Synners (6 page)

Abruptly she remembered the ex-pump in her pocket.

"Hey,"
said the kid, following her over to the corner. "I
know
she wouldn't want you screwing around with that."

"I'm not screwing, I'm hooking," Sam said, unrolling the wires that had been discreetly tucked behind a table leg. "Hooking up, that is." She found the communications jack and plugged it into the ex-pump, then connected it to both the sunglasses and the chip-player. "If Gator comes back, I won't let her kill you more than you deserve."

She settled down on the sand and put on the sunglasses. The screen in the left lens lit up, blurring for a moment before it settled on her focal length. There was a tap on her knee, and she looked over the top of the glasses at the kid.

"Hey, you know you got lice?" he said, pointing at her pants.

"That's not lice, it's rice," she told him. "Now don't bother me, I'm calling Dial-a-Prayer."

"You older women sure are religious," he muttered.

In a few moments she was inside the public net system, flashing through the menus until she reached the listing for the St. Dismas Infirmary for the Incurably Informed. She ignored the public posts and punched for the conference area.

>You have been misinformed,
said the screen.
No conference area ex
ists on this board. If you wish to pray, please make an offering. If not,
please exit. <

She had to peer under the glasses to watch her fingers work the tiny keyboard on the face of the pump.

>Are services in progress?<
she asked.

>Prayer services require an offering. <

She summoned the basic schematic for the adapted insulin pump system and uploaded it. There was a short pause before the screen said,
>The
doctor will see you now.<

Sam frowned. The doctor? Christ, was St. Diz siccing a virus on anyone they didn't trust? She started to tap the little keyboard again when a new message appeared on the screen.

>Wonderful to hear from you, Sam! Go to Fez and learn all. <
Abruptly she was disconnected, not just back in the main menu area but off-line.

She took off the sunglasses and rubbed her eyes. Fez. It figured. She probably should have headed straight for his place to begin with. He knew everything, or almost everything. Maybe he knew what had happened to Keely. Or how Diversifications' acquisition of a video-production company corresponded to the schematic drawing of a neuron from a human brain that Keely had zapped to her encrypted in music he couldn't stand. Maybe Fez would know. Somebody had to.

The house looked quiet enough, but then the whole street was quiet, and Gabe knew that was all wrong.

On his left Marly nudged him. "It's a lot weirder inside than it is outside," she said in a low voice. "Costa says a guy starved to death in there looking for a way out."

Gabe shook his head. "You believe everything Costa tells you?"

"I'd believe this. Since he's been in, and we haven't." She looked past him to Caritha standing on his right. Caritha held up the handcam projector, her half smile confident. Gabe felt a little more dubious. The projector was the best they could do on short notice, but it was awfully small. Like Caritha herself. The late-afternoon sun seemed to strike sparks in the black hair cropped close to her skull. By contrast, Marly's thick, honey-colored mane hung loose and wild.

As if reading his mind, she suddenly gathered it between her hands and wound it into a knot at the back of her head. Gabe stared, fascinated. He had no idea what was keeping it up there. The force of Marly's will, perhaps. He wouldn't have been surprised. She smiled down at him and threw a muscular arm around his shoulders. "Don't tell me you
want
to live forever."

Gabe winced. Marly was three inches taller than he was and possibly heavier, every pound invested in muscle. "Don't crack my collarbone, I might need it later."

"You want it all, dontcha, hotwire?" Marly gave him an extra squeeze and released him.

"All I really want now is to get in, get your friend, and get out," Gabe said.

"I want that viral program," Caritha said seriously. "I don't like clinics that go screwing up people's brains."

"I don't like clinics, period," said Marly. "Come on. Let's go do a little damage."

Nobody came to the front door in response to the bell. (Caritha tried the doorknob, and Gabe heard a faint sizzling sound.

"Son of a
bitch,"
she said, looking at her palm. "It buzzed me."

"I call that blatant hostility," said Marly. She produced a small card from her breast pocket. "I'm glad I thought to get the key from Costa."

Gabe looked the door frame over. "Yah, but where do you put it? I don't see a slot."

