by Eric Brown
‘If you’d just let me get dried and dressed . . .’
‘Of course, of course,’ he said as he backed from the room. ‘We’ll discuss the matter of a refund...’
Halliday closed the door. He dried himself on the gown and dressed quickly, thinking only of what might have happened to Joe Kosinski. In VR Joe had burned, and the yak-thing had sliced him to ribbons, but were the injuries he sustained in the virtual world any indication of what had happened to him in reality? He felt sick at the thought, and there appeared unbidden in his mind’s eye the image of a gangly Joe Kosinski in faded jeans and an ancient T-shirt.
He recalled the address of the safe house Joe had given him. Somewhere on the Upper West Side, West 86th Street, off Amsterdam Avenue. He tried to recall the house number.
He slipped from the office. The waiting room was a confusion of technicians, security guards, and customers pulled prematurely from their virtual worlds. The red-uniformed hostesses - whose fixed smiles now possessed a quality of desperation - moved among the melee with ineffectual words of reassurance. Halliday took the opportunity to slip unnoticed around the milling crowd and exit the bar, the cold air hitting him with a sobering rush.
As he made his way to the car, he saw that it was beginning to snow: flakes the size of confetti drifted down through the frigid night air.
He U-turned in the empty street and accelerated uptown. It occurred to him to make a detour and call in at Connelly’s first, to pick up the program Joe had left there. He thought about it, decided that the program could wait. He knew where it was; there was no way LINx could obtain the program now that Dan Reeves was dead; and his paramount concern at the moment was the need to know if Joe Kosinski was okay.
As he drove, he tried to imagine how LINx had discovered Joe’s presence in the Mantoni virtual reality. According to Joe, the Mantoni system was secure, and there should have been no way that LINx could have gained access. No way, but it had, and there had been something almost mocking in its disguise as a yak, its terrible transformation into the mechanical killing machine. Halliday considered the irony of the situation: the creation had outstripped the knowledge of its creator.
He gripped the steering-wheel. He told himself that perhaps Joe had survived, had managed to leap from the tank, despite what had happened to his virtual image. He realised that Wellman and Barney would have been in the safe house: perhaps they had seen something amiss, noticed the jelly heating up and done something to get Joe out. Even as he tried to convince himself of this, a small, treacherous voice in his head advised him not to build up his hopes.
He reached the Upper West Side as the snow started to fall in earnest. He slowed, leaning forward to peer through the white-out. He was forced to edge forward at walking pace, cursing impatiently.
Minutes later he turned onto West 86th Street. Now, what was the number?
In the event, he found the safe house with the help of the silver Cyber-Tech van. As he watched, Ralph and two other technicians, loaded with equipment, hurried from the vehicle and up the drive of a tall, red-brick townhouse.
The sight of the van filled him with apprehension.
He pulled into the kerb and jumped out. Snow caught in his eyebrows, stung his face with tiny kisses of cold. He caught up with Ralph as he was stepping through the front door. ‘What’s happening, Ralph? How’s Joe?’
‘Just been called out, Mr Halliday.’ He shrugged. ‘Mr Wellman sounded pretty cut up.’
Halliday nodded, his stomach churning. The techs were mounting the stairs. Halliday followed. They filed into a room furnished with computer hardware, and Halliday stopped, aware of the smell.
He heard a noise behind him. Wellman was stepping from a bathroom, his right hand enclosed in a bright yellow burns mitten. He was pale, and for once his suit was dishevelled, the waistcoat unbuttoned and the tie askew.
He looked up. ‘Thank Christ you made it, Halliday. I didn’t know . . .’
‘Joe?’ Halliday said, his voice catching.
Wellman just stared at him, and then shook his head.
It was all Halliday could do not to cry out loud. He moved towards the room crammed with hardware.
The floor was slick with jelly, and his boots ground shards of glass through the viscous film that covered the carpet. The tank was shattered. Joe Kosinski had failed to get out in time, and his body lay in a few inches of molten jelly congealed like burned toffee. The body was a shrivelled mummy, horribly contorted, one hand outstretched in a futile gesture.
Halliday looked away, registered the technicians as they examined the banked computer terminals. He saw, on the floor by the door, a red carnation: it had been ground into the carpet by the heel of a shoe.
He stepped from the room and sat on the bottom step of the staircase that rose to the third floor. Wellman joined him, leaning against the banister rail.
Halliday dashed something from his eyes, moisture which he told himself was melted snowflakes.
‘How did you get away?’ Wellman asked.
Halliday screwed his thumbs into his eyes, reliving those last terrible seconds in the Himalayasite. ‘It happened so fast. This . . . thing, it attacked him.’
Wellman nodded. ‘I had it on screen. We were watching. There was nothing we could do. LINx attacked, and the next thing I knew, the jelly was bubbling. I tried to pull him free . . .’ He raised his mittened hand.
