Slow River

With tools in her hand and a job to do, she was transformed. Each gesture was gentle, precise as she set up the diagnostic flatscreen watched the waveforms, nodded, reached for her tone pad. I remembered those hands touching my back, the spaces between my ribs, stroking. I remembered the whites around her eyes, the way she had trembled with the effort of not moving, not jarring her dislocated joints before the medic came.

I swallowed convulsively.

She pushed the disk into its drive, watched the screen, frowned, sucked air through her teeth.

“Trouble?”

“Um? No. Take a few minutes.”

I was distracting her. It was time I prepared myself for my part.

The access window was flat to the wall behind and to the right of Spa

There was no way to know whether or not the program would do what its writers claimed; there was no way to make sure the handshake box would successfully mimic the net’s signal, which was changed on a random basis. Spa

I looked over at Spa

The schedules had listed a rerun of an old, fashionably cult-status sitcom on the assigned cha

“Commercials in two minutes eleven seconds.”

Usually, commercials were tailored for the viewing audience, but we were going to hit everyone with the same thing. As Spa

“Hope the damn handshake doesn’t change in the middle of the commercial,” she muttered. I didn’t ask what would happen if it did. I didn’t want to know.

“Is the account program online?”

“Yes. Commercial in fifty seconds.”

My hands were tight on the board, going purply white at the joints. We were going to wait until the end of the first advertisement; probably thirty seconds. At that point there was less chance of the security snoop noticing—they weren’t paid to guard the advert signal. We had no idea what the commercials might be, but Spa

“Twenty seconds. Nineteen. Eighteen. Seventeen…”

My board was amber all the way.

“We’re synchronized.” We would ride silently for a few seconds.

Still amber. “All clear.”

“Four seconds. Three. Two. One.”

The screen cut to a brilliant green. “This is-” and Spa

“What’s happening, what’s happening?

“Minimercial,” Spa

We had less than three minutes to decide what to do. “Board’s amber.”

“And the signal’s very sweet,” Spa

“You know this commercial.”

“No, but a windup’s a windup.”

She was right. You could always tell the last few seconds of an ad. “Do it,” I said.

It was dangerous, much more dangerous than we had pla

“Here’s the windup.”

“All clear.” No going back now. If the drugs had affected Spa

She was perfect. The white lettering faded out and then in to the bright red and yellow that was the first frame close-up of Tom’s tie.

I looked at the board. “Ten-percent red. Twenty.” The security program had started to trace our signal. It wouldn’t find us until the whole board lit.

“Come on, you babies, come on,” Spa

“Twenty-five percent. Fifty!” The sudden flicker of red across the board made my heart leap sideways. “Seventy!”

“Taking us off.” My board went blank. She started stripping down the screen, unhooking the box.

I found I was kneeling on the floor, stowing things in the backpack without knowing how I got there.

“Nearly twelve seconds,” she was saying.

“Cut the account,” I said.

“Money’s still coming in-”

“Cut it!” I didn’t care how much or how little we had. We needed to cut and run. A nanosecond could make a difference to a security program.

She touched a key, pulled a lead free. “All closed down.”

And then we were standing outside in the rain, pulling the door closed, leaning against the wall, laughing. The rain ran in my ears, my mouth, down my neck, but I didn’t care. We should be ru

Reluctantly, I pushed myself away from the wall. “We have to hurry.”

“They didn’t trace us.” But she was already sobering, looking from left to right. Information technology and its finer points did not matter much to the crocodile brain. It wanted some physical distance. We hurried.

I started to feel safe when we were about a quarter of a mile away. I slowed, stopped, started stripping off the plasthene protection. Spa

She gri

“A lot.” I started to fizz again. A lot of money. For a few minutes’ work. “Tell me.”

“A hundred and four, maybe a hundred and five thousand.”

I laughed out loud, incredulous.

“Shut your mouth,” Spa

I was suddenly glad of the rain, glad to be getting wet. It was real. All that money. I felt dizzy. It made a mockery of what I earned at Hedon Road.

The Polar Bear was quiet, only half a dozen people in the place. Spa