Moxyland (11 page)

   'She's good to go. Whenever you are. Security's going down in… oh, it's down now. We got eight minutes. As of ten seconds back.'

   'Shit! She's done it already? What the hell – never mind, just go! Go! After this one.' A Renault cruises past, headlights slicing the night, and we all dash across the highway before the next batch of intermittent traffic comes through, scrambling up onto the island.

   We step gingerly between the coils of wire, just in case Toby's friend has not lived up to her promises. I jump to catch hold of a beam and swing my legs up, to the left of the maintenance ladder, which is off-limits, unless you have an official SIM ID or a particular desire to get crisped.

   'Tendeka! Your harness.' Ashraf hisses, displeased, clipping himself in and starting after me, hand over hand up the rope, Toby right behind him. Jasmine and Zuko are supposed to stay at the bottom to keep watch, but the kid has other plans. He's clipping in too. I don't have time to worry about him, though. Not with the insane deadline we're on.

   I pull myself up onto the catwalk that runs behind the adboard and wedge the screwdriver under the corner edge of the screen, prising it away from the casing, cracking the plastech. But there's no need to finesse it.

   The great thing about smear is that the tech is straight out of the box, compliments of my friend in Amsterdam, so there aren't preventive measures in place yet. Smear's not the technical word, of course; it's a TSR-3 signal delay device that interferes with data packet transfer, so the image that gets displayed is garbled and incomplete like that painting with the melted clocks. It was invented in America to try and shut down streamcasters who were getting too vocal in criticising the administration. It's nice to be able to turn it around.

   I click open the plastic container, disguised as a flashdrive, in case of random searches in the street, but I'm sweating so heavily, I nearly drop the damn thing. Ash nudges his way in beside me. 'Two and a half minutes,' Jazz calls from below. Ashraf's jaw is tight with stress as he takes the smear chip and binds it onto the motherboard with his pocket solder.

   'Can you guys move it? Let me get a clear shot of this?' Toby tjunes, his abruptly added weight making the catwalk shudder.

   'Fuck off, Toby, there's no time. You can't film this part of the operation. It's too sensitive.'

   'Hey, fuck you, Tendeka. It's my connection. I get the footage I want. And you think they're not going to figure it out when they come to fix it tomorrow morning?'

   And then Zuko swings up, so the walkway is dangerously overcrowded, when we should already be down and safely back across the highway.

   'You're risking all of us, you asshole.'

   But Toby is unmoved. 'Yeah, so are you. Just give me a clear view, and we can all go home.'

   'Ninety-six seconds,' Jasmine calls from below.

   'Shit, shit, shit. Everyone down. Now!'

   Toby jostles in to get his shot and it's all I can do to stop myself shoving him against the railing, which is the perfect height to hit him behind the knees and tip him into the mesh of barbwire below. Even deactivated, it would do plenty damage.

   'You're on your fucking own.' I swing out round the side and start the descent, not bothering to look back. Ash is already halfway down, but Zuko has stalled on the walkway, trying to get in the picture. 'Thirty-seven seconds.'

   'Would you get down?' Ash snaps. 'There's no time!'

   Zuko finally catches a wake-up and starts scrambling down.

   Toby rolls over the railing, real dramatic, and I'm praying he clipped in incorrectly, that his harness is going to spill him the twenty-metre drop, but no such luck. The karabiner catches and he rappels down, easily overtaking Zuko.

   'Six seconds. Come on!'

   I touch down. Ashraf is struggling to unclip, and there really is no fucking time when we're ankle-deep in smart barbwire that is about to reactivate. I flick open my Spiderco, rip the blade through the reinforced webbing of his harness, and we vault over the wire, his hand locked in mine.

   'Minus three.'

   Toby kicks off hard from the support beams, still relatively high, so that he swings out over the highway, clear of the wire, and then the moron simply unclips, which means he tumbles two metres onto the tar. He lands hard. I hope he's broken something.

   'Jesus fuck!' He stands up and starts hobbling across the highway, clutching his shoulder.

