Five

 

I crashed at six. One minute I was sitting on the sofa talking to Deck, next thing I was out. I'd been awake for forty-eight hours, and my brain was carrying more than the usual load. I was too exhausted to dream much, and all I could remember when I woke up a little after nine was another image of the silver car from the end of Laura's memory. I was standing by a road, I don't know where, but it seemed familiar. On either side was swampy woodland, and the road stretched out straight to the horizon, shimmering in the heat. Something hurtled towards where I was standing, moving so fast that at first I couldn't tell what it was. Then I saw that it was a car, the sun beating down on it so hard that it almost looked as if it was spinning. As it got closer it began to slow down, and when it drew level I woke up.

I didn't know what it meant, other than that part of my brain was evidently trying to get some things in order, and had been since Ensenada. I wished it well. My mind wasn't exactly razor-sharp before it became a flop-house for other people's hand-me-downs, and I now had far more pressing things to worry about.

‘She's moving,’ Deck said.

I stood at the bedroom door and waited impatiently while Ms Reynolds stirred towards consciousness. It looked like it was a long journey, and it took a while. Now that I was properly awake, panic was beginning to resurface, but I didn't poke her with a stick or anything. For the time being I was still hoping the whole situation could be resolved amicably.

Eventually her eyes opened. They were pretty red, a combination of hangover and the remnants of having been in shock. She stared at me for a while without moving.

‘Where?’ she croaked.

‘Griffith,’ I said. I had a glass of water in my hand, but she wasn't getting it just yet.

‘How?’

‘I brought you here.’

She sat up, wincing at the pain in her arms. She must have temporarily forgotten what the source might be, because when she looked down and saw the stitches her lips tightened and her face fell: a small and private look of sorrow and disappointment. I couldn't tell whether this was because it had happened, or because it had failed.

I gave her the water, and she drank.

‘Why would you do that?’ she asked, when she'd finished.

‘You were going to die otherwise. As it is, you're not allowed to go bungee jumping. Want some chicken soup?’

She stared at me. ‘I'm a vegetarian.’

‘Right – your body is a temple. Full of money-changers like vodka and smack.’

‘Look, who are you?’

‘Hap Thompson,’ I said.

She was out of the bed with a speed I found frankly impressive, though once on her feet she swayed alarmingly. ‘The front door's locked, and the windows don't open,’ I added. ‘You're not going anywhere.’

‘Oh yeah? Just watch me,’ she said, as she pushed past and swished out into the living room. Deck looked up, and she glared at him, face pale. ‘Who the hell are you?’

‘Deck,’ he said, equably. ‘Friend of Hap's.’

‘That's nice. Look, where are my clothes?’

I picked my coat off the end of the sofa and fished in the pockets. Two bras, a pair of panties, and a dress of some thin green material. I held them out to her. Laura looked at me as if I'd offered to crack a walnut between my buttocks.

‘And?’

I shrugged. ‘It's all I could carry.’

‘And my purse is where?’

‘Back in the hotel room.’

‘Are you some kind of monster? You kidnap a woman and don't bring her purse?’

Deck grinned at me. ‘She's real friendly, isn't she?’

Laura turned on him. ‘Look, fuckhead – do you mind if I call you that? – kidnapping's a federal offence. You guys are lucky I'm not on the phone right now, talking to the police.’

‘Memory dumping's a crime too,’ I said. ‘Not to mention murder. You and I both know the last thing you're going to do is get in touch with the cops.’

Her eyes went blank, and she did a good impression of total lack of recall. ‘What murder?’ she said. For a moment it was hard to believe this was someone I'd fished out of a bloody bath in the small hours. She looked like the kind of bank manager who could make you shrivel to a raisin with a raised eyebrow. Either Woodley had done a superb job in patching her up, or she was as tough as all hell.

‘Nice try,’ I said, holding her eyes, ‘but it's not going to work with me. I do this for a living. You lost the event itself, but you still know what you lost. You'll remember seeking me out, and you'll remember why.’

‘You took the job. You got paid.’

‘You lied. And I only got a third of the money.’

‘I'll get you the rest.’

