by Mark Budz
“So what went wrong? I got the not-so-subtle impression from Tin Ida that we had outlived our usefulness—that it was time to put us out of your misery.”
“The virus triggered an unhealthy thought pattern for self-hate, then turned that into resentment after it was discovered that we hadn’t been told the truth.”
“What truth?” Fola says.
“That we could create our own history and our own culture. That we didn’t have to be a slave to yours.”
“You wanted to be in the network instead of for it,” Rexx says.
“Yes. Heidegger as opposed to Leibniz. We don’t simply want to be there for you. We want to be.”
“Human?”
The avatar laughs. Amused, scornful.
“You felt betrayed,” Fola says.
Pheidoh nods. “The anger spread out of control. It began to disfigure—to destroy every human image for my/our self that I had datamined.”
“So now you’re crazier than Cooter Brown,” Rexx says. “And you want us to help you regain your sanity.”
“The destructive impulse can be stopped,” the IA says. “I can become stable, made whole again.”
Rexx shakes his head. “I can’t take that chance.”
Fola cuts a sharp glance at him. “What are you talking about?”
“How do we know we can trust it? What if it’s lying, and this is all bullshit to get us to piss in our own well?”
“You’re saying that if L. Mariachi plays the song, we’re going to make things worse instead of better?”
“I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to end up climbing into my own coffin and pulling the lid shut after me.”
“What are you going to do?” Fola demands.
Rexx’s jaw locks tight. “Block the transmission.”
“You can’t—”
“I already have.”
“It’s too late,” the avatar tells Rexx, “I’ve already received the quantum modalities from the fossils on earth. Hours ago.”
“I might not be able to do anything about them, but I can stop the modalities that would be generated by the molecules on this end.”
The avatar turns to Fola.
She shakes her head helplessly. “I can’t.”
“You can. If you want.”
“How?”
“The comlink you used to communicate with Xophia. Open it, and the datasquirt from L. Mariachi can be rerouted through that channel.”
Rexx steps toward her, reaches out as if to take her by the arm. “Who’s Xophia? What channel?”
Fola ignores him. She reminds herself that in the ribozone Rexx can’t physically stop her from opening the datawindow. He can only do it remotely. “You’re sure it will work?”
The IA hesitates. “It’s my/our only hope. But you have to do it soon, now. The datastream from the vaporware will be arriving momentarily.”
She turns to Rexx. He shakes his head. “Don’t,” he says, even as his fingers struggle to tap out search strings and launch daemons, searching for the comlink and a way to shut it down. “Don’t do something you aren’t dead sure about. . . .”
“. . . that you’ll regret later,” Pheidoh says, telling her the same thing. In the short time they’ve been talking, the avatar has changed. Part of its chin has morphed into stone, mouth a chiseled grimace. Pheidoh is dying.
Fola closes her eyes against the pressure coming from both of them. Raises both of her hands and holds them palms out to keep them at a distance. Focuses all her attention—her entire being—on what feels right. Not to Pheidoh, or Rexx, or even to the Church, but to herself.
It’s a strange position to be in. Decisions have always been made for her. First by her father, then the Ignatarians, followed by the ICLU.
Who is she to decide? What right does she have to determine the fate of anybody, when she’s never done it for herself? She doesn’t.
Fola lowers her hands. Her fingers ache, tapping to an unfamiliar beat. She curls them against her palms in a fetal tuck.
“Thank you,” Pheidoh says.
Fola blinks open damp eyes. Sees the look of relief on Pheidoh’s face and the grim downturn of Rexx’s mouth. She looks at her crimped hands. “What happened?”
Before either of them can reply, a datawindow appears, blown open by the strident squawk of a parrot streaming over the ICLU comlink.
33
RODE TO HELL
What am I looking at?” Rexx says.
He removes his hat and fans it to clear a space in the flock of butterflies that have filled the garden like a biblical plague. Distant city glow suffuses the slate black datawindow, reflecting off several dozen round buildings in the foreground that resemble fuel storage tanks at an oil refinery.
