by Dan Simmons
His laugh was short and sharp. “This one knows very little.” He read his fortune: be wary of sudden impulses.
I crossed my arms. “You know, except for that parlor trick with the bank manager holo, I have no proof that you are what you say you are.”
“Give me your hand.”
“My hand?”
“Yes. Either one. Thank you.”
Johnny held my right hand in both of his. His fingers were longer than mine. Mine were stronger.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
I did. There was no transition: one instant I was sitting in the Blue Lotus on Red Dragon Street and the next I was … nowhere. Somewhere! Streaking through gray-blue datumplane, banking along chrome-yellow information highways, passing over and under and through great cities of glowing information storage, red skyscrapers sheathed in black security ice, simple entities like personal accounts or corporate files blazing like burning refineries in the night. Above it all, just out of sight as if poised in twisted space, hung the gigantic weights of the AIs, their simplest communications pulsing like violent heat lightning along the infinite horizons. Somewhere in the distance, all but lost in the maze of three-dimensional neon that partitioned one tiny second of arc in the incredible datasphere of one small world, I sensed rather than saw those soft, hazel eyes waiting for me.
Johnny released my hand. He cracked my fortune cookie open. The strip of paper read: INVEST WISELY IN NEW VENTURES.
“Jesus,” I whispered. BB had taken me flying in datumplane before, but without a shunt the experience had been a shadow of this. It was the difference between watching a black and white holo of a fireworks display and being there. “How do you do that?”
“Will you be making any progress on the case tomorrow?” he asked.
I regained my composure. “Tomorrow,” I said, “I plan to solve it.”
Well, maybe not solve it, but at least get things moving. The last charge on Johnny’s credit flimsy had been the bar on Renaissance V. I’d checked it out the first day, of course, talked to several of the regulars since there was no human bartender, but had come up with no one who remembered Johnny. I’d been back twice with no greater luck. But on the third day I went back to stay until something broke.
The bar was definitely not in the class of the wood and brass place Johnny and I had visited on TC2. This place was tucked on a second floor of a decaying building in a run-down neighborhood two blocks from the Renaissance library where Johnny spent his days. Not the kind of place he would stop in on the way to the farcaster plaza, but just the kind of place he might end up if he met someone in or near the library—someone who wanted to talk in private.
I’d been there six hours and was getting damned tired of salted nuts and flat beer when an old derelict came in. I guessed that he was a regular by the way he didn’t pause in the doorway or look around, but headed straight for a small table in the back and ordered a whiskey before the serving mech had come to a full stop. When I joined him at the table I realized that he wasn’t so much a derelict as an example of the tired’men and women I’d seen in the junk shops and street stalls in that neighborhood. He squinted up at me through defeated eyes.
“May I sit down?”
“Depends, sister. What’re you selling?”
“I’m buying.” I sat, set my beer mug on the table, and slid across a flat photo of Johnny entering the farcaster booth on TC2. “Seen this guy?”
The old man glanced at the photo and returned his full attention to his whiskey. “Maybe.”
I waved over the mech for another round. “If you did see him, it’s your lucky day.”
The old man snorted and rubbed the back of his hand against the gray stubble on his cheek. “If it is, it’ll be the first time in a long fucking time.” He focused on me. “How much? For what?”
“Information. How much depends on the information. Have you seen him?” I removed a black market fifty-mark bill from my tunic pocket.
“Yeah.”
The bill came down to the table but remained in my hand. “When?”
“Last Tuesday. Tuesday morning.”
That was the correct day. I slid the fifty marks to him and removed another bill. “Was he alone?”
The old man licked his lips. “Let me think. I don’t think … no, he was there.” He pointed toward a table at the rear. “Two other guys with him. One of them … well, that’s why I remembered.”
“What’s that?”
The old man rubbed finger and thumb in a gesture as old as greed.
“Tell me about the two men,” I coaxed.
“The young guy … your guy … he was with one of them, you know, the nature freaks with robes. You see ’em on HTV all the time. Them and their damn trees.”
Trees? “A Templar?” I said, astounded. What would a Templar be doing in a Renaissance V bar? If he’d been after Johnny, why would he wear his robe? That would be like a murderer going out to do business in a clown suit.
“Yeah. Templar. Brown robe, sort of oriental-looking.”
“A man?”
“Yeah, I said he was.”
“Can you describe him more?”
“Nah. Templar. Tall son of a bitch. Couldn’t see his face very well.”
“What about the other one?”
The old man shrugged. I removed a second bill and set them both near my glass.
“Did they come in together?” I prompted. “The three of them?”
“I don’t … I can’t … No, wait. Your guy and the Templar guy came in first. I remember seeing the robe before the other guy sat down.”
“Describe the other man.”
The old man waved over the mech and ordered a third drink. I used my card and the servitor slid away on noisy repellers.
“Like you,” he said. “Sort of like you.”
“Short?” I said. “Strong arms and legs? A Lusian?”
“Yeah. I guess so. Never been there.”
“What else?”
“No hair,” said the old man. “Just a whattyacallit like my niece used to wear. A pony tail.”
“A queue,” I said.
