Synners

by Pat Cadigan

  Correct. His father had never seen him as an adult. The flush of dismay hit him hard, making his mind spin with confusion. Just trying to get ahead… it takes a lot just trying to outswim the pack and get ahead…

  We've got everything but the heads.

  The thought of Joslin was a rancid taste in his mouth.

  Hackers and freaked-out vivisectors and berserk rock'n'roll animals all around, an onslaught of human craziness, and what isn't crazy is almost too limp to produce, that's how I got so mean, Father, and it would make you mean, too, if you had to do what I do.

  He became aware that he was whispering aloud, and a new wave of exhaustion swept through him. Too much, too fast, he thought. He would worry about everything tomorrow, includ ing the kid in the penthouse. If he had the nerve to crack in again after getting Manny's message, that would only provide extra proof that he was intractable and unrepentant. If Diversifications couldn't handle him, the courts would, and any lost data would come out of his hide one way or another.

  He paused and marked the videos for a second review with full sockets before shutting the console down. If they were so bad that they'd put him to sleep, he would have to be as familiar with them as possible in case the Upstairs Team wanted him to explain why he thought they were good enough to release. Reviewing them socketed and on-line, he shouldn't have much trouble staying awake for them, he decided.

  If he had not stopped to take a little refreshment in the empty Common Room, he might have made it out the door before Security called him.

  Gabe could hear her yelling as soon as he stepped into the hall. It was coming not from her pit, but from the one at the end of the hall. Visual Mark's. The door was open.

  For a moment he wavered. The last time he'd talked to Gina hadn't exactly been an unqualified success, and she probably wouldn't welcome his intervention. Go back to your jampot. He was deluded thinking he could do anything for her, or for that matter, for himself.

  "He's out of fucking control!" Gina was yelling. "You get him outa there-"

  "Hey," said a soft voice behind him.

  He turned. The tall thin man in the weird patterning cape was standing in one of the open elevators, holding the doors apart. The cape was thrown back so that he couldn't see most of it, but there seemed to be oddly shaped shadows pulsing all over it in a rhythm Gabe found immediately discomfiting. He tried to block out the sight without looking away from the man's face and then wasn't sure he wanted to look at the man, either. His expression was a peculiar mix of helplessness and something that Gabe would normally have identified as lust.

  "You tell them," the man said, "I took the video mainline, and the hardline is, I've seen the stranger on the stony shore." He stepped back and let the elevator doors snap shut.

  Gabe blinked, wondering what the hell had just happened, and went down the hall to Mark's open door.

  Two of the implant doctors from the infirmary were standing on one side of Mark's inert body, and Gina was standing on the other, still shouting.

  "He doesn't get up, he doesn't move around, he doesn't leave this place, he just lays there on that fucking mat jacking off!"

  "We've told you, Ms. Aiesi," said the taller doctor, an edge creeping into her voice, "that the readings for Mark when he is connected to the system are quite normal for him. His vitals have always sunk dramatically-"

  "Not always-"

  "-it's just the way his body has chosen to handle it, and it's nothing more than a manifestation of the same nature as a fakir-"

  "Fuck your fakir-"

  The second doctor put up her hand. Neither of them was the doctor who had treated him the day Gina had hit him; Gabe wondered what had happened to her. "We can't force him to disconnect without possibly doing him grave harm-"

  "This is his fucking grave!" Gina pointed at the console. "This whole fucking pit's a tomb-"

  Gabe drew back a little from the doorway, craning his neck. The figure curled up in the fetal position on the mat looked sick in some way, but Mark had always looked sick to him.

  "-records do not show that Mark has been continuously on-line," the first doctor was saying.

  "Your fucking records are fucking wrong, he did something to them. He told me himself he's not in his body anymore-"

  "That's a fanciful way for an imaginative individual like Mark to put it-"

  "Fancy this, lady." Gina doubled up a fist.

  "That's enough," said the shorter doctor, putting up her hands and taking a step back. "This isn't a bar, we're not interested in brawling with you."

  "You can't tell me this is normal."

