going But you know, even here, those little nano repair stations--everybody's
using them. I just don't know how we're going to do it. Al's his uncle. It's
nice how everybody helps everybody else here."
And nice how A1 doesn't have to pay much in the way of specie to his nephew's
.i
girlfriend.
;,:i
Giffey makes up his mind. Yvonne deserves better than she's getting, at
I
least for the short term. He strongly suspects she's never been in bed with a
man who knows anything besides the standard plumbing specs.
/ SLANT 55
"What?" She seems ready to take offense.
"You're smart, you could help A1 turn this place around if he'd just listen
to you..." All of this, Giffey knows, is both true and has seldom if ever been
said to her. "Besides, you're a true beauty."
Yvonne reacts as she must to that signal word, beauty. She's suspicious. She
starts to get up. The red on her cheeks is pale but genuine.
"Sorry," Giffey says. "I'm just too damned blunt. I speak my mind. If you
have to get back to work..."
Yvonne looks around. The Bullpen is truly, proudly empty. She sits again
and stares ar him, hard. "You're throwing me a line, aren't you?"
Giffey laughs. He has a good, solid laugh. Yvonne blushes again at her
unintentional double entendre.
"Was that well put, or what?" he asks.
"Damn you," she says, not unkindly.
"I'm not a youngster and nobody calls me handsome, and I still like the
attention of a beautiful woman," Giffey says. "I am an honorable man, in my
way. And the truth is, I'm lonely. I'd be proud to buy you a good dinner
someplace at six or seven this evening and listen some more."
Yvonne considers this with half-defensive bemusement, and then turns aside
to do her inner calculations, hide all the whirrings and turnings of her centers
of sexual judgment.
Then comes the downward glance at the table. All her current figures tot
up to a big dull zero. Jack's figures come in. marginally above that. Giffey's
been through it many times before. He has never been an instant heartthrob,
but he has rarely failed to impress a woman upon more extended acquaintance.
"All right," Yvonne says. "You'd better eat that good sandwich, Jack."
"I will," Jack says.
"Make it seven. I'll meet you on the corner of Constitution and Divinity. I
have a dress I want to finish."
"Seven." He takes his first bite of the sandwich, and Yvonne goes away
without a backward glance.
He gives her even odds of showing up. It's going to be cold in Moscow at
seven tonight.
Do you remember?
Fibes and satlinks, all the dataflow river, used to be called the Media and the
Internet. Slow and primitive, but the shape was clear from the beginning. You
can poke all the way back up the tributaries to the Internet Archives, and catch
holo snaps of the Sour Decades... Frozen in time, the murmurings and mutterings
of tens of millions of folks now mostly dead, all their little opinions, and so many of them
unknown to us, even today. Because they preferred to hide, to remain anonymous, to
56
GRFG BEAR
Not so different now, but as with everything else, anonymity is wrapped around and
around with provisions and safeguards, all paid for in higher fees. With the Internet
went the last Free Lunch of the rude, crude, highly energetic First Dataflow Culture.
rathe U.S. Government Digiman on Dataflow Economics,
56" Revision, 2052
7 Y / N ?
The afternoon air is crisp in the hills. A few clouds build to the south. Alice
thumbs her pad for the time. "Fourteen thirty-one," it murmurs in the pocket
of her long black coat. Wind is coming around in a whorl and will sweep rain
and perhaps snow over the southern sound by seven this evening. She does not
for most of her life.
The shuttle drops her half a block from her house and she walks the rest of
the way, hands buried in pockets, collar pulled up around her neck.
Alice feels a deep ache unattached to anything specific, except perhaps
Twist's voice, or Minstrel's problems with his boyfriend. Her social group
has always been royal disorder in motion, and that's often meant something
positive. Alice has always claimed that a year in her life held the entertainment
of ten years in anyone else's; but if that is true, Twist can double on
Alice.
She likes seeing herself in the ox, does not particularly like having
iusr parrs of her mental backside displayed for convincing detail. She enjoys
dominating, not supplementing. Being on the down spin is simply
not something she has ever planned for. And from her skedj it looks as if
she will be down for some time to come. She is not skedjed for any corporeal
appearances, interviews, or vid whatsoever, and of course, very little
on the Yox.
Francis is it.
"Maybe I'll read the Faerie Qeene tonight," she tells herself as the door to
her house recognizes her and opens. The house isa quaint century-old framer
with brick accents. She has re-done the interior twice and it is small and spare
and comfortable, a good place to simply lie back and not think.
