Hardwired

by Walter Jon Williams

  The upper story of the farmhouse is riddled, a round every few inches. Whoever fired the rocket can’t have survived. Sarah slams a new clip into the machine pistol by feel, swaying across the hatch as the panzer begins to move. It’s moving right across the yard, the armored bow heading the Subaru. Sarah crouches as the man with the shotgun begins to turn, as the shotgun keeps firing kawham-kawham. Pellets rattle off the armor. The man begins to run.

  The panzer strikes the limo dead-on, pushing it ahead as if it were of no more weight than a bicycle. The man darts to one side, trying awkwardly to bring up the shotgun. He’s lost his hat and shades. Sarah can feel her chips urging her to stand in the hatch, to bring the machine pistol up in both hands and trigger it…

  The white man spins as he falls, and Sarah can see the flaring agony in his eyes at the exact moment of her own jarring leap of recognition, and she knows she’s met this particular man before, that she’s looked into those eyes in the rearview mirror, as this particular white man drove Cunningham’s car down the neon streets to her apartment. Cunningham’s big assistant.

  Then the panzer smashes the Subaru against the farmhouse and it crumples like a tin can, the panzer bounding off, heading for the ridge, its speed building. Cowboy’s voice is ringing in her mind. “Get down inside, Sarah, you’ve done all you can.” Sarah is still staring aft in shock, staring at the smoking, scattered tableau where Cunningham’s driver lies like a sack of meal.

  The turret gun begins to moan again, able to depress now that the panzer’s climbing the ridge, and the unarmored ground-effects truck is riddled, the fuel tanks erupting in washes of flame. No sign of the two men who drove it; they’re probably both chunks of shredded meat on the other side. Cunningham’s man, she thinks. And the rocket. Daud.

  The minigun is still firing as Sarah numbly climbs down the hatchway, trying to protect herself against the wild swings of the panzer. She dogs the hatch down over her head and dives for the bunk. Seven-millimeter casings roll jingling across the metal deck.

  “Time to hide, Sarah.” Cowboy’s voice comes both in her head and ears. “Time to find a deep hole and hide.”

  You can’t, she wants to say. You can’t hide from them.

  She pulls the headset off, closes her eyes, and tries to escape into blackness.

  Chapter Seven

  TAMPA’S TOTALS OVERNITE, AS OF 8 THIS MORNING: 22 FOUND DEAD WITHIN CITY LIMITS…

  LUCKY WINNERSCOLLECT AT ODDS OF 18 TO 1

  POLICE DENY CHARGES OF FIXING (RELATED STORY)

  The panzer waits for nightfall in a narrow fold of ground between the Blue Mountains and the Tuscaroras, having followed a shallow creek between green bluffs into a quiet swale studded with pine. Cowboy sips some orange-flavored electrolyte replacement and squats on a fragrant bed of pine needles. His mind is cool and clear, but tremors are running through his limbs, the aftereffects of too much adrenaline. Through the trees he can see a hawk flying against the sun, wings spread to catch the thermals.

  Lucky, he thinks. That the first rocket went for Andrei. That they assumed the panzer was unarmed except for Sarah in the hatch. Otherwise the first rocket would have been aimed right in his lap. Maybe it would have got through the armor, maybe not. His muscles tremble at the thought.

  “Those people were trying to kill us,” he says. “I figured if anybody’s story survived, it had better be ours.”

  Sarah looks out into a dappled meadow and frowns. Her hand is never far from the gun on her hip. “Too bad about those truck drivers, though. They were just hired help.”

  “Then they shouldn’t have tried to play with the likes of us,” Cowboy says. He can feel indignation prickling along his neck and shoulders at the idea of being ambushed by a collection of shabby players like that. He frowns at the blue-green Tuscaroras. “This’ll be all over the screamsheets in another few hours,” he says. “Those escorts Andrei hired for the panzer weren’t his people, right? Just some local escort service with a license from the police that’ll be revoked if they get into trouble. They’ll have seen the panzer go down that turn and then heard half the world blow up. No way they aren’t going to tell the local laws.”

