Ribofunk

by Paul Di Filippo

  At the Copley I went straight to the registration console. It was actually being manned by a human, but that’s just the Copley’s policy: no splices on their staff, and all the ones owned by guests kept discreetly out of sight (except, of course, for bodyguards). I had to check Hamster at the stable.

  The clerk was a piebald black man wearing a topknot laced with gold wire. I flashed him my card. “Mass Pee Eye.” He blinked twice, without expression. I looked at my own ID. The stupid cab had left Siouxsie Sexcrime uppermost when it had read the card. I flexed the plaz back to the right creds.

  “Yes, sir, how may I help you?”

  Slipping my left hand into my vest pocket, I palmed the boot. “Do you have a guest named Jurgen von Bulow?”

  The clerk ran a mental eidetic. “He just checked out this morning, sir.”

  Bugshit! “Let me guess. He broke the bank, wired his winnings to Paraguay, and caught a suborb south.”

  “No sir, not quite. Mister von Bulow lost heavily. In fact, had we not taken the precaution of pre-debiting his proxy—as we do with anyone who intends to play the games—he would not have had enough to pay his bill. As it was, he left here very much down on his luck. As I might phrase it, were I off-duty, ‘His lily-white ass was dragging.’”

  That didn’t make sense. Either the casino games were rigged worse than a Fourth-World election, or the stolen trope was junkbond. Neither alternative seemed likely.

  “Did he happen to mention his plans?”

  “No, sir, he did not.”

  Dead end. I turned ruefully away.

  Something bumped my ankles.

  I looked down.

  It was Flipper.

  Flipper was a fishboy I knew from around town. He was a Fuser, a member of a sect that sought personally to atone for the extermination of the dolphins. (They claimed humanity’s guilt was not diminished by the subsequent restocking of the seas.) Flipper’s arms had been melded to his torso, his legs fused shut from toes to crotch. He wore a slick grey suit that handled bodily functions and made him look like a sleek torpedo. He rode a little wheeled dolly that ran on fuel cells.

  “Hey, Flip, what’s metabolizing?”

  “Not much. But I heard what you were asking the clerk just now.”

  “Why don’t we go outside?”

  I walked—and Flipper rolled—out the Copley. On the busy sidewalk, no one paid any attention to us.

  “So, whatcha know, Flip?”

  “I was hanging around the casino all day yesterday, hoping to hit a big winner up for a donation to the church. I saw the plug you’re looking for. He was really off the far-end of the spectrum. After a while, when he began zero-summing worse than ever, he started talking to himself. ‘Turbulence,’ he said. ‘It’s all turbulence, noise, and strange attractors. I can’t ride the flow.’”

  Sounded to me like the tropes hadn’t quite kicked in yet, or von Bulow was having a tough time coordinating the new dataflux.

  “Yeah, go on.”

  “When he was wiped out, he came up to me. ‘Fishboy, I need some black meds. Who’s on top in this town?’”

  “And you sent him to—”

  “Who else? The Vat Rats.”

  I nodded. It was a solid lead.

  “Thanks, Flip. I’d shake your hand if it were possible.”

  “Screw that human chauvinism. Just make sure the church gets credited with a good-sized chunk of eft.”

  “Will do. Catch you later.”

  “Swim free.”

  I went back and got Hamster out of the stable, tipping the splice-check girl.

  “Thank you, sir, it is good to see you again, sir, I was waiting most patiently, sir.”

  “Hamster, shut the fuck up.”

  “Immediately, sir.”

  We went looking for the Vat Rats.

  * * *

  Over the past half century Boston had been hit by a dozen gang invasions. First it was the Bloods and the Crips, out of LA, back in the eighties and nineties. Then it was the Hong Kong Tongs, when that entrepot went red. They segued into the Cambodians, Hispanics, Camspanics, Colombians, Novascots, Brazzes, Jamaicans.… Each had ruled the metro for a brief period that always ended in a bloody dustup, with the victors setting up exclusive shop. Finally, though, the pattern of foreign invasions had been disrupted by two factors: the establishment of the North American Union, and the dominance of tropes and other lab-bioactives over organic drugs. The NU had sewn up its borders tighter than a dose of Lipzip. That kept out the nonlocal competitors. And the slimemold spread of legal neurotropins through schools and socially santioned avenues created the young local biobrujos, who proceeded, with their home amino-linkers and chromo-cookers, to brew up the sublegal tropes and strobers. Various sets fell into particular special niches, turf struggles were minimal, the social order was not disrupted, and the authorities looked the other way at most of it.

