A Paradigm of Earth

by Candas Jane Dorsey

  “This is Hester. This is Andris.”

  “I’ve heard a lot … ,” they both started, stopped and laughed, but Salome was already moving into the video suite. “Crass!” she said. “Spinal!”

  “It’s a compliment, Andris,” said Mr. Grey dryly. Salomé grinned, but she was already in the pilot seat, sliding into the rig.

  “Hester,” she said to the tech, “but if Dad calls me Salome, don’t do the double-take. It’s my other name.”

  “Bryant. It’s cued up at midnight,” said the tech. “I’ve checked it down to the byte. No sign of splice.”

  “Yeah,” said Salomé, “that’s good. Very good. I see your notes here. Nothing’s overlooked here: that saves me a lot of work. But … look, cope me here.” He leaned into the copilot rig. “Now watch. We’re going to go macro here. Look for loops. But our wombat will be clever. Won’t loop everything. There’ll be four or five layers.”

  After that, Grey and Andris were watching magic, with a few cryptic incantations.

  “The cars?”

  “No, but here’s a cat. And the hall light.”

  “Great moiré.”

  “Look at this segue. Smooth, but here—is that counter always that height?”

  “Bandwidth conservation?”

  “Showing off, I think. Look, I see that as signature …”

  Mr. Grey was surprised to see that almost two hours had passed when Salome pushed herself out of the rig.

  “There are twelve tracks,” Salomé said. “They range from one byte per scan to about three megabytes per scan. I’ll put them on the big display. Here’s the kitchen in the dark, right? That’s the big one. That’s easy. But if it just looped, it would be too obvious. So here’s a random cat. Loops three times, different loop length, between midnight and dawn. Water dish each time, same number of laps. And it says meouw. Same voiceprint. Then there’s the streetlight. See the fluttering? That’s supposed to be tree limbs in front of it, but if you look, it’s just a cross-scan with a black lattice. Was the wind blowing at that time last night? Would the rain have obscured the light more? Then the counter, there, catches the edge of light from the prism in the window. That one’s cute, because there is a cross-current when the cat comes in, but there shouldn’t be, because the cat doesn’t have to open the door, she just comes through that triangle cut out of the outside corner there, see? There is light and shadow showing through that triangle, cut off by her body, but if you play the hall, the hall shows dark, and when the cat comes down the hall, it’s a different size. See where the tail cuts the door edge? And look how it bends its legs to get through the cat door, and the kitchen one doesn’t have to. That hall stuff’s a pale cat. The pixel-level alterations are on the fur. This wasn’t a brown tabby when it started, but the kitchen one is a brown tabby. Are there two cats in the house?”

  Andris looked at Mr. Grey. “There used to be three, but two died,” said the grey man. “The others were big marmalade toms.”

  “Were you already recording before that?”

  “Yes, but it’s on a loop. We don’t save everything. We certainly don’t save footage of looking through a window at a cat going to eat in the middle of the night.”

  “Somebody does. Are your feeds secure?”

  “Sure,” said Andris, but Mr. Grey said, “Of course not. There are three people in that house who use video intensively, and one who uses it minimally—technically that is. Copping a feed is the easiest video hack to do. Even I can do it, with good equipment. Kids in day care cop the baby monitor.”

  “Yeah, it’s not rocket science,” said Salomé. “The only thing I can suggest is to look for deviousness. That one-byte-per-scan layer? It’s a signature. Look.”

  She damped all the other layers, and gave the single byte simultaneity. It became a word, traced in the air of the hall, and two other words traced in the empty space of the kitchen. “Runs … with scissors.”

  “Look for someone cute,” she said. “In the old sense of the word.”

