Idolon

by Mark Budz

  There was no sign of Lisette. In the hour he'd been watching, no one had entered or exited the building.

  It didn't look as if the girl would be coming back anytime soon.

  Van Dijk logged into SFPD central data and queried a datician regarding the status of the simage array Apodaca's crime-scene unit had sprayed on the walls of Lisette's apartment, the dead woman's apartment, and the stairwell leading up to them.

  According to the datician, the array had identified and recorded several DiNA-authorized residents in the past twenty-four hours. But no one, identified or unidentified, had approached or tried to enter either of the apartments under surveillance.

  In addition to simages—the simulated image created by the nanotrodes woven into electronic skin to produce a virtual construct—the array recoded standard optical images. Visible spectrum resolution was limited—so unphilmed articles of clothing, hair, and nonelectronic skin tended to be sketchily translucent—but for anyone using the stairwell, van Dijk would see both a virtual image and a standard optical image.

  The same would be true of the apartments. He'd see whatever new philm, if any, had appeared on the programmable wallpaper when no one was around.

  Decorative philm told as much about a person as the philm they wore. A lot of people changed interior decor at regular preprogrammed intervals— nights and weekends were common—to create a certain ambiance. If the walls in the victim's apartment had rephilmed in the last twenty-four hours, it might tell him where she was from, where she spent her free time, or where she wanted to go.

  Van Dijk entered the building and made his way up the stairwell. On the second-floor landing he paused, turned to look back down the steps, and issued a mental command to the datician to flash him the recordings from the stairwell.

  Time-lapse, he instructed. Compression ratio: sixty to one. Split d-splay.

  The stairwell flickered under a faint light imbalance as the datician downloaded the simage clip to his eyefeed.

  The first recording had a time stamp of fifteen hours ago, at seven in the morning.

  An old woman appeared six steps below him. She had philmed her face and hands only. Katharine Hepburn. On the simage d-splay, her face and hands floated like bodiless apparitions. The rest of her was invisible, indicating she had no other 'skin on her body or philmed articles of clothing. On the optical d-splay, she bent under a spectral wool jacket and the weight of a grocery bag as she gripped the banged-up handrail and hauled herself toward him.

  Three steps from the landing, she passed out of range of the array and disappeared from both d-splays.

  Thirty seconds later, half an hour real time, a school-age kid materialized, bounded toward him, and blinked out of existence in less than a second.

  In five minutes, van Dijk had watched five hours real time pass before him. A quick cross-reference told him that the old woman and three other people were residents. The kid, on the other hand, was a visitor, and had left a few minutes after storming up the stairs.

  A friend of Lisette's?

  The kid had philmed herself as a cast member of the Ghost Dragons, waring one of the spirit masks that conveyed special powers, like iron fists or fire breath. He wasn't able to tell if the kid had actually been 'skinned, or if the mask was nanoFX paint or a graphene prosthetic that could be put on and taken off.

  Van Dijk ran the kid's DiNA, which yielded a home address in a coop a couple of blocks away, then made his way down the hall to the dead woman's apartment to see what the walls could tell him.

  _______

  He stood in the middle of the room and replayed the simage recording. Not much change in the last twenty-four hours. The decor remained resolutely fixed: pine veneer flooring, walls philmed in white brick, Art Nouveau stained-glass windows. Only the red-and-black-framed Japanese partitions arranged in front of the windows as privacy screens re-philmed at regular intervals, a built-in factory preset that mechanically cycled through a packaged series of Hokusai and Hiroshige woodcut prints like The Great Wave and Plum Estate. The sequence didn't appear to have been revised or edited in any way. It was off the shelf.

  Usually, test subjects were hardcore philmheads, "any ware, anywhere" types who datahoused vast collections of philm and even snipped their own images for private use or resale.

  Not this woman. Why? What was different about her?

  If she was new, maybe she hadn't had time to collect an image library. Or maybe she was just being cautious, afraid if she flaunted the betaware, she'd become a target for black-market rip artists and bootleggers.

  Possible. But he had the feeling there was something more.

