Memory Wire

The past had driven him away. “I’m sorry, Ray.”

She was embarrassed to realize she had said it out loud. But only the gulls overheard.

But now she had come to a place that triggered her memory. She suppressed the sense of familiarity, but her heart beat harder. She had come here for some reason. This was the place her feet had led her. Wise feet. But it was best not to think too hard about it.

The float shack had not changed much. The same dangerous-seeming list, the same bilge pump gushing oily water into a waste canal. She descended an ancient flight of chain-link stairs to the door and knocked, breathless.

The old, hollow man was older, hollower. She was surprised that he recognized her. His eyes narrowed in stale amusement from the dark frame of his doorway. “You,” he said.

He still kept the pills at the back.

CHAPTER 18

1. There was still the possibility of selling the stone. Byron was in no position to grow copies; he dared not risk even a visit to his basement lab in the Floats. They had only the single ’lith, and he was not sure how Teresa would feel about him selling it… but that was a problem he could deal with later. Right now they needed money.

He hired a canalboat and cruised until he found a functioning Public Works phone booth. The call code he thumbed in was private, but he was not surprised when it failed to enter. There was an ominous pause, then a Bell/Calstate symbol in crude pixels and the scrolling message: The number you have entered is out of service. Please hold and your call will be rerouted.

To the Agencies, Byron thought grimly. He hammered the Escape key and climbed back into his rented barque. Within minutes he was lost in traffic.

At a second booth deep in the factory district, he placed another call, strictly inside the Floats exchange: a friend, a local artist named Montoya. Cruz Wexler’s estate in Carmel was off the optic lines, Byron said, and did Montoya have any idea why?

Montoya became wide-eyed. “It was maybe a stupid idea to call him. You just back in town? The Agencies raided Wexler weeks ago. The building is closed up and his files are in custody.”

Byron considered. It must have happened shortly after they left for Brazil. Not, he thought, coincidence.

“They even raided some places in the Floats,” Montoya said. “Very rough time. Some good people were up in Carmel when the hammer came down.” He shook his head.

“They took Wexler?”

Montoya’s eyes narrowed; he licked his lips. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, right? But could be somebody asked you to ask.”

Byron took hold of the camera lens, forced it left and right on its rusted pivot. “Do you see anybody?”

“Ask Cat,” Montoya said, and cleared the monitor.

“Cat” Katsuma was a petite second-generation Floater who did crystal paintings for the mainland galleries. She had known Byron and Teresa for years; she expressed her pleasure at seeing him again. “I heard bad rumors,” she said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Reasonably okay,” Byron said. “Tell me about Wexler.”

“You really need to talk to him?”

“It would clear some things up.” Though the prospect of money had retreated.

“Well. Meet me this afternoon, then,” and she named a cafe by the sea wall south of the factories.

He figured Wexler owed him—minimum—an explanation.

Ru

Much of it was public knowledge. Wexler was, or had been, a celebrity. During the war years crystal ’liths had begun to circulate in the drug underground; they enjoyed a kind of vogue during which public curiosity had peaked. Wexler held a Ph.D. in Chaotic Dynamics but had been cashiered when he began publishing articles in which he described the dreamstones as “psychic ma

He moored his boat at a by-the-hour dock behind the ruin of a cracking plant and walked to the cafe Cat had specified. It was a dicey neighborhood. Not terrible, but you got a certain influx from the slums farther south. Inside the chain-link perimeter he recognized Cat sitting at a high table overlooking the canal. A man was with her. The man had a Navy cap pulled down over his ears and a few days growth of beard, but it was Wexler; he was not hard to recognize. Byron, nervous and focused now, ordered a beer and carried it to the table.

“Byron,” Cat said warmly.

But he was staring at Wexler. Wexler said nothing, only returned the look. His eyes were steady and blue. Still a charismatic figure. People didn’t believe he could lie with eyes like that.

His breath rasped in, rasped out.

Cat stood up, sighing. “I’ll talk to you later, then.” She touched Byron’s shoulder, leaned over him. “Go easy on him, all right? I’ve been bunking him in my float. He’s got nowhere to go and his lungs are pretty bad.”

When she was out of earshot, Byron said tonelessly, “I have every reason to believe you fucked us over.”

Wexler nodded. “I can see how you might feel that way.”

“A walk, you said. A vacation.”

“Unforeseen circumstances,” Wexler said. “Is Teresa all right?”

“More or less.” He resented the question. “You have the stone?”

No, Byron thought. You are not entitled to that datum. Not yet. He smiled. “Worry about it,” he said.

Wexler sat back and sipped his coffee. “I’m not here,” he said at last—meaning the Floats, Byron took it—“by choice. You might have noticed.”

“Cat said you got burned.”

“They came in force. I was not expecting it.”

“But you weren’t home? That’s a pretty good coincidence.”

“I didn’t expect any of this. Or I would not have sent you people south. May I explain, or would you prefer to break my nose?”

Byron realized his fists were clenched. More bullshit, he thought bleakly. But he might as well listen. And he realized then that he had come here not for money or satisfaction, but for Teresa’s sake. Her unhappiness was patent and frightening and co

A gull circled overhead, screeching. Byron tossed a crumb from the table and watched the bird chase it down to the dark canal water. “I’m listening,” he said.

The Agencies came and closed the estate, Wexler said. It was a radical sweep. They had always ignored him before. The dreamstones were technically contraband, but it was a law not much enforced; the scale of the crime was minuscule, and intensive enforcement would not have been cost-effective. “The new ’liths changed their mind,” Wexler said. “The deep-core ’liths.”

“You knew,” Byron said.

“I was warned,” he admitted. “I have my own contacts. Obviously.”

“Some good people were there.”

“There was no time to get them out. They’ve been in custody, but my understanding is that they’ll be released soon.” He sipped his coffee, labored for breath. “You have to understand about the stones.”

Wexler had a contact in the government research facility in Virginia, a highly-placed member of the research team who had been feeding him news about the deep-core oneiroliths. “And it was heady information. You have to understand that. It was everything we wanted. Everything that came before, impressive as it was, was blurred or obscure by comparison. For years we’d been decoding data in which every third bit had been erased by time. Reconstructing it, really. Even so, we learned a great deal. But never anything substantial about the Exotics themselves. As if they were holding themselves aloof, standing out of reach.”