Levels: The Host

by Peter Emshwiller

  Again his breathing quickened and his skin broke out in sweat. This won’t work, he thought. It can’t. Something terrible will go wrong. Maybe I’ll burst a blood vessel in my head. Or maybe I’ll have a heart attack.

  Watly continued onward.

  Or maybe someone has already come in behind me and is about to shoot me in the back of the head—or in that little valley just between the shoulder blades. Or maybe they’re aiming for my neck. Right where my skull meets my spine. The slug will bite bone and shatter my brain. I’ll feel it busting my head open. I’ll feel every moment.

  He was moving slower now, each step torture. He was overcome with the same kind of powerless horror he’d experienced when his mother had died. Only worse. His vision blurred as he approached the area he had been stopped at before.

  My whole life has been a disaster. My whole life I’ve never gotten anything I want. My dreams are all dead. I’ll never be a mother. No child for me. None. I’ll be caught and killed. And... and...

  Watly thought he might wet himself. The feelings of impending doom and inevitable death were intolerable. He couldn’t move forward anymore.

  And if I ever do have a child, it will be deformed and insane and it will kill me when it’s strong enough. And...

  It was no good. He was frozen in place—just at the end of the hall.

  And the next woman I have sex with will grow teeth down below and bite me off midstroke.... And any minute now someone will stab me in the eyes.... And then bugs and small animals will envelope me....

  Watly backed up. It was useless. The fear grew so intense down near the end of the anxiety field that it was impossible to pass. He kept retreating until he was leaning back into the door, relieved the terror was abated. Now he was okay. But he was still not inside. He was still at square one.

  Watly wiped the sweat off his face with the sleeve of his “borrowed’’ blue uniform. He turned toward the wall and stared at the small bank of numbers. Nine little buttons, set up in rows of three. One row on top of the other. If only he could remember the combination. If only he could remember the numbers. But he’d never really known the numbers. The donor had known them. The donor had punched them in quickly as if well practiced. Naturally, Watly’s eyes had been on the board at the time—he’d had no choice—but the actual combination had gone by too fast. And there had been other things on Watly’s mind.

  Da, da, de-da—the donor had hit the buttons. Da, da, de-da. One, two, three-four. Four of them. Four numbers and the field would be deactivated. Watly could hear the rhythm in his head—da, da, de-da. If only he could remember the digits. The donor had done it all in such an offhanded manner—barely looking at the board. It seemed like months ago now. Years.

  Watly looked at his right hand and tried to hold it the same way the donor had—index finger pointed, the others curled slightly, thumb relaxed. He brought his hand near the keyboard, trying to replay the foggy memory of that evening. Da, da, de-da. Watly gave up on remembering the actual numbers—he just concentrated and tried to envision the movements his own hand had taken back then.

  What had the sensations been like? How stretched was his arm? How much of the board was visible between his fingers when they’d hit the first number? What had the negative space between his hand and the doorjamb been shaped like? Had the wrist twisted from one number to the next? Watly tried to digest all this, put it together in his mind, and come up with some viable answer. Da, da, de-da. Remember the rhythm....

  It was time to give it a try. Watly punched in four numbers on the keyboard, trying to mimic the same rhythm and sensation as in his memory. Da, da, de-da.

  There was a mechanical hum. A small green light flashed on the board. Yes.

  He’d done it. Watly strode forward rapidly down the hallway—he didn’t know how long he had before the field came up again, but he wasn’t about to get caught in the middle. This time any anxiety he felt as he passed down to the all-wood sitting room was real anxiety. None of this stimulation-to-the-fear-centers-of-the-brain business—just some honest-to-goodness straightforward shit-willies. Shit-willies that came from being on Second, from breaking and entering, from being in the house where it all had occurred... and from everything else that had happened and that might happen yet. It still could be a trap. This anxiety was surprisingly comfortable compared to the all-encompassing synthetic fear the field had induced. It was almost pleasant. Almost.

