Quads I was late when I pushed open the door to the Black Cat, the hot card burning a hole in my hip pocket. The large room was already full, radiating energy. As always, the silence rolled over me like a stone. I sniffed the familiar scents of sweat and stale endorphins and headed for the bar, checking the action. Rog was in his usual spot. I stopped in front of him, reached down and poked his bone. His eyes swam into focus. When my image registered through the swirl, he grinned and raised a questioning eyebrow. I grinned back, patted my butt over the item in question and we four- knucked a salute to my success. Continuing toward the bar, I deliberately just missed stomping on Horne's big toe. The queeb was too far into it to know that I'd threatened him. Horne and I just irritated one another, any original cause lost to memory. Just one of those things. We'd gotten into a scuffle as we'd left the Cat last night. In the dim light, I could just make out the bruise over his left eye were I'd landed a lucky punch before friends pulled us apart. At the bar, I ordered a stim, took a long draw and looked around again as the crash rippled out from my belly, overrunning my fatigue. Too litle sleep. When did I last eat - enchilada breakfast eighteen hours ago, a few tortilla chips since? My brain aching with the code I'd pounded out today. The stress of hanging in the shadows, nervous from the wad of cash in my jeans, waiting for my source. All that faded away. Oh, score! Pearlie was off in a far, dark corner. (S)he was probably the best in the house, and with my new amp, this was going to run. I could feel the warmth in the four bare spots on my scalp as the juice did its stuff. I dropped a bill for the drink and slot, took the beat-up card and my change from the barkeep and looked for a spot. My favorite hack was the one next to Rog. You could scope the whole place. Another queeb had it, so I poked around and found an empty in the middle of the floor. I settled in and snugged the four trodes of the headset onto my quads. The contact didn't feel quite right. I knew I should have shaved again tonight, but I wasn't going to let that slow me down. I slotted the house card and raved up. The blast of the music lifted me like a shot and the vid swarmed through my head. I dialed down the vid intensity so I could dimly make out the shapes in the bar behind the optical feed, a little insurance in case someone should make a move. I leaned back and let the music and vibes wash over me. There must have been a hundred vibes, I recognized about half of them. I couldn't fix Rog, figured he was on onesies. Then he dropped back into omni, and I tickled him. We onesied and kinked around a bit. He was still blown from his last onesie, whoever it was. He psyched as usual, mellow, but with that ragged, crazy edge he'd had ever since our bulletin board days when both of us had more brains than gonads. He stroked my alpha's and then when he thought I wasn't on it, put a hook on my beta's. I was ready for him, put up a block, reached deeper and hammered him in his mu's. He rolled and came up laughing. We dropped back into omni and surfed the vibes. The full spectrum of psychs was there. A few genuinely, giddily, high and happy. Most questing, a forced conviviality, determined to find a good time, keep the dark at bay. Then below, the deep, somber, dangerous ones. You stayed away from those unless you knew them personally, and knew how to handle them. "Ratchet Mutha" cued, a local classic from a band long gone national, and someone started a combo. First a few vibes, then more climbed on, synching with the music. I synched and Rog came in right after me and within a few beats the whole house rezzed. At the end of the piece, the circuits rang with whistlers and I added a few zingers of my own. I surfed some more, just kinking a little and enjoying myself, savoring the hit to come. Then I felt Rog tickle me . We onesied again, and he played me, laughing and nudging. He'd set me up on this deal through one of his bootlegging contacts. Rumors of a hot new piece of mentaltech had circulated for months. I couldn't believe my luck when Rog said he'd turned up a dealer. No tech junkie worth his quads refused a chance like this. Rog, ever the hustler, was always broke, but he was anxious to share the new toy purchased with my hard-earned bucks. I bleeped him an affirmative and dialed the vid down to minimum to check the house. I would have preferred my hack with my back to the wall, and felt a bit exposed, but nobody was paying attention, including the occasional security guards. I worked the card out of my hip pocket and looked at it cupped in my palm, still shiny new, not like the much-used house card. Thing cost me a month's time, producing clever code of mind-numbing tediousness so some queeb could schedule his widget production more efficiently. My source swore it was worth it, recently ripped off from MCC, front-line stuff. I looked around again, then pulled the house card and palmed it. The silence descended like a heavy drape and the four shaved circles on my skull tingled with the feedback of disconnect. I slipped the house card into my shirt pocket and then slotted the new card. It took a ten count while the card shoved its code into the ancient RISC station hidden somewhere in the off-limits back rooms of the Cat. My source swore the card would ramp the system to a new level, and that it had also been hyped to cover its tracks in the host machine. No trace that it was me. Damn well better be right. Then the card kicked in and everything was familiar, but different. The music soared, the vid lit intensely, and my brain was washed with vibes. It took me a minute to get a handle on it. There were the familiar hazy, impressionistic psych vibes, but something crisper, more intense. There was so much of it I couldn't sort it out. Some kind of input overload. Then I gradually began to discriminate. I was getting specific