Farewell Horizontal

THREE

He’d fallen asleep among corpses. His fatigue had caught up with him, in the burnt-out sector. Dreaming of bad things; Axxter cradled his head on his wrist, back of hand against ashes and concrete. The familiar comfort of sleeping on a horizontal floor, no matter how torn where it ended in air. An even more comforting weight of metal on his chest, finger curled against sickle trigger. A space cleared among the grinning things, so they wouldn’t whisper in his ear. But he was dreaming of them nonetheless.

“You too!” Dancing in a circle around him “Even as we are! You too will be!” From their white faces and spider ribs the charred-tissue remnants flutter, black rags. (In sleep, Axxter moaned, clutched the gun tighter.) A skull squared off with a mortarboard cap turns to its audience, hand rattling like dice, the thin end of the pointer tapping on Axxter’s breastbone. The lecture-hall lights come up, blinding him, standing naked on the podium.

The pointer flicks his nose, then draws a line down to his navel. “We see the front side.” The skull’s voice is Guyer’s, oddly, but no longer kind. “The sun comes up on this side. We see this side, we know this side.”

“We see! We are! Will be!” White grins swaying in the seats. (The crosshatched handle sweats in Axxter’s grip.) “You too!”

“The sun goes up and over -” The pointer traces vertical between Axxter’s eyes, bisects his forehead. He strains to hear the skull’s words; some analogy here, but he can’t make it out. “Then it’s on the other side, the rear side. We don’t see that side, we don’t know what’s on it – we don’t even care!”

“Don’t care!”

“But ah! The center! The core!” A flourish, and an overhead mirror lights up. Axxter rolls his eyes brow-ward, to see what the pointer stabs at. And observes, with sick surprise, the reflection of a circular hole at the top of his own head. A flat hat of darkness that drops away into a hole parallel to his spine. The reflected light falls into it, with only a few glimmers as echoes. “That we know – something about!”

“We know!”

(Sleeps and draws a bead, but all the grinning things outside the dream stay prudently quiet.)

Skull, Guyer’s voice: “Something we don’t want to know! Something inside – where it’s dark!”

“Dark! Dark! You too! Dark!”

(Twitches and mumbles, sweating.)

Dream-Axxter stares at the hole revealed in the mirror, the darkness running down inside him, the hollow core.

The lecture goes on. “Something – it’s where they are! The -”

He shouts at the voice, just a grin behind the glare of the lights, warning it to shut up. But it doesn’t, he knows with dream-certainty that it won’t. It’s going to say the name.

Chorus: “You too! You too!”

“… the -”

Then the gun is right there in the dream – you’re never completely naked with one – and he squeezes it with both hands as the white face screams in triumph.

“ – the Dead Centers!”

In the corridor of ruins the gunshot slapped against the wall and bounced back into Axxter’s ears. He jerked awake, the gun in his hand scraping across the floor as he scrambled upright, just in time to hear the bullet’s clanging echo against the wall.

“Shit!” He ducked instinctively, head down between shoulders. “God-damn.” The bullet clattered into silence somewhere along the corridor. Gun warmth seeped into his palm; he dropped it with a start, as if seeing the weapon for the first time. Looking down, he saw a burn mark across the front of his jacket. Prodding his ribs, he found nothing amiss. A mutter, as he shook his head: “Fuckin’ dreams.” Could’ve killed myself. What I get for falling asleep, down here, of all places. His hand still shook as he reached for the terminal jack he’d found when first looking about the place.

As soon as he waggled his finger in the socket, the words zipped into his vision.

WHERE YOU BEEN? GOT ASK & RECEIVE HOT FOR YOU.

