city blues 01 - dome city blues (41 page)

“Jackal, don’t do this.”

She ignores me.  Perhaps the drug is totally in control now.

The analog looms like a rectangular mountain until it eclipses the entire net.

I steel myself for impact when we slam into the side of it.

The sensation is abrupt and strange.  It reminds me of diving into a pool, an instantaneous and painless transition from one plane of existence to another.

The world is a dark scarlet blur seen through a candy apple lens set for soft focus.  Vaguely perceived shapes shift and slide in the blood-tinged darkness.  Vermilion walls of logarithms.  Dense ruddy strata of information.  Vertical helixes of glowing red coals smolder in towering fractal spirals.  Platelets of data swim through a medium of plasma in a carefully random crossfire of information exchange.

Another field of alphanumeric data appears in front of my face, digits streaming by in a blur of digital static.

“I’m not even trying to get near the core data,” Jackal says.  “I’m just skimming, trying not to attract attention.”

Suddenly, we seem to lurch, and the interior of the analog goes dark.  Plumes of data recede, and are sucked into the faceted sides of the AI’s data structure like a video of blossoming flowers run at high-speed in reverse.

“Oh shit,” Jackal says.  “We’re busted.”

“Get us out of here!”

“Yeah...  I think you’re right.”

We pull a high-gravity turn that would be impossible in the real world.

Rainbow-hued lightning bolts leap from the dark heart of the AI construct to strike at us.

Jackal zigs and zags at random intervals.

Searing bolts of energy sizzle by us at incredible speeds.

Chrome bubbles the size of my fist begin to appear in our wake.

The rainbow lightning strikes one of the chrome spheres.  Then another.  Jackal is dropping decoys, logic traps to attract the lightning.

The ruse works for a half-second, then the AI learns to ignore the spheres, and the lightning reaches out for us again.

Four white sparks, identical to our own matrix image, appear around us and shear off in divergent directions.

The lightning spreads its attention between the five of us.

I can see the outer wall of the construct, a crimson dividing line between life and death.

One by one, the rainbow lightning destroys the false images.  We become the sole focus of the AI’s attention again.

Jackal continues her random changes of course and altitude, but the wall is still too far away.  We aren’t going to make it.

“Stalin, jack out.  Now!”

Somewhere, in a seedy little room a million light years away, my hands snatch the induction rig off of my head.

The world snapped into existence, the net instantly relegated to the status of a silicon-generated fantasy.

Jackal’s hand leapt off the keyboard and reached for the power switch on the matrix generator.

At the instant her finger touched the switch, something went through her like a surge of electricity.  Her body stood up on its own, galvanized by some unseen force.  Her back arched sharply and made a sound like ten people cracking their knuckles at once.  Her hands flopped around like two fish tied to the ends of her wrists.  She fell to the carpet and lay still.

I scrambled to hit the switch that Jackal had been reaching toward.  The lights on the matrix generator winked out.

The odors of burned circuitry and singed flesh permeated the air.

A trickle of blood ran from Jackal’s left nostril and down her cheek to drip on the carpet.

I dropped to my knees and felt the side of her neck for a pulse.  It was weak and rapid.

Her eyes fluttered open, stared at the ceiling for a second, and then drifted closed again.

I looked around wildly.  I honestly didn’t know what to do.  I knew some first aid, but I was ninety percent certain that the damage was to Jackal’s brain.  What’s the first aid for that?

I grabbed the corner of the bed sheet and worked at staunching the stream of blood from her nose.  I was about to yell for help when I heard feet pounding down the hall toward my room.

The door swung open.  It was Surf.

“Jackal got zapped,” I said.  “Some kind of neural-feedback overload, I think.  You’ve got to help me get her to a doctor.”

Surf’s electroptic eyes zoomed in on me and he stood without speaking for a couple of seconds.

“Are you deaf?” I shouted.  “Go call an ambulance!”

Surf bent down and gently unplugged the ribbon cable from the back of Jackal’s head.  “Ambulances don’t come out here,” he said.  “Anyhow, they couldn’t help her.  She needs a special doctor.  A skull-mechanic.”

“Do you know where to find one?”

“Yeah.”

“Call him; tell him we’re on the way.  And call a taxi.  Have it meet us at that strip mall across the street.”

“We’ve got a car,” Surf said.  “I can drive her.  And I’ve already got somebody calling her skull-mechanic.”

“Then help me carry her,” I said.

Surf reached down and slid his hands under Jackal’s armpits.  His vid-camera eyes locked on me again.

“What in the hell are you staring at?”

“You act like you actually give a shit,” Surf said.  He lifted Jackal’s upper body.

I managed to lift her legs.  “What is that supposed to mean?”

We started shuffling toward the door.

“Of course I give a shit.  She was working for me when this happened.  That makes it my responsibility.”

Surf looked over his shoulder and maneuvered to clear the door jam as he backed out of the room.  “Don’t see that very often,” he said.

His mechanical voice managed to convey a tone of confusion.  “People who hire jackers don’t usually treat us like that.  When something goes wrong, they walk away and leave our bodies to rot where they fall.  Then they go hire somebody else until they get whatever it is they’re after.”

“I don’t care what you’re used to,” I said.  “That’s not how I do business.”

CHAPTER 27

The sign hovered above the boutique, an animated hologram of two heads, one male, the other female.  In the space of about ten seconds, both faces morphed from outright homeliness to vid-star perfection.

The words ‘Second Looks’ wrote themselves above the faces in fancy platinum script, then silently exploded into a million pinpoints of rainbow-colored light.  The ugly heads reappeared, ready to repeat their fast-forward evolution to beauty.

