by Robert Reed
A light, dry motion comes to the balcony.
A familiar voice, sharp and sudden, shouts, “Mr. Shoo! Look! You’ve got turds on your face!”
Toby is awake.
“Poor Mr. Shoo!” cries the bird. “Did I wake you?”
Toby bolts onto the balcony, waving his arms and shouting and then thinking to quit. To listen. The sound of Gabbro’s voice comes up at him, the voice not loud but large somehow. Massive.
“Did you hear it?” he asks the girl. “Called him Mr. Shoo!”
The girl says something. Their door is open again, but she isn’t close enough to be heard clearly.
“I bet I got him going,” says Gabbro. “Got him mad!”
The girl says she doesn’t care. “You and your goddamn jokes!” she cries, hooks in her voice. “Aren’t you listening to me?”
“Were you talking?”
“Was I talking?”
“Now what are you doing?”
Something breaks.
“Don’t do that!” Gabbro is screaming. “Hey! Not that!”
Something heavy tumbles into a wall.
“Fucking quit that!” he says.
And Toby retreats. He shuts the door and sits on the floor, in one of the white corners, curling into a ball and pursing his lips and wishing he could be anywhere else, by any means, halfway wanting the white walls to do him a favor and reach out and swallow him whole.
3
Masking Glass was developed in twenty different places at approximately the same time, on the Earth and elsewhere, and it spread through most of the available markets in several decades. Not too many inventions of the last several centuries have done so well so rapidly…
…It’s a technology of deception. One or more AIs produce an entirely fictitious scene in order to deceive passing eyes. There are limitations, of course. There’s the obligatory sameness to the scenes. AIs have only so much capacity. And there’s the expense involved, but many find the money well spent. Several tricks can allow the modern burglar to probe past the Masking Glass, but isn’t that true with every safety system? The primitive burglars will be stymied, and they’re the ones who are clumsy and dangerous and frequently vindictive—envious of your wealth, angry with their lot in life. Think about the Glass as a filter which allows only the most professional thieves into your midst. If it keeps everyone away, fine. But if not, your lives will still be safe, and isn’t that the most important factor…?
—excerpt from a Masking Glass text, available through World-Net
In Quito, funny as this sounds, the Glass is used in two ways. The wealthy use it as a sophisticated, nearly flawless camouflage. That is its original function. But people with considerably less in the form of bulky goods, like antiques and expensive furnishings, will nonetheless spend enormous sums to acquire and maintain their Glass. The Glass produces the illusion of wealth within their walls. The rarest antiques in the System can be shown sitting in the middle of a room, and people passing by in floaters or on foot will glance indoors and be amazed. Of course a watchful crime lord, knowing the neighborhood and its people, will not believe his or her eyes. But the others will stay amazed long afterward. “Gemstone furniture. I mean it! As big as that ugly old couch, and so brilliant!”
—excerpt from a traveler’s notebook, available through System-Net
She remembers the last time she spoke to the Quito boy. He told her that Dirk and Minus were suspicious, that Minus had made inquiries back in Quito and the inquiries had shaken the Magician pretty good. Had she heard anything from Dirk? No? Anyway, the Magician wanted all of them to pull out now and cut their losses. He’s lost his nerve, the boy swore to Miss Luscious Chiffon. Are you sure Dirk doesn’t suspect? You’re sure? Well, he said, maybe. Maybe. But things down here are sure odd. Chiffon, he said, I don’t like the feel of it. None of it.
The Magician’s a coward, she said.
Isn’t he? he said. He does half the planning and the hardest part of the work. Besides the front-line risks. That’s you, Chiffon. Bless you! And now he’s scared. You should see him. Him and his high-velocity brain, so damned clever and foolish at the same time. You know him. He thinks it takes brains, nothing more, to beat Dirk. Except now he doesn’t feel so smart, and now he’s going to kill us all.
You make it sound like he’s turning us in, she said.
