EYEBRIGHT Read online

  EYEBRIGHT

  Ray Aldridge

  The story before you developed this truism: every advance in security technology creates new opportunities for ingenious criminals.

  Ray Aldridge

  EYEBRIGHT

  Kemrin Animoht walked down Motomachi Street. He wasn’t really there.

  He dodged the outstretched claws of a legless beggar, veered around a; puddle of vomit, hopped nimbly over a maggoty pile of something unidentifiable — but he didn’t really see any of Howlytown’s ugly sights. His mind was full of the dream episode he would record later that morning at Singh Louie’s studio. Already he could feel the cool embrace of the dream harness, could feel the dream pouring out of his head into the recorder.

  That s why he didn’t notice the eyegougers sneaking up behind him.

  He thought: Prince Velligon would escape from the dungeons under SilverGilt Keep, with the connivance of beautiful raven-haired Sualn. Yes, yes, and then: Velligon would gather his few faithful retainers for a desperate assault on the Iron Fortress of his evil brother, the Pretender Jam.

  Kemrin laughed. With any luck, the battle would surge back and forth, neither side gaining decisive advantage — enough to keep Velligon’s fans happy for at least two or three more dream episodes — before Jam would go down to his inevitable, if temporary defeat. And Velligon would get to spend another hot night with delicious Sualn. Yes, that should please the fans, those quiet folk who lived safe lives within the Pale. They would taste the simpleminded adventures Kemrin imagined for them, and never notice the empty years sipping past.

  Its a living, he thought, just before eyegougers pounced on him.

  Two big ones grabbed his arms and hustled him into a nearby alley. Kemrin hung suspended in their grip, at first more surprised than alarmed.

  «Hey,» he said.

  «Shut it,» said the one on the right, a bullnecked, swarthy fellow.Twists of rainbow foil decorated his long red braids.

  The man on the left was very tall and very thin. His shaven skull glowed with tattoos, a pattern of big red peonies and little green frogs. His huge knobby hands bit painfully into Kemrin’s arms.

  «Hey, ease up,» Kemrin said.

  Rainbow released his arm just long enough to thwack the back of Kemrin’s head. Spots danced in Kemrin’s vision.

  «Better shut it,» Peonies advised, in high breathless tones.

  They went deeper into the alley, finally turning into a dark cul-de-sac. The two heavies threw Kemrin sprawling forward onto his face. He slid through something slimy, to the feet of the largest, palest man he had ever seen.

  The man made a sound of displeasure. «He’d better not have any of that muck on his eyes,» the man said, in a mad trembling voice.

  «Sorry, boss,» the two heavies said in unison. «Habit,» said Rainbow. «Yeah,» added Peonies. They picked Kemrin up, set him on his feet, brushed the slime from his face.

  «One eye’s clean, anyway,» said Peonies.

  Kemrin looked up into the man’s face, a vast expanse of puffy white flesh, bisected vertically by narrow pink and lavender beauty stripes. The albino wore his colorless hair in an enormous dredlock tangle. His one good eye had a pink iris; the sclera was stained mauve. An old-fashioned black eye patch covered the other eye. On the patch a holographic eye drawn in hot neon colors winked frantically.

  Kemrin couldn’t decide where to look, so he looked at the huge man’s companions. To the right was a statuesque blonde woman, wearing a silver mesh mask and a T-shirt that said Kiss My Razor. To the left was a conservatively dressed young woman with long black hair and an oddly innocent face. Her eyes were large; she did not seem to be enjoying herself.

  «Let’s do him,» said the blonde, in a hoarse scratchy voice. «The stink in here is making me dizzy.»

  «Let us introduce ourselves,» the huge man said, as if she had not spoken. «You, of course; are Kemrin Animoht, the noted dreamer. I am Asmo Bluedog. Perhaps you’ve heard my name?»

  Kemrin tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. «Yes, sir,» he croaked. He’d always thought Asmo Bluedog was a legend, not a real man. Certainly not such a large, ugly, frightening man.

  Asmo Bluedog beamed, exposing a mouthful of small pearly teeth. «Ah? Well, that’s pleasant. You’re a polite lad. But I need your eye.»

  «What?» Kemrin was confused by the speed of events. «What do you mean?»

