Slab City Blues - The Collected Stories: All Five Stories in One Volume (12 page)

“It’s really no different in essence from any playback device,” McKinnon went on. “It records the neural impulses generated by the wearer and either transmits them in real time to a paired device or replays them later, coded into an enhanced immersive format. It doesn’t - can’t do anything else.”

“Let’s say for the sake of argument,” I said. “I was feeling like I wanted to end it all and that feeling got recorded to the band. Wouldn’t someone who played it back later feel the same thing?”

She gave an emphatic headshake. “Suicidal thoughts are
abstract,
they’re
ideas.
Ideas can’t be recorded, or even if they could, when you played them back in someone else’s head they wouldn’t make any sense. Touch, taste, smell, sight, even language, all light up the same very specific regions of the brain, so the sensations can be recreated. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, that’s another universe worth of complexity.”

I watched her closely, finding no indications of deceit, and she wasn’t enough of a practised interviewee to fool me. But there was something more, I could see it in her white-knuckle hand clasp and the reluctance to meet my gaze.

“You a religious person, Ms McKinnon?” I asked.

She blinked, almost suppressed a shudder, but I saw it. “What?”

“Religious. As in neo-Catholic, Bhuddist, Hindu and so on. I hear there’s also a new brand of paganism if that floats your spiritual boat. The Mythos Movement. Ever hear of it?”

“Oh shit!” Van Pelt breathed, looking up from his vomit filled receptacle. “I knew that crazy little bastard would come back to haunt us.”

“Shut up, Ryan!” McKinnon rounded on him. “Just shut the hell up!”

“No Ryan,” I said. “Don’t do that.”

He wiped his mouth and came back to the table, sitting down, hands rested flat and finger-splayed on the oak as if worried he might suddenly lose his balance. “Erik Lasalle,” he said, voice hoarse. “Former lead programmer on the Neural Immersion development team. Dismissed eighteen months ago due to… erratic behaviour.”

“He was a member of the Mythos Movement?” Janet asked.

“Oh yeah. Big time devotee, filled his office with Celtic amulets, 2Ds of the old gods, most of his body was covered in tattoos. All the same weirdo pagan shit. Once he started on it you couldn’t shut him up, ranting on about the lost wisdom of the ancients. People generally avoided him.”

“They didn’t understand him!” McKinnon insisted, fierce if a little shrill. “Someone so - so brilliant. Normal modes of behaviour were irrelevant.”

“Elise, he was writing runes on the mainframe in his own blood the day they fired him. I’m all for tolerating the eccentricities of genius, but the guy was a loon.”

McKinnon put her head in her hands and began to weep, soft, rasping sobs. I looked at Janet and inclined my head at McKinnon then gestured for Van Pelt to follow me to the door.

“I need everything from your HR files on Lasalle,” I told him, keeping my voice low. “Plus details of every project he worked on.”

“He only worked on neural immersion. Truth be told we couldn’t have done it without him, the algorithms he came up with for the enhanced immersive format were groundbreaking, took years off the development cycle. Elise is right, he
was
brilliant.” He glanced back at the table where Janet had rested her hand on McKinnon’s doubled fist. The plump woman was speaking in a flat tone, barely audible words tumbling from her mouth in a torrent.

“What’s she doing to her?” I was impressed by the concern in Van Pelt’s voice. Maybe they really were just one big happy family in MEC.

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him. “She and Lasalle were close?”

“She recruited him. Found him coding sims in an immersion arcade on some Yang-side shit-hole.” He paused at my sudden glower. “No offence.”

“The HR records,” I said.

“Already on it.” He tapped his temple. “Sub-dermal smart implant. Had it for a year now. Don’t know how I coped before. The SPI gets a little grating now and then though, but upgrades cost a fortune.”

“Spy?”

“No. S-P-I. Simulated Personality Interface, like a voice in my head. Relays data, suggests content.”

“You mean you’ve got an artificial intelligence living in your brain?”

“Nah, just in the smart. It’s not a true AI anyway, maybe a six on the Turing scale.” He blinked. “All done. I’ll need your ID to transfer the data.”

I held up my smart with the ID displayed. It beeped almost immediately.

“So he’s really started killing people, huh?” Van Pelt said. “The gods demand sacrifice.”

“What?”

