by Mark Budz
"You've been using the store," Jhon said. "Using me. Putting me and everything I worked for in danger."
The philmhead must be with Immigration, working undercover. That was what he'd been doing last night. Watching the store. Her.
"That girl yesterday," Jhon went on. "She wasn't the first. But I can promise you she's the last."
Marta tilted her chin at the undercover agent watching from the chair. "That what he told you?"
The philmhead chuckled. "I'm not with the government. If that's what you think." The rhythm of his speech was slightly off, as if he was waring a voicefeed.
"But that can be arranged," Jhon said. "If you decide not to cooperate. In fact, I guarantee it."
Cooperate with what? "What are you talking about?"
"You'll be reported to Immigration," Jhon said. "Your family, too. I'm willing to bet you're not the only one giving sanctuary to illegals."
The light in the room appeared to flicker. Marta touched a finger to her forehead. This wasn't happening. Not now, it couldn't be. She should never have come here after last night. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The philmhead stood. "You're not feeling well," he said. "That's to be expected." He walked over to her and caught her by the elbow. "Sit down."
Marta pinched her brow. To be expected. What was he saying? She let herself be guided to the seat.
"Who are you?" she asked, without her earlier hardness.
"We have an arrangement," the philmhead said. "Your boss and I."
"Which is...?"
The philmhead sat on the front edge of Jhon's desk. "He finds people for me. People in need of a spiritual compass. People looking to change the direction of their life."
"It's not just me," Jhon said quickly, defensively. "They got other people recruiting for them."
Them? Recruiting? The words reverb'd in her head like a struck bell.
"There are others," the philmhead admitted. He spread his hands, palms up. "But that's not the issue here."
Marta turned toward Jhon. "You get paid by this guy?" Her eyes flashed. "To do what?"
Jhon shrugged. "Look. Most of the people who come in here are losers. They're never gonna amount to shit. Even they know it. That's why they get philmed, so they can be someone. I'm not selling 'em something they don't already know. I'm just giving 'em what they want."
"No. You're selling them out. The same way you're selling me out."
"You screwed yourself. Don't blame me."
Marta shook her head in disgust. "You're pathetic."
His face reddened. "How stupid do you think I am, not to figure out what you were doing? You're the fuckup here, not me."
He was baiting her, his pride injured, pissed off about being used and trying to get a rise out of her. She cut a quick glance at the other man, whoever he was. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, oblivious to their bickering.
"How long did you think you could get away with it?" Jhon asked. "That's what I want to know."
Marta pressed her lips tight, unwilling to give him the satisfaction. She turned back to the philmhead. "If you're not with the government, who are you with?"
He blinked once, and the unrecognizable Rorschach blotch of features disintegrated into pointillist noise.
"You're a TV?" she said.
The philmhead smiled. His eyes twinkled with static. "It's not as bad as it looks."
It was hard to focus on him. There was nothing for her gaze to hold on to. It was as if he'd scraped the surface off reality to expose an undercoat of raw pixels. "What do you want?"
"To help you."
Marta bristled. "I don't need your help."
"I'm not so sure."
"Think about it," Jhon said, bending close. His breath tickled her. "Your family. Friends. Loved ones..." He let the implication hang in the air— allowed the unspoken threat to rattle around in her head.
"Fuck you!" She spat at Jhon. He stumbled back, his hands flailing wildly as he tried to avoid the saliva. She turned on the TV. "Is this how you get your converts?"
The TV shook his head. "Your situation is different. You have something of ours. Something that's very important to us."
"How could I have something of yours?"
"The child you're carrying," he said. "That's the reason you haven't been feeling well."
Her hand darted involuntarily to her unsettled stomach. How long since her last period? Three months? Four? She couldn't remember—couldn't think. Sure, she was late. But she'd always been irregular. Too skinny, according to Nguyet's divinations. Too stressed.
"That's not possible." She was just late. No way she was pregnant. "I can't be."
