Blue Shifting (7 page)

And then the final tragedy.

The film industry died a death, overnight – a Paris 'night', that is. In one month the studios in Hollywood, Bombay, Rio and Sydney shut up shop, and the stars found themselves redundant. In Geneva, a cartel of computer-wizards developed Inter-Active computer-simulated holographics, and actors, directors, script-writers were a thing of the past, superseded by the all-powerful Programmer. A dozen or so mega-stars were paid retainers so that their personas could be used to give Joe public familiar, reassuring faces to see them through the period of transition – until a whole new pantheon of computer-generated screen Gods was invented for mass worship. Etteridge was one of these tide-over stars, which was how I recognised her face; I'd seen many 'Etteridge' Inter-Active dramas as a kid. But it didn't take a degree in psychology to read between the lines of the documentary and realise that lending your face to what was little more than a cartoon character was no compensation for the denial of stardom.

The documentary didn't dwell on the personal tragedy, of course; the last scene showed her marriage to an Italian surgeon, and while the credits rolled a voice-over reported that Stephanie Etteridge had made her last film in '30 and thereafter retired to a secluded villa in the South of France.

I was re-running that last film when Dan came back.

He'd washed and changed; he wore a smart, side-fastening blue suit with a high collar. I preferred him in casuals – but perhaps that was because I knew where he was going.

"You dining with that woman, Dan?" I asked.

He nodded. "The Gastrodome at twelve."

"I wish you wouldn't," I whispered, and I was unable to tell whether I was jealous, or scared at what the woman might want Dan to do.

"Like you said earlier, we need the dollars." He mussed my hair. "Did you find out who she is?"

I told him that I'd followed her to a mansion on the left bank, but I said nothing about my capture.

"There were tons of blown-up stills on the walls," I said, "all of the old film actress Stephanie Etteridge. I know you're going to call me dumb, but the resemblance is remarkable. Not only her face, but the way she moves. Look..."

I turned the screen to him while Etteridge played the spurned lover with a bravura performance of venom and spite. "Recognise?"

He leaned close and whispered in my ear. "You're dumb."

"I know, I know. But you must admit, the resemblance..."

Dan nodded. "Okay, the woman does look like Etteridge. But that film's what...? Thirty years old? I'd say that Etteridge was about forty there. That'd make her seventy now... Are you trying to tell me that the woman we saw here today was that old?"

"But why all the pictures?"

He shrugged. "Beats me. Perhaps she's the daughter of the actress. Or a fan. Or some fruit-cake who thinks she's Etteridge. Have you accessed her? A hundred to one you'll find her dead."

So I turned back to the Batan and called up the information on Stephanie Katerina Etteridge. We scanned her life story in cold, bureaucratic fact. Date of birth, education, professional status, the four marriages, her involvement with an American businessman jailed for an unspecified misdemeanour a matter of days before they were due to marry – though the documentary had said nothing about this. And her death...?

I threw the nearest thing to hand – a vid cartridge – at Dan. "You owe me!"

He fielded the cartridge and waved it. "Okay, so she's still alive – a crotchety old dame somewhere living on caviar and memories. She's seventy, Phuong..."

I turned away in a huff.

Dan readied the tape on the desk. He slipped a small mic into his pocket so that I'd be able to monitor his conversation with the woman over dinner.

"I'll catch you later."

I came out of my sulk. "Dan, take care. Okay?"

I ran to the door and tried to pull him to me, but he stiffened and kissed the top of my head as if I were a kid. Despite all the Zen he'd been pumping into his skull, he still could not accept me. From needing to show affection, my feelings polarised and I wanted suddenly to strike him, to hurt him as much as he hurt me. He murmured goodbye and took the downchute to the boulevard.

~

Two years ago Dan was an Engineman with the Javelin Line, a spacer who mind-pushed bigships through the
nada
-continuum. Then he got scared; the ineffable union with the infinite, with Nirvana, that all Enginemen attained when they fluxed, was draining reality of meaning and leaving him strung-out and crazy and in need of constant flux oblivion. He knew that if he went on fluxing for much longer he'd end up dead. So he did the brave thing and got out and started a third rate investigative agency in Montparnasse. He advertised for an assistant to do the leg-work, and I got the job.