   But right now I'm worried about Zuko, who is only halfway down. If he gets caught, and caves and links this back to me, it's going to be the end of more than just a promising junior soccer career.

   'Minus sixteen,' Jasmine says, still watching her clock. 'I'm sorry, I must have messed up the timing. But it's going to kick in any second.'

   'Jump, idiot!' I shout. And Zuko does, landing on his feet, barely, but his boot catches one of the barbs, so it shears through the leather and skin underneath, and then he's in my arms, almost sobbing with relief.

   Except the barbwire is not twitching back to life. The screen is still frozen. There's no time to consider. I yank Zuko up and out of the coils at his feet and pelt across the highway, holding up a hand to the oncoming headlights that swerve round us, disappearing into the curve of Hospital Bend, horn bleating angrily.

   Toby is waiting on the other side, sitting on the fence and rolling his shoulder. I hope it's fucking broken.

   The adboard comes back up with a flicker. And I feel that hard kick of victory. Cos we've fucking done it. And now, with the TSR fraying the signal, all those too-beautiful clebs and models and realife™ virtua spokespersons frisking in the ocean or nodding into the latest cell or acting in the consumer mini-movies for LG or Lucky Strike or Premiere Recruiting will look somehow wrong.

   And maybe it will take the commuters a second or two to figure it out. To pick up that the features of the bouncy beach babe or the cool hand smoker in the ads on this board are melting, running down their faces. Smeared. And it feels fucking great, even with Zuko sporting an injury that is going to be difficult to explain to casualty. Until Toby opens his mouth.

   'Shit, that really hurt. Do not try this at home, kids. Oh, what. Don't be so panicky, Tendeka. I was kidding about the eight minutes. Lerato's real generous. She gave us twelve. I just thought you could do with added incentive, up the drama, you know?'

   This time I do hit him. In the face. Full on.

 

I get to work to discover that Mpho has turned stalker boy. There is an outrageous bouquet of flowers on my desk, complete with miniature butterflies, the kind gen-modded to stay within a hand's-length radius of the scent of the assigned homing flower and guaranteed to live seventy-two hours, if you believe the advertising. Until now, I've never met anyone cheesy enough to fall for it.

   Seed has paired us on the MetroBabe Stroller audio job, designing an interface that works for both toddlers and parents. At the touch of a button, it has to be able to play back rockabyes, current hits packaged as instrumental lullabies for baby, or MetroBabe's private info station, simply jam-packed with useful information to help guide new parents through the very special hell they've signed up for. The things already come with two cup-holders, one for baby's bottle, one for mom's moccachino or, more realistically, mom's whisky flask.

   I wave away the butterflies that are hovering near my screen, attracted to the light, and shove the bouquet to the edge of my desk, which will hopefully limit the little bastards' range. There's no sign of Mpho, which is savagely annoying.

   There is a MetroBabe audio file in my jobs folder, so I can get some idea of the content we're dealing with. I ignore it and kill time waiting for Mpho by checking my mail, updating my dating profile on Seed and prowling the responses. There're three pre-approved potential matches, all within Communique or affiliated companies (which means no lengthy mutual non disclosure contracts to sign before you can move on to the sex), one civilian, which I delete without even looking at (at least I admit I'm biased), and a man of real interest from a rival corp, which Seed has tagged as questionable, meaning a potential headhunter.

   Considering how I got here, to this twentythird floor office, to this desk with its views of the seaboard, you'd think the system might trust me to spot one all on my own. Or maybe they're letting me know that they know. Heads up, girl, we're paying attention. Hopefully not too closely.

   The guy's profile looks sony, as Toby might say. Stefan Thuys. Forty-one, which is ten years older than my ideal, but hey, I'm open to trying new things. He's a development exec on gamesoft, reasonably attractive apart from the craggy nose that looks as though it may have been broken at some stage, which is unreasonably hot. He claims an interesting selection of media, although his choices are suspiciously hip. But who doesn't paint themselves in a prettier light? And I've always been interested in development. I msg him. He msgs back, and we hook up a date for later in the week.

