by Rusty Coats
Rita studied Monk as if he were a Hopi urn and whispered: "That's Charlie Monk. I thought he was dead. His suits were the only reason Avalon flew. His tactile --"
"Later."
The kids spread out, polishing their daggers. Rita stared at Administration's once-celebrated stage, then her eyes snagged on the holographic portrait of Avalon -- the unfinished status report that showed the city's progress as it stood the day Wrecking Ball hit the mainframe. For a moment, I thought she was going to kneel.
"I've done a little digging,” I said. “I'm not happy about what I've found."
"So have I," Monk said, "and neither am I."
"Then crack a bottle,” I said. “It's gonna be another long night."
He shrugged. "They're all long."
I started with the fusion bombs and the data pipes and then filled him in on New Hope, about the bounty Cassady put on my head and especially about what Freud had hidden on the ROM disc. At the mention of duplicity, Monk only frowned, unsurprised.
"The doc's got the predatory instincts of a sucker fish," he said, swirling Ephedria in his glass. "My bet is that he's crossin' T's for somebody else, somebody big. Your man Regan could have told you that. That suit material you found in his gun? Stygian. Whoever came for you didn't even want to risk hirin' out the job to a professional.”
"Everyone's a killer these days," I said absently. "But if it was a contract job, they'd have waited. Regan hadn't been dead long. They were looking for something."
"That's what I thought." He grinned. "But I can't think of anything you own that's worth the trouble."
I ached for a Cyn; too long without a dose and my brain started feeling like last year's model. "That's why I want to go back in. Club Trocadero covers the biggest remaining cluster of data pipes in the city. I think --"
He waved his hand, cutting me off. "If you jump right into Club Troc, you're gonna stir up things worse than they are now. Just like ya did at New Hope. Or the Rhapsody."
I scowled at him. "You got an idea?"
"Depends. Can you fix McFee's gauze?"
McFee's gauze was high-end stuff, better than Icarus. And whoever killed the boy had the flight log showing I'd pried it open, so the encryption was useless now. But the flaw was tertiary, below the surface. By adding a fourth tier to the program -- maybe the second gear of the Icarus program -- the flaw would become a scar, harder to penetrate than all the coding around it.
"Yeah," I said. "I can."
"Do it." His breath was hot with the Ephedria's spice. "Then suit up."
I stared blankly at him. "Where are we going?"
"Where memories never die."
I kept Icarus in my hat, a habit born in Echo Wharf, when the datacops got wise. The fedora had just enough memory for Icarus and a few family pix, buried under uplink programming. When the induction guards performed Jasper's famous cavity search, the goons found nothing but factory features from the haberdashery.
I hadn't unwrapped the program since the feds cuffed me, letting it collect dust but, unable to dump it, finding some security in having it there. Some hope.
I sat at the central Mensa while Monk gave Rita a tour and the kids threw jagged ROM discs into the fabric of an old scuba suit. I loaded the disc I'd gotten from Van Meter that first night, skipped past Magdi and went straight for the sourcec ode. My hand was slick inside the dataglove as I hooked the code out of the virtual environment and moved it to a holding file. It hovered in the nonspace while I uploaded the dusty copy of Icarus, shot it through the chip and saw them both floating beside each other on the ripped visor of my hat. They looked like distant cousins.
It took almost three hours to merge the second gear of Icarus into McFee's cloak. The stitchwork gave McFee's echo effect -- hiding his movements in the walls, shouts and smiles of his surroundings -- a boost, shooting them past Merlin's foundations and into the Flux, where Avalon's spent energy went to percolate. The flaw of McFee's gauze was that he hid his data too close. The beauty of it was that I'd never thought of that. No one had.
Merging his gauze with Icarus was like linking two puzzle pieces. Snapped together, the code on my visor looked like the statue of a bird, finally given wings.
I tinkered longer than I needed to, but with the visor folded down, alone with the hybrid code, I let my eyes glide over the creation. In Jasper, privacy hacks were considered the lowest criminals, more dangerous than any other code writer. Privacy hacks wrote code to keep things snug, no matter what it was -- an artist's fractal garden or the rough digitized dreams of a serial rapist. Encryption doesn't care what it hides. And when a code writer goes down, the world screams about the child pornographers or the anarchists we abetted -- never the civil rights we shielded from fascists.
