Hardwired

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Dodger,” he says. “Listen. It’s not over.” He can see the heads turning toward him. “I want to make a run.”

  Already the steel guitar is bending notes in his mind.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Sarah lies naked and restless on her pallet in a section of the bubble tent sealed off by an opaque hanging of Jovian plastic. Her arms and neck are red with sunburn from the hours she’s spent in the sun assembling homemade missiles, the sunblock she’d brought from Florida having proved to be less than useful in the Nevada desert. Cooled air whistles through the duct but does not ease her discomfort. She reaches for her beer and presses the cold bottle to her forehead, feeling the chill in welcome contrast to her burning skin.

  “Where are you going to get pilots, C’boy?“ The question had been Warren’s. “We got five deltas, six if we don’t keep one in reserve for spare parts, but we only got three pilots.” Warren’s head shook slowly from side to side. “Most of the pilots died crossing the Line. And a lot of the survivors are hiding from both sides in this war.“

  Then Sarah remembered the pictures on the wall of the Blue Silk, the few that weren’t swathed in mourning ribbons. She blurted out what she knew, and a call to Tampa was made. Maurice was coming west, with 30,000 in gold guaranteed. Attempts had been made, one successful, to contact a pair of old cutterjocks Maurice had recommended. Raw material for missiles were brought in by chopper. Fuel and explosive were being cooked up day and night under a waving camouflage net.

  “It’s me.“ Cowboy’s voice. The velcro room seal rips open with the sound of torn linen. He steps in, sealing the door behind him. Sweat pours down his face. He’s in a pair of worn coveralls, his forehead and hands bright with sunburn.

  “Hi.” He kneels by her side and bends to kiss her nipple. Sarah hands him her beer. He sits, crosses his legs, drinks. “I’ve got to ferry in a delta from Colorado tonight,“ he says. “The chopper’s taking me out.“

  “When are you going to get some sleep?“

  Cowboy wipes sweat from his forehead with his palm, then wipes the palm on his thigh. “On the chopper flight,“ he says. “I’m not piloting.“

  “Shit, Cowboy.“ She scowls and props herself up on her elbows. “You need rest. Take off your clothes and come to bed.“

  He grins. “I don’t know just how restful that’s going to be.“

  She moves over to make room on the pallet, pats the place beside her. Her voice is deliberate. “Very. Restful.”

  Cowboy puts down the beer and reaches for the zip on his coveralls, and at that moment he stops, his motion frozen. Sarah turns her head and listens, hearing the distant baritone throb of the helicopter growing as it moves in from the north. “Fuck,“ Sarah mutters. She can see the fever rising again in Cowboy’s eyes, the brightness she’d seen two days before when he’d stalked from his delta...the love of speed and metal, the obsession with the crystal interface and the electronic extensions of his mind hurtling at the speed of light...In these moods Cowboy seems surrounded, like an atomic nucleus, by a shroud of electrons, impenetrable, free from earthly attachments, immune... He uncoils his long legs and stands up.

  “Sorry,“ he says, but he’s already gone, his mind lost in some internal space, insulated behind his plastic eyes. He blows a kiss in her direction and leaves. Sarah reaches for her beer, picks it up, puts it down again. She’s lost her thirst. She rolls on her stomach, feeling the fitful ventilator breeze begin to cool the sweat on her back.

  Later in the day she’s on communications duty. There isn’t any heavy traffic, and messages are being kept to a minimum to lessen the chance of Tempel detecting the net. She sits in the big, still room, the foam pads of her headset chafing her sunburned forehead. She hates the military atmosphere here, the guards, the duties assigned from above, all the emphasis on security and discipline that cramps her dirtgirl style. Across the room, a communications tech is doing something with cables, insulating tapes, male/female connectors. The cooling system in here doesn’t seem any more efficient than in her own room. She taps the keys in frustration, a line of gibberish, then wipes it.

