New York Dreams - [Virex 03]

by Eric Brown

  Desperation calls for desperate measures.

  Everything she had fought for, everything she had thought for, for the past eighteen months, was falling to pieces.

  She was slowly going mad and there seemed to be nothing she could do to help herself.

  Her com chimed.

  She pulled it from the back pocket of her leggings and kept on walking. ‘Yeah?’

  A small face looked out at her. Temple, her controller.

  ‘Kat, we need to meet.’

  ‘Where and when?’ She felt a stab of apprehension. She knew what this was about. Someone had seen her losing it outside some VR Bar, and it had got back to her controller.

  ‘Thirty minutes. Do you now Connelly’s on 42nd Street?’

  ‘Sure I know it. I’ll be there.’ She cut the connection.

  42nd Street? She could make it in thirty minutes if she upped her pace. She turned and headed uptown.

  Of all the controllers she’d had, Temple was the only one she didn’t get on with. The others had been good guys, who seemed to understand her. Temple was a slick, supercilious prick in his thirties who dressed like a prosecuting attorney and gave Kat orders as if he were talking to his rebellious teenage daughter.

  What if word had got back to him about her behaviour? What if Temple said that Virex had decided to drop her? They’d take all her stuff, all her com-systems and monitors, and Kat’d be like a snail without a shell.

  She got in thirty-five minutes later. The bastard was waiting for her, sharp in his immaculate navy blue suit. He was dark, Italian-looking. Gold watch and cuff-links, an emerald tie-clip, for Chrissake. It unsettled her that Virex was using suits like Temple.

  His look, as she entered the bar and ordered a pint of Guinness, suggested that he resented having been kept waiting.

  She took a thirsty gulp of the bitter liquid and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as she slipped into the booth. Her knickers squelched with rapidly warming rainwater.

  ‘Temple, what gives?’

  He slipped a small manila envelope across the tabletop. She pocketed it, feeling a needle through the paper. Her heart pounded. Work, at last.

  ‘A burn, right? The techs have cooked up a virus that’ll fucking work this time?’

  He had a unique way of expressing his distaste for her. He would simply stare at her, stare her down, until she looked away.

  She took refuge in her beer.

  ‘You know how unsuccessful the attempted viral attacks have been, Katherine.’

  That was another thing she hated about him. She’d told him early on that she disliked her full name, and he’d used it ever since.

  She slapped the tabletop, causing him to wince. ‘Fuck this!’ she snapped. ‘First the bombing goes down the john, then the viruses! Jesus Christ, we’ll be buying shares in VR next!’

  He stared at her. ‘Surveillance,’ he said. ‘Those in control, in their wisdom, want you to check the sites catalogued on the pin. Record the programs that run the Cyber-Tech core site, in particular. They’re progressing with their time-extension research.’

  Kat nodded, overcome with the heavy, suffocating sensation of defeat. She sometimes wondered what was going on. For months, before her lay-off, she had been doing nothing but record what the big three were doing, and relaying the information to an unknown source.

  The lack of perceived progress was sickening.

  ‘I’ll be in touch, Katherine,’ Temple said, holding the flaps of his suit jacket together as he rose.

  ‘Yeah,’ Kat said. ‘See you around.’

  She watched him step from the bar and hail a taxi. She slipped further down into her seat and rested her feet on the opposite cushion.

  At least, she thought, she would have something to occupy her mind for the next couple of days.

  Her com chimed, and she wondered who the hell else might be calling her. ‘Yeah, who is it?’

  The tiny screen flickered. A face looked out at her.

  She stared. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she whispered, her heart jumping.

  ‘Hi, Kat.’

  She found her voice. ‘Colby? It’s really you, Colby?’

  He grinned at her, all snaggle-toothed and hairy. ‘Course it’s me.’

  She shook her head, amazed. ‘What’s happening?’ She ran a little fantasy number: Colby had quit Virex, was coming back for her.

  ‘Things’ve happened, Kat. Big things. We need to talk.’

  She nodded. ‘Sure. Great. You in town?’

  ‘I’m in Canada, checking something out. I’ll be in New York by the weekend. I need to see you.’

  She laughed. ‘Sure. Can’t wait, Colby.’

  ‘See you then.’

  Kat leaned forward. ‘Hold it! What do you mean, big things?’

  But he’d cut the connection. She tried to return the call, without luck.

  She sat and stared at his stilled image on the tiny screen, grinning to herself.

  And just when everything had seemed to be going from bad to worse ...

  * * * *

  Four

  Once, around the turn of the century, White Plains had been an affluent satellite city of New York. Over the years the economic recession that had swept across North America had taken its toll. Businesses had closed, and sites marked for development had been left undeveloped or abandoned. Select outlying suburbs still maintained an air of defiant affluence; Maple Avenue, where Suzie Charlesworth lived, was one of these last bastions of wealth and privilege, and it showed.

