Synners (56 page)

"Loophead,"
she called back. "What'ud you
think?"

Keely nodded his head to the beat, watching the shifting numbers settle into familiar synchronization. He could read numbers the way other people could read road signs; a gift.
"I feel
it." He glanced up at Ludovic, who had a wary look on his face. Fasten your seat belt, homeboy, it's gonna get weirder. "Turn it on."

Ludovic obeyed. The screen lit to blank white. Keely waited until he saw the dark spot start to gather in the center. "Okay, don't look at that till I tell you it's safe. There's some kind of funny subliminal shit there, bigger than old-style subliminal shit. Finds your trigger and pulls it. Got your hand on that plug? If it dives for me, I don't want to be there."

He could practically feel Ludovic getting hinky about it, but he didn't bother trying to reassure him. The laptop screen had split into three columns, and the numbers were moving hard, the fooler loop and the mirror twisting around and around somewhere in the system in a choreography that could outdance just about anything, at least for a little while.

"Glad someone's having a good time," he heard the Beater mutter.

Keely grinned, letting himself move to the beat. Jesus, but it felt good to do something
real.
"Yah," he said, "Yah, the wind can't blow everywhere at once, even a hurricane's got an eye to it."

"What if it isn't wind? What if it's fire?"

He glanced over at Gina, kneeling on the mattress watching him. She looked bad, worked over, and hung out to drip off. Yah. This one was for all of them.

"Fire burns everywhere at once," she said.

"Wrong," he said, grinning at the screen. Stealthy had found the gaps, and it was worming its way in now. Any minute they were going to look at the big screen and get a surprise. "Right in the center of the flame, it doesn't burn at all. Check it out sometime. The problem—" He glanced up at the wall monitor and laughed a little. Almost ready. "—the problem is getting to the center without getting singed on the way in, and that's only impossible in the real world. Keep your hand on that plug, my man."

But it was an unnecessary reminder. Old Ludovic had a stranglehold on that cable; he might have to remind the guy not to yank it too soon. And Stealthy was in now, really in. On the wall screen pinpoints of light winked in and out between the rapidly changing shadows, escaping the dark areas and anticipating the light ones.

"Check that," he said, pointing at the screen. "Fooling it into another frequency now. Just for long enough to get a message through. You still got those chips?"

There was no answer. Ludovic was gaping at the screen. Never mind, homeboy, it only
looks
simple.

"Gabe? The chips? The ladies. Marly and Caritha."

"What about them?"

"I
told
you, you're on, you and the ladies. I need them now like I never needed nothing in my life before." He sat back a little and unbuttoned his shirt. The sweat was starting to pour off him the way it always did when he was cranking hard. There was no fucking feeling in the world like this, he thought.

"Now?"
Ludovic said uncertainly.

He held out his hand, wiggling his fingers.

"All
of them?"

Keely felt a flash of irritation. "This is no time to get candy-assed, my man. I told you anything could be useful. Your ladies know how to get through shit. Now give 'em to me one at a time till I say stop or till they're gone, whichever comes first, and I hope we got enough."

Ludovic dropped the first chip into his palm. He flipped open a driveslot and pushed the chip into it. Stealthy's numbers doubled as it accepted the data, adjusted its range, and told it what the situation was and what it had to do now. In his mind's eye he could practically see the simulated ladies taking it all in, pumping themselves up.

A new line appeared at the bottom of the screen suddenly. The numbers were going too fast for even Keely's practiced eye to follow, racing left to right, but he recognized them the way he recognized his own face in the mirror.

"Stone the fucking crows at home!" he shouted. "This stuff s
infectedl"

From the corner of his eye, he saw Ludovic go pale and look at Gina.

"Whoa, not
that
way," he added quickly. "You got a dose of the Fish here. Didn't you know that? Guess not. God, no wonder your program was so goddamn beautiful. How come I couldn't see that when I hacked you, why didn't it show then?" He laughed. "Because it didn't want me to, that's why. Shit, I
got
to stop taking stupid pills. Oughta be real easy to break that habit now."

It felt as if the music was boiling in him. The little one with the sticks, Flavia, had come up behind him to look at the laptop screen. "You
read
that?" she said incredulously.

