Idolon (11 page)

Atossa was waiting for Pelayo when he got home. She'd philmed herself as a Hula Honey with a copper sun-burnished complexion, hair the color of molten gold, and hibiscus lips. She wore a blue pineapple-print dress, a puka-shell necklace, and palm-frond sandals. Her toenails were sunset red.

"Where have you been?" She got up from the couch that faced the large Vurtronic screen and crossed the living room to him. "I was afraid something bad happened."

He shrugged off his jacket and tie, draping them over the back of the chair next to the couch. "I had to talk to Marta."

"You could have called. Left a message." She looked hurt, her face pinched tight around the eyes and mouth.

"I'm sorry." She refused to let him draw her into a hug.

"I brought dinner." She nodded at the three Asian Rose take-out boxes arranged on the coffee table next to a pair of empty plates. His favorites: pineapple tempeh, Singapore noodles, and basil eggplant. "It's probably cold by now."

"Sorry." Pelayo ran both hands over his head, still surprised by the hair and how real the nanoscopic fibers felt under his fingers. Ditto the wrinkles on his forehead and the faint parenthetical crease lines circumscribing his mouth and eyes. "I wasn't thinking."

"Not about me, anyway." She turned from him and went to the kitchenette for a glass of water.

Pelayo frowned—this was about more than his being late and not calling, or her being worried— and went after her. "What is it?" he said. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing." She twisted her mouth and shook her head. "It's not that important. We can talk about it later."

Something to do with the class she was taking, he guessed. Or her job. She held the glass with both hands.

"Talk about what?" he asked.

"I said it can wait." Tossa raised the glass to her lips and swallowed, as if forcing the water past an obstruction.

There was no point pushing her. She would just dig in her heels.

"So what did Marta want?" she said, placing the half-drained glass on the counter.

Pelayo ran through events, relieved to be talking. Sooner or later, they would get around to what she wanted to discuss. That was the way things usually worked; she just needed time to calm down.

"If Marta wants your help," Tossa said when he finished, "she'll ask for it. Until then, it's none of your business."

Pelayo wasn't so sure. "I guess," he allowed.

Tossa let out a breath, then took a step back and appraised the test philm with a practiced eye. "You look like you should be carrying a Bible in one hand and a Tommy gun in the other."

"Yeah." He loosened his collar, then lifted his arms and turned in a little pirouette. "What do you think?"

"Any idea who you're supposed to be?"

"Uri didn't say. Asshole wouldn't give me shit. I was hoping maybe you could tell me."

She moved closer to touch the sleeve of his jacket. "Did IBT provide the clothes, or did you pick them out yourself?"

"They're part of the ware."

"Serious?" She shifted her hand to explore the ridges of his knuckles and age line running through his palm.

"The hair, too. "

She frowned. "What's that on your face?"

"What?"

She reached up and turned his head under the ceiling-strung LEDs. "It looks like a blemish."

He touched his right cheek. "Like a birthmark, you mean?"

"Or a watermark." Tossa withdrew her hand. "What's the 'skin like without the philm?"

Pelayo shrugged. "I haven't checked." Between Lagrante and Marta, there hadn't been time.

"Let's take a look." She mirrored the screen on the Vurtronic.

Pelayo studied his reflection. He initially mistook the necrotic gray patch for a shadow. But the size and shape didn't change as he turned his head under the ambient track lights.

It could be a defect... or an indication something went wrong with the installation. Then again, maybe not.

"Come on," Tossa teased. A smile sidled into one corner of her mouth. "Let's see what you got."

_______

Pelayo stripped out of his pants and shirt, down to gray boxer shorts and the watch philmed on his wrist. Held in place by a black leather strap, the elegantly crafted watch had a gold case and a black bezel with roman numerals. The name Hamilton was stenciled across the top half of the white- marbled face, while a small dial counted off seconds on the lower half of the face.

He tapped the crystal with a fingernail. It felt hard and smooth as glass. "Any idea what kind of watch is this?"

Tossa accessed a datician, scanned an image of the watch, uploaded it, then opened a d-splay inset on the mirror and conferenced him in on the ear- feed.

According to the datician, the watch was a replica of a Hamilton Piping Rock with a 14K gold case. The watch was first introduced in the 1920s, and included a white gold version with a bronze-colored face.

Pelayo pressed the crown, the winder knob on the side of the case, expecting the philm to toggle off manually. That's the way it worked with every other 'skin he'd tested. There was a basic on/off switch, normally in the form of a button, ring, or earring. Instead, a translucent d-splay appeared in the upper right of his field of view.

"Well?" Tossa said.

"Virtual menu," he said.

Most of the menu options—tie color and width, suspenders, suit fabric (worsted, gabardine, Saxony) and pattern (pinstripe, herringbone, houndstooth check)—were grayed out, not available in the beta version. This included skin color. Caucasian was the only ethnic background supported. All other ethnicities—a comprehensive list that included Latasian and Vietino—were not yet offered.

"Quit stalling," Tossa said.

He thought-selected the option to display/hide the philm.

The 'skin turned translucent as it deimaged. His pseudoidentity faded, giving way to nanosculpted features he barely recognized as himself. The hair on his body retreated, absorbed through the pores of his tissue into subcutaneous cavities, leaving him smooth-shaved. Naked, he couldn't feel the graphene exomer. With most 'skin, there was a dull, waxy patina that left his flesh feeling stiff and inelastic. This was different. All that remained was the retro Hamilton. He could even feel a dank, briny draft from the open transom on the other side of the room.

Pelayo examined his flesh carefully in the mirror. There was no sign of the blotch, on his face or anywhere else.

