Cyberweb

by Lisa Mason

  What power has this silver witch?

  “As I told your boy,” she says, tossing a grin at Ouija, “I’ll store these holoids in encrypted private telespace where no one will find them. Unless I want them to. And, since the one who paid me for this gig wants me to be nice to you, I’ll give you codes that’ll get you into prime lockbox Bins on Union Street. First-hand food going to the best second-hand markets.”

  Several elders begin to smile and nod. Others still hide their faces.

  “And in return?” Ouija says, catching Zebra’s sharp look.

  “This.” The ultra aims another holoid over the burning scut. The holoid hovers and turns.

  A young woman. Very sleek. Pretty-pretty. Hair the color of a poisonous dawn. Eyes as bright as bits of green glass. One of the human folk, not canned. Ouija knows they’re called gennies. Some powerful magic has shaped and formed their pretty bodies, made them strong and firm. This genny woman is nearly as distant from him and his tribe, who have sprung from the humble folk of the street, as the silver woman.

  “Her name is Carly Quester,” Patina says, “and I want you to go and track her.” She waves her hand at the demon chair. “Track her, hunt her, trap her. And bring her here. Go on, get going.”

  “Why?” Ouija demands.

  Patina laughs. “She’s late for a meeting.”

  4

  A Meeting with Cognatus

  Carly Quester creeps through the parking garage below Washington Square. Pliers tucked in her waistband, the sharp-lipped pop-top from a tuna can stashed in her hip pocket. The stink of gridlock fumes clogs her throat. A security guard whirrs by, a slim chrome column as tall as a man, with a blinking red light in its headpiece and a huge mouth-place through which alarms will blare if the security guard detects anything amiss.

  A laughing couple parks their Jaguar, beeps the locks. Closes the lid on their rooftop solar cell, strolls to the elevators. The man is dressed in an expensive Hong Kong suit with biofeed discreetly lining the silken seams. The other man wears a flowing red dress, red stockings, and spike-heeled boots, his closely cropped beard, mustache, eyelashes, and eyebrows dyed to match. Gold bracelets clink. His perfume, as pungent as insect repellent, pierces the car fumes.

  Once Carly had strolled to dinner with such careless ease and confidence. However bedeviled her professional telespace career had been, she’d had money and status, her own niche in the world of power and circumstance. She’d had hope for the future. Goals, aspirations. She’d had dreams. Big dreams.

  Crouched in the shadow of the sleek Jag, she finds herself burning with her disgrace, a hot knot of bitterness.

  They set me up, Dad. But she has to face facts. She’s suspended from public telespace, barred from the Hall of Justice, wanted by the medcenter sengine and Data Control, thrown out of her office on the twenty-second floor, evicted from her apartment. To this. Petty thievery and hunger, rags and filth, a hideout over the YinYang Club. Living like a refugee with nothing but an AI entity and a cat for company. All her friends are still linked with Ava & Rice. Or dead. Like you, Dad. Dead.

  She’s never felt so alone in her life.

  Does she have any goals now? How about aspirations? Any dreams left? Or hope?

  Something scuttles across the concrete two cars over.

  Sure. Her goal is to survive another day. Her aspiration, to control her hyperlink. And dreams? She longs to master the Arachne. To prove she’s been wronged. She still hopes for a better life.

  How can she square things with Data Control without confronting the medcenter sengine first? That’s a serious problem. She can’t enter telespace till she recertifies her access code and she can’t recertify her code till R-X, the medcenter sengine, signs off on her suspension. She’s certain someone at Data Control would give her a hearing. Equally certain the medcenter sengine would seize her, sequester her, possibly disengage her telelink in telespace, if it could. The second she jacked into public telespace, R-X would be on her ass. It has first dibs. She wouldn’t even get to a Monitor for access codes and clear through the Mac before the medcenter sengine would detain her. Hello, Quester space C, we’ve got to talk . . .

  She shivers. Keep working with the hyperlink. Get good old Spin to jack with her into their little bootleg telespace. Every day, twice a day. She can stand it now. She’s got to stand it. She’s got to be ready.

  The scuttling thing moves again, diving into a shadow.

