Mona Lisa Overdrive

13 - Catwalk

The catwalk groaned and swayed. The stretcher was too wide for the walk's handrails, so they had to keep it chest-high as they inched across, Gentry at the front with his gloved hands clamped around the rails on either side of the sleeper's feet. Slick had the heavy end, the head, with the batteries and all that gear; he could feel Cherry creeping along behind him. He wanted to tell her to get back, that they didn't need her weight on the walk, but somehow he couldn't.

Giving Gentry Kid Afrika's bag of drugs had been a mistake. He didn't know what was in the derm Gentry'd done; he didn't know what had been in Gentry's bloodstream to begin with. Whatever, Gentry'd gone bare-wires crazy and now they were out here on the fucking catwalk, twenty meters over Factory's concrete floor, and Slick was ready to weep with frustration, to scream; he wanted to smash something, anything, but he couldn't let go of the stretcher.

And Gentry's smile, lit up by the glow of the bio-readout taped to the foot of the stretcher, as Gentry took another step backward across the catwalk ...

"O man," Cherry said, her voice like a little girl's, "this is just seriously fucked ... "

Gentry gave the stretcher a sudden impatient tug and Slick almost lost his grip.

"Gentry," Slick said, "I think you better think twice about this."

Gentry had removed his gloves. He held a pair of optic jumpers in either hand, and Slick could see the splitter fittings trembling.

"I mean Kid Afrika's heavy, Gentry. You don't know what you're messing with, you mess with him." This was not, strictly speaking, true, the Kid being, as far as Slick knew, too smart to value revenge. But who the hell knew what Gentry was about to mess with anyway?

"I'm not messing with anything," Gentry said, approaching the stretcher with the jumpers.

"Listen, buddy," Cherry said, "you interrupt his input, you maybe kill 'im; his autonomic nervous system'll go tits-up. Why don't you just stop him?" she asked Slick. "Why don't you just knock him on his ass?"

Slick rubbed his eyes. "Because ... I dunno. Because he's ... Look, Gentry, she's saying it'll maybe kill the poor bastard, you try to tap in. You hear that?"

" 'LF,' " Gentry said, "I heard that." He put the jumpers between his teeth and began to fiddle with one of the connections on the featureless slab above the sleeper's head. His hands had stopped shaking.

"Shit," Cherry said, and gnawed at a knuckle. The connection came away in Gentry's hand. He whipped a jumper into place with his other hand and began to tighten the connection. He smiled around the remaining jumper. "Fuck this," Cherry said, "I'm outa here," but she didn't move.

The man on the stretcher grunted, once, softly. The sound made the hairs stand up on Slick's arms.

The second connection came loose. Gentry inserted the other splitter and began to retighten the fitting.

Cherry went quickly to the foot of the stretcher, knelt to check the readout. "He felt it," she said, looking up at Gentry, "but his signs look okay ... "

Gentry turned to his consoles. Slick watched as he jacked the jumpers into position. Maybe, he thought, it was going to work out; Gentry would crash soon, and they'd have to leave the stretcher up here until he could get Little Bird and Cherry to help him get it back across the catwalk. But Gentry was just so crazy, probably he should try to get the drugs back, or some of them anyway, get things back to normal ...

"I can only believe," Gentry said, "that this was predetermined. Prefigured by the form of my previous work. I wouldn't pretend to understand how that might be, but ours is not to question why, is it, Slick Henry?" He tapped out a sequence on one of his keyboards. "Have you ever considered the relationship of clinical paranoia to the phenomenon of religious conversion?"

"What's he talking about?" Cherry asked.

Slick glumly shook his head. If he said anything, it would only encourage Gentry's craziness.

Now Gentry went to the big display unit, the projection table. "There are worlds within worlds," he said. "Macrocosm, microcosm. We carried an entire universe across a bridge tonight, and that which is above is like that below ... It was obvious, of course, that such things must exist, but I'd not dared to hope ... " He glanced coyly back at them over a black-beaded shoulder. "And now," he said, "we'll see the shape of the little universe our guest's gone voyaging in. And in that form, Slick Henry, I'll see ... "

He touched the power stud at the edge of the holo table. And screamed.