2xs

by Nigel Findley

  No, no matter how difficult it might be, the best I could do right then was wait.

  I think it was Karl Marx who described religion as the "opiate of the masses." Of course, old Karl didn't have trideo. It was with a kind of perverse satisfaction that I lost myself in the cultural wasteland that afternoon. Let's face it, who couldn't enjoy gems like "Under the Stars," a sitcom about a beautiful but naive rock groupie, or that potboiler about a family with somewhat unusual inter-generational relationships, "Up the Auntie"? I could feel my brain turning to oatmeal.

  It was a little after 1800 hours that I found myself zapping through the evening news shows.

  Computer-animated talking head on KORO, two very erudite political analysts on KSTS, very mammalian blonde on KONG (zap back to that channel a couple of times), gonzo journalist doing a high-speed rap on pirate FOAD. And Daniel Waters on KOMA.

  Yes, Daniel Waters, the same guy I'd seen pulled out of the downtown park on Tuesday. Today was Sunday and the slag was already back on the air. Sure, he looked like pure drek: sunken eyes, a serious bulge under one shoulder of his tailored jacket that could only be a dressing or a cast, and a sallow complexion that made him look half-dead. (Couldn't they fix that with makeup? I wondered idly. But then I realized why they'd probably let it be or even augmented it. "Journalist nearly dies but insists on returning to his anchorchair as soon as he's off the respirator." Gets you right here, doesn't it?) I remembered the image of Waters' face from that news broadcast: skin white as bone, short hair caked with blood. Now? He looked slotted out, that was for sure, but he was functioning. As for the aura of almost-godlike wisdom he usually emanated, it hadn't diminished a wit. If anything, it seemed greater than usual. I suppose people also paid Lazarus a little more attention after his time off. His co-anchor wasn't immune to the change, either.

  Every time the camera cut over to her, she had her brilliant blue eyes fixed on Waters, an expression of unconditional adulation on her cheerleader-cute face.

  If Waters noticed her attention, he didn't show it. Like a true professional he focused all his concentration on the job. I could tell it was costing him, though. Every few seconds, his eyes would narrow a little as though he was fighting off a jolt of pain. For the first time I felt sorry for the poor sod: he wasn't ready to go back to work yet, but his producers were no doubt using the restrictive clauses of his contract to force him.

  The telecom beeped, announcing an incoming call. For some reason I didn't want to turn off Daniel Waters, so I shrank the trideo image to a small inset in the top-right corner of the screen, and killed the audio. Then I answered the call.

  It was Jocasta, so I cut in my video feed immediately and said hello.

  She smiled, a little uncomfortably. Still concerned about the night before, I figured. Her first words confirmed it. "Two things," she said briskly, jumping right in. "First, I apologize again for last night. Second, it took me a while, but I understand what you were doing in the cab when you were slotting me off so badly. I just wanted to say thanks."

  I could read in her face that an apology was about as easy for her as it is for me. And I could also read, as clear as anything, that she was uncomfortable about what she perceived as her lack of coolness under fire. (Why, I don't know. I'd guess that nine out of ten people on the street think they could open fire at living targets and kill people who wanted to kill them, and not choke up about it afterward. All but the very rare exceptions are dead fragging wrong.) But telling that to Jocasta right then would sound patronizing, so I just shrugged.

  Her expression softened as though she'd gotten some painful obligation out of the way. "Where do we stand?" she asked.

  "William Sutcliffe," I replied. "It was his line tap that Lolly was working on." Her face lit up, and I could literally feel her enthusiasm. "Whoa," I said. "I don't have anything more on him at the moment. Just his name. He's not in any of the public databases, but I've got a decker checking out some shadow sources.

  Depending on how deep he's buried, that could take some time. Days, maybe a week."

  She sobered quickly, and I could see her thinking. After a few moments, she nodded. "What can I do to speed things up?"

  I was about to mention the Universal Brotherhood connection, just in case she had some line into the group that was inaccessible to me. But then my attention was drawn to the trideo window in the corner of the screen. Daniel Waters was still doing his newsman shtick, but it was obviously heavy going. He was twitching like he had the DTs or St. Vitus' Dance, and it looked like he was losing control of the left side of his face. "What is it?" Jocasta asked sharply. "Trideo channel four," I said. "Something's fragged."

