by Cadigan, Pat
When she finally did look up, she was still on a subway platform, but it was a very hospitable subway, all the dirt gone or metamorphosed into glitter. The rails had become gleaming chrome rods laid on smooth, flawless onyx. Growing up out of the tile floor on the platform were large metal things that seemed to be mimicking plants, except at a rate a million times faster if still graceful. Metal knobs became branches bearing things that suggested a mating between blades and viscera, and flowered with blossoms that looked sexual to Konstantin without containing any elements that she normally associated with erotica. Rorschach strikes again, she thought, and almost chuckled in spite of herself.
More people had appeared from somewhere. Or was it just that more were becoming visible? She looked up slowly. Holos were moving among the people in the subway, some of them floating through the air – people, creatures, symbols, words, some animated, some drifting, some completely stationary but fading in and out of sight in a way that somehow made Konstantin think she would have been able to see them for a longer time if she had been on a higher level. She was sure that she might have been able to see them better, certainly, from a higher level, and found herself wondering exactly how she might manage that, since she didn’t have to worry about a personal on-line bill swelling to the size of the national debt.
Very seductive, this on-line stuff, she thought. Now she could see how easy it was to get caught up in things here, getting stuff. Going places, curiosity driving you on. Of course, curiosity had killed the cat – she touched the slightly ragged skin of Shantih Love’s throat. Of course, the cat could well be alive on eight other levels.
A holo designed to look like an old-fashioned neon sign drifted over to her at eye-level. Welcome to Waxx24, where Reality goes to have a good time. As she watched, the words sailed away from her, passing through an equally vaporous attendee wearing the body of an adolescent boy with the head of an antlered stag. If that really was an attendee, she thought, remembering the strange guy in white face and the gang that hadn’t really been there. Maybe some of these people were no more than phantoms that other people carried around for company. Were phantom friends another example of AR stuff?
A seven-foot-tall woman whose hip-length auburn hair seemed to have a life of its own looked down at her through opera glasses. ‘What sort of a creature are you?’ she asked in a voice so deep that it was more vibration than audible.
‘I think I’ve forgotten.’ Konstantin winced. The ’suit was reminding her now that it was full coverage, and that Shantih Love would have responded strongly to this woman. It was as if her body had decided to follow the example of the woman’s hair, which was curling and uncurling in shining, supple tendrils along her arms and her torso, and enjoy a life of its own. Her ex probably would have laughed at her and told her that it was no less than what she deserved for stealing someone else’s life.
I didn’t steal it. He lost it and I found it.
Yeah, well. Finders weepers.
Konstantin wasn’t sure if having an imaginary argument with an ex after a breakup might not be even worse than having the breaking-up argument, but she was fairly sure that it was completely counterproductive to have it both on billable AR time and during a murder investigation. If that was what this really was, and not just a massive waste of time all around.
‘Do you know Body Sativa?’ she asked the tall woman.
‘Yes.’ The woman gazed at her a moment longer and walked away.
The people down on the tracks were dancing, or at least moving more or less in time to something that sounded like the rhythmic smashing of glass on metal. Konstantin hopped down off the platform onto the tracks and walked among them. Most of the people down here seemed to be affecting what her ex had called rough and shoddy sugar-plum. Konstantin had to admit that she found the look somewhat appealing, in a rough and shoddy way.
In this light, the ankle-length gown Shantih Love had preferred seemed to have more of a red tone, much more than she had thought. Even stranger was the texture – it looked like velvet but now it felt more like sandpaper, at least on the outside. Inside, the feeling was all but nonexistent; the hotsuit was full-coverage but not so complete in the detailing that she felt the gown swinging and brushing against her ankles. For that, she supposed, you had to have some kind of custom job.
