Synners (59 page)

There was another beep from the pump unit, and a new message appeared on the screen.

> W e h a v e h a d a n I d e a . <

She didn't jump when he touched her shoulder, and she didn't pull away when he put his arms around her, but she was not responsive. Two out of three, Gabe thought nonsensically, resting his cheek on the top of her head.

He had gone to great lengths to give her room when they had first arrived. Well, it had been that, and the surprise of seeing Sam. He'd needed room himself, to reorient himself with Sam, and he still wasn't sure of himself with her. Too much simulated living, he thought; out here you couldn't just change the program, wipe the old referents, and pick up the story at any point.

God, you re profound, hotwire,
he thought. In his own inner voice this time. He had refused to let phantoms surface in his mind since leaving the cellar in Fairfax. The little pile of chips was probably still there on the floor next to where Keely had danced through his hack. The chips were useless now, voided; Keely had adapted them and shot them into the infected net. When he let himself think of it, he liked to believe that Marly and Caritha had gone in there intact in the
Headhunters
scenario, assuming on some level that they were just on blind-select.

After a bit Gina pulled back with a wary look. "Who the fuck do you think you are, anyway."

He barely hesitated. "Just another synner."

"Not bad," she said. "You keep surprising me. Try this one: how long do you think we've got?"

"Till when?"

"Till our fucking synning heads blow up."

"If that were going to happen, don't you think it would have by now?"

She looked so startled that he laughed. Startlement dropped years from her face.

"I don't think it's that we're infected," he went on, "as much as—oh, incurably informed."

Her eyes narrowed.
"You
were the one that raised
that
idea," she said.
"You
said—"

"I know." He shrugged without letting go of her. "I was wrong."

"Just like that—I was wrong.' Sure. Check with me again when I'm a fucking—"

He twined his fingers in her dreadlocks and kissed her. She hesitated, and then he felt her arms go around his waist and hang on tight.

"You think we can synthesize something together?" he asked after a while.

"I'll pop your chocks again if we don't. I'll take your whole fucking head off."

The Gina Aiesi School of Sweet Talk. He was going to have to get used to it.

Someone behind him made a throat-clearing noise. He turned and found Keely standing there looking embarrassed and amused. "I wouldn't interrupt if it weren't kind of important," he said, "but I think you'd better come over and listen to this."

Her first reaction was an unqualified No-Fucking-Chance. It sounded like a stupid way to get their heads blown up and toss the AI to the sharks at the same time. She could tell little old Sam hated it, and as far as sense went, her money was on Gabe's kid. All the rest of them reminded her of some kind of retrograde experiment in techno-Walden-Pondism on the communal level, including the white-headed eminence who seemed to have all the answers. The old guy, Fez, he could sound pretty good, but Gabe's kid had been bolted together right on the first try.

She kept looking at the little box resting on the kid's leg, as if there were something to see there, and they all kept talking, including Ludovic. She had a feeling he was leaning toward it but would stand wherever she stood.

Abruptly the music clicked on in her head while they talked on, and the screen flashed messages from the Incredible Shrunken Entities. Shrunken heads.

I want you. . . .

Ninety percent of life was being there, and the rest was being there on time.

Be there for me one last time.
Last stroke, you should pardon the expression, in a twenty-ump-year pattern. Sure, be there. And if she was, would she be anywhere when it was over?

"If we don't do it," Ludovic was saying, "someone else'll think of it, if they haven't already. It makes sense. If it's intelligent, you need something intelligent to fight it, and no one else knows it as well as we do. It might eat whole
expeditions
before anyone figures out how to put a stop to it. And by then it might be too strong—"

"They won't even do that," the woman named Jasm was saying. "They'll just string a new net and use that until it happens again. And it
will
happen again, because they won't know how to prevent it. Or stop it."

Keely was pounding away on the keyboard, more subdued this time as he transmitted the conversation to Mark and Art, who were identifying themselves as Markt now. Figured. That was a good one. She could have told them who was
really
fucking
marked.

