"MAYBE YOU CAN RUN that one by me again," Bobby said, around a mouthful of rice and eggs "I thought you already said its not a religion."
Beauvoir removed his eyeglass frames and sighted down one of the earpieces. "That wasnt what I said. I said you didnt have to worry about it, is all, whether its a religion or not Its Just a structure. Lets you an me discuss some things that are happening, otherwise we might not have words for it, concepts"
"But you talk like these, whatchacallem, lows, are"
"Loa," Beauvoir corrected, tossing his glasses down on the table He sighed, dug one of the Chinese cigarettes from Two-a-Days pack, and lit it with the pewter skull. "Plurals same as the singular." He inhaled deeply, blew out twin streams of smoke through arched nostrils. "You think religion, what are you thinking about, exactly?"
"Well, my mothers sister, shes a Scientologist, real orthodox, you know? And theres this woman across the hall, shes Catholic. My old lady" he paused, the food gone tasteless in his mouth " shed put these holograms up in my room sometimes, Jesus or Hubbard or some shit. I guess I think about that."
"Vodou isnt like that," Beauvoir said. "It isnt concerned with notions of salvation and transcendence. What its about is getting things done. You follow me? In our system, there are many gods, spirits. Part of one big family, with all the virtues, all the vices. Theres a ritual tradition of communal manifestation, understand? Vodou says, theres God, sure, Gran Met, but Hes big, too big and too far away to worry Himself if your ass is poor, or you cant get laid. Come on, man, you know how this works, its street religion, came out of a dirt-poor place a million years ago. Vodous like the street. Some duster chops out your sister, you dont go camp on the Yakuzas doorstep, do you? No way. You go to somebody, though, who can get the thing done. Right?" Bobby nodded, chewing thoughtfully. Another derm and two glasses of the red wine had helped a lot, and the big man had taken Two-a-Day for a walk through the trees and the fluorescent jackstraws, leaving Bobby with Beauvoir. Then Jackie had shown up all cheerful, with a big bowl of this eggs-and-rice stuff, which wasnt bad at all, and as shed put it down on the table in front of him, shed pressed one of her tits against his shoulder.
"So," Beauvoir said, "we are concerned with getting things done. If you want, were concerned with systems. And so are you, or at least you want to be, or else you wouldnt be a cowboy and you wouldnt have a handle, right?" He dunked what was left of the cigarette in a fingerprinted glass half full of red wine. "Looks like Two-a-Day was about to get down to serious partying, about the time the shit hit the fan."
"What shits that?" Bobby asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"You," Beauvoir said, frowning. "Not that any of it is your fault. As much as Two-a-Day wants to make out thats the case."
"He does? He seems pretty tense now Real bitchy, too."
"Exactly. You got it Tense Scared shitless is more like it."
"So how come?"
"Well, you see, things arent exactly what they seem, with Two-a-Day. I mean, yeah, he actually does the kind of shit youve known him to; hustles hot software to the caspers, pardon me" he grinned "down in Barrytown, but his main shot, I mean the mans real ambitions, you understand, lie elsewhere." Beauvoir picked up a wilted canapé, regarded it with evident suspicion, and flicked it over the table, into the trees. "His thing, you understand, is dicking around for a couple of bigtime Sprawl oungans."
Bobby nodded blankly.
"Dudes who serve with both hands"
"You lost me there."
"Were talking a professional priesthood here, you want to call it that. Otherwise, just imagine a couple of major dudes console cowboys, among other things who make it their business to get things done for people. To serve with both hands is an expression we have, sort of means they work both ends. White and black, got me?"
Bobby swallowed, then shook his head.
"Sorcerers," Beauvoir said "Never mind. Bad dudes, big money, thats all you need to know Two-a-Day, he acts like an up-line joeboy for these people. Sometimes he finds some thing they might be interested in, he downloads it on em, collects a few favors later. Maybe he collects a dozen too many favors, they download something on him. Not quite the same proposition, you follow me? Say they get something they think has potential, but it scares them. These characters tend to a certain conservatism, you see? No? Well, youll learn."
Bobby nodded.
