The Resurrected Man (21 page)

She stiffened slightly. “If that's the way you want it—”

“No.” He raised a hand, immediately regretting what he'd said.
Wrong, wrong!
“You misunderstand me. Losing Lindsay was a shock, yes, but not for the reasons you think.”

She stared at him. “I know he wasn't your natural father. Is that what you mean?”

“No. Where my genes come from was irrelevant to both of us.”

“Then what? I don't understand.”

“It's hard to explain. We were never particularly close. He took me into his custody so he could watch a child grow. I was an experiment in developmental cognition. By studying me, he hoped to learn more about growing his own AIs, which is what he was really interested in. By the time I grew up, he'd lost interest in me. We just lived together out of habit.”

She moved away to lean against a stack of equipment. “I guess that explains something,” she said, not really looking at him. “You talked about what he was doing a lot—his latest projects and so on—but
never about
him.
It always seemed a bit strange. That, and the fact that I never met him.”

“There was never an opportunity,” he lied. “He didn't get out much, unless he had to. He never used d-mat—”

“I know, and that only made me wonder why he moved out here.”

“He liked the quiet, the privacy.” Jonah felt a familiar frustration at justifying the actions of someone he himself disagreed with. “There's a small airstrip not far away where he kept a private plane. If he really needed to travel, it took him only a few hours to get to Perth or Darwin, and from there to the rest of the world.”

“Did you fly with him much?”

“No. You know I had no problem with d-mat. And prior to that we flew on commercial jets like everyone else.” He turned the memory over in his mind, savouring its bitter-sweet taste. The bubble was growing again. “I miss the planes, sometimes.”

She nodded and shot him a sharp glance. “You're changing the subject, aren't you?”

“Yes.”

“It bothers you?”

“What do you think?”

“I don't know
what
to think, Jonah. You've just told me more about Lindsay in five minutes than you did in all the time we knew each other.”

“I've got nothing to hide, Marylin. And there's nothing I wouldn't tell you, eventually.” The words came like a confession, from the deepest part of his soul, and his irritation flared at being so vulnerable. “Besides, you never told me about
your
parents.”

“I didn't think you were interested. And it's not relevant, anyway. We're here to discuss you.”

“True, but I'll be damned if I'll let you suck me dry. If you want me to help you, how about helping me along the way?”

“How?”

“Give me some answers. You said you'd show me the file on Lindsay's death if I helped you, but you haven't even mentioned it yet. I presume I'll only get it when you're good and ready, or when I have something concrete to bargain with.”

“You think we're playing games, hanging onto the file to guarantee your compliance?”

“Are you telling me you're not?”

“No, I'm not telling you that.”

“Is
that what you're doing?”

Her stare didn't waver, but she said nothing.

“I thought so,” he said, his voice bitter.

“It's not that simple, Jonah.”

“No? What is it you're hiding, then?”

“Nothing, I swear. We just want answers.”

“Maybe you should look somewhere else.”

He turned the chair and wheeled it out of the study. She followed him, startled at first, then alarmed.

“Jonah. What are you talking about?”

“I can't help you like this.
That's
what I'm talking about.”

“I don't get it. Will you stop and talk to me!”

He didn't slow down. “This case. It's too big, too complex, and it's been going too long. There's so much data I'd need a year to sift through it all.”

“It's just a matter of starting somewhere—”

“Bullshit. It's a matter of teamwork. You and your buddies work together just fine, but I'm an outsider; I'll never fit in. That doesn't worry me in itself, but it will be a problem in an investigation this size. It'll always be a case of me versus you—even if you do trust me completely, which I'm sure you don't. It's a sham.”

He stopped at the entrance to the lounge, not sure where to go from there. He'd initially planned to leave looking in the study till later, but that forced him to confront the rest of the
unit. The only other place he had left to go was back to the KTI medical centre.

“Jonah, you can't just give up on this.” Marylin came to a halt behind him. “We can work together if you try.”

“Exactly. If
I
try. What about
you?
How are
you
trying?” Frustration made him lash out. “Spare me the crap about being professional and having a job to do. If you really gave a shit about wanting to catch the Twinmaker, you'd give me the file on Lindsay's death and let me get on with it instead of jerking me around like a kid with a bag of lollies.
Share
, Marylin—that's all you have to do. There wouldn't be situations like this if information was disseminated freely.”

