“Try it out on us.” Aspen was still grinning. He’d already forgotten what I wanted to do with it, or the trouble it could make for me. Or maybe it had never even registered on him in the first place.
I looked around the circle, felt them waiting to feel something.… I shook my head. “I don’t want to try it now.” I looked down. “Just tell me how I make it do what I need it to do. Just tell me how I record what happens to me, and how do I feed it back into the heads of the Assembly?”
“We can’t tell you,” Argentyne said, feeling her patience slip again. “Like I said, it’s not anything we’ve ever done. You’ve got to lock in so we can test it out. The symb quantifies sensory input for vision and sound, sometimes even smell, but we’ve never tried to code anything like whole body sensation before. I don’t know if it can even handle something as unpredictable as … as your pain.” She said the word like an obscenity, and in the back of her mind she thought an obscenity was what I’d be committing with her equipment. “We’ve got to take neural readings off you.”
I nodded, shrugged. “What do I do?” I started to get up.
“Just stay there,” she said. I sat back down again. “Wake up the jack … and listen through it for the music.”
I called it on: it shrieked and shone and crackled inside my brain like some insane alien lifeforce. “Jeezu—!” I pressed my hand against my eyes, trying to blot out the molten highways that were linking me to the startled faces of the players. Slowly the sandpaper static faded, as my mind took its measure and tuned out everything irrelevant, bit by bit. I blinked, able to see their relief, starting to be able to feel it again past the noise. “I’m reading you … and you…” pointing to them as I was able to separate the raw data of the sounds each of their instrument systems made. Readouts flashed inside my eyes like phosphenes. “Where are you?” I looked at Argentyne, the only one I couldn’t find a channel for.
“You’re in my seat, playing spirit, my role,” she said. “I’m just listening, reading you out this time. You’ll have to play spirit to do what you want to do. You’re accessing my console.”
“I’m in your head?”
“Not exactly. Just on the phone. I can’t feel you.”
I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure I understood; trusting her judgment because I didn’t have any choice.
“How does it feel?” She’d never taken a reaction off a psion.
“Like having rats down your pantslegs. How the hell do you stand it?”
“I’m used to it.” She shrugged. “Anyway, it never really bothered me that much.…” She looked away from whatever she was seeing on some built-in readout of her own, focused on my face again. Slowly she lifted her hand to touch her forehead. “You remember what I said about you feeling like silk…?”
I nodded, finally understanding that much, at least. “Now what?”
“Open up the console; send data back to the others. Tell them to pick it up, ease off—something simple.”
Something simple was all I could do anyway; but I did it, embarrassed and awkward, collecting my thoughts like spit and funneling them into the rigid patterns of noiselight that lay waiting, a datascan that had somehow ended up on the wrong side of my eyes. The symb-system only recognized a narrow range of commands, a narrow band of frequencies; it was totally blind to everything else. It was like being brain-damaged … but remembering how I’d felt without my psi, I realized it was still better than nothing.
“Loosen up,” Argentyne said. “Stop treating it like an electric shock.”
“I don’t know anything about making music—”
“You don’t have to,” she said gently. “That’s their business. Just let them know what you want to hear. Nobody’s judging you—try to enjoy it. That’s what it’s for.”
I let myself settle back into the couch, into the crosscurrents of half a dozen different kinds of music playing at once. I let it fill my brain and filter down, trying to reach levels where the control would be almost instinctive. My muscles began to twitch, wanting to be what made the sounds that were filling me now. I’d always liked music. It was everywhere in Oldcity, pouring out of forbidden clubs or broken windows, trapped inside a bottle, just like I was. It was the only thing about Oldcity that ever made me feel glad I was alive. I tried to remember that, to imagine what I was hearing was like that. I let go of who and where I was, and of what I was doing here; tried to make what was happening inside me feel like the sound of an Oldcity night ricocheting off the roof of the world. By not focusing on any single player I could half-hear them all, reacting half a dozen ways at once by not trying to react.…
I felt it begin to change; felt the sudden surge of my own pleasure fill me until it turned into a squeal of feedback … until I got it under control, drifting back into the river of sound, feeling its currents divide and re-form around me.
“Good,” Argentyne murmured. “You’ve got instincts, at least. Now try making an image.”
“How?” I mumbled, hating to interrupt myself to say the word.
“The same way you’re guiding the music. Concentrate on the console, give it an easy focus—a face, something in the room, to fix on, and let it start improvising, then ride it—”
I gave it the easiest thing I could think of—myself, moving to the music the way my body wanted to. I saw my own holoform image flash into being in the middle of the symb, dancing, with the walls and ceiling darkening, closing in … dancing the way I’d danced once years ago to someone else’s music, through a sweltering Oldcity night. I stared at the image, forgetting that I was supposed to be controlling it … until suddenly it wavered, folded in on itself, and was gone. The music began to unravel into separate strands inside me. “Damn!”
“Don’t worry,” Argentyne said. “It takes practice. It’s like putting your pants on while walking a fence.…”
I smiled with half my brain; the other half was still trying to put everything back together that I’d almost had perfect. I looked from face to face, finally understanding the kind of trust it took, the discipline, the control, to do what a player did. Creativity was only the beginning. And they did it without using psi.
