by Ted White
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Just tell me about Dian. Was she alone when you saw her?”
“No, of course not,” she said. “She had that colonist fellow with her, that big, strange-looking man. You know, I bet he made me sick!”
“How’s that again?” I said.
“He comes from some other planet, right? Who knows how many bugs he’s carrying on him? He could be starting an epidemic, just wandering around this city!”
“You should only know,” I muttered to myself.
“Hah?”
“It’s not likely,” I said. “He had to go through Bio-Customs. They don’t even let stray spacefaring spores through.”
“Yeah? Well, something’s made me sick!”
“No doubt,” I said. “Let’s get back to Miss Knight. She had Bjonn with her, you say. Why did they come here?”
“I don’t know,” she said, a little reflectively. “Funny you should ask. She seemed, oh, I dunno… different.”
“Different?” My ears were pricked up.
“Well, like, I don’t really know… kinda glowy, you know, really happy, even.”
“What did she do? What did she say? Did she pack any clothes or anything?”
“Ummm, yes, I guess she did. Not a lot, though. Nothing much more than you’d want for a night out.” She smirked at that one. She’d figured it all out, she had. “Just a little bag.”
“Were you out of the room at all during that time?”
“Me? No, I don’t—oh, yes, I was for a minute. The fellow, Dian had told him I was an artist. He wanted to see my stuff. I have a studio—in there.” She waved her arm vaguely at a closed door.
“This room in here is yours?” I asked.
“I use it, yes. It’s really for both of us. But since my own room is just filled up with my equipment, I kinda use this room, too.”
“I see. And while you were in the other room, with Bjonn, was the door opened or closed?”
She leaned closer to me, as though trying to make me out in the murk. I wondered if she’d thought of turning up the lights, and then dismissed the notion. She’d surely not want brighter lights in this slovenly room. “Just what is it you think you’re pinning on me, mister?” she asked. She had the whole line down perfect, even the inflection was right off a nighttime melodrama on the 3-D.
“I’m asking if you could watch what Dian was doing out here, while you were in your, ah, studio with Bjonn,” I said.
Her bristles withdrew. “Ummm, well, no, I guess I wasn’t paying much attention. I, umm, probably closed the door—one of my best renderings is mounted on the back of the door, and.…”
“So Dian could have picked up something out here and you wouldn’t have known,” I finished it for her.
“Picked up what?” she said. “Just what are you talking about?”
I sighed. “Used your card today?” I asked.
“My card? My credit card? No.…”
“See if you can find it,” I suggested.
She pushed herself to her feet and moved over to a piece of furniture half buried under a pile of something-or-other. She pawed through the pile for a bit, and then reached under it. Half the pile slid to the floor, where it was absorbed by a mound of clutter already there. She paid no attention to it. She rooted about in the chest of drawers, or whatever it was for a while, and then moved on to another high mound which turned out to be a chair, stacked with debris. Plastic infomat printouts went flying. An old and very musty towel landed at my feet. I leaned over to pick it up between thumb and forefinger, and an unpleasant odor assailed my nostrils. Given another week or two, and I think life might have been spontaneously generated in that towel, particularly in this hothouse environment.
By now she was beginning to look a little frantic. She stopped, fixed her gaze on me, and stated, “I can’t find it. I know exactly where I keep it, and it is not there.” She opened her mouth to continue, but I interrupted her.
“Did Dian know where you kept it?” I asked.
“She knew well enough that it was always in my sporan,” she said, nodding emphatically. Her turban was starting to come loose.
“Where’s your sporan?” I asked.
“That’s it! I can’t find my sporan,” she said. Her chins quivered with indignation.
My eyes wandered aimlessly, then returned to the pile I’d moved from the chair I was in to the floor at my side. Amid the rumpled clothing was a shaggy tail of fur. I reached down and pulled it free: it was a side pouch of synthetic fur, ending in a floppy tail. “Is this—?”
“That’s it,” she cried, pouncing upon it and wresting it from my hand.
“Please check it out,” I said, feeling a vague sense of anticlimax.
She dumped the entire contents out on top of what remained of the pile on the chest of drawers. Her fingers rifled through the new debris and emerged triumphantly. “Got it!” she said. Her tone was a crow of pleasure—as though she had somehow bested me in a covert contest.
“Let’s see,” I requested, holding out my hand. She surrendered the tab of homogeneous plastic to me with poor grace.
I turned it over and stared at its face.
Every credit card has its molecular key that identifies it to its owner’s account. Every card is unique; no one has ever succeeded in counterfeiting a card. A card can be stolen, but once reported stolen it is valueless, and the rightful owner is issued a new card. A simple consultation with the infomat is all that is necessary. So cards are rarely stolen these days.
But one was. This card carried a name in simple block letters: Dian Knight. To its right was an embossed thumbprint.
Dian had switched cards. “This isn’t your card,” I said. “This is Dian’s.”
“What?” she screeched. “That’s whose?”
“Where’s your infomat?” I asked, wearily.
“In there,” she said, pointing through a half-open door.
