Copyright 1986 by Walter Jon Williams Chapter One

the geometrical Orbital fantasy and the courtyard; they simply walk under the bright pretzel

girders and into an area of cool, still air, hushed like the place is holding its breath, the

sun's light, refracted by the curved crystal above, shining down in falling sheets of green,

violet, blue, touching sculpted metal furniture with delicate pastel-colored nails...

"Must be a metaphor, huh?" Cowboy says. Sarah's laugh echoes harshly from the silent

metal.

Cowboy's bootheels sink deep into the carpet. This leads to a pair of linked rooms, all shadows

and curves, just like the Ritz Flop, but with a hologram image of some space habitat rotating

slowly near one ceiling corner. Cowboy feels an urge to use the softglow inhaler in his pocket,

feeling that a sense of unreality might help in coping with this place. Sarah walks through the

irising connecting doorway.

"We're deep in Fantasyland here," she says. "You know about Fantasyland, Cowboy? Where

they built the spaceport at Orlando?"

"Never heard of it."

"A place for children. Where they could learn how nice the future was supposed to be." She

laughs. "They sure got that part wrong, didn't they?"

The sitting room has a holo of a refugee kid in the corner, all ribs and eyes. Cowboy

doesn't like to look at it.

Roon enters the room quietly from behind, and Cowboy can feel his hackles trying to rise

at the man's scent, the sweet pomade he uses on his forelock, the scent of corpses on his breath.

Room moving in silence behind Cowboy's chair, lowers his pale hands to the iron muscles in

Cowboy's shoulders. Cowboy looks at the opaque expression on Sarah's face as she curls in a half-

lotus on a settee.

"I have considered your plan," he says. "My crystal tells me it is sound. I will accept."

He pauses. "I will make the arrangements for secure communication lines."

The tension doesn't leave Cowboy's neck. "Thank you, Mr. Roon," he says.

Roon's thumbs drill into Cowboy's neck with considered pressure, as if trying to loosen

the hard muscles there. Cowboy remains as still as one of Roon's children at the table. "You are

blessed," Roon says. Corrupt breath floats in the room. "You will help me to regain heaven. From

there I shall impose my crystal dreams upon the Earth."

"We're only messengers," Cowboy says. He can feel prickles of sweat on his scalp.

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Roon doesn't seem to be listening. "I shall send Couceiro to Earth," he says, his voice

drifting on, locked in its own madness. "To the surface of the planet he hates. Perhaps it will

redeem him, perhaps the people of Earth will teach him to love. Who can say?"

He takes his hands away, and Cowboy can feel relief filling his muscles. Roon walks toward

Sarah. Cowboy can see the white bandage on his arm as he takes her head in his hands and bends to

gravely kiss her lips. "I thank you," he says. "I thank you both." He turns and fixes Cowboy with

his blissful smile. Liquid nitrogen fills Cowboy's heart. "You have made possible all my dreams."

After waiting for an hour, Cowboy and Sarah decide to go exploring. They poke into things

at random, finding the same kind of soft, shadowy rooms lit by tinted sunlight. Beds, chairs,

tables, computer access seem to be strewn more or less randomly; few of the rooms appear to have

any definite purpose in mind. Hologrammatic images of star fields, ships, industrial colonies move

silently on the walls, the ceilings. There are also pictures of children, wide-eyed barefoot

refugee kids, standing like appeals to charity in the midst of the plush, silent rooms.

In the end they find Roon by accident, wandering into the room where he sits on a tall

white chair, faced into a portable computer deck held in the still arms of a small, absolutely

motionless girl-child standing next to him in a white dress. By now Cowboy's beginning to doubt

anything he sees and it takes him a moment to realize the picture isn't another hologram, that the

man with the long laser-optic cable reaching up to the socket on his temple is breathing slightly,

that his closed eyelids are trembling with reflex eyeball movement as his optical centers scan the

data.

