Hardwired Read online

  The other girl’s weeping is a whining, grating sound, like a saw on bone, syncopated with the hysterical crashing as she smashes again and again into the divider. Sarah can see flecks of blood daubing the floor of the next stall. She opens her door and sweeps through the room, past the dirtgirls, whose eyes stand out pale amid their rimming of kohl as they gaze at each other and wonder what to do about the sobbing casualty.

  PRINCESS AUJOURD’OUI REPEAT AUJOURD’OUI

  AM SWITCHING POLICE TRANSMISSIONS

  GOOD HUNTING CUNNINGHAM.

  Sarah blinks as she steps into the darkness of the club, feeling the hardfire impelling her limbs to motion, and she rides the drug like a jock on the flaming roman candle of a booster, climbing for the edge of the sky and still in control. The corners of the room, the dancers and fixtures, flare like liquid-crystal kaleidoscopes.

  And then Princess comes, and Sarah’s motion freezes. Princess is surrounded by dirtboy muscle, but she stands out clearly in the dark---there is an aura about her, a glow. She has the Look as none of them have, a soft radiance that speaks of luxury, soft and carefree joys, freedom even from gravity. A life even the jocks can’t share. It seems as if there is a pause in the music, as the room inhales in mutual awe. Two hundred eyes can see the glow and a hundred mouths, hungry for it, begin to salivate. Sarah feels her body tingle, flares of nerve warmth at her fingertips. She is ready.

  Sarah gives a soft private laugh, as if her triumph were already a fact, and walks long-legged across the darkened bar as Firebud has taught her, swinging her broad shoulders in counterpoint to her hips, insinuant animal style. She gives a grin to the muscle and holds her hands palms out to show them she carries no weapons, and then Princess stands before her. She is a good four inches shorter and Sarah looks down at her, hands cocked on her hips, challenging. Princess’s soft blond hair is worn long, ringlets playing with her cheeks, her ears. Her eyes are circled with vast blooms of purple and yellow makeup, to look like bruises, making public the secret wish of a translucent white face that has never known pain. Her mouth is a deep violet, another laceration. Sarah cocks her head back and laughs low, baring her teeth, and thinks of the sounds hyenas make on the hunt.

  “Dance with me, Princess,” she says to the wide cornflower eyes. “I am your wildest dreams.”

  PRACTICE CREATES PERFECTION

  PERFECTION CREATES POWER

  POWER CONQUERS LAW

  LAW CREATES HEAVEN

  –– A helpful reminder from Toshiba

  Nicole has a cigarette in the corner of her mouth and wears a jacket of cracked brown leather. She has dark blond hair that reaches down her back in tawny strands, and long deep gray eyes that look up at Sarah without a flicker.

  Cunningham stands behind her with his two assistants. One is huge, a muscleman with no neck. The other is small, blond, and has even less to say than Cunningham. Sarah thinks the smaller is the more dangerous of the two.

  “You can’t hesitate for a second, Sarah,” Cunningham says. “Not even the fragment of a second. Princess will know it and know there’s something wrong. Nicole is here for that. You are to practice with her.”

  Sarah looks at Nicole for a moment of surprise and then barks a laugh. Anger bubbles in her, whitely, coolly, like flares on the night horizon. “I suppose you plan to watch, Cunningham,” she says.

  He nods. “Yes,” he says. “I and Firebud. You seemed uncertain at first about making love to a woman.” Nicole draws slowly on her cigarette and says nothing.

  “Make a vid record, perhaps?” Sarah asks. “Give me post-game critique?” She curls her lip. “Is that your particular pleasure, Cunningham?” she demands. “Does watching this kind of vid keep your demons away?”

  “We’ll destroy the vids together, if you like...afterward,” Cunningham says. His no-neck assistant grins. The other watches her, expressionless as his chief.

  Sarah has been two months in training, has had her body altered and surgical work done, and all along she has been their willing dirtgirl. But however many candidates had been in Cunningham’s files, she is sure she’s the only hope now, the only charge Cunningham will have shaped by the time Princess next comes down from orbit, and she knows now she has power of her own. They will have to go with her or the project will fail, and it is time they knew it.

