Idolon (32 page)

The blade pierced Nadice's left cheek, sliding between her teeth and coming out the opposite side. Pelayo bit down, trapping the blade and the dull taste of steel in his mouth.

Blood thrummed in his ears, urgent, pounding.

Mateus swore and yanked the knife free, raising it. Pelayo rolled, bucking against the tangle of arms and legs pinning Nadice to the bed. The thudding ended, and a bright rectangle of light leaned into the room. The knife flashed, and then darkened, doused by shadow. "Police!"

Through the eyefeed from the mask, Pelayo watched Lagrante sprint past the mirror, the saffron jacket of his zoot suit billowing out behind him.

Above Pelayo, Mateus twisted away from Nadice, slid off the back of the bed, and snatched up the evening gown in one smooth motion, turning toward Lagrante.

The rip artist raised his right palm, face out, as if to slow the crunkhead. "You're under arrest."

Mateus nodded. "I gotcha."

He flung the evening gown at Lagrante and charged. The dress unfurled, wrapped over around Lagrante's upraised hand and draped around his head. Lagrante ducked, momentarily blinded, but Mateus's bull rush caught him full in the stomach. Lagrante fell back, hat sailing, and went down. A scimitar gash opened on the right side of his face, curving from ear to jaw.

The two men rolled onto the floor. The knife carved a slim, tight arc under the LEDs. This time the blade impaled Lagrante just below the shoulder blades, where it stuck, pinning the yellow jacket in place.

A crimson circle appeared around Mateus's neck; not blood but the evening gown, knotted tight. Mateus let go of the knife to claw at the ribbon with both hands. The crunkhead's fingers pried frantically at the nanomechanical fibers. But Lagrante cinched the noose tighter.

Pelayo stared down at Mateus, at the cyanosis-blue complexion and the fat tip of the tongue barely protruding from between swollen lips.

—He's dead,
the fish said.
Nadice is dying. So is the baby.

Lagrante lay on his side, sweating, breathing heavily. Blood smeared his face and stained the back of the zoot suit.

Blood stained the sheets around Nadice, too. Too much blood to have come from just the stab wound to her face.

"Lagrante?" Pelayo said.

The rip artist stirred.

"You okay?"

"Think so." The rip artist coughed. "Nadice is in bad shape," Pelayo said. "She needs help."

Lagrante pushed himself up, propping a shoulder against the bed. "Parameds are already on the way." His voice wobbled. He reached for the sodden sheets, tried to pull himself to his knees, and sank back down.

—Nadice doesn't have much time,
the fish said.
You need to come with me, now.

"Where?"

Inside of him the fish rose up from virtual depths, swimming for the surface of his 'skin. As it ascended it rephilmed itself in the integrated-circuit design on the wall next to the bed.

—This way.

Pelayo mentally d-splayed the menu for his 'skin, with the updated list of choices for room decor. He thought-selected the wallpaper/microchip option, and part of him merged with the wall.

He entered into it, became one with it, and in the process was able to step through it...

_______

... into an online room, simage-cast over his eye-feed.

Pelayo looked around the holographic d-splay. "What is this place?

A crib occupied one corner of the room. A carousel of brightly colored plastic animals spun lazily over the crib. A bundle of IV drip tubes dangled from a chrome stand, watched by a nurse in a chair. The tubes were capillary-thin, more like fiberoptic wires that dripped light instead of fluid. Mounted high in one corner, a television on a swivel arm stared down at the nurse. The screen was a blizzard of static.

Through a virtual door to the room he could see a hall with other doors leading to other rooms. Other nurseries. Cries echoed down the hallway, fussy, hungry, tired, and colicky.

The simage construct appeared to be a hodgepodge compilation of images spliced together to form a single room. Each wall was different: rusty foam-backed sheet metal; powder-blue cinder block philmed with unicorn and faery cinFX; gray stucco tagged with Basquiat-style graffiti; and the microchip wallpaper he'd philmed himself in to instantiate here. Overhead a ceiling of tinted glass buzzed with honeybee appliques. Varnished tongue and groove made up the floor.

"Tesseract," he said, thinking of Dali's
Crucifixion,
which he had seen in church once, the cross an unfolded hypercube. "Six rooms in one." All joined by programmable matter.

—Hyperstantial,
the fish said. It detached from the mobile and drifted above the crib, green plastic weaving between the tubes.

