by Rusty Coats
"Absolutely. And he made sure it would never happen again."
Frank pushed his plate forward. "How so?"
Jenny gave me a wink and then turned back to Frank. "Jack confronted the man in my online office. And then he killed him."
Frank's hands trembled in grease. "That was you?"
"No." I shoved the glass aside. "What happened --"
"Was genius," Van Meter gloated. "I'm sure you've heard the rumors. Dinosaurs and demons." He waved his hand, dismissing the image. "Jack trapped the interloper in my office and then killed him with some sort of electrical charge that lit him up like a halogen bulb. They found Adam McFee's body in his flight suit over in New Berkeley."
Emily’s affections cooled. Cecily folded her arms as if I gave her a chill.
"A boy," Frank seethed. "Nothing but a child."
"He was nineteen," Van Meter said, "and he was quite experienced in my brothels. So I wouldn't call him a boy. I would call him dead, however. Quite dead."
I took a breath. Van Meter had the visual record. He knew the dragon wasn't mine. But he was using me for bragging rights in front of two hookers and Frank, laying a film of manure that would sprout rumors faster than the Z-10 pandemic wiped out half of three generations. From the hookers, word would spread through johns and call girls to every brothel, and from Frank it would reach all the way up to the United Nations. About how Van Meter had a secret weapon in Avalon. Which would make Jenny the most powerful Sysop in town.
And why? Because Van Meter was doing spin control. Because somewhere out there was someone who really was the most powerful. And it wasn't Jenny.
"Killer," Frank growled. "I remember you now. And I remember your parents. The librarians." He smiled at the women. "His parents were killers, too, in their own way. His mother fought Prohibition and planned to discredit the research. She didn't care about the people -- only the Project. And that made them killers. Just like you."
The spotlight came on as the emcee crossed the stage, the light winking off his celluloid collar. "Welcome to the Rhapsody, where tonight we have a fabulous slate of music and romance. But if you want laughs, here’s one: Two Neuromantics walked into a speakeasy with a parrot. And one says --"
But he couldn't finish the joke, because the spotlight had turned on us, bathing Van Meter's throne room with yellow light as I beat Frank Wren until he screamed.
Van Meter studied his cuticles, yawned and spoke into a filament sewn into his collar. Thurgood immediately opened the door and broke up the show, pressing me against the wall. Frank's face looked like his plate of ribs.
The women slipped out, their heels punching holes in the carpet, and the spotlight had returned to the stage. As Thurgood carried Frank away, a Laotian busboy swabbed the balcony until Frank's blood was nothing but a sticky memory.
Van Meter watched the chorus girls poke each other with neon spears to the tune of Dizzy Boden's "Jungle Trot." He said, "Feel better?"
"Grind the organ and I dance." I wiped the mess off my hands. "How about you?"
"Yes and no."
"Which is yes and which is no?"
"Yes on Frank. I've considered having Frank erased, a gift to my Campus alumni, although his lack of backbone was partially responsible for my empire. I've even signed the hit. But then I realized that punishing him -- as you punished him now -- was more pleasing." He laughed through his long nose. "I think you're the seventh person to do that to Frank in my club. It makes me wonder why he still likes my company."
I lit a Cyn and watched the girls roll down their garters while the table boys took reservations for the uplink room. The girls lived on tips.
"As for no, I'm referring to your botched job with McFee. I would have had more discretion if I'd signed out a public warrant on the little bastard. You kick up more dust than a food-lift crate in the Hong Kong crater."
"I'm not the one spinning the propeller."
He sucked his ice. "What choice do I have? I run Avalon because people believe I run Avalon. It's a confidence game, not just a bunch of ones and zeroes. It's hearts and minds, Jack. And if people start thinking I can't handle it, then I don't."
The girls went into their finale, showing the audience how nice reality could be.
"I thought you didn't care about hierarchies."
"And I thought you didn't care for prison."
"Why call Stan? Send Thurgood to my apartment. First in his class, after all."
He grinned. "Don't tempt me. But appearances are everything, and appearances suggest you're my best boy. Rubbing you out would be bad PR."
