Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014

by Penny Publications

  "What's the package?" she asks, though it's not like she's going to say no.

  A tiny object flies toward her face. She snatches it out of the air.

  "That," Ahmad says. They still haven't looked at her, either of them. A stream of chatter thick as a pipe flows between them in the ambient, but of course it's encrypted all to hell, even here within the sanctum of the Garage, and she can't make out a word of it.

  She looks down at the object in her hand, pings it experimentally. Some sort of data storage object, obviously. Whatever's on it doesn't respond to her ping. It might as well be a lump of rock.

  Makes sense. If they're not trusting whatever's on it to the ambient, it must be locked up tighter than the Garage. She slips it into the pocket no one knows about. Except Bud and Ahmad, now, but they've got every reason not to reveal that bit of data. Aside from that object and a diamond-edge butterfly knife—she calls it her "just in case"—she carries nothing.

  "Twenty-five percent bonus if you make the delivery in the next half hour," Bud adds.

  Knowing a hint when she hears one, Kip heads for the exit.

  The cylinder disgorges her onto one of the semi-enclosed slidewalks that snake amidst the city's middle stories. Before it let her out it extended a robot arm, which stuck her with an inoculating cocktail against ambient viruses and hacks—standard for anyone who visits the Garage.

  Good thing, too. Because the instant she steps out into the rain, the ambient mobs her with inquiries, probes, sales pitches, journalists, gadflies, trendwatchers, buzz-surfers, and coolhunters. Irritated—why isn't the stuff they gave her protecting her against this? —she slams her own filters into place.

  Blessed silence.

  But now she's got to move. Even those few minutes of visibility, even without her name attached, were enough to open the floodgates. No one cared about some nobody entering the Garage, but now that she's coming out: > hums in the ambient, dissolving into the constant general background noise of ten billion online brains. She makes for the nearest maglev station and executes a twisting leap onto the platform roof, landing lightly.

  The train arrives with its characteristic hum, shedding speed with a rush of wind. Kip leaps aboard, her Geck-Toes gloves and split-toe shoes clinging to the roof.

  Bud and Ahmad didn't say that she had to beat the fare. But fares mean data, and data means attention.

  Besides, trainjumping is fun. The wind buffets her short hair as the train accelerates straight through a mile-high canyon, the rain needling against her face and chilling her even through her skinsuit. She blinks to engage the protective lenses over her corneas. Glass-walled superskyscrapers coruscating with light whiz by on either side. Kip grins and the wind chills her teeth. Twenty-seven minutes and seventeen seconds to go. Miles ahead, an open space and a glimpse of white: the ovoid of the CloudSpire atop its curving narrow stem. Her destination: an uptown address nearby. Expensive real estate. Bud and Ahmad must have scored one hell of a contract.

  So she'd better not mess it up.

  Clang. Behind her, the train's roof vibrating from the impact. Kip looks over her shoulder.

  A sleek female figure in shiny black, magnetic boots stuck to the metal roof. Her hair's dark, smooth, pulled back into a tight bun behind her head.

  She could be just another courier on a job. Or even a recreational freerunner like Kip.

  Somehow, Kip doubts it.

  The woman smiles, like she knows what Kip's thinking.

  The train slows with a falling whine. Signs reading "Battery/South Ring" flash past, slower and slower. On the platform above curves the rail of the Ring Line that circles the CloudSpire without ever actually touching it.

  Kip slips from the roof right as the train doors open, joining the horde as it crowds onto the platform and slipping into one of her false personas. It won't stand up to close scrutiny, but it ought to be good enough to give that woman the slip. Moving rampways spiral up and down from this platform, curling helixes connecting the maglev lines that cross and diverge like chromosomes. The Ring Line runs in two concentric circles, inbound and outbound. The next inbound, that loops out over the bay then back to Magnolia and Lake Union, comes in two minutes.

  She joins the crowd headed for one of the upward spirals. Too slow. She glances back. The woman's still on the roof of the train. With her shades it's impossible to tell what she's looking at, but her head turns from side to side.

