by Timothy Zahn
For Shrill, that meant going from one crash straight to another, without any of the high in between. That part sucked. Really sucked.
But the money was good. Very good. And he had to admit that floating like a ghost in the Soulminder machine was pretty peaceful.
Maybe if he ever got enough money he’d see if it was possible to take vacations in there. Surely that was where the rich people spent their time when they got bored with their big boats.
He was daydreaming about living in a sea of calm peacefulness when the tech tingled his arm with the hypo.
A minute later, he was dead.
The face at the hotel room door was exactly as Jacobi had expected. The body, though—or rather, that body’s current encasement—definitely wasn’t.
“What the hell is this?” he demanded as the young man strode past him into the room.
“It’s called a suit,” the man replied coolly. “What, haven’t you ever seen a suit before?”
“I told you I had a wardrobe already put away for you,” Jacobi said, not nearly so coolly.
“And I wanted to get out of those damn filthy druggie rags,” the other retorted. “What are you worried about? It’s not coming out of your pocket.”
“Damn right it isn’t. So whose pocket did it come from?”
“Whose do you think? The rich kid left two hundred to buy his hit. I just bought something that would last longer than a three-hour high, that’s all. Maybe he’ll learn a little about lasting value this way.”
Jacobi ground his teeth. This was not the plan, and the only way he’d survived as long as he had in this business was because he always followed the plan. “And what do you think they’re going to say at the rehab center when you show up in a brand-new suit?”
“They’re not going to say a thing,” the man said, “because I’m not going.”
Jacobi felt his eyes narrow. “What?” he asked in a low, ominous voice.
“Oh, don’t worry,” the man assured him with a grin full of stained teeth. “I’m not going to drop into this body’s old habits. I figure I can kick his addictions on my own, that’s all.”
“You think you can do that, do you?” Jacobi asked patiently. “Did you even do the reading I recommended?”
“Of course I did,” the man said, his cocky bravado switching to soothing humility in an instant. It was the kind of emotional dexterity that separated a good con man from a great one, Jacobi knew. Probably why he’d been one of the best. “I know a person’s brain and body retains some of their habits and muscle memory, no matter whose soul is in it.” He lifted a finger like a grade-school teacher making a point to a particularly slow student. “But I also know that even meth can be kicked provided the addict is motivated.” He looked down at his body. “Believe me, brother—I’m extremely motivated.”
Jacobi ground his teeth even harder. But there was nothing he could do. Even the best plans required the client’s cooperation, and in this case the arrogant S.O.B. was clearly determined to do things his way. “Fine,” he said, crossing to the coffee table and opening the satchel lying there. “Come here.”
He dug beneath the neatly folded clothing in the satchel and retrieved the wallet tucked away in the middle. “Pay attention.” He opened the wallet and ran a finger down the assortment of cards in the slots. “Driver’s license in your new name of Gabriel Vance. Visa and MasterCard, ten thousand dollar credit limit on each. That should hold you until you can get to your own stash. Social Security, Safeway Preferred Customer, Staples, and Best Buy—”
“Best Buy?” the other interrupted, sounding aghast.
“You want to flaunt your billions with designer electronics, be my guest,” Jacobi said. “Just be aware that that’s exactly the kind of trail FBI agents love to dig out.”
The man sniffed. “Like they’ll have a snowball’s chance.”
“You don’t want my advice, don’t take it,” Jacobi said, suddenly tired of this man and this conversation. “No skin off my nose either way. You have my money?”
“You have a pencil?”
Silently, Jacobi wiggled his fingers in invitation.
The man rattled off a series of numbers. “You need me to repeat that?”
“No,” Jacobi said. “I trust all fifty million is there?”
“All fifty, plus a ten-million bonus.” The man grinned again. “I figure you earned it.”
“Okay, then,” Jacobi said. For a moment he considered reminding the client what would happen if his fee was not, in fact, in that account. But it really wasn’t worth the effort. “Take the satchel and get going. I’ll follow in about ten minutes.”
“Better idea,” the man said. “You go, and I go take a shower. I’m thinking room service, and a good night’s sleep.”
Jacobi cocked an eyebrow. “You’re staying here? Even though they’re looking for you out there?”
“Exactly. They’re looking for me out there. They’re not looking for me in here.”
“Good,” Jacobi said, his estimation of the man going up a reluctant notch. Most of the time people on the run did just that—run—often too fast or too obviously. It took discipline and cool-headedness to stay put in a potentially risky place. “I’d skip the room service, though. There’s leftover pizza in the fridge.”
“Good enough,” the man said. “I might need the credit card you checked in with.”
“I already put it down for the charges.”
“Yes, I assumed that,” the man said. “But sometimes they want to see the card again. I don’t want to take any chances.”
“Fine.” Jacobi pulled out the card and handed it over. “I checked in at ten in the evening, so as long as you check out before noon you shouldn’t run into anyone who might remember the face that went with that name. Destroy it as soon as you’re out the door, of course.”
“Got it,” the man said as he glanced at the card and then slipped it into his pocket.
“I mean destroy it, not just throw it away.”
