Read Online Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Walter Jon Williams
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the dream of being the last free Americans on the last free road is a foolish, romantic delusion. And what is Cowboy, then? A dupe, a hovercraft clown. Or worse than that, a tool.
The Dodger gives him a weary smile. “Concentrate on the privateers, Cowboy, that’s my advice,” he says. “You’re the best panzerboy on the planet. Stick to what you’re good at.”
Cowboy forces a grin and gives him the finger, and then closes the dorsal hatch. He strips naked and sticks electrodes to his arms and legs, then runs the wires from the electrodes to collars on his wrists and ankles. He attaches a catheter, then dons his g-suit and boots, sits on his acceleration couch and attaches cables to the collars, straps himself onto the couch. While his body remains immobile, his muscles will be exercised by electrode to keep the blood flowing. In the old days, before this technique had been developed and the jocks were riding their headsets out of Earth’s well and into the long diamond night, sometimes their legs and arms got gangrene.
Next he plugs jacks into the sockets in his temples, the silver-chased sockets over each ear, the fifth socket at the base of his skull. He pulls his helmet on over them, careful not to stress the laser-optic wires coming out of his head. He closes the mask across his face. He tastes rubber and hears the hiss of anesthetic, loud here in the closed space of the helmet.
His body will be put to sleep while he makes his run through the Alley. He is going to have more important things to do than look after it.
Cowboy does the chore swiftly, automatically. All along, there is a feeling: I have done this too often not to know what it’s about.
Neurotransmitters awaken the five studs in his head and Cowboy watches the insides of his skull blaze with incandescent light, the liquid-crystal data matrices of the panzer molding themselves to the configuration of his mind. His heart beats faster; he’s living in the interface again, the eye-face, his expanded mind racing like electrons through the circuits, into the metal and crystal heart of the machine. He can see around the panzer a full 360 degrees, and there are other boards in his strange mental space for engine displays and the panzer systems. He does a system check and a comp check and a weapons check, watching the long rows of green as they light up. His physical perceptions are no longer in three dimensions: the boards overlap and intertwine as they weave in and out of the face, as they mirror the subatomic reality of the electronics and the data that are the dying day outside.
Neurotransmitters lick with their chemical tongues the metal and crystal in his head, and electrons spit from the chips, racing along the cables to the engine starters, and through a dozen sensors Cowboy feels the bladed turbines reluctantly turn as the starters moan, and then flame torches the walls of the combustion chambers and the blades spin into life with a screaming whine. Cowboy monitors the howling exhaust as it belches fire. On his mental displays Cowboy can see the Dodger and Arkady and the ground crew watching the panzer through the blurred exhaust haze, and he watches fore and aft and checks the engine displays and sees another set of green lights and knows it’s time to move.
The howling of the engines beats at his senses. Warren’s spent the last week tuning them, running check after check, making certain they will perform beyond expectations. They’re military surplus jets, monsters. They aren’t built to ride this close to the ground, and without Cowboy’s straddling this mutant creature every inch of the way they’re going to run away with him.
Inside the rubber-tasting mask his lips draw back from his teeth and he grins: he will ride this beast across the Alley and through the web of traps set up this side of the Mississippi and add another layer of permeable sky to the distance separating him from the lesser icons of glory that are the other
The Dodger gives him a weary smile. “Concentrate on the privateers, Cowboy, that’s my advice,” he says. “You’re the best panzerboy on the planet. Stick to what you’re good at.”
Cowboy forces a grin and gives him the finger, and then closes the dorsal hatch. He strips naked and sticks electrodes to his arms and legs, then runs the wires from the electrodes to collars on his wrists and ankles. He attaches a catheter, then dons his g-suit and boots, sits on his acceleration couch and attaches cables to the collars, straps himself onto the couch. While his body remains immobile, his muscles will be exercised by electrode to keep the blood flowing. In the old days, before this technique had been developed and the jocks were riding their headsets out of Earth’s well and into the long diamond night, sometimes their legs and arms got gangrene.
Next he plugs jacks into the sockets in his temples, the silver-chased sockets over each ear, the fifth socket at the base of his skull. He pulls his helmet on over them, careful not to stress the laser-optic wires coming out of his head. He closes the mask across his face. He tastes rubber and hears the hiss of anesthetic, loud here in the closed space of the helmet.
His body will be put to sleep while he makes his run through the Alley. He is going to have more important things to do than look after it.
Cowboy does the chore swiftly, automatically. All along, there is a feeling: I have done this too often not to know what it’s about.
Neurotransmitters awaken the five studs in his head and Cowboy watches the insides of his skull blaze with incandescent light, the liquid-crystal data matrices of the panzer molding themselves to the configuration of his mind. His heart beats faster; he’s living in the interface again, the eye-face, his expanded mind racing like electrons through the circuits, into the metal and crystal heart of the machine. He can see around the panzer a full 360 degrees, and there are other boards in his strange mental space for engine displays and the panzer systems. He does a system check and a comp check and a weapons check, watching the long rows of green as they light up. His physical perceptions are no longer in three dimensions: the boards overlap and intertwine as they weave in and out of the face, as they mirror the subatomic reality of the electronics and the data that are the dying day outside.
Neurotransmitters lick with their chemical tongues the metal and crystal in his head, and electrons spit from the chips, racing along the cables to the engine starters, and through a dozen sensors Cowboy feels the bladed turbines reluctantly turn as the starters moan, and then flame torches the walls of the combustion chambers and the blades spin into life with a screaming whine. Cowboy monitors the howling exhaust as it belches fire. On his mental displays Cowboy can see the Dodger and Arkady and the ground crew watching the panzer through the blurred exhaust haze, and he watches fore and aft and checks the engine displays and sees another set of green lights and knows it’s time to move.
The howling of the engines beats at his senses. Warren’s spent the last week tuning them, running check after check, making certain they will perform beyond expectations. They’re military surplus jets, monsters. They aren’t built to ride this close to the ground, and without Cowboy’s straddling this mutant creature every inch of the way they’re going to run away with him.
Inside the rubber-tasting mask his lips draw back from his teeth and he grins: he will ride this beast across the Alley and through the web of traps set up this side of the Mississippi and add another layer of permeable sky to the distance separating him from the lesser icons of glory that are the other
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