If he bolts, he does just that. Believe me. Minus is already sniffing around. He’ll see a suspect run and figure the rest for himself. He will.
She believed him. A cold feeling came into her chest, and she sat in the dark and listened to the quiet around her while she looked down at the shadowy projection. What do we do? she wondered.
This line’s secure? he asked.
Chances are.
And you’re sure you’re safe?
Minus may suspect. Not Dirk. I know for certain.
You do?
And she said nothing. The boy would realize as much for himself, she knew. She studied him, what she could see of him, and decided he was talking from a public booth somewhere in the East Skyhook region. The architecture. The constant street sounds. He was to serve as her contact and savior. He was a human-shaped slice of shadow, sensibly paranoid. She said to him, I’ve got news of my own. The biggest!
Yeah?
Today he got in a conversational mood. Dirk, I mean. He got to bragging like he does and do you know what he did? Talk about him suspecting nothing. He opened the safe. He showed me the safe! That’s what I’ve been waiting for, finding where it’s hidden. And the bigger news is that he and Minus are going to be gone tomorrow. Dinner at the Mayor’s. A good chance to make my move.
The boy had no response.
She listened to him breathing. She wondered if he heard her just now. A dozen quiver chips! she wanted to shout. Imagine them! I saw them sitting pretty inside the safe! But she took a calming breath and asked, What are you thinking?
About the Magician exposing us.
He showed me the chips!
Just the same, he said, maybe you should break it off now.
Now? Who’s losing his will now?
Chiffon, he told her, I don’t know. I’m scared for you. If they find us out, and they will anytime, you’ll be the first one caught. Not the damned Magician. Not me. You.
And what are my prospects otherwise? she asked. Tell me.
Let me come get you, he said. Now.
Tomorrow.
They’re not home tonight? Do it tonight.
They won’t be gone long enough. I’m not even sure where they’ve gone…for a walk, drinks, I don’t know…
All right, he agreed. I’ll come tomorrow night. Like we planned.
Good.
Unless the Magician bolts early.
Chiffon didn’t want to think about that prospect. It was out of her hands, and fuck the bastard, she thought. This business was a helluva lot more important to her than to anyone else. It was everything. Twelve IA quiver chips, fully charged and worth…God, she couldn’t put a number to their value…and if she held on till tomorrow night and if she could keep Dirk snowed with her charms and body, then they were hers and the boy would come snatch her away to safety, like they practiced, and then she’d have all the options that her new-won fortune would ensure.
She told the boy where they would meet and what she’d be wearing. She warned him about the AIs that were watching everything. Floaters. The tubetrains. Almost every way out of Brulé, or in, and he asked:
Wear something less potent, would you?
It’s all I have, she said. I know what I’m doing. Don’t worry. (She came to Dirk nude. The dress was the most public part of the wardrobe that Dirk had purchased, and she hadn’t worn it twice in these last months. No one saw her but him and Minus, plus the Mayor once. By accident.) I’d dress in his clothes, only that would look silly.
The boy was jealous of Dirk. She knew just by listening to him say nothing. She knew his own job tomorrow wasn’t going to be easy. An unmarked,
unregistered floater without an AI pilot or governors on its speed…she pictured him and maybe some hired muscles riding in over the Farmsteads, keeping low, the big corntrees clipping the floater’s belly. He needed encouragement. He needed to believe that she was waiting for him. So she said:
I’ve missed you, lover.
Chiffon.
She said, Two people with twelve fortunes between them, working as a team, can run a long distance. You and me. Us.
The boy confessed, I dream of you. Every night.
I dream of you, she lied.
Maybe it’ll all turn out right…like it was at the first.
It’ll be better.
You think? he said.
I promise.
That Quito boy was the purest product of the streets—tough and typically wise and utterly reliable when the reasons were good. In the early days, just after her “birth” from the plastic womb, the boy and she had spent some time together. Not much. Just enough so she could play with her new body and so the Magician could make some tests. Now the boy was suffering for their fun. She could tell. She knew enough about her talents to imagine his dreams, and the sweats, his nervous system swearing to him that he was in love. Thoroughly and forever in love.
