by Glenn Grant
Stearns handed the radio back. “Ship this back to my office and I’ll check it out tonight. I haven’t had time to look at the other one yet. If you can’t see much else that’s easy to get at, you’d better wrap it up; I’d like to put the team on clearing some of the warehouses by the bridge. We might have better luck there. I’ve got to be going now. I’ll see Werner gets credit for the find.”
* * *
He walked on, his left leg starting to drag, and came to a limestone-and-slate motor hotel, still largely intact in its concrete lot. At the lobby entrance he saw a BMW electric cycle pushed among the yellow weeds by the door. He frowned, then clumped up the steps and went in. From the broken window, the usual splash of light fell across the registration desk; but the two chairs behind it were empty. As he hesitated, his hand slipping into his right pocket, a woman in black cycle leathers moved from the shadows in the far corner. She was of medium height, with straight brown hair and she carried a machine pistol easily at her side, its muzzle aimed a couple of metres in front of Stearns’s feet.
“It’s cold for April this year,” he said, feeling ridiculous.
“And no lilacs are blooming,” she completed, and clipped the gun to her belt. “Right you are, but I’ve learned to be careful with a new customer. What’s the matter? Oh—you were expecting Adrienne. She’s—not going to make it. Trouble last month. You know.”
“I can imagine.”
“Anyway, I’ve got the data you wanted, and as far as we’re concerned, the deal’s still on.” She paused. “Did you know her well?”
“Well? I’m not sure.” He swallowed. “I looked forward to when she came through here, but it’s been so quiet here that you forget.… Today’s full of surprises.” The fingers of his right hand were gripping his gloved wrist. “She won’t be back at all? That’ll be hard to get used to.”
She nodded. “It’s still hard to lose someone, even now, after all this. I’ve got some medicinal alcohol on the bike. You want a slug?”
He shook his head and took out the thermos. “Won’t mix with this.”
“I’ve got a recorder with me. We could use that if you’d rather.”
“No. No. Those things start to mash my brains if they’re not perfectly tuned. Electric feet scuttering through my mind. Can we talk a bit first, though? I’m not ready yet.”
* * *
They talked. Her name was Megan. She had a husky voice and rather coarse features, and she carried two gigabytes of RAM implanted in her head. Talking of fortified villages and water-powered assembly lines in a ruined cathedral, she leaned forward, gesturing with stiff wrists and curved fingers. There was something wrong with her right hand. They compared stories of agricultural projects, outdated maps and new perimeter defences. When she laughed, as she did finally, she was almost silent, falling back in her chair, open-mouthed, while her cheeks went red and her nose white.
“God,” she said, sitting up and shaking her head. “Mass hysteria, just the two of us. The last few weeks were worse than I’d realized.” She lay back in the chair again and looked at her hands. “The past keeps coming back, doesn’t it. Someone I used to know … I’d assumed he was dead; I’d almost managed to forget he’d existed. Then just a couple of days ago, a new database came onto the circuit. It has an old security classification: secret projects and who was working on them. His name was there, and where he had been working; and when this job came up, I took it, even though I was due for a break, because it would take me here, and I could be where he’d lived.”
She was sombre again and went on quietly: “Memories. Some of them are more real than what’s around me, but I can’t trust them. Have you noticed there’s always some leakage, some cross-talk between what’s in the implants and your own memories. At least, I think that’s the trouble. He once told me that was it; he said you could make use of it if you knew how. Memories change on me—it scares me, I don’t want to say it—and I dream, or I remember, but I can’t see him. Or I see him, but it’s someone else. Sometimes he changes while I remember. That’s what frightens me. Supposing he hadn’t died, and I found him, and we didn’t know each other?”
Stearns shook his head. “I can’t believe people change that easily. I think you’re worrying too much.”
“I know, I know, I’m old enough to know better. But still…” She shrugged and then smiled. “You’re a good listener. I’ve needed to talk. You ready now?”
He nodded. “There’s a room through there. The light’s about right, and there’s even a bed.”
She followed him. When she hung her jacket on the door handle, he saw that the right sleeve of her work shirt was worn through at the elbow, and her arm was prosthetic. The false skin had hardened and was flaking away at the joint. As they sat, his gloved hand brushed that elbow.
They sat facing each other on the bed. There was enough light to see her eyes clearly; the irises were grey. He opened the thermos, took out the phial and broke the seal. Loading the hypo-spray he shook his head. “I thought I wouldn’t be able to get it this time. I thought I’d have to give it up for the neurovaccine.”
“But you didn’t have to. So it’s all right.”
Her hands moved down the front of his shirt, unfastening buttons. When her fingers reached his belt and began loosening it, he put the spray gun down and took her hand away.
“No use,” he said softly, his eyes closed. “Burned.” He picked up the hypo. “Just this now.”
They injected each other at the base of the neck and waited, her left hand resting loosely on his right.
