The First

by Scott Nicholson

  No socket.

  This guy didn’t have a socket.

  If I was scared before, I was plenty close to one of those old-fashioned Big Zeroes, the kind the oldtimers talk about, where you just fall down and your heart stops and your turn to slow dust instead of fast dust. The man moved to the bank’s opening and surveyed the street. He turned and lowered his voice. “This junk has to come from somewhere. I want you to take me underground.”

  My heart was beating again. I said to him, “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  He went to the Teller again, tinkered with some of its mechanisms, and then held open his palm. My card lay in it. My life.

  “Underground,” he said. “And don’t worry. I’m not working for the Areopagus.”

  Sure. That’s exactly what a Spirit Spy would say. He wanted me to sell out my contacts. But why would the Areopagus waste resources by busting up a small-time pusher? Everybody knows they like to keep us downtowners juiced and dumb and staring at the clock.

  But if they wanted to bust me, I’d already be a palmful of grit. The Teller had recorded my transactions, and therefore knew my whereabouts. Its eyes must have monitored the gray-haired stranger. I could picture a dozen jetcars, packed full of armor-clad Spirit Spies, swooping down from the smugger to land on the street outside.

  If I lost my supplier, I might never find another source of juice. But every sell-out has a price. Like I said, time is time.

  “Time doesn’t matter down there,” I said, my eyes fixed on the card in his hand. “She doesn’t care how rich you are.”

  “Time doesn’t matter up here, either,” he said.

  Easy for him to say. He had my card. I had a feeling that he could slip it back into the Teller’s mouth, lay into the machine with his secret tool, and wipe out my account. I didn’t have any weapons to fight something like that. All I had was a hundred different hits of juice, and this guy didn’t even have a socket.

  “I get my card back,” I said, then nodded toward the Teller. “And you work your wonders and dump twenty years into my account.”

  “Deal,” he said, handing me my card. “You get the time when we get back.”

  Twenty years. I don’t have to tell you, that’s Big Time. I went into the shadows, into the dark corner of the bank. “And don’t say I didn’t warn you,” I told him. “If you want experience, I got all you can handle.”

  He followed me, and I led him behind the Teller, into the cracks between walls where the real world lies. Sure, we see the buildings, they go up and up and disappear into the smugger, and all of us downtowners think the buildings keep right on going into the sky. We think that the people who live up there must be pretty lucky, and plenty rich. Probably hooked in with the Areopagus.

  But the underground, even the Spirit Spies don’t know much about it. Because that’s where emotions come from. That’s where she is. That’s where she makes the juice that keeps so many of my customers happy. You probably don’t believe me, but I see you’re not walking away, either.

  I led this strange man with the chrome suit into the crevices beneath my favorite bank. Some pushers have gotten lost in those corridors, wandered around in the gridworks until their cards expired. But, me, I’m a pro. Which is why I never sample the merchandise. I like to keep my head clear so I can take care of business.

  A good hour passed, us feeling our way through the rusted pipes and broken stairs. We went through a couple of doors, the old-fashioned kind that swing open. Then we heard the moaning, what sounded like a street full of trippers all plugged into the same bad wire. Then we heard a single scream.

  The stranger had barely spoken since we slid into the walls, but as he heard the scream, he clutched my arm. His skin was as cold as a rain factory. “What’s that?” he asked me.

  Screams, when you hear them underground, rattle around between the walls, bounce back and forth, get you all fazzed up. It’s one thing to hear the sound from a street junkie, but when it’s real and raw and loud as the dark, you know you’re someplace you shouldn’t have gone.

  I said, “It’s what you’re paying for.” I led him through a few more turns, glad that the scream died away. One more, and he’d have dashed into the black mouths of one of those corridors, and I’d have missed out on those twenty years he’d promised.

  We finally saw a fuzzy glow at the end of one of the halls. I’d been there before, so it wasn’t any big time to me. But I heard the stranger gasping and wheezing like somebody had flashed him with a God screen. I pulled him through a hole in the wall, and we were in the juiceworks.

