by John Shirley
In the audience, infrastoners with movable tattoos, animated Cat Hats, opaque eye cusps, grinned and whispered; some stood in corners and tried to look cool. Re-Ravers, semi-nude, bodies painted, danced to the house music. Pagoths milled, wearing simulated fur, animal skins, charcoaled eyes, much piercing, some with long streaked hair, others with scalp-up sculptures of cartilage-shaped like gods and dragons and online game creatures, fixed to their skulls like articulated Mohawks. Glum, silent corner-boys, in their shapeless hoodies, sagging army pants, heavy boots. The Elegant Dub contingent, in tight fitting retro suits with blazers, white shirts skinny ties, clustered disdainfully together, amused by the other cliques. The audience faces were mixed race, mostly, with only a few real blonds, even fewer truly black African-Americans. Danny had always had a cross-genre appeal, Candle reflected; he had managed to balance electronica, stoner rock, hip-hop, grime, and worldsounds, transitioning from one to the other, culminating in almost perfect fusion. The music unified by a rapid, steady beat and the ironic intonations of his voice.
The place definitely made Candle uneasy. His parents had ruined it for him. He supposed he might have found some other way to get past that bouncer—a stiff bribe would have been wiser—but he’d enjoyed taking him down. It was like he was punching out the club itself. And maybe Dad too.
Candle kept moving, as if looking for friends in the crowd, kept his face mostly turned to the stage, but glancing around, discreetly watching for drones. He caught a silvery flicker up near the ceiling. A medium-sized flying camera—smaller than the one Rina had bashed, larger than the one he’d found on the wall. The small ones were prone to getting lost or broken in large crowds.
Suddenly the background music faded and the walls concealing the stage began slowly to draw back, slotting into the stage wings; first the outer wall of darkened plastic-glass, letting the audience see the performers a little more clearly. And when that translucent wall started drawing back, a drumbeat thudded from the band. Then the second wall drew away in the other direction, and they could see the band a little better; but they were still hidden behind the third wall of dark glass, and they were already playing, Danny playing guitar, Spanx on bass, the third guy providing hand-triggered rhythm and percussion. He could just make out their faces ...
Then Danny started singing, and the third wall drew back and the crowd erupted in hoots, and cheers and “Woot!” and clapping and people holding up their palmers, screens alight, to make a constellation of electronic greeting, as if the social electricity in the room was translating into digital light. Candle felt the clenching in his gut become a twisting. There was his little brother, at last.
“Danny,” he muttered.
The performance wound its way through a roughly ascending arc of energy. There was no puttering about between songs—Danny couldn’t abide that, and once when Spanx distractedly fiddled with his bass Danny kicked him in the ass. The audience laughed, Spanx pretended to be offended, then the beat-jock started the pulsing sample and Spanx spun around and started playing and another song started. The energy built, the varied crowd became a unity around their focal point: Danny Candle.
The music hammered away. Danny sang a peculiar, whimsical lyric, something like,
Has to be chapter one—
that’s how it is, hode, ask anyone;
And this text gotta be chapter two
—personal shit ‘tween me ’n’ you—
An’ this refined expression of me,
in litr’chure- talk ... is chapter three ...
Candle kept slowly moving, keeping tall people and any obstacle he could find—a fold in the rippled glassy walls—between him and the birdseye. But they were getting hard to avoid. More than once someone in the audience spotted them, took a swipe at them. People generally hated flying cams.
Now Danny was on another cut, singing something about a box in his head ...
... There’s a box in my head
and inside it is a box
and that box
has a box, within;
there’s a box in my skull
my skull is a box
and there’s room for us both, to go in—
yeah come on sweet baby, come in ...
Just at the end of the encore set, Candle saw a silver flicker draw near, overhead. He decided it was time to use the blur bandage. He turned his back, took the blur bandage from a coat pocket, unpeeled the backing, pressed the swatch to his right cheek bone—it was camouflaged as a band-aid. It’d set up a field that’d blur any cam looking at his face. But it had a fiber battery that wouldn’t last long so he’d kept it back till now. And while it would conceal his identity, the blur, in a crowd full of crisp faces, could draw attention to him.