“Oh – yeah. Right.” He blinked away a bit more sleep muddle. Dark enough in the corridor, the exterior visible through the torn-open wall already fallen into deepshade, that he didn’t need the deadfilm. From the time readout in the corner of his gaze, he made a quick calculation: he’d only been asleep and locked into the dream for a couple of minutes or so. He’d called Brevis – no way of avoiding him, since the info value of the find depended on giving the ruined zone’s location – and Brevis must have called, as a good agent should, the numero-uno toplevel data agency. And sold it for a lot of money, Axxter hoped. “Put ’em through.”

Ask & Receive’s animated logo – hand with mouth in palm, then eye, then mouth again – came up on the terminal. Followed by a softly modulated female voice: “Please send location coordinates. Will credit to your account the sum of -” A male voice broke in, clipped and bored: “Two hundred dollars.”

“What?” Axxter stared at the mouth, eye, mouth pattern.

The words looped in repeat. “Two hundred dollars.”

“You must be joking.”

The male voice came again, a real-time override. “The price was worked out by your agent, fella. You want to check with him -”

“You bet your ass I’m checking with him. Hold this sucker,” Axxter instructed the line. “And get me Brevis.”

His agent’s face came up, one pacifying hand already stroking the air. “I know, I know -”

“Two hundred – what are you doing to me, for Christ’s sake?”

Brevis’s other hand rose, warding his client away from his throat. “That’s all they’ll pay, Ny. Believe me. They don’t even want your tape, man. Somebody beat you to it.”

“Somebody what?”

“Somebody else already got the info to Ask & Receive. And copped the initial report fee for it. Two hundred bucks is the standard payment for a confirming report from a second-on-the-scene. There isn’t any money for anybody who comes after you, Ny.”

“Two hundred bucks.” Axxter gritted his teeth, bitter spit under his tongue. They’re screwing me. First the angels tape, now this. He looked around, Brevis’s face floating superimposed over the charred corpses, the walls bowed and blackened by explosion, the torn skin of Cylinder itself. He had climbed in and taped it all, greed circuits kicking in at the sight of so much destruction. You get paid – you’re supposed to get paid – lots for info like this. The unprofitable corpses went on grinning at him.

“They’re screwing me.” Out loud. “There’s no one else around here who could’ve reported it. I’m the only one out in these sectors.” Except maybe Guyer Gimble, he noted to himself. And she would’ve told me if she’d spotted anything like this. “And the metal was still hot. From… whatever happened.” Still reluctant to speak it, the name the skull had shouted. “Nobody else could’ve come across it before me. They’re cheating me of the initial report fee.”

“Hey.” Another wave of Brevis’s professional sympathy. “I know that. You know that. But what do you want to do, get a bad rep with Ask & Receive? You’re gonna have to deal with these people long after this. They want to cheap out on you – just let it slide, Ny. You won’t be able to get as much money from anyone else.”

“They’re screwing me.” Axxter closed his eyes, but Brevis’s face didn’t go away. “Shit.”

“Take the money, Ny.”

The voice behind Ask & Receive’s logo sounded smug when Axxter got back to him. “Two hundred dollars all right, then?”

“Yeah, sure.” Your ass. He read out the coordinates for the zone and logged off. Not even bothering to check his account for the deposit of the fee.

It was a moment before his spirits rose again. “Not yet,” he replied to the nearest corpse’s grinning comment. “Soon enough, but not just yet.” Hadn’t been a total waste of a day. Two thousand for the mating angels, another two hundred – those fuckers – for coming across this place… Not bad; not really. “Puts me ahead of you.” A fly in search of unscorched nourishment crawled over the white face.

The dream came back to him as he reached across the floor and retrieved the gun. I get it now. The spooky lecturer, the hole in the top of his own skull, the darkness running down inside. Everything except the point of it all. He stood up, the gun heavy in his jacket pocket, and started walking back toward the exterior, the deepshade lighter than the ruined interior. His boots, pithons nulled on the horizontal, raised little clouds of gray dust.

At the jagged floor edge, the welcoming corpse lay across his path, white face turned toward where he had spotted it in his camera’s viewfinder. He stepped over it – bony hand reaching for his ankle, unable to grasp it – and looked back inside. He could still smell the burnt odor.

