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Volume IV Issue 4 ISSN 1053-8496 August 1992
Quanta Volume IV, Issue 4
ISSN 1053-8496 December, 1992
____________________________________________________________________________
Editor/Technical Director All submissions, request for
Daniel K. Appelquist submission guidelines, requests for
Proofreading back issues, queries concerning
Cheryl Droffner subscriptions, letters, comments, or
_____________________________________ other correspondence should be sent
to the Internet address
Copyright 1992 by Daniel K.
[email protected].
Appelquist. This magazine may be
archived, reproduced and/or Subscriptions come in three flavors:
distributed provided that it is left MAIL subscriptions, where each issue
intact and that no additions or is sent as a series electronic mail
changes are made to it. The messages; BITNET subscriptions, where
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the sole property of their respective BITNET and FTP subscriptions, where
author(s). No further use of their subscribers receive a notification
works is permitted without their when a new issue has been placed at a
explicit consent. All stories in this designated FTP site. Anonymous FTP
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Quanta is supported solely by reader lth.se...................130.235.16.3
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Issues of Quanta are also available
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____________________________________________________________________________
Articles
LOOKING AHEAD Daniel K. Appelquist
Serials
THE HARRISON CHAPTERS Jim Vassilakos
DR TOMORROW Marshall F. Gilula
Stories
STARBLOOD Steven Schuldt
LAST TRAIN Lou Crago
WAITING FOR THE
NIGHT BOAT Nicole Gustas
GREEN John Goodrich
______________________________________________________________________________
Looking Ahead
Daniel K. Appelquist
______________________________________________________________________________
Hi, y'all! I'm practicing my southern drawl, because I'm soon to be moving to
Virginia (well... Reston, Virginia, which is really more like a suburb of
D.C., but you get the idea). Anyway, I'll be sending out a letter to all
subscribers informing people of my new email address when I get one. For now,
though, you can continue to send mail to be at
[email protected].
Some people have asked "Dan, now that you're leaving Carnegie Mellon, what
happens to Quanta?" Well, the beauty of a network entity like Quanta is that
it can exist anywhere on the network. The answer is, of course, that Quanta
goes where I go.
So, much to my disappointment, I've only been able to produce four issues
of Quanta this year (March, June, August and December). What this means is
that I haven't been able to round out the Dr Tomorrow serial within the year.
There's still one more chapter to go on that, and you should be seeing it
around February, although I may have to postpone the February issue to a March
issue since I'll be starting a new job and all.
As I write this particular paragraph, I'm working on my new Macintosh
PowerBook Duo 210 laptop computer. All I can say is that I'm extremely
impressed with it. It really is a piece of science fiction in and of itself.
Apple needs to work on their quality control, however. When I first received
my Duo, it had a serial port problem and needed to be sent back twice before
it was resolved. Hopefully I should be able to get lots more work done, both
on Quanta and my own writing. But who am I kidding? I bought the thing because
it's a really neat toy.
Submissions! Submissions submissions submissions. What can I say? I
received a fair number after my recent plea for material, and I was very
pleased with the quality. I'm always in need of more, however. I've gotten
letters from a lot of people saying things like "I may send you something in
the near future." Well, I would love to receive those manuscripts. If any of
you have something you've been holding back from me, shame on you!
Subscriptions! Wow - This month, Quanta subscriptions for the first time
rose above 2000. That's not even counting re-distribution points like bulletin
boards and CompuServe, or people who pick up issues from one of the FTP
servers or Gopher. If you are reading Quanta in one of these ways and you
aren't receiving a notice whenever a new issue comes out, mail me and I'll put
you on a "notice only" mailing list. That way I can have a more accurate idea
of how many people are reading Quanta and you can know whenever a new issue
hits the `stands'.
I have some very interesting material for you in this issue... some fresh
faces, some new ideas. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed
putting it together.
______________________________________________________________________________
Quanta Party!
OK - I've been talking about putting together a Quanta party for a while now,
but this time I really and truly mean it. I'd like to arrange someting for
near future. What prompted this sudden enthusiasm? I recently attended PhilCon
(a science fiction convention based in Philadelphia) and was very impressed.
Apart from the guests (one of whom was Greg Bear, who was an excellent
speaker), the art show, the gaming, and the general feeling of community and
openness that permiated the con, what really impressed me about it was the
parties! Mostly they were just little impromptu get-togethers in some of the
hotel rooms occupied by con attendees, but they were lots of fun. So I thought
to myself, why not have a party at an upcoming convention and invite all
Quanta subscribers and submitters. So what about it? How many subscribers out
there are con-goers who would be interested in something like this? I guess
since I'm going to be in D.C., I'm thinking of a convention like Disclave
(which is in D.C.) or another eastern con (perhaps in New York or Boston). If
there's interest, I'll start making more definite plans. If any of you already
have plans to attend cons in the near future, that would be good information
to have as well. Hopefully, we can get something rolling here.
