Cowboy pictures the two Orbital giants grappled in their electronic conflict, using the paper value of the shares as leverage against each other, feeding on data more precious than gold, artificial intelligences and corporate minds scheming to manipulate the streams of numbers. Buying stock and futures through third parties they hoped no one knew they controlled. Both sides had resources that were almost unlimited, and victory would go to the most subtle, the one who manipulated the other through the most blinds, who had a better comprehension of the other’s weaknesses. Reno seems to fade away, his mind moving back into the interface, sucking data through the filter of the memory box. Cowboy sneaks a look at Sarah and sees her, like Reno, turning inward, absorbed for a moment in her own inner landscape. Assembling a picture more complete than Cowboy’s. He wishes she’d give him some of what she knows.
Reno unfaces. The glowing colors in the deep ebony table fade. He puts his crystal memory back in its file and takes a breath. “The borders are fading,” he says. The voice is still dreamy, his eyes trancelike, staring a thousand yards into some internal landscape. “After the war, demarcation was clear–– victors, vanquished, victims. Blocs agreed not to compete in certain areas, formed cartels to dominate other markets. Agreed-upon areas of exploitation. Sharing of data. Competition limited to nonvital areas.
“But the war created a lot of vacuums. Vacuums in power, in distribution, in information flow. The Orbitals got sucked into them, and there things weren’t so neat. The borders were...less well defined. There the winners and losers weren’t so easy to see. Now the blocs are tangled in those areas and the result is that the lines of demarcation are undergoing some adjustment. The system is beginning to undergo stress, to radiate fracture lines. Events taking place in the ill-defined areas are having consequences in the rest of the system. A little pressure put here and there, at a critical point...it could make a big difference.” His eyes shift abruptly to face Cowboy.
“That, of course, isn’t my concern,” he says. “I’m planning on keeping in the middle, on the node of the standing waves. I’ve got some information and I’ve got a good sense of how things move. I can ride things out.”
“Keeping in the middle gets you in the crossfire, Reno,” Cowboy says. “Just like Sarah and me.”
“You were never in the middle, Cowboy. None of the deltajockeys ever were. The thirdmen strive for the middle, but rarely reach it.” Reno’s eyes are chill as he raises his prosthetic arm. “I’m in the middle. I’m in the middle by my nature, half one thing, half another. I can stand on the node and see the waves rising and collapsing around me. The deltajocks collapsed, Cowboy. You swam off to ride another wave, but it’s going to collapse, too.”
Who is speaking? Cowboy wonders. Reno or that mass of crystal lodged in his skull? Reno is living in the eye-face every moment now, and Cowboy wonders if he’s lost himself in there, if too much of his personality has been sucked into the machine part of him, if control has shifted from his brain to the crystal.
Whiteout, it’s called. Rapture of the comp. It’s not supposed to happen to people like Cowboy and Reno, not to users who know the score, who fly the interface across the terrain of the real world, but it’s a hazard for the theoretical types, artificial intelligence people and physicists, those who are lost in abstracts most of the time. They can confuse the electron image with the reality it images, diffuse themselves through the information net, race at the speed of light along its patterns until their egos fade away, become so thin as to become intangible.
With a shiver Cowboy realizes that Reno is a ghost, a vacant-eyed collection of habits that have lost any purpose except to feed the crystal in his head with the data it needs. Whatever remains of the deltajock is pure reflex.
“These comp hearts are hot,” Cowboy says. “You might want to sit on them for a while.”
Reno shakes his head. “I’m not even going to sell them, not for a long time. I’ll put them in a vault and use them as collateral for a loan from a face bank. I’ll use the loan to enrich my portfolio, and by the time I’ve played with the money for a while, I’ll be able to pay back the loan and then move the comp hearts onto the market. By then this war will be history. ”
Cowboy leans back in his chair. Reno seems to be thoroughly out of his trance now, and his plan for making use of the crystal seems as safe as any.
“You can move the hearts right to my place till I can rent a vault,” Reno says. “I’ve got a double system of security here. The first one can be taken out if people know how. The second–– well, they won’t be looking for it. Anyone coming over my wall is going to get a firefight.”
