Black Glass (9 page)

Grist watched with increasing dysphoria as Gulliver Sykes, breathing through his mouth and muttering, pottered around the brushed steel worktable in Lab 4D, a laboratory physically within three other labs. The surrounding labs developed non-allergenic cosmetics; this lab was encircled by the others for reasons of disinformational security.

Grist disliked spending time with Sykes. Gulliver Sykes was déclassé. He was a pop-eyed, fortyish, dyspeptic, overweight computer neurologist; he wore grubby T-shirts in the lab; he picked his nose and wiped it on his cargo pants; he was usually three days short a shave. His proximity reflected badly on a man. Grist stared at the belly drooping over Sykes’s belt.

“Sykes—you know, as a Slakon employee at the Prime Executive level, you have free access to the forming clinics. One two-day visit would eliminate all that unsightly fat. You can have a complete nano-surgery on that face too, if you wanted, for free. Idealize it. I mean after this project comes in. Just for employee morale–”

“No nuh no nuh
no!
Thank you very much! I don’t have the time ... or the inclination,” Sykes said, wheezing between phrases, his hands busy at a horseshoe-shaped smart console, his eyes flickering between two screens and a holotank. “That sort of thing is all sociobiological-reproductive plumage, altering one’s appearance, and I haven’t any use for that—I get complete satisfaction with virtual sex, I have the best sex suit, and a good relationship with a very accommodating, learning-capable program which, unlike a real female, I can switch off as I please. Plus, cellular reduction and reformation is time consuming—I haven’t two or three days to waste getting my body altered—and it’s all very well to say I could take two days off, but about the time I tried to do it you’d drop something else in my lap and say you want it finished yesterday ...”

“At the very least you could wear some shoes instead of those grubby sandals ...”

“I have warts, they are encouraged by being enclosed in—oh, there you go, there you go, there, there–” And putting on VR glasses, he turned to look at the Multisemblant hardware.

The lab room annoyed Grist too—it was like more like a teenager’s bedroom than a lab, untidy, murkily lit, the gear crowded on the main table making him think of a model of a city skyline, but made out of apparently random computer hardware, some of it connected, some not. He recognized holotanks and self-generating chip growers. And there were a dozen empty ephedrine cola containers, and yellow Envirofoam take-out cartons mixed in with the gear. But the main server of the semblant hardware, behind a sheet of armorglass, was a contrast. Austere cleanliness protected the sensitive semblant tech. Dust could make a semblant psychotic.

Centered on a table between two huge displays, the Multisemblant array encompassed six crystal disks inset in a circle, as if at the points of a star, inside a small holo tank. In the center of the circle was a seventh disk. The whole Multisemblant array, once disconnected from the drive, was compact enough to fit into a suitcase. “Got it ... got i-i-i-t ...”

“You have?” Grist frowned. “Where? I don’t see anything.”

Sykes reached blindly for an Ephe-Cola with one hand as
he stared into the holo tank, operating a sphere board with the other hand, and nearly knocked drink over, so Grist put the can in his hand. Sykes drank, all the while tickling the sphere board with his free hand. Cola streamed down his chin. “You’ll see it, you will, truly ... Doing a test-merge now ... you will ... you will ... Here we go, here we ... go. There, how’s that!”

Nothing appeared on the array platform. “You’re seeing it virtually, you idiot, it’s not externalized for me.”

“Oh, yes, yes, I’m sorry. External line ... there.”

Three holographic human heads appeared on three of the six disks: the visual representation of the semblants of Claire, Grist, and Bulwer.

The three heads blinked at Grist, as they were programmed to do. They perceived him through a fiber optic camera, a pinhole at the base of the array, but of course the images were designed to look at him as if seeing him from their holographic eyes. “Bulwer” squinted; “Claire” looked at him balefully; “Grist” winked.

“What about the others?” the real Grist asked. “What about Hoffman?”

“Problems with Hoffman—it’s simply giving me problems.”

“Not surprising, somehow.”