We got along fine for weeks, even though I was evasive and distant and didn't let him get too close. Then as I got to know him better I began to believe that we were both disabled, and that if I could accept the state of his head, then perhaps he could come to some acceptance of my body.

Then one night he asked me back to his place, and like a fool I nodded yes. The usual scene, as far as I could gather from the tapes I'd watched: soft light, music, wine... And after a bottle of chianti I found myself close to him. His fingers mimed the shape of my face, centimetres away; it was as if he had difficulty believing my beauty and was afraid to let his fingertips discover a lie. But it was no lie, just reconstructed osseous underlay and synthi-flesh done with the touch of an artist. We kissed. He fumbled my buttons and I went for his zip, meaning to get him with my mouth before he discovered my secret. I didn't make it. He touched me where my right breast should have been, then ripped open my bodice. He gagged and tipped me to the floor, strode to the window and stared out while I gathered my stuff and ran.

I stayed away for weeks, until he came for me and apologised. I returned to the office and we began again from the beginning, and it was as if we were closer, having shared our secrets – though never, of course, close enough.

~

Soon after that night at his place he began experimenting. He claimed that he was doing it for me. By embracing illegal skull-tapes, second-hand Buddhism and the
Bardo
Thodol
rewritten for the twenty-first century, he was attempting to come to some acceptance of my disfigurement. But he was also doing it for himself; he wanted the thrill of Nirvana without the threat of dependence.

Now I stared at the mystical junk that littered the desk and the chesterfield: the pamphlets, the mandalas, the meditation vids and bootleg tapes. In a rage I picked up a great drift of the stuff and threw it the length of the room. When the desk and chesterfield were cleared, and my anger was still not exhausted, I ran across the office, fell to my knees and pitched
tankas
and tapes, magazines and effigies of Gautama through the window. I leaned out and laughed like a fool, then rushed down into the street and stomped on the useless relics and idols of mysticism, ground them into the sidewalk and kicked the debris into the storm drain. Then, as the rain poured down around me, I sat on the kerb and cried.

Hell,
real
love rarely lasted; so what chance had our corrupted version of attraction, what chance had the relationship between a screwed up flux-junky attempting to rewire his head with bogus Buddhist tracts so that he could, in theory, ignore the physical, and someone whose body was no more than a puckered mass of raddled meat? It was unfair to both of us; it was unfair of myself to expect love and affection after so many years without hope, and it was unfair of me to keep Dan from other women who could offer him more than just companionship and a pretty face.

~

The tape was running when I returned to the office.

I lay on the chesterfield in the darkness and listened to the clink of glasses, the murmur of polite conversation. The Gastrodome was the de-commissioned astrodome of an old French bigship, amputated and welded atop the Eiffel tower. I'd been up there once, but the view had given me vertigo. Now I lay half asleep and listened to the dialogue that filled the room.

All I wanted was for Dan to refuse to work for the woman, so that he would be free from the danger of whatever it was she wanted him to do. Then, when he returned, I could tell him that I was leaving, and that this time there was nothing he could say to make me return.

"Tell me about when you worked for the Javelin Line," the woman said. "Is it true that in flux you experience Nirvana?"

"Some Enginemen claim that."

"Did you?"

"Do we have to talk about this?" he said, and I knew that his hands would be trembling.

In my mind's eye I could see the woman giving an unconcerned shrug. "Very well, but I hope you don't mind discussing your occipital implant-"

Dan: "Why?" suspicious.

"Because I'm interested." Her tone was hard. "What kind is it, Leferve?"

"Standard Sony neo-cortical implant-"

"With a dozen chips in the pre-frontal lobe, sub-cortex, cerebellum, etc...?"

"You've done your homework," Dan said. "Why the interest?"

"When was the last time you fluxed?"

I cried out.

It took Dan aback, too. The silence stretched. Then: "Almost two years ago..."

"Would you consider doing it just one more time," she asked, "for twenty-five thousand dollars?"