  Driving up on the Interstate, Halliday had passed vast tracts of diseased and stunted trees, elm and elder mostly, with the occasional plantation of genetically enhanced pine, developed in the vain hope that it might withstand the blight that had ravaged the country just as remorselessly as the economic recession.

  Turning onto Maple Avenue, he was greeted by a startling sight. He wondered what would have been more surprising, evidence of real live maple trees in every front garden, or this: a display of holographic maples that stretched the length of the avenue in a blaze of bronze glory - a gesture at once visually arresting and intellectually futile.

  He brought his old Ford to rest outside a tall, three-storey weatherboard house, luminously white amid a lawn so green that it was either a holographic projection too, or genetically modified.

  After his VR meeting with Wellman, Halliday had tried to contact Kim. He’d called one of the restaurants she ran, but the manageress told him that she wasn’t there and that she had no idea where she might be. He’d tried her old com number, which he’d last used well over a year ago, but as he expected it was no longer connected.

  So he’d put off questioning his ex-girlfriend, relieved that the inevitable encounter had been delayed, and yet puzzled by her involvement with Suzie Charlesworth.

  He left the Ford in the street and walked up the sloping driveway. He climbed a flight of steps to a long verandah and paused before the screen-door. He was out of breath from the short walk. He stanchioned an arm against the woodwork and wiped his forehead on his shirt-sleeve. He would have to start back at the gym again, begin eating properly.

  He pressed the door-bell and awaited a reply. Was he as out of condition mentally as he was physically? He hadn’t worked for six months, hadn’t had to think through a case in that long, and he wondered if he’d be up to the task.

  A child’s voice issued from a speaker beside the door. ‘What do you want?’ According to the dossier Wellman had prepared, Suzie was an only child. So who was the kid with the brusque tone?

  ‘I need to talk with Ms Charlesworth. Ms Anita Charlesworth?’

  He heard the lock open automatically. He hesitated, waiting for a summons, and when none came pushed inside.

  He was in a cool, shaded hallway at once strangely familiar and yet unusual. It was a museum piece, something from fifty years ago with its flower-patterned wallpaper, parquet flooring and framed oil prints. The hall had the evocative aroma of beeswax polish and freshly
brewed coffee.

  It was familiar because it reminded Halliday of his father’s old house.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘In here. You want coffee?’

  The voice sounded from behind a door to his right. The kid’s voice, again.

  He pushed open the door and stood on the threshold.

  It was a facsimile reproduction of his father’s front room in the house he’d owned before his death last year: a similar three-piece suite, dark wood cabinets and, in the corner, something he recognised from his childhood: an old Sony television set.

  He was wondering if it was still working when he saw the girl.

  She was sitting on an upright chair by the window, her bare feet inches shy of the carpet. She was wearing a pair of cut-down denim shorts and a white T-shirt. She was blonde, perhaps thirteen years old, and her teeth were in braces.

  ‘I said, do you want coffee, Mr Halliday?’

  Like an actor fed the wrong lines, Halliday did his best to extemporise. He lowered himself onto an ancient sofa and sat back. ‘Don’t mind if I do ... Suzie, isn’t it?’

  She pointed to a tiny hexagonal table beautifully fashioned from what looked like mahogany. ‘Help yourself.’

  He nodded, but made no move to comply. He was dealing with a deceptively bright kid here, despite appearances. If she wanted to play games, he was equal to the contest.

  ‘Where’s your mom, Suzie?’

  ‘She’s upstairs, resting.’

  He nodded. There were any number of ways she might have learned his name. The house, despite its fin de siècle aspect, was possibly rigged with the latest surveillance devices, linked to some powerful mainframe directory.

  ‘I can’t disturb her,’ Suzie went on.

  ‘That’s okay.’ He took a bone-china cup from a tray and poured himself a black coffee, no sugar.

  He sat back, the delicate cup poised before his lips. He felt as though he were playing tea parties with someone who should have known better.

  ‘Actually, it’s not your mom I want to talk to. I came looking for you.’

  ‘Well, in that case, Mr Halliday, you’ve found me.’

  It was going to be, he thought, the easiest two hundred grand he’d ever worked for.

  But, even as this occurred to him, he realised that there was something about the situation that was not quite right. As he sipped the lukewarm coffee, buying time, he understood what it was. Wellman had said the kid was autistic.

  He could think of several words that might have described the precocious kid before him, but autistic was not one of them.

  He returned the cup to the tray and leaned forward. ‘Listen, Suzie, I’m a private detective and I’ve been hired by your employers to find you. According to Wellman, you didn’t show at work on Friday. You’ve been missing for three days, you didn’t ring in, and your employers were naturally concerned. If you can tell me what happened, and reassure me that everything’s okay and you’ll turn up at work next time, I can tell Wellman and things’ll be fine.’

