From: gdg019@cch.coventry.ac.uk (Ridley McIntyre)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo
Subject: STORY: BOY [revised] (3 of 4)
Keywords: Rat 1.3
Date: 24 Jan 93 15:30:56 GMT
Organization: Fifth Column, Coventry, UK


                  	BOY - by Ridley McIntyre

				3. Rehash.

"Nixon. How are you? It's the Camden Town Boy. No, not anymore, I'm a free
man now. In Shitamachi dealing software to the Asahi Tag Team. Yeah I know...
fifty-five kills last night, you get a share? Better luck tonight, eh? Anyway,
I've got something you might like. I did a run for Kreskin last week, Texan
Army flight plans along the North Route. Yeah, well I asked for 750 bucks, but
Kreskin dropped his price, said he couldn't go any higher than 500. Yeah,
I know, I should have guessed he'd take me for a sucker. Anyway, the TAAF are
wise to it, so they've changed their flight plan. Yep. And I've got the new one,
too. I'll let you have it for 600 dollars, what do you say? Aces, it's a deal.
Transfer the money into a World Bank bin under the account name of Peter
Townshend. Of course I know who Pete Townshend was, but they're too stupid to
figure it out. I'll fax the details to you. Better send one of your jokers.
Pickup point will be on the fax. Anyway, time is money and you're eating my
phone bill. See you sometime."

 Dex has an airbrushed wheel-dial telephone, the colour of turtleshells. Kitty
says he has no taste whatsoever. When Dex reiterates that he likes strange
colours, she just shakes her head.

 "Who was that?" asks Kitty. She stands half-in, half-out of the doorway to
the kitchen. There is still a trace of vomit smell in the air in there after
a week.

 "Nixon's another Joker Lord. Officially him and Kreskin are rivals. So he'll 
buy it just to have something Kreskin hasn't." He wipes sleep from his eyes 
and pulls at itchy hair.

 "Think it'll work?" Kitty sips on ration pack coffee and makes a face as she
burns her tongue.

 Dex collapses onto his mattress and sighs, looking out through his window
at the condemned block across East 10th Street. Lines of age wrinkling the
building. The circular port-hole windows, like a thousand eyes all crying at
once.

 "It bloody well better work," he finally replies, hoping that soon, things
could get back to normal.

				***

Nixon has his package. Another group of mercenaries known as the Harlequins
are  also  interested in the information. A mission they were running for
the Pentagon went wrong, and they need to get back in and get their boys out.

 He meets them at dusk in Tompkins Square, when the day is hottest, and the
shadows are longest. The Harlequin Rigger's name is Fly, and he is a frail
twig of a man who needs a metal walking stick to stand upright. He is known
more for his abilities as a fence than for running a good merc group.

 The boys around him are typical San Angeles ronin, they are all six feet
two inches and have deep tans, dressed in Twin Soul Tribe garb (very baggy
coloured jeans and hooded sweaters). Dex has seen a million like these two
muscleboys, and they don't impress him. Fly introduces them as J.D. and 
Mavik.

 "So what's business like now, Boy?" Fly speaks in a dreamy, whispering tone,
a voice much older than he is; looking at him with eyes that are much wiser than
the frail man could ever be.

 "To tell the truth, the chipster business could be bottoming out here. I might
need to expand."

 "Expansion's always a good thing, Boy. If you're going to think at all, think
big. A real famous businessman said that once... But I'm damned if I can
remember his name."

 Fly gives a hoarse laugh and Dex joins in. J.D. and Mavik look calmly at the
decrepit housing blocks that surround the concrete plaza of Tompkin's Square.
Thermographic Sony vision scanning the windows for possible threats. They don't
even have to show what weapons they carry. They have rewired nerves for inhuman
speed and could probably take out a potential assassin before the hammer falls
on his gun. Stuff like that doesn't come cheap, though. Most of the Asahi
Tag Team who have rewired nerves had to go as far as the Tokyo Metroplex to
find a neurosurgeon good enough to do it. These boys have it as standard with
all the military trickery built into it. They look too dumb to know about
the  kinds  of  cut-outs  and glitches that come with  that  technology,
glitches such as tracers that show up on every military sat in the  world
and  activate  as soon as you stray from The Path. Glitches that Boy once
had to pay through his nose to get taken out.

 "Where's Man Friday? How's he doing these days? I haven't heard from him in
a long time."

 Fly pulls a nicotine stick from his black denim jacket and bites a piece off
the end. "He's still trying to find out what happened in Rio. Did he leave a
girl behind there or something?"

 Dex nods. "A wife, from what I remember."

 "Oh. Well, we think the FDI caught up with her and she's gone missing. He's
organising an expedition to find her, I think. We're gonna go in with him.
He wishes you were running Grid again. Says it ain't so much fun with you not
around."

 "Well, I'm officially retired. Except for this stuff. Good luck, anyway. If
you need any chips for Portuguese, you know where to find me."

 Dex and Fly banter this way for only a few more minutes, as both of them have
other places to go to. Fly eventually gives him about 400 dollars' worth of yen
for the data cube.

 Kitty watches Dex throughout these events. She can see his life here burning
out slowly. She can see from his blue-eyed, thousand-yard stare that his feet
are getting itchy again. Track record has proven that he doesn't stay in one
place for too long. Kitty needs him here, or at least with her. The two of them
aren't in love, not exactly, but what they have is more than a friendship. Some
kind of closeness that she can't afford to live without.

				***

He flicks the stop switch. Sweat pours from his face, stings his eyes,
leaves salt on his pink lips. His black hair is stuck to his wet head. He gasps
for air and finds the atmosphere is too thin for him in this grimy little room.
He pulls the leads from his head, rushes to the round port-hole window and
wrenches it open.

 Lukewarm air hits his face, cools him down. He sticks his head out into the
night's rain. It rains every night in Manhattan. Something to do with the high
humidity during the day condensing when the hot sun goes down.

 Across East 10th Street, three Asahi Tag Teamsters in their canary yellow
jackets and purple tiger-striped skintight jeans suck on nicotine sticks and
slap with each other about previous clashes. One of them breaks into a spurt
of superhuman martial arts to demonstrate his actions. Just visible behind the
kid's ear a microsoft shines from his Neuro-Sensory Transfer socket. Chipped for
Hapkune-Do, reflexes rewired and boosted by 10%, zen flowing from their new
Sony eyes. Boy looks at these kids and sees the future of the world. A future
he doesn't much care for anymore.

 He slides back inside and closes the window. Walking over to the middle
of the floor, he looks at the green screen of the unlicensed Fednet computer
and sees the results of this day's work. Two tickets to Narita waiting for
him whenever he wants. One way. His life here is falling to pieces, and it's
getting near the time to skin out. Tiny words glowing green in a dark room. He
looks at that screen and thinks he can see his future.

(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 |
|     |  |__|  |       - a rather visual Tank Police joke | an   acid   river" |
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