by Eric Brown
Jeff Simmons stared out at him, his heavy face filling the screen.
‘Hal. Where are you?’
‘Park Avenue, the ComStore. What is it?’
‘Get yourself down to the station, Hal.’
Something turned in his stomach. ‘You’ve found the other bodies, right? Kim and the kid’s?’
‘We’re still searching. Something else has come up. I don’t want to talk about it over the link. See you in ten minutes, okay?’
Halliday pocketed his com and left the store. He drove down to the police HQ on the corner of Fifth and 42nd, wondering at the summons.
Jeff Simmons had a big office in the basement of the old library building, an interior room without the luxury of a window. He sat behind a big desk, his ruddy face washed in the blue glow of his com-screen. A fan turned on the ceiling, stirring his grey hair.
‘Hal, Christmas’s come early this year.’
‘Yeah? What’s Santa brought me?’
Jeff leaned over the obstacle of his belly, reached out and flipped his desk-com so that it faced Halliday. The screen showed the likeness of the black guy he’d potted in the woods north of Nyack.
‘The guy we found in the grave ...’ Jeff began.
‘My bullet didn’t kill him, right?’
Jeff nodded. ‘The bullet from your automatic winged him - caught him in the upper arm. The bullet that killed him was fired at point blank range, like the forensic people said at the scene.’
Halliday nodded. So why the hell had someone shot the guy dead?
‘Turns out he was one Andre Connaught,’ Jeff was saying, ‘a big fish wanted on a list of charges as long as your arm. He was into big money scams, laundering, stock exchange frauds ... you name it. We suspected he was behind a lot of financial crimes in the city, but we’ve never had the evidence to prosecute. You know how it is with these guys, they employ some high-profile attorney who knows all the tricks, ties the case up for a decade. So anyway, when the Fraud Squad found out he was dead ... hey, it was Christmas for them, too.’
Jeff hesitated, looking uneasy. ‘Ah ... Forensic examined the graves you found, Hal. They came up with minute blood samples. They matched those on record for Suzie Charlesworth, Anastasia Dah, and Kim.’ He looked away, shrugged. ‘I’m sorry.’
Hal heard the words and felt a strange hollowness within him. He told himself to snap out of it. He’d held Kim in his arms, hadn’t he? He’d known all along that she was dead.
He wondered if some part of him had been holding out the hope that the events of two days ago had been a hyper-real hypnagogic hallucination, after all.
‘Suzie Charlesworth as well. . .’ Halliday said.
‘We’re investigating multiple murder,’ Jeff went on. ‘Anything you find out, we’d be interested in sharing. Strictly off the record, Hal, the same goes the other way round, okay?’
‘Sounds like a fair deal to me,’ Halliday said. He passed a pix of Charles across the desk. ‘This is the guy I saw in the woods north of Nyack.’
Jeff took the pix and stared at it, nodding. ‘Any other leads?’
Halliday hesitated. ‘A VR site,’ he said. ‘I found it in Dah’s tank. Only when I checked again, it’d been wiped. I checked Kim’s tank and Charlesworth’s. Guess what? They’d been cleaned, too. So I hacked my way into the site.’
‘And?’
Halliday described what he found in there, leaving out the fire in the attic scenario but reporting the silver-haired guy’s threat.
Jeff nodded as he tapped a touchpad and relayed Halliday’s report to his desk-com. He read something on the screen, then looked up. ‘You know anything about something called the Mercury Project, Halliday?’
‘Mercury? I keep coming across something called the Methuselah Project, but that’s all I know about it. Kim Long and Dah mentioned it in conversation a couple of times, and were overheard by a third party.’
Jeff shrugged. ‘Dunno, might be linked.’
‘You got anything on the Mercury Project?’
‘A little. Connaught was behind the legitimate funding of a consortium of like-minded business contacts - they called themselves the Mercury Project.’
‘Like-minded in what way?’
‘They were funding research into von Neumann technology-’
‘Interesting ... or it might be if I knew what the hell von Neumann technology was.’
‘Hey,’ Jeff said, ‘where you been hiding yourself, Hal? You don’t keep up with the times? The technology’s been around in theory for some time now. Apparently von Neumann machines are devices that self-replicate, spaceships that go among the stars, using what they find to make more of themselves.’
‘And Connaught was behind this?’
‘Behind thefunding. Hal.’
‘You think it’s linked to the deaths of Dah and the others?’ He thought it highly unlikely.
Jeff nodded. ‘We think maybe, yes. See, Dah was also funding the same project. Her father was the billionaire tycoon George Dah, the holo-drama mogul. When he passed on, guess who got his billions? We checked her assets and found she was siphoning off millions into the same account as Connaught used to fund the Mercury Project.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser.’
Jeff grunted. ‘And that’s as far as it goes, Hal. The principal players apart from our Mr Charles are dead, and we’ve linked no one else with what’s going on, as of yet.’