“I said I got it,” the man said, a bit testily. “Any other words of wisdom?”
“Yes,” Jacobi said, gesturing to the satchel. “Until you get a haircut, I’d suggest you stick to the black shirt and jeans.”
“The Greenwich Village disaffected artist outfit,” the man said, nodding sagely as he ran his fingers through his long, greasy hair. “Going to be different having hair again, instead of that silly silver toupee. Well, as you can probably tell, I need a shower. Don’t let me keep you.”
“Yeah,” Jacobi said, heading for the door. “Enjoy your twenty billion.”
“Ten, actually,” the other corrected. “The press always blows things way out of proportion.”
“Yeah.” Like at that stratospheric level a few billion here or there really mattered. “Enjoy. See you never.”
“Right,” the man who had once been a con artist called Marvin Chernov said from the mouth that had once belonged to a man called Shrill. “See you never.”
The low phone conversation that had been going on across the Global 6000’s lounge finally came to an end. “Well?” Dr. Adrian Sommer asked, raising his voice enough to be heard over the rumbling drone of the jet’s engines.
“It’s still a horrific mess,” Frank Everly growled, his eyes looking ready to flash-vaporize tungsten. “But some of the threads are starting to work out around the edges.” He picked up the notebook he’d been scribbling in during the conversation. “It looks like Chernov entered a trap in the Manhattan South office at three-seventeen. Four minutes earlier, at three-thirteen, a drug addict in one of Walkabout USA’s body-swapping programs entered the same office. At three-twenty he was euthed and entered his own trap. His body was supposed to then have been entered by a Blaine Kaplan, who was already in a trap awaiting transfer.”
“Only he never made it,” Sommer said.
“Nope,” Everly confirmed. “Somehow, and we still don’t know how it happened, Chernov’s soul was transferred into the druggie instead. The druggie walked out and, of course, never came back.” His lip twisted. “Oh, and Kaplan had conveniently left two hundred dollars for the druggie to buy some meth with.”
Sommer frowned. He despised everything about Walkabout, but he’d nevertheless taken care to learn every part of their routine, especially the parts that directly involved the Soulminder facilities. Waiting to accept and sign for the money would have taken Chernov another five to ten minutes. “And with twenty billion dollars of his own stashed away, he actually waited around to collect it?”
Everly shrugged. “Traveling money is traveling money,” he pointed out. “And no one’s ever accused Chernov of being chutzpah-challenged.”
“I suppose not,” Sommer said. “What do we know about Blaine Kaplan?”
“Sixteen-year-old Richie Rich type,” Everly said. “Likes to play with the forbidden fruit, but is terrified his blue-blood Park Avenue parents will disinherit him if he ever flunks a drug test. Walkabout and Soulminder were the logical answers.”
“Pretty expensive logic.”
“Apparently, he was able to pull it off just by tucking away some of his allowance money,” Everly said. “He’s done it a couple of times before.”
“From his allowance money.” Sommer shook his head. “I definitely picked the wrong parents.”
“If it makes you feel any better, Blaine probably will agree with you after Mom and Dad get done with him,” Everly said. “We grilled the whole family for three hours after they got him back in his body, looking for a connection with Chernov. Nothing yet, but we’re still looking.”
And even if there was, Sommer thought bitterly, it would probably be lost in the ground clutter. There were a lot of people who might have wanted Chernov dead and could have been suckered into the con man’s double-reverse play. “Anything on the shooter?”
“The kill round was a .300 Winchester short magnum,” Everly said. “Probably fired through an FN Special Police sniper rifle, though it’s possible he modified some other rifle to handle that cartridge. We found the nest he fired from, and the distance alone shows he was definitely a pro.”
“A man like Chernov would hardly hire an amateur.”
“True,” Everly said. “We’ve got the FBI and Interpol running the M.O. through their files—this guy’s too good not to have popped up on the radar before. We’re also working the Kaplan family against that angle, just in case.”
“Probably a waste of time.”
“Probably,” Everly agreed. “You always check these things, just on general principles, but it’s looking more and more like Blaine was just collateral damage.”
“Yes,” Sommer murmured. “And speaking of damage … ”
“Yeah,” Everly said heavily. “Shrill.”
“I assume he’s still in a trap, right?”
“Yes, of course,” Everly said. “But with his body gone … it doesn’t look good. We’ve done a full-scale search of the area, but all the photos of the guy are pretty scraggly, and if he’s cleaned up at all decently the facial-recognition software isn’t going to be much help. Chernov and whoever helped him had this whole thing mapped out. I’m guessing he’s halfway to Venezuela by now.”
“In a stolen body,” Sommer said. “God help us.”
“And while He’s at it,” Everly added darkly, “He’d better help whoever in Manhattan South helped Chernov fiddle the labels and settings to make this happen.”
“If there was anyone.”
“Oh, there was,” Everly assured him. “There has to have been. No hacker’s ever gotten through Soulminder security, and they didn’t get through this time. No, they had an inside man. And we will find him.”
“I know,” Sommer said, looking toward the dark sky out the window beside him. Just below the jet, looking like they were close enough to touch, the clouds flickered rhythmically with reflections from the flashing running lights.
