Synners (61 page)

He was looking across the twentieth-floor terrace at Gina standing on the railing. She had the harness on, but he saw that the cords weren't connected to the railing this time. When she went over, she would be falling for real.

For . . . 'real'? Could it be 'real'
this
way, in here?

Oh, yah; it would be different, maybe, but no less
real,
a virtual fall and a virtual impact, but when she hit bottom, the effect would amount to something real.

Did she know?

He couldn't tell for certain. She seemed to know and not know at the same time, and something suggested she would accept it either way.

Schrodinger s Gina.

Gabe frowned; where had
that
come from? He took a step toward her.

"Floor's mined," Caritha said offhandedly.

Gina looked over her shoulder at him, her gaze both meeting him and going through him in an odd way. What was
she
seeing, he wondered. Did she even realize she was on the railing? What was
her
context?

You got to know your context, because you're only gonna get one shot
at getting into it.

Yes, but if she thought it was one thing, and he thought it was another, then what was the
real
context? He burned with impatience and frustration. How was he supposed to know what to do?

"Whatever's right," Gina said. "How'd you like to get even?"

Even? He could almost have laughed. There was nothing even about Gina.

The loose harness connections on the rail swayed slightly in the breeze.

"Make up your mind," she said. "I gotta go one way or the other, I jump or you push me."

No, that was wrong, he thought wildly, but he had no way to tell her. It wasn't in her context.

"Gettin' late, hotwire," Marly said. Her voice sounded just a bit strange to him now. "Already know you can't argue. What's next?"

He turned in what he thought was her direction, and the images rushed over him.

Go somewhere. Go
somewhere.

Floor's mined.

Change for the machines.

MORE DRUGS.

Run Personnel run.

Take a little walk with me.

Why the fuck didn't you watch where you were going?

The desire on the terrace was electric. Gina started to turn away from him. The scene blurred in front of him, briefly became an arc of stony shore around a lake. He was back on the terrace before he could even be startled, and he saw Gina's knees bend as she prepared to jump.

Somewhere, someone was laughing.
If you can't fuck it and it doesn't
dance—

He shoved the thought away.
If you can't argue, and you can't stop it. . .

Last thing they'd expect.

Hey, hotwire—you're an asshole.

Yah, but I'm trying to quit.

Just as her feet left the rail, he hurled himself forward and caught her in midair, at the moment before she dropped.

Port in a storm, nowhere else to go. That bother you?

She already knew the answer to that, but he told her anyway. They toppled onto the sagging mattress in a frantic, urgent tangle.

That's what I've got: a port in a storm,
he thought.

That's more than most people are left with when the smoking lamp
starts to burn low.

The feel of her was even more tangible in this state, if that was possible. The sense-memory of her T-shirt against his hands was wildly vivid, the warmth of her skin a shocking contrast, and then the taste and smell of her flooded him, carrying him to her like a hurricane tide.

Her physical strength had caught him unawares, in spite of that punch she'd given him. The power in her muscles had been astonishing. Or maybe it had been the force of her passion that had taken him by surprise, so different from long-ago, bloodless couplings with Catherine, no paler for being dim in the recollection.

Or maybe it had been the force of his own passion that had been the real stunner that night (was the real stunner
now);
until then he had all but forgotten that there was even the potential for passion inside him, let alone at this intensity. But he
could,
could then, could now—

We do what we do. We do it because we can.
The words came to him now clearly, what he had only been able to understand in a primitive, gutlevel way from the sound of her breathing in the dark.
I'm lucky I can
dance, and so are you, and we're lucky we can dance together now. Take a
little walk with me. A little traveling music, please. Here it comes. Be there
for you. What does this remind you of, an open window or an open wound
. . .

The response poured from him without his willing it.

