Synners

by Pat Cadigan

  "Gina?" he said without much hope as he turned all the way around.

  There was a sudden bright light, and he was suddenly facing in a different direction entirely. "Guess again, Dad."

  He could have believed it was another of Mark's apparitions (another of those visual marks, his mind whispered) except she was so obviously patched in, like a rough cut from the old days of hotsuits and head-mounted monitors. Old days… as if it had really been so very long ago.

  "Yah, it's me," she said, walking smoothly over the stones as if they were an even surface like a floor. "It's Sam. I'm wearing your hotsuit."

  He looked down at the permanent tattoo that was his virtual body. "What are you doing here?"

  "Jamming." Her face rippled and flickered with mild line-noise. "Trying to give you a breather. It's been all over you and Gina. Where is Gina?" She reached out, and he took her hands. As patched in as she looked, the feel of her was startlingly realistic, and he could tell by the look on her face that she found the sensation equally real.

  "It's not what you're used to," he said. "Things can change awfully quickly now. Maybe too quickly for you to keep up in that thing."

  "Appropriate technology, Dad. Appropriate for me, anyway, since I don't have sockets." Her eyes shut tightly for a moment. "What is it?" he asked.

  "Keely's got a program disrupting the frequency so I don't trance out," she said. "Sometimes it makes my eyes feel funny. Like they're bouncing. I don't have long. Where's Gina?"

  " 'Where' is not exactly the word. She's here, I just"-he looked around at the stones-"I just can't find the right context." He felt the pull at his vision reassert itself, and he started to turn toward the stranger without wanting to.

  Abruptly Sam was in front of him again. "Jamming," she said. "Buying you some time. What's this about a context?"

  What does this look like to you, an open window or an open wound?

  … the Beater? Jim Morrison, or Visual Mark? Mozart or Canadaytime? The Living Sickle Orchestra… or that strange red-headed doctor. Her mind turned fitfully like a sleeping creature in the grip of a dream about to become real. Real dreams.

  Come along with me.

  When was I ever not therefor you?

  Come along with me now.

  "It wasn't really that I didn't want your pain, Gina, it was that I could never take it away. Now I can."

  What's your weak spot, Gina? Better get to it before he does.

  Oh, you son of a bitch, you stupid fuck-up, my weak spot has always been you, and you know that, you've always known it. You do what you do, you do it because you can, and if that meant using my weakness against me, I just had to live with it.

  She stood in the shadows on the courthouse steps, watching him pinned under Joslin's dead-white hand, she stood over him on the Mimosa, she knelt beside him in a thousand different places, waiting to see if he was going to turn blue or worse.

  Can you top it, lover?

  – -

  "Can you, Dad?" Sam asked.

  I don't know," he said, holding the stone she'd found for him. Sympathetic vibrations, she called it. He was getting a sense of the program without really understanding it, but the way things were for him, he didn't really have to understand it. Which was a good thing; he couldn't fragment his attention to that extent.

  "Then maybe that's the wrong context," Sam said. Her image rippled with noise again. "Is there something you know for sure?"

  He groaned. "God, Sam, how does anyone know anything for sure?"

  She looked at another stone and then smiled at him a little sheepishly. "Well, what've you got?"

  Back to that again, he thought. He'd been through this, he thought, picking his way farther along the shore, using Sam's sympathetic vibrations on the stones.

  "No, Dad," she said urgently, "what've you got?"

  "It wasn't really that I didn't want your pain," Mark said. "It was that I could never take it away. And now I can. The brain feels no pain."

  Maybe it was because she had never known what that would be like, maybe because she had missed the only other chance to find out all those years ago when Dylan had spoken the truth for both of them that night. Maybe that was why she was slipping now even though he hadn't even bothered to try to trick her. Take a little walk with me, yah, right into the jaws of the beast, with both eyes wide open and clear as rainwater, but God, to undo the years of getting toxed and renting furnished rooms with everything she needed and none of it hers and was that what it had all been about all along, was that really what it had all been for, all along?

  "The brain feels no pain," he whispered.

  "I feel pain," said Ludovic in a cool, clear voice. She looked up and saw him lying on his back in the graveyard. There was blood on his face. "Pain the day I met you, and it hasn't quit yet."

  "So curable," Mark whispered to her. "There doesn't have to be pain. Just us…"

  "Oh, come on, Gina." Ludovic sat up. The blood ran down his face in streams. "What would become of you if you couldn't cause someone some pain, raise a few welts now and then, draw a little blood, bring up the swelling?"

  "That's not all there is to me," she said, feeling Mark try to tighten his hold on her (warm and so familiar, as if they had never led separate lives at all).

  "I know that," Ludovic said. "The difference is, I'll take it. I have taken it. He never did." He leaned forward, stretching his hand out to her.

  An open window or an open wound, whatever it comes up, Gina, I'll take it. The big bad c-word. Sure is big and bad. Never knew anything of value that wasn't.

  His fingers brushed her face, and there was a roar like a hurricane wind that drowned out everything.

  Had she gone to him this time, or had he come to her? And did it even matter?

