Levels: The Host

by Peter Emshwiller

  Dr. Mitterly stepped into the tube back on Third between Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth and sealed the hatch behind him. Watly waited a moment outside it, giving Mitterly time to get to Second. Then he stepped in the tube himself, wondering how much of his makeup had run from the tears. Tears that were gone now. They had hardly been noticed.

  “Face forward, please.”

  Watly fished for the override cards. No sweet talking, no bluffing. Just a quiet ride. Easy as pie. And soon he was on Second Level himself. Walking a block or so behind Mitterly.

  Walking in the rain.

  The doctor had pulled out a birdhat and Watly could guess that the unusually wide wingspan probably kept him perfectly dry. As for Watly, he was soaked. But the rain helped. It helped his spirits. Real rain felt cleansing. The water was pure and cool and regular. Real rain like before Manhattan. Brooklyn rain. The drops were small and close together—not like the drips below. Watly tilted his head back as he walked and let the water bounce off his face and run down his jacket. The Second Level streets were empty. Aside from the occasional private vehicle streaking by, it was just him and Mitterly. Mitterly kept steadily on, not looking back once. The wings of the birdhat flapped slightly with each step. Watly kept his distance.

  After a few turns, Watly realized where they were going. They were almost there, in fact. Mitterly was going to the Alvedine residence. To the home of Sentiva Alvedine.

  You’re going to murder her, just like Oldyer, aren’t you, doctor? Watly thought to himself. If you kill her just because I spoke with her once—just to tie up that loose end—then I’ve lost my one Second Level connection. I’ve lost the one person in power who might become an ally. I won’t let you. I won’t let you kill again.

  Watly suddenly felt very calm. He was calmed by the decision he had made. The decision to stop Mitterly before Mitterly could kill Sentiva. In whatever way necessary.

  The doctor was climbing the front steps to the Alvedine house now. Watly stayed behind one of the flying buttresses of the building next door and watched. The blond man slowly reached the top of the steps, glanced around behind him, and then knocked sharply on the wooden front door.

  On instinct—now, Watly, now—Watly started out from behind the buttress and climbed quietly up the steps behind Aug Mitterly. His boots squeaked slightly in the rain, but not loud enough for the sound to travel. Just as Watly was almost behind the doctor, Sentiva opened the door.

  “Yes?” She was wearing something long and white that made her look angelic and vulnerable. She stared blankly at the doctor for a moment until her eyes shifted to the side as she saw Watly coming up behind. “Wha—?”

  This must have tipped Mitterly off. He whirled around, a large scalpel ready, those empty doll’s eyes of his gleaming. The birdhat flapped wildly, splashing water everywhere.

  “Watly Caiper! Mr. Night Host!” He smiled and lunged out with the knife. He knew how to handle a weapon. He didn’t wield it like a doctor, he wielded it like a trained assassin—like a man who was used to killing, who took pleasure in it. The blade was thrust out expertly toward Watly’s heart. It would have gone in cleanly and killed instantly. It never got there. Watly Caiper let his reflexes take over. Savage reflexes. Angry reflexes. He pointed the pistol and squeezed the trigger. There was the shock of recoil; Watly’s elbow was jammed hard into his own belly. Pow. Caiper shot Mitterly in the neck. One slug. Pow. That’s it. Blackish blood from a new hole.

  The hat vibrated for a moment and then flapped gently as Aug Mitterly gave Watly a look of serious startlement and concern, and then collapsed backward into the doorway. The blond-topped head twitched and spasmed. There were some choking sounds before he was dead. As dead as Oldyer had been. And Narcolo. And P-pajer....

  Watly dragged the body into the foyer and closed the door on the rain as Sentiva watched.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Sentiva. I think he came here to kill you. I’m sorry.” There was a lot of blood soaking into the hall rug. Watly was dripping wet. His nose was running badly. Sentiva stared at it all briefly and then straightened, composed herself, and snap-ignited a cigel. She was beautiful as ever. Pale and strong in her flowing robe. From two small frosted windows beside the door, shadows of rain streaks rolled down the front of her face. It almost gave the illusion of tears.

