Copyright 1986 by Walter Jon Williams Chapter One

could have told Tempel about that poker game. Reno's caught somewhere in the crystal, what's left

of him an electronic ghost caught in an endless loop between two worlds, going nowhere at the

speed of light. Cowboy smashes the back of his head against the booth, seeking the clarity of

pain. The waiter looks at him in disapproval, a buttonhead junkie going mad in his clean palm bar.

"Look, Reno, we'll get you out." Cowboy tastes blood in his mouth. He swipes his forehead

with the back of his arm. "The Dodger and me. We'll find a body for you."

"I don't have the money, Cowboy. I've got most of my accounts, but the money isn't near

enough."

Cowboy laughs. The sound is vast in the small booth, and the echo comes back tinny with

the overtones of hysteria. He wants to keep on laughing but manages to stop himself.

"Hell, brother, you're halfway there." He realizes he's shouting and lowers his voice.

"You're already out of your body and in the crystal medium. It's only the last part we've got to

pay for. Bet we can get a big discount."

He swings open the door and takes the beer from the surprised waiter. "Some snacks, too,"

he says. "Nachos, if you have them. Peanuts'll be okay, though."

"Cowboy...Cowboy." Reno's voice is fading in and out of the white noise.

"Yeah, Reno. I'm still here."

"Thank you, Cowboy. Thank you so much. Everyone I called was dead or hiding. It's like I

killed them or drove them away."

"Reno, I'm here." He gulps air. The little booth smells of beer. "I'm here." Cowboy tries

to speak comfortingly. "I'm here," he says.

But where are you? he thinks. A lost program, stealing comp time where he can find it,

hiding from the system that will kill him without knowing what he is. Running forever, losing bits

of himself in inefficient transfers until there's almost nothing left, just a ghost wind touching

the interface with its electron breath.

"I'll take care of you," Cowboy says. And thinks of the little girl trembling under Roon's

hand, the two kids in the barn in Missouri, all the burdens he's failed to carry, and how much

good he's done any of them...

"I'll figure a way out," he promises, and in some part of his own mind sees a monochrome

image, himself and Reno, Raul and Lupe, Sarah looking as if she's been lit by von Sternberg and

bearing a resemblance to Louise Brooks, all in some improbably large delta cabin, sailing against

a background of gray watercolor-wash clouds pierced by the bright swords of sunbeams, a happy

silver nitrate ending glowing on the screen of Cowboy's closed lids, and he has a feeling he can

work it somehow, flick a switch and things will turn out that way, if he just knows what switch

and when.

There is knock on the booth door. It is the waiter with his peanuts. Cowboy looks up at

him, the thin disapproving face with its tracks of broken veins high on the cheeks, the clipped

graying mustache, the careful contempt somehow enhanced by the twitch of one lower lid. The gray

mindcolor fades, no THE END marching across the sky in a sudden Alfred Newman swell of triumphant

music. Cowboy's lost his grip on the switch; instead, he's trapped in the sweating plastic walls

of a tiny room in a little Florida bar, stuck here with all of Earth's lost children, and can't

seem to find his way out...

(99 of 137) [7/17/03 11:28:35 PM]

Chapter Seventeen

LIVING IN THE DEAD ZONE?

WE GUARANTEE A PAYOFF

When Sarah gets back, Cowboy is sitting with crossed legs on the mattress, shirtless,

wearing only a pair of cutoff jeans. A half-dozen empty beer bottles are scattered around him.

He's lubricating his eyes, rolling them up into his head while he attaches the nipple on a bottle

of silicon gel to the little reservoir in the bottom of each implant.

When he finishes and looks at her she can see that his eyes are rimmed by violet shadows.

There are cords in his neck that weren't there before.

"Cowboy," Sarah says, "you look like death."

He looks down at the floor, swallows. "Yeah."

She walks over to him, squatting on her heels and putting her hands on his shoulders. His

skin is moist. She feels a trickle of gratitude that he doesn't flinch, like Daud, from her touch.

She looks into his eyes. "Anything happen while I was gone?"

