“It’s all right.” She looked up at me, resigned. “It is my own fault.”
I shrugged, and sat down across from her. “I’m sorry I took up your bed all day, anyway.”
She laughed. “Don’t lose sleep over it. I’ve got half a dozen others.”
It took a minute before the meaning behind the words sank in. “The symb—?” I realized that I almost never saw any of them alone. They were always in twos and threes, always with each other, talking, touching.
“Yeah.” She smiled now, half fond, half amused. “We all sleep together. When you get that tangled up in each others’ heads, it just seems natural to get as close as you can. It’s kind of like family.” Her smile twitched. “‘Vice is nice, but incest is best’.”
“Where did that leave Daric?” I asked. “Or was he only in it for the pain?”
She stopped smiling; but it wasn’t anger this time. “Everybody takes their serious lovers on the outside. It would get too intense otherwise. This way it stays more casual … maybe it’ll hold together longer.…” She glanced down at her hands, like she was holding a bubble in her palms; she looked up again at me. “Daric is—was like nobody else I ever had. The way he touched me … he could touch me in impossible places.…” Her eyes changed; I felt her realizing for the first time why—how—he was able to do that to her. “He was so good.…” She pushed up from the table, looking toward the door. “I’ll be in back with the others. We’ll be ready with the equipment when he gets here.”
I sat and waited alone for Daric, rubbing my wet fingertip around and around the lip of a half-empty glass until I could make it sing.
He came into the club at last, walking straight across the room toward me. He stopped in front of the table; his frustration showed on his face as he saw that Argentyne wasn’t there.
“The Centauri board’s against what we want to do to Stryger,” I said, trying to get his mind off her. He frowned. He didn’t know that; they’d met without him. I wondered which way Charon had voted, or if it really mattered. “I’ve got Braedee on hold, but he says Stryger’s other backers will be watching him closer. I don’t know if Braedee can control that, or not. Is that going to be a problem—?”
He shook his head, his mouth thinning. I felt the sullen betrayal smoldering in his brain. “No,” he said softly. “Stryger has his own ways, and so do I … I assume the Governor will allow me to use them in his interest. Stryger will keep his appointment with you.” I looked away. “What are you waiting for?” he asked. “Let’s check the system. We want to make sure it’s all perfect—” When I looked back at him, he was smiling.
I led the way into the back of the club, feeling the strangeness he felt as he followed me through this place he knew so well. All the players were there, waiting for us. Argentyne stood in the middle of them like someone wearing a human shield; she was blinking too much. Daric stopped dead as he saw her. He hadn’t really believed she’d be here, meeting him face to face. I felt the air come alive between them with the static of their tension. All they felt was the silence—both of them wanting and hating this, the closeness without contact, the contact without closeness.
Argentyne looked down first, away from the sight of him. He’d never looked better to her—taller, handsomer.… “Hullo, Daric,” she said.
“Argentyne,” he muttered; broke off, when he couldn’t think of what to say next.
“Here’s the box.” She held something out to him in the palm of her hand.
He crossed the room, took it from her; I felt the electricity as they touched. He settled the finger-sized box in the palm of his left hand, closed his own fingers over it like he was about to crush it. But his hand was more than a hand—augmented, like Elnear’s, like his father’s. “Activate it,” he said.
She called on the symb. Daric’s face got vague as something else took over inside his brain, checking, matching, reading out. After a few seconds his expression started to come back … he frowned. He swore with disbelief. “You were right.” He glanced at Argentyne, his face going pale. He’d checked the symb with his own bioware, and it didn’t match.
“Can the Assembly system be altered so it works?” I asked.
He laughed, still frowning. “Of course it could. It’s simple enough. You’d only have to open up the spectrum-width the Assembly floor accepts. But you’d have to break into the Federation’s security first. I guarantee you that you will grow old and die before you make that happen.”
Argentyne took the box back from him, stood looking at it, holding it in her cupped hands. “He could still make a threedy. It would still show up Stryger. You could give it to the Indy, they’d run it—”
“Stryger could say it was altered, faked. A smear.” I shook my head. “Nobody would believe it.”
“He’s right.” Daric pulled at the high collar of his coat, sweating. “Stryger isn’t where he is because his aura’s been easy to tarnish.” He started to pace. “Oh God … what am I going to do? They’re going to kill me, Argentyne!”
Argentyne’s face filled with helplessness as she watched him. She raised her hands, raising the symb box to plug it into its hidden socket again, somewhere in the back of her head.
“Wait.” I held out my hand. She gave me the box, looking uncertain. “Just for a little while,” I said, “that’s all we need.” I jerked my head at Daric. “There’s still something we can try. But we have to do it without any interruptions.”
She nodded, and didn’t ask the questions in her mind. The other players followed her out of the room, glancing back at us as they left. Daric watched her go, watched me stay, like he was paralyzed.
(Daric,) I thought, loud, to get his attention. He spasmed, focused on me. “Can you access the Federation system from here? Or do you need some kind of special port?”
He touched his head, irritated and confused. “I can access directly through my bandphone, from anywhere on the planet. Why?”
“We’re going to take a trip together into their system. And you’re going to change it.”