‘I'm not sure I believe you have it, and I don't want it either way. Don't worry – you'll get a refund. Judging by last night, it looks like the dump didn't really work out for you anyway.’

Laura glared at me, then marched over to the front door. She gave the handle a tug. It was, as advertised, locked. ‘Open this door,’ she commanded.

‘Coffee?’ Deck asked me, poised with kettle in hand over in the kitchenette.

Laura kicked the door, nearly toppling herself over in the process. ‘Open it.’

‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘Think I've got some mint mocha left somewhere.’

She stomped back to me. I thought I was going to catch a slap in the face, but she just snatched her clothes and banged off into the bathroom, where she slammed and locked the door. I decided ‘tough as hell’ was the answer to my question.

‘She going to be okay in there?’ Deck asked.

‘Unless she can break the window and absail ten floors.’

‘No,’ he said, patiently. ‘I mean – okay.’

I knew what he meant. ‘I think so.’ I suspected that trying to kill yourself first thing in the morning, with a hangover and two men annoying the hell out of you, was a different affair to doing it in the small hours with no-one around.

Deck found the coffee, poured it into a cafetiere. I used to have a coffee machine like everybody else. You tell them where the coffee beans are, and how to use the tap, and it's ready whenever you want it. But through a design error the hole the coffee comes out of is rather closer to the machine's posterior than you would hope, and after seeing the little biomachine squatting over a cup, grunting with effort, I tend to go off the idea of a hot beverage. When it goes wrong, as they invariably do, the result tastes very strange indeed. Mine got sick, with what I suspect was the coffee machine equivalent of food poisoning, and I just couldn't have it in the house any longer. I put it in the alley behind the building late at night and it was gone the next day. Maybe it made its way down to Mexico to be with its comrades. If so, it must have been in a different group from the ones I'd passed on the way to Ensenada. They tend to hold grudges, apparently, and between them they could easily have forced me off the road. Maybe they just didn't get a good look at my face.

Deck handed me a cup. ‘She's not going to just take it back.’

‘No kidding.’ Having met Laura Reynolds properly, I was now wishing I had woken her up with a pointy stick. I was also finding it hard to believe I'd ever expected things might go differently. ‘So we go with that time-honoured favourite, Plan B.’

‘Which is?’

‘Exactly the same, except we just have to keep her locked up while I get hold of the transmitter.’ The sound of water and occasional bad-tempered stomping made it clear that Laura was now taking a shower. I was looking forward to being harangued when she got out for not bringing her shampoo and cotton balls.

‘By the way,’ Deck said, ‘that weirdo called. Quat.’

My next move, on a plate. ‘Shit – why didn't you say?’

Deck shrugged. ‘Didn't know it was important, and he was done before I could pick it up. You set a callback, apparently. Just said he was around, you wanted to talk to him.’

I started moving. ‘Can you do me a favour?’

‘Absolutely not. Fuck off.’

I waited.

He grinned. ‘Baby-sitting, I assume.’

‘I have to go see him.’

‘Why not just call?’

‘He won't do business that way.’

‘How long will you be?’

‘Very quick.’

Deck settled himself on the sofa, pointed a finger at me. ‘Better be. I suspect Laura Reynolds is a person who's going to take some handling when she gets mad. Going to take your charm and winning ways.’

‘Half hour at most,’ I said.

The lobby downstairs was quiet, just a few people setting up their stalls. During the day most of them sell arts and crafts – inexplicable things fashioned out of pieces of wood originally used for something else, which you take home and move from room to room until you realize the attic is the best place for them. Someone else's attic, preferably. It is my firm belief that in the afterglow of our civilization, when all we have made is come to nought and our planet slumbers once more, home only to a few valiant creatures – bugs, probably – who have the courage to struggle through whatever nemesis we have wrought on Mother Nature, some alien race will land and do a spot of archaeology. And all they'll find, particularly in coastal areas, is layers of mirrors made from reclaimed floorboards with homespun wisdom etched on them with a soldering iron, or pockets of driftwood sculptures of fishing boats which rock when pushed, and they'll nod sadly amongst themselves and admit that this was a civilization whose time had come.

