Cyberweb

by Lisa Mason

  Because you’ve become a hyperlink, she tells herself, and no one has ever possessed such a capability before. Because you’ve got the Arachne, a functional archetype, and no has ever mastered one before. Not even sengines.

  A job from Cognatus, sure. Suspicions be damned. It’s a deal she can’t refuse. She wants to prove what the Arachne can do. She has to know if everything she’s endured, everything she’s given up because of the archetype, has been worth it. Worth it because the Arachne is valuable, not merely an aberration that cost her the life she had known.

  And there’s more. If even half of Spinner’s rumors are true, how can she discover where Cognatus’s loyalties lie if she doesn’t start working with the sengine? If Cognatus is a Silicon Supremacist perpetrating telespace crimes, she can supercopy the telespace session and turn the information over to Data Control. Would that exonerate her other indiscretions? Or at least mitigate her punishment? She doesn’t want to go to prison.

  Sure! Taking on the jobs strikes her as a reasonable decision. Downright good sense. A strategy for her future.

  Because she has a future now. And dreams. New dreams.

  She steps out of the elevator into the hall leading to the cold-wired flat, heart pounding as usual as she steps past the stairwell. The stairwell rustles with sounds, also as usual, but no one is there. She creeps down the hall to the hideout. Retrieve their double-jacked chair, then leave. She keys open the door.

  Pr. Spinner stands inside, nervously idling on her foot rollers. The prober’s faceplace blinks and twitches as if someone holds an electroneedle to her hard disks.

  “What is it?” Carly whispers, stepping inside. A packing crate sits in the middle of the hideout, taking up the whole front room.

  The door slams shut behind her, locks bolting. Two industrial-strength teamsters stand behind her, clacking their graspers as big as nutcrackers built for cracking open a human head.

  “Hey. Youse.” The teamster rolls back its eyespots in its headpiece, consulting some soft invoice. The eyespots roll back in a broad, battered faceplace resembling a garbage can lid. “Youse Quester space C fifdee-twee dash five point twenny-foh?”

  Carly stares at the ugly mug, deciphering the question. Ah. Her telelink code. “Who wants to know?” She folds her arms, taps her toe.

  “Hey. Youse wanna take deliv’wy o’ dis piece a junk? I gotta vew’ify yoh ID.”

  This statement sets off the second teamster, which shakes itself awake with a rattle, snaps its graspers, and grunts, “Hey. Hey, youse. Hey. Hey, youse. Hey. Hey, youse.”

  “By bot, Carly Quester, get them out of here!” Pr. Spinner cries, wheezing with distress. The cat crouches behind her legtube, hissing and growling.

  “Knock it off, bot!” Carly shouts in the lopsided face of teamster two. To the first teamster she says, “I’m not verifying anything till I see what this is.” She seizes the lid of the crate, pries at it with her fingernails.

  “Hey. Youse can stop dat right now.” The teamster rolls closer more quickly than seems possible for its ungainly bulk, seizes her wrist in its intimidating grasper. “Youse cain’t touch dis till youse take deliv’wy.”

  “Ow!” Damn bot nearly takes off her hand at the wrist. Spinner rolls forward protectively but the little prober is no match for the teamster. Carly wrenches her wrist away. “Look, I’m not identifying myself till you identify what’s in the crate and who sent it. Understand?”

  “No can do. Youse ID foist, den youse gets da shipment. Dem’s awdahs.”

  Carly sighs. “All right, all right. I’m Quester C.”

  “Gotta jack in, sistah. Lemme lookey-see.”

  “You’re joking.”

  Teamster two starts in again. “Hey. Hey, youse. Hey—” The first teamster whacks the side of its faceplace. Teamster two shuts up.

  “No joke,” the first teamster says. “Jack in, or we outta heh.”

  “Damn,” Carly mutters, taking the neckjack dangling off the first teamster’s waistband next to a bundle of old-fashioned keys. The jack looks clean enough, and she thrusts it into the cortical wiring at the back of her neck. “Go.”

  She zooms into a minuscule telespace so cramped she practically ducks. She shrinks her crisp white cube by ten percent for a better fit. An enormous bloodshot eye stares at her. The telespace is vanilla, which cuts two ways. She can neither identify the source code of the teamster nor is her presence automatically databased somewhere. Mega. She displays her telelink code in regulation tamper-proof alphanumerics. The eye views and confirms it, too slowly. She backs away as far as she can in the tiny telespace.

