by Eric Brown
Casey looked up from the album. ‘What is it?’
‘The history file’s blank.’
She shrugged. ‘So?’
‘So ... It’s been wiped, cleared. And I mean purged, cleaned right out of the system.’
‘So she wiped the history file,’ Casey said. ‘So what?’
‘So, Casey, there’s no need to clean your history file like this - unless you’ve got a good reason. Like you want to hide where you’ve been.’
‘Like sex zones?’ she said.
‘Only if you’re a prude. And Kim certainly wasn’t that.’
‘So why’d she wipe the history?’
‘Good question.’
Maybe she - or whoever else wiped the file - didn’t want people to know she’d entered the site he’d been denied access to the other day? The same code he’d found in the history of Dah’s tank. What was it again? Vrus~mp/ss/797 ...
Or maybe he was leaping to wild conclusions?
They finished the search of the apartment and came up with nothing, no mention of the Methuselah Project, or of a silver-haired guy called Charles.
‘What now, Hal?’
‘Couple of things I have to do. I need to pick up the car over at the office. What you doing?’
She shrugged. ‘Nothing. How about I come with you?’
He planned to check the history file of Anastasia Dah’s jellytank, to see if that had been mysteriously wiped, too. Then he’d go up to White Plains and question Suzie Charlesworth’s mother. Today should be the day she spent out of the tank - if, of course, she didn’t cheat and spend it tanked in some VR Bar.
He shook his head. ‘You’d just be hanging around, getting bored. It’s just routine, Casey.’
A year ago she might have complained, pestered him to take her with him. Now she just nodded, trying not to show that she was put out.
‘Hal, I was thinking. You can’t go back to your place tonight. You can’t spend the night alone, not after what happened.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ he said.
‘Listen to the big man!’ She scowled at him. ‘Look, I’ve a spare sofa-bed. Why don’t you spend a night or two at my place?’
He hesitated, torn between hurting her and giving in and accepting her offer, when all he really wanted to do was to get the interview with Anita Charlesworth out of the way, have a few beers, and sleep for a long time.
‘I’ll see how things turn out, okay? I might be back late.’
She was determined not to let him see her disappointment. She nodded. ‘Hokay,’ she said. ‘If I’m asleep, just use your key-cards to get in, okay?’
He smiled. ‘If I’m not held up, it’s a deal.’
They left the apartment and shared a cab back to El Barrio. She got out at her place, waved fingers at him and ran up the steps of her brownstone. Halliday continued to the office, picked up the Ford and drove downtown on Fifth to Houston Street.
The concierge recognised him. ‘Ms Dah’s out of town for a few days,’ he said.
Halliday flashed his police ID. ‘I’ll let myself in.’
He ignored the guy’s protests and rode the elevator to the fifth floor. He opened Dah’s apartment with one of his spare card-keys and made his way to the VR room.
He accessed the history file and seconds later stared down at the screen.
Surprise, surprise, he told himself. The file had been deleted, purged from the system.
Either Anastasia Dah had done it herself immediately before leaving the apartment with Charles, or someone had returned since last night and wiped the file.
He took the elevator to the foyer and leaned through the hatch of the concierge’s cubby hole. ‘You let anyone into Dah’s apartment last night or today?’
The guy peered at him. ‘You a cop, right?’
He produced his ID. ‘What does this say, pal?’
The concierge nodded. ‘Matter of fact, I did. VR tech, said he was. Come to fix Ms Dah’s tank. She said he might be around some time.’
‘Remember the guy?’
He shrugged. ‘Just a regular-looking guy. Couldn’t describe him to save my life.’
Halliday returned to the Ford and sat behind the wheel for five minutes, going over the facts of the case and trying to work out what the hell was going on.
He gave in, started the car and drove north on Park Avenue. He left Manhattan on Interstate 87, slipping the car into cruise control and sitting back. He glanced at the digital on the dash. It was six, and the nightly rains were threatening. Just twelve hours ago he’d taken the same road north to Nyack. Just twelve hours ago, so far as he’d been aware, Kim was still alive, the case a simple Missing Persons investigation. Now Kim and Dah were dead and he was trying to find out why, why the silver-haired killer had taken Dah’s life after such a show of affection, why he’d killed Kim Long.
There was an explanation, no matter how complex and convoluted; there was a reason for Charles to have acted as he had, a series of motives which were obscure now but which, given time and patient investigation, would become apparent. It was always a question of time and hard work.
He arrived in White Plains as the sun was going down through the summer smog, casting a bloody glow over Maple Street and the avenue of artificial trees.
He parked the Ford outside the Charlesworth residence just as the heavens opened. The monsoon deluge drummed on the roof of the car, deafening. He jumped out, hunched, and ran through the rain to the protection of the porch.