"If it's going to happen, it has to happen soon," Fez said apologetically. She knew without looking at him that he was talking to her. "While we're still running some clean lines. Otherwise we'll be socked in."

"Do you
know
we've still got some clean lines?" she heard herself asking.

"I've had the system running split-second checks at regular intervals. It hasn't come out of Phoenix or San Diego in this direction yet."

"Probably because we're mostly off-line, so it hasn't sensed the activity," said the good-looking one with the unlikely name of Gator. "And maybe it won't. Maybe as long as we're offline, it'll stay away."

"What good is that?" said the little kid. Adrian, the one who couldn't read or write. "We'll have clean lines we can't use. That's as bad as being infected."

Her gaze returned to the little tiny box where Mark had been distilled into his new existence.
See past all the old trash to the core of what you
thought you were loving all these years. A hot shot of truth. If it isn't the
way you thought it was, can you take it? You really want to know any
body
that
well?

She just didn't want her head getting blown up, she didn't want to stroke out in a fucking computer network.

I want you. . . .

What if it is what you thought it was, and more besides— and it's in
there
now, and it'll never be out here again. Think you can take it?

There was too much to face. Too much. After twenty-ump years she needed a rest. She was fucking
entitled.

"We can use the sample to see what we're dealing with," Ludovic said. He picked up the cape.

"No," she said.

He looked at her, defeated.

"We can hook the cape up to the big system and use it as bait," she went on. "It's got the first edition, so to speak, and it wasn't on-line when Mark stroked out for good. The Big One'll run right at it. That sound fucked enough to work, right up there in the stupidsphere?"

Keely's fingers danced on the keyboard.

The screen blinked.
>What the fuck.<

"Okay," said Fez. "What the fuck."

Fez was spooning fortified banana mash into her mouth as if she were an invalid, and though it made her want to squirm with annoyance, Sam held still for it. If Gabe could do what he was about to do, she could make peace with Fez, at least in her own mind. For the first time he had expressed admiration for her vision in constructing the pump unit rather than only revulsion for the power source. Having his open respect made up for a lot.

"I really did see the usefulness of it all along," Fez was saying, "as outré as I found it. A computer running on a power source that can't be compromised—

"Unless you die."

"Then you can keep an extra set of connections in a potato and always carry it in your pocket. 'Is that a potato in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?' "

Sam blinked at him. "Huh?"

"I should have known you wouldn't get it." Fez sighed. "The one time I make a dirty joke with you, and you don't get it." She started to say something else, and he stuck the spoon in her mouth. "Eat up. We want you to stay comfortable."

She swallowed and pushed the spoon aside. "No more. I'm fortified and banana-mashed to the gills. If you want to see to anyone's comfort, take care of my dad and Gina. I don't have to be anything more than a potato."

Fez regarded her solemnly. "You're still against it."

"Yah, I am. I don't think they can bring it off. It sounds like a computer game I once wrote. Or a bad B-feature that did well in the wannabees. Ever hear of something called
House of the Headhunters?"

"No. But the title could belong to a good many of all the computer games ever written. The rest being variations on Parcheesi."

"Really?"

"No." Fez sighed again. "Truthfully, I don't really like it, either. I think there's a good chance we could lose them all. And if it were just Art alone in there with them, I'd never allow it. Art's always been viral at heart. Figurative heart. If he were a flesh-person, I'd watch him for sociopathic tendencies."

Sam raised her eyebrows. "Why? I never found him particularly antisocial."

"Not lately you haven't. But what's more antisocial than a virus? Besides, he never had to be antisocial by the time you came along. By then we were all at his beck and call. But didn't you find him just a little bit stuck on himself?"

"Yah. When I thought he was a person. Flesh-person, I mean."

