Schismatrix plus - Bruce Sterling [93]
"Ten years or so. Time alters under the wires. You know, I can't remember offhand where I left my brain. Someplace unlikely, I'm sure." Ryumin smiled. "It must be in Dembowska Cartel, or there'd be a transmission lag."
"I want to talk privately. How many people do you suppose are listening in on us?"
"Just the police," Ryumin assured him. "You're in a Harem safehouse; their calls are routed directly through the Chief's databanks. In Dembowska this is as private as it gets. Especially for someone whose past is as dubious as yours, Mr. Dze."
Lindsay dabbed at his nose with a kerchief. The new bacteria had hit his sinuses badly; they had already been weakened by the Investors' ozone-charged air. "Things were different in the Zaibatsu. When we were face to face."
"The wires bring changes," Ryumin said. "It all becomes a matter of input, you see. Systems. Data. We tend toward solipsism; it comes with the territory. Please don't resent it if I doubt you."
"How long have you been in Dembowska?"
"Since the Peace began to crumble. I needed a haven. This is the best available."
"So your travels are over, old man?"
"Yes and no, Mr. Dze. With the loss of mobility comes extension of the senses. If I want I can switch out to a probe in Mercurian orbit. Or in the winds of Jupiter. I often do, in fact. Suddenly I'm there, just as fully as I'm ever anywhere these days. The mind isn't what you think, Mr. Dze. When you grip it with wires, it tends to flow. Data seem to bubble up from some deep layer of the mind. This is not exactly living, but it has advantages."
"You've given up Kabuki Intrasolar?"
"With the war heating up, the theatre's glory days are over for a while. The Network takes up most of my time."
"Journalism?"
"Yes. We wireheads—or, rather, Senior Mechanists, to give us a name not tainted by Shaper propaganda—we have our own modes of dataflow. News networks. At its most intense it approaches telepathy. I'm the local stringer for Ceres Datacom Network. I hold citizenship in it, though legally speaking it's sometimes more convenient to be treated as wholly owned depreciable hardware. Our life is information—even money is information. Our money and our life are one and the same."
The Mechanist's synthesized voice was calm, detached, but Lindsay felt alarm. "Are you in danger, old man? Is it something I can help?"
"My boy," Ryumin said, "there's a whole world behind this screen. The lines have blurred so much that mere matters of life and death have to take a back seat. There are those among us whose brains broke down years ago: they totter along on investments and programmed routines. If the fleshies knew, they'd declare them legally dead. But we're not telling." He smiled. "Think of us as angels, Mr. Dze. Spirits on the wires. Sometimes it's easier that way."
"I'm a stranger here. I'd hoped you could help me, as you did once. I need advice. I need your wisdom."
Ryumin sighed precisely. "I knew a Dze once when we were both rogues. I trusted him; I admired his daring. We were men together. That's no longer the case."
Lindsay blew his nose. With a shudder of deep loathing he handed the soiled kerchief to the household servo. "I would have dared anything then. I was ready to die, but I didn't. I kept looking. And I found someone. I had a wife, and there was no pretense between us. We were happy together."
"I'm glad for you, Mr. Dze."
"When danger crowded in on us I broke and ran. Now after almost forty years I'm a sundog again."
"Forty years is a human lifetime, Mr. Dze. Don't force yourself to be human. A time comes when you have to give that up."
Lindsay looked at his prosthetic arm, flexed the fingers slowly. "I still love her. It was the war that parted us. If there were peace again—"
"Those