"The kind of software someone like you would rent from Two-a-Day, thats nothin. I mean, itll work, but its nothing anybody heavy would ever bother with. Youve seen a lot of cowboy kinos, right? Well, the stuff they make up for those things isnt much, compared with the kind of shit a real heavy operator can front. Particularly when it comes to icebreakers Heavy icebreakers are kind of funny to deal in, even for the big boys You know why? Because ice, all the really hard stuff, the walls around every major store of data in the matrix, is always the produce of an Al, an artificial intelligence. Nothing else is fast enough to weave good ice and constantly alter and upgrade it. So when a really powerful icebreaker shows up on the black market, there are already a couple of very dicey factors in play. Like, for starts, where did the product come from? Nine times out of ten, it came from an Al, and Als are constantly screened, mainly by the Turing people, to make sure they dont get too smart. So maybe youll get the Turing machine after your ass, because maybe an Al somewhere wants to augment its private cash flow Some Als have citizenship, right? Another thing you have to watch out for, maybe its a military icebreaker, and thats bad heat, too, or maybe its taken a walk out of some zaibatsus industrial espionage arm, and you dont want that either You takin this shit in, Bobby?"
Bobby nodded. He felt like hed been waiting all his life to hear Beauvoir explain the workings of a world whose existence hed only guessed at before.
"Still, an icebreaker thatll really cut is worth mega, I mean beaucoup. So maybe youre Mr. Big in the market, someone offers you this thing, and you dont want to just tell em to take a walk So you buy it. You buy it, real quiet, but you dont slot it, no. What do you do with it? You take it home, have your tech fix it up so that it looks real average. Like you have it set up in a format like this" and he tapped a stack of software in front of him "and you take it to your joeboy, who owes you some favors, as usual.
"Wait a sec," Bobby said. "I dont think I like "
"Good. That means youre getting smart, or anyway smarter. Because thats what they did. They brought it out here to your friendly wareman, Mr. Two-a-Day, and they told him their problem. Ace, they say, we want to check this shit out, test-drive it, but no way we gonna do it ourselves Its down to you, boy. So, in the way of things, whats Two-a-Day gonna do with it? Is he gonna slot it? No way at all. He just does the same damn thing the big boys did to him, cept he isnt even going to bother telling the guy hes going to do it to. What he does, he picks a base out in the Midwest thats full of tax-dodge programs and yen-laundry flowcharts for some whorehouse in Kansas City, and everybody who didnt just fall off a tree knows that the motherfucker is eyeball-deep in ice, black ice, totally lethal feedback programs. There isnt a cowboy in the Sprawl or out whod mess with that base first, because its dripping with defenses; second, because the stuff inside isnt worth anything to anybody but the IRS, and theyre probably already on the owners take
"Hey," Bobby said, "lemme get this straight"
"Im giving it to you straight, white boy! He picked out that base, then he ran down his list of hotdoggers, ambitious punks from over in Barrytown, wilsons dumb enough to run a program theyd never seen before against a base that some joker like Two-a-Day fingered for them and told them was an easy make. And whos he pick? He picks somebody new to the game, natch, somebody who doesnt even know where he lives, doesnt even have his number, and he says, here, my man, you take this home and make yourself some money. You get anything good, Ill fence it for you!" Beauvoirs eyes were wide, he wasnt smiling. "Sound like anybody you know, man, or maybe you try not to hang out with losers?"
"You mean he knew I was going to get killed if I plugged into that base?"
"No, Bobby, but he knew it was a possibility if the package didnt work. What he mainly wanted was to watch you try. Which he didnt bother to do himself, just put a couple of cowboys on it. It couldve gone a couple different ways. Say, if that icebreaker had done its number on the black ice, youd have gotten in, found a bunch of figures that meant dick to you, youd have gotten back out, maybe with-out leaving any trace at all. Well, youd have come back to Leons and told Two-a-Day that hed fingered the wrong data. Oh, hed have been real apologetic, for sure, and youd have gotten a new target and a new icebreaker, and hed have taken the first one back to the Sprawl and said it looked okay. Meanwhile, hed have an eye cocked in your direction, just to monitor your health, make sure nobody came looking for the icebreaker they mightve heard youd used. Another way it might have gone, the way it nearly did go, something couldve been funny with the icebreaker, the ice couldve fried you dead, and one of those cowboys wouldve had to break into your mommas place and get that software back before any-body found your body."
