Pat Cadigan - Dervish is Digital

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DERVISH IS DIGITAL
by PAT CADIGAN (2000)
[VERSION 1.1 (Nov 20 04). If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version
number by 0.1 and redistribute.]
For Mic Cheetham,
Konstantin’s best friend
Human being extraordinaire,
Role model, defender of the faith
Not to mention timeless beauty
With admiration and love.
Thank You:
Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois and Susan Casper, Merrilee Heifetz (tomorrow’s agent today),
John and Judith Clute, Oisin Murphy-Lawless, Sweet Potato Queen Jeannie Hund, Lisa
Tallarico-Robertson, and Kathy Griffin (I still can’t believe it was twins), and the Indispensable Friday
Lunch Gang, including but not necessarily limited to Paul McAuley, Kim Newman, Russ Schechter, Jon
Courtney Grimwood, not to mention the occasional Barry Forshaw.
A round of applause to gamesmaster and debonair man about town Bob Fenner, whom I would
like a lot even if he weren’t the son I love, and bouquets to my mother Helen S. Kearney for her
encouragement, patience, and understanding. And cooking.
Big thanks to inhouse good guy Jael Denny, for making our home an even more pleasant place to
be. Beth Meacham and Peter Lavery are two of the best editors on the planet -- boy, did I get lucky.
A very special thank-you to our good friend Kypros, and to all our friends at Haringey Cars, for
looking after my mother so well, and taking us everywhere we need to go.
And big thanks to Chris Fowler, muse, confidant, soul-mate, other half, and the love of my life.
(You know, I always did like you.)
1.
Sitting on the fake leather chair in the cheesy hotel room, Konstantin thought, This will be a very
serious weapon.
“Now, this,” said the slim, angular woman sitting on the bed, “this is a very serious weapon.”
Konstantin could see that she was a very serious arms dealer, meticulously well-dressed, the tasteful,
classic lines of her jacket and pleated skirt suggesting a high-ranking officer of a yacht club that would
not, for one moment, consider admitting Konstantin or anyone like her. Especially not in those leggings
with that tunic. The one detail that said otherwise, the detail you had to watch for so you could tell the
difference between the president of the yacht club membership committee and a very serious arms dealer
was the little finger on her left hand. It was artificial, stainless steel with a brushed surface and a
rectangular-cut sapphire where the nail would have been. That was as close as she came to wearing
jewelry -- no earrings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, studs, or pins. The stainless steel finger seemed to
impart even more grace to her gestures as she caressed the weapon lying across her thighs in a way that
made Konstantin think of game show prizes you couldn’t possibly win.
The weapon itself looked like a cross between a micro-missile launcher with onboard laser
targeting and a giant hypodermic syringe, also with onboard laser targeting, but designed by some fetishist
psycho who insisted every line on the thing have a curve so full as to be practically lascivious. No
question that it was deadlier than average -- you could tell by the shine as well as the curves. The
deadlier the weapon, the higher the shine, and this one could have been made out of blue-black chrome.
As if it had been produced for a specific catalog entry: This year’s look is all full curves and hot shine
-- and don’t forget that ammo! Probably the only way it could have been more lethal would have been
if it had simultaneously killed both shooter and target. Doré Konstantin had seen stranger things. “What’s
it do?” she asked.
“What’s it do?” The woman tilted her head, letting the shoulder length blue-black hair fall to one
side like a curtain. The cool light blue of her eyes matched the blue tones in both her hair and the
weapon, Konstantin realized. Don’t just arm yourself -- accessorize! Konstantin swallowed hard,
ordering herself not to corpse unless she wanted to be one. Weapons dealers weren’t renowned for their
great sense of humor. “It looks good and it kills shit.”
“What kind of shit?”
“All kinds of shit.” The woman’s face was so narrow that her smile was almost V-shaped. “Your
choice. Your weapon, your shit. Any shit you want to shoot, you shoot.” She lifted the weapon up and
held it out to Konstantin. “Go ahead. Touch it. You know you want to. It’s light but solid.”
“I can see that,” Konstantin said, keeping her hands to herself.
“Light. But solid,” the woman repeated carefully, as if she thought Konstantin might find this hard
to remember. “If you want to carry something heavy, pick up a brick. You want to get the job done--”
she balanced the weapon on two fingers. “Get real.”
Konstantin felt her amusement souring to boredom. Did they all go to some kind of school, these
people, that taught them the same kind of sales patter, facial expressions, mannerisms? All the arms
dealers she’d seen this week seemed to have been stamped from the same mold. If she got any more
bored, she would start confusing them with each other. Maybe they had to take a seminar before they
were allowed to deal weapons. Angularity and Specularity: Twin Keys to Success in the Arms
Trade.
