The Resurrected Man

by Sean Williams

  The others were frozen too: Whitesmith with his mouth open on the other side of the room, Trevaskis to his left with his weapon already drawn but pointed at no one, Geyten on the right looking startled and Schumacher in the entrance to the kitchen just holding a glass in stunned bafflement.

  The instant seemed to stretch for minutes, but lasted probably no more than a second or two. And at the end of it Verstegen himself was the first to move.

  The hand came down and clenched into a fist. He spaced his words evenly and loudly, as though speaking to someone with a hearing impairment.

  “Are—you—insane?”

  Whitesmith shut his mouth with a click. “You'd better have a good explanation for this, McEwen—”

  “Does he, Herold?” Schumacher asked. “You tell us, eh?”

  “The onus is on me to prove nothing,” said Verstegen. “I'm not the one pointing the finger.”

  “Ha,” laughed Schumacher, but without a trace of humour. “And he's not the one with the gun pointed at him.”

  “I can change that, sir,” said Whitesmith.

  “No need,” said Trevaskis. “I already have.”

  “So there we have it,” said Schumacher. “Stalemate. Who's going first?”

  “I am.” Jonah's head ached. He hoped he would have enough time before the next memory seizure to do what he needed. “Marylin, keep that gun on Verstegen. Whitesmith, come with me. I'm going to get something from the kitchen.” He led the way out of the lounge with hands held high and pointed a toe at a cupboard. “Bottom shelf, black box. Shall I get it myself?”

  “No.”

  He backed away as Whitesmith opened the cupboard and produced the box. “This? It looks like a field medical kit.”

  “Congo Marines, 2047. Lindsay helped design the software. Bring it with you.”

  Back in the lounge, no one had moved.

  “Officer Geyten?” The woman stepped forward. “Officer Whitesmith is about to give you a medical kit. I want you to take a sample of blood from Herold Verstegen and run it through the kit's sequencer.”

  “To what end?” Verstegen protested.

  “I want to check your DNA. Isn't that obvious?”

  “Yes, but why go to so much trouble? QUALIA can give you the data instantly.”

  “I know. I want to double-check it, that's all. Are you watching this, QUALIA?”

  “Yes, although I—”

  “Just have that data ready for me when we ask for it, okay?”

  Verstegen relaxed then, and submitted to Geyten's touch. The blood was drawn from a vein in his forearm into a thin tube which she carried back to the field kit.

  “It'll take about ten minutes to process,” she said.

  “And it will prove nothing.” Verstegen's lip curled in easy disdain. “You're bluffing, McEwen. Killing time and hoping for an inspiration.”

  “Not this time.” The bulge under Verstegen's armpit caught his eye again. “Someone disarm him, please—and tell us all what sort of pistol he's carrying.”

  Verstegen handed over the pistol with a scowl. “It's a .42 Holkenhill, of course. The same sort of gun you use. But if you think that's significant, you're wrong. The serial numbers are different.”

  “He's right,” said Whitesmith, studying the engraved numerals.

  “He could've changed it the same way the note Marylin left for me was changed,” Jonah said. “By d-med. That's what happens when you start screwing around with reality—eh, Schumacher?”

  KTI's senior executive looked up, as though startled to have been addressed. “What was that? I thought I could sit back and ride this out.”

  “Don't play the idiot, man. You're giving new life to a technique that started with altering photographic plates: tampering with evidence. Doesn't that worry you?”

  “Not in the slightest. Why should it?” The old man did indeed sit. “I just make the tools. I don't tell people how to use them.”

  “The oldest argument in the world.”

  “Spare us the sermon, McEwen,” Verstegen said. “If you've got something to say, get on with it.”

  “All right.” Jonah took a deep breath. “How about blindsight? Does that give you a hint where I'm heading?”

  Verstegen's eyes widened slightly. “I don't know what the hell you—”

  Then he stopped. His gaze turned inward for a second, then outward again.

