Synners

25

Manny's head was pounding. Not thirty minutes back to work after his own procedure and he'd had to have that headline, of all things, jump out at him from the dataline, with a notation from Mirisch: Find out about this!

He was half tempted to leave his own message for the Great Grey Executive: Find out about it yourself! But he didn't need that kind of trouble with everything else he had to think about. He had to write up a dismissal notice for the Beater; good thing they hadn't had to waste sockets on him, and good riddance. He had to check on the hacker in the penthouse, make sure he'd been kept dosed enough to be unambitious but not so toxed that any damage had been done. Maybe another interrogation, with something stronger this time. None of the names Manny had gotten out of him under the influence had surfaced, and if at least some of them didn't show soon, the cops were going to drop them.

Maybe that was best; more than a couple of hackers together, and they'd start plotting to take over the world. Maybe it would be enough just to get the one he already had drilled and get him working on security. If he could turn the kid all the way around, Diversifications would be airtight, completely closed to any break-ins-and at the same time, no employee system would be completely locked to him, either.

But first, Travis. The red-haired doctor must have been sitting by the phone; there was half a ring, and then Travis's face was looking out at him through the screen, haggard and pale, as if he'd been up for days. The scene around him was definitely not his office.

"I tried to keep it quiet," Travis said before Manny could speak. "You'll be happy to know almost nothing of the real story got out. Anybody who saw anything's been paid off, including the cops, although we had to get one of them a new, higher-paying job before she was completely satisfied." Travis stepped aside; behind him was a table with a sheet covering what was obviously two bodies.

"What happened?" Manny asked, his voice flat.

Travis looked even grimmer. "They had a stroke. Which is to say, they each had the same one." He reached over and threw the sheet back.

Joslin and Galen nude was a sight every bit as revolting as Manny had ever imagined, with the added feature that their faces seemed to have been dipped in blood. He looked away from the screen.

"No, look at this," Travis demanded, and adjusted the lens on his end. It zoomed in on their heads. Manny's stomach did a slow forward roll.

The wires connecting Joslin to Galen-Galen to Joslin?- were an incomprehensible snarl. There looked to be too many of them, more wires than there were sockets to accommodate them. Travis kept the lens on them for a long time and then retracted it, moving into the center and mercifully obscuring the sight.

"That's all there was, just the wires," Travis said. "Connecting them directly to each other. Wires, and blood, and piss, and shit. Just the way the hotel maid found them."

Manny massaged his forehead. "And did the maid understand what she'd seen?"

"You bet she did. She's saving for mod school." Travis's mouth twitched. "We're giving her sockets next week-our treat, of course-and sending her off to a prestigious school in Hawaii, also our treat. A congenial practice on Oahu will be waiting to take her when she finishes."

"Did you think of giving her sockets and clearing out some old useless memories taking up a lot of space that could be put to better use?"

Travis's disgust came through clearly. "If it were that simple, you'd never have gotten this legalized in the States. I don't have time to explain the complexities of memory storage, so just take my word for it, Mr. Rivera, that it could not be done without removing a number of other memories, and we don't yet know enough to be able to plant screen memories to cover it. And even if we did, I would refuse to take that kind of responsibility."

He wiped a palm back and forth across his lips in a harsh movement. "But we kept that part of it out of the media. What they were doing." Travis glanced over his shoulder at the still uncovered bodies. "Mindfucking, I guess you'd call it. Apparently they used to do it hooked into hardware to save the images. We found quite a library of chips in their room, which have since been removed and purged. I had a look at some of them. It's amazing, really, what can walk around upright, let alone manipulate technology."

Travis was losing it, Manny thought. The idea was enough to make him feel a little panicky himself. "We've known for some time they weren't the healthiest people around," he said placatingly. "I'm sure if you look at the specs of her brain-"

"It's not a matter of sick," Travis said. "It's a matter of… being alien. Another person's mind can be an alien thing, if you approach it just right. Or just wrong. But we were talking about how they died, weren't we?

