Limit of Vision (2 page)

A cleaning
robot had found Gabrielle. The little cindy had gone into the project suite just after five, tending to the carpets in the hallway and offices before entering the common room. At five-nineteen it contacted security, reporting that its air-quality sensors had detected the presence of noxious or hazardous airborne vapors.

Security discovered her body at five-thirty-two.

“Oh God no,” someone said. “It can’t be true.”

“Virg?”

That was Panwar. He sounded like a kid again, sixteen years old and scared.

Virgil sat hunched on a sofa in the retreat center’s lobby, his face in his hands. “God, my chest hurts.”

Panwar’s hand closed awkwardly on his shoulder. “Hold on to yourself, Virg. Don’t lose it. We still have to get there. Find out what happened.”

Virgil nodded. They’d driven over together from Honolulu. Significantly, Gabrielle had declined to carpool. She’d been in a hurry Saturday, when Virgil had called.
“
You two go ahead. I’ve got some business to take care of, so I might be a few minutes late.
”

So. Time to head back, then. He started to rise.

“No, wait here,” Panwar said. “I’ll get your car.”

“Get it tomorrow,” Nash Chou interrupted from somewhere nearby. His voice was soothing, fatherly. “It’s getting dark, and neither of you is in any shape to drive.”

So Nash drove them back in the rain. Virgil sat in the shotgun seat, his head bowed against his hand, drowning slowly in a grief that seemed to have nothing to do with feedback from the
L
ov
s.
How?
he wondered.
Why?
He was dimly aware of Nash behind the wheel of the Mercedes. The windshield wipers were on. Veils of rain pattered against the glass as the car accelerated into heavy traffic on the freeway.

A light started blinking, somewhere close to Virgil’s eye. Its insistent optical bleating tugged at his consciousness, teased him, forced him to look at it.

It was Panwar’s icon—an infinity sign made to look like a twisted lane of black space containing thousands of stars, set against a powder blue background. Why was it there on the screen of his farsights? Panwar was only a couple feet away, behind him in the backseat.

Still, it was easier to accept the link than to turn around. He tapped a quick code with his fingers, stimulating the microchips embedded in his fingertips to emit faint radio signals, detectable by his farsights.

Panwar’s face replaced the glittery icon. He looked wary, almost defensive as his gaze fixed on Virgil, but he didn’t speak. Instead, typed text in bright white letters appeared in Virgil’s field of view:

→
Don’t say a word!
Understand me?
Don’t let Nash know we’re talking.

Virgil stared at the message, trying to make sense of it, until a new couplet replaced the original sentences:

→
Virg?
You understand?

Without looking up or lowering the hand that shaded his farsights, Virgil dipped his head in a slight nod. More words arrived:

→
Pull yourself together, man, because you are scaring the shit out of me!!!

Virgil started to open his mouth.

→
No!
Don’t talk!!!
Listen to me, and try to remember what’s at stake.
Gabrielle’s dead.
I can’t believe it either, but we can’t bring her back.
We’re not that far along yet.

Virgil squeezed his eyes shut, wondering if they ever would have the power to heal death. The human body was a machine; he knew that. He had looked deep into its workings, all the way down to the level of cellular mechanics, and there was no other way to interpret the processes there than as the workings of an intricate, beautiful, and delicate machine.

Machines, though, could be repaired. They could be rebuilt, copied, and improved—and sometimes it seemed inevitable that all of that would soon be possible for the human machine too.

But not soon enough for Gabrielle.

When Virgil looked again, new words had replaced the old ones on his farsights:

→
Remember the Lovs, Virg.
HER Lovs.
The coroner could find them.

Panwar had found the arrow to pierce Virgil’s confusion. He sat up. His hand fell to his side. Every communication their farsights handled was encrypted and passed through anonymous servers, protecting them from pirate spammers and data thieves. Most farsights worked that way, producing messages that were untraceable and unreadable except by their intended recipient. Virgil felt grateful for that security as he scanned Panwar’s next message.

→
You see it now, don’t you, Virg?
EVERYTHING is at stake.

Nash glanced over at Virgil, his hairless brow furrowed in concern. “Better now, son?”

Virgil said: “I think so.” His voice was hoarse and thick with grief, but he was thinking again.

“It’s an unimaginable thing,” Nash said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

Virgil’s hand rose again to his forehead, this time to touch the tiny glass shells of his implanted
L
ov
s.

More words appeared in his field of view:

→
Answer him.

Virgil shook his head.
Unimaginable
. He turned to Nash. “What was she doing there? That’s what I can’t figure out.”

“She wasn’t scheduled to be in?”

“No. We had all agreed to take the weekend off. She was supposed to meet us at the retreat.”