‘What do you think Kim and Suzie Charlesworth were doing mixed up with these people?’ For the life of him he could not see Kim knowingly involved in any underworld activity. She must have been an unwitting accomplice in whatever was going on, the Suzie kid likewise.
The cop shrugged. ‘Search me, Halliday. I was hoping you might have some ideas.’
‘If I come up with anything, you’ll be the first to know.’
‘Sure thing. Keep in touch.’
Halliday smiled. ‘Just like the old days,’ he said.
‘Get outta here, Hal,’ Jeff grumbled.
He quit the office and made his way back through the maze-like warren of corridors, at once nostalgic for the times he’d spent here, the memories of the cases he’d worked on with Barney and Jeff, and at the same time relieved that he was no longer part of the vast and inefficient mechanism that was the NYPD.
He started the Ford and headed uptown, towards Lenox Hill. Five minutes later he drew up in the shadow of the Lincoln Tower, erected ten years ago and for a short while - perhaps six months, until the Japs finished the Mitsubishi Stratoscraper in Tokyo - the tallest building in the world.
He stood on the sidewalk and gave himself a sore neck trying to look all the way up to the top. It was like peering along an infinite length of polished steel, and left him dizzy when he looked away. Then he saw the elevator shaft, a diaphanous column on the outside of the building, and he hoped that Edward L. Tallak’s office wasn’t on the top floor.
He passed into the building. A receptionist in the busy lobby told him that Tallak had his office on the 297th floor, a mere three quarters of the way up the tower.
He rode the elevator with half a dozen secretaries and business suits who didn’t seem in the least concerned by the fact that New York City was falling away from their feet with alarming speed. He felt his stomach roll, threatening to dispatch his breakfast, and resisted the urge to plaster himself against the inner wall. He glanced down, at his feet, and knew he’d made a mistake; the floor was gratuitously transparent, and the flank of the tower seemed to fall in a long, graceful parabola all the way down to the miniaturised avenue far below.
He stared ahead, at the spectacular panorama of Manhattan stretching away into the summer smog. Somewhere out there, among the high-rises and sunken streets, the silver-haired killer of Kim and the others was quietly going about his business.
Revenge would be so terribly sweet.
He stepped from the lift onto the safe, non-transparent solidity of a carpeted corridor with the sensation of stepping on
to terra firma. A brass plaque listing the various business concerns on this floor hung on the wall opposite the elevator exit.
Edward L. Tallak, Child Psychiatrist, occupied suite twenty-five. Halliday made his way along a series of wide corridors before he found the office area, positioned on the corner of the floor with dizzying views over Manhattan to the south and New Jersey to the west.
A receptionist with all the poise and hauteur of a fashion model sat at a desk like the console of a spaceship. Halliday passed his card. ‘I need to talk to Mr Tallak.’
She glanced at the card with disdain. ‘I’m afraid Dr Tallak is with a client at the moment.’
‘Fine. I’ll see him when he’s through.’
‘Do you have an appointment?’
‘When he’s finished, tell him I’m investigating the disappearance of one of his patients, Suzie Charlesworth.’
He moved off before she could reply. He sat in a recliner well away from the view and tried to interest himself in a plastic-paged magazine. It seemed to consist of nothing but images of women like the receptionist sporting fashions that cost more than he might earn in a good week.
When he looked up, the woman was murmuring into a microphone and sliding a quick look in his direction.
Five minutes later a door beyond her desk opened to reveal a plush office with a floor-to-ceiling window full of nothing but sky. A slim, suited man in his fifties appeared, signalled to the receptionist and slipped back into the office.
She looked up. ‘If you’d care to step into the consulting room, Dr Tallak will see you.’
Dr Edward Tallak was seated behind a vast desk, silhouetted against the sky. He was perhaps fifty, his hair greying at the temples, his face tanned and unlined. The word impeccable seemed coined to describe him. Halliday often wondered, on the few occasions he came across examples of human perfection such as the one enthroned before him, if the contents of their psyches were as well-ordered as their physical aspects.
He passed his card across the desk, then sat down and watched as Tallak picked it up and examined it between thumb and forefinger. The doctor’s hand was tanned and beautifully manicured, exhibiting an attention to detail that Halliday found vain and vaguely distasteful.
Tallak looked up from the card. ‘I understand you’re here in relation to Suzie Charlesworth?’
Halliday decided not to tell Tallak that Suzie was dead. ‘She disappeared last Friday. I’ve been hired to find her. She had a regular appointment with you, I take it?’ He concentrated on looking directly at Tallak, ignoring the view of Manhattan beyond the doctor. If he glanced through the window immediately to his left, he had a vertiginous view down the plummeting flank of the tower.
Tallak nodded. ‘One hour, every Thursday morning.’
‘She was here last Thursday, right?’
‘She never missed an appointment, Mr Halliday.’
‘The last time you saw her, did you notice anything unusual in her manner? Was she at all agitated or distracted? She didn’t say anything to you about future plans?’
