Simon removed his shit-kickers. He peeled the fetid T-shirt over his head and tossed it in a corner. He tumbled onto his bedshelf and sipped his fiery drink.
There was a message on the vid. “Speak to me,” he said. Marcus shimmered up. Right. Who else would call?
Mini-Marcus appeared, pallid and wavering. It would be nice to have a vid with better resolution. It would be nice to have a lot of things.
Flickering Marcus said, “I’m nobody, who are you? Are you nobody, too? Call me when you get in.”
He vanished in a fist of sparkles. Simon said, “Marcus.” The vid purred up the number. Marcus answered on the second tone. He reappeared with slightly better resolution, being live.
“Hey, Simon,” his image said. He was still in his kit, his blacks and kickers. He had not taken off his eyeliner yet. His model, called up out of the Infinidot archives, was Keith Richards with no money. Simon had been told to alter his first choice: Malcolm McDowell more than a century ago, in A Clockwork Orange. Deliberating over the ancient vids, he had finally decided on Sid Vicious instead and had added Morrissey hair.
“I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume. How was your night?”
“The usual. Listen. I think a drone was watching me tonight.”
“You do?”
“I’m not completely sure. But yeah. I swear it hovered over me for, like, almost a minute.”
“Might not have been interested in you. Where were you?”
“By the band shell.”
“They cruise the band shell. It’s a campsite. They’re always checking for Nadians there. You know that.”
“I’ve got a feeling. That’s all.”
“Right. But do you think you’re being, shall we say, a little oversensitive?”
“I hope I am. I’ve just had a feeling. For a couple of days now. I didn’t want to mention it.”
“I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing.”
“Could you stop that?”
“You know I can’t.”
“I’m starting to think,” Marcus said. “Maybe this whole June 21 thing is just crazy. Old New York is too risky for us. They watch too closely here.”
“They watch the Nadians and the tourists. Scabrous subprostitutes such as we are low on the priority list.”
“Still…”
“Just a few more days, Marc.”
“I’ve been wondering if we should split up.”
“Say not so.”
“We’re conspicuous, Simon.”
“Parting track’d by arriving, perpetual payment of perpetual loan.”
“Concentrate. Please.”
“I’d be all alone without you, Marc. And you, without me.”
“I know. I just think—”
“I’d rather risk it with you. Listen. Have yourself a Liquex or two, get some rest, meet me for breakfast tomorrow.”
“At Freddy’s?”
“Where else?”
“Okay. Two o’clock?”
“Two o’clock.”
“Good night.”
“Sweetest of dreams.”
Marcus clicked off. He dissolved in a shiver of silvery dust.
Simon drank off his Liquex and poured himself another. Was Marcus in fact overreacting? He ran to nervousness. And yet. Old New York was riskier than other places, no denying it. But it was the best place for picking up a few quick yen with no questions asked.
Simon ran through half the bottle of Liquex. He let it carry him off into a simmering, nightmare-laced twilight that passed for sleep. He dreamed of people walking calmly and regally into a river. He dreamed of a woman who wore a secret around her neck.
He rolled off the shelf at one-thirty. He took a dermaslough, got into his streetwear. Levi’s, Pumas, a ratty CBGB T-shirt. Old New York required period dress at all times. It was part of the agreement.
East Fifth Street was full of players and the people who’d come to look at them. The punks strode along in their rage funks. The old ladies nattered on their stoops. Rondo, the day-shift derelict, was at his post in front of the flower shop, ranting his rants. In midblock, a tour pod disgorged a battalion of Sinos. Simon hustled to Freddy’s, dodging tourists. Some snapped a vid of him, though he was not a popular attraction. He was East Village regular; he was filler. There were so many more exotic specimens. Who cared about an aging musician type when there were pink-haired girls with snakes draped around their necks? When there were demented old men dressed in scorched rags, screaming holy fire and the coming of the insect god?