But the house monitor has a message. It's from her temp rep, and it's flagged
Urgent--might be more work--so she returns the touch as she slips out of
her coat. She catches Lisa Pauli in and available.
Lisa's utxer torso and head flick into view over the kitchen pad. She has
/ SLANT 57
small precise eyes and an amused mouth set in a triangular face. "How was
Francis, honey?" Lisa asks without any preliminaries.
"The usual," Alice says. "Being an artiste."
"Yin looking for more Yox body work, believe me, honey," Lisa says. "Vid
pays nothing these days; it's abso neg. I hate psynthe, but that's what they're
asking for. However... I've got something for you for this evening. I wouldn't
just throw any call-in to you... But this one sounds intriguing."
For a moment, Alice is too shocked and hurt to be angry. "A
Lisa blinks. "Excellent money. I'll halve our commission on this one. Fifteen,
honey. Jackie says you'll be doing our branch a real favor. Can't say who it is--you
won't even know after you've done your job--but it's high comb, spin
sosh, and it's a max four-hour engagement, bonded. It's no worse than a live
show, honey, you know that."
"I haven't done a live show in seven years," Alice says, her chin starting
to quiver. She hates having a glass soul, especially in front of Lisa, but.., a call-in.f
She did call-ins for six months when she was a teenager. That was all supposed
to stop with being on the sly spin in vids and Yox.
"It's getting tough, honey," Lisa says.
"I don't do call-ins," Alice says.
"The agency has gotten three jobs for you in the past six months, all with
Francis, and honey, Francis is going nowhere soonest. We can't bond your bills
and back your medical without some roll-in. Your credit is dregged, honey."
Lisa's face, as always, manages to be sympath
etic, with that slight upward
curl of smile, those wise eyes sharpened by the natural yellow-green of her
pupils.
"You don't rep call-ins," Alice says. "I mean, how did you get this, and
why are you even handling it?"
"I won't tell the whole story, but I've done a good pimp's tegwork--let's
be straight, I know what I'm asking of you, honey. It's a male. He's alone. He
asked for you specifically. He's a big fan of yours---seen all your vials. He has
good connections, I'm told, and the agency vets him."
"Do you know who he is?"
"No."
"I suppose he'll ask me to marry him?" Alice says, holding her fingers to
her chin, feeling the sting in her eyes.
"This is not mandatory, honey. We never do that."
Alice knows Lisa's expressions very well by now. Lisa has repped Alice at
Wellspring Temp for eight years, taking her on after her first rep moved up
from show business to corp relations.
Call-ins are legal in forty-seven states, tolerated in all fifty-two, and in Rim
nations it's even rated in travel guides. But it's strictly entry-level work, a real
slide, and there's something else about it she does not like.
58 GREG BEAR
Lately she has been enjoying the illusion of choosing her work partners--
on the few occasions she's worked at all.
"How soon?"
"He wants a confirmation by four."
"He's bonded?"
"I wouldn't touch this without a bond. You know that."
"Yeah. I know. His apt?"
"It's plush, I understand. Should be very entertaining."
Alice closes her eyes, considers. She had hoped for a quiet night and time
to think. "What's my share?"
"I'm guessing your cut will be seventy-five if we sink the hook and tug."
Seventy-five grand could pull her credit out of the pit and pay for several
months of toe-twiddling. Alice tries not to look inward. She puts on her Face--the
Alice that is always tough-minded and competent and unperturbed, who
has in fact done worse things, who is realistic about careers and what it takes
to realize long-term goals--and says to Lisa, "Well, we already know what I
am. Tug hard."
Lisa smiles, but to Alice it is apparent she is not overjoyed.
"What's with you?" Alice asks, suddenly brittle. "Should I turn it down?"
"No, honey," Lisa says. "It's honest work."
"Lisa, I need your bond on this. You will never ask me to do this again, and
you'll try your damnedest to get me meetings with rea/producers, not just
Yox fiockers."
"You got it," Lisa said, then gives Alice that abrupt moment of silence that
indicates the touch, she hopes, isfini, and there is so much more for her to do
e this day.
"Feed my monitor some directions," Alice says.
"No need. You'll be picked up at seven-thirty and dropped off by twelve-
thirty."
"He knows my address but I don't even know who he is?"
"We know your address, honey," Lisa says. "It's an agency limo. The ride's
on us. Bye."