“Yeah. Whatever.” He started to reach for the bills.
“Couple more questions. Did they argue?”
“Nah. Don’t think so. Talked real quiet. Place’s pretty empty that time of day.”
“What time of day was it?”
“Morning. About ten o’clock.”
This coincided with the credit flimsy code.
“Did you hear any of the conversation?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Who did most of the talking?”
The old man took a drink and furrowed his brow in thought. “Templar guy did at first. Your man seemed to be answering questions. Seemed surprised once when I was looking.”
“Shocked?”
“Uh-uh, just surprised. Like the guy in the robe’d said something he didn’t expect.”
“You said the Templar did most of the talking at first. Who spoke later? My guy?”
“Uh-uh, the one with the pony tail. Then they left.”
“All three of them left?”
“Nah. Your guy and the pony tail.”
“The Templar stayed behind?”
“Yeah. I guess so. I think. I went to the lav. When I got back I don’t think he was there.”
“What way did the other two go?”
“I don’t know, goddammit. I wasn’t paying much attention. I was having a drink, not playing spy!”
I nodded. The mech rolled over again but I waved it away. The old man scowled at its back.
“So they weren’t arguing when they left? No sign of a disagreement or that one was forcing the other to leave?”
“Who?”
“My guy and the queue.”
“Uh-uh. Shit, I don’t know.” He looked down at the bills in his grimy hand and at the whiskey in the mech’s display panel, realizing, perhaps, that he wasn’t going to get any more of either from me.
“Why do you want to know all this shit, anyway?”
“I’m looking for the guy,” I said. I looked around the bar. About twenty customers sat at tables. Most of them looked like neighborhood regulars. “Anyone else here who might’ve seen them? Or somebody else you might remember who was here?”
“Uh-uh,” he said dully. I realized then that the old man’s eyes were precisely the color of the whiskey he’d been drinking.
I stood, set a final twenty-mark bill on the table. “Thanks, friend.”
“Any time, sister.”
The mech was rolling toward him before I’d reached the door.
I walked back toward the library, paused a minute in the busy farcaster plaza, and stood there a minute. Scenario so far: Johnny had met the Templar or been approached by him, either in the library or outside when he arrived in midmorning. They went somewhere private to talk, the bar, and something the Templar said surprised Johnny. A man with a queue—possibly a Lusian—showed up and took over the conversation. Johnny and Queue left together. Sometime after that, Johnny farcast to TC2 and then farcast from there with one other person—possibly Queue or the Templar—to Madhya where someone tried to kill him. Did kill him.
Too many gaps. Too many “someones.” Not a hell of a lot to show for a day’s work.
I was debating whether to ’cast back to Lusus when my comlog chirped on the restricted comm frequency I’d given to Johnny.
His voice was raw. “M. Lamia. Come quickly, please. I think they’ve just tried again. To kill me.” The coordinates which followed were for the East Bergson Hive.
I ran for the farcaster.
The door to Johnny’s cubby was open a crack. There was no one in the corridor, no sounds from the apartment. Whatever had happened hadn’t brought the authorities yet.
I brought out Dad’s automatic pistol from my coat pocket, jacked a round into the chamber, and clicked on the laser targeting beam with a single motion.
I went in low, both arms extended, the red dot sliding across the dark walls, a cheap print on the far wall, a darker hall leading into the cubby. The foyer was empty. The living room and media pit were empty.
Johnny lay on the floor of the bedroom, his head against the bed. Blood soaked the sheet. He struggled to prop himself up, fell back. The sliding door behind him was open and a dank industrial wind blew in from the open mall beyond.
I checked the single closet, short hall, kitchen niche, and came back to step out on the balcony. The view was spectacular from the perch two hundred or so meters up the curved Hive wall, looking down the ten or twenty kilometers of the Trench Mall. The roof of the Hive was a dark mass of girders another hundred or so meters above. Thousands of lights, commercial holos, and neon lights glowed from the mall, joining in the haze of distance to a brilliant, throbbing electric blur.
There were hundreds of similar balconies on this wall of the Hive, all deserted. The nearest was twenty meters away. They were the kind of thing rental agents like to point to as a plus—God knows that Johnny probably paid plenty extra for an outside room—but the balconies were totally impractical because of the strong wind rushing up toward the ventilators, carrying the usual grit and debris as well as the eternal Hive scent of oil and ozone.
I put my pistol away and went back to check on Johnny.
The cut ran from his hairline to his eyebrow, superficial but messy. He was sitting up as I returned from the bathroom with a sterile drypad and pressed it against the cut. “What happened?” I said.
“Two men … were waiting in the bedroom when I came in. They’d bypassed the alarms on the balcony door.”
“You deserve a refund on your security tax,” I said. “What happened next?”
“We struggled. They seemed to be dragging me toward the door. One of them had an injector but I managed to knock it out of his hand.”
“What made them leave?”
“I activated the in-house alarms.”
“But not Hive security?”
“No. I didn’t want them involved.”
“Who hit you?”
Johnny smiled sheepishly, “I did. They released me, I went after them. I managed to trip and fall against the nightstand.”
