THE SOLDIER IN THE MACHINE

RUSSELL BLACKFORD

 

 

Although Russell Blackford’s fiction appears infrequently, he has maintained a reputation as one of Australia’s significant writers of fantasy and science fiction. His first published story, “The Load on Her Mind” appeared in Westerly in 1982. Since then, he has published one novel, The Tempting of the Witch King, and several short stories. Among the latter, “Glass Reptile Breakout” is frequently cited as an early example of Australian cyberpunk writing, and one of the best stories of its kind. In 1997 “The Sword of God” won the Aurealis Award for best Australian fantasy story and the Ditmar Award for short fiction.

 

Russell is an internationally known critic of science fiction and fantasy, and has also published in other fields relating to literature, philosophy and the law. He holds a BA with first class honours and a PhD from the University of Newcastle, as well as an LLB with first class honours from the University of Melbourne. He has enjoyed a distinguished career in academe, public administration, and labour relations.

 

His criticism appears in standard science fiction reference works, such as The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Magill’s Guide to Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature; in Australian, US, and British journals; and in several collections of critical articles. He has twice won the prestigious William Atheling Junior Award for criticism or review.

 

Russell was a member of the editorial collective of Australian Science Fiction Review: Second Series, an acclaimed forum for discussion of science fiction, which won a Ditmar Award in 1991. He was a principal in the small press Ebony Books and an organiser of the academic track for the 1985 World Science Fiction Convention, for which he co-edited the proceedings volume Contrary Modes (with Jenny Blackford, Lucy Sussex, and Norman Talbot). He also co-edited a state-of-the-art collection of fantasy and science fiction stories, Urban Fantasies (with David King).

 

In the jittery, noir, cyberpunk story that follows, you might just begin to feel that you’re hallucinating instead of reading. Don’t adjust your set ... Blackford is firmly in control.

 

* * * *

 

 

Honey Fantasia is a honey: she plays loud and wild and pretty in a miracle band, and Rhino will work for her any time.

 

Rhino is conspicuous — he flaunts it. You could never camouflage him in brand-new pastel Reeboks and a fresh white printed T-shirt and pass him off as a harmless Aussie tourist, first time in Bangkok on Qantas Airlines. But here he is, all the same, with that honey by his side. Others try not to stare at him, but, out of the corner of one beady eye, he catches a young blonde mother with a little kid, boy or girl, with eyes as blue as the sky over Darwin this August and long yellow hair in a pony-tail. Mother there is crouching down to the kid’s level, telling it something, and glancing his way. “Don’t go near the big man!”

 

He paces and frets, sleepless, anxious, around the airport’s baggage carousel, waiting for fat suitcases the same dull hardware grey as his implant trademark. Honey Fantasia yawns.

 

Rhino is accustomed to towering over clients and he does, even with Fantasia. But she’s tall: 185 centimetres of her slims up to his two-metres-plus-implant. She’s long and strong and slippery with masses of burnt orange ultra-soft “hair”, genetically engineered stuff based on alpacas or something, implanted into her scalp (she’s been re-engineered to grow no natural hair anywhere on her body). The “hair” — what else do you call it? — spills down her back, down to her thighs, over a loose-sleeved cotton dress the colour of dark grass stains, which reaches bare ankles. She slings a chamois leather bag to hold her multitude of plastic cards and her chunky Finnish laser shades. Her hands and pretty sandalled feet, her broad face, horse rider’s shoulders — real muscle thickness layered over delicate bones: deltoids in a motion of runnels and waves — are oiled softly, tanned deeply. Brow and cheekbones feed wells of wide dark eyes. A double implanted row of diamond chips makes needle tracks in her left cheek like parallel duelling scars. For eyebrows she has little surgically-grafted white feathers. Below them are long black implanted lashes.

 

Rhino and this fine gal client have brought nothing to disturb Customs on this leg of the trip. They just want out of here.

 

Suitcases turn up. He steps forward. “Excuse me.” None of the bunch crowded about the luggage carousel want to go near him or his client — they shrink aside. He hooks one big plastic oyster suitcase by its black handle, then the other, swings both in one callused hand, lifts them high over the heads of other passengers, waits for Fantasia to step in his wake, powers towards Customs. Not yet crowded; first flight in. Finds the green arrows, brushes through the Nothing To Declare passage — and out.

 

Where they’re waiting.

 

You can’t disguise Rhino any more than you can Honey Fantasia. Two metres in his scuffed leather Nikes, plus the grey horn implant arching up out of the top of his forehead, he’s two-hundred kilos of beef and steroids, a walking megalith. Skin a pale controlled tan, despite the ferocious sunshine Fantasia’s inflicted on him all August. He’s exhibited blur fighting wherever it’s legal or tolerated throughout the Pacific rim; he’s been a ghetto courier in cities all over South-East Asia and the States; he’s had work as standover muscle in Vegas, on the Gold Coast, in Bangkok and the sprawl of KL. He’s totally clean and legal, with an international passport.

 

And he’s one helluva bodyguard. He could slam a shrivel of paparazzi straight through a pressboard door; better, he looks like he could. So he flaunts it. Rhino’s head is permanently depilated, leaving only his twenty centimetres of vat-grown rhino horn. He wears a huge black T-shirt with the sleeves ripped out. Red lettering splashes it diagonally on front and back: RHINOSAURUS. Wide, chrome-studded wristbands and leather collar; feathery drop earrings that match Fantasia’s eyebrows. When you hire Rhino, you’re not looking for some fancy operative to cover you from the background; you want conspicuous muscle; you’re telling the world, “Get out of the goddamn way!”

 

That’s what Fantasia has been saying to all the world through the big, bad Territory and on a working holiday across Java. They’ve driven like mad mothers everywhere between Uluru and Darwin, Fantasia’s sandals on the dash, Fantasia squeezing plasticized data dots into the sound system — miracle band music — popping them out just as quickly, trying something else. They’ve swum tropical beaches beneath cloudless August skies. Carved into fatty white crocodile steaks in the Kakadu. Scoffed Bintang beers together at the Lava Bar up on the volcano edge at Mount Bromo, seeing who could get drunker. Driven in the backs of tour-guided people movers from Yogya to Malang to Bromo and back, then north to Jakarta, dodging the kings of the road: Mercedes diesel tour buses as long and ugly as Boeing 797s, thundering the roads, scattering underpowered motor-cycles, pedal-powered becaks, crowded people movers and occasional flashy red government sedans with sinister tinted screens. Fantasia has played with local miracle bands out of the teeming Javanese cities. Now Thailand, Bangkok — miracle city.

