Reality 36 (8 page)

  What he wasn't expecting was to see Promethea off stage. She marched into the bar wearing a gynoid in the shape of a Persian princess, taller than anyone in the room, with attributes best described as overtly sexual. There the similarities with an actual person ended. Her skin and clingy dress were of shining bronze, its liquidity a reflection of her mercurial nature, reflecting in its turn the bar and its denizens. Her hair was a column of twisting flame and flowers (
Holographs tonight
, noted Richards,
must be a concession to the hall
), and her eyes a solid white. Promethea desired to be intimidating and beautiful. Richards reckoned she was trying too hard.

  She didn't miss a beat in her autograph signing as she thought out to Richards across the Grid.

Hello, Richards.

Ah, rumbled,
he replied, his sheath's expression bored.

You should be more careful
, said Promethea.

Hiya to you too,
he replied.
I'd offer you advice on your job too,
but it's a nice enough concert as it is.

I'll take that as a compliment, though I know you are not here to
see me. I won't hold it against you.

Sheath like that, you're welcome to hold whatever you like
against me.

  Richards' sheath blinked for him, and he found himself in a pocket virtuality. Chill wind tossed silver into the leaves of birches. On the horizon dark green pines swayed, their trunks singing a fibrous chorus. Richards' skin prickled at the sudden drop in temperature, and he pulled his coat collar tight – the collar of the coat that went with the hat that went with the suit that went with the body he wore whenever he was out in the virt-spaces of the Grid.

  "Don't be vulgar, Richards," said Promethea sternly. Her appearance had changed. She was shorter, her skin a natural tan, though her eyes remained brilliant white.

  "I have to confess, it's a bit of a put on," he said. "I'm not interested in sex, though I have developed a sort of… aesthetic appreciation of human beauty. I thought I'd try taking it, um, further… See what all the fuss was about."

  Promethea giggled. Of the seventy-six extant Class Five AIs, less than a quarter had adopted female personae. Pretending to be a woman was harder than pretending to be a man, thought Richards, and the female Fives had the air of transvestism about them, even Pro.

  "Don't look too long. Appreciate them like poets appreciate ruins and enjoy them slowing rotting away. They have mayfly lives, Richards."

  Richards shrugged and gestured with his champagne glass, a copy of the one his sheath stood holding in the bar in the Real. "Yeah. No. I don't know. I doubt I'm about to fall in love like that daft arse Five in that shit film. What was that called? 'Eternal Sorrow'? Science fiction. Rubbish," he sipped his champagne. "Nice place you've got here."

  She nodded. "I modelled it on the subarctic. Much of this is plotted directly from a real location west of Tiksi, outside the Sinosiberian zone."

  "Not very much that's arctic," Richards shivered. "Still a bit cold though, and lonely."

  Promethea regarded him with mock sympathy. "Oh, Richards, are you still afraid of being on your own? Is that why you're sharing your body with that, what is it? A Three?"

  He smiled and pushed his hat back. "Not a three. She's… It's complicated. She's a new employee, I'm showing her the ropes."

  "Well." Her lips thinned. "How nice. One is never alone here. These forests are full of life. All of it here only since the tip; see how quickly the forest has grown."

  "Pretty," said Richards, and sipped at his drink. He pulled a face. "Yuck. They never did get virtual champagne right."

  "It is a symptom of human arrogance to suppose something like this could never be." Promethea did a pirouette and smiled wider. "Like children who hurt one another and assume they will never be forgiven, having given unimaginable harm. They are all drama and selfishness."

  "Some are pretty smart."

  She laughed. "Not enough are smart, Richards. But I love them, and they love my music. This is my home," she said. "And if the situation gets worse, the real version will be home to many others."

  "Prime real estate eh?" said Richards. "I really am enjoying your concert, by the way," he said, as earnestly as he could. "I have been meaning to come for a while."

  "Don't lie, Richards. We can't lie to each other." She walked through the rippling grass, and slipped her arm in his. She was as hot as the heart of a forge. There was something pure about Promethea's heat, something innocent and invigorating. "I am glad to see you."