  “They’re all too damn cute in that house,” said the grey man.

  journal:

  Went into the bathroom to discover that Delany had left the lid off the toothpaste again—that bitch, she thinks cuz John does it she can get away with it—one of these days gonna get my jam together to tell her she’s just being lazy—I get so fucking infuriated when she does something shabby like that—cheating—looking to get away with something

  Talk about getting away with something, Blue was pushing the dream issue again today and this time I think John is getting interested—but not like Blue wants—John wants the whole thing for his vid/doc—he wants Jakob to do the dreaming, and John wants to put four cameras in the room—he says it’s the best segment he’s conceived—watching the interface of the human subpsyche with the alien whatever—he hasn’t paid enough real attention to Blue to know what the “whatever” will be yet-don’t know why I should object—the whole thing just a circus anyhow—Mounties here today digging up Dundee or was it Seville—hard to tell—they called it exhuming—Blue wanted to know if all burials are temporary—none of our customs so far had revealed this interesting fact—envisioning some sort of galactic postgrad thesis being formed and shattered I said no and started a course of Lord Peter Wimsey—the natural successor to Klaatu?—we’ll see what the galactic sensibilities make of the detective genre—the whole thing is a joke—I’m getting so sick of tripping over microphones—if it’s not CSIS it’s John—apparently the city cops tried to get into the investigation because of some anonymous hate mail, but Mr. Grey invoked national security of course—all gossip and rumours-we seem to live in a house of rumors—our real life suspended for the duration

  Not to speak of the fact that with all these cops around my intentions to resume my sex life are shot to hell—even considered going to the Women’s Dance tonight but as soon as I mentioned it Blue wanted to go and the RCMP stepped in and said they couldn’t guarantee Blue’s safety and so on and so on—and even if we had gone this kind of spotlight does not facilitate groupies

  Blue wants to know what the procedure will be if the police keep on believing Blue did it—in this case the blind leading the blind—I can’t imagine—my head keeps going around and around—I can’t believe Blue had anything to do with it—all these xenophobes—but I keep remembering Blue was awake, out of the room, and one moment of reassurance isn’t a hell of a lot

  All this energy goes nowhere—Jakob has the right idea—John too—just keep doing their thing—Jakob plans to “sleep Blue”, as he calls it, next week—now he tells me that they weren’t dancing, that night, they were trying to share dreams but no dreams ensued, he said, because the turmoil outside woke him up too soon—but how do they know-without a REM monitor—Blue certainly couldn’t describe a dream though seems to have taken to the concept with enthusiasm—that’s what this brouhaha is all about, teaching Blue the dream world—how would Blue know a dream if one appeared, anyway?

  I dreamed that Blue was in jail 7 guess but instead of bars it was a long leash that kept hands away from everyone s/he tried to touch just by a few cm—torture—I was the lawyer and I couldn’t talk—trying to force the works—Blue looking like death warmed over and sort of wilting like a fun house mirror or an old Star Trek monster fog—shit—woke up in the usual state—got up to pee and Blue was in the bay window in the staircase in the dark watching the moon

  Said, I can walk on there, but I came here instead

  I said, are you sorry?

  Blue said, sorry? I am not allowed to be sorry

  Big silence

  Then, are you going to let me dream you?

  If this keeps up I am going to do it, for sure. what could be worse? This is the craziest seduction scene I’ve ever been in. Just mumbled something but it took a couple of hours to get some sleep

  “You can relax,” said the grey man, testily. “There’s no hard evidence against anyone inside the perimeter,”

  “The pe
rimeter?”

  “The fence. The house. The security force.”

  “Ah, you investigated yourselves.”

  He glared at her.

  She laughed. “Okay. Sorry. I was provoking you. Why are you in such a bad mood?”

  “Because eliminating your people and my people from the list leaves only the passing casual murderer, and that’s an unsatisfying and essentially clichéd outcome. It bothers me. It’s unaesthetic.”

  “Unaesthetic? This is a murder.”

  “Logically, I mean. Inelegant solutions are usually wrong. Which means, all my elaborate elimination logic is wrong. All my evidence is wrong. In a word, I am wrong.”

  She looked at him gently. “You are far too good at your job,” she said. “They don’t deserve you.”

