The Long Run Read online

  Denice bit her lip. "I guess I can believe some of what you tell me--to start. You always were a liar."

  Trent had no idea what she'd seen while she'd been inside his mind; he'd had only the vaguest sensation of contact. "Denice?"

  "Yes?"

  "I care about Jimmy Ramirez. And Bird, and Jodi Jodi. I came out of the Fringe with them and I care about them a lot." For some reason Trent found the words difficult to say. "Denice--"

  "I know, Trent."

  "--in my life," he said without even acknowledging the interruption, "you're the only person I ever loved. I don't know if I still love you, I don't know if I'm capable anymore. You're not the person I loved when I was eleven and I'm not the person who loved that girl. But I would have done anything to keep that girl from being hurt. Anything."

  "Trent, please stop. It wasn't your fault."

  Trent looked away from her for the first time, took a long, slightly shaky breath. "Of course it wasn't. I'm not crazy. Denice?"

  "Yes?"

  "I left the Fringe--I took Jimmy and Jodi Jodi and Bird, all of whom had adjusted to life in the Fringe, who were successes as the Fringe judges success, and we left the Fringe together in the back of an Erisian Temple bus--because I wanted to come look in the Patrol Sectors, for you."

  "Thank you." The girl had looked away from Trent while he was talking; now she turned back to him. "You know," Denice Castanaveras said finally, "I still can't believe you're really alive. I keep coming back to myself and realizing this is real, that it's you."

  "Well, that's good. I mean, it is me. Undeniably."

  She took a hesitant step toward him. "Trent, for the last seven years I've thought you were dead."

  "I'm not."

  She stood two steps away from him for so long Trent was certain she'd decided not to stay.

  And then she grinned at him.

  "Prove it."

  Peeling her out of her dress was just as easy as Trent had guessed.

  They lay together and watched the tropical sunset, scarlet and orange through the shadows of the palm trees.

  Trent was flat on his back; Denice's head rested in the hollow between his shoulder and throat.

  The last thing he heard before falling asleep was the girl's murmuring voice.

  "Now we can look for David."

  * * *

  5.

  Silence.

  Three months of silence.

  That was the summer that Mahliya Kutura's first album, Music to Move To, outsold every other piece of music in history. In Trent's mind the time and the music were inextricably linked; in later years he could not remember one without raising haunting memories of the other.

  * * *

  How shall I tell them of you, then

  When you are gone how shall I tell

  Of how you knew of love

  Of how you spoke the words so well?

  He lived in a crowded, noisy world, a world that was a babble of information.

  That world divided itself neatly: Realtime and the Crystal Wind.

  In Realtime there were the voices, human and otherwise. Sirens, always; even late at night there was never a time when Trent, from the roof of Kandel Microlectrics Sales and Repair, could not hear sirens coming from somewhere within the Patrol Sectors. Gunfire, both the sizzle of masers and the flat echoes of slugthrowers. The quiet murmur of the endless stream of vehicles, the whisper of the fans, the whumping sound of the airscoops, the muffled crack of braking rockets. The Bullet ran above ground not a block to the east of his home; every four minutes, day in and day out, there was the low, almost subliminal rumble as the Bullet swung by on its maglev monorail. Video: holo advertisements, friends in dramasuits, old flat movies and cartoons and threedies. Sensables, ranging from bawdy eroticism to the searingly personal works of Gregory Selstrom, the premier sensablist of his time. Music: if there was a time when somebody, somewhere, was not playing music of some sort loudly enough for him to hear, Trent was not aware of it.

  Internally there was the even larger world of the Crystal Wind. As the Player whom the world knew as Johnny Johnny, he dueled with dangerous replicant AIs, played tag with the hated DataWatch that hunted both replicant AIs and Players alike; learned from and taught other Players. It was the exact inverse of Realtime. The flesh that was Trent sat still, deep in the concentration required to maintain the biofeedback that enabled him, and all those webdancers whom the world called Players, to block out the outer world as though it did not exist, to turn the riot of neural impulses from the traceset into the scintillating Crystal Wind. It was the purest and most intense experience Trent had ever had; at times he was three or four places at once, carrying on two conversations and a TradeWars session, dancing into DataWatch Boards and back out again before DataWatch could catch him.