thoughts! Almost words, but not quite. I felt a rush of adrenaline. I'd stepped on the gas of my old jalopy and gotten the response of a Formula One! I felt Rog's tickle and we onesied. Things were even clearer then. I could read Rog wider and deeper than I'd ever known. "Rog!" I thought to myself in recognition. I could feel his shock and recoil. I could not quite make out words, but the concise feeling was there. He had heard me. Sonafubitch! We tried a little gentle kinking. I don't know what he was getting from me, but I was in a new dimension. Like there were two heads in mine. My own thoughts, rushing, sloshing, but then, like radio through static, I was hearing Rog, too. "Heywhat'sgoingon?" "Sumpnhuh?" I queried. "ManIhearyou! Whattatrip!" he responded. Then I got another line. Fear of the new experience -- and of me. "Chudoingtome? Don'likethis. Don'trustem." "Rogmanitsme. Settledown." "Likewhenhestiffedme. Leftmeinthatjoint." "Rogthatwasthreeyearsago. I'msorryman." "Come'satmeI'llfuckem." "Rogferchrissakes!" I omnied. I sat there, sweating. That was not a normal psych. I had been in his head, swimming above some abyss I was not ready to explore. In omni things were not that much different and I slowly settled down. Rog tickled me and I responded. Both a little scared, but buddies again. A small rational piece of me struggled to assimilate what had just happened, the implications of direct head connect, but it was lost in the turmoil. As the adrenalin rush settled out, I became aware that the stim had continued to work. The endorphins had lifted me to that delicious precipice and I was so horny I could smoke. Still a little antsy with this card, but -- god hates a coward. I surfed, found Pearlie surprisingly unoccupied and tickled her. We onsied and I felt the familiar embracing welcome, but also words, interwoven, like interference. "Sweetie! Another. C'monin! Suckemdry. WhatavyougotforPearlie? Makeit." Some tangled, neurotic nest I did not recognize. I did not want to get tied up in it. "Wantchu." "Whazzat?" "Donbeafraid." "Chudoin?" I was amped, but these word- thoughts got in the way of the action. I struggled to look for the familiar tendrils, slipped, heard more neurotic querelousness, then found the range, always so easy before. Pearlie felt the link and gradually the words slipped away. Then it was just two psychs, probing, fondling. I responded to her familiar expert, exquisite touch, deep in that special place in my skull. I reached for her in the same place. No one else could find that edge, that almost, that soaring pressure, always bounded by the lightest finger touch just short of climax, as well as Pearlie. I reached the usual point, but the amp gave me more control, some extra feedback. I guided her, reached for her, felt the pressure grow in both of us. We held there, quivering on the brink for an incredible, uncounted time, and then, by mutual consent, gave simultaneous flicks to the bubble and it exploded, engulfing both of us. I came out of it back in omni, limp as a noodle, every pore awake and stroked by the music and the vid, awash in the waves of release. I lolled, rolling in the surf, mindless. Something poked me, rough, unwelcome. Horne. He wrinkled my mu's, taunting. I tried to ignore him, slipping back into the music, but he did not go away. Irritating, bullying. I sent blockers, but still he pushed, only happy when standing on someone. I onesied. "Littlecraphead. Makesmepuke." Mean, agressive, but then also something else, deeper. "Gotsompn. Ineverhadit." Jealousy. Of me? Then even deeper. "Getem. Showem." The latter laced with fear, repugnance, thoughts of a brutal parent, cowering child, ill-defined, but overpowering. This guy's head was a mess. Not my mess. "Horne!" "Zat?" "Outtamyfaceman." "Fuckinwime?" "Gotnoproblemwithyouman. Easeoff." Fear and anger. He kinked my beta's. It hurt. "Dondothatman!" "Asshole!" He poked me again. "Horne!" I reached, instinctively, not quite knowing what I was doing, for one of those deeper levels. "Horne!" "Whazzat? Nottacloset!" "Hornegoininacloset!" "Noclosetnonoratsno. Nonorats!" "Yesrats. Ratsllcrawlonyou." "Noratsbitenorats. Nobitenobiteno!" The thoughts dissolved into pure terror, but I dug deeper. "Ratsllcrawlinyournose." "Nonono!" "Ratsllcrawlinyourmouth." "Nonono!" "Ratsllcrawlinyourguts." "Noooooo!" "Ratslleatyoufrominside!" "Noooooooooooooooo!" Something clicked. Not quite heard, but palpable. I omnied and slammed the eject. I stared at the butt end of the narrow card sticking its tongue out at me from the slot. Silence roared in my ears, Horne's abject panic resounding in my skull like an echo in a large, dark cavern. I turned my head a little and looked over at him. He was spawled in his hack, not quite upright, strangely rigid. I pulled the card from the slot, palmed it, and shoved myself unsteadily out of the hack. I was not sure what had happened, but there was no question in my mind that I, and that card, had hurt Horne. Badly. I shoved the card in my hip pocket again. Time to roll. I walked, week-kneed, over to Rog and kicked him in the sole of his boot. I hit his eject button and left him hanging, dazed. When I had his attention, I yanked my thumb at the door. He got the message, pulled the card, and lumbered to his feet. We walked past the bar, dropped the bar cards in the return slot and headed for the can. My nerves settled as we went through the familiar ritual of departure, unzipped and peeled off the filled sacs, dumped them in the reeking can by the door, and relieved ourselves of the processed stim. Outside on Sixth, we joined the thin throng, strolling east. "Helluva ride." "Got that right." "You gotta let me try that thing next time." "Dunno, Rog. Takes some getting used to." Ahead of us, I could just make out the first glow of sunrise through the blaze of city lights. Behind me, deep in the recesses of my skull, I felt something stir. Large, dark, dangerous, fixing me with a baleful eye.