Synners (18 page)

The Beater snapped to attention. She shrugged at his alarmed expression.

"Maybe Joslin was fucking an earth-mover, and they caught her at it. You figure it out, son." She paused.
"Can
you figure it out?"

"Some of it," he said slowly. "I think."

She grabbed his shirt again, closer to the collar this time. "Then you better fucking tell me what's going on."

He shook his head, pulling her hand off. "Not till I find something out for sure. I'll talk to Rivera." He started to get up, and she seized the waistband of his pants, yanking hard.

"Fuck
Rivera and his mother, too, my man, you oughta be talking to
me!"

The Beater pulled away from her, shoving her back into her chair. "Goddammit, Gina, will you grow the fuck up? What do you think this is, a hit-and-run? We lost EyeTraxx, it's over! The corporations took over the world, that's not my fault! Mark spent the last twenty-five years toxed, and now he's paying the price for it. Nothing stays the same, Gina, nothing works forever. If I don't like it, that's too bad. If
you
don't like it, that's
still
too bad."

She stared up at him darkly. "All I wanna know is just what it is I don't like. And how bad is 'too bad.' "

The Beater pressed his lips together. "Just do the videos. Just do the videos and hope for the best."

He stood on the lift with his back to her.

She sat for a while, thinking nothing, the pit so much empty space around her. In the old days at EyeTraxx, they'd have killed to get something like this. Or the Beater might have. Operating out of a converted warehouse hadn't made much difference to the videos. Sometimes they'd all been practically on top of each other, especially when the groups came in. Valjean and that cape, the crazy skiffle-revival group, the Little Cares; Vlad had done most of their videos, usually bouncing one of his seven kids on his knee while they all watched a rough cut on flatscreen. Galen had laid Vlad off early, and when Vlad had gone, he'd taken the Little Cares with him in a show of solidarity that had lasted through one more video, a gypsy production, and when it had failed, they'd all dropped out of sight.

Kim had gone next, Galen insisting they were losing money like crazy, and Jolene had stomped out after her. Kim had taken off for parts unknown, but Jolene was still around, picking up the work wherever she could. Guerstein had been Galen's final cut, Guerstein who did news like other people did dope, and that left just the three of them, the way it had been in the beginning, except that someone else owned them now, and Galen partitioned the warehouse and rented out three-fourths of it for storage. And that had lasted something over a year before the real end came.

It was strange, but sometimes she couldn't remember what it had been like; it was almost as if those years had never happened. Except for Mark; that was where the mileage really showed.

Just do the videos and hope for the best.

Sure. Do the videos. Do it
their
way. She looked around the pit. This was a place to make commercials, and fool with feature releases, and maybe play a few nifty games, but it wasn't rock'n'roll. Rock'n'fuckin'roll. Jesus. Yah, what the hell, we'll just put
that
in a nice clean box and keep it business, keep it all business, and maybe she'd go out of her mind in the nice clean box.

Grow the fuck up.
She might give the Beater that one, but she wouldn't give him the rest of it, at least not until she knew what it was. If you had to surrender, you at least ought to get to know what you were surrendering to. They owed her that much, Mark most of all.

Just do the videos. Hope for the best. Wanna jam? Can you top it, lov
er?
Not today.

She had just stepped out into the hall when the door directly across from her own opened, and she was face-to-face with the guy she'd punched. He froze, staring at her as if he thought she was going to pop him again. That was a good one. Or maybe he wanted to pick a fight, get his own back on her. He didn't look like the type, but you never knew. Maybe she should offer him a free shot.

Or maybe she should pop him again, for staring. "You want something?"

He shook his head wordlessly. His face looked pretty swollen, and there were three or four flesh-tone squares spotting his cheek.

"You know you can get toxed on that shit?" she said. He blinked at her uncomprehendingly, and she tapped her own cheek.

"Stuff builds up in your system, and you get off. Watch
out,
it can make you a little stupid."

Now he looked thoughtful; probably trying to decide whether he was toxed or not. Life was pretty fucking hard when you couldn't tell the difference.

