Hardwired

by Walter Jon Williams

  His surroundings remind him of dependency, and that makes him sour. He’s mixing beer and mescal on the terrace of a bar in Colorado with the remnants of the party. It had filled the place the night before, but now it’s down to three.

  Today Cathy’s on a hike with Arnold, who’s become her friend. Cowboy’s staying in the bar, looking for the answers to some questions. He’s been asking them these last weeks, quietly, as the party roistered up and down the Rockies, and pretending that the replies don’t mean anything.

  Jimi Gutierrez is eighteen, an up-and-comer with a brand new set of sockets planted in his head, the operation so recent that there’s still a bit of shaved scalp surrounding each porcelain node. He grins through a mouthful of metal braces, watches the world through eyes fevered by speed. He’s fast, the word says, but maybe too unstable to be trusted with major cargoes.

  The other panzerboy is Chapel. He’s burly; running to fat, nearing thirty. He drinks quietly and doesn’t speak much. There’s a black box on his belt with a wire that’s studded into his head. A junkie of some kind, the electronic high something he can no longer do without. Buttonheads make Cowboy nervous; he doesn’t trust junkies in general and has a particular aversion to this kind– it’s a near desecration, he thinks, an abuse of the interface. The point is to use the interface to reach out, to touch the remotes from the inside, to access the electron world...to feel yourself moving at the speed of light! The run across the Line is the only addiction Cowboy needs, and it’s something real, not just an electronic stimulation of the lizard pleasure centers.

  But Cowboy tolerates Chapel. The man runs almost exclusively for Arkady–– these days he’s a free-lancer only by courtesy-and maybe he’s got a few of the answers Cowboy needs.

  “Convoy stuff,” Cowboy says. “Saturday, in Florida. No big deal, but the Dodger says they’re offering a lot.”

  “When I started, I was running convoys across Utah,” Jimi says. “Armored trucks, guys with no necks riding shotgun.” He shakes his head, then splashes mescal into a shot glass. “Wouldn’t do that now, though. Don’t need it.”

  Cowboy hands him the lime. “The panzer’s in the East, so why not?” he says. “I don’t like it to sit idle for too long. Or me. Rev us up for a day, collect some gold.”

  “Yeah. Forgot you were in a panzer. That’s okay. ” Jimi licks salt, drains the mescal, bites the lime. The blaze in his eyes grows brighter.

  “I started right on deltas, of course,” Cowboy says. “Didn’t have to run convoys. But you should have seen the distribution networks back then. Flying out of blind canyons on the Indian reservations. Convoys moving without lights across old bits of state highway. It wasn’t the competition that would hijack you back then, it was the refugees. Who could blame them? Half the time I’d be sitting on the runway apron past midnight, waiting for the delivery. And it wouldn’t show, the whole mission would have to be scrubbed.”

  “Yeah,” says Jimi, and starts off on a speed monologue, all rapping staccatos, about how the distribution is managed today. Cowboy smiles and raises a finger for another round of beers. He receives a quiet nod from the bartender, a Navajo and a refugee, still looking a bit bewildered behind the eyes. A man lacking a center, without a home, and no matter how many Ways are chanted by the Singers, it’s not going to change things. Half of his reservation is as barren as the moon, strip-mined since the war by the Orbitals, and the rest is poisoned by the tailings piles, paved over into parking lots, or dry as the Sahara since the miners sucked off the water to run their operations. Texans, Cowboy thinks, leaving their goddamn dust bowls and their fairy high-heel bootprints from here to fucking Nix Olympica.

  The drinks come and Cowboy sips his while listening to Jimi’s stories. Asking questions here and there, but just mostly letting the man talk. Talk of midnight errands to Orbital loading docks, security people paid to look the other way, betrayal, fouled schedules, police raids on thirdman warehouses arranged by the thirdmen themselves so the laws could look good, the cargo quietly bought back later. Foulups, missed connections, real raids, treachery between thirdmen. Two thirdmen running their panzerboys across the same piece of territory on the same night, neither aware of the other until the blaze of radars from above pinned them both.

  “Arkady, now,” Cowboy says, “he’s got his networks running smooth. Right, Chapel?”