  She tenses. Slides out the pliers with one hand, the pop-top with the other. Fear slithers over her skin. Sweat pops out of her brow, her stomach rumbles. Damn! She isn’t some street tough. This is crazy!

  She peeks over the Jag’s trunk, sees wild dreadlocks, glyphs and spirals tattooed on walnut-stained skin. A digger. Yeah, she did a little digger when she was young and dumb. A fad in school. Chuck your clothes, stain your face, grab a spear, play primitive. Right. She glimpses a feral face more fitting for the domed jungles of Costa Rica than downtown San Francisco peering over the hood of a Rolls Royce. Woman or man?

  Carly can’t tell, other than this is the real thing. Not a school kid playing digger. One of the dispossessed, kids of addicts and paupers, pollution victims, the malnourished and diseased, the mentally impaired, the chronically unlinked. That’s who the real diggers are, and their presence in the City is anything but a game.

  The digger darts away, deftly using shadows cast by support columns in the garage. Wobble of breasts and buttocks. A woman, then.

  Carly pockets the pop-top and pliers. Her mouth tastes sour. Are these her new peers, competing for the scraps left by the world?

  Another security guard speeds by, stops, backs up, and hesitates, rolling to the stall where Carly crouches. She shrinks back, edging around the Jag. The security guard turns on its laser, begins to sweep the stall with a bright blue beam. But a distant noise breaks the silence. The security guard swivels, backs out of the stall, foot rollers whining, and speeds toward the sound.

  Jags are impossible to steal oil from, especially one as heavily alarmed as this. She can practically feel the Jag’s AI, watchful, precise, and arrogant. The Jag will probably scream and curse if she so much as runs her fingernail over its paint job.

  Carly moves on to a Beijing Beetle, the People’s Special, a motortrike made of plastic and rubber. You could boost its tiny motor by pedaling the damn thing yourself, and you changed the synthy oil through the bottom into a drip pan, a process as barbaric as the oil change for an antique car and less efficient. An alarm blinks modestly on the motortrike’s door, but that’s all right. It will only bleat if someone breaks in that way. The alarm isn’t wired to the hood, underside, or trunk. Carly slides under. Once she drains the oil into her jar, she might take a look inside, just to see if the driver carelessly left something she can use.

  The motortrike is cold, sitting here a while, apparently. The oil drips out slow as honey. This one’s for you, good old Spin. Carly watches the oil fill the mustard jar, screws the cap tight, tucks it in her jacket pocket. Starts to slide out from under the motortrike.

  Eyes, teeth. The feral face peers at her from beneath the next car.

  Carly jumps, bumping her head with a resounding thump. She yelps in pain. Where did the digger come from all of a sudden? Whispers, “What the hell do you want?”

  The digger only stares with glittering brown eyes.

  Security guards whiz down the lanes, foot rollers screeching. Synthy voices bounce off the low ceiling. “SG Sixteen, check lane B three, lane B three . . .”

  The digger slides out and stands, keenly glancing back and forth. Carly slides from beneath the motortrike. The digger flashes a huge grin, nods her head, takes off at a gallop down the corridor. Encouraged by the grin and the nod, Carly follows. By the time she catches up, five security guards are speeding down the corridors, alarms wailing. The digger tugs at a manhole cover. Carly seizes one side of it. Together they heave the cover away. The digger climbs down ladder rungs set in the metal side of the
manhole.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Carly mutters, recoiling from the chemical stench. Five security guards race furiously toward her. She scrambles down the rungs.

  Carly looks up. The security guards surround the manhole, their excited chatter fuzzing with static as they try to summon the night manager. Red lights spin in their headpieces. No way can the guards climb down. The ladder is strictly for human arms and legs. Security garage, hah.

  Come back another night, with decent tools and a sack. Yeah, Carly thinks, giddy with her escape. Raid the place till the City figures out the security breach and slaps lockboxes on the all the manhole covers. What a score. People carry all sorts of goodies in their cars: food, clothes, telelink jacks, solar cells, palmtops, phones, porta-potties, bedding, vegetable minigardens, drugs. In the days when Carly considered buying a car herself, she’d heard that thieves could record the beep sequence on your alarm, play it back and pop the lock on the fanciest system. Even that Jag. She’ll have to talk to Sashi about scoring a recorder.

