Avalon

by Rusty Coats

  Rita gawked as if regarding a bauble in Haggletown. "That's really you, huh?"

  I nodded. "Or what I was."

  She smiled and her mustache crinkled like fresh paint. "I've seen this body in newsreels, before Prohibition. That one newsreel of Construction Kids. You were flying."

  "I was always flying," I said. I glanced at the subscreen, at Monk. "Why didn't you give me this the first time I plugged in?"

  "Didn't know if it still belonged to you." He glanced away, frowning. "These things have souls, Jack. It isn’t just a suit of clothes, for Christ's sake."

  "I guess not."

  The short man of Rita met my eyes in the reflection. "But isn't this risky? Walking around as yourself?"

  Behind us, the street surged with people, their voices like a babbling river. I watched them, all of them beautiful, junkies and uptown players alike, shining with the glamour Prohibition gives all things forbidden. Not one stopped to notice me.

  I smiled. "Looks like you're the only one buying antiques."

  I guided us toward the Tesla coil of a teleport station to get us to Club Troc and Rita stopped. "Please," her baritone squeaked. "We have time. Let's walk."

  So we did. And halfway up the block, Rita said, "Pretend this never happened. Imagine the signs and the billboards gone. Can you?"

  She grabbed my hand and told me to tell her all about it, to act like I was showing my girlfriend my old hometown, even though my girlfriend was dressed like a man and my hometown had become a brothel. But I did it. I pointed out the first blocks of Jann Turnquist's architecture, traced the lines of unfinished skyscrapers, boasted about the promises we'd made at the Hall of Nations. Here's where my parents stored the tactile data of the first Moon walk. There's where I first flew on Icarus.

  Before long I barely noticed that I was holding hands with a mustachioed man, or that I'd actually begun to smile at the city, noticing again just how beautiful it was.

  The line outside Club Troc stretched down the street in a blur of conspicuous fashion and taxed patience. Access codes were at a premium that night, so the alphas and betas -- the low-rent folks, half a step above canned-heat junkies -- stood outside watching others come and go. They were bottom feeders, just like they were in any reality, thinking they could be important just by watching important people.

  Rita and I went to the front of the line. Rita showed him a credit number any honest man would decline, since the number was hotter than a fallout shelter in China. But this was Avalon, where they filtered out honest men like pebbles from sand.

  We walked into the lounge and leaned on the solid-gold bar. Club Troc was the most popular nightspot in town, one of the only online clubs where sexual fulfillment was a side dish, not the main course. Van Meter had financed a complete facelift; Ballantine Hall was gutted and rebuilt, so no one would catch glimpses of the old world. The walls were black marble, the cornices gold-leafed, the artwork a series of tasteful nudes. Above the bar stood a gold-toned mirror that reminded me of Echo Wharf, designed to reflect greater beauty than it was given. Green-marble pilasters held the transparent dance floors aloft, like tree trunks holding up the sky. Van Meter had built one of the most beautiful clubs in history, even if it did not physically exist.

  Rita's eyes flicked from dancer to dancer. Some, she pointed out. "There's Wild Bill Henry -- in the red cape, see him? He runs Kitten Kaboodle and two other gay spots in town. Very behind in his rent to Danny Marrs. And over there? In the fringe? That's Senator Langdon's wife, head of Mothers Against Immersion Technologies. She's having an affair with one of Roddy's designers. And there ..."

  On and on, using her insider knowledge to give names to the faces. I leaned on the bar and watched the fashion roll past, gazing up through the clear floors at the dancers, their heels punching the air, noticing that most women declined to add underwear to their online fashion. The music flowed like aged wine.

  Rita's manly shoulders had begun to move to the music, tapping her wingtips against the chrome bar stool. Van Meter's band had just gone into a slow-groove swing, all brass and reed. We still had an hour before Levy and the other Digerati boys arrived.

  "Say," I said, and spun Rita around on the bar stool. "I may be out of style with my steps, but it seems a shame to waste a stolen credit chip just sitting here."

  Her mustache twitched. "That's sweet, Jack, but I'm a man."

  "Odds are three to one that half the women here are cross-dressers. Club Troc isn't that restricted." I stared up through the dance floors. "I just feel like dancing."

