Tea From an Empty Cup (23 page)

At first, she could only stand in total darkness, confused. Then she felt the cat in her arms, and a moment later, two beams of light were playing around the lobby. Twin flashlights – they came from the cat’s eyes, which made her laugh, but more with relief than amusement. The cat looked around the ruined, dirty lobby until it found the elevator for her, staring at the call button until she pressed it. She had some reservations about climbing into an elevator in a building like this, but when it arrived, it was fully lit and functional. Considering that the alternative would have been to hike up a few hundred flights of stairs in the dark, she decided that it was a risk she could tolerate.

The elevator opened right onto a waiting room. It was brightly lit, filled with oddly-shaped furniture that suggested both antiquity and unknown origin. The texture seemed to be wood, but also gave the impression that it had been made liquid at some point, to be pulled and tortured into twisted, bizarre framework before hardening permanently. Tortured furniture? Konstantin shook her head. Either she was getting more imaginative in her old age, or she was extremely tired. Her ex would have voted for tired.

She looked around. There was no one else in the room, not even at the contorted table that could very well have been a receptionist’s desk. Konstantin sighed, absently petting the cat in her arms. The cat jumped onto the surface of the table/receptionist’s desk, lay down and became a book again, open to a page with a large exclamation mark on it. Konstantin went around the other side to have a look.

The exclam vanished and words appeared on the page.
So you’re here to see Body Sativa and no one seems to be in
.

Konstantin stepped back and looked around. ‘Hello?’ she asked warily.

The book turned a page with an attention-getting flapping noise.
You have entered an area normally reserved for those who access at a higher speed
.

She blew out a disgusted breath. Figured. Sex, drugs, blood and guts. When did humanity last have an original thought, she wondered.
Probably never. Everything we thought we needed to know we learned from chimpanzees
.

There will be a short wait before anyone can see you, but you will be seen. Do you want to wait? Please touch one:
–
YES
–
NO
.

Konstantin touched the YES square.

Thank you. Please have a seat
.

Konstantin picked up the book and tucked it away inside her robe, before finding a piece of furniture that seemed to be remotely like a couch, and sitting down. The walls in this room were blank, as far as she could tell. Sometimes she thought she saw a shadow flicker but nothing appeared and she decided it was some kind of glitch in the transmission. Either that, or the simulated fluorescent lights were flickering in the interest of authenticity.

‘Cat,’ she said, and there it was in her lap again, giving her a glimpse of a puzzled feline face before it became a book. She stared down at the page of icons Tim Mezzer had given her. Several were question marks, presumably to provide her with relatively simple answers. Or so she surmised. She touched one of the question marks and it became a small card in her hand.

‘Is it me,’ she said to the card, ‘or is this really boring?’

‘It’s you.’

She looked up. A large TV screen had come into existence directly in front of her without her noticing; she might have taken the image on the screen for another androgyne, except that everyone had referred to Body Sativa as
she
. Male or female or both, Body Sativa would have been beautiful, although her face should have been too wide and too round and her eyes too small to allow that description of her. Perhaps it was the full, wide, sensuous mouth that did it, or the chaotic, multi-colored hair. Or maybe it was all just a special effect on a TV screen, as seen on a second TV screen.

‘I don’t get to meet you in person, I have to watch you on a monitor?’ Konstantin said. ‘And I’m already actually watching you on a monitor to begin with. Don’t you think that’s excessive?’

Body Sativa’s smile was appreciative. ‘It’s always wise to take anything in AR with a grain of salt at least. Grains of salt are a valuable commodity here. But an even more valuable commodity is speed.’

‘So I hear. Tell me, what is there for the, uh, unaccelerated, so to speak?’

‘There’s plenty of keep-busy junk in the world out there. One could beg the question of why anyone would even bother to come in here
unaccelerated
, as you put it.’

