Tomorrow’s World (5 page)

From the way Paula looked at this Pareto,
she
knew who he was. I wasn't sure how she knew, and didn't want to think about that for too long. My dislike of the Pareto increased exponentially, and with a shock I realized I was jealous. I was used to only feeling unadulterated contempt for Paretos. I wasn't used to being jealous of them. I had a feeling Paula was mentally undressing him. I'd never had the feeling she was mentally undressing me, which hardly seemed fair since I'd done it so many times to her.

The Pareto ignored me, which suited me fine, and addressed Paula, which I wasn't so happy about. “SitRep,” he said.

So Paula gave him a situation report, if you can call two words and an abbreviation a report: “Suicide by OD.”

“Evidence for?”

“Note and syringe. No sign of struggle. No forced entry. Last authorized entry was by the deceased last night.”

“Evidence against?” the Pareto asked.

Paula looked at me, like she was daring me to say something.

I looked at Doug MacDougall, trying to figure out what to say. If my formless doubts hadn't cut any ice with Paula, there wasn't the remotest chance they would impress the Pareto. He was sneering at me bigtime as it was, and would cut me down mercilessly if I voiced the mix of hunch and intuition that made me think there might be more to this than met the eye. Still, I was going to voice my doubts anyway. I opened my mouth, not quite sure exactly what I was going to say.

Paula beat me to it. No doubt scared my idiocy would reflect badly on her, given she's my immediate superior, she hurriedly said, “We can probably close the case with an autopsy.”

“Good,” the Pareto said.

So we could all live happily ever after.

Well, except for Doug MacDougall.

And, as it turned out, not-so-perfect Paula.

And, of course, me.

Not to mention all the other people in every haven on the planet.

I
HAD A SNOOP AROUND THE APARTMENT WHILE WE
waited for the body to be bagged. I had no idea what I was looking for, but I was sure things weren't quite what they seemed.

By the time I got back where I'd started, Paula had rolled up the left sleeve of Doug's green coveralls and was checking for signs of previous drug abuse. That was when I realized one of the things that wasn't right about the scene we'd walked in on. “His sleeve,” I said, thinking aloud.

Paula gave me a questioning look. That's the nicest thing I can call it.

“His sleeve should have already been rolled up,” I said by way of explanation.

“What are you talking about?”

“He wouldn't have injected himself through his coveralls.”

“Why not? He wouldn't have to worry about introducing textile fragments into his bloodstream if he was injecting enough drugs to kill himself.”

That was perfectly logical, but I would roll up my sleeve before injecting anything into my arm, and I'm certain other people—well, other Names—would do likewise.

The arrival of the haven counselors saved me from trying to explain any of that to Paula.

We're supposed to brief the counselors in cases like this so they can break the bad news to the next of kin. They work in male and female Name and Number pairs—like LogiPol wardens, and for pretty much the same reasons. I sensed the same sort of antipathy between this pair as there is between me and Paula, and took a perverse satisfaction from it. The knowledge that these people, who are trained to get on with everyone, can't get on with each other made me feel less unreasonable and bigoted in comparison.

Paula related what we knew about Doug and his death, and passed on what she'd learned from the Ecosystem about his next of kin—a daughter called Annie, who taught in Haven Nine's school. Each haven has its own little school. Pupils who do well go on to the Learning Zone, a self-contained university in Community Central.

Normally I'm only too glad to let counselors break bad news to the next of kin. I find it hard enough coping with my own emotions, let alone helping someone else deal with theirs. However, the same instinct that led me to believe there might be more to Doug's death than met the eye made me think it would be worth accompanying the counselors to see if Annie MacDougall's shock and grief were genuine. While I was there, I could slip in a few questions about her father's state of mind and the people who made up his world.

Another callout, this time to a disturbance in an apartment on level eight, prevented me from suggesting any of that to Paula. The counselors headed off to break the news to Annie MacDougall, and Paula and I hurried for the lift.

