Into Everywhere

by Paul McAuley

  ‘That depends on the trouble.’

  ‘Police trouble.’

  ‘The police police, or the geek police?’ Lisa said.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The UN Technology Control Unit. A guy name of Adam Nevers.’

  ‘Yes, that was the man in charge,’ the manager said. ‘He sealed Mr Willie’s room with tape and told me I couldn’t rent it out again until his investigation was finished. What investigation this was he would not tell me.’

  ‘He’s chasing ghosts,’ Lisa said, and held up another fifty and asked if she could check out Willie’s room.

  ‘If the police find you there,’ the manager said, ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

  The room was pretty much as Lisa remembered it, apart from the women’s clothing in the chipboard chifferobe and the make-up and box of tampons in the bathroom. Hard to tell if it had been tossed by the police or not, but she bet that if Willie had left any souvenirs behind, Nevers and his Jackaroo pal probably had them now.

  Feeling like a detective, she drove the two blocks to the bar, a low flat-roofed shack islanded in a big dirt lot. A neon sign over the door flickered weakly in the sunlight. Chillies Spot. Behind it, spiny jags of elbow bush caught about with litter sloped down to the steel-grey water of a broad inlet. A warm breeze carried the bitter tang of the sea, subtly different to the scent of the seas of Earth.

  Lisa told Pete to sit tight in the back of the pickup truck and keep a look out for men in black, adding, when Pete said he didn’t understand, ‘Like the people who visited us yesterday.’

  Pete wagged his tail and said no problem.

  Chillies Spot was a dim cave reeking of cigarette smoke, stale beer and disinfectant. Bottles racked in front of mirrors behind the well bar, vinyl booths, a scuffed pool table. It was as if Lisa had time-travelled back to one of the dives where she’d hid from the world in the bad old days. It was alarmingly like coming home.

  She spotted Brittany Odenkirk at once – a pale blonde girl, pretty in that brittle way that went quickly downhill after the brief glow of youth faded, talking to a couple of old geezers at the far end of the bar counter – and took a seat and waited. After a couple of minutes the girl drifted over, asked her what she was having.

  ‘I’d like to ask a couple of questions about your boyfriend.’

  Brittany Odenkirk gave Lisa a weary look. Her eyes were bruised. She’d been crying, Lisa realised, and felt a touch of shame. She hadn’t yet shed one tear for Willie, had come here for entirely selfish reasons.

  The girl said, ‘If you’re from the police, I already told everything I know.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Lisa said, ‘I’m Willie’s fucking wife. Let me buy you a drink, and we can talk about our mutual loss.’

  They sat in one of the booths, with a tall glass of a green concoction called Jackaroo Blood for Brittany and a what-the-fuck bottle of imported Dos Equis for Lisa. Still tasting damn fine after crossing twenty thousand light years. She told herself that she’d be careful and only have the one.

  After Lisa told Brittany about the raid on her homestead, the girl said that she’d found out about Willie’s accident when the police came to search their motel room yesterday, at four in the fucking morning.

  ‘A guy and, can you believe it, a goldskin.’

  ‘An avatar?’

  ‘In a tracksuit and box-fresh kicks like some gnarly old MC.’

  The girl had a Californian lilt and was, as Carol Schleifer had said, very young. Twenty, twenty-two, traces of acne in the corners of her mouth. Lisa felt sort of protective, wondering about the brief sad trajectory that had brought her to Felony Flats, and Willie.

  ‘They came to my place, too,’ Lisa said, and described Adam Nevers.

  Brittany nodded. ‘Like an older, not quite as handsome version of that actor who played Batman in those movies? He was English too, right?’

  ‘Did they take anything?’

  ‘What’s it to you, if you don’t mind me asking.’

  ‘Did Willie ever tell you about the Bad Trip?’

  ‘You mean the ghost in his head? Yeah, he liked to tell that story. Said it helped him see things differently. Gave him what he called a Martian perspective, whatever that was.’

  ‘Did he tell you I was there with him?’

  ‘Well, not exactly . . .’