Van Meter once called me the last private eye and maybe he was right. After the feds dumped me in Jasper with three pairs of work blues, a toothbrush and a comb, no one took my place in Avalon. The few who tried were killed, until no one wanted to do it anymore. Too risky, no respect. Privacy hacks wrote code for religion, because they believed in that fairy tale of freedom, and that’s the loneliest fairy tale of all.
McFee did that. He wrote this poem and flew for a while, wasting his creation on cheap voyeurism the way Faust wasted his soul on parlor tricks. His program was the last of its kind, a Mohican. Now he was gone and his masterpiece -- which I'd hand-sifted from a cheap live-sex brothel in a city full of red-light districts -- winked on the fedora's torn visor, an epitaph no one would read.
I uploaded it to the Mensa, watching it fade from the visor like pulse lightning absorbed into the clouds. When it was gone, I flicked the visor into the brim and rubbed my eyes. Ferret's boys were sleeping on the stage, curled beneath the hologram of the unfinished City of Light. Monk and Rita sat behind them, and I could hear Monk's sandpaper voice telling lies about the good old days while Rita nodded, her eyes as wide as Magdalene's on the third day. I listened for a while, but grew restless hearing about the past, about what we coulda and shoulda and woulda. It was the mantra of the Mission District, the one that kept us warm with the flicker of hope.
I cleared my throat and they glanced over as if they'd forgotten I was there. I hitched a thumb at the beakers and said, "Let's fly."
AVALON XVI: Into the Flux
Monk and I tightened the sashes of our scuba suits while Rita reconfigured the Merlin interface. Ferret and the boys stood behind her, watching with eyes the size of ROM spinners as she hot-rodded Monk's antique waystation. Rita had a fan club.
"Nice little family," I said, nodding at the kids.
"I guess we deserve each other." The Lucite made his face bend like taffy as he glanced at Ferret. "Real name's Francis Lee. His daddy was one of the first cut down by the programmer's disease. Ted Lee worked in Compression, one of their fourth-floor fellas, where the ink never dried on the patents. Ted was a talent at smashin' atoms, but one day he got a taste of the high life and never came down."
The shoulder bungee groaned twice and caught, pulling me aloft. My feet dangled seven inches off the stage.
Monk threaded his cable through the collar plate. "Don't know what happened to his mom. About that time, things were fallin' apart. Lotsa people just never showed up again for work. She was one of 'em. Worked in wallpapers. You can still see her designs in the Opera House."
Rita stared into the panel screen, mumbling about the virgin gateway -- the door that hadn't been corrupted by Digerati advertisements or liquefied by Wrecking Ball. Her voice quivered on the speakers like a reed broken in half.
"How'd you end up with the boy?"
"For a while, the only human haunts on Campus were me and some junkies and those kids. We sorta stuck together like two pieces of gum." He booted up the datapack and adjusted my suit for low immersion. "Besides, we're good for each other. They keep an eye out, scavenge me some supplies. They're good kids."
I thought about Ferret's boys clawing Janak's pugs until they stared at the rain with empty socket
s and said, "What do you give them?"
"A place to hide. A meal. Company. Sometimes I tell 'em stories about the old days. If I didn't know their folks, I just make it up. They don't know any better."
I slid the ROM of Monk's identity and the hybrid encryption program into the optic drive. The tiny screen flashed System: Active, waiting for us to enter the Leap.
"They inherited this city," he said, staring at the holographic portrait of Avalon. "Walls built around it, broken dreams all over the place like pieces of glass, all the good folks gone or dead or wrapped up in that crazy Neuromantic cult. That's what those kids inherited, and they don't see the tragedy of that. To them, the city's a clubhouse, full of mazes and treasure. A fantasyland."
Rita's voice squeaked over the booth speaker. "The Mensa is ready if you are. I'm bouncing you through six waystations, plus a speakeasy in Arcada. Their scanners will pick you up as an overseas call. That is, if Jack's encryption is any good..."
She let it hang, backed up by a gang of grinning kids, looking like Snow White.
I played Grumpy. "Yeah, yeah."
