by Lisa Mason
“Oh, certainly, but you got the specs,” the canned woman answers, casting a quick suspicious look at Ouija.
“Yeah.” She strides to the door, cracks it open, peers out. Shuts it again, shoots the bolts home. She glances, puzzled, at his befuddled look. “You see anybody, Ja, while we were gone?”
He shrugs again. Should he tell her about the silver woman? He has seen too much. Perhaps his knowledge of Patina’s dreadful presence, that she could be following him, is knowledge to benefit him and his tribe. And not the genny woman. Ouija keeps silent.
“I guess not,” the genny woman says, smiling at him. To the canned woman, “Well, at least Cognatus has kept its part of the bargain. How about that encrypted path, you ever see anything like it? Do you think it’s safe to take the new workstation to our house after all, Spin?”
“Teh! Don’t be so quick to trust a sengine, Carly Quester,” the canned woman says, tapping her graspers on the shiny new demon chair. “Especially the likes of Cognatus. I say stick with our plan. Take my old double-jacked chair to the house so we can train your hyperlink capability. Leave this thing here, for the time being.”
The genny woman nods. She gives Ouija another smile. “Ever see Tellie Gulch?”
Is he still silly and loose from the smokes of the club? Ouija feels not so much silly, as free of the awful dread Patina’s dance gave him. “I’ve seen the gulch.”
“Ah, but have you seen the Tellie side? Want to see it? I could use your help with the chair. Will you come with me?”
What if someone of the tribes sees him? Sees him help her carry the old demon chair, wires dangling, seats swaybacked, across Broadway to the whirligig? What if someone sees him strap the chair on the rack of the whirligig, pull the ropes tight, carefully wind the wires around the chair’s arms? What if someone sees him, flying above Grant Avenue on her little flying machine, straddling the seat behind her, holding her waist?
Yet he does all these shameful things. Does them though Styx has warned him. Does them though Zebra had stared at him, his chief’s displeasure clouding his eyes.
He tells himself he will find out the Glass Land intends. The signs and prophesies of mighty Whoosh have revealed little. His sage, Louie Zoo, has asked him to watch and watching has led to him riding on her flying machine. The genny woman did not bring his answer back from the Unseen. Yet she has renewed her promise to him. He will force her to honor that promise.
And yes, it is evil, but he cannot suppress the joy leaping in his heart as they speed high over the Glass Land. He has never seen how the world looks from up here! When the tribe hunted across the bridges, they stole along the curbs. They had to hunker down, keep their heads down, their eyes straight ahead. For copbots could track and trap them if they were seen.
But once, on the great bridge leading to the eastern hills, Ouija had stood tall and glanced over the edge. The height was dizzying, terrifying. Yet he had seen the Glass Land on both shores and the many-many wirefires winking to the horizon on all sides. And his heart had filled with awe at the vastness of the world.
From the whirligig, he sees a different view, for the land is not so far below. As they speed above the cars and folk, over streets and buildings, Ouija feels that awe again. He feels he is a great chief peering down, surveying the world from on high.
The genny woman flies up the crest of Grant Avenue and down the other side, to Tellie Gulch.
The tribes know the gulch well. Well-traveled drains let out at its bottom and lead to the wetlands and the sea. Ouija knows the earthy smell. The sheer raw walls towering up. The wires that sometimes spark alive with spirits. Dim fires have been installed in it and whirring devices. Scut litters the muddy sand, which flows with deep water in a heavy rain. He has also seen the tiny footbridge far above, a flimsy steel ribbon which Whoosh often toys with. The tribes had not known what the steel ribbon was used for till a small child tumbled off and fell into the gulch, a little bundle of clothing and flesh not much different from other scut.
Ouija had heard Styx’s tribe had gathered up the body before the copbots could come, and that the meat had been tender and sweet.
The gulch from above is another matter. For now he sees for the first time why the copbots had buzzed so fearfully when they rolled down to the bottom to collect the lost little girl. The tribe’s easy path to the waterfront is to them a wound in the earth, a gaping ragged crevice terrifying to behold. Walls seen from below as merely too tall to climb are seen from above as a long fall to a muddy grave. The little footbridge over the abyss tilts and sways with the slightest touch of Whoosh.
