Charon had stopped again, this time at the balcony that overlooked the four hundred VR pods—rows and rows of arm-chair or bed booths, stretching into the distance. He peered at the panel of stats he’d conjured on the wall beside him.
“Got a hundred and twenty-three Dreamers and seventy-three tourists in at the moment.”
“What has all this got to do with our dead man and organ harvests?” Decker said.
“And the juice banks remember,” Charon said. “That’s what he took most interest in after he’d seen my Abandon Pods.”
“What?” Decker and I said in unison. I added, “So you brought Jimmy Strong down here, too?”
“If, CJ, you’re asking did I personally bring a ninja calling himself Dweedack down here, then yes. He wanted to know if any clients other than Dreamers stayed for extra-long periods.”
I poked Charon in his oversized bronze chest. “Please don’t tell me you call them Abandon Pods coz they forget to leave, or you abandon them coz they don’t pay?”
“I am deeply offended, CJ. Leaving non-paying customers in situ is not good business. I can’t rent out occupied space. I use Ragnor’s bone-breaking skills for that.”
“Who the hell is Ragnor?” Decker was either playing bad cop to my good, or he was genuinely aggravated.
“She’s my wife, Startup,” Charon snarled, as “Bruce” added a fleeting doubling of his avatar’s size to tower over “Apollo.” “She was on the dais with me earlier.”
Apollo-Decker stood his ground. “You mean the one-eyed, triple-breasted leviathan that Agent Capra knocked out with one kick?”
“Yes, her.” Charon laughed heartily. “I told Ninja Dweedack that only the Abandon Pods were addictive enough to hook people into protracted sessions. Why? They’re called Abandon Pods coz most feature hard-core sex programs, or other adrenaline-endorphin raising adventures. Either way, they’re designed to get your juices flowing.”
“Ah, hence the juice banks reference,” Decker said.
This time I joined Charon in the exaggerated laughing.
“What?” Decker asked.
“Juice banks are sperm banks,” I managed to say. “Their contemporary existence is the stuff of urban myth, of course. But until mid-last century they were nearly as common as blood and stem-cell banks.”
Decker’s real-hand, clasping my forearm, this time conveyed an unmistakable sense of foreboding. It was shaking.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“Charon,” he said, “what exactly did Jimmy see down here and, specifically, what did he ask you?”
“He saw everything you’ve seen, plus the Abandon Pods. Come with.” Charon took the wide circular staircase down to the Pod Deck.
“And you just showed him, Charon?” I asked.
“CJ, when will you learn, I don’t do favours. Except for you. The ninja paid for a personally guided tour. Paid well enough for me to let him scope some of the Plungers.”
“So much for privacy,” I noted. “What did he ask about organ harvests?”
Charon tapped at the plasma screen on his left palm. The VR Pods began moving around the cavernous space, jostling gently for position.
“Ninja Dweedack asked if the black market in cloned organs still existed. I said of course it did. Dumb frakn question really.”
“Cloned organs, not harvests?” I said.
Charon rolled his shoulders. “I now surmise he wasn’t interested in organs at all. After I explained the nature of most of the Abandon Pods, his quizzing became precise, and turned quite earnestly to the subject of juice banks. You with us on that subject now, Startup?”
“Yes,” Decker sighed.
“When we got to this very spot here, he wanted to know if any new Plungers, say in the last two months, had been introduced to Hades Gates by someone. Especially if the same someone intro’d more than one.”
“And?” I asked as Charon suddenly seemed distracted by the tango his pods were doing. “Sorry, I’m calculating. Step back a bit, please.”
Decker and I did as we were told.
“And when I checked,” Charon consulted his plasma again, “I found that thirty-three Trawlers had been ‘treated’ to first-time Plunges by friends, but only five had been intro’d by the same friend. But not all together. Each of their first visits were a few days apart. After a week, the same someone—a drek Ragnor later ID’d as Belbo Armitage—escorted them in together, like they were regular old-world bucks. The five have since been here like clockwork: three days in Abandon, two days gone, back again for three, et cetera, for a total ranging fifty-two to fifty-nine days.”