  Kip jumps onto the rampway's handrail, stepping lightly over hands and arms and elbows, around and around the spiral and up onto the upper platform. People stare, but that's all right; they'll forget her in a few minutes. The ambient aids and ensures human memory—unless, of course, you want it not to.

  A shadow passes overhead. Kip glances up. Nothing.

  The handrail carries her off its end and onto the upper platform. One minute, six seconds to the next train as she rounds one of the support pillars for the platform roof—easier to boost herself onto the train that way—and comes face to face with the woman in shiny black and mirrored shades.

  The woman looks down at her and smiles. Her mirrored lenses are tinted bluish to go with her lipstick, retro but stylish, entirely in keeping with her shiny, all black body-suit. The crowd splits and flows around them. No one pays them the least attention.

  Kip ducks away into the crowd. Fifty-six seconds to the next train. If the woman's tagged her, losing herself amidst the mob will do no good. But maybe—

  "Hey. Heyyou."

  She reacts, first mistake, and then compounds her error by looking around for its source. Said source is skinny, sunglassed, about her own age, and looks way too much like Narciso, who she trounced in the races last month but who walked off with the girl anyway, and now won't race against her anymore.

  "Yougottadatapickup? BudandAhmadright? Thatsomeseriousshitright? You wannashareoutpieceathat?"

  Crap. A fastalker. "Fuck off," she says, walking away. Fastalkers distract you with words and try to hack your brain. She's not too worried about the second part—Bud and Ahmad inoculated her but good —but he noticed her. And he's pinned her as courier for the Garage. What the hell? Are her filters not working?

  "Awdontbelikethat," he protests, just as though they'd been flirting, which they weren't. "Justwannagetalegup, youunderstandthatdontyou? Justlikeyouright? Firstrun?" Fastalkers always sound like they're asking questions. It's one of their tricks to keep you listening instead of punching them in the face. Forty seconds. She walks faster, hazarding a quick glance back, past him.

  The woman in the shiny black bodysuit emerges from the crowd.

  "Awcomeon. Justforaminute? Heyyourecuteyouknow, howzaboutfiveminutes? Ten? Whatsyourname?"

  At least he doesn't know that. "I said. Fuck. Off." Thirty-two seconds. "Okayfinebitch. Fuckinbitch, Imjusttryinabenicetoyou." He keeps cursing at her as she plunges back into the crowd to get away from him.

  Momentarily out of his line of sight, Kip prepares a one-time mask. It's a blank, no filters, no persona, but with her appearance: slim, brown-skinned, black-haired. She line-of-sights into the crowd on the platform, maps a spot in the ambient, and triggers the mask. At the same time, she slams her own heaviest, most opaque filter into place.

  It's like going blind.

  A duplicate of herself appears some fifty feet away, entirely visible but untagged, which she hopes is enough since she has no idea how much the fastalker was able to perceive. Those nearby instinctively avoid the doppel, even though it's only present in the ambient. The fastalker heads for it. It won't fool him, or the woman, for long.

  But maybe long enough. Twenty-five seconds.

  She turns and heads in the opposite direction. People bump into her as they jostle for position in anticipation of the train. She slips between two highly coiffed men loaded down with packages and a tall androgyne staring upward and reciting poetry and makes for a spot between the clusters of people who are gathering where the train doors will open. With her shields up, even basic directi
onal markers don't appear in her view, nor does she catch the ambient announcement of the train's arrival. Only the rising whine and whoosh of displaced air alerts her. Even as the train approaches, the woman in shiny black emerges from the crowd, ignoring the doppel entirely.

  So much for that idea.

  The train whips into the station with a whine of deceleration. Positioned right where two cars join when it stops, Kip climbs up the outside of one, fingers and toes clinging to the metal surface, and flattens herself against the top of the car. The train starts to move. Relief washes over her.

  A thin black cable whips over the edge of the roof. A magnet at its end latches onto the metal surface with a clang. Moments later the woman follows it, climbing the cable hand over hand. The slenderness of the cable, the woman's shiny bodysuit and shades, and particularly the almost delicate way her fingers wrap around the cable make Kip think of a spider.

