Black Glass (25 page)

As they spoke, Zilia uploading from her palmer into Clive’s equipment, Candle strolled over to an open door opposite; it let into a long storeroom that ran along the side of the building, probably where the chickenfeed had been stored and sluiced,
at one time. Candle moved closer to the open door, and looked through—there were endless shelves of electronic parts, in exactingly marked bins, stretching off into the perspective of distance. They were organized so that each bin contained the same part, or something close; the one beside it a similar part, only a little different. On and on and on down the length of the narrow room.

Clive appeared at Candle’s side. “You doing research, there, Candle?”

“Just ... amazed at how organized this is. There’s so much of it. So many different kinds of computers ... and you seem to have them all running together, some way.”

Clive glared at him—and turned away muttering.

Zilia said, “Clivey—be nice. Trust him. He’s interested for good reasons. He’s doing security for the undermarket.”

“Undermarket? The Black Stock Market?” Clive musingly made a minute correction in his beard. “There’s more than one of those. Which one?”

“Nodder’s,” Candle said, noticing that Clive had tiny little glyphs painted on his fingernails, much like the ones in his hair, his tattoos, his beard.

“Nodder’s? Reputable. All right, since it’s Nodder—and since
she
says so.” He strutted back and forth like a bantam rooster, then, making quick, energetic, precise gestures as he spoke, emphasizing every word. “Organized you say ... People use the word and never think about it ...”

“Uh oh,” Zilia said, hiding a smile behind her hand.

“Organized!” Clive piped. “As in more
organic
, as in more of an organ, as in arrayed into the
parts
of an organ, as in part of the
big organism
, yes?”

“Is that what it is, a big organism?” Candle said. “What do you do with all this?”

“What do I do? Oh, people pay me to provide SuperComputer computation, where there is no super computer, cloud computation where there is no cloud. Like hijacked computers, but these are all in one building and all owned by one guy. This is like one of those great expensive SuperSystems at Slakon—but made of thousands of people’s old Macs and PCs! Some of these computers date from the late twentieth century! Many of them should
not be compatible with one another. But I have made them so! They are all one, now! Order from chaos! That is my great imperial demand on my environment! But do you know, there is no chaos, my friend—in a certain sense, the notion of chaos is a falseness! There is only
relative localized chaos!
This I convert to order, but I will someday find a way to make local order replicate the computations of the big machine, the so-called randomness of chance falling about in the universe, the cosmos itself a grand calculator working out an endless problem of probability. I have come close, I tell you, to proving that
there is no chaos!
Even entropy is only a relative disorder! An organism dies, yes, and we see a greater disorder in the system ... but that is the local system! Consider—a planet is struck by an asteroid and comes apart at the seams! It flies asunder! Chaos, disorder rampant in the system that had been the planet! But! But!”

“Clive ... Clivey ... sweetheart ...” Zilia said gently.

But Clive didn’t hear her. He was stalking back and forth, arms waving, spittle gathering at the corners of his mouth. “But! Did the asteroid strike the planet with inexactitude? No! It struck it as exactly it must! It struck it as a pool ball strikes another! Within the system of the pool table the balls strike exactly as they must if propelled a certain way. This seems superficially random—until we direct one in a given fashion to a given end and then we see it is not random, not at all. We introduce human notions of orderliness. If the laws of physics are, with mathematical precision, guiding the motion of these so called randomized atoms, then how is their movement random? They move according to their mass, according to density, according to the fields they are a part of, according to velocity, and so on. They move instantly into
another
system—there is no randomness, there is no chaos, there is always order, everywhere! A man’s death itself is the breaking up of one system only to render the so-called destroyed organism into another system, that of the worms, the soil, the–”

“Clive?” She stepped close and tugged at one of his ear rings.

He seemed emotionally startled; his cheeks reddened. He licked his lips. Then stepped suddenly back from her.

He’s afraid to touch anyone, Candle realized, with a rush of pity. He loves her. But he can’t touch her.

“Clive, you can send your Master Theory to Rick when it’s done.”

“Oh I don’t think it can ever be done ...” He clutched his arms to his sides as if to keep from losing control of them. “One system becomes another—how can my Theory be complete?”

“Actually,” Candle said, “some of what you said sounds like something my lama said ... Kenpo Rinpoche ...”

Suddenly Clive became stock-still. He looked at Candle intently, as if seeing him for the first time. He wiped the corners of his mouth. “Kenpo of Venice Beach?” Clive’s voice was hushed, almost inaudible. When Candle nodded, he took a long slow breath and said. “Well then. That being the case. I am at your service.”

Candle looked at him in surprise. “You know Kenpo?”

Clive bowed, ever so slightly. “His path is all that keeps me ...
sane
is not the word. But you understand. How can I help?”

“Well—our ... you call it an undermarket. It was raided–”

“I heard. It’s all over the Mesh. One of your brokers was killed. It’s that prick Grist, I expect, behind it.”

“We’ve saved the data. We need to restart. But ... we’ll need a comprehensive new platform ... and maybe something with more power for a better defense.”

Clive tweaked his beard, walked rapidly to a hard drive about ten yards down, stared at a flickering light; he reached out, straightened a wire. A spark flew, and then the light glowed steadily again. He walked back to Candle, and replied as if he’d never left his side.