  “How—”

  “For the people who aren't keeping up,” Jonah said, “I've just shut down all electronic links from this building to Artsutanov Station—apart from mine and, through me, QUALIA's. Temporarily, I assure you,” he said, raising his voice over the immediate protest, “and without increasing anyone's danger. A visual feed is being relayed to the security teams outside, so they'll know you're all safe. I'm sorry about the inconvenience, but I wanted to make sure word didn't get somewhere in particular.”

  He held Verstegen's stare a second longer, then turned away and sat down.

  “You haven't explained how you did it,” Whitesmith said.

  “The same way the Twinmaker does. Using ACHERON. The word ‘blindsight’ triggered the shutdown.”

  “Wait, wait,” said Marylin. Her weapon was still in her hand, although she had ceased covering Verstegen with it as soon as he was disarmed. “If he's not the Twinmaker or ACHERON, then what's the fuss about?”

  “And what does it have to do with blindsight?” asked Schumacher.

  “What the hell is blindsight?” asked Whitesmith.

  “Blindsight is caused by damage to the primary visual cortex,” Geyten explained. “It's characterised by a conscious inability to see objects about which information is unconsciously known. That is, a person with blindsight might deny being able to see me, but their eyes would track me if I moved across the room, and they would know where I was at any time even if they could not explain how they knew.”

  “I had something like blindsight when I woke here six days ago.” Jonah picked up the thread before someone else could interrupt. “I knew things but couldn't explain why. It was like I was processing information without knowing it; working out how I had done it afterwards was sometimes very difficult. I'm much improved now, but I'll never forget what it felt like. I'd lost control over a part of myself I value very highly.”

  “Do you think you'll ever get it back?”

  He ignored Verstegen's interruption. “InSight did that to me,” he said, “at the same time as it encapsulated a week's worth of memory—which was very convenient for the people who injected me with it, since in that week I'd discovered a fair amount about Lindsay's work that they didn't want me to know.”

  “So that's what this is about,” Marylin said. “It's Lindsay, not the Twinmaker. You think Verstegen killed him?”

  “I'm not saying anything of the sort. If I did, I wouldn't be able to prove it. What little evidence might have existed has been cleaned away or destroyed.”

  “But you're implicating SciCon,” said Verstegen. “That's clear enough.”

  “Or someone who used to work there, at least. Someone who knew Lindsay and his work, and who I contacted or who contacted me—or both—after Lindsay's death.”

  “That's pretty nebulous, Jonah.” Marylin looked almost disappointed.

  “It gets worse. Let's shift back to the evidence for a second, to explain why I can't be more specific. Everyone in this room has admitted at some point that there's a leak into and out of KTI. Yet you all act surprised when confronted with mysterious data. The hits on my UGI are the perfect example. I'm supposed to have been all over the globe in the three years I was in the bath, but there hasn't been one hit since. The only way to explain that is to assume that the information is being manufactured at this end. That GLITCH never recorded the hits at all. That the result of the search on my UGI was altered to incriminate me.

  “There are other instances I could mention: untraceable d-mat booths on Mars, blood spilt from nonexistent people, the security system failing to recognis
e the head of security himself, and so on. Every item has one thing in common. One missing link that ties it all together.”

  “And that is?” asked Trevaskis.

  “The information comes from or through QUALIA.”

  A burst of mocking laughter from Verstegen greeted the announcement. “That really is too much.”

  “Why?” asked Trevaskis. “He does have a point. We take QUALIA for granted.”

  “Precisely. Because QUALIA is trustworthy.”

  “But what would happen if—”

  “It's not possible, whatever you're about to suggest. Look—” Verstegen made a sphere out of his hands. “Everything about QUALIA is known. We designed a mind to serve KTI, and that is precisely—and solely—what we got. There are no hidden corners hiding despicable secrets. That's why we took out the unconscious that Carlaw designed into QUIDDITY. It would've made QUALIA too unreliable. KTI—and anyone who travelled by d-mat—needed something that could be depended on completely.”