  “With your permission,” he said, “I’d like to play that tape clip to my boss. I’ve been wanting a raise.” He smiled finally.

  “You look tired. Want to talk about it?”

  “Thanks for the reflex. No, I can’t.” He got up and turned on the radio, started running water and washing his cup. “Well, I can talk about it, but I’m tired of it. I’ve been around and around the evidence. There’s been serious tampering with the feeds, and anyone in this house could have done it—but so could any of seventeen outside interests, ranging from unaffiliated fanatics to other governments.” His cup was clean, but he kept flipping his hands through the water stream, spreading the stream into a wide spray of droplets. Morgan realized that he had done this before once, and suddenly—why it had taken so long she couldn’t imagine—she realized it was the old-fashioned fool-the-microphone trick. “We discovered some huge holes in our ice, and we’ve been putting in patches, but we don’t know if they were always there or, if not, when they were melted.” She handed him her cup to wash, and the plate that the oatmeal-and-date cookies had been on. “There’s no on-site evidence. No DNA. No heat trace. Nothing we can scrape off the surrounding landscape shouldn’t be there. Nothing we scraped off this house or anyone in it shouldn’t be there. It’s the lack of evidence: we know someone’s seriously bent here, but we can’t get a handle. And of course, I shouldn’t be spilling this.”

  “I thought that trick didn’t work with the new gadgets.” She nodded toward the running water. In response to his come-hither gesture, she handed him the tea-towel from the rail beside her.

  “We have a pretty basic set-up here.” He turned off the water and dried cups and saucers and plate, and his hands, then neatly hung up the linen teatowel. “I saw to that. And for anything more than surface scans, I’d have to authorize the unscrambling time.”

  As he worked, she had been flicking the selector button of the radio, station-surfing a chaotic mix of sound. “Are we really out from under suspicion?”

  “You and Delany are. Our techs gave her up reluctantly, but medical evidence is pretty clear. The others—they all have reasons, but I can’t see any of them as strong enough. And I myself don’t suspect Blue.”

  His distinction was pretty clear. “Oh.” Though she had a dozen questions, she still couldn’t think of anything else she really wanted to say. He reached past her and tapped the radio’s off switch. “Do you mind?” he said. “The noise is driving me crazy.”

  “Sorry,” said Morgan, grinning. “I was just looking for some news.”

  Grinning, he opened the cupboard and put away the clean cups.

  “You know where everything goes,” Morgan said.

  “It’s a Sherlock Holmes thing. Professional standards,” he said.

  She turned away from his smile, suddenly realizing how complicit they seemed. Was he her friend? She didn’t want any friends.

  Transparent though that wish was, and impossible—it was already too late, several times over. She sighed.

  “Well, at least I cheered you up,” he said.

  “She’s not like I expected,” Delany whispered to Morgan in the kitchen. “She’s …”

  “Older?” said Jakob archly.

  “Cut it out, Jakob. We’re all older than we used to be,” Morgan snapped, then laughed. “Sorry. But really. Don’t be bitchy. She’s a nice woman. Give her a chance.”

  Russ’s new friend was there for dinner, and was running the gauntlet of household evaluation. Household xenophobia, Morgan thought with surprise. They’d taken in an alien without a murmur, made Blue one of the family, but those who courted family were now scrutinized with huge suspicion.

  Aziz, who by the evidence must have gone home a few times to import the astonishing array of fashionable clothes he wore, still appeared never to have left Jakob’s side, but he had weathered the gatekeeping stares and interrogations with the sublime disregard of the egotistical. A lad that pretty had never had reason to look beyond his mirror, Morgan thought, but then again, he seemed devoted to Jakob, so they had all accepted him as inevitable after a very short try-out period.

  Now this Miranda (“Call me Randy!”) would face the same test. She sat at the dining table next to Russ, leaning slightly against his shoulder, handling with great self-possession the stares, and the frequent preparatory errands to the kitchen that gave people a chance to whisper about her. She was a lean, fit, muscular woman who had spent a lot of time in the sun. She was tall—her eyes were almost level with Russ’s—and she looked like a hobby-marathon-runner. She wore good corporate attire, as did Russ, but her forearms looked hard and tanned—clearly she found time for non-corporate pursuits as well.

