Idolon

by Mark Budz

  Pelayo skirted the crowd, searching for other vehicles. Past the first responders, the headlights on an old Mercedes parked next to the curb snapped on. He couldn't make out the color of the car behind the glare, but when the Benz eased away from the curb the eyefeed from the mask jostled just before the image sparked and dissolved.

  "That her?" Lagrante said. He shrugged off his suit coat and bent over, arms on his knees, to catch his breath.

  "I'm pretty sure." Pelayo's throat burned, scraped raw by smoke and frustration.

  "I'm not getting anything," Atossa said. "I can't get it back."

  "Keep trying." Pelayo followed the path of the Mercedes down the hill, toward the pier and downtown.

  "They're probably taking her to a hospital," Lagrante said. "Dominican. That'd be my guess. In which case she's in good hands."

  Pelayo grunted, noncommittal. Something about the man who'd been carrying her was familiar.

  49

  Uri finished filling the bathtub with surgical gel. Using a dolly, he wheeled the empty storage tank into the front room and set it behind the bed next to the other two tanks he had taken from his lab. The modular tanks were translucent white, designed to fit together for easy storage and transport. To hide the containers from security cameras, Uri covered them with a bedspread. He'd taken precautions, sanitized the room with both electronic and biochemical counter-surveillance, but you couldn't be too careful. The last thing he wanted was unexpected visitors.

  Mateus would be here soon with Nadice. When they showed up, Uri wanted to get her scanned and 'skinned as quick as possible. As soon as the updated 'skin was installed and stable, it wouldn't take long for the quantum components in the wetronics to entangle.

  In theory, the resonance state would collapse into a stable structure on its own. Once that happened, nonlocal EPR effects in Nadice's copy of the 'skin would entangle with 'skin that had already been doped with the quantum components he had taken from her in Dockton. Soon, Nadice, himself, and Mateus's boyz would all be entangled, waring the same 'skin.

  Pelayo, too. That asshole had dropped off-line, hadn't bothered to get back to him. It pissed him off, but he didn't have time to deal with Pelayo now. That would have to wait till later.

  Uri checked the time, then the med equip he'd set up on a coffee table next to the double bed.

  Everything was in order. Where the hell were they? They should have been here by now. Uri simaged Mateus's boyz on his eyefeed d-splay. "You heard anything from your man?"

  "Not since he left," the one named Rafa said. "Why?"

  Uri got up and paced. "He's late."

  "Probably stopped to take care of some unfinished bidness," the other one, Tiago, said with a wink.

  "What do you want us to do now?" Rafa said. "Keep watching this place? There ain't shit we can do with all the activity. Place is crawling with po pos."

  Uri thought for a moment. "Split up," he said. "I want you here," he told Tiago. "In case there's trouble."

  "What about me?" Rafa said.

  Uri forwarded him an address.

  Rafa frowned as he pulled up the location. "Talk about a shit hole. What do I do when I get there?"

  "Nothing," Uri said. "Stay out of sight. Watch the place. Let me know if anyone goes in or out."

  Rafa nodded. "I gotcha."

  A message light flashed at the bottom of Uri's eye-feed. It was Mateus. "Where the hell are you?" Uri demanded.

  "Loading dock in back. There a way I can get her up to the room without being seen?"

  "Service elevator." Uri copied him a floor plan of the hotel.

  "Gotcha," Mateus said. "Be there in five."

  Uri stared out the window across the room, at the sprawl of city lights that scoured the stars from the night sky. He couldn't ever remember looking up and seeing stars. Growing up, the only stars he knew, the only constellations he had to guide him, were the streetlights that illuminated back alleys and dead-end streets.

  He d-splayed the decor menu for the room. The menu offered several options for wallpaper and pattern, floor-tile design, carpet texture and color, pressed-metal ceiling panels, and window embossing and etching. He selected the option for black silk drapes. In a few seconds, the programmable nano-fibers on the surface of the window assembled into curtains and drew together, shutting out the light.

  He was tired of being taken for granted. Tired of being taken advantage of by IBT and Atherton.