That’s what happens. Stupid shits – gave your lives for me, and all I got out of it was two hundred bucks. The people who had lived in this horizontal sector – bumpkins, this far from toplevel; machine tenders – had made their little deal with the Dead Centers – the name finally spoken inside Axxter’s head, the dream skull having broken the ice – and had made their final payment for it. That’s what happens. Even if you don’t think it’s going to happen to you.

He wondered what had made them decide to do it.

How long they had thought about it, talking during their lunch breaks at the widget factory, first sotto voce, then right out loud when everybody in the sector had been in on it. What had the Dead Centers said to them – the blandishments of things you’ve never seen, have only wondered about, moving in their secret ways in the great darkness at the building’s core and in your bad dreams. The whispering voices that had come through the thick, sealed walls way far inside; maybe a signal override on any Wire Syndicate transmissions coming in, just a crawl of words across the bottom of their terminals; maybe little rolled notes floating up in their toilet bowls, spidery handwriting, smeared sticky ink…

You’re so wise and good, dear people. The whispers through the wall. So clever and smart. Yet oppressed by those old lies, slanders against those who would befriend you. Let us come to you, and we’ll give you… everything… everything…

Everything, thought Axxter, looking down to where the scorched walls merged with the dark. What would that include? Who knows… all sorts of elaborate pre-War high-tech, no doubt. The Dead Centers were supposed to have inherited all of that stuff. Wonders upon wonders, hidden away in the building’s core. Maybe it had even been watching that old Opt Cooder tape, of the dead gas angel tangled in the exterior transit cable, that had worked away on the poor horizontal suckers’ imaginations. Common belief that the angels were the remnant of some military genetic technology, bred for some now-unfathomable strategic use. Forgotten the same as everything else connected with that ancient event. Maybe the Dead Centers themselves were what was left of one of the warring factions. Maybe the War itself… some effect of the other guys’ weapons, or their own… had changed them… left them crouching in the dark at the building’s core… whispering to those who could still stand the light…

Just let us come to you. Why should you let those ones above you push you around, cheat you of all you so richly deserve? We’ll help you… just let us come to you…

A shiver ran under Axxter’s skin. Fuckin’ spooked myself. The image came of the sector’s inhabitants, when they’d had flesh over their grins, drawing back the heavy bolts, cutting through the heavy steel plates, boring a hole through whatever stood between them and the darkness at Cylinder’s core… their minds made up after a unanimous vote at the sector meeting… or just made up, without a word spoken, silent greed flashing round from eye to eye -

They’d had a big surprise then. Wonder how long they had to think, Not such a great idea, after all. Not too cool.

At least they got to satisfy their curiosity. About what the Dead Centers even looked like. Toads with jewels in their foreheads, or nothing but shining rods of light, or small golden-haired children with dead eyes – the scary stories of childhood romped behind Axxter’s eyes. At least I listened to those tales; these poor suckers must not’ve. And look what they got.

Axxter’s gaze came back to the burnt zone, the smell in his nostrils. He turned toward the jagged edge of metal curling beside him, grasped it, and hoisted himself back out onto the vertical.

† † †

Deepshade to night. Axxter made camp as far away from the ruins zone as he could get before dark set in.

Even at a distance of several kilometers, the torn metal remained visible, a rim of jagged teeth biting at the stars.

Other than that, a peaceful scene, as he lay in the securely anchored bivouac, hands behind head, rehydrated food inching warm through his gut. The Norton grazed a few meters away, scraping up the wall’s vegetation with its extruded proboscis. My cup runneth over, or at least closer to the rim – Axxter scratched his stomach in deep meditation. Weird day; small profits, smaller than I deserved, but still – profits. A section of his lower intestine gurgled assent, echoing the noises from the motorcycle’s conversion tank.