Her ex would have told her she was doing it again, although exactly which it that would be --
oversimplifying, ridiculing, avoidance, or something else she couldn’t remember at the moment -- it was
hard to say. Maybe, Konstantin thought, she could take her pick and be glad of the choice.
“I’m not keeping you awake, am I?” The dealer’s amused tone had a sharpness to it and
Konstantin knew she’d have to straighten up and keep her focus or plead a migraine and flash on out of
there, queering the deal for good. Arms dealers weren’t much for the old
not-now-I’ve-got-a-killer-migraine routine. She was about to say something neutral when the woman
suddenly grinned and launched the weapon at her as if she were playing volleyball.
Konstantin caught the weapon in mid-air. It was like catching an unexpectedly sturdy soap bubble.
People are always throwing things at me, she thought. Why are people always throwing things at
me?
“Nice and light, right?” the woman said. “But substantial. Go ahead. Handle it. Feel it. Feel it all
over.”
Konstantin went ahead and did just that, fingering the weapon as thoroughly as any weapons
fetishist would have, focusing her gaze on the shiny, lethal lines and curves. She wanted to hurry, to get it
over with so she could flash out of this highly seedy hotel room. But fetishists generally liked highly seedy
hotel rooms, and they didn’t like hurrying. The worst part, she thought as she watched her fingers move
along the trigger before going onto the stock, was that she was beginning to understand the fetishist point
of view.
“Hot, isn’t it,” the dealer purred. “Hot as I told you.”
“The very furnace of cool,” said Konstantin, and winced inwardly, wondering where the hell that
had come from. On the edge of her vision, she saw the dealer frown for a moment as she tried to figure it
out.
“Well, obviously you’re a connoisseur,” she said at last.
“Thank you,” Konstantin answered, dismayed by the purr in her own voice. Caught between the
absurd and the banal, she thought. Behold, I am the epitome of the human condition. Before she
could come out with any more conversational gems, she found the thing she had actually been searching
for, etched into the outside flat of the stock, near the end. “Well, well, well.” She tapped the stock with
one finger.
“Put it to your shoulder,” said the dealer. “It’ll feel like it grew there. I’m telling you, a weapon like
that can get you on TV.”
“For what?” Konstantin said. “Shopping at the same hypermart as Wile E. Coyote?”
Now the dealer was offended. “That does not say Acme.”
“Might as well,” Konstantin told her loftily. “Next, I suppose you’re going to try to sell me a
drop-box address in a town called Springfield and sign me up with an answering service on the 555
exchange.” Konstantin tapped the logo with an impatient finger again. “Even a virgin would know this is
pure fiction. ‘LockNLoad, RockNRoll’? You can say that with a straight face? Only some slave-waged,
tin-eared, moonlighting greeting card copywriter would come up with something like that. Looks good,
kills shit -- what else is new? Everything looks good and kills shit.” She tossed the weapon back at the
woman and made as if to gather herself up and leave.
“Come on, pal,” the woman said, hefting the weapon and caressing it. “Where do you think you
are, Malaysia? This weapon looks better than good. You know it, I know you know it. You want to
quibble about a trademark? What are you really after, a superior weapon or a brand name?”
Konstantin did her best to look inscrutable. “Do you really have to ask?”
The woman put the weapon aside, folded her arms and stared hard at Konstantin. They sat like
that for a while, Konstantin knowing that the woman was as aware of the time clicking away as she was.
This is my life, Konstantin thought. Watching other people being conscious of their time passing.
“You think you can wait me out, do you?” the woman said finally.
“I know I can,” Konstantin told her. “But only for so long. I have to compensate for the time like
anyone else would, though, so the price goes down as the clock goes ’round. When we get to zero, I
flash outa here and leave you to it.”
“But then it was all for nothing. What good does that do you or anyone else?”
“It’s not my nothing, it’s your nothing.”
The woman’s wary expression made her face look even narrower. “You’ve got a key to the city?
Is that it? Or someone else’s key to the city?”
Konstantin made a movement that could have been taken for yes, no, or anything in between.
“Of course, everybody lies about that,” the woman added, confidence creeping back into her
voice.
“Everybody lies about everything,” said Konstantin carelessly. “Even when they’re telling the
truth.”
The woman laughed at her. “Just get your degree in media studies, did you? Semi-idiotics,
maybe?”