"The only thing you really have to know is the difference between on and off," he said. "Night and day. Right and left. In and out. Down and up. Beat and rest." The numbers began to slow, and he ejected the chip, holding out his hand for another. "However you want to think of it, that's the way it is, but you got to know the difference." He took the next chip Ludovic had dropped into his palm and slipped it into the drive. "I figure it's eighty percent sure the Fish is aware at least part of the time."

"Aware?" Ludovic said.

"Alive. Intelligent. Conscious. Knows where-to."

"A conscious virus," Gina said flatly. She got up and went over to sit near Ludovic, who was watching the screen again. Stealthy was shifting along with the virus now; some of the points were coming up in the shadowed areas, and instead of winking out, they seemed to melt away.

"The virus is taking over what it thinks is input from that terminal." Keely ejected the chip and held out his hand for another. He put it in, and the numbers gave a jerk, backtracked, and then waited. He ejected the chip and reached for another.

"Don't anybody ask me," Ludovic said a little weakly. "I'm just the supplier. I don't know what he does with it."

Keely laughed. "I smoke it. I
mainline
it. Do it again."

"Yah, I've seen 'em get this way," Gina said. "If we actually get to the Mimosa, you'll see
real
fucking maniacs."

Maniacs? She wanted to see a maniac? He stripped his shirt off, whipped it around over his head, and let it go. It sailed across the room and landed on the Beater, who was keeping his distance.

"Is it really that good?" Ludovic said, putting another chip in his hand.

Sweat was dripping into his eyes. He scoured it away with his fist. "You got a short memory. If we could run your head-mount and your hotsuit here, you'd fight me to do this."

Ludovic was silent for a moment. "Maybe."

"A
what?"
Sam said. She looked from the bottom left corner monitor where Art had parked his image to the cam next to it.

"It's a commercial," Art said again. "For body armor."

"That's got to be an encryption," Gator said, coming over from her work island. "Is it out of Phoenix or Alameda?"

"L.A."

Gator shook her head. "Dump it before it bites you."

"But it's clean," Art said.

"Nothing out of L.A. is clean now," Gator told him.

"It got here the same way I did," Art said, sounding insistent.

Gator frowned and turned to Fez, still sitting in her work island. Fez looked past her. "Sam? What do you think?"

Sam rolled her eyes. "God, ask me an easy one. I don't want that responsibility."

"Tough," Fez said mildly, getting up slowly and coming over to her.

Sam rubbed her forehead. "Art, can you tell anything else about it? Anything at all?"

Art's image froze for a moment. "It's something I used to know," he said finally.

"That's a major help," Sam muttered. She looked at the cam apologetically. "Sorry, Art. Gator's right, dump it. It might be harmless, but nobody ever got infected from not receiving something."

"Don't be so sure about that," Art said. "And you didn't let me finish. It's from Keely."

Sam felt her mouth drop open. "Are you
sure?"

"I told you, I know you, I know you
all."
Abruptly Art's image was replaced by a street scene, the pov panning from a row of vandalized storefronts to a grotesque thug with a spiked ring piercing his cheek and a serrated knife in one hand. He lunged, and it cut to the knife bouncing off another man's chest. Sam stared, feeling goose bumps sweep over her in multiple-assault waves.

"Sam?" Fez put a hand on her shoulder, bending to look at her.

"That's Gabe," she said, pointing at the second man. "That's my father."

The pov tracked him as he entered an office building. There was a sudden jump and flicker, and then he was sitting behind a desk, looking at a monitor. The pov cut to a shot of the screen over his shoulder.

YOU HAVE BEEN HACKED! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA AHAHAHAHA- HAAH!

"There are some things Gilding BodyShields won't protect you from," said a male voice faintly.

The image froze. "This is what it really says," Art said. The words on the man's screen melted, writhed, and suddenly reformed.

live n frfx 2 do SSW
Z-U + - xRs
dare
Leaky
GGF

"Leaky's the clincher," said Rosa. She was standing on Sam's right with Percy. "That's what his family used to call him. He was a bed wetter."

"Whack
that
family," Percy said darkly.

"What about the rest of it?" said Gator.