"Stroke. Did I say that? The fact is, I can't tell you what it was. Global malfunction. Intercranial meltdown. System failure. Their brains just… went. I can't tell from the scans who went first, or why, and personally I don't think it matters. As to why, I'd say that certain ideas can be hazardous to your health, real hazardous, Mr. Rivera. If you can get an ulcer, why not a cerebral vascular accident, or all-out nuked?" He gazed into the screen, chin lifted defiantly, as if daring Manny to argue with him. "Are you coming down to take care of this?"

"You can take care of it," Manny said quietly. "Just get rid of the bodies. That's all you have to do. We'll handle the media."

"I thought we might remove the brains-what's left of the brains-and study them," Travis said, his voice suddenly dry and pedantic. "Since this is the first case we know of where two brains have been directly linked, without the hardware."

"Do what you feel you have to do-" Manny started.

"I personally favor burning the brains, pouring the ashes into a deep hole, and salting the earth above them so that nothing can grow there."

"That's enough!" Manny snapped. "You're supposed to be transferring the operation over to the Mexican government and training their doctors. Get a grip on yourself. I don't care if you found chips recreating Krafft-Ebing out of the Marquis de Sade. For all you know they died as soon as they stuck the wires in their heads, from the misuse of the hardware and not from any weird ideas any of them had."

Travis laughed humorlessly. "You didn't see the chips."

"And I don't need to. All I need to do is take care of my end while you take care of yours."

"We really should study these connections," Travis said, turning pedantic again. "To see exactly how she altered them. I'd like to know, just for my own curiosity, what she did to set up two-way communication without hardware intervention. Without more hardware intervention, I should say. I don't want to know, but as a scientist, I should know. You can't let these things get by you."

"We're putting warning labels on all the equipment," Manny said, managing to sound far more serene than he felt. "Misuse of hardware and unauthorized alterations could prove hazardous and blah-blah-blah. We were doing that anyway, but nobody needs to know what can happen if they disregard the warnings. Are you up to the job right now?"

Travis leaned forward. "Going to move me out, retire me, send me to some lab where I'll be too sheltered to leak?"

"Perhaps you're feeling overly stressed from the responsibility and the work load and all the VIPs and the media traipsing through, that's all," Manny said evenly. "But I need your expertise right now, and if you can't supply it, give me someone who can."

Travis's shoulders slumped as all the tension drained out of his face. Manny could see the man's professional reflexes kick in as they discussed who at the installation should be let in on the Joslin-Galen fiasco and what kind of new cover story should be released to the media. By the time Manny finished with him, he seemed refocused, back in control, though with an occasional glimmer of suppressed emotion.

Manny himself felt half-drained, in need of another week of R amp;R. He started to make notes on a new media release explaining that Joslin had died of "natural causes" and Galen had killed himself out of grief for his lost beloved. It removed the hint of instability on Joslin's part, something they didn't need to have associated with the person who had invented brain sockets.

Five minutes later his emailbox alarm beeped, showing a new message from Mirisch. Manny put it on-screen.

Just wish we could have screened these videos before their release-M.

Manny had the distinct sensation of his heart hitting the top of his stomach. He brought up the review and release queues and watched in horror as the listings shifted from review to release like a little parade of data-soldiers in lockstep. Cursing himself, he froze the process immediately, managed to call two items back from the bottom of the release queue, and then just sat at his desk trying not to hyperventilate.

If the Upstairs Team got wind of this, he'd be preceding the Beater out the door. Not just out the door but probably into court-it wouldn't be the first time a company successfully sued an employee who faked a job by automating it. His panic lessened slightly when he saw there was still a handful of items in the review queue, a few short commercial spots, and a couple of videos, both Visual Mark's.

A moment later his heart went into turbo-charged overdrive again. Even automated, it should not have happened. He had to call an item out of the review queue, review it-screen it -and then dispose of it, either letting the program release it automatically, or releasing it himself. And even then the process was not self-perpetuating-he had to order it to deliver another item from the review queue. It should not have been able to continue by itself. But then, it should not have been able to start-

His heart was banging as if it were trying to bludgeon its way out of his chest. That little bastard in the penthouse. The son of a bitch had not only hacked him but infected him with some kind of virus. Had to be. If the little shit had been able to worm his way into Ludovic's area, then he could get in anywhere, and he'd just fucked around with the program until he'd kicked it into motion. And then planted his little virus. Obviously the dosage in his food was no longer strong enough-if the Upstairs Team found out-

Anxiety attack, he thought, left mesial temporal lobe. Travis would probably enjoy studying this. Especially now.