The black-rimmed eyes open, move dreamily across the room. Find Cowboy and Sarah, focus on

The black and silver singularity twists into cold n-dimensional space. And the collective

nightmare, Roon's and Cowboy's, begins again.

Chapter Fifteen

The flat green border of the Florida peninsula, scalloped where the sea is coming in, lies

canted up on edge before them. Clouds seem pasted to it like construction-paper cutouts. The

returning gravity presses on Sarah's chest. She swallows hard and feels Weasel lying tike a rock

in her throat.

In Roon's house she hadn't dared relax-she was either watching Roon the whole time or

riding Cowboy to make sure he didn't flip. The time in Roon's house had felt like a century, and

she's surprised it was only five days. Before the shuttle left she mixed rightsnap and alcohol in

the port bar, the first relief she'd allowed herself, and walked onto the shuttle in a blaze of

warm internal light. Now the drugs move sluggishly through her veins, softening the razor edge of

reality.

She looks at Cowboy and frowns. He's been faced into his computer for most of the trip,

and even when he's had his head out of the crystal his eyes have still had that far-off look, as

if he was trying to make sense out of something...like maybe the latticework of his three-

dimensional holo construct of the Tempel bloc, the way Roon was worked into it, the girders and

networks of its architecture studding into his sockets, the way Cowboy and Sarah are now

extensions of those networks, a tunnel through which Roon communicates with all the lattices and

powers outside of the Tempel organization. Cowboy's trying to make sense, Sarah thinks, of the way

Cowboy and Roon are linked, and what that means to the world that Cowboy's lived in for so many

years, that implausible vision of himself that she's been able to glimpse from time to time, all

jet-powered hardware and burning crystal escaping into black night corridors, the outside sensors

filled with flaming rockets, alcohol fire, screaming pumps-and all this mechanical violence in the

unlikely servile of some kind of transcendental, personal sense of justice, life lived in service

to unspoken codes of honor and existence... Sarah figures Cowboy's been living alongside evil

people all his life, but just never let one touch him before.

Lucky man, she thinks, and sips her rum and lime. Gravity squats on her chest, and she

sees the bubbles that rise in her glass slow down, then hang in the cool solution, waiting for the

well to free them. Her head presses back against the padded rest.

"You think he'll be okay?" Sarah can't decide whether Cowboy's muttering to himself or to

her.

"Raul."

"Yeah," she says. "He'll do good." Maybe it's even the truth, though Sarah suspects that Raul's

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throat will most likely get cut the first time he tries to use the American dollars Cowboy gave

him. She wishes he'd given the money to her-she'd have found a good use for it, better anyway than

scattering it among the knifeboys of some Cordillera shantytown.

"Maybe I can find him again. Bring him to the States, let him stay with my uncle. He can

always use a willing hand."

Sarah can feel the atmosphere whispering against the outside of the shuttle. She opens her

eyes. The clouds over Florida have risen at an angle oblique to the land, like a layered

transparency lifted over a map. Shadows pox the land below. The pressure in her throat lessens.

"If you want to get into that kind of business," Sarah says, "there are homeless kids a lot closer

than Venezuela."

He doesn't answer that, just stares forward and fades into the matrix again. Sarah sips

her drink and closes her eyes. The shuttle begins to buffet and the Free Zone rises to claim them.

"Michael will meet you tonight." That's the word from the Flash Force man who waits at the

security gate. "In the meantime, we'll drive you where you need to go."

The sun hammers at them as they step onto the concrete. "The Ritz Flop," Sarah says, but

out of the corner of her eye she sees Cowboy shake his head.

"No," he says. "Someplace else." She looks at him in silent surprise. Sweat dots his

forehead like a constellation of extra sockets.

"Where?" she asks.

Cowboy shrugs. He looks at the long car with its opaqued windows, then at Sarah. "Your

place, maybe. Above the bar?"

She's about to refuse but something stops her. His look, a sixth sense, something. A

knowledge that to say no would be wrong-not unwise, just a piece of unnecessary cruelty.

