Bodyguard

by William C. Dietz

  The first step was to make some travel arrangements and find out where Trans-Solar was located: a task made relatively easy by sliding my single credit card into a slot, waiting for the door to slide open, and stepping into a com booth. The door hissed closed behind me and I damned near gagged on the smell. Someone, or a number of someones, had urinated in the enclosure rather than take their chances in a public rest room along with everyone else. Assholes.

  The lights dimmed, and a rather seductive female voice intoned the words that everyone has heard a thousand times. “Welcome to the Pubcom Gateway 4000. Lean forward until your forehead touches the padding, take hold of both grips, and wait for the main menu to appear. You may choose between tactile or voice control. Please indicate your preference now.”

  “Voice.”

  “You chose voice. Thank you.”

  “Bite my ass.”

  “I’m sorry, but the service you requested is not among those I am programed to provide. Please choose from the following menus.”

  Characters appeared as the voice read them off. They were pink and floated over a black background. There was everything from a com directory, to on-line games, to travel services, to a gazillion different databases.

  When the voice said “travel,” I pulled the trigger on my right hand grip. An arrow appeared. I pulled the trigger on the left side and was sucked into the network. This particular sense-surround had been designed by the famous cyber-architect Moshi Chow. It was designed to seem like a futuristic race course, complete with bullet cars, and a pipe-shaped track. A track on which you could drive right side up or upside down.

  I gave the grip another squeeze, felt my car pick up speed, and used the arrow to steer. Other cars were all around me. They came in every color of the rainbow and wove in and out with what seemed like death-defying courage.

  I gloried in the feel of it and understood how people came to be addicted. After all, virtual reality was everything that reality wasn’t: exciting, fulfilling, and forever fun. It was, the critics complained, a carefully orchestrated opiate for the people, subsidized by The Board to keep the workers under control. I tried to think my way through the problem, but my head started to hurt and I gave up.

  I felt-sensed my destination ahead, took the proper exit, and was downloaded into a custom-made reality. There was no such place, of course, but it looked real, sounded real, and, thanks to kinesthetic feedback, felt real as well.

  My not-real vehicle slowed as it entered a glass-and-steel high-tech building and coasted to a stop. I got out. The car pulled away and accelerated out of sight. The room was huge, or seemed to be anyway, and was rather pleasant.

  A network of paths led here and there, passing countless kiosks, each designed to look like the sort of destination you had in mind. I saw tropical gardens, a night club, an English pub, a beach motif, and many more.

  Navigating by means of the arrow, I made my way over to what looked like a high-tech control console. A woman, crisp in her ship-type suit, looked up and smiled. Her teeth were slightly uneven. A nice little touch by a programmer somewhere.

  “Yes? How may I help you?”

  “1111000111000110000100100100100000.”

  “What was that?”

  “I want to visit Europa Station.”

  The woman nodded agreeably and gestured towards a command chair. “Have a seat.”

  It felt strange to sit in a chair knowing that I was standing in a com booth.

  “How would you like to travel?”

  “A space ship would be nice.”

  The woman smiled patiently.

  “No, how would you like to travel? First class? Business? Or coach?”

  “Well, I normally travel first class, but the rich food plays hell with my waistline, so coach is better.”

  She nodded as if my response was perfectly believable and consulted a free-floating computer screen. “The fair is $23, 879.12 one way.”

  I shifted in my chair. “I don’t suppose you have anything less expensive? Dowand imbu odlepork.”

  She shook her head. “No sir, I’m afraid we don’t.”

  “Hmmm. Well, that being the case, perhaps a shorter trip would be best.”

  She raised a carefully programmed eyebrow. “How short? Mars? The moon, perhaps?”

  Like most freelancers, I knew exactly what I had in the bank. There was three hundred credits plus my pay from Droidware Inc. “How far could two people go on $800.00?”

