Silhouette (14 page)

“Did you like our little surprise?” he asked. I nodded, and asked him what it was.

“I
knew
you never would have cataloged it,” he said, all but patting himself on the back. “It's an old thing from the Russian civil war. Don't know what it was called there, but the people who brought it over called it NuPain—with a
u.
Don't usually do business with that bunch of phobes, but I had to have it. How many less agents does the BigASS have now?”

I ignored his question and, knowing there was no BASS surveillance in here, went straight to the point.

“I want you to tell me anything you know about a BASS black op designed to control people through neuroware in their brains,” I said. “And maybe I'll spare your worthless life.” He tilted his head in puzzlement, since he was expecting me to gloat or lash out—anything but ask him a question.

“I have to think for a while,” he said, striking the pose from the famous Greek statue.

“No, just tell me if you know anything. Our conversations are over, except for any information you might have on that topic.”

Something in my voice made him grow very serious, suddenly looking like a different person.

“I heard something like that years ago when I was there,” he said. “But I really don't know any more about it. I wish … I wish I did.”

I decided against pursuing it any further and told him to turn on the news. “Just search for your name,” I added. “I'm sure you'll find something.”

Looking more puzzled, and even fearful now, Harris did as I'd said. Soon his search program found an entry, and brought up a newscast on a screen to his left. One of the talking heads he despised so much was telling the Bay Area and the world the same thing that would be broadcast a million times over on the infinite Net:

“… The downfall of a popular Web figure from the San Francisco Bay Area. Harold Harris, former employee of the company who rules that part of the world, became the darling hero of many by playing counterrevolutionary in BASS's backyard, and a fascinating curiosity for many more by sending out waves of slick netfare from his pilfered palace. For two years, he has projected an air of moral superiority, claiming that a corrupt BASS has a callous disregard for human life, while he and his friends are standing for a sublime ideal of human rights.

“BASS authorities have broken their long silence about Harris and his fellow ‘squatters,' as they are called in the city. Michael Ares, an executive agent in the company, released a statement today saying that after repeated attempts to peacefully persuade the squatters to return their stolen property, the time has come for a forceful eviction. To show that Harris is not the philanthropist or saint that he makes himself out to be, Ares also released a vidclip, certified by Reality G and three federal agencies, which proves that the squatter was responsible for injuries sustained by innocent people in a recent arrest…”

They went on to show the conversation between Harris and me about the Korcz incident, which the tech named Kim had recorded by skillfully beating the squatters' blocks. It made clear to the watching world that if anyone had a “callous disregard for human life,” it was Harris. Especially when it ended like this:

Me: “You realize people could have been killed or wounded.”

Harris: “Torque 'em! That would have been Even Better Than the Real Thing.”

“Singing about the death of innocents?” the talking head on the news concluded. “If anyone questioned the legitimacy of evicting the squatters, those questions are gone now. And if any of us questioned the truth of Harris's bold claims, we are now sure that he cannot be trusted.”

The news went on to another topic, but Harris left it on, staring at the screen and silently processing the effect this had on his career as a crusader, not to mention what being in jail without the net would do to his soul. I hoped he was thinking hard as I lifted the palm-size disk in my hand to where he could see it out of the corner of his eye. To the underside of the explosive, which was very similar to the one that had killed D and Lynette, I had attached the little disk containing the incriminating picture of me.

“This bomb is about to blow all your best friends into a thousand pieces,” I said, waving it at the piles of equipment. “Once I drop it, you have ten seconds to leave with me for a cyberless cell, or you can stay here and beat me to hell.”

He didn't say anything, but just stared at the news, where the weather was currently being discussed.

I slid the trigger on the disk in three different directions until it was primed, then bowled it across a length of bare floor, much like I had done the other night at my friend's house, while my daughter was saying hi to me from the backseat.

I turned and stepped to the door, looking back one more time to see if Harris was coming. He wasn't, as I had expected, so I closed the door and walked at a normal pace toward my tank. When I had almost reached it, I looked at the mirrored surface of the vehicle and saw Harris sitting inside his room, staring at the screen. Then there was a fiery flash that filled the room and struck my eyes through the reflection, so bright that I was forced to close them. But not before I saw my own figure in the reflection, silhouetted against the bright glow of the blast, just like in the image I had now destroyed.

I opened my eyes again, and still looking at the reflection on the tank, I studied the big transteel wall, which had stood strong in the blast, as I had known it would. Its inside was covered with dark shards of metal and plastic that had been propelled into it by the force of the blast, interspersed with dripping patches of bloody flesh.

I was dismayed to find that my anger wasn't gone, and now I felt sick and sweaty, too, like I needed a shower.

I turned toward the cityside exit and headed for it.

“Is there a bookstore near here?” I asked an officer at the gate. I needed to find out more about the old man's secret project but was too paranoid to use the net and leave any kind of cyberprint related to it.

“I don't know, sir, sorry,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“I need to get some religion,” I answered, and stepped out into the streets of San Francisco.

 

12

It was starting to get dark as I wove through the crowd that had gathered around our barricades on the surface, outside the entrance to the tunnel, and the city assailed my senses.

I supposed the people who lived here were immune to the sights, sounds, and smells of this metropolis, but they always hit me like I was running into a wall. My eyes immediately tended to twirl and glaze from the unfamiliar stimuli of a thousand moving parts and the scale of the surrounding buildings. My ears almost hurt at the cacophony of voices, vehicles, and video advertisements, both flat and holo, that were being projected onto the streets and sidewalks. And the rotation of strong aromas could only be described as bittersweet—an unpleasant residue from the chemical products (natural and not-so-natural) of a million sardined humans, punctuated with refreshing bursts of sea air blowing in from the Bay.

