From: gdg019@cch.coventry.ac.uk (Ridley McIntyre)
Subject: STORY: BOY [Revised] (1 of 4)
Date: 24 Jan 93 15:28:40 GMT
Lines: 212

[This is the revised version of BOY, the first in three stories set in
the Year Of The Rat. The second story, MONKEYTRICK, has also been revised
and will be re-posted too. The third, GHOSTDANCER, is currently under
construction.]

                  	BOY - by Ridley McIntyre

                       	1. Start Switch.

Shitamachi. The Manhattan Outzone. The Year of the Rat.

 Darkness and rain wash the quiet streets of the Outzone. Here, the New
Atlantic City Metroplex Authority in their infinite wisdom have cut off all
electricity, and have left the running of the place to it's inhabitants. In
Shitamachi, the Asahi Tag Team run everything.

 The DJ in Snakestrike is a tiger-haired poserboy with his brain connected to
the turbo sound system at the end of a large dance floor, two thin blue wires
dangling from the tiny electrodes stuck to his forehead. He is engrossed in the
world of the music, every digitized blip and beep and thump pulsing through his
nerves like the very blood in his veins. Electrical signals interfacing
the sound system to his nervous system to allow him complete control over the
mix. The ersatz sensory stimulation that runs through the trodes overrides his
own natural senses. Every three minutes he switches to life to take a request.

 The dance floor swarms with a thousand Shitamachi teenagers, sticking their
heads into the blue lasers and flashing flourescent gloves under the ultra-
violet strobes. Every wall of the club writhes with holographic snake scales,
a reptilian world that's constantly moving.

 There's a hole above the dance floor where people from the level above can
watch the dancers. Up here, on the left at the cocktail bar, Snakestrike
stinks of dancer sweat. It also reeks of business. And for once, Dex has
nothing to do with it.

 Two women serve the cocktail bar. One dark haired with natural beauty, the
other a made up half-Japanese blonde doll who is well known as an Asahi Tag
Teamster. They call themselves sisters when a drunken Japanese Sony slave
plays being a suit to them, despite his slave's company grey jumpsuit. Dex
watches them all with interest, then calls the dark-haired girl over to order
his third tequila slammer.

 Dex is here to see Laughing Simon, the Asahi Tag Team's best technojack, but
he's been stood up again. So, he sits by the bar with his face cupped in his
hand and a pocketful of stimulant wetware in his black pilot's jacket. He is
just thinking of leaving when he feels a tap on his shoulder from the billyboy
on the grey stool next to him; a muscular Australian kid with sideburns, a
blue denim jacket, a quiff and a ginger moustache.

 "So what do you do?" asks the billy.

 "Why, you collecting taxes?" Dex answers. His voice is English. The dark-
haired girl returning with a plastic tumbler wonders if there are any
Americans left in Manhattan. She turns the glass three times and fizzes it
with a bang on the bar and Dex calmly downs it.

 "You look like a ghost to me," says the Australian.

 Dex shakes his head the way he's supposed to when they ask him these
questions. All the time thinking does it show that much? "Sorry, matey. Just
your average ho-hum chipster."

 The billy shuffles closer, his voice slipping gently into a business
tone. "Shame. I'm looking some hot paydata and I really need a ghost. One of
the best. Someone like the Camden Town Boy. Dex Eastman."

 "You've found Dex Eastman, matey. But I gave up the ghost over a year ago."

 The billy makes a swift move from his jacket and Dex can feel a cold
plastic tube dig into his hip. The Australian raises his eyebrows. "Looks
like I've found my man, then." He motions to the exit with his head. "We're
walking."

 "You're walking. I'm here for a drink."

 The Australian squints in Dex's face. "You'd better move, cause if you don't
it's gonna be a Kodak moment."

 Dex sits still. "Go ahead. Shoot me. You won't get out alive. The decision,
as they say, is yours." A flick of Dex's eyes motions the Australian to look
at the dark-haired bargirl. She holds the HK assault shotgun usually kept
under the bar. Casually, and with a feisty smile, she rests the barrel on the
bone of the Australian's nose and crunches the first round into the chamber.