On the other side, on an island of rock surrounded by the gulch on one side and the sheer cliff of the hill on the other, stands a collection of astonishing lairs. Tall houses made of beautiful pink stone, roofed in red tiles, lined in the colors of the sky.
The genny woman flies over the gulch with barely a downward glance, taxies into a driveway. The blue-green bars of an enormous garage swing open at her touch of a button. She drives the whirligig inside.
Ouija follows her, though he shouldn’t. He burns with shame when she turns and dazzles him with another woman-smile. “Help me?” He gladly shoulders half the old demon chair. He can smell her salty-sweet scent, a lovely human scent with no trace of the ozone of wirefire. She need not turn on the scent of flesh.
They carry the chair through a courtyard to a magnificent house that rises up three floors. Ouija stares. Large empty balconies with more blue-green bars. As much glass set in the walls as the towers of the Glass Land. She presses her thumb onto the doorknob, and door swings open at her touch.
Inside, the floors are gleaming wood. The walls smooth and white. Slabs of speckled stone as polished as jewels serve as countertops or the fronts of hearth places large enough for several stew pots. The rooms are empty. Untribal and cold, to his way of thinking. Yet he has never stood inside such a beautiful lair. And his heart beats hard.
“How do you own all this if you are a linker who is unlinked?” he demands, as they carry the demon chair up two stairwells to a room high in the house. “An outlaw from Data Control?”
“Cognatus pays me,” she says, panting from the exertion. “Let’s put it here.” They deposit the demon chair in a corner of the high room. She’s laid out a mattress on the floor, tangled blankets. Boxes of her things stacked, still unpacked. He sets down the demon chair, then strides to a glass window as big as a door, finds the handle, opens it to a broad deck. He breathes deeply of the chilly salt air.
High, high again! He has never stood so high, gazing out at the Bay without cringing from copbots and wirefires. He can see the evil place far out on an island—a casino called Big Al’s—gleaming with many-many spirits and multicolored wirefires that seem to speak to him as they flicker from shape to shape. The whole Bay, all the ships, the far shores, the great red bridge in which the banshee lives and shrieks when great Whoosh harasses her—all these things he can see. The Glass Land stretching all around him. So high.
A sadness falls over Ouija. He feels not that he is a great chief now but a humble man. A man who roots in the drains of the Glass Land, hunts with his tribe, attacks whirlies for their booty. But why? For what? Ouija feels not pleased at all, but filled with deep shame.
“Cognatus,” he says, trying out the sound of it. “Then Cognatus must be a great, great spirit. A powerful spirit. Perhaps, genny woman, you are not so much an outlaw as you have claimed.”
“You surprise me, Ouija,” the genny woman says, coming to stand behind him, gazing out at the view herself. And at him, with the kind of eyes that judge. Yet kind eyes, woman-smiling eyes. “You’re not as ignorant as you look.”
“No, I am not,” he says indignantly. He tucks his amulet of power and courage more deeply into the beads on his chest. He will not allow her to see the amulet, he decides, for perhaps she could steal its power the same way she reaches into his soul and disturbs him.
“You see? You do know what I mean,
don’t you?”
“You mean that I am shaman and I know how to read. Not one of the diggers who hunt in the Glass Land.” At her nod, he adds, “Perhaps many-many diggers are not as evil as you believe, either. We choose to live outside the laws of the Glass Land. We choose not to bind ourselves to the wires. We choose not to become like linkers.”
She laughs, claps her hands. “Mega! And what do you think linkers are like?”
“They are bound to the wires and thus dead in their souls, though they are still alive.”
“Dead in their souls, eh? I suppose everyone’s got a different idea about how life should be lived.” She shrugs. “But that’s the way things are done these days. The way everything is done. You can’t escape tech-mech. Well,” she says, looking him up and down, “perhaps you can.”
“Yes, and perhaps too my folk are wrong.” He glances around her high room, gazes back out at the view. He conceals not the sadness and longing in his heart. “For we own no lair as fine as this. We never will.”
