‘Yes?’
‘Sorry to disturb you, Herr Klein. I’m outside your door right now. I have urgent need of your advice.’
When Vogt entered Klein’s apartment, he didn’t know what to expect; what he didn’t expect was a complete absence of hospitality. Not so much as a glass of water, though he noticed one on Klein’s desk, freshly poured from a bottle of the deionised variety into a cut crystal glass. As if to indicate a desire to continue with his work, Klein returned to his desk, sat down at his monitor and put on the glasses he now required to see the screen clearly. Scanning his unfinished text, he asked Werner what he wanted.
‘I have reason to believe that the operation of the service is being undermined. The excellent work you put in place before you left has been passed on to that Lang woman, who is happy enough to consult with Adalbert Pearson but not with actual employees.’
This was transparent. ‘Such as yourself.’
Since Klein’s apartment was fitted out exclusively for his own use, there was a castor-mounted chair at his desk but nowhere for a visitor to sit. Looking through to the kitchen, Werner noticed a bar stool and asked Klein if he could bring it through. Klein didn’t like the sound of this. How long was the fellow planning to stay?
‘Provided you return it when you leave.’
‘Of course, Herr Klein. That goes without saying.’
Klein then considered Werner’s complaint; he undoubtedly had a point.
‘I have always had doubts about Frau Lang, not so much about her loyalty, which is not in question, but rather of her modus operandi. When she is not ignoring them entirely, she has, shall we say, a tendency to bend the rules. But as you and I both know, rules are there for a reason. As for her habit of knitting during meetings, well…’
At the thought of Ursula Lang plying her needles, words appeared to fail him. As musical notes would have done, though this did not occur to him at the time.
‘So in terms of your legacy, Herr Klein, what can best be done to protect it?’
Self-absorbed though he was, it had never occurred even to Klein that he might have a legacy at the BND. Hearing this word, he realised that Werner was softening him up but did his best to answer the question anyway as the most efficient way of concluding the meeting.
‘I can only advise you to keep a watching brief, documenting in as much detail as possible any irregularities you may observe, in particular any access afforded Pearson to classified information he should not be privy to. That would be a matter of the utmost seriousness. Oh, and any sign of exceeding the limits of federal law, that would be compelling too. For example, where it comes to surveillance.’
Vogt knew this was sound advice but it was hardly rocket science either. Though he had an ulterior motive in visiting Klein, he also had a problem, less analytical than psychological. He was feeling increasingly insecure, the more so since his mentor had retired. But Klein wasn’t finished.
‘In addition, to the extent that resources allow, you should consider documenting any meeting Lang might have with our transatlantic friend. Such meetings should be logged, but I doubt that all of them will be.’
This was all very well, but what Vogt really wanted to know was whether he could safely take his concerns to a higher level. Such a course might be effective in raising his profile but might equally well backfire, meaning that he’d marked his own card by mistake. With his years of experience, Dieter Klein could be expected to know which of these two outcomes was the more likely.
‘So all this being the case, do you consider that I should take my concerns to a higher authority?’
Klein was about to assent to this proposition, the prospect of shafting Lang still having its attractions, when it occurred to him that the deal he himself had cut with Pearson might then come under scrutiny, a deal which had not entirely accorded with the rules which were there for a reason.
‘Not at this time, no. I believe that might be premature.’
Having his answer, and sensing Klein’s impatience to get back to his work, Werner changed the subject.
‘If I may ask, Herr Klein, how is your magnum opus coming along?’
Klein was unsure whether Werner was referring to his treatise on the musical note or his projected symphony in Eb.
‘Your symphony.’
‘Ah. Yes.’
Klein had abandoned the symphony in favour of the concerto, which offered the opportunity to lean more on melodic line and so reduce the demands of structure. The trouble was that several composers before him had already written notable concertos, mainly for the piano and the violin. Even he, Klein, couldn’t hope to live with competition like that.
‘So you propose to write for a less common instrument?’
Klein smiled. Young Werner was catching on fast. ‘Exactly!’
He’d given this question much thought and narrowed the field to the lute and the tenor bassoon. Preparatory work had involved listening to as many examples as he could of concertos for these instruments. As far as he could see, there weren’t many and most of them weren’t up to much.
Beginning to wonder if, in his deadpan way, Klein was having him on, Vogt changed the subject.
‘Herr Klein, if I may ask, have you at any point regretted leaving the service earlier than you might have?’
Klein took off his glasses and looked up at Werner in surprise.
‘I can’t say I have.’
As someone might wash Courvoisier round his mouth for a moment to relish its quality before swallowing, so Klein savoured his formulation before delivering it to his visitor. He plainly liked it a lot.
‘If I may so put it, young man, one should stop in time while one still has time to stop.’
44
Saito was at work when the call came through and rushed from the building in her lab coat, her ID still round her neck. In the course of her relatively short life, she had learned to avoid expectations of any sort, which certainly included an emergency message from the Community Hospital concerning a colleague. What had he done this time, collapsed in the street in a drunken stupor? But her Uber driver allowed her no space to consider this, answering every question he put to her himself before she had a chance to reply.
