by Jack Dann
"But that was twenty years ago!"
She drained her coffee and rose. "Don't you recall what the experts said at the time?"
"No."
"The effects will be with us for generations."
It took me four months to penetrate the drug manufacturer's network.
I eavesdropped on the data flow of several company executives who chose to work from home. It didn't take long to identify the least computer-literate. A real bumbling fool, who used ten-thousand-dollar spreadsheet software to do what the average five-year-old could have done without fingers and toes. I watched his clumsy responses when the spreadsheet package gave him error messages. He was a gift from heaven; he simply didn't have a clue.
And, best of all, he was forever running a tediously unimaginative pornographic video game.
If the computer said, "Jump!" he'd say, "Promise not to tell?"
I spent a fortnight minimizing what he had to do; it started out at seventy keystrokes, but I finally got it down to twenty-three.
I waited until his screen was at its most compromising, then I suspended his connection to the network, and took its place myself.
fatal system error! type the following to recover.
He botched it the first time. I rang alarm bells, and repeated the request. The second time he got it right.
The first multi-key combination I had him strike took the work station right out of its operating system into its processor's microcode debugging routine. The hexadecimal that followed, gibberish to him, was a tiny program to dump all of the work station's memory down the communications line, right into my lap.
If he told anyone with any sense what had happened, suspicion would be aroused at once—but would he risk being asked to explain just what he was running when the "bug" occurred? I doubted it.
I already had his passwords. Included in the work station's memory was an algorithm which told me precisely how to respond to the network's security challenges.
I was in.
The rest of their defenses were trivial, at least so far as my aims were concerned. Data that might have been useful to their competitors was well shielded, but I wasn't interested in stealing the secrets of their latest hemorrhoid cure.
I could have done a lot of damage. Arranged for their backups to be filled with garbage. Arranged for the gradual deviation of their accounts from reality, until reality suddenly intruded in the form of bankruptcy—or charges of tax fraud. I considered a thousand possibilities, from the crudest annihilation of data to the slowest, most insidious forms of corruption.
In the end, though, I restrained myself. I knew the fight would soon become a political one, and any act of petty vengeance on my part would be sure to be dredged up and used to discredit me, to undermine my cause.
So I did only what was absolutely necessary.
I located the files containing the names and addresses of everyone who had been unknowingly participating in triple-blind trials of the company's products. I arranged for them all to be notified of what had been done to them. There were over two hundred thousand people, spread all around the world—but I found a swollen executive slush fund which easily covered the communications bill.
Soon, the whole world would know of our anger, would share in our outrage and grief. Half of us were sick or dying, though, and before the slightest whisper of protest was heard, my first objective had to be to save whoever I could.
I found the program that allocated medication or placebo. The program that had killed Paula, and thousands of others, for the sake of sound experimental technique.
I altered it. A very small change. I added one more lie.
All the reports it generated would continue to assert that half the patients involved in clinical trials were being given the placebo. Dozens of exhaustive, impressive files would continue to be created, containing data entirely consistent with this lie. Only one small file, never read by humans, would be different. The file controlling the assembly-line robots would instruct them to put medication in every vial of every batch.
From triple-blind to quadruple-blind. One more lie, to cancel out the others, until the time for deception was finally over.
Martin came to see me.
"I heard about what you're doing. TIM. Truth in Medicine." He pulled a newspaper clipping from his pocket. " 'A vigorous new organization dedicated to the eradication of quakery, fraud and deception in both alternative and conventional medicine.' Sounds like a great idea."
"Thanks."
He hesitated. "I heard you were looking for a few more volunteers. To help around the office."
"That's right."
"I could manage four hours a week."
I laughed. "Oh, could you really? Well, thanks very much, but I think we'll cope without you."
For a moment, I thought he was going to walk out, but then he said, not so much hurt as simply baffled, "Do you want volunteers, or not?"
"Yes, but—" But what? If he could swallow enough pride to offer, I could swallow enough pride to accept.
I signed him up for Wednesday afternoons.
