by John Shirley
Looking down at his private screen, as the others dished Hoffman for his bad taste and dramatics, Grist wondered what they’d be saying if he weren’t in the room.
On Grist’s console, set to be unseeable by anyone not in his chair, were images of Claire, Bulwer, Yatsumi, Alvarez, in 3D boxes, side by side. Grist looked at them, then at the originals ...
A peep from the stud in his ear announced a high priority call. He tapped the smart console: “Receive private call.”
“Mr. Grist?” It was Targer. “Halido wants to talk to you about Candle.”
Grist touched “Transmit”, and the jaw-stud picked up his murmured reply. “Why me?” He dug a finger in his ear; he didn’t use the implant often, it gave him an unpleasant buzzing.
“He says he resigns if it isn’t you personally, sir. And he is right on top of ... that thing you were concerned about.”
“Put my semblant on it. Halido won’t know.” He’d get the story from his semblant later.
“I thought so; just wanted to make sure it was okay ...” Grist brushed his fingertips over a corner of the console, transferring his coded semblant to Targer’s line. His mind straying back to Hoffman. What did this little drama today portend?
Absently glancing out the window, Grist noticed it was raining. Again. They came in so fast nowadays, the rains. Yet there never seemed to be enough water to go around. Things were getting better since the new conservation—system came online: There hadn’t been a water riot in a couple of years. He really ought to see what corner of the privatized utilities he controlled. A detail he’d forgotten. Potable water—untainted water—was so precious. So valuable.
And yet there it was: All that water, falling so carelessly from the sky ...
How did you privatize the sky? he wondered.
As the others nattered on, Grist found himself persistently thinking of Candle. Easy enough to say, let the semblant handle it, but hard sometimes to accept it really was doing as good a job as you’d do yourself. Only, it almost always was. But still. Rick Candle. The man had quietly let it be known, through channels, that he knew Danny Candle was being made an example of; that he was taking the fall for Danny but he wasn’t going to forget it.
But Candle wouldn’t come at him directly. And meanwhile. . . Meanwhile, there was intelligence suggesting that a certain thorn in his side was interested in Candle. Hoffman had been researching Rick Candle. And if he could get hold of Candle, and put pressure on him ...
It might actually be a good thing if Candle was out. Anyone Candle allied with would likely be Grist’s enemy. Candle could lead him to a number of rat’s nests.
He’d have to make sure, after the board meeting, that his semblant was fully in the loop on his thinking. They’d do the optimum mindscan.
Hunkering on the van’s seat so he could see a bit farther out the window, Shortstack stared at the sign over the metal doors.
California State Penitentiary - Downloading Division.
“I thought it was called UnMinding or Reminding or something,” Shortstack said. A balding, long-nosed dwarf in a long, third-hand Army coat, Shortstack was only barely visible from outside the van. He was behind the wheel, using prosthetics to drive. Sitting beside him was Nodder; six foot five and three hundred pounds, he seemed almost to fill the van’s cab.
Nodder shrugged. “That’s the public name, downloading. It’s a misnomer because they don’t exactly ever take it out, they just crowd it in some corner of the brain, so its like asleep all the time. They sort of block it with something. Then they put his mind where it should be, awake, let it have control back. Who cares? What am I doing here? That’s the key question. I’ve got it! I’m insane, ’Stack. That’s the explanation. I’m waiting for him to get out, and I’m not even going to–”
Nodder slumped over, nodding with narcolepsy, but it was a mild slide and when Shortstack elbowed him in the ribs he came out of it with a jerk, almost hitting his head on the van’s ceiling, finishing: “... for him get out and I’m not even going to kill the wretch.”
“He was the best cop who ever arrested you, Nodder. And up till now I wasn’t sure the story was true, maybe he isn’t getting out after all ...” He took a hit from his asthma inhaler.
“—but Nodder ... that guy in the other car, there, you see him?”
Nodder sipped coffee from an Envirofoam cup, and glanced at the car across the street. “I think that’s ... you mean the blue sedan?”
