Walter Jon Williams

by Videostar

  Ric was hoping Cartoon Messiah was full of young, fresh minds.

  He signaled the bartender again. Super Virgin grinned at him.

  "You sure you don't wanna ball me?"

  "Positive."

  "I'm gonna be cherry till I die. I'm just not interested. None of the guys seem like anybody I'd want to fuck." Ric didn't say anything. She sipped the last of her drink. "You think I'm repulsive-looking, right?"

  "That seems to be your intention."

  She laughed. "You're okay, Marat. What's it like in Switzerland?"

  "Hot."

  "So hot you had to leave, maybe?"

  "Maybe."

  "You looking for work?"

  "Not yet. Just looking around."

  She leaned closer to him. "You find out anything interesting while you're looking, I'll pay you for it. Just leave a message here, at the Bar."

  "You deal in information?"

  She licked her lips. "That and other things. This Bar, see, it's in a kind of interface. North of here is Lounge Lizard turf, south and east are the Cold Wires, west is the Silicon Romantics. The Romantics are on their way out." She gave a little sneer. "They're brocade commandos, right? -- their turf's being cut up. But here, it's no-gang's-land. Where things get moved from one buyer to another."

  "Cartoon Messiah -- they got turf?"

  She shook her head. "Just places where we can be found. Territory is not what we're after. Two-Fisted Jesus -- he's our sort-of chairman -- he says only stupid people like brocade boys want turf, when the real money's in data."

  Ric smiled. "That's smart. Property values are down, anyway."

  He could see his reflection in her metal teeth, a pale smear. "You got anything you wanna deal in, I can set it up," she said. "Software?

  Biologicals? Pharmaceuticals? Wetware?"

  "I have nothing. Right now."

  She turned to look at a group of people coming in the door. "Cold Wires," she said. "These are the people I'm supposed to meet." She tipped her head back and swallowed the rest of her drink. "They're so goddam bourgeois,"

  she said. "Look -- their surgery's fake, it's just good makeup. And the tattoos -- they spray 'em on through a stencil. I hate people who don't have the courage of their convictions, don't you?"

  "They can be useful, though." Smiling, thin-lipped.

  She grinned at him. "Yeah. They can. Stop by tomorrow and I'll pay you back, okay? See ya." She pushed her chair back, scraping alloy on the concrete floor, a small metal scream.

  Ric sipped his drink, watching the room. Letting its rhythm seep through his skin. Things were firming in his mind.

  7

  "Hi."

  The security guard looked up at him from under the plastic brim of his baseball cap. He frowned. "Hi. You need something? I seen you around before."

  "I'm Warren Whitmore," Ric said. "I'm recovering from an accident, going to finish the course of treatment soon. Go out into the real world."

  Whitmore was one of Ric's former neighbors, a man who'd had his head split in half by a falling beam. He hadn't left any instructions about radical life-preservation measures and the artificial intelligences who ran the hospital were going to keep him alive till they burned up the insurance and then the family's money.

  "Yeah?" the guard said. "Congratulations." There was a plastic tape sewed on over the guard's breast pocket that said LYSAGHT.

  "The thing is, I don't have a job waiting. Cigar?"

  Ric had seen Lysaght smoking big stogies outside the hospital doors.

  They wouldn't let him light up inside. Ric had bought him the most expensive Havanas available at the hospital gift shop.

  Lysaght took the cigar, rolled it between his fingers while he looked left and right down the corridor, trying to decide whether to light it or not.

  Ric reached for his lighter.

  "I had some military training in my former life," Ric said. "I thought I might look into the idea of getting into the security business, once I get into the world. Could I buy you a drink, maybe, after you get off shift? Talk about what you do."

  Lysaght drew on the cigar, still looking left and right. seeing only patients. He was a big fleshy man, about forty, dressed in a black uniform with body armor sewn into pockets on his chest and back. His long dark hair was slicked back behind his ears, falling over his shoulders in greased ringlets. His sideburns came to points. A brushed-alloy gun with a hardwood custom grip and a laser sight hung conspicuously on one hip, next to the gas grenades, next to the plastic handwrap restraints, next to the combat staff, next to the portable gas mask.

