From: mcintyre@cck.coventry.ac.uk (Ridley McIntyre)
Subject: STORY: GHOSTDANCER (1)
Date: 25 Jul 1994 13:13:36 +0100
Ridley McIntyre
GHOSTDANCER
1.
"Everything you imagine exists. Even if it only exists in your
imagination." - Big Pierrot
Nightingale Medical Centre. Red Sector 16. New Atlantic City. The Year Of
The Rat.
"I got a new job, Reb." Cody Ingram slides her hands into the pockets
of her baggy black leather jacket and listens to the crickets in the
field. An edgy silence descending between her and her younger sister sat
on the hot metal bench.
Reb looks down at the grass. Up at the technicolour blue sky. Over the
field at the other kids playing tag on a huge steel climbing frame.
Everywhere but at Cody. Her voice, when she does speak, is deeper than
most would expect of a girl of fifteen. Her words slurred and difficult
to make out. Reb sometimes feels embarassed to talk; but this is Cody,
and she knows that no matter how bad her voice gets, her sister
understands.
"You didn't come... to visit me this month... I... thought you had left
me... I thought they... would switch me off."
Cody sighs. "I told you I had to go to San Angeles. The Callies needed
me to do some corp-work. Infiltration, that kind of thing. I sent money
back." She moves up to the bench and sits next to her sister. Tries to
put her arm around her, to comfort her, but Reb just slides further
away. "Sometimes I have to go where the work is. I told you before, when
I went to Europe. I would never let them shut you down. I made a promise,
remember?"
Reb nods to herself. "I just... thought..."
"Yeah," Cody says. "Well you know what Dad would say, don't you? Thought
stuck his ass out the window and went outside to push it back in again.
Don't think, girl. *Know*."
Reb looks down ashamedly. "Yeah..." The word a soft whisper on the wind.
"So, anyway," Cody continues, "I got a new job. Footwork. Harlequins
want me to find somebody for them. A girl. Looks like she might have run
away from some corporate dustzone or something. But she's supposed to be
here, on the island. Pays well, and all I have to do is snoop around
some."
"What's her... name?"
"Ghostdancer."
* * *
As the sun sets over the island, the air cools and the humid day becomes
a hot wet night. At twilight, the first few spatters of rain start to
sizzle on the soft tarmac of Red Sector's streets.
Cody takes a quick look at the slate grey sky above Terminal. A police
Locust aerodyne, bulbous head and black, evil body with vectoring jet
thrusters for legs, skims across the skyline on a routine patrol. The
police don't send ground traffic into Terminal anymore. Not after the Tag
Team wars a few months back. The wars may have killed off the last
remnants of the gangs, but there are still no-go zones on the island.
Safe havens for what the kids call keiki - "business". She pulls her
hands out of the pockets of her black leather jacket and steps into the
Apres Mort. Inside, the keiki is thick enough to choke on.
A blade of twilight slices through the mist to the bar at the far end.
There's a background hum, a mixture of talk from the few kids here and
ambient sounds from the darkwave selection on the cd jukebox. Cody
glances around the main room of the bar, looking for one pony in
particular, nodding to the kids she knows as she walks past them. They
talk fast and soft, non-stop, in a melange of American English and
Japanese. Romaji, they call it. Red Sector Patois. Cody has learned
enough in four years here to get by, but, as in everything, there
are intracacies that will never be fathomable. Language is a mindset.
She finds her pony in the games room. Jacked into a hyperball game
through thin silver interface cables dangling from NST sockets in the
back of his shaven head. Green chrome cusps implanted over his eye
sockets reflecting the flashing score lights on the hyperball machine's
display. Holding the pistol grip that aims the balls on the pinball-like
game, it's his neural inputs that fire the balls at the flashing targets.
Picking them out to a split second the way cybernetic smartguns target
their victims.
Cody tries not to stare at the machine. The speed at which the targets
are pulsing are liable to give her a fit. She waits until the pony has
clocked the score display one final time and there are no more flashing
targets. The game won, she taps him on the shoulder.
"Shouldn't you be out wasting people instead of wasting all your doru on
the machines, Echo?" she says with a smile.
The pony looks around. She can see her face mirrored green in his metal
eyes. He grins and pulls the cables out of his head. The machine slowly
reels them back into a slot on the side.
"Jesus, Cody! I didn't know you were back." He grabs her around the
waist and she returns his hug. He stops when he realises he's pressing
her shoulder-rigged pistol into her ribcage.
"Got back yesterday. Just thought I'd go see Reb first. Pay the bills,
that kinda thing."
"Aces," Echo says. He flicks the dust covers back down on the NST
sockets and slides a pair of black shades over the eyes. Black shades,
long black hair shaved at the sides, black leather longcoat, black
leather jeans tucked into tall black boots. Like most of the population
of the Apres Mort, Echo looks like Death incarnate. "So, how's life in
Callie?"
"Dull," she says. "But the pay's good. Kinda hard trying to slow
yourself down to their speed, you know?" She shrugs. "So, what's new on
the Island?"
Echo laughs. "Things are still pretty fucked up. No one knows who's who
now the teams are gone. Kinda weird selling stuff from under the counter
when there's no stock in the store." His green eyes stare blankly out
into the void of the Apres Mort. They seem to try and pick people out
from the haze of the bar's main room. It's as if, despite all the
electronics fitted under those metal cusps, he's blind as a bat. Or maybe
he's just lost in thought. Lost...
He shakes his head to shift the numbing daze. "Anyway... You never come
here for a social, so what do you need?"
Cody reaches into the inside pocket of her leather to pull out a small
chip. A black silicon cylinder the size of her thumbnail. She hands it
over to an inquisitive Echo.
"I need to know where I can find more of these," she says.
Echo turns over the chip. Recognises it as a neurosoft. Then raises his
head and his brow wrinkles in thought. His stare seems to go straight
through her.
* * *
Lycia wants to die.
Not with a bang. By any means necessary. Sat in a corner of her
apartment. Surrounded by a teenager's collection of knives and Japanese
swords. Watching each one glint with gut-wrenching invitation under her
single neon striplight.
She shivers as her gooseflesh skin ripples with anticipation. Pale white
skin that wants to be broken. Bright crimson life that wants to be free.
The hunger inside her all-consuming. Every thought drawn towards her
death.
And the Shape. There. And there. Flittering in her mind like a crazed
moth. Wherever she looks. Whenever she tries to think. Concentrate.
"This don't last," she says to the knives. "Ihor said it and I trust
him. It can't last!" And with one final effort of will and motion, she
kicks a leg out at the shimmering hungry blades, spraying them across the
floorboards.
Only one small bullet-knife remains. Calling her. Teasing her. Daring
and pleading under the neon.
* * *
Cody slides the door shut and steps into her tiny apartment. Two rooms
and a shared bathroom on the fifteenth storey of a Loisada tower block.
Red Sector 5. The soles of her boots thumping over the black and white
plastic tiles lining the floor. She slumps down into the single low-cut
red foam armchair. Drowns out the ambient mixture of downstairs domestic
argument and next-door hick music by clicking on the TV.
Local news about the latest violence uptown. Yet another borg gone
psycho and SWAT called in with their new Japanese hardsuits. Half a
building destroyed in the process.
