This Alien Shore

  Content at last that he was as safe as he could ever get, he leaned back and shut his eyes and called up the eddress he’d been given.

  He didn’t head straight to it, of course. That would be too easy a trap to fall into, and not worthy of the invitation’s maker. He rode the skip to Tiananmen Station, but then took a back door in through the shipping department of a local construction company. From there he hopped over to an educational processor, compliments of Rajastar University, and masked his presence with a torrent of undergraduate writing exercises, while he checked out the available routes to the data neighborhood he wanted.

  So far so good.

  He wondered if the guy was watching him. Probably he had sniffers lining every path to his place, and Phoenix had triggered all of them. If so, he hadn’t seen any of them yet. Damn, this person was good. Who the hell was he?

  He was all set up to move forward, and maybe launch a message into the guy’s chosen site to stir up some response, when something hit him.

  His field of vision suddenly went blank. He must have been pretty keyed up, because his heart almost stopped when it happened. Before he could respond in any way, an image appeared before him. Bright wings, red flames, a powerful bird flying headlong into a pyre of scarlet and gold. His namesake, the phoenix.

  This was just too spooky. He tried to call up one of his own programs to break the thing down, to take control again, but every time he tried to bring up code, he just got another copy of the picture. It was as if he was surrounded by birds, and every time he tried to move, one got in the way.

  For a moment he just sat there, breathless. Then he sent out an image of his own.

  WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?

  The birds faded. Words took their place.

  ONE WHO SEARCHES.

  He didn’t ask for what. That would have been too obvious. Only an amateur asked obvious questions. Only a amateur would answer them.

  He thought about it for a moment, then flashed: MAYBE I CAN HELP

  And held his breath, waiting.

  A data capsule appeared before him. He hesitated, knowing he shouldn’t be taking chances ... but curiosity won out. Just like this guy probably knew it would. He called up an antiviral program just in case, and cracked open the enclosing code on the thing....

  And saw what it was.

  And closed it up again, really quickly.

  Now his heart was pounding. Really pounding. There was nothing quite as scary as having that virus stare you in the face, and not know if it was a neutralized version or the real, very hot thing. Shit. He slapped a few extra security programs on the now-closed packet, just to make sure it would stay closed up tight, and then, for a lack of a more inspired response, flashed, NORTHSTAR.

  YES.

  Shit. Shit.

  WHY? appeared before him.

  Shit.

  Okay, think this out. If he’s the one who designed the damn thing, then he wants to know why you were fucking with it. There’s no safe answer to that one. On the other hand, if he really was its designer, then he could have sent you a copy that would be in your head already, searching out the data he wants. Right? That damned thing was designed to snitch data, so why not just use it? Suddenly he realized how utterly reckless he had been, opening the data packet up like that. But nothing bad had happened, right? So that told him something about the guy who sent it. Okay, so let’s say the odds are he’s probably not responsible for it existing in the first place ... and both of you know that. Right? So what does he want with it? And me?

  You didn’t get that kind of data without offering something.

  He thought about it for a few seconds, weighing his various options. Finally in his mind’s eyes he formed the words, IT KILLED A FRIEND. And sent them.

  There was no response.

  Finally he added, YOU?

  A long wait. Then: IT KILLED.

  For the first time in several minutes, he found he could actually draw in a full breath.

  YOU SEARCH FOR IT? he asked.

  Again the answer was long in coming. It took no great genius to figure out why. If the guy was legit, and was really hunting the thing, he had to be sure that Phoenix was too before he committed himself. He’d be reviewing everything they’d said now, and everything he’d seen in Northstar, and assessing him with a hacker’s eye. Because oh yeah, the guy had to be a hacker himself. There was no way around that. You could teach a good programmer how to track viruses and such, but you could never give them the cultural language that went with it. The minute Phoenix had seen the birds surrounding them, he knew this was one of his own.

  I SEARCH FOR ITS MAKER.