"It is," the TV said. "And you are."
"I don't believe you." It could be anything. Lots of stuff could make her throw up, cause her period to be late.
"Have you been to a doctor?" A pause. "I didn't think so. If you want, I will pay for an examination."
He sounded so sure, so confident. "How...?" Marta stopped, derailed by a sudden thought.
"How do I know? Or how is it possible?"
Marta bit her lower lip, worrying it until she felt a sharp stab of pain. "What do you mean the child is 'yours'?"
"I'm afraid I can't answer that now."
She tasted blood, ran the tip of her tongue across the ragged cut. "I want to know what you've done to me."
"You will. Trust me. Now is not the time." Have faith. Was this what it had meant; that she was supposed to become a TV?
"Well?" the TV said.
She nodded, to herself mostly, and caught a flash of Jhon grinning in triumph. She followed his gaze to her hands.
They were trembling uncontrollably in her lap.
21
An early-morning call from Uri dragged Pelayo out of a heavy sleep. He blinked a few times to clear the gunk from his eye-feed.
"I need you at the lab," the skintech said. His expression betrayed nothing.
"When?" Pelayo sat on the edge of the bed. He ran a hand over his face and scalp, trying to massage himself fully awake as Atossa joined him.
"As soon as possible."
In other words, now. "What's the rush?"
"I'll let you know when you get here," Uri said.
The skintech's image vanished, leaving him staring at the albumin-gray wall across the room.
"Bad news?" Tossa said.
"The lab wants to see me."
"What time is it?" she asked.
Pelayo checked the Hamilton on his left wrist: 6:42.
Atossa groaned as he eased from the bed and wandered into the bathroom to check himself in the mirror.
The blemish had vanished. So maybe it had been a glitch on IBT's end and a remote update during the night had fixed it. That could be what Uri wanted to see him about. Or maybe the skintech had found out about his contact with Lagrante.
Panic fluttered in him. His head ached. He leaned on the sink, gripping it tightly as he stared into the faux marble bowl.
What was wrong with him?
After several minutes the pressure subsided. He splashed cool water on his face and willed himself to relax. There was no need to mention the blemish. If Uri asked about it, no problem. It was just a temporary glitch. No big deal. If he asked about Lagrante...
Atossa appeared in the mirror next to him. "You all right?" She wrapped her arms around him froim behind, pressing her breasts against his bare back.
“Yeah."
"You want me to go with you?"
Pelayo shook his head. If there was a problem, he didn't want Uri to think she was involved. "I'll be fine."
Her hand slid down and he felt himself stiffen in her fingers.
"I can't," he said.
"I know." She relinquished her grip. "Just wishful thinking."
"Don't."
"You can't keep doing this forever. Sooner or later you're going to have to give it up."
They'd been through this before. "We'll talk about it later."
"That's wha
t you always say. One of these days, there might not be a later."
Whatever that meant. He took a cold shower, then reached for the winder on the side of the Hamilton to rephilm himself. Before he could toggle it, the selection menu appeared. Apparently, the new 'skin had autosynchronized with his extant brain-computer interface. He didn't need to physically press the crown anymore, just thinking about doing it was enough to activate his BCI.
Was the philm becoming a part of him? he wondered. Or was he becoming part of it?
"Call me," Atossa said on his way out the door. "Right away. I want to know how it goes."
_______
"How do you feel?" Uri asked.
Pelayo squinted at the skintech under the scathing lab lights, searching for the fine print. "Great," he said.
"Any problems?"
"No. So far, so good."
Uri clicked his teeth, then bent over a stainless steel tray. When he straightened, he held an old-style syringe.
Pelayo eyed the needle and the cloudy white solution the hypodermic held. In the past, updates to the 'skin had been made electronically.
Uri smiled at his unease. "I need to tweak the wetronics in the 'skin to support an add-on."
"What kind of add-on?"