  And with that I put her on hold, swapping windows so Daniel Waters filled the entire screen, with Jocastar up in the corner. I turned up the volume. Waters was in serious trouble. The twitching was even more pronounced in the larger image, and his familiar, perfectly enunciated baritone was coming apart at the seams. One moment he'd be the old Daniel Waters, ratings king, the next he sounded like a brain-fried chip abuser. I watched, frozen in sick fascination.

  "... And the visiting representatives met with the Secretary of the Treasury," Waters was saying, "to discuss the advisability of extending further credit to the Third World War." He stopped, blinked for a moment, confused. Then his avuncular smile returned and he went on, "I'm sorry, that should be 'further credit to the Third World War.' " He looked around him, as though responding to some strange sound, then looked back directly into the camera. There was something different about his eyes, and I realized that they were focused on infinity, as though he were actually looking at his audience, rather than the teleprompter.

  He frowned in puzzlement. "You know," he said, his tone casual, conversational. "I'll be fragged if I know what's going on here." He twitched, a spasm that jerked his entire body like a puppet being controlled by an epileptic puppeteer. The left half of his face was sagging, that side of his mouth turned down in a scowl. His eyes rolled. "I'll be dipped in drek," he suddenly roared.

  Until now, the producer must have been as frozen by this spectacle as I was. Now, however, he must have suddenly realized he had to do something. The camera cut away to the nubile co-anchor. No help there. She was staring at Waters, her mouth hanging open. Cut back to Waters. His eyes were rolling wildly, and half his face hung like raw meat, no muscle tone at all. His perfect enunciation had degenerated to an unintelligible mumble, something like, "Ah wugga wah ah wugga wugga." His hands, in fact his whole body, shook violently like a flag in a high wind. He clutched at his jacket, tugging in a frenzy at the fabric.

  His microphone flew free from where it was clipped to his lapel, then clattered to the floor. Waters' right eye opened wide, almost bulging from his chalk-white face. He clutched again at his jacket-no, at his chest.

  He jerked spasmodically again, then pitched forward. His face hit the desk with a crunch. The screen went blank for a moment, then was filled with an innocuous cityscape, a KOMA logo in the bottom corner.

  Seemed that the evening news was over for the time being.

  I re-expanded Jocasta's image to fill the screen. "Did you see that?" I asked.

  She shrugged. "I'm surprised it hasn't happened before. You know how prevalent drug and chip use is in the entertainment industry."

  "Sure," I said, "but they know not to overdose before they go on the air. This is KOMA, remember, the big leagues. It's not one of the pirates, where it doesn't matter how brain-fried the talent gets. Anyway, there's more to it than that." I went on to tell her about Waters' extraction from the park. "Crashcart again." I said.

  Jocasta was umimpressed. "He'll show up in drug rehab next week," she predicted.

  Chapter 10

  He didn't, of course. On Wednesday, November 27, the official announcement came that Daniel Waters, anchor extraordinaire, had died. No more details on what happened, just that he was flatlined. No memorial service, send donations to the Daniel Waters KOMA Memorial Scholarship Fund e
tcetera etcetera drek etcetera.

  I'd had lots of time to think over the past few days. Buddy had sent me a brusque message that she was on the electronic hunt for William Sutcliffe. I called back to ask that she give me regular status reports, but asking that of Buddy was like asking a fish to whistle. I'd tried my own resources, but soon realized that Mr. Sutcliffe was buried too deep for my limited capabilities. Jocasta had called each day to check up on my progress. Though I didn't mind talking to her, it irritated me that I had nothing positive to report.

  The rest of the time I did almost nothing. I'd put my other cases on hold so I could hang around the apartment. For one thing, I didn't want to miss a call from Buddy. For another, I didn't care to attract the attention of the mysterious X or anyone else who wanted to terminate my existence.

  In other words, I had lots of time to think. I went over the incident with the bikers a hundred times, and each time the Crashcart life-signs monitor the elf was wearing seemed to take on more importance and to raise more questions. I'd made a quick call directly to Crashcart, pretending to be a corporate expediter exploring the advantages of Crashcart as opposed to DocWagon. They'd almost fallen over themselves giving me all the information I needed to make a decision.