  The figure on the mat stretched out suddenly with a yawn. Gina jumped as Mark rolled over onto his back and opened his eyes.

  "Hey," he said softly, "is this the mainline or the hardline?" Gabe frowned. I took the video mainline. And the hardline is…

  "Get those fucking wires out of your head," Gina ordered him, "and get up."

  He looked around and saw the doctors. "Is something wrong?" he asked, raising himself on one elbow.

  "Not that we can tell," said the shorter doctor cordially. "How are you feeling?"

  Mark's mouth stretched in a smile. "Never better. I'm doing a lot of work."

  Something funny about the voice, Gabe thought. He sounded too-Gabe groped for a term. Coherent?

  "Have you experienced any symptoms you would like to talk to us about?"

  "Make him take those fucking wires out," Gina demanded. Her dreadlocks were practically bristling visibly.

  "Not now, Gina," Mark said patiently. "I'm working on a video."

  The shorter doctor made a polite, indulgent noise. "Well, when you're through, you might have a word with your friend here. She seems to think you're working too hard and that you haven't been off-line in an abnormally long time."

  Mark gave a short, flat laugh. "I'm real busy. Got everything I need here." He lay down and curled up again as the doctors headed for the lift. Gabe slipped out into the hall.

  "You get your asses back here!" Gina yelled after them. "You can't tell me that's fucking normal! That wasn't him, that was some goddamn program or something, he's a fucking zombie-"

  "Ms. Aiesi, we'll continue to monitor his vitals, but that's all we can do-"

  "His fucking brain wave's abnormal!" Gina shouted. "It's abnormal and you know it!"

  Gabe moved farther up the hall as he heard the lift reach the catwalk. "Considering the life you and your friend have lived, of course it's abnormal. But it's well within an acceptable range, allowing for the changes wrought by the implants."

  "Bullshit!"

  Gabe winced for her. Eloquence always deserted her at the wrong time. He fled back up to his own door and opened it as if he were just going in. The doctors emerged and came up the hall together, looking resolute and professional. They nodded to him, and he nodded back, staring after them and wondering if they also had sockets. He couldn't remember ever having seen them before, not even after his own procedure.

  As soon as they were gone, he went back down the hall to Mark's pit. Gina was still standing over him, head bowed, hugging herself. Gabe felt a sudden flash of anger at Mark and then at her without really knowing why. He brushed it aside. "I heard all that," he said.

  The fierce expression she turned up to him faded quickly. He took that as a good sign and went down to her.

  "I didn't hear it all," he added, "but most of it. And I saw when he woke up and talked. He didn't sound right. But you didn't sound right to me, either, when you did it."

  She shrugged. "Nobody cares but me, and he doesn't want me to care." She nudged Mark's back with the toe of her boot. "I oughta just say fuck it, if this is what he wants, it's what he wants."

  Impulsively Gabe took her by the arm and led her to the lift, surprised when she didn't pull away from him. "Maybe we ought to get an outside doctor," he said as they went up to the catwalk together.

  "I tried that," she said wearily. "Rivera'll block it. I figured I'd just t
ry to get somebody's attention here."

  "Well, there's something else," he said. "That guy in the cape that changes all the time-"

  "Valjean," she said irritably, striding out into the hall ahead of him.

  "Him. I saw him just a few minutes ago, here. He was on the elevator, and he told me to tell you, or them, or somebody something about the mainline and the hardline."

  Gina stopped to frown at him. "What?"

  "I know, that's something like what Mark said-"

  "What the fuck was it?" she asked impatiently.

  "He said he'd taken the video mainline, and the hardline was something about a stranger on a stony shore."

  "That again." She shrugged. "Mark did Canadaytime's last video,"

  "I thought you did their last video," Gabe said. "You jumped off the terrace for it."

  "Mark's done another since we got drilled. The boy's a regular video-production factory now, ain't you heard?"

  The elevator doors opened suddenly, and two security guards came barreling out, stopping short when they saw Gina. "That guy Mark in his pit?" one of them asked.

  "More or less," Gina said. "Why, you think I stole him?"