______________________________________________________________________________
Moving? Take Quanta with you!
Please remember to keep us apprised of any changes in your address. If you
don't we can't guarantee that you'll continue to receive the high quality of
fiction and non-fiction that Quanta provides. Also, if your account is going
to become non-existent, even temporarilly, please inform us. This way, we can
keep Net traffic due to bounced mail at a minimum. Please send all
subscription updates to
[email protected]. Thanks!
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
STARBLOOD "Process hadn't allowed itself to be
benchmarked in nine quarters. Not
by Steven Schuldt that the other IM players were
complaining too loudly, Process
Copyright(c)1990 Publishing Industries had always
taken the benchmarks by light-years."
______________________________________________________________________________
"Don't you move." said Einstein, the semi-automatic handgun
trembling in his hands, his thick accent still failing to
conceal his terror. The sky was boiling overhead; dark, restless
geometric shapes sliding above and behind each other. The wind
had started to kick up again and Ursula's long hair danced
across her pale white face. "Raise your arms."
She slowly raised her arms above her head. "That's good. Now
walk."
"You're crazy, you old bastard." she hissed, taking a step
towards the ledge. A distant crack of thunder was heard and a
swirling choir of voices began to rise ominously. "Crazy! Cr-"
____________________
Phyllis took an outlet. "How much longer?"
"Fifteen minutes." said the shell. She was going to die in here. Ursula's
wedding was only four days away, and Phyllis felt obligated to try another
print if she died. She was annoyed, feeling too much pressure to contemplate
this noir spy mess that the VanGehr Group engine had spit up. She looked out
of the rain-spattered bullet train window. Quebec's streets were skidding by
like wet black cat hairs through her dim reflection in the glass. It looked
very different than she remembered it. Phyllis closed the shell, settled back
in the deep white folds of her seat and thought about Process.
Process hadn't allowed itself to be benchmarked in nine quarters. Not
that the other IM players were complaining too loudly, Process Publishing
Industries had always taken the benchmarks by light-years. Most were content
to let CEO Paul Reuters and the PPI network of enigmacrats thrash and twist in
a web of what was beginning to appear as its over-cultivated mystique.
Besides, other corporate prime movers in Image Manipulation were tired of
tumbling vats of capital into the black hole of random number benchmarking.
Now, at last, a certain parity seemed reachable and majors like
ClimeLight/Fissure and Junee-July could concentrate on the more pressing but
no less challenging craft of star-making.
How Process tested so well was pretty widely known. The entropic harrier it
was only half-jokingly called. Their variant of seed value generation based on
the interference tier-contours created by 4D graphs of radioactive decay and
simple Lorenz attractors had proven a ruthlessly effective, if somewhat
quasi-mystical approach to the problem. The variant was Process' ace card,
however, and would have remained a standard for years.
The house was old and pathologically gothic, all odd angles, bleak corners
and towering cloisters. Set near the edge of the Gaspe' peninsula, the place
was about as far away from civilization as this ancient province allowed.
Phyllis found herself waiting in a sparse antechamber after having been buzzed
through wrought iron gates she would have guessed to be fourteen feet high.
She had been led by a smallish bespectacled man of fifty or so down
six-hundred feet of winding private road. He had spoken with a harsh
French-Canadian accent. Despite all her preparation and determination, she
felt extremely nervous. This shoot had to be good; she wouldn't get another
chance. The rain had stopped on the taxi ride in from the station but the gray
sky and cool autumn weather seemed to mirror her feelings of unease. The
little man had taken her coat and addressed her as "Miss Cope". For some
reason she was reminded of the teasings of an ex-boyfriend, "Miss can't Cope".
"I am terribly sorry, madam," said the man, "but Mr. Nareid is
preoccupied at the moment and has advised me to show you in. If you please."
Phyllis nodded politely and, lifting her gearbag, followed his gesturing hand
into a large, skylit circular room. There was a disused marble water fountain
at its center. The man followed her in. "Mr. Nareid informs me that you are a
photographer." Phyllis was looking absently up at the grimy, stained-glass
dome.
"Yes, of sorts" she half laughed. "I'm a cam-tech really."
"Oh, I am sorry," he was looking up at her and Phyllis felt that he was
standing uncomfortably close. "There is a difference?"
