Slant

by Greg Bear

  Mea maxima culpa. I alone of my family am responsible.

  And there is nothing I can do to take it back.

  Nussbaum stands beside her and reads the message. Mary has already set her pad to record the bedroom, the body, the message, in greater detail. Nussbaum holds up his pad as well.

  “What’s that about? Guilty about financing a bad psynthe shop?”

  Mary shakes her head; she does not know. But her instincts are aroused. Something is very wrong.

  “The girlfriend or hooker,” Nussbaum says. “The limo in the garage—a temp agency limo.”

  Mary is already querying for limos in the vicinity. In seconds, with the sucking and hissing sounds of the med getting louder and more desperate behind them, she reads the pad display. All limos within a ten-block radius are carrying identified male passengers—all but one. And that limo refuses to identify without court order.

  That is the one, Mary knows instinctively: an expensive, agency-brokered call-in.

  Nussbaum shudders. “Christ,” he shouts at the med. “Leave the poor bastard alone! He’s dead!”

  “I can’t confirm that by myself, sir,” the arbeiter responds. Mary heads for the hall.

  Human paramedics rush through the hall and look left, then right, into the bedroom. Mary backs up against the wall, knocking an animated print askew, as they run past her. Their own arbeiters are equally aggressive; the tracks and wheels grate and squeal against the floor.

  Nussbaum joins her in the middle room before the lift. “There’s a broken tab from an ampoule of hyper-caff beside his hand,” Nussbaum says. “I can’t find the ampoule but it’s either under him or it’s rolled somewhere.”

  “What was his connection to the psynthe deaths? Mary asks.

  “He had investments in an entertainment group employing psynthes. He knew the two men the manager had loaned the house to, as former business partners. It was a long shot, but I thought maybe he could tell us something about them. Doesn’t seem right that he would just kill himself. Maybe it’s coincidence.”

  “With a projected confession?” Mary asks. “And why wear optical makeup?”

  “He didn’t want the hooker to ID him.” Nussbaum holds his hands out, baffled

  The chief attending physician finds them by the lift. She strips away her skin-tight gloves and shakes her head. “Unrecoverable,” she says. “It’s uncut hyper-caff, about ten milligrams.” She holds up the ampoule. “Injected into his left wrist. He’s wiped his memory and any chance of restarting neural activity. His body’s still going, but just barely.”

  Hyper-caff is the strongest jolt of all, ten thousand times more potent than caffeine. Usually doses are no higher than a tenth of a microgram. A few micrograms can turn a dullard into a chess master—but at a price of weeks in bed. Some high-level managers indulge in it for critical competitive planning sessions, then take long vacations in stress-free climes.

  “Was he a corp manager?” the doctor asks.

  “Even better than that,” Nussbaum says. “He’s famous. A multi-billionaire.”

  “And we scared him?” Mary asks, dismayed.

  Nussbaum pinches his nose and shuts his eyes. “Why even agree to talk to us? Too easy.”

  The physician listens intently. Nussbaum gives her a disapproving glare. “Haven’t you got work to do?”

  She smiles sweetly. “He’s dead,” she says. “It’s more interesting out here.”

  “Any chance this is homicide?” Nussbaum grumbles.

  “Someone could have forced the drug on him, but it takes effect in seconds, and in that dose, it kills in a couple of minutes.”

  “We’ll need her, then,” Nussbaum says to Mary. “Material witness.”

  “Right,” Mary says. She enters the lift. As the light glows, Nussbaum gives her a thumbs-up, and the door closes.

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  14

  At seven-fifteen, Jack Giffey has been standing on the corner of Constitution and Divinity for twenty minutes. He claps his hands together to keep them warm; he is not wearing gloves, and his coat is light, the night is cold, and the wind is rising. At fifty, he feels too old for this sort of thing, but he will give Yvonne until seven-thirty.

  He doesn’t even know her last name.

  A few percentage points difference in the genome; the best laid plans of men and monkeys gang aft very a-gley.

