Ghost Dancers Part 11

The Kid had no particular difficulty with the long words. He was an intelligent person, and although he had only the vaguest idea what cybernetics might be he reasoned that it had to refer to Yokoi and the horrorshows. "And you want me to offer you further compensation, in the shape of Zarathustra's data-disc?" he saida"not because he was in any rush to get to the point, but simply because he hoped it would show how clued-up he was.

Tanagawa smiled, but didn't jump at the offer. Yokoi obviously wasn't the only one who thought that these matters needn't be hurried. The Kid had heard from guys who had regular dealings with the yakuza that the j.a.panese were positively addicted to beating all around the bush before getting down to the nitty-gritty, so he wasn't to perplexed by it.

Tanagawa sat forward in his chair. "Strange as it may seem," he said, "we have had the utmost difficulty in discovering who you really area"or who you were, if you prefer to think of it that way, before you a.s.sumed the name Kid Zero. America's record-keeping has suffered an unfortunate decline, of course, since the Policed Zones were sealed and the areas outside excluded from many of the privileges of bureaucratic regulation, but it is strange, nevertheless."

"Does it matter?" asked the Kid.

"It might. Everything which interests GenTech matters to us. Anyone whose interests are opposed to GenTech's are at least partly aligned with oursa"which includes Mr Haycraft and his masters as well as yourself. We know and understand what Mr Haycraft's masters are trying to doa"but you, quite frankly, are more of a puzzle."

"You ought to understand me well enough," replied the Kid, with a slight coldness in his tone, "after that trick you pulled with the horrorshow. I was surprised myself when I tried to figure out how much of that little hallucination was fed to me and how much was my own input."

"Alas," said Tanagawa unrepentantly, "Dr Yokoi has not yet given us a perfect psychoa.n.a.lytical tool. Perhaps he will, one daya"but for the time being, his devices can do little more than play interesting games. Will you tell me what name you had when you were a child, and where you were born?"

"I don't see that it would be any use to you," the Kid countered, stubbornly.

Tanagawa didn't frown, or make any other sign of annoyance. "Would you like to work for us?" he asked.

"As what? A hired killer, like Pasco? Or a spy, like Haycraft?" The Kid's tone was calculated to imply that he didn't favour either prospect.

Tanagawa didn't reply immediately, but looked steadily at the Kid for several seconds from the depths of his dark, birdlike eyes. Then he said: "Can you not understand and sympathize with the motives which led Mr Pasco to become a GenTech employee? His present post offered hima"until his present a.s.signment, at leasta"the careful protection of a large organization, with all the benefits that can provide. And the previous position which he gave up in order to pursue a career with GenTech was surely preferable to your own status as a hunted criminal. Why should you not leap at the chance of a similar role within Mitsu-Makema?"

"If I were an Op," replied the Kid soberly. "A job with a corp SecDiv would probably look pretty good. But I'm not an Op, and I never would be. I'm an outlaw."

"By which you mean to imply," said Tanagawa, "that you subscribe to the image of your activities which has been so carefully built up by Mr Hegarty. Do you really see yourself as a free man, Mr Zero? Can you sincerely represent yourself as some kind of mythical hero, embodying the reincarnated spirit of the American pioneer?"

The Kid laughed. "I'm just a ghost dancer, Mr Tanagawa," he said. "Just a ghost dancer. I have it on the word of Homer himself." For a fleeting moment he nursed the hope that Tanagawa might ask him to explain, so he could show off all that Homer Hegarty had told him about Wovoka and the ma.s.sacre of the Sioux at Wounded Knee, pa.s.sing it off as his own wisdom. But Tanagawa already knew what a ghost dancer was.

"And is that what you want for yourself?" the director asked. "Are you content to be a celebrant of hopelessness, committing yourself to meaningless rituals of bravado and revenge, in order to serve some half-formed and half-baked quasi-religious faith?"

"It's the American way," said the Kid cheerfully. "You heard about what they're doing in Deseret these days?"

"Is that what you want for, yourself?" asked Tanagawa, quietly refusing to let his question be ignored. It was a good question.

"I'll tell you where I stashed the disc," said the Kid uncomfortably. "You're welcome to it. I owe you that much, for pulling me out. As for the resta"I honestly don't know what I want, Mr Tanagawa."

"Perhaps we can help you to decide," said the M-M man, with what seemed to the Kid to be unwarranted smugness. "I really am interested in your previous history, you know. Won't you tell me something about it?"

