But Starburst was nowhere near that sweet spot yet, so Zeb was safe there as long as he minded his own business and shambled enough so anyone looking would think he was just another brain-damaged stoner. He stayed away from everyone and anything because he didn't want to attract any Chuck-like infiltrators.
He knew from his dips into the news that although the Rev was awaiting trial, he was out on bail and issuing statements about his innocence: he was the victim of an anti-religion and anti-Oleum left-wing cabal that had kidnapped and murdered his saintly first wife, Fenella, and then had maliciously spread the rumour that she'd run away to partake of an immoral life; which, since the Rev had believed it, had been an ongoing torture to him. This dastardly cabal had then planted Fenella in the Rev's yard for the sole purpose of casting dirt upon his name and of sullying the reputation of the Holy Oleum itself.
The Rev on bail would therefore be living in his house, and would thus have access to his Church of PetrOleum network - if not the true true believers, who were no doubt shunning him because of the embezzlement charges, then at least the more cynical wing, the ones who were in it for the money. And he'd be filled to the brim with cold, rancorous vengefulness because he would deeply suspect who was to blame for the tipoff about Fenella's pitiful bones turning to plant nutrients in his rock garden.
Meanwhile, main-chance Trudy had sold an autobiographical plaint and was doing numerous online interviews. How deceived she'd been by the Rev, having been convinced when she married him that he was a grieving widower dedicated to the greater good, and she so much wanted to be a partner in his pious works, and a mother to Fenella's son, little Adam. No wonder that young man could not be found, as he was very sensitive, and would hate the glare of publicity as much as she did. How shattering it had been to awaken to the truth of the Rev's murderous nature! Since learning of it, she'd prayed for Fenella's soul and begged her forgiveness, even though she'd had no idea at the time about what had really happened. Because, like everyone else, she, Trudy, had believed the story about Fenella running off with some trashy Tex-Mex or other. She is ashamed of herself for having been so falsely judgmental.
And now some of her very own church members - people she'd thought of as brothers and sisters - were refusing to speak to her, and had even accused her of having been in on the Rev's gory and larcenous activities all along. Only her faith had seen her through this testing and trying ordeal; and she longed for just one glimpse of her beloved lost son, Zebulon, who had strayed from the path, and no wonder, considering what sort of a father he had. But she prayed for him, wherever he was.
That beloved lost son fully intended to stay lost; though the temptation to hack into one of Trudy's online weepies and impersonate a ghostly spirit voice and denounce her was very great. A fine line of DNA he'd inherited: a psychopath of a con artist for a dad, a selfish liar of a mother with an obsessive love of pelf. He could only hope that in addition to her narcissism and greed, Trudy was secretly a skanky cheat who'd pulled a fast one on the Rev and had it off with a dark stranger in the garden tool shed. If so, it was possibly from his real, nameless father - an itinerant spade and sod artist prone to bonking the be-ringed and be-bangled wives of his upper-echelon clients - that Zeb had inherited his more dubious talents: babe-charming, the knack for sneaking in and out of windows both real and virtual, discretion as the better part of valour, and a not always reliable cloak of invisibility.
Maybe that's why the Rev hated Zeb so much: he knew Trudy had saddled him with a cuckoo in the nest, but he couldn't get back at her directly because of their shared digging activities. He had to either kill her or put up with her, her and her sluttish ways. If only Zeb had thought to purloin some of the Rev's DNA - a few hairs or toenail clippings - then he could get the tests done and set his mind at rest. Or not. But at least he'd be sure of his parentage, one way or the other.
No doubt about Adam, though: a definite Rev resemblance there. Though refined by the contribution of Fenella, of course. The poor girl was most likely a pious type - scrubbed hands, no nail polish, pulled-back hairdo, white panties devoid of trim - longing to do good and help people. A sitting duckie. His Warpiness had no doubt sold her on the idea that she would be a precious helpmeet to him and that this was a higher calling, though he'd have told her that one must forgo joy and pleasure as such in the service of him and his mission. Zeb guessed he'd have had no patience with the female orgasm. Crappy sex the two of them must have had, in any normal terms.
