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

by Stephen Leather

  Ruth is prowling around Aintrell’s huge office, weaving in and out of the furniture, nose to the ground as if she’s hunting for something.

  ‘I think there’s a definite something, but I’m not sure what it is,’ I say, but realise that doesn’t really make sense. ‘What I mean is, in both of the discs there comes a point when something happens, or is about to happen. Like an attack. It’s not as if the thing just stops dead, do you see?’ I can see by the blank look on his face that he doesn’t. ‘I thought at first that maybe it was something to do with the intensity of the discs, that the Dreamers burnt themselves out, but that doesn’t seem to be it.’ This is not easy, it’s on a par with trying to explain colours to a blind man. How can a businessman like Aintrell be expected to understand the complexities of the world that Dreamers inhabit?

  ‘Just before the disc ends there’s a sensation of being attacked, by something. But there’s no time to see it, I just react and then bang, I’m awake.’

  ‘Something?’ he asks.

  ‘Something. Or somebody. Maybe an animal. Or a machine. But something that moves, something that is extra to the discs that the Dreamers were laying down, as if something had entered into the disc. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

  Aintrell exhales smoke in a cloud, just as Ruth walks by his chair. She stops and coughs, her whole body shaking, but she’s only fooling around because the real world has no effect on her, in the same way that she can have no impact on the real world.

  ‘Oh really?’ she says sarcastically, and her chest heaves and the coughing fit intensifies. I ignore her, she only wants to be the centre of attention.

  ‘You wish, Jack,’ she says, but at least the retching noises stop.

  ‘I think I understand,’ says Aintrell. ‘You’re saying that the Dreamers had no inkling of what was to come, and that it was outside their control. But does that mean that whatever killed them wasn’t a product of their imagination?’

  That as they say, is the $64,000 question. Had the Dreamers created their own executioners, or had somebody, or something, else killed them. And if it was their own imagination, their own creativity, then why would they do it? I watch Ruth, sitting by Aintrell’s chair and rubbing her head against the velvet material as if scratching an itch. Her eyes are closed. A picture of innocence. I wonder if the other Dreamers had created companions like Ruth, and if they could turn on their creators. Suppose Ruth decided to go into one of my dreams, would we be on equal terms? Could she kill me? But how can I explain that to Aintrell, that the Dreamers could have been killed by their own creations. And that mine was sitting by his chair having a good scratch. End of conversation. End of contract. Anyway, it would be unlikely in the extreme, because the Dreamers would have known it was coming and would simply pull themselves out of it.

  Far more likely is that something else had managed to get into the mind without them knowing, and was able to take them by surprise. That’s what I tell Aintrell, anyway, though again it’s difficult to put it into words.

  He nods and smokes as I talk, occasionally flicking ash into the ashtray. When I finish describing how both psi-discs end he sits forward, giving me the Aintrell smile.

  ‘Tell me, Leif. Who do you think is responsible?’

  I hold up my hands as if warding off an attack. ‘Hey, how am I supposed to know that?’ I say. ‘You’re the one who should know if the Corporation has been threatened.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘Threatened. What makes you say that someone is threatening the Corporation?’

  ‘I’m not saying anyone is, Louis. All I’m saying is that if anyone is, you’d be the first to know. Right?’

  He sits back in his chair and examines his cigar as if checking it for hidden explosives. ‘Right,’ he says.

  ‘And?’

  He sighs. ‘No one is threatening the Corporation, or at least we haven’t received any threats. Yet.’ He left the ‘yet’ hanging there like a lost seagull looking for its nest.

  ‘You know RCA have lost three Dreamers?’ I ask, and it’s clear from the look on his face that he doesn’t.

  ‘Who told you that?’ he asks, stabbing the air with his cigar in time to the words.

  ‘That’s the talk on the street,’ I say, reluctant to tell him of my meeting with Eric Takahashi, fraternising with the enemy and all that. ‘It seems two of their Dreamers died in similar circumstances. I was wondering if perhaps CBS and RCA were both fighting dirty.’

  Aintrell laughs, a bellowing guffaw that starts somewhere in his stomach and finishes at the far end of his enormous office.

