by Pat Cadigan
Purple Tuxedo makes a move toward her just as Moon/Sovay points at me and says in a very un-Sovay voice, “And she’s the Brain Police.”
Everybody freezes except Coney Loe, who says, “Big fucking surprise,” and jumps at me. I dive sideways, bracing myself, expecting to go out again. Instead, I hit the floor, roll, and fetch up against the orange idiot. Before he can move, the mouthkisser hauls me up by one arm and puts a half nelson on me in this very casual way. This bimbo’s strong; if he wants to mouthkiss, I won’t have much to say about it.
Coney Loe, meanwhile, has joybuzzed himself again, not enough to go out, but he’s sitting against the wall looking dazed and trying to figure out how to stand up. This is not his day. Purple Tuxedo relieves him of the joybuzzer and gives it to the mouthkisser who shows it to me without comment. Super Carrot just stands there watching without making a sound; he definitely got a whole lot smarter when he changed drivers.
“What are we going to do,” demands the grieving widow, sounding like she’s at the end of the last fray on her rope. “With her and him.”
“Listen, now,” Coney Loe says suddenly, “I can tell you who ordered this hit. You probably think you’re working for yourselves—” He pushes himself up the wall slowly. “You’re not.”
“Sure,” says Super Carrot. “You don’t know where Monkey Shock is but you know who they work for. I’ll buy that for a million dollars.”
“It’s my business to know things,” Coney Loe says, sounding desperate now. “It’s what I do.”
Mouthkisser gives me a little shake. “Must be something you can do with this stuff, then.”
“I’m not the Brain Police,” I say, trying to get my head out from under his big hand without breaking my neck.
The grieving widow gives Stringy Hair a disgusted look. “You had to go fooling around with her.”
Something changes in his face and he looks around quick, like he’s ready to bolt. Purple Tuxedo buzzes him and he goes down like a stone.
“What did you do that for?” yells the mouthkisser. “You expect me to carry him around?”
“He was flipping back,” says Purple Tuxedo. “When he’s Sovay, he’s no goddam good to us. Anyway, nobody has to carry anyone around. We can do everything right here.” He pats the box under his arm. “I’ve got the original, we’ll just use the available hardware.”
Super Carrot nods. “Fine. Put her to sleep so we can get on with this undisturbed.”
I don’t have to ask who they’re putting to sleep even if there was time to get the question out of my mouth.
But they didn’t knock me out entirely. Apparently the juice in the buzzer was running low. I went down paralyzed but wide-awake. They left me where I’d fallen, so I had a good view of the whole setup procedure.
Purple Tuxedo had to buzz her lightly a few times, but the woman in the fur bikini did most of the work, stripping a wannabee helmet down to the skull-frame and the ocular connections and rewiring the program-loader to fit the box containing Sovay.
The box sat off to the side on a table, looking deceptively small and banal. Coney Loe was lying on the floor with new blood leaking out of his nose, eyes closed, though I had the feeling he wasn’t really out, just from the way his eyelids twitched. Perhaps Hercules had popped him just on general principle. Hercules had gotten hyperactive; he kept getting all over Rowan, and Rowan kept alternately kissing him and pushing him away. I watched this long enough for the feeling to return to my arms and legs. I actually crawled all the way to the door before someone noticed.
I gotta get my head right. If I still have a head. Feels like somebody took it off and threw it away. I can hear the flies buzzing around it in the garbage. Like I haven’t had enough buzzing today.
After a while, I realize, it’s people’s voices, not buzzing and there’s that déjà voodoo again—I feel like I did this not too long ago, and maybe I’m doing it again because I didn’t do it right. Am I in a play, or is this just bad karmic backlash? Do I believe in karma? Why would I think I was in a play? What do I know?
All I know is I’m a hypehead lying on the floor under a table with what feels like a few cracked ribs and a broken nose, and I am looking up at the bottom of the table, and scratched on the underside of the table is, If U can read this, U R meat.
Karma-gram?