"Just..." he begins, then shakes his head. "No. Nothing."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

She kisses his cheek, feeling bristles against her lips. She stands up and shrugs out of

The shower is in an old battered stainless-steel tub, down the hall in a bathroom Sarah

shares with Maurice. Pebbled glass doors seal in the mist, fill the tub with soft, ambiguous

luminescence, patterning their skin with diffused nebula light. Cowboy stands under the running

heat for a long time, soap and water pouring in translucent waves down his chest while Sarah

reaches up to work on his muscles, finding them strung like steel wire with all the unvoiced

screams of the last five days with Roon, each shriek encoded on the muscle pattern like data in

crystal. She takes her time, works on each muscle in turn, feeling him grow alive again under her

fingers. Then she turns the water cold and watches a shudder run up his back. His eyes come alive

for the first time in days.

Sarah turns the water off and Cowboy puts his arms around her, presses his cool skin

against hers. With her cheek she blots the droplets on his shoulder. Standing on the scarred

reflective surface of the tub, they are moving against each other before either of them quite

realizes it.

She's uncertain when Cowboy picks her up and carries her toward her room. Sarah can't tell

if he really belongs, if he's sufficiently a part of things here... There's a difference, she

thinks, between letting someone into your body and letting him into the place where you live-but

then she realizes that she wants him here, that he's not a false note in her walk-up hideaway. She

puts her arms around his neck, surprised to find herself excited by the fact of someone tall and

strong enough to carry her so easily, freeing her from gravity in the cradle of his forearms. She

watches water droplets appearing from his nape hair, running down the thick muscle of his pilot's

neck. Feels his hard pectoral against her shoulder. Lets her head hang back, shaking it, feeling

the water flying from her hair in parabolic rainbow trajectories. Laughs. Decides to let things

happen.

and arms tangling on the dark polished floor, heads lolling to leave wet beaded traceries on the

polymer... It doesn't seem to matter much. Eventually they're facing each other, sitting up with

Sarah in his lap. Their motion is slow, almost imperceptible, a renewed acquaintance of near-

frictionless membranes sliding slower than the tolling chimes of breath and heartbeat. Window

light patterns his chest with distorted crossword patterns; she reaches out to touch them, fill in

the bright squares with an alphabet of her own invention, touches, nail-scratches, brushes with

the backs of her knuckles or the pads of fingertips. Cowboy looks at her with a silent intensity,

and she finds this unnerving until she begins to feel that for the first time he's all here, not

drifting in and out of some strange space hidden behind his artificial eyes, but looking at her as

if there's something there he hasn't seen before. She gazes back at him, into the hard dilated

pupils that seem to absorb her, absorbing the radiance she has become, bottomless singularities

planted in Cowboy's head... She reaches for him and comes, Cowboy's face dissolving as if a sheet

of gelid rain had fallen before her unfocused eyes, the breath bottled in her throat, burning her

lungs.

Sarah lets the air out a sip at a time, feeling Cowboy's eyes still on her. She runs her

fingers through his short fair hair. They're moving a little faster now they've become acquainted.

She reaches forward and pushes him onto his back, crouching over him. Sunlight warms the side of

her face. Her thigh muscles are as taut as bridge cable, an arch spanning his hips. He reaches up

to touch her breasts, cupping them, raising his head to lick the nipples. Sarah throws her head

back, feeling hair ends tickling her shoulder blades. Packets of energy rush along the highways of

her nerves, sirens dopplering up and down, their speedometer needles twitching, rising higher,

climbing toward the speed of light. Cowboy leans back and she feels the touch of his eyes... She

comes again, superliminal.

Impact, splash, into the heart of a star. Sarah is a pulsar, flinging burning photons in

widening circles... She's surprised her binary's flesh is still cool, that she isn't giving him

sunburn. He's on top of her now, their orbits having swung round each other. There's a crumpled

wet towel under her left shoulder. Slow music throbs up from the bar below. The room is beginning

to blueshift again. Sarah raises her hands, clasps Cowboy's head. He comes a half second before

she does, a mutual gravitational collapse. She folds her arms around him, drawing him toward her,

cherishing the touch of his breath on her neck.

