Synners (64 page)

. . . because the larger pattern is contained in the smaller
. . . She brushed the thought away, not even wondering who it belonged to.

Dylan's nasal, tuneful whine.
I want you.

Who you wannabee?

But she had her own music with her, her own sound and her own vision. Nasty bridge, hammering all the way, the growl of her own need. Colors pouring down the bowl of the sky.

U B the Ass to Risk.

Lover, I always was. I'm lucky I can dance. Can you top this?

It
was the
real
head of the food-fuck-dance-and-be chain, and it was going to try. She didn't run from it. I hit him, but what can he do for me?

———

"I can find you," Gabe said.

—and the other ten percent is being there on time. It was time then,
and it's time now.

"Bravo,
hotwire," they all said. "All right, this won't hurt a bit. —Well, not much," Caritha's voice added.

It was like being tumbled in an enormous barrel rolling along a bumpy road, but somehow it wasn't unpleasant.

Got all the associations now, Gabe.
One voice.

Was that what this was all about—associations? Just to find her?
he asked.

Only in part. You were the fooler loop, she's the mirror. There she is.
Better help her. She's strong enough to let you do that now.

There was a sensation of being shoved through some kind of thin but tough barrier, like a sheet of plastic. He landed on two feet in the pit. Gina was already straddling Mark with her hands on the connections.

The common eye-shaped area that was their life.

"But what do you think will happen?" asked the Mark-thing under her. "What do you think this is?"

A hard wave of dizziness hit her between the eyes, and she was staring up at herself holding the wires, ready to jerk them out.

Should've known it wouldn't be so fucking simple. U B the ass to risk,
that's me. What did I wannabee, yah, how can you wannabee something
and not know?

"There was a little bit of him left, then, do you remember? He opened his eyes and begged you to do it. Because the little of him that stayed with the body then, that was from the last time, in Mexico. Do you remember?"

The surprise of her own urgency, and his, and the overwhelming familiarity, as if they'd never had any secrets from each other. Because he'd already taken her there, to the lake with the stony shore. The doctors had fed the image into her brain to find out if she could see it as he'd meant it, but what he'd meant was not what they'd thought. He'd taken her there, and she'd been there for him.

"If you do it now, that goes, too.

"Can you do that, really? Can you end it, not just him but that bit of yourself
he
kept with the part that stayed with the body, that is here now? Can you die a little and live through it?"

She tried to force her pov back home, but it was jammed there, gazing up at her own face. Who
had
been there, looking out of his eyes and begging her to yank the wires? Mark? Or herself?

"If you don't believe you can be in two places at once, you've forgotten everything you've learned. You, Ludovic, his simulated playmates, Mark—
me.
Do it, and everyone dies a little, and can you do that,
really?"

She could see herself waver at whatever she was seeing in those eyes, her/Mark's eyes; the surge of brute hope she felt from the thing at the sight was not as far removed from herself as she would have wished.

That'll teach you to glory in your
separateness,
your precious
aloneness.

Ludovic reached around from behind and put his hands over hers on the wires.

"Oh, it'll be even harder for you, Mr. Noble Gesture. Do it, and you'll kill your taste for it, and you'll kill your last link to
them,
your simulated playmates, and that's something you might not be able to get back, ever. Can you do that, really?"

Ludovic's expression changed, and she knew that he was seeing them.

"You gave up what you had of them, but see, here is what I took from the volatile memory of your system when I ran through, and it's every bit of them. Can you end it for them? Wouldn't you rather do just about anything else but lose them again, wouldn't you rather come and live with them and go back to the way it was, not having to do anything, least of all make Noble Gestures?"

"Last thing they'd expect, hotwire."

It should have been easy, but the desire for them was still there. The desire for them and the way things had been, for no good reason, just because—

"Because you can," Gina said. "But it's not the only thing you can do."

But it's different when you think you have no choice, and then suddenly
you do after all.

