Globalhead

by Bruce Sterling

  “You’re running phone pornography?” Wolverine said, appalled.

  “Of course not,” Mr. Judy said. “You can’t really call it ‘pornography’ if there’s no oppression-of-women involved. Our 900 service is entirely cruelty- and exploitation-free!”

  Wolverine was skeptical. “What about that woman who’s talking on the phone, though? You can’t tell me she’s not being exploited.”

  “That’s the amazing beauty of it!” Mr. Judy declared. “There’s no real woman there at all! That voice is just a kind of Artificial Intelligence thing! It’s not ‘talking’ at all, really—it’s just generating speech, using Marilyn Monroe’s voice mixed with Karen Carpenter’s. It’s all just digital, like on a CD.”

  “What?” said Wolverine. “I don’t understand.”

  Mr. Judy patted her console; the top was out of it, revealing a miniature urban high-rise of accelerator cards and plug-in modules. “This computer’s got a voice-recognition card. The software just picks words at random out of the customer’s own sick, pathetic rant! Whenever he stops for breath, it feeds a question back to him, using his own vocabulary. I mean, if he talks about shaved hamsters—or whatever his kink is—then it talks about shaved hamsters. The system knows how to construct sentences in English, but it doesn’t have to understand a single thing he says! All it does is claim to understand him.”

  “Every two or three minutes it stops and says really nice things to him off the hard disk,” Vanna said helpfully. “Kind of a flattery subroutine.”

  “And he doesn’t realize that?”

  “Nobody’s ever complained so far,” Vanna said. “We get men calling in steady, week after week!”

  “When it comes to men and sex, being human has never been part of the transaction,” Mr. Judy said. “If you just give men exactly what they want, they never miss the rest. It’s really true!”

  Wolverine was troubled. “You must get a lot of really sick people.”

  “Well, sure,” Mr. Judy said. “Actually, we hardly ever bother to listen-in to the calls anymore … But if he’s really disgusting, like a child-porn guy or something, we just rip-off his card-number and post it on an underground bulletin board. A week later this guy gets taken to the cleaners by hacker kids all over America.”

  “How on earth did you start this project?” Wolverine said.

  “Well,” Mr. Judy said, “phreaking long-distance is an old trick. We’ve been doing that since ’84. But we didn’t get into the heavy digital stuff until 1989.” She hesitated. “As it happens, this van itself belongs to Leggy here.”

  Starlitz was watching his rear-view mirror. “Well, the van,” he mumbled absently, “I got a lot of software with the van … this box of Commodore floppies tucked in the back, somebody’s back-ups, with addresses and phone numbers … About a million suckers who’d pledged money to Six Flags Over Jesus. Man, you can’t ask for a softer bunch of marks and rubes than that.” He turned off the highway suddenly.

  “Pretty soon we’re gonna branch out!” Mn Judy said. “Our group is onto something really hot here. We’re gonna run a gay-rights BBS—a dating service—voice-mail classified ads—why, by ’95 we’ll be doing dial-up Goddess videos on fiber-to-the-curb!”

  “Problem, Jude,” Starlitz announced.

  Mr. Judy’s face fell. “What is it?”

  “The blue Toyota,” Starlitz said. “It picked us up outside the harbor. Been right on our ass ever since.”

  “Cops?”

  “They’ve got CB, but I don’t see any microwave,” Starlitz said.

  Vanna’s blue eyes went wide. “Anti-choice people!”

  “Lose ’em,” Mr. Judy commanded.

  Starlitz floored it. The van’s suspension scrunched angrily as they pitched headlong down the road. Wolverine, clinging to her plastic handhold above the passenger door, reached up to steady her dentures. “I’m afraid!” she said. “Will they hurt us?”

  Starlitz grunted.

  “I can’t take this! I’m sorry! I’d rather be arrested!” Wolverine cried.

  “They’re not cops, they don’t do arrests,” Starlitz said. He crossed three lines of traffic against the light and hit an access ramp. Both Vanna and Mr. Judy were flung head-long across their rubber mats on the floor. The van’s jounced machinery settled with a violent clatter.

  The speaker emitted a crackle and a loud dial-tone.

  “God damn it, Leggy,” Mr. Judy shouted, “okay, forget ‘losing’ them!”

  Starlitz ignored her, checking the mirror, then scanning the highway mechanically. “I lost ’em, all right. For a while, anyhow.”

  “Who were those people?” Wolverine wailed.

