Dervish Is Digital Part 16

Konstantin thought of the narcs, busily working the middle ground between two ends that just couldn't quite get tied together. "How long do you think it'll take?"

"As long as it takes to get it done. Take it or shake it. You afraid someone's gonna accuse you of enjoying yourself in here?" The arms dealer smiled. "Or are you afraid that you will enjoy yourself in here?"

Before Konstantin could answer, the arms dealer was moving flirtatiously back to Darwin, skirt swis.h.i.+ng behind her, hair swinging in an echo of the motion. Konstantin wasn't sure if the sight was hypnotic or just making her seasick again. She marched over to the woman, ignoring Darwin's metallicleer.

"Preserve the kayfabe all you want," she said, "but this gear-head knows I'm a cop. He called me in here in the first place. So if you want to pose for him, do it on your own time. After you're done working for me."

The arms dealer suddenly looked so thoughtful it was almost shocking. "Really." She looked the cyborg up and down, as if memorizing his appearance. "It's so hard to keep track."

"I'm so sympathetic," Konstantin said. "Now, exactly what const.i.tutes a decent interval to wait before we get something done? At the very least, I'd like to know why I'm back here when we had to make a big point of taking a junk to Kowloon. Wait, don't tell me -- carnival ride."

The arms dealer looked even more troubled. "Consider anger management."

"I'm managing to be angry just fine, thanks," said Konstantin before she could stop herself.

Taliaferro, I really hope you're getting this, I think I'm out of control. The weird, non-numbness was spreading up either side of her face; she wondered idly if the narcs had poisoned her for mentioning IAD in their presence.

"Are you sure?" said Darwin mildly. "You look more like you're in the freak mix."

"A cyborg using the word 'freak,'" Konstantin said. "Now I've heard everything. Come on, what happened to the no-loitering rule?"

The arms dealer turned her around and led her to the ladies' room.

The lounge area was as crowded as ever with women and other female creatures jockeying for position in front of the mirrors or each other. The only place that wasn't crowded was the monster puce sofa, which was occupied solely by a hybrid human-tyrannosaur in pink and black striped Capri pants and a pink-sequined tube top. She had her feet up on the coffee table, which was still a naked man on all fours, although Konstantin couldn't have sworn it was the same man. She tried to remember what he had looked like but, disconcertingly, she could only summon up a mental image of Thorpe.

On impulse, Konstantin sat down next to the tyrannosaur woman and put her feet on the man's back. The tyrannosaur didn't react in any way. Either she was truly unaware of Konstantin or she was too loaded to move. Why anyone would spend billable time too loaded to move was beyond Konstantin's understanding.

"Shall we remove a layer so we can get around more comfortably?" said the arms dealer, close to her ear.

Konstantin was about to ask her what she meant by that when the tyrannosaur beside her vanished, as did about half the number of other people. The ones who remained seemed oblivious to what had just happened. But then, they would be, Konstantin thought, because nothing had actually happened, except that the arms dealer had removed their perception of the un-boosted ma.s.ses. Was I supposed to get hysterical, Konstantin wondered, gazing calmly at the arms dealer.

"I knew it would be much easier on your sensibilities if I took you in here for that," the other woman said, sounding pleased with herself. "If you see it happen in a s.p.a.ce as large as a casino, you can get hysterics. On this scale, it's just a relief." She waved a hand through the emptier s.p.a.ce around her.

"They're all still there, of course. On their level. We could go on perceiving them but we'd see them slowing down more and more until the sight became completely ridiculous. And intolerable. When you're boosted, you don't want a lot of snails cluttering up your vision-s.p.a.ce."

Konstantin looked around, her gaze coming to rest on the coffee table, which was still visible.

"He's furniture," the arms dealer said, gathering her skirt around her and sitting primly on his back.

"He stays because we're using him."

Konstantin stared at her unhappily. If the tyrannosaur woman had still been in sight, her feet would have been in the arms dealer's lap. "I don't understand how two things can occupy the same s.p.a.ce at the same time," she said.