It was obviously Dian’s room: the cheerful late-afternoon light that streamed in through the windows only pointed up the neatness of the room and its effects. I found the infomat next to a chair that folded out into a bed.
I punched in my code and got Credit Clearance. “What’s your full name?” I called out.
“Terri Carr,” she answered.
“No middle names, no marriage-contract names?”
“No, of course not,” she said, her voice trailing off. I requested information on the recent uses of Miss Terri Carr’s credit.
Paydirt, as the old saying goes: two continental hops to the west coast, to Southern Pacifica. Pod to downtown Santa Barbara in northern Southern Pacifica.
And then nothing. No further uses. Absolutely nothing.
“How much did you say your regular allowance was?” I called out.
She told me.
“Well, I think you’d better prepare to draw in your belt a little,” I said.
“What do you mean?” She was filling the open doorway with her bulk. I was getting tired of her.
“It’s been spent,” I said.
I took the time to do a thorough search of Dian’s room, although not with much hope of finding anything. Still, I hoped I might turn up something that would point in the direction she had fled. People rarely manage to just “disappear” on their own hook. It isn’t that easy. When one thinks of escape, he usually thinks in terms of escape to some place—a place in some way familiar to him, or a place he’s always wanted to see. More likely even, he thinks of escape to some place where he has friends, contacts: some place where he will not be alone.
Bjonn was an alien to this planet. He could hardly have contacts or friends anywhere. He would have no preferences for any one spot on the globe. And no real knowledge of any given area’s advantages or disadvantages, either.
So that left Dian, and Dian had roots. She had grown up, left behind a family, friends, associates, playmates, roommates. She had lived in various cities during her life. Some she would not want to revisit; others mig
ht arouse nostalgia from her and a desire to return. I had to gamble on a clue in her past that would point out the direction she was taking—because unless we sighted her by chance, there was no other way.
This is, as I have said, the Age of Anonymity. This is an era when one can see, in the order of a day’s business, several thousand faces. Commuting alone: I shared my daily trips on the tubes with tens of thousands, whose throngs I must push my way through. As a consequence, privacy is a very personal and closely guarded right. One does not stare at strangers. One never meets another’s eyes when out in public. It isn’t done. It strips your own defenses as readily as it does his; that shocking moment of contact can leave you shaking and nauseated.
Bjonn was a striking figure of a man—but how many of those he passed among would notice him, even to the extent of becoming aware of his striking qualities? We could blanket the 3-D with his hologram, and we would receive millions of false reports on his whereabouts, and—probably—none genuine. Talk about your haystacks and needles—!
I found nothing of value in Dian’s room. She had a few private tapes, a thin sheaf of printouts, mostly fashion notes for women, and a privately made pornographic book, much thumbed through, its plastic binding in tatters. But there was no correspondence—if she received any, she did not keep printouts—and no personal effects from her childhood. I wondered if she had successfully boxed her past and put it behind her. Most people do; I wondered if I was the only exception.
“You’ve still got her card,” Terri Carr said to me when I returned to the humid gloom of the other room.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Aren’t you going to give it back?”
I stared at the gross creature with ill-concealed dislike. “Miss Carr, this is not your card. Your card was stolen, and you should report it and have another issued in your name. This card is evidence, and does not belong to you.”
“But she gave it to me!” she yelped.
“She did not have the right to give it to you,” I said. “If you used it you would be guilty of violating the law.”
“But she used mine!”
“I’ll see what I can do about having the amount she used refunded from her account to yours,” I said. “You won’t starve.”
“She’s not coming back, is she?”
“I doubt it.”
“What am I going to do for rent?”
“I suggest you find another roommate,” I said. “One who can be equally tolerant of your little foibles. It’s a big city—you shouldn’t have much trouble.”
As the door to the apt slammed shut behind me, I heard her begin to wail with sobs of self-pity.
Chapter Seven
I had to put in for Bureau clearance for a hop to Southern Pacifica—that is, if I wanted to put the expenses on the Bureau account rather than my own. So I had to talk to Conners.
“Pacifica,” he said. “Why do you need to go out there?” Conners is in Cost Accounting.
“Mainly because that’s where our missing persons last were,” I said, wishing I could thumb off the connection and terminate the whole inquisition.
“Is there some reason why one of our people in Pacifica could not handle it?” Conners asked politely. His detachment came to him easily; Conners’ office is in our main office in Geneva, and as far as I know he hasn’t stirred from that spot in twenty years.
“There are a number of reasons, but the main one is that this investigation is my job—not that of some nit in Pacifica,” I said, my temper fraying at the edges.
Conners tut-tutted me, and then asked me to hold. The screen flashed a couple of times, and lit up with “Please Hold,” while I sat in my office and twiddled my fingers. I thought of waiting until he returned, then flashing him my “Please Hold” signal for a moment or two. But I didn’t. I thought about things like that, but I rarely did them. A pity.