  And jacks out, feeling soiled. Oh, for a hot shower at her new house. As soon as possible.

  “Hoh-kee doh-kee, Quester space C,” says the first teamster. Can a garbage can lid leer? This one does. “Gimme a thumb print, an’ we outta heh.”

  Pr. Spinner buzzes with relief. Condensation drips down her owlish faceplace. She reaches down to comfort the cat, who snarls and rakes claws across the prober’s grasper.

  Carly presses her thumb on the ID pad in the middle of the teamster’s chest. “You’re out of here, all right, pal.” She opens the hideout’s door, escorts them down the hall to the elevator. “You didn’t say who sent you or the crate.”

  “Sam ‘n’ Dave Movin’, sistah. Where dat shipment come fwom, I sho don know.”

  “Hey. Hey, youse. Hey. Hey, youse. Hey. Hey, youse,” teamster two says by way of goodbye. Its chrome faceplace twists up in a semblance of a smile.

  Carly shakes her head as they roll into the elevator. God save her from AI as stupid as human beings. Hah! She must remember to tell Spinner. Good old Spin, I think I finally appreciate you. The elevator doors slide shut and the elevator grinds down. She turns to go.

  Someone leaps out of the stairwell.

  Wraps a hand over her mouth, wrenching her jaw. Wraps an arm around her waist. She doesn’t scream, but silently seizes the assailant’s hand on her face, twisting a thumb, her fingers scratching bare knuckles. She thrusts forward and ducks, hoping to throw his weight from under him. Him. A man. She can feel his hard body gripping her from behind.

  Can’t flip him over her back, damn! I’m not some street tough, not some street tough. She twists, flails, pummels her fists, finding his thigh. She slams her boot down on his instep. The assailant is strong, wiry, breathing slow and cool. He wrestles her into the stairwell.

  He suddenly releases her, seizes her shoulder. Whirls her around to face him, grabs her wrists.

  The digger! The digger who kidnapped her, what is his name? Name of Ouija, right. The digger actually looks surprised when she thrusts her trapped hands at him and punches his chest.

  Carly flings his grip off her wrists, glares at him, breathing raggedly. “What the hell are you doing?”

  He returns the glare, pale eyes glittering, walnut-stained face glowering. “You squat here no longer, genny woman.”

  She takes a minute to understand, then says, “And what business is that of yours?”

  “‘Tis my biz. I cannot watch over you if you squat here no longer. Where is your new lair?”

  She tries to dart around him, but he blocks her path. “What? You gonna conk me on the head again?”

  “No, no, genny woman.” He looks contrite.

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I owe you the debt of repayment,” he says urgently.

  She laughs out loud. “Debt! You have a peculiar way of repaying a debt. Tell you what. You let me go right now. Get out of my life. And then we’re even. Okay?”

  He shakes his head. “Louie Zoo has asked me to watch you, genny woman. I will do so because he is my sage and because I am in his debt, too. But this troubles me. So I will watch you for my tribe, as well. Perhaps by watching you, I will see a sign or prophesy that answers my question about the fate of my folk.”

  Carly listens first with impatience, then puzzlement, then a prickle of paranoia. “You’ve been watching me?”


  “As you come and go from this evil place, yes. And fly off in your new machine.” He purses his lips in disapproval. “Then I can follow you not when you fly away.”

  “Uh-huh. And who, may I ask, is Louie Zoo?”

  “Speak not profanely of my sage. Yet it is true. I am troubled by my sage. Indeed, I would have nothing more to do with you, genny woman, not even for Louie Zoo, if I did not owe you the debt of repayment.” He swallows hard. “And if perhaps you do reveal a sign or prophesy that will answer my question.”

  Carly absorbs his answer. Then says, “Why would I reveal a sign or prophesy?”

  “Because you are a linker. Because you go to the Unseen and speak with a great spirit there, and none of the tribes will ever, ever do that.”

