Fools

Book 35: Gateway Essentials

by Pat Cadigan

Genres: Cyberpunk; Dystopian

Synopsis

Warning: Personalities for Sale. All the World's a role. In a world of brainsuckers and bodysnatchers, you can't take anything for granted. Not even your own identity. When Marva, a struggling Method actress, wakes up in a hologram pool in an exclusive priv club with fancy new clothes and plenty of money, she knows something is strange. When a memory of a murder starts tugging at her, she knows something is very strange, and that she'd better find out whose life she's living. Fast. Pursued by assassins from a mysterious Escort Service and renegade mind-pirates of every description, Marva must venture into the seamy Downs to find out who wrote the script of the most difficult role of her career. Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best novel, 1995

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 304

Sample

Everywhere I looked in Davy Jones’ Locker, I saw me, or people who wanted to be me. And the club wasn’t even half full yet. I knew I was going to love being Famous.

The holo fish floating through the deep blue holo water flickered, vanished, and then reappeared more vividly than before. I could relate; I’d just flickered into existence myself, it felt like. A small price to pay for being Famous, these little lapses. Happened whenever I had to fine-tune the system, nothing terribly serious. All I had to do was give myself a few minutes to get oriented, take a few deep breaths, and it would all come back to me. It always did.

I caught sight of my new manager on the other side of the club, talking to some of the employees. I gave him a cheery wave to cover the fact that I could not, at that moment, remember his name. Post-mindplay amnesia can be so embarrassing.

He froze in midgesture, both hands spread in front of him, and stared at me as if I had two heads or something. Migod, I thought, what was his drama? Had I come out too early, should I have still been in back putting on another coat of paint for La Grande Entrance later?

I gave a big, exaggerated shrug à la Constanzia, the role I had just finished playing at Sir Larry’s. It would have been just like Constanzia to jump the gun this way – maybe I could blame it on leak-through. For all I knew, it was leak-through. My manager started to take a step toward me and one of the employees pulled at his sleeve. I was pleased to see that she had already been made over with the Look, though I doubted she had been enfranchised completely. It wouldn’t have been much like me to be serving refreshments in a club, even a club like Davy Jones’ Locker.

She said something to my manager and then pointed toward the back room. He looked torn, turning from her to me and back again, long white hair swinging with the movement. I made a dismissing gesture to tell him that he didn’t have to worry about me right now and went for a stroll to admire the decor. I’d been to Davy Jones’ plenty of times, but tonight, it was all mine, hired for the debut. My manager certainly knew what would make me happy. I was going to have to figure out some way to keep his name from melting out of my memory all the time. It was the least I could do.

The club was starting to fill up now, but for some reason, nobody seemed to notice me wandering around. Maybe because I wasn’t really dressed up – I still had on my street clothes, which were as nondescript as a person could get and still remain visible. Well, I’d just have to rely on my manager or my valets or both to drag me back to the dressing room at the proper time. After all, what was the point of being Famous if you couldn’t leave the little details to the people who were supposed to take care of them?

On the other side of the main room, the funhouse mirror was already running and drawing a crowd, so I decided to go over and have a fast look. Once the party really got going, they’d be lined up half a dozen deep and climbing all over each other for a turn in front of it.

An oyster bed faded into existence in front of me on the floor. The jeweled shells opened to disgorge pearls that rolled into the golden sand. It was very pretty, but I’d seen it about a million times before. Not so much pearls as chestnuts; I’d have thought I rated something a little less overexposed. I tiptoed through it so as not to spoil the illusion. Hackneyed or not, there was no reason to be rude.

I was a good ten feet away from the mirror when I suddenly got the strangest urge to turn around and run for the nearest exit as fast as I could. More than an urge – it might have been some kind of inner alarm going off. Migod, I thought, I wasn’t getting one of those tiresome body-image problems where you get all mirror-phobic and start starving yourself, was I? I’d heard that sometimes happened to people after they became Famous – something about seeing yourself in so many different places that you developed some kind of aversion. I’d have thought that I would have been the last person to suffer from something like that.