 "If you're takin' anyone out at my bar, it won't be with a plastic pistol,
chum," she says curtly. "Give me the piece and deal with the man friendly-
like."

 The Australian gives over the gun with a taught look from Dex to the bargirl
and back. He wipes sweat from his moustache.

 Dex gives a thankful look to the bargirl. "Respect to you," he says.

 "S'okay," she replies, "If he didn't look so dumb, I'd shoot him anyway." She
puts the guns behind the counter out of reach and and goes back to the
Japanese slave.

 The Boy turns to the Australian. "You've got two minutes. Deal or step."

 The billy talks through clenched teeth. Being challenged down in a club full
of strangers by a girl who looks about seventeen has raised a storm inside
his pride. A storm that has to subside just this once.

 "My name's Priest. I'm a dealer for Kreskin."

 "Kreskin the Joker Lord?"

 "The very same. Kreskin says you two used to work together. You used to do
overnight laundry for him with the World Bank."

 "That was a year ago."

 "Yeah, well he's coming up against some tough opposition from the Texas
Rangers along the South Route and he needs you to run the Grid for him. Hack
into the Texans' shell and find out the border patrol plans for next week.
Rabies just broke out again in Texas City and Kreskin wants to throw some
vaccine over the line. He says you did it before for him. He says you'll do
it again."

 Dex narrows his eyes. "Read my profile. Ex-decker."

 Priest smiles. "Kreskin said you'd be a little reluctant. I have read your
profile. Ex-decker. Ex-Texan Army tank gunner. Ex-joker. You've done a lot in
your time. Kreskin needs someone he can trust. Someone he knows. And of course
if you refuse..." Priest takes a cold gyuza dumpling from a bowl on the bar and
bites half of it.

 "Kreskin publicly announces my whereabouts to the Texan Army."

 "I think he had something even worse in mind, but you're on the right track.
Strictly business, you understand, Dex. Nothing personal.

 Somehow Dex wishes it was personal, then he'd have an excuse to smash
Priest's face in.

				***

Kitty slips into the Boy's room and hands him steaming ration coffee in a
polystyrene cup. She's like him, another smart young refugee from the
authorities. The Manhattan Outzone is an excellent place to hide; but she
wasn't born to this, and no one could hide forever.

 She looks at Dex through superchromed Sony eyes as he drinks his coffee,
sitting on his black leather swivel chair and fidgetting, and she realises
that she knows very little about him. He grew up in a dustzone in the
Thames Midland Metroplex and found a way out through running the Grid; the
Camden Town Boy. He was a decking legend by the age of fourteen, teaching
others like Dagger and Man Friday to run the Grid. Then something happened
and he left for Texas, where he joined the Texan Tank Corps, fighting running
battles against the nomad joker clans who smuggled in  anything  from  weapons
to  computer  parts  to stolen expensive  petroleum  plastics,  figuring
that  the  Texan's  high  data security would make him harder to track down.

 She heard that he turned joker after he shot his tank commander to stop the
officer firing a 120mm hesh-3 round into a busload of kids. Unable to face
a court martial, he deserted and joined Kreskin's nomads as a driver running
recon missions, and every once in a while he would launder joker clan money
through the Grid.

 Kreskin got him a new identity and he left the game for the Manhattan Outzone,
where he moved in with Kitty and the Asahi Tag Team and became a chipster.
Once, he told her that his main ambition was to live a normal life. Buy himself
a piece of Happyville. The biggest problem he had was dropping his past.

 Kitty only has to see the look on his face to know that the past is on it's
way back.

 Dex downs the coffee and crushes the cup inside a sinewy hand. "You don't think
I should do this, do you?"

 Kitty stands with her back to the wall by the door to the kitchen, her arms
neatly folded over her OMNI t-shirt. She bites her bottom lip.

 "No," she says to him. She kicks herself off the wall and leaves the room,
closing the door behind her.

 Dex is alone in a grimy-grey room with a swivel chair, a desk and a foam
matress to sleep on. Something inside him claws his stomach. An empty feeling.

 A hunger.