  Kip drops her filters to their previous levels; hiding in the ambient just blinds her. She blinks, once, deliberately capturing a still image, and starts a pattern search. The Ring Line train accelerates westward. The last downtown superskyscrapers flash by in a haze of multicolored lights. At this speed the rain is needles through Kip's skinsuit. It doesn't seem to trouble her pursuer at all. The train hits a curve as it arcs out across Elliott Bay. Kip presses her fingers and toes more firmly to the roof to keep from being thrown off. The woman crouches, retracting her cable.

  Kip can't help grinning. This is real. This is really real. She's a courier carrying something for Bud and Ahmad and someone is trying to get it from her. Holy shit.

  The woman crawls toward her. Kip snaps another image.

  The train hits another curve. The cable whips out again, its magnet latches on, the woman swings around on one hip with the train's movement, and ends up ten feet closer to Kip.

  Freerunner. Traceur. This woman's a former city racer. Has to be, with moves like that. But Kip's pattern search is still coming up empty. Which is impossible—the woman must resemble someone.

  The train slows. Alki Point. Kip tenses. Twenty-two minutes, sixteen seconds to make the delivery and earn that bonus. As soon as the train has dumped enough speed, she springs like the runner at the start of a race and flees. Rapid footsteps behind her; with those boots, the woman can't run as quietly as Kip, though the passengers trading places on the platform below don't notice either of them. Nor would they remember for more than a few moments if they did. Only the sound of those footsteps reminds Kip what she's running from.

  The train starts to move. Kip drops to all fours, spinning on her knees to get the woman in sight, and grabs hold as the train accelerates. She blinks, captures another picture as the woman anchors both boots to the train's metallic roof and stands up straight.

  > Kip blinks again, not an image capture this time, though the handle carries with it the alarming vision of the jumping spider that is her pursuer's namesake. She knows that name. With it comes a flood of additional data, some from her own memory store, some from the general ambient. Phidippus Audax is a legend; what's more, she's the first traceur Kip ever saw, just a glimpse as she leaped from rooftop to train, Kip happening to look up as she stood on the platform with her parents, still young enough to be holding her mother's hand.

  And a few years ago, just as Kip was getting serious, she flamed out spectacularly and disappeared.

  > The voice, coming to her through the ambient, seems to speak inside her head. >

  Kip shoots Phidippus Audax an indignant look. She's nearly sixteen, for gods' sakes. The woman laughs, out loud, though the wind generated by the train's speed rips the sound away almost instantly.

  >

  >

  Now Kip laughs. She's played thrillchase games that had better dialogue than this. >

  > Phidippus Audax raises her arm, leveling the top of her wrist at Kip. The movement is so fluid that Kip barely ducks in time as the smart cable whips over her head. Finding nothing to latch onto, it retracts just as fast. > The cable whips out again. This time Kip doesn't duck quite fast enough. Something stings across her cheek.

  She flinches away, deliberately letting go on her right hand side just as the train hits another curve. It's still raining and the wet metal makes this easier—too easy. Kip rolls onto her back. Her fingers and toes tear loose from the roof. Then she tumbles over the side.

  The cable whips around her left arm and then her waist and she's dangling, looking down at the water rushing by below. Stanchions whip by at a hundred and sixty kilometers per hour. Ahead looms the lit-up bulk of Seattle Center, the station's pale arch and blue lights seeming to beckon even as the train begins to slow down.

  Kip twists her head around to look up at the train's underside hovering around the magnetic rail like it's about to hug it. The cable disappears over the molded curve of the train's topside. She can't see Phidippus Audax, just the cityscape flashing by above the train.

  > The cable retracts. Kip bumps into the side of the train and braces herself against it. No one looking out the windows seems to notice. >

  Kip does not dignify this with a reply. She just reaches down the outside of her right leg with her free hand, flips out the diamond-edged butterfly, and slices at the cable.

  Nothing happens. She saws harder. The cable hauls her upward. Phidippus Audax laughs. Kip looks up at her, the knife blade—diamond blade, best cutting edge she could get—still working at the damned cable.