  He looks south and then west, up the nearly empty streets. The students have retreated to their hostels for the evening, or to the relative safety of the mountain lodges for tomorrow’s skiing. A snowstorm is on the way. Skiing and hunting keep the republic alive today; those, and paper for fine books. The last mining and timber harvesting petered out about ten years ago, leaving much of Green Idaho a barren, scarred wasteland.

  Giffey tracks back to the idea of book paper. It nags at him. He remembers the last mass market books when he was a boy, paperbacks they were called, for sale in public bookstores. He has a small box of old books in his attic back in Montana, in the small house he bought three years ago; they belonged to his mother and father, and were given to him by the federal agents who cleaned up the mess.

  Funny, though: he can’t remember actually reading any of those books.

  “Jack!”

  He’s caught by surprise and spins around. Yvonne is walking quickly along Divinity, a mockfur collar on her long black coat blowing up through her hair and around her ears. She looks as if a dark halo surrounds her head.

  “Sorry I’m late. Bill needed some stuff shipped up to the mills and I had to get it packed.”

  “I thought we’d eat at the Briar, up on Peace Street,” Giffey says. Yvonne nods briskly; her face is flushed with the cold. She is very pretty and she looks very young. Something goes a little acid in the pit of his stomach, thinking of hanging around with someone so young. He hopes she can keep up her end of the conversation. He may be thinking of her body, but his own body has not yet made up its mind about this whole thing, and he’ll need a little intellectual diversion in the meantime.

  Truth is, he’s irritated to be kept waiting. If she only knew who it was she was keeping out in the cold, and what he was planning to do…

  She takes his arm and actually snuggles in close, as innocent and friendly as you please. She’s caught that little abruptness in his tone, he thinks, and is making amends.

  “The Briar is nice,” she says, “but there’s another place about three blocks from here called Blakely’s. It’s more established and the food is better, and it doesn’t cost any more. Besides, it’s got more atmosphere.”

  “All right,” he says. “Let’s go there.”

  Blakely’s is small and mock-rustic, but at least there are no stuffed deer heads on the walls. An ornate sign near the bar asks that all citizens turn over firearms to the barkeep. It’s meant to be funny. Jack is carrying a gun now but he usually doesn’t wear firearms, even in Green Idaho; if somebody is going to shoot you, modern weapons are so smart and extreme that you have to plan hours in advance to get a drop on your killers. Might as well let justice take them down, because you won’t.

  Yvonne catches the waiter’s eye and looks at Jack as if he might like to handle getting the table, but that’s okay. Jack lets her do it, and when they sit, he orders a bourbon and water and she asks for a beer.

  Then she looks him straight in the eye, very serious, and asks, “What in hell have I got to say that you’d find amusing?”

  Giffey snorts and takes a sip from the glass of water. Then he laughs. “Christ, Yvonne, I haven’t even got my game plan in order, and you want straight answers.”

  Yvonne watches with darting eyes as the waiter drops off their drinks. After the waite
r leaves, she says, “You’re here because you want to take me someplace and screw my brains out, don’t you?”

  Giffey gapes, then laughs again, a genuinely appreciative guffaw. And I thought this might be a bore. “A man’s mind is an open book to a pretty woman,” he says. “I will not deny some parts of my anatomy look upon you with favor.” Then he draws himself up in the chair. “I’m flattered you even think I could—”

  “The hell you say. You’re no grandpa, Jack, and I’m no little girl looking for the cozy image of her daddy.”

  “Good,” Giffey manages.

  “I would like to talk, though. I need your opinion on some things. I think there’s a chance you’re more than half-smart. You might even know a thing or two about men and women.”

  “All right,” Giffey says. “Shoot.” He plays with the glass of bourbon but does not drink from it right away. He certainly does not want to look like a lush.

  “Am I wasting my time? With my boyfriend, I mean, and doing all this menial shit?”

  “You could do better.”

  “You mean, in the sex lottery, I’m not playing all my numbers?”

  Yvonne is very intense and Jack is dismayed he can so completely misjudge a person. On the other hand, he’s delighted. Warm bed with young flesh seems out of the question, but the evening’s going to be a hoot

  “I think you’d better explain this sex lottery thing to me.”

