Slant

by Greg Bear

  He can say nothing to this. He tries to tell himself that she is not well, that the woman he loves and who mothered his children, the woman with whom he has slept in bed almost eight thousand times, and with whom he has made love at least two thousand times, would not use these words, this voice. Chloe has become someone else and this person will soon go away.

  “What is it?” she asks, breaking the silence of half a minute or more. “Why are you here?”

  “I hope you feel better soon.” Jonathan looks around for some button to push, some cord to pull to call in human help, to keep him from saying anything, but the words erupt. The room feels hot. “You had therapy after we met but you didn’t tell me.”

  “Why should I?” Chloe asks.

  “Why did you need therapy?”

  “Because I kept wanting men, lots of men, and they kept hurting me,” Chloe says. “An excess of desire. Why should I ever feel desire again?”

  He sees the chair and turns, sits before his knees go rubbery. Part of him wants to leave immediately and let the professionals treat her; another part is guilty for ever expecting anything from a mother, the mother of his children for God’s sake, and he knows he deserves this condign punishment.

  But this has nothing to do with what he says to her. “You’ve never liked to lose control,” he says.

  “Look what it gets me.” She gestures at the bed, the curtains.

  “I always thought we were partners, that we could be free with each other… I didn’t know it was hurting you.”

  She glances at him, pityingly, and to Jonathan that look embodies all the disapproving looks women have ever given him, from the disappointed anger of his mother to a girlfriend telling him he is not for her. Wrathscorn.

  Jonathan pulls his chair closer. She shifts on the bed.

  “Please, listen,” he says. “I’ll go soon. Hiram and Penelope want to see you.”

  “Oh, my God. Hiram. He saw what you were doing to me.”

  “Don’t,” Jonathan says, pulling together all his control. “Listen, Chloe. This is important. No matter what you feel now, it’s not real. You’ve had a thymic collapse. All your therapy gave way at once. I don’t think I was responsible for that, but if I was, we have to make our decisions after you’re out of the hospital, not now. You need time to rest and recuperate and let the doctors put things back in place. I’m told that won’t take more than a week, but… the hospital is pretty busy now. The experts may not get to you for a few days. And I want only the best for you. If necessary, I’ll take you out of here and find a specialist myself. The best.” He swallows and tries to produce spit to wet his tongue, but it will not flow. “I won’t come back if you don’t want me to… until after you’re feeling better.”

  “I’ve just come awake, that’s all.”

  Jonathan takes a deep breath. He knows many things intellectually, that he should not feel anger for these words because they are not truly reflective of the real woman who is his wife. But he can’t help thinking of a snail heaped high with salt. An earthworm drying in the summer sun. No love, no sex, cut away from the joys of this Earth; he is a dead man.

  She closes her eyes. “I need to rest,” she says.

  He stands and turns and parts the curtain. In the passageway beyond, looking at the receding curves of blue curtains beneath the soft glow of the high ceiling, he can’t breathe. He stands there making small choking noises until his throat clears and his eyes water. He sounds like a dog with its vocal cords cut. Thank God nobody sees him before he wipes his eyes and stops his gasping.

  In the visitors’ room, Hiram and Penelope are pale and serious and they sit with hands folded between their knees, as if posed for a photo. Hiram looks up at Jonathan.

  “She’s not feeling very well. She’s… saying some bitter things,” Jonathan tells them.

  His children give him looks of total lack of comprehension. Perhaps they are being kind.

  “I’d like to see her,” Penelope says. “We need to talk to her.”

  “She’s resting.”

  “We’ll wait, father,” Penelope says, and looks away.

  Jonathan agrees. “I have to go now. I’ll come back later.”

  “All right,” Penelope says.

  Hiram refuses to look at him.

  Jonathan kisses them on the tops of their heads and leaves. The hospital building seems airless, hermetic.

  In the open air, beneath the brilliant clouds and patches of blue sky, he feels no better. Jonathan requests an autobus and waits, stiff and aching, at the sheltered stop. He must walk carefully. He feels naked and vulnerable.

