Cole Perriman's Terminal Games (35 page)

“This sounds a little out of my depth,” Kelsey said dubiously. “I’ll tell you what. Let’s have your computer man send those files along to our computer man.”

Two hours later, Nolan got a call back from Kelsey. The Omaha lieutenant sounded much more somber than before.

“Yeah, we got your stuff,” Kelsey said. “And we’ve got a corpse, too. The photos match your cartoon—body wrapped in a red-striped plastic shower curtain. He was reported missing by his family Monday morning, and they ID’d the body when we found it. The thing about the church still doesn’t fit, though. The stiff was found in an open lot.”

The Omaha detective went on to say that the local archdiocese was trying to help them locate the church shown in the animation.

“I’m gonna give you another name and phone number,” Nolan said. “It’s another guy in Omaha who’s a member of the same network. We’ve got reason to think that he might be involved. But I’m sorry to say we haven’t got anything for you to haul him in on.”

“No probable cause, huh?”

“Hey, we’re out here in L.A., remember? You’d better check him out, though.”

Kelsey promised to let Nolan know how it worked out. Nolan hung up.

Oregon. Just keep thinking about Oregon.

Then he phoned Marianne and passed the news on to her.

*

Marianne walked her Renee alter over to a booth in Ernie’s Bar and pressed the keys admitting her to the private space. She had earlier come on Insomnimania as Elfie, but had not been able to find Auggie anywhere.

After the snuff last night, she had slept briefly and fitfully. Tonight she’d been too restless to consider going to bed. Now she felt as if she might drop off to sleep at any moment, but she was sure that if she shut down the computer she would soon be pacing the floor again, wide awake.

The Renee alter was just sitting there in the booth, looking bored.

“Let’s go somewhere more interesting,” Marianne said.

Thinking as little as possible, Marianne allowed her fingers to type Renee’s response, allowed her voice to read the words aloud.

“Where do you have in mind?”

“The beach.”

“I don’t think I can make it anywhere outside the box here.”

“What box?”

“Your computer.”

“No, silly. I mean Babbage Beach. The one right here in Insomnimania.”

“Now that’s a great idea.”

Marianne steered the Renee alter out of Ernie’s, back to the maze, and to the icon for Babbage Beach. She double-clicked the beach icon, and the image of Renee was immediately standing on a yellow-sand beach. Renee was facing away from her. Marianne felt as though she was looking over her friend’s shoulder at a late afternoon sky filled with a preposterously outsized orange sun. While the
real
sun always looked like a flat bright disk tacked onto the sky, this simulated one appeared to be a palpable, rounded ball with a light source other than itself.

The ocean undulated like the surface of a waterbed as the sky, sun, and clouds shimmeringly reflected in its surface. The ocean’s ripples grew in size and acquired expanding tufts of white as they approached the screen.

A short way ahead was a red-and-white beach umbrella.

“Let’s sit there,” Renee said. “Then we can talk privately.” Marianne knew that the beach umbrellas operated the same as the booths in Ernie’s, shielding conversation from all outsiders.

It seemed to her that Renee walked through the sand very naturally and sat down under the umbrella quite under her own power. Marianne felt like she was just tagging along behind, not directing the action—especially when Renee took off her shoes and rolled up her red slacks.

But are there any such commands?
Was she actually watching this picture on the screen, or was her imagination creating all this in a near-dream state? She decided it would take too much concentration to decide. She didn’t care where the scene came from. She was here. And an image of Renee was right in front of her, her red slacks rolled up to her knees, wriggling her bare toes in the sand. This didn’t have to
be
real. Marianne just wanted it to
seem
real for a little while.

The outsized, nursery-school sun slipped slowly toward the horizon, partially masked by slender, horizontal threads of clouds.

Marianne asked, “What are those clouds in the middle, Renee? Cirrus?”

“Don’tcha remember anything from school?” Renee replied. “Cirrus clouds are way up there. Can’t even see ’em from here. Top of the screen cuts them off.”

