The Resurrected Man (12 page)

“Marylin, the link is established.” That was Whitesmith, clearly intending his voice to be heard by both of them. Reminding them that they were being observed.

“I know,” she said.

The sound of her voice so close at hand—as though from within his own head—destabilised him even further. He wanted to shut his eyes, to blot out the VTC, but they were already closed. The image
was coming direct from her optic nerve to his; there was nothing he could do to stem the flood of sensory input, except—

The view went black as he tripped the Time-Out option on the VTC command border. Thankfully, he hadn't forgotten how to do that. All he was picking up now were sounds: Marylin's breathing, the crunch of her feet on gravel, startlingly loud, and finally his name.

“Hello, Jonah.” Her tone was cold.

Not “Jon” any more. And not “Jon and Mary,” either. He had to keep that firmly in mind if this was to work. He was in the future, now—a future in which the things he still felt, she had had time to deal with. The realisation came as a deep shock, even though he had thought he was ready for it.

“I'm registering high levels of anxiety.” QUALIA's voice, coming through his postauditory implants, was a reminder of yet another level of reality close by.

“I'm fine,” he said.

“Are you positive? I can—”

“I said I'm
fine.
Just give me time to get my bearings.”

“Very well, but if you need assistance, all you have to do is ask.”

Jonah shook his head, not caring how the people monitoring the VTC interpreted his discomfort. Relaying was hard enough under the best circumstances. He fought to ignore the real world and to prepare himself for the view through Marylin's senses alone.

When he reentered the VTC, he saw—

Green.
Marylin was walking around something white and onto a grassy verge. A slate pathway led from the curb to a shallow verandah, with a slight detour around an oak that looked a hundred years old but almost certainly wasn't. Behind the oak was a house at least three storeys high. The facade was triangular in cross-section. Somewhere inside that building, he assumed, was the unit in which Yoland Suche-Thomas lived.

Every step Marylin took gave him vertigo. Ironically, the giddiness
finally helped him to adjust. He had experienced exactly this disorientation many times before. Disregarding the three years he had spent in hibernation, it had only been a matter of weeks since he had last used Marylin as a relay.

“Marylin, I'm here.” She stopped.

The agent accompanying her, Fassini, swung into view again as she glanced at him, possibly for reassurance. It was hard reading body language from the inside although that didn't stop him trying.

“Is there a problem?” she asked, using her prevocal implants.

“No. Just getting used to my new wetware. Everything's been updated.”

The view through her eyes rocked as she nodded. Whether she believed him or not was irrelevant.

“You've missed the interview,” she said.

“Did you learn anything important?”

“Did we, Jason?”

The MIU field agent met Marylin's gaze, but it was clear he was making eye-contact mainly for Jonah's benefit.

“Everything's
amtlich,
” he said, also by prevocals. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“So why am I here?” he asked.

Her eyes wandered; the white object hovering in the periphery of her vision was a car, the only one parked in the street. “The intention, as I understand it, is to give you an opportunity to look around,” she said.

“Why would I want to do that?”

“You tell me. It's safer not to presume.”

He didn't reply immediately. She was playing with him, testing him. And given the way her eyes kept returning to the car, she wanted to be elsewhere.

“I don't know,” he said. “But let's do it anyway. At least walk around the building.” He couldn't resist adding: “It's not as if I've got anything better to do.”

She grunted and headed up the path with brisk, businesslike steps. Fassini walked beside her, watching her with an almost protective air.

“How's the link?” he asked.

At first, Jonah assumed he was asking Marylin. After a few seconds of silence, he realised his error and answered: “Fine. Blinking a bit, though.”

Marylin upped her anti-allergen intake to combat airborne irritants. “We can talk,” she said, “discuss the case, review the interview, whatever, but don't expect to tell me what to do. You're just along for the ride, Jonah.”

“Yes, I realise that.”

“I'm the experienced one, this time.”

Overstating the obvious
, Jonah thought, but kept the comment to himself.

The view dimmed as she stepped under the shadow of the house. Poor-light algorithms quickly restored the image; she had obviously kept her own eyes, rather than opt for new ones that could see in infrared. The verandah was made from pine, or a fair imitation thereof, and contained a small outdoor setting and a number of potted plants, the soil dark from recent watering. The main door, behind a security screen, also appeared to be made of wood, although he assumed a more resilient material lay at its heart. One window opened onto the verandah; it was curtained and dark and almost certainly bulletproof.

Her eyes scanned the verandah automatically—left then right, up and down then back to centre, a pattern as familiar to him as his own. The guidelines for relay VTC were simple and obvious: maximise data input by sweeping smoothly across a scene without lingering overlong or jerking between disparate points; avoid losing focus; keep blinking and other interruptions to a minimum; take nothing for granted.

As her eyes roved, he caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window. Her hair was shorter than it had been when he had woken the first time, almost nonexistent under a matte-black skullcap that
matched the severity of her expression, but he had no time to notice more than that. She glanced quickly away, as though nervous of seeing herself—
or of me seeing her
, he thought.

“So
ask
something,” she said, sounding irritated.

“The building has security?” It was the first thing that occurred to him.

“Of course.”

“Annoying little
syf
, too,” Fassini added.

Marylin faced the door and pressed her left thumb to a button nearby. The overly expressive voice of a cheap AI answered her call almost immediately.

“State your name, the name of the person you wish to visit and the purpose of your call.”

“My name is Marylin Blaylock and I am an officer of the Earth Justice Commission,” she said. “Please disregard this inquiry.”

Fassini indicated the verandah to their left. “Her apartment's on the second floor at the rear. Nothing too flash. Working for CRE obviously isn't all it's cracked up to be.”

“Windows?” Jonah asked.