  The cable parts and Kip drops. She gets her legs under her just barely in time for a hard landing on the Seattle Center station platform, rolls to shed some of the force of impact. The train whines to a stop. Phidippus Audax's boots hit the platform. "Think so?" she says, striding toward Kip. Her spoken voice is a surprise: deeper and harder than her presence in the ambient.

  Kip turns and runs, scales a concrete decorative wall that encircles part of the platform, flips Phidippus Audax the bird, and drops down the other side. The architecture here is blocky, with lots of geometric concrete chunks and carvings. Perfect terrain for a freerunner's wall-runs, climb-ups, vaults, and leaps. Kip charts a route to her destination—no trains necessary, not this close—and turns on the burn. Sev enteen minutes left.

  As she does, she scans the ambient, though not with the expectation of finding anything. She even risks a glance or two back over her shoulder. There's no sign of Phidippus Audax.

  Eight minutes and forty seconds later—eight and twenty to go to get that bonus— she rides a glass-bubble up the side of one of the superskyscrapers that ring the CloudSpire, clustering near the slender stem of its base, then curving away like the leaves of a flowering plant to give its ovoid upper structure plenty of room. Cascades and fountains of light play across the buildings, logos and abstract patterns and giant Mona Lisa smiles. Bud and Ahmad's client must have serious resources to afford this real estate. The only people who've gone all-virtual are the ones who can't afford the concrete.

  She rides the bubble straight up into a three-sided courtyard; its fourth side is a mere three-foot rail guarding against a sixty-five-story drop. The other three sides are sheets of black glass across which coruscate shimmering meteoric falls of light, with a door nearly indistinguishable from the glass around it in the wall opposite the drop. The platform is empty. She heads for the door.

  The cable whips around the rail with a loud snap. Phidippus Audax follows it, one foot bracing on the courtyard's edge as the cable retracts, then vaults the railing using her free hand. Five minutes, thirty-five seconds. But it doesn't matter. Laughter rings through the ambient. >

  "Hell if I will." Silence reigns in the air between them, except for the rain; there's no need to speak in the ambient.

  >

  "After you saved my life?"

  >

  Kip feels as cold as if the rain has turned to ice. Her own skills in the ambient all have to do with hiding and evasion. But Phidippus Audax doesn't seem to have any trouble remembering her... or finding her.

 
Trembling, she prepares another one-time mask. She can't think what else to do. She chooses a spot with an ambient geography just a little in front of where she's actually standing, and triggers it. The mask slams into place.

  Kip leaps away, hidden in the ambient behind the mask, her physical presence disguised behind the hologram the woman now perceives instead of Kip herself.

  The cable snakes around her wrist, yanking her off balance. She spins and skitters, falls to the deck. The woman reels her in. Kip's body slides across the platform's smooth surface. Phidippus Audax pulls her to her feet, reaches into the pocket no one knows about and winkles out the chip.

  Kip draws her knife. The hand holding the chip slices down, hard. Kip's hand goes numb. The knife skitters across the platform.

  > She holds the chip up to her eyes, easily keeping a one-handed grip on her captive. chip? >> Kip shrugs. >

  > Phidippus Audax lowers her face to Kip's and kisses her. Kip breaks away, but not before Phidippus Audax's tongue thoroughly invades her mouth.

  > Three minutes, twenty-three seconds, not that it matters anymore. > She releases Kip and is gone over the railing, leaving Kip alone in the rain.

  For an eternal moment—>—she just stands there. Her arms feel like lead weights. The rain is cold on her face, colder than it's been all night.

  They'll never call on her again. One shot, one simple, straightforward, crosstown shot, and she planted it. Right into solid concrete.

  She can't imagine going home. She wants to run, off the grid maybe, away from the news of her failure that'll be all over the ambient soon. Doesn't matter how many races she wins from now on, she'll be remembered as the one who took Bud and Ahmad's hire and screwed it up.

  Something tickles her in the ambient. She turns around.

  The door's open. >

  Kip walks in, numb, through a second set of doors, and into a bright antechamber lit up with the logo of one of the city's better-known corporations. Despite this, the room is deserted, save for a small man standing next to a medical robot.