He looked at me like I’d gone insane. “I told you, there isn’t any way—”
(There is for us.)
He jerked again, shuddered, as it reminded him what we had in common. “But that’s impossible … isn’t it?”
I shook my head. “I know how to get in. If you open the window, it’ll be easy enough. But I have to take you with me, because I can’t change anything once I get inside. You show me what I need to find, and when I find it, you’ll make it change.”
He shook his head, trying to imagine what I was actually telling him. “You mean.… any psion could do that. I could?”
“Not without me to find the way. I’m the eyes … you’re the tool. We need each other.” My mouth twisted into a grin that felt like one of his.
He glared at me, with his lips pressed together. “Their security—”
“—won’t see us, hear us, or feel us if we’re careful enough. We’re outside the spectrum.”
“This is incredible.…” he murmured. “You’re really serious. How do you know all this?”
“That doesn’t matter. And once we’ve done it, you’d better forget you ever knew it, if you want to go on passing for human.”
His frown came back. He sat on a couch, twitching. “How do we do it?”
I handed him the box and sat down across from him, hoping I knew as much as I thought I did; thinking about Deadeye. “I’m going to link with you—make telepathic contact. You’re going to open your access to the Assembly system. I’m going to follow it in, and take you with me.”
He licked his lips. “How long does it take?”
“Not long, if it works.” I shut my eyes, shutting out the sight of his face as I moved in on his mind. I kept the contact as gentle as I could, but still the fear inside him exploded, fragmenting his concentration. (Daric!) I thought. (Do this or you’re dead.) I felt everything pull back together, as the survivor reintegrated and focused on his own need. Images of his
father, shot through with memories, filled him/me like gall. “All right,” he said bitterly. “I can stand it if you can.”
(Don’t talk. Just think. I’ll hear you.)
(Oh, God,) he thought.
(Open the access.)
He called on his access to the Assembly floor. A rush of particle code lit up a section of his bioware with party lights; data began reforming itself into something his conscious mind could read.
(Think about how the system needs to be altered, and where.)
He did what I asked, checking and comparing the symb’s system with his own, spelling it out for me until I knew what I had to look for. (Now relax and hold on; you’re going for a ride.)
The open window lay right there inside his mind, waiting. Compared to what I’d gone through with Deadeye, getting in this way was easy. I dragged Daric after me into the channel of white light. His ghost clung to me, riding my back, too terrified and dazzled to even think about letting go. The access conduit swept us at lightspeed into the hidden heart of the Federation, the invisible world that made the visible one possible. Entering its data core was like being sucked into the heart of a star, drawn in through denser and denser shells of pulsing energies. My head sang with the feedback of our passage: the layers of light/noise/vibration seemed endless, filling my senses with the smell of burnt cinnamon. It was hard to remember that this blazing infinity was no more than a subatomic dance to prerecorded music, locked inside a telhassium crystal the size of my thumb. It was even harder to remember that I knew where I was going inside it, and what I wanted to do when I got there.
Before I’d finished the thought we were there, inside the nexus that fed the Assembly Hall; the end of the line. (We’re there,) I said to Daric, and felt him open his eyes, or something like it.
(It’s hot—) he thought, because that came closer to describing the indescribable than anything he could think of, sensing something all around him, but blind to it with every sense he had any understanding of. I began to search for the nerve center he’d described, that contained the code sequence we were hunting for. As I narrowed my focus things got clearer; I began to pick out forms within the form, the kinds of things Deadeye had taught me to recognize and forced me to learn the meaning of. Every other layer here was some kind of security program, penetrating the flesh of the data core like blood vessels. Uneasy subsystems nuzzled my brain, rippling through us like fish through water. My mind wanted to hold its breath every time one did, and I was glad that Daric couldn’t see what I saw as I riffled the Assembly’s files.
(Here it is,) I said at last. The sequence we had to open up lay waiting, sandwiched in between security traps, but clean and simple. I deepened my penetration into Daric’s mind until I was contacting the brain centers he’d be using. I opened up to him, let him see for a second through my mind’s eye. (Make it change—) I felt him respond with a kind of terrified eagerness; felt an energy I’d never been able to call up surge through the circuits of his/my mind and out of him/me, turning black to white, yes to no, open to closed.
A different sequence was pulsing under my eyes now … the right one, the one that would give us both what we wanted. (Look,) thought, trying to let him see it himself.
(Get me out of here!) he screamed. I felt him start to panic as he got too much input; struggling to get free—In another minute he was going to trigger something in the system around us, and we’d be dead. I got us out of there as fast as I could.
I got myself out of his mind even faster. In less than a heartbeat we were staring at each other, slack-faced and glassy-eyed, across the empty distance of the room again.
“We did it?” he asked finally, having trouble with his mouth. “It’s going to work?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. “I think we did.”
He got up, rubber-kneed. “Incredible,” he mumbled again, his mind still strobing with awe and energy. He held his head … suddenly feeling afraid that maybe he’d even enjoyed what he’d just done. “I need a drink. Or something.” He turned to look back at me; his relief and revulsion were sweet-sour clogging my senses. And because he was afraid he’d liked it, he said, “God, I’d hate to be you. Why do you bother living?”
