Idolon (16 page)

"Go blow a wet turd."

This time the laugh was genuine. "What else did this doctor do to you?"

As Nadice relayed the conversation, Marta's expression grew darker. "Talk about rucked," she said at last.

"How do you explain what happened to you?" Nadice said.

"I can't. Not yet." Agitated, Marta pushed to her feet and began to pace. "There has to be another explanation."

Nadice thought of the fish and the bee that had approached her. "There are things out there we don't understand."

"What kind of things?"

Nadice told her about her encounters with the flying fish and the honeybee.

"You're starting to sound like them," Marta said. The comment fell just short of a scoff.

Nadice shrugged. "I'm just saying."

Marta went to the window and gazed out at the ocean, her shoulders rigid, her jaw set. Nadice joined her, resting one hand lightly on her arm. The muscles there were stiff, bundled so tight they felt close to snapping. "You okay?" she asked. Some of the tension under her fingertips eased.

"Just thinking."

"Lot to think about."

"Yeah. Nothing is ever what it seems."

"Including you?" Nadice said.

Marta cut her a scathing glance. "Don't worry about me. If you're smart, you'll look after yourself. Know what I'm saying?"

"Sure." Nadice dropped her hand and stepped away from the rebuke. She could take a hint. She walked back to the bed, giving them a little space.

"I don't want you to get hurt," Marta said after a while. She seemed to be talking to her own reflection in the sunlit diamond.

"It's not your fault I'm here," Nadice said. "Don't blame yourself."

"I'm not." Marta turned to look at her. "I just don't want it to be my fault if you don't get out."

Seoul Man specialized in heirlooms, personal and cultural artifacts he pawned as arcana. His shop on Valencia Street contained an old Curta calculator, a three-meter-long-by-five-centimeter-wide strip of embroidered foot-binding cloth, a Royal manual typewriter, a pair of rhinestone-studded sunglasses purportedly worn in concert by Elton John, various jade netsuke, and a set of eight deformed bullets he claimed had been dug out of the skulls of political rivals and detractors who had been personally executed by Pol Pot during the Cambodian genocide.

"Found at the site of an old Phnom Penh high school that the Khmer Rouge secret police turned into a torture center," Seoul Man told van Dijk, grinning. Under plain brown monk robes he had philmed himself as a gold-complected statue of the Buddha. Black moon-shaped eyebrows framed a red bindi dot centered just above the bridge of his nose. An elaborate ushnisha, with a prominent flamelike halo, crowned his head.

Van Dijk shook his head. The bullets were set in soft foam in a glass-lidded display box with a pewter hasp. "I think I'll pass."

Seoul Man's expression remained placid as he sighed. "That's what everyone says." He closed the lid on the bullets, returned the box to the glass case in front of him, and turned back to van Dijk. "What can I do for you, Detective? It's been a while. I was afraid you'd taken your business elsewhere."

"Hasn't been any business. At least not in your specialty."

"Until now."

Van Dijk reached into his jacket and pulled out a plastine evidence bag, containing the glass earrings and necklace from the dead girl. He held the bag up in the tallow-soft gloom of the shop.

Seoul Man plucked the bag from him and slid it under a magnifying lamp mounted on the top of the case. He peered through the lens. "Roman glass shard," he said. "Crude silverwork, probably modern. Not all that unusual." He straightened. "What else do you want to know?"

"Who made it?"

Seoul Man smiled serenely. "Ahh, so you are buying, after all. Information—the most valuable commodity."

Van Dijk grunted. "How much?"

"Let's find out."

With a quick mental command the antiquarian locked the front door to the pawnshop and d-splayed a
be back shortly
sign. He then led van Dijk through a rear door, down a short hall to his workroom.

Crammed with equipment, the room was a cross between a physics lab and a museum curator's office. Shelves with dusty brass-knobbed specimen drawers occupied one wall. A scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffractometer, mass spectrometer, gas chromato-graph, and acoustic microscopy imager elbowed for space along the remaining walls. The ceramic-topped counter in the center of the room held a stainless-steel sink, a Bunsen burner, and a gene-sequencing centrifuge.