“But that’s not what you meant, was it?” Everly said. “The God help us part?”
Sommer didn’t answer. He’d had variants of the same conversation with a dozen different people over the past few years. There was no reason to expect that having it with his security chief would have any different outcome.
“Because you’ve mentioned some of your concerns to Dr. Sands,” Everly continued.
Sommer felt his lip twitch. And of course Jessica had gone straight to Everly. “I assume Dr. Sands is worried that I’m on the edge of going berserk and denouncing Soulminder before the press or a congressional committee?”
“Something like that,” Everly said calmly. “Dr. Sands wants to live forever. Did you know that?”
Sommer closed his eyes. “She may have mentioned it once or twice over the past twenty years.”
“Yeah,” Everly said. “My clues were her late-night study sessions and spending flurries and the glazed look she gets whenever Soulminder clears her more research money.”
“Especially when Soulminder clears her more research money.”
“Pretty much.” Everly paused. “Only not all of that money’s exactly snowy-white clean, is it?”
“Clean?” Sommer opened his eyes again, glaring at and through Everly. “You’re joking, right? We’ve got people borrowing druggies’ bodies to get high. We’ve got suicides legally able to will their bodies to other people and a society that’s increasingly all right with that. We’ve got gang members swapping bodies with twelve-year-old recruits so they can commit murders without being charged as adults.”
“Not legally,” Everly pointed out.
“No,” Sommer agreed. “But until Washington gives us full copies of everyone’s personal files so that we can tell the difference between a small eighteen-year-old and a big twelve-year-old with a good fake ID it’s going to happen.” He waved a hand. “And now we’ve got people murdering other people for their bodies.”
He turned to stare at the darkness outside. And none of that even touched on the ghastly reason he and Everly were on their way to Iraq in the first place. “We’ve lost control, Frank,” he said softly. “Somewhere along the way, Soulminder stopped being a last-ditch medical tool and became something else. Something dark and twisted.”
“It’s still a medical tool, Doctor,” Everly pointed out. “And a damn good one. It’s saved a hell of a lot of lives.”
“Granted,” Sommer said. “But along the way … ” He sighed. “You remember Reverend Tommy Lee Harper, Frank?”
“He’d be a little hard to forget,” Everly said sourly. “I hear he’s ditched his big broadcasting friends for a website and streaming video.”
“Keeping up with the times,” Sommer said. “He and I had a private meeting once, back in Soulminder’s early days. I doubt you remember.”
“Oh, I remember,” Everly said. “Mostly I remember warning you not to go alone and you ignoring me.”
“I’d forgotten that part of it,” Sommer confessed. “But something he said at that meeting has stuck with me all these years. Soulminder is an archangel, so far as earthly creations go. I’m very much afraid that it’ll be beyond your ability to keep it from becoming a demon.”
For a long moment Everly was silent. “It’s still an archangel, as far as the medical and legal parts are concerned,” he said at last. “As to the rest … it’s really not your fault.”
“Of course it’s our fault,” Sommer retorted. “Congress says it’s okay for us to allow a murder victim to borrow a body so that he can testify against his killer, or that we can let a paraplegic borrow a body so that he can have a few hours of freedom, or that we can store criminals’ souls so that their bodies can be stacked in a warehouse like cordwood at a fraction of a prison’s cost. We could have said no. We should have said no.”
“You’re right, we should have,” Everly agreed. “Somewhere along the way we should have drawn the line. But where? The Pro-Witness program was a good idea, and there are a hell of a lot of murderers off the streets because of it. Sure, body-sharing is being abused, but those paraplegics you mentioned are getting a chance at life they never could have had before. Every noble idea and good tool can be abused. That doesn’t mean you throw the whole thing out.”
“Then how do you sort out the good from the bad?” Sommer asked. “How do you keep the archangel from becoming the demon?”
“I don’t know,” Everly admitted. “But I’m not the genius here, you are. You’ll find a way.”
Sommer shook his head. “I doubt it.”
“I know you doubt it.” Everly cocked his head. “But you will. I don’t doubt that.”
Sommer exhaled loudly. “Your faith in me is touching. Let’s see if you still have it on the trip home.”
Everly inclined his head. “Challenge accepted.”
It was nine o’clock in the morning, local time, when the plane touched down at Baghdad International. The Soulminder security convoy Everly had ordered was waiting inside the private hangar, with one of the security chief’s handpicked officers in command. A sizeable contingent of armed and armored men and women was also present, and had formed a cordon around the plane and cars.
“Dr. Sommer,” the woman in charge said in greeting, offering her hand. “I’m Janine Spendlove; former colonel, U.S. Marines; currently head of Soulminder Security Middle East. Welcome to Baghdad.”
“Thank you,” Sommer said, shaking the proffered hand. Spendlove’s grip was good, her handshake the brief but sincere ritual he’d experienced with other military and ex-military men and women. “Has General al-Hirai been briefed on the reason for our visit?”
“Partially.” Spendlove’s lips twitched in a humorless smile. “Mr. Everly thought it might be better if you sprung the more interesting points on him without a lot of warning.”