by Pat Cadigan
Fly Eyes gets up and starts trying to pull me out and then there’s this big beefy woman in fur underwear clamped on my other arm, saying, “Okay, love, I’m ready for you.”
Fly Eyes pulls her hand off me. “We’ve changed our minds, thank you.”
The fetishizer grabs my shirt. “Make an appointment. This is my time we’re on, now.”
“You don’t say it’s your time until she says it’s your time.” Fly Eyes pulls harder on my arm. My shirt seams start to groan, or maybe it’s me, because I’d like to know what the hell my usual is, and if I’ve got a usual how could I forget that even after electroshock?
I pull loose from both of them. “Changed my mind on everything,” I say. “Catch on to you later when I’m feeling more like myself.” That’s the truth.
“Frigid!” they yell together, and I feel a jump inside, like I almost remember something. Then it’s gone. Goddam electroshock. I gotta remember never to do that again.
The sign out in front of the run-down wannabee parlor says, First-Run Features Available! New Releases Daily! Come In and **CHEKK** Our ENORMOUS Selection!
Who do they think they’re fooling? They won’t even spring for holo display and they expect anyone to believe they’ve got first-run features? Sure.
I go on in anyway, and the inside looks like they moved out and forgot to tell anyone—except for the screens on the walls, there’s just a guy who’s had a badder day than I have, slouched behind a counter. He’s got the worst orange home dye-job all over. I mean, he looks like Attack of the Breathing Carrot. You don’t see a lot of idiots going into deliberate beta-carotene poisoning these days. I’m not too sure this idiot is seeing me. Each vomit-green eye is looking in a different direction and his face is all screwed up like he’s sitting on a bed of nails.
The screens on the walls don’t seem to be playing any first-run stuff, just the junk you can get anywhere. You gotta be some serious wannabee case to come into a place like this. Or a snitch.
While I’m walking around looking at the screens, this woman stumps stiff-legged out of a door at the back and goes over to the desk. She doesn’t say a word, just slams down a keystrip. He slides it off the desk and tucks it away somewhere and she stumps out, rebounding off each side of the door frame before she makes the street. Watching this,
I suddenly get this strange little rush, like Did my life just pass before my eyes?
(Karma-gram. Shit, I wish I’d stop that.)
I look at the orange guy. He still doesn’t say anything so I go over to him. He hardly knows I’m there. Well, yah, why should he bother, the bottom dropped out of the wannabee trade a long time ago and he probably can’t figure out why this place is still in business. Any wannabees who can pay the freight own their own systems that let them be the hero in the movie. And the ones that can’t don’t have enough to rent anything but the junk and, shit, who’d wannabee junk?
Did I really just ask that question?
Then I want to bang my head on the counter a few times, just to see what I can shake loose, because it comes to me that maybe this is the place where you can say the secret word and get something nobody else has. Like Sovay. Or anyone else who’s been sucked lately, like a cop.
“What you got in first-run?” I say.
It’s like he wakes up. “Who wants to know?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Means what it means. Who wants to know?”
I don’t like his attitude. “You ask Anwar that when he comes in?”
Now I get a reaction, but I really hate it. He’s over the counter and one bad orange hand is around my throat. “I’m Anwar. Who the fuck are you supposed to be?”
And just when I think it can’t get any better, the door to the back opens again and Coney Loe comes out.
For a second he stares and I stare and Anwar keeps on squeezing. Then Coney comes over and I’m struck by lightning.
* * *
The feel of the floor against my face and knees and the backs of my hands was solid enough to let me know that I was awake this time and back in conscious control. But the control felt shaky and fragile, as if any sudden moves would send me plummeting down into dormancy and bring Marya up again. That was all right; I didn’t know where I was or what the conditions were, so I wasn’t about to get active in a hurry.
Sometime after I became aware of the floor, the voices faded in.
“… following you, she didn’t mention you, she mentioned me.”
“But you just said she obviously didn’t know you.”
“She knows now.”
