Dervish Is Digital Part 4

Celestine materialized in the chair on the other side of her desk. Konstantin's amus.e.m.e.nt faded; the officer had opted for a cyborg appearance. Most of it -- the transparent diamond crystal skull, an LED eyeball mismatched with an organic, the translucent skin stretched over chrome structure -- was thestock model from central stores, a kind used mostly by scavengers who liked to collect limbs and organs and then trade among themselves. Celestine's torso was mostly biological, with a fancy torque meter built into the waist; one artificial hand, two combination-flesh-and-artificial legs with partially exposed cording but, to Konstantin's relief, no exposed chrome b.u.t.tocks. The metal-fiber muttonchops had to be Celestine's bit of customization. They didn't look any better to Konstantin in AR than they did outside of it.

"Don't tell me," Konstantin said after a moment. "You've always wanted to experience metal in a personal way."

"Oh, so you've been there, too," Celestine enthused. "What did you think of the templates?"

Konstantin hit another mental speed b.u.mp. "Been where?"

"Personal Metal. Best cyborg outfitter I've ever seen in AR. It's in the Little Tokyo area of post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty. I swear, the Sitty will never die. Just when you think it's finally had its day, it buds out another borough."

"Little Tokyo in post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty," Konstantin said, shaking her head. "Did post-Apocalyptic Tokyo have a fire sale?"

Celestine's metal-thread eyebrows went up. "More like a sponsors.h.i.+p deal, actually. They're thinking about reorganizing all the post-Apocalyptic areas under one umbrella and make them all boroughs of a single post-Apocalyptic section, instead of having them all separate from each other, like now. So they want to see how it goes with each place having a sort of a part of another place contained in it. If you see what I mean."

"Does post-Apocalyptic Tokyo have a Little Noo Yawk Sitty inside it?" Konstantin asked.

"I don't think it's open for general access yet," Celestine said. "Want me to check?"

"No." Konstantin turned on her inbox.

"Well, I'm on the mailing list. I'll know as soon as it's operational."

You expect it to get weird, Konstantin thought, pulling the monitor up out of her desktop and setting it so she could swivel it toward Celestine if she needed to. You even expect it to get really weird, but the weirdest thing is that it gets weird in such a matter-of-fact way. Post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty? Sure, check the ad rate, send out the newsletter. Who's this week's sponsor, who bought ad s.p.a.ce? What's the share, what's the rating? Better open a Little Tokyo so we can cover off anyone who can't cope with the genuine j.a.panese stuff. Have everyone speak English, serve sus.h.i.+, and dress like the Seven Samurai are in town. Whoever they are.

"Any more brainwas.h.i.+ng complaints from lowdown Hong Kong? Or anywhere else?" Konstantin asked, tapping the monitor. It lit up and immediately showed her a screensaver. She got rid of it and tapped for the day's reports.

"Complaints from two different families of older users, unconnected to each other as far as we can tell, having to do with said users changing their wills to cut out their nearest and dearest and leave all their real property to purely digital AR ent.i.ties. I think that makes half a dozen for the month." Celestine chuckled; it sounded like several pieces of metal colliding in her throat which, to Konstantin's surprise, was rather musical. "Good audio, isn't it?" Celestine added pleasantly. "Custom voice box. The two latest disinheriting parties each follow the pattern of the rest of them -- refusing to believe that the ent.i.ty isn't in some way real unto itself."

Konstantin found the cases and paged through them on the monitor. "This is beginning to sound more like a psychiatric problem to me, one of those ma.s.s hysteria things. That's a.s.suming there's really no direct connection between any of the cases."

"DiPietro and I aren't really sure of that," Celestine said. "Right now we're trying to run down a possible dotted line between one of the early complainants and an AR ent.i.ty not involved in any of the complaints but connected to one of the ent.i.ties that is involved, but with a different complainant. Follow?"

Konstantin frowned. "Put a diagram in your report. What else?"

"A stalker with a twist."

"Uh-huh. And the twist is, the stalker isn't human, right?"

"Right -- but," added Celestine, holding up a brushed metal forefinger, "the stalker used to behuman. According to the complainant."

"Definitely twisty," Konstantin said, impressed in spite of herself. "Somebody's cast-off persona revamped for animation?"