  She shakes her head slowly. “I don’t think so, Cunningham,” she says. “I’ll be ready on the night, but I’m not now and I’m not going to be. Not for you, not for your cameras.”

  Cunningham does not reply. He seems to squint a little, as if suddenly the light is stronger. Nicole watches Sarah with smoky eyes, then shakes her long hair and speaks. “Just dance with me, then.” Her words come a little too abruptly, as if impelled by some form of desperation, and Sarah wonders what she has been promised, how she has been made vulnerable to them. When she speaks, her voice gives her away; it is so much younger than her pose. “Just dance a little,” she says. “It’ll be all right.”

  Sarah turns her gaze from Cunningham to Nicole and back, then nods. “Will a few dances satisfy you, Cunningham?” she asks. “Or do we end the program where we stand?”

  His jaw muscles tighten, and for a moment Sarah thinks the business is done, that it’s over. Then he nods, still facing her. “Yes,” he says. “If it has to be that way.”

  “That’s how it has to be,” she says. There is a moment of silence, then Cunningham nods again, as if to himself, and turns away. Nicole gives a nervous smile, wanting to please, not knowing who is her ticket to whatever it is she needs. Cunningham walks to the sound deck and presses a switch. Music buffets the walls. He turns back and folds his arms, waiting.

  Nicole closes her eyes and shrugs out of her jacket. Either they have gone out of their way to find a woman of Princess’s build or they have been lucky. Sarah watches as Nicole sways her body to the music, the plastic girl, waiting blindly to take an impression.

  She steps forward and takes the girl’s hands in her own.

  DELTA THREE EMERGENCY ATTEMPTED SUICIDE AUJOURD’OUI EMERGENCY

  Deep in her zone, Sarah shakes her head to clear the sweat from her eyes and feels the hardfire biting her veins. Princess has been her partner all night. She leaps and spins, and Princess watches with gleaming eyes, admiring. She feels like the crane on her back, arms stretching out to fly on pinions of purest silver. Sarah changes zones and Princess follows, letting her give a name to their motion, their liquid pattern. She is bringing Princess in closer until, like a wave, she can fall upon her from her crest of foaming white.

  There is an intrusion into the zone, an attempted alteration in the pattern. Sarah whirls, an elbow digging deep into ribs, the zoneboy doubling with the impact. She slices at his neck with a sword hand and the boy flies from the zone whimpering. Princess is watching, rapt with glowing admiration. Sarah steps to her and catches her about the waist, and they spin like skaters on the edge of sharpened blades.

  “Am I the danger that you want?” she asks. The blue eyes give an answer. I know you, old man, Sarah thinks in triumph, and bends her head to devour the violet lips, feasting like a raptor on her prey. The eyes of Princess widen, held in Sarah’s gaze.

  Her lips taste of salt, and blood.

  MODERNBODYMODERNBODYMODERNBODYMODERN

  You Can’t Claim You’re a CYBORG Till You Have a

  MODERNBODY SEXUAL IMPLANT

  Undetectable...

  Gives You the Power to Last All Night...

  Orgasm Chips Optional...

  Your Partner Will Thank You for It!

  RNBODYMODERNBODYMODERNBODYMODERNBODY

  Cunningham’s car hisses through the night on speed-blurred wheels. Holograms slide past the windows in neon array. Sarah watches the back of the driver’s neck as it swells from its collar. “It’ll be best if you go alone to the club,” Cunningham says. “Princess may send some of her people ahead, and you don’t want to be seen with anyone.”

  Sarah nods. He’s given these instru
ctions before and she can recite them word for word, even do a fair imitation of the whispery monotone. She nods to show she’s listening. Earlier this afternoon she’d collected the second payment of chloramphenildorphin, and her mind is occupied chiefly with ways of putting it on the street.

  “Sarah,” he says, and reaches into a pocket. “I want you to have this. Just in case.” His hand comes up with a small aerosol bottle.

  “Yes?” she asks. She sprays it on the back of her hand, touches it, sniffs.

  “Silicon lubricant,” he says. “The scent is right, and should last for hours. Use it in the washroom if you find that you aren’t really...attracted to her. ”

  Sarah caps the bottle and holds it out to him. “I don’t plan for it to go that far,” she Says.

  He shakes his head. “Just in case,” he says. “We don’t know what happens when you go behind her walls.”

