Silhouette (7 page)

By the time I pulled the aero over to him and got out, he had managed to drag himself to the edge of a gaping fissure that ran through the center of the stadium's field. He had also managed to pry loose a small knife that had been concealed under his arm. I took it from his almost-limp hand and threw it into the blackness of the crack, where it did not hit bottom, at least that I heard. As I went to turn him faceup, I saw the thick, bloody cross behind his right ear where one of the Xs had hit him. Based on the way he was struggling to move, I assumed the other one had hit him in the kidneys or lower spine. I turned him over, grabbed his lapels, and held his upper body over the edge of the crevasse.

“There are a lot of dead people down there,” I said to him. “I'm sure they'd love some company.” Korcz blinked his eyes at the blood that had seeped over to his face during his crawl. In my mind, I pictured this man walking up to D's car, my little girl staring at him from the back window. “Did. You. Kill. Darien. Anthony?”

“What?” he said, or something that resembled it, and blinked a few more times.

I pulled out the killer boa and held it to his face, my hand shaking from the rush of emotion, until I heard Twitch's voice say, “Is everything all right, sir?” And on the left side of my vision, because the editor had switched back to the falcon view, I saw myself from behind and above, the dark maw of the crack on the other side of me so big that it looked like it could swallow me whole, if I wasn't careful.

 

6

We took Korcz to the cathedral and locked him up, but within an hour it was obvious that this man was not the murderer. No fewer than five reliable and independent sources, both real and virtual, confirmed that he had flown into the Bay Area that morning, rather than three days ago, as Harris had said. He had come to visit his parents (the old couple), who still lived here. He was on vacation from a security job with an East Coast firm similar to ours, but smaller, and they had granted him his perfectly legitimate weapons clearance. He also had no explosives on him, or in the belongings we searched.

Why had he run, then? Seems that he had been guilty of some financial indiscretions years ago when he was an agent of BASS. Darien had handled the problem personally in a discreet and gracious manner, allowing him to leave without controversy, and even serving as a reference for him later on when he applied for his new job—which explained the periodic contact between the two men.

When Korcz heard that same morning that Darien had been killed, and then was confronted by a BASS posse, he thought that the clemency toward him had expired. The man also apparently had a deep-rooted paranoia about BASS leadership, which for some reason only Darien had been able to assuage. I made a mental note to ask him about this at some point before he was released, but now I was calling Harris from a net room in the castle, near the aero garage.

The tech beside me was busy with my special instructions when the tattooed freak appeared on the screen. I didn't want to endure his gloating, but there was a method to my madness.

“Sir Michael Ares,”
Harris barely managed to say in his talking-head voice, because he was laughing so hard. He clutched his stomach and rocked back and forth in his chair.
“Leads an assault on an innocent man, almost killing his geriatric, heart-patient parents”
(more laughing) “who immediately go to the press,
when they wake up
, describing the entire fiasco in vivid detail! This is Nirvana! The third heaven. Brainsmash, Headflip without the hangovers. A night with Marilyn—Monroe
and
Manson! I think it's on the news right now.…” He started fumbling with some of the screens beside him.

“I don't want to see it,” I said. “You told me Korcz had been in town for three days, and that he had explosives on him.”

“Beautiful, ain't it?” he said, proud of himself. “After you asked me about those names, our Tricky Dickies ran a net scan, and found out he had flown in and bought three tickets for the Stick. I was hoping it would waste your time, at least, but I didn't even
dream
(Dream Base Outer Space) of a John Woo firefight! And you
phosgenated
his
mum
” laughing again “best use of toxic chemicals since the Haiti massacre!”

“You realize people could have been killed or wounded,” I said.

“Torque 'em! That would have been Even Better Than the Real Thing.” He was singing again; it was definitely time for this discussion to end.

“Harris,” I said, and the excuse for a man raised his eyebrow as high as it could go, cocked his head to the side, and showed me all his multicolored teeth.

“Yes, my Cardinal Squeeze?”

“You've worn out your welcome,” I said, and clicked him off. I asked the tech if he had successfully skirted the squatters' jam and recorded the conversation. He said yes, and did I want to see it? I said no, but copied it to my glasses, and headed for the garage.

*   *   *

As I headed north to the Ranch to visit Paul, the olive green and black of the castle and the early-evening sun receding behind me, I put the glasses on and brought up the reports and inquiries that had reached my desk during the day. One was merely an informational item, about a BASS aero that had been fired upon by a punk in Japantown who had built his own bazooka. Another was an “external employment transfer”—read
termination
—that I immediately signed with my code, trusting the evaluator who had submitted it. Beyond that, there was nothing significant or pressing, so I spent the rest of the trip learning about the plan to expunge the squatters, which had been intricately outlined two years ago, then shelved. I liked the plan, so I notified the necessary people that they should be prepared by tomorrow to implement it at a moment's notice.

When I had finished that project and was approaching Paul's Marin County residence, I finally began wondering why my boss and friend had seemed so troubled when he called me. He seemed to have no interest or excitement about the arrest of a possible suspect. Had he known that Korcz wasn't the man? Or was this unrelated? I only knew it was something of weight, because the only other times I had been invited to the Ranch were for social occasions involving our whole family.

As the memory of those family moments flooded into my mind, I pushed out the ones of the member I had lost and focused on the one who remained. I called Lynn, not really wanting to talk to her but thinking that I should. In fact, I used the audio on my glasses instead of the car phone, because I didn't want to have to look her in the eye. The answering message came on, and I started talking to our net system, half hoping that she wouldn't hear and answer.

“Hi, Lynn,” I said. “I wanted to see how you're doing. Dumb question, I guess. And, uh, just wanted to let you know that I plan to sleep at home tonight, or at least try to sleep—”

“I don't know,” she said, picking up the call. “I don't know.”