Monk said, "Don’t be scared if ya can't pinpoint us. The Flux --"
"Oh, I know all about the Flux. And don't you worry," she prattled. "I've got you pegged, no matter how far under you go. I reconfigured the Doppler ping to handle Flux anomalies, just like the Sysop Mensas. See, you --"
“Shiloh girl,” I said, "how about you just show us how it works, huh?"
Rita's eyes burned. "How about you just kiss my ass?"
Monk grinned. "Pretty brassy for a gal who works under a church."
"I bring out the best in people," I said, then pulled the helmet over my head.
We flashed across the Leap like two raisins in a bowl of milk and emerged at the teleportation station outside what was left of The Palms, Baxter Levy's torched club. The high-res pavement knocked against our boots as we stepped out, and my eyes filled with greasepaint. Simulated neon pulsed the names of brothels nestled in the space designed for the Avalon University, student population zero.
"Hooo, baby! How's it tonight, honey?"
The station's Tesla coils roared cobalt lightning as we stepped out, pausing to adapt to immersion. My ears filled with catcalls and nearby jazz from a tiny club shoved into a University classroom, the sounds blanketed by pleasured moans. The Lounge cried out for patrons with holographic signs of live-sex shows, "featuring the delightful Jonna, formerly of Delilah's" -- a code that meant Slick Sister was where you'd find hookers past their prime. Sector three was Avalon's low-rent district.
"Give me some of that!"
Across the street, the line was twenty deep for a spot on Mistress Maui's massage table; the joke being that no one had designed a suit good enough for chiropractic work. I heard Monk laugh and turned to share the joke, then had to bite my lip to keep my jaw from dropping.
Monk was beautiful. Against the girders of an unfinished University, his dark skin looked polished, stretched over the body of a decathlon champion. Dressed in loose pants and a tight, collarless shirt, Monk was a panther. He'd replaced his bald-spot with a tight cut of black hair and his legs were long and sure.
"Jesus forgive me for what I see!"
In another reality, Mother Nature handed Monk a bum leg. This reality gave it back. Even with its brothels and pedophile clubs, Avalon still offered gifts of decency.
"What're you gawkin' at, dimples?"
Rita, lurking in the subscreen, giggled. I looked past Monk at the mirrored wall surrounding The Palms. Staring back was a chesty brunette with nice taste in mink.
I yanked Monk off the ground and shook him like a tambourine. The commotion drew stares from the boys awaiting Mistress Maui. They began to hoot.
"You know, Monk --" I said, then bit my tongue. I had one of the most beautiful soprano voices I'd ever heard.
This only made Monk laugh harder.
I tossed him aside and he glided to the ground, quickly keying his gravity low. I put my hands on my hips -- nice hips, these -- and pouted and felt ridiculous.
"Change me." My voice lilted. "Change me right now."
Monk was laughing too hard to speak.
"You can't change, Jackie," Rita said. "You know that. Once you're in, you've gotta keep your identity or Merlin will spit you out. House rules."
I crossed my arms and tapped my slender toes against the pavement.
A sailor from the Mistress Maui line ran up and did his best wolf growl. He was a burr-head dolt with a stock johnny body -- a cheap way to paint the town. He gave my ass a squeeze just before I grabbed his throat and lifted him off the ground.
"In twenty-two seconds," I said, trying to deepen my soft soprano to an alto, "your flight log will show that you're in peril. You may already see the screen reporting that your life force is down to ninety percent. As I squeeze, you'll notice it diminishes faster."
The boy's face stuttered in the frames, starting to break up. Low-dollar body rentals couldn't take much abuse.
Monk shook his head. Ferret's boys stared over Rita's shoulder. Across the street, the sailor's pals howled.
"What's it say now? Twenty percent?" I yawned. "You really should buy better equipment. It's worth it."
"Pleesh!"
It wasn't articulate, but it was sincere. I figured he was down to the dregs of his online life; another smack across his cheek and Merlin would boot him off-line.
I put him down like a good girl.
He rubbed his neck. "Jeez, lady, I thought --"
"That's the problem, pal." There was ice in my voice. "You think every lady on the street wants to give it away. I might just be here for a nice stroll, you ever think of that?”