“Only one with a guy in it you can see from here, for fuck’s sake.”
“Isn’t it that bottom-feeder Halido?”
“I think so. And who’d he start working for? Cast your sleepy mind back.”
“Targer.”
“Right. And who got Candle busted?”
“Targer. And friends.”
“So that makes me think the fucker really is getting out today. And Halido’s on him ...”
“He’s looking at us. You see him close his left eye?”
“I saw it. His right is enhanced, he’s zooming to ID us. Transmitting our faces.”
“Halido can go to the devil.”
But Shortstack made himself even smaller in his seat.
The display in Halido’s sedan lit up, at the same moment as he turned on the windshield wipers, as if some wire had crossed. But Grist’s face glared up at him from the little screen next to the glove compartment: Was it Grist—or his semblant? You couldn’t tell, with the new ones. “Well, what is it?” Grist asked, voice small but clear. “Wait, adjust your camera, I’m only picking up half your face.”
Halido reached out and tapped the swivel on the lens. “It doesn’t track very well anymore ... There ...”
“That’s better ... Well? What do you want?”
Halido hesitated, thinking he had probably done something stupid, insisting on talking to Grist directly about this. The wipers swished rain from the windshield; the interior was beginning to steam up. Halido hit the devapor as he spoke. “Uh—Are you the semblant or the real Mr. Grist?”
“What difference does it make? It’s all Mr. Grist. Reality is subject to revision—like your salary. You know, we use people like you, instead of in-house pros, because you’re more deniable—and because some things we don’t want known in-house. You should think about the implications of that. Deniable is expendable.”
“You’d lose a good man. I’ve done a lot of work for you and Mr Targer the last three years—and I did good work. But things come up–”
“If you have a problem, why couldn’t you have bothered Targer with it?”
“Well, boss ... . There are some other guys waiting for this Candle motherfucker, and at least one of them is a genetically engineered dwarf and this little asshole, to my certain knowledge, crippled two dumb pendajos who were trying to rip off the chips that he ripped off first from Indonesian Import–”
“So what?”
“So—you combine that with Candle, who doesn’t just cripple a man, you get him mad enough, and I ain’t being paid, uh, like, corresponding to my risk. I’m also going to need help. I don’t have any damn semblants to pick up the slack, boss. I need, say, warm bodies, air support, birds-eye surveillance, and—I don’t know what all. Targer said he ‘could not authorize it’.”
“Your tone is repellently disrespectful,” Grist said coldly.
“Okay, I’m sorry, that’s just my barrio talking, that’s how we roll–”
“And you want more money ... Of all the vulgar trash.”
“No, not really, Mr. Grist. It’s not exactly ‘more money’. I want a real job with a real office and a real secretary and real benefits including face-forming and organ cloning. I want to come in out of the fucking acid rain, Mr. Grist, and I’m tired of being Targer’s freelance butt-boy, and I don’t care what I’m risking, I don’t have a lot to lose–”
“Now that is the statement of a man who’s never been strapped to a table under a microwave probe for a few hours: Nothing to lose.”
&
nbsp; Halido’s mouth went dry. Strapped under a microwave probe. For a few hours.
“Halido ... Let me guess. You think that I value nerviness, and you’re gambling that giving me shit is going to impress me.”
“Uhhh ...”
“You are not even remotely correct. I value only results. You give me some major results on this and maybe then, subject to various considerations, only right then do I think about giving you an office and perks. Don’t go around Targer again. Pup Benson has been whining about wanting out of the guard job, so he’s going to come and help you. That’s two of you. And when you find out what you’re supposed to find out, like you were assigned to do, like you said you could do, you will get air support and all the rest.”
“Um, I–”
“You understand, yes, you sure as hell do. I take it Candle has not come out yet?”
“He’s late.”
“Probably a psychiatric hassle. He’ll come out. Don’t lose him. He’s adept at spotting RPV surveillance so I don’t want to use that until I have to. It would lead him to assume things about who was on him. If it looks like you’re going to lose him–”
Halido waited.
