Tea From an Empty Cup

by Cadigan, Pat

  Across the road, beyond the burning piles of wreckage – vehicles of some kind, they looked like teepees set on fire – the windows of the closed and vacant shops or whatever they had once been reflected the streetlife through a veil of grime. She hurried across to them, clambering over a barrier dividing the trafficway in half and shaking off the imploring hands of someone who seemed to have been a refugee from a mummy case.

  She stood in front of a dirty, cracked window, staring at herself. Or rather, at Tom’s likeness. She could see it quite well in spite of the reflected glare of the fire just behind her. Tom’s face was expectant, almost hopeful. She studied the eyes, waiting to see an awareness in them that didn’t belong to her, but they remained her own gaze and no one else’s.

  No one else’s?

  The memory spilled over her like hot liquid from an overturned cup, that sensation of having someone else’s hand inside of her own, as if it – as if she herself – were somebody else’s clothing. There was a cold, uncomfortable knot at the top of her stomach, a panic bomb setting itself to go off at the first sign that she wasn’t alone in her – Tom’s – body. She waited in front of the glass, afraid to look at the reflection, afraid not to.

  As if on cue, there was a movement behind the glass. She yelled and jumped back, but her panic stalled, becoming mere startlement. The movement really was behind the glass, something actually on the other side (virtually actually, her mind corrected her, some part of her needing to emphasize the absurdity). While she was still trying to catch her breath, a figure stepped through the glass as if it were a veil of gelatin and faced her on the sidewalk, a humanish creature with shiny black hair flowing down beyond waist level, velvet skin the color of concord grapes, and animal eyes. It was the velvet skin more than the eyes or hair that fascinated her. Velvet skin, and only a loincloth to keep out the cold, as if whoever was underneath craved to be a tactile magnet for everyone else.

  ‘Well, are you coming in or aren’t you?’ The voice was aural velvet, musical, and unmistakably Ash. Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed her wrist in a velvet-steel grip and pulled her through the window after him.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said, offering her his arm. ‘Pet me. Rub me. You know you want to.’

  Yuki stroked his arm twice, just to be polite. They were standing in the middle of an area Ash said was the post-Apocalyptic version of Times Square. There were as many lights here as in the real place, possibly more, but the vehicular traffic comprised mostly cobbled-together machines, most of them without roofs or any other kind of enclosing element, to make it easier for the occupants to jump out on short notice. They had to; the gangs here sported strange metal wings that let them glide if not actually fly, though the trajectories and the speeds seemed to be fudged, at least to Yuki’s eye. Like an old film, the kind where a fall from ten feet up never hurt you, the hero could punch a dozen people, one after another, and never suffer broken bones, or even pain and swelling, and guns fired a million shots in succession and never needed reloading. Which was the whole point, of course.

  ‘So, what are we doing today, Ash?’ she said finally.

  He was watching the gang flyers show off for each other, soaring through the neon canyon. ‘Anything we want, I guess. What did you have in mind?’

  Yuki groaned. ‘You’re the one who pulled me in here, remember? You asked me, I didn’t ask you.’

  Ash stroked his velvet chest with both hands. ‘I just wanted you to see how well I’ve done since the last time I saw you.’

  She frowned at him. ‘Oh, you’ve done strikingly well – I guess – but it hasn’t been that long since the last time you saw me.’ Pause. ‘Has it?’

  Now he looked a bit uneasy, as if she had caught him in something compromising. A lie, she wondered? Or someone else’s body? Something else?

  ‘It’s all relative,’ he said after a few moments. ‘You know – Einstein, time, space, mc2. So much has happened to me since I saw you that it seems like a long time.’

  ‘Really,’ she said, not quite asking a question. ‘I’m kind of surprised that you went for velvet, though. I’d have thought you’d prefer large-grain sandpaper.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Small-grain, definitely.’ He laughed. ‘What about you? Got anything interesting?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought we might trade merchandise or favors.’

