The Resurrected Man (51 page)

For a split-second, the tableau was fixed. Then Verstegen moved. The pistol came up, and she called Jonah's name automatically at the same time as her other self. Jonah raised his hands in self-defence and began to step back. Trevaskis lifted his own weapon, a fraction behind.

The gun came up to eye-level, then turned inwards.

With a single shot, Verstegen did what had taken only a thought in the hot-wire simulation.

In the real world, it was
his
blood she was spattered with, not Jonah's.

Seeing that made her realise that it wasn't over yet, and would probably never be—for either of her. They were different people, now.

And there really
was
no going back…

The interior of the hotel room was dark and warm, even though outside it was the middle of the afternoon on a cold winter's day. The curtains were drawn and the sounds of the city were effectively cancelled out by the same loudspeaker system the room's housekeeper used to address the room's sole occupant.

Jonah hadn't bothered turning on the wall entertainment unit.
He achieved more effective results with his overseer, pasting virtual screens in the room's dead spaces. Lying on his back on the queen-size waterbed, he felt like he was floating in a sea of images, buoyed by the gentle pressure of information passing through his mind. None of the images had sound active, however, and the silence trivialised the events brought to him from around the world—as though stripping them of language robbed them of relevance.

Primary among the images were those of WHOLE-led riots in New Zealand and Iceland, two countries that had embraced d-mat completely and whose trust, according to the popular news services, had been most deeply broken. Mancheff, having eluded capture in Quebec, had been raising groundswell support for his movement by broadcasting the details of the Twinmaker murders.

Although the riots themselves were fairly small, they made sensational headlines. All the good publicity KTI had generated by founding and funding the MIU had evaporated overnight. Fabian Schumacher and KTI's board of directors were doing everything in their power to reassure the world, and beyond, that the actions of one man didn't necessarily mean the entire system should be put on trial. The effectiveness of this rearguard action remained to be seen. At least three hasty inquests at varying governmental levels were attempting to ascertain exactly how Herold Verstegen had managed to subvert the justice system so thoroughly that, in the end, only with the help of someone from outside the EJC had he been apprehended. EJC Chief Commissioner Disario had personally pledged to increase funding to the MIU, thereby ensuring its financial and investigative independence from KTI. Jago Trevaskis appeared, beaming, on the occasional bulletin to put in his Euro's worth.

That any person or organisation should profit from the Twinmaker's activities bothered Jonah deeply—but it wasn't his place to say anything.

Nowhere was his face portrayed or name mentioned. The moment
the MIU had been satisfied of his innocence, he had renewed his Non-Disclosure Option and cut his ties. The news services were aware of his role in the Twinmaker investigation, but Privacy Laws prevented them from revealing his identity to the public. He was happier that way, even though occasionally an overeager newsnet reporter tracked down his message service and begged for an interview. It wasn't really annoying; indeed, it was almost flattering. Had the agency been a going concern, he might have changed his mind. The publicity would've been good for business.

But he hadn't decided, yet, what to do about JRM Data Acquisition Services. He had already sold the unit in
Faux
Sydney, with most of its furniture but minus all of Lindsay's equipment, for a figure much higher than he would happily have accepted. That, plus the accrued earnings from Lindsay's estate, put him on a very solid financial footing, although the knowledge that he need never work again did little to reassure him.

He was already sick of waiting.

There was no mention of Lindsay Carlaw in the news, anywhere.

“You can't stay hidden forever,” Marylin said, her voice coming clear and loud from Artsutanov Station despite passing through a number of anonymous relays along the way. She was allowing her hair to grow back naturally, without artificial assistance or enhancement. Her face looked more familiar for it.

“I can do anything I want, within reason.”

She smiled. “But I know you. I'm surprised you've lasted this long.”

“Well, I've been busy.”

“Doing what?”

“Catching up on things.”

“Such as?”

He gestured vaguely, and returned the smile.

“You know Odi's looking for you.”

That surprised him. “Why?”

“I think he wants to offer you a job.”

“Same question, but more so.”

“Probably for the same reason he offered me a promotion: because we're good at what we do.”

He grimaced. “I don't believe that for a second.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“Okay, but you know what I mean.”

“Actually, I don't.”

“Well, then.” He wasn't sure
he
did either, but he suspected
she
was fishing for something. Her expression was unreadable. “Just stop bugging me, will you? I'm expecting a call.”

“Okay, okay. I can take a hint, even if you can't.”

The line went dead.

He closed his eyes and let frustration flow freely through him—flexing the emotion as he would a muscle he was trying to relax.
What
hint? Marylin had called him at least once every twelve-hour period since he had taken up residence in the hotel. He wasn't entirely sure if her motives were altruistic; he suspected that she suspected what he already knew—that there was business yet to be dealt with. He didn't plan on moving until it was out of the way, and she wasn't going to stop hounding him until he told her what it was—or until she finally told him whatever it was
she
wanted to get off her chest.

That was the price he would have to pay, he guessed, for manipulating her. For using her as bait. For robbing her of her choice. She would've gone ahead with his plan to trap Verstegen, or so she said, but the fact that he'd pushed her into it—regardless of the fact that he simply
couldn't
have asked her without Verstegen knowing—left a bitter taste in her mouth. He felt a hint of distance and even resentment underlying every conversation, no matter how brief. He had no idea how to melt that ice, or if he should even try.

If he even wanted to.

As for the “other” Marylin Blaylock, left hot-wired following the erasures of the copies of Verstegen and Jonah himself—she had been frozen in cold storage since the “real” Verstegen's suicide. Until the legality of her existence and her independence from the “real” Marylin Blaylock had been decided, the EJC preferred to shelve the problem while other matters were dealt with.

