Hardwired (32 page)

“You think he’ll be okay?” Sarah can’t decide whether Cowboy’s muttering to himself or to her.

“Raul.”

She closes her eyes, seeing growing patches the color of blood on the back of her lids.

“Yeah,” she says. “He’ll do good.” Maybe it’s even the truth, though Sarah suspects that Raul’s throat will most likely get cut the first time he tries to use the American dollars Cowboy gave him. She wishes he’d given the money to her–– she’d have found a good use for it, better anyway than scattering it among the knifeboys of some Cordillera shantytown.

“Maybe I can find him again. Bring him to the States, let him stay with my uncle. He can always use a willing hand.”

Sarah can feel the atmosphere whispering against the outside of the shuttle. She opens her eyes. The clouds over Florida have risen at an angle oblique to the land, like a layered transparency lifted over a map. Shadows pox the land below. The pressure in her throat lessens.

“If you want to get into that kind of business,” Sarah says, “there are homeless kids a lot closer than Venezuela.”

He doesn’t answer that, just stares forward and fades into the matrix again. Sarah sips her drink and closes her eyes. The shuttle begins to buffet and the Free Zone rises to claim them.

*

“Michael will meet you tonight.” That’s the word from the Flash Force man who waits at the security gate. “In the meantime, we’ll drive you where you need to go.”

The sun hammers at them as they step onto the concrete. “The Ritz Flop,” Sarah says, but out of the corner of her eye she sees Cowboy shake his head.

“No,” he says. “Someplace else.” She looks at him in silent surprise. Sweat dots his forehead like a constellation of extra sockets.

“Where?” she asks.

Cowboy shrugs. He looks at the long car with its opaqued windows, then at Sarah. “Your place, maybe. Above the bar?”

She’s about to refuse but something stops her. His look, a sixth sense, something. A knowledge that to say no would be wrong–– not unwise, just a piece of unnecessary cruelty.

“Okay,” she says slowly. “But you’ll be by yourself. If we don’t meet the Hetman till night, I’m going to spend the afternoon with Daud.”

Cowboy shrugs again. “Blue Silk, then,” Sarah tells the driver, then ducks into the car’s back seat.

Cowboy’s quiet on the ride back to Tampa, drawn into himself. Sarah stops in the Blue Silk long enough to tell Maurice that it’s okay if Cowboy stays for the afternoon, then lets the Flash Force take her to Daud.

She’s moved him out of the hospital and into a recovery house in a Tampa suburb, a place out behind the howling limited expressway that connects Tampa with Orlando. He’s got a room that’s more like a dormitory residence than a hospital room, and Sarah doesn’t think any of the attendants have the look of a Joseph, with a syringe hidden in the towels.

Daud is sitting up in a chair when she enters his room. He looks better simply by virtue of the fact he’s out of hospital clothes, and he’s lifting a dumbbell with his weak arm. It’s the first time she’s seen him exercise voluntarily, and she smiles as she walks toward him.

“Hi, Sarah.”

She bends to kiss him. His blue eyes smile up at her from beneath an unscarred brow. Sarah straightens in surprise. “Daud...” She blinks at him. A cold needle begins to stitch her nerves. His smile broadens as he works the weight. “How...?”

“The body designer took off the face scars two days ago. With her laser.” He’s beginning to breathe hard from the exertion. His tone shows the strain.

She leans back against the wall, crosses her arms. “Who paid for it?” she asks.

“This...guy I met. His sister is in here with...terminal Huntington’s. He’s rich.” Daud’s smile turns shaky. The cords on his neck stand out. He lifts the weight twice more, then lets it down. He leans his head back and takes a breath.

“What does he do?”

“Something in shipping. He’s from southern Africa someplace. He’s just in Florida because his sister is a patient here.” He raises his head and looks at Sarah. His smile is hesitant. “He thinks he might want me to go home with him.”

“Well.” Sarah can feel a harshness in her tone that she doesn’t want. She swallows and tries to control it. “This is fast. A romantic African from across the seas. All in five days.”

A wary look clouds Daud’s eyes. “I think you’ll like him,” he says.

“Is he here now?”

Daud mutely shakes his head. “He left about an hour ago.”

Sarah wants to grab him, hold his arm out, tear up his sleeve to see if there are puncture marks. Shake him till his teeth rattle. Instead she makes herself smile. Knowing how badly he needs this new bit of hope, and that she doesn’t dare destroy it unless she knows for certain it’s a phantom.

