Synners (4 page)

She dug the chip-player out of her bag and popped on the 'phones. It was some stone-home righteous new speed-thrash Keely had zapped to her, and the translation program she had used on it had left it intact. She hadn't had to remove the encrypted material from the carrier-data to go over it during the nights, looking like any other lad on a boring trip, shades on and plugged into her music. No one had been able to see that, under her shabby satin jacket, the chip-player had been connected to the former insulin pump in her pocket, and the unruly tangle of her hair had hidden how the cord on her sunglasses was plugged into the headphone wire.

She was almost tempted to connect the sunglasses and have another look at Keely's data, but there would be time enough for that later—if she didn't die of old age waiting to rent a commuter unit she probably wouldn't get anyway. She hated the commuter rentals—everybody did—but owning a real car in L.A. was a bureaucratic nightmare, requiring a lily-white record and a king's ransom for the umpty-ump different permits and licenses and taxes that had to be renewed every three months. L.A.'s millennial solution to the car overpopulation problem of the previous century; it was a bad joke. Instead of a mass transit system, there were rental units proliferating like rabbits on fast-forward, little boxes made of masking tape and spit, with shitty little computer navigators built into the dash. For all the good
that
did—GridLid usually ran anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour behind the traffic patterns, so that you were more likely to find yourself in the middle of a clog before the warning about it appeared on the nav screen.

Sam let out a tired breath. Back in L.A. less than an hour, and it was already undoing the smooth that two weeks in the Ozarks had given her. The solitude had been what her father called a tonic. Everything had just gotten so crazy, the whole hacker scene, an information frenzy. Then there'd been the doodah with her parents, speaking of her father, which hadn't helped her feel any less frantic. Old Gabe and Catherine had really done their part to make her crazy, Catherine more than Gabe
,
to be fair about it. Why she had expected anything else after all these years—call it temporary brain damage, she thought sourly. Just thinking about them now was giving her that fluttery I-gotta-get-outa-here-or-die-screaming churn in the pit of her stomach.

That had been reason enough to head for the hills, though the stuff she'd hacked out of Diversifications had been hot enough to serve as an excuse for an extended trip out of town. She kept telling herself that was the real reason, the only reason, she'd jumped out. It felt better than admitting that, in spite of everything, the fact that she could not have her mother's love and respect was still a knife in her heart.

She hadn't had to admit anything on the McNabb Nature Reserve; the McNabbs didn't scan IDs, and they didn't ask questions. Few amenities, small cost; each day she had trucked over to the common shower and bathroom area from her tent. If she wanted news, the McNabbs ran a small general store where she could reserve a tailored hardcopy of
The Daily You
printed out from the dataline, if she didn't mind having to reset her defaults each time. Occasionally there was a wait, since the McNabbs had only two printers, and if she didn't want to bother, Lorene McNabb would put hers aside and give it to her the next time she came in.

But as pleasant a change as it had been, she'd known it wasn't her life. She'd already begun thinking about going back to L.A. when Keely had called her.

The one tech thing the McNabbs supplied for each tent was a phone; they did not take messages, and they did not go tramping out to inform people of emergencies. Sam had thought the phone had looked pretty funny sitting on the McNabb-supplied footlocker at the head of the cot. She hadn't expected it to ring; no one had known where she was. But if anyone was capable of tracking her down, it was Keely.

He'd sounded wired as usual—his bizarro relationship with deathcrazed Jones was something else that had gotten on her nerves. But for once he hadn't whined about what Jones and his implants were coming to. This time he'd sounded wired and scared, something about some stuff he'd hacked. Keely liked to call it B&E, as if that somehow made it more glamorous than plain old hacking. Sam suspected he'd hit Diversifications. She'd made the mistake of giving him the specs for the modified insulin pump before shed left.

She'd done all the work on the pump while she'd been out in the Ozarks, just to see if she had the touch with this kind of hardware. She did, and as it turned out, it was fortunate she had. Keely insisted on zapping something to her over the phone, and she'd left her laptop behind with Rosa.

