Futures Near and Far (15 page)

Like a fly giving herself to the spider, she drew within his
reach and allowed him to wrap her up. His steely, masculine hands pressed the
fabric of her bathrobe into the muscles of her back. She leaned against him,
her breath shifting the hairs of his chest, between clavicle and nipple. She
moaned at the touch of his fingers massaging their way down her spine.

“I need to know that you don’t hate me,” he said, making his
voice crack, the way poor, guilty Bernd Hauser’s would have, had the real Bernd
possessed the courage to utter those same words.

Veronica looked up. He tilted his head, until their mouths
were poised barely far enough apart for her sentence to squeeze into the gap.

“Hating you is not the problem,” she said.

He let her bridge the space. Their lips united. Her tongue
probed tentatively, seeking the assurance of familiarity. He kissed her back
firmly, letting passion override telltale differences between his touch and
that of the real Bernd.

Her bathrobe drifted open. With it went any other barrier
between Louis and his goal.

o0o

Veronica lingered in the bed while Louis slipped into his
clothes. She watched him as intently as if she were a cat, and he a canary
flitting about its nest. The scrutiny bothered him. He had to remind himself
not to button the shirt.

“You’re leaving already?” she asked.

Disappointment colored the words. He preferred to think that
she was sorry to see him go, but in truth, those pensive eyebrows of hers had
drawn together as soon as they’d finished making love.

No doubt Bernd would have talked more. Perhaps that was it.
But Louis didn’t dare say too much, or she might see through the façade. He’d
had what he’d come for. It was time to get the hell out of there, before she
became suspicious and asked the Net who he really was.

“I promised Christine I’d call her tonight. She’s probably
waiting already.”

Veronica dropped her glance to the floor. “Of course,” she
said softly.

“I, uh . . .” Louis said, in his best
imitation of Bernd’s indecisiveness.

“Don’t say it. Just go.” She rolled away from him, and did
not see him smile as he made his exit.

o0o

Back in his quarters, Louis immediately lay down on the
bed and tripped the programs he’d pre-set. His morph reverted to his normal
one. His clothes became the tux he’d worn to the banquet. Reaching under the
bed to the programming port, he erased every one of his entries from the buffer.

He did not neglect to place Bernd’s hair in the recycler and
make sure it was deconstituted.

With luck, Veronica would never guess what had happened. But
even if she did, just let her try to prove it. And then, remembering that he
had a formal paper to deliver in the morning, he fell into deep, refreshing
slumber.

o0o

The auditorium hummed with the babble of the audience as
Louis approached the podium, taking the place of the earlier speaker. The
assemblage applauded him and settled down to listen.

Louis scanned the room. A good crowd — large, attentive. He
basked in it, and began orating.

“Many of you here today have some cause, now and then, to
use a bit of paleontology in your work. Even if you don’t, I’m sure nearly all
of you are aware of the aquatic ape concept. Sir Alister Hardy and Elaine
Morgan’s theory that early man must have spent several million years in a
largely marine environment encountered resistance when first proposed, but
became doctrine once fossil confirmation was brought to light. The question has
remained — just how much did this oceanside environment alter the primates we
are descended from, and how fast? By the time our ancestors returned to inland
Africa, how close were they to modern man?”

Louis felt the respectful attention. He released the words
in careful, measured doses. “My team addressed this question using the
increasingly popular Berliner Method. With the guidance of archaeogeneticist
Mbebe Ongo, we created a small population of live apemen, just as they might
have existed during the Pliocene drought, when diminishing primate habitats on
the African continent forced them into the water, where they could find
reliable safety and a plentiful source of food. With each pregnancy, we further
manipulated genes in order to accelerate evolution, and have twice replaced the
entire troop in order to make jumps in development.”

Raising his eyes from his notes, Louis paused.

She
was out there.
He had spotted her as if magnetically drawn. She was seated in the upper left
quarter of the audience, quietly observing, listening. She did not react to his
glance, but for just a brief moment, he faltered, and was forced to check his
prepared speech.