I chuckled. “You've got a dragon loose in Avalon and the last time I saw him, he was turning your office to slag. Appearances suggest you’re not calling the shots."
Van Meter slammed his hand on the balcony toggle and a membrane of smoked Lucite rose from the knee-high balcony like a wall of dark air. He spun around and spat, "I’ve had enough of you, Denys. I want answers, and then I never want to see you again. First: How did you find McFee?"
I watched the performance through the tinted resin. "His cloak produced an anomaly. An echo. I tracked it back to Merlin's buffer and devolved the room. Once I was down to the thirty-fourth tier, I found the echo."
"In atmospherics or interactive?"
Jenny's crime-boss routine was rehearsed, but his Sysop brain was genuine. "Both. His cloak embedded his presence in the bitstream. At any moment, McFee could be part chair, part music and part tactile-delivery code."
"And you caught him with some sort of crude trap."
It hadn't seemed so crude to me. "Something like that."
"Did McFee transmit anything? Text or subprograms?"
Through the tint, the girls took their bows. "You have the visual record. If the kid sent anything, you'd know. Why?"
He drummed his fingers on the chair. "You shared a dialogue in the office, and then you attempted to let him go. That led me to believe you owed him a favor."
"I owed him a fair chance." McFee's onion-skinned ghost flashed on my retinas.
“Always the martyr, Jack.”
"That dragon killed him while I had him hog-tied. Then it tried to kill me." I inhaled cinnamon mist. "The kid knew what was up. Before the dragon smashed through the grid, he said 'They'll be here any moment.' Who are They, Jenny?"
Van Meter poured another snort and swirled it around the glass. "It was the trap, you know. It lit off flares everywhere McFee went, pointing to my office like some glow-in-the-dark hopscotch grid. It's a wonder you didn't have a hundred uninvited guests."
I snubbed out the Cyn. "A hundred guests don’t have that kind of muscle."
His face was marble. "I told you the Digerati is in the middle of an organizational change. Control is in flux. I expected you to keep that in mind."
"Is that who McFee was? Some Digerati front man?"
"He was exactly what the Neuromantic billboards say he was: A kid. A nobody."
"A nobody who recognized your office."
"I'm a popular man."
I grabbed the Ephedria bottle, started to pour, then slammed it back on the table. "Cut the act, Jenny. You've got questions? You've got six kilometers of bitstream that can answer them. But I've got questions of my own."
"You're in no position to ask anything."
"Maybe not. But I will, because I‘ve spent two days dabbing my own blood because I stepped into your line of fire. And I don't like that."
"This is war, Jack. Secret weapons and secret allies and before it's over, there will thousands of unmarked graves. Thousands. You say you didn't know what you were getting into? I say tough titty." He shrugged. "I hired you as a personal favor. Icarus once gave me leverage. Besides," he said, stirring his thoughts with a dainty hand, "I'd heard you were out of Jasper and wasting away. So I hired you. And you failed me."
He sipped at his snifter. "Nevertheless, I've transferred a considerable chunk of credit to your account. You are now liquid again. Don't bother to thank me."
"I won't
."
"But get this: I owe you nothing. Not a job, not even protection, which you'll need. I especially don't owe you an explanation. You're lucky I'm letting you walk out of here."
"I'm not out here yet." I poured a shot and drank it hard. "And I'm not leaving until I find out why McFee knew he was a goner when he recognized your office."
"Oh, Jack," he sneered. "Jack, you slay me!"
That sliced through what was left of my manners. I grabbed his arm and squeezed until I felt the muscle buckle against bone.
“Juh-" he stuttered. "Juh-Jack!"
He cocked his head toward his collar, but my hand flashed like a grappling hook, grabbed the filament microphone and ripped it off Van Meter's silk shirt, then snubbed it like a Cyn butt. He looked at me, eyes wide and weak, showing his true face.
"Who are They, Jenny? Tell me or I'll break this arm just to hear it sing."
Below, the crowd erupted in applause for Buddy Green. Jenny's nose cast a sundial shadow across his cheeks and I felt his eggshell bones begin to crackle.
"It's too late!" he blurted. "They're already coming for you." The idea made him grin, twisting the red hairs of his beard. "I’m surprised you’re still alive. It's a done deal!"