‘If
one
doesn’t have a good illicit drug connection and
one
doesn’t know to begin with,’ Konstantin snapped, losing her patience. ‘Look, I’m tired, I’ve had a bad night. I’m wearing this outfit to investigate a murder that occurred out there, in a video parlor. The person who normally wears this appearance, or who was wearing it earlier tonight anyway, got his throat cut. The name is Shantih Love, which he wore
over
the name Tom Iguchi, which according to his wife wasn’t his name to begin with, since he was known to change his name regularly. During questioning of possible witnesses, you were mentioned several times as someone who would know something more about Shantih Love than the average paying customer. I’m sick of chasing around in here –’ Konstantin sighed. Suddenly she felt weak and very, very tired. ‘I almost got molested by a
child
, for chrissakes.’

‘A
child?
’ Body Sativa’s amused smile was also skeptical. ‘There are no
children
in here.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ Konstantin sighed. ‘After all, everything you’re told in here is a lie, right? So that must be a lie, too.’

‘Philosophers’ Corner is halfway down the block from Beginners’ Cafe, and you don’t even need to pay extra to be in the Sitty to go to either one of them,’ Body Sativa said briskly. ‘Look, dear-friend, if you have some information for me, you can deposit it down there, in the bottom of this monitor unit –’ the TV screen bulged slightly as Body Sativa leaned forward and looked down, at the outside of the TV case; a small slot glowed brightly. ‘I’ll look at it – I assume it’s footage? – and if you leave your email address, you’ll hear from me in a day, possibly less. If I know anything, I’ll tell you. The truth, that is; the truth you use out there.’

‘Well, the truth would be a nice change in routine,’ Konstantin said cheerfully. ‘But an even better thing would be if you would agree to meet me out there yourself. In person.’

‘I didn’t witness anything
in person
. Be a good dear-friend and settle for email. I wouldn’t even give you that much, except that a study of your movements this session indicates that you are everything you say, and I’d be less than responsible if I didn’t give you what you ask. You’re so completely … ignorant … of how things are done here that if I don’t help you, you’re liable to get hurt very badly.’

‘Well, that’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,’ Konstantin said quickly. ‘This Shantih Love/Tom Iguchi person wasn’t the only one who turned up dead out there. There are seven other people –’

‘Email,’ Body Sativa said firmly. ‘And now, you really should be going. The tribal wars module isn’t strictly ornamental.’ Then she reached out of the TV screen and pressed a button in the upper right-hand corner of the console. The screen went dark. Konstantin got up and tried pressing the button herself but nothing happened. Wearily she asked the cat for instructions on how to transfer a copy of the footage of Shantih Love’s AR murder to the slot Body Sativa had showed her. Email was better than nothing, she supposed, and then it occurred to her that it was probably even better than AR. Email was traceable.

It didn’t occur to her that it wasn’t necessary to ride all the way down to the ground floor in the elevator to get out.

She walked out of the building into the middle of a riot.

The werewolves were gone, but the formerly empty piazza was now full of people running, screaming, chasing each other, hurling furniture and other heavy objects from broken-out windows in the building, possibly from midair for all she knew. Wrecked cars had been overturned and set on fire. But then, perhaps that actually counted as new home construction for the salamander population, she thought, feeling dazed and anxious as she look around for some clear route of escape.

Escape. Good one, Einstein. Try ‘exit
.’ She felt like a complete idiot. It was no wonder that Body Sativa didn’t want to have anything to do with her. She wasn’t just unaccelerated, she was stupid. The whole venture was no better than a reckless prank. She couldn’t get into the spirit of it even for the sake of information-gathering on behalf of some poor murdered kid. And walking around disguised as the victim – the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like an act of desecration. Better just to hope for useful information via email from Body Sativa, though she doubted there would be any. This had nothing to do with anyone’s life, not anyone’s
real
life. So how could it have anything to do with a kid’s real death? Or seven other real deaths?

She stepped out of the relative shelter of the lobby just as a Molotov cocktail sailed over her head and shattered on the building above her, making a perfect wave circle of flame. The effect of the heat was so realistic she could have sworn her face was flushed. She put an arm up defensively and turned away.

