Farewell Horizontal

Behind his eyelids, a word pulsed on, luminous.

NUMBER?

He could’ve wept. “I need to talk to my bank.” He blinked on his display, his directory reeling across one side of his vision. “Right now.”

NUMBER? The idiot word flashed, on-off, on-off.

Some ancient circuit, built-in at this end. You ran across them sometimes, out in the less-traveled sectors. Christ only knew when was the last time this plug-in had been used. Maybe back before the War. “Goddamn.” Axxter stared at the word printed on the sky. What’d the thing want?

“My number?”

NUMBER? On-off.

There was a registration number for the vanished Norton, and his business license. He could dig those up, but he couldn’t figure why the circuit wanted to know.

It dawned on him. The bank’s number. He opened up the entry on the comm list and let the digits dance in sequence across the center of the field.

DIALING. He let out his breath. PLEASE WAIT.

The Wire Syndicate’s logo flashed by, then the bank’s. Thank God they picked up the charges for inquiry calls. “Give me my balance.” He wanted to know the worst.

It took longer than usual; that made him nervous. Maybe there was some funky lien already slapped on the account, a black hole to suck up anything that might come in. Christ, how big was the fine for cutting that cable? Sweat trickled into the corners of his mouth.

His vision filled with a blinking red square. He’d never seen that before, either. And didn’t want to now. It spelled trouble.

ACCOUNT CLOSED. Red, black, red; the words stayed hanging there.

“What?” He’d expected zero; that would’ve made sense.

ACCOUNT CLOSED. CLIENT DECEASED.

Something cold, with ice teeth frozen to diamonds, seized his heart. “What -” His voice caught in his throat. “What do you mean?”

CLIENT AXXTER (NY) DECEASED. Red. Black. ACCOUNT CLOSED.

“But – that’s me; I’m Ny Axx -”

DECEASED. INQUIRY TERMINATED.

Then it was just black.

TEN

Maybe his agent would front him some money. He had to. If Brevis wouldn’t do that much for him, what with his being stuck out here starving in the ass-end of nowhere, then what the hell good was he? The sonuvabitch.

Axxter reversed the charges, praying that Brevis would accept a collect call. Just this once.

WHAT NAME (CALLING PARTY)? The Wire Syndicate logo waited for his reply.

“Uh – tell him it’s Ny. Ny Axxter.”

He listened to the distant ringing, a world away. The wire from the plug-in jack ran all the way through the building and up to the toplevel; his only link.

Then he heard Brevis’s voice. “Yeah, I’ll take it. Give him to me.”

Sweet Jesus. “Brevis -” he blurted out.

The agent cut him off. “Listen, mac – whoever you are – I don’t appreciate little jokes like this. You got a sick sense of humor to try something like this. Now fuck off, and don’t -”

“Brevis – hey, no, it’s really me -”

“Yeah, right, very funny; now go get -”

All he could think of was the agent hanging up, breaking the connection. Desperate: “It’s really me, for Christ’s sake, this isn’t a joke. I’m not dead. Brevis, you gotta believe me.”

Silence. But at least not a click and a buzz.

“Ny?” Brevis’s voice was half skeptical, half wondering. “That’s you? How -”

Keep him on the line. “Brevis, I swear it.” Don’t let him get away. “I know what you probably heard, but it’s not true. I’m not dead. This is really Ny Axxter talking to you.”

Another beat of silence. “Prove it. I mean, prove it’s you.”

“For Christ’s sake, what do you want me to do?” He studied his finger in the plug-in jack, as though it might be possible to squeeze himself through the hole and confront the agent. “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

“Could be anybody.” The skeptical tone hardened. “Sounds like it’s Axxter – but that’s easy enough to fake.”

“Okay. Okay, just hold on a second.” His thoughts sped up. “All right, how’s this: the first thing I ever did, the first piece after I signed on with you. It was a commission from a little band, about a dozen guys, they’re all dead now, they were called – um -” He snapped his fingers. “Abrasion Surtax. Right? And the piece I did, I went blank and I couldn’t think of anything, so I ripped off a dragon spreadeagle from a collection of old tattoo flash that Howe Drafe lent me. Only the Abrasion guys found out about it, and they were all pissed off ’cause they’d paid for an original, so you had to give ’em their money back plus ten percent, which you deducted from my next job, only it wasn’t true, they hadn’t dinged you for any ten percent penalty at all -”

“Jeez – you still remember that? Christ, talk about carrying a grudge.”

Axxter allowed himself a smile. “So is it me, or not?”

“Well, yeah; I suppose so.” No skepticism now in Brevis’s voice, just baffled wondering. “But how come you’re not dead?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“No, no; I mean it. What the hell’s going on?”

He shrugged. “I’m still alive. That’s all there is to it. Whatever you heard -”

“‘Heard’ ain’t it. I saw it, man. There’s a tape of you heading for the clouds. After getting all whammed to shit against the wall. The Havoc Mass – that bunch had a telephoto trained on the whole thing; they had one of their archives men right behind the thugs who were on your tail. He was sending the signal back on a tightbeam to the camp; that was the only way it got recorded, because he bit it along with the rest of them when the cable went boing. Whose bright idea was that, anyway?”

“I had help. All right? I didn’t think of it all by myself.” The agent’s old-womanish hectoring got under his skin. He would’ve thought Brevis would be happy just to know he was alive.

“Yeah, well, that little number cost you, Jack. The Public Works Department was in here so fast, sucking out your account… They took the wad, buddy. That tape was prima facie evidence. When it got broadcast, and everybody from the toplevel on down saw it -”

“What? Who saw it -”

“Everybody; that’s what I’m telling you.” Brevis’s voice went shrill. “The Havoc Mass sold the tape to Ask & Receive’s entertainment division – it was on the air while you were supposedly still falling through the cloud barrier. A bunch like the Mass doesn’t need the money they got for it; they just enjoy making people they don’t like look like assholes.”

“Jeez..” Everybody on or in Cylinder had seen him sawing away at the transit cable, like an idiot. The kind of thing you saw in an ancient kiddy cartoon, the cat cutting off the tree limb he’s sitting on. His girlfriend had no doubt seen it, too. Her last memory of him, on the ‘Here’s a cutie for you’ segment of the evening news. Great.

“So how do you think I feel about it? You think it does an agent any good to have the whole world know you got clients with shit for brains? You ever try to do business with people, they gotta ring off and get back to you later, ’cause they’re laughing too hard?”

That was the problem in dealing with Brevis: no one had ever suffered the way he had.

“Okay, okay; look, you don’t have to tell me it wasn’t a great idea.” Axxter tried to get the call back on track. “I was under a lot of pressure at the time. Those guys were trying to kill me. All right?”

“Yeah, well, just don’t do it again. Jesus Christ!” Brevis’s voice broke into a yelp. “Do you know what this call is