“And Jimmy’s juice bank questions?” I asked.
“Your ‘ninja uncle’ seemed convinced the banks were a reality and that I must know their real-world location.”
“Why?” Decker asked.
“Because of the five Plungers, I think,” Charon said. “But as I told him, over and over, there’s no point in juice banks when the produce is forty-five years beyond its use-by date.”
Oh frak. I glanced at Apollo-Decker, who’d clearly seen the same light.
“Here they are,” Charon announced as a group of pods pulled to a stop before us.
Decker and I stepped in to take a look at “the five Plungers” as the realisation of what was most likely happening to the missing Spacers hit home. I was swamped by a tsunami of anguish and distress; of almost…oh help, unbearable grief.
But not mine.
Not my grief. What the hell?
I grabbed hold of Apollo’s arm to see if the misery emanating from the pods was affecting him, too. In the same nanosec that he resisted my attempt to make him face me, I remembered he couldn’t feel anything in here.
Real-world Decker then snatched his hand from my arm, and Apollo…disappeared.
“That,” Charon pointed to the empty space, “is exactly what your Uncle Ninja Dweedack did.”
“I don’t get it,” I said—to both Charon in Downside and Decker in my office.
Only Charon bothered to answer. “Ragnor said that when your uncle came back as Pirate Dweedack he met with Belbo Armitage, the Plunger’s escort. Then the brawl started and they were thrown out.”
I inspected the Plungers again. They were all wearing simple masquerade masks—the most basic of avatar cloaks—which meant they really looked just like the blokes in the Pods. I took a better look at the one Apollo had been checking…out.
It was, it looked like…
I reached out, removed the mask, then shook my head. It didn’t help. For the second time today I was gazing down at one of the finest specimens of manhood I’d ever seen.
The young man in this particular Abandon Pod was Ensign Milo Decker.
As my office-hands performed vital logging-out procedures, my fem-punk avatar waved good-bye to Charon Marx. The real-world materialised around me and I swung Aggie around to find out how the hell anyone could be in two—no, who knew how many—places at once.
My freshly minted partner was lying on the floor. Again. Only this time he seemed to be out cold. Probably hadn’t accounted for the lack of space between my terminal and the wall behind when he backed out of Downside so fast. Obviously yanked the VR helmet off and smacked his head into the wall.
None of which explained the fact that Milo Decker and his spiffy Jumani suit were shimmering—I squinted—no, phasing in and out of focus.
I stared at my own hands, then the wall.
Not shimmering.
I directed Aggie down to the floor but still couldn’t reach him coz my anti-grav unit was in the way. I unbuckled and heaved myself over the edge to lie on the floor beside the definitely phasing Decker.
I poked him. The shimmering stopped. Then started again.
I patted Decker’s cheek. He grabbed my hand and stopped shimmering.
“Who the frak are you?” I asked.
He blinked. “Who do I look like?”
“You look like the bloke in the Pod back there.”
“Really?” he frowned, then hauled me across his body and held me there.
I struggled for three seconds until I registered that the person below me was now morphing like a changing avatar. Decker became Bruce May became—bloody hell, me—then Decker again.
This was simply not possible in the real world.
“It’s coz I hit my head,” whoever-it-was beneath me said.
No, clearly I had died earlier today. And this was my hell, forever caught nowhere at all.
Capra Jane.
Ooh peace. Oh that’s nice.
Look at me, Capra Jane.
I did as I was told because now the morpher looked like that delicious Captain Zanzibar Black, and she was doing that talking in my head thing again.
Jane, remember. It’s time to come back to me.
Well! With an invitation like that, how could I not let this brilliant hallucination kiss me like her life depended on it?
The sound of distant gunfire, exploding shells, and screeching Atter-jets filled my mind. No, not my mind; it was outside, scragging the air around me and tainting it with noxious fumes.
Where was I again?
I shifted on the makeshift hospital bed and my blood chilled me to the core.
