Black Glass

by John Shirley

  Clive snorted, and turned away. “You’re here now, I’ll take a chance on you. If she says so. I have to trust someone. And she’s the one.”

  Candle didn’t miss the reverence in Clive’s voice, when he said she, Clive glancing at Zilia out of the corners of his small, intense blue eyes.

  Clive’s beard was an object of fascination; in outline it was large and spade-shaped but within the “spade” the red-brown beard-hair was cut and formed into an intricacy of rune-like shapes, almost ideograms; the corona of hair on his head was a corresponding ideogrammatic display; the skin on his bare arms replicated the same sort of cryptic glyphs, in blue tattoo ink; his ears were intricately pierced with the same kinds of shapes, in silver. Each glyph seemed almost familiar, and alien, at once.

  “I’ve known Clive since we were little kids, and he was the older boy up the street,” Zilia said, walking up to a bank of input systems. “Clive I’ve got a program here I need extrapolated, the image needs to be reproduced thousands of times, a bee-eye effect ...”

  As they spoke, Zilia uploading from her palmer into Clive’s equipment, Candle strolled over to an open door opposite; it let into a long storeroom that ran along the side of the building, probably where the chickenfeed had been stored and sluiced, at one time. Candle moved closer to the open door, and looked through—there were endless shelves of electronic parts, in exactingly marked bins, stretching off into the perspective of distance. They were organized so that each bin contained the same part, or something close; the one beside it a similar part, only a little different. On and on and on down the length of the narrow room.

  Clive appeared at Candle’s side. “You doing research, there, Candle?”

  “Just ... amazed at how organized this is. There’s so much of it. So many different kinds of computers ... and you seem to have them all running together, some way.”

  Clive glared at him—and turned away muttering.

  Zilia said, “Clivey—be nice. Trust him. He’s interested for good reasons. He’s doing security for the undermarket.”

  “Undermarket? The Black Stock Market?” Clive musingly made a minute correction in his beard. “There’s more than one of those. Which one?”

  “Nodder’s,” Candle said, noticing that Clive had tiny little glyphs painted on his fingernails, much like the ones in his hair, his tattoos, his beard.

  “Nodder’s? Reputable. All right, since it’s Nodder—and since she says so.” He strutted back and forth like a bantam rooster, then, making quick, energetic, precise gestures as he spoke, emphasizing every word. “Organized you say ... People use the word and never think about it ...”

  “Uh oh,” Zilia said, hiding a smile behind her hand.

  “Organized!” Clive piped. “As in more organic, as in more of an organ, as in arrayed into the parts of an organ, as in part of the big organism, yes?”

  “Is that what it is, a big organism?” Candle said. “What do you do with all this?”

  “What do I do? Oh, people pay me to provide SuperComputer computation, where there is no super computer, cloud computation where there is no cloud. Like hijacked computers, but these are all in one building and all owned by one guy. This is like one of those great expensive SuperSystems at Slakon—but made of thousands of people’s old Macs and PCs! Some of these computers date from the late twentieth century! Many of them should not be compatible with one another. But I have made them so! They are all one, now! Order from chaos! That is my great imperial demand on my environment! But do you know, there is no chaos, my friend—in a certain sense, the notion of chaos is a falseness! There is only relative localized chaos! This I convert to order, but I will someday find a way to make local order replicate the computations of the big machine, the so-called randomness of chance falling about in the universe, the cosmos itself a grand calculator working out an endless problem of probability. I have come close, I tell you, to proving that there is no chaos! Even entropy is only a relative disorder! An organism dies, yes, and we see a greater disorder in the system ... but that is the local system! Consider—a planet is struck by an asteroid and comes apart at the seams! It flies asunder! Chaos, disorder rampant in the system that had been the planet! But! But!”

  “Clive ... Clivey ... sweetheart ...” Zilia said gently.

