Jacaranda overhead perfumes the air with pendulous blossom.
Leaves sway in the 70 degree breeze as Auri tells her story. It nettles Karl to hear it. So much beauty, so many lives, so much youthwasted. He watches washboard cirrus meander across a sky too blue for Mexi-Cali. That's when he spots it.
A speck at first just above the horizon, growing into a shape he recognizes. A helicopter, no, two, sweep in from the sea. Two-man jobs, very light, very fast. Traffic reporters use them. Red and white. From where Karl sits they look like mating dragon flies. Funny to see two so close together.
He watches, pretending to listen as she recounts the seductions, the blackmail, the lonelinessall of what passes for glamour. He prefers not to hear any more. He doesn't want to be drawn in, to sympathize with this woman. What he wants is to stay apart, alone. Easier that way.
Coming in low and fast, the birds skim the waves, heading directly for the cliff below them. Something's not right. Karl feels naked, exposed.
Time drips slow as honey running down frosty glass, and the voice inside his head, the one that's saved his life more than once, screams. Not knowing why, he glances over his shoulder just as the maid pulls back the curtain to look out at them, mouth twisted, face closed, the face of one getting her own back.Then she's gone and the curtain dances back.
Rusty. He's so damned rusty, he would never have fallen for a set up like this five years ago. Like a tourist he sits waiting for it. Face flushed hot with shame, he stands sending his chair skidding across tile. When they sweep up and over the cliff, there won't be time.
Hand reaching instinctively to the empty holster under his arm, he stands frozen. Every word he can think of he spits, cursing her, himself, their lack of hard cover on the exposed terrace. They don't get inside they're dead. He remembers, now, the woman locked them out. Snatching up his heavy glass, still full, he hurls it through the tempered door. Instantly, it opaques, peanut size chunks of glass skittering over tile.
Eyes frightened, Auri watches, drawing back. By an arm, he drags her to the door, but he's too slow. Over his shoulder, he sees the first bird sweep up and over their heads. The second comes dead on, the passenger leaning out the door, raising something black. It gives Karl no pleasure to know he's right, that they are going to die. Frustrated by his sluggishness, he drags her inside, shoes skidding on glass.
She screams, clawing, "What, what?" Auri holds him back for all she's worth, all the hours in the gym helping to get them both sawn in half out here in the open. She catches at the door frame, and he considers going on, getting to the elevator, down and out, leaving her to them. That's what he should do, what he wants to do. One thing he does knowhe won't die here.
Hard on the face he slaps her, raises his hand again. Her hands loosen and he drags her inside. Through the living room he hauls her, hearing the gun roar, one long din blotting out the chop of the blades, white noise as window glass sprays inward, raising curtains on projectile wind.
Carmen, waiting by the kitchen doorway, falls, hit, shrieking on broken glass, dark legs bloodied. Hauling Auri past her, Karl thinks. Of course she won't be spared. Ten minutes and there won't be anyone breathing in the building, not neighbors, not security, not him, not her. These guys are here chasing a buck. And from what he's seen so farthe birds, the woman insidethey're serious about it.
Through the cool, dark interior at the back of the house to the elevator he drags her, neither of them hit as far as he knows, as far as he can feel. Not that he feels much. At the elevator door, he stops, listens, the gun roaring five walls away, a few odd rounds sputtering through sheet rock, trailing clouds of gypsum dust and insulation. This is as far as they go. With no choice, Karl passes his hand in front of the elevator sensor.
A serene female voice responds. "The elevator is on its way. ETA thirty seconds."
He'll lay odds it won't be empty.
Suddenly Auri gasps, covers her arm. He pries away her hand and plucks out the needle thin flachette embedded in flesh to the fins. Bundling the fabric of her shirt, he presses it tight against the oozing puncture. She watches him as he does it, eyes dry. Gutsy.
"Hold this, it's nothing to worry about."
Ain't that the truth. Odds are they'll both be dead in less than a minute.
Nervous sweat running icy down his back, he backs away. That's it then. A team's on the way. Thirty seconds, that's how long they have.
He's not up to this, not anymore. He doesn't want to be here, doesn't want any part of it, this woman or the squad after her. If there were only some way out, somewhere to run, some way to fight. He never should have given up his piece. Never.
His mind stutters. It may be security. Sure, it's got to be security. Heard the noise and come to get them.
He knows better.
"ETA twenty seconds."
Twenty seconds and they'll be here.
Could be good.
Could be not so good.
Paralyzed, mind spinning like he's on the teacup ride at the Humboldt County Fair, he waits.
Overcoat flapping in the wash, Villar leaps easily from the hovering chopper, heads for the entry not more than a hundred meters away, leaving the door wagging open behind him.
Being late he can't stand. It's sloppy. It's lazy. He is neither. Then why does he have to work with idiots? Damned pilot, kid fresh off the boat, probably never done a fast drop in his life. He told him he wanted to be down when the shooting started, and he sets him down like he's delivering eggs. When this is over he's done. He can get a job slicing gyros on a catering boat working the Miracle Mile.
He stops, forces himself to slow, to relax. After this one he's done himself. This gives him enough to start again in Mexico with a place of his own.
Dark tranquil eyes on eucalypt overhead, he strides up the incline to the entry, breathing deep their medicinal scent as he passes.
"Twas brillig..." he says in a quiet voice, beginning the ritual, clearing his mind. "...and the slithey toves did gyre and gimbol in the wabe..."
Over netcom he hears Alfredo firing, cursing as he loses sight of the target inside, raking the line of windows from the balcony, burning up ammunition. Idiot. What happened to catching her on the terrace?
"All mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe..."
His strides eating up the meters to the entrance, Villar speaks into the air, headset picking it up through bone conduction at the back of his skull, "Get them?"
Flustered, stuttering, grunting with the effort of birthing words through a mouth not big enough for them, Alfredothe moronsays he doesn't know, but that there's a guy with her, and somehow they got inside. On the walk barely twenty meters from the front door, Villar stops, shaking his head in disgust.
"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!"
From his pocket he takes foam plugs, pressing them into his ears, working his jaw to seat first one...
"The jaws that bite..."
Then the other.
"...the claws that catch!"
How boring the screw ups are, how predictable. He knew it, he knew this would happen. Why, oh why can life never be simple, he asks himself, feeling put out, ill used by fate. Send Alfredo to shoot a fish in a toilet bowl and he misses twoincredible. Must he do everything himself? They could be on their way out right now.
"He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought"
Impossible to get competent help, that's what it is.
Up the walk to the glass doors. Inside he sees the two men Carmen said would be there, obviously panicked by the shots from overhead. Amateurs, all lousy amateurs. From his vest he takes a small, brown cigar. Wetting it between his lips, he slips it between his teeth as they watch him from inside.
"So rested he by the Tum Tum tree, and stood awhile in thought."
Reaching back, he draws the carbine from under his coat, slaps the rounded knob with the heel of his hand, sending the roller bolt clacking forward, chambering a round. Not Villar. Villar doesn't play.
"And, as in uffish thought he stood..."
Almost he pities them, stupid bastards, imagining he's no threat until he's inside the office.
"The Jaberwock, with eyes of flame, came whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbled as it came!"
Wrapping the sling tight over his arm, he shoulders the carbine, fires as he goes, a burst for each, then a second serving.
"One two one two and through and through, his vorpal blade goes snicker-snack."
The guards go down, penetrator rounds zipping through plate glass and soft armor like grass through a goose. Gingerly Villar steps through the empty door frame, shoes crunching crumbled glass.
"And with his head..."
Letting the carbine drop to hang by its sling, he draws a suppressed pistol, presses it behind the big man's ear, turning his head to avoid spattered blood, bone, gray matter. One can't be too careful. An intimate act, killing. Like sex, best done with care.
The pistol sounds, open hand on leather.
"...he went galumphing back."
He does the second. What no one sees never happens. He dusts immaculate hands, checks himself for splatter, slips away the pistol. No game for amateurs. Looking down at the men on the floor, he shakes his head. It's like sausage, like clothes: you get what you pay for. Sad.
The elevator hisses, hydraulics venting as the car descends on its ram. Gingerly he steps over the two dead men into the door jamb. He waits for the doors to open, five seconds, ten, chewing the end of the slender cigar, sure of what's coming, expecting no surprises. Carmen's kept her stupid brown eyes open for once. All except for the man upstairs, for that she'll get the back of his hand.
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy!"
The doors slide open, fire and noise erupting from inside. Amid the roar of the two tens firing at 900 rpm, Villar laughs out loud. Special forces has beens. Too old, too thick in the belly, not hungry enough, they forget how to think like a hunted animal. House cats, lazy, contenteventually, dead.
Muzzles sweep the room, corner to corner searching, finding nothing. From inside the lift, from safety, they spray like fools, stopping to snap in new magazines. Villar presses himself back in the recessed doorway of the stairwell, only eight inches deep, but enoughjust enough.
A round bites a button off his London Fog, chews it in half. New stinking coat, not cheap, now he's got a broken button to replace. "Son and heir of a mongrel bitch," he says through clenched teeth white as his eyes.
Suddenly it's quiet, and the two step out like they own the world. Carbine held high, sling taut over forearm, Villar gives the closest a three round burst behind the ear. He drops. The bigger man turns, whines, a little shriek, one endless second, face a mask of fear and surprise as he sees he's about to die.
Sad, very sad, to be that unprepared. Villar puts a burst through his open mouth, giving him no time to think, to move, to recover. Dindindin, three sounds one, conducted through folding stock to jaw. The dead man joins his friend on the carpet.
Villar watches them jerk like hogs with throats slit, bleeding out for Quinceañera. Closely, he examines the raveling thread where the button on his coat should be. Hundred bucks at least, that's what they'll want to sew on another one. In disgust he looks at the men at his feet.
No respect for property any more. No courtesy. Not even competence. This city is not what it once was.
Behind him a gong sounds as someone calls the car. Villar's head whips around and a slow smile spreads over a hard face.
"Oh, frabjous day, 'Callooh! Callay!' he chortled in his joy."
It's time his luck turned.
Feeling like a rabbit in a snare, Karl steps back and onto Auri's foot.
"Ow," she says, shoving him off.
"Are there stairs?"
She smiles at his stupidity. "It'll be security."
"Will it?" He knows the answer, knows what they'll see when the doors open, knows how it'll feelthe numbing blows as the slugs tear through them, the spreading cold. That's what he hopes for anyway. That's if they work clean. If they're being paid to make an example of her it won't be that easy.
He remembers a family in Fresno. Father got careless with drug money. That was the consensus. Two days in the scorching summer heat before neighbors smelled them. Daughter home for the weekend from UC Santa Cruz. Beautiful kid. They made him watch what they did to the girl, then the wife. He was last. Karl had been called in on that one. House out in Sunnyside knee deep in gore. Pros. No prints, no witnesses, no car, no nothing. Just three bodies.
Karl arranged to be alone with them for ten minutes. Thought that was weird, but they cleared out for him. Worst one he ever did. And useless. Pain and terror ripe as three-week-old tuna choked out everything else. A wastehe got nothing. The victims had no idea who the killers were, never even saw their faces. The memory he'll carry with him.
What they did to the girltwenty, knowing nothing about what her father had done, just a beautiful kidwas done for show, to get to the old man. Karl never saw the world quite the same way after that. He still dreams about that house under the shade of big eucalypt. Though he's heard there are no smells in dreams, there are in these.