“Now
you're
talking rubbish,” she shot back. “That freedom of information spiel is just rhetoric. It's a justification for being a voyeur—and a pretty flimsy one at that. No matter what you call yourself, you've always been a petty, prying little person. It's about time you woke up and took a good look at the rest of the world. You might get a surprise to see that it works just fine without your little crusade to keep it going.”

He couldn't suppress a low, bitter laugh. “Jesus, you can tell who works for the government now. What a fucking waste.”

“You're one to talk about waste. Who's spent the last three years vegetating in a vat of jelly? And who's the one who accused
me
of running away?”

He clenched the arms of the chair and opened his mouth to retaliate. But before he could utter a word, the memory hit him hard.

Someone had been standing in front of the d-mat booth, holding a pistol.

He turned to stare at the booth, willing more to appear. The angle was almost right. He had been in roughly the same position, except standing; the light was the same. And he had been angry then, as now. But nothing else came. Just the certainty that the memory was correct:
there had been someone in the room with him, someone he didn't know very well, and they had been fighting over something. The pistol had been aimed at him.

Marylin followed his gaze. “What now? Jonah?”

He couldn't tell her. It was too vague, too fleeting. She would think he was baiting her, making up leads in order to obtain the data he wanted. But he couldn't ignore it. He needed to pursue it. It was all he had.

“We're doing it again,” he said, forcing himself to look at her.

“What?”

“Arguing.”

“Yes.” She tapped the back of the wheelchair with the toe of her shoe. “Occupational hazard, I guess.”

“You have to wonder if there's any point in doing this at all.”

“The point is that we don't have much choice.”

“Of course we do.” He sighed. Feigning exhaustion had never been easier. “Maybe we should take a break for a while, come back to it when we're feeling more relaxed.”

She looked uncomfortable at the suggestion, but said: “Sure. If you want to. What exactly do you have in mind?”

“A few hours. There are some things here I need to sort out. I'm sure you've got plenty of work to do elsewhere.”

“I'm not leaving here without you.”

“I need some time alone, Marylin.”

“That's not an option, Jonah.”

“Why not? You can't force me to do anything.”

“And you can't do anything without us.”

“Crap. I have contacts.”

“Had
, Jonah. You've been out of touch so long most of them assume you're dead. Any favours you might have been owed have long since been forgotten. And let's face it, you didn't have many actual friends.”

He winced involuntarily, and she caught it.

“Sorry to put it like that,” she said. “But you know how it is. Three years is forever in this business.”

“But money is everything.” He resented her attitude. It made him callous. “Lindsay's estate was considerable. I presume I inherited?”

She shrugged. “There was no one else.”

“Well,
there's
a possibility. At the very least, you can let me try to do it my way.”

“I'm sorry, Jonah. I can't. And you can't stay here alone. You're not fully recovered; you still require treatment.”

“I'll manage.”
As if you give a shit.
“I'll bring a doctor in—a whole team, if I have to. Maybe that way I'll find out what else you've done to me without my consent.”

Her expression tightened at that, but she still didn't relent.

“Look, it's really not that hard—”

“Don't patronise me, Jonah.”

“
Me
patronise
you?
I'm just having trouble seeing the problem. What are you so afraid of? That I'll get away from you?”

“Partly—”

“So tag me, disable the booth, have QUALIA keep an eye on me—”

“Who's to say we haven't?”

That stopped him for a moment. “Haven't what?”

“All of the above.”

“Jesus christ. And
still
you won't leave me alone? Not even for
three hours?”
He shook his head, abandoning the pretence of surprise and letting the real thing flow free.

“I know where you're coming from Jonah,” she said. “And I sympathise, really. But you have to see it from our point of view. We're in a very tricky position. It's not in our best interest to set you free, or to lock you up. Likewise, we need your help but we can't reciprocate fully. The law is vague on the matter of guilt in the case of duplication; we don't want to be seen to be aiding a potential felon. Yet you're our best lead. We
can't
let you go just yet. Don't you realise that? Don't you see what that means?”

For a split-second he thought she was trying to tell him something
quite different:
Don't you see what sort of power that gives you over us?
But what use was power like that if it couldn't gain freedom?

And, besides, he doubted that that was what she was really trying to say. It didn't sit well with her new image.

“It means I'm trapped,” he said.

“Yes. For now.”