  “Leave him, Watly. You’ve got to get out of here.”

  In the dim light Watly looked down at the chip pistol he held, then to the body. “Here we go again,” he said aloud to himself. Death. Murder. Selfish/bad.

  “You’ve got to leave if you don’t want them to blame this on you too, Caiper.” She exhaled a cloud of pink smoke.

  “What’re you going to do with him?” he asked.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said with her Second Level superior voice. “But someone may have heard the shot. You’d better leave.”

  “How will you explain it?”

  “I’ll take the blame, Watly. I’ll claim self-defense. They won’t do anything to me. I’m Second Level.”

  Watly tried to see what was going on inside her head—what she was about. She was expressionless. Blank. “You’re helping me,” he said.

  “I’m helping you because you deserve it.” She turned toward the door. There was a pause. “I do believe in you.”

  Watly stepped over the body and nearer to Sentiva. He touched her shoulder. She tensed. “Leave while you have time, Watly.”

  It struck him that she was a tragically lonely figure. Lonely and sad. He felt bad that she had lost her poovus. Bad that she looked so alone. Rich, privileged, pampered, but very sad. There was something hidden about her. Hidden and distant. “Thank you for your help,” he said, not knowing any better way to put it.

  “Go, Watly.”

  Watly turned to the door.

  “Thank you,” he said again as he opened it.

  “I will...” she started, the words hard for her, “I will help you again if I can. If it wasn’t for my people, you wouldn’t be in this mess. Hosting wouldn’t exist.”

  “You’re not to blame,” Watly said as he stepped back into the rain. It seemed like he’d been saying that a lot lately. The rain was coming down harder now. It was difficult to see any distance. The street was a soaked blur.

  “I am part of the problem,” her voice came from behind. Watly started down the steps. He had to be careful not to slip. “Mea culpa, Watly Caiper. Mea maxima culpa.”

  Watly stopped in his tracks. His cheeks felt cold. The rain beat down on his head, running off his shoulders and splashing to the ground. Some of it got under his jacket and trickled its way lower, following the line of his spinal column. His drenched hairpiece itched. He turned back toward Sentiva to see her standing in the doorway. She exhaled more pink smoke. Her head was held high.

  “What did you say?” he asked softly. The downpour almost obscured Sentiva from him. She seemed transparent, cloudlike. The stairs and front of the building appeared to telescope in, squashing together and becoming flat as a chromell. Everything was on an angle now—the stairs, the door, the windows—all tilted. And the woman herself. Watly felt vertigo almost overpower him. He was sick. His legs wanted to give out suddenly. Cold. So cold. He held himself up by willpower alone. “What did you just say?” Watly’s hands were trembling.

  Sentiva smiled slightly. “Oh, dear, Watly Caiper. Have I blown my cover?” she asked. Her voice was oily now. Very oily. Wintery. It had a cruel and powerful undercurrent. If anything, to Watly’s ear her voice was evil. Pure, unadulterated evil.

  And deadly.

  CHAPTER 39

  A plan was trying to form in Watly’s head. It wasn’t succeeding. But he kept at it. Thinking. His mind was buzzing as he slipped his rain-soaked override cards into the tube’s slots. Holy rape on sunbean toast! Again, with no arguments the tube lowered easily down to First. Watly stepped out, barely awa
re of his surroundings now. He was concentrating. Somewhere in the equation, somewhere in all the complex stuff he was deeply embroiled in, there was a solution. Or, if not a solution, at least an idea. A chance. Some convoluted long shot would do, if necessary. And now the stakes were higher. Oh, rape, were they higher. Veils had been lifted—lifted from unexpected directions—and nothing was as he’d thought. It was a new game now. A whole new game.

  Watly headed—hardly realizing it—to the camouflaged sub entrance near Forty-fifth and Vanderbilt. As he walked, an unmanned copper buzzed by and slowed for a look at him, but Watly ignored it and it soon left. He was alone in the alley now. There was no one in sight nearby. Watly leaned over a pile of garbage. It was strikingly familiar, crowned with seemingly random strands of cable. He manipulated the pieces in the sequence Ragman had told him, and the hidden door slid aside. A quick glance around and down he went. Back to his new home. The subs.