“We’ve found, just as the theory predicted, that our
reconstructions began to take on features typical of modern humans almost from
the moment the species adopted the aquatic lifestyle, achieving an early
version of
Homo maritimus
, or reef
apes, in the equivalent of less than a million years. . . .”

When Louis next looked at Veronica Rizal, he did not
stumble. She did not act like a woman hiding strong emotions. If anything, she
seemed humble, the way she might look as if she’d only just realized what a
watermark Louis had reached in his career, and was sorry she’d rejected his
invitation the previous afternoon.

How perfect, he thought. He sailed through the remainder of
the talk. The audience gave him the longest applause yet heard at the
conference, and for the rest of his stay in Baja California, he rode a wave of
professional and sexual triumph.

The next day, as he was leaving the conference, he failed to
notice Veronica engaged in conversation with Bernd Hauser.

o0o

Helen Renault, Attorney-at-Law, considered increasing the
intensity of her personal body shield, so tangible was the wave of anger coming
from the woman whose virtual self sat on the other side of the desk.

“Veronica,” Helen began slowly. “It’s going to be hard to
get a conviction.”

“What do you mean? He was there in my room that night. The
Net will confirm that.”

The lawyer looked down. “Master Sheldon isn’t denying that.
But according to his attorney, he was there by your invitation, and whatever
happened occurred with your full consent and cooperation.”

“What?!”

If Veronica had been there in the flesh, rather than as a
transmitted image, Helen would have taken her hands in hers and held them. “I
want you to think very hard, before we’ve pressed charges, before it’s public.
I want you to picture the scenario as the jury or the D.A. might see it.”

Veronica sank back in an invisible chair. Furrows rippled
across her forehead. “Talk to me.”

“First, there’s your story: Sheldon impersonated your old
lover and had sex with you under false pretenses.”

“You make it sound so incidental.”

“Let me finish,” Helen said. “On the other side is Sheldon’s
story: You seemed interested in him, so he propositioned you and you accepted.
After intercourse, he claims that you began to ask probing questions about his
research, which he declined to answer. According to him, that made you angry,
and you asked him to leave. Apparently he’s arguing that your anger prompted
you to fabricate a rape and impersonation story.”

“Don’t you think that’s rather far-fetched?” Veronica
countered.

Helen was perspiring, caught in a role she didn’t want.
Self-conscious, the lawyer sub-vocally cued her nanodocs to tone down her
pores, even though Veronica couldn’t detect the odor while in virtual mode.

“Yes and no,” she replied. “It has been decades since you
produced any truly significant research, Veronica. A good lawyer — and his is a
maestro — might convince a jury that you wanted some sort of career boost out
of Sheldon, and were desperate enough to seduce him, and, when that failed, to
try to blackmail him with a rape case. You were known to be emotionally upset
about your break-up with Bernd Hauser. An image could be constructed of an
angry, unstable woman ready to lash out at a convenient target.”

Veronica opened her mouth, but closed it without speaking.

“We need something more than your word against his,” the
attorney continued. “Remember, we have to utterly convince the jury that our
version of the events is the truth; all Sheldon’s side has to do is raise
‘reasonable doubt.’”

“And you don’t think we can manage it,” Veronica said
stiffly.

Helen coughed. “Well, first off, neither you nor Master
Sheldon asked the Net to record your encounter at the time it occurred, so the
privacy parameter remained in effect. There is no document of what went on that
night, except for the Net’s location log. That proves both of you were in the bungalow,
but it says nothing about what you did, or what either of you felt about those
actions, and by design the log’s only accurate to the nearest three meters.”

“But we have the semen traces,” Veronica interjected.

“Yes. But the analysis came back showing Sheldon’s DNA
pattern, not that of Bernd Hauser. That doesn’t support your claim that he was
disguised.”

Veronica massaged her forehead, brows drawn tight. “He must
not have altered his morph down to that level.”

“Let’s assume the jury believes that. And that they accept
that the hair and particles of skin we retrieved from the bedding had been
programmed to revert to their normal pattern upon being sloughed off. That’s
sophisticated stuff. Ordinarily only someone licensed in cosmetology could pull
it off.”