  If she’d worked it right, Sarah knows, she wouldn’t be here, sitting in an inflated target in the middle of a former nuclear testing range, helping a collection of range rats take on the Orbitals in a few homemade jets. She could be looking down on Nevada from a weightless home out of the well, living there in exemplary alloy immunity with Daud, the both of them cleansed of the mud that had clung to them all their lives. If she had just managed Andre better, if she had not let sentiment contaminate her actions...if she had kept her desire pure and titanium-hard, she would be safe now, wrapped in the perfect insulation of vacuum.

  The cooling unit whispers of futures that will never be. She knows the one that is most likely: charred bodies wrapped in melted metal, and her own death, a figure with uncertain features but equipped with Andre’s metal irises and Cunningham’s whispering voice, coming with the supersonic suddenness of a bullet. This whole ridiculous homemade venture exploding like shrapnel, each survivor seeking cover, turning on one another in their search for safety.

  The tech bangs on something with the butt end of a screwdriver. Sarah grins and relaxes in her chair, pushing the headset back, wiping her forehead. She closes her eyes and rolls her head, feeling her neck bones crackle.

  Foolish as it sounds, there is no place she would rather be than here.

  An incoming call tickles her mind as a signal begins bleeping on her screen. She adjusts the headset over her temples and sends a mental signal. Her nerves cringe in response to the cold pulse of distant crystal madness.

  “This is Roon. My people found the time and date of the shipment.“

  Sarah flips on the recorder. “Ready to receive,“ she says into the mic; no point in using the headset for chat.

  “Is that you, Sarah?“ The forced intimacy of the words whispering in her head is worsened, made almost unendurable, by their tonelessness, her knowledge of the man sitting in his alloy castle, stroking the shining hair of one of his victims while he purrs into his chips. “I remember you very well. Smooth olive skin, and the scars you wore with such defiance. I would have taught you the futility of such defiance, Sarah. Taught you the joys of submission.“

  The frozen, remote voice turns her bones to ice. She’s going to have to edit this recording; she’s not going to let anyone else hear this. “I’m not Sarah,“ she says. “If you don’t have a message for me to pass on, clear this channel.“

  “Ah.“ Even through the tonelessness Sarah can sense Roon’s pleasure in her anger. “As you wish. The new shipment is coming down tomorrow on the Venture-class shuttle Argosy, arrival time calculated as eighteen thirty-two. The shuttle will be landing at Edwards, not Vandenberg. It will be escorted by six Hyperion-class frigates.“

  Sarah’s heart is crowding her chest. Tomorrow is much too soon. Cowboy’s pilots haven’t even flown together yet. And Edwards is the Orbital’s military and testing field, not their commercial port–– no facilities to land the frigates at Vandenberg, she figures. They’re big ships, capable of maneuvering in space and atmosphere both. But on the other hand, the change might be good–– Edwards is closer to the base in Nevada, and the shuttle will be within Cowboy’s range for a longer period.

  “Message received,“ Sarah says, and repeats it to make certain.

  “I’m sorry, Sarah, I truly am.“ The cryogenic voice sounds infuriatingly superior. “I know this is too soon for you to make adequate preparations. But your failure will only delay the historic relationship for a short while. The new order will evolve regardless. The pure inevitability of the data demands it.“

  Sarah snaps off the recorder. She tries to cool the anger in her voice. “We will proceed as planned,“ she says. “We will down the shuttle.“

  There is a fractional hesitation in Roon’s voice. “Understood,“ he says. And his presence fades from the network.

  Bastard, Sarah thinks. If we go d
own, if there’s nothing left, I’m going to pay you a visit and run Weasel right into your brain. Leave the planet a little cleaner when I’m done.

  Sarah pages the Dodger and calls him to the room. She uses her headset to edit Roon’s comments and has the new version ready when the Dodger walks in. She plays him the recording and watches the concern build in the older man’s eyes.

  He cuts a plug of tobacco for a long silent moment. “We can do ’er, maybe,“ he says. “But we’re still missing a pilot.“

  Sarah hunches over her screen. “I’ll find you one,“ she says. Maurice has told her about some guy who, last anyone heard, lived on Catalina. He’s moved and no one knows where. She digs through records, finds his address, calls his old neighbors. One of them mentions Santa Barbara, where she has to go through the same procedure. This time a neighbor mentions Carson City. Jackpot. The man’s almost next door.