Alice closes the touch and stands in the kitchen, tapping her lips with her
finger. A slippery wash of emotion obscures her sight. Her eyes lose their focus
and time blanks. She is thinking of being very young and determined. Nobody
got in her way back then; men and a few women she took as they came along for
whatever she needed, money or brief desire. She remembers the looks on their
faces when she discarded them, no longer amusing or needed. She developed so
many ways, creative techniques--an art in itselfof pushing men away, boy
ish men really just bigger children with their hearts written on their faces, older
men with their money and prestige buying things their looks could not, and
here she is back again, but without the controls and techniques.
et-- I I,
nc rhne wears: or rather, it
has
been
plucked
/
SLANT 59
The irony is, she is nowhere near old. She is twenty-nine. Below her skin,
however, if sex gauges years, she has lived centuries; she is a wrinkled and
fragile mummy husk.
"Bullshit," she says and shakes her arms out. "It's just another dance."
She knows the steps. She can do it in her sleep.
8 ZERO-SUM
Jack Giffey takes the alcohol-powered bus across Moscow to the east. The bus's
fumes smells like a bad drunk and the seats are almost empty; an older woman
and a young boy in her charge ride toward the front. The woman turns to steal
a suspicious look at him over the back of her bench. He smiles politely, but
he is thinking about Omphalos and his thoughts are far from polite. He hates
Omphalos with a passion even he does not understand. It's not a class sort of
thing; he doesn't envy the rich, he doesn't want to live forever, and he certainly
doesn't want to be holed up in a fancy icebox until the end of time. It's deeper.
He tamps down his irritation and leans over to see through the armored slit
windows. Some of the more out-of-control Ruggers like to take potshots at
public transportation; the legislature can't bring itself to control them, since
that would trample on individual freedoms. There is probably not a bus or
public conveyance in Green Idaho that hasn't been ventilated by a few bullets.
Just boys having fun.
Giffey thinks the bastard separatist republic has maybe two more years
before it falls apart and accepts federal troops to restore order. He will not be
sorry to see it go.
A few trees and some fields with horses in them are passing now; they're
on the 43 Loop outside of town. He's been here once before, at night, under a
tarp in the back of a pickup that also smelled of crude ethanol. But this time
the old ranch house has been described in detail.
His stop is coming in a mile or so. He prepares himself to consort with a
few very necessary loons. Giffey is not fond of weapons; but to break into
Omphalos and have any hope of surviving, he must work with men who dearly
love them. To these men, guns and bombs and more extreme weapons are a
necessity; women, pit stops, and food are simply unavoidable annoyances on
the road to fondling a shapely new piece of steel.
Giffey tugs the cord and the bus slows to let him off. The highway is met
by a bumpy gravel road. The ranch house is about a mile beyond. He stands
by the door.
"I'll need a pickup at four, back to Moscow," he tells the driver, a young
60 GREG BEAR
The young man nods solemnly and opens the door. Giffey looks back with a
quick grin at the boy and the woman, then steps down to the gravel. The bus
farts a sweet corn-liquor cloud of unburned fuel and grumbles back on to the
road.
Giffey shields his eyes against the fumes. He looks up in time to see the
boy's eyes peering at him through a slit, curious at the man getting off in the
middle of nowhere.
Giffey pulls out his pad and punches in a satlink number. A hoarse voice
answers, "Hello?"
"It's me, Giffey."
"Do I have to send a truck?"
"Just let your guards know I'm coming."
"They know."
Giffey closes the link and starts walking. Fifteen minutes later, he stands
at a fence sixty yards from an old brick and frame house on the edge of two
hundred acres of fallow grassland. The house needs paint and a new roof and
foundation work. A man steps out on the stoop in front of the snow porch and
waves for him to come in.
The inside of the house smells like Cuban cigarettes and stale beer. Four
men stand with hands in pockets in what might be called a living room.
They've expressed a willingness to take his money, give him supplies and tell
him some of what he needs to know. Giffey shakes hands all around.
One of the four has been corresponding with Giffey for two months; he's
Ken Jenner, a beardless thin fellow with pale blue eyes and yellow bee-fuzz on
a scalp that moves when he wrinkles his forehead. Giffey regards that scalp
with wonder whenever Jenner looks away; he does not know if he likes working
with a man with a scalp like that; that scalp is almost prehensile. Still, Jenner
comes highly recommended; he's an ex-G1 with expertise in weapons more
extreme than any of Green Idaho's citizens will ever fondle.
The other three are not remarkable. The oldest is about Giffey's age though
not as well preserved, probably because of a bad drinking and smoking habit.
His face is pale but covered with fine wrinkles. Thin purple and red rivers map