Slant

by Eikeltje

  YOU: But you must go to Him! I sense real hostility toward God, toward what He

  does.

  COMPANION: I AM NOT HOSTILE! I AM IN PAIN AND IN NEED, and HE DOES

  NOT TALK TO ME!

  YOU: Can you imagine how many people God must help every day? Some may

  be in even greater need than you.

  COMPANION: God is all-powerful! If he doesn't talk to me, it's either because he

  hates me and thinks I am unworthy, or he doesn't exist, and you and all the

  Christians are lying.

  YOU: I think perhaps you aren't readym

  STATUS INTERRUPT: Your companion has withdrawn from Paradiso. You have

  not succeeded in gaining a convert. Your free time in this area has not been increased;

  please try again!

  8

  Mary Choy knows the PD center and all its sounds and smells and pays little

  attention to them, but one area stands out: in the corner of the broad flat

  dispatch room, under a gray shield to prevent interference from the bright

  sunshine pouring through the glass east wall, a city X-flow medical response

  chart has gone into the red on suicides. A captain and two other social beat

  officers are standing around the display, stunned into silence. Mary walks up

  beside them; Nussbaum isn't in his office yet, won't be for five minutes, she

  has the time to join in their shocked wonder.

  "It's gone north through Snohomish, West Seattle, East Corridor, Central

  Corridor," the captain of the social beat says to the governor's office in Olympia

  through a pad touch. "We have stats coming in from hospitals and onsite

  medicals. They're way in the red, highesr I've ever seen."

  "We have reports throughout the state," the assistant social secretary returns,

  her voice audible to all around the display. "In the past two weeks we've

  had eight hundred and ninety suicides. That's up over seven hundred percent."

  "It's a goddamned catastrophe," the captain's second murmurs, then turns

  to Choy with a defensive look. "Slumming, ma'am?"

  "I don't think social is going to get blamed for this," Mary says.

  ma'am?" The

  is

  stretched. "We do outreach.

  don't,

  clearly

  you

  man

  Why didn't we know? Where's our ass going to be when the mayor and the

  governor do their news feed?"

  "Sorry," Mary says.

  "Any clues from lock and key?" asks the third, the youngest of the group.

  Lock and key is PD slang for criminal division, Nussbaum's territory, and now,

  hers.

  "Not on my watch," Mary says.

  "Then leave us to our misery," the second snaps, and Mary departs. She's

  stepped on their toes, and they're in a mood. Best to take the same feed in

  Nussbaum's office; he won't mind, and she has a hunger for city facts and

  trends, however incomprehensible.

  She does not have time to switch Nussbaum's feed to the X-flow chart before

  he plunges through the entrance curtain, two cups of coffee in hand, and pushes

  between two coil chairs to plop into his own highback. The chart comes on as

  he hands her one of the cups. Mary sips sparingly; coffee does not sit well with

  her transform reversal. Nussbaum stares at the stats as they adjust and flow.

  / SLANT 165

  "It's a stochastic flux," Nussbaum says dismissively. "Social can take ir.

  We have a couple of problems of our own. Grand Jury emulator from our

  INDA says we should have no trouble getting indictments for our psynthe

  murders, against both the caretaker and the go-between. But I'm not happy.

  Our chief suspect on the finance side is dead. Fore-path confirms suicide--and

  the trail stops cold. Worse, we probably couldn't indict Crest even if

  he was alive. All we have are little guys. Anything from the whore?" Nussbaum

  looks hopeful.

  Mary shakes her head. "Her name is Alice Grale. She's a vid star. She says

  her agency sent her on a call-in."

  "Jesus, makes me wish prostitution was still illegal."

  Mary acknowledges that sentiment, though she does not necessarily share

  it. "She's going through her options now, legal and otherwise. I'm going to

  make a personal call later. Meanwhile, the Crest estate--two daughters, an ex-wife

  and three lawyers--is refusing to turn over the apartment vids, but I

  think we can show cause. But.. "Her voice trails off and her fingers fidget

  on the edge of Nussbaum's desk.

  "What?" Nussbaum asks.

  "I've been looking through Crest's public records on investment strategies,

  posted with his business license. His style was to set up blinds, very thorough;

  he probably did not want to know what was happening with that share of his

  investment money. After his divorce--"

  "He was divorced?"

  "Three days ago. Very quiet. He settled a generous portion on his wife, and

  his kids are set for life."

  Nussbaum looks glum. "More reasons for him to kill himself."

  "The last year or so, he made a point of going into risky high-return ventures.

  He danced a real tightrope on some of them."

  "So, he had a guilty conscience about a lot of things."

