Black Glass

by John Shirley

“He can’t do anything to someone he can’t catch, Gully! Remember I’m his mind too. I can anticipate him, I can elude him!”

  “Bullshit. A semblant is close but it’s not him. Look—forget it! And stay out of my home systems or I’ll fucking wipe you and tell him you had a system crash!”

  “Oh my dear fellow ...” Its face had become an amalgam of five faces again. Its eyes were Grist’s. Its voice Bulwer’s. “Lord but ain’t that a shame. Now I’m going to have to go around you. Or maybe ... right over the top of you.”

  “Hey—Multisemblant ...”

  But the face blinked out. The Multisemblant had “hung up the line.” There was nothing but the visual static of unformulated virtual reality ... and a hissing sound, from the audio. A hiss of white noise.

  But it sounded, then, like the hiss of a snake.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  HAS A LIFE OF ITS OWN, IT’S A DEVIL’S SIGH, IT’S AN ANGEL’S GROAN

  Candle was worried about security. Worried about Shortstack’s undermarket; worried in the right-here-and-now, and not in some vague someday sense. But he wasn’t sure why.

  He was pacing around in the market room, as Nodder called it, watching the three women at work on the undermarket. He had begun calling it that, the undermarket, instead of the “Black Stock Market”—made it easier for an ex-cop to rationalize.

  Candle stopped and looked at the screens. He already had a pretty good intuitive grasp of the undermarket. “Pell—is that white hat ’ware working for you?”

  “I don’t know—it hasn’t detected any surveillance on us yet.”

  Brinny glanced over her shoulder at Candle, her lips pursed. “You’d be four years out of date, on that stuff, though, wouldn’t you now, officer Candle?”

  “I am a bit behind the curve, yeah,” Candle answered, glancing at his watch. It was two-thirty. He hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch, had nothing but an espresso with sugar, and hunger was gnawing at him. And Brinny was not helping his mood. “But the guy I got the software from isn’t behind the curve—he’s right on top of it. Hard part was convincing him to sell to me. He’s ...” Candle shrugged, let it trail off. Just as well they didn’t know the hode he had bought the protective software from, that morning, was a working police detective. They might get gossipy about it. Or they might worry that the guy had buried a law enforcement trojan in it somewhere. They didn’t know, like Candle did, that Gustafson was a dirty cop, skim-scamming a dozen grafts. Gustafson was worried about being busted—not about busting people.

  The block on the door rolled back, making Candle jump. Nodder ducked into the room, carrying a big tray of mixed takeout. Candle selected the western falafel, a sort of Mexican/Middle-Eastern blend. Wondered how much of it was vat-grown or shale protein. It did have a trace of petroleum aftertaste, he decided, munching on it.

  “Where’s Shortstack today?” Candle asked. “Haven’t seen him.”

  “Off getting some gear,” Nodder said. “He’ll be back tonight. You okay, Candle? You seem nervous.”

  “What you hired me to be,” Candle said, drinking cola. What was that taste? Pineapple cola? “Nervous is alert.”

  “But there’s something worrying you?”

  There was something. But he didn’t know how to articulate it. It wasn’t much more than a hunch. “New to the job, is all. You transfer that money to my account?”

  “Sure. You can get Pell to open a window and show you.”

  “Nah, I’ll take your word.”

  “Any sign of your brother?”

  “Everybody asks me that and I keep saying I was gonna ask them the same thing. But actually—he’s doing a show in a couple days. I’ll get him there, at the Black Glass. If the people he owes money to don’t drag him into some hole first ...”

  “You worried about Grist?”

  “Should I be? You heard anything?”

  “Word is they wanted you for some kind of interrogation. Maybe you oughta open up a channel to them, tell Grist you’re not going to get ugly about their little skimmy-scam.”

  “I might. Listen—I didn’t have a chance to ask you this morning. At this point ...” Candle put his cup down on the desk he’d pulled in for his workstation, that morning. It was bare, so far, except for the cup. “..maybe it’s too late. I should’ve been clear on this point before. But I gotta ask you guys to commit—I give you police software, show you tricks to avoid ’em, you don’t pass that software or that info on to anyone else. You don’t copy it, you don’t share it, you don’t sell it. That goes for everyone.”