Auri opens her mouth to protest, but instead brings a hand to her throat. Now he can see she gets it, sees all bets are off.
"Are there stairs?" he says again, knowing there won't be, knowing he's wasting his breath.
"Over here." She leads him to stairs. As the elevator announces its arrival, they shut the door behind them. One floor down he stops her. Head cocked, he looks up, willing himself hear through a meter of steel and concrete. He thinks he may hear men talking. Panic drives up through his spine. Time to go.
Inside the door to the entry, he stops, afraid of what he'll find on the other side. Pressing an ear to cold metal, he listens. Nothing. He can picture someone on the other side, waiting, listening. He pushes the thought away. No use worrying about it. It's the only way out. It's where they have to go.
Auri starts to open her mouth and Karl covers it with a hand. >From over their heads, one shot, two more in rapid succession, suppressed, but far from silent. The maid gets hers. Thanks, honey, for your help. Did she imagine this would be her kiss off?
Karl strains to hear footsteps on the stairs, hears noneyet.
Villar catches hold of one of the elevator doors, causing it to spring back with a warning to stand clear.
Stepping over the men on the carpet, he releases a spent magazine, tossing it easily on the big one's back, a memento. His gloves bear the prints of a man who drowned off the coast ten months ago. Let them figure that one out.
He rips up the velcro on his leg pack and slips in another thirty rounder, tilting it forward, up, and back until it locks in place with a satisfying click. German craftsmanship.
He turns away, steps inside, presses the button for the top floor with the muzzle of the carbine. It takes him up. Hey, maybe he could just sew a new button on himself. This makes him smile. He used to be pretty handy with a needle and thread back in collegewhy not? Be damned if he'll pay some wetback to do it. He'll save money doing the repair himself, use that extra button they sew on the side seam lining.
He wipes his face with the back of his hand. It comes away smeared crimson, white clots of brain rolling against his face. He panics, letting the gun drop to its sling. A whine rises from his throat as he rubs furiously at his face with one sleeve, then another. He can't stand getting it on him. There's no telling where they've been, what they've got. He's not some indio working in a slaughterhouse, arms deep in steaming cavities. He doesn't want their filthy blood on him, on his skin for chrissake!
Finding a mirror in a pocket of his jacket, he raises it with a trembling hand, looking himself over. Gone. Breathing hard, he stares at himself in the empty car, thankful he's alone.
Needing suddenly to speak to someone alive, he opens a line, hears Alfredo go into the apartment overhead, tells him he's coming. No use getting shot by the idiot, too.
Villar reaches up to turn out the light. As the car rises slowly the three stories on its hydraulic ram, he squats, waits for his eyes to adjust to the dark, the second target worrying him.
You never know. This guy could be anybody, anybody at all. There are some out there, he's heard of them, guys he'd rather not meet up there with only Alfredo to watch his back.
He adjusts his grip on the carbine, smiling into the dark, savoring the reek of burnt powder. Reminds him of good times, times he'd conquered his fear, faced it, come away alive. It's what life is forleaving fear behind, rising from it.
Before Villar the door opens on a silent apartment.
On blood-soaked carpet Carmen lies, legs drawn up as if napping. Seeing her, he feels cheated. He won't be able to slap her after all. Furious, Alfredo following, he searches for them, flinging open doors, raging through the penthouse. A closet he finds locked, and fires twice through the door. Listening, he hears water, sees it soak under the door. Now he's whacking water heaters.
Panic clawing, he backtracks to the living room, stalls in the middle of the floor, tick spasming his right eye. Where are they?
Alfredo, he sends to search the kitchen, knowing they aren't there. At least he'll be out of the way.
Senses prickling, he freezes. He knowsthe stairs.
Desperately Karl works to keep his mind from seizing. There might be someone on the other side of the door. There might not. Thinking he might have heard a door open above their heads, he cranes his neck, sees nothing. They stay where they are, they're dead.
Nerves prickling, he cracks the door. The big man, looking deflated, lies face down on carpet newly incarnadine. Skin's on his knees behind the counter. At first Karl thinks he may be looking for something. A quick look tells him he's not. The air hangs acrid with burned powder, gamy with the tang of blood, lung, brain.
From the size of the craters in the big man's backgaping wounds he could stick a fist inhe'd say penetrator, high velocity 5.56, under-stabilized. Frantically, he rifles drawers. In the third he finds the Smith, opens, checks the cylinder and nearly laughs with relief. He's hot.
Going back for Auri, it's good to have something in his hand. Outgunned, at least he won't die like an animal. He's seen lambs harried by dogs. They stand, they run, they bleat. All they're really doing is waiting to die. He won't live that way, won't die that way. Now, if he's smart, he can make it costly. As for getting away.... He's heard of miracles. He doesn't expect to see one.
Auri he finds racked by tremors, clinging to the rail with both hands, "Oh, God." She sobs. "Oh, God."
Gently as he can, he pries loose her hands. Old woman's hands, veins standing out, blue cords, hands that might have been his mother's.
No matter what they do, these poor vain children, the hands don't lie.
Arm about her waist, he takes her. She's light. It's like lifting a starving pelicanall plumage, no meat. Her eyes squeezed shut, he guides her over the dead men, over broken glass, out the shattered front door.
Fifty yards away the second bird idles, blades winding down. Across the lot, his car waits. Bink's going nuts behind the driver's window. Seeing Karl, he tries to bite his way through glass, barking, whining. No good, too slow, they'd have no chance at all in the car.
Unsure, he stands in the middle of the lot, pea shooter clenched in his fist, wanting to scream, Auri in his arms vibrating like a harp, whining deep in her throat.
Deciding, Karl guides her to the helicopter. The pilot's lips move, talking via com to somebody inside. One mannobody else, just the pilot. Dark eyes watch them as they come. A kid. His eyes widen as Karl leads her right up to him. Should he be a hero, he seems to wonder, right hand sliding down his leg. He sees the gun in Karl's hand and sits still. Gun up, Karl opens the door, shoves her in, follows, tells him to go. Seeing he means it, the kid, Greek, maybe, not more than twenty, throttles up,
"Too many, too heavy!" he says, accent strong as cloves, looking down at the ground as if he might jump, run for it.
Leaning over Auri, Karl takes a fist full of black tunic, thrusts the gun forward, pressing the muzzle of the .44 hard against his right knee, "Go, now, right now."
The rotors whine higher. Still nobody comes out the door. They do while they're on the ground and it's overplexi won't stop a day old wad of chewing gum.
And who the hell would let Bink out of the car?
The pilot shakes so, Karl worries about his flying. "They shoot us down!" he says, pleading, as they leave the pavement. They rise. Ten, twenty, thirty, a hundred meters. A figure in black, quick as a coyote, lopes out through the shattered front door, looks up, raises a carbine.
Karl sees the muzzle flash, ducks away from the window, hearing sonic cracks as rounds pass near. One clips the bubble, sounding like a good solid swing with a Louisville Slugger. The pilot hisses something in Greek, swings the bird about, checking gauges.
The man below runs a hand over a short cropped head, throws short, powerful arms up in disgust, kicking at nothing. Watching him recede, Karl smiles, throws him a wave. Better luck next time. Dizzy with relief, legs shaking, muscles spasming from fear, from fatigue, Karl leans back, scents garlic in the pilot's sweat.
The kid cocks his head, listens to the man below, looks over at Karl, worry in his eyes. Being threatened, Karl suspects, which is bad. Karl doesn't want him forgetting he's his biggest threat. Karl shakes his head no, "I see your lips move you'll be spitting teeth."
"They come," he says, craning his neck to look behind. "They catch me, they kill me."
Taking the Greek's gun from the holster on his right ankle, Karl dumps the cylinder out the window, tosses it behind the seats. "You try taking us back I'll kneecap you, and I'm a lot closer than your friend down there." Karl works the muzzle of the .44 into the meniscus of his knee. Seeing him wince, Karl tries a bluff. "You'll take us. Want to do it with one leg or two?"
"Two." His adam's apple bobs. "Two, two."
"Then you might want to hurry," Karl says, releasing him. Settling back, he shifts his weight off Auri, afraid he might have hurt her with his elbow, so frail does she seem.
The kid takes them down low and fast over the sea, past sandstone cliffs at 120, scrub trees stunted as bonsai whipping past.
To Auri, Karl says, "Better than Disneyland," but she only stares, looking every day of her age. "You okay?"
She nods.
The pilot leans forward to be heard over the wash, "Where you go?"
Feet braced, Karl relaxes, enjoying the ride. Slipping the revolver away under his arm, he smiles, heart slowing. Close. He's just had the luckiest day of his life and he's feeling good about it. They should both be dead. From here on in, everything's a bonus. To the kid he says, "I'll tell you when I decide. For now, follow the coast."
Thinking of Bink, he smiles. He won't have long to wait. Two, maybe three hours. Nobody'll bother him. Karl directs the kid to the city. Dark eyes sullen, he whips them up and away from the coast, heading in.
Euphoria fading as he watches the sprawling malignancy of L.A. roll out under them, Karl leans back, easing an aching knee. So he's kept her alive. Now all he has to do is get her what she wants.
After the last few minutes, how hard can that be?
Villar comes out fast.
Runaway helicopter rising over the roof of the Spanish style next door, he squeezes off three fast bursts without hoping to hit it, just out of frustration, too fast to aim, sighting over the front hood.
Regaining self-control, he watches it rise, casings raining over pavement, tinkling wind chimes. She's gone.
Never before has he blown a job. Never. Hurling his arms in the air, he curses elaborately. Then he sees it, the wave from the window of the chopper. He laughs, rage molten salt running in his veins. The curly-headed bastard is dead. Dead. And the other one.... He screams at the barking dog to shut up, raises his carbine to make it, hears a siren seesaw, hesitates, ear cocked. One...no, two...three... He sees a young woman at her window gawking, and feels suddenly the need to be gone.
Screaming at Fredo to get his bird over the house, he turns away, drawing the trench coat over the carbine. Below, he hears tires blow, hitting spikes at the gate. He smiles. Nobody left to drop it for them.
Over the roof the bird swoops, dipping long enough for Villar to climb onto a strut. The bird rises, then vaults out over a steep gulch, thick with scrub, and away as cruisers grate up the hill on sparking rims.
He stays out as the helicopter takes them home. Eyes tearing in hundred kilometer wind, he spends his wrath in obscenity. As the plat comes into view below them, he calms.
He'll have his chance at this guy again.
Oh, yes.
And next time it'll end differently.
"All mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe."
Karl has him drop them on a floating seaway median.
Letting Auri out over his lap, he lowers her to the grid, reminding himself she was twenty the day he was born. He drops down after her. All the while the kid talks a Greek storm.
Though Karl doesn't understand a word, he knows a man begging for his life. Hand shaking, he holds out a wallet with a picture of his family: Mama, little sisters, fleabag dog looks like it hasn't eaten in a month. For that matter, neither do any of them. Fear in his dark eyes, he flinches for a slug he knows is coming, turning away, lifting a hand to block a bullet, saying what, a prayer?
"I'm not going to kill you," Karl says, thinking he should tell him not to go back, that he's dead if he does. Instead he slams the door, motioning him up, "Take off!"
Mouth open, the kid stares.
