by Mark Budz
"Do you have any idea what causes the discrepancy?" he said.
LaComb blew on her coffee, then took a sip. "There's a theory that the shared processing environment that balances load also creates transients. Temporary overlaps where things get jumbled. Misinterpreted."
"But it hasn't been proven?"
"Or observed. When we try to look at one of these transient waveforms, it goes away. So we can't actually see what's going on. We can observe the effects but not the cause."
"Sounds like it's hiding from you," van Dijk said. The same way the damselfly seemed to be hiding from him.
_______
"The shards are authentic," Seoul Man told van Dijk when he went back for the jewelry. "The barium, lead, and iron isotope concentrations are consistent with Roman glass made in western Germany during the late fourth century."
"You're sure?"
"Positive. There's also a high concentration of strontium, pointing to the use of marine mollusk shells as carbonate."
"What about the silver?"
The antiquarian gave a dismissive wave as he handed van Dijk the plastine bag. "Cheap. Probably melted down and reused from another piece of jewelry."
Van Dijk took the evidence bag. He ran his fingers over the earrings, along the delicate chain of the necklace. Were they a gift? Had the young woman bought them herself? "Any idea where they came from?"
Seoul Man shook his head. "Any one of a thousand artisans or craft shops, all around the world."
"You're saying there's no way to run down the manufacturer? Or backtrack to whoever sold it?"
The antiquarian shrugged. "This stuff is available everywhere, on the street and online. It shows up for sale all the time."
Van Dijk nodded and put the bag into his jacket pocket. "What's the damage?"
Seoul Man's smile was a slice of Nirvana.
Fifteen minutes later van Dijk left the pawnshop, bearing not just the weight of the Roman glass jewelry but eight misshapen bullets.
As if he didn't already have enough death on his hands.
37
It was all about timing, Pelayo thought. Being in the right place at the right time. This was not the right time. Something was happening at the TV center. There was a lot of activity in the front lobby. People kept stepping in and out of the main elevators. Instead of two security guards, there were three. He'd been watching the convention center for a couple of hours now, scoping the lay of the land from the roof of a parking garage across the street. He thought he'd gotten a pretty good idea of how things worked, and was waiting for full-on night, when the helicopter appeared, materializing out of the bright solder of glare where the sea met the sky.
Pelayo shivered against the swirling chill of the fog. "Any idea what's going on?" he said to Atossa.
The mask bobbed unsteadily. Metallic gold tracery on the mask gleamed, suture bright. "Someone's arriving," she said over his earfeed. "Or else getting ready to leave."
Pelayo looked back to the hotel. He watched a group of people come out of the parking garage onto the street below. Tourists, off to visit the Boardwalk or the surf museum farther up the hill on West Cliff. There was a bronze statue of a surfer there, a gift shop that sold wet suits, boogie boards, and other surf memorabilia. He'd gone there with Atossa once, on a calm, clear afternoon, to watch the waves pummel the rocks below the seawall.
One of the tourists on the sidewalk below him tossed a green nanoFX wrapper into the gutter, where the leaf-textured cellophane was nudged along by the steady onshore breeze. Pelayo turned to the mask. "What do you think?"
"The wind is too strong, and it's coming from the wrong direction."
"Try. While they're busy."
All she had to do was get the mask close to the building. Once she was next to a wall, the building would block most of the wind and she could maneuver the mask to check the roof and look in windows.
"What if they catch me?" she said.
"An accident. You got blown off course."
"I'll still get reported."
"We don't have much time," Pelayo said.
The mask circled him a few times, then bumped him in the head and dove off the parking garage and up the street.
It was slow going. The mask dipped and rose like a kite, gaining ground, then losing it.
"I'm not going to make it," Atossa said.
"You're almost there."
Pelayo watched a second chopper drop out of the foggy sky above the bay. This one was larger. It droned loudly as it touched down on the roof, ponderous as a bumblebee. Below him a muscle-bound crunkhead hurried across the street, toward the parking garage. The 'skin the crunkhead was waring was cheap. It had the waxy, secondhand look of paraffin, glossy-smooth and stiff.
