Synners (24 page)

"Marly? Caritha?"

They appeared at the edge of the loft, smiling down at him. "Come on up, hotwire," Marly said, beckoning to him. There was an emerald green stain on the back of her hand. Had she crushed the grasshopper? Or had the program stuttered when it had sent the thing away?

He put it out of his mind as he climbed the ladder.

He flinched when Rivera clapped him on the shoulder. Rivera didn't seem to notice; he was trying not to grin too widely. Like royalty's displays of emotion were unseemly in front of the serfs, Keely thought sourly. He felt stone-home shitty. Hey, you, with your dick in your hand—say hello to everybody, this is
Global News Update,
and you're the feature entertainment story of the hour—you
and
your dick.

Nothing he could do. Rivera was calling the shots, and if Rivera wanted to hack one of his own employees, he didn't have anything to say about it. Who would have believed him?

"I want two copies of that," Rivera said cheerfully, pulling his chair a little closer to the console.

Obediently Keely punched for duplication and then stood up. "Mind if I take a piss?"
All over you?

Manny jerked his head toward the doorway. "I think you know where it is by this time."

"Yah. Sure do."
Actually, I thought I'd use one across the street, if you
don't mind. You do? Well, fuck.
If the poor clown he'd just finished tapping had to work for Rivera day in, day out, it was no wonder he was jerking off in the bit bucket with imaginary playmates. Jesus.

There was a lock on the bathroom door. But then, the bathroom had no windows. He could pee, or he could kill himself, those were the choices. Does this picture look familiar?

He had his first on-line Corrections Board meeting in a month. Suppose he actually did try to tell them that Diversifications' reparation program had him doing in-house hacking, breaking into employees' confidential systems to eavesdrop on their work?

Sure,
try.
If he'd had to report in person, he might have had a chance to make a case. Diversifications wouldn't even let it get as far as his word against Rivera's—they'd pull the plug on him in midsentence and claim technical difficulties, have him back on-line in twenty minutes, grinning like an idiot in drugged-fucking-clothes.

What the fuck. In a month it wouldn't matter. Their little project would be up and running hot in Mexico, probably close to legalization in the States. Diversifications seemed to be more pervasive than Dr. Fish.

He sniffed his shirt collar. The fresh-air smell was long gone; otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to tap into the system—

He could tap into the system again, he thought suddenly. Look for another peripheral item in the sequence, contact the guy again, and feed him the whole story, the
real
story, and have him call—

Who? Sam? Fez?
Jones?
What could they do, other than get canned themselves. Maybe just alert the guy—hey, you with your dick in your hand. He went back out to the living room, where Rivera was now rerunning the sequence and enjoying the show. Enjoying it a little too much—maybe Rivera was fooling his bosses, but he knew just by looking at him that Rivera had been turbo'd for days. Working overtime on his big project. Or maybe Rivera found the paranoia useful.

Rivera froze the display and sat back in the chair, drumming his fingers on his thigh. "Is there any way you can run any sequences without
his
activating them? I'd like to see what else he's been playing with."

It was on the tip of his tongue to say,
Yes, if it's in volatile storage,
but he caught himself in time. "Sorry. Maybe someone else could, but you've got the security locked up tighter than a rat's ass. The only way I can get in is through a database he's annexed to the simulation, and that's a matter of split-second timing. I have to wait and see which template goes into the simulation. That storm, for example. Then I can get in before the program accepts it. Because, technically, it's not really in his system before it's incorporated into the simulation. It's in the storage area, and that's just a section of a pool common to all the other employees."

Rivera nodded thoughtfully. "So any other employee could do this."

"If they knew how. It's tricky even if you know the proper commands. It's hacking." He felt ashamed at the hint of pride in his voice. He wasn't doing anything to be proud of now.

"How about the volatile storage?" Rivera asked. "It's just a subsection of general storage."

Keely felt a flare of anger. "Isn't this just slightly against the law?"