Overhead, out from the wall, a circle of dark silver: the Small Moon rounding the building, catching only trace light from the toplevel and the thin ribbons of the Linear Fairs’ perpetual activity. He’d kept the transceiver on, angling his head to catch the weak bounce of a free-access station. Ancient music – the Liebeslieder Waltzes, somebody (-thing?) called Tampa Red’s “She Don’t Know My Mind, Part Two” – seeped up the wire to his finger and then inside to his ear. Interspersed with commercials – enlistment bonuses from the Havoc Mass (made him think of Guyer’s surprising faith), new stuff online to buy and watch (maybe the mating angels were already in the catalog) – all of which he ignored. Or tried to; the image of the figures in the bright sky kept seeping into his thoughts.

“Well, I looked in the window, and this is what I saw -”

Axxter ignored the barely human voice vibrating at the hinge of his jaw. He reached over and picked up the camera – after this morning’s lucky break, he had kept it handy – and cradled it against his chest. As if the image-data locked inside his archive were real blood and flesh. Magnified close enough to touch.

“- a man, on his hands and knees, doing… doing the cootie… cootie-cootie kuh-rawl.”

Well, shoot… made money today, didn’t I? Deserve some kind of treat for that. That’s how you program yourself for more of that kind of thing. That five-year-old kid at the center of your brain… Axxter didn’t know if he believed that sort of thing or not. Willing to let it slide, in the process of cajoling himself. Already knowing what he wanted. He shifted uncomfortably, the sling’s confines suddenly tight. Switched off the free-access, fearing something even worse than prehistoric Tampa Red.

The decision had been made by the raising of his bank account, intersected by the length of time he’d been out wandering on the wall. Two variables evoking a programmed response, his brain along for the ride. For a moment, the sheer predictability of his desires twinged disgust inside him. An idiot; he gazed at nothing, shaking his head. You’re an idiot. Why do you ding yourself around with her, anyway?

Axxter brought his vision back to medium focus, looking at the territory surrounding the bivouac. Seemed safe enough for a little indulgence in hollow time; at least in a certain fatalistic way, he supposed. There was no safecage for rent in the vicinity, the usual, advisable amenity for a disembodied spree. But then there wasn’t anyone else around in these sectors who might come across his body and do something weird with it. Unless Guyer had doubled back for some reason – an intriguing thought; he wondered what strange souvenir she might leave behind if she came across the sleeping, breathing meat part of him, his mind vacated elsewhere. Some pattern of bruises and muscles stretched into unusual postures, a trademark of hers written in the fatigue of tissues. Might be worth sticking around for, feigning being off in hollow time; I could dig it. If I knew it would happen that way. But it won’t. Guyer’s long gone, heading for toplevel inside rather than out of her own flesh. Pity.

Only the torn metal, black teeth against night, visible over the wall’s curve, worried him. Not enough to change his mind, though. A faint radiation, heat ebbing from inside the ruin zone, tinged the jagged limits. Whatever had done that wouldn’t be much fazed by a safecage with the tempting Axxter-morsel locked inside; it, or they would eat the whole goddamn thing, fry me up like a wienie on a spit. Of course, if they – the other two words had gone back down inside himself, not to be spoken – were going to come romping out, through the devastated stretch of their previous fun, to swarm out over the wall just to get him, it wouldn’t matter much if he was off in hollow time, or sitting up all night, eyes wide and gun on knee, waiting for the sun to break over the cloud barrier. So his reasoning, what was left of it after his internal cajoling, dissolved, fatalism giving the desired result. Might as well do what I want, without worrying about it.

He blinked on his terminal, the glowing words bright against the night sky.

YES?

“Get me HoloDays.”

YOU ARE THE VICTIM OF IGNOBLE PASSIONS.

“Jesus. Just do it, all right?” Fucker who programmed that… Shaking his head, Axxter leaned back against the building’s wall. The transceiver bounced a signal off the Small Moon’s metallic sheen, right to the toplevel.

