Synners by Pat Cadigan

folded his wiry arms. "Actually, I think I can shed some light on the question of the cross-ref, and Sam, I think you can provide some of the fill-in details."
    Sam looked at him, startled. "I can?"
    "You only have part of Keely's zap," he said. "I have the other part. You show me what you have, and I'll show you what I have, and between the two of us, maybe we'll have something for real."
    She grinned. "You'll show me yours if I show you mine?" She tucked a hand in her right pants pocket where the erstwhile insulin pump was resting against her thigh. "My chips aren't compatible with your system. Mind using mine?"
    Fez lifted an eyebrow. "You have a system cleverly concealed about your person?"
    She took the pump out of her pocket and showed it to him and Rosa. Fez's surprised expression deepened as he squinted at the palm-sized unit on her outstretched hand. "To my knowledge you're not a diabetic, especially not one whose body keeps rejecting pancreas implants. Very clever." He started to take it from her and spotted the wire snaking under the tail of her shirt. "Oh, God, Sam, not really."
    "What?" said Rosa. "What's going on?"
    Sam lifted her shirt just high enough to show where the two needles went into the fleshiest part of her abdomen. "You were wrong when you figured I was too busy roughing it to check out the latest in nanotechnology," she told Fez, a little smugly. "The Ozarks turned out to be about the best place I could have gone with my hot hack. I found a lab where I could trade scut work for work space."
    "Oh, God!" Rosa made a gagging noise. "That's an atrocity! You're sick!"
    "I'm a potato clock," Sam corrected her.
    "You're a potato head," Fez said grimly. "What's wrong with batteries?"
    "Not personal enough. No, no, I'm kidding." She laughed at his revolted look. "It's just an alternative power source. You can use batteries, or house current with an adapter, but if the power fails from one or the other, it's crash time. This never crashes. The Dive had this stored in a very out-ofthe-way place. I bet my father doesn't even know about it. Probably they meant it for people working in isolated areas under hostile conditions— Antarctica, surface of the moon, places like that."
    "Good for espionage, too." Fez winced. "What do you use for a screen?"
    She put on the sunglasses. "You'll have to adjust the focal length for your own eye. Projects right onto the retina. How bad s your astigmatism?"
    Fez touched the wire. "Hurt much?"
    "Stings when I first put it on, but after that I almost forget It's there."
    "That's because you're sick," Rosa said, refusing to look. "They'd never have put it over, never, never, never."
    "She's right," said Fez. "Most people will reject anything that requires them to be a pin cushion. The hard-core diabetics and the endocrine cases do it, but ask them if they like it. Someone in Diversifications' research and development lab has a real ghoulish streak." He handed the pump back to Sam. "Give me your software and drive. I've got an adapter."
    She fetched the chip-player from her bag and handed it over. He searched through a couple of desk drawers before he came up with a coil of thin cable. Plugging one end into the chip-player, he connected the other end to his system.
    A moment later thrash-rock blasted tinnily from a small speaker. Fez looked pained. "You didn't tell me it was still encrypted."
    "Of course. You think I was gonna chance getting caught with naked stolen data? You need the potato-head system here to decrypt, unless you want to wait around for one of your own programs to work on it. Might take a few days, though. Keely learned encryption from me."
    "Only hours," he said loftily, and then beckoned to her. "Come on. But we'll run it on my power, thank you. I've got a first-rate generator in case you're paranoid about the Bigger One hitting just when things are getting good."
    "Thanks," Rosa said faintly, still standing with her back to them. "Tell me when it's safe to