“I see.”
“The thing is, I can’t imagine he would drop out of the biz. He was gung ho, like most of us. I figured they’d have to haul his body away from the console if he died. But there’s no sign of him anywhere from about three years after we graduated. Poof.”
The insect house was not far ahead. It was always warm in there, if kind of humid, but it was getting chilly, and Jay nodded at it. “Let’s go look at the bugs.”
Inside, small children darted from window to window, looking at giant cockroaches, horned beetles, and all kinds of scorpions from around the world. It felt like a jungle, warm and damp, though the lights were fairly dim.
“So you think maybe this weirdo is somehow part of things?”
He shook his head. “No. I think it’s the other one—my old buddy Keller.”
She looked at an albino beetle the size of a mouse as it lumbered over a floor of fine-grained sand. “What makes you think that?”
“A couple things. The weirdo—his name was Zimmer-man—never had the chops to make me look bad in VR. Keller wasn’t quite as good as I was, but he coulda gotten better. And I’ve been thinking about that climb up Fuji-yama. When the old Thai guy came and sat next to me. That’s what Keller used to call me, back in college. Jay, the Old Thai. He was a year or two younger than most of us, a child prodigy who finished high school at fifteen.”
“You think the VR construct was a hint?”
“I think so, yeah. And you know what it really feels like? It feels personal. Like this guy knows me, wants to screw me up. And his stuff is like the stuff Keller used to do—he was always big on ambushes. He used to say if you are going to duel with somebody, shoot ’em in the back before they see you coming, it’ll save you a lot of grief. Their fault if they weren’t paying attention.”
“Huh,” she said.
“ ‘Huh?’ That’s the best you can do?”
“What do you want me to say? Yes, you must be right, you brilliant stud!”
He grinned. “That would be okay, I like the sound of that.”
She grinned back at him. “I bet.” She looked back at the beetle. “So, if this is true, how do you find out for sure? And then what?”
“Well, to start, I can dig deeper in public records, see if I can find Keller anywhere. Maybe I’m imagining it, maybe he’s got a job in Silicon Valley somewhere running some company and I missed him.”
“Maybe he changed his name,” she said.
“Why would he do that?”
“For all your smarts, you sometimes miss the easy stuff, Jay. What if he got into debt? Maybe some kind of white-collar crime? Needed a fresh start. Or just went bonkers and decided to start calling himself ‘Ra, God of the Sun.’ ”
Jay watched the bug in the glass case going about its business. It had found something in the sand and was digging it up. Jay halfway expected to see the insect unearth a tiny human skull. “I don’t think so. If he had, there’d be some record of it under his old name. First things I checked were criminal records, B&D stats, and Deja, and he was active on the net until about five years ago. After that, he’s just gone. You’d think somebody who was planning on leaving would say good-bye—he was on a lot of newsgroups and professional pub pages, then he stopped posting. I had a searchbot scan all his postings: There’s no mention of being in trouble with the law, or in debt, or wanting to change his name. One minute he was there, the next, he was gone.”
“Black helicopters got him?” she said.
Jay smiled. “Uh-huh. Don’t forget, I know where those guys hang out.”
The beetle came up with something that looked like a little ball made out of Tootsie Roll, and proceeded to roll it across the stand toward a far corner of the cage.
“All right, then,” she said. “Hunt him down and find out what he’s been up to.”
Jay nodded. Yes.
27
Washington, D.C.
The ceremony was outside, a bright June afternoon. A sea of graduates in blue caps and gowns sat in folding chairs in front of a raised platform. On the stage, a speaker called out names, and students walked across the stand to collect their diplomas. Most of the students looked happy as they accepted their sheepskins and shook hands with the principal. A couple of the boys mugged and did silly waves. One boy flashed the crowd, showing off jockey undershorts. A typical high school graduation, “Pomp and Circumstance” playing in the background, the proud parents smiling, crying, fanning themselves with programs, watching their progeny morph from children to semi-adults.
Later, a tall blonde girl stood with her arms around two of her girlfriends while her parents, then the parents of her friends took pictures.
As the festivities wound down, students hugging each other, slapping each other on the back, punching shoulders, a father and son walked side by side toward the parking lot. The family resemblance was strong, the boy a younger copy of his father. The father stopped walking and said, “Here, son.”
The boy took a small plastic card from his father, looked at it, then back at his dad.
“Your first year of membership in CyberNation,” his father said. He was blinking back tears.
The son looked amazed. “But—but you think this is stupid!” He waved the card a little.
“Times change, son. People change, too—they have to, or they miss what’s important in life.”
The boy looked at the card.
“Your mother would have been so proud.”
Behind them, a woman—the spirit of the boy’s mother—shimmered and appeared ghostlike into view. The father and son looked at the spirit, who smiled at them.
With the spirit of the wife and mother watching, the boy and his father embraced.
“CyberNation,” said the deep voice. “It’s today, it’s tomorrow. It’s forever.”
A small graphic appeared under the father and son, and in small print the words CYBERNATION appeared.
Michaels pointed the remote at the television in disgust and clicked the set off. “Have you seen this? A three-hanky commercial for an Internet service.”