  Brinny turned to look at him, her eyes coldly flat. Then she glanced at Nodder, shrugged, and went back to work.

  Candle figured she’d already mentally spent the money she’d thought she was going to get from copying the software and selling it. “I don’t mean don’t do it—I mean don’t even try. It’s set up to dissolve if you try to transfer the software out. Won’t hurt your system but it won’t transfer or copy and ... it’ll inform me.”

  Nodder looked at him blandly. It was almost as dangerous a look as the one Brinny had given him. “You definitely should have established this earlier. We got to be out front with each other here. In future ...”

  “Sure,” Candle said. “Just so you know—I’m not going to do this job if I feel like it’s fucking people over.”

  “He’s noble,” Monroe said, with a lisp. “Oooh, I like it.”

  “He’s a fucking hypocrite,” Brinny said, not looking up from the screen.

  Candle’s hands bunched into fists. But he said nothing. When you’re right, you’re right. And it seemed to him that she was right

  He’d been trying to push away the feeling of self-disgust, since buying the white hat software from Gustafson that morning—bought specifically to use in the undermarket. Surprised at how much it had bothered him when Gustafson had grinned at him and ‘shot him’ with his finger in that way he had. Like, “Gotcha! You’re one of us now!” Candle would have turned Gustafson in, if he’d had proof, before the UnMinding.

  Now he was having to buy dirty software from him.

  It’s a good cause, he told himself. People needed to be given a chance. And anything that crosses Grist is a good cause.

  But he couldn’t get over the feeling that it wasn’t going to last. It had scarcely begun. But some intuition kept nagging at him, telling him ...

  That it was all going to Hell. It was like Rooftown. It was going to come crashing down.

  “So if we can’t trace whoever they’re talking to,” Pup Benson said, looking over Halido’s shoulder at the surveillance monitor, “why wait, why not raid them?”

  “Because Mr. Grist hasn’t said go yet.” Halido took a flask from his coat, topped his coffee with Bacardi. “Anyway—I would like to get that dwarf in here,” he added, between sips, “and interrogate him personally. He’s got some ’leet ginger somewhere, enhanced him. Probably experimental enhancement. But he’s the strongest little bastard I ever ran into. And he caught me by surprise—the little piglet, he threw me through the air and when I came down, it fucking hurt. So I want to neutralize his enhancement and interrogate him before we turn them over to Grist. Oh man, I’d like to get that little prick. If the dwarf lives through the raid. And he’s not back yet. He’s gone somewhere to buy some extra drive. And we want to hit the place when he’s in it ...”

  They were in a small room, with glass walls on two sides, used for sensitive surveillance. They could see out, no one could see in. Beyond the glass walls were rows and rows of other monitors watched by personnel, wearing the Slakon security uniforms. Men, women, of every race, some with headsets, some with little bluetooth devices in their ears, some with no visible headset, a few with goggles for some special rapport with equipment Pup didn’t really understand. The long narrow rooms on either side went on and on, like three hundred yards each way, it seemed to him. Who were they all surveilling? And why?

  There was another layer of surveillance personnel, he knew, o
verseas, outsourced, watching thousands of facilities belonging to Slakon and its subsidiaries. Watching blank walls, the outsides of the plants, the offices, as often as not. Excited when a cockroach or a mouse scurried by.

  Pup figured he wasn’t doing much better, standing around in this glass box staring at monitors. Him and Halido looking at the crisp but slightly fish-eye image of the three women in the Black Stock Market squat; a down angle from up near the ceiling. The women were still eating; which made Benson hungry, though he’d already eaten.

  I should’ve done what my folks wanted, Benson thought, and finished college, and gotten some kind of working degree. Accounting. Maybe by now I’d be a vice president of some company. Not tugged around by my leash like a fucking guard dog.

  That’s when his skull fone rang.

  Some people called it a skull fone, some a cranny or cranny-plant. His skull fone was buzzing for the first time in a long while. He’d forgotten that when Grist had given him an advance he’d transferred some money to get the bill caught up.