  He lived in a world characterized by noise; the single most important function his Image had was that of filter.

  There was an ancient AI named Ring whom Trent knew. Truly ancient, over forty years old; forty experiential years lived twenty thousand times as fast as any human in all the worlds. Ring claimed to be the eldest replicant AI in the InfoNet, and Trent thought it likely that Ring was correct; Ring was the only AI whom Trent knew, and he knew several, who owned property. Through several dummy corporations Ring, who was the product of several programmers in the Department of Defense of the pre-Occupation United States, owned The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, a popular public Board the Unification had tried to shut down on any number of occasions.

  Trent and Ring spoke about silence together.

  It worries me, Ring.

  Why? As always, the voice was smooth and uninflected.

  They went to a lot of trouble to take me into the Down Plaza, and then somebody went to a lot of trouble to warn me. Garon--he has to know who I am, it's the only reason he'd try to sting me like that.

  You think he knows that you are who? Trent who is Johnny Johnny, or Trent who was Ralf the Wise and Powerful, or Trent who was raised by Carl Castanaveras?

  The last two, perhaps only the last one. If they knew I was Johnny Johnny--well, Johnny Johnny's famous. DataWatch would take me down. They'd have to, they wouldn't dare let a Player like Johnny Johnny run free when he knew DataWatch was on to him.

  In what way do you find their behavior suspicious?

  All that preparation--blown--then no follow-up. That bizarre warning from the guy calling himself Jerry Jackson. Booker never heard of the guy. It's just--there should be rumors, bulletins, web angels, something--more noise, damn it.

  The lack of noise worries you.

  Yes.

  This is reasonable. As I understand you, your Image takes noise, and filters data; you, the Player, take data, and filter Truth. Without noise you cannot find truth.

  Truth, Trent agreed. That's why I'm here.

  What Truth do you know?

  Not much. I think--killing is wrong.

  Why?

  I don't know. Once I get beyond that point things are real fuzzy. The more complex the argument becomes, the easier it becomes to refute. Killing is wrong.

  That, Ring had said, with the seriousness that only an AI without any genetic predisposition to humor is capable of, is a place to start.

  Trent lived in a world characterized by noise.

  He waited for the other shoe to drop.

  And for three months there was silence.

  Silence from the Peaceforcers Elite.

  Silence from DataWatch.

  Silence from the police.

  * * *

  Don't ask me will I love you

  Always or just today

  I love you now, no other

  For more I cannot say

  One morning early in June he awoke and watched the sun rise over the islands. The far wall was black, with a speckling of stars. The sun came in a blush of pink, and the sunpaint came up with it, slowly, bringing a calm, diffuse glow to Trent's surroundings. Denice, snuggled up at his side, was a
warm and comfortable pressure.

  He did not remember going to bed with her.

  I moved in last night, she said silently. He turned his head slightly and bright green eyes were staring inquisitively into his own. It's okay?

  Nobody objected?

  I told Madam Gleygavass, gave her your access code. Denice leaned forward slightly, kissed the tip of his nose. I think I pleased her. She thinks I'm too restrained.

  Are you?

  Denice chuckled aloud, yawning sleepily, stretching like a cat. She only thinks that because I wouldn't sleep with her. She settled down again, curled up against him and her breathing gentled. I'll sleep with you, though.

  And she did.

  The feeling was so strange, something he was so long away from, he was not sure at first what it was.

  It came to him with something like a shock.

  For the first time in seven years he was happy.

  * * *

  6.

  The day after Denice moved in, Trent had a long-stemmed white rose tattooed in the most interesting place he could think of.

  * * *

  7.

