Engineman (64 page)

All I wanted was for Dan to refuse to work for the woman, so that he would be free from the danger of whatever it was she wanted him to do. Then, when he returned, I could tell him that I was leaving, and that this time there was nothing he could say to make me return.

"Tell me about when you worked for the Canterbury Line," the woman said. "Is it true that in flux you experience Nirvana?"

"Some Enginemen claim that."

"Did you?"

"Do we have to talk about this?" he said, and I knew that his hands would be trembling.

In my mind's eye I could see the woman giving an unconcerned shrug. "Very well, but I hope you don't mind discussing your occipital implant-"

Dan, "Why?" suspicious.

"Because I'm interested." Her tone was hard. "What kind is it, Leferve?"

"Standard Sony neo-cortical implant-"

"With a dozen chips in the pre-frontal lobe, sub-cortex, cerebellum, etc...?"

"You've done your homework," Dan said. "Why the interest?"

"When was the last time you fluxed?"

I cried out.

It took Dan aback, too. The silence stretched. Then: "Almost two years ago..."

"Would you consider doing it just one more time," she asked, "for twenty-five thousand dollars?"

I balled my fists and willed him to say no...

"I have a smallship I need taking on a short haul," she said.

There was a brief moment of silence, then Dan spoke.

"Insystem or interstellar?"

And I yelled, "Dan..."

"Neither," the woman said. "I want you to push the ship through the
nada
-continuum from here to Frankfurt."

Dan laughed. "You're mad..."

"I'm quite sane, I assure you. From A to B and back again. You'll be in the flux-tank for less than one hour."

"And the ship?"

"An ex-Indian Navy Hindustan-Tata with Rolls-Royce ion drive-"

"Crew?"

"None. Just you and me. The ship is pre-programmed with the co-ordinates. All it needs is someone to push it."

"And I'd be wasting my time asking what all this is about?"

The woman assented. "You'd be wasting your time. Can I take it that you want the job?"

Dan murmured something.

"Good," she said. "Here's my card. If you arrive at five, we'll phase out at six."

They left the restaurant and took the downchute to the landing stage. I sat in the darkness and stared at the wall, wishing that Dan had had the strength of will to turn his back on the flux. He craved union with the
nada
-continuum, but this gig would be just a quick fix after which his craving would be all the more intense.

I switched off the tape, then switched it on again. I couldn't face Dan and tell him that I was leaving - that way I'd end up screaming and shouting how much I hated him, which wasn't true. I'd leave a message to the effect that I needed a long break, and quit before he got back. I picked up the microphone.

Then the Batan chimed and Claude's big face filled the screen. "Phuong, I got the information on that flier."

"Yeah?" My thoughts were elsewhere.

"Belongs to a guy called Lassolini - Sam Lassolini."

I just shrugged.

Claude went on, "He's a surgeon, a big noise in European bio-engineering."

I remembered the documentary, and Etteridge's last marriage. "Hey, wasn't he married to-"

Claude nodded. "That's the guy. He hit the headlines a few years ago when the film star Stephanie Etteridge left him."

"You got his address, Claude?"

"Sure. De Gaul building, Montparnasse."

"Pick me up in five minutes."

I thought about it.

Now why would Sam Lassolini follow the Stephanie Etteridge look-alike to her mansion in Passy...?

There was only one way to find out.

The de Gaul building was the old city morgue, deserted and derelict but for the converted top floor, now a penthouse suite. Claude dropped me on the landing stage and I told him to wait. I took the downchute one floor and hiked along a corridor. I came to a pair of double doors and hit the chime. I felt suddenly conspicuous. I hadn't washed for two days, and I'd hardly had time to learn my lines.

A small Japanese butler opened the door.

"Lassolini residence?" I asked.

"The doctor sees no-one without an appointment."

"Then I'll make an appointment - for
now
."

I tried to push past him. When he barred my way I showed him my pistol and said that if he didn't sit down and keep quiet I'd blow a hole in his head. He sat down quickly, hands in the air.

I tiptoed down a passage and came to a vast ballroom with a chequerboard floor of marble and onyx tiles, and a dozen scintilating chandeliers. There was no sign of Lassolini; I would have called out, but the weight of the silence intimidated me.

I opened the first door on the right.

It took me about fifteen seconds to recognise the woman who this morning had visited the office, who I had followed to the mansion, and who, less than thirty minutes ago, had been dining with Dan.

She was hanging by the neck and her torso had been opened with something sharp from sternum to stomach; the contents of her abdomen had spilled, and the weight of her entrails anchored her to the floor.

I heard a sound behind me and turned. A tall, Latin guy looked down on me. He wore a white suit and too much gold. I did mental arithmetic and decided that he looked good for sixty.

"Sam Lassolini?" I asked.

He didn't deny it. "Who are you, and what do you want?"

I drew my pistol and aimed at his chest. Next to it I hung my identification. "Phuong Li Xian," I said. "I have the power of arrest." I indicated the woman. "Why did you do it, Lassolini?"

He looked past me at the the body and smiled. "If I may answer a question with a question: why your interest?"

I hesitated. "I'm working on her case."

He threw his head back and laughed.

My fist tightened on the pistol. "I don't see what's so funny."

He indicated another door along the hall. "Follow me."

He opened the door and entered the room. He turned to face me, his laughter mocking my shock.