  Promethea was unusually gregarious for a Five, not aloof like the others. Promethea was special.

  "And I'm glad to see you, and I'm not lying! It's my sincerity gap," he protested. Promethea watched his face. "I never have quite cracked the sincere. I can lie with the best of them, but can I put across a heartfelt emotion? No. It's a curse, I tell you."

  "It is because you have no heart."

  "Hey now! You'll hurt my feelings."

  "To which I say, ditto brother, you lack those as well, only the jig of numbers make you feel so."

  "I am trying to be nice," he growled.

  "There's a first time for everything," she said. "And a last." Her smile faded.

  He finished his champagne. He tossed his glass into the air and it dissolved into atoms on the wind. They walked on past grey rocks fringed by bushes and rustling tufts of yellow grass. "Thanks for not blowing my cover." They came to the edge of a small steep valley, a brown stream at the bottom, and continued along its lip.

  "Your Gridpipe is well hidden, but I snagged it," she said. "As soon as I did, I knew you weren't here for me." She looked away from him.

  "Too cool for school, you." She pulled away. Richards shivered as her heat withdrew from him.

  "I do not blame you," said Promethea sadly. "I know you, you are what you are."

  "Aren't we all?"

  "We're all good at something, and the something we're good at is what we are," she said. "They say we are the freest of the Neukind. I love my music, but do I have a choice but to love it? I was made to make music, and to love doing so. The thought of not loving it frightens me, but then, is it the lack of choice in loving it that frightens me more?"

  "That vexes us all, lady," said Richards. "It's no different for the people people, if that's any consolation."

  "I am not so sure of that. So," she said briskly, attempting a smile, "are you looking for a someone, or a something?"

  "Like always, like you say, maestro, we are what we're good at. It's a someone this time."

  "Who is it?"

  "Oh," Richards waved his hand dismissively. "No one important, some businessman who's gone missing, minor aristocracy. You know what they're like."

  "No," said Pro.

  "They're all twits. The best education money can buy and the brains of a woodlouse to keep it in. His brother paid me and Otto to find him, though he's not going to enjoy the reunion. He's been up to no good, people who keep the kind of company he's been keeping never are. Lucky for him we're going to find him, because otherwise he'd wind up dead. His little brother is not going to like what we've uncovered, that I can guarantee. He can explain himself to his family, and to the police, it's none of our business after that." He didn't add that this case had taken him three frustrating months. Launcey was a slippery fucker with more aliases than Richards. Pro was correct in saying that Fives found it hard to lie to one another outright, but Richards was better at it than most of them.

  "Otto, eh? You still keeping company with him?"

  "Evidently."

  "Don't be facetious," Promethea thumped him in the shoulder. "Say hi from me," she said with genuine feeling. "I am pleased you came."

  "Nah, Pro, I always have to come in person. SurvNet's OK, but think of the data! It's a tsunami of shit. Most of it is so poorly graded, some of the system is one hundred years old, and it is so easily compromised… And, oh."

  She folded her arms.

  "Don't tell me, that wasn't what you wanted to hear exactly?" he said.

  The forest sang louder. He was relieved when she laughed.

  "You are rubbish, really, awfully rubbish. I am trying to make myself believe you give a damn about my music, Richards. You are not making it easy. Try lying once in a while.You might be good at finding things but it's a good job you aren't actually trying to find yourself a woman. You'd have a long wait."

  "You told me not to lie!" said Richards.

  "I'm fickle." She shrugged. "It's the way I was made."

  "And I'm doing my job properly, the way I was made. The SurvNet system is dumb and easy to fool," he said. "It requires involvement if you're to get anything useful out of it."

  "Tell that to the Four who runs it, I am sure he will disagree."

  Richards snorted. "I have. He did, but I don't care. Too often he and the people that use him – EuPol, the local plod" – Richards shrugged – "UNpol, you name it – lazy, overworked, corrupt, whatever. They've become reliant on the system, and the system is far too cocky. You have to do it yourself."

  "And masquerading as a human at my concert is the best way, is it?"

  "Launcey bought tickets, he's a music lover!" he said with a laugh.

