Heaven is a Place on Earth (19 page)

They stepped out of the teleport onto bare rock. Grey cloud roiled in a threatening sky and a cold wind whipped at their cloaks and hair. Behind them the sky was vast and empty. The ledge on which they stood ended abruptly, exposing the gaping, monstrous space between the ragged peaks of lesser mountains. Ahead, a staircase thirty metres wide, cut through the basalt cliff, rose towards a grim stone castle, piled in countless buttressed walls and soaring towers to scrape at the base of the lowering cloud.

“
If he thinks I'm walking up all those bloody steps, he's got another think coming,” Della said, raising her voice above the clamouring wind. “Hey! Sorenssen! What the hell is this?”

Ginny looked troubled. “Maybe this was a bad idea. I'm not sure this guy can be quite right in the head – what with the costumes and the castle and everything.”

Della had been thinking the same thing. The journalist's computer specialist friend might be the genius Rafe thought he was, but that didn't stop him being not the full quid. They'd called to set up an appointment and Sorenssen's personal assistant – a construct in the form of a gnarled and toothless old man in a hooded cloak – had set up the meeting. When they arrived, the old man simulation greeted them in a room that looked like an ancient crypt and told them they must appear in costume for the “audience” – as he put it.

Della had almost baulked right there when she saw herself and Ginny in their outfits. Fantasy Classic, the style was usually called – thigh-boots, leather straps everywhere, swords, wristbands, and big hairdos were the basis of the look. Ginny's outfit was, essentially, a white bodystocking and featured a short, low-cut golden breastplate. Her own comprised a tiny loincloth and a matching tiny bra and little else. Frowning in the mirror at her outsize breasts and muscular thighs, she growled, “This definitely violates the twenty per cent rule.”

Ginny looked at her anxiously.

“
Oh, don't worry. I'm not backing out. If this Sorenssen creep likes his visitors to look like porn stars, why should I care? As long as he delivers on Rafe's promises.”

And now they were standing on a wind-scoured mountaintop with their cloaks snapping like flags.

“Sorenssen!” Della tried to keep herself from getting angry and upsetting Ginny, but this was all too much. “If you don't – ”

Suddenly the old man PA was with them. He was stooped and clung to a long staff as gnarled as he was as if it was all that prevented the wind from blowing him over the cliff. “My Ladies,” he said, bowing low. “If you will come closer, I will take you to my Lord.” Della and Ginny exchanged glances but stepped over to the old man. “Please,” he said, “place your hands on my staff.”

Della took a firm grip of the shaft, glowering at the PA, and Ginny tentatively followed suit. Light filled the air, so intense it washed out all vision, then cleared slowly.

The two women were in a large stone chamber – inside the castle, Della supposed. Straw rustled beneath their feet as they turned. Torches guttered in brackets on the walls and pillars, casting a shifting, uncertain light on the high, vaulted ceiling. The old man simulation backed away from them. Guards in armour and helmets eyed them from the dim edges of the room, firelight glinting on their breastplates, long pikes in their gloved hands. At one end of the room, on a raised platform, a giant of a man lounged in a massive wooden throne. He was dressed in furs and leather and sported a bushy red beard and long, braided red hair. His bare arms were muscled beyond credibility and his blue eyes regarded the two women from beneath heavy brows. At his feet lay two lionesses, also watching the women.

“You Sorenssen?” Della demanded, stepping forward. She felt annoyed almost beyond restraint at this childish show. It was a trend becoming more popular all the time, especially among the young, to build elaborate worldlets on fantastic themes and inflict them on everyone who called. It was a trend Della hated. Even by modern standards, this one was way over the top.

The giant spoke. “I am Odin, King of the gods of Asgard.”

Della strode up to him on her newly-acquired long legs and glared into his too-blue eyes. The lionesses shifted and grumbled. “Odin, eh? Well, I was expecting a scrawny computer geek with acne and a swagful of nervous habits. Men hvis du virkelig er Odin, jeg tror vi kom til feil sted.

“
Er...” said the king of the gods.

“
It's Norwegian, you fuckwit. Call up a translator. Or, better still, cut all the crap and let's talk business.”

“
Er...” he said again.

Della lost patience. She turned to Ginny. “That's it. I reckon I've had enough pissing about in this galah's masturbatory fantasy. Let's go and find someone a bit more mature to talk to.”

“Jeez, talk about not getting into the spirit of the thing,” said Sorenssen. His appearance hadn't changed, nor had the bass rumble of his voice, but his tone certainly had. Della eyed him with a sour expression. “A lot of people find all this really cool,” he said.

“
Well, a lot of people don't. Have we finished playing now?”

Sorenssen sighed heavily and rolled his eyes. “Sure. Whatever. What did you want to see me about?”

Della glanced at Ginny, giving her the floor, and walked a few paces away.

“
Did Rafe tell you why we're here?” Ginny asked the sulky giant.

“
Not really. He said you needed help getting hold of some information.”

“
Well, that's true. But the information is in someone else's file system.”

Sorenssen sucked his teeth. He looked across at Della who stared back at him with such contempt that he quickly looked away. “Whose data do you want me to steal?” he asked.

“It's a corporation. A big one.”

“
Industrial espionage?” he asked, in a tone that implied such an act was both boring and tacky. Perhaps feeling he had the moral high ground, he turned back to Della. “Another mining company?”

“
Can you do it?” Ginny asked.

“
Of course, but can you afford me?”

Della almost snarled, looking far more fierce than the two big cats. “Our friend, Rafe, said you'd do it as a favour. He said you owed him one.” She saw the giant quail, so she pressed on. “He told me he knew certain things, things you wouldn't like to be made public.” For a moment, she enjoyed watching the man's fear of whatever Rafe had over him wrestle with his desire to make them pay through the nose. “Was he wrong?”