  "It's good," said Ludovic. He sounded a little surprised. She remembered that she had thought of him down in Mexico, and it was something he needed to know.

  They didn't have to bother going down the hall to the room this time, they were just there, and he let her pull him down onto the bed.

  "I know," he said, "this was never the easy part. You weren't smooch-faces." He laughed. "God, I love that. It's perfect."

  She didn't understand how he could be there and also be on the stony shore at the same moment. But then, you could stand in the center of the burning flame untouched, too; the only problem was getting to the center without getting singed on the way in. And that was only impossible in the real world.

  "I'm proud of you, Dad," she said impulsively.

  He was still glowing, and yet he averted his gaze as if he were some lovestruck innocent.

  "There's nothing to be embarrassed about," she added. "I know a little about this stuff. Maybe more than a little."

  "Yah, but you're not supposed to see your father naked. Or your father's mind, anyway."

  She started to say something, and suddenly Beauregard as she had last seen him popped into her mind, wearing a holo crown and hustling free preview tickets. "God, maybe it really is only impossible in the real world," she said.

  "What is?"

  She thought of Fez and laughed, feeling both hopeless and hopeful all at once. "Everything, Dad. Everything that matters. I hope not, I wish it weren't, but-"

  The screen flickered several times; down in the lower right corner, the small icon warning of imminent power interruption appeared, blinking on and off.

  "Oh, shit!"

  "What is it, Sam?" He came closer, looking alarmed. "You are starting to break up-"

  She threw her arms around him in a quick hug before something tore her away.

  The Arabian-Nights-type tent was still ornate but it also looked disheveled now, messy, things out of place.

  "This is certainly an unexpected and historic pleasure," Markt said too casually. "If the media is ever restored, we can state positively that interaction between the old and the new technology is indeed feasible."

  "Where the fuck were you?" Sam shouted. "What are you doing?
They're all alone-my father's all alone on those rocks and Gina's out somewhere all by herself, and what the fuck is that? You said you wanted their help neutralizing that thing, you never said you were going to make them do it all by themselves!"

  "They have to," Markt said quietly. "To a certain extent, anyway. One of us is too viral, and the other is too… marked."

  "I'm not in any fucking mood for bad wordplay," Sam said. The icon in the lower right corner was blinking more rapidly and she looked for the power-boost symbol. "You should have told them that before you let them go charging in to save the world. Your world."

  "Yours, too," Markt said evenly. "Apparently you have some things you wish weren't impossible only in the real world. But then, doesn't everybody?" He looked away. "Sorry. We're on to something else now, and I can't keep it from biting off your power any longer. But thanks, Sam, you did the right thing. That sympathetic vibration program really is a banger. And thank Keely for the jamming program, too."

  The screen went blank.

  Keely helped her work the headmount off. The rest of them were still gathered around her work island, and they were all looking at her, including the Beater, who made one hell of a nervous potato. She felt a sudden wave of excruciating embarrassment.

  "How was it?" Keely asked her.

  "Weird," she said, letting out a long breath. "You can see everything at once sometimes, and sometimes you can't see but what's directly in front of you. And we'll need at least four times the resolution we've got now, I don't think I got a fraction of the detail. There's all sorts of things-I don't know, symbols and elements and-"

  You're not supposed to see your father naked. Or your father's mind, anyway.

  "-or maybe not," she said after a moment. "Maybe we should leave well enough alone. Damn. I really wished I'd had sockets. Sort of. Or maybe not. Seeing someone's mind like that-"

  Some residue of power surged through the hotsuit then, and she had the sensation of someone squeezing her hand. She stripped off the gloves in a hurry. " 'Scuse me, I'm going to slip into something a lot more comfortable." She headed for her squat space.

  "Good work, Sam," Keely called after her. "You did it, you know."

  "Yah, I did it," she called back over her shoulder. "For a while, anyway."

  "Sam?" Gabe called. The jamming program was still running, but he could feel how it was beginning to stumble. It kept correcting, but that wouldn't last. Eventually Mark was going to overwhelm it, and he would be back at the mercy of that pull to turn around and see the stranger. Mercy? Bad choice of word.

  And then they were just there, in front of him. He jumped, startled, unsure if it was just some wishful visualization.

  Then he was rushing forward to embrace them, but they stepped back from his reaching arms.

  "Can't, hotwire." Marly's expression was only half-apologetic. "You promised."

  "You did," Caritha added. "I was there. And so were you."

  He looked at each of them, but there was no appeal. He had promised, to Gina, all the things that were supposed to be impossible only in the real world, and without waiting for an answering promise. Because that was how it was, whether you heard an answer or not, whether it was the answer you wanted or not, whether you had to crawl over shards of broken glass or cold, naked stones. Even with a sympathetic vibration program.