We heard the racket as soon as we got to level eight, and it gave me a good idea what to expect. It sounded like the occupants of the apartment we'd been called to were watching a sexually explicit movie with the volume turned up and the tracking slowed down. I was getting used to such sounds—and no, that doesn't mean I'd started watching explicit movies on slow advance.

With barely veiled disgust, Paula said, “You people are so weak and pathetic, Travis.”

I didn't say, ‘How do you know they're Names and not Numbers?' because we both knew that Numbers don't get themselves into these sort of situations. The best I could manage was, “And you people are so likeable and compassionate.”

There was no let-up in the ecstatic moaning as we made our way along the corridor. If we hadn't been called, it would have gone on for days, if not weeks. We couldn't stop it, just ensure it continued in a sound-proof room in Community General. I was mortally embarrassed, not only because of the intimate nature of the moans but because they voiced so much more than desire. They proclaimed loud and clear the sort of pathetic weakness which Numbers never miss an opportunity to denigrate us for, and which we spend our lives trying to deny to ourselves and to them. That is, when we don't give ourselves over to it completely, like the couple we were about to walk in on. As the moaning grew even more abandoned, I resorted to a lame attempt at humor to cover my shame: “I bet you're just jealous because you're not getting—”

“Travis, don't go there.”

Time for another in my series of pathetic confessions: I love it when Perfect Paula tells me off.

We paused at the apartment door, listening in horrified fascination to the sounds from within. There were seemingly endless groans and moans of ecstasy, and other sounds that might have been words but were so drawn out you couldn't even tell what the language was. I'm guessing there was a ‘No' and a ‘Yes' and a man and a woman, but I'd no idea who was saying what.

I looked at Paula as she listened to those sounds, and thought I glimpsed more than disapproval and disgust in her upswept eyes. I've started thinking I glimpse a whole lot of things in her eyes. I don't know how many of those things are actually there, all I know is that I like to think they are.

Paula caught me looking at her, and for once she couldn't meet my gaze. For a few moments I forgot all about the moaning from the other side of the door marked 826.

But only for a few moments. It was far too loud to forget for any longer than that.

I drew my knockdown—an air-pistol that fires gel-filled sacks. They'll stop the strongest man in his tracks without doing lasting damage to anything except his coverall; they leave a fluorescent dye-stain no amount of washing will remove. I wouldn't need the knockdown if the only people in the apartment were the ones I could hear, but if there's anything I've learned from fifteen years in this job it's to expect the unexpected. Plus, let's be honest, I like playing with my knockdown.

Paula rapped on the door and said, “LogiPol! Open up!”

The moaning carried on regardless. Even if the two people on the other side of the door had heard Paula, they wouldn't be able to react. Not for about a year, if they'd taken what I thought they had.

I reached for the door, threw it open, and stormed inside, waving my knockdown about like I'd seen actors do in the Olden Days detective shows I like so much. I was William Shatner's T.J. Hooker to Paula's Heather Locklear; I was Jimmy Smits' Bobby Simone to her Detective Russell. If I looked anything like as impressive as I felt, Perfect Paula had to be impressed. I pointed my knockdown at each corner of the room in turn, holding the last pose long enough to let Paula get a good look at me being heroic.

“Travis, put your knockdown away,” she said.

She's good at hiding it when she's impressed.

Reluctantly, I holstered my handgun. I've no desire to actually fire it at anyone, but I've got to admit I enjoy waving it around and pointing it at anything that moves. I'd like to say it was protecting the weak and putting away the bad guys that makes my job worthwhile, but in truth it's playing with my knockdown that gives me the most satisfaction.

The door to the bedroom was wide open, and the room beyond contained a man, a woman and some clothes as well as a bed. The clothes were on the floor, the woman was on the bed, and the man was on the woman. You'd think the amount of emotion being expressed would require quite a bit of motion to generate it, but the bodies on the bed weren't moving any more than the clothes on the floor.