“Can I meet his sister?”

“Sure. But she’s paralyzed with viral Huntington’s. Can’t talk.”

Sarah feels apprehension waning in her system with the rightsnap. She moves to sit on Daud’s bed. Tries to smile again. “Daud, I hope you’re being careful. Because this man may be aimed at me.”

She sees the jaw muscles clench, the anger flaring behind the coldness in Daud’s eyes. He turns to her. “You can’t believe in things that aren’t connected to you, can you? Everything has to revolve around you, even me and the people I know.” He throws up his hands. “Can’t you stay out of my life?”

“I’m just trying to keep you from getting hurt, Daud. If this man turns out to be one of the people that are after me.”

“He’s not. He cares for me. He really does.”

“I’m glad. If...” She lets the sentence fade away.

“If he turns out to be real.” Daud’s voice blazes defiance. “That’s what you were going to say, right?” He shakes his head. “You didn’t even ask his name, did you? It’s Nick Mslope. ”

“I don’t want to fight, Daud.”

“Nick Mslope. Say it.”

“Yeah. Fine. Nick Mslope. Who may or may not be real.” She looks at him. “Can you say that?”

He turns away, fumbles in his pocket for a cigarette.

“Can you, Daud?” Her voice is as gentle as she can make it.

“I don’t have to take this,” Daud mumbles. “I don’t have to say anything I don’t want.” He lights the tobacco. “I don’t have to depend on your money anymore. Nick will take care of me.”

“I hope he will,” Sarah says. “But tell him something first. Tell him you saw me, that we had a fight and you’ll never see me again. And then if he’ll still take care of you, fine.” Smoke rises over Daud’s averted head. Sarah leans forward. “Will you tell him that, Daud? Will you take that chance?”

Daud’s jaw is trembling. “I don’t have to,” he says.

“I’m only interested in making things clear. For everybody. If Nick wants to help you through this, fine. I’d enjoy not having to pay for it. But don’t question him too close till you get all your parts back.”

He looks at her out of the corner of his eyes. “Damn you,” he says. “You can’t leave me with anything.”

“I don’t enjoy this.”

“So you say.” He tries to make his voice cut, but he can’t do more than choke on the words. She reaches out to touch him, feels him try to flinch away, then accept her. Feeding people realities. That seems to be all she’s done lately, and she feels a sickness at it, like bile stirring in her stomach.

She comes closer to Daud, putting her arms around him, kissing his cold, compliant cheek.

“Take care, Daud,” she whispers. “Take care.” Knowing that he won’t, that he doesn’t care enough to do more than take whatever comes. He’ll hang his hope on it, whether it exists or not.

Chapter Sixteen

The bottom of the bottle makes a cold circle on Cowboy’s chest. He feels hot, unable to sleep. Something is working at him.

Sarah’s little room is a box and suddenly he can’t take it anymore.

He stands, finishes the beer, pulls on a shirt. He walks down the stairs and lets himself out the back so that he won’t have the Flash Force tagging along. The alley steams after a short rain shower. He steps out of the alley and the city oozes up around him, smelling of frangipani. He thinks about getting high, but drugs won’t do the job... He has to get really high, in a delta, float in the whispering night, before
high
will do him any good. Even sitting in his abandoned panzer would help. He wonders if it’s been found yet, sitting in its gully in Ohio. People on the street are looking at the sockets in his head, and he realizes he’s forgotten his wig. He glares at them, and they look away, their curiosity turning covert.
I’m not a junkie
, he thinks at them,
I’m a pilot
. The sidelong looks continue. Cowboy gives up in disgust and goes into the first bar he finds. It’s full of potted palms and tasteful holograms floating above businessmen drinking away their expense accounts. Cowboy can’t take this, either. With no idea other than acquiring some privacy, he walks into a phone booth and closes the door.

A little fan whines into action on the roof of the booth, sounding like an anemic turbine.

Cool air brushes Cowboy’s face. He studs the phone into the socket over his right ear and decides to call Norfolk and talk to Cathy, his Coast Guard lieutenant, see if she’s able to get away for another weekend, somewhere up on the Western Slope, where the lowlands are far away and the clean winds move through the aspens like a cutter through the thin air, but he’s told that she’s at sea and they won’t patch him through. He stares at the phone, clenches his fists, and decides he’s tired of being careful, of being told he can’t help people if he wants to.

He calls Reno’s number in Pittsburgh.

“Cowboy. Cowboy, my god.”