  Someday- if they ever got out of this-Ludovic might understand. It had been somewhat of a dirty trick, the promise and the choosing. Perhaps the choosing most of all, because Ludovic hadn't realized he'd been choosing. Markt knew by his graph that he'd have made the same choice regardless, but Ludovic would have obstinately insisted on going through it the way he thought he had to crawl over every single stone. Even with a sympathetic vibration program. He'd have wanted to do it, actively and consciously, claiming it as a right. A right-when the Art configuration had invested Marly and Caritha with himself long ago, and Ludovic hadn't even known it at the time. He still didn't realize it all the way through, and it was hard to see how he couldn't. Took it for granted, perhaps, that a simulation could grow that responsive by virtue of growing so many decision trees. Wander through the enchanted forest, yes, it's magic, must be magic.

  The magic is, there is no magic.

  Sound and vision, yes, but no magic. Pain and pleasure, yes, but no magic. Catastrophe and chaos, yes, but ho magic.

  Synthesis. But no magic.

  Synners… but no magic.

  None whatsoever.

  Ludovic, this isn't bad news.

  "How is that supposed to help me?" Gabe said, exasperated.

  "Come on, hotwire," said Marly, or Caritha. It was hard to tell, now. They were both looking more like composites. "If you can face this, you can face anything."

  He shook his head.

  "If there was magic," Caritha, or Marly, said, "what would you need faith for?"

  Gabe considered it. Then he turned around. Gina's fist was the size of a Hollywood Boulevard tourist bus as it came at him, and he was there for it.

  – -

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up.

  Night court. From high on the bench, the judge regarded her with a satisfied smirk. "You took the wrong turn getting up from that bed. Story of your life, eh, Gina?"

  I cant be all fucking alone-

  "Can't get you, but you can't get me, either." The judge tapped the gavel lightly and then pointed at the wall with it. "We can just stand each other off in here until I get him."

  On the monitor she saw Ludovic frowning down at the stones.

  Dammit all to fucking hell, Gabe, it doesn't make any difference which fucking stone-

  "Not that it matters," said the judge, looking satisfied, "but how do you plead?"

  "I don't plead," Gina said, feeling shakier than she sounded. "I never fucking pleaded in my life."

  "No?" The judge was amused.

  Get your claw off him, bitch, that meat is mine.

  How'd you like to get even?

  She turned away from the judge and got back into bed.

  "Can I help you?"

  Gabe hesitated. The common room was completely silent. Over at the cold-drink machine, Marly and Caritha were waiting patiently, Caritha tapping the cam resting on one raised thigh. She nodded at him. "Go ahead."

  He looked down at the stones and then up at her again. "Oh, Christ. I know how this comes out."

  "So hurry up," said Marly.

  It's only impossible in the real world.

  He sighed. "I thought you looked like you needed change for the machines."

  "The more change, the less you know what's going on."

  Markt smiled dreamily, turned him around, and pushed him into the path of Gina's fist.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up.

  "Open up in the name of the law!" The judge's voice, or maybe Manny Rivera's, doing Mark. "You are all alone in there. You took the wrong turn again getting up from the bed, and you are all alone."

  She was getting closer to the center now. Mark's bedroom. How's that for fucking symbolism, she thought sourly. Maybe she wasn't getting singed on the way in, but things were definitely starting to get warm.

  "Open up in the name of the law!"

  She paused in the act of getting back into bed. "What did you say?"

  The name of the law…the name of the law… The echoes danced in the gray air above the lake. Gabe could imagine them bouncing off the low clouds like maddened rubber balls. Now, what was that name, the name of the law? He could almost feel it, but it wouldn't come clear, wouldn't straighten itself out from the noise in his mind.

  He looked at the stone in his hand and let it go. That was the bad news about the sympathetic vibration program. There was a sympathetic vibration in all of them, something that rang a response in him one way or another, but no way to tell which was the right one.

  Who says it has to be the right one? Will you just look over here?

  The name of the
law… He searched, grabbing as many stones as he could, but the name wasn't in any of them. There might as well have been nothing at all. He felt like a fool.

  Fool.

  Fooler loop.

  He raised his head to the grey sky and laughed aloud.

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up.

  U B the Ass to Risk.

  Yah, we're already clear on that, thank you one fuck of a lot.

  Who you wannabee?

  Gina laughed. Have you got the wrong number, fucker.

  Really, Gina? Really? A very old room; surprising, this close to the center, but nothing should have surprised her anymore.

  … because the larger pattern is contained in the smaller … She brushed the thought away, not even wondering who it belonged to.

  Dylan's nasal, tuneful whine. I want you.

  Who you wannabee?

  But she had her own music with her, her own sound and her own vision. Nasty bridge, hammering all the way, the growl of her own need. Colors pouring down the bowl of the sky.

  U B the Ass to Risk.

  Lover, I always was. I'm lucky I can dance. Can you top this?

  It was the real head of the food-fuck-dance-and-be chain, and it was going to try. She didn't run from it. I hit him, but what can he do for me?

  – -

  "I can find you," Gabe said.

  – and the other ten percent is being there on time. It was time then, and it's time now.

  "Bravo, hotwire," they all said. "All right, this won't hurt a bit. -Well, not much," Caritha's voice added.

  It was like being tumbled in an enormous barrel rolling along a bumpy road, but somehow it wasn't unpleasant.

  Got all the associations now, Gabe. One voice.

  Was that what this was all about-associations? Just to find her? he asked.