New York Dreams - [Virex 03]

by Eric Brown

  She ran the suicide fantasy number again. She was in a jellytank in Times Square, a freeze-dried mummy in the suspension gel, a warning to all who took for granted the easy pleasures of virtual reality.

  She held her head in her hands and wept.

  Colby, the bastard, had failed to show.

  He should have arrived from Canada yesterday, but he’d neither shown nor called to explain himself. But that was Colby all over, a great guy, but as unreliable as hell.

  He said he was a free soul, tied to nothing, a drifter through the cosmos - as if this excused him any responsibility towards others.

  To make matters worse, she’d worked for the past few days with the needle that Temple had given her. The needle routed her to a few sites, and she was supposed to record the specifics of these sites, log the streams of data like some fucking mind-zapped wage slave. She could have done it in two days, two days of solid hard graft, but the job was so mind-numbingly tedious that she’d spread the work-load out over four days, and then downloaded it to some Virex source God knew where. And good-fucking-riddance.

  The work had been made bearable, though, by the knowledge that soon Colby would arrive. He wanted to see her. Something big had gone down. He would be here by the weekend.

  Only, the weekend had come and gone and there was still no sign of the bastard.

  She cried herself to sleep.

  She had no idea how long she’d been out. Something woke her, something loud and insistent. She rolled onto her back, feeling like shit. The room was totally dark. Christ, what’d happened to the com-system? Then she remembered. She’d killed everything to prepare herself for the spin hit.

  She heard it again. Some crazy fuck was banging on the door.

  She staggered to her feet and hauled the door open. She’d expected sunlight, but it was night out there. She must’ve slept for hours.

  There was no one standing outside, no crazy with a gun ready to shoot her in the head. She banged the door shut and reeled towards the mattress.

  She thought she heard a shout. ‘Kat!’

  The banging started again.

  With an effort of will she thought beyond her, she stood woozily and again made for the door. The banging continued. This time she’d catch the bastard. She pulled open the door and a thin, wiry, hairy, gap-toothed ugly son-of-a-bitch stood on the threshold, staring at her with concern.

  ‘Kat, what the hell? When you didn’t answer I thought I had the wrong place, so I tried down the street.’

  She blinked. ‘Colby?’

  He stepped inside, found the light switch and filled the room with dazzle.

  He looked into her eyes, then around the floor of the room littered with discarded aerosols. His eyes took in the evidence of her slide, but did not censure her.

  That was one of the things she loved about Colby. He never took the moral high ground. He knew that humans were frail things, that everyone needed some crutch or other.

  He settled her on the mattress, then sat cross-legged before her. He pulled a small stove and a kettle from his backpack and brewed some disgusting-smelling - and tasting - herbal concoction, which Kat drank only because it was Colby’s special cure-all.

  ‘Thought you were never gonna get here, Col,’ she said.

  ‘I was delayed, Kat. Long way down from Saskatchewan.’

  ‘You been to Sas— to Sask—’

  ‘Never mind, I’m back now.’

  Her heart nearly stopped. ‘For good?’

  He hesitated, both hands clasped around his mug of herbal effluent. ‘I found a place I want to settle down, Kat. It ain’t New York.’

  She could only shake her head, disappointment beyond her. ‘Then why you back?’

  ‘Because I want you to come with me.’

  She stared at him. ‘To Canada?’ She shook her head. ‘But I can’t leave—’ she began.

  He said, ‘That’s what I came to talk to you about, Kat. Things have been happening. Big things.’

  She smiled at his seriousness. ‘Big things?’ she mocked.

  He shook his head, nibbled at the overhang of his moustache. He looked around the room. ‘Not here. Might be bugged. Let’s go some place else, okay? We’ll talk then.’

  She nodded. Her head was still tender from the spin. She needed coffee. She needed Colby to talk to her, his gentle Arizona drawl lulling her senses.

  She found her shoes and locked the door and walked through the dark, wet streets with Colby. How often had they done this before, gone to some all-night place, drank coffee and herbal tea and traded backgrounds?

  What had he said? That he wanted her to come with him . . . ? To Canada?

  ‘Time’s it, Col?’

  ‘Four.’

  She laughed to herself. They found an underground coffee shop on Bowery, and they were the only customers. Colby bought an espresso for Kat, and a mug of boiling water for himself. He sat across from her, adding a sprig of this, a leaf of that, for all the world like some ancient, bedraggled sorcerer.

  She took a hit of coffee and felt instantly less dead.

  He rolled a raspberry leaf cigarette with nimble, expert fingers. The process always fascinated her, just as the smoke always smarted her eyes.

  ‘So, Col, what were you doing in Canada?’