The Community Hospital seemed old to her, but her father seemed old to her too and he was still functioning. She made her way to the ward mentioned in the message, only to find Munoz had been moved. Approaching his bay, for the time being curtained off, she was intercepted by a nurse.
‘You’re here for Señor Munoz?’ Saito nodded and the nurse gestured her into a small office. ‘As you know, Miss…’
‘Saito.’
‘ …a repair of this sort is by no means easy but the sooner we operated the better.’
‘You’ve dealt with it already?’
‘One of our vascular surgeons operated early this morning. Dr Ibrahimi, you know him?’
‘We haven’t met.’
‘He’s excellent.’
‘I’m sure he is. So tell me, how bad was it?’ she asked, switching on her phone’s voice recorder. ‘You don’t mind?’
‘Provided it’s solely for your own reference, one professional to another. So,’ she said, glancing at Munoz’ file, ‘a transverse tear of the tunica albuginea, common in these cases. The corpora cavernosa were also damaged.’
Saito knew that her lab coat had led the nurse to infer that she was staff too. And when you came right down to it, she was also a professional, though not a medical one.
‘I see.’
‘As you know, urethral damage is also a possibility in such cases, but we’ve postponed pursuing that till the patient recovers from this morning’s procedure.’ She glanced again at Munoz’ notes. ‘He’s able to void, which is good, though that in itself doesn’t preclude the possibility of damage.’ Nurse Kouris smiled and spread her hands, palms upw
ards in a philosophical gesture as if to say that surgical intervention complete, they were now in the hands of fate, the Deity, or some such.
‘These incidents are relatively rare, but there we are.’
Saito would have asked what the incident had been but Nurse Kouris assumed she already knew. Looking through the office window, she noted that the latest obs had been completed, the curtain drawn back and Munoz, resting at a slight incline, was available to receive visitors whether he wanted them or not. When she pulled up a chair and sat down by his bed, he groaned.
‘Oh God, what are you doing here?’
‘The hospital contacted me. They’re under the impression that I’m your next of kin. Why would they think that, Rafael, why would that be?’
‘Ah, right, well… to tell you the truth, I couldn’t think of anyone else.’
‘A vote of confidence, then. Okay, so tell me.’
When Munoz showed great reluctance to tell her anything at all, Saito threatened to ask the medical staff.
‘They won’t tell you. Patient confidentiality.’
‘I think you’re forgetting I’m next of kin. In any case,’ she said, ‘you should listen to this.’ She produced her phone and played back the recording. Hearing it, Munoz looked even sicker than he did already.
‘So I have the inside story on your tunica albuginea, not to mention your corpora cavernosa.’
Munoz sighed. ‘Until today I didn’t know I had any.’
Even though he was the one who’d suffered the damage, Munoz had failed to absorb the relevant medical terms. He tried to move to a more comfortable position and winced in pain.
Saito attempted to sound sympathetic; when it came to Munoz, a feeling she would always have to counterfeit.
‘You’re in discomfort.’
‘Discomfort! For fuck’s sake, Gina, is that what you call it? The word you’re looking for is agony! Oh, and since you ask, you do realise how serious this is? I may never get it up again.’
Which seemed to Saito a desired outcome, for the female population as a whole and for Ai in particular.
‘So one thing you can be sure of, I won’t be collecting any more parcels for a while.’
‘Whatever,’ Saito said dismissively, ‘just tell me what happened.’
‘Right, but this is strictly between you and me. No one else gets to know. No one!’
And when Munoz finally told her, Saito could see why he wouldn’t want this information in the public domain. Rafael had become over-energetic with Ai while his shapely partner straddled him in the cowgirl position. In an excess of ardour, he’d fractured his penis.
‘You ought to have heard it!’ Saito didn’t think so. ‘It was like something snapped with a loud twang. Like the string of a guitar, maybe. And the pain! The pain was intense. Excruciating!’ He pointed to the damaged organ beneath the sheet. ‘You wouldn’t want to see this.’
How right he was, though Saito looked more puzzled than disgusted.
‘But Rafael, in our species the male has no penile bone. How could you fracture a bone where there is none to break?’
‘Exactly what I said in the ambulance, but that’s what the medics call it – a fractured penis.’
‘The nurse mentioned something about urethral damage.’
‘The Greek one, Olympia?’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean, there’s good-looking then there’s Olympia Kouris.’
Gina could hardly believe that Rafael’s thoughts were straying to the area which had got him into this mess in the first place.
‘About the urethral damage.’
Munoz looked pained even to be reminded of it.
‘They actually wanted to stick a catheter up my dick and pump some dye or other all the way up to my bladder.’
‘Sounds painful.’
‘I told them no way. I was in agony as it was. What are these people on!’