"It looks like it's part of the philm," he said.

Tossa eyed him critically. "How do you feel?"

"Fine." No ill effects, so far. It might be cosmetic, harmless, or normal even... part of the test plan.

“Try rephilming," she suggested. "See what happens." She blinked, activating an eyefeed.

When he rephilmed himself the blotch reappeared, in the same exact configuration and location. Definitely a hardware or software issue. Unless the betaware was reacting to something it encountered inside him... some physical or chemical trigger. "I wonder if maybe I should go in," he said. "Have Uri take a look at it?"

Tossa coiled a strand of hair around one finger. "What if Lagrante's the cause of the glitch?"

Assuming it
was
a glitch. Either way, there were risks. If the electronic skin was defective and it went undiagnosed, he could hull himself: permanent nerve and cell damage, according to the medical release he'd signed. If he went in, and the problem turned out to be serious, Uri would probably pull the plug on the clinical trial and scratch him as a test subject. If that happened, he would be left with nothing.

Lagrante hadn't been able to crack the ware. It was possible he'd damaged the 'skin. If that was the case, and Pelayo brought it to the attention of IBT, things could get ugly. Uri would want to know where he'd been, who he'd been in contact with, what he'd been doing.

"Let's wait," Pelayo decided. "See what it looks like in the morning." He could always claim that it had shown up while he was asleep... hadn't been discovered until he woke up.

Tossa worried the strand of hair. "You sure?"

"Yeah."

He touched the blemish again. It didn't feel odd, abnormal.

Neither did he.

"I wish there was someone else you could go to to get checked out," she said.

"It's probably nothing," he said.

"I don't like it."

"If we knew more about the background of the philm," he said, "that might tell us something."

"You mean style, historical context, and cultural influences? Like that?"

"Right." Pelayo led her back to the sofa and the boxes of cold Sri Lankan takeout. "What you've been doing in class," he said, pulling on pants and shirt.

"It's not exactly the same. We don't get into fash-ioneering. But I might be able to run some crossreferences, see what turns up."

While he heated the takeout, Tossa uploaded the images she'd grabbed with her eyefeed cams.

Overhead, moonlight etched hieroglyphs into the skylight perched on the roof of the converted warehouse. Hairline cracks in the glassine, sutured together with cartilage-thick welts of epoxy, cast a shadowy web of veins on the concrete floor slab.

He brought the plates back to the coffee table. A moment later, a black-and-white still appeared on the d-splay. The photograph showed a man lounging next to an old gasoline-engine sedan, parked in front of a dry sand beach. The man sported a suit similar to the one Pelayo was waring.

"The suit's called a Windsor," Tossa said. "It's a modified version of a 'drape cut' suit originally created by this London tailor, Frederick Scholte. Its trademark features are slightly tapered sleeves, wide, pointed lapels, and shoulder pads."

"What time period are we talking?"

"Around 1935 to 1940."

Pelayo brushed at a short length of noodle clinging to his shirtsleeve. "What's the suit made out of?"

"Worsted yarn."

Pelayo shook his head.

"Cloth made out of thread spun from combed, stapled wool. It has a hard sheen to it. A super glossy, smooth finish."

"How about the shirt and tie?"

"Cotton and silk. The shoes are patent leather."

"Who wore Windsors?"

"White-collar professionals, mostly. Businessmen, politicians, entertainers. Like that. It was seen as a sign of success."

"What about religious leaders?"

"Sure. As soon as religion got to be big business, religious leaders became these big-time media personalities. Especially televangelists. They packaged and sold faith as entertainment."

"So they dressed the part."

"Exactly."

"That fits in with the corporate angle Lagrante was telling me about. The tough-ass business 'tude tempered by strict moral values."

Tossa frowned at something on her eyefeed. "This is interesting."

A new d-splay opened on the Vurtronic screen. It showed a large sphere next to a tall, triangular needle or spike. The design incorporated both geometric elements as part of a larger Christian-style cross.

"What is it?" he said.

"The Perisphere and Trylon," Tossa said, "from the 1939 New York World's Fair. They were part of something called The World of Tomorrow exhibition." She opened another d-splay, clicked through various images of the fair, then paused to chew on a sporkful of eggplant.

"We're talking Art Deco," he said.

"Futurism, too. It was all about science and technology. According to the datalib, 'this perfect machine-based world is one of the primary metanarratives of the twentieth century.'"

The d-splay expanded to accommodate a monolithic cityscape. The mountainous buildings were all composed of flat, sharp-edged planes with a grid of windows. There was no color, only charcoal shades of gray.

"The style pretty much eliminated all decorative ornamentation," Atossa said. "It was big on simple geometric shapes, like cubes and triangles."

A tall zigzag building, albumen silver and perforated with windows, replaced the cityscape.

"Function over form," Pelayo said.

Tossa nodded and swallowed.

Pelayo scraped more chunks of diced pineapple onto his plate. "So what does that have to do with the philm?"

"I guess it's trying to tap into that particular narrative. Simple, plain, fundamentalist. Whatever."

"But why R&D a whole new 'skin just to develop a new cast?" Pelayo shook his head, got up, and began to pace. It didn't make sense.

Tossa got up from the sofa and joined him next to the wall d-splay. She slid a hand into his left front pant's pocket. Gentle fingers curled around him and he felt himself grow stiff.

"No," he said.

"Why not?"

Uri had warned him about dirty-dicking himself. But Pelayo wondered if Uri was more worried about him passing something on to someone else. "IBT said not to. Plus…

Tossa stopped stroking, but kept her fingers in place. Holding him that way. "The blemish?" she said.