Tomorrow’s World (24 page)

And the great thing is, as long as you can dream and imagine and wonder, then there are.

The terrible thing was that Calum had been wrong about that: I could dream and imagine and wonder, but there were no more voyages of discovery waiting to be made.

I let out another of my wistful sighs. Like Jen's memory Calum Tait's book was bittersweet, and for the same reasons: sweetness from the thought of wonderful things; bitterness from the knowledge that those things are gone forever.

I was prepared to put up with the bitter for the sweet, however, so I flicked through the pages of the book, looking for my favorite passages. One described what Calum saw when he looked from the top of a natural, sphinx-like outcrop beside Table Mountain in Cape Town, seeing with his imagination as well as his eyes:

From the Lion's Head you can gaze into the heart of Africa: see veldt and savannah and tropical rainforest; Great Rift Valley and High Atlas Mountains; rainbow rising over Victoria Falls and snows crowning Kilimanjaro.

Coasts of Slaves and Barbary, Gold and Ivory; blowing sands of Kalahari, Namib and Sahara; flowing waters of Limpopo, Zambezi and Congo, Niger and Nile.

Migrating zebra, charging rhino and stampeding elephant; sprinting cheetah, leopard up a tree and lion at a kill; sidewinding trail of snake in sand dune and silhouette of giraffe at sunset.

Places with names like Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam; Timbuktu and Tamanrassat, Bujumbura and Ougadougou.

Africa is the fabled land that lies beyond the far horizon. Africa is an adventurer's dream.

And just as I'd wondered how it felt to discover a continent, so I wondered how one could be lost. I wondered how such richness and diversity could be turned to dust and carried away by a wind that no longer had a different name in each place it passed, that no longer had a name at all.

The turn of a page took me to:

Cape Town's Two Oceans Aquarium, where I saw a pair of seahorses drifting with their tails curled together. I don't know if that's how seahorses embrace, but they were like a courting couple, enchantment embodied. It's hard to believe they share the ocean with nuclear submarines; they're too serene to belong to the same planet as beings who've devised weapons of mass destruction.

And it was hard for me to believe such things once existed in oceans that were now all but empty.

I was in mid-sigh when my hear-ring crackled into life: “Ben?”

It was a woman's voice. At first I thought it was Paula, and my heart raced at the fact she'd called my by my first name again; at the notion she might be feeling some of the same things for me that I was for her, and feeling them too strongly to deny.

“I just wanted to say congratulations.”

My heart sank, because I recognized the voice as Annie MacDougall's. I was so disappointed it was a few seconds before it dawned on me: I'd no idea what she was congratulating me for.

“You have heard about it, haven't you?”

“Heard about what?” I said.

“Y
OUR NAME CAME UP IN TONIGHT'S LOTTERY DRAW.”

All of a sudden things were looking up, big time. I went through the list of lottery prizes in my mind. They range from a timesphere season ticket to a trip on a jetliner. Usually the jetliners only carry cargo, but every month one of the smaller models takes on passengers. If you can't afford to buy a seat—and they're priced so high few people can—your only hope of making a trip is to win the lottery. I'd once read an article about the logic behind such trips. The Ecosystem apparently calculated they represent one of the most cost-effective ways for it to redeem pleasure points. Only a couple of seats were for sale on each trip, and they were priced high enough to cover all the costs. Meanwhile the lottery sales for the other seats added up to a vast amount of points, which were effectively being redeemed at no cost to the Ecosystem—all it was providing in return for them was hopes and dreams, only a few of which it had to fulfill. As a bonus, the lottery represented a way of adding a small, harmless element of unpredictability to an otherwise predictable world, giving people something to look forward to every week—the hope of a dream coming true.

“Please tell me I didn't just win a timesphere ticket,” I said.

“No, you hit it big time,” Annie told me. “Top prize—two seats on the next jetliner.”

Annie had been through a bad time and needed cheering up, and I felt guilty at my failure to work out what had happened to her dad, so I said, “Would you like to come along?”

She laughed. “I wasn't hinting. It's amazingly kind of you to ask, but I couldn't take so much from someone I barely know. Besides, it's a transatlantic crossing to Niagara Falls, no less—you should take someone you love.”

I didn't say anything to Annie MacDougall. I was too busy thanking a god I hadn't believed in until a few moments ago. If any place on the planet could put Paula in the mood for love, it had to be the most romantic waterfall in the world.

I went to bed dreaming about standing beside Paula with the spray from Niagara blowing in our faces and a rainbow rising above the Horseshoe Falls. It was as good a dream as I've ever had.

Until I put my arm around Paula, and her hand was where her elbow should have been. Just like Annie MacDougall's.

It was a relief when my hear-ring crackled into life at that point.

My relief didn't last long; the call-out was an urgent one, to someone on the point of flatlining in apartment 479.

I tumbled out of bed, pulled on my coverall and raced for the elevator. I fired some questions into my i-band as the lift doors closed behind me. By the time they opened two floors later I knew that the occupant of 479 was a man called Tim McCann who was the same age as myself. He lived alone and was on the point of dying alone—there was no record of anyone else entering his apartment. We were told at LogiPol College to assume nothing, but sometimes you can't help yourself—and, as I hurried along the corridor, I assumed I was about to encounter another overdose victim.

Paula was at the far end of the corridor, and she wasn't assuming anything at all; she slotted her ID card into the reader with one hand, and drew her knockdown with the other. I broke into a run, but Paula charged into the flat before I got there.

The scene was pretty much what I'd expected: a man on a bed, one arm dangling to the floor. The hand at the end of the arm was almost touching a syringe on the carpet.

