Synners

3

LAX went as smoothly and uneventfully as the entire trip. Or trips, actually: K.C. to Salt Lake, Salt Lake to the Bay, and a jumper from the Bay to L.A. Decathlon traveling, but it was the only way to buy three different tickets under three different names-correction, only two; they hadn't asked for a name in San Francisco because it was just a jumper-using anonymous bearer-chips in quantities that wouldn't raise any eyebrows.

Sam hadn't really expected anyone to bother her about the insulin pump hanging on her side. The most attention anyone had given it was to screen it for off-color blips, and the security guard at the Bay jumper hadn't even done that. He'd just grinned at her, displayed his own pump, and said, "Pray for better tissue matching, eh, sister?" Airport security was interested only in weapons and explosives, not unlicensed or bootlegged computer equipment. Besides, it really had been an insulin pump once, before she'd gone to work on it.

She kept her pace to a leisurely stroll through the terminal, letting the crowds flow around her. The pump was out of sight in the pocket of her baggy pants, deactivated for the moment; the tacky sunglasses were hanging on a cord around her neck (tacky but functional; when not turned on, the retinal-projection screen in the left lens was transparent). The chip-player was tucked away in her one small duffel bag. No one had shown much interest in the chip-player, either, but chip-players were far more common than severely brittle diabetics whose bodies rejected all cultured implants. Even if the security guards had been interested enough to pop on the fingertip-sized 'phones and take a listen, all they would have heard was hard-core speed-thrash, in stereo. Speed-thrash was undergoing yet another renaissance as a new generation discovered it was a great way to make everyone over the age of twenty-five give ground in a hurry, hands over ears. Sam was very fond of speed-thrash. She was seventeen.

She passed the baggage-claim area, weaving her way through the people waiting to use the closed booths along the wall opposite the carousel. The Cal-Pac modem symbol above the booths buzzed and flickered; not the most confidence-inspiring sight, but nobody gave up a place in line. It never failed to surprise Sam how many people went on trusting Cal-Pac's public modems. Because of their broad compatibility, they were more susceptible to viruses, no matter how many vaccines were pumped into the system. But then, half the vaccines in use were pathetically outdated. Rather than spend money for further research and development, the government and the taxpayers (of which Sam was not one) had opted for stiffer penalties for vandals. As if that would put Humpty Dumpty together again.

She paused briefly next to the end booth. The small graffito was still there, scratched into the plastic in clumsy block letters: Dr. Fish Makes House Calls. A new one had been added farther down: St. Dismas, pray for us.

At the exit to ground transportation, she ran the usual gauntlet of gawkers and hawkers-a few peddlers, some advocacy groups with handbills to waste, two rival clinics promising that her motivation would come back as if by magic, yes, magic, young woman, diagnostic practitioners on the premises, right there on the premises, no need to apply for a recommendation from a doctor who probably would refuse anyway since so many doctors these days didn't seem to understand that the healing force of implants was for anyone, everyone who felt the need.

"Modern life is making you sick!" someone called after her.

"And your saying that is making me sick!" someone else yelled back.

Sam grinned to herself. My, but the karma was heavy today.

The airport rental lot was as chaotic as ever, impassably jammed with last-minute arrivals trying to turn in vehicles and make the flights they were already late for, and the recently-landed clamoring for service from the bored attendants wandering back and forth seemingly at whim between the Rentals-ln and Rentals-Out blockhouses in the center of the lot. Welcome back to L.A., Sam thought resignedly. After two weeks on the McNabb Nature Reserve in the Ozarks, she wasn't sure her shit-tolerance threshold existed any more.

Against her better judgment she joined the line in front of the blockhouse labeled Rentals-Out. No doubt by the time she reached the service window, the attendant would tell her they were all out of everything but the bigger models, sorry, no shortage discount, next please. But she felt too travel-weary to hike over to one of the hotel lots, and getting on one of the privately-run shuttles required producing a scannable ID, something she avoided as often as possible by using bearer-chips. She didn't care to make her movements too traceable.

She dug the chip-player out of her bag and popped on the 'phones. It was some stone-home righteous new speed-thrash Keely had zapped to her, and the translation program she had used on it had left it intact. She hadn't had to remove the encrypted material from the carrier-data to go over it during the nights, looking like any other lad on a boring trip, shades on and plugged into her music. No one had been able to see that, under her shabby satin jacket, the chip-player had been connected to the former insulin pump in her pocket, and the unruly tangle of her hair had hidden how the cord on her sunglasses was plugged into the headphone wire.

