Kitty wiped her lips and spat out the door. “Christ, that baton packs a wallop.” She snorted. “Don’t you ever ventilate this place, kid? Those paint fumes are gonna kill you before you’re thirty.”
“I don’t have time to clean or ventilate it. I’m real busy.”
“Okay, then I’ll clean it. I’ll ventilate it. I gotta stay here awhile, understand? Maybe quite awhile.”
Lyle blinked. “How long, exactly?”
Kitty stared at him. “You’re not taking me seriously, are you? I don’t much like it when people don’t take me seriously.”
“No, no,” Lyle assured her hastily. “You’re very serious.”
“You ever heard of a small-business grant, kid? How about venture capital, did you ever hear of that? Ever heard of federal research-and-development subsidies, Mr. Schweik?” Kitty looked at him sharply, weighing her words. “Yeah, I thought maybe you’d heard of that one, Mr. Techie Wacko. Federal R and D backing is the kind of thing that only happens to other people, right? But Lyle, when you make good friends with a senator, you
“I guess I do,” Lyle said slowly.
“We’ll have ourselves some nice talks about that subject, Lyle. You wouldn’t mind that, would you?”
“No. I don’t mind it now that you’re talking.”
“There’s some stuff going on down here in the zone that I didn’t understand at first, but it’s important.” Kitty paused, then rubbed dried dye from her hair in a cascade of green dandruff. “How much did you pay those Spider gangsters to string up this place for you?”
“It was kind of a barter situation,” Lyle told her.
“Think they’d do it again if I paid ’em real cash? Yeah? I thought so.” She nodded thoughtfully. “They look like a heavy outfit, the City Spiders. I gotta pry ’em loose from that leftist gorgon before she finishes indoctrinating them in socialist revolution.” Kitty wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “This is the Senator’s own constituency! It was stupid of us to duck an ideological battle, just because this is a worthless area inhabited by reckless sociopaths who don’t vote. Hell, that’s exactly why it’s important. This could be a vital territory in the culture war. I’m gonna call the office right away, start making arrangements. There’s no way we’re gonna leave this place in the hands of the self- styled Queen of Peace and Justice over there.”
She snorted, then stretched a kink out of her back. “With a little self-control and discipline, I can save those Spiders from themselves and turn them into an asset to law and order! I’ll get ’em to string up a couple of trailers here in the zone. We could start a dojo.”
Eddy called, two weeks later. He was in a beachside cabana somewhere in Catalunya, wearing a silk floral- print shirt and a new and very pricey looking set of spex. “How’s life, Lyle?”
“It’s okay, Eddy.”
“Making out all right?” Eddy had two new tattoos on his cheekbone.
“Yeah. I got a new paying roommate. She’s a martial artist.”
“Girl roommate working out okay this time?”
“Yeah, she’s good at pumping the flywheel and she lets me get on with my bike work. Bike business has been picking up a lot lately. Looks like I might get a legal electrical feed and some more floorspace, maybe even some genuine mail delivery. My new roomie’s got a lot of useful contacts.”
“Boy, the ladies sure love you, Lyle! Can’t beat ’em off with a stick, can you, poor guy? That’s a heck of a note.”
Eddy leaned forward a little, shoving aside a silver tray full of dead gold-tipped zigarettes. “You been getting the packages?”
“Yeah. Pretty regular.”
“Good deal,” he said briskly, “but you can wipe ’em all now. I don’t need those backups anymore. Just wipe the data and trash the disks, or sell ’em. I’m into some, well, pretty hairy opportunities right now, and I don’t need all that old clutter. It’s kid stuff anyway.”
“Okay, man. If that’s the way you want it.”
Eddy leaned forward. “D’you happen to get a package lately? Some hardware? Kind of a settop box?”
“Yeah, I got the thing.”
“That’s great, Lyle. I want you to open the box up, and break all the chips with pliers.”
“Yeah?
“Then throw all the pieces away. Separately. It’s trouble, Lyle, okay? The kind of trouble I don’t need right now.”
“Consider it done, man.”
“Thanks! Anyway, you won’t be bothered by mailouts from now on.” He paused. “Not that I don’t appreciate your former effort and goodwill, and all.”
Lyle blinked. “How’s your love life, Eddy?”
Eddy sighed. “Frederika! What a handful! I dunno, Lyle, it was okay for a while, but we couldn’t stick it together. I don’t know why I ever thought that private cops were sexy. I musta been totally out of my mind…. Anyway, I got a new girlfriend now.”
“Yeah?”
“She’s a politician, Lyle. She’s a radical member of the Spanish Parliament. Can you believe that? I’m sleeping with an elected official of a European local government.” He laughed. “Politicians are
“That’s pleasant to hear, zude.”
“More pleasant than you know, my man.”
“Not a problem,” Lyle said indulgently. “We all gotta make our own lives, Eddy.”
“Ain’t it the truth.”
Lyle nodded. “I’m in business, zude!”
“You gonna perfect that inertial whatsit?” Eddy said.
“Maybe. It could happen. I get to work on it a lot now. I’m getting closer, really getting a grip on the concept. It feels really good. It’s a good hack, man. It makes up for all the rest of it. It really does.”
Eddy sipped his mimosa. “Lyle.”
“What?”
“You didn’t hook up that settop box and look at it, did you?”
“You know me, Eddy,” Lyle said. “Just another kid with a wrench.”
“You can’t turn pop genre into mainstream. You can’t turn rock and roll into modern symphonic music. It won’t wash.”
‘“You can’t turn pop genre into mainstream.’ Maybe. I see the problem. But a lot of good stuff has been produced in the past by artists trying to do exactly that…. look at Shakespeare and revenge tragedy
Gwyneth Jones
Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland
(With apologies to E. R. Eddison)
