by John Shirley
And he switched on the laser, and applied it to the server box.
As Candle used the laser, the Multisemblant spoke portentously, with scarcely a trace of desperation, about Kurzweillian theory, positivist/mechanistic models of consciousness, and how a semblant program could be a person too. Spoke quickly, glibly—and unconvincingly.
“Oh Candle,” Hoffman said, as the server burned, blackened, its nanotubes and chips melting. As the Multisemblant ended and the hologram flickered through five faces, over and over, faster and faster—and then simply blinked out. “I could have used that thing, and all the stock it bought ...”
“You can get your friends in government to say the exchange never happened,” Candle said.
“That’s true,” Hoffman said, brightening.
“But if you fuck with my twenty million WD, I’ll find you and kill you.”
“You’d have to get past me,” Lisha said.
“Yes,” Candle said. “I bet I would.”
“I don’t care about your money, even though it was skimmed from Slakon,” Hoffman said, as the Multisemblant’s hardware became slag. “You earned it.”
“Yeah. I’m issuing that. Let’s go get a drink. Let’s have a drink to my brother ...”
EPILOGUE
Candle was getting sick and tired of the Cayman Islands.
“I mean, yeah, baby, it’s good,” he said. “Of course I’m happy here with you.”
“You sent for Kenpo. He’s here,” Zilia pointed out. She was smiling, tanned. Pregnant but not that big yet. “Well, he’s across the island from us”
“Actually he’s in Nepal this month.”
“He’ll be back. You’ve got everything you need right here.”
It was a bright, white-sand, blue-sky late afternoon. They were side by side in lounge chairs on the porch of their beachside home. She was five and a half months along; liked to swim and walk and work at her art, but she spent a lot of time in the lounge chair. Candle, glancing around at his property, felt a vague disquiet. Like there was something wrong, but he had no clue what. There was the same emerald greenery, with brushstrokes of orange and blue, to their left; a small marina to their right. Their own dock right ahead. The islands were half as big as they’d been thirty years ago, of course. Out a ways in the bay were the tops of drowned high rises, just a story or two emerging from the lapping waves—part of the island covered when global warming melted the ice caps.
But the money was safe. In all those banks, inland. That was the main thing.
Candle’s money. And billions of other WD belonging to other kinds of hustlers; offshore accounts, mafia money, tax shelter money, money that only existed because civilization said that particular sets of agreed-on numeric symbols meant those people had money. But that agreement, that money, was the reason Candle had this four story house with a pool; was the reason he owned this beachfront property—well, no beach, exactly, that was under water, but a nice new dock, with his own hundred-twenty-foot motor yacht, and robots, and servants, all of them pleasant island people ...
Just restlessness, he thought. That’s what was bothering him, probably. And in fact—he was bored. “I’m bored as all shat-terin’ hell,” Candle said. “And I’m getting fat drinking these rum drinks.”
“Bored is easy to fix,” Zilia said, taking his hand. “We could get more active, my friends in the States–”
“Zil? I’m not an activist. Not like that. They have a tendency to disappear, for one thing. And we’ve got a baby coming.”
She nodded. “You’re right. Activists have to watch the news, too—and it’s so depressing sometimes. You see what happened to Rooftown? I just saw a doc on it ...”
“Rather not know. But you’re gonna tell me anyway. It collapsed, finally?”
“It did—but about three-fourths the people were already moved out. The Matriarch saw it coming and got most of ’em out. The ones who would go. But ... collapsed isn’t exactly right. People are saying it was sabotaged. Charges in the undercarriage. Some real estate scam. It was right after we left town. Two weeks after the Black Wind hit L.A ... The Matriarch went down with it. At least most of them got out ...” She sighed and smiled sadly, took his hand. Candle looked at her, thinking pregnancy looked good on her. “Anyway,” she went on, “forget activism. For now. If you’re bored, we’ll go out on our yacht and tell it where to pilot us and we’ll go see some more of the world. There’s some that’s not trashed yet.”
That’s what I told Danny, he thought glumly.
She went on, “The Black Wind’s mostly under control—I mean, pretty much. There’s still some beautiful places to see—in the Danny C. You could make a reggae song. ‘What we gonna go see in the Danny C?’”
“Yeah,” Candle said. “I’ve hardly used that yacht. We should just go. Before you get too big for a trip. This time of year it’s not—“
“By all means,” said a man, a voice they’d never heard before. “Let’s go out on your yacht. Might be more convenient for me.”
Candle got to his feet ... swayingly. And saw a stocky, bald man in a Slakon security uniform.
And he had a gun in his hand. A blue-metal autopistol.
“I thought I had a guard out front ...” Candle muttered.
“I’m afraid I shot him dead. Silencer, you see,” the man said, patting the barrel of the gun. He looked obscurely angry. Like he was waiting to tell them why he was angry. “I will have to kill you both ...”
Strange to die out here on this bright sunny blue sky day, Candle thought.
Zilia was five months pregnant ...
He should have asked her to marry him. She pretended not to be interested in it. He knew she was. And now ... this assassin. . . and the baby ...
Could he jump the guy? Maybe save Zilia? He’d be shot but she could run.
Come on. How far would she get, running, five months pregnant?
Should have asked her ...
“Zilia,” he said, as the stranger tried to decide if he should shoot them here. “Listen ...”