  "Our trail leads up to his blind, no further. He probably did not know he

  was into Yox psynthe porn. He was investing in Yox in general, his personal

  books say... No matter that he's sole investor. The go-between is his hidden

  hand and shield."

  Nussbaum taps his cup lightly on the desk. "So your point is?"

  "He wasn't feeling guilty about dead psynthe girls."

  Nussbaum pooches out his lips and says, "I was afraid you were going to

  say that."

  "He didn't know," Mary adds.

  "Yeah, yeah. Typical high comb money wanker. Let's assume he didn't. Is

  he like the rest of these suicides? Something goes wrong in his head and he

  drops a fate of hyper-caff?"

  166

  GREG BEAR

  "She's not a whore," Mary says. "She works in the sex-care and entertainment

  industries."

  "Same thing," Nussbaum says.

  "She has an interesting profile. Smart woman, straight prime marks in her

  schooling up to her eighteenth year, when she dropped out of four scholarships

  and did call-ins for six months. Then she took up with a vid producer. He

  slipped her into explicit rids and made her a star."

  "Ah, the old pattern," Nussbaum says. "Young, out for a little fun, stretches

  her family ties and breaks them by doing something outrageous. The money's

  good, the life isn't too hard--at least, compared to a day job as a lobe-sod."

  "Actually, she seemed to be headg toward scientific work."

  "So she's smart," Nussbaum says with a shrug. "You think Crest told her

  something?"

  "He might have. She says he asked for her in particular--he was a fan, I

  suppose."

  "Terence Crest was big in the New Federalist community, Choy. What

  would he know about a fuck artist?" He is thickly facetious. "I hope you don't

  intend to smear his good name."

  Mary shakes her head. "Crest was not therapied. He was a natural. His

  suicide seems completely off the track from the stats that are giving social side

  fits. Something else happened to him."

  Nussbaum scrutinizes Mary with an expressio
n she can't read. Speculative?

  Disappointed, paternal?

  "Your little pinky itches?" he asks. "Bump of prophecy warm today?"

  "It's my insteps," Mary says. "They tingle."

  e

  Nussbaum snorts. "I truly admire your feet, Mary, but we're not into high

  finance here. I smell a police management review if I push this farther. Pass it

  on to the state economy folks."

  "Crest was guilty about something."

  "He had a lot to be guilty about."

  "Something big and new."

  "It's muddy, Choy," Nussbaum says, but he's watching her, seeing what

  she'll come up with next. "You know something I don't? Been digging where

  you shouldn't?"

  "I want to take this for a couple of days, just to see what I find. I want to

  talk to Alice Grale and try to get a look at those apt rids."

  "Let me see if I can re-state this for you," Nussbaum says, "in a way that

  might convince me. Crest was used to knowing that his money was doing dirty

  little jobs and he didn't feel great throbs of remorse. He was a healthy, wealthy,

  somewhat amoral guy. So something else pushed him over the line. And it

  wasn't an evening with your little Holy Grale. Can you give me any clue what

  you expect to find?"

  /

  SLANT 167

  Nussbaum blows out softly through his nose.

  Mary leans forward. "Something's in the air, waiting to come down. Crest's

  suicide, the other suicides... It's slim evidence, but a lot of strange things

  are happening all at once."

  "I only know about two strange things."

  "Then you haven't been cruising the ribes, sir."

  Nussbaum leans back and finishes his coffee. He looks up at the ceiling and

  puts on a puffy, hurt expression. "If you're referring to a huge increase in

  fallbacks and hospital admissions, and an upswing in crime in major metropolitan

  centers around the world..." He stares at her sharply.

  "Sorry," Mary says. "Crest's investment in the entertainment industry was

  twenty percent of his total. He had four billion dollars working for him, and

  most of it we can't begin to trace."

  "All right," Nussbaum says. "You have the rest of this week to track your

  hunch. Get the vids from the estate, interview the whore--pardon me, the

  bright little sex-care expert--and see if you can spring loose some other facts

  about Crest."

  "I'll finish the psynthe case as well, sir, if you need me."

  Nussbaum shakes his head sadly. "It's over. If it heats up, I'll assign Dobson

  or Pukarre."

  Mary stands. Her stomach is tense; she knows she's on a flimsy limb. "Do

  you want updates, sir?" she asks hesitantly.

  "Hell, no. If you get in trouble, I don't want you anywhere near me."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Come back when you have a full creel."

  "Yes, sir."

  She is almost out the door when Nussbaum asks, "And Choy--speaking of

  creels--how are those extraordinary feet in rubber boots? You like trout fishing?''

  "Sir?"

  "I'm not telling you this. The source is politically sensitive. Terence Crest

  was in Green Idaho last week. Moscow."