Sitting alone in Dirk’s enormous apartment, sharing space with Dirk’s other possessions, she had a sudden but obvious thought that came up out of the depths of her brain. Twelve quiver chips divided between one person only…imagine that!
Chiffon, he moaned.
I’ll be waiting for you, lover.
He said, Just get out alive. Promise me that much.
I will. I do, she said, lying to him with perfect ease. She blinked and took a long breath and looked at him while smiling; she thought how there were trillions of people and millions of Flowers in the System, but only one individual had had the experience of being both things. Only one. And here she sat, the honest voice in her head telling her that she would do anything and everything to survive. But no, she wasn’t coming out of this apartment without the quiver chips buried in her leg. Never. She told the Quito boy:
Promise me something too. Please?
He said, In a second. You know that.
Come save me. Whatever happens, come pull me out of here.
I promise.
Thank you.
Count on me.
I knew I could.
They said a few more things, letting nothing to chance. Then she kissed his projected face—the boy mistakenly letting his features show for an instant—and she said good-bye and killed the image and stood and listened to the silence, no one yet coming home. She had already written off the Magician. It was easy. He had brought her out of her Ghost life, giving her this new chance, yet she didn’t waste time or energy on his behalf. The cowardly shit, she thought. Then she looked at herself in the room’s bad light, noticing how her hands trembled, and her insides made a nervous noise and she farted softly, the air suddenly full of the smell of honeysuckle.
Steward is standing at the Masking Glass door, permanently sealed and secure. His hands are on his hips and he watches a man who screams at some black bird—a Gardener, isn’t he?—and Chiffon listens to the show and thinks this is some neighborhood. Steward has a microphone strung outside. He says he likes to keep tabs on the world. Chiffon can now hear other voices shouting too. This is some wild neighborhood. She looks at the wide bare back, the cords of his muscles showing, and she hears him telling her, “I don’t know why. I tell myself every year that I’m going to move. Find something better. But this is all the home I need, I guess. I’ve been here since the start.”
“Really?” She is sitting on the living sofa, her thoughts a little tangled and slow. No sleep, she thinks. But her leg feels better today. She rubs the cut and makes certain that she can’t feel the buried quiver chips, and she breathes and looks at the tiny room without saying anything more. The furnishings and the etceteras make it feel smaller still. But at least she’s safe. The Masking Glass hides her presence from all these loud neighbors. Somewhere an AI hired by Steward does nothing but paint a picture of him living in a pauper’s room. A sophisticated trick, she knows. A private man. He lay on the floor all night, neither of them sleeping, and he explained all the ways in which he had made this modest home a fortress.
A pure Freestater.
She is in the presence of a born-and-bred warrior.
Steward turns now. Chiffon thinks to smile and twinkle her eyes—the bright overdone expression designed by teams of biologists and human psychologists and perfected by more than a century of Flower commerce—and she can’t help but stare at the scars on Steward’s broad chest, remembering when she saw them in the moonlight and his sensing that something was wrong.
Warrior rites, he explained.
She had kissed him on the mouth while he spoke, pulling him down on top of herself. Thinking of the tough Quito boy, and Dirk, she used her charms. The scars were nothing. She canceled them from her mind. She thought she was getting somewhere with Steward, but then he looked into her face and explained:
In Yellowknife. I got them a long time ago.
Warrior rites? she echoed.
They don’t bother you, do they?
No, she lied. I don’t mind.
Do you know anything about the Freestates?
Very little, she said. (Not much of a lie this time.)
I didn’t think you would, he responded. Then he nodded and kissed her mouth and asked with tenderness if she was comfortable. Was the floor comfortable?
I’m fine.
Because I’ve got a bed. If you want a bed.
Do they use beds in Yellowknife? she asked.
