Chimera (20 page)

I woke feeling almost refreshed and definitely pleased. I lay between clean sheets on a mattress that was the next best thing to zero G. Mozart played softly in the background. The scent of roses wafted by my nose. Hoping someone attractive was lying beside me—only to confirm that I was in Heaven—I opened my eyes.

If Heaven looks like a small, cheap hotel room, I was there. The furnishings, when new, had been attractive and expensive faux-Victorian, from the Gainesborough reproductions on the wall to the enormous green and mahogany wing chair by my bed. Now they were all tired, faded, worn, cracked, or chipped. Dull purple velvet curtains covered the window, but on a bedside table with a cigarette burn, a lamp with a stained shade gave a soft, comforting glow, much as the rose in the chipped vase by the lamp gave a subtle, comforting scent. This wasn't any Hell I had heard of; everything was clean, and nothing smelled bad. Maybe Heaven was having trouble keeping up with the demand, and I'd been shunted to the overflow lot.

I lay there, drowsily aware that I was missing something. Chase Oliver Maxwell. Los Angeles, South California, United States of North America. Private detective. Infinite Pocket. (I glanced at my wrist then. The familiar scar was still there.) Zoe Domingo. The safe house—that wasn't so safe. A fight. Escape. Then something. Something important. Oh, right. Death.

This room may not have fit any idea I'd had of Heaven, but when you don't expect to wake up, you can't complain about where you do. I wondered if the afterlife shaped itself to your notion of heaven on Earth. I'd had a few good times in cheap hotel rooms, but I really wanted to request a villa by the sea. Then I noticed various parts of my body making distant, muted protests that bad things had been done to them, and I realized that the dreamlike quality of my thoughts must come from drugs given me for pain.

On the bedside table were a coolglass of water and an ugly institutional HV set with a blinking red message light. Propping myself on an elbow, I picked up the water, smelled it, then drank greedily, knowing instantly that whatever was keeping me blissful had also been hiding an intense thirst. The coolglass maintained the water at 40 degrees Fahrenheit, the proper temperature for cisterns and cellars. It tasted better than chocolate milkshakes or dark beer. Maybe Heaven consists of simple things fully appreciated.

When I finished the water, I pushed the sheet off my upper body. Someone had put me in a white gown. I wondered if there were people who woke up in hospitals and thought, "Oh, good, strangers stripped me naked, but that's all right because then they dressed me like a doll."

A hospital did seem a more likely guess than Heaven. But if this was a hospital, why hadn't anyone looked in on me?

I sat up. The world did a merry-go-round, but I didn't fall back on the bed. The world slowed, then stopped. I tried for the brass ring, and stood. The merry-go-round was faster than before. Something deep under my happy drugs said this much exertion wasn't a good idea, so I sat, breathed deeply, and feeling like a mountain climber setting out on the final assault, yanked the gown over my head.

Patches of my chest were pale and hairless with synthskin. That answered my first question: I had been hurt badly; I was better now. I still seemed to have everything I ought to have had, and while everything was weak, a systematic series of flexings and wigglings proved everything worked.

I made it to the small bathroom without falling and continued the self-diagnostic. A support bar by the toilet gave me another clue that I wasn't in a hotel. I wasn't too proud to cling to it. In the mirror, I looked flushed, undoubtedly from exertion. Several days' worth of stubble shaded my jaw and lip. Except for the patches of synthskin, I seemed to be my usual self.

I drank cold water from the tap, then splashed my face. The drugged sensation was fading, which made me feel better. Not having the greatest mind, I hate wasting any of it. No part of me actually hurt. I simply felt uncomfortable all over, and knew it would be nice to sleep for another day.

Instead, I stumbled to the front door and tried the handle. It was unlocked, which encouraged me to look out. An older woman in a wheelchair sat in a room like mine across a hall with the stainless surfaces of a hospital corridor. Her laugh reminded me that I was naked. Thinking applause would've been a far more appropriate reaction, I closed the door quickly.

