Robert Silverberg - The Alien Years

“Thinking of moving down here, are you?”

“Another year, year or two, maybe.”

“Let me know,” Sammo Borracho said. “I’ve got connections. Couple of pardoners I know. Been doing a little pardoning work myself, and I could probably get some for you, if you were interested.”

“I could be,” Andy said.

“Pardoners?” said Darleen, eyes going wide. “You know some pardoners?”

“Why?” said Sammo Borracho. “You need a deal?”

Andy and Darleen and Sammo Borracho spent the night together at Sammo Borracho’s place at the eastern edge of Culver City. That was something new, for Andy. And, in its way, pretty interesting.

“Whenever you come down to stay,” Sammo Borracho told him in the morning, “you just let me know, guy. I’ll set things up the way you want. Just say the word.”

The third trip was two years after that, when word reached Andy that new interface upgrades had been invented that would fit his kind of implant jack, upgrades that had double the biofiltering capacity of the old-fashioned sort. That caught his attention. It wasn’t often that some new technological improvement came along, any more, and you wanted to keep as much bio-originated crud out of your implant as you could. The manufacture of mobile androids had been the last big breakthrough, five years back, and that had been worked out in quisling laboratories under Entity auspices. The new interface was good old freelance human ingenuity at work.

It turned out that there were only two places where Andy could have the upgrade installed: in the old Silicon Valley that was just south of San Francisco, or Los Angeles. He remembered what Sammo Borracho had said about the weather in San Francisco. Andy didn’t like cold weather at all; and it was time, perhaps, to check in with Darleen once again. He swiped his father’s car without much difficulty and went to Los Angeles.

Darleen wasn’t living in the Valley any more. Andy tracked her down, after some quick work with access codes that let him look into the LACON residential-permit files, in Culver City, living with Sammo Borracho. Delayne had been pardoned out of the Ukiah labor camp and she was living there too. Sammo Borracho seemed to be one very happy hacker indeed.

You owe me one, pal, Andy thought.

“You finally moving south, then?” Sammo Borracho asked him, looking just a bit uneasy about that possibility, as though he might be thinking that Andy intended to reclaim one or both of the girls.

“Not yet, man. I’m just here on a holiday. Thought I’d get me one of the new bio interfaces, too. You know an installer?”

“Sure,” Sammo Borracho said, not taking any trouble at all to hide his relief that that was all that Andy wanted.

Andy got his interface upgrade put in in downtown L.A. Sammo Borracho’s installer was a little hunchbacked guy with a soft, crooning voice and eagle eyes, who did the whole thing freehand, no calipers, no microscope. Sammo Borracho let Andy borrow Delayne for a couple of nights, too. When that started to get old he went back to the ranch.

“Any time you want to come down here and set yourself up writing pardons, man, just let me know,” said Sammo Borracho, as usual, as Andy was getting ready to leave.

And now he was in the big city once more and ready to set up shop. He was done with ranch life. Ultimately La-La had come across, sure. Had come across big time, in fact, six months of wild nights, plenty of fun. Too much fun, because she was knocked up, now, and talking about marrying him and having lots of kids. Which was not exactly Andy’s idea of what the next few years ought to hold for Andy. Goodbye, La-La. Goodbye, Rancho Carmichael. Andy’s on his way into the big bad world.

Sammo Borracho had moved to Venice, which was a town right along the ocean, narrow streets and weird old houses, just down the road from Santa Monica. He had put a little meat on his bones and had had his dumb tattoos removed and all in all he looked sleek and prosperous and happy. His house was a nice place just a couple of blocks from the water, lots of sunlight and breezes and three rooms full of impressive-looking hardware, and he had a nice red-haired live-in playmate named Linda, too, long and lean as a whippet. Sammo Borracho didn’t say a word about Darleen or Delayne, and Andy didn’t ask. Darleen and Delayne were history, apparently. Sammo Borracho was on his way in the world too, it seemed.

“You’ll need your own territory,” Sammo Borracho told him. “Somewhere out east of La Brea, I imagine. We’ve already got enough pardoners working the West Side. As you know, the territorial allotments are done by Mary Canary. I’ll hook you along to Mary and she’ll take care of things.”

Mary Canary, Andy soon discovered, was as female as Sammo Borracho was Mexican. Andy had a brief on-line discussion with “her” and they arranged to meet in Beverly Hills at the place where Santa Monica Boulevard crossed Wilshire, and when he got there he found a dark-haired greasy-skinned man of about forty, nearly as wide as he was tall, waiting there for him with a blue Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap on his head, turned back to front. The turned-around Dodger cap was the identification signal Andy had been told to look for.

“I know who you are,” said Mary Canary right away. His voice was deep and full of gravel, a tough voice, a movie-gangster voice. I just want you to realize that. If you mess around, you’ll be shipped back to your family’s cozy little hideaway in Santa Barbara in several pieces.”

“I’m from San Francisco, not Santa Barbara,” Andy said.

“Sure you, are. San Francisco: I accept that. Only I’d like you to understand that I’m aware it isn’t true. Now let’s get down to business.”

There was a formally organized guild of pardoners, it seemed, and Mary Canary was one of the guildmasters. Andy, having been vouched for by Sammo Borracho and being also widely known by reputation to various other Los Angeles guild members, was welcome to join. His territory, Mary Canary told him, would be bounded by Beverly Boulevard on the north and Olympic Boulevard on the south, and would run from Crenshaw Boulevard in the west to Normandie Avenue in the east. That sounded like a sizable chunk of turf, although Andy suspected that it was somewhat less than the most lucrative area around.

Within his territory he was free to solicit as much pardoning work as he dared. The guild would give him all the basic know-how he would need to perform basic pardoning operations, and the rest was up to him. In return, he would pay the guild a commission of thirty percent of his first year’s gross earnings, and fifteen percent each year thereafter. In perpetuity, said Mary Canary.

“Don’t try to finagle,” Mary Canary warned him. “I know how good you are, believe me. But our guys aren’t such dopes themselves, and the one thing we don’t tolerate is a hacker trying to subvert revenues. Play it straight, pay what’s due, is what I most strenuously advise.”

And gave Andy a long, slow look that very explicitly said, We are quite aware of your hacking skills, Mr. Andy Gannett, and therefore we will be keeping our eyes on you. So you just better not mess around.

Andy didn’t intend to mess around. Not right away, anyway.

On a cold, windy day three weeks after Andy’s departure for Los Angeles, one of those bleak mid-winter days when the ranch was being buffeted by a wild storm that had burst howling out of Alaska and gone rampaging right down the entire west coast looking for Mexico, Cassandra walked without knocking, an hour before dawn, into the austere, monastic little bedroom where Anson Carmichael had spent his nights since Raven’s death. “You’d better come now,” she told him. “Your father’s going fast.”