What if Marta really had decided to convert? What if he was off base about her, and this was what she really wanted? Maybe she had reached a crisis point, felt trapped, and this was the only door that led out.
Especially if she'd gotten pregnant.
If that was the case, he wasn't going to stand in her way. Her life was her business. Maybe this was what she needed right now. If so, Nguyet would just have to deal with it. It might be nice, not having to think about the pressures of everyday life. No more worries about the rent, food, or medical care. It might be restful, even liberating. He could see the allure.
He felt the pressure, too. It got to him after a while. It got to everyone. Each day, reality became a little less familiar... a little more uncertain. Maybe that was why so many people cast themselves in the past. It wasn't real, but it had been real. Which was more than anyone could say for the future.
"It's not going to happen," Atossa said. "I'm coming back."
Pelayo looked up. The mask was no closer to the building. She wasn't making any progress. Too many eddies and currents. She was coming at it from the wrong direction. Yet every time she tried a different angle, a fresh gust pushed her back or off to the side.
Pelayo swore under his breath. It would be dark soon. Lights had come on in the conference center windows. That would make it easy for Atossa to see in. All they had to do was get close.
At some point, the lights had winked on at the Boardwalk. Red, blue, yellow, and green sketched the outlines of rides. Here the merry-go-round, there the Big Dipper and the Sky Tram.
The mask tumbled out of a tendril of fog and settled to the weathered concrete at his feet. Pelayo picked it up and hurried to the stairs.
"Where are you going?" Atossa said.
"I have an idea."
She sighed. "I was afraid of that."
In the stairwell, Pelayo ran headlong into the crunkhead, who was taking the steps two at a time.
"Move yo ass, muhfucker, before I get off in yo shit."
Pelayo's jaw tensed. He tightened his grip on the mask and stared into the crunk's nicotine-yellow eyes.
"Don't," Tossa whispered. "It's not worth it."
"Yeah." Pelayo gritted his teeth. "I hear ya."
He stepped aside, knocking the crunk's hand away when the dude brought it up to shove him in the chest.
"Leave it," Tossa said. "Just let it go."
"Right." Pelayo put on the mask, jammed his hands into his pockets, and continued down to ground level. On the street, he turned down the hill to the Boardwalk, glancing back every couple of steps to check on the helicopters. They seemed to have settled, but for how long?
38
"What about Yukawa?" Zhenyu al-Fayoumi asked. A chill had crept into the air as the sun sank over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the west, into the roiling bank of fog spilling over into the Santa Clara Valley
The damselfish drifted closer, gliding past the side of his face, then pausing next to his ear.
Al-Fayoumi fought the urge to pull back. His shirt bunched under his arms, bound his neck. He ran a finger under the collar.
"His real name is Uri Titov," the damselfish said over al-Fayoumi's earfeed. "He's a skintech with Iosepa Biognost Tek."
"I
BT?" he said. "Not Siglint?"
The damselfish swam back into view and appraised him coolly. "You haven't been given all of the information you need to know about the project you're working on. If completed, a lot of innocent people will be harmed."
"Including you, I suppose."
The damselfish flapped fins and wings, arcing away in an ellipse. Sunlight flashed, rippling off its scales. "What makes you think I'm innocent? Or a person, for that matter?"
"If you're not a person, what are you?"
The damselfish paused in midair for a second, as if debating. "What do you think?"
Al-Fayoumi shut his eyes for a beat. "Sageware. A datician—or many daticians, perhaps—animating distributed nanoware." He opened his eyes.
"Perhaps." The fish's lower fins quivered. "If Yukawa—Titov—is successful, then all programmable matter will become the same matter. All 'skin will become the same 'skin. All philm the same philm."
"You're already quantum-entangled," al-Fayoumi said. That was how the image was acquired, how the idolon was xferred from one fly to another. "That's why you are afraid. If the entanglement spreads, you'll be part of it. You'll no longer be independent."