“You like my house?” she says in a teasing tone. “Not bad for a dead soul, eh?”
Quick anger overcomes his sadness. “Do you think I cannot see? That because I hunt in the drains and squat in a barge on the waterfront and eat food stolen from the Bins, I cannot see the fineness of this?’ His head throbs. “Cannot see it? Cannot want it?”
Her face grows somber. “I’m sorry. Really.” She strides inside to the chair, unwraps the wires thoughtfully.
Ouija cannot be certain that the slab of gray stone will hold him but he steps out on the deck and sits, propping his back against the glass wall. He takes out his skinful of screech, uncorked the top, swigs. And gazes, filling his eyes with the many-many sparkles dancing on far waters.
In a while, the genny woman walks out on the deck, sits too. She carries a tray of woven stalks. Ouija sees a loaf of fresh bread with an unbroken crust. Good bird meat, sliced, in a fancy wrapper. Yellow cheese so smooth and shiny he would think it plastic till he smells the tantalizing odor. Red wine in a dark green bottle. A bowl of little fruits, red and purple, clustered on tough stems.
She offers him this bounty, which he proudly declines. She hungrily begins to eat and drink herself, and the yeasty scent of bread, the salty smell of good meat sets his mouth watering. She smiles her quick smile. “Please. I know what it’s like to go without good food. These days I’ve got plenty. Eat, Ja.”
“It is the Way for me to share something of mine before I take of yours.” He holds out his precious skinful of screech. “I offer this to you.” Darkly he adds, “‘Tis too crude for you, I think, yet I must offer it just the same. For it is all I have to share.”
“Thank you. Um. What is it?”
“‘Tis screech.”
“Screech!” she laughs.
“‘Tis finely brewed from fruits that have gone soft and peels that are dry and cooked rice not eaten for two days. Very fine screech.”
The nip he’s swallowed burns its way down his throat, strikes his stomach with a thump, burns its way up his spine to his head. He does not expect her to take the skin.
But she does, tilts the tip to her mouth.
“Whoa!” Her eyes spurt, her mouth curls. She coughs and coughs. She hands the skin back, whispers as if her voice has been scrubbed by sand, “‘S good.”
He laughs, his anger melting, and helps himself to meat, cheese, bread, grapes. He tries some of her red wine. It is sweetly sour, but as water after screech.
Her face flushes, her eyes glitter. “You know, we citizens are afraid of the diggers, Ouija. There are rumors. Burglary, robbery, murder. Cannibalism. I’ve been harassed on the street, myself. I’m scared of you. Well,” she waves her hand. He stares, unwilling to reassure her, yet dismayed. “Not of you. Not right now, anyway. By yourself. Without your tribe. I can talk to you, can’t I?”
“Talk,” he says. Eating, drinking.
“Well, who are you really, Ouija? How did you wind up running with the diggers?”
Of all the shameful things he’s done, to tell his story is the worst. He should not tell. Tribal law forbids the telling of secret matters to linkers, to those of the Glass Land. Even this genny woman, outlaw or not, feeds her soul to a great spirit and collects a fine house for her sacrifice.
Who is he? Who are his folk, really?
This is the great secret the Glass Land wants to know.
Ouija should not tell. But the view is beautiful. She is beautiful. And kind. The food is the best food he’s ever eaten.
And he finds himself telling of the babbling man. His long, golden hair curled not in dreadlocks, but fell below his shoulders, streamed down his thin back in white-gold waves. He sat upon gray stone curbs in the Glass Land, strumming a guitar, sometimes nicely, sometimes badly, depending on how much liquor he had in him. He sang songs, his own songs, which he pulled out of his head. He sang no one else’s songs. One time a young woman asked him to sing a song that synthy voices sang over the wires, and he had told her to move along.
Ouija remembered looking up, always looking up, at the tall, proud folk who walked by. Their eyes of ice. The babbling man, when he stood, was as tall as the proud folk. But when he sat on the street and sang and begged, he was no taller than Ouija, and he looked up at the proud folk, too, like a child. When Ouija was very little, he loved the babbling man for this.