“Feel something—”
“I am.…” I said, only half hearing her; working my mind deeper into the artificial passageways, still looking for my lost image.
“Something physical.”
“Yeah.…” I looked down at my bandaged hand; made it into a fist.
Something happened in the artificial grid inside my head—pain went out and came back again sixfold, making me gasp. It went out and came back again, worse, caught in a circular feedback that I didn’t know how to stop—
Suddenly the link went dead; Argentyne had cut me loose. I sank back into the couch, gulping in the sweet, empty void that followed like cool water.
There was silence around me in the room, too. Not even echoes. Finally Midnight said, “Shit … don’t ever do that again, man.” Raya put an arm around him, pulling him close.
“I won’t,” I said. “Not to you, anyway.” There was silence again. Slowly the players began to get up, by ones and twos, putting their arms around each other and mumbling excuses as they left the room. Only Argentyne was still there when I finally looked up.
“I guess it works,” she said faintly.
I nodded.
“It won’t feed back like that on an open-ended link. It was just trapped.”
I laughed once. “So I won’t burn the brains out of the Federation Assembly. Then all I’ve got to worry about is putting my pants on while walking a fence with Stryger on my back.”
She shook her head; tried not to grimace. “That’s no problem either, if all you want from the equipment is to code a feelie … a straight record of your experience. You come through very clearly; some people never learn to do that. You focus like a pro.”
I half smiled. “I am a pro.”
“I know.…” she said, glancing away, and back at me. “You should really tr
y working this more. Experiment, play with us. It wouldn’t take you long to pick it up, I can tell. I want to know what you’d symb like, feeling something real good.…” Her gaze broke, as self-consciousness smashed the image crystallizing in her mind.
I kept my face expressionless, looking down. I picked up the small metal-plated bar that was still lying in my lap. “What’s this thing?” I asked, to get my own mind off what she’d been thinking.
She looked relieved at the change of subject. “Oh, that … something Raya picked up in a junk shop. It’s real old, like most of the stuff here—” She gestured at the other instruments lying around the room, started to smile a little. “She can’t resist any old piece of crap that’s supposed to make music. We like to play them … play with them. She said it’s called a harp.”
“I thought harps had long strings. Like pianos.”
“She said it’s a mouth harp. You blow through its teeth, and it makes noise. Try it.”
I tried it. It made a whole chord of notes as I blew, a different chord when I breathed in again. The sound was smoky and lost; it put a hand around my heart and squeezed. It reminded me of something, but I couldn’t remember what. I dropped it on the couch and stood up.
“Take it, if you want,” Argentyne said.
I shook my head, and started for the door.
“Where are you going?” she called, mostly because she wasn’t sure that I knew either.
“Back to the real world,” I said.
TWENTY-NINE
“YOU’RE HOTWIRED,” BRAEDEE said, as I came into his office. He leaned forward across the desk/terminal like a snooper sniffing out drugs. The desk was a black cube, like the one on his cruiser. “Do you know what the penalty is for psions wearing bioware?”
“Fuck off, Braedee.” I frowned, collapsing into a chair. “I know it better than you do.” The way I felt right now, there was nothing they could do to me that wasn’t already happening.
“Where did you pick up an illegal jack?”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re not going to turn me in.” Daring him to deny it, feeling lousy enough to enjoy pissing him off. “I need it right now. I’ll get rid of it as soon as I can. Wearing this shit is enough punishment—I don’t know how you deadheads stand it.”
He stared at me, unblinking, rigid. Finally his body eased, with a shrug that said he’d given up trying to make sense of a sociopath. “See that you do.” If I didn’t see to it, he would. “What have you found out concerning Daric taMing?”
I leaned back in my seat, trying to ignore the dryness in my mouth, and the way my eyes kept wanting to trace the black knife-edge outline of his desk. I glanced at the wide stretch of window behind him, at the view of Centauri’s operations plex spreading out in the cold, clear morning across Longeye, as big as the city that had been there before it. I realized the whole layout of this office, and even the colors in it, were the same as the ones on his ship. He liked his world under control. No wonder he didn’t like what was happening now. I looked back at him. “I think I found out how you can save Daric’s life.”
His face barely registered a change; but his mind was an exclamation point. “How?” he said.
“You’re not going to like it. Did you tell Charon—Gentleman Charon—” as he frowned, “what happened?”
He nodded. “He knows Daric is in trouble. And he knows that you’re still working for me here on Earth.”
“How’s he taking it?”
“With extreme prejudice.” Braedee’s mouth thinned. “Well—?”
There wasn’t an easy way to say it. “If he wants Daric to stay alive, the pentryptine deregulation has to lose in the Assembly.”
Braedee shook his head slightly, as if he thought his hearing had gone out on him.
I went over it again: Daric’s drugs, Daric’s Lack Market dealings, how Daric had stepped over some invisible line, and the only way back across it was the hard way. What was going on in Braedee’s brain got darker with every word I spoke, as he realized what Daric had done to himself.