  She steps down onto the concrete bank, ducks out of the glare cast through the manhole above.

  Now, how to get out. She stands at the lip of a white stream, bubbling with suds. Lights on the drain’s ceiling cast sickly gleam on the roiling gush. Cool walls drip with slime. Must be rats, but she doesn’t see any. Bad sign. Could mean this drain is so toxic, even the vermin don’t go near it.

  Soft patter, bare feet on concrete. Carly presses flat against the wall, stands very still. Diggers—the real thing—are crazy, or worse. She will never forget the time when she was a pro linker going to an appointment downtown, and a digger tribe had stalked her, taunted her, pelted her with stones and darts in the middle of California Street on a sunny afternoon. Now she’s lost in a chemical drain, at night when work crews aren’t likely to be around, with a strange digger woman.

  Mega. Next question: where is the tribe?

  Carly runs down the narrow ledge as fast as she can without losing her footing. At first, she tries to be quiet. But her boot heels clatter no matter how lightly she treads. She gives up on silence, opting for speed. Get the hell away from that digger. She’s bound to find another manhole. Maybe a work crew will be on night shift.

  She runs till her breath gives out, and she pauses, bent over, her lungs painfully heaving. Damn, the air is bad, and she’s weak with hunger. She turns, peers into the tunnel stretching behind her. Nothing. She exhales, pants. Pauses again.

  Sound of the wings of a moth beating on glass, soft and chilling. The sound of digger feet.

  Get out! She has to get out!

  The tunnel splits before her in three directions. Carly veers to the right, veers again at the next fork. She sprints full out, teetering on the ledge, lungs burning from the chemical fumes. And there! Rungs set in the wall. She scrambles up, braces her shoulder on the manhole cover, shoves.

  Nothing! The heavy metal won’t budge.

  Again! But she’s wasting her time. She’d helped the digger girl lift the manhole cover in the garage. She can’t possibly lift this by herself. The pitter-pat of bare feet nears, becomes the bold slap of skin on concrete. The digger doesn’t care about stealth anymore. Her prey—that would be Carly—is trying to escape.

  Carly hears the catch of an ignition, the growl of an engine. The manhole cover vibrates, loosening its hold. Carly shoves her shoulder against the cover again. Now it flies off with a clatter.

  She scrambles out into the crisp night air, finds herself next to a street curb. Parked cars crowd either side of the narrow street. She drags the cover back, kicks it in place, stands on top of it. Is the digger strong enough to lift the manhole cover, plus Carly’s weight?

  Carly sucks cold, clean air into her tortured lungs. At least she got the synthy oil for Pr. Spinner. Man! The things she does for good old Spin. She’ll make the perimeter prober pay with extra telespace time. Jack into their double-sided chair just as soon as she returns to their hideout.

  She looks around. She’s climbed out next to the North Beach Playground on Lombard Street. The playground is locked up tight, barbed wire fences rising twenty feet. She looks down, alarmed. Is that movement beneath her feet? Is the digger shoving her shoulder against the manhole cover?

  Then nothing.

  Relief makes her heave. Well, all right. Survival. Goal for the day. She wonders if she can find her way back by this route if she does decide to raid the parking garage. The chemical drain is bad, but the take from the parked cars will be better than hacking the lockboxes on the Bin behind the YinYang Club. Carly closes her eyes, retracing her steps. Down the manhole in lane B three. To that fork where the three tunnels angle. A sharp left, then a right.

  Right?

  A long, low whistle drifts in the night. A casual sound that could be anything. The hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Uh-uh, not anything. Terror slides up her throat. She drops to a crouch, scrambling as fast as she can away from the manhole cover. Damn it!

  Lombard Street is deserted. A residential district, everyone barricaded in their rooms behind security systems, door monitors, alarmed steel bars, smart windows. The blue glow of comm screens flicker. She thinks about pounding on a stranger’s door. Help! But the dark doors, alarms and comms linked to public telespace, security systems jacked into the police, make her hesitate. She doesn’t want the cops to find her, either. Or Data Control.

  Carly sprints down Powell Street. If she can just get back to the nightclub district where cars, people, bots clog the streets, and she isn’t alone.

