New York Dreams - [Virex 03]

by Eric Brown

  Where was the scrawny street kid he’d taken in a year ago, the barefoot refugee from the Atlanta meltdown?

  He stood up and indicated the chesterfield beside his swivel chair, and as he watched her walk around the desk - watching how the dress hugged the curves of her hip and breast - he felt a sudden pang of guilt.

  He considered the Casey persona he’d created in VR, and how lifeless it was beside the real, live human being.

  She sat down on the chesterfield, kicked off her shoes and drew her legs up beneath her.

  How many times had he seen her curled up like this, but dressed back then in soiled shorts and a ripped T-shirt, her feet bare and her hair a tousled mess?

  He sat back in his swivel and laughed. ‘Well, I don’t know what to say ...’

  She blushed. ‘Hey, Hal. It’s still me. All this,’ she indicated the sleek dress and fashionably styled hair, ‘it doesn’t matter, y’know.’

  ‘It’s just a surprise, that’s all. You look about ten years older.’ He leaned forward, staring at her. ‘And you’re wearing make-up.’

  She shrugged. ‘Just a little blusher and lipstick, is all. Aren’t you going to offer me a coffee?’

  He indicated the percolator. ‘Help yourself.’

  He watched her as she poured a mug of coffee and sat with it in both hands, held up before her rouged mouth. How many nights had they sat like this a year ago, just chatting as he waited for work?

  She was no longer the thin-faced urchin he remembered: her face had filled out, become quite striking, with high cheekbones and full lips. He found it hard to believe that she was still only seventeen.

  ‘Well, it’s good to see you. How long’s it been? Six months?’ He was aware of a note of censure that he had not consciously intended.

  She looked at him, eyes narrowed. She had always given as good as she got. ‘Six months? Listen, pal, I was here last month. Dropped by to see how my old buddy was getting along.’

  He frowned, shook his head. ‘A month ago?’

  ‘Can’t remember, can you? Well, Hal, you were out of it. Blitzed on VR. You’d just quit the tank. I found you collapsed in the shower. You were not a pretty sight.’

  ‘You did? I mean ...’

  ‘I got you out and dressed, bought you a take-out. You could hardly eat. I wanted to call Doc Symes, but you said you were okay. I tried to contact you a few days later, but you weren’t taking calls. No doubt tanked again ...’

  Walking through the Virginia site with you in my arms, he thought. Or, rather, some pale imitation of you.

  He shrugged. ‘I’m working on a case,’ he said feebly. ‘Look, I’m eating again, see?’ He pointed to the scrunched silver foil tray in the trash can.

  Casey wrinkled her nose. ‘When you going to get some real food down you, Hal? I mean, if you use VR so much, you need to really look after yourself.’

  ‘Yeah, okay. ..’ He busied himself, embarrassed, by pouring another coffee.

  ‘I’m concerned for you, Hal. You never call round these days. I miss you.’

  He shrugged again. About six months ago, feeling pretty low, drunk and maudlin for the good times when Barney was alive, he’d driven around the block to where Casey lived with her Chinese boyfriend. He’d hoped to catch her alone, see how she was keeping. He’d pulled up outside the tenement building and seen them walking along the street towards him, Casey and her man, hand in hand, and he’d been rendered breathless by a sudden stab of some strange and powerful emotion, part jealousy, part despair. He’d started the engine and roared off, gone back to Olga’s bar and consoled himself with a few more Ukrainian wheat beers...

  Not long after that he’d had the idea of creating Casey’s persona in VR.

  He took a mouthful of coffee. ‘So ... how’s things with you, anyway? Still seeing Ben?’

  She twisted her lips into a half-humorous, half-wistful pout. ‘Ben’s history, Hal. It was good while it lasted, but...’

  ‘Too bad.’ He was about to ask if she was seeing anyone else, but stopped himself in time. ‘Still working for Kim?’

  The last he’d heard, Kim had owned half a dozen restaurants around the area. She’d sold her street-stalls one by one and invested in real, sit-down, cutlery and chop-stick eating houses. Casey had worked for Kim on a stall, and when Kim moved upmarket she’d taken Casey on as a trainee manageress.

  Halliday had seen one of her places reviewed on the leisure channel, but the thought of dining there, and maybe happening across Kim and whoever she was screwing at the moment, did not appeal.

  Casey replaced her empty mug on the desk. ‘That’s what I came to see you about.’

  Something in her manner alerted him. ‘What is it?’

  ‘See, Kim sold all her restaurants a few weeks ago. Every one of them. She didn’t even tell anyone, not even me. Yesterday the new manager came in and said he was laying a few of us off.’

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not the job I’m worried about, Hal.’

  ‘So what is it?’

  She hesitated. ‘Last night I went around to Kim’s apartment. I just wanted to know why she hadn’t told me what was going down. You see, I thought we were friends, you know? I didn’t want to make a scene.’

  He was aware of his heart, thumping. Kim had sold her restaurants, was seen in the company of an old guy and a girl who a day later mysteriously vanished...