This was what Zeb thought about while watching daytime TV in his dank Starburst lair, or tossing on his lumpy, stained mattress while listening to the shouting and screaming going on outside his flimsily locked door. Animal spirits, drug-induced hilarity, hatred, fear, craziness. There were gradations to screams. It was the ones that stopped in the middle that you had to worry about.
Finally Adam came through. A meetup address, a time, and some instructions about what to wear. No red, no orange, a plain brown T-shirt if possible. No green: it was a politically charged colour, what with the vendetta against ecofreaks.
The address was a nondescript Happicuppa in New Astoria, not too near the semi-submerged and dangerously unstable buildings of the waterfront. Zeb sat crammed in behind one of the chi-chi little Happicuppa tables, on one of the teensy chairs that reminded him of kindergarten - he hadn't fitted into those chairs either - nursing his Happicappuccino and fortifying himself with half a Joltbar, and wondering what sort of spitball Adam was about to toss his way. He'd have a job lined up for Zeb - otherwise he wouldn't be calling for a meet - but what sort of job? Worm picker? Nightwatchman at a puppy mill? What order of contacts might Adam have been cultivating, wherever he had been?
Adam had hinted that he'd use an intermediary as the meetup courier, and Zeb worried about safety: the two of them had always been wary about trusting anyone except each other. True, Adam would be cautious. But he was methodical, and methodology could give you away. The only sure camouflage was unpredictability.
From his cramped chair Zeb eyed the entering customers, hoping to spot the courier. Was it this blond hermaphrodite in the halter top and sequined three-horned headdress? He hoped not. This plump, gum-chewing woman with the cream-coloured shorts and the wedgie and the retro cinch belt? She looked too vacuous, though vacuousness was a nearly foolproof disguise, at least for girls. Was it this mild, geeky-looking boy of the type that would some day machine-gun an auditorium full of his pimply fellow classmates? Nope, not him either.
But suddenly, surprise: there was Adam himself. It startled Zeb to see him materialize in the chair opposite, which had been empty just the moment before. Ectoplasmic, you could say.
Adam looked like a passport photo of himself, one that was already fading to light and shadow. It was as if he'd returned from the dead: he had that glowing-eyeball thing about him. His T-shirt was beige, his baseball cap sloganless. He'd bought himself a Happimocha to make it seem as if this was just two oddfellow buddies taking a break from their nerdwork, or else doing a meeting about some startup doomed to implode like a drowning blimp. Happimocha and Adam didn't go together: Zeb was curious to see if he'd actually drink any of the stuff - something so impure.
"Don't raise your voice," were the first words Adam spoke. Not two seconds back in Zeb's life and already he was giving orders.
"I was thinking of fucking yelling," said Zeb. He waited to be told not to use profanity, but Adam didn't take the bait. Zeb stared at him: there was something different. His eyes were just as round and blue, but his hair was paler. Could it be turning white? There was a new beard too, also pale. "Nice to see you too," he added.
Adam smiled: a flicker of a smile. "You'll be going into HelthWyzer West near San Francisco," he said. "As a data inputter. I've fixed it up. When you leave here, pick up the shopping bag beside your left knee. Everything you'll need is in there. You'll have to get the scans and prints inserted in the ID - I've put the address for that. And you'll need to scrap the old ID: delete anything
online. But I don't have to tell you that."
"Where've you been, anyway?" said Zeb.
Adam smiled in that maddening, saintly way he had. Butter wouldn't melt; it never had melted. "Classified," he said. "Other lives involved." That was the kind of thing that made Zeb long to put a toad in his bed.
"Right, slap my wrist. Okay, what's this HelthWyzer West, and what'm I supposed to be doing in there?"
"It's a Compound," said Adam. "Research and innovation. Drugs, the medical kind; enriched vitamin supplements; materials for transgenic splices and gene enhancement, specifically the hormone blends and simulators. It's a powerful Corp. There are a lot of top brains there."
"How'd you get me in?" said Zeb.
"I have some new acquaintances," said Adam, continuing his nonstop I-know-more-than-you smile. "They'll watch out for you. You'll be safe." He looked past Zeb's shoulder, then at his watch. Or he appeared to look at his watch. Zeb knew a good piece of misdirection when he saw it: Adam was scanning the room, checking for shadows.
"Cut the bullshit," said Zeb. "You want me to do something for you."