Well, the fact is, Gina, sometimes it looks like one and sometimes like
the other, and it's really a combination of both. But what really matters,
Gina, what
really
matters is, I climbed on in, because ninety percent of life
is being there, and the other ten percent is being there on time, and it was
time. And it
still
is, Gina. It
still is
time. But do I really have to tell you
that?

No, he hadn't. But it had been good for her to hear it. She'd wanted to hear it.

Don't tell me who my enemy is; tell me who it
isn't.

Okay, Gina; whatever works, whatever s right.

"How the fuck
did
you find me?"

"It wasn't that hard," Gabe said. "Not once I had the right associations."

There was a pause on the brink of one moment before the next.

"Jesus, yes, we've both got that, Ludovic. Run with it from there."

From there to anywhere, he thought. He could do that. What else did he have?
Take a little walk with me.

Right; that, too—a walk he'd taken, a way. Go
somewhere.
And what else?
Change for the machines.

MORE DRUGS.

Watch out, it can make you a little stupid.
Definitely got that, Gabe thought, bemused; definitely got a little stupid.

So? The kid said
anything
could be useful.

How about the C-word? Commitment.

Lover, sometimes that's
all
you got. Remember?

Sometimes, Gina. But not this time.

———

"All right," Mark said lightly, "I gave you that one. Now you can say I should have known better. That's okay, Gina. I got a million of them—"

—and they ain't all for you.

Gabe caught the rest of it, even if Gina hadn't. Apprehension hummed within him like a spinning sawblade.
Can't get her on a direct approach,
he thought, urgency rising in him and trying to become panic.
Got to go at her
through the weak link, and that would be me.

"Knock that shit off, hotwire," Marly said seriously, "unless you just want to paint a bull's-eye on your forehead and hold still for whatever's coming up next."

They were in the dark hallway again, flattened against the wall. But the hallway was different somehow, not quite right, and yet not totally unfamiliar.

"You're good. There's really no question about that, never has been."

"That's your cue, hotwire," Caritha said, and gave him a shove.

He was sitting at the table in Manny's office, and the smell of fried food was sickeningly strong.

"This was how I got you last time," Manny said. "Playing with your friends."

Gabe tried to look at Marly and Caritha, but his head refused to turn.

"See, you all tend to do the same things, gravitate to the familiar." Manny leaned forward, the bogus concern creasing his face as nauseating as the fried-meat stink. "You're so utterly predictable, it isn't worth the bother of plotting a decision tree for you. But our kind isn't. No trap doors, no twenty-story drops this time. Sticky field."

Gabe could feel it, sucking at him in the chair like quicksand. The everpopular sticky field, mainstay of numerous B-features. Like the holo-tolaser trick, something else that was impossible only in the real world.

Something tugged at the edge of his thoughts, the bare, dim shadow of some idea, or—

Manny got up and came around the table to him. "And though you didn't ask, yes, it
is
me. Manny Rivera. After a fashion."

After a fashion.
In spite of everything Gabe wanted to laugh. Poor old affected Manny Rivera, posturing even in this state. Although after the initial shock, Manny had probably taken to this like home. Anyone who could survive in the belly of the corporate beast would probably find this existence all but natural.

"Me," Manny said, "not that pitiful meat that walked and talked and played the villain in the set-piece of your life. Just as this is
you,
isn't it, Gabe, not the meat that breathes so slowly in some other reality. You left that behind to be where you are now, and it does breathe so slowly, doesn't it? Slowly, but it still breathes. Or can't you feel it anymore?"

The sticky field increased its pull on him and scrambled inside, trying to free himself, to get some sense of his body and his connection to it, because if he couldn't, there'd be nowhere to go if this failed, nowhere to go when it was over.

I can't remember what it feels like to have a body.
No? Even after everything else? He wanted to scream in frustration, but he had nothing to scream with.

"Your life's all in your mind, isn't it? Good at dreaming, not so good at waking up—pretty bad, in fact. Stone-home bad, as they say in the world, the one you don't live in right now. You were right—you
are
the weak link. It's not hard to get to you. You just have to hold still long enough, and even I can work on you, even
I
can become so important that I can feed you a line of shit that will tie you in knots."

