Part 9 (1/2)
”Tell me where he is and I'll send someone out to get him.”
”He's not in here like we are.”
”No? Why not?”
”He's not much for indoor sports.”
”But he likes spectator sports. Paul Taliaferro, detective and sometimes treatable claustrophobe.”
He looked smug again, but now that Konstantin had seen that smug expression on a nine-year-old face, it was hard to take it seriously. Either that, or she was just as insufferably smug herself. She knew which way her ex would have voted. ”You have to remember, I called you at his place last night. He was up on the roof, right? I mean, since you were sleeping alone.”
”Some people sleep alone because they want to,” Konstantin said, smiling at his obvious attempt to bait her. He had to be very young, she thought suddenly. Very, very young and maybe nowhere near as sure of himself as he liked to project. (On the other hand, she thought, who really was?) ”If you want, I'll give you the full story on my sleeping habits right after you tell me why you're so interested in me and what sort of investigation you're conducting that you're so worried about. 'Maybe the first of its kind,'
that was the description, wasn't it?”
”'Certainly the largest,'” he added, nodding.
”I remember that part, too, Goku,” Konstantin said casually, looking around the conference room.
It was nothing special. They could have been anywhere.
”So, you got that much. Is that my first or last name?” he asked.
”Oh, please,” Konstantin said wearily. ”All the intrigue is giving me gas. I am a police detective, but not a very important police detective, at least if my boss's constant references to how disposable I am are any indication. But I am the only fool the department could force into becoming the AR technocrime division, although lately I've been able to force two subordinate fools into working for me as well as talking my old partner into working with me. So far, I mostly chase patent thieves, copyright infringers, and product counterfeiters around. But I also take complaints from any cranks smart enough to word their complaints well enough to get them past the crank filter, so I occasionally end up listening to people insist that some evil empire is brainwas.h.i.+ng people or that they're being stalked by psychos who have traded places with an intelligent program and become digital. I'm working on one of those right now. Some guy named Hastings Dervish became digital. The Digital Dervish. Now, does it get any better than that, I ask you?”
Her j.a.panese friend blew smoke over the middle of the conference table. Instead of dissipating, itswirled into a silvery cloud. He gestured at a chair.
”I don't know if it gets any better,” he said, ”but it does get stranger. If you really want to know.”
”There have been complaints about lowdown Hong Kong raping people's heads for a long time,”
said the older j.a.panese man in the cloud-monitor still floating over the center of the conference table. He was Chief Inspector Kozo Yos.h.i.+da and her friend Goku had supposedly zapped a lot of verifiable information about him to Taliaferro, who would be able (they said) to have it all verified by the time he caught up with her or before they finished briefing her, whichever came first. She hoped it was the former.
Not that she was in any real, physical danger, she kept reminding herself. There was no such thing as real, physical danger in AR, unless you had a bad heart or a seizure disorder. They could scare you, but they couldn't kill you. For some reason, however, this knowledge was no protection against being spooked, and at the moment, she was more spooked than she could ever remember being at any other time in AR or, for that matter, outside of it.
Maybe it was because Goku had dropped the I'm-so-cool act, as if someone had cut off his testosterone drip. The older man in the cloud-monitor was supposedly his superior -- was very probably Goku's superior, she corrected herself. Considering Goku had found her outside of AR, and that the DA had obviously had some communication from these people concerning the investigation they were going to tell her about, she had very little reason left to keep on doubting everything. Except, perhaps, the force of habit. Once you started doubting things, it was hard to stop. No matter how compelling the evidence might be, the compulsion to doubt it was stronger. And maybe that was just because she liked being contrary. Challenge authority. Sez who?
”With no legally enforceable contracts possible in AR,” Yos.h.i.+da went on, ”you have to find other ways to get to people. It wasn't long before someone figured out that the total immersion of AR was handy for persuading people to believe just about anything. Ever gone to a religious service in here?”
”No,” Konstantin said.
