Was his client trying to tell him something by using a name that would be in his mother’s records?
Logically, he could comm-link with his Mum, retired and living in Cornwall. But he didn’t like to bother her yet. He could access info on his own, and didn’t need to crawl to her when problems got thorny. She had taught him to be self-reliant. Maybe neurotically so. If that was the case, he’d get it seen to eventually.
As things were, he was employed, but not contracted, to find a ghost whose name he knew on behalf of a meat-woman who was anonymous. Nice irony. He appreciated it.
*
He had several favoured ports into the InfoWorld. He usually sidestepped the dreamwelt sites that impressed the neos and plugged straight into streams of pure data, not even bothering with a customised simile. Most of the ghosts he had busted revealed too much about their meat-selves in their self-designed wish-fulfilment avatars. They all had an unhealthy preoccupation with self.
It always amazed him that the geek gunslingers were so locked into games-playing they never took in the view. It was like ignoring the stars. To him, the thrill was in the info landscape, the waves and currents and trends and collapses. He could endlessly access, anchored on a loose chain, becoming one with the world, letting it flow around and through him.
But this time, he wanted to seem like a neo.
He customised a ShadowShark and swam into dreamwelt through a Multi-User Carnival. It was a mixture of marketplace and playground, where the hustlers peddled surprise packages, containing either valuable gen or worthless tosh at the purchaser’s risk, and the zap-heads conducted endless duels or orgies, getting in and out of the way.
Basically, it was a Dress-Up and Play Area.
To operate here, he not only needed to project a poseur’s ident but also to intimate that there was a neo tosser at home, jacked into his parents’ ports, belly bloated and limbs atrophied as he let the dreamwelt be more his home than the plush monad where he was meat-locked.
He morphed the ShadowShark from fishform to carform, and got out, wearing the distinctive cloak, mask, goggles and boots of Dr. Shade, the wholly-owned Leech International superhero. He had been fond of the Dr. Shade films as a kid, despite (or maybe because of) Mum’s unaccountable loathing of them (and all other Leech efforts).
The Dr. Shade image was kiddie-cool enough to pass here. He had most of the heroes and heroines and gods and monsters who mingled in the carnival pegged as neo tossers. All womenshapes were Amazons with unfeasible breasts, and faces iconic of cool rebellion wandered by. Outlaws who coughed up registration fees and site subs. The InfoWorld welcomed phreaks and madpersons, but if you didn’t pay your phone bill you were shut out, marooned forever in realwelt.
He was clever enough even to maintain a flimsy intermediate persona as “Jonathan Chambers”, Dr. Shade’s secret ident. If probed deeply, he’d pull out, leaving behind traces typical of a neo tosser.
As Dr. Shade, he slipped through the carnival.
The dreamwelt darkened. A pack of feral kids on armoured bikes wove in and out of the crowds, blasting each other and bystanders to fast-reforming pixel-clouds.
Fantasy figures exposed their assets in neon-lit windows, offering eighteen varieties of non-copyright sexual access. A lot of neos bankrupted their parents by letting their bar codes be read by the info-whores and compounding the fees to infinity.
As usual, this all seemed silly. But, as usual, it was a place to start.
He passed up all the offers of sex and slid into the darker streets where the snitches lurked. Info was air and water here, but could be bought and sold like anything else.
A newsblurt cut through the scene, shaking the overhanging eaves and the artfully strewn shadows. The dog story had escalated. Gunmints issued instructions for humane disposal of soon-to-be-dangerous companions or minions. Dreamwelt denizens were warned that if they were in a realwelt monad with a dog, they should jack out immediately and disable it. Horrorshow pics flashed: users yanked out of info jaunts by ripped-open throats.
The blurt finished. The alley scene settled.
There was a scuttle of snitches. Extending his shadowcloak, he netted the one he was after. She made a fluttering attempt to break free and graciously gave in, landing delicately on his palm.
“Hello, Tink,” he said.
The cartoon fairy twinkled a greet.
