Slant (9 page)

. . ghostly "Now you."

"I live with a forager. Not married yet, but soon. He's up north working .

in a pulp mill. Making fine papers for art books, you know. Sometimes they

even pay on time."

Giffey nods. "Must be tough"

"It really is," Yvonne says, looking out the window. "He doesn't want to

get married until we have enough in the state bank to get a little repair business

going But you know, even here, those little nano repair stations--everybody's

using them. I just don't know how we're going to do it. Al's his uncle. It's

nice how everybody helps everybody else here."

And nice how A1 doesn't have to pay much in the way of specie to his nephew's .i

girlfriend. ;,:i

Giffey makes up his mind. Yvonne deserves better than she's getting, at I

least for the short term. He strongly suspects she's never been in bed with a

man who knows anything besides the standard plumbing specs.

/ SLANT 55

"What?" She seems ready to take offense. "You're smart, you could help A1 turn this place around if he'd just listen to you..." All of this, Giffey knows, is both true and has seldom if ever been said to her. "Besides, you're a true beauty." Yvonne reacts as she must to that signal word, beauty. She's suspicious. She starts to get up. The red on her cheeks is pale but genuine. "Sorry," Giffey says. "I'm just too damned blunt. I speak my mind. If you have to get back to work..." Yvonne looks around. The Bullpen is truly, proudly empty. She sits again and stares ar him, hard. "You're throwing me a line, aren't you?" Giffey laughs. He has a good, solid laugh. Yvonne blushes again at her unintentional double entendre. "Was that well put, or what?" he asks. "Damn you," she says, not unkindly. "I'm not a youngster and nobody calls me handsome, and I still like the attention of a beautiful woman," Giffey says. "I am an honorable man, in my way. And the truth is, I'm lonely. I'd be proud to buy you a good dinner someplace at six or seven this evening and listen some more." Yvonne considers this with half-defensive bemusement, and then turns aside to do her inner calculations, hide all the whirrings and turnings of her centers of sexual judgment. Then comes the downward glance at the table. All her current figures tot up to a big dull zero. Jack's figures come in. marginally above that. Giffey's been through it many times before. He has never been an instant heartthrob, but he has rarely failed to impress a woman upon more extended acquaintance. "All right," Yvonne says. "You'd better eat that good sandwich, Jack." "I will," Jack says. "Make it seven. I'll meet you on the corner of Constitution and Divinity. I have a dress I want to finish." "Seven." He takes his first bite of the sandwich, and Yvonne goes away without a backward glance. He gives her even odds of showing up. It's going to be cold in Moscow at seven tonight.

Do you remember?

Fibes and satlinks, all the dataflow river, used to be called the Media and the Internet. Slow and primitive, but the shape was clear from the beginning. You can poke all the way back up the tributaries to the Internet Archives, and catch holo snaps of the Sour Decades... Frozen in time, the murmurings and mutterings of tens of millions of folks now mostly dead, all their little opinions, and so many of them unknown to us, even today. Because they preferred to hide, to remain anonymous, to

56 GRFG BEAR

Not so different now, but as with everything else, anonymity is wrapped around and

around with provisions and safeguards, all paid for in higher fees. With the Internet

went the last Free Lunch of the rude, crude, highly energetic First Dataflow Culture.

rathe U.S. Government Digiman on Dataflow Economics,

56" Revision, 2052

7 Y / N ?

The afternoon air is crisp in the hills. A few clouds build to the south. Alice thumbs her pad for the time. "Fourteen thirty-one," it murmurs in the pocket of her long black coat. Wind is coming around in a whorl and will sweep rain and perhaps snow over the southern sound by seven this evening. She does not need to access the weather voice to know this; she has lived in the Corridor for most of her life.

The shuttle drops her half a block from her house and she walks the rest of

the way, hands buried in pockets, collar pulled up around her neck.

Alice feels a deep ache unattached to anything specific, except perhaps Twist's voice, or Minstrel's problems with his boyfriend. Her social group has always been royal disorder in motion, and that's often meant something positive. Alice has always claimed that a year in her life held the entertainment of ten years in anyone else's; but if that is true, Twist can double on Alice.

She likes seeing herself in the ox, does not particularly like having

iusr parrs of her mental backside displayed for convincing detail. She enjoys dominating, not supplementing. Being on the down spin is simply not something she has ever planned for. And from her skedj it looks as if she will be down for some time to come. She is not skedjed for any corporeal appearances, interviews, or vid whatsoever, and of course, very little on the Yox.

Francis is it.

"Maybe I'll read the Faerie Qeene tonight," she tells herself as the door to

her house recognizes her and opens. The house isa quaint century-old framer with brick accents. She has re-done the interior twice and it is small and spare and comfortable, a good place to simply lie back and not think.