 He takes the machinery out of their bubble-plastic wrapping, it's been in
storage in a tea chest in Kitty's room for so long that the wrapping sticks
to the molded form of the Sony electronics, making the job more difficult. The
Neuro-Sensory Transfer jacks, like platinum beads with microthin wires are
wrapped around the cyberdeck. A procured military item in cold matt black,
designated Ares IV.

 The Ares IV has a stream of wires that plug into the input port of his stolen,
unlicensed Fednet computer. Built in Poland, it's bright red plastic casing
and moulded keyboard with old chunky keys seems tasteless to all but the
billy tribe. Dex is no billy, he's a New Church throwback, but he likes things
in strange colours. The whole setup that has been updated for high-speed bias
by Laughing Simon is plugged into the socket that runs a tap into the
groundline. He jacks the NST plugs into two tiny sockets behind his right ear
and switches on all the equipment. "On" telltales glisten in the darkness of
his room. The screen on the Fednet computer displays a prompt. Everything's
ready to go except Dex.

 He sits crosslegged in front of the setup and hesitates. The hunger inside his
guts claws him again, and he nearly buckles with tension. With his left hand,
he fingers the keyboard of the Fednet computer, preparing himself for sensory
takeover.

 With the other poised over the Ares IV, he touches the Start switch.

(c) COPYRIGHT 1993 BY RIDLEY MCINTYRE
--
 ____ @     |  | Ridley McIntyre  -  gdg019@cck.cov.ac.uk | EARTH      CALLING |
|         __|  | Piglet 8@) -  On a  Flowery Space  Trip! | ANGELA: "Her black |
|     |  |  |  | "NAPOLEON!!!"    -         "AAAAAIIEE!!" | hair flowing  like |
|     |  |__|  |       - a rather visual Tank Police joke | an   acid   river" |


                  	BOY - by Ridley McIntyre

				2. Ether

Just as Dex had taught the Dagger and Man Friday, so a girl called Kayjay
introduced him to the Grid on a cold London night in a Sony-owned flat in the
Camden Secure Zone. He was twelve years old and Kayjay was a small, thin-
boned, pretty little Bangladeshi girl with nothing better to do than follow
the latest fads.

 She had spent most of the day playing with her father's electronic toys. His
Sony computer... black and sleek and totally unlike the low-tech kit-boxes
that Dex had seen in the Pancras dustzone. His wallscreen colour TV that was
constantly tuned into Disney 7 (The Children's Channel), showing the latest
adventures of baby-faced anthropomorphic soldiers in space jungles, fighting
the evil insectoids with their nuclear battlesuits, and Dex and Kayjay acted
them out in the living room, firing remote control units at each other (Dex
was always Mark and Kayjay was always Sukhi), and Kayjay won. When they raided
the wardrobe for fancy costumes, Kayjay came across the thin non-descript box
that she had seen her father use. It was densely heavy and as big as a
Provisions Ministry daily ration box.

 He remembers her words now as she tried to explain the concepts to this bright,
but uneducated, boy, lying on the thick carpet floor of her bedroom. She tapped
the ridge on her black leather swivel chair.

 "See this chair?" she said. Twelve year old Dexter Eastman nodded softly.
"This chair doesn't really exist. It's just an amassment of atomic particles.
But the way the light reflects from them, and the way our eyes see that light,
leads our brains to come to the conclusion that this pack of particles is a
chair. Without a way of translating the fact to us, it doesn't really exist.
Without sight it has no colour. Without touch it has no texture. Without taste
it's not organic. Without sound it doesn't squeak when you turn it. Without
smell it isn't leather. A person without senses has no world. It just doesn't
exist, there's no way of translating it to them."

 Kayjay moved around the room like some eccentric Disney 9 (Education Channel)
science instructor and ended up grinning, pointing to her red telephone.

 "Ever listened to the sound a modem makes when you send it down a phone line?"
She made a weird screeching sound and an equally apalling face and Dex gave a
little giggle.

 "Data. Raw data. A computer talking to another computer. Not to us, because it
doesn't speak our language, but that's by-the-by. The fact is that data has a
sound. And if it has a sound, it has a smell. And a taste, and a texture and
you must be able to see it. It exists. Only normally, there's no way to
translate it to us."

