Art paused. He had his image sitting at a desk sorting through papers. "Okay, how's this: 'Lobby for Decency Declares Brain an Erogenous Zone, Demands Mandatory Hatting.' "
" 'Hatting'?" said Adrian.
"Did you make that up?" Gator asked suspiciously.
"Nope." Art grinned. "Here, Adrian, just for you-" Mandarin subtitles appeared below each headline on the other screen.
"Hatting." Captain Jasm looked thoughtful. "I like that. I hat, you hat, she/he/it hats, I have hatted, I will have hatted, I will have been hatted-"
"Not to mention the soon-to-be-immortal 'Hat you, sucker,' " Rosa put in.
"Couldn't some of us just get capped?" said Adrian.
Jasm looked at him fondly and then gave the top of his head a glancing swat. "How's that?"
" 'Para-Versal Announces Forthcoming New Release with Multiple Cross-Tie-Ins,' " Art went on. " 'Tailor-Made Companionship Now a Reality, Thanks to Sockets.' "
No one said anything for a moment. "Is that stupid," Gator asked, "or just pathetic?"
"I don't know," said Art, "but I thought it would be of interest to Sam, since her father's involved."
"He is?" Sam frowned.
" 'New Release Custom-Created by Diversifications' Gabriel Ludovic,' it says here," Art told her.
"They must have drilled him, then," Sam said, more to herself.
"Let's not bandy surnames about too liberally," Fez said to Art. "We're among friends, but we never know who's going to walk in on us."
On-screen Art had not moved for several seconds. Sam reached across Jasm to tap Fez on the knee. "Fez-"
"I'm watching," he said. "Art? Still with us?"
Gator reached over and held a finger over the disconnect panel. Art's image unfroze.
"Something strange," he said.
"Trace?" Gator asked.
"No…" he looked thoughtful. "Something… touched me."
"Explain," said Fez.
"It was so momentary. Let me work on it. I'll get back to you." He shuffled the simulated papers on his simulated desk. "Ah, this just in. 'To whomever, wherever: Hi, I didn't die, I'm in the big tower. Divers up, divers down, divers on vacation.' "
Everyone looked at everyone else. "This is a headline?" Gator said.
"Actually, I found it in the current-events area of Dr. Fish's Answering Machine with a funny mark on it."
Gator started to chew Art out for maintaining the bulletin board when a voice behind them spoke.
"Divers on vacation. Come on, even I can figure that one."
Sam twisted around to look at Jones standing just inside the tent flap, looking puffy-eyed and depressed. He gazed around at all of them. "Percy told me where to find you," he added, a bit apologetically.
"That's fine," Gator said, "but don't you die in here."
Sam jumped up. "Come on, I'll take you back."
He waved her away. "Don't bother. I temporarily can't sleep. And don't worry, Gator. The implants have stopped working. For now, anyway."
" 'Sockets Inventor Dies in Mexico,' " Art said. " 'Suicide Pact with Hall Galen Suspected.' "
They all turned back to the screen again. Even Jones seemed interested.
The music, all cruising synthesizers and pumping beatbox, decreased in volume again.
"Message sent. So did I tell you it was a damned Schrodinger world?" said the man on the screen. He was sitting on a yellow chaise in a strange partial room. The walls on either side rose to unequal heights, and where the ceiling and back wall should have been was a backdrop of swiftly moving clouds in a blue green sky, gray and almost stony looking, reflected in the large, shiny black and white tiles on the floor. Besides the chaise there were two angular black chairs that looked like dollhouse miniatures and a small white table on impossibly thin legs.
"Schrodinger or Heisenberg?" Keely said, talking into the speaker.
"Well, either one, I guess. To be or not to be, are you or aren't you-can't be sure of either one till somebody opens your box. Fly Heisenberg Airlines-we don't know where we are, but we're making damned good time." An old-fashioned detonator with a plunger materialized in his hands. "Sure you don't want me to blow the door for you?"
"If I leave here, it would be just like a jailbreak," Keely said wearily. "An outside phone line is better, for the time being. Since I don't know where anybody is or how to reach them. And wouldn't want anyone to trace them if I did."
The detonator swelled to desk size and straddled the man on the chaise. Lifting the top, he reached in and plucked out a tangled handful of wires, surveying them closely. "I still haven't figured this. It could take some time."
"I don't know how much time I have," Keely said. "I could be down in Medical tomorrow."
"Don't know how you take the confinement." The man shook his head in time to the music, which was still playing at a level just below the attention threshold. "Confinement is a double-A, stone-home, all-wool-and-a-yard-wide bitch. And don't you forget it."
Not likely, Keely thought, watching him with interest. Visual Mark's energy had definitely picked up since he'd gotten his sockets.
"I'm outa the box now myself," Mark went on, searching through the tangle of wires. He reached into the desk again and pulled out some more.
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Keely asked, tentatively.
"Fuck, no. I'm picking it up on the fly. Fly, fly, fly is what I do now. I don't actually know dick about anything."
Keely frowned, suddenly suspicious. "So, what's this, then, some kind of cheap comedy video you're trying out on me?"
The man dropped the wires and looked out of the screen sternly. Keely found himself marveling; he could almost believe that the on-screen image could actually see him. Sometimes Mark's gaze missed him entirely, but most times, like now, Mark's estimate of where he was sitting at the monitor was dead on. "Did I say I'd help? Did I send your fucking message for you? You can answer anytime."
"Sorry," Keely said.
"You didn't let me finish anyway. I don't know dick about any of this stuff just being like you are, no holes in the head. But now I'm on-line. Connected." Wires appeared on his head, growing out from his skull in a frenzy. "Understand now? I know what there is to know. Only thing I don't know is how I'm supposed to get all this stuff back in my head with me. I mean, where can I put it?" He picked up the tangle of lines again.
"Wait," said Keely. "You mean you're on-line that way?" For some reason it hadn't occurred to him that Mark would be using the interface.
"Come on. Anyone can tell something's different with me. Haven't been this coherent since I was sixteen fuckin' years old." He held the wires up and grimaced at them. "Gonna haveta cook this one awhile. Getting back to you later. I'll leave a back door open for you. Access code 'Gina' and you're in.'
"What if you're off-line?"
Mark spread his hands. "If I'm off-line, call Medical. It'll mean I'm dead."
The screen went dark, leaving Keely staring at his own distorted reflection in the glass.
25
Manny's head was pounding. Not thirty minutes back to work after his own procedure and he'd had to have that headline, of all things, jump out at him from the dataline, with a notation from Mirisch: Find out about this!
He was half tempted to leave his own message for the Great Grey Executive: Find out about it yourself! But he didn't need that kind of trouble with everything else he had to think about. He had to write up a dismissal notice for the Beater; good thing they hadn't had to waste sockets on him, and good riddance. He had to check on the hacker in the penthouse, make sure he'd been kept dosed enough to be unambitious but not so toxed that any damage had been done. Maybe another interrogation, with something stronger this time. None of the names Manny had gotten out of him under the influence had surfaced, and if at least some of them didn't show soon, the cops were going to drop them.