“A simulacrum. A shared hallucination. A Virtua woman. A Ghost.”
“Yes, a Ghost. And you are a Ghosthunter, a Ghostkiller. You frighten me.”
“I’m sorry. But I wouldn’t hunt you. You’re legal. Hassan’s license is in order. Besides, as you said, you don’t hide what you are.”
She looked back at me then, defiant. “If I could, I would. If I could pass for real. If you could smell me, touch me, if I had weight, substance. Would I be real then, Señor Montoya?”
We sat in silence a moment, the Ghost, the blind man, and the sleeper. I had no answer to her question—and if I did, I might not have the heart to tell her. Luckily, the sleeper stirred and woke, and Leila and I both pretended the conversation had not happened.
“Montoya,” Hassan mumbled. Then a frown divided his brow, and he said: “You dare to come back here, after spurning my best coffee?”
“I need help. I want you to run a scan.”
“Another insult: your bio-implant was the best your filthy money could buy. There can be nothing wrong with it.”
“Hassan, I misread someone today. I went hunting a Ghost, and she turned out to be human. Not only human, but without any augmentation at all. My senses failed me, my instincts failed me—and my diagnostics failed me.”
The corners of his mouth turned down. “Everyone makes mistakes, Montoya.”
“That’s what I thought, at first. But the more I think about it, the less I like it. My diagnostics found nothing, nothing at all. No one walks around with no augmentation at all, not even an identification, a tag.”
“Unusual, but not impossible.”
“Unusual? When was the last time you saw anyone without augmentation? Here on El Puente? If you go down south, past Ojo Cerrado, you’ll meet a few. If you go as far as Saqt al-Zand, you’ll find nothing else. But on El Puente? I don’t believe it. But all right, my friend, let’s say it’s just unusual. There were a couple of other things, too: things I only realized after I left. First, Harris wanted me to see her. In that sneaky way of his, he sent me to her, making it seem as if he was reluctant to do it. In fact, that must have been the only reason he was there.”
“And second?”
“When I say my diagnostics found nothing, I mean they found nothing. I didn’t even realize it, but it’s been nagging at me all the way back from the edge. I couldn’t sense her diagnostics, either. Now, maybe I can accept that someone might choose to have no augmentation at all. There’s no law against wearing your own face. But no diagnostics? How does she know who she’s talking to? How does she know where she’s going? How does she know the prices of things? How does she keep in contact with her family, her friends, her work or school? She must have a pathfinder and a messenger, at the very least And as far as I could see, she didn’t have them. Which means—”
Hassan sat up on his elbow, frowning. He knew well enough what it meant. “Did she say what her name was?”
“Yes . . .” I pulled it out of an auditory buffer. “Anila. She told me it was Anila.”
Hassan and Leila exchanged a glance. Then Hassan hauled himself to his feet. “Very well. We will scan you.” He bared his teeth. “And then you will drink that cup of coffee. I’ve saved it for you.”
* * *
In the middle of wiring me in, Hassan paused, and that frown divided his brow again. This was slightly illegal, of course, though I doubted that would make him hesitate. No, he had realized that he was feeding my peculiar vice, and that he was doing it gratis. I normally had to pay Harris for the privilege, when I could afford it. He was very expensive, and very rude, in that particular way the English have; but better Harris than some fumbling amateur. You never know when someone’s hand might slip, or what might happen if it does.
“You’ve done this before, Montoya. You must be used to it.”
“Not really. But go ahead.”
I did not see him touch the switch. For a moment, I was not aware that anything had changed at all. Then I moved my head—and the room seemed to move with me, everything frozen in time until, a few seconds later, the image began to fade. The still picture of the room grew dim, the bright cloth hangings fading as if, before my eyes, they were aging, turning to dust. Then they were gone altogether. The optic interface was disconnected. All I could see was the world fed through my bio-implant: the augmented world.