Behind him, spread across the floor and the far wall, were the remains of what once might have been a human being. It was as if the wall and the floor had suddenly snapped shut to create a grotesque Rorschach blot of flesh and blood. The only part of the body that had survived the mutilation was the head. It sat beside Lassolini's right foot, staring at me.

It was the head of the same woman...

Lassolini left the room and strode to the next door. He paused on the threshold. "My dear..." I stumbled after him, amenable with shock.

Another atrocity. This time the woman had been lasered into bloody chunks and arranged on plinths around the room after the fashion of Dali.

"You're mad!" I cried.

"That did occur to me, my dear. Though what you see here is not the cause or symptom of it, but an attempt to cure myself. A catharsis, if you like."

"But... but which one is Stephanie Etteridge?"

"None of them is Stephanie," he said. "She is alive and well and living in Paris. And yet... all of them
were
Stephanie."

I took control of my shock, levelled the pistol and said with determination: "Look, Lassolini, I want answers. And if I don't get them..."

He bowed. "Very well, my dear. This way - and I assure you, no more horrors."

He strode down a long corridor. I had to run to keep up. We came to a pair of swing doors with circular portholes, and Lassolini pushed through. Another surprise: after the luxury of the ballroom, the stark and antiseptic utility of what looked like a hospital ward. Then I remembered that this place was once the city morgue.

We stopped at a line of horizontal silver tanks, and with an outstretched hand Lassolini invited me to inspect their contents.

I peered through the first frosted faceplate and made out the young, beautiful face of Stephanie Etteridge. In a daze I moved on to the next one, and the next: Etteridge, again, and again. Each tank contained a flawless replica of the actress.

I stared at him, and he smiled.

"Clones..." I murmured, and I experienced a curious vacuum within my chest.

"Perspicacious of you, my dear."

"But I thought the science was still in its experimental stages. I thought the Kilimanjiro Corporation had the rights..."

Lassolini laughed. "The science
is
still in its experimental stages," he said. "And I
am
the Kilimanjiro Corporation."

I gestured in the direction of the ritually slaughtered Etteridge clones. "But you still murdered human beings," I said. "Even clones are-"

Lassolini was shaking his head. "By no stretch of the imagination can they be considered human - as of yet. They are grown from DNA samples taken from the original Stephanie Etteridge, and their minds remain blank until the encoded identity of the subject is downloaded into them."

"So those...?"

"Merely so much dead meat. But it pleased me to sacrifice Stephanie, if only in effigy. These bodies were the ones I kept in supply for the time when she aged and required her youth again."

I looked into his youthful face. "So both you,
and
the Stephanie Etteridge I met, are clones?" I was beginning to understand.

He regarded me, as if calculating how much to divulge.

"We were married for five happy years," he said. "When her career came to an end, and she began to show signs of age, I promised her a new lease of life. Virtual immortality. Perhaps only this kept her with me, until my scientists perfected the technique of cloning, and the more difficult procedure of recording and downloading individual identity from one brain to another.

"She was nearly seventy when we downloaded her into the body of her twenty year old clone. Then... and then she left me, and nothing I could do or say would make her return. I had such plans! We could have toured the Expansion together in eternal youth." He seemed to deflate at the recollection of her betrayal.

"I considered hiring an assassin to kill the man she left me for, but as events transpired that proved unnecessary. She divorced me, and a matter of days before she was due to marry her lover he was arrested by the German police and charged with conspiring to sabotage a European military satellite. He was jailed for life."

He paused there and licked his lips. When he spoke next it was in barely a whisper. "You mentioned that you were on her 'case'?"

"That's right."

"Then... you're in contact with her?"

I was guarded. "I might be."

"
Then bring her to me!"
And I was shocked by the intensity of his emotion.

I glanced at the Etteridge clones, then back at the surgeon who had performed this miracle.

"I have a price," I said.

"Name it!"

With trembling fingers I fumbled with the buttons of my
cheongsam
and revealed my body.

Claude was snoozing in his flier when I jumped aboard and yelled at him to take off. I checked my watch. It was five-forty, and Etteridge and Dan were due to phase-out at six. We burned across Paris towards Passy.

Ten minutes later we sailed in over the Seine. Claude slowed and we cut across the corner of the Etteridge estate. I opened the hatch and prepared to jump. "See you later, Claude."

His reply was lost as I dived.

This time I missed the marshmallow and fell through a bush with leaves like sabres. I picked myself up, bleeding from a dozen cuts, and limped through the jungle. It was three minutes to six when I emerged from the trees, and the smallship was still berthed inside the marquee. I ducked back into the vegetation and ran along the side of the tent. Once behind it I left the cover and dodged guy ropes.

I lifted the tarpaulin wall of the tent, squirmed through the gap and ran over to the dorsal escape chute. I palmed the sensor and waited for the hatch to cycle - ten seconds, though it seemed like as many minutes. I checked my watch: one minute to go. Then the hatch slid open and I jumped inside and curled in the darkness. Above me, the computerised locking system of the interior hatch rumbled away to itself and finally opened. I pulled myself into the carpeted, semi-lighted corridor. And I'd realised a childhood ambition: I was inside a smallship.

I could see along the corridor and into the bridge. Etteridge sat in a swivel-seat between the arms of a V-shaped instrument console, speaking to a soft-voiced computer. Beside her was the sen-dep tank, the hatch dogged and the alpha-numerics pulsing a countdown sequence. Dan was already in there.

I drew my pistol and started towards the bridge. If I could untank Dan before he fluxed-