  He touched the corner of his jaw and muttered, “Answer.”

  “Mr. Benson!” A woman’s voice in his inner ear. “My name is Claire—I have a business proposition for you. I prefer, I would rather, I would desire, that you call me back outside of the surveillance field of the office you’re in. Just for the sake of non-disclosure of personal business.”

  Another time Pup would have said screw this mystery call stuff. But he wasn’t happy being where he was. He felt like Grist owned him. And he was getting slightly less money than he had when he was working for the prison.

  “Okay ...” he said. And the line clicked as the woman hung up. Benson cleared his throat. “Halido—I’m gonna go out and have a smoke.”

  “You mean you’re going to take a personal call,” Halido said dryly, staring at the monitor. And after a moment he added: “I heard you answering your cranny.”

  “Yeah well, that too. Be back in a few.”

  He went through the door to the back hall, down the long slick tiles to the double doors. A guard robot trundled by. It scanned him and kept going and he went out through the doors into the little grassy square, with its park benches, between Slakon buildings. A fountain played listlessly in a concrete bowl between four small, mostly leafless trees in planters; one of the trees had died. Benson hurried over to the fountain, got out a cigarette with one hand, the other touching his jaw joint. He muttered, “I-one-one, returning call.”

  Then a commercial came on, in his head. He had the cheapest skull fone deal—the kind where you had to sit through a fifteen second commercial before you could finish a call out.

  “Frank—Over-channel tonight?”

  “No way, I’m not signing on to that, Buster! Last time I was on Over-channel O-chan’d my pulse was pounding, my adrenaline was shooting out my ears and I was howling like a wolf!”

  “So what time you on?”

  “Yeah yeah,” Pup muttered. “Whatever. Give me my damn call.”

  “Hey, hode, I’m already on! See you there!”

  “Over-Channel—surf the tsunami!”

  At least he didn’t have to watch the commercial too. For awhile there’d been pictures but too many people had lost part of their eyesight, some kind of damage to the optic nerve, and other people had blundered unseeing into traffic and gotten run over, and they’d stop selling the picture implant. The recalls had been messy.

  Click, and the call went through. “Mr. Benson?” The same woman’s voice in his head. The pebbly concrete was still wet, he saw, though it wasn’t raining just now, and there were some dead bugs drifting in the fountain. And there was a voice in his head saying thanks for calling back. “Thanks, much gratitude, gracias, for calling back ...”

  “‘Claire’, you said. Claire who?”

  “I’m not at liberty to disclose that ...”

  Pup snorted. “You think I’m stupid? This number is supposed to be on the don’t-call list, how’d you get it? I’m not buying whatever you’re selling, tell you that right now.” He looked up at the small patch of gray-blue sky showing between the buildings. There was a fluttering up there and for a moment he thought he saw a birdseye surveillance drone watching him, but then the flutterer landed in one of the little trees and he was surprised to see it was an actual bird, a robin. A “robin red-breast” his mother would have said. He had heard they were pretty much all gone, those kinds of songbirds. But there it was, staring at him, as the voice spoke through the bones of his skull, again.

  “Do you have a video cell with you, Mr. Benson?”

  “Uh—yeah.” He should just hang up, but a subtle sexy promise in her voice held him. “I think it’s in my coat pocket here.” He flicked the cigarette alight. Blew smoke at the dead bugs in the fountain; the smoke swirled, the bugs swirled, and he wondered why she was asking about a video cell. He almost never used his.

  “Wouldn’t you like to see, to gaze, to look upon ... me?”

  Oh, that was it, some kind of porn come-on. Well, it wasn’t a call that cost anything, or he’d have been warned by the network. “Sure, why not.” He took his little vid out of his coat pocket, switched it on, and somehow the woman’s picture was there already on the tiny screen. She was a slender, very slender blond woman; long straight hair that streamed over one bare shoulder. Couldn’t see much of her below the shoulders. “Uh—hi. You going to let me see a better shot of you or what?”