Konstantin got up. “I don’t bother waiting out anyone who bores me.” She moved toward the
door, slowly enough so that the woman could reach out and grab her forearm. The thing was, Konstantin
thought, feeling the hand close on her, the woman knew she was moving slowly enough to be stopped,
and she could see by the woman’s expression that the woman knew that she knew. Nonetheless, neither
of them would drop the charade, under any circumstances. Violate not the kayfabe, shall be the whole
of the law.
“Nice muscles,” the woman said, giving Konstantin’s arm a squeeze. “You must work out a lot.
Do you have a key to the city? Yes or no.”
Konstantin disengaged the woman’s hand with a practiced easy twist. “If I say yes, I’m lying. If I
say no, I’m lying. What can you do?”
“I can ask to see it.”
“You can. And I can say no.”
The woman nodded, her hair swinging back and forth flirtatiously. “Well, I’m open to suggestions.”
“And I’ve made my suggestions. If the best you can do is a second-rate Acme trademark--”
“All right, all right, all right.” The woman picked up the weapon, showed the stock where the
brand name was, and peeled it off. Underneath, it said, Smith & Wesson. She flipped the weapon
around expertly, made several more adjustments too quickly for Konstantin’s eye to follow, and then
offered it again. Konstantin took it from her, impressed. It looked different now. Konstantin’s silent
pop-up reference verified the authenticity.
“You got one of these inside every Acme, like a prize?” Konstantin asked.
The woman smiled back at her. “If you have the right source-codes, you can put anything inside of
anything else. Like a prize. Or a booby-trap. So now you got a weapon four times as expensive as it
was, and not quite as good. Happy?”
“You bet, Konstantin said, shocked at the intensity of the lascivious note in her voice. Her hands
traveled over the weapon again. It was indeed a pure S&W product, a perfect reproduction of a
prototype built under a military contract and still in development. And, according to the pop-up,
supposedly still classified. Somebody, either S&W or the military, had sprung a leak.
Konstantin raised the weapon to her shoulder and aimed at a stain high on the far wall. “This feels
like it grew into my shoulder, too. Why didn’t you show me this right off?”
The woman leaned back on her hands and crossed her long legs, still flirting. “Because the design
you had first is superior.”
“You really think so?”
“I know so. Because it was my design.” The woman nodded, her smile turning sour. “Yeah, that’s
right, I’m the ‘slave-waged, tin-eared, moonlighting greeting card copywriter’ who thought up
‘LockNLoad, RockNRoll.’ Maybe I got a tin ear for brand names, but I’m the best damned weapons
designer there is. You give me fifteen minutes with any weapon, any weapon you can think of, and I can
make you a better one.”
Konstantin shrugged. “I wouldn’t know, I’m not an expert. I just want the right brand of weapon
that looks good and kills shit.”
“What if I put the S&W trademark on the better weapon?” suggested the woman. “It’ll still cost
you, since you want to buy the logo, not the real thing.”
“No,” Konstantin said firmly. “I pay for S&W, I get S&W.”
“Crap. What the fuck do you want S&W for when I just showed you a superior weapon? What is
it with them, no matter how shitty they are, people got this brand-loyalty dogma. The up-and-coming
armourer these days is just fucked over before you even get out to the drawing board.”
“That’s what you are -- an armourer?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I am,” the woman said, sitting up straight and forgetting to flirt. “I spent
a hell of a lot of time paying my dues on target ranges and in themelands. So, then I finally get an
appointment with a really big supplier and they decide they’ll go with the goliath just because S&W can
churn the stuff out with cookie-cutters.” Her hands had balled into white-knuckled fists. “Because they
say individual craftsmanship is just too slow. You believe that? Too slow. So there’s a hot flash for
artisans everywhere -- doesn’t matter how brilliant you are, in the end you’re just too slow.” She stood
up and snatched the weapon away from Konstantin. “I’d tell you how fucking lousy that is, but it
wouldn’t mean shit to you.”
Looking into that fierce, narrow face, Konstantin had the sudden sensation of seeing all the way
through the woman to the angry real person manipulating the image from someplace far removed from
sleazy hotel rooms and the intrigues of glamorous arms dealers or anything exotic, exciting or significant.
A weapons designer for jaded gamesters, who had thought the high demand for hot weaponry among the
aficionados would mean work that was not just steady but demanding as well, something that would call
for imagination, for innovation, for an inventiveness that would surpass the mere need to kill. And instead,
the jaded gamesters and cloyed chimeras took a quick look at her offering and turned up their virtual
noses, saying Is that all? and That the best you got? and Where’s the designer label?
