by John Shirley
What about the Multisemblant? Who had it and why? They hadn’t been able to trace Benson’s most recent calls. They’d been hacked, blanked out.
Street cameras had lost Benson a quarter mile from the lab. Americans had held out against the kind of uniform street surveillance cameras that had become normal in the UK and Canada; in Japan and China and Russia. America’s streets, at least some of them, though haunted by drone cameras and ATVs, were the last bastion of privacy. He was going to have to militate harder with his people in Congress, to get that overturned. They needed those cameras in place.
He watched the nurse injecting some clear fluid into Sykes’ IV and wondered: Who had stolen the Multisemblant? Hoffman? Someone from Microsoft, maybe? They’d been sniffing around. The countries that Microsoft had bought in Central America, to create their nationalized corporate headquarters, were said to have spies all over North America.
Grist growled to himself and turned away, strode down the hallway, wondering if he should have his bodyguards stick closer to him.
“This all my stuff you got?” Danny asked, poring through the plastifiber box in Spanx’s musty closet, a flashlight in his left hand, his right hand rummaging. “You didn’t fucking sell any of it did you?”
“Sell what? Like you had anything worth selling, nothing gelling, oh well oh welling, Mr. Wanxenheimer,” Spanx said, from somewhere behind him.
“Oh so if there was anything worth selling you’da sold it?”
“No, I told you–” This was followed by a litany of complaints and resentments which Danny tuned out. Under a copy of Essential Works of Baudelaire Zilia had given him, and snuggled up with a pair of multiply-holed Intestine Town socks, was the memstick he was looking for. He’d forgotten about it—pushed it out of his head with all thoughts of the court case, Rick’s going to jail—until Rick getting out had prompted thoughts of Maeterling and the software deal they’d been working on when the skim-scam bit them in the ass.
Danny picked up the memstick, toyed with it, admiring its translucent blue-green color, like beetle’s wings. Seemed intact.
He considered the rest of the contents. An old drive that had some even older songs on it; a holo-cube award certifying a million tune downloads, a couple of antique .45 bullets missing their gun; a sheaf of lyrics; a bent headset microphone that probably didn’t work; a flattened Jerome-X cap; an empty Absolut Absinthe bottle, full when he’d swiped it from Zilia’s place; those socks ...
He smiled, remembering his three months doing music for the Intestine Town Mesh cartoon. Scoring the animated adventures of strangely witty germs in crap and mucous; germs earnestly building houses out of undigested bits of corn. “Now, that’s comedy,” he said. Too bad he’d gotten fired, it’d been a lucrative gig.
“What’s comedy, hode, your story about why you don’t owe me money, is that comedy? Because I’m gonna tell you it’s all shitter-shatter and I’m not laughitating or chuckifying and I’ll tell you something else–”
“You know what, Spanx? Don’t! Just don’t! Now listen: we going to have rehearsal or not? Is the beat-jock coming or what? Or not and or what?” The beat jock played out the beats and rhythm guitar tracks with sample loops, triggered sounds.
“I told him come but maybe he’s not over his operation yet. Maybe he won’t show. I got the last set we used all on a stick, we don’t need him for rehearsal. We could use the stick for the show too. We got to pay him, rather slay him. So if he doesn’t show up who cares, Care Bear.”
“I care. I want him here and I want him at the show. Presentation matters. You got to have some fucking pride about performance, hode. We don’t have him there for the show, we’ll come across like duh-taunts.”
Spanx paced up and down the creaking floor, kicking empty food cartons aside. “He’ll be there! He’s all ‘Mr. Jeep’, you know how he is, he’ll be here, hode, he gets all Sisters of Mercy on it—You should be thankin’ me for getting this gig together, man. You should be, all: Spanx is the wanx who deserves your thanx–”
“You didn’t think I had anything to sell in that box,” Danny said, going to the grimy window of the tenement flat. “Pretty ironic, hode. You had something worth maybe millions in that box all this time.”
