Hardwired (36 page)

“Are you sure that’s all?”

She looks coolly into the stainless-steel irises. “That’s it. After that he looked like he realized he was saying something he shouldn’t, and changed the subject.”

“No names?”

“No names.”

“Where did this happen?”

She gives the location of the house by the beach. His lips tighten. “It looks to me like you’re stalling. Why didn’t you tell us Michael was going to be there?”

“I didn’t know myself. The driver just got orders to pick me up at the hotel. ”

“If you’re not telling us the truth...” Andre leaves that thought unfinished. Instead, he reaches into a pocket, comes up with a recorder. “If you’re thinking there’s a way back, I’m telling you there’s not. I’ve made recordings of every conversation we’ve had. They can be sent to Michael.”

Sarah’s wired nerves flame with fury at her own idiocy. She looks at Andre in white anger. These people expect us to trust them, even though they will betray us, even though we know the betrayal is coming. Because we have no choice but to trust them. Because they are our only hope.

“I’m not turning back,” she grates. “But you’ve got to give me room.”

Andre puts the recorder in his pocket. His look is softer now that’s he made his point. “You’ll have your room,” he says. “But soon the walls will start getting closer. I’m just telling you.”

“I’m listening,” Sarah says. Despair tugs at her. Perhaps up to this point she hasn’t really believed in the deal she’s cut, in what it means. She thinks of Cowboy doing loops in the night sky, of the Hetman shrouded by Poinciana, of Reno, a pattern of burning electrons, circling desperately in his world of wire and crystal. The cost of her ticket.

I’m sorry. But they didn’t leave me a way out.

And hates herself. Because she knows it’s not true,

ANYWHERE, ANYTIME

YOU KNOW WE’RE WITH YOU

The voice makes her think of sagebrush, of long prairies and the purple eastern face of mountains staring up at the sky. “It’s cool where I am, Sarah. The summer’s dying here.”

She tries to think of Daud, of the humming laser and who’s paying for it, of Daud’s ticket and her own. The body designer finished with him that afternoon. His body is healed, beautiful, just a little weak.

“The aspens will be turning soon. I hope you can see it.”

“It sounds good,” Sarah says. She reaches into her pocketbook for her inhaler, wanting hardfire, needing desperately to be high.

“I heard from Reno. I told you he’d be useful.”

Sarah fires the torpedoes, throws her head back. Her hardwiring screams as the neurotransmitters multiply. Reno had broken open the entire Tempel distribution net on the East Coast, from Havana all the way to Halifax. Half their people had been assassinated within a two-day period, the other half were running and wouldn’t be doing business anytime soon. Michael’s people had raided so many warehouses they were at a loss as to where to put the stuff. News datalines screamed the statistics on every street corner, while officials ducked for cover and offered no comment.

“They’re getting desperate,” Sarah says. Her hands tremble and she reaches for the table edge to steady them.

Friends, she thinks. When we can afford to be. She is going to have to give them the Hetman soon. And give him as well the nature of Roon’s part in the Hetman’s plans, which will be the only piece of pleasure in this sorry business.

“Michael says that Reno’s given him another four months,” she says. “Reno’s in his tank now. The Hetman paid for it. Have you heard?”

“Yeah. He called me from there.”

Reno’s tank is a crystal matrix in Havana, ready to move into a cloned body as soon as DNA can be found to approximate his original appearance and a new body grown from it. He was beginning to feel paranoid living in the Tempel computers, knowing that sooner or later they’d start looking for an intruder program.

At least Reno’s body and the operation is paid for in advance. When Michael falls, Reno will be out of the way.

“Our friend in South America is almost ready,” Cowboy says. “He’s got the date.”

Sarah feels ice form in her veins. The deadline is coming.

“When?”

“Five days from now. We figure on moving you out by bullet in three days.”

“I’ll have to prepare Daud,” she says. “And arrange to see the Hetman.”

That, she thinks, is when it will have to happen. Feed them Roon at the same time. And then, a part of her thinks, a call through secure lines to Cowboy to let him know that he’s just crashed, that all his plans and hopes are going up in flames on some mountainside labeled Reality, that it’s time to say good-bye.

“Say hi from me,” Cowboy says. Sarah remembers the way he looked a few months ago, when he was sitting in the armored cabin of his betrayed panzer outside Pittsburgh, the fear and bafflement and anger in his eyes...When the news comes, will the look be the same? Sarah wonders.
When we can afford to be.
The operative phrase.