“I can see it makes you upset,” Konstantin said. “For real.”
“Oh, yeah. Damn right for real. This shit gets real real, real fast.” The woman began to take the
weapon apart, thrusting the pieces into a padded container shaped like a violin case. Konstantin had to
suppress a smile at the hommage. It was unlikely that a real customer would catch the reference to old
gangster dramas. “I might as well go back to making broadswords and battle-axes for the sad bastards
at Renaissance Festivals.”
“I like Renaissance Festivals,” Konstantin said, telling the truth with impunity.
“You would. Maybe that’s where you oughta be, in somebody’s lower forty, talkin’ trash to
varlets.”
“You’re not gonna do business with me?”
“Can’t sneak one past you, can I?” The woman slammed the lid of the violin case down and
latched it. “I’m goin’ home, see what’s on TV. There’s gotta be something better than this.”
“A second ago, you were fussing about it all being for nothing. Now you don’t even want to see if
I have anything you want,” said Konstantin in her most innocently reasonable voice. “I’m just having
trouble keeping up with the way the wind’s blowing around here is all.”
The woman paused and looked at her tiredly. “Do you or do you not have a key to the city?”
Konstantin produced a thick portfolio about the size of a box of her ex’s favorite chocolates. “This
is my life’s savings. You could probably make a key out of what I’ve got here, or damn near. Or trade it
for something almost as good.”
The woman straightened up, the light blue eyes cloudy with skepticism. “Even a virgin would know
you weren’t offering me the whole thing.” Pause. “Right?”
“Well.” Konstantin looked sheepish. “I thought we could talk about what you might be interested
in for the S&W. I got all kinds of stuff. All kinds.”
The woman’s gaze traveled from the violin case on the bed to the portfolio. It was a gorgeous
portfolio, deep blood-colored leather with feathery designs hand-tooled all over it. Konstantin had
created it herself. “And now we come to that old billion Euro, all-singing, all-dancing, all-season
question,” she said, hands on her hips. “Are you a cop?”
Konstantin sighed. “If I say yes, I’m lying. If I say no, I’m lying. It’s so hard to give anyone a
straight answer in this joint. But I’ll tell you what -- you, I will cut a break. Yes. I’m a cop.”
The woman looked genuinely taken aback by Konstantin’s admission. It was probably the only
answer she hadn’t been expecting. “Yeah, well. What I thought all along.” She sounded both superior
and nervous at the same time. “Nobody, but nobody saves up that much.”
“You’re right,” Konstantin said. “Most of this stuff I strong-armed off people in shakedowns, or in
return for favors. Bribes, in other worlds. I mean, words.” She grinned and the woman allowed her a
smile. “All works just like it’s supposed to. In the words of the prophet, ‘It doesn’t matter where it
comes from, just as long as it comes.’”
They both laughed as the woman sat down again on the bed. “So,” she said, one hand on the violin
case. “What now? We fight? I gotta kill you to get out of here, or do you still want to deal?”
“I’m crooked, so we deal, of course.” Konstantin shrugged. “Unless you want to die. You don’t,
do you?”
The woman shook her head. “I’m having too much fun. You?”
“Likewise,” Konstantin said. “Too much fun.”
“OK. We deal.” The woman’s smile was satisfied. “And then what? And before you answer, you
should know that I’m speaking strictly hypothetical here. It’s not a done deal us dealing. Not yet.”
“We can talk about it.”
The woman’s expression went flat again. “We’ve already done a shitload of talking, my sister.
What kind of deal are you wanting to make. One weapon? Several stashes? Regular upgrades, personal
service? I do it all.”
“How about a partner?”
The flat expression held for a moment longer before the woman burst out laughing. “I don’t do
partners. There’s matchmaking bureaus for that shit.”
“I was thinking of you and me,” Konstantin said. “Business. Nothing personal.”
“Yeah? Well, nothing personal here, either, but I’m not allowed to take on partners.”
“Not allowed? I thought you were self-employed.”
“You catch on quick.”
Konstantin pouted. “So then how does somebody who wants to be in the business go about
getting a toehold?”
“Dunno,” the woman said brightly. “You could try watching more TV.” She picked up the violin
case. “And now I really am outa time. So...” Her voice died away as her gaze fell on Konstantin’s
portfolio.
Konstantin held it out to her. “Not the sort of riches you can just flash away from, is it?”
“I must be in decline.” The dealer sighed and put the violin case down. “What’s the best stuff you
got?”