  "Sure," Lysaght said. "Why not?" He blew smoke in the general direction of an elderly female patient walking purposefully down the corridor in flowery pajamas. The patient blinked but kept walking.

  "Hey, Mrs. Calderone, how you doin'?" Lysaght said. Mrs. Calderone ignored him. "Fuckin' head case," said Lysaght.

  "I want to work for a sharp outfit though," Ric said. He looked at Lysaght's belt. "With good equipment and stuff, you know?"

  "That's Folger Security," Lysaght said. "If we weren't good, we wouldn't be working for a hospital this size."

  During his time in the Cadillacs and elsewhere, Ric had been continually surprised by how little it actually took to bribe someone. A few drinks, a few cigars, and Lysaght was working for him. And Lysaght didn't even know it yet. Or, with luck, ever.

  "Listen," Lysaght was saying. "I gotta go smoke this in the toilet. But I'll see you at the guard station around five, okay?"

  "Sounds good."

  8

  That night, his temples throbbing with pain, Ric entered Marlene's condeco and walked straight to the kitchen for something to ease the long raw ache that coated the insides of his throat. He could hear the sounds of _Alien Inquisitor_ on the vid. He was carrying a two-liter plastic bottle of industrial-strength soap he'd just stolen from the custodian's storeroom here in Marlene's condeco. He put down the bottle of soap, rubbed his sore shoulder muscle, took some whiskey from the shelf, and poured it into a tall glass. He took a slow, deliberate drink and winced as he felt the fire in his throat. He added water to the glass. _Alien Inquisitor_ diminished in volume, then he heard the sound of Marlene's flipflops slapping against her heels.

  Her eyes bore the heavy eye makeup she wore to work. "Jesus," Marlene said. She screwed up her face. "You smell like someone's been putting out cigarettes in your pockets. Where the hell have you been?"

  "Smoking cigars with a rentacop. He wears so much equipment and armor he has to wear a truss, you know that? He got drunk and told me."

  "Which rentacop?"

  "One who works for the hospital."

  "The hospital? We're going to take off the hospital?" Marlene shook her head. "That's pretty serious, Ric."

  Ric was wondering if she'd heard _take off_ used that way on the vid.

  "Yes." He eased the whiskey down his throat again. Better.

  "Isn't that dangerous? Taking off the same hospital where you were a patient?"

  "We're not going to be doing it in person. We're going to have someone else do the work."

  "Who?"

  "Cartoon Messiah, I think. They're young and promising."

  "What's the stuff in the plastic bottle for?"

  He looked at her, swirling the whiskey absently in the glass. "This cleaner's mostly potassium hydroxide," he said. "That's wood lye. You can use it to make plastic explosive."

  Marlene shrugged, then reached in her pocket for a cigarette. Ric frowned. "You seem not to be reacting to that, Marlene," he said. "Robbing a hospital is serious, plastic explosive isn't?"

  She blew smoke at him. "Let me show you something" She went back into the living room and then returned with her pouch belt. She fished in it for a second, then threw him a small aerosol bottle.

  Ric caught it and looked at the label. "Holy fuck," he said. He blinked and looked at the bottle again. "Jesus Christ."

  "Ten-ounce aerosol bottle of mustard gas," Marlene sa
id. "Sixteen dollars in Starbright scrip at your local boutique. For personal protection, you know? The platinum designer bottle costs more."

  Ric was blinking furiously. "Holy fuck," he said again.

  "Some sixteen-year-old asshole tried to rape me once," Marlene said. "I hit him with the gas and now he's reading Braille. You know?"

  Ric took another sip of the whiskey and then wordlessly placed the mustard gas in Marlene's waiting palm. "You're in America now, Ric," Marlene said. "You keep forgetting that, singing your old Spanish marching songs."

  He rubbed his chin. "Right," he said. "I've got to make adjustments."

  "Better do it soon," Marlene said, "if you're going to start busting into hospitals."

  9

  The next day Ric went to the drugstore, where he purchased a large amount of petroleum jelly, some nasal mist that came in squeeze bottles, liquid bleach, a bottle of toilet cleaner, a small amount of alcohol-based lamp fuel, and a bottle of glycerin. Then he drove to a chemical supply store, where he brought some distilling equipment and some litmus paper.

