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  Nothing for the kid to taste, nothing wrong to detect. The powder was inert, not even as close to living as the programmed micro-organics in McNihil’s coat pocket. From being dispersed through the drink, the powder had been activated, re-formed into a gel, and settled at the bottom of the cup, waiting for its next trigger.

  “You know,” mused the kid, “that one last month, with them Communist guys-those people were right. Even if they were cartoons. Everything should be free.”

  McNihil set his own drink down on the theater’s sticky floor. “It should, huh?”

  “Yeah…” The kid nodded slowly, on to something. “Because it all wants to be free.”

  “Does it?”

  “Sure. You know… like the way information wants to be free.”

  “Information wants to be free, huh?” McNihil didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, here’s some info you can have for nothing.” He swung his fist in a hard, flat arc, landing it straight to the kid’s nose, which exploded in a bright flower of blood.

  He caught the kid’s drink before it could spill. The kid had both hands to his face, red leaking between his fingers. McNihil leaned forward, grabbing the T-shirt collar in one hand, bringing the plastic cup up to the kid’s face with the other. The Tanaka hydro-gel with which he’d doped the kid’s drink was keyed to McNihil’s parasympathetic system; the gel would respond to a shift in certain physical indicators, blood pressure and adrenaline level being chief among them. McNihil had been carefully keeping his emotions under control-he had worked so long as an asp-head that it was easy for him-but now he’d let them go. Pumped them up, just by letting the pure loathing he had for copyright infringers come boiling out of the little box he kept inside his skull.

  The gel came alive as though it were part of him. He knocked the kid’s bloodied hands aside, as the stuff inside the cup swelled with explosive speed.

  There was no time for the kid to react with anything more than the eyes going wide behind the glasses, his mouth taking in a quick gasp of air. His last one, for a while at least; the hydro-gel shot up from the bottom of the cup, spraying the remaining liquid and ice across the kid’s face. It trickled from his ears and down the tendons of his neck as the gel swarmed over all the human skin it was programmed to find. The gel expanded from its compression state, soaking up the spilled drink and moisture from the air, transforming itself into a sticky mass larger than the kid’s head.

  McNihil leaned back from the scene he was watching. Dispassionately now; once the hydro-gel had been triggered by his worked-up emotional state, there was no need to maintain it. He let his anger subside, pulling his blood pressure back down with it.

  The kid’s scrawny hands were still clawing at the transparent gel enveloping his head, all the way to the back of his skull. It had flowed onto his hands and down onto his wrists, welding them to the suffocating mass. The kid’s mouth was still gaping open; the gel trembled with his scream, but let no sound through.

  A few of the other scattered theater patrons had roused themselves and looked over at what was going on. They watched in silence, either unconcerned or grateful that it wasn’t happening to them.

  Past the kid’s mired fingers, the face that could be seen through the wavering, inch-thick layer of hydro-gel had turned red, as though even more blood were about to start seeping out of the kid’s pores. McNihil knew what came next, the red turning to black, the lungs laboring for breath that couldn’t penetrate the clear mask, anoxia and death. The heart stopping, and then the delicate cells of the brain collapsing into each other like fruits forgotten and rotting in a refrigerator bin-but faster. McNihil didn’t want that; he wanted the kid alive for at least a while longer. Trophying out a brain-dead corpse yielded unsatisfactory results.

  McNihil reached over and grabbed the kid by the neck, his own fingertips sinking partway into the hydro-gel. He didn’t have to worry about it fastening onto his own skin; the gel had already locked onto the kid’s sweat and wasn’t interested in any other human touch now. Something reduced to less than human stared out of the panicking eyes under the gel; the kid’s consciousness had been devoured by animal fright. The scent of warmer liquid rose in the theater’s dark air as the kid’s urine soaked down his jeans leg and mixed with the spilled drink on the floor.

  With his other hand, McNihil poked his way through the kid’s hands, caught by the gel. A crooked fingertip was enough to tear open a small breathing hole, right above the kid’s flattened nostrils; the gel had stiffened enough that it wouldn’t flow to refill the little gap. McNihil flicked the dollop of bloodstained matter away from his fingernail; it landed like soft crystal on the back of the next row’s seat, then dribbled snotlike downward.