"Okay," she says slowly. "But you'll be by yourself. If we don't meet the Hetman till

night, I'm going to spend the afternoon with Daud."

Cowboy shrugs again. "Blue Silk, then," Sarah tells the driver, then ducks into the car's

back seat.

Cowboy's quiet on the ride back to Tampa, drawn into himself. Sarah stops in the Blue Silk

long enough to tell Maurice that it's okay if Cowboy stays for the afternoon, then lets the Flash

Force take her to Daud.

She's moved him out of the hospital and into a recovery house in a Tampa suburb, a place

out behind the howling limited expressway that connects Tampa with Orlando. He's got a room that's

more like a dormitory residence than a hospital room, and Sarah doesn't think any of the

attendants have the look of a Joseph, with a syringe hidden in the towels.

Daud is sitting up in a chair when she enters his room. He looks better simply by virtue

of the fact he's out of hospital clothes, and he's lifting a dumbbell with his weak arm. It's the

first time she's seen him exercise voluntarily, and she smiles as she walks toward him.

"Hi, Sarah."

She bends to kiss him. His blue eyes smile up at her from beneath an unscarred brow. Sarah

straightens in surprise. "Daud..." She blinks at him. A cold needle begins to stitch her nerves.

His smile broadens as he works the weight. "How...?"

"The body designer took off the face scars two days ago. With her laser." He's beginning

to breathe hard from the exertion. His tone shows the strain.

She leans back against the wall, crosses her arms. "Who paid for it?" she asks.

"This...guy I met. His sister is in here with...terminal Huntington's. He's rich." Daud's

smile turns shaky. The cords on his neck stand out. He lifts the weight twice more, then lets it

down. He leans his head back and takes a breath.

"What does he do?"

"Something in shipping. He's from southern Africa someplace. He's just here because his

sister is a patient here." He raises his head and looks at Sarah. His smile is hesitant. "He

thinks he might want me to go home with him."

"Well." Sarah can feel a harshness in her tone that she doesn't want. She swallows and

tries to control it. "This is fast. A romantic African from across the seas. All in five days."

A wary look clouds Daud's eyes. "I think you'll like him," he says.

"Is he here now?"

Daud mutely shakes his head. "He left about an hour ago."

Sarah wants to grab him, hold his arm out, tear up his sleeve to see if there are puncture

marks. Shake him till his teeth rattle. Instead she makes herself smile. Knowing how badly he

needs this new bit of hope, and that she doesn't dare destroy it unless she knows for certain it's

a phantom.

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"Can I meet his sister?"

"Sure. But she's paralyzed with viral Huntington's. Can't talk."

Sarah feels apprehension waning in her system with the rightsnap. She moves to sit on

Daud's bed. Tries to smile again. "Daud, I hope you're being careful. Because this man may be

aimed at me."

She sees the jaw muscles clench, the anger flaring behind the coldness in Daud's eyes. He

turns to her. "You can't believe in things that aren't connected to you, can you? Everything has

to revolve around you, even me and the people I know." He throws up his hands. "Can't you stay out

of my life?"

"I'm just trying to keep you from getting hurt, Daud. If this man turns out to be one of

the people that are after me."

"He's not. He cares for me. He really does."

"I'm glad. If..." She lets the sentence fade away.

"If he turns out to be real." Daud's voice blazes defiance. "That's what you were going to

say, right?" He shakes his head. "You didn't even ask his name, did you? It's Nick Mslope. "

"I don't want to fight, Daud."

"Nick Mslope. Say it."

"Yeah. Fine. Nick Mslope. Who may or may not be real." She looks at him. "Can you say

that?"

He turns away, fumbles in his pocket for a cigarette.

"I don't have to take this," Daud mumbles. "I don't have to say anything I don't want." He

lights the tobacco. "I don't have to depend on your money anymore. Nick will take care of me."

"I hope he will," Sarah says. "But tell him something first. Tell him you saw me, that we

had a fight and you'll never see me again. And then if he'll still take care of you, fine." Smoke

rises over Daud's averted head. Sarah leans forward. "Will you tell him that, Daud? Will you take

that chance Daud's jaw is trembling. "I don't have to," he says.