She was almost tempted to connect the sunglasses and have another look at Keely's data, but there would be time enough for that later-if she didn't die of old age waiting to rent a commuter unit she probably wouldn't get anyway. She hated the commuter rentals-everybody did-but owning a real car in L.A. was a bureaucratic nightmare, requiring a lily-white record and a king's ransom for the umpty-ump different permits and licenses and taxes that had to be renewed every three months. L.A.'s millennial solution to the car overpopulation problem of the previous century; it was a bad joke. Instead of a mass transit system, there were rental units proliferating like rabbits on fast-forward, little boxes made of masking tape and spit, with shitty little computer navigators built into the dash. For all the good that did-GridLid usually ran anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour behind the traffic patterns, so that you were more likely to find yourself in the middle of a clog before the warning about it appeared on the nav screen.

Sam let out a tired breath. Back in L.A. less than an hour, and it was already undoing the smooth that two weeks in the Ozarks had given her. The solitude had been what her father called a tonic. Everything had just gotten so crazy, the whole hacker scene, an information frenzy. Then there'd been the doodah with her parents, speaking of her father, which hadn't helped her feel any less frantic. Old Gabe and Catherine had really done their part to make her crazy, Catherine more than Gabe, to be fair about it. Why she had expected anything else after all these years-call it temporary brain damage, she thought sourly. Just thinking about them now was giving her that fluttery I-gotta-get-outa-here-or-die-screaming churn in the pit of her stomach.

That had been reason enough to head for the hills, though the stuff she'd hacked out of Diversifications had been hot enough to serve as an excuse for an extended trip out of town. She kept telling herself that was the real reason, the only reason, she'd jumped out. It felt better than admitting that, in spite of everything, the fact that she could not have her mother's love and respect was still a knife in her heart.

She hadn't had to admit anything on the McNabb Nature Reserve; the McNabbs didn't scan IDs, and they didn't ask questions. Few amenities, small cost; each day she had trucked over to the common shower and bathroom area from her tent. If she wanted news, the McNabbs ran a small general store where she could reserve a tailored hardcopy of The Daily You printed out from the dataline, if she didn't mind having to reset her defaults each time. Occasionally there was a wait, since the McNabbs had only two printers, and if she didn't want to bother, Lorene McNabb would put hers aside and give it to her the next time she came in.

But as pleasant a change as it had been, she'd known it wasn't her life. She'd already begun thinking about going back to L.A. when Keely had called her.

The one tech thing the McNabbs supplied for each tent was a phone; they did not take messages, and they did not go tramping out to inform people of emergencies. Sam had thought the phone had looked pretty funny sitting on the McNabb-supplied footlocker at the head of the cot. She hadn't expected it to ring; no one had known where she was. But if anyone was capable of tracking her down, it was Keely.

He'd sounded wired as usual-his bizarro relationship with death-crazed Jones was something else that had gotten on her nerves. But for once he hadn't whined about what Jones and his implants were coming to. This time he'd sounded wired and scared, something about some stuff he'd hacked. Keely liked to call it B amp;E, as if that somehow made it more glamorous than plain old hacking. Sam suspected he'd hit Diversifications. She'd made the mistake of giving him the specs for the modified insulin pump before shed left.

She'd done all the work on the pump while she'd been out in the Ozarks, just to see if she had the touch with this kind of hardware. She did, and as it turned out, it was fortunate she had. Keely insisted on zapping something to her over the phone, and she'd left her laptop behind with Rosa.

And then after the zap, he'd just said good-bye and hung up on her. So it had to be Diversifications, she decided, the hackers' Mount Everest and the place most likely to catch you. And when they did, they always prosecuted. Keely had always had this compulsive rivalry with her, needing to match her hit for hit. She'd tried to make him see rivalry was pointless, and the more often you tried Diversifications, the more likely you were to get caught. But Keely had always had more talent than sense.

Perhaps she might have been more convincing, Sam thought, if she'd told him her own little trade secret: she knew her way around their defenses because her father worked there, and she'd picked up a lot about their operation by simple osmosis. Maybe Keely would have seen the wisdom of backing off, or maybe he'd have just taken up hounding her for tips and hints until he drove her mad. And no matter how she tried, she couldn't get around feeling responsible, in an oblique, neurotic way, for whatever had happened to him. Ridiculous, maybe, but there it was. And here she was, back in L.A.