  Van Dijk instructed the datician to continue the simage log for another twenty-four hours—it was a long shot, but something might show up—then left the apartment, no closer to figuring out who she was than before.

  The simage in Lisette's apartment was troubling in other ways. In addition to the "Ghost Dragon" Chinamation on the cheap Vurtronic d-splay, the walls were philmed with toons. Unicorns and faeries, mostly, with a few insects tossed in for good measure. The same half dozen images looped over and over again, the visual equivalent of comfort food kids snacked on continuously, even obsessively.

  The girl was alone, left to her own devices while mom outsourced herself in another city or country. Van Dijk pictured her sitting in the sofa, gnawing her nails bloody while the toons kept her company and she tried to cast herself as a Ghost Dragon.

  That explained the watercolors in the bathroom. She had no way to 'skin or philm herself. So she painted her face, applying the mask the way the performers had in the old Chinese operas.

  What about the dead woman? How did she fit into the picture? Had she taken the girl under her wing? Was she a surrogate mother, a friend, or possibly a big sister? Van Dijk could see it happening...

  _______

  The door stood open a crack. A sword-thin blade of light slashed across the floor of the hallway.

  Eight-year-old Kasuo crept up to the door on tiptoes, careful to avoid being cut by the light. Inside, Mr. Natal knelt on a yoga mat on the floor. His back was to the door. He wasn't wearing a shirt, but his skin wasn't naked. It was covered with so many tattoos it looked as if he was wearing a black Hawaiian shirt decorated with green leaves and red flowers. The tattoos wrapped over his shoulders and continued down his arms in colorful sleeves.

  "It's not polite to stare," Mr. Natal said. Kasuo started. "I'm... I'm..." Mr. Natal grunted. "There's nothing to be sorry about. It's I who should apologize for not inviting you in."

  Kasuo hesitated, uncertain if he should run to the safety of his mother's apartment. His gaze snagged on the man's feet, tucked under his buttocks. The soles had been inked to look like bamboo sandals.

  "Well?" Mr. Natal didn't turn his head to look at him. Probably he was watching the door through an eyefeed. "What are you waiting for?"

  The question felt more like a command. There was no turning back. Kasuo eased open the door and crossed the room.

  "I was just..." The explanation was swept away by the roar of his pulse in his ears.

  "Come here. Let me see you."

  Kasuo edged around the yoga mat. The man's face reminded him of smooth, rain-wet stone.

  "You are Kasuo," Mr. Natal said.

  Kasuo nodded, surprised the man knew his name. Kasuo and his mother had only been in the apartment down the hall one week. As far as Kasuo knew, his mother and Mr. Natal had never spoken. Mr. Natal was a hermit who kept to himself.

  "You're curious," Mr. Natal said.

  Kasuo nodded, unable to speak. He'd just noticed the long knife arranged on the yoga mat in front of Mr. Natal's knees.

  "Good. But you're afraid."

  Another nod. The blade of the knife seemed to shimmer with silvery heat waves.

  "That is also good. Still, you want to know what I'm doing. That is why you are here."

  Kasuo swallowed to make room for a response. His silence swelled like a blister. The more
it grew, the more uncomfortable it became.

  "Well?"

  Kasuo flinched under the sudden sharpness in Mr. Natal's voice. "I wanted to..."

  "Speak up! I can't hear you."

  "I wanted to know what you were doing," he blurted.

  "Since you asked, I'll tell you," Mr. Natal said. He became suddenly calm, there was no trace of the outburst. "I was thinking."

  "About what?"

  "Nothing."

  "How can you think about nothing?" He already knew how someone could think about everything. His mother did it all the time. She was always worrying. At night he heard her in the kitchen, drinking tea to help her sleep.

  "A good question," Mr. Natal said. "It is not as easy as it looks. But I can see you already know that."

  Like a compass needle, Kasuo's attention returned to the blade. "How come you have a knife?"

  "It helps me think."

  Did his mother have a knife when she stayed up? "How?"

  "It sharpens my mind."

  Kasuo watched light from the door glimmer on the edge of the blade. Maybe Mr. Natal could tell him how to help his mother think about nothing.

