Mona Lisa Overdrive

38 - The Factory War (2)

They watched the hover burn from the high window at the end of Gentry's loft. He could hear that same amplified voice now: "You think that 's pretty fucking funny, huh? Hahahahahahaha, so do we! We think you guys are just tons of fucking fun, so now we 're all gonna party!"

Couldn't see anyone, just the flames of the hover.

"We just start walking," Cherry said, close beside him, "take water, some food if you got it." Her eyes were red, her face streaked with tears, but she sounded calm. Too calm, Slick thought. "Come on, Slick, what else we gonna do?"

He glanced back at Gentry, slumped in his chair in front of the holo table, head propped between his hands, staring at the white column that thrust up out of the familiar rainbow jumble of Sprawl cyberspace. Gentry hadn't moved, hadn't said a word, since they'd come back to the loft. The heel of Slick's left boot had left faint dark prints on the floor behind him, Little Bird's blood; he'd stepped in it on his way back across Factory's floor.

Then Gentry spoke: "I couldn't get the others going." He was looking down at the control unit in his lap.

"You need a unit for each one you wanna work," Slick said.

"Time for the Count's advice," Gentry said, tossing Slick the unit.

"I'm not going back in there," Slick said. "You go."

"Don't need to," Gentry said, touching a console on his bench. Bobby the Count appeared on a monitor.

Cherry's eyes widened. "Tell him," she said, "that he's gonna be dead soon. Unless you jack him out of the matrix and stage one quick trip to an intensive care unit. He's dying."

Bobby's face, on the monitor, grew still. The background came sharply into focus: the neck of the iron deer, long grass dappled with white flowers, the broad trunks of ancient trees.

"Hear that, motherfucker?" Cherry yelled. "You're dying! Your lungs are filling up with fluid, your kidneys aren't working, your heart's fucked ... You make me wanna puke!"

"Gentry," Bobby said, his voice coming small and tinny from a little speaker on the side of the monitor, "I don't know what kind of setup you people have there, but I've arranged a little diversion."

"We never checked the bike," Cherry said, her arms around Slick, "we never looked. It might be okay."

"What's that mean, 'arranged a little diversion'?" Pulling back from her, looking at Bobby on the monitor.

"I'm still working it out. I've rerouted a Borg-Ward cargo drone, out of Newark."

Slick broke away from Cherry. "Don't just sit there," he yelled at Gentry, who looked up at Slick and slowly shook his head. Slick felt the first flickers of Korsakov's, minute increments of memory shuddering out of focus.

"He doesn't want to go anywhere," Bobby said. "He's found the Shape. He just wants to see how it all works out, what it is in the end. There's people on their way here. Friends, sort of. They'll get the aleph off your hands. Meantime, I'll do what I can about these assholes."

"I'm not gonna stay here and watch you die," Cherry said.

"Nobody's asking you to. My advice, you get out. Gimme twenty minutes, I'll distract them for you."

Factory never felt emptier.

Little Bird was somewhere on that floor. Slick kept thinking of the tangle of thongs and bones that had hung on Bird's chest, feathers and rusty spring-wind watches with the hands all stopped, each one a different time ... Stupid stringtown shit. But Bird wouldn't be around anymore. Guess I won't be around anymore myself, he thought, leading Cherry down the shaking stairs. Not like before. There wasn't time to move the machines, not without a flatbed and some help, and he figured once he was gone, he'd stay gone. Factory wasn't ever going to feel the same again.

Cherry had four liters of filtered water in a plastic jug, a mesh bag of Burmese peanuts, and five individually sealed portions of Big Ginza freeze-dried soup -- all she'd been able to find in the kitchen. Slick had two sleeping bags, the flashlight, and a ball peen hammer.

It was quiet now, just the sounds of the wind across corrugated metal and the scuff of their boots on concrete.

He wasn't sure where he'd go, himself. He thought he'd take Cherry as far as Marvie's place and leave her there. Then maybe he'd come back, see what was happening with Gentry. She could get a ride out to a rustbelt town in a day or two. She didn't know that, though; all she could think about was leaving. Seemed as scared of having to watch Bobby the Count die on his stretcher as she was of the men outside. But Slick could see that Bobby didn't care much at all, about dying. Maybe he figured he'd just be in there, like that 3Jane. Or maybe he just didn't give a shit; sometimes people got that way.

If he meant to leave for good, he thought, steering Cherry through the dark with his free hand, he'd go in now and have a last look at the Judge and the Witch, the Corpsegrinder and the two Investigators. But this way he'd get Cherry out, then come back ... But he knew as he thought it that it didn't make sense, there wasn't time, but he'd get her out anyway ...

"There's a gap, this side, low down by the floor," he told her. "We'll slide out through there, hope nobody notices ... " She squeezed his hand as he led her through the darkness.

He found the hole by feel, stuffed the sleeping bags through, stuck the ball peen into his belt, lay down on his back, and pulled himself out until his head and chest were through. The sky was low and only marginally lighter than Factory's dark.

He thought he heard a faint drumming of engines, but then it faded.

He worked himself the rest of the way out with his heels and hips and shoulders, then rolled over in the snow.

Something bumped against his foot: Cherry pushing out the water jug. He reached back to take it, and the red firefly lit on the back of his hand. He jerked back and rolled again, as the bullet slammed Factory's wall like a giant's sledge.

A white flare, drifting. Above the Solitude. Faint through the low cloud. Drifting down from the swollen gray flank of the cargo drone, Bobby's diversion. Illuminating the second hover, thirty meters out, and the hooded figure with the rifle ...

The first container struck the ground with a crash, just in front of the hover, and burst, throwing up a cloud of foam packing pellets. The second one, carrying two refrigerators, scored a direct hit, crushing the cab. The hijacked Borg-Ward airship continued to disgorge containers as the flare spun down, fading.

Slick scrambled back through the gap in the wall, leaving the water and the sleeping bags.

Moving fast, in the dark.

He'd lost Cherry. He'd lost the hammer. She must've slid back into Factory when the guy fired his first shot. Last shot, if he'd been under that box when it came down ...

His feet found the ramp into the room where his machines waited. "Cherry?"

He flicked on the flashlight.

The one-armed Judge was centered in the beam. Before the Judge stood a figure with mirrors for eyes, throwing back the light.

"You wanna die?" A woman's voice.

"No ... "

"Light, out."

Darkness. Run ...

"I can see in the dark. You just stuck that flash in your jacket pocket. You look like you still wanna run. I gotta gun on you."

Run?

"Don't even think about it. You ever see a Fujiwara HE flechette? Hits something hard, it goes off. Hits something soft, like most of you, buddy, it goes in, then it goes off. Ten seconds later."

"Why?"

"So you get to think about it."

"You with those guys outside?"

"No. You drop all those stoves 'n'shit on them?"

"No."

"Newmark. Bobby Newmark. I cut a deal tonight. I get somebody together with Bobby Newmark, I get my slate cleaned. You're gonna show me where he is."