I pressed him against the black Lucite wall. "Who?"
His face twisted. A palsied hand dropped to his side and I could see the answer form in his trachea and travel up to his tongue. My ears cocked to hear it.
What I heard was the hot sizzle of a stun-gun, shouting my name.
My head glanced off the cocktail table, spilling the Ephedria, which soaked my Tremayne as my legs spasmed. I vibrated, tasting copper.
Van Meter stood over me, rubbing his arm. He patted the wall panel where he'd signaled his Southpaw, then kicked me squarely in the ribs. I counted six blows.
"Sorry, Jack,” he said, straightening his hair. “Looks like you should have stayed in yesterday, because today is too tough for you. And tomorrow sold your seat."
I caught a last glimpse of Buddy Green blowing swing through his trumpet, then Thurgood hauled me out of the room and tossed me down the stairs.
AVALON X: Echo Wharf
"Hey, brother, got it? Can't let go. Bring it home."
The junkie had a familiar face, with blond hair that reminded me of old California postcards and milky blue eyes that hadn't spent much time staring at this reality. WPA alumni haunted the Campus, exhumed from our yearbooks to chase the ghost of their first online high. I'd long ago given up on naming the dead.
But this junkie had my attention. He sat on the front desk of Kenosha Arms, talking to the skeleton keys on a tarnished brass ring. And one of the keys was mine.
"Flew it out? You know. Got some of that."
I shoved the fedora back and banged a bell once used to summon bellhops, back when the place had class. The noise sent a spasm through the junkie and he fell, his wiry body glancing off the mail slots, keys scattering on the cold tile.
"I got it. There. You see it? Hummed out."
Hummed out was right. In the last phases of SDS and CNI, the brain shut off neurotransmitters like a janitor tripping circuits at closing time, leaving the junkie lost in a dim fog of afterimages, flickering memories and that urge to fix.
I glanced at the mail slots. Even the dust was gone. Next to the slots was a Mensa old enough to be a museum piece. Someone had gutted it.
"Are you a thief?" I asked, wishing I had a heater. "Or just the welcoming party?"
His lips mimicked the words I'd spoken. Three times. Finally, realizing he was too far gone, I turned toward the elevator, and that’s when the junkie found his voice.
"Denys isn't heah! I sweah! Denys isn't heah! I sweah! Denys isn't heah!"
My ribs howled as I spun around. The junkie screamed the two sentences over and over, his face wide with madness: "I sweah! Denys isn't heah! I sweah!"
I reached across the counter and grabbed his overcoat and felt it rip in my grasp, rotten. He kept screaming, even as I pulled him over the desk, screamed as I raised my hand and finally stopped when I smacked him.
I let go and he fell back, mumbling as he gathered keys off the tile. "See, when it comes, it's gone. Hear that breath? Flip you for it."
The empty lobby echoed my steps as I ran toward the elevator. The junkie’s scream had been nothing but mimicry, a playback with a perfect Brooklyn accent.
Just like Regan.
I found him outside my apartment, his head twisted like a bottle cap, still holding his black-beetle stun. I leaned over and smelled ozone; he'd fired at least once, at close range. A swatch of black fabric clung to the barbed tip. Double-interwoven matrix material, top-drawer stuff. Almost like a datasuit.
I dropped the swatch in my pocket, glancing at the master key lodged in the door. Regan must have led someone to my apartment, probably for money, smelled a rat and pulled his heater. But not fast enough. That was Regan all over again.
His hand was warm, but the muscles had begun to freeze. I pinned his wrist with my foot, yanked the heater away and walked into what was left of my home.
My cabinets and drawers had been emptied on the floor, sorted like artifacts from an archaeological dig. Socks separated, shirts ripped, Cyn cases turned inside out. My Mensa had been hacksawed, the memory buffers gone. The lumpectomy had removed every bit of parole work that kept me a free man.
The Murphy bed had been ripped away from the wall. I stepped over the clothes and pushed aside the splinters of my bed, my eyes nailed to a ROM shard. Rain pelted the window as I picked it up, seeing my reflection in the prisms, then turned it over and saw my own handwriting -- or what had been my handwriting, when I was 12. "ing valon, stmas onk, etchen rthday." The rest of the title had been broken away.