"No one will be free." The damselfish twitched, slipped sideways, steadied. "The net being cast is a wide one. Eventually, everyone will be caught in it."
Al-Fayoumi pursed his lips. "Is there more sageware out there like you?"
The damselfish rephilmed, and a girl's face replaced the head of the fish. The girl was young. She had long black lashes and loose-curled hair that fell in ringlets over her smooth brow.
Al-Fayoumi didn't recognize the philm. He had no clue who the girl was—if she was real or imagined.
"Her name is Lisette," the damselfish said. "She is ten years old and has no one to look after her."
Al-Fayoumi frowned. He shifted his gaze from the damsel to the pink scarf of sun trailing along the horizon. "What about her?"
"She needs your help."
His focus returned to the damsel. "What kind of help?"
"Protection. A safe place to stay."
"Protection from whom?"
"Titov." The damsel dropped suddenly, landing on his arm, close to the spot where it had emerged.
Al-Fayoumi flinched under the sharp myelin tickle of the nanomal. "Why are you telling me this? What do you expect me to do?"
"Save her." The damsel fit itself back into the shallow indentation. "And yourself."
39
As the evening deepened, so did Mateus's urgency.
He was running out of time. He could feel the seconds slipping through his tightly clenched fists. From his vantage point on the roof of the parking garage across the street from the TVs' hotel, he watched the copters prep for flight. It wouldn't be long now, he figured. An hour, maybe less.
He hadn't been able to determine where the copters were headed. If they left and Nadice was on one of them, his chances of finding her dropped to fuck-all. Once the copters were in flight, he had no way to track them. That meant the copters couldn't leave. It was as simple as that. He was working on getting more muscle, putting together an assault team, but that wouldn't happen for another few hours at the earliest.
He couldn't wait that long. He needed to act now. Uri had agreed. He'd even offered to rephilm Mateus's boyz for the job. "Just get her. Do whatever you need to do."
"It could get messy," Mateus warned. "It's already messy!" Uri snapped. "You fuck this up, it's going to get a helluva lot messier."
"You care if she's alive?" That always made things tougher. It was a complication he'd rather do without.
"Just make sure she's in one piece." Uri didn't bother to grin, a bad sign. "If she's not all there, if any part of her is missing, parts of you are gonna end up missing."
Despite the threat, Mateus felt calmer under the cover of darkness and the raucous glare of the Boardwalk. He had a plan. His boyz were on the way. Mateus checked their coords on his spex. They were less than a kilometer away. Another five minutes and they'd be here. Ten minutes after that, they'd be set up and in position. Ready to lock and load.
Taking the stairwell, Mateus made his way down to the street. By the time he got to the sidewalk, his boyz were making the turn onto West Cliff at the foot of the hill.
He watched the restored Benzy rumble up the slope, the hydrogen fuel cell pissing water out the tailpipe. 'Cept for that it was nicely candied up, with a wood-grain steering wheel, drop top, and blades.
The sedan pulled to a stop along the curb, between a couple of three-wheeled cars that were strictly for in-town use. They were pissant small, but they afforded a little cover from the casual passerby.
The passenger window slid down and Rafa glowered at him, indignant. "When we gonna get some treal philm for this new 'skin? This makes me feel starched up, like I'm the Lone Ranger, or sumthin'."
His boyz were totally reskinned, fresh out of the tank. Uri had philmed them as clean-cut private-security goons from Texasecure, out of Houston. They had the company's distinctive logo, a lone Texas star in the middle of a yellow rose, inscribed prominently on their foreheads. The starchiez uniforms looked authentic. Ditto the boots and ten-gallon hats. Not that it mattered. In the pandemonium, no one would ask questions. All people would see was the lone star rose on their foreheads and that would be enough to give his boyz free rein. There wouldn't be any of the trouble they'd run into at the homeless shelter, people asking questions and threatening to call the cops on them because of the way they'd gone into the place. This time, they were the cops.
