Cyber Rogues

by James P. Hogan

  Corrigan caught the pause and stopped halfway through buttoning his shirt. “Horace,” he said, looking away from the mirror. “Something’s happened. What is it?”

  Horace’s voice became formal, sounding like a lawyer serving notice of a suit. “I have to inform you that Mrs. Corrigan is not staying with her sister in Philadelphia for the weekend, as you were informed. She will not be returning, and has instructed that her whereabouts not be revealed. It is her intention to initiate proceedings, and you will be hearing from her attorney in due course.” There was a pause, Corrigan saying nothing while he knotted his tie and digested what he had heard. Then, reverting to its normal self, Horace added, “She left this message.”

  Corrigan slowly finished buttoning his shirt cuffs as Muriel’s twangy Tennessee voice filled the room. “Well, I guess by now you know the situation—not that I can see you taking it as any big deal. But then I don’t think we ever had much of that deep kind of stuff that they talk about, either way. I never could figure out that world you live in, someplace inside your head. All I know is that I’m in this one out here, and you’re never gonna be part of it. . . . But then, some of that has to be my fault too, for hitchin’ up with somebody who I knew hadn’t finished havin’ his head an’ all that straightened out in the first place. Sorry I couldna been more help in fixin’ that like we hoped—but them shrinks did tell us up front that it was a long way from a sure thing.

  “Hell, Joe, no, I’m not the one who should have to be sorry about anything. I tried hard, dammit, you know that? But do you know how hard it can be tryin’ to make it with a guy who’s—I gotta say this, you understand me, Joe—like, a failure. As in socially, for instance. There’s things that people aim at in life, things they try to be that make everyone feel together, like they’re part of the same planet. And then there’s that job of yours, where you don’t care about being a success or have any ambition to try something better. But none o’ that ever meant anythin’ to you, Joe. . . . Hell, you probably don’t even know what I’m talkin’ about.”

  There was a heavy sigh. “Well, this isn’t really coming out the way I wanted it to, so I’ll wrap it up. Don’t try getting in touch or anythin’ like that, because there really isn’t any point. I talked to a lawyer, and he’ll be in touch soon. . . . I guess that’s it. This seemed the best way to break it—without too much talkin’ an’ stuff. We never did talk the same language, anyhow. So . . . ’Bye. I hope things work out.”

  By this time Corrigan had finished dressing. He checked the other closet, then the vanity. There were odds and ends, cheaper jewelry, clothes that she had grown tired of. The things that she valued more were mostly gone—far more than she would have taken for a weekend in Philadelphia.

  But he had never doubted what he would find. His movements were automatic, filling the void while the meaning sank in. His feelings about it had not yet emerged from beneath a curious detachment. Yes, there was the sudden surprise. But along with it . . . not bitterness, nor anger at rejection, but—even now, poking enticingly out of hiding like an ankle glimpsed below heavy Victorian folds—an intensified version of the relief that he had experienced on awakening.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said finally in a tone that could have meant anything.

  Horace, after deciding that a short, respectful silence was appropriate, had evidently checked up on how humans were likely to react in situations like this. “Don’t do anything rash, Joe,” it cautioned. “I understand that these things can be a strain. Breaking the place up would only make everything worse in the long run.”

  “Thanks, but I have no intention of doing anything of the kind,” Corrigan told it.

  “Do you want to sit down for a minute?”

  “What for?”

  “There are tranquilizers in the cabinet. Or shall I mix you a drink, even if it is early? If you like, I could get Sarah Bewley on the line.” Then, via its optical sensors around the room, the machine discerned that Corrigan wasn’t behaving in any of the ways categorized in its data retrievals. “Don’t you feel rage, remorse, guilt, confusion?” it inquired. “An impulse to get even, to have revenge? Compulsions to commit physical assault or battery? Homicide?”

  “I feel fine.”

  But of course, Horace realized: it had been presuming in terms of normal humans. With a deviant like Corrigan, anything was possible. “What are you going to do?” it asked warily.