Yos.h.i.+da nodded gravely. ”Probably best. Those who have maintain that you can feel the presence of G.o.d, whether you believe or not... regardless of the denomination. Most legitimate churches don't sanction AR services.”
”Well, I always said that if I wanted to feel the presence of G.o.d, I'd die. It's the only way to be sure.” Konstantin glanced at Goku; she was somewhat satisfied to see that he looked uneasy now rather than smug.
”Can I ask you a personal question?” he said after a moment.
Konstantin shrugged.
”Do you think you're dreaming?”
She didn't answer, thinking that he was probably as delighted over the uneasy expression on her face now as she had been at his a moment before.
”That's a new question,” she said after a bit. ”I have to say no one's ever asked me that one before. But what it is -- I think -- is this sensation of everything being not quite real. Or not real enough, anyway.”
Goku traded looks with Yos.h.i.+da. ”This is something you have to beware of,” the older man said.
”You think it's being skeptical, but it's not. It's more along the lines of dissociation. Anything can happen to you in a dissociative state, most of it bad. If you do not have a strong sense of what is real to you, you are without a rudder--”
”What's real to me,” Konstantin said impatiently, ”is being traced to the mattress I'm sleeping on and interrogated in the middle of the night, like George Orwell's favorite nightmare. I want to know who authorized that invasion of privacy and what it was for.” She looked from the cloud-monitor to Goku and back again. ”Now, do I get some real answers or are we going to talk in circles about rudders and moralcompa.s.ses until our ears bleed?”
”The real answer -- one of them -- is, I was watching and waiting for the right time to engage casino security when you and your wannabe cyborg friend came stomping into the middle of everything and got yourselves busted,” said Goku.
”Just ask me,” Konstantin said. ”I'll tell you all about it.”
”Tell me about what -- how you escaped from a paddy wagon and left the cyborg behind?” Goku shrugged. ”Don't bother, I can tell you all about that. I was prepared to go all the way, take the whole ride from start to finish. I had a whole carton of cigarettes and a dead man's switch with a black box, and I was ready to go. And then you and Mr. Machine stole my ride.”
”Sorry,” said Konstantin. ”I was investigating a complaint from the guy about the casino, something about brainwas.h.i.+ng. When he claimed we wouldn't be able to get out of the paddy wagon, I figured he was just someone who'd spent himself broke and he was being a sore loser.”
”That was your first visit to lowdown Hong Kong casino?” asked Yos.h.i.+da.
”Yes,” Goku said, before she could answer.
Konstantin nodded at him. ”OK, I'm impressed already.”
”I know because you were able to find your exit prompt,” he went on, as if she hadn't spoken.
”The first visit to lowdown Hong Kong is always a normal experience. Your second visit, they've got your data and they can play with you all they want, play little tricks on you. Or big ones.”
”Like what?” Konstantin asked.
”Like hiding your exit prompt.”
Konstantin was silent for a moment. ”And if you come back as somebody else?”
”If you come back often enough, it doesn't matter,” Goku said. ”Most people -- all of them who show up at lowdown, anyway -- don't really change ident.i.ty when they come as someone else. They might act a little different for the sake of whatever persona they're wearing, but they aren't different people. The same information keeps adding up, pretty soon the casino knows what you're going to do even before you do.”
Konstantin shook her head. ”We've got similar kinds of identification programs but that sounds pretty farfetched.”
”That's because you're not in this just for the sake of it,” Goku said, leaning toward her slightly.
”You always come in here as a cop on a case. This isn't your idea of fun. You don't wish it was all for real.”
”Oh, I don't know,” Konstantin said. ”Maybe I've just never found the one set-up I could really dig into. Not that I'm hoping I will.”
”Let me know if you ever decide to go on a quest,” said Goku. ”The task force needs the data.”
Konstantin felt a surge of apprehension. ”What task force?”
”We're a loose body of law enforcement officers from different parts of the world where substantial percentages of the population use AR for recreation, or other purposes.”