Because J. M. Barrie had left the royalties on Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, and an Act of the Old Parliament extended that income in perpetuity, there was a copyright glitch. After the Mouse Wars, unlicensed McDisney avatars were purged from the InfoWorld, but the Peter Pan crew, with a few tiny alterations (the loss of the WMcD logo), were able to survive.
He had seen the loophole at the time and left it open. So Tinkerbelle owed him her dreamlife.
“What can you tell me about Seven Stars?”
The fairy buzzed and glowed like a tiny phosphor grenade and tried to get away.
“That tells me something,” he said, in Dr. Shade’s scary voice.
“It is foretold that the coming of the Seven Stars will bring about the Collapse,” Tinkerbelle shrilled.
It was the InfoWorld’s version of Armageddon. One big plug pulling, and global shrinkage to a dying white dot. Despite a million fail-safes, superstitions abounded, especially in the wake of the Vatican’s Fall. There were always intimations of Collapse.
“Where can I find Seven Stars?”
“You can’t,” the fairy shrilled. “They find you. Then no one else does. Ever.”
Tinkerbelle turned to a blip of light and vanished.
“But I believe in fairies,” he declared.
Even here, removed from the actual, he heard the cacophony of dogs. The constant barking, breaking through all the mutes and muffles and soundproof shields, scraped his nerves.
*
“Mum,” he said, “two names. Geneviève Dieudonné. Mimsy Mountmain.”
Sally, his mother, looked distracted.
A lot of dog noise came over the comm-link. She lived in a country retirement site, where animals were a special feature.
But the names clicked.
Sally Rhodes stopped moving about the room and stood so the reader could fix her image. He adjusted the projection, so her three-dimensional bust—solid and flesh-tone, though with the telltale hologram sparkle—sat on his desk.
She had cut her hair and let it go grey. Her face was unlined, without the benefit of a skin-stretch.
She made a kiss-mouth and he touched his lips to the tridvid image. They both laughed.
Then his mother nodded him to sit back.
“I tried to find Mimsy Mountmain once, for her mother. And for someone else. Her mother was killed before I could get anywhere. I was paid off. Case closed. As far as I know, the blasted girl never did show up.”
“And Geneviève?”
“She was part of it. She was also looking for Mimsy.”
“She still is. At least, someone with her name. Actually, it can’t be the same woman.”
“Blonde, looks about sixteen, slightly French accent, stays out of the sun, old-fashioned girl outfits?”
“Sounds like her.”
“If it is, give her my love. It’s unfinished business. I’m sorry I’m out of it.”
“So am I.”
“Nonsense. You need to be on your own.”
“How did you meet Geneviève?”
“She accosted me. In Pall Mall.”
Mum pronounced it the old way.
“Snap,” he said.
“I was looking for something called the Diogenes Club. They were out of business, but involved with whatever Mimsy Mountmain was up to. It went back years.”
“The Diogenes Club?”
“That’s right. Neil dug up some stuff on them. Nothing useful, as usual.”
Jerome wondered about it. He said goodbye.
“Give yourself my love too,” said Mum.
“I w
ill. And mine to you.”
They “kissed” again, and cut the link.
*
There was shooting outside. Not a running battle, as there had been briefly three years ago in the last of the Religious Wars. This time, it was a succession of single-shots.
Jerome turned the window on and scanned Upper Street. Men in armour dealt with dogs. They used jolt-guns, one charge to the back of the skull. A cleanup krewe followed, collecting the corpses. A lot of the dogs trailed leashes, and all had collar controls. Some unpersons harassed the pest officers. The dog story was stepping up, as if the unheard sound had become shriller, more maddening. Other species with canine levels of pitch were getting agitated.
Warnings were posted against approaching or sheltering affected animals. A raft of human interest stories offered cautionary tales of children ripped by loved family companions. Clinically blind people mind-linked to seeing-eye dogs reported that their skulls were ringing with sound, and censor blotches on the reports suggested not a few of them had become dangerous and were being treated like the street packs.