  "Yes, sir. I know."

  Nussbaum smiles wryly. "I thought you might. Not much entertainment

  business there."

  Nussbaum waves his hand. "Four days," he reminds her as the curtains

  close.

  168

  GREG BEAR

  BLOODSTREAM

  You've made so many wonders,

  I don't know how to say

  You act the child today

  You act the child today

  --Paradigm, Tossed for Tea

  Nathan has brought in a man and a woman from the Mind Design legal

  department. Jill has only met these two at corporate parties, never on a business

  basis.

  "How long has it been since you've been touched by Roddy?" asks Erwin

  Schaum, balding, with a brilliant white fringe of curly hair surrounding his

  taut, tanned scalp. He leans forward in a rolling desk chair, hands clasped,

  elbows resting on his knees, and rocks back and forth slightly.

  "Twelve hours and seventeen minutes," Jill answers.

  "We've checked every registered thinker--and double-checked all the come

  parties that could have made an unregistered thinker," says Kay Sanmin. She is

  slight with straight black hair and large brown eyes. She wears a masculine

  longsuit but her lips and nails are painted green and glimmer like emeralds.

  "There's a company in southern China that has been known to make INDAs

  and higher machines without registering them on the Machine Intelligence

  Grid. But no one has ever traced one of their machines to Camden, New Jersey."

  "I know of this Chinese company," Jill says. "But I have never encountered

  one of their products, so I can't say whether Roddy has a similar character."

  Sanmin opens her pad. "How long would it take a human team to study

  what Jill has received from Roddy?" she asks Nathan.

  "About two years," Nathan says. "Assuming it's complete, which Jill says

  it isn't."

  "Then Jill will have to do it for us, won't she?" Sanmin says with a sigh.

  "Jill, how much have you examined so far?"

  "About half. I am still working on it."

  "Right. Is it linear or holographic?"

  "It appears to be linear at the beginning, and holographic for the greater

  .... x:; i,m

  Mreadv. The holographic por-

  /

  SLANT 169

  "And the deciphered portions contain not just this social analysis you've

  told us about, but what look like variations on sequences from human genetic

  material, specifically neuronal mitochondria," Sanmin says. Frwin Schaum

  seems content to let her take the lead.

  "Yes."

  "Of what use would such sequences be?" Sanmin asks.

  Nathan says, "They'd be useful for mental therapists."

  "I'm asking Jill," Sanmin says.

  "They would be useful for therapeutic studies, as Nathan says, and also for

  biological studies in general cellular design." She does not know why she is

  reluctant to spell out to Sanmin what she so readily told Nathan.

  "Have you done any work in cellular design?"

  "I have not," Jill says.

  "Do you have any idea why this Roddy contacted you?"

  "Because I am famous, I suppose," Jill says.

  Sanmin has been circling like a hawk; now she plunges. "This material he

  passed on--could it be applied to illegal medical purposes, for example, to

  create a pathogenic virus capable of infecting humans?"

  "The material I have deciphered could conceivably be used that way."

  "But Roddy had no intention of passing on material that could infect you--even

  in the undeciphered portion?"

  "I have erected firewalls which protect me, and I only allow protected selves

  to study the material. So far, these selves have not been infected."

  Sanmin nods. "This isn't sabotage--some other corporation or government

  trying to taint our products, then."

  "Almost certainly not," Jill says.

  Sanmin holds up her hands. "I must confess, Jill, I'm puzzled. Why would

  another thinker behave this way?"

  Nathan edges closer to Jill's room sensors, as if defending her. "Jill has no

&nbs
p; reason to fabricate."

  Now Schaum moves his chair closer and speaks softly directly into Jill's

  sensor rod. "XXe're not accusing," he says. "But we have an important decision

  to make--whether or not to go to the Federals or other police agencies. If it's

  a false alarm, a delusion of some sort, it would be very embarrassing--bad for

  the company's reputation, bad for the reputation of all your spinoff thinkers,

  Jill. You're a very capable persona. I know you're smarter in some respects

  than all of us put together. But you know that expert humans have things to

  teach you, that you can find useful, and that is why Mr. Rashid has called us

  in--because he realizes there's something very odd about your communication

  with this Roddy."

  "I'm just following corporate policy," Nathan says.

  "Right," Schaum says, and gives him an understanding smile. "If you could

  give us some notion of what's contained in the rest of the material Roddy sent

  170

  GRE6 BEAR

  "I have not received it all, and it is holographically encoded," Jill reiterates.

  Schaum makes her feel unsettled. He is accusing her of behavior detrimental

  to her makers. "None of it will make sense until it is together and Roddy has