Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online

Cunningham sits huddled in his seat, somehow smaller than he had been. Up until now, until the firing of his shaped charge, he’d been in control–– but now he’s committed her to action and all he is able to do is watch the result and hope he calculated the ballistics correctly. His jaw muscles twitch in a tight smile and he raises a hand.
    “Thanks,” she says, knowing he’s wished her luck without actually risking a curse by saying it, and she turns away and breathes out and feels a lightness in her body and heart, as if the gravity were somehow lessened. All she has left is the job. No more pleasing Cunningham, no more rules or training, no more listening to Firebud criticizing the very way she walked, the way she held her head. All that is behind.
    The apartment is splashed with video color and she knows Daud is home. He’s cleared the coffee table from the center of the room and is doing his exercises, the weights in his hands, the burning holograms outlining his naked body, his hairless genitals. She kisses his cheek. “Dinner?” she asks.
    “I’m going with Jackstraw. He wants me to meet someone.”
    “Someone new?”
    “Yes. It’s a lot of money.” He drops the weights and lowers himself to the floor, begins strapping another set of weights to his ankles. She stands over him with a frown.
    “How much?” she asks.
    He gives her a quick glance, green laserfire winking from his eye whites, then he looks down. His voice is directed to the floor. “Eight thousand,” he says.
    “That’s a lot,” she says.
    He nods and stretches his back on the ground, raising his legs against the strain of the weights. He points his feet and she can see the muscles taut on the tops of his thighs. She slips out of her shoes and flexes her toes in the carpet.
    “What does he want for it?” she asks. Daud shrugs. Sarah crouches and looks down at him. She feels a tightness in her throat.
    She repeats her question.
    “Jackstraw will be in the next room,” he says. “If anything goes wrong, he’ll know.”
    “He’s a thatch, isn’t he?”
    She can see the Adam’s apple bob as Daud swallows. He nods silently. She takes a breath and watches him strain against the weights. Then he sits up. His eyes are cold.
    “You don’t have to do this,” she says.
    “It’s a lot of money,” he repeats.
    “Tomorrow my job will be over,” she says. “It’ll pay enough for a long time, almost enough for a pair of tickets out.”
    He shakes his head, then springs to his feet and turns his back. He walks toward the shower. “I don’t want your money,” he says. “Your tickets, either.”
    “Daud,” she says. He whirls around and she can see his anger.
    “Your job!” he spits. “You think I don’t know what it is you do?”
    She rises from her crouch, and for a moment she can see fear in his eyes. Fear of her? A wedge of doubt enters her mind.
    “You know what I do, yes,” she says. “You also know why.”
    “Because some man went thatch once,” he says. “And because when you got loose you killed him and liked it. I know the stories on the street.”
    She feels a constriction in her chest. She shakes her head slowly. “No,” she says. “It’s for us , Daud. To get us out, into the Orbitals.” She comes up to him to touch him, and he flinches. She drops her hand. “Where it’s clean, Daud,” she says. “Where we’re not in the street, because there isn’t a street. ”
    Daud gives a contemptuous laugh. “There isn’t a street there?” he asks. “So what will we do, Sarah? Punch code in some little office?” He shakes his head. “No, Sarah,” he says. “We’d do what we’ve always done. But it will be for them, not for us.”
    “No,” she says. “It’ll be different. Something we haven’t known. Something finer.”
    “You should see your eyes when you say that,” Daud says. “Like you’ve just put a needle in your veins. Like that hope is your drug, and you’re hooked on it.” He