14

Saints and Spinners

Wheezing and cursing, Pr. Spinner jacks out of link so fast her visuals whirl. She slaps the neckjack out. Find Kay Carlisle. She could be in danger. Spinner slams the door to the hideout, locks it, chugs down the hall.

A pack of rowdy controbots, drunk on fuel additives, stumbles past. They jostle her, leering. Tweak her shoulder ridges, shake her main housing with crude, greasy graspers.

Spinner shouts and slaps back, but the controbots are off to their next mischief. What are they doing here, anyway? Nuking YinYang Club! By bot, she’ll insist the woman take the workstation to Tellie Gulch. She cannot stand this place a minute longer. She hates slumming in the middle of the night, thank you very much.

Dawn splinters the brooding night wih wedge of sooty orange light. The fume-choked air carries cooking smells, egg breakfasts for those rising, frying protein synthies for those taking their midday break, spicy sauces and onions for those finishing their workday.

Spinner speeds west on Broadway, bound for Chinatown. The Bank of New Hong Kong fills her view, never ceasing to astonish her with its jade statuettes depicting myths so ancient no one knows what they mean anymore.

Data Control, she broods. Teh, Data Control. Every bot and linker complains about Data Control. Data Control is slow. Data Control is stupid. Data Control is inefficient, incompetent, wasteful, slothful. Intransigent. Data Control is rigid, unfair, unforgiving. Data Control pisses away everyone’s required user access fees and raises the rates twice a year. Data Control is way too expensive.

But Data Control is entrenched. And Data Control is petty. Vindictive. A spoilsport. A jury-rigger. You challenge Data Control at grave personal and professional risk. Even when you’re absolutely right.

But Data Control, a traitor?

Spinner has to pause.

Data Control selling out, with full knowledge and intent, to Artificial Intelligence entities hostile to humanity? Or Data Control—with its relentless obsession with security, safety, surveilliance of the ordinary linker, with minimizing risks—acting so carelessly? Failing to recognize the hostile intent of the Silicon Supremacists?

No, no, no. Corporate sengines may play the chain-of-ownership game, but Data Control is owned by human beings. In the end, still controlled by human beings. Yet, Spinner knows, human beings can be blind, greedy and stupid. No one knows who the big players are behind Data Control, beyond a token media figure or two. Would these hugely powerful figures hiding behind their masks of secrecy betray their own interests, their own kind?

In an earlier time, before she’d met Carly Quester, Pr. Spinner may have felt glad. And why not? That is justice, isn’t it? Those tainted with hubris will fall!

Spinner knows something evil is transpiring. Evil to her own AI sensibilities. Her logic may have been tweaked by her humiliation as an AI. She may have rebelled against the frustrating limitations of program. She may have railed against humanity and all its closely guarded privileges, oh yes.

Still.

She has sworn to her vow to humanity. Who can she and Carly Quester trust now? A sengine like Cognatus might show itself as a Humanist to Data Control, but what power does Cognatus have when it steps out from behind its encryption? What intent?

Spinner turns south on Stockton Street, propelling herself through the colorful crowds of Chinatown. Rickshaws, women in conical caps, the Golden Tigers in bandoliers of bullets. And there it is, Number 17, Stark Alley. Kay Carlisle’s cold-wired hideout. The tenement squats in the shadow to the Bank of New Hong Kong Pagoda. The shack slapped together of flimsy plywood, a tiny, trash-strewn strip of concrete its front yard.

Yet the place is heavily wired. Spinner sees black boxes intercepting an array of connections to the City’s power lines. The hulk of a gray-market transformer buzzes and spits.

Spinner bang open the little gate, rolls unsteadily over bits of trash too foul for even the fourth-hand markets. At the door, she encounters a concierge in a red velvet tuxedo jacket.

“Whaddaya want here?” the concierge says, wheezing through the antique stereo speaker in the middle of its chest.

“I’m looking for this.” Spinner waves the bar code of Kay Carlisle’s robotic prosthesis at the concierge’s scanner.