 

* * * *

 

Driver: a little Thai in a short-sleeved floral shirt, greens and yellows, and cheap black trousers. The other guy: mean, slick Caucasian bozo, mid-twenties, eyes nearly level with Rhino’s. Hawk face, evenly tanned, darker than Fantasia’s, as if his skin has absorbed quantities of mahogany shoe polish. Hair cut brutally short, flat-topped, coifed with the fuzzy neatness of a gay bouncer’s. He looks hungry and honed, springy and sharp like razor ribbon. That’ll do for a handle. Razor Ribbon is dolled up in a somber grey suit, a Zegna-Pointman job nestling his broad shoulders, snaking narrow hips — brilliant white shirt, gold cufflinks, spit-and-polish black brogues, red St Laurent tie. “Mr Rhino,” he says. Like Fantasia’s not there. American accent, West coast, Rhino guesses. Razor Ribbon extends a plate-sized bony hand.

 

Rhino sets down his bags, takes the hand, measures the strength in it. Astonishing strength.

 

“I’m Paul,” says Razor Ribbon as they part grips. No suggestion of a surname. “This is Darling.” The driver smiles and bows, hands pressed: wai gesture. “That’s not his real name, but it’s close and he likes it, thinks it’s a bit of a joke, don’t you, Darling?”

 

There’s an unpleasant element in this banter. Rhino presses slabs of hands, bows to Darling. “Sawat-dii.” To Paul: “I’m pleased to meet you. Do you have rooms? We’re stuffed from the flight. And we’ve been driving like fuckers these last three weeks. And I don’t fit into jumbo jets easily.” He looks Paul up and down: maybe half Rhino’s total bulk — still a big boy. “Guess you’d know something about that, too.”

 

“Don’t know who designs the things.” Paul relaxes slightly. “Maybe Snow White and the seven dwarfs.”

 

“Maybe.” Rhino steps aside, lets Fantasia come forward. “This,” he says, “is Ms Fantasia.”

 

“Delighted to meet you ... again,” Paul says. He smiles at Fantasia like an old lover. She smiles but does not move. He switches off the smile. “Come on. We’ve got a hotel for you. You can shower in your rooms and get some sleep. We’ll have you there by nine.” It’s just past 8 a.m. local time. “The Colonel wants to talk with you both this afternoon.”

 

“Hope she doesn’t expect too much sense out of me.” But, under his exhaustion, Rhino is curious, ready to go, full of questions. Like who the Colonel is for a start — except that she’s already paid ten thousand megayen into one of Rhino’s AMEX digital cash lines. More into Fantasia’s discretionary trust accounts. Gestures of good faith.

 

Paul looks at him quizzically. “Here, let me take Ms Fantasia’s suitcase.” Rhino slides it over. “Right. We’re taking you to the New Intercontinental. Have you stayed there before? No? You’ll like it.”

 

He swings the bag Rhino’s given him like it weighs nothing.

 

Rubber tracks slide them on smooth rollers through the giant clean international terminal already filling with departing passengers. Paul keeps his voice down, seems to talk into his suit lapels. “You know why you’re here?”

 

Fantasia must know better than him. She’s silent. So is Rhino.

 

“The Colonel is not quite what you think, Rhino.” Paul has dropped the Mr. “And she’s got a contract to fulfill. There’s deals we’ve made here, components that have to be flown elsewhere, big trouble if we try to leave Bangkok, where the military police who run the city are friendly to us. Capisce? We have work to do this afternoon to help you understand just how dangerous our competitors can be to you.” Smiles like a jaguar. Very white teeth. “We need lots of beauty and lots of brawn. Got it?” He turns the smile on Fantasia. “Ms Fantasia can provide some of the beauty.”

 

She shrugs. Oiled deltoids make pretty ripples under her skin.

 

The rollers slide them past repetitive placards sponsored by International Service Clubs, smiling Asian faces exhorting them to solve problems through truth and consideration. All very well if you’re raising credit for the local school library, thinks Rhino. Wouldn’t work in my line.

 

* * * *

 

Flashy white turbo-charged limo, extended version — Darling guns it into the city. Rhino takes over an entire bench in the back. Fantasia takes off her sandals, flexes her toes, bends and worries at chipped green toenail polish, leans back and sighs. Paul lounges in front, leaves them alone.

 

With a measure of room to stretch at last, Rhino can finally start to doze. Dopily, he half-registers as they pass scum-filled canals, brilliant green fields, enter Bangkok’s maniac streets where ancient, clapped out vehicles menace each other for the roadway like holo movie dinosaurs, pulling stunts of cunning and brinkmanship. Darling jabs viciously into traffic chaos, honking the horn.

 

They drive by narrow side streets crowded with pedlars. The morning sky is a dirty glare: colours are bright enough — and Rhino dons wrap-around German goggles — but the sun itself is not visible. He’s dozed off by the time they reach the hotel, where Darling opens his door, touches his shoulder diffidently. “Mr Rhino” — turns away — “Ms Fantasia.”

 

Fantasia’s wearing her laser shades. She steps from the car carrying her sandals in one hand, shakes orange hair.

 

Paul gets baggage for them, checks them into the hotel, Rhino and Fantasia digging out tired passports for the smiling clerk. Formalities: explanations of the hotel’s multiple restaurants, baggage to the porter, keys, directions.

 

Their rooms are in another building entirely (this place is built on one helluva scale); Rhino completely takes up one of his room’s big beds. Honey Fantasia is next door. She can’t come to too much harm in a place like this. Forget the client for a while. Rhino doesn’t bother to remove clothes. Sleeps like a baby.

 

* * * *

 

Wakes leaping from the bed, fists clenched.

 

But it’s only the telephone. Startled into clarity, he finds he’s not alone. How did she get here? She’s already answered the phone, cut out its conference facility; she’s talking into a handset, and he can’t hear the speaker at the other end. Video screen tuned dead. She puts down the handset, shrugs prettily. “That was Paul.” She’s a songbird! “He says the Colonel wants to talk with you and Ms Fantasia at four this afternoon. Better get ready, Sir. I call Ms Fantasia, too. Now you’re here, I look after you, Mr Rhino. I look after you very well, Sir.”

 

Manhattan accent over Thai; she’s lived in the States. Dainty Thai-Indian, fraction Rhino’s size. She’d come to Fantasia’s shoulders. Moist eyes like orgasms.

 

Hired sex-girl.

 

Perfect oval face, very dark skin, blue-black hair cut in a classic French bob, she’s all dressed up in pinks: footless lurex tights; short-sleeved silk jacket, embroidered in green and blue and yellow floral swirls, and beautifully lined; little shiny pink slippers. Glistening emerald-scales the size of postage stamps are implanted each side of her face between eye-corners and temples. She oozes charm, discretion, Eastern personal courtesy — antithesis of Bangkok’s traffic manners.

 

“How about I go back to sleep?” He sits back on his bed.

 

“No, you must wake up, Mr Rhino. You cannot disappoint Paul and the Colonel.”

 

“Wait on. Who are you, anyway?” He’s met everyone on his current client list except Ice Ninja and the Colonel. This cutey’s not there on any print-out.

 

“I’m Sunandra. I look after you, Sir.”

 

“So you said.”

