City of Golden Shadow

  Long ago, he had discovered, during the first great housing crisis at the beginning of the century, squatters had begun to build shantytowns beneath the elevated freeways, freeform agglomerations of cardboard crates, aluminum siding, and plastic sheets. As the ground beneath the concrete chutes filled up with an ever-thickening tide of the dispossessed, later arrivals began to move upward into the vaulting itself, bolting cargo nets, canvas tarpaulins, and military surplus parachutes onto the pillars and undersides of the freeways. Rope walkways soon linked the makeshift dwellings, and ladders linked the shantytown below with the one growing above. Resident craftsmen and amateur engineers added intermediary levels, until a marrow of shabby multilevel housing ran beneath nearly every freeway and aqueduct.

  With the sun near noon, the underside of Highway 92 was dark, but the webwork city was full of movement. Orlando lowered the window to get a better view. A group of young children were chasing each other across a broad expanse of netting seventy feet above his head. They looked like squirrels, swift and confident, and he envied them. Then he reminded himself of their poverty, of the overcrowding and unsanitary conditions, and of the dangers that came purely from their environment. Besides the violence that always threatened urban poor, the residents of the hammock cities also had gravity to contend with: not a day went past without someone falling onto a freeway and being crushed, or drowning in a waterway. Just last year, the sheer weight of the Barrio Los Moches honeycomb had brought down a section of the San Diego Freeway, killing hundreds of residents and scores of drivers.

  "Orlando? Why is that window open?"

  "I'm just looking."

  "Close it. There's no reason to have it open."

  Orlando ran the window back up, putting both the children's voices and most of the sunlight on the other side of the smoked glass.

  They crept along the El Camino Real, the broad main strip of neo-neon and holographed advertising images that stretched fifty miles down the peninsula from San Francisco. The sidewalks were full of people, half of whom seemed to be living in the doorways of buildings or lounging in informal congregation outside the sealed, card-activated bus stops. Orlando's mother was driving edgily, despite being hemmed in by shoals of smaller automotive fish, mopeds and minicars. Pedestrians walked past slowly at the intersections, studying the one-way windows of the Gardiners' car with the calculating faces of shoplifters observed on closed-circuit security video.

  Drumming her fingers on the wheel, Vivien stopped the car at another traffic light. A group of young Hispanic men stood in a ragged circle on the near corner, the goggles pushed up on their foreheads making it seem they had extra sets of eyes. Even in the bright sun their faces seemed to pulse with light, although the implants—slender tubes of chemical neon beneath the skin, arranged in fetishistic tribal patterns—were far more impressive at night, under the dark concrete overhangs.

  Orlando had heard his parents' friends talk about Goggle-boys with a mixture of fear and mythmaking relish, claiming they wore the distinctive eyewear to protect themselves from chemical spray reprisal when they were mugging people, but Orlando recognized most of the lenses they wore as flashy but low-power VR rigs, little more use than old-fashioned walkie-talkies. It was a trend, just a way of looking like you might have to pop into a virtual meeting at any moment, or take an important call, but in the meantime you were just hanging around on the corner.

  One of the young men broke off from the group and headed toward the crosswalk. His long coat of magenta 'chute flapped in the wind behind him like a flag. A tattoo of a chain began in the hairline beside his temple and ran down to his jaw, and jumped into darker relief every few seconds as the implants pulsed the skin. He was smiling as though remembering something funny. Before he reached their car—before it was clear he was even approaching the car—Vivien accelerated through the red light, narrowly missing one of the battle cruisers euphemistically called a "family wagon," The other car's proximity lights blazed out like the warning flash of a cobra's hood.

  "Vivien, you ran that signal!"

  "We're almost there."

  Orlando turned to look out the rear window. The young man stood on the corner staring after them, coat flapping. He looked as though he were waiting for the rest of the parade to show up.

  "All things considered, I think you're doing pretty well. The new anti-inflammatories seem to be helping." Doctor Vanh stood up. "I don't like that cough, though. Have you had it long?"

