Halo | Page 8

movers,
dealers, and players since he was a child, and in all of them he had felt
the same obsessive grasping at money and land and power and had
heard the same childish voices, wanting more more more. At his
parents' parties, he remembered dark Southern Florida
faces--sun-burned whites, blacks, Hispanics; men with heavy gold
jewelry, trailing clouds of expensive cologne, and women with stiff
hair and pushed-up breasts whose laughter made brittle footnotes to the
men's loud voices. He'd fled all that as instinctively as a child yanks its
hand from a fire.
Both there and here he stood in an alien land, no more at home at one
end of the country than the other.
"No reply," Gonzales said.
----
The next day Gonzales sat in the solarium, where he lounged among
black lacquer and etched glass while thoughts of death gnawed at the
edges of his torpor. He filled a bronze pipe with small green sensemilla
leaves and holed up in a haze of smoke and drank tea.
The late afternoon light through the windows went to pure Seattle Gray,
the color of ennui and unemphatic despair, and his solitude became
oppressive. He needed company, he thought, and wondered what it
would be like to have a cat. Then he thought about the truth of it, how
often he would be gone and the cat left to itself and the house's
machines. "Here kitty kitty," the cleaning robot would say, and the
memex would want veterinary programs and a diagnostic link ... fuck it,
they all could live without a cat.
Then a hunger kick came on him, and he decided to make taboulleh.
"You are not taking care of business," the memex said to Gonzales as
he stood chopping mint leaves, green onions and tomato, squeezing
lemon and stirring in bulgur wheat with the patience of the

deeply-stoned.
"True," Gonzales said. "I'm in no hurry."
"Why not? Since your return from Asia, you have not been productive."
"I'm going to die, my friend." The smells of lemon and mint drifted up
to him, and he inhaled them deeply. He said, "Today, mañana, some
day for sure ... and I'm still trying to understand what that means to me
now. To be productive, that is fine, but to come to terms with my own
mortality ... I think that is better." The taboulleh was finished. It was
beautiful; he wanted to rub his face in it.
----
Not long after he finished eating, a package arrived from Thailand.
Inside layers of foam and strapping were the memory modules the
Thais had taken. When he plugged the modules into the memex, they
showed empty: zeroed, ready to be used again.
Gonzales stood looking at the racked modules in the memex closet. I
can't fucking believe it, he thought. In effect, the audit had been
cancelled out. Whatever data he or anyone else collected at this point
from SenTrax Myanmar would be essentially useless, Grossback
having been given time to cook the data if he needed to do so. A fatal
indeterminacy had settled on the whole affair.
Grossback, you bastard, thought Gonzales. If you arranged for the
Thais to grab these boxes, maybe you are smarter and meaner than I
thought.
"Shit," Gonzales said.
"Is there anything I can do?" the memex asked.
"Nothing I can think of."
----

From the background of jungle plants and pastel walls and the
signature pieces of curved silver, HeyMex recognized the latest
incarnation of the Beverly Rodeo Hotel's public lounge. Mister Jones
preferred ostentation, even in simulacra.
HeyMex settled into a sling chair made of bright chrome and stuffed
chocolate-brown leather. HeyMex wore the usual baggy pants and
jacket of black cotton, a crumpled white linen shirt; was smooth-faced
and had close-cropped hair.
A figure shimmered into being in the chair opposite: silver suit and red
metal-laced shirt brilliant under lights; black-framed glasses with dark
lenses; greased hair combed straight back, a little black goatee and
moustache.
"Mister Jones," HeyMex said.
The other figure took a long, slow drag off a brown cigarette.
"HeyMex," it said. "What can I do for you?"
"It's Gonzales. Since we got back from Myanmar, he's been passive,
hasn't been taking care of business."
"Post-trauma response--give him some time, he'll be okay."
"No, he doesn't need time. He needs work. Have you got something?"
"Maybe. I haven't run a personnel search--he might not fit the exact
profile."
"Never mind that. Give it to Gonzales. He needs it."
"If you say so. You'll hear something official later today."
The world went translucent, then turned to smoke, and Mister Jones
disappeared back into his identity as Traynor's Advisor, HeyMex into
his as Gonzales's memex.
(Ask yourself why the two machines chose this elaborate masquerade,

or why no one knew these sorts