“Rick? Just ... run.” She started to push between him and the stranger.
Candle shoved her roughly behind him. Spoke to the stranger, as if he’d already resigned himself to death. “I know you want to tell me why you’re doing this ... You’re hurting to tell me. So let’s get it over with. Who the hell are you?”
The stranger nodded. “My name is Damon. Mr. Grist gave me a promotion—he trusted me that much. And then he gave me an assignment. I was out looking for you in the wrong places, that day—the day he died. Pushed out of a helicopter, according to the house surveillance. A helicopter you were in. Mr. Grist was a man I admired. Died choking in the Black Wind. I failed him ...”
“That’s funny,” said Candle. “I know the feeling. Failing someone. Trying to do something about it ... and then ...” He shook his head sadly. “But I didn’t kill Grist.”
“You’re the cause of his death,” Damon said, aiming the gun at Candle’s heart. “That’s all that matters ... And ... I can’t wait. Thinking about it makes me want to do it now.”
“Hey you troll mother,” said a familiar voice, coming from the doorway. A heavy tread—and a giant figure of a man stepped onto the porch, looming over Damon. “You are not going to shoot my hodey brudder Rick, here. Can’t let you do that.”
It was Shortstack. Only he’d been enhanced, gingered—something expensive, some new procedure.
He was almost seven feet tall, now. And proportional. And Rina was at his side, a diamond wedding ring catching the light; smiling smugly.
Candle stared at them—and Damon turned to fire at Shortstack. But it was too late, Shortstack moved in fast, grabbing the gun, which spat a few rounds into the wall. He crushed the gun in his unnaturally powerful grip. It made a crinking sound as it crumpled.
Damon screamed. Some of his fingers had crumpled with the gun. He fell to his knees.
“Don’t, Rina!” Zilia yelled instinctively.
/> But Candle didn’t say anything as Rina shot Damon in the chest, three times, with a niner. He just let it happen. It had to be done.
Damon surprised Candle by getting to his feet—taking one last hoarse breath. Then he fell forward, twitching. Blood pooled around him.
“Oh God,” Zilia said, turning away, retching.
“I’m sorry to make a mess on your porch,” Rina said. “But me and my man here, we tracking this fucker thousand miles. We hear he after Rick. Big companies came and got our money, Rick. Mad when Hive open-source that software. Mad about our stock market. They found us and cleaned us out.”
Shortstack sighed. “We had some money hidden away—but we lost most of it. Hive is hiding, we’re running ... we heard this guy was looking for you so we came after him ... and now, we figure—you owe us. Maybe you can help us out.”
“I do owe you,” Candle agreed. “And don’t worry about the mess. Local authorities—I pay them good. They’ll cover for us if anyone complains about missing him. Let’s put him in a bag, spray off the porch, dump him out at sea ... and just keep going. We’ll go in my cruiser, see the part of Japan that’s not underwater. I always wanted to see that.We’ll put the boat on self-drive, tell it where to go and just cruise.”
It took Zilia a while to get over the killing ...
It took her about three hours, after they dumped Damon’s body.
But by sunset, sixty miles out from shore, on the Danny C, letting the motor yacht’s self-piloting computer follow its course, Zilia was laughing at some joke Rina made; Zilia drinking the single glass of white wine she was allowed, as they cut a fluorescent wake through the dark sea, heading East.
Candle joined her and Rina at the prow rail, a drink in his hand, looking at the way the light of sunset subtly colored the sky overhead. Feeling the sun going down behind them; the sky darkening forward, the wind in his face. Shortstack walked up, a rolling walk on the slightly heaving deck, and Rina took his arm. Candle was having trouble getting used to Shortstack as a tall man. Like he was on stilts, but those were his legs. Shortstack started to stay something about dinner, but Rina looked at Candle and Zilia and shook her head at Shortstack, took him by the hand, drew him aft. “Come, we make dinner, I teach you Vietnamese dish ...”
When they were alone, Candle put his arm around Zilia and said, “You’re getting to be a big armful of girl.”
“You keep drinking that rum, sitting on your ass, you’re gonna get bigger’n me, Rick.”
He laughed softly. “Okay. No more rum ...” He patted her slightly swollen belly. “Hey. I’m old fashioned—I ever told you that? That I’m old fashioned?”
“Yeah?” She waited.
“So ... will you marry me?”
She looked at him. Looked out to sea. “If I do—you gonna be serious about it? If we went that far—I’d need serious.”
“Sure.” He nodded. “I will. I’ll be serious. And I’ll never leave you.”
“You promise?”
“You know what ...” He smiled. Felt the wind on his face. “I give you my word.”
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Jimmy Hayes had a bad feeling the moment he arrived at Kharkhov Station, and it had nothing to do with the cold, the snow, and the four solid months of darkness at the South Pole. But when mummies were discovered in the mountains, even he didn’t know what would happen when the ruins of a pre-human civilization was discovered in a series of subsurface caverns ...
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In the final days, humanity faced the final hour of existence. With a whimper they passed from this life and into something inhuman, something monstrous, something alien. In the last hours they longed for a deliverance that would never come —there was only emptiness. But all species are difficult to extinguish, and in humankind there were seven imperfect souls selected for survival. What seemed a blessing was a nightmare. And the dead are unforgiving.
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