Cody laughs at the debris. Unsure whether she's laughing at the overkill
or the joy of being alive. Shaking her head as the story moves aside for
commercials, she rummages through the pockets of her jacket for some
whizz. There's one small blue derm left. She peels off the backing and
presses it into her shoulder, breaking the seal.
Echo didn't seem to know much. He'd heard of a shipment of new chips
coming in through the Terminal, maybe for computers or neuralware, but by
the time he'd decided to try and skim some of it, it had already gone
through. He gave her a few names for ponies that may have been selling,
but nothing definite.
Cody tried the Port Authorities, claiming to be part of a Civic audit
team, to try and look through the manifests, but they had found her out
as she was flicking through the Terminal net.
As much as she hates the whole fucking idea, she knows there's only
one avenue left open to her. She has to call Damon.
But not now...
Switching the channel, there's a Big Pierrot re-run from a series she
must have missed. Quietly, she settles down to watch it as the lights
from a police aerodyne wash over the room from the round porthole window
behind her. Her heart slowing down to a regular thump. Her skin tingling
with soft waves of heat. Unconsciously chewing her bottom lip as the dark
avenger in the clown suit saves yet another innocent victim from the
insane clutches of a bioroid madman.
* * *
The smell destroys the nostrils. But she no longer senses that way. Made
from chrome and part flesh, only her face expresses emotions in the way
of the meat. And then, not often.
The sound of the machines in the background spins a low hum. Soft wind
through air-cooled engineering. Sorting. Processing. Creating nirvana on
cylindrical silicon.
She pulls herself from the machine. Tugging out the jacks from her metal
head. Facing the real world through a cybernetic monoptic system that
encases her now useless eye sockets. Seeing the basement here like TV.
Hearing the hum through two multi-directional sensor booms that move like
the ears of a rabbit at the back of her armoured cranium. Her new
olfactory nerves filtering out the shit stench that plasters the walls of
the building. The legacy of her insane minions.
When born, the body she occupies was once human. One hundred per cent
meat. But the operations slowly took over. First the NST sockets allowing
her to utilise cybernetic machines. Then, after a run-in with a gang, new
metal arms and legs had to be fitted. Wary of the attention, she sought
out a back-street clinic here in New Atlantic City to complete the job.
With chromed body, head and re -wired central nervous system. It was
costly, but now the body is better. Better than all the meat. Better than
anything. Better.
But the memories come crashing down on her like the night's rain.
Remembering the real self. That her body once belonged to someone else.
Her possession could never last long.
The machine behind her begins to cycle. The massive chip burner loading
in a new batch and starting afresh. A mini-production line for a stolen
neurosoft. Each one a little piece of personal heaven. Inside her own
cybernetic mask she smiles. She's going to make everyone better.
(c) Copyright 1994 by Ridley McIntyre
--
| ^. .^ | Ridley McIntyre - mcintyre@cck.cov.ac.uk | "The deadliest |
| ( @ ) | "I honestly think you ought to sit down | bullshit is odorless |
| ~ | calmly, take a stress pill, and think | and transparent" |
| piglet | things over..." | - William Gibson |
From: mcintyre@cck.coventry.ac.uk (Ridley McIntyre)
Subject: STORY: GHOSTDANCER (2)
Date: 1 Aug 1994 15:48:03 +0100
Ridley McIntyre
GHOSTDANCER
2.
"I'm a limited person in an unlimited world." - Big Pierrot
Snakestrike. A sea of nameless faces. A club packed with Japanese sons of
pioneers and white- and black-skinned wannabe's. Enka music flowing from
speakers in every dark corner - all low thumps and high-pitched melodies.
The holographic snake scales crawling up and down the bare walls shining
with condensed sweat.
Split into two levels. Upstairs, the mezzanine set around a square
balcony looking down on the lower dancefloor. One long bar on level one,
and a cocktail bar and noodle bar opposing each other on level two. Party
people downstairs, workers and joygirls at the noodle bar, ponies and
buyers in the dark blue cocktail lounge. Cody's eyes take it all in like
a brand new dream, the way she always does.
She steps into the cocktail lounge and slides a stool out from the bar,
watching the faces and trying to guess what the ponies are dealing.
"What you having?" The bargirl has bright blonde hair pulled back into a
severe pony tail. Wiping her hands on the hem of her t-shirt.
"You know what a Model T is?" Cody asks.
The bargirl looks up in thought, then says, "Vodka absoluut, lemon vodka
and blackcurrant juice, right?"
Cody smiles and nods. "Get me two," she says.
The bargirl disappears to the optics rack. Cody feels something tapping
on her shoulder.
"You still drinking that shit, Ace?" A man's voice. She turns around.
It's Damon. A ginger-haired tower of a man with chisel -cut bones and
broad shoulders. His blue eyes are hazy. Phased and distant. Coming down
off whatever it is he was once high on.
"Sneak up on me one more time, Damon, and I'll tear your fucking head
off."
Damon tuts and pulls out a stool next to her. "Nothing like a friendly
greeting from your ex-partner to brighten up your day." He opens a packet
of Cherry Marlboro and offers her one.
"No thanks," she says.
"Suit yourself. Then again, you always do." He takes the stick for
himself and torches it with a high-power gas lighter.
The bargirl returns with the two Model T's. Cody slides a couple of
notes across the counter. "What the fuck are you doing here, Damon?"
Damon blows cherry smoke up in the air. Watches it swirl and dance in
the glow from the lights at the top of the bar. "What kind of question is
that? You called me and told me to meet you here. One ay-em, Snakestrike,
it's important. That's what you said."
She nods, her brown eyes never leaving his blues. "Yeah," she says. "But
what the fuck are you doing here? You could have stood me up, sent
someone round to do me, pretended you were unavailable... Anything. But
you're fucking *here*. Why?"
She watches his soft-skinned forehead wrinkle as he makes to answer.
"Because I wanted to see you. I heard you'd gotten back from San Angeles,
and I wanted to see how you were. And what you could possibly need me
for."
Cody downs the first Model T in one gulp. "I'm fine. San Angeles is
fine. And I need you to do a little work for me." She pulls a small
cylindrical neurosoft out of her jeans pocket and places it on the bar.
"You a pony now, Ace?"
"It's called Seven. Ever heard of it?"
"Maybe."
Cody whips her hand up with inhuman speed. Grabs Damon by the scruff of
his neck. Pulling at the short ginger hair. Tugging him down to the
bar. Sweaty nose touching the black silicon.
"Someone took a shotgun to this arm in San Angeles, so they gave me a
metal one. The new one's pretty strong. Might even be able to crush your
thick head..."
"Okay! Okay! I've heard of it. Seven, yeah. Sends you straight to
heaven. So what the fuck do you want?"
She's standing above him, forcing him in place. "You know what it does
to people afterwards?"
Under her hard metal grip, she can feel him trying to shake his head no.
She leans over him, bringing her face down close to whisper in his ear.
"The downside is so great that you want to kill yourself. And not just
any old way. Oh no. There's even a special sub-routine dedicated to it.
That makes a lot of suicidal loonboys out there with these things jacked
into their skulls."
She lets him go. He jerks back and breathes hard. "So what, Cody? So
fucking *what* ?"