  “Pro-life fanatics …” Mr. Judy grunted. “Christian cultist weirdos …” She clutched a slotted metal column for support as Starlitz weaved violently into the fast lane. “I sure hope it’s not ‘Sword of the Unborn.’ They hit a clinic in Alabama once with a shoulder-launched rocket.”

  “Hang on,” Starlitz said. He braked, fishtailed ninety degrees, then struck out headlong across a grassy meridian. They crossed in the teeth of oncoming traffic, off the gravelled shoulder, then up and down through a shallow ditch. The van took a curb hard, became briefly airborne, crossed a street, and skidded with miraculous ease through the crowded lot of a convenience grocery.

  Starlitz veered left, onto the striped tarmac of a tree-clustered strip mall.

  Starlitz drove swiftly to the back of the mall and parked illegally in the delivery-access slot of a florist’s shop. “This baby’s kinda hard to hide,” he said, setting the emergency brake. “Now that they’re onto us, we gotta get the hell out of this town.”

  “He’s right. I think we’d better drop you off here, Wolverine,” Mr. Judy said. “If that’s okay with you.”

  Vanna unlocked the van’s back door and flung herself out, yanking Wolverine’s Samsonite case behind her with a thud and a clatter.

  “Yes, that’s quite all right, dear,” Wolverine said dazedly. She touched a lump on the top of her scalp, and examined the trace of blood on her fingertips. She winced, then stuffed the Mexican straw sun-hat over her head.

  With brutal haste, Mr. Judy palpated the stuffed animals for any remaining contraband. She flung them head-long from the van into Vanna’s waiting arms.

  Wolverine opened the passenger door and climbed down, with arthritic awkwardness. The tires stank direly of scorched rubber. “I’m sure that I can call a taxi here, young man,” she told Starlitz, hanging to the door like a drunk from a lamp-post. “Never you mind about little me …”

  Starlitz was fiddling with his broadband scanner-set, below the dash. He looked up sharply. “Right. You clean now?”

  “What?” Wolverine said.

  “Are you holding?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Starlitz gritted his teeth. “Do you have any illegal drugs? On your person? Right now?”

  “Oh. No. I gave them all to you!”

  “Great. Then stick right by the payphones till your taxi comes. If anyone gives you any kind of shit, scream like hell and dial 9-1-1.”

  “All right,” Wolverine said bravely. “I understand. Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Shut the door,” Starlitz said. Wolverine closed the door gently. “And lose that fuckin’ ugly hat,” Starlitz muttered.

  Vanna heaved the leaky stuffed toys into Wolverine’s arms, kissed her cheek briefly and awkwardly, then ran to the back of the van. “Split!” she yelled. Starlitz threw it into reverse and the rear doors banged shut.

  Wolverine waved dazedly as she stood beside the florist’s dumpster.

  “I’m gonna take 26 West,” Starlitz announced.

  “You’re kidding,” Mr. Judy said, clambering into the front passenger seat. She tugged her harness tight as they pulled out of the mall’s parking lot. “That’s miles out of our way! Why?”

  Starlitz shrugged. “Mystical Zen intuition.”

  Mr. Judy frowned at him, rubbing a bruise
on her thigh. “Look, don’t even start on me with that crap, Leggy.”

  A distant trucker’s voice drawled from the scanner. “So then I tell him, look, Alar is downright good for kids, it kills pinworms for one thing …” Starlitz punched the radio back onto channel-scan.

  Mr. Judy bent to turn down the hiss.

  “Leave it,” Starlitz said. “ELINT traffic intercept. Standard evasive tactics.”

  “Look, Starlitz,” Mr. Judy said, “were you ever in the U.S. Army?”

  “No …”

  “Then don’t talk like you were in the goddamn Army. Say something normal. Say something like ‘maybe we can overhear what they say.’ ” Mr. Judy fetched a pad of Post-It notes and a pencil-stub from the glove compartment.

  “I think our fax just blew a chip,” Vanna announced mournfully from the back. “All its little red lights are blinking.”

  “Small wonder! Mr. Zen Intuition here was driving like a fucking maniac,” Mr. Judy said. She groaned. “Remind me to wrap some padding on those goddamned metal uprights. I feel like I’ve been nunchucked.”

  An excited voice burst scratchily from the scanner. “Where is Big Fish? Repeat, where is Big Fish? What was their last heading? Ten-six, Salvation!”