“Maybe she had a private experiment under way,” Panwar said, his voice low, angry, coming from the blackness of the backseat.

Nash frowned. “Was competition a problem?”

It took a moment for Virgil to understand what he was asking. “God no! We got along fine.”

“That’s right,” Panwar said. “Of course there was competition. There always is at this level, but we understood one another.”

Nash spoke delicately: “Gabrielle had been working hard. All of you had. I’ve seen your logs. You’re all utterly dedicated to your work. Sometimes that’s good, but sometimes . . . it inflates the importance of what you’re doing. Had there been any . . . setbacks recently? Something that might have . . . disturbed her? Disappointed her? Nothing was mentioned in your last report, I know, but . . .” He let his question trail off.

Virgil stared at the rain shooting down through the headlights, momentarily hating Nash for asking such a thing. “She was happy,” he said, each syllable crisp. “There were no setbacks. And if there were, she would have handled them. She was tough, Nash. Smart.”
Beautiful.
Virgil could almost taste her skin; feel its softness beneath his lips.

Never again.

“Sorry,” Nash said. “I had to ask.”

Virgil turned to look out the side window at traffic flowing in parallel lanes and the black wall of rain forest beyond it. On the screen of his farsights, Panwar nodded.

→
Good man.
Now think.

Virgil didn’t want to. But Panwar was right, damn him. If Gabrielle’s implanted
L
ov
s were discovered, they could lose everything. Their jobs. Their freedom.

Their own
L
ov
implants.

That frightened him most of all. The implants were part of him now. Taking them away would be like taking away part of his mind—

Focus!

Keeping his right hand low against his thigh, Virgil started tapping codes, trying to remember the procedure for sending typed messages. His
R
osa
—his ROving Silicon Agent—appeared on-screen, ready to help him. A
R
osa
was an artificial intelligence program personalized for its user. Virgil’s
R
osa
appeared as a tiny, idealized woman of ancient Greece, her tawny face framed in iridescent hair. He called it Iris.

Iris whispered questions. Virgil tapped his responses, and a keyboard display appeared. After that it was easy. All he had to do was gaze at a letter. Iris would place it on a working line. With three or four letters in place the
R
osa
could usually guess the remainder of the word. Sometimes it only took one or two.

He typed:

♦
The only danger—
if
they find her Lovs.

The answer came back immediately.

→
Exactly.

♦
Will coroner ask questions?
Should assume body jewelry.

→
Maybe.
Maybe not.
But if Nash looks close, he
’ll know.

Virgil gave a slight, negative shake of his head and typed:

♦
Squeamish.
Won’t look close
.

→
Bet your life?

Virgil sighed, pressing his head against the cold glass of the side window. It came to exactly that, didn’t it? Gabrielle was gone and all they could do now was try to save themselves.

♦
WHAT HAPPENED TO HER???

→
Later!!!
Now, LOVS!
Have to extract, before body’s removed.
How?

♦
HER body
, Virgil reminded, sending the little jibe without really thinking.

Panwar glared at the words. Then his eyes darted as he composed a retort

→
Fuck you V.
Think I don’t care?

Virgil leaned against the seat back, trying to slow the beating of his heart. Her skin had been like cinnamon cream; her breasts smooth and full, the nipples honey brown.

“You were very close to her, weren’t you?” Nash asked, his voice low, and a touch embarrassed. He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t ask this, except . . . the investigation. They’ll want to know. Were you . . . lovers?”

Virgil shook his head. Then he shrugged. In a choked voice he answered, “Sometimes.”

Panwar’s image displayed comical surprise. Then the expression vanished like hail on a hot street. His black eyes radiated a terrible anger. Aloud he said, “I didn’t know.”

In typeface he added,

→
You bastard.

♦
She wanted it private.

→
You used Lovs?

Virgil stared straight ahead, not wanting to answer, not wanting to remember what was lost, but Panwar wouldn’t let it rest.

→
Answer me!

♦
Yes then!
Yes, yes, yes!

Her
L
ov
s had spoken to his in a closed loop of enhanced emotion. Never had he felt more connected with another human being.

No response came from Panwar, not right away. He brooded as they descended into the city. A few minutes later, Nash took the off-ramp to H-1. Traffic was almost bumper-to-bumper, but it hadn’t come to a stop yet. Virgil watched the skyscrapers slide by, until they reached the exit to downtown. The EquaSys building was only a few blocks from the waterfront. Virgil looked for it, picking it out from the surrounding towers. Gabrielle would be there.

New words printed themselves across his field of view:

→
Only one thing matters now, Virgil Copeland.
If anyone discovers Gabrielle’s Lovs, both of us are good as dead.
Remember that!
And don’t fuck up
.