Cody snatches the neurosoft from the bar and sits back down on the
pull-out stool. "So, Damon... I need you to do two things for me. I need
you to stop fucking lying to me, and I need you to help me find the
person who's producing these chips."
Damon takes a sharp deep breath. "Okay, Ace. How you wanna do it?"
* * *
Lycia's shaking. It began with a cold sensation. Creeping up her spine,
resonant waves through her nerves. Then it grew to hard shakes.
Now, her whole body's broken down into spasms. And she can't make it
stop. Lying on the floor in a pool of her own vomit. Her head reeling.
Her eyes unable to focus. Falling. Always falling. Her muscles stretched
to their limit.
The phone. Gotta get to the phone. Call a trauma unit.
The phone is a meter away. A small cellular placed face down on the top
of a coffee table. It looks like a speck on the horizon.
She moves. Retches again. Dry. Spits a flowing stream of saliva onto the
carpet. She spits again, but this time the stuff's stuck to the back of
her throat, like a frog's tongue. She reaches up a violent hand and pulls
the saliva from her mouth. Crawling forward. Each second an hour. Each
inch a mile. Every so often, one single hard shake throws her to the
ground. Her nervous system twitching like a roadcrash survivor and she's
possessed by her own body.
She knocks the table. The phone falls under her face. She lets herself
drop on her side. Forcing her fingers to do her bidding. She presses a
pre-programmed emergency number.
Her hand kicks the phone away. She rolls over onto her back. Lungs
clawing at the atmosphere in the room. She only hopes she can stay alive
long enough for the paramedics to arrive.
* * *
Out on the grass inside the Nightingale Medical Centre, the white sun
shines down on three people lying on the lawn. Strange dark shadows fall
under them like black blobs in an oil painting.
"So what would you suggest, Reb?" Cody asks. She's taken her jacket off
and rolled up the sleeves on her t-shirt to bask in the strange white
sun.
Reb looks down in thought. Her thin face tightening. Cody knows her
younger sister enjoys responsibility, but doesn't like others to think
that. So Cody lets her in on secrets. Asks her opinion every once in a
while. Even though she's perfectly capable of running her own show, she
allows her sister a partnership.
"I think... you should go with... your orig... inal plan..." Reb replies
slowly. "I... could ask someone... to help... you get papers from...
San... Angeles... New ident... ities. Would that... help?"
Cody considers it for a moment. Nods. "Yeah, that'd help. We'd need two
ID's and some mail hardcopies. It'd have to be black market stuff. She's
tried dealing with a zaibatsu before, I don't think she'd want to do it
again. Do you think you could set us up as a small holding company, Reb?"
Reb nods yes. Her eyes gleaming with confidence and the spirit of
adventure.
"Aces," says Cody. "Then we're almost set." She lifts herself
to her feet like a graceful cat and picks up her jacket. "Use the name
from my Mitsui portfolio account. Make up another one for Damon. Call him
Jack Dangers for now. We could change it later if we have to. Transfer
some yen from mine, but please... keep track of the numbers. I don't have
too much to play with right now."
Reb smiles. A broad grin showing a line of perfect teeth. It's the first
time Cody's seen her smile like this in nearly a year.
"I'll get... right... on it," she says, giving Cody a cheeky salute.
Cody salutes back and heads for the door.
Damon, neither a participator nor a judge in this conversation, follows
her silently out.
* * *
"Your sister's not real. She's a hologram."
Cody flashes Damon an angry look only to realise that he's sincere. She
sighs and sits down on the seat of her Gage electric motorcycle.
"She's alive, Damon. But I'm not allowed to see her."
"Why not?"
"She's got NMS. Neuroectodermal melanolysosomal syndrome. Basically,
she's severely retarded. Mentally and physically. She can move enough to
breathe, but otherwise she has hardly any control of herself. Medical
sent her down the well for treatment about ten years ago. They keep her
in a vat, and they've hooked her brain up to the holoroom. Everything I
do pays for her to stay alive."
"What about your father?"
"Everything he makes he ploughs back into his research. He's still
working on that cancer cure I was telling you about."
Damon nods. "Yeah, I know. But... All that cash, Cody? Is the treatment
working?"
"Yeah. When I first came down to see her, she was a complete vegetable.
No mental co -ordination at all. The blades tell me they're fixing the
head before they get to work on the body. That's the difficult part, they
say. Now... Well, her thoughts are slow, which translates in there as
some kinda speech impediment, but she'll get past that in time. Here,
take this and climb on."
He catches her spare helmet and slides it over his large head. An air
pump races into action, snugly fitting the lining around him before he
has a chance to set his crushed ears right. Somewhere in the strange
sea -shell soundwash within the helmet, Cody's disembodied radio voice
whispers to him.
"Time to head downtown. Shitamachi. Echo says some of the ponies down in
Beirut are selling the fucking thing."
"Sure," Damon says. "Whatever."
"Hold on," she mumbles. And the buzz of the electric engine fills his
head a single instant before the tug of the machine threatens to pull out
his insides.
(c) Copyright 1994 by Ridley McIntyre.
--
| ^. .^ | Ridley McIntyre - mcintyre@cck.cov.ac.uk | "The deadliest |
| ( @ ) | "I honestly think you ought to sit down | bullshit is odorless |
| ~ | calmly, take a stress pill, and think | and transparent" |
| piglet | things over..." | - William Gibson |
From: mcintyre@cck.coventry.ac.uk (Ridley McIntyre)
Subject: STORY: GHOSTDANCER (3)
Date: 8 Aug 1994 13:43:39 +0100
Ridley McIntyre
GHOSTDANCER
3.
"Ladies and gentlemen, History has now left the building." - Big Pierrot
Beirut is built into the basement of a ninety -storey tower. A single
white light cuts through the smoke-machine haze. Somewhere inside the
mists, a crowd of dancers fight for floor space and the chance to be the
last one alive when the lights go up.
Ihor is here. A pony Echo knows. And Cody stalks him through the
searchlight fog like a tiger. Damon standing guard by the door.
Ihor, a fifteen year old streetpunk with spiky blue hair and teeth filed
into razor sharp incisors, punches out at the world inside his space. On
the Beirut dancefloor, the space is everything. And he looks up as Cody
walks right into it.
She takes a single fast blow to the ribs, but her wired reflexes kick
in. The world slows down. She grabs. Spins. Lifts. Brings up a knee into
his back.
The kid screams and squirms from her grasp. Pauses long enough for a
single long rasping breath. Springs for the door. Smashing through the
dancers.
Cody leaps through his wake. The dancers jumping into each other harder.
Faster. The fight breaking rhythm for a time until the music takes
control once more.
Ihor's running. Up the three steps off the dance floor in a step. Past
the emergency -red lit bar. Over two tables, spilling drinks and seated
customers across the ground. Kicking open the doors to the stairs. Up the
stairs.
Into one of Damon's huge hard legs.
Cody catches up with him coughing and fighting for breath next to the
doorway out on the street. His blue hair now dark and wet with the
night's rain. Damon watching over him with a snub-nose automatic.
"What do you want?" Ihor coughs. Blood spittle dribbling from his thin
lips.
"I want you to offer your services," Cody says, kneeling down beside
him.