And there—at the edge of the crowd, looking around. Halido. And some other thugflesh prick with him.
Candle went quickly to the backstage door, waved his stolen pass at the puzzled, bearded stagehand, slipped past, and was waiting in the dressing room when the flushed, triumphant Danny arrived. The smile faded from Danny’s face as he stared at Candle. Then he shrugged and put away his guitar.
“Glad you’re out, bro,” Danny mumbled.
“Like you didn’t know?” Candle said. “You knew. Good set, by the way. You look like you feel good about it.”
“Why wouldn’t I feel good about a good set?”
“It’s just that–”
“Oh, I know: get a natural high from music. I remember that speech.” Danny sat in a creaking chair, poured himself a drink from a bottle sitting on the dressing table. “You want a drink? Brought my own brandy.”
“Sure.”
They drank some Hennessey as Spanx and Ronnie stowed gear. Spanx mumbled something about seeing about the money and Ronnie mumbled about getting a drink at the bar. They vanished and Candle was alone with his brother. Canned music thudded murkily, masked by the intervening walls, from the main room.
Finally, wondering how long before Halido showed up back here, Candle said, “You weren’t there. Said you would be.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
“I figure you knew I’d find out you were using again and–”
“Yeah okay, fine, whatever. You want another drink? If not—I’m gonna change and get my money and get the fuck out of Dodge–”
“No you’re gonna shut up and listen. Four years, my mind downloaded—my body walking around—taking orders—You know what they did with my body?”
“No, ‘Saint Rick’, I don’t.”
“”Neither do I. That’s the fucking point. And all I asked you to do was not fry your brain anymore. But from what Zilia tells me–”
“You’ve seen Zilia? How is she?”
Candle cleared his throat. Should he tell him? Later. “She’s okay. She’s good. She’s ... she wanted her money. But I think I got her to drop that.”
“Rick—if you’ll think back, you’ll remember, hode, I didn’t ask you to be a fucking martyr for me.”
“You’d have done hard time. I knew I’d get a break. And as for asking me ... everything you do asks for help, kid.”
Danny’s face contorted and he threw the drink. Candle ducked; the glass added a new web of cracks to the mirror and distorted magic marker graffiti on the mirror so that it went from reading, FUCK YOU IF YOU DON’T LIKE MY IGGY COVERS, to FUCK YOU IGGY OVER.
Danny got up, squatted by his guitar case, snapped it shut, his back to Candle. Then he seemed to sag in place. He went to his knees, his shoulders hunched. His voice was hoarse when he said, “I don’t fucking know. I’m sorry. I tried for a long time. Zilia can tell you that for a couple years there, almost three ...”
“We can try again, Danny,” Candle said gently. “Relapse—so what, it’s part of the journey, man. You can get over relapsing. But you need time away from all the temptations. We’ll get the fuck out of Dodge together. We’ll hit Highway 1 up the beach, you’ll get some distance from the V-rat nest. One of these days you’ll feel confident eno
ugh, you can get back into performance. I’ll find you a new agent. But you got to stay close to me.”
Danny rocked back on his haunches, ran his fingers through his hair. “Rick ... we can try. I guess I can trust you. I don’t know how I can trust anyfuckingbody but ... see, I’m not gonna make it, man. It’s like ... like if you’ve got a table, and one leg is cracked, if you put something heavy on it, that fucker’s gonna break down. And bust whatever’s on that table. And I’m that table. Going to break, you put anything on me. I don’t want to bust down and and fuck up everything for you, man. I ...” He took a long breath. His voice was ragged, almost inaudible as he went on. “... I got a busted part that won’t hold anything up ...”