Virgil didn’t answer. Nash stopped at the security gate to the underground garage. The guard stepped out of his booth to scan their faces. Virgil ignored the formalities. At the bottom of the ramp, parked beside the elevator bank, were two squad cars and a coroner’s white van.

2

In the fish
market at Can Tho a two-foot river carp lay on the chopping block while a diminutive housekeeper argued with the knife-wielding saleswoman for a better price. It was a common scene in the Mekong Delta of southern Vietnam, but it still made good video. Ela Suvanatat was using her farsights to record surreptitiously the early-morning dispute when the icon of her job broker appeared on the net goggles’ interactive screen.

Ela caught her breath, certain this link would be about the article she had prepared for
Nine Dragon Daily
. For two years, she had worked as a freelance producer, creating video articles for regional magazines. Her job broker was supposed to find her new assignments, but things had been slow lately. Ominously slow.
Let this be good news
, Ela thought.
Please
. She couldn’t help totting up in her mind the change left on her debit cards. Not enough to eat tonight, at least if she expected to pay for her room. She would have to start selling equipment soon.

She turned away from the market’s gossiping heart, looking for a place quiet enough for conversation. She found it in a few inches of free space at a wooden railing that overlooked a canal. Her intrusion earned her an angry stare from a young woman who squatted there, selling frog-meat filets, but Ela ignored her. As a foreigner, she was used to stares.

Ela was half-Thai, and half some unknown European vintage that had boosted her height past five-seven. At nineteen she could be described as lithe as a dancer—or freakishly tall and skinny, depending on one’s idea of beauty. It was easy to guess which view the frog woman held.

Looking out over the water, Ela tapped a code with her thumb and fingers, using her implanted microchips to accept the link. Joanie’s image appeared on Ela’s screen, head and shoulders only, overlaid against the bustle of wooden boats plying the canal. “Joanie? Did you hear from
Nine Dragon
? Did they like the article?”

Joanie was a pale, blunt-faced Chinese woman who always dressed in black. “Ela! Oh yes. They liked the article a lot . . .”

“But they didn’t buy it.”

“They didn’t buy it,” Joanie agreed. “The editor feels your work is too . . .
sophisticated
for the market he serves.”

Ela’s hands squeezed the fish-slippery railing. “Sophisticated? What is that supposed to mean? That my work assumes too much from the viewer? Or it’s just boring?”

“No, Ela, no. This is not criticism. Your work is wonderful. Passionate. Both in image and in voice. But not everyone has the benefit of your education.”

Ela shook her head. She had gotten her education free off the net from corporate sponsored schools. She’d learned fluent English by reading and listening to pirated books and magazines. Now her work was too intellectual and passionate for an affluent regional magazine? The journalism prize that had bought her passage out of Bangkok suddenly seemed a joke. She was supposed to be smart, so why was she always broke?

“All right,” Ela said, her voice low and very controlled. “You’re saying I need to adopt a simpler style.”

“No. Your style is beautiful, just as it is. And besides . . . viewers always know when you’re talking down to them. “

“Then what
are
you saying? That I can’t produce a dumb enough vid for the big markets?”

“You’re too bright for them, Ela. There’s a lot more fluff than substance in the world. You’ve just never been good with the fluff.”

Ela’s throat felt dry despite the humid air. “I did the piece on spec, Joanie. Can’t you market it somewhere else?”

“Well of course I’m trying . . .”

“But you don’t think it will sell.”

“This is not the end,” Joanie said. “It’s not our last shot. The Coastal Society article is still open after all, and you’re perfect for it. The editor wants you to do it.”

Ela turned her back to the railing, meeting again the glare of the frog woman. She returned it in full measure.

The Coastal Society was an environmental charity looking for a propaganda article on the impact of overfishing on the coastline of the Mekong Delta. To Ela, it was the literary equivalent of burger-flipping, only for less money. She had twice refused the assignment already. “That article’s still open because there’s no one else in this miserable shit-swamp of a country who would consider doing it at the fee they’re offering!”

Joanie looked apologetic. “It’s all I’ve got right now.”

Ela made a fist at the frog woman and won some small satisfaction when she looked away.

If she accepted this project, it would mean a two-day trip to the coast. She would need to hire a boat and rent diving equipment. Along the way there might be bribes, or “taxes” to pay so that by the time she got back to Can Tho there would be little money left. Certainly not enough to get her out of the country. But if she didn’t take the project, she wasn’t going to eat.

“Ela? I need to let them know.”

“Did you know I used to be good at telling fortunes?”

“Say yes, Ela. You have no real choice.”

“All right,” she said bitterly. “I’ll take it.”