Toni came out of the bathroom with the electric toothbrush in her mouth. “What?”
Michaels waved at the television. “The CyberNation ad.”
She held up a hand, a “wait a second” gesture, then went back into the bathroom. A moment later, she was back. “Let me go check on the baby,” she said.
“Already did. He’s sleeping like a rock.”
She moved to the bed and sat. “You were saying something about the TV?”
“Yeah, the CyberNation tear-jerker commercial.”
“Which one? The old lady abandoned in the nursing home by her children? Or the young guy talking to his wife’s tombstone?”
“The high school graduation.”
“Oh, that one.”
“These guys put Coca-Cola, the phone and insurance companies into the minor leagues. Most manipulative thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Wait until you see the thirteen-year-old girl orphan on the street and the cop who comes to help her,” she said. “Equal parts of pathos and pedophilia.”
He shook his head. “Don’t they have any shame?”
“Not if they sell the product.”
He shook his head again.
“So, have you thought any more about what we talked about? Guru?”
“You really want to do this?”
She nodded. “Yes. She’s as much my grandma as anybody. Every day from the time I was thirteen until I went off to college, I spent two hours with her. Sometimes at her house, sometimes on the steps out front, sometimes in the park. Rain or shine, whatever else was going on, she was there for me. She gave me a skill that’s the core of who I am. Whatever else happened to me, I was always sure I could take care of myself if somebody wanted to put his hands on me and I didn’t want him to. It was the basis of making my way in the world. If all else failed, I could kick somebody’s butt. I didn’t have to be afraid.”
He smiled at her.
“She’s useful here. Little Alex loves her. I love her. And I owe her. For so much. She’s eighty-five, she won’t be around much longer.”
He chuckled. “She’ll probably outlive us all.”
“Alex—”
“Okay. If you really want this, then, yeah, okay. Ask her.”
“You sure?”
“What I’m sure of is that I want you to be happy. Whatever it is. If that means having a coffee-swilling deadly old nanny living in the guest bedroom, what the hell.”
He didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile any bigger. She hugged him, and once again he marveled at how good that made him feel, to make her smile.
What was it Jay’s girl Saji had said recently? Making somebody smile lightens your karmic burden? Well, if that was the case, he intended to be karmically clear on Toni’s grins alone, if he could.
CyberNation Train Kassel, Germany
The train was stopped, some kind of mechanical problem, just outside Kassel, still three hundred or so kilometers southwest of Berlin. Some of the team had taken the opportunity to get off and stretch their legs, but Keller saw no reason to do so. He had never been a fan of outside. When you could go anywhere in time or space in VR, could control the weather, the smells, the action, why would you bother tromping around in the cold and dark next to a train track in the middle of nowhere? Where you had no control at all, save that of your own body’s ability to come or go? That’s what the Luddites didn’t understand, that virtual reality was so much better than the real world because you could make it do exactly what you wanted it to do. No wild cards, no chance that you would be caught in an unexpected snowstorm, or bitten by a mosquito chock full of malaria. In VR, life was what you wanted it to be.
This was the real reason that CyberNation would succeed, more than anything. As VR became more and more like RW, the ability to have anything you wanted, to see, hear, taste, touch, smell, and feel it exactly as you wished it to be, that was heaven. Give the people what they want. Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. That was always how it had been, and that was how it was going to continue to be.
There were some things you still had to do. Serious VR players, really serious ones, could hook up IVs and catheters so they could stay jacked in for days, not having to eat or pee. Keller had done that a few times, been in VR for forty, fifty hours, even sleeping on-line, being fed dreams by programs that knew how to input them. Usually, however, he had to interface with the real world often enough so he couldn’t do that. Just like now, he had to go pee. It was a bother, but there was no help for it without a Foley running through your dick into your bladder.
He went to the toilet, which on this old-style car was a pretty big place—five stalls, five urinals, a tile floor, mirrors, sinks, the whole enchilada. Normally, they closed the toilets when the train was in the station, because when you flushed the toilet, a hole opened in the bottom and it fell right out onto the tracks. There were laws against that now in a lot of places, but people who ran private trains didn’t pay attention to them. Who was going to follow a train across the country looking to see if it was dropping turds and piss onto the tracks out in the middle of nowhere?
He stood in front of the urinal for what seemed like a long time, emptying his bladder, zipped up, and started to wash his hands.
“Hello, Jackson” came a voice from behind him.
Keller froze, as if he had seen Medusa and turned to stone.
Smiling behind him, reflected in the mirror, was Roberto Santos.
Keller forgot how to breathe. He managed to manufacture a grin that felt like a rictus. “Roberto. Wh-what are you doing here? Something wr-wrong?”
Santos moved to the door. Locked it.
Keller’s heart turned to a block of dry ice. His mouth went dry.
“Nothing wrong, Jackson. Just balancing things out.”
“Wh-Wh-Whuh—?”
“You touched my woman. You knew she was mine, and you went with her. Missy is fine, she is hot. I know it was her idea, making the two-backed beast, I know how she is. Woman’s got tricks that would make a plaster saint hard. I know turning her down is not easy. But she was mine. She still is, until I say otherwise.”