“Not a very graceful brawl on either side,” I said. I switched on a lamp and checked the carpet until I found the injection ampule where it had rolled under the bed.
Johnny eyed it as if it were a viper.
“What’s your guess?” I said. “More AIDS II?”
He shook his head.
“I know a place where we can get it analyzed,” I said. “My guess is that it’s just a hypnotic trank. They just wanted you to come along … not to kill you.”
Johnny moved the drypad and grimaced. The blood was still flowing. “Why would anyone want to kidnap a cybrid?”
“You tell me. I’m beginning to think that the so-called murder was just a botched kidnapping attempt.”
Johnny shook his head again.
I said, “Did one of the men wear a queue?”
“I don’t know. They wore caps and osmosis masks.”
“Was either one tall enough to be a Templar or strong enough to be a Lusian?”
“A Templar?” Johnny was surprised. “No. One was about average Web height. The one with the ampule could have been Lusian. Strong enough.”
“So you went after a Lusian thug with your bare hands. Do you have some bioprocessors or augmentation implants I don’t know about?”
“No. I was just mad.”
I helped him to his feet. “So AIs get angry?”
“I do.”
“Come on,” I said, “I know an automated med clinic that’s discount. Then you’ll be staying with me for a while.”
“With you? Why?”
“Because you’ve graduated from just needing a detective,” I said. “Now you need a bodyguard.”
My cubby wasn’t registered in the Hive zoning schematic as an apartment; I’d taken over a renovated warehouse loft from a friend of mine who’d run afoul of loan sharks. My friend had decided late in life to emigrate to one of the Outback colonies and I’d gotten a good deal on a place just a klick down the corridor frith my office. The environment was a little rough and sometimes the noise from the loading docks could drown out conversation, but it gave me ten times the room of a normal cubby and I could use my weights and workout equipment right at home.
Johnny honestly seemed intrigued by the place and I had to kick myself for being pleased. Next thing you knew, I’d be putting on lipstick and body rouge for this cybrid.
“So why do you live on Lusus?” I asked him. “Most offworlders find the gravity a pain and the scenery monotonous. Plus your research material’s at the library on Renaissance V. Why here?”
I found myself looking and listening very carefully as he answered. His hair was straight on top, parted in the middle, and fell in reddish-brown curls to his collar. He had the habit of resting his cheek on his fist as he spoke. It struck me that his dialect was actually the nondialect of someone who has learned a new language perfectly but without the lazy shortcuts of someone born to it. And beneath that there was a hint of lilt that brought back the overtones of a cat burglar I’d known who had grown up on Asquith, a quiet, backwater Web world settled by First Expansion immigrants from what had once been the British Isles.
“I have lived on many worlds,” he said. “My purpose is to observe.”
“As a poet?”
He shook his head, winced, and gingerly touched the stitches. “No. I’m not a poet. He was.”
Despite the circumstances, there was an energy and vitality to Johnny that I’d found in too few men. It was hard to describe, but I’d seen rooms fulls of more important personages rearrange themselves to orbit around personalities like his. It was not merely his reticence and sensitivity, it was an intensity that he emanated even when merely observing.
“Why do you live here?” he asked.
“I was born here.”
“Y
es, but you spent your childhood years on Tau Ceti Center. Your father was a senator.”
I said nothing.
“Many people expected you to go into politics,” he said. “Did your father’s suicide dissuade you?”
“It wasn’t suicide,” I said.
“No?”
“All the news reports and the inquest said it was,” I said tonelessly, “but they were wrong. My father never would have taken his own life.”
“So it was murder?”
“Yes.”
“Despite the fact that there was no motive or hint of a suspect?”
“Yes.”
“I see,” said Johnny. The yellow glow from the loading dock lamps came through the dusty windows and made his hair gleam like new copper. “Do you like being a detective?”
“When I do it well,” I said. “Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Then let’s get some sleep. You can have the couch.”
“Do you do it well often?” he said. “Being a detective?”
“We’ll see tomorrow.”
In the morning Johnny farcast to Renaissance Vector at about the usual time, waited a moment in the plaza, and then cast to the Old Settlers’ Museum on Sol Draconi Septem. From there he jumped to the main terminex on Nordholm and then ’cast to the Templar world of God’s Grove.
We’d worked out the timing ahead of time and I was waiting for him on Renaissance V, standing back in the shadows of the colonnade.
A man with a queue was the third through after Johnny. There was no doubt he was Lusian—between the Hive pallor, the muscle and body mass, and the arrogant way of walking, he might have been my long-lost brother.
He never looked at Johnny but I could tell that he was surprised when the cybrid circled around to the outbound portals. I stayed back and only caught a glimpse of his card but would’ve bet anything that it was a tracer.
Queue was careful in the Old Settlers’ Museum, keeping Johnny in sight but checking his own back as well. I was dressed in a Zen Gnostic’s meditation jumper, isolation visor and all, and I never looked their way as I circled to the museum outportal and ’cast directly to God’s Grove.
It made me feel funny, leaving Johnny alone through the museum and Nordholm terminex, but both were public places and it was a calculated risk.