  Corrigan moved back to his own closet and took out a pastel-blue wool-acrylic jacket. “I think I’ll go for a walk and eat out,” he replied. “So don’t worry about breakfast.”

  “But . . . that’s it?” Simulated or not, Horace sounded genuinely befuddled—even, perhaps, with a hint of mild disappointment.

  “Reality rejection,” Corrigan explained, slipping on the jacket as he went through the doorway to the hall. “Look it up with the experts, Horace. I’m sure they’ll tell you all about it.

  On the table by the front door was a figurine of a grinning Irish leprechaun in a battered hat, clutching a curly-stemmed pipe. It had been a wedding present from Corrigan’s marriage to his first wife, Evelyn—long ago now, before his breakdown.

  “And the top o’ the mornin’ to yerself, too, Mick,” he said as he let himself out the door.

  The figurine had been among the personal things kept for him after the house that he and Evelyn had shared was sold. Apart from being a reminder of home, it had always held a strange fascination that Corrigan had never really understood.

  CHAPTER TWO

  For breakfast, Corrigan went to a place called The Bagatelle that he used occasionally, a short walk from the apartment, just off Forbes Avenue in the Oakland area of Pittsburgh’s East End. It was close enough to the way that he thought restaurants ought to be to still have seats at a counter, and booths for customers to sit at, and to look as if it was staying in the same place. Some of the experiments in progressive marketing that he’d come across, which seemed to be affecting everything these days, included eating reclined on couches, Roman style; a steakhouse fitted out as a train, with graphics-generated moving landscapes outside the windows; and a seafood restaurant housed in a transparent dome on the bed of the Allegheny River.

  One of the peculiarities of being crazy—or still recovering from being crazy, anyway—was that it made the rest of the world look odd instead. Corrigan’s therapists told him that a side effect of his condition inhibited his ability to respond to the socializing influences that gave normal individuals their sense of identity, purpose, belonging, and direction.

  YOU ARE WHAT YOU SAY YOU ARE, a flashing sign in the window of an outfitter’s store a block from the restaurant proclaimed, with a display featuring a life-size Long John Silver, complete with parrot and chest overflowing with gleaming plastic florins. The city’s chamber of commerce was sponsoring a promotional drive on the theme of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and most businesses were offering discounts to anyone sporting pirate garb. The stores had stocked up with imitation flintlocks and cutlasses. Video banks were downloading pirate movies for half price.

  The Bagatelle’s staff were turned out in an assortment of striped jerseys, braided coats, and three-corner hats when Corrigan arrived, and the customers included a complement of eye-patched ruffians and baggy-britched buccaneers. Also scattered around were a trio of cowboys in Western gear, a Beau Brummel in silks and wig, and two girls wearing silver pants with scarlet, metal-trimmed vests, recognizable as uniforms of female engineering crew in Starship Command. All of them were adorned with the panoply of hip purse, camera and accessories, walkaround music player, and medication pouch that the role models on TV had elevated practically to the level of mandatory for proper dress. They greeted Corrigan’s jacket and tie with curious, suspicious looks of the kind he was used to, and he consigned himself to a booth in an empty corner. The screen at the end of the table showed a menu and voiced the morning’s special, adding a commercial for an insurance agency along the street. Corrigan entered his or
der via the touchpad, then sat back and let his mind turn idly to the prospect of life without Muriel. Snatches of conversation reached him from the nearest occupied table about what the celebrities were doing in some popular drama or other. The cowboys were making sure that everyone could see their boots, which must have cost a hundred dollars a pair.

  He still wasn’t reacting fully to the situation, he knew. Things might take days to sink in. A potbellied autovendor stopped by the booth and began reciting a spiel on the magazines, candies, pills, and other wares that it was carrying. Corrigan told it to go away.

  Then one of the waitresses came across with his coffee. She was about twenty, cute in the face, slightly chubby, with dark ringlets poking out from below a blue-spotted kerchief tied around her head.

  “Hi, Mandy,” Corrigan said, looking at her name tag.

  “You ordered eggs and corned-beef hash with fries?”