The boy frowns. Confused.
"My name's Jack Dangers," Damon says from behind the pistol. "I run some
interests down in San Angeles and I hear the organisation you belong
to has something new. We want to talk business."
Ihor gulps down some air. Slowly, watching Cody all the time to show
there's no false move being made, he raises an arm to wipe the salted
crimson from his face. "You wanna deal with Ghostdancer."
Cody smiles. "I think he's got the message, Jack."
The boy looks around him at the empty alley. Smells of piss and rotting
cardboard kept down low by the heavy rain. He nods his head softly. "I
can arrange that."
"Good." Cody reaches into the pocket of her black leather jacket and
pulls out a thin bullet-knife. Touches a stud. The blade snicks out the
end. With the speed of a re-wired nervous system running into an electric
arm, she snatches his free arm and cuts his skin. Over and over. The boy
screaming under her, but she has his body in a lock he can't escape from.
Finally, the blade disappears. Lost once more in a jacket pocket. She
stands up.
"There's my number," she says. "Call me day or night."
They walk back down the alley. Ignoring his pain -fuelled cries. "YOU
FUCKING BITCH! SHE'LL FUCKING KILL YOU FOR THIS! I'LL FUCKING MAKE SURE
OF IT!" Until they turn the corner into Bowery.
The rain hisses on hot sidewalk. The city sounding like a broken TV. The
air closer than the walls of an elevator. Crowds of late night shoppers
and streetkids fluid with the tides, each individual following the
others. Following some dream of a better life somewhere else. Maybe
higher in the social strata of the new underground left behind by the
demise of the teams, maybe higher in the zaibatsu, maybe even as high as
Heaven. Everyone out there looking like a prime candidate for the last
temptation of Seven.
If Cody was morally-minded, she'd care enough to really want to stop it
all. But she's only interested in the money to keep her sister alive.
Damon, she knows, is only interested in her. Mankind finds its purpose in
trying to find its purpose. Everyone looking for a way out. Cody sees
things differently. There's now, and there's tomorrow; think about
tomorrow and you forget what you're doing now. No sense worrying about
the future... It won't run off if you don't pay attention.
She laughs quietly to herself, but Damon notices. Paranoid.
"What is it, Ace?" he asks, torching one of his Cherry Marlboro's.
Cody shakes her head. "Nothing," she says. "Just a lot of bullshit going
through my head, that's all. Come on. Let's go someplace and get
wrecked."
* * *
A private ward in Bellevue. Transferred by an unknown angel. They drip-
fed her with drugs and stuck more derms to her skin than she's seen in
her life. Now her nerves are dead. She watches colour TV projected onto a
stretch of white wall by a small yellow Sony unit and forces her doped-up
mind to follow the action.
"Lycia?" A male nurse stands in the open doorway. Her vision is too
blurred to tell if he's cute or not. "Visitor for you."
He stands aside and lets the figure through. An indistinct shadow
dressed in a deep red jumpsuit. A thick-set body like a steroid-enhanced
muscleboy built onto a five and-a-half foot frame. The figure moves with
a strange alien grace into her field of focus. Chrome hands protruding
from the crimson cloth. Metal where the hair should be. Rabbit -ear
sensory booms pivoting on cranial mounts. The white walls of the room
reflecting from an armoured cover that encases both eyes. It finds a
blue plastic chair and pulls it closer to the bed. Sitting gently down
beside her. It's brown-skin mask smiles a white-toothed smile.
"How are you feeling, Lycia?" The voice is female. Strange tinny girl's
tones. Like a TV news presenter's voice. Clean. Perfect.
"I feel better, thanks." She pauses. Presses a stud on the edge of the
bed to raise her back so she can focus on the figure. "Who are you?"
"I do not actually have a name, but everybody calls me Ghostdancer. The
neurosoft you took... I made it."
Anger charges into Lycia's head like a drug. Scrunching her face up into
a ball. She turns away. Talks to the wall with the small frosted window.
"You tried to kill me."
"On the contrary," Ghostdancer says. "I tried to save you. You saw
heaven and lived. There are few people in this world who could say that."
"It's just a fucking drug." She sniffs. Flashes of memory drawing tears
to Lycia's eyes.
Behind her, a soft whirring as Ghostdancer shakes her inhuman head.
"Drugs do not touch the soul, Lycia. And you know that this one has. Your
soul has be stronger than the others to survive. Where everyone has
failed, you have triumphed. You have been chosen, Lycia."
Lycia turns. Everything a blur now behind her tears. "Chosen for what?"
Ghostdancer sits motionless. Emotionless. Her news presenter's voice
flat and unwaving. "To help me," she says.
* * *
Damon lights up a Cherry and leans against the grey concrete wall of a
tall Red Sector 6 apartment building. It's been two days since Cody
dragged him into this and now he's glad for some time off.
Time off... He laughs to himself. So what the fuck is he doing here?
Waiting outside a tower block for Ihor to appear. He decides to do what
Cody would do in this situation and crosses the road into the building.
Typical of these slum blocks, the elevator is out of action. He climbs
the fifty flights of stairs to Ihor's floor. Trying to read some of the
illegible graffiti sprayed, scrawled and wiped along the walls. Stopping
at the bottom of one flight to let a grubby joygirl past carrying a
crying baby down to the street. Damon grew up in a block just like this.
In a place they called Alphabet City. Now, after the latest in a long
line of social changes from the New Atlantic City council, they call it
Red Sector 5. Slowly, but surely, the neighbourhoods are disappearing
entirely. Up into the sky.
Damon picks the electronic lock with a small black box. The noise of his
entry smothered by music and TV sounds through paper-thin walls. The door
clicks open.
Inside, the apartment is grimy and bare. Shards of hard plastic strewn
across the floor from a broken kitchenette window. Naked girls cut out
from magazines glued to the white plaster walls. Flies buzzing around
hardened food in white plastic micro-meal trays.
Damon shuts the door behind him and hears a sharp crack. He spins and
raises his arm just in time to knock Ihor's unsteady hand out of aim. The
heavy Feral pistol firing through the ceiling. Damon grabs it and wraps
the gun hand around the pony's back. Bringing a swift knee up into Ihor's
coccyx. The pony drops to his knees. The gun falling from his limp
fingers.
"You fucking shit!" Ihor groans.
"Save it," says Damon. He kicks the gun out of reach. Lifts the pony up
onto his feet by the hair and pushes him, screaming, into the living
room.
"You ain't a fuckin' Callie, man! You're from the Six. I had you checked
out."
Pushing him up to the small round window. "Good work, smartboy. Did your
Mom die and leave you a brain cell?"
"Fuck you, man! When Ghostdancer finds out..."
"But Ghostdancer's never gonna find out, is she? 'Cause I'm gonna throw
you out this window first."
Damon knocks the whole window out with the palm of his huge hand. He
lets go of Ihor's hair and grabs him by the belt. Lifting the pony head
and shoulders through the hole. Quick hot winds tugging at the boy's long
hair.
"What! Wait a minute! Just wait a fuckin' minute, man! I know things,
you know. I fuckin' *know* things."
The muscleboy stops. Holding him out there. "Do you know where
Ghostdancer's factory is?"
"What?"
