Damage Time

by Colin Harvey

  "But I am in no way beholden to him," Tosada continued. "Ask your questions."

  Shah transmitted a picture of Aurora from his eyepiece to Tosada's. "You ever seen this woman before?"

  Tosada squinted in concentration. "I've think that I've seen her with Abhijit. One of his many female… acquaintances."

  "You know her name?" Shah fought not to appear too eager. He didn't want to be accused of leading a witness.

  "I think that it's something like… Aurora. Yes, that's it."

  First thing next morning Shah told Marietetski and van Doorn about the conversation, replaying it to their eyepieces.

  Van Doorn nodded approval. "You did well."

  Shah said. "Do we call Kotian's lawyer for a little chat?"

  "Not yet," van Doorn said. "He'll just admit that he knows her, but they were just friends, yadda yadda. Let's keep this ace up our sleeve for the moment." He turned and picked up a print. "Meanwhile, here's something else for you."

  Shah and Marietetski stepped out onto the rooftop and stared across the rows and rows of algae growing in water-filled trays, covering the whole roof.

  Shah took a deep breath. "That climb was one floor too many."

  "You just out of breath, old man," Marietetski said with a

  grin. He was breathing hard as well. "Though it's a shame that when they picked a disused building, they couldn't have picked one with a few less floors to climb up." He wrinkled his nose. "Jeez, it stinks up here. Like sewage crossed with… I dunno. Whatever it is, it reeks man."

  "Don't knock it – without this stuff, we'd have no bulking out of protein burgers."

  "That's supposed to make me feel better about it?" Marietetski hadn't had a protein burger since he was eight. No matter how poor he ever got, he'd find the money for real food, somehow.

  "Can I help you, officers?" called an overalled worker who walked toward them.

  "Mr Singh, isn't it?" Shah said, recognizing the algae-farm's owner, a small dark-skinned man from Goa. "How ya doing, sir? Been years since I seen you."

  "I'm well, officers, but aren't you a long way from home out here in the wilds?" Singh said with a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

  "Queens is hardly Outer Mongolia," Marietetski muttered.

  "Your farm suffered several attacks of vandalism earlier in the year." Shah transmitted a picture of a young man. "Ever seen this guy?"

  Singh shook his head.

  "Let me remind you," Marietetski said. "He was seen around here, picked up on surveillance cameras. Then the attacks mysteriously stop, and this guy shows up as a walking vegetable. Who did you pay off?"

  "No one."

  Singh looks scared. "Was it this man?" Shah sent a picture of Sunny Kotian

  Singh's eyes widened. "I've – I've never seen him before," he gasped.

  Shah sent a picture of Kotian senior, and Singh shook his head again. "They're your countrymen, at least compared to black half-Polacks like my partner here," Shah said. "You going to tell me you don't recognize important people in your community?"

  "Oh… yes," said Singh weakly. "I know them distantly, now I think of it."

  "Mr Singh, we're going to keep digging," Marietetski said. "If we find you're paying protection money to these guys, you're going to need another sort of protection… from us. But if you were to recall anything, let's put it this way, he's never going to be in a position to threaten you again. We'll protect you, Mr Singh."

  Singh shook his head. "I don't remember anything."

  XIV

  "Take it," Myleene says, a beatific smile lighting up her drab features. A cold sore has split and a spot of blood slowly distends, creeping down her face. Four of the five other people in the suburban lounge have similarly blissful smiles, as they lie back in the raggedy chairs cluttering the room.

  You envy her such happiness, even if most of it is from the weed she's smoking that – despite the homemade joss sticks burned to mask its odor – is stinking the room out. Even after she comes down, Myleene will no longer be the semi-suicidal fourteen year-old of last year. She's achieved a measure of peace that you can only dream about.

  If you could only pluck up the courage…

  Jamie is the only person in the room without that stoner smile, but he's dispensing the happiness, not receiving it. He takes the probe, a clunky foot-long square box that's almost antique compared to the latest ones, and places it on one side of Myleene's shaven head, just below the waxed coxcomb that's all that's left of her once-beautiful hair. "Sorry, babe." His Brooklyn accent is strange to hear so far out here on the far end of Long Island. "This is going to hurt; there's no analgesic left in the tank." Later models have bigger tanks and use smaller doses, but even they run out and bootleg refills are all but impossible to get since the Dieback. "What do you want to lose?"

  "Just pick a memory at random." Myleene closes her eyes.

  When Jamie's done she opens them again and stares at you. "Hey, beautiful." You never guessed your oldest friend had sapphic tendencies before, but at least it's a connection now she doesn't know you, so you don't mind too much.

  Loving her, being loved by her, would be a way of forgetting Bradley.

  The door bangs open, and a black guy enters. He's shavenheaded, his skull scarred with the repeated nicks and cuts of the regular user. He doesn't meet your eyes.

  "Hey, Bradley, you got it?" Jamie says.

  The black guy nods. "What she doin' here?"