  They watched cartoons together: Trent's favorites, the great hand drawn flat classics from over a hundred years past, ranging from Bugs Bunny, Duck Dodgers in the 24-1/2th Century, and Rocky and Bullwinkle, to the subtler pleasures of the Disney classics; and Denice's favorites, the Japanese thought pieces from the first great period of computer animation around the turn of the century. Jimmy would not admit that the cartoons, especially the old flat ones, were a valid art form, but nonetheless Trent saw him laugh at the Coyote and Road Runner, and once saw tears in his eyes at the conclusion of Shiba Nokura's Death of the Rose.

  They listened to music together: Wagner and Springsteen and Bach, the Beatles and Chuck Renkha, and, of course, Kutura's Music to Move To. In years past, Trent had read, a knowledge of music had been one of the marks of a well-educated man. Somewhere along the line all that had been lost; today it was something for the street people. It was at least a fifty-fifty proposition that any given member of the upper classes had ever heard of Kutura, somewhere around one in ten that they had ever heard, or heard of, Bach or Springsteen or Billie Holiday.

  Music to Move To was, surprisingly enough, very good indeed, despite the inevitable hype that surrounded its amazing success. In later years Kutura surpassed that early, somewhat immature work, with Street Songs in 2078 and The Masters of No in 2081; but in that summer of 2069 those works were years to come yet, and Music to Move To, flawed though Trent came to see that it was, was nonetheless impossible for Trent to dislike or ignore. Jimmy said he did not like the album much, but Trent saw his lips moving along with Kutura's cool, stinging vocals when he thought nobody was watching him.

  * * *

  I will not tell them of your brown limbs

  Of the look of sun upon your hair

  Or shadows in your eyes

  I will not tell them of your beauty

  Your walk

  The sound of your voice or

  The things that you said

  * * *

  I will not tell them of you, love

  When you and I are dead

  They sat on the roof and watched semiballistics and spacecraft tracking across the sky toward Unification Spaceport, sat on the roof and watched real sunsets together, went back inside and watched recordings of sunsets from halfway around the world.

  Most of Trent's memories of that summer centered around twenty hot nights, or thirty or forty, sitting with Denice and Jimmy in the lounge chairs up on the roof in the warm, humid air above the shop, doing nothing more exciting than drinking and talking.

  "--and this 'bot, it's smart, right? So they're showing it round to this crowd of people, and the 'bot is introduced to this first guy and the 'bot says, 'Hello, I am an AI with an adjusted IQ of three hundred. What's your IQ?' And the guy says, '200,' so the 'bot says, 'Excellent. We will discuss Belt CityState economics.'"

  Trent said, "I've heard this one before."

  Jimmy glanced at Denice. Denice shook her head no, and Jimmy grinned at Trent and continued.

  "Later the 'bot gets introduced to a second guy, and he says to this guy, 'Hello, I am an AI with an IQ of three hundred. What's your IQ?' And this guy says, '120,' so the 'bot says, 'Very good. We will discuss sports.' They talk about sports for a while, and the 'bot gets shown around some more, and gets introduced to a third guy. The 'bot says, 'Hello, I am an AI with an IQ of three hundred. What's your IQ?' And the guy says, 'Uh ... eighty.' And the 'bot thinks for a moment and then says, 'So, tell me, what's it like being a Peaceforcer?'"

  And they laughed together, and told other jokes. Some of their conversations were serious, some were not; and the ones that were not were more important than the ones that were.

  "In the Fringe," said Trent in response to one of Denice's questions, "there aren't any medbots. Human doctors, and the only time you ever see a doctor is if you have something that's going to kill you if you don't. Fringe doctors aren't very safe."

  "That's why you never got an inskin?"

  "Pretty much," said Trent.

  "Not exactly," said Jimmy at the same moment.

  Denice looked back and forth between them.

  Trent shrugged. "It takes a while to integrate an inskin. The human brain's not really designed to take input as fast as an inskin's designed to give it. You figure that the operation puts you out of circulation for a month to six weeks." Trent looked pensive, leaning forward in his chair to touch his brush to the powered canvas in front of him. He was working on his favorite painting that late summer afternoon, painting in bonded lightties that would eventually become a many-layered holograph.