When I walked in Virtua, I liked best to wander the streets of El Puente: the random augmentations carried toward me, and past me, and away; the radiance of the sea and sky, without the sea and sky behind them, but only endless darkness; the gaudy shop-fronts, the tracery of the stones in the main street, the landmarks, the shimmering statues, the floating lights. I had spent hours sitting before the fountain, watching the water rise and fall, unable to see the stone of the basin itself, only an augmented marker, a circle on the ground, probably an aid to perspective left there by the programmer. I remembered the droplets, appearing in empty space, leaping, tumbling, glittering coldly in the Virtua light.
Beyond it, I remembered the entrance to the old electronics market, its canvas walls invisible now, the lights within moving like fireflies. Above the entrance, a sign, hung in the air, glowing in Virtua neon. No one used real neon signs anymore.
I remembered a woman emerging from the market, her hands marked with red-gold Virtua henna, her face hidden by a Virtua bird mask, an augmented cloak trailing from her shoulders. Tiny blue sparks seemed to jump and vanish in the cloth.
Hassan’s room was interesting, too, in its way. There were fewer augmentations than I had thought: a few ornaments, a Jack Vettriano painting, some lighting effects: Virtua candles casting Virtua shadows. There was no tracery around the edges of the room, and so the candles were the only way I had of knowing the size of the room, its dimensions. Hassan himself wore augmentations on his clothes, and augmented rings on his fingers, but his face was entirely natural, so in Virtua he seemed like a headless man, hollow, his shape defined by lines of red and gold.
Leila, of course, looked just as she had before; the Ghost appeared more real than the living man.
I could not see myself. In Virtua, I was invisible. Perhaps that was what I liked about walking in Virtua.
“Don’t move,” Hassan was saying. “You’re still wired up. It won’t take that long to check your diagnostics.”
“You will find nothing,” Leila said, softly, almost sadly. I wondered how she could be so sure.
I thought of the girl, Anila—how this would appear to her. If she had no diagnostics, no connection to Virtua at all, then she would see none of it. The fountain would be an empty stone bowl. The market would be a long, featureless tent of drab, unornamented cloth. The woman in the bird mask would be no different than any other woman. And this other world, this Virtua, would be nothing but blackness to her.
Except, of course, that the girl must have had diagnostics. She might have had no augmentations, or chosen not to wear the ones she had, but diagnostics were essential on El Puente. Without them, the place was just a causeway across the Mediterranean: three parallel streets of shops and houses, a place to live or to visit or just to pass through. A place like any other. And in any event, life without diagnostics was hideously impractical. Hassan had reached the same conclusion I had: either my diagnostics were faulty or the girl had a secure loop with enough protection to fool me. And if she had a loop that secure, then we wanted to know about it.
“Nothing,” Hassan said at last. “As I said: your connection and your diagnostics, are the best money can buy.”
“Which means,” I said, “that the girl must have data-protection money can’t buy.”
“A.I.-generated?”
“Without a doubt. And if it’s A.I.-generated, then the Ghosts could be planning to use it. Something to keep the hunters away, the next time they come through.”
Hassan’s invisible hand rose up to stroke his invisible beard. “Maybe.”
“You don’t seem convinced, my friend.”
Hassan said nothing. He turned away, and I saw Leila reach out to him, a reassuring touch—a touch he could not feel.
At last, he said: “Maybe it doesn’t matter, Montoya. So what if they come?”
I said nothing. Leila looked at me, gauging my reaction. Then she left, without a word, without a sound. Outside the room—visible to me, but not to Hassan—she vanished altogether, her body dissolving like smoke.
Seeing Leila disappear, I thought of another reason I wanted to find the girl. She had mentioned the Invisibles. I had thought she was just taunting me, but now I was not sure. Perhaps she knew something. Perhaps she had seen them, whatever they were. Higher-level A.I.s? Virtua gods? Alien Ghosts in the network? If the girl knew anything at all, it would be something worth knowing.