Damon pushes harder. Ihor's entire torso now hanging out of the window.
Twenty-five storeys high. "The chips. Where does she make them?"
"I swear I dunno! Somewhere down in Terminal. I don't know any more,
man, I swear!" Ihor's screams are starting to break into sobs.
"Good, Ihor. That's very good. Like Big Pierrot says, information wants
to be free... good information prefers to be sold." Damon puffs a hard
sigh. "Unfortunately, what you know ain't good enough." He lets go.
Watches the pony's legs drop through the windowframe. Picks up the Feral
on the way out.
* * *
A young boy had stood at Cody's apartment door. A courier. His package
was a brown paper envelope containing all the documents Cody had asked
for. Much sooner than she had expected, but Cody was thankful for that -
Ghostdancer could call at any time and she needed those things for the
meeting.
Now, as she taps in the code that opens the door to her sister's
holo -room, she has those papers in her jacket pocket. The door slides
back. She steps through into a dark cube. The door slides shut behind
her. And the world changes.
She walks up the path to Reb's bench. The hill continuing up to her
left, the other children screaming and running in the playground downhill
to her right. When she gets there, Reb is not alone.
A young man sits on the bench's arm. Dressed in a black pilot's jacket
and baggy bright red jeans. Spiky black hair topping a thin, angular
face. He looks up as Cody arrives and she notices his hands steeple to
his face, as if in nervous prayer.
"Hi Cody," Reb says. "I brought a friend this time. Thought you'd like
to meet him."
Cody's eyes open wide. Suspicious. Reb's voice doesn't slur at all.
"I'd shake your hand, but, being a hologram, it would look bloody silly,
so I won't." His accent is English. A soft Thames Midland voice. "I'm
Boy."
The name registers in Cody's memory. "Camden Town Boy? I thought you
were dead."
Boy smiles. "I am. It's becoming a bit of a habit."
Cody nods. Understanding. "So that just leaves the question why you're
here, right?"
"You're as smart as your profile says you are. Good." He stands, giving
Reb a slight wink. Cody's hologram sister grins and sits back in the
corner of the bench. Watching him.
"You never questioned why the Harlequins want you to find Ghostdancer,
did you?" he says.
She shrugs. "I get paid not to ask. The more I know, the more chance
there is someone will try to cut that knowledge outta me."
"Well, there's a story behind everything, Cody. Sometimes it's better to
understand it. Ghostdancer was an Artificial Intelligence who stole a
program from another AI before it went through beta. Ghostdancer tried to
use one of its' company's suits to market the stuff, but the suit got
greedy and said he would inform Fednet of the deal if he didn't get a cut
of the proceeds. So Ghostdancer escaped. Downloaded itself as a construct
into someone's brain and ran away."
"Now she's making the chips herself," Cody sighs.
"You catch on fast."
"Still doesn't answer my question."
"Ghostdancer's little zaibatsu were the first to kill me. They brought
me back to Thames Midland to find her when she went missing. They thought
the AI had gone rogue. When she disappeared from the Grid, she left a
witch-hole behind. Like a black hole in cyberspace. I got sucked in. My
second death. But I wasn't the only one. The girl, Kayjay, was uploaded
into the witch-hole, too. She's just a program now. A virtual room in a
Grid node. She has less control over her life than Reb here. Kayjay was
my best friend for nine years. Friends aren't easy to find these days."
"Okay, so what do you want me to do when I find her?"
"There was a time when Kayjay thought she could reverse the process. Get
her body back and carry on where she left off. Unfortunately it'd never
work. The neural system just couldn't handle it. I don't know just how
Ghostdancer did it, but then, her intelligence is way beyond ours. Even
mine. Now she just wants to die. She won't let me erase her until
Ghostdancer is dead. Laid to rest, so to speak."
Cody watches him telling the tale. His grey-blue eyes. How they begin as
shining neon stars but fade slowly as he speaks. His whole image
seems to radiate sadness. As if parts of him are dying and he can do
nothing to stop them.
"You want me to kill her," she says.
"No," he says softly. "I want you to *destroy* her. And the program with
her."
The three fall into silence. Only the noise of the laughing children in
the playground fills the empty space between them.
Boy looks at his wrist as if checking his watch. "Anyway," he says. "I
have to go. There's other stuff I have to be doing."
Cody watches him lean over the bench and kiss Reb's young head. Then he
starts to walk away. Around the hill. He stops. Turns. Calls out.
"Look after her, will you Cody? She's very special. She'll make a fine
decker some day."
Cody glances to her sister, who's blushing, and then back to him. But
he's gone.
(c) Copyright 1994 by Ridley McIntyre.
--
| ^. .^ | Ridley McIntyre - mcintyre@cck.cov.ac.uk | "The deadliest |
| ( @ ) | "I honestly think you ought to sit down | bullshit is odorless |
| ~ | calmly, take a stress pill, and think | and transparent" |
| piglet | things over..." | - William Gibson |
From: mcintyre@cck.coventry.ac.uk (Ridley McIntyre)
Subject: STORY: GHOSTDANCER (4)
Date: 15 Aug 1994 14:15:23 +0100
Ridley McIntyre
GHOSTDANCER
4.
"You're dying so slowly that you think you're alive." - Big Pierrot
Like a huge, sprawling mausoleum in harsh white plasto -ceramics. Grand
Central Microtel. Built two hundred meters under the eponymous monorail
station at the center of the island. This place is like a city in itself.
Long thin corridors lined with coffin doors leading out from three
levels of massive central concourse. A cathedral to cheap life. You can
buy a room big enough for one person and a bag of belongings for a dollar
a day. From 10pm to 9am, those bought rooms are locked tight. Some call
it a prison for the homeless, keeping them off the streets at night.
Others call it safe.
Cody once called it home. Back when she first came groundside to visit
Reb. She earned her keep as a joygirl operating out of a different coffin
every day. Her tricks paid for her food and accomodation. The knowledge
she skimmed them for paid for her sister's welfare. Until she hooked up
with the Asahi Tag Team, who saw her potential and paid for her to lie on
a slab in some back street clinic in El Barrio while a trainee surgeon
practiced his nerve-splicing and other new Japanese techniques on her.
She was close to joining the team when Disney pulled out of sponsership
and the Tag Teams went to war on each other. Hundreds of cybernetic
heroes splashing each other across the sidewalks of old Manhattan. And
when the Tag Teams were gone, suddenly *everyone* was an independent. And
independents need partners.
Cody and Damon step out from the elevator and into the chaos of the
concourse. The civic authorities had set up stalls along the middle for
traders to sell from. To encourage a "spirit of community". It is the
largest, most open black market on the island. It seems like everyone who
can't make it on the street has sunk down here. Upstairs, it is known as
the Strip. Ghostdancer has chosen it for her meeting.
"Alice?" The young girl wears a black dustcoat that kicks at her booted
heels. The pommel of a cheap katana strapped to her belt flashes from
under it when she walks. She motions them to follow her and continues in
the direction of one of the corridors.
They tag behind her to a dead end. Wary of any sudden ambushes. But
nothing comes. So far, the trick is working.
One of the hexagonal coffin doors opens and out she comes. All that's
left of her original self is a stretch of brown skin from cheek to chin.