  "No. It's not too bad."

  "Okay. But we'll keep an eye on it. Oh, and I'm afraid we're going to have to take some more blood."

  Orlando tried to smile. "You've got most of it. I guess you might as well have the rest."

  Doctor Vanh nodded approvingly. "That's the spirit." He reached out a slender hand, indicating that Orlando should stay on the table. "The nurse will be here in just a minute. Oh, let me check those patch-sites." He turned Orlando's arm over and examined it. "Are you still getting rashes?"

  "Not too bad."

  "Good. Glad to hear it." He nodded again. Orlando was always intrigued by the way such cheerful sayings came out of the doctor's thin sad face.

  While Doctor Vanh checked something on the pad on the corner table—they knew better than to put things up on a wall-screen where the patient could see—a nurse named Desdemona came in and took some of Orlando's blood. She was pretty and very polite; they always used her, so he would be too embarrassed to make a fuss. They were right. Even though he was tired and hurting and sick of needles, he clenched his teeth and made it through. He even managed a weak return of Desdemona's cheerful farewell.

  "How are you feeling, Orlando?" his mother asked. "Can you walk out to the waiting room by yourself? I want to talk to Doctor Vanh for a few minutes."

  He made a face. "Yes, Vivien. I think I can drag myself down the corridor."

  She gave him a nervous smile, trying to show she appreciated the joke, even though she didn't. The doctor helped him off the table. He fastened his own shirt on the way to the door, waving Vivien off despite the painful stiffness in his fingers.

  He stopped by the drinking fountain to rest for a moment; when he looked back, he could see his mother's head through the tiny window in the examining room door. She was listening to something and frowning. He wanted to go back and tell her that all this whispering and secrecy was a waste, that he knew more about his own condition than she did. And, he was fairly certain, she knew that he did, too. Being a starhammer netboy meant more than being able to kill lots of monsters in the fantasy simworlds—he could avail himself of medical libraries from universities and hospitals all over the world, whenever he wanted to. His mother couldn't really believe that he would remain in ignorance about his own case, could she? Maybe that was one of the reasons she had a thing about him spending so much time on the net.

  Of course, she might have a point Maybe you could have too much information. For a while he had made a habit of reading his own medical records out of the hospital files, but had eventually given it up. VR death-trips were one thing, RL another—especially when it was his own RL.

  "After all, they can't work miracles, Vivien," he murmured, then pushed himself away from the fountain and resumed his slow progress up the hall.

  Beezle beeped him five minutes before the call was due. He sat up in bed, surprised and a little disoriented. The new t-jack was so comfortable he had forgotten it was still in, and had fallen asleep wearing it.

  "Incoming," Beezle said in his ear.

  "Right. Give me one of the standard sims, then connect."

  He closed his eyes. The screen hung in the darkness behind his lids, routed directly through the telematic jack to his optical nerves. He opened his eyes again and the screen still hovered before him, but now he could also see the darkened walls of his room and the skeletal silhouette of his IV unit, as though in a photographic double exposure. He had spent hours getting the calibrations right, but it was worth it.

  This is chizz! It work
s just as well as the fiber—no, better. I never have to be offline again.

  Elaine Strassman popped onto the screen. She was young, probably mid-twenties, and wore lots of jewelry. Her dark hair was twisted up into a topknot and wrapped in something gleamingly metallic. Orlando closed his eyes to block out his room, so he could examine her more closely. He thought he recognized her, but wasn't quite sure.

  "Uh . . . Orlando Gardiner?" she asked.

  "That's me."

  "Hi, I'm Elaine Strassman? From Indigo?" She hesitated, clearly a little confused, and squinted. "The . . . the Orlando Gardiner I'm looking for is fourteen years old."

  Jesus, she worked in the gear trade and she couldn't recognize a sim? She was either utterly impacted or her vision was bad. Hadn't everybody in LA/SD had their eyes fixed by now? "That's me. This is a sim. I couldn't get to the regular phone, so no video picture."

