Cole Perriman's Terminal Games (18 page)

“There now,” he said. “Take a nice little nappy-wappy.” He turned toward Maisie. “Hey, Baldy, could you fetch us a nice juicy accounting program? Poor Tourette’s a growing girl, and I just can’t seem to keep her fed.”

“In a minute, Pritch. I’ve got a couple of people here—a Lieutenant Somebody-Or-Other and his girlfriend.”

His girlfriend!

Marianne shuddered reflexively. Pritchard swiveled around in his chair and faced her and Lieutenant Grobowski.

“They want to find out about Auggie,” Maisie continued. “You know, the clown character. Says the guy’s some kind of mass murderer.”

Pritchard smiled and shrugged and said nothing.

“Well, there’s your answer,” Maisie said amiably. “Client confidentiality, you see? It’s even in our instruction book. I can show it to you. ‘Your actual identity is protected at all times,’ it says—or words to that effect. You wouldn’t want us to turn into high-tech finks, wouldja?”

“I can get a subpoena,” Nolan said.

Maisie laughed and shook his head good naturedly. “Lieutenant, we’ve got very good lawyers. We fight cases like this all the time. They tend to drag on for a long while.”

Suddenly, Pritchard spoke up.

“Hey, Baldy,” he said warmly. “Show the lady and gentleman a chair. Let me talk to ’em.”

Nolan and Marianne placed themselves on uncomfortable folding metal chairs, neither of which sat quite squarely on the damp, gray-painted concrete floor. Still perched on his swivel chair, Pritchard rolled toward them, smiling a pudgy but not disagreeable smile.

“So we’ve got a killer in our midst, eh?” he asked.

“It looks that way,” said Nolan. “And you guys could find yourselves accessories before the fact.”

“How do you figure?” Pritchard asked.

“By inventing a nasty little place called the Snuff Room. By setting the scene, by provoking the situation. By concealing the identity of the perpetrator. It’s called ‘aiding and abetting.’”

“Now hold it,” interrupted Maisie, his voice quavering a little. “Hold it just a minute. We’re not saying another word without our lawyer present.”

“It’s okay, Baldy,” said Pritchard benignly. “This isn’t any big deal. I think we can spare some legal fees and set this matter straight.” He began to speak to Nolan with direct simplicity. “We didn’t set a scene, we didn’t provoke a situation, and we aren’t accessories.”

“No?”

“Come on, Lieutenant. We’re talking about gaming software! Software doesn’t kill people.”

“People
kill people, right?” Nolan answered derisively.

“The network is
virtual reality
. Nobody really gets killed in virtual reality.”

“But some of the cartoons show actual killings,” Marianne interjected.

“So what? Newspaper reporters depict real events. Have you arrested the guy who wrote up these murders for the
Times?
Whatever’s going on, Baldy and I aren’t responsible. If there’s a killer in our net, you know perfectly well he’d be killing whether we were here or not.”

“But you invented the Snuff Room,” Marianne said.

“Not really. When we first started Insomnimania, we only gave it two rooms: the Factory, where clients could create virtual selves, and the Speakers’ Corner, where those virtual selves could chat with one another. The rest of the thing, the whole labyrinth, was added on piecemeal. New games are requested by our subscribers and we do the programming for them.”

“How many subscribers have you got?” Nolan asked.

“Beats me,” Pritchard said. “What do you think, Baldy?”

“I’d have to look it up. Lots, anyway. The largest number are here in the L.A. area, where we got started. But we’ve got members all over the country, all over the world. Distance has no meaning when you’re online—leastways, not till you get your bill.”

“So any of these people can request some new sex game or murder game or whatever and you just fill the orders—no matter what?”

“Only if it’s a cool idea,” said Maisie. “And if it’s workable. We try to run a democratic outfit.”

“Your prices aren’t exactly democratic,” Marianne remarked.

“We aren’t as pure as we used to be,” Maisie said. “Who is?”

“So a subscriber thought up the Snuff Room and you filled their request?” Grobowski asked.

“That one was a little different, as I recall,” Pritchard said. “A little odd.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Maisie agreed. “That one came to us all ready to run. One of the members sent it in already programmed—software, instructions, everything.”

“Nice little program,” Pritchard added. “Nothing complicated, just performances of animations which are all created ahead of time. Who was it sent that to us, Baldy?”