“Cowboy,” Sarah says. He is startled by her voice, having got used to her as a silent half-lotus on the periphery of his vision. “We’re going to need to get a truck to move the hearts here.”
“Use mine,” Reno says. “It’s in the garage.” He fishes in his pocket, brings out a key, a tiny crystal on the end of a stainless-steel needle. “This’ll have the codes. I’ll open the garage door and gate from here.” He looks from Sarah to Cowboy. “Do you people need a meal?”
“No,” Sarah says, and again Cowboy is surprised by the determined edge in her voice. “We should be getting back to the panzer. I don’t like leaving the Hetman’s cargo alone.”
Reno points with his left hand. The fingertips are trembling. “Through there. Right, end of the hall. Kitchen’s on the left if you change your mind.” He reaches under the table, takes out a stud, puts it into one temple. His other hand reaches for the memory box. “I’ve got to talk to some people. See how much I can raise on this.”
“Be careful,” Sarah says. Reno pays no attention. His eyes are already abstracted. Cowboy rises from his chair.
Sarah uncoils herself like an angry cat, her dark eyes intent on Reno, her spine arched. She stalks away and Cowboy can see the ridged muscles on her arms. She comes back with her ruck and Cowboy’s gun, and Reno doesn’t react.
“Your friend’s crazy, Cowboy,” she says later as they take the truck south through the bright early evening. “His brain is so white I almost had to put on my shades to look at him. ”
Cowboy is driving the truck through the interface, feeling the hydrogen fuel cook in its turbine, the tires moving over the softening asphalt. “I know,” he says. “He had a bad wreck.”
“Now he thinks he’s sitting on a node at the center of the cosmic dataflow,” she says. “What happens if the celestial matrix tells him to turn us in?”
“He’s an old friend,” Cowboy says, unsettled. “We don’t operate that way.”
“What if he does?” Sarah demands. “Tempel would happily give him two thousand crystals instead of the single K we’re giving him. And it wouldn’t be a seventy-thirty split, either.”
Cowboy feels his anger rising. “If he’s a traitor, we’re hardly any worse off, are we? I don’t notice your friends offering to help.”
Sarah’s quiet fury is her only answer. Cowboy feels it as a silent, almost tangible radiation for the rest of the ride.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES RIOT IN LENINGRAD DATANET
KOROLEV I.G. OFFERS NO COMMENT ON SAFEGUARD QUESTION
In the four A.M. darkness Cowboy brings the panzer out of the quarry and he and Sarah load a thousand crystal hearts into Reno’s light truck. Mosquitoes whine along their spiral tracks, aiming for wrists, necks, the hollow behind the ear. Sarah has made it clear she’s going to scout Reno’s neighborhood before she’ll let the truck drive in.
The scouting turns out not to be necessary.
Fear moves like ammonia ice in Cowboy’s veins as, from half a mile away, he sees the smoke rising like a slow gray phantom over Reno’s house, the cloud’s underside glowing the color of blood. Police wagons slice past, their sirens whooping up and down the register. Sarah rolls down the window, and a distant rattle of fire echoes hollow from the slate hills.
“That second defense system,” Cowboy says. Something flares orange on the underside of
the cloud and a second later Cowboy hears a muffled thump, and he can feel his teeth drawing back as anger pours through him like alcohol fire. He hauls the truck around and shoots hydrogen to the turbine, feeling himself pressed back in the seat. He skids around a curve and the cargo thumps in the back. If he can get to the panzer in time, he might be able to get Reno out, the Pony Express to the rescue…
“Cowboy,” Sarah says. “Slow down. We don’t want them checking our registration.”
“I’m going to pull Reno out with the panzer.”
Sarah moves toward him, her eyes glittering like diamonds. “Reno’s blown, Cowboy. All he can do now is get us killed. They’ll be ready for a panzer. They know what yours does by now. That turret gun won’t surprise them.”
“There’s a chance.”
She grips his arm and he can feel the pain skate along his nerves. “He’s alone, Cowboy,” she says. “And so are we.”
Cowboy can hear regret in Sarah’s voice, and it surprises him.