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe normally through the pain in his chest. Bad day, he repeated over and over to himself like a mantra. Bad day, bad day, badday, badday, badday…

Eventually the pain began to recede, giving ground by the slow half inch. He was almost back to normal when the pounding on the door started.

"Rivera, you motherfucker, I know you're in there!"

He groaned. Aiesi. The only person in the world who would ignore a Sealed for Privacy notice. He thumbed the speaker pad.

"This had better be important. I'm too busy to be at the beck and call of every employee with a problem."

She pounded on the door again, and he unsealed. Under normal circumstances he'd have just called security and let them deal with her. But then she might have just jumped off the terrace again.

She strode in, planted her fists on his desk, and leaned into his face. "You're gonna be too busy to live if you don't do something about Mark. He's fucked."

He gave her his standard antiprofanity wince to remind her of what an animal he thought she was. "Your friend is doing fine, according to all the reports. He's producing well above what we expected, and he's adapted beautifully, the doctors say-"

"Yah, your fuckin' butchers on your payroll. They'd certify a chuck roast if you told them to. You pull in a cold one, or I will."

"Pardon?" he said politely. "A 'cold one'?"

She straightened up and put her big fists on her hips. "A neurosurgeon from the outside. Someone who ain't in on it, who ain't standing around waiting to profit on the big fucking breakthrough."

Manny gave a short, refined laugh. "I'm afraid Diversifications' insurance plan doesn't cover consultations outside our own staff except in the case of grave emergencies needing a particular kind of specialist."

"Bill me."

"You don't have that kind of credit. Ms. Aiesi. I think you'd do better to spend some extra time on-line yourself, to get a better feel of how the system works. Your output, to be frank, hasn't been as high as we'd hoped." He actually had no idea of what her output was, but it was a good standard speech for heading off troublesome employees at the pass.

"Don't output me, I've had enough of your horseshit. You won't get a cold one in here, I'll fucking do it."

"No, you won't," he said cordially. "No doctor will examine another doctor's patient unless the patient him- or herself requests it. I don't think Mark is going to do that."

She glared at him. "I'll find a way. I will fucking find a way, and then I'm gonna nail your ass up in court-you, and your head-drillers, and this whole fucking shithole."

"I see." Manny sat forward and folded his hands on his desk. "Are you through now? Because if you are, I'd like to point some things out to you. Generally this is not how we address our superiors here. If you do it again, you'll be subject to discipline. Your whole outburst makes you subject to discipline, but I'm going to let it go because you're obviously overwrought for some reason-"

"Wow. The quality of mercy just ain't fucking strained with you, is it?" She looked at him incredulously. "Thanks for the big fucking break, I'd just hate to see this on my permanent fucking record, that just makes my shit run loose." She turned and marched out.

The door resealed behind her, and Manny waited tensely for the phone to buzz with a new crisis. It would be only too appropriate. After a few minutes of blessed quiet, he let himself relax. Apparently it was over for the day, over for the bad day. And all bad days always came to an end.

He called up a list of the released material and prepared to skim through each item, in case the Upstairs Team decided to pop-quiz him on it. If they did, he'd just tell them he'd reviewed most of the stuff prior to getting his sockets and sent it to release sequentially so as not to overload the area. None of them had the expertise to prove otherwise. Then he could screen what was left in the review queue, either later today or early tomorrow. For now, though, he would leave it frozen.

He skimmed the commercials first and found nothing that made him wince unduly. There were a few things he'd have sent back for a little fixing, but no disasters he'd have to live down or explain in full.