Clothes were in the closet—my shirt and suit, which had been washed, but were only fit for rags now, and a white shirt and tan trousers that clearly were not new, but were in decent shape. I dressed in the latter, then returned to the bathroom, found a razor, and shaved. A comb was among the toiletries, so I dampened my hair and beat it into submission. When I checked the mirror this time, I looked like I might be able to stand upright in a breeze. I opened the Pocket. The SIG slammed into my hand, and I dropped it.

That's the price of arrogance. I told myself I should quit paying it, picked up the SIG, and returned it to the Pocket. I popped the earring and felt better when I caught it, both because I had caught it and because someone hadn't emptied the Pocket while I was dead—which shouldn't be possible, but someone was doing lots of things that weren't possible for the rest of us. At least Zoe would be glad to know Gold's device was all right.

Which raised the next question. I returned the earring to the Pocket and tried the most promising way to get an answer: I went to the bed, breathed slowly and deeply to get my strength back (and maybe to prepare for bad news), then pressed the red message light on the HV.

A well-modulated androgynous voice said, "You have two messages."

"Play the first."

Detective Vallejo's head and shoulders appeared above the set with a phone number and a date, the day after I died. He said, "Mr. Maxwell, welcome back to the land of the living. We have a few questions for you. And maybe a few answers, too. Call me anytime."

The projection froze in midair. I mulled over phoning him then. He had been polite. There hadn't been a cop standing in the hall. That meant I wasn't under arrest or considered a serious suspect in Tauber's death. Or maybe they just figured I wasn't likely to run away in my current shape. But the most likely explanation was they had pinned everything illegal we'd done on Zoe.

Then I thought of two more possibilities for the absence of a guard at my door that I liked even less. Either the police didn't think I needed protection from killer copbots, or they didn't care whether someone removed me from their lists of available suspects and witnesses.

I said, "Next message."

A tall brown-haired man in a designer suit appeared. "Mr. Maxwell, I'm David Melius. I'd like to talk to you about a job." Neither his name nor his phone number were familiar.

Not feeling like talking to a stranger, I killed the HV. The offer of work was nice, even if it only turned out to be a couple hours tracing one of his old friends. Anything that distracted me from thinking about Zoe was welcome.

I knew she couldn't leave a message for me. I wondered how far from L.A. she was, and whether she had found someone to help her, and whether I would ever get an unsigned postcard saying she was okay. People pass through your life and disappear. That's just how things are. I wondered why I still wished life was different, and I hoped Zoe was happy wherever she was, and I longed for some way to double the dosage of bliss drugs in my blood, because now I had a very powerful hurt indeed. That's what you get for doing the right thing, I thought: Kicked around, killed, and heart-broken.

I jerked myself to my feet, then stopped. Zoe had left without the earring. With me dead, there'd been no way for her to recover it. Would she want it, or would she consider it another part of a past that she was best off forgetting? Maybe she had decided to take the risk and send me email with a clue to her plans. I wanted to go someplace private to check my messages, then realized her pocket computer was gone with her, mine was still in hock, and I was still flat broke and late on my rent.

Broke. I felt like I was walking down a mined path, and each step set off a larger explosion. I had no money. Returning me to life had to have cost more megs than I'd ever had. Even if the cat had gotten to her inheritance, she couldn't have covered my bill.

I knew the tricky part of how I'd survived to get here: When UNSEC installed the Infinite Pocket, they wired my body to provide the Pocket with bioelectric power. And since they had me open, they installed something that'll soon be standard for anyone doing a dangerous job: cryo circuits. When the sensors decided I was dead, two things happened. An alert appeared somewhere in UNSEC headquarters letting them know they might not have to worry about me anymore, and the cryo circuits began to radically chill my body, expanding the time I could be revived without suffering brain damage from minutes to hours.

I must have scared Zoe when I'd frosted over. I never thought to warn her; it's not something that comes up much in conversation: "Oh, if I happen to die, I'll turn into a popsicle. Will anything interesting happen to you?"

But the icewire only explained how someone had managed to get me someplace to be rebuilt and restarted. It didn't explain why I'd gotten the reboot. UNSEC's standard retirement policy gives its agents two revivals before the age of seventy-five, and one after, not counting those earned in the course of duty. My early departure from the force meant I got to keep the circuitry, but the cost of coming back to life was entirely mine.

