Idolon (8 page)

The sneer slipped from Uri's face. From his shirt pocket he produced a small vial containing a barely visible biopsy chip.

Atherton took the vial for closer inspection. "Is this it?"

"The quantum-coupled switches aren't completely in phase yet," Uri said. "They're in the final stages of becoming coherent.'" He had been enthusiastic all along
—
something about a stable electron tunnel in the quantum circuitry
—
convinced from the beginning that the quantronics he'd obtained from a fly-by-night research lab would prove viable in vivo. "As soon as the resonance state is stable we can integrate the circuitry into the production reelease of the 'skin." .

"How long are we talking?"

"A day or two."

"So"
—
Ather!on shifted his attention from the vial to Uri
—
"what's the problem?"

A muscle in the 'side of Uri's face twitched. Once.Twice. "One of the initial test subjects died. Earlier today. I don't have the exact time of death."

Atherton closed his eyes, stared into the darkness for a moment. "How?"

"I'm not sure. I just found out about it a couple of hours ago. The cause of death hasn't been deterrmined."

The burning sensation in Atherton's stomach rekindled, along with the pressure in his chest. He squeezed the vial, then reopened his eyes.

Uri wet his lips. "It might not have been the ware."

"But it could have been."

Uri nodded. "That's what I need to find out." Atherton relaxed his grip on, the vial. "What about the mule? Is she going to be a problem, too?"

Uri shook his head cautiously. "I don't think so. She should be easy to keep quiet. Her handler might be more difficult."

"Why? What happened?"

They were cruising through a quiet neighborhood known as the Jewel Box, because the streets were named after gems: Garnet, Emerald, Agate. The houses were midtwentieth-century modern. Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier.

"Nothing," Uri said. "I just don't trust him."

A lie. Atherton could smell it on the skintech's breath, sour and clammy. Uri had done something
—
or knew something
—
he was keeping to himself. That might be for the best. Then again, maybe not.

"Don't worry," Uri said, "nothing will get out of hand."

Atherton decided to back off. For the time being. He returned the vial. "Tell me about this phemeticist you've contacted."

"Zhenyu al-Fayoumi." Uri pocketed the vial. "I'm meeting him tonight."

Once the quantum component was in place and bootleg copies of IBT's new 'skin became widely available on the street, they needed to know what was likely to happen as the shareware spread
—
what patterns and modalities of behavior would emerge. For that, they needed a whole new set of mathemattical tools and evolutionary models.

"You're sure about him?" Atherton said. "He knows what he's doing? He can be trusted?"

Uri chafed. "The Lamarckian inheritance of acquired traits was disproved over a hundred years ago. As a theory, it's considered a joke-synonymous with quack science.'"

"I fail to see how that proves he can keep his mouth shut and do what he's told."

"He can't talk about he's working on. No one in the scientific community would take him seriously. He'd be a laughingstock."

"You're saying he has a chip on his shoulder
—
something to prove."

"If he says anything, he'll be risking his job and his reputation. He's not going to take that chance. This is an opportunity to pursue a line of inquiry that would otherwise get him discredited."

Atherton pressed his lips into a tight line. "I don't like being used as a means to someone else's end."

"You're worried he'll try to take advantage of the situation?"

"I refuse to be held hostage."

"That's not going to happen. If he's our best option, we're also his. Outside of us, there's no one he can turn to."

"All right." Atherton worked his jaw from side to side. "Just make sure you keep a tight leash on him."

Uri touched the tip of his tongue to his teeth. "You aren't the only one who doesn't want to get bit."

"And find out what happened to that test subject." That, more than anything, had him on edge.

"Is that it?" Uri said after a short pause.

"For now."

The Mitsubishi slowed to a stop next to a deserted sidewalk near the yacht harbor. They were still a long way from the Boardwalk. But even from this distance, music flayed the damp air, brash as the neon/LED glare that detonated off the bellies of low-hanging clouds.

"I'll let you know how it goes in the morning," Uri said. He eased out of the car and dissolved into the night like venom in dark, oily water.

Judy's Garlands was back in business. A month ago, the salon had been closed by the San Francisco health inspector for running an illegal bathhouse and 'skin parlor out of the basement. To van Dijk, it looked like the salon was on the up-and-up, back to hairstyling, nails, nanimatronics, and minor cosmetic surgery.

