“You think you might like tossing in with me? You know, becoming business partners? We’d make good isk. Not that we need to earn much, like you said. And you could give up the illegal stuff—”
“Give up the Oyster Pirates? Never! That’s my heritage! And to be honest with you, babe, there’s just not enough thrills in your line of work.”
Just as I was addicted to mongo, Cherry was hooked on plundering the shellfish farms, outwitting the guards and owners and escaping with her booty. Myself, I knew I’d be a nervous wreck doing that for a living. (She took me out one night on a raid; when the PEP discharges started sizzling through the air close to my head, I dropped to the deck of the Soft Grind (which possessed a lot of speed belied by its appearance) and didn’t stand up again till we reached home. Meanwhile, Cherry was alternately shouting curses at our pursuers and emitting bloodthirsty laughs.)
Luckily, we were able to reconcile our different lifestyles quite nicely. I simply switched to night work. Once I was deep enough below the surface, I had to rely on artificial lights even during the daytime anyhow.
Several nights each week, you’d find us motoring off side by side in our respective boats. Eventually our paths would diverge, signalled by a dangerous kiss across the narrow gap between our bobbing boats. As I headed toward whatever nexus of sunken loot I had charted, I’d catch up on ubik matters, writing dialogue for One Step Closer to Nowhere, the sitcom that had replaced Naomi Instanton, or monitoring border crossings for an hourly rate for the Minute Men.
Cherry and I would meet back home on my little island, which Cherry had christened “Sandybump.” We’d sleep till noon or later, then have fun during the day.
A lot of that fun seemed to involve Foolty “FooDog” Fontal.
5. A PORTRAIT OF THE CON ARTIST AS A YOUNG FOODOG
During all the years we hung out together, we never learned where FooDog actually lived. He seemed reluctant to divulge the location of his digs, protective of his security and privacy even with his friends. (And recalling how easily he had stolen Cherry’s identity from my friends list, who could blame him at worrying about unintentional data-sharing?) FooDog’s various business, recreational and hobbyist pursuits had involved him with lots of shady characters and inequitable dealings, and he existed, I soon realized, just one step ahead—or perhaps laterally abaft—of various grudge-holders.
I should hasten to say that FooDog’s dealings were never—or seldom—truly unethical or self-serving. It’s just that his wide-ranging enthusiasms respected no borders, sacred cows or intellectual property rights.
But despite his lack of a public meatspace address, FooDog could always be contacted through the ubik, and me and Cherry would often meet him somewhere for what invariably turned out to be an adventure of the most hyphy dimensions.
I remember one day in November….
We grabbed a zipcar, FooDog slung several duffels in the interior storage space, and we headed north to New Hampshire. FooDog refused to tell us where we were heading till it was too late to turn back.
“We’re going to climb Mount Washington? Are you nuts?” I picked up the feed from the Weather Observatory atop the peak. “There’s a blizzard going on right now!”
“Precisely the conditions I need for my experiment.”
The normal daily high temperature atop the peak at this time of the year was thirteen degrees Farenheit. The record low was minus-twenty. In 1934, the Observatory had recorded the biggest wind ever experienced on the planet: 231 MPH. There were taller places and colder places and windier places and places with worse weather. But Mount Washington managed to combine generous slices of all these pies into a unique killer confection.
Cherry said, “C’mon, Russ, trust the Dog.”
I grumbled, but went along.
We made it by car up the access road to 4300 vertical feet, leaving only 2000 feet to ascend on foot. With many contortions, we managed to dress in the car in the smartsuits FooDog had provided. When we stepped outside, we were smitten with what felt like a battering ram made of ice. We sealed up our micropore facemasks and snugged our adaptive goggles more firmly into place. Cherry had a headset that provided a two-way audiofeed to the ubik. We donned our snowshoes, grabbed our alpenstocks, and began the ascent, following the buried road which was painted by our ubik vision to resemble the Golden Brick path to Oz. FooDog carried a box strapped to his back, the object of our whole folly.
I won’t belabour you with the journey, which resembled in its particulars any number of other crazed climbs atop forbidding peaks. Let’s just say the trek was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
We never even made it to the top. Around 5500 feet, FooDog declared that he could conduct his experiment at that altitude, with the storm raging slightly less virulently around us. He doffed his box, unfolded its tripod legs, spiked it into the snow, and began sending an encrypted command stream to the gadget over the ubik.
“Can we know now what we risked our lives for?” I said.
“Sure thing, nephew. This gadget messes with the quantum bonds between the hydrogen atoms in water molecules, via a directional electrostatic field. I’ve got it pointed upward now. Good thing, or we’d all be puddles of slop.”
I took a nervous step or three away from the machine, unsure if FooDog was kidding or not. But I should have trusted him not to endanger us—at least via technology.
I looked toward Cherry, to make sure she was okay. She gave an exclamation of awe. I looked back toward the machine.
There was an expanding hemisphere of atmospheric inactivity above the gadget. It grew and grew, providing an umbrella of calm. Some snow still pelted us from the side, but none reached us from above.
FooDog’s box was quelling the blizzard.
FooDog undid his mask. His black face, wreathed in a wide grin, stood out amidst all the white like the dot of a giant exclamation point.
“Hyphy!” he exclaimed.
The ubik was already going insane. Weather-watcher wikis frantically sought to dispatch entomopter cams to our location, to supplement the reports of the fixed sensors located at some distance, but were frustrated by the surrounding storm, still in full force. But I suspected that if FooDog’s bubble continued to expand, sooner or later a cam would get through and ID us.
Evidently, FooDog had the same realization. He said, “Brace yourself,” then shut off his machine.
The blizzard socked us with renewed vigour—although I seemed to sense in the storm a kind of almost-human shock, as if it had been alarmed by its interruption.
FooDog resealed his mask, and we headed down.
“Aren’t you worried we’ll be ID’d on the way down the mountain?”
“I hired the zipcar under a spoofed name, then de-spimed it. Cherry’s untouchable, and you and I have our denial flags on. Once we get down the mountain, anyone who manages to get near us in meatspace will have to distinguish us from a hundred other identical cars on the road. We’re as invisible as anyone gets these days.”
“So your little invention is safe from greedy and irresponsible hands.”
“Sure. Unless I decide to opensource it.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
But the Dog replied not.
So that’s what the average outing with Foolty Fontal was like.
Of course, I had certain thrills in my own line of work.
One day my not inconsiderable rep as a salvage expert attracted an offer from the Noakhali Nagas, a wiki from Bangladesh. That unfortunate country had suffered perhaps more than any, due to oceanic incursions. The creeping Bay of Bengal had submerged thousands of shrines. Rescuing deities would provide me with a significant chunk of lindens. And the challenge of new territory—the Cape Archipelago was starting to bore me a little after so many years—was a plus as well.