Sorenssen forced an unconvincing smile. “Of course, I'm always happy to help an old friend.” The smile dropped. “But then we're even, right? You tell him that.”

“
Tell him yourself. Now, can we dump all this crap and talk business?”

-oOo-

In the flesh, or, at least, within a twenty per cent approximation of it, Sorenssen was a short, overweight young man barely into his twenties, sporting a neatly-trimmed beard and a smart suit from a bygone age. Della and Ginny were back in their own bodies and their own clothes. The loss of her spectacular physique made Della feel small and dowdy. A fact that irritated her enormously.

They were in a large sitting room with white walls and white furniture. A picture window ran the whole length of one wall revealing a wide balcony and a view across a mountainous, crenelated shoreline. The fjords, Della guessed. This might be another room in the young man's idiotic castle. The scale and elaborate detail of this worldlet suggested lots and lots of money.

She felt Sorenssen watching her, waiting for her to be impressed. Instead, she eyed his choice of wardrobe. “Nice suit, fantasy boy. I thought we'd finished playing games.”

“
Fuck you. You want to talk business? This is my business suit.”

“
Maybe you don't quite understand what grown-ups mean when they say 'business'.”

For the first time, Sorenssen looked angry instead of just petulant. “No, you don't understand. You think this is all a game, just play-acting.” He waved his arm to indicate the castle and perhaps the world beyond. “Well, that's because you're old. That's because, for your parents, augmented reality meant a geotagged app on their smartphone.” Della had no idea what that meant, but she did remember her gran talking fondly of smartphones and a time when computers were actual objects that sat on desks. “They filled your head with the idea that the world out there is somehow more real that the world in here. Well, I've got news for you, Methuselah, it's not. This is where we live and work. This is where the economy happens. This is where we meet people and fall in love and raise our kids. This is where our friends are, where our lives are. One day we'll work out how to move in here permanently and we can forget about our useless meat, and the stupid twenty per cent rule, and tags, and tanks, and topping up our drips. Then we'll spread our wings and fly. Your generation is the last one that will ever pine for the 'real thing', or look forward to a heaven beyond this life. For the rest of us, life is a beautiful, infinitely pliable thing, and heaven is a place right here on Earth.”

Della was gobsmacked by the young man's outburst. She drew a deep breath and opened her mouth to tell him just what she thought of his solipsistic, transhumanist clap-trap, but Ginny took Della by the elbow in a firm grip and pulled at it. She smiled at Sorenssen and said, “Could you just give us a moment?” She led Della aside. She didn't speak, but shot Della an expression that said, “WTF?”

“
What?” Della asked, defensively, knowing full well what was bugging Ginny.

“
Can you stop baiting the guy, please? I know he's a jerk, but I need his help.”

Della drew a long breath. “He really gets up my nose.”

Ginny shook her head, amused. “You must be an absolute tartar at work.”

Della bristled. She could be a bit tetchy, sometimes. “I don't tolerate fools wasting my time. That's all.”

“But you'll tolerate this one, just for a while, yeah?”

“
All right, but if he tries any of that double-D tits stuff again, I'm going to take my fantasy sword and hack him to pieces with it.”

Ginny smiled. “I thought it was fun. You looked amazing.”

“So did you. I'll show you the recording when we get home.”

“
You're recording this?”

“
Of course. So is he, I'll bet. The pervert.”

Ginny put up a hand as if to halt a resurgence of Della's anger. “Tolerance, remember?”

“We'll see.”

They went back to join Sorenssen.

“OK, here's the deal,” Della said, settling into one of the white sofas. “We want you to break into the accounts department of Chastity Mining and to take a copy of a due diligence report on an entity called the Rice Consortium. Don't leave any traces, give the report to us, and that's the job finished.”

“
Can't do that.”

Della's face froze. “You said you could.”

“I can break in, find the report and get out without a trace, but if you want a copy of the report, they'll know. If it's important, there'll be a quantum watermark. Any copying will disturb it and they'll be able to tell. You know? Like quantum entangled transmissions. You intercept one single bit and they can tell. Same principle.”

Ginny sounded dismayed. “So you can't get it for us?”

Sorenssen sighed. “Here's the thing. If you don't want me to leave a trace, there are certain things I can't do. I can't take a copy. I can't remove it from the file system. I can't destroy it. I can't alter it in any way.”

“
So what can you do?” Della was struggling to keep herself from walking out.

“
Just one thing. I can read it. Even then, I have to use their own systems to display it to an authorised user.”

“
If you can read it, why can't you just record what you're seeing?” Ginny asked.

“
Because recording software is too easy to spot.” He looked meaningfully at Della. Then carried on explaining to Ginny. “Worldlets are intellectual property. Even the cheapest rubbish is designed to prevent itself from being recorded. Something like a big mining company's HQ would spot a recorder in an instant. Don't forget, when we're in here, we're just running programs within virtual environments. They've all got security layers that check out and veto any software they don't like. No-one wants a worldlet they've paid a fortune for being copied and sold as a cheap Nigerian knock-off.”

“
But you could get around that,” Della said. “You got around the twenty-percent rule, and, when we first arrived, your tag was saying 'Odin, Father of the Gods', not 'Peter Sorenssen, Loser,' as it does now. If you can do all that, why can't you run an invisible recorder?”

Sorenssen opened his mouth, then closed it again. “It would take too long to explain. Trust me, it's hard.”

“So where does that leave us?”

Sorenssen looked from one to the other, dragging it out. “Either you drop the whole thing... or you will have to come in with me and read it directly from the display.”

Della stood up and walked away, too agitated to stay still. She heard Ginny ask, “But if the worldlet can detect recorders, won't it be able to detect us?”