Idolon (13 page)

Why had he agreed? He hadn't intended to. He had planned to politely decline, a courteous thanks but no thanks.

Fear. That was why. He'd been afraid Yukawa would discredit him. Not publicly, but behind his back; a well-placed word here or there and his career would be over. He'd had no choice.

He was being set up, al-Fayoumi realized. But what for?

Into the Trenches.

Before making the trip below sea level, into the excavated streets, Marta bought a pair of cheap, foreign, and probably stolen spex from a street vendor. The spex cost twice the going rate because she needed a pair with built-in GPS.

Marta checked for cops, then headed north on foot, first along Zmudowski, then Sunset, following the curve of the beaches and the houses piled against the crumbling seawall like cliff dwellings. The southernmost edge of the Trenches, where the streets started to slope down into the landfill, was marked by an intricate network of levees, dams, sump pumps, and drainage pipes designed to hold high tides and storm surges at bay. She skirted the old desalination plant that still supplied water to the Flats.

The buildings went from above ground to below ground, forming unbroken walls on either side of the street...

Squeezing her, Marta thought. Molding her into a another shape—another person. No different from 'skin, or the water divination that Nguyet used to supposedly transform herself.

Marta had never bought into the spiritual nature of water. The belief that water responded directly to prayers, thoughts, or ideas by forming differently shaped crystalline structures seemed ridiculous.

"People are mostly water," Nguyet argued. "Sixty percent or more. If I change the character of the water in me, I change my character." To her it was obvious. A direct one-to-one correlation.

Marta had seen the pictures, of course. The books Nguyet used to perform the divination process showed dozens of crystals, how there was a particular shape, or family of shapes, for different emotions and states of balance or imbalance. Even words like "love," "peace," and "hate" equated to a particular shape. The crystals were no different than runes,
I Ching
hexagrams, or the signs of the Zodiac when it came to analyzing oneself, answering questions, and deciding on a particular course of action. Except that a person could influence events by realigning their physical being.

"How can water respond to words?" Marta had once asked. "It can't read or hear. So how does it know what message you're sending?"

"Because it's an expression of the same universal consciousness we are all part of."

If the logic behind the prayer crystals was flawed, then the metaphysics at the heart of them were even more mysterious and idiosyncratic. The exact same word, or expression, in different languages could produce different crystalline shapes. Two different types of stimuli—music or words—could supposedly produce the same, or similar-shaped, crystals.

"Everything is connected," Nguyet had told her. "If I am in balance, then the world around me will be in balance. More harmonious."

Marta queried the GPS indicator on her spex and turned down a side street covered by a barrel vault. Architectural graphene stretched tight over the half pipe kludged together out of Kevlex and aluminum tubing.

The Flats were beginning to wind down for the night. Most of the retail outlets had closed. Marta passed a restored clothing store and an Art Brico gallery, found-art jewelry fashioned out of bits of excavated debris. The bars were still open, the late-night clubs and cafes, spilling music, laughter, and dank conversation into the night air.

Marta wondered if the person on the radio had been Concetta. Was the shortwave her way of letting them know she was alive, and to tell them how to get in touch with her?

Marta's heart stuttered when a red indicator on her spex started to blink. Not far now—only a couple of hundred meters. With each step, the light blinked faster and her pulse sped up to keep pace. When the coordinates matched the ones she had entered earlier, the LED glowed solid green.

She stood in front of a store that appeared to be a combination pawnshop and mini flea mart. A sign on the window said EGGED, ROWED, AND OLE GOODS. Whatever that meant.

Was Concetta inside, waiting for her?

She raised her hand—it felt heavy as concrete— and rapped on the door. Ten seconds passed, twenty, with no answer. Even the door remained silent. Maybe it wasn't smart, or maybe it was just being tight-lipped after closing up for the night.

What if she'd gotten the coordinates wrong? Misheard, miscopied, or misentered them?

Sweat broke out on the nape of her neck. Her face felt hot. There was no way to replay the broadcast. If she'd misheard, the information was lost.

She tried the handle, a sort of bone-and-metal claw. It felt like shaking hands with a movie prop, some grade-B prosthesis animated by wires and gears. To her surprise, the hand tightened around hers and tinny laughter spilled from a speaker embedded in the door.

"Welcome," a voice said. "Come in."