  50

  "I don't understand." The building manager swiped her hand in front of a DiNA scanner next to the door. "He's always been such a good tenant. Quiet, respectful. Not like so many of the young people I rent to these days. I can't believe he's involved with anything illegal, especially warewolves."

  The woman had philmed herself from the neck up as a Betty Paige pinup, complete with cheap hair and lash grafts. Collagen, doped with bioluminescent bacteria that emitted candy-apple red, inflated her lips under the waxy, low-budget 'skin. She couldn't afford REbot cosmetics for the rest of her. Her loose-fitting, hand-knitted clothing clung to slack breasts, sagging arms, and a drooping waistline.

  Van Dijk watched the cinFX on her nails, an old black-and-white film he didn't recognize involving a buxom blonde in a clingy evening gown and clumsy pumps. "You haven't noticed anything unusual?"

  "If he had a 'skin tank in there, I'd know," she said.

  Van Dijk thought she'd also probably be first in line. "What about people coming and going?"

  Her lips pinched. "At odd hours, you mean?"

  "Possibly... but not necessarily. Mostly different people. Strangers who come by briefly, for a few minutes, then leave."

  She led him down a steep, narrow stairwell. The door to the basement apartment was at the bottom, barely lit by the streetlight on the corner. In the cramped quarters the woman's violet perfume made his eyes water.

  "No. Nothing like that," she said. "Just the opposite."

  "What do you mean?"

  "He never gets any visitors." The woman rested artificially young fingers on the steel knob. "He's always by himself, closeted away in his apartment. He never goes out, except to work or eat."

  "He doesn't have any friends? He's not seeing anyone?"

  "Not that I've ever noticed. He's quiet, keeps to himself." The woman sighed. "It's a pity. He doesn't know what he's missing."

  "What's that?"

  The manager turned the knob and pushed open the door. "Life."

  _______

  The apartment smelled. Van Dijk couldn't place the smell. It was organic—not exactly rotten, but fecund, as if there should be lots of houseplants, growing in pots and hanging from the ceiling. There were no plants. Instead, there were terrariums..'. a whole wall of them on metal shelving units.

  Van Dijk opted not to turn on the lights. If al-Fayoumi returned, the last thing he wanted to do was scare him off. Besides, he could see more in the dark.

  The flies glowed. There were thousands of them, crawling, buzzing around in their sealed cages. He had to press his face close to the plastine to make out the Fokker wings on them, the tiny faces rendered in microminiature detail, like the crests and coat of arms on hand-painted military figurines.

  He mentally activated the record mode on his eyefeed and uploaded the image stream to the datician and case database.

  He stared for several minutes, mesmerized, before he realized that there was a pattern to the terrariums. Each terrarium contained a different cast, separated by image, almost as if each cast represented a different species. Snow White here and Mona Lisa there. Spitfires in this one, Japanese Zeros in that one.

  But no damselflies.

  Van Dijk turned his attention from the terrariums to the rest of the apartment. It looked more like a research lab than a living area. Gradually, details emerged from the gloom. A portable STM microscope. CNT probe array. Philm imager and sequencer. Small 'skin chamber, designed for aerosol application of liquid graphene and wetronics. Large Vurtronic wall d-splay.

>   Down a narrow, windowless hallway, past a tidily kept kitchenette, he found the bedroom and bathroom. Both were clean, spartan in their furnishing and decor. The bathroom was too cramped for a tub, and he could find no external tank or cutoff valve spliced into the water tubes feeding the shower. The bedroom had a neatly made futon on a wood-slat frame, a set of drawers, a folding partition that seemed to be more decorative than functional.

  Pleated curtains concealed a window well that w home to discarded takeout trays, a paper cup, and a least one spent condom.

  Returning to the terrariums in the front room, van Dijk heard the lock in the door snick open.

  He stepped back, thumbing the safety off on the HK minifuge as the door swung inward. A shadow stepped into the rectangle of light cast by the streetlight and seeped across the floor toward him.