"No! No, not really," said Phyllis, instantly regretting her nervous
response. "it's just not a term I've ever used."
"I see," he said slowly, and there was an awkward moment of silence before
he gestured, "Make yourself comfortable." She thanked him and accepted his
offer of tea, hoping to redeem herself somewhat. He left and Phyllis perceived
for the first time the place's dead air and unsettling feeling of perversity,
the decayed lavishness of the entire estate. Whatever sort of person this
James Nareid turned out to be, he was not, she guessed, going to be an average
shoot. Even by Process' standards.
Image manipulation was the inevitable resonating phenomenon of a media
mad world. A miracle of style becoming substance. Every icon, every movement
in art, music, video, holography, and film, captured, treated and distorted by
the latest computer rendering gear. Hyper-real storylines cropped, spliced and
juxtaposed, culled from every source old and new, from Homer through
Messiana/Hologramic slasher vids. The latest in rotational dissolving and
recombinant overlay-tracing applied to the bulk of the flotsam of the human
information system. After so many years now it had become reality's feedback
loop. The gather and distort technique had been born out of necessity, of
course, in the years before automatic royalties, with the standing copyright
laws taxed to the limit and straining to hold back the dike. Process had been
there from the start. The vast bulk of Process' profits still came from the
quaint black octagonal boxes found at every HDHF local, the IMAGER. Inside
where girl and boy could tumble their way down a hierarchy of silly menus
packed with time-frames, icons and double entendres - to leave with their own
"Totally unique!" little chunk of the zeitgeist. A fine time for all concerned
as PPI had years earlier licensed off its IMAGER to the Fissure corporation,
pretensions to high art intact as well as safe gliding distance above the red.
Things had changed since then and the better IMs, like Process, had learned
almost unconsciously to play to the last and all inclusive human gallery. They
had realized that at the end of the day people wanted something to hold on to,
invariably, an intelligibly convoluted mirror.
As a child growing up in Montreal, Phyllis would spend most nights alone.
Her grisette mother worked and slowly grew more unsound, acting ambitions
fading out year by year. At the age of nine Phyllis was sent to Paris to live
with her cousins. Her only truly enduring memories of early childhood: a
collage of neon, white light and pain. That light had stayed with her, had
kept her straight through the shooting of some of the most bizarre imagery a
jaded world could come up with.
Things had gone better in Europe, later on. She had returned to the
Americas to attend film school in Cote-Saint-Luc and had done her cam-tech
grunt work in LA. It got pretty ugly for awhile, months of shooting warehouses
and dockyards for the truly sleazy Estienne and Finch. She guessed her couples
work for respected independent Lemaitre! had gotten her the Process call.
Phyllis hated that idea, however, because couples made for some of the worst
subject matter. Most of them got drunk or bent on some analog first so they
could get loose enough to screw in front of a stranger, but somehow the
returns had always been okay. Shooting Process, however, was every cam-tech's
grail, and when they flew two reps to Vienna to watch her shoot an
industrio-demolition sponsored by some bored Austrian art fags, she had felt
that white light rising in her head.
"Ms. Cope, isn't it?" said a voice behind her. Phyllis turned to see a
thin, almost emaciated looking young man of twenty or so approaching her and
smiling. He wore an oversize half-buttoned white shirt and pastel red baggy
silk pants. He had a shoulder-length mop of wispy black hair. Phyllis' first
impression was that of some nineteenth century lion tamer's apprentice.
"Yes," she smiled and shook his small, bird-like hand. He grinned widely.
"James Nareid."
"You can call me Phyllis." she said, assuming her best
friendly-but-professional tone.
"Yes. Phyllis. I see Ryeland has forced his tea upon you." He was looking
fixedly at her with wide hazel eyes that suggested no depth at all.
"Hardly," she said uncomfortably, his apparent pomposity and atrocious
hawk's gaze distracting her, "it's very good actually." There was a brief
pause before James spoke.
"Well, I've never done anything like this before so...do I pose?" he said,
looking hopeful.
"Oh, its nothing like that at all," she said laughing and beginning to root
through her bag. "I'll be shooting almost continuously for as long or as
briefly as you like. Obviously," she began pulling out several objects and
resting them carefully on the floor "the more variegated," she continued
fastening a lens and new cartridge on her Leico TiarraShot "-this is my
favorite camera- the more variegated the shots the more chance we have of
obtaining interesting results. Most random Image engines work best with
diverse shots of the main subject." She raised the camera and began shooting,
slowly and reflexively circling her subject. James was looking right at her
with an amused smile. "So just move around and pretend I'm not even here. Try
to do whatever it is you'd normally be doing."