  She laughed. "I'm used to sims, but most kids . . . most people your age have. . . ."

  "Something flashier. Yeah, but this is what I use. Makes it easier to talk to grownups like you. It's supposed to, anyway." He wondered what sim Beezle had chosen for him. They ranged in apparent age from one just a little older than he actually was to a rather mature and avuncular persona particularly useful for dealing with institutions and authority in general. "What can I do for you?"

  She took a breath, trying to find the breezy tone she had lost. It was good to keep people off balance, Orlando reflected. You found out more about them that way—and they found out less about you. "Well," she said,"our records show that you monitored a presentation I gave on SchoolNet, and you also queried us afterward about some of the things I had discussed. Proprioception loops?"

  "I remember now. Yeah, that was pretty interesting. But one of your engineers already sent me some data."

  "We were most impressed by your questions. And we thought some of them were particularly perceptive."

  Orlando said nothing, but his mental antennae tingled. Could this be some roundabout method for the mystery hacker to get at him? It was hard to believe that Elaine Strassman, with her fashion hair and hummingbird-skull jewelry, could be the person who had hacked the Middle Country so effectively, but appearances could be deceiving. Or she might be working for someone else, perhaps unwittingly.

  "I do okay," he said as evenly as he could. "I'm pretty interested in VR."

  "We know that. I hope this doesn't sound awful, but we've been asking some questions about you. At SchoolNet, for instance."

  "Questions."

  "Nothing private," she said hurriedly. "Just about your grades and your special interests in the field. Talked to some of your instructors." She paused as though on the brink of revelation. Orlando realized by the ache in his fingers that he was clenching his fists. "Do you have any plans after graduation?" she asked.

  "After graduation?" He opened his eyes and Elaine Strassman once more appeared to hover in midair above the foot of his bed.

  "We have an apprenticeship program here at Indigo," she said. "We would be willing to sponsor you through college—we have a wide range of the best high-technology programs to choose from—pay all your expenses, even send you to special seminars in all kinds of utterly detail places." She used the expression with the faint overemphasis of someone who knew she would not be able to get away with using netgirl slang much longer. "It's a great deal."

  He was relieved but faintly disappointed. He had been approached by recruiters before, although never quite so directly. "You want to sponsor me."

  "It's a great deal," she repeated. "All you have to do is promise to come work for us for a certain amount of time after you graduate. It's not even that long—just three years! Indigo Gear is so certain that you'll like our environment that we're willing to bet you an education that you'll stay."

  Or at least willing to bet that I come up with some useful patents for them during the first three years, he thought. Not that it's such a bad deal, even so. But these people don't understand what kind of bet they'd really be making.

  "Sounds like a nice deal." It was almost painful to watch her smile widen. "Why don't you send me some information." If nothing else, it would give his mother a few moments of pleasure.

  "I'll do that. And listen—you have my number now. If you have any questions, Orlando, you just phone me any time. Any time. I mean that."

  She almost sounded like she was promising to sleep with him. He couldn't help smiling. Dream on, Gardiner!

  "Okay. Send me the stuff and I'll definitely think about it."

  After several more enthusiastic assurances, Elaine Strassman hung up. Orlando closed his eyes again. He selected the new Pharaoh Had To Shout album from his music library and set it playing quietly, then settled back to think.

  Five minutes into the first track, he opened his eyes. "Beezle," he said. "Bug. Call Elaine Whatsername back at that number."

  "Strassman."

  "Yeah. Let's get her on the phone."

  She had said to call if he had any questions. He'd just thought of a question.

  "I understood you the first time—you don't have to say it again. I just don't believe you." Fredericks folded his arms in front of his chest like an aggrieved child.

  "What don't you believe? That the people who made the gryphon have connections to TreeHouse?" Orlando was trying to curb his temper. Being impatient with Fredericks never made anything happen any faster—he had a stubborn streak as wide as his simulated shoulders.