The music crawls slowly beneath Sarah's spine. Cowboy raises himself again. Her arms still

wreath his neck. She wonders if this is someone she could get sentimental about.

His storm-cloud eyes rain down on her. She can feel parts of herself coming to life. His

voice is slow, like a recording at half speed. "Reno's alive," he says. "I just talked to him."

TEMPEL PROMISES DELIVERY OF HUNTINGTON'S CURE IN 6-10 WEEKS

ANTICIPATION MOUNTS

Two sets of purposeful figures move through the confusion of the bullet station, the

square Caucasian jaws of Cowboy's Flash Force guards thrusting against the current set up by the

suspicious black faces of the Gold Coast Maximum Law people that Michael the Hetman is sending to

New Mexico to help establish a secure communications link. Mercenaries can't afford overlong

memories, but these two groups have tangled in the past, and though neither is being outright

hostile, they're obviously not going to make friends anytime soon.

Sarah can feel the tension. Cowboy is already looking unhappy at the prospect of sharing a

ride to Sante Fe with this crowd. He pulls up his jacket collar and glances around the platform.

A hawker wanders by, selling drugs from a cart. A disconnected female voice, in three

languages, announces schedules, tracks, numbers.

"I'll see you in a couple weeks," Sarah says.

"See you then."

The faces circle, black and white, weaving their invisible pattern of defense, of power,

moving outside of Sarah's volition like Orbital constellations involved in some vast and vastly

subtle game of positional strategy... Their presence inhibits her. She tries to shrug off their

influence, fails.

"You'll like the mountains," Cowboy says.

"I'll look forward."

Spanish numbers accumulate in the air, flitting like birds around their pointless spoken

banalities. Fuck it, Sarah decides, and grabs Cowboy by the sleeves of his jacket. "Hey, Cowboy."

She looks up into his lean, impassive face. "Are we friends, or allies?"

A cold smile twitches at the corners of Cowboy's mouth. "I guess we're friends," he says.

"When we can afford to be.

A chime of steel amusement vibrates through her. "Yeah." She nods slowly. "That's how it

looks from here."

"Call Reno when you can," Cowboy says. "He's lonely where he is."

She remembers the white-brained cyborg zombie in his dark, glowing little Pennsylvania

womb, then imagines his disembodied spectral voice coming out of some disconnected piece of

crystal, pulsing into her ear... The man was ghost enough when he was in his body, no sense in

asking to be haunted. She shrugs. "I'll try. But the guy spooked me enough when he was alive."

Cowboy frowns a little. "He can help. He's got a lot of money stashed away."

"Okay. I'll call him. Promise."

They say good-bye. Sarah watches his tall form, orbited by his black and white satellites,

fading down the fluorescent-lit platform, moving down the tunnel toward the vanishing point, and

wonders if it's a good idea to see him again. She could arrange it easily enough, simply talk the

Hetman into sending someone else out to the Dodger when the time came... There are commitments she

has made, to herself, to her brother, and they allow no indulgence in sentiment. Letting people

into the places where you live, she knows, gives them a license to injure you, and she's had

(101 of 137) [7/17/03 11:28:35 PM]

injuries enough as it is.

Her Maximum Law guard is looking impatient. She rates a bodyguard now that she knows the

Hetman's plan-this boy's probably got orders to kill her if he can't keep her from capture. After

this he'll take her to a hotel, where she'll be easier to keep secure: she won't be visiting her

hideaway at the Blue Silk anytime soon. She turns her back on her guard as the drug vendor comes

by and buys a whiff of snapcoke. Well-being coils in helixes of pleasure along her veins. She buys

some cigarettes for Daud and begins to move toward the exit.

She'll feel good when she visits Daud, at least until the drug wears off.

MODERNBODYMODERNBODYMODERNBODYMODERN

Tired of What You're Seeing in Your Mirror?

Let MODERNBODY Give YOU a New Face!

Special This Month on Celebrity Physiognomy!