  ‘That’s preposterous, Leif, and you know it. We’re keen competitors, which is as it should be, but killing each other’s Dreamers? Christ man, you know what a precious resource a Dreamer is. Killing you guys off is the last thing we’d do.’

  Yeah, I know how rare Dreamers are. About twenty million people take the tests each year, and in a good year fifty make the grade. We’re not exactly one in a million, but we’re close. Too close for the firms to start knocking us off. It would be like two feuding cattle barons killing off their steers one by one. It wouldn’t matter which of them won in the end. They’d be better off shooting each other, or trying to screw up each other’s distribution networks.

  ‘In that case, maybe you should start looking for a third party, someone who wants both Corporations to shut up shop. The Moral Crusade, maybe.’

  ‘Possible,’ he says. ‘More likely to be a crank who thinks we should all go back to watching movies or reading books or playing the piano on dark winter evenings.’

  ‘What do the police think?’ I ask.

  He doesn’t reply and avoids my eyes, concentrating on his cigar. ‘He hasn’t told them,’ says Ruth accusingly.

  ‘You haven’t told them, have you?’ I say, and Aintrell admits that I’m right. ‘We’re right,’ says Ruth.

  Yeah, okay, Aintrell admits that me and my cat are right.

  ‘My cat and I,’ purrs Ruth. Now my cat’s an English teacher, for goodness sake.

  ‘It’s something we should handle in-house, as it were,’ continues Aintrell. ‘It isn’t something the police have any expertise in. If we do receive an extortion demand then of course we’ll call them in, but we don’t consider it necessary just yet.’

  ‘You don’t think the police have any expertise in investing murder?’ I say. I am amazed at his arrogance.

  ‘Leif, Leif, Leif,’ he says, as if consoling an unreasonable mental patient. ‘We don’t know that they were murdered, that’s one of the things you have to prove. You prove that there is a murderer and I’ll call them in. I can’t say fairer than that.’ He flashes The Smile and looks at me exactly as he used to look into millions of homes across America, the face you can trust. It isn’t true unless you heard it from the mouth of Louis Aintrell. Yeah, well that was then and this is now and I don’t believe him. I think he knows exactly what’s going on with the new psi-discs, and I don’t think he’s got the slightest intention of bringing outsiders in to wash his dirty linen.

  Still, what can I do? I’m going to have to plug into the third psi-disc tomorrow, and shortly afterwards I’ll have to lay down my own. Then I can turn my back on the whole bloody lot of them.

  Ruth opens her eyes and hisses, and there is a fierceness about her that brings home with a jolt how wild she really is. She is never happy around Aintrell. She walks over to me and puts her head on my knee, eyes upturned and watching me. Time to go. Aintrell springs to his feet and leads me to the door, waving his half-smoked cigar and thanking me for coming, he wishes me well tomorrow and asks me if I’ll come up and see him after I’ve gone through the third psi-disc.

  Herbie is waiting for me outside and he does not look happy. I tell him I want to be alone for a while and he looks relieved. I guess I haven’t been the best of company over the past couple of days.

  ‘You can say that again,’ says Ruth.

/>   We ride down in the lift together. ‘Herbie,’ I say, ‘where do the CBS Dreamers hang out these days? Those that like hanging out, I mean.’ Most Dreamers avoid contact with others of their kind, not because we hate talking shop but because it can get a bit confusing at times, each with our own relative grip on reality. He tells me the name of a bar and an address and asks if I want him to tag along, obviously unhappy that I might change my mind about wanting to be on my own.

  ‘No, that’s okay,’ I say. ‘I’m going for a walk now, but later tonight I might fancy a drink or something.’

  The lift opens and we say goodbye in the lobby. I don’t know what he does in his spare time, but I know that all I have to do is whistle and he’ll be back.

  ‘Like a stupid dog,’ says Ruth.

  ‘Dogs make good companions and are loyal and faithful,’ I whisper. ‘There are lessons there to be learned by the whole feline family.’

  ‘You wish, Jack,’ she says and she wags her tail and pants. Cute.

