Dreamer's Cat: a sci-fi murder mystery with a killer twist

by Stephen Leather

  ‘And what’s wrong with being an animal?’ asks Ruth, head turned up as she pads along by my side. I ignore her, there are too many people around and I already look strange with my bald and shining head.

  ‘You’ve got plenty of hats back in the flat,’ she says, smugly.

  *

  Sleep keeps avoiding me, and the images of the raid on the Indian village keep running through my mind. What worries me the most is the fact that the images are so strong, and so is the adrenaline rush that comes with them. My headache seems worse than yesterday. Ruth seems uneasy as well and is constantly shifting position on the bed and grunting each time she moves.

  At seven o’clock I decide I can’t lie in bed any more and I shower and dress and go out for a walk. I’m wearing an old tweed cap that I brought in London years ago, the sort of headgear that gamekeepers wear while tending Japanese pheasant farms. It’s not that the lack of hair is physically uncomfortable, the weather is too mild for that, but it stops the curious looks. There’s no need for anyone to be bald these days and it’s unusual enough to attract attention.

  ‘It looks pretty stupid, too,’ says Ruth, walking by my side. Suddenly my cat is a fashion expert.

  Traffic is already bumper to bumper along the main roads, most of them on autopilot, guided by computer-controlled servo-mechanisms pulling information from navigation satellites hundreds of miles up in space. The air is thick with fumes and noise as we head for the park. It has become a tradition, the early morning walk around the lake before laying down a disc, the last chance to get my thoughts in order. This was different, though, this was me preparing myself mentally for exposing myself to whatever was on the second psi-disc, and I have a feeling it isn’t going to be pleasant. We pass a down and out asleep on a concrete bench, his head resting on a plastic carrier bag containing his belongings. He snores loudly and Ruth growls.

  The wind is whipping up small waves on the lake and it ruffles Ruth’s fur, making it look as if she was being stroked by an invisible hand. She faces into the wind and lets it play over her face, her eyes closed, purring with pleasure. I stand next to her and follow her example. It feels good. The smell of traffic seeps into the park, there is no escape from the fumes or the buzz of engines.

  A police jet helicopter clatters overhead, heading for the outskirts of the city, air-to-surface missiles hanging under its stubby wings.

  ‘What’s worrying you?’ Ruth asks. ‘You’re not scared are you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I reply, and it’s the truth. ‘I just feel I’m caught up in something that I don’t understand. I think that Aintrell knows a lot more than he’s telling me.’

  ‘You think the Corporation knows what’s happening?’

  ‘I think that Aintrell has a good idea, and maybe Max, too. They’re up to something, Ruth.’ She prowls around me, tail swishing slowly back and forth, nodding her head up and down the way she always does when she’s deep in thought. Round and round me she walks, pacing as if she was in a cage.

  ‘I wish I could help make it better for you,’ she says. I drop my hand down and tickle her behind her left ear.

  ‘Just being here helps,’ I say. ‘You’re the only one I can trust.’

  She rears up and plants her front paws on my chest and looks up at me with her knowing hazel eyes. ‘You’d better believe it,’ she says and headbuts me affectionately. I lower my head and rub noses with her. Her’s feels like warm fine grade sandpaper.

  ‘You don’t think they deliberately want to hurt you, do you?’

  ‘It’s not impossible, is it?’ I reply. ‘One more psi-disc and they have to pay me close to one billion dollars. If I fail to deliver they don’t have to pay me anything.’

  ‘If that’s the reason, Leif, then it would be a hell of a lot easier just to have you killed,’ she says, and I have to agree with her.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Let’s walk. You need the exercise.’ My biggest fan and my biggest critic.

  ‘You betta believe it,’ she says.

  *

  Back in the flat the phone tells me that Herbie has called. I tell it to get him on the line. Herbie tells me that he’s got someone he wants to see me and asks me to meet him downstairs in ten minutes.

  He’s punctual, as usual. The limo pulls up to the kerb and the door swings open. There are two people in the back, Herbie and a young man with a raspberry coloured crew cut and a black motorcycle jacket with shiny chains stitched down the arms.

  ‘Leif, this is Eric Takahashi, he’s a minder with RCA,’ says Herbie.

  Eric nods but makes no move to shake hands. He seems to be wearing brightly-coloured woollen gloves. His name is Japanese but it’s hard to tell, what with the dyed hair and pallid complexion. His eyes don’t look like Oriental eyes but that’s not surprising these days, more than half have had the operation, folding eyelids and all. Eric grins and offers me a stick of marijuana chewing gum but I say no thanks, a bit early in the day for me.

  ‘So you’re Leif Ableman,’ says Eric, putting the pack of gum back in his pocket. ‘I didn’t realise you were so old.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I say. I’m only 48 years old, for God’s sake. ‘How old are you?’ he asks.

  ‘Forty eight,’ I say. He looks me over and I can see that he wants to ask what’s it like to be so old, to be so close to checking out of Life.

  ‘That’s old for a Dreamer,’ says Eric. He is obviously not going to let go of the subject. He leans over me so that he can talk to Herbie. ‘What’s the average age of a Dreamer these days, Herbie? Twenty one? Twenty two?’