 

She laughs at that. God help him, she’s beautiful, almost too beautiful, probably the creation of some surgical sculptor — not just the implants. “We stay together all the time. So I hope you like me, Mr Rhino.”

 

She can’t mean all the time: he’s likely to be in capital-D danger at some point — let that pass. “Tell me,” he says, “about the Colonel.”

 

She sits on the other bed, legs crossed under her. He watches the V-line of her jacket where it exposes brown throat, plunges between the fullness of her breasts; helplessly he imagines skin colour under the jacket. Same colour all over? Undoubtedly. What’s going on? He knows nothing about the people in this hotel. His agent has dealt with intermediaries of intermediaries in setting up this whole trip, furtive street couriers with the capacity to deliver on promises of walloping digital cash transactions.

 

All he knows about the Colonel is that she’s some kind of dropout from a multinational security contractor to the global telecommunications companies. She’s hustling big, scoring local contacts and contracts. She has some kind of components deal to deliver on. She’s looking for some unsophisticated muscle (why?). And she has dangerous competitors.

 

“Well,” she says, “Paul wanted me to prepare you. The Colonel’s different, Sir.”

 

“Sir? You’ll have to cut that out.” Rhino laughs. “We’re all different, Sunandra. You. Me. Paul. Honey Fantasia. Look at us.”

 

Sunandra won’t be denied. “You know what an upload is, Mr Rhino?” she says in her songbird voice.

 

He thinks of money. “Sure.”

 

“Nanoware text intelligence analogue, Mr Rhino.” The terminology surprises him only because it comes from her.

 

“The Colonel’s a brain-program? Well, I can handle that.” But he needs a lot more information. “Are you going to tell me all about it? From the beginning, eh?”

 

“Of course I cannot, Mr Rhino. But we have some components that the Colonel needs delivered to a colleague with Offnet Polisearch Laboratory. Not a firm you would have heard of, Sir.”

 

But that’s not true. He’s done courier work for Offnet Polisearch before: radical tech security consultants — operate out of a technology enclave in South Australia. Polisearch has links in half a dozen technopoles in Japan and Korea, in Yogya, KL ... in Bangkok.

 

Sunandra uncrosses her legs, lowers slippered feet to the floor. “Our competitors may not know the place of delivery, but they watch our movements very carefully. The Colonel hopes you will help us deliver on our obligations, Mr Rhino. The authorities in Bangkok are friendly to us. Not so elsewhere. Soon you talk to Paul and the Colonel. Ms Fantasia already knows something about this. While you are here we have many ... many plausible” — she pronounces it like an unfamiliar word — “things for you to do. Ms Fantasia also. I look after you especially, Mr Rhino, while you look after her. Okay?”

 

What else is there to say? He also stands, stretches and looks down at her — she seems to be standing on some lower slope. “And you’ve all got me this exhibition? The blur fight?”

 

“Correct, Mr Rhino. You are Rhinosaurus, blur fighting professional. There is big promoter in Bangkok. You fight Ice Ninja from Sapporo in one week. His promoter puts up good money to fight you. Makes him your client, too.” Good money, aching legs and a few bruises. “We will tell you everything else when you need to know.” He doesn’t like her choice of words. “But the Colonel must explain, herself. You must not worry. The Colonel said I have to look after you, and I will.”

 

His mood is worsening. “I hope it isn’t too goddamn onerous.”

 

She’s downcast. “I do not mean it that way, Mr Rhino.”

 

Looks her over again. He notices her fingers for the first time: third finger and the pinkie on her left hand — nails are emerald-scale implants, like her eyes, but long, and squared off, like chisels. They’ll be razor sharp. He’s seen it before on flickdancers in KL. She’s a dancer, then. Songbird. Flickdancer. “Yeah, sorry, Sunandra. Most people don’t like me much. I scare them. That’s the idea, I guess. But I don’t want you to be scared.”

 

She reaches to take his hand. “I never get scared,” she says matter-of-factly. He looks her over incredulously. “And, Mr Rhino, you seem such a gentle man.”

 

* * * *

 

She bullies him; makes him undress and shower. Though it’s a cavernous shower unit, he hardly fits. Sunandra dries him, businesslike, with the hotel’s huge fluffy towels, commands him to lie on his groaning bed, applies massage, sitting astride him like riding a horse. There’s nothing sexual about it, just pure relief for stiffened neck, aching shoulders, fatigued hocks. Bossed unmercifully by this flower of a girl, he finds he likes it. When she’s finished, he lies on his back, great fleshy tub of a body pink, shiny, flopping relaxed.

 

“Okay,” he says at last. “Take me to your leader, Sunandra.”

 

“You must now get dressed. Let us see...” Shamelessly, she rummages through his suitcase, gets clean clothes together for him — camo duds, a sleeveless shirt that would do her for a tent, knitted of leather straps, sea green and deep red.

 

He takes her proffered hand as they descend the elevator: she drags him out-doors, where the 90-degree heat, the humidity, the glare fasten on him at once. She’s already handing over his German shades. Sunandra leads him past a fountain and pond, where two cranes with clipped wings stalk gracefully — avian Tai-Chi — then past a running track and a free-form swimming pool, by an acre of lily ponds, through dark crannies and arbors. “Where are we going?” he says.

 

“The driving range.”

 

He’d believe anything about this place; some grounds it’s got. Acres and acres. “Vroom-vroom or thwackum?”

 

She laughs at him looking up from the bottom of his sternum. “In fact they have got both,” she says.

 

“But this time I meant thwackum, Mr Rhino. Later on you can do your motoring practice or game of golf.”

 

* * * *

 

The driving range is in full use. They all seem to know each other. Thais and Westerners, dressed for a casual afternoon at the practice tee and maybe a round in the evening. There’s matte grey equipment around them which Rhino recognizes as holo gear, mounted cameras, God knows how many megayen of the stuff, all installed so the New Intercontinental’s clientele can analyse the mechanics of backswing, wrist placement, follow-through. Paul dominates the group, towering, like the heroic lead on a holo set — he’s relaxed into a yellow knitted golfshirt, crisp brown trousers, teak-coloured Akubra hat. The outfit exaggerates his broad shoulders, snake hips. He hits nine-iron pitch shots with authority, high and hard, golf balls lobbing with real backbite.

 

Honey Fantasia has not arrived yet.

 

Sunandra introduces Rhino to the others. Americans, Aussies, Thais, but somehow all the same, all slightly false in bright casual dress. Heavily painted girls with nosejobs, implants for hair: fur, feathers, iridescent mops of plastic wire. They remind him of failed holo starlets or glamour gal ring attendants at the blur fights. Slim jumpy guys — stomachless, hipless — with high veins on wiry arms. There’s a sense of deliberate hunger here. Rhino wonders what weapons they are all concealing. Telco security cowboys.