"Nothing's occupying s.p.a.ce," the arms dealer said. "It's all digital. There's always room between digits."

"909, 606," said Konstantin. The arms dealer nodded. "That way, too."

A flicker from the mirror caught the edge of Konstantin's peripheral vision, but when she turned to look, she only saw a woman zipping herself into a rubber-suit that molded her torso and limbs into elongated pipestem shapes. Konstantin found she wasn't sure what repelled her more -- the way the woman looked, or the kind of person who would find her appearance arousing. There was no mistaking, from the placement of the zippers, that this was meant to be arousing to someone. Or maybe something.

The woman's head, still normal but too large on that narrow, elongated neck, swiveled around to regard Konstantin with enormous Cleopatra-style eyes. There was no defiance, no embarra.s.sment, no emotion at all as she took a small black clutch purse from the counter and picked her way over to the door, moving on her spindly limbs like a marionette controlled by an inexpert puppeteer.

"People's imaginations," sighed the arms dealer. "It's amazing what they can think of getting up to in here."

"All that and boosted too," said Konstantin. "Are we waiting for someone or something in here or can we go now?"

The door opened and Darwin stuck his head in. He looked at the arms dealer and nodded.

Konstantin started to get up and suddenly found herself receding rapidly from the arms dealer, who shrank to nothing and disappeared. But only from her own point of view, Konstantin thought, feeling stupid. Most likely, it had happened the other way around.

She might have been less annoyed and more startled if she hadn't found herself on yet another carnival ride.

The whole point of a roller-coaster is the thrill. The thrill is the illusion of falling or being hurled to your death. In AR, this has to be accomplished by disorientation.

Had Tonic told her that? Or had she heard that on some popular culture a.n.a.lysis program?

The key to overcoming disorientation is focus. Dancers executing a long series of fast turns counter dizziness by focusing on one point of the area they are moving toward, turning their heads faster than their bodies to keep it in sight as long as possible. In AR, where there is only the illusion of movement, closing the eyes can sometimes do the trick, but not always, due to the high suggestibility of the human mind especially under the influence. Instead, concentrate on one part of the physical body. The hands are good. She could practically hear the voice but she couldn't identify it. Didn't matter; she concentrated on trying to feel her right hand curl into a fist and then open out again.

Abruptly, she felt her hand close around something live. Startled, she opened her eyes to find herself sitting on the puce sofa in the ladies room. The arms dealer was holding her hand between both of her own. "Can you hear me?" she asked Konstantin.

"Yeah. What was that about?"

"If what I read from your vitals is correct, you're hallucinating. I think you've taken just slightly too much boost for your level of tolerance. Which is zero."

"An overdose?"

"No, just a shade too much. You're going to have those moments where you lose contact with your surroundings. Just ride them out."

Are you getting this, Taliaferro?

No answer. There was no sign of her exit prompt or her panic b.u.t.ton, but her eyes still felt funny.

"Where's my software?" she managed after a moment.

"You don't get something for nothing in this joint," said a Moulin Rouge showgirl. There was a pause while Konstantin flew headfirst through a looping tunnel of strobing lights for a few seconds before she found herself at one of the tables in the casino, sitting next to Darwin and across from the Chinese heavy-labor cyborg. "Put up or shut up."

The chips were already there in front of her. She tossed one into the center pile as the MoulinRouge showgirl dealt her in. Konstantin felt less than optimistic. The last time she'd tried gambling for information, it had been a complete failure.

She looked around for the arms dealer but the lights were too bright, or not bright enough, depending on the angle. How the h.e.l.l was she supposed to see her cards? Not that she would necessarily understand them if she could see them. She picked them up anyway. Maybe Taliaferro would come through for her.

A jumble of hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs leaped up at her face and then pulled back again, as if they were on springs. A face card suddenly resolved itself into hard clarity: the Goku of clubs.

Konstantin looked up sharply, squinting in the bad light at the other people around the table. The chinchilla made a twittering noise; it was looking more like a rat already. d.a.m.n, not again, Konstantin thought. "Something wrong with your cards?"

