Synners (41 page)

She took the ex-pump unit out of her pocket and turned it over and over in her hand. She had made her own contributions in the way of hardware and programs in the tumble-down shelter, but she wasn't about to toss this out for communal use. Making the specs available was enough.

Of course, having the specs wasn't like having work space to do anything with them. The supply house in the Ozarks that she had made contact with had been well stocked and very accommodating, allowing her to trade scut work on their inventory and beefing up their antiviral routines for a clean, well-lit area with the right kind of equipment for manipulating the protein assemblers. Once she'd had the guts properly configured, she'd been able to make the rest of the modifications on the pump itself in the privacy of her tent. It was really just a hacker toy, stolen just for her own use because she hadn't wanted to wait six months, a year, maybe two years, before it came out on the market so she could buy one, putting more money into Diversifications' well-lined pockets, and strip it down to see how she could dupe it. If indeed the units had become available at all.

All things considered, this should have been the ideal place to use it. Made for inhospitable environments. She remembered the hardware Percy had given her, still in her other hand, and examined it. A little redesign, a little rewiring, and it would adapt perfectly to the pump unit. Then she'd be all set; her own intimately personal computer system with a wireless modem set to Art's iron-guard frequency. The sunglasses weren't as good as a headmount, but they were far better than nothing, and she wouldn't need even solar power to lack it over. Except for the modem, of course. She could have outfitted herself in a few minutes, except her ambition seemed to have deserted her. "Are you okay?"

Rosa was standing at the nominal entrance to her squat space; Sam nodded, beckoning. "Yah. I think I've just got them bad old cozmic Mimosa dead-end blues."

"Come on, it could be worse." Rosa eased down next to her, resting her back against the powdery, cracked wall.

"I know. I've just been telling myself that. I never did want to come here. I thought it would be the first place anyone would look for us. Cops aren't stupid, they could figure that we planted false information that we'd left town." Sam took a long breath. "But then I started softening up to the idea a little. Thinking that it would be kind of . . . oh, exciting, I guess. Romantic, even. Almost like being in the Ozarks again, except freakier. Laptops in the raw, jammers making music. Horny hardware geniuses making cordless modems for you." She laughed a little and then sighed again. "But mostly it's being dirty and smelly and not having any safe place to stay and not getting enough to eat."

"And getting your shoes stolen," Rosa added.

"Yah. I guess I never bounced back after that one."

"Well, I got them back. Black eye faded pretty quick, too. And you should have seen the other guy."

"I did see him. The scum. I still feel horribly guilty about the whole thing."

Rosa chuckled. "You don't have to feel guilty about that. You're a lover, not a fighter."

"Which means I definitely don't belong here. And I'm not even anybody's lover."

"Come on. If Percy could be bad for three, he could be bad for two. If you believe."

Sam groaned. "Even if I could bring myself to molest a fifteen-yearold—"

"—who probably has more experience than you do," Rosa put in wryly.

"—I'm not sure I could ever get around the language barrier. Half the time when he's talking, I'm winging it."

"And he just went to all the trouble of showing you he could talk like us. But I don't blame you for wanting to wait until his voice changes." Rosa chuckled again, a little sadly. "What else?"

Sam pressed her lips together. She had never mentioned her feelings for Fez to Rosa, but she doubted that she really had to. She was sure Rosa had picked up on plenty and tactfully held her peace, and she was also sure what her friend would say if she invited comment. Why bother bringing it up at all, she thought; if you've run the simulation, and you know how it turns out, there's no point in wasting time living through it all over again.

"I just miss civilization. I miss being able to move around, come and go as I please. Being out there. Maybe at heart I'm just another bourgeois who can't take the heat, and as soon as I turn eighteen, I'll turn in my laptop, look up my social security number, and go get a real job."

Rosa patted her leg carelessly. "Buck up, little soldier. As soon as the dust settles from the Instant Information Revolution, they'll lose interest in us, and we'll all be able to go home."

"You think so?"

"Either then, or when Keely's sentence is up." Sam groaned again, loudly.

"Now—" Rosa pushed herself to her feet and offered her a hand. "It's just about
Stupid Headlines
time. Let's us old and tired fugitives from justice go see what's on the news and have a few laughs. Unless you'd like to sit and sulk on your own."