And then after the zap, he'd just said good-bye and hung up on her. So it had to be Diversifications, she decided, the hackers' Mount Everest and the place most likely to catch you. And when they did, they always prosecuted. Keely had always had this compulsive rivalry with her, needing to match her hit for hit. She'd tried to make him see rivalry was pointless, and the more often you tried Diversifications, the more likely you were to get caught. But Keely had always had more talent than sense.

Perhaps she might have been more convincing, Sam thought, if she'd told him her own little trade secret: she knew her way around their defenses because her father worked there, and she'd picked up a lot about their operation by simple osmosis. Maybe Keely would have seen the wisdom of backing off, or maybe he'd have just taken up hounding her for tips and hints until he drove her mad. And no matter how she tried, she couldn't get around feeling responsible, in an oblique, neurotic way, for whatever had happened to him. Ridiculous, maybe, but there it was. And here
she
was, back in L.A.

". . . new show, free equipment, absolutely no charge!"

The voice that cut through the tumult in her earphones sounded familiar. She clicked off the chip-player and looked around.

The young guy working his way up from the now-distant end of the line she was standing in could have used a few more pounds to fill out his bodysuit and balance off the absurdly full cascade of golden waves spilling down past his bony shoulders. The holo crown bobbing in the air over his head faded in and out with each step, but he didn't bother adjusting the projector on his belt or, for that matter, the bored look on his face. Sam grinned. It had been quite a while, but she'd have known Beauregard in any guise.

"Free tickets!" he called, holding them up between two fingers. "Preview of an exciting new show!" He was about to pass her when she caught his arm.

"Getting many takers?" she asked.

He looked down at her blankly for a moment and then let out a surprised laugh. "Well, fuck me."

"Is that free, too?"

He gave her a ticket. "For this you get an hour's use of a head-mounted monitor and the chance to kill a new series, which you can brag to the folks back in Kansas City about. You wanna get fucked, call my agent. He'll fuck you four times before you even mention my name."

"Thanks, Beau, but I'll give that a miss. I like to know I'm being fucked while it happens." She looked him up and down. "Love the hotbody. You look like an old-time street mime."

"And you look like an old-time vent-hugger. Some things never change. Where the hell have you been?"

She hesitated, looking from side to side. Beauregard thrust two tickets at the man standing behind her. "Here, hold her place in line, will you?" he said. "You can take those down to Hollywood Boulevard and get an easy hundred for them in front of the Chinese Theatre. They're in short supply, everyone in town wants them."

The man frowned dubiously at the tickets in his hand, and Beauregard pressed two more on him. "Okay, this is all I can let you have. That's a guaranteed two hundred you're holding, that'll pay for the best rental you can get here four times over, thanks a lot, pal, you're a prince." Sam laughed helplessly as Beauregard hustled her away from the line.

"Is that true, what you told him?" she asked.

"Fuck, no. They're
free
tickets. He'll probably have to pay someone to take them off his hands."

She stared at him in disbelief. "How do you get away with being you?"

"Same way you do, honey." He tapped her chin with his fist. "Where have you been?"

"The Ozarks. They're real pretty. What are you doing wearing the Para Versal logo?"

He glanced up at the holo still floating over his head. "I got lucky, for a change. I got a part in
Tunnels in the Void."

Sam looked at the ticket he'd given her. "This? What is it?"

"A small band of intrepid explorers travel the universe using black holes as a kind of intergalactic subway system, taking you with them as they seek adventure and excitement, sneering in the face of danger and all scientific fact. But hey, it's work. They used me in a bit, on the condition that I hustle passes." He gazed at her evenly as he took the ticket back from her. "Like I said, some things never change."

"I guess not." Sam shook her head. "You know this is probably all that'll come of it. Intergalactic subway system. Stone the fucking crows at home. How stupid do they think people are?"

"You tell me when you see that guy trying to scalp those on the Boulevard. Diversifications did the finish on it, all the commercials are from their clients, and gaming rights are being auctioned right now. Plenty of features have pulled out of a nosedive on gaming rights alone. Or the wannabee trade."

Sam felt her stomach tighten a little at the mention of Diversification^. "Sorry, Beau, but I don't see why you're wasting your time."