  ‘And? What did Kim say?’

  ‘Kim didn’t say anything. She wasn’t there. I talked to the neighbours, but they hadn’t seen her for more than a week. I went round all her old restaurants today, but no one there had seen her, either.’

  ‘What about the guy she was seeing? The Chinese guy who owned a restaurant?’

  ‘He’s long gone, Hal. Kim blew him out weeks ago. She was with a new guy, last I heard. A Vietnamese kick-boxing star.’

  The thought of Kim with someone, even after a year, twisted something deep within him. ‘So maybe she’s shacked up somewhere with this guy?’

  Casey shrugged, staring down at her fingernails. Halliday recalled them as being constantly bitten-back, the varnish chipped and grown out. Now her nails were long and oval, with a chic mother-of-pearl lustre. Real sophisticated.

  She said at last, ‘So why hasn’t she been around? Why hasn’t she dropped by to tell her staff she was selling up? It just isn’t like her, Hal.’

  They were connected, of course. Kim’s disappearance, and the Charlesworth kid. Halliday experienced a once familiar feeling: the visceral kick of initiating an investigation that would end in either success or failure. He wished, though, that he could be more objective about this one. The thought of Kim’s involvement in the affair, in whatever capacity that might be, filled him with apprehension.

  ‘You know where this kick-boxing champ lives?’

  Casey shook her head. ‘I tried to find out from his agent, but he wouldn’t say. But I do know he’s fighting tonight. Madison Square Gardens. His bout’s scheduled for ten. Some title fight.’

  ‘That’d be the place to start. I’ll go along, see what the champ knows. What’s his name?’

  Even as he asked it, he realised that he’d never before wanted to know the name of the guy Kim had been seeing. Without a name, these people were less real, Kim’s infidelity abstracted.

  ‘He fights under the name of Jimmy King. I don’t know his real name.’ She hesitated, not looking at him, then asked, ‘Hey, how about I come with you? I’ve nothing to do tonight.’

  Halliday thought about it. Why not? It certainly beat the hell out of pretending with some lifeless VR ghost.

  ‘Okay, sure.’

  Casey grinned. ‘Great. Thanks, Hal.’

  He made to leave the office, then remembered the case Wellman had given him. He’d take it with him, stow it in the car.

  They left the office and emerged into the night. The rain had ceased, freshening the air. The lights of a hundred fast-food kiosks dazzled across the wet tarmac. Hallid
ay gunned the Ford and headed downtown on Park Avenue. Buildings clad in holo-façades flickered by like so many colossal Halloween lanterns.

  Casey pulled the case from the passenger footwell where Halliday had placed it. ‘Can I look?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  He smiled across at her. For all her assumed sophistication, she was still a kid at heart: this time, a kid on Christmas morning.

  ‘Hey,’ Casey said, pulling a package from the case. ‘Looka this.’

  Halliday smiled. ‘Not bad, eh? The latest in capillary holographic hardware.’

  ‘Remember when I wanted one of these?’

  A year ago, Casey had gone though a phase of thinking she looked ugly. She got it into her head that she needed a chu to hide behind. Halliday had talked her out of it, telling her that she was good-looking enough not to need one.

  ‘Yeah,’ Halliday said, ‘and now look at you. Cinderella, right?’

  He recalled the cheque Vanessa Artois had presented him with on the completion of the case a year ago. A cool half million dollars. He had dreamed of how he might go about spending the money. He had promised himself that he’d set Casey up in business, or pay for her education.

  In the end he’d done none of these things. Casey had moved out and shacked up with her boyfriend, and perhaps understandably he’d seen less of her, and his resolution to make her a gift had foundered on apathy and his own very real need to fund his increasing VR addiction.

  Now he felt a stab of guilt: he hadn’t even mentioned a word of his windfall to her.

  She was rummaging through the case. ‘You bought all these, Hal?’

  ‘A client. Like I said, I’m working on a case.’

  ‘The first in how long?’ she asked, slanting a glance at him.

  ‘Oh ... I don’t know.’ He opened his palms on the apex of the wheel in a dismissive gesture. ‘Thing is, I’m working again.’

  ‘And you gonna cut down on VR, right?’

  The image of Anita Charlesworth’s emaciated body flashed in his mind’s eye.

  How could he tell Casey that he had no intention of reducing the hours he spent in his jellytank? He’d simply make sure that he looked after himself when he quit VR.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ He glanced across at her, saw a look of dubiety in her eyes. ‘I mean it. See, I saw something today that gave me the creeps.’

  ‘Yeah? Tell me about it.’ She closed the case and replaced it in the footwell.

  He hunched his shoulders in a where-to-begin shrug. ‘Working on this case, upstate. The mother of someone I was questioning. Well, she was using VR to the limit, twenty-four hours in every forty-eight.’

  Casey pulled ayucky face. ‘You saw her, Hal?’

  He nodded. ‘Looked like something from the Egyptian Room of the National History Museum. Yellow and wasted, all skin and bone.’

  Casey was quiet. He glanced at her. ‘What?’ he asked.