"Nope." Celestine's smile was enhanced, though not improved, by the muttonchops. "Try again."

"This isn't a game show, for chrissakes."

Unperturbed, Celestine pointed at the monitor. "Well, if it were, you'd never get this one."

Konstantin tilted the screen and started reading. After rereading the same four paragraphs several times, she turned back to Celestine. "Changeling?"

"Complainant's term, not ours," the officer said serenely. "Sounds a bit more intelligent than 'bodys.n.a.t.c.her,' don't you think? More poetic, anyway. I mean, you'd have to have some education to know what a changeling is. Besides, our complainant states that she doesn't know if the stalker in question was swapped completely, or whether the ent.i.ty had taken over and revamped the existing person. Which would be the person in question. Or the person we question." Celestine shrugged, smiling.

"Question authority."

"Oh? Says who?" Konstantin paged over to the complainant's particulars. "Stalking online is harder to prove than most people think. Especially the people who file the complaints. I'd like to interview this one, see if this--" she squinted at the screen with watery eyes "--Susannah Ell is one of those people who thinks aliens are invading from AR."

"Ell didn't mention aliens, but we have another report on someone who does. It makes exciting reading."

"Any connection to Ell, or anyone else we've heard from?" Konstantin asked, suspicious.

"Don't know yet. DiPietro's hunting up any possible dotted lines. Should know soon, unless someone steals a vehicle in the next few hours."

"OK, OK, you've made your point," Konstantin said. "You can tell auto theft I said you're permanently busy. Now let's go visit Susannah Ell."

Susannah Ell was in her own online workshop where, according to preliminary information, she designed a line of clothing for a small catalog house. The catalog house itself was virtual, although the clothing was both real and virtual. Nothing better than a product that would place itself, Konstantin supposed.

Ell's workshop would seem to have been a placed product as well, executed by someone with a serious retro-fetish. It was a recreation of a loft from sometime in the previous century, cluttered with bolts of cloth, dressmaker dummies, feathers, sequins, beads, shoes, hats, and a.s.sistants. The a.s.sistants seemed to have all been stamped from the same mold -- young males, or possibly neuters with a male bias, small, thin, and eager to be of service to Ms. Ell, who was about two feet taller than they were, though perhaps not quite as heavy.

"What do you think?" Celestine murmured as they paused on the other side of the access threshold in spectator mode. "Seven feet tall, maybe eighty-five pounds?"

Konstantin made a hus.h.i.+ng motion at Celestine, even though she was probably right. Ten of those pounds might have been the rich, thick coils of streaky reddish-blonde hair. Anorexic, domineering, almost certainly a proud member of the Sisters of Rapunzel/Daughters of Medusa -- probably exactly how this particular neighborhood expected its design geniuses to look. She stepped across the threshold from gallery to access, pulling Celestine after her.

One of the a.s.sistants was in front of them immediately, appraising them over the tops of his trifocals which, given the height difference, wasn't easy. Konstantin found herself wanting to bend down to him.

"Do you have an appointment with Madame?" he asked.

"Do we need one?"

"It would be very good if you had one."

Konstantin looked pointedly around the loft-s.p.a.ce. "Is there anyone else waiting to see Madame?"

"No one without an appointment," the a.s.sistant said smoothly. "How about anyone with an appointment?" Konstantin asked, just as smoothly.

"Well..." He looked sheepish as he brushed a hank of black hair back from his forehead. He reminded Konstantin of a leprechaun, albeit a leprechaun in a bright white s.h.i.+rt starched to within an inch of its life and slightly baggy black trousers that pooled a bit around his ankles. Two yellow measuring tapes hung around his neck and the points of his open collar were serving as pincus.h.i.+ons. "Look," he said, leaning forward a bit and lowering his voice confidentially, "we get a lot of spectator traffic. We don't want to give anybody the wrong idea about how valuable Madame's time is. Especially when she's in the middle of designing the new line, you know -- she can't have people just popping in on a whim. It's not like she's pret-a-porter."

"Your accent is flawless," Celestine said.

"Madame made a complaint about a stalker," said Konstantin, while the a.s.sistant was still beaming over Celestine's compliment. "We've been sent to investigate this. We're from the technocrime unit."

