by Eric Brown
Dah frowned, twisting scarlet lips in a moue that managed to be both sensuous and almost ugly. ‘Perhaps last week some time,’ she said. ‘We spoke by com.’
‘And Kim didn’t mention that she was planning a trip, going away anywhere?’
Dah shook her head, a tumble of midnight ringlets falling prettily over one eye. She brushed back the offending curls with a lazy hand. ‘She said nothing about any trip, Mr Halliday. In fact she said that she’d be in the city for the next few weeks - she suggested we meet for dinner. I said I’d get back to her.’ She leaned forward. ‘It isn’t like Kim to do something like taking a vacation, even a short break, without telling friends. Do you have any idea what might have happened to her, Mr Halliday?’
‘We’re following various leads, but at the moment we have nothing definite. How well do you know Kim?’
‘We’re good friends, Mr Halliday. We have a lot in common.’
Halliday took in Dah’s painted toenails, the gold rings sparkling on her long fingers. He found it hard to see what the practical, down-to-earth girl he’d known and loved would have in common with the affluent director of a VR casting agency.
‘Do you know any of the men in Kim Long’s life?’ he asked.
‘I’ve met her boxer friend once or twice.’
‘What about an older man? He’d be in his sixties, silver-haired?’
She shook her head. ‘Kim didn’t go for the older type,’ she said.
‘Might she have had an acquaintance who would fit that description?’
She held his gaze. ‘She might.’
‘Do you know if she knew a young girl by the name of Susanna Charlesworth, a computer technician?’
‘If she did, she never mentioned her to me.’
He picked up his com and switched it off. ‘I might need to talk to you again, Ms Dah. I’ll be in touch.’
‘I am planning to go away for a while next week.’
‘In that case I’ll call you before you go.’
He replaced the com in his pocket and stood up.
Dah glanced down at the palm of her right hand, frowning as she scratched the skin with long, crimson-lacquered nails. She looked up as Halliday hesitated on the way to the door.
‘One thing I thought I’d mention,’ he said. ‘Could you tell me what the Methuselah Project is, Ms Dah?’
She made a convincing performance of repeating the name and frowning. He had hoped to catch her by surprise, but Anastasia Dah would not be fooled so easily.
‘I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of it,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘I’ll leave you to tank in peace, Ms Dah. Thanks for your time.’
He moved to the door, and turned before stepping from the room. She was watching him, drawing the gown tight across her chest and scowling with what appeared to be displeasure.
He quit the air-conditioned sanctuary of the Kennedy building and crossed the street to his Ford. He sat in the driver’s seat and stared up at the strip of lighted windows on the fourth floor. Over the years he had developed the ability to intuit when someone was not telling the entire truth. Anastasia Dah had appeared superficially convincing, replying to his questions with just the right answers, but something in her performance convinced him that it had been just that.
As he stared up at the windows, the lighting dimmed. A darkened window to the left - presumably that of the VR room - flared with illumination. Halliday imagined Anastasia Dah slipping the wrap from her body and stepping into the jellytank.
He pulled the case onto his lap and lifted the lid. He activated the computer and accessed the nano-med file.
A fluctuating graph filled the screen. It took him several minutes to work out exactly what was represented, and then he had it: the horizontal slide-bars calibrated Anastasia Dah’s physiological state: heartbeat, blood pressure, alpha- and beta-wave emissions...
As he watched, the slide-bars retracted. Her pulse dropped along with her blood pressure; her alpha-wave emissions slowed, indicating a sudden soporific state deeper even than that of sleep.
Dah had tanked and entered VR.
Halliday climbed from the Ford and crossed the street. He shook his head as the concierge swung open the glass door. ‘Left my com in Ms Dah’s apartment...’
The concierge waved him through.
In the elevator he took half a dozen key-cards from the breast pocket of his jacket. He always carried enough to get him past most of the modern electronic security systems. He recalled one occasion when he was confronted with a lock that consisted of an ancient tumbler mechanism, opened by the simple expedient of an old-fashioned key. He’d admitted defeat, and considered obtaining something called a skeleton key, without ever getting round to doing so.
At the door of Dah’s apartment he swiped the first card through the lock mechanism. Nothing happened. He tried the second with the same lack of effect. The third, to his relief, sprang the lock. He pushed open the door and slipped inside.
He upped the lighting and moved to the door of the VR room. The dark shape of Anastasia Dah floated in the suspension gel. He looked around the lounge, wondering where to start. Dah had told him that she spent an hour in VR every day, which meant that he had about fifty-five minutes before she quit the tank.
He checked the other rooms, a large bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and a study. There was no sign of a computer system. He guessed that Dah worked from an office elsewhere. Next, he looked for her personal communicator. It was likely to be in the lounge, or in the VR room if she carried it on her person. He searched the lounge without finding the com, then moved to the VR room.