Somewhere in the world, each simulated wall connected to an actual wall like the hotel room.

—If you had the access code to philm yourself as one of the five other walls, you would be able to cast a simage of yourself from here to there.

The same way he'd come from the Fairmont; the same way he'd presumably get back. "That how you get around? Wall to wall?"

—Don't think of them as different walls,
the fish said.
They are all the same wall oscillating at different frequencies.

Like a person screening different philms. Underneath, they didn't change. They were still the same person, no matter how much they wanted to be someone else, anyone but who they were.

The nurse was asleep. Or unconscious. Pelayo walked over to her. A tiny puckered baby lay in the crib. A preemie, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, but perfectly formed. Oxygen tubes snaked out of its nostrils, and a feeding tube trailed from its mouth. Several of the tubes had pulled loose. Air hissed from one tube. Food paste dribbled from another. Fluid from the bags hanging on the rack stained the mattress, dripped onto the nurse, and puddled on the floorboards.

Pelayo stepped up to the nurse and touched her on the arm. "Hello?" He prodded her gently.

—She can't hear you,
the fish said.

'"Why not? Wat's wrong with her?"

—Her 'skin has been damaged. She is no longer fully connected to the child and is unable to provide life support.

"Who is she?"

—The mother of the child.

The fish settled into the crib, behind smooth-varnished dowels. Pelayo watched it come to rest a few centimeters above a bunched flannel coverlet.

"I don't understand," he said. "Why'd you bring me here? What am I supposed to do?"

—You need to reinsert the tubes.

"Is that going to help Nadice?"

—They connect the baby to her and to... others. If you stabilize the baby, you will stop the bleeding in her.

Pelayo leaned over the crib. The fish slipped into the baby's hand. The newborn was a girl. Tiny fingers curled reflexively, holding the fish tight. "What others?"

—The other birth mothers.

"Mothers? As in more than one?"

—I had to be sure the child survived. The best way to ensure survival is through numbers.

"So you impregnated a bunch of women. Didn't ask for permission, or bother to tell them."

—If I hadn't, the baby would be dead. One mother has already been killed, along with the fetus. I couldn't take the chance that her death would spread to other mothers.

"Spread how?"

—Through quantronics in the electronic 'skin she was waring—similar to the 'skin you are testing—that were passed on to the baby.

"Wait a minute, let me get this straight. You're saying that the test 'skin she was waring killed her?"

—A virus, applied to the source circuit, was used to attack her autonomic nervous system. I've taken steps to protect as many of the remaining babies as I can, initiated the spread of an applet that will enable me to backdoor the ware. So far the installation is limited to a handful of Transcendental Vibrationists. But as soon as the applet is copied and distributed, the danger should pass.

"You infected the TVs?"

—Through a network of deprogrammers who already have a contact inside of the cult. I posed as a member of the network—fabricated a message that mobilized certain members for an emergency intervention. Arranged for the application to be administered and delivered.

Marta, he thought. She had been set up. Jhon selling her to the TVs had all been part of the plan, carefully orchestrated.

The fish seemed to sigh, soft wind rattling through the dusty window in the sheet-metal wall.

—We're running out of time,
the rattle said.
Listen.

"To what?" But he didn't need an answer. Less noise echoed in the hall—fewer cries from the other rooms.

What choice did he have?

Pelayo rubbed his face. The air tube, he decided. Start with that. He pinched the oxygen tube with shaky fingers. The baby stirred. Her head shifted to one side and she stopped breathing. Carefully, Pelayo tucked a finger under the baby's head, tilted her face up, and reinserted the tube into the nostril. The feeding tube was next. He slipped it in, threading it between dehydrated lips.

Still no response. It wasn't working. The baby wasn't responding. He picked up the IV tube that was dripping blood onto the aged tongue and groove. Plink, plink, plink.

A shadow spread inward from the doorway, darkening the floor. No sound came from the hall. Suddenly, all of the rooms grew quiet, as if they had been silenced by the shadow now lengthening to occlude the crib.

Hair prickling, Pelayo looked up.

Uri grinned at him. "I had a feeling I'd find you here," the skintech said.

"Zhenyu al-Fayoumi?" the security guar said. He stood outside the door, dressed in a clean, smartly pressed uniform with knife-sharp creases and a Texasecure watermark on his forehead.

