Cyberpunk (6 page)

©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

right, then went back into Martin’s executable and started keying in code

patches off the top of my head.

“Will you look at that?” Martin asked.

I didn’t answer ‘cause I was thinking in object-oriented language.

Ten minutes later I had his core mod in, linked, and romping through the

test data sets. It worked perfect, of course.

“I just can’t believe that kid,” Martin said. “He can hack object code

easier than I can talk.”

My voice started to come back. “Nothing to it,” I croaked.

“Maybe not for you, Mikey. I knew a kid who grew up speaking

Arabic, used to say the same thing.” He shook his head, tugged his

beard, looked me in the face, and smiled. “Anyhow, thanks loads, man. I

don’t know how to ... “ He snapped his fingers. “Say, I just got

something in the other day, I bet you’d be really interested in.” I found

my feet and got up out of the chair. He hobbled over to the flyspecked

glass display case, pushed aside a pile of old GridPads and ‘Roo PCs,

and pulled out a small, flat, black plastic case. “I’ve gotta tell you,

Mikey, this was a real find. Most of what comes in here is just old junk,

but
this
you won’t believe. The latest word in microportables.” He set

the little case on the counter. “Mikey Harris, may I present—

“
The Zeilemann Starfire 600
.”

I dropped a bit! Then I ballsed up enough to touch it. I flipped up the

wafer display, opened the keyboard wings, ran my fingers over the touch

pads, and I just
wanted
it so bad, right then and there! “It’s smart,”

Martin said. “Rammed, rommed, fully metal and lightpipe ported; a

videoshade jack for your friend there—,” he nodded at Georgie. “Even

has bubble memory, too, so you won’t have to muck around with that

chipburner.”

My God, it was beautiful!

Rayno leaned on the counter, gave the Starfire a cold, cold look.

“My 300 is still faster,” he said.

“It should be,” Martin said. “You customized it half to death. But

the 600 is nearly as fast, and it’s stock, and it lists for $1200 new. I

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

figure you must have spent around 4K upgrading yours.”

I got my breath back. “Can I try it out?” I asked. Martin waddled

back over to his workstation, plugged a lightfiber into his patch bay, and

threw the coil of plastic at me. I jacked in, booted up, linked through to

CityNet. Took a cruise up to the Northside repeater and logged into

FIDOnet.

It worked great. Clean, quiet, accurate; so maybe it was a few nanos

slower than Rayno’s Nova,
I
couldn’t tell the difference. “Rayno, this

thing is the max!” I looked at Martin. “Can we work out some kind of ...

?” Martin looked back to his terminal, where the real estate program was

still running data tests without a glitch.

“I been thinking about that, Mike. You’re a minor dependent of an

employed Class-One citizen, so I can’t legally hire you.” He tugged on

his beard and rolled his tongue around his mouth. “But I’m hitting that

client for some pretty heavy bread on the customizing fees, and it

doesn’t seem fair to me to make you pay full list.” He looked at the

Starfire again, and got his squinty, appraising look.

“On the other hand, that Starfire you’re holding is a, uh,
demo

model
. Factory new, but it, uh, doesn’t have a serial number plate.” He

chewed on his left index finger for a bit, then stopped, sudden, and made

with a wide and toothy smile.

“Of course, you and I both know that that doesn’t mean a thing, but

some of my other clients might get a little, uh,
nervous
about that

machine. So—,” he went back to chewing on his index finger, and

giving the Starfire a worried look. He looked at me.

He smiled.

“So tell you what, Mikey! You be my consultant on, say, seven more

projects like this, and it’s yours! What d’ya think? Sound like a good

deal to you?”

Before I could shout
yes
, Rayno pushed in between me and Martin.

“I’ll buy it. List price.” He flicked a charge card out of his breast pocket.

Martin’s jaw dropped. “Well, what’re you waiting for? My plastic’s

clean.”

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

“
Charge
it? At
list
? But I—uh, I owe Mike one.”

“List price. And here,” Rayno grabbed some piece of junk that

Georgie was futzing with and slapped it down on the counter. “Include

this. Write it up as miscellaneous used gear. That way you don’t have to

report any serial numbers.”

Martin smiled. If I didn’t know him better, I’d swear it was major

relief. “Okay, Rayno.” He took the card and ran it through his

magreader. A few seconds later the reader made with a pleasant little

chime and a few measures of
We’re In The Money
. “It’s approved,”

Martin said, an even bigger smile on his face. He punched up the sale

and started laughing. “Honestly, I don’t know
where
you kids get this

kind of money.”

“We rob banks,” Rayno said. Martin froze a mo, looked dead

straight at Rayno, then broke up and started laughing so hard he cried.

Rayno picked up on the laugh; he’s got a great Vincent Price kind of evil

laugh that he uses sometimes, especially when he’s fangs-out smiling.