  It seemed that you get a life-signs monitor only if you subscribe to the Executive Diamond service, which is very much like a DocWagon Super-Platinum contract: unlimited free resuscitations, free High-Threat Response service (although the client is liable for death benefits for Crashcart employees geeked during a hot extraction), a 60 percent discount on extended care, and 10 percent off on cyber-replacement technology. All for the bargain price of 65,000 nuyen per year. Compared to Doc-Wagon's Super-Platinum fee of seventy-five K per year, it was a bargain. But sixty-five K annually is well beyond the reach of your average biker, unless. . .

  Well, unless somebody else is paying the tab (why?), or unless the biker is actually more than he appears to be (what?), or unless there's a connection between said biker and Crashcart itself (huh?). The first two possibilities got me thinking paranoid again: was friend elf somehow associated with the mysterious X? I had no data and no immediate way of getting any, so I put that question on the back burner. The third possibility didn't seem at all likely, but it did keep Crashcart near the forefront of my thoughts.

  Then Daniel Waters kicked off, after losing it in a very spectacular manner on national trideo.

  Interesting, but seemingly unrelated-except for the fact that it was Crashcart that had pulled him out of the park. That was two strange events, both involving Crashcart in one way or another. It wasn't a strong link, and any other time I would have written the whole thing off to coincidence. But right now I had some idle cycles.

  No, let's be honest, I was getting stir-crazy just waiting for Buddy to dig up the dirt on Sutcliffe. I was ready to chase down any lead, no matter how strange, just to do something.

  So I called up Bent Sigurdsen again. He was glad to hear from me, which was almost worth the effort right there. "Hoi, Dirk," he grinned. "We've got to stop meeting like this." He was obviously in his lab, wearing gloves up to his elbows and a green coverall. Fortunately for my digestion, he either hadn't actually started for the day or had taken a break between clients and had changed into unspattered gear. "Echo that," I told him.

  "What can I do for you this time? Or is this a social call?"

  "When this is all out of the way, I owe you a dinner," I said. "My treat, your choice of location and menu."

  He crowed at that. "Done and done," he laughed. "Make sure your credstick's healthy." I winced inwardly. Bent is something of a gourmet, and the last time I'd stood him to a dinner he'd chosen McDuff's.

  That's right, the McDuff's, and the bill had come to over three hundred nuyen for the two of us.

  "I suppose you're going to make me earn my meal," Bent went on. "What do you need this time?"

  "Daniel Waters," I said simply. "What happened to him?"

  "Damned if I know," he shot back. "Ratings wars getting a little nasty? Just kidding." His grin faded.

  "That's actually a good question, you know. You'd think he'd have come across my table, but he's not in the queue. Why is that, I wonder?" Bent's mouth twisted into a frown, as though he was personally offended that he wouldn't be dealing with Waters. Who knows, maybe he was. He turned away from the screen to check another terminal. As he rattled away on the keyboard, his frown deepened.

  Finally he turned back. "They did him last night," he mused. "Definitely counter to SOP." That surprised me a little, although I suppose it shouldn't have: coroners can have Standard Operating Procedures, too. "They used Lab One-that's my lab-but they brought in one of their own people to do the post." Any other time I'd have been amused by Bent's pettish reaction. I had other things on my mind.

  "Who's they?" I asked.

  He blinked. "Lone Star. Just like you suspected-you wouldn't be calling about just another stiff."

  I let a (wholly feigned) self-satisfied smirk spread across my face. If Bent wanted to give me credit for intuition I didn't have, let him. "Tell me what happened," I said.

  He shrugged. "It doesn't say much here. He broke down Sunday night, then immediately slipped into a coma, as you know." As I didn't know, but I stayed mum. "He was showing no cerebral functioning when the wagon arrived to pick him up."

  "Crashcart, right?"

  Bent shook his head. "No, all KOMA employees are still covered by Doc Wagon. Why?"