  “You know. Evolution and women, and how we’re supposed to choose supportive men who’ll stick around to raise our youngsters so we can pass our genes along. Because you can go out and get a hundred women knocked up, but we only have a few chances to spread our genes around. The whole Darwin thing.”

  The waiter brings their appetizers and Yvonne removes her coat and hands it to him, something she might have done earlier. But if Giffey had reacted badly or said nothing at all to this opening salvo, she might have just stalked out of the Blakely and gone home.

  He’s still in the game.

  “Last I heard,” he says, “Darwin was sort of on the outs. But I only know what I read.”

  “I’ve been with my boyfriend for six years. He’s spent half that time up in the woods working, or looking-for supplies and work. That’s what foragers do, I accept that. But I feel stretched and dried like a moose skin. Is that just me, acting stupid?”

  “Sounds faithful, as if you’re a pretty good person,” Giffey says, and means it. He wishes his women had been so steadfast.

  Yvonne slugs back a third of her beer. Giffey takes his first sip of the bourbon. It’s not the best. “I do not understand all this,” she says. “If I were in Southcoast, with my skills and education, I’d be disAffected… The only work I could get would be in sex or maybe entertainment. You know. The Yox. That’s a bad word around here.” Her face goes slack, and she looks away, across the room at nothing. “You know what I found out last week?”

  Giffey believes he is about to learn.

  “Up in the work cabins, up in Paul Bunyan land, they have Yox satlinks. They pay a third of their salary and at night, they just wallow in it. I’ve never even seen a Yox—not for more than an hour, I mean, and that was just a karaoke sitcom. But this other stuff… Is that being unfaithful?”

  “Men have their urges,” Giffey says. He’s becoming a little embarrassed. “You could be happy he isn’t calling in.”

  “Maybe,” she says, and leans back. She’s wearing a knit top with a glittering silver and clearstone necklace, and he was right about her breasts—womanly and well curved. Her rib cage is a little narrow for so much armament, he thinks, but her face is nice, even as she chews on a fingernail and looks away with her eyes moist. She is really mad.

  She leans forward, country earnest. “You know what some of the counselors told us in school? The girls? They’re not even supposed to believe this evolution stuff. It’s in the state constitution, don’t teach it as fact, don’t want to upset the pious folks. But they used it to keep us in our places. They said, ‘Good men want their women choosy, and able to control themselves. You give in to desire, which is mighty strong,’ they allow that much, ‘you give in to having sex just because it sounds like fun, you’ll end up with a lower grade of male, a shiftless sort feeding on the muddy bottom like a catfish who will leave you soon as buy a new hat. Because high-grade men who’ll stay faithful and help you raise your kids, they’re sensitive types, and they want a woman who only gives herself to quality.’“

  Giffey can’t help but laugh out loud. Yvonne s eyes twinkle as she says this but her face is still angry. The waiter comes back and asks what they want to eat.

  “Get the pike,” Yvonne suggests. “It’s flown in, but it’s good.”

  Giffey orders the walleye special. She doubles on that.

  “I was raised that way. That’s what I believe in my heart. And now my Bill is up there with his buddies and they’re doing karaoke orgies with women in India or who knows the hell where. Well, sometimes it’s too much.”

  “I don’t put much faith in what people say about love,” Giffey says. “Nobody knows what they’re talking about.”

  “You’re saying we should just listen to what’s inside us. But what if we’re all wrong inside?”

  Giffey thinks the topic is getting a little stale. “I’m no wise man and I can’t tell you what to do,” he says. “You have to live your own life.”

  “I’m talking to you,” Yvonne says coolly. “You said you wanted to hear me talk to you.”

  “I get a little embarrassed when someone just… spills their heart out on me.”

  “I tend to be up front. Bill always says so. Lately, though, I’ve been asking myself some serious questions. About Bill, about what I want, about what my dad wanted moving us here. I’ve been thinking about going to the Corridor or Southcoast. Getting some real work, through a temp agency. Taking some training and maybe even getting therapy to hone my personality.”