I have nightmares about Paula, now and then. I wake smelling the ghost of a candle flame, certain that she's standing in the dark beside my pillow, a solemn-eyed nine-year-old child again, mesmerized by our strange condition.
That child can't haunt me, though. She never died. She grew up, and grew apart from me, and she fought for our separateness harder than I ever did. What if we had died "at the very same hour"? It would have signified nothing, changed nothing. Nothing could have reached back and robbed us of our separate lives, our separate achievements and failures.
I realize, now, that the blood oath that seemed so ominous to me was nothing but a joke to Paula, her way of mocking the very idea that our fates could be entwined. How could I have taken so long to see that?
It shouldn't surprise me, though. The truth—and the measure of her triumph—is that I never really knew her.
ROCK ON
Pat Cadigan
There's an old adage that says, "Rock'n'roll never forgets. " And in a future where hackers are needed to create the music in the first place, rock'n'roll really never forgets . . . even if you want it to.
Pat Cadigan was born in Schenectady, New York, and now lives in Overland Park, Kansas. She made her first professional sale in 1980, and has subsequently come to be regarded as one of the best new writers in SF. Her story "Pretty Boy Crossover" has recently appeared on several critic's lists as among the best science fiction stories of the 1980s, her story "Angel" was a finalist for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the World Fantasy Award (one of the few stories ever to earn that rather unusual distinction) and her collection Patterns has been hailed as one of the landmark collections of the decade. Her first novel, Mindplayers, was released in 1987 to excellent critical response, and her second novel, Synners, released in 1991, won the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award as the year's best science-fiction novel, as did her third novel, Fools, making her the only writer ever to win the Clarke Award twice. Her most recent book is a new collection called Dirty Work. Coming up is a new novel, tentatively entitled Parasites.
Rain woke me. I thought, shit, here I am, Lady Rain-in-the-Face, because that's where it was hitting, right in the old face. Sat up and saw I was still on Newbury Street. See beautiful downtown Boston. Was Newbury Street downtown? In the middle of the night, did it matter? No, it did not. And not a soul in sight. Like everybody said, let's get Gina drunk and while she's passed out, we'll all move to Vermont. Do I love New England? A great place to live, but you wouldn't want to visit here.
I smeared my hair out of my eyes and wondered if anyone was looking for me now. Hey, anybody shy a forty-year-old rock'n'roll sinner?
I scuttled into the doorway of one of those quaint old buildings where there was a shop with the entrance below ground level. A little awning kept the rain off but pissed water down in a maddening beat. Wrung the water out of my wrap pants and my hair and just sat
being damp. Cold, too, I guess, but didn't feel that so much.
Sat a long time with my chin on my knees; you know, it made me feel like a kid again. When I started nodding my head, I began to pick up on something. Just primal but I tap into that amazing well. Man-O-War, if you could see me now. By the time the blueboys found me, I was rocking pretty good.
And that was the punchline. I'd never tried to get up and leave, but if I had, I'd have found I was locked into place in a sticky field. Made to catch the b&e kids in the act until the blueboys could get around to coming out and getting them. I'd been sitting in a trap and digging it. The story of my life.
They were nice to me. Led me, read me, dried me out. Fined me a hundred, sent me on my way in time for breakfast.
Awful time to see and be seen, righteous awful. For the first three hours after you get up, people can tell whether you've got a broken heart or not. The solution is, either you get up real early so your camouflage is in place by the time everybody else is out, or you don't go to bed. Don't go to bed ought to work all the time, but it doesn't. Sometimes when you don't go to bed, people can see whether you've got a broken heart all day long. I schlepped it, searching for an uncrowded breakfast bar and not looking at anyone who was looking at me. But I had this urge to stop random pedestrians and say, Yeah, yeah, it's true, but it was rock'n'roll broke my poor old heart, not a person, don't cry for me or I'll pop your chocks.
I went around and up and down and all over until I found Tremont Street. It had been the pounder with that group from the Detroit Crater—the name was gone but the malady lingered on—anyway, him, he'd been the one told me Tremont had the best breakfast bars in the world, especially when you were coming off a bottle drunk you couldn't remember.