  She holds it out, expectant, then when he doesn’t respond, she shrugs and puts it in her belt pouch. She rests her reshaped jaw on her hand and stares out the window, the hologram adverts reflecting in her dark eyes, until the car slides to a stop at the door of her apartment.

  She reaches for the latch and opens it, steps out. The heat of the outside covers her like a smothering blanket, and she can feel the sweat springing up on her forehead. Cunningham sits huddled in his seat, somehow smaller than he had been. Up until now, until the firing of his shaped charge, he’d been in control–– but now he’s committed her to action and all he is able to do is watch the result and hope he calculated the ballistics correctly. His jaw muscles twitch in a tight smile and he raises a hand.

  “Thanks,” she says, knowing he’s wished her luck without actually risking a curse by saying it, and she turns away and breathes out and feels a lightness in her body and heart, as if the gravity were somehow lessened. All she has left is the job. No more pleasing Cunningham, no more rules or training, no more listening to Firebud criticizing the very way she walked, the way she held her head. All that is behind.

  The apartment is splashed with video color and she knows Daud is home. He’s cleared the coffee table from the center of the room and is doing his exercises, the weights in his hands, the burning holograms outlining his naked body, his hairless genitals. She kisses his cheek. “Dinner?” she asks.

  “I’m going with Jackstraw. He wants me to meet someone.”

  “Someone new?”

  “Yes. It’s a lot of money.” He drops the weights and lowers himself to the floor, begins strapping another set of weights to his ankles. She stands over him with a frown.

  “How much?” she asks.

  He gives her a quick glance, green laserfire winking from his eye whites, then he looks down. His voice is directed to the floor. “Eight thousand,” he says.

  “That’s a lot,” she says.

  He nods and stretches his back on the ground, raising his legs against the strain of the weights. He points his feet and she can see the muscles taut on the tops of his thighs. She slips out of her shoes and flexes her toes in the carpet.

  “What does he want for it?” she asks. Daud shrugs. Sarah crouches and looks down at him. She feels a tightness in her throat.

  She repeats her question.

  “Jackstraw will be in the next room,” he says. “If anything goes wrong, he’ll know.”

  “He’s a thatch, isn’t he?”

  She can see the Adam’s apple bob as Daud swallows. He nods silently. She takes a breath and watches him strain against the weights. Then he sits up. His eyes are cold.

  “You don’t have to do this,” she says.

  “It’s a lot of money,” he repeats.

  “Tomorrow my job will be over,” she says. “It’ll pay enough for a long time, almost enough for a pair of tickets out.”

  He shakes his head, then springs to his feet and turns his back. He walks toward the shower. “I don’t want your money,” he says. “Your tickets, either.”

  “Daud,” she says. He whirls around and she can see his anger.

  “Your job!” he spits. “You think I don’t know what it is you do?”

  She rises from her crouch, and for a moment she can see fear in his eyes. Fear of her? A wedge of doubt enters her mind.

  “You know what I do, yes,” she says. “You also know why.”

  “Because some man went thatch once,” he says. “And because when you got loose you killed him and liked it. I know the stories on the street.”

  She feels a constriction in her chest. She shakes her head slowly. “No,” she says. “It’s for us, Daud. To get us out, into the Orbitals.” She comes up to him to touch him, and he flinches. She drops her hand. “Where it’s clean, Daud,” she says. “Where we’re not in the street, because there isn’t a street. ”

  Daud gives a contemptuous laugh. “There isn’t a street there?” he asks. “So what will we do, Sarah? Punch code in some little office?” He shakes his head. “No, Sarah,” he says. “We’d do what we’ve always done. But it will be for them, not for us.”

  “No,” she says. “It’ll be different. Something we haven’t known. Something finer.”

  “You should see your eyes when you say that,” Daud says. “Like you’ve just put a needle in your veins. Like that hope is your drug, and you’re hooked on it.” He looks at her soberly, all his anger gone. “No, Sarah,” he says. “I know what I am, and what you are. I don’t want your hope, or your tickets. Especially tickets with blood on them.” He turns away again, and her answer comes quick and angry, striking for his weakness, for the heart. Like a weasel.