  He drew in a deep breath and sent back, DITTO. And he added, SO DO OTHERS.

  YOU KNOW THEIR WORK?

  Was it a trap? WHAT THEY’VE DONE. NOT WHO THEY ARE. That was true enough. Half of the people he talked to he only knew by their hacking nomen. It also was a clear signal to this guy that if he wanted information on others who were following the virus, he wouldn’t get it from him.

  WE SHOULD COMPARE NOTES, THEN.

  MAYBE. He was taking a risk here, but shit, if this guy had more information on the virus than Phoenix’s crowd had been able to dig up, that was a risk worth taking. He could see Chaos standing before him, bright as life, begging him with her eyes to find her killer, punish him, and see that no more moddies fell prey to his creation. NOT HERE. TOO INSECURE.

  AGREED. LIVE ONLY.

  He stared at the words in shock, not quite believing them. Was this guy crazy? Suddenly he was reassessing the whole conversation, and wondering just who and what it was on the other end. No hacker would have sent that suggestion to him. Hackers sometimes went their whole lives without meeting each other, outside of electronic forums. Did this guy really think he was going to put his body at risk for this? It was bad enough letting a stranger connect to his signal, he sure as hell wasn’t going to walk into the office of some unknown person and just see what came of it.

  NO FUCKING WAY, he sent. And he prepared to terminate the contact, just in case something nasty was to follow.

  YOU WILL, the other assured him. BY YOUR OWN CHOICE. YOU WILL KNOW WHEN. And he signed it below, like a letter: MASADA

  What the fuck—

  The signal was gone. He tried to trace it, but realized pretty quickly that that wasn’t going to happen. So he called back up that final image, that infuriating signature that promised too much and delivered too little.

  Masada?

  The Masada? As in Kio Masada, who had written the only handbook on computer security that any moddie respected? Who was a pain in the ass to Phoenix and his friends precisely because he understood them so well? Who had designed the Guild defenses so well that testing them was almost a hacker rite-of-passage these days? That Masada?

  Couldn’t be. Shit. That would be like ... that would be like meeting God online, and having Him-drop you his eddress. Not damn likely.

  So who the hell was using his name online?

  He scoured around the data neighborhood for a brief while more, hoping to find some sign of the guy, some more information on him. But whoever he was, he hacked clean; every trail Phoenix could find dead-ended in a loop, sending him back where he started.

  At last it was clear he wasn’t going to find anything useful, and he gave up in frustration. He flashed an icon that cleared his field of vision so that he saw nothing but the real world again. The dead world, as some of his friends called it. People. Packages. The tube’s interior. Blurred images outside, local stations not worth the time involved in stopping.

  Masada. Yeah. Right.

  Sex isn’t about sex. Sex is about power.

  The pleasure of the body is mere window dressing to one who truly understands the game

  SHARON GREER,

  The Human Dynamic

  PARADISE NODE PARADISE STATION

  SHE WAS WAITING for Phoenix when he came back. Of course. Where else did she have to go? She wasn’t nearly as confi
dent as he was that the station was safe for her, now that the facial recognition program had been neutralized, and besides, what business was there for her to attend to, that she had to go anywhere? For now it seemed safest to remain sheltered here, in the apartment of this man who so obviously found her mysterious and attractive. If only that could be manipulated into some more lasting feeling! What would happen when all her mysteries were solved, or other mysteries beckoned more loudly to him? She’d be on her own again, and that wasn’t good. No, if Phoenix had taught her anything in their few hours together, it was that she needed a hacker to survive. The data jungle that was the outernet simply could not be navigated safely, not when so many predators were at large in it, creatures with her scent in their nostrils and blood on their claws.

  She dreaded the day he would ask her more questions. She dreaded the moment he found out that she really, really didn’t know the answers herself, and couldn’t give him more information than she already had. Would he leave her then? Decide the intriguing mystery of her presence was not worth the risk of harboring a fugitive? Grow frustrated with her refusal to share her secrets with him, not really believing that she herself didn’t know who was after her, or even why?