“She has some, yes. The nearest building is too far away for direct access, but someone could've planted remote surveillance devices from there. Or from the ground. Nanos can get almost anywhere, these days.”

“Access from the inside?”

“There are three other apartments on her level. All open onto a central corridor that has clear line of sight. Security wouldn't have missed someone breaking in that way.”

They headed for the rear of the building. “And I presume she lives alone?”

“Yes. Her SO in Johannesburg was an ex-partner and she has no dependants.”

“Has she been stalked?”

“We asked about nuisance calls and she's had none. She doesn't remember if anyone's been following her. I get the feeling she's a touch
agoraphobic. Nervous of open spaces, you know? Maybe a little paranoid, too. She'd notice if someone had staked her out, I'm sure.”

“She trusted
you
, didn't she?”

“Don't sound so surprised.” Fassini grinned and raised his right hand. The holographic tattoo of an EJC Public Officer flared briefly to life in his palm. “It's amazing what this thing will do, even for me.”

They completed a circuit of the building. Jonah had seen nothing suspicious on the ground or wall surrounding the victim's apartment, and Marylin's visual scan had been thorough.

“Any ideas, Jonah?” she asked.

He concentrated. His thoughts were scattered, loosely connected. But the time had come to make a meaningful contribution; he had to do his best, if only to have a chance at finding out what had happened to his father.

“Is this lack of evidence normal?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “The only way the Twinmaker breaks in anywhere is via d-mat when disposing of the bodies. But we know he observes his victims somehow, if only to make certain of their suitability.”

“And that's all they have in common—their appearance?”

“That and the fact they use d-mat. Their nationalities are randomly distributed. The timing of each murder is fairly erratic, as though limited by supply of victims rather than an overwhelming need to kill. The disposal sites have appeared random, too, until now.”

“But the victims
are
linked by superficial data, mainly their appearance,” he said, letting his instinct guide him. “There's only one place he could get that sort of detail over that wide an area.”

“You're thinking of GLITCH, aren't you?” she said.

“Back doors do exist.”

“Did.
The ones you knew have been closed.”

“There's no way to keep a network that big watertight. Too many people maintain it on a regular basis for
none
of them to be corrupt.”

“Regardless whether that's true or not, we have no way to prove
GLITCH is involved, so we have to keep looking for material evidence of some other method.”

“That's eminently sensible, even though it's not what I'd do.”

“I know, Jonah. And that's why I don't work for you any more, remember?”

True
, he thought with a wince. She'd never liked unorthodox methods, and the Banytis case, their last, had involved one too many. But she hadn't liked orthodoxy much, either, otherwise she would never have worked with him in the first place. He suspected that in only working by herself, for herself, applying her own standards, would she ever be completely happy.

Still, she was an officer of the EJC now and she had to behave accordingly. Which meant that he did, too, for the time being. Her comment left him feeling as though he'd been publicly slapped down by a superior.

Avoid the past
, he reminded himself.
Anything but that.

“Let's move on,” Marylin said, heading for the car. She hit a touch-sensitive patch on the side of the car with a fist and the door popped open. “Should we visit NuSense?” she asked Fassini.

“No. Suche-Thomas said she hasn't been to the office in a month, and that's something we can check with GLITCH now that we have her permission. Her friend—Emily Ahmadi—lives about fifteen minutes' drive from here. We can pay her a visit, if you like.”

“I don't see the point. Her story fits the facts.” Marylin slid into the car, taking the seat facing rearward. Fassini sat opposite her, all gangly limbs and loose fabric.

“That's it?” Jonah asked.

“There's nothing for us here. Nothing new. Just confirmation of what we already know.”

“There's value in that—”

“Not at the moment, or under these circumstances. It's procedure, paperwork, getting us nowhere. Confirmation we already have up to
our eyeballs. What we need is another angle, another way of looking at the Twinmaker crimes, another
clue.
”

“That's where I come in, I guess.”

“So I'm told.”

With a faint electric whirr, the car slid out from the curb and performed an elegant three-point turn. Sunlight caught Marylin square in the eyes as it drove off down the street, dazzling her despite automatically tinting windows. She blinked and looked away.

“So,” Jonah ventured, “what we have here is a murder victim who's still alive, who knows nothing about being copied and killed, and who shows no sign of having been stalked. The killer might use the GLITCH network to track them and the KTI network to kidnap them. He disposes of the victims by d-mat, too.” He didn't know enough about d-mat to probe the subtleties of the Twinmaker's modus operandi, but he did know how networks operated. “Have you traced the source address?”

“We've tried,” she said. “The transmissions all pass through a node in the Pool that strips them of their stats. It's the same ID every time: ACHERON-P14-66782.”

“Who runs it?”

“We don't know. It doesn't seem to exist, as far as we can tell.”

“It could be software, then—a virtual node generated by the killer to keep his transmissions anonymous. He shuts it down when he doesn't need it, which is why you can't find it now.”

“It still needs to be registered with SciCon or else the Pool won't recognise it.”

“Does
the Pool recognise it?”

“Not at the moment, no. The only time it seems to be used is to relay the bodies anonymously to the disposal sites.”

“So it's a decoy,” Jonah said. “The Twinmaker has us looking for a fake ID when he could've just given us nothing.”

“Actually, no, he couldn't have done that. There has to be some
sort of return address listed, be it partial or full. No booth will accept a d-mat transmission without a source to double-check the data. The risk of reconstitution errors creeping in is too high, otherwise.”

“I see.” He was beginning to feel frustrated and did his best to keep the emotion out of his voice. “But if the bodies
are
being transmitted through the network via an unknown address, how is the killer doing it? Could he be faking the address so the receiving booth will accept the transmission, or is there another explanation I haven't thought of?”

“Only that the transmission is coming from within KTI itself.”