For the moment. It wouldn't be long before the 'skin parlor was back in operation. The owner didn't have much choice. Not if he wanted to stay in business. There were thousands of unlicensed 'skintubs in back rooms, frequented by philmmheads who couldn't afford to go to a regulated parlor or wanted cracked ware and bootleg philm they couldn't get legally.

Dirty 'skin was becoming more common, resultting in a rash of medical problems
—
everything from eczema and cyte infections to neurological disorders.

The cosmeticians were all philmed as Judy Garland, each from a different film.
A Star Is Born. Meet Me in St. Louis. Till the Clouds Roll By. Ziegfeld Follies, ZiegfeldGirl.

The receptionist at the front desk wore a white blouse and a blue skirt, hair parted and pulled back. His complexion was soft, his eyes luminous. Van Dijk didn't recognize the musical.

"
Babes on Broadway
?" he ventured.

"
In Arms
," the man said in a suggestive, if someewhat scratchy, singsong. Evidently, he took pleasure in the vaguely sexual hiss, or didn't want a digitally remastered version of her voice that wasn't abbsolutely authentic and true to the real Judy.

Van Dijk nodded. "Harvey around?"

The receptionist cocked his head and introduced a flirtatious sashay into the voice. "Who shall I say is calling?"

"Andy Hardy."

The receptionist gave him a florid eye roll. "Don't tell me.
Meets Debutante
.

Van Dijk smiled. "
Love finds
." The only other movie in the long-running Andy Hardy series that starred Judy Garland.

The receptionist spread his hands,
c'est la vie
, like the wings of a flamingo. "Do you have an appointment?"

"Walk-in." Van Dijk flashed his badge. At the same time he transmitted a DiNA verification code to the building security.

The receptionist pouted as he was autonotified,of the verification. "In that case, do you have a warrant?"

"It's not that kind of visit." Van Dijk made his way past the desk and the Harvey Girls, as they liked to call themselves, busy with customers at their styling stations. Six Judys turned to eye him with petulant disapproval. They glared, but said nothing as he mounted the narrow stairs to the second floor.

_______

"You could have at least philmed yourself for the part," Harvey said from behind an old wooden desk. Reproductions of Judy Garland movie posters papered the walls of the office.
The Harvey Girls
, wholeesome and sumptuous, were the focus of the room, center stage behind the desk and larger than life.

Van Dijk shrugged. "You know me. I hate to give the wrong impression."

Harvey scowled. As usual, he'd philmed himself as John Hodiak, the male lead in the poster, with black hair and a thin, swallowtail mustache. He wore a black jacket, a white starched shirt, and a shiny red silk tie. "Is that what this is about?" he asked. "False pretenses?"

Van Dijk eased into a low-slung chair, chrome-framed with leopard-spot fabrique that stiffened under his weight. Through the big window next to him, the only one in the room, he caught swirling fog-obscured glimpses of the Tenderloin's cabaret and bordello cinescape. The district was heating up for the evening, glowing with sultry reds and hot pinks. "You tell me."

"I've got nothing to hide. I'm clean."  

"I can see that." Van Dijk crossed an ankle over one knee, then tented his fingers under his chin.

After a beat, Harvey sighed in resignation and grudgingly slipped into his uncomfortable role as police informant. "I suppose you want to know if I know anything about that girl who died."

"Well?"

"What do you think?"

"I didn't figure her for one of yours," Judy’s Garlands was strictly Y-chromo. "But if you think that means you're off the hook, think again."

Harvey shook his head. "I don't know where she got 'skinned. Or what she was waring."

"But you'd know if there was bad 'skin going around."

"Business has been pretty clean of late."

"What about bad blood?"

Harvey smoothed his mustache with deft strokes of one index finger, first the left side, then the right "Always bad blood. You know that."

"Bad enough to kill?"

"Word I'm getting from some of the cinematiques is that she was new to the club scene."

"How new?"

"Hard to say. Couple of months, maybe. Give or take."

"So she was trying to break into the trade as a dancer, sex worker, whatever, and no one knows who she was or where she was from."