For the videos he went to the high-res thirty-six-inch screen in the wall behind him. The first one he tossed up was one of Aiesi's, something with a group called Canadaytime. He shook his head at the silly name. Diversifications was going to sound like it was putting out word salad. After a few minutes he used the remote to cut it off and go on to the next one.

Sometime later he became aware that he was staring at a blank screen. Dazed, he swiveled around to his desk to do something and realized he had no idea what he was going to do. He glanced at the desktop monitor. Play completed, said the plain white letters, and underneath, Actions Menu: replay, next, exit?

He turned and looked at the big screen again, frowning. His head felt foggy, as if he'd dozed off. It must have been one hell of a boring series of rock videos if it had put him to sleep.

Manny tried to remember what he'd seen, but the only thing that came to mind were vague shapes moving rhythmically. More tired than he'd realized, he thought, too much the first day back.

Abruptly he found himself standing up behind his desk, rubbing one eye to the point of soreness. Damn, but he needed a rest already, from obnoxious rock'n'roll animals and a certain hacker who was too smart for his own good.

Which reminded him-what was he going to do about that little bastard? He could go up and confront him and see where that would lead, or he could let him stew for a couple of days, worrying about what would happen, maybe let him get confident enough so that he cracked in again, but this time to a hot reception, Manny catching him in the act. And then see where that would lead. Threatening to revoke the reparation contract and having him remanded to prison could make him compliant.

The little shit. The little brass-balled cock-knocker. Screw him, why let him have even one more moment of feeling confident? He sat down and banged out a short, pointed message on the keyboard and zapped it up to the penthouse. Sweat, you son of a bitch, sweat and suffer all night, Manny thought, so that when I get around to you tomorrow, you'll be the shivering little turd you ought to be.

Immanuel, when did you get so mean?

It seemed to be his father's voice speaking in his head, a voice he had not heard for years, and it took him by surprise. His father had been proud of his ambition, but his father had also been dead for close to twenty-five years, since before he had graduated high school.

Correct. His father had never seen him as an adult. The flush of dismay hit him hard, making his mind spin with confusion. Just trying to get ahead… it takes a lot just trying to outswim the pack and get ahead…

We've got everything but the heads.

The thought of Joslin was a rancid taste in his mouth.

Hackers and freaked-out vivisectors and berserk rock'n'roll animals all around, an onslaught of human craziness, and what isn't crazy is almost too limp to produce, that's how I got so mean, Father, and it would make you mean, too, if you had to do what I do.

He became aware that he was whispering aloud, and a new wave of exhaustion swept through him. Too much, too fast, he thought. He would worry about everything tomorrow, includ ing the kid in the penthouse. If he had the nerve to crack in again after getting Manny's message, that would only provide extra proof that he was intractable and unrepentant. If Diversifications couldn't handle him, the courts would, and any lost data would come out of his hide one way or another.

He paused and marked the videos for a second review with full sockets before shutting the console down. If they were so bad that they'd put him to sleep, he would have to be as familiar with them as possible in case the Upstairs Team wanted him to explain why he thought they were good enough to release. Reviewing them socketed and on-line, he shouldn't have much trouble staying awake for them, he decided.

If he had not stopped to take a little refreshment in the empty Common Room, he might have made it out the door before Security called him.

Gabe could hear her yelling as soon as he stepped into the hall. It was coming not from her pit, but from the one at the end of the hall. Visual Mark's. The door was open.

For a moment he wavered. The last time he'd talked to Gina hadn't exactly been an unqualified success, and she probably wouldn't welcome his intervention. Go back to your jampot. He was deluded thinking he could do anything for her, or for that matter, for himself.

"He's out of fucking control!" Gina was yelling. "You get him outa there-"

"Hey," said a soft voice behind him.

He turned. The tall thin man in the weird patterning cape was standing in one of the open elevators, holding the doors apart. The cape was thrown back so that he couldn't see most of it, but there seemed to be oddly shaped shadows pulsing all over it in a rhythm Gabe found immediately discomfiting. He tried to block out the sight without looking away from the man's face and then wasn't sure he wanted to look at the man, either. His expression was a peculiar mix of helplessness and something that Gabe would normally have identified as lust.