  “That’s right,” Chapel says. “Never missed a connection, far as I know.” He’s more closemouthed than Jimi but he seems to know a lot. Cowboy is beginning to build a picture. Large quantities of merchandise, all Orbital quality, moving out of California to the East. Warehouses spotted across the West. Arkady’s floating entourage of helpers and assistants that turn up along the run, shepherding things along, just keeping an eye on everybody.

  There’s no way, Cowboy knows, that Arkady can be getting this kind of quantity without Orbital knowledge and cooperation. But who’s using whom? Is Arkady just finding sources the others don’t know, buying off the Orbitals’ surplus and distributing it, or are they letting him have it, making sure the underground is their own, that they control both its supply and demand? He tosses back another mescal and meditates for a bit, trying to stare down the unblinking eyes of the moon. Arkady’s supplies seem to keep coming regardless of spot-market prices, so it can’t be surplus. And that means he’s got a mortgage on his heart, his hands and feet tied to strings that are hanging down from ice-cold fingers above the gravity well.

  “It’s a business,” Chapel is saying. “Arkady just runs it like a business, is all.”

  Jimi turns his head away from Chapel, an expression of distaste on his face. Cowboy keeps his own face still. It didn’t start as a business, he and Jimi know, it started as a cause. Locating the weak links in the Orbital system of distribution, finding people who were weak or bribable, who could be brought over. Feeding the system what it needed, not just the endless machine pleasure that the Orbitals wanted to jack into your head or push into your corroding veins. There were the problems of any underground market–– territoriality, treachery, competition that strayed beyond the bounds of what was strictly friendly. There was, all along, the suspicion that the resistance might be an excuse on the part of some human lice to profit off a world’s misfortune. But even if the lice were there, the mail still got itself delivered.

  And it was a human mechanism, not a machine. Not the Orbitals, and not Arkady. Maybe a panzerboy association will help keep things human.

  Cowboy has no plans to approach the lizardbrain Chapel. He’s too much in the pockets of the thirdmen. And he’s not sure about Jimi yet. He thinks the boy’s too unstable to keep a secret for long. So he just listens, and pours more mescal. From here, on the balcony, he can see Cathy and Arnold wandering down the grassy slope in the shade of the aspens. Tonight’s party will begin soon.

  For now, Cowboy has another mescal and keeps trying to stare down the moon.

  Chapter Six

  Great, Sarah thinks. A buttonhead. She knows that only people who are serious about their addictions put sockets in their brains.

  It’s early morning. Cowboy is standing next to Warren and his panzer as the mechanic explains something, using his hands to diagram an auxiliary power unit that is sending spikes into the servos of an afterburner hydraulic system, explaining how Cowboy ought to avoid using it if possible. The panzer sits on broken blacktop cut by dunes, the asphalt already beginning to melt in the heat, here at the edge of the ocean just north of St. Petersburg where the gulf is turning an old housing development into a barrier reef, dark chimneys standing above the green swell to mark where fish swim among the old cinderblocks. Fore and aft are parked a pair of light trucks with warning flags–– they’ll be moving with the panzer till it reaches the interstate, as is required by law, ground-effects vehicles being able to travel very fast but having a problem with stopping.

  The offshore wind plucks at Sarah’s hair. She watches the conversation from a distance, standing by the Hetman’s a
rmored Packard with the unfamiliar weight of the Heckler & Koch on her hip.

  She’s chipped in with it now, having fired 200 rounds two days before. She’s been hardwired with the generic chips for this type of weapon, but now she’s got specific data in her ROM: when fired from the hip, the burst climbs this much, pulls so much to the right; when shoulder-fired, it behaves thus. Adding the suppressor does so. All worked into her reflexes. Ready, if the time should come.

  And more important, she’s survived. There’s a livid bruise on her ribs, but it was almost worth it, seeing the expression on the faces of a few of her acquaintances when she walked into the Plastic Girl for her appointment the first time she’d been there since her last meeting with Cunningham. She counted a number of double takes, a blunt stare or two, sudden whispered conversations in corners mixed with glances in her direction. People who knew her at least by sight, who’d heard of Cunningham’s offer. Who knew, perhaps, a couple of streetboys who’d met with misfortune, and whose piebald Mercury was found driven into the surf near Tarpon Springs. Who watched her in the bar mirror as she drank a rum and lime, her back to the wall– no sense in being foolish– standing with her hip cocked as if there was already a gun on it, and a smile on her face that said that she knew something they didn’t.