  He turns out to be in need of thirty K in gold. The Flash Force arranges for helicopter delivery tonight.

  The Dodger beams at her and pats her on the shoulder. “Good, Sarah. We’ve got our team.“ He shifts his tobacco from cheek to cheek and looks for one of the cuspidors his people have brought with him: “Your Maurice is flying in tonight. I’ve got to get all the pilots together with him so they can get his lecture on Orbital tactics.“

  More military stuff. Sarah’s glad she won’t have to deal with it. She’s got another hour left on the monitors before she can break for dinner, and even then it will be a mass meal served in a special tent, too reminiscent of her childhood meals in DP camps for her to look forward to it with any appetite.

  The Dodger shuffles away. Sarah watches the white cursor blink and wishes she had something cold to drink. Then the cursor is racing across the screen with a piece of incoming data, and a new voice is tickling Sarah’s temples: “I want to talk to Sarah. Tell her it’s her brother.“

  Warmth touches her faintly. “It’s me, Daud.“

  “Sarah, who is that guy I was talking to?“

  She looks up at the tech who is still fiddling with the cables, wishes there was privacy here. “I don’t really know. One of the cutouts, I guess.“

  “Is his name really Randolph Scott?“ Daud’s voice sounds a little wrong. Like he’s tired, or maybe high. A warning whispers in Sarah’s veins.

  “I doubt it,” She lowers her voice and speaks carefully into the mic. “How are you? Where are you?”

  “I’m fine. Nick and I found a place. He’s got a little money put by.“

  Where did you get it? Is he paying for the endorphins that you’re putting in your veins? She wants to ask the questions but she knows what the answers will be, that she’ll never know the truth as long as she’s hiding in Nevada.

  “Have they been bothering you? Are they watching you?“

  “Not so I can tell.“ Then there’s a noise in the background, a domestic sound like someone closing a refrigerator door, and Sarah’s blood turns to fire.

  “Where are you calling from? Are you calling from the apartment?“

  “No.“ There’s a fractional hesitation before Daud’s answer that makes Sarah certain it’s a lie. She can see him standing by the phone, a cigarette in his hands, his eyes shifting nervously at the word.

  She leans forward into the monitor. Her voice is so urgent that the tech across the room turns his head to look at her. “Daud, tell me. I won’t be angry if you just tell me.“

  “No,“ Daud says. There’s a definite anger in his voice. “Why don’t you ever believe me? I just said no.“

  She knows him too well, and knows this, too, is a lie. “Daud, things have started happening here,“ she says quickly. “I can’t talk. I’ll call you when it’s safe.“

  Daud spits out his anger. “Fucking bitch! I told you–”

  “I love you.“ Tonelessly, her hands already slapping the stud that ends communication. She looks at the board, sees nothing out of the ordinary. She looks up at the tech. “Breach of security,“ she says. “Tell somebody. I’m sure someone was monitoring that call. “

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Sarah stands with Maurice on the desert floor, the breath hammered from her lungs by the pulsing heart rising from the earth. Cowboy’s delta hovers in the dark, a smooth blackness against the sky, its downward-directed jet raising an opaque cloud of dust that pours through the starry night. Sarah narrows her eyes against the tide of dirt and feels her neck and shoulder muscles tense, waiting for someone to fall from the sky…

  The schedule’s too tight, they tell her. With the intercept coming the next afternoon they can’t shift their base and still hope to make the mission. They don’t think, they tell her, that any program could have traced them through the multiple cutouts tied into the net. They’ll just have to increase security, fly in a few more people and defensive weapons, and hope that the Flash Force experts are right.

  The delta lands, its whine diminishing. The dust storm subsides. They’re three quarters of a mile from the command tent: the deltas are being dispersed to make it harder to find them. Sarah finds herself looking up at the diamond-flecked blackness above, the muscles still tense in her shoulders and neck, and then realizes she’s waiting for a rock. If Tempel has their location, there is no easier way to dispose of them.