The philm looked legitimate. It didn't appear to be a cheap bootleg copy. Perhaps the building manager had finally gotten a guard to watch the premises at night.

"Is there a problem?" al-Fayoumi asked, distracted by the online conversation behind him between van Dijk and somebody named Buhay from the San Jose police.

"Uri Titov," van Dijk said in a low voice. "I'd like you to pick him up. Bring him in for questioning."

The guard in front of al-Fayoumi grinned. "IBT thinks there is."

Al-Fayoumi frowned. "I don't have anything to do with IBT."

"Parent company of Sigilint."

"What's this about?" al-Fayoumi demanded. His voice sounded too high and thin, too close to a whine to be intimidating. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"I got a man wants to talk to you."

"Who?"

"I'm not at liberty to say."

Al-Fayoumi held his ground as the guard stepped toward him. "About what?"

The guard peered over his shoulder, taking in the terrariums and Lisette. The girl retreated down the hallway to the bedroom.

Al-Fayoumi raised his voice, hoping to attract van Dijk's attention. "Get out of here, now. Before I call the police."

"I don't think so," the guard said. "From what I can see, you don't want any laws sniffing around."

He shoved al-Fayoumi back and pushed past him, into the narrow entryway to the apartment.

Al-Fayoumi stumbled and lost his balance. He landed squarely on his back. The impact knocked the wind out of him. The guard shut and locked the door, then stood over him.

"Let's do this easy," the man said. "Don't make me get off in your shit. Ya feel me?"

"That's not going to happen," van Dijk said, appearing out of the gloom. Behind him, at the far end of the hall, Lisette's Ghost Dragon mask glowed demonically.

The guard turned to him. "This ain't none of your bidness. I was you, I'd get my azz outta here while I could."

Van Dijk smiled. "You don't know shit about my business." And d-splayed his SFPD badge.

The guard moistened his lips. "Fine. That's how you wanna play it, no problem." He stepped away from al-Fayoumi, backing toward the door.

Al-Fayoumi scrambled to his feet.

The detective motioned for him to
stay down
and reached for the sidearm holstered under his one arm.

Sudden movement behind al-Fayoumi snagged his attention. His gaze jerked from the detective to a thick-barreled handgun the security guard had pulled.

Instead of a single large bore, al-Fayoumi noted dozens of pinprick holes in the dull anodized gleam. The muzzle looked more like the head of a big salt-shaker than anything else.

Someone screamed. Lisette. The glow of her face lurched toward him from down the hall.

Al-Fayoumi lunged to stop her. The air around his head shattered, splintering into hundreds of invisible needles.

"What are you doing here?" Pelayo asked. He straightened, still holding the IV drip in his right hand.

Uri smiled, the familiar saw-blade simage of his teeth more ragged in the online construct. "Hunting."

"For what?"

"Malware. Viral plug-in that's infecting the new 'skin." He took a Kahr PM9 handgun from the pocket of his white lab coat. He aimed the little 9mm at Pelayo. It had a black polymer grip, satin finish, and a stainless-steel slide. Pelayo noted that the safety was off. "Off the shelf antivirus," Uri said, hefting the weapon. "Best I could do on short notice. But I've modified the bullet, so to speak, adapted it with patch ware of my own."

"Have I been infected?" Pelayo said.

Uri shrugged. "If the bullet kills you, you're infected. If it doesn't, you're clean. Simple as that."

In the hotel room the ad mask had moved, was moving, from the bathroom into the main room at what felt like an agonizingly slow pace. Its reflection in the wall mirror grew steadily larger. Atossa must be moving it for the parameds. Trying to get a closer view of Nadice and Lagrante.

"You wanted the 'skin ripped all along," Pelayo said. He didn't move when Uri's hand twitched at the sound of his voice. "I was just doing what you expected."

Uri shrugged off the comment as inconsequential. He raised the 9mm a fraction of a centimeter and pulled the trigger.

Over his earfeed, Pelayo heard the simulated hiss of a bullet pass millimeters from his head. Behind him, the television shattered. He turned. Fracture lines radiated from a neat hole in the center of the glass screen. The static flickered, then cut out.

Pelayo looked back at Uri. Had a subsystem somewhere actually been targeted by the ware, or was the skintech simply making his point? "So how do the TVs fit into all this?" he said.