He felt bad, briefly; she did look as though it bothered her. “All right then, I'll make it easy for you.” He wheeled the chair closer to her and used its mass to force her backwards, shepherding her through the dining area. “You're on my property. Get out now, before I call security, and don't come back until three hours have passed, or you have that file. Or a warrant.”

“Jonah—”

“Go on. Fuck off.”

Fassini tensed as they approached. He reached for his taser, but Marylin cut him off with a single, sharp gesture.

“Jonah,” she said, making a stand by the inner door.

“Marylin, listen to me.
I don't want you here.
”

“You don't mean that.”

“No? House, outer door open.”

She looked like she wanted to say something more, but the door hissed behind her, cutting her off.

“Three hours,” he said again. “Unless I call. Then we can talk about it over the file on Lindsay.”

Marylin turned on her heel and stepped out into the heat. She didn't look back, but Fassini did. His expression was disappointed. Jonah wondered what she might be saying to him via prevocals.

“House? Close outer door. Maintain full security and privacy until otherwise instructed.”

“Yes, Jonah.”

He wheeled himself back into the lounge and confronted the d-mat booth, daring another memory to surface while it had the
chance. He was alone at last. He had time to think. Now would be the perfect opportunity to experience some sort of revelation.

But it didn't come—and as the satisfaction at ousting Marylin began to ebb, anger and regret rose to take its place.

No
, he told himself.
I can do this on my own. I don't need them. I don't need
her.

With his hands planted firmly on the arms of the wheelchair, he rose slowly to his feet. The muscles in his thighs quivered at the sudden exertion, and he had to grit his teeth to stop himself from gasping when he pulled his hands away, but he did it. He stood, unaided in the full gravity of Earth, for almost twenty seconds.

Then something seemed to give between his eyes. He swayed forwards, arms pinwheeling to keep him upright. His balance went entirely and he pitched forward onto the floor, striking his forehead a glancing blow on the bamboo coffee table.

His world went black for an instant before dissolving into stars. He rolled onto his back and clutched his temple, groaning with pain.

You stupid sonofabitch
, he told himself.
What the hell do you think you're doing?

The half-remembered voice of the man who had stood in his lounge room, three years earlier, replied:
Killing yourself, of course.

And with the memory came a name:
Herold Verstegen.

“H
e did
what?
”

With those words, Odi Whitesmith's mask disappeared and was replaced by his real face. His expression was one of mixed anger and disbelief.

“He kicked us out of the unit for three hours. Threatened to call security if we didn't leave,” Marylin said, not quite believing it herself but feeling more irritated than genuinely
angry. “He's going to make life difficult until you give him the file on his father.”

“You tried to talk him out of it?”

“Of course. The problem is, he's making more sense than me.”

“Fuck.
” Whitesmith's gaze wandered and he scratched his head. “Where are you now?”

“Still in
Faux
Sydney. I don't mind waiting here for the time being. Local security can assign us somewhere to work from. Just because Jonah's not with us doesn't mean we have to sit on our thumbs. I want to start looking at the housekeeper, if that's okay with you.”

“Yes, do that. I'll talk to Trevaskis, get him to okay the transfer. Verstegen will shit if he finds out about this.”

As he should
, Marylin thought. “I told you what might happen if you pushed him too hard,” she said.

“Yeah, you did. Consider it noted. In fact, you can tell Trevaskis yourself, if you like.”

“Pass.”

The line to Whitesmith died while he went to reason with the Director of the MIU. Marylin paced the length of the glass-windowed shelter to take a mouthful of water from a basic refreshment dispenser in one corner. Then she called the nearest security outpost and, using her EJC powers, arranged transport to collect them.

“I can't work out whether you're pissed at him or what,” said Fassini.

“Who?”

“McEwen.”

“I'm annoyed because he's making me look bad,” she explained as honestly as she could. If she was truly annoyed with anyone it was Trevaskis, for letting politics get in the way of an investigation. “I sympathise too much at the moment to take sides against Jonah. I'd probably be doing the same or worse in his shoes.”

Fassini smiled at that. “True. So what
will
he be doing in there?”

“Good question. QUALIA?”

The reply from Artsutanov Station came with faint distortion caused by congestion in the Pool.

“Yes, Marylin?”

“Have you been following this?”

“Yes.”

“I'd like you to access Jonah's housekeeping program without him knowing. Can you do that for me?”

“That would be illegal,” e argued.