  His disapproval pierces even your misery. "She has a name, Bradley." Your voice wavers. You shut your eyes. He's already told you that crying women turn him off, so he mustn't see your tears, or whatever faint chance you have would be gone.

  When you open them the man you love has gone again, his mystery delivery complete.

  "You sure you want to join us?" Jamie says. "Ripping away parts of your memory is illegal. You – deep down you – knows it's fundamentally wrong so it has your nerve endings send out pain signals throughout your body."

  "You do it, don't you?" You don't mean to sound so sullen, but the words are said now.

  "I retain more of my memories than the others," Jamie says, "That's the price of being the priest. It's a sacrifice, rather than a short cut to Nirvana. But I couldn't tell you anything about me. Even my name may not be my name." He shrugs. "That's not what I'm asking you, Roxanne. Are you sure about this? We can't replace your memories once they're ripped."

  This new, intense Jamie with the serious face and the intent eyes is so unlike the happy, laid-back tripper you've grown to like over the last few weeks that you wonder whether someone's taken him over. Or maybe this is the real Jamie, and the other a mask.

  Perhaps this is a test. You think of Bradley, the smiling hooded-eyed guy you used to see from time to time, clearly checking you out, making small talk; but then you think of after you'd made it with him, his sudden disinterest, even contempt. Do you really want to carry this around forever? Would a lifetime of misery and remembrance be better than joining the Sisters of Lethe?

  "I'm sure," you say.

  And happy, laid-back Jamie is back. He smiles and gives you a wink. "Then I'll do you after I've taken care of Myleene."

  XV

  Shah stood at the coffee machine, staring into space.

  "You OK?" A young man asked.

  Shah dragged himself back to the present. A uniformed officer, five o'clock stubble already casting a shadow over youthful features, watched him intently.

  "I'm OK," Shah said. "Just daydreaming." He searched his memory – more and more new faces, it seemed. "Nikolides, isn't it?"

  "That's it. Just transferred in from the 73rd."

  "Nice to meet you." Shah waved him forward. "Sorry to hold you up."

  "De nada. Finish what you're doing. I got ten gazillion reports to write up back at my desk, so a couple minutes away isn't going to hurt."

  "I know the feeling." Shah took Marietetski's coffee and punched the code for his own.

  "Hope you don
't mind me saying this, but just then you looked like you wanted to tear someone's throat out." Nikolides laughed nervously, but he seemed genuinely concerned.

  "Sometimes the job gets to you." Shah took his own cup.

  Back at his desk he passed Marietetski his cup.

  "That last clip really got to you, didn't it?" Frown lines creased Marietetski's forehead. "Sure you're not overdoing it? Regs say you can take longer breaks if you need to."

  "Nah, it's OK." Shah sighed. "For all that I live through kilohours of other people's lives – good stuff, but mostly the garbage – occasionally there's a clip that gets to me. A fifteen year old taking the chemical equivalent of a parmesan-scraper to her brain and cutting out bits of her life because she's depressed." He sighed. "Did Perveza feel like that?"

  "Your daughter's a grown woman, Pete," Marietetski said. "Don't beat yourself up about things you can't do anything about."

  "Thanks, Confucius."

  "That's more like the grouchy old bastard I have to put up with every day. Anything useful on the clip?"

  "Bradley!" Shah slipped his eyepiece on. After he'd ripped the scanner from his head and thrown it onto the desk, he'd forgotten it while fetching coffees. "There was a kid called Bradley. He looks familiar." He groaned. "This means having to go through thousands of mugshots."

  Marietetski reached across, hooked his fingertips around the scanner's frame. "Why don't I look at the clip? I may not have your analytical talent, but I can remember a face well enough to look through half the rogue's gallery – we'll split the work."

  "Good idea."

  "I have them occasionally."

  "Yeah." Shah desperately tried to think of a comeback.

  "I love it when your face says you want to put me down, and you can't come up with something. " Marietetski laughed. "Who needs neuro-kits when your face is an open book?"

  "Swing on this." Shah gave Marietetski the finger, but his partner was already under the hood.

  They walked from the subway to Kotian's garage on West 59th Street. Marietetski said, "You heard the Islanders lost last night to Ottawa? No Stanley Cup for them after all."

  "Good," Shah said absently, his thoughts elsewhere. "Only thing worse than an Islanders fan is a smug Islanders fan. Better the Senators win it than those bastards." He was silent for a moment. "Do you know," he voiced what he'd been thinking about before Marietetski's interruption, "that when I started in the NYPD, my whole working life revolved around a few blocks?"

  "Yeah, but they had steam engines and sailing ships then."

  "Oh, ver-ee fun-nee, junior. Gimme a second while I hold my aching sides."

  They jay-walked between pedicabs.

  Shah said, "I suppose the good thing is that crime's got just as disorganized as everything else."

  "That's supposed to make me feel better?"

  "You saw the stuff I did as a rookie it would. Not everything was better in the Good Old Days. Weird thing is, sometimes the tougher life gets, the fewer crimes get committed."