  He set up the unicarriage himself, rolling it along beside the platform and locking its teeth into place on the rail. The cab bobbed forward and back as he climbed in, but quickly stabilized. Watly pulled the driving ringlet from its casing and the unicarriage slid forward. The tunnel walls streaked by. He wiped what was left of the makeup streaks from his cheeks and pulled off the soggy hairpiece. He would have no problem finding the way now. The Ragman’s directions had been clear. Watly could sit back and ride the unicarriage to the main platform. There he would meet the Ragman and Alysess.

  Watly hoped the Ragman would not be too upset about the chip pistol. He had not expected to return without it. Perhaps the Subkeeper would just be happy to see Watly alive. That would be nice. Alysess certainly would. And they would both be anxious to find out what had happened. Well, Watly certainly had quite a tale for them. They would be, he was sure, as shocked as he had been. As he still was. Rape on toast.

  It had taken a long while for the truth to sink in. About Sentiva. Back there in the rain, standing in front of the majestic Alvedine residence, Watly had felt nothing but bewilderment at first. Sentiva the donor? But he had not been so bewildered that he forgot about his gun. He raised the pistol up and slowly climbed the steps toward the strikingly beautiful woman. She was leaning in the doorway and puffing out casual pink smoke rings that vanished when they drifted out into the rain. One of her legs was crossed in front of the other. She exuded confidence.

  “I have, haven’t I?” she continued calmly. Those dimples came back into view. “I’ve given myself away. What a shame. Not to worry, Watly Caiper. Everything works out all right in the end.”

  She seemed totally oblivious to Watly’s weapon. Her strong jaw was relaxed. She stepped aside and let Watly back into the foyer. He kept the gun trained on her chest.

  “You,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  “That it is, my little friend.” She smiled. “Me.”

  “You are the donor.”

  Sentiva took a last long drag off the cigel and then dropped it on Mitterly’s drenched back, stamping it out with her heel. The dead body vibrated from the impact. “Love your pants, Watly.”

  “How could you be the donor?” he asked.

  “Gee, I don’t know.” Sentiva stepped over the body and crossed lazily into the sitting room. Watly followed, gun raised.

  “You were here! In the bedroom! You weren’t even in the Hosting Building.”

  Sentiva turned and her face went as cold as her voice. The eyes looked almost inhuman—like something mechanical. “Ever hear of cables, Caiper? Ever hear of wiring? What are you—stupid? I’m loaded, you fungus. I can pay for anything I want.”

  “You ran cables from the Hosting Building to here?”

  “Over months, yes. Little by little. Bit by bit. Different worker for each stage. Right to my bedroom. Right to the forked donor plates in my pillows.” She looked disgusted. “Now do you get it?”

  “You can be a donor from your bed,” Watly said softly.

  “Brilliant deduction.”

  “But why?” Watly tried to read something other than blank coldness in her eyes. “Why did you do it?”

  “To kill Corbell. Is that so complicated?” She looked at Watly as if he were a bug. “Is it beyond your comprehension?” she asked. “To kill Corber Alvedine. To stop her dangerous thinking and to gain control of the most powerful company in the country of Manhattan—possibly the world. Is that motive enough for you? That’s what I wanted from the beginning. And I’ve got it.”

  Watly stepped closer to her. She leaned back on the great wooden banister carved into the shape of a wing. She seemed taller than he remembered her before. He almost felt as if she loomed over him.

  “The perfect murder, Mr. Watly Caiper, is one in which the one who committed it would be the prime suspect—the only suspect—but isn’t... because she simply could not have committed it. Not to mention that someone else—” she nodded toward Watly, “seems to have been caught in the act. Airtight alibis and plenty of insurance, that is what I have created. Oh—and I always make sure anyone who knowingly helps me has more to lose than I do. A simple rule.”

  “Why didn’t you just hire someone else to kill her?”