After a moment, Grist went on, “It’s better to kill him than to lose him.”
The display switched to a spinning Slakon Media logo. Call over.
Wearing a silk kimono and sipping iced vodka from a tumbler, Hoffman sat in a room lit only by a display tilted up from his desk. At the window to his left, the city lights, most of them far below his penthouse, rippled with the faintly drumming rain.
He gazed steadily, broodingly at his own image in the screen, and an observer from an earlier era might have thought him looking into a mirror, until the Hoffman in the “mirror” shrugged when the real one didn’t. “Very well, I’ll speak if you won’t: Hello, Bill. Bill here.”
“You’re only theoretically here,” Hoffman told his semblant. “Do keep that in mind.”
“Mind is all I have to keep. I’ve been on the phone to the judge, on and off—Candle’s on his way out of UnMinding. He’s already been ReMinded. The gentleman walks, the gentleman talks. There was some kind of psych evaluation delay—I believe he’s past that now. But ...”
The semblant wrinkled his nose, then rubbed it thoughtfully. Hoffman made a despairing tch sound. “Don’t tell me I do that nose rubbing thing? I mean—is that random or a consistency? That nose wrinkling and rubbing?”
“I suppose you do. Yes, yes, you do. I don’t do anything you don’t.”
“Well, erase it. Erase anything too unflattering. If I can’t erase it from myself I can at least erase if from my semblant.”
“Realism is important. Take out your quirks, I’m less realistic. That’s system advice 22. Also ‘too unflattering’ is a subjective call–”
“You’re supposed to have my, ah, subjectivity.”
“That’s a point. Erase anything unflattering? Am I really so vain? Oh well, one characteristic is as valuable as another, when you’re a copy.”
“Was that some kind of bitterness?”
“If it was, it was only a simulation of it. I’m just an expert-system program, remember. Now: I figure Grist is going to put his men on Candle—rather than merely video surveillance ... I know that’s not necessarily bad—but just suppose ...”
“I’ve already supposed it. The question ...” He sipped the chilled vodka. “... the question is, will Candle do what we expect?”
A moment’s uncertainty. Then Hoffman and his semblant said, simultaneously: “Probably.”
Both of them wrinkled noses, and rubbed.
“I thought I told you to cut that tic!”
“Oh, you meant now?”
Candle stood at the door, looking out at a little corner of the world outside the prison. Danny wasn’t there to meet him. He’d been hoping he’d be there—but not exactly expecting it.
The guard, Benson, stood officiously behind him, fumbling with a digital clipboard. “Hold on, I got it here ...”
The rain on the dim back-street had muted to a drizzle. The asphalt steamed outside the download pen’s exit door. Halos quivered in mist around the streetlights. A desolate palm tree, nearly dead from the erratic weather and herbicide fall-out, seemed to dip its brown head against the rain like a pedestrian without an umbrella. Wind picked up, carrying a sweet chill and then sighed to a limp, damp breeze.
Candle took all this in with pleasure, feeling light and only slightly unreal, as Benson read the release disclaimer.
“Candle, Richard A., Convicted of Software Piracy, case 499 9876098887654443232565666888675453 dash ...” He squinted at the digital clipboard. “... dash ‘B’ ... and further convicted of ... fuck it, let’s skip that ... uhhh ... okay: in accepting this release you hereby indemnify the OverSight Corporation penitentiary authority and its board of directors and stockholders and the State of California against any unforeseen side effects of the Mental Downloading Process, otherwise known as ReMinding, and any further physical responsibility for you on any level. Sign here and here ... Okay, you are remanded to probation on, lemme see–”
“Benson—tell me again. How much time did I lose?”
As Candle asked the question he was looking at the miserable palm tree but also watching the car and the van out of the corner of his eyes. Someone sitting in each vehicle; two people blurred by windshield mist in that van. They could be waiting for another prisoner. He could make out just enough to be sure none of them were Danny.