Mechanical fingers gripped her. She twisted her hand to free it, but the prosthesis turned with her. Then a latch clicked, the door swung open, and the hand let go, freeing her to enter the shop.

A carnival game, Marta thought. A fun-house gimmick. She adjusted the power on the spex, maxed the night-vision setting, and looked around.

The shop was gloomy, lighted only by the sputtering neon of the sign branded onto the window. She heard water dripping, the steady plink plink of seepage collecting in an underground tank. Glass display cases, sheet-metal cabinets, and adjustable shelves lined the walls of the room. Shadows cob-webbed the contents: a stuffed elephant here, a wooden train there, a clown-faced jack-in-the-box. Kevlex fiber mesh hung from the ceiling, heavy with detritus. The air felt puffy, swollen. It pressed against her, tender and inflamed.

"Hello?" It sounded as if a thick cotton pillow was pressed against her mouth, muffling her voice.

No answer.

"Concetta..."

"I'm not interested in your name." The harsh whisper scraped out of the darkness, choking her off. "Or the reason you're here."

Marta's breath snagged on her vocal cords. Finally tore free. "There's something you should know. I'm not—"

"Have faith," the voice said.

"All right." She wet her lips.

"Have faith..." The voice paused, expectant.

Her mind raced. Have faith in what? In who? Then, it came to her.

"Become a true believer," she said, haltingly repeating the message. "And all your prayers will be forgiven."

The room seemed to exhale. "This way," the voice said.

A grainy rectangle of light, roughly the size and shape of a door, appeared three or four meters to her right.

Taking a breath, Marta walked toward the opening. She could see a chair inside the other room, facing a luminous green wall crisscrossed by abstract lines reminiscent of Jackson Pollock or the ghosts of high-energy particles.

Several steps from the door, a fuzzy silhouette appeared behind the wall. The wall wasn't solid, she realized, but some sort of hospital green Kevlex or cellophane sheet plastic. The person behind it moved slowly, meticulously, with precise, almost mechanical, movements.

The room itself was small, not much larger than a closet. No LEDs or bulbs of any kind. The only light came through the membrane in front of her.

"Close the door."

She pulled the door shut behind her. Past the front edge of the chair, two holes in the curtain stared at her. Not holes, exactly, but openings to tubes of some kind, spaced about twenty-five centimeters apart. "Are you scared?"

She nodded, her tongue dry and shrunken. "You should be."

Why?
she wanted to ask. But the question cowered in her mouth.

"I'm not here to reassure you," the man said. At least she thought it was a man, but the voice was clipped, as clockwork as his movements.

Something clicked, then hissed, on the other side of the curtain. A rubber pressure seal.

"Sit down. Facing the screen."

Marta slid onto the chair. The legs scraped on naked concrete. The silhouette took a seat directly in front of her so that together they formed a single shadow between them—an interstitial ghost where their lives met.

"Place your hands in the gloves."

Marta leaned forward and slid her hand into the holes. It was like reaching into the hollow arms of a space suit.

"All the way," the voice said. "As far as you can."

Marta reached deeper and encountered gloves. She wriggled her fingers in, all the way to the tips. Something round and cold pressed snugly into the palm of her right hand, nestling there like a coin.

"Good." The man seemed satisfied. "Don't move."

His hands took hers, probing. He found the wafer and pressed it firmly into place.

He was a doctor, she realized, used to dealing with patients. His examination was experienced, his movements confident. Any quivering came from her, not him.

Why did she need to be examined? Was he looking for something in particular or was this standard operating procedure?

"You have beautiful bone structure. Very delicate."

Was this a compliment, or a clinical observation detached of emotion and judgment? Before she could answer she felt a brief, needle-sharp prick in her palm. Out of reflex she tried to curl her fingers around the sliver of pain.

Her fingers refused to move. They felt numb, leaden. She jerked back, away from the curtain, but he had cuffed her by the wrists, metal bands holding her securely in place.

Panic seized her.

"Relax," the man said. He caressed her hands through the gloves, stroking them the way he would a dying animal. "This won't take long. A few minutes of discomfort. Nothing more."

She couldn't speak, couldn't cry out. Chemical scissors had cut the neural circuit that transmuted thought into sound.

Her mouth tingled.

Poison, she thought.

The tingling spread, a numb flush that started in her extremities and worked its way inward. Soon it would infiltrate her chest. When it did her heart would stop, fall suddenly and irrevocably silent.