  “Let’s go, pal.” McNihil hauled the kid upright and dragged him toward the theater aisle. “We’ve got more business to take care of. I think you know what kind.”

  A whinnying noise, sheer terror, came from the kid’s exposed nasopharynx. That, and the eyes that had managed to open even wider beneath the hydro-gel, was eloquent enough.

  The girl behind the improvised snack bar cast a bored gaze at McNihil as he dragged the kid through the lobby and out onto the street. If she hadn’t seen it before in reality, she’d seen it over the wire, and that was close enough.

  Strangled, muffled noises continued to be emitted from McNihil’s human parcel as he hit the sidewalk outside the theater. The kid’s urine-damp legs thrashed, heels against the cracked cement. McNihil wished he had torn a slightly smaller hole in the gel; the kid was getting just a bit too much oxygen into his lungs.

  In the world outside the theater, time had rolled into its own dark hours. McNihil could see a trace of the dwindling sunset tingeing the petroleum-mottled ocean to the west; the ancient buildings of the city’s center were folding into deeper shadows. Human silhouettes wavered across the empty storefronts and up the alley walls; the bare-dirt park had become one bonfire, the uprooted 747 a skeletal carcass in the middle of the flames, like some sacrificial totem of a forgotten age.

  The scene didn’t look good to McNihil. There was a much bigger crowd in the streets than when he had gone into the little fly-by-night theater. Riot time, he judged. The crowd was feeding the fire leaping above their heads; ragged figures hauled scraps of lumber and other fuel, broken furniture and commercial fixtures from the unoccupied buildings surrounding the area, and threw them in with a bright swirl of sparks and cinders. The roar of the fire gave the mob’s instigators something to shout over, to bring their voices to the properly impassioned hoarseness. McNihil spotted the bearded figure who’d operated the panhandling gantry, now standing on an overturned trash dumpsker, upraised fists shaking with every word.

  McNihil quickly debated whether he should go back to the End Zone Hotel, where he’d left his gun and tools, all that ponderous metal that would’ve set off the theater’s security devices, or head to the train station with the stifled, struggling kid in tow. He decided against the latter; with this kind of civil disturbance in progress, every cabbie had probably-and wisely-fled to the outskirts of town. It’d be a long walk to the station, especially with an untrophied kid slung over his shoulder.

  The crowd gave no attention to anyone dragging a gel-bound captive down the sidewalk. McNihil kept close to the buildings, but was still jostled by newcomers streaming into the action zone. The fire mounting at the center laid a shifting orange glow over the sweating faces, the sparks dancing in their overstimulated eyes.

  In the hotel lobby, the television audience spread out on the sagging couch and upholstered chairs hadn’t stirred. The program’s addicts and hustlers were still going through their paces, copping and geezing, while the tubed-together viewers received their sympathetic hits. Whatever glow of the outside flames landed on their gray faces, it wasn’t enough to ignite their interest.

  “I’ll take my room key now.” McNihil had dragged the kid up to the lobby desk. He dropped him onto the floor and pinned him with a foot to his spine, so he
wouldn’t try running away. “Any’ll do.”

  “You’re fuckin’ crazy.” The desk clerk looked aghast behind the heavy mesh screen. His face was radiant with sweat and he had a fire extinguisher cradled in his arms, as though the mob outside were about to burst through the lobby doors. “Get the connect outta here.”

  The metal drawer beneath the grille pushed against McNihil’s stomach. He looked down and saw the familiar comforting shape of his tannhäuser and the pack of asp-head tools he’d previously deposited with the clerk. McNihil scooped them up, dropping the gun into his free coat pocket and holding the tools in one hand. “I still need a room. I paid for one, remember?”

  “Aw, Christ…” The clerk got the sick, dismayed look that comes with the realization that one has just handed a high-caliber weapon over to another person. He hurriedly pulled money out of a cashbox, shoved it into the drawer and back toward McNihil. “Look, there’s a refund. Now just get moving, pal. I don’t want you around here.”