  “I’ve got to talk to Michael the Hetman,” Sarah says. “This was a move against him, and it was by one of the Orbitals. ”

  Cowboy feels shock prickling the hairs on his arms. He looks up at her. “How do you know that?”

  “That white guy I unzipped,” Sarah says. She bares her teeth in unconscious anger. “He worked for the Orbitals. One of their...security units. For a man named Cunningham. Cunningham had to have set this up.” Cowboy stares at his silvered image in the mirrors over her eyes and wonders what he’s stepped into, how high this dirtgirl’s profile is. And how much he’s been soiled by whatever it is she’s mixed up with.

  Sarah’s voice turns soft. As if what she’s saying is something so personal she can only speak of it in whispers. “And they’ve used rockets before. Fired one at me.”

  And now Cowboy knows. He’s covered with Sarah’s mess, and the smartest thing he can do is say adios and climb back into the panzer, stud into the eye-face, and fly away and never look back. Whoever is firing those rockets wants this scar-faced dirtgirl and doesn’t care who gets splashed on the way to her. He represses an urge to look over his shoulder.

  “Which Orbital?” he asks. “How strong are they on the ground here?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me. ”

  “Wouldn’t tell you when?”

  She takes a breath and suddenly he can see the sadness in her, that in spite of the armor and gun and shades and swagger she’s very alone here, sitting in some dead-end Blue Mountain valley and trying to think of a next move. A street animal lost and blind, running on adrenaline and instinct and knowing there are footsteps right behind her, each one bringing the enemy closer.

  “When I worked for them,” she says. And she tells him a story about how she was trained for a job and did it for them, and afterward they decided she was a risk and fired a rocket into her apartment and hit her brother. Who, according to her, had nothing to do with the original deal. Cowboy can tell there’s a lot more to it than that, and tries to decide whether he ought to press her on it. There might be a detail that could save them both. But he knows she doesn’t trust him yet, and decides to wait. He’s out of it anyway, once he can get the panzer clear.

  “So I’ve got to talk to the Hetman,” she says. “Let him know what’s happened so that he can make peace with those people.” Cowboy watches her manner grow distant. She licks her lips. “Too bad,” she says, “that part of his price for peace will probably be turning me over to them.”

  Cowboy shakes his head. “Don’t jump to those kind of conclusions so early,” he says. “He might not get his peace on any terms, and then you and Michael are in the same boat.” He thinks for a moment, not liking this business of trying to see into a war where he doesn’t know any of the players. His profile is suddenly higher than it’s ever been, and he has no idea when or from where the next blow might fall. He finishes his drink and stands, crumpling the paper cup in his hand.

  “Still,” he says, “I’d advise you not to tell him where you are. We’ve got his computer hearts and he’ll want them back. He’ll have to keep you alive until he can locate his shipment.” He feels reluctant amusement bubbling along his spine. “In the meantime I’ll call the Dodger–– this friend of mine–– and he’ll send some transport to get us out. Or maybe even set up a run across the Line to Colorado with you as a passenger.” He laughs. “Then the Hetman may have to pay me to run his crystal back.”

  Sarah looks at him without expression. “You just can’t run across tonight?”

  Cowboy shakes his head. “I can’t make a legal run, because the laws will be looking. And I can’t make a contraband run, because I don’t have enough fuel, and also because that minigun’s the only weapon I’ve got and I used up most of the ammunition. So we’ll have t
o get some people working for us. Probably the best thing to do is hide the panzer here and arrange to pick it up later.”

  He stops and shades his eyes and looks at the sun. “Won’t be dark enough for another three hours,” he says. “Best to spend our time resting. We won’t get much sleep tonight.”

  Sarah shakes her head and takes a deep breath. “I doubt I could sleep if I tried,” she says.

  He walks toward the panzer. “Up to you,” he says, and climbs the frontal slope of armor. He dumps the crumpled paper cup in the trash and lowers himself into his contoured seat. He jacks a stud into his forehead and scans the channels, hoping to catch a news broadcast. When he does, it’s a local video screamsheet, and it’s his own face that’s rotating in the holographic presentation, a photograph he doesn’t even remember being taken that’s been enhanced to 3-D.

