And that’s why I have to laugh every time you sneak a peek at your reader, there. Because you’re a mechanic, dude. You should know this shit better than I do. You fumble around using words and drugs when you really should be getting in there with a very tiny soldering gun, but when it comes right down to it you’ve spent your whole damn career trying to change the circuitry in people’s heads. So why do you keep looking for answers in my file, Roger? I’m not that person anymore. I’m something new.
And believe me. The thing that’s talking to you now has no mommy issues whatsoever.
Anatomy
The elevator slides open on a man in combat fatigues who obviously never pulled a day of combat in his life. Glasses, salt-and-pepper goatee, middle-aged paunch pushing out over his belt. Stupid little ponytail, probably meant as some kind of diversionary tactic to draw attention from his hairline. I’ve never seen him before, of course; but the sight of me lights his face up with such obvious joy I wonder for a second if he’s going to kiss me.
“Dude,” he says. “You made it.”
Nathan Gould is a slob with a paper fetish. The apartment is piled floor-to-ceiling with all manner of shit: filing cabinets, drawers hanging half open like extruded tongues, piles of newspapers (where the hell did he get newspapers in Manhattan?), stacks of old optical ROM. Old paper maps spread out across one of those tilted architect’s tables you see in TwenCen movies, you know, before computers. Topographic, geological, architectural. It’s like Gould’s hardcopied every overlay anyone’s ever dumped into the Manhattan database. I don’t know what he’s using them for, other than to mop up coffee spills and snort the occasional line of grimwire (I can see the crystal residue from across the room; the eyes in this suit don’t miss a thing).
“Man, you wouldn’t believe the shit that’s gone down in the last twenty-four hours. Barclay’s guys are getting creamed uptown. CryNet are falling the fuck apart everywhere else. Chaos, man.”
The walls—those bits of them that peek through between the mountains of dead trees, anyway—are a mix of smart paint, cork-board, and old 2-D monitors. One wall’s three layers deep in pushpins and pictures, everything from false-color satcam shots to coupons for 20 percent off tampons at PharMart. An ancient mini fridge squats in one corner; it doesn’t even have an online connection but someone called Angie has scribbled Nate, When are you going to get your shit out of my place?! I’m back for good on the 28th on the dry-erase board stuck to the door.
Gould leads me through all this chaos like a guide through the jungle, talking nonstop: “That shit you absorbed at the crash site, it’s lit up the suit systems like a pinball, man,” and “Definitely viral, same base structure as the nano-weave,” and “Hargreave must be nuts, playing with that shit like it was Kevlar.” I’m not really paying attention. I’ve just caught sight of an aquarium behind a stack of old hardcovers, a big hundred-gallon job, and something’s squirming in it: something with arms and suckers. For a moment I think Gould’s caught himself a baby Ceph, but no; it’s just an octopus. Looks as alien as anything else I’ve run into these past few hours, but at least it’s from around here.
Somehow that makes all the difference. I almost feel, I don’t know, affection for the spineless crawly thing. We’re all in the same tank now, right?
Gould leads me down the hall—“Right down here, same basic setup as back on the island, just not as many bells and whistles”—into a room that’s at least empty enough to really appreciate how dingy the wallpaper is. Backed up against the far wall is a cross between a recliner and a crucifix. Or maybe a crucifix and a dentist’s chair. Definitely a crucifixion subtext, though: It’s a molded recliner with outstretched arms, a socket for the suit. You sit back and—judging by those circular little receptacles along the arms and legs and spine—it plugs right into you. A loose coil of black umbilicals connects it to a server stack in the corner.
“So come on, let’s get you checked out.”
I lower myself into the cradle, and whump I’m stuck in stone. I don’t know if it’s the damn suit or Gould’s setup but here I am again, paralyzed while this middle-aged geek rolls around on his desk chair and fiddles with controls I can’t understand.
“Some fucked-up shit, right?” He ends up at an old scuffed desk against the wall, playing with the laptop there. “And Hargreave, well, who knows what’s going on in his head . . . So let’s see what we—
“Wait a second, that’s odd—”
And suddenly, whatever welcome I saw in Nathan Gould’s face is nowhere to be seen. What I see instead is shock, and anger, and fear. I see the beginnings of a killing rage; I know what those look like.
I see the gun in Gould’s hand, pointed at my face.
“You’re not Prophet,” he hisses.
I still can’t move.
“Who are you? What did you do to him?” He leans in close. “Hargreave, right? Just another loose end. Hargreave sent you to kill me.”
I wonder how much this suit can take, immobilized. I wonder what kinds of tools Gould has at his disposal. I wonder how long it’ll take him to crack me open like a clam, get at the soft squishy parts inside. Just calm down, Nathan. You have the upper hand. No need to panic, no need to be hasty. Just—
That’s right. Back to your keyboard. Access the black box. There’s gotta be one in here somewhere. Play back the log. Get the facts.
He gets them. Seems to sink into himself a little. After a few moments he remembers me, and frees me with the flip of a switch. He turns without a word and disappears up the hallway.
I find him back in the living room. Somehow, against all odds, he’s found a chair that isn’t half a meter deep in ancient hardcopy. He sits with his head in his hands.
“I can’t do this anymore,” he says to the carpet. “I’m not a fucking stormtrooper, I’m not some spec ops hard case like y—like Prophet . . . was. A conspiracy geek with a grudge. That’s all I fucking am.”
Motion from the corner of my eye: Over by the wall the octopus writhes in its tank. Its arms coil, uncoil, beckon me from across the room.
“Prophet was supposed to get us out. The marines were coming for us. Now . . .”
Suckers attach themselves deliberately to the glass, one after another after another, an endless procession of circular footsteps. The body of the thing inflates as I watch, swells up like a great fleshy balloon, then slowly collapses; I get the sense of a weary, resigned sigh. One gold unblinking eye regards me through a horizontal bar of pupil.
“That’s Houdini,” Gould says, behind me. “Know anything about cephalopods?” He sounds almost hopeful, but it doesn’t last: “No, of course you don’t.”
Houdini and I watch each other through the glass.
“Smartest inver—smartest earthly invertebrate that ever lived,” Gould remarks. “Astonishing problem-solving abilities, deep memory, physical dexterity an order of magnitude greater than anything we vertebrates ever managed. You know, they have individual motor control over every one of those suckers? Pass a pebble from one sucker to the next: down from the tip of one arm, across the beak, back up to the tip of another arm, do it a hundred times and never drop the damn thing once.