On a chair beside the jellytank was a pile of clothing, with her scarlet wrap draped over the back of the chair. On top of the clothes was her com.
Halliday accessed the memory and found Kim Long’s code. He tried getting through to her, but as he’d expected there was no reply. Then he went through the com’s history and found that Dah had been telling the truth: the last time she had spoken to Kim had indeed been last week - on the Wednesday, the day before Kim had been seen at the restaurant with the silver-haired guy and Suzie Charlesworth.
He replaced the com and moved to the head of the jellytank. Anastasia Dah hung suspended in the gel, floating in a state of total relaxation. Halliday found something eerie in the sight of a human form in so unfamiliar a position, as if floating in the air without support or volition.
He accessed the tank’s history and scanned the list of sites she had visited over the past few months. As she had told him, she spent an hour every day in VR, very rarely any longer. Most of the sites she frequented were the entertainment zones of the various big virtual reality companies: Mantoni, Tidemann’s and Cyber-Tech. Occasionally she indulged herself and visited a sex-site; he read half a dozen listings for Aphrodesia and a couple for Eros Island.
Then, he saw a code that he could not immediately identify, and yet which seemed maddeningly familiar. He read the address out loud, wondering where he’d come across it before. Dah had accessed the site four times over the past couple of months: vrus~mp/ss/797.
He entered the code into his com, and then stared at the screen: mp ... Was he being over-optimistic in hoping that ‘mp’ might stand for the Methuselah Project?
He looked around the VR room. It was empty apart from the jellytank. He returned to the lounge. He went though the drawers of a bureau, various shelves bearing nothing more than ornaments, pix and holo-cubes, not sure what he was looking for but aware from experience that he would know when he found it.
He froze, heart hammering, when the chime of the doorbell sounded through the lounge. He willed whoever it was to go away. The chime sounded again. He calmed himself. He had nothing to worry about. Whoever was out there would soon get tired of waiting when their summons was ignored.
Then he heard the sound of a key-card in the lock.
He was a metre from an interior door. He moved towards it, pushed through and found himself in the bathroom. He
cursed. He should have made for the kitchen. It was more likely that a casual visitor would use the bathroom than the kitchen. He heard the pounding of his pulse in his ears and realised that he was sweating. He felt sick and faint, and wondered how much that was because of the situation, or the fact that he was so out of condition.
He shut the door, allowing a gap of a centimetre for him to observe whoever it was who had a key-card for Dah’s apartment.
‘Hello ... Ana? Charles here.’
A man’s voice, a low, rich tone. Halliday immediately supplied a face to the voice: over-fed, cultivated, grey-haired.
He peered through the gap.
A man appeared from the short hallway, and Halliday saw that his visualisation was not that far from the mark. Charles was tall, perhaps in his sixties or seventies. He wore a fashionably cut grey suit and sported a full head of long, silver hair.
Halliday told himself that it was a coincidence, of course. How many old, silver-haired men were there in Manhattan?
‘Ana, you home?’
Charles moved to the door of the VR room. He stepped inside and approached the tank. Halliday knew he should have taken his chance, while the man’s back was turned, to get out. Instead, he watched the guy as he stared down at Anastasia Dah’s naked body.
Charles left the room. He moved across the lounge to the bar in the corner and made himself at home. He poured a glass of beer and carried it to an armchair facing the door behind which Halliday was concealed. He wondered how long it might be before the guy’s bladder decided that it had had enough beer and needed a leak.
Halliday could easily overpower him, but he would have to do so before Dah quit the tank, and without the guy catching a glimpse of him.
He would make his move when Charles finished his beer and was fixing himself another, while his attention was on the drink. He looked around the bathroom. On a peg by the shower was a pink robe. He’d pull the robe over Charles’ head and be out of the apartment in three seconds.
It was a measure of his lack of confidence that he considered how he might react if his plan went wrong. What if the guy was fitter than he appeared, and decided to make a fight of it? Christ, Halliday hadn’t worked out in months. He’d find it hard to go three rounds with a ten-year-old schoolkid, these days.
Charles looked big, solid around the shoulders, as if at some time in the past he’d known how to handle himself in an emergency.
Halliday tried to convince himself that he had nothing to fear. If only Barney could have seen how chicken-shit scared he was acting...
The guy drained his beer. He held up the glass, admiring the pattern of froth on the side, as if considering whether to help himself to another. He stood.
Halliday tensed himself to move. He reached out and lifted down the pink gown, holding it in both hands like a thuggee assassin.
Charles was moving towards the bar. Halliday was about to step from the bathroom when he saw movement in the VR room.
Charles half-turned and smiled as he watched Anastasia Dah emerge, naked and statuesque, from the tank.