“The best stuff?” Konstantin turned a page. “You think one S&W is worth my best stuff?”
“All right, show me the best stuff you could give me for it,” the woman snapped. “And don’t waste
any more of my valuable time, either.”
“You mean your overpriced time,” said Konstantin, leafing through the portfolio to one of her more
prominent bookmarks. “How about this?” she sad, peeling a season pass for global rapid transit off a
page. “Look good?”
“Looks like a start.” The woman accepted it so that it dangled by a corner from her stainless steel
finger. “Got anything that looks good with it?”
“Like what?” asked Konstantin. “A year’s supply of turtle wax?”
“My turtle is shiny enough. I was thinking of some passwords good for fuel, coin of the realm,
something like that. Maybe a step-up converter.”
“A step-up converter? I should be asking you for that,” Konstantin laughed. “Here. This is as
good as it’s gonna get today.” She peeled a half-price coupon off another page and held it out. “Half
price online anywhere.”
The woman frowned over it for a few moments and then looked up at Konstantin. “Only three
months?”
“Three subjective months,” Konstantin corrected her. “Runs on your clock, not theirs.”
“Shit,” the woman exclaimed in admiration. “How’d you get the coding for that?”
“Custom job,” Konstantin said carelessly, buffing the cover of the portfolio with her sleep.
“There’s no code I can’t renoodle.”
“Well, ain’t you a caution.” The woman gave her a long, considering stare. “That kind of talent,
seems to me you don’t have to bother being a cop. Even a crooked one.”
“Crooked cops get all the best codes to renoodle. Does this mean you’re taking it?”
“You see? I never could put one over on you.” The woman tapped the violin case. “Want me to
reassemble it?”
“Are there instructions?”
“Sure. Nothing a crooked cop qualified in code would have trouble understanding, I just thought
I’d save you some time.”
“Considerate of you, but I want to get acquainted with it before I go out lookin’ good and killin’
shit.” Konstantin watched as the woman stuck the pass and the coupon to a couple of empty spaces in a
folding wallet. Her pop-up assured her that the extra codes in the pass and the coupon were digging in
undetected. “Bye now.”
“Yeah,” said the woman, looking troubled and making no move to leave.
“What’s the matter?” Konstantin asked uneasily. “You got a bad itch or something?”
The woman sighed. “I really must be in decline. Where’s my brain? I should have held out for a
personal transit stop.”
Konstantin just managed not to sigh with relief. “I heard about this one blowfish put up one of
those in a room like this,” she said. “You know what happened?”
“What?” asked the woman warily.
“Great big old eagle flies in the window, plucks our hero up in its claws, flies out again. But the
code’s faulty and the bird lets go too soon.” Konstantin nodded solemnly at the dealer’s distressed
expression. AR was a wealth of scare stories. “Another one where the code was faulty, a subway car
pulls up out of nowhere. The blowfish gets in, subway car turns into a giant boa constrictor. The blowfish
goes nuts with the claustrophobia. Waste of time, valuable, overpriced, or any other kind.” Konstantin
laughed a little. “If you really want to wish for something, wish for a decoy time sink.”
“Now, that’s gotta be an urban legend, the decoy time sink,” said the woman, tucking away her
wallet. “Because if it was real, one of us woulda come across it by now.” Pause. “Right?”
Konstantin made a vague gesture. “If I ever do, I’ll look you up.”
Another pause, just long enough for Konstantin to know she didn’t believe that for a moment.
“Likewise.”
Konstantin watched her fade out and then opened the violin case. All the pieces were still tucked
away neatly inside, no shell-game today. The S&W logo was still on the stock. Her pop-up went into a
frenzy confirming the authenticity of each part.
“Item acquired and verified,” she said, closing it up and sending it into her inventory. “Next case.”
“Down these mean casino aisles,” said the cyborg to Konstantin as they walked through the
gambling palace, “something, something go. Or is it go something something?” He was a patchwork
cyborg, very leading-bleeding edge these days. His name was Darwin. Konstantin had traded her
street-life outfit for shiny pastel plastic and a nondescript painted-lady face. She might have stood out
among the far more ornamented crowds in the glitter and sparkle of the casino, except she was sure that
she was invisible in the shine.