"… new show, free equipment, absolutely no charge!"

The voice that cut through the tumult in her earphones sounded familiar. She clicked off the chip-player and looked around.

The young guy working his way up from the now-distant end of the line she was standing in could have used a few more pounds to fill out his bodysuit and balance off the absurdly full cascade of golden waves spilling down past his bony shoulders. The holo crown bobbing in the air over his head faded in and out with each step, but he didn't bother adjusting the projector on his belt or, for that matter, the bored look on his face. Sam grinned. It had been quite a while, but she'd have known Beauregard in any guise.

"Free tickets!" he called, holding them up between two fingers. "Preview of an exciting new show!" He was about to pass her when she caught his arm.

"Getting many takers?" she asked.

He looked down at her blankly for a moment and then let out a surprised laugh. "Well, fuck me."

"Is that free, too?"

He gave her a ticket. "For this you get an hour's use of a head-mounted monitor and the chance to kill a new series, which you can brag to the folks back in Kansas City about. You wanna get fucked, call my agent. He'll fuck you four times before you even mention my name."

"Thanks, Beau, but I'll give that a miss. I like to know I'm being fucked while it happens." She looked him up and down. "Love the hotbody. You look like an old-time street mime."

"And you look like an old-time vent-hugger. Some things never change. Where the hell have you been?"

She hesitated, looking from side to side. Beauregard thrust two tickets at the man standing behind her. "Here, hold her place in line, will you?" he said. "You can take those down to Hollywood Boulevard and get an easy hundred for them in front of the Chinese Theatre. They're in short supply, everyone in town wants them."

The man frowned dubiously at the tickets in his hand, and Beauregard pressed two more on him. "Okay, this is all I can let you have. That's a guaranteed two hundred you're holding, that'll pay for the best rental you can get here four times over, thanks a lot, pal, you're a prince." Sam laughed helplessly as Beauregard hustled her away from the line.

"Is that true, what you told him?" she asked.

"Fuck, no. They're free tickets. He'll probably have to pay someone to take them off his hands."

She stared at him in disbelief. "How do you get away with being you?"

"Same way you do, honey." He tapped her chin with his fist. "Where have you been?"

"The Ozarks. They're real pretty. What are you doing wearing the Para-Versal logo?"

He glanced up at the holo still floating over his head. "I got lucky, for a change. I got a part in Tunnels in the Void."

Sam looked at the ticket he'd given her. "This? What is it?"

"A small band of intrepid explorers travel the universe using black holes as a kind of intergalactic subway system, taking you with them as they seek adventure and excitement, sneering in the face of danger and all scientific fact. But hey, it's work. They used me in a bit, on the condition that I hustle passes." He gazed at her evenly as he took the ticket back from her. "Like I said, some things never change."

"I guess not." Sam shook her head. "You know this is probably all that'll come of it. Intergalactic subway system. Stone the fucking crows at home. How stupid do they think people are?"

"You tell me when you see that guy trying to scalp those on the Boulevard. Diversifications did the finish on it, all the commercials are from their clients, and gaming rights are being auctioned right now. Plenty of features have pulled out of a nosedive on gaming rights alone. Or the wannabee trade."

Sam felt her stomach tighten a little at the mention of Diversification^. "Sorry, Beau, but I don't see why you're wasting your time."

"Oh, yah. Hacking programs and dodging watchdogs from a Mimosa squat is so much nobler." He shrugged. "I sold my equipment to Rosa. She's got a use for it."

"You had a use for it, once," she said seriously.

He glanced upward with a labored sigh, making the holo crown jiggle. "Shit, why can't you be like everyone else and refuse to have anything to do with me until I, quote, shake it off, unquote?"

"Beau, if you'd hung in, you could probably be making this stuff yourself. And not garbage like Tunnels in the Void, either, but really good stuff. You know, a lot of people used to think that you were behind the Dr. Fish virus. 'The one that got away.' "

"So that makes two of us that got away." His face was stony now. "You know, it's harder than it ever was now to get a toehold. All the studios want to go to complete simulation, and what the fuck is that? Nobody home, you know? No people."