“You don't know what?” I said, bracing myself.

“I don't know if I want you to come home.”

We were both silent for a while. On my end, I was weighing whether this was a good or a bad turn of events.

“I'm just really confused,” she finally continued. “Part of me wants to hurt you, hate you, for this. But part of me needs you. I'm not sure which part to listen to.”

“I knew you would blame me for this,” I said defensively, but feeling deep inside that I couldn't win this argument.

“Who else should I blame?” she answered, as if she had been rehearsing this in her mind. Then she said my answer before I could get it out. “The killer? Michael, sometimes it takes more than one person to make a murder.
I gave you the choice.
I let you decide about your job—probably because of some antiquated notion of male leadership that I got from the old lady…” Her straining voice was suddenly choked off by a series of sobs. “This is what I was afraid of!” Then more sobs.

I sat silently for a few moments, listening to the humming of the aero's engine. I thought about striking back or hanging up, but something told me that would mean more than I was ready for it to mean. I was truly beginning to think this might be the end for us, and for some reason the biggest part of me didn't want that.

“Lynn,” I started, having no idea what I was going to say.

“No, Michael, listen,” she interrupted in a softer voice. “I don't know what to think right now, so you need to do the thinking for us.” She let out a combination of a sob and a chuckle. “Huh, that's from, uh—”

“Casablanca,”
I said.

“Yeah.” It sounded like she was wiping her eyes and nose. “You just tell me if you want to come back here or not, that way I don't have to make the decision. Yeah. I guess I kinda want you to come home right now, I guess. But stay away if you want. You just tell me, so I know how it's gonna be.”

“Well, I can't come right now—” I started.

“Fine. Goodbye,” she blurted.

“No, wait!” I said, then paused to make sure she was still on the line. “I want to come home and be with you. But I'm here at Paul's right now. I have to meet with him for a few minutes, then I'll be there.”

“Okay,” she said. “But you have to be here. You remember all those times when you told me that and didn't make it? Well, this can't be one of them. I'm close, Michael, I'm on the edge. Don't let me fall off.”

“I'll be there,” I said. “Give me an hour at the most.”

“I'll see you then,” she said.

“I'll see you then,” I echoed, and then tapped the glasses' audio off.

“I love you…?” I said to nobody, after a few moments of silence.

By this time, the aero had automatically stopped and was undergoing a series of security scans at the perimeter of Paul's property. Marin had proven too broad an area to secure corporately like the Napa Valley, so the individual estates had developed their own fortresslike defenses. And Paul's was the best guarded, not only because he had access to the highest of high-tech resources through BASS but because his property was the most valuable.

Even beyond the obvious worth of three thousand acres secluded from any real neighbors, and the fifty million dollars' worth of architecture, the Ranch was a bona fide cultural and historical landmark. The land and the original buildings had been owned and built by a man named Lucas, who had produced about ten of the most well-known (and worshipped) flatmovies of all time. He had died just prior to the onset of holos, but versions of the virtual universe he created in his antiquated medium endured even until today, in various forms of entertainment.

As I hovered above the arid woodlands, waiting for the scans to conclude, I saw the inconspicuous gate on the ground in front of me and to my right. Someone with only a ground vehicle wouldn't have known the impressive estate was here unless they had been directed to it, and I was sure there was no sign at the road saying
SKYWALKER RANCH
(the original name, from one of the man's characters). But from the sky, I saw the congregation of Victorian-style buildings not too far north of the gate, and it was toward them that I directed the aero, once the clearance had been granted.

I watched and numbered the buildings in my mind as they grew closer: the inn for guests, the old firehouse, the stables, the theater, and the main house, along with accoutrements such as a vineyard and a baseball diamond. I also saw Paul's biggest addition to the original structures: an Olympic-size swimming pool that appeared to be open to the weather but actually was enclosed by an invisible transteel canopy, which somehow kept harmful rays from Paul and his family but still allowed them to enjoy the sun. It also kept the water and air under it warm in the winter. I remembered how Paul had introduced me to this marvel by lobbing toward the pool one of his son's balls, which bounced against nothing in the middle of the air and rolled slowly down more nothing until it was back on the ground. I remembered how Lynette had loved that trick, too, and my eyes watered up again.

I set the car down next to Paul's, and saw him stepping out of the main house to greet me, followed by his twin daughters, who had often played with Lynette, though they were a few years older. As I exited the car and walked to them, they each hung on one of their father's arms, and said, “Hi, Uncle Michael,” almost simultaneously. Neither Paul nor I had brothers, so Lynette had addressed him in the same way, as “Uncle Paul.”

“Hi, Hilly. Hi, Jessa,” I replied. “How are you?” They said, “Fine,” dutifully but sweetly, and then their father told them to get back to school, which I knew was actually inside the residence, staffed by live and virtual tutors. They did as he said, half skipping back into the house.

“They wanted to say hi,” Paul said, the same pained look on his face, then he started moving away. “Why don't we go over to the theater.” I walked with him, asking where John was. “He's riding with Liria. The girls are behind in school, but he's ahead right now. They hate that.” He forced a smile, and I scanned the horizon, as if I might see the horses carrying the young man in his teens and the Asian woman, whose stunning beauty was blemished only by the half-hidden sadness that always seemed to cling to her. Lynn and I had many times pondered its cause, concluding that it probably had something to do with a husband who, like me, was “out saving the world” and seldom at home.

“It
is
a nice night for a ride,” I said as we reached the big building, realizing then that the pall that infected my friend had spread to me. A lump was tightening in my stomach as we opened the inner door and were immediately accosted by a wall of sound. Paul frowned and informed me, over the din, that John had left the player on. He stepped inside the theater toward the controls at its center, and I followed, taking in the awesome virtual scene all around me.