The center of his vision brightened with the hollow-time agency’s logo. In one corner, the Small Moon Consortium nibbled away at his bank account, the call charges a shade less than the Wire Syndicate’s – for which Axxter was grateful.

A woman’s voice came, incongruous, from the smiling clock face. “What may we do for you?” One of the clock’s cartoon eyes winked cheerfully.

“Um…” The clock’s manic stare unnerved him, almost as much as the female voice. They always know what you want; otherwise you wouldn’t have called them in the first place. Ignoble passions. “I guess I need… about an hour. That’s all.”

“The second hour comes cheaper. By the time you get to the tenth hour, we’re practically giving it away.”

I bet. Axxter shook his head, the motion translating as simple no over the terminal. Listening to voices like the clock’s was how you wound up with a zipped-out bank account. “Just an hour, please.”

The voice stiffened, sensing cheapskate. “I don’t suppose you want full sensory, then.”

Another shake. “Just the minimum… gravity orientation, optic, midband aural… you know.”

“Right. Like your last order.” The person behind the clock face had pulled his number. “If that’s how you like it…”

… how much fun can it be. Axxter weathered the sneer. “That’s how I like it.”

“Guarded line?”

He could tell what answer the voice expected. “No; bare line.” Screw it; didn’t have any trouble with it last time. Why would ghosts be interested in his comings and goings over the building’s wires? When the voice asked, he gave the horizontal sector he wanted.

Another programmed wink from the clock face as his order went through.

“Transmission set.” (Inside his head, he heard the bored voice say There you go, sport. Enjoy yourself, Diamond Jim.) “Signal when ready. Your hour starts at the other end.”

The last bit was another comment on his spending habits. Axxter ignored it, settling into a comfortable position in the bivouac sling. Where, after lying for an hour without moving, he wouldn’t come back with a stiff spine and a tingling-numb leg. With a wadded-up shirt for a pillow under his head, he looked up; past the clock face, the Small Moon glowed silver. From the corner of his eye, he glanced over to the ruin zone’s jagged outline. What the fuck – too late to worry about it now. “Go,” he told the clock.

Walking, and he didn’t feel cold. The exterior’s winds no longer seeped through his clothing. On his skin, no warmth or chill; he supposed, as he had in his other hollow times, that he’d have to hold flame or ice to his arm to feel any temperature at all. At this low-resolution, he couldn’t even feel his boots’ impact, hear the ring of each step on the familiar corridor’s floor. Back here on the horizontal; outside, somewhere far downwall on Cylinder’s stark vertical, his vacated body rocked in the bivouac sling. Waiting for me to finish all my little business. He – or the carrier-image HoloDays had given him – scanned the numbers on each door he passed. Optic input not too bad, fairly crisp with only a little filtered stair-stepping at the edges of shadows and where the walls met. At least they got me on the right level. Be there in a minute or two; he wondered what she’d say. The same as last time – more of the same, actually, just continued; he remembered now how he’d pulled the plug and zipped back to his real body out on the cold vertical, scourged there by the whip of her tongue. Maybe it’ll be different this time; Christ, I hope so. The numbers on the doors were mounting up to the one for which he was heading. She’s not always like that. Thank God.

“You stupid shit.”

“Christ, and ugly, too. Look at him.”

The two voices, and the barking laughter that followed, sounded right at his ear, loud enough for him to flinch in reflex. The corridor bounced and wavered until the optic feed settled. Then he saw the grinning faces, edges sharper than the walls shimmering behind them.

They looked like depraved children. As if – Axxter’s heart sank under their leering gaze – as if they’d gotten an early start on every adult vice and sin. And their baby faces had never grown up, but stayed vapid, silly, and knowing.

“Boo-gitty boo.” One of the faces grinned wider, floating toward him. A wispy shadow, dwindled torso and arms, trailed behind. “Whereya going? Whatcha doing?”