He was checking me out, of course, probably with Tucker. I could imagine Tucker telling him in that lazy drawl of his, “Oh, the boy is getting nervous; I lit a little fire under him t’other day. Thinks he could ease his way with a paid vacation on the coast and be out from under my thumb.” Or maybe, “You know how it is,” a chuckle, “fellow takes his title seriously—’field investigator’—too seriously.” Or most likely, “No need for him to go out; we’ve got plenty of people out there can get the job done; fact is, Dameron’s under a bit of a cloud these days….” It would all come down to the same answer, I was sure. And the thing was, I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t true—was I just looking for a change of scenery, an out from the hot box? Why did I have to go out there myself? Because I thought I might just sniff out something a more dispassionate investigator would overlook? And just how likely was that, anyway?
The screen flashed again and the speaker tweeted to let me know Conners was back—just in case I might be preoccupied with a finger count or something of the sort. Conners looked up. Light glinted for a moment on his bald head. “It’s all been cleared,” he said. “I hope you have a productive trip.” Then the screen cleared and went blank.
The HST took only a little over an hour; trips this short usually take longer by air than those which allow a full trajectory. Soon I was amid the sunwashed stucco cliffs of Southern Pacifica, that vast man-made sprawl that covers the entire southern half of the state of California and the western parts of Arizona and Nevada. Never my favorite part of the world, I found myself wondering what its attraction had been to Dian and Bjonn. Or was it just that she’d already discovered her roommate’s credit went no further?
The terminal was built over a portion of what had once been the San Pedro Channel, only just east of Catalina Island. These days it was an island in name only, since the city of Southern Pacifica had been built on piers stretching out over the water for miles. I was standing in a passenger lounge, staring around me and trying to put myself into their shoes. What had Dian and Bjonn been thinking when they stood here? Had they been perplexed, or were they already certain of the next leg of their flight? Had Bjonn Stared out the big polarized windows at the muted scene of bright sun and white concrete and the tall, rocket-like shapes of the HST planes, or had he followed Dian immediately across the lounge for the local tube terminal? I scanned slowly around the room. People, coming and going, few pausing to sit and rest. A big 3-D on one side of the room, a soap playing itself out on its scene-shifting stage. A screen, dominating the other interior wall, with arrivals and departures flickering across in bright-green block letters a foot high. A vending area, near the exit doors, headlines and Come-on blurbs racing across the screen over its printout in mockery of the larger screen nearby. The few seats were hard and uncomfortable—no one lingered here long.
I joined the crowd getting off another plane and made for the exit. Every man, woman and child who had ever passed through this terminal had robbed it of a little of its life and individuality. It had long ceased to have any. It was just a place one went through to get from one place to another, not even a way station.
Several tubes terminated here. Dian and Bjonn had taken the through-express to Santa Barbara. I passed my card over the turnstile eye and went through to board a through-express.
The tube made the nearly one hundred twenty miles in thirty minutes—slower than I’m used to, but then they take life at a more leisurely pace in Pacifica.
Santa Barbara is regarded by the locals as an island of culture and history amid the enormous population growth and mushrooming megacity of Pacifica, but to me it looked more like a slum. Narrow, twisting streets, ancient tumbledown architecture dating, it is said, from the time the Spanish first colonized the coast, and a jungle of untidy plant life that seemed to be winning an age-old battle with the artifacts of men. And no pods. The tube station had only lifts to the surface, and there I found no covered arcades, no climate control, nothing in fact but the bare face of the city. Appropriate as a shrine for visits, perhaps, but to liv
e in? No thanks.
It was easy to see why no further record had been found. Dian and Bjonn could hardly have summoned up transportation with a credit card here even if they’d wished it. I stood blinking in the sun and wondered just what I’d do next.
“Hey, goodfella’, you lost?”
It was a kid. I looked down at him and felt the shock of premonition. He didn’t look over nine or ten, his grinning face was the color of teak, and his sun-bleached hair was golden white. His teeth flashed ivory in the sun, and his eyes were the palest blue. He could’ve been Bjonn’s son or younger brother.
“You tell me,” I said. “Am I lost?” I gestured around me at the white stucco, red-tile roofs so low that the whole street was awash in light, and the dark-green hues of the palms and ivy on the walls.
“Maybe you need a smart guide—show you around the town?” He winked. Clever little bastard; I wondered if his virgin sister—or maybe his virgin mother, they never do things by halves, do they?—was next on the ticket. I had the feeling I’d walked into a very bad old melodrama… live and in solid color. … I waited for the next cliché to drop.
“What you want,” he continued, “is a cycle. The only way to get around.” He gestured, and I saw a man down the street perched upon an ungainly device with two high, narrow wheels. As he pedaled toward us he took a wobbling route, and I wondered how much further he’d make it before falling off.
“One of those things?” I asked. “No thanks. It’s too late in life to try that trick.”
“They got them with three wheels, too—for the ladies and the old men,” he said. I gave him a sharp look, but his face was bland.
“Tell me something,” I suggested. “Is there a place around here that’s cool and out of the sun, where a tired old man could sit down for a moment?”
“Sure. You want me to come along an’ show you?”
“Why not?” I said.
It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind—I could have used a place with eating cubicles for a fast bit of refreshment—but he led me into a little vest-pocket park just down the street. In the shade the dry air was much cooler, and the smooth plastic of a bench felt almost soft.