  51

  Marta woke in an elevator alcove, roused by pincushion stinging in her feet, arms, and hands. She sat propped against a wall, her legs stretched out in front of her on plain white tile. The elevator next to her stood open, a birdcage of floral-etched diamond and wrought iron that had come to a stop fifteen or twenty centimeters be- low the level of the floor. Past the elevator she could see the dull gray of dead philm on the opposite wall of the corridor. The blizzard of white static was gone. So was much of the smoke, but the reek of scorched polymer and metal hung in the air.

  Jeremy was gone. She recalled his dragging her here from the hallway—away from the MEMS—and saying he'd be right back. He needed to check on—

  Nadice!

  A muscle in her left thigh jerked, then stilled.

  How long had she lain unconscious? Minutes, hours? No, not hours. Otherwise, she wouldn't still be here. Someone would have found her. She would be in a hospital or an ambulance.

  Her pulse throbbed in her abdomen. It felt sluggish, anesthetized. But it was still there.

  Alive. If the baby still lived, so did Nadice. The baby connected them. It needed them, both of them. Without them it would die.

  She fought against the lethargy holding her in place. Bent her legs. Folded her knees under her. Grabbed the chrome handrail just above her head and hauled herself to her feet.

  "Nadice?" she called.

  A soft, half-choked response answered her. Marta's legs shook as she worked her way to the front of the alcove and hobbled into the hallway. "Nadice?"

  Jeremy lay on his side, curled up in a fetal position a few meters down the corridor. The shallow rise and fall of his ribs was barely visible. Fresh blood smeared the necrotic philm on the wall beside him as if he'd slid sideways to the place where he now huddled.

  There was no one else in the corridor. A SARbot appeared in the murk, probing the hall. Marta fel her way along the wall. When she reached Jeremy she sank to the carpet next to him, too unsteady to stand. "What happened? Where's Nadice?"

  Jeremy blinked, coughed. Blood-speckled saliva frothed between the static limning his lips. He licked at the blood, but a crimson bubble burst and trickled down his chin.

  "Shit," she said.

  The front of his shirt was wet and dark where he'd been hit. She could see the tiny constellation of holes left by the flechette needles.

  "Her boss," he groaned. The words gurgled up, moist and soft from deep inside his chest. "Mateus."

  Marta leaned closer, trying to make it easier on him. She choked on the fetid odor from his mouth. "What about him?"

  "Took her." His eyes fell shut.

  "When?" She gripped his shoulder, squeezed it hard to keep him with her. "How long ago?"

  "She had to go," he said. A cough wracked him and more blood gushed out, from his nose this time. "Couldn't stop him."

  "Why did she have to go?"

  "Sorry," Jeremy whispered. "Necessary."

  "You let her go?"

  "Had to."

  "You bastard." She bit her lip. "You promised you'd look after her."

  "Necessary. Pluglet—" A sucking wheeze rasped out of him. At the very least, one of his lungs was pierced. Maybe an artery, judging by the amount of blood he was losing.

  "Where'd he take her?" she said.

  He shook his head.

  "Goddamn it! How could you?"

  Jeremy's shoulders convulsed under her hand and a shudder coursed through her fingers. "Told him not to hurt her."

  A lot of good that would do. Marta waved a hand to attract the attention of the SARbot's motion detectors and started to stand.

  Jeremy clutched her wrist. "In my pocket. Shirt."

  "What?" She sank back down.

  "Take it."

  The shirt pocket was damp. She slipped her fingers into the blood-slicked linen, groping through the sticky wet wrinkles and her mounting nausea. She could feel his 'skin through the sodden linen. It was soft and smooth, the texture of cold wax.

  Her fingers encountered the databead, wedged into one corner of the pocket. The bead was the size of a pomegranate seed. She pinched it lightly, afraid it would squirt away.

  "What is it?"

  "Contact..."

  His voice was fading, barely audible. Marta ben her ear to his mouth, straining to hear. "Who?"

  He opened to his mouth to speak. But his voice guttered, then flickered out before Marta could make out the words. The static veiling his face and hands ebbed until all that remained of the philm was a flat, lifeless gray.

  Marta jerked to her feet. The blood on her fingertips grew sticky. A ladies' room. That was her first impulse, to wash her hands.