  The ground crew rushes up with camouflage nets. The canopy lifts, and Cowboy stands in the cockpit, his black helmet reflecting the stars. Sarah walks up as Cowboy drops down the ladder to the radiant sand. She can hear Maurice following quietly.

  “Cowboy, Daud called and––”

  “I know. They told me while I was flying in. I took some extra evasive action just in case they had something looking for us.”

  He is weary, she can see that even in starlight. There is a red line around his nose and chin where the anesthetic mask scored the flesh. He pulls off his helmet and wipes sweat away. “Something’s got to be done about that brother of yours, Sarah.”

  She feels herself prickle. “He’s my problem.” Maybe they got to him, she thinks, maybe Nick has been sitting there all along, purring suggestions in to him. Maybe he just didn’t care any longer, didn’t want to exercise his new legs heading for another phone.

  “Your problem may have just blown this base. Your problem may get us killed.” He reaches out a gloved hand to touch the fading bruises on her cheek. Sarah turns her head away. “He’s responsible for this,” Cowboy says.

  “He’s not.” Crisply. “That was my mistake, not his.”

  “He let them ambush you. Whose mistake was that?”

  Sarah doesn’t answer, just shakes her head. She feels a sting behind her eyes, in her sinuses. Daud is faithless, she knows, but that doesn’t change anything within her. It doesn’t change her responsibility for the things in him that make him faithless, and it doesn’t change her own faithlessness, her attempted betrayal that put scars on her heart as well as her face.

  Instead, it was her goals she betrayed, her chance to live away from this... She feels a hole in her chest, a vacuum where her purpose has been torn free.

  Cowboy turns from her, holds out a hand to Maurice. “I’m glad you can be here,” he says. Maurice’s quiet, sad smile seems another face of the night. His eyes glitter like a pair of distant artificial moons. “I’m pleased to be given the chance.” He’s wearing his blue silk scarf tucked between his neck and the collar of his shirt, the faded badge of his old allegiance.

  “You’re the last to arrive. I have a briefing arranged. About the Hyperion frigates and the tactics they will probably use.”

  “Now? Let’s do it, then.”

  Sarah follows them during the long walk to the bubble tent. They converse in a jargon-ridden aeronautical slang that seems far more opaque than necessary. The language of their secret club, she thinks, the exclusive society of those who worship speed and mechanical violence. She avoids the briefing, meaningless to her anyway, and finds instead a sandwich and a cold lemonade, then goes to her little room, strips, and stretc
hes out on her pallet. The air tube whispers monotonously. She’s got another six hours before she’s on shift again, making missiles in the oven of the assembly trench.

  Her head on her pillow, staring at the gray crook of her own elbow, she gazes back over her last weeks and tries to find the point where her loyalties changed, where she surrendered her dream... Somewhere things shifted, away from herself and Daud, toward something more complex. Survival was a simple enough goal, survival for herself and her brother–– that and flight from the mud. The new loyalties are a lot more complicated than mere survival. Cowboy’s people, the panzerboys and pilots, are not, so far as she can tell, survivors. They’re not as flamboyant in their search for extinction as the Silver Apaches, but there’s something about their quest for the absolute that gives her pause...They chase oblivion with every ride, and they rank themselves on how far they can push into the dark eye sockets of a crumbling death’s head in the sky, push and still come back... They talk about Cowboy as if he is immortal, as though his life is magic, but she knows that if he keeps stretching that fragile envelope between himself and the darkness, someday it will snap, and Cowboy will spin alone into the night.

  Within a few hours all six deltas could be melted epoxide on the California desert, their pilots’ ultimate quest fulfilled, and what of Sarah’s new loyalties then? The little tent city would have lost its purpose, its center. With luck the Flash Force might give her a ride to the nearest town. Daud is weak and faithless, but she knows she can force him to accept life. She doesn’t think that’s possible with Cowboy.

  He doesn’t join her that night: the briefing runs late and in early morning there’s some kind of problem with one of the jet engines that needs every experienced hand. Sarah lies on her back and stares at the ceiling, wondering if the rock will come, if she will see its glow through the tent fabric before the shock wave hits.