Realtime Interrupt

by James P. Hogan

  Chapter Four

  Pittsburgh had seen a surprising amount of demolition and rebuilding in recent years.

  The Camelot Hotel was located downtown on Fourth Avenue—a redevelopment of a site where an office building had stood previously. It was an experimental throwback from the glass-and-concrete architectural catastrophes that had been provoking mirth and outrage among everyone but the experts for decades. Standing out amid the gray slab canyons and arrays of faceless mirror rectangles, the Camelot presented a warm, defiant countenance of red bricks, arched windows, and a pseudo-Tudor foyer with wood-beamed ceilings—imitation wood, it was true, but visually pleasing nonetheless. A crenellated terrace reduced the severity of the vertical line, and, in keeping with the name, twin chateau-style turrets rounded off the design. Visitors and locals liked it, and a residential developer was putting up English Victorian-style row houses along several streets on the North Side. And Corrigan liked working there because it offered a respite from the various dementias of the age that he was supposed to want to normalize himself by imitating.

  Plenty of people were out, healthily expressing themselves, when he arrived from the subway stop on Stanwix Street. Half a block before the hotel entrance, a couple were having a domestic tiff, screaming insults at each other in front of onlookers who yelled taunts or encouragement, depending on whose side they took. A street band was playing for nickels in front of a battery of equipment that must have cost several thousand dollars; a group of men wearing togas and holding staffs were sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk for reasons that were not obvious; some women were parading dogs glamorized with coiffures of various cuts and colors to reflect their mistresses' personas; and there were more pirates about.

  Movement and bearing were important parts of the language by which people told the world who they were and what they owned. So business suits and hats strutted, blazers and sport coats strode, macho gear swaggered, uniforms of any kind marched, shapely skirts wiggled, and demure dresses minced. The modern world in miniature, the street was a stage of acted-out messages: the measured tread of confidence; paradings of success; hunched, defeated shoulders; a hanging head of shame. Nobody took any notice of Corrigan as he made his way uncommunicatively along the sidewalk to the Camelot's main doors. He was far from convinced that they took very much notice of each other.

  A media celebrity called Merlyn Dree was staying at the Camelot, and Corrigan had to pick his way through a flock of garishly clad fans who were being held at bay outside the door by hotel security staff. Inside, at the front desk, a fat man in an overcoat was pointing at a sheet of paper and remonstrating loudly with a harassed-looking clerk.

  "No, Crammerwitz booked the room, but it's under Mancini, okay? The basic goes to the company, and they pick up these calls, but not those calls. Dinner goes on the other company and not this one, because it's a different account. What's the problem?"

  In a corner nearby, the latest experimental wonder in Artificial Intelligence that somebody had succeeded in selling to management stood ignominiously, dismantled and partly crated in preparation for being shipped back: automated, talking desk-clerks. They hadn't lasted a week. Whoever coded their database was probably very smart but had obviously never worked in hotels. Corrigan went on through the lobby, grateful that nobody had come up with any ideas for replacing human bartenders. That would need Artificial Wisdom, which was another matter entirely.

  He went up the main stairway to the second-floor landing and through the staff door to the room behind the bar of the Galahad Lounge. The roster pinned to the message board told him that Sherri would be working the late shift with him. At least she was one that he found he could talk to. She listened, and seemed genuinely curious to understand what made him different. Sometimes he thought that Sherri would be better doing Sarah's job. But on the other hand, maybe that would mean he'd have to work with Sarah.

  Maurice, who was in charge of the Camelot's three lounges, came in while Corrigan was changing into his work outfit of dress shirt with bow tie and maroon jacket. Small, dark, with the shaped mustachios that he considered went with the bar-manager image, Maurice was a Horace incarnate with a New York accent—meticulous about detail, and most of the time sounding like an animated company-procedure manual. Since his staff handled cash and dealt directly with the clientele, that wasn't all bad, Corrigan supposed. But Maurice confused all around him by being incapable of doing anything simply if a more complicated way could be contrived. On top of that, his particular brand of normality came in the form of a conviction that everyone in the trade was crooked, especially management, and customers worst of all. Corrigan stayed behind his shield of maladaptability and watched with baffled fascination.