The Kid shrugged. "I had a mis-spent youth," he said. "I seemed to spend most of it watching TV. Not the networksa"the educational stuff that schools used to subscribe to. That was what pa.s.sed for looking after us in the place where I was. It was a kind of orphanage in the Houston NoGoa"I guess the whole outfit lived on the survival margin. It doesn't matter what name they called me bya"it wasn't really mine. I was a foundling, left on the steps by persons unknown. I left the name behind when they threw me out to fend for myself, and became plain *Kid'.

"I was taken in by the Low Numbers because Ace the Ace knew mea"he was an old boy of the Inst.i.tutiona"but that went wrong; his buddies gave me the zero when Pete Quint got killed and the Trip brothers convinced themselves that I was lousing up their luck. They meant it to hurt, but I always liked ita"no half-measures, you see. All and nothing are better than not so much, and I wanted it both ways: Kid Zero, all out to put the bite on GenTech; Kid Zero stops at nothing. Once I started the vendetta, it was absolute. That make any sense to you, Mr Tanagawa?"

"You can make a fresh start now," the man in the suit pointed out.

"Sure," said the Kid, in a low tone. "Back in the cradle, in the garden of Eden. But what can I do for you, except be Ray Pasco in miniature?"

"You might be worth much more to us than that, Mr Zero," said Tanagawa, quietly. "We belong to a subtler species than the men who run GenTech, and we have little interest in recruiting men like Mr Pasco."

The Kid was unconvinced. He couldn't see why he might be useful to an org like M-M. But then he guessed what the suit might be referring to.

"You're interested in Lady Venom, aren't you?" he said. "You want to figure out how I get along so well with a rattler."

"That is so," admitted Tanagawa. "Thata"in addition to the simpler reasons of securitya"is why you were brought here, and why you have been placed in Dr Yokoi's hands. My role is simply to persuade you to co-operate with him. And, of course, to receive from you the location of Dr Zarathustra's data disc."

"Do I get paid?" asked the Kid, for the sake of curiosity.

"Of course," said Tanagawa serenely. "I am authorized to offer you a fee of forty million yena"convertible, of course, to any other currency you care to namea"plus a wage of two hundred thousand yen per day until such time as you or I decide that our a.s.sociation is at an end. Are those terms agreeable to you, Mr Zero?"

The Kid had only an approximate idea of what a hundred thousand yen was worth in dollars and cents, but the numbers were undeniably impressive. Oddly enough, it was the daily rate rather than the forty million which seemed astonishing to Kid Zero. He tried to imagine how much that might be in real termsa"in terms of gallons of water or gasoline; in terms of what wh.o.r.es charged their clients or what the dealers charged for ammunition; in terms of the dead-or-alive bounty currently on offer to the man who could bring his head in or the prizes on the average ZBC game-show. He couldn't help but wonder how much a boardroom suit got paid, and whether they reckoned it by the hour or the minute.

"It'll do," he said, trying to sound laconic. "Leastways, it'll do for now."

"Thank you, Mr Zero," said Tanagawa, standing up and extending his hand to be shaken. "Thank you very much indeed."

Because of what he was it was impossible to be certain whether Mr Tanagawa was being sincere, but he certainly sounded it. In fact, he sounded so sincere that the Kid wondered whether he mightn't have got twice as much, if he had only bothered to haggle. He recalled that the mafia still owed him a payoff too, if he could ever contrive to collect it.

He was richa"but he hadn't a cent in his pocket.

"Well," he said, in an attempt to be witty, "I sure hope that Homer Hegarty and the mafia are wrong about the end of the world being just around the corner. I'd like to clock up an awful lot of two-hundred-thousand-yen days."

"If the threatened end of civilization were not every bit as imminent as Mr Hegarty and Mr Andriano implied," Tanagawa observed, in a curiously scrupulous manner, "n.o.body's days would be worth two hundred thousand yen. As things are, alas, we may well have far more money than time on our handsa"and as Confucius once observed, we can't take it with us if and when we go."

It was a joke of sorts, but the Kid couldn't quite bring himself to laugh. He had, after all, just been obliquely informed that he wasn't overly likely to have the opportunity to spend what he earned.

"Just what is on that disc?" he asked, in a tone which sounded more exasperated than he had intended. "And why does everyone think that the end of the world is just around he corner?"