  Herbie, to his credit, looks suitably pained. Eric realises he isn’t going to get an answer but doesn’t seem to appreciate how tactless he is being.

  ‘Eric, the reason Herbie has arranged this meeting is because there’s something I have to know,’ I tell him.

  ‘Fire away, man,’ he says. He starts fingering a gold stud in his left earlobe as if it is a lucky talisman. There is a large dimple in the middle of his chin. Perhaps he had that done at the same time as he had his eyes altered.

  ‘Have any of RCA’s Dreamers died recently?’

  He stops chewing and swallows his gum. His mouth falls open. His teeth are too perfect to be natural. How much of Eric Takahashi is real and how much has been created, I wonder.

  ‘Died?’ he repeats.

  ‘Try him with an easy question first,’ says Ruth. She is sitting on the front passenger seat, facing backwards so that she can watch us. ‘Ask him what it’s like having an IQ lower than his shoe size.’

  ‘Died,’ I say. ‘Deceased. Passed away. Cashed in their chips.’

  Eric waves his hands in front of his face as if swatting a swarm of invisible insects. ‘Hey man, I hear you, but we’re talking commercial secrets here. RCA and CBS aren’t exactly bosom buddies you know. I mean, I’ll shoot the breeze with you under a white flag and all that, but give me a break, will yer? This is heavy shit.’

  ‘Eric, I have a reason for asking,’ I say patiently. ‘Look, if it makes you feel any easier, I’ll tell you something first, okay?’

  He doesn’t look any more relaxed. He squeezes his ear lobe. Maybe the stud is some sort of acupuncture pressure point, stress reliever or something.

  ‘CBS has lost three Dreamers. All dead. I want to find out what happened.’

  ‘Awesome,’ says Eric. ‘That is awesome. Totally unreal.’

  ‘RCA has had Dreamers die?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. Two in the last month. Shit. We thought maybe it was your Corporation behind it. Industrial espionage and all that.’

  ‘Were they new talent or old?’

  ‘One of each. One was a teen star laying down his second psi-disc, the other was two away from finishing his contract.’

  ‘Do you know what happened?’

  He shook his head. ‘Naw, total info clampdown from management. The buzz is that something went wrong while they were plugged in, but nobody knows what. A technician is supposed to have
snuffed it, too.’

  I look at Herbie. ‘Snap,’ I say and he nods his head in agreement. Whatever is happening is happening to both companies.

  ‘Any idea what sort of psi-discs they were working on?’ I ask, playing a hunch. ‘Sort?’ he asks, lines furrowing his brow. ‘What do you mean, what sort?’

  ‘Subject matter,’ I reply. ‘Have you seen the storyboards?’

  ‘Naw. Neither of them were mine,’ he says. ‘Sex, violence, anything like that?’

  ‘I told you, man, total secrecy.’

  ‘But RCA is going ahead with new psi-discs?’

  ‘No question about it. My boy is due to lay down his next one in four weeks time.’

  ‘Is he worried?’

  ‘Naw, he doesn’t know nothing. He spends most of his time spaced out on crack. That’s my biggest headache, keeping the drug cops away from him. It’s costing us a fortune. The sooner they legalise it the better. Roll on December.’

  ‘Have you sent up his storyboard yet?’

  ‘Naw, he’s still working it out in his head.’

  ‘Is there any pressure from Creative to make it more violent?’

  He shook his head. ‘They’re always pressing for more sensations, you know that, man. But they’ve still got to get them past the censors.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so,’ I say, but Aintrell’s words echo in my head. The law is flexible. It evolves. Even cocaine is set to be legalised in a few months, and the drug pressure groups are already gearing up to start pressing for heroin use to be decriminalised. What the censors won’t allow today could be family viewing by next year. Especially if the Corporation were to start applying a little pressure, financial or otherwise. The Government’s not likely to need too much persuading, not with the state of the economy and so many people out of work. The more plugged into psi-discs, the fewer will be protesting on the streets or blowing up IRS offices.

  ‘Leif,’ says Herbie. ‘Time’s pressing and Max is expecting us.’

  He’s right, of course, so I ask Eric if we can drop him off. He tells us that his own limo is following ours so we thank him and let him out there and then before driving to CBS Tower.

  Max is champing at the bit by the time we finally get to his office. We are late but I refuse to let him intimidate me, he’s not the one that has to plug into the potentially lethal disc so I reckon I deserve a little leeway.

  ‘Do you want anything before we go up?’ asks Max.

  ‘Coke,’ I say and he looks shocked, thinking I mean the white powder. It takes Herbie by surprise, too, because they both know I don’t do drugs. I raise my eyebrows and sigh and point at the red and white vending machine.

  ‘Oh, right, sure,’ says Max and gets me a can. He throws it underarm and I catch it left-handed. Max asks Herbie if he wants anything and he says no. Max takes a Coke to keep me company.

  We open them in the lift and mine sprays a plume of foaming brown liquid over Herbie’s gleaming shoes. Ruth creases up laughing, and so does Max.