"Any restrictions I should know about?" Seoul Man said. "Special precautions or handling requirements?"

"Just your usual tender loving care."

The antiquarian nodded. He sprayed his hands with liquid gloves. "Where'd the jewelry come from?" he asked while he waited for the translucent latex to dry. "If you don't mind my asking."

"You tell me."

The antiquarian regarded him impassively. "You know what I mean."

Van Dijk nodded. Any trace particles or residue from the site where the earring was recovered might taint the results. "Apartment over in North Beach."

"Does she have a name?"

"Does it matter?"

"Everything matters, Detective. I don't need to tell you that. The Devil may be in the details, but so is God."

"No ID yet," van Dijk said.

"Too bad," the antiquarian said, serenity giving way to sorrow. "I always like to know the names of the people whose lives touch mine."

Van Dijk said nothing.

Seoul Man unsealed the evidence bag, carefully removed the jewelry, and set one earring under a regular light microscope. He activated a wall d-splay and the earring appeared, much larger than life. Magnified, the tiny pits in the square silver frame around the pale azure shard resolved into small nano- or laser-engraved crucifixes.

"Names add a certain value," the antiquarian went on. "A certain meaning that's otherwise missing. Take the victims of those bullets. I haven't been able to identify them yet. I probably never will, but that won't stop me from trying. It's the search that counts, right?"

"A bullet tells more about the killer than the person it kills," van Dijk said.

Seoul Man nodded. "Perhaps the same will be true of this earring." He shaved a miniscule sample of silver from the setting for analysis, followed by a tiny silver of glass. "This may take a while."

"When should I come back?"

"Just before closing." The antiquarian went to one of the machines along the wall. "I have the skulls, you know. Intact except for the bullet holes. I can show them to you, if you like."

Over a secure eyefeed, Zhenyu al-Fayoumi d-splayed the project scope and specifications provided to him by the datician: Quantum phenotype. Entangled inheritance. Group selection. Instant epigenetic transmission.

He rubbed his eyes. The project sounded like more than a straightforward philm release. The philm would be used to literally create a shared social system or subculture in which everybody dressed and thought in lockstep. Yukawa was basically designing a new kind of smart mob, joined not by mass-mediation but electronic skin.

To what end?

A regular smob formed in response to online stimulus. The goal was to get people en masse to buy a particular product, attend a show, or instantiate a shared group activity, like a pray-in or a political rally.

Yukawa's smart mob would be stable, permanently linked through their 'skin, and programmable— capable of directed action.

A military application, he thought. That made the most sense. Instantaneous field updates of information and ware. Inheritable physical traits and characteristics, such as camouflage. Coordinated group activity. Shared, modifiable habits and tendencies. All of these would be desirable in a combat or security unit.

Of course, there would need to be some kind of fail-safe to make sure things didn't get out of control—some way to isolate the groupware, the quantum-coupled 'skin. How to do that in the case of superposed states? Was it possible? It had to be. There must be a way to induce a null state that contained information that could not be understood from the outside.

Still, he had the feeling that he was missing something, something obvious.

Mokita,
he thought. The truth everyone knew, but no one was willing to admit or talk about, even though it was there to see for anyone who cared to look.

Or wasn't afraid of what they might find.

Al-Fayoumi stood in front of a lamp-warmed ter-rarium and examined the batch of flies he'd 'skinned a few hours ago. The graphene coating had finally cleared on most of them. Now they were slowly reviving.

The problem with smobs was instability. They were inherently chaotic. There was no way to predict the types of conditions that gave rise to random, possibly uncontrollable behavior. Based on his observations of the flies, and the mathematical models he was developing to explain the Lamarckian inheritance of idolons, Yukawa wanted him to come up with an algorithm to predict the acquisition of images and the behavioral traits those images produced in a quantum-entangled group. The project referred to these behavioral traits as LMTs, Learned Memetic Tendencies. LMTs could include, but were not limited to, memes and habits. It was well established that certain images encouraged similar behavior in people waring those images. That was why people belonged to a certain cast. The images screened by members of the cast conferred an attitude, and codified a certain type of behavior. Images gave people permission to act in a certain way, because the act wasn't carried out by them but by the pseudoself the image represented.