  Every trip to the juiceworks is different. That’s another reason I don’t like wires, because the juice experience is always the same. Underground, you can almost pretend that there’s no Areopagus. You almost feel like your time belongs to you, and not to the Tellers. Because she’s real.

  She sat on a heap of slag, her face lit up by the forge, clumps of circuits and cables dangling like hair. The stranger tried to hide behind me, but I wanted him to get his time’s worth. She tilted her head up at the sound of our footsteps. She was blind, of course, just like the legends say. My guess is that a Teller once tried to stare her down.

  “Who is it?” she asked, barely audible over the bubbling smelt. Not a whisper of fear was in her voice. Only curiosity.

  “Gustavo,” I said. “And a friend.”

  “Friend,” she said. “You wouldn’t know what the word means.”

  “He’s not a junkie,” I said.

  “Nobody is,” she answered. She returned to her work as if we weren’t there. Her hand dipped into the forge and brought up a palmful of the molten metal. She shoved it into her socket, the leftovers dribbling down her face in red streaks before hardening. She smiled, then groaned, her face like a junkie’s on a dozen different trips at the same time.

  Her body shook. Gasm or Teenage Wasteland, I figured. Sparks flew from her fingers. The stranger stepped into the light of the forge, trembling in witness to the miracle of birth.

  She relaxed after a moment, breathing in the rhythm of clocks. She pinched at her socket with two fingers, and brought a new silvery wire into the world. She knew I was looking at it, as hooked as any of my customers.

  She tossed the wire onto the gritty floor.

  “You don’t have a socket,” she said to the stranger.

  He fell on his knees before her, there in that dim cavern of smelt tins and slag. I stooped and began gathering handfuls of the wires that were scattered around my feet. Twenty years wasn’t enough for me, not when months and months of juice were right there for the taking. But I knew she had her own price, her own measure of value, and I wasn’t sure whether it would be me or the stranger who would pay.

  The stranger brought out an electromagnetic scrambler, what the Areopagus used before vaporizers became the most efficient science. His hands shook as he aimed that primitive weapon. I backed away, wondering if the electromagnetic pulse would scramble my own biorhythms.

  “You’re a Spirit Spy,” she said to him. Even blind, she knew what was happening. I swear to God that she was smiling. Then her machines lit up, all ten hexamillion of them, every color you've ever plugged in, all sparkling and flashing.

  “You—you’re beautiful,” he said. I knew how he felt. Everybody who sees her on display gets that same lift, as if gravity just got forgotten and blood is as good as any juice.

  But he had a mission. Decades of Areopagan training was stronger than any leap of faith. And all leaps of faith end in graceless falls, anyway.

  He triggered the scrambler, and my heart stuttered in my chest. The three of us screamed and laughtracked and trembled together on the biggest time trip of all: the one where you’re dead.

  I leaned against the wall until the Spirit Spy collapsed. After I regained my senses and my heartbeat, I lifted the dense metal corpse. I shoved him into the forge and watched him melt down. That’s one of my all-time favorite highs.

  “He was a good e
xperience,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said to her. “He was going to give me twenty years.”

  “I believe I’m worth more than that,” she said, and, like always, I couldn’t tell if she was serious.

  “What’s he worth?” I said.

  “You’ve already named your price,” she said, pointing to the wires in my hand.

  “Might take me around the clock a few times,” I agreed. I retreated to the mouth of the cave, went back through the corridors and up the stairs until I reached the street. As I walked out under the smugger, where we all dream that we’re free, I thought of something she’d told me once.

  I’d asked her what was the big fazzing deal, what did she get out of it, why did she bother?

  She told me, “We’re all Spirit Spies. We just steal in different ways.”

  Yeah, sing it to the Tellers, next time your account’s down to a couple of minutes. See what they say about it.

  There’s a bank right around the corner.

  I don’t care if you believe me or not. That’s not part of the deal.

  Now, pay up.

