basement had been working on the power lines, so he got Thorvin down there to patch things up. When he returned to the second floor, he found Piper sitting on the sofa, axe in her lap. Her eyes rose to meet his.
"Got something?" he asked.
"Surikov," Piper said. "Ansell Surikov. That's who they want us to get."
7
Everybody wanted something.
That's why the crowds stood waiting outside the old stadium beneath the giant TV/3V screen advertising Chromium Retrosocket, coming soon. That's why so many thousands of people jammed the Main Line along Bloomfield Avenue through the western half of Sector 3. And that's why Monk stood in the middle of the traffic lanes, amid a teeming mass of people, with six-story tall coffin hotels on the left and decrepit ferrocrete tenements on the right, all ablaze with flickering, flashing neon signs.
Just a few steps in front of him stood a man on a plastic crate. "What's wrong with society?" the man shouted, waving a sheaf of hardcopy. "Too much coercion! Corporate, government, economic coercion! No one can escape it, not the squatters, not the salarymen, not the execs, not even the SINless! Coercion dooms us all to sterile and empty lives, years with no hope, no goals and no end!
"Neo-anarchism is the only answer! the only way humanity can throw off the chains of oppression!
Transcend its degeneracy and rise up out of the mire of the new corporate feudalism!
"We must unite in common cause and seek Pareto optimality!"
Monk frowned.
Pareto what?
A bit further along was a woman shoving a pushcart up the street while she hawked weevo warts, which, when applied with a solution of three percent sodium bicarbonate, would make all men handsome and virile and all women beautiful and fertile.
Weevo warts ... Monk wondered what those were.
After that came pyramids and crystals, positive and negative ion generators, a grow-your-own-clone booth, a tarot reader, a palmist, a noodle stand, cheap body organs and cyberware, another noodle stand, soykaf, a Sidewalk Doc, and a group of masked men big enough to be orks, all wearing the black hoods, jumpsuits, gloves, and boots of the Sanitation Department.
"Where's the stiff ?" one shouted.
Monk tried not to pass judgment. The writer's business was to watch and listen. To learn the patterns of the world and reveal them to others. To do that, he had be like a sponge. He had to soak up everything, remember it, and eventually find ways to explain the seeming randomness of existence to others, regardless of the medium he used.
One of these days, people would read his telebooks or watch his tridplays or experience simsense performances that he had orchestrated, and they would find truth.
And that would be a great day.
He could see it already: "One Day in the Life of the Main Line Mega-market of the Newark Metroplex!"
Or words to that effect.
"By Monk!"
He grinned.
What happened then caught him completely by surprise. From somewhere amid the noise of the street, the babble of voices, the reverb of adverts, the rumble of subways and transitways, the roaring of boom boxes and the distant clatter of gunfire, he heard a kind of high-pitched whining sound, but didn't really pay much attention. He didn't think anything of it.
As he turned one way, something hit him from the other direction, first in the leg, then in the hip. The impact itself didn't come as much of a shock. He'd been getting jostled by the crowds for hours, in fact, practically every day of his life. It was what followed that took away his breath.
Whatever had hit him seemed to sweep him right up off his feet. For a second or two Monk felt himself being carried along at near breakneck speed, arched over backward, his arms and legs flying out wide into empty air. Just in passing, he noticed a few things: the blur of a neon sign advertising soykaf, the face of an Asian man, mouth gaping as in astonishment, eyes bulging and staring down at him, a hooded woman battling a pair of gangers over a
"Got something?" he asked.
"Surikov," Piper said. "Ansell Surikov. That's who they want us to get."
7
Everybody wanted something.
That's why the crowds stood waiting outside the old stadium beneath the giant TV/3V screen advertising Chromium Retrosocket, coming soon. That's why so many thousands of people jammed the Main Line along Bloomfield Avenue through the western half of Sector 3. And that's why Monk stood in the middle of the traffic lanes, amid a teeming mass of people, with six-story tall coffin hotels on the left and decrepit ferrocrete tenements on the right, all ablaze with flickering, flashing neon signs.
Just a few steps in front of him stood a man on a plastic crate. "What's wrong with society?" the man shouted, waving a sheaf of hardcopy. "Too much coercion! Corporate, government, economic coercion! No one can escape it, not the squatters, not the salarymen, not the execs, not even the SINless! Coercion dooms us all to sterile and empty lives, years with no hope, no goals and no end!
"Neo-anarchism is the only answer! the only way humanity can throw off the chains of oppression!
Transcend its degeneracy and rise up out of the mire of the new corporate feudalism!
"We must unite in common cause and seek Pareto optimality!"
Monk frowned.
Pareto what?
A bit further along was a woman shoving a pushcart up the street while she hawked weevo warts, which, when applied with a solution of three percent sodium bicarbonate, would make all men handsome and virile and all women beautiful and fertile.
Weevo warts ... Monk wondered what those were.
After that came pyramids and crystals, positive and negative ion generators, a grow-your-own-clone booth, a tarot reader, a palmist, a noodle stand, cheap body organs and cyberware, another noodle stand, soykaf, a Sidewalk Doc, and a group of masked men big enough to be orks, all wearing the black hoods, jumpsuits, gloves, and boots of the Sanitation Department.
"Where's the stiff ?" one shouted.
Monk tried not to pass judgment. The writer's business was to watch and listen. To learn the patterns of the world and reveal them to others. To do that, he had be like a sponge. He had to soak up everything, remember it, and eventually find ways to explain the seeming randomness of existence to others, regardless of the medium he used.
One of these days, people would read his telebooks or watch his tridplays or experience simsense performances that he had orchestrated, and they would find truth.
And that would be a great day.
He could see it already: "One Day in the Life of the Main Line Mega-market of the Newark Metroplex!"
Or words to that effect.
"By Monk!"
He grinned.
What happened then caught him completely by surprise. From somewhere amid the noise of the street, the babble of voices, the reverb of adverts, the rumble of subways and transitways, the roaring of boom boxes and the distant clatter of gunfire, he heard a kind of high-pitched whining sound, but didn't really pay much attention. He didn't think anything of it.
As he turned one way, something hit him from the other direction, first in the leg, then in the hip. The impact itself didn't come as much of a shock. He'd been getting jostled by the crowds for hours, in fact, practically every day of his life. It was what followed that took away his breath.
Whatever had hit him seemed to sweep him right up off his feet. For a second or two Monk felt himself being carried along at near breakneck speed, arched over backward, his arms and legs flying out wide into empty air. Just in passing, he noticed a few things: the blur of a neon sign advertising soykaf, the face of an Asian man, mouth gaping as in astonishment, eyes bulging and staring down at him, a hooded woman battling a pair of gangers over a
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