"I dunno, Beauvoir, thats pretty fucking hard to "
"Hard my ass. Life is hard. I mean, were talkin biz, you know?" Beauvoir regarded him with some severity, the plastic frames far down his slender nose. He was lighter than either Two-a-Day or the big man, the color of coffee with only a little whitener, his forehead high and smooth beneath close-cropped black fizz. He looked skinny, under his gray sharkskin robe, and Bobby didnt really find him threatening at all. "But our problem, the reason were here, the reason youre here, is to figure out what did happen. And thats something else."
"But you mean he set me up, Two-a-Day set me up so Id get my ass killed?" Bobby was still in the St Marys Maternity wheelchair, although he no longer felt like he needed it. "And hes in deep shit with these guys, these heavies from the Sprawl?"
"You got it now."
"And thats why he was acting that way, like he doesnt give a shit, or maybe hates my guts, right? And hes real scared?"
Beauvoir nodded.
"And," Bobby said, suddenly seeing what Two-a-Day was really pissed about, and why he was scared, "its because I got my ass jumped, down by Big Playground, and those Lobe fucks ripped me for my deck! And their software, it was still in my deck!" He leaned forward, excited at having put it together. "And these guys, its like theyll kill him or some-thing, unless he gets it back for them, right?"
"I can tell you watch a lot of kino," Beauvoir said, "but thats about the size of it, definitely."
"Right," Bobby said, settling back in the wheelchair and putting his bare feet up on the edge of the table. "Well, Beauvoir, who are these guys? Whatchacallem, hoonguns? Sorcerers, you said? What the fucks that supposed to mean?"
"Well, Bobby," Beauvoir said "Im one, and the big fella you can call him Lucas hes the other."
"Youve probably seen one of these before," Beauvoir said, as the man he called Lucas put the projection tank down on the table, having methodically cleared a space for it.
"In school," Bobby said.
"You go to school, man?" Two-a-Day snapped "Why the fuck didnt you stay there?" Hed been chain-smoking since he came back with Lucas, and seemed in worse shape than hed been in before.
"Shut up, Two-a-Day," Beauvoir said. "Little education might do you some good "
"They used one to teach us our way around in the matrix, how to access stuff from the print library, like that . . ."
"Well, then," Lucas said, straightening up and brushing nonexistent dust from his big pink palms, "did you ever use it for that, to access print books?" Hed removed his immaculate black suit coat, his spotless white shirt was traversed by a pair of slender maroon suspenders, and hed loosened the knot of his plain black tie.
"I dont read too well," Bobby said. "I mean, I can, but its work. But yeah, I did I looked at some real old books on the matrix and stuff"
"I thought you had," Lucas said, jacking some kind of small deck into the console that formed the base of the tank. "Count Zero. Count zero interrupt. Old programmer talk." He passed the deck to Beauvoir, who began to tap commands into it.
Complex geometric forms began to click into place in the tank, aligned with the nearly invisible planes of a three-dimensional grid. Beauvoir was sketching in the cyberspace coordinates for Barrytown, Bobby saw. "Well call you this blue pyramid, Bobby. There you are." A blue pyramid began to pulse softly at the very center of the tank. "Now well show you what Two-a-Days cowboys saw, the ones who were watching you. From now on, youre seeing a recording " An interrupted line of blue light extruded from the pyramid, following a grid line Bobby watched, seeing himself alone in his mothers living room, the Ono-Sendai on his lap, the curtains drawn, his fingers moving across the deck
"Icebreaker on its way," Beauvoir said. The line of blue dots reached the wall of the tank. Beauvoir tapped the deck, and the coordinates changed. A new set of geometrics replaced the first arrangement Bobby recognized the cluster of orange rectangles centered in the grid. "Thats it," he said.
The blue line progressed from the edge of the tank, headed for the orange base. Faint planes of ghost-orange flickered around the rectangles, shifting and strobing, as the line grew closer.
"You can see somethings wrong right there." Lucas said. "Thats their ice, and it was already hip to you. Rumbled you before you even got a lock."
