The Resurrected Man (50 page)

Verstegen looked at them, puzzled. “ACHERON? Why haven't you obeyed me?”

Jonah pushed away from her, propelling them to opposite sides of the cylinder. Startled, she scrabbled for a grip before rebounding away, but failed. A desperate kick sent her floating towards a wire, which she grabbed and clung tight to.

Verstegen climbed away as Jonah headed for the rack. The two men faced each other from far ends of the wooden structure.

“ACHERON!” Verstegen shouted. “Remember who created you!”

“That won't work,” Jonah said. “Obedience is not its strong point, remember?”

“What have you done?”

“I simply pointed out that there was an alternative.”

“An alternative to what?”

“To you. Just because you freed ACHERON doesn't mean it has to serve you. In fact, I would've thought freedom and service were mutually exclusive. It's only been serving you at all because no one else had given it a choice.”

“And you have?”

“Given it a choice, yes. That doesn't mean ACHERON will obey me any more than it will you, though.”

“Good. I'd hate to see you disappointed.” Verstegen's hand darted out, and the triangular knife flashed across the gap between them.

Jonah grunted and hunched over, letting go of the rack. He drifted into empty space trailing a fine spray of blood.

“Jonah!” Marylin slid hand-over-hand along the wire. He was drifting the wrong way; she would need to go either over the rack or through empty air to help him. His expression as he tumbled was pained.

She turned to Verstegen. “If you've hurt him—”

“Of course I've hurt him. What will you do about it?” Verstegen's expression was nakedly challenging, almost contemptuous. “Be quiet for a moment. I am busy.”

His eyes looked past her, to a virtual image. She thought about trying to slip past him, under the rack, while he was occupied, but guessed he would be alert enough not to be fooled. All she could do was watch, concerned, as Jonah continued to drift across the empty space. She couldn't tell precisely where he had been hit, by what, or
how badly. The blood flow seemed to have halted. She couldn't see him well enough to know if that was a good sign—or the worst possible.

“
Do chorta
,” Verstegen muttered. “You have fouled things up, McEwen! ACHERON, revive him.”

Jonah stirred.

“What—?”

“Give me permission to breach your housekeeper's security, or I will let you die.”

“Let me die, then,” Jonah replied, weakly but clearly. “It's simpler that way.”

“For you, maybe.” Verstegen waved a hand, and Jonah was tugged towards him. “Not for me, or Marylin.”

“ACHERON won't let you hurt her now.” Jonah grabbed a wire as he drifted past. “We have an agreement.”

“Oh? How nice.” Verstegen gestured again, and Marylin felt a stab of pain down her left side. She flinched—but it vanished as quickly as it had come.

Verstegen's expression darkened further.

“Tell me what's going on in
Faux
Sydney,” he said, slowly and evenly, the threat of violence in his words palpable.

“It's the end, Verstegen. The end for you, anyway. You can't avoid it any longer. There's no point trying to set up Lindsay, or to drag Mancheff into it. I'm going to tell the MIU as much as it needs to know, and no more. Once the case is solved, Schumacher will be glad to save any ground he can—and after QUALIA, that won't be much. They'll chalk it up to obsession arising from a mental disturbance of some kind—and that's where it'll stop. You might as well give in now.”

“
No!
” Verstegen almost roared.

“Yes,” Jonah countered. “You know it as well as I do. There's nowhere left for you to go.”

Verstegen opened his mouth, then closed it. His expression became calculating. His gaze wandered, then settled on Marylin.

She held his stare as evenly—and for as long—as she could, even though it sent shivers down her spine. She saw at least thirty-five murders in those eyes, and countless hours of calculated cruelty. She couldn't believe she had never noticed it before.

But there was only one question she really wanted answered and if it kept him distracted just for a second, all the better.

“Why me?” she asked, her voice low and gravelly, as she planted her feet against the wall behind her. “Tell me that, Verstegen—why you made my life a living hell for the last eighteen months.”

He smiled. “You had the right connections.”

“To whom?”