"What if I'd be masturbating?" he said, with the same fixed grin.
This is going to be cake thought Phyllis.
"By all means, makes for some great stuff, semen. Nothing beats the old
money shot."
"Well," he said "I wouldn't be, but just checking. Maybe I'd have some
tea." He poured himself a cup from the pot Ryeland had left on the tray and
stared in profile at the fountain. Phyllis was now shooting from a crouched
position.
"Do I understand correctly, that in this deal I have you for as long as I
like?" he asked, looking now up at the skylight and taking a small sip of tea.
"Or while the optic medium holds out, maybe thirty hours worth of straight
shooting." she slowly rose from her crouch. James was now looking intently
into his china cup.
"This is good isn't it. A lovely blend." he smiled at her, "I do have a
little something planned..."
Every IM had by definition a huge database of countless portrayals,
delineations, and distortions of almost everything and everyone worth
capturing ever. These catalogs were more or less interchangeable, as there
were only so many sources for interesting material and the rate at which the
new became the old had almost achieved real-time. Stars of course were IM's
lifeblood and the majors spent vast amounts of resources farming out
difference and intrigue. Icons were routinely erected overnight only to have
their electronic exoskeletons ground into image-gristle weeks later.
Manufactured stars were not, however, the lifeblood of Process. They always
let you be the star, for the right price. An extravagant one. That any IM
could command the compensation for a location shoot, random engine
recombination, and print that PPI could was partially attributable to their
quality but mainly to their reputation. The finished product was good, this
was undeniable, the Process engine seemed to be able to make intuitive and
often otherworldly connections to attenuated and rarely used perceptions of
cultural totems disused by more mainstream IM's, but it wasn't that good. Yet
to own a Process episode of your own Process shoot was a status symbol the
monied worldwide coveted. Guaranteed only one original to exist, generated at
the Process labs with no human intervention. As their infrequent
advertisements claimed, two things in life are certain, only one isn't. Even
the daughter of the CEO of Junee-July had provoked no end of embarrassment at
corporate headquarters when she boasted of her Process shoot in an interview
with CRUEL.
Playing pool turned out to be the little something that James had spoken
about. He had led her upstairs into an oak paneled room with a huge table and
deep maroon carpeting. The room was dank with the smell of mold. For nearly an
hour he quietly racked, broke and cleared. Phyllis was doing her best to make
this look interesting, she guessed he wasn't half bad as a player, but this
would undoubtedly make for poor source material and she knew who would have to
carry the can for that. Occasionally he would light a cigarette and Phyllis
would frantically try every trick she knew to make it look dramatic. Ryeland
came in and offered another round of tea, which was declined, and informed
James that he would be leaving for the afternoon. "Is this okay?" he asked
Phyllis a few minutes later, after clearing the table and beginning to set up
a new break.
"Fine, sure." she said, trying to sound intrigued.
"If not, then there is something else I might be doing."
Phyllis followed James down a long, winding, semi-lit hallway that sloped
for maybe forty-five yards, shooting the entire way.
"I've always wanted to record my dreams," said James with a hint of
resignation, "but you people have made that desire obsolete, haven't you?"
"I'd like to think we augment peoples dreams." said Phyllis, shooting now
at close range, nearly over his shoulders. James stopped suddenly, maybe ten
meters from what appeared to Phyllis to be the end of the corridor. "Oh wait,
one thing I have got to have first, those inner lights? Do they still do
that?" It took Phyllis a few moments to understand what it was he wanted.
"Like in Goelsann's Deduche' Jar" said James.
"Micro-machines?"
"Yes! Can you do that?" He seemed almost childishly enthused by the idea.
"Sure." Phyllis said, halting the shoot. Micro-machines. Oh brother. How
hackneyed can he make this? She knelt again to root through her equipment bag.
"I have to tell you though, they do require you to sign a waiver authorizing a
hypodermic injection. Also," and suddenly the thought of injecting a syringe
full of little paddling chemo-phosphorescent machines into this fey man struck
her as too repulsive for words, "also, you may experience some after-effects
until they are completely flushed out of your system."
"Like?"
"Like headaches and diarrhea."
"That doesn't sound too terrible," he said, the smile fixed on his face.
Phyllis carefully unwrapped a new needle and handed both a pen and the
needle's paper jacket, which doubled as both waiver and warning, to James. He
signed it with short quick stabs.
"What density?" asked Phyllis.
"Pardon?"
"Do you want a few or a lot?" She was crouching and holding the needle
carefully, with both hands.
"Oh, light me up like a Christmas tree, by all means." She took his arm
and slowly administered the machine injection.