Tallak smiled. ‘Mr Halliday, Suzie was autistic. One of the features of the severe form of autism as exhibited by Suzie Charlesworth is a chronic inability to communicate states of mind, feelings, emotions. Whatever she did say to me would have been factual, and often only in response to questions I asked. Last Thursday was like every other session I’ve had with Suzie Charlesworth for the past two months.’
‘How exactly were you treating her, Dr Tallak? I understand there’s no cure.’
‘Autism is congenital, a condition hardwired into the system during the development of the embryo in the womb. There is no cure, only various means of helping someone with autism make sense of a world in which everyone else seems to communicate in a language they are unable to understand, a language of gestures and tacit codes, subliminal messages indicating empathy with and understanding of other human beings. People with autism are unable to comprehend the emotional existence of others, because they themselves do not function within the same range of emotions as do you or me.’
‘So how did you help Suzie Charlesworth?’
Tallak smiled. ‘I’m not at all sure that I did, Mr Halliday. I tried to facilitate her abilities and stimulate her interests in fields allied to those she was already studying.’
‘Cybernetics?’
‘Computational theory, mathematics, quantum theory . . .’
Halliday shook his head. ‘It seems amazing that she had no difficulty with these fields, but the act of communicating her emotions was beyond her.’
Tallak gestured. ‘We’re all products of our hardwiring and environmental conditioning, Mr Halliday. It’s just that the preponderance of citizens happen to be non-autistic. It’s only a theory, but some researchers hold that the hardwiring of an autistic’s brain is not wrong, aberrant, but merely different.’
‘Did Suzie ever mention her work to you - or rather did you question her about her work?’
‘Occasionally, but merely as a ploy to facilitate some form of conversation. What she talked about, when she was in full flow, was way over my head. I’m no computer scientist.’
‘Do you know if she was happy with Cyber-Tech?’
Tallak smiled. ‘“Happy” is not a word I would associate with Suzie. Her interests were sufficiently stimulated by the work she did there, and to that extent you could say that she was content.’
‘Did she ever mention whether she’d been approached by other companies, wanting her services?’
‘She said nothing about that to me, no.’
Halliday nodded. ‘Did you know that she was interested in discovering...’ He paused, trying to recall how the holographic Suzie had described it the other day ... ‘in discovering whether the human soul existed as a material fact?’
‘I didn’t, but it doesn’t surprise me. Suzie, despite appearances, has a brilliant mind. That kind of question would fascinate her.’
‘The night before she disappeared,’ Halliday went on, ‘she was seen at a restaurant in White Plains, accompanied by two people. One was a woman, and the other a man in his sixties. We know him only as “Charles”.’ He drew the Identi-fix pix of the silver-haired man from his pocket and slipped it across the desk to Tallak.
‘Did Suzie ever mention anyone who might fit this description?’
Tallak regarded the pix, his lips pursed. He shook his head. ‘She’d very occasionally mention her mother, and the hologram of herself, and now and again her co-workers at Cyber-Tech. But I never heard her mention anything about anyone called Charles.’
‘Did she ever refer to something called the Methuselah Project?’
Tallak repeated the name, shook his head. ‘Not to my knowledge, no.’
Halliday shook his head. How much of his time was spent in conversations like these, interrogational cul-de-sacs that were a necessary part of investigations but which ninety-nine per cent of the time led nowhere?
For the first time, Tallak asked a question of his own. ‘Do you have any idea what might have happened to Suzie Charlesworth, Mr Halliday?’
He had a flash vision of the grave in the dead forest north of Nyack. ‘It’s too early in my investigations to tell, yet, Dr Tallak. I’m following various leads, and with luck something will turn up.’
He stood, making to leave the office.
Tallak reached into the breast pocket of his blue suit and produced a card of his own, a wafer of silver metal inscribed with his name and business address. He passed it across to Halliday, tweezered between his perfect fingers.
‘If you need to know anything more that you think of relevance to the case,’ he said, ‘don’t hesitate to get in touch.’
Halliday nodded. ‘I appreciate that, Doctor.’
He smiled at the receptionist as he made his way out, but she deigned not to return the compliment. As he stepped into the elevator along with a dozen other beautiful people, he considered the many and separate worlds inhabited by the citizens
of the same city, from which one was excluded by the arbitrary rules of things like wealth, appearance, age ... He recalled something that Kat Kosinski had told him when they’d first met, a year ago. According to her, far from VR breaking down prejudices in people’s minds about things like colour and class and sheer difference, the facility to assume any persona in virtual reality, to adopt perfect physical alter egos at will, was having an unforeseen effect in the real world: people were becoming ever more conscious of the perceived privileges of colour and class, wealth and beauty. Instead of leading to an egalitarian society in which everyone was seen as equal in one realm at least, VR was reinforcing old prejudices, leading to even more rigorously defined divisions in real life, as citizens strove to gain physical perfection and wealth.