“It’s impossible.…” he said finally; but he didn’t mean that he didn’t believe it. Only that he didn’t see any way to stop it. He turned his chair until his back was to me, and stared out at the fields, the symbol of Centauri’s empire. Even if Centauri suddenly changed its mind on the deregulation, he figured they’d never get enough other combines to change their votes, just to save the life of Daric taMing. They might be able to save Daric by giving him a total identity change and sending him away somewhere, but the end result would still be the same. They’d still lose his voting seat in the Assembly, and on the hoard. That made him as good as dead to Centauri, even if he survived.
“Maybe not,” I said.
He turned back to face me again. “Explain.”
“Stryger. I think Stryger’s the key. I think I have a way of making his credibility lousy. And if he goes down, I think he’ll drag deregulation down with him.”
“Stryger…?” he murmured. His eyes glazed while he called up data and fed it over and over through his mind. At last he said, “Centauri is backing Stryger in his bid for the Council slot as well as in his push for deregulation.” He thought he was telling me something I didn’t know.
“I know,” I said.
His sudden paranoia turned into irritation, almost before he knew what he was feeling. “They are not the only combine involved in this.”
“I know.”
His fingers began to tap on the black expanse of tabletop. “What makes you think Stryger is vulnerable?”
“Everybody’s vulnerable.” I looked down. “He hates psions.”
Braedee was actually surprised, for half a second. “How is that fact likely to cause him any serious trouble?” Plenty of people in positions of power hated psions.
I looked up at him again. “Because he does things to freaks that the rest of you deadheads only daydream about,” I said softly.
He straightened up in his seat, staring at me. His mouth opened. But by now he knew enough not to waste his time asking me the obvious questions. “What are you planning to do?” he murmured.
“That’s my business.” I frowned.
He shook his head. “I can’t allow that.”
“Daric will know all about it. He’s going to help me. If Centauri wants to keep him alive, then you’ve got to trust me. Leave me alone to do what I have to do.”
“What are you getting out of this?” he asked, finally.
I shrugged. “Your money.”
He leaned forward again, his fingers making a pyramid on the black plain. “What else?”
“You wouldn’t understand.… Knowing Stryger won’t be working for the Humane Society.” He didn’t understand, but it didn’t matter. “You told me you think Stryger’s a fanatic, maybe crazy. That he’s not going to play anybody’s game but his own—”
He nodded. “But that’s only my opinion. I’ll still have to clear it with the board. Centauri has a great deal to lose if deregulation loses. If the board disagrees, it will still be my duty to stop you.”
I didn’t say anything.
* * *
The Corpses who had taken me to Braedee took me back to the city again, and let me off at the waterline. It was the middle of the day by the time I walked the last few streets to Purgatory. My feet began to stumble as the angry energy from my meeting with him finally wore off.
I still had to deal with Daric; but breaking the news to him was going to be like breaking glass, and I didn’t feel clear-headed enough to handle it without more sleep. My brain still thought it was plugged into the sun, but my body said my brain was a liar.
Argentyne met me in the back hallway of the club, looking concerned, but not about me. “Jiro’s here.”
“Jiro?” I said. “Why?”
Jiro stepped out of her dressing room into the hallway behind her. His white tunic was smeared with something that looked the way it smelled, and one side of his face was red and purple. For
a second I thought it was makeup. But this time it was real.
“Somebody robbed him,” Argentyne said.
“I wanted to see you,” he said to me. His voice couldn’t decide whether to sound like a taMing, or like he wanted to cry.
“How’d you find me?”
“Auntie told me you were here.”
I glanced at Argentyne.
She nodded. “Go on upstairs.”
We went up to her room. Jiro looked around it, wide eyed with curiosity in spite of himself. He sat down almost timidly on the edge of her bed. “Why doesn’t Argentyne want to see Daric anymore?”
I tried a lot of answers, finally settled on, “She’s angry at him.”
“She’s been angry at him before. But this is different. Daric’s real upset. He won’t even leave his house. He said she’s never going to come back. Even if he tells her he’ll kill himself again.”
“Jeezu,” I muttered. “That’s all I need.” I looked out the window, wondering if he’d still be so eager to commit suicide once he knew that somebody wanted to do it for him.
“He said it was your fault.”
I looked back at Jiro. “Daric says a lot of things that aren’t true.”
He bit his lip. “I know.…”
“How are you doing?” I asked it, even though I already knew the answer.
“I miss my mother.” He twisted the edge of his belt between his fists. “And Tally.”
“Me too,” I said, touching the empty hole in my ear, feeling the drug patch still in place behind it. “Why’d you come down here, Jiro?”
“Because I hate Charon! I’m never going back there—” He winced as his face hurt him. “I want to stay with you.”
I stared at him. “And do what?” I asked.
“We could go to Eldorado and find my mother, and you and she—”
“No,” I said softly, cutting him off. “We can’t. You’ve got to go home.”
“Why not—?” A crimson rush of anger frustration grief fear reddened his other cheek.
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