“And the Japanese language template in the Yatsumi semblant—it creates some kind of differential wave, ripple noise–”

“We may have to use a truncated Yatsumi semblant. At least at first,” Grist suggested.

“So now there’s three of them—we can try the merge again so you can see it–”

“Do it, do it, I don’t want to spend any more time in this mephitic air than I have to.”

“Really, Grist, we do have air conditioning.”

“It’s not enough, not around you. Do it, I said.”

“This is an unauthorized use of a semblant,” said Claire PointOne’s semblant, looking around. “I will shut down and erase.”

“No, actually, you won’t,” Sykes said. “I’ve removed all the piracy protections.”

“You can’t be switching me on like this,” the Bulwer semblant said, “without checking with the real Bulwer—this here, it’s–”

The Grist holographic head turned to the other two. “Oh, shut
your logorrheic mouth, he knows what he’s doing.” He turned to look at the real Grist. “Go ahead, old friend.”

“We’re doing just that, thanks. Sykes?”

Sykes hit ENTER. The three semblants shimmered—and faded, to instantly reappear on the center disk, together.

“This is–” Bulwer’s semblant began.

“—totally objectionable.” Claire’s was saying as ...

. . . they merged, into one distorted face.

“Muss them zorn stang at aye-oh-well-dot smith no wesson oil,” the jittering, unsteady image chattered. “Vreedeez vent howl doctor the Pep-Pay, Michael I good king Wenceslas Dharma, how about a little head little lady, point zero approximates nothingness, point one fulfills all, all sum totals times acquisition is love, vanity is love, seven thousand shares of my front teeth too prominent ...”

The faces had combined to be visually askew, matching the verbal mish-mash.

“Sykes?” Grist said, staring at it.

Sykes worked feverishly at the input.

The face looked like a cubistic painting, to Grist. Maybe two Picassos superimposed. “I am the Not one,” it said, “who used to be ten thousand barrels a day, crude can be divided more times than that nigger Washington Carver’s fucking peanuts to you mother please don’t touch me there with that metal thing it hurts why does Dad have to die just when I’m not in the mood to be touched today, Hank, I’m just not a bird up the ass of my seventh stick this morning like a burning bush of gynecological dimensions–”

“Sykes?”

Sykes shook his head, hit a power button. The holograph switched off, the voice ceased.

“They’re fighting it,” Sykes said, taking off the glasses. There were sweat rings around his eyes.

“Then fight back. I insist you make it work—and soon. I need it soon. I suspect the board is planning on moving against me—I need to know.”

“It’ll take time to control it—if it can be done at all–”

“Oh you’ll control it, Sykes. You must keep it growing—but with careful control.” Grist’s voice had become soft. Almost like
a father whispering a warning to a noisy child in church. “You’ll consolidate them and you’ll control what you consolidate and you will make no excuses. I am sick of your excuses. Do you understand me, Sykes? And if you fail me, I will simply take away everything you have. Everything. Your money and your Cassandra. I’ll let you ponder that for a while. And then I’ll have you picked up and I’ll have your arms and legs surgically removed and leave you on the sidewalk on skid row. Naked. Just picture that! What would they do with you? It’s tempting to do it anyway.”

Grist had Sykes’ attention, for once. The tech prodigy gaped at him. “That’s ... too baroque to ever ... to ever actually ...” He stammered. “I mean, really, such a ... a travesty couldn’t ... You could never ...”

“What would stop me? The police? I own them.” An exaggeration. A hyperbole. But he did have a lot of influence. And Slakon did own certain segments of the police. “My own security forces are enough to take over the city of Los Angeles. Two hours notice and I can call in enough security to overwhelm the California National Guard. We didn’t just buy Blackwater—we expanded it exponentially, Sykes. I can do exactly as I said and never be prosecuted for it. Your rewards for success, on the other hand, will also be great. Just do it. And get control of the thing—it’s been leaving trails. They know we’re prowling through their systems. And just remember ... a quick hour with the surgeons and–”

There was a faint buzzing at Grist’s ear. Targer on three. He accepted the call, turning his back on Sykes.

