Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone by Jack Womack Read Free Book Online Page A

I’ve always been under the impression cheaters were glamorizers, but the look theirs gave them weren’t so much Rita Hayworth as Lon Chaney. They were yellow, with spots and lines. Seemed impossible to see through but I guess they did.
    » Godness,« said Chlojo. I think she’d met her match. The rod’s knob shone like the headlight on the midnight express. Their geiger counter, or something, started clicking out a mambo beat.
    »Walter!« Eulie said, sounding touchy. »You recognize?«
    »None other.«
    My airy pair, as always, didn’t seem to be up on the news that we were close at hand. They just hung there in the corner like a painting you could walk all the way around; looked sealed in lucite. I took advantage of their lassitude and gave them a closer one-two. I’d have put the dude at my age, thirty or so. From the look of him I guessed he’d been standing on Everest when somebody pulled it out from under him. The buttons on his jacket were gone, the lining hung down all raggedyass; his pants were wrinkled as Grandpa’s kisser. The shoes didn’t matter, they kept fading in and out. His dreamgirl was a goner, no wondering about that. Couldn’t tell exactly what did her in but judging from the bruises I’d think somebody’d played xylophone on her with a pair of meat tenderizers. She’d been a luscious morsel once, though, and her face wasn’t touched. Her eyes were shut. His weren’t. I don’t know what he saw but he didn’t seem to like it.
    »Scrolling?« Chlojo asked.
    »AO,« Eulie said, putting her card underneath the end of that red-hot rod. »Ratio coordinates verifying. Wave accessibility doubling, enter primary codes –«
    No need to eavesdrop; I might as well have been putting the glom on Armenians. Impossible for the layman to get much of a grip on the wonders of science. Wished now I hadn’t cut those paraphysics classes during the six months I cooled my heels at the U of Washington. Knowing the basics would have let me be more hep to their jive. They did their chores as if this was the kind of thing they did every morning before breakfast. I settled back in the purple gleam to soak in the zen of the moment. Just then the phone rang. The gals sprang hurdles when the jingle bells started clanging and the ghosts took off on a fade. Eulie and Chlojo glared at me; in my state of heightened enlightenment I wasn’t too clear on what I was supposed to do. » Answer!« Chlojo shouted, starting toward me. I snatched up the receiver and bleated a hasty salute.
    »What’s shaking?« Trish’s lovely dulcets charmed my ear in reply. La Fabulosa never fails to send me express, but on this evening, at that moment, I’d have been a lot happier if she’d gone to play stickball on somebody else’s block. »Cat got your tongue? Speak up.«
    »Basta,« I said, going low-toned and sultry so she’d think I was in the midst of heavy loveseat action. Chlojo and Eulie were getting frantic with their machinery but the ghosts weren’t sticking around. »Not talking. Loose lips, ships.«
    »Don’t feed me that huggermugger.«
    »Unavoidable, fabs.«
    »You hotfooted it so fast out of Max’s you beat the smoke out the door. Give me the dirt, handsome. You get anywhere trying to shift into babe-o-luscious or did those fair maidens put on the brakes and toss you out on the curb?«
    »Ixnay on the usciouslay,« I chided.
    »You mean they’re still there?« The amazement in her voice annoyed me, but there was no need to get into it here. » Both?«
    »The sixty-four thousand dollar question.«
    »It’s groovitudinous?« she asked.
    »Maxima.«
    »Mea maxima groovitudina.«
    »Must run,« I said, knowing she rarely recognized hints when she heard them. »Tally ho.«
    »What’s the protocol in this situation?« she asked. »Draw straws?«
    »Flip coins,« I said. »Look, haste wastes. We’ll chat anon, bet on it. I swear.«
    »You’re so sexigismal.« She whinnied a king-size horselaugh. »Fill me in later.