Shit. Axxter batted at the face. Should’ve asked for a guarded line. Pushing my luck – just because I got away without picking up any ghosts the last time… “Beat it.” The back of his hand sailed into the idiot smile. “Get out of here.”

“Awww… don’t wanna play?” The ghost face, leprous freckles spattering the pug nose, had enveloped Axxter’s hand. A wet-flannel tongue rolled up his wrist. “Come on. Play with us.”

“Jee-zuss.” He couldn’t shake the face off his carrier-image. He waved it back and forth, the round eyes rolling. “Get the fuck away from me.”

“Your ass. Ass, ass, ass.” The other line-ghost, a face still on the wall, crossed its eyes and sneered. “Come on, let’s go. He’s no fun.” The image flickered, bands of nothing running across the fat cheeks.

“No.” The smile gummed around Axxter’s wrist. “Not done.” Looking up delightedly at him. “Play. Play, play, play.”

The corridor wall was blank, the second ghost having gone to look for other amusements elsewhere on the building’s wires. Axxter started walking again. “I’m not playing with you. I’m ignoring you.” That was all he could do, short of terminating the call. And I’ve already paid for the hollow time.

“Yaah, sucks.” His hand reemerged as the ghost slithered upward. It wrapped into a cylinder around his forearm, substituting itself for that portion of the carrier-image. The elongated mouth opened, revealing the inside of his arm to be now full of glistening teeth. I should just unplug and go back out on the wall – foreboding seized him as to how the rest of the call would go.

“Eeee!” shrilled the ghost face when he raised his hand to the door. Axxter hastily lowered the afflicted arm and knocked with his other hand.

Maybe she’s not at home – then what’s the point, asshole? You jerk. He couldn’t help hoping, though. His heart sank as he heard steps approaching on the other side of the door.

“Hello, Ree.” Forcing a smile. “It’s me.”

The door opened wider. She leaned forward, peering at the carrier-image until the low-resolution came into focus for her. “Oh, Christ.” A sigh dragged her shoulders down. “Ny – what the hell are you doing here?”

“Hey. I just came by to see you. That’s all.” He realized that he had spread his arms out, slack crucifix, and that the ghost was leering and rolling its eyes at Ree. “Sorry.” He tucked the arm and face back behind himself. “It glommed onto me on my way here.”

“What did?” Her squint became even more pain-filled, his mere presence, even in this diminished form, the cause. “Christ, I hate it when you show up all fuzzy like this. You were bad enough before.”

The ghost’s sawtooth voice came up his spine. “She can’t see me, turkey. I’m on your sensory feedback loop, not the output to real. Hee hee.”

“Ny – look at me.” Ree leaned against the doorway, her broad shoulders blocking any possible entry by the carrier-image. “Where… are… you. Okay? Just tell me that. Where are you right now?”

He had to think about it for a moment, to recall the exact coordinates. The ghost face goggled down at him as he ran his fingers through his indistinct hair, dimly sensed. “Uh – remember where I called from the last time? There’s that big exit site about fifty kilometers from the lefthand Linear Fair? You know? Anyway, first I was traveling straight downwall from there, then -”

“Shut up, Ny. Jesus Christ.” Her coarse bronze hair tangled against the doorway as she shook her head, eyes closed. They opened to follow her hands rooting through the dangly pockets caught on the shelves of her hips, coming up with nothing but an empty cigarette pack, which she disgustedly threw into the corridor. It passed through Axxter’s midsection and landed behind. “You’re still out there on the fucking wall. That’s where you are.”

“Well… sure. Where else?” From the angle of his arm, the ghost regarded him, its smile gone, interest caught.

“Yeah, right. Where else.” The bitter voice tugged down the corners of her mouth. “That’s the whole problem with you, isn’t it?”

“Hey! Tell this bitch where to go! Eat it, ya stupid broad!”