“Not really. He's given us access to the unit's maintenance records for the last three years plus permission to seek any other data we need to verify those records. The housekeeper knows me by name. And we have his UGI. All that should be enough to get us in.”

“May I ask why you wish to do this, Marylin?”

“I want—” She stopped, not entirely certain how best to phrase her request. Part of it was simple enough, if surprising. Jonah wasn't in the best position to do anything too drastic, but she wouldn't put it past him to try. “I want to make sure he's okay.”

“Very well. I will begin negotiations.” QUALIA was silent for a moment, during which time Marylin paced the enclosure again.

“The housekeeper will grant us vision but no sound,” QUALIA eventually said. “That will be enough to allow us to ascertain that Jonah McEwen has not left the premises. You will have access to all records. If you wish, I can ask the housekeeper to communicate with him, and relay his answers on, if they are not already known.”

“That's great, QUALIA. Thanks. Let's have a look at what he's up to.”

The image came through one eye only, recorded from a single camera high in the corner of the lounge. At first she failed to see him. The wheelchair was half-visible behind one of the expansive sofa chairs Lindsay had liked, but it was empty. A flutter of apprehension made her heart race as she considered the possibility that he had been faking
all along, that his health was much more improved than he looked, that he had somehow escaped—

Then he moved. He was lying face-up on the floor, camouflaged against a dark-coloured hessian rug that dominated the space in front of the d-mat booth. He moved feebly, like a turtle trying to right itself. She knew immediately that he had fallen.

Her first impression, which she spoke aloud, was that he needed help.

“The housekeeper insists that he does not,” QUALIA argued.

“What would it know?”

“It has his interests at heart.”

“This from a machine that would've let him rot forever if we hadn't found him when we did?”

“He has instructed it not to call for assistance under any but extreme circumstances, and it is required to obey him. Presumably he did the same when he entered the hibernation state three years ago.”

She conceded the point. Meanwhile, the feed from the unit revealed that Jonah had stopped moving. His eyes were closed; he seemed to be concentrating, “What's he doing now? Can you tell?”

“He is attempting to place a call to a citizen by the name of Molybdenum Ilaria Bache.”

She recognised the name; “Mollie” Bache had been one of Jonah's prime contacts in the old days.

“‘Attempting'?” asked Fassini.

“She died in '68,” Marylin informed him. “Her estate let the number go.”

“He is trying another number,” QUALIA said. “Ehren Patrizio Smith.”

Another contact. This one had been in a correctional institution for over a year and had had his communication privileges curtailed.

She could guess who would be the next half dozen or so on his list, and all of them were incommunicado for various reasons. The ones he
could
contact would be of little use to him. Absence meant nothing where fondness was concerned in the shadowy world most of these people inhabited.

But that wasn't the point. Jonah was
trying.
He was calling for help, fighting to the last. She didn't know what he would do when he realised that he truly was trapped, cut off from the past by three years of lost time.

She felt uncomfortable. “I can't watch this.”

“You don't have to,” Fassini said, nudging her. “The transport's arrived.”

She directed her attention outwards, through the eye not filled with the black-and-white image. Sure enough, an automated vehicle resembling a golf cart (which it may in fact have been, given the all-pervasive lawn of
Faux
Sydney) had pulled up outside the shelter and idled patiently, waiting for them. She was grateful for the distraction and dropped the feed from the unit into a drawer for later perusal.

As they entered the heat of the outside world and moved closer to the cart, she heard a tiny voice issuing from the dash.

“Officer Blaylock? Please provide thumbprint ID. This vehicle will take you to your destination.”

She and Fassini climbed aboard. A thin but effective shade spread out to protect them from the sun. “QUALIA? Keep an eye on Jonah while we start looking at the data; make sure he doesn't hurt himself.”

“If anything happens, Marylin, I will let you know immediately.”

She touched her right thumb to the dash of the vehicle and, with a slight jerk, it moved off.

The cart took them to the nearest security station, visible from some distance away due to the black spike protruding through the hill that covered it. The more she saw of
Faux
Sydney, the more it reminded her of an ant hill: a bizarre, subterranean world with only the occasional, alien protrusion reaching the surface.

There was an officer present to meet them, one she recognised from the night they had discovered the body in Jonah's unit. He nodded cordially and showed them to a vacant office. Apart from that room and two others, and a row of three d-mat booths, the security station consisted of empty space.