  On his way back he stopped by an expensive liquor store and bought some champagne. He didn't want the plastic bottles the domestic stuff came in; instead he bought the champagne imported from France, in glass bottles with the little hollow cone in the bottom. It was the biggest expense of the day.

  Back in Marlene's apartment he opened the tops of the nasal inhalers and drained the contents into the sink. He cleaned each and set them out to dry. He set up his distilling equipment, mixing the toilet-bowl cleaner with the liquid bleach, then bubbled the resulting chlorine gas through the wood lye until the litmus paper showed it had been neutralized. He emptied the stuff into a pan and brought it to a simmer on the stove. When crystals began forming he took it off the burner and let the pan cool. He repeated the process two more times and, in the end, he had almost pure potassium chlorate.

  Ric then mixed the potassium chlorate with petroleum jelly to make plastic explosive. He put it in an old coffee can in the refrigerator.

  Feeling pleased with his handiwork, he opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate. He drank a glass and then set up his distilling equipment again.

  He put glycerine and some of the toilet bowl cleaner in a flask, mixed it, then put it over a flame. He distilled out a couple ounces of acrolein and then put the chemical in the empty nasal spray containers. He capped them. He drank another glass of champagne, put away all his materials, and turned on the vid. Something called _Video Vixens_ was just starting. Ric settled into his chair. He hadn't seen that one.

  10

  "I made plastic explosive today," Ric said. "It's in the icebox."

  "Great." Marlene had just come home from work and was tired. She was drinking champagne and waiting for the night's pills to kick in.

  "I'll show you a trick," Ric said. He got some twine from the cupboard, cut it into strips, and soaked it in the lamp fuel. While it was soaking he got a large mixing bowl and filled it with water and ice. Then he tied the string around the empty champagne bottles, about three inches above the topmost point of the little hollow cone on the bottom. He got his lighter and set fire to the thread. It burned slowly, with a cool blue flame, for a couple minutes. Then he took the bottle and plunged it into the ice water. It split neatly in half with a crystalline snapping sound.

  Ric took some of the plastic explosive and packed it into the bottom of the champagne bottle. He pushed a pencil into the middle of it, making a narrow hole for the detonator.

  "There," he said. "That's a shaped charge. I'll make the detonators tomorrow, out of peroxide, acetone, and sulphuric acid. It's easy."

  "What's a shaped charge, Ricardo?"

  "It's used for blowing a hole through armor. Steel doors, cars. Tanks.

  Things like that."

  Marlene looked at him appraisingly. "You're adjusting yourself to America, all right," she said.

  11

  Ric took a bus to Phoenix and rented a motel room with a kitchenette, paying five days in advance and using a false name. In the motel he changed clothes and took a cab to the Bar. Super Virgin waved as he came in. She was with her friend, Captain Islam. He was a long, gawky boy, about sixteen, with his head shaved and covered with the tattoos of Urban Surgery. He hadn't had any alterations yet, or the eye implants this group favored -- instead he wore complicated mirrorshades with twin minicameras mounted above the bridge of the nose. They registered radiation in UV and infrared as well as the normal spectrum and featured liquid-crystal video displays on the backs of the eyepieces that received input from the minicameras or from any vid program he felt like seeing. Ric wondered if things weren't real to him, not unless he saw them on the vid. Captain Islam didn't talk much, just sat quietly behind his drink and his shades and watched whatever it was that he watched. The effect was unsettling and was probably meant to be. Ric could be talking to him and would never know whether the man was looking at him or at _Video Vixens_. Ric had first pegged him for a user, but Super Virgin said not.

  Ric got a whiskey at the bar and joined the two at their table. "Slow night?" he asked.

  "We're waiting for the jai alai to come on," Super Virgin said. "Live from Bilbao. We've got some money down."

  "Sounds slow to me."

  She gave a brittle laugh. "Guess so, Marat. You got any ideas for accelerating our motion?"

  Ric frowned. "I have something to sell. Some information. But I don't know if it's something you'd really want to deal with."

  "Too hot?" The words were Captain Islam's. Ric looked at his own distorted face in the Captain's spectacles.