  ‘Checking something out, like I said. I’d heard about this place, up in Saskatchewan ...’ He talked real slow, careful, looking up from time to time as he built his roll-up. ‘Town Called Barton, out beyond nowhere. Full of real people, people like me, Kat. Back-to-Earthers and travellers and nature-freaks and what have you. And you know what?’

  ‘No ...’ Mesmerised by the dexterity of his fingers, the sound of his drawl. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The people of this good town have declared it a VR-free zone.’

  She stared at him. ‘A VR-free zone?’ she echoed. ‘Always thought there wasn’t a place on Earth free of VR.’

  ‘Well there is now, Kat, and it’s called Barton, Saskatchewan.’ He raised the almost-ready cigarette to his lips, licked quickly along the outside of the column, removed strands of excess leaf from one end, lit up and inhaled and stared at Kat though the resultant fug.

  Her heart began a slow pounding. ‘You quit Virex, Col?’

  He nodded. ‘Sure did, Kat. I got out. I found out something, and I reckoned I couldn’t stay a second longer.’

  ‘Found something? Something big, right?’

  ‘Something mighty big,’ he said. ‘You know how a while back the bombing was vetoed, and then they quit with the viral attacks, just when we thought we were getting somewhere?’

  She nodded, sipping her coffee.

  ‘And then they start giving us VR sites to analyse, like we were company spies or something, and we send all the information down the line to some mysterious big organiser, some big wheel, head of Virex.’

  ‘Where’s this leading, Col?’

  ‘Leading to this, Kat. Couple of months ago who drops by but Koviak. Remember me talking about Koviak, my cell-partner before you?’

  She nodded. ‘Sure I remember. You and him were big buddies.’

  ‘Well, out of the blue he shows and he wants to talk, but not anywhere we can be overheard. He’s all jumpy and nervous and not at all like himself, so I take him to Central Park Zoo, and he tells me.’

  He stopped. His roll-up was burning unevenly. He remedied this by dabbing spittle onto the charred column with a smoke-stained forefinger.

  ‘What’d he tell you?’

  He looked at her through the smoke. ‘He told me that Virex was being infiltrated. One by one the controllers were being replaced by other controllers, people belonging to a big, powerful, and rich organisation. You see, they knew we had mucho expertise. I mean, Virex had - still have - some of the best cyber-brains working for them. They reckoned that if they could take over, infiltrate, get us working for them...’

  ‘What, Col? What they want?’

  ‘They want the information we’ve been send
ing down the line to who knows where. The information on every big VR company in existence.’

  ‘So ... that sounds pretty much like Virex to me, Col. And when they have all that data, we use it—’

  She stopped. Colby was shaking his head. ‘They aren’t Virex,’ he said, ‘or rather they aren’t Virex any more. The organisation that’s been using us is into VR itself.’

  She regarded him, thought through what he’d said. ‘Paranoia,’ she pronounced at last, aware of the flutter in her throat. ‘Conspiracy theory. I mean, what proof do you have, Col? What proof did Koviak come up with to make you believe all this?’

  ‘He showed me pix,’ he said. ‘These pix, they showed Temple, your controller, in the company of a guy called Connaught. Now this Connaught is a big fish in financial circles. He has his fingers in lots of pies. One of these pies is the VR pie—’

  ‘Hearsay.’ Her hands were shaking, bad now.

  ‘The pix show Connaught handing over needles to Temple, Kat. The needles he passed on to you and me, the needles that we used to get into the secure Mantoni, Cyber-Tech and Tidemann’s sites.’

  She felt sick to her stomach, and her protests sounded feeble even to herself. ‘You can’t be sure. A few pix aren’t hard evidence.’

  ‘They’re evidence enough for me, Kat. Along with how things’ve been going for the past six months.’

  They talked for the next couple of hours, going through half a dozen herbal teas and as many espressos until Kat was wired with the granddaddy of all caffeine ODs.

  They went through what Koviak had said, and argued the evidence back and forth, and the end result was that Colby had quit Virex, gone north and found paradise, and wanted Kat to join him.

  He was catching the eight-fifteen express to Montreal, and at seven they quit the cellar bar and walked through the quickening streets to Grand Central Station.

  She stood with him on platform four, just like in some ancient weepy movie. ‘So, Kat...You joining me up there some time?’

  ‘I need to think about it, Col. I need to think about it hard, okay?’

  The train was about to leave, and she hugged him to her, considered everything she would lose if she quit the city, and everything she would gain.

  She waved him off as the train drew from the station, and then walked back to Chinatown, all the way, working off the caffeine high and trying to convince herself that what Colby had told her was nothing more than baseless supposition.

  How could it be true? How could she have been working for what was in effect another VR company, the enemy? The thought was too terrible to contemplate.

  Colby had given her his address in Barton. If she found that Virex had been infiltrated, that they had indeed been used like pawns, then she knew where to find him.