There was a light on in the front room, and when he rang the bell the hall light came on, too.
The door opened a grudging five centimetres. ‘Yes?’
He showed his PI card. ‘Halliday. I’m investigating your daughter’s disappearance. If you could spare ten minutes...’
A thin, gaunt face peered out at him, suspicious. ‘You a cop?’ Anita Charlesworth asked.
‘Private investigator,’ he said.
‘Ten minutes,’ Charlesworth said, opening the door and leaving him to close it as she retreated down the hall. He followed her into the front room. She was already seated by the window on the high-backed chair which the holographic Suzie had occupied on his first visit.
Her appearance confirmed what he’d been able to see of her in the tank the other day. She was a bad advertisement for VR addiction. She stared at Halliday from a withered face that once might have been attractive, and the tragedy was that her bright blue eyes, or rather the intelligence behind them, seemed aware of the terrible fact of what she had done to herself.
‘I hope I haven’t called at a bad time ...’ he began.
She clutched a dressing-gown around her withered body. ‘I want her back, Halliday.’
‘I’m doing my best to find out what happened to her, Ms Charlesworth.’ He recalled the short grave in the dell, and wondered what effect the news of her daughter’s death might have on her already fragile grasp of reality.
‘I know what happened to her, Halliday!’
‘You do?’
‘Someone was around yesterday, some cop. Neighbour saw him nosing about. When I got out of the tank, Suzie was gone.’
‘She disappeared four days ago,’ Halliday began, and stopped. ‘Who was gone?’
‘Suzie. Who else? No doubt the cop took her, wanted to question her about where her sister might’ve gotten to.’
Halliday stared at the woman, slowly shaking his head. ‘You mean the holographic Suzie?’ he said. ‘You want the holographic Suzie back?’
She clutched at the collar of her dressing-gown with an emaciated hand. ‘Of course I want Suzie Two back, who the hell do you think I want back? Her sister?’ She laughed. ‘Suzie One’s no company for me, Halliday. At least Suzie Two talked.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll get Suzie Two back for you, Ms Charlesworth. Don’t worry yourself on that score.’ He hesitated, wondering how to phrase what he had to say. ‘I actually came here to talk to you about Suzie One.’
She shook her head. ‘I do
n’t know anything about her, Halliday. She never spoke to me, never told me what the hell she was thinking. She wasn’t a daughter to me.’
‘Even so, I need to know a few details.’
She seemed not to have heard him. ‘Know what she did, before she left for good? She tried to turn Suzie Two against me. They spent a lot of time together - Suzie One filled her head with all sorts of fanciful notions, big words. Suzie One spoke to her, but not to her own mother, and by the time Suzie One had finished with her, Two hardly had the time of day for me, either.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sure everything’ll be okay when I get Suzie Two back to you.’
‘You promise me you’ll do that?’
‘If you answer just a few of my questions about Suzie One, then I promise.’
‘I’ll do my best. But like I said, I don’t know the girl.’
‘I just want to know if she ever went out, and if so where? Also, did she have any friends, or rather contacts? People she saw from time to time?’ He paused, realising that he was speaking of the girl in the past tense.
‘Friends? The girl doesn’t know the meaning of the word.’
‘She never went out, other than to work and college? She had no contacts?’
‘Every fortnight, on Tuesdays. She went into the city to see her psychiatrist.’
‘Suzie had a psychiatrist?’
‘He called himself something else, but that’s what he was. A shrink. He worked with people like Suzie, people with autism.’
‘You don’t happen to have his address?’
She looked over at the mantelshelf, nodded towards a small white business card propped against a carriage clock. ‘Take that, if it’ll do you any good.’
Halliday stood and took the card. He read: Edward L. Tallak, Behavioural Psychologist. Beneath this was an address in Lenox Hill.
‘And she never went out other than to visit him, to work and to college.’
She shook her head. ‘Never.’
‘Did she by any chance use VR?’ he asked.
‘On occasion. I know she used the tanks over at Cyber-Tech, but she used my tank from time to time.’
‘Could I examine it?’
She looked at him, as if wondering why the hell he was interested in her jellytank. ‘If it’ll help. It’s upstairs. I’ll show you.’
He followed her as she made her way slowly up the staircase, and he had to remind himself that the shambling, skeletal figure before him was just thirty-eight years old.
She opened the door to the VR room and switched on the light. She shuffled over to the tank and stood beside it, something almost defiantly proud and proprietorial about the way she lay a hand on the crystal cover.
‘Do you mind if I access the history file?’
‘Go ahead, I’ve got nothing to hide.’
He moved to the head of the tank and tapped the touchpad. A list of sites visited, stretching back almost a year, appeared on the screen.
He read through the sites, his disappointment mounting as he failed to find the site he was looking for.