The voice is that of a lost child, but it’s Reno’s, a little toneless maybe, but still good enough to send a wave of liquid oxygen rushing over Cowboy’s skin, a pulse of fear, cold yet somehow invigorating.

“Cowboy, what happened? I can’t remember.”

“They came down on us, Reno,” Cowboy says. Reno’s brain was white, Cowboy remembers. In the eye-face all the time. The personality fading almost visibly. Unless it’s a Tempel trick. Unless they’ve got a program jacking along the lines, identifying this phone, sending out their hard men with their robot eyes and crystal-guided deathware.

“We had a talk, about hearts you wanted to sell,” Reno says. “I remember that. And that tall girl you had with you, the one with the gun. Then I can’t remember anything, not until...I remember fire all over the place. Intruder alarms. Never knew who was out there. I was faced in, trying to call for help.” There is silence for a moment.

“I think I died, Cowboy.” The voice is hesitant. “That’s what I read in the screamsheets, that I died. They didn’t mention you.”

Cowboy can feel his sweat going cold. Fear is making his teeth ache. He reaches out blindly, touching the brushed aluminum front of the phone. “Reno,” he says. “Reno, where are you?”

“I’m in public crystal, Cowboy. In Pittsburgh, in Maryland...I’ve got parts of me all over. Libraries, minimum security datafiles, unused telephone addresses. Banks where I’ve opened accounts and had the passwords.” The voice wanders on. Cowboy can feel his hackles rising. “I was faced through my house crystal, through memory boxes. I’ve got all that data. But I’m so scattered out I can’t use it very well. And I’ve lost so much else.” Reno’s voice is a child’s whimper.

Cowboy thinks of Lupe, of the scream bottled in her throat at the touch of Roon’s hand.

“Cowboy,” Reno says, “I’ve forgotten things. I’ve forgotten how to be a person. I remember it boiling away. My brain boiling in the fire. Help me, Cowboy.”

Cowboy can feel Reno out there, just on the other side of the socket. Trying to pour himself out of the crystal, become a person again. Cowboy makes a fist, punches the glass wall of the booth. Bar patrons look at him, then look away. “Listen,” he says, “we can get you out. Into a body. They do crystal transfers every day. ”

“I don’t think there’s enough of me left. I’m losing more pieces all the time. Getting little bits of data lost in transfers. Sometimes people find me in their crystal and erase parts of me before I know it, before I can get away.” Reno sounds as if, wherever he is, he’s crying. “Why didn’t you call sooner? You’re one of the few people I can remember. I tried everything to get hold of you. I tried calling, following your accounts. I think I got you once, in a library matrix in New Mexico, but you unfaced. Everyone’s shut off.”

“There’s a war on, Reno. You were killed. Everyone else is hiding.”

“War? With who? Who killed me, Cowboy?”

There is a knock on the booth’s door. Cowboy glares up to see one of the waiters, a tall South American with cold eyes and a curled lip.

“Interruption here. Excuse me.” Cowboy opens the door.

“Who killed me, Cowboy?” The voice sounds on Cowboy’s aural crystal. It’s growing distorted, as if Reno’s losing control of the pulses that are creating his voice in Cowboy’s head.

“This telephone is for the convenience of our patrons only, sir,” the waiter says.

“So bring me a drink. Beer. Any brand.” Cowboy slams the door.

“Cowboy?” Reno’s voice is almost inaudible below an uncontrolled fluctuation of white noise. Cowboy winces at the volume. “How did I die?”

“Tempel killed you. Tempel Pharmaceuticals Interessengemeinschaft. They and their friends.”

“Tempel...Tempel. ” Reno’s voice grows clear again, as if understanding has somehow cleared up his interface problem. “I’ve still remember a lot of detail about Tempel–– it was faced into my memory box when I died. And I talked to you through that Tempel model you had, and I’ve got the model in my memory now. When you were in my house, did we talk about Tempel, Cowboy? I remember talking to you about something.”

“Yeah. We talked about Tempel. About the war.”

“It’s all so long ago. I measure time in picoseconds now.”

Cowboy thinks again of the hard men in their armored cars, their faces cold planes, their eyes ice, metal in their hands. “Reno,” he says. “I need to know if you’re real. You might be a trap.”

“Cowboy. I’m real. Help me.”

“Tell me something only we know about. Tell me something, Reno.”

“Cowboy.” Reno’s soft cry is buried in white noise. “I don’t know. I’ve lost so much.”