“Not only can I provide a platform for it, Candle—I can give the undermarket ten times, a hundred times the scope. We can start your undermarket over—but you must bring them out here. I do not wish to work with your people remotely. I must meet them, you understand. And there are risks. I obviously cannot carry this building away with me to escape, should we be raided. But one of the things I have used this computing power for, is obfuscation. It’s something like noise floggers, but much more
comprehensive, much more powerful, much more ... How can I put it ... All inclusive ... I really doubt they’d ever find me. Because you see—they’ve tried a thousand times.”

“Grist does not know this drive is here,” said the Multisemblant the very moment that Pup Benson switched it on, its voice phasing in and out of clarity. “He does not know! Can you imagine! It’s his! His computer! And it’s worth more money than you ever will have, even if you become rich, wealthy, another Croesus!”

It’s multiplex face was shifting—and then forming into its more solid, only slightly askew form.

They were in a building, with concrete floors, about fifty yards square. The Multisemblant array sat on a table, a single overhead bulb illumined it with a cone of dusty light in the middle of the chilly room.

The display switched on. An image of Grist appeared, seen from above, walking into his apartment building, late at night. Two large men in tightly-fitting suits walked just behind him. Bodyguards, if Pup was any judge of thug flesh.

“If we can see him,” Pup said, “his security systems can see us ...”

“No, no,” said the Multisemblant. “I’ve got all that squared away, covered, controlled, I assure you, friend Benson.”

“It’s his computer, the one you’re running off of, now? One of those big superwhatsits? And he doesn’t know it’s here!”

“He does not know! It was being completed to his specifications and was to be shipped to him next week—but I had it shipped here. More precisely, I had it shipped to a dock two miles from here. I used his semblant, I used certain rarely-used Slakon accounts, and had it shipped there. Then I used a different set of accounts to ship it from there to here and have it set up. It will seem to have disappeared from that dock! Vanished, flickered away, gone!”

“Well—okay. Now you’re all set up. You’re supposed to pay me–”

“I already did! Check your account!”

Pup checked it, and fast. And saw the money there. Hundreds
of thousands of WD, and it was all his. He could ... What would he do? Get a yacht and take it down to Cabo and just see if ...

“But of course that won’t be enough for y’all,” said the Multisemblant, its voice suddenly sounding Texan. “You’re gonna want the
five million
WD.”

Pup’s mouth went dry. “Five million. For what?”

“Something small. Helping me eliminate some human vileness from the world. Horrible little people. Just a few of them, here and there. A few minor killings, a few less pink softbodied cockroaches out of the nine billion in the world. Who’ll know the difference? The fewer pink softbodied softshell crabs in human form the better.”

“And then—five million?”

“Oh yes. And then you will join the Hashishim in paradise. What do you say?”

“T
exer is, I figure he’s gonna find me anyway.” Danny Candle shrugged, pouring himself the one drink he allowed himself before a show. Gin and tonic. “He may as well find me here in the Black Glass where I’m in my ... I don’t know, I just feel stronger here.”

They were in the dressing room, a cramped space with graffiti layering the walls, tags and jeers left by twenty years of bands and performers. A makeup table with a cracked mirror.

Spanx was making a pyramid of empty beer cans, on the colorless cigarette-scarred carpet. “Your brother gonna find you, drag your ass to rehab, where they make put happy brain bots in you, so you can feel happy vibrations or some deal, makes you feel like a pretty eel, steal a feel.”

“I’m all set up,” Ronnie said, coming to the door. She leaned on the doorframe, arms crossed over her perfected breasts, wearing a blouse top sparkling with onyx sequins and fringed with blood-red beads; a pair of masculine black jeans underneath, tight enough to show her considerable package. Her head was shaved, eyes deep in kohl, lips puffy and shiny with gloss, ears dangly with black gems. “They said five minutes, like, ten minutes ago, so, hodie brother ...”

“Yeah okay. Let ’em wait a few minutes,” Danny said, finishing his drink.

“It’s a good house. Standing room only.”

“Fucking oughta be.” He realized he ought to get this over with and get out of here as quick as possible. Maybe avoid Rick after all.
Just a couple minutes more and then he’d hit the stage ... Hoped there was no trouble about getting paid after the show ...

Candle had gotten hold of a drone scanner. And standing in the alley, around the corner from the street entrance for the Black Glass, he picked up two drones, within forty feet. Right now they were watching the crowd gathered outside the front entrance. A small crowd—most everyone had gone in for the show. In a moment one of the operators would fly the birseye around the building, to watch the other entrances. Probably looking for him.

He slipped the scanner in his pocket, and walked down the alley, wondering if Zilia was really safe. She was staying at her cabin up north. But they could trace him to her—and her to the cabin. Suppose they grabbed her, made her a hostage?

Maybe he ought to make some kind of deal with Grist. Let him know he didn’t really have anything on Grist’s part in the skim-scam; wasn’t looking for revenge. Wasn’t a loose cannon.

From what he knew of Grist, though—trusting him to follow through on a deal was taking a big chance.

He stepped over a drunk sleeping on flattened plastifiber boxes; very authentic mingled reek of alcohol, old sweat and urine suggesting it wasn’t some undercover guy.