  Wanted for questioning, the broadcast says. Statewide alert. Aerial patrols.

  And Cowboy realizes that it isn’t Sarah these people are looking for.

  They want him.

  NEW VIRAL HUNTINGTON’S CASES REACH 100,000 IN U.S.

  EPIDEMIC CONTINUES TO GROW

  The panzer sits in a midnight creek just east of the main rise of the Allegheny range.

  Cowboy and Sarah have walked two kilometers into town and the only public phone they’ve found has been disemboweled by what appears to have been a chainsaw. Now they’re watching a tavern and wondering if strangers would be noticed there.

  Cowboy can’t use the radio in his panzer because the police will be listening for him. He can’t use a squirt transmission from a directional microwave antenna because there’s no receiver set up within line of sight. And he can’t use a wireless telephone because they’re completely unsafe–– someone within range of the phone is bound to be listening, ready to dissect the signal for hints as to the owner’s identity and business. If you’re lucky, they’ll only steal your wireless account–– and if you’re unlucky, they’ll get your identity and the keys to your portfolio and bank account. The only way to beat them is to use the latest military-grade encryption, and only the Orbitals have that. And on top of that, the phone signal is going to be bounced off some satellite or other, a satellite owned by one or another of the Orbitals, and they’re are almost guaranteed to be listening.

  Using a cellular telephone is like standing naked in an open field with a megaphone, screaming Please kill me and take all my stuff.

  What Cowboy needs is a ground line. Not that ground lines can’t be monitored, but someone actually has to attach a tap to the line, or monitor traffic from a phone supplier control room, and that means a human being has to be involved somehow, not an automated system listening to wireless traffic.

  Cowboy’s been monitoring the newscasts and police broadcasts from the moment they turned interesting, and it seems that he’s the only one they’re looking for. There’s no mention of another person in the panzer, and that means that even if the same people who are after him want Sarah, it’s just an accident that she’s with him. His description and a description of the panzer have been delivered to the police across the country, and he’s so blazing hot that even though he’s wearing the dark wig the Dodger made him buy for his emergency pack, with a visored cap jammed down low on his forehead, he can feel the crosshairs pasted over his heart. Sarah had to talk him out of wearing a plastic belly gun, guaranteed to pass the detectors about 60 percent of the time, pointing out that there was a 40-percent chance of the gun’s getting him killed. But still he wishes he had the comforting solidity pressed against his stomach.

  Sarah, on the other hand, is invisible, and Cowboy wants her with him. The enemy will be looking for a lone man, and she lowers his profile. She also knows at least some of the enemy’s faces.

  Still, he figures the odds aren’t good. The Dodger’s got to get him away from this war in the East before he’s flown out in a body bag.

  The tavern is called Oliver’s and it’s breathing a late-night Saturday crowd in and out with each pulse of the litejack music that’s playing seven beats against sixteen from the inside. Cowboy and Sarah watch the place for a while as neon-colored holograms waver in the windows and the music begins to play eleven against four. The local cops pass by once without showing any interest in its clientele.

  “Let’s go before they come again,” Sarah says. Cowboy nods but somehow he doesn’t want to move. Sarah gives him a hard-alloy glance.

  “Think of me as your bodyguard,” she says. “It’s something I know how to do.”

  The tavern inhaled them. Fluorescent holograms burn Oliver’s ceiling and walls with cool, persistent fire. It is the only illumination except for a plain white spotlight trained on an expressionless man standing on the stage with five instruments plugged into his head, his monochrome shadow standing behind him like a male Medusa. He’s playing all the instruments at once, five against seven now. People ace dancing through his changes, even the zoned moving to his complex, compelling rhythms. “My heart is alloy,” he recites, “I live in boxes.” The voice is a breathless whisper that stands apart from the rest of the music, alone in ironic solitude.

  Cowboy likes hearing old favorites, but mainly he’s grateful for the fact that it’s dark.

  Sarah is shrugged down into her jacket and has turned off the challenging swagger, and Cowboy’s grateful for that, too. He and Sarah wander through the tavern without anyone seeming to pay any attention. There is a pay phone in a hallway leading to the toilet. Cowboy changes some bills at the bar into crystal money on a credit needle, and sticks the phone’s optional audio stud into his head. It has a thin mic that trails to the corner of his mouth for a speaker.