And I hadn't been able to afford health insurance for a couple of years. No one who checked my credit rating would bother to fill a cavity without cash up front, let alone replace major organs, quickset broken bones, reknit torn muscles, and jumpstart my heart.

Maybe I'd been mistaken for someone else. Or maybe they'd recognized my UNSEC circuitry and assumed I was someone the UN still liked. Maybe the proper thing to do was to gather my belongings and sneak away before the hospital realized a mistake had been made and demanded their organs back.

The state of the furniture suggested one answer to why I was alive. I went to the window to confirm it. The sun was bright on the streets of Los Angeles. I recognized the neighborhood. I was in the Engelberg Center, arguably L.A.'s best medical facility for the underclass, where equipment and doctors' time were donated, and patients paid what they could. My bill couldn't be very large.

Then I remembered a news story about a man found almost dead and fixed up by a clinic that gave him a choice: indenture yourself for ten years to pay for your new heart, or return it. I couldn't remember his decision.

My considerations were interrupted when the HV's message light came on again. I tapped it. A middle-aged dogman in a nurse's uniform smiled at me. The hair on his head and face was mostly white and gold, like a Collie's or an Afghan Hound's. "Good afternoon, Mr. Maxwell. I'm Clovis. Sorry not get to you sooner, but we're understaffed, and the monitors say you're doing fine. How're you feeling?"

"Ready to check out."

"The room's paid for two more nights, if you want it."

"Paid? Already?"

Clovis nodded.

"Who by?"

"You'd have to ask at the desk, I'm afraid."

That seemed odd, but I'd never had a major operation at a medical facility for the underclass. Maybe they had already docked what they could from my bank account. But I would hardly call taking a percentage of nothing "payment." Deciding my health had priority just then, I asked, "Do you think I need the room?"

"Not if you're in a hurry to go. Just don't do anything strenuous for a few days. You've got a new heart, a new liver, and a new lung to adjust to."

If I was going to lie around watching HV, I would be more comfortable at home. I said, "Good. I'll check out."

"You can get a refund at the desk on the main floor. If you don't want to donate the balance to the hospital."

"A refund?"

"For the nights you're not using." He glanced away, then back at me. "One hundred seventeen K."

"Shouldn't that go to whoever paid the bill?"

"There's no return address."

"Is there a name?"

Clovis shrugged. "They might know at the desk."

"Thanks."

He looked apologetic. "Detective Vallejo told us to call him if you left without contacting him. The system says you haven't used the phone."

"But I'm free to go if I want?"

Clovis blinked in surprise. "Certainly."

"Thanks." I disconnected and decided to let Vallejo wait. I called up my messages and tapped David Melius's number.

The phone rang long enough that I was about to hang up. Melius answered in a different designer suit. Behind him was a large office and a view of Manhattan Island that didn't look virtual. I wasn't surprised that he had given me his personal number; most execs who hire detectives will bypass their secretaries, if possible. He said "Yes?" like a man in a hurry.

"I'm Chase Maxwell. You left a message for me?"

"Mr. Maxwell!" His grin said he now had as much time as I wanted. "Yes, I did. I'm the president of DynaTech Industries. We're looking for someone to head up our security division. You seem like just the man we want."

"Excuse me?"

"DynaTech's a small company, but we're growing quickly. We're prepared to be competitive with salary and benefits. Extremely competitive."

I doubt I would've processed this faster without the painkillers. "You want to hire me for a full-time position?"

He nodded firmly. "Very much."

"How did you know I was here?"

He laughed. "You made the news, Mr. Maxwell. There aren't many detectives who bounce back from the dead. A man with UNSEC training—"

"Who didn't solve his client's case."

Melius smiled and waved that aside. "No one expects a one hundred percent success rate."

"I'm not in the market for that kind of work, Mr. Melius."

"Fifty meg a year, Mr. Maxwell. Plus an apartment near our headquarters. And a car. Two months vacation. Complete medical and dental. An education package—"