"I simply do not fucking believe we have to do this
again,"
Gina said, and her fist was coming at him. "There ain't
nothing
to them you didn't have in the first place,
hotwire.
And you
know
what you got."

"But how do you know whatever's right?" he asked, confused.

"You don't," she said. Realization came simultaneously with the words. "It's a damned Schrodinger world." The name of the law.

On the stony shore he turned not because it was pulling at him but all on his own power. And she was there, just having turned around herself to look at him.

Her fist pushed through the air. This time he ducked, and it sailed past him to strike Mark.

Their hands came up together, and the wires pulled free.

The chain reaction went at the speed of light, unfeeling and unstoppable. It unraveled the pit around them, moved on to the lake with the stony shore, the common room, Mexico, Manny's office, Hollywood Boulevard, everything dissolving, running to nothing, and they were pulled along with it.

"I didn't even know for sure sometimes you were there," Gina told him.

"Likewise," Gabe said, feeling tired and exhilarated all at once. "You never know until you turn and look."

Abruptly he found himself back in the strange half room. Right; no need to go any further with it now, it was all happening by itself. He could sense it retracing every step the Big One had taken, undoing itself as it spread out in every direction, a starburst whose points touched Phoenix, Sacramento, Seattle, Japan, Mexico, London, Bangkok—

He turned to say something to Gina. She wasn't there.

"Hey," said Jasm. She had one ear to Gina's chest. "I hate to tell anybody, but I don't hear anything."

Sam looked down at her father. His face was still swollen, but the impressions from his hotsuit were fading rapidly. "When do we pull them out? Or do we just pull Gabe out?"

Keely motioned for her to be quiet. Sam looked at the Beater. He had refused to relinquish his new role as official potato, and she hadn't felt she could insist. Somehow, going in with them, even by old hardware, however briefly, whether to any purpose or not, had changed her status.

But the way the Beater was sitting, she could lunge quick and yank the wires out of his stomach. One hard jerk. If she had to do it to save Gabe's life—

"Whack to this," said Percy. He was holding the cape connected to the big system. The patterning side was blank white.

Easy now, Gabe told himself. He'd only looked at one spot. She could be anywhere in the room. Schrodinger's Gina—

The window still framed an area of black against the moving clouds. He took a step toward it and then stopped. The door swung only one way now, and it had already swung for him. He could wait, or he could go.

They floated in near-perfect rapport, balancing. With the virus gone, Markt was wide open, and she could see everything now, Markt's life and Mark's life and her life and their overlapping life together, right where it had always been.

"Let's dance," Mark said, surfacing in the composite. "Let's jump all night, let's burn it all down and burn it back up again. Let's die before we get old. Let's never die, ever."

She hesitated.

"It'll be better now than ever it was," Markt said. "And we're inoculated now. Even if it could come back, it couldn't touch us."

"I want you," said Mark. "Always did. Just couldn't find my way through the noise. But the noise is gone, and the wanting is still there."

Through the still-open window, she could see a very small and distant Gabe Ludovic, waiting.

"It's what I was born to do. And doing that, I can do anything now. I can be there for you. It was only impossible in the real world."

Her face pressed against his bony chest, hanging onto what was left. Not just remnants now, but everything.
Better now than ever it was.

"All the equipment we need is in our room," he said, leading her up the long hall. He opened the door, stepped inside, and turned, holding out his hand. Markt leaned close.

"The brain feels no pain."

It was a more persuasive argument this time.

He knew. He could sense it all through the dark window, and he knew it dwarfed his own offering.

Was that why they'd gone into this so easily? Did Gina want to be with him so badly? If she did, why had he come along? To be there to convince her to come out again after it was all over? Christ, he'd only known her a few months. After fifteen years of marriage, he'd been unable to persuade his wife to come out of a sealed office. How was he supposed to fight over twenty years of someone else, to compete with a, a whatever-it-was, a video, a synthesis, a sympathetic vibration?