Back to Gator's tent. Was she ready for that again? Oh, hell, she thought, and laughed. "Not really."

" 'Post-Millennarist Fundamentalists Claim Sockets Facilitate Demonic Possession via Rock Music' " Art's image, looking a bit purple, beamed from a Percy-supplied monitor at the group in Gator's tent. One of the easel monitors Fez had managed to salvage sat next to it with headline text.

"Stupid, but unimaginative and not one bit original," said Gator, leaning on the back of Fez's chair.

"Yah, but it's too stupid to ignore," said Captain Jasm, on Sam's right. Jasm's deep voice reminded her of an engine slightly and pleasantly out of tune.

Art paused. He had his image sitting at a desk sorting through papers. "Okay, how's this: 'Lobby for Decency Declares Brain an Erogenous Zone, Demands Mandatory Hatting.' "

" 'Hatting'?" said Adrian.

"Did you make that up?" Gator asked suspiciously.

"Nope." Art grinned. "Here, Adrian, just for you—" Mandarin subtitles appeared below each headline on the other screen.

"Hatting." Captain Jasm looked thoughtful. "I like that. I hat, you hat, she/he/it hats, I have hatted, I will have hatted, I will have been hatted—"

"Not to mention the soon-to-be-immortal 'Hat you, sucker,' " Rosa put in.

"Couldn't some of us just get capped?" said Adrian.

Jasm looked at him fondly and then gave the top of his head a glancing swat. "How's that?"

" 'Para-Versal Announces Forthcoming New Release with Multiple Cross-Tie-Ins,' " Art went on. " 'Tailor-Made Companionship Now a Reality, Thanks to Sockets.' "

No one said anything for a moment. "Is that stupid," Gator asked, "or just pathetic?"

"I don't know," said Art, "but I thought it would be of interest to Sam, since her father's involved."

"He is?" Sam frowned.

" 'New Release Custom-Created by Diversifications' Gabriel Ludovic,' it says here," Art told her.

"They must have drilled him, then," Sam said, more to herself.

"Let's not bandy surnames about too liberally," Fez said to Art. "We're among friends, but we never know who's going to walk in on us."

On-screen Art had not moved for several seconds. Sam reached across Jasm to tap Fez on the knee. "Fez—"

"I'm watching," he said. "Art? Still with us?"

Gator reached over and held a finger over the disconnect panel. Art's image unfroze.

"Something strange," he said.

"Trace?" Gator asked.

"No . . ." he looked thoughtful. "Something . . .
touched
me."

"Explain," said Fez.

"It was so momentary. Let me work on it. I'll get back to you." He shuffled the simulated papers on his simulated desk. "Ah, this just in. 'To whomever, wherever: Hi, I didn't die, I'm in the big tower. Divers up, divers down, divers on vacation.' "

Everyone looked at everyone else. "This is a headline?" Gator said.

"Actually, I found it in the current-events area of Dr. Fish's Answering Machine with a funny mark on it."

Gator started to chew Art out for maintaining the bulletin board when a voice behind them spoke.

"Divers on vacation. Come on, even
I
can figure that one."

Sam twisted around to look at Jones standing just inside the tent flap, looking puffy-eyed and depressed. He gazed around at all of them. "Percy told me where to find you," he added, a bit apologetically.

"That's fine," Gator said, "but don't you die in here."

Sam jumped up. "Come on, I'll take you back."

He waved her away. "Don't bother. I temporarily can't sleep. And don't worry, Gator. The implants have stopped working. For now, anyway."

" 'Sockets Inventor Dies in Mexico,' " Art said. " 'Suicide Pact with Hall Galen Suspected.' "

They all turned back to the screen again. Even Jones seemed interested.

The music, all cruising synthesizers and pumping beatbox, decreased in volume again.

"Message sent. So did I tell you it was a damned Schrodinger world?" said the man on the screen. He was sitting on a yellow chaise in a strange partial room. The walls on either side rose to unequal heights, and where the ceiling and back wall should have been was a backdrop of swiftly moving clouds in a blue green sky, gray and almost stony looking, reflected in the large, shiny black and white tiles on the floor. Besides the chaise there were two angular black chairs that looked like dollhouse miniatures and a small white table on impossibly thin legs.