  Despite such a diffuse network and the impossibility of figuring out a strict hierarchy, there were some sets that had more status than others.

  Those generalists, the Vat Rats, were one of the posses at the pinnacle.

  The V-Rats lived in the labyrinth of abandoned pipes that had once fed sewerage into the formerly toxic harbor. When the whole city was retrofitted with D-compoz silicrobe sanitation units, there had been no need for the antique system. Every once in a while someone still raised the topic of digging it all out, but the payback wasn’t bottom-line enough, and the metro would just drop the matter.

  Cold water dripped down my neck. It felt like a zombie’s caress. I stood in a pool of sludge up to the ankles of my boots. Hamster was shivering, but it wasn’t from the cold.

  We were surrounded by Rats, illuminated by my lantern. They all shared the dental moddies that gave them their name. Other than that, they were as motley a lot as your average set.

  “Lookin’ for some Rat poison, slimjim?”

  “No thanks. Let me see Zuma Puma.”

  “The Puma’s a busy slagger. He don’t see just anyone.”

  “He knows me.”

  The Rat looked dubious. “What’s the log-on, then?”

  I told him.

  “Wait here.”

  I waited. The Rats watched. One was gnawing what looked like a human femur. Hamster kept shivering.

  “Calm down. No one’s going to hurt you while I’m around.”

  “I cannot help it, sir. These are not nice folks.”

  The Rats tittered.

  The spokes-Rat returned. “Puma’ll see you.”

  “Like I said.”

  We exited the maze of pipes into a big dry bubble-room littered with personal effects: the Rats’ nest. A door led to the Puma’s private quarters. Hamster and I went through alone.

  The Zuma Puma reclined on a pile of cushions. He wore flexible piezoplastic armor, its effectors slaved to his own electrochemical biosystem. From out the neck, wrists and ankles of the armor protruded tawny fur. His face was bare. A playpet I recognized as a Green Canary model sat beside him, stroking his fur. When we entered, she let out a brief trill of song.

  “Haven’t seen you in a while, slagger,” said the Puma.

  “Not since I saved your tail from the Marrow Mothers.”

  The Puma laughed. “That’s one version of the story.”

  “Commonly called ‘the truth.’ For which I figure you owe me a favor.”

  “Depends on the magnitude.”

  “You had a client this morning.” I described von Bulow. “What did he want?”

  “Sorry, slagger, can’t tell you that. You know all our transactions are eyes-only. Who’d come to us if they thought we’d, ah, rat on them?”

  “You know it won’t get any further than this room.”

  The Puma was feeling mean. “Sorry. Anything else?”

  I pulled my shocker off my hip. The Puma laughed.

  “What are you gonna do with that toy, knock me out? When I come to, you still won’t know anything.”

  I
aimed at his chest and pulled the trigger. The dart embedded its microhooks into his armor.

  “Bad shot, slagger. You didn’t even connect with the flesh.”

  “I know.” I sent current down the wire. The Puma stiffened boardlike out on his couch, just like a window shutter.

  “The fuel cell in this is rated for a month of constant output. When I leave by your bolthole with your Canary, your Rats will try breaking in. I don’t imagine they’ll succeed, given your security. I understand dying of thirst is particularly nasty.”

  “I’ll sue the cartel that sold me this piece of shit armor!”

  “Only if you tell me what I want to know.”

  The Puma gave an exaggerated sigh. “Okay. The guy wouldn’t let us unravel his blood. That made us curious, and we were gonna try for a sample anyway. But he was launch-on-warning and pulled a flashlight on us. Put a quick end to any fiddle and diddle, and we desisted. He proceeded to describe his prob. Sounded like he needed a high-powered math coprocessor and some grafix wetware. We laid them in, and it seemed to satisfy him.”