"I'm only interested in making things clear. For everybody. If Nick wants to help you

through this, fine. I'd enjoy not having to pay for it. But don't question him too close till you

get all your parts back."

He looks at her out of the corner of his eyes. "Damn you," he says. "You can't leave me

with anything."

"I don't enjoy this."

"So you say." He tries to make his voice cut, but he can't do more than choke on the

words. She reaches out to touch him, feels him try to flinch away, then accept her.

Feeding people realities. That seems to be all she's done lately, and she feels a sickness

at it, like bile stirring in her stomach.

She comes closer to Daud, putting her arms around him, kissing his cold, compliant cheek.

"Take care, Daud," she whispers. "Take care." Knowing that he won't, that he doesn't care enough

to do more than take whatever comes. He'll hang his hope on it, whether it exists or not.

Chapter Sixteen

The bottom of the bottle makes a cold circle on Cowboy's chest. He feels hot, unable to

sleep. Something is working at him.

Sarah's little room is a box and suddenly he can't take it anymore.

He stands, finishes the beer, pulls on a shirt. He walks down the stairs and lets himself

out the back so that he won't have the Flash Force tagging along. The alley steams after a short

rainshower. He steps out of the alley and the city oozes up around him, smelling of frangipani.

He thinks about getting high, but drugs won't do the job... He has to get really high, in

a delta, float in the whispering night, before high will do him any good. Even sitting in his

abandoned panzer would help. He wonders if it's been found yet, sitting in its gully in Ohio.

People on the street are looking at the sockets in his head, and he realizes he's

forgotten his wig. He glares at them, and they look away, their curiosity turning covert. I'm not

a junkie, he thinks at them, I'm a pilot. The sidelong looks continue. Cowboy gives up in disgust

and goes into the first bar he finds. It's full of potted palms and tasteful holograms floating

above businessmen drinking away their expense accounts. Cowboy can't take this, either. With no

idea other than acquiring some privacy, he walks into a phone booth and closes the door.

A little fan whines into action on the roof of the booth, sounding like an anemic turbine.

Cool air brushes Cowboy's face. He studs the phone into the socket over his right ear and decides

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to call Norfolk and talk to Cathy, his Coast Guard lieutenant, see if she's able to get away for

another weekend, somewhere up on the Western Slope, where the lowlands are far away and the clean

winds move through the aspens like a cutter through the thin air, but he's told that she's at sea

and they won't patch him through. He stares at the phone, clenches his fists, and decides he's

tired of being careful, of being told he can't help people if he wants to.

He calls Reno's number in Pittsburgh.

"Cowboy. Cowboy, my god."

The voice is that of a lost child, but it's Reno's, a little toneless maybe, but still

good enough to send a wave of liquid oxygen rushing over Cowboy's skin, a pulse of fear, cold yet

somehow invigorating.

"Cowboy, what happened? I can't remember."

"They came down on us, Reno," Cowboy says. Reno's brain was white, Cowboy remembers. In

the eye-face all the time. The personality fading almost visibly. Unless it's a Tempel trick.

Unless they've got a program jacking along the lines, identifying this phone, sending out their

hard men with their robot eyes and crystal-guided deathware.

"We had a talk, about hearts you wanted to sell," Reno says. "I remember that. And that

tall girl you had with you, the one with the gun. Then I can't remember anything, not until...I

remember fire all over the place. Intruder alarms. Never knew who was out there. I was faced in,

trying to call for help." There is silence for a moment.

"I think I died, Cowboy." The voice is hesitant. "That's what I read in the screamsheets,

that I died. They didn't mention you."

Cowboy can feel his sweat going cold. Fear is making his teeth ache. He reaches out

blindly, touching the brushed aluminum front of the phone. "Reno," he says. "Reno, where are you?"