Over and over, news-streams emphasised that this was a global phenomenon. Global.
How many dogs were there in the world? Including wolves.
His teeth were on edge. He imagined he could sense the unheard sound. His eyeballs sang silently.
Did everybody feel this?
He didn’t feel like comm-linking around his associates, and asking. There were thousands of mushroom sites on the dog story. Mediamass obscured any useful gen. It would take a while to purge the extremists and for a sensible centre position to coalesce. In the meantime, stay-at-homes were staying put, and get-abouts were accepting restrictions. Suggested codes of practice for travel in cities and designated country sites.
An across-bands newsblurt cut in. A major announcement was imminent on the dog story. He knew that meant a thirty-second deep-core ad probe was coming. He tore out his earpiece and hummed the Anvil Chorus with fingers stuck in both ears. He did not need to be infected with psycho-dependency on some new flavour of echt burger.
Then he tuned in again. Seven Stars was claiming responsibility. The ghost’s message concluded with: “For the dogs, it will end soon.”
A scramble of experts got on-stream and began pouring opinion and speculation onto the maelstrom. He jacked out of all access and tried to think.
*
When one of his deep-level search engines paid off, Jerome thought somebody must be extracting the urine.
He had an address for Mimsy Mountmain. She was supposed to be a terminal stay-at-home, a shut-in on life support. She was maintained in the Mall. His client had met him outside the building in which his quarry lived.
The dog story was a constant distraction. It was hard to hack through to info that concerned him. The dog story criss-crossed and trailed over every other pathway. It had been the same during the Religious Wars.
Emergency legislation was being passed, globally. Dog ownership was now illegal. There were painless extermination programs. Some of the more liberal sub-gunmints were merely interning the animals and working on a “cure”.
Not having a dog, Jerome didn’t care. The dog story just got in the way.
He was increasingly spooked.
He tried to get back in touch with Geneviève, but there was no back-up listing for the Brixton address she had given him as her piedater. The node they had used as a comm-link was discontinued and the charges for its creation and dissolution all laid to his account.
He had let her see his bar-code. She must have some sort of hidden reader, maybe an Eyeball.
It turned out that his client was the ghost.
He had seen her in the meat. She was real, not a projection of some unknown veg like Tinkerbelle.
And now she was gone.
*
As Dr. Shade, he was back in the carnival. The party seemed to be slowing down. Somehow, the dog story was throwing the InfoWorld into turmoil. It happened like that. Mammoth realwelt events made users jack out for once, depopulated the dataways. Fine. That made it easier.
Now, he was looking for Geneviève Dieudonné.
1893–1962 wasn’t her. 1416–1432, though. There was something in that equation. That Geneviève didn’t get to be older than his seemed to be.
What about 1902 and 1942?
He glided through archive sites, shadowcloak passing over icons and portals. Few came here but academic researchers. The neos were only interested in the now, the crashing wave of the present. And vastcorps employed balanced factions of muck-raking exposé merchants and raking-over cover-up krewes.
He moved into the past, down an almost-empty conduit. Similes of buildings lined the way, in regressing architectural styles, each with foundation stones giving away the year. The buildings housed the records.
Geneviève had yielded too few mentions. So he had to trawl wider. He had set up search engines to look for the Diogenes Club. Most of them crashed against security barriers, alerting all kinds of official warnings. He had received desist notices, but no enforcement operatives were coming at him, from inside or outside the InfoWorld. Regulation boards were too busy with the dog story.
During a crisis, there was a window of opportunity.
*
He fought against déjà vu, as he stood outside the simile of the building he had seen in realwelt yesterday morning. Then, he had just wondered why it hadn’t been gutted for stores. Now, he knew it had significance.
There was even a simile of the bench where he had met his client. An information package lay on it, tied up with a big blue bow.
He looked at the gift. It could easily be a trap. He opened the package. Inside was a keystring. He ran the string through the swipe-slot, and the front door of the Diogenes Club opened.