The Kahr lowered. The small dark hole in the muzzle centered on Pelayo's forehead. "The TVs are the source of the pluglet." Uri's face soured with irritation. "The way it's being spread."

"Through pregnant women?"

"Through the goddamn babies. Once a baby is infected in utero, it gets passed on to another baby."

"How?" "

"Quantronics. The babies are growing the same quantum-based processors that are in the test 'skin."

"The mule you had working for you," Pelayo said. "Nadice." The mask had drifted closer to the bed. He could see Nadice now. She lay on the bedspread, faint as a shadow. Lagrante sat on the floor next to the bed, his back propped against the side. "When she got pregnant, the baby picked up the ware you were growing inside her."

Uri sniffed. "Probably."

Neither Lagrante or Nadice had moved; they were in the same exact position he'd left them in. What was taking so long?

Uri gestured with the Kahr. "Now move away from the crib."

Pelayo listened for cries from the hallway. There were none. "You're murdering them, aren't you? The babies."

"Babies." Uri scoffed, as if he found the idea amusing. "These things aren't even human. Never will be, even if they make it to term."

"What are they, then?"

Uri's smile curled into a sneer. "Piecework. Some kind of nanoanimated matter that's using the fetuses as a host—a way to reproduce. I'm doing everyone a favor."

"In other words," Pelayo said, "it's replicating using the test 'skin. Whatever it is, you helped give birth to it."

The Kahr trembled. "And now I'm going to put an end to it, before things get any further out of hand."

Pelayo cut a glance at the unconscious nurse. "What about the mothers?" he asked. "What's going to happen to them?"

"Nothing, if they're clean. Otherwise—"

"What's going on here?" a voice said. "Uri? What are you doing? Who are these people?"

Pelayo's focus slid past Uri. A man stood in the hallway, peering tentatively into the room. He'd simaged himself in a black ministerial suit, white shirt, and silver tie. Thin gray hair flowed back from a high forehead, clouds trailing off an unyielding bluff.

The man looked directly at Pelayo, then consulted a palm d-splay. "You're the test subject," he said. "The two of you are working together on this. Stealing the 'skin, trying to take control of it behind my back."

"I'm not the one holding the gun," Pelayo said.

The man frowned at the Kahr and Uri. "You are responsible for the miscarriages?" His gaze flitted, bird-quick, to the crib.

Uri's shoulders rose a fraction. "I'm doing what needs to be done."

"Killing people? Unborn babies?"

Uri backed to one side. The muzzle of the 9mm teetered between the old man and Pelayo.

"This isn't what we discussed," the man said, ignoring the handgun. "We had an agreement."

The tiny black spot at the end of the barrel swung toward the man. "Not anymore."

The man trembled. Not out of fear, but rage. He seemed oblivious to the weapon. His eyes blazed. "This is contemptible. I refuse to be party to this. I cannot condone the slaughter of innocent children."

Uri reddened. "They aren't children."

"Enough! This is wrong." The man drew himself up. "As of now, I am officially terminating your association with Atherton enterprises. This cannot, will not, be allowed to continue."

Next to Pelayo, the baby coughed to life. The hand holding the fish lifted, waving the toy.

Uri's face hardened. He jerked the Kahr in the direction of the crib.

"No!" Pelayo reached out
and felt something invade him. The trigger against his finger. Part of him squeezing it and another part resisting, trying to keep from squeezing; teetering in a moment of equipoise...

Pelayo pictured the d
é
cor menu for the 'skin, and mentally selected the option for pressed ceiling panel/tin.

Uri froze, the Kahr extended, as if gripped by a statue. Pelayo couldn't move, his fingers imprisoned in a veneer of embossed, finely textured metal. Somewhere, back in realspace, he hoped that Uri was similarly immobilized.

Atherton walked up to Uri. "I know where you are." The old man smiled. "I've notified the police and hotel security." He turned toward Pelayo. "It won't be long," he said, and exited the room, vanishing down the hallway.

Pelayo watched the baby play with the fish. On the ad-mask d-splay, he could see Nadice's face on the mattress staring up at him, her half-open eyes just centimeters away. Then the mask flipped and he saw the embossed ceiling panel she was looking up at, like the engraved lid of a coffin.

A yellow plastic bee detached from the mobile over the crib and approached him. It entered his mouth, and from there his thoughts... and finally, his dreams.