But at least she never tripped on the hem, Konstantin thought as she moved among the dancers, still holding the map. The map had not changed, even though she was supposedly up on a higher level; no picture of Body Sativa appeared, not so much as a written description, or a hint as to which platform Konstantin could find her dancing on. Perhaps Body Sativa didn’t dance. She was just going to have to look around, see if she could get anyone to talk to her. And perhaps, she thought, remembering how the tall woman had looked at her and walked away, perhaps just asking a plain old straightforward question wasn’t the way to go about things.
Finding out what was, however, wouldn’t be easy. The people down on the tracks seemed honestly unaware of her, as if she were invisible. Which would seem to indicate she had found another level within a level. Levels within levels and boxes within boxes. Was there any purpose to it, she wondered – any real purpose other than to intrigue people into spending more billable hours solving the puzzle?
She moved over to a man who was a few inches shorter than she was. His idea of rough and shoddy was very old and very worn crushed velvet in a shade of blue that Konstantin’s ex had always called ‘heavenly,’ tunic and pants, almost like a Hindu. In the midst of everything else, its tastefulness was all but out of place.
Konstantin maneuvered around him, trying to catch his eye, but it was impossible. She might have been watching a holo of the man rather than the man himself. Perhaps she was? She tried putting her hand on his shoulder in a friendly but substantial way.
There was no actual contact that she could feel, but some sort of contact was made – a stream of heavenly blue water shot out from his shoulder, made a circuit around both of them, and flowed off into the shadows overhead. Almost immediately afterward came a torrent of flying insects, bees, hornets, and dragonflies, their tiny bodies increasing in size as they emerged from the man’s shoulder not in a way that suggested they were literally growing but more as if they were approaching from a distance. Konstantin blinked at the dragonflies. Strange that they would be among bees and hornets, as they were completely harmless, not stinging bugs at all. Maybe it was all looks and design – their long, slender bodies and narrow wings made a nice contrast to the others.
She realized that the man could see the water and the insects; he was watching them with an expression of surprised delight. As he turned his face in her general direction, something white began to issue from between his lips, rising into the air like a balloon.
In the next moment, she saw that it was a balloon – a good old-fashioned word balloon. Would you care to chat? Press one: YES NO
Konstantin reached up and pushed the word YES with her index finger.
There was no warning and no transition; she lowered her arm to find herself standing alone in a room not quite as big as the one where the kid had died. To her right were a small round table and two chairs. In the center of the table was an open fan dividing the surface of the table in half; the design on her side was a portrait of a Japanese woman in traditional costume playing a guitar-like musical instrument. A Geisha?
The man she had approached melted into existence on the other side of the table. Obviously able to see her now, he smiled and gestured at the one other chair in the room.
‘Well, this really is an honor,’ he said, and his voice sounded just slightly tanky, as if he were speaking from the bottom of an enormous metal container. ‘I had a feeling that if I just managed to stay on long enough, this would be my lucky night. So here I am, singled out by the legendary and redoubtable Shantih Love for the chat booth. What do you have in mind for me, Shantih? Whatever it is, I’m completely yours. I surrender.’ He leaned an elbow on t
he table and rested his chin in his hand, giving her a dreamy smile so adoring it frightened her. ‘Fill me where I am empty, empty me where I am full, roughen me where I am smooth, smooth out my rough places. I know the drill.’ He sighed happily.
Oh my god. Konstantin took a breath. ‘You know me?’
‘Do I know you. Ask me anything. Anything.’ He sat forward a little.
‘Where do you know me from?’
‘Ferocious Windows, 30th Zentury, Body&Soul, and, of course, Waxx24. Those are your favorite haunts, though you’ve been spotted at others from time to time.’ The man laughed a little. ‘Pretty toff, huh? Ask me a hard one.’
‘What are those?’
‘What are what?’
‘Ferocious Body, Waxx24, the others.’
The man’s expression went from bewildered to suspicious. ‘Is this a joke?’
Konstantin tried to look stern. ‘Am I laughing? Answer the question.’
‘But –’ He let out a breath. ‘Well, we’re in Waxx24. And it’s not Ferocious Body, it’s –’
‘Body Sativa,’ Konstantin said. ‘Bring her to me at once.’