  "You were on yesterday afternoon before Jack, right, Joe?" Maurice was holding the notebook in which he entered the figures from the cash registers. Jack was another of the younger bar assistants. Maurice had confided that he knew Jack was on the take, because he styled his hair in the same way as Nelson Torrence of Underside, who conned wealthy widows and robbed banks.

  "Yesterday? Yes, that's right," Corrigan replied. "Why?"

  "Was everything okay when you cashed up? Last night, we were thirty bucks down."

  Corrigan groaned inwardly. Jack had been delayed on his way in, making Corrigan late for a game that he'd wanted to catch at Three Rivers. By way of amends and to help out, Jack had offered to cash up Corrigan's shift for him so that he could be on his way. Although it was against the rules, just that one time Corrigan had let him—he had no qualms about Jack being honest. And just that one time, of course, something like this had to happen.

  He sighed. "I didn't do it. I was late for something and got Jack to cover."

  "What! You let him cash up your shift? You know better than that, Joe."

  Yes, Corrigan knew. But it happened from time to time nevertheless, as Maurice knew perfectly well. The problem was that trust was a concept that lay beyond Maurice's powers of comprehension.

  "My fault," Corrigan said. "I'm wide open. I'll eat the thirty, no problem."

  But that wasn't what Maurice wanted. He moved a step closer and lowered his voice. "Come on, Joe, you know and I know that Jack's a snitch, don't we? He cooked your numbers and took a dip. But he doesn't have to get away with it. All I need is a docket from you, and I'll countersign that you put it in yesterday."

  In other words, a pure frame-up implicating Jack as trying to frame Corrigan. Corrigan couldn't see for the life of him why Maurice went about doing things this way. "Ah, no," he said, "that wouldn't be right at all. There's no knowing it was him. I might have made a mistake earlier, sure enough."

  Maurice shook his head. "That's not the point. I don't care who goofed. I've been wanting to get rid of him anyhow. This is all I need."

  "Of course it's the point," Corrigan retorted. "I'm not covered, and that's the fact of it. I'll not be a party to making up something that says otherwise."

  "You're too careful to drop thirty," Maurice persisted. "I say he palmed it and tried to lay it on you."

  "Maybe he did. I guess we'll never know."

  Maurice shook his head disbelievingly. "Aren't you gonna fight that?"

  "Maurice, there isn't anything to fight. I didn't cash up the shift, and that's all there is to it. For God's sake take it out of my check like I said, and let's be done with it."

  Maurice seemed mystified. "I don't get it. You've got nothing to lose by doing it my way. This way you lose thirty bucks. Where's the logic?"

  "You really can't see it?"

  "I can't see it."

  "I'd be losing my self-respect, and that's worth far more than what we're talking about."

  "So if Jack's made thirty for nothing, that's okay by you?"

  "Well, he's the only one who knows about that for sure, isn't he? If he did, then it wasn't for nothing. He made it at the price of becoming a thief." Corrigan shook his head. "In my opinion that wouldn't be a very good deal at all, at all."


  Maurice seemed to freeze for an instant; then he looked at Corrigan with a different expression, as if a switch had clicked in his head somewhere, transforming him into a different personality. "Say, you know, that's an interesting way to look at it," he said. "I never thought about it before."

  Try it sometime, Corrigan thought to himself.

  Maurice went on. "How would you weight a payoff matrix to express the options? Logically it reduces to the same structure as Prisoner's Dilemma."

  Corrigan stared at him in surprise. Years before, when he'd worked among engineers and programmers, intellectual topics figured naturally in conversation, and game theory was often one of them. But it was the last thing that he would have expected from Maurice.

  Before Corrigan could reply, however, Sherri stuck her head in through the doorway from the bar. "Joe, great, you're here. We're filling up out front."

  "Sorry, Maurice," Corrigan said, glad to get off the subject. "Duty's calling. We'll have to talk about it some other time." And with that, he straightened his jacket and went through to join Sherri in the bar.

