"Push out!" she yelled. "Wedge yourself in!"
It took him a few moments, but he managed to apply his elbows and knees to the sides of the chute, bringing himself to a stop.
"Gabe?" Marly called from somewhere above him.
"Did it," he said a little breathlessly.
"You think you can inch your way back up again?"
He groaned. "Nah, I'll just fly up. Be just as easy."
He heard a slithering sound, and then Marly s hands touched his shoulders. "How about if you hold onto me and do it?" she said with an effort.
"You can't pull us both up."
"Well, no, but I thought it'd be easier if you were holding onto me."
"Easier for who?"
"Don't waste breath arguing, it's the one thing they're not expecting."
He grunted, pushing himself up against the sides of the chute. "Because it can't be done."
"Dammit, hotwire-" she groaned, and rose a few inches. "Why'd you even come?"
"What was I s'posed to do? Give you the cam and wish you luck?" His elbow slipped. He struggled to regain his purchase on the chute, but the effort was too much, and he was sliding down again with a shout.
"Dammit!" yelled Marly. He heard her coming down after him.
He landed on a pile of musty mattresses and scooted out of the way just before Marly hit.
"See what happens when you don't introduce yourselves properly?"
The woman in the black dress was standing several feet away in front of a white cement-block wall. Gabe got up slowly, brushing himself off, and offered a hand to Marly. She ignored it, keeping her eyes on the woman. "Isn't a trapdoor kind of crude?" she said.
"But effective. Appropriate technology." The woman smiled. "You got what you deserved."
"Hotwire, I don't think this one's any more real than her twin sister," Marly said, and took a step forward.
The woman suddenly compressed to a sharp red point of light.
"Down!" Marly yelled.
They flattened just as the point became a red spear that shot out at the spot where Marly had been standing a moment before. It hit the chute with a loud sizzle, and the smell of hot metal filled the air. Marly raised her head slightly to look at him over the mattresses. "They know a few neat tricks with light."
Dumbfounded, Gabe blinked at the spot where the woman's image had been, then at the chute. "I thought the government said the holo-to-laser thing was impossible."
"Impossible for the government," Marly said, looking around warily. "These people hacked the team that worked on it, removed the real specs, and substituted their own." She got up slowly. "Shit, what are we in, a boxcar?"
The room was shaped like a boxcar and not much bigger, all walls and no entrance or exit that Gabe could see except for the end of the chute protruding from the wall. Marly ripped into one of the mattresses, pulling a chunk of ratty yellow foam rubber out of it. She tossed it at the cement-block wall; instead of bouncing off, it vanished.
"That answers that question," she said, and got up.
"Wait! What are you doing?" Gabe said as she headed for the wall.
"Ah, it's not like we're not already in sight, hotwire," she said. "If they can see us, I want to see them." She walked through the wall. Gabe hurried after her.
Beyond the white wall was a long room lined with beds, all of them occupied. Gabe braced himself, but no one rushed them. No one in the beds moved or even spoke.
"The ward," Marly said darkly.
"Why aren't there any attendants?" Gabe whispered.
"Don't need them, they're built in." Marly went to the nearest bed and yanked up the man lying there by his shirt-front. He hung bonelessly in her grasp, his eyes wide open but seeing nothing. A thick black cable was driven into the top of his shaven head, held in place by small clamps.
"Jesus," Gabe said.
"The viral program's just a sideline," Marly said grimly, laying the man down again. "You ever wonder where Solomon Labs gets all that fresh, natural-no-synthetics neurotransmitter?"
He stared, unable to speak.
"And if you think this is a deep, dark secret, you're wrong about that, too," Marly added. "They all know. Even that outfit you work for, the Dive. You crank out the commercials, and high-level management gets their regular doses of n/t to keep them running at peak brain power. If you could get promoted high enough, you'd get some, too." She looked around at the ward. "If Jimmy's in one of these beds, the best thing we can do is yank his cable and say kaddish before we beat it out of here."
Far down at the other end of the room, the silhouette of a man appeared. "Hey! You're not supposed to be in here!" The man started to run for it when another red beam speared the length of the ward and impaled him. He fell backwards.
A moment later Caritha materialized at Gabe's elbow, hefting the cam. "Did I mention I made some other modifications to your hardware? Hope you don't mind too much."
"Why did you come down the chute?" he asked incredulously.
"Last thing they'd expect," she said, winking at him. "Find Jimmy? I hope not."
"Haven't looked," Marly said. "Come on." They hurried through the ward, Caritha scanning the beds with the cam. Gabe marveled. It had originally been a simple record/playback holo projector until she'd gone to work on it; now it was the Swiss Army knife of handcams. She had the same easy genius for hardware that Sam did.
He felt himself flushing guiltily at the thought of his daughter, but there was no time to dwell on that; they had reached the end of the ward. He spotted three vacant beds, and then Marly was shoving him after Caritha into what looked like an elevator. Doors snapped shut behind them. Marly was still searching for a control panel when the floor tilted and spilled them out through the back wall. "Uh-oh," said Caritha in a low voice.
They were looking not into another room but down a long, dark alley strewn with garbage and the shattered remnants of unfathomable machine parts.
"This must be where all the bad machines go to be punished," Marly said. She pulled into a crouch, poised to strike out.
"Can you bust it up, show us where we really are?" Gabe asked Caritha.
"It's worse than you think," Caritha said. She thumbed a switch on the cam, and a bright circle of light appeared on a filthy wall. A moment later the words came up in poison green, precise and annoying:
TIME: 10.30 A.M.
MEETING: 11:15 A.M., NEW MONTHLY
ASSIGNMENTS
!!REMINDER!! LUNCH TOMORROW: 12:30 P.M.
W/MANNY RIVERA, PROBABLY RE QUOTA
ELAPSED TIME: 24 MINUTES, CREDITED TO
GILDING BODYSHIELDS
DISCONNECT: Y/N?
Gabe groaned.
"Rotten break, hotwire," Marly said, and then grinned at him. "Or is it?"
"It is," he said grimly. "I'd rather face the minions of technological evil than another monthly assignment meeting."
Caritha punched his arm. "Just answer y or n so we can get on with this or not."
"I'll catch up with you later," he promised, pushing himself to his feet.
"Y or n," insisted Caritha.
"Yes, dammit," he said wearily. "I mean, y. But leave it running. Leave it running!"
The alley faded to utter black.
The disconnect command automatically opened the clasps on his head-mounted monitor. Gabe eased it off, unplugging the feeds from his hotsuit. The monitor was brand new, lighter than the model he was used to, but it still made him feel as if he had a garbage can over his head.
He stood in the simulation pit, reorienting himself slowly. By afternoon he was going to be aching all over, the way he'd been throwing himself around the room. Like an overgrown, hyperactive eight-year-old playing junior G-man or something. And it was a big room, the biggest Diversifications had; after fifteen years he'd worked his way up to the basketball-court size with the twenty-foot ceilings and full range of equipment-treadmill, stair-climber, scaffolding assembly, modular blocks to stand in for furniture, padded mats.