“So what are these then? Stratus maybe?”

“Wrong again, helium breath. Stratocumulus.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I know my clouds, dearie.”

“Where are the stratus then?”

“At the very bottom. Next to the horizon. See?”

Renee pointed to an unbroken layer of clouds just above the horizon.

“Those are nimbostratus.”

“Wanna put money on it?”

“Okay. You’re on.”

“How much?”

“Ten dollars.”

“Cheapskate. You must know you’re gonna lose.”

The clouds chugged silently across the sky, much faster than real clouds could go, changing color as they went. At the screen’s far left, the clouds made their entrances a silky white, growing more yellow as they approached the edge of the orange ball, turning a startling complementary blue as they crossed over it, becoming gray as they passed across the sky again, and finally settling into smoky blackness before exiting at the right-hand border of the screen.

The white-capped waves broke in irregular patterns against the shore, raising zesty sprays of silver pixels and a chorus of white noise. The white noise was actually a constant undertone, roaring into a crescendo with the crash of every wave. The noise lulled Marianne hypnotically. She was having trouble holding her eyes open.

Then, turning around to face Marianne, Renee said, “Listen to those waves. I think that’s the most beautiful sound in the world.”

“It’s just white noise,” Marianne said.

“I know,” replied Renee. “But it’s magical just the same. I like to sit here and imagine that it’s all the signals, all the messages being transmitted in the whole world at this very minute—every television, radio, or telephone signal. If you listen, you can pick out some little piece of it. Listen. Listen real carefully. You’ll hear a daughter talking to her mother for the first time after ten years of estrangement. They’re making up. They’re becoming friends again.” Renee rotated to face Marianne. “Can you hear it, too?”

Marianne’s eyes rolled back under her eyelids. She felt her lids droop shut. Even so, the seaside scene was still vividly painted before her. The lowermost edge of the sun had just touched the horizon now. Pretty soon, the great orange ball would disappear behind the sea. She felt too exhausted to go on with this taxing form of self-hypnosis. But she followed Renee’s injunction to keep listening. The computerized noise
was
evocative—much like a conch shell’s whispering “sea” sound.

And yes, it didn’t take much imagination to hear two women’s voices in the slow, rhythmic surges of white noise. Marianne couldn’t make out their words, but both women were weeping for joy. Other conversations could be heard, too—many of them not nearly so conciliatory. There were business calls, bits of idle gossip, lovers’ quarrels. And there was music, too, ranging from a Bach two-part invention to a rap song. Indeed, the surf did seem to contain an entire world of electronic messages, some sweet, some vindictive, but all reflecting an aching, universal loneliness—and all purely imaginary.

A flock of seagulls swept across the sky. The sun, which had just disappeared below the horizon, reappeared at the top of the screen and began its descent again. Marianne could barely feel her fingers fluttering across the keyboard as she tiptoed around the fringes of unconsciousness.

Am I even still awake? Am I actually dreaming?

It didn’t
feel
as though she were dreaming. Her dreams were less vivid than this—and certainly less colorful. Also, there were still hints of electronic artificiality about the scene. Marianne observed that the sun did not play on Renee’s face or reflect in her eyes, nor did the wind move her hair.

I forgot to give her sunglasses.
But of course, Renee wasn’t squinting. A puppet had no sensitivity to sunlight.

“What are you thinking about?” Marianne asked her pensive virtual friend.

“I often sit here and try to remember what the real ocean looked like,” Renee said.

“What do you mean, ‘often’?” Marianne asked.

“A lot,” Renee said. “Frequently. Routinely. Usually. What do you think I mean?” Marianne could hear a bit of Renee’s old wise-assedness pipe up.

“Well, what I mean is you haven’t even
been
here all that long.”

Renee looked straight at her, her lips frozen in a partial grin, but her eyebrows tilted in uncertainty.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Don’t you know how long it’s been since you were killed?” Marianne asked.