"There's definitely something wrong with mine," said the s.e.x G.o.ddess. "I've got five suits and one of them's tweed. I just can't believe it. I look hideous in tweed." The texture of her white halter-top dress changed briefly, just long enough to demonstrate she was right.

"Don't blame me," said the Moulin Rouge showgirl. "How I get them is how I deal them."

"Someone must have brought some extra cards," said the chinchilla.

Everyone turned to stare at Konstantin. She looked down at her cards again quickly. The Goku of clubs was now the knave of clubs. "Not guilty." Taliaferro, did you see that?

The arms dealer was leaning over her shoulder. She pulled the knave of clubs up slightly out of the fan of cards and then slid it down again. Her satisfied smile looked distorted and alien on her face.

"Nothing extra. You could use it. Fold."

The Chinese cyborg took the chips in the center of the table, sorted through them and found one marked with a K. "You have to tell me something I want to know."

Konstantin frowned. "That's not how it works. The game isn't over, you don't get that till you cash in your chips."

"You're on a different level now," said the chinchilla. "You're playing boosted. We do things differently up here. This is rare air up here."

The cyborg got up and leaned across the table.

Abruptly, Konstantin was being dragged backwards down a long sharp incline under a sky boiling with angry, purplish clouds. She squeezed her eyes shut. There was a roaring in her ears and a vibration that shook her like a rag doll, and then something behind her released or disintegrated so that she was suddenly in freefall.

She hit the chair sitting up and would have fallen except that the arms dealer was there to prop her up. The Moulin Rouge showgirl was dealing a new hand of cards. Resignedly, Konstantin picked them up without bothering to try to sort them.

This time, she had a Goku of hearts, two Gokus of spades, and a Goku of clubs.

She snapped the fan of cards shut, but not quickly enough. The arms dealer grabbed them out of her hand and spread them on the table. The face cards had all changed back to kings and queens but apparently the arms dealer wasn't fooled.

"Little b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" she bellowed. The floor of the casino shuddered and began to crack. The table broke into fragments, scattering the other players. Konstantin got to her feet and staggered back. The arms dealer grabbed her by the front of her riverboat gambler ruffled s.h.i.+rt and shook her. "How did you smuggle him in? I cut everyone off, everyone! No one can see you, no one can hear you! How did you do it?"

"I thought I was hallucinating," Konstantin said honestly.

"Frigging liar!" The arms dealer lifted her by her s.h.i.+rt and threw her. Konstantin felt herself rising and squeezed her eyes shut against the sensation. This was beyond fear or excitement -- it was as though she could feel every millimeter of her own skin horripilating so intensely it must have been levitating the hotsuit away from her in every direction.

She flailed her arms, or tried to, hoping she could hit some part of the chair and make the outer world break in on her that way. All of her prompts had disappeared so completely that she couldn't evenbelieve them into working. Gotta have faith... that or better drugs, she thought grimly. She tried to sense how fast her heart was beating but she couldn't muster up any awareness of it beyond a kind of tightness in her chest. Vitals, she whispered; nothing.

Maybe I died.

She could almost hear Taliaferro laughing at her. Don't be looking to get any time off until after you wrap this case.

Her ascent was slowing; eventually it would come to a stop and she would plummet. The fall wouldn't kill her but she wasn't sure she could survive the antic.i.p.ation.

So you're going to let some fifth-rate petty criminal functioning as a mob placeholder -- a bookmark, for chrissakes, a paperweight -- wipe you out with a little carnival ride action? He can say that he's got a clear field to defraud, extort, dominate, stalk -- whatever the h.e.l.l he feels like doing, because you had to unplug.

No. Of course not. She was tougher than that. It wasn't like she could actually get killed in here.

Unless the boost gave her a heart attack. Was that what Hastings Dervish was trying to do, induce cardiac arrest?

She felt her rise finally come to an inches-painful halt and braced herself for the sensation of falling.

Nothing happened.

