Cyberweb

by Lisa Mason

  He’s on a hunt.

  Why would a twirlie of such beauty and power land on the street? Why not on the top of a tower as most other twirlies do?

  Ouija glances up at Lady Night’s winking face. By the ruddy fire of the blood-red moon, he sees twirlies far above, hovering, circling, diving, or droning away to another landing port. Something is wrong at the port atop this tower or else too many twirlies wish to land there.

  Ah, wise Zebra. That is why Zebra is their chief. Chiefs however humble know the ways of chiefs however great. And this great chief in his twirlie must land on the street so he can go into his tower and speak with the spirits of the Unseen.

  As the twirlie touches down, Ouija sees this truth: the great chief is a servant of the spirits, too. Perhaps more of a servant than his many-many folk in the towers of the Barko. For he risks his life and his pretty twirlie just to feed the ravenous spirits.

  Ouija glances around. No copbots. No meat-heat. Not even linkers, brain-drainers, or the unlinked who hate the tribe, carry weapons. Can get tough in a fight. Nobody around! No one!

  Zebra signs: Go.

  Zebra springs out from behind the comm booth, Skink after. Ouija sprints around the twirlie’s pointed snout. Dazzle, Mojo, and Nokko leap upon the twirlie’s metal ass. Wrapping their hands and knives with rubber, they know how to avoid the spirits in the metal that bite and kill with sharp sudden pain. Nokko rips out the wires that will make demons scream after they break the locks.

  Break the locks they do.

  Ouija leaps into the cabin. The pilot is canned, a buglike thing with its many-many armlets plugged into the blinking board before it. Ouija seizes the bug’s headpiece, twists it off. But the armlets stay busy, pushing, stabbing, plunging beaks into little holes on the board. Demons begin to shriek in the cabin.

  Zebra shoves the great chief into the back of the cabin. The great chief yells and whoops, expressing many curses, reaching for a gun. Zebra whacks the great chief on his skull with the shaft of his spear, and the great chief falls, eyes rolled back, blood leaking. Zebra strips off the chief’s thick cape and leggings, a gold timepiece from his wrist, animal-skin shoes, animal-skin pouches stuffed with plastic gee-gaws, a few metal coins. Zebra takes the coins. Zebra finds and tosses the thin disks away, for although these are said to contain many-many riches, disks are evil and of little use to the tribe. Same for the gun, which Zebra spits on, kicks away.

  Zebra nods impatiently at Ouija, and he darts farther back into the twirlie, searching for more booty. He kicks open the cargo loader, tosses loot to Skink, Dazzle, Mojo, and Nokko, who stuff things in sacks tied at their belts. Fine clothing, bottles of first-hand water, tubes of air, jugs of liquor, packages of cured meat. Ouija touches not the little demon eyes, nor the wires and their beaks. He finds other strange things—blades, tools, graspers, things that bolt—all of which will bring good trade and booty.

  Copbots wail in the distance. Meat-heat, too.

  Ouija ducks back into the cabin. Zebra has impaled the great chief with his spear, kicks at the great chief’s face, swipes with his deadly axe. The great chief coughs blood, spits teeth. His noble face split open, an eye spilling down his cheek. Wires hang from the plunging place behind his ear. His hair, flesh, and blood mat on the place where linkers connect to the spirits in the wires.

  “Zebra,” Ouija says. His chief has the look, the awful, twisted look that means he is far, far into the hunt. “We must go, my chief.”

  Zebra wants the great chief’s head, Ouija knows. Not for pride or blood lust, oh no. Each head Zebra takes means the spirits in the Unseen have lost one more soul. In this case, a great soul. A chief who commanded such a luxurious twirlie and so much more.

  “The Glass Land will think twice before It tries to trap my folk in the shelters, eh, Ja?” Zebra grins up at Ouija as he sets about his grisly work.

  Ouija nods, but his soul is dark. He turns his eyes away. He taps his knife against the pilot impatiently, anxious to be gone. Wirefires still blink on the control board of the twirlie. That means spirits still live here, watching, listening.

  “We’ve got to go, my chief.”

  Zebra is hacking with his axe at the great chief’s neck when the copbots and the meat-heat swoop down on the street, coming faster than Ouija thought they would. He glances out the window, sees a cyberweb flung over Skink and her booty, trapping her. She screams and kicks, requiring the strength of six copbots to seize her. Dazzle, Mojo, and Nokko scatter, vanishing into the secret places of the Glass Land.