The a.s.sistant's expression s.h.i.+fted to wary. "And how does Madame verify this?"

Celestine produced a small card from a slot in the palm of her left hand. "You can call the precinct.

It's a free call. Including the time for the call."

"Ah." The a.s.sistant made a show of scrutinizing the card carefully. "I shall show this to Madame so she can verify that you are whom you say you are. If there is an effect on the billable time, Madame will see you post-haste." He zipped away to push through the crowd of other a.s.sistants around the terribly busy Susannah Ell, who was shaking her head vigorously as she ripped ragged bits of cloth from an hour-gla.s.s-shaped dummy and tossed it away in disgust.

Konstantin saw her reddish head dip toward the a.s.sistant she and Celestine had just been talking to. Moments later, time came to an abrupt stop.

"Ah-ha!" said Susannah Ell, looking around the suddenly silent workshop, over the heads of the now-frozen a.s.sistants. A feather sat in mid-air as if it belonged there, the tiny fronds still graceful, though completely rigid and immobile.

"I take it you're satisfied," Konstantin said.

Ell turned to her and Celestine, startled. She probably hadn't realized that the stoppage of billable time wouldn't freeze her visitors, too.

"I'm just not used to being put on hold like this," she said, brandis.h.i.+ng a pair of scissors that doubled as a telephone. "You cops have such ingenious ways of telling the truth in AR, when all the rest of us can do is keep on telling the same lies. Too bad it can't last all day."

"Since it stops billable time, there's really no such thing as 'all day,'" Konstantin said. "But it's not indefinite, if that's what you were thinking of. But even if it could -- well, try doing anything."

Susannah Ell poked a swatch of cloth she had started to reattach to the dummy's impossible bosom. It might have been made of stone.

"Frozen solid," Celestine confirmed, as if she were supplying the technical definition.

"So." Susannah Ell tried pus.h.i.+ng at the heads of the a.s.sistants surrounding her; they too might have been stone. "How do I get out of this?"

"Climb over them," Celestine told her. "They'll never know the difference."

Ell put each hand on top of an a.s.sistant's head and boosted herself up, swinging her legs high over the frozen group and managing to touch ground without setting foot on anyone. She straightened her black s.h.i.+rt and trousers and stood back to survey the tableau her a.s.sistants made without her. "Aren't they darling. They really are as attentive and devoted as the program promised they'd be." She turned to Celestine and Konstantin. "Supposedly, it's a dog AI running them."

"Did you changeling get into any of them?" Celestine asked her.

"This group? No. The last group, though, I had to have them all purged because they'd gotten infected.

"How?" asked Konstantin.

"I don't know the technical details, I design clothes, not changelings. How does anything get infected with anything else?"

"I mean, was it just one of them, or was it in all of them," Konstantin clarified. "Oh. I'm not sure whether it was in all of them simultaneously, or hopping from one to another very fast." Ell stroked her impossibly long, lush red hair; it coiled around her wrist like a living thing while another section caressed her shoulder. "Sh," the woman told her hair and gave the coil braceleting her wrists a tender nuzzle with her lips. "Not now. Wait." Konstantin was unsure whether she should avert her gaze. "It was unacceptable, this possession, but so thorough. At the molecular level, in the virtual sense."

"I'm not sure what you mean," Konstantin said.

"I mean, it's like he's left a stain or a smell behind that I can't get out of my infrastructure.

Sometimes I can sense he's using it to hide in and watch me from somewhere very close -- in the walls of this building, or the floors. Maybe the color of the walls, or the dirt on the color of the walls. Or the dirt on the windows."

Konstantin glanced at Celestine, who only nodded at the woman. "That would take a lot more processing power than most end users could--"

"We're not talking about most end users, are we?" Ell snapped. Her eyebrows became to very pointed arches. The hair bristled and rearranged itself around her protectively "We're talking about Hastings Dervish, race traitor."

"What did you say?" Konstantin asked. If her own hair had been able to move, it would have been standing on end, hissing.

"I said race traitor, and I meant it," Ell said feverishly. "He's betraying us, his own race."

"What race would that be?" Konstantin asked stiffly.

"The human race. What other race is there?" Ell looked annoyed and bewildered. "Don't tell me you're a couple of those believers in the living pixel. Are you?"