With a sigh, Hassan touched a switch, and the real world began to take shape again. I was not glad to see it back.
* * *
That night, I went looking for Harris along the central street. The sidestreets were sleeping, more or less, but the central street stayed alive. At night, people’s augmentations became wilder, almost as if they themselves were taking advantage of the dark, and the freedom that came with it. I saw a woman with scales and a prehensile tail snaking from beneath her heavy black skirt; and it struck me that if a real lizard woman ever did walk the central street, no one would ever notice. One man had a subroutine that scanned his head and projected it beneath his arm; an Elizabethan costume completed the picture. The scan was not perfect, though. I could see a very slight shimmer in the empty space above his shoulders. There were even some Virtua creatures—owls were popular this year—and, out of habit, I ran diagnostic checks on them all, to make sure they were properly licensed, and properly chained to their owners.
I did not know whether finding Harris would do me any good, but I knew that he knew something. He had not even tried to hide it; when I had asked about the girl, he had all but stuck his arm out to show me which way she had gone. So he knew, and he wanted me to know that he knew. He let me share a little of his knowledge only because it suited his plans, whatever they were.
I knew where the Englishman would be. I took an autorickshaw along the central street toward the north end of the bridge, and had the driver set me down on the corner. For some reason I did not want anyone to know where I was going.
Leaving the central street behind, I crossed over to a small building whose face looked out over the Atlantic. A building with no augmentations at all, no decorations, no name above the door, not even a listing in the Virtua map. If you had one of their calling cards, it would lead you to the door, but the cards were few and far between. Even so, the place had no shortage of clients.
As I entered, a man was just leaving: a man in a top hat and a shadowy greatcoat, the cane in his hand topped with augmented gold.
I looked around for Harris. He was over in a corner, still in his tweeds, with a woman on each arm. One was naked, or seemed so, but for veils of Virtua color playing over her skin. She might be clothed, with an augmented illusion of bare skin; there was no way to tell without touching her. Perhaps that was the idea. The other woman was clothed, but that, too, might well have been an augmentation. In here, it was not easy to tell. Many of the women were augmented only to take away a few years, or to soften their eyes, to help mask their contempt for their clients; some wore sophisticated fantasies, like the one on Harris’s left, with scraps of red and green and silver sliding over her shoulders and back, around her sides, along her arms, between her fingers, as if caressing her.
Incongruously, Harris was sipping a cup of tea. He raised the cup to me, the saucer in his other hand, and the tips of his moustache gave me a little twirl.
I nodded in reply, but even as I did so, something caught at the corner of my eye. A movement, a shape, a distortion in the air—something that should not have been there. I turned to look, but it was gone. Turning on my heel, avoiding the attentions of a woman augmented with mirrored skin, I ran back the way I had come.
In the doorway, I hesitated a moment, looking this way and that along the street. The ocean sighed, rubbing its back against the columns of the bridge; above, Virtua stars shone gently in the dark, making new constellations from old. Some way along the street, the man in the shadowy greatcoat was striding south, in the general direction of Morocco.
There it was again: a movement, a shimmer in the air. And, just as quickly, it was gone. I followed it, over the empty street, to the sea-rail, until I reached the place where it had been. There was nothing there, at least nothing I could see or feel. Then I saw it again, but in a place I could not follow: out above the ocean, suspended in the cold salt air. A moment later, it had vanished once more.
From behind me, a familiar voice said: “Come on, Montoya. It isn’t that bad, surely?”
“Harris?”
“Who else? I saw you running away. I couldn’t help but be curious. Did something scare you in the house of fun? Not Dar, I hope? The silver skin takes some getting used to, but it really is worth the effort. Imagine making love to your reflection from a hall of mirrors.”
I sighed, looking down at my hands upon the sea-rail. I realized I was trembling.
“I saw something.”
Harris said nothing, waiting for me to continue.
“Something in the air. Something . . . wrong. I can’t describe it. I think it was one of the Invisibles.”