He waves his arms, "Go on, fly away home!" His voice drops as he thinks out loud. "For all the good it'll do you."
The kid guns it, and Karl backs off as it winds up. Why waste his breath? The kid won't listen. He watches him lift, headed right back to them. Won't be around tomorrow, is Karl's guess.
As he flags a taxi, Auri gives him an indignant look. Karl helps her in and they pull out into traffic, wind in their faces heavy with two-stroke oil.
"I can't believe you let him go. He knows who tried to kill me."
The hack casts a look over her shoulder when she hears this. Karl gives her a look and she turns.
Auri must think he's an idiot. "You telling me you don't?"
She looks away, and he has his answer.
At the office Tate hears what happened, makes a few calls, joins Auri on the couch. To Karl he says, "I've sent someone for Binks," and to Auri, in the arrogant voice Karl can't stand, says, "You can see what I meansix of the best and even unarmed, he got you out."
Working on keeping his hands steady, Karl pours himself wine, "They'd thought to send somebody up the stairs we wouldn't be here."
Magnus, eager to reassure Auri, pats her knee with a proprietary gesture. Karl notices and it's as if he's just seen water run uphill. Tate and a client?
"You'll be safe here, even if they know where you are, which is unlikely. I've had the place swept just this morning."
She ignores him and he tries again."You must be shaken up, would you like to rest?'
Karl begins to be embarrassed for him. Why can't he just shut up?
Sipping her scotch, she watches Karl as he paces the rug. "Aren't you the caged tiger? I guess I should thank you. If you hadn't been there I'd be just like poor Carmen."
Still thrumming, Karl takes another look out the window, finds nothing to see . A revved engine, he can't throttle back. Hands trembling, feeling trapped, he paces. Nine out of ten they know exactly where she is, where he is. He's not waiting for them. He goes to a counter lining the far wall, where over black walnut paneling, recessed lighting illuminate a trio of Van Gogh's. Copies, true, but good ones. What does he care whether or not she thanks him? She's a client, an asset, for chrissake. She's nothing to him. The question is, what is she to Magnus?
He slides out a long drawer, runs his hand over knives. Folders, stilettos, throwers, spikes, fighters arrayed in long rows on a bed of black velvet. Tate's collectionthe best of the best. Taking a wickedly beaked folder in his hand, one he knows is Tate's favorite, he opens it with a flick of his thumb, judges it good, clips it inside his waistband. He looks up to see Tate frown and smiles with satisfaction. Too bad. He wants him here so much, he can loan him tools.
With a bitter look at Karl, Tate says to Auri, "As I said, he's the best."
Still she stares, "How did you know?"
"Karl is quite perceptive when he cares to be."
Not seeming to hear Tate, she keeps on. "But why break the glass? I thought you'd gone insane."
Karl swings open double cabinet doors, revealing rifles, shotguns, smg's, racked muzzles up along the wall. He runs a hand down the line and feels better right away, breathing deep, enjoying the smell of gun oil. "Poor Carmen...." He understands, now, the feeling he got from her, the look he saw in her eyes. "Poor Carmen locked you out on the balcony to give them an easier target."
Auri exhales, looking as if he'd slapped her, "Carmen, no." She shakes her head, "Not Carmen."
What does he care whether she believes him?
Tate lays a hand on her, "If he says she did, she did."
"God," she says, "if she were working for them I can't believe they'd kill her like that."
Karl takes down a short ugly carbine, caseless, electronic ignition flachette. "Believe it."
"No better reason," Tate says.
Karl looks it over, opens the action, brings it to his shoulder, sighting at the windows. Uh, uh. He sets it back, moves down the line. "Somebody finds it inconvenient to have you breathing. Why is that?"
"That's what I...." She takes a long breath, starting over. "I was going to tell you, they came to see me a few months after the photo shoot you saw. Found me in the Mediterranean. Man with white hair, not old, but his hair, white like an albino. His name was Vici." She says it so it rhymes with Lichee. "Maybe you've heard of him."
He has.
"Said he represented Genesistems. Said they would pay a billion dollars for a few thousand of my ova."
Karl begins to see. And what he sees he doesn't like. Is there ever going to be a bottom to this? Will it ever get as dirty as it can get? It's like diving for the bottom of a murky pond, kicking deeper and deeper, and there's never any bottom. "Ova, you sold your ova?"
She nods, looking ashamed. "This was when a bill was real money. I needed the money, my health wasn't good. Too many drugs. Too much catting around. Too much...everything. The agency had a new name now, new girls. I was down to a call or two a month. The money wasn't so good any more."
Karl picks out a folding stocked 870 magnum twelve cut down to arm's length, cycles the action.
Auri jumps, "What are you doing over there? That won't go off, will it?"
"If I want it to it will." Karl closes the action, folds the stock. "Don't like guns?" He knows the answer as he asks.
"There a reason I should?"
Karl smiles. It doesn't surprise him. It goes with the whole outlook, the whole view on life. What she needs, she buys. She needs security, she hires guns. Wants a steak, she hires a butcher. So much neater that way. "Not that I know of."
She turns away, "Good, because I don't."
Tate gives him a quick frown, telling him to back off, not queer the deal. Karl stuffs the 870 in a duffel he finds in a drawer. His hand snags on a rapelling harness and he tosses it into a drawer, then on second thought, tosses it back into the bag. Will he need it? Probably not, but then again, it will take up little space. After it he drops in a coil of climbing rope. "They dropped you. Why?"
"Oh, the tabloid vultures.... Remember tabloids? Caught me in some foolishness with a band, very hot at the time. You wouldn't know themspit in hot oil, but very big then. A little foolishness with the six of us at La Crillon. They set up the room before we ever got there. Got vid, stills, everything. One of the bastards set the whole thing up, got paid well for it, too. Bad medicine for an ad agency to have its top model spread eagled across the rags like that."
She shrugs, draining her glass. "That was what started me down. They just dropped me," she says, snapping long fingers, "like that. After five years with me paying their salaries...they flushed me." She says it like she still doesn't believe it. "Bastards, God damn them all to hell!" She takes a breath, eyes shut, "They're gone now, gobbled up by the cartel, but they were big then, very big."
He's not sure what she wants him to feel. What he doesn't is sympathy. Karl looks for twelve gauge shells, finds them. "Tough."
She aims hard green eyes at him, "So, are you shocked, a woman selling her unborn babies?"
"Not me," he lies, dropping a box of buckshot into the bag at his feet, bouncing them off his toe to cushion their fall. She disgusts him. She and all she represents. The drifting, the aimlessness, the chasing the buck. He isn't a part of this world. Doesn't want to be. None of it interests him. None of it affects him. It's as if he's another species.
Her gaze pierces him, the wall, a thousand meters of space, forty years. "At the time I didn't give it a thought. The money they offered was too good to miss. I mean what's to think about, you know? It wasn't really even an abortion and I'd had more of those than I care to remember. Since then I've had a lot of time for thought, for regretsa lot of time. We all did."
Had he heard right? He cocks an eyebrow, and even from across the room, she responds. "Yes, oh, yes, we all did it, all five of us. We were in and out in a couple hours. Sitting on the table in panties, room cold, they're always cold, I watched as they slipped the tube into me, watched on the monitor as it snaked its way in, watched as they took what they wanted. They looked like strings of pearls," she says, voice filled with wonder. "Up the tube and gone. The nurse ran with them. As if they were precious. I remember thinking thatas if they were worth more than I was. I slipped on my jeans and went out with the others to drink myself into oblivion."
She laughs, a harsh sound. "I remember, we went across the street to split a magnum of Perignon, celebrating, rejoicing our coup, ignorant bitches that we were."
She refills her glass with Pinch, sets it down hard as she loses hold of it for a second, glass thumping granite, "We signed the papers in our attorney's office, contracts fifty pages long all in gobbledygooknone of us read a word. Still lightheaded from champagne, we signed away our rights to our progeny, to our souls. I was high at the time. In the toilet I puked, washed my mouth out, dusted my gums with coke.
"Even then we frightened me. Of course we could still have babies, they left us with all the eggs we would ever need." She shakes her head, "None of us ever did...blessing probably."
She sighs, eyes on the carpet in front of her, "Of course, the money didn't change a thing, we were still as lost as we ever were."
Numb, Karl drops a box of armor piercing ammunition for the .44 off his toe and into his bag. On impulse, he tosses in a handful of light sticks, zips the duffel. "Why?"
She looks up, as if surprised he's spoken. "I told you about the billion."
Of course she would think he was talking about the money. What else but the money? "The ova, why'd they want them?"
She frowns, looks at him as if he's asked something profound. "I never asked. They said they were for genetic experimentation, but I never asked them why they should want ourstoo stupid, I guess." She looks up, and Karl sees that though her mouth is hard as ever, her eyes brim. "I never even asked."
Karl comes to lean against Tate's desk, dropping the heavy duffel on the desktop. He might not like her much, but she's putting herself through hell remembering whatever it is she's trying to tell him. It's hard to be contemptuous of someone willing to do that.
Wiping her face with the back of a hand, she looks up with diamond hard hazel eyes, and Karl gets the feeling she could be dangerous. Gets the feeling that if she wanted to be, she could be as cold, as unforgiving as those eyes.
"Twenty years later," she says, "I found out whyI met Romy."
Twenty kilometers out, Platform 66 rises before the rushing hovercraft.
A shimmering oasis on the waste of the sea, it's more impressive than Karl imagined. A glittering mass of dodecagonal units, some hover low, others tower hundreds of meters above the sea. A feather of misgiving traces its way up his spine as they close on it.
Lit blue and green by the glow of solar tubes, ebbing low, now, so close to dawn, 66 hovers just past relaxed territorial limits. Independent, but not. Tied to the mainland by service conduits, by Genesistems' ties of influence, wealth, coercion, by the incoming tide of tourists on the make for thrills, it's everything Karl fears, everything he hates.
Knuckles burning from cold spray, he clings to the rail. Bink presses against his calf as the hovercraft plows through chop toward the mass of glass and alloy hanging suspended above a network of docks, a bloated mother spider protecting her egg. Bink trembles against him, a low rattling growl rising from his throat. At the rail, Karl squats to scratch his neck. Poor Bink doesn't like it here. Looking up at the complex looming larger with each lurch of the craft, Karl agrees.
Standing, he wonders what the other agents thought of itthe ones who never came back. It all seems so easy now, looking at it from this far out, so easy not to end up like them, nourishing bottom feeders. But as the humming craft slides closer, columns rising until they seem to descend from heaven, he wonders if they expected to go home just as he does now. His guess is they did.
Karl ducks as they skim inches below a girder web-work frosted with gull droppings. Skimming in, they come to rest with a jar against a metal grid that pivots on hydraulics to grasp them. With a clanging lurch, the ride's over.
Through milling passengers, Karl spots a woman waiting in the harsh green glow of the tubes and is sure she's come for him. Through perpetual twilight Karl follows blasted tourists, morose workers reporting for shift, a pair of grid walkers can't be more than thirteen. Together they plod out and up the ramp.
The woman waiting there lets them pass, eyes on Karl. Nice eyes, in a hard sort of way. Doll's face, hair a shining copper that only gene therapy could account for, she stoops to make over Bink, hem sliding up taut thighs. Bink trembles under the attention, whining with pleasure.
"Mr. Swindlehurst expects you, follow me, if you will."