Now the man looked aggrieved. ‘What’s got into you?’
‘Did I tell you to ask questions when I ask questions?’
He looked at her from under his brows. ‘If they let us hunt up people on your side I’d have tracked you down a lot sooner than this.’
‘If they let you? What they is that?’ Konstantin winced.
‘Are you gonna do something with me?’ the man demanded. ‘Or are you just gonna waste my billable time?’
‘What do you want me to do with you?’ asked Konstantin, trying to sound both authoritative and accommodating.
He sat back and studied her for a few moments and Konstantin knew that she had fumbled. ‘You’re not Shantih Love,’ he said finally.
‘Don’t tell me who I’m not.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Con somebody else, if you can. I know all about Shantih Love, I know all the stories. Shantih Love doesn’t waste time talking. For future reference, Citizen Wannabe, or whoever you are, brush up on your tantric yoga and Kama Sutra, although I hear that Shantih Love’s imagination is one of those things you can’t study for.’ He looked to one side. ‘Excuse me, I got some consumer-warning to take care of concerning an impersonator –’
‘Fail,’ Konstantin said imperiously, turning her head as if speaking to an invisible assistant.
The guy froze halfway out of his chair. ‘What?’
‘I said, fail, you fool, what did you think I said?’ Konstantin refused to look at him. ‘Do you think Shantih Love would just swoop down on any pretty face and carry him off to Nirvana? Everyone must pass an initial interview test of my devising before I empty them where they are full and so forth. Sometimes they know it’s an interview, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes I come in disguise and sometimes I don’t. Go ahead, go out there, warn all the consumers. You’ll only be advertising the fact that Shantih Love gave you a try-out and you failed. Hold your head high.’
‘Are you kidding here?’ The man looked pained. ‘What the hell kind of a thing is that to do to people on billable time?’
Konstantin gave what she hoped was a disgusted and haughty laugh. ‘If you couldn’t stand the tab, pilgrim, why the hell did you get on this ride? Anything worth paying for is worth over-paying for. That’s the Shopper’s Credo. You’re dismissed.’
The man melted away, still looking shocked. A moment later, she was back in the subway, in the midst of the people who weren’t aware of her. Strangely enough, she didn’t see the man she had just been talking to. Perhaps he had run out of billable time. Whatever his absence meant, she hoped it also signified that her bluff had worked.
She considered the others, moving among them and feeling like a live person at a ghosts’ convention. Or should that have been a ghost at a live persons’ convention?
Her gaze caught on the guitar-player. He was still in the same place, and it looked as if he were still playing as well, though it was impossible to hear anything except the smash-clang everyone around her was dancing to. She made her way through the group over to where he sat. Here the platform was about as high as her nose. She tried boosting herself up but somehow she couldn’t get enough leverage.
‘Stay,’ said the guitar-player, eyes closed. ‘I can see and hear you fine where you are.’
‘Good,’ Konstantin said doubtfully. ‘Tell me, are you really here? And if you’re not, which one of us is? And are you going to turn into someone else?’
‘It’s all in what you can perceive,’ he said, smiling. He morphed from a plump, balding young guy to an angular middle-aged man with very long straight, steel-grey hair. He still didn’t open his eyes. ‘You’d be surprised how few turns of the morphing dial that took.’
‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘Do you know Body Sativa?’
‘Know her, or know of her?’
‘Know her. Personally. Intimately, or casually.’ She paused. ‘And have you seen her in here recently?’
‘In here or around here?’
‘Yes,’ Konstantin snapped impatiently.
He tilted his head, his closed eyes moving back and forth beneath his eyelids, as if he were dreaming, while his fingers played over guitar strings that appeared no thicker than spider silk. Konstantin realized that though she couldn’t exactly hear the music, she could feel it pass through her. ‘I was a dolphin in a previous incarnation,’ he said, after a bit.