“You mean he had
help
?”

“Maybe. There’s another way he could have done it. He may
have learned remorphing in the process of creating his reef ape species. If so,
he could have programmed the hotel nanoplayers to do his dirty work, without
help from anyone.”

“Surely we can prove he had that kind of training.”

“Even if we do, it will only show
how
he might have done it, it won’t prove
if
he did it.”

Veronica sighed. “But Helen — it’s what happened.”

Helen choked down a sip of coffee and loosened the kinks in
her shoulders, the kinks that told her Veronica was telling the truth. “I know.
But as your lawyer, I have to advise you not to press charges.”

“Why?”

“Using a nanoplayer to impersonate a human being is a
mindwipe crime. The D.A. won’t risk her maestro status for you unless she knows
she can win. The defense will have extremely wide latitude. Judges just don’t
send someone to mindwipe without giving the person the fullest hearing
possible. You’ll be subject to the most ruthless kind of cross-examination. Any
part of your personal history that might have a bearing on the case is fair
game. Do you really want to be dragged through the shit, Veronica?”

“I’m not ashamed of my life,” the client replied.

“Let me spell it out. Your three biggest pieces of research,
your claims to fame, were done in close collaboration with male colleagues.”

“Yes. So?”

“Male colleagues who were your lovers at the time.”

Veronica stiffened. “I don’t meet many men outside my
discipline. And I happen to be drawn to men I admire for their professional
acumen.”

Helen kept forcing out the words. “Imagine a brilliant
attorney facing a jury, speaking eloquently of how you manipulated lovers into
giving you credit for ideas which were largely their own. Imagine him pointing
out that you and Louis Sheldon had once had a brief fling. Imagine a woman
desperate to maintain her rank in her profession.”

Helen ordered her desk to generate another cup of coffee.
“Come on, Veronica. Going public is only going to magnify the incident out of
proportion. He didn’t hurt you. You even enjoyed it, apparently, before you
discovered who was fucking you.”

Veronica swayed, as if her bones had turned to air. “He made
me an accessory to my own rape,” she said, so softly that Helen scarcely made
out the words.

“The point remains,” the lawyer said, almost as softly,
“that Louis Sheldon can hurt your reputation a lot more than an unproved
accusation of nanoplayer misuse will hurt his. Short of an accomplice stepping
forward out of the blue, the D.A. is not going to pursue the felony. Without
the impersonation charge, the rape’s just personal assault. That means if we
pursue it as a civil case and lose, you’re liable for false accusation. If
Sheldon insisted, the judge could strip you down to journeyman. Do you really
want to set back your career eighty or a hundred years?”

Veronica drew up her feet. Her arms curled around her
elbows. Helen thought of a turtle, vanishing into its shell.

“It never changes,” Veronica said, in a voice that dropped
the bottom out of Helen’s stomach.

“No, it doesn’t,” Helen whispered, knowing exactly what
Veronica meant. For a long, bitter moment, she wished she were not such a
persuasive lawyer.

Long after it had visually disappeared, Veronica’s face
seemed to float in front of Helen’s desk. What had been hot anger on her
arrival now lay deep behind those haunted eyes, a flame made into ice, as
permanent and unstoppable as a glacier. Helen shivered, knowing that though the
legal case had died unborn, the matter was not resolved.

o0o

As he stepped out of his research offices five years
later, Louis had not thought of Veronica Rizal in a long time. She’d vanished
from his sphere entirely after his lawyer had put a stop to a certain
ineffective, behind-closed-doors attempt to block his confirmation to adept.
Since then, his life had been busy. These days, his main concern was dealing
with the frequent visitors to the hominid sanctuary — media personnel,
tourists, colleagues looking to ride his coattails.

This day, there were no visitors. Louis had deliberately
arranged a complete day of quiet. He’d sent the staff away as well, giving him
the run of his small patch of paradise. He waded into the shallows with a
cheerful, confident stride, master of his domain.