"You tell them," the man said, "I took the video mainline, and the hardline is, I've seen the stranger on the stony shore." He stepped back and let the elevator doors snap shut.

Gabe blinked, wondering what the hell had just happened, and went down the hall to Mark's open door.

Two of the implant doctors from the infirmary were standing on one side of Mark's inert body, and Gina was standing on the other, still shouting.

"He doesn't get up, he doesn't move around, he doesn't leave this place, he just lays there on that fucking mat jacking off!"

"We've told you, Ms. Aiesi," said the taller doctor, an edge creeping into her voice, "that the readings for Mark when he is connected to the system are quite normal for him. His vitals have always sunk dramatically-"

"Not always-"

"-it's just the way his body has chosen to handle it, and it's nothing more than a manifestation of the same nature as a fakir-"

"Fuck your fakir-"

The second doctor put up her hand. Neither of them was the doctor who had treated him the day Gina had hit him; Gabe wondered what had happened to her. "We can't force him to disconnect without possibly doing him grave harm-"

"This is his fucking grave!" Gina pointed at the console. "This whole fucking pit's a tomb-"

Gabe drew back a little from the doorway, craning his neck. The figure curled up in the fetal position on the mat looked sick in some way, but Mark had always looked sick to him.

"-records do not show that Mark has been continuously on-line," the first doctor was saying.

"Your fucking records are fucking wrong, he did something to them. He told me himself he's not in his body anymore-"

"That's a fanciful way for an imaginative individual like Mark to put it-"

"Fancy this, lady." Gina doubled up a fist.

"That's enough," said the shorter doctor, putting up her hands and taking a step back. "This isn't a bar, we're not interested in brawling with you."

"You can't tell me this is normal."

The figure on the mat stretched out suddenly with a yawn. Gina jumped as Mark rolled over onto his back and opened his eyes.

"Hey," he said softly, "is this the mainline or the hardline?" Gabe frowned. I took the video mainline. And the hardline is…

"Get those fucking wires out of your head," Gina ordered him, "and get up."

He looked around and saw the doctors. "Is something wrong?" he asked, raising himself on one elbow.

"Not that we can tell," said the shorter doctor cordially. "How are you feeling?"

Mark's mouth stretched in a smile. "Never better. I'm doing a lot of work."

Something funny about the voice, Gabe thought. He sounded too-Gabe groped for a term. Coherent?

"Have you experienced any symptoms you would like to talk to us about?"

"Make him take those fucking wires out," Gina demanded. Her dreadlocks were practically bristling visibly.

"Not now, Gina," Mark said patiently. "I'm working on a video."

The shorter doctor made a polite, indulgent noise. "Well, when you're through, you might have a word with your friend here. She seems to think you're working too hard and that you haven't been off-line in an abnormally long time."

Mark gave a short, flat laugh. "I'm real busy. Got everything I need here." He lay down and curled up again as the doctors headed for the lift. Gabe slipped out into the hall.

"You get your asses back here!" Gina yelled after them. "You can't tell me that's fucking normal! That wasn't him, that was some goddamn program or something, he's a fucking zombie-"

"Ms. Aiesi, we'll continue to monitor his vitals, but that's all we can do-"

"His fucking brain wave's abnormal!" Gina shouted. "It's abnormal and you know it!"

Gabe moved farther up the hall as he heard the lift reach the catwalk. "Considering the life you and your friend have lived, of course it's abnormal. But it's well within an acceptable range, allowing for the changes wrought by the implants."

"Bullshit!"

Gabe winced for her. Eloquence always deserted her at the wrong time. He fled back up to his own door and opened it as if he were just going in. The doctors emerged and came up the hall together, looking resolute and professional. They nodded to him, and he nodded back, staring after them and wondering if they also had sockets. He couldn't remember ever having seen them before, not even after his own procedure.

As soon as they were gone, he went back down the hall to Mark's pit. Gina was still standing over him, head bowed, hugging herself. Gabe felt a sudden flash of anger at Mark and then at her without really knowing why. He brushed it aside. "I heard all that," he said.