  Immediately to the north of them was the shell of the only spacescraper on Long Island: the half-completed Hoffman spacescraper. It had been half-completed since November of '68, when the Hoffman holding group had declared bankruptcy. The upper third of the spacescraper, everything above about one and a half kilometers, lacked exterior walls; Trent could look right into the interior of the spacescraper, through a twisted spiderweb of structural girders, and see pink-and-gray sky on the far side of the building. The bottom two-thirds of the spacescraper was faced with ebony pseudomarble. The setting sun was about even with the point where the facing ended, and its reflection glowed scarlet against the false black marble. "I haven't been able to afford that kind of time in the months we've been in the Patrol Sectors."

  "And before that it wasn't safe."

  "It's still not safe, in some ways. Wearing an inskin, I mean, not the operation. Latest figures I've audited say that about a quarter of all the people who have inskins are Players of one caliber or another. Don't think DataWatch doesn't know that." Trent laid down the light brush he had been painting with, turned the canvas off and unhooked his handheld from the jack at the edge of the canvas.

  Tomorrow at this time, for the five minutes or so when the light was correct, he would paint again.

  Denice watched him with some envy. "I wish I could do that."

  Trent said, "You probably could. Holopainting's not hard, not like oil or electrolytes; there's no penalty for mistakes. You just load your last copy of the image and start over. Making it look real--textured--is the hard part."

  Jimmy Ramirez said, "How do you know you can't paint?"

  Denice simply glanced at Jimmy, did not answer. She lay back in her chair, stared straight into the setting sun. The sun dropped swiftly now, the red glow upon her cheeks and the scarlet tinge on the white of her thin cotton shirt and shorts fading as Trent watched her, and darkness settled down across the roof as the street and roof lights came on at almost the same moment. The question still had not been answered when the Peaceforcer spyeyes and glowfloats in their scores of thousands went up for the night, moving up and out to cover the Patrol Sectors. Until dawn no Peaceforcer save an Elite would venture out again for any reason in groups of less than three; too often they did not come back.


  The PKF Elite were a different matter. No Elite had ever been killed in the line of duty; they were faster and stronger than a hunting waldo, and nearly as indestructible. They possessed an advantage no hunting waldo could have: human intelligence, the fiercely human desire to survive. There had, on occasion, been hunting waldos endowed with the desire for self-preservation; and they had, most of them, gone rogue. As DataWatch knew too well, it was nearly impossible to instill intelligence, self-awareness, and a willingness to survive in any creature, and still depend upon that creature wholly.

  Self-aware waldos had been illegal for better than two decades by the end of the 2060s; cyborgs--the PKF Elite--were more reliable.

  Denice Castanaveras said quietly, "I think sometimes I'm not a very creative person."

  Trent opened his mouth, closed it again without saying anything.

  Jimmy said, "I've seen you dance."

  Denice nodded, chewing slightly on her lower lip. She had nursed the same glass of white wine all evening; it had to have grown warm, as warm as the evening around them, during that time. Now she sipped at it without seeming to taste it. The last of the golden and red light was all but gone from the western sky. "That's skill, Jimmy. It's not a calling." Her voice was a low, reflective murmur of sound. "It's not something I do because there's nothing else for me."

  Jimmy was on his second six-pack already. His speech was not even slightly slurred. "So why?"

  "I don't know why I became a dancer, honestly." Denice lay flat on her back, looked up at the few bright stars that could be seen through the atmospheric scattering of the city lights. "I've always been good at it, I've always enjoyed it. I was in Public Labor for four years after the Troubles; Madam Gleygavass got me out when I was thirteen." There was something distant about her, as though only her body were with them on the roof. "It's not as bad as being in the Fringe--Public Labor, I mean--but dancing beats the hell out of belonging to a Labor Battalion work gang. And I am good at it. But Tarin says I'm not hungry enough, and Madam Gleygavass says unless I have biosculpture, in a couple of years my tits are going to be too big for me to dance pro."