I can't remember what it feels like to have a body.
All right, then, where was Marly, where was Caritha?

"Not something we can help you with, hotwire," Caritha said apologetically.

"Of course not," Manny agreed. "No body, no hotsuit to put on it."

He strained to look down at himself. No body and no hotsuit, but the familiar baroque pattern of snaky lines and geometric sensor shapes
was
there. At last the permanent tattoo.

I can't remember what it feels like to have a body.

Great people leave their marks. Everyone else is left
with
marks—

. . . with
visual
marks . . .

Manny was leaning forward to take it when Gina's face burst on him like a thunderstorm.

"Can't
remember?
Well, lover, it's a lot like
this."

His face exploded with pain. The secondary hit of his body on the carpet was negligible, but he felt it clearly this time, his lower back hitting first, then shoulders and head, his heels bouncing a few times. From behind closed eyes he felt his mouth stretching in a smile.

"Jesus," said Keely. He knelt down to touch the left side of Gabe's face.

"What happened?" Sam clutched the unit on her thigh, her other hand resting on the wire leading to the needles in her stomach. "What's doing that, why is that happening? Keely, I can't read the fucking screen the way you can, goddammit!" One little yank; if that was what it would take to save her father's life, she would do it and hope it wasn't already too late, if that weird swelling in his face didn't mean he'd stroked out—

Keely was at the monitor again, scrolling the output backwards, forwards, and backwards again. Then he looked over the top of the monitor at Jasm, who was squatting next to Gina. "Jazz, look at her hands. Are her knuckles bruised?"

Jasm checked and then held up Gina's limp right arm. "You got it. Bruised and skinned a little." She glanced at Gabe and then did a double take. "Keely, something else." She leaned over Gina and pulled Gabe's shirt up. "You want to guess at what that is?"

Keely stared in silence at the sinuous lines and shapes pressed into Gabe's flesh. Then he blew out a long breath and shook his head.

"Keely, I'm gonna tear your fucking head off," Sam said tearfully. Fez put his arms around her, and she twisted away, keeping one hand on the wire leading to the needles.

"It's all right," Keely told her, laughing a little. "It's just the best case of stigmata I've ever seen. Actually, it's the
only
one I've ever seen with my own eyes, so let's say it's the best one I know about."

"Shit," said Gator, "they must be seriously hysterical in there."

"Wouldn't you be?" Keely said. He smiled at Sam. "Gina just belted your father a good one."

"Whack to that," said Percy, standing over Gabe and rubbing his own face. "Whack on sight when you been to the same party."

"What about those marks on him, what are those?" she demanded.

"From his hotsuit, of course," Keely said matter-of-factly. "You've worn hotsuits a time or two, you ought to recognize the marks they leave. Your father just discovered his whole body's a hotsuit, at least as far as his mind's concerned."

Sam stared at her father, not quite believing. The marks on his skin were fresh and deep, his swelling cheek looked painful, and the expression on his face said the best dream of his life had just gotten even better.

I feel pain.

That's sober as I remember it.

"Anybody can take shelter," Marly said. "Can you take on someone else's pain?"

"You're gonna have to try, at least," Caritha said, before Gabe could answer.

He was in somebody's living room, somebody's enormous, endless living room, currently filled with a glittery array of people eating, drinking, wandering in and out, watching the multiple screens on the walls, giving the thing in the center of the room a wide, courteous berth.

Gabe blinked at it. He remembered a creature eight feet tall, part ersatz samurai and part machine-fantasy, but this thing was so much more overdone that he was having trouble keeping it in focus. He thought he could catch glimpses of Marly at certain angles, Caritha at others; sometimes when it turned a particular way, he was sure it was Gina he saw within it, other times Mark, or Markt, and occasionally even himself.