  “This is Salvation,” a second voice replied. “Calm the heck down, for pete’s sake! We’ve got the description now. We’ll pick ’em up on 101 South if we have to. Over.”

  “Bingo,” Mr. Judy exulted. “Citizen’s Band channel 13.” She made a quick note on her Post-It pad.

  Starlitz rubbed his stubbled chin. “Good thing we avoided Highway 101.”

  “Don’t be smug, Leggy.”

  The CB spoke up again. “This is Isaiah, everybody. On Tenth and, uh, Sherbrooke, okay? I don’t think they could have possibly come this far, over.”

  “Heck no they couldn’t,” Salvation said angrily. “What in blazes are you doing over into Sector B? Get back to Sector A, over.”

  “Ezekiel here,” said another voice. “We’re in A, but we surmise they must have parked somewhere. That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Uhm, over …”

  “No air chatter, over,” Salvation commanded. His signal was fading.

  “ ‘Salvation,’ ‘Ezekiel,’ and ‘Isaiah,’ ” Vanna said. “Wow, their handles really suck!”

  “I know, I know,” Mr. Judy said. “Mother of God, the bastards are swarming like locusts. I can’t understand this!”

  Starlitz sighed patiently. “Look, Jude. There’s nothing to understand, okay? Somebody must have finked. That little coven of yours has got an informer.”

  “No way!” Vanna said.

  “Yes way. One of your favorite backwoods mantra-chanters is a pro-life plant, okay? They knew we were coming here. Maybe they didn’t know everything, but they sure knew enough to stake us out.”

  Mr. Judy clenched her small, gnarled fists and stared out the windshield, biting her lip. “Maybe it was Wolverine’s people that leaked! Ever think of that?”

  “If it were Wolverine, they’d have hit us at the docks,” Starlitz said. “You’re being a sap, Jude. Your problem is, you don’t think there’s any pro-life woman smart enough to run a scam on the sisters. Come on, get real! It doesn’t take a genius to wear chi-pants and tattoo a yin-yang on your tit.”

  Mr. Judy tugged at the front of her jersey. “Thanks a lot. Creep.”

  Starlitz shrugged. “The underground-right are as smart as you are, easy. They know everything they wanna know about the ‘Liberal Humanist Movement.’ Hell, they’ve all got subscriptions to Utne Reader.”

  “So what do you think we should do?”

  Starlitz grinned. “This gig of yours is blown, so let’s forget it. Brand-new deal, okay? Let’s card us a big rental-car and call the New Caledonians.”

  “No way,” Mr. Judy said. “No way we’re losing this van! Besides, I draw the line at credit-card theft. Unless the victim is Republican.”

  “And no way we’re calling any Polynesians, anyway,” Vanna said.

  Starlitz dug in his vest for a cigarette, lit it, and blew ochre smoke across the windshield. “I’ll trade you,” he said at last. “You tell me where the kid is. You can borrow my van for a while, and I’ll rent a V-8 and do the Utah run all by myself.”

  “Fat chance!” Mr. Judy shouted. “Last time we trusted you with our stash, we didn’t see you for three fucking years!”

  “And we’re not telling you anything more about the kid until this is all over,” Vanna said firmly.

  Starlitz snorted smoke. “You think I got any use for a wimpy abortion drug? Hell, RU-486 isn’t even illegal in most other countries. Lemme deliver it—heck, I’ll even get you a receipt. And when I’m back, we all go meet the kid. Just like we agreed before. If that goes okay, I might even throw in the van later. Deal?”

  “No deal,” Mr. Judy said.

  “Think about it. It’s really a lot easier.”

  Mr. Judy silently peeled the Post-It and slapped it on the scanner.

  “Don’t you make trouble for us, Leggy,” Vanna spoke up. “You don’t know anything! You don’t know who we’re meeting. You don’t know the passwords. You don’t know the time or the place.” Vanna took a breath. “You don’t even know which one of us is the kid’s real mother.”

  “You act like that’s my fault,” Starlitz said. “That’s not the way I remember it.” He grinned, a curl of ginseng smoke escaping his back molars. “Anyway, I can guess.”

  “No you can’t!” Vanna said heatedly. “Don’t you dare guess!”

  “Forget it,” Mr. Judy said. “We shouldn’t even talk about the kid. We shouldn’t have mentioned the kid. We won’t talk about the kid anymore. Not till the trip’s over and we’ve done the deal just like we agreed back at the commune.”

