"Headhunters," Gabe whispered.
"Good guess, but the real title is Need to Know," said the same voice close to his ear. "It's an indictment of our present system of information dispersal. You're allowed to know only those things the information czars decide that you need to know. They call it 'market research' and 'efficient use of resources' and 'no-waste,' but it's the same old shit they've been doing to us for more than a hundred years-keep 'em confused and in the dark. You gotta be a stone-home super-Renaissance person to find out what's really going on. Don't you agree?"
Gabe couldn't look away from the image on the screen. It was almost as bad as what he'd seen in the ward.
"What ward?"
Talking without realizing it; he seemed to be doing that a lot tonight. "Where they punch holes in people's heads and steal their neurotransmitter."
There was a pause. "You must watch a lot of tech-fantasy porn. I knew it. I could tell just by looking at you."
He turned to look at the person who was speaking to him. The face wouldn't come clear of the ornate drifting patterns falling past it like veils, but he was sure it was neither Caritha nor Marly. "Excuse me," he said, "I have to find some people."
The house was on fire. No, he was on fire. No, he was standing in the pillar of fire. He'd forgotten all about it. Embarrassed, he tried to step out of it, and it moved with him in a way that was oddly possessive, as if it had decided to claim him. Adopted by a pillar of fire; the program certainly was frisky today. He peered through the flames. A small knot of people gathered near another machine were applauding him. He turned away, wandering around in a small circle as he tried to get his bearings. There was the wall of screens, he must have come from there-no, there was another wall of screens, maybe he'd come from there. The people were still applauding. Abruptly the flames parted, and he was standing outside of the pillar. A woman in an open military-style coat with fringe on the shoulders did something to the machine and then shook her head at him.
"Homeboy, if you're not going to do anything more interesting than stagger around, I can't use you."
"Excuse me," he said. "I have to find some people."
They slid out of his field of vision, and his pov floated around a corner and down a long hallway-long? No, just a special-effects distortion. A robot bird-head popped out of a doorway and inspected him curiously for several seconds before a man's face came out from behind it and waved him on. Cam, he realized, another cam. It was like one of those Big Night Out video releases they did in Entertainment, he thought; simulated parties and private clubs and bars. Like an insty-vacation. He became aware of music, a driving, frenzied beat urging him to relax, relax, relax.
At the top of a spiral staircase, he had a sudden clear glimpse of a mass of hair the color of dark honey before it moved away. "Marly?" he asked. He pushed through the warm bodies posed against the twisting, turning railing. Words bounced off him like hail, and he emerged on the next floor feeling slightly worked over.
He made his way down another hall, stopping at every doorway. Some of the rooms were crowded, and some were mostly empty, but Marly wasn't in any of them. The door to the last room was half-open, and he hesitated, almost knocked, and then gave it a push with his foot.
Music rushed over him, big music with lots of different sounds in it. He hung onto the frame, overwhelmed and blinded. Sometime later his vision cleared, and he saw the bed tipped up on its side against the far wall. To make room for the music, he thought. And for the man he now saw kneeling in the center of the floor before a small fire, urging the flames upward with graceful fingers.
A little ways away Caritha was stretched out with her back to him, resting on one elbow, watching. Gabe floated down onto the floor next to her with a rush of relief.
"I knew I'd find you," he said, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes.
"Shit, what happened to you?" Her voice sounded strange and rough under the music.
"When?" he asked. He wanted to look at her, put an arm around her, but his head was suddenly too heavy to move, his eyes too much trouble to open. He would open them in a minute; there was no point to running a video if you were going to keep your eyes closed.
"Whenever. What'ud you do, get a few refills? How much did you have?"
He managed to get his eyes open to slits. Caritha's voice sounded very strange, as if someone had been messing with the program. The hacker. The hacker who had claimed to be on his side had done something to his program. He struggled to raise his head. The man in the center of the room was burning a musical instrument, he realized, an old electric guitar from the last century, squirting fluid on it and setting a match to it deliberately. Someone was asking him if he was experienced.
"That's not the question," he said. "The question is who's really on your side. Anyone can say they are, but it-it-" He floundered; the thought was suddenly draining away like water down an open pipe.
" 'It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing,' right? That what you're trying to tell me?"
He reached out blindly and found her wrist. "I'm trying to tell you we've been found out. We've got to get away. Where's Marly?"
" 'Found out'? Somebody found something out about you?" A sudden raucous laugh, un-Caritha-like and yet not so out of character. Something was tugging at his mind, trying to get through the jumble of ideas and images and noise; he thought it might be his calendar alarm beeping almost unheard, but no reminder display appeared before him.
"It was Manny," he said faintly. "He found out. Not entirely legally, but I don't know what he's going to do."
"Manny? You mean Rivera?" Another laugh. "Nothing about that character's entirely legal. I could tell you stories."
"You could?" Gabe asked, confused.
"Who knows but that I fucking will."
The man was still burning his guitar. Or burning it again. Static boiled through the figure, and Gabe realized he was looking at a holo of a very old piece of footage.
"There's no time for stories anymore," he said after a bit. "I covered up as much as I could. All he'll find is commercials now, but it'll be a long time before we're all together again." He paused, twining his fingers with hers. So real; he could actually feel the sweat on her palm, the texture of her fingers, the warmth. He tried to remember if new hotsuits with upgraded sensors had been issued. Because the sensations weren't ever this vivid, only good enough, what with the video portion providing power of suggestion, so that your mind would fill in any missing details. Usually, if you surrendered to the illusion. Which you really had to do to make really good video, even commercials…
After a while he realized he'd been talking without knowing it again, and at some length. He blinked at the flames licking up from the guitar.
"I put two LotusLands in you, what you call your mildly hallucinogenic beverages, just to get that fucking pinched look off your face. I don't know how many more they put in you downstairs, but I'd say you're more toxed than you've ever been in your life."
Frowning, he turned to look at her and jumped. It wasn't Caritha.
"You remember anything that happened since you walked in here?" Gina asked him. She waited a moment. "Didn't think so."
Attention, Marly's voice said in his mind. This is not a simulation.
"It's a little late to tell me that," he muttered.
"A little late?" Gina gave a short, humorless laugh. "It's a whole fucking stone-home lot late." Her eyes were dark holes; she was even more toxed than he was, he realized. "We made it easier to be in the sounds and the pictures, and hardly fucking none of it's real anymore. It's a faster, better way to get a real unreal experience. You don't know what I'm talkin' about, do you?"