Walter Jon Williams Hardwired

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

"No. They're victims. Roon is evil. I'm just saying my brother would trade
places with either one of them in a minute. And once upon a time, I would have
done the same."
The last of the contrail vanishes. Cowboy takes a deep breath and turns to
face Sarah. She stands deep in his shadow, her hands cocked on her hips.
Watching him with cold eyes.
"I want to kill him," he says. "Kill Roon. I've never wanted anything more."
He's surprised at it. Even Arkady had never seemed worth the trouble of hating
just a Russian thirdman who was foolish enough to stand between Cowboy and his
legend. But Roon is something else, a shadowy foul-breathed evil hovering in
his silver-laced Gaussian night-
mare... A creature worth the killing.
Sarah tosses her hair. "So kill him. I won't stop you. Two months from now."
"After he's out of the well, where I can't reach him."
"Kill Couceiro first. He's the one that's trying to kill you."
Cowboy moves through the connecting door to Sarah's room, to the white plastic
bar that stands outlined with holograms of old neon tropical images, green
palm trees, blue water, girls in oscillating grass skirts. He reaches for a
bottle and feels the cool glass against his fingers, sees the holo images
glowing through the crystal, distorted, nightmarish. He drops the bottle,
tastes sweat on his lip. He realizes that he's shifted into a hardwired state,
that impulses are screaming through his Santistevan nerves, the dark room
seeming to bend in toward him as the rushing adrenaline distorts his vision...
He closes his eyes and looks up. Sees behind his lids the twists and turns of
the wire and crystal world, the victors drifting out of the well, building
their architecture of power, contemplating the earth with artificial raptor
eyes. Earth's billions in their ratholes, scrabbling for their diminishing
portions while the air grows hotter, the grip of the blocs stronger, the
pressure of numbers greater. In the black night alleys of the war of all
against all, Sarah's cybersnake is only logical, a piece of cyborg cunning
that can kill only those trusting enough to come close. They're the only ones
she can reach. The others fly too high, out of her sight. That she is
desperate enough to have such a thing marks her as a victim before it marks
her as anything else.
An alliance with Roon? Easily done. A few children will lose their childhood,
and who's to say they wouldn't have lost it anyway, here or in the streets? At
least they're being fed well.
For dirt.
He opens his eyes, seeing the cold and brilliant hologram of the night sky
that covers all the ceilings here, the burning stars and the stationary
platinum beacons of the geosynchronous robot factories. "You've lost your
choices long ago," the constellation whispers, "and whatever moves you make
are the ones we let you. And Cowboy-we do not permit innocence as an option.
That is the first thing you give us."
Cowboy is aware of Sarah standing in the doorway, her body in shadow, her eyes
concerned but still demanding a choice. Whatever innocence she once possessed
had gone long ago, cut away by the razors of the streets. The cybersnake is
less a horror now, more a pathetic attempt at defense, at making a place for
herself in the dark new order.
Page 122
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
He tries to tote up the debts he owes, to Sarah and the Dodger and Warren, to
a couple of kids huddled in a single sleeping bag in some decaying barn in
Missouri. To the children here in
Roon's palace. To his own burning dreams.
"All right," he whispers. His eyelids flutter, an old reflex made obsolete by
his plastic eyes and his amputated tear ducts. "All right. We'll do it your
way."
She walks up to him slowly, putting her arms around his neck, laying her cheek
to his.
"I'm sorry, Cowboy," she says. "I'm sorry."
He clings to her for a while, lets her lead him away into the night of her own
scarred mind, torn life, dark choices.
He lived free in the air, once, on the last free road. It's a tunnel now,
growing ever narrower and blacker, and he never saw the walls rise till he was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Tematy