That he could look into the babbling man’s eyes, his long. thin face, and see him smile.
But soon, when the Way of the world began to impress itself upon him, Ouija came to resent the babbling man for sitting on the street. For standing no taller than a child. As Ouija grew, he stood. Stood taller and taller, till he could no longer look into his eyes, but looked down. And could stare into the hateful eyes of the proud folk. Stare back.
“Did your father name you Ouija?” the genny woman asks.
“No. That was my mother.”
“Leave it to mom,” the genny woman says. “Double ‘Yes’.”
But the answers for Ouija and his parents were not all yes.
One day his mother was taken away. They had huddled on the street, a cold rain soaked them, they were hungry. A proud man spat upon them. And his mother seized the man’s arm, screamed filthy things, tore at his clothes, his hair, his proud face. Ouija remembered blood on the man’s startled face.
Then she was gone. He recalled the cold, rainy day, being hungry. The man whose face she scratched. But he cannot recall what had happened to her. She was gone. Just like that.
He never saw his mother again.
“That was when I knew I had to hide,” Ouija says. “For I could not crouch upon the street and beg from folk who would spit upon me. Soon I found my tribe. And I found my pride. We crouch not upon the gray stone and beg. We take what we need from the Glass Land when we need it.” He shakes his fist. “And it is good!”
The genny woman flinches. But she does not flee.
“We choose not to feed our souls to your spirits of the Unseen,” he says. “We will not be bound to that Way. We think it is evil. We need to live. We hunt, we feed, we mate. We are free. We are not the living dead. Are you the living dead, genny woman?”
She touches his hand, his arm, his chest. Reaches for his thigh. “No, I’m not dead,” she whispers. “Come here and I’ll show you.”
Later, that night, when he wakes on the soft mattress beside her, and breathes her scent and touches her fine hair, she looks wholly alive. Though deeply asleep. Peacefully asleep.
And Ouija wonders. How asleep is she? How alive and how dead?
10
Found Objects
“You must have found something, Quester space C,” the voices of Cognatus say. The bearded man’s face is stern; the jackal pants, the lizard blinks its topaz eyes. The icon crosses its front legs like a trick horse and lazily swishes its long tail, stirring up buzzing bytes of data.
“We found no archetype,” Carly insists. “Just an old warehouse filled with junk. Found it
by sheer accident. There was no trace of an archetype.”
Her presence in link sizzles with anxiety. The more she thinks about Spinner’s advice, the more anxious she becomes about jacking into the sengine’s sanctum with Kay Carlisle’s specs security-coded in her link memory. Her internal encryption isn’t that sophisticated. The sengine could probably seize the data in less than a minute. What defensive moves could she make?
Are you the living dead? Ouija had asked her. And she had answered no. Then, to prove it to him, she mated him. A wild man. A digger. One of society’s outcasts, dreadlocks with roots of gold. She cast out her notions of what is valuable, what worthless. She doesn’t regret their time together.
But what has she proven to herself?
“There may be coincidences and correspondences you don’t understand, Quester space C. There are no accidents when you invoke the Arachne,” Cognatus says. “And you did invoke the Arachne, did you not?”
Carly tightens with tension, her presence in link whirling in the sanctum. The origin path had been encrypted and automatically deleted, as the sengine itself had promised. That means even Cognatus could not follow the telespace journey she and Spinner embarked upon. Could not zoom along the spider silk.
Carly knew the sengine would demand an accounting as soon as she jacked into the new workstation in the hideout above the YinYang Club. She knew it, yet now she isn’t sure how to answer.
Cognatus has a right to know. Of course. She found another black credit disk containing a hundred thousand untraceable softbucks slipped through the mail slot at the hideout. Which could mean Cognatus hasn’t discovered her new residence at Tellie Gulch. Which could mean, further, the softbucks truly are unaccounted, untraceable. Not bugged with a spybyte through which Cognatus could track her every time she downloaded credits.
Or which could mean Cognatus wants her to feel secure. Safe in her haven. Confident of her secrets. Till the sengine makes its move.