"They probably will go to complete simulation soon, Beau," Sam said, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice. "Maybe not tomorrow, but soon enough. Too soon for you and your union and all the other unions. It's gonna be a stone dead end for you, unless you can make the stuff."

"I don't want to make the stuff. I want to be the stuff. If that isn't culturally on-line, then write me off. I don't go around telling people what they're supposed to want."

"Touché, doll." Sam held out her hands. "Peace?"

He curled his fingers around hers briefly, looking momentarily embarrassed. "Well, truce, anyway. I didn't pull you out of line to fight with you. It's good to see you again, Sam."

"Likewise." She paused. "Haven't seen anyone else lately, have you?"

"Ha. Like who."

"Oh, Rosa. Gator." She gave a casual shrug. "Keely?"

Beauregard shook his head, making the holo crown wag in sluggish half circles. "I don't see anyone." He ran a wistful finger down the line of her cheek and then looked around. "Listen, I'm on a schedule-"

She nodded. "See you, Beau."

"If I get really lucky, yah, you probably will." He started his pitch again as she went back to her place in the line, smiling apologetically at the man still holding the preview tickets.

"Excuse me," he said as she was putting on her headphones again. "Do you really think I can get anything for these?"

"Oh. Well," she said, "maybe. I mean, sure. I think you might get something."

"You mean something besides taken?" The look on his face was anything but happy.

"Hey, you got them for nothing," she said coldly. "You'll only get taken if you actually go to the preview. Welcome to Hollywood, mister."

Half an hour later she was sitting in a rental that achieved two-passenger status only by virtue of the fact that it had another seat. Sam would not have taxed it with more than her duffel bag, not that it made a whole lot of difference at the moment. True to form GridLid had failed to transmit up-to-date traffic patterns, and she had driven right into the clog on Sepulveda, where, it seemed, she was going to spend most of the morning, kicking herself for not bringing a radio. Some of the smaller free-lance stations operating outside the amorphous mass of the dataline gave traffic reports from phoned-in tips. She glanced at the receiver hanging from the dash. Hell, she could phone one in herself, except it probably wasn't exactly news anymore.

Fez would have told her to accept it as an unexpected opportunity to unwind. An L.A. clog is just Natures way of saying it's break time. But then, Fez had told her that trying to reconcile with her parents was a good idea, too.

She sighed and looked at the nav screen. The map display vanished, to be replaced with a basic, abbreviated dataline menu. Good old GridLid. Gosh, folks, sorry we didn't warn vou about the clog, but since you're already sitting in it, you can enjoy some minor diversion, courtesy of the city.

The offerings were limited to the most popular items off several of the networks, text and/or sound only, including, she saw with some amusement, The Stars, Crystals, and You Show and Dear Mrs. Troubles from FolkNet. If you couldn't pre-guess GridLid with stars and crystals, maybe Mrs. Troubles could help you change your miserable life at two miles an hour.

She pressed the scroll button on the keyboard between the seats, and the categories began a slow roll upward. Business: Local, Regional, National, International; Sporting Events; Lunar Installation Report; Peccadillo Update-that was tempting; famous people throw up in public and other gossip to die for-CrimeTime; The World of Medicine; L.A. Rox, Including!Latest! Video Releases.

She pressed for the last, feeling slightly mollified. She wouldn't be able to see any videos on the cheap-assed monitor, but at least she'd be able to listen to some new music, maybe find a few good encryption vehicles. Encryption was fun; play this sideways, kiddies, and hear a message from the devil. Keely would certainly have approved.

Keely hated speed-thrash.

Unbidden, the thought came to her and sat in her mind, waiting for her to make something of it. Keely had sent her the information encrypted in speed-thrash, and he hated speed-thrash. If the Good Lord had really meant speed-thrash to exist, he would have made me deaf.

Well, so what? He knew she liked speed-thrash; he'd probably figured he'd zap her something she could appreciate.

She made a face. That didn't feel right. Keely had been in a hurry; he'd had plenty of other encryption vehicles to choose from, anything from the Brandenburg Concertos to one of those Edgar Varese things he was so crazy about, and any of those probably far more available to him than a piece of speed-thrash. A new piece of speed-thrash.

She pushed for the new speed-thrash listings, tapping the steering wheel impatiently while GridLid's access to the dataline pondered her choice and made a laborious search. The Age of Fast Information, sure, she thought sourly.