“One of his favourite sayings, even had it tattooed across his chest. Crazy little fucker.”

Chapter 8

The 2D in
the MEC personnel file showed a sallow faced youth in a black t-shirt that hung on his bony frame like a wind-blown sheet finding purchase on a sapling. The eyes, dark and a little unnerving in their evident intelligence, gleamed from behind a weeping fringe of lank dark hair.

“Off the charts IQ and problem-solving abilities,” Janet said. We’d perched ourselves on a bench overlooking one of the ornamental lakes, MEC security lingering nearby. “No surviving family, all lost in the war. According to Ms McKinnon. She misses him terribly. Deeply felt maternal feelings, I’d say.”

“Van Pelt said she brought him in,” I said. “He was a freelance sim-coder for Yang-side arcades. Big numbers on the download sites, hefty royalties. He was already rich before he got here. So why’d he take the job?”

“McKinnon said he needed challenge, needed to be tested. He was terrified of boredom.”

“Fear of tedium is an indicator for sociopathic behaviour.” I drew back at her raised eyebrow. “Hey, I can read too.”

“So you think he’s a sociopath?”

“Doesn’t really fit. Sociopaths, especially those prone to violence, tend not to have any real belief system. They are their own god. Plus they’re usually convinced of their own genius but turn out pretty average when you test them.” I nodded at the 2D of Lasalle. “This Jed really is a genius.”

“And a troubled young man. MEC insisted he went for counselling when his behaviour started to deteriorate. The records are sealed but from what he told McKinnon it seems his delusions were getting progressively worse. He told her once there was a demon living inside him. She thought his interest in paganism was an attempt to purge it, cleanse his soul somehow.”

“Did he have a band of his own?”

“McKinnon let him take one the day he left. Leaving present, I guess.”

“Has she heard from him since he got canned?”

“This is the interesting bit. She had a smart-ping from him a few days later. He’d read about some ancient Native American ritual, a key to releasing bad spirits, or so he said. Seems he went Downside to find it.”

“Where?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

Janet’s smile was small but just a little bit smug. “New Mexico.”

*

“So, what can I do fer you fine folks?”

“Sheriff Halbertson?”

“That’s m’name, fella. An’ who might you be?”

“Detective Inspector Alex McLeod, sir. Lorenzo City PD. Thanks for taking our call.”

“Inter-agency co-operation is the key to effective police work, least ways it says so in my contract.”

Sheriff Halbertson had a broad sun-seasoned face, craggy with age and outdoor living. He stood in front of a vista of scrub desert and sky, complete with stetson and a six-pointed star gleaming on his chest armour. The vastness of the backdrop made me a little queasy. Agoraphobia is a common trait amongst those born in orbit.

“It’s concerning the Rickard case,” I said. We were back on Yang One in the local PD office, away from the prying eyes of MEC security. I’d placed an inter-agency call via the Lawnet terminal. It had taken about an hour to locate the Sheriff who was apparently tracking some cattle rustlers on his quad-bike (yes, actual cattle rustlers).

“The musician?” Halbertson squinted at me in puzzlement. “That was over a year ago. And done. As open and shut as I ever saw.”

“I know sir, but we’re tracking an individual who may be linked to the case.” I sent him the 2D of Lasalle. “Do you recognise this man?”

Halbertson’s expression became sombre. “Yeah. I knew
him
alright. Fox Runner.”

“That’s what he called himself?”

“Yep. There’s a local tribe of pagan weirdo types live in a commune out near Coruco, part of that whole Mythos Movement dumbassery. They give themselves what they think are Native American names. The Pueblos think they’re funny as hell and sell them dream-catchers ‘n beads by the truckload.”

“Fox Runner lived with them?”

“Fer a time, till they kicked him out. Seems they didn’t like what he had to say. Always rantin’ about demons and such. That don’t sit too well among the paganites. Guess he was something of a heretic. After that he rented a place in town, never seemed to be shy of cash. Did some background checks on him but they all came back clean. He wasn’t really a bad kid, just had a bad case a’ religion. And not the good kind.”

“And the girls who were convicted of Rickard’s murder. Did he know them?”

“Not so far as I knew. Anyways that all happened a good six weeks after he died.”

Janet let out a sigh of annoyance.

Shit. Dead end.
“He died?” I asked.

