Reality 36: A Richards & Klein Novel

by Guy Haley

  "Yes, Richards. I do know that, I am a Five like you. I know lots and lots, not just how to sing. Like I know you knew he was here, that you did not come to listen to me, I just wanted to hear you try to please me. Have you tagged him?"

  "His champagne should have had a little surprise in it," Richards admitted smugly.

  "Oh, Richards, you didn't dose my entire audience, did you?"

  Richards smiled sheepishly.

  "Richards!"

  "Come on, it'll do them no harm. I'll turn his on and turn theirs off. Dead easy, they'll never know. And providing he's not feeling ill and throws it up, I should be able to track him for ten hours or so…"

  "Stop showing off," she said with a scowl.

  "OK, OK." He held up his hands. "Guilty as charged. I can't help it. But if it makes you feel any better, I know piss-all about music, so there you go. I still like yours though," he added hurriedly. "I've got to go."

  "Richards… Please come back," said Promethea, her frown melting into something else entirely. "No one visits me."

  "So you do get lonely."

  She looked away, her arms tightening under her breasts. "I admit, company is nice. This is something else, they're… I don't know."

  "Eh?" said Richards. Seventy-six was seventy-six was seventy-six, there were no fewer and no more Fives than there ever had been, as many as there had been since the general recall. "Fives don't disappear."

  "Even Pl'anna hasn't been to see me."

  "And? That's Pl'anna for you, inconstant."

  "It's not just her. I hear that Rolston and k52 haven't been seen for a while, either…"

  "Don't be silly."

  "I'm not being silly. I know it seems that way." Promethea shook her head. "No one has seen them. I've looked and looked. I think they may have gone somewhere… else."

  "Where else would they go? Their Gridsigs are out there," said Richards, puzzled. He isolated three disparate notes from the bloodrush roar of the five billion sentients registered on the Grid and flashed them up in the virtuality. "See? Sometimes they like to keep themselves to themselves, to sit on mountain peaks, contemplate the meaning of life, or the fractal design of flower petals, or some other pretentious toss like that; especially Rolston." He held up his fingers of his right hand and counted them off with his left. "Pl'anna would blow off a friendship for shopping. k52 is barely comprehensible. Last I heard he was out in Nevada with the VIA, something esoteric in the Reality Realms, see?" He nodded encouragingly, Pro glared back. It was hard work being her friend, but worth it. Most of the time.

  "Yes, Richards, I know their sigs are there! You make me so mad! But they have gone."

  "There is nowhere else to go! Just the Grid, and the Real. Two realities, one digital, one material, one on top of the other," he said, laying his hands one on the other. "As dense as the information that comprises our personalities and memory is, an AI really is not that big. Trust me, Pro, I do this for a living."

  "Don't talk down to me," she said sharply. "And if the three missing Fives are in either reality at all, they'd have left more traces than their sigs! There is no other trace, do you understand? No sign of activity beyond their Gridsigs ambling back and forth, back and forth like zombies. Go to them, they wander off, they are never quite where you are."

  "Oh," he said. "I see." So he found he was intrigued. Typical Promethea. "Look." He peered through the wipe. His quarry was slo-moing out of the door. "I'll look into it. They probably decided to try life as goats for a year or something."

  "Richards! Can you imagine k52 and Pl'anna as goats?"

  Richards shrugged. "OK, well, maybe not. No, definitely not. But Rolston, that's really not beyond the bounds of possibility. I'd say it was a likelihood. He spent four years trying to learn cow, remember…"

  "Stop it, this is important! If they've gone, what about the rest of us? What if someone is trying to kill us? What if someone is succeeding? We're not exactly loved."

  She was right about that. Feared, yes; hated, often; loved, rarely. Promethea was an exception. She was revered by her audiences, her music was a connection with people the other Fives did not have. Her complaints were therefore ridiculous.

  "I've no idea."

  Pro huffed and took a breath. "Richards, please do stop being so obstructive. This isn't my speciality, I am a composer, you're the detective…"

  "Security consultant," he corrected.

  "…you work it out. It's your job!"

  "OK! Calm down. It really is true about Rolston and the cows though." She rolled her eyes. "Fine! I'll look into it. I'm a very busy man, you know, you should be grateful." He winked at her.

  "You are neither a man nor more busy than you wish to be, but thank you, although I don't think you will find them. They have gone. Pouff!" She opened her fingers swiftly. "Dandelion clocks in the wind." The breeze brought in a sudden cloud of downy seeds. "Promise you'll come and see me before I am gone, too," she pleaded.

  "We'll see about that," said Richards, spitting fluff. "There's nothing to worry about."

  "See you around, Richards." Her expression cleared, clouds uncovering the sun.

  "See you around, Pro." He planted a kiss on her burning cheek. "I'll come back and see the second half, I promise."

  "You know you won't and I know you won't. Stop pretending, Richards, I don't like disappointment."

  "You told me that I should try lying! What's a man to do?" He grinned apologetically.

  He was back in the bar. The whole exchange had taken less than ten seconds. Promethea's sheath had carried on chatting to her public, Richards' mechanically fidgeting.

