Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

looks at her soberly, all his anger gone. “No, Sarah,” he says. “I know what I am, and what you are. I don’t want your hope, or your tickets. Especially tickets with blood on them.” He turns away again, and her answer comes quick and angry, striking for his weakness, for the heart. Like a weasel.
    “You don’t mind stealing my bloody endorphins, I’ve noticed,” she says. His back stiffens for a moment, then he walks on. Heat stings Sarah’s eyes. She blinks back tears. “Daud,” she says.“Don’t go with a thatch. Please.”
    He pauses at the door, hand on the jamb. “What’s the difference?” he asks. “Going with a thatch, or living with you?”
    The door closes and Sarah can only stand and fight a helpless war with anger and tears. She spins and stalks into her bedroom. Her hardwired nerves are crackling, the adrenaline triggering her reflexes, and she only stops herself from trying to drive a fist through the wall.
    She can taste death on her tongue, and wants to run the Weasel as fast as she can.
    The holograph of Princess sits on her chest of drawers. She takes it and stares at it; seeing the creamy shoulders, the blue innocence in the eyes, an innocence as false as Daud’s.

    TOMORROW/NO

    Sarah and Princess follow the ambulance men out of the Aujourd’Oui. They are carrying the girl from the washroom stall. She has clawed her cheeks and breasts with her fingernails. Her face is a swollen cloud of bruises, her nose blue pulp; her lips are split and bloody. She is still trying to weep, but lacks the strength.
    Sarah can see Princess’s excitement glittering in her eyes. This is the touch of the world she craves, warm and sweaty and real, flavored with the very soil of old Earth. Princess stands on the hot sidewalk, while her dirtboys circle and call for the cars. Sarah puts her arm around her and whispers in her ear, telling her what Sarah knows she wants. “I am your dream. ”
    “My name is Danica,” Princess says.
    In the back of the car there is a smell of sweat and expensive scent. Sarah begins to devour Danica, licking and biting and breathing her in. She left the silicon spray at home but won’t be needing it: Danica has Daud’s eyes and hair and smooth flesh, and Sarah finds herself wanting to touch her, to make a feast of her.
    The car passes smoothly through gates of hardened alloy, and then they are in the nest. None of Cunningham’s people ever got this far. Danica takes Sarah’s hand and leads her in. A security man insists on a check: Sarah looks down at him with a contemptuous stare and spreads the wings of her jacket, letting his electronic marvel scout her body: She knows Weasel is undetectable by these means. The boy confiscates her hardfire inhaler. Fine: it is made so as not to acquire fingerprints. “What are these?” he asks, holding up the hard black cubes of liquid crystal, ready for insertion into a comp deck.
    “Music,” she says. He shrugs and gives them back. Princess takes her hand again and leads her up a long stair.
    Her room is soft azure. She laughs and lies back on sheets that match her eyes, arms outstretched. Sarah bends over and laps at her. Danica moans softly, approving. She is an old man and a powerful one, and Sarah knows this game. His job is to rape Earth, to be as strong as spaceborn alloy, and it is weakness that is his forbidden thing, his pornography. To put his bright new body into the hands of a slave is a weakness he wants more than life itself.
    “My dream,” Danica whispers. Her fingers trace the scars on Sarah’s cheek, her chin. Sarah takes a deep breath. Her tongue retracts into Weasel’s implastic housing, and the cybersnake’s head closes over it. She rolls Danica entirely under her, holding her wrists, molding herself to the old man’s new girl body. She presses her mouth to Danica’s, feeling the flutter of the girl’s tongue, and then Weasel strikes, telescoping from its hiding place in Sarah’s throat and chest.