“… make a deal?” says the grieving widow’s voice.
“Woman, you are not in a dealing position,” says someone else. Purple Tuxedo, I think. “Nobody touches Brain Police. Nobody sucks them.”
“We don’t know she’s Brain Police,” says the grieving widow. “And if she is, can’t you just flush her?”
“Tell her about residue.”
“No time,” says Fur Underwear. “We’re knee-deep in Sovays here, you wanna do it now, or you wanna wait till we’re ass-deep?”
“We’ll start now,” says Purple Tuxedo. “And collect the ones that are still loose later.”
“You had to sample the merchandise,” says Fur Under’ wear miserably. “You had to find out what was going on. I hope you’re happy, you half-brain.”
“I’m much happier. For one thing, I kinda like him, and for another, I know for absolutely certain he doesn’t have that mythical database. And I’m beginning to think it is indeed mythical.” Purple Tuxedo actually chortles, a sound I could have gone without hearing. I shift some and my ribs are on fire. Little by little, I scrunch along until I just get my head out from under the table (If U can read this, U R meat, yah, thanks for the reminder) and then I’m looking at Fur Underwear’s bare legs. Beyond her, Rowan’s standing around practically hopping from one foot to the other and trying to keep Hercules from pawing her too much. Nearby, Stringy Hair has perked up considerably, but he still doesn’t look like he’s any too sure of who he is.
Fur Underwear spots me and tries to shove me back under the table with her foot. Her name’s Souse, I remember now, which is the goddamnedest thing, considering what I’ve been through today. I wonder what she was busy doing when I showed up at the fetishizer joint. In for my usual, sure. Was I gonna get a piece of this without even knowing it? Am I some kinda dump for sucker leftovers, and I don’t even know it? How can I not know that?
Maybe I’m not supposed to remember that part. Shit. In for my usual, sure.
And now I’m thinking all kinds of strange shit, about what am I screwing with suckers for, if they’ll suck someone, they’ll jack everyone else around till they don’t know where-to and is this any way to live. So right then I know I have been jacked past one of those critical points they’re always talking about because I do not think like this. Not all alone, I don’t.
“… reintegrated,” Rowan is saying, “I’ll take the box with me.”
“Like hell,” says Fur Underwear. “I built this myself.”
“I’ll make it worth your while,” Rowan says. “You might as well, because it’s worthless to you now. You’ll never get rid of Sovay, not if you run a flush-and-purge every ten minutes. He is the box now. That’s the Method at work, you know.”
I think I can hear Fur Underwear’s teeth grinding. No, it’s the box. It’s hooked up and running now. I crawl out from under the table again, right into Super Carrot, who hauls me up like a cat. “Speaking of the Brain Police,” he says.
“Oh, Christ, you keep saying that. She’s just a memory junkie,” Fur Underwear says. “We were both Escorting for Bateau before he got, ah, retired. She isn’t any cop—the stupid cow did some silly actress. Then she went into business for herself. The actress turned out to be a cop and Bateau got caught with her, while the junkie here slipped out the back door. Anwar could tell you about that if he could remember it. Thank God for the memory wipe, right, Anwar?”
Super Carrot looks down his nose at her. “Anwar’s a bit clouded now. Ask again later.”
“She’s been everybody’s dump for ages,” Fur Underwear goes on, “and her habit’s so bad she’s been paying for the privilege. We figured soon
er or later she’d flash back to the old routines, even with Bateau out of the picture. Memory junkies are like that. They got nowhere to go except back. I figured if we sucked Sovay, and waited for her to show up, we could put the two of them together and get the database Bateau was digging for before the cops canned him.”
“There’s no database,” Super Carrot says. “Or maybe there is, but I don’t have it. None of me has it.”
“What database?” says Rowan. They all ignore her.
“Then it’s still in the box and the junkie can unlock it. It would be easier if we still had the actress but we can make do with the junkie’s memories of her. Then you can just scrape her off the bottom of your shoe and do what you want.