  Yuki felt her frown deepen. ‘Are you collecting stamps and coins now, too? Souvenir spoons?’ Ash’s textured face looked blank. ‘Brassieres?’

  A flying gang-member swooped low over them, making her duck, but Ash didn’t even flinch. ‘God, what’s the matter with you? Haven’t you found that tiresome Tom yet?’

  ‘Well, it’s hard, looking all by myself,’ she snapped. ‘With none of Tom’s good friends giving me a bit of help.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Ash said, unperturbed. ‘It’s just that Tom’s a big boy and always was able to look after himself. Maybe better than any of us.’

  ‘Where would you get an idea like that?’

  ‘Well, from Tom, of course.’ He looked surprised. ‘Now, have you got anything worth looking at or haven’t you?’

  She wanted to spit in his face and walk away. Instead, she produced her icon cat and simply held it out to him. ‘Here. If you don’t see it, ask. I probably haven’t got it.’ She watched as he pored through it, studying some pages, brushing past others. He found the mirror-card and held it up, frowning.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘I met this cyborg –’

  ‘Ew. Yuck!’ He dropped the card back into the book as if it had been something unclean. ‘A cyborg, for god’s sake. What are you doing going around with cyborgs.’

  ‘Is a cyborg some kind of untouchable in here?’ she asked, amused in spite of everything.

  Ash shuddered. ‘In triplicate. For god’s sake, they’re made up of parts.’

  ‘Why is that bad?’ Yuki asked, more to needle him than anything else.

  ‘It’s not bad. It’s just so –’ Ash looked pained. ‘Robohick.’ He shuddered again. ‘Most of us got past model building before puberty.’

  She stroked his velvet arm. ‘Indeed.’

  He finished leafing through her catalog and then handed it back to her. ‘Well, you don’t have anything that interests me, thanks just the same.’

  ‘Well, you’re welcome just the same,’ she said, laughing a little. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, I think that’s all,’ he said. ‘Let me know when you find Tom, will you?’ He was striding away from her before she could ask him how she was supposed to do that.

  Holding her catalog, she stood staring after him. The cyborg’s mirror-card was sticking out of the top like a bookmark. She plucked it out before it could fall or be snatched away and was about to tuck it into the catalog when she saw that it had changed.

  Instead of the cyborg’s face in the mirror now, it was Ash, all velvety and perfectly reproduced in hard-res 3D. Underneath the flawless face was the legend, Unacceptable – Simulated Person, Non-Human Manipulated.

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’ she said aloud, and reached for one of the lottery cards.

  DEATH IN THE PROMISED LAND [IV]

  Konstantin came up out of the subway just as the flying saucer stopped overhead. She stared up at it, surprised and then wary. One of the murder victims had been abducted by a flying saucer in the Sitty, she remembered uneasily, and looked around for something to grab on to, or at least use as a weapon. And then she remembered that that would do about as much good as her phoning Guilfoyle Pleshette and asking her to bring in her service pistol and taser.

  But apparently the saucer didn’t have designs on androgynous corpses with slashed throats; a spotlight flashed down on the pavement in front of her, quivered, and then moved along as the saucer sailed away silently. Curious, she followed. The light jumped around, not just sweeping over the ground but flashing on and off at different spots in a way that reminded her of stop-motion animat
ion, the old-fashioned, hard and tedious kind that pre-dated software trickery, right down to the choppiness. And the quivering, which never let up.

  A shadow breezed past her, ruffling her robe and her hair. Well, Shantih’s robe and hair, anyway. The saucer was starting to pick up speed and Konstantin had to walk faster and faster to keep up with it. Pretty soon, though, she would either have to run or give up.

  Or hail a cab. Cabbie, this is a police emergency – follow that saucer!

  She could imagine the cabbie, a chrome humanoid that answered to the name Sylvia, turning around from the steering wheel and saying, Tailing a UFO is subject to a surcharge on your billable time. Do you still wish to proceed? Please answer yes or no.