When the c'muters cleared out some, I found a space at a Greek hole-in-the-wall. We shut down 10:30 a.m. sharp, get the hell out when you're done, counter service only, take it or shake it. I like a place with Attitude. I folded a seat down and asked for coffee and a feta cheese omelet. Came with home fries from the home fries mountain in a corner of the grill (no microwave gar-bazhe, hoo-ray). They shot my retinas before they even brought my coffee, and while I was pouring the cream, they checked my credit. Was that badass? It was badass. Did I care? I did not. No waste, no machines when a human could do it, and real food, none of this edible polyester that slips clear through you so you can stay looking like a famine victim, my deah.
They came in when I was half finished with the omelet. Went all night by the look and sound of them, but I didn't check their faces for broken hearts. Made me nervous but I thought, well, they're tired; who's going to notice this old lady? Nobody.
Wrong again. I became visible to them right after they got their retinas shot. Seventeen-year-old boy with tattooed cheeks and a forked tongue leaned forward and hissed like a snake.
"Sssssssinner."
The other four with him perked right up. "Where?" "Whose?" "In here?"
"Rock'n'roll ssssssinner."
The lady identified me. She bore much resemblance to nobody at all, and if she had a heart it wasn't even sprained a little. With a sinner, she was probably Madame Magnifica. "Gina," she said, with all confidence.
My left eye tic'ed. Oh, please. Feta cheese on my knees. What the hell, I thought, I'll nod, they'll nod, I'll eat, I'll go. And then somebody whispered the word, reward.
I dropped my fork and ran.
Safe enough, I figured. Were they all going to chase me before they got their Greek breakfasts? No, they were not. They sent the lady after me.
She was much the younger, and she tackled me in the middle of a crosswalk when the light changed. A car hopped over us, its undercarriage just ruffling the top of her hard copper hair.
"Just come back and finish your omelet. Or we'll buy you another."
"No."
She yanked me up and pulled me out of the street. "Come on." People were staring but Tremont's full of theaters. You see that here, live theater; you can still get it. She put a bring-along on my wrist and brought me along, back to the breakfast bar, where they'd sold the rest of my omelet at a discount to a bum. The lady and her group made room for me among themselves and brought me another cup of coffee.
"How can you eat and drink with a forked tongue?" I asked Tatooed Cheeks. He showed me. A little appliance underneath, like a zipper. The Featherweight to the left of the big boy on the lady's other side leaned over and frowned at me.
"Give us one good reason why we shouldn't turn you in for Man-O-War's reward."
I shook my head. "I'm through. This sinner's been absolved."
"You're legally bound by contract," said the lady. "But we could c'noodle something. Buy Man-O-War out, sue on your behalf for nonfulfillment. We're Misbegotten. Oley." She pointed at herself. "Pidge." That was the silent type next to her. "Percy." The big boy. "The Krait." Mr. Tongue. "Gus." Featherweight. "We'll take care of you."
I shook my head again. "If you're going to turn me in, turn me in and collect. The credit ought to buy you the best sinner there ever was."
"We can be good to you."
"I don't have it anymore. It's gone. All my rock'n'roll sins have been forgiven."
"Untrue," said the big boy. Automatically, I started to picture on him and shut it down hard. "Man-O-War would have thrown you out if it were gone. You wouldn't have to run."
"I didn't want to tell him. Leave me alone. I just want to go and sin no more, see? Play with yourselves, I'm not helping." I grabbed the counter with both hands and held on. So what were they going to do, pop me one and carry me off?
As a matter of fact, they did.
In the beginning, I thought, and the echo effect was stupendous. In the beginning . . . the beginning . . . the beginning . . .
In the beginning, the sinner was not human. I know because I'm old enough to remember.