He was leaning against a brick wall of the corridor and looking at her with
half-lidded eyes as she fastened a chemo-sensitive lens to the TiarraShot.
"How long have you been doing this?" he asked. Phyllis stood up and
noticed, oddly and for the first time, that she was considerably taller than
James.
"Almost ten years, professionally four." She smiled and raised the camera.
"An old hand. You've seen some weird stuff, I bet." He was smiling and
walking slowly towards the corridors' end.
"Nothing's shocking." She said, following closely.
"That's good because some people might not feel up to recording something I
really want in this." And the room opened up behind him. Phyllis did not feel
well at that moment. Not at all.
She was naked and tied to a rusted metal table with red stockings. Her eyes
were open but un-focused and her hair was a matted brown. She was covered with
scars and uttered streams of non-words, like someone speaking in tongues,
every few moments. "This is a friend of mine, Phyllis. Her name is Alice,"
said James. He circled around the table and looked down at the woman with an
adoring glare. Phyllis had let her bag fall to the floor and the Leico drop to
her chest upon entering the large room but had now raised the camera again,
almost in self defense. The room at the end of the corridor turned out to be
large and rectangular, maybe twelve by twenty meters. One wall was completely
framed glass with a view out into what Phyllis guessed to be the rear
quadrangle of the estate. The ceiling was high, maybe twenty feet. The room
was dimly illuminated on the near side by an arc lamp that stretched from one
wall out over the table. There were several small wooden deck chairs scattered
around the table. It was nearly dark outside and the rain had begun again.
Through the camera James was beginning to glow with the tiny red, blue and
green lights of the micro-machines.
"I'm sort of a medical enthusiast, Phyllis." said James. She noticed, as
she circled around to his side of the table, the small tray of surgical
implements. "I've got some radical ideas in the area."
"So she needs an operation?" said Phyllis, getting weak in the knees, her
voice unsteady.
"Yes, very desperately." He smiled fixedly and looked at Phyllis.
"James," she said lowering the TiarraShot, "there was something in the
tea." She felt the rising edge of panic in her voice. The room seemed to be
the culmination of some deliberate and insidious chain of events. The
implements, her camera, the table and its babbling girl, all felt like props
in a game that was about to end.
"There was something in the tea, yes. Can I begin now?" He ventured a
quick glance at the camera dangling at her neck. Phyllis raised the camera
and un-halted. James was now almost a blazing sheet of white through the lens,
so she reflexively keyed the shutter speed down to avoid retinal burn. He
slowly raised a small cutting tool and leaned over Alice. The first incision
extended along her left side from her neck to just below her ribcage, a tiny
thread of blood following his hand. The girl on the table let out a low moan
and then uttered a small stream of sibilant non-words. Phyllis struggled to
hold the Leico steady, shooting now over James' shoulder. He cut her again,
more deeply this time, a small jet of blood leaping out of her neck and onto
the table. Phyllis let the camera fall and backed quickly away from the table.
"James, this-" she couldn't seem to form words and in her eyes she still saw
the faint ghost of James' blazing silhouette leaning over the table. "I have
to go," she turned, stumbled, and hit glass. The rain was coming down hard and
cold, running down her face. Phyllis felt dizzy, burning with confusion and
slicing pain.
"This thing I'm doing here," James said softly, kneeling in the broken
glass and firmly holding her bleeding arm, "is a dedication." He let go of her
and she watched in fear and bemusement as he ran the scalpel along his wrist.
He took her arm again and pressed his wrist to it.
Phyllis got up unsteadily and walked into the room. Her vision was swimming
and she felt an unbearable nausea. Alice was looking mutely at her from the
table, unblinking.
"If you are feeling ill," said James "we could finish some other time."
Phyllis had spilled her equipment bag by the entrance and was clumsily
packing.
"Yes," she muttered, speech feeling alien and unnatural to her mouth.
She got up, walked over to the glass wall, gave James a half-nod and ducked
out of the broken portion of the window into the rain. She found herself
choking back a sob as she stumbled around the outside of the house through the
downpour, fighting an urge to run. The rain felt like molasses running down
her face. The words and glances of peers reverberated in her head. A cam-tech
was a go-between for star and fanatic, a mere tool of the truly famous, the
elite. They couldn't know that Phyllis had wanted very much to opt out of the
loop. She could scarcely admit it to herself. She remembered her mother's
eyes, the curse that fame denied can really be. She just didn't have it. She
would fail this audition, there was no doubt. "Miss can't Cope..."