The fierce expression she turned up to him faded quickly. He took that as a good sign and went down to her.

"I didn't hear it all," he added, "but most of it. And I saw when he woke up and talked. He didn't sound right. But you didn't sound right to me, either, when you did it."

She shrugged. "Nobody cares but me, and he doesn't want me to care." She nudged Mark's back with the toe of her boot. "I oughta just say fuck it, if this is what he wants, it's what he wants."

Impulsively Gabe took her by the arm and led her to the lift, surprised when she didn't pull away from him. "Maybe we ought to get an outside doctor," he said as they went up to the catwalk together.

"I tried that," she said wearily. "Rivera'll block it. I figured I'd just try to get somebody's attention here."

"Well, there's something else," he said. "That guy in the cape that changes all the time-"

"Valjean," she said irritably, striding out into the hall ahead of him.

"Him. I saw him just a few minutes ago, here. He was on the elevator, and he told me to tell you, or them, or somebody something about the mainline and the hardline."

Gina stopped to frown at him. "What?"

"I know, that's something like what Mark said-"

"What the fuck was it?" she asked impatiently.

"He said he'd taken the video mainline, and the hardline was something about a stranger on a stony shore."

"That again." She shrugged. "Mark did Canadaytime's last video,"

"I thought you did their last video," Gabe said. "You jumped off the terrace for it."

"Mark's done another since we got drilled. The boy's a regular video-production factory now, ain't you heard?"

The elevator doors opened suddenly, and two security guards came barreling out, stopping short when they saw Gina. "That guy Mark in his pit?" one of them asked.

"More or less," Gina said. "Why, you think I stole him?"

Gabe couldn't remember if either of them had been on the terrace when Gina had jumped; at Diversifications security guards tended to run together, the same clean-cut, private gestapo squad looks in identical brown uniforms.

"Is he available or not?" asked the other guard.

Gina made a disgusted noise. "Ask me an easy one."

The guards turned to Gabe. He shrugged. "I'd say no, he's not available."

"You know, he was up there the day she pulled her little stunt," the first guard said to the other one. "Who was?" Gina asked.

"It's probably how he got the idea," said the second guard. They started to walk away.

"What idea?" Gina caught his sleeve.

The first guard looked at her. "Forget about it. You'd hurt more than help."

"I'll hurt you right now if you don't tell me what the fuck's going on," Gina said darkly.

Both guards hesitated. Gabe herded them toward the elevator without saying a word, as if he had all the authority in the world, and the guards took them up to the terrace on the twentieth floor.

There should have been wind. Twenty stories up, wind should have been a given, but the air seemed to have lay down and died. That made it worse, Gina thought. If there had been wind, the cape would have been blowing back so she wouldn't have had to look at the shadows throbbing over it.

She tried to keep her eyes focused on Valjean's face and the woman-Dinshaw whoever. The same one who'd threatened to have her arrested that day in the common room. Gina had to hand it to her. She didn't look completely nuked, and she hadn't wet her pants yet, but she was getting there. Valjean had one haunch up on the railing, his left arm wrapped around her while he held the knife near her throat, ready either to slice her or go over the rail with her anytime he pleased.

"Hey!" he yelled to Gina, looking grotesquely cheerful. "You're here!" He gestured briefly at the security guards standing in a tense semicircle at a useless distance. "You can all go now." He blinked at her, his face twisting abruptly into a pained expression. "When's Mark coming?"

She took a few careful steps forward, watching for any sign of panic. "Mark's still on-line. I think he's waiting for you to show your face. Or your ass, whichever applies."

Valjean shook his head vigorously. The Dinshaw woman held onto the arm gripping her with both hands. "No, no, you got it wrong. He's in context. You understand? He's in context, and we're all out of context, because he's the stranger on the stony shore. It was always him. But we're all out of context, and everybody knows that when you take something out of context, it can't make no fuckin' sense."

Gina nodded. "Which context are we talking here? And where the fuck does she fit in?"

"It's gonna be my context, so I get whoever I want for it." Valjean rested his chin on top of the woman's head. She clenched her eyes shut, and Gina saw Valjean's hand start to move.