  The woman consulted her screen again. “Staros-3.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Staros-3 is an Earth-orbit habitat. That’s how far the two of you could go on $800.00. Assuming you’re willing to travel aboard a cargo shuttle with no amenities.”

  “I see.”

  Staros-3 fell way short of our destination, but it was a step in the right direction, and a reasonably good hiding place. Something we would need when Sasha was free. And if that seems a tad optimistic, remember that I’m half a lobe short of a full brain, and given to occasional oversimplification.

  “Okay, Staros-3 it is.”

  “Name?”

  I gave it some thought.

  “Roger Doud.”

  “The name of your companion?”

  “Imbelzweetnorkab.”

  “Spell it please.”

  “I meant to say ‘Mary Cooper.’“

  The woman nodded, and her electronic hands went through the motions of typing while a computer did the real work. “Method of payment?”

  “Electronic transfer.”

  “Account number?”

  I quoted the number from memory.

  “Authorization code?”

  “Privacy, please.”

  The world went temporarily dark. I gave the code. “Lima beans taste like hammered owl shit.”

  The computer heard, transferred the funds, and the surround reappeared. The woman smiled.

  “Thank you, Mr. Doud. When would you like to lift?”

  “Tomorrow evening.”

  She checked the screen. “That will be fine. FENA Air Flight 124 will board from Gate 426, Surface Port 12, at 3:35 p.m. Each passenger is limited to ten pounds of baggage. Questions?”

  “Nope.”

  “Thank you, and have a nice day.”

  I liked the sentiment but didn’t think it would come true. I decided to forgo the subjective ride and jump to the com booth instead. The voice returned along with the main menu. I asked for the business directory, ignored the characters that floated in front of me, and requested a listing of all Trans-Solar facilities located in the northwest section of the North American continent.

  Looking back, I realize it would have been a good idea to learn more about the company in hopes of understanding why they had put the snatch on Sasha, but at the time the idea never crossed my mind.

  The voice read them off. Trans-Solar had two northwest locations: a downtown business office, and a hangar complex out at the spaceport. It was an easy choice.

  The days of enormous high-rise buildings crammed to overflowing with staff were long gone. A regional business office would house five to ten lifers, some overworked freelancers to make coffee, and some security types to protect them. The real day-to-day administrative work would be done by computers and freelancers telecommuting from home. No, all things considered, the office didn’t seem like a place to stash prisoners. Not with a hangar complex to work with.

  The entire com booth shook as someone kicked the door. “You been in there long enough. Come the hell out or pay the price!”

  I ignored the voice and summoned a map of the spaceport. There was a maze of yellow lines, lots of little red words, and a pulsating orange dot to mark the hangar’s location. Maps give me headaches, so I gritted my teeth, squinted my eyes, and forced the information into my unwilling brain.

  A boot hit the door and it bulged inwards.

  “You better come outta there, asshole! Or I’m comin’ in!”

  My eyes found the main terminal
, made obvious by its size and location, and followed a sequence of yellow lines to an orange dot. North, left at the first intersection, then north again. Right at the third intersection, let four grids pass, and watch for it on the right. I closed my eyes, visualized the pattern, and repeated the directions three times.

  The door was ripped aside. A gang banger filled the opening. He was young enough to have peach fuzz and old enough to support fifty pounds worth of chromed chain. He wore leather pants, a matching jacket, and a light blue tutu. He held a piece of rebar, painted to match the tutu, and tapped it against his right shoulder. He grinned. “Hi there. My name’s Alice. Wanta dance?”

  I showed him the .38. His eyes grew bigger. “Sorry, Alice…but my dance card’s full. 789123789456123.”

  I watched him figure the odds, trying to calculate whether he could hit me with the rebar before I pulled the trigger. Caution won out. He bowed and made a sweeping gesture with one arm. “Until next time, then.”

  I stayed where I was. “Is that a threat? Because if it is, I might as well kill you right now and have done with it.”