‘When the thing attacked Joe,’ Halliday said, ‘it turned to me. I quit the site. The jelly was already heating. I got out before it blew.’
‘I thought it’d got you too, Halliday.’
He stared down at the carpet, then looked up. ‘How did it happen?’ he asked. ‘How did it kill Joe?’
Wellman shook his head. ‘According to Joseph, the Mantoni VR was a closed link. He told me it couldn’t be breached. But Joe found a way in, and so did LINx. It’s as if it punished Joe for what happened to Dan Reeves.’
Halliday recalled what Joe Kosinski had said about Reeves, how he felt responsible for what had happened to him. He shook his head. ‘When will the killing stop? I thought when Dan Reeves died, that’d be the end of it.’
‘The killing will end now, Halliday. Thanks to Joe, LINx won’t last much longer.’
Halliday remembered the program. ‘I’ll go to the bar, pick it up.’
‘Barney left for the bar as soon as we found out that LINx knew where the program was,’ Wellman said.
Halliday nodded, pulling his communicator from his jacket pocket. He tapped in Barney’s code and waited. There was no reply.
‘I’ll go to the bar,’ he said, trying to keep the concern from his voice.
‘Pick Barney up and meet me at the Cyber-Tech office,’ Wellman said. ‘I’ll stay here a while, see to the removal of . . .’ He paused. ‘Bring the program back and we’ll make sure we exterminate the bastard, for Joseph.’
Halliday left the house. The snow was still falling, fast and thick, laying down a scintillating blue-white mantle across the street. He drove around the block and headed downtown on 9th Avenue. He turned the heater up and the radio on, tuned to some classical station. He’d witnessed so much death today that he felt almost removed from what had happened. It was as if his mind had yet to take in and comprehend what his senses had already absorbed: he felt incredibly tired, punch-drunk.
He turned onto West 23rd and approached Connelly’s, guided by the emerald glow of the shamrock in the window. A cop car was parked outside, and though Halliday registered the fact, he thought nothing of it. Wellman’s Benz was parked behind the cop car - so Barney was still in the bar. Halliday smiled to himself. No doubt he was calming his nerves with a couple of beers. He pulled in behind the Benz and hurried through the snow and into the warmth of the bar.
A big cop was leaning against the far end of the bar, recording a statement from the barman. A forensic drone, for all the world like an oversized pepper-pot, was floating in the air, taking photographs. Someone was sweeping up the broken
glass of a door at the rear of the room.
Halliday looked around for Barney; the place was almost empty, unusual for this time of night. There was no sign of Barney. Halliday told himself that he’d gone to the john, would be out any second. The cop finished taking the statement, pushed himself from the bar and made his way to the door.
Halliday moved to the back of the bar and pushed through the swing door to the restroom. Barney was not at the urinal trough and the stalls were empty. His stomach twisted, as if a brutal, invisible hand had reached down his throat and yanked at his entrails. On the way out he caught a quick glimpse of himself in a mirror. He stopped and stared, hardly recognising the pale-faced stranger that looked out at him with dead eyes.
He pushed into the bar and nodded to the black barman with the silver decals. ‘Joe left a package earlier.’
He stopped as he caught the guy’s expression.
‘You the third person tonight came in for that damned thing, man.’
‘The third?’ Halliday heard himself say.
‘First, an old white guy, he comes in and says Joe left something. So I hands it over and he takes a seat right here with a beer.’
‘Then someone else came in?’ Halliday said, trying to work out who it might possibly be.
‘You got it. Tall black guy comes in and says he’s come for what Joe left him. This could be interesting, I thinks. So I point to the white guy and say, fight it out with him, man - except the white guy’s high-tailing it out the back.’ The barman shook his head. ‘Like, when I said “fight it out”, it was a figure of speech. Didn’t mean he should go start shooting.’
The broken glass, the cop . . .
Halliday found his voice. ‘What happened?’ He managed to pull his identification card from his jacket and hold it before the barman.
‘What happened? The guy pulls his shooter, is what happened. Fired as the old guy disappeared through the door.’
‘Was he hit?’
The barman shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. Then the black guy goes after him and I’m calling the cops.’
Halliday pushed himself from the bar. ‘Hey!’ the barman called after him. ‘What the hell’s going on?’
‘Wish I knew,’ Halliday said, and hurried past the restrooms to the rear exit.
He knew Barney could look after himself, had every confidence that he would pull through. So he might be carrying a bit of weight these days, and more years than most guys in this line of work, but he had experience, and he was still a good shot. As he pushed through the fire-door, Halliday realised that he was trying to convince himself.
He stopped. Two sets of footprints disappeared into the darkness of the alley, a series of exclamation marks in the snow. The sight of something so graphic, evidence of a chase that had already happened and might now have concluded, filled him with fear. He pulled out his com and with shaking fingers punched in Barney’s code.