Renee’s laugh trumpeted sarcastically over the computer speaker. Marianne realized she must have dazedly struck the command for laughter. “Don’t pussyfoot around, dearie,” Renee said. “Go ahead. Ask the really
tough
questions.”

“Sorry.”

Then Renee’s smile disappeared. “Your whole idea of making me up was so I’d seem
alive,
right?” she snapped, looking straight into Marianne’s eyes with startling ruthlessness. “Why fuck it up by bringing my death into it?”

“I said I’m sorry.”

Renee was brooding now, running her finger through the sand. No furrows appeared in the sand where Renee’s finger passed. Marianne felt a pang of guilt at having been so insensitive. Her apology did not seem enough. She felt compelled to do something more to put things right. She tried in vain to remind herself that none of this was real, that she owed no explanations, no apologies to an electronic puppet. But she was in too deep. It seemed too real.

Marianne wanted to reach out and hold Renee’s hand. But she was all too aware of the surface of the screen between them. She and this image could share all kinds of dreams and memories, but they couldn’t do one terribly important thing. They could never touch.

Marianne was seized by a spasm of sleep. She struggled to keep her balance, fought not to fall from her chair. Her eyes fell heavily closed. She drew in her breath. Then she heard Renee calling from the depths of darkness, her voice echoing out of a long tunnel.

“Marianne? Marianne! Are you still there?”

“I’m ... still ... here,” Marianne heard herself murmur. Then, with a tremendous effort, she yanked her eyes open. Renee was staring at her with a look of benign, smiling concern.

“Are you okay?” Renee asked. “Thought I’d lost you for a minute.”

Marianne tried to answer, but found that she couldn’t. Renee leaned toward her, her eyebrows knitted together with concern.

“Marianne, what’s the matter?” Renee asked. “You’re crying.”

Marianne fingered her cheeks and discovered that they were wet with tears. She had no idea why.

“Why are you crying?” Renee insisted firmly.

Marianne was surprised at what she said next.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there that night. I’m sorry I didn’t stop your killer.”

She hung her head, choking on her sobs.

“I want to touch you,” she said.

Renee’s smile seemed to broaden sweetly.

“Marianne, there’s no one to touch,” she said. “There’s no one here at all. You’ve got to get a grip on your imagination. You’ve got to get some sleep.”

Marianne nodded dumbly. She could not argue with that. She said goodbye to Renee and shut down her computer. She got up from her chair, feeling like she was rising from a dream. Then she walked slowly and unsteadily down the hall toward the bedroom.

11000
INTIMATIONS

“The Abernathy project looks great,” said Dwayne over the phone. “I just got a chance to go over it thoroughly yesterday. You’ve really outdone yourself this time, kid.”

“Thanks,” Marianne replied. “I’m sorry to have taken so long with it.” She had turned in the Abernathy project at the meeting on Wednesday. Now it was late Friday afternoon. She had spent the whole day on the new office project and had just modemed some designs over to the office. She wondered what Dwayne thought of that one, or whether he had even gotten a look at it yet.

“We all understand,” said Dwayne warmly. “We appreciate your coming through with the work despite your grief and everything. It must have been rough as hell.”

“Still, I wanted to get it done.”

“It sure looks like it was worth the wait. The Abernathys are going to love it.”

“That’s nice to hear.”

“Speaking of getting it done—you sent some preliminaries on the Carswell office over today. Isn’t that a little premature?”

Marianne took a deep breath. “Yes, well, I was hoping someone else could finish it,” she said.

“We were kind of looking forward to having you do the whole job,” Dwayne said, sounding distressed.

“Surely my preliminaries are enough for somebody else to work from.”

“Even so—”

“Isn’t anybody else free?”

Dwayne groaned slightly. “Sure, there’s Paul. He could do it in a pinch.”

“Dwayne, I’d appreciate it,” Marianne said. “I need some time to … sort things out.”

“Marianne, I don’t mean to sound callous, but how long has it been since your friend died? Two weeks?”