  "Depends on your concept of _hot_. The adjective I had in mind was _big_."

  "Big." The word came with a pause before and after, as if Captain Islam had never heard the word before and was wondering what it meant.

  Ric took a bottle of nasal mist out of his pocket and squeezed it once up each nostril.

  "Got a virus?" Virgin asked.

  "I'm allergic to Arizona."

  Captain Islam was frowning. "So what's this action of yours, buck?" he asked.

  "Several kilos of Thunder."

  Captain Islam continued to stare into the interior of his mirrors.

  Super Virgin burst into laughter.

  "I knew you weren't a fucking tourist, Marat!" she cackled. "'Several kilos'! _One_ kilo is weight! What the hell is 'several'?"

  "I don't know if you people can move that much," Ric said. "Also, I'd like an agreement. I want twenty percent of the take, and I want you to move my twenty percent for me, free of charge. If you think you can move that kind of weight at all, that is." He sipped his whiskey. "Maybe I should talk to some people in California."

  "You talk to them, you end up dead," Virgin said. "They're not friendly to anyone these days, not when Thunder's involved."

  Ric smiled. "Maybe you're right."

  "Where is it? Who do we have to steal it from?"

  "Another thing," Ric said. "I want certain agreements. I don't want any excessive force used, here. Nobody shot."

  "Sometimes things happen," Captain Islam said. Ric had the feeling that the Captain was definitely looking at him this time. "Sometimes things can't be avoided."

  "This stuff is guarded by an organization who won't forget it if any of their people get hurt," Ric explained. "If you try to move this kind of weight, word's going to get out that it's you that has the Thunder, and that means these characters are going to find out sooner or later. You might be tempted to give me to them as a way of getting the heat off you. Which would be a mistake, because I intend on establishing an alibi. That would mean that they're going to be extremely upset with you misleading them." Ric sipped his whiskey and smiled. "I'm just looking out for all our interests."

  "A hospital," Captain Islam said. He shook his head. "You want us to take off a hospital. The one up in Flag, right? You stupid shit."

  "I have a plan," Ric said. "I know their defenses, to a certain point.

  I
know how they're organized. I know how they _think_."

  "That's Folger Security, for chrissake," Captain Islam said. "They're tough. They don't forget when someone makes idiots out of them."

  "That's why it's got to be my rules," Ric said. "But I should probably mention something, here." He grinned, seeing the smile reflected in the Captain's quicksilver eyes. "It's an inside job," Ric said. "I'm friends with someone on their force."

  Virgin whooped and banged him on the shoulder with her left hand, the one with the sheathed claws. "Why didn't you say so?" she said.

  "You people," Ric said. "You've got to learn to be patient."

  12

  Treble whimpered against a throbbing bass line. Shafts of red sunset sliced into the violet depths of the Grand Canyon. Marlene backed, spun, turned back to Ric, touched palms. She was wearing Indian war paint. Colors zigzagged across her face. Her eyes and smile were bright.

  The band was dressed like hussars, lights glittering off brocade, the lead singer sweating under her dolman, threatening to split her tight breeches with each of her leaps. Her eye makeup dazzled like butterfly wings. Her lyrics were all heroism, thunder, revolution. The romantic wave against which Cartoon Messiah and Urban Surgery were a cool reaction.

  Marlene stepped forward, pressing herself against him. He circled her with his arms, felt her sacral dimples as they leaned back and spun against each other. At the end of the five-bar chorus she gave a grind of her hips against him, then winked.

  He laughed. While he was establishing his alibi, Cartoon Messiah were working for him back in Flagstaff. And they didn't even know it.

  13

  Readiness crackled from Ric's nerves as he approached the hotel door. They could try to kill him, he knew. Now would be the best time. Black Thunder tended to generate that kind of behavior. He'd been telling them he had ideas for other jobs, that he'd be valuable to them alive, but he couldn't be sure if they believed him.

  The door opened and Super Virgin grinned at him with her metal teeth.

  "Piece of cake, Marat," she said. "Your cut's on the table."

  The hotel room was dark, the walls draped in blueblack plastic. More plastic sheets covered the floors, the ceiling, some of the furniture.