And he had hung over her in the moonlight, thinking, his face sober and a little hard and his eyes fixed on nothing, she deciding that no one, warrior or not, was going to slip out of her grasp. So she went on with her work and made him forget whatever he was thinking. She was everything to him, and even now he looks at her smooth legs and the dress and gives a sigh, deep and hungry, probably remembering last night.
The monkeys in the yard are quarreling, running and screeching and throwing bits of masticated fruit at one another. In Quito, she recalls, the best areas have monkeys that are tailored to sing if they need to make noise. Operas are the preferred nonsense. The wealthiest Quito traders and investors, and crime lords have a peculiar fondness for Cradler operas and the ancient Chinese works, milking status out of genetic tinkering. In another century or two, when those particular citizens are dead or Ghosts, some other kind of nonsense will come along. Dancing bears, say. Or big crickets harpsichording Bach.
People, she thinks.
God, she thinks, what a crazy species.
These last few months have been instructive, surprising and oftentimes bewildering. She has been a Flower and not a human being of any kind, and it’s shown her vantage points, all right. Like the way people, any people, care desperately for what others think of them. Like Dirk, for instance. Dirk the famous crime lord. Dirk the alleged sociopath. Dirk the aging chunk of callous, brutal and unforgiving, who spends an hour every day sitting at a mirror while robot hands work at his face with healing creams and lotions and makeup. As if it matters. As if he has spent years cheating and killing so he can have the freedom to sit and worry about his face. About his looks. Dirk, the man who has done so well for himself in Quito that he doesn’t dare step inside its borders again. Dirk, the fool who put the bulk of his fortune, unregistered and untraceable, inside a foolproof safe, and then thought to himself that a man of his staggering good looks and means deserves the best and so why not purchase a Flower from the best Quito brothel? A special, almost one-of-a-kind Flower all his own?
Chiffon nearly laughs when she considers everything.
Steward sits on the chair facing her, the big hands capping his knees and his expression lustful, yet wary. The sofa and the chairs are living dark leather. The shelves on the walls are full of curiosities, plus several hundred old books.
While Steward was in the bathroom this morning, unaware, Chiffon had hidden her little pistol behind the dustiest ones.
“You’ve got interesting neighbors,” she begins.
He shrugs as if to apologize for them. He says, “Another good thing about this area…there’s a rapid turnover in the tenants. I’ve been here so long that I’ve outlasted their memories,” and he shrugs again. “I can’t afford to let anyone know too much. It’s bad business.”
“You were explaining your business to me.” He had started telling it when the crazy Gardener began shouting at the bird. “Something about registration. Citizenship—?”
“I’m no citizen. Not of Brulé, or anywhere.” He breathes, making himself seem larger. “No one knows where I live. Or how. Or even my name, for certain.”
“Steward—”
“There’s a few dozen Freestaters in Brulé City. Sometimes we do work for the government offices, and part of the payment is obscurity. It comes in a lot of ways.”
“The Glass?”
“And a reinforced door. Hyperfiber mesh in the walls. Untraceable World-Net lines, very sophisticated and damned expensive, plus Freestater weapons hidden here and there. Just for us. The police promise not to notice so long as we obey the laws and do the occasional job.”
She simply listens, offering no judgments.
“Most of what I do is…teaching, I guess. Some people pay me to show them how to fight. A few want to learn how to hunt wild game, and others find a kind of pleasure in dressing what’s dead. You know what I mean? Cutting away fur from the meat.” He pauses, then says, “Some of Brulé’s good people are curious about Freestate mental training, its philosophies or whatever.”
She nods.
“But a few months, a few years, and they get bored and forget to come to class.” He has an easy warm laugh. “I bet they don’t know about the Freestates in Quito. Brulé does. A lot of the people who started those little nations, back in the old Neoamerindian Revival, came from this area. And there are still some ties. Enough to keep impressions alive. Wrong impressions, often enough, but alive just the same.”