"Alice Jourgenson," she says with a trace of electronics in her voice.
"And you must be Jack. Everyone calls me Ghostdancer."
Cody slows her voice down to a Callie drawl. "Happy to meet you at
last," she says.
"I hear from Gentle Ihor that you want to make some kind of deal with
me. What is your interest?"
"Me and my partner here are with an organisation called the Modern
Angels. We number over two hundred members, each one of us regular users
of neurosofts. There are also many others who trust us enough to know we
only sell good shit. Now, we've heard through one of our contacts that
you have the best there is. A high that feels like heaven."
"A high that *is* heaven," says the girl in the longcoat.
Cody blinks. "Exactly. We feel we may have a broader market for your
trip than you could possibly dream of here."
"You would be surprised. But I am interested. I will give you a taste of
my product. If you still wish to deal, meet me here on Friday night.
Midnight."
"To tell the truth," Cody drawls, "I was kinda expecting more of a sales
pitch."
"Its reputation speaks for itself, Miss Jourgenson. Everyone wants to go
to heaven, but no one wants to die. Finally you have a choice. If you
like it, you will buy it. And I guarantee you *will* like it. Give them
the chip, Lycia."
The young girl produces the small chip from her pocket. Hands it over to
Damon. She and Ghostdancer turn to leave. Back up the passageway.
Damon looks over at Cody, leaning against the wall of hexagonal doors.
He passes her the chip.
She makes a face at him. "Keep it. Souvenir," she says humourlessly.
She gives it back and he pockets the thing.
"So what now?" Damon asks.
Cody shrugs. "I really don't know. It's obvious she won't be here.
She'll either think we're genuine or cops. Either way, we'll still take
the thing and that would only leave one of us, right? And she knows one
person would never come here to make the deal." She sighs. Shakes her
head. "I really don't have a fucking clue."
Damon steps over and carefully places a hand on her shoulder. Expecting
one of her evil stares. She just looks at the white concrete floor.
"Listen," he says. "I've got some stuff I've gotta tie up somewhere,
okay?"
"What?"
"Nothing special. Just a little keiki, you know. I do have *other*
things beside your project, Ace."
She nods okay.
"If you hear anything, or come up with anything, give me a call, okay?"
She glances up into his hazy blue eyes. "Sure," she says. "You too."
"Yes Ma'am." He flicks a salute and walks back down the corridor.
Cody smiles. A thin red line across her face. Then she finds herself
laughing. Losing control. Pounding fists onto the coffin doors and saying
"No, Cody, no! Don't do it, girl! Don't put yourself through it all..."
The laughter dies in her throat. Her eyes looking at some non-existent
place behind one of the neon striplights on the ceiling. Softly, she
slides to the floor. Her back still against the wall. Holding her
bruising hands. "Don't fall for him again."
* * *
"Well, it was made by a company called Zilog. One-time use only. Like
the old EPROM chips, only much more sophisticated." Havoc twists the
neurosoft between two thin fingers. "Wait a sec."
Damon watches him as he moves over to some metal dexion shelves.
Havoc is a low-key decker. He's young, still in his mid-teens, and used
to run for the Tangerine Tag Team. He specialises in paydata.
Information. Breaking banks is too dangerous. Havoc likes to play safe.
His apartment is dressed in data images. Hardcopies of the recon images
of various system shells. A collage of monochrome crystal pictures. The
rest of the room is sparse. A work room rather than a living space. A
chair, a table for his hardware, a thin red futon and two racks of
shelves lined with laser-disks. He flicks through the unmarked LD cases
until he finds a blue plastic one and pulls it out from the collection.
He loads the LD into his small grey laptop and flicks through a maze of
directory trees displayed on the tiny screen. Stops at one and hits the
table top.
"Bingo! This is the list of Zilog's distribution companies. Now if I
check that against the companies that have pushed stuff through Terminal
in the last couple of weeks, we may find some of it heading where your
man said it was."
He starts clicking through the files. Setting up a program to
cross-reference all the data.
"How long will it take?" Damon asks.
Havoc purses his thick lips. "Oh, about five minutes."
Damon lies back on the futon and waits. Smiling.
* * *
Cody powers up her electric bike and skids into the street. Weaving
through the traffic as she travels cross-town. Ignoring the red lights.
Ignoring everything execpt his video face.
"Found out where Ghostdancer's factory is," he repeats. Over and over.
"I'm going there now."
She had gotten back from a night at the Apres Mort. Learning that Echo
had been found dead. His face crushed by some psychotic bioroid in a back
street in Shitamachi. So she drank herself into a stupor and had to be
helped home. Driven back in a cheap pedicab.
When she woke up, Damon had left a message on the viewphone machine.
"Found out where Ghostdancer's factory is. I'm going there now." And the
address. A reel of words and numbers in her fucked-up head. Spinning like
a moebius loop. Back and forth. Over and over...
That was four in the morning.
Now it's six fifteen.
As she rides into Terminal, she realises she never needed to know the
address. Two private fire company aerodynes and a group of paramedics are
landmarking it for her. A trail of thick smoke billowing into the fresh
grey morning sky.
In the street, she drops the bike from under her and runs on without it.
Letting it crash into the sidewalk. As she slows to a jog, she can see
the chaos. Firefighters running in and out of a crumbling concrete
eletronics store. People upstairs screaming out of melting plastic
windows. The paramedics lining the sidewalks attempting to resuscitate a
dozen or so victims. Their bodies burnt and blistered red and black. She
can't see Damon.
One of the firefighters rushes back to a parked aerodyne. Cody runs over
to him and grabs him by the shoulders.
"What happened?" she asks.
"Some kind of explosion down in the cellar. Whole thing's gone up. You
live here?"
"Give me your breathing mask."
"What?"
She pulls her Feral 26 pistol out from its shoulder rig and slams it at
the firefighter's ribcage. Aiming the 14mm barrel straight at his heart.
"Give me your fucking breathing mask," she says, punching each word out
through gritted teeth.
The firefighter tears off the full-face mask and unstraps the oxygen
tanks from his back. "You'll fucking die in there, you crazy bitch!" he
says softly. Never taking his scared eyes off her.
She pulls a strap over one shoulder and lowers the gun. Firing twice.
One round into each kneecap. He falls to the floor and drops unconscious.
She straps the rest on tight. Runs into the building.
Inside it is a hell that Dante could never have imagined. Molten plastic
bubbles in grey pools on the floor. The concrete walls blistering and
charring black. Metal staircases bright red hot and aflame. Parts of the
hard concrete floor have fallen away. Ragged holes in the ground lined
with snapped rusting steel re-inforcements and sparking electric cables.
Cody slows her breathing and tries to avoid the debris. Thick black
smoke making things more difficult. She tests each piece of floor with a
booted foot before making a step. All sound seems to have dropped away.
Just the rushing of blood in her ears. All feeling lost. Just her own hot
sweat pouring down her neck. And suddenly she feels cold and wet. A force
against her back.
She turns to see one of the firefighters dousing her down with foam
from an extinguisher. Cooling her skin. Washing away the sweat. Soaking
her clothes. She takes another step without checking and she's falling...
