This was the painful part, the lying. 'My mom,' he said. 'But she's a druggie. The guy she's seeing…' He shook his head. 'We don't see eye to eye. And they're a long-term thing. I'm gonna be 'phased out.' I can see it coming. She's gonna farm me out to some cousin of hers.' Manta bowed his head, unable, unwilling to look up to see how Kalki was taking this.
'Sounds rough,' Kalki said. 'Look, Manta… you've got to believe it. It can get better. Without warning, sometimes.'
Manta's laughwas bitter. 'Is that the best you can come up with? That just maybe things might get better? The only way that's going to happen to me is if all this stops, if the hurting, and the yelling, and the pushing around, if it all just stops. I've had it. I don't mind being worthless, being in everybody's way, no use for anything, I can deal with that if I'm just left alone. But when they make you that way, and then they yell at you for it, when they take everything away from you and then scream at you for not acting normal, for letting them down-' The words choked off. 'I couldn't even give stuff away, gave some of my stuff to the kids at school, the few things I had. They even yelled at me for that.' He laughed, that harsh sound again. 'It doesn't matter. Those things are safe now.'
'You gave stuff away?'
Manta was silent for a moment. 'When I realized my mom was going to send me off to Philly or wherever it is her cousin lives,' he said, 'and I wasn't going to be able to see my friends anymore…' He trailed off. 'I knew she was gonna just throw all my stuff away… '
He listened hard to Kalki's silence. His mom had been pretty clear that suicidal people sometimes gave personal possessions away to friends in anticipation of the act itself.
Kalki shifted, and as Manta glanced back at him, he thought Kalki looked uncomfortable. 'Look, Manta,' Kalki said at last, 'this isn't the best place to be having this conversation. You're talking about the most real thing there is… your own existence. But places like this are instead of reality. They can be really attractive, or interesting, but they're not real contact, with real people.' He shook his head, glancing around them. 'So much of the uncertainty in the world, the pain… I think it comes of there not being enough genuine contact.'
He looked down at Manta. 'We should get together and have this out,' Kalki said. 'Not here. Contact between human beings shouldn't have to be mediated by electrons.' His voice was suddenly pained. 'Or snatched in the few minutes between online experiences and virtual appointments… '
'For what?' Manta said. 'This is real enough. You don't have anything to say that's going to convince me. If you did, you'd have said it already.' He got up. 'Thanks, but-the talking time's over. I know what I need to do.'
He took off across the huge 'front hall.'
'Manta, wait!' Kalki yelled after him, and came after, but Manta broke his connection to Deathworld, and vanished into the darkness.
A moment later Charlie was standing in his workspace again, slightly out of breath, not from any exertion, but from nerves. He glanced over at the readout connected to Mark's 'trip wire' routine: glowing letters and numbers hung in the air, zeroed out, showing no attempts to access his space in any way.
Okay, Charlie thought, the trap's baited. Now let's see what happens…
The next morning he came down from the den, yawning, feeling somehow faintly disappointed. Despite the fact that people seemed to have been reading 'Manta's' messages on the Deathworld message facility, there were no answers to any of them. And no follow-through from Shade or Kalki. I wonder if I overreacted a little, he thought. Scared Kalki off…
This time his mother was in the kitchen, pouring coffee from a freshly filled pot, and the sound of the front door shutting told him that he had just missed his father. 'You're up early,' she said, turning as Charlie yawned again.
'Yeah,' he said.
'Want some?' his mom said.
'Uh, you don't think it'll stunt my growth?'
She gave him a look. 'Nah. That's just a matter of time. I doubt much of anything could do that at this point.'
From the cupboard she got down the mug with the double duck on it and the motto EIDER WAY UP, filled it and handed it to him.
'Thanks…' he said, and flopped into one of the kitchen chairs.
They both drank coffee in silence for a moment. Then, 'A lot of late nights, the last week or so,' his mom said. 'Yeah.'
'Dad says you're still researching suicide.'
Charlie nodded.
His mother looked slightly resigned. 'It has a kind of horrible fascination, I'll admit,' she said. 'Especially when life seems good, and it's difficult to understand how anyone could want to end it.'
'Yeah,' Charlie said, thinking of the six sets of images in his workspace, people he was not convinced had unanimously intended to end anything. 'What's your schedule like today?'
His mother raised her eyebrows at him, plainly noticing the change of subject, but declining for the moment to comment. 'The usual day shift, barring emergencies.' She looked slightly relieved. 'Though you know how it is trying to predict those. You?'
'School as usual,' Charlie said. 'Nothing exciting.'
'Sounds wonderful,' his mom said, finishing her coffee. 'Look, Dad picked up some ribs last night, I was thinking of doing that thing with the hot sauce again for dinner.'
'Yes, please!'
She grinned at him, rinsing out the coffee cup and leaving it to drain, then picking up her work-satchel from where it sat on one of the kitchen chairs. 'Okay. Dinner around six, then. See you later, sweetie… '
School went uneventfully. Charlie had left a message with Nick's mom that he wanted to get together with him for lunch, but at lunchtime Nick was nowhere to be found. The most highly developed communications systern in history, Charlie thought ruefully as the afternoon went by, and we're still playing Net Tag with each other. Oh, well… I could always drop by his place. It's not that much out of my way home…
He finished his afternoon bio class and headed home after hanging around a little while to see if Nick surfaced. There was no sign of him, so Charlie strolled in an absentminded way through the sweet spring-afternoon, considering neurotransmitter chemistry and the prospect of his mom's hot and spicy ribs. There had been some discussion a week or so ago into exactly why the capsiacin molecule was able to fool mouth tissue into thinking it was injured, and trigger the release of endorphins. Charlie's bio teacher had suggested that there might be some fake neurotransmitter 'key' involved. Doesn't sound genuine to me, Charlie thought. If it were, there would be a-
The sound of a car slowing down close to him when all the rest of the traffic was doing forty or better made Charlie turn his head. A big car had slid up beside him, and just as his head was turning its door popped open and someone lunged out, reached out toward him-
It was only the reflexes of the nascent street kid Charlie had once been that now saved him, the thing that even these days sometimes made it hard for him to hold still and let his mom hug him. Don't let them touch you! Touch is control-
He twisted away and plunged off down Morrison Street, away from the car. Charlie heard the whine of the sonic going off behind him, someone actually trying to stun him into collapse-but he was just out of range, and his legs were moving faster than his brain for once. They remembered fear more clearly and immediately than he did, and while the intellectual constituent of the fear was still working its way down from his brain to his adrenals Charlie was already running, running as if the Devil himself was after him, down the street, turn the corner, down the side alley that served that block of Morrison, turn another corner in the opposite direction, run, run He barely felt the concrete beneath his feet, he was running so hard, and though his body was panting with terror and exertion already, Charlie's brain was running ahead of him, planning his escape.
It's a one-way street. They can't get down here easily. And I know this area-
He ran. His lungs started burning, and he ignored them. I thought they were in a hurry. I was right. Too right. Charlie gulped for air as he ran. If they're ready to try a snatch in broad daylight, they're really serious. Got to get online right away. Got to get help. The cops-or better still, Net Force For the cops didn't know him. Net Force did. He needed Mark Gridley, or James Winters, just as fast as he could get to one or the other of them.
Is it the killer himself Charlie thought, or an accomplice? Does it matter? They're right behind me-For he