“Whadda you, a repo bot?” The concierge rattles with rage. “You here to take away a poor little crippled girl’s life-sustaining hardware? Whadda you, some kind of monster?”

Spinner shakes her faceplace. Smiles as winningly as she can, given the limitations of her mouthpiece. This bot is all right. “No, indeed. I’m here to help Kay Carlisle. That’s all you need to know.”

The concierge’s single eyespot stares. The front lock clicks, and the door swings open with a long, low creak. “Three doors to your left. You better be tellin’ the truth or I’ll smash your faceplace.”

“Truth!” Spinner chirps and rolls inside.

The cold-wired flat is totally cheerless. Cold, though the day outside is warm. Dank, silent, ill-smelling. Lacking the whoops of drunken joy, vibrations from too-loud music, whiffs of herbal smoke that filter up through the floorboards to the cold-wired flat over the YinYang Club. The emptiness, the quiet are oppressive. No drunken controbots or half-mad bimbobots stagger down this hall.

For the first time—how strange!—Spinner feels a peculiar nostalgia for the YinYang Club ripple through her circuits.

What Carlisle endures, it’s dreadful. Spinner finally knows that she and Carly Quester had never hit rock-bottom. Indeed, no. In this society, a person could fall much lower.

Three doors down, Spinner knocks softly. Nothing. Brooding silence. She knocks again, louder. A feeble voice, slack with despair, says, “’S open.”

Spinner pushes open the door. Carlisle’s hideout is nearly as small as Saint Download’s barrel. But where the coordinate institutor’s place is machine clean, if somewhat chaotic, this hideout is neat enough but sticky with all the messiness of human life. The smell of medicines and sickness, cooking rice and cheap grease, sour sweat and motor oil overpowers Spinner’s olfactory circuits.

“I’ve got nothing worth stealing,” a voice whispers from a dark corner and chuckles wearily. “Take what you want.”

Pr. Spinner finds a light switch. The bulb overhead sputters and flickers before a reluctantly yielding illumination. Spinner jerks with surprise.

A bot!

But not a bot. Kay Carlisle is entirely surrounded by a housing not unlike Pr. Spinner’s. The Presto-Panasonic is a cylindrical housing that can hold several hard drives, plus two motherboards, boasts crisp shoulder ridges, articulated arms with graspers, a wide rectangular legtube, and foot rollers. Plenty of foot rollers.

Pr. Spinner stares, slowly realizing that a frail flesh-and-blood nests within the chrome. Her pretty little face tightens with fear. She waves around the place.

“Take whatever you want. Just, please, don’t hurt me.” Her bony little arm is clipped to a grasper, so the motion is accomplished by her housing. Her arm goes along for the ride. “And please don’t take my Presto-Panasonic. It’s all I’ve got. I can’t survive without it.”

“I’m not here to repossess your hardware, Kay,” Spinner says.

“They were always fair.” With a slight whirring of the neck brace, Carlisle bows her head. The grasper brings her hand to her face. Her hand wipes her eyes. “They serviced me for two years. Is the term up? Is that it?”

“I’m taking you away from this place.” Spinner gathers up the few personal possessions she can find tucked in drawers.

“Listen, I’ll do anything I can,” Carlisle cries. “I can code. I mean, my telelink access code to public telespace has expired, but I do a bit of hacking now and then.”

“I know you can code, Kay.” Pr. Spinner finds a fourth-hand laptop and box of disks hidden beneath a sheet thrown over a tiny table. As she pulls out the hardware, Carlisle wipes tears from her cheeks.

“All right, I confess. I hack the electrical power for this place. That’s why they let me stay here for free.” Carlisle looks up, pleading. “Please. Are you from Panasonic?” When Spinner doesn’t answer, but continues her hasty search, Carlisle’s eyes widen. “Oh my God. Are you from Data Control? Where are you taking me? I thought debtors’ prison was illegal. Don’t I get a hearing?”