“Yessir. Hiked out to Walker’s Canyon. There’re some caves where Pueblo legend says braves used to go for their vision quests. Found him myself a few weeks later, sitting cross-legged in a cave, all dried out and dead as a stump. Coroner said dehydration and malnutrition.”

“Did he have any friends in town? Other newcomers, maybe?”

“Not so much. Got a few complaints from the townsfolk about his preaching an’ all. Being too vocal about religion doesn’t go round here since the Rapture Wars.”

I called up the image of the immersion band. “When you found his body, did he have this with him?”

“Naw, can’t say as he did. Just his clothes and an empty backpack. May’ve been in the stuff he left at his place, but that all got donated to the local med-centre.”

“The girls who killed Rickard, did they ever attend the same centre?”

Halbertson grunted a laugh. “Those girls? Hell yeah, iffin it wasn’t an STD it was the mornin’ after pill, or a cut from a cat-fight needed stitching.”

“They were trouble?”

“Troubled more like. Came from pretty terrible backgrounds. There was a strong meth-cooking scene out here before I took over. Those three girls grew up amongst it. Their folks were old-time cookers, migrated from some Appalachian jerkwater after the wars. Been at it for decades, more a clan than a gang. Three generations of hard-core scum. I was recruited outta Houston by the Territorial Authority to clean them out. Things got ugly fer a while, real old school range war shit. Pardon m’French, ma’am.”

Janet smothered a laugh as he actually tipped his hat.

“Anyways,” the sheriff went on, “when it was done the girls and the other kids were pretty much left on their own with the few half-wit grown-ups that weren’t dead or in jail. They’d been through a lot; poverty, abuse, sexual and violent. Didn’t make for a productive adulthood. We tried to get them some help, the County even hired in a specialist with some new-fangled immersion therapy. Worked on some but not the girls. If anything they got worse. The thing with the Rickard kid though, that was way beyond their usual misbehavin’.”

“The therapist. Do you have their name?”

“Be in the case file somewhere.” Halbertson reached forward to hit some icons on his smart screen. “Pretty little thing as I recall. From up your way too, come to think on it. Here we go.”

“Oh crap,” Janet breathed.

The young woman who stared out from the screen was blonde, petite and had been sitting opposite me at the dinner table the night before.

I was already fumbling for my smart. Sherry’s ID came back as unavailable. I called the office and got Red Wing.

“She hasn’t been in all day. Assumed she was working the case with you.”

“Has anyone heard from her today?”

Red Wing did a quick canvas of the squad room and came back with a negative.

“Put out a city-wide alert,” I told him, fighting the burning dread clutching at my guts. “Highest priority. Possible officer abduction.”
If we’re lucky.
“Suspect name Samantha Jane Neaves. Considered extremely dangerous. I’m sending you the ID specs now. We’ll need a full spectrum search of all systems, financial and security. Tell Ricci to meet me at Sherry’s place.”

For once Red Wing didn’t want to get into a pissing contest and got straight on it.

“You folks OK?” Sheriff Halbertson was asking from the holo as I barrelled through the door.

*

Ricci was already at the apartment block entrance when we got there. I ran overrides on the doors and went in Sig first, scanning for targets. Nothing. Everything neat and well ordered. Same with the other rooms.

“Full work up, quick as you can,” I told Ricci.

“I’m aware of the urgency.” He broke out his spectrometer and got to work on the hard surfaces.

“She said she’d never used one,” Janet said. “An immersion band.”

“I’m going to go with my police intuition that she was lying.” My eyes pored over every detail in the room.
There has to be
something.

“So Lasalle goes Downside to purge his demon,” Janet went on. “Vision-quests himself to death in the desert and his band, if he still had it, ends up in a box at the local med-centre where Sam happens to be working.”

I picked up the thread. “She works with immersion tech, maybe she knows what it is, tries it on. A few weeks later she’s treating three girls who later turn into vicious murderers. She returns to the Slab and whaddya know? People start getting viciously murdered.”

“There’s absolutely nothing in her bio to indicate a violent past, or even a pre-disposition to violence.”

“Forget her past. This isn’t about who she was, it’s about what she is. What she was made.”

“By a malfunctioning immersion device?”