“Almost three,” Marianne replied. “But I’ve been doing my best to get my work done during all that time, and it’s been awfully stressful. I think I deserve a little time off. I’ve got a lot of vacation days coming.”

“Point well taken,” Dwayne said pleasantly. “Okay. It’s not a great time, but I guess it never is. Take as much as you need.”

“Thanks. Give my best to everybody at the office.”

“Sure will.”

Marianne hung up the phone.

“Take as much time as you need,” Dwayne had said.

Dwayne assumed that all she wanted was a little time for rest and recuperation. What she actually wanted was time to contend with Auggie, to work her way closer and closer to him, to learn his secrets, and stop him from killing again—to destroy him, if it came to that. And how much time would that take? A couple of days? A week? A month? The rest of her life?

Will I have a job waiting for me when this is over?

Then she almost laughed at her misplaced concern. What kind of threat was getting herself fired in comparison to getting herself murdered? Unemployment and death both loomed over her life right now—and which of the two did she really find more dreadful? If Nolan was right—if Auggie could have stolen her password and found out who she was and where she lived—then she might already be in danger. Even more chilling, Marianne suspected that Auggie had no
need
to steal her password.

Paradoxically, Marianne’s most vivid cyberworld experiences were the most obscure in some respects. Insomnimania took on reality for her in the quiet hours after midnight, when she was very tired, when her subconscious was at its most active. At those times she could hear the typed-out conversations, rather than just reading them from the screen, and the characters seemed alive and autonomous.

Marianne knew that the effect must be an illusion, created by a state of self-hypnosis brought on by exhaustion and by desire. She also knew that she couldn’t remember every bit of the conversations she had in that state. Judging from her Pleasure Dome experience, she might have told Auggie her most secret sexual fantasies. What more mundane clues had she given that would be of use to a superhacker? She might also have told him her password or her real name.

Nolan had protested her roaming about Insomnimania because he was afraid that Auggie could learn her identity. If she explained the true nature of her participation there—and her suspicions about Auggie’s ability to scrounge information—he would certainly insist that she cancel her Insomnimania membership immediately. But Renee had resigned from Insomnimania, and that hadn’t saved
her
life.

Besides, Marianne was convinced that her half-remembered sessions were building a unique relationship with Auggie, that she had a kind of access to him no one else had. He seemed ready to take her into his confidence. And she was gaining some concept—if only a vague one—of just how powerful and mysterious Auggie was. No one else had any idea. Nolan was a good cop and a wonderful man, but he was too used to thinking like a cop to understand Auggie. So was everybody on his team. They were all logical and methodical, and Auggie lived in a world where logic and method had very little meaning.

In last night’s session on Babbage Beach, she and a “virtual Renee” had talked. Whether the computer network gave life to the fantasies of her own mind, or whether it allowed her to venture into the fantasies of another mind, it provided a place where things actually happened—events with their own kind of truth and meaning. That was the world where Auggie lived, and whoever stopped Auggie would have to do it there, on Auggie’s own terms.

It’s got to be me. I’m the only one.

It felt good to have all her obligations out of the way, to be able to devote herself single-mindedly to the task at hand. And despite (or perhaps because of) her commiseration with Renee last night, Marianne felt profoundly rested today—rested and ready to act.

So … what now?

How was she going to cultivate the necessary state of mind and deliberately sustain and control it for long periods of time?

Mind altering drugs would certainly bring this sort of consciousness to the forefront with a fury—probably
too much
of a fury, and fleetingly as well. She didn’t want to find herself too disoriented to grasp what was going on. Marianne knew she’d better keep her wits about her, no matter how right-brained she intended to get. Besides, she no longer had any idea where to get such drugs.

Guess I’ll have to alter my consciousness the old-fashioned way.

Marianne had practiced a number of techniques at one time or another during her bohemian days—meditation, self-induced sleeplessness, and fasting. Now she would have to muster them all in a kind of crash-course of mind alteration.