"Church of the Living Pixel," Celestine said to Konstantin. "Of course not," she added to Ell.

"We're strictly law enforcement, here to investigate your complaint. Our personal beliefs don't apply."

Ell's suspicious expression disappeared. "OK. If you were Church of the LP, you couldn't say that."

Celestine nodded rea.s.suringly. "That's right. We're lucky that they're one of those groups that feels a greater need to advertise than to encrypt."

"So to speak," Konstantin murmured.

Ell didn't hear her; she was beaming at Celestine. "Ah. I see you're familiar with W. J. Williams'

First Law of Free Speech -- 'a.s.sholes always advertise.'" Her smile faded. "Unfortunately, stalkers are something worse than a.s.sholes. Now that Dervish is in the infrastructure, he can be anywhere any time he wants. He could be right under my feet right now, or yours. Or watching from the ceiling." She looked up. "If you're up there today, Dervish, I swear--"

"No user, even one with top-line tech, has the capacity or power for that kind of interactive self-encryption," Konstantin said, trying not to sound overly patronizing or put-out. "Anyone can observe you from open gallery s.p.a.ce, and some of the more skilled peepers can open a window where you don't want one."

"I suppose now you're going to tell me how important it is not to let anyone find out my pa.s.sword," Ell said sourly.

Konstantin shrugged apologetically. "Is all of this s.p.a.ce your own?"

"My private domain," Ell nodded. "Every pixel."

"Then any intruders, no matter how well encrypted within this environment, would still be running on their own billable time. Which means that the free police time we're currently running on wouldn't freeze them, which would register immediately. We'd know if there were an intruder--"

"Dervish is not an intruder," Ell said impatiently. "Dervish is digital."

"Is what?" Konstantin blinked.

"Digital, dammit. Digital." She paused, looking from Konstantin to Celestine and back several times, as if she were waiting for them to catch on to something they should have known all along.

"And how did that happen?" Celestine asked calmly.

"The old switch-ola." Celestine's voice was a miracle of neutrality; Konstantin thought that made her sound even more skeptical. "You believe in the old switch-ola, do you?"

"Hey, there are things you believe, and then there are things you know. One of the things I know is Hastings Dervish. I mean, I really know him. He's my ex-partner. Not just business, but ex-friend, ex-lover, ex-husband, ex-spare brain, ex-everything. There's a way you get close enough to someone that you could recognize them by the way the air moves around them? The way the floor feels when you're both standing on it. The way they bend light and reflect it back, in here, out there, anywhere there is a where." She looked from Konstantin to Celestine and back again. "Does any of this sound even a little familiar to either of you?"

"So," Konstantin said, taking a breath, "you're saying that you know when Hastings Dervish is present just from certain clues perceptible to anyone familiar enough with his habits?"

"That's a remarkably antiseptic way to put it." Disapproval was gravelly in Ell's voice. "Look, I know it's supposed to be so clean and tidy in here that you can wade through anything without ever actually getting any on you, yackety-yackety and so forth. But I'm not in here playing at being a tortured artist. All this you see? This is my life. I mean, I design clothes for a living, and I do it in here because it's cheaper than a real room full of real fabrics and real a.s.sistants who you couldn't get with this much dedication in the first place. I have what I want. I'm not frustrated, I'm not looking for the Out door, I'm content without a partner. I'm minding my own business, and my ex is stalking me. Stalking is still illegal, isn't it?"

"I can't argue with any of that," Konstantin said. "But only because I'm stuck back on 'Dervish is digital' and 'the old switch-ola'."

Ell rolled her eyes. "Hastings is not happy. He is not content. He didn't get what he wanted, he is frustrated. He was looking for the Out door but he couldn't find it. So he took the next best thing."

"And that's the old switch-ola," Konstantin guessed.

"That's the old switch-ola. He managed to make contact with an AI looking to swap. Leave it to Hastings to sell his soul to the devil. Metaphorically speaking," she added quickly. "I don't want you to get the idea that I'm some kind of weird Satanist. Anyway, the AI is out there somewhere out on the ground floor, walking around making plans for world conquest and Hastings is in here working on his own version of world conquest."

"Sounds like a full schedule," said Celestine. "When does he get time to stalk you?"

"I don't appreciate your sarcasm," Ell said mildly.