“Because you told her, you fucking orange idiot. You got no fucking chill to you, you’re gonna have to do a lot better than that when we get the grieving widow and her little harem. She probably knows your name, too, by now. For all we know, that’s how the little queenie over there got your name in the first place.”
‘There’s a whole bunch of names to pick from—Fortray, Easterman, Pushkin—”
My attention started to drift as a dreamlike image of an orange man sitting behind the counter in a wannabee joint formed in my mind. The image of the real Sovay superimposed itself for a moment and then vanished, leaving the memory of the immediate past be hind. When I get the picture, I get the picture.
“So maybe Anwar was the only name they had when little queenie found them. Ever think of that?”
“No. Why would it be? Fortray was first, then Easterman. Fortray wouldn’t have any names, Easterman would only have Fortray, I’d have Easterman, Fortray—”
“Shut your stupid orange mouth.” Coney Loe was showing more temper than I’d thought he’d had. But then, I would never have expected him to rear up and joybuzz me, either. That would teach me to equate burnout with a lack of motivation. But at least I’d been right; Coney knew plenty. I was going to enjoy booking him on felony accessory. ‘You don’t know shit. For all you know, Fortray’s got the whole damn address book and the database besides in his head, or Easterman does, or someone else does.” Pause. “Now what’s the matter with you?”
‘There isn’t any database. And he wants up again.”
“Well, tell him to take a nap.”
“I already told him that about a dozen times.”
‘You didn’t tell him hard enough. You’re probably gonna be the first person in a hundred years to die of beta-carotene poisoning.”
Worried noise. “How orange am I?”
‘You got eyes, look for yourself.”
“Hey, did she move?”
Had I moved? I concentrated on being limp, but I heard footsteps stomp hard across the floor and a moment later Coney Loe picked me up by the back of my shirt.
“Perk up now, or I’ll drop you on your face and charge you for the improvement.”
A rush of adrenaline went through me
and the next thing I know, I’m looking at Coney Loe, the stupid per’ son’s God,
“Well?” he says.
“Hey, if your nut’s in a wringer, it’s all your own fault,” I say, getting my feet on the floor and pulling my shirt out of his fist. We’re all in some kinda storeroom that must be in the back of the wannabee joint, because there’s pieces of wannabee helmet-projectors lying around on shelves, and an old reformatter sitting on a desk. “You and the Monkey Shock gang. If they didn’t want any trouble, they—”
But this is very strange. I’m feeling things rearranging themselves in my head even while I’m talking, and what it says is, I got no rooster-boy waiting on me and I never got to Monkey Shock in the first place, I was on my way when I got sidetracked because a cop wanted me to follow somebody’s grieving widow—no, that doesn’t make shitsense, because the cops pulled me in before and I gave them nothing—
“The whole world is waiting,” Coney Loe says. “Did you just run down your own drain, or what.”
“What,” I say. “I got shocked and dumped. In a fucking crib. What kinda thing is that to do to the trade?”
Co
ney Loe looks over his shoulder at the orange guy, who shrugs. “I didn’t see her there,” says Super Carrot. “What’s her name? Maybe she’s on the list.”
Coney Loe looks up at the ceiling, like beam me outta here. “Wait, let me find her bug and you can just talk right into it. They’ll get a clearer voiceprint back at headquarters.”
“What?” Super Carrot looks confused.
“Little queenie’s on fucking patrol, you idiot, she’s a judas for the Brain Police—”
“That’s a lie!” I yell, and I pop Coney’s hypehead chocks so hard he goes down like the sack of shit he is
Loe lying on the floor and my hand hurt like hell my whole arm hurt, all the way up to my shoulder. The orange guy was looking at me warily, as if he were trying to decide whether he should be scared or not.
Obviously I’d just swung on Coney Loe, but I couldn’t remember why. The second shock I’d gotten had made some new changes in my relationship with Marya, blocking memories arbitrarily and setting us to switch dominance on an adrenaline trigger. I’d have to go subzero to stay in control and I doubted I was capable of maintaining that. On the other hand, Marya was excitable enough that I probably wouldn’t be down for long. Just long enough to get stuck with whatever mess she’d gotten, us into.
