- Corey, that your name? You’re a hostage.’ Dante dragged Corey the Teller toward the rear exit as the Entropy Kid kept the Kafka on the assembly. The three backed out.
‘You must be mortified,’ Corey shrieked, chewing gum. ‘You shot your own twin brudder?’
‘Wasn’t Danny’s brudder, miss,’ whispered the Kid as they rushed through the vault room, ‘it was Danny.’
‘Most guys leave prints on the scene,’ chewed Corey as Dante wired the elevator. ‘You leave a whole body back there?’
‘We never leave no prints,’ said the Kid. ‘Always quality hand-brushed originals with us, eh, Danny?’
‘I’m legally dead, miss,’ Dante explained. The elevator opened and they stepped in. ‘My ma gets the insurance. No music, thank Christ - got any gum?’
Corey handed Dante a stick and they chewed in unison as the elevator ascended. The Kid grabbed a handful of pills from his pocket and banged them into his mouth.
‘Stay alert,’ said Dante.
‘Painkillers are the drugs of the future, Danny.’
‘Sure, but you ain’t gonna see it,’ Corey muttered, and blew a huge pink bubble.
On the third floor Dante used the gum to stick a charge to the console and sent the elevator down. The three started along a hallway and, as the floor thumped with the explosion, Dante stopped short at a wall which shouldn’t have been there.
He and the Kid knew every turn of the place due to virtual walkthroughs - Download Jones had done a beautiful job from a set of architect’s plans off the dredge. But it was dawning on Dante that aside from the bank itself, the simulation was a drooper. It seemed Jones had used the wrong schematic. They’d memorized the wrong building.
2 A CONTAGION
A contagion of squad cars moved between the potholes of Deal Street like roaches prowling a cheap hotel. In Beerlight this was a risk - so many were boosted the authorities had considered replacing them with a monorail. The reflection of code art and graffiti scrolled across a window behind which a figure was bent in thought or indigestion. A random bullet spiderwebbed the window, erasing the image.
It was the last car to pull up in the twilight shadow of the Deal Street Highrise. The door opened and Chief Henry Blince bulged out like a gumbubble which refused to burst. Blince had lost all sense of proportion - each of his chins was registered to vote. His bulk was the only thing standing between justice and chaos, and he had so far kept these conditions innocent of one another. Biting into a doughnut the size of a flotation ring, he surveyed the first-floor bank. ‘How many inside, Benny?’
‘Twenty-five, Chief,’ sniggered Benny the Trooper.
‘How many outside?’
‘Four and a half million, Chief, border to border.’
‘And ain’t it right that every one of us is essentially bisexual?’
‘That’s what they say, Chief.’
‘So us and the folks inside’ll have somethin’ to talk about. Gimme the bullhorn.’ The bullhorn screeched like a stuck pig as Blince aimed it at the bank. ‘Come out and we won’t blow the whistle on your goddamn depravities. Dogs? Cattle? Who’ll ever know? And for those o’you with Oedipal urges, mom’s the word.’
Blince broke off to gasp with laughter. Benny was kicking the car with constricted mirth.
‘Now why ain’t they emergin’, Benny?’
‘It’s the sirens, Chief - they know who we are.’
‘That so?’ Blince raised the bullhorn. ‘Fractal eddies, you sons o’ bitches. Everythin’ influences everythin’ else. You’re goddamn accessories and I got hard scientific evidence.’
‘Non-linearity’s six feet under, Chief.’
‘You pitchin’ complexity? Hell with that - all I need’s a bagel and a caffeine drip.’
‘Nah, disorder theory, Chief - “Every action or inaction may or may not be related to some other action or inaction.”’
‘By any other dumb name, Benny, and just where in the wide world d’you leap off tellin’ me what’s the fashion? With your pewter pants. This here’s a clean-up operation, Benny. We’re at the crime face, drillin’ on all cylinders. Stampin’ on the many and varied serpent heads o’ subversion. Born to the job while the smoke o’ creation was still swirlin’.’
Benny giggled and pranced on the spot. ‘I got a good feelin’ about this, Chief.’
‘You and me both, Benny.’
‘I’m beefed up.’
‘Me too, Benny, me too. Get a demographic cannon out here and put it on a broad setting.’
At that moment a figure emerged through the shattered entrance, shuffling and decrepit, hands timidly raised. ‘What’s the point o’ this joker?’ asked Blince. The town and its people were found wanting in the harsh glare of his ignorance. ‘Gimme your guzzler, Benny.’
Benny handed over a snubgun and Blince whirled the chamber, spitting aside like a pitcher on a mound. Then he shuttered and raised the gun. Mr Kraken was cut in half like a credit card.
The Kid went over to the third-floor window. ‘This place, man,’ he breathed. ‘Reminds me what my Pa said on his deathbed.’
‘What he say?’ asked Corey.
‘Nuthin’, miss - he was dead. Hey, Danny, there’s cops out here and the sun’s goin’ down.’
‘Terrific,’ said Dante, peering at the ceiling. ‘Here I’ve taken responsibility for four lives and the brotherhood wants to relieve me of the consequences.’ Dante emptied the Winchester into the ceiling, threw it aside and pulled a desk across the floor. ‘I see Download again, I’m gonna tease a bullet into his head. Easier to pull a hat out of a rabbit than a habit out of a rat.’
Download Jones had a reputation as a practical joker. He liked to put scorpions on people’s seats and look on as these rarest of animals were crushed. Like most socketeers his worldview was small format. He’d siphoned his brain into a mainframe which would have stupid ideas even after his death. He was a youth excited too often by the future.
‘Download wouldn’t dump us,’ whispered the Kid as the three climbed through the ceiling. ‘Deep down he’s all heart - stab him and the knife’d germinate.’
Dante had the job down to fly-leg detail. The first three floors belonged to the bank and the bank’s elevator rose no further. Above that, according to Download’s sensurround reconstruction, were seventeen floors devoted to scams of every stamp, reached by a bullet elevator up the side of the building. Dante’s little group would hitch the bullet to the roof where Rosa Control would be waiting with a grin and a jetfoil to Alaska - the continuation of Dante’s life and reputation would be assured. He and the Kid were pioneers of the permutation heist, forcing