  She said, ‘Listen to the kettle ...’

  He didn’t get the reference. ‘What you mean?’

  ‘You’ve got some room to talk. Looked in the mirror lately?’

  ‘Come on, Casey ... Okay, I’ve been overdoing it. But I’m not that bad.’

  ‘No? Listen, I walked in the office and I said to myself, who’s the moving skeleton in the swivel chair? That’s how bad you look.’

  He looked at her. ‘And I suppose you don’t use at all, Casey?’

  ‘Matter of fact, I don’t. Used it a few times, then decided it wasn’t for me.’

  ‘Listen to miss-holier-than-thou. You must be the only citizen in America not tanking.’

  She stared straight ahead, stung. ‘That suits me fine.’

  He let the seconds pass, then said gently, placating, ‘So, why don’t you like it, Casey?’

  She let out a long sigh and turned in her seat. ‘You want to know what I think, Hal? I think it’s a bad influence. I don’t like what it’s doing to people.’

  ‘What is it doing to people?’

  ‘I read something the other day, some professor writing on the Net. He said something about VR changing how people related to each other. He said the VR experience was too easy. I mean, you get everything you want in VR. You only have to think of yourself, not other people. So when you get back into the real world, you find it harder to relate ... Except he used all these big words to back up his argument.’

  ‘So you read one article and you’re immediately down on VR?’

  ‘No! The professor just wrote what I was thinking, or perhaps not even thinking, butfeeling. I don’t know ... I look at people around me, see, and they don’t seem to be relating to other people, they don’t seem to be thinking about anyone else but themselves.’

  She fell silent and looked away, embarrassed.

  Halliday grunted. ‘So when’s it been any different, Casey?’

  She turned and stared at him. ‘What I’m trying to say is, look after yourself, Hal. Don’t tank so much, okay?’ She reached out and squeezed his thigh, and something in her expression, as her hand closed on the slack, atrophied muscle, turned his stomach.

  ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Here we are.’

  The exterior of the arena was fitted with a gargantuan and tasteless holo-façade depicting two Thai boxers head to head. The promoters had obviously lavished thousands on the display: from time to time a fist or leg lashed out with sickening authenticity. Halliday left the Ford in a sidestreet and made for the entrance between the boxers’ dancing legs.

  They bought tickets for ringside seats and made their way towards the focus of what seemed like a million dazzling spotlights. A bout was already under way, the last round of the fight before Jimmy King was due to defend his world middleweight title.

  They took their seats to a chorus of grants from the fighters in the ring. They were close enough to see the ejecta of sweat and blood that exploded, scintillating in the lights, whenever a fighter landed a blow.

  Halliday looked around the banked arena. Despite the cacophony of noise, the partisan cries of supporters, he guessed that the venue was only half full. Since the advent of VR, attendances at sporting events all across the United States had gradually dropped. Why attend a live event when you could actually participate in a sporting fixture yourself, irrespective of your ability to play the game, and with no risk of pain or injury?

  Casey held onto his arm and squeezed. ‘What do people see in this?’ she said above the noise.

  He watched the antics of the marionettes in the ring, their expressions horribly contorted with every blow delivered and received. He bent his head to her ear. ‘I can think of better ways to spend my evenings.’

  The fight came to an end, and one participant was adjudged to have outfought the other. The verdict produced euphoria in one section of the crowd, matched by boos and cat-calls from another. The winner was carried precariously from the ring on the shoulders of supporters, holding a belt the size of a car fender high above his head.

  ‘Can I get you a drink, Casey?’ The heat of the night, combined with the humidity in the arena, had given him a thirst.

  ‘Love a beer,’ she said. She looked at her programme. ‘Jimmy King’s on next. He’s fighting someone called Han Ki Sin, from Taiwan.’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ Halliday muttered as he left his seat and hurried down the aisle. In fact, if he was honest with himself, he was intrigued to see just what kind of guy Kim was currently dating.

  He carried two ice-cold bottles of German lager back to his seat and watched as the promoter announced the night’s main attraction. The beer cut a cryogenic swathe down his gullet, and he realised that it was the first alcohol he’d tasted since quitting the tank at midday. Some record, he thought to himself. Usually, his first stop after the tank was Olga’s bar, to ease his way back into the real world.

  A combination of work and Casey’s company was having a beneficial effect on him already.

  The fighters leapt into the ring. Jimmy King was short and squat. His body appeared
to be constructed from variously sized blocks of solid muscle, each one highlighted in oil and shining in the spotlights. He sported a pair of scarlet shorts, a good size too big for him, and a white headband like a latter-day kamikaze pilot.

  The Taiwanese boxer was his mirror image, physically; only his blue shorts and absence of headband distinguished him from Jimmy King.

  Halliday sank into his seat, tipped his beer and looked forward to watching the Vietnamese fighter get beaten to a bloody pulp.

  The bout began, and it soon became obvious that he was going to be disappointed. King had the advantage from the outset, kicking and punching with swift and brutal economy. Casey winced behind raised hands at every blow.