Well, actually, that's not quite true. They didn't
seem
to be moving, but in fact they were dancing to the beat of a different drummer.

As I walked toward the room I saw a bedside cabinet with two tumblers and an empty sachet on it. Even without a four-year course in criminology at The Learning Zone I could have guessed what the sachet had contained. In a word, Slo-Mo. Or maybe that's two words. Whatever, it slows your metabolism down and, with it, your reactions and sensory perception. It's the latter quality people take it for. What would otherwise be a passing pleasure becomes a long-distance journey to the furthest realms of ecstasy. It becomes a trip to a place where the joy is so exquisite you cry out at the top of your voice and keep on doing so until your cries turn to moans, and your moans to groans, and you lose your voice altogether. And then your mouth stays open in a wordless expression of pleasure. Or so they say. I've never tried it. Listening to those two on the bed, I was wondering why I'd never tried it. And I was glad I'd squirreled away a syringe of the stuff from a similar call-out the week before, when my perfect partner had been playing the role of Miss G. Two-Shoes, taking fingerprints or a witness statement or something boring like that.

Paula joined me in the bedroom.

I'd love to be able to say
Paula joined me in the bedroom
in a sentence that didn't have anything to do with a crime scene or a daydream.

She shook her head with a mix of disapproval and bewilderment and said, “Why do they do it?”

“Are you kidding? Just listen to them. Look at them.”

Only when you looked at them for longer than a moment could you see the man's hips pulling almost imperceptibly back and up, the woman's hands slowly dragging down his back, her nails gouging pink furrows that took a very long time to fill with blood because his metabolism had slowed down so much.

Get the dosage wrong and your body wears out before the drug wears off. Knowing how much is too much is a fine art, and part of the trouble is that Slo-Mo's such a new craze nobody's actually got it down to a fine art yet. Another part of the trouble is that the drug is addictive, and people keep upping the dose each time they use it because the pleasure's so intense they want it to last longer. They want it to last forever.

After a small part of forever the man's hips started to sink, and the woman's fingers began digging in. Her head turned ever so slowly to one side, and her eyelids gradually parted to reveal glassy eyes focused on somewhere a thousand miles away. Her pupils darkened and widened until they swallowed the irises, and her moans became louder and more intense, which I wouldn't have believed possible.

Remembering my partner's ‘why do they do it?' I said, “If you can experience something like that without taking drugs, I'm going to look at you in a whole different light, Paula. You don't mind if I call you Paula, do you?”

“Sometimes I think you forget you're talking to a superior.”

“I never forget I'm talking to someone superior,” I told her. Without looking away from the couple on the bed, I said, “I feel like I shouldn't be watching this.”

“I can tell you're forcing yourself,” Paula said with the thinly disguised sarcasm which is usually all that differentiates a Number's voice from the Voice of Reason. She walked over to the cabinet to take a closer look at the tumblers.

“Any left?” I asked.

She shook her head.

“Damn.” I said it as a joke, but if there had been any Slo-Mo left and Paula had asked me to split it with her, I wouldn't have hesitated. Suddenly I realized how much I longed for love, and felt as pathetic as the people on the bed. I just wanted to get out of there. “I'll call the medics,” I said.

Paula nodded. She pulled up the sheet that had slipped down to the lovers' ankles. They didn't notice. I doubt if they would have noticed if the roof fell in. Listening to them, you'd think it already had and they were buried in the rubble.

We waited for the haven's medical team to arrive. They probably only took a couple of minutes, but time stretched almost as much for me as it did for the two people slowly writhing on the bed. I tried to shut out the sounds that went with the writhing, but didn't come close. I heard those sounds with my heart as well as my head. I was scared to look at Paula in case she was looking at me. When I finally did risk a glance, she was watching the couple on the bed. I got the strangest feeling she was as deeply affected by what she was seeing and hearing as I was.

I had to be imagining it, because one of the things about Numbers is that they're not only incapable of dreaming and of wonder, they're incapable of love.