  That could be dealt with. He was a man, and men could be manipulated. Men could be bound in a web of emotions so delicate that they never felt its touch, yet tangled so tightly they could never break free. It was hard to do such a thing quickly, of course ... but then, that only made it more of a challenge. All of the Others could appreciate such a challenge, though they might argue for hours about how to meet it.

  In the end it was Katlyn who told them what had to be done. Katlyn who made the preparations, and waited with bated breath to see what his response would be. The Others crowded around the edges of her consciousness like children at a viddie, vying for the best view. Even Derik was there, which surprised her. Normally when she took control of their body, he just sank down into the darkness and sulked.

  It’s not that easy, he told her.

  Isn’t it? She smiled. Just watch me.

  Then the door slid open, and the hacker was home at last. Tall and a bit gangly, with a shock of blond hair haphazardly brushed across his forehead and a faraway look in his eyes. Not bad-looking, she assessed, though it was clear from the plain cut of his clothes and the rather careless way they had been assembled that he was unconcerned with his own appearance. She could have done worse.

  He seemed not to notice her at first, lost in some hacker’s reverie. She suspected that was pretty much his normal state. “Jamisia, I’m sorry it took so long, I had to—”

  He stopped in mid-sentence. He had seen the apartment’s interior. Clearly for all his sophisticated brainware, he had no way of processing such a vision.

  Katlyn looked about the small space with what she hoped was an expression of charming innocence. “I just wanted to help out a bit, for all you’ve done.” There: add a slight tremor at the end, expressed in voice and the trembling of a lower lip, to imply she was afraid she had displeased him. Because her fate was now in his hands, and she could not afford his displeasure.

  I’m going to gag, Derik warned.

  Do it on your own time, she thought back.

  Phoenix entered the apartment and walked around, as if in a daze. In truth the transformation was hardly spectacular, but apparently it was unexpected enough to render him speechless. He went to the table where old dirty plates had been piled—now cleaned and stored away, and the other items on its surface neatened—and touched a finger to it as if suddenly remembering that yes, the tabletop was that color, how long since he had seen it?

  It wasn’t clean. Oh, no. Katlyn wasn’t foolish. Katlyn knew what game she was playing, and she played it with finesse. Katlyn had been abandoned for a half a day on a strange and hostile station, and had realized that she needed more assurance of this man’s protection than she currently had.

  He’s mad at us, Zusu crooned.

  Shhhh.

  Phoenix looked like a man in shock as he wandered around the apartment. He stopped at one or two places where items of special value were scattered—like his worktable, with all its electronic paraphernalia—and she could see him open his mouth as if to voice some criticism of her cleaning. But those things which he treasured had not been touched at all. Every piece of wire, every chip, every headset fragment, was exactly where he had left it. She had cleaned around those things, avoiding the sacred sites of his manhood, sweeping away the mess which surrounded with enough discernment and sensitivity that he could find no cause for protest.

  He knew, of course. Deep inside his soul, where men rarely looked, he knew exactly what had taken place. She could see the concept struggling toward his lips, trying to shape itself into words. But men didn’t have those words. Men were creatures of confrontation and certainty, who didn’t deal well with the subtle gray realm of hints and intuition. And she could see it in his face when he finally decided to ignore those internal warnings, the hints of a game that was beyond his understanding.

  “You ... cleaned up.”

  She bit her lower lip in what should look like uncertainty. He responded well to her vulnerability, so she was trying to play up that role. “I hope you don’t mind. I was here for so long, and the place ...” She managed to blush, as if from embarrassment. “It kind of needed it.”

  You were gone for a long time and I marked your territory, not so blatantly that you would reject it, not so subtly that you could ignore it. Can you feel my presence around you now? Everywhere you look, everywhere you move.

