Synners (28 page)

"I know," Rosa said wearily. "I can always get more stuff, but it's the stiff. If I just leave him there, he really will be a stiff. If they find him dead, they'll figure one of us killed him to keep him from talking. Won't that be a pretty pickle."

Fez sighed. "How about the gypsy jobs you've been doing? What are the chances any of those turning you?"

"Who can say?" Rosa spread her hands. "If I find a welcoming committee waiting for me, I'll jump and get a message to you later on the answering machine. Otherwise, I'll get back here with Jones as fast as I can."

"Change rentals!" Fez called after her as she went out the door.

"Pheasant Sam." Sam shook her head. "Maybe it
isn't
me. Adrian's translation—"

Fez shook his head. "A pheasant
is
a game bird." He moved back to the other screen and scrolled all the way to the end.

"Keely really did talk, then, didn't he?" she said.

"Not willingly, I'm sure. Probably in a drug-induced stupor."

"The police can't do that. I mean, they're not supposed to."

"Nobody said the police had to do it. He might be in a hospital." Fez paused. "If Keely knows your actual first name, 'pheasant' could be a slurred or garbled version of that."

Sam tried to hear it in her mind, the transformation of
Cassandra
into
pheasant.
It seemed farfetched, but stranger things had come to pass, she thought, looking at Fez's system—

"Shit," she said. "It
isn't
Pheasant Sam. It's Fezzansam—
Fez and Sam."

Fez went so white she thought he was going to faint. "Oh, my. It's one of those good-news days, isn't it?" He was about to say something else when he did a double take at something at the bottom of the screen.
"Oh,
my. Did Art tell you he was going to email this information to you?"

"No!" She jumped up and ran over to him. "I mean—" She tried to think. "When I talked to him, he said he was going to copy me, and I didn't even think of—oh, Jesus, why did he
do
that?"

She went to the other screen. Adrian surrendered the chair to her. "I'll blow it up from here. I'll send a delete to the mailbox."

"Don't!" Fez said. "Don't get on-line. You can only delete mail under your own name, and someone could be watching for any variation of Pheasant Sam. Including plain old Sam."

She sat back with a groan. "It wouldn't be under my name anyway. I forgot. All my mail's forwarded to Rosa, and I don't know her password. We've got to get a message to her, to tell her to delete the mail right away."

"Adrian can do it," Fez said.

She looked up at the boy in amazement. "How? In Mandarin?"

"I can touch-type, and I can write," Adrian told her as they changed places again. "The lesion left writing intact. You'll just have to dictate to me, because I won't be able to read any of it.

Sam watched his fingers move easily over the keyboard as Fez dictated a short message to Rosa. "Now," Fez added as Adrian pressed
send,
"we'll just have to hope the traffic's running in her favor."

An hour later Rosa called to tell them that Jones was gone, her laptop was missing, and the mailbox was empty.

It wasn't one of the officially sanctioned break times, so he had the whole Common Room to himself. The whole idea of officially sanctioned break times had always rankled him anyway. Besides, what was Manny going to do to him if he found out, put a disciplinary note in his file? It was incredibly humorous to him now that he had once feared a mere disciplinary note.

As of a few days ago, he was fearing nothing. The only thing he was feeling now was a peculiar off-balance numbness, the same kind of sensation he'd had in the bayou portion of
Head-hunters,
when he'd been up to his neck in cold swamp water, waiting for the voodoo bad guys to pull him out and crucify him on the cypress tree.

His first impulse, after seeing the hacker's final message, had been to download everything to chip and clear out. Marly and Caritha would have been barely accessible to him—his system at home wasn't sophisticated enough to handle anything more than a standard game. But at least he would have saved them.