Outside, a rusting fire escape, not safe to climb on; a trashed-up airshaft, illuminated with a glaucous security light. Far overhead, a five-decker flying bus plowed through the rasping haze, angling north for the airport, fully visible in the night because the city lights reflected from the smog, making the sky a backdrop of luminous violent. Ah, downtown L.A.
“What you mean, worth millions, you phishline V-rat–?”
“You call me a V-rat again and I’m not going to tell you and I’m not going to play the gig, I don’t need the money that bad.” Which was a bluff, and they both knew it.
“Okay so what’s the mystery, money man?”
“Texer is: Maeterling was a thief–”
“Like we don’t know that, hode!”
“Shut up and listen. I got a reason for telling you this. Maeterling was a thief, did his skim-scam, yeah, but he was also looking for proprietary ware to steal. He was really interested in the semblant ware. Thought it was going to be a big thing. Only, it was so, like, obsessed on by the company he didn’t think he could get away with stealing that. But there was a program they had for in-house work ... like, when you got a V-game and you’ve got cheats to use in-house to check things out, like God Mode used to be. So this was a program they had for detecting semblants. But they wanted their semblants to be seamless so they didn’t want the program getting out. But he got numbdumb with a guy in Slakon semblant programming and the guy blogmouthed and Maeterling found out about this and went into the guy’s machine and copied it. And he gave it to me to sell but then the whole thing fell apart so I hid it. And Maeterling turned up dead. So I was worried about using anything, after that, from them, I didn’t wanta turn up with a hole in my head and people saying, ‘another burnt out rock star casualty killed himself’. And with Rick in prison, I just didn’t want to ...” He shrugged. “... anyway, I figure it’s now or never.”
“You think people will like, pay, in actual fucking double-you dee for this stuff?” Spanx voice almost awestruck with wonder.
“I think so because people don’t know if they’re talking to a semblant now or what, right? They want to know for sure—I don’t know why but they do—so ...”
“It’d fuck their heads up big if we open-sourced it, hode–”
“Open source! How do we make any money from that, you idiot! No! Don’t even tell anybody about this except the guy we make a deal with. And I’m only telling you because you got that guy who does your rotor tune ups, right? And he knows about selling dirty ware, and who’d buy it. You know, Slakon and those people probably got it wired so it’s illegal here but we could sell to someone overseas and they’d sell d-loads here. Maybe JapanaCorp, someone like that, they’d buy it. I give you and your man ten percent each–”
“Ten percent? That’s a fucking skim-scam on your friend, your only friend, your best friend, your–”
“Ten percent of two million, man! That’s what I’m asking for, two million! Two fucking million is my floor! That’s two hundred grand for you! Tell you what, I’ll make it twenty percent for you, ten for him.”
“Okay, okay, well, I dunno ...”
Danny shook his head. Spanx: useless for anything outside band business. He’d bung something up. He was out of his mind. And it occurred to Danny that he knew someone who could do the same thing for him, cut out at least one of the middle men: Rack Nidd. Yeah. Rack could maybe sell it ...
“Look, let’s think about it awhile, Spanx. One thing at a time. I hear the buzzer, someone wants in, that must be our jock. Who is it, Ronald?”
“Calls herself Ronnie. She-wee now.”
“What? He’s a She-wee?”
“Got a good ginger for it. Can have sex with himself or something. I mean ... you know what
I mean. Complete hermaphrodite. Got all the parts, fully functional. He can—or she can—turn his dingus around so it–”
Danny winced and interrupted, “You know what? I don’t fucking want to hear about it. Let’s just rehearse so I can ex outta here ... I’m afraid Rick’s gonna check your place out ... I’m gonna go back to Rooftown and put this ware away there.”
“Bev’ll never let you back in, you naughty naughty little doggie.”
“Yeah she will.”
Spanx grinned. “Yeah she probably will.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t check out Spanx’s place,” Zilia said, as they lay in bed together at the cabin, nude bodies cooling.
“I thought of Spanx’s place but decided that if I came around there and missed him he’d hear of it and it might spook him enough he might not do the Black Glass show. And then I’d miss him there too. And the Black Glass show is a pretty definite place to find Danny ...”