  “Can’t.” McNihil shook his head in a show of regret. “Still got a little business to finish up.” He spread the pack of tools open on the narrow shelf in front of the grille. On a bed of cushioned black leather lay a row of shining surgical instruments, their polished steel and honed cutting edges touched with the fire mounting outside the End Zone Hotel. “I would’ve preferred a little privacy for this part-hey, he probably would-” McNihil nodded toward the struggling figure under his foot. “But if you want it to all happen right out here in the open…” McNihil shrugged and picked up the scalpel with the biggest blade. “I’ve worked under worse conditions.”

  The desk clerk looked even more panicked than before. His stare shot past McNihil, to the lobby’s door and windows. None of the crowd had noticed that McNihil was inside the hotel. But it wouldn’t be long before they did.

  “All right, all right.” The clerk hurriedly snagged a key off the board behind him and shot it out in the drawer. “Do it, and then just get out of here, for God’s sake. Please-”

  McNihil rolled up his tools and picked up the key. “Thanks,” he said as he dragged the kid away from the counter.

  The elevator, an antique cage, was out of commission; the kid’s head bounced against each stair as McNihil hauled him two floors up.

  He slammed the hotel room’s door shut and turned the lock; leaving the kid squirming in the middle of the floor, McNihil pulled up the dirt-smeared window and looked out. The bonfire permeating the skeletal 747 had grown larger, the flames leaping as high as the surrounding rooftops. The crowd had grown larger as well, having gone well beyond the critical-mass point; McNihil could see the eddies and ripples running through the closely pressed bodies. At the edges of the open space, the street levels of the empty buildings had been broken into, with flames and smoke pouring out of the shattered windows and plywood barriers.

  Get to work, McNihil told himself. Fortunately, this part always went fast. Other asp-heads had always admired his speed with the knives.

  McNihil knelt down with his tool pack. He rolled the kid facedown, turning the gel-encased head to one side so the exposed nostrils could still draw in some breath; the kid’s lungs weren’t superfluous yet. An agonized scream managed to pierce the clear mask, coming out as a muffled, distant wail, as McNihil jabbed the first sharp-edged tool into the vertebrae between the kid’s shoulder blades. Using anesthetics had never been part of an asp-head’s job description; he had a few bee-sting syringes and quick-dispersion epidermals in the pack, and had used them on occasion, but there was no present need. The shouts and excited cries coming through the window drowned out whatever noises the kid would make.

  Blood had started soaking into the T-shirt, as though the white fabric had been wounded rather than cut. McNihil grabbed the edges on either side of the knife and tore the shirt to either side, exposing the kid’s skinny torso. There was no need to look as he reached over to the pack for more of the glittering tools; years of practice in the field had put his hands on autopilot.

  From kneeling, he raised himself onto his haunches, to keep the pooling blood from getting on his trousers. The wet red seeped through the worn carpet and beneath the soles of McNihil’s shoes. He balanced himself with one hand against the kid’s bare shoulder, leaning over the torso and guiding the tools as they worked. At one time, when he’d first started out as an asp-head, McNihil had dispensed with any of the autonomic surgical tools, preferring to do everything manually-he’d wanted to get the feel of cracking bone and neatly shearing flesh right into his hands. But, just as the older asp-heads had warned him, he’d started getting twinges of carpal tunnel syndrome in his wrists, and he’d gone to using the clever little machines.

  At the back of the kid’s neck, the retractor device had expanded itself crabwise, flaring the gristle and muscle sheathing the spinal column. The miniature plow of the auto-incision knife had worked its way down toward the kid’s waist, steered by a few correcting taps of McNihil’s fingers and the machine’s internal terrain-recognition program. Following behind came the mantislike bone saw, stopping in position over each vertebra and mapping the projected depth and angle of its blade with quick ultrasound pulses. The saw needed a confirm signal before each cut; McNihil checked the grid on a handheld monitor before thumbing the proceed button; a fine spray of blood and bone dust drifted up as the tiny whirling blade descended.

  As the devices inched their way farther apart, from nape to buttock, they set up a focused irradiation field, keeping the incision free of contamination. From micropore nozzles in the metal, a yellowish haze of nitromersol spread over the violated flesh, the mercuric compound acting as a backup disinfectant. Even if there hadn’t been a personal element in the favor McNihil was doing, asp-head professionalism would have ensured a neat, antiseptic job.