Ultimately, Yukawa's goal was to reduce the unpredictability in smob behavior... calculate the expected frequency of random mutations and weight the viability and severity of any such mutations.

The latest batch of newly 'skinned flies was stirring to fitful life beneath the lamps, dry wings twitching intermittently and buzzing.

Al-Fayoumi bent a fraction nearer. One of the flies looked different; it appeared to be two flies stuck together, one behind and slightly on top of the other. On closer inspection, however, he noticed that it was actually one single fly with four wings and an elongated body.

A damselfly.

As he watched, the long, reed-thin body flashed vibrant blue and the head began to rephilm.

Al-Fayoumi blinked several times under the heat lamps. With each staccato blink, the emergent image became clearer, more distinct, until it resolved into the head of a fish with silver scales and gill slits.

He toggled to a real-time simage over his eyefeed and increased the magnification until the idolon appeared to be as large as his hand.

The damselfish rose into the air, turned, and approached the front of the terrarium to peer at him directly. Half-floating, half-hovering, its gills gulped and its mouth opened and closed.

As if preparing to speak.

"It's time," Uri said.

He and Mateus sat in a secure booth in Uri's favorite chat room. The simage construct resembled an old twentieth-century New York City deli complete with wooden tables, scuffed linoleum tile, and dusty fluorescent tubes. Framed black-and-white photographs of classic prizefights and other boxing memorabilia, like sweat-stained shorts and leather gloves, decorated the walls. There was even a heavy bag hanging in one corner next to a cold case. Uri liked the smell of pastrami, and the pugilistic scratch of a transistor radio behind the cash register, reliving Ali-Frazier, Louis-Schmelling, or some other famous bout. "The quantum ware is fully assembled," he went on. "Ready to extract."

Mateus wet his lips. "When?"

"Tonight."

Mateus rubbed his face. The simage was real-time, transmitted by tight-weave nanotrodes embedded in his 'skin, so Uri knew it wasn't some software affectation but a genuine case of nerves.

"Tonight could be difficult," Mateus said. "The exact timing, I mean."

"Why's that?"

Mateus flexed and unflexed his hands. A sure sign of trouble. Something was wrong. Apprehension, serrated with impatience, cut into Uri. He opened a d-splay on the table in front of him and packet-sniffed the neural stream from the 'skin the smuggler was waring. The crunkhead was bleeding perspiration, a torrential downpour of jitters. Sweat beaded on his upper lip.

"She flipped." Mateus scratched the back of his neck, chafing under Uri's immediate presence. "Took off before I could stop her."

"You said she wouldn't run," Uri reminded him. "You guaranteed it. No place to go. Too much to lose."

"I'm on it. I'll get her back. No problem."

"Where is she?"

Mateus cleared his throat. "TVs got her."

Unfuckingbelievable. Uri ran the tip of his tongue carefully along the shark-edged tips of his teeth. "Where are you now?" He couldn't tell from the eye-feed. It wasn't the 'skin house where he'd examined the girl last night. There was a bubble window next to Mateus. Filtered sunlight heated the side of his face.

"A hotel, some TV events center. I've got her tagged and that's her last reported location."

""You still receiving a signal?"

"No." A slight shake of the head. "The feed cut out a couple hours ago."

"So the TVs identified the taggant and disabled it."

Mateus squirmed.

"Which means she might not be there anymore," Uri went on. "They might have transferred her someplace else."

Mateus shook his head. "I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"I've been keeping a close eye on the place. She hasn't come out. No one's come out, except for TVs."

"You're positive?"

No answer.

"Make sure," Uri said. "Find out."

"What you want me to do if she's there? I got some boyz—we can go in an' grab the bitch."

"No." Uri's head throbbed. He pressed cool fingertips into his temples. The last thing he wanted to do was provoke a well-organized, well-defended group of religious fanatics. They had the girl. God only knew what she'd told them. He had to assume the worst. That meant she'd almost certainly warned them about Mateus and his crunkhead thugs. Ergo, the TVs would be on the lookout for them. So a direct frontal assault was out of the question. There had to be a way to get to her... talk to her, threaten her, buy her. Whatever it took to get the quantum ware. That was the main thing. He didn't care how it happened.