Up the stairs he follows, eyes on the pleasant adjustment of muscle and adipose under the slick synthetic of her dress as she walks. If he missed anything about L.A., it was the view.
Under his breath he recites as he takes her in. "When in silks my Julia goes / Then, then methinks how sweetly flows / The liquaefaction of her clothes."
At a landing, she hesitates, "You say something?"
"Read any Herrick?"
Already bored, she shakes her head, turns away.
Of course she hasn't. Probably doesn't read, period.
The office is bright, warm. At her desk she sits, speaks into air, then to Karl, smile warm as the foul smelling mist outside. "Be a sec."
He sits. This is good. At least Tate got him a shot. The door swings wide. Karl has Bink sit along the wall and goes in. Now he'll see how much of a shot he's got.
Swindlehurst looks up from his desk, eyes flaying him. "Sit down, Mr. Latte."
Already not liking him, Karl sits, waits for him to go on, certain this man knows he's not what he says he is, and doesn't care.
"So, x-cop, Frisco, that right?" he says, flipping a satcom token over his knuckles.
"That's right." Karl leans forward in his chair, hoping he sounds more enthusiastic than he feels. Been too long himself to want to dance the two-step with a narrow-eyed moron like this one.
"I don't like cops," he says, like it's an original sentiment, like it's supposed to crush him.
Karl smiles a nervous smile, doing the part, a smile that says he's ready to talk about it. "Sorry to hear that."
"Mr. Latte," Swindlehurst says, musing, keen eyes on him, "Karl, may I call you Karl?"
Karl doesn't like his tone, doesn't like his voice, doesn't like him. He nods. Call me Adam, just get this over with and get out of my way.
"Okay, Karl, I'd like to know why you're here."
Bam, the jerk doesn't fool around. That he respects. He's willing to find it enchanting if it'll get him out of here any faster. Swindlehurst is running his file over his implant right now, Karl can tell. Go right ahead and run it.
The Latte persona is one he knows like an old friend. Comfortable in it, rough corners worn soft as frayed flannel long ago, he can be the man drunk, drugged, asleepat times he thinks he is.
Cop fired for a little something dirty, but not too. Fibrillating heart, bad knees from college ball slowing his gait, superstitiously reluctant about implantsall true and medically verifiable. Always salt your lies with truth. Also in his bio, a weakness for alcohol, for pneumatic women, for Lottolies, all of them.
Himself, Karl can't talk about, won't talk about. About Latte he willhas for hours at a stretch. Maybe they are the same man after all. Stomach tightening, he forces himself to smile, "I've had my problems, I'm here to make a new start."
This is it, he'll either get in or he won't, based on what happens the next few seconds.
Swindlehurst shakes his head, tosses the coin onto the top of the desk. "Why should I take a chance on you?"
Karl gets the feeling he's about to get the boot. "Because I'm good. Because I'm discreet." Karl knows they have a hard time filling the job. Liaison officer between L.A. jurisdiction and the offshore plats is a swamp. Anything goes wrong, the LO's head rolls. Scapegoat on a short tether. Whipping boy on twenty-four hour call. Pays a joke, too. That's why Tate picked this for him to get him on the inside fast.
Swindlehurst seems unimpressed. "Why should I care if you're either?"
"I give up, why?" Karl's had enough, goes to the door. "Thanks for the ride out." He won't beg.
"Sit down, Karl."
He pretends to think about it, returns to his chair.
For a long moment Swindlehurst gazes steadily at him, putty face revealing nothing. He reaches for the token. "You'll do."
Karl doesn't like those eyes, doesn't like the man behind them.
"Welcome to 66." He raises a finger to his lips."But let me offer you a piece of valuable advice, Karl. Don't make waves. We've got enough waves out here. Sixty-six is Genesistems' property, and we take property rights very seriously." He takes a vial from a small, mother-of-pearl box on the desk, offers the box to Karl. When he refuses, Swindlehurst snaps a vial under his nose, breathing deeply the gas released, eyes closed.
Karl isn't sure what he's using, hasn't kept up. Five years is eons in designer drugs. Smelling geranium, Karl watches, repulsed, keeping his face tightly under control as the small man's mouth twitches, convulsed in pleasure as the chemical clamps down.
"Security is very important to us here. This is a recreational island. We get ten million visitors every year. They come for fantasy, for sex, for love, for excitement, romance. We're Coney Island, Disneyland, Vegas, flesh pots of Thailand all in oneand only eighteen minutes from L.A.. We're fantasy, Karl, magic. Don't try to change us, and you'll do fine. "
What an ass. Karl nods, knowing he's made it, passed whatever test he'd been brought here to take. He's in.
Swindlehurst shrugs, mumbling into his lap. Too long away from the hive, Karl feels the urge to look to see if there's somebody there under the desk. He keeps his eyes on the nude on the wall. He recognizes the secretary. It's this city. It rots everything it touches. The more beautiful, the quicker to taint.
"I'll send you down to see Villar. He'll show you your office, set you up with ID's, get you on your way. "I'll be keeping my eye on you, Karl, oh, yes I will."
Interview over, he turns in his chair to the window, greeting someone only he can see, laughing, mumbling into vacant air.
Karl can't wait to get away. The door opens and the secretary waits, smile cold as hoarfrost. It's she on the wall, all rightall of her.
Not bothering to smile back, Karl shakes off a chill, passes her and out.
So, he's in, good for him.
Now if he can just stay alive long enough to get out.
"She was beautiful."
Auri says it wistfully.
"She looked the way I might have looked if I hadn't been in such a hurry to kill myself. No black under her eyes, not bulimic, I could tell. She told me she wanted to know about me, because I'm her mother. It was I who needed to know"
She has his attention. How this comes out he's got to know. "What, they fertilized them, in vitro?"
She nods, falling back into her trance, eyes dull.
"They were Vici's brainchild. He wanted to design the perfect woman, the perfect fantasy. Perfect, more than perfect, sublime. Funny little man, mad as a hatter, I thought at the time."
"So, you were the raw material," he says, all of it making sense, all of it coming together. "Quite an honor."
Bitterly, she looks up, eyes cold sapphires in the dim room. "I used to think so."
"Change your mind?"
She takes a long, slow breath, eyes squeezed shut, "How much do you know about them?"
"What everyone knows, what's in the vids, the ads."
She smiles, "Nothing, you mean. Okay, let me tell you. First, they fertilized the ova, then they went to work finding out just what they had. Out of a thousand blastomere, ten had the genotype they wanted: IQ 150 plus, body type close to perfection as they knew how to make it."
"Meaning you," Karl says.
Eyes guileless, she answers. "Meaning me. Then they started fiddling. Longevity, memory retention, linguistic abilitythey made what they wanted. The last thing they did was to cut out a section of intron, the part of the code they used to think was junk, splicing in wildcats: intron loading they call it."
"Wait, wait, wait." He holds up a hand to stop her. Tate seems to know all this, to have heard it all before, but he's in way over his head. "Wildcats?"
She nods, "Nonhuman alleles."
"Nonhuman?" This is getting very weird very fast. "What are we talking about, here?"
"Orchid, ocelot, eeloh yeah, they had a ball."
He stops her again, "Look, I know I'm dense.... Eel?"
She sighs, "We're talking about just one allele out of hundreds of thousands, it's not going to make them long and slippery. Most, they found had no effect on the phenotypewhat they look like, act likeat all. But they weren't done yet. They imported sequences they were curious about from certain talented people: psychokinetics, clairvoyants, idiot savant, people like that. Just to see, just to tinker."
It's as if he's out on pond ice and underfoot there comes metallic pinging. "And?"
She shakes her head, "Nothing too far off the curve. When they were done, they patented the genotypes they came up with."
"Just hold on." This he knows. "You can't patent a human being."
"Ah," she says, apparently delighted he should say it. "But they weren't human. Remember the alleles? It was there in the code, in the DNA, they could prove it. The courts came down hard on Genie's side, saying humans don't have non-human alleles in their code."
She snags a joint from the holder on Tate's desk, taps it hard on polished teak to clear bud from butt, hangs it from her lip, "Now those same judges control hefty blocks of Genesistems series A common stock."
Moving to the window, she reaches out to the west, toward the haze, lays her hand flat against the glass. "In ten days they'll turn thirty."
He's lost again. "So drop them a card."
She flashes him a look. "I mentioned my suit. I'm suing for my daughters' freedom from age thirty. It looks as if I may prevail. I do, they'll lose big. Do you know what a Sister's organs are worth? They can't take the chance, they'll butcher them first, every one of them. They're worth more dead than alive, now."
Seeing again the faces in the holos, he looks up, doubting he heard right. "How can they do that? They'd be out of business."
"Second generation Sisters will take over."
Deeper, it keeps getting deeper. "They've made more?"
"Thousands more, they're being thawed, conceived, bornif you want to call it thatsomewhere right now. Fifteenth generation I think it is they're on."
"Your daughter, the one you met...."
"Romy?"
Odd name. Odd pronunciationrow-me. If he's heard it before he doesn't remember when. "Where is she now?"
She points to sea, "Out there."
She drops opposite him, elbows propped on knees as she leans forward, intent on her story. "We made a pact that day in the lawyer's office, set up a trust. We made each other mutual beneficiaries. I have their money, now, too. Since I met Romy I've brought suit for all of us, for Neena, Tatia, Tabby, Morganall of us. I think they would have wanted me to, if they had lived to grow up, to think about anything but themselves. I like to think so, anyway.
"At fifty I began to learn what it was I'd done. Then I saw what I needed to do. They didn't count on any of us growing up, you see, and they were just about right. But I did, forty years too late, okay, but I did, and I've got the money to do it. I've been a carbuncle on their ass ever since."
That, Karl can believe.
Gingerly, she fingers the wound on her arm. "I must be getting to them, huh?"
Karl finds Villar in his office off the Sisters lobby. Feet propped up on his desk, hands linked behind shaved head, he watches Karl come in. Two security officers drink coffee. To them Villar snarls profanity. "Here comes another one."
Conscious of their eyes on him, Karl waits just inside the door, "I'm"
"I know who you are," Villar says, "another loser from L.A.."
"Karl Latte, a pleasure." There's something familiar about the little Spic with his feet up in his face. "I'm going to need some ID."
Villar blows air through white teeth, "You don't need ID. Last one was gone before the plastic was cool."
Karl sees an empty desk with a name plate Liaison Officer and drops the duffel hard. "Swindlehurst seems to think I do, and he seems to think you might be willing to get them for me."
For a moment Villar says nothing, just does his best to intimidate him with vato loco eyes.
Karl watches him, smiling. He knows the stare, has had it worked on him by experts. "Maybe I got that wrong, maybe I need to go back up there and tell him he made a mistake, that you're too busy."
Villar kicks away from the desk and is on his feet. "You want ID, here, have some ID." From a file he takes a wallet, spinning it hard at him.
Karl slaps it down before it hits him in the face, traps it on the desktop.
"And let me give you some advice along with it. You want to keep your job, you stay out of our way. Don't play detective. Don't think you're out here to straighten us all out. You're not. Just plant your ass right there in that chair and keep it there." He goes to the door. "You do and you might last more than a week." He flings the door back against the wall, rattling glass. "Oh, yeah, almost forgot.... Welcome to the plat." The door bangs shut behind him.