  His face grew paler and he backed away. I nodded agreeably and left the booth. Kids these days. What’re you gonna do?

  4

  “Zombies have eternal peace of mind, think about it.”

  Ad copy from Mindwipe Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the Datastor Corporation

  It took the better part of two hours and three different subways to reach the spaceport. In spite of the name “subways,” there was a time when wheeled vehicles, the direct ancestors of today’s hover trains, followed the same routes under the open sky. But that was before the urboplex grew up around them, raising “ground level” to coincide with the penthouses where the lifers lived, and leaving the trains to thread their way through the depths below. The trains and the people like me who had little choice but to ride them. Strip lights, alternating smears of white and blue, whipped by.

  As with walking the halls, there’s some danger to riding the trains. The stops are two or three minutes apart, and a lot can happen in that amount of time. Sure, each car comes equipped with a Zeeb, but they tend to be too young or too old to do much good. The rest have other more important assignments.

  My car was a good example. Our Zebra was a woman, pretty once, but gone to fat. Lard rolled back and forth as she moved, and her hips were so big that the regulation sidearm stuck straight out from her waist.

  Still, some presence is better than none, and we arrived in one whole piece. Not counting the messenger droid who was ambushed, slammed, and scrapped, all during the sixty seconds or so that the Zeeb spent picking her nose.

  A recording announced the airport, the doors whooshed open, and most of the people aboard headed outside. Stepping onto the platform was like stepping onto a whale’s tongue. Steel ribs curved up to a high, vaulted ceiling and a PA system gabbled words I couldn’t understand.

  I followed the crowd onto one of a dozen gleaming escalators, moved to one side as a droid pushed his way past, and listened while a somewhat patronizing voice told me all the things I wasn’t supposed to do inside the terminal area.

  The faint odor of brine drifted up from the heavily polluted waters below. Not even multiple layers of concrete and steel could keep it out. By the time space travel had become so routine that every city needed its own spaceport, there was very little land available to put them on. That’s when the corpies looked around, noticed that Puget Sound took up a lot of space, and decided to pave it over. And why not? It had been a long time since anyone had caught an unmutated fish from Elliott Bay or gone swimming without a dry suit.

  Still, it was weird to think there was water under the spaceport, not to mention old shipwrecks, and the ruins of low-lying communities overcome by the constantly rising sea level. The Board was working on global warming, or so they claimed, but the oceans got deeper every year.

  The escalators dumped us on the main level. It was huge. The furniture crouched low as if defying people to move it. Each spaceline had its own kiosk, and they dotted the open floor like islands in a nylon ocean. The building shuddered and engines rumbled as a shuttle lifted off somewhere outside. I knew where I was headed, but had every intention of getting there slowly. There would be security, lots of security, and I would have to find a way around or through it.

  Now, someone else might have come up with a plan, a clever stratagem to get them where they wanted to go, but not me. Being, as they say, “mentally challenged,” I tend to head in the obvious direction and hope for the best. You’d be surprised how often it works.

  I drifted towards an expresso stand and bought an Americano. The waitress was fascinated by my chromed dome, knew she shouldn’t look, but couldn’t help herself. I smiled reassuringly, accepted the coffee, and ambled in the direction of a huge column. It was black with gold bands at the top and bottom.

  I used the drink to warm my hands and to justify my lack of movement. People swarmed around me. Judging from the luggage, or the lack of it, the crowd was about evenly split between actual travelers and those who had come to meet someone, wave good-bye, or pick pockets.

  I can’t remember if I liked to travel, but I think I did. Why else would I join the Mishimuto Marines? Or head out into what spacers call the “Big Black”?

  And second only to travel itself I like the feeling of travel, the hustle and bustle of spaceports, and the people that ebb and flow like a fleshy tide. Some running, some walking, some trudging heads down, eyes on the floor. Who are they? Where are they headed? And what are they thinking? There are times when I go to the spaceport to commune with them, to share the energy created by their movement, and wonder what they’re all about. Strange? Maybe. But it’s better than being alone.