  *

  We walk aimlessly through the streets of the city, or rather I wander and Ruth pads by my side. She walks close, occasionally brushing my leg with her shoulder, or lifting her head so that my hand knocks against her ear. Nothing obtrusive, it was just her way of letting me know she was there. I was walking in protective slouch mode, hands in pockets, shoulders slumped, feet scuffing the ground, signalling to any muggers watching that I’m not the sort worth pulling into a dark alley and taking my wallet. As it happens, any mugger stupid enough to roll me would find my wallet contains precious little in the way of cash and he wouldn’t know the code numbers that go with the chipcard. Ruth is matching her pace with mine, stopping with me at each road intersection, looking right and left each time we step off the kerb.

  ‘Where shall we go?’ I ask her, quietly so I can’t be overheard. ‘Dunno,’ she says.

  ‘What do you feel like?’

  ‘My mind’s in a whirl, Ruth,’ I say. ‘I just want to keep moving, do you understand?’

  ‘Hey, tell me about it. I’m a cat, you know, and cats love to prowl. We choose to cruise.’ My street-tough cat.

  We walk for a while longer, both of us looking down at the pavement. When I look up we’ve walked out of the business district and are now in a seedy residential district, either a broken down area that’s being gentrified or a former upper class enclave on the way down. There are a couple of burnt out cars at the side of the road and some of the buildings are boarded up. An unmanned police drone hovers above us, checks us out and whizzes off.

  ‘Where are we?’ I ask Ruth. She looks up and sniffs the air.

  ‘Dunno,’ she says. ‘Why don’t we go to the zoo?’

  ‘The zoo?’

  ‘Yeah, you know. Animals in cages. It’ll do you good.’

  ‘Where the hell is the zoo?’

  She groans and rolls her eyes. ‘Pull yourself together, Leif. We’ll catch a cab.’

  There seem to be few vehicles on the road in this neighbourhood, but eventually I spot one, the driver with his head close to the windscreen and hands grabbing the steering wheel as if expecting an ambush at any moment.

  He stops the cab barely long enough for Ruth and I to climb in the back, then accelerates away sharply.

  Twenty minutes later we’re in the zoo, walking slowly around the exhibits. We stand in front of the wolves enclosure while Ruth struts around and makes fun of them. They ignore her. I buy an ice cream and she asks me if she can lick it and I tell her she’s crazy but she insists so I hold the cone down for her.

  ‘It’s good,’ she says. ‘But not as good as milk from my master.’

  For some reason she’s being especially nice to me today. Maybe she realises how upset I am after the two psi-discs, and how worried I am about tomorrow.

  We find an unoccupied bench and I sit down, close to the end. She lifts herself on, one paw at a time, and then lies down with her head in my lap, eyes closed in contentment. From where I’m sitting I can see the enclosures where the big cats are confined. One of the enclaves resembles a surrealistic swimming pool which has been drained of all of its water, with a sprinkling of logs. There are man-made caves set into the side of one of the concrete swirls and inside sit two tigers staring blankly out into the daylight. They seem to be watching me eat the ice-cream but it’s hard to tell from their expressionless faces. One of them lifts a giant paw to its mouth and begins to wash its whiskers with small, careful strokes. It looks as if it’s mimicking the way I’m eating.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ says Ruth. ‘They wouldn’t waste their time watching you.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ I reach down and ruffle the fur on her chest as I finish off the cone. ‘How do you think they feel, being caged?’ I ask her.

  She moves her head a fraction as if shrugging. ‘Probably bored,’ she purrs, enjoying the slow tickling of my finger.

  ‘Just bored?’

  ‘You want me to give you some sort of garbage about them pining for lost freedoms, the open plains, the herds of wildebeest?’ she says.

  She stumps me with that, because that’s what I was thinking, that big cats must surely hate to be confined, they must hate it with all their soul.

  ‘Mostly a tiger thinks about its stomach,’ says Ruth. ‘Every now and then they think of sex, but once that’s out of the way the male wanders off again and the female is stuck with the litter. Then they go back to thinking about food.’

  ‘I thought they mated for life.’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose that’s what the female tigers are led to believe,’ she says. ‘You men are all the same.’