  She glanced down the bar at a row of cascading curls, low-cut silk and off-the-shoulders lace, a gallery of ladies in waiting. Some were pros hired by the house for taxi dances; the others were legit, out for a good time.

  "Why not one of them?"

  "Not my style," I said. "I dance with who brought me."

  The brass music slid across my eardrums. "You'd really dance with me," Rita asked, touching her pinstriped jacket "dressed like this?"

  "If that's my only shot, yeah."

  She searched my online eyes for honesty, her irises shaded by the brim of her fedora. Then, abruptly, she stood up and said, "Sit tight."

  The fedora was cocked high on her forehead as she shouldered past the pretty people. I watched her walk, at the cat-like agility of it, at how her hips told the truth about her gender, mustache and all. She was mumbling.

  At the edge of the lounge, she walked behind a green-marble pilaster. When her wingtips emerged from the other side of the column, they'd changed.

  They'd become black heels.

  The trousers became a black dress slit up to here. The suspenders had become spaghetti straps on a Danith fringe dress, revealing an elegant neck dotted with baby pearls. The fedora became pixie black hair. And the mustache was gone.

  She leaned against the pilaster, her manicured red nails scratching at the smooth surface, hips cocked. In her other hand she held a white feather fan and lazily gave herself a breeze. Rita's alter-ego looked exactly like her worldly body, except that her digital clone was bolder with her clothes and sultrier with her lipstick.

  I slid off the stool. The soft brass tickled my ear as we moved onto the floor, not saying anything, falling into a smooth sway. Her body pressed against mine, my hand firm against her smooth back, her milky legs following my lead with a graceful glide. It was several minutes before I realized that Monk's screen was black, leaving us alone.

  We never figured out how to make kisses possible in Avalon. The tactile systems were too bulky for the helmets, the touch too delicate to transmit.

  What a shame.

  AVALON XIX: Digerati Bug Hunt

  My Bulova read 7:50 when the subscreen opened and Monk stared back across the divide. On the third floor of Club Trocadero, Rita's black dress flared like a parasol as we danced on the transparent plateau. And three stories below us, Baxter Levy had just walked through the front door.

  He was surrounded by a clutch of flunkies who cleared a path for the Digerati boss. His online body was a square-shouldered bruiser who looked like he grew up on the docks, not a society dob whose love for code landed him a WPA job creating Merlin -- a job he and the other Sysops parlayed into mafia careers. Online, Levy looked like someone who owned the playground, because online, he did.

  "Show time."

  I pulled Rita off the floor and steered toward the private rooms. The corridor ran to oblivion, a red-carpet floor with mahogany walls and doors locked by high prices. Outside one of the rooms a man in an admiral suit was negotiating price with a young woman and I almost paused to thank Mandelbaum for the loaner.

  We stopped at Room 708. A decade ago, when this quarter of town was the University and Club Troc was the Physics Building, this room was a service elevator.

  "How much credit you got left?"

  "Plenty," Rita said. "Only amateurs steal small."

  The door was as dishonest as the man downstairs. It popped open.

  It was a typi
cal sex room, nothing fancy. Just a bed and interactive walls for porn or a view to the abutting rooms -- Avalon's answer to closed-circuit TV. Some rooms came stocked with girls the way fisheries once stocked bass; other rooms expected you to do your own angling. This one was a couples room, offering the luxury of a four-poster bed and a bedside dashboard called a Sensu-Panel that offered enhancements, from vibrations to preprogrammed third-party lovers, if you were feeling ambitious.

  "You get the access codes?"

  Monk piped in, "Yeah. But we got a problem. With this hack, I can't separate one screen from the others. It’s the same com-grid. So anything --"

  "Anything we upload to one screen plays on every screen in the city," I said. "Doesn't sound like a problem to me, Monk."

  "Oh, God," Rita said, trying out the bed. "Poor Van Meter."

  I shrugged. "Remind me later to feel sorry for him."

  I walked to the south wall, which offered a penthouse view for exhibitionists. High above the other skyscrapers was the Hall of Nations, the mushroom-shaped monolith where it all started. I wondered if Van Meter stood at the window of his private office that night, staring across town as the dragon punched a hole in the turquoise sky, calmly watching as it turned McFee's virtual body to cinders.

