Asimov's SF, Oct/Nov 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The player clicked off. I listened to my breath.

  * * * *

  Franz Thixton threw his head back and slurped an oyster into his florid, jowly face. He replaced the empty shell on the plate, lips glistening with juice, and wiped his fingers fussily on a linen napkin. Even though we were sitting outside, the smell of the oysters flirted with my nausea switch. Or maybe it wasn't the oysters.

  "You don't look good, Scott,” he said. “You need to take better care of yourself."

  I brushed the backs of my fingers against two day's growth of beard stubble. “I'll start hitting the gym,” I said. “You want to buddy up?"

  He laughed asthmatically. I didn't like the proprietary way he looked at me, but I guess it made sense.

  "In all seriousness,” he said.

  "Look,” I said. “What I wanted to talk to you about was boundaries. Our agreed-upon boundaries."

  Thixton sopped up oyster juice with a hunk of French bread, then pushed the bread into his mouth with his blunt fingers, as if he were loading something. He chewed methodically, and looked at me like I was a good suit of clothes that needed pressing. It was the same look he'd given me on the day I met him, at a press function after the dedication of the Thixton Terminal, Back Bay station. He had picked me out of the crowd of journalists. Naively, I'd thought I was going to get a private interview. That's how fogged I was in the first months following Cyn's murder.

  "What about them?” he said now, referring to boundaries.

  "Nothing illegal,” I said. “That was the agreement."

  "So I recall. And no scars. Did you find a scar?"

  "No."

  "Then there's no problem."

  "Nothing illegal,” I said. “I mean it."

  He skinned his upper lip back and pried with an ivory toothpick at something green between his teeth.

  "Do you have a particular illegality in mind,” he said, “or are you simply seeking in your own clumsy way to terminate our relationship?"

  "No, no. I don't want—"

  "Perhaps you've found yourself the recipient of an unforeseen inheritance."

  "No."

  "Lottery ticket? A spectacular day at the track?"

  I shook my head.

  "Too bad,” he said. “Luck is a wonderful companion."

  "So I've heard."

  Thixton picked up his glass of Chablis and drained it off in one greedy draft.

  "Then let me set your mind at ease,” he said. “As your Rider, I haven't incurred any traffic tickets, nor distributed any bribes, nor robbed any banks. I don't need to rob a bank, anyway."

  He put his empty glass down and stood, the servos of his dead leg's exo-frames whirring loud enough to draw stares from other tables.

  "Go home and shave, for God's sake,” he said. “Don't you ever look at yourself?"

  "Not as often as you, I'm sure."

  He grunted and walked away, whirring and clicking, the exo-frames pinching at his baggy slacks. People stared not only because of who he was, but what he was.

  I looked at my crab salad, then pushed it away.

  Did you kill that boy?

  My hands were clean.

  * * * *

  I returned to my apartment on the ragged edge of the Boston Sprawl, Medford Township. Sleep continued to elude me. Being taken over by a Rider denies you your REMs, flattens you out, and, paradoxically, keeps you vibrating above sleep's sweet threshold for two or three days afterward—then you drop into sleep so lightless and abrupt, it might as well be a coma. Providing a ride can also, in some cases, have the unfortunate consequence of permanently shorting out your sleep centers—which is why Rider arrangements are illegal. That, and the inevitable possibility of body-jacking for various unwholesome purposes. I was willing to risk the consequences for a chance at seeing my wife again, if only in vivid memory-loop recall. Certain very expensive drugs had already begun to modify my near-memory engrams. Perhaps that's why the overlay had occurred. Thixton paid well for the occasional use of my body.

  I picked through some notes and hammered out five hundred words of scintillating prose concerning the “kinder/gentler” Homeland checkpoint makeover, filed the story with NENSS, and crashed with a beer and the TV.

  And there she was! The girl with the tarnished copper hair, part of a guerrilla theater group perpetrating some disruptive art on the Boston Common, something to do with black body suits, red paint, and wrist-to-wrist paper chains. It was a quikclip on MSNBC, a disposable eyeflash that cut out right after the cops waded in with their movealongs.