The first change was always visual, as details forced themselves into prominence: a grey hair at her temple, the crease at the corner of her mouth, two red veins in her eye. Then his hearing sharpened, so that their heartbeats and breathing filled the room with muffled thunder. As he became aware of it, the syncopation smoothed away. Breath came with breath, pulse beat with pulse. He felt veins swell and relax. Air pushed down into his lungs, lifting the ribcage, pressing down the diaphragm, opening each alveolar sac like a bud.
She parted her lips and sang. Starting from an inhumanly precise B-flat, the sound broke and shivered into a hail of notes, too fast to be consciously controlled or apprehended. The sounds and the grey aureoles of her eyes filled his senses. He floated disembodied on a river of numbers that surged into an abyss of dark. When the song ended and the abyss was filled, he reached into his body and let his own song spill out. The river poured through him, molecular switches firing neurons, shaping puffs of air into sound. He orbited twin grey suns in a void that sang.
At the end, their bodies slackened, the world came back, their foreheads touched. They closed their eyes and slept.
* * *
He knew he was dreaming. Cavendish turned from the map on the wall and pushed a blue folder across the desk toward him.… An incandescent light bulb was reflected in the froth-ringed liquid in Stearns’s beer mug. Beside him, a folded newspaper had been left between a beer mat and the ash-tray. Casually he picked it up, felt for the envelope inside.… He was staring up at the twin flourescents in the white ceiling, wondering if his head should feel different after the operation, how long it would take to learn to use the implants. He tried to sit up, and the ceiling cracked and turned brown, the lights became dim unshaded incandescents, and he screamed with the return of pain and the stink of burned flesh.… He was up on the second floor, pushing discs through the eraser. Beside him was a box of documents for the incinerator and a ten-litre can of petrol. His hands were shaking and he worked so that he could watch the doorway and the stairs.… It was dark with just the embers from the fireplace, and his arms were full. They were standing, he and she, turning together, so that the snow on the cars outside passed across his gaze, then the bookshelves under the Escher print, the stereo that had turned itself off, the dark hallway, the window again, moonlight and shade, turning, until his eyes closed and there was just her weight in his arms, her hair against his cheek.
&nbs
p; * * *
Megan’s hands, the warm and the cold, shook him awake. It was late afternoon and his throat was stiff.
She took her hand from his shoulder. “You okay? I’ve got to be going soon.”
“I was remembering things, perhaps. Some of them hurt.” He swung his feet to the floor. “You’re right, you know—how can you trust memories like that? Still … before you go, could you tell me the hex reference for that secret project of yours?”
She told him, and he nodded. “I think I expected that. I’d like to look at some of that database you mentioned. Could we arrange something?”
“I’m not sure. I’d have to ask when I get back.”
“Yes of course.” He followed her to the door. “I’ll make the usual arrangements when I know what we’ve got to offer.”
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll see you then.”
“Travel safely.”
“Take care.”
They started to shake hands, then moved closer and held each other stiffly for a few moments. She put on her jacket and walked out to the motor cycle. Stearns listened to her ride away, then turned and made his way back to see the end of the cricket match on Stockhausen Square.
* * *
That evening in his office in the museum, he turned to the device that the salvage team had found: a grey metal box with interface sockets and a small keyboard and display. It looked military. That meant triply-redundant software storage; and when he removed the cover plate, the circuitry looked intact. So there was a chance it would still work. With his storage batteries connected to the oscilloscope and pulse-tester, he worked by the light of two oil lamps, using the mirror from the VW to illuminate the device. He noted the serial number, traced the circuitry, then closed his eyes. A frown of concentration appeared on his face, his jaw slack, his lips slightly parted. After a moment, he nodded and bent to pull a catalogue from a box under his bench. He opened it at the page he wanted and checked the diagram there against the device in front of him. He inhaled sharply and nodded. “An easy-out. That’s what we used to call them—”
He stopped breathing. Carefully he put the catalogue down. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, then slowly repeated, “That’s what we used to call them, when … That’s what we used to call them when, when—” He moistened his lips. There was sweat on his forehead. “That’s what we…” He shuddered and shook his head, and sat for a few moments, breathing heavily. Then he sighed and bent over the work again.
He replaced the cover, brought out a length of optical cable and coupled the easy-out to his implants. He adjusted the voltage regulator in series with his batteries and connected it to the device, and began entering commands through its keyboard. After a few minutes, he paused, frowning; then he nodded and continued.
A spasm went through him. He gasped, and his body twisted and arched in the chair. A scream started to force itself out through his teeth, and then his hand jerked the power cable free.
He slumped back in his seat and shivered. Outside the window, beyond his lamps, the last red was fading from the sky, and two stars were visible. He remembered grey eyes and data-song echoing through his mind. Two guards with shotguns walked across Stockhausen Square on their way to the bridge checkpoint. Their footsteps crunched across the gravel, slapped on concrete, and receded into their own echoes. Stearns reconnected the easy-out and began again.
* * *
In the library, Stearns examined the ampoules Cavendish had brought. As he checked the serial numbers, he remarked, “I may be able to get something for you on that Viking project. But I’d want something special for it.”