Argentyne came into the room; she’d been waiting for sounds of life. I could hear other sounds coming alive out front, the club beginning to fill up for the night. “Did you fix it—?” she asked, not sure which of us to look at. “What happened?” Not sure anything even had. She was doing everything she could think of to keep from looking at Daric too much.
“Don’t ask.” Daric put his hands up to his head again. But then he said. “Yes. I fixed it.”
I frowned, but I didn’t say anything. I watched her face soften with relief and self-doubt. “That’s good,” she said, meaning it. She hesitated, aching deep inside. “Are you staying … for the show?”
“Do you want me to?” he asked, moving closer. The urge went through him to do something to her with his mind, one of those things that had always made her want him to do more.… I touched his mind, just enough to let him know I was there; just enough to stop him.
She looked away, glancing at me. “I need the symb box.” He gave it to her, and she went out again, her mind and body clenched.
Daric stood where he was for another minute, watching me. “I’m going out front for a drink,” he said. His voice sounded strained. (And staying for the show.) Knowing that I could read the decision in his mind; and knowing that I would. “Are you coming?” Daring me to do anything about it.
“No,” I said.
He let himself think about what he’d done to me a few nights ago … about what Stryger was going to do to me, two nights from now—I watched his face flush. “See you in hell,” he said. He went out of the room.
I sat where I was, trying not to follow his mind as he went away. But I couldn’t stop myself, because he was still thinking about me—me on top of his stepmother; wondering how she’d liked it. Hoping his father was wondering too. Thinking about Argentyne naked.…
I cut contact, hating him, hating myself. But the images of naked flesh stayed in my mind. Argentyne … Lazuli … I wondered where Lazuli was right now, too far away to reach; remembering the soft sweetness of her body until it made my own body ache. I wondered whether she was thinking about me; whether she was hating me, and how much.
“Damn,” I said, to nobody.
THIRTY-TWO
DARIC WAS THE last one to leave the club as Purgatory shut down for the night. I watched him go, making sure he didn’t turn back or change his mind—the one thing that I could still do to hurt him.
Argentyne watched him go too, with the heavy ache still deep inside her. She looked at me once, from across the room, feeling my eyes on her. Her performance had looked good tonight, but inside it had been empty. Her mind had been somewhere else the whole time; her body felt like lead to her. She went backstage with the other players, her arms around two of them, burying her need in the security of the symb. After a while I heard them making music again in the back room, aimless and loose, unwinding.
I followed them down the hall, not knowing why, until I saw them. The players looked up at me as I came into the room, accepting the sight of me now, somehow more used to my being here than I was. Argentyne was the only one who felt any resentment.
“I thought maybe I should … practice.” I touched the socket on my neck before she could say anything. “Like you said.” My mind didn’t want to face anything that took any effort, any emotion, but even working the symb was better than the emptiness I felt inside me right now.
Some of the players mumbled agreement, their curiosity reaching out to me. They were tired from the night but still riding their performance high, and nobody had interfaced with them even casually in a long while. Argentyne nodded, shrugged; I felt her own anticipation stir, almost against her will.
I crossed the room, calling my link on; the two-dimensional imagery of their artificial psi unfolded across my mind. For
a while it was enough just to listen and watch, leaning against the wall, as Argentyne wove their separate colors of sound into lightsong, funneling her unhappiness into a search for something she’d never seen before. But the more I felt the changing flow of images around them, the more it got into my blood, making me hungry to be a part of the pattern again, and not just a dead-end street.
“Come on,” Argentyne said to me finally, impatiently, “feel something.”
I eased into the dance, trying not to stumble and break its heart; concentrating on the way it made me feel—the pleasure, envy, longing—trying to focus the physical sensations the emotions caused in me. The sea of stimuli inside and outside of my head seemed to shimmer as the players reacted to a kind of input they’d never experienced before. Their disorientation faded fast; they liked it. Argentyne liked it.
I took what they gave back to me and sent it out again, filtering it this time so that the feedback stayed under control. I wanted to give them something, an extra dimension to move in, a part of myself, in return for what they were giving me. And hovering around the pattern of their energy I found something that only happened inside Argentyne: something that was a part of the vision filling her as she controlled the symb, something more real to her than reality—and yet always missing, when they played, because it was too intangible to express through the crude sensory net of the symb. I felt the ache of her frustration, always there too, because her act of creation could never be complete.…
I took the fragile phantom that hovered in her mind and used my psi to give it form. Then I fed it into the circuits, setting it free … feeling her rush of pleasure warm me like the sun’s heat as her vision suddenly became perfect. She looked toward me, the wonder alive on her face. And suddenly I felt whole, a part of something more, for the first time in longer than I wanted to remember.
It was nothing like a joining … because a joining was like nothing else. It was a different kind of give and take, a different kind of sharing than I’d ever known; one that belonged totally to the human side of me. Holding together my concentration in the middle of such dense input was hard to do; but staying with the flow made it worth the effort. It got easier the longer we played, until I felt like I’d never felt this good and been in my right mind.…
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