Konstantin paused at a roulette table where everything was so jeweled she couldn’t tell the wagers
from the wagering board they rested on. She wondered if any of the equally bedizened blowfish clustered
around the table could. The croupier was an even more bejeweled demon of a kind she hadn’t seen
before, but that didn’t mean anything. The Hong Kong mound added a multitude of demons and kicked
out others every day. It would have been impossible for even a scholar in the classics to keep up with,
and Konstantin’s knowledge was more on the mahjong level. This was one of the lower-middle layers of
the HK mound, where the climate was controlled as strictly as the gambling and there was never any raw
skyspace to interfere with the permanent evening sky simulation.
That wasn’t as hard on the nerves as the casino sprawl itself, where one gaming joint melted into
another without either a mark or a pause. The revel without a pause, Konstantin thought. She’d heard
that hardened Vegas veterans had been found, within an hour of arrival, curled up in the foetal position
under craps tables, shaking and crying and hemorrhaging money from every orifice. It was the sort of
story Konstantin had been tempted to dismiss as clever PR disguised as an urban legend. Now, besieged
by glitter -- blitzed by the glitz, so to speak -- the idea of someone melting down under the onslaught
didn’t seem so farfetched. Withstanding this kind of sensory overload took either nerves of stainless steel
or really good drugs, and the former seldom came without the help of the latter. She turned to Darwin
and waited for him to offer her a dose. Instead, he tugged at her arm, pulling her away from the roulette
table, toward something bright. Not that it wasn’t all bright, everything around her, but this was even
brighter. Probably just some game of chance trying to get their attention, Konstantin thought, feeling the
first touches of ennui at the edge of her mind.
Abruptly, the brightness flared into a blinding explosion of light, soundless but so intense that
Konstantin’s ears rang and she lost her balance. Some moments later she found herself blinking up at
Darwin’s face; she was bent backwards in the crook of his arm as if they’d been dancing.
“All right now?” Darwin asked cheerfully.
“Paparazzi?” guessed Konstantin, righting herself clumsily and pushing away his hands. They didn’t
feel as metallic as they looked. She didn’t like that; the trainer had told her that illusions you couldn’t trust
implied more serious treachery to come but Konstantin’s objections were based on a dislike of literally
mixed literal metaphors.
The brightness had died down to a more tolerable level and she saw they were standing on a
promontory overlooking a lake of fire. Automatically, she took two steps back, raising a hand to shield
her face, but there was no heat at all.
A sort of demarcation between this casino and another just beyond? Konstantin adjusted the
shading feature in her vision and the lake of fire became a shimmering pool of opals.
“Doesn’t this ever become a feast too far?” Konstantin asked the cyborg. As if in response to a
keyword (probably feast, Konstantin thought) two people in chef drag passed in front of them, walking
over the lake in midair on a bridge that appeared under their feet at each step and disappeared behind.
They were carrying a platter with the most enormous roast duck she had ever seen. Their puffy white
hats and aprons advised her where she could enjoy a similar treat, in any of several branches worldwide.
“What do you mean?” Darwin asked her, looking longingly after the duck. She wouldn’t have
thought anyone with a lower jaw made of platinum would be all that interested in eating. Maybe it had
just been a long time since breakfast.
“I mean, don’t you get just a wee bit tired of jewel-bedecked this-and-that?”
“I hear the Vatican makes this place look poverty-stricken, but they won’t let any civilians in so I
can’t say for sure--”
“A big strong cyborg like you, can’t hack into the Vatican?” Konstantin was surprised. “I’d have
thought you’d have done that so often by now that the idea bored you.”
The right hemisphere of Darwin’s brain, visible through the transparent half of his skull, showed a
pinker undertone in the grey matter. “I didn’t say I couldn’t, I’m just not posing for mug shots this year.
Besides, I’m not Catholic. I don’t even bother to watch it on TV. What we got here, this is the big
leagues. Mean aisles in mean casinos. Beggars, trash, dirt, it’s all been abolished. They got a very serious
dictatorship running things here.”
“In the whole mound, or just this level?”
Darwin spread his mismatched fingers. “A few levels both ways. And I never knew any
dictatorship that wasn’t dying to expand its horizons. They brainwash people. It’s easy in a place like
this. After a few hours here, you’d believe anything anyway.”
“But if people do it voluntarily--” Konstantin shrugged, watching as creatures who might have been
humans crossbred with jeweled dolphins swam through the opal lake, cheered on by groups now
gathered at either side. It didn’t seem to be a race but Konstantin was sure they were betting on
something. “And you know it’s gotta be voluntary. So it isn’t against the law.”
“Who says it’s always voluntary?”
“Look, they come here knowing what kind of place it is. It’d be hard not to know. It’s advertised
heavily enough and you can’t turned around without seeing a warning sticker on your way in. People put
themselves through it so they can say they survived it. It sounds cool to have done it, and you’re the envy
of everyone. My Mom got brainwashed in low down Hong Kong and all I got was this lousy Mickey
Mao holo.”