I seldom left a controlled environment, and this was anything but. I knew that Lynn and probably Paul would have thrown fits if they'd known what I was doing. They would have told me that I was recognizable, and would be afraid that some anti-BASS gang of thugs would dismember me before the cavalry could show up. But my state of mind right now was such that I really didn't care, and I needed to be outside the reach of BASS surveillance to do what I wanted to do.

As I studied some of the faces I passed in the crowd, however, the fear seemed unfounded. Very few recognized me (at least noticeably), none approached, and most simply went about their business, not on the lookout for famous people by any means. After all, I was the least well known of the BASS executives: the old man was a living legend, Paul was his son, and D had been our charismatic, smiling face for the media. I had hardly ever appeared on the net by choice, and the tabloid coverage had focused mostly on those three.

Nevertheless, a few people did recognize me as I walked a few blocks up Powell Street. And a woman I asked about a bookstore noticed at least one of the boas, because the breeze had blown my jacket open while I was talking to her. I closed it partially then to avoid scaring too many people, but I left the guns in front in case I met anyone that I
needed
to scare.

I turned a corner, looking for the Noble Virgin. The woman had said, “Can't miss it,” and she was right. It took up half a block along this street, almost the entire first floor of a typically colossal building that stretched so high that I couldn't see the top from this angle. I stepped in and noticed that the buzz of noise was even louder in here than on the street. This was from the conversations going on at the coffeehouses on the perimeter of the huge floor, but also from the many sampling and downloading stations spread throughout it—not that the various media itself was so loud, but people experiencing it through earphones, glasses, goggles, and headgear always tended to talk louder to their friends, as if they were hard of hearing.

I had barely stepped inside the door when I was greeted by three tense security guards and a smiling customer-service representative, or manager (he was not wearing an ID tag). The boas had undoubtedly been scanned and set off a silent alarm. The man recognized me immediately, and said my name, at which the guards relaxed considerably. I gave him a card, which he dutifully ran through his Reality G terminal as the guards continued to watch me dutifully.

He came back and returned my card. “It's good to have you here, Mr. Ares,” he said in a low voice, to avoid any more attention than was already being lavished on me by some onlookers. “Is there anything we can help you with?” He motioned the guards away, and they reluctantly left. So did the gawkers.

“Actually, there is,” I said, hesitating to make what I was doing public, but not knowing any other way to find what I was looking for. “I want to find something in the Bible.”

“Okay,” he said, trying not to look surprised. “Veel or real?”

“Well, it was written as a real book, right? So I guess I want to see one of those.” What I really wanted was to stay away from any media where there might be a record of what I was doing.

“Oh,” he said, nodding. “So are you referring to the Old Bible?” When he saw my puzzled look, he explained. “There are … I forget the exact number right now, but … thousands of different versions of that book. Everything from obscure, homemade holos to the bestselling
Open Scriptures
done by top religious scholars. Most of them are in a virtual format, of course, though there are some real ones. But we have a collector's item called the Old Bible—only a few of them in print, because there's not much demand—that is actually translated into English right from the ancient languages, like they used to do.”

“So that's the …
true
version?” I asked.

“What is ‘true,' Mr. Ares?” he answered, shrugging his shoulders and smirking. “But some people—‘purists' would be one of the nicer names for them—do think so.” He glanced around for a moment, as if he were looking for someone. “Would you like to see one of those? We usually don't bring them out, because they're so expensive, but for you I will.”

“Okay,” I said, and he began to lead me through the maze of stations to a back corner of the store, where the smaller selection of “real books” was kept. On the way, I saw hundreds of people of all ages sampling or buying audio, video, and holo media, by downloading it into their OutPhones, InPhones, goggles, glasses, or personal “pockets” so that they could carry it home to their net rooms. The first and last were the ubiquitous choices of most consumers at this time, because implants and goggles that worked consistently were still quite expensive, and good glasses were even more. The cyber-pocket boom started with video and game pockets (known as “vips” and “gaps”), then developed into holo pockets (“hops”), then culminated recently in all-media pockets, or “amps,” which every human being from age four up now considered one of the basic necessities of life.

There was a time not long before when it looked like all media would become downloadable by terminals at home or other wireless receptors like those mentioned above, which would have made stores like this obsolete and put them out of business. But before that could happen, the big retail companies conglomerated and made deals with the media producers to pay higher prices for the exclusive rights to their properties, and then began to charge even higher prices to the consumers, who couldn't buy them anywhere else … an example of how capitalism was still alive and well in the West, despite the socialist experimentation of the last generation (or maybe because of it).

As we finally passed into the real-books part of the store, the buzz of noise instantly disappeared and was replaced by the hum of soft music, so that the customers reading at various tables and cubicles throughout the section could concentrate. Obviously the store was using an invisible sound barrier, like the ones we had throughout the castle where our employees had offices in or near busy floors. And not only was the atmosphere different, but the people in here were generally another breed. They were those who had enough intellectual and cultural interest to reach this back part of the store, having pressed through the gauntlet of the more popular distractions along the way. I wondered if some of them might be a part of the small but growing movement of intellectuals who protested “the scourge of modern media” by reading
only
real books. It occurred to me that Lynn would be a good candidate for that movement, if she had been inclined toward activism (which she was not) or considered herself an intellectual (which she did not).

My guide ushered me to a table near a transparent case containing antique and collectible volumes, then proceeded to open it with his key card. He pulled out a book with a cordovan leather cover that sagged down around his fingers as he carried it over and put it in front of me.