  It is the Dodger’s wife who answers. Jutz is a wiremuscled blond woman who runs the Dodger’s ranch while he’s away, and she knows her end of the business well. She sounds as if Cowboy’s got her out of bed.

  “Jutz,” he says, “is the Dodger there?”

  “Cowboy,” she says, “don’t tell me where you are. They’re probably monitoring this line.” Her timbre chills his nerves like liquid helium. There is a tremor in her voice, a well-controlled fear. Suddenly the little hallway seems very small.

  “What’s happened?” he asks.

  “Listen carefully.” Her words are carefully spaced and enunciated to avoid her having to repeat them. Fear overtones quaver at the hard edges of her consonants. Cowboy closes his eyes and presses his forehead to the comforting, solid reality of the metal phone.

  “The Dodger has been shot. They tried to kill him in his car but he managed to get away. He’s in the hospital now and I’ve got guards around him. Don’t try to visit him, and don’t call me again. Just find some safe place to hide and stay there until the situation clarifies.”

  The door to the toilet opens and Cowboy flashes a look over his shoulder, feeling his vulnerability. A man with bright glazed eyes steps out and gives Cowboy a friendly smile as he passes by. Cowboy hunches into himself and whispers into the mic. “Who’s doing this?”

  “Word is it’s Arkady. That he’s moving in on the other thirdmen and on the panzerboys. He wants you in particular.”

  A distorted dark-haired stranger, his reflection on the bright metal phone chassis, stares at Cowboy in cold-eyed anger. “He almost got me this afternoon,” Cowboy says. “He’s fighting his war here now. And he’s given my face and name to the laws.” Cowboy feels as if gravity is suspended, as if he were in a panzer soaring off the crest of a ridge that has turned into the lip of a black and bottomless canyon.

  A tone sounds on Cowboy’s aural crystal. He studs a credit needle into the phone and lets the machine take his money.

  “Hide, Cowboy,” Jutz says. “We don’t know who to trust, and we can’t set up a run to get you back West. Arkady’s dealt with everybody at one time or another, and we don’t know who are his men and who’s on our side. So everyone’s running for cover.”

  “Arkady’s got a bloc behind him.” Cowboy looks wildly to either side, af
raid that his whisper will be overheard. “Tell everyone that.”

  “Which one?” But suddenly there is a click and Jutz is gone. Cowboy knows who’s listening now. His lips pull back in a snarl.

  “Too late,” he says. “I’m gone.”

  He unjacks and steps out of the hallway. Sarah stands watching the dance floor. He gives her the credit needle. “Call the Hetman, but make it quick,” he says. “We’re compromised here. Your bloc has its thumb on communications. ” He stands outside the short hallway and watches. Plenty of time, he thinks. They probably traced the call, but the chance of their having any people sitting within a few minutes of this particular bar are nil, and they’ve got no liaison with the local cops. It’ll take a long time to get through to anyone in this burg. But still he feels rushes of fear speeding up his spine, and his eyes count the exits. If the laws come in, he’s got his escape routes planned.

  “I have what you need,” insinuates the voice from the singer, “I can keep the flames away.”

  Sarah is back in less than two minutes. “Couldn’t reach the Hetman,” she says. Cowboy is already moving toward the exit. “He’s in hiding somewhere. But I talked to one of his people.” She shakes her head. “It’s chaos. There’s a war going on, but the sides aren’t very clear. Michael and most of his people seem to be safe for the moment, because he put the word out to be careful. Andrei was the only...casualty, aside from snagboys and the like. ”

  Cowboy swings a fire door open and steps into an alley. His eyes adjust quickly to the light. There are rusting steel dumpsters complete with cats, and several people are sleeping uncovered in the August heat that radiates from the old concrete, glowing in Cowboy’s infrared perception. Some drunk, some looking, some just lost. Like any small-town alley.

  “They said to hide,” Sarah says. “They’ll pick up the computer hearts when things cool down in this part of the world.”