“This is the place,” Surf said.

He steered his car, a Focke-Wulf hover-sedan that was probably older than he was, around the corner and into a narrow alley behind the building.

As we turned the corner, Jackal’s head lolled forward.  A quiet mewling sound came from somewhere deep in her throat.

I gently guided her head back to my shoulder and pulled her slack body closer to mine.

Surf pulled up short of a service door in the rear of the surgical boutique.  The old car settled onto its apron with a groan.

“What are we doing here?” I asked.  “I thought you said she needed a skull-mechanic.”

“Lance
is
a skull-mechanic,” Surf said.

He climbed out of the car and knocked on the back door of the boutique.  “The cosmetic surgery stuff is a profitable side-line.”

The door was opened a lot more quickly than I expected, by a man in a lab coat.  He was ludicrously handsome, his features nearly perfect, with just enough rugged imperfection thrown in to keep him from looking feminine.  It was a calculated beauty, the sort of face you’d expect to find on someone who worked in a surgical boutique.

He looked up and down the alley before motioning us inside.  Surf helped me lift Jackal out of the back seat and carry her into the clinic.

The treatment room that the man led us to smelled like every hospital I’ve ever been in: the burnt-ozone scent of ultrasonic sterilizers reinforced by the loamy earth smell of active-enzyme disinfectants.

Two of the four banks of florescent lights in the ceiling were turned off.

“You can put her there,” the man in the lab coat said, pointing to a powered form-fitting couch that reminded me uncomfortably of a dentist’s chair.

We lowered Jackal’s limp body onto the couch.

The man pulled a vaguely pistol-shaped instrument from the pocket of his lab coat and leaned over Jackal’s body.  He parted her eyelids with thumb and forefinger and used the strange device to stare into one of her eyes, and then the other.  “Been playing rough again, Gwen?”

“She crossed it up with an AI,” Surf said.

“I figured as much,” the man said.

He looked up and pointed toward an equipment cart crammed full of electronic gear that would have looked at home on Tommy Mailo’s workbench.  “Wheel that over here, will you Mr. Stalin?”

I pushed the cart to within his reach.  “How do you know my name?”

He fished something out of his pants pocket and handed it to me.  It was a copy of the trid that Bobbie had carried.  “This is you, isn’t it?”

I felt myself stiffen.  “Yeah, it’s me.”

The man nodded.  “When someone is on the run, his picture gets circulated around the face clinics.  Usually, there’s a fat reward attached.  Makes it hard to change your face without anyone finding out.”

I unzipped the front of the bomber jacket as casually as I could.

“Whoa, Stalin,” Surf said.  “You won’t need the gun.  Lance is a friend.”

The man he’d referred to as Lance smiled a little and turned to fiddle with the equipment cart.  “He’s right.  I could use fifty thousand marks, but I’m not greedy enough to sell out a friend of Gwen’s.”

He unrolled a thin coil of cable and clipped a sensor to the tip of one of Jackal’s fingers.  He slid Jackal’s blue sweatshirt up far enough to paste a self-adhesive electrode to her sternum.  Two more electrodes went on either side of her forehead.

He punched a couple of keys on one of the scopes, and a pattern of blue lines appeared.  “Her sinus-rhythm is normal, but accelerated.  Skin galvanics are a little out of whack.  BP is up, but not out of control.”

He squinted.  “Has she been using amphetamines again?”

“Yes,” I said.  “Something she called Zoom.”

“That’s what I thought,” Lance said.  “Looks like she got lucky, not much organic damage.  She’s not going to flatline.”

He looked at Surf.  “I’ll take care of her from here.”

Surf nodded.  “Thanks, Doc.”  He looked at me.  “You need a ride somewhere?”

I shook my head.  “I think I’ll stick around.”

Lance frowned.  “Now that I know that Gwen’s not in serious danger, I need to finish up some other jobs first.  Mid-afternoon is my busiest time.  I’ve got a penis enlargement, a face job, and three breast-reductions on the books.”

“Three?” I asked.

Lance smiled wearily.  “I call it the Vid-Star of the Week Club.  Last week, it was Tori Caplin.  Everybody wanted a pug nose, perfect teeth, and boobs out to here.  Now, Tori’s out, and Britannia King is in, and it’s a long straight nose, pointed chin, and practically no breasts at all.”

He looked at his watch.  “I shouldn’t be very long.  For the cosmetic surgery part of this business, my job is mostly sales and bedside manner.  My AI will handle the real work, won’t you Tasha?”

“Of course, Doctor.”  The AI’s voice was feminine, carefully pitched to conjure images of a friendly but highly competent nurse.

“Great,” Lance said.  “I’ll go make the rounds, and do a little hand-holding.  When I get back, we’ll have a look at Gwen’s silicon.”

Surf walked to the door.  “Last chance, Stalin,” he said.

“No thanks,” I said.  “I’ll stick with Jackal for a while.”

Surf’s electroptic eyes stared at me for a few seconds, then he nodded once and walked out the door.

Lance left on Surf’s heels.

Despite Surf’s assurances, as soon as the door closed, my first instinct was to get the hell out of there.  It wasn’t Lance himself that was bothering me.  It was the situation, the entire slant that the case had taken.  My name and face were all over the net, all over the street.

Everywhere I went, I seemed to run into strangers who knew my name.  I couldn’t escape the feeling that every move that I had made, and every move that I
would
make, had all been anticipated and accounted for.  I was a puppet dancing and capering at the end of someone else’s string, and the thing that really scared me—more than the possibility of death itself—was the thought that I might die without ever having seen the face of the Puppeteer.