  Watly had crossed through the sitting room and was halfway up the large curved staircase before he noticed someone was coming down it. Straight at him.

  He almost bumped into the graceful form before him. Like a dancer she moved, and like a dancer she stopped in her tracks.

  In the split second that he became aware of her presence—even before she became aware of his—Watly surprised himself. There was a flicker of something within him—less than love but more than lust. Not like Alysess. Alysess was something else entirely. With Alysess, in spite of their short acquaintance, he felt something strong—something important. If what he felt for Alysess wasn’t love, it was certainly a close second. But this...

  But this was different. A look at the vision before him brought out a hint of something disturbing—something primitive. Why is it, Watly wondered, that we are all so pulled toward the aesthetic—for its own sake? Why do we have this drive to be with, to touch, to make love to that which pleases the eye? Do we think that the beauty will somehow rub off on us? Why is our libido, our lust, our passion so intertwined with our concept of beauty? Why do I, Watly Caiper, want so much to poke myself into loveliness? To enter it, to affect it, to be wanted by it, to be a part of it? Beauty. Beauty like this person before me. I can almost understand why one would kill for such a one as this.

  There she was. Sentiva Alvedine in all her glory. The incredible face, those intense green eyes that had been hidden from Watly’s view, the strong—almost overpowering—jawline, the flowing dark hair, that statuesque body.... She was wearing a dark business suit—not unlike the one worn by the murder victim that night that seemed so long ago. Even under the sexless outfit, her physical beauty was not hidden. The rise of the breasts, the slender waist, the hips.... This is a goddess, Watly thought. He was overcome with the desire to apologize for the actions of his donor. His first instinct was to say: I’m sorry my body took advantage of yours. Yours is not a body to be taken advantage of. No body, of course, is a body to take advantage of. But somehow, the rape of your body is a perfect example of why rape is a curse, but fuck is not. Fuck is a beautiful thing, rape is an obscenity. The ultimate obscenity. And, incidentally, Sentiva, about that murder... But Watly said nothing. He gazed blankly up at her.

  Sentiva looked stunned for a moment. “Officer?” she said. “How did you get—”

  Then Watly saw recognition pass over her face. She must know me from my news-file photos, he thought. She recognizes me. She sees before her the man who murdered her mate. Her mate? Whoever the hell it was.

  “You’re...” She drew back up a step and Watly—with some reluctance—shouldered the haver nerve rifle.

  “Yes, I am,” he said quietly.

  “Yes, I see that,” Sentiva said, rapidly composed again, no hinkyness in her expression at all now. “Yes, you are.”

  She had a beautiful voice. Like Alysess’s but less youthful, more mature. Her Second Level accent was thick and obvious but somehow sounded softened, no harshness in its tone. Watly gestured with the rifle for her to continue down the steps. “I’d like to talk to you.”

  “What makes you think that I’d like to talk to the man who murdered my poovus?” she said, stepping slowly down past Watly with her hands in front of her, palms out and fingers spread. The gesture was not so much one of supplication as it was of temporary truce. I will refrain from hurting you at the moment, her hands seemed to say—even though it was he who held the weapon. There was no fear in her face, only anger
. Watly wondered if maybe she knew some advanced form of self-defense or if there was additional security he hadn’t caught. Or maybe this is just what it meant to be a Second Leveler: brave, tough, and fearless.

  He kept the rifle trained on her as she stepped to the sitting room. She still moved like a dancer, gliding effortlessly and gracefully around the furniture. She was a class act.

  “Because I didn’t do it,” he said with as much conviction as he could muster.

  She sat on the wicker couch. “I see.”

  She’s putting me on stage, Watly thought. She knows that if I had come here to kill her I would’ve done it already. No wonder she’s not afraid. She knows I’ve come here to talk—or else she’d be dead—and she’s saying, “So? Go ahead. Talk.”

  Watly shifted his weight nervously from one leg to another. “I’m innocent. This whole thing is a frame-up.”