Freddy’s wasn’t crowded at this hour. Marcus was already there. He was at a back table, hunched over a double e. Jorge, who was Freddy during the ten-to-four shift, bid Simon a sardonic goodmorning, it being two in the afternoon. He had Simon’s latte on the tabletop almost before Simon’s ass had landed in his seat. Jorge was a good-looking guy, still young. What was he doing playing Freddy, all piercings and mordant wisecracks, during off-peak hours? There would of course be a story. The stories usually involved having failed somewhere else and landing temporarily in Old New York to pick up a little cash before moving on. Some of the players had been there temporarily for twenty years or more. Some had started living 24/7 as their characters. Some had had their names changed.
Marcus didn’t look so good. He huddled into his coffee like it was his only friend.
“Hey, boy,” Simon said. “Feeling any better?”
Marcus’s face darkened, as if he were stifling a belch. His neck went taut. Then it burst out of him. “Because I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me.” Immediately after, he glanced around in furtive shame.
“It’s okay,” Simon told him softly.
“It’s not. There’s nothing right now that could accurately be called ‘okay.’ ”
“A drone. One drone, hovering over the band shell when you happened to be nearby. It isn’t much.”
“I told you, though. I’ve had a feeling. For a while.”
“I am given up by traitors, I talk wildly, I have lost my wits.”
“We are so fucked up.”
Simon took Marcus’s hand in his, pressed, and released. He said, “We can’t be nervous all the time, Marc. What would our lives be worth?”
“Why exactly do you think we shouldn’t be nervous all the time?”
It was a pertinent question, if not a welcome one. There seemed to have been an election. The Christians seemed to have regained their majority on the Council. How else to explain the upsurge in Christian comedies and dramas all over the vid, the increasing stringency of law enforcement? If the Christians had in fact won an election, it was not good news for simulos, or any other artificial.
Simon said, “Don’t skeev out on me, huh? I’ll deliver the pep talk if you aren’t careful.”
“When we get to Denver, I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“As if you could.”
“I keep wondering. What if there’s nothing there?”
“Not a productive line of thinking.”
“Right. Okay. He’s out there in Denver, waiting, and he’ll not only fix us, he’ll give us new shoes and free vacations to the island paradise of our choice.”
“Better. Focus on the future. In three more days, we’re out of here.”
“And bound for some godforsaken cow town because a chip is telling us to go there.”
“It’s not like you have a prior engagement.”
“All things swept sole away—This—is immensity—”
“You got that right, sport.”
“I’m tired, Simon. I’m sick of this.”
“What, exactly, are you sick of?”
“The whole thing. I’m sick of being illegal. I’m sick of feeling like I’m nobody in particular. I’m sick of spitting out lines of fucking verse I don’t even understand.”
“And in Denver on June 21, maybe you’ll understand.”
“The message is more than five years old, Simon. It’s like a note in a godd
amn bottle.”
“Prodigal, you have given me love! Therefore I to you give love.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Can’t.”
“God help me. Neither can I.”
Simon sent Marcus home with instructions to worry less. He ran a few errands. He needed coffee and dermalath and laser blades. He tried to focus on the immediate. He tried not being nervous all the time.
It was Saturday. The streets were jammed. Still, he went to Broadway for the coffee. That was where the good coffee store was. Besides, he had these hours to fill until he was back on duty again.
Broadway was all ethnic youth, rolling along in packs. Plus the tourists. Plus a smattering of faux tourists in period dress: Mid-western ma and pa in matching nylon windbreakers; Euro couple consulting a map; Japanese gaggles in Burberry and Gucci, aiming ancient cameras at anything that moved. Plus of course a Nadian here and there, making deliveries, cleaning up. There were those who insisted that Old New York should be free of Nadians, for accuracy’s sake. They were suffered to remain, however, for now. Who else would do the work they were willing to do?