A full ten seconds later, the screen delivered the page. For once she was lucky; it was the very first item she selected for audio excerpt. Mechanists Run Loco, by Scattershot. The credit line for the video made her blink: created by Aiesil EyeTraxx, acq. by Diversifications, Inc.

EyeTraxx acquired by Diversifications? Since when, and how had that gotten by her? She topped back to the L.A. Rox general menu and selected the news.

There was nothing but the usual collection of gossipy items on which artists were doing what outrageous or dull things. (General Industry News, sub-subheading Rock Videos gave her nothing but snippets on rights reversions, what artists were signing with what video companies, who had died, and who wasn't doing anything at all.

Rock Video: Acquisitions was just a rerun of who was signing with who, nothing she hadn't been getting in her edition of The Daily You back in the Ozarks.

She slid back the sunroof panel and stood up on the seat carefully. There was nothing but an unbroken sea of rentals interspersed with a few private cars in all directions, and no sign of movement. Sam clambered down behind the wheel again and blew out a disgusted breath. "Shit."

"It's awful, isn't it?"

The driver in the car on her left was smiling at her sympathetically. She nodded. "It's worse than that."

"I think we all ought to file a class-action suit against GridLid, force them to clean up their program," he went on. "Or at least provide full dataline access for the rentals. I can't get anything I want."

"Me, neither." Sam looked at him speculatively. "Say, you wouldn't happen to follow rock-video news, would you?"

He managed to look apologetic and bored at the same time. "Sorry. I get Casting Call and Daily Variety, and the rest of the world can go hang as far as I'm concerned." He looked around at the clog. "Right now I really wish it would. Why aren't all these people home with their families?"

"'Scuse me? Hey, you there?" A woman about her own age was waving at her from another rental directly behind the man. "I follow rock video."

Except for the long pink hair, she looked more like a folkie than a thrasher, but Sam wasn't feeling choosy. "I just saw this item on the dataline," she called to the woman, twisting around to lean out the window. "It said EyeTraxx had been acquired by Diversifications, Inc. You know anything about that?"

Now the woman stared at her as if she were crazy. "God, no. That sounds like biz news to me. Snore, snore."

"Oh. Yah," Sam said faintly, pulling her head back in. Business news. Christ, business-fucking-news, what in hell else would it have been. Feeling sheepish, she topped all the way back to the main menu and selected Business News. Then she stared at the screen while it asked her which subheading she wanted, Local, Regional, National, or International? There was nothing more specific. Which figured. Hard-core biz types didn't register as a target market for GridLid; they wouldn't be in a clog like this. They'd be in their offices doing everything by net and email. Like her mother. Give up, she told herself. At least until you light somewhere with halfway decent capability.

Fifteen minutes later traffic had moved forward a good fifty feet only to halt again, but she finally had something, a small item under Markets-at-a-Glance/NYSE Most Active. The listing for Diversifications was footnoted with a comparison box, giving the trading before and after its acquisition of EyeTraxx. The date given was roughly two weeks before; nothing about a topic thread to follow.

Frustrated, Sam sat back, stretching her arms overhead through the open sunroof. She still didn't know what it meant, if anything. If it don't mean a thing, it ain't information, as Fez would say.

"Fez, you talk too much," she muttered. She went back to listening to excerpts from new speed-thrash releases as the sun climbed higher in the sky.

GridLid finally saw fit to deliver a bulletin about an accident half a mile from where she was; by then traffic was advancing regularly in twenty-foot spurts. A few food vendors had materialized to work the clog until the cops appeared and chased them out. Couldn't redirect traffic fast enough to avoid a clog, Sam thought sourly, but moved at the speed of light if someone was out making a profit. Her stomach growled. The cops had jogged back from the site of the wreck just before one of the vendors would have reached her.

She had meant to head straight for the Mimosa from the airport, but she knew if she didn't get something to eat, she was going to faint. Feeling shaky, she detoured onto Artesia and cruised until she found a quickie with fewer than five cars in the drive-thru lane. Quickies were not her cuisine of choice, but at least she'd had the luck to find one with a decent vegetarian offering.

The big menu screen was just out of her reach, and she had to hang out the window to touch the square next to "Sushi rice in seaweed cone." Her order appeared in red letters in the middle section of the screen; a moment later the words !Good Choice! flashed on and off. Cute, she thought. What else would it say-!Lousy Choice! or !No Good For You!? Maybe the burger-gobblers got !Slow Death!