  «I need to get past Singh Louie’s scanner» Bluedog seemed to lose interest in the conversation. He turned away, flapping a bloated hand at his henchmen. «Go ahead,» Bluedog said. «Time’s a-wasting.»

  From her tasteful nearleather purse, the dark-haired young woman produced a spray can of coagulant. Kemrin thought he saw tears trembling on her long lashes, just before the two henchmen flung him on his back.

  Rainbow arranged his bulk on Kemrin’s chest, pinning Kemrin’s arms with his knees. From his shirt, Peonies produced a shiny metal instrument, a thing like ice tongs with fangs. The gripping surfaces were articulated so that they curved inward as the device closed. The cutting edges threw a keen glitter. Peonies flexed the instrument once, and it made a series of tiny snicking sounds as the jaws came together.

  When Kemrin opened his mouth to scream, Rainbow stuffed in a handful of garbage. Kemrin choked. Rainbow gripped his head, Peonies pried open his left eye, and the gouger descended.

  Pain burst in his head, pain unimaginable. Half the world went dark. Peonies jerked out the gouger with a wet tearing sound and a grunt of satisfaction. Kemrin’s remaining vision grew dim, but he saw Peonies inject a stabilizer into the eyeball and offer it to Bluedog, who flipped up his eye patch and pushed the bloody object into the empty orbit.

  Kemrin’s brown eye contrasted oddly with Bluedog’s own. A trickle of blood escaped from the socket and dripped down one white cheek.

  Kemrin coughed out filth. «Bastard,» he said weakly.

  Bluedog drew back, scandalized. «Rude boy!» In an instant the vast face became a demon’s. «I know you,» Bluedog hissed in a thin malevolent voice. «Rich little prig, come down to Howlytown to rub elbows with the romantic rejects, gather a little local color, hope that a little real will stick to you. How’s this for real? How’s this for local color? Eh, boy?» Bluedog’s face was a red cloud, the good eye burned crazily; Kemrin’s stolen eye looked down and away, uninterested.

  Bluedog turned his back. «I should kill you!» He jerked back, looked down at Kemrin for the last time. «But I won’t» He smiled and the mad face was placid again. «I'll need the other eye soon enough. Come, all. We have business elsewhere.»

  They left. The blonde woman gave Kemrin a spiteful little kick as she stepped over him. The last to go was the dark-haired woman. She knelt beside him for a moment, and squirted coagulant into his injury. With her long fingers she raked most of the garbage from his mouth. «Sorry, sorry…» she whispered so the others couldn’t hear.

  Naturally, no one came to his aid. He eventually got to his feet, swaying unsteadily. Crusted with blood and garbage, he shambled through the streets of Howlytown, and everyone left him alone. He reached the Palegate safely; he stumbled up to the retinal scanner and pressed his remaining eye to the sensor.

  When the gate slid aside, he stepped through into the Pale, and safety.

  Bodrun Depultimar, his agent, came to see Kemrin in the hospital. Bodrun settled his short plump body comfortably on the bed and regarded (пропущен текст)

  «So, it came to this, Kemrin? Did I warn you? Tell me I didn’t warn you.» Bodrun leaned forward, tapping Kemrin’s leg for emphasis. «You know what your trouble was?»

  «No, but you’ll tell me, won’t you?»

  «Hey. You’re pretty smart for a one-eyed guy. You never believed those people down there were real
. You thought they were like dream people; you thought if they got too heavy all you’d have to do was jack out. What ever made you think you could walk around Howlytown, pretending you belong there? Kemrin, I said, they’ll cut your throat and steal your shoes.»

  «You were wrong.» Kemrin rubbed at the plastic shield that covered his injury.

  Bodrun looked away, tugged uneasily at his collar. «Yes,» Bodrun said.

  «Well. What else did they get?»

  Bodrun shrugged. «Everything, actually. They brought in a floater and cleaned the place out down to the floor. Singh Louie didn’t see a thing, he says.»

  «And the dreams?»

  Bodrun brightened. «Ah, that’s the good news. The courier got there an hour before they did, and picked up all the current Velligon wafers.»

  «And my personal dreams?»

  Bodrun’s face fell. He didn’t need to speak.

  «Damn,» Kemrin said gloomily.

  Bodrun patted Kemrin’s leg. «Cheer up. The equipment’s insured. Now you can come back inside the Pale, where you belong.»