  Gabe couldn't remember if either of them had been on the terrace when Gina had jumped; at Diversifications security guards tended to run together, the same clean-cut, private gestapo squad looks in identical brown uniforms.

  "Is he available or not?" asked the other guard.

  Gina made a disgusted noise. "Ask me an easy one."

  The guards turned to Gabe. He shrugged. "I'd say no, he's not available."

  "You know, he was up there the day she pulled her little stunt," the first guard said to the other one. "Who was?" Gina asked.

  "It's probably how he got the idea," said the second guard. They started to walk away.

  "What idea?" Gina caught his sleeve.

  The first guard looked at her. "Forget about it. You'd hurt more than help."

  "I'll hurt you right now if you don't tell me what the fuck's going on," Gina said darkly.

  Both guards hesitated. Gabe herded them toward the elevator without saying a word, as if he had all the authority in the world, and the guards took them up to the terrace on the twentieth floor.

  There should have been wind. Twenty stories up, wind should have been a given, but the air seemed to have lay down and died. That made it worse, Gina thought. If there had been wind, the cape would have been blowing back so she wouldn't have had to look at the shadows throbbing over it.

  She tried to keep her eyes focused on Valjean's face and the woman-Dinshaw whoever. The same one who'd threatened to have her arrested that day in the common room. Gina had to hand it to her. She didn't look completely nuked, and she hadn't wet her pants yet, but she was getting there. Valjean had one haunch up on the railing, his left arm wrapped around her while he held the knife near her throat, ready either to slice her or go over the rail with her anytime he pleased.

  "Hey!" he yelled to Gina, looking grotesquely cheerful. "You're here!" He gestured briefly at the security guards standing in a tense semicircle at a useless distance. "You can all go now." He blinked at her, his face twisting abruptly into a pained expression. "When's Mark coming?"

  She took a few careful steps forward, watching for any sign of panic. "Mark's still on-line. I think he's waiting for you to show your face. Or your ass, whichever applies."

  Valjean shook his head vigorously. The Dinshaw woman held onto the arm gripping her with both hands. "No, no, you got it wrong. He's in context. You understand? He's in context, and we're all out of context, because he's the stranger on the stony shore. It was always him. But we're all out of context, and everybody knows that when you take something out of context, it can't make no fuckin' sense."

  Gina nodded. "Which context are we talking here? And where the fuck does she fit in?"

  "It's gonna be my context, so I get whoever I want for it." Valjean rested his chin on top of the woman's head. She clenched her eyes shut, and Gina saw Valjean's hand start to move.

  "Hey, asshole, knock off that dirty stuff!" she yelled. "You ain't in the context of your bedroom here, fucking security guards're watching, chrissakes!"

  "I didn't do nothing!" Valjean looked hurt but no less wild-eyed.

  Gina took another step toward him. "Okay, okay, I just know you guys, you know? I been on a tour bus once or twice."

  "I've never been on a tour bus," Valjean said, proudly. "All video. All the time."

  "Yah, sure, that was before your time. I'm speaking symbolic. Like the context of a tour bus, get it?"

  "Get it." Valjean stared at some point over her head. Now the knife hand was moving slightly in a twisting motion. "Get it? Get it." He pulled the knife away from the woman and scratched the side of his face with the hilt. "Someday everybody's gonna get it."

  "Never mind, I said that out of context. Listen, Val, I know about the context, and I know about the stranger on the stony shore, but I don't see where the knife comes in." Gina nodded at it. "What about that? You want to let me see it?"

  He looked down at it as if he'd never seen it before. "I was thinking… something. I was thinking when you fall…when you cut through the air…"

  The woman sagged in Valjean's grip, looking past Gina with pure hopelessness in her face. "Oh, shit," she groaned.

  Gina turned around. Clooney had just stepped out onto the terrace, smoothing his clothes and puffing himself up. "All right, Mr. Valjean or Canadaytime or whatever you call yourself," he said loudly, stumping toward him gracelessly, "you put that knife down and let go of that woman or you're in big, big trouble."