  In the far corner, a clique of Merlyn Dree fans had penetrated the defenses and were chanting some of his slogans and catchphrases around a table. Two macho-looking characters in sunglasses and pink fedoras were at the bar, waiting to be served. A bearded man in a pirate hat was prefacing every phrase with a loud, rolling "Arr!" to a group sitting near the door. A man in a yellow suit was loudly expounding that the art of selling lay in being a good listener, and a couple with their heads encased in audiovisual helmets were sitting as though in a trance by the far wall.

  Normal, sane, ordinary people, Corrigan thought to himself as he checked the register and surveyed the scene. Nothing unusual. Yes, it was going to be another typical night.

  Chapter Five

  Jonathan Wilbur had had three scotches in the last half hour and was getting loquacious. He waved a hand expansively from the barstool where he was sitting. "New York, London, Tokyo. It moves around the world through computers all the time. Billions of dollars every day. I can buy a company in the morning, sell it at lunchtime, lose my ass in the afternoon."

  "That's nice," Corrigan said, collecting empties off the bar.

  Privately, he doubted if Wilbur had ever bought and sold more than the office furniture. He was young, dazzled by a world that was obviously new to him, and too anxious to make an impression where it didn't matter. Hotel bartenders saw it all the time.

  "Ah, who gives a shit? . . . But I guess in your job you can't imagine money like that, eh, Joe?" With his double-breasted, charcoal suit, white silk shirt, and silver-gray tie with garnet clip, Wilbur at least looked the part. From past conversations, Corrigan knew that he kept up with the fashions that boosted the executive image: golf in summer, skiing in winter, woman's-magazine-cover home with gourmet kitchen, all the wines, European wardrobe, glitzmobile car. The only problem was, the bank owned all of it and he was perpetually one promotion away from being able to afford the repayments. If that was success, Corrigan preferred being a happy failure.

  Sherri came back carrying a tray filled with more glasses from the tables. She was petite, blond, bouncy, looking trim in her bar outfit of blouse, maroon vest, and black skirt. "One Bud, one Red, vodka lime with lemon, margarita special, and a Greyhound," she said to Corrigan. He nodded and began pouring.

  Wilbur had opened a briefcase on his knee, revealing it to be a portable office complete with laptop and screen, phone, fax/copier, and music player—presumably for necessary relaxation. While Corrigan was busy with the drinks, he lifted out the handset and tapped in a code. "Hi, A.J.? Jon here. Look, about that meeting, can we make it tomorrow? I have to see a guy about an offer, and it might take a while, okay?" He kept his voice raised to make sure that it carried. Sherri caught Corrigan's gaze, raised her eyes momentarily, and came around to pour the beers. "That'll do fine. I'll see you then. 'Bye." Wilbur closed the lid, glancing about quickly to see who was watching. Two girls at a table behind, whom he missed, seemed to be impressed.

  "Actually it's a job offer," he confided in a low voice, in case Corrigan was itching to know.

  "Is that so, now?" Corrigan said.

  "Do you know Oliver, who comes in here sometimes?" Wilbur asked.

  Corrigan did—and he wouldn't have trusted him as far as he could fly. "Big fella. Hearty kind—likes a joke. Not a lot of hair on the top of him," Corrigan said.

  "That's the one."

  "Ah, I do, sure. He was in yesterday for lunch."

  Wilbur leaned forward and propped an elbow on the bar, covering the side of his mouth with two fingers. "Well, the job's with his operation, managing portfolios. And I'm telling you, it's not nickel-and-dime stuff with those guys. I mean, we're talking big-time here."

  "Well, good luck with it," Corrigan said.

  Wilbur scooped a handful of peanuts from a dish on the bar and studied Corrigan while he brought them up to his mouth. "You'd be about what, Joe, fortyish? A little less, maybe?" he asked.

  "I'm forty-four." Corrigan transferred the cocktails to Sherri's tray. She picked it up and carried it away.

  "Ever have any experience with big outfits, out of curiosity?" Wilbur went on. "Where the real wheels are, know what I mean?"

  Corrigan could have said that he had once been the main instigator and joint director of a project whose backers could probably have bought Oliver's operation with the petty cash. Instead, he answered, "Oh, I'll leave that kind of thing to those who have a taste for it. I'm from a part of the world where people tend to take things a bit easier, you understand."