  Sentiva ran a hand through her hair and shook her head slightly. It was almost the same gesture Watly’s mother used to make so often. “Oh, but you miss the point, Watly Caiper. You miss it entirely. I’ve been looking forward to killing Corbell for years. This was my reward. This was the prize I got for putting up with her—for pretending affection, gaining her confidence, listening to her spout garbage—crazy garbage. I even took her name, for rape’s sake. The company name. The name of an insane person. Corbell was a sick woman. A sick and very dangerous woman. She was going to run for Chancellor next election. She might’ve won, too. This was simply not acceptable. Not at all. She had a secret agenda. A revolutionary agenda. She would’ve turned the world upside down. Everything we hold dear up here would have been destroyed. She had ideas, Caiper, diseased ideas, about fairness, justice, freedom—all the old catchwords. If she had her way, diseased plurites like you would be swarming up here. Or maybe she’d’ve just ripped up the Second Level—torn out the roads so this island country was one level again—she spoke of that often. ‘I’ve got to help those poor folks down below,’ she’d whine. And I listened, Caiper. Day after day. Nodding politely and smiling. ‘Yes, my darling poovus, you will change the world.’

  “No, Watly Caiper. To actually kill her myself was always my aim. I would not have had it otherwise.”

  Watly shivered. He remembered what it was like having this heartless thing inside of him. This murderer. This badness. She was not just unfeeling, she was evil. She scared him. Where did she come from? How did someone get like this? Watly had to strain to remember that he was the one with the weapon. He was the one with the upper hand. But she didn’t seem to think so. Her well-toned body was relaxed, her expression one of utter confidence. She wet her lips carefully. Watly couldn’t help but remember her body naked. Funny how his mind worked.

  “The hosting... you had sex with yourself?” Watly asked. He remembered the strange, almost loving fuck; the donor’s comments—I suspect her dreams were no less vivid; the lifeless body, head half buried in pillows....

  She smiled and fingered her white lacy collar. “I’m the best. Why not? Anyway, you might say I took onanism to its logical extreme, yes?” She let out a burst of cold laughter.

  Watly felt weak and confused. “Well, it’s all over now. Everything,” he said slowly. Sentiva reached out to Watly’s waist and he flinched—almost shooting her right then and there, blowing her chest open—but she wasn’t attacking. She popped the ringlet on his belt with a flick and then backed off to the banister again.

  “Mea culpa, Watly. Mea maxima culpa. Just thought I’d pull your little rip cord to see what developed.”

  Watly suddenly felt incredibly embarrassed and small. He wanted to hide.
The pant bubble’s vacuum engaged and he could feel an involuntary erection developing. “Hey.”

  “Nice to see you still like me, after all we’ve been through,” Sentiva said. Again she laughed.

  “All right, now.” Watly tried to stand tall and dignified. He held the chip pistol lower, trying to block her view of his rising organ. He reinserted the ringlet, knowing it would take a while for the vacuum to shut off and his penis to empty and relax. Great. How To Make Watly Look Foolish: Lesson Number Eighty-seven. Shit, she knew how to keep you off balance. “All right, now. I’ve got you. Cut the crap. I know the story now. All of it. I’m going to turn you in.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly Watly took a step backward and had to stop and regain confidence before speaking again. “I have a gun,” he said. “And I have you. You lose. It’s over.”

  “No, Watly, it’s not over.” She still stared at the bubble, her eyes amused, condescending.

  Watly took a deep breath. “I have won, don’t you see? I know the truth!”

  Sentiva closed her eyes and looked impatient. “Where’s your proof, Watly? You’ve got no proof, catbreath. And if you try to make trouble for me now that you know it was indeed moi... if you try to make noise and raise some questions, I have you covered. You’ll keep quiet.” She smiled wide now and the deep dimples flashed. Her eyes were still closed, as if Watly weren’t worth looking at. “Poor Watly Caiper—do you think I’m a fool like you? Do you think I could come up with a plan as elegant as this—a murder this perfect—without safeguards?”

  “I have the gun!” Watly felt sweat on his forehead running into his eyebrows. “I could just kill you. I just might kill you.”

  Sentiva’s eyes popped back open, flashing. “Who cares what you ‘might’ do, you little fool. You can’t. I have insurance.” She started walking toward him. “I’m not stupid. I cover all my bases. All.”