 She edged over to Boy and kissed him softly, ran thin brown fingers through
his spiky black hair. "Somedays I go there... to this other world. Father
calls it the Grid. I call it ether. Like ethereal, I suppose. But it's more
like a checkboard than anything else. You want to go? I'll get Father to bring
home another set of trodes. After that, we'll do it together..."

				***

The processor is an empty blue cathedral. Code emobodies him as the virus
runs it's course. There is a soft dent in the defense shell and Texnet's
watchdog program lays in wait. Boy knows this, though, and avoids the obvious
weakness in favour of the silent meltdown.

 Another key is tapped and a silver thread streams from the melting roof where
the Boy has lived all this time, down towards the bounty. The defenses have
been breached, the virus has become part of the defense program, shaping
itself to the contours and the Boy knows his trojan software can work well
enough without him, that he can switch off any time and let a demon do the
work for him. But it seems too easy, and something must be wrong.

 He stays with it, observing... watching the trojan open and close files
with lightning speed, knowing it's true target, but running a trick that it
really is a routine file check. As soon as it finds the file, the thread snaps
back, and the Boy sends a program to cover it's tracks. It doesn't matter. The
breaching virus is old and faulty, and has caused a cancer in the defense
shell that the watchdog can't fail to notice. Boy waits just long enough for
the thread to return before he tries to rescue the virus which has gone wild.
Eventually, before he can tear the trodes from his forehead, he feels the
crushing smash of the TexNet trace program as it finds his home shell. His
senses are dazed, rocked back and forth and he is pulled like spaghetti as he
sees the trace's toothy smile.

				***

He tears the jacks from his head and fights for breath. Suddenly nauseated, he
crawls so fast through the door but vomits across the kitchen floor before he
can reach the sink. Passing out, he can sense the far off rank smell of
stagnant water and the cruel touch of a  rough cloth. The stern tones of
Kitty's voice echoing through his head...

				***

Snakestrike. The pretty, dark-haired girl brings his drink over to him, loosely
covered with a small cloth. She draws him closer to her. Her voice is an urgent
whisper. "Your name's Dex isn't it?"

 Dex nods.

 "Man in that booth behind you was asking for you not two minutes ago. He said
he was an old friend. I told him you weren't here. He said he'd wait. If you're
in trouble, matey, call for another drink. I'll bring the shotgun. Escort him
out for you."

 Dex sits back. She circles the tumbler three times and bangs it on the bar,
turning the drink into wet foam. He lets her take away the cloth before
downing it.

 "What's your name?"

 "Jess," she says.

 "Enough respect to you, Jess." He taps the bar and takes a breath before
pushing himself off the stool and looking for this Mister Dangerous. He spots
him immediately, and knows his name is Turk.

 "What are you doing here, Turk?"

 Turk has his arms spread along the back of the seat, a dumb, superior grin
on his Dixie City fat face. He wears a blue tanker's suit, lieutenant's tapes
on the epaulettes. He even has his own row of medals, including a purple heart
that  he  won a year back when Dex shot him in the shoulder and he called
it in as being wounded in battle.

 "Thought Ah'd find you heah, Eastman," he drawls drunkenly. "Ah was gonna ask
you that question mahself. How the hell can you live in this dump, anyways?
What do the Sammies call it? Shitter-what?"

 "Shitamachi. It's Japanese for downtown. Look, cut the gomi, Turk, just tell
me what you want."

 Turk laughs raucously and chews gum, bobbing his head. "Jeez, Eastman. You
been heah so long, you'se even spoutin' like a Sammie. Bah the way, your
friend Priest is dead. Ah did him mahself. But not before I managed to spill
your deal outta him. So gimme the file you copied and we'll be friends again."

 "We were never friends. What makes you think I've got it with me?"

 Turk leans forward and takes a sip from his beer, then returns to his
reclining position, absent-mindedly tapping his fingers against the ultra-
suede. "Ah told you, Eastman. Ah know the deal. So gimme the data, cos I know
you got it."

 Dex takes on a wounded, irritated look. He runs his hands through his
spiky black hair and then takes out a black silicate cube from his jacket
pocket and tosses it over to him. He's angry as hell now, but he knows he
has to contain it if he wants to stay alive.