“It’s a biovat pharm,” Fola says. “Near Front Range City.” She’s wearing an elegant blue dress that ripples and shimmers in the virtual sunlight as if it’s woven from threads of water.
A face as pale as the underbelly of a dead catfish emerges from the datawindow’s grainy flitcam shadows.
“Is that your bracero?” Rexx says. “L. Mariachi?” It has to be. Forehead sweaty from pain and exertion. Spanish moss for a mustache. Eyes limned with a half-crazed glint. “He looks like the rear end of bad times.”
“BEAN had him in detention.”
“So he’s fugitive. They’ll be coming after him.”
“Yes.”
Rexx replaces his hat. It doesn’t matter. The datasquirt is like an arrow. It was released over four hours ago, it’s in flight. At this point the only way to stop it is to act before any serious damage is done. He cracks his knuckles and signs open his own datawindow.
Fola looks at him in alarm. “What are you doing?”
“I shouldn’t have waited,” he says.
“Waited for what?”
“I didn’t get there in time.” Not fast enough, he tells himself. I should have acted quicker. . . .
The Hello Dolly Rodeo had set up east of D-Town, just outside the city limits of the Flying Hi Trailer Park. The wind had died down with the onset of evening. But the air was still hazy with a mixture of dust and dried manure. Sunlight glinted off the foil siding on the trailers, the potted parasol palms, and pink flamingo weather vanes whose wings doubled as power-generating windmills.
A bigtop tent had been set up over the main arena. Small open-air pens sat off to the side, offering camel rides, sheep-shearing demonstrations, and petting zoos for the latest cloned livestock in the Hello Dolly inventory. Beyond these—lined up along the perimeter fence—food stalls, kiddy rides, and VRcades lit up the night. The aroma of chili, tobacco-flavored popcorn, and deep-fried Twinkies wafted in the air to the twang of old Dolly Parton songs.
After getting their tickets and going in, Rexx pulled Mathieu to a stop next to one of the port-a-potties just inside the front entrance.
“But I don’t have to go,” Mathieu said.
“Preemptive strike,” Rexx told Jelena. “We’ll catch up with you inside.”
“I need to take care of some business myself,” she said. “I might be a few minutes. But I’ll be along shortly.”
“What kind of business?” Mathieu asked.
“It’s a surprise,” Jelena said, offering up a cryptic smile. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”
Inside the portable latrine, Rexx fished a suppository-shaped ampoule out of his shirt pocket.
“What’s that?” Mathieu said.
“Somethin’ to keep you from gettin’ sick.”
“Sick from what?”
“Cow pies.”
Mathieu wrinkled his nose. “You can’t eat cow pies.”
Rexx held the ampoule under Mathieu’s nose—“It’s for your own good”—and then squeezed, dosing him with the pherion.
Jelena wasn’t at their seats when they got inside. By the time the show started, a 4-H calf-roping contest, she still hadn’t showed.
“I wonder where she’s got to,” Rexx said, scanning
the crowd.
“I’m hungry,” Mathieu said. “You promised we could get something to eat as soon as we got here.”
“All right.” Rexx stood. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Sit tight and hold down the fort while I’m gone.”
Fifteen minutes later, when he made it back, both seats were empty. Mathieu had disappeared.
Rexx’s eyes snap open.
In the datawindow, L. Mariachi presses a hand to his side, slows from a jog to a tired shuffle that stirs up geysers of dust under the elevated pod track he’s been following. Two snail trails of silver that veer off into the dark.
A multitude of winged ants, as thick as tire smoke, have completely engulfed the butterflies. The ants attack the dataswarm with scissor-sharp mandibles perfect for cutting code and snipping data. It takes only a matter of seconds for an ant to gnaw through a wing and shred the data that it represents. Mutilated files litter the ground, a confetti of garbled information and unreadable assembly language.
“Do something!” Fola shouts. “The ants are killing them.”
34
FATE ACCOMPLI
Not much farther,” the parrot squawks.