She shivered, the shiver transmitting to her multicolored hair, making it shimmer like a waterfall. “I sometimes forget you were a cop—and then you say something that shows your cop-think and I get all funny. Not that I never fantasized about doing it with a cop. I sure as hell did. You don’t have any of the, ah, accoutrement of police work still do you? Like, you know ...”
“Handcuffs?” He laughed. “No. Who’d wear them, you or me?”
“Ooh, you’d let me put them on you?”
“Well actually ... much as I like you ... and that’s a lot ... no I wouldn’t.”
“Good.” She nestled against him.
She seemed a marked contrast to the woman who’d barely let him into her place a short time ago. Who kept putting him in his place. But even then he’d known; the attraction between himself and this mercurial woman was an inexorable undertow; and the breakers on the rocks outside seemed to sussurate agreement. And he felt, in that moment, as if life might have something to offer, after all ...
He smiled, shook his head. Thinking: Sucker. But he knew what Kenpo would say: If you weren’t ready to risk being a sucker, you lost everything.
“What you going to do, when you find Danny—really?”
“I don’t know, get him away from this town. Rehab him somehow. Getting over an addiction is as much about time clean as anything else. And I’ll try to get your money out of him.”
“Tell you the truth, I don’t care about that. Not really. I just wanted to ... vent about him.”
Candle nodded. That’s what he’d figured. He wondered how Danny would take his relationship with Zilia—if the relationship continued. It felt like it was going to go on. He suspected Danny wouldn’t care, really—but he might pretend to care. Use it as an excuse to give his brother the slip. Get back to his addiction.
He shifted in the bed, reaching for his tepid beer on the end table—and winced. He still had a backache from concerted sex in the small spaces of the freight-train control cab. Not that he regretted a moment of it. Nor did he regret the throbbing headache he had now from the absinthe. Not something you’d want to do every day but ... what an experience that had been. Even Kenpo would have been envious. Coupling in a train engine? Really? Was it moving? Marvelous! You shouldn’t be drinking absinthe! Do you have any left?
They had fallen silent and Candle lay there, propped up a little, his arm around her, listening to the waves crashing against the cliffs below the little cabin. The grease-recycle heater sensed the room was cooling and clicked within itself, began to hum and exhale warm air, the smell of fried food. The one-room cabin was crowded with old canvasses stacked against the redwood walls. None of the paintings were actually hung. Zilia’s late mother’s canvasses, she’d said, not hers, and in fact they weren’t very good. Seascapes with images of rocks in the sea, the rocks looking like lumps of dung—and not intentionally. Pictures of slightly deformed horses. The room smelled faintly of aged oil paint.
Candle felt himself start to drift to sleep ...
Monroe going down the trap door. The top of her head snapped off by bullets, her wig flipping aside. Flying guns sniffing bloodhound like after them down the corridor. Bullets strafing at his heels ...
His eyes snapped open. He was suddenly wide awake. It was going to take time to work through all that had happened. He’d need Kenpo’s help. But there wouldn’t be time, not for awhile. He could feel an imminence, as if events were crowding outside the door, together, pushing on it, ready to force their way in all at once, in a rush. Things were going to keep coming at him, hard and fast.
There were alternatives. He could avoid the Black Glass, give up on Danny. Stupid not to give up on him. But Danny was his only family. Candle had to try to retrieve him—at least once.
Monroe going down the trap door. The top of her head ...
“You want to sleep?” Zilia asked. Not sounding sleepy.
“I don’t think I can sleep. I’m still ... dealing. I feel like getting out, get some fresh air. You actually have something close to fresh air up here. Where are we, sixty miles from L.A.?”
“Farther than that. We’re north of Santa Barbara, near Isla Vista. Still some greenery out here. But something else too—there’s a big electronic waste recycling center about three miles away. And that’s where Clive the Hive’s got his had-ware shop going.”
“You mean hardware?”
“He calls it had-ware. It’s worth seeing. And I need him to process something for me, I got the specs on my palmer. Needs big processing. He might be what you and Shortstack need to restart. You wanta go over there? We could ride the horses over.”
“Horses? You’re fucking with me.”