  “Do we really have that?” asked Jonah. “Because if we don't, it's a serious flaw in the system.”

  “Yes, it would be,” said Schumacher, looking less than cheerful for the first time. “A very fundamental flaw. It would've been revealed by now. I can't see that we have any evidence at all for the existence of some sort of backdoor route into the very core of our—” He stopped.

  “Yes?” Jonah prompted. “Seventeen murders aren't enough?”

  “Very well, I'll order a series of diagnostic checks as soon as you reopen communications—”

  “But who runs the checks? Who processes the results? QUALIA does. Everything that happens in KTI passes through that central point. Is there anyone who fully understands how its mind works?”

  “Not ‘it,’” said Marylin. “E.”

  “Actually, I prefer SHE,” said QUALIA. “And I disagree totally with Jonah's accusation. My functioning is in no way impaired. I cannot see how I could have assisted a murderer without being aware of it.”

  “That's the beauty of it. Hopefully I can prove that when Jason Fassini gets here.” He checked the time. Only minutes away, if the agent had stuck to his instructions.

  “The DNA sequencing is finished,” Geyten said.

  “Check with QUALIA,” he said. “Make sure it matches the records.”

  “It does.”

  “No surprises there, McEwen.” Verstegen's eyes glittered with amusement.

  “Not yet. But if QUALIA has been compromised, that doesn't necessarily mean anything.”

  “If the Twinmaker knows how to control QUALIA,” Whitesmith said, “he might not be in KTI at all. He wouldn't necessarily be one of us.”

  “Good point. But here is the first place to start looking.” Jonah nodded at Verstegen.

  “You think I'm a serial killer?” Verstegen looked offended.

  “I know what the evidence tells me.”

  “But there is no evidence, as you yourself said.”

  “Then all we can do is speculate.” He smiled for the benefit of his audience. “I'm generally no good at profiling, but in this case, working backwards, I think I can build up a model of what sort of person the Twinmaker might be. For a start, he is single, male, and very intelligent—the type we see in most premeditative serial killers. His family structure might have been authoritarian—possibly abusive, although not necessarily. He can hold down a steady job, and even excell at it when he wants to, but his career history has been patchy in recent years. He might have been dismissed from a responsible position for being too careless, or for being overzealous. He's meticulous, capable of socialising with colleagues but generally not well-liked, presentable and outwardly stable. However, no one knows what he's really thinking.”

  Jonah paused to survey the room. He could see that his words were being matched against the personality of Herold Verstegen, as he had hoped. The idea was to suggest rather than to insist. They would come to the same conclusions as him, given time and the right information.

  “By nature, he's not a psychopath, although I feel he has a deep antisocial streak. His field—especially at his last place of employment—allowed him to earth feelings of violence and resentment by legitimising such acts as victimisation or torture upon anyone who defied him. In fact, it was his dismissal from this employment that resulted in the string of deaths we're confronted with now. Denied the gradual release, pressure mounted unbearably. He began looking for a means to vent that pressure. It didn't take long for him to come up with one—and an end to justify it.

  “At first the murders were simple. Cut throats, no torture—almost hurried. I think he was testing the technique as much as enjoying the kills. Only later, as the thrill of simple murder began to wear off, did he become more artful. The torture and dismemberment increased until even that was no longer sufficient. To maximise the rush, he turned to playing games with the MIU and KTI—teasing them, toying with them, waiting to see how long it took before someone cottoned on.

  “But even then, the superimposed justification didn't change. You've got to admire his intelligence. It's almost as though he knew from the beginning that he would reach this point—that he would need to go to such lengths in order to keep himself interested. Maybe he did know. The victims have always had Marylin's features and build, just as they have always come with WHOLE literature. Why? So I would be implicated, and later, introduced in person to muddy things up further. The same with the body in Quebec: it turns the spotlight on WHOLE, and adds the element of RAFT. He enjoyed putting the MIU off the trail. I dread to think where it would have gone from here had—”

  “What about Mars?” interjected Verstegen. “How does that fit into your theory?”