 

Fantasia turns up. She nods to Paul. “Thanks for the directions.” She looks sporty in her way, jaunty: she’s wearing loose grass-coloured jeans, matching plain canvas runners, baseball cap, plastic bangles all the way up her right arm to the elbow. Orange hair streams from under the cap. Her upper body is covered by a short-sleeved yellow nylon jacket, several sizes too big for her — more Rhino’s size. Those bulky laser shades with their gunmetal frames dominate her face, covering the white feathers of her brows.

 

The holo unit showers with congealing light, forms the image of a tall, middle-aged woman in khaki uniform. Steel grey hair combed back over ears, collar-length, slope of her prominent nose almost vertical. Tough lady, nothing butch about her, but no little softnesses or affectations. The Colonel, then, Vocal-Aural-Visual interface software patching in to the hotel’s holo set-up.

 

“My current ... lifestyle does not encourage a taste in pleasantries, Ms Fantasia, Rhino,” says the Colonel. Good lip-synch on the animation. The synthesized voice through speakers is brisk but flattened, with the vowels programmed for something close to Carolina softness. “You are welcome. I’ll get to business. But, first, an illustration. I hope this interests you.”

 

“Go ahead,” says Fantasia. Rhino watches the animation, its colours just too close to the primaries, its shapes a fraction geometric, but close to some presumed reality.

 

“Very well. It’s simple. Rhino, I want you to hit a golf ball. Do you know how to play golf?”

 

“I’ve played.”

 

“Take a driver. Sunandra will tee up for you. Don’t try to hit straight; aim somewhere to the right or left, wherever you like. Go on.”

 

Suspiciously, expecting some trick, Rhino obeys. He waggles the club, lifts it around his chest in a short backswing, forgets about the holo for a moment. Clumsily, but still with great force, Rhino strikes at his golf ball, sends it in a savage uncontrolled hook down the left of the driving range. A couple of seconds later Paul hits a drive, lands the ball within a centimetre of where Rhino’s landed. It bounces, and rolls after Rhino’s ball so that they come to rest a metre apart.

 

“Try again,” the Colonel says blandly. “By the way, we could have made our point with a roulette wheel, or with dice throws, but we thought you would prefer something more physical.” Rhino looks over at the smug holo.

 

Sunandra tees his ball. Irritated, Rhino thrashes at it. There’s a double crack! as Paul drives simultaneously with him this time. The two golf balls land just to right of centre of the range, almost collide, but bounce in randomly different directions.

 

“Better, Paul,” says the Colonel. “Again, Rhino.”

 

What the heck? Rhino thwacks a beauty, but this time Paul actually hits his ball a split second earlier than Rhino hits his. They land close together right in the middle of the range. Again, they both drive simultaneously, Rhino mishitting the top of the ball. Both balls hit hard into the ground, roll for one hundred metres, actually collide and ricochet apart.

 

“Enough,” says the Colonel. “Paul could do this all day and not get tired.”

 

Light’s dawning. “He’s deliberately matching ...?” says Rhino. “But that’s impossible —”

 

“He’d have to be able to know exactly how you’re going to hit the ball the instant before you hit it, correct?” Rhino is speechless. “Honey Fantasia, Rhinosaurus,” the Colonel says expansively, “meet the face of the future. SACID operative. Specified Anomalous Capabilities (Intelligence Design). Outcome of decades of research.”

 

“I don’t think I want to know about this,” Rhino says slowly.

 

“You do, mister. You do. My former employers have worked with the FBI, USSS, the global telcos, a number of semi-secret university-controlled corporations for longer than I’ve been alive, gene-engineering to develop Paul and his breed. You’ll find the breed doing corporate security work throughout the States, Western Europe, Japan, places like Australia. There’s a major market for the technology here in Thailand. I’m happy to fill it. Unfortunately, setting up my own firm in competition with ex-colleagues has not been easy. Outside of Bangkok I am not popular with those in the same business. Even establishing this operation involved a few small tactical hardships like an uploading and a body-death.” She lets it sink in. “Outsmarting the competitors is not always a simple matter.

 

“Rhino, Honey Fantasia will be staying in Bangkok when you leave. She already knows the bad news. You and Sunandra need to deliver certain components to a research company in South Australia associated with us. You Will Not Go There Directly.” The Colonel emphasizes the words of the last sentence, one word at a time. “I want you to imagine Paul in a fire fight.” Rhino is paying attention — no cobwebs left in his mind by now. “The physical augmentation is secondary. It’s his mind. He evades before you shoot; he corrects before you evade. He makes you look like a dinosaur. Sorry.” The subtle geometric of an animation smile.

 

“No hard feelings, Colonel.”

 

“Rhino,” she says, intense now, “I am a SACID. A couple of generations earlier than Paul, but still a SACID. One thing I and my competitors can’t yet do is get the SACID mind to upload with its full capabilities into a form running on digital neurons. The physical material of the brain is too important. But we’re close. We have ideas. We want to do more research. We have components that are promising. And there’s other research we need to do. You’ve seen Paul’s capability. It’s the only one we can consistently engineer for: superinstantaneous cognition. To talk about precognition would be an exaggeration. But there’s lots of new research ... My group started off by studying flickdancers. You’ve seen flickdancers in this very city cutting themselves as they dance, healing themselves —”

 

“I’ve seen it everywhere,” he says. A worldwide musical phenomenon, the miracle band musicians and the flickdancers. Rhino has one of each here: Honey Fantasia, Sunandra. The craze they manifest is nowhere more extreme than right here in Bangkok. What is he supposed to do about it?

 

“Rhino, how do you think you would fare if you had to go up against SACID operatives?”

 

But she’s already answered that question. Rhino realizes too sharply what he’s up against if he has to act as a courier with bastards like Paul on his tail. A guy like that — or a woman like the Colonel — would be unbeatable in a fire fight. Not just that. How could you ever nail one — feet, fists? And Paul, at least, looks like the kind who could stack up roofing tiles — and smash! You could never avoid those hands. “Like a dinosaur, I suppose,” he says. “Look, I don’t get this. Paul’s here. What am I supposed to add to the operation? Looks?”

 

“Variety!... Stay with Sunandra. Fantasia, you know what to do. From now on, Paul is your bodyguard. You’ll stay in Bangkok until we judge it’s safe to leave.”

 

Honey Fantasia shrugs. “Sure, keep it coming.” They must be feeding that discretionary trust of hers. Bangkok is not Rhino’s idea of a place to stay under siege.

 

“The authorities will see a moderately famous miracle muso on tour and holidays with a large well-documented bodyguard. They will see her stay in Bangkok for a time, appropriately guarded, while the large bodyguard leaves with a pretty Thai flickdancer. You should not expect any official trouble. The trouble will come from our competitors.”

 

That’s more than enough.

 

“Sunandra knows what you need to do,” says the Colonel. “You know our financial terms. You don’t know too much to back out ... quite ... Don’t expect to learn too much more.” She pauses. “You’ve already made some cash for your trouble. I should add that you’ve already become a target for our competitors as soon as you leave Bangkok. Guilt by association. You backing out or you staying in, mister?”