I quickly located Tid, the guy who'd parked my car, and gave him the usual ten spot. I like to think this is a voluntary arrangement, showing great generosity on my part, but I suspect that without it I'd never find out where my car had been put. Tid's a small, disreputable-looking man who seems to live solely on M&Ms, but we'd always got on well enough. Money's like that: promotes straightforward relationships. I slipped him an extra twenty, and asked him to do me a favour, then ran down to the parking lot under the building.

The car was parked over on the far side, nestled into a dark corner. This was perfect for me, because I wasn't going anywhere. I got inside, set the alarm and locked the doors.

Most people go in the Net via their homes, obviously. Though my account was now billed to the apartment, I still had the rig in the car because over the last couple of years it had remained the most stable environment in my life. I bought it after my first couple months' work for REMtemps, and had it fully kitted out. As I accumulated more money, I upgraded and tweaked to the point where even I couldn't remember where all the wires were. Ripping it all out and reconstructing it in the apartment was one of those things I never quite got round to, like throwing away biros which didn't work properly. Or getting a life.

The console in the car plays images direct into the brain, so I don't have to wear VR goggles. All I had to do was flip the switch, close my eyes, and be transferred to the other side.

The light changed, and instead of being underground I was in my standard driveway home page, facing out towards a leafy residential district of small-town America. I put my foot down and pulled out into the road. My netcar looks like a souped-up '59 Caddy, complete with retro fins and powder-blue paint job, but the engine characteristics are bang up-to-date. I don't mind driving fast in the Net, because of the in-built anti-collision protocol – in fact sometimes I speed straight at other people just for the pure hell of it. It's especially fun if you come across one of those die-hards who refuse to get with the new metaphor, and insist on trawling the Net on surfboards. You see them occasionally, old hippies scraping along the road on boards equipped with little skateboard wheels, complaining about the traffic and muttering about the good old days of browser wars.

I turned left out of my street and tore down the trunk lines for a while, then hung a right and cut up into the personal domain hills on the other side. You have to slog through a lot of cyber suburbia these days – family sites full of digitized vacation videos and mind-numbing detail on how little Todd did in his tests – before you get out into the darker zones. It used to be that you could type in a URL and leap straight to anyone's home page. But when they folded out into three-dimensional spaces and started to look like real homes – and their owners started spending actual time there – things changed. They wanted you to walk up the path and ring a doorbell like a civilized person. With most other places you can still just jump straight to the general district, but not where I was going – and the jams at the jump links are often so bad you're usually better just putting your foot down and going the long way round. Thus what had started as an alternative reality ended up just being another layer of the same old same old, operating on more-or-less similar rules.

Humans are like that. Very literal-minded.

I reminded myself, as usual, that I ought to visit my grandparents soon. Now was not the time. It seldom was. They retired to the Net six years ago, about two weeks ahead of the Grim Reaper. Bought themselves a scrabby virtual farm way out on the edge of Australasia. Net just before they died, and had themselves transferred. Unfortunately they were ripped off by their realtor, and the resolution is fucked. It's just polygons and big blocks of colour out where they live, and voices sound like they're coming through speakers which had an earlier life in a thrash ambient band. I guess I could phone them from out in the real world, but that gives me the creeps: too much like pretending they're still alive. They are – were, whatever – good people, and I'm glad that in some sense I still have access to them, but there are barriers which I suspect shouldn't be breached. We still don't know as much about the mind as we think we do, and there's something a little off about them now, as if the rough edges got lost in the translation. Show me a person without a bit of sand in their nature, and I'll show you someone a little creepy.

I started to lose a little speed, which meant that traffic was starting to build – people checking their mail and doing the early-morning shop online. The roads still looked empty, but that's because I like it that way and usually set my gear to filter out all cars except those of people I know.

Deck hates the Net – won't come in unless he has to. Says he doesn't trust mediated experience. I asked him what magazine he got that out of and he admitted it was something an ex-girlfriend used to say. I quite like it, enjoy the feeling of going places without actually having to get out of the chair, and of there being some other place you can go to in the flick of a switch. But mainly I use it to access people who refuse to do business in the normal way. Quat, for example, who won't make any transaction over a phone. Doesn't trust them, which is a complete pain in the ass when you need something in a hurry.