  “You don’t mind stealing my bloody endorphins, I’ve noticed,” she says. His back stiffens for a moment, then he walks on. Heat stings Sarah’s eyes. She blinks back tears. “Daud,” she says.“Don’t go with a thatch. Please.”

  He pauses at the door, hand on the jamb. “What’s the difference?” he asks. “Going with a thatch, or living with you?”

  The door closes and Sarah can only stand and fight a helpless war with anger and tears. She spins and stalks into her bedroom. Her hardwired nerves are crackling, the adrenaline triggering her reflexes, and she only stops herself from trying to drive a fist through the wall.

  She can taste death on her tongue, and wants to run the Weasel as fast as she can.

  The holograph of Princess sits on her chest of drawers. She takes it and stares at it; seeing the creamy shoulders, the blue innocence in the eyes, an innocence as false as Daud’s.

  TOMORROW/NO

  Sarah and Princess follow the ambulance men out of the Aujourd’Oui. They are carrying the girl from the washroom stall. She has clawed her cheeks and breasts with her fingernails. Her face is a swollen cloud of bruises, her nose blue pulp; her lips are split and bloody. She is still trying to weep, but lacks the strength.

  Sarah can see Princess’s excitement glittering in her eyes. This is the touch of the world she craves, warm and sweaty and real, flavored with the very soil of old Earth. Princess stands on the hot sidewalk, while her dirtboys circle and call for the cars. Sarah puts her arm around her and whispers in her ear, telling her what Sarah knows she wants. “I am your dream. ”

  “My name is Danica,” Princess says.

  In the back of the car there is a smell of sweat and expensive scent. Sarah begins to devour Danica, licking and biting and breathing her in. She left the silicon spray at home but won’t be needing it: Danica has Daud’s eyes and hair and smooth flesh, and Sarah finds herself wanting to touch her, to make a feast of her.

  The car passes smoothly through gates of hardened alloy, and then they are in the nest. None of Cunningham’s people ever got this far. Danica takes Sarah’s hand and leads her in. A security man insists on a check: Sarah looks down at him with a contemptuous stare and spreads the wings of her jacket, letting his electronic marvel scout her body: She knows Weasel is undetectable by these means. The boy confiscates her hardfire inhaler. Fine: it is made so as not to acquire fingerprints. “What are these?” he
asks, holding up the hard black cubes of liquid crystal, ready for insertion into a comp deck.

  “Music,” she says. He shrugs and gives them back. Princess takes her hand again and leads her up a long stair.

  Her room is soft azure. She laughs and lies back on sheets that match her eyes, arms outstretched. Sarah bends over and laps at her. Danica moans softly, approving. She is an old man and a powerful one, and Sarah knows this game. His job is to rape Earth, to be as strong as spaceborn alloy, and it is weakness that is his forbidden thing, his pornography. To put his bright new body into the hands of a slave is a weakness he wants more than life itself.

  “My dream,” Danica whispers. Her fingers trace the scars on Sarah’s cheek, her chin. Sarah takes a deep breath. Her tongue retracts into Weasel’s implastic housing, and the cybersnake’s head closes over it. She rolls Danica entirely under her, holding her wrists, molding herself to the old man’s new girl body. She presses her mouth to Danica’s, feeling the flutter of the girl’s tongue, and then Weasel strikes, telescoping from its hiding place in Sarah’s throat and chest. Sarah holds her breath as her elastic artificial trachea constricts. Danica’s eyes open wide as she feels the touch of Weasel in her mouth, the temperature of Sarah’s body but somehow cold and brittle. Sarah’s fingers clamp on her wrists, and Princess gives a birth-strangled cry as Weasel’s head forces its way down her throat. Her body bucks once, again, her breath warm in Sarah’s face. Weasel keeps uncoiling, following its program, sliding down into the stomach, its sensors questing for life. Daud’s eyes make desperate promises. Princess moans in fear, using his strength against Sarah’s weight, trying to throw her off. Sarah holds him crucified. Weasel, turning back on itself as it enters Danica’s stomach, tears its way out, seeks the cava inferior and shreds it. Danica makes bubbling sounds, and though Sarah knows it is impossible, although she knows her tongue is still retracted deep into Weasel’s base, Sarah thinks she can taste blood.