"The addition of Mark makes me more optimistic," Fez said. "Not very much more, but some. Humans have always been smarter than viruses. Humans drive, viruses are driven. Even the intelligent ones. Three-plus humans ought to have a fighting chance against one intelligent virus."

"But it's not a virus," Sam said.

"An intelligent spike, then." Fez let out a long breath. "No matter what it is, it's still
driven.
No initiative—the big human advantage. I hope."

Gina and Gabe came over then with Keely, who was carrying the cape and the connections. "All clear," Keely said. "The diagnostic says the connections are free of all infection. But I still don't know if four each are enough."

"Mark says it will work with four apiece," Gabe said. "My left hemisphere and Gina's right."

Fez started to say something, but Gina turned to Gabe.

"You sure you want to run at this thing?"

Sam met her father's gaze evenly. They'd hardly spoken since he and Gina had decided to do it. She wanted to tell him not to, that the risks were too great, that he didn't know what he was getting into, but something in his expression stopped her. He was looking for her support, she realized suddenly. Not her help, or even her approval, but just for her
not
to discourage him. He'd had enough of that with Catherine. She looked down at the pump unit resting on her lap and cradled it protectively in both hands before she looked up at her father again.

"Yah," he said to Gina. "Yah, I do."

Gina shook her head. "You're a stone-home crazy fucker."

In spite of everything Sam smiled. It was the nicest thing she'd ever heard anyone say to her father.

———

They were lying side by side on a couple of narrow mattresses donated by Jasm and Graziella. Keely checked and rechecked the boot program before he divided the connections from the cape between them.

"When you connect," he told them, "the transmission and stealth programs will boot with you, and they'll stick by you till you disconnect. You can't accidentally disable them, but you might not always recognize them, and I'm afraid you won't be able to get a status reading whenever you need one. But whatever kind of controls you need, you ask—"

"Are you gonna fucking let us do this?" Gina demanded. "Or are you gonna fuck around till the fucking lights go out?"

Sam felt Rosa squeeze her hand, and she squeezed back. Keely looked up at her from where he was kneeling next to Gina.

"Sam, if you have to go to the bathroom, go now."

"If I have to go to the bathroom," she said with a nervous laugh, "you can bring me a saucepan, and everyone can look the other way."

"Let's just fucking
go"
Gina said, staring up at the ceiling. She reached over and took Gabe's hand.

"Okay," he said. Sam winced as he twisted his neck to take a last look at her. Suddenly she wished she'd thought to give him a hug or a kiss. Then his eyes were closed, and the program was running.

He was looking at a strange, half-finished room with black and white tiles and roofless walls against a backdrop of swiftly moving clouds. Or rather, he was trying to look at it. There was something very bright in the center of the room, undulating like a reflection of the sun on a ripply lake surface. It blinded him, blotting out most of the scene so that he would have to look away and readjust. He could sense Gina nearby. Her energy simmered like continuous, contained explosions. After a bit he turned toward her, and her visual was Gina as he knew her, but coming through strangely, the textures and colors shifting like a painting in flux.

She said something, but he couldn't understand it.

"Everything will be in phase shortly," said a voice from the bright light. "We're a little ways from full synthesis." And then: "Some trip, hey, Gina?"

The brightness became less blinding, not because it was fading, but because he was becoming adjusted to it. Gradually he came to distinguish a figure within the light, one figure but with two images superimposed on it, each image waxing and waning, sometimes in fragments so that it was a shifting composite rather than two separate images trading full dominance.

"Loads of room in here," the voice went on, and Gabe realized that it, too, was a composite. He turned to Gina again, and her image was smoothing out, the painting transmuting from impressionistic to photographic realism. And then it was like seeing her come through some transparent barrier, glass or water, before something gave, and he was perceiving her with total clarity.

The figure in the light moved aside to show them a four-paned window floating in midair against the backdrop of clouds. It put its hand on the windowsill; everything contained within the frame vanished, leaving a rectangle of darkness.