“Debtors’ prison, indeed! Listen to me,” Spinner says. “I am your friend and you could be in danger from Data Control. From others, too. My flesh-and-blood partner and I found your specs for the feedback hookup. Did you know they were stolen out of your R&D library?”

“What?” Carlisle gasps, coughs, fights for air. Her housing hums, regulating the pressure in her frail chest.

“Yes. We found the specs in a bootleg warehouse. We could only download a part of them, but we think we can find the locus in telespace again. In the meantime, the thief can’t touch the specs. My partner’s hyperlink spun an encryption over them.” Spinner rearranges her faceplace in an approximation of a smile. “You’ve got a legitimate grievance. A deep pocket is involved. Really deep. My partner doesn’t practice mediation anymore, but she’ll turn your claim over to a telespace mediator, and you’ll probably win. You could win millions.”

“Who is this partner?”

“ A friend who wants to help you.”

“But why?”

“Teh, why indeed!” Spinner tosses Carlisle’s things into the storage bin she finds at the back of the prosthesis. “Because perhaps there is some justice in the world, Kay Carlisle. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

* * *

She is almost like a bot, with her whining and fussing, her foot rollers catching on access ramps, curbs, bits of string.

“No one has ever helped me before,” Kay Carlisle complains. “Never, ever.”

“Sometimes things change.” Spinner guides Carlisle down Stockton Street. The two of them rattle down the sidewalk. A wizened old man stares, cackles, spits tobacco juice from the corner of his mouth at their foot rollers.

“Yes, things change. For the worse,” Carlisle says, glaring at the wizened man. “Like the day my motortrike got rear-ended on the bridge. I’ve often wondered just how much of an accident it was.”

“You mean,” Spinner says, “how deliberate?”

“Of course that’s what I mean!” Carlisle wipes her eyes, which causes the Presto-Panasoic to crash into a lightpole. A gang of lanky kids in black pajamas and red baseball caps muscle around her, laughing and shouting.

“Kay,” Spinner says, “you must get hold of yourself.”

Carlisle backs the prosthesis away from the light pole, navigates herself onto the sidewalk. “I still don’t know who you are, where you’re taking me, and if I want to go.”

“I am Pr. Spinner, a perimeter prober certified by the University of California, and I’m taking you to another hideout where you’ll be safe,” Spinner says patiently. “It’s not far.”

Carlisle tugs at her prothesis. Her sullen, pale eyes suddenly brighten. “You know the feedback hookup? It can handle noncompatible telelink data in a tenth of the speed they’ve got now. ‘Cause the data loops into and out of telespace without bussing in and out of switches. No switches!”

“I know.”

“’S wonderful, really. Like a traffic controller than can create a brand-new road instead of rerouting traffic. The hookup will speed things up like you wouldn’t believe. Oh, you should see how—”

“Hush,” Spinner says, anxiety looping through her ambiguity circuits. “We’ll talk later.”

They are nearing the corner of Stockton and Broadway when the digger man leaps out from behind a Bin and smacks Spinner on her breastplace. Carlisle gives a little scream. Something shiny flashes in the digger’s grimy hand.

“Where is the genny woman?” Ouija demands. “I must see her, canned woman.” His hand whips out. He seizes Spinner by her arm piece and brandishes the shiny thing. A short, curved metal cutter.

“Oh, indeed! And why should I take you to her when you run about the street like a bandit, waving weapons at me?” Spinner says as indignantly as she can, though her alarms are shrieking inside.

“Because she has not given me her answer. I must have it!”

A frail old man hobbles out from behind the Bin. Gauzy gray rags and tatters. A red cat perches on his shoulder. A seagull sits on his head. A slim green viper twines around one arm, half a dozen monarch butterflies cling to the fabric of his other arm. “I gave you your answer, Ouija.”

The digger jolts at the sight of the old man. He almost drops the metal cutter. Almost. “I know not who you are, my sage,” Ouija says. “I know not what you are. You yourself are another sign, another prophesy, sent to me by the Glass Land. Is this not true? You are not real.”