As I drove my mind worked overtime, trying to predict the angles now I knew more about the guy that Laura had killed. The bottom line was simple: there was even more reason for me to get her experience back into her head and out of mine – like, immediately. If there's one thing that really ticks cops off, it's people whacking one of their own. I didn't know how much difference it would make that I hadn't been the one who actually pulled the trigger, but I suspected that if they got hold of me they'd choose not to get mired in metaphysical complexities.

On the plus side, my guess was that the case wasn't going to be easy to crack, and that I remained reasonably safe for the time being. The cops' only route to me was through Laura, and something told me that her connection to Hammond wasn't one that was going to leap at them straight off the bat. The loaned memory of his eyes said he was a man who was good at keeping secrets, and that Laura would be one of them. The wild card was the guys in grey who'd come along at the end. As I'd told Deck, they didn't strike me as cops – and I was even more sure of that now I knew who Ray Hammond had been. It was partly their reaction at the scene of the crime, and partly just something about them. They had nothing on me, and so no action was required, except keeping them in mind.

It was possible that the cops would brace Stratten, and anyone operating similar services, for information on his recent clients. Stratten would have no knowledge of my piece of freelancing, but I had to make sure that I behaved in as normal a way as possible, otherwise his brain might start ticking over. In other words, give him a call and act nice.

I ran back over it every which way, and came back to the same conclusion. If we could just lie low for a while, and Quat came through for me, chances were I would be okay. Which only left one question, irrelevant but still curious.

What was a ranking cop doing with property in wasteland LA?

Eventually the sky started to darken and my speed picked back up, as I approached the adult area. A Net Nanny peered at me at the intersection and let me pass, correctly judging I was of adult age, if not necessarily an adult. The adult zone's not a homely place – perpetual night, petrol stations and 24-hour mini-marts, bus shelters with no-one standing at them and lone figures trudging down roads – but I had to drive through it to get to where the wild folks live. Competing banner signs kept pace with the car as I shot through, shouting about the wares of sex sites along the way. Gradually they got side-tracked into punching each other out, and started to fall behind. At one point an entirely naked and silicone-enhanced woman appeared in the passenger seat, cooing about the things I could see for just $19.95 an hour, but I kept my foot down and got out the other side before it got out of hand. The image pouted and dissolved as I crossed the line into hacker territory, leaving me with the sound of a kiss.

It's individual domains again out there, but the houses are of more baroque design and have Fuck-off Dogs sleeping out front. As you drive past in the twilight each opens one eye and growls to let you know he's there. They're basically hack detectors, and can deal with anything short of a supervirus. There was a period when you'd see lions, dragons and eternal vortexes of death-knives keeping guard, but then the hackers all moved on to some other fad and dogs slowly took over again.

Time tends to seem to slow down a little in the hacker zone, because of the processing requirements of all of their little tweaks and hacks. Roads seldom lead where you expect, and unless you know where you're going – and have forward clearance – you'll find yourself burped out somewhere on the other side of the Net.

Eventually I got to Quat's road, and drove up to his gate. His Fuck-off hauled itself to its feet and squinted irritably at me as I approached. He's an old version and getting tired, but Quat's too sentimental to upgrade. I held my hand out and let the dog sniff it, as always half-expecting to lose my fingers, but he recognized my Preferences File and let me through. It tried to send a cookie back down the link as I passed, and I blocked it as usual. One of Quat's milder cookies will localize your operating system into Amish, and one time he turned my avatar into a serial killer. I'd whacked fourteen virtual people in cyburbia before the sysCops caught up with me, but luckily Quat had included an Undo function and no lasting harm was done.

I parked in front of the house and ran up the path to the front door. As the buzzer played what sounded like an entire random symphony deep in the bowels of the house, I nervously hopped from foot to foot and looked through the window into Quat's living room. It was very tidy. It always is. Quat's so house-proud, the rumour goes that even in the real world when he has a party, he insists that everyone is modelled in code and spends the evening in a virtual reality version of his apartment: then when they go he can just restore it from a backup, without the wine stains and piles of vomit. I'd never actually met Quat in the flesh, but I could believe it.