He was sitting in a deck chair by the illuminated end of the room,
smoking a cigarette. The girl and the table were gone. Phyllis breathed deeply
and tried to calm the speeding sensation her body was experiencing. D-Lysergic
acid, she told herself, kid's stuff. She silently pressed the camera to the
glass and un-halted. Momentarily James turned and looked at her. She had the
momentary thought that he looked like a vulture but resisted an urge to run
and kept shooting. A smile slowly spread across his thin face.
Welcome aboard. You handle yourself very professionally. I like your
technique. My son is my favorite camera by the way, and he likes you as well.
We'll be in touch. P. Reuters
There were two prints in the package, the first being Ursula's wedding
gift. Phyllis realized she must have left it behind when her bag had spilled.
An attached note chided her for her taste in IM's. Phyllis couldn't seem to
care about that at the moment, and took an immediate inlet into the other
episode. For many minutes the thing made very little sense indeed. A montage
of beautiful, wavering portraits, all vaguely familiar, all with the strangely
vast more real than reality edge every Process episode seemed to possess, but
no evidence of James at all. The thing then segued into a minimal children's
story of a farm girl who loved cats and had a cruel grandmother. The whole
thing somehow was the most astonishing episode she had ever seen but she
couldn't figure out why until the final few moments when the engine seemed to
power down from a spectral, idealized shot of a gigantic urban skyline into
the episode's source material. The final shot was a ghostly, skeletal
treatment of a woman soaked in rain, seen through glass and holding a camera,
treated with some sort of hyper-trophied ray tracing algorithm. The
micro-machines circulating beneath her skin tiny, red sparks.
____________________
She spun with grace and impossible quickness. The gun
skittered across the tar and arched in slow motion off the roof.
"- crazy if you thought you could kill me, Al." said Ursula.
Albert Einstein fell to his knees. He began to cry. "You're
pathetic. I knew your game from the first, and I waited too long
for this, but its going to be a different world from here on
out." Einstein looked slowly up into her eyes and nodded.
______________________________________________________________________________
Steven Schuldt is an undergraduate at the Sterling school of post-cyberpunk
fiction. He is currently majoring in Slipstream studies and working on his
first novel, tentatively titled "Transmission and Grace". He lives in Boston
with his fiance, three cats and a computer.
[email protected]
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
THE HARRISON CHAPTERS "Mike grinned his baiting grin,
waiting for anything that would keep
by Jim Vassilakos Johanes on the line just a few
moments longer. The Draconian
Chapter 12 seemed to read his mind from afar,
sifting implications through the
Copyright(c)1992 pours of Mike's skin."
______________________________________________________________________________
The condo's comm-board continued to beep, muted light from the Sintrivani
sketching dim lines across the white, plaster walls. Cecil curled his lip
into an angry grimace.
"Great hindsight, gatherer."
"Just answer it." Mike added a t-cross with his finger and thumb, an old
gatherer hand-sign, and one of the few which he remembered teaching Cecil. It
usually meant "track" or "follow", but given the proper context, it could mean
"trace". Cecil's cameras bobbed in comprehension as Johanes' image appeared on
the three-vee, a slight nod displaying all the greetings he wished to convey.
Cecil snorted, "Speak of the devil and he shalt come."
"Look, I don't have time to dance the verbal footsie with either of you. I
know that you're probably tracing this call, so just stop me if I start
getting long-winded."
Mike smiled, "Fat chance."
"I'm calling on your behalf, Michael. I realize that right now you probably
think that I'm lower than a swamp slog."
"You could have killed thousands of people, Johanes."
"But I didn't."
"And you tried to set me up. You sacrificed Nicholas. And for all you knew,
that nuke could have gone off in the heart of Xin."
"All true."
Mike shook his head is disbelief, "You don't even care."
"There's a lot at stake, Michael."
"Doomsday?"
"I've already told you far too much."
"Now you have to kill me, I suppose?" Mike grinned his baiting grin,
waiting for anything that would keep Johanes on the line just a few moments
longer. The Draconian seemed to read his mind from afar, sifting implications
through the pours of Mike's skin. He took a deep breath.
"If I wasn't pressed for time, perhaps I would do the honors, but I imagine
the Imps will do a far better job with you."
"Too bad. You could have done us all. Why didn't you?"
"Just do yourself a favor, Michael. Get back to Tizar. Forget about this
story. If you try publishing even half of what you know, it'll be the same as
signing your own execution warrant."
"How many times have I heard that before?"
"This isn't like the other stories. Don't give them a reason to pay you a
visit. It's not worth it."
His face flickered off the depth box as the connection broke, and within a
minute, Mike had dismembered the "bug" from its battery.