“People mend, Danny. I’ve got some to do myself ...” Candle hesitated, wondering once more if he should tell Danny about Zilia. But that might be too much weight on the table, right now. He’d tell him when things were more stable. “What else you got going, Danny? Come on, look at where you clicked at. Rooftown? Living in a roof shack? And still blowing your resources on scum like Rack Nidd? What you do at his place—it’s the lowest form of partying, Danny. Because V-ratting is something you do all alone. Even if you’re wired to somebody. It’s not like real contact. You see an image of them—it’s not like you’re really with them. It’s isolating. Like Dad–”
Danny visibly cringed at that. Candle knew it was a dirty trick, bringing Dad into it this way; he knew Danny had an aversion to thinking about Dad ... Dad, putting drugs and partying before his kids. Candle went on relentlessly, “—Dad started out partying with other people, ended up doing drugs in a toilet stall. And that’s how he died. Alone, hode. I mean—fuck that. There’s stuff to do in this life you haven’t seen. You did one world tour. You could get a comeback going, do another. There’s a lot of places you haven’t been to.”
Danny snorted, shook his head. “You want to depress me, take me on a trip. The world’s all ... used up. Doesn’t seem worth it. Same stores everywhere, same restaurants, all over the world. Wilderness is dying. Why bother going anywhere?”
“It’s not all fucked up out there. Some of this planet is holding on. Let’s go see it, man. Give it a chance. I promise—I’ll stick with you no matter what.” Then he said something he almost never said. “I give you my word.”
Danny sighed. “Uh oh—his word. Serious shit.”
“It is—with me.”
“Yeah. I know it is.” Finally Danny said, “Okay. Like you say. Nothing to lose. Let’s try it.”
Spanx appeared at the door. “Yo yo whoa whoa whoa, there’s some fucking wanxenheimers from Hell asking for the Candle brothers, telling the stage dudes they got to come back, saying the badges are coming ...”
Danny looked at Candle. “What the fuck?”
“That’s Grist’s people. They’re looking for me more than you. But they’ll scoop your ass up too. It’s that whole Maeterling thing. I was gonna try to make a deal with Grist—but I can’t do it on their terms. I got to avoid ’em, Danny. You do, too.”
“So let’s get gone!”
“Yeah ... but their drones will follow us out,” Candle said.
Spanx grinned lopsidedly. “Drones? Hafuckingha,motherh afuckingha! I love to fuck up drone cams! I can do a feedback freaker!”
Candle looked at him. “A what?”
“Yeah a feedback freaker, there’s a frequency, you do heavy feedback with the amp set proper, it’ll fuck up the signal on them flying cams. But I’d have to borrow Danny’s guitar.”
Danny stood, scowled over at Spanx—then nodded. “Do it. But make sure you take care of my guitar, I’m gonna come and get that thing before me and Rick leave town.”
“You’re leaving town? What fo’ you leaving town, hound?”
“Just for awhile. Hey where’s my pay?”
“Here, muh dear.” Spanx handed him a pay card. “It’s all there –already gave Ronnie his. I mean ... hers.”
“Okay take the guitar, Hamster’ll let you do it—maybe Ronnie’ll back you up.”
“Oh yeah he’ll totalfuckingly ...”
“Don’t tell anyone why you’re doing this, Spanx,” Candle warned.
“I ain’t no blogmouther, hodey brudder ...”
A couple minutes later, Spanx was onstage explaining that he was going to do a feedback concert, as a special treat for you to eat, please don’t bleat, and the audience cheered—some of them groaned—and Ronnie set up a beat and Spanx adjusted the guitar carefully, turned it up loud as it would go and made hideous roaring-squealing noises come out of it—but at a certain frequency that invariably interfered with the transmissions of drone cams. And suddenly the spies monitoring the flying cameras saw nothing at all but snow and they recoiled from the amplified shrieking that might have been a transmission from a microphone set up at the place where a wandering star smashed into another star and created fulminating hell throughout a planetary system. Worlds colliding in some dark corner of the galaxy.
Danny and Rick Candle got to the back door leading to the alley—just as the closet door burst open and the bound-up bouncer stumbled out, roaring with rage.
