He shoved the thought away. If you can't argue, and you can't stop it…
Last thing they'd expect.
Hey, hotwire-you're an asshole.
Yah, but I'm trying to quit.
Just as her feet left the rail, he hurled himself forward and caught her in midair, at the moment before she dropped.
Port in a storm, nowhere else to go. That bother you?
She already knew the answer to that, but he told her anyway. They toppled onto the sagging mattress in a frantic, urgent tangle.
That's what I've got: a port in a storm, he thought.
That's more than most people are left with when the smoking lamp starts to burn low.
The feel of her was even more tangible in this state, if that was possible. The sense-memory of her T-shirt against his hands was wildly vivid, the warmth of her skin a shocking contrast, and then the taste and smell of her flooded him, carrying him to her like a hurricane tide.
Her physical strength had caught him unawares, in spite of that punch she'd given him. The power in her muscles had been astonishing. Or maybe it had been the force of her passion that had taken him by surprise, so different from long-ago, bloodless couplings with Catherine, no paler for being dim in the recollection.
Or maybe it had been the force of his own passion that had been the real stunner that night (was the real stunner now); until then he had all but forgotten that there was even the potential for passion inside him, let alone at this intensity. But he could, could then, could now-
We do what we do. We do it because we can. The words came to him now clearly, what he had only been able to understand in a primitive, gut-level way from the sound of her breathing in the dark. I'm lucky I can dance, and so are you, and we're lucky we can dance together now. Take a little walk with me. A little traveling music, please. Here it comes. Be there for you. What does this remind you of, an open window or an open wound…
The response poured from him without his willing it.
Well, the fact is, Gina, sometimes it looks like one and sometimes like the other, and it's really a combination of both. But what really matters, Gina, what really matters is, I climbed on in, because ninety percent of life is being there, and the other ten percent is being there on time, and it was time. And it still is, Gina. It still is time. But do I really have to tell you that?
No, he hadn't. But it had been good for her to hear it. She'd wanted to hear it.
Don't tell me who my enemy is; tell me who it isn't.
Okay, Gina; whatever works, whatever s right.
"How the fuck did you find me?"
"It wasn't that hard," Gabe said. "Not once I had the right associations."
There was a pause on the brink of one moment before the next.
"Jesus, yes, we've both got that, Ludovic. Run with it from there."
From there to anywhere, he thought. He could do that. What else did he have? Take a little walk with me.
Right; that, too-a walk he'd taken, a way. Go somewhere. And what else? Change for the machines.
MORE DRUGS.
Watch out, it can make you a little stupid. Definitely got that, Gabe thought, bemused; definitely got a little stupid.
So? The kid said anything could be useful.
How about the C-word? Commitment.
Lover, sometimes that's all you got. Remember?
Sometimes, Gina. But not this time.
– -
"All right," Mark said lightly, "I gave you that one. Now you can say I should have known better. That's okay, Gina. I got a million of them-"
– and they ain't all for you.
Gabe caught the rest of it, even if Gina hadn't. Apprehension hummed within him like a spinning sawblade. Can't get her on a direct approach, he thought, urgency rising in him and trying to become panic. Got to go at her through the weak link, and that would be me.
"Knock that shit off, hotwire," Marly said seriously, "unless you just want to paint a bull's-eye on your forehead and hold still for whatever's coming up next."
They were in the dark hallway again, flattened against the wall. But the hallway was different somehow, not quite right, and yet not totally unfamiliar.
"You're good. There's really no question about that, never has been."
"That's your cue, hotwire," Caritha said, and gave him a shove.
He was sitting at the table in Manny's office, and the smell of fried food was sickeningly strong.
"This was how I got you last time," Manny said. "Playing with your friends."
Gabe tried to look at Marly and Caritha, but his head refused to turn.
"See, you all tend to do the same things, gravitate to the familiar." Manny leaned forward, the bogus concern creasing his face as nauseating as the fried-meat stink. "You're so utterly predictable, it isn't worth the bother of plotting a decision tree for you. But our kind isn't. No trap doors, no twenty-story drops this time. Sticky field."
Gabe could feel it, sucking at him in the chair like quicksand. The ever-popular sticky field, mainstay of numerous B-features. Like the holo-to-laser trick, something else that was impossible only in the real world.
Something tugged at the edge of his thoughts, the bare, dim shadow of some idea, or-
Manny got up and came around the table to him. "And though you didn't ask, yes, it is me. Manny Rivera. After a fashion."
After a fashion. In spite of everything Gabe wanted to laugh. Poor old affected Manny Rivera, posturing even in this state. Although after the initial shock, Manny had probably taken to this like home. Anyone who could survive in the belly of the corporate beast would probably find this existence all but natural.
"Me," Manny said, "not that pitiful meat that walked and talked and played the villain in the set-piece of your life. Just as this is you, isn't it, Gabe, not the meat that breathes so slowly in some other reality. You left that behind to be where you are now, and it does breathe so slowly, doesn't it? Slowly, but it still breathes. Or can't you feel it anymore?"
The sticky field increased its pull on him and scrambled inside, trying to free himself, to get some sense of his body and his connection to it, because if he couldn't, there'd be nowhere to go if this failed, nowhere to go when it was over.
I can't remember what it feels like to have a body. No? Even after everything else? He wanted to scream in frustration, but he had nothing to scream with.
"Your life's all in your mind, isn't it? Good at dreaming, not so good at waking up-pretty bad, in fact. Stone-home bad, as they say in the world, the one you don't live in right now. You were right-you are the weak link. It's not hard to get to you. You just have to hold still long enough, and even I can work on you, even I can become so important that I can feed you a line of shit that will tie you in knots."
I can't remember what it feels like to have a body. All right, then, where was Marly, where was Caritha?
"Not something we can help you with, hotwire," Caritha said apologetically.
"Of course not," Manny agreed. "No body, no hotsuit to put on it."
He strained to look down at himself. No body and no hotsuit, but the familiar baroque pattern of snaky lines and geometric sensor shapes was there. At last the permanent tattoo.