  “Fine,” Starlitz sneered. “That’s real handy. For you, anyway.”

  Mr. Judy cracked her knuckles. “Okay, call me stupid. Call me reckless. I admit that, okay? And if me and Vanna hadn’t both been incredibly stupid and reckless around you three years ago, pal, there wouldn’t even be any kid now.”

  Starlitz said nothing.

  Mr. Judy sniffed. “What happened that time—between the three of us—we never talk about it, I know that … And for God’s sake, after this, let’s not ever talk about it again.” She lowered her voice. “But privately—that thing we did—with the tequila and the benwa balls and the big rubber hammock—yeah, I remember it just as well as you do, and I blame myself for that. Completely. I take that entire karmic burden upon myself. I absorb all guilt trips, I take upon myself complete moral accountability. Okay, Leggy? I’m responsible, you’re not responsible. You happy now?”

  “Sure thing,” Starlitz said sullenly, grinding out his cigarette.

  They drove on then, in ominous silence, for two full hours: through Portland and up the Columbia River Valley. Vanna finally broke the ice again by passing out tofu-loaf, Ginseng Rush, and rice cakes.

  “We’ve lost ’em good,” Mr. Judy decided.

  “Maybe,” Starlitz said. There had been no traffic on Channel 13, except the usual truck farmers, speedballers and lot lizards. “But the situation’s changed some now … Why don’t you phone your friends back at the commune? Tell ’em to dig up my arsenal and Fed-Ex us three Mac-10s to Pocatello. With plenty of ammo.”

  Mr. Judy frowned. “So we can risk dope and federal weapons charges? Forget it! We said no guns, remember? I don’t think you even ought to have that goddamn pistol.”

  “Sure,” Starlitz sneered, “so when they pull up right next to us at sixty miles per, and cut loose on us with a repeating combat-shotgun …” Vanna flinched. “Yeah,” Starlitz continued, “Judy here is gonna do a Chuck Norris out the window and side-kick ’em right through their windshield!” He patted his holstered gun. “Fuckin’ black belts … I’ve seen acidheads with more sense!”

  “And I’ve seen you with a loaded Ingram!” Vanna retorted. “I’d rather face a hundred right-to-lifers.”

&n
bsp; “Oh stop it,” Mr. Judy said. “You’re both making trouble for nothing. We lost ’em, remember? They’re probably still hunting us on 101 South. We got a big lead now.” She munched her last rice cake. “If we had any sense, we’d take a couple hours and completely change this van’s appearance. Vanna’s pretty good with graphics. We can buy paint at an auto store and re-do our van like a diaper service. Something a lot less macho than white pearlized paint with two big chrome TV logos.”

  “It’s not your van,” Starlitz said angrily. “It’s my van, and you’re not putting any crappy paint on it. Anyway, we’ve got to look like a TV van. What if somebody looks in the window and sees all this equipment? You can’t get more suspicious and obvious than a van full of monitors that’s painted like some wimpy diaper service. Everybody’ll think we’re the goddamned FBI.”

  “Okay, okay, have it your way,” Mr. Judy shrugged. She put on a pair of black drugstore Polaroids. “We’ll just take it easy. Keep a low profile. We’ll make it fine.”

  They spent the night in a lot in a campground near a state park on the Oregon-Idaho border. The lots were a bargain for the TV van, for its demand for electrical power was enormous, and rental campgrounds offered cheap hookups. Judy and Vanna slept outside in a hemispherical, bright pink alpine tent. Starlitz slept inside the van.

  Next morning they were enjoying three bowls of muesli when an open-faced young man in a lumberjack shirt and overalls meandered up, carrying a rubber-antennaed cellular phone.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Hi,” Mr. Judy said, pausing in mid-spoon.

  “Spend a pleasant night?”

  “Why don’t you guys install proper telephone hookups here?” Mr. Judy demanded. “We need copper-cable. You know, twisted-pair.”

  “Oh I’m sorry, I don’t run this campground,” the young man apologized, propping one booted foot on the edge of their wooden picnic table. “You see, I just happen to live in this area.” He cleared his throat. “I thought we might counsel together about your activities.”

  “Huh?” Vanna said.

  “I got an alarm posted on my Christian BBS last night,” the young man told them. “Got up at five a.m., and spent the whole morning lookin’ for you and this van.” He pointed with his thumb. “You’re the people who import abortion pills.” He looked at them soberly. “Word’s out about you all over our network.”