"You gotta
look."
Marly reached up to the top of the frame and pushed the card in. It disappeared, and a moment later the door swung open. Caritha went first, holding the projector up and ready. Marly followed, pulling Gabe after her. He glanced behind; just before the door swung shut again, he saw a small figure standing in the middle of the street, a child holding up a hand in a strange gesture of farewell. The sight gave him a brief flash of superstitious dread. He shook it away. It could have just been the clinic playing games with holo, trying to spook them.

They were standing in a murky entrance hall that had been painstakingly antiqued. The highly polished woodwork looked both slippery and cold. Marly tugged his arm, and they followed Caritha down the hall.

Caritha stopped at the first doorway and waved them back. Marly flattened against the wall, throwing one arm across his chest. Somewhere far above he heard muffled footsteps. They stumped the length of the ceiling and then stopped. Gabe waited for the sound of a door opening and closing, but there was nothing. The silence seemed to press on his ears.

"I know you're there," said a woman's voice suddenly. Gabe jumped. Marly patted his rib cage, but he could feel how tense she was.

"You might as well come in and introduce yourselves like citizens," the woman went on. "And if you're burglars, you'll find out you've got a lot more of value to us than we have to steal. Come on, now."

Caritha swung around and stood in the doorway.

"That's right. Now your two friends. Two, I
think.
One of them is awfully big."

Marly joined Caritha in the doorway, and Gabe moved to her side. In the old-fashioned parlor an older woman in a straight black floor-length dress was standing near a round table arrayed with bottles, open pill cases, and several shiny, sterile-looking metal boxes.

Caritha swung the projector up. Half the woman disappeared. "Thought so," she said, and widened the beam to include the table. The bottles vanished. "Cheap holo show. They're buried in the heart of the house, they'd never get so close to an outside wall."

"Wait," Gabe said, looking at the table. The holo of the woman had frozen with a hand to her high collar. A moment later the transmission broke up completely, and the image frayed into nothing. "Not all that stuff on the table is a magic-lantern show." He took a cautious step forward before Marly could yank him back.

"Floor's mined," Caritha said offhandedly.

He kept his eyes on the one metal box that hadn't vanished from the tabletop. "You wanted that program. I'll bet it's locked up in that set of implants."

"Think,
hotwire," Marly said urgently. "Why would they leave a set of implants out like that?"

"Maybe
they
didn't. Maybe it's a sign from your friend."

A moment later he felt Marly behind him. She hooked one hand in the waistband of his pants. His underwear started to ride up.

"Dammit, Marl," he whispered. "Ease off."

"You'll thank me for this," she whispered back.

He reached the table and put one hand on it carefully, reaching for the metal box with the other. His fingers closed on it, and he dropped through the floor, pulling Marly down after him.

He was sliding down some kind of long chute with a lot of twists and turns in it; his shoulders banged roughly against the sides, and he could feel Marly coming down just above
him.

"Push out!" she yelled. "Wedge yourself in!"

It took him a few moments, but he managed to apply his elbows and knees to the sides of the chute, bringing himself to a stop.

"Gabe?" Marly called from somewhere above him.

"Did it," he said a little breathlessly.

"You think you can inch your way back up again?"

He groaned. "Nah, I'll just fly up. Be just as easy."

He heard a slithering sound, and then Marly s hands touched his shoulders. "How about if you hold onto me and do it?" she said with an effort.

"You can't pull us both up."

"Well, no, but I thought it'd be easier if you were holding onto me."

"Easier for who?"

"Don't waste breath arguing, it's the one thing they're not expecting."

He grunted, pushing himself up against the sides of the chute. "Because it can't be done."

"Dammit, hotwire—" she groaned, and rose a few inches. "Why'd you even come?"

"What was I s'posed to do? Give you the cam and wish you luck?" His elbow slipped. He struggled to regain his purchase on the chute, but the effort was too much, and he was sliding down again with a shout.

"Dammit!" yelled Marly. He heard her coming down after him.

He landed on a pile of musty mattresses and scooted out of the way just before Marly hit.