  Sentiva reached slowly to the table before her and opened the small wooden box on it. Watly raised the rifle in warning. She pulled out a cigel and snap-ignited its end with one fluid movement.

  “Cigel?” she asked.

  Watly shook his head. He was about to comment on their illegality, but then—considering the situation—he thought better of it.

  Sentiva took a long, sensuous drag off the cigel and glanced up at Watly, her delicate eyelashes obscuring the tops of those intense emerald irises. “What do you want from me?” she asked calmly. “Haven’t you done enough?”

  “I want...” Watly leaned on the arm of the chair opposite her, gun still raised, “I want some answers. I didn’t do this and I need help figuring out who did.”

  Sentiva smiled slightly. Two little dimples appeared beside her full lips, and her already beautiful face became more beautiful still. But the smile was full of irony. “You want me to help you? Why? Why should I believe you?”

  Watly stood again. “You tell me why I would be here if I did do it.”

  “Because you’re scared,” Sentiva answered.

  “Then you tell me how I did it. You explain it to me. Tell me where I learned the combination to your anxiety field. Tell me how—how I drugged you before I even got here. Tell me how I forged passes so good I got to Second Level with no problem. And last of all—last of all, you tell me, if I was smart enough to do all that—if I was this incredible criminal mastermind—how come I was stupid enough to get caught? How come I murdered someone in full view of the office recorder lenses?”

  “Some criminals want to get caught,” Sentiva said coldly.

  “That’s catshit.”

  “Then you tell me,” she countered, punctuating each word with a jerk of the cigel, “how come it’s you we see on the recorders? You tell me how come I’ve watched a certain recording over and over and it’s your face that I’ve memorized. It’s your hands on the scalpel. Why is that, Mister Caiper?” Her voice was raised for the first time. A brighter spark of anger glowed within each eye.

  Watly paused before speaking. “I was hosting,” he said finally. “Hosting against my will.” Even to him it sounded like a lie.

  “Then where was the—”

  “I know,” Watly interrupted. “Where was the cuff? The cuff was removed—and no, I don’t know how. But it was.”

  Sentiva puffed out a perfect pink smoke ring. She was calm again. “Why should I believe you?”

  Watly shrugged. “You don’t have to. It would be nice, but you don’t have to. I still want some answers anyway.”

  “Answers to what?”

  Watly sat down fully on the chair’s cushion. “Why do they say it was Corber Alvedine who was killed?”

  “Because it was.”

  “It was a woman.”

  There was silence for a moment. “Yes, that’s right. It was,” Sentiva said dispassionately.

  Watly was confused. “You can’t have it both ways, Sentiva. Why do they say it was Corber who was killed instead of the woman?”

  Sentiva pushed out the cigel and exhaled the last of its pink smoke. “Corber was a woman.”

  CHAPTER 28

  “You are an incredibly naive man, Watly Caiper. Incredibly. In fact, I’m tempted to accept your insane story as truth on that ground alone. Do you believe every image you see on the CV? Do you think that every person on it exists? Or that they always exist in the form that you see them? You don’t understand that a person can be keyboard-manufactured for vidsatt?” Sentiva was staring at Watly as if he’d just told her that he’d always thought the world was flat. She had ignited another cigel and was dragging heavily on it between sentences.

  Watly was pacing now, back and forth across the carpet in front of her. “Are you telling me the murdered woman was Corber Alvedine? But I’ve seen Corber Alvedine,” he said loudly. “I’ve seen him all the time on—”

  “—on the CV?” she interrupted. “Is that where you’ve seen him? Ever seen him in person? Do you know of anyone who’s ever seen him in person? No? The woman you killed was Corber. Corbell, actually. She had always been Corber Alvedine. From the beginning. The founder and president of Alvedine Industries.”

  Watly stopped pacing and faced Sentiva squarely. “But why? Why the pretense?” he asked.