  I called a friend, a third-banana news director on the network, and asked if he could ID the girl. He could and did, after an hour or so.

  * * * *

  Her name was Rhonda Reppo, and her co-op's security was laughable. I paged her room from the lobby.

  "Ms. Reppo?"

  "Yes. Franz—?"

  "My name's Scott Kriegel."

  A pause. “And?"

  "And I'd like to talk to you."

  "Do I know you, Mr. Kriegel?"

  "It's about Franz Thixton."

  Another pause, this one longer. Then: “What about him?"

  "It would be easier if I came up."

  "Easier for whom?"

  "Look, I'm not interested in any arrangement you might have with Thixton. It isn't about you."

  "I don't know what you think you mean by ‘arrangement,’ but I guess you can come up. Bear in mind that I don't have all day."

  Number 217 on a gray slab door. It opened, and Rhonda Reppo's face morphed through a variety of reactions, then settled on stoic neutrality. She wasn't made up as she'd been in the overlay. Her pale lips and unlined eyes verged on wholesome vulnerability. Right. She turned and walked into the room. No clinging gossamer today; jeans and a green silk blouse. I followed her in and closed the door behind me.

  Her place wasn't much bigger than mine, though her taste was a quantum leap beyond. And, of course, the indulgence of such taste isn't usually cheap.

  "Drink?” she said.

  "I'll have what you're having."

  "I'm having a joint, and I don't share."

  "Beer, then."

  "Be serious."

  "Scotch?"

  She sat on the white sofa and opened a red lacquered box that held her drug paraphernalia. I stood there like any inanimate object you care to name. She grinned up at me. “It's your bottle and you know where it is,” she said.

  "I don't—"

  But I did. I'm not a scotch drinker, and yet, standing in the middle of her apartment, the word had appeared in my mind naturally and I even experienced a desire for it. Now I breathed out, allowed the tension to relax from my body, and I found myself walking into the tiny kitchen and opening the cabinet over the stove top. Horse finding his way home. Somatic memory reflex. I reached down the bottle of Glenfidditch and poured a couple of amber-gold ounces into a glass.

  She was already smoking when I re-entered the room, the air pungent with a melancholy haze of dope. I sat opposite her in a spindly appearing chair, more skeletal artwork than functional furniture.

  "You found it,” she said.

  I nodded, sipped, put the glass down. “It still tastes like mercuro-chrome."

  "Franz loves it."

  "I'm sure he does."

  She dragged primly on her joint and sat back, looking at me in a peculiar way that made me want to squirm. Instead of squirming, I told her why I was there. I explained the memory overlay and what I'd heard her say. She went on looking at me after I'd finished. The moment became uncomfortably elastic.

  "Look,” I said. “I want to know what you meant by asking Thixton whether he'd killed someone."

  "I didn't mean anything by it."

  "I don't believe you. And I wish you wouldn't stare at me like that."

  She laughed. “But it's fascinating."

  She made me so nervous that I found myself reaching for the scotch again, despite the medicinal—to my taste—flavor. It burne
d down my throat and almost immediately fumed up into my sleep-deprived brain.

  "This is quite a study in opposites,” Rhonda said. “When it's Franz, he—"

  "He what?"

  She began preparing another joint. “He likes to be in charge."

  "In what way?"

  She snorted.

  "Tell me."

  "In a rough way, what do you think?"

  "I think the price must be right."

  She lit the new joint with a Zippo and drew hard on it, holding the smoke in her lungs before finally breathing out. She slumped back on the cushions and regarded me with moist, drooping eyes.

  "The price is right,” she said. “For both of us."

  I drank some more mercurochrome.

  "I know all about you,” she said. “Franz laughs. He says you're pathetic, selling yourself for the price of a few memories."

  I grunted.

  "I can get under your skin so easy,” she said. “Franz's skin is like rhino hide."

  "What about the murder?” I said.

  "You're persistent."

  "I'm a reporter. It comes with the job."

  "You looking for a story, then?"

  I shook my head. “I just want to know."