  John was, as was his frequent condition, late. Finally Morgan buzzed him on the house terminal. “Come on down! Supper’s almost ready, and we have company!”

  He appeared, bleary-eyed and rumpled of clothing, rubbing quicktime goop from his hands.

  “Computer problems?” asked Randy sympathetically. “I’ve certainly had my share of goop days.”

  “Randy works in MIS,” said Russ.

  “I love those want-ads,” Delany said, laughing. “Saw one last week that said ‘MIS Manager Wanted in Bahamas’.”

  “Where in the Bahamas?” Randy said. “Where did you see it?”

  “WebJob, I think. But it’s a joke, right? Mis-manager?”

  “Yeah, but, goodness, the Bahamas. What a place to go to work!”

  “But you have a job, don’t you?” said John.

  Randy looked at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’ve met you,” said John. “I saw you at work. Don’t you remember?”

  Randy looked uneasy.

  “Back off, Johnny,” Jakob said, his voice no gentler than John’s. “Randy’s a buddy now, right?”

  “Oh, sure, didn’t mean to get muscular,” said John. “I’ll go get the salad.” And he shambled out into the kitchen.

  “I’m sure there’s something I can do to help,” Randy said. “It’s like at family reunions, you know? Everybody pitches in.”

  “Leave that for later visits,” Russ said. “This is your one chance to relax.”

  “Relax?” Randy said. “You don’t know me well yet, do you, sweetie? I just always have to be on the go,” and she popped up and bustled into the kitchen.

  “You better listen to this, Mac,” said Rahim. “Live feed. Kitchen.”

  The voices were very clear.

  “I saw you when I was a tech there,” said John.

  “It doesn’t matter. So I worked there. Now I work in Russ’s department. So what?”

  “One is happenstance: Morgan. Twice is co-incidence: me. Three times is enemy action: you. What the hell are you doing here? If you’re freelance, forget it. I have an exclusive on this site. If you still work for them, you better find a reason to get out of your burgeoning little romance with Rusty there before I blow your cover. Capiche?”

  The grey man was out of the trailer and striding toward the house before Rahim turned around. “Wait, Mac!” he called, but Mr. Grey ignored him and he was forced to follow behind, still protesting, as the grey man pounded on the back door, then without waiting for an answer flung
it open and strode through the kitchen into the dining room.

  He recognized both of the visitors he found there.

  The peremptory knocking on the back door startled them all. Morgan leaped up, darted toward the kitchen, meeting the grey man in the dining room doorway.

  “Hi,” he said. “Move.” Behind him, the Boy Wonder was making fish faces, but not getting any words out of his gasping mouth.

  “What the hell are you doing busting in here?” Morgan said, but the grey man was not looking at her. He was looking at Randy.

  “Maybelle Murphy as I live and breathe. And who assigned you here?”

  “Kowalski,” Randy said calmly. “Told me to get up close and personal with somebody here. I picked Russ.”

  Russ looked at her in shock.

  “Sorry,” she said to him, “but you’re the cute one. And I knew about your Amnesty work. I figured hey, why not. And you run.”

  “And you figured this was okay—exactly how?” said the grey man.

  “He wasn’t passing on orders from you?”

  “You know bloody well he wasn’t. Don’t you?”

  “Had an idea. But I’m just a flunky.”

  “No, you’re a minion. Flunkies have more brains. Get the hell out of here before I bust your ass down to bedrock and put you back on booze patrol. And when you tell Kowalski about this, tell him I want him in my office at ten tomorrow morning.”

  She looked shamefaced. Morgan was catching up.

  “You mean, this is a cop?”

  Mr. Grey looked at Morgan. “In the broadest possible interpretation of the term, I suppose you could say yes.” Randy went into the hall, came back with her coat and shoulder bag.