"Oh, yah. Hacking programs and dodging watchdogs from a Mimosa squat is
so
much nobler." He shrugged. "I sold my equipment to Rosa. She's got a use for it."

"You had a use for it, once," she said seriously.

He glanced upward with a labored sigh, making the holo crown jiggle. "Shit, why can't you be like everyone else and refuse to have anything to do with me until I, quote, shake it off, unquote?"

"Beau, if you'd hung in, you could probably be
making
this stuff yourself. And not garbage like
Tunnels in the Void,
either, but really good stuff. You know, a lot of people used to think that you were behind the Dr. Fish virus. 'The one that got away.' "

"So that makes two of us that got away." His face was stony now. "You know, it's harder than it ever was now to get a toehold. All the studios want to go to complete simulation, and what the fuck is that? Nobody home, you know? No
people."

"They probably
will
go to complete simulation soon, Beau," Sam said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. "Maybe not tomorrow, but soon enough. Too soon for you and your union and all the other unions. It's gonna be a stone dead end for you, unless you can make the stuff."

"I don't want to
make
the stuff. I want to
be
the stuff. If that isn't culturally on-line, then write me off.
I
don't go around telling people what they're supposed to want."

"Touché, doll." Sam held out her hands. "Peace?"

He curled his fingers around hers briefly, looking momentarily embarrassed. "Well, truce, anyway. I didn't pull you out of line to fight with you. It's good to see you again, Sam."

"Likewise." She paused. "Haven't seen anyone else lately, have you?"

"Ha. Like who."

"Oh, Rosa. Gator." She gave a casual shrug. "Keely?"

Beauregard shook his head, making the holo crown wag in sluggish half circles. "I don't see anyone." He ran a wistful finger down the line of her cheek and then looked around. "Listen, I'm on a schedule—"

She nodded. "See you, Beau."

"If I get really lucky, yah, you probably will." He started his pitch again as she went back to her place in the line, smiling apologetically at the man still holding the preview tickets.

"Excuse me," he said as she was putting on her headphones again. "Do you really think I can get anything for these?"

"Oh. Well," she said, "maybe. I mean, sure. I think you might get something."

"You mean something besides taken?" The look on his face was anything but happy.

"Hey, you got them for nothing," she said coldly. "You'll only get taken if you actually go to the preview. Welcome to Hollywood, mister."

Half an hour later she was sitting in a rental that achieved two-passenger status only by virtue of the fact that it had another seat. Sam would not have taxed it with more than her duffel bag, not that it made a whole lot of difference at the moment. True to form GridLid had failed to transmit upto-date traffic patterns, and she had driven right into the clog on Sepulveda, where, it seemed, she was going to spend most of the morning, kicking herself for not bringing a radio. Some of the smaller free-lance stations operating outside the amorphous mass of the dataline gave traffic reports from phoned-in tips. She glanced at the receiver hanging from the dash. Hell, she could phone one in herself, except it probably wasn't exactly news anymore.

Fez would have told her to accept it as an unexpected opportunity to unwind.
An L.A. clog is just Natures way of saying it's break time.
But then, Fez had told her that trying to reconcile with her parents was a good idea, too.

She sighed and looked at the nav screen. The map display vanished, to be replaced with a basic, abbreviated dataline menu. Good old GridLid. Gosh, folks, sorry we didn't warn vou about the clog, but since you're already sitting in it, you can enjoy some minor diversion, courtesy of the city.

The offerings were limited to the most popular items off several of the networks, text and/or sound only, including, she saw with some amusement,
The Stars, Crystals, and You Show
and
Dear Mrs. Troubles
from FolkNet. If you couldn't pre-guess GridLid with stars and crystals, maybe Mrs. Troubles could help you change your miserable life at two miles an hour.

She pressed the scroll button on the keyboard between the seats, and the categories began a slow roll upward.
Business: Local, Regional, Na
tional, International; Sporting Events; Lunar Installation Report; Pecca
dillo Update
—that was tempting; famous people throw up in public and other gossip to die for
—CrimeTime; The World of Medicine; L.A. Rox, In
cluding !Latest! Video Releases.