Axxter clamped a hand over his forearm, the goggling eyes leaking around his knuckles. “Come on, Ree… you know -”

“Damn straight I know.” She turned straight toward him, her expanding anger filling the doorway’s frame. If the carrier-image had a tissue’s mass, Axxter knew, it would’ve been blown down the corridor by the pressure wave of her wrath. “We went through it all the last time you showed up like this.”

He could hear, pitched over her voice, the line-ghost’s shrill Fuck you! Fuck you!, his own hand glowing mottled red as the face’s infantile passion seeped through. “Ree… please. Come on -”

Then it struck him. His head filled with light. The insubstantial body grafted onto his thoughts seemed to float equidistant from every corridor surface. “Fuck this,” said Axxter. “And fuck you.” (Yeah! Yeah! shouted the ghost.) For a moment the corridor, the door with Ree standing in it, all became insubstantial; he felt the narrow confines of the bivouac sling against his shoulders, his cramped muscles swelling with the pulse of his anger. Ree gaped at him as he continued to shout. “I spend all this money to come see you, and this is the crap you lay on me? Forget it. Just forget it. You – and all your goddamn fucking horizontal thought processes – you can just go fuck yourself.” (Eeee! Yeah!) He swung his gaze away from the door, a dizzying sweep across the square-edged vectors. Even before the perspective sightlines settled down, he was striding away, the impact of his boots now loud enough to cross the hearing threshold. “See you in the funny pages, bitch.” He shouted it ahead of himself, ahead of the carrier-image, and was gratified to see doorways all along the hallway snap fearfully shut.

“Way to go, ace! Yah! Yah!” The line ghost babbled happily.

“Shut up.” He gritted his teeth – or tried to; the carrier-image fed back no corresponding pressure inside the skull.

The face swung in a short arc as Axxter strode on. “You really told her! It was great!” The rolling eyes filled with delight and admiration.

“Yeah – great.” Never again. He shook the image’s head. Absolutely promise yourself – no more of this shit.

“I can get her for you! Fix her little red wagon but good!” The face on Axxter’s arm glowed, feverish in its excitement. “Come on – you and me – it’ll be a gas!”

“Goddamn it. Get off me.” He scrabbled at the face with the fingernails of his other hand. A pain signal traveled up the carrier-image’s arm, triggered by the self-inflicted violation.

“You’re no fun.” The face, sulky now, slid off and wavered in space. The grating voice called from behind him: “You stink, and your edges are all blurry… and… and…”

Alone with his own thoughts at last, and the anger still simmering in his guts. Or whatever’s in that place when you’re on hollow time; nothing, I guess. Nothing at all. Here or back in the flesh.

He looked up and saw himself.

A mirror, he thought at first. Right in the middle of the goddamn corridor. But different, he realized; as if it were made of some finer glass that had drawn the fuzzy low-resolution image into sharper focus, the outline razor-edged where it stood facing him. As he stared at it, the image turned its head, leaning a three-quarter profile toward him. Smiling; the centers of its eyes dark, nothing behind.

Ny – It lifted its hand toward him.

I – He heard the echo at his ear. The corridor filled with cold, and he felt afraid. “Okay! HoloDays!” He tilted his face up to the ceiling and shouted, all the while aware of the mirror-image’s hand reaching on a line level with his chest. The odd notion struck him that the more solid image might be able to reach right inside his insubstantial one, to pluck out some luminous fiber that was his heart. “That’s it – terminate the call.”

Don’t go -

O - “Did you hear me?” An edge of panic filtered into his voice.

The corridor disappeared. On his back, lying in the sling out on the wall, he looked up at the agency’s smiling clock centered in the terminal. He pulled himself upright, his spine unkinking with little stabs at each vertebra.