 "Sammie for downtown," Turk mutters. "Down is the operative word, Eastman."
He turns his head to the end of the booth, which backs onto the hole above
the dance floor. "CAN'T YOU PLAY SOME NEIL YOUNG OR SOMETHIN'? ALL THIS SAMMIE
NOISE SOUNDS THE SAME AND HALF OF IT AIN'T GOT NO WORDS!" He comes back and
laughs. "You got insurance, Eastman? Ah'd take some out if Ah were you." He
stands and finishes his beer.

 "And don't let those Sammies take you in. Remember Pearl Harbour. Catch you
'round." Turk slips out of the booth and past the cocktail bar, shaking his
head and laughing to himself when Jess throws him a dirty look.

 Dex and Jess exchange a glance. Somehow the look on her face tells him
exactly what to do.

(c) COPYRIGHT 1993 BY RIDLEY MCINTYRE
--
 ____ @     |  | Ridley McIntyre  -  gdg019@cck.cov.ac.uk | EARTH      CALLING |
|         __|  | Piglet 8@) -  On a  Flowery Space  Trip! | ANGELA: "Her black |
|     |  |  |  | "NAPOLEON!!!"    -         "AAAAAIIEE!!" | hair flowing  like |
|     |  |__|  |       - a rather visual Tank Police joke | an   acid   river" |


                  	BOY - by Ridley McIntyre

				3. Rehash.

"Nixon. How are you? It's the Camden Town Boy. No, not anymore, I'm a free
man now. In Shitamachi dealing software to the Asahi Tag Team. Yeah I know...
fifty-five kills last night, you get a share? Better luck tonight, eh? Anyway,
I've got something you might like. I did a run for Kreskin last week, Texan
Army flight plans along the North Route. Yeah, well I asked for 750 bucks, but
Kreskin dropped his price, said he couldn't go any higher than 500. Yeah,
I know, I should have guessed he'd take me for a sucker. Anyway, the TAAF are
wise to it, so they've changed their flight plan. Yep. And I've got the new one,
too. I'll let you have it for 600 dollars, what do you say? Aces, it's a deal.
Transfer the money into a World Bank bin under the account name of Peter
Townshend. Of course I know who Pete Townshend was, but they're too stupid to
figure it out. I'll fax the details to you. Better send one of your jokers.
Pickup point will be on the fax. Anyway, time is money and you're eating my
phone bill. See you sometime."

 Dex has an airbrushed wheel-dial telephone, the colour of turtleshells. Kitty
says he has no taste whatsoever. When Dex reiterates that he likes strange
colours, she just shakes her head.

 "Who was that?" asks Kitty. She stands half-in, half-out of the doorway to
the kitchen. There is still a trace of vomit smell in the air in there after
a week.

 "Nixon's another Joker Lord. Officially him and Kreskin are rivals. So he'll
buy it just to have something Kreskin hasn't." He wipes sleep from his eyes
and pulls at itchy hair.

 "Think it'll work?" Kitty sips on ration pack coffee and makes a face as she
burns her tongue.

 Dex collapses onto his mattress and sighs, looking out through his window
at the condemned block across East 10th Street. Lines of age wrinkling the
building. The circular port-hole windows, like a thousand eyes all crying at
once.

 "It bloody well better work," he finally replies, hoping that soon, things
could get back to normal.

				***

Nixon has his package. Another group of mercenaries known as the Harlequins
are  also  interested in the information. A mission they were running for
the Pentagon went wrong, and they need to get back in and get their boys out.

 He meets them at dusk in Tompkins Square, when the day is hottest, and the
shadows are longest. The Harlequin Rigger's name is Fly, and he is a frail
twig of a man who needs a metal walking stick to stand upright. He is known
more for his abilities as a fence than for running a good merc group.

 The boys around him are typical San Angeles ronin, they are all six feet
two inches and have deep tans, dressed in Twin Soul Tribe garb (very baggy
coloured jeans and hooded sweaters). Dex has seen a million like these two
muscleboys, and they don't impress him. Fly introduces them as J.D. and
Mavik.

 "So what's business like now, Boy?" Fly speaks in a dreamy, whispering tone,
a voice much older than he is; looking at him with eyes that are much wiser than
the frail man could ever be.

