Synners by Pat Cadigan Read Free Book Online

back, leaning her elbows on the roof of the rental and folding her hands. "Why?"
    "For services rendered. If you know so much, you must know how to take care of it. It'll save me another service call."
    "You can do it yourself," she said.
    "Me? I don't know dick about computers."
    "You know where the off switch is?"
    He nodded. "So?"
    "So flip it. That'll kill it bang. No matter what your service has been tolling you, that's the only way to kill a virus. Cut off the power."
    The man rolled his eyes. "Forget about it. The menu's out of a closedarea network so they can monitor our volume; we got nothing here but dumb terminals. I cut us off, they'll be down here with an auditor and a warrant to bust me on suspicion of embezzlement."
    Standing behind the man, the young guy was making a familiar up-anddown motion with a fist. Sam bit her lips together to keep from laughing.
    "Hey, you don't want a free meal, honey, it's fine by me, but you sure look like you could use one. More than one."
    "You only offered one," Sam said evenly, "and for what it would cost you to have someone do the work legally, I should get a free meal here every day for a year."
    "Offer's closed." He pulled his head back inside the window and turned to the young guy, who was suddenly scratching the side of his head vigorously. "The virus can stay in there, people can live with a warning about coffee, I don't care. We gotta sell more herbal tea anyway." He marched off.
    The young guy grinned at Sam, who shook her head. "Probably wouldn't have worked, at that. The virus is most likely dug in at the node, so as soon as you turned on again, it would be right back here."
    "Nobody cares as long as it doesn't actually destroy anything," he said, shrugging a bony shoulder. "It's like graffiti to them, the cheap-asses."
    The rental behind Sam honked again. "I said, is it taking long enough?" the driver called, louder.
    "Not quite, but we're working on it!" Sam called back. The guy at the window handed her a small bag and a tall covered thermo-cup. She thanked him and pulled up far enough to allow the woman to reach the window before she tore the bag open and attacked her food. The ball of rice sitting on top of the seaweed cone tipped into her lap and shattered on impact, leaving her with a mostly empty seaweed wrapper. "Fuck it," she muttered, and drove back down Artesia toward the Mimosa, scooping rice out of her lap with one hand.
    "Where's Gator?" she asked the kid in the tent. He must have been all of fifteen, with a funny-chubby cherub's face and thick, fuzzy dark hair that was tangling itself into dreadlocks.
    "At services," he said, hitching up his pants. Hospital surplus; they made him look like an underaged, homeless surgeon.
    "Services?"
    "Yah. She said to tell you she's off praying for God to forgive you."
    Sam blinked. "I'm in hell," she said wonderingly. "The world ended when I wasn't looking, and now I'm in hell." She rubbed her forehead with one hand, trying to think. At least the kid was speaking English. "Gator really told you to tell me that?"
    Now the kid looked embarrassed. "Well, actually, that's what she told me I should say to anyone who came by for a tattoo."
    Sam laughed and kept laughing as she made her way over to Gator's old barber chair and plumped down in it, alarming the kid.
    "Hey, you better not. She said she'd kill me if anyone fucked around in here."
    "I'm not fucking, I'm laughing," Sam said wearily. "Can't you tell the difference?" She swiveled around. The printer was in its usual spot in the corner, but Gator had taken the laptop with her. To services. At the St. Dismas Infirmary for the Incurably Informed, of course, wherever that was now.
    Abruptly she remembered the ex-pump in her pocket.
    "Hey," said the kid, following her over to the corner. "I know she wouldn't want you screwing around with that."
    "I'm not screwing, I'm hooking," Sam said, unrolling the wires that had been discreetly tucked behind a table leg. "Hooking up,