The smile Rivera gave him was bizarrely cordial. "If you want to quibble about the law, we can void your contract, and you can quibble with a real judge in a real court."

"Maybe I'll just tell them what you've been up to here."

"And maybe there won't be any evidence of it, and you'll go down for perjury. It would be easy enough to get another hacker." Rivera paused. "Not a bad idea, actually. Hackers bounce off us all the time. We don't usually bother tracing the ones that don't get in—otherwise, we'd be in court constantly. But maybe we ought to reel in another."

Keely nodded vigorously. "You do that. You go right ahead and do that. I'd like a chance to show you fuckers what
two
hackers could do to your system."

Rivera threw back his head and roared laughter at the ceiling. "Please, follow this up with a hymn to solidarity, anything less would be anticlimax!" He gestured at the image of the grasshopper, still frozen on the screen. "In case you don't know, the only difference between you and this gentleman is—ahem—balls. He doesn't have any, and we have yours."

"And what are you gonna do to
him?
Gonna wire him up, too, with your little socket-and-plug set? Or is he out in the cold on this one?"

"My plans for him don't concern you. Just stay with him," Rivera said, getting up. "I've got quite a lot of other things to take care of before I meet with our friend here; he won't be going anywhere, either." He picked up the briefcase he'd left on the highly polished conference table in the center of the room. "Download me two more copies to chip—no, make it three. Have them packed for me when I come back tomorrow, along with three copies of whatever else you tap from him between now and then. You've got supper makings in the kitchenette, full dataline subscription for your entertainment. No pharmaceuticals, I'm afraid—"

"Laundry on strike?" Keely asked.

"—but if you can hack the lock on the liquor cabinet, you can get toxed on the Upstairs Team's best cognac. I understand the good stuff doesn't make one quite so sick."

Keely turned away as Rivera left and sat down at the console to run the sequence again, dividing the screen so he could study the mechanics of the program along with the execution. If he could figure a way to manipulate the filler elements more extensively, he might be able to add original input rather than shifting already existing data to create dialogue. He'd pulled everything the woman had said to the guy under hypnosis out of the pool of most-used dialogue and even then he'd almost crashed everything fooling around with the grasshopper. If only Dr. Fish could have made a house call here. But then, if Dr. Fish could have made
this
house call, maybe he wouldn't be in this wringer.

The program was pretty complicated, far beyond what he'd expected someone at Diversifications to be capable of, but if he could make it accept him without crashing, he could do more than just download a copy of the guy s fantasy land. He could talk to him. Hey, you, with your dick in your hand. He could warn him.

Theo was covering one of the Beater's old encores, a hard-on called
Who
Do You Love?
All synth, of course; Theo would have mistaken a guitar for his lover in dim light. If he even had a lover. But for all the synth, he'd gotten it off as nasty as it had to be, taking you all forty-seven miles on pure barbed wire with a cobra around your neck.

Struggle through the bangers on that tiny little dance floor, until you see a likely-looking head nodding up and down, and you think that's him, and you put your hand on his shoulder and force him to turn around because he's not going to get away this time.

Who do you love?

Say again, doll, I didn't hear you that time.

Sorry, wrong number, but he looks good anyway, and another time you might have stayed there and made believe it was him, for a little while. Instead, fight your way out to the street, where the air is still heavy with the heat of the day. Somebody at the curb, pounding out the beat with two sticks on the hood of somebody's abandoned limo.

Who do you love?

Ask again, doll, you didn't hear what I seen.

(Nasty bridge, running from the top all the way down, hammering every step of the way, and you think about it, but you got to keep moving.)

At a wannabee parlor, you see him standing with his back to you, talking to some woman with hair from hell and a silver kimono who's starting to pull him through a curtain of barbed wire, and the blood from the last victim is still dripping from the points. You grab his other hand before he goes through, and he turns around.

Who do you love?

Doll, why
do
you keep on askin me that? You must be seeing something
I didn't say.