  She had reached the end of the street and trotted through a ruined square into some kind of park bordering some large body of water. Very likely the East River, unless the classic directions of north, south, east, and west were as changeable as everything else here. Somehow, she didn’t think so, at least, not in this case, since it was so important that this be a variation on New York City.

  The saucer sailed out over the water, the jumpy spotlights slapping down at the waves in a way that seemed less random than purposeful. She stood at a railing made of brushed metal pipe, wondering what the hell it was doing. Looking for something, of course. No, someone. Someone to abduct. Or maybe it was abducting people right in front of her, sucking them up in light beams. What was that old saw about beaming? Beam me something. Beam me off? Away? Over? But who – people underwater? Mermaids? Dolphin people? Well, why not? There were people living in burning wrecks like moto-salamanders, so why not underwater gillgeeks? Konstantin groaned; that hadn’t occurred to her until just now. Why hadn’t she thought to bring someone else along – two or three someone elses, Celestine and DiPietro, not Taliaferro, of course, but maybe what’s-her-name, Wolski –

  Then she had a sudden vision of herself trying to explain to the policy board why they really did need an Artificial Reality squad made up of officers specially trained to deal with crimes peculiar to AR, such as copyright infringement, post-Apocalyptic poaching, and murder. Oh, yeah. That would happen right after she impressed the taxpayers by finding a killer on-line and dragging him back out with her to be jailed, as Pleshette had suggested. Maybe even on the same day.

  Abruptly, the saucer jittered and shot off upriver, going faster than should have been possible from a more-or-less standing start. Konstantin was about to turn away and go looking for a cab when the UFO was suddenly back, directly overhead, shining a spotlight down on her. She was still blinking against it when it was gone again, heading west this time, and she lost sight of it among the buildings. So, what’s the matter, saucer-people, a homicide detective isn’t good enough for you to abduct? Guess not.

  What a waste of time that had been, following the saucer. Not much to see around here at all; obviously, she had no more instinct in AR for finding the real cool places than she did out on the street. Her ex would have felt vindicated, Konstantin thought.

  ‘Taxi?’ she asked the darkness, not really expecting anything to happen.

  Somewhere behind her there was a metallic creaking. She started to turn toward it and then a bright yellow rectangle popped into existence in front of her.

  DO YOU WISH TO ORDER A TAXI-CAB?

  YES NO

  !?HELP?!

  ‘You know, there’s more protocol here sometimes than in the entire police department?’ she said to the sign. It didn’t bother to tell her to stick to the subject at hand, or even to warn her about possible surcharges; it only hung in the air, waiting for her to trigger the next event with the proper response. Konstantin stood staring at it, trying to decide if she wanted to tangle with Help (You know what some people call help. Which employee had said that to her? The bored one, hadn’t it been? Sure hadn’t been Mank. Or Pleshette.), or whether she should just say Yes and hope for the best.

  She would probably make decisions a lot faster, she thought ruefully, if this was her own billable time. And then, with a shudder: Jesus, now they’ve got me singing the billable-time song.

  The sound of creaking metal came again, something familiar, even rather commonplace, though seldom heard in the middle of the night. Probably past sunrise out there, in the real world, which right now felt a great deal less real to her than where she was.

  More creaking, a bit louder. To get her attention, Konstantin thought idly, and then had the strong feeling that she was right. She looked at the sign for a moment. It showed no impatience, didn’t give any indication that it was about to flicker out, so she simply turned away from it and squinted into the darkness.

  She was facing an area that seemed to be a ruined park or recreational zone, where people might have come to sit and look at the water, or stroll along footpaths in the sunshine. Abruptly she caught herself picturing it all in her mind and had to laugh. Not just authentic sensation, but authentic ambience – and not just authentic ambience but authentic retro ambience. That was the sort of thing that could make an otherwise prudent person forget that the meter was clicking away, running the tab higher and higher. Probably why there was so much yak-yak about billable time this and billable time that.

  She moved along the railing, keeping one ear cocked for the sounds of anything in the water, while she listened for the metal creaking.