They were all there, little more than phantoms. Misbegotten. Where do they get those names? I'm old enough to remember. Oingo-Boingo and Bow-Wow-Wow. Forty, did I say? Oooh, just a little past, a little close to a lot. Old rockers never die, they just keep rocking on. I never saw The Who; Moon was dead before I was born. But I remember, barely old enough to stand, rocking in my mother's arms while thousands screamed and clapped and danced in their seats. Start me up . . . if you start me up, I'll never stop . . . 763 Strings did a rendition for elevator and dentist's office, I remember that, too. And that wasn't the worst of it.
They hung on the memories, pulling more from me, turning me inside out. Are you experienced? Only a record of my father's, because he'd died too, before my parents even met, and nobody else ever dared ask that question. Are you experienced? . . . Well, I am.
(Well, I am.)
Five against one and I couldn't push them away. Only, can you call it rape when you know you're going to like it? Well, if I couldn't get away, then I'd give them the ride of their lives. Jerkin' Crocus didn't kill me but she sure came near . . .
The big boy faded in first, big and wild and too much badass to him. I reached out, held him tight, showing him. The beat from the night in the rain, I gave it to him, fed it to his heart and made him live it. Then came the lady, putting down the bass theme. She jittered, but mostly in the right places.
Now the Krait, and he was slithering around the sound, in and out. Never mind the tattooed cheeks, he wasn't just flash for the fools. He knew; you wouldn't have thought it, but he knew.
Featherweight and the silent type, melody and first harmony. Bad. Featherweight was a disaster, didn't know where to go or what to do when he got there, but he was pitching ahead like the S.S. Suicide.
Christ. If they had to rape me, couldn't they have provided someone upright? The other four kept on, refusing to lose it, and I would have to make the best of it for all of us. Derivative, unoriginal—Featherweight did not rock. It was a crime, but all I could do was take them and shake them. Rock gods in the hands of an angry sinner.
They were never better. Small change getting a glimpse of wha
t it was like to be big bucks. Hadn't been for Featherweight, they might have gotten all the way there. More groups now than ever there was, all of them sure that if they just got the right sinner with them, they'd rock the moon down out of the sky.
We maybe vibrated it a little before we were done. Poor old Featherweight.
I gave them better than they deserved, and they knew that, too. So when I begged out, they showed me respect at last and went. Their techies were gentle with me, taking the plugs from my head, my poor old throbbing abused brokenhearted sinning head, and covered up the sockets. I had to sleep and they let me. I heard the man say, "That's a take, righteously. We'll rush it into distribution. Where in hell did you find that sinner?"
"Synthesizeer," I muttered, already asleep. "The actual word, my boy, is synthesizer."
Crazy old dreams. I was back with Man-O-War in the big CA, leaving him again, and it was mostly as it happened, but you know dreams. His living room was half outdoors, half indoors, the walls all busted out. You know dreams; I didn't think it was strange.
Man-O-War was mostly undressed, like he'd forgotten to finish. Oh, that never happened. Man-O-War forget a sequin or a bead? He loved to act it out, just like the Krait.
"No more," I was saying, and he was saying, "But you don't know anything else, you shitting?" Nobody in the big CA kids, they all shit; loose juice.
"Your contract goes another two and I get the option, I always get the option. And you love it, Gina, you know that, you're no good without it."
And then it was flashback time and I was in the pod with all my sockets plugged, rocking Man-O-War through the wires, giving him the meat and bone that made him Man-O-War and the machines picking it up, sound and vision, so all the tube babies all around the world could play it on their screens whenever they wanted. Forget the road, forget the shows, too much trouble, and it wasn't like the tapes, not as exciting, even with the biggest FX, lasers, spaceships, explosions, no good. And the tapes weren't as good as the stuff in the head, rock'n'roll visions straight from the brain. No hours of setup and hours more doctoring in the lab. But you had to get everyone in the group dreaming the same way. You needed a synthesis, and for that you got a synthesizer, not the old kind, the musical instrument, but something—somebody—to channel your group through, to bump up their tube-fed little souls, to rock them and roll them the way they couldn't do themselves. And anyone could be a rock'n'roll hero then. Anyone!