“Listen, Santos, it was a mistake, a mistake, I’m sorry, I really am, I’m sorry, what can I do to make it up to you?”
Santos smiled. “Don’t worry so much, Jackson. I’m not gonna kill you. It won’t even show. But you got a debt; it has to be paid.”
“Santos, don’t! You don’t want to do this! Jasmine will fire you!”
“No, she won’t. Because you won’t tell her.”
“I will! I will!”
“No,” he said, “you won’t. And you know why? Because if she fires me, I will come back and kill you. But only after a long, long time of you wishing you were dead. You understand?”
Keller’s fear gripped him so hard he started to shake.
Santos moved—so fast! and hit him, just under his sternum.
He . . . couldn’t . . . get . . . any . . . air—!
Santos smiled. A man enjoying himself.
As Keller tried to get his wind back, Santos hit him again.
It hurt so bad—!
The rental car was cold when Santos started it, and it took the heater a while to warm things up. He hated the cold. Even in a jacket, with gloves and a hat, he felt the chill trying to get to him. Yes, they had winter at home, but it was the kind of winter where you could walk around in a T-shirt and shorts. In June, when it was the coldest, it dropped to maybe sixty, sixty-five most nights. Mean temperature year round was seventy-something. It got hot sometimes—now, in the summer, you could work up a sweat; it actually got cold sometimes, but rarely. Those were not the normal things. In Rio, the temperature was almost always perfect. It was God’s country, and men who lived there were fortunate above other men.
Here and now, there was ice in the ponds and lakes, and patches of snow in the shadows, with more to come. How could people live in such places?
Well. They were Germans, weren’t they? And all Germans were at least slightly mad.
The plane he was going to catch was at a private airport about thirty miles away. From there, he would fly to a big airport in Berlin, and from there, back to the U.S. He was supposedly making sure that preparations for the big attack were in order, and in a way, he was. He had already talked to people he needed to talk to, and he would see others. Missy wasn’t expecting him back for a couple of days.
Putting fear into Keller was part of the preparations as far as he was concerned.
He smiled at the memory of Keller, lying curled like a newborn on the floor in the train’s washroom, a pool of yellow vomit next to him. He hadn’t really hurt the man, nothing permanent. Never hit him in the face. He would be sore tomorrow, belly, ribs, back, thighs, and he would bruise some, but nothing that would show when he was dressed. He was a flower-picker, Jackson was, his ping-pongs the size of BBs, more girl than man. It hadn’t been particularly satisfying to beat him, like slapping a child. He had offered no resistance, but it had to be that way. There were things that a man had to do if he was going to remain a man and not turn into an old woman.
He hadn’t decided yet how he was going to punish Missy, but he was smart enough to know he needed to wait until the attack was finished. There would be a bonus for successful completion, a big bonus, enough so he could walk away if he really wanted to do that. At the very least, he had to wait until that money was converted into gold and on its way home. It would not be quite as much as he wanted, but it would do. A man like him could always find more work if he had to find it.
The heater had finally begun to unfog the windows and offer enough warmth so he didn’t have to tense against the cold. Better. Not good, but better.
Keller would say nothing to Missy. If he knew anything, Santos knew when a man would stand and fight, and Keller was not such a man. Missy was more dangerous. She cou
ld put a knife between your ribs if you pissed her off bad enough and closed your eyes at the wrong time. That was part of what he liked about her. She was soft where it counted, she could wring a man dry of his essential juices, but she was also hard in her mind. He would punish her, he had to, but it must be in such a way that she could not revenge herself upon him.
He might even have to kill her. A shame, but sometimes, that’s what you had to do. People died every day. That was how life was: You came into the world, you lived your time, you left. All that mattered in between the coming and the going was how you spent your time. And for Santos, that and O-Jôgo—The Game.
All else was no more than a shrug.
28
Washington, D.C.
The lobbyist’s name was Corinna Skye. She was a drop-dead gorgeous natural blonde who looked five years younger than her thirty-five years. She was tall, slim, busty, and was a six-handicap golfer. She wore a charcoal-gray power suit, the skirt cut just short enough to show she had great legs without being titillating, a white silk blouse, and a dark red scarf. Her shoes were dark gray handmade Italian leather, one-inch heels, five hundred dollars a pair. She was smart, funny, and while many in political circles considered all lobbyists high-priced whores, she had never slept with a senator or congressman, though many of them had tried to make that happen. She had graduated first in her class at Columbia in political science, and was considered the best lobbyist on Internet issues in the country.
Chance sat across the table from Skye in the booth at Umberto’s. The salad had been perfect, and the handmade fresh pasta was outstanding—Chance had gotten the bay shrimp in heavy cream and would have to pay for it on the stairclimber later, but it had been worth it.
“With Wayne DeWitt’s unfortunate accident—a terrible tragedy—things’ll be easier on the senatorial side,” Skye said. She didn’t know that DeWitt’s injuries had been on Chance’s orders; she wasn’t in that loop.
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