"There will be time enough for explanations," Tanagawa a.s.sured him, apparently unworried by his own inconsistency. "First, Mr Zero, we have a deal to complete. Will you tell me now exactly where you hid the fourth copy of Dr Zarathustra's disc?"

The Kid buried his exasperation, and told the M-M man what he wanted to know. He told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He was, after all, an honourable man.

3.

The city streets are damp with recent rain, glistening redly wherever the light of the setting sun can penetrate the crevices between the huddled tenements. The streets are crowded with hurrying pedestrians of both s.e.xes, whose heads area"without exceptiona"bowed and hooded. The sun seems unnaturally large and the clouded sky is tinted vivid orange, as though the entire western horizon were aflame.

You have a gun in your right hand; it looks like a forty-five Magnum but there is no sensation of weight to back up the visual evidence and you don't waste much time in looking down at the weapon anyway, because your gaze is flicking avidly back and forth over the crowds.

(You're probably looking for someonea"but what chance can you possibly have of finding them, when there is not a naked face to be seen?) You step out into the path of one of the hurrying figuresa"it seems to be a smartly-dressed young woman, clicking along on high heels. She takes half a step backwards, obviously alarmed, but you can't see anything within the folds of her hood.

You reach out with the hand which holds the Magnum, and use the barrel of the gun to push the hood back. You keep pushing until it falls.

Perhaps it is a young woman, but perhaps not. The hair is grey and wispy; the cheeks are mottled, as though covered in yellowing bruises; the lips are blackened, chapped and cracked and the teeth behind them are as yellow as the mottled skin. Most remarkable of all are the eyes: their "whites" are silvered like a polished ball-bearing; the irises are blood-red; the pupils are mere-pinp.r.i.c.ks.

(How is it possible to read expression into such a face? Is that stare malevolent, or is no other appearance of emotion available to such features as these?) You step back again, lowering the gun and clearing the way so that the other may proceed. She pulls up the hood again, carefully obscuring her hideous visage, and hurries on her way, head bowed.

You begin the search again, your eyes flickering from hood to hooda"but while you watch, you begin to move along the street, skulking in the shadows cast by the tall buildings, whose windows are all shuttered and whose doors are all sealed.

(Can you have the slightest doubt that all the hooded faces are as frightful as the one which you exposed? This world has surely been the victim of some dire plague which transfigures without killinga"some mutant micro-organism sp.a.w.ned in the polluted rivers, or some engineered virus escaped from a secret laboratorya"and all human beauty has been banished from it. You can't help but wonder what the consequences of that fact might be, for human relationships.

For now, it seems, the people are content to hide themselves for fear of offending one another's eyes, but for how long? Will there not come a time when the hoods are thrown back, so that G.o.d may look upon the faces of His people, and none will be ashamed to be seen as they are? Will there not come a time when these Brave New Men will obliterate the cultural heritage which preserves images of another kind, destroying all the paintings, all the books, all the films, all the photographsa"until no evidence remains to remind the people of the world that they have not always been as they are? And when that has been done, will not people come to think themselves fine and handsome again, and will they not learn to cherish the stigmata of their affliction?) You move from the sunlit street into a shadowed alleywaya"a deep crevice carved in the body of the city, from which the fiery sky is visible only as a high and narrow slit. There are fewer people here, but there are some, hurrying in both directions. Your gaze selects them one by one: checking, judging, appraising.

Here comes another of much the same height and build as the last, and again you move out to block her way. This one does not step back, but merely stops, and when you reach up with the gun-barrel she turns it aside with a gnarled and mottled hand. She also tries to block your other hand as it comes up to perform the task instead, but the handa"which is not discoloureda"brushes her much smaller one aside, and hauls back the hood.

It is the same face as the othera"or so similar that it cannot be told apart. This time, though, the spoiled lips move. They emit a hissing sound, and then the womana"if it is a womana"spits in your face.

You see the spittle coming at you, but there is no sensation of being hit by it. You don't recoil, nor do you retaliate. You simply step back, and allow the other to cover herself up again.

She goes on her way.

(And in time, no doubt, these people will come to consider that they are made in the image of G.o.d, and will redesign their icons. Should any baby be born miraculously immune to the ravages of the disease, it will be promptly killed for its deformity. If the disease is a virus, made of the same stuff as the genes which are the carriers of human nature, it will be accepted and adopted into that human nature; if it is something other, it will become a second system of heredity, its own future evolution being part and parcel of the evolution of the race. That is the fate of universal diseasesa"to become commensals instead of compet.i.tors.