Paula took on the task of first-response medicare, while I slipped on a pair of skintex gloves and did the detective bit. The set-up was so similar to what had happened with Doug MacDougall I couldn't help think there was more to things than met the eye in flat 479, just as there had been in flat 331. With that in mind I bagged the syringe for forensic testing and gave the apartment a once-over.

Tim McCann's passion in life was obvious; the walls were lined with an assortment of Olden Days bookcases containing tattered and mildewed paperbacks. A quick glance gave me an insight into his tastes: Hemingway, Steinbeck, Chandler, James M. Cain and a whole lot of sci-fi.

I went over to his desk and checked his computer. It showed no record of any activity in the previous few hours. The drawer beneath it held an Olden Days diary and a pencil. I put them in my plastic bag along with the syringe.

By that time the medics had arrived and there was nothing more to do except watch them cart Tim McCann away.

I longed to tell Paula the good news about my lottery win and invite her to Niagara Falls, but resisted the temptation because I couldn't think of a less romantic set of circumstances for extending the invitation.

So we went our separate ways and I tried to get back to sleep.

When we met up again it was in the station house a couple of hours later. I called Community General to ask about Tim McCann. He wasn't dead and he wasn't going to die. Well, everybody's going to die. I just mean he wasn't going to die anytime soon. Theoretically, I should have been able to ask him what had happened, and why. There wasn't much point in asking him anything, though, because it would take about a thousand days for an answer. He'd overdosed on Slo-Mo.

Since I couldn't ask Tim McCann anything, I asked Paula something: “How would you like to go with me to Niagara Falls?”

I explained about my lottery win.

I was sure she wanted to go—who wouldn't, because it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see one of the most amazing places on the planet—but she said, “I don't think that would be a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“I promised myself I'd never go Outside with you again.”

“I thought you had a good time. I've never seen you so happy.”

“That's the whole point.”

The old rom-coms I'm so fond of were often based on the differences between the sexes, and the way men can never understand women. I had a lot more than that to contend with here; I think the genetic divide is far deeper than the gender gap. I gave up trying to fathom things out for myself and asked her straight out: “How can you not want to do something that will make you happy?”

“The time I spent with you Outside made me want to be something that, when I got back to the community, I realized I couldn't be.”

“I don't—”

“We've been over this, Travis. I might be able to feel love in a way other Numbers can't, but I can't believe in it any more than the rest
of them… of us.
Just thinking about it has got me confused about who I am, what I am.”

“This is Niagara Falls I'm talking about, Paula. Make up a list of the top ten most—” I nearly said ‘romantic,' but stopped myself in time—”beautiful places on the planet, and this has to be on it.”

I could tell she was weakening. “You'll never get another chance to see it. If you don't take it, you'll always wonder what it would have been like.”

“I can see what it's like from a timesphere.”

“Do you really think that's the same thing? Do you honestly think you won't regret it for the rest of your life if you say no.”

“I'll get over it. Easier than I'm likely to get over the regret if I say yes.”

“Look, it's not as if we'll be alone, like we were in the library. And we'll be so taken up with the falls we'll hardly be aware of each other.”

“Thanks,” she said sarcastically.

“Take it as a compliment—I want you to come so much I'm prepared to lie to you.”

She smiled; the first crack in her armor.

Inspired, I said, “I'll tell you what, I'll do a deal with you. I've got a copy of the old Marilyn Monroe film
Niagara.
I'll bring it in this afternoon and you can watch it tonight—and if it doesn't leave you wanting to see the falls for yourself, I'll say no more about it. Okay?”

“Only if you agree to say no more about it before I've watched the film, as well as after.”

“Deal,” I said.

“Good. Maybe I can get on with doing the report on McCann, then.”

While she did the paperwork on Tim McCann, I checked up on his background. It turned out he made a living from writing eBooks. Mainly neo-noir, if the titles were anything to go by. He'd churned out one every eight months, regular as clockwork, for the last ten years. I recognized some of the titles, which were borderline trashy. I think I've read a couple, but they couldn't have been too memorable. It was four months since his last story came out. He should have been halfway through the latest one, but there was no sign of anything on his computer.

I thought about what that might mean.

I thought about the way there was no sign of
Lichens and Mosses of the World
on the Ecosystem database.

There was probably a perfectly reasonable explanation. In fact, two came to mind at about the same time. To check out the first one I went into the evidence bag and brought out McCann's diary, thinking maybe it was blank when he found it and he'd been using it to write out his latest story long-hand.

But when I opened the diary the writing was in pen, not the pencil I'd found in his desk. The ink was faded and the words described a day in the life of someone from the Old Days. I put the diary in the thigh pocket of my coveralls. Bedtime reading for tonight.

The other explanation for the lack of a new work in progress seemed to be the most logical one: writer's block. Either Tim McCann had run out of ideas or couldn't think how to express them. That would explain why he'd turned to drugs.

Everything made sense. I metaphorically patted myself on the back.

It turned out I was a bit premature in doing so, but I didn't realize that until later.

An hour later, to be precise. With nothing else to do, and mindful of the advice about ‘assuming nothing'—not to mention the whole Doug MacDougall situation—I'd taken the syringe and pencil along to the forensics lab to get them tested.

“You're not going to believe this,” the lab technician said.

Unable to improve on that statement as a way of introducing the forensic results to Paula, I repeated it word for word when I got back to the station house.

“Don't tell me, there aren't any prints on this syringe either,” she said.

“No, there's a perfect set of prints.”

“But they're not McCann's.”

“Wrong again.”

“So what's the problem?”

“The prints on the pencil are from his left hand.”

“And the ones on the syringe are from his right,” Paula guessed.

She was correct about that, and also with the rest of what she said: “And you're thinking someone else injected McCann, then pressed McCann's fingers on the syringe to get prints on it, not realizing he was left-handed.”