Thomas Pynchon - Bleeding Edge

Counselors at Camp Tewattsirokwas delighted in creeeping kids out with local legends about Lake Heatsink—how from ancient times the Indians avoided the place, in terror of what lived in its depths, cloak-shaped rays of glowing ultraviolet, giant albino eels that could get around on land as well as through water, with demonic faces that spoke to you in Iroquois of the horrors that awaited you should you dip so much as a toe…

“Make her stop,” Grisha shivering, “she’s scaring me.”

“No wonder Gabe seemed to fit right in,” figures Tallis. Ice apparently chose Lake Heatsink because it’s deeper and colder than anything else in the Adirondacks. Maxine flashes back to his spiel at the Geeks’ Cotillion, northward migration to fjordsides, to subarctic lakes, where the unnatural flows of heat generated by server equipment can begin to corrupt the last patches of innocence on the planet.

Onto the sound system comes Nelly singing “Ride Wit Me.” As the Thruway unreels toward and around the speeding ZiL a sorrowful winterscape of little farms, frozen fields, trees that look like they’ll never bear leaves again, Misha and Grisha start bouncing up and down and chiming in on “Hey! Must be the money!”

“Don’t mean to seem nosy,” of course not Maxine, “but I gather you’re not going up there just to drop in and hang out by the snack machine.”

Another exchange in jailhouse Russian. Suspicious glances. In some neglected area of her brain, Maxine understands how easily yenta activities can turn dangerous, but this doesn’t keep her from a little lobe probe here. “Is it true what I hear,” adopting Elaine’s murderous perkiness, “that server farms, no matter how carefully hidden, are all sitting ducks, because they put out an infrared signature that a heat-seeking missile can read?”

“Missiles? Sorry.”

“No missiles tonight. Small-scale experiment only.”

They stop for gas, Misha and Grisha take Maxine around to the back of the ZiL, open the trunk. Something long, cylindrical, flanges with bolts, projections that look electrical… “Nice, which end are you supposed to inhale out of— Oh, shit, wait, I know what this is! I saw this in Reg’s movie! it’s one of those vircators, isn’t it, what are you guys—let me guess, you’re gonna hit that server farm with an EM pulse?”

“Shh- shh ,” cautions Misha.

“Only ten-percent power,” Grisha assures her.

“Twenty maybe.”

“Experiment.”

“You shouldn’t be showing me this,” Maxine thinking, on the one hand nonnuclear means minor league, while on the other, don’t rule out that they’re insane also.

“Igor says trust you.”

“Anybody asks, I didn’t see this, good with whatever fellas, nichego, hashslingrz in my opinion, they’re way overdue for a little inconvenience.”

“Po khuy,” Grisha beams, “Ice’s server is toast.”

Of course Maxine sees attitude like this all the time, blind confidence, sure disaster for the other guy, somehow it never works out. Oh, this trip does not bode well. No orgies tonight, no hostage situation, God help them all, it’s a nerd exploit, a journey far from the comforts of screenside, out into the middle of an increasingly arctic night right up in the enemy’s face.

Back on the Thruway, Grisha replacing Misha behind the wheel now, “They’ve got to have pretty tight security up there,” Maxine as if it’s just occurred to her, “how are you planning to get past it?”

“Yeah,” Tallis shifting into a cheery tough-moppet voice, “are you gonna go crashing in the gate?”

Misha pushes up a sleeve, revealing one of his prison tats, Ever-Virgin Mary Mother of God holding her baby, Jesus, on whose forehead at about third-eye position Maxine now can just detect a little bump about the size of a zit, which babies aren’t supposed to have. “Transponder implant,” Misha explains. “We found out from social-engineering cute nyashetchka we met in bar.”

“Tiffany,” Grisha recalls.

“Everybody who works for hashslingrz gets one of these, so Security can track them wherever they go.”

Wait a minute. “My sister’s husband has been walking around with a tracking implant? Since—”

Shrug, “Couple months. Even Ice Man himself has one. You didn’t know that?”

“You, Tallis?”

“Only till I could get my dermatologist back from St. Maarten’s to take it out.”

“And when you went dark, Hubby never said anything?”

The cute fingernail. “I guess I wasn’t thinking past Chazz and me, and how to keep it from Gabe.”

“Once again, Tallis,” Maxine doesn’t want to be the bully here, but the news isn’t penetrating. “Gabe knew, he planned the whole thing, of course he didn’t make an issue.” Stubborn kid. She wonders how March ever dealt with this.

The interior of the limo has picked up a Gaussian blur from the smoke of inexpensive cigar tobacco and high-priced weed. Things grow merry. Not to mention less cautious. The boys admit, for one thing, that their tattoos aren’t quite legit. Seems that back in Russia, having been popped actually for minor hacker beefs under Article 272, illegal access, they were never inside for long enough to rate real prison tattoos, so later on had to settle drunkenly instead for a Brooklyn ink parlour that does knockoffs for those who wish to appear more dangerous than they are. In a passage of lighthearted back-and-forth, Misha and Grisha discuss who is more of a wannabe badass than whom, during which the Bizons get waved around, Maxine has to hope rhetorically.

“According to Igor last time we talked,” Maxine schnozzing right ahead, “this beef between you people and Ice isn’t KGB business—”

“Igor doesn’t know about this thing tonight.”

“Of course not, Misha. Let’s say he has deniability and you guys are strictly on your own here. I’m still wondering why you aren’t doing it from a little further away, like on the Internet. Overflow exploit, denial of service, whatever.”

“Too institutional. Hacker-school approach. Grisha and I are close-up type of scumbags. You didn’t notice? More personal this way.”

“So if it’s personal…” She doesn’t quite mention Lester Traipse, but a crinkled, almost-kind look, the sort of expression Stalin liked to beam at you in his publicity shots, has crept into Misha’s eyes.

“Isn’t only Lester. Please. Ice has this coming, you know it, we all know it. But better you don’t have full history.”

Deimos-and-Phobos gamer machismo, legitimate avenging angels, what? Maybe it is about more than Lester tonight, but isn’t Lester enough? whatever he saw that he shouldn’t’ve, the visitation that meant his end rising spooky and vaporous above the spreadsheets of secret cash flow, was something that couldn’t be allowed out among civilians….

“OK, but how about a little history?”

The fellows exchange a mischievous look. Anasha can do funny things to a man. Even to two men.

“You heard about HALO jump.” Misha sez. “Igor tells story to everybody.”

“Especially cute women.” sez Grisha.

“Was not HALO jump, however. Was HAHO jump.”

“That’s… laughing all the way down, no wait, High Altitude…”

“High Opening. Chutes open, maybe 27,000 feet, you and your unit can fly 30, 40 miles, all stacked up in sky, lowest guy carries GLONASS receiver—”

“Like Russian GPS. One night Igor is on insertion job, everything gets fucked up, praporschik freaks out from no oxygen, wind spreads everybody over half Caucasus, GLONASS quits working. Igor gets down OK, but now he’s all by himself. No idea where or if base camp is set up. Uses compass and map to try and find rest of his unit. Days later, smells something. Little village, totally like massacred. Young, old, dogs, everybody.”