Maybe that was why the big leaning-over-my-shoulder number, the pep-talk rerun. The man’s an enthusiast – I can deal with that. Better that than starving out on the wall.
Axxter felt the tent rubbing against the back of his head. “I think… you’ll like it.”
The general smiled. “I’m looking forward to it. At the banquet – are you going to have it done in time?”
The usual push. The customer is always antsy. “No sweat.” If the senile old bastard snoring away between them could be woken up, and the last few good bits tapped out of him. And that was just for color, the little personal bits, frosting on the cake. He’d rung up Ask & Receive days ago, when Cripplemaker had first given him the frieze assignment, and gotten a full historical rundown on the Havoc Mass. On the sly. Clients usually didn’t want you going outside, getting a losses-and-all account, and working from that. Their own PR line was all ups. “It’ll be ready. You don’t have a thing to worry about.” He patted the sleeping warrior’s breastplate, sounding a dull heartbeat from the blank biofoil. No worries at all: he’d have to push it to get it all implanted, but he’d already sketched out the major panels, programmed the routines.
The general straightened up from his crouch, reaching behind himself for the tent flap. “Keep it up.” Smile wider, and a wink that crinkled his face like a finger poked in an eye-socket. The black skulking getup slid out and looped away on the nearest hold.
Whatever that was all about – Axxter rubbed the side of his face, wondering. But not much. He was too tired, the grit under his eyelids getting sharper edges, to worry about it.
The old warrior was still snoring, scratching with one of his grizzled paws at his breastplate. He’d managed to peel up the edge of the biofoil; a hairline trickle of red oozed out from beneath. Axxter had stripped off the old foil from the armor, implanted in all fresh; you could recycle old foil, often did if you had a standing contract, blanking out the old stuff or just coding up new animation signals if the basic patterns were close enough to what you wanted to do. Not for a job like this, though. It smacked of working on the cheap, and the fine details tended to come out blurry. Plus – the big trouble – the coding for the warrior’s old foil was still being carried by the Small Moon Consortium as a DeathPix account, keyed to this locus.
They might not know that the old foil had been stripped off, wadded up, and tossed downwall – but if he’d been stupid enough to try and contract for an override signal, that would’ve been a dead tip-off that he was horning in on one of their clients. At this stage, he couldn’t be sure of the Mass protecting him from DeathPix retaliating for that kind of action. But what they didn’t know… Beyond that, overrides just cost too damn much money; the Small Moon Consortium threw on a prohibitive fee schedule for that sort of thing, to discourage graffices from sabotaging each other’s work and generally giving the industry a bad name.
The old warrior snuffled as Axxter prodded him in the shoulder. The aged baby’s-face contorted against the intrusion of the world outside its delicious remembering. “Hey. Come on. Wake up.” Realizing how tired he was had made Axxter nerveless. The aged bear didn’t scare him now; he just wanted to get the job done.
The warrior’s fingers had smeared the blood across his leather-sheathed ribs. He’d complained – fussily, like a child – that the new foil ‘tickled’; Axxter knew that whatever nerve endings the old boy had left were buried so far down under armor and scar tissue that he couldn’t feel a thing.
Have to reimplant it. Put a bandage or something over it so the old fool couldn’t go picking at it again. He reached into the corner of the tent for his toolkit. As long as the subject was relatively still, sleeping away…
As Axxter bent over his work, the warrior opened his yellow-and-red eyes, beard splaying over his chest as he lifted his head to watch.
“So that’s what happened.” The warrior nodded. “Just like that. I was there, so you can believe it.”
“You bet.” He watched the tip of the soldering gun tracing the edge of the foil.
He worked on as the warrior closed his eyes and smiled.
† † †
When he called up the Small Moon Consortium and blinked on GRAFFEX SERVICES, then ACCOUNTS (NEW) (CONTINUING), he got his favorite order desk. Somewhere up on the toplevel, where the Consortium had its offices across a thoroughfare from their Wire Syndicate competition, somewhere a body housed that coarse-sand, laughing voice. Axxter took it as a sign of the high tide his luck was running at to hear it now.
“Ny – how ya been?” She coughed, the rasp right in his ear. “Haven’t heard from you in ages. Not since, um…” She was looking up his account, he knew. “Jeez, it’s been a coupla months.”
“Had a slack period.” He shrugged, though she couldn’t see him “You know how it goes.”
“You poor saps.” Her mother routine; it killed him. “You oughta give up this bullshit, get into something that’s worth money.” Every freelancer on the wall, male and female, had the hots for her, the voice alone.
He didn’t even know her name, though he’d experimented in his head with
“Yeah?” Sad and laughing at the same time. She’d heard that one before, from all of them. “I really hope you do. You could use it.”
The uploading of the animation coding took a couple of minutes. “My,” she said when it ended. “That’s a big one.”
He had to laugh – she knew all the old lines. “All of mine are big, sweetheart. That’s the kind of guy I am.”
Laugh in return. “Seriously – big job?”
“I told you.” He’d been up for the last twenty-four hours straight, just doing the code. And there’d only been maybe four hours sleep between that and the long stretch working the patterns into the old warrior’s armor and skin foil. Which followed the hours of listening to war stories and then doing the final designs for the frieze. His eyes had now filled with sand, with black stick figures jeering and contorting through rubbery dances at the corners where he could just barely see them. During the last pull, he’d developed the notion that if he’d rubbed his eyes, his fingers would’ve come away with blood. “This one’s a real break for me.”
“Mmm – guess so.” The rasp moved down an octave. “Who ya working for?”
A little warning bell drilled through his fatigue. “Oh… uh, just a start-up outfit. But, uh, they got some heavy financing. Venture capital from up your way.” Best to be careful. He didn’t think she’d finger him – it would’ve broken his heart – but still… Things had a way of getting around if you didn’t keep a lid on them.
The advance from General Cripplemaker had raised his operating account to the highest level it’d ever been. He watched the numbers slide back down at the corner of his vision as he transferred a hefty whack of it over to the Consortium. Enough for the setup costs for the code and a locked/following narrowcast for a six-month period. That still left a nice fat little wad in the bank.
“You want this started up immediately?”
Axxter shook his head. “No – I got a kickoff time for it.” Cripplemaker had already gone over the details of the banquet with him, right down to the presentation ceremony when they’d bring out the old warrior. Ostensibly to hang some concocted veteran’s medal on him – good conduct, low absenteeism, something or other – but really to show off the new frieze. Hit with a pinlight a second before the animation comes to life:
“You got it.” The voice from the order desk swooped down, almost a kiss. “Hey… good luck.”
“Yeah, thanks.” She was already gone, replaced by the charges for the call. One bill for the Wire Syndicate connect at the start, then the rest switched over to the Consortium when the Small Moon itself had rounded the building and come into transceiving angle. He turned his head and saw its metallic glow, bright against the first of the evening stars.
Absentmindedly, he rubbed the corners of his eyes, then jerked his hand away, seeing with relief the unstained tips of his fingers. He wished he hadn’t cut it so close, finishing up the code and sending it off. A lot of the last few