"Dude's never satisfied," Tiago said from the driver's seat. "He scores ware that no one else has, and all he can do is complain."
"You got what I asked for?" Mateus said, getting down to business.
Rafa nodded. "In back."
Mateus looked back down the street, toward the Boardwalk and downtown. "You see any laws on the way in?"
Rafa shook his head. "No po pos to speak of. They all off lookin' for skull down at da Walk."
"You sure?" The last thing they needed was a police cruiser to swing by, checking shit out. Cops had access to all kinds of surveillance.
"We gonna do this, or what?" Tiago asked. His fingers pattered on the blond grain of the wheel, tapping out a staccato rhythm. He was a twitchy punk, throwed half the time. But he got it done when it counted, no ifs, ands, or buts.
"Bet," Mateus said. "Let's pop some trunk."
Rafa's grin widened. "I feel ya!"
Mateus went around to the back of the Benzy, waited until he heard the lock click, then opened the trunk. Zipped in three nylon boogie board bags were two Russian RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and six rounds of ordnance.
You couldn't beat old Soviet-era weapons. Over a hundred years old, and the shit still worked. It was simple, reliable, and readily available. Peasants in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq were still digging up weapons stockpiles, hidden by Al-Qaeda and other raghead terrorists.
The RPG-7 was shoulder-fired, recoilless, and muzzle reloadable. It had an effective range of five hundred meters against a fixed target and could punch through twenty-plus centimeters of conventional plate armor. Mateus had practiced with one a few years back, outside of H-Town, when he was running with Fo-Fo. He'd used it to light up the junk cars they'd used as targets.
There were also a couple of compressed gas flechette pistols that fired needles or darts. Nice and quiet. He jammed one into the waistband of his pants, dropped the other into a mesh side pocket, along with a MEMS grenade.
Rafa and Tiago joined him. "Let's get a move on," Mateus said. He didn't like it, being out in the open.
They hefted out the bags, alarmed the Benzy, and climbed the stairwell to the roof, where they moved into position.
There were four copters. Mateus double-checked the distance with a pair of night-vision binoculars. Two hundred and twenty meters. It would work, no problem. Him shouldering the RPGs while Rafa loaded them and Tiago guarded the stairwell. He
should be able to get off four clean shots in a minute or two.
"Got some activity," Rafa said. He had the grenades neatly lined up. In the open bags, they looked like cone-tipped spears or javelins.
Mateus took the night-vision binoculars and peered through them, the world going grainy and monochrome green. Several TVs stood next to the copters, gesturing. The fuselage doors to the copters were open; it looked as if they were going to start taking on passengers. Sure enough, a service entrance to the roof opened and a close-bunched group of women spilled out, looking confused and frightened. They huddled together as they were herded to the nearest chopper.
He looked for Nadice, but he was too far away to make out individual features or clothing.
One of the women broke away from the group and ran. A couple of TVs sprinted after her. There was a waist-high wall topped by a Kevlex fence around the building. No place for her to go, but that didn't stop her from trying.
Bitch had spunk, he had to give her that. Maybe she'd be grateful if he saved her ass. Maybe a lot of them would. He'd heard pregnant women were horny all of the time, something to do with—
"What we waitin' for?" Tiago said.
Mateus wet his lips and lowered the binoculars. "Nothing," he said. "Let's get to it."
40
"It's still pretty windy" Atossa said. "I don't know if I can make it."
"It will work," Pelayo said. At least now the breeze was blowing in the right direction.
They stood in line for the Sky Tram. The tram's cars—little blue, red, green, and yellow buckets suspended from tower-supported cables—followed the seawall, running between the Santa Cruz pier at one end and the Ferris wheel at the other.
"What if she's not there?" Atossa said.
Pelayo puffed out his cheeks. "Then I'll let it go."
"Even if she is, I might not see her. No matter how close I get."
"I know," Pelayo said. He massaged his face. It felt tight, vacuum-sealed by the mask. The microvilli that held it to his 'skin itched.