But the house monitor has a message. It's from her temp rep, and it's flagged Urgent--might be more work--so she returns the touch as she slips out of her coat. She catches Lisa Pauli in and available.

Lisa's utxer torso and head flick into view over the kitchen pad. She has

/ SLANT 57

small precise eyes and an amused mouth set in a triangular face. "How was Francis, honey?" Lisa asks without any preliminaries. "The usual," Alice says. "Being an artiste." "Yin looking for more Yox body work, believe me, honey," Lisa says. "Vid pays nothing these days; it's abso neg. I hate psynthe, but that's what they're asking for. However... I've got something for you for this evening. I wouldn't just throw any call-in to you... But this one sounds intriguing." For a moment, Alice is too shocked and hurt to be angry. "A Lisa blinks. "Excellent money. I'll halve our commission on this one. Fifteen, honey. Jackie says you'll be doing our branch a real favor. Can't say who it is--you won't even know after you've done your job--but it's high comb, spin sosh, and it's a max four-hour engagement, bonded. It's no worse than a live show, honey, you know that." "I haven't done a live show in seven years," Alice says, her chin starting to quiver. She hates having a glass soul, especially in front of Lisa, but.., a call-in.f She did call-ins for six months when she was a teenager. That was all supposed to stop with being on the sly spin in vids and Yox. "It's getting tough, honey," Lisa says. "I don't do call-ins," Alice says. "The agency has gotten three jobs for you in the past six months, all with Francis, and honey, Francis is going nowhere soonest. We can't bond your bills and back your medical without some roll-in. Your credit is dregged, honey." Lisa's face, as always, manages to be sympathetic, with that slight upward curl of smile, those wise eyes sharpened by the natural yellow-green of her pupils. "You don't rep call-ins," Alice says. "I mean, how did you get this, and why are you even handling it?" "I won't tell the whole story, but I've done a good pimp's tegwork--let's be straight, I know what I'm asking of you, honey. It's a male. He's alone. He asked for you specifically. He's a big fan of yours---seen all your vials. He has good connections, I'm told, and the agency vets him." "Do you know who he is?" "No." "I suppose he'll ask me to marry him?" Alice says, holding her fingers to her chin, feeling the sting in her eyes. "This is not mandatory, honey. We never do that." Alice knows Lisa's expressions very well by now. Lisa has repped Alice at Wellspring Temp for eight years, taking her on after her first rep moved up from show business to corp relations. Call-ins are legal in forty-seven states, tolerated in all fifty-two, and in Rim nations it's even rated in travel guides. But it's strictly entry-level work, a real slide, and there's something else about it she does not like.

58 GREG BEAR

Lately she has been enjoying the illusion of choosing her work partners-- on the few occasions she's worked at all. "How soon?" "He wants a confirmation by four." "He's bonded?" "I wouldn't touch this without a bond. You know that." "Yeah. I know. His apt?" "It's plush, I understand. Should be very entertaining." Alice closes her eyes, considers. She had hoped for a quiet night and time to think. "What's my share?" "I'm guessing your cut will be seventy-five if we sink the hook and tug." Seventy-five grand could pull her credit out of the pit and pay for several months of toe-twiddling. Alice tries not to look inward. She puts on her Face--the Alice that is always tough-minded and competent and unperturbed, who has in fact done worse things, who is realistic about careers and what it takes to realize long-term goals--and says to Lisa, "Well, we already know what I am. Tug hard." Lisa smiles, but to Alice it is apparent she is not overjoyed. "What's with you?" Alice asks, suddenly brittle. "Should I turn it down?" "No, honey," Lisa says. "It's honest work." "Lisa, I need your bond on this. You will never ask me to do this again, and you'll try your damnedest to get me meetings with rea/producers, not just Yox fiockers." "You got it," Lisa said, then gives Alice that abrupt moment of silence that indicates the touch, she hopes, isfini, and there is so much more for her to do e this day.

"Feed my monitor some directions," Alice says.

"No need. You'll be picked up at seven-thirty and dropped off by twelve-

thirty."

"He knows my address but I don't even know who he is?"

"We know your address, honey," Lisa says. "It's an agency limo. The ride's

on us. Bye."

Alice closes the touch and stands in the kitchen, tapping her lips with her

finger. A slippery wash of emotion obscures her sight. Her eyes lose their focus

and time blanks. She is thinking of being very young and determined. Nobody

got in her way back then; men and a few women she took as they came along for

whatever she needed, money or brief desire. She remembers the looks on their

faces when she discarded them, no longer amusing or needed. She developed so

many ways, creative techniques--an art in itselfof pushing men away, boy ish men really just bigger children with their hearts written on their faces, older

men with their money and prestige buying things their looks could not, and

here she is back again, but without the controls and techniques. et-- I I, nc rhne wears: or rather, it has been plucked

/ SLANT 59

The irony is, she is nowhere near old. She is twenty-nine. Below her skin, however, if sex gauges years, she has lived centuries; she is a wrinkled and fragile mummy husk.