  “He say what he intended to do with ’em?”

  “Hey, it’s getting hard to breathe in this suit—”

  “It’ll only get harder. C’mon. Where was he going?”

  “Well, our fee pretty much wiped him out. He wanted to know where he could get a big stake to gamble with. I told him the casinos in this town were too conservative to loan him anything. It’s true, you know, Boston’s as far out of things as the Oort Cloud. I sent him to Atlantic City.”

  “Right.” I reeled the dart back in. The Puma relaxed.

  “You make it hard to act friendly,” he said.

  “Not my biggest worry. See you around, Zee Pee.”

  Back on the streets, I joined a line at a Bank of Boston machine. Flipper’s tip had paid off, and I was going to credit the church’s account before I headed for Atlantic City.

  The guy in front of me took back his card from the machine. He went to pocket it, then something made him halt. He looked at his card, swore, then drew his gun and Fired into the bank machine.

  The machine let out an electronic squeal. It shot out of its wall-alcove on four wheels and tried to race off. It knocked down a salesman. The salesman’s sample case hit the ground and broke open. Shards of music filled the air. A woman screamed. The guy with the gun fired again. This time he brought the machine down.

  A crowd was collecting around the shattered and smoking bank machine. The smell of frying circuits hung thick in the air. The angry customer bulled through the bystanders. He reached into the machine’s guts and retrieved his original card. “Fucking mimics,” he said. “Last time my card was stolen, I lost fifteen thousand NU-dollars.”

  “It’s a hard world,” said someone in the crowd, with incomplete sincerity.

  “Bet on it,” said the guy, and patted his holstered gun.

  * * *

  The Seraphim trip from Boston to Atlantic City was a good ninety minutes plus. Von Bulow was a few hours ahead of me, and there was no way I was going to catch up with him any faster than this. I was just as glad. It gave me a little time to think.

  Hamster sat asleep in the seat beside me. I couldn’t say why I was bringing the splice along. It would have been just as happy sitting at home, watching the special transgenic thrid-vid channels, and Papa Legba knows it was absolutely no help on a case. Maybe I needed the company. Maybe I felt Hamster was my good-luck talisman. Maybe my dendrites were tangled. What the hell, though. The little trans rode for half-fare.

  I scratched behind Hamster’s ears while I considered the case.

  Von Bulow must be a certifiable monomaniac. Here he was, carrying some codes in his blood which, if they worked, he could sell to any of a dozen companies for practically a month’s GNP from APEC. Instead, he was going to use them to get a few jolts from the casino games. I couldn’t decrypt it. Maybe someone had wired his boards this way. For all I knew, he could be creaming in his jox every time the dealer called “vingt-une.” I had run into kinkier stim-rep loops.

  After half an hour, I gave up pondering the matter. I couldn’t be bothered trying to figure out why people acted the crazy way they did. If I had any talents in that area, I would have been able to tell you why I came home one day to find my apartment packed solid with self-replicating Krazy Foam, and my wife gone. All I can handle is what people actually do, not whatever wordless impulses they might be working from. I had my assignment, and that was that. Geneva Hippenstiel-Imhausen wanted back what was hers, and I was being paid to get it for her.

  I remembered the feel of her hot love-scar under my thumb and wondered what else she wanted.

  The scenery rushed by the single-crystal windows of the train in a blur like fast-forward video. Eventually, under New York, I dozed off for a few minutes too. It had been a long day.

  We pulled into AC about eight P.M. Hamster and I debarked and made our way to the Boardwalk.

  I hadn’t been here since they rebuilt the Boardwalk behind the new dike that kept the rising Atlantic at bay. They had used Bechtel-Kanematsu-Gosho superwood and elevated the structure four stories in the air, to wind its way past all the casinos. It was spectacular, in Atlantic City’s usual tawdry style.

  The walk was crowded with citizens and splices. Tourists gawped at the street performers. There was a crowd around a bikini-clad socket who had dosed herself with plenty of Bonemelt. She had put a half-twist in her body before grabbing her feet, turning herself into a human Mobius strip. To prove she was one-sided as she lay on her mat, she had little sucker-footed crawlers walking over her common ventral-dorsal surface. Good trick.