“Major Capra, wake up.” I did, so Dr Black kindly held my hand.
Not again.
It’s okay, my love. You’re not really there.
Fresh air, music. A deep throbbing tango; just like sex on legs. Don’t have legs.
Jane, concentrate. On me.
I was now kissing Zanzibar Black like my life depended on it. And clearly it did, coz nothing could feel this good and not be intrinsic to my very existence.
Her tongue was in my mouth. Mine was in hers. I was never going to let her go, ever again.
And then I did.
Just to check which part of my fractured existence I was in at the moment.
Yes, I am real.
Zanzibar Black was lying on my office floor, under me. We had been kissing each other.
And now I felt completely foolish.
I rolled away from her and sat up, shaking my head in an effort to say: I. am. so. sorry.
What for?
“Speak,” I said. “Who the frak are you?”
She smiled and—my insides melted—said, “Zanzibar Black, just as your chief introduced us earlier.”
I scowled at her. “My other chief intro’d my new partner as Ensign Milo Decker. But he was in Downside and, and now it seems I’ve…”
“Been with me all along. Sorry.” Captain Black got to her feet. “I’m going to check out Jimmy’s lead.”
She walked out my office.
Just like that.
What? Did you forget I can’t just follow you? I mind-shouted, in the hope she’d hear me. She did.
I’m sure you’ll catch up, Jane.
Jane? What’s with the Jane nonsense?
I rolled over and into Aggie, hovered back up to my terminal, and began an intel-hunt on Captain Zanzibar Black. Only family called me Jane, dammit. Family and lovers. And actual “lovers,” not two-minute stands.
Why on earth, while kissing a woman I’d met today, had my strongest feeling been not to let her leave me again? Actually that was the strongest emotion, in my chest and mind; the earth-shattering feeling was in a whole other place.
Concentrate.
I brought up the image I’d taken of Jimmy’s graffiti and stared at it, while my terminal did its own analysis.
λCJ
Daerin Juno
37.48 144.57 libr
Okay. λCJ equals Lambda Capra Jane; easy. Daerin Juno? Was that simply a ref to Aunt Juno being on the Board of the DaerinCorp Research Foundation, or an actual clue? Jimmy’s final route into Downside had been via Daerin’s data stacks; specifically their Future Projects Division.
But what could any of this have to do with Juno herself? What would be enough to prompt Jimmy Strong to turn into the most unlikely of heroes to protect her?
And why would Captain Black, a spook from HomeWorld Security, impersonate a missing Spacer? Coz it was obvious—well, now it was—that Milo Decker and the other four of Charon’s five Plungers were indeed the missing Spacers.
If Jimmy had also been searching for them and asking about juice bars, then Charon’s offhand remark about use-by dates was the crux of this whole mystery. My “partner” obviously had the same revelation about the value of “viable” juice in an age when the expiry date of genetically useful men was nearly half a century gone.
Dammit. I’d even reminded Decker—or Zanzibar—myself that he was one of only four thousand humans in existence with functioning sperm.
My terminal chimed, so I glanced down at Aggie’s screen.
Zanzibar Black: Beninzay, female, born Benin, 2068; father Benin, mother Beninzay. Ranks / designations: current—Captain, HomeWorld Security; previous—Medical Officer-Surgeon, Benin MedCentre, Battalion Field Hospitals on Western Front, Sydney and Auckland, North Border.
Bloody hell. Captain Black. Dr Black. North Border Field Hospital. I checked the date of her deployment there.
2116. Eleven years ago.
The year I lost my legs in the northern trenches. No evac for three months from that stinking on-border field hospital. Stranded, in a mostly drug-induced fog, dancing a beguine with the imaginary love of my life. Or so I thought.
I headed out of my office to find out if Chief Bascome had thought to pin the usual visitor’s trackerbot on our mysterious bloody HomeWorld spook, so I could track her down and…
My plasma-phone vibrated with my mother’s urgent ID again. I’d put her off too many times, so I forced a smile and raised my wrist so we could see each other. I also took the lift to the next floor.