She selected "Coffee, caffeinated, pot" from the drink menu, and this time the message was unblinking. The Surgeons General wish you to be aware that caffeine is associated with chromosome breakage, headaches, tension, anxiety, and impaired motor coordination when taken to excess. In pregnant women birth defects can result in those prone to certain inimical chemistries. Abstinence may be advisable; consult your doctor.

Sam stared. A pretentious quickie; that was new. She slapped her palm against the endit square with a defiant flourish. Too late; she had the guilts over the coffee even as she couldn't wait to drink half of it at one gulp. Modern life was making her sick by trying not to make her sick.

"That's some menu," she said to the guy in the window as she stretched out of the open sunroof to pass him a few crumpled bills.

"Yah, better living through technology," he said, glancing at her without interest. He was tall and good-looking, with icy white hair and luminous green contact lenses, most likely another member of the latest generation of aspiring actors. That may have been the biggest reason simulation hadn't shut down Old Hollywood, Sam thought a little light-headedly. If they stopped taping from live action, who would staff the quickies? "Be a minute," he added as he leaned out to hand her the change. "Just opened a fresh pot of rice."

"Glad to know this place cares so much," she said. "I especially enjoyed the lecture on what caffeine would do to me."

"Oh, hell. George!" he roared over his shoulder. "That goddamn virus is back!"

Sam laughed aloud. She should have realized as soon as she'd seen it. A Dr. Fish, no doubt, making a house call with unsolicited health advice. Characteristic of the Dr. Fish strain – almost no destructiveness, just unexpected messages taking up space and slowing things down.

An older man who was definitely not an aspiring actor appeared in the window next to the younger guy. "If it's not asking so terribly much of you, Harmon, could you not screech our troubles to the entire world?"

The young guy gestured at Sam. "She says she got the caffeine message."

"It was just one of those health warnings from the Surgeons General," she said, shrugging. "I thought it was supposed to be there."

The older man frowned at her as if she were somehow responsible. "Great. We're never going to get rid of that thing. Every time I think it's cleaned out, it pops up somewhere else."

"Just because of the way it reproduces," Sam told him. "Cleaning it out won't take care of any data carrying the infection dormantly. You've got herpes, not cholera."

His expression took on a revolted tinge. "Excuse me?"

Sam glanced at the younger guy, who was grinning behind his hand. "Cholera is a disease you treat by treating the symptoms. Herpes lesions can be treated so they go away, but the infection itself remains in the nerves, waiting to activate again."

"Well, thank you so much, Miz Med School, that was just what I've been waiting all day to hear."

"It's contagious," Sam couldn't help adding. "It can be passed on without being active."

There was a short honk from the rental behind her. "Think it's taking long enough?" called the driver, leaning her head out the window.

"It's coming, lady," the older man called back, and leaned out the window a little more. 'You sound like you know a lot about this."

Sam shrugged again. If he was so off-line he didn't know about Dr. Fish, she wasn't going to enlighten him. "Anyone with computer equipment ought to know a lot about it."

"I just manage this place. And hire and fire the help." He gave the younger guy a sidelong glance. "You want a free meal?"

Sam drew back, leaning her elbows on the roof of the rental and folding her hands. "Why?"

"For services rendered. If you know so much, you must know how to take care of it. It'll save me another service call."

"You can do it yourself," she said.

"Me? I don't know dick about computers."

"You know where the off switch is?"

He nodded. "So?"

"So flip it. That'll kill it bang. No matter what your service has been tolling you, that's the only way to kill a virus. Cut off the power."

The man rolled his eyes. "Forget about it. The menu's out of a closed-area network so they can monitor our volume; we got nothing here but dumb terminals. I cut us off, they'll be down here with an auditor and a warrant to bust me on suspicion of embezzlement."

Standing behind the man, the young guy was making a familiar up-and-down motion with a fist. Sam bit her lips together to keep from laughing.

"Hey, you don't want a free meal, honey, it's fine by me, but you sure look like you could use one. More than one."

"You only offered one," Sam said evenly, "and for what it would cost you to have someone do the work legally, I should get a free meal here every day for a year."