“I don’t know yet. I do know that what ever came back from New Mexico, it wasn’t the girl that left. Making friends with Joe, latching on to Sherry. All very useful if you need a fix on potential future interference from law enforcement. Classic deep cover operative stuff.”

“Why act now?”

“Sherry must have told Sam about her suspended detective friend unofficially working a seriously odd case with a vampire classicist. She - it, decides to covertly eliminate the threat. Another standard deep cover move. It sets the trap with Mrs Devant, sits down to dinner with us knowing we’re going to be dead in a few hours. We tell it about DeMarco. It knew we’d figure out that him jumping from the Pipe and going to the slaughterhouse was connected to the band. That leads us to MEC which leads us to Lasalle. When its ploy with the Devants didn’t work…” I gestured at the empty apartment. “I’m guessing it’s bringing its plans forward.”

Ricci called from the bedroom. I rushed through to find him holding the spectrometer to a small-size t-shirt. “Barely more than a trace amount,” he said. “But it’s an eighty-six percent match. Need a lab test to confirm.”

“Eighty-six percent of what?”

“DeMarco’s DNA.”

“Well, there’s the clincher. Must’ve picked it up when she retrieved the band. That’s all you’ve got? Nothing that’ll lead us to Sherry?”

“Left my crystal ball at home, Alex.” The strain was evident in his voice and I realised I’d been shouting.

“Sorry,” I said. “Keep at it. Draft in as many techs as you need.” I made my way outside with Janet in tow.

“So what now?” she asked.

“The clinic where she worked. If that’s a bust, we’ll go Yin-side and talk to her family.”

My smart buzzed as we neared the Pipe: Red Wing. “Tell me you have something.”

“Cam footage. Red Line, Axis bound, ten minutes ago.” He fed it through, the image clear enough to flood me with relief. Sherry sitting on the Pipe, alone and breathing. My relief faded fast when I noticed the thin band of metal shining out from the red mass of her hair and the vacant unseeing expression on her face. There was also some kind of interference on the feed, a spasming rash of pixels to her left.

“What’s that?” I asked Red Wing.

“It’s kinda weird. The techs don’t know. The image is high-res and uncompressed so there shouldn’t be any artifacts.”

I looked closer at the patch of dislocated pixels. Adjusting for perspective it was just about the same height as a five foot nothing young woman.
It can mask
itself.

“Where are they now?”

“Cams show her exiting the Pipe at Axis Terminus.”

“Flash to local units. Proceed with extreme caution. I’m on my way.”

Why the Axis?
It came to me as we sprinted onto the Pipe carriage and I punched in the emergency override codes.
Freak. It’s going to visit
family.

*

We were two levels short of Axis Terminus when my smart buzzed with an unfamiliar caller ID. “What?”

“Inspector McLeod? Ryan Van Pelt. You said to call if anything else came to light.”

“Can it wait? Kinda in the middle of something.”

“Sure, it’s just I remembered our first phase of human trials.”

“First phase?”

“Oh yeah. We went through six separate trials before the band was cleared for initial marketing. Anyway, I thought I’d better double check for any long-term adverse effects. I ran the names through a standard open source cross-check and one came up as a recent homicide victim.”

“Which one?”

“Karnikhov, Ygor. Axis resident. We often use veterans for human trials. Disciplined test subjects are hard to find. Plus they can always use the money.”

“He had a band?”

“Well, not officially.”

“I really don’t have time for this shit, Van Pelt! Did he have a band?”

“OK, OK. I checked with the testing crew. Seems he made a big impression on one of the female techs.”

“She let him take one home.”

“Along with her. On the condition he kept it quiet. Hugely unprofessional. Naturally, we just terminated her contract.”

Karnikhov, servo-bot retrieval and repair specialist.
Logging a lot of extra hours recently. He was killed by a bot alright; he programmed it himself. After he’d made some power-company replicas to take care of Mr and Mrs Devant. How many more did he have access
to?

I sounded off and called Joe.
Screw chain of command.
“I need to speak to him.”

“He’s kinda tied up, Alex. It’s the quarterly budget meeting.”

“Sherry’s been taken, OK? If you want to see her alive again, you’ll get me the chief.”

A short pause, faint sounds of argument, Joe’s difficult-to-ignore assertiveness coming through. “I’m afraid I
must
insist, sir!”