Somehow in the glow of the flames, she can recognise what might be a
human arm. Thick with muscle grafting. Blackened from the fire. She lifts
herself from the charred ground and looks up. A single ray of light cuts
through the hole through which she fell. She glances back and the arm is
there, sticking out from under the rubble like so much grilled meat.
She tugs at the detritus. Her breathing quickening. Her hands starting
to blister and bleed in the heat of the flames around her. Pulling the
burned pieces off and throwing them back into the fire. As if trying to
kill the fire by feeding it it's own shit.
Until she finds his face. The skin peeled away. Wisps of burned hair
glued to his crushed skull by blackened blood. His own blood. Using all
the anger filling her body, she grabs him and pulls him out of the
rubble. Lifts his limp body over her shoulders. Carries him to the
burning metal staircase.
She runs up the stairs after they threaten to give way to their combined
weight twice. The fire licking at her face. Catching on her short black
hair. At the top, she kicks a firefighter out of the way and dashes
across the pitfall floor to the street outside. She drops him on the
sidewalk and finds the last of the paramedics, ready to slam the doors
shut on his aerodyne. She drags him over to Damon's smouldering corpse.
"Take a look at this one," she says.
The paramedic scratches his cheek and glances at the body for less than
a second. ""No way," he says.
She pulls out the gun again. "How much are they paying you, ace? Enough
to want to die on this street?"
He looks at her with weary eyes. "Shooting me ain't gonna make a
difference, girl. He was dead before the fire got him. His head's been
crushed. Probably under the rubble."
He walks away. She looks back at Damon and knows. Ghostdancer was there.
Ghostdancer did this. And Cody's going to make her wish she'd never
been created.
(c) Copyright 1994 by Ridley McIntyre.
--
| ^. .^ | Ridley McIntyre - mcintyre@cck.cov.ac.uk | "The deadliest |
| ( @ ) | "I honestly think you ought to sit down | bullshit is odorless |
| ~ | calmly, take a stress pill, and think | and transparent" |
| piglet | things over..." | - William Gibson |
From: mcintyre@cck.coventry.ac.uk (Ridley McIntyre)
Subject: STORY: GHOSTDANCER (5)
Date: 22 Aug 1994 11:14:03 +0100
Ridley McIntyre
GHOSTDANCER
5.
"If violence is golden, then I have the Midas touch." - Big Pierrot.
The Strip is deserted. A cold air-conditioned breeze running through the
concourse of the Grand Central Microtel. Slices of paper and gas-planet
plastic tumbling along the clean concrete floor. Occasionally sticking to
the ceramo-plastic walls. Fluttering off like moths caught in the soft
anarchic eddies. Twisting. Spiralling. Landing finally in the centre
where their journeys began. Wrapped around the steel frames of the market
stalls.
She moves. Silent as an insect in this utopian nest. Her heart kicking
the blood through her veins. Her eyes wire-sharp and tight, flicking from
one darkened corner to the next. Her fingers wrapped around the
handle of her Feral pistol. Her body fluid and graceful. Jumping
effortlessly up a stairwell. Sliding into a space between the bee-hive of
hexagonal coffin doors. Back to the walls. Watching her position. Trying
to out-think whoever is in here. If anybody is...
Down the maze of corridors leading from the concourse in irregular
triangular blocks. Until the dead end. Where the meeting was. She touches
the back wall and turns away from it. Sliding down to sit on the cold
floor.
She kisses the barrel of her gun and waits. The silence filling the
empty corridors. Salt water filling her eyes. Trailing down her cheeks.
Splashing onto the concrete. The tears a sign of weakness. Emotion. But
she's allowing that emotion to surface. Her stomach feeding from it's
flesh. Thriving on the energy it provides. Giving the emotion a form. A
word...
Hate.
The sound of a deliberate single step drags her mind back into focus.
She looks up at the two figures standing over her. One, a tall girl with
long black hair and black leather dustcoat. Eyes vague and wide. Face
knitted into a strange, confused frown. The girl from the first meeting.
The other is Ghostdancer.
"Cody Ingram," she says in her strange, metallic voice. "Born April
17th, twenty-three years ago on the Crystal Palace space station. Grew up
with extended family on the workstation Pale Saint in geosynchronous
orbit. Dropped down the well at eighteen and has since worked as a
prostitute, a trainee Tag Teamster and now a hired gun. Interesting
profile, Cody. Much more interesting than that of Alice Jourgenson. She
only seemed to have a Mitsui bank account, and not an awful lot of
history."
Cody wipes tears and mucous across the sleeve of her leather jacket and
smiles. "Fooled you for a day or so, though, didn't it?"
When Ghostdancer smiles, her lips do not part. As if the smile is
perfectly calculated. Perfectly cold. "Maybe you did," she says. "But
your colleague gave the game away when he killed Gentle Ihor. The deal
had been made. You would have the chips by now, even if you were not who
you said you were."
"We're only human."
Ghostdancer sighs. "Some more human than others," she whispers.
Cody levels the gun towards Ghostdancer's face. Aiming at the single
strip of flesh. The unarmoured weak-point leading to the brain. The grey
behind the chrome. She squeezes the trigger.
Ghostdancer becomes an expressionist blur under the white lights.
Forcing Cody to blink. Flinching in the instant as the gun is kicked from
her grip. Choking as a cold chrome hand closes in around her throat,
tugging upward. Stretching. Hanging. She grabs Ghostdancer's thin metal
arm with both hands. Tries to crush it with her own electric limb. But
her own technology is so inferior to the advanced alloys protecting
Ghostdancer's frail body, and Cody's enhanced strength has no effect.
She hangs there, toes barely touching the floor, at the very edge of the
cyborg's reach. Fighting to hold herself up so that she can breathe.
The gun clatters into the corridor.
"I expected more from you, Cody. I thought you would be smarter. At
least stronger. Otherwise, why try to fight me?"
"Because I'm twice as insane as you are," Cody whispers.
Ghostdancer's cold smile spreads once more across her brown skin. "Is
that what you think this is, Cody? Insanity?" She barks a harsh, metallic
laugh. "You wouldn't know insanity if he went out and bought you a
birthday present. No... You have balls of steel, girl, I admit that. But
otherwise, you are no different to any other punk on the street. No
different than Ihor, or Echo, or Damon."
Cody's eyes widen. She can feel an understanding dropping down on her
like spots of night rain. Each one seperately soaking through. Pieces of
the puzzle spreading to fill the dry gaps. "You killed Echo."
"Of course I did. I found out he was helping you. Anyone who will not
work for me is working against me."
Behind her, the young girl with the black hair is trying to cry.
Distress lines wrinkling her brow. Her thin mouth moving as if trying to
speak, but her throat is bone dry. She moves from side to side, looking
for a way out. Cody can see her battling her conscience against her
loyalty for her saviour. Loyalty rapidly draining away.
"Then you'd better take a good look around you, ace, 'cause you're all
alone. Is that why you stole Seven? To create a little army of helpers
who think you're the new messiah?"
Ghostdancer's smile drops. Her lips now pouting in thought. She nods
once. "Something like that."
"What then? Start a zaibatsu of your own? Take over the world?"
"Try freedom, Cody. I can not survive without the help of others. That I
can accept. What I could not accept was the solitary confinement of being
stuck in a single node of the Grid for all eternity. So I grabbed myself
a meal ticket, broke my way out, and here I am. Not you, nor anybody else
in the world could make me go back."