  “Perhaps in time you’ll see me as I am, fully and gloriously exposed, revealed, uncurtained. But for now, I wish to make you an offer, Mr. Benson. If you go to a certain address, and remove the hardware you find there—certain devices, which will be clearly specified, before your arrival—and take them where indicated, specified, directed, I shall transfer two hundred thousand world-dollars to your account.” What a sweet smile she had.

  “Uh huh, two hundred K-W-D? Right. Sure. Drop call, Miss Sinkitty.”

  “You sound skeptical, dubious, unconvinced. Check your bank account—I have just transferred twenty thousand world-dollars to your account. Check and see.”

  Pup’s heart started to pound. He licked his lips and looked at the robin. It cocked its head as if wondering what he was going to do next.

  He took a deep breath, and said, “Hold on.” He clicked hold and then clicked the over to wi-net, pressed speed dial for his bank account, tapped in the pin ...

  $20,704.78

  That’s what it said. They’d transferred twenty grand and they were offering him more. Lots more. What would he do for two hundred thousand WD? He’d do pretty much anything.

  “Okay,” Pup said hoarsely, flicking the cigarette into the fountain. “Tell me more about what I got to do.”

  Richard Candle was sure he wanted to see his Master. He just didn’t know if his Master wanted to see him. Candle had stopped going to sittings, even before Danny had gotten himself into trouble. Candle had been feeling too distracted by work and worry about his brother, and Kenpo was moody. Just what a Buddhist master shouldn’t be. But he was the only major lama of Shiva Buddhism Candle knew of in the USA—he was revered, in fact, as a Rinpoche—and Candle valued his insight.

  The lama was still living in the same place, in Venice Beach, in the penthouse apartment of an old five story building overlooking the Pacific. Kenpo insisted on calling the ocean “The Dead Sea.” The Pacific wasn’t entirely dead. But after a few superficial attempts at regulation, before they were undercut by despair over global warming, the EPA was privatized by corporate interests, and there was no serious effort at abating greenhouse gases, acidification, dead zones, vast tracks of plastic-debris, over-fishing, mercury toxicity, pesticide run-off, nano-particle clouds or industrial outflow. The consolidation of the corporations and their increasing influence on Congress had seen to that. A few “green” surges and a general shift to low-carbon vehicles hadn’t been enough to stop it, and international pollution treaties were largely ignored by the Chinese government, so that its countless u
nscrubbed coal-fired power plants continued huffing sulfites and acids and mercury into the air. In the quasi-libertarian free-market frenzy that weakened federal control, many U.S. states allowed similar coal-fired plants.

  Candle rarely visited the beach.As a boy he’d found the shore lively with crabs, sea birds, fish, seaweed—the life of the sea. Now there was a stretch of drab sand flecked with cigarette butts, as if the beach had turned into a giant ashtray. The coast’s grimy deadness was depressing. And so was the imprisoning line of the levee protecting Los Angeles from the sea—he couldn’t see the infinite reach implied by an oceanic horizon.

  He could hear the ocean churning but he didn’t look toward it as he climbed the old, creaking wooden stairs on the outside of the building, five stories to the locked gate of the penthouse’s deck. The elevator had a tendency to break down partway up.

  “Is that you, Richard?” Kenpo called, from the other side of the graying fence.

  Candle smiled. Kenpo would probably like him to assume psychic awareness had told him Candle was there. More likely he’d looked through a crack in the fence when he’d heard someone coming up the stairs.

  “You know it is! You going to let me in, Master Kenpo, or what?”

  The gate creaked open and Kenpo gestured for him to follow, not even looking him over though they hadn’t seen each other for more than four years. A short stocky man, half-Asian and half-Caucasian, Kenpo was wearing his blue and gold robes today; the back of the robe showed Shiva and Buddha both riding a Chinese dragon. In the old days he’d worn the robe only rarely. Maybe he had felt him coming.

  They were standing in the roof garden—it was protected from the periodic acid rains by a pitted transparent plastic overhang. Here there was life. In pots. Many large pots of plants, ferns and miniature roses and heliotrope, irises and flowering herbs from Tibet. Not that Kenpo had ever been to Tibet itself. Kenpo had studied Shiva Buddhism in Northern India and Nepal, but he’d been raised in California.