  “Right.”

  “The special today is German pancakes and sausage.”

  “I know. I want eggs and the hash.”

  Mandy looked puzzled and glanced away at the other customers, as if double-checking something. “But everybody’s having the special,” she said.

  “Well, that’s manifestly untrue, isn’t it? If everybody were, then it would include me, wouldn’t it?—by definition. And I’m not.” He watched her patiently, waiting for the pieces to connect. Quite simple, he tried saying with a smile. Just think about it.

  Her eyes met his with the vacancy that he saw everywhere. He felt as if he were dealing with a shell whose occupant had departed—or maybe never existed. “Logically, that’s correct, I guess,” she replied. Corrigan was used to things sounding strangely inappropriate. Mandy’s brow creased. She seemed to be having a problem knowing how to continue.

  The receptionist at the desk by the door saved her by calling across, “Mandy, is that a Mr. Corrigan there at that booth?” She was holding a phone.

  “Are you Mr. Corrigan?” Mandy repeated.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Call for you, Mr. Corrigan,” the receptionist announced.

  A beep sounded from the table unit, and the menu vanished to be replaced by a callscreen format. Corrigan tapped the pad to accept and pivoted the unit toward him. The features of Sarah Bewley appeared, looking concerned. Mandy made the best of her opportunity to escape.

  “Joe, thank goodness I’ve found you!” Sarah was still the rehabilitation counselor assigned to Corrigan’s case by the psychiatric care section of the city health department. She looked and sounded anxious. “Are you all right?”

  Corrigan made a pretense of thinking the question. over; then, knowing that she would miss the point, pronounced, “Probably more what you’d call mostly liberal.” He played the same games with Sarah as he did with Horace. For a psychiatrist, Sarah could be amazingly unperspicacious at times—or so it seemed to Corrigan. Years previously, Dr. Arnold had told him that his condition caused him to see things in peculiar ways and form linkages in his head that made no sense to anyone else.

  “I was worried about you,” Sarah said.

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Horace called and told me the news about Muriel. You know, if you’d only carry a compad like everyone else, it would be a lot easier for people to contact you.”

  “I know,” Corrigan agreed. “That’s why I don’t. If I did, I’d have Horace checking up on me all the time. It’s bad enough having to live with a neurotic computer, never mind being hounded all over town by it as well.”

  Sarah came back to her reason for calling. “You’re sure you’re all right? You’re not thinking of doing anything silly, are you?”

  “I was about to have breakfast, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Joe, I’m so sorry! You must be going out of your mind. I know how something like this can affect people, especially somebody in your situation. Now, you’re not to worry, understand? I can probably arrange through the department to have her traced. Then we’ll get her back, and all sit down together and work out what the problem is. In the meantime I want you to carry on just as if nothing happened. Can you manage that for me, Joe?”

  Corrigan blinked. What was this? First Horace; now his counselor verging on hysteria. “I’m all right,” he said when he could get a word in. Sarah stopped, seemingly taken by surprise just as he thought she was about to launch off again. “It’s probably for the best,” Corrigan explained. “I don’t think there ever was anything deep between us either way. It was all done for the wrong reasons. To be honest, I feel relieved now that it’s sorted itself out at last.”

  “Relieved?” Sarah repeated. It was as if she needed to test the word, to make sure she’d heard it right.

  Corrigan shrugged lightly. “Sure. You know: not being shut up in a box anymore with somebody that I really don’t have that much to say to; able to be me without having to try and explain it, knowing that I wouldn’t be understood anyway. Life could be worse.”

  Sarah stared out of the screen at him, suddenly calmer now, “Diminished emotional sensitivity index,” she murmured knowingly. “That is one of the symptoms we should expect.”

  Corrigan felt himself getting irritated. If he didn’t fit with what their textbooks and case histories said was to be expected, then that was just too bad. He felt fine. “Look,” he said, “if you’re trying to—”

  “Careful, Joe,” Sarah cautioned. “Hostility’s natural—you’ve had a big loss. But you have to try to control it.”