If it was him, it isn't now, but he looks good, too good to go through that curtain. You can see he doesn't know, and you could save him, for a little while anyway, but he'd still be the wrong one.

(Here's the nasty bridge again, and the sound chases you the full length of it as fast as you can go, and when you reach the other side, you pass that same one rapping the sticks on golden garbage cans. Golden garbage is still garbage.
Move.)

Who do you love?

Oh, doll, wouldn't you like to know?

They've all come out from under the piers tonight, every last one of them; they've been expecting you, they know the one you've come for, but they've come for you. Their hands keep sliding off because you're still too fast, but something's going to slow you down, and all they have to do is be there when it happens. Then you start looking at them, look at each one of them, and thank God that's not him, and that's not him, and that's not him, and that's not him, but up ahead, up ahead—

And a big ball of fire lands right in front of you, blows up in your face, and you see the way things never were, like there was someplace else you'd been going instead of here.

If you go fast enough, fire won't burn, not that fire. Besides, what were you going to do, back then? You couldn't take that trip any more than he could, you with yours, him with his. You got what you got, and what the fuck, you've still got it, it still lives, it didn't get worn away by what might have happened. That's more than a lot are left with when the smoking lamp starts to burn low.

Who—

They want you, but they part like the Red Sea anyway, those reaching hands falling back against the darkness.
Who do—

He struggles on the sand, trying to get up, and it hangs on, dragging at him.
Who do you—

Some others hold you back, but you push against the barrier of their arms. You can break through, but only if you want to. And the question is

Who do you love?

Do you still want to?

Who do you love?

Do you still want to?

Who do you love?

You tell me, doll.

Who do. . .

Do you . . .

. . . you love?

. . . still
want to?

He gets up, and that's when you rush into him.

Who do you still want to love?

It's him. But you know, they all were.

The sound of laughter fades away in the dark.

Theo took off the headmount and looked at her, filling his lungs with a big breath and letting it out slowly. "You're fuckin' dangerous."

Gina flipped off the flatscreen she'd been watching. "That mean you like it?"

He dug his blocky fingers in his squared-off orange beard
("Burnt sien
na,
not orange. Don't you call it fucking 'orange,' I paid for
burnt sienna,
not fucking 'orange.' "), looking glassy-eyed. "It'll probably kill somebody, and we'll all get sued over it, but—" He shrugged and then started to peel off the hotsuit. "Get this off me before it squeezes me to death."

She stripped him quickly and tossed his clothes at him, keeping her back to him while he dressed.

"What's this?" he said jovially. "I only used to walk naked through Eye Traxx several times a week."

"Had it for lunch," she muttered.

"It's too early for lunch."

"So I had it for breakfast, then."

"You sure didn't eat breakfast here."

She busied herself with the console, setting it to make copies of Theo's video, zapping one into the release sequence. Apparently it had to make several stops before it actually made it to the release pipe; every second assistant's mother's brother had to screen it and put their okay on it, including Rivera. He could chew on this one awhile, see how it went with his diet of commercials.

"Did you hear what I said? I said, you didn't eat breakfast here."

"No shit."

"It scared me."

She frowned at him over her shoulder.

"The video," he added, slipping his vest on over his shirt. "It really fuckin' scared me."

"Everything scares you, Theo. You're the biggest chicken-ass I know."

He went over to her, smiling. "You want to try my ass out? See if you can really put the fear of God into it?"

She looked up at him. Theo was all of twenty-six and looked like somebody's video idea of the farmer's son, even with the stupid orange beard. The Beater had caught him in a theme club, jamming his own improvs into nostalgia covers, and she'd almost caught him herself in a weak moment. She patted his butt. "Take a number and wait. I got videos backed up like GridLid's day off."

A few minutes after she threw him out, the door buzzed. She pressed the release, and Valjean swirled in with his ever-changing cape. "Everybody wants to know," he said.