Free Transmaniacon by John Shirley

“Is it where it’s supposed to be? The exciter, I mean.”
    â€œIt is.”
    â€œThat was quick. A few days. Don’t you have to lie up? Or pay the bill?”
    â€œI paid beforehand, by radio credit-code. I’ve got an account in a Vegas bank. And I’m rested already. All healed up. Things are changed nowadays, in some places. In some parts of the country a broken bone can be healed in hours—but a few hundred miles from there the best you can hope for is a witch doctor and maybe an amputation. Good surgeons in Las Vegas. Where’s your brother? Where’s Ranger?”
    She ignored the question. “Hey, how come Chaldin trusted you to bring that exciter back to him? I mean if it was his all along, why didn’t he give you a dummy or something? The thing must be valuable.”
    â€œHe invented it, he could make more. But it’s psychic-conductive metal. That means it has to be attuned to the electromagnetic emanations of the user. I have to keep it next to my body so it can align itself to my personal electricity. I figure he intended me to use it. The thing is an electronic Ben Rackey, in a way. It’s a manipulator and intensifier of hostility and emotional uncertainty. And so am I--or anyway it’s something I know how to do.” He rubbed his head. He was a little woozy. “I know the game. Chaldin needs me to operate it, to direct it. He needs a man with precision in emotional incitement. There are only a few Professional Irritants. I’m the best of them. Maybe he didn’t figure I’d take control this soon.”
    â€œHe invented the euphonium to quiet people down, make them harmless, and he invented this thing that makes them violent-like.” She nodded to herself. “Yeah, he’s got plans.”
    â€œWhere’s your brother?”
    She shifted nervously. “Out playing. I don’t know what he’s doing. I told him you said to stay out of that stuff but that just pissed him off. He gets pissed off easy. He went into that Carousel Mall, down the way.”
    Oh no, Ben thought. He ran to the nearest elevator, and she trotted after him.. In the elevator she asked, “You worried?”
    â€œFuck yeah. He’ll get himself in trouble and expose us all. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Not here.”
    â€œAnd you know just what you’re doing, I suppose? When are you going to test that thing in your chest?”
    â€œNot till we get back to Lenny’s, he’s setting up controlled experiments. Only--we’ll see. This is a dangerous city.”
    â€œHow do you like--turn the thing on? Just thinking...?”
    â€œThe exciter? Not exactly. It’s tuned to a certain brainwave frequency—never mind.”
    The elevator door opened onto the subterranean city’s main avenue. Chaldin Avenue.
    â€œTell you something,” Ben said. “If Fuller survived the desert and went back to Chaldin, then Chaldin’s figured out where we are, within a few miles. And he owns most of the casinos on this street. It’s named after him.”
    The avenue was only a wide corridor flanked by neon-festooned arcades. Twenty feet overhead, light panels cast a pale glitter over the dusty, curling tinsel that dangled everywhere. Striving for anonymity, dressed in inconspicuous smocks of dull gray and brown, natives of all the cities that were not armed camps hurried by, avoiding each other’s eyes. In gutters on both sides of the broad hallway a narrow conveyor belt carried away refuse: empty drink bulbs, handbills, scraps of food, a broken stiletto, a gutted wallet, a shattered wrist phone. All were swept away, to rendezvous at last with a distant furnace. The long-dead body of an old man swept past, head pillowed on a crumpled aluminum tin.
    They stepped into the Carousel Mall’s entranceway and turned into an unoccupied selection booth. Ben closed the door behind them and opened another