  A shadow slips between cars parked on the other side of the street. A shadow, and a shadow, joined by another shadow.

  A tribe.

  What does a tribe want with her?

  What would they want? Carly recalls every awful rumor. Diggers prey on women for all the reasons women have always been preyed upon. Far easier for diggers to steal her clothing, boots, the pliers, even the pop-top, than to scavenge those things themselves. Diggers despise anything powered by electricity, but could trade her jar of synthy oil or make use of it if they have manual tools and machines. And diggers loathe linkers. Once they pull back her hair and find her neckjack, any denial she could make would be useless.

  She’s heard some tribes are cannibals. She assumes they’re rapists. Maybe they abduct sex slaves.

  She sprints up the block, weaving between parked cars. Powell Street angles up steadily, a long, low slope that winds her lungs, still aching from the fumes in the drain.

  Another shadow juts from the side of an apartment building straight ahead, withdraws, disappearing into the alley.

  Oh, fuck! She glances around, sick with terror. Shadows slide across the street, shadows dart before her. Dark buildings brood on either side, taciturn and unhelpful. This is crazy! Carly whirls, takes off in the direction she’s come from, boots ringing on the pavement as she dashes downhill.

  A man leaps out at her. She swerves around him, ducking from his grasping hands. Hooks sharply to the right into the open street. Veers back again, scrambling over the hood of a Beijing Beetle. She’s running, running. No idea where. Go, go, go!

  A hand snags her right shoulder, a hand catches her left wrist. A foot thrusts around her ankle, throwing her off her feet. She staggers across the pavement. Time slows for a moment, everything in dream slow-motion. All she can think is don’t break your damn teeth, you’ve got no dental insurance. Someone catches her, wrapping arms around her waist before she crashes to the sidewalk.

  Sharp pain across the back of her head. Then darkness.

  * * *

  Carly wakes, bumping and bobbing, slung over a burly digger’s shoulder. Dim darkness and a dampness in the air. No chemical stench. The ripe, rotten smell of waste water, a true sewer and the squealing of rats. Which is bizarrely reassuring.

  Carly feels the press of breasts against her knees, sees the bulge of buttocks below her forehead. A woman, then, this burly digger, huge and lumbering as the official animal of th
e State of California. A vanished creature called a bear she’d once seen on the Big Board.

  She’s relieved. Maybe. Maybe the female digger carries her because the digger is the strongest. Maybe only digger women can touch nontribal women. Or maybe digger women are the custodians of birth and death and she, Carly, is bound to be the object of a sacrifice. They have all sorts of strange beliefs and superstitions, these diggers. Beliefs that differ from tribe to tribe. Once Carly scanned a reprise in telespace about the diggers. Some do-gooder program spliced together by civil rights advocates protesting the mandatory detainment of digger tribes by the City. The reprise took ten minutes, hypertime. Carly wishes she’d paid more attention.

  Her head throbs. Pain knots at the base of her skull where her neckjack hides beneath her hair. Good old fashioned blackjack hit her, she guesses. She needs a dose of cram bad.

  Dark wild men creep behind the digger woman and her load. Loins wrapped in plastic or patched rags, some barefoot, some in boots or scruffy athletic shoes. All with bushy dreadlocks or braids to their waists, belts slung with knives, axes, hammers. Some wear colorful jewelry made of found objects—plastic wrap, colored string, pop-tops. All have brown skin, stained by a pigment, patches worn off to reveal the pink-white skin beneath. Some hoist spears as long as a person, others carry bows and sheaves of arrows. They move with feral wariness, the bone weariness of a lifetime on the edge.

  The air grows colder and damper, the sound of rushing water louder. They climb out of the drain in a place near the waterfront. Carly glimpses the color-coded spotlights of a reclamation plant, hears the roar of machinery, which fades as they leave the drain behind. A seagull cries. She sees ancient planking, water-soaked and rotten, sea foam dashing through the gaps far below. A pier? Do they intend to drown her?

  Carly peers again at the men walking behind her, turning her head, raising her eyes as inconspicuously as she can. Not inconspicuously enough. The tall, wiry digger who’d tackled her—she recognizes his sharp profile—slaps the back of her head. Sending a shower of blue sparks across her eyelids.