"Christ," Sam said, laughing. "Say it out loud. 'Live in
Fairfax
to do south-southwest.' We're due south-southwest of Fairfax. 'Zee-you over dare plus minus xRs.' Give or take however many hours. I have no idea what GGF is. Maybe 'gotta go, folks.' " She laughed some more, feeling her eyes starting to fill. "I guess he figured the one thing the virus wouldn't be able to read was his
accent."

"I wonder if that son of a bitch has been hiding out there all along," Rosa said. "If he's just been camped under some rubble all this time, I'm going to bash his brains in."

"The boys's always had far more talent than brains," Fez said. "Isn't that right, Sam?"

She nodded, wiping her eyes before they could overflow. She couldn't say why Gabe's image had appeared in the commercial Keely had sent, but knowing Keely, it had to mean he at least knew something about him. The ambiguity of the body armor bothered her, though; she couldn't decide whether it meant Gabe had been hurt in some way, and if he had, whether he would be all right.
There are some things Gilding BodyShields won't
protect you from.
Her eyes began to fill again.

———

Gabe was watching when the fluctuating points of light suddenly began winking in and out much more slowly. He tightened his grip on the wire.

"Yank it!" Keely yelled. Gabe held up the plug, letting out a relieved sigh. The kid looked impressed. "That's what I call
reflexes."

"I yanked it as soon as I saw the lights changing," Gabe confessed. "Just a hunch." He shrugged; actually, it had been more of an accident. The feed had come out as soon as his hand had tightened on it.

"Good for you. Sometimes all you got is one good guess." Keely stretched one arm and then the other over his head. "God, that felt great. It was ..." He paused, looking puzzled. "Great." Then his eyelids fluttered, and he fell backwards, Flavia catching him just before his head could hit the floor.

"Jesus!" Gabe leaped over the laptop to kneel down next to him. He felt for a heartbeat, trying to not to panic. The virus couldn't kill anyone without sockets, it couldn't be
that
bad—

"Just guessing myself," Gina said tonelessly, "I'd say he fainted from hunger. When's the last time
you
ate?"

Gabe looked at her, startled, taking notice for the first time of the ache that had been growing in his stomach over a period of hours. "Christ, you had to bring it up." He turned to Flavia.

"No food here," she said. "But I got a car. Wait till dark. We'll go shopping."

"You've changed," Sam said, trying not to fidget. She still couldn't believe he was there.

Gabe nodded. "So have you. Changed." He glanced over at the group, where Keely was stuffing his face from a seal-pack and giving an account of the impossible all-night drive in a car—a real car, not a hotwired rental— from Fairfax, mostly through backyards, it sounded like, to Venice. Sam couldn't imagine driving without GridLid, as clunky as it had always been. Not having any idea of what might be even half a mile ahead sounded like an easy way to get killed to her, especially in the dark; Gabe had to remind her that most of the streets were parking lots except for stretches the Guard had managed to clear with bulldozers. To let the emergency vehicles get through.

But of course. Sam felt foolish. You didn't even have to go up Palos Verdes to see the smoke from downtown L.A. Welcome back to the Age of Smog. She started to say something to Gabe and saw that his gaze had gone to Gina Aiesi again. The woman was sitting on the floor near the remains of Jasm's homunculus, head back against the wall, eyes closed. A little ways away from her, the Beater stood by alone, as if he were waiting for someone to tell him what he could do with himself.

"I forgot to tell you the good news the last time I saw you," Gabe said suddenly, still looking at Gina. "Your mother left me."

There was a pause, and then they both laughed.

"I'm sorry," Sam said, putting a hand to her mouth. "I don't know why
I'm
laughing, I don't know why it hit me funny."

"The shock of the mundane," her father said. He dug something out of his pocket. "And I got this today. Or yesterday, now."

She took the slip of paper from him. "What is it?"

"It's a ticket. I got a ticket for riding my bicycle on the sidewalk."

Sam burst out laughing again. "You rode a
bicycle?"

"Actually, it was stolen."

"You
stole
a
bicycle? My father
stole a
bicycle?"
She laughed harder, and then she was hugging him, and he was hugging her back awkwardly, as if he had forgotten how.