  “That’s all a crock,” Giffey says.

  “Did you ever try it?” Yvonne asks.

  “Don’t need to eat the whole hog to know it’s spoiled.”

  Yvonne laughs, then puts on her thoughtful look, and her eyes squint down as if the Blakely’s dim light is still too bright. “I deserve better,” she says. “Bill is a dead end. I’m smarter than he is and I don’t care what other men think about me or how I’m going to lead my life. My dad was wrong. All these folks here—they’re stupid. They don’t want to dance in the big world because they’re all left feet.”

  Giffey can’t argue with this. The outside world’s a crock but Green Idaho is the scum on the bottom of the crock. “I suppose that sums it up,” he murmurs, looking for the food.

  “What happens to me if I leave here?” Yvonne asks. “I don’t know much about the outside. Bill has his Yox, but we don’t have any fibes or satlinks in our apartment. He says we can’t afford them. There’s the library, but it’s been crowded lately—lots of people researching getting out, I guess. And so much stuff has been yanked out of there—banned this, banned that. Christ, the catalog is like Swiss cheese.”

  “I don’t know anybody you’d want to talk to,” Giffey says, “if that’s what you’re hoping. Yvonne, I’m not a nice man and the people I know aren’t nice, either.”

  The waiter brings them their pike. It’s drizzled in a walnut sauce with a faint hint of maple syrup and some berries on the side. Giffey lifts his fork in salute and takes a bite of the white flaky fish. “Not bad at all,” he says.

  “No, they do it real good here,” Yvonne says. “What are you looking for?”

  Giffey thinks this over and decides it would be polite to give some answer. “A way to gully the hypocrites.”

  “I don’t understand,” Yvonne says.

  “Honey, like I said, I’m not nice and what’s bottled up inside me isn’t nice either. I just don’t believe in leaving well enough alone. There are some things I’d like to do, but I don’t tell them to others.”

  Y
vonne regards him with that same appraising stare she used in the Bullpen. She is jotting up her biological pluses and minuses. She likes this bit of confession; it ties in with her need for rootlessness right now. She’s deciding her next step. Giffey looks down at the table. He doesn’t like the way an attractive woman—one with any features in her favor—must speck out a sexual situation with some sort of internal calculator, how she has to weigh and balance and draw deep conclusions. He has met very few women without this trait, this set of skills. It’s sort of an insult, and it’s one of the things that sets women apart from men in his book. Men are more like puppies—sloppy and sometimes cruel puppies, but right up front with their needs.

  Her counselors would be proud of her. She’s looking for some sort of quality. But if she chooses me—she’s got it all wrong.

  Yvonne’s expression changes. She’s made her decision, but he can’t tell what it is. She spears a bite of walleye and lifts it, deftly swings the fork, pokes it into her mouth. “This fish is real good tonight,” she says.

  “It is,” he agrees.

  ?*1 TRIBUTARY FEED

  LITVID NOTE: The 1994 film Aerosol you have just seen reveals much about the time. In the late twentieth, a VIRUS*3462231 is an insidious and incurable presence, a disease irritating or often deadly, so common that most of the Earth’s population carried hundreds of types of these tiny genetic hitchhikers. Children caught CHICKEN POXs3416*893 a non-lethal but highly irritating malady that could recur later in life as the painful SHINGLES562. Many adults as well as children sprouted sores on lips or moist tissues caused by a herpetic axon creeper, simplex or zoster, blood-to-blood or semen contact carried the dreaded AIDS*12477392 virus, which spawned the oscillating sexual conservatism of early twenty-one. Viruses shaped and distorted social attitudes about nearly everything and everybody…

  The transformation of the word “virus” during early twenty-one is a marvel. Today, a virus is no longer virulent, but omnipresent—one of the little servants of a larger, more intelligent nature. Viruses in human medicine are a template or tool of major medical treatment. Children proudly say they have a tailored virus that will gradually remove genetic mistakes; viruses are used in nano transformations, and extended viruses or phage hunters police our tissues, killing the bacteriological diseases which have proven to be far more insidious and persistent, though not unbeatable.