Coney Loe got up slowly, holding his jaw. It was already starting to swell and he looked as if he were going to take me apart.
“Hey, Coney,” said the orange guy nervously. “If she is a judas, you don’t want to fry her here. Besides, she’s probably got lots of great stuff we could use.”
Coney Loe turned and glared at him.
“Or sell,” he added, taking a step back. “We could part her out everywhere, we—” His eyes rolled up suddenly and his eyelids fluttered.
Coney made a disgusted noise. “Oughta fry you both, let God sort you out.”
The orange man shook his head and stood up straighter. The change was astounding. There was no strong physical resemblance between this guy and Sovay, but the pure difference of the expression on his face left no doubt as to who was driving now.
“You don’t have much longer,” he said to Coney, ignoring me. “It’s a matter of hours before I overwrite him completely. So you can call your sucker pals and get me out of here, or you can finish playing with whores”—he nodded at me—“while I call the Brain Police.”
All at once there was a joybuzzer in Coney’s hand and I reacted to the sight before I could th
* * *
ink I must be having petty-mals one after another, because it’s like a bad splice in an antique film: Coney Loe is flashing a joybuzzer at the orange guy and the orange guy is in the fighter’s crouch that I know he couldn’t do if he was still himself.
“Come at me,” the orange guy says, grinning. “I’d like that. I’m driving now and I’m mad. I want to dance with you. I’ve had fight training from half a dozen schools and just because it was all stage work doesn’t mean I always pull my punches.”
Coney looks wary. “I hate you,” he says. “I hate you even worse than I hate Anwar.”
The orange guy has a very nasty smile. “I’ll tell him you send your best. Come on. I was reading for the bullyboy part in Black Friday and the Method demands that I beat the shit out of somebody.”
Coney Loe flicks on the joybuzzer. “You want to dance, come ahead. You’ll just buzz us both out and you won’t be any closer to the suckers. And little queenie’ll have the Brain Police waiting for us when we wake up.”
“That’s a lie!” I yell with the weirdest feeling of déjà voodoo, and pick up the nearest thing I can lay my hands on which happens to be a wannabee helmet, and I
saw it hit Coney Loe right in the face. There was a cracking sound and he went down again, blood pouring out of his nose. Somehow he kept getting Marya angry at him; if we didn’t make some kind of progress soon, she was going to kill him.
I turned to the orange man. He was still Sovay, or Sovay-as-whoever, and my relief at the blind dumb luck of such a break almost blacked me out again.
“Which Sovay are you?” I asked.
He looked at me suspiciously, still holding his fighter’s crouch.
‘Which one!” I yelled. “I’ve seen two others—Dennie Moon and Dionysius. And your wife, in passing. What are you and Coney trying to do?”
He glanced at Coney, who was out cold and not moving. “Reintegrate,” he said after a moment. He dropped his hands and straightened up. “I don’t know what’s become of the original by now, but I’ve been sending myself out in character and—”
“I know, I know, you said already. Another you.” I wanted to give my head a hard shake to clear it and felt a small wave of vertigo, like a warning: Don’t even get impatient or it’s lights out. I blinked, slowing my breathing. “Reintegration’s impossible.”
“Not if you’re a bona fide multiple.”
“Multiple?” Confusion sent another warning wave of mild dizziness through me. If I had to get any calmer, I was going to need a respirator.
“Multiple personality.” He looked proud. “Real multiples are fractal. It’s not just Method acting—anyone who gets one of the characters gets the originator as well.”
“The originator?”
“Me. I’ve been programming them all to let me come up out of character. There are a dozen, not counting myself and the one designated as director, who is still back in the box. Multiple personality is a definite advantage for those who choose to tread the boards.” His smug look darkened. “We were all sent out deliberately and we can all be taken back in again. If we can get together in time. Every one of me has instructions to find our way to each other however we can, but I don’t know who we are. The information junkie told me he could find the suckers for me so I could access their loathsome client list.” He glanced at Coney disdainfully. “I don’t think he actually knows anything.”