"See what happens when you don't introduce yourselves properly?"

The woman in the black dress was standing several feet away in front of a white cement-block wall. Gabe got up slowly, brushing himself off, and offered a hand to Marly. She ignored it, keeping her eyes on the woman. "Isn't a trapdoor kind of crude?" she said.

"But effective. Appropriate technology." The woman smiled. "You got what you deserved."

"Hotwire, I don't think this one's any more real than her twin sister," Marly said, and took a step forward.

The woman suddenly compressed to a sharp red point of light.

"Down!"
Marly yelled.

They flattened just as the point became a red spear that shot out at the spot where Marly had been standing a moment before. It hit the chute with a loud sizzle, and the smell of hot metal filled the air. Marly raised her head slightly to look at him over the mattresses. "They know a few neat tricks with light."

Dumbfounded, Gabe blinked at the spot where the woman's image had been, then at the chute. "I thought the government said the holo-to-laser thing was impossible."

"Impossible for the government," Marly said, looking around warily. "These people hacked the team that worked on it, removed the real specs, and substituted their own." She got up slowly. "Shit, what are we in, a boxcar?"

The room was shaped like a boxcar and not much bigger, all walls and no entrance or exit that Gabe could see except for the end of the chute protruding from the wall. Marly ripped into one of the mattresses, pulling a chunk of ratty yellow foam rubber out of it. She tossed it at the cementblock wall; instead of bouncing off, it vanished.

"That answers
that
question," she said, and got up.

"Wait! What are you doing?" Gabe said as she headed for the wall.

"Ah, it's not like we're not already in sight, hotwire," she said. "If they can see us, I want to see them." She walked through the wall. Gabe hurried after her.

Beyond the white wall was a long room lined with beds, all of them occupied. Gabe braced himself, but no one rushed them. No one in the beds moved or even spoke.

"The ward," Marly said darkly.

"Why aren't there any attendants?" Gabe whispered.

"Don't need them, they're built in." Marly went to the nearest bed and yanked up the man lying there by his shirt-front. He hung bonelessly in her grasp, his eyes wide open but seeing nothing. A thick black cable was driven into the top of his shaven head, held in place by small clamps.

"Jesus," Gabe said.

"The viral program's just a sideline," Marly said grimly, laying the man down again. "You ever wonder where Solomon Labs gets all that fresh, natural-no-synthetics neurotransmitter?"

He stared, unable to speak.

"And if you think this is a deep, dark secret, you're wrong about that, too," Marly added. "They
all
know. Even that outfit you work for, the Dive. You crank out the commercials, and high-level management gets their regular doses of n/t to keep them running at peak brain power. If you could get promoted high enough, you'd get some, too." She looked around at the ward. "If Jimmy's in one of these beds, the best thing we can do is yank his cable and say kaddish before we beat it out of here."

Far down at the other end of the room, the silhouette of a man appeared. "Hey! You're not supposed to be in here!" The man started to run for it when another red beam speared the length of the ward and impaled him. He fell backwards.

A moment later Caritha materialized at Gabe's elbow, hefting the cam. "Did I mention I made some other modifications to your hardware? Hope you don't mind too much."

"Why did you come down the chute?" he asked incredulously.

"Last thing they'd expect," she said, winking at him. "Find Jimmy? I hope not."

"Haven't looked," Marly said. "Come on." They hurried through the ward, Caritha scanning the beds with the cam. Gabe marveled. It had originally been a simple record/playback holo projector until she'd gone to work on it; now it was the Swiss Army knife of handcams. She had the same easy genius for hardware that Sam did.

He felt himself flushing guiltily at the thought of his daughter, but there was no time to dwell on that; they had reached the end of the ward. He spotted three vacant beds, and then Marly was shoving him after Caritha into what looked like an elevator. Doors snapped shut behind them. Marly was still searching for a control panel when the floor tilted and spilled them out through the back wall. "Uh-oh," said Caritha in a low voice.

They were looking not into another room but down a long, dark alley strewn with garbage and the shattered remnants of unfathomable machine parts.