  “Meat-heat, copbots!” Ouija yells. Zebra severs the great chief’s head at last. Ouija frowns. This will do no good for the tribe. “We must go.”

  The two of them creep to the cargo bay. They find a fuel loader, which drops opens beneath the twirlie. They slip down and out. They lie flat on their backs, wriggle under the twirlie. The many-many feet of linkers crowd around, as well as the foot rollers, sliders, and wheels of canned folk. Meat-heat climbs up into the twirlie’s cabin, shouting, “You’re surrounded, digger scum. Lay your weapons down now!”

  Zebra grins, his face spattered with the great chief’s blood. His blood-lust satiated, at least for the moment. “Run, Ja,” he mutters. “Go to Skar Alley. There’s a hole to the drains.”

  Then they’re scrambling through the crowd, pushing and shoving, ducking and swerving as the copbots wail. Ouija slaps an old woman in his path, seizes her by the arm, swings her like a war club, clearing linkers from his path. By the comm booth, he flings the woman away, heading for Skar Alley.

  But as he dashes across the rough gray stone, something catches Ouija around his neck, around his leg. Something yanks him with such force, he loses his footing. He falls, rolls. Something scoops him up and tosses him into darkness.

  * * *

  Darkness, and an aching in Ouija’s head. Is he dead? He should not feel pain if he’s dead. Should not hear a motor growling, feel the floor moving—a vehicle traveling—beneath him.

  A woman bends over Ouija as he lies on the floor of a windowless cabin. His half-closed eyes pick out light. Half in a swoon from some drug, probably a knockerblocker, which she’d blown in his face. Limbs heavy, not just from knockerblocker. He flails, striking out with his hands.

  With each thrashing movement, the heaviness tightens. Something bites into his skin. The vehicle rumbles and sways as it swings sharply around a corner. He tumbles painfully across the floor, tries to lie very still, panting, fear needling up his neck.

  His vision clears further. His eyes probe the darkness. The dull sheen of a cyberweb, the kind copbots had used to catch Skink, clings to his limbs. Its silky silver strands quiver and tense. It’s got a spirit living in it. His fear deepens to dread. Is the woman a cop? Has the Glass Land seized him?

  The woman is taller than most, as thin as a bone. He sees high pointed breasts, hard long limbs, finely chiseled features when she turns to glance at him. Like the cyberweb, she too glows with a dull silver sheen. Her clothing looks as if pasted on her skin. But wait. Her skin itself is silver, slicked with a tribal stain he’s never seen before. Metallic. Impossibly smooth.

  She peers at him again, turns with a satisfied grunt. She flicks on a wirefire in the roof.

  Not human! Canned! Shaped as a woman, but canned! Ouija leaps to his feet, despite the cyberweb, which nearly strangles him with a strand around his throat. The cyberweb wrestles him down. He falls to his knees, groaning. He stares.

  “Never saw a bot like me before, eh, digger?” the woman says, in a deep grinding voice. Humanoid, but fuzzed with a mechanical sound. She chuckles, a rasping like metal scraping stone. Her slanted, almond-shaped eyes are completely black, shimmering as though wet. Her cheekbones are sharp as knife-blades, her mouth astonishing. Not the hole through which most canned folk send their synthy voices. Red lips, thick and moist, that purse as she speaks.

  “Twenty-fourth generation controbot, babe. But who’s counting? I’m an ultra. As close to flesh-and-blood as
you’re likely to get without all that disgusting meat and wetware. Call me Patina. That’s my handle. Hey, Benzie,” she calls to the truck’s autopilot, “get the fuck away from the Embarcadero, already. The ‘Barko,’ isn’t that what you diggers call it?” she says to Ouija with a mocking laugh. To the pilot, “Take Sansome to Green Street, park in Icehouse Alley.” To Ouija, eyeing him as Skink does when she wants to bed, “My, my, aren’t you a sight.” To the pilot, “Me and the pretty digger boy gotta talk.”

  “I speak not with the canned folk,” Ouija says imperiously, even as he blushes at her mating look. “I speak not with the Glass Land.” With a sudden yell, he seizes strands of the cyberweb, tearing them loose from his throat, ripping them from his knees.