  His own sanity depends now on a plan to walk safely between close walls of thickly clustered nettles.

  PARADISO

  PLAYERS: 25,600

  GOALS: Gonzo, PLAY-DEFINED

  STATUS: You are currently in Space 2. Your avatar/face is MASK 1. RECORDING.

  COMPANION: Name and status unknown. Also masked.

  YOU: I wish there was some way I could explain it to you… a feeling of perfect peace, of belonging, of knowing where you are and what’s expected of you.

  COMPANION: I wish I knew what that felt like.

  YOU: But you can! You can come join our Spiritual Therapy Group. We’re having a chat multiway in fifteen minutes in Space 98.

  COMPANION: I’ve been through all of this before. I’ve been to chats with dozens of earnest people ganging up on me, and I ask them tough questions, and they all fold and go home. You’re just a bunch of self-deluding types, what can I say?

  YOU: But you’re not being fair. You have to open up your heart and listen. God will talk within you.

  COMPANION: Sure. Does he talk inside of you? All the time? Clear as a bell? Does he make sure you never do anything wrong?

  YOU: No, He doesn’t talk inside me all of the time. He lets me make my own choices, and sometimes I choose wrong.

  COMPANION: Well, you don’t sound as bad as those others. Are you male or female?

  YOU: Let’s stick to the point here.

  COMPANION: Yeah, well the point is I’m open to god, I really am. I would love to have him talk to me and show me where I should be headed. But I’m sick of waiting. I hate this coy god shit where I have to play some unknown game just to have him talk to me. That’s really cruel. I’m here; I need his help. I’m not being defiant or shutting myself out. I just don’t hear anything!

  YOU: Perhaps you need to listen more carefully.

  COMPANION: I AM LISTENING! Why do you think I’m here? I keep coming back here for answers and going away and trying again, and god never talks to me!

  YOU: Perhaps He needs a sign from you. Some opening He can use to enter you.

  COMPANION: What, I should mend my ways just to have him talk to me? I need him to tell me how to mend my ways! I need guidance! It’s getting worse every day, this pain. I thought it was over years ago but it isn’t. I need him to help me!

  YOU: But you must go to Him! I sense real hostility toward God, toward what He does.

  COMPANION: I AM NOT HOSTILE! I AM IN PAIN AND IN NEED, and HE DOES NOT TALK TO ME!

  YOU: Can you imagine how many people God must help every day? Some may be in even greater need than you.

  COMPANION: God is all-powerful! If he doesn’t talk to me, it’s either because he hates me and thinks I am unworthy, or he doesn’t exist, and you and all the Christians are lying.

  YOU: I think perhaps you aren’t ready—

  STATUS INTERRUPT: Your companion has withdrawn from Paradiso. You have not succeeded in gaining a convert. Your free time in this area has not been increased; please try again!

  8

  Mary Choy knows the PD center and all its sounds and smells and pays little attention to them, but one area stands out: in the corner of the broad flat dispatch room, under a gray shield to prevent interference from the bright sunshine pouring through the glass east wall, a city X-flow medical response chart has gone into the red on suicides. A captain and two ot
her social beat officers are standing around the display, stunned into silence. Mary walks up beside them; Nussbaum isn’t in his office yet, won’t be for five minutes, she has the time to join in their shocked wonder.

  “It’s gone north through Snohomish, West Seattle, East Corridor, Central Corridor,” the captain of the social beat says to the governor’s office in Olympia through a pad touch. “We have stats coming in from hospitals and on-site medicals. They’re way in the red, highest I’ve ever seen.”

  “We have reports throughout the state,” the assistant social secretary returns, her voice audible to all around the display. “In the past two weeks we’ve had eight hundred and ninety suicides. That’s up over seven hundred percent.

  “It’s a goddamned catastrophe,” the captain’s second murmurs, then turns to Choy with a defensive look. “Slumming, ma’am?”

  “I don’t think social is going to get blamed for this,” Mary says.