"I'm in public crystal, Cowboy. In Pittsburgh, in Maryland...I've got parts of me all

over. Libraries, minimum security datafiles, unused telephone addresses. Banks where I've opened

accounts and had the passwords." The voice wanders on. Cowboy can feel his hackles rising. "I was

faced through my house crystal, through memory boxes. I've got all that data. But I'm so scattered

out I can't use it very well. And I've lost so much else." Reno's voice is a child's whimper.

Cowboy thinks of Lupe, of the scream bottled in her throat at the touch of Roon's hand.

"Cowboy," Reno says, "I've forgotten things. I've forgotten how to be a person. I remember

it boiling away. My brain boiling in the fire. Help me, Cowboy."

Cowboy can feel Reno out there, just on the other side of the socket. Trying to pour

himself out of the crystal, become a person again. Cowboy makes a fist, punches the glass wall of

the booth. Bar patrons look at him, then look away. "Listen," he says, "we can get you out. Into a

body. They do crystal transfers every day. "

"I don't think there's enough of me left. I'm losing more pieces all the time. Getting

little bits of data lost in transfers. Sometimes people find me in their crystal and erase parts

of me before I know it, before I can get away." Reno sounds as if, wherever he is, he's crying.

"Why didn't you call sooner? You're one of the few people I can remember. I tried everything to

get hold of you. I tried calling, following your accounts. I think I got you once, in a library

matrix in New Mexico, but you unfaced. Everyone's shut off."

"There's a war on, Reno. You were killed. Everyone else is hiding."

"War? With who? Who killed me, Cowboy?"

There is a knock on the booth's door. Cowboy glares up to see one of the waiters, a tall

South American with cold eyes and a curled lip.

"Interruption here. Excuse me." Cowboy opens the door.

"Who killed me, Cowboy?" The voice sounds on Cowboy's aural crystal. It's growing

distorted, as if Reno's losing control of the pulses that are creating his voice in Cowboy's head.

"This telephone is for the convenience of our patrons only, sir," the waiter says.

"So bring me a drink. Beer. Any brand." Cowboy slams the door.

"Cowboy?" Reno's voice is almost inaudible below an uncontrolled fluctuation of white

noise. Cowboy winces at the volume. "How did I die?"

"Tempel killed you. Tempel Pharmaceuticals Interessengemeinschaft. They and their

friends."

"Tempel...Tempel. " Reno's voice grows clear again, as if understanding has somehow

cleared up his interface problem. "I've still got a lot of detail about Tempel-it was faced into

my memory box when I died. And I talked to you through that Tempel model you had, and I've got the

model in my memory now. When you were in my house, did we talk about Tempel, Cowboy? I remember

talking to you about something."

"Yeah. We talked about Tempel. About the war."

"It's all so long ago. I measure time in picoseconds now."

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Cowboy thinks again of the hard men in their armored cars, their faces cold planes, their

eyes ice, metal in their hands. "Reno," he says. "I need to know if you're real. You might be a

trap."

"Tell me something only we know about. Tell me something, Reno."

"Cowboy." Reno's soft cry is buried in white noise. "I don't know. I've lost so much."

The waiter is coming with Cowboy's beer. Cowboy's knuckles are white as he grips the frame

of the phone booth. He gulps the cool air fanning slowly down from above.

"Cowboy, listen." White noise crashes like the sound of Oahu surf. "I remember a time we

were playing poker. In that little cammo shack Saavedra set up by the Dakota line. You'd just

brought the Express back from a run and you decided to stay around and be part of my ground crew

later that night. You and I were there, and Saavedra dropped in for a few hands, and there was

another jock. Begay, the big Navajo. The one who got killed by his brother in that accident. He

took all our money, gave us all cigars. Remember?"

The waiter is standing by the booth with a beer in his hand. Cowboy has no strength

anymore, just leans against the transparent plastic. Sobs try to force their way up past his

throat. "Jesus, Reno. My god. It's you. It's you."

He would cry if he could. Saavedra and Begay are both dead and there is no one else who