  ‘Sorry, Herbie,’ I say, but I can see that he doesn’t believe me.

  While the lift gives us a breakdown of the world news and the nuclear pollution report, I ask Max to tell me about the second psi-disc.

  ‘The Dreamer is, I mean was, a woman. One of the few female Dreamers. Her name was Janet Dewar, 23-years-old, and it was her fourth psi-disc.’

  ‘Subject?’

  ‘Space adventure, science fiction, from the point of view of a space trooper in a battle squadron defending Earth from aliens, you know the sort of thing.’

  ‘Yeah. They’re all the vogue these days.’

  ‘That’s one of the good things about sci-fi, the format allows you to let rip with the special effects,’ says Max.

  ‘Sure, but too many Dreamers use the special effects to cover up for a lack of plot and characterisation,’ I reply, then realise how bitchy that sounds.

  ‘Don’t knock it,’ says Max. ‘Just give the punters what they want. And what they want is action and excitement.’

  And sex and violence? Give them what they want so long as it’s legal, that’s what he means. The technicians give us dirty looks when we get to the studio as if we should apologise for having kept them waiting. Nobody does. I finish the Coke and lob the can into a steel waste paper bin. Max takes it as a challenge, empties his can and throws it in as well.

  I go behind the screen and change into the gown. There’s no need to shave my head again, there’s only the barest stubble, but the goo still has to be rubbed in, and then Max takes me into the booth and attaches the headset.

  ‘OK Leif,’ he says. ‘Exactly the same as yesterday. Stick with it unless you feel you are in danger. We’ll be here, but there’s nothing to worry about. We’ve stopped it a full two seconds before Jan ran into problems.’

  Ran into problems. A nice way of putting it. He means died. ‘Max,’ I say. ‘Is there anything else I should know?’

  He looks down at me as I lie on the couch. ‘No,’ he says,

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure.’ I am certain that he is lying, I can see it in his eyes, but there is nothing I can do. ‘Let’s go for it then,’ I say. He leaves me alone in the cubicle. I cannot turn my head to look through the glass but I can feel Ruth there, staring at me and worrying. The glass turns opaque, white at first and then grey. I become aware of the headache again, the dull throb behind my eyes. It is……

  ……..Light. Artificial light, cold and bleak. I’m sitting in what looks like a lecture theatre, ranks and ranks of orange plastic seats fixed to stainless steel benches. There are no windows in the room, and no obvious source of the harsh light. There are about eighty of us there, men and women, and we are all dressed in the same light blue one-piece uniform. It looks as if it is made out of some sort of metallic material but it feels like the finest Korean silk. There is a plastic zip running from the neck down to the groin. There are two gold stars on each of my shoulders and over my left breast there is a rectangular metal badge. I have to turn my head to the side to read the lettering on it. It says ‘Navigator.’

  We are all looking at a man standing behind a silvery lectern. He has five stars on each of his shoulders and a jagged scar that runs from his right ear across to the bridge of his nose. He is totally bald and parts of his head are a greyish-blue as if there is steel beneath the skin. He is too far away for me to read the metal badge on his chest - it is surrounded by gold, red and green squares, medals I guess - but I know that he is our Commander. He is briefing us on our next mission.

  We are in Deep Space, he tells us, approaching a planet called Kuei. We are many light years from Earth and the reason we feel so strange is that we have only recently been woken from artificial sleep. We are warriors, and we are to make war on the Kueians. The Kueians, he says, are waging war on the Earth, even as he speaks. We are too far away to help repel the invaders, but we can attack where they least expect it - their home planet.

  To the Commander’s left a swirling mass of dots of lights coalesces into a three-dimensional picture of a Kueian, a seven foot tall lizard, standing upright on its rear taloned legs, its tail just touching the ground behind it. The eyes are yellow and slanted with a diamond-shaped iris and lethal pointed teeth protrude from its gaping mouth. It owes more to Tyrannosaurus Rex than to any living lizard on Earth. The 3-D image slowly revolves so we can all see the enemy. It has an opposable thumb which means that unlike the dinosaur it can hold things, and it is as technologically advanced as we are, the Commander tells us. Maybe even more so.

  The image changes and we see the Kueian dressed in its space combat gear. It looks similar to our own, he says, though the helmet is a different shape and there is a single tank on the back-pack rather than our three cylinders. Notice that there is no sign of the tail when the Kueian is suited up, says the Commander. He explains that the tail is vestigal, it has no function. In fact the biologists reckon it will go completely over the next few thousand years.

  The K
ueian disappears and in its place there is a Kueian star fighter, a white needle with small fins at the rear. It is fast and highly manoeuvrable in space, less so in the Kueian atmosphere. Our own fighters have smaller boosters but larger wings which means we have the edge on them in the thick atmosphere so our strategy is get past them and lure them closer to the planet before attacking. The two types of ship are comparable in terms of weaponry, laser guns and heat-seeking smart bombs, so the battle is going to be a test of pilot skill. And, he says, raising his voice to fill the room, it is a battle that we are going to win.