  I stopped to grab a spirulina-dog and an orange soda. If von Bulow was here, he would just be settling down, not moving on, and I could take my time.

  “Want something?” I asked Hamster.

  “Oh, yes, sir, if you please. One of those nice chili-dogs, with extra sauce.”

  I made Hamster take its special supplement. One a day, or goodbye world. Sold only to registered human owners. That’s why there are no runaway transgenics. Or not so many.

  When we were finished, I crumpled my napkin and threw it on the Boardwalk. A litter-critter snatched it up.

  “Let’s go get Mister von Bulow,” I said to Hamster.

  “If you say so, then that’s what we must do, sir.”

  I found him inside the Time-Warner-Sears casino, at the roulette table. His ID card lay on the betting board, flexed to show his eft balance. He kept sliding the card from one red and black number to another, and his balance kept getting bigger and bigger. I watched him for a while. His lilac eyes were half-glazed over, his face wore a zoned-out expression. The experimental H-I trope, as modified by the Vat Rats, was plainly a success. Von Bulow was rapt up in the nonlinear dynamics of the wheel, seeing chance and aleatory patterns materialized in intelligible forms that guided his play.

  He never lost a spin. His balance was rising toward geostat orbit. His winning streak had attracted a crowd of ginza-joes and dolly-dears, house playpets and freelance eft-lifters, not to mention members of the management, who stood around looking like they had swallowed a quart of worms. I doubted if they’d object when I booted von Bulow.

  I worked my way to his side. The management had halted play to check the wheel and scan the crowd for remote interference. I used the opportunity.

  “Jurgen, I’ve got a message from your wife.”

  He jumped. “What? Who are you? How do you know my wife?” He narrowed his eyes, as if to use his new insights to unriddle me. A muscle jerked along his jaw. “That is, if you even do know her.”

  “Ask not who the panther roars for, slagger, it roars for you.”

  He pushed back his chair. “All right, all right, not here, for Christ’s sake. Let’s step outside.”

  We walked out to a deserted balcony. Overhead the stars glistened like scales on snake. Von Bulow and I stood about four feet apart. I sensed Hamster by my side.


  “Geneva wants her trope back, Jurgen.”

  He snorted. “Let her come and get it.”

  “She was busy, so she sent me instead.” I had the boot concealed in my palm.

  Before I could move, I was facing his flashlight, a Krupp pocket model.

  “Don’t complicate things, Jurgen—” I said, then went for him.

  Laserlight lanced past my side, scorching my vest so I could smell burning ripstop. One shot was all he got off before I slapped the boot on his neck.

  The neural shunt burrowed under his skin and fastened itself to his spinal cord in a millie. Von Bulow collapsed to the floor.

  I turned around. Hamster was twitching with a scorched hole through its tunic over its heart. I went over to the splice and picked it up.

  “Not nice, not nice, sir—” it said, then died.

  I went back to von Bulow. First I kicked him a half dozen times in the gut and balls. He didn’t say anything, because he couldn’t feel anything below his neck, and couldn’t see what I was doing. Then I slapped an orange sticker on him to show he was booted. I got an autochair from the casino, put him in it, and headed for the train station.

  As predicted, the management put up no fuss. I left Hamster for them to dispose of. Geneva would find a surcharge on her bill equal to the splice’s original cost.

  At the station, I copped a dose of Double-up from a public S&M parlor.

  The ninety minutes back to Boston was enough to express my displeasure fully to von Bulow.

  I was going to have to mention to Geneva to block her ears when she had the boot removed.

  BLANKIE

  The second-floor nursery window had been left open on a temperate summer day.

  That was the fatal invitation.

  No antique wire screen protected the opening into the sensate house. An intelligent invisible air curtain defeated insects, large particulates, and drifting organic debris such as clothtree leaves and airfish spume. Barnacle-like microjets around the window frame constantly tracked the incoming intruders in jerky chaotic patterns before emitting their dissuasive blasts. Large intruders over five hundred grams would be anticipated and neutralized by the house’s alarm net and its entrained armaments.