Adam held his smile. "You'll be a blacklight headlamp," he said. "Be extra careful checking in online, once you're there. Oh, and there's a new dropbox, and a new gateway into it. Don't return to that zephyr site, it may have been compromised."
"What's a blacklight headlamp?" said Zeb. But Adam had already stood up and straightened his beige tee and was halfway to the door. He hadn't drunk any of his Happimocha, so Zeb obligingly drank it for him. An unconsumed Happimocha might raise eyebrows in a pleeb like this, where only pimps had money to burn.
Zeb took his time getting back to Starburst. The back of his neck prickled all the way there, he was so sure he was being watched. But nobody tried to mug him. Once inside his door he looked up "blacklight headlamp" on his most recent cheap toss-at-will cellphone. "Blacklight" was a novelty item from the first decades of the century, he was told: it let you see in the dark, or it let you see some things in the dark. Eyeballs. Teeth. White bedsheets. Glo in the Dark Hair Gel. Fog. As for "headlamp," it was what it said. Bicycle shops sold them, and camping suppliers. Not that anyone really went camping any more except inside derelict buildings.
Thanks a pile, Adam, thought Zeb. That is so fucking instructive.
Then he opened Adam's shopping bag. There was his new skin, all neatly laid out for him. What he had to do now was Truck-A-Pillar over to San Francisco, and then crawl into it.
Intestinal Parasites, the Game
Adam's preparations had been thorough. There was a burn-this to-do list, and a big envelope stuffed with cash because Zeb would need some to pay off the grey marketeer designated to fake his passes. There was plastic as well, so Zeb could get himself the kind of wardrobe Adam thought he should have. He'd supplied descriptions: casual geekwear, with brown cord pants and neutral Ts and plaid shirts - brown and grey - and a pair of round-eyed glasses that didn't magnify anything. As for the footgear, the recommendation was trainers with so much rubber cross-strapping Zeb would look like a gay Morris dancer or some fugitive from a session of Robin Hood cosplay. Hat, a steampunk bowler from the 2010s: those were back in style. Though how would Adam know that? He'd never appeared to take any interest in vestments, but no interest was of course an interest. He must've been noting what other people wore so he could not wear it himself.
Zeb's assigned name was Seth. A little biblical joke of Adam's: Seth meant "appointed," as they were both aware, since they'd had the main biblical names and stories drilled into their skulls with a figurative screwdriver. Seth was the third son of Adam and Eve, deputized to take the place of the murdered Abel, who wasn't entirely dead, however, because he still had talking blood that cried out from the ground. So "Seth" was replacing the departed and presumed dead Zeb. By appointment, courtesy of Adam. Very funny.
Adam requested that Zeb/Seth test the new chatroom before entering HelthWyzer, and then check in once a week to signal he was still walking the planet. So the next day, while making his circuitous way to the grey marketeer to get his prints and iris scans inserted into his fake docs, he chose a net cafe at random and followed the lilypad trail laid out for him by Adam. (Memorize, then destroy, said the note, as if Zeb was a fucking idiot.)
The main gateway was a biogeek challenge game called Extinctathon. Monitored by MaddAddam, it said: Adam named the living animals, MaddAddam names the dead ones. Do you want to play? Zeb entered the codename supplied to him by Adam - Spirit Bear - and the password, which was shoelaces, and found himself inside the game.
It seemed to be a variant of Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. Using obscure clues provided by your opponent, you had to guess the identities of various extirpated beetles, fish, plants, skinks, and so forth. A roll call of the already erased. It was a certified yawner: even the CorpSeCorps would be put to sleep by this one, plus they'd have no clue as to most of the answers. As - to be fair - Zeb himself did not, despite his time spent with the Bearlifters and their obscure forms of one-upmanship. You haven't heard of Steller's sea cow? Really? Tiny, self-satisfied smirk.
Five minutes inside Extinctathon and any self-respecting Corps-Man would run screaming in search of alcoholic beverages. A terminally boring game was almost as effective as a vacuous stare, disguise-wise; plus they'd never think there was anything hidden inside a location that was right out in the open and so obviously ecofreakish. Instead, they'd be combing through bimplant ads and sites where you could shoot exotic animals online without leaving your office chair. Full Points to Adam, thought Zeb.