“Damned if I can remember,” said Maisie.

The two of them smiled complacently.

“A killer might be using your game to track his victims,” Nolan said. “Aren’t you going to help us find him?”

“No,” Pritchard said.

“I think you’d better.”

“Listen, Officer Krupke—”

“It’s
Grobowski.”

“Whatever. As the old saying goes, ‘Information wants to be free.’ Do you know who said that?”

“Who?” Grobowski asked.

Pritchard looked suddenly bewildered, as if he had really expected Grobowski to tell
him
.

“I dunno,” he said. “Who
was
it, Baldy?”

Maisie shrugged. “Benjamin Franklin. Timothy Leary. One of those founding father guys.”

“Whoever it was, one of these days I’m gonna personally hand him the Nobel Prize,” Pritchard said. “That is, after I crack my way into their nondigital low-bandwidth totalitarian committee.”

“Let me get this straight,” Grobowski said. “You want to set information free, and all I’m
asking
for is information. We want the same thing. So what’s the problem?”

“You’re a cop,” Pritchard said.

“So what?”

“You’re the enemy.”

Grobowski’s face reddened a little. “What’s more important?” he snapped. “Information or people’s lives?”

“Information,” Pritchard and Maisie replied in flawless unison.

Grobowski’s face was crimson now. Marianne wondered if he would actually get out of here without suffering a heart attack or a stroke.

Pritchard patted the computer terminal in front of him, the one that was presently riddled with the Tourette virus. “Listen, Krupke,” he said. “One of these days the human race is gonna vacate the physical temporal world of ‘meat’ existence altogether. Then we’ll become pure information and
live
in these things—call it virtual reality, cyberspace, electronic nirvana, or whatever. When we do, you’ll thank
me
that Big Brother didn’t get there ahead of the rest of us.”

Marianne studied Grobowski’s furious but perplexed expression.
He really doesn’t look well.
Marianne wished he would sit down. He obviously wasn’t familiar with any of this cyberpunk talk about “downloading” human minds into computers. Not that Marianne herself took any of it seriously. Whenever she tried to imagine life in a seemingly infinite space that wasn’t really a space at all, it gave new meaning to the Mad Hatter’s cry of “No room! No room!”

In the meantime, Pritchard was holding forth on the subject. “Do you have any idea what the word ‘information’ means, Grobowski?” he said. “It means that I could write you down. I could take a pencil and write down everything you are. You might take up the whole front of a building, but I could do it—at least in principle. I could do it with just two symbols—a one and a zero. And when you died, I could pour all those ones and zeroes into a machine and start them up again. And if I actually had all your ones and zeroes written down, would you want me turning them over to the authorities to scramble up however they see fit? No. My job would be to keep all those digits organized and safe from harm—to make you immortal if possible. It’s called
encoding,
and it’s the sort of work we do here.”

Nolan stared at Pritchard for a moment.

“I’m going to get a subpoena,” Nolan said. He rose from his chair and started to leave, obviously assuming that she would follow.

Oh, great. We’re going to get nothing out of these guys—just because this cop can’t talk informationese.

“Look at me, Mr. Pritchard,” Marianne said. “Just look at me.”

Without query, Pritchard cooperatively turned his soft eyes toward her. He and Marianne studied each other’s eyes for a moment. In her peripheral vision, she noticed Lieutenant Grobowski stop on his way to the door.

Then Marianne said, “Can you tell me how many bits of information, how many ones and zeroes, passed between us just now?”

“A lot,” Pritchard said.

“A lot? That sounds awfully unscientific. So you don’t know how many
exactly?
Well, I guess it will be a few more years before the big download roundup, huh? I hope I live that long. I hope
you
live that long. After that, none of us will have to worry, right? Because there won’t be such things as death, murder, and even bodily harm.”

Pritchard smiled. “The way I picture it, you’ll be like a character on a Saturday morning cartoon. You can get blown up by a stick of dynamite or get thrown off a cliff or run over by a steamroller, but a minute later you’ll be as good as new.”

“So there’ll be no need for police.”

“Nope.”

“And no laws, either.”

“Nope.”

“A world of benign anarchy and nonstop adventure.”

“You got it.”

“But it’s not like that
here, is
it?” Marianne suggested. “Not in this nonvirtual world. Not in this ‘meat’ existence of ours. And a friend of mine is permanently dead. If ones and zeroes were stars, my friend and I exchanged enough to make a whole galaxy. Even so, I never really got to know her.”