RNBODYMODERNBODYMODERNBODYMODERNBODY

Daud has visitors. There's a woman body designer with vast unblinking owl eyes and

cheekbones sharp as broken glass. She is removing the jagged pink scars from Daud's chest with a

humming laser, watched with a benevolent look by a middle-aged black man.

"Nick Mslope? I'm Sarah."

He glances up with a pleased smile. He's small and soft, dressed in pressed white cotton

jeans and a tropical shirt. There's a partly eaten candy bar, its white envelope carefully folded,

sticking out of the pocket of the shirt. "Pleased to meet you," he says. His accent is unfamiliar.

Disintegrating scar tissue rises from Daud's pale chest in a wisp of gray smoke. Daud

opens his eyes and looks at Sarah. "Hi. Look at this, will you? Miss Deboyce says you won't be

able to see the scars without a microscope."

"Don't talk," says the body designer. She brushes ash from his chest with a gloved finger.

"Don't breathe, if you can help it." She adjusts a pair of magnifying lenses on her nose and bends

over him with a frown of concentration.

Mslope lights a cigarette, then puts it between Daud's lips. Anger, dulled by the

snapcoke, flickers in Sarah's mind. Mslope gives her a quick look and then steps around Daud to

stand by her. She looks at him cautiously.

"Thank you for all this," she says. "Daud and I are grateful."

"I am very happy to be able to help." He watches as the red beam lances a scar, turns it

to vapor. "Daud seems a very worthy young man, and...I am glad I can be of some use, you see." He

shakes his head. "My poor sister-I cannot do anything for her."

"There's the new cure," Sarah says. Discomfort settles in her, in the interface between

what she knows and Mslope doesn't.

"Too late. It would halt the progress of the disease, but her mind is already gone. Death

will be a mercy, when it comes."

The laser licks Daud's chest with its scarlet tongue. Sarah looks from Mslope to Daud and

back again. "What sort of business are you in, Mr. Mslope?" she asks.

"Please, call me Nick."

"Nick."

A cryogenic smile tugs at. Sarah's mouth. "I know some people in that business."

"I think-" Mslope looks at Daud. "I think I can find a place for Daud there. If he wishes

to join me."

Sarah feels the scrape of a razor on her nerves. "As what? Daud isn't skilled."

"My secretary. I'm certain he could learn the job quickly."

She grins at him, wondering if it's an answering cynicism she sees in Mslope's smile, or

whether it's a reflection of her own. She can feel Daud's blue, opaque eyes on them, watching

helplessly as they battle for his heart, as the tug of war develops over his future.

"I'd hate to be that far away from him," Sarah says. "If it doesn't work out, he'll be so

far away."

Mslope reaches for the cigarette in Daud's mouth, flicks the ash into the tray, returns

it. "I take my responsibilities very seriously, Sarah. I would never bring a young man all that

way without providing the means to return home if he becomes unhappy." He looks at Sarah. "Perhaps

I could help you, too. I know some people here at the port. And if you came to Africa with us, I

could certainly find work for you."

"As what?"

His look is imperturbable. "I'm sure you would know best."

(102 of 137) [7/17/03 11:28:35 PM]

Sarah laughs, the snapcoke and her own spring-steel mirth rising in her veins. The laser

hums again. Smoke rises, the color of gunmetal, pain transformed to vapor.

PANZER HIJACKED IN NEBRASKA

PITCHED BATTLE FOUGHT

POLICE REPORT NO SUSPECTS

"This is Sarah. Do you remember me?"

"Sarah. Yes." The voice seems to bubble through a hundred miles of water before it reaches

Sarah's ear. The sound prickles her skin. A line of dying palms flickers past the car's windows,

brown against a steel sky. She's calling from the mobile phone in her Maximum Law car, not yet

convinced this isn't some form of elaborate trap. Staying mobile seems to be the best way to keep

from getting ambushed.

"You were with Cowboy," Reno says, "just before I was killed." A chill rides up her nerves

at his words, at the calm with which he accepts his own fate.

"That's right." Gutted Venice buildings rotate slowly in the background as the car climbs

the St. Petersburg causeway. "I helped him get away to his people out West."