  “Easily. It wasn't planned. I went to Mars to confront the killer, but a copy of him had beaten me there. I was killed, and the copy escaped.”

  “Jesus, you've lost me now,” said Whitesmith. “The Twinmaker copied himself?”

  “Yes, to provide himself with an alibi. The copy did the kidnapping and killing while the original stayed behind. When the body was disposed of, the copy took the place of the original and KTI was none the wiser.”

  “But there can't have been another version of the killer,” Trevaskis said. “One extra body stood out like a McDonalds on Mercury. Two—”

  “Again, I can explain. There was no long-lasting effect on the mass/energy reserve because neither the copy of the Twinmaker nor the copy of the victim were real. They were hot-wired.”

  Verstegen laughed again. “Hot-wired? Really, where will it end?”

  “Let's hear him out,” said Whitesmith.

  “Seriously? I can't believe nobody else finds this as amusing as I do. This paranoid but undeniably enthusiastic amateur has cobbled a theory out of nothing more than scraps. It will disintegrate under the slightest examination.”

  “Actually,” said QUALIA, “I have evidence to support the conjecture.”

  The announcement surprised even Jonah—but none more than Verstegen, judging by his expression.

  “You do?”

  “Yes, sir. During the course of my work in the last couple of days, as you know, I have examined a recurring irregular drop in the Pool's mean latency known as the Novohantay Sequence. Each event corresponds with one of the seventeen murders. While the cause is not conclusively known, a similar effect appeared in the Pool when Jonah was hot-wired earlier today. It may be that the Novohantay events indicate the use of the Pool by the Twinmaker to simulate both himself and his victim.”

  “Can we check that?” asked Trevaskis.

  “I doubt it,” said Jonah. “Any evidence would have been erased—”

  “But the Sequence itself is real,” Schumacher said.

  Verstegen nodded. “QUALIA showed it to us yesterday.”

  “You'll have to produce more than that, though, to connect it to Herold.”

  “You're right,” Jonah conceded. “It could've been anyone here. But we can at least test the theory, now. All we need i
s a sample of his blood, which we have, and—” he checked the time “—and Jason Fassini, wherever the hell he's got to.”

  “His synthesis should be complete in three minutes.”

  “QUALIA, please stay out of this.”

  “Yes, Jonah.”

  Marylin glanced at the d-mat. “He's coming here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “He has the evidence I need.”

  “What evidence?”

  “The evidence I couldn't gather while I was hot-wired, or after. I asked him to get it while we were all in transit, so he wouldn't be observed.”

  “Clever tactic,” said Verstegen, nodding in appreciation. “I presume that's why we're here in the first place? That it actually has nothing to do with symmetry or privacy?”

  “That's right. Does that bother you?”

  “Only inasmuch as you have wasted my time. I have better things to do. Don't you, Fabian?”

  “No one's leaving until I say so.” Jonah stood. “I've withdrawn the access I gave Marylin and anyone else in the MIU. You'll have to cut your way out if I don't give the okay.”

  Verstegen shrugged. “We can do that if necessary. I'm sure the guards outside would be happy to assist us.”

  “I'm sure they would, too, but you'd have to contact them first.”

  “Enough with the threats, gentlemen.” Schumacher shook his head as though at the antics of schoolchildren. “I don't like being locked up either, Herold, but I'm prepared to stay here until this is sorted out. And it will be sorted out, soon?”

  The last was directed at Jonah, who hoped so too. “I'm doing my best.”

  The d-mat booth depressurised with a hiss, drawing everyone's attention. The door didn't open, however, and it took Jonah a second to work out why.

  “House? Unlock the door to the d-mat booth.”

  As the door slid aside, Verstegen's sudden movement caught the corner of his eye. He turned—

  Click

  —too quickly and caught the edge of the curb. The car jumped, then settled back onto the road. He cursed his clumsiness; it had been months since he had last driven on manual. And now, when he most needed to be careful…