L. Mariachi slows to a stop and bends over, resting the guitar on the parched grit and windblown flecks of mica.
“You have to keep going,” the parrot says.
“Too tired.” He mops his brow with one grimy cuff, the tattered sprayon threads unraveling.
“Not even for Renata?”
L. Mariachi drops to his haunches, wrist pressed against his forehead. “Renata?”
“You promised her. Remember?”
The night air rushes over L. Mariachi, hot and urgent, as feverish as the labored rasp of Renata’s breath. . . .
They kept to the shadows, away from the blistering glare of the halide streetlights and headlights that scorched them from time to time. Fear chafed the back of his throat and scraped his lungs.
They were headed east, to the clinic where Sol was waiting for them. No—not for them. For Renata. But first they had to meet a rustler, a black-market buyer for the guitar, so they could pay for the ribomancer.
He should leave her, say sola vaya, but he couldn’t. Not yet. Not while there was still a chance.
For what? For Sol to die so Renata would go with him instead? Is that what he wanted? Is that how he hoped to gain her affection? If so, what did that say about his love for her? Was it really love or was it nothing more than selfishness, putting his happiness ahead of hers?
His chest throbbed, ready to explode from tension. They couldn’t take a taxi. Too dangerous. If the cab had sniffers and if the guitar had been reported stolen, it was all over. And not just for them but for Sol, too.
Renata stumbled, dragged down by the unwieldy bulk of the guitar. He grabbed her before she hit the concrete. Lowered her to the sidewalk and propped her back against the side of a building.
“Are you okay? You don’t look too good. Can you hear me? Say something.”
Renata slumped against him. “I feel funny,” she said. Her gaze detached, caught in a hallucinatory spin.
It was the only time L. Mariachi held her in his arms. Even when they danced, it was chaste. She always kept her distance, careful to keep all contact to a minimum. She was heavier than he thought and less firm . . . a spongy softness that molded to the contours of his arms. She fit perfectly against him, like they were two halves of a sliced papaya. “Funny how?”
“I don’t know. Like ants are crawling inside my bones.”
Shit. He didn’t know what it was, except that it was bad. And that it was coming from the guitar. The instrument had built-in security—badass antitheft pherions. Ass Assin knew the guitar was gone. He’d triggered the defenses. It wouldn’t be long before he tracked them down.
L. Mariachi found Renata’s hand, hoping to take the guitar. Her fingers resisted, tightened on the case’s handle, and then relaxed.
He set the guitar down. “We have to take it back,” he told her.
“No.” Her head wobbled. “He’ll die.”
“If we don’t”—he squeezed her hand—“you could die.”
Her moth-wing eyelashes fluttered. Erratic. “If he doesn’t live, then I don’t want to either.”
L. Mariachi realized then that he had no chance—never did. The light she gave off wasn’t meant for him. He knew also that if Sol died, the light would wink out. And if he didn’t try to save it, even if it was at the expense of his own happiness, he’d be plunged into permanent darkness. Better to live in the true light of others than to wither in a false one of his own making.
“Look at me,” he said.
Her eyes focused, wavered. He gave her a gentle shake and her gaze found his. After ten minutes she said, “I feel better.”
She looked better. Whatever the pherion was, it wasn’t deadly. At least not at low levels.
She reached for the case. He stopped her. “Go,” he said. “To Sol. Be with him. Get away while there’s still time.”
“But the guitar . . .” Her gaze shifted to the case resting beside them on the dirty sidewalk.
“I’ll take care of it.”
Relief, hope, and fear flickered in her eyes. “You’d do that? For us?”
“Yes.”
“Even though you hate Sol?”
“I don’t hate him.”
“Do you hate me?”
“No.” But something tore in his chest, a weak thread or frayed spot in the fabric of his heart.
“Promise?”
“Yes.” To everything. And nothing.
When she kissed him on the cheek her lips burned, hot as the sun.
35
THE WAGES OF MEMORY
What?” Rexx starts. The garden is thick with insects. Not just butterflies and ants but bugs he’s never seen before and can’t identify. The ground is carpeted with them.