Uri slipped the protective cap from the needle. "Circuitry to improve synthapse performance. For various reasons, we weren't able to include it in the preliminary build." He held up the syringe, tapped it a couple of times, then squirted a tiny stream of the milk-white fluid. "It's mostly backend, so you won't notice much change."
Uri took his right hand, located a vein on the top, and inserted the needle. There was a brief sting as the needle disturbed a couple of million nanosocket links connecting the 'skin to his nervous system, then nothing. A minute dot of blood welled up when Uri withdrew the needle.
"That wasn't so bad now, was it?" Uri had a way of condescending that got under his skin worse than the needle.
"Didn't feel a thing."
Uri replaced the empty syringe on the tray. "That it?" Pelayo said.
Uri nodded absently, already concentrating on the next bullet item on his to-do list. "You're good to go."
_______
As soon as Pelayo stepped out of the IBT building, his thoughts turned to Lagrante. Should he contact him? Bring him up to speed on the upgrade? See if maybe he'd heard back from his contacts about ripping the 'skin?
No, Pelayo decided. Let Lagrante sweat for a change, worry that he might decide to take his business elsewhere and let another rip artist have a crack at the 'skin.
He scanned the ad masks circulating up and down Pacific Avenue, looking for one that might be Atossa. She hated his job as a test subject. From the beginning, she'd tried to talk him out of it. Too dangerous, she said. She didn't want to see him get hurt, didn't want to lose him. She'd toned it down. But every so often, like this morning, she tried to scare him.
One of these days, there might not be a later.
None of the ad masks approached him. Just as well, he wasn't ready to get into it with her. Not yet. Most of the masks were descending on a smob half a block down on Pacific, drawn like vultures to fresh meat.
Pelayo drifted toward the smart mob, caught in the magnetic attraction of consensual curiosity. The attention of the crowd seemed focused on the sidewalk rather than the storefront window displays. Probably some street musician or novelty act had captured the spontaneous interest of passersby and triggered the mass convergence for a particular cast.
"What's going on?" he asked a Goth-philmed yamp. Instead of a full 'skin job, she was waring an ensemble of paste-on cinFX patches and grafts: charcoal eye shadow, white-complected nanoFX paint, mortician-black hair and fingernails.
"Performance art," came the terminally bored response.
The Edward Gorey Gashlycrumb Tiny next to her smirked, hemorrhaging sarcasm. "How can you tell?"
The Goth shrugged, then pressed her black applique lips more firmly into place. The paste-on lips had started to peel at one corner, exposing a moist, glistening welt of synthapse collagen and flesh. The cinFX patch seemed irritated or infected. She prodded the sore with the tip of an equally inflamed and disdainful tongue.
A gap opened in the smob and Pelayo caught a glimpse of a pudgy guy squirming on the sidewalk. His feet kicked and legs thrashed, wracked by convulsions, as he fought to pull a Chinamation popera mask from his face.
A shabby street musician, dressed in Confederate gray, hacked a wad of phlegm onto the ground in front of Pelayo, barely missing the soft patent leather of his shoes. "I guess some ads just can't take no for an answer."
"Buy or die," a woman joked with forced hilarity.
"No, man. That shit started before the mask. He collapsed and all, then the mask jumped his ass."
"Talk about taking advantage," someone else said.
A snicker rippled through the smob.
"Anybody know what store it's from?"
A distant siren warbled. Then the smart mob surged back in a collective muscular contraction.
"Look out! There it goes!"
"Quick! Grab it!"
Slowly, lazily, the popera mask drifted above the smob, face turned to the sky as it ascended, growing smaller and smaller until it slipped from view.
A call, flagged urgent, bleated frantically over his earfeed. But it wasn't Lagrante or Atossa.
Pelayo frowned. "Nguyet?"
"I need your help," his aunt said. "It's an emergency."
22
"Here we are," Jeremy said. The TV helped her out of the private van he'd picked her up in.