Then I saw the more likely explanation for my sudden case of dread – i.e., Em-Cate, big as life and twice as gruesome. She was actually preening in front of the mirror, admiring her reflection, which had come up as a silvery-white shark. Typecast again, I thought, feeling nasty. Why on earth had she come here? She’d known as well as I had that the invitation had been only a formality. I couldn’t imagine Em-Cate wishing me well under these circumstances or any others. There had never been any love lost between us at Sir Larry’s but now that I was going to be Famous and she wasn’t, she had dropped all pretense and had been openly displaying her revulsion for me.

Well, the timing on this thing could have been a lot better, too. My manager could have made the franchiser wait until I’d finished with the role at Sir Larry’s before announcing I was under contract. But the contract with the franchiser wasn’t going to interfere with the play – I had promised Sir Larry’s. Of course, as soon as the last performance was over, I’d be lucky to get fifteen minutes to gather up my personal belongings and clear out, probably with Em-Cate dogging my every step to make sure I didn’t make off with something that belonged to the theatre. And like what – a jar of pancake, for God’s sake?

Professional jealousy was a monster. I hoped to God that it would never happen to me. I liked to think that if they’d gone for Em-Cate instead of me, I’d have been big enough to hold my nose, grit my teeth, and say, Congratulations. Or maybe just Good-bye and good luck. Or, okay: Good-bye.

She’d been such a pig about things that I would have sworn she’d have flung herself off the tallest building in Commerce Canyon sans parachute before she’d attend a party in my honor. But it had been an open invitation for anyone and everyone at Sir Larry’s; no other polite way to handle it, really. Almost everyone had told me they planned to come, though the director had begged off, claiming artistic differences. Just what I would have expected from a man who mainlined Fosse, but at least Bayles wasn’t a hypocrite.

If Em-Cate thought I was going to let her presence sour things for me, she could write up her own scenario and stick it in her eye. I sidled up next to her and said, ‘Enjoying the show, Em-Cate?’

She turned away from the mirror and blinked up at me. (She also hated me because I was taller. Tonight, she must have forgotten her stilettos, which would have brought her up to about the level of my nose.) ‘Pardon?’

‘I said, “Enjoying the show, Em-Cate?”’

She blinked some more, a habit Bayles had practically had to beat out of her, since it tended to leak through to her character. ‘Why, yes. Yes, I am. Thank you.’ She gave me a puzzled smile and went back to admiring the shark.

Migod, I thought, the bitterness of her jealousy knew no bounds – now she was pretending she didn’t even know me! I felt so bad for her. Well, for a second, anyway.

On Em-Cate’s right, Twill Carstairs – of course he made it up – paused in his admiration of his own reflection, a stingray wearing a bow tie on the stinger, to look at me curiously. Twill and I had always been on good terms, even though I knew he really didn’t approve of what I was doing, and probably wouldn’t have accepted an offer like it himself. Which was too bad – with the right ad campaign, lots of people would have wanted to be him.

‘Looks like another satisfied customer already,’ he said, glancing at Em-Cate.

Was he referring to himself or Em-Cate? ‘Well, I’m still an entertainer, Twill,’ I said. ‘Even when I’m just helping you entertain yourself.’

His square face took on a wary expression, as if I had said something patently untrue. Maybe Em-Cate’s rotten mouth had finally gotten to him and he had decided I was scum after all. Or had he and Em-Cate hit up the pharmaceutical buffet early and scrambled their brains? I smiled at him and turned to the mirror.

Oh, very clever. Instead of a shark or a stingray or some other fish, I had an aquarium filled with all sorts of exotic-looking fish. Em-Cate and Twill were staring at it curiously.

‘If you’re thinking something about small fish in a big pond,’ I said, ‘keep in mind that it’s my pond.’ I gave them both a farewell salute and moved off.

‘Was that … you know,’ I heard Em-Cate ask as I moved away.

‘If it is, I don’t like how much she’s giving away with it,’ Twill answered.

Well, that made no sense whatsoever. Maybe they hadn’t waited to hit up the pharmaceutical buffet and picked up some cheap risers before they got here. Best to get back to the dressing room and stay out of trouble, I decided. I looked for my manager – dammit, what was his name? – but I couldn’t see him or any of the employees he’d been talking to. Davy Jones’ was getting more crowded by the moment; he was probably searching for me even more frantically than I was searching for him.

‘I thought they’d sent you home.’

I turned around. Sovay’s bleached face had soaked in every bit of blue light. It made him look slightly luminous. ‘Are you serious?’ I said. ‘Go home and miss my own debut?’