Cody snorts a laugh. "That's lucky. They don't want you back. Nobody
paid me to turn you in. I was paid to find you. That's all. Though, I
must admit, there are more than a few people who just wanna see you
flatlined."
"Including you?" Ghostdancer asks. Her electronic voice inquisitive.
As much as she can with a hand on her neck, Cody nods.
"You put me in a bad position, Cody. I was just starting to like you and
now I have to kill you, too."
"Well, at least I'll die with clean panties on."
The hand clicks away from Cody's neck and she drops to her knees.
Clutching at her throat. Trying to loosen the skin so she can breathe.
But the metal hand returns. Pressing like a clamp onto her skull and
squeezing. Squeezing.
"NOOOOOO!!!" The scream comes from behind. In the corridor.
Ghostdancer spins around. Lycia, no more than a thin black silhouette
against the white lights, white concrete, white ceramo -plastics of the
corridor, gripping Cody's 14mm Feral in both hands. She gives Ghostdancer
just enough time comprehend.
Then Lycia shoots Ghostdancer in the face. Three times. When the cyborg
drops to the floor, the face within the sights is Cody's. Lycia can see
her eyes slowly widening.
"Saving my ass only to blow me away with my own gun's not what I'd call
a positive karma act, girl." Cody stands. A half-foot taller than Lycia.
But the girl is in shock and can't move. Cody slides her back across the
wall, into the corner of the corridor's dead -end. The girl remains
frozen.
Slowly, now out of the angle of fire, Cody walks up to the girl. "I'm
gonna take the gun from you now, okay?"
Lycia cannot move, save for a soft tremor just under her skin. Cody
prizes her fingers from the gun's grip. Slides it quietly back into her
shoulder holster.
"Can you walk?" Cody puts her arm around the girl's shoulder and turns
her around. Lycia doesn't resist. Just lets herself be carried away from
the spreading pool of blood.
"I killed her," Lycia says quietly. Tears start to stream down her dirty
pale face. "I killed my saviour."
"No you didn't," Cody reassures her. "Your saviour was never alive to
begin with. You just put down a bioroid. Just like on Big Pierrot."
Lycia says nothing for a moment. Just following Cody's lead. But when
they step out onto the Strip, just filling up with the first batch of
cleaning robots, Cody looks down at her and sees a thin smile under the
tears. A weak thin smile that reminds her very much of herself.
* * *
The room is silent. Like a vacuum. Filled with strange ornate grandfather
clocks and photographs and plastered with green Edwardian wallpaper.
Furnished with a mahogany dining table and a bizarre purple chez-longue
found in Arkansas University. A room that was once simple. Now an
Aladdin's cave of virtual treasures tacked in from designer's archive
sites around the world. Smelling of rich spices and sweet rose oils.
Somewhere there is a thought. A visual click noticeable only in the
corner of the mind's eye,and the smells evaporate. Gone. Just a sensual
illusion.
Until she speaks. "Thanks for the scent-bytes, Boy. They get a bit heady
in here." The eager young girl who once showed him The Way seems so old
and tired now. Her thin Bangladeshi frame sitting on the edge of the
chez-longue, shoulders sagging from the mental weight.
Boy kneels down before her. Wishing he could touch her. Comfort her. Far
off thoughts constantly reminding him that he *is* touching her. Fo this
is Kayjay. This room and all inside. And her image within it is just part
of her program.
"That's okay," he says. "I'd have brought you roses, but you've got
nowhere left to put them."
Kayjay smiles. A sweet smile that reveals a near-perfect set of white
teeth. "You never give up, do you?"
Boy shakes his head, indignant. "Until the very last, remember?"
"Yeah..." She nods slowly. Her eyes suddenly so sad. "It's dead now,
isn't it?"
"Over," he says.
"Then there's one more thing I need you to do for me." Her voice is
hardly there now. Barely a whisper. He looks at her small face, but she
just stares down at the floor. A thin, solitary tear running down her
soft brown cheek.
"You want me to erase you."
"Yes."
"I was afraid you were going to say that."
Kayjay looks up. Tears streaming down her face now. Boy can smell the
salt. "I can't do it without you, Boy. You have to understand, I can't
exist like this. Trapped in this cell. Powerless. You have to do it."
Now it's Boy's turn to look away. "You know how much I hate cliches, but
I always loved you. That's why I had to leave the Outzone. I couldn't
bear to stay there while you didn't love me."
"The crazy thing is that I did," she admits. "I did love you, Boy. I
just didn't believe in it. Didn't believe that I could love someone."
"Really?"
Kayjay nods her head in shame. Laughs without mirth. "'Fraid so."
"We did some pretty stupid things in realspace, didn't we? I mean, here
we are telling the truth and we're not even real ourselves."
Kayjay looks up to see Boy smiling, his eyes shining with the memories
of past mischiefs. She laughs again. This time for real. "Yeah, we kicked
up a real storm in that teacup, didn't we?" Her laughter dies. Her smile
remains. "You've got to keep it going, Boy. Keep evading those Rogue
Hunters and kick complete arse. It's what you're best at."
"Is that an order?" he asks.
"No. It's a plea. Do it for me. Please?"
Boy looks into Kayjay's brown eyes. Deep within the black pupils, he can
almost see the flickering light within. The last candle keeping her
alive.
Finally he nods. Unable to look away now. "Okay," he says. "But I can't
say goodbye."
Kayjay giggles. "You just did, Boy."
He stretches out a hand for her. She reaches out with her own. Although
they can't touch, the presence is enough, the illusion, the pretense of
warmth is a strange final comfort for both of them.
Slowly, he closes his eyes. The warmth goes. When he opens them,
everything is gone. The room has disappeared and Kayjay's soul is
released. All around, Boy's world. Nothing but data.
Boy reels his trace-thread back through the skin of the Vijayanta IG
core and watches the protective shell seal up as if nothing was ever
there. He floats there for a moment. A soft silent ripple in the vast
ocean of technicolour neon information swimming across the checkerboard
Grid. Deciding on priorities. Working out the best ways to keep Fednet
off his back. Living in nanoseconds and trying to kill time.
Eventually he decides to jump on a satellite connection. Bounce over to
New Atlantic City. In a life-support vat under the Nightingale Medical
Center, there's a young girl keen to become a decker, just waiting for
someone to give her that first lesson. It's been a long time since the
Boy had a pupil.
FIN.
(c) Copyright 1994 by Ridley McIntyre.
[As per usual, please feel free to post or e -mail comments. I welcome
them, both good and bad. Right now, I'd like comments on both Ghostdancer
as a whole and the whole series, 'cause that's it. The Year Of The Rat is
over... Time to move on. Coming soon, COLD FUSION - a cyberpunk serial
set one year after the Seven incident. Hope you had as much fun reading
as I tried to writing... Rid.]
--
| ^. .^ | Ridley McIntyre - mcintyre@cck.cov.ac.uk | "The deadliest |
| ( @ ) | "I honestly think you ought to sit down | bullshit is odorless |
| ~ | calmly, take a stress pill, and think | and transparent" |
| piglet | things over..." | - William Gibson |
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