“Finally! I’ve been calling for hours.”
“I’m kinda busy, Mum.”
“I know, Jane. You’re investigating your uncle’s murder.”
“He’s not my uncle.”
“He most surely is today, Jane. He was helping your aunt.”
“You knew about this?” I snapped.
“No. I just knew he was helping.” My mother—the queen of deniability. “Not that his endeavours actually helped. She’s been kidnapped.”
“What?” I hovered out of the lift and headed for the chiefs’ wing.
“Juno—my sister, your aunt—has been kidnapped.”
“Why didn’t you call the cops, Mum?”
“I did. You didn’t answer,” she snapped, scowling like all of this was my fault.
“There are other cops…forget it. How do you know? Is there a ransom demand?”
“I was with her when they snatched her from the Daimaru Flywalk. Three men in masks pushed me over, dragged her into a scootercab, and made off with her.”
“Okay, Mum. I’m on it now.” I waved the call off and opened the chief’s door without knocking. He and Chief Jayla Ellen were sharing a meal.
“Sorry, Chiefs, but I hope you pinned Captain Black. I need to know her current location, now.”
Chief Bascome knew when urgent meant yesterday. He turned to his terminal. “Sending you the cords,” he said.
“Have you found the missing men, Agent Capra?”
“Almost, Chief Jayla. I think they’re being… Actually I’m not sure what you’d call it. I suspect they’re being held captive, probably together, while as avatars they’re regularly taken to a hardcore porn suite in Downside for the purposes of arousal. So they can be milked.”
The chiefs blinked at me and then stared at each other.
“I’ll leave you to think about that then, shall I?” I reverse-hovered to the door. “Oh yes. One other thing: the President has been kidnapped.”
I was already in the lift by the time both chiefs rushed in the hall demanding more info.
“Later,” I waved. Aggie was screening the results of my analysis requests. It seemed 37.48 144.57 libr was the latitude and longitude of Melbourne’s old, very
old, Library, which explained why Zan Black’s trackerbot placed her on Swanston Canal heading north.
I emerged from SIP HQ, zipped onto the nearest police airboat, and asked the pilot to take Russell Canal to La Trobe. The only part of the Victorian Library building that was still above water at high tide was its massive copper-green dome and one upper level, which constituted nearly half its original above-street-level height.
It was 6.20 p.m., Melbourne’s nightlights were on, a storm was brewing southwest of the city, and the tide was about to come back in. I knew this coz, as the airboat approached one of our few almost remaining truly historic city landmarks, I could see the extra floor that was exposed every low tide.
I directed my pilot to the pedestrian Skywalk that ran around the dome and off in several directions to connect with the others that spider-webbed the city. The statuesque Beninzay who stood at the apex seemed to be waiting for me.
I joined Captain Zanzibar Black on the high deck that overlooked the dome’s oculus. The five-metre-wide skylight provided an eerie glimpse into the partially illuminated interior: thirty-five metres down to the dry top-most gallery level that ran around the octagonal space.
“It’s quite incredible,” Zan noted.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “When the tide returns, that second level down will be back underwater, though. At the moment it’s a good thirty metres deep over the dome room’s floor, which is another level above the old street.”
“Bloody weather,” Zan said, then turned to me. “What took you so long?”
“You left me on my arse on the office floor. Then I had to report to the chiefs.”
“Right,” Zan noted, as if we always talked this way. “Do you think my boys are in there?”
“Probably; and I think whoever’s got them also kidnapped my aunt Juno today.”
“The President? Damn. What is her connection to all this?”
“Something to do with DaerinCorp’s future projects I think. I hope she’ll be able to tell us. Shall we suss this joint?”
“After you, Capra Jane.”
Call me Jane.
Okay, my love.
There was no time to sort our history out now. I pointed Zan to the ladder and hovered beside her as we descended to the concealed service entrance at the base of the dome. My SIP universal passcode gave us immediate access and we slipped into the upper gallery.
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