K Jeter: Farewell Horizontal

All this hinting around was getting on his nerves. “Yeah, I’m sure. The Small Moon relay satellite doesn’t come around on this side of the building; it’s stationed permanently over on the other side. Otherwise, I could possibly transmit a signal and bounce it off, get it to the Mass that way. But since the Small Moon doesn’t come in sight here, that just can’t be done.”

“What about using something else besides the Small Moon to bounce your signal off?”

Axxter sighed. “You’re driving me crazy – there isn’t anything else.”

“Come on, man – you gotta think about the ants.” Maybe he wasn’t the one who had gone crazy. “Ants? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Like in the story – when you befriend the ants, they do you a favor in return. Come on, think ; for whom did you, once you got past your cynical self-interest jive, ever do a good deed? Hm?”

It took a second to remember. “You mean – the gas angel? Is that what you’re talking about? What the hell good is that?”

“You could use her to send a message.”

“Oh, yeah, sure; that’d work just great. Let a gas angel play mailman – are you out of your mind? How long do you think it’d take her to go drifting around on the wind currents from here all the way over to the Havoc Mass camp? I don’t have that kind of time; that megassassin is on my tail right now . Plus I can just imagine her bobbing into the camp – if there were some way of telling her how to find it – with a letter from me in her hand; I’m sure she’d get a fine reception from those guys.” Axxter shook his head in disgust. “If this is your idea of helping me out, you might as well just forget it.”

“You’re still not thinking, man; that’s not what I meant at all. Show some imagination. You could use the angel the same way you’d use the Small Moon, if it were available: as a relay satellite, something to bounce your signal off to get it where you want it to go. Think about it: the Small Moon’s not much more than a reflective metal surface, suspended out in the atmosphere. Same thing with that angel, after you grafted that foil onto her – granted, she doesn’t have the encoding and narrowcasting facilities that the Small Moon does, but the principle is the same. All you’d have to do is have her station herself at the right spot out there, and you’d be able to clear the curve of the building and bounce a signal off her for the Havoc Mass to pick up. It’s simple.”

“Yeah, it’s simple – simpleminded. You’re forgetting one little thing. The signals that get relayed by the Small Moon are encoded to channel them to the person you want to talk to. You can’t just throw a raw signal out in the air and expect it to trigger the reception mode on the right party’s comm line.”

Sai spoke slowly, patiently. “But you don’t need their comm line. You’ve got another way of communicating with the Havoc Mass. The graffex work you did for the Mass – you control the animating signal for it, as long as something like the Grievous Amalgam isn’t overriding it. And they’re long done with that now. All you have to do is change that animating signal to incorporate your message, transmit it, bounce it off the angel, and it’ll get picked up by your graffex work at the Havoc Mass camp. They’ll be able to read what you have to say to them in the patterns on the biofoil; hell, you could include sections from the tapes you loaded out of the dumps. Whoever’s wearing that foil you worked on will be turned into a walking video receiver.”

He stood speechless for a moment. “That’s the most absurd plan I’ve ever heard in my life. There’s about a dozen different reasons something like that wouldn’t work. I’d have to depend upon the angel getting into exactly the right position out there; the Mass might’ve already had all that work I did for them torn out and replaced – they weren’t exactly thrilled with it to begin with, remember? – so even if I got the signal bounced to them, there might not be anything to pick it up…”

“Sure -” Sai seemed unfazed by the objections. “You don’t want to do it, fine. I wasn’t offering it as some kind of foolproof suggestion. I’m just telling you: it’s the only option you got. Other than just curling up and waiting for the megassassin to find you.”

“You know, I’ve gotten really sick of people telling me I’ve got no other choice. I seem to hear that a lot.”

“You got some other bright idea? Let’s hear it, then.”

He didn’t. The pisser was that there never was one.

Sai waited for him to speak, seconds ticking into a full minute, then finally nodded. “Okay, look – if you’re going to do this, you’re going to have to work fast. You’re not going to have much time: that megassassin has been having a hard time tracking you down inside here, but you get out on the surface, it’ll be right on you before you know it. That’s what its sensors are geared for. You’re going to have to have your message to the Havoc Mass all taped and ready to go, so you can just let it rip as soon as the angel’s in the right position. So you sit down right now and work that up – make it the pitch of your life. Fast and snappy, but with everything in it, all the evidence you got out of the dump. You do that, and I’ll go check out the territory between here and the surface, see if we’re all clear to proceed.” He switched on the flashlight, the beam darting ahead as he moved away. “See you in a bit.”

Axxter watched the cone of light diminish, and then he was alone in the dark.

† † †

“You sure that thing’s not around?”

“Stop worrying.” Sai shielded his eyes with his hand, looking across the sky. “You got a margin. The megassassin’s several levels inside the wall – even if he got a fix on you right now, it’d still take him awhile to work his way out here.”

Axxter bit his lip. “This sure seems to be taking a long time.”

“Like I said, don’t worry; she’ll show up. She’s got a crush on you.”

A dot appeared in the sky, growing larger until it had arms, legs, the sphere of the flight membrane behind. Then at last her smile radiating toward him.

“Hi. Hello.” Lahft dangled in air a few feet from where Axxter was latched onto the wall. She turned, looking over her shoulder at him and displaying the image on the grafted biofoil. “Good to see you.” She laughed, like bells falling.

Axxter looked at the picture of his own face that he’d transmitted. The sunlight glared off the shining curve of metal, obscuring the black dots ordered into eyes, nose, and chin. It was the first self-portrait he’d ever done; he resisted the temptation to work it over now, to rotate it to a three-quarter profile, so it wouldn’t look so full-on stupid. Like I’m waiting to get killed. This is accuracy .

“Come on.” Sai nudged him in the ribs. “Tell her what you need her to do. You don’t have that much time.”

He couldn’t tell if he was getting through to her; she just bobbed and listened, eyes wide.

“You got it?”

She tilted her head, her gaze drifting past him Axxter prayed that there was at least one gear meshing with another behind her brow. “Here… now.” She nodded, then pointed off into the sky. “There. After now.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Right out from the Linear Fair; I mean, the big line. Go out as far as you can. And stay there. You got it?”

She smiled at him.

“Jesus flipping Christ.” He turned toward Sai. “This is hopeless. This isn’t going to work.”

“How do you know?” Sai returned the angel’s smile. “She’s smarter than you think. She’s just on a different wavelength.”