His expression went from wary to openly amazed.

‘Migod,’ I said wearily, ‘is everyone on some kind of new drug that makes everything I say sound astonishing?’

‘ “Migod,” indeed,’ Sovay said slowly. ‘I suppose what I really find astonishing is what some people will do to other people for the sake of a profit.’

Given our history together, Sovay was probably the most entitled to a say about what I was doing. But mind-to-mind contact hardly meant that he owned me, not as a fellow performer, and not personally. After all, he was married full-time, a fact he had gone to great pains to impress on me.

‘I don’t see where the choice I made constitutes my “doing” anything to you or anyone else at the theatre,’ I said. ‘So I decided to pursue the franchise rather than continue onstage – so what? I didn’t try to force anyone to go and do likewise. I didn’t even suggest anyone for the recruiter to talk to, though I’m sure if I told him you were interested in a no-obligation interview, he’d be happy to meet with you. He’s a great recruiter and an even better manager.’

‘Who do you think you are?’ Sovay said, that fragile, bleached skin wrinkling with concern. He should have taken a semi-immobilizer to prevent overexpressing before he was repigmented. Unless he actually wanted his face to look like crumpled paper for some reason.

‘Okay, okay, I know,’ I said, ‘you’re getting little flashes of Constanzia, aren’t you? It’s not really leak-through, just a little flashover, and that’s quite normal, nothing to do with the franchising programs. It’s just that she’s the freshest portrayal and, frankly, she’s my favorite.’ I spread my hands and wiggled my fingers. ‘It’s a tickle to have a grand gesture for every occasion.’

Sovay put a finger to his mouth, caught himself, and stroked his chin instead. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘tickling is actually a very sadistic thing to do?’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Even if you tickle yourself?’

‘You can’t tickle yourself.’

We stared at each other for a long time. Mindplay amnesia had not affected the memory of how he had felt mind-to-mind and how I had felt to him. He had been as surprised as I had; Sovay, the man of stainless, no-rust virtue, devoted to his plump little drab of a wife, discovering love-at-first-contact.

There hadn’t even been time for second thoughts – when you’re mind-to-mind in a system, the speed of thought makes the speed of light look like a snail’s pace. Perhaps if there had been time to consider, my nobler instincts might have won out, but I hadn’t had that option and neither had he. Personally, I’d always thought we’d done the best thing for everyone. Some things you just have to get out of your system. Once it had happened, we’d gone on with the character interplay and it had been the best session I’d ever had with anyone.

Thank God his guilt-storm hadn’t hit until after we’d disconnected – I couldn’t have taken such an onslaught myself. I’d told him over and over that his wife needn’t ever know, that it wasn’t as if he’d been unfaithful to her in fact or in act. A fantasy for two is as unreal as a fantasy for one, after all. But he just couldn’t seem to allow me to reassure him; it was something he had to work out to his own satisfaction by himself and I supposed he had. I didn’t know for sure because we’d stayed out of each other’s head after that, and he never discussed it with me.

But though he seemed to return to normal, there were times when I would catch him looking at me in an odd, almost suspicious way, as if he were sure that whatever I was thinking threatened him in some way. I figured he was just afraid that if I went mind-to-mind with anyone else, the whole dirty little story would spill out into the middle of whatever scene we were working on. I wanted to reassure him, tell him I could keep a secret and that just because I was mind-to-mind with someone didn’t mean I felt compelled to show everything I had. But I had never been able to bring myself to say anything at all to him. His whole being, which I knew better than I’d ever planned to, warned me to keep my distance.

Now he was probably afraid that someday, someone would run up to him on the street, declare undying mental lust, and demand to relive the entire experience.

Poor, silly scared boy. Part of me wanted to tell him his fears were groundless. Another part of me said to let him suffer. That he didn’t seem to understand me as well as I understood him was a pretty telling thing.

‘You know,’ I said after a bit, ‘if you devoted a little cold rational thought to things – just a little – you’d be a lot better off. But as long as you drag around all that sad baggage, I can’t help you. You can’t even help yourself.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘Maybe I can help you.’

I laughed and moved off toward where I thought the dressing room might be. Sovay helping me – what a novel idea. The man was fine as long as he was pretending, but put him in a real situation, even an unreal-real situation of the strictly mental variety, and he fell on his face.