After the conversation she decides that she needs the hotel bar. Her guard isn’t happy but allows it. She sails down the elevator and submerges herself in thudding litejack, shouted conversation, dark rum served neat, a softglow high out of the bar inhaler that smooths the hardfire jitters. She looks at the single men in the room, wondering about the possibility of letting one come to her room, of letting the high she’s feeling peak in orgasm, in the necessary obliteration. But when one approaches her, she brushes him off. There’s plenty of time.

She notices a crowd around one of the games at the other end of the bar. She picks up her drink and wanders over, hearing the hum of laserfire, the rush of missiles.
Delta
, the game is called. A black man is strapped into the seat, his head obscured by a sensory helmet that feeds him information, letting him feel the jar of missiles cutting loose, the pull of g-stresses. A wide-screen video unit above the machine gives other customers a glimpse of his play. Government liteweights pounce from the sky. The sun glitters off the rotating fins of turning missiles. Radar displays scream for attention. Liteweights dodge, leap, explode in flaring ruin, draw charcoal fingers across the sky.

Sarah loses interest and decides to go back for another round of softglow. She turns to step away and meets the metal eyes of a man in a wheelchair. Memory jars her.

“Is it Maurice who’s playing?” she asks.

The man nods. His eyes stay on the display above his head. “Yes. It’s the closest we can come.”

“Tell Maurice hi.” The video cockpit gushes flame as an enemy missile strikes home. Sadness wars with the softglow in Sarah’s veins. She wonders if Cowboy will end like that, endlessly rerunning the war he fought and lost.

Maurice tries to eject, fails, tumbles to the earth like a broken dragonfly. Before he can raise the sensory helmet from his face, Sarah turns and drifts away with the murmuring crowd.

LIVING IN PAIN CITY? LET US SEND YOU TO HAPPYVILLE!

–Pointsman Pharmaceuticals A.G.

Andre is dressed in tailored jungle fatigues, even to the cap. His stainless-steel irises gleam from the shadow of the brim. His inevitable pens are fixed to the breast pocket with camouflage velcro straps.

“We don’t think,” he says, “that you’ve been entirely candid. ”

Sarah cocks her hands on her hips. “Que?” she says softly.

“We think that you know more than you’re giving us.” His voice is soft, his inflections unhurried. As if he’s made some decision. He takes a step toward her.

Sarah’s mouth is suddenly dry. She runs her corrugated tongue over her palate, sandpaper on stone. She looks left and right, seeing patients in bathrobes and pajamas. “What do you think I know?”

“We’re not sure. More than you’re telling.” His eyes are wide, unblinking, focused on her like a pair of gunsights. His calm voice drones on. “We’re going to make you disappear for a few hours. Give you a few drugs, let you talk. You won’t be hurt.”

Sarah tries to calm the hardfire pulsing adrenaline messages through her body. A cold inner voice, a soulless inflection like Reno’s, tells her he’s got more chips, more talent. If she fights, she’ll lose. “I’ve got a guard, Andre. The Hetman will know.”

“We have a story ready for Michael. We tried to snatch you. You got away.”

She shakes her head slowly. “He’s not going to believe that. ”

Andre takes another step toward her, only inches away. Her flesh prickles. She can feel his breath against her face, taste spearmint. “Turn around,” he says. “Look out the window. He’ll believe the evidence.”

She can feel the hairs on her neck erect as she turns. He can hit her from here, and she has only instinct to tell her where and when.

From the front window she can see her Maximum Law escort car stretched out by the curb, the color of blued steel. The windows are mirrors, but she can see the driver as a vague shadow behind the silver glass.

A girl is coming down the street in a bicycle. Brown-skinned, young, her hair in pigtails braided with yellow ribbon. She’s reclining in the bucket seat of an alloy bicycle, feet first, low to the ground, moving fast behind an aerodynamic shield. In her lap is a woven basket with artificial daisies plaited around the rim. She’s wearing a white blouse with bright red patterns. As she rides she laughs to herself. Her teeth are white and contrast brilliantly with her dark face.

She passes the car to streetward, out of Sarah’s sight, but still Sarah senses a movement.

