"What do you mean?"
"It doesn't seem to have any kind of focus, you know? I saw the threads—it described me a thousand different ways and then it just went with the one that stuck. I don't know how many head cases it threw at me, through my watch, my visor—they even started coming at me out of vending machines, did you know that? — and it wasn't until I stopped talking to anyone else that it settled on you. Any haploid would've known better than to audition most of those assholes, but your anemone is just—random. Why is that?"
"I don't know."
"Didn't you ever wonder?"
She had, of course. But somehow it hadn't seemed to matter that much.
"Maybe that's why you made the cut," Clarke said.
"Why?"
"You're a good soldier. You need a cause, you follow orders, you don't ask embarrassing questions." A whisper of static. Then: "Why are you helping me, Sou? You've seen the threads."
"You said the threads were bullshit," Perreault said.
"Most of them are. Almost all. But they blew up Channer. They must have known the kind of collateral that would bring down, and they did it anyway. They burned the Strip. And the life down there on the rift, it was—God knows what was down there. What I brought back."
"I thought your blood tested clean."
"Tests only see what they're looking for. You haven't answered my question."
And still she didn't, for a very long time.
"Because they tried to hammer you down," she said at last. "And you're still here."
"Huh." A long breath whispered through the headset. "You ever have a dog, Sou-Hon? As a pet?"
"No."
"You know what happens when you keep a dog locked away from every living thing, except you visit once a day and kick the shit out of him?"
Perreault laughed nervously. "Someone actually tried that?"
"What happens is, the dog's a social animal, and it gets so lonely it actually looks forward to the shit-kicking. It asks to be kicked. It begs."
"What are you saying?"
"Maybe everyone's just so used to being kicked around, they'll help out anyone they think has a big enough boot."
"Or maybe," Perreault said, "we're so fucking tired of being kicked that we're finally lining up with anyone who kicks back."
"Yeah? At any cost?"
"What do we have to lose?"
"You have no idea."
"But you did. You must have known all along. If the danger was really so great, why didn't you turn yourself in? Save the world? Save yourself?"
"The world had it coming," Clarke said softly.
"Is that what you’re doing? Just—getting revenge on nine billion people you never even met?"
"I don't know. Maybe before."
"Now?"
"I just—" Clarke's voice broke. Pain and confusion flooded through the breach. "Sou, I want to go home."
"So go," Perreault said gently. "I'll help you."
A ragged breath, brought back under tight controclass="underline" "No."
"You could really use—"
"Look, you're not just a—a traveling companion any more. I don't think either of us was really on the scope before Yankton, but they know about us now, and you—you really got in their way. If they haven't tracked you down already, they're damn well working on it."
"You're forgetting about our anemone."
"No I'm not. I just don't trust the fucking thing."
"Look—"
"Sou-Hon, thanks for everything. I mean that. But it's too dangerous. Every second we talk, our trail gets brighter. You really want to help me, then help yourself. Don't try to talk to me again. Go away. Go somewhere safe."
A lump grew in her throat. "Where? Where's safe?"
"I don't know. I'm sorry."
"Lenie, listen to me. There's got to be a plan. You've got to have faith, there's a purpose behind all of this. Please, just—"
The crunch of plastic, ground underfoot.
"Lenie!"
Link lost flashed front and center.
She didn't know how long she sat there, in her own personal void. Eventually, link lost went away. Some other readout flashed off at the edge of vision, a rhythmic little scratch on her retina. The effort required to focus on it seemed almost superhuman.
Goodbye
It said. And:
Anemone. We like that.
Behind the Lines
A random trawl caught the anomaly fifteen nodes off the port bow. A thousand other channels were abuzz with Lenie Clarke, but this one was so clean: no packet locs, no drop-outs, none of the stutters and time-lags that always plagued civilian traffic in Maelstrom. The line was full of groupies with online handles like Squidnapper and White-eyes, all at rapt attention while something whispered disinformation in their midst. It called itself The General and it spoke with a thousand different voices: raw ASCII reinflated to specs set by each recipient's software.
It hung up the moment it heard Achilles Desjardins creeping in from behind.
Too fast for meat. Almost too fast even for the hounds Desjardins set on its trail; they circled the world in seconds, diving through gateways, tripping over wildlife, finding half-eaten carcasses where traffic registries had lived and breathed just moments before. Here, and here, and here: nodes through which The General's words had passed. Traffic logs mauled beyond recognition by earth-scorchers covering their tracks. The hounds replicated a thousandfold and dived through all available ports in unison, trying reacquire the scent through brute force.
This time they succeeded. The flag went up on Desjardins's board at t-plus-six seconds: something had been treed on a server in the Hokkaido microwave array. It wasn't a smart gel. There were no smart gels for at least four nodes in any direction. But it was dark, and it was massive, and it was holding its breath so tight that nothing could get a fix on its exact address. It was just in there, somewhere. Under the surface.
And when Achilles Desjardins seined the node, panicky wildlife scattering at his approach, The General was nowhere to be found.
"Shit…"
He rubbed his eyes and broke the link. The real world resolved around him—or at least, that part of it trapped within the walls of his cubby.
That was him, he remembered. Trapped in there. Undistracted by the endless frustration of hunting phantoms, it all came flooding back.
The real world had got even worse, now that Lubin had deserted him.
A hand on his shoulder. He started, then sagged.
"Killjoy. You look like shit," Jovellanos said kindly.
He looked up at her. "Maybe Rowan's right."
"Rowan?" She laid her hands on his shoulders and started kneading the muscles.
"It's not the gels. Maybe it really is some kind of—global conspiracy. I can't find any other explanation…"
"Uh, Killjoy—in case you've forgotten, I haven't seen you in four days." Her hair smelled like some extinct flower from Desjardins's childhood. "I hear you've been hobnobbing with all sorts of strange people, but I'm nowhere near the loop, you know?"
He waved at the board, then realized that she wouldn't see anything there; he'd routed the display to his inlays. "That whole movement. Rifter chic or whatever the hell they call it, you know? It's a propagation strategy. That's all it is. Isn't that wild?"
"Yeah? What's it propagating?"
"ßehemoth," Desjardins whispered.
"No." Her hands dropped away. "How?"