  "Ever been in one of these rooms, Jack?"

  I turned around. "No. And I'm sorry we have to waste it. But I'm going to have to ask you to get off the bed."

  "What?"

  "Just get off."

  She did. And then I told the bed: "Hard hat Two-four-oh-nine-one Delta. Run."

  And the velveteen headboard became as transparent as a sheer stocking. Behind it was a working hard hat tunnel, another trap door in a city full of bait.

  "Hey," Rita said, her voice slung low, "not a bad trick."

  I pulled her toward the tunnel. "We've got to go through together. Package data. But you need to key Mohican before you step through. If you wait too long --"

  "I got it." She was smiling now, her lipstick shining. "Not bad for an old-timer."

  "Just key the gauze," I said, "and step in the hole."

  Danny Marrs toured Avalon in a body fashioned after a film star a century ago. Marrs loved the guy's style, and so right now he was wearing tights, a white buccaneer shirt and a silk pirate mask, and had tucked his saber neatly under Van Meter's chin.

  "Danny," Van Meter said as Rita and I emerged invisibly from the wall, "if you cut my head off, I'll plug back in, strip you naked and parade you past every pedophile in my club. Within a week, everyone will have a cheap digital copy of your ass to hump."

  It wasn't every day you could hear the most notorious criminals in the history of telecommunications squabble like the foul little brats they actually were.

  Rita hadn't adjusted to her body under the influence of Mohican. The encryption had erased her femininity and replaced it with a featureless, gray body, visible only to me and Monk. She held her drab hand up to her eyeless, lipless face.

  "God." Her voice was an empty monotone. "I feel like I have no soul."

  I shrugged. "You get used to it."

  Roddy Benedikt and Baxter Levy were arguing. Benedikt crossed his arms across the lapels of his tuxedo and told Levy in a fake British accent that Levy had destroyed the other clubs to cover up a scandal at The Palms.

  "Scandal?!" Levy scoffed. "I've never run anything but a decent club. Nothing like what you run at Orphan Andy's. Or what you once ran."

  "Oh, Baxter," Benedikt said, twirling his thumbs, "don't begrudge me the variety I offer my customers. Why, during Construction I seem to remember that you were quite an aficionado of the early boy-love ROMs."

  "That is not true. Simply NOT true!"

  And so on. Van Meter was obviously letting his Sysop brothers sputter before dropping his own bomb -- perhaps demanding occupation rights to the remaining clubs and brothels in Avalon. Jenny was a card-player. Jenny would bluff until the last call before spreading his aces on the green.

  Rita had moved behind Levy. Reaching around him, she waved her clay-colored arms in front of him in a frantic pinwheel, shouting "Hello!" Only Monk and I could see her act like a fool.

  "Satisfied?"

  The muddy-gray head nodded. "I'm impressed. But can they feel us?"

  I stepped behind Van Meter's glossy chrome desk, eyed his red windswept hair and gave his ear a sharp flick. Van Meter's head jerked to the side to see what had happened, rubbing his ear, his face bundled and pinched.

  Rita nodded again. "So McFee not only visited clubs for free, he also satisfied himself while he was cloaked?"

  "Yeah."

  "God. This is an awful place."

  The men in the office had worn themselves out. Now they sat in leather chairs, staring past Van Meter at the skyline, their eyes following the occasional flyboy. Finally Jenny spread his manicured fingers on the chrome desk and began talking.

  "In the past two weeks, Avalon has suffered a series of blows as potentially damaging as Wrecking Ball. A young boy was killed in my office here, killed while he was in full-immersion mode. Three clubs were destroyed by a logic-fusion bomb, forcing Merlin to boot the guests off-line and refund their money, while we are left with the charred remains of three once-lucrative profit centers."

  "What, pray," Benedikt said, "is this 'we' business? I've lost Orphan Andy's. Baxter has lost the Palms and Marrs has lost his rent from that Neanderthal Jacarta. You have lost nothing."

  Van Meter leaned forward. "I have lost something much worse, Roddy. I have lost control."

  Marrs snickered behind his pirate's mask. "Control."