Could it be that Adam had designed this game himself? A game with his own name embedded as the Monitor? But he'd never shown much interest in animals, as such. Though, come to think of it, he'd been known to view with mild contempt the Rev's interpretation of Genesis, which was that God had made the animals for the sole pleasure and use of man, and you could therefore exterminate them at whim. Was Extinctathon a piece of anti-Rev counterinsurgency on the part of Adam? Had he somehow got mixed up with the ecofreaks? Maybe he'd had a conversion moment while smoking too much of some brain-damaging hallucinogenic and bonded with a plant fairy. Though that was unlikely: it was Zeb who'd been the chemicals risk-taker, not Adam. But Adam was mixed up with someone, for sure, because he'd never be able to pull off something like this on his own.
Zeb continued along the pathway. He chose Yes to show readiness and was redirected. Welcome, Spirit Bear. Do you want to play a general game, or do you want to play a Grandmaster? The second was the choice to make, said Adam's instructions, so Zeb clicked on it.
Good. Find your playroom. MaddAddam will meet you there.
The path to the playroom was complicated, zigzagging from one coordinate to another through pixels located here and there on innocuous sites: ads, for the most part, though some were lists: TOP TEN SCARY EASTER BUNNY PICS, TEN SCARIEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME, TEN SCARIEST SEA MONSTERS. Zeb found a portal through the buck teeth of a deranged purple plush rabbit with a terrorized infant perched on its knee, from there to a tombstone in a still from Night of the Living Dead, the original, and finally to the eye of a coelacanth. Then he was in the chatroom.
Welcome to MaddAddam's playroom, Spirit Bear. You have a message.
Zeb clicked on Deliver message.
Hello, said the message. You see, it works. Here are the coordinates for next week's chatroom. A.
Minimalist bugger, thought Zeb. He's not going to tell me a thing.
He bought the suggested outfit, or most of it: the round glasses were too much to take, as were the shoes. He broke in the pants and the shirts - spilled food on them, frayed them a little, ran them through the wash a few times. Then he tossed his previous clothes into various dumpsters and wiped his biotraces off his cheesy Starburst room as much as he could.
After paying up at Starburst - no sense in having the skip-tracers on your tail, if avoidable - he made the cross-continent trek to San Francisco. Then he reported at HelthWyzer West as instructed, pre
sented his fraudulent docs, and underwent the welcoming Hi, Buddy, Happy You're Here, We'll Help You Feel at Home minuet of the podge-faced greeter.
Nobody said boo. He was expected, he was accepted. Smooth as grease.
Inside HelthWyzer West he was assigned a bachelor condo unit in the residential tower. Nothing rundown about these facilities: nice landscaping around the entranceway, swimming pool on the roof, and the plumbing and electricals all worked, though the interior design was a little Spartan. There was a queen-sized bed, an optimistic signal. Bachelor did not mean celibate in the world of HelthWyzer West, it appeared.
The workspace high-rise had a cafeteria where he was issued a swipe card that would record his consumption: everyone had a points allowance, which they could use on anything on the menu. The food was real food, not spurious glop like the stuff he'd eaten at Bearlift. The drinks had alcohol in them, which was the least you could expect in a drink.
The HelthWyzer women were brisk, and had jobs to do and not much time for small talk, and - he guessed - no tolerance at all for cheap pickup lines, so he didn't even bother; but though he'd vowed to be careful about personal involvements because of the kinds of questions they could generate, he wasn't made of stone. Already a couple of the younger females had looked at his Seth name tag - name tags were a fashion statement at HelthWyzer - and one of them had asked him if he was new because she couldn't recall seeing him before, but of course she was kind of new herself.
Was there a little twist of the shoulders, a giveaway flutter of the eyelids? Marjorie, he read, not lingering too long on her name tag, which was perched on a breast of no more than ordinary prominence: obvious bimplants were not common inside the HelthWyzer walls. Marjorie had a blunt-nosed, brown-eyed, acquiescent face, like a spaniel, and in ordinary circumstances he would have proceeded, but as it was he said he hoped he'd see her around. Such a hope was not the top hope on his list of hopes - that spot was reserved for not getting caught - but it was not the bottom hope either.