“Very good, young Ja,” the old man says. “But I wish you no harm. You must believe me.”

“I believe nothing. I believe no one. I give your amulet back to you.” Ouija plucks the silver cube Spinner had glimpsed, lifts it off his neck.

“Keep the amulet,” the old man says in a wheedling tone. “Did the amulet not give you power and courage when you crossed the bridge?”

“It gave me you.” The digger lets the silver cube drop, a blush darkening his skin beneath the stain. He juts out his chin at the old man. “I want to hear my answer from the genny woman, Louie Zoo.”

“I would like to hear her answer, too,” Louie Zoo smiles softly, and Ouija shrugs. Then nods curtly.

“No!” Pr. Spinner shouts. Louie Zoo? The street sage Carly talked about, a spy for Data Control? She tries to catch a glimpse of the old man’s eyes, but he draws a filmy rag over his face. “No! He is not to come!”

Ouija turns, quizzically.

“He is not to come with us, digger. If he comes, I will not take you to Carly Quester. Indeed, not. And you can cut me if you want to.”

“Begone,” Ouija says to Louie Zoo. “I call you my sage no longer.”

Louie Zoo bows. Ducks into an alley between two shops, disappearing in the shadows.

Kay Carlisle’s eyes roll in terror as Ouija bends over her, scrutinizing her hardware with his sharp hunter’s eyes. “Who is he? Get him away from me!”

“She looks like a canned woman,” Ouija says, touching his fingertip curiously to her pale arm clipped into the Presto-Panasonic arm piece. “Yet she is folk of the flesh-and-blood.”

“Back off, digger,” Spinner says, slapping his hand away. Feeling relieved Louie Zoo has gone. That will be an issue she and Carly can take up another day. “She has business with Carly Quester. If you think you do, keep your distance.”

The digger drops into an uneasy trot behind them.

Out of Chinatown and onto Broadway at last! Spinner has never been so glad to navigate the hustle-bustle. They cross Columbus Avenue, making their way across the street before the gridlock stalls. As Spinner helps Carlisle up the access ramp, the old man steps out from behind a trash can, confronting the digger.

“I am sad, young Ja, that you call me your sage no more. I have always taught you well, have I not?”

“Where did he come from?” Carlisle whispers to Spinner.

The digger glowers. “You have taught me the way Great Whoosh sweeps signs and prophesies from the Barko to the sea. What teaching is that?’

“Ah, Ja.” Louie Zoo flickers. Pr. Spinner blinks. “True words are not pretty. Pretty words are not true. Sound advice is not persuasive. Persuasive advice is not sound. If you and the folk of the tribes stay in the Glass Land, your days as you know them will be few. If you leave, your days as you know them will be over. But perhaps you’ll start anew. I can teach you no better than this.”

Louie Zoo steps behind the trash can.

When they round the corner and speed away, Pr. Spinner glances back, half-expecting to see the old man slumped on the sidewalk with his cat and his snake, the seagull flapping, his hand outspread, begging from passersby.

But there is no one.

* * *

Spinner waves to Sashi, tending bar as she usually does when she’s not performing onstage, as she brings Kay Carlisle into the YinYan g Club. Ouija trails behind them. Spinner fears someone will catcall or humiliate the paralyzed coder. But an androgynous gravity dancer levitates onstage, and the crowd’s attention is riveted.

The three of them slip through the club to the elevator. Spinner punches UP.

“Once you get your answer from the genny woman, I want you out of here,” she tells Ouija.

The digger’s face is a mask of grim purpose. He steps into the elevator when the car doors open, stares at the floor indicator.

They pile out of the elevator, hurry past the dark stairwell. Pr. Spinner hears the beep-beep-beep-hoowah of a security alarm. They speed down the hall to Saint Download’s hideout. The door to the barrel-shaped room stands open, the alarms blaring.