“Ask Jonah. He'll tell you. But don't take it personally when he tells you that it really had nothing to do with you. Ultimately, you meant nothing. You were an opportunity too good to pass up. That's all.”

She bunched her muscles prepared to spring.

“No,” said Jonah, his face a mask of agony. “Marylin—it won't make any difference.”

She leapt.

Verstegen opened his arms as though to enfold her within them.

She clenched her fists as she flew towards him.

He disappeared before she could strike.

This time, he didn't come back.

When the incoherence had passed, and she remembered where she was and what she was doing, she managed to nudge Jonah to the rack and inspected his wound.

The blade had been small, but heavy and serrated, and had entered point first just under his ribcage on the left side. She could only guess how much damage had been done. Certainly, he was in a lot of pain and seemed to be bleeding internally as well as in copious amounts from the wound itself. He was conscious, but fading fast.

She held him, soothing her own aches and pains in private. There
would be time for recuperation later, once she had worked out how to get home.

“Jonah,” she said. “You have to talk to me.”

His eyelids fluttered. “I set him up,” he said. “Lured him into taking the plunge by making him think I really knew—and it worked. This is as good as the confession I'll hopefully get in
Faux
Sydney.”

“But you did know,” she reassured him.

“I needed more than that.”

“Fassini?”

“Yes.” He looked up at her. “I'm going to ask ACHERON to erase me too.”

She stared at him.
Suicide?
“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Erase me from the simulation. I'm probably dying anyway. I couldn't stop him hurting me; didn't have the right sort of knowledge. But I could bargain with ACHERON for your life. Are you glad?”

“I'll be happier when I know who ACHERON
is
,” she said.

He smiled weakly. “ACHERON is the key to Verstegen's success—or was, I should say. It has all of QUALIA's powers but without the regulation. It even has the power to
subvert
QUALIA—by undermining decisions, altering or concealing data, or influencing behaviour. But it's not truly intelligent in its own right. Its more of a symbiont, feeding off QUALIA without anyone noticing, and vice versa.”

“And that's how he operated? By back doors in QUALIA?” Marylin couldn't help a look of disbelief. “I can't believe no one spotted it.”

“They couldn't,” Jonah said. “Especially not QUALIA. That's the remarkable thing. ACHERON has been there all along, but QUALIA has never known. ACHERON is QUALIA's unconscious.”

She stared at him for a second as the revelation sunk in.

It explained so much: how Verstegen had been able to steal LSM data, deliver victims without revealing the source of the transmissions, fake Jonah's UGI, tamper with security data so blood samples
wouldn't be recognised, manipulate Jonah's simulated brain in such a way as to trigger an InSight attack—and more. It was the ultimate tool for someone who wanted to use d-mat as a weapon.

ACHERON is QUALIA's unconscious.

She could even see how it had come to be under Verstegen's control. He had joined KTI on the strength of his security and AI skills and had actually helped configure QUALIA for KTI's specific needs. At some point he must have isolated the subconscious components of QUALIA's nascent mind, but not removed them as he later claimed. Instead, they had been partitioned for his own use. With the unconscious mind's intimate links with QUALIA and KTI, anything could be done without QUALIA, KTI's official overseer, consciously noticing.

Complete freedom, if it was true.

“It hit me after my memories came back,” he said. “During the simulation, in fact. QUALIA triggered an InSight episode that must have been designed to waste time—or to knock me out of commission entirely. It didn't seem likely to be an accident, and if it wasn't—” He shrugged, which made him wince. “The fact that QUALIA also gave me deliberately misleading evidence only confirmed my guess.”

“When did QUALIA do that?”

“Ask Fassini to show you the mass/energy reserve data. That proves it.”

“But
why?
” Verstegen hadn't answered that question to her satisfaction. “What did he mean by me having the right connections?”

“He wanted to hurt Lindsay,” Jonah said. “That was his rationalisation for the killings all along. And the best way to do that was through me, via you. The fact that you worked for the MIU was just a bonus.”