  No. She shook her head. There wasn't time. She wasn't fitted with a nanosocket I/O port for the bead and needed to find a pair of spex to access it.

  She yanked open the door to the stairwell and the lingering stench of burned cloth and fear. A SARbot drifted toward, nav fans whirring. It doused her with UV light, and the blood on her hands fluoresced.

  Marta pushed past the drone and quickly descended the stairwell.

  Dust, smoke, and fog lingered in the lobby. Two more SARbots appeared as she worked her way through a bramble heap of twisted joists and crushed graphene wall panels. Emergency vehicles clogged the parking lot and street. Several rescue workers near the elevator were picking their way through the rubble, fanning out.

  Her toe caught something soft. She looked down; a hand protruded from under a yellow plastic tarp.

  She yanked her foot back. The tarp was unblemished, new. It had been put there after the explosion.

  She started to step over the hand, then stopped. The corpse still wore a wristwatch. It was military grade. The Kevlex band was in good shape. So was the face. Marta could read the time: 9:12 p.m.

  She dropped to her haunches. The body lay on its back. She pulled the tarp aside, exposing a man's face. A bent section of sheet metal protruded from his neck. It had cut deep, exposing bone and gristle and severing the artery.

  The man still wore spex. They had sustained more damage than the watch. Heat had blackened the frames and the scratched lenses. But with any luck they might still be functional.

  Don't look at the gash, she told herself. Just get it over with.

  For a moment, the lenses seemed to be cauterized to his face. The heat-cracked graphene around his brow and cheeks resisted her, clinging to the frames.

  Come on, she thought, gritting her teeth.

  The frames tore loose and Marta discovered the reason for the resistance. One of the stems was bent where it had cooked to the 'skin behind one ear.

  She checked the foam padding along the inside curve of the frame. It was a little discolored and misshapen from wear, but otherwise serviceable. She slipped on the spex, toggled them to IR mode, and made her way out of the lobby.

  A smob had gathered on the opposite side of the street. In the parking lot, an inflatable trauma tent was ballooning to life. Several SCPD officers patrolled the perimeter of the smob, working crowd control.

  Marta slipped into the roiling confusion, then ducked out the other side. As she hurried down the hill to the Boa
rdwalk, a figure detached from the crowd, trailing after her.

  Walking quickly, she clicked the databead into one of the I/O ports on the inside of the thin stem.

  Nothing. The bead was shot. She would have to go to a minimart, pick up a pair of cheap disposables, and hope they had enough bandwidth.

  Marta glanced back. A second figure had joined the first, which had broken into a trot. Headlights from an approaching car splashed the lenses, solar-flare-bright, blinding her.

  She yanked off the spex, pressing the bead to eject it. Instead the lenses flickered, sputtering to life.

  Marta refitted the screens over her eyes, holding the lopsided frames in place with one hand.

  The narrow bandwidth image of a line-of-sight flashcast appeared on the warped lenses.

  "... Marta?" a voice said over the stem speakers. "Is that you?"

  52

  "Pelayo?" Marta said.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked. Her outline emerged from the fog, familiar details slowly taking shape. "What did you do with the mask?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I thought you were unconscious. Being rushed to the hospital by somebody in a car."

  "Why?"

  "Never mind." Less than ten meters separated them. Under the streetlight where she had slowed to a stop, her face looked uneven and pale. When she removed the spex, her eyes formed dark craters.

  "Jesus," he said. "You look like hell. Are you okay?"

  Marta leaned unsteadily against the wall behind her, an arched alcove to a game arcade. The place was lit up but empty, pinball machines and Vurtronic screens blinking. "Hurt. Bleeding, I think."

  Pelayo reached her, followed by Lagrante. "Where?"

  "Nadice."

  Pelayo glanced at Lagrante, who shook his head.

  "Do something," Marta pleaded.

  "Who's Nadice?" Pelayo asked.

  "Someone I met. Was trying to help." Marta's legs

  trembled and Lagrante helped her sit. The spex clattered to the fog-damp concrete amid puddles of soft neon and flashing LEDs.

  Lagrante squatted next to her. "How do you know she's bleeding?"