  Just as he was about to pass her, Gina grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and pulled him back. "Yah? What the fuck are you gonna do, tell Rivera on him?"

  Clooney blinked at her uncomprehendingly.

  "He doesn't work here, asshole, so you can't have him fired."

  Clooney jerked away from her. "We'll cancel your video contract!" he yelled at Valjean. "You'll never work in this business again!"

  "I am this business!" Valjean announced with a mad joyousness in his voice.

  "Val, listen, let's trade!" Gina said quickly, grabbing Clooney's arm. "This guy for the woman you got! Go for that?"

  Valjean looked from her to Clooney and back again before he took a firmer grip on the woman. "Get real. You'd rush me."

  Clooney was glaring at her with self-righteous fury. She ignored him. "Val. Keep looking at me." She moved as close to him as she dared, within arm's reach of a security guard on her left. The guard caught her eye and discreetly patted the holster of his stun pistol. She gave one small emphatic shake of her head no and raised both hands to keep Valjean's attention. Context. The fall. Signature image. The stranger on the stony shore. Somehow one of those was the royal road into him. "This context thing. Are we talking music or video or what?"

  "Video," Valjean said breathily, not really in answer to her question. He rested the side of his face on the woman's head. "Gina, you been in there. In where the video is, right?" He tapped his head with the handle of the knife. "Chinese fucking boxes, one in another in another in another. We been to the next box in, but now we gotta get to the next box out. That's the context. And see, if you're in the video, you're not the video, you're just in it."

  The woman winced as Valjean sat himself farther back on the rail. The shadows on the cape were pulsing more quickly and unevenly, the rhythm stumbling now and then. The shapes looked like stones moving as quickly as clouds in a storm.

  "See, Gina," he said suddenly, "you got a bottle, say, and the bottle's got something in it. You're either the bottle, or you're something in it, but you're not both. Right?"

  Gina nodded. "I'm with you that far. So?"

  He made a frustrated face. "Well, don't you hate that?"

  "Sure, hate it to fuck-all. Where does the stranger come in?"

  "You can be a bigger thing," Valjean said. "You got a thought, and the thought wants to be more
than it is, so it becomes a concept, and then pretty soon it's part of you. So like this, like now, I'm a thought. I wanna be a concept, and I wanna be the bigger thing that can think thoughts. Thoughts like me. Before the stranger on the stony shore turns and sees me and makes me stay just like I am."

  Gina let out a breath. "All right. Now what's that got to do with hanging off a terrace twenty floors up holding a knife to somebody's throat?"

  "When you cut through the air… when you fall a long, long way, you have to fall fast, before the stranger on the stony shore turns around and fixes you there, fixes you right there, and you'll never get away. And, oh, Gina"-he gave a shaky laugh-"I'm a bad, bad thought, and I gotta get into context."

  "You're a bad thought, and you have to get into context," Gina said.

  "Prima, girl. You know."

  "Don't call me a girl," she growled at him.

  "I'm a bad thought." Valjean looked down his nose at her.

  "Just not in front of the asshole." She jerked her head at Clooney.

  "Right. Sorry."

  "Okay. Bad thought out of context. You're gonna cut through the air and take her with you, but you got no idea about what the context is."

  "How can I, if I'm out of context?" He suddenly bent the woman backwards over the rail. Her feet dangled above the tacky grass green outdoor carpeting. Valjean held the knife above her, ready to stab down. Gina noted with a growing feeling of absurdity that it was a steak knife.

  "Val, what if you get into context and you find out you're supposed to be a good thought?" she said quickly.

  He looked up from the woman, exasperated. "Bad is bad."

  "But if you don't know what the context is, how can you know if you're supposed to be bad?"

  "What the fuck are you talking about?" Valjean yelled angrily. "You think you know something, you think you're the stranger here?"

  "You don't know what you're supposed to be if you're not in context," she insisted. "You remember when I did your video, the fall, the bungi cords, all that?" She waited for him to nod. "Take that fall out of context, and what is it?"

  "It's a fall," he said suspiciously.