  "Nothing," I said. "Go on." Bent glanced back to the other terminal. "There's not much else. Admitted to Harborview at seventeen-oh-three, 24 November 2052. Life support terminated twenty-two-fifteen, 26 November-last night. Post-mortem begun twenty-two-fifty-one-that's fast-completed oh-one-ten this morning." He frowned again, but it was an expression of puzzlement, not affront. "Waters flatlines at twenty-two-fifteen, and the Lone Star doc starts cutting thirty-six minutes later," he said slowly. "And transit from Harborview to here is twenty minutes, give or take." He looked at me expectantly.

  It took a moment, then I got it. "Sounds like they were waiting for him to die," I said. "This is Lone Star we're talking about?"

  Bent grinned. "Not an organization renowned for their humanitarianism, but I think we can safely assume that Lone Star doesn't routinely geek newsreaders. What does that leave us with?"

  I was tracking him better now. "The Star is real interested in why he croaked," I said. "So why did he croak?" I laughed humorlessly. "The file's Lone Star Secured and encrypted, right?"

  "With bells and whistles," Bent told me. "You want me to dredge it up, I assume." I started to nod, then hesitated. It must have been the doubt showing in my expression that made him chuckle. "Chill, Dirk," he told me, "This is just routine department politics. Null perspiration."

  That's probably what Lolly said. I nodded, but I wasn't easy about it. "You'll get back to me?"

  "As soon as I've got something," he reassured me. "Later." And he broke the connection. Leaving me with less to do, and more to worry about.

  One thing about Bent Sigurdsen: when he says he'll call back, you know he'll call back. By the clock it wasn't much more than an hour later-although it felt like several times that-when the telecom beeped. I hit the appropriate key, and Bent's face filled the screen. He was out of the lab, virtually the only time I'd ever been on the phone with him when he was elsewhere. The background looked to be a window-wall with a view of the Sound and Bainbridge Island in the distance.

  "I've got something," he said, "but I don't know what the frag to make of it." He paused, fixing me with those blue eyes. "What exactly are you working on, Dirk?"

  My turn to pause. My first reaction was to clam up, to give Bent some palatable line about it being better that he didn't know. But then I had to ask myself, better for who? Not knowing what was going down, Bent would be much more likely to stumble into something that might attract the attention of our mysterious X. How can you avoid your enemy if you don't know who he is? Add to th
is my desire to tell someone.

  To make it short, I spilled my guts. Starting with Jocasta's arrival at my Auburn apartment, I took him through the whole chronology up to the present moment. If I missed anything, it was a simple slip.

  When I was done, his penetrating stare had softened. I could see that in his heart he was mourning Lolly and the others who had died. "Thanks for telling me the truth," he said simply. "It's good to know. I guess I'd started to worry ..." He trailed off.

  "That I wasn't working the right side of the street?" He nodded, a little embarrassed. "Don't grind it, chummer," I told him. "That's what the shadows are like. Sometimes I don't know. So, what can you tell me?"

  "It's twisted," he admitted. "According to the post, Waters shows many of the same symptoms as Mi Long."

  I paused for a moment. "You mean Daniel Waters was addicted to 2XS?"

  "That's what's twisted. The report describes the same kind of neurophysiological aspects as appeared in Juli Long. It certainly seems that similar processes occurred."

  "What's so twisted about that?" I said, then echoed Jocasta's comment about how prevalent was drug and chip use in the entertainment industry.

  Bent smiled grimly. "Maybe," he said, "but Daniel Waters didn't have a datajack."

  I shrugged. "So maybe you were wrong. Maybe you can run it through a standard simsense deck."

  He was shaking his head before I'd finished. "Not a chance. I've done some checking. The signal degradation on a headset would make 2XS useless. You wouldn't get much more effect than from a regular simsense chip. Certainly not enough to cause what happened to Waters."

  When Bent Sigurdsen sounds that emphatic, you don't argue with him. I'd learned that he knows whereof he speaks. "Okay," I said, "so what happened?"

  "I don't know. But that's not the only strange thing in the report. Look at this."

  He leaned forward to pound on his telecom keyboard, and my screen split in two. Half showed Bent, the other showed a Lone Star file header with a body of text below it. I skimmed the text quickly: it was medical language describing the condition of the late Daniel Waters.