  I think she’s being sarcastic. Or maybe it’s a dig at my two ex-wives. But these days it’s getting harder to fathom her sense of humour.

  ‘But if they had the choice, surely they’d choose freedom?’ I press.

  She twists her head up to look at me, and smiles. ‘They’d take the option which was most likely to keep their stomachs filled,’ she said. ‘Let me tell you, killing your food isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Killing for sport is okay, and I can understand killing for revenge or for territory, but given the choice of being fed decent chunks of prime beefsteak or having to lie in wait by a waterhole for five or six hours, I know which I’d choose.’

  ‘And being in a cage doesn’t bother them?’

  She looks at me knowingly. ‘We’re all in cages, Leif.’

  Yeah, that’s true enough. Here’s me talking about freedom and roaming the plains and I’m the one imprisoned in a CBS contract and tied to two ex-wives by cast iron alimony agreements.

  ‘What sort of cage are you in?’ I ask her.

  She raises her eyebrows in mock horror. ‘Me?’ she says. ‘I’m in the cage of your mind, aren’t I?’ She sees my face fall and fakes a slash at my throat with her paw. ‘It’s not so bad,’ she says.

  ‘The cage?’ I say.

  ‘Your mind,’ she answers, then puts her head back in my lap. She starts to breathe deeply and is soon asleep.

  *

  We get back to the flat at about six o’clock, just as the daylight begins to creep out of the rooms. I take off the cap and throw it on one of the sofas. I hate hats, no matter how long I have them on my head I’m always aware of their presence, like a band of steel around my forehead getting tighter and tighter, but until my hair grows back I’m stuck with it.

  I was being honest when I told Herbie that I wanted to be on my own, but I also know that I must talk to other Dreamers to find out what the hell is going on. If the Corporation is changing its stand on violence in its psi-discs then it’s possible that they wouldn’t tell me about it because I’m so near the end of my contract. But the new intake, those that have only recently been signed up, might have been given new instructions.

  I shower and change into jeans and a sweatshirt then look at myself in the mirror and wince, a 48-year-old wreck trying to pass himself off as a teenager. The effect is not easy on the eye, and I realise with a jolt what bad shape I’
m in. Looking straight down I am unable to see my knees. That is not a good sign. I have fallen victim to gravity and over-indulgence in a big way.

  ‘Hardly surprising considering the type of restaurants you frequent,’ says Ruth archly. She looks not one day older than when I first met her and that was almost four years ago. ‘And bearing in mind your alcohol intake,’ she adds.

  ‘I’m going to have to change,’ I say. ‘It’ll be an uphill struggle,’ she says.

  ‘The clothes, I mean,’ I say. I figure that if I’m going to meet the juvenile delinquents that pass for Dreamers then I should dress for the part, but I’m not going to fool anybody. I throw the jeans and shirt back into the wardrobe and put on something more befitting a middle-aged man with a paunch.

  ‘And bald,’ says Ruth. ‘Don’t forget bald.’

  The grey flannel trousers, white shirt and red sweater look okay, a bit like an off-duty scoutmaster, and I try on a selection of hats until I find one that’s halfway decent.

  ‘You call a Yankees baseball cap decent?’ accuses Ruth.

  ‘It’ll have to do,’ I say. Anything is better than a bald head.

  The bar that Herbie told me about is within walking distance so I don’t bother calling for the limo, but on the way out the phone rings. I ask the phone who it is and it tells me that it’s someone called Helen Gwynne from the Moral Crusade then waits for me to either accept the call or tell it to take a message. I decide to speak to her.

  ‘You don’t know me but I’d very much like to talk with you about CBS’s psi-discs,’ she says.

  ‘What in particular do you want to talk about?’ I ask.

  ‘I’d rather go over it in person,’ she answers. ‘Do you mind if I come around now? I can be there in ten minutes.’

  That surprises me because my number is not listed and there are very few people who know where I live. She senses my unease and quickly adds: ‘Herbert Chastel de Beauville suggested I get in touch with you.’

  That settles it for me and I tell her I’ll see her.