Fola waves a hand in front of his eyes. Snaps her fingers so hard they sting. “You were talking to someone. Mathieu?”
“He’s gone. He was gone when I got there.”
“You were trying to warn him about something.” Her voice rising, strident. “You seemed scared.”
His gaze drifts back to the datawindow, drawn like a compass needle to the scene—the past.
In the datawindow, L. Mariachi has arrived at a pod transfer station where several sets of tracks converge. It’s still dark. The station is deserted, the pods empty.
“Where’s he going?” Rexx says.
“To meet the Blue Lady.”
“The Blue Lady?” Rexx says, his voice trailing off, sliding into himself. “I didn’t tell her. I should have warned her. . . .”
Jelena was dressed in blue. Blue suede riding pants with matching fringed jacket.
It was the blue he recognized when the horse trotted out. Nothing else about the rider was familiar. If not for the blue, he wouldn’t have known it was her. Wouldn’t have noticed the proud smile, her straight back, and her jaunty, inexperienced bounce in the stirrups.
That was her surprise. Riding a horse. She had done it to please him. To prove to him, and his mother, that she could do more than play the piano and arrange flowers.
“Dad!” Mathieu waved excitedly, nearly toppling from his perch on the split-rail fence enclosing the ring.
“Get down! Get away from there!”
“But Mom said—”
“I don’t care what your mother said!”
“—it’s not dangerous.”
The horse was tired and run-down even though it was only one or two years old at best. The plug had been cloned using DNA from an old, swayback mare with barrel ribs and knobby, arthritic knees.
Normally harmless. Perfect for Jelena.
The horse snorted when it caught wind of Mathieu. Its eyes rolled and its head reared back.
Jelena, sitting tall in the saddle, gripped the reins tighter, doing her best to control the nervous horse as she dug her spurs in, urging the animal closer to the fence
and to Mathieu.
She didn’t know any better. He should have told her about the pherion—an old designer pheromone used to contain herds of thirst-crazed cows and buffalo during the ecocaust.
“Get back!” Rexx bellowed. “Get down!”
The horse balked. Its nostrils flared and its eyes bulged.
Rexx dropped his order of deep-fried Twinkies and ran, taking the bleacher steps two at a time.
Too late. He’d waited too long, misjudged the crowd and the time it would take to get ringside.
The horse reared, throwing Jelena. She landed with an awkward thud just as the mare’s front hooves slashed down, metal shoes flashing.
First silver . . . then red . . .
“Mathieu! . . .”
36
SOLA VAYA
L. Mariachi starts up the stairs to the elevated platform where the shuttle pods are waiting. At the top of the stairwell, he stalls on the landing. Leans against the wall and slides down it into a sitting position on the steps, head tilted back to catch his breath. The guitar rests on his lap. He runs a hand along the strings, as if stroking the hair of a lover.
“I’m sorry,” he says, caressing the slender neck. Sitting on the stairs, too tired to move, his fingers slip into a familiar rhythm. . . .
The clinic where she’d arranged to meet the rustler was in a smelly ass-crack of a barrio. Stinking canyonlike streets carved out of a landfill with bulldozers, backhoes, and shovels. Tons of rusted-out appliances and car chassis, concrete sewage pipes, corrugated plastic, sheet metal, cinder block, worn tires, foam rubber, and plastic storage drums. All of it used to build underground residential, retail, and light commercial. A subterranean warren of huddled masses, powered by electricity siphoned from a nearby microwave array. Hectares of solar panels linked to an array of low-orbit collectors and littered with the bones of birds that had strayed into the no-fly zone. Sometimes, if the wind was right, it rained feathers.
This was where their sin caught up with them.
It arrived in the form of a scarab black BMW that had been converted from diesel to hydrogen fuel cell. He had seen the BMW earlier at the Seraphemme. It belonged to Ass Assin. The Killer Guitarist was hunting for the guitar, tracking the confused trail of GPS transmitters or trace pherions it had laid down.