And then the bicycle is skimming past and there is a thud, hardly perceptible to Sarah through the double panes of window glass and the insulating walls of the hospital. The driver’s window of her car flies outward, brilliant bits of mirror gushing up in a sunlit expanding funnel…

“Sticky bomb with a two-second delay,” Andre says. His tone is low, conversational. “Put a shaped charge right through the window glass. I don’t think your driver got out of the way. ”

Sarah is suddenly aware that she hasn’t been breathing. She lets the air out of her lungs, breathes in. Neurotransmitters are multiplying, racing from her crystal. Her veins are smoking with adrenaline. The cybersnake waits coldly, uselessly in her throat.

They’re going to get it all, she thinks. She knows she won’t get paid, but maybe they’ll let her live. And Daud has his ticket, that’s something.

The last bit of mirror flutters to the pavement. Another car pulls up behind the Maximum Law car. Two men in summer suits get out, walk to the shattered window. Facing the car, visible only from the chest up as they draw pistols from their belts, they look, ludicrously, as if they’re getting ready to piss on the polished blue finish.

“Silenced pistols,” Andre says. “If your driver has a head left, he’s going to lose it.”

Spearmint whispers coolly into Sarah’s nostrils. Behind her in the room there is a low murmur of patient conversation. The assassins zip up their pants and start walking up the drive. Their car pulls away from the curb.

Sarah sees government liteweights bursting on the screen. Cowboy’s head under the sensory helmet. The look in his eyes, the look of someone whose dream is broken and is desperate in searchof another.

There is a smile of pleasure in Andre’s voice. “We’re going to wring you dry, Sarah,” he says. “You have no choice. We’ve bought you and we’re going to have you.”

Sarah lets her head fall, gulps air. She knew all along, as soon as she saw Andre, that this was going to happen, and that she was going to let it. That Andre would enjoy it. That his stainless-steel irises would dilate with satisfaction as her struggles ceased and the drugs took hold of her mind, as she began babbling her every thought into their cold, waiting crystal.

“Come along, Sarah,” Andre says. “Time for, your ride.”

It’s the tone that does it. Sarah has sold herself, and she can live with that, accept the consequences. But the idea that the man who has bought her will take such pleasure in it...Something in her screams outrage. She remembers a droning voice, a razor, a blur of movement, abstract patterns of red, like paint. Weasel stirs. Her chips are spitting instructions and the neurotransmitters are multiplying along their chemical pathways before she even knows she has made a conscious decision.

She takes a step back with her right foot, toward Andre. Her fists cock up toward her chest, where she knows he can’t see. Then her weight shifts back and she is spinning, her right arm lashing out with a back-knuckle blow aimed at Andre’s temple, the torque of her upper body behind it.

Andre blocks it, of course. Foolish to think otherwise–– he is wired himself, and probably expecting resistance. But when his hands come up, she changes her movement from a blow to a sweep, gets her hands and forearm over both his hands, driving down his guard. Follows it up with a lash from Weasel, aimed at Andre’s throat…

From somewhere there is a dry steel click, like a hammer going back…

And her weight is already shifted forward to the right foot, her left coming up in a wheeling kick aimed high, a kick he can’t even see because when it was launched Sarah’s fist and his own two hands were in the way. By the time Andre sees the blur to his right, the only thing he can do is to try to hunch down into his shoulders and roll with it.

Too late. The kick has all of Sarah’s weight behind it, all six feet three inches torqued in by hip and shoulder and concentrated along a few square inches of Andre’s reluctant skull. Sarah’s shin impacts Andre’s temple with enough force to send shards of pain shrieking along Sarah’s leg. Andre falls like a sack of sugar, his every nerve misfiring. Something extrudes from between his lips.

Sarah recovers her balance, steps forward with her left foot, and delivers a rising kick with her right boot-tip square between Andre’s eyes. Andre’s head bounces back, hits the floor, bounces again. A cybersnake flails uselessly from his mouth, a glistening metal whip looking for something to kill. Maybe Andre is dead. Sarah doesn’t care.

One eye is open, one shut. Sarah stares into the open eye, ignoring the whipping cybersnake, seeing something wrong. The stainless-steel iris is dilated wide and there is a hole where the pupil should be, and Sarah remembers the sound of that click. She looks down at herself, sees the steel needle stuck in her armored jacket, and feels the fear begin, clamping on her in a wave of nausea.