  But Clive didn’t hear her. He was stalking back and forth, arms waving, spittle gathering at the corners of his mouth. “But! Did the asteroid strike the planet with inexactitude? No! It struck it as exactly it must! It struck it as a pool ball strikes another! Within the system of the pool table the balls strike exactly as they must if propelled a certain way. This seems superficially random—until we direct one in a given fashion to a given end and then we see it is not random, not at all. We introduce human notions of orderliness. If the laws of physics are, with mathematical precision, guiding the motion of these so called randomized atoms, then how is their movement random? They move according to their mass, according to density, according to the fields they are a part of, according to velocity, and so on. They move instantly into another system—there is no randomness, there is no chaos, there is always order, everywhere! A man’s death itself is the breaking up of one system only to render the so-called destroyed organism into another system, that of the worms, the soil, the–”

  “Clive?” She stepped close and tugged at one of his ear rings.

  He seemed emotionally startled; his cheeks reddened. He licked his lips. Then stepped suddenly back from her.

  He’s afraid to touch anyone, Candle realized, with a rush of pity. He loves her. But he can’t touch her.

  “Clive, you can send your Master Theory to Rick when it’s done.”

  “Oh I don’t think it can ever be done ...” He clutched his arms to his sides as if to keep from losing control of them. “One system becomes another—how can my Theory be complete?”

  “Actually,” Candle said, “some of what you said sounds like something my lama said ... Kenpo Rinpoche ...”

  Suddenly Clive became stock-still. He looked at Candle intently, as if seeing him for the first time. He wiped the corners of his mouth. “Kenpo of Venice Beach?” Clive’s voice was hushed, almost inaudible. When Candle nodded, he took a long slow breath and said. “Well then. That being the case. I am at your service.”

  Candle looked at him in surprise. “You know Kenpo?”

  Clive bowed, ever so slightly. “His path is all that keeps me ... sane is not the word. But you understand. How can I help?”

  “Well—our ... you call it an undermarket. It was raided–”

  “I heard. It’s all over the Mesh. One of your brokers was killed. It’s that prick Grist, I expect, behind it.”

  “We’ve saved the data. We need to restart. But ... we’ll need a comprehensive new platform ... and maybe something with more power for a better defense.”

  Clive tweaked his beard, walked rapidly to a hard drive about ten yards down, stared at a flickering light; he reached out, straightened a wire. A spark flew, and then the light glowed steadily again. He walked back to Candle, and replied as if he’d never left his side.

  “Not only can I provide a platform for it, Candle—I can give the undermarket ten times, a hundred times the scope. We can start your undermarket over—but you must bring them out here. I do not wish to work with your people remotely. I must meet them, you understand. And there are risks. I obviously cannot carry this building away with me to escape, should we be raided. But one of the things I have used this computing power for, is obfuscation. It’s something like noise floggers, but much more comprehensive, much more powerful, much more ... How can I put it ... All inclusive ... I really doubt they’d ever find me. Because you see—they’ve tried a thousand times.”

  “Grist does not know this drive is here,” said the Multisemblant the very moment that Pup Benson switched it on, its voice phasing in and out of clarity. “He does not know! Can you imagine! It’s his! His computer! And it’s worth more money than you ever will hav
e, even if you become rich, wealthy, another Croesus!”

  It’s multiplex face was shifting—and then forming into its more solid, only slightly askew form.

  They were in a building, with concrete floors, about fifty yards square. The Multisemblant array sat on a table, a single overhead bulb illumined it with a cone of dusty light in the middle of the chilly room.

  The display switched on. An image of Grist appeared, seen from above, walking into his apartment building, late at night. Two large men in tightly-fitting suits walked just behind him. Bodyguards, if Pup was any judge of thug flesh.

  “If we can see him,” Pup said, “his security systems can see us ...”

  “No, no,” said the Multisemblant. “I’ve got all that squared away, covered, controlled, I assure you, friend Benson.”

  “It’s his computer, the one you’re running off of, now? One of those big superwhatsits? And he doesn’t know it’s here!”

  “He does not know! It was being completed to his specifications and was to be shipped to him next week—but I had it shipped here. More precisely, I had it shipped to a dock two miles from here. I used his semblant, I used certain rarely-used Slakon accounts, and had it shipped there. Then I used a different set of accounts to ship it from there to here and have it set up. It will seem to have disappeared from that dock! Vanished, flickered away, gone!”