  Mr. Natal tilted his head, as if listening. "Your mother needs you," he said.

  "She does?" Kasuo didn't hear her calling.

  "Thank you for visiting. Please shut the door on your way out."

  Kasuo ran back to his apartment. In the morning, there was a commotion from the hallway. Shouts, followed by sudden silence. Kasuo peeked. A crowd of floor-mates had gathered around Mr. Natal's door at the far end of the hall. The door was open, but none of the people went in. They huddled outside, whispering among themselves.

  When Kasuo started down the hallway, his mother caught him by the arm, holding him back. "But I want to see," he said.

  "It's better if you don't," his mother said. A moment later the wail of sirens came to them from the street below.

  The sound haunted Kasuo for years. Why had Mr. Natal killed himself? It didn't make any sense. Mr. Natal hadn't seemed depressed or upset. He had been calm.

  And yet something, or someone, had made him plunge the knife into his stomach.

  Who—or what—was Mr. Natal protecting or running from? Had he been thinking about someone else when the blade entered him, or himself? Had he been thinking about everything, or nothing?

  _______

  The simage had ended. Van Dijk, standing in the middle of the room, grew aware of a soft whir. Annoyed, he craned his head, searching for the source of the sound.

  A blue damselfly clung to the wall. It appeared to be injured—only two of its four wings were moving. The opposite set of wings and the tail end of its long abdomen were pressed flat to the wall.

  Van Dijk was about to turn away when he noted that the size, shape, and iridescent blue of the damselfly matched the toon dragonflies he'd seen zipping about in the simage, harassing faeries and perching on unicorn horns.

  Van Dijk moved closer. The damselfly wasn't real.

  It was a toon in the process of emerging from the wall, like a cicada from the ground. As he watched, a third wing came free, leaving only the fourth wing and the last couple of abdominal segments embedded in the graphene.

  The dameselfly had the head of fish. What the hell?

  Van Dijk reached for the toon. Before he could cage it in his fingers, the last wing and abdominal segment peeled free from the graphene and the damselfly, fully formed and functional, flashed under the ceiling LEDs. It circled for a moment, darting here and there, hovering over him for an instant before zigzagging off.

  Van Dijk turned to see the damselfly zip through the open doorway. Hurrying into the hallway he forced his thoughts to slow as he queried the SFPD datician, speaking out loud so the datacian could learn his synapse firing pattern for damselfly, a word he hadn't used before. "Image type. Blue damselfly. Identify."

  "Enallagma cyathigerum," the datician replied. "Considered the bluest of the blue damsels. Widespread and common." A snapshot flashed over his eyefeed. "The males have a club-shaped black mark on the second abdominal segment and broad antehumeral stripes along the dorsal surface of the thorax..."

  Van Dijk stopped listening. The damsel was gone. He returned to the apartment. "Play simage," he said. "Last five minutes. Realspeed."

  He watched the initial stages of the damsel's emergence. First, the head and legs. Then the thorax and the first filament-veined wing.

  "Image source?" he said when the sequence completed.

  "Unknown," the datacian said.

  "Current location?"

  "Unknown."

  Van Dijk started to pace. "Log image. Cross-reference. Then compare for like images."

  The nanoware had been looking for something. Not him—he had been summarily examined and dismissed.

  Lisette. If the toon was keyed to her, there was a possibility it could lead him to her. Find the damsel, and he might find the girl.

  20

  Marta nursed a tamarind-flavored agua fresca from Tacopulco, one of the all-night taco bars. A grizzled philmhead crouched in the breezeway with her. The guy rocked back and forth, knees pulled to his chest while he spat out a profanity-laced diatribe. "Can't starve a fucking hunger artist. Nipple to the bottle. That's what I'm talking about. Bite me, cock-sucker ..."

  Hard to tell if the monologue belonged to him or one of the music channels he had loaded into his earbud. An hour earlier, she'd run into him as she was walking downtown from Sister Giselle's homeless shelter on Branciforte. She hadn't had a chance to talk to the nun. So she had ended up in the covered alley behind the Get Reel, the only place she could think to go for the night. In the morning, after she quit her job and things settled down, she would get in touch with the Sister.