  Kemrin sat up straight. «No. You know why. Singh Louie’s got the sweet metal. His biocomps are better than anything Central Dreamways can jack me into legally — all that hot black-market stuff. I ’m not good enough without it.»

  «Okay. But you don’t have to sleep down there.»

  «No, I’m staying,» Kemrin said. «I came to Howlytown to dream my own dreams. No thief is going to run me off.»

  All Kemrin could see was the glitter of Singh Louie’s eyes as the studio owner peered from the slot of his armored safety cage.

  «A mecheye? You got a mecheye? What’s wrong with meat? You had pretty eyes.»

  Kemrin stroked his cheek, just below the new alloy-and-crystal eye, a gesture that was rapidly becoming habit. «Just a reminder, Singh Louie.I don’t want to forget what I lost.»

  «Each to his own. What you want?»

  «Studio space. Cable to your core processors.»

  «Your gear gone. You got more? You got the cash?»

  Kemrin tendered his cashplaque through the baffle. Inside the cage a machine purred.

  His plaque popped out through the baffle. «Okay,» Singh Louie said. «You got studio, cable. When your new gear due?»

  «Today. Listen, Singh Louie. Your security. it’s not so good. Can you make it better?»

  Singh Louie’s voice was scornful. «How? I put a guard on the gate; they send in a rat with a stickybomb. Then I got to pay deathdues and rebuild lobby, and they still get in. I put an EEG idplex on the scanner; next time they cut off your head and hook it to a life-support block. They still get in.»

  «But…»

  «No but. You wear armor, carry a splinter gun, hire a couple of shield-boys, just like the other Pale-bred toffs who come down to Singh Louie’s, you be okay.»

  Kemrin turned away, frustrated. «Would that stop Bluedog?» he muttered.

  A sudden electrified rustle came from the cage. «Bluedog? Bluedog rob you? You got troubles, boy. Bluedog madbatnik. Best you go home to the Pale, hope he don’t see you go. Never set foot in Howlytown again. Listen to me!»

  «But…»

  «But but but. Bluedog he chew you up, suck out juice, spit out skin and bone. Run away!»

  Kemrin set his jaw. «He’s just a criminal.»

  The cage was silent for a while. Finally, Singh Louie spoke a single word. «Idiot.»

  But Kemrin bought a splinter gun; he bought a suit of servo-augmented armor, with a self-contained breather and stunrad shielding.

  He took shooting lessons. He learned to shred large, slow-moving targets— if they weren’t too far away.

  He went to an armor dojo. The armor instructor worked patiently with him for a week; finally, she threw up her arms in disgust and concentrated on teaching him to run fast in the armor.

  Kemrin didn’t hire bodyguards. Rumors of Bluedog’s involvement reached the Howlytown security agencies, and the rates they quoted were beyond his means.

  For in-house protection, he acquired a seeker-destroyer robot from a DownLevel weaponslegger. At Kemrin’s nervous request, the legger fitted the robot with non-lethal darts. It patrolled Kemrin’s small habitat, rolling constantly from room to room, sonarscans alert for intruders.

  Once he got used to the little metal soldier, it was a comfort.

  Kemrin lay in the dream harness. The Velligon dream kept slipping away, and finally he lost it completely, fell into a crack down at the bottom of his imagination.

  He sees the dark-haired woman who had been with Bluedog. She is naked lying on an immense suicide wheel, the kind end-of-the-liners come to Howlytown to play, in hopes of gaining a new fortune or, fa i l in g that, an interesting death. Her delicate feet point to the sector of the wheel marked Exsanguination her right am points to Flay-and-Salt, her left arm to Auto-da-Fe, her head to Decapitation. Kemrin can’t see the Jackpot sector; perhaps it is obscured by her luxuriant hair, spilling outward as the wheel slowly turns.

  Her body fascinates him, slender, smooth, supple, glistening in the pink flitterlights that bum at the wheel’s perimeter.

  Suddenly, she is watching him. He glances at her face, and he sees that her eyes are mecheyes, glittering silver balls. She smiles; she seems to have something in

  her mouth.

  Her smile widens impossibly; her teeth are tiny white hooks, and between them she holds…

  He tries to will himself from the dream. She holds his stolen eye between her fish-bone teeth, and it stares at him, accusing him o f something.