  Jenny turned. "Yes. Control. I hired a nobody to scrape a bug off my back. McFee was abusing the system, flying free under some hot cloak. He was doing this to all of us, stealing from all of us. I decided to do something about it. And now look."

  Levy rolled his eyes. "Honestly, Jenny. The online community regards McFee's death as a fluke. It certainly hasn't affected profits. And any embarrassment you suffered was only compounded by your own boasting about Jack Denys."

  Jenny pounded the desk. "What else could I do? If word leaks that some hacker or a Sons of David terrorist has the power to supersede our authority, we're finished! We rule because people believe we rule. Once they stop believing it, we stop ruling.”

  Marrs flashed his saber. "We don't rule Avalon, Jenny. We squeeze a human need for our own fortune. That's how we control it."

  Jenny's face went soft. "And how much money have you made since Sparta burned? How much will you make when the same thing happens at Lusty Luthor's?"

  Swish-swish! Marrs' blade cleaved the pixellated air in response.

  "Gentlemen, there is a wolf loose in this city," Van Meter said. "And if we do not drag this wolf into the Plaza of Light and crucify him, we’ll lose everything we’ve built."

  For a moment, the room was as quiet as a vacuum -- no music, no pedestrian babble, no screaming ads for discount hummers. Just a muted volley of political flex.

  Marrs pointed his saber at Van Meter. "You believe Denys is behind this?"

  Van Meter spun the chair around to stare out at Avalon. "No," he exhaled. "Jack was a talented privacy hack ten years ago. Today, he's a footnote in a history ROM."

  The urge to slap Jenny from the spirit world was nearly overwhelming.

  "Icarus," Benedikt mused, "nearly turned Avalon into a free state. I dare say that had Mr. Denys not been sent to prison, we would not be in positions of power. Icarus -- or some offspring -- would have made it impossible for us to bill our clients."

  "Rubbish," Van Meter chuckled. "Had that occurred, we would have dealt with Denys the way we dealt with Wrecking Ball."

  "But," Levy stuttered, "if not Denys, then who?"

  "That's what I intend to find out," Jenny said. "And that's why I brought you here. I need your help to trap Denys as he trapped McFee. Then, when this dragon appears, we will use our combined talents to eviscerate him." He shrugged. "Piece of cake."

  In the
subscreen, Monk uttered a corrosive stream of obscenity.

  "You believe," Benedikt asked, "the dragon and the logic bombs are related?"

  "Undoubtedly. The programming involved suggests similar origins. Break the dragon down to a binary level and you have the online manifestation of a logic-bomb."

  Levy and Benedikt exchanged mumbles. Marrs turned the blade, mesmerized by his reflection. "How are we to help?"

  Van Meter opened a drawer and pulled out a ROM disc -- the visual package of a subprogram. "This is the trap, which I've designed myself. It's not very sophisticated, but it will work -- if I have your cooperation."

  "You have our attention," Benedikt said. "Continue."

  Jenny smiled courteously. "I'll transmit copies to each of your personal files. You'll install the file in the general maintenance programs for each of your clubs. I want this trap set in every corner of this city. I believe we'll only get one chance, and I don't want it foiled because Jack picked a brothel we didn't bait."

  Levy said, "What exactly does this trap do?"

  Van Meter shrugged. "It will grab his online agent and virtually weld him in place, making it impossible for him to unplug. We leave the rest to the dragon."

  Marrs crossed his arms, his buccaneer shirt flaring like bellows. "How can you be sure the dragon wants Denys?"

  Jenny grinned. "The dragon nearly killed Jack last time. He escaped only because he was physically pulled off-line. Yes. The dragon will attack again."

  I stared at Monk in the subscreen and said, "Can you get a read on that ROM?"

  "It might be a shadow box," Monk said, "just an empty prop. But I'll see what I can do." He glanced away. "When you want me to upload this disc to the screen?"

  "A few minutes," I said. "Let's give him enough rope."

  Rita walked over beside me. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, if that ROM is what I think it is, Van Meter plans to use the trust of his Sysop brothers to poison them. Simple bait-and-switch. They take the program, thinking it's going to trap me, and load it into their maintenance files. A Trojan Horse.” I glanced down at Van Meter. "Just like the old days. Jenny always did give gifts that had a way of giving him more in return."