  What about the person she was supposed to contact? Would they know how to get in touch with her? Where to get in touch with her?

  Her chest tightened. Sweat stung her armpits. She pulled her leather jacket tight and hugged herself, taking comfort in the added warmth of the heavy Guatemalan cotton lining.

  Have faith...

  She repeated the thought like a mantra, filling her head with it in an effort to force aside her doubt and fear.

  The philmhead turned out to be a blessing in disguise, annoying enough to distract her from her thoughts. When he'd first showed up, she thought he might hit on her or rob her. He stared at her and the leather jacket, and licked his lips. But it turned out he was as old and tired as the music trickling over his earfeed, Christian white rap, totally out-of-date.

  As if that wasn't bad enough, his pseudoself was one hackneyed edit job after another. So many faces had been spliced together, one on top of the other, that his appearance was an unrecognizable blur. Washed-out eyes, shapeless nose and lips, muddy complexion. It was obsessive-compulsive with some people. They couldn't decide who they wanted to be—or they wanted to be everybody—and ended up being no one. That was where Pelayo was headed. She could see it, even if he couldn't. That was why he was a test subject.

  Of course, Pelayo would never admit it. He was in denial, and the problem would get worse until he bottomed out.

  At 6:40, when the philmhead lapsed into fitful paresis, Marta made her way to the Pacific Avenue mall for a bite to eat.

  Serf's Up opened at seven and served a decent tofu scramble that had a half-life of only a couple hours and wouldn't corrode the lining of her stomach— unlike the java juice the place served.

  Thick fog had rolled in overnight, watering down the Marie Gabriel foliage philmed on the trees. Waiting in line at the kiosk, breathing in the sharp tang of brine, processed kelp, and deep-frying peanut oil, a wave of nausea engulfed her. She hurriedly stepped out of line and cupped both hands over her mouth, pressing her fingers against her lips to stifle an onrush of bile.

  When the bout passed, she stumbled to a nearby bench, sat down, and held her head between her knees. She dry-heaved once, felt sweat break out on her scalp.

  What was the matt
er with her? Was she really that uptight? Her stomach had been upset for days and she'd been feeling more and more bloated.

  Marta forced slow, deep breaths. By the time she felt better, an hour had passed. It was almost eight. Time to head back to the Get Reel.

  _______

  "What's this?" Jhon said. He narrowed sleep-addled eyes at her. "You saying you want to quit?"

  "Yes. Effective immediately."

  He massaged the back of his hairy neck. His morning espresso hadn't yet kicked in. "Why?"

  "Family emergency."

  "Christ." He let out a sour breath that sent her stomach cartwheeling. "Okay, then. Watch the counter for a few minutes. I'll be right back."

  Before she could protest, he lumbered back to his office. There was no reason to watch the counter. The store didn't open for business until ten. But he didn't appear to be thinking too clearly. She usually came in at nine, to get things set up. By then he was his normal pain-in-the-ass self.

  Jhon poked his head around the dividing screen. "I need your help. Can you come back here for a second?"

  "Help with what?"

  But he'd already disappeared. Typical. It was just like him. She wouldn't get paid until he got as much out of her as he could. If he had his way, she would be lucky to leave before the doors were unlocked.

  As she rounded the partition, and made her way through the splice room to Jhon's office, she heard music... and caught a whiff of something rancid.

  The philmhead from the breezeway. He sat in a chair at Jhon's desk and smiled at her as she entered. Not in the stoned way he had earlier. His eyes were clear and sharp.

  Marta stopped, pulled up short by the expression. "What the hell's going on?" she asked. Something wasn't right.

  "I know what you've been doing," Jhon said.

  She kept her face carefully blank. No reaction at all.

  "Helping illegal immigrants," he said. "Giving them black-market ware so they can avoid domestic security."

  She forced her voice to remain low, tightly controlled. If she got all ballistic, it was all over. "That's crazy."