 "To tell the truth, the chipster business could be bottoming out here. I might
need to expand."

 "Expansion's always a good thing, Boy. If you're going to think at all, think
big. A real famous businessman said that once... But I'm damned if I can
remember his name."

 Fly gives a hoarse laugh and Dex joins in. J.D. and Mavik look calmly at the
decrepit housing blocks that surround the concrete plaza of Tompkin's Square.
Thermographic Sony vision scanning the windows for possible threats. They don't
even have to show what weapons they carry. They have rewired nerves for inhuman
speed and could probably take out a potential assassin before the hammer falls
on his gun. Stuff like that doesn't come cheap, though. Most of the Asahi
Tag Team who have rewired nerves had to go as far as the Tokyo Metroplex to
find a neurosurgeon good enough to do it. These boys have it as standard with
all the military trickery built into it. They look too dumb to know about
the  kinds  of  cut-outs  and glitches that come with  that  technology,
glitches such as tracers that show up on every military sat in the  world
and  activate  as soon as you stray from The Path. Glitches that Boy once
had to pay through his nose to get taken out.

 "Where's Man Friday? How's he doing these days? I haven't heard from him in
a long time."

 Fly pulls a nicotine stick from his black denim jacket and bites a piece off
the end. "He's still trying to find out what happened in Rio. Did he leave a
girl behind there or something?"

 Dex nods. "A wife, from what I remember."

 "Oh. Well, we think the FDI caught up with her and she's gone missing. He's
organising an expedition to find her, I think. We're gonna go in with him.
He wishes you were running Grid again. Says it ain't so much fun with you not
around."

 "Well, I'm officially retired. Except for this stuff. Good luck, anyway. If
you need any chips for Portuguese, you know where to find me."

 Dex and Fly banter this way for only a few more minutes, as both of them have
other places to go to. Fly eventually gives him about 400 dollars' worth of yen
for the data cube.

 Kitty watches Dex throughout these events. She can see his life here burning
out slowly. She can see from his blue-eyed, thousand-yard stare that his feet
are getting itchy again. Track record has proven that he doesn't stay in one
place for too long. Kitty needs him here, or at least with her. The two of them
aren't in love, not exactly, but what they have is more than a friendship. Some
kind of closeness that she can't afford to live without.

				***

He flicks the stop switch. Sweat pours from his face, stings his eyes,
leaves salt on his pink lips. His black hair is stuck to his wet head. He gasps
for air and finds the atmosphere is too thin for him in this grimy little room.
He pulls the leads from his head, rushes to the round port-hole window and
wrenches it open.

 Lukewarm air hits his face, cools him down. He sticks his head out into the
night's rain. It rains every night in Manhattan. Something to do with the high
humidity during the day condensing when the hot sun goes down.

 Across East 10th Street, three Asahi Tag Teamsters in their canary yellow
jackets and purple tiger-striped skintight jeans suck on nicotine sticks and
slap with each other about previous clashes. One of them breaks into a spurt
of superhuman martial arts to demonstrate his actions. Just visible behind the
kid's ear a microsoft shines from his Neuro-Sensory Transfer socket. Chipped for
Hapkune-Do, reflexes rewired and boosted by 10%, zen flowing from their new
Sony eyes. Boy looks at these kids and sees the future of the world. A future
he doesn't much care for anymore.

 He slides back inside and closes the window. Walking over to the middle
of the floor, he looks at the green screen of the unlicensed Fednet computer
and sees the results of this day's work. Two tickets to Narita waiting for
him whenever he wants. One way. His life here is falling to pieces, and it's
getting near the time to skin out. Tiny words glowing green in a dark room. He
looks at that screen and thinks he can see his future.

(c) COPYRIGHT 1993 BY RIDLEY MCINTYRE
--
 ____ @     |  | Ridley McIntyre  -  gdg019@cck.cov.ac.uk | EARTH      CALLING |
|         __|  | Piglet 8@) -  On a  Flowery Space  Trip! | ANGELA: "Her black |
|     |  |  |  | "NAPOLEON!!!"    -         "AAAAAIIEE!!" | hair flowing  like |
|     |  |__|  |       - a rather visual Tank Police joke | an   acid   river" |


                  	BOY - by Ridley McIntyre

			4. Times Square.

"Kreskin says he'll met you outside the old Slammer Cyberena at noon."