“That’s reasonable. It’s a valuable property.”
Stearns put the package down. “As we both know.” He looked at Cavendish for a moment. “I found someone who remembers something about it, but the memory is associated with trauma. It’s going to be difficult to recover. He was hurt while he was trying to destroy the research records, after the balloon started to go up. Someone was on his track and must have caught him at the last minute.”
“I’ve no doubt several parties were quite anxious to get hold of information about it.”
“And some of them are still in business?”
“No doubt,” Cavendish said impassively. “Now, what is it you—or your associate—wants in exchange?”
“A security file,” Stearns said, “with a list of personnel working on that project. I want to see the personal files. And”—he looked into Cavendish’s eyes—“there must have been a counterespionage file, with the identities of known agents, the ones likely to be looking for such information. I think it would be interesting for me to see that too. Don’t you?”
Cavendish linked his fingers together and looked down at the backs of his hands. “It might be interesting, if you are interested in the past for its own sake. It might also be more distressing than it’s worth. The situation has changed somewhat, after all. People’s motives change. Even though they may keep on performing the same little manipulations, what’s inside them changes, erodes, wears itself out. You might be disappointed in what you find.”
“Can you bring me the files next time, or not?”
“I won’t pretend I can’t get them.” Cavendish closed his eyes and sighed. “Yes, it might be interesting to let you see them. I think we can arrange something on that basis.”
* * *
Stearns was setting up a recorder in the lobby of the motel when Megan arrived. “We’re a bit short of time today,” he said. “I’ve arranged a meeting for both of us later this afternoon, and there’s something I want to discuss with you, so I’d rather use this for once.”
“Okay. I imagine you know what you’re doing.”
Stearns bent over the recorder, tuning it. “I looked in at the hospital last night,” he remarked. “Roger Finlay stepped on a mine two days ago, and we’ve got him on antiobiotics.… My first memories are there—the pain, and looking up at that ceiling. I was lying in that bed waiting for the universe to finish with me, and one day, Charlotte asked me to help with the evening meal.” He paused and abstractedly checked and rechecked a setting. “I hadn’t thought I could walk that far, but I did it. And then I was fetching water, washing dishes—until one day I stumbled over some technical manuals and found we had enough information to start repairing things. Then I started to realize what could be done with just a bit of organization. I had just discovered I could still use the implants and store what I’d read, when old Ernst turned up, offering to trade.… That’s all I know about myself for sure. That’s all I am now.”
He looked up from the recorder. “It’s good to see you again,” he said, and hesitated. “This man you were looking for—you know the project he was working on was military, it could still be used if the data became available?”
“I know people are still interested in finding it. How much do you know about it?”
“Not much more than that—at the moment.” He hesitated again, then asked abruptly, “If you found this man alive, and you were sure it was him—you’d still know all about him, where he was born, who his friends were, what books he read—everything?”
“I have to believe that. Yes.”
“What would you do if you found he’d been killed, or badly injured by someone?”
“I’d try to find out who did it.”
Stearns nodded. “As I said, we have an appointment later.” He moistened his lips. “And what if he’d lost his memory? If he was—disfigured.”
She looked at him, then swallowed and closed her eyes. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I’d have to be sure.”
Stearns nodded and started connecting his implants to the recorder. “Right. Let’s get this business out of the way then.”
They sat facing each other and made the data transfer. He disconnected from the recorder and waited for her to check her data and do the same. Then he reached down and put the easy-out on the table. “Will you help me with this? You’ve seen one of thes
e before? It carries enough lock-picks and brute-force probes to read practically anything you can store, if you know how to use it. I want you to use it on me. There’s something in me that won’t come out, something to do with that project, and I want you to keep this thing operating until we get it.”
“Why can’t you use it yourself?”
“I tried working it from the keyboard. The memories are buried under some trauma. It hurts when I go near them. I lose control of it then.”
“All right,” she said slowly. “You want me to hook into it directly?”
“Yes. I’ll probably show some signs of discomfort. You’ll have to ignore them.”
She used the optical cable to interface with the control port, and he linked himself to the probe terminal. They began.
The first time he screamed, Sammy burst in with his shotgun levelled, and they had to stop so that Stearns could explain. Then they continued.
* * *
Finally she whispered, “I think that’s the best I can do,” and slumped in her chair. “Has it worked?”
He was sprawled across the table, panting. He levered himself up and dragged the cable from his scalp. His artificial cheek was livid against the pallor of the rest of his face. He pushed himself to his feet. “Come on,” he muttered. “We’re going to be late.”
She followed as he picked up his coat and limped to the door. “Has it worked?”
“I don’t know.”
* * *
Sammy followed, and Stearns hurried them past the library to the building where the salvage crew had been working. The stairwell was almost clear of rubble, and Stearns scrambled up to the second floor. “It’s safe enough. Come on.” He turned through an empty door-frame and began heaving at smoke-blackened masonry. “Help me with this, will you.” Sammy joined him, and a slab of plasterboard cracked and slid out of the way.