Perhaps men were once G.o.ds, before they were weakened by plague after plague after plague, so that they became only menaand perhaps, in time, they will degenerate even further, until they are no more than ugly beastsaand in the end, completing the devolutionary process, no more than gory blobs of protoplasm. Disease to disease, slime to slime.) You move again, into an alley narrower than the other, so that the illuminating sky is no more than a striplight; but you can still see the people who go by, in both directions. You can still examine them one by one, dismissing all those who stand too tall or too broad, and all those who wear male attire.

Only the women attract your eye, drawing your attention like magnets; only the women who might be young.

Clearly, you do not expect your adversary to wear a disguise, save for the hood with which she will hide her face.

Again, one comes who might be the one you're looking for. Again you step out to block her path.

She doesn't step back; she doesn't even stop. She cannons into you, but you're so tall and solid and she's so small and frail that she reboundsa"and then she cowers and quivers in evident fear, and clutches with both hands at the black velvet hood which hides her shame. When you reach out with your free hand to seize the cloth and tear it away she resists, but not stronglya"panic makes her impotent.

You yank the hood back, brutally, to display the ridiculous wisps of hair upon the scabby head, and the cheeks and chin the colour of pus, and the shattered lips smeared with something as black and sticky as tar. But the eyesa"the eyes the colour of blooda"are staring at you as though you are the hideous monster.

She begins to retreat, in spite of the fact that you're holding her. She begins to move backwards, into the shadowed building, which seems to be coming to meet her and merge with her. She fades into its substance, so that her body becomes blackened brick and her face, denuded of its hood, becomes the one unshuttered window in the whole world. Her face is just gla.s.s, which you can't see through at all, and her repulsive features are only a reflection.

Your reflection.

Then the window shatters, and from within there emerges a cataract of liquid which cascades over your face and body. But you can't feel it as it douses youayou can't feel anything at alla.

Because it is, after all, only an illusionaonly a horrorshowaonly a trick.

"Holy s.h.i.t," said the Kid, when he emerged. His heart was hammering and his palms were sweaty. "That's pretty weird stuff. Are you telling me that Pasco chose to see that?"

Dr Yokoi made a slightly dismissive gesture with his hand. "The script which we fed in was gradually modified by the signals with which his own brain reacted to ita"but chose is too strong a word. When a subject knows that he is in a sensurround his consciousness can at least act as a censor, but all these tapes were made before the two men were fully revived. The process of modification in this casea"as in your own dream of the trackless foresta"was entirely subconscious."

"Pasco must be a pretty screwed-up guy," observed the Kid.

"We all have our fears," said Yokoi. "A man who has sight in only one eye may be ent.i.tled to deeper fears than those who have two."

"I didn't feel that I was only seeing with one eye," said the Kid. "Anyhow, he has an artificial one in place of the one he lost."

"Your experience cannot be the same as his," Yokoi pointed out. "When the tape is played back, you see as if with your own eyes. And yes, it is true that Pasco has an artificial eye to compensate for his lacka"but there is a level at which his fears are still very much aware of his loss. Of course, we can only attempt to deduce what psychological processes lie behind the modifications which his brain activity made to the scripta"all that is on the tape is the programme's visual presentation after modification by his responses. When the tape is played back, you see what is on the tape and hear what is on the tape as though you were the protagonist. Your own responsesa"a.s.sociations, interpretations, chains of thought and speculationa"may not resemble Pasco's at all."

The Kid struggled with the implications of all this, trying to sort out in his memory of Pasco's dream just what had been visual image and what had been his own interpretation. Some of it could be bracketed as his and set aside quite easily, but it wasn't easy to draw the linea"it wasn't easy at all. He wondered what Yokoi had seen and felt and thought when he reviewed the tape.

In the meantime, the Kid adjusted his sitting position, rather awkwardly, and sipped tea from his cup. He was beginning to get used to the tea, but his muscles were still having trouble adapting to the business of squatting on a rug instead of sitting on a chair.

"Even if it's subconscious, though," he said thoughtfully, "he's still choosing it."

"I cannot agree," said Yokoi reprovingly. "The word choice implies too much and too little. Must we be said to choose our natural dreams and nightmares because they come from the subconscious? It is the brain and not that aspect of it which we call the mind which learns so rapidly to emit directive signals into the encephalograph. My machine has no self-conscious mind at alla"it is simply a computer designed to simulate in the manner of its internal wiring the configurations of the human brain. What we are seeing as a result of the two-way flow of information is a mutual reprogramming which is only peripherally concerned, if at all, with that particular brain-phenomenon we call consciousness. It calls into question the very concept of choice, and it may be that we will have to think again about what we can mean by the word. Do you understand what I am saying?"