Karl smiles, "Thanks." He checks the ID, slips the badge into his pocket, looks over at the two waiting at the coffee urn to see his reaction. Villar he's not worried about. Not at all. Taking his time, Karl searches through desk drawers, finds a chipped mug. Through his teeth he whistles If I Only Had a Brain. What worries Karl is what's worried him since he heard Auri's propositionhow will he get Romy out? With a worry like that crossways in his gut, there's no room left for a little spic with a big mouth. "Hey, guys, tell me something, will you?"
They shrug, exchange glances, shrug.
In the sink, he rinses the mug, frees a glob of sludge from the bottom with a nail, "This coffee any good or what?"
Karl's headset chirps and he bolts awake, hand on his gun, heart pounding.
First night on the plat and it's starting. Holographic digits glowing at arms length in the dark room: 03:07. Glad to be moving, he rises in the dark, slipping boots on over the trousers he slept in. If he wants to beat Villar there, he'll have to move.
On the way out, he slams his knee into the corner of a table in the still unfamiliar room. Headset riding as easily as a pair of shades, he learns only one other man is on the wayVillar. His luck.
Trotting down the walk as it moves him past a few dozing netpunks, he calls up an overlay of the plat. He's closer than Villar. He can make it there first.
Coming off the walk at a run, he checks the Smith, opening the cylinder. Seeing six unpocked primers, he shuts it. A habit with him, has been for twenty years since a home invasion out in Escondido. Came up behind one of them, finger electric on the trigger, got him to drop his shotgun. Later, he opens the chamber and his stomach hits the floor. Had the light shone from a different angle, the punk with the sawed off would have seen a gaping cylinder, and Karl would have been dead. Now he checks. Every time.
Every step he takes moves the blue dothimon the overlay closer to the red circlethe murder scene. Villar hasn't moved, still in the lobby. No big deal to him, just another one, why scramble? This is Karl's first and he wants to be there without Villar looking over his shoulder.
Sliding down steep stairs, he hits the grill running. Very close, now, blue almost on top of red, he can see the crowd. He runs, pacing himself, elbowing his way between a fat man in bermudas, legs white enough to glow in the dim light, and a small woman, pinched face pressed to glass. Following their line of sight, he sees her, and in that instant wants more than anything else to shield her from them.
Passing his hand in front of the sensor, he overrides the lock. Edging inside, he kicks the door shut behind him, opaques the glass. Disappointed, they groan.
Tension electric, he turns to face her and hesitates, afraid he's walked in on a woman asleep. So lifelike is she, he nearly calls out. A closer look and a familiar sinking in his stomach tells him he's got it right.
Just like the others. He depends on Tate for thisno one thought to keep notes or records, bodies were gathered up, taken away, organs harvested, any evidence ruined, discarded like trash. That will stop now. Right now.
Nude, eyes open, mouth slack, neck tilted back, this time, too, she's on her knees. Sitting on her feet, ear down over leather ottoman, it's almost as if she's straining to see behind her. Careful to obliterate nothing, Karl moves closer, doubting his eyes.
Can there be such perfection?
That it can be at all stretches his faith. That it can be in death is too much. At least he got here first, at least he'll have time to look the scene over alone, without the Mexican's eyes boring into him. At least he won't have to put up with that.
Preparing himself for what he must do, he takes an aching knee, desolation rising up and over him like water, shutting out light, air, warmth. He lets his breath go. His eyes he can't take off her. Hair liquid teak, finest he's ever seen, a magnificent bundle at the nape of her neck. Ear small and delicate as a sprite's.
Tourists gone, room still, he fights an incoming tide of depression. She may not have been humanthat he doesn't knowbut right now, the loss, the anger, the sense of rage he feels is as strong as he's ever felt. Whatever she was, whoever she was, the world is less robbed of her grace.
The door clicks open behind him. He turns to tell whoever it is to get the hell out.
"Well, I'll be damned, look who's here," Villar says, kicking the door shut behind him. "If it isn't Dick Tracy."
Seven years old, Karl works at the sink, scrubbing softball size roots for a batch of pickled beets.
He turns to his mother as she slices an onion, wiping away tears with the back of her hand, and out of the blue, tells her he knows what other people are thinking.
He remembers the day vividly. The weather, rainon the cape what else? The feel of the big rough beets in his hands as he scrubbs away sticky black gumbo with a brush. His mother's skirt, the one with all the big apples, pears, tomatoes, and celery with smiling faces dancing around on a black background. He remembers everything. Most of all, he remembers her laugh.
"Sure you can, Sugar."
This makes him mad. The more he insists, the more she laughs. Any other time he loves her laugh. On the phone to her friends or down at the store, she would try to tell a joke she'd heard, and forget a detail, or botch the punch line, or just screw it up somehow. And she would laugh. Thinking back, he wasn't sure if it was from embarrassment at her having blown another one or just from remembering how funny it had been when it was told right, but laugh she did.
And laughGod, she could laugh. Not especially loud or especially odd or braying or anythingjust a laugh that would overwhelm her, make her lose control, leave her giggling and squealing and everybody within earshot laughing with her.
His father used to say that was why she never lacked for an audience. Not that they wanted to hear the joke. That they put up with to hear her laugh. Karl never doubted it.
But now her laugh mocks. Had he been older, he might have offered to prove his claim. But he is seven, and his feelings are hurt. So instead he swears never to tell anyone again. But he does.
Nineteen, a sophomore at Humboldt, where the women, uncombed, unshaven, mamaries bobbing in Indian prints and sandals, make statements about global warming by refusing to eat meat unless prepared in little unrecognizable chunks in fish and pepper sauce. There he meets his own flaxen-haired, if hirsute, Guenevere, and, because their love is worthy of an epic, deems it worthy of absolute honesty as well. Late one night in her room, he bares his soul.
Her reaction, remarkably similar to his mother's, infuriates him. Stubbornly, he quotes her thoughts for her, right out of her mind, speaking them before she can, leaving her sputtering and stuttering beneath him. The scene that follows, her screaming loud enough to wake the entire floor, is hardly the mating of souls he imagined. Gathering his clothes, he slinks down the back stairs and out into Humboldt Bay fog. Next day she won't speak to him, walks past as if he's invisible, turning the knife in his guts by hanging on whatever boy she happens to be with.
From her he learns honesty is for others.
Mid-quarter he drops out, catches a ride east, writes his mom, tells her not to worry. Ends up in Vegas. Spends a year living in a seventy-year-old Silver Streak in a little park on the edge of the desert. Truck tires buried on end in the sand curb spreading nopal, finger-long spikes bristling. Days he spends in the public library, one of the few still open, its single remaining librarian a blind woman with a sour face. Psychology, telepathy, parapsychologyhe reads everything he can find. From the Skeptical Inquirer he learns that what he does is impossible, that he's a fake. At first he wants to find them, show them, make them see, make them admit they don't know everything. The urge passes.
When rent comes due, he plays poker. Kicks off his boots, plays barefooted, has trouble keeping his feet on his own side of the table. The other players bitch, think he does it to distract them. Barely able to stand these overly serious amateurs and their concern for concentration in a game that demands none, he endures them only long enough to make rent and food. Though the casino suspects him, their best cheats can't name his grift. As he seldom plays, and never wins big, they kiss him off as a fluke or a fool, move on to bigger fish.
When he's read all there is to read about psychology, most of which he decides is wasted ink, and tires of fleecing tourists from Fresno at the card table, he stuffs his duffel and moves on. North on 101. No idea where he's headed. Just wants to move, to watch the white lines fly by. Sleeps through Frisco. Around Weott, he sits up in the cab of a transport, guilt and homesickness panging in his gut, and watches as the exit slides by in the misthome only an hour away. Punching his damp jean jacket into a pillow against cold glass, he goes back to sleep.
At the Canadian border he decides he's come far enough. He's an American, that he knows. What he's heard about Canadians he doesn't like. He's not willing to give up the pistol in his bag, either, so as the transport waits in a line a quarter mile long to pass over the inspection grid, he climbs down. Five minutes later he's climbing a ride south.
Makes San Francisco by dawn. First day in a tenderloin boarding house, on his last C note, he spends a drizzly day flat on his back in bed in a room crowded with half a dozen beds. Under lines hung with hand-washed socks, he cruises the net. In the middle of a soap he hears it: SFPD's taking aps. It's like he's got a hand on a live wire.
Why not? It isn't like he's got anything else going on. It may even give him a chance to use what he hides, what he spends his time running from.
Why the hell not?
From the first step inside SFPD Karl knows it's for him.
He feels like a jerk for not finding it out before. At personnel, he signs up and is cleared for the test. Gets a job dockside unloading containers alongside Mexicans and Chinese, none of whom speak much English. Waits out the weeks till the written, then breezes through it an hour before the time limit.
Not exactly brain surgery. Question 44: "If you were to see a naked woman walking down the street, you would:
A: Keep driving.
B: Stop to ask if you could be of assistance.
C: call for backup.
D: Get her to pose for a holo by the cruiser.
E: Both B and C.
Karl picks E and scores a 99%.
Physical's a cinch, too. Doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, and for years he's dealt with long nights alone by running himself exhausted in the desert. Then comes the academy.
He has no talent for the unarmed stuffdoesn't like hitting much better than being hit. Hurts. Hands aren't made for it. Wrists, fingers are too slender. Eyes tend to tear when he's hit. Takes it personally. With firearms he does better than most. Raised with them, they're nothing new. Graduates top 10th of his class and with things never looking brighter, falls flat on his face.
Can't keep a partner. They refuse to work with him, call him super rookie because he's so good at finding evidence. Guns, stash, bodieshe seems to know where they are by asking a few questions, offering a suspect a Coke or a cigarette. He talks about feelings he has, about hunches, about following his instincts. Has the best conviction record in the department. Who wants to work with that?
They call him a freaking Houdini, a mind reader, a wizard. Of all the monikers, Mind Reader is what sticks. That's what they call him. And Karl doesn't mind. In a way, like a backwards sort of camouflage, its accuracy is his hiding spot.
Awed by his own good fortune, Karl expects things to start looking up. They don't. Shields don't like him any better than they did downstairs. A know it all, a hot shot, thinks he's got all the answers, thinks his don't stink and the polish still not dry on his loafers. What's worse, he's always right.
Still, nobody wants to work with him, so they team him with another FNG, a woman. Nice looking, beautiful even, but the best part, the sweet part, the part that bends them all overshe's a dyke. Big joke. Oh boy, did the new kid get screwed. Got a babe for a partner and she's a dyke. Ain't that the living end?
Karl knows what he's getting and can't do a thing about it. He doesn't like gays. Hasn't ever known one. Doesn't want to. Not too many running wild on the cape. If anybody at Ferndale High felt any inclinations in that direction, they'd been smart enough to keep it to themselves. Karl assumes he knows what she'll be like. Assumes she'll be hard to get along with, bitchy, prissy, butch, a man hater. He's wrong.
She surprises him. She's okay. Does her job, and for the first time ever, hallelujah, he's driving. For the first time he doesn't have to pretend to follow somebody else's lead, somebody who doesn't know, can't know what he does. So, he and Sarethat's her name, Saradecide to play a little joke right back at them.
They start with little looks across the desk when they're sure somebody's looking. From there they go into the coffee room together, close the door behind them. Somebody walks in, they jump, get quiet, slink out. It works. The station buzzes.
