— Well, you asked for quality, right?
— Y
— Then be patient. I’ll have something soon.
— A Gen-Xer?
Qwaz meant generation X — a member of the post baby-boom wave.
— Nothing but. You’ll have bit maps within the week. What about $?
— The $, Blu, will be sent when the QAI is done.
QAI stood for Quality Assurance Inspection. Qwaz added:
— You have the P.O. box number?
— Y
— That’s fine. CU later.
And Qwaz was gone, allowing Lu one more chance. Lu knew that she had to make good on it this time, that there were unlikely to be any further extensions. And damn it, she would have had the material in Qwaz’s hands weeks ago if things hadn’t kept going sour for her.
Her attempts kept coming up dry. She’d arrange a meeting and arrive promptly, but the other party would fail to materialize. It was like a curse, or else extremely bad luck. Tonight would be different, though. Her luck was due to change. She felt it way down deep in her bones.
To burn off adrenaline before setting off to meet the stewardess, Lu sat at the computer a while longer and flamed people. Flaming was an amusing pastime, the Net equivalent of throwing spitballs. You made contact with someone, were enormously polite and sympathetic, pressing them to open up to you, to bare their innermost self. Then you lashed out at the unsuspecting cyber-dork with the most outrageous and abusive insult you could possibly muster. Lu was a champ at it. She liked the instant gratification, the raw and indignant response. She had just meted out a terrific scorcher to a particularly soppy net-head and was waiting in keen anticipation for the comeback when suddenly the system operator keyed onto the screen. The sysop typed a curt message, followed by a sideways crabby face:
— OK, torch, snuff it! And butt out of my board! >:-/
Lu replied with a face of her own; a cheeky one...
—:-P
...and shut down.
She was peeved. Sysops were intrusive. Once a frontier of unfettered freedom, the Net was now drifting the way of everything else — towards overregulation and policing. It was a trend that had started with the phone companies, them and their digital networks. No longer an assortment of clumsy electro-mechanical switches, the telephone network had evolved into a web of powerful computers. And computers remembered things. It meant the authorities no longer had to keep you on a line to trace you, as they did in the old movies, but had simply to look at a screen — the next day, even — and there you were. The time and duration of your call, the number of the called party, the number of the caller. Your number. It was all there. An infringement of rights. They’d be recording conversations next. They were probably doing it now.
But it was time to leave. Time to go out into that lousy real world and take one last stab at bagging a subject for Qwaz.
Lu locked up carefully as she always did. And as always, standing in her garage moments later with her ignition key in her hand, she hesitated, then returned to inspect the locks. There were five of them — their number had grown over the years — and each time she left the house they all had to be double-checked. You just couldn’t be too careful nowadays. There was a grave nationwide law-and-order problem in her view: too much law and not enough order.
She drove toward the park contemplating her stewardess — or more accurately, her virtual stewardess; things were rarely what they seemed on the Net.
Virtual or not, stewardesses reigned in Big Lu’s bad books. As a teen she had fantasized about joining those high-fliers, envying the free travel, exotic places, and high wages. But when she was old enough to try for the job, she didn’t even apply. She knew they wouldn’t accept her. By her eighteenth birthday Lu was already six feet tall, weighed over two hundred pounds, and, unlike some more fortunate large women, didn’t wear it well.
Lu hoped that the subject truly was a stewardess, or at least somebody very much like one.
Gathering thunderheads in the west drew an early twilight over the sky, the footbridge that spanned the river already an arc of yellow electric light dispensed by round glass globes on ornamental posts. Very murky. Very turn-of-the-century. It made one feel like — well, like Jack the Ripper. Pausing on a broad, grassy slope, Lu gave the area a quick once-over. A real stewardess ought to stand out like a clothes horse — twiggy, neat, and pert, with the air of someone balancing a book on her head. But there were few people here and certainly no one of that description. An older couple walked a small fuzzy dog across the bridge; a boy on a bicycle swept past them in defiance of the bylaws. The only other person present was a dumpy middle-aged man in an ugly plaid coat. Was this her stewardess? Lu seethed. She hoped he wasn’t, but it wouldn’t surprise her. The guy was staring at the water as if he meant to end it all. Go for it, Lu thought with acid spite. Do it! I’ll give you a leg up.
She sauntered past as if the bridge were the last thing that interested her. Only when she was completely out of sight of it and its arches were screened by the limbs of a broad, gnarly willow did she casually turn and stroll back the other way. She hoped to find the dumpy metajerk replaced by a reasonable facsimile of a stewardess.
He hadn’t been.
She would have to ignore him.
She walked out on the bridge, keeping her distance from the man, placed her own brawny elbows on the parapet, and peered down at the water, which was slate-gray, turgid, dimpled with vortices. Swallows skimmed its surface, then veered under the bridge like miniature fighter planes. It was a peaceful scene; almost, she thought, as good as the screen-saver on her computer monitor.
The stewardess was late. She would give her another five minutes, and then...
“Deep water for this time of year, huh?” The voice was nasal and chummy, and it resonated right at her elbow. She was not surprised to discover that the middle-aged man had sidled up to her like some rotund, wheezing predator. He had a nylon bag that Lu hadn’t noticed before, which he dropped theatrically on the wide, stone parapet with a soft, heavy plop. The bag was black with a loud pink racing stripe across it, and jaunty lettering that announced boldly: JUNK.
“Got some items here that just might interest you.” The man leered as if this were his private showroom. He flopped the bag open before she could raise an objection, revealing a panoply of wares for the local lowlifes: a couple of handguns; some combat knives, many of them particularly vicious-looking; and the cold gleam of throwing stars and brass knuckles. Deeper in the bag’s folds were lurid magazines and videotapes. And there was computer software...
It was the software that caught Lu’s attention. Diskettes bundled in elastic bands and CD-ROM’s bright with garish artwork. She saw immediately what this guy was about. The gang weaponry, the magazines, the rest of this stuff she didn’t give a damn about. But the software touched a nerve. It implied something else. It told her that this guy must be her stewardess, and that he had come here simply to make a buck off of her.
In sudden rage, Lu shot out her hand and seized the man. He gasped and made a plaintive mewing sound. She jerked him off his feet and with a thrust of her powerful shoulders heaved him sideways out over the water. He fell away from her, his astonished face orange under the lights, and hit the water with a dismayed yell and an enormous ka-ploosh! She sent his bag after him with an angry backhander, then turned on her heel and stormed off. To hell with the guy, to hell with Qwaz, to hell with the lousy unreliable real world.