"Wait!" he called.

She turned to him disinterestedly. "Yah?"

"I was just wondering . . ." He came out a little farther into the hall, touching his wounded face. "I was just wondering why you hit me."

"It was a mistake, all right? You got in the way."

"I see." He shrugged. "Well, then, why did you want to hit the other guy? Or anybody?"

"Is that supposed to be important to you?"

"I thought that since I wasn't going to get an apology, I might get an explanation."

Gina laughed. "You want a lot, don't you? Homeboy, you just keep asking. Who knows, maybe someday someone'll put an egg in your beer."

He almost looked like he understood. Hell, maybe he did. She headed toward the elevators.

"You're good," Manny said, resting a hand on the covered tray in front of him on the table. "There's really no question about that, never has been. You do good commercials, but you're not doing enough of them."

Sitting across from him, Gabe eyed the cover on his own tray. You didn't eat while Manny talked. First, Manny had to explain to you why he would sully his lunch hour with a subordinate. LeBlanc had once suggested making lunch with Manny an Olympic event.
Well call it the biathlon—first, you
see how much torture you can absorb, then you see how much food you
can eat in his presence before you vomit. Right? We need that, right?

Gabe had to press a finger on his injured cheek to keep from laughing.
Watch out, it can make you a little stupid.
He shifted in his chair, accidentally pressing his cheek harder.

"And checking the time logged on each assignment, anyone can see you're taking too long on the commercials you
do
produce." Manny stared at him evenly, waiting for an answer.

"I'll try to pick up the pace," he managed, barely moving his lips. His voice sounded strange and distant, as if he were speaking from behind a character facade in a wannabee program.

"Gabe. Trying isn't good enough." Manny shook his head slowly. Like a bad actor in a camp movie, Gabe thought; the whole situation seemed more and more unreal. Except for the throbbing in his face, which had begun again in hot earnest. "You're just going to have to
do
it, before the next quarterly figures go Upstairs. I can just about guarantee that when they graph your time spent against your number of completed assignments, they'll start talking personal audit. That's everything you've got in memory, on chip, in long-term storage. They'll want to see it all, and they'll question every requisition you've made in the past two years. You'll have to explain and justify everything, completed projects, fragments, the whole thing."

Manny paused to let him digest that one, but all he could think about now was the aroma that had started to seep out from under the covered tray in front of him. It turned his stomach. He slipped another patch out of his shirt pocket and applied it to his cheek. The throbbing receded after a few moments, but the smell of the food became even more nauseating. Something fried, he thought, besides himself.
Watch out, it can make you a little
stupid.

"And if you're thinking of dumping everything you have, you'd better reconsider." Manny leaned forward, bracketing his own tray with his forearms. "As low as your numbers are, a bare cupboard will look very suspicious. They could get the idea you've been working on some project of your own, unrelated to the job. I don't have to tell you what will happen if they think you've been abusing corporate equipment." Manny's serious expression changed suddenly. "Is everything all right in your personal life?"

Gabe winced. What was he supposed to say?
Well, let's see, this morn
ing, my wife left me, and then I came to work and got punched in the face
by a complete stranger. Now I'm apparently toxed on painkillers I
shouldn't be toxed on, and they've made me a little stupid. Did you mean
besides that?

He became aware of the rather long moment that had passed since Manny's question and shrugged awkwardly. "Everyone has problems."

"Yes, I suppose," Manny said. "But I don't think you'd care to work under the conditions of a personal audit. You'd be monitored every moment. Even while you were sketching out the barest scenario, they'd be listening and watching on-line. Most people would find it impossible to work under those conditions, but the Upstairs Team would be expecting you to up your productivity. The Upstairs Team does not understand the creative individual, you see. Therefore, it's the responsibility of the creative individual to adjust, to be creative enough to learn how to play the game their way."