"Hey, asshole, knock off that dirty stuff!" she yelled. "You ain't in the context of your bedroom here, fucking security guards're watching, chrissakes!"

"I didn't do nothing!" Valjean looked hurt but no less wild-eyed.

Gina took another step toward him. "Okay, okay, I just know you guys, you know? I been on a tour bus once or twice."

"I've never been on a tour bus," Valjean said, proudly. "All video. All the time."

"Yah, sure, that was before your time. I'm speaking symbolic. Like the context of a tour bus, get it?"

"Get it." Valjean stared at some point over her head. Now the knife hand was moving slightly in a twisting motion. "Get it? Get it." He pulled the knife away from the woman and scratched the side of his face with the hilt. "Someday everybody's gonna get it."

"Never mind, I said that out of context. Listen, Val, I know about the context, and I know about the stranger on the stony shore, but I don't see where the knife comes in." Gina nodded at it. "What about that? You want to let me see it?"

He looked down at it as if he'd never seen it before. "I was thinking… something. I was thinking when you fall…when you cut through the air…"

The woman sagged in Valjean's grip, looking past Gina with pure hopelessness in her face. "Oh, shit," she groaned.

Gina turned around. Clooney had just stepped out onto the terrace, smoothing his clothes and puffing himself up. "All right, Mr. Valjean or Canadaytime or whatever you call yourself," he said loudly, stumping toward him gracelessly, "you put that knife down and let go of that woman or you're in big, big trouble."

Just as he was about to pass her, Gina grabbed him by the back of his shirt collar and pulled him back. "Yah? What the fuck are you gonna do, tell Rivera on him?"

Clooney blinked at her uncomprehendingly.

"He doesn't work here, asshole, so you can't have him fired."

Clooney jerked away from her. "We'll cancel your video contract!" he yelled at Valjean. "You'll never work in this business again!"

"I am this business!" Valjean announced with a mad joyousness in his voice.

"Val, listen, let's trade!" Gina said quickly, grabbing Clooney's arm. "This guy for the woman you got! Go for that?"

Valjean looked from her to Clooney and back again before he took a firmer grip on the woman. "Get real. You'd rush me."

Clooney was glaring at her with self-righteous fury. She ignored him. "Val. Keep looking at me." She moved as close to him as she dared, within arm's reach of a security guard on her left. The guard caught her eye and discreetly patted the holster of his stun pistol. She gave one small emphatic shake of her head no and raised both hands to keep Valjean's attention. Context. The fall. Signature image. The stranger on the stony shore. Somehow one of those was the royal road into him. "This context thing. Are we talking music or video or what?"

"Video," Valjean said breathily, not really in answer to her question. He rested the side of his face on the woman's head. "Gina, you been in there. In where the video is, right?" He tapped his head with the handle of the knife. "Chinese fucking boxes, one in another in another in another. We been to the next box in, but now we gotta get to the next box out. That's the context. And see, if you're in the video, you're not the video, you're just in it."

The woman winced as Valjean sat himself farther back on the rail. The shadows on the cape were pulsing more quickly and unevenly, the rhythm stumbling now and then. The shapes looked like stones moving as quickly as clouds in a storm.

"See, Gina," he said suddenly, "you got a bottle, say, and the bottle's got something in it. You're either the bottle, or you're something in it, but you're not both. Right?"

Gina nodded. "I'm with you that far. So?"

He made a frustrated face. "Well, don't you hate that?"

"Sure, hate it to fuck-all. Where does the stranger come in?"

"You can be a bigger thing," Valjean said. "You got a thought, and the thought wants to be more than it is, so it becomes a concept, and then pretty soon it's part of you. So like this, like now, I'm a thought. I wanna be a concept, and I wanna be the bigger thing that can think thoughts. Thoughts like me. Before the stranger on the stony shore turns and sees me and makes me stay just like I am."

Gina let out a breath. "All right. Now what's that got to do with hanging off a terrace twenty floors up holding a knife to somebody's throat?"