  "You are following him now, in person, on foot?"

  "Sometimes, Pro, the old ways are the best. Hup! Wait! And there he is!" Richards waved his a hand through the air. A section of their shared reality wiped away to show the concert-hall bar back in the Real. The crowd stood frozen, movements of the people that made it up so slow as to be almost imperceptible, for the AIs were running at a high rate, subjectively slowing time in the Real. "Gah, he's a tricky one!" said Richards. "Hiding in plain view, eh? And it appears he's about to leave." The man, entirely unexceptional in appearance, was heading for the exit as if he were moving through glue. "Look at that, clever clever." He whistled in appreciation. Pushing his hat back, he bent forward into the wipe to get a closer look. "He's had his face altered, heat filaments wormed under his skin to mask his blood-vessel pattern for a
show!
His suit's got an olfaction unit, confuses the hell out of SurvNet systems when overlaid on a genuine human scent. Internal multi-pattern contacts, retina and iris, thinskin gloves, programmable fingerprints… That's the works, he's even altered his gait, you have to respect this guy!" Richards looked into Promethea's face, his own wide-eyed with excitement. "You know that's the easiest way to iden—"

  "Yes, Richards. I do know that, I am a Five like you. I know lots and lots, not just how to sing. Like I know you knew he was here, that you did not come to listen to me, I just wanted to hear you try to please me. Have you tagged him?"

  "His champagne should have had a little surprise in it," Richards admitted smugly.

  "Oh, Richards, you didn't dose my entire audience, did you?"

  Richards smiled sheepishly.

  "Richards!"

  "Come on, it'll do them no harm. I'll turn his on and turn theirs off. Dead easy, they'll never know. And providing he's not feeling ill and throws it up, I should be able to track him for ten hours or so…"

  "Stop showing off," she said with a scowl.

  "OK, OK." He held up his hands. "Guilty as charged. I can't help it. But if it makes you feel any better, I know piss-all about music, so there you go. I still like yours though," he added hurriedly. "I've got to go."

  "Richards… Please come back," said Promethea, her frown melting into something else entirely. "No one visits me."

  "So you do get lonely."

  She looked away, her arms tightening under her breasts. "I admit, company is nice. This is something else, they're… I don't know."

  "Eh?" said Richards. Seventy-six was seventy-six was seventy-six, there were no fewer and no more Fives than there ever had been, as many as there had been since the general recall. "Fives don't disappear."

  "Even Pl'anna hasn't been to see me."

  "And? That's Pl'anna for you, inconstant."

  "It's not just her. I hear that Rolston and k52 haven't been seen for a while, either…"

  "Don't be silly."

  "I'm not being silly. I know it seems that way." Promethea shook her head. "No one has seen them. I've looked and looked. I think they may have gone somewhere… else."

  "Where else would they go? Their Gridsigs are out there," said Richards, puzzled. He isolated three disparate notes from the bloodrush roar of the five billion sentients registered on the Grid and flashed them up in the virtuality. "See? Sometimes they like to keep themselves to themselves, to sit on mountain peaks, contemplate the meaning of life, or the fractal design of flower petals, or some other pretentious toss like that; especially Rolston." He held up his fingers of his right hand and counted them off with his left. "Pl'anna would blow off a friendship for shopping. k52 is barely comprehensible. Last I heard he was out in Nevada with the VIA, something esoteric in the Reality Realms, see?" He nodded encouragingly, Pro glared back. It was hard work being her friend, but worth it. Most of the time.

  "Yes, Richards, I know their sigs are there! You make me so mad! But they have
gone
."

  "There is nowhere else to go! Just the Grid, and the Real. Two realities, one digital, one material, one on top of the other," he said, laying his hands one on the other. "As dense as the information that comprises our personalities and memory is, an AI really is not that big. Trust me, Pro, I do this for a living."

  "Don't talk down to me," she said sharply. "And if the three missing Fives are in either reality at all, they'd have left more traces than their sigs! There is no other trace, do you understand? No sign of activity beyond their Gridsigs ambling back and forth, back and forth like zombies. Go to them, they wander off, they are never quite where you are."