“But if anyone’s afraid she’s Brain Police, we’ll just run the test.” She slings one of my arms over her shoulder with this smarmy fondness that makes me want to punch her. “Marceline as the Brain Police is even funnier than Marceline the actress.”
Marceline. I’m wondering if it can get weirder as she walks me over to an old dentist’s chair and lets me fall into it. She takes a good look into my eyes just before she reaches for the left one.
That’s it, I think, and I try to open my mouth to scream, but something really weird happens. All of a sudden, she’s moving underwater, I can even see little whorls and eddies around her hand, but the hand moves slower and slower, and I’m thinking what is this when a trapdoor opens in my mind and I fall through it.
That’s about the only way I can describe it. Everything just went out from under me and the next thing I knew, I was sitting in a strange, badly lit room. There was a sense of other people all around, but the light was either too bright or too dim, or there was something wrong with my inner eye—
“First, stay calm,” says this woman’s voice. “Obviously, we’ve had some trouble, and if you don’t know what it is, don’t worry about it.”
I tried to see who was speaking but the light failed completely.
‘This is your reassurance program,” the voice goes on. “A facade program is in place for the current probing. So far, no probe has managed to reach this level, so we’re all safe for the moment.”
Trying to move my perspective was no good, either. I seemed to be mired in something like liquid rubber or gelatin.
‘You cannot be briefed at this time,” says the voice. “Please gather your resources, as we will be reemerging in a matter of moments. Be prepared; obviously, our FAT’s in the fire, so to speak, and any one of you could end up driving. For your information, which you will not be able to take with you anyway, the electrical shocks have done no permanent damage. Things are just a little scrambled and some of the memory has been rendered unreadable in some sectors, readable in other sectors where it shouldn’t be, and garbled all over. This can be repaired.”
“I quit!” I yelled. Or I heard myself yell. It felt like me, but it also felt remote, as if it were someone like me. Which didn’t make shitsense.
‘Your contract expires after this,” the voice says. “Make your decision then.”
“How can I?” I said, or something. “I never get to drivel”
“About to engage with real-time,” said the voice politely. “Drive carefully, whoever you are.”
My eyes refocused on the face of the woman in the fur bikini. The man in the purple tuxedo was crowded in next to her.
“No Brain Police in there,” he said, sounding relieved.
“I told you that.” She turned away to beckon to Rowan. “Here’s what it is,” she said as Rowan pushed the guy in the purple tuxedo aside. ‘The best way to go is, after we pull the database, we give you the dump here and you can use her to reintegrate your husband. I know it’s a woman instead of a man, but I think you’ll get better results with her brain. Dumps are used to taking all kinds of stuff, they’re a little more plastic somehow. She’ll make a better adjustment.”
Hercules came up on Rowan’s left. “I like this one,” he said, pointing to himself. “I mean, just look at him. You like him, too, Rowan. I know you do.”
Rowan looked from me to him and back again, troubled. “Yes, but we’ve got to go with the best chance we’ve got. She says—”
“Oh, Christ, what would she know, is she a neurosurgeon? Use this me. I’ve got this guy so rewritten already—”
Rowan let out a deep breath. “Aesthetically, you’re preferable, but …” She looked at me again.
This is giving me the chills. Some grieving widow. Thinks nothing of just commandeering whoever’s handy to get her husband back. Must be some husband. Maybe if it were my husband, I’d do the same, but I can’t believe she’d just go with these suckers and take someone out to get him back. She doesn’t even know if she really can get him back, I never hearda anyone
Peculiar. I hadn’t blacked out that time but Marya came up, didn’t notice me, and went away again. That wasn’t supposed to be possible.
“Hey,” said Hercules. “I’m a volunteer. It oughta go easier with a volunteer.”
The woman in the fur bikini reached over and patted my head carelessly. “Nobody’s going to miss this one, I can tell you that. You can get her sex changed, you’re rich enough. Make her over completely.”
“Is that really our best chance?” Rowan asked. She might have been getting a second opinion from a specialist.