Darwin eyed her as if from a great height -- one brown, organic eye, one glowing green LED,
which briefly flashed the local time at her. It was later than she’d realized, but there was no way she’d be
able to hurry Darwin. “They don’t know,” he insisted. “They think they know, just because they can see
it on TV. They think it’s like an amusement park ride or something, but they’re wrong. The after-effects
linger a lot longer than Hong Kong says. Some of them may never disappear.”
“Never?” said Konstantin skeptically. “Look, I know it’s hard to figure out why anyone would
willingly live, even temporarily, under a totalitarian regime that would brainwash them. But it’s a big world
and there’s no explaining what some people want. In the words of the prophet, the joint is jumping. If
enough people weren’t coming here and watching it on TV besides, this place would be gone, turned into
something else -- sex playground, sewing circle, you name it. Hey, can we walk over this on one of those
visible/invisible bridges, like the chefs?”
Darwin nodded and she strode out from the promontory into the space above the pool of opals,
enjoying the feel of the step-bridge coming into existence under her feet as she went. The steps gave a
little as she put each foot on them with a bouncy sensation that wasn’t at all unpleasant. The cyborg
stumbled after her gracelessly. “So you think it’s all right to lure people to a place like this, get them all
worked up--”
“No,” Konstantin said, letting the steps lead her away from the lake of opals and up to another
level. Darwin nearly fell trying to keep pace with her. She was only too happy to leave the opals behind;
she’d begun to feel slightly hypnotized. Now she was walking down a wide aisle/boulevard lined with
card games.
The tables, all at different heights, were shaped like calla lilies or lotuses. She wasn’t sure how the
players climbed up to their seats on the higher ones. Maybe they were airlifted. “Truthfully, I don’t. In the
perfect world defined by what would be the Great and Powerful Me, places like this don’t exist. But
we’re not on that planet, and it’s not my job to close down legal businesses just because I don’t
approve.” She shrugged. “If the ratings fall off, it’ll get cancelled.”
“But don’t you care?” Darwin said melodramatically.
Konstantin winced. Not that one again. She moved a little faster.
“Come on, now, you care or you don’t,” Darwin said, chasing alongside her. “It doesn’t have to
be a perfect world for you to care.”
You care or you don’t. Where had she heard that one before? Don’t answer that, she told
herself. “OK, I’ll admit it,” she said wearily. “I don’t care. I don’t care about anything or anyone. Not
only do I not care, I loathe and despise anyone who does. I also hate the helpless and the innocent.
Especially children. I think all children should be sold into slavery. I detest whales and seals. I spit on
rhinos and white tigers. And that’s nothing compared to how I feel about the world in general and
everything in it. It’s all one big abomination as far as I’m concerned. The biggest favor anyone could do
us would be to perfect a doomsday device that would blow this ball of low-grade mud we live on into a
billion, trillion--”
Four golden uniforms materialized around her and Darwin amid the tables. Everyone, those at the
tables and those cruising along the aisle, ignored them. The golden uniforms were unadorned and
unmarked, and something about the way the surfaces looked suggested to Konstantin that they were
closer to liquid than solid. The heads were as featureless as the bodies, each one vaguely helmet-shaped,
but without any visible openings for sight or speech. She couldn’t see where they had come from; for all
she knew, they had congealed from the glitter in the air.
“Papers,” said the one directly in front of Konstantin. Something might have moved behind the
featureless gold expanse at face level, or not. Konstantin thought of an antique photograph she’d seen in
a museum, of a police officer from the previous century wearing mirrored glasses that reflected the scene
directly in front of him, including the photographer. Who’d have thought that sort of thing would have
caught on in Hong Kong, she thought as she produced a visitor’s pass. She was not surprised to see it
disappear into the flexible scoop that served as the thing’s hand.
While the officer, or whatever it was supposed to be, considered her pass, she looked the
mechanism over, careful to keep her posture unaggressive. All the major joints were perfect
ball-and-socket arrangements, meant to allow movement in any direction. Good for law enforcement --
in the event of physical confrontation, there would be no dislocations. Pity they couldn’t manage that
where she came from, she thought. Her own shoulders, never great, were giving her more trouble with
every year.
It stretched its hand-scoop toward Darwin, who obligingly produced his own pass. She took a
chance and looked at the other uniforms, feigning innocent curiosity. They were probably scanning her
and Darwin as thoroughly as any ultra-expensive hospital scanner could. Most likely, they were just an
extension of the one in front of her, and she doubted they had passed any information to it yet.