She waited, and the wait stretched so slowly she was sure that time itself had stopped. And still nothing happened.

She opened her eyes. The moment she did, she fell. Head first, she accelerated toward a large dark pit with a tiny spark in the middle. It took a long time for the pit to swell in size as she approached.

No wind in her face, but it roared in her ears and began to twist her around like a corkscrew. She felt her eyes roll back in her head, so far back and so hard she wondered if they could pull loose in their sockets.

Concentrate. Even if you're loaded, you still know this is an illusion.

Tell my inner ear, she thought. And then: Who am I talking to?

Taliaferro, is that you?

She got her eyes open just in time to see the surface of the pit inches from her face.

And then nothing.

She came to lying on the floor of her cubicle with Ogada bending over her. He must have removed her headmount for her. Not that he looked as if he were in the mood to do her any other favors.

"You," he said, "you are in such a pit of trouble, I don't see how you'll ever dig your way out. If you ever see daylight again, it'll be a miracle."

She didn't attempt to move or respond. A fresh wave of numbness had spread through her mouth, from the back of her throat all the way to her chin so that she was even having trouble swallowing.

Ogada's going to stand over me counting my sins while I drown in my own spit, and he won't even notice, she thought. Welcome to the real world.

"What you've done is against every regulation, everything this department stands for," he went on while she tried to cough. "You have taken drugs on duty and performed under the influence, and for no reason that anyone can discern other than your own recreation. Rather than investigating technocrimes you appear to have used a possibly false complaint by a very dubious character pa.s.sing herself off as a legitimate fas.h.i.+on designer when what she really is is a scam artist well known to several AR service providers who are still trying to collect overdue fees from her--" he paused and nodded. "Oh, yeah. You didn't know about that, did you? Of course not. All you'd have had to do was run a credit check on her, something you never thought of."

Konstantin finally managed to make a noise and tried to sit up, but Ogada pushed her back down.

"Lie still. You've had some kind of seizure thanks to your drug use. We're waiting for an ambulance. If I'd known that you were just one more AR junkie out to feed her s.e.x and drugs habit at all costs and d.a.m.n the torpedoes, I'd have terminated you before I'd have let you go near a hotsuit."

Konstantin glared up at him, fuming. That was just like him, the son of a b.i.t.c.h, to start working on covering his a.s.s, making like the whole technocrime a.s.signment had been her idea and not something hehad forced her into. And rather than even asking her for her side of events, he was just a.s.suming she was guilty of every crime in the book. He was as bad as IAD. She tried to sit up again and he pushed her down even more roughly than before.

"Don't make me cuff you, detective," he said threateningly. "I don't want to send you out of here on a stretcher in handcuffs but I will if I have to." He thought for a moment. "Maybe I should. Who says you deserve any consideration after the way you've abused your position?"

"Unreal," Konstantin croaked.

Ogada raised an eyebrow at her. "What? What did you just say to me?"

Her numb lips felt gigantic against her face. "Unreal," she managed. "Unreal." Pause. "Feeling."

"I suppose it's too much to ask that you make any sense." He looked to his left, toward the door.

"Where the h.e.l.l is that ambulance?"

Konstantin coughed again. The drug was still very strong in her system. If Ogada didn't let her get up soon, she was going to start vibrating like a wire in a high wind, even have another seizure.

"What?" Ogada was glaring down at her again. "Feeling chatty? All speeded up, ready to talk?"

He gave a short, humorless laugh. "Forget it, I don't need to hear anything you have to say. I can get the whole story from Taliaferro. He's not gonna cover for you. You'd be surprised how fast partners sell each other out in these cases. n.o.body wants to be the one to fall."

The jittery feeling in Konstantin's chest turned to ice. Of all the things that Ogada might do -- arrest her, have her hospitalized, hang her out to dry and twist slowly, slowly in the wind -- the one thing he would not do was call Taliaferro her partner. That argument had been settled in Ogada's mind, and he didn't know about the tap.

Anyone who did, however, would have a.s.sumed, quite naturally, that she and Taliaferro were partners.