  "Irish, right?"

  "That's it."

  "Yeah. Never got there." Wilbur's voice fell again. "But this thing I was telling you about with Oliver. He's gonna fix me up real good there, in exchange for"—Wilbur grinned slyly—"don't say anything to anyone, but you know how it is—a little harmless information about the place I'm at now. But anything's fair in love, war, and business, eh?" It was all straight out of a score of popular movie series. Corrigan found it hard not to smile.

  "I wouldn't know about that," he said.

  Oliver arrived a few minutes later, dressed showily in a suit of silver-dusted cobalt blue with a white leather topcoat thrown loosely across his shoulders. He stopped in the doorway to look around, saw Wilbur at the bar, and moved ponderously across to join him. With Oliver was a tall woman, mid-thirties to forty, with straight hair worn high, heavy on the makeup. She was wearing a long, low-cut dress, and glittered from throat to fingers with jewelry. Corrigan had seen her with Oliver a couple of times before. Delia, he thought her name was.

  Oliver was all hale-and-heartiness. "Hey, Wilbur, old buddy. You're good on time, too, huh? That's great. Just what we need. Joe, how's it going? You remember Delia, right?"

  "Hello again, Joe." Delia smiled, revealing teeth that had to have been surgically rebuilt, and displaying her purple eye shadow. She was an accessory to Oliver's image that went with the manner, the coat, and the suit.

  "Let's see," Oliver said. "Gimme a screwdriver, gin with bitter lemon and a slice of lime here, and another of whatever that is for Wilbur."

  Corrigan took three fresh glasses down from the overhead rack. Delia rested an elbow on the bar and watched him while Oliver started telling Wilbur about the volume of transactions that the firm had handled that day. A couple that Corrigan had been keeping an eye on by the far wall, arguing since they sat down, were losing their cool, the man getting angrier, the woman's voice rising, both gesticulating. Healthy expressiveness. The Merlyn Dree fans had started acting out some of his skits. The pink fedoras had latched on to the two girls who found Wilbur glamorous and exciting. Sherri came back with more empties and started loading the washer.

  "I'm an associate with Oliver," Delia told Corrigan. "I don't know if he mentioned it. Foreign stocks and bonds department. That's the high-risk end, where you have to know your way around." She waited, inviting a response, then went on when Corrigan
just nodded. "But the money you can make! I'm not even going to say what commission I grossed last quarter. But it bought me a Hampton Riviera with no payments. Getaway cabin in Vermont, Queensland beach scene in winter. . . ."

  Corrigan looked at her with a neutral expression and said, "That's nice."

  Delia's voice dropped to a more confidential note. "You get to meet all the right contacts, too. I pay less tax than I did five years ago. I practically bank my paycheck and live off the expenses."

  "That's nice."

  Oliver picked up his and Delia's drinks and looked around. "Let's move to a table. There's one over there. Come on, Jon, I'll give you some inside secrets about how to screw the most out of clients. If they've still got blood left, we're not doing our job, right?" He winked at Corrigan. "Talk to you later, Joe, okay?"

  "Behave yourself, now."

  "Why? Where's the fun in that?"

  Wilbur took up his own glass and his briefcase, and followed the other two away. Sherri, who had been half listening, came up beside Corrigan to ring some cash into the till. Corrigan eyed Oliver and his two companions contemplatively while they seated themselves around the table, then said to Sherri, "Suppose you moved to a small town. And you found there were only two hairdressers: one whose hair was neat, the other a mess. You'd go to the one who looked a mess, wouldn't you? Because it would be she who did the hair of the other."

  Sherri frowned for a moment, then smiled. "Yeah—true. What brought that on all of a sudden?"

  "Oh, those three who were here just now. That fella Wilbur thinks Oliver is going to do him a good turn out of the kindness of his heart. He's expecting he'll be treated with fairness and honesty." Corrigan sighed and shook his head. "Why do people insist on looking for something where it clearly isn't? And then they blame the world when their hopes don't materialize."