She saw the guy and waved. ‘Charles, I’ll be with you in a minute. Help yourself to a drink while I shower.’
Halliday cursed himself. Great... Now he’d have to use the robe on Dah when she came into the bathroom, and attempt to get out before the guy reacted. He’d pull his automatic and threaten him if he looked like trying anything.
But it was unprofessional, a damned mess. He wanted to get out without being seen, without leaving a trace that he’d been snooping around.
Perhaps he should have refused Wellman’s commission and stayed retired.
The seconds became a minute, and then two, and Anastasia Dah failed to appear from the VR room. Halliday let out a pent breath. He was damned lucky...
The VR room evidently had its own shower unit. He might yet get out without making a fool of himself.
Charles had poured himself another beer. He was sitting in the armchair when Dah emerged five minutes later, dressed in a full-length black evening dress that clung to her curves like a second skin. They kissed cheeks.
‘A cop was round earlier,’ Halliday heard her say.
‘What did he want?’
‘He was asking about Kim and Suzie.’
Charles stared at her. ‘What did you say?’
Dah smiled, her eyes alight with mischief. ‘What do you think I said, Charles? I said I didn’t know a thing.’
The guy nodded. ‘Good.’
‘But ... Charles, he asked me if I’d ever heard of the Methuselah Project.’
The man’s back was turned to Halliday, his expression concealed. ‘Damn it, Ana. How much do you think he knows?’
She twisted her lips into a familiar moue. ‘He sounded as if he were casting about in the dark. I don’t think he knows much at all.’
‘I hope not. This is all we need ... Okay, you ready?’
It would be just like her, Halliday thought, if she decided that she needed to use the bathroom.
Anastasia Dah looked around the room. She found a handbag the size of a cigarette case and said, ‘All set.’
‘You sure you don’t need anything else?’
She laughed. ‘How much do you think I need, where I’m going?’
Charles smiled. ‘True enough. Let’s go, then.’
Halliday watched as they left the apartment and closed the door behind them. He waited perhaps three minutes, his forehead resting against the cool paintwork of the door. Then he sank to the floor, his back against the wall, and considered everything he’d heard.
So they did have something to do with the disappearances of Kim and Suzie Charlesworth, and they were involved in the Methuselah Project, whatever the hell that was.
He’d contact Wellman, make his report. As things turned out, he’d struck lucky. Barney would have just shaken his head and called him the most fortunate son of a bitch in New York State.
He quit the apartment, took the elevator and hurried past the concierge. He stepped out into the sauna-like humidity of the midnight street and slipped into the Ford.
He opened the case in his lap and activated the screen. He accessed the nano-med file and initiated the surveillance program. A street map of Manhattan Island filled the screen, in the centre of which was a flashing red star indicating the location of Anastasia Dah.
She was moving west on Houston Street, towards Broadway. Halliday started the Ford and headed in the same direction. The red star turned left at Broadway, heading downtown, and seconds later Halliday caught up with a taxi whose position corresponded with the star.
He kept his distance, wondering how far they might be travelling. The taxi turned onto Canal Street, moving into the bright glare of neons and holo-façades that was Chinatown.
Seconds later the taxi drew up at the kerb. Halliday braked a hundred metres behind, and watched as Anastasia Dah and Charles climbed out and entered the Happy Valley Chinese restaurant.
He considered waiting until they’d finished their meal, and then continuing the chase. They might be an hour or two, and anyway he would be able to trace Dah wherever she went from now on. He decided to return to the office, contact Wellman with what he’d come up with so far, and maybe access the site he’d noted in the apartment.
As he drove north through the bright streets empty of traffic, he felt a quick and involuntary pang of sadness that Barney wasn’t around to work on the case.
* * * *
Seven
He woke suddenly, swung his legs from under the thin cotton sheet and sat on the edge of the bed. Clean, pure sunlight, the like of which he hadn’t seen for twenty years, filled the room with the radiance of a gold ingot.
He gazed down at his hands, then the rest of his body. They were young, strong hands, and the body was younger too, leaner, packed with slabs of hard muscle that were a distant memory of his youth. He looked up, through the window of the villa, and gazed across the foreshore to the crashing sea.
&nbs
p; He turned. Estelle was sleeping soundly beside him. She was around forty here, at the height of her beauty, her short hair flecked with grey and her sun-browned face bearing the lineaments of maturity that served only to emphasise her natural good looks.
He dressed quickly and made his way downstairs.
He dispensed with breakfast; he never seemed to have an appetite here anyway, and whatever he ate seemed insubstantial and dissatisfying.
He was about to leave the villa for one of his regular long walks when he heard a sound behind him.
Estelle was hurrying down the stairs, hastily cording the peach wrap around her slim body.