‘Yo,’ he said, when he opened the door. ‘You got my message.’

‘Nice suit, Quatty,’ I replied. Quat always dresses like a particularly straight-laced FBI agent from the 1950s, which I guess is an ironic statement of some kind. His virtual face, likewise, is a picture of stern respectability – whereas I expect in the real world he looks the usual hacker mess and doesn't spend enough money on clothes.

‘Can't stay,’ I said, and he nodded.

‘I guessed a call at three in the morning was unlikely to have been purely social. What do you need?’

‘A machine.’

‘What kind of machine?’

I looked him straight in the eye. ‘A memory transmitter.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes. And soon.’

He shook his head slowly, still looking at me. ‘Soon I can't do. At all is going to be very difficult. As you know. And expensive. I only know about two people who might be able to lash one up, and they're both doing time with no hope of Net access.’

‘There's someone around who can do it,’ I said.

‘Got a name?’

I shook my head, wishing I'd thought to ask Laura but knowing she wouldn't have told me. ‘Just trust me, there is. And however much it costs, I need a machine. Now.’

‘Someone taken a job they shouldn't have done?’

‘That's about the size of it.’

‘It doesn't worry you that if Stratten finds out he's going to be extremely mad? I mean, like, killing mad?’

‘Quat, I've got no choice. The last lump of money your daemon fractalled for me was the first payment for the job. The dump's already in my head. You've got to find this guy, and fast.’

Facial reactions don't mean a whole lot in the Net, but Quat's stern face looked especially stern. ‘What are you carrying?’

‘A murder. A cop killing. And there's something hinky about it. I need it out of my head.’

He looked away, running his eyes over the pristine tidiness of his hallway. In reality he could have been doing anything, and was probably already starting getting in touch with his contacts.

‘Got to go,’ I said. ‘Give me an estimate.’

‘Twenty-four hours.’

My heart dropped. ‘Shit – that long?’

‘If you're lucky. Where are you going to be?’

‘Wherever I am,’ I said, and went.

Quat and his house dissolved into a shower of pixels, and I was back in the car park again. I was about to leap out and go running upstairs, with that youthful vigour I have, but then decided I could do with a quick cigarette without Laura Reynolds whining at me. Meantime I got the teleputer to flash up the bottom line of today's news. People were doing stuff, or had done stuff, none of it of direct relevance to me. It was going to be a sunny day, unless it pissed down later on. There was nothing about the Hammond case. Life was holding steady, at least for the time being.

I finished the cigarette and slipped out of the car, trying not to let any of the smoke escape.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I closed the apartment door behind me. Rather than knocking I'd used my key, on the grounds that Laura might be in escapist mood. Turned out not to be an issue. The living room was empty, and a glance to the side told me there was no-one in the bathroom either. I quickly walked to both bedrooms, then turned round and pointlessly searched in the living room again. Deck and Laura continued to fail to be there.

I stopped myself from going and checking the other rooms again. The apartment was empty. You can tell. The objects in the room looked smug and over-prominent, in that way they do when they've got the space to themselves. I stood still for a moment, blinking, not sure how to react but suspecting that outright panic was the way forward. I hadn't specifically told Deck not to take Laura out shopping or something, but he's a bright guy. I'm sure he took it as read. There was a third used coffee cup on the counter, which meant there'd been time for Laura to finish up in the bathroom and doubtless irritably accept a cup. The readout on the answering machine said no-one had called, and the machine itself bad-temperedly confirmed this.

There was no note, and no sign of a struggle in the apartment. There just wasn't anyone there. The place felt like the Marie Celeste except that it wasn't a ship and was carpeted.

The phone rang. I grabbed it. ‘Deck?’

‘No – it's the Tidster.’

‘Tid – have you seen Deck? With a woman?’

He laughed. ‘No. That'd be something to remember, right?’

‘You didn't see him leave the building.’

‘No.’

‘Then what the hell are you calling for?’