"Hmm... didn't self-destruct like the others. Did you trace him?"
Cecil shook his head, "He's a crafty one. He piggy-backed on a remote
dialer. Could have found him, but he dropped the line before it became
apparent."
"Damnit, Cecil! I had him on for how long?!"
"Cecil be sorry." The camera's made a dejected pose. "Got the last of it
recorded from the remote if you're interested. Just didn't think to extend the
trace in time."
"Great hindsight, hacker."
The camera nearest Mike perked sideways like a confused dog trying to see
things from a slightly different perspective: Cecil's way of acknowledging a
turn-about. However, something about its hound-like stance and the crumpled
flimsi in his pants pocket told Mike the chase wasn't over. The comm-address
glittered faintly as Mike flattened the flimsi out on the rug.
"Cecil, I just thought of something."
"Congratulations."
"Spokes managed to trace a call I made him from Gardansa's to a restricted
comm-address."
"So?"
"He was using amplitude logs or something. Can you do the same thing?"
The camera seemed to shrug.
"That could take days."
"I bet you he's at the Arien mansion. Just compare the dialing records to
the mansion and the immediate area around it."
Cecil half-sighed half-grumbled.
"He's not going to be that stupid, Michael. If he doesn't want you to find
him, that's the last place he would go."
"Unless...
Cecil's cameras started rotating in victorious delight as Mike looked out
the window toward Xin.
"...he has an good reason to be there. That was fast. He's inside the
mansion, I take it?"
"You aren't planning on going down there, are you?" The cameras stopped
rejoicing as Vilya's cat pawed at one of them, uncertain as to it's edibility.
"I'd like to know more about the Ariens themselves. They're playing some
part in this, Cecil."
"And probably on both sides of the court, knowing how psyches are."
Mike smirked. It was like Cecil to understate the galaxy's most common
prejudice just to needle him. He was probably baiting for the sort of reaction
that could get them into an hours-long argument. Anything to waste time and
keep Mike from going there. Cecil would simply consider it a friendly favor on
his part.
"I'm going down there. I don't believe Johanes will carry out his threat."
"Well, then say hello to the rioters. Tell them you're a nice neghrali and
maybe they won't hurt you either."
"I doubt I'll see any. Whatever unrest there is in Xin is not being
directed against the Ariens."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, really."
"Anger, once sparked, burns a path toward the most opportunistic form of
release, no matter how malign or misdirected."
"What idiot said that?"
The quote flashed across the three-vee. Below it, "Shattered Eden, Michael
J. Harrison, Tyberian Publications." Mike scratched his head trying to figure
out whether or not Cecil was pulling his leg.
"So I write a lot of stupid things. Big deal."
"What are you going to gain by going there?"
"Maybe I'll be able to talk to Mr. Arien. I met him briefly, the last time
I was here."
"Met him?"
"Okay, Tara met him. I was there."
"Along for the ride."
"Yeah. All right. I don't really expect him to remember me, but if he does,
it could be the break I need."
"Or break you don't need."
"You have a better idea?"
Cecil shrugged, "Investigate from afar. It's less dangerous."
"If I had access to Cindy, I would."
"SNDI? Supernatural Data, Incorporated? You've got it, Michael. What did
you think the Doggie Blitz ran on? Punch cards?"
Mike tried to formulate an appropriate response as Cecil taught him how to
hook into the phone jack. From what he gathered, higher brain functions were
off-limits to all save the super-users or "wizards" as they were called. Mike
considered calling the favor, but he figured that lower-brain would be just
fine as long as he could avoid running into snags. Cecil retired to the
balcony. Outside, the warm, jetting waters of the Sintrivani carried a late
evening crowd high above the dispersed illumination save for the few strands
of blue and purple laser light captured within the misty fog.
"Woof!"
Mike jumped slightly, though the cat seemed neither to notice nor care. The
noise was in his head, no more than an electrical illusion.
"Access. File. Information. Library. Galactic Press."
"...Woof!"
"Does that mean..."
"Woof!"
"Damnit."
"...Woof!"
"Access. File. System. Output parameters. Errors. Command. Set format.
Long."
"...Pant pant."
Mike rubbed the side of his face. For a moment, he could almost smell wet,
sticky, dog breath.
"Very funny."
"...Woof! Illegal command ignored."
"Access. File. System. Output parameters. Errors. Command. Ignore. Keyword
woof."
"...Pant pant."
"Access. File. System. Output messages. Command. Galanglicize. Message.
Most recent."
"...Done."
"Access. Userlog. Current. Command. Find. Username. Spokes."
"...Done."
"Query. Date. Login through logout. Most recent."