  She pulled her legs up on the sofa, feline sinuosity, and I recalled the gossamer thing and the black lipstick.

  "What if he did kill someone while he was riding you, what would you do about it?"

  "I don't know."

  "But it would make a difference?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "It just would."

  She reached out and dropped the tiny glowing scrap of the joint in the ashtray on the table, stretched, and stood up.

  "You have a car?"

  "Yes."

  "Let's go for a drive,” she said.

  * * * *

  She pointed and I turned. We rolled past grimy brick buildings. I knew the area. My skin felt prickly with sweat and nerves. A Boston police cruiser idled at the curb, flashers alternating, a man in the caged backseat staring out the window like he was watching TV while the cop filled in paperwork on a clipboard. A little farther on, Rhonda said stop. We were in front of an empty store and a green fire hydrant. Across the street, there was a nightclub with a red door.

  "Franz drove me down here a few weeks ago,” Rhonda said. “There was a boy standing on the sidewalk right over there. Only he wasn't just standing; he was advertising. Young, fifteen. Sixteen—maybe. Franz asked me if I thought the kid was good-looking."

  Something ugly uncoiled in my stomach.

  "Yeah?” I said.

  "I told him I wouldn't touch the kid with a ten-foot pole, even if I was wearing a full bio-hazard suit. So Franz said something like, I don't blame you. He's fucking scum and I'm going to kill him."

  "And that's who you were asking about in my memory loop overlay?"

  "Yes."

  "Did Franz kill him?"

  "I'm hungry,” Rhonda said. “Let's get out of this neighborhood."

  * * * *

  We hit a brewpub near Fenway Park, ordered pints of Revolution Ale and club sandwiches.

  "What do you think our patron is having for lunch?” I said.

  She almost choked on her sandwich. “Our patron? You're too funny. Do me a favor?"

  "What kind of favor?"

  "Kiss me."

  "Why?"

  "I want to compare. You know, is it what's inside that counts?"

  "Let's skip it."

  "Chicken."

  I bit into my sandwich.

  "How did your wife die?"

  I chewed, swallowed, and said, “Let's skip that, too."

  "Was she a reporter like you?"

  I sighed, put down my sandwich. “Yes, she was a reporter. She was murdered. Not too far from the street corner you took me to."

  "Was she a good reporter?"

  "She was good enough, which, in our line, pegs you to second-rate venues, second-rate pay scales, and second-rate lives. She had ambition, though. She was chasing some mystery story on her own time when she got killed."

  "What did the police say?"

  "Random act. No one has been arrested, but it hasn't been that long. Can we talk about something else now?"

  "What was the mystery story?"

  "Jesus. It was a mystery. Even to me. She kept it to herself. She shouldn't have bothered. I'm not ambitious."

  I reached for my beer, but didn't want it and didn't pick it up. Fatigue overtook me like a gray wave. All of a sudden, I could barely keep my eyes open, my post-Rider buzz failing with characteristic abruptness.

  "I have to sleep,” I said.

  "You look like somebody just hit you in the head with a hammer."

  "Roughly correct."

  I paid the bill. In the parking lot, I fumbled the keys out of my pocket, dropped them on the ground. I leaned over, but it was Rhonda's hand that picked them up, her nails finely shaped and painted the faintest mauve.

  * * * *

  In my dreams, Cynthia was real. Not just a memory, or a desire, or a longing, or a regret. Dreams resemble loops, or the other way around. There is no distance. Imagine being able to turn on your favorite dream at will. Imagine the risen dead.

  * * * *

  I woke in my apartment, on my bed, in a straggle of blue TV light filtered through layered strata of dope. It was hot. Rhonda Reppo sat with her legs crossed and locked in a Zen lotus. Her legs were bare, and she was wearing one of my sleeveless T's.

  "What—” I started, but my throat was too dry to make much more than a croak. She turned her head, and I swallowed a couple of times and tried again: “What are you doing here?"