 

Paul tees up another ball, swings through it with a bullet-like crack, driving it high and sweet. Rhino is not sure that he likes doing anything that involves pushing along the evolution of this breed. But what’s the choice? “In,” he says. One word. He looks at Honey Fantasia, almost pleading with her. What have you got me into, gal? Nothing looks back through the opaque-lensed laser shades.

 

* * * *

 

It’s like he’s slurped down too much coffee: hollow tired, but nerves jangling. He paces the floor of his room. Fidgets with anything, the waistband of his pants, the hotel’s services listing — anything. Reads the menu for room service. He wants to be able to sleep, knows he’ll be awake all night.

 

“We have work to do soon, Mr Rhino,” says Sunandra. “You must try to enjoy yourself.”

 

“Doing what?” He sits on the edge of his bed.

 

Sunandra sits beside him. Takes one hand in both of her tiny ones. Talks to him, soothing, smoothing, crooning, guides him back through the coiled and poisonous intricacies of their situation.

 

Tells him: the Colonel was working on a government contract in Sao Paulo when she saw the opportunity to start up some competition for her employer. She arranged to die. Uploaded secretly, merging her brain’s wetware with a nanoware text, switched off the wetware, arranged a plausible accident for her body — one involving a military concussion rifle, leaving no sign of any recent work on her brain. Transferred herself and a massive line of digital cash to associates in Bangkok, several steps ahead of what had already become the competition. Arranged for the original nanoware text in Brazil to be wiped clean. Gathered supporters; bought in software, hardware mobiles, interface junk; made Bangkok military police contacts, heavy and necessary. Other contacts with government telco people. She was starting to build an operation. She kept her nanoware matrix off the nets. When she did have to interface with them, she had layers and layers of counter-intrusive firewalls and guard dogs to hide behind, always paranoid.

 

She’s still slowly building contacts outside of Thailand, Honey Fantasia among them. Research corporations. Rhino.

 

He’s broody, and Sunandra takes him down to the hotel’s seafood restaurant, which is wake-up-and-take-notice good — she makes him try the local fish, crab, a satay. He puts away a couple of litres of Tiger beer, two bottles of imported Australian pinot noir. Sunandra drinks and twinkles, seems to sing to him.

 

After dinner, she orders a cab to Sukhumvit Road. Takes him to a vast dance hall, styled Soi Angel, where international miracle bands play. “Honey Fantasia plays here tonight, Mr Rhino.” He knows.

 

The hall is all mirrors and holos, reflecting endlessly, top and bottom, sides. Smoke twists in thinning scarves and catches the random bursts of laser lights. Here are Bangkok’s fish people, the local sharks and roe, mingling with tourists, boys and girls, from all over mainland Asia, Japan, Australia, the States. Near naked to show off radical body implants: fins, fur, feathers, spines ... and anything marine — fins and flippers, teeth from whales, crocodile scales, dorsal sails ... Wildest are the professional flickdancers — caged in platforms drifting about on wires high over the dance floor — and their emulators in the crowd, lean hungry shark boys, the little roe, bare-breasted teenage girls.

 

When the miracle bands play, Bio-Feed music, synthesizers hooked up to state-of-the-art EEG receptors, these crowds are hysterical with a religious lunacy that brings out crazy effects in the right people — the sort of people the Colonel is interested in, the potential SACID gene stock — provided they believe. There are supposed to be explanations: enhanced mental field effects from the unnatural contortions of playing music with your brain, interacting with other minds in the room, them interacting with each other. The music has its own mystique, like any music, but the really weird stuff is from the fields of minds cuddling up in bizarre unnatural ways, not the musical notes themselves.

 

The music has its own, and Sunandra has caught it. She drags Rhino onto the dance floor. Above them, a male flickdancer mutilates himself systematically, carves unbleeding patterns into his chest with a triangle-bladed knife.

 

On the stage, musicians prance and posture; leading them, Honey Fantasia. She’s almost a different creature, now — miracle muso — though a creature Rhino knows well.

 

Fantasia’s Wires, the spidery black crown of EEG headgear jacked into her scalp under the hairline, are tangled in messed orange implanted hair; below them, long pins of coherent red light emitted from her laser shades slowly trace the hall. She’s wearing nothing but a seaweed-coloured wrap-around skirt that falls to mid-thigh and a kind of rope net the colour of her implanted hair, the mesh wide enough to let her head and arms through. Stomach muscles harden and twist like gnarled wood. Fantasia’s breasts are tipped with ultrasoft fur a millimetre long, the same burnt orange colour as the mane of hair on her head. As she dances she undoes the knot at the side of her skirt, removes it in a swift gesture, letting it fall to the floor, kicking it away, revealing a Y of the same soft implanted stuff, rising between her legs and branching around her waist; seen from the front and at this distance, she is wearing a kind of skimpy fur bikini. Serpent tattoos with fiery mouths coil her legs; their eyes are deeply-implanted chips of emerald like those on Sunandra’s face. She’s glorious.

 

Thick, voiceless curtains of sound, wild, improvised, at times almost atonal, billow out around the core of a heavy rock beat. Sunandra is smiling fixedly in the direction of Honey Fantasia, the little scale-jewels at her eyes glistening; she’s sweating, and she pulls off her silk jacket. God! Her brown nipples are puckered hard. Looks Rhino in the eye, dances flailingly from the neck down, never, never moves her eyes. He’s picking up on things in her head, weird, sexy, undefinable things. Miracle dancer.

 

And then she does it. Flick. Sunandra rips upwards, then down again, between her breasts with those razor jewels on her left hand, opening herself, peeling back skin over sternum, down the stomach to her tights, like parting the teeth of a red zipper on a sexy jumpsuit. No blood flows; within moments the skin is knitting back. And, despite himself, despite everything, incorrectly, inappropriately, even incoherently, Rhino is turned on ...

 

Later, in the hotel room, Sunandra uses massage. She takes off her clothes and is all over him, hands, breasts, hot mouth. Rhino on his back, that hot wet mouth finds him; she’s kneeling, straddling one of his tree-trunk legs, rubbing her fur, rubbing her wetness against him, while her tongue swirls and flicks. His eyes are squeezed shut against a pleasure that hurts and hurts.

 

Until she’s riding him, her legs split apart like a ballerina’s; she’s balancing with one hand on his chest, the other holding his knuckles at her crotch. And she starts trembling, another harmonic to her movement. “Now, Mr Rhino, now!” she says. Their minds are locked together, wordless, but there’s a bewildering, joyous feedback of lust and ecstasy. Yet this is no dance floor. Who is she?

 

His eyes are closed, but he still sees her, sees her seeing him. “I race you, Mr Rhino.” Starts to spasm. Together. Each of them. YES. YES. YES.