A bright yellow fish with spines all over it sailed by me and then circled around for another pass, closer this time. I was appalled to see that it had the Look, too. Migod, I thought, club employees were one thing but the party decorations, too? Whose brilliant idea had that been, the club’s or my manager’s? The price of being Famous, I supposed. I made a shooing motion, hoping that whoever was on the holo controls was paying attention and would send it away or make it disappear altogether. I was going to have to have a little talk with my manager about this. Franchises were one thing, but fish seemed just a little undignified.

The fish hung there in midair, staring at me with its freakish human eyes. Then it blew a kiss at me. Heart-shaped bubbles floated upward. I had to laugh out loud in spite of myself – never let it be said that I couldn’t take a joke – and looked around to see if anyone else was catching this little encounter.

Only Sovay, still staring after me with a forlorn, pitying expression. Migod. Who did he think he was feeling sorry for, anyway?

Maybe only himself, I thought suddenly, watching the fish blow more heart-shaped bubble-kisses at me. Its face looked even more human now. I stepped back; having to focus on it at such short distance was making me dizzy. I hoped my eyes hadn’t picked this moment to go glitchy on me. Scant minutes before my actual debut, I didn’t need my eyes spinning like loose marbles. I had to find the dressing room and my manager now.

There was a slight commotion across the room and I saw the employee who had the Look, surrounded by a number of other employees. She was upset about something. My manager was bent over her; when he moved away slightly, I saw it wasn’t the employee after all, but someone else who had the Look. Enfranchising on the premises tonight? Quite a vote of confidence in the product, though rather unorthodox.

Well, if they were going to pull out all the stops, they could have at least changed her clothes. She looked like she’d spent a bad week with ragpickers turned fashion terrorists, and they’d won. I’d have been upset in that outfit myself.

Faint snatches of what they were all saying to each other came to me through the underwater sound effects, which had come on without my noticing. ‘… clothes …’ she was saying. ‘… itch stole my clothes!’

I couldn’t help laughing a little. If fashion terrorists really want you, they’ll get you, no matter how careful you are. It was funny, even if she couldn’t really be expected to see the humor in it.

‘… can’t … stampede her … won’t … clean wipe …’ My manager was physically restraining her and she was practically hurting herself, trying to get away from him.

‘… me … derstand that? … thinks … me!’

My manager had both arms around her and was trying to drag her into the back room. Forget the fashion terrorists, I thought, nauseated, this had to be an enfranchising gone wrong. How awful; especially the timing. If this hurt my image, I was going to sue the pants off everybody, including my manager, who apparently didn’t have the sense to carry emergency tranks.

The sight was making me even more nauseated. I turned away and found the fish had moved up even closer. Its face was even more human and for a dizzy moment I thought I was back on the other side of the room, looking at a reflection in the funhouse mirror.

That face was definitely in the wrong place, I thought.

The dizziness intensified.

Okay, the last thing I remember is throwing someone off a cliff.

Now I am standing in the bottom of a swimming pool filled with holo water and fancy holo fish and a couple hundred souls who are getting a lot more out of this experience than I am, as most of them probably remember how they got here and those that can’t don’t care anyway.

This, they say, is the lot of the memory junkie: bad living, bad cess, tough stuff. I know I am not exactly in a position to complain to karma-rama, but who ever sets out to be a memory junkie on purpose? Ten thousand people buy and sell memories every day. Me, I’m the ducky luck-out who gets the thunderbolt in the head: junkie-junkie-junkie. The crazy side effects are just another fringe benefit. But what the hell, I always did say that anyone who wasn’t pulling a fugue state here and there just wasn’t trying.

The light in the swimming pool is the appropriate underwater mood-indigo murk, but my eyes are adjusted, which must mean I’ve been here awhile. I glance around in what I’m hoping comes off as casual, trying to get a feel for the social climate in my immediate vicinity. Apparently, I have not been throwing money, marriage proposals, or punches around carelessly, since nobody is looking except a weird, puffed-up fish with prickles all over it, floating in front of me and glowing like a radioactive yellow ghost. It’s got eyelashes about an inch long on its bulgy eyes, and instead of a standard fishy mouth, there’s a little Cupid’s bow, red lipstick and all, blowing fishy kisses at me in tiny, heart-shaped bubbles – yow! Isn’t that a hell of a thing to find coming after your bait. But what’s worse is, the face is familiar.