  "I got your address out of your wallet and drove you home. I didn't want to leave you sleeping in your car, so I walked you up here. Every time we stopped, like at the lobby door or the elevator, you started sliding. So I'm not going to carry you, right? I tried to keep you moving. Got your apartment open, but then what? Let you hit the floor and leave you? Then I'm thinking, I'm not cabbing it all the way back to my co-op. So you're my ride—but also, I was thinking we could kill Franz together, if you're game."

  "You better quit smoking that shit.” I rubbed my face, stood up like somebody rising out of a sucking tub of mud, and shambled over to the refrigerator. It was mostly empty, except for a few bottles of beer and one of water. It was water I needed. I chugged on the half-empty bottle, letting the cool air from the open fridge dry my sweat.

  Rhonda touched my bare shoulder. I'd known she was there, and didn't flinch. She trailed her nails down my back. It felt good, but I said, “Don't,” and she stopped. I capped the bottle, replaced it on the shelf, swung the door shut, and turned. She had stopped touching me but she hadn't retreated an inch. Her breasts filled out my T-shirt, dark nipples visible through white ribbed cotton.

  "You're a nice guy,” she said.

  "I have my moments."

  "Loyal."

  "To a fault.” I moved past her, picked up my keys. “I'll drive you home now."

  "You didn't say whether or not you were game. There's this guy in my troupe? He kind of plays at the street-theater thing. In real life, he's some kind of techie. I asked him once if he could screw up a Rider while he was riding, and this guy, Tony, he said sure. He said he could make a gizmo that would scramble the Rider like breakfast eggs, but you'd have to be right on the portal. And I could be on it, that's not a problem."

  "Nobody's killing Thixton. Nobody's killing anybody."

  "You're wrong,” she said. She still hadn't moved. The TV light pulsed on her legs.

  I clutched my car keys, stared at her.

  "You're not the only one,” she said. “Franz has many rides. He can buy what he wants, and he buys lives."

  My head hurt. How long had I slept? It was dark, the time stamp in the corner of the TV said two AM, but what day was it?

  "With us,” Rhonda said, “it's like a seedy romance, almost. He gets off on the artsy-girl bull
shit. In some of his other lives, he gets darker. You're a nice guy, but you need to know how much your memories cost."

  "Get dressed,” I said.

  "Franz talks to me,” she said. “He shows me things, like that boy. He knows I'm scared, and he likes it."

  "Get dressed, Rhonda."

  She did, and neither of us spoke another word.

  * * * *

  My hands were clean. But somebody else's were dirty. I was able to ignore this fact for a while, though I knew it would eventually claim me. Meanwhile, my drug protocol continued apace, and I was well on the road to permanently altering my memory centers—I was on the road to having Cynthia back.

  Then, one night, drunk, trying to write a feature about the role of block captains in co-op districts, I became suddenly enraged and threw my beer bottle at the wall hard enough to wake up the unknown occupant of the adjoining apartment. He thumped the wall a couple of times, but it was nothing compared to the thumping going on inside my head. And for the millionth time since Rhonda told me about Thixton's other lives, I wondered what story Cyn had been chasing, and who had decided to terminate her investigation.

  I closed out my newsfile and buzzed Rhonda Reppo's terminal. It was about three o'clock in the morning. After a moment, she answered, a dark, grainy image-insert opening in the corner of the screen.

  "Don't you ever sleep?” I said.

  "Don't you?"

  "Not much."

  A tiny coal brightened and dimmed in front of her face. “So,” she said.

  "You can't get at a man like Thixton. He has money and he has political connections, police connections. Even with proof, you couldn't expose him. Say you have names, particulars. The cops would collar me for participating in an illegal Rider arrangement and never bother with the rest of it. Or I write the story, fly it by my editor—whom I've never met in person, by the way. He wouldn't run it. I'd be lucky if he didn't fire me. What's more, I'd find myself audited, some government agency raping every data point out of my soul until they found something good to nail me with. I'm a threat to security. Isn't everybody?"

  "I never said anything about getting Franz that way,” Rhonda said. That tiny glow-in-the-dark image, waiting.

  "This gizmo,” I said. “What will it really do to him?"

  "In a perfect world, he'll become a drooling vegetable."

  "The world isn't perfect."