  When he said nothing she offered, “I tried not to move anything important—”

  “No. You didn’t. You didn’t at all.” He shook his head as if to clear stray thoughts from it, and at last, the male processing done, a grin spread slowly across his face. “It’s great. Thanks.”

  She beamed at him, warmed by the light of his praise. It was an expression she’d been practicing all afternoon, and it had its intended effect.

  This is no challenge at all, she mourned to the Others.

  Stop complaining, Raven told her. And Derik smirked, They can’t all be Variants.

  He sat down in the chair by his desk in what was obviously a state of utter exhaustion. She could not have asked for a better opportunity if she had scripted it herself. Slowly she came up behind him as he rubbed at a kink in the back of his neck. Physical tension. Good. “Did you do what you needed to?”

  He began to curse, then stopped himself, as if embarrassed at giving her offense. That was pretty amusing, as she’d heard far worse inside her own head than he could ever manage. Derik had inured them all to such language long ago.

  “Sort of. I—” He jumped slightly as her hands touched his shoulders—gently, so gently—and then began to stroke the points of tension along the crest of his muscle. “Ah. I ... ah, found the person I was looking for. Don’t know who he is yet, not really. Gave me a name.” Eyes shut, he relaxed into the gentle kneading, surrendering his tension to her caress. “Not his real name, of course.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Said he was Masada.” He laughed shortly.

  “Masada?”

  “Famous outernet theorist. You wouldn’t know ... oh, that feels good there.” She saw him sink down into his chair about two inches as she stroked the muscles of his upper back. “Scary son of a bitch, whoever this guy is. But not damn likely to be Masada.”

  There was silence then, a few minutes stretched out long and smooth by the contact of fingers upon flesh. The thin material of his shirt slid easily over his pale skin, and it was some minutes before she slipped her hands under it, touching his skin directly. He jumped as she did so. Easy. Easy.

  He had to talk, of course. The silence was too intimate. “It was really nice, what you did with the place. That you did it, I mean.”

  Her fingers slid down over his chest as she leaned forward, the warmth of her body close enough to be felt now along his back. She fe
lt him shiver slightly, and knew that he was aware to the inch of just how close she was. “You’ve done so much for me,” she said softly. Hands stroking gently over his lean torso, feeling him stir slightly, clearly both aroused and disconcerted by her attentions. That was good. Men were easiest to control when they were off balance. This one was working out just fine.

  At last he moved, rising from the seat, taking two steps forward to get out of her reach. Not unexpected, she assured the others. All part of the game. She could sense Jamisia watching in awe, which was good; the girl had to learn this someday.

  “I ... um ... it’s all right, I was glad to help ...” He fumbled with some piece of machinery on his workbench, turning it this way and that and tapping it against the table, as if trying to think of something suitably urgent to do with it. She didn’t move toward him, but let the moment play itself out. If the prey got too nervous, he would bolt for cover, and then the chase must begin all over again. Not a bad prospect under normal circumstances, but right now she didn’t have the time for that kind of prolonged game.

  Finally he looked up at her. That was her cue. Holding his gaze, she moved forward again—slowly, softly, and most importantly, wordlessly. He started to say something. She reached out and touched a finger to his lips, warning him to silence. No, my sweet, this isn’t something you can put into words, so don’t even try. What are you going to say-? That you don’t know what’s happening here, or why? That part of you knows you should protest, but the far larger part of you has no desire to? That you’re used to cold data, which can be categorized, analyzed—controlled—but the chemistry of human interaction is something else again?

  My sweet little hacker, it’s all just a fantasy. Pretty young girl wrapped in mystery winds up in your arms, and I know you want her. I saw that clearly yesterday. You don’t know her name and you don’t know her story, but there just might be something in her head that’s worth finding out about, and that’s sexier to you than half the showgirls in Paradise, isn’t it? Warm and willing flesh wrapped about dark tech secrets, the ultimate elixir of seduction for your kind. Can you resist it? Do you have a reason to?