  The boy had come, and she’d gone off with him, trailing that smile, walking in the smooth, confident stride that Firebud had taught her, walking as if there was no such thing as fear. The boy’s name was Lane. He carried the gun in the trunk of his car– if he’d brought it into the bar with him, the Plastic Girl’s detectors would have screamed an alarm that would have had him in the crosshairs of a dozen automated systems. Lane opened the rear door for her and seemed pleased when she’d asked to ride up front.

  He never made his move. He’d driven south to an old farm by the Little Manatee and brought the gun out of the trunk and showed her how to strip and load it, then stood by while she chipped in. Never knowing that she had figured he was wired himself, and probably with weapons, like the Weasel, that she couldn’t see. Not knowing how ready she was, if he was false even for an instant, to fling Weasel into his face and claw for the right to remain standing, for that particular instant, on that particular patch of terran mud.

  She had survived another slice of time, another Moment. She bought a bottle of rum to celebrate, and drank half of it in her hiding place–– not in Tampa’s Venice but across the bay in St. Petersburg, in a stately old office building with green deco bronze on the windows and a marble lobby scored by the spring tide. High above the city, where she could see the sun coming up over Tampa and watch it shine like spun gold on the arches that cross the bay.

  Sarah has reason to be pleased. The Hetman’s advance payment is in the hospital’s account, and Daud will get a left leg tomorrow morning. Her final payment, on completion of her task, will pay for the other leg.

  The surf hisses across the crumbling concrete beach. Another armored car appears, Andrei’s. The Hetman opens his door and waits.

  Andrei isn’t fond of cryo max fashion, and instead dresses conservatively in denim trousers, boots, and a blue satin vest over his T-shirt. He and Michael meet, embrace, talk apart for a while, speaking in Russian. Michael insistent, Andrei reassuring. Sarah catches a word here and there. Their drivers and associates–– bodyguards, mainly–– watch from their vehicles. The Hetman is traveling in three-car convoys there days, and he’s holding his neck stiffly, a result of the armored vest under his baggy blouse. Trying to be ready for whatever it is that he smells on the wind.

  A five-ton truck, with its own escort, appears at the verge of the trees, lumbers down to the sand. The Hetman returns to the air conditioning of his Packard. The conversation between Cowboy and Warren ends, and they shake hands. Warren moves to his own car and drives off. The truck drops its loading gate and Cowboy begins supervising the transfer of the cargo. The Hetman, a figure of shadow behind his reflective armored glass, gives a wave, or a blessing, and then his car and escort pull out. Sarah stands alone, feeling the asphalt ooze beneath her boots.

  She watches, trying to see what is important. Powerful people, she knows, have their own rituals, their own ways of doing things. A different stance, a different style. Firebud had shown her that, drilling into her the difference between the way a dirtgirl moves and the way a jock glides through her space.

  The difference intrigues Sarah. She knows there are hierarchies building here on this corroded old thoroughfare, that power is being exchanged and validated. But she doesn’t know what is important and what is not. Warren and the buttonhead shake hands, while Andrei and Michael give each other the abrazo. Does the embrace confer greater respect, or is the more elaborate ritual necessary in the more shadowy world of the thirdmen, where friendships exist as convenience dictates and alliances can crumble like Venice on a high tide, where more effort is necessary to convey the sincerity of one’s allegiance? Or perhaps it’s just a Russian thing. She doesn’t know.

  The hydraulics of the panzer’s cargo bay hiss as the gate closes. The buttonhead is staring out to sea, watching America crumbling into the Gulf. Sarah walks forward.

  “My name is Sarah,” she says.

  Pupils like pinpricks turn to her. “Flattest damn country I ever saw.” Sunlight gleams from the silver that decorates his head sockets. He frowns.

  “Are we moving?” Sarah asks.

  “It’s time, I guess,” he says. “I’m Cowboy.”