"I'm glad you escaped. Do you work for Michael the Hetman?"

"Sometimes."

"I think I may have met him once. I don't remember things very well." Reno's voice

hesitates for an instant, then rushes on, his words earnest. "Thank you for calling, Sarah. I'm

very alone where I am."

"Yeah." Sarah gazes at the water below; dark and sluggish, filmed with oil. Thinks of

Daud's cool, faithless eyes, the explosion of water and wind against long Missouri concrete walls,

Cowboy recessing forever down the length of the bullet platform, moving toward the supersonic

horizon. "Lonely," she says. "I know how that can be."

"WE'RE RECLAIMING EIGHTY THOUSAND SQUARE MILES OF FARMLAND EVERY YEAR!"

Mikoyan-Gurevich Feeds the World

Sarah sees Mslope every day. When she's alone she finds herself thinking about him, about

his gentle voice, the way his soft hands seem to reach out for her but always stop short, the

small kindnesses-lighting Daud's cigarettes, fetching her a chair, offering her one of the candy

bars he always carries in the pocket of his inevitable tropical shirt... It's as though there's

some kind of strange courting ritual going on between them, a seductive dance with Daud as the

focus, progressing in slow motion toward the inevitable payoff, the contents of which Sarah thinks

she knows.

"I understand your concern, believe me," Mslope protests, and opens an attaché case to

show her a contract ready for Daud's signature. A ticket to and from Cape Town on the Havana

suborbital shuttle; a year's wages guaranteed regardless of performance; lodging at Mslope's

expense... "And, of course, I'll see he gets all necessary medical attention," Mslope says with a

smile. For a moment Sarah's suspicion wavers and she wonders whether he could possibly be genuine,

then decides that things like this just don't happen in real life. Where did They find this man?

What pressures are They using? Or has he been one of Them all along? There is a real Mslope, she

assumes. They wouldn't be that careless. And the real Mslope has a sister who is dying, and whose

dying comforts will be provided by Tempel Pharmaceuticals I.G. if Mslope agrees to let someone

else use his identity for a while.

It's flattering, Sarah thinks, that they want her so badly They created a plan this

elaborate. "The contract's good," she tells Daud. "Sign it if you want." But she and Mslope are

watching each other, their eyes meeting over Daud's bed. It's not Daud, after all, that They are

after. He's almost irrelevant by now.

"Perhaps I can introduce you to someone," Mslope says in his gentle voice. He reaches into

his pocket for his candy bar and peels away the wrapper. "I know a lot of people at the port. You

could get good work."

"I'd be happy to meet somebody," she says. "Here, for preference." How much is Mslope

willing to break his cover? No real port boss would interview an employee in a place of her

choosing.

"I don't know if that's possible," Mslope says. Sarah shrugs. Daud scrawls his signature

on the contract.

Mslope bites his candy bar. "I have a meeting here in Tampa tomorrow," he says. "Perhaps,

after the meeting, I could bring one of the people I know..."

(103 of 137) [7/17/03 11:28:35 PM]

"That would be nice, I'm sure," Sarah purrs. Daud gazes up at her tone, wondering what's

happening here. His look grows bewildered. Sarah puts a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Miss

Deboyce will be in tomorrow, yes?" Sarah asks.

Mslope gives her his most reassuring smile. "Of course. My company takes good care of its

employees. Better than anyone in this area, I'm sure."

Sarah can hear the songs of alloy strings in her mind, love's old sweet song. She's useful

to them again, and they're willing to pay for her services. If she can avoid what might happen at

the moment when her usefulness ends-the rocket or bullet or cold steel needle laden with its

silent overdose-she might be able to get what she wants.

A pair of tickets. Maybe they've finally figured it out.

She glances out the window at the long dark Maximum Law car. She'll have to carry out the

negotiations under their watching eyes.

"What would be a good time?" she asks.

Mslope's eyes meet hers again. "Two o'clock," he says.

The minute she sees Mslope's friend, waiting for her in the patients' lounge in the front,