  ‘I have a ghost in my head, too,’ Lisa said. ‘Courtesy of the Bad Trip. It gave me a kick when the breakout killed Willie and his friends. So I’m pretty sure that whatever happened out there has something to do with me, and that’s why I need to find out what Willie was into.’

  Brittany looked off at something that wasn’t in the dim room. When she looked back, she said, ‘Can your ghost . . . Does it know if he’s really dead?’

  ‘All I know so far is what the police told me.’

  ‘He was so up before he went away,’ Brittany said. ‘Bouncing around because he’d made a find. He said there was a big payday coming. Promised me we’d be rich.’

  ‘Did he tell you what he’d found? Where he’d found it?’

  ‘He had like one of those little stones you can find in the City of the Dead?’

  ‘A tessera?’

  Lisa felt like Spider-Girl just before the baddie tries to whomp her.

  ‘Yeah. A little black squarish thing. He said it was special. Said he was going back out to dig up a lot more of them.’

  ‘Did he tell you where he found it?’

  ‘All I know is it wasn’t from the City of the Dead, but someplace out in the Badlands. And yeah, I wish I’d asked about it, but it wouldn’t have meant anything to me. I only ever went out with him the one time. Dust and sand and really old ruins that really didn’t look anything much like tombs or whatever. More like heaps of rubble, holes in the ground. Willie dug up a bunch of these what-do-you-call-them, tesserae, but nothing special. He got a couple of hundred bucks for some of them from this guy in this little desert town, let me keep the rest.’

  ‘The town – was that Joe’s Corner?’

  Brittany shrugged.

  ‘Can you remember the name of the guy who bought those tesserae?’

  Another shrug.

  ‘Calvin Quinlan, does that ring any bells?’

  Calvin Quinlan was an assayer Willie had done business with, back in the day.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘When Willie went back out,’ Lisa said, ‘did he leave any documentation behind? Maps, samples, maybe a data stick with photos on it?’

  ‘The police guy asked me that. I said go ahead and look. All they found were the little stones Willie gave me.’

  ‘Were any of them haunted?’

  ‘Willie said they were just stones. Said he’d buy some silver wire and make me a necklace, but he never got around to it . . .’

  Brittany sniffed loudly, tipped back her head. To keep her tears from running and ruining her mascara, Lisa realised, and handed her a napkin.

  ‘Thanks,’ Brittany said, and dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose. ‘When he told me he’d found something big? Frankly, I didn’t really believe him. He was always talking about making a big score. Finding something out there that would make him rich. He’d make a joke about it, you know? But I think it was the one thing he was serious about.’

  ‘Willie didn’t lack ambition,’ Lisa said.

  ‘Yeah, and look where it got him.’

  Brittany took a big sip of her green cocktail; Lisa drank down the last of her beer. Lord but it tasted good. She had to step hard on the impulse to order another.

  ‘The police told me there were other people involved in that breakout,’ she said. ‘Do you know who they were? Tomb-raider pals of Willie’s, what?’

  ‘He got in with this company?’

  Lisa’s spider-sense was tingling again. ‘Do you happen to know its name, or where I can find it?’

  ‘I don’t know where their offices are. Somewhere in the city, I guess. They’re called Outla
nd Archaeological Services? Willie came in here to get the contract checked out. One of our regulars, he used to be a lawyer.’

  ‘Outland Archaeological Services. Okay. That’s good.’

  ‘You know who they are?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘It was Willie’s life, looking for that alien shit out in the desert,’ Brittany said. ‘I should have been more interested in it, but to tell the truth? That one time was enough. The sand getting everywhere, and the heat, and the weird creepy-crawlies? Thanks, but no thanks. Also, I have this job now. Ten hours a day behind the counter with a smile painted on and my legs turning to wood, and even with tips it barely covers the rent. And I can’t take time off, I’d get canned. Even after that raid yesterday, finding out what happened to Willie . . . The next day, here I am. The trip we made, that was before I got started here. When we first met.’

  She’d hooked up with Willie three months ago, soon after she’d arrived on First Foot. A guy she was sort of seeing had taken her to a house party, and she’d left with Willie.