The clock face swam ahead of him, hanging in the dark night. A woman’s voice, a different one, sounded. “We hope you enjoyed your time with us. And that we may again be of service to you in meeting all your recreational needs. Remember: absence may make hearts grow fonder, but with HoloDays -”

“Cut it.” Axxter rubbed his brow; the time spent walking around in the carrier-image had left him hung over, as it had the last time and every time before.

Stiffly: “Will there be anything else?”

He gazed at the totaled charges in the corner of the terminal, and beyond them to the Small Moon in the distance off the building, relaying the signal from the transceiver. Away from the spooky mirror-image – whatever the hell that had been; more line-ghost shit, he supposed; but genuinely spookier – and back out here in his cheerless bivouac, the fear had dissipated. But not the anger; that remained, a dull rock under his breastbone.

That’s a fuck of a lot to pay for no fun at all. As he watched, the total went up another few cents, for keeping the HoloDays agency waiting on the line. A lot, just to have walked into more of that stupid Ree’s shit.

He brooded a moment longer before speaking. “Yeah, there’s something more.” He rubbed his hands across his knees. “First off, I want a guarded line this time…”

† † †

Guyer looked up from the book in her hands when he appeared. “That’s sweet.” Smiling. “You came all this way.”

HoloDays had put his image floating in space, a meter away from the wall. He reached out and grasped the edge of her sling. Somewhere farther away on the vertical metal, the gentle snuffling sounds of her grazing motorcycle came sharp and distinct to his synthed ear.

“I just wanted to see you again.”

She kept her finger in the book to mark her place. “Must’ve cost you.”

He let the carrier-image shrug for him. “They put on a surcharge for having Ask & Receive figure out your location. That’s all.”

The smile saddened. “I don’t usually do anything except real flesh, Ny. Just one of my little preferences. If that’s what you came here for.” She laid the book down on a pillow at the sling’s narrow end. “You know there’s places you could go for that; I could give you some recommendations.”

He shook his head. “No; it’s not important. But… if you wanted to give it a try… I paid for the complete sensory package. With on-line enhancements. I could respond very well.”

Her eyes widened a bit. “Really? You must be feeling pretty flush.”

Tilting the image’s head back, he looked up the dark height of the building, all the way to the distant top, the same black as the surrounding night. “No -” He looked back at her. “No, I just don’t give a shit.”

“Well… in that case…” Guyer reached out and brushed aside his shirt, a film of smoke over his skin. “It’ll cost you a little bit more still. Just on principle, you know.”

“Sure.” He closed his eyes. Her hand felt like fire as it moved down his ribs. “I understand everything.”

† † †

He laid his head on her breast. Lying together in the sling; she held him in her arms, a circle carefully held around the image. “I saw myself.” He tilted his face to look up at her. “Before. Before I came here.”

She made a motion to stroke his hair, the dark strands unreachable beneath her fingertips. “Really?”

“It was like a mirror. Only it moved when I didn’t.”

He could almost feel her stiffen against him. “Ny -” Her gaze was level and no longer playful. “If you see something like that again – and if it says anything to you – don’t listen. Okay? Just don’t. I know about these things.”

The carrier-image lifted up onto its elbows. “What would it say to me? It’s just a ghost on the line.”

With one hand, she reached and pulled a blanket over herself. “Some ghosts are different from others.” She smoothed the blanket across her legs. “They all want to play.” A sour word when she spoke it. “Just in different ways sometimes.”

He said nothing, watching her brush her tangled hair back from the side of her face.

“You’d better go, Ny. This is costing you money.”

He nodded. “What do I owe you?”

“Forget it. I’ll put it on your account; settle up the next time.” She lay back against the pillow and shut her eyes.

Back in his own flesh, he called up his bank account. The night’s little excursions had wiped out his small profits from selling the tapes to Ask & Receive, the angels and the spooky ruins. Under the silver glow of the Small Moon, he looked across Cylinder’s wall to the jagged silhouettes of the ruin zone’s torn metal. Solid black against black now, all the heat had died away.