 "Times Square."

 That's where he is now. The north side, across from the entrance to the
Cyberena. He sits in the uncomfortable seat of a magnesium alloy rickshaw that
belongs to a young Irish-American kid called Bobby, who wears a white BIG
PIERROT SAYS WATCH YOUR BACK t-shirt and a conical straw hat to keep the
blazing sun off him. Kitty's next to him, watching the windows behind the dead
neon signs. She's not happy about this choice of venue at all. It's out of
Shitamachi. Out of the protection of the Asahi Tag Team. It's the lower end
of the Tangerine Tag Team's kill zone and it's totally open.

 Dex figures the poor security of the area will work to the advantage of
everyone, but he knows that Kitty doesn't get nervous without good reason. So
when Kreskin's red rickshaw arrives and Kitty hands him a HK pistol, he doesn't
give it back. Dex hates guns. He snaps a magazine in and loads a round, letting
the hammer down softly. Before climbing out, he stuffs the thing down the back
of his baggy red jeans.

 Kreskin climbs out wearing a cheap business suit, hiding his eyes behind a
pair of Mitsubishi anti-laser glare glasses. He keeps two of his joker
muscleboys close to him, watching the area while playing toyfully with their
HK uzi copies. The tallest one looks like one of the cartoon robots from a
Disney 7 series.

 For a moment it almost looks like Kreskin doesn't recognise Dex as he strides
across the street. But soon he's there and the smile creeps onto the Russian's
chubby face. The huge arms extend and the two old friends hug each other with
subtle reservation.

 There's a swift conversation that seems to arrange another meeting time, and
Dex hands over the data cube. Dex is secretly full of himself as they talk. He's
given Kreskin what he wanted, made enough money for Kreskin to sort him and
Kitty out with new ID's so they can go to Tokyo when the heat is on. He has
his future in his hands at last. A chance to create his own destiny.

 There's a stifled thump and a cry and a woman's urgent shout behind him.

 "Dex!"

 He spins to see the scene, pulls the HK from his jeans.

 Bobby lies in a growing pool of blood, his life evaporating under the heat of
the sun. Turk has Kitty by the throat, using her as human body armour; the
cliched hostage position, with a thick chrome revolver pressed into her temple.

 "Hi there, Eastman!" Turk breaks into his dumb grin showing bright white
teeth and a piece of strawberry gum. "Think Ah'd leave heah without takin'
you wi' me? Ah think not."

 Dex levels the automatic at Turk's head. Behind him, he can feel the presence
of Kreskin and his boys, the sights of HK uzi copies sending shivers along
his neck. Sweat tickles his chin before dripping off him.

 "Let her go, Turk. This is you and me here."

 Turk whistles and makes a face. "You been watchin' too much Big Pierrot,
Eastman. Come up wi' an ole cliche like that. You put away your piece an'
maybe, jus' maybe, Ah might let your li'l lady go."

 Dex shakes his head. His guts wrenching with the feeling of betrayal, like
nothing has happened but he's lost everything he has. "Come on, man. I throw
this away and I'm giving you the edge."

 Turk flicks back the hammer on the revolver, Kitty sucks in a breath. "What
edge, fool. Don't try an' pull that mental shit on me, Eastman. Ah know you
ain't gonna shoot me."

 "Did it once before, Turk, remember? Nothing can happen without you dying
at the end of it. You run and I'll shoot. You shoot me and I'll shoot you. You
point the gun at me and I'll shoot you. You kill her and I'll shoot you. They
shoot me and I'll shoot you. No win situation."

 Dex cocks an eyebrow at Turk's expression. The smile falling from the fat
Dixie City man's face, turning to a sneer.

 "What's up, Turk? Running out of choices? Then call Kreskin's men off."

 Turk licks salt from his lips.