The sailor stared at his cheap shoes, then snarled, "You ain't no lady at all."
I pushed the mink aside. "This is Avalon, doll. What I am off-line doesn't matter. Haven't you got that yet? Or do you still think Mistress Maui is a Hawaiian lei lady when she takes off her stroke suit?"
"I, uh," he stuttered. "She's --"
"I'll let you in on a little secret. Mistress Maui is a three-hundred pound Hispanic man from Livermore." I tickled his ear. "But he sure gives a nice hummer, hmmm?"
The sailor's face shuddered with rage. "You gotta --"
And that was all he could say. His fret had sped up his heart, and Merlin didn't like that. The sailor boy vanished with a small crackle of light.
I blew on my nails and gave Monk a flip look. "So I'm a man-eater."
Monk shook his head. "Just load that gauze before you get a fan club."
The visor's infrared sensors picked up my eye movement and called up the directory for Mohican. Beside it were two switches, Run and End.
"Here I go," I told Monk. Then, to the visor, "Run."
McFee's gauze shot all data associated with my online body into the binary blood surging through Merlin's veins. It spread like a virus, and when Mohican had infected every cell, my body dissipated like a statue made of sand.
I raised my hand and saw a sheer outline; the woman's peachy flesh was gone, replaced by a dun gray. My hand still had fingers and my torso ended in legs, but the program had robbed my identity. Facial features, skin and sex didn't exist. McFee's program -- our program -- turned its user into Anyman.
Then I watched Monk disappear.
His body pulsed against the Tesla coil, then vanished, replaced by a pewter-colored ghost with the face of a wig mannequin. He cast no shadows, and the glare of the lights from Mistress Maui's burned through him. But there he stood, visible only to me and Rita -- a ghost with two arms, a stocky body and one short, handicapped leg.
"Damn." His voice sounded like gravel. "Damn."
In the bottom of my screen, Rita's hand conjured a spell to adjust her connection. "Cross-chat's OK," she said. "You guys see and hear each other?"
"Yeah," I said. Monk nodded, holding his short leg as if it were an anchor.
"Good," Rita said. "I see vague shapes, but I can hear you. But check t
his out."
A Scan monitor appeared on the visor, showing our recent progress on a mathematical grid that logged each online movement and sensation. The grid spiked when I'd held the kid in the air, leveled out, peaked once more and then flatlined.
As far as Merlin was concerned, I'd unplugged.
Rita came back. "Not bad, Jack. After the dragon incident, Van Meter sent the specs for McFee's gauze to his Digerati cronies so they could detect anyone using it. But you're not tripping a single wire. How'd you do it?"
I shrugged. "Something old. Something new."
Monk stood next to me, elbow-height again. Even without facial features, his emotions were easy to read. Mohican killed every reason Monk came to the city.
"Let's go to the Flux so I can get outta this suit."
I nodded, then followed his slow gait toward the advent horizon of Avalon. It was the first time I'd heard him eager to leave.
The Avenue of Power ended with a wall of interlocked bricks -- terracotta nightmares, sutured with gray mortar, impenetrable to even the highest echelon of Avalon citizen. Merlin didn't want his citizens poking a hole in the dyke, didn't want all that old data slopping into the streets.
Monk and I passed through easily, as if gliding through a pink mist.
Avalon's Flux had its genesis in old mainframes, which moved files into that hazy suburb between delete and undelete, where it ground the files into raw strips of code, like a tallow plant working on a pig. Mainframes needed the area for computational digestion, so it could dispose of data the way it had come in: One byte at a time.
The Flux did the same on an epic scale. Merlin made sure you experienced the moment in Avalon, then sent used data into a crackling fog at the edge of the city. Some blobs of data could bob around for years before being picked clean; others went instantly. Finding a specific strand of code in the Flux was like finding a diamond in a landfill, but that was Monk's hobby -- beachcombing on a shore of memories.
As we walked, I saw images pop out of the swampy soil -- recorded images erupting from Merlin's digestive system like St. Elmo's Fire. I heard groans, chanting crowds, lilting clarinets, all the spent moments of Avalon bubbling to the surface. We walked, dodging wraiths, then watched them disappear into the ground.