 

* * * *

 

Sunandra is up before him. She’s found a pink silk dressing gown. Brings breakfast from the room waiter, plates stacked with pineapple, papaya, local ham and bacon, little brown sausages, fried egg beaten with onions. She throws off the dressing gown, gets into bed. They scoop together into the good local food.

 

Make love with the same desperation as last night.

 

Then, it’s a day with nothing to do. They spend it with Paul and Honey Fantasia by the lukewarm swimming pool, basking in the sunshine, sharking warm water. Sunandra and Honey Fantasia wear demure one-piece swimming costumes out of deference to local custom (this is a business hotel, not the Soi Angel). They seem to get along. Sunandra tries out the mechanics of the laser shades, though it’s too bright to gain any effect; they need darkness and smoke. Turns out that she’s also been engineered to play with Honey Fantasia’s Wires.

 

They spend the afternoon with the women jacked into sets of Wires. Fantasia produces a set of receivers for Rhino to listen to. They fit his ears bulkily like old-fashioned headphones. But Fantasia can broadcast into them instead of into stage amps and make music straight to his ears. It’s just the same to her. Sunandra has some rudimentary skills, but she’s a dancer, not a miracle muso. Still, she seems to learn fast. Paul ignores it all. He swims up and down the pool, a magnificent athlete at home in the water. Rhino didn’t see him at the Soi Angel, but he must have been there. He seems to think it’s his duty — duty! — to stay close to Honey Fantasia.

 

That night they cruise back to the Soi Angel. They’ve started a routine. Long lazy days and hot nights. Sunandra makes love to him twice before they go to sleep. At 2 am they grope for each other in the dark and she rolls on top of him; they fuck half in their sleep.

 

By day they swim, play games with the Wires. Paul challenges Honey Fantasia to a round of golf. She takes him up on it even though he’s obviously unbeatable. Rhino and Sunandra splash in the pool. The Colonel is sending plenty of cash their way for their trouble. Sunandra is getting better with the Wires all the time. By night they follow Honey Fantasia’s band and the other miracle bands, dance late.

 

Then, one morning: “Tonight is your exhibition of blur fighting, Mr Rhino.”

 

“I know, Sunandra.”

 

“Blur fight professionals use drugs for advantage, isn’t it, Mr Rhino. I think we give you more advantage.”

 

Rhino lowers his fork and chews his breakfast more slowly. Swallows. “What sort of advantage?”

 

“Better drug, Sir. You will see.”

 

Like everyone who has been in blur fighting, Rhino has a catheter inserted in the big vein of his left thigh. The catheter contains a miniaturized sensor complex to monitor body signs, feed data to a microchip. This controls the valve on a sac implanted safely within Rhino’s stomach wall, determining the rate of infusion of a specialized drug mix. It’s a fiery cocktail of pseuodoadrenaline and inhibition killers. There are rules in blur fighting, but participants often forget them, too high on the drug cocktail.

 

“We have developed a specialized nootropic drug. You see? A crude paracognitive enhancer, Mr Rhino. It will work on you, I think. It will work on any flickdancer, on a SACID operative, on anyone with the latent anomalous capabilities. I have spent past days testing you for it.”

 

How many surprises do they have? And surprises within surprises. One thing at a time. He scoops a pile of crisp bacon, and munches. “I’m no SACID operative, Sunandra. Are you going to turn me into a flickdancer?”

 

“Absolutely, Mr Rhino.” She kisses him on the cheek. “We are still trying to find out how it works, but it does work. It will take at least some of the golfing edge off competition.” She smiles at him; her little hands dart suddenly, almost faster than he can follow, snatches a crinkled rasher of bacon from his plate. “Thwackum, yes?” Gobbles the bacon like a fowl with a worm.

 

Then, as suddenly, she slaps right fist into stiffly flattened palm. Rhino raises his eyebrows, goes on eating.

 

* * * *

 

Today, Sunandra wants to hustle him around the city, keep him busy with sights, trips to strange bars and clubs, a walk around the tall stupas of Wat Pho, a wander through the leafy niches of the New Intercontinental’s vast grounds, a wild spin on the hotel’s automobile driving range.

 

Then the evening. Thais love professional fights. There’s a crowd of eighty thousand: it overflows and washes through a giant domed indoor stadium. Rhinosaurus battles Ice Ninja. Overhead holo reflects the action — from the auditorium’s back seats, the antagonists are no more than bizarre microbes. Paul is sitting in the front row. Somehow, Honey Fantasia has a night off and is there too, close to Sunandra, the two of them playing with the Wires and giggling together.

 

After ten minutes, Rhino is flushed and out of wind, but he’s been canny: Ice Ninja is angry, frustrated. Tall Japanese, moves like a strutting crane — white implanted hair falls past his shoulders, coarse, nasty stuff, not like Honey Fantasia’s. He’s white-skinned, wears white wrestling trunks, fights barefoot. He’s noisy.

 

Neither is hurt much; that’s not the idea. But Ice Ninja is out of control, hyped up on inhibition killers, pupils dilated. The nootropic doesn’t seem to be doing much — Rhino can’t predict moves in advance like he’d hoped. But his reflexes seem preternaturally fast, his thoughts like crystals.

 

While Rhino’s thinking about it, Ice Ninja catches him: Rhino lumbering off the ropes one moment, then spear-hand!, no attempt to fake it.

 

Rhino’s world screams, shears. Red. And yellow star-sparks feeding his brain.

 

Bastard.

 

Down on his back. Shoulders pinned. Blindly, he throws Ice Ninja away, stumbles to feet and grabs the surprised Ninja across forehead, huge thumbs pressing. Fakes his move, like he’s supposed to — no use killing the man — headbutts outstretched thumbs, once, twice ... Ice Ninja falls and spreads the canvas. Pain is a rusty bolt sticking through Rhino’s throat. Maybe Ice Ninja has doubts about his own armour class. So Rhino makes sure, drops across him, point-of-elbow first ... takes most of the weight on himself, shoulderblade hitting the canvas an instant before the blow. But he delivers Ice Ninja just a little more force than he’s supposed to — and much less than the bastard deserves. The crowd is roaring. Ice Ninja has to accept the three count.

 

Afterwards, Rhino scoops Sunandra, and they get the hell out via an alley exit, taxi back to the hotel, make love, minds and bodies glowing white hot. Rhino’s done his approved business in Bangkok. With Honey Fantasia safely in Paul’s hands, Rhino is a government-recognized tourist.

 

* * * *

 

They’ve taken over the private heated swimming pool at the Tiger Club. Honey Fantasia and Sunandra are both Wired, but evidently not playing the miracle music into each other’s ears at the moment. They can hold a conversation. “I’m actually going to miss you two when you leave Bangkok,” Honey Fantasia says. “It’s been a time, Rhino. And I’m glad I met you, Su.” Su?

 

“Mr Rhino, Ms Fantasia and I teach each other. You too. Watch.”