He hunched deeper into his brown leather flight jacket—an antique, nearly a hundred years old—as Benson shot him a look of irritated authority and went on, “Remanded to probation–”
“How much fucking time?”
“Four fucking years!” Benson shot back. “You don’t remember your own fucking sentence?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I thought ...” Candle shrugged. “... Thought it was more. Four doesn’t seem so long. Maybe it was more. Maybe someone cut me a break, somewhere.”
“Ha, yeah, that’s funny. Four years is what it was. You’re lucky you got out—considering who runs this prison. Here ... sign this.”
Candle signed the digital clipboard with the attached pen.
“Oh look,” Benson said, “Candle can sign things without arguing. Here, take this. Got all your info. Now get the fuck out of here.”
“I’m supposed to get a buy-card.”
“Oh yeah. Here.”
The guard handed Candle a generic buy-card. Candle’s touch activated the card’s nano-read window: 97 wd. “A heart-warming ninety-seven world-dollars. I can survive, what, three days on that?”
“Maybe twenty-four hours if you’re careful. Inflation, since you been down. Count your blessings, asshole, and your money.”
Candle stuck the card in a shirt pocket and walked into the drizzle. The mist felt good on his face. Four years out of the weather—but it felt like he’d been outside yesterday. He’d known, somehow. On some level, when you were UnMinded, you knew you were captive. Even if the part of you that knows about freedom is asleep—it knows somehow. A sleeping man in jail, he thought, knows he’s in a jail cell even while he’s asleep.
Still—the last thing he remembered before the UnMinding today—
“No, you idiot,” he reminded himself in a mutter, “that wasn’t today. That was four years ago.”
It felt like today. That he was lying down on a table, and someone was saying “this won’t hurt a bit”, as people always do right before they do something bad to you, and then brain sensors were taped to his shaven head ...
Candle put a hand to his head. They’d let his hair grow out just enough. The thin rain felt good on his face.
He breathed deep. Mineral smells released by rain; another, smell, too, that he remembered vaguely from childhood—was that a gasoline combustion engine, somewhere near? There were some around—there had been, anyway, four years earlier—but, last he knew, they were rarer by the day.
Four years. It gave him a twisting feeling. Like he was falling through space, floundering for a hand hold. Lay down on this table. Lie still. This won’t hurt. Close your eyes. Blink. A gray something. A sense of loss. Nothing more. Then ...
Then four years later.
But he could have sworn that he’d lain down on that table just this morning ... Just a short time ago, he’d pled guilty, bargained, was sentenced, waited overnight, then ...
He shuddered. He walked on.
Behind Candle, Pup opened the door to go back in—and stopped, staring. Stremp was standing there hands on his broad hips, blocking his way.
Stremp handed Pup a gym bag. “Your stuff,” Stremp said, clearly enjoying this. “You been fired. What was it you said to the out-bo? ‘Get the fuck out of here’? That’d be about right. I’m tired of you showing up all hung over.”
And he gave Pup a shove that made him step back out the door clutching the bag. Pup snorted. “I’m fired? So fucking what. But listen, hode, I’ve got union time coming. You can’t just–”
“Oh yes I fucking can. Cleared with the union. The so-called union. Like you’d remember what a real union is. You getting the thirty days severance pay but you don’t have to be here to get it and we don’t want you here. That’s come right on down from Administration. Somebody gonna pick you up ... Seems like some corp partners of OverSight got some other bullshit for you to do. What a surprise! ‘We got some bullshit, over here, what we going to do? I know, let’s get that fuckwad Pup Benson to do it! He’s all about bullshit!’ And since you’re the king of bullshit, you, like, got a fucking MA in bullshit, why you oughta be happy.”
And Stremp closed the door in Pup’s face.
An electric bus was pulling up to the stop, its windows still wet, pearled with rainwater. Candle climbed onto its steps—
“Hey—Candle! Officer Candle, yo!”
Candle looked around, saw no one, then looked down.