"What is this place?" She craned her neck to see, following the straight, rectilinear grid of the building's facade.
"A conference center." He seemed preoccupied. "We use it for a wide variety of activities: Retreats. Seminars. Planning sessions and special events." He led her by the hand to the front entrance. "There are a number of women here already."
"Like me?"
"Yes."
Nadice glanced nervously at the street and the steep hill leading up to the hotel. She didn't want to be here, but Mateus had given her no choice. He would never let her go. He had never intended to. He would string her along with promises or threats, whatever it took to keep her in line.
Jeremy caught her staring at the street. "What?"
"I'm worried about Mateus. He'll follow me. He found me at the shelter—he'll find me here."
"Mateus is your boyfriend?"
She shook her head. "The man I work for. I have something of his. He'll want it back."
"Something you stole from him?" Jeremy said. He turned the full spotlight of his attention on her.
"Not exactly."
He waited for her to explain.
"I'm carrying something for him," she said, uncertain how to word it. She should have said something sooner, so he wouldn't think she was trying to hide it from him.
"Something?"
"I don't know what it is." She rolled her shoulders. "He didn't tell me. I brought it into the country for him, when I was transferred from my previous job in Lagos."
"You're a Monospace?"
"It was just for this one time. It was the only way I could get free of Atherton... so they wouldn't force me to give up the baby."
He frowned, and her stomach pinched. It was over, she thought. No way he was going to take her now.
"Who's the package for?" he asked.
"I don't know. This guy examined me yesterday. I guess whatever I have wasn't ready yet. I'm supposed to see him again."
"When?"
"Today, I think. Mateus was supposed to let me know."
"So there could be others looking for you, in addition to Mateus."
She ducked her head. "I'm sorry."
He smiled philosophically. "These things happen. We'll just have to deal with it, if it comes to that."
Relief flooded her. He wasn't going to cut her loose, wasn't going to send her back to the shelter.
; A pair of heavily armored security guards loomed just inside the main double doors to the lobby.
"See?" Jeremy said. "You're perfectly safe. We're used to assholes coming up here and causing problems."
Nadice smiled at the exoskeletoned guards. They projected the don't-fuck-with-me attitude of professionals. The shelter hadn't had security like this. If it had, Mateus would never have gotten inside. He would have a harder time getting to her in here. As far as she could tell, the only way in was through the well-defended lobby.
Jeremy registered her at the front desk. The process involved a DiNa bar code and retinal scan. Since she wasn't waring a built-in eyefeed, she was given a pair of spex. When registration was completed, he took her to an elevator framed by tall plants in Raku pots. The graphene foliage was programmable. It changed shape and texture, alternating between variegated leaves and the fluttering, diaphanous wings of insects. The effect left her unsettled, and more than a little light-headed.
"Hungry?" he asked.
She bit her lip. Her stomach churned, remembering the rice she had tossed on the commuter train.
"You look a little pale," he said. "It might help if you lie down."
_______
Her room overlooked the Boardwalk and a ribbon of seawall that meandered along the coast, holding the ocean at bay.
"That's Monterey over there," he said, pointing. Through the floor-to-ceiling window, she could make out the hazy outline of coastal hills hunched across the bay. "On clear days, you can sometimes see whales. Their waterspouts, anyway."
Exhausted, Nadice plopped down on the side of the bed. The tempergel molded to the undersides of her legs.
"Try to get some rest," Jeremy said. "You're scheduled for a medical exam in two hours."
There was a second bed in the room. "Who's that for?"
"We might need to pair you with someone else. I'm afraid space is rather limited right now."
Were there really that many of them?
"I'll check back with you before the exam. In the meantime, if you need anything, feel free to query the building datician."
Nadice fingered the spex in her lap. "How long will I be here?" She hoped it was for a while. She couldn't believe how totally wiped she was... how much tension she had been holding. All she wanted to do was sleep.