She thought she detected a change in Pritchard’s expression—a softening, perhaps.

“I think your game ripped me off,” she said. “It robbed me of billions of ones and zeroes. And I don’t like being cheated. I don’t like it at all.”

She leaned toward Pritchard, assuming a calculated tone of eerie, half-crazed quietness. “Mr. Pritchard, I am very, very angry,” she murmured. “And I might—just might—have a gun in my purse. If I do, I’m liable to take it out and blow all your little gray ones and zeroes all over this room. That wouldn’t give you much of a chance to get encoded for immortality, would it?”

Pritchard’s eyes widened with alarm. He looked at the purse warily. It had suddenly become a very evocative object. The room was silent except for the hum of the VAX 8650.

“Now aren’t you glad there’s a cop here?” Marianne finally asked. “And don’t you think it would be a good idea to do what he says?”

Pritchard kept looking at her for a moment with the expression of a quizzical, slightly apprehensive sheepdog. Then he looked up at Grobowski with a smile.

“So tell me, Krupke,” Pritchard said, “what would you like to know?”

01101
OLD CLOTHES

“You were a lot of help to me back there,” Nolan said to Marianne Hedison as he drove through the sluggish afternoon traffic on the way back to her hotel.

“I’m glad,” she replied simply.

Was that it?
“I’m glad?”
Wasn’t she going to say something just a little snide or smart-assed?

“‘A lot of help?’” you might tell me. “That’s an interesting way to say I stopped you from turning the whole thing into a drawn-out sideshow with subpoenas and months of courtroom hearings—all leading to absolutely nothing. “‘A lot of help.’” Well, what should I expect from a bull in a china shop with a vocabulary too small to include the words ‘thank you’?”

Why don’t you say all that, lady? I know you’re thinking it.

He turned to look at the woman in the passenger seat. Her head hung forward slightly and her eyes were half-closed as if she could barely stay awake. She clearly wasn’t in the frame of mind to deliver stinging diatribes.

Nolan turned his eyes back onto the Santa Monica Freeway. The traffic seeped along, threatening to grind to a stop at any moment. He felt stupid to have let himself get on the freeway without checking traffic conditions. It might have been smarter to cut across town by way of one of the boulevards to the south. The traffic flow wasn’t blocked up completely, as it might be by a major accident. This was probably one of those inexplicable L.A. conditions that occurred when too many people in one part of town experienced a sudden desire to be in another part of town—shifting habitual patterns and creating unpredictable tides of traffic. Maybe everybody downtown had decided to leave early today to miss the usual rush hours.

He was behind a big truck now, and he hated to be behind big trucks. They blocked the exit signs. It didn’t matter that the exit he was looking for was still a long way off. He liked to see
all
the exit signs along the way, to get a sense of their progression, to see that Western came before Hawthorne, which came before Lincoln, just like they were supposed to. With a big truck in the way, nothing seemed right.

No progression.

Anyway, he was glad he’d stopped himself from saying “Thank you.” He still didn’t know whether he really had anything to thank her for. If she was trying to send him on a wild goose chase, getting him to do anything except investigate
her,
she was doing a pretty good job of it. Here she was, sitting right beside him, but he knew practically nothing about her. He certainly had no idea whether she’d had a motive to commit murder—
any
murder.

In the meantime, he had to be content with the information Pritchard and Maisie had passed along once Marianne had warmed them up. They had confirmed that G. K. Judson had been a member of Insomnimania. They had said that a few of Auggie’s past snuffs included a car crash and a fall from a high place. There was next to no chance of connecting those with real life events, but Nolan and Clayton would give it a try. Surely more useful was the membership information on Auggie’s operator—the name, address, and credit card number of a certain Donald Hampstead in Malibu. Nolan would pay him a visit after dropping Marianne Hedison off at her hotel.

Nolan glanced again at Marianne.

She looks as
bad as I feel.
He felt a twinge of guilt for dragging her around in this exhausted state.

I could probably get a confession out of her by starving her, never letting her sleep, never letting her use the bathroom. Hell, I could probably get her to confess to the Watergate burglaries that way.

They had just passed the Hawthorne exit when the traffic actually came to a stop. The big truck in front of them was becoming a permanent fixture. Maybe it was time to find an exit. Side streets had to be better than this.