  There it was, coming from something farther up. Her eyes were getting more accustomed to the darkness and she could see now that she was on the edge of a playground that was fairly well still intact. But what for, Konstantin wondered. Surely children didn’t –

  Ah, but apparently children did. The creaking became louder as well as constant, and she saw just the bare movement of the swing before she saw the girl.

  The streetlamps along the railing had been gradually getting brighter since she had arrived; now she could actually see by them. The girl was hard at work to keep the swing going, pumping with enormous effort because she was too small for her feet to touch the ground. Konstantin could hear her grunt at the back of each sweep just as the swing went forward again, her legs thrust out straight, her braids flying out behind her.

  ‘Good God,’ said Konstantin. ‘What the hell are you?’

  The girl’s head whipped around in a startled away, as if she really hadn’t known Konstantin was there. She quit pumping, letting her legs dangle, but made no active effort to stop herself. Eventually, the swing slowed enough so that the girl could just stand up and walk away from it. But she went only as far as the part of the A-frame closest to Konstantin and then stood hugging the slanted bar and looking like nothing so much as a shy little girl in a playground.

  ‘Are you another paying customer, or something the module throws in to make things interesting?’

  The girl leaned her head on the support pole and looked at Konstantin. ‘I want to go home.’ Pause. ‘Will you take me home? Are you a nice person?’

  Konstantin started to bury her face in her hands and then remembered that would be awkward. ‘Drop the act, whoever you are. I know as well as anyone else there aren’t any real children in here.’

  ‘What if you’re wrong?’ The girl pushed away from the pole and came toward her with her hands behind her back. ‘What if I am a real little girl? What if I told you that every time my mom brings one of her boyfriends home, she sticks me in her rig and logs me in so I’m out of the way?’

  Konstantin looked down at her, feeling slightly queasy. ‘I’d say that your mom is breaking the law, and she could be in a lot of trouble if anyone finds out.’

  ‘Nobody will,’ the girl said. ‘I can run around in here for hours and hours telling everyone about it and no one will believe me. You’re not supposed to believe anything anyone tells you in here, so she’s perfectly safe.’

  Konstantin’s queasiness intensified. ‘Is that why you hang around here, swinging in the dark?’

  The girl nodded. ‘If you know anything about the Sitty, then you can see why I want to just st
ay out of the way till I can log out.’

  ‘But this is ridiculous,’ Konstantin said. ‘Why don’t you tell someone when you’re off-line? A teacher, a police officer, a counselor –’

  ‘I have.’ The girl shrugged. ‘Nobody believes me out there, either. It’s too unbelievable. Nobody would do that. I have to be lying. Right?’

  ‘Plus ça change.’ Konstantin sighed, thinking suddenly that there was very damned little that had ever been invented for the sake of bringing humans closer to truth.

  The girl took her hand suddenly, making her jump. ‘I think you are a nice person. You must be. Even if you don’t believe me, at least you care. At least there’s enough of a real person left inside you to think it isn’t right.’

  Konstantin sighed again, at a complete loss for something to say, anything at all. So, which is worse – murder, or the things that let the victims live to regret? Damn it, it just wasn’t fair, when she was trying to handle one to have to be confronted with the other.

  You can’t save the world; you can only channel-surf it. Something her ex had said once, or at least quoted. Back when they had still been showing each other compassion.

  ‘Look,’ she said, gently removing her hand from the girl’s. ‘I’m in here for a – a special purpose, I’ve got to find someone …’ Her voice trailed off. The girl stood looking up at her.

  You just couldn’t win, Konstantin thought unhappily. If she walked away, she’d never know if she’d heard a tragedy-in-progress or an outrageous fish story. Either way, the soul behind the facade of those eyes was someone who needed some kind of help. In spite of everything, she wouldn’t be able to square it with her conscience if she walked away simply because the problem wasn’t one of those listed in her job description.

  Okay. Think of a better reason to walk away, urged her more cynical side. Try the billable time thing.

  ‘Or maybe you can help me,’ Konstantin said quickly, taking the girl’s hand again. ‘Do you know anything about someone named Body Sativa?’