  She—Patina—raises her foot, which is shaped like a silver high-heeled boot seamlessly joined at the ankle to the swell of her calf, casually places her toe in the center of his chest, and straightens her gleaming knee. Her quick kick sends him sprawling across the floor.

  “You and your chief murdered a vice president of TeleSystems, Inc., digger boy.” She shakes her silver finger at him. “Benzie patched through the pilot. We recorded the whole scene. I should dump you off at the copshop, you understand? If you diggers don’t want to go to the shelters, you should check out jail.”

  “I know of jail,” Ouija says quietly. Zebra, too, has been to jail, and Mojo, many-many moons ago. He shivers. Skink will go there now, he supposes, and never come back. Or come back, but not the same. Not of the tribe. And there is nothing he or the tribe can do. He looks at the ultra, puzzled. “Why do you not take me to jail now?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to guess. I don’t give a shit about TeleSystems any more than I give a shit about you,” she says. “So be nice, babe.” She goes to the autopilot.

  He watches her go, admiring the lean molded flanks, the curve of her back, much as he’d admired the twirlie’s metallic beauty. He finds himself wanting . . . wanting to touch her? Run his hands down her silver thighs? No, no! He shakes his head. Those who built her and put evil magic in her did their work only too well. He frowns. Skink’s sweaty stink has always pleased him. He smells nothing of Patina but a whiff of flowers mingled with the metallic odor of wirefire. Yet the scent dizzies him as much as a human smell.

  Wanting to touch her. And do what?

  She is a bot. An ultra. A servant of the spirits that want to devour his soul.

  * * *

  Ouija ducks down the drain a block away from Icehouse Alley. The ultra follows close behind him. The tribes know of two types of drains beneath the Glass Land—dirty and clean. This dirty drain branches off in all directions, going up and down, dimly lit by wirefires. Dirty drains are flush with booty, however badly they stink. Prey that sometimes the tribe can use and sometimes not. You drink not from the dirty drains, wash not your wounds, for you could cause sickness in your stomach and sickness in your wounds.

  But dirty drains are better for hunting and for tracking than the clean drains. Clean drains run beneath the Glass Land, too. They are very bright, with a chemical stink. No prey crawls there, no booty runs through. And a mere touch of the shiny waters, sometimes a mere breath of the clean air in the narrow tunnels could kill you.

  Now Ouija examines each clump of scut closely, searching for signs and prophesies. But he sees nothing. The bloodred moon should have been warning enough. He curses himself for his carelessness.

  He glances back at Patina, finds her slanting ebony eyes trained on him, cold as ice. She grins, her red lips curling around curved silver choppers in the shape of a row of teeth, but without the small gasps you see between each human tooth. She’s looped the cyberweb around his right ankle, grips the other end in her fist. He can feel the spirits in the silky strands as the cyberweb pulses against his skin.

  Could he shove her in the water, hack the cyberweb off, disappear in the dark maze of the drain? With a shrug, the ultra had let him keep his long spear and good knife. She isn’t made of flesh, after all. What does she have to fear of such weapons? He suspects his blades would make no mark on her silver skin. And her reactions are quicker than a cat’s. The moment he reaches for her, she’d seize him. From her kick, he guesses she’s as strong as three hunters. Perhaps stronger.

  Better that he keep the deal they’d made in Icehouse Alley.

  He loathes bringing a stranger—a canned folk, and dangerous—to the waterfront where the tribe has kept their lair for many-many moons. Ouija loves the lair. He’s never had such a fine squat of his own in such a fine lair. He loathes the fear and discomfort of moving, of always moving his bed as he’s had to do as a child. He loves how the tribe has lived there for so long without being disturbed by the Glass Land.

  When Ouija was an uninitiated lad, he, Zebra, and Mojo had found the huge, rusted barge half sunk in the wetlands along a lip of the bay no one but waterbirds could build nests upon. They’d found and taken the barge for their own. Reclaimed its rotting decks and snug cabins, rebuilt the planking, patched the roof. Even planted a garden with seeds they’d found in the Bins, grew red and orange and green fruits on the roof. They practiced the arts of decoration on every inner wall. Zebra told the tribe to leave the outside plain and rotten, plant the fruits here and there in odd spots. For wise Zebra knew they had to hide their lair from the ships that sail past and the twirlies that fly overhead. His words have proven true. The tribe has rejoiced.