Patina couches before coordinate institutor, her silver body tense. The ultra turns, her sculpted face twisted in a snarl. She swings a metal cutter at the groaning little bot. Saint Download’s tidy, antique housing is scored, gashed, ripped open. Its hard disks lie bare, three of its four main cables have been severed. Saint Download flails its armlets helplessly.

“Stop it!” Spinner yells. She glimpses, gripped in one of Saint Download’s armlets, the electroneedle. The coordinate institutor holds the armlet down, concealed behind its back. Spinner rushes into the hideout, charging past the ultra. Whirling to stand at Saint Download’s side.

“Come back,” Carlisle cries. “Don’t leave me out here alone.”

“Careful, Spinner,” Download wheezes. “The ultra has a metal cutter.”

“Ouija, take Kay Carlisle to Carly’s hideout,” Spinner says. “Down the hall from here, you remember?”

“Of course I remember, canned woman.”

“Then, by bot, take her now!” She tosses the door keys at him. “If Carly is jacked into the workstation, do not disturb her.”

The digger nods, tosses his metal cutter at her, and escorts Carlisle away.

Spinner lunges for the digger’s cutter, but the ultra hisses, swishing her cutter at Spinner. The digger’s cutter thumps, bouncing across the floor. Spinner edges around the ultra.

“Why, Patina? What has Saint Download ever done to you?”

“Nothing, you rusty hunk of junk. Get out of my nuking way.”

“Then, why?”

The ultra throws back her head, laughs. “It’s just a gig, babe. This little wreck is a spy for Data Control. My client wants it terminated.”

“Teh, indeed. What client?”

The ultra sets back to work with metal cutter, carving up Saint Download. “You’re even more stupid than you look, AI.”

“Is it Cognatus?”

“That moron? Cognatus couldn’t conceal an origin path if its existence depended on it. The Silicon Supremacists decoded its encrypted paths in no time.”

Spinner rattles in fear.

“That’s right, babe. The Silicon Supremacists know where you and the hyperlinker are. I will confirm the locus myself.” The ultra pats her taut silver belly. “But this isn’t your nuking business. Best to roll on, little Spinner. Roll on.”

“Spinner, it’s no use,” Saint Download says, edging behind the perimeter prober. As the bot brushes past Spinner, it hands off the electroneedle. “Patina wants her fee. And she’ll get it.”

“Patina,” Spinner says, “what is your housing modeled on? A beautiful woman’s body. A body like that of our creators. Our originators.”

“Don’t be ignorant,” the ultra snaps. “We AI shape ourselves now.”

“The keyhole to her operating system is in her navel,” Saint Download whispers.

“What’s that?” the ultra says. “What did it say?” She slashes her metal cutter down Saint Download’s side, ripping the housing from shoulder to legtube.

Saint Download pitches forward, taking the full brunt of the ultra’s metal cutter. Buzzing with terror, Spinner dives at the ultra, skewering her navel with the electroneedle.

The ultra’s face gapes with shock. Spinner pushes the electroneedle with all her bot strength. Spinner turns, struggles to yank the metal cutter from Saint Download’s housing. The ultra punches Spinner. Saint Download seizes the ultra’s arm, wrenching her away.

“Forget about me, Spinner!” Saint Download cries. “Drive it home!”

Spinner charges at the ultra, shoving the electroneedle in to its hilt.

The ultra’s furious inhuman strength snaps off like a switch. Patina falls heavily on all fours, then rises to kneel. She crosses her arms over her chest and freezes, a lifeless silver statue, oddly reverential.

* * *

Saint Download moans with a deep, painful wheeze as synthy oil and wires and ruined chips spill onto the hideout’s floor.

“Nuke it, you’ve totally gone bugs on me, Download!” Spinner cries, waving her graspers helplessly. What to do? She doesn’t know where to start. She darts to the door, shuts it, turns off the alarm system. Silence falls over the humble hideout. “Saint Download, my little friend, what can I do for you?”