"Schrodinger or Heisenberg?" Keely said, talking into the speaker.

"Well, either one, I guess. To be or not to be, are you or aren't you—can't be sure of either one till somebody opens your box. Fly Heisenberg Airlines—we don't know where we are, but we're making damned good time." An old-fashioned detonator with a plunger materialized in his hands. "Sure you don't want me to blow the door for you?"

"If I leave here, it would be just like a jailbreak," Keely said wearily. "An outside phone line is better, for the time being. Since I don't know where anybody is or how to reach them. And wouldn't want anyone to trace them if I did."

The detonator swelled to desk size and straddled the man on the chaise. Lifting the top, he reached in and plucked out a tangled handful of wires, surveying them closely. "I still haven't figured this. It could take some time."

"I don't know how much time I have," Keely said. "I could be down in Medical tomorrow."

"Don't know how you take the confinement." The man shook his head in time to the music, which was still playing at a level just below the attention threshold. "Confinement is a double-A, stone-home, all-wool-and-a-yardwide bitch. And don't you forget it."

Not likely, Keely thought, watching him with interest. Visual Mark's energy had definitely picked up since he'd gotten his sockets.

"I'm outa the box now myself," Mark went on, searching through the tangle of wires. He reached into the desk again and pulled out some more.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Keely asked, tentatively.

"Fuck, no. I'm picking it up on the fly. Fly, fly, fly is what I do now. I don't actually
know
dick about anything."

Keely frowned, suddenly suspicious. "So, what's this, then, some kind of cheap comedy video you're trying out on me?"

The man dropped the wires and looked out of the screen sternly. Keely found himself marveling; he could almost believe that the on-screen image could actually see him. Sometimes Mark's gaze missed him entirely, but most times, like now, Mark's estimate of where he was sitting at the monitor was dead on. "Did I say I'd help? Did I send your fucking message for you? You can answer anytime."

"Sorry," Keely said.

"You didn't let me finish anyway. I don't know dick about any of this stuff just being like you are, no holes in the head. But now I'm on-line.
Connected.
" Wires appeared on his head, growing out from his skull in a frenzy. "Understand now? I know what there is to know. Only thing I don't know is how I'm supposed to get all this stuff back in my head with me. I mean, where can I put it?" He picked up the tangle of lines again.

"Wait," said Keely. "You mean you're on-line
that
way?" For some reason it hadn't occurred to him that Mark would be using the interface.

"Come
on.
Anyone can tell something's different with me. Haven't been this coherent since I was sixteen fuckin' years old." He held the wires up and grimaced at them. "Gonna haveta cook this one awhile. Getting back to you later. I'll leave a back door open for you. Access code 'Gina' and you're in.'

"What if you're off-line?"

Mark spread his hands. "If I'm off-line, call Medical. It'll mean I'm dead."

The screen went dark, leaving Keely staring at his own distorted reflection in the glass.

Manny's head was pounding. Not thirty minutes back to work after his own procedure and he'd had to have that headline, of all things, jump out at him from the dataline, with a notation from Mirisch:
Find out about this!

He was half tempted to leave his own message for the Great Grey Executive:
Find out about it yourself!
But he didn't need that kind of trouble with everything else he had to think about. He had to write up a dismissal notice for the Beater; good thing they hadn't had to waste sockets on him, and good riddance. He had to check on the hacker in the penthouse, make sure he'd been kept dosed enough to be unambitious but not so toxed that any damage had been done. Maybe another interrogation, with something stronger this time. None of the names Manny had gotten out of him under the influence had surfaced, and if at least some of them didn't show soon, the cops were going to drop them.

Maybe that was best; more than a couple of hackers together, and they'd start plotting to take over the world. Maybe it would be enough just to get the one he already had drilled and get him working on security. If he could turn the kid all the way around, Diversifications would be airtight, completely closed to any break-ins—and at the same time, no employee system would be completely locked to him, either.

But first, Travis. The red-haired doctor must have been sitting by the phone; there was half a ring, and then Travis's face was looking out at him through the screen, haggard and pale, as if he'd been up for days. The scene around him was definitely not his office.