“What is it, Targer?”

“I’m sorry, sir. Candle’s slipped past Halido.”

“We should have had more people on him.”

“You didn’t want to use the in-house pros. But Halido’s usually reliable. ”

“Seems Candle’s better. Do something about it, Targer.”

“Targer’s on it, sir. As it’s you, I’m authorized to tell you that I’m only his semblant, but I can assure you, he’s–”

“Oh, shut the fuck up.”

Grist cut the connection and stalked out of the room. “Fight back, Sykes. Get it done.”

Grist slammed the door shut behind him.

The night wind was damp, but it wasn’t quite raining. Candle was walking through the polymorphous cooking smells, the multicolored crowds of Borderbust, in southeast L.A. First and second generation immigrants from around the world, many of them refugees from cities flooded or desiccated by global warming. The crowd elbowing, pushing thick on the sidewalk; in the street dull colored, soft-line cars, mostly electric, a few ethanol exuding their own “cooking” smells—not many after the big ethanol bust of 2016. A swarm of pert little electric cars darting past a few rusty, stubborn oversized, technically illegal gas-burners; a couple of the pricier hydrogen humvees bulked over the rest.

Borderbust had a rep for providing sanctuary for illegal immigrants in line for amnesty; for being densely polyglot, the melting pot of melting pots, but it seemed to Candle that each foreign culture here had tried to keep its own character; that Chinese still grouped near Chinese, Koreans near Koreans, Mexicans near Mexicans, Filipinos with Filipinos, Albanians with Albanians, Pakistanis with Pakistanis, Armenians with Armenians, Laotians with Laotians. But the melding was there, too; a Mexican/Chinese restaurant, and there the Calcutta and North African Digital Movie Store; a small place since most of its business was online. There was plenty of genetic crossbreeding: there were faces, especially the young on the crowded street, that seemed a sweetly indefinable genetic meld. To Candle, the African-Asian girls were the prettiest combination.

Candle stopped at a booth, bought a curried vegetarian burrito and a meal-in-a-bar. He stuck the food bar in his pocket, drank a ginseng coffee and ate his burrito using the domed top of a trash can for a table; watching the crowd sift by, a flow of faces: eager, incurious, defeated, focused, hungry, jonesing, angry, amusedly tolerant.

Lots of faces but never Danny’s.

So far Candle hadn’t found anyone who’d tell him where the illegal VR was. The chances that Danny would be in the area weren’t bad, but he could be thirty feet from him, here, and not see him. And if Danny saw him first, and if he were still actively addicted, he’d go the opposite direction.

He could show Danny’s picture around, but time had passed, and Danny would have changed his look—maybe even gotten a face forming. And anyway they’d look at Candle, his clothes, his eyes, and think he was a cop or a private detective and you didn’t talk to those in Borderbust, because the cops usually lied about what they were really after.

As Candle had, while a cop, many times.

Suppose he found Danny—what then? What refuge could he take his little brother to? He had a Thirdy Card, he had no home, no pension, no resources. There was Guffin, maybe ...

No. If his old partner was still alive, he’d leave him alone. He was a good guy. He didn’t deserve to have Slakon dogging him.

Same with Tulku Kenpo. Leave Guffin alone, leave Tulku alone. Leave them alone ...

Candle put the plastic cup into the trash, throwing away most of the ginseng coffee. It was already making him jittery.

He walked on, sorting through faces on the street, hoping to get lucky, just run into Danny.

His heart was thumping now; he thought he felt his old herpes trouble buzzing and stinging at his nervous system. He should renew his nano cure for that, if he could get Public Health to pay for it, though it made his skin crawl when the microseekers crept through his nervous system, dendron by ganglion by nerve ending, looking for viruses. What might his enemies have done to him when he was UnMinded? Or even just some jughead of a prison bull. There were stories of guards tinkering with the oversight cameras so they could fuck the prisoners, make them do humiliating things, some kind of elaborate tournament in a basement room using the UnMinded as pieces on a big board game.Urban myth, probably. But who knew?