 "Better do as he says, man. You won't be quite so good-looking with a hole
in your face." Kitty's mind is racing. She doesn't have the advantage that
these boys have. All of them are probably rewired. Dex, she knows, definitely
has been, she's seen how fast he can be. Only a tiny reflex boost, but it's
enough of an edge against an unmodified man. No, she can't outrun them, so she
has to outthink them. Be faster by pre-empting them all.

 "Shut up, bitch!"

 "What's it going to be, Turk, eh?" Dex can feel his wired nervous system,
courtesy of the Texan Army, speeding up. An effect like pins and needles all
over the body. A slight vertigo and then the neural processor that runs it
all from the base of his spine kicks in and the world turns slow-mo.

 Frame by frame, a second of violence.

 Everyone is surprised because Kitty moves first. Her elbow lifts up and
back to push Turk's arm away and the revolver slips from his grasp and Kitty
is in the air, diving for the cover of the rickshaw. Turk is a standing target,
but Dex doesn't fire, instead, he jumps at wired speed to the floor and shoots
at the red rickshaw. His eyes shut tight, he empty's half a magazine into
Kreskin.

 Kreskin's boys are too slow, only now starting to speed up. Their first bursts
of fire are at the place where Dex was, and find only Turk's fat body at the
far side of the street, catching him in the throat and upper torso. Bullets
rip through his spine and out the other side, pulling Turk with them like
puppet strings. The tall Dixie City man slaps against a metal shop front and
slides silent to the ground in a bloody, crumpled heap of flesh.

 The cartoon robot boy manages to follow Dex's trajectory, and when Dex rolls
up onto his knees to fire the other half of the magazine, bullets smash into
his right arm and send him spinning back to the floor.

 Kitty gives the robot boy less than an instant to realise that his boss is dead
before shattering his skull, sending blood and brain matter across the red
rickshaw. The remaining joker is stunned and silent. Kitty stands there
with Turk's revolver in her small hands, trained at his head. The boy drops his
HK uzi copy. Kitty walks over and kicks it away. Then kneecaps the joker with
two well-placed shots to stop him from leaving.

 Dex is screaming in agony. He's been shot before, back in Thames Midland, but
that was just a flesh wound. He figures a bone's been hit here and it's
drawing his entire mind to it. By the time Kitty's run over to help him, he's
passed out from the pain.

				***

Dex climbs lazily out of cot and moves to the window. Looking out, the hot sun
is going down on East 10th Street and some half-Japanese kids are playing
soccer with a ball made from rubber bands. These kids are going to grow up
tough, he thinks to himself. Street Darwinism. But there's no future for them
if they can't think, and the Boy knows that being smart can just beat being
tough. He knows, cause it's not him lying in the street in Times Square
waiting for the Tangerine Tag Team to pick him up. That's Turk, and Turk was
tough; but far too stupid.

 "Well, there go your dreams, kiddo." Kitty stands at the door, the one place
in his room where she feels comfortable.

 "Not really. Turk said I may need an insurance policy. I'm going to keep
the tickets open for that."

 "What about for now?"

 He turns around and sees her there. He smiles. His bandaged arm doesn't hurt
much anymore. Not after Kitty pressed about 320 miligrams of endorphin analog
into the bloody skin. He's as happy as a rat in a hole. But the sudden
realisation in his mind is that he needs Kitty. And he's never needed anyone
like this before.

 Dex shakes his head. "The chipster business is too slow to stay alive here. I
mean..."

 "You want to punch deck again, don't you?" Kitty seems to raise her whole
face, an expression which means to Dex that she knows the answer already.

 "Man Friday said he misses me."

 Kitty's expression turns into a rueful grin. She shakes her head and gives him
a knowing look as she edges out the door.

 Dex Eastman looks back out the window, and for the first time in years,
he feels he's found home.

(c) COPYRIGHT 1993 BY RIDLEY MCINTYRE
--
 ____ @     |  | Ridley McIntyre  -  gdg019@cck.cov.ac.uk | EARTH      CALLING |
|         __|  | Piglet 8@) -  On a  Flowery Space  Trip! | ANGELA: "Her black |
|     |  |  |  | "NAPOLEON!!!"    -         "AAAAAIIEE!!" | hair flowing  like |
|     |  |__|  |       - a rather visual Tank Police joke | an   acid   river" |