From: gdg019@cch.coventry.ac.uk (Ridley McIntyre)
Subject: STORY: MONKEYTRICK [revised] (5/6)
Keywords: Rat 2.5
Organization: Fifth Column, Coventry, UK
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 08:59:09 GMT

                  	MONKEYTRICK - by Ridley McIntyre

                        5. I Don't Know.

An apartment like any other. Lifeless. Dead. Then Sarah presses her palm
against the lock and the door slides open, the hall lights flicker on
and bathe the place in sea green splendour; an effect that sends a warm
shiver through Sarah's spine. She's home.

 Each room is a different colour. She uses them to enhance her moods and to
keep her sane; a constant reminder of variegation in such a monochrome place
as Milton Keynes.

 Her living room is a subtle contrast of turquoise walls and aquamarine
furniture. She places herself at her petroleum plastic desk and flicks the
switch on the blue-screen Sony PC she uses to keep in touch with her work.
After logging on, she runs through her packed message box, filled with faces
from the Information Services department asking about her whereabouts. She
absent-mindedly skims through each one. The last face, Dex's face, shocks
her tapered finger, and she can't press a single button while he plays.

 "Sarah," he says. "I know about Shelley's deal. Now, I can tell the Feds
or I can talk to you. So reply to T7088-Vja274-BOY. Okay?"

                                ***

His own deck and he loves the machine like a child loves his mother. He
powers it up, plugs the lead from the two Neuro-Sensory Transfer plugs into 
the back of the machine, and hits the start switch, shuddering into the Grid.

 Ussing copies of the Trojan that Sarah gave the Boy, Motorhead follows a
strand through the hardened shell and the shell accepts him gladly. Without
the Boy's recon map, Motorhead is having a hard time orientating himself
inside the shell, but he relies on his memory of the place and sends some
FIND slaves in likely directions, hoping one will run into the Witch-Hole.
When he receives a positive message from one of the slave strands, he
follows it's path and then stops dead in his tracks.

 The Witch-Hole has been filled with another program of some sort. Tentatively,
he calls in the other FIND slaves and sends an IDENTIFIER slave to the
opaque area ahead of him. The thin blue thread touches the skin of the
dodecahedron. Motorhead registers the name in his mind and tears the wires
from his head.

 Plunging back into his own body, he reels from the chair in which he was
sat and makes a run for the window, feeling sense-shock pulsing through
him, but he's too slow, and he can almost feel the inner walls of his stomach
meet as he retches into a convenient plastic box.

 He wipes his moouth with his shirt sleeve and allows himself time to take
it in. His old friend, Dex, is dead. His body, at least. Somehow, the Grid
had pulled his soul through to the other side when he entered that Witch-Hole.
Now, with his body cremated by the Sodha roughriders at Motorhead's request,
the Boy seems damned with eternal life in the innards of Vijayanta core 274,
Rhea's replacement.

 For a full, painful hour, Motorhead cannot close his eyes without that AI
code filling up his sensorium. T7088-Vja274-BOY.

                                ***

Shelley's thin face, the face of the skinny man in the tan-brown suit, fills
the blue monitor screen, his eyes looking out of shot to his own screen in an
office in London.

 Sarah regards closely the bony features of the man on the screen. The blank,
poker-face expression and cold, dark blue eyes, that are naturally brown, 
piercing the corner of the screen the way an insect sits perfectly still and
watches it's prey.

 "What's wrong, Sarah?"

 She shrugs, off-camera. "I got a message from Dex. Something's happened. He
seems to be caught in the core. I think he's dead."

 The expression doesn't change. "What was the message about, Sarah?"

 "Something about a deal you've made. He says he'll take it to the FDI,
whatever it is."

 Shelley's lips pout in thought. He shakes his head. His voice takes on a
stern, yet sincerely concerned tone. "You could be in considerable danger,
Sarah, so I'll have you moved. Put into a safehouse, I mean, just until this
blows over. Stay in your flat, and I'll send someone to pick you up. Just
stay where you are, okay?"

 She hangs her head. "Okay." The screen flickers and then returns to it's
normal blue fuzz.

 Sarah stays in her flat for a full three minutes before she packs a small
black sports bag with her Enkagirl's outfit and a tiny hold out pistol and
heads back to London.

                                ***

When Sarah's round face appears at the door, he slams it shut.

 "Mo," he hears her pleading. "This wasn't supposed to happen. It was
a simple monkeytrick. I used Dex as bait to lure Rhea into the open. I
didn't know he would go into the Witch-Hole. Look, you have to let me in.
They're after me, too. He left a message for me in Milton Keynes and I need
to talk to him."

 "You can't talk to him, you stupid bitch. He's dead." Motorhead is leaning
against the steel front door, his face in his hands. In the bedroom, on the
other side of the apartment, his cellular phone buzzes; waiting to be answered.

 "I know that, Mo. But he's in my system somehow. He can talk to me, so
I must be able to talk to him."

 The phone in the bedroom still buzzing impatiently.

 "He's dead. D-E-A-D. He's not in your system, he's not a ghost, he's just
dead. Just fuck off and leave me alone." As he leaves the door to answer the
phone, he can just make out her words as she calls through the steel.

 "You don't understand. Something happened. He went into the Witch-Hole and
something happened, didn't it? I need to know what happened!"

 Motorhead pulls the aerial up on the phone and presses a button as he wipes
sweat from his brow. "Yes," he manages to say.

 "Open the door and let her in, Mo. And keep the line open." It's Dex's
voice. Motorhead rushes for the door.

                                ***

He'd jacked the cellular into an old tape recorder which was the closest they
could get to Conference mode on the thing. Dex explains everything. Rhea's
escape into the mind of Kayjay and Kayjay's whereabouts, and he tells them
about the deal.

 "Shelley has his hands on something that could change the face of Vijayanta
and he's dealt some out to the street. Only four people know about this
and one of them is Rhea. That's why he wants it back so much. It's hot stuff, 
but lethal, and Shelley will have the London Outzone market cornered. Worst
thing is... Shelley's playing Sodha and Kistna off against each other, 
telling each one that they can control the distribution, and giving them
just enough information to make them paranoid that the other team has some
of it, too."

 "Sounds like he wants to put his own men in," Motorhead says. "What can 
we do?"

 "Well, we have to stop him. Dev Lung won't listen to us if we tell him he's
making a bad move, so we'll just have to stop Shelley. That means we have to
get Kayjay's body out of the Smallpox Hospital. She holds the trump card."

 "I can still get us into the St. James Secure Zone. Once we get in I can get
us into Brook Street Points, where Vijayanta's London offices are, but we'll
need an army to get past the security," Sarah suggests.

 Dex's voice provides the answer. "No need for an army. I'll get you in.
That's it settled, then. Get Kayjay and I'll sort it out. You have to be 
quick, though, Secure Zone curfew hours and all that stuff."

 Sarah finds herself nodding unconsciously to the phone. Motorhead unjacks
the thing from the tape machine.

 "So there it is," he says. "Dex is your new DI. So tell me, what the hell
are we supposed to do with Rhea when we get to Brook Street Points?"

 She looks at the young decker and sighs. "I don't know. I really don't
know."

(c) COPYRIGHT 1993 BY RIDLEY MCINTYRE
-- 
 ____ @     |  | Ridley McIntyre  -  gdg019@cck.cov.ac.uk | EARTH      CALLING |
|         __|  | Piglet 8@) -  On a  Flowery Space  Trip! | ANGELA: "Her black |
|     |  |  |  | "NAPOLEON!!!"    -         "AAAAAIIEE!!" | hair flowing  like |
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