They're riled, thinking they've got something going. No fair, that's cheating. If they'd thought she was a get-aheader they'd have kept her with one of them. Then, one night at the local hoffbrau after shift, they share the joke.
After they get over being taken, they start to laugh. Everybody has a good one, ha ha, got you, and by the time everybody's had a few more beers, everything's fine. Karl's one of the boys. Sara's one of the boys. Happy ending.
Except for one thing.
After so much time together, Karl finds out he wasn't acting. Sara's beautiful. She's smart. And, as he knows, he doesn't do a thing for her. Not a thing. Hasn't the equipment. But stubborn as he's always been, Karl won't say uncle.
They talk about it, about what it's like to feel what she feels. He can tell it's hard, but she tells him, says it's how she is, how she's always been. Not something she can change, would change, even, just the way she's wired. He nods as if he understands, embarrassed by her obvious concern, her attempt not to hurt him. It doesn't get any more humiliating than that.
For him she feels friendly affection, nothing else. He knows, he touches her all day, a poke on the arm, a brush of an elbow, hoping to catch the ghost of something, unable to believe he could feel what he does and she can feel nothing. He tries to forget how nice her suits fit her, how nice she smells, and usually he can. But they're always together in the car, and it's not easy. Intimate, cars.
As a team, no beating them, they're the best. Other guys start coming to them for tips, asking them to sit in on interrogations. They look to Karl, two years out of the academy, for help, and it feels good, it feels fine. He's doing the job, and he loves it, he really does. For the first time in his life it's worth it, having this thing, having to hide it, nurse it, try not to let it hurt him. For the first time it's giving something back, and he's giving something too. Then, like that, it's gone.
Sixteen-year-old girl, Mai Lee, honor student, Hmong, strangled while her grandparents are deep in UR in the next room. Came in the window. Did it real slow, the FP said, took maybe an hour. All the time the kid shredding the sheet with her nails. Down to bloody quicks. They've interviewed everybody, called in SID for prints, DNA, everything. What they've got is a big fat zero. Then Karl thinks of something and it scares him.
He's touched suspects. He's touched victims, little kids, too small to say what they saw, to give descriptions. Some of them are bad, harrowing, even, but even if they're hurt, they're alive, and to catch the guy it's worth it. Now, for the first time he thinks of touching the dead. Wonders what would happen. Thinks probably nothing, but what the hell, they've got nothing now, why not try?
When SID packs up, he has the coroner hold off downstairs. Leaving Sara writing a report in the living room, he eases the bedroom door shut behind him. By her bed, he sits on his haunches, lifts the sheet enough to expose her head and arm. Primitive fear keeps his hand trembling above her smaller one hanging limp over the edge of the mattress. Stomach aching with tension, he can't take his eyes off it, so little, the hand of a child really, unpainted nails broken. He hears the door open behind him.
Sara comes in, Grandfather and Grandmother behind her.
When she's close enough to whisper, she says, "Are you out of your mind, what are you doing?"
Karl sees the grandparents watching, doesn't know how much he wants to say. "Just seeing if I can learn anything."
The grandfather watches, eyes hard, then seems to decide, nods, giving him the go ahead.
Karl turns back, but Sara catches his arm in a strong hand, doubt coming through loud as a scream. "Don't give me that, what's going on?"
"Just," he says, raising a hand between them, "just stay away." She backs off to the door. The grandfather, wrinkled face hard, watches.
Embarrassed, ashamed, scared more than he cares to admit, Karl turns, and before he can think, presses his hand firmly to the nape of her neck.
An abscess bursting with infection, her mind opens. Groaning, he sags against the bed, gagging on anger, fear, hate.
She'd seen him a few times, didn't know his name, hadn't liked his eyesthe man downstairs in 3C. What happened to her he can feel. The helplessness, the pain, the fear, all of it...it's just too much....
Panicked, he jerks his hand away, but it won't come. He can't let go. It's like he's holding a live wire. With a yelp of fear, he tears it away, and the force raises her off the bed. She bounces and is still.
On hands and knees, he catches his breath, relief washing over him. Relief that it's over, that he lived through it, that she didn't reach up to drag him down wherever it is she's gone, didn't snatch away his mind, his soul. Breathing hard, he sits up, back against the bed, her hand prodding his shoulder, nothing more to give. Dreading it, Karl meets the old man's faded eyes and sees understanding.
Mai's grandfather watches him as a snake watches a rat, black hair combed straight back into a widow's peak gleaming, smelling of barber shop dressing. "You know."
Eager to get away, Karl gets to his feet, heads for the hall. The grandfather, following, drags his wife with him. She screams, cries, chatters away fast and sing song as Karl flees downstairs.
From the doorway, voice tortured with anguish, he yells down after them. "You know!"
The voice pursues Karl as he heads down the long, dark stairway, stinking of fish oil, peanut sauce, garlic, "You know!"
Once past the waiting coroner, Sara starts in on him. He won't talk. It's all too raw, too fresh, too septic. Next day Karl tips another detective. They bring 3C in and the SOB clams up, screams for a lawyer. Won't say anything. Won't submit to blood testing, DNA matching, nothing. Slick as a skinned cucumber, he looks right at them and smiles. >From him Karl gets nothing he can use. He's got an alibi, a lie but with what they've got, which is nothing, it's enough.
They cut him loose and Karl tries to forget. Only he can't. He can't forget Mai. The way she clawed the sheet bloody. The way 3C let her have just enough blood to stay alive, teasing her until he tired of her. The way 3C smiles at them, knowing he did it, knowing they know, smiles right at them. Two weeks later they get a call.
3C's shot dead in his apartment. Back of the head. Billfold in his pocketan execution. They go to see the grandfather. Soon as Karl sees him he knows he did it. Sara he tells to wait outside. Looking daggers, she goes. Hands atremble, Grandma fixes tea, old man sitting at the table still as stone.
Karl looks around the room, the Buddhist set up, whatever it is, he doesn't know. In the corner, little altar on a low table, holos of Mai, baby to high school, pudgy chin on a hand, the hand that shredded the sheet. Tea made, Grandma perches on a hard chair, holds her husband's hand clamped in her aproned lap.
Karl asks if he still has the gun, and without his face changing, he raps something off to the wife. She protests, cries, whines, but he silences her with a hard word. Head bowed, she fetches it, klunks it on the table wrapped in a rag. Heart dead in his chest, Karl pockets it. "Anybody else know?"
The old man shakes his head, puzzled. "Me, I shot."
"Anybody see you?"
Again he shakes his head no. Karl hesitates. Is this how a man's life ravels? So easily? So suddenly? "Now, I want you to listen to me." Karl leans forward, knowing exactly what it is he's about to do. Knowing what it'll cost him. "You were home in bed last night from eight on. You heard nothing, you saw nothing, understand?"
Understanding growing in his eyes, Grandpa nods. The wife worries at his arm. He speaks and as a valve is closed she stops her sobbing.
"She understand?"
The old man speaks again, and she wipes her eyes, nodding rapidly, eager to agree. As a man looks at God come to earth he looks at Karl. It makes Karl nervous. "You can remember that, can't you, eight on?"
"We remember," he says. The woman nods.
Suddenly drained, Karl opens the door, motions Sara inside. She's curious. He's never asked her to leave before, and she doesn't know what it means, why he would. She notices the woman's been crying, but Karl's not worried about that. The old woman smiles tentatively. In front of Sara he asks them what time they went to bed and they say what he's told them. He thanks them. They leave.
On the way down narrow stairs she steps in front of him, blocking the way, "What was that about, asking me to leave, huh, what?"
He's never lied to her. He doesn't want to, now. "I thought they might talk to me alone," he says, squeezing by. The rest of the night she won't talk. She knows he's lying, and she's mad. He doesn't blame her. He's mad at himself.
After shift he can't sleep. He jogs through the park, bundle in a windbreaker pocket clutched in his hand. It's cold, foggy as hell, and he's got a decision to make. The faster he runs, the tighter it squeezes him. Just before dawn, winded, Karl strolls across the Golden Gate. It all comes down to one question: How the hell can he do what he does and let a man get away with murder?
Can't have it both ways; he has to choose.
Right or wrong.
Anarchy or law.
Easy choice.
Except for Mai.
Halfway to Sausalito he stops and, no one in sight, winds up and hurls a small parcel far out over the water.
Too dark to watch it fall.
Too far down to hear the splash.
The gun is gone.
With it goes his life.
Beside the strangled sister Karl kneels, wishing Villar gone.
A pain in the rear he is, and maybe dangerous, he doesn't know. Karl hasn't touched him. Doesn't want to.
Face like an angel, spittle drizzling from the corner of her mouth, Karl gets down close. Reaching out to wipe it away, he catches himself.
Too late to matter, now.
He reaches out, flat of his palm hovering just above flawless skin. Still warm. Dead only a few minutes. Somehow it makes it harder to be here, to see her. He snaps a light stick, holds it over her eyes. Red, vessels engorged with blood. Strangled slowly, while he was inside her. Like Mai.
Slowly, he reaches out, brushes hair from her face,and gets a jolt that rocks him on his heels. More than he's felt in years.
Ignoring Villar smirking from where he leans against the door, he sifts it between thumb and forefinger. Tingling like an electric current, he can feel it come, a wave rising far out. He wants to pull his hand away. Doesn't want to know this fallen sprite. But he waits for it, and by then it's on him, a crashing wave.
It hits him like a sucker punch in the solar plexus. His breath leaves him in a rush. He can feel her, the ghost of the last thing she felt as she died. What he expects never comes. No hate. No fear. Only despair, deeper than he's felt before in a human being. Sadness. Hopelessness. This he doesn't get. There is always hate, fearwho could be human and not feel both?
But then, he remembers: she isn'tis she?
What there is, is acceptance, that and concern for the Sisters she left. That's all.
Drained, as if he's been for a long swim, he sits back, watching her, half expecting her to rise. The lightstick he takes from between his lips and reaches with it between her legs. In the yellow light he finds a line of ejaculate crimson with blood snaking its way down the inside of a thigh. Blood. Either because he was brutal or because he was her first. He'll wait for the coroner to tell him which.
He notices her hands. Flat on the floor, long nails perfect in repose. In his mind he sees Mai's, broken and bloodied, and wonders what it means. Drugged? He doesn't think so. Strangled slowly and she didn't fight, didn't struggle. Who would, who could do that? Could she have detested life so much to have feared death so little?
Villar laughs. "That how you get yuks where you come from?"
He stands, considers pushing the little spic through the plate glass behind him.
"Any time," Villar says.
Vision clearing, Karl sees a little Mexican with a shaved head. Sure, Villar wouldn't like him, new LO throwing his weight around, shooting off his mouth when he should be staying out of the way. "We need a pathologist in here now."
Villar laughs, looking away as if he's said something funny.
"What's the joke?"
Like a switch cut off, Villar quiets, face turning glacial, "No forensic pathologists out here, detective."
So, he looked over Latte's file, found he never made it out of blues. Karl wonders why he'd be curious enough to go to the trouble.
"The meds'll be here in two minutes, take her away and that's it. She'll be bait by sunrise, like she never was."
Karl hears, but the words mean nothing. "What about the investigation?"
"What investigation?"
"How do you expect to catch this guy? Murder can't be good for business."