  “Well—okay. Now you’re all set up. You’re supposed to pay me–”

  “I already did! Check your account!”

  Pup checked it, and fast. And saw the money there. Hundreds of thousands of WD, and it was all his. He could ... What would he do? Get a yacht and take it down to Cabo and just see if ...

  “But of course that won’t be enough for y’all,” said the Multisemblant, its voice suddenly sounding Texan. “You’re gonna want the five million WD.”

  Pup’s mouth went dry. “Five million. For what?”

  “Something small. Helping me eliminate some human vileness from the world. Horrible little people. Just a few of them, here and there. A few minor killings, a few less pink softbodied cockroaches out of the nine billion in the world. Who’ll know the difference? The fewer pink softbodied softshell crabs in human form the better.”

  “And then—five million?”

  “Oh yes. And then you will join the Hashishim in paradise. What do you say?”

  NOW MARCHES RYTHMICALLY INTO THEN. SOME LIKE TO CALL IT,

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Texer is, I figure he’s gonna find me anyway.” Danny Candle shrugged, pouring himself the one drink he allowed himself before a show. Gin and tonic. “He may as well find me here in the Black Glass where I’m in my ... I don’t know, I just feel stronger here.”

  They were in the dressing room, a cramped space with graffiti layering the walls, tags and jeers left by twenty years of bands and performers. A makeup table with a cracked mirror.

  Spanx was making a pyramid of empty beer cans, on the colorless cigarette-scarred carpet. “Your brother gonna find you, drag your ass to rehab, where they make put happy brain bots in you, so you can feel happy vibrations or some deal, makes you feel like a pretty eel, steal a feel.”

  “I’m all set up,” Ronnie said, coming to the door. She leaned on the doorframe, arms crossed over her perfected breasts, wearing a blouse top sparkling with onyx sequins and fringed with blood-red beads; a pair of masculine black jeans underneath, tight enough to show her considerable package. Her head was shaved, eyes deep in kohl, lips puffy and shiny with gloss, ears dangly with black gems. “They said five minutes, like, ten minutes ago, so, hodie brother ...”

  “Yeah okay. Let ’em wait a few minutes,” Danny said, finishing his drink.

  “It’s a good house. Standing room only.”

  “Fucking oughta be.” He realized he ought to get this over with and get out of here as quick as possible. Maybe avoid Rick after all. Just a couple minutes more and then he’d hit the stage ... Hoped there was no trouble about getting paid after the show ...

  Candle had gotten hold of a drone scanner. And standing in the alley, around the corner from the street entrance for the Black Glass, he picked up two drones, within forty feet. Right now they were watching the crowd gathered outside the front entrance. A small crowd—most everyone had gone in for the show. In a moment one of the operators would fly the birseye around the building, to watch the other entrances. Probably looking for him.

  He slipped the scanner in his pocket, and walked down the alley, wondering if Zilia was really safe. She was staying at her cabin up north. But they could trace him to her—and her to the cabin. Suppose they grabbed her, made her a hostage?

  Maybe he ought to make some kind of deal with Grist. Let him know he didn’t really have anything on Grist’s part in the skim-scam; wasn’t looking for revenge. Wasn’t a loose cannon.

  From what he knew of Grist, though—trusting him to follow through on a deal was taking a big chance.

  He stepped over a drunk sleeping on flattened plastifiber boxes; very authentic mingled reek of alcohol, old sweat and urine suggesting it wasn’t some undercover guy.

  Four paces more, and then the load-up entrance of the nightclub ... where a stocky steroid-bulky bouncer with short flaxen hair stepped into the doorway, lighting a cigarette.

  “You don’t look like you belong,” said the bouncer, squinting against smoke. He was young, and somehow that went with the moving tattoo of a striking cobra on his chest, bared under an open leather jacket. The tattoo on his chest striking ... drawing back. Waiting. Striking ... drawing back ...

  “I’m Danny Candle’s brother. He’s performing here tonight.”