"Bullshit," she says and shakes her arms out. "It's just another dance." She knows the steps. She can do it in her sleep.

8 ZERO-SUM

Jack Giffey takes the alcohol-powered bus across Moscow to the east. The bus's fumes smells like a bad drunk and the seats are almost empty; an older woman and a young boy in her charge ride toward the front. The woman turns to steal a suspicious look at him over the back of her bench. He smiles politely, but he is thinking about Omphalos and his thoughts are far from polite. He hates Omphalos with a passion even he does not understand. It's not a class sort of thing; he doesn't envy the rich, he doesn't want to live forever, and he certainly doesn't want to be holed up in a fancy icebox until the end of time. It's deeper.

He tamps down his irritation and leans over to see through the armored slit windows. Some of the more out-of-control Ruggers like to take potshots at public transportation; the legislature can't bring itself to control them, since that would trample on individual freedoms. There is probably not a bus or public conveyance in Green Idaho that hasn't been ventilated by a few bullets. Just boys having fun.

Giffey thinks the bastard separatist republic has maybe two more years before it falls apart and accepts federal troops to restore order. He will not be sorry to see it go.

A few trees and some fields with horses in them are passing now; they're on the 43 Loop outside of town. He's been here once before, at night, under a tarp in the back of a pickup that also smelled of crude ethanol. But this time the old ranch house has been described in detail.

His stop is coming in a mile or so. He prepares himself to consort with a few very necessary loons. Giffey is not fond of weapons; but to break into Omphalos and have any hope of surviving, he must work with men who dearly love them. To these men, guns and bombs and more extreme weapons are a necessity; women, pit stops, and food are simply unavoidable annoyances on the road to fondling a shapely new piece of steel.

Giffey tugs the cord and the bus slows to let him off. The highway is met by a bumpy gravel road. The ranch house is about a mile beyond. He stands by the door.

"I'll need a pickup at four, back to Moscow," he tells the driver, a young

60 GREG BEAR

The young man nods solemnly and opens the door. Giffey looks back with a quick grin at the boy and the woman, then steps down to the gravel. The bus farts a sweet corn-liquor cloud of unburned fuel and grumbles back on to the road. Giffey shields his eyes against the fumes. He looks up in time to see the boy's eyes peering at him through a slit, curious at the man getting off in the middle of nowhere. Giffey pulls out his pad and punches in a satlink number. A hoarse voice answers, "Hello?" "It's me, Giffey." "Do I have to send a truck?" "Just let your guards know I'm coming." "They know." Giffey closes the link and starts walking. Fifteen minutes later, he stands at a fence sixty yards from an old brick and frame house on the edge of two hundred acres of fallow grassland. The house needs paint and a new roof and foundation work. A man steps out on the stoop in front of the snow porch and waves for him to come in. The inside of the house smells like Cuban cigarettes and stale beer. Four men stand with hands in pockets in what might be called a living room. They've expressed a willingness to take his money, give him supplies and tell him some of what he needs to know. Giffey shakes hands all around. One of the four has been corresponding with Giffey for two months; he's Ken Jenner, a beardless thin fellow with pale blue eyes and yellow bee-fuzz on a scalp that moves when he wrinkles his forehead. Giffey regards that scalp with wonder whenever Jenner looks away; he does not know if he likes working with a man with a scalp like that; that scalp is almost prehensile. Still, Jenner comes highly recommended; he's an ex-G1 with expertise in weapons more extreme than any of Green Idaho's citizens will ever fondle. The other three are not remarkable. The oldest is about Giffey's age though not as well preserved, probably because of a bad drinking and smoking habit. His face is pale but covered with fine wrinkles. Thin purple and red rivers map his cheeks and nose. The remaining two may be brothers, hawkish smiling men between thirty and thirty-five years of age, but Giffey will not even learn their names. They act as if all this is beneath them, but when Giffey talks, they lean forward on the folding plastic chairs and listen intently. Giffey hopes they aren't informants. There's something a little false about them. "All right, let's get started, you only got half an hour," the oldest man says "I've done my part." Giffey looks up at the ceiling and sees a pair of antique car bumper stickers pasted on a composite beam. One reads: QUESTIONAUTHORITY. The other, I: .... I., I--, .... tl ir. I7lo'm,'/c5)