He stood in the cold, the com pressed to his ear, and willed Barney to answer.
The ringing tone rang out. If he wasn’t answering, that might mean one of two things. Either he was still running, and couldn’t answer the call, or he had stopped running . . .
He exchanged his com for his automatic and followed the trail of the footprints down the alley. One set was broad, the stride short; the second set, pursuing, was narrow and the stride ridiculously long. The following prints seemed to eat up the ground.
Halliday expected to find Barney at any second.
As he ran, for the first time it came to him to wonder who the hell had followed Barney. The answer was pretty obvious, he told himself, but it was an answer he could not bring himself to contemplate. The black guy had asked the barman for the package that Joe had left, which could mean only one thing.
LINx had yet another slave in its control, a third benighted human doomed to play out the wishes of his master. He tried to push the thought to the back of his mind.
He followed the footprints as they turned down another, even narrower, alleyway. He imagined the chase that had been enacted here, the occasional halts for exchanges of fire.
The alleyway ended in a low timber fence, its planks rotting and broken. He saw bullet holes drilled through the wood, and a great hole in the planks where Barney must have charged straight through. Halliday ducked under, found himself in a quiet sidestreet. To his right were the distant lights of a main street. The footprints turned in that direction, and Halliday felt a surge of hope, renewed. If Barney had managed to get to the main drag . . .
Then he saw the blood.
It had splashed holes in the fresh snow, staining the crystals a pale pink. He stared at the trail as it punctuated the whitened alleyway, a graphic Morse code signalling defeat for either the hunter or the hunted. He stopped in his tracks, stared at the double set of footprints and tried to determine who had been hit.
He backtracked, looking for the first drops of blood. He studied the pattern of the footprints. His pulse surged. At the point where the blood first hit the snow, the long stride of the Barney’s pursuer shortened, and the snow was scuffed where he’d hit the ground. So Barney had scored a hit, maybe buying himself time to reach the main drag and make his escape. Halliday followed the trail. The black guy had continued, but his stride was shorter now, erratic. For the first time since leaving the bar, Halliday allowed himself to feel hopeful.
He approached the end of the street. A sign to his right, a loopy yellow neon above a lighted window, advertised Ed’s Taxis. On the main street, three green cabs waited for trade.
Halliday slowed his pace. He followed Barney’s footsteps out into the main street, across the sidewalk to where the first taxi in the rank now stood. Barney had used the time he’d bought with his accurate shot to dive into a taxi, make his escape. Right now he might be back at the office, or at the Cyber-Tech suite in Battery Park. He looked about him, studying the sidewalk. He made out the black guy’s prints, accompanied by splashes of blood: the trail made its way to where the second cab waited by the kerb. So Barney’s pursuer had not given up; despite his injury he had continued the chase.
Halliday fumbled with his communicator, dialled Barney’s code. Again, maddeningly, there was no reply, and the hope he had begun to feel earlier now faded into despair.
He turned to the taxi office. He’d enquire there, find out where Barney had gone.
He was about to enter the office when his communicator buzzed.
‘Barney?’ he shouted.
A second of silence, then, ‘Hal,’ Barney said, and Halliday knew something was wrong. The word was hardly a breath.
‘Barney, where the hell are you, what’s . . .?’
‘Come and get . . .’ the frail voice paused for breath. ‘Come and get me, Hal.’
‘Barney - take your time. Where are you? Tell me where . . .’
‘Off Charles Street . . .’ Barney’s voice was so faint now that Halliday could hardly make it out. ‘Alleyway. Behind . . . behind the bowling . . .’
‘I know it Barney. I’m on my way. Barney . . . Barney?’
Silence.
Halliday ran to the taxi rank, dived into the back of the first cab. ‘Imperial Bowling, Hudson Street.’
The cab laboured from the kerb, seeming to take an age, circled the block and headed south.
Halliday tried to reach Barney again, but there was no reply.
He had almost got away. He had managed to injure his pursuer, make it to a taxi . . . Christ, he had done everything right. But the black guy had followed in a taxi, traced Barney through the streets. Had Barney made a mistake, then, his first mistake? Had he left the taxi and continued on foot? There was a subway station nearby, on the line to Rector Street, near Battery Park. Confident of having given his pursuer the slip, Barney would make doubly sure by completing the journey by train.
And then? Had the black guy been following him all along, seen him quit the taxi and resumed the chase?
One mistake, Halliday thought, just one m
istake was all it took.
The journey seemed to take an age. The snow fell in a relentless blizzard, making visibility poor and the road treacherous. They turned off 9th Avenue onto Hudson Street. Two minutes later the holo-façade of Imperial Bowling - a giant bowling pin, unoriginally - came into view.
Halliday directed the driver around the building, down the narrow back alley. Somewhere around here, somewhere close by, Barney was in need of his help. He stared through the windscreen, through the driving snow.