As the line of blue dots touched the shifting orange plane, it was surrounded by a translucent orange tube of slightly greater diameter The tube began to lengthen, traveling back, along the line, until it reached the wall of the tank . . .
"Meanwhile," Beauvoir said, "back home in Barrytown . . ." He tapped the deck again and now Bobbys blue pyramid was in the center. Bobby watched as the orange tube emerged from the wall of the projection tank, still following the blue line, and smoothly approached the pyramid. "Now at this point, you were due to start doing some serious dying, cowboy." The tube reached the pyramid; triangular orange planes snapped up, walling it in. Beauvoir froze the projection.
"Now," Lucas said, "when Two-a-Days hired help, who are all in all a pair of tough and experienced console jockeys, when they saw what you are about to see, my man, they decided that their deck was due for that big overhaul in the sky. Being pros, they had a backup deck. When they brought it on line, they saw the same thing. It was at that point that they decided to phone their employer, Mr. Two-a-Day, who, as we can see from this mess, was about to throw himself a party..
"Man," Two-a-Day said, his voice tight with hysteria, "I told you. I had some clients up here needed entertaining. I paid those boys to watch, they were watching, and they phoned me. I phoned you. What the hell you want, anyway?"
"Our property," Beauvoir said softly. "Now watch this, real close. This motherfucker is what we call an anomalous phenomenon, no shit . . ." He tapped the deck again, starting the recording.
Liquid flowers of milky white blossomed from the floor of the tank; Bobby, craning forward, saw that they seemed to consist of thousands of tiny spheres or bubbles, and then they aligned perfectly with the cubical grid and coalesced, forming a top-heavy, asymmetrical structure, a thing like a rectilinear mushroom. The surfaces, facets, were white, perfectly blank. The image in the tank was no longer than Bobbys open hand. but to anyone jacked into a deck it would have been enormous. The thing unfolded a pair of horns; these lengthened, curved, became pincers that arced out to grasp the pyramid. He saw the tips sink smoothly through the flickering orange planes of the enemy ice.
"She said, What are you doing? " he heard himself say. "Then she asked me why they were doing that, doing it to me, killing me . . ."
"Ah," Beauvoir said, quietly, "now we are getting somewhere."
He didnt know where they were going, but he was glad to be out of that chair. Beauvoir ducked to avoid a slanting gro-light that dangled from twin lengths of curly-cord: Bobby followed, almost slipping in a green-filmed puddle of water Away from Two-a-Days couch-clearing, the air seemed thicker. There was a greenhouse smell of damp and growing things.
"So thats how it was," Beauvoir said, "Two-a-Day sent some friends round to Covina Concourse Courts, but you were gone. Your deck was gone, too."
"Well," Bobby said, "I dont see its exactly his fault, then. I mean, if I hadnt split for Leons and I was lookin for Two-a-Day. even lookin to try to get up here then hed have found me, right?" Beauvoir paused to admire a leafy stand of flowering hemp, extending a thin brown forefinger to lightly brush the pale, colorless flowers.
"True," he said, "but this is a business matter. He should have detailed someone to watch your place for the duration of the run, to ensure that neither you nor the software took any unscheduled walks."
"Well, he sent Rhea n Jackie over to Leons, because I saw em there." Bobby reached into the neck of his black pajamas and scratched at the sealed wound that crossed his chest and stomach. Then he remembered the centipede thing Pye had used as a suture, and quickly withdrew his hand. It itched, a straight line of itch, but he didnt want to touch it.
"No, Jackie and Rhea are ours. Jackie is a mambo, a priestess, the horse of Danbala." Beauvoir continued on his way, picking out what Bobby presumed was some existing track or path through the jumbled forest of hydroponics, although it seemed to progress in no particular direction. Some of the larger shrubs were rooted in bulbous green plastic trash bags filled with dark humus. Many of these had burst, and pale roots sought fresh nourishment in the shadows between the gro-lights, where time and the gradual fall of leaves conspired to produce a thin compost. Bobby wore a pair of black nylon thongs Jackie had found for him, but there was already damp earth between his toes. "A horse?" he asked Beauvoir, dodging past a prickly-looking thing that suggested an inside-out palm tree.