Inside, the quality of the mimesis upgraded. As Dr. Shade, he entered a gentleman’s club. He heard a rustle of newspapers, the discreet footsteps of servants. He smelled various types of tobacco smoke and the old leather of the clubroom chairs.
An attendant ushered him upstairs.
The Chambers of the Ruling Cabal were derelict. Cobwebs wound over everything, spun between chairs and tables and desks and map stands. He walked through the webs without breaking strands. Everything sparkled slightly.
The darkness dispelled as someone turned up a gas lamp. It was a well-wrapped mummy, androgynous in form, adept in movement. The mummy’s eyes flickered. They were tiny screens. Red figures scrolled down.
There were others. A dog-headed man, in a broad Ancient Egyptian collar. The actor, John Barrymore. A swaddled invalid in a cocoon-like wheelchair, her head supported by a leather brace. And a red entity, a gemstone which shone with the light of stars.
Seven Stars.
Of course, all these were avatars of one person. One intelligence.
He took off his goggles, and let his simile resemble himself.
“We understand you’re out of pocket,” Barrymore said. “You’ve been the victim of a prank.”
“I was sent to find someone who seems not to be lost.”
All the faces of Seven Stars smiled at once. Even the jewel.
“We’re in a position to compensate you, and to prosecute your interests. To turn your commission around, we’d be willing to pay you well to find out the whereabouts of your former employer, the undead Mademoiselle Dieudonné.”
“Interesting,” he said.
He had a realwelt address. His mother’s paper records were still in the firm’s vault, and it had only taken an hour or so to find the notes Neil had deposited after the abandonment of the 1998 investigation. There, on headed notepaper, in a fine hand, was a personal thank you note, signed Gené. Without accessing the InfoWorld, he had confirmed that the address—a suite at a private hotel in Kensington—was still occupied. It was a throwback to his mother’s type of detective work. He didn’t even allow himself to make comm-links, for they contrailed through the InfoWorld, flagging themselves. He used printe
d-out directories and walked across the city, avoiding dogs and euthanasia krewes, to ask questions of a human desk clerk.
The hotel was off-record. Jerome worked out it had been bought—for cash—around the turn of the century. A phantom access signature implied it to be the property of a deceased lady named Catriona Kaye, run by a permanent trust administered by a firm of lawyers, kept open in accordance with Miss Kaye’s will.
Actually, it was a hidey-hole.
Invisible to the InfoWorld, it was a vampire’s coffin.
He couldn’t even claim credit for brilliant analysis. Geneviève had given him her address—the note, dated 1998, even mentioned him—and all he had done was confirm it.
“For Mam’selle Dieudonné’s location, we will pay a sum equivalent to your aggregate earnings over the last five years.”
This came from the mummy.
That flagged it. He was almost but not quite annoyed enough at Geneviève to turn her over.
But the comm-link gave it away.
“I’ll think about it,” he told the Seven Stars. “It’ll take time to get and confirm the info you want.”
“Very well, you have one hour.”
Jerome jacked out and cut access.
*
The realwelt rung with the sounds of dying dogs.
He was shocked. The sudden withdrawal from the dreamwelt was a heart-kicker, advised against by all help programs. But the realisation had been jolt enough.
He had nearly been gulled.
Now, he had to get across realwelt London. There was a severe curfew in force. All people-transport services, above and below ground, were suspended. Groups of dog-lovers had banded together to resist the extermination krewes, augmented by unpersons ready to riot for any cause, and there were outbreaks of fighting in St. James’s Park and Oxford Street. He would have to get round that.
He could not drive, because he’d have to log a route plan in his auto’s master program, and that would register in the InfoWorld. In the basement, he still had the last of the bikes he had pedalled through childhood. His dad, dead before he was born, had been a cycle messenger, and he’d felt that in pumping along tracks or out on the road he was sending out an “I Am Here” notice to the Beyond, paying tribute in his own way to the man he had never known.
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