"You know how it is in this business. Everyone is someone else
—
and no one is who they say they are."

"I also know that if you don't put out," Van Dijk said, "you're shut out."

Harvey squirmed. "All I've heard are the usual ruumors, that's all. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Such as?"

"You know." Harvey waved a vague hand. "The 'skin she was waring was totally new. High-end. All of the rip artists wanted to get into her pants. But she wasn't putting out. That might have pissed some people off."

"New ware from who?" There were hundreds of philm studios releasing updated 'skin and downloads. For every legit shop, there were thousands of illegal ones.

Harvey shrugged. "Good question. That would imply intimate information about something I'm no longer involved in."

"You've always been a very intimate girl."

Harvey flounced dark lashes. "But very circumspect." He dimpled his left cheek with a fingertip. Or is it 'cised? I can never remember."

Van Dijk leaned forward. "This is not the time to play hard to get. I'm not in the mood."

"You never are." Harvey sniffed. "Party pooper."

"I'm serious."

"Uptight, darling. But who's splitting hairs?"

Very slowly, van Dijk puckered his lips and kissed air between them.

Harvey affected an air of exasperation. "Why do I always have to be the one to tell? What's in it for me?"

"Depends."

"That's what you said last time, and look what happened. I get raided and closed down."

"I know. I feel bad about what happened. But sometimes there's only so much a guy can do to protect  a girl."

"Oh, all right." Harvey sighed. "IBT. They're on everybody's lips these days. I don't know why. If you ask me their stuff is crap, hopelessly derivative. But I suppose there's no accounting for bad taste."

_______

In his car, van Dijk got a call from Kostroff. He routed her to a d-splay on the inside of his winddshield.

"You're not going to like this," the medical examminer said.

"Tell me something I don't know."

Kostroff blew at a strand of hair that had curled around one corner of her mouth. "Cause of death in your stiff was acute neuroleptic shock, leading to sudden respiratory and cardiac arrest."

"Her nervous system failed?"

"Shut down, suddenly and catastrophically."

"How?"

"Basically neurotransmission in her central nervous system was hyperpolarized
—
inhibited
—
immediately prior to death."

"By what? Toxins?"

Kostroff shook her head. "All the blood and tisssue work came back negative for toxicity."

"So what are we looking at?"

"Something in the 'skin. It's got wetronic hooks into her peripheral and central nervous systems."

"What kind of hooks?"

"Nothing I've ever seen. I'm going to notify NTSI. At this point, it looks more like their baby."

Nanotechnological Systems Investigation handled everything from designer drugs to illegal ware, including street-kinked 'skin and dirty grafts. Since the forensics pointed to a cause of death other than homicide, the case was no longer his. He could wash his hands.

"There're couple of other things I found," Kostroff said, "which may or may not be important."

"What's that?"

"She was carrying a lot of dormant  REbots. Mostly in the face. It appears that the bots took bone from her nose and cheeks and redistributed it to other parts of her skeleton for reuse."

"Nanoplasty for the 'skin." It was a high-end modification that made it possible for a person to alter their physiology to more closely imitate the appearance of the philm they were screening.

Kostroff nodded. "She was also pregnant."

Van Dijk took a moment to let this sink in.

"How far along?"

"I'm not sure. The baby was ... abnormal. I'm not even sure it was alive, strictly speaking."

"Abnormal how?"

"Fully formed and properly proportioned, for its size. More like a scaled-down version of an adult than a fetus."

Van Dijk raised his brows. "Piecework?"

"That's what I'm thinking. The infant, if you can call it that, was also 'skinned." Kostroff gnawed a corner of one lip. "It's almost as if the fetus was being used as a culture, to grow the 'skin."

"Any DNA from the fetus?" he asked hopefully.

Kostroff shook her head. "NOF."

So he wouldn't be able to identify the victim that way. Even if she had gone to a legal piecework clinic that kept DNA records, they would be confidential. He'd need a court order, and at this point he didn't have enough probable cause.

After Kostroff logged off, van Dijk stared at his reflection in the windshield, pale and spectral against the cabaret of street LEDs and blinking adcasts.

The girl. Lisette. He needed to find her. She had seen something
—
or someone
—
she shouldn't.

Why else would she run?