  Where have you been? said Genie. He's getting away!

  I've been talking to an old friend. It's all under control. Get back to the office, keep tabs on his dealings while I chase him down.

  OK. Be careful. Genie's mind withdrew from his.

  Richards drained his glass again. He pushed through the crowd to the door.

  On his way out, he snagged an uncorked bottle of champagne. The hunt was on.

  Chapter 5

  Launcey

  The weather outside the Wellington Arcology, centre of operations for Richards & Klein, Inc, Security Consultants, was as muggy and grey as befitted the season. The days would continue to get hotter and stickier for some weeks, drizzling blood-warm water, until the sky broke and sheeting rain announced the start of the rainy season. Why they called it that, Otto often wondered, because rain fell all year round in England. Optimism, he supposed. If one season is called rainy, then another, by implication, is not. The only real difference was in the ferocity of the deluge.

  The opening salvoes of the heavier rain would be welcomed by both sets of Londoners as a relief from the morbid days of summer, only to be cursed as the days turned into weeks and the weeks turned into months of unrelenting autumn downpours. Mosquitoes, flooding of the old city and disease would accompany it. As far as Otto was concerned, none of the seasons in the British Isles had much to recommend them; only for a brief while did their turning offer novelty, and something for the natives to talk about.

  Although Otto loved the Londons, he missed the baking heat of an honest German summer, and the fact that it went mostly unremarked upon by those enjoying it.

  Since he was neither British nor outside, the day's weather was irrelevant to Otto. He made his way through the carefully controlled climate of the Wellington Arcology to the 372ndfloor garage where their office had its parking bays. He followed the gentle curve of the internal street from their offices, one side of it open to the deep atrium at the heart of the arco, where, far below, were situated the largest of the building's multi-level parks. After half a kilometre he reached one of the express lifts, for the use of which Richards and Klein paid a substantial monthly fee. Otto's thumbprint opened the door. The lift's near-I tasted the air as he entered, verifying his identity.

  "Good morning, Herr Klein," said the lift in German. "To where may I bear you today?"

&
nbsp; "Car park," said Otto tersely. He disliked these demi-conversations he was obliged to hold with the lift, the vending machines, luggage trolleys… Pleasantries with things too hollow to understand what they said. There was too much near-I in the environment, and they barely had enough processing power to pass the Turing test between them. "Now."

  "As you wish," said the lift, setting off at speed, first horizontally, then vertically, up to the parking garage one hundred floors above the office.

  Otto stepped out on to shelf three of the garage. He walked along the glass-walled gallery, past docking ports until he reached one of the two parking bays reserved for Richards & Klein, Inc. He thumbprinted the lock, had his iris, Gridsig and DNA checked again. Granted access, he walked out on to the pierced foamcrete catwalk running alongside the car. The walk pulsed the time-hallowed black and yellow chevrons of hazardous places, describing a slow wave away from the drop at the edge of the platform. Through the holes in the floor Otto saw past the car shelves to the distant forest round the base of the arcology, twelve hundred metres of muggy air blurring it into an undifferentiated green carpet. He opened the car, underwent stronger security protocols and got in.

  The car was an unfancy four-seater model, but it was much more than appearance suggested. It was fast for a start, very fast, and the near-I pilot had been personally programmed by Richards, its capabilities run right up to the very edge of the near-I definition. It wasn't going to solve the unified field theory any time soon, but it was a hell of a lot smarter than the lift, and seemed to be genuinely content to be a car. That was important to Richards: he refused to work with machines that had been given no choice.

  "Hiya, Otto, where ya going?" The car spoke with a thick 1950's New York accent, Richards' idea of a joke. From the rear came the humming whicker of ducted turbofans powering up.

  "I'll fly," said Otto. "I am to meet Richards."

  "Huh, feeling chatty again. I won't take it badly. Ya know what? I like that about ya. Strong silent type. Macho. I should introduce you to my sister, she's in catering. You'd get on."

  "Give me the controls, and be quiet."

  "Sure," said the car. "Whatever ya say, big guy. I'll keep it down."

  There were some days when Otto hated machines, and that occasionally included his partner.

  As he flicked on the navigation instruments he caught sight of the corded polymer muscles underneath the skin on his hands. The irony was not lost on him.

  Instruments hit green bars as the fans came up to speed for flight. "Bay, release," Otto said, and pulled the wheel back. Clamps disengaged from the side of the car and pulled back into the parking shelf. The car rose a little. Otto eased his foot down on the accelerator and pulled out into the air. In the aft view on the car's windscreen the parking garage dwindled; fourteen storeys tall, eighty shelves to a storey, cars nestled into them like nuts in a pinecone.

  Otto guided the car over the parkland that divided the Wellington from the Hengist and Bacon arcos, pulled into the flight lanes that ran between them, and set off south towards Old London.

  New London was home to twenty million people, but occupied less space than the city that had come before it. There were one hundred and seven arcos in New London in all, black termite mounds towering a mile or more over the woodlands at their feet, each a city in its own right. At the edge of New London the flight lanes passed over the highfarms where the city grew its food, and then he was out over the crumbling suburbs of Old London.