Candle calmly drew his gun—and buffaloed the man, knocking him out with a sharp blow on the back of the head with his gun barrel. Then before the bouncer had hit the deck they were slipping through the door into the thin rain—and Candle saw Halido at the end of the alley, waiting for them in a cone of light from the single lamp projecting from the wall above him.
Candle sighed. Shortstack and Nodder weren’t here to get him out of this one.
So Candle drew his gun, aimed carefully—and shot the light out at the end of the alley.
Darkness descended over the alley and he hustled Danny to another back door, kicked it in—it took two kicks, painfully jarring his ankle—and he hobbled ahead of Danny, the two of them darting through the back corridors of a Chinese-Mexican-French bakery.
They waved at the startled bakers, Danny snagging a cruller as they passed, and ran out through the front door, and into the gathering downfall. They were lucky and caught an autocab almost immediately ...
And left Halido behind.
But ahead was the cross traffic of possibilities, most of them dark possibilities, in the city of uncertainty.
IS THIS REALLY
CHAPTER ELEVEN?
WISH YOU WERE BACK IN NUMBER SEVEN?
“Is the chopper on the roof, Targer?” Terrence Grist sat on his living room sofa. Gazing through a transparent wall at the city lights; a web of lights, like when you see bright dew marking out a spider’s web. He hadn’t seen a wet spider’s web since he was a kid. Did spiders still spin webs? They must, somewhere.
“Yes sir.” Targer’s face appearing in the glossy top of the low smart table, in front of the sofa.
“Okay wait there for me—you’re flying the chopper. My regular pilot’s staying here. You still up to piloting a rig like that?”
“I stay up to date, Mr. Grist. I can do it.” Targer’s expression hinted he wondered why Grist wanted him to pilot. It wasn’t usual. The chopper was self-piloting. But some people didn’t trust robotic pilots—though they never got drunk, never smoked pot, and never got tired.
“We’ve got a job. Serious things to deal with, Targer. You understand me? If you’re not ready to be very, very serious, you stay here.”
“You need me, I’m there, Mr. Grist.”
“Fucking Candle got away from me. Again. I wanted that loose end tied up. Everybody is frustrating me, here. And Targer—before we go, I meant to ask about that Benson asshole ...”
“We’re still looking. Everyone is looking. The LAPD, Blackwater Division, Halliburton Policing, everyone.”
“What about transaction traces?”
“Whatever the thing is ... the program or whatever it is ... it covered its tracks well. We can see where it swiped some cash, moved some things around, but that was all before it was moved. Since then we can’t find it and if it’s active we can’t
trace it. It’s using some really sophisticated camouflage. We’re trying–”
“Spare me the fumbling details. Get as many people on it as you need. Just get it done.”
Grist heard a footstep and looked up to see Lisha come in, wearing a lustrous dark blue silk shift, clutching her purse close against her, walking carefully on her black high heels. Her lips were pinched together. She looked like a scared child. She paused just inside the door—it was a bit darker there—and then came closer. He saw what was worrying her; a red mottling of rash across her face, specked by open lesions.
Her face, his face. His stomach lurched.
Grist looked away. “What happened? You have an allergic reaction to something? You need an allergist?”
“No. I’ve been to the dermatologist and the ginger. Everyone says the same thing ... it’s a rash. It’s a reaction to this face ...”
He glanced up at her. She meant, in a way, his face—since hers had been re-shaped into a feminized version of his. “You mean—the new face–”
“They said ...” She chewed her lip, and turned away, her eyes glassy with tears. “That it’s psychological. That I ... it’s face rejection. It’s because I don’t like ... because I don’t, um, relate to you, or trust you, or something, so I don’t like having your face on my face so my ... my body is rejecting the face ... it’s this thing that happens sometimes and they have a test where they can tell it’s caused by ... by your own ... by ... and I took the test and ...”
“All right! I get it!” So it was her fault after all. “You know what, I won’t subject you to ... me. Not anymore. Not that way, not any way. Just—you can get your pay-off check, get your face restored, and get your stuff and go ...”