Lisa followed Rayno. Me and Georgie looked at each other for a mo, not

real sure what it was we were laughing at but figuring we should at least

act
like we knew, and then jumped in together.

Still laughing, Rayno used the Starfire to fax for a smartcab. Then he

logged out, disconnected, folded up the Starfire and headed for the door.

Laughing, we followed. Laughing, Martin waved goodbye. The

smartcab rolled up; we opened the outside security door and stepped out.

Rayno stopped laughing. Then he handed the Starfire to me. “Here.

Enjoy.”

“Thanks Rayno. But—but I coulda made the deal myself.”

“Happy Birthday, Mike.”

“Rayno, my birthday is in August.”

He looked at me through his eyebrows, cold and truly utter serious.

“Let’s get one thing straight. You work for
me
.”

The smartcab chirped for our attention. We piled in. It was near

school endtime, so we routed direct back to Buddy’s. On the way, in the

smartcab, Georgie took my Starfire, gently opened the back of the case,

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

and scanned the board. “We could swap out the 4166-8,” he said,

“replace it real easy with a 42C816. That’d just about double your

throughput speed.”

“Leave it stock,” Rayno said.

We split up at Buddy’s, and I took the transys home. I was lucky,

‘cause Mom and Dad weren’t there and I could zip right upstairs and

hide the Starfire in my closet. I wish I had cool parents, like Rayno does.

His dad’s never there, and his mom never asks him any dumb questions.

I’d just finished up putting MoJo back together when Mom came

home and asked how school was. I didn’t have to say much, ‘cause just

then the stove said that dinner was ready and she started setting the

table. Dad came home fifteen minutes later and we started eating.

Halfway through dinner, the phone chirped.

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

Chapter 0/ 4

I jumped up and answered the phone. It was Georgie’s old man, and

he wanted to talk to my Dad. I gave Dad the phone and tried to overhear,

but he took it into the next room and started talking real quiet. I got

unhungry. I never liked tofu, anyway.

Dad didn’t stay quiet for long. “He
what?
Well thank you for telling

me! I’m going to get to the bottom of this right now!” He came

stomping back into the kitchen and slammed the phone into its cradle.

“Who was that, honey?” Mom asked, sweet.

“Bob Hansen. Georgie’s father. Mike and Georgie were hanging

around with that punk Rayno again!” He snapped around to look at me.

I’d almost made it out the kitchen door. “Mikhail! Did you cut school

today?”

Dad called me
Mikhail
? Uh-oh...

I tried to talk confident. I think the tofu had my throat all clogged

up. “No. No, of course not.”

“Then how come Mr. Hansen saw you coming out of the downtown

library?”

I started to hang. “I—I got a pass. I was down there doing some

extra research.”

“For what class?”

I froze.

“Come on, Mikhail.
What were you studying
?”

Damn! I wish I could be totally slick, totally smart, like Rayno. He’d

know the right thing to say. He could speak the pravda without sweating.

But this was
my
Dad, and he was putting the heavy clamp on
me
, and all

my input and output interrupts were colliding and the words in my head

were turning into a truly enormous mess. I locked up solid—like I

always do when Dad starts yelling.

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©1982, 1998 Bruce Bethke

“Honey,” Mom said, “aren’t you being a bit hasty? I’m sure there’s

a perfectly good explanation.”

“Sweetheart, Bob was looking over some programs that Georgie and

Mikhail put in his computer. He says he thinks they’re doing something

illegal. He says it
looks
like they are tampering with a
bank
.”

“
Our
Mikey? I’m sorry, David, but this must be some kind of bad

joke.”

Dad locked a glare on her. That vein on the side of his forehead

started throbbing again. His face shifted down to that deep red beet-look,

and he took a deep, deep breath.

I saw my opening and started to slide for the door.

“Sherri, you airheaded nitwit, this is
serious
!” He spun, lunged,

grabbed me by the back of the collar. Didn’t think the old guy could

move that fast. “Mikhail Arthur Harris! What have you been doing with

that computer? What was that program in Hansen’s system? Answer me!

What have you been doing?
”

My eyes felt hot, teary. My face muscles went all tight and twisty

and I pouted so hard it
hurt
. “It’s none of your business!” I screamed.

“Keep your nose out of things you’ll never understand, you obsolete old

relic!” The tears felt like hot burning blood pouring down my cheeks.

“That does it,” Dad said, his voice as cold and calm as death. “I

don’t know what’s wrong with this damn kid of yours, but I know that

thing
upstairs sure as hell isn’t helping.” I blinked the tears out of my

eyes long enough to see he was building up to a boiling thunderhead, but

before I could get control enough to move he broke loose and went

storming up to my room. I tried to get ahead of him all the way up the

stairs and just got my hands stepped on. Mom came fluttering up behind

as he was yanking the power cables on my Miko-Gyoja.

“Now honey,” Mom said. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit harsh?