First, she needed to make a few preparations. She got in her car and drove to the local health food store. For fasting, she wanted lots of juices on hand, things like carrot and celery juice. Dilutions of fruit juices—grape and apple—would be useful, too. She filled her cart with such items and also rounded up a substantial supply of herbal teas. But most important would be the bottled water. Marianne picked up several gallons.

All in all, she figured this would give her enough liquids to keep her going for a week—that is, if all the juices stayed fresh in the fridge. She also picked up some cabbage, turnips, and collards to make a thin broth should she find herself becoming too weak to function. But it probably wouldn’t come to that—not for a while, anyway. She was a light eater to begin with, so she didn’t expect fasting to be particularly stressful.

She returned home, put away her groceries, and fixed herself a cup of aromatic herbal tea. It was far too early to log onto Insomnimania. It felt a little strange to be alone in her own home with nothing to do at the moment.

She paced around the house for a little while. The air was stale and lifeless, so she opened the front door and looked outside. Her tiny hillside yard was lit with the full warm glow of late afternoon California sunshine. Although nothing much was blooming just now, the garden seemed inviting. She put on a sweater and carried her tea outside.

Unlike the interior of her house, Marianne’s yard had a casual, natural look. It had been designed that way. Her landscape architect—a colleague at the office—had planted the entire space in terraced beds with drought-tolerant lavender and rosemary, together with roses, irises, coral bells, and other brilliantly flowering plants. He had revivified two orange trees and added two peaches and an avocado. Throughout much of the year, the garden flowered in lush profusion.

It was not the kind of landscape Marianne would have designed, and at first she had protested the idea. But her co-worker had been insistent, claiming that this sort of garden would be low-maintenance and would suit the climate. She finally gave him a free hand, and now she was happy with his work. Her garden had survived even when years of water rationing had turned Santa Barbara’s expensive grass lawns a uniform beige. And today, she found the crazy-quilt randomness of the garden quite charming.

In the distance, she could just see a reflection of light off the ocean. She sat down on a concrete bench and put the teacup and saucer on a low stone table in front of her. Marianne closed her left nostril with her forefinger and breathed in through her right nostril. Then she switched, closing the right nostril and breathing through the left. The right nostril felt clear—she could breathe through it easily, but the left was slightly clogged and congested.

She had learned during her meditating days that brain hemispheric dominance switched back and forth at regular intervals, and that nostril congestion could be used to determine which hemisphere was dominant at a particular moment. It was an ancient yoga insight that had more recently been confirmed by hard research. The connection between nostril and brain hemisphere was inverted, as it was for the rest of the body. The left nostril correlated with the right hemisphere, the right nostril with the left. The clearness in Marianne’s right nostril told her that the left, more rational hemisphere of her brain was currently dominant. She would need to activate her right brain to evoke an instinctive, nonlinear state of mind.

She closed her eyes. She began to inhale and exhale slowly, as she had been taught to do in a yoga class conducted by Japanese Buddhist monks with white robes and shaven heads.

“Exhale, counting to a certain number,” the monks had instructed her. “Then inhale, counting twice as high.”

She exhaled completely to a slow count of five. Then she inhaled as fully as she could to a slow count of ten. She maintained this slow alternation for some minutes. At first, images and preoccupations fluttered through her mind, making it hard to keep count. Faces drifted by—Nolan, Renee, Stephen, Evan, and of course, Auggie.

Worries about work, about her future with Nolan, about the great dilemma of Auggie—all these struggled and contended for her attention. She didn’t try to shove them out of her brain. She simply allowed them to pass with as little notice as possible. Without any acknowledgment or affirmation, the intruding thoughts and concerns soon vanished.

Her mind became empty, and she felt her whole body relax. She noticed, too, that her breathing became thinner and thinner until, at last, she couldn’t detect any breath at all. She was sitting in her garden in utter stillness, and she had stopped breathing altogether. It wasn’t as if she were holding her breath. She felt no such anxiety or discomfort. It was more as though any need for the air’s nourishment was suspended. She felt that she could sustain this breathless state indefinitely. This was not a new sensation for her. She had experienced it when meditating with the monks, and even during silent Quaker meetings when she was still a teenager. It was immensely peaceful.