“We’re alone,” she repeats. “Just like we’ve been since we left the Free Zone. The only difference is that now we know it for sure.”
There is a flash from behind them and the smoke turns opalescent, shot through with white fire. Cowboy feels the heat of it on his neck. There can’t be anything left after that, he knows. The turbine, seemingly of its own accord, lowers the pitch of its quiet howl.
Dawn is just climbing over the Appalachians. The asphalt is already beginning to melt.
Chapter Eight
TAMPA’S TOTALS OVERNIGHT, 28 FOUND DEAD IN CITY LIMITS…
LUCKY WINNERS PAY OFF AT 15 TO 1
POLICE BLAME RECORD HEAT WAVE
The cooling panzer engines crackle, sounding like someone knocking on the armor. Images of heat dance in slow motion on Sarah’s retinas.
“Tell me about Korolev,” Cowboy says. Sarah looks at him in surprise.
“You knew something about Korolev that Reno didn’t know,” Cowboy insists. His expression is intent, angry. “If I know it, I have a better chance of staying alive. I need you to tell me. I have a right.”
They have come another hundred miles west through the slate hills and have found a dry brush-covered gully to hide in, this one across the Line in Ohio, sitting in old National Forest land amid timber too old and rotten to harvest. It’s the end of the line for the panzer, the fuel tanks laden with little more than alcohol dew.
Sarah sits down on the passenger bunk. A seven-millimeter casing rolls across the metal floor as she straightens her foot, and she thinks of the sounds of fire echoing from the Pennsylvania ridges, that last white-heat flash that ended it. The screamsheets report that an armed party of unknown origin tried to break into Reno’s place, got caught by his defense systems. Then the cops arrived and got fire from both the intruders and the automatics, and took out everything before it was clear what was going on. No survivors.
“Korolev Fellowship of Interests,” Cowboy reminds her. Sarah can feel the words weighing on her shoulders like steel.
“All right,” she says. Images flicker in her mind, Firebud’s scornful violet eyes, the company patches on the zonedancers at the Aujourd’Oui, that last amber statement, RUNNING, burning forever in the corner of Danica’s display as Sarah listened to the slow-dripping moments.
“All right,” she says again. She feels the intensity of Cowboy’s gaze and surrenders to it. History, she thinks. It doesn’t matter anyway. “It was a penetration operation,” she tells him, “targeted against the Korolev computer in Tampa. The outside security on the comp was too strong to break, so I was supposed to use this Korolev courier to get me into their compound and put a program into their system from there, once we got past the safeguards. I figured it was a data raid, but it looks as if it was sabotage. The program was aimed at smashing up Korolev’s strategies, trying to weaken them for the takeover.”
“What did the courier get out of it?”
Sarah feels Weasel throb, a heavy presence in her throat. She looks at Cowboy, daring him to react.
“He thought he was going to get laid. What he got was dead.”
Cowboy holds her gaze. “Okay,” he says.
“He deserved it.”
“I never said he didn’t.”
In the end it is Sarah who drops her gaze. She plucks at the old wool blanket on the bed and smells the dense unmoving air, the sweat and chemical toilet and hot metal. Even the open dorsal hatch doesn’t stir the air here.
“How’d you meet this Cunningham?” Cowboy asks.
“The Hetman gave him my name. I think they did business from time to time.”
“Now they’re trying to kill each other.”
She shrugs. “It’s business. Nothing personal. Cunningham isn’t the type to mix the two, and even if he were, his company wouldn’t let him.”
Cowboy picks up his helmet from the back of his seat, holds it loosely in his hands. “Is it connected, do you think? Tempel’s moving on the thirdmen and on Korolev at the same time?”
“I don’t know. Could they be weakening Korolev by attacking you?”
“I can’t see how. Nobody in this country uses Korolev engines or parts. My engines are Rolls-Royce turbines made under license by Pratt and Whitney.”
Sarah leans back against the bulkhead and closes her eyes. She can still hear the roaring of the turbines, the vibration of the metal. Behind her eyelids Sarah can still see the amber message, RUNNING. She shakes her head.
“I don’t see how it can be connected,” she says.