“Have you had anything to eat today?” Nolan asked.

“No,” Marianne said.

“Maybe we should stop somewhere for lunch.”

“I don’t think I can eat anything,” she said, rubbing her face with her hands. “I just want to get back to the hotel and take a shower and get some sleep.”

Nolan shook his head. “It’s going to take a while,” he said.

“I’m in no hurry,” she said.

“Have you got clean clothes?”

“No.”

Small wonder. The way she showed up out of nowhere last night, she probably didn’t even pack a robe or a gown or a toothbrush.

“Can I take you somewhere to shop?” he asked.

“No. I’ll go out later.”

“You’ve got money, haven’t you?”

“Sure,” she said, leaning her head against the headrest and closing her eyes.

Nolan sat staring at the back of the motionless truck. Then the traffic took a small lurch forward, carrying the pocket of cars westward in a slow moving trickle. They were approaching Culver City now—if “approaching” was really the right word. Nolan found himself on the verge of a decision …

*

Marianne opened her eyes with a start, realizing that she must have fallen asleep. She was surprised to see that the lieutenant’s car had stopped in front of a private home on a totally unfamiliar street. It was a neighborhood of small homes.

A family street. With lots of little kids and dogs.

She had barely realized that such a street still existed in Los Angeles. How long had it been since she’d seen such a traditional, All-American, working-class neighborhood?

Don’t I need a passport to be here?

“Where are we?” she asked.

“My place,” Lieutenant Grobowski said, opening his door and getting out of the car. He walked around the car and opened the door on her side. “Come on in for a few minutes.”

She raised her hand to shield her eyes against the sunlight and sat motionless for a moment without answering.

She wanted to say,
“No, I’ll stay here. You go on and take care of whatever you need to do. Just leave me here to die a quiet, dignified death.”

But she was too tired to argue. She got out of the car and followed the lieutenant into his living room, which was cluttered with well-kept but tired furniture.

Scuffed.

Framed portraits and snapshots were absolutely everywhere, covering every square inch of walls, tables, and shelves.

A family. The lieutenant has a family. Imagine that.

She bent to look at a picture, a wedding portrait. But Lieutenant Grobowski’s voice stopped her from getting a good look at it.

“Come on,” he said. “Up here.”

She followed him upstairs to the second floor. Then Grobowski opened a narrow doorway and disappeared up another flight of stairs. Again she followed him, this time up into the attic, a finished but musty area with steeply sloping walls. Trunks and pieces of dusty furniture were scattered all around.

At the far end of the attic was a closet. Grobowski opened the closet door and switched on a light. A selection of clothes hung on a long rod, protected from dust by a translucent plastic sheet. Marianne shivered slightly at the memory of the last such sheet she had seen.

A wooden dresser was shoved tightly against the closet wall. Grobowski opened a drawer in the dresser, revealing more clothes—stockings and underwear and nightgowns.

Marianne suddenly grasped the situation.

He’s offering me the use of his wife’s clothing

He hasn’t asked her permission.

He can’t ask her permission.

The truth of the matter was bitter, but she had to acknowledge it somehow. It wouldn’t quite be human not to.

“You’ve lost Mrs. Grobowski, haven’t you?” she said.

The detective didn’t look at her, but nodded in a perfunctory way, as if in reply to a perfectly trivial question.

“I’m sorry,” Marianne said.

“Thanks.”

Grobowski gently pulled the plastic sheet away. Then he picked up a small overnight case off the floor and placed it on the shelf.

“Put whatever you need in this,” he said.

“Are you sure it’s all right?” Marianne asked.

“Sure. Would you excuse me?”

“Of course.”

Grobowski quietly left the attic.

I can’t do this. I just can’t.

But she had to. It would be terribly insensitive to refuse this mysterious hospitality, however politely. She felt a flood of tangled emotions. They ranged from revulsion at the idea of using a dead woman’s clothes to gratitude toward the detective for this show of generosity.

But why is he doing this? The man almost arrested me just this morning.

It was as though she had awakened from a nightmare only to find herself in a still stranger situation.

But she was exhausted—too exhausted to sustain any strong emotion for more than a few seconds. The flood of feelings ebbed, and a hard-nosed practicality set in. She decided that it really wasn’t important whose clothes these were. Her own were uncomfortably grungy and were undoubtedly starting to smell a little.

