Rudy Rucker - The hacker and the ants

“Sure, Riscky, whatever.” As if I fucking cared about television.

“Hurry home, bro.”

I cleaned myself up and found a raincoat, an umbrella, a scarf, and a pair of leather gloves to hide the cuts in my fingers.

I left Roger’s house on foot just before noon on Sunday, May 31. I’d half-expected to find, the factory burned to the ground outside Roger’s shuttered windows, but the acetone seemed to have burned itself out without managing to set the Swiss concrete building on fire, not that I looked inside. The main thing was that no alarms seemed to have gone off, and everything looked fairly normal. I splashed down to Saint-Cergue, where I found a cafe crowded with peasants drinking vile Swiss beer.

Without anyone taking much notice of me, I phoned for a taxi, which took me to the Geneva airport. Customs didn’t look in my satchel, which could have been luck or could have been something else. I couldn’t tell anymore.

Monday morning I was back in San Jose, just in time for the next part of my trial. I buttonholed Stu in the hall outside the courtroom. He was kind of surprised to see me.

“You’re still here, Jerzy?”

“Yes. I want to win this trial. Let me ask you something point-blank. Do you really want me to lose, or have you just been dogging it because West West stopped paying you?”

“Of course I want you to win. You’re my client. And I think it’s somewhat inaccurate to say that I’ve been dogging it. The problem is that you haven’t given me a defense to work with. And of course I am operating on somewhat limited funds.”

“I’ve come into some money and some new information over the weekend, Stu. It was Roger Coolidge who made Studly put the ants on the Fibernet. He was driving Studly over a remote cyberspace link. Get hold of Coolidge’s phone bill and we can prove it.”

“Use a cryp?”

“Use whatever it takes. And get the same guy who made the prosecutor’s demo to make a cyberspace demo for us. A better demo. Coolidge was on the phone to a transponder in the back of a truck driven by a guy called Vinh Vo.”

“Is he related to the Vo family you were visiting? None of them were willing to talk.”

“Vinh’s the oldest son. I’ve already had dealings with him and I’m sure I can get him to testify for us. Vinh is very money-oriented. The one thing is that our story can’t make Vinh look bad. If Vinh were to turn against me, he could open up information about-never mind what about.” If Vinh and Bety and Vanna and Riscky kept mum, the authorities need never find out that I was the Sandy Schrandt who’d been visiting Roger Coolidge when he died.

“If this Vinh will really testify that Coolidge paid him to run a transponder near Studly, that could break the case wide open,” said Stu.

“I’d like to bring him over to your office this afternoon,” I said. “So we can work on his story with him. Can you get the judge to postpone the rest of the trial for a couple of days?”

“This will all mean a lot of additional legal expenses,” said Stu tentatively.

“Let’s say I’m good for twenty thousand more dollars, max.”

“That works for me!”

As soon as court went into session, Stu approached the bench and asked the judge for a two-day continuance. The D.A. called it frivolous, but the judge said okay.

I found Vinh Vo at Pho Train that afternoon. He too was surprised to see me. I got him to walk through the SJSU campus toward Stu’s office with me. On the way I talked to him.

“Vinh, I know that you had a transponder in the back of your truck that night that Studly put the ants on the Fibernet. Roger Coolidge was running Studly through the device in your truck. We’re going to have to bring that out for my trial defense.”

Vinh angrily screwed up his face around the fuming cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “Don’t you talk to the cops about me, Mr. Yuppie. I know Eastside Virus boys who’d knife you for fifty dollars.” The Eastside Virus was a notorious Vietnamese street gang.

“Now, Vinh, that’s not being very cooperative. Anyway I’ve already told my lawyer all about you.”

“My boys can kill your lawyer, too.” It was another day of brilliant California sun, and the shadowed creases in Vinh’s face looked hard and dark.

“Calm down,” I urged him. “All you have to do is say that you ran the transponder for Roger Coolidge. You didn’t know why. It’s not a crime. You’ll just be a witness. Coolidge has to take the fall for this, and you have to help me set him up. If you testify in court, I’ll give you a thousand dollars.”

“You think Coolidge will take this lying down? He’s a billionaire. He’ll come back at you with everything he’s got.”

“Coolidge is dead, Vinh.”

Vinh’s customary lack of expression briefly gave way to surprise. His mouth opened and his eyebrows shot up before he regained control.

“You kill him?”

“No, I didn’t. His robots killed him. But nobody ever finds out about Sandy Schrandt, see?”

“That’s a big secret to keep, Rugby. I want five thousand dollars.”

“I’ll give you two. And you tell Bety Byte and Vanna to purge their records and take a long vacation.”

“That’s got to make it four thousand.”

“Okay,” I said. “Who wants to haggle on such a nice, sunny day.”

We went to Stu’s office and ironed out our courtroom strategy. Vinh left, and then Stu and I talked a little more. He’d already crypped Roger’s relevant phone records, and he’d scheduled a guy to rush-job our cyberspace demo for tomorrow, which was Tuesday. The trial was due to start back up on Wednesday.

“But don’t forget,” Stu reminded me. “Your bail runs out at noon tomorrow. You have to show up at the jail and turn yourself in.”

“You damn well better win this trial for me, Stu.”

“Here’s hoping!”

That evening I went back to Queue’s. Keith and I were sitting on the porch smoking a joint when Riscky Pharbeque came bouncing up the path-with none other than Susan Poker in tow.

“Yo, bro,” said Riscky. “I brought my friend Sue. She’s the movie agent I was telling you about.” Susan Poker had replaced her hard-shell Realtor garb with black jeans and a Mexican blouse embroidered with cyberspace interface icons. She wore pale lipstick, and had washed the stiffener out of her hair to pull it back into a loose ponytail. She looked arty, in an LA kind of way.

“Hi, there!” she sang. “I’m looking forward to representing you. Riscky won’t tell me what he did to convince you.” She gave Riscky a kittenish slap.

I was on my feet staring down over the railing. “Since when are you a movie agent, Poker?” I demanded.

“What you don’t know about me would fill a book, Rugby,” she fired back. “But don’t you think it’s time we got on a first-name basis?”

They sat on the porch and smoked with us for a bit, and then I took Riscky upstairs alone with me.

“I hope to God you don’t tell that flap-mouth about-” I broke off, remembering that my room was probably bugged. Riscky laid a finger on his long sharp nose and looked kindly confidential. He drew a cloth sack out of his pocket and held it up inquiringly. I pointed to my black satchel. He reached into it with the sack and invisibly bagged his RAM chip and the dormant winged plastic ants. I was glad to see them go. I was dead sick of ants.

Back downstairs, Susan Poker said, “We can’t stay long, Jerzy, but I’ve got these papers for you to sign.”

“What?”

“It’s my standard agency contract. I incorporated on Friday-when Riscky told me he’d get you. The networks already know I’m going to represent you, and ABC and TNT are definitely interested.”