  It's only time, after all. And Tellers never lie. They just steal in a different way.

  ###

  ANGELORUM ORBIS

  Grayfield could sense the chunk of compact rock waiting beneath the ship, as if its atmosphere were a held breath. Would this be the one? He approached each new contact with a mixture of excitement and dread. Always the Areopagus won. And still he came away empty.

  "Contact established, Imperius."

  "Lock in, Praetor, and close," Grayfield said with practiced formality.

  "Computer has anticipated and enacted, sir."

  The spaceship automatically honed in and did a thousand calculations. It was at these moments that Imperius Grayfield, proxy commander and Chief Spirit Officer, felt most useless. Technology had rendered many of his executive decisions impotent. High Command wasn't the blood and guts of old; now it was a palmful of soulless silicon. Grayfield sighed and watched through the simulation screen as the ship he still couldn't help thinking of as his entered the new planet's orbit.

  "Docking complete, sir."

  "Secure all decks and assemble Diplomatic Corps, Praetor."

  "Computer has already issued those orders, sir. Corps awaiting debarkment."

  Grayfield removed his simulation visor and dragged his weary human bones from his bunk. He looked around his spartan quarters, wishing he had a flawed oil painting hanging on the wall or a handmade sculpture sagging in the corner, some non-manufactured object he could take comfort in. There was only tungsten precision and bright rayon upholstery.

  He entered a code into a small keypad and a panel slid open. He knelt and gazed into the velvet interior of his secret sanctuary. Here was his collection: buddhas and Ibeji twin-figures that were banned on his native planet, Oortian relics and the sacred bones of a Centauri sandreader. A Denebolan ghost-image was sealed in a crystal vacuum, swirling in an eternal aurora of red and orange. Thick crumbling books and dusty tablets sat weighty in one corner, holy words of wisdom from dozens of species, some in languages long forgotten. If the Areopagus ever found out about these forbidden artifacts, Grayfield himself would be only dust, all record of his existence obliterated from their great computers.

  He wondered what sort of religions might have flourished on the planet below. Maybe a new totem or fetish might find its way into his vault. But he would trade them all, along with his position, prestige, and wealth, for one ounce of enlightenment. Not the enlightenment of scientific discovery that was espoused by the Areopagus, but the kind that was hinted at in his collected legends.

  Grayfield closed the panel and walked down to the debarkment area to meet the Corps. His arrival was awaited by a phalanx of bright-eyed, eraser-headed graduates. Their eyes shone with dutiful enthusiasm.

  "Briefing?" he asked the room at large.

  An apple-polisher stepped forward, jutting out her chest to make her name insignia more visible.

  "Planet first identified by subspace microwave in the year 2414. Initial probe revealed various carbon-based species dominated by intelligent civilization with complex social organization. The name the species gives itself translates as 'Pacis Manus.' Apparently benevolent."

  Grayfield said, "Did you memorize all that or just have the chip installed?"

  "Sir?"

  "That's all, Praetor."

  The praetor stepped back into rank and stood rigidly with the others. Grayfield said, "Let's go to work. The Areopagus awaits our report so they can decide if they wish to assimilate."

  Of course the Areopagus would wish to assimilate. Bigger was better, whether computers, star-eating spaceships, or interplanetary alliances. The Areopagus had expanded its influence across dozens of solar systems, brought hundreds of intelligent species under its heel. And if these Peacehands resisted? Too bad for them.

  Grayfield pressed the transition button and instantly the Corps was standing in a high basalt dome before a trio of Peacehands. They looked just as the simulation screen reports had depicted them. An anthropoid species with milk-colored leathery skin and four sets of eyes that ringed their oblong heads. Stocky builds with short, blunt limbs, withered wings on their backs that they were losing in evolution's ever-changing wisdom. Exoskeletons covered with thin fibrous clothing.

  One of the Peacehands stepped forward, eyes jiggling at the ends of limpid stalks.

  "Greetings, members of Areopagus. We are pleased to meet your species," she said.