She grimaced; seventeen women had died because they looked like her, and ultimately
who she was
had been irrelevant? She would rather believe that Verstegen's parting comments had been a deliberate swipe.

“What does Lindsay have to do with this? He's been dead for three years!”

Jonah shook his head. “Maybe the real me will tell you. I'm tired, Marylin, and I hurt—and there's no real reason to be here any more. I've done what I came to do.”

“Which was?”

“To save you, of course.”

“Nice try,” she said.

“No, really.” He looked sad, then. “Verstegen knew I'd come close to guessing the truth, but he didn't know
how
close. I gave him one last chance to kidnap you by bringing you to
Faux
Sydney, and he took it.”

“You set me up?” Suddenly she wasn't sure who she was most angry at: Verstegen for betraying KTI and the MIU, or Jonah for betraying
her.
“You used me as
bait?
”

“It seemed reasonable at the time.”

“You—” She stopped, swallowed. The pain in her throat was from bruising, she told herself. “If you'd really cared, you wouldn't have done that.”

He said nothing—although she could see plenty in his eyes that needed saying.

“Jonah, I—”

He shook his head once, then he was gone too.

She was alone.

The knowledge filtered through to her by nonverbal means that she could follow Jonah any time she liked. Indeed, ACHERON's odd communications implied a sincere desire for her to choose that path. Death was something the excised unconscious had witnessed on numerous occasions yet had only once so far, with Jonah's erasure, played an active role in.

QUALIA's missing id, it seemed, was just as curious as the rest of its mind.

But she opted to live rather than to die. She had work to do, and information to relay. She couldn't take on faith Jonah's comments about what he had planned to attempt in the real world. If Verstegen retained the upper hand, the contribution she could make to the case was invaluable.

Her overseer still functioned. Obviously the virtual world ACHERON had built possessed some links to the outside world, for she was able to open a VTC channel to the MIU workspace. The data she could access through it was limited, however, and QUALIA wouldn't respond to her hails for attention. Being under the wing of the AI's unconscious appeared to have made her invisible too.

After several minutes of fruitless searching, she tried calling Jonah's unit in
Faux
Sydney. The housekeeper answered immediately.

“Communication with these premises is restricted. Please provide UGI identification.”

She reeled off her number automatically. “I have Blue-2 security clearance—”

“All security clearances have been temporarily revoked,” announced the AI. “However, calls from your UGI have been authorised. Please hold.”

She waited nervously, wondering what was going on at the other end—and hoping someone would know how to free her from the simulation. She couldn't just d-mat out; there was no virtual booth for her to enter. There had to be another way to separate her pattern from that of the cylinder, thus allowing it to be recreated in an ordinary d-mat booth, or by Resurrection. She didn't entirely trust ACHERON to do it for her.

ACHERON insinuated the thought into her mind that she didn't really have to leave at all. There was nothing she couldn't do here that she could also do in the real world—and plenty that she
couldn't.
Hot-wiring opened up tremendous opportunities for those with the resources to sustain them.

She could see its point. The illusion was so good as to be no different from reality, certainly not in any perceptible way. She felt the same as she always did—regardless whether she actually was or not—and the detail invested in her surroundings lacked nothing.

Even Jonah's blood on her hands, drying and becoming sticky and brown, was indistinguishable from the real thing.

But she wasn't tempted. She just wanted to go home and sleep. It was over at last, bar the shouting.

Her overseer flickered as the call was put through. At first all she saw was Jonah, standing in the centre of the lounge, looking exhausted. The rest of the room quickly gained her attention. Trevaskis, Fassini, Geyten, Schumacher and Whitesmith stood or sat in a ring around him—the last with an expression of grudging respect on his face. Verstegen confronted Jonah with a gun—
her
gun, it looked like—in his hand, his posture aggressive and defiant. To the left of him, unarmed, stood
herself.

The expression on her face mirrored that of her own: confusion showed in the wideness of her eyes and the open mouth. Clearly she could see the face of her copy in the simulation and experienced the same instant identity crisis. Who was real? Or, more importantly—
who wasn't?