Hey, Gina—come on out here and pop my chocks. Really, it'll make you
feel better.

Sure. When the brain felt no pain?

What the fuck, as Gina would say if she were here. You got a punch in
the jaw and, for a little while, a life. Keep asking, maybe someday some
one'll put an egg in your beer. But not today.

He yielded to the pull toward the outside and faded away.

"I'd say about ten beats a minute, now," said Jasm, holding Gina's wrist. Sam tightened her grip on the wires in her stomach. There was a rustle as Gabe stirred on the mattress. Keely knelt down beside him and then looked up at Sam. "He's coming out of it."

"She isn't," said Jasm.

It was several hours before the feeling of disorientation and woollyheadedness even began to drop away from him. Gina stayed down. Ignoring his still-swollen jaw, he told them in as few words as possible what was happening to her, or what could be happening. Sam pointed out gently that he didn't know for sure, and he didn't contradict her by telling her he had looked and she hadn't been there. Not out loud.

Local portions of the dataline came back by the next morning, anchors recapping the big story every few minutes. The final count of socket casualties had yet to be determined. L.A. was still burning, and martial law was the order of the day.

The young guy called Percy offered him some 'killers. "They make me a little stupid," he said, pushing them back at the kid. "Thanks all the same."

He distracted Sam with a shower of attention, telling her everything that had happened before he'd seen her at the graveyard, even though she'd heard a lot of that. He didn't have to tell her anything about after, and he didn't try.

The following night Gina was still down, and he made a big deal out of tucking Sam in like a child in her little privacy area, her squat space, she called it
.
The ex-pump had been put aside, the contents transferred back into the big system, so it wouldn't be long before contact would be reestablished on the showy multimonitor arrangement they had. They were all waiting for that, he could tell.

Sam went to sleep, and Gina had still not come out of it. There were so many kinds of doors that swung only one way, and he could wait, or he could go.

Maybe there really is no magic, but for a few moments here and there,
Gina, I think maybe there was. Just a few moments, but they were more
than enough. And is that high enough up in the stupidsphere for you?

Go somewhere. Go
somewhere.

He touched his swollen cheek. This was where he had come in; good place to make an exit.

There was no pull toward the outside this time, but he went anyway.

The light on the voice-only phone meant he had email. He called the local exchange, and the grandfatherly man read it to him. Just a thank-you note from the school on the latest simulations for the geometry students. Gabe felt pleased. It was an isolated area and not a moneyed one, either. Custom-programs off the dataline would have broken their budget, whereas the little bit he charged for producing them let him live well enough, combined with the other little bit he made on the holos he managed to sell from time to time. He was glad of the income but disgusted by the dataline. Still run by a bunch of greedy bastards who wanted to charge by the bit, who had learned nothing. He was glad every day that he'd refused to put it in his house.

It was a pretty nice house, smaller than the condo in Reseda, but far more pleasant. It looked like someone lived there. Not in the best of style, perhaps—the furniture was a little of this and a little of that, and the last occupants had apparently gotten a deal on yellow-duck wallpaper. Cartoony yellow ducks sailed the walls in the kitchen, in the living room, and, mysteriously, on only one wall of the bedroom. Yellow ducks he could live with, though; they didn't bother him, and he didn't bother them.

The electrical system was less easy to get along with—he had to unplug the refrigerator to run the holo cam. But nothing, neither food nor holos, had spoiled yet.

The only thing he felt mildly bad about was his lack of gardening ability. The backyard seemed destined to remain scrub no matter what he did.

But the front yard was just fine. It stopped short about fifty feet from the front door, where the land dropped sharply down a rocky incline. From there he had an unobstructed view of the ocean. Someone was operating an underwater farm a few hundred yards out; with binoculars he could watch the dolphins popping up and down, hard at work at whatever dolphins did on underwater farms. On some days he did almost nothing else but watch them.