  And now, to bring a stranger to his lair? One of the dreaded canned folk, a silver woman such as he has never see before?

  Yet this is what the ultra had demanded.

  Worse, when he steps out of the drain, the ultra crouched close behind him, he sees her truck. The truck—plain and unmarked—has somehow followed them on the streets above. The truck has parked itself, growling in the pitted road next to the ramshackle pier, the broken planks of which lead to the barge.

  He whirls. “You tricked me!”

  She grins. “What trick is that, babe?”

  “That! You were not to summon your truck. How did you? Through the wires? The spirits in the wires are everywhere. The copbots and meat-heat are sure to trace us. You are stupid, silver woman.”

  “Take it easy, digger boy,” she says coldly. “Benzie has got something I’ll need. I’m linked to it.” She taps her breast, “I’ve got works in here. I can generate private telespace with encrypted comm capability. Fucking Data Control can’t touch me.”

  He gawks at her. Works? In her breast? What is that? He knows about comm booths, of course. And he’s seen the demon chairs where linkers sit down and plunge wires into their necks. But works. What are works? What is private telespace?

  “Let’s go, babe,” she says. Slaps his back with her hard hand.

  * * *

  The elders sit around the fire. Not a wirefire, but a burning heap of scut that pops and crackles and smells of soot. Ouija’s heart shrinks before their angry scowls. He expected Zebra to be furious, but Zebra has retreated, muttering, rubbing tribal stain through his long white braids.

  Patina has gone to Benzie and brought back from the truck a demon chair with beaked wires coming from it. Mothers and fathers in the tribe hide their children’s eyes as the ultra unwinds a long wire rolled up on a spool and strings it from the chair, out of the lair, and across the waterfront to her truck.

  What is she up to?

  The hunters and the elders curse, spit over their shoulders, mutter with alarm. Does the ultra intend to take one of them to the Unseen? The hunters draw their knives, hold their spears ready. The elders whisper incantations, make magical motions with their gnarled hands.

  The ultra ignores them. She ignores the demon chair, too, once she’s set it up. Instead, she takes out a cube which she flings into the air above the burning scut. Her cube makes what Ouija knows are called holoids—spirit pictures that dance in midair before their eyes. The holoids show the hunting of the twirlie. Show Ouija tossing fine booty to the hunting party. Show Zebra hacking a
t the neck of the great chief. All the tribe can see that the great chief had no weapons with which to defend himself.

  Ouija knows Zebra has been noble and true. The great chief in the twirlie was one less soul to feed to the spirits of the Unseen. All the tribe knows Zebra’s purpose was not shameful. And the hunters have brought back much fine booty for the tribe.

  But to see the raid again, to see the small helpless man in his fine clothes, with no allies and no weapons pleading for mercy before Zebra’s bloody axe . . .

  Ouija’s heart shrinks more and more till he feels like a bug crawling on the floor. The tribe lives as it lives from need. But the tribe lives as it lives due to secrets it knows, too. And the tribe knows the wires are evil, the spirits of the Unseen are evil. The clean drains, the cars that cough bad air, too many canned folk—all these are evil. The tribe believes in freedom, in taking only what they need to live, in growing fruits on the roof, in teaching their children the joys of Whoosh, Lord Day, and Lady Night. In living lightly in the Glass Land as water birds live upon the wetlands.

  Isn’t that what he, too, believes?

  In the cold clear fire of the holoid, the twirlie raid looks very ugly to Ouija. Killing the great chief very, very ugly. And Skink, poor little Skink who is carrying Ouija’s child. She will go to jail, she may even die there, and for what? Why? For a bit of booty the tribe needed not? Ouija shudders. Zebra hides his face in his hands.

  The elders begin to wail, for they never say much. They merely howl or laugh or shriek or wail, and the tribe knows what the elders mean. Now they wail.

  Zebra lurches to his feet. “Stop this! So what now, silver woman? What do you want from us?”

  Patina grins, an awful grimace that shakes Ouija. He sees lust in that look, and greed, and death. She struts her slim hard body, props her high-heeled foot atop a keg of screech, leans toward them. Several elders hide their faces from her cold, black eyes. Ouija glances anxiously at Zebra. But his chief gazes at the ultra with a dark hungry look.