She noticed, too, that she was staring at the teacup and saucer on the glass table—that she was raptly observing the late afternoon sun’s reflection on the flat, polished stone table and on the slightly curved, slightly wavering surface of the tea. She could see it quite clearly—and she was looking at it through closed eyelids. She remembered this effect, too, both from her yoga meditations and the silent meetings of her youth.

The Buddhist monks had a name for this seemingly numinous eyesight. They also had a name for her suspended breathing. Marianne couldn’t remember what those names were. All she knew was that this whole experience was very pleasant and very soothing.

She heard herself whisper.

“I’ll be ready.”

*

Nolan was heading back to the detective bay area after a walk around the block. He’d left the desk from sheer nervousness. He just couldn’t spend all afternoon sitting around waiting.

He had run all his requisite errands for today, including his routine visit to Pritchard and Maisie, and he had a pile of paperwork to go through. But he’d had an awful time sitting still. He was going crazy wondering what was happening in Omaha at the moment. Would the cops there have any luck finding the murderer of the poor bastard in the shower curtain? Would the name of Myron Stalnaker that Nolan had given the Omaha detective be of any use to them?

The walk hadn’t particularly settled him, so he’d reluctantly come back.

Hell, maybe we’ve heard something from Omaha by now.

As he entered the squad room, a loud shriek rang out. Nolan saw Clayton standing at his desk halfway across the room. Clayton was waving his arms and jumping up and down. The whole squad room was staring at him.

“Waaaa-hoooooo!” Clayton screamed. “We got him! We got the bastard cold!”

Nolan trotted toward the ordinarily-quiet Clayton, who was dancing around the desk, throwing paper up in the air.

Nolan skidded to a stop in front of the desk.

“My partner’s having one of his manic spells,” he explained to the other detectives staring their way.

Clayton dropped into his swivel chair and spun around in it like a little kid trying to make himself dizzy.

“What?” Nolan asked.

“Oh, well, nothing much,” Clayton chuckled delightedly. “I don’t know what got into me. Guess I kind of got carried away. They just caught the Omaha killer, is all. They caught the murderous bastard—courtesy of us!”

“Hey, slow down,” Nolan said. “So we got a laugh, huh?”

“A laugh? We got a fucking guffaw! We’re bringing down the house!”

“That’s great. That’s really great.”

“What’samatter? Aren’t you excited?”

“Well, I wish you’d tell me how it happened.”

“Come on to Coffey’s office and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Wait a minute. You’re gonna tell Coffey before you tell
me?”

“Don’t pull that hurt routine. I’m gonna tell the both of you at the same time.”

“Clay—”

“Hey, I got the news first, and I get to tell the boss first. I don’t need you standing behind me playing back-seat talker, interrupting me and correcting me from the get-go.”

“Come on. I’d never do a thing like that.”

“Shut the fuck up, willya? Clayton said. “Last one to the captain’s office is Darryl Gates.”

The two of them speed-walked through the bay area toward the captain’s office. Clayton threw open the door and charged inside, with Nolan in hot pursuit. They stopped dead in their tracks in front of Coffey’s desk. The captain didn’t show the slightest trace of surprise at their abrupt entrance. Instead, he quietly lit a cigar.

“Gentlemen,” said Coffey, slowly and sarcastically, “I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here.”

Nolan shuddered with apprehension. Charging into the captain’s office unannounced was never a good idea. How could he and Clayton have both forgotten that?

“Well, I’ll
tell
you why I asked you to come,” Coffey said, maintaining a tone of ruthless irony. “I was just kind of sitting here, thinking about the good old days, the departed niceties of life, waxing elegiacal, as it were. And I thought it might be nice to have a couple of uncouth, hog-trough, pissant detectives here to sort of commiserate with me in my melancholy, deprived as I am of any respectable
human
company.”