  Sentiva exhaled impatiently. “Because we decided on it. One of us had to be a man, Mr. Caiper. Corbell and I are mated. Poovuses. We have been for ten years. Up here things are different. Things are not like on First Level. Up here people want a certain image and it must be maintained. People want high-profile couples to be male-female. One must keep up appearances. We drew lots and Corbell became... Corber. Open same-sex relationships are not acceptable. So—for the past five years, every time you saw Corber on the CV, the image you saw was keyboard-created. It’s quite simple.”

  “But how...” Watly still didn’t feel he had the story straight, “how can you keep a secret like that?”

  Sentiva smiled again. “Oh, you needn’t, really,” she said. “It’s quite a common practice up here. Many do it.”

  “Why?”

  “For appearances, Caiper. For appearances.”

  The pink smoke from her continuous cigel smoking was getting thick. Watly waived some of it away.

  “Okay,” he said slowly, “so this woman, Corber—Corbell, or whatever—this poovus of yours—who would want to kill her?”

  “You, apparently,” Sentiva said abruptly, her smile gone.

  “I already told you—”

  “All right,” she jumped in. “You plead your innocence. If we accept that—and I must say you’ve almost convinced me with your stupidity alone—if we accept for the sake of argument that you didn’t do it, then everyone’s a suspect.”

  “Everyone?” Watly stepped closer. By now the swinging rifle was just a nuisance. It banged into his arm.

  “One makes a lot of enemies building an empire as big as she did within only a few years. And she was headed for politics. Big-time politics. Corbell was not always well liked,” Sentiva said carefully.

  “Did she have a specific political opponent?” Watly asked.

  Sentiva looked mildly embarrassed. “No one liked her politics, Mr. Caiper.”

  “No one specific?”

  Sentiva shrugged.

  “What about jealousy?” Watly asked. “Romantic jealousy?”

  Sentiva smiled and crossed her legs. “Again,” she said, “it could have been... anyone.”

  “Yes?”

  “I am... well liked,” she said, raising her eyebrows to punctuate the double entendre. Her Second Level accent seemed to be getting thicker by the moment.

  Watly took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind. There had to be an answer here. “Who knows the combination to the anxiety field?” he asked.

  “Corbell, me, and, apparently, you,” Sentiva replied smugly.

  “Nobody else?”

  “If you
’re telling the truth, then yes, somebody else does know it—the murderer.”

  Watly frowned. So far, all this wasn’t very productive. “Tell me what you remember from that day—the day of the murder.”

  Sentiva rolled her eyes and pushed out her latest cigel. She started speaking with boredom in her voice—as if she had recited the same litany of events over and over for the cops. “I had my usual exciting and glamorous Second Level day. I spent most of the afternoon working upstairs in Corbell’s office, helping her with some correspondence. We had dinner out. When we came back, Corbell went back up to her office and I went to my bedroom. All I remember was going to the window to look out. I felt a stabbing pain in my neck and that was all.” Sentiva shifted on the couch. “Next thing I know, I’m waking up stark naked on the bed and the police are pounding on the door.” Her cheeks seemed to be getting flushed with anger—no, with genuine rage. “Apparently, I had been raped.”

  Sentiva paused, sat up stiffly, and Watly watched the redness drain from her face. “And then the body upstairs...” she said, “the body of Corbell... it was...” She lifted her strong jaw up defiantly, as if to stave off tears. Her cheeks reddened again, but not from anger. She was making a strong attempt not to cry, it seemed. Not to grieve in front of the possible murderer of her poovus.

  Watly stepped toward Sentiva, searching her eyes. “Do you remember anything—a sound, a smell—from right before you were drugged?”

  She paused and seemed to be seriously pondering the question. She took a long moment. “Nothing,” she said finally, shaking her head.

  Watly pushed the cap back and rubbed his forehead roughly. “Did Corbell have a real rival? Is there anyone who had really expressed a strong interest in you lately? Someone who might want to get Corbell out of the way?”

  Sentiva looked irritated. “As I said before, Mr. Caiper. I have many friends. And admirers. Sex partners, even. But I have no lovers. Quite honestly, I know of no one who would kill for me.”