Her mind thrashed. She opened her mouth to speak, and found that she couldn't breathe. A vacuum had formed in her lungs.

"That's it," the man said. "Not so bad. It will be worse if you fail to make your next connection. Fatal, I'm afraid. You would do well to remember that."

In other words, there was no turning back. She was committed. The only way out was forward.

He released her hands. Sensation flooded back into them. Her lungs heaved and she coughed, clearing her throat of saliva, snot, tears.

Abruptly the shadow stood, becoming lighter and more diffuse. Shaken, Marta withdrew her hands. Her palm was fine, no sign of injury. "What happens now?" she managed.

"Go." The voice softened to gray velour. "You have forty-eight hours to make contact. After that..."

"Go where?" she asked. "Contact who?"

There was no response. The shadow spread into a hazy vignette, then dispersed altogether. The glow behind the partition dimmed, engulfing her in gangrenous, green-tinged darkness.

Marta stood, pushing the chair back with her legs, and groped her way to the door. She fumbled with the latch, then staggered blindly into the shop. Half a minute later she found herself standing in the street, gasping for air and looking giddily around her.

She couldn't go home. Not now, maybe never. She couldn't risk putting her father, or Nguyet, in danger. She might expose them to whatever she'd been injected with. Until she knew what it was, what she was supposed to do, she couldn't go near them.

Why hadn't the man told her something? Anything? How did he expect her to do the right thing?

A shelter, she decided. She could spend the night there. In the morning, she'd get in touch with Sister Giselle. Then she'd go to the Get Reel and collect whatever back pay Jhon owed her.

And after that?

Have faith.
There wasn't much else she could do.

Steam billowed up from a manhole and slipped along the street, a white finger  working its way under the dark elastic of the night.

From his unmarked car, parked down the street from the North Beach apartment building, van Dijk watched the mist slink into an alleyway, dim the LED array on a security light, and fondle the skirts of a Betty Boop ad for Hongtasan cigarettes.

There was no sign of Lisette. In the hour he'd been watching, no one had entered or exited the building.

It didn't look as if the girl would be coming back anytime soon.

Van Dijk logged into SFPD central data and queried a datician regarding the status of the simage array Apodaca's crime-scene unit had sprayed on the walls of Lisette's apartment, the dead woman's apartment, and the stairwell leading up to them.

According to the datician, the array had identified and recorded several DiNA-authorized residents in the past twenty-four hours. But no one, identified or unidentified, had approached or tried to enter either of the apartments under surveillance.

In addition to simages—the simulated image created by the nanotrodes woven into electronic skin to produce a virtual construct—the array recoded standard optical images. Visible spectrum resolution was limited—so unphilmed articles of clothing, hair, and nonelectronic skin tended to be sketchily translucent—but for anyone using the stairwell, van Dijk would see both a virtual image and a standard optical image.

The same would be true of the apartments. He'd see whatever new philm, if any, had appeared on the programmable wallpaper when no one was around.

Decorative philm told as much about a person as the philm they wore. A lot of people changed interior decor at regular preprogrammed intervals— nights and weekends were common—to create a certain ambiance. If the walls in the victim's apartment had rephilmed in the last twenty-four hours, it might tell him where she was from, where she spent her free time, or where she wanted to go.

Van Dijk entered the building and made his way up the stairwell. On the second-floor landing he paused, turned to look back down the steps, and issued a mental command to the datician to flash him the recordings from the stairwell.

Time-lapse,
he instructed.
Compression ratio: sixty to one. Split d-splay.

The stairwell flickered under a faint light imbalance as the datician downloaded the simage clip to his eyefeed.

The first recording had a time stamp of fifteen hours ago, at seven in the morning.

An old woman appeared six steps below him. She had philmed her face and hands only. Katharine Hepburn. On the simage d-splay, her face and hands floated like bodiless apparitions. The rest of her was invisible, indicating she had no other 'skin on her body or philmed articles of clothing. On the optical d-splay, she bent under a spectral wool jacket and the weight of a grocery bag as she gripped the banged-up handrail and hauled herself toward him.

Three steps from the landing, she passed out of range of the array and disappeared from both d-splays.

Thirty seconds later, half an hour real time, a school-age kid materialized, bounded toward him, and blinked out of existence in less than a second.