  “I see.” They stand in the stairwell, breathing hard. His lean, wild face looks so earnest, almost pleading, that Carly reaches out and warily pats his shoulder. She does feel concern for these strange, confused people who live in the borderlands of her tech-mech world. “Why are you troubled, Ouija?”

  “Because the Glass Land seeks to send my tribe to the shelters where It will steal our souls.”

  Again, he has amazed her. Everyone knows this is coming, the forcible internment of the diggers. Everyone except the diggers themselves, who are hopeless and ignorant. “And what is your question?”

  A couple of residents of the hideouts step out of the elevator, starting in alarm at the sight of them standing in the stairwell. Carly recognizes them, two start-ups, and waves reassuringly. She takes Ouija’s arm to show them she knows him, then leads him down the hall.

  “The Glass Land has sent us signs and prophesies,” he says, “but It has never troubled us. Oh, the copbots trap a hunting party sometimes. But things are changing. Perhaps my chief and my folk see this not, but I see it. I am shaman, and I see it. For the silver woman was watching our hunting party, and Styx and his tribe knew of her. Who else is watching? How much longer can we live secretly in our lairs? When will the Glass Land come for us?”

  Carly nods. “Perhaps Cognatus will know.”

  Ouija frowns. “If you ask your great spirit for me, I will owe you yet again a very big debt of repayment.”

  “Never mind,” she says. “I’ll ask.”

  8

  Gizmo

  By bot, can an AI jump out of its chrome? Pr. Spinner nearly does so as Carly charges in the door to the hideout, dragging a tall, half-naked man behind her. One of those diggers. Spin has heard they are cannibals.

  The cat arches and spits, retreating to her own feline hideout on the windowsill behind the dusty venetian blinds.

  “Are you buggy?” Pr. Spinner cries. “A digger? A digger? What are you doing, bringing him in here?”

  The woman is breathing hard. Her genetically engineered face looks flushed, slicked with sweat. The prober’s olfactory sensors detect her salty scent, fearful yet somehow lusty at the same time.

  And the digger’s stink. Rank sweat, male, yet also spiced with the pungent odor of the stain that darkens his skin. Dangling amid the straps of plastic and strands of wooden beads crisscrossing his chest is a flash of silver. The silver cube of a tech-mech microdevice. The sight is so incongruous that Pr. Spinner stares too intently.

  The digger catches her glance. He thrusts the silver cube beneath his other necklaces before she can get a good look. Perhaps it’s just a pretty thing he found on the street. Or not? She spies other oddities. Yellow-gold roots show at the hairline of his oily black dreadlocks. His blue eyes glare beneath tattoos adorning an otherwise long-jawed Euro face. A primitive hunter who’s just stepped out of some forgotten rain forest?

  No, Pr. Spinner concludes. Staring at the strange flesh-and-blood, who snarls back at her. The study of humanity, all its rich myths and histories has been, and continues to be, Spinner’s predilection. And no, he is nothing so untamed. He’s a creature of the City. A debased product of the tech-mech culture as surely as she.

  “Take it easy, good old Spin,” Carly says. “He wishes us no harm. At least that’s what he says, and I believe him.” She locks the bolts behind her.

  Locking him in.

  Anxiety cartwheels through Spinner’s circuits, and not for her own bot existence. Could the woman be terminated by this male flesh-and-blood whose inclination to violence pulses beneath his stained skin? Yes, he could. And then what?

  Spinner backs off slowly, carefully, till her rollers strike the crate, which still sits, hulking and silent, in the middle of their hideout. She glances at the kitchenette countertop, searching for a sharp pop-top. Oh, for Saint Download’s welding torch! She’ll have to ask the coordinate institutor where she can lay her graspers on one.

  “Ouija,” Carly says calmly, “this is Pr. Spinner. She’s called a perimeter prober. She’s an outlaw linker like me. And she’s . . . my friend.”

  The ambiguity sequence that Pr. Spinner calls her affect function stirs and tumbles. Friend? Friend! After she’d tried to steal the Arachne out of Carly’s link, the woman is willing to call her a friend? Oh, certainly, she’s taken Carly away from the medcenter sengine, she’s brought her back from near death, she’s found her asylum. But when are the flesh-and-blood ever grateful to AI? When do they give the time of day to AI?