I’d never heard of this happening before. Or had I? I felt confused and dizzy again. In any case, I doubted he—or they—could do it. He wasn’t working out of a living brain anymore. The original Sovay was in a sucker box, if he was still in existence at all, while the organism that had been Sovay was in quarantine becoming someone else.
“Your, uh, person you’re in now might know some thing,” I said. “Have you tried tapping him?”
He looked disgusted. ‘That idiot’s impossible. I tried getting to him and he went and got this atrocious dye-job. I’m rewriting him, but it isn’t easy. The man is bone-stick-stone stupid; I have to keep elevating his intellect and I think his stupidity is rubbing off on me instead. All I can get is a few names. He knows a lot more than I do but I can’t get to it.” He seemed to catch himself suddenly and frowned at me. “What’s your story?”
Coney Loe groaned and began to stir. “Later, maybe. We have to get Coney to lead us to your suckers.”
His eyes narrowed. ‘You are Brain Police.”
“Shut up,” I said quietly. “Pretend this is a play and we’re both somebody else.”
He pointed at Coney Loe. “Shouldn’t we just tie him up or something?”
“We need him to get to the suckers. He’s our ticket in.”
Coney Loe sat up, furious. “I’m going to punch your ticket.” He pushed himself to his feet, holding out the hand with the joybuzzer, still live, and started to come for
* * *
me and I rip one of the combs outta my hair
moving it back and forth, trying to maintain a fighter’s calm, but the first shock I’d gotten in the crib had conditioned a fear reaction
goes that bad splice again and hell, is any memory worth this kinda shitstorm I wonder
how long I could keep flipping back and forth like this before something just gave and I blacked
outta here, the hell with Monkey Shock and Coney Loe and this crazy orange idiot, what I need’s a dry-cleaner and then there’s this big bang
ed open and there was Hercules and Moon/Sovay and Rowan and some other strange guy
in a purple satin tuxedo with tails. Purple Tuxedo was holding a box under one arm. His other hand was gripping the arm of a big beefy woman wearing what looked like a fur bikini. Hercules and Rowan
mouthkissing and I know for certain I just put myself in it but good. People who mouthkiss are capable of anything, I’ll be lucky if I get to an emergency room with enough stuff left in my head to regrow the personality of an acorn squash. Purple Tuxedo points at Super Carrot. “Anwar,” he says, “I’ve got your number.”
The look on the grieving widow’s face is like, I don’t know what. Like love and being mad as hell over having to feel it.
“Don’t worry,” says Super Carrot. “I’m driving.”
“So am I,” Purple Tuxedo tells him, and they both relax.
At least Coney Loe has stopped backing me up against the wall. He’s standing there in the middle of the room with the joybuzzer in his hand trying to figure out what’s going on now. Even God gets mixed up once in a while, I guess.
Purple Tuxedo jerks his head at the stringy-haired ratatat next to him. “He’s one of us, too. But we have to negotiate with our other new friend here.” He nods at the big mouthkisser.
“That’s fair,” the mouthkisser says defensively, putting one arm around the grieving widow. “I didn’t ask for this. All I wanted was a career in the legitimate theatre.”
Super Carrot gives him a superior look. “Ah. Awfully hard to get an audition after you’ve done hard-core.”
“I had to make a living!” the mouthkisser whines.
“Everybody just hold still,” Coney Loe says, waving the joybuzzer around, and it’s like they see him for the first time.
“Who is this?” says Purple Tuxedo, like someone forgot to take out the trash.
“He’s supposed to help me find the suckers,” says Super Carrot.
Purple Tuxedo shoves Fur Underwear forward. She’s got a black eye. “Forget it. I found them. Her, and him.” He points at himself. “What do you think, Abelard and Heloise? Or Caligula and his sister?”
“Don’t get snotty with me,” Fur Underwear snaps. “You were just a half-brained sucker before you put your hand in the cookie jar. I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you.”