She began to study the wardrobe. The dead woman seemed uncannily present, seemed to be suggesting particular combinations.

“I always wore this gray skirt with this jacket,”
Marianne could almost hear her say.
“It would look all right on you. I wish I had more to offer.”

“Don’t apologize,” Marianne heard herself whisper. “This is fine. I appreciate it.”

The ghostly presence had too much class to suggest any of the more formal apparel—understood that Marianne wouldn’t have the need for any of that. The presence, too, passed over the fancier lingerie with a slightly embarrassed giggle.

Marianne looked efficiently through the wardrobe. The colors were mostly pastels, and the fabric was all natural. The woman had been of a somewhat larger build than she was.

The dresses will be too large.
Marianne found a pair of black slacks with a drawstring waist. She put it together with a simple blouse she could let hang on the outside. She also chose a jacket, a gown, a bathrobe, and a selection of unadorned underclothes. She thought rather than said the words “thank you” before leaving the attic.

*

Here was Jack on his second birthday with Louise helping him blow out the candles. And here was Molly learning to swim. And here was Jack pitching his first Little League baseball game. And here was Molly in her cheerleader uniform. And here was Louise at Newport Beach …

His “friendly ghosts,” Nolan called them. The faces gazed at Nolan from all around the living room. Each picture had a smile in it somewhere. There was not a sad moment to be found among them. In moments of self-doubt like this one, Nolan knew that he could always turn to them—not so much for sanction or approval, but for familial warmth and love.

The moment after he had left Marianne Hedison with Louise’s clothes, he had to fight himself not to go back up to the attic, not to cry out, “Wait! Don’t touch those!”

But it was too late. The decision was made and could not be taken back. And somehow, for some reason, it was right.

The friendly ghosts are still smiling, anyway.

Nolan had wondered from time to time what to do with Louise’s personal belongings, particularly her clothes. Molly was too small for her mother’s outfits, and none of Louise’s friends or relatives would have been comfortable taking them. Louise probably would have wanted him to give them away to some kind of charity, but Nolan had just not brought himself around to doing it. This was the first time an opportunity had arisen for any of those items to be of use.

Besides, this woman deserved a little consideration. Nolan remembered how she had saved the morning. He couldn’t help but admire the deftness and wit with which she had maneuvered those computer nerds. He had also detected a special kind of determination and resolve about her. He was finding it harder by the minute to mistrust her.

Anyway, the woman was only going to take an outfit or two, and she was undoubtedly going to bring them back. When this was all over, the dilemma of what to do with Louise’s clothes would remain unchanged.

So why do I feel so strange?

The only reason Nolan could think of was that he was doing something he had never imagined himself doing. But in a way, that was appropriate for what was turning out to be a very weird day. It had all begun with that powerful surge of emotions at the crime scene.

What on earth was going on then?

What was going on now?

Nolan remembered something Crazy Syd had told him many years ago when he was still a rookie—something he had almost forgotten.

“Sooner or later,” Syd had said, “every cop takes on a case that changes
everything.”

“What do you mean by ‘everything’?” a much, much younger Nolan had asked.

“Your life,”
Syd had said. “Everything you think and feel will get turned all topsy-turvy. You won’t have the slightest idea why or how. All you’ll know is that nothing will ever be the same again. Cops deal with it in different ways. It makes some of ’em tougher and meaner. It makes others warmer and kinder. It might happen tomorrow, or it might happen the week before you retire. But it happens. It happens to us all—that one case that changes everything.”

Maybe this is it.
Nolan wandered out to the kitchen.
Maybe this is my case.

*

Marianne came down the stairs toting the small bag. She heard Lieutenant Grobowski’s voice call out from the kitchen.

“I’m in here,” he said. His voice sounded remarkably bright—almost cheerful.

She went into the brightly-lit kitchen and found him placing two sandwiches on the Formica table. She could hear and smell coffee perking.

“Tuna salad,” he said pleasantly. “Dolphin-safe—or so it says on the can. I hope that’s okay.”

“It’s fine,” she said in surprise, sitting down at the table.

“How do you want your coffee?”

“Black, please,” she said. She knew that coffee would neither jangle her nor keep her awake. Her tiredness was deep and benign. All she needed in order to get some precious sleep was a comfortable place to lie down. She’d have that before too long.