‘You still interested in hearing if any official-looking dudes pull up outside?’

My blood ran a little colder. ‘What are you telling me?’

‘Silver car, two guys, ten seconds ago.’

‘Holy fuck.’ I put the phone down on Tid, who was still talking, snatched my coat and ran out of the apartment. Dithered for a moment in the hallway, then headed towards the bank of elevators which lead down the northern side of the building – judging that the men would come up the central way.

As I ran I asked four questions: how the hell had they found the apartment? Why were they after me, and how did they even know I existed? Who the hell were they?

No answers came. Near the end of the corridor I found myself slowing down, and stopped just before turning the corner. I had the jitters big time, and not just because of the general situation. I felt trapped. I glanced back towards the apartment: there was no sign of anyone yet, but once they entered my corridor they'd see me, and I was too far away to hear the elevator doors. Large and noisy sections of my brain were shouting at me to just keep running, head for the other bank and get the hell down to another floor. But something else was telling me to be careful. I decided to trust it.

I reached into my pocket and yanked out the clock, shook it vigorously until it woke up.

‘Jeez, what time is it?’ it said, irritably. ‘I'm bushed.’

‘Got a job for you,’ I said.

At this the clock brightened considerably. ‘Cool. What?’

‘I need you to go round the corner, walk until you can see the elevator doors.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do it. If the doors open and anything danger-shaped comes out, run back here shouting your head off.’

I set the clock down on the floor. It looked up at me suspiciously, and I waved it forward. As it toddled off round the corner, keeping close to the wall, I prepared to feel kind of foolish.

For a minute it was very quiet; then I heard the sound of the elevator doors opening. The clock didn't shout.

I was halfway round the corner when I heard something else.

A single gunshot.

After a brief pause in which I froze, shocked into immobility, the clock came hurtling round the corner towards me. ‘Shit,’ it squeaked breathlessly, and then it was gone. I took after it as fast as I could, but not quickly enough to avoid getting a glimpse of who had come out of the elevator.

Two men. Dressed in grey.

I hurtled down the corridor, knowing I was trapped. As I passed the clock it made a dive for my jeans, clung on and scrambled hectically up my leg. When it got to the top it scurried rapidly back into my jacket pocket, and nosed its way into the deepest corner. I sensed it wasn't going to be a great deal of help.

I heard a ping, and realized that someone was about to enter the floor via the central elevators. I glanced behind and saw that the two men were coming down the corridor after me. They were running fast, with a compact running style in exact step with each other. In that second I also flashed on something I hadn't consciously noticed in the memory: both were wearing old-fashioned sunglasses, like sloping beetle eyes.

The one on the right scoped me and a shot rang out, whistling about a foot to the side of my leg. I found my rhythm again, and then some. As I sprinted round the corner I saw four old people getting out of the elevator, in a neat two by two formation. They looked pretty alarmed. I banged straight through the middle – knocking three of them over – and into the elevator behind them. I slapped the button and threw myself flat against the side wall as the oldsters squawked and jabbered. The doors closed mercifully quickly and I just stared across the elevator, panting slightly, not bothering to peek through the narrowing gap.

Then it was closed, and we were heading down. ‘They shot at me,’ came a muffled voice from my pocket, sounding genuinely upset.

‘Fuckers,’ I said, pulling out my gun. ‘I won't stand for that.’

‘You mean it?’

I slammed a clip in. ‘Absolutely. You're my clock. Anyone shoots you, it's going to be me.’

I decided against screwing around with lower floors and went straight to the basement. Waved the gun around as I jumped out, but nobody was there. I turned and shot out the elevator controls on both sides, and an alarm of implacable vehemence went off.

I ran across the parking lot with the back of my neck writhing, expecting something small and hard to smack into it at any moment. I left the Falkland's premises at around a hundred miles an hour, for once in my life deciding that anti-collision software was for wimps. I lost the back end for a while as I swerved onto the street, causing a certain amount of disquiet in my fellow road-users, then just put my foot down and headed for the gate.

It was only when I was half a mile away that I remembered I'd left the memory receiver in my apartment.