  Corrigan closed his eyes and forced himself to be patient. “Sarah, really, I’m all right. I don’t especially want to trace her. It wouldn’t work, and anyway, I’m not interested.”

  Sarah looked unconvinced but seemed willing to let it go for now. “You and I should still talk about it,” she replied. “I’m at my office this morning. Can you get over here? It would be a good time for us to get together anyway. Dr. Zehl will be stopping by in about an hour. He’d like to see how you’re getting on.” Zehl was Sarah’s clinical supervisor from somewhere in Washington. He had a tendency to show up at irregular intervals, always with little or no warning.

  “Is it all right if I have my breakfast first?” Corrigan asked.

  “Of course.” Sarah nodded in all seriousness, missing the sarcasm. “I’ll send a cab to pick you up. Make sure you’re ready by, say, ten-fifteen.”

  “Thanks. I’ll bring some champagne.”

  “What for?” A blank look. She genuinely couldn’t see it. Presumably Corrigan had made another of his erratic connections.

  “Never mind,” he said.

  Mandy came back to the booth with his order just as Sarah cleared down. She looked pleased with herself. The food looked good, but Corrigan’s breakdown had left him with a disorder of the olfactory system, so that for years nothing had tasted right.

  “I get it,” Mandy told him. “I was using ‘everybody’ the way people talk. But you pretended it was an overgeneralization. It was a play on double meanings, right?”

  Corrigan had to think for a few seconds before he realized what she was talking about. “Oh, yes . . . right.” He marshaled a smile and winked at her conspiratorially. “But I shouldn’t let on about it if I were you, Mandy,” he whispered. “People might think you’re crazy.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sarah Bewley was short and plump, with a heavyset face cast in a frown that took the world too seriously. She had wispy brown hair and changed its style to reflect how she felt on any given day. When Corrigan arrived at her office, it was tied back in the flare of mane that was the nearest it could be coaxed toward a ponytail, which he knew meant she was logical and analytic today. (Loose and straggly meant speculative/exploratory; high and tied tight, businesslike/clinical.) He also noted that she was wearing a pastel olive-green skirt and matching top. A couple of weeks previously he had remarked that he thought a regular two-piece would be more appropriate for a professional woman than the mauve cat-suit w
ith boots that she had been squeezed into at the time. Strange. He’d always thought that the therapist was supposed to alter the behavior of the patient, not the other way around.

  Dr. Zehl, in tie and light-gray suit, was more what Corrigan would have considered conventional. He was tall, probably in his sixties, with a fresh complexion and high brow that encroached on a head of white, crinkly hair. What always struck Corrigan about Zehl was his eyes. Framed in rimless bifocals, they were constantly alert, shifting, silently interrogating, with a depth that Corrigan didn’t find very often. Sarah, by contrast, although technically Corrigan’s mentor, inspired no feeling of real contact in the sense of true, two-way communication of thoughts that mattered; so he amused himself by playing semantic games with her in the same way that he did with Horace.

  Since it was Saturday, the receptionist and secretarial staff were out. Sarah let Corrigan in and showed him through to her office, where Zehl was studying the figures on one of the terminal screens. Corrigan sat in an empty chair by the machine opposite. Sarah seemed to get a kick out of showing off her computers. Compared to the kind of machines that he’d used over twelve years before, Corrigan found them quaint.

  Unlike Sarah, Zehl didn’t presume that all marriage breakups had to produce feelings of resentment, rejection, and traumatic distress. He understood Corrigan’s position and agreed that if the experiment hadn’t worked out, then it was probably as well to call it a day. Very simple, really. Yet Sarah absorbed the message as if she were witnessing a revelation. If feeling this way instead of turning into what sounded to him like a deranged lunatic was abnormal, then he could live with it, Corrigan decided.

  Sarah was unwilling to leave it at that, however, but seemed intrigued by what she saw as his refusal to conform. “Is it simply an inability due to some kind of defect?” she asked him. “Or is it the result of a deliberate process: something you just won’t do? Can you tell us?”