Saito pointed out that they were doing their best to help him and some appreciation might be in order. But by now she had something else on her mind.
‘Anyway, and forgive me but I have to ask this, do you consider that Ai’s design in any way led to this unfortunate breakage?’
Munoz was suspicious. ‘Is this for your review?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I’ll only tell you what I think if you keep it anonymous. That’s a must, Gina, an absolute must. You have no idea how embarrassing this could be for me.’
In fact, she had a very good idea and gave him a cast iron, copper-bottomed guarantee. But he still wasn’t happy, too many metals in her reply, and five more minutes passed before he relented.
‘Well, looking back on it, I would say that the removable internal parts I told you about might be too inflexible, don’t bend enough with the user, so to speak. That might be at the root of it.’
‘So in your experience,’ she said, in an attempt to sum up, ‘less flexible than a real vagina.’
Munoz blushed, partly because his experience of real vaginas was minimal, but more because a passing nurse had overheard what Saito said and shot him a knowing look.
45
‘I think you should see this.’
The analyst was checking information collected at Hiroshi Sasaki’s research facility in Nagoya from the eighty-seven sex dolls already in service. Production was increasing but sales were slow due to the high purchase price. The sales department had passed responsibility for this to marketing, reminding them that the more units sold, the greater the possibility of reducing the cost per unit. Sasaki had heard it all before, but what they were seeing now was something new.
‘I believe we have an event, Sasaki San.’
Sasaki pulled up a chair and sat down beside her. A graphic display showed a spike so high he was reminded of seismograph readings from the catastrophic earthquake of 2011.
‘This is indeed unusual. Do we know the cause?’
The assistant, a young lady educated in artificial intelligence to post-doctoral level, believed she did but was reluctant to explain it. Even through her makeup, Sasaki detected signs of a blush.
‘Tell the story as it is, Dr Tanaka. If we do not enter the tiger’s cave…’
‘There is reason to believe the user injured himself.’
Sasaki made a mental note to contact his legal department when he had a better handle on what had occurred. As if reading his mind, his assistant reminded him of the disclaimers in the user guide, albeit in eight-point type and crying out for a magnifying glass.
‘True. But we must analyse these data from a technical point of view. Only by doing so can we improve Ai and, with her, the service we provide to our customers. So, the user, he has registered his Ai?’
‘Rafael Ignaz Munoz, Los Angeles.’
‘And when did he buy her?’
‘He didn’t. My records show that Ai was bought for him by Saito Gina, also resident in Los Angeles.’
Interesting. Saito could spend her money as she wished, but as gifts went, this one was expensive. Did she use his money? If so, how would buying an Ai for this man further the objectives of Future World?
‘The nature of the incident?’
‘The voice recording should tell us, though my English may not be adequate. I have trouble with prepositions.’
‘We can agree, Dr Tanaka, that there is no logic to them whatsoever.’
Both disliked the many aspects of language which could not be accounted for by logic, a factor which meant that producing eloquent Ais was much more difficult than it should have been.
She pointed her cursor at the waveform below the graphic and pressed play, selecting the point where the incident began, audible as a loud shriek closely followed by a stream of profanity.
‘For fuck’s sake, what have you done! You bitch, you cunt!’
Unaccustomed to such language, Dr Tanaka blanched and turned to Sasaki.
‘This person, Munoz, he is showing her no respect.’
Pleased that Dr Tanaka thought of Ai as a person, he replied in kind.
‘Which she certainly deserves.’
Munoz’ bad words were followed by loud moans of pain then Ai’s response.
‘My only interest is in giving you pleasure, Rafael.’
‘Pleasure! Pleasure! You call this pleasure! It’s leaking blood all over the place! Look what you’ve done, look at it!’
Which neither Tanaka nor Sasaki could do since Ai’s imaging had yet to be enabled. The legal department had counselled against it: if Ais were hacked, images might be used to blackmail users.
‘I am sorry, Rafael. I have failed to meet your requirements. How may I please you?’
‘Chinga tu madre!’
Rafael wailed as he checked the damage, then finally said something which made sense.
‘Call 911!’
And this was something Ai could do, though she needed more detail.
‘Which service do you require: police, fire, ambulance?’
‘My God, isn’t it fucking obvious? It’s damaged! I actually think it’s broken! Christ, what am I going to do now!’
Sasaki and Tanaka exchanged glances, both thinking the same thing.
‘He may be referring to his organ, Sasaki San.’
If this were the case, it raised a serious issue. If Munoz’ injury was attributable to Ai’s interior design, changes would have to be made. But perhaps it had been caused by Munoz himself in an excess of enthusiasm.
‘Tell me, Dr Tanaka, does your present data stream allow us to identify the position adopted when the incident occurred?’
But this was proving tricky, even for Dr Tanaka.
‘Sensors on Ai’s buttocks indicate little contact so we may exclude Position 3.’
Sasaki was accustomed to statements of this kind from his team and understood the problem, but he wanted to know which position had been adopted, not which position had not.
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