 

Nothing happens. Nothing that he can see or hear. But the two gals are both Wired and, right now, he isn’t: no headphones. Sunandra is evidently making music because Fantasia stands beside the pool and starts to dance. Hey! Sunandra is getting good. They’re jamming. So far, so good. Fantasia looks great dancing in only her long, long implanted hair and the implanted “bikini”, which basically conceals nothing up this close, even if it gives the impression of a kind of skimpy swimsuit from up on stage. Her eyes are closed beneath feather-brows. Sunandra steps up close to her as she puts out one brown, strong arm. In a razor flash, Sunandra has flicked out and cut her, not a deep cut or long, but a real cut along the inside of Fantasia’s forearm. In another flash, Sunandra has cut her own right arm. They watch each other, Fantasia daring to open eyes, still evidently jamming — and the cuts don’t bleed. Honey Fantasia is turning into a flickdancer.

 

“The Colonel knew what she was doing when getting us all together, Mr Rhino.”

 

Honey Fantasia’s cut heals up nearly as quickly as Sunandra’s. “Rhino, you ought to try it,” she says.

 

“I’ve had my share of pain lately.”

 

They’re doing a private gig. Sunandra picks up the laser shades beside Fantasia’s oversized pool towel, starts to mess around with them, getting the pinpoint beams going faintly around this low-lit space, looking for airborne particles to light up. “You like them, Su? They’re yours. I’ll find another pair. Hey, why don’t you put the headphones on Rhino?” Fantasia’s shouting a little, now, obviously deafened by phantom music. “This is pretty cool to listen in on.”

 

“Nup.” He decides to take a belly flop into the pool, hitting it with his two hundred kilos. When he surfaces, gulping for his breath, they’re slightly splashed but unfazed. Rhino gives up.

 

... And that night at the Soi Angel, as Honey Fantasia plays miracle music, Sunandra dances with him, looks up at him with her moist orgasm-eyes, and says, “Now!” She carves only shallowly, but moves with breathtaking speed, slicing straight up his right biceps muscle like an emerald flash. For a moment he’s shocked, but somehow she holds him with her mind, and panic washes away. The cut is a superposition of states: wound and healing. It won’t bleed, but doesn’t close up. Gently, she strokes it with her soft palm. It seems to be getting better. “You must take me home, Mr Rhino.”

 

* * * *

 

At last the time has come to leave Bangkok. As usual, Sunandra seems to know the schedule. An ultimate destination in South Australia, sure. “But we go very slowly, Mr Rhino. We do stages. Okay? First stop, New York City. I have friends there, lots of friends. I can take cover in the States for months. Then we will think about the rest of the trip.”

 

Paul is still strong. They shake hands. “Look after the little girl, big guy.”

 

But it takes Honey Fantasia to surprise him: when she kisses him goodbye it’s full on the lips, her tongue in his mouth, and right in front of Sunandra, who then seems to get a kiss almost as friendly.

 

Darling drives them out to the airport, gunning the limo, hunching the wheel like a smiling maniac.

 

* * * *

 

Touchdown La Guardia Airport. Rhino has slept through much of the long flight in his two first-class seats. Sunandra has been restless.

 

They step out of the 797. Smiles for flight attendants. At least until they get through Immigration and Customs, they’re safe enough. As cabin baggage, Rhino carries a soft grey Qantas bag with personal belongings and a shiny black plastic attaché case which Sunandra knows how to open and he doesn’t. There’s no visible trace of any catch. She’s confident they’ll get through Customs. They’re wild-looking mothers flying in from a place like Bangkok, but Customs officials leave Rhino alone: he travels a lot, their computers know him. His clients are usually beyond the law if not beyond reproach.

 

Sunandra is Wired and wearing Honey Fantasia’s laser shades. Rhino sports headphones behind his curving horn and lets her play soothing music into them with her mind; he needs it, but he’s got it. The catheter in his thigh must be monitoring body signs, but it shouldn’t find too much wrong yet.

 

Poking out of Customs, they look around carefully. They have rooms arranged at a dive in Times Square. They’ll get an airport bus into Manhattan.

 

It goes wrong from the start. There’s a uniformed driver bearing a handwritten sign: RHINOSAURUS. The guy isn’t supposed to be there. He steps up to them. “Mr Rhino, it must be you,” he says, grinning furiously under a moustache. So ... he’s only about 180 centimetres, looks harmless enough. At first. But Rhino is hitting into overdrive. The catheter in his thigh starts to zing. He’s a lot closer to the drug now than the first time with Ice Ninja.

 

The paracognitive enhancer edges in like he’s dropped acid: heightened awareness of colours, shapes, textures, of individual sounds and layers of sound in the airport noise-wash. But drugs like acid create an uncontrolled sensory overload — wide eyes bugging the flowers — a passive, voluntary acceptance of the Universe’s plenty and bliss; that’s the farthest thing from what Rhino feels — senses sharp as a cat’s, mind clear and clean.

 

This driver is shockingly, tangibly dangerous, high-strung but controlled. Something about the way he moves cries out Paul’s inhuman strength. And there’s the same underlying body structure, facial bones as Paul’s. There’s been gene-splicing along the way: superficially, the driver is a different racial type as well as being maybe fifteen centimetres shorter than Paul — Spanish-Amerindian, very swarthy, black-haired, comic-book moustache. An ingratiating smile that seems to fit but would look incongruous on Paul. Rhino registers it all at once. Sunandra is still Wired, still playing him music, trying to calm him. She gives no outward sign that anything is wrong, but something’s subtly different about the music or her body language; he knows that she knows.

 

“I’m parked illegally, Sir,” the driver says. “Can you hurry, please? Let me take your bag.”

 

Rhino hands over their one suitcase. They’re travelling lighter than he did with Honey Fantasia. This guy is now encumbered. There are two of them to one of him. Rhino is twice his size. They could jump him. Bad idea. He’ll be bristling with concealed weapons, hoping to avoid using them in the open but prepared to. And Rhino sees enough with the paracognitive to know he doesn’t see enough. This guy is much too fast for him.

 

“Times Square, driver,” Sunandra says. She gives him the address. Cool.

 

Nothing is said until they reach the car, another stretch limo — royal blue Mercedes with a purple tinge to the windows. The driver insists upon placing all their luggage in the limo’s huge trunk. Reluctantly, Rhino parts with the smart attaché case. In the rear passenger compartment there are another two guys who look just like the driver. They nod to Rhino and Sunandra, supremely confident. Sit opposite as they all drive in to Manhattan, carry no obvious weapons. One says: “Please remove the laser shades, Ms. Something could go wrong and they could blind somebody.” Sunandra hands them over. Courteously, he takes them, says, “Thank you.” Places them carefully in a top pocket.

 

They all wear beautifully starched Extropez shirts, bright white under navy blue sports jackets.