"Well?" Mateus said.

"Stay put. Keep an eye on things. Find out if she's still there but don't take any other action. Is that clear? Call me, but don't
do
anything."

"I gotcha."

"What did you do to her?" Uri asked.

"Say what?"

"To make her leave. You must have done, or said, something." That was the only explanation that made sense. If the girl had really wanted to become a TV, she could have done so at any time while she was working as a maid. People didn't suddenly convert except as a last resort. They'd been backed into a corner financially or emotionally and it was an act of desperation just short of suicide.

"I didn't do shit," Mateus protested.

"Come on. A crunkhead like you, always looking to knock down some dime piece or yamp." Fucker was always bragging about doing it with this or that young tramp.

"Maaan! It wasn't like that. Our relationship was strictly business. No way I'd cut somethin' with that ho."

Uri propped his elbows on the table in front of him and leaned forward. "Tell me."

"I went to get her. At the homeless shelter. Fuckhead at the front desk gave me a hard time. No visitors after 9:00 p.m. Some shit like that."

"So you forced the issue."

Mateus raised his palms. "It wasn't my fault things got out of hand. Goddamned welfare junkies turned it into a riot."

"Why'd you go get her in the first place?"

Mateus shifted uncertainly. "My boyz saw her talking to a TV. I got concerned. Figured I'd better get her ass out of there."

"For being preached to?"

"The TVs been recruiting a lotta pregnant women. Single mothers. I read it on a newzine feed. Free medical care and all."

Uri had forgotten about that. The girl was knocked up. He could use that to find her. He saw that now. It was obvious.

"Find out if she's there," he reiterated. "Rephilm yourself in case they have your description. Then get back to me and be ready to move."

It would work, Uri told himself. He still had part of the quantum circuit he'd injected into Pelayo. The circuit was entangled, including the part that Nadice still had in her. All he had to do was tweak Pelayo, and the tweak would show up in Nadice.

It couldn't get any simpler.

The more he thought about it, the clearer it became.

_______

Giles Atherton sat in his penthouse office, reviewing the retail distribution plans for Iosepa Biognost Tek's upcoming line of designer philm. Ilse Svatba had finally deigned to give him a preview of the fashion downloads that would be available for the custom 'skin he'd contracted for. Dresses, suits, shoes, jewelry, and other designer accessories hung on the Vurtronic d-splays around him.

"If I run across any bootleg copies prior to the official release date," she'd warned him, under the guise of a playful chide, "I'll know whose scent to pass on to our corporate lawyers."

The implication being that he was the only one she'd leaked information to... which he didn't believe for a minute.

"Not to worry," he'd reassured her. "I can keep a secret as well as you, Ilse se. You know that."

That had earned him a bright, plastic laugh.

It was bullshit, of course, part of IBT's unofficial marketing strategy. She
wanted
the designs to leak into the black-market. Not right away, maybe. But soon. That would generate buzz. Buzz would generate more buzz, which in turn would generate sales.

"I need a firm release date, Ilse. I need to tell my retailers when they can expect to receive delivery."

"Soon, Giles. I promise."

"You know what they say about promises."

She had waved one burgundy-gloved hand. "And you know what they say about believing everything you're told."

This time, it was his turn to force a laugh. Even if she gave him a date, there were no guarantees.

He stared at the floor-to-ceiling d-splays, draped with new clothing. Both the 'skin and philm would be sold at the network of exclusive retail outlets located in Atherton resort hotels. As much as he hated smart mobs, that's what he was trying to instantiate—a global smob that would drive sales of the new 'skin through the roof. It would be difficult, but not impossible. Initial market penetration was the key. Hit critical mass, and he would control the masses.

He stood, went over the nearest Vurtronic, and ran his fingertips along the hem of a Mucha-style dress.

He would need endorsements, of course. Philm stars. Musicians. Other high-profile celebrities. Once those were in place, the window of opportunity would be wide-open. He would have to act quickly, though. Timing was everything. Not just for the legal sales but for the bootleg ones. They needed to be carefully coordinated so that initial supply lagged behind demand.