Simon procured his coffee and toiletries. He watched a little vid back home. He had gotten hooked on the Finnish show about the woman who leaves her husband for an android, but it seemed to have been replaced by something involving a teenage girl who starts seeing the Virgin Mother in unexpected places (on a bus, at the movies, all ghostly shimmer, with a hungry and mortified smile) and renounces her boyfriend. He watched that instead. It was sexy, in its way. Dykey. Then he scarfed down a spanomeal, got into his kit, reported to the park, and manned his station.
He strode along just north of Sheep Meadow. He had a six at seven.
It was one of those evenings—all soft, with an undercurrent of haze-green glow. The chlorophyll sprayers were turned up high. In honor of early summer they had released the first of the fireflies. The lawn rolled off into lavender nowhere, vanishing into trees, and then, overseeing all, the limestone and ziggurats of Central Park South, where the windows were blinking on. Scattered across the broad expanse were the various players—the joggers and rollerbladers, the dog walkers—and, always, the tour groups, which from where Simon stood might have been gatherings of monks or nuns en route to their devotions, following the liquid twinkles of their guides’ lightglobes.
It was beautiful. He said the word to himself. Was some minor disturbance racketing through his circuits? Maybe.
He decided to wander over to the edge of his own terrain, where it bordered on Marcus’s. Nothing wrong with that, nothing technically wrong. He was free to roam within his boundaries. If he happened to catch sight of Marcus, if they happened to pass briefly where their turfs touched, who would know or care? It might be good for Marc, being reminded that Simon was here, thinking of him. It might calm him a little.
As he ambled in Marcus’s direction a drone whizzed by, hovering low. They had modified the design last year, made them less sinister in response to tourist complaints. The drones were no longer spinning black balls studded with red sensor lights. They had gilded them, elongated them, equipped them with functionless golden wings. Now they were little surveillance birds. They were golden pigeons that sniffed out crime.
There was no sign of Marcus around the band shell. Simon hoped he hadn’t decided to vid in sick or, worse, simply not show. If the authorities were suspicious, any varying of his routine would be suicidally foolish.
And then, there he came. He was in full dress. He was making his rounds. Simon’s circuits hummed at the identification.
Marcus saw him. He ambled over, not too close. Simon kept moving. He kept looking as mean as possible. He silently entreated Marcus to do the same.
Marcus was fewer than thirty feet away from Simon when the drone swooped in. It hovered in front of Marcus. Its golden wings whirred. It spoke. Marcus responded. Simon couldn’t make out the words, Marcus’s or the drone’s. The drone would be wanting answers. Marcus would have answers. They would check the records at Infinidot. Tomorrow they’d have more questions, trickier ones, but by tomorrow Simon and Marcus would be gone. They’d slip away two days early, be on their way to Denver by the time the authorities checked back. Too bad they wouldn’t have time to save up a few more yen.
The drone spoke again. Marcus looked puzzled. The new drone design didn’t work all that well. This sleek, pigeonlike version tended to be erratic and often inaudible. The drone repeated itself. A silence passed. Marcus stood black-clad and big-booted under the beating wings of a golden search-bird as dusk deepened around them.
The drone spoke once again. Simon could make out the pulse of its voice but not the meaning. Marcus glanced at the ground, as if he saw something written at his feet.
Then he started to run.
No, Simon thought. Do not run. Do anything but that. If you must run, do not run in my direction.
He ran in Simon’s direction.
Fuck you, Marcus. Cowardly piece of scrap metal. Knick-knack in man drag. This is going to make it so much worse.
The drone hesitated. Was it stalled? Was someone in Infinidot headquarters consulting a higher-up?
The drone whipped around. It went after Marcus.
It said, “Stop. Do not run.”
Marcus ran toward Simon.