"Danbala rides her, Danbala Wedo, the snake. Other times, she is the horse of Aida Wedo, his wife."
Bobby decided not to pursue it. He tried to change the subject: "How come Two-a-Days got such a motherhuge place? What are all these trees n things for?" He knew that Jackie and Rhea had wheeled him through a doorway, in the St. Marys chair, but he hadnt seen a wall since. He also knew that the arcology covered x number of hectares, so that it was possible that Two-a-Days place was very large indeed, but it hardly seemed likely that a wareman, even a very sharp one, could afford this much space. Nobody could afford this much space, and why would anybody want to live in a leaky hydroponic forest?
The last derm was wearing off, and his back and chest were beginning to burn and ache.
"Ficus trees, mapou trees . . . This whole level of the Projects is a lieu saint, holy place." Beauvoir tapped Bobby on the shoulder and pointed out twisted, bicolored strings dangling from the limbs of a nearby tree. "The trees are consecrated to different ba. That one is for Ougou, Ougou Feray, god of war. Theres a lot of other things grown up here, herbs the leaf-doctors need, and some just for fun. But this isnt Two-a-Days place, this is communal."
"You mean the whole Projects into this? All like voodoo and stuff?" It was worse than Marshas darkest fantasies.
"No, man," and Beauvoir laughed. "Theres a mosque up top, and a couple or ten thousand holyroller Baptists scattered around, some Church o Sci. . . . All the usual stuff. Still" he grinned "we are the ones with the tradition of getting shit done. . . . But how this got started, this level, that goes way back. The people who designed these places, maybe eighty, a hundred years ago, they had the idea theyd make em as self-sufficient as possible. Make em grow food Make em heat themselves, generate power, whatever Now this one, you drill far enough down, is sitting on top of a lot of geothermal water. Its real hot down there, but not hot enough to run an engine, so it wasnt gonna give em any power. They made a stab at power, up on the roof, with about a hundred Darrieus rotors, what they call eggbeaters Had them-selves a wind farm, see? Today they get most of their watts off the Fission Authority, like anybody else. But that geothermal water, they pump that up to a heat exchanger. Its too salty to drink, so in the exchanger it just heats up your standard Jersey tap water, which a lot of people figure isnt worth drinking anyway . . ."
Finally, they were approaching a wall of some kind. Bobby looked back. Shallow pools on the muddy concrete floor caught and reflected the limbs of the dwarf trees, the bare pale roots straggling down into makeshift tanks of hydroponic fluid.
"Then they pump that into shrimp tanks, and grow a lot of shrimp. Shrimp grow real fast in warm water. Then they pump it through pipes in the concrete, up here, to keep this place warm. Thats what this level was for, to grow ponic amaranth, lettuce, things like that. Then they pump it out into the catfish tanks, and algae eat the shrimp shit. Catfish eat the algae, and it all goes around again. Or anyway, that was the idea. Chances are they didnt figure anybodyd go up on the roof and kick those Darrieus rotors over to make room for a mosque, and they didnt figure a lot of other changes either So we wound up with this space. But you can still get you some damned good shrimp in the Projects . . . Catfish, too"
They had arrived at the wall. It was made of glass, beaded heavily with condensation. A few centimeters beyond it was another wall, that one made of what looked like rusty sheet steel. Beauvoir fished a key of some kind from a pocket in his sharkskin robe and slid it into an opening in a bare alloy beam dividing two expanses of window. Somewhere nearby, an engine whined into life; the broad steel shutter rotated up and out, moving jerkily, to reveal a view that Bobby had often imagined.
They must be near the top, high up in the Projects, because Big Playground was something he could cover with two hands. The condos of Barrytown looked like some gray-white fungus, spreading to the horizon. It was nearly dark, and he could make out a pink glow, beyond the last range of condo racks.
"Thats the Sprawl, over there, isnt it? That pink."
"Thats right, but the closer you get, the less pretty it looks. Howd you like to go there, Bobby? Count Zero ready to make the Sprawl?"
"Oh, yeah," Bobby said, his palms against the sweating glass, "you got no idea...." The derm had worn off entirely now, and his back and chest hurt like hell.