  “Then you’re the guy I’m specifically not supposed to allow in here, so be a good old wanx and fuck off.”

  Candle thought it unwise to pull his gun. Showing a gun led to too many repercussions, in a place like this. He looked the bouncer over, and decided this prime chunk of thug-flesh was into some form of martial arts, maybe kick boxing: it was there in the cockiness, and in a particular way the bouncer balanced on his feet, a trigger-like poise that suggested his confidence was in more than his heft. But that could make him predictable, and predictable is vulnerable.

  “Sure thing,” Candle said. Then he made a deliberately clumsy swing at the bouncer’s head—not really trying to connect. Counting on the man’s martial arts reflexes.

  The bouncer reacted like Candle figured, with a sneer and a left-hand block, tilting back, putting his weight on his left foot, raising his right leg, right knee cocked, boot aimed for a kick—

  But Candle had already stepped left, and braced—and he grabbed the bouncer’s kicking foot, lifted it up hard, throwing his opponent off balance. The bouncer went pitching backwards, grunting, onto his back, wheezing as the air whooshed out of him.

  Candle stepped through the door, waited as the snarling bouncer rolled over and got to one knee, preparatory to rushing—then Candle slammed him under the chin with the heel of his right hand, a short sharp shock: a move he’d learned from Rina. The big man’s head snapped back, and then forward, and he fell on his face at Candle’s feet.

  Out cold.

  Candle looked around, saw this back hallway was empty—there was a thumping noise and a roar from the direction of the stage—and he dragged the bouncer to a janitor’s closet, wedged him into it, cuffing him from behind with a pair of LP cuffs obtained the same place he’d gotten the scanner: Gustafson. He pulled the bouncer’s backstage pass off, put it on himself, found a wedge used to hold doors open, used it to jam the closet door shut at the bottom. He closed the back door, and went down the narrow hall toward the main hall. He glanced down a cross hall, behind the stage, and saw Spanx following Danny and someone he couldn’t see clearly—a woman? All three moving away from him down the narrow passage, Danny and Spanx carrying their instruments.

  Candle considered running down there, grabbing Danny right now. But he’d make Danny furious if he stopped him from performing—from collecting
his gig money. Let him have his show and his pay. Grab him after.

  He turned toward the main room, slipping past a puzzled techie watching the backstage door. Edging quickly into the crowd, Candle felt the combination of sick despair and thrill he always experienced at rock shows. At shows like this, where people heard the music the old fashioned way, from amplifiers on the stage instead of through head implants picking up wifi transmissions from the performers, the atmosphere was more or less the same as it had been, in rock clubs, for generation: Milling people chattering with one another in a dim, compressed space, the décor both ironic and earnest; canned music throbbed as the jostling crowd, drinks clinking, waited for the live show. Electricity building in the air waiting to be discharged, like a battery overcharged with energy.

  His father had been a band manager, his mother an aspiring singer; she’d become a groupie, then a wife and management partner. And by inexorable degrees an alcoholic. As a child, Candle came into the clubs and concert halls with his parents—in some places it was technically illegal, but his mom somehow got him in because it was almost the only time he could spend with them out in the world; and in a place where they weren’t hung over, weren’t bickering; weren’t as likely to just walk out.

  But he’d been scared and lonely in places like this, too. Sitting backstage with his mom and some self-consumed rock star, stomach clenching when his dad would come back from the bathroom, wiping his nose, grinning, winking at him, chattering from blue mesc or crystal meth or synthcoke or yex.

  Candle felt that clenching now, looking around.

  The club was called Black Glass for more than one reason. The obvious one was that the room was made of one giant piece of black glass—actually it was hardened, dark-tinted transparent plastic—roughly shaped like a cavern, but with the cornerless walls in fold-shapes like rumpled cloth. The stage was shuttered by three successive movable walls of translucent blackened “glass,” instead of curtains. Like looking through three sets of dark sunglasses. Before the show, dark figures of the performers could be seen, just blur-edged silhouettes. That one silhouette was Danny, his hunched shoulders and explosive hairstyle unmistakable.