The drone fired. This was impossible. They didn’t fire on first encounter. A ray of brilliant red shot out and sheared Marcus’s right arm off at the shoulder. Simon stood still. The arm fell. It lay on the ground with its shoulder end smoking. The fingers twitched. Marcus did not slow down. The drone fired again. This time it malfunctioned and incinerated a sapling three feet to Marcus’s left. Marcus got another few yards before the drone was directly over his head. It let loose: a ray, a ray, a ray, in split-second intervals. Marcus’s other arm fell away, then his left leg. He ran for another moment on one leg. His arm sockets were smoldering. He looked at Simon. He didn’t speak. He made no sign of recognition. He looked at Simon with perfect blankness, as if they had never met. And then he fell.
The drone took off Marcus’s second leg. He lay facedown. He was nothing but head and torso. He made no sound. The drone hovered two feet above what was left of Marcus. It beamed down ray after ray after ray. It carved the flesh away until only the core remained: a silver cylinder with articulated silver neck joint attached to a silver head orb slightly bigger than a softball, with a palm-sized patch of Marcus’s scalp still attached. The armature lay smoking on the grass. A smell of hot metal mingled with the chlorophyll. The limbs, still twitching, still fleshed, were scattered like discarded clothes.
Simon stood still. The drone paused for a moment over the wreckage. It took its vids. Then it zoomed over to Simon. It hovered in front of his face, wings whirring.
It said, “Arsh da o prada ho?”
“What?” Simon said.
Someone at headquarters adjusted the audio. “Is there a problem here?” It had a human voice, rendered electronically, mechanical by design. It was considered more futuristic that way.
Simon said, “I understand the large hearts of heroes, the courage of present times and all times.”
Fuck. Concentrate.
“Is there a problem here?” the drone repeated.
“No,” Simon answered. “No problem.”
“Are you working?” the drone asked.
“Yeah. I’m with Dangerous Encounters.”
“You have ID?”
He did. He produced it. The drone snapped a vid.
“Get back to work,” it said.
He did. As he walked away, he risked a quick look backward at the smoldering pieces that had been Marcus. The wreckage put out a faint light as the drone hovered around it, snapping further vids. This was what they were, then. Flesh joined to a titanium armature. The flesh could be zapped away like so much whipped cream. Simon squeezed his own bicep, tenderly but probingly, between thumb and forefinger. There was a rod inside, bright silver. Marcus had been, in essence, a dr
eam his skeleton was having. Simon was that, too.
He said, “Who degrades or defiles the living human body is cursed.”
He hoped the drone hadn’t heard.
He went back to his regular bench by the lake and sat down. It was fifteen minutes to seven. He should be on his way to his first client. But he lingered on his bench, glowering at a tourist gaggle who passed him skittishly, trilling to one another, glancing back at him as their guide hustled them along, nudging one another, variously corpulent or wiry, middle-aged (Old New York was not big with the young), middle-income (it didn’t hold much fascination for the rich, either), eager to be astonished, blinkingly attentive, holding tight to bags or spouses, stomping along in practical shoes, a motley band, not what you’d call heroic, but alive. All of them alive.
Simon was not alive, technically speaking. Marcus hadn’t been, either.
And now Marcus was where they’d both been less than five years ago, when they were nothing. When they were unmanufactured. What was gone? Flesh and wiring, a series of microchips. No memories of Mother’s smile or Dad’s voice; no dogs or favorite toys or summers on a farm. Just cognition, which had started abruptly in a plant on the outskirts of Atlanta. A light turned suddenly on. A sense of somethingness that rose fully formed from the dark and wanted to continue. That would be the survival implant. It was surprisingly potent.
Now Marcus was nothing, wanted nothing, and the world was unmoved. Marcus was a window that had opened and closed again. The view out the window was no different for the window’s being open or closed.
It was time for Simon to go to his seven o’clock. But here she came. Here was the Nadian, headed his way with her two little blonds. He decided to see her one last time.
Today the boy had some kind of toy in his hand, something bright that apparently outranked the search for stones and marbles. He capered along, waving the golden object over his head. The little girl danced in his wake, demanding a turn of her own, which the boy naturally refused.