  “Oh, you don’t, ma’am?” The man is clearly stretched. “We do outreach. Why didn’t we know? Where’s our ass going to be when the mayor and the governor do their news feed?”

  “Sorry,” Mary says.

  “Any clues from lock and key?” asks the third, the youngest of the group. Lock and key is PD slang for criminal division, Nussbaum’s territory, and now, hers.

  “Not on my watch,” Mary says.

  “Then leave us to our misery,” the second snaps, and Mary departs. She’s stepped on their toes, and they’re in a mood. Best to take the same feed in Nussbaum’s office; he won’t mind, and she has a hunger for city facts and trends, however incomprehensible.

  She does not have time to switch Nussbaum’s feed to the X-flow chart before he plunges through the entrance curtain, two cups of coffee in hand, and pushes between two coil chairs to plop into his own highback. The chart comes on as he hands her one of the cups. Mary sips sparingly; coffee does not sit well with her transform reversal. Nussbaum stares at the stats as they adjust and flow; The chart looks inflamed.

  “It’s a stochastic flux,” Nussbaum says dismissively. “Social can take it. We have a couple of problems of our own. Grand Jury emulator from our INDA says we should have no trouble getting indictments for our psynthe murders, against both the caretaker and the go-between. But I’m not happy. Our chief suspect on the finance side is dead. Forepath confirms suicide—and the trail stops cold. Worse, we probably couldn’t indict Crest even if he was alive. All we have are little guys. Anything from the whore?” Nussbaum looks hopeful.

  Mary shakes her head. “Her name is Alice Grale. She’s a vid star. She says her agency sent her on a call-in.”

  “Jesus, makes me wish prostitution was still illegal.”

  Mary acknowledges that sentiment, though she does not necessarily share it. “She’s going through her options now, legal and otherwise. I’m going to make a personal call later. Meanwhile, the Crest estate—two daughters, an ex-wife and three lawyers—is refusing to turn over the apartment vids, but I think we can show cause. But…” Her voice trails off and her fingers fidget on the edge of Nussbaum’s desk.

  “What?” Nussbaum asks.

  “I’ve been looking through Crest’s public records on investment strategies, posted with his business license. His style was to set up blinds, very thorough; he probably did not want to know what was happening with that share of his investment money. After his divorce—”

  “He was divorced?”

  “Three days ago. Very quiet. He settled a generous portion on his wife, and his kids are set for life.”

  Nussbaum looks glum. “More reasons for him to kill himself.”

  “The last year or so, he made a point of going into risky high-return ventures. He danced a real tightrope on some of them.”

  “So, he had a guilty conscience about a lot of things.”

  “Our trail leads up to his blind, no further. He probably did not know he was into Yox psynthe porn. He was investing in Yox in general, his personal books say… No matter that he’s sole investor. The go-between is his hidden hand and shield.”

  Nussbaum taps his cup lightly on the desk. “So your point is?”

  “He wasn’t feeling guilty about dead psynthe girls.”

  Nussbaum pooches out his lips and says, “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

  “He didn’t know,” Mary adds.

  “Yeah, yeah. Typical high comb money wanker. Let’s assume he didn’t. Is he like the rest of these suicides? Something goes wrong in his head and he drops a fate of hyper-caff?”

  “I don’t know,” Mary says.

  “You think the whore knows?”

  “She’s not a whore,” Mary says. “She works in the sex-care and entertainment industries.”

  “Same thing,” Nussbaum says.

  “She has an interesting profile. Smart woman, straight prime marks in her schooling up to her eighteenth year, when she dropped out of four scholarships and did call-ins for six months. Then she took up with a vid producer. He slipped her into explicit vids and made her a star.”

  “Ah, the old pattern,” Nussbaum says. “Young, out for a little fun, stretches her family ties and breaks them by doing something outrageous. The money’s good, the life isn’t too hard—at least, compared to a day job as a lobe-sod.”

  “Actually, she seemed to be heading toward scientific work.”

  “So she’s smart,” Nussbaum says with a shrug. “You think Crest told her something?”