The thing darts right at me. Instead of letting it swim through my head, I dodge to one side and it sails up and away, twitching its tail fins. Not that it would have hurt or anything; I just didn’t like the idea.

A few feet off, I see this guy watching, and he’s got kind of a fishy look himself, like he disapproves but he’s too prim to say so. He’s wearing one of those lighter-than-air sacsuits, the kind that billows out if you even twitch, making him look like he really is underwater. His skin is all bleached out, prepped for a tint – I can tell by the way it glows blue. The chin-length hair is a darker blue blot around his head. I don’t know him. Maybe he’s the fish’s friend. So let him pucker up.

Then I realize there’s some kind of something going on behind me, and that’s what he’s really looking at. Yah, that makes more sense; I can’t be important enough for anybody to disapprove of. But then, who knows what kind of changes have been playing while I’ve been fugued out?

Whatever the big attraction is over there, it’s drawing people and holo fish from all over the pool. Angelfish are swimming through me before I can get out of the way, and I hate it. I’ve heard about this kind of thing, this is how they throw a party uptown – if you’re some kind of high power celebrity priv, they send all the party decorations your way so you can make La Grande Entrance. I’m not sure what I’m more curious about, who the celebrity is, or why I’m in on it.

There’s a break in the crowd all jockeying for position and I see her. It’s that bad old kissy fish! Or rather, it’s the person the fish was modeled on. She must be Famous. I wonder if she knows what they’ve been putting her face on around here. Pretty good face; if I had those custom cheek bones, I’d show them off, too. But jeez, on a blowfish? At least they didn’t try putting the hair on, too. I guess a hairy fish was too sprung even for the priv’d-out joychildren who run this place. Whoever that might be.

The people around her are all working hard to get noticed and she’s looking a little shaky about it, like she’s not so sure she wants to be there. One woman wrapped in scarves keeps moving back and forth in front of her like she’s dancing. Boy, I’ve heard about professional pests, but I never saw one in action before. If it was me, I’d just relieve her of the waking state and use her ass for a foot-rest, but Miz Famous looks too blown out to blow up. There’s a guy in a chef’s outfit and a lady angler complete with a fishing rod and waders, somebody else dressed like a court jester, two Madonnas, one Pre-Raphaelite and one postmodern, a human torch whose holo flames have a bad case of static, the fakest-looking samurai I’ve ever seen in my life, and, all told, a lot more horse’s asses than there are horses. Suddenly, I get this very loony flash that all these people are holos, just like the fish, and Miz Famous and I are the only real people here.

And then I think, No, that’s some other place, but I’m goddamned if I know what place that could be. But I almost know. It’s on the tip of my brain. Maybe some old memory I bought to feed my beast of a habit, repeating on me like bad chili.

Miz Famous turns and sees me then, and there’s no doubt from the look on her designer face that she knows me. That’s a good one – nobody Famous would know me or anybody like me. I sure don’t know her. I don’t know her name, I don’t even know what she’s Famous for. Whatever it is can’t be anything to do with me.

So what am I here for anyway?

Abruptly, the image of that cliff pops into my head again, a memory of looking over the edge into some foggy nowhere. Can’t be her I threw over, unless she can fly without a plane.

A tall guy with sanitary white hair puts a hand on her shoulder, telling her something he obviously thinks is very important Now, him I do know … but that’s all I know. I don’t know if I like him or hate him or owe him money or worse, so I step behind a big underwater plant. A memory junkie can’t be too careful

Then this other guy in a purple satin tuxedo steps in front of her and I get a real funny feeling. Something about him makes me think I ought to go home to the Downs where I belong as soon as possible. I’m not sure where this place is, but from the look of the crowd, it’s a long walk home if I can’t catch a freebus.

I have got to tell Anwar about this. I don’t think he’ll believe me. He’ll think I’ve been feeding the beast again and he’ll start telling me how I’m gonna have to do something to take care of what I owe.

Of course, if I hang around here long enough, I can maybe build up a memory I can pawn. Any pawnshop’ll pay more for firsthand stuff lik. . .