“You’re a lot less likely to get caught too.”
Rowan shrugged. “Plug her back in, then, and let’s get it over with.”
“Hook up the box,” said the other woman. She started to turn toward me and I was gone again.
There was no relaxation exercise, just a few seconds of sleep, and then Sovay’s rehearsal studio came up around me like the dawn.
Sovay himself was sitting on a pillow in the middle of the room with his back to the mirrored wall. Funhouse mirrors; vague shapes were shifting within them in response to his thoughts. He was studying what looked like a hard-copy playscript. Several more were piled on the floor beside him. He wasn’t orange now. More of a golden beige bordering on brown, actually. I could tell it was completely natural.
He looked up as I melted into existence and then frowned. Bother, he said. Not another one.
I started to explain and everything suddenly played out on the mirrors behind him, what the suckers intended to do, Rowan’s part in it, and who I was.
Well, he said. I knew one of me would have the sense to call the law. For all the good it did. Came by yourself, did you?
I don’t know, I told him.
He tossed away the script he’d been looking at and Sighed. I don’t suppose you have a brilliant plan to get us out of this.
I was about to tell him I didn’t know that, either, when something gave me a powerful shove toward him. I had a brief glimpse of his face rushing at me and then, like nothing, we were back where we’d been.
God, they’re crude, he said. Abruptly, something lifted him off the floor and started to toss him at me. My vision gave a jump and once again we were in our old positions.
Whoever’s at the controls out there has absolutely no idea how to go about this. Sovay sounded almost amused. But being a dedicated multiple gives you an edge over this kind of brute force. Don’t you find that? He looked past me. You must. You’re all here.
I turned around. Marya was there, with someone similar, someone whose name was Marceline. There was another woman who looked thin and a little too clean, as if she’d just come out of a rehab center, and behind them, more faces, just phantoms at the moment, but if I kept looking, they would solidify. I couldn’t let that happen right now, I knew, and turned back to Sovay.
Some of us split spontaneously, he said. You wouldn’t want to know what makes it happen. Others, like you, can be induced to split. The talent’s there, it just needs the proper stimulus. Some of us go into acting, some into police work.
An image of Flaxie’s face popped into my mind. All the neurotics In theatre.
I could go on splitting for simply eve
r. Right, Box? He looked around and the studio gave a slow kind of ripple that exuded a sense Of affirmation. There’s another personality who is being the Box. Between the two of us and all this old material—he patted the stack of scripts—I can go on manufacturing selves indefinitely. He laughed and then suddenly looked pained.
* * *
I’m looking at Fur Underwear with one eye and with the other
I was still in the box with Sovay, who was wearing an expression of revulsion. I hate it when they do that, he said. It looks so awful.
“Why won’t you behave,” Fur Underwear says. That’s a cruel smile she’s got. Rowan’s face crowds in next to hers.
“What’s wrong,” says the grieving widow, impatient.
“They won’t smoosh together. Goddam wannabee hardware.”
“You should be using me,” whines Hercules, somewhere out of my sight. “I wannabee him. She doesn’t.”
“You can’t get the database,” Fur Underwear says grimly.
“What database?” Rowan says. “You keep talking about it and talking about it.”
“Brain Police information. Whatever they send with their people on an undercover job. Could be an informant list, or a list of everyone working undercover—don’t know till we see it.”
“Sovay doesn’t have anything like that,” Rowan says.
Fur Underwear gives her a look like she’s something to scrap off the bottom of a shoe, too. “How would you know.”
“Because I helped him wipe it.”
“You’re lying,” Fur Underwear says, but real unsure.
“No. I’m not.” Rowan lets out this crazy little laugh. “Is that why you sucked him? Is that what this was all about, some database that doesn’t even exist anymore?” In a minute she’s going to go up like a bottle-rocket and explode in hysterical fireworks.
Fur Underwear looks like she could throw a temper tantrum herself. “You coulda saved us all a lot of trouble if you’d just told us that.”