The look Villar gives him makes Karl think he may care more than he is willing to let on. "You'd be surprised."
The door flies open and techs come in six strong, brushing Karl aside with practiced efficiency. Karl orders them not to touch the body. They ignore him, showing him broad backs. As he reaches for his gun, Villar presses a hand over his jacket, shakes a shaved head. "You don't want to do that."
Karl watches as they handle her, big hands rough as they zip her into a bag. Yes he does, yes he does want to. "goddam it!"
"Come on," Villar says, motioning with a nod of his head for him to follow. Along the quay, they walk. "Look, things aren't done here the way they're done on the mainland. That," he says, hooking a thumb over his shoulder, " was no murder."
"What was it, then?"
"No human, no murder. That thing back there wasn't human."
Karl is staggered by the outrage he feels. "That what you think?"
Villar's eyes narrow. "What I think's got nothing to do with it. Anyway, we know who did her."
Karl is adrift. "You do."
"Same guy who checked her out couple hours ago. We'll have him before morning. They'll recoup the cost of the merchandise if he's got it, but that's all."
"The merchandise?"
"Her, the one you found so fascinating."
Villar strolls along the rail, runs a small brown hand over a shaved skull. "About a year ago, I tracked one down myself." Sensing Karl's question, he answers before he can ask, "Favor for a friend. Swore up and down he didn't do it. One minor problemhe did."
"So?"
Villar shrugs, "Didn't have two shekels to rub together, no way he could pay the fine. Borrowed the dough to take her out. Could have turned him in, but this friend, she was upset about the whole thing."
Karl can't believe Villar's telling him this, doesn't know what it means, where it's leading.
"Took him out on a scow, pierced his ear with a .22, dropped him over, toilet for an anklet. Jesus, did I stink! Had to toss away the suit, shoes. Two days later it happened again. Same time, same placement of the body, same MO, everything. If I hadn't popped him myself, I'd have swornsame guy."
Karl doesn't get the mystery. "Copycat."
"Uh, uh, total net blackout, bought and paid for by the company. You won't hear anything about this tomorrow, not a word. Go ahead, scan for it. Genie doesn't like bad press, won't stand for it."
Karl watches closely for a response. "Then you killed the wrong guy."
Villar lights a doob, inhales, shakes his head no. "Haven't you been listening? He did it, all right. Two days later it was somebody else. So's this."
"How can you know that?"
He shrugs, looking out toward the lights of L.A.."You're the detective, you tell me," he says, cuing his headset with a blink of his eye. "Ah, okay, here we go, com 50."
Karl scans up, passing the setting once, out of practice, gets it. Indoor surveillance camera mounted over the door. A man, balding, fifty, overweight, leads in a woman. He realizes who it is he's seeing and tingles like he's absorbing a static charge. It's her.
"You mean you have it on chip?"
"Shut up and watch."
In she comes, camera catching her from above, movements smooth as a cat. She follows into the room, sits demurely, waiting. "Wait, stop it, stop it."
"What?"
"Why does she go to his room with him? I thought these things weren't supposed to get...."
"Intimate?" Villar looks bored, "They're not."
"Then why his room?"
"Look, Sisters will talk anywhere. What do they care? nobody touches them. They do, they pay."
"Why set it up that way?"
"Organs aren't worth a dime on the dollar infected with HIV. What if it is a harmless retrovirus? Fifty years of propaganda from the CDC takes a long time to pass through the gut. The penalties would choke a horse. It's all in the contract. Some pretty big fish have been hooked when they crossed the line. Genie's got more lawyers than L.A.'s got netpunks. They never lose."
There's something Karl's been wanting to ask. "One thing I don't get. Why do these guys go for this, paying that much when they can't touch her?"
Villar sneers, as if Karl's just shown himself for the scum he is. "It's not sexsex is everywhere. On the quay you got twelve-year-olds hustling for a few copecs. It's not sex."
Karl is surprised by the intensity in his voice. "What, then?"
Villar marvels at his stupidity, "Her intellect, her compassion, her interest. That's ten times as sexy as anything you can lay a hand on. Believe me."
Karl does. "Okay, then she doesn't expect anything to happen, just talk."
Villar nods, impatient, "Yeah, here we go, watch this."
At the door, just out of range of the fish eye, another man waits.
"Who's that?"
"Don't know, never comes any farther into the room, but there are always at least one or two netpunks as lookouts. We've tracked them down and it's like talking to a wall, they're fried." Villar starts the vid, "You know what they remind me of? Zombies. Look at the way he stands there, it's like he's sleepwalking."
This isn't right. Serial murder's no team sport. "A hit, then."
"Uh, uh, keep watching."
The big man fixes himself a drink, turns and a tremor passes over his face. He seems to change, something about his face, his manner, the way he holds himselfa metamorphosis. Hard to see in the poor light, but it's like a wolf tossing off a lambskin.
Villar stops it, plays it again, "Right there, see that?"
Karl's skin tingles with revulsion. "I see it."
"What, what did you see?"
"It's like...." Karl struggles for words. "...like a mask came off, what is it?"
"Don't know, but it always happens. Here we go."
From her seat on the couch, she glances uneasily at the guy by the door, then back to the man at the bar. "Been enjoying your holiday Mr. Newman?" She asks it like she cares.
That's all she has time to say before he's on her. Moving faster than Karl would have guessed he could, he forces her down. "That's enough," he says to Villar.
She moans with pain as he pulls her hair, already wrapped in his fist, raises her dress to her waist. Karl tries to cut out, can't remember how, and ends up tearing the satcom off his head, fumbling, nearly dropping it, "goddam it, that's enough, I said!"
Villar smiles, "What's the matter? It's just getting good. I thought you detectives collected this stuff, passed it around like trading cards. The last LO did." He motions in empty air, "Look at that, bet I could get ten million a copy for this. I mean, this makes Black Dahlia stills look tame." Villar cuts off, looks him in the eye, face hard, "You don't like it, huh? What's the matter? They're only things, I thought you knew that."
Karl gets the impression he's being tested, probed. He doesn't like it. "You know who he is, why don't you pick him up?"
Villar sub-vocalizes into the air, and Karl thinks of someone speaking in their sleep, indistinct, yet close enough to sound like words. Villar smiles, searching his face, "Want to meet him?"
In his cubicle Karl sits cross-legged on a narrow bunk, back against the wall, holos arrayed before him on the futon.
Perfection, every one. He'd always heard they only looked human. Inside they were somehow less, somehow lacking. He shuffles the stack with a finger, parade of empty single-serving Johnny Walker boxes lined up along the edge of the night table, glass cradled in his lap, .44 by his thigh.
Needing to hear a human voice, he cues one of the vids waiting for him on his satcom.
"The first fitful attempts at UR required bulky headsets and gloves," says a male announcer, voice exuding competence.
Karl watches archival footage of 20th century VR gloves, headsets.
"Why input data through hands, eyes, ears, when it's possible to go directly to the destination of all interface, the source of all controlthe brain itself?"
A 3D computer brain simulation overlayed with an implant schematic tumbles through a 360. "First available in twenty-oh-five, satcom headsets were crude, but with holo glasses, integral auditory stimulators, and ocular movement interactive systems, a vast improvement over what came before."
Fluttering black and whites of a gawky boy with horse teeth trying one on. "Gee wilikers! This is swell!"
"Next came implants."
A professor lies on a sweep of black sand under beefwoods, sand filtering slowly through his fingers, as a thousand students observe his presentation. "Freeing the body from all external heads up hardware, implants permanently linked vision, auditory, pleasure, olfactory and tactile centers in one network, allowing levels of realism in UR until now unimaginable. Implants made instant satcom access and use of inactive cerebrum for data storage possible at last."
Split view of a dozen couples, all colors, both same and mixed sex playing with toddlers. "Now, Genesistems and the miracle of genetic engineering can insure your child's safety, education, and happiness from the moment of exogenesis. The modern couple prefers not to rely on chance to decide their offspring's destiny. Now at the same time you conduct other conventional manipulation during germ cell therapy, you may insure not only your child's future, but your child's offspringand theirs. The new Biocom offers complete net link and satcom functions with no electronic implants! Generated by your child's own body from the code implanted, Biocom will form an integral part of your child's brain, and be passed on to future generations."
Close up of child's face, eyes intent.
"Imagineyour child may now come online before birth! Extensive testing has proven that children developing with Genesistems' Biocom surpass infants receiving conventional implants.You can now talk directly to your child via satlink, whether in utero or the more carefree fetal development chamber! Begin molding your child's character and intellectual development from the moment of conception. In conjunction with the new intelligence enhancing engineering, who can predict to what heights man may rise?"
A view unfolds of Earth as seen from a craft rising rapidly to space. "At Genesistems, we envision a world in which all humanity is linked, a world in which no one is without companionship, without stimulation, without access to the accumulated knowledge of mankind.... With Biocom the sky's the limit!"
Well known actress, voice sultry yet wise, coos, "Oh, that Genesistems!"
Swiping his headset off over his head, he tosses it across the bunk. Again his eye falls on the holos spread out before him. Among them he finds the one murdered last night. Shockingly beautiful, she smiles up at him. He lifts his glass, shakes the ice just to hear it jingle, drinks.
He may not know much about genetics, or psychology, or biology.... But one thing he does know. He lays a finger gently against her cheek, remembering what he'd felt when he touched her. He may not know anything at all, but he knows what people are like inside. And that woman is...was...as human as any he's ever touched. And what happened... that was murder.
What it means is he's been wrong about recombinants his whole life. Thinking about that, he tears open another box, squeezing it into his glass with the sound of urination.
How many other things is he wrong about?
The holos he shuffles, stirring the pot. This time Romy ends up on top, looking up at him with eyes that melt their way inside him.
Can beauty like that be anything but hollow?
He's never spoken to her, yet he's known those eyes forever. They call to him, reach for him. Slowly, he reaches out a hand to the face so lifelike there before him. As his hand nears the sheet, his headset hums. Karl jumps, spilling Tennessee whiskey over the holos and his bed, "goddammit, what?"
"Love you, too, sweatheart." It's Villar.
In security at the base of the tower, Villar leads him to a room where, behind one way glass, an ordinary looking man paces. The man in the vid, yet not the man who forced her to her knees. This man is nothing like that one. Face is wrong. Eyes are wrong. Might fantasize about it. Never do it.
"Our friend from the tape," Villar says. "Caught him trying to sneak aboard a taxi."
"What took so long?"
"Had to get his story."
"So what's he say?"
"So far nothing, just that he didn't do it. Played the movie for him...." He shrugs, "Didn't look too surprised."
Karl watches him as he paces the room nervously. "What'll happen to him?"
"Doesn't have the ten bill penalty, so he'll go up on grand theft in L.A., get five years in-house, probably."
"No ride on a scow?"
Villar looks at him like an unfriendly dog, says nothing.
"I want to talk to him."
Villar shrugs, "Be my guest."
"Need a pack of jays and a lighter."
"Going to make friends?"
Karl nods impatiently, "Just give me the sticks, huh?"
Villar digs out a pack of Lucky's more than half full and a lighter, hands them over. "Sure, man, enjoy." He waves a hand in front of the door and it unlocks, springing open. Karl goes in, feeling like he has the hundreds of times he's done this in the citylittle high, little like an actor on for an opening night one-liner.