 

“Perhaps I should see that headgear as well. I guess you could communicate with each other, or even with allies, wearing something like that. One-way traffic at least. That wouldn’t be appropriate. You, too, Sir. Don’t move. Let me take it.” He reaches over for Sunandra’s Wires. She’s playing full-on miracle music, not as good as Honey Fantasia yet, but enough to alter Rhino’s consciousness. She’s a songbird. He’s a flickdancer. But then the music stops. “You, too, Sir. Pass the headphones.”

 

The man folds up all the Wires. They fit neatly enough in a square jacket side pocket, the right-hand one.

 

Soon, the Empire State’s transmission tower scrapes clouds like an art deco cathedral spire. The driver stops at a nondescript office block on Fifth Avenue. The bozo looking after Honey Fantasia’s laser shades says, “Executive apartments. We have a suite on the 21st floor. Come on. This will be better than your room in Times Square.”

 

The two men in the back get out, leaving the driver. Luggage still in the trunk. They check in for two rooms, a double suite for Rhino and Sunandra, a twin room for themselves. Arrange for someone to go and get luggage. “It’s with our driver.”

 

Walk to the elevator.

 

Rhino is an attack-robot; he tenses.

 

But there’s a frightened screaming deep in Rhino’s ears, agonizingly loud — and he collapses, holding his head. How did she do it? They’re not Wired. People turn; a bullet already fired, out of nowhere, strikes right through his horn implant; AND SUNANDRA FLYING. All slow motion; all at once. Always already happened. Somehow, Sunandra has hurt one attacker and stolen from him a slim long-bladed knife. While everything else moves more slowly than ever, she is a blur. Outside, car horns honking; the building’s electronically-controlled doors are open and the limo driver seems to come through in one motion, propelled like a crossbow bolt and strikes Rhino down even though Rhino’s body had already dodged to the left! Sunandra is fighting their third captor, neither seeming able to get the better of it, or even to land a blow.

 

There’s an all-at-once massacre about him, more bullets fired, and he’s been hit. His own assailant flows away as Rhino swings at him, and he’s already struck Rhino before Rhino realizes his body has already unsuccessfully dodged — knife-hand! spear-hand!, then a spinning high kick. For the kill!... For a moment Rhino blacks out. They’re both after Sunandra. Lucidity washes his veins. Sunandra!

 

One attacker has already fired, but already already Rhino has dodged. It’s taking time. Police sirens in the neighbourhood. It’s taking time. The three SACID operatives have given up and are running back to the car. They still have all the luggage from Bangkok in the limo’s trunk. And time to kill. Sunandra throws down the knife.

 

In the other hand she has something else: the Wires; she’s retrieved them. Rhino is bleeding, but nothing vital seems to have been hit. One bullet hit his horn — fixable. One seems to have passed right through a massive steroidal thigh muscle.

 

Sunandra is Wired. She concentrates. The city booms and shudders.

 

* * * *

 

She has good, hidden friends on Times Square. Sunandra must arrange ID for herself and Rhino, a trustworthy surgical sculptor, replacement cash cards and some very fast and hairy credit transfers, some interface junk — two micro-decks, a tricky modem card. There is an encrypted and coded message to go to Bangkok and one for Adelaide. All her possessions in the States — and Rhino’s — were destroyed in the limo.

 

The paracognitive drug was successful — more so on Sunandra herself than on Rhino, but with him, too, in the end. Her link with Rhino worked even better. The miracle music itself has nothing logical to do with the anomalous capabilities of a flickdancer or a miracle muso. The mental contortions of a muso trained to be Wired have everything to do with it, unnatural mental fields. In the end, she could reach directly into Rhino’s mind, music or no music; as long as she pretended the Wires were there, she gave Rhino what he really needed and responded to.

 

Not so for reaching out and talking to mere dumb electronic components, the brute physical world. For that she actually needed the Wires. Needed them to send electrical impulses to a shiny black attaché case she had known she must give away to the competition, an attaché case full of powerful remote-activated amps and lined with a vibration-sensitive plastique, disguised to the eyes of airport security equipment.

 

Eye-witness reports told of the limousine’s brakes slamming on and its passengers attempting to flee the car an instant before it blew into noisy smithereens. But only an instant. Superinstantaneous cognition. Not real precognition.

 

So far, the New York Police Department has nothing on her and Mr Rhino. They are exotic victims of bomb-happy terrorists who managed to blow themselves up, exotic victims and no more, at least until the further investigation which must connect the explosion to a very clever attaché case full of dumb electronics. And the attaché case to her and Mr Rhino. She must get out of New York while she is still a step ahead of both the competition and the cops. There are expensive and crucial vatware components — simplified wetware texts of the Colonel — implanted within Sunandra’s brain; she has a tortuous route to deliver them to her contacts at Offnet Polisearch Laboratory in its high-tech arcology outside of Adelaide. Meanwhile, she is winning.

 

“Home free, Mr Rhino!” she says. Close enough to the truth. Somehow she must find a way to deliver him safely back to Bangkok; he will miss her, she knows, but Honey Fantasia will look after him. For herself, she must arrange for extensive body resculpting ... soon: a complete disappearance and change of identity.

 

For now, light-footed, she runs up the street, turns, skipping backwards down the pavement and calling out to Rhino: “Home free!”

 

She lets hustlers, shoppers, a startled traffic cop, tourists dodge out of her way. She attracts lascivious glances, knowing glances, freaky glances, but there is no-one here on Times Square uncool enough even to glance twice.

 

* * * *

 

AFTERWORD

 

 

Sunandra and Rhino haunted my consciousness for several years before I could write the definitive version of their tale. Indeed, I’m not done yet: I’m working on a series of stories inspired by them (Singularity Shadow), including a novel (Flickdancer) based loosely on “The Soldier in the Machine”. Ah, vaulting ambition ...

 

Anything I said about how I came to write “Soldier” would be a horrible over-simplification. While the characters and the relationship of Sunandra and Rhino percolated in my mind, innumerable other considerations had time to impinge on the story. Some will need to be teased out more fully in other works — for example, the deeper significances, moral or philosophical, of postulated technologies such as personality uploading.

 

More immediately, I returned, in “Soldier”, to the ambience of “Glass Reptile Breakout”, with its culture of body morphing, and extreme lifestyles, captured succinctly in the image of flickdancing. I wished to take that story a step further, and to create a sub-text that would challenge my readers while the action entertained them. “Soldier” is also influenced by my visits to Thailand, Indonesia, and the US, and by my meditations, for what they are worth, on the possibility that the human mind possesses physically anomalous powers.

 

On the latter subject, I am a sceptic: to convince me, it will take much more dramatic evidence than the parapsychologists have yet made available. Accordingly, I tend to think that stories such as “Soldier” must be treated as a species of high-tech fantasy. And yet, I have nothing against the fantasy genre. One of my impulses was to create an adventure story about anomalous psychic capabilities with something of the same rigour and internal consistency as the best fantasy stories display in their handling of magical phenomena. Whether I’ve succeeded in that particular ambition, others must judge.

 

— Russell Blackford