  She was swinging her legs, staring down at her feet with a deep frown on her pretty face. She looked up at him, her eyes startlingly azure.

  He’d expected a hurried, maybe embarrassed explanation, even an apology. What she said left him open-mouthed.

  ‘But I don’t work, Mr Halliday.’

  He massaged his tired eyes. ‘You are Suzie Charlesworth, right? According to Wellman, who hired me to find you, you work for Cyber-Tech, in the time-extension division or whatever—’

  ‘I’m Suzie, but I don’t work. I very rarely leave the house. You see, I’m ill.’

  Halliday nodded. Was this a part of her illness, then? Did her autism have other psychological effects? He didn’t know enough about the subject to hazard a guess.

  ‘But last Thursday night you did go for a meal at Carlo’s, with a silver-haired man and a woman called Kim Long, right?’

  She was frowning at him, shaking her head. ‘I haven’t been out of the house for weeks.’

  He decided to call it quits. He’d talk to her mother, get Suzie to call Wellman and explain the situation, and then pick up his cheque from Cyber-Tech for services rendered.

  ‘I don’t think this is funny. You’re old enough to know that lying isn’t...’ He stopped himself; he was beginning to sound like his late father. ‘I’d like to talk to your mother. Could you go and wake her?’

  She shook her head, defiant. ‘That’s impossible.’

  He sighed. More games? ‘And why’s that, Suzie?’

  ‘Mother is tanked.’

  He nodded. ‘Okay, fine. When is she due out?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, could you go upstairs and check the monitor?’

  She hesitated for a second, then jumped off the chair without a sound and hurried past him. He watched as she left the room, dancing around the partly opened door as if wary of coming into contact with the polished wood.

  Come to that, he hadn’t seen her touch anything else in the room, either. She hadn’t opened the front door for him, or passed him a cup, or even opened the front-room door further to allow herself an easier exit.

  She either had a contact phobia, or ...

  She returned a minute later, again moving around the door with the quick twist of a slalom skier.

  As she resumed her place on the chair, Halliday watched the crimson brocade cushion.

  ‘She’ll be in there another twelve hours, Mr Halliday. She left instructions not to be disturbed.’

  He nodded and moved from his chair. He knelt before the girl, staring into her bright blue eyes.

  He had to admit, it had had him fooled.

  She was almost perfect.

  She smiled at him, shy. ‘What?’ she said.

  He reached out, as if to cup her cheek, and his fingers passed through her flesh. His hand appeared to be buried, surreally, up to the wrist in the girl’s head. His fingertips touched something, and he made a grab, his fist closing around a small, cold metallic object.

  Instantly, Suzie Charlesworth disappeared.

  He returned to his seat, hand grasped before him triumphantly as if he’d managed to snatch a fly in mid-air.

  He held the device between his thumb and forefinger. The projection, released, relayed a partial image of the girl. Halliday’s hand was still planted in her skull; her torso was complete. But her legs were cut off where they came into contact with his lap. The visual effect of the holographic projection was as if their two forms were melded, some face-to-face bi-sexual Siamese twin.

  His hand vibrated as the device relayed her words. ‘Pretty clever, Mr Halliday. You really are some super detective.’ And she smiled, sweetly.

  He released the device. For a second, the image of Suzie remained standing with her legs buried in his lap. Then she retreated and sat on the high-backed chair.

  ‘Why the lies?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t lie, Mr Halliday. I told you I didn’t work for Cyber-Tech, I told you I hadn’t left the house for absolutely ages.’

  ‘And you also told me you were Suzie Charlesworth.’

  ‘I never! You said you were looking for her, and I said you’d found me.’

  ‘Who programmed you, Suzie?’

  The projection hesitated. Checking the parameters of what she was allowed to divulge?

  ‘Suzie did.’

  ‘Can you tell me why?’

  Another hesitation. ‘Mother had me installed, as a kind of rehabilitation program for Suzie. It’s called mirror-behaviourism. Suzie was supposed to see what I was doing and saying and want to compete.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  Suzie gave a sly smile. ‘Suzie is okay as she is. She reprogrammed me, made me into whatshe wanted me to be.’

  ‘Which is?’

  The hologram girl swung her legs. ‘Someone who can communicate with her.’

  ‘A friend, right?’

  She sneered. ‘Suzie doesn’t need friends. She programmed me a
s a mental co-processor, if you like. A tool.’

  ‘To help her with her work at Cyber-Tech?’

  The projection nodded.

  Halliday poured himself another coffee. Far from feeling disappointed that he hadn’t after all located Suzie Charlesworth, he was intrigued.