After getting over the initial shock—
Rivera spot you meeting
—he had reconsidered. The only way Manny could have spotted him meeting—with Marly and Caritha, he assumed—was to have this hacker, whoever it was, crack him, which was illegal surveillance according to Diversifications' own company bylaws. Which meant Manny couldn't actually
do
a damned thing with the information. If Manny reported him to the Upstairs Team, he'd have to mention how he'd found out in the first place. Gabe might still lose his job, but Manny would almost certainly be fired, too. Even if Manny had done it with the blessing of the Upstairs Team, all Gabe would have to do would be to file a grievance with the Labor Board; upper management would quietly throw Manny to the wolves to avoid a scandal.

Stalemate, at least until Manny figured out how to maneuver. Working faster than he ever had in his life, Gabe had downloaded everything to do with Marly and Caritha and filled the system with commercials. If Manny had had him cracked just to research a case for a personal audit, then let the audit come, then. They'd find nothing but story boards, roughs, finished spots, and inventories of props. Even if they were suspicious, Manny would look like an idiot.

The most surprising thing about his plan, Gabe thought, staring unseeingly at the dataline screens in the wall, was that he had gone through with it. He
had
filled the system up with new commercials, all kinds of spots, body armor, pharmaceuticals, clothing—whatever had been waiting for him in his assignment queue. It was as if he'd been some kind of machine, cranking them out, not even wondering if he'd be able to come up with anything, just
doing
it. Doing what he had to do. Apparently he wasn't as burned out as he'd thought. Either that, or a touch of danger was exactly what the old creative generator had needed to get it fired up again.

So he'd done commercials and more commercials, waiting for something to happen, waiting for a note from Manny to appear in his interoffice emailbox asking him to please come to Manny's office, waiting for Manny himself to show up at the door to his pit. And nothing had happened. He hadn't even seen Manny around the building.

Maybe Manny didn't actually know anything at all. Maybe the hacker had covered it all up somehow. He had to consider that, too, Gabe thought, that the hacker's warning had come early enough to give him a chance to clear his system of anything incriminating. If so, that meant he'd be able to load Marly and Caritha back in again eventually, and he'd be a little more cautious about it this time, keep the time/productivity ratios a little more even, if he could. Because he shouldn't have to lose everything all at once. He shouldn't have to be left with
nothing.

It was fortunate, he thought, that he hadn't seen Catherine in days, either, not since she'd announced she was leaving him. One look at him would have told her that something other than the end of their marriage was bothering him. But things had gone back to a semblance of normal at the condo, too. She was sealed up in her office, and he was tiptoeing in and out of the guest bedroom, all as usual. Apparently her house hadn't come onto the market yet. He imagined she would let him know when it was time to move, and perhaps he should have been out looking for an apartment, but if he hadn't let Manny stampede him, then Catherine wasn't going to do it either.

Behind him he heard the Common Room doors whisper open.
"There
you are!"

He jumped at the sound of LeBlanc's voice, spilling cold coffee all over his lap.

"Sorry," LeBlanc said with an embarrassed laugh. "I didn't realize you were in media trance. What are you doing down here all by yourself when everyone's up on Mirisch's folly watching the show?"

He blinked at her, dabbing at his pants with a napkin. "Mirisch's folly?"

"That stupid platform terrace on twenty." She handed him another napkin from the dispenser on the table.

"There's a show up there?"

"Sort of. That woman is up there, and she says she's gonna jump."

Gabe shook his head. "What woman?"

"The one that hit you. She's sitting on the rail, and she says she's gonna jump. I thought you'd like to see that."

"She's going to commit
suicide?"

"Yah, she really hates it here. No, actually, she's got this harness on with these long elastic cords, it's some kind of stunt—" LeBlanc pulled him out of the chair. "Come on, you have to see it to believe it."

They were really turning out for this, Gina thought, looking at the crowd on the terrace. Two security guards were trying to keep them all back from her, and some ditz named Clooney was running back and forth trying to be in charge. The security guards were arguing as to whether they should call for reinforcements or prove they could handle this themselves.
Christ deliv
er us all from security guards with something to prove,
she thought. A little ways down from her, Valjean was leaning on the rail, tapping his foot impatiently while his cape went into tile-deformation frenzy. She could practically hear his thoughts:
Are you gonna do this fucking fall, or are you
gonna wait for a bigger fucking audience?