   At last I'm prepared to get round to the MetroBabe audio file. I drag it into my player and crank up the volume. I'll be damned if I have to suffer through the incessant infant-stuff alone.

   
'…surrogate breast milk is a risk, Noeleen, but it's
a qualified risk if you go through the correct channels,
and get a certified provider who can provide you with
a full medical history. You can get cocktails specially
made to order, get your provider to take vitamins and
nutrients tailored to the very specific needs of your
baby's gene map.'

   Across the office, a couple of people raise their heads. Genevieve mouths at me, 'Can you privacy that?' but I ignore her.

   And finally Mpho materialises at my desk, pushing a stroller, the dull grey of the plastic marking it as a prototype fresh off the printer. 'Hey, L. Hope you haven't been waiting too long. I thought I'd get a demo model from product development so we can really nail this thing. Oops, nearly forgot!' He produces two lattes with a flourish from the cup-holders. 'Mamzelle.' In four days of getting room service together, you'd think he would have picked up that I take my coffee black.

   
'But couldn't you just add those to the content af
terwards? Or, I don't know, give your baby
supplements, Dr. Redelinghuys?'

   'Thanks, babe.' I deliberately let the coffee slip through my fingers so it drops into the bin, spilling its contents en route. Someone else will clean it up. I probably should have done the same with the flowers, just swept them off the desk into the rubbish. Mpho looks shocked.

   'So, M,' I emphasise the consonant, how it's really not a name. 'You ready to tackle this baby thing?'

   'I'm sorry. Was there something wrong–?'

   'I'm lactose-intolerant, Mpho. Thanks for asking.'

   'Shit. I'm sorry. Let me get you another one.'

   'Can we just do this?'

   Mpho is insistent. 'Seriously, let me get you another one. I'll be right back.'

   'No, honestly–' but he's already dashed off.

   
'That's a good question, Noeleen, but really I think
we have to look at the way the body system processes
nutrients, and how that's passed on to your baby. She
really needs all this goodness in a way that's palatable
to her still-developing immune system, that she can
readily absorb, especially when it comes to HIV anti
bodies–'

   I click it off. As if actually having a drooling, mewling, puking little troll weren't enough. If I had to listen to this shit all day, I'd kill myself.

   There's a good reason I need to get this out of the way asap. I'm expecting a tech support callout any minute to deal with a damaged adboard. I stayed up all night coding upgrades with some neat little added features of my own for the security software they're going to have to install today, and then covering my tracks to ensure it looks like they've always been there.

   When the maintenance team head out, I need to monitor them remotely to ensure there aren't any unexpected surprises that might betray me when the software update goes live. But of course, I'm not supposed to know that an adboard has been hit. Not yet. So I wait.

   Mpho finally gets back, balancing a filter ultra and a selection of every variety of sweetener and cinnamon/chocolate/mint additive possible, just in case. I drink it black just to spite him, not that he notices.

   'What did you do to your hair?' he asks, in a little-boy-wounded way. He should have seen it before I had the Communique inhouse stylist tidy it up this morning. 'I liked it long.'

   'I get bored easily.'

   You'd think I would know better than to get involved with someone in my own department. But I'm really crap at resisting sexual tension. Oh, it's entertaining for a few weeks, the fuzzy sting that rushes down your vertebra to your groin when the eyes meet, the banter spiked with innuendo – then it becomes irritating, and you need to get it out of your system. Neutralise it by indulging it, which is fine, assuming you can both keep it tidy.

   'You've had a listen, what do you reckon? The prototype isn't functioning 100%, but you can see the way it's structured is there's one big tactile button for baby right where he can get at it, and here, on the pushbar, full audio controls and screen for mommy…'

   'I'm just the programmer,' I snarl, cutting him off. 'I'm only interested in the internal processes.'

   'Whooo! Someone is
grumpy
this morning.'

   'I was up most of the night,' I snip, too defensive. He's caught me off guard, and I've slipped up, which is a good indication that I haven't in fact had enough rest, but please let him not try and get into the why. Fortunately, his brain defaults automatically to the same strand of primitive code every time.