In five minutes, van Dijk had watched five hours real time pass before him. A quick cross-reference told him that the old woman and three other people were residents. The kid, on the other hand, was a visitor, and had left a few minutes after storming up the stairs.

A friend of Lisette's?

The kid had philmed herself as a cast member of the Ghost Dragons, waring one of the spirit masks that conveyed special powers, like iron fists or fire breath. He wasn't able to tell if the kid had actually been 'skinned, or if the mask was nanoFX paint or a graphene prosthetic that could be put on and taken off.

Van Dijk ran the kid's DiNA, which yielded a home address in a coop a couple of blocks away, then made his way down the hall to the dead woman's apartment to see what the walls could tell him.

_______

He stood in the middle of the room and replayed the simage recording. Not much change in the last twenty-four hours. The decor remained resolutely fixed: pine veneer flooring, walls philmed in white brick, Art Nouveau stained-glass windows. Only the red-and-black-framed Japanese partitions arranged in front of the windows as privacy screens re-philmed at regular intervals, a built-in factory preset that mechanically cycled through a packaged series of Hokusai and Hiroshige woodcut prints like
The Great Wave
and
Plum Estate.
The sequence didn't appear to have been revised or edited in any way. It was off the shelf.

Usually, test subjects were hardcore philmheads, "any ware, anywhere" types who datahoused vast collections of philm and even snipped their own images for private use or resale.

Not this woman. Why? What was different about her?

If she was new, maybe she hadn't had time to collect an image library. Or maybe she was just being cautious, afraid if she flaunted the betaware, she'd become a target for black-market rip artists and bootleggers.

Possible. But he had the feeling there was something more.

Van Dijk instructed the datician to continue the simage log for another twenty-four hours—it was a long shot, but something might show up—then left the apartment, no closer to figuring out who she was than before.

The simage in Lisette's apartment was troubling in other ways. In addition to the "Ghost Dragon" Chinamation on the cheap Vurtronic d-splay, the walls were philmed with toons. Unicorns and faeries, mostly, with a few insects tossed in for good measure. The same half dozen images looped over and over again, the visual equivalent of comfort food kids snacked on continuously, even obsessively.

The girl was alone, left to her own devices while mom outsourced herself in another city or country. Van Dijk pictured her sitting in the sofa, gnawing her nails bloody while the toons kept her company and she tried to cast herself as a Ghost Dragon.

That explained the watercolors in the bathroom. She had no way to 'skin or philm herself. So she painted her face, applying the mask the way the performers had in the old Chinese operas.

What about the dead woman? How did she fit into the picture? Had she taken the girl under her wing? Was she a surrogate mother, a friend, or possibly a big sister? Van Dijk could see it happening...

_______

The door stood open a crack. A sword-thin blade of light slashed across the floor of the hallway.

Eight-year-old Kasuo crept up to the door on tiptoes, careful to avoid being cut by the light. Inside, Mr. Natal knelt on a yoga mat on the floor. His back was to the door. He wasn't wearing a shirt, but his skin wasn't naked. It was covered with so many tattoos it looked as if he was wearing a black Hawaiian shirt decorated with green leaves and red flowers. The tattoos wrapped over his shoulders and continued down his arms in colorful sleeves.

"It's not polite to stare," Mr. Natal said. Kasuo started. "I'm... I'm..." Mr. Natal grunted. "There's nothing to be sorry about. It's I who should apologize for not inviting you in."

Kasuo hesitated, uncertain if he should run to the safety of his mother's apartment. His gaze snagged on the man's feet, tucked under his buttocks. The soles had been inked to look like bamboo sandals.

"Well?" Mr. Natal didn't turn his head to look at him. Probably he was watching the door through an eyefeed. "What are you waiting for?"

The question felt more like a command. There was no turning back. Kasuo eased open the door and crossed the room.

"I was just..." The explanation was swept away by the roar of his pulse in his ears.

"Come here. Let me see you."

Kasuo edged around the yoga mat. The man's face reminded him of smooth, rain-wet stone.

"You are Kasuo," Mr. Natal said.

Kasuo nodded, surprised the man knew his name. Kasuo and his mother had only been in the apartment down the hall one week. As far as Kasuo knew, his mother and Mr. Natal had never spoken. Mr. Natal was a hermit who kept to himself.

"You're curious," Mr. Natal said.