  ‘I’ve always gone for older types. And he’s fun to be with, you know?’

  ‘At first, yeah.’

  Brittany looked sideways at Lisa. ‘Are you really married to him?’

  ‘I really am.’

  ‘It’s just that he never mentioned it. And I didn’t think he was the marrying type.’

  ‘He wasn’t,’ Lisa said. ‘And you don’t have anything to apologise for. We split up years ago. Just never got around to getting a divorce.’

  ‘That sounds like Willie.’

  They shared a smile.

  Lisa said, ‘Willie had a sort of glamour about him. A free-spirit thing, and also a kind of helplessness that made you want to look after him. But someone like you? Frankly, and not wishing to speak ill of the dead and all that, I think you can do better.’

  ‘I did love him,’ Brittany said, with a sharp stubborn look.

  ‘How did you come up here? Shuttle or scow?’

  ‘Shuttle. I won a lottery ticket.’

  ‘There you go. You’re a winner. Don’t piss it away. Don’t be like Willie.’

  ‘Were you a lottery winner too?’

  ‘Yeah, I was. And yeah, I know, I ended up marrying Willie. Don’t make my mistake is what I guess I’m trying to say.’

  ‘So how did you guys hook up?’

  ‘I was kind of bored with the way my life was going,’ Lisa said, ‘and Willie happened along.’

  After the high point of designing the virtual space where Ghostkeeper code could be run safely, she’d quit the Crazy 88 Collective and sort of lost direction. Her next big idea, an attempt to construct a logic engine to map common features in algorithms from a variety of Elder Cultures, had run into serious difficulties. It seemed that her best work was behind her, that like many mathematicians she’d burned out early. She’d been working in the Alien Market back then, testing finds for prospectors and tomb raiders, analysing algorithms and code for commercial potential. It paid the rent and groceries, but it was mostly dull routine, and she was beginning to believe that it was what she’d be doing for the rest of her life when one day Willie Coleman turned up with a tessellation panel for analysis.

  When he’d won a ticket in the emigration lottery, Willie had been a thirty-year-old farm-equipment salesman in Duluth. He left behind an ex-wife and two daughters, a rented apartment and an ancient Subaru Outback held together by rust and duct tape, and completely reinvented himself on arrival in Port of Plenty, becoming a swashbuckling prospector who roamed the vast necropolis of the City of the Dead in a sand-blasted Holden Colorado truck, scraping a living selling tesserae and other small artefacts, always hoping for the life-changing jackpot of discovering a fragment of novel technology that he could sell or licence to one of the big companies. He wasn’t exactly handsome, but he had a charmingly boyish enthusiasm and a quick wit, and carried off his rock-and-roll gypsy look – fingers knuckly with silver rings, long hair tied back with a red bandana, loose white shirts carelessly unbuttoned under an ancient leather jacket – with total unselfconsciousness. Lisa knew about his string of girlfriends and his self-mythologising, but she’d allowed him to flirt with her, he’d stayed the night, and returned a week later to ask if she wanted to go on a trip. And she’d said why not?

  ‘You got together with him while you were depressed,’ Bria once said, as if Lisa’s black dog had prevented her from making any good decisions. But at the time Willie had been right for her. He’d helped her to escape herself.

  Three months after their first trip to the City of the Dead, they married on impulse in a Star Trek-themed chapel in Mammoth Lakes. They’d gone there to test Lisa’s method for beating the house at blackjack. She’d mentioned Edward Thorp’s card-counting technique after Willie had almost lost his truck in a poker game, and he’d said that he bet she could come up with something better. Lisa accepted the challenge and spent some serious time on the project, but after winning nine hundred and forty dollars at one of the ten-dollar-minimum blackjack tables in the Galaxy Rio Casino she was spotted and thrown out. It didn’t help that she pointed out to the shift manager who accused her of card-counting that her method actually used an equilibrium distribution strategy based on a variant of Markov chain analysis. In the end, she wasn’t charged because she hadn’t been wearing a computer or been caught using a code to signal to confederates. She’d been allowed to keep her winnings, but she’d been banned, permanently, from the Galaxy Rio and the other casinos on the Strip.