  But how the hell could she find out? And, she asked herself, did she really want to know the truth?

  How could she live with the knowledge that everything she had worked for, over the past year and a half, was for nothing?

  She reached her apartment. A can of spin lay on the mattress, inviting her.

  Kat inserted the aerosol into her right nostril, prepared herself for the rush, and sprayed.

  * * * *

  Thirteen

  At two that morning, before he got too drunk and maudlin, Halliday found Kat Kosinski’s code in his com and tried to get through to her.

  A message flashed on the screen informing him that the code was no longer in use.

  He considered his options. He could stay here in Olga’s bar, drinking until daylight, or go back to his room and try to sleep. If he kept on drinking he would only make himself angry, and if he went back to the office, haunted by the ghost of Kim Long, he would only succeed in making himself sick with grief.

  Or he could try to find Kat Kosinski.

  He quit the bar and drove south to Chinatown.

  Back when he’d done a little work for her, Kat had spent a lot of time in a cellar bar off Lafayette Street. Most nights she could be found there, on a stool in the shadows at the end of the bar, nursing a beer and taking the occasional hit of spin.

  She had once told him that she never spoke to anyone in the bar, that she had nothing in common with anyone she had ever met. He’d been intrigued by her self-imposed isolation, curious as to the reason for it. He’d often wondered what had caused her cynicism, her world-view in which trust played no part.

  A year back she’d hired him to track down someone she merely referred to as Levine, a business partner - though when he’d tried to find out more about Levine and exactly what business they were engaged in, Kat had been reluctant to tell him much more. He’d found Levine, or rather his bullet-riddled body had turned up at the city morgue. Kat had taken the news stoically, without the slightest show of emotion - as if to exhibit feelings would be to admit to weakness. Six months before that her brother, Joe, had died - Halliday had known and liked the kid - and after the death of Levine Kat had retreated even further into herself, and Halliday had found her long silences and bitterness oppressive. He’d called round at her apartment from time to time, reluctant but sorry for her, and at the same time intrigued by the air of mystery that surrounded her like the ever-present reek of spin. Then, one day, he dropped by to find the apartment deserted, all the VR equipment packed up and removed, with no message or forwarding address apparent. Halliday had been secretly relieved.

  He parked the car on Lafayette Street, crossed the rain-slick sidewalk and descended the steps. He pushed into the cellar bar and peered into the gloom; there was no sign of Kat Kosinski. He ordered a beer and asked the barman if he’d seen her about.

  ‘Kat? She’s been ill. Hasn’t been in for a week.’

  ‘You know where she’s living now?’

  The guy gave him the once over. ‘You into VR?’ he asked.

  Strange question. Did he assume that Kat was likewise into VR, from her frail and wasted appearance? He nodded.

  ‘Can’t tell you where she lives. Kat wouldn’t want that. But I’ll give you her com code, okay?’

  He scribbled the code on a beer mat and flipped it across the bar. Halliday finished his beer and returned to the Ford.

  He entered the code and watched the screen.

  Kat answered a minute later. The screen remained blank. ‘Who is it?’ Her voice sounded rough, marinated in bourbon and spin.

  ‘Kat? It’s Hal, Hal Halliday.’

  ‘Jesus Christ. Ghost from the past. How long’s it been, Halliday?’

  ‘A year. How’s things? Heard you been ill?’

  ‘Just flu. I’m okay now. What you want?’

  ‘I need to see you.’

  Silence from the other end of the line. ‘You don’t have my address?’ she said at last.

  ‘You never contacted me when you moved out of your last place.’

  She gave a humourless laugh. ‘I didn’t? Never was any good with the social graces. You know me.’

  ‘Any chance of seeing you? I can wait till morning, whatever.’

  ‘Shit, Halliday. What’s wrong with now? You know I never sleep.’ She gave her address and cut the connection.

  He drove a couple of blocks and eased the Ford down a narrow alley. Kat’s place was a basement apartment beneath a Chinese supermarket. He climbed down steps slick with rotten vegetable peelings and assorted litter and rapped on the door. The barred windows were blacked out, something he recalled from her last apartment.

  She opened the door. Blue light spilled out, turning Kat into a dark waif-like figure. ‘Hal Halliday, the man himself. Get yourself in here.’

  He slipped into the small room - small, he told himself, only because of the amount of equipment that lined the walls, reducing the floorspace. A jellytank, banks of computers, monitors, touchpads and headphones.

  A single mattress lay in one corner, Kat’s only concession to furniture. Empty bottles of Jack Daniel’s and canisters of spin littered the floor, along with congealed take-out trays.

&nb
sp; Kat stood in the middle of the room, hugging herself. She seemed even thinner and more wasted than he recalled. As ever, she was dressed all in black, a baggy T-shirt and tights that made her legs seem spider-like.