  He woke from the dream trance, gasping. He stripped the dream harness from his head.

  «God,» he said, trying to stop shaking.

  Kemrin walked the streets warily, keeping to the widest brightest places, splinter gun ready in his hands.

  Somehow the world had turned for Kemrin. Before, he had walked through Howlytown like a happy sponge, soaking up the rich details of life there. The beggars had seemed colorful then, the cutthroats adventurous, the whores mysterious. Before, he had seen the folk o f Howlytown as no more than vivid icons, threads to be worked into the fabric of his personal dreams, not real, in the sense that Kemrin Animoht was real.

  But now they stood revealed as living, breathing unreliable creatures with purposes of their own. Who knew what perversities they harbored in their hearts?

  Now the crowding beggars were sinister; perhaps they spied for Bluedog. He brandished his weapon at the cutthroats; they laughed and faded away, but he felt their eyes on his armored back. The whores seemed like shoals of bright carnivorous fish, cold, calculating, hungry.

  His personal dreams had changed, darkened. Even his commercial work was affected.

  An invisible malevolence pressed around him, a pressure he fearfully identified as Bluedog’s attention.

  «Kem,» Bodrun had said on his agent’s last timid venture into Howlytown. «The execs are concerned about you. I mean, Velligon’s been languishing in the dungeon way too long, this time. And Sualn’s having much too good a time with Jarn, don’t you think?»

  «Don’t worry. I’ll pull it all together,» Kemrin answered absently.

  «I hope so, Kemrin. I really hope so. They’re making uneasy noises up there; they’re talking options and alternatives. Are you hearing me?»

  Kemrin forced himself to look properly apprehensive. «I understand. I’ll do better. How ’bout this: Velligon escapes, with the help of Sualn’s beauteous chambermaid, Miskette, who’s carrying his illegal clone-child. They’re hiding out in CloudWorld’s Howlytown, right? Meanwhile, Jam’s critically injured in a fiery floater accident, and all seven of his Dilvermoon exbondmates flock to his bedside and throw Sualn out into Howlytown, where her on the street. Just off the top of my head, Bodrun, but… you see where I ’m going?»

  «Yeah, yeah, that sounds like the good old stuff, Kem. But, listen to me. It’s a tight dream season.»

  The next attack came after a hard day’s struggle with the new
Velligon sequence.

  Kemrin approached the foyer o f the building where he lived, trying to look in all directions simultaneously. To each side, slagged-out buildings offered ample concealment to potential ambushers.

  Five meters from the safety of the foyer entrance, he heard a low thrum. A stream of soft plastic bullets reached out from a dark doorway and knocked him off his feet. He sprawled, losing his grip on the splinter gun. From the corner of his eye, he saw Rainbow and Peonies hot-footing it toward him, carrying between them a big stickyshock net.

  Kemrin scrambled desperately after the gun, caught it on a lucky bounce before it had skittered out of reach. The gun buzzed, and half of Rainbow’s astounded face shredded away into red mist.

  Peonies dropped his half of the net, said, «Oh rats,» in a small voice, and dodged back into the doorway before Kemrin could get a bead on him. Kemrin looked stupidly after him for a moment. Then his sense of selfpreservation kicked in, and he made for the foyer as fast as he could crawl.

  His first act, on attaining the safety o f his habitat, was to call Bodrun.

  «Kem? Is that you, Kem?» Bodrun peered anxiously through the static that afflicted most Howlytown-Pale vid lines.

  «Yes, it’s me. Bodrun, you were right. Send an armorcar for my gear, and then come get me. Howlytown’s lost all its glamor.»

  Bodrun looked uncomfortable. «Ah. Well. Kemrin, things have changed. Prince Velligon has dropped ten points, right off the bottom o f the Reigger list. Big trouble, buddy. They’ve assessed your account for their losses, and until you build it up again, you’re locked out o f the Pale.»

  «How can they do that?»

  «How can they do that?»

  «Fine print. It looked like a good trade-off, at the time.»

  Kemrin felt Howlytown pressing in around him, all teeth and claws and hungry eyes. He was too frightened to be angry. «What can I do?»

  Bodnin shrugged. «Hang in there, buddy. They ’re not pulling Velligon from the schedule yet. If you can make him profitable again, they’ll give it all back. Or you can sell some of those serious dreams you went down there to make.»