  "More likely the fewer get reported," Marietetski said. "People just take care of it themselves."

  Shah didn't seem to hear Marietetski. "Kotian's the first sign that criminals are getting organized again." They walked in silence for a minute or two. Shah said, "Do you think that we obsess about Kotian?"

  "No more than we have to," Marietetski said. "Every precinct has a key case, from which loads of smaller stuff radiates out. In ours Kotian's a key case on his own, because he mostly falls into our geography, and we're familiar with him. Used to be called Project Management, according to the Organizational Theory course." He shook his fist at a pedicab that cut across and nearly mowed him down, and shouted "Asshole!" before turning back to Shah: "NYPD finally got wise to the crims using geographical and organizational boundaries to their advantage, and restructured."

  "But…" Shah's hands articulated his frustration. "We waste hours wading through crap. I know, we've always wasted time on pointless exercises. But it's getting worse, not better."

  "That's just you nostalgia-cizing the past." Marietetski stiffened. "You see that?"

  "What?" Shah pulled a face. "I didn't see anything."

  "A flash of something in the sun – I could've sworn I saw one of the Enhanced, walking through – nah, couldn't be. Not in Manhattan."

  "Where's the Californian Consulate?"

  Marietetski thought. "It's out in the boonies, somewhere. They only come in for the occasional UN meeting, stuff like that."

  Shah laughed mirthlessly. "That pretty much sums the UN up. You been working too hard John, if you think that one of Homo Superior Californius is going to pitch up here."

  "If they even exist."

  "Oh, they exist. Just not the supermen of pop-fiction. Leslyn toyed with upgrading a few years ago."

  Marietetski's eyes threatened to pop out. "You are kidding."

  Shah shook his head. "About the only time we've had a major row. She needed me to help pay for it, and I refused flat out. It was just after she washed her hands of Perveza. Rex had already moved out on his climb of the corporate ladder. She was at home with time on her hands… anyway, she parked the idea when she saw how opposed I was to it. Brought Doug into the marriage instead.

  "Like we'd better park this discussion for now." They turned a corner onto an open lot. "Here we are – Kotian's Klassic Kars. Oh, how I hate that spelling."

  "You're a snob," Marietetski said. "Would you look at those stinkpots?"

  "American engineering at its finest." Shah didn't see the point in telling his partner that the stinkpot in the showroom was a 1965 Ford Mustang. It'd be wasted on him.

  "American gluttony, more like. Things like that poisoned the planet. Surely they must have seen that, even a century ago? How could they not?"

  "It's never that clear, John. We been in denial about what we was doing, even though people been prophecisizing doom since – what – a hunnerd years ago?" He exhaled. "When I was your age, scientists was busy telling us that when the gas ran out society'd fall off a cliff. We didn't, though prices went into orbit."

  "Some folks can still afford what there is, Pete. Like this piece of work."

  "And we found other ways to run cars, not as efficient, maybe, but still… Before that some guy called Malthus said we'd all starve to death. We're hungry but still here, though–"

  A heavily built young man in a well-tailored suit stepped out of the back office, awkward and shambling for all the flash suit, with none of his father's grace, Shah thought. The young man stumbled over a box and cursed. "Rupa, get this box cleared out of the way," he bellowed into the office. "Before someone breaks their neck."

  "Here's Kotian's brat," Marietetski muttered.

  "Gentlemen!" Sunny called. Then the smile slipped. "Oh, it's you. What do you want?"

  "Just passing by, Sunny," Marietetski said.

  "It's Mr Kotian to you," Sunny said. "I pay your wages, remember?" His eyes narrowed still further. "Why don't you piss off, instead of harassing respectable businessmen like Singh and me?"

  "So Singh's been whining?" Marietetski grinned. "Interesting."

  Shah imagined he could almost hear the thud of Sunny's palm mentally slapping his forehead. "Bradley still working here, Mr Kotian?"

  "Who?"

  "Bradley Schwartz, Mr Kotian. Mechanic of yours. I've seen him working here."

  "I'm supposed to remember every grease monkey that works for me?" Sunny turned and bellowed, "Rupa!"

  An Asian woman appeared in the doorway. "Yes, Mr Kotian?" She would have been pretty if she hadn't looked so tired. I guess working for Sunny has that effect.

  "Bradley Schwartz. Does he work for us?"

  Rupa vanished.

  "You don't want to know why we want to talk to him?" Marietetski said.

  "It'll be one of your memory-ripper conspiracies," Sunny said. "It usually is."

  "A man who robs his victims of their memories, and sells them through the Pacific net-havens t
o subscribers interested in living vicariously. That's a real conspiracy, huh?"

  "So you say," Sunny snapped.

  "The conspiracy is that the trail keeps leading us back to your circle," Marietetski said. "Victims or witnesses all seem to have passed through your network. We see them on the memory rips, in the background."

  "So you claim."

  "Probability doesn't lie," Shah said.