Kasuo nodded, unable to speak. He'd just noticed the long knife arranged on the yoga mat in front of Mr. Natal's knees.

"Good. But you're afraid."

Another nod. The blade of the knife seemed to shimmer with silvery heat waves.

"That is also good. Still, you want to know what I'm doing. That is why you are here."

Kasuo swallowed to make room for a response. His silence swelled like a blister. The more it grew, the more uncomfortable it became.

"Well?"

Kasuo flinched under the sudden sharpness in Mr. Natal's voice. "I wanted to..."

"Speak up! I can't hear you."

"I wanted to know what you were doing," he blurted.

"Since you asked, I'll tell you," Mr. Natal said. He became suddenly calm, there was no trace of the outburst. "I was thinking."

"About what?"

"Nothing."

"How can you think about nothing?" He already knew how someone could think about everything. His mother did it all the time. She was always worrying. At night he heard her in the kitchen, drinking tea to help her sleep.

"A good question," Mr. Natal said. "It is not as easy as it looks. But I can see you already know that."

Like a compass needle, Kasuo's attention returned to the blade. "How come you have a knife?"

"It helps me think."

Did his mother have a knife when she stayed up? "How?"

"It sharpens my mind."

Kasuo watched light from the door glimmer on the edge of the blade. Maybe Mr. Natal could tell him how to help his mother think about nothing.

Mr. Natal tilted his head, as if listening. "Your mother needs you," he said.

"She does?" Kasuo didn't hear her calling.

"Thank you for visiting. Please shut the door on your way out."

Kasuo ran back to his apartment. In the morning, there was a commotion from the hallway. Shouts, followed by sudden silence. Kasuo peeked. A crowd of floor-mates had gathered around Mr. Natal's door at the far end of the hall. The door was open, but none of the people went in. They huddled outside, whispering among themselves.

When Kasuo started down the hallway, his mother caught him by the arm, holding him back. "But I want to see," he said.

"It's better if you don't," his mother said. A moment later the wail of sirens came to them from the street below.

The sound haunted Kasuo for years. Why had Mr. Natal killed himself? It didn't make any sense. Mr. Natal hadn't seemed depressed or upset. He had been calm.

And yet something, or someone, had made him plunge the knife into his stomach.

Who—or what—was Mr. Natal protecting or running from? Had he been thinking about someone else when the blade entered him, or himself? Had he been thinking about everything, or nothing?

_______

The simage had ended. Van Dijk, standing in the middle of the room, grew aware of a soft whir. Annoyed, he craned his head, searching for the source of the sound.

A blue damselfly clung to the wall. It appeared to be injured—only two of its four wings were moving. The opposite set of wings and the tail end of its long abdomen were pressed flat to the wall.

Van Dijk was about to turn away when he noted that the size, shape, and iridescent blue of the damselfly matched the toon dragonflies he'd seen zipping about in the simage, harassing faeries and perching on unicorn horns.

Van Dijk moved closer. The damselfly wasn't real.

It was a toon in the process of emerging from the wall, like a cicada from the ground. As he watched, a third wing came free, leaving only the fourth wing and the last couple of abdominal segments embedded in the graphene.

The dameselfly had the head of fish. What the hell?

Van Dijk reached for the toon. Before he could cage it in his fingers, the last wing and abdominal segment peeled free from the graphene and the damselfly, fully formed and functional, flashed under the ceiling LEDs. It circled for a moment, darting here and there, hovering over him for an instant before zigzagging off.

Van Dijk turned to see the damselfly zip through the open doorway. Hurrying into the hallway he forced his thoughts to slow as he queried the SFPD datician, speaking out loud so the datacian could learn his synapse firing pattern for damselfly, a word he hadn't used before. "Image type. Blue damselfly. Identify."

"Enallagma cyathigerum,"
the datician replied. "Considered the bluest of the blue damsels. Widespread and common." A snapshot flashed over his eyefeed. "The males have a club-shaped black mark on the second abdominal segment and broad antehumeral stripes along the dorsal surface of the thorax..."

Van Dijk stopped listening. The damsel was gone. He returned to the apartment. "Play simage," he said. "Last five minutes. Realspeed."

He watched the initial stages of the damsel's emergence. First, the head and legs. Then the thorax and the first filament-veined wing.

"Image source?" he said when the sequence completed.