"Offer's closed." He pulled his head back inside the window and turned to the young guy, who was suddenly scratching the side of his head vigorously. "The virus can stay in there, people can live with a warning about coffee, I don't care. We gotta sell more herbal tea anyway." He marched off.

The young guy grinned at Sam, who shook her head. "Probably wouldn't have worked, at that. The virus is most likely dug in at the node, so as soon as you turned on again, it would be right back here."

"Nobody cares as long as it doesn't actually destroy anything," he said, shrugging a bony shoulder. "It's like graffiti to them, the cheap-asses."

The rental behind Sam honked again. "I said, is it taking long enough?" the driver called, louder.

"Not quite, but we're working on it!" Sam called back. The guy at the window handed her a small bag and a tall covered thermo-cup. She thanked him and pulled up far enough to allow the woman to reach the window before she tore the bag open and attacked her food. The ball of rice sitting on top of the seaweed cone tipped into her lap and shattered on impact, leaving her with a mostly empty seaweed wrapper. "Fuck it," she muttered, and drove back down Artesia toward the Mimosa, scooping rice out of her lap with one hand.

"Where's Gator?" she asked the kid in the tent. He must have been all of fifteen, with a funny-chubby cherub's face and thick, fuzzy dark hair that was tangling itself into dreadlocks.

"At services," he said, hitching up his pants. Hospital surplus; they made him look like an underaged, homeless surgeon.

"Services?"

"Yah. She said to tell you she's off praying for God to forgive you."

Sam blinked. "I'm in hell," she said wonderingly. "The world ended when I wasn't looking, and now I'm in hell." She rubbed her forehead with one hand, trying to think. At least the kid was speaking English. "Gator really told you to tell me that?"

Now the kid looked embarrassed. "Well, actually, that's what she told me I should say to anyone who came by for a tattoo."

Sam laughed and kept laughing as she made her way over to Gator's old barber chair and plumped down in it, alarming the kid.

"Hey, you better not. She said she'd kill me if anyone fucked around in here."

"I'm not fucking, I'm laughing," Sam said wearily. "Can't you tell the difference?" She swiveled around. The printer was in its usual spot in the corner, but Gator had taken the laptop with her. To services. At the St. Dismas Infirmary for the Incurably Informed, of course, wherever that was now.

Abruptly she remembered the ex-pump in her pocket.

"Hey," said the kid, following her over to the corner. "I know she wouldn't want you screwing around with that."

"I'm not screwing, I'm hooking," Sam said, unrolling the wires that had been discreetly tucked behind a table leg. "Hooking up, that is." She found the communications jack and plugged it into the ex-pump, then connected it to both the sunglasses and the chip-player. "If Gator comes back, I won't let her kill you more than you deserve."

She settled down on the sand and put on the sunglasses. The screen in the left lens lit up, blurring for a moment before it settled on her focal length. There was a tap on her knee, and she looked over the top of the glasses at the kid.

"Hey, you know you got lice?" he said, pointing at her pants.

"That's not lice, it's rice," she told him. "Now don't bother me, I'm calling Dial-a-Prayer."

"You older women sure are religious," he muttered.

In a few moments she was inside the public net system, flashing through the menus until she reached the listing for the St. Dismas Infirmary for the Incurably Informed. She ignored the public posts and punched for the conference area.

›You have been misinformed, said the screen. No conference area exists on this board. If you wish to pray, please make an offering. If not, please exit. ‹

She had to peer under the glasses to watch her fingers work the tiny keyboard on the face of the pump.

›Are services in progress?‹ she asked.

›Prayer services require an offering. ‹

She summoned the basic schematic for the adapted insulin pump system and uploaded it. There was a short pause before the screen said, ›The doctor will see you now.‹

Sam frowned. The doctor? Christ, was St. Diz siccing a virus on anyone they didn't trust? She started to tap the little keyboard again when a new message appeared on the screen.

›Wonderful to hear from you, Sam! Go to Fez and learn all. ‹ Abruptly she was disconnected, not just back in the main menu area but off-line.

She took off the sunglasses and rubbed her eyes. Fez. It figured. She probably should have headed straight for his place to begin with. He knew everything, or almost everything. Maybe he knew what had happened to Keely. Or how Diversifications' acquisition of a video-production company corresponded to the schematic drawing of a neuron from a human brain that Keely had zapped to her encrypted in music he couldn't stand. Maybe Fez would know. Somebody had to.