William Gibson: Virtual Light

Straight stretch now. No cars at all. Rydell straddled the centerline and floored it. Sublett was making a weird keening sound that synched eerily with the rising ceramic whine of the twin Kyoceras, and it came to Rydell that the Texan had snapped completely under the pressure of the thing, and was Singing in Some trailer-camp tongue known only to the benighted followers of the Rev. Fallon.

But, no, when he glanced that way, he saw Sublett, lips moving, frantically scanning the client-data as it seethed on the dash-screens, his eyes bugging like the silver contacts might pop right out. But while he read, Rydell saw, he was actually loading his worn-out, secondhand Glock, his long white fingers moving in the most matter-of-fact way imaginable, as though he were making a sandwich or folding a newspaper.

And that was scary.

“Death Star!” Rydell yelled. It was Sublett’s job to keep the bead in his ear at all times, listening for the satellite-relayed, instantly overriding Word of the Real Cops.

Sublett turned, snapping the magazine into his Glock, his face so pale that it seemed to reflect the colors of the dash-display as readily as did the blank steel rounds of his eyes.

“The help’s all dead” he said, “an’ they got the three kids in the nursery.” He sounded like he was talking about something mildly baffling he was seeing on television, say a badly altered version of some old, favorite film, drastically recast for some obscure ethnic market-niche. “Say they’re gonna kill ’em, Berry.”

“What do the fucking cops say about it?” Rydell shouted, pounding on the padded figure-eight steering wheel in the purest rage of frustration he’d ever felt.

Sublett touched a finger to his right ear. He looked like he was about to scream. “Down” he said.

Gunhead’s right front fender clipped off somebody’s circa-1943 fully-galvanized Sears rural-route mailbox, no doubt acquired at great cost on Melrose Avenue.

“They can’t be fucking down” Rydell said, “they’re the police.”

Sublett tugged the bead from his ear and offered it to Rydell. “Static’s all…

Rydell looked down at his dash-display. Gunhead’s cursor was a green spear of destiny, whipping along a paler-green canyon road toward a chaste white circle the size of a wedding ring. In the window immediately to the right, he could read the vital-signs data on the subscriber’s three kids. Their pulse rates were up. In the window below, there was a ridiculously peaceful-looking infrared frame of the subscriber’s front gate. It looked solid. The read-out said it was locked and armed.

Right then, probably, was when he decided just to go for it.

A week or so later, when it had all been sorted out, Hernandez was basically sympathetic about the whole thing. Not happy, mind you, because it had happened over his shift, but he did say he couldn’t much blame Rydell under the circumstances.

IntenSecure had brought in a whole planeload of people from the head office in Singapore, Rydell had heard, to keep it all out of the media and work out some kind of settlement with the subscribers, the Schonbrunns. He had no idea what that settlement might have finally amounted to, but he was just as happy not to know; there was no such program as RentaCops in Trouble, and the Schonbrunns’ front gate alone had probably been worth a couple of dozen of his paychecks.

IntenSecure could replace that gate, sure, because they’d installed it in the first place. It had been quite a gate, too, some kind of Japanese fiber-reinforced sheeting, thermoset to concrete, and it sure as hell had managed to get most of that Wet Honey Sienna off Gunhead’s front end.

Then there was the damage to the house itself, mostly to the living-room windows (which he’d driven through) and the furniture (which he’d driven over).

But there had to be something for the Schonbrunns on top of that, Hernandez explained. Something for emotional pain, he said, pumping Rydell a cup of old nasty coffee from the big stainless thermos behind his desk. There was a fridge-magnet on the thermos that said I’M NOT OKAY, YOU’RE NOT OKAY—BUT, HEY, THAT’S OKAY.

It was two weeks since the night in question, ten in the morning, and Rydell was wearing a five-day beard, a fine-weave panama Stetson, a pair of baggy, faded orange trunks, a KNOXVILLE POLICE DEPARTMENTt-shirt that was starting to disintegrate at the shoulder-seams, the black SWAT-trainers from his IntenSecure uniform, and an inflated transparent cast on his left arm. “Emotional pain” Rydell said.

Hernandez, who was very nearly as wide as his desk, passed Rydell the coffee. “You way lucky, all I can say.”

“I’m out a job, arm in a cast, I’m ‘way lucky’?”

“Seriously, man” Hernandez said, “you coulda killed yourself. LAPD, they coulda greased your ass down dead. Mr. and Mrs. Schonbrunn, they been very nice about this, considering Mrs. Schonbrunn’s embarrassment and everything. Your arm got hassled, hey, I’m sorry…” Hernandez shrugged, enormously. “Anyway, you not fired, man. We just can’t let you drive now. You want us put you on gated residential, no problem.”

“No thanks.”

“Retail properties? You wanna work evenings, Encino Fashion Mall?”

“No.”

Hernandez narrowed his eyes. “You seen the pussy over there?”

“Nope.”

Hernandez sighed. “Man, what happen with all that shit coming down on you in Nashville?”

“Knoxville. Department came down for permanent suspension. Going in without authorization or proper back-up.”

“And that bitch, one’s suing your ass?”

“She and her son got caught sticking up a muffler shop in Johnson City, last I heard…” Now it was Rydell’s turn to shrug, except it made his shoulder hurt.

“See” Hernandez said, beaming, “you lucky.”

In the instant of putting Gunhead through the Schonbrunns locked-and-armed Benedict Canyon gate, Rydell had experienced a fleeting awareness of something very high, very pure and quite clinically empty; the doing of the thing, the not-thinking; that weird adrenal exultation and the losing of every more troublesome aspect of self.

And that—he later recalled remembering, as he’d fought the wheel, slashing through a Japanese garden, across a patio, and through a membrane of armored glass that gave way like something in a dream—had been a lot like what he’d felt as he’d drawn his gun and pulled the trigger, emptying Kenneth Turvey’s brain-pan, and most copiously, across a seemingly infinite expanse of white-primered wallboard that nobody had ever bothered to paint.

Rydell went over to Cedars to see Sublett.

IntenSecure had sprung for a private cubicle, the better to keep Sublett away from any cruising minions of the media. The Texan was sitting up in bed, chewing gum, and watching a little liquid-crystal disk-player propped on his chest.

“Warlords of the 21st Century” he said, when Rydell edged in, “James Wainwright, Annie McEnroe, Michael Beck.”

Rydell grinned. “When’d they make it?”

“1982..” Sublett muted the audio and looked up. “But I’ve seen it a couple times already.”

“I been over at the shop seem’ Hernandez, man. He says you don’t have to worry any about your job.”

Sublett looked at Rydell with his blank silver eyes. “How ’bout yours, Berry?”

Rydell’s arm started to itch, inside the inflated cast. He bent over and fished a plastic drinking-straw from the little white wastebasket beside the bed. He poked the straw down inside the cast and wiggled it around. It helped some. “I’m history, over there. They won’t let me drive anymore.”

Sublett was looking at the straw. “You shouldn’t ought to touch used stuff, not in a hospital.”