"When you cut through the air… when you fall a long, long way, you have to fall fast, before the stranger on the stony shore turns around and fixes you there, fixes you right there, and you'll never get away. And, oh, Gina"-he gave a shaky laugh-"I'm a bad, bad thought, and I gotta get into context."

"You're a bad thought, and you have to get into context," Gina said.

"Prima, girl. You know."

"Don't call me a girl," she growled at him.

"I'm a bad thought." Valjean looked down his nose at her.

"Just not in front of the asshole." She jerked her head at Clooney.

"Right. Sorry."

"Okay. Bad thought out of context. You're gonna cut through the air and take her with you, but you got no idea about what the context is."

"How can I, if I'm out of context?" He suddenly bent the woman backwards over the rail. Her feet dangled above the tacky grass green outdoor carpeting. Valjean held the knife above her, ready to stab down. Gina noted with a growing feeling of absurdity that it was a steak knife.

"Val, what if you get into context and you find out you're supposed to be a good thought?" she said quickly.

He looked up from the woman, exasperated. "Bad is bad."

"But if you don't know what the context is, how can you know if you're supposed to be bad?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Valjean yelled angrily. "You think you know something, you think you're the stranger here?"

"You don't know what you're supposed to be if you're not in context," she insisted. "You remember when I did your video, the fall, the bungi cords, all that?" She waited for him to nod. "Take that fall out of context, and what is it?"

"It's a fall," he said suspiciously.

"You think so? I coulda got the same effect going up in a jet and taking a power dive, or strapped a cam on a rocket and shot it up, then run the footage in reverse. Any of those methods would have given me the same kind of rush. All I had to do was make the image move the right way. It's supposed to be a fall in context. Out of context it's just pictures going real fast." She licked her lips, swallowing hard on a dry throat. "What did you ask for-fucking pictures going fast, or a stone-home fall?"

Valjean frowned hard. "You're making me confused now."

"It's not me," she said, forcing a blase tone into her voice. "It's being out of context. But you got to know your context, because you're only gonna get one shot at getting into it."

He paused, thinking it over. "How do you know that?"

"When I make a video, and something doesn't work, I take it out and throw it away. No use for it, doesn't fit the context. That's okay for footage, but what about thoughts? You're not gonna be any kind of thought sitting in the cosmic trash barrel, and if you don't know the context, that's where you could end up."

There was an eternal moment when nothing happened at all, and then Valjean let go of the woman. She teetered, recovered, and slid down onto the carpeting in a heap, looking dazed. Gina waved a finger at her and she crawled away, out of Valjean's reach.

Valjean stayed on the rail, the knife in both hands and his face all puckered up. The stone shapes were racing on the cape, more like meteors now. She had a brief thought about falling stars as she took another step toward him, and then another, until she was within reach of him. He seemed to be unaware of her, even as she leaned forward and put one hand on his shoulder. The patterns on the cape began to fade in and out in spots, flickering, wavering. She watched his face carefully as she took a firm grip on him and started to pull him forward. His left eye was bloodshot; more than bloodshot. It was starting to fill up with watery pinkish tears. Gina pulled at him a little harder, and for a moment he resisted. Then he slid forward off the rail, still holding the knife in both hands as if he were praying.

Gina took the knife from him slowly and carefully. Valjean gave her a searching look and started to say something, but the guards were suddenly all around them, pulling him away from her.

"I'll take that knife."

Gina turned to Clooney, holding the knife between two fingers. "Don't tempt me, asshole, you're on my shitlist."

"I'm the ranking employee here." He snapped his fingers and held his hand out.

Gina flicked her wrist and the knife suddenly blossomed in the tacky green carpeting between his feet. "Oops," she enunciated into his outraged face. One of the security guards clamped a hand on her arm.

"Remove this woman," Clooney said, rolling his eyes. "Obviously she's as disturbed as her rock'n'roll buddy here."

She twisted away from the guard easily. "I can remove myself. Fuck you very much, stooge."

Two of the guards removed her anyway. As they marched her past Ludovic and the Dinshaw woman, Valjean was singing "Coney Island Baby." He was flat.