"Not really," the Kid admitted. "But where's it all leading? If your machines can put people's dreams and nightmares on tape, does that mean you can use it to straighten people out? On the other hand, if it can make those nightmares worse, can it be developed into a means of torture? Or can you have it both ways?."

"You have a remarkably vivid imagination," observed Yokoi shrewdly, "for a person with such a limited education."

"I may have had a limited education," retorted the Kid, "but I'm not as screwed up as Pasco, am I? I had a nice dream, didn't Ia"and I also talked myself out of believing that it was a dream, even though I didn't know where the h.e.l.l I was? Pasco couldn't even figure that out, could he?"

"It might be too harsh a judgment to conclude that he could not," said the scientist, carefully. "Mr Pasco has used our horrorshow booths quite extensively, and people who do that tend to become willing collaborators in the illusion. In order to partake of a horrorshow fully, users of the booths must learn to overlook the evidence that their experience is not reala"Mr Pasco may have put a good deal of hard work into learning to ignore the signs of falseness and incompleteness in order that he might subject himself to an authentic test of his courage."

The Kid sipped more tea.

"You've woken Pasco up now?" he asked.

"Yes," Yokoi agreed. "We could not keep him too long in a virtual state of suspended animation, lest his muscles begin to waste. I would have liked to extend the series of experiments further, but it would have been wrong to endanger his health."

"He tried very hard to endanger my health," muttered the Kid. "Arc you going to let me see some more of Pasco's tapes? It might be interesting to eavesdrop on the other guy, too."

"I am sure that you would find it so," agreed Yokoi. "Mr Preston has been closely a.s.sociated with Dr Zarathustra for some time now, and I could not resist the temptation to see if we could elicit some interesting reactions to some well-chosen cues."

The Kid looked up sharply from his cup. "How come the mercy boy knows Zarathustra?" he asked.

"Mr Preston was dressed in a borrowed uniform," Yokoi told him, off-handedly. "Until he was sent after you he was, in effect, Dr Zarathustra's personal bodyguard."

The Kid nodded slowly, wondering whether he'd have handled things any differently back at the tunnel if he'd known that. "In that case," he said, "I'd certainly like to scan the tape that you made."

"In time," said Yokoi non-committally. "But we must remember, Zero-san, that you are here in order that you may be investigated, rather than that you may investigate others."

The Kid shrugged. "You can put me back in any time you like, Doc," he said. "For what you're paying me, I'll dream as much as you want me to."

Yokoi permitted himself a tiny smile. "If only it were as easy as that," he said, with a sigh. "If only I could put you in the booth and run a programme which would tell me everything I need to know. Perhaps one dayawho can tell what rewards this avenue of research will yield? In the meantime, alas, my research produces far more questions than answers; the path which leads from exploration to explanation is always difficult to follow. You will forgive me, I hope, if I proceed in a much more pedestrian manner, by asking you some very ordinary questions."

"Fire away," said the Kid.

"How did you first encounter Lady Venom?"

"I was looking for a hidey-hole. So was she. We met, and she bit me. I was sick for two days, but I got better. She was still around."

"You didn't attempt to destroy her after she bit you?"

"No. She was only doing what came naturally. It was her hidey-hole and I was the invader. I was glad when she finally decided to let me staya"I figured it would be no bad thing to have an extra disincentive to callers. I heard that people could build up an immunity to snakebite, and it seemed like a neat idea to be able to hide out with the rattlersa"there are quite a few of them about on the edges of the desert. I'd been bitten before, by a little one, and I figured that might be what helped me get over the Lady's bite. So I stopped being scared of them, and let myself get bitten two or three times morea"though not by the Lady. I tried to let the Lady bite me, but she wouldn't. She was too well-used to me by then, I suppose. After the fifth bite I was hardly sick at all. I don't think I need to worry about rattlers any more."

"Can you control Lady Venom?"

"After a fashion. I don't think she understands English or anything stupid like that, but when I tell her to do something she usually does it. Maybe she's telepathic, or something. Maybe I read too much into ita"maybe she just likes being around me. Not that she needs me at alla"she can do her own hunting well enough."