By how much? That was the question. Not enough availability, and interest would wane. Volume would never reach critical mass. Too much availability, too soon, and the novelty would wear off. It was a balancing act. The black-market component was the most problematic. He could control the supply chain for the retail outlets in his hotels. What he couldn't control was the number of rip artists hacking the ware and how many bootleg copies they made. His black-market contact was already pressuring him for the go-ahead to start ripping the 'skin and selling street downloads even though the quantronics weren't up and running yet.

A tiny bell tone sounded over his earfeed, and Uri's secure signature appeared over his eyefeed. Atherton rerouted the message to one of the big Vurtronic d-splays, replacing the Mucha dress with Uri's face.

"We have a problem," the skintech said.

"What is it this time?"

"Mateus. He lost the girl."

With an effort, Atherton kept his face impassive. "Before or after you retrieved the ware?"

"Before. She's with the TVs."

Atheton fought down panic. "I assume you're taking appropriate measures to get her back."

Uri nodded. "But I might need some help."

"I can't be involved. Not directly. You know that."

"You won't be. I need a secure place to hide her. Just for a few hours, until I can extract the ware."

Atherton narrowed his eyes. "Where?" Though he was pretty sure he knew where Uri was headed.

"The Fairmont."

The Fairmont in downtown San Jose was the closest Atherton resort hotel. "I don't like it," Atherton said.

"Dockton is too far," Uri said. "I need someplace closer I can take her. IBT is out of the question. I've got spare equipment in my lab I can use but I need to be able to set it up in a secure location without any questions."

"What about the Seacliff Inn or an Akasaka capsule hotel?"

Uri shook his head. "Too risky. There's no way I can move all the equipment into place without drawing attention."

"There must be some other location."

"Yeah. If I had time to set it up. But I don't. I need it tonight. In a couple hours. You can backdoor me past security as a delivery driver and register the room using one of the disposable DiNA identities you keep lying around."

Atherton took a deep breath... let it out slowly. "All right. I'll take care of it."

"One other thing," Uri said.

Atherton waited for the second shoe to drop.

"Mateus."

"What about him?"

"He's becoming a liability."

Atherton waved a hand. "Do whatever you think is best. You hired him... you fire him."

"I'm just letting you know."

"Fine. I don't need to know any more." Mateus wasn't his problem. "What about your consultant?" he asked.

The question seemed to take Uri by surprise. "Al-Fayoumi?"

"You were going to keep me posted."

"Everything's fine. I'm keeping a close eye on him." Uri hesitated a beat. "As I expected, he ran a background check on Yukawa and Sigilint."

"And?"

Uri fidgeted under Atherton's irritation. "He appears to have accepted the bio and background information I set up."

"How long before he connects the dots and figures who Yukawa really is?"

"He won't. There aren't any dots to connect."

There were always dots, Atherton thought. Mateus wasn't the only one that might have to be erased.

_______

Before approaching TV central, Mateus rephilmed himself as a 1960s Hippie-era dreadhead, complete with tie-dyed T-shirt, Birkenstock sandals, and matted fro extensions he picked up at a warehouse cosmetique. He could have chosen something badass, Bruce Lee or Delta Force D-boy would've been perfect, but decided it would be better not to come at them with too much 'tude. It would only make them uncooperative from the start. Besides, everybody knew those philms were off the shelf—public-domain shit that would cast him as an amateur. Not only would they not give him any intel, they'd totally laugh their asses off at his expense.

Checking himself out in the side mirror of his car, he felt like a pansy. How did a dreadhead talk, anyway?

Fuck it. The sooner he got this over with, the better. You couldn't think too much about shit. You did what you had to do. And you did it meaner and harder than everyone else, and you didn't look back. That was how you got ahead in life. No second thoughts. No regrets. No involvement other than the business at hand. Those were the rules.

It was no different with Nadice. He'd made the mistake of taking a liking to her—of trying to help her out. A moment of weakness, and now he was paying for it. That's how it always was. There was no forgiveness in the world. It didn't cut you any slack. It didn't pay to cut others any slack.