"...Insufficient format specification."
"Tora-centric. Positive past. Unit centim. Single decimal."
"96.2 through 71.9."
Mike looked out the window wondering what Spokes was up to. The evening was
hacker time, and Spokes had been gone long enough to make it back to
Xekhasmeno. Long enough to get pulled off the road and molested by locals,
Mike figured.
Cecil was leaning back in a lounge chair, luxuriating in his abstinence
>from the electronic environs as thin layers of warm mist settled over him and
the gleeful screams of children resounded in the distance. He used to say that
he needed the condo to get away from it all. Then, when he was rested, he'd go
back into a little cubicle somewhere and not be seen for days or weeks. It
didn't make a great deal of sense to Mike, but then a lot of things didn't
make much sense. He hoped that Spokes had the same idea. Better isolation than
dislocation.
"Access. File. Information. Library. The Aggressor. Interstellar society
page. Command. Search. Keyword Arien."
"...Insufficient file specification."
"Most recent."
"...Done."
"Say file."
"...Incompatible format error."
"Show file."
A page of the local paper appeared in glowing blue Calannic in front of
Mike's face. Even blinking his eyes refused to dislodge it, and whoever
scanned it into memory hadn't bothered to reduce it into text. Instead, it was
simply an image with a list of keywords attached to it. Sloppy but
cost-efficient.
As he began to scan the first few lines, Mike realized that the article
wasn't about the Arien family at all, but he instantly recognized the picture.
Long, dark hair fell straight along her spine, her sharp, brown eyes watching
the row of black grav-limos rising from a well manicured lawn. The color of
the cars clashed against her white evening dress, her shoulders bare save for
the reflection of headlights on deep, bronzed skin. In the background, a crowd
of people were escaping the Lion's Den. Mike remembered the awards ceremony
all too well. The headline read, "Draconian Ambassador Disappears."
"Cecil!"
"...Illegal command ignored."
"Command. Pause."
Cecil poked his head in.
"What is it?"
"I got something. How do I display this on the three-vee?"
Cecil strolled in, unplugging Mike and plugging himself in with two swift
motions of his wrist. The image appeared on the depth box a moment later.
"You know her?"
Mike nodded, "I met her at an awards banquet just before coming to Calanna.
It looks like this image was taken just after it."
"How did this turn up?"
"It says she was married to..."
Mike read the paragraph again, still shaking off his disbelief.
"...Alister Arien. An unnamed source in the Draconian Embassy blamed the
DSS. I don't believe this."
"Good. The written word is rarely worth believing."
"Why would they kidnap their own ambassador?"
"Cloak and dagger stuff. Conspiracy of hate. You know how it is."
Mike looked up incredulously. His old friend wore a fool's grin, the sort
he'd throw on for guests he was planning on throwing out. Mike stood up,
stepping toward the door.
"You don't buy any of this, do you."
"It's a local rag, Michael. The Aggressor rarely prints anything worth
reading beyond its entertainment value. Too bad Doggie Blitz doesn't carry The
Galactican. But then we'd have to deal with those silly writers' royalties,
not to mention all varieties of interstellar propaganda."
Mike winced, "I'm not biting, Cecil. I have to get to the Arien mansion."
"You already know Cecil's opinion."
"That I'm being hideously stupid?"
The nearest camera nodded, and Cecil sighed.
"Before you go, there's something more you should know."
"Such as?"
"Found something interesting while sifting through the booty from that
android brain."
"Robin?"
"She had some very peculiar orders, Michael. Orders which she had to
consult before deciding to fry you. She was to kill you and Niki upon touch
down and then report to her temporary supervisor for further instructions."
"Clay?"
"A chap by the name of William Walker."
Mike blinked, "Bill?"
"One and the same."
"That doesn't make sense."
"If she recognized him and he had the proper access code, then he could
have gotten inside just like we did tonight. Judging from these orders, he
could have gotten further."
"Why would Clay turn her over to Bill? Why would he send us on this mission
just to kill us?"
Cecil smiled, "A change of plans, perhaps? Now, at least, you and Johanes
might have something interesting to talk about. Give the Draconian Cecil's
warmest regards. Translation: if he blinks, fry him."
____________________
Evening descended into night as Mike approached the outskirts of Xin, his
impatience forcing a speed well beyond the limits proscribed by Calannan law.
Judging from the radio reports, however, he wouldn't have to worry about being
pulled over. The police were most likely busy in the inner city, quelling the
incessant looting and vandalism.
He'd seen riots before. Even in his early youth, he'd learned what to
expect. What made "Shattered Eden" a success wasn't so much the accurate