He sits at the table, motions the guy to a chair turned 90 degrees away, the best angle for conversation, shakes out a doob, offers it. "You look nervous."
He sighs with apparent relief, and like a drowning man offered a hold on something solid, sits. "Finally!"
He takes the offered smoke, and in an instant, like a rush through a short tunnel on a bullet train and out into the light, Karl's inside him.
Guilt for petty sins, squalid pleasures, unexceptional vices: the sins of a common man. Worry, fear, it's all there, but nothing like the ferocity, the viciousness he saw in the vid. He's the man, he can see that, but just as definitely, he's not. Weird. No way he can lie to him. Doesn't know he's being read. Couldn't if he did.
"Christ, nobody will listen to me. These Genie guys, they're a bunch of jerks. Listen, you from L.A.?"
Karl nods.
"Those dicks wouldn't know beans if the bag was open. Look, the first thing you should know is that I didn't do this." Hands rocking, he pinches the jay between his lips. Karl slides the Zippo across the table where he snaps it up, flips the lid with a practiced hand, lights up. He slaps the lid shut with a metallic chirp, drags long, talks without letting it go, voice a croak. "My wife can't find out about this."
Karl nods, watching. He's scared, not faking, really scared. "Tell me about last night."
He shakes his head, lets out a lung-full of smoke, "You'll think I'm nutsor lying."
Karl knows he's neither and it worries him. "Try me."
Like a man who's just dug a trench and is ordered to fill it in, he breathes, lets it go. "Picked her up about nine. Fifty thousand for three hours. Know how long I saved for that? Five years. Five goddam years...." He shakes his head sadly. "We went out, ate, walked the quay, that's all. Always been kind of a roamer, you know, been with all kinds. Recoms, netpunks, however the mood strikes me, right? Well, let me tell you, most of them, you might as well be alone."
Relaxed, now he goes on. "With them I'm lonelier than I was before, right? Not with her. I heard about Sisters, figured, sure, just another scam, another way to separate a sucker from his cash." He shakes his head, "I know they say they're not real women. I'm here to tell you, they're better."
Karl nods. He's used to listening, letting them talk themselves out. He has that effect on people. "Then what?"
He looks right at him, shakes his head as if he's trying to dislodge something from an ear. "I don't know. I'm talking to her, and she's looking at me with those eyes. You know what that feels like? to have one of them pouring all that attention on you? Do you? all that high voltage?"
Karl shakes his head. He has no idea what it's like and he's not pleased to find he's sorry to admit it.
"Well, let me tell you, man, I been married twenty years, and it's been longer than that since my wife's paid that much attention to me. If she ever did. It makes you feel like you're the one and only man she wants. I'm not talking about all that sighing and oh, baby crap the others give you. No, this is real. I swear it is. She listened to me.
Karl sees his hands are shaking again.
"I thought that maybe I was going to be the one, the one in a billion. And I'll never have to go home again, right? We'll just run away from everything together, just her and me." He smiles, leaning forward in the hard-backed metal chair, turning the lighter in pudgy hands, hands Karl's sure spend their days at a computer console. Hands unused to violence, to hard labor.
He takes another drag. "Then out of the blue...." His face distorts into a grimace and he presses two hands to his receding hairline as if he's got to hold on the top of his skull.
Karl remembers the changes in personality he came across on the net. Can this be one? "What?"
The guy is sweating, nervous, frightened. Karl finds it catching. Why can't he just say it, whatever it is?
"Something's in here with me. It's like I'm not alone, like I see a movement out of the corner of my eye, you know?"
Karl feels the need to look behind him, sloughs it off, "In the room, you mean, the hotel room?"
"No, no, no," he says, slamming the heel of his hand against his forehead, "In here!" He gets up, pacing, moans, "Oh, Christ, I'm screwed. Nobody's going to believe this, nobody."
Karl's listened to a lot of liars. This guy isn't one. "You don't talk to me, I can't help you."
He comes back to the table. "How do I know you're not with the company?"
"I think you know."
"Yeah," he says, eyes moving over Karl's face, "you're different. What are you, anyway?"
Good question. What is he? "Mainland liaison."
His eyes widen in disbelief, "Liaison?" He resumes his pacing. "Oh, Christ, I'm screwed. Why am I even wasting my breath talking to you? I've already told the story ten times. I'm sick to death of telling it. I thought you were LAPD, somebody with some pull over there. I'm an American citizen, I don't want to end up in some stinking Mexican jail."
Conscious of Villar listening, watching from the next room, Karl chooses his words with care. "What I am is somebody who's willing to listen." Karl rises, moves to the door, "You don't want to tell me, that's fine."
"Okay, okay," he says, "stick around a minute, I'm getting to it. I'm just tired, that's all. He leans far over the table, arms stretched out, palms down. "I never told anybody this part, this is where it gets real weird. They showed me the vid, but I already knew what happened. I remember it all. I remember what it felt like to do it, the feel of her hair, her skin, all of it. God, I can smell her on me, now. " He drops his head on his arms.
Karl's mind races, trying to make sense of it. "You said you didn't do it."
"I didn't, I didn't do it." Frustrated, he stops, hunting for a way to say it. "You ever have a dream, a bad, a real bad dream, and try to scream, try to run, to do anything? That's what it's like. Whatever had me was strong, real strong, I couldn't fight it."
The hair on Karl's neck prickles. "It?"
Frustration coming off him like heat off a stove, he pounds the table, "It, the thing that took me over!" Running a trembling hand over his hair, he looks up at Karl, "You want to know what it was? Want to hear me say it? Okay, it was a demon."
Understanding he's perfectly serious, Karl feels the walls of the room close in, the lights dim. "Why do you say that?"
"Because it was evil, that's why."
Karl shoves away from the table, paces the room in front of the door. "Ever felt anything like it before?"
"No."
"Ever treated for any...." Karl searches for a delicate way to say this, fails, "...problems?"
"I'm not nuts!"
Everything Karl feels, everything he knows tells him it happened just as he says it did. So, what does that mean, that there are demons out there, things lurking in the dark just beyond the glow of phosphor tubes? He doesn't believe it, doesn't want to. "Go on."
"After I... it... did it, it let me go. And there I am, and there she is, and God, I'm going nuts. I mean I just killed somebody. I don't know what to do. I know nobody'll believe what happened."
"What then?"
"I get out of there, stay out of sight for a while. When I try for a taxi they grab me."
"That's your best storya demon?"
Face hunted, eyes far away as if he's forgotten Karl's there, he says, "It loved it, really got a kick out of it. Every time she whined, every breath.... The pain," he says, voice low, "the pain's what it's after, not the sex. It wants, it needs the pain. Oh, yeah, it loved every second of it."
Karl watches him, sickened, "And you didn't."
"No!" he says, face breaking up, like he might be going to ball, "Not most of it," he says, whining, "but come on, man, she was a goddess. You telling me you've never thought about what it'd be like? Come on, haven't you?"
Karl lets the question hang in the haze of smoke, gets to his feet.
He follows Karl to the door, grabs his arm. "I know what you all think, but if it had let me, I would have stopped. I would have let her breathe, I would have."
Karl relaxes the block he throws up when touched just enough to feel he's telling the truth. "I believe you."
His mouth opens in surprise, "You do?"
Karl nods.
"Then come on, man, help me out on this, will you? I can't afford ten bills, I couldn't afford what I spent."
Sickened by the sight of him, he fights the urge to slap his hand away. "I'll do what I can," he says, knowing he won't.
In the dark, Villar waits.
"You heard?"
Villar nods. "Believe him?"
"He's no liar, too scared."
"So what's he talking about? I mean, come on, the devil made him do it?" Villar laughs through his teeth, "That what you believe?"
Karl's got nothing to say to that. Maybe he does, maybe there is evil out there. Maybe all their trinkets and twenty thousand years changed nothing. Still light against dark, still man huddled around the fire pit, eyes circling.
Villar turns serious. "We've got the DNA, the prints, the vidhe did it, all right. I don't care if the devil did egg him on, we caught him and he's going to pay."
Karl wants out of this dark, cramped room, away from the man on the other side of the glass crying on folded arms. "Later."
Villar's voice booms after him as he goes. "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour."
Karl hesitates at the door, "Peter?"
"First, 5:8. So, know your Bible? Religious man, are you?"
Karl shakes his head, "You?"
"Ha, ha, he laughed bitterly," Villar says, rising. "You say you believe him, that mean the part about the demon, too?"
Karl pushes his way out the door, needing to get out into the light, into the air. "I don't know."
"Think about it, Marlowe, and let me know when you figure it all out."
As far as Karl was concerned, Villar would be the first to know.
On the way back to his cubicle, Karl remembers their last meeting in Tate's office.
"Just what is it you want me to do?"
Auri doesn't hesitate, "I want you to stop them, I don't care how you do it. Stop them before they kill her."
Karl's curious. "You say there are about fifty left, what makes Romy so important?"
Face to the window, Auri answers, "She's the last one of mine, the last one of my daughters."
Karl rubs a face in need of a shave with a work-roughened hand. Now he understands. "Is that all?" He laughs, seeing nothing funny about it. "Before I came to see you, I did a little research. Genesistems is one of the largest cartels in the world. Chi-Coms took over in '20, gobbled up Genetek, Genysis, Generelle, all the bio tech firms. They sell Sisters and Brothers worldwide in hundreds of types. It's big business, all perfectly legal. Got a former president and three senators on the board."
She presses forehead to glass, "Please, all I ask is that you try. Meet her, meet Romy, talk to her. She knows everything. If you do that, you'll know what needs to be done. That's all I ask, a few days of your time. In exchange I'll fix that thing with EPA."
Karl glances at Tate who seems to find the surface of his desk fascinating.
"I don't know what he's told you about me, but I don't leap tall buildings in a single bound. Sometimes it takes me two or three tries."
She turns to Tate, eyes disappointed. "But you said"
"Sweetheart, Darlin', I'm not your man. Five years ago maybe, not now. I'm a farmer. Any of Tate's agents would be ten times better than I."
Tate toys with a pen, balancing it on a forefinger. "I sent eight agents before Alandro. Good people, best I had."
Now he really doesn't follow. "Aren't they stumbling over each other out there?"
Tate says nothing.
"Well, come on, what'd they come up with?"
Auri stands, broad back to them at the glass. "They ended up same as Alandro."
Tate looks as if he may be sick.
"Nine?" Karl says, stunned. "All nine?"
Tate nods.
A cold finger traces its way from Karl's tailbone to the nape of his neck, over the top of his scalp. "This just keeps getting better." Karl thinks of Sara and his stomach clenches. "I know any of them?"
Tate opens his mouth to answer, and Karl raises a hand, cutting him off. "Forget it." He knows the answer. If he sent his best, he sent Sara. "I don't want to know."
Tilting Bink's head up, absently he scratches his chin. The dog's eyes close, tail doing a lazy wave. Karl knows he won't get out of this onenobody's luck's that good. "So what do you think I can do that they couldn't, besides adding to the glut on the liver market?"
Tate squirms in his chair. "I've told her about your talent."
Karl sees it had to be that, sighs, "Stupid question."
Seeing the look on Karl's face, Tate raises a placative hand, "She wanted you, Karl. You're the only one she wanted."
Karl gets to his feet. Anger deciding for him, he moves for the door. On his way out he turns, "Well, Honey, you can't have me."