  ‘It isn’t about the money,’ she told Willie, when he’d asked her how much she’d won. ‘It’s about proving that the system worked. Which it did.’

  ‘Apart from the getting-caught part.’

  ‘A hazard of field experimentation that doesn’t invalidate my conclusion.’

  ‘It kind of invalidates the potential profits, though. Maybe you could sell it to someone else,’ Willie said. ‘Let them try their luck.’

  ‘It’s been busted,’ Lisa said. ‘All the casinos will know about it now. Mei told me that they share information on attempts to game the system.’

  ‘Mei?’

  ‘The shift manager.’

  ‘You and her got pretty cosy, it sounds like.’

  ‘The problem is that the pattern of wins and loses isn’t random. That’s how I was caught. An AI plugged into the surveillance cameras spotted the periodicity. Anyone else trying to use it will be caught too.’

  ‘Why I hate the modern world,’ Willie said, ‘is working people can’t catch a break. But hey, at least you got your mojo back. Didn’t I tell you it would be fun?’

  They celebrated in a bar, and after half a dozen cocktails came to the mutual decision that it would be a blast to get married. So Lisa bought a couple of rings in a pawnshop and they did the deed in the hotel chapel, reading their vows in Klingon off an iPhone in front of a guy in golden robes and Spock ears.

  Waking up in the motel room the next morning with her new husband snoring beside her, Lisa didn’t regret it, not one little bit. Willie was self-centred and narcissistic, and wasn’t half as bright as he thought he was, but he was also kind and thoughtful, in his way, the sex was amazing, and he was a fun guy, fun to be with. Lisa worked on other people’s finds in the Alien Market and took trips with Willie into the back country searching for finds of their own, and for a couple of years she was happy. They even began to talk about settling down one day, having kids. Lisa still sometimes thought of the children she hadn’t had, the chances she’d missed, because the Bad Trip had fucked up their heads and everything else, and Willie had gone his way and she had gone hers, and that was that.

  Brittany said, ‘If you don’t mind me asking? You split up like years ago, you think he’s a loser . . . So why do you still care for him?’

  ‘My reasons for wanting to find out what happened, they’re mostly selfish,’ Lisa confessed, feeling that she should be honest with this girl, who’d clearly fallen hard for Willie. ‘
I’m hoping that it might help me evict the ghost in my head. But beyond that, I guess Willie and I still had a kind of connection. Whatever it was he found out there, it shouldn’t be up to Adam Nevers and the geek police to decide what to do with it.’

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Check out that company. Outland Archaeological Services.’

  ‘And if they can’t help you? Like if they all went out there?’

  ‘A friend of mine is looking at the register of Elder Culture sites, in case Willie or maybe this company made a claim. And if that doesn’t work I’ll just head out there and see what I can find. I still know some people in Joe’s Corner. Maybe they’ll know something.’

  Brittany took a big sip of her drink, looking at Lisa over the top of the glass. ‘There is something else that might help you,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘That stone Willie found? The one that started off this whole thing? I still have it.’

  10. The Singer Not The Song

  ‘That’s him,’ Òrélolu told Tony.

  ‘The one with the cornrows?’

  ‘Danilo Evangalista. A real heartbreaker. He can sing, too. Wait until you hear him sing, cousin. If I wasn’t married . . .’

  ‘Oh, he’s luscious, no doubt,’ Tony said. He was a little drunk. Brandy at the Great House when he had met up with Òrélolu, and now gin flavoured with pine resin. ‘Is this why you brought me here? To see a little songbird who has turned your head?’

  They were in a basement café in the Old Town quarter. Rough stone walls, wooden benches and tables, a toilet where you put used tissues in a bin instead of flushing them. Tony and Òrélolu sat in a booth whose original occupants had been evicted by the café’s owner; the man couldn’t stop telling them what an honour it was to have two such distinguished guests. The booth was to one side of the low stage, where a poet was machine-gunning staccato verses under a blue spotlight. The young singer sat with two men on the other side, tall and slender in a simple white shirt and black trousers.