William Gibson - Count Zero

“It’s okay,” Turner said. “Watchdog. Belongs to my friend.”

The house had grown, sprouting wings and workshops, but Rudy had never painted the peeling clapboard of the original structure. Rudy had thrown up a taut square of chainlink, since Turner’s time, fencing away his collection of vehicles, but the gate was open when they arrived, the hinges lost in morning glory and rust. The real defenses, Turner knew, were elsewhere. Four of the augmented hounds trotted after him as he trudged up the gravel drive, Angie’s head limp on his shoulder, her arms still locked around him.

Rudy was waiting on the front porch, in old white shorts and a navy T-shirt, its single pocket displaying at least nine pens of one kind or another. He looked at them and raised a green can of Dutch beer in greeting. Behind him, a blonde in a faded khaki shirt stepped out of the kitchen, a chrome spatula in her hand; her hair was clipped short, swept up and back in a cut that made Turner think of the Korean medic in Hosaka’s pod, of the pod burning, of Webber, of the white sky… He swayed there, in Rudy’s gravel driveway, legs wide to support the girl, his bare chest streaked with sweat, with dust from the mall in Arizona, and looked at Rudy and the blonde.

“We got some breakfast for you,” Rudy said. “When you came up on the dog screens, we figured you’d be hungry His tone was carefully noncommittal.

The girl groaned.

“That’s good,” Turner said. “She’s got a bum ankle, Rudy. We better look at that. Some other things I have to talk to you about, too.”

“Little young for you. I’d say,” Rudy said, and took another swig of his beer.

“Fuck off, Rudy,” the woman beside him said, “can’t you see she’s hurt? Bring her in this way,” she said to Turner, and was gone, back through the kitchen door.

“You look different,” Rudy said, peering at him, and Turner saw that he was drunk. “The same, but different.”

“It’s been a while,” Turner said, starting for the wooden steps.

“You get a face job or something?”

“Reconstruction. They had to build it back from records He climbed the steps, his lower back stabbed through with pain at every move.

“It’s not bad,” Rudy said. “I almost didn’t notice.” He belched. He was shorter than Turner, and going to fat, but they had the same brown hair, very similar features.

Turner paused, on the stair, when their eyes were level. “You still do a little bit of everything. Rudy? I need this kid scanned. I need a few other things, too.”

“Well,” his brother said, “we’ll see what we can do. We heard something last night. Maybe a sonic boom. Anything to do with you?”

“Yeah. There’s a jet up by the squirrel wood, but it’s pretty well out of sight.”

Rudy sighed “Jesus… Well, bring her in…”

Rudy’s years in the house had stripped it of most of the things that Turner might have remembered, and something in him was obscurely grateful for that. He watched the blonde crack eggs into a steel bowl, dark yellow free-range yolks;

Rudy kept his own chickens. “I’m Sally,” she said, whisking the eggs around with a fork.

“Turner.”

‘That’s all he ever calls you either,” she said. “He never has talked about you much.”

“We haven’t kept all that much in touch. Maybe I should go up now and help him.”

“You sit. Your little girl’s okay with Rudy. He’s got a good touch.”

“Even when he’s pissed?”

“Half pissed. Well, he’s not going to operate, just derm her and tape that ankle.” She crushed dry tortilla chips into a black pan, over sizzling butter, and poured the eggs on top. “What happened to your eyes, Turner? You and her…” She stirred the mixture with the chrome spatula, slopping in salsa from a plastic tub.

“G-force. Had to take off quick.”

“That how she hurt her ankle?”

“Maybe. Don’t know.”

“People after you now? After her?” Busy taking plates from the cabinet above the sink, the cheap brown laminate of the cabinet doors triggering a sudden rush of nostalgia in Turner, seeing her tanned wrists as his mother’s…

“Probably,” he said. “I don’t know what’s involved, not yet.”

“Eat some of this.” Transferring the mixture to a white plate, rummaging for a fork. “Rudy’s scared of the kind of people you might get after you.”

Taking the plate, the fork. Steam rising from the eggs. “So am I.”

“Got some clothes,” Sally said, over the sound of the shower, “friend of Rudy’s left ’em here, ought to fit you. The shower was gravity-operated, rainwater from a roof tank, a fat white filtration unit strapped into the pipe above the spray head. Turner stuck his head out between cloudy sheets of plastic and blinked at her. “Thanks.”

“Girl’s unconscious,” she said. “Rudy thinks it’s shock, exhaustion. He says her crits are high, so he might as well run his scan now.” She left the room then, taking Turner’s fatigues and Oakey’s shirt with her.

“What is she?” Rudy extending a crumpled scroll of silvery printout.

“I don’t know how to read that,” Turner said, looking around the white room, looking for Angie. “Where is she?”

“Sleeping. Sally’s watching her.” Rudy turned and walked back, the length of the room, and Turner remembered it had been the living room once. Rudy began to shut his consoles down, the tiny pilot lights blinking out one by one. “I don’t know, man. I just don’t know. What is it, some kind of cancer?”

Turner followed him down the room, past a worktable where a micromanipulator waited beneath its dustcover Past the dusty rectangular eyes of a bank of aged monitors, one of them with a shattered screen.

“It’s all through her head,” Rudy said “Like long chains of it. It doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen, ever.”

Nothing.

“How much do you know about biochips, Rudy?”

Rudy grunted. He seemed very sober now, but tense, agitated. He kept running his hands back through his hair “That’s what I thought. It’s some kind of… Not an implant. Graft.”

“What’s it for?”

“For? Christ Who the fuck knows? Who did it to her? Somebody you work for?”

“Her father, I think.”

“Jesus.” Rudy wiped his hand across his mouth. “It shadows like tumor, on the scans, but her crits are high enough, normal What’s she like, ordinarily?”

“Don’t know. A kid.” He shrugged.

“Fucking hell,” Rudy said. “I’m amazed she can walk.”

He opened a little lab freezer and came up with a frosted bottle of Moskovskaya “Want it out of the bottle?” he asked.

“Maybe later.”

Rudy sighed, looked at the bottle, then returned it to the fridge. “So what do you want? Anything as weird as what’s in that little girl’s head, somebody’s going to be after it soon. If they aren’t already.”

“They are,” Turner said. “I don’t know if they know she’s here.”

“Yet.” Rudy wiped his palms on his grubby white shorts.

“But they probably will, right?”

Turner nodded.

“Where you going to go, then?”

“The Sprawl.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve got money there I’ve got credit lines in four different names, no way to link ’em back to me Because I’ve got a lot of other connections I may be able to use. And because it’s always cover, the Sprawl. So damned much of it, you know?”

“Okay,” Rudy said. “When?”

“You that worried about it, you want us right out?”

“No I mean, I don’t know It’s all pretty interesting, what’s in your girl friend’s head. I’ve got a friend in Atlanta could rent me a function analyzer, brain map, one to one; put that on her, I might start to figure out what that thing is. Might be worth something.”