‘Why did you change?’
‘We all have to, sooner or later. I would have thought you’d know that as well as anyone. What were you before you passed on to your present manifestation?’
Konstantin barely hesitated. ‘A homicide detective.’
‘Ah. That accounts for the interrogation.’ He chuckled. ‘You know, the idea is to go on to something different, not just do the same thing behind a new mask.’
Words to live by, Konstantin thought. Perhaps she could print them on a card and send it to her ex. ‘That’s pretty good for a guitar-playing ex-dolphin.’
He stopped playing and pulled something out of the hole in the center of the instrument. ‘Here,’ he said, leaning forward and holding it out to her; it looked like a playing card. ‘You’re not necessarily smarter than the last one who had your face, but the quality of your ignorance is an improvement.’
‘It is? How?’ Konstantin asked, straining on tiptoe to take the card from him.
‘You might actually learn something.’
She studied the card, trying to see it clearly, except the image on it kept shifting, melting, changing. It might have been an Oriental ideogram. ‘What’s this?’
‘Cab fare.’
‘Cab fare? In a subway station?’
‘Trains aren’t running tonight. Or didn’t you notice?’
She looked down at her map again. The display still hadn’t changed. ‘I was supposed to find somebody I needed here. My map says she’s still here.’
The guitar player shook his head. ‘Sorry, you misunderstood. There’s a locator utility here, for help finding someone in the Sitty. That’s what your map says is here.’ He shrugged. ‘There are locator utilities in all the subway stations.’
Konstantin managed not to groan. ‘Where?’
‘It’s all in what you perceive.’
‘You’re a big help.’
‘Thank you, I’m supposed to be. If you get it figured, you have cab fare to get to wherever it is you need to go.’
Cab fare, Konstantin thought. Cab fare. Did it include the tip, she wondered, or was that what the coin was for? She looked down at it in her other hand.
The man stopped playing again. ‘When did you get that?’
‘Just now. Upstairs, on my way in.’ She closed her fist around it again. ‘Why?’
‘Because even in here, certain things are perishable. Like milk. Or cut flowers.’
‘Or people with cut throats?’
He smiled
. ‘No, you may have noticed that death doesn’t have to put a crimp in your plans for the evening. On the other hand, it’s not generally an accepted practice to start out dead. If you want to be dead, custom dictates that you die here.’
‘Here in the subway, you mean, or here in AR?’
‘It’s all in what you perceive.’
He was going to say that once too often, Konstantin thought unhappily. ‘What about this coin?’ she asked. ‘Were you telling me just now that it’s going to expire?’
‘Conditions,’ he said after a moment. ‘It’s the conditions under which it would be … effective. Conditions don’t last.’
‘More words to live by,’ Konstantin muttered to herself. ‘I want to find the locator utility. How do I do that?’
‘You have only to ask.’
‘Who do I ask?’
‘Me.’
Konstantin hesitated. ‘All right. How do I find the locator utility?’
‘You have only to ask,’ he said again serenely, fingers picking at the strings of the guitar again.
‘I just did,’ Konstantin said testily. ‘How –’ She cut off as understanding flooded through her. ‘Where is Body Sativa?’
Eyes still closed, the guitar-player jerked his chin at her. ‘Hail a cab, and when you’re asked where you want to go, answer, “To Body Sativa,” and give the driver that.’
Konstantin looked at the card again. The ideogram was still shifting. Suddenly she was very tired and bored. ‘Are you sure this’ll do it?’
‘Oh, yeah. Take you right to her.’
‘That simple.’
The guitar-player nodded. ‘That simple.’
‘How strange. Nothing else here seems to be.’
The guitar-player smiled. ‘What you want is simple. All you had to do was state it in the proper place at the proper moment. In the proper form, of course. That’s just elementary programming.’
‘Programming,’ Konstantin said, giving a short, not terribly merry laugh. ‘I should have known. You’re the locator utility and the help utility, aren’t you?’