It took her all of a second to register the blow followed by the impact of her body on the piazza. The punch in her upper chest had been so abrupt and powerful that her legs had flown out from under her and she’d hit the pavement on her back. It
hurt
, as badly as the real thing would have. She thought she had run into one of the rioters and the program had authenticated the logical result. But then a half-circle of grinning faces appeared above her as she tried to sit up and catch her breath and she couldn’t believe it. Of all the damned things that could go on in this ridiculous scenario and she
would
go and trigger one of the least imaginative.

Before she could ask for the icon cat, they hauled her to her feet and began shoving her around so that she rebounded from one into another like a pinball. Still breathless, she tried to get a good look at them but they were pushing her around too quickly. The Molotov cocktail had ignited something and she could see others, some human and some not quite, watching in the firelight as her attackers played with her.

There had to be something in the icon cat that would help, she thought, something for protection, self-defense,
something
. Too bad she hadn’t thought of that sooner and used some precautions. She could imagine Body Sativa laughing at her.
Ignorant … ignorant. You thought you were safe because you were here under false pretenses. Surprise, dear-friend, we’re
all
here under false pretenses
.

They were shoving her around harder now, slapping and punching, and the pain was only too real. Never mind the technical specs of the sensation delivery system – this was
too
authentic. She wondered if Tomoyuki Iguchi had had some kind of masochistic streak that he had indulged as Shantih Love –

And suddenly she wasn’t sure that it
wasn’t
happening for real. Maybe Shantih Love hadn’t been able to tell the difference there on the shore of the Hudson River, not until it was too late and he couldn’t feel how the real blood was flowing along with the virtual, even though he could see, perhaps until the moment of his death, the virtual attacker who had come to hijack his persona. But
why?

A leg kicked out as she stumbled sideways and she went down again. One of her attackers started to pull her up; she twisted away and fumbled the iconcat out onto the ground where she could see it.

This time, it didn’t pause for animal imagery. The book fell open to a fierce and cartoony picture of a monster that she somehow knew was a talisman of protection. Just as she grabbed for it, her attackers tore it away from her.

Too late, she understood that the catalog with its treasure trove of icons – its
stuff
– was what they’d been after all along. She scrambled up but a heavy boot caught her in the midsection and she sat down hard.

Someone crouched down and shoved a face that looked like the product of an unfortunate mating between a troll and a gargoyle up close to hers. ‘Hey, you never heard that expression,
be seated?
’

She scooted backward, trying to get away. He advanced on her with the others behind him, one holding up her icon cat so she could see that they had taken the whole thing from her.

All, that was, except for one page that she was still clutching in one hand, so hard that her knuckles hurt. Another pain that was real, produced by the way she was clenching her hand in this unreal place, a pain that paled next to the jazzy high-res authenticity of the ’suit but went deeper, all the way down to the level where what remained of the reptile senses sorted real from unreal.

They are killing me. They are
really
killing me!

The thought was a screaming in her head. What was going on, out there beyond the bounds of the headmount and the neo-exo-nervous system, what was happening
out there
, how many were
out there
, why hadn’t she figured there could be more than one in on the murder, someone else hidden in the air-processing ducts, perhaps, with the cooperation of some insider, maybe bored Tim Mezzer or bitter Miles Mank, or even Pleshette, not bored or bitter, just plain crazy. Or
all
of them together, Mank and Pleshette pretending to hate each other
out there
. Or maybe they
did
hate each other
out there
but not
in here
.

In here
. Where the employee discount was pretty good. What arrogance and contempt, to kill someone so soon after the last one, and the detective investigating the case, no less! Ideal, though – the partner was too claustrophobic to jump right on the crime scene and they knew it, so by the time someone else, Celestine and DiPietro perhaps, arrived, they’d have jiggered the evidence, massaged the data, and Celestine and DiPietro would be too busy trying to impress the stringer from
Police Blotter
to notice or care that she had become so much more grist for the AR urban legend mill.
Ya hear about the homicide detective who was killed in AR
investigating a murder? Yeah, incredible
galloping head-bugs, she was crazier ’n a sackful of assholes. Happened in D.C., of course. Life is so cheap there, it’s a whole different world –