She checked the connections on the harness she was wearing, making sure the cords were secure on the stone rail, and tightened the band on the minicam strapped to her forehead. Canadaytime and their fucking signature image. Last time she'd had to go feet first off the roof of the old Eye Traxx warehouse building, and Valjean had complained that the fall hadn't been
really
long enough. It would be long enough this time. The bungis would stretch fifteen stories at least.

"You've got to seal this place off, make all these people leave, and mount a serious rescue operation!" Clooney was yelling at one of the guards. A sudden gust of wind whipped the corner of his large, floppy shirt collar right into his open mouth. The guard shoved him aside.

"Madam,
please
get off that rail and come inside
now!"
he shouted at her. "Don't make us have to call your supervisor up here."

"Whoa, my fucking
supervisor,
I'm trembling in my fucking traces over that one," she muttered, looking out at West Hollywood and the Santa Monica Mountains. Like they weren't going to tell Rivera about this if she just went along quietly. She'd told the Beater when the deal with Diversifications had gone through, you work for a large corporation, they'll expect you to believe all kinds of stupid shit.

And what kind of stupid shit did she believe—that getting eight holes punched in Mark's head was going to crank his battery back to high? That if she went along with him, the world was going to be new again?

If you agree, you go tomorrow, you and Mark. To Mexico. And if you
say no, they'll find a reason to get rid of you, Gina. I know it for a fact.

Bend over, right now, while they're still asking nicely.

He wants you with him. And if you say no, he'll go anyway because
that's the deal. Rivera didn't want me to give you much time to think
about it, or to try to talk Mark out of it.

The guy she'd popped appeared among the crowd on the terrace, looking dazed and confused. Must be his natural state, she thought.

If you go with him, he can make it. It's the one chance he's got to keep
from melting down, but if you go with him, he'll make it for certain. For
what you are to each other, even if you don't know what that is.

So how much stupid shit did she believe, and how much of it was stupid shit? She'd pounded on Mark's door, but he hadn't been in that fucking pit. Lost somewhere in videoland; in the stupidsphere.

Who's gonna find him if you don't, Gina?

She'd almost smacked the Beater for that one. For that, and for sitting on it until that morning, when it was too late to say but one thing. But she wouldn't say it while the Beater stood there waiting for it, she wouldn't say a goddamn word to him. Let him crawl for it over forty-seven miles of barbed wire. She looked around the crowd on the terrace again, her gaze snagging briefly on the punching bag. The Beater hadn't crawled up here yet. Neither had Mark.

Valjean straightened up and threw one end of the cape over his shoulder. Cloud shapes were scudding through the material at high speed. What was she waiting for? She had to do his stupid fucking
fall.
Get it planted good in her mind, so when they drilled her skull, it would come out of the holes like the perfect dream, and she wouldn't need the footage from the cam strapped on her head. She stood up on the rail, balancing carefully, ignoring the guards, who were shouting at her again. "Wait!"

The punching bag had broken out of the crowd, coming toward her. He looked like he was going to be sick any moment. She stuck her fists on her hips. "What."

He looked around self-consciously. "Ah . . . are you sure you know what you're doing? There's a flying harness in the pit, you know."

Funny; she could almost believe he cared about what was going to happen next. A screwy idea popped into her head. "How'd you like to get even?"

His face scrunched up. "What?"

"For the punch I gave you."

"You're just doing this for the attention!" bellowed the ditz Clooney, actually shaking a finger at her. She shook a different finger back at him.

"You wanna get even or not? Make up your mind. I gotta go one way or the other, I jump or you push me."

He looked green with horror.

She waved a hand in dismissal. Nobody would push you when you asked for it. Screwy fucking idea anyway. Turning her back to him, she took a deep breath and looked down to intensify the vertigo. The terrace had enough overhang so she wouldn't leave a long red smear on the side of the building. Considerate of them to build it that way. She wondered what it had been built for as she stepped off the rail.

On the third bounce she figured what the fuck. She'd do it.