Moving Day to Avalon, First Christmas with Monk, Gretchen's 10th Birthday.
I crawled through the debris, searching for the black-leather binder of ROM discs that contained every recorded moment of my family, proof that something other than the Depression, pandemics, nuclear war and Prohibition had happened. ROMs of my mother in a Rapunzel costume for the Campus Halloween party. VR discs of holding my Dad's hand -- his grip incongruous because Monk hadn't debugged the tactile-delivery cleats -- as we walked through the angry heart of Vesuvius. Snapshots of Gretchen's sixteenth birthday, her hair cut short and her hemline cut shorter. WPA newsreels, Monk with hair, Monk going bald, homework lessons and early encryption codes. Footage of our first steps in Avalon and my long walk to the federal courthouse. Gone.
Whoever killed Regan took most of me, too.
An hour later I found a half-empty flask of booze and dropped it in my pocket next to Regan’s heater, stepped over his corpse and walked out, searching for nowhere.
Echo Wharf still smelled like aftershave poured on a barbecue. The rafters dripped rust and the linoleum had turned to powder. Galaxies. That's what they used to have on the linoleum: silver galaxies that swirled under your feet. But now it was antimatter and the chromium furniture was mangled into pretzels and the mirror that had tinted our faces with gold had melted into hard, cold lava, our reflections long gone.
I pulled a halogen from my pocket and put the darkness at arm's length. Rats cruised the walls and disappeared behind a row of shattered teleportation booths, wires dangling like severed earthworms. Third from the left, Lucky No. 7. That was my booth. A data glove and my hat and I'd make the Leap with a new cloak jammed between my virtual teeth like a dagger in a Tarzan book, dodging data sharks. Sometimes they bit me. Sometimes the Campus police came to our apartment with a warrant and a pair of nylon cuffs and I'd hear my mother at the door, telling them that I'd taken my homework too seriously, and she'd handle it the way a mother should, and who could believe kids these days? Then she'd come to my bedroom and talk about how encryption was secondary to Construction, that we should create the paradigm before we subvert it. But sometimes -- and then more than not -- the sharks missed me. And when the Campus police stopped coming around, that’s when my
mother worried most of all.
Lucky No. 7. That’s where I ran circles around PresiWren Geddes' at Avalon’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, using a cloak called Chowder. When Merlin tried to finger me, I bobbed under the surface like a cracker. When Merlin learned to watch for bubbles and caught me, I wandered out of No. 7 to a chorus of jeers. "You'd think a guy who calls himself Daedalus," Van Meter carped, "would find a way to fly over Merlin's head."
That night I sketched the rough code of Icarus on the monochrome screen above the urinals. Two weeks later, I gave it away, subverting the paradigm for the last time.
Now I sat down and served myself a drink. The fire had scorched the tavern's skin, but not its soul. Some buildings were bulldozed when Prohibition hit and the Sons of David swooped in with the zeal of a Baptist book-burning. The Sysops had organized by then, and once they'd dismantled Wrecking Ball, they sent a goon squad to kill every Davidian on Campus. It turned into a standoff, with datacops firebombing them all, and when the smoke was as thick as topsoil, the U.N. entombed the place with razor wire.
Echo Wharf. I'd spent almost every night of my life here, sneaking in as a kid to learn from the masters, then swaggering in as a teenager to trade code. And then one night I watched the datacops push through the door. Icarus had been online for three weeks and had replicated more times than a Korean metavirus, and the U.N. wanted someone's head on a stake. Icarus turned Avalon into a free society and became an international event. It turned me into a hero, then a martyr, and then a nobody.
I held up the flask and opened my mouth to say something poignant but came up dry. So I toasted the dark, tapping the broken ROM on the tabletop.
"I saw your mother here once," said a voice behind me. "Drunker 'n a skunk."
I spun around, reaching for the heater. Monk stood on a pile of cinders and busted slate that had been a pool table, a stun rifle across his knee.
"She danced on this table. Don't know what for. Danced barefoot by the side pocket, twirlin' like a dervish. Interrupted one my best games, if I remember right."