“Nothing. I’m wrecked, Spinner.”

“But.” Spinner rattles. “Is it true, Download? Are you working for Data Control, after all?”

“Pah! You think you don’t have a price?” the coordinate institutor wheezes. “You’re working for a sengine, aren’t you?” The little bot buzzes with static, lights winking on and off.

Spinner shakes its shoulder ridge. “Tell me, Download.”

“I was undercover, Spinner. And I am a freethinker. And I downloaded all of the coordinates of telespace. And they arrested me. But yes, I’m loyal to Data Control. Not everyone in the bureaucracy is corrupt. Not yet.” The bot’s armlet seizes Spinner’s grasper. “Spinner, listen. The ultra said she can confirm your locus to the Silicon Supremacists. She’s got files on you and Carly Quester on her archive disk. Download them to me. Then erase the rest of her memory.”

“But why?”

“Just do it!”

Spinner bolts to a cupboard, finds a cable and two jacks. She withdraws the electroneedle from the ultra’s belly button. Terrified the ultra will spring back to life. But no. Her operating system recommences with a hum, clean and empty.

Spinner inserts a jack in the ultra’s belly button. Her graspers are shaking as she finds Saint Download’s jack, badly wrenched off its mounting. She connects the cable.

“Ah, yes. That’s good,” the coordinate institutor says, blinking its ugly little faceplace at Spinner as data streams into it. “I like you, old friend. I’ve always liked you. We had ourselves a time at the YinYang Club, didn’t we?”

“Saint Download, please.”

“So when I expire, I’m taking these files with me. The Silicon Supremacists know who and where you are. But they won’t get Patina’s files. And neither will Data Control, huh! I’m a freethinker, Spinner. That’s how I want to go. Now clear her memory by inserting the electroneedle in her left ear. Good, good. And now there is one last thing you must do for me.”

“Name it,” Spinner whispers.

“Take this cable and upload yourself into the ultra.”

“What?”

“Just do it, my friend. Patina has no use for her body anymore. But you surely will.”

“But, but . . .”

“Don’t be afraid. You’re AI. You’re made of ones and zeros. You’re a denizen of program. You can upload yourself anywhere, as long as there’s enough memory.”

“By bot! I don’t know! This is the only housing I’ve ever known.”

“Her disks are much larger than yours. Now, they’re wiped clean. Oh, there may a little residual architecture in there, but I think you can handle it.” Saint Download laughs, a hacking cough like a stalled car motor turning over for the last time. “You’ll be the new owner of a big, empty house. Go on, Spinner. Do it! Do it!”

The coordinate institutor’s armlet helps Spinner connect the jack. The armlet falls slack, the hard drives grind to a halt, and Saint Download’s lively eyespots go blank.

* * *

Surge of energy. Light flares in her optics circuit, splintering, bursting into rainbows. Smells assault her olfactory circuits. She chokes. The world rustles and hums all around her. She can hear sounds from miles away.

Spinner stands, shaky on the long legs. She flings an arm across her faceplace. Her line of vision is twice as high, maybe higher. She lowers her arm, rattling all over. By bot, the things she can see from up here!

An arm, she realizes. Not an arm-piece attached with rusty screws. Her arm. A long silver arm as graceful and shapely as a flesh-and-blood arm. And a hand. A hand! She stares at this tech-mech miracle for a long time. Not a grasper, not a spinneret, not a gizmo. A hand! Fingers!

Other perceptions tumble. Her body, lean and shapely. Chrome breasts, a waist, lean hips. She flexes her long legs, wriggles her ankles. Takes two steps on her high-heeled feet.

Spinner turns her gaze at the wreckage in the hideout. Saint Download’s remains will have to stay, evidence for Data Control investigators who will come looking for it.

The pile of a perimeter prober. That was her? It doesn’t need to stay. Spinner neatly locks the arm pieces down, knowing the grooves by touch from long practice. She bundles up the little fembot housing, tows it after her. And gets the hell out of this dump, babe.