  The northwest was empty and choked with vegetation, cleared by government order after the bungled A-bomb plot of 2033. Neither radiation nor official edict had prevented people living out near the crater and fallout zone. Here and there, Otto could pick out hints of life, small villages of refugees well out from the designated, if no more comfortable, resettlement camp in Camden.

  Past southern Enfield the city was much as it had always been, clinging to its low hills in tight ripples, streets busy. As the ground levelled off, the four overflow canals that circled the diminished centre cut geometric shapes through ancient districts. A forest of cranes rose up from the waterlogged Thameside, rushed under the car's keel, and were behind him. Over the wide brown Thames, past prosperity to swamped roads and building shells, then the marshes lapping round the feet of the commons.

  Otto headed on south, toward the insalubrious, sprawling warrens of the Morden Subcity. Otto was willing to bet that was where it was all going to play out. Anything bad went down in the Londons, it went down in Morden.

  Otto dipped out of the flightlane into a cloud bank. Rain streaked the glass of the cockpit. A dart shot out from a hidden tube in the car, tagging another vehicle with a transmitter broadcasting Otto's Grid signal. He switched off the car's beacon and engaged the car's lamellar camouflage. Until Richards cracked Launcey's personal data net and found out where he was going, this was him, hiding in the clouds. It was Otto's job to film Launcey in the act, if he could, because little things like evidence still mattered.

  The car's aircon was on full, but Otto began to sweat; humidity was always near total saturation in the Londons this time of year. His shoulder hurt. He felt old. And he needed a piss. He put the car on autopilot, and began checking over his guns to take his mind off it.

  Unseen by man or machine, Otto circled just below the flight lane and waited for Richards to contact him. He was late.

  Sometimes he hated his job, and that too occasionally included his partner.

  Richards followed Launcey through the crowds on Kensington Plaza. He kept him in sight even though the tag lodged in Launcey's intestines glowed bright in Richards' mind. If Richards' past experience with Launcey was anything to go by, Launcey'd expect to be followed. Richards couldn't risk him deploying any kind of fancy remote perception device. Richards' sheath might fool the human eye, but not much else. He watched every insect and pigeon that came near him with suspicion.

  It was hot, the evening heavy with pollen. Richards' sheath sneezed. He cursed its verisimilitude, but refrained from deactivating its full emulation features.

  At the edge of the crowded plaza Launcey got into an autohackney. Richards clambered into a second as Launcey's pulled off on to the autohackney tracks. Away to his right, on the other side of Hyde Park, rose the bubbled dome of Regent's Conservation Area, to his left, the cranes and heavy lifters renovating Old London. The plaza, paved over bar the two autohackney tracks, was thronged with foot traffic. For once the sky was clearing up, revealing a streak of blue, and while the humidity was beyond tolerance, this affected Richards about as much as sea fog bothers sand.

  "Good evening," said the cab. "State your destination."

  "Follow that cab," slurred Richards. "Number four seven seven three four five, I think," he added, just to be sure.

  "That is not possible," said the cab.

  Richards cradled his bottle, a puzzled expression creasing his face. "No, that's it. Go on, get going."

  The autohackney hummed and something clanked inside the compartment. "I cannot follow a private customer at the request of another private customer," it said eventually. "If you have a Grid intimacy permission for an acquaintance within the autohackney that has just departed, please state it now and I will be able to comply."

  Richards shrugged. "Nah, go on. I know him, promise. Get going." He banged hard on the drive compartment. "Come on, I haven't got all day." He hiccupped and swigged at his champagne bottle. That should do it. Any second now…

  "Are you drunk, sir?" asked the cab. It sampled the air. "You are, sir."

  "What? Me? Drunk? No."

  "Drunk, sir. I must ask you to exit."

  "Er, no. I don't think so, I'm a paying customer. Me man, you machine. Get going or I'll report you to… whatever reads your reports," said Richards, and settled back into his seat.

  A man tapped on the window, looking to share, less punishing on the energy taxes that way. Richards smiled. "No way, buddy," he mouthed. "I'm busy in here." The man pulled a face a
nd knocked again, gesturing for him to wind the window down.

  Richards waved him off. He'd felt a shift in the Grid, the surge of information preceding something powerful coming into the cab's virtual space.

  And there it was, his way in. He'd tripped an alert in the autohackney mainframe. Human drivers might have been long redundant, but AIs liked cleaning sick up little better than meat people. Some minor part of the Series Four that ran the show was poking out and peering at him through the cab's internal eyes, checking him out, looking for trouble. Richards looked back. The cab's sensors were dumb, and all the Four saw was a drunken nuisance. Richards slipped his mind past the Four's extrusion as it was appraising his sheath, following it back to its source. He snuck through a back door of the autohackney central control nexus, cracked its security, and usurped control of the vehicle. The Four became blissfully forgetful, the existence of the cab blocked from its awareness. "I better drive myself," said Richards laconically. Few AIs could do what he just did.