  "I believe that okay. But I can't believe that you actually think you can get in there. That's utter fenfen, Gardiner."

  "Oh, man." Orlando moved himself into Fredericks' line of sight, blocking off the Cretaceous-swamp window at which his friend had been sullenly staring. "Look, I don't think, I know! I've been trying to explain. This engineer at Indigo Gear is going to get me in—get us in, if you want to come along."

  "Into TreeHouse? Some guy you've never met is going to slip a couple of kids into TreeHouse? Just for fun? Shoot me again, Gardiner, I'm still breathing."

  "Okay, not just for fun. I told them that I'd sign their sponsorship agreement if someone could get me into TreeHouse for a day."

  Fredericks sat up. "You what? Orlando, this is too far scanny! You signed up to go work for some gear company for half your life just to find out who made that stupid gryphon?"

  "It's not half my life. It's three years. And it's a pretty good deal, anyway." He didn't tell Fredericks about his private disbelief that he would ever serve that sentence. "Come on, Frederico. Even if I have lost my mind—it's TreeHouse! You're not going to turn down the chance to go there, are you? To see it? You don't have work for Indigo."

  His friend looked at him carefully, as though hoping to see through the sim to the real person beneath—a futile hope. Orlando wondered briefly if there was something bad for your brain about having years-long friendships with people you'd never met in the real world.

  "I'm worried about you, Gardiner. You're taking this much too seriously. First you get Thargor killed, then you blow your chances with the Table of Judgment, now you've . . . I don't know, sold your soul to some corporation—and it's all because of this city you saw for about five seconds. Are you going mental or something?"

  Orlando paused on the verge of saying something sarcastic. Instead, he found himself wondering if Fredericks might be right, and the mere fact of wondering, the momentary loss of certainty, brought a stab of cold fear. The word was "dementia," and he had seen it in more than a few medical articles.

  "Gardiner?"

  "Shut up for a second, Fredericks." He tested the fear, felt its clammy extent. Could his friend be right?

  Then again, did it matter? If he was losing his mind, did it matter if he made a fool of himself? All he knew was that when he had seen the city, it had made him feel that there was something left to wonder about, in a life that was otherwise full of dreadful certainties. And in his dreams, the city had taken on an even greater significance. It was the exact
size, shape, and color of hope itself . . . something he had never thought he would see again. And that was more important than anything.

  "I guess you'll just have to trust me, Fredericks old chum."

  His friend sat silently for some time. "Okay," he said at last. "But I'm not going to break any laws."

  "No one's asking you to break the law. TreeHouse isn't illegal, really. Well, maybe it is, I'm not sure. But remember, we're both minors. The guy who's taking us is an adult. If anyone gets in trouble, it'll be him."

  Fredericks shook his head. "You're so stupid, Gardino."

  "Why?"

  "Because if this guy is willing to break the law to get you to sign up for Indigo, they must really want you. Jeez, you probably could have gotten them to give you a private jet or something."

  Orlando laughed. "Frederico, you are one of a kind."

  "Yeah? All the more reason not to get wiped out on one of your stupid excursions, Gardiner."

  "You're not going to wear that sim, are you?"

  "Detox, Fredericks. Of course I'm going to wear it" He flexed Thargor's leather-vambraced arm. "I know it better than my own body."

  Oh, yeah, he thought. I wish.

  "But it's . . . it's TreeHouse! Shouldn't you wear something . . . I don't know . . . more interesting?"

  Orlando glowered, something the Thargor sim did very well. "It's not a costume party. And if the people in TreeHouse have been hacking forever, they probably wouldn't be very impressed by some fancy sim. I just want to get the job done."

  Fredericks shrugged. "I'm certainly not going to wear anything that someone might recognize. We might get in trouble—this is illegal, Orlando."

  "Sure. Like there are a bunch of people hanging around in TreeHouse who are going to say, 'Look, isn't that Pithlit, the famous slightly nervous person from the Middle Country sim world?' "