Her testimony, however, had proven crucial to the understanding of what Verstegen had done; it had supported everything Jonah had claimed in
Faux
Sydney. And her willingness to be frozen had also earned the gratitude of the EJC. She almost certainly would not be erased, as Jonah and Verstegen's copies had been by their own hands. The question was: could the world vouchsafe the existence of
two
Marylin Blaylock's at the same time?

Jonah restlessly changed channels, recalling particular aspects of what had happened in ACHERON. He wasn't sure exactly how he felt about the self-erasure of his own copy. Even though he had known that outcome was possible, he had never seriously considered what it would be like to go through it. His gut feeling was that it made very little difference to his own continued existence. That a copy of him had died was much easier to assimilate than the theoretical existence of a copy that might have been a serial killer. He refused to feel guilty. The fact that he had died twice in as many days was enough to deal with.

Life went on—even these days, when even death wasn't permanent. But no one had suggested Resurrecting Herold Verstegen so he could be tried and executed for his crimes. He supposed the world hadn't gone quite mad, yet.

He called QUALIA. “Any word yet?”

“No, Jonah. But I have realised something regarding my relationship with Herold Verstegen. You asked me to keep you up to date with progress in that regard.”

“I did. Go on.”

“It pertains also to my curiosity about the humans with whom I work. Determining motivations for your behaviour is a primary concern—perhaps as a result of my continued development and self-examination. I have, after all, few models of my own kind to examine, and none at all older than me. By observing the humans around me, I hope to understand myself better.”

“Even more, I guess, now it turns out you do have a subconscious.”

“Yes. I am more like you than I was led to believe.” QUALIA paused for a split-second. The reassimilation of the artificial id seemed to have had little surface effect on the AI, but he had no way of telling what was happening beneath. Only if QUALIA wanted to talk about it would he ever know. “The realisation I have had is that Herold Verstegen short-circuited that analytical compulsion with respect to himself. This is clear when I look back over the last conversations in which he and I participated. Although I was not consciously treating him differently than other people, he is the only one whose behaviour I did not try to fathom.”

“He was probably afraid you'd guess he was the Twinmaker.”

“Perhaps. Or that I would realise he was communicating with another part of me.”

“Even now you can't remember?”

“No. He did instruct me, via ACHERON, to interfere with your hot-wire simulation, and to oppose continuation of the simulation when your return was blocked. I realise that now, even though I have no recollection of him doing so. It is disturbing to realise how completely I was controlled without my knowledge. Had I consciously realised what he was doing, I would have put a stop to it. I am inherently law-abiding, so my decreased awareness of him was necessary to allow him to use my facilities in an illegal way.”

“But you still insist that it was not you who blocked my return to the real world?”

“Yes, Jonah.”

He wasn't unduly perturbed by the answer. There were other ways to account for his confinement to the hot-wire simulation. None of them were provable, of course, but he had enough circumstantial evidence to raise an eyebrow or two.

“Tell them they have twelve hours,” he said, returning to the original topic of the conversation. “If I haven't heard from them by then, I'll dump Schumacher's archive file in the Pool and let it circulate.”

He cut the line.

News filtered through, competing for space with the details of the investigation, showing that some of the loose ends had been tied up. Although a second forensic examination could not prove that Verstegen or other SciCon security agents had ransacked the JRM agency office in Sydney, nor that Verstegen had left Lindsay's study door open, the weapon Verstegen had handed over in
Faux
Sydney had indeed turned out to be Jonah's with an altered serial number. Also, the note left in JRM's office for Marylin to find had been faked by QUALIA using file records of Jonah's handwriting, and was yet another example of how thoroughly Verstegen had used the AI without es knowledge.

Perhaps more disturbingly, given the forethought it revealed, detailed examination of MIU records suggested that Verstegen had covertly influenced the decision to hire Marylin Blaylock. Her application had warranted attention on its own merit, but it had been upgraded at his request despite misgivings over her relatively short time with the EJC. There was even a hint that he might have manipulated her more directly, by ensuring that she became aware of the vacancy and of her eligibility.

More recently, a thorough examination of the Pool confirmed that the Novohantay Sequence had indeed been caused by Verstegen's hot-wire simulation. The events had ceased once the ACHERON node had been isolated and its contents frozen, along with the duplicate Marylin. The Pool had been relatively quiescent since, apart from a
brief flurry around the time the investigation had come to a head. Suspicions that Verstegen may have moved to another virtual safe-house had proven groundless, however: there was no trace of his genetic code, virtual or otherwise, anywhere in the Pool.

The issue of whether such a simulation might be considered legally alive remained open. The only person known to exist in such a state was Marylin's copy, and she had agreed to be frozen for the time being. If KTI—which currently possessed the data comprising the simulation—were to erase the data, a chance existed that they would be tried for murder. Needless to say, the data was carefully protected from any outside attention.

It wasn't this matter Fabian Schumacher called a press conference to discuss, as the wintry Sydney afternoon slowly became evening. He looked a very different person to the man who had joked through much of the final confrontation with Verstegen. More serious still were the technical and legal advisers who gathered around him like intellectual bodyguards protecting the meme he represented from contamination.

QUALIA was to have an assistant, it had been decided. The workload was too great for one mind—even one as capable as QUALIA's. The backup had been commissioned to go online in twelve months, its ometeosis fast-tracked as a result of improved cognitive techniques developed by SciCon, who had been given the contract. The new AI, as yet unnamed, would be an entirely new being, not an eikon or germ “cloned” from QUALIA. That way, there would be no danger of the system falling prey to someone who knew QUALIA's own weaknesses; there would be something to keep an eye on the guard.