“Pshaw,” he said, or something like it, but it did not sound convincing. Then he asked, in a voice that left me in no doubt that he knew exactly what I had seen: “Where was it?”
“Inside. I followed it out here, across the street. Then I saw it over the sea, just floating in the air.”
“And then it was gone?”
I nodded.
I thought I knew what it was. The girl, Anila, had asked me mockingly whether I had ever seen one of the Invisibles. Now I could tell her I had. I only wished I knew what it was, what it meant.
Harris’s face was empty of all expression, as if the emotion had been poured out of him. He was searching the horizon, slowly, with eyes like stones. He seemed to have forgotten that I was there at all. A moment later, he saw it, that brief shimmer in the air, and the sight of it froze him.
“Harris?”
But Harris was running, now, away from me, along the waterfront, his footsteps rapping on the stone; and, as I watched, the shimmer in the air came to life, swooping after him, a writhing nothingness, soundless and strange. It sped past me, very close, and I did not even feel its passing.
Then Harris fell. I saw him trip, and stumble to the ground. I could still hear his footsteps, though; and then I realized he was still running, faster than before. Yet I had seen him fall. I could still see him, stretched out unmoving on the ground. The shimmer flew over him, chasing the other Harris, the one who was still running.
The other Harris glanced over his shoulder. He turned, facing the thing that hunted him, leaning on the sea-rail as if exhausted. Then, with a grin, he vaulted over the side.
I staggered forward with a wordless cry, leaning over the rail to see him plunging down toward the sea. He was still running as he fell, his legs pumping the air, and I could have sworn that it was working, that he was actually moving further away from the bridge. The shimmer in the air was closing on him now. I stood and watched, helpless, as they were lost from sight: Harris plunging into the ocean, the shimmer vanishing into the waves along with him. I was not sure whether it had reached him before the water claimed them both.
Suddenly weak, I knelt down on the stone, one hand still clasping the sea-rail.
Up ahead of me, Harris’s body still lay, unmoving, on the ground.
He was very different without his augmentations, more so than I would have thought. He was much thinner, for one thing. Very few people used their augmentations to make them look fatter. He was clean-shaven. His clothes were not tweed at all, of course—he was dressed in blue jeans and a simple white shirt, remind
ing me at once of Anila. It might have been coincidence, but it seemed almost to be a uniform.
He was alive, and not obviously injured, but his breathing was ragged and his skin was very pale. Then again, I had no idea how pale his skin was supposed to be. The skin I remembered had always been an augmentation.
Reluctant to carry him back into the brothel, I called Hassan to come and pick us up. Then I summoned a Virtua medic, who told me there was no lasting damage, and could not even understand why Harris was unconscious. It was certainly not a blow to the head: the medic’s diagnostics believed he was sleeping. I sent it away, wondering whether I should call for a human doctor, but the medic seemed to have been right. By the time Hassan arrived, the Englishman was already starting to come round.
Back at the café, the first sip of one of Hassan’s coffees seemed to revive Harris completely—he even asked if he could have tea instead, then quickly dropped the request when he saw the affronted look on Hassan’s face. He smiled at me and sipped away, having obviously decided to take his time before giving us an explanation. He even produced a small pack of cigarillos, and toyed with one, though he did not light it.
The night had finally quenched the last lingering warmth of the sun and, outside, a chill sea wind had picked up. Harris tipped back his head to listen to the low, breathy keening that was the wind’s lament. Then, ignoring us completely, he sipped at his coffee again.
By the third sip, my patience had expired.
“What the hell happened back there?”
Harris gave me a pained look. “What did you see?”
“I think I saw one of the Invisibles. And now that I’ve seen one, I still have no idea what they are. I saw it come after you, and I saw you run. I saw you fall. And I saw your augmentation—no, I saw the full set of your augmentations, auditory as well as visual—go running on without you.”
AIs Page 21