“No, I’m not. Jeff keeps them for me down the road. I grew up around horses. They’re just part of our family. They need exercise. Come on, Rick, get your lazy ass dressed ...”
A little over an hour later, they were riding through the night along a trail beside the cliffs—Zilia adroitly on a black stallion; Candle following, clinging desperately to a lean brown mare; the rocky path, the stunted trees bouncing past him. The moonlight came and went, the moon slipping in and out of the clouds, and it seemed to him it was riding along parallel to the horses. His legs ached already; his thighs rasped; the smell of the horse seemed acrid and strange to him; sometimes it turned its head and looked doubtfully back at him, with eyes like black marble.
Candle’s mare seemed determined to stick with the stallion, which was fortunate, since Candle was at a loss as to how to guide her, and in a few minutes they were reining their mounts outside a rusty hurricane fence topped with razor wire. It was a warm, moist night, shreds of ground fog blew around them as they dismounted. They tied the horses to a snag under an oak tree, where there was a patch of yellow grass to graze on.
Candle did a few quick squats, grimacing, as Zilia tapped a message to someone on her palmer. She stared into the little screen. “He’s gonna let us in ...” She grinned at Candle. “Something wrong with your legs?”
“Only that my thighs are abraded and my crotch is an inch wider than it was, and my balls are now like wafers.” But he smiled at her. He was glad of the experience. It was the last thing he’d expected would happen today.
“Your body gets used to it. Come on.”
A big metal gate on wheels, almost indistinguishable from the fence, was rolling back to let them through. They walked on a gravel road in darkness, Candle’s legs still stiff, toward an enormous, long, low darkbuilding of scrap aluminum and mystercyke, more roof than walls, with a vaguely agricultural aspect. It was nearly as long as a football field, Candle guessed. A door opened in the nearer end of the building, and light fairly gushed out; they stepped in, blinking, looking around.
Clive closed the door quickly behind them. He was a skinny, snaggle-toothed man with an intricate beard and elaborately pierced ears.Maybe mid-thirties but looking older, in old fashioned denim overalls, his shirtless tattooed arms and chest bare. He clumped about in enormous, scuffed work boots.
The interior of the bu
ilding was sealed up with liberally applied tar: every crack, every window, so that no light escaped to call attention to the structure. It was all one lengthy gigantic room, and it was filled with tiers, to the right and left, like bleachers; on each “bleacher” was a long row of old—ancient!—computer hard drives, hardwired into unity; some were in their original cases, connected by tangles and ropes of cables. Every so often a scavenged server bulked above the smaller drives. A discrete ‘cloud computing’ system of ... how many? Tens of thousands? Each glowing with a small green or blue or red light. The room hummed with their collective computation, was warmed with the heat they gave off ; each row was wired to the others, on both sides of the room. “It used to be one of those big agribusiness chicken barns,” Zilia said. “Till Clive converted it to his had-ware hive. All this gear you see in this room, every hard drive, every processor, every CPU, it was all discarded, in the electronics dump. Supposed to be recycled but they only actually recycle a small percentage of it and no one seems to care when he scavenges it. He’s made it into one big computer. Oh—Clive, this is Rick Candle. Rick, this is Clive. Doesn’t use his last name anymore. Sometimes people call him Clive the Hive—don’t they Clivey?—‘cause this place is ‘the Hive’.”
Clive was scrutinizing Candle with a skepticism that made him think of Brinny. “You didn’t say he was such a hard-looking character,” Clive remarked, in a high-pitched voice.
“He’s an ex-cop, Clive,” she said.
Clive’s bristling eyebrows met in a scowl. “He’d better not be still talking to–”
“You know,” Candle interrupted sharply, “I’m getting tired of people giving me crap for having spent sixteen years watching out for them. I’ve given up working for the law, man. Your secrets are safe with me. Just let it go.”
Candle knew that if he wanted to keep on Zilia’s good side, he shouldn’t be snapping at her friend. He knew there was too much warning, too much edge in his voice. But there were edges everywhere. He was on an edge, most of the time. Even when he was in Zilia’s arms. A certain desperation ...