“Sorry about treating you like this,” he said, indicating the sparse quarters. “We had another bomb scare this morning. Things are still a little messy.”

“Oh?” Marylin didn't mind where she was, as long as she could work. “You see a lot of that around here?”

“Constantly. Usually we manage to catch anything serious in time. It's mostly for the publicity, which is one reason why we downplay it.”

“I thought there were safeguards against this sort of thing.”

The guard laughed dryly. “There are ways to smuggle prohibited materials through d-mat, and they know most of them.”

“Sounds like a job for the MIU,” Fassini commented. “Who're ‘they'?”

“WHOLE,” the officer replied. “Who else?”

As Marylin settled into the seat behind the tiny room's sole desk, she pondered the officer's question. Who else indeed?
Faux
Sydney existed solely because of d-mat; it would have been an absurd proposition to build suburbs in such a remote location even a decade before, and the demand to live there would not have existed. The pseudocity was therefore both a symbol and a symptom of the technology WHOLE hated so passionately. It was a perfect example of the way humanity distorted its environment purely for the sake of convenience. And as the self-appointed defender of all things “natural,” WHOLE would find it an irresistible target, not necessarily to cause actual damage, but to inconvenience those who sought convenience this way.

It was strange. The organisation had innocent enough beginnings. Following the turn of the millennium, the level of interest in New Age philosophy and fringe religious groups had fallen steadily. Several
of the more predominant organisations had overcome their differences in 2010 to form an alliance with just two very clear priorities: the preservation of the terrestrial biosphere and the betterment of the human soul. The name chosen for the organisation reflected the unity of purpose felt by the members of the alliance, even if it didn't actually reveal anything about their underlying beliefs or the way in which they intended to go about meeting their goals. Exactly what the acronym “WHOLE” stood for—if anything—remained a mystery, sixty years later.

Its first leader, Manuel MacPhedron, had been a charismatic man in his fifties and WHOLE remained a nonconfrontational entity until his death in 2022. Since then, however, a succession of mergers with other ailing groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the World Wide Fund For Nature, and others had brought an influx of more aggressive members that had gradually eased the focus of the group away from passive protest. The first major work undertaken by the revitalised WHOLE had been the nanoware “picketing” of a dam in India, followed by sabotage in a dozen other places. The aim of the organisation was always to obstruct the development and application of radical, new technology—flying in the face of the trends of the previous century.

The development of d-mat in 2039, its initial use by the military and space services, and its commercial introduction fifteen years later gave WHOLE a perfect means by which to separate “them” from “us.” D-mat technology polluted the soul, according to WHOLE's pseudoscientists. Every trip through a KTI booth killed the original person (which was true, in a sense) and created an imperfect copy elsewhere. The human soul was not able to accommodate such a dislocation, so the use of d-mat therefore “polluted” or destroyed it entirely. Rumours of disfigurements and psychological upsets supposedly caused by d-mat began to circulate, assisted by WHOLE's propaganda machine. Enlisting the posthumous help of twentieth-century writer Daniel C. Dennet,
who had coined the term “Murdering Twinmaker” for describing a then hypothetical d-mat device, WHOLE set about a campaign designed to deter KTI's small but growing market for near-instantaneous transportation.

WHOLE wasn't the only group to disapprove of KTI, of course. The independent state of Quebec remained staunchly opposed to d-mat. When the headquarters of WHOLE in Boston, USA, were raided and its then leader arrested, the organisation packed up and moved to a secret location deep in the heart of isolationist Quebec, crying harassment all the way. Although Quebecois leaders officially denied any involvement in WHOLE activities, it was an open suspicion that the two were inextricably linked. The current leader of WHOLE, Karoly Mancheff, had once held a seat in Quebec's local parliament.

Lindsay Carlaw had been just one of many scientifically qualified people who openly supported the organisation. In Carlaw's case, Marylin had often suspected that some sort of phobia rather than strong religious belief had brought him to the group. She found it hard to accept that a man at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence could believe the mumbo-jumbo about “soul pollution” WHOLE espoused. Some people found the idea of being taken apart and put back together too difficult to overcome and would go to extraordinary lengths to avoid it—much as other people in different times, she supposed, had avoided motor cars or aeroplanes. No matter how much the discontinuity between “departure” and “arrival” was carefully avoided by KTI spokespeople, WHOLE was there to not-so-gently remind the public, and since Lindsay Carlaw's death the reminders had become much more strident.