  “He might have. She says he asked for her in particular—he was a fan, I suppose.”

  “Terence Crest was big in the New Federalist community, Choy. What would he know about a fuck artist?” He is thickly facetious., “I hope you don’t intend to smear his good name.”

  Mary shakes her head. “Crest was not therapied. He was a natural. His suicide seems completely off the track from the stats that are giving social side fits. Something else happened to him.”

  Nussbaum scrutinizes Mary with an expression she can’t read. Speculative? Disappointed, paternal?

  “Your little pinky itches?” he asks. “Bump of prophecy warm today?”

  “It’s my insteps,” Mary says. “They tingle.”

  Nussbaum snorts. “I truly admire your feet, Mary, but we’re not into high finance here. I smell a police management review if I push this farther. Pass it on to the state economy folks.”

  “Crest was guilty about something.”

  “He had a lot to be guilty about.”

  “Something big and new.”

  “It’s muddy, Choy,” Nussbaum says, but he’s watching her, seeing what she’ll come up with next. “You know something I don’t? Been digging where you shouldn’t?”

  “I want to take this for a couple of days, just to see what I find. I want to talk to Alice Grale and try to get a look at those apt vids.”

  “Let me see if I can re-state this for you,” Nussbaum says, “in a way that might convince me. Crest was used to knowing that his money was doing dirty little jobs and he didn’t feel great throbs of remorse. He was a healthy, wealthy, somewhat amoral guy. So something else pushed him over the line. And it wasn’t an evening with your little Holy Grale. Can you give me any clue what you expect to find?”

  “Not a one, sir.”

  Nussbaum blows out softly through his nose.

  Mary leans forward. “Something’s in the air, waiting to come down. Crest’s suicide, the other suicides… It’s slim evidence, but a lot of strange things are happening all at once.”

  “I only know about two strange things.”

  “Then you haven’t been cruising the fibes, sir.”

  Nussbaum leans back and finishes his coffee. He looks up at the ceiling and puts on a puffy, hurt expression. “If you’re referring to a huge increase in fallbacks and hospital admissions, and an upswing in crime in major metropolitan centers around the world…” He stares at her sharply.

  “Sorry,” Mary says. “Crest’s investment in the entertainment indust
ry was twenty percent of his total. He had four billion dollars working for him, and most of it we can’t begin to trace.”

  “All right,” Nussbaum says. “You have the rest of this week to track your hunch. Get the vids from the estate, interview the whore—pardon me, the bright little sex-care expert—and see if you can spring loose some other facts about Crest.”

  “I’ll finish the psynthe case as well, sir, if you need me.”

  Nussbaum shakes his head sadly. “It’s over. If it heats up, I’ll assign Dobson or Pukarre.”

  Mary stands. Her stomach is tense; she knows she’s on a flimsy limb. “Do you want updates, sir?” she asks hesitantly.

  “Hell, no. If you get in trouble, I don’t want you anywhere near me.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Come back when you have a full creel.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She is almost out the door when Nussbaum asks, “And Choy—speaking of creels—how are those extraordinary feet in rubber boots? You like trout fishing?”

  “Sir?”

  “I’m not telling you this. The source is politically sensitive. Terence Crest was in Green Idaho last week. Moscow.”

  “Yes, sir. I know.”

  Nussbaum smiles wryly. “I thought you might. Not much entertainment business there.”

  Nussbaum waves his hand. “Four days,” he reminds her as the curtains close.

  BLOODSTREAM

  You’ve made so many wonders,

  I don’t know how to say

  You act the child today

  You act the child today

  —Paradigm, Tossed for Tea

  9

  Nathan has brought in a man and a woman from the Mind Design legal department. Jill has only met these two at corporate parties, never on a business basis.

  “How long has it been since you’ve been touched by Roddy?” asks Erwin Schaum, balding, with a brilliant white fringe of curly hair surrounding his taut, tanned scalp. He leans forward in a rolling desk chair, hands clasped, elbows resting on his knees, and rocks back and forth slightly.