I could sense Dan's indecision.

I balled my fists and willed him to say no...

"I have a smallship I need taking on a short haul," she said.

There was a brief moment of silence, then Dan spoke.

"Insystem or interstellar?"

And I yelled: "Dan..."

"Neither," the woman said. "I want you to 'push the ship through the
nada
-continuum from here to Frankfurt."

Dan laughed. "You're mad..."

"I'm quite sane, I assure you. From A to B and back again. You'll be in the sen-dep tank for less than one hour."

"And the ship?"

"An ex-Indian Navy Hindustan-Tata with Rolls-Royce ion drive-"

"Crew?"

"None. Just you and me. The ship is pre-programmed with the co-ordinates. All it needs is someone to 'push it."

"And I'd be wasting my time asking what all this is about?"

The woman assented. "You'd be wasting your time. Can I take it that you want the job?"

Dan murmured something.

"Good," she said. "Here's my card. If you arrive at five, we'll phase out at six."

They left the restaurant and took the downchute to the landing stage. I sat in the darkness and stared at the wall, wishing that Dan had had the strength of will to turn his back on that which had almost killed him.

I switched off the tape, then switched it on again. I couldn't face Dan and tell him that I was leaving – that way I'd end up screaming and shouting how much I hated him, which wasn't true. I'd leave a taped message to the effect that I needed a long break, and quit before he got back. I picked up the microphone.

Then the Batan chimed and Claude's big monkey face filled the screen. "Phuong, I got the information on that flier."

"Yeah?" My thoughts were elsewhere.

"Belongs to a guy called Lassolini – Sam Lassolini-"

I just shrugged.

Claude went on: "He's a surgeon, a big noise in European bio-engineering."

I remembered the documentary, and Etteridge's last marriage. "Hey, wasn't he married to-"

Claude nodded. "That's the guy. He hit the headlines ten years ago when the film star Stephanie Etteridge left him-"

"You got his address, Claude?"

"Sure."

"Then pick me up
tout-de-suite
."

I thought about it.

Now why would Sam Lassolini follow the Stephanie Etteridge look-alike to her mansion in Passy...?

There was only one way to find out.

~

The de Gaulle building was the old city morgue, deserted and derelict but for the converted top floor, now a penthouse suite. Claude dropped me on the landing stage and I told him to wait. I took the downchute one floor and hiked along a corridor. I came to a pair of double doors and hit the chime. I felt suddenly conspicuous. I hadn't washed for two days, and I'd hardly had time to learn my lines.

A small Japanese butler opened the door.

"Lassolini residence?" I asked.

"The doctor sees no-one without an appointment."

"Then I'll make an appointment – for
now
."

I tried to push past him. When he barred my way I showed him my pistol and said that if he didn't sit down and keep quiet I'd blow a hole in his head. He sat down quickly, hands in the air.

I tiptoed down a passage and came to a vast ballroom with a checkerboard floor of marble and onyx tiles, and a dozen chandeliers burning against the long Paris night outside. There was no sign of Lassolini; I would have called out, but the weight of the silence intimidated me.

I opened the first door on the right.

It took me about fifteen seconds to recognise the woman who this morning had visited the office, who I had followed to the mansion, and who, less than thirty minutes ago, had been dining with Dan.

She was hanging by the neck and her torso had been opened with something sharp from sternum to stomach; the contents of her abdomen had spilled, and the weight of her entrails anchored her to the floor.

I heard a sound behind me and turned. A tall, Latin guy looked down on me. He wore a white suit and too much gold. I did mental arithmetic and decided that he looked good for sixty.

"Sam Lassolini?" I asked.

He didn't deny it. "Who are you, and what do you want?"

I drew my pistol and aimed at his chest. Next to it I hung my identification. "Phuong Li Xian," I said. "I have the power of arrest." I indicated the woman. "Why did you do it, Lassolini?"

He looked past me at the body and smiled. "If I may answer a question with a question: why your interest?"

I hesitated. "I was working on her case-"

He threw his head back and laughed.

My fist tightened on the pistol. "I don't see what's so funny-"