“What are you doing here?” the gold uniform in front of her asked.
“Playing?” Konstantin asked, hoping she had guessed right at what he wanted to hear. She
sneaked a glance at Darwin. The problem with a cyborg was that the face wasn’t meant to be especially
expressive. No cues forthcoming.
“You have played nothing,” the golden uniform said.
“We couldn’t make our minds up,” Konstantin said uneasily. “We were trying to decide.”
“Your behavior does not conform to normal activity patterns,” the uniform told her.
Konstantin wondered if it had been talking to her ex. Darwin nudged her. Finally, a reaction, she
thought. Now if only she knew what he was expecting her to do.
“Your conversation indicates that you are antisocial and so could be intending to act in antisocial
and disruptive ways,” the golden uniform went on impassively. “This gives us due cause to take you into
custody and decide if it will be necessary to regularize you, which is our right under global guidelines for
local peacekeeping, crowd control, and law enforcement.”
Konstantin looked at Darwin again. The time readout in his digital eye had changed from numerals
to EEEE. Big help, that boy. “And how would that be accomplished, this being regularized?” she asked,
turning back to the uniform. Darwin nudged her again and she grabbed his wrist before he could pull
away.
“We have a complete program of conditioning and behavior phasing, which will last as long as
your stay within our borders. It is non-toxic, with no lasting side-effects, and will not interfere with any
other activity in any other location.”
The people at the gambling tables and the traffic in the aisles seemed to become more colorful and
ornate, the jewels larger, stranger, more exotic, the movements stronger and the music more intense, but
still, everyone ignored them. More than that, Konstantin decided; it was more like they were no longer
visible to anyone else.
The idea gave her a faint preview of panic and she looked around quickly, wondering if she could
catch anyone in the act of sneaking a look at them, or even ignoring them intensely.
High up on one of the leaf perches around a calla lily gaming table, an Oriental guy in a painfully
authentic tuxedo glanced briefly past the cards fanned out in his left hand and met her gaze for a fraction
of a fraction of a second.
Or had he? Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure. He wasn’t seeing her now, even though he hadn’t
turned all the way back to the dealer in the center of the flower-shaped table. Either that or he had
especially fierce control over what he allowed to draw his gaze.
“Will this treatment have to be repeated if we decide to come back?” Konstantin asked smoothly.
“Or does it kick in again automatically every time we hit this part of the mound?”
“There are no lasting side-effects,” repeated the uniform.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Konstantin said.
“Yes, it does,” said the uniform, still without any emotion or expression whatsoever.
“No, it doesn’t,” Konstantin insisted, in spite of Darwin stepping on her foot. “I want to know if
this is brainwashing that wears off out of context or not. I think it’s important.”
“Brainwashing is too inexact a term, leading to misunderstanding and misrepresentation,” the
uniform said. Konstantin wasn’t sure whether she was imagining that some smug had finally crept into its
tone.
“We’ll decline the regularization, thanks just the same,” she said. “Just point us at the nearest
exit--”
“Normally this would be the procedure,” the uniform said. “But you have expressed negative and
destructive emotions towards entities unable to defend themselves effectively against aggression. You
may constitute a danger to those whom we are bound by law to protect.”
“Not if we leave,” said Darwin nervously.
“If we allow you to leave, we may be held responsible for any harm you may do in any neighboring
sovereignty, state, city, or territory within easy access of this location. Records would show that
monitoring had revealed you as an antisocial, aggressive, and potentially dangerous individual. Our failure
to act could make us partially liable for any harm you may cause.”
“But how will your regularizing us make the world a safer place?” Konstantin asked. “I thought
you said there were no lasting side effects.”
“They didn’t say anything about after effects,” Darwin whispered harshly.
“Our monitors can pick up whatever you say, at whatever volume,” the uniform told Darwin. “We
can also detect and decode pop-ups.”
Darwin’s befuddlement was obvious, in spite of his partly machine made face.
摘要：

DERVISHISDIGITALbyPATCADIGAN(2000)[VERSION1.1(Nov2004).Ifyoufindandcorrecterrorsinthetext,pleaseupdatetheversionnumberby0.1andredistribute.]ForMicCheetham,Konstantin’sbestfriendHumanbeingextraordinaire,Rolemodel,defenderofthefaithNottomentiontimelessbeautyWithadmirationandlove.ThankYou:EllenDatlow,G...

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