  He glanced up at the room’s open window. Flames higher, shouts louder; glass shattered and rained across the mob-filled streets-McNihil could see, in his mind’s eye, the razorlike fragments nicking the oblivious, upturned faces. The people below would be lapping their own blood as it trickled into the corners of their mouths. Which would, he knew, only make them thirstier for someone else’s. His, mainly.

  “Let’s wrap it up.” McNihil spoke aloud, as though the surgical devices were not only clever but sentient. He’d had this set a long time; they were almost to the status of pets, cared for and maintained. As if it could sense the controlled urgency in his voice, the tractor knife gave a last surge, opening up the kid’s back to the base of the spine. The kid had lost all consciousness, as McNihil had expected; there was a limit to what fear could keep awake, before pain temporarily annihilated it. For McNihil, that was just as well; the last segments of the procedure were tricky and delicate enough that he didn’t need the body quivering and jerking around.

  He’d already brought out and inserted another pair of retractors like the first, up by the kid’s head. The second one, positioned halfway down the back, pushed its curved claws outward, exposing not just the spine but the viscera clustered below the ribs. Those were of no importance now; the kid had no further use for them. McNihil picked up the auto-incision knife and set it aside, so the last retractor could settle into place and force the bleeding flesh apart.

  In a few more seconds, the bone saw had finished its work; McNihil removed it as well. The spider-clawed feet penetrated the blood-soaked carpet as the bright opticals and other sensors faded to empty black.

  From the pack of tools, McNihil’s quick hand extracted an inert polymer ring. One pull telescoped it into a flexible tube, open at one end, a tapered bulletlike seal at the other, the whole thing longer than the kid’s split torso. The retractors and saw had exposed the protective meninges encasing the spinal cord, the bundled nerves running through the core of the kid’s torso. The machines went to work again, slicing through the dura mater, then the tangled arachnoid layer beneath. Using their finest, tweezerlike implements, the retractors peeled back the fragile pia mater, revealing raw and naked nerve
tissue. With one of the smaller, nonautomated knives, McNihil made a series of cuts, freeing the spine from its elongated nest. He lifted and compressed the blood-specked sacral plexus and slipped it into the open end of the polymer tube. Cutting with one hand and drawing the ring opening up with the other, in less than a minute he had the tender spinal material encased in the tube. The ring rested against the back of the kid’s neck; McNihil pulled the tab inside, releasing another hydro-gel inside the tube. This one had a mesh structure woven into the substance; as it expanded and protectively encased the spine, oxygenated microfilaments formed a temporary life-support for the human tissue. The tube’s outside shell turned stiffer and harder, responding to the gel’s precisely calibrated lowering of temperature. McNihil knew he had a few hours, just time enough to get the trophy to where it needed to be.

  The cerebral matter was the last that had to be taken care of. A judgment call for McNihil: he could either do a quick-and-dirty extraction, pulling the entire brain out of the skull and packing it with him, or he could take the time to let the cleverest of his tools pare away the unnecessary segments. The easiest and fastest would have been to just lop off the kid’s head guillotine-style and wrap it in a freezer pack, carry it out of here like a bowling ball in a bag-he’d done that before, in situations less time-pressured than this. It was considered bad form in asp-head circles, though; the microsurgery that was needed to reattach the brain portion to the top of the spine was a lot of work for the agency techs-McNihil still had enough favors to call in that he could get it done, but he didn’t want to deplete his account. Plus, the results were never as good, trophy-wise, as an original, unsevered connection. I may be getting old, thought McNihil, but I’ve still got pride issues to deal with.

  He shifted his position closer to the kid’s head. The tiny hotel room’s carpet was now soaked from wall to wall with blood, the sagging bed and battered chest of drawers like islands in a red sea. “Damn,” said McNihil aloud; he’d brushed his knee too close to the kid’s shoulder and gotten a smear on his trousers leg. He hated spending the money for dry cleaners. He reached over and grabbed another pair of tools from his pack.