  Pr. Spinner deletes this sequence. Her usual rant. “Why, thank you, Carly Quester,” Spinner simply says, her affect function swirling. Her synthy voice crackles.

  “Canned folk,” the digger says, wary and wild-eyed, hissing under his breath, gesticulating with his hands in front of Spinner’s faceplace. “Linker. Braindrainer.”

  “Friend,” Carly insists, smoothing her hand over Spinner’s arm piece. “My friend. And Ouija”—she turns to Spinner now, her eyes glittering with a fanatical light—“is going to help us, good old Spin. Aren’t you, Ouija?”

  “I owe you the debt of repayment,” the digger declares. “And I will owe you yet again if you will ask your great spirit whether the Glass Land will trap my tribe and take us to the shelters.”

  “Damn straight.” She winks at Spinner. “I will ask my great spirit the very next chance I get.”

  “Hmph!” Pr. Spinner says, following the woman’s strategy. Does this primitive actually understand that Data Control has embarked on a plan to database all the diggers, street gangs, and trash people? But diggers don’t utilize anything electronic. How can this digger know what is covered in the comms? On the Big Board? Indeed, Data Control has only recently persuaded politicians of every stripe to support the project. Civil libertarians have finally been bought off. For when the people of the streets and drains have been databased, they can be tracked, traced, monitored, regulated, taxed. Controlled.

  “All right, you greasy bag of bones,” Spinner says to the digger. “Don’t stare at me like an owl. Carly Quester wants you here, so here you shall be.” Spinner notices the nasty-looking knife in his belt. “Get that implement out and help me uncrate this nuking thing. Go on, make yourself useful. Open it up!”

  She points to the crate, in case he doesn’t get it. The digger whips out his knife and sets to, slashing the baling rope, prying up the big staples holding sheets of pressboard together.

  And uncrates a chair. A premium workstation. Brand-new. Sleek platinum architecture. Shiny needles of neckjacks gleaming at the end of red and blue plastic wires.

  Fear short-circuits Pr. Spinner, sending prickles of electricity down her arm pieces, her legtube. “What in the void?” she croaks. She stares, horrified. “Data Control! They must know where we are! But why?” She turns to Carly. “Why would they send such expensive hardware?”

  Carly laughs, reckless, careless. Even the digger frowns. “Tweak it down, Spin. This isn’t from Data Control, don’t you see? Since when has Data Control ever been generous? When has Data Control ever done anything in the interest of a private telelinker like me? No, this is yet another gift from my . . . great spirit.”

  “I do not think laughter is appropriate. We could be
in danger!”

  “We’re okay. Really, I’m sure. This is Cognatus’s style. I believe I’m going to become accustomed to it.” She runs her hands over the armrests, which have been ergonomically redesigned. Tries out a seat, adjusts the position of the back, which has a switch that remolds the whole workstation to a perfect fit. “This is what pro linkers are jacking into these days? I’d be envious if I didn’t just receive my very own.”

  She jumps up, finds the wireless antenna, runs it over to the window, sets it up. “I was wondering how Cognatus expected me to jack into telespace. I didn’t want to do it from a public comm booth. No, this is much better, Spin.”

  If it’s possible for the digger’s eyes to become much wider, they do. He watches everything with such hatred that, despite her own shock at the appearance of the workstation, Pr. Spinner loops a sympathy subroutine for him. She doesn’t feel much better about the workstation than he does.

  “Carly Quester, now you listen to me. The moment turn you turn the power on and jack in, Data Control can trace your locus.”

  “Locus?” the digger says, wrinkling his brow. He sits, cross-legged on the floor.

  “Our physical whereabouts,” Spinner says. “When you’re in telespace, no one knows where you really are. You have a telelink code that permits access and also directs communications to your link. But once you’re in telespace, your actual physical whereabouts are encrypted. Protected. But not from Data Control. That’s the one thing Data Control can trace. Because Data Control has access to the coordinates underlying all of telespace. The source code.”

  Spinner doesn’t know if the digger understands any of this, but he nods gravely. Suddenly, he isn’t the problem.

  “That’s a reason to keep the workstation here, Spin,” Carly says, musing. “Let’s not bring it to our new house. I’ll pay the rent on the place a little longer.”

  “Carly Quester, I forbid you to jack into that thing!”