No vrus~mp/ss/797 ...
So the site was a dead end, a promising lead that had taken him nowhere, despite his high hopes.
He looked up as something occurred to him. ‘Do you know if Suzie One had a separate history file that listed her own sites?’
She laughed. ‘Of course. You don’t think I’d let her have access to some of the sites I use, do you?’
He checked the tank’s memory for any sign of a second history file. ‘I don’t see anything here.’
‘There must be, Halliday. She used the tank just a week ago.’
He searched a dozen files, but found nothing.
‘Have you had a VR tech come in to service the tank since last week?’ he asked.
‘Two, three days ago. I told him the tank was perfectly okay, but he said Suzie One had called him out.’
Vrus~mp/ss/797 ... Perhaps that was the link, after all. Or perhaps he was clutching at straws.
It was the only real lead he had, and so far it had led him to nothing.
‘Thanks for your time, Ms Charlesworth.’
They made their way back down the stairs and into the hall. She opened the door for Halliday, and laid a hand on his arm as he was about to step out.
‘You’ll get her back, won’t you, Halliday?’
‘Just as soon as I possibly can,’ he said.
She restrained him a second time, her hand claw-like on his sleeve. ‘You know, don’t you?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You’re a detective. You know, don’t you? I can see you use the tank yourself.’
‘I know... ?’ he began, then stopped and stared at her. ‘You use the VR Bars as well?’ he said.
She smiled, and there was something tragic in the smile that, very briefly, showed a woman in her late thirties.
‘Wouldn’t you, if you had two daughters like mine, Halliday?’
He nodded, lifted a hand in farewell, and then stepped from the house.
As he drove through the rain towards Manhattan Island, the glow from its neons and holo-façades lighting the horizon, he considered the inaccessible code.
A year ago he’d accepted a commission from a strange woman called Kat Kosinski, who turned out to be the brother of Joe Kosinski, a cyber-genius Halliday had worked with just six months before that. Kat was opposed to VR in some way that he had never quite figured out - though he suspected that her opposition was more active than she admitted. He’d been to her apartment a few times, and he’d never seen so much VR equipment, tanks, computers, and even stranger cyber-paraphernalia, outside of a VR store.
She’d once admitted, out of her head on spin and alcohol, that she was a VR hacker. What had she called herself? A vracker...
They’d lost contact not long after that, and he’d never got to know the full story.
But if anyone could crack the inaccessible code, Kat was the woman.
He drove into El Barrio, considering Casey’s offer of a sofa-bed for the night. He parked in the street outside the office, then locked the Ford and ran through the driving rain to Olga’s.
It was quiet in the bar, just a couple of familiar faces occupying favourite seats like sentinels. He ordered an ice-cold Ukrainian wheat beer and a couple of ham on ryes, with a side-salad as his concession to a healthier diet.
He carried the beer to his booth at the back of the bar, sat down and took a long, wonderful swallow.
The beer cut through his thirst like a scalpel.
He fished out his com and got through to Casey.
Her face peered out from the tiny screen. ‘Hey, Hal. Where are you?’
‘I won’t be able to make it back tonight, kid. Sorry. Still up in White Plains.’
‘You come across anything?’
‘Maybe, maybe not. I’ll fill you in later, okay? I’ll be in touch.’
‘Sure, Hal. Take care.’
He cut the connection, then sat staring at her fading image on the screen.
He told himself that he had to be alone, that the last thing he needed right now was company.
He considered Anita Charlesworth, and her request that Suzie be returned to her. How lonely and desperate must she be to consider a pre-programmed hologram as a substitute for her only daughter?
He got through to Wellman’s heavy, Roberts, and asked him to have a copy of the Suzie holographic device sent up to White Plains as soon as possible.
Then he sat back and ordered another beer.
* * * *
Twelve
Kat inserted the aerosol into her left nostril, prepared herself for the hit, and sprayed. The icy rush of spin seemed to blast the top off her head. She laughed crazily, reeling around the single room of her apartment. Her head was spinning, and for a few minutes the world seemed like an okay place.
She sat on the mattress and hugged her shins, staring into the darkness. It was daylight outside, but when she’d taken the apartment she�
��d spray-painted the window matte black to shut out the sunlight. All the monitors of her com-system were switched off, and without their glow the room was midnight dark. Without the sound of their motors, the room was utterly silent, too. She could make believe she was in space, floating through the vacuum. What about stars? She was glad there were no stars in her universe. Stars meant planets. Planets meant people. And people meant only heartache and trouble and loneliness ... Loneliness? She thought through that convoluted logic again. How could people mean loneliness? If there were people, then you were not alone. But ... she smiled to herself ... she had it: you could be lonely in a crowd, so-people did mean loneliness. Especially those people who walked out on you and left you lonely.