"They have to," Markt said quietly. "To a certain extent, anyway. One of us is too viral, and the other is too… marked."
"I'm not in any fucking mood for bad wordplay," Sam said. The icon in the lower right corner was blinking more rapidly and she looked for the power-boost symbol. "You should have told them that before you let them go charging in to save the world. Your world."
"Yours, too," Markt said evenly. "Apparently you have some things you wish weren't impossible only in the real world. But then, doesn't everybody?" He looked away. "Sorry. We're on to something else now, and I can't keep it from biting off your power any longer. But thanks, Sam, you did the right thing. That sympathetic vibration program really is a banger. And thank Keely for the jamming program, too."
The screen went blank.
Keely helped her work the headmount off. The rest of them were still gathered around her work island, and they were all looking at her, including the Beater, who made one hell of a nervous potato. She felt a sudden wave of excruciating embarrassment.
"How was it?" Keely asked her.
"Weird," she said, letting out a long breath. "You can see everything at once sometimes, and sometimes you can't see but what's directly in front of you. And we'll need at least four times the resolution we've got now, I don't think I got a fraction of the detail. There's all sorts of things-I don't know, symbols and elements and-"
You're not supposed to see your father naked. Or your father's mind, anyway.
"-or maybe not," she said after a moment. "Maybe we should leave well enough alone. Damn. I really wished I'd had sockets. Sort of. Or maybe not. Seeing someone's mind like that-"
Some residue of power surged through the hotsuit then, and she had the sensation of someone squeezing her hand. She stripped off the gloves in a hurry. " 'Scuse me, I'm going to slip into something a lot more comfortable." She headed for her squat space.
"Good work, Sam," Keely called after her. "You did it, you know."
"Yah, I did it," she called back over her shoulder. "For a while, anyway."
"Sam?" Gabe called. The jamming program was still running, but he could feel how it was beginning to stumble. It kept correcting, but that wouldn't last. Eventually Mark was going to overwhelm it, and he would be back at the mercy of that pull to turn around and see the stranger. Mercy? Bad choice of word.
And then they were just there, in front of him. He jumped, startled, unsure if it was just some wishful visualization.
Then he was rushing forward to embrace them, but they stepped back from his reaching arms.
"Can't, hotwire." Marly's expression was only half-apologetic. "You promised."
"You did," Caritha added. "I was there. And so were you."
He looked at each of them, but there was no appeal. He had promised, to Gina, all the things that were supposed to be impossible only in the real world, and without waiting for an answering promise. Because that was how it was, whether you heard an answer or not, whether it was the answer you wanted or not, whether you had to crawl over shards of broken glass or cold, naked stones. Even with a sympathetic vibration program.
Someday- if they ever got out of this-Ludovic might understand. It had been somewhat of a dirty trick, the promise and the choosing. Perhaps the choosing most of all, because Ludovic hadn't realized he'd been choosing. Markt knew by his graph that he'd have made the same choice regardless, but Ludovic would have obstinately insisted on going through it the way he thought he had to crawl over every single stone. Even with a sympathetic vibration program. He'd have wanted to do it, actively and consciously, claiming it as a right. A right-when the Art configuration had invested Marly and Caritha with himself long ago, and Ludovic hadn't even known it at the time. He still didn't realize it all the way through, and it was hard to see how he couldn't. Took it for granted, perhaps, that a simulation could grow that responsive by virtue of growing so many decision trees. Wander through the enchanted forest, yes, it's magic, must be magic.
The magic is, there is no magic.
Sound and vision, yes, but no magic. Pain and pleasure, yes, but no magic. Catastrophe and chaos, yes, but ho magic.
Synthesis. But no magic.
Synners… but no magic.
None whatsoever.
Ludovic, this isn't bad news.
"How is that supposed to help me?" Gabe said, exasperated.
"Come on, hotwire," said Marly, or Caritha. It was hard to tell, now. They were both looking more like composites. "If you can face this, you can face anything."
He shook his head.
"If there was magic," Caritha, or Marly, said, "what would you need faith for?"
Gabe considered it. Then he turned around. Gina's fist was the size of a Hollywood Boulevard tourist bus as it came at him, and he was there for it.
– -
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up.
Night court. From high on the bench, the judge regarded her with a satisfied smirk. "You took the wrong turn getting up from that bed. Story of your life, eh, Gina?"
I cant be all fucking alone-
"Can't get you, but you can't get me, either." The judge tapped the gavel lightly and then pointed at the wall with it. "We can just stand each other off in here until I get him."
On the monitor she saw Ludovic frowning down at the stones.
Dammit all to fucking hell, Gabe, it doesn't make any difference which fucking stone-
"Not that it matters," said the judge, looking satisfied, "but how do you plead?"
"I don't plead," Gina said, feeling shakier than she sounded. "I never fucking pleaded in my life."
"No?" The judge was amused.
Get your claw off him, bitch, that meat is mine.
How'd you like to get even?
She turned away from the judge and got back into bed.
"Can I help you?"
Gabe hesitated. The common room was completely silent. Over at the cold-drink machine, Marly and Caritha were waiting patiently, Caritha tapping the cam resting on one raised thigh. She nodded at him. "Go ahead."
He looked down at the stones and then up at her again. "Oh, Christ. I know how this comes out."
"So hurry up," said Marly.
It's only impossible in the real world.
He sighed. "I thought you looked like you needed change for the machines."
"The more change, the less you know what's going on."
Markt smiled dreamily, turned him around, and pushed him into the path of Gina's fist.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up.
"Open up in the name of the law!" The judge's voice, or maybe Manny Rivera's, doing Mark. "You are all alone in there. You took the wrong turn again getting up from the bed, and you are all alone."
She was getting closer to the center now. Mark's bedroom. How's that for fucking symbolism, she thought sourly. Maybe she wasn't getting singed on the way in, but things were definitely starting to get warm.
"Open up in the name of the law!"
She paused in the act of getting back into bed. "What did you say?"
The name of the law…the name of the law… The echoes danced in the gray air above the lake. Gabe could imagine them bouncing off the low clouds like maddened rubber balls. Now, what was that name, the name of the law? He could almost feel it, but it wouldn't come clear, wouldn't straighten itself out from the noise in his mind.