  Tiny ear-implanted computers translated her musical clicks and whistles instantaneously into Neo Celtic. Grayfield nodded and bowed slightly, one of his vertebrae popping audibly as he did so. He spoke, a chip on his larynx translating his words into the Peacehand language. Studies had shown that species were more likely to let down their guard when Spirit Officers spoke to them in their own language.

  "The Areopagus returns your greetings," he said, prefacing the same speech he had given on many other planets. "We're always pleased to meet new peoples and to explore new areas of space. We hope you'll learn from us as well. The Areopagus believes we have much to offer each other."

  Yes, we offer you the chance to lick the asteroid dust from our boots and you offer us unfettered access to your natural resources, Grayfield thought bitterly. If the Peacehands had tongues, that is. He had seen no movement inside the Peacehand ambassador's speaking orifice. Her glottal phrasings wouldn't necessarily require a tongue.

  "I am—," the Peacehand ambassador said, chirping a name that the computer randomly designated, "Exa. Please allow me to give you a personal tour of our city."

  Grayfield bowed again. "That would be most generous of your time, Exa." Then, to his praetors, "Commence exploratory duties as per High Command orders. Meet here in one hour, and remember, no trouble."

  The rows of gleaming uniforms saluted him and disbanded into groups of two and threes.

  Exa led Grayfield down the long basalt hallway to a large door. Grayfield looked up at the arch twenty meters above and wondered why the stubby Peacehands needed such clearance. Then he was squinting into the daylight that rained from the planet's cool orange sun. The light reflected off the slightly elevated streets and radiated about the buildings, causing the entire city to shimmer before his eyes. He followed Exa out the door.

  As much as he loathed computers, now he was grateful for the biomaintenance system tucked into his front pocket and attached to his aorta by thin wires. It regulated oxygen and filtered toxins, making protective suits necessary only in the most inhospitable environs. He breathed the thin air of the planet without fear, savoring the respite from the stale shipboard air that was continually recycled until it lost its essence.

  Now that his eyes had adjusted to the sunshine, he scanned the city that stretched gleaming in all directions. The structures were built of white marble, and followed neat geometric organizations of height and width. More Peacehands walked the streets with shuffling, m
eek movements, their eyes bugging out from every side. And the streets...impossible! The streets were paved with pure gold, and his boots made no sound on the hard but yielding metal.

  Whatever slim chance the planet had of not being assimilated was now down to zero. As soon as Grayfield filed his report, the Areopagus would send a fleet of excavating machines hurtling through space, staffed by a crew of geologists of the Computer Generation, their heads full of rocks and dreams of motherlodes. But first came the formality of diplomatic contact.

  And Grayfield's own private mission.

  "What do you think of our city, Imperius Grayfield?" Exa asked.

  "Why, I've never seen anything so beautiful." He had used the exact same words on every planet he had set Areopagan foot on, but this was the first time he really meant it. The sky was a rich cobalt blue and moist silver clouds drifted in gentle circles. Then he pictured the black industrial smogs that would soon be fighting those clouds for airspace, and turned his attention back to the ground.

  "You have such splendid architecture," Grayfield said, rubbing his fingers over the smooth polished wall of a building. The marble was cool to his touch. "Solid and durable, yet highly aesthetic."

  "You are most kind, Imperius."

  Peacehands passed them on both sides as they walked through the orderly golden streets. A sweet honeyed odor of distant meadows wafted in the faint breeze like notes of music. Soft dusts blew in from the far hills and powdered the edges of cut stone and doorframes. Even the insects floated passively about, as if afraid to offend.

  "Tell me of your people," Grayfield said, with an unconscious note of command in his voice.

  "We are simple people. We work for the greater good of each other. We aspire only to happiness."

  "Yes, yes," he said impatiently. "But what about industry and economic structure?"

  "We are each industrious and we all are rich."

  "Surely you must have some political organization. After all, you are representing your people."

  "We are each ambassadors of our way of life. I had no other work today."