“I’ve got to get out West, Sarah. I’ve got resources there.”
She cocks an eyebrow at him. “Buried treasure?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. And friends.”
Sarah says nothing, just closes her eyes.
“Are you coming?” Cowboy asks. He sounds impatient. “Or are you going to try to get back to the Occupied Zone?”
“My brother’s in Florida. I’m supposed to be taking care of him.”
Cowboy stirs on his foam couch. “How old did you say he was?”
“I didn’t say. But he’s twenty.”
“Then he can take care of himself.”
Sarah opens her eyes and sneers. “You seem to need me to take care of you, Cowboy.”
In one singing movement that is too fast for her eyes to follow, Cowboy slams his helmet down on his armrest. “I’m a target, damn it! They’re looking for me! If I’m with you, it changes my profile. I’m safer.”
Sarah laughs and shakes her head. “All that means is that I’m standing next to a target. Forget it, Cowboy. I can draw fire on my own.”
He looks at her with his jaw muscle working. And to her surprise there’s a hopeless look in his eyes, a vacancy filled only with desperation. “I’ll pay you,” he says. “Your standard rates for a bodyguard job. Payable when we get to Montana. ”
“Standard rates and a ticket to Florida,” she says automatically, while her mind clicks into gear and she wonders whether she really wants this job. She thinks of Daud lying under the Christmas green LEDs of his automated bed, his eye dull with endorphins, waiting for Jackstraw who would not come, having no one to turn to but the sister he fears. Wanting his old magic to return, the place in the street that was his own, knowing it was gone now because the rules have changed for him as well as for Sarah, that he will have to find a new pattern, a new source for what he needs... She doesn’t want him to be alone, having nothing to look into but the nullity of the endorphin haze.
But a job at this point would bring in some money, maybe make a down payment on Daud’s replacement eye. Getting to Montana probably won’t take appreciably longer than moving to Florida, and once she’s paid, she can get past the border checks into the Occupied U.S. with fewer problems than if she were penniless. The Free Zone cops don’t like to let in paupers.
With the fighting in Florida there will be work, but it might be too dangerous to go there right now: the Hetman might give her to Cunningham as part o
f a peace treaty. Business, of course, nothing personal. So–– best to take Cowboy up on his offer.
And the look in his eyes has something to do with it, too, touching a part of her she doesn’t want to think about. A part, she thinks, that doesn’t want the next stage of the journey to be a lonely one.
Sarah haggles for a while about her “standard rate,” not wanting Cowboy to think he was getting her easy. Cowboy ends up paying a little more than he would have otherwise, not as much as she suspects she could have got. In the end she stands up and shrugs. “Okay. You’ve got yourself a bodyguard. Now what have you got to eat?”
“Lurp rations are all that’s left. Freeze-dried. Enough for three, four days.”
Sarah grimaces. “Freeze-dried soy. My favorite.”
“Unless you want to hold up a bank and buy the real.”
“It’s an option.” She grins. She presses her hands to the metal of the low ceiling and pushes upward, feeling her muscles flex and strain, suddenly impatient to be on her way. Good to get outside of this Chobham box again, breathe some air. Good to have a direction to walk in, even if the goal was someone else’s.
“It was a bank that killed Reno,” Cowboy says. “He was trying to raise money on those hearts, and whoever he was dealing with must have tipped off Tempel.”
If you knew where to look in the interface, you could find banks disguised as something else, trading companies or some kind of broker, that offered unusually high rates of interest and didn’t inquire too deeply into the source of the cash, that either didn’t report their transactions as required by law or cheerfully accepted a false name for their customers if they did. Uninsured, of course– sometimes the banks vanished overnight along with their depositors’ funds. This was accepted as one of the risks of that kind of speculation, but it didn’t happen often. And sometimes the bank was just reforming under another cover, and the depositors would be contacted later.
“If the Orbitals are into the thirdman network, then they can be running a dozen eye-face banks and no one will know it,” Cowboy says. “Maybe that’s the connection. Maybe the thirdmen are using Korolev’s banks and Tempel wants to take everything out.”
Hardwired Page 15