  But watching is a one-way game, or it’s supposed to be anyway. So why was the little guy looking at me? Sure, the head attracts some attention, but the way this character stared at me suggested something else. Trans-Solar security? Possibly, but it seemed unlikely. They had no reason to expect me at the spaceport, or so I assumed. A scammer, then, or an undercover Zeeb, looking for who knows what. My heart jumped. The deader. Had they issued a warrant? Nah, if the Zebras wanted me they’d walk up and take me. I made a note to keep an eye on the man. It wouldn’t be hard. He was the only guy around dressed in a bright green sports coat.

  A zombie walked between us, eyes blank, a tiny bit of drool dribbling from the corner of his mouth. He wore immaculate gray livery, high-gloss boots, and a matching dog collar. It was set with diamonds and connected to a six-foot leash. The woman who held the other end was a sight for sore eyes. She was black, about six-six, and dressed in a gray tunic, black miniskirt, and skin-tight leggings. She wore high heels, and they clicked as she walked. A cloud of perfume drifted behind her. It marked the air she breathed as hers and caused every heterosexual male within a hundred yards to salivate. I was no exception.

  I felt sorry for the zombie, and slightly superior at the same time, because even I can find my way around without a leash. Zombies came into being as the result of some well-intended medical research by a company called E-Mem. Scientists there were searching for ways to enhance human memory when they accidentally came up with a way to replace it. And not just memory, but the thing that makes us get up in the morning, and drink that first cup of coffee.

  And, as is so often the case with pure research, the real-world applications were an afterthought. As the corpies had grown more and more reliant on computers, and the data stored within them had become increasingly valuable, hackers, and the data pirates they gave birth to, profited accordingly. So when it became possible to electronically record information onto human brain tissue, and to psychologically encrypt it so that not even the most sophisticated data pirate could touch it, the market for zombies was created. Some were brain-damaged from birth, but many weren’t.

  Why this particular man had been willing to sacrifice most of his identity for a large up-front payment was known only to
him. Assuming that he had the ability to remember, that is.

  The crowd surged like fish fleeing a shark. I looked and was immediately interested. The bullet-catchers came first, easily identified by the pullover ponchos they wore, each embossed with the Trans-Solar logo. Their function was to literally “catch bullets” should a team of poppers attack their client. It was a high-risk way to make lots of money in a short period of time: a fact well understood by the catchers themselves and the reason behind their frightened eyes and strained expressions.

  Four tough-looking bodyguards backed the bullet-catchers and stood ready to respond should someone attack. They looked quite competent. A fact that brought me little comfort and made my mission seem silly.

  The lifer they protected was as handsome as the biosculptors could make him and walked with the heads-up confidence of someone who has all the answers. The lifer and his entourage left a vacuum, and I helped fill it. I checked on the guy in the green jacket and found he was following behind me. It was quite a procession.

  A comparison of our route to the one that I had so painfully memorized produced a perfect match. I decided to continue. We made good time thanks to the fact that the bullet-catchers forced everyone out of the way. So good that I was worried that we’d hit a corporate checkpoint where the lifer would be allowed to pass and I wouldn’t. But the world is a complicated place, and nobody rides for free, not even corpies.

  The supposedly “spontaneous” demonstration came out of nowhere along with robo-cams to tape it. People who had seemed like raggedy-assed freelancers moments before rose from their seats, deployed hand-lettered signs and blocked the corridor.

  They yelled slogans like “Down with Trans-Solar!” “People before profits!” and “Earth first!”

  Greenies. I should’ve known. Some called them the lunatic fringe, and others regarded them as would-be saviors, men and women, and yes, a dysfunctional android or two, willing to attack the corpies regardless of cost. And the cost was high, as their gaunt faces and ragged clothes could attest. Because to be a greenie was to take an involuntary oath of poverty.