  “I know.”

  Cowboy looks at her without any particular friendship. This dirtgirl’s only an inch or so shorter than his six feet four inches, and she walks with a kind of arrogant strut that calls more attention than is strictly necessary to the gun she’s wearing. Despite the mirrorshades, her face has a kind of clarity to it that he likes, a single-minded purposefulness like an old cutthroat razor that has been whetted half away but is still sharp enough to slice edelweiss; but though she probably came by those scars honestly enough, he doesn’t like the way she uses them as part of an attitude, as if every glance was a challenge and every scar a dare. But still there’s no reason to dislike her, so he concludes that things will be all right if she doesn’t keep trying to prove things to herself all the rest of the day.

  “This way,” he says, and climbs the frontal slope of the panzer.

  He doesn’t turn and offer a hand as she climbs the sunbaked armor, and with Sarah that’s a point in Cowboy’s favor. The silken fingers of claustrophobia touch her nerves as she sees the interior, the passenger and control spaces crammed between the two engines, slabs of Chobham Seven armor, hydraulic and fuel lines. Rows of green and red lights glisten like a faraway Christmas. The place smells of stale air, hydraulic fluid, male humanity. There is, as it turns out, no passenger seat, only a narrow cot with straps that are intended to secure the passenger during high-g turns.

  In a scabbard near the hatch is a carbine, one of the light alloy ones, all metal and plastic, that look like they started out as golf clubs. “There’s a headset in there for you,” Cowboy says. “So you can listen to the radio or whatever.” He points at a cabinet door. “Chemical toilet,” he says. “Not what you’re used to.”

  “Thanks.” What she’s used to is an old scrub bucket in a marble ruin in St. Petersburg, but she doesn’t say it. She takes off the gun and rolls into the bunk, putting the Heckler & Koch in a far corner and raising the netting. She wonders what Cowboy has in mind for after the delivery, if he intends they should share the bunk. If that’s what he means to do, he has a surprise in store.

  The panzer, she decides, is a place only a junkie could love. A cozy cybernetic womb of masculine scent, soft blinking lights, the studs that feed one’s addiction. Whatever Cowboy’s is, she doesn’t want to know. Porn mainlined to the forebrain, electric orgasms courtesy of induction, screaming synthetic highs circuited to the mind, technicolor power fantasies jabbed right into one’s primal need. Sarah looks at the headset with sudden distrust. It might be tuned to C
owboy’s channel, and if so, she isn’t interested.

  Cowboy strips unself-consciously and attaches the electrodes and a rubber urine collector. Sarah thinks of Daud, his insensate and lacerated flesh, no more human than an oozing, fresh-killed slab of pork. She tries to shrug deeper into her alcove. Pain chooses this moment to crawl over her ribs. She closes her eyes and puts her head on a naked pillow.

  Pumps begin throbbing, hydraulic links hissing. There is the whine of a starter and the shriek of an engine. A lurch as the panzer rises on its cushion, a flutter in her stomach as it wheels and begins to move toward the highway. Sarah shifts in the bunk and the pain in her side fades. Weariness rises like a mist and she feels the tension drain out of her. She is cushioned in someone else’s armored fantasy, being carried to someone else’s destination. Her own armor, for the moment anyway, is superfluous.

  The sound of the engine seems more and more distant. Sarah feels sleep beginning to ooze into her mind. It is, she realizes, someone else’s job to get her through this next Moment. She decides to go to sleep and let him get on with his work.

  Cowboy’s deep in the face, paying no attention to Sarah once he’s shown her the fixtures. Keeping watch on the columns of green, the video views of the exterior of the panzer. He keeps the escort aware of his intentions, listens to their chatter. Balances the panzer while it runs on only one engine, saving fuel as long as its speed is harnessed to that of the escort.

  Once onto the interstate he says adios to the escort and starts the second engine. The surface is pitted and holed, the concrete of some bridges crumbled down to the rebar. Anything with wheels hugs the rightward lane and moves slowly, cursing the chuckholes. The ground-effect panzer rides smoothly on its air cushion, crossing the outer lanes of traffic to the two inner lanes reserved for vehicles moving over a hundred miles per hour.