The game.
House of the Headhunters
rose up in his thoughts, fragmenting his concentration. He'd put on far too many patches trying to kill the pain in his face, he realized. That was what she had meant, the woman who hit him. A
little
stupid, that was a good one. Or as Marly would have said,
A
little
stupid, hotwire? Looks to me like they broke the stupid-stick on you.

Manny was looking at him oddly now, and he realized he was smiling. He turned it into a grimace and touched his face.

"Clooney told me Gina Aiesi hit you, is that right?" Manny said, resting one hand on the cover of his tray.

"Accident," Gabe said. "Just one of those dumb freak accidents."

"I see." Manny toyed with the handle on the cover. "You'll take what I've told you seriously, now, won't you, Gabe? I'd hate to see one of our best people get into difficulties after such a long career." He hesitated, and Gabe waited for him to hint that perhaps he needed a little consultation with Medical on the possibility of implants to improve his concentration. Instead Manny uncovered his tray, signaling the onset of actual eating.

Gabe followed suit and then sat there with his numbed, swollen jaw, looking down at the pork chop, the mashed potatoes, the corn on the cob, and the mixture of celery and carrot sticks.

"Ah," Manny said. "Direct from our executive kitchen. Rediscovery Cuisine is the one food trend I can really get my teeth into. So to speak." He favored Gabe with a cordial smile as he picked up the knife and fork and began to saw away on the pork chop.

The thugs that had been waiting in the alley, if it was an alley, came at them with the mindless savagery of machines set on
kill.
The program carried him through the motions. At least it wouldn't let him ruin the choreography, and the hotsuit compensated as much as it could for his lack of physical ability. But it wasn't up to his usual standards of verisimilitude.

Perhaps, he thought as Caritha took down some of the attackers with sting-shots from the cam, it was all the painkiller coming between him and the illusion. He was too aware of the sensors plucking at his nerves, delivering the simulated sensations of punches and kicks, both giving and getting, with more of the former, of course. The program didn't have a masochism setting.

What the hell, he thought, watching his fist smash dead center in the head of a shadowy figure. He had a little more experience with this than he'd had a couple of hours before. His face throbbed against the inside of the headmount, but the feeling was distant and painless, less immediate than the sensation of impact the sensors put to his knuckles and ran up his arm. When you hit someone, you were supposed to feel it yourself, after all, though the program made tough stuff out of you—taking a punch or giving one, you could just shake it right off. Like Marly; he had a glimpse of her jabbing her fist into a thug's midsection, doubling him over so she could give him a knee in the face. He fell back as another one threw liiinself at her from the side, slamming them both into a wall. They went down, and a moment later the thug was flying backwards, arms windmilling. Gabe stepped to meet him and managed a fair imitation of a karate chop to the back of his neck.

Marly saluted and then looked alarmed. Before she could shout a warning, he took a giant step to the right and clothes-lined the killer that had been about to take him down from behind. He turned to see how Caritha was doing.

She was having a ridiculous tug-of-war over the cam with the last of their attackers. Forcing his arms up high, she tried to kick him in the crotch, but he danced out of the way, still keeping a grip on the cam. Gabe took a step forward, but Marly was already flying past him. She tackled the thug from the side, and they all fell to the ground together with the two women on top. Gabe took another step toward them and then looked around.

The alley was empty again, except for the trash. Dutifully the hotsuit gave him the sensation of cold chills and goose bumps. He stared down the length of the alley, trying to discern if there might be one more. He didn't know; they were on blind-select. Cautiously he turned toward Caritha and Marly, who were still busy pounding the thug into the ground, and then felt the presence at his left elbow. One more, of course, the old just-when-youthought-you-were-done-you-got-a-surprise-fist-in-the-face ramadoola. He braced himself, and his face gave a sudden throb shot through with a sharp pain. The sensors in the headmount were far more limited than those in the 'suit, but he didn't think he could take even the limited illusion of another punch in the face.

He came around swinging fast and hard and felt the peculiar shock of connecting with nothing. He turned around quickly, fists up, but there was nobody to hit, no one next to him at all, but the sense of another presence remained strong. His jaw was throbbing nastily now, anticipating the blow.