Into the New Millennium: Trailblazing Tales From Analog Science Fiction and Fact, 2000 - 2010 (33 page)

That was strange. My company had dozens of throwaway lines for outgoing calls. Even now, I'd automatically used one. Letting people learn your real phone number is like sex—bad things can happen if you do it too promiscuously. In business, throwaway lines are the simplest defense: nobody answers them if they ring back, and when they do start getting clogged with incoming calls, replacing them is no big loss. I knew the city was in a fiscal crisis, but how could it survive at all without enough phone lines?

Still, there was no choice but to wait. I gave Sergeant McLusky a backup code that that would ring my office, but not my voice mail. If Tina was slow to call back, I could always switch the temp line into a short-term voice drop, but for the moment I wasn't going anywhere. Then, having not done any work all day, I decided it was time to get started.

Any writer knows that the hard part is composing the first draft. If you're prone to writer's block, that's when it happens. If you're not, you may still produce nothing but drek. The reports I write aren't high art, but they have to be both accurate and comprehensible, and to make that happen, first drafts take concentration, skill, and a certain degree of inspiration.

Revisions are a different matter. Even with Jill, Tiny Berries, and the pending callback from Officer Tina rattling around my brain in a weird stew, I could still edit, and the perfect project was waiting in my in-basket: a hydrology report I'd been asked to look at regarding a research complex we were building in Minnesota. It was way outside of my usual bailiwick—what I knew about hydrology wouldn't fill a thimble—but our St. Paul division was short on technical writers and the home office had figured that if I was good at converting project engineer-speak into English, I could do the same for hydrology. That's the downside of being underpaid—you can't claim your time is too valuable for tasks like this. The whole mammoth document—300 pages, counting appendices—was destined to be boiled down to a few paragraphs in an environmental impact statement which was so noncontroversial that nobody would ever read
it
, either. It wasn't as though we were building a chemical plant that might pollute an aquifer—to the contrary, the new facility was to be an environmental showcase, whose grounds would include hundreds of acres of artificial wetlands, a prairie-restoration project, a carefully husbanded riparian zone, and miles of hiking and bicycling trails that would be deeded to the county as a park. It was a great project—and probably good PR—but the home office was acting under the illusion that the press might actually
read
our technical reports.

What I had now were the hydrologists' comments on my rewrite, which should be easy enough to deal with even today.

I downloaded the document from my in-basket and took a sip of coffee as the word-processor booted up. In my current mental state, I needed a tranquilizer more than I needed caffeine, but like most people I gravitate toward beverages that exacerbate my mood swings. If you're feeling depressed, you hit the booze. If you're already excited, you drink coffee. I sometimes think the flight reflex, however good it may have been for protecting our ancestors from saber-tooth tigers, is one of our greatest enemies. Too often, when we think we're running away from whatever it is we don't want to be, we make ourselves into even more of it until, like my father, we disappear completely. Just as I was now trying to bury myself in work to avoid thinking about Jill.
Was I really in love with her? Did I even want to know the answer?
Defiantly, I took another sip of coffee. I did not have to deal with this now.

Ironically, it was a spammer who pulled me back to the present. Someone had invaded my report. Instead of the expected title page, it now opened with a stylized drawing of a computer monitor. "Click here to find out how to learn anything about anybody," read a line of text beneath the monitor.

The next page was more of the same. "Find out what your lover's been hiding! Check the financial history of business associates! Fight back against your enemies! WebPARSER software can sift the smallest details from the Internet. Faster, better, and more THOROUGH than ever . . ."

Thankfully, the report began on the next page. Frustrated that our Internet server hadn't blocked the hitchhiking ad, I deleted it, being careful not to accidentally activate the Web link. The hydrologists shouldn't have sent this to me over the Web, anyway. Even when there are no trade secrets worth stealing, it's better to make sure there can be no unauthorized copies of the draft out there to embarrass you when the final version goes public. Not that I'd ever heard of that happening. But now, it felt as though the entire façade of Web-based society was crumbling around me.

I was thoroughly tired of hydrology by the time Officer Tina rang back. From the street sounds in the background, it sounded like she really was calling from a pay phone. Curiouser and curiouser. I remembered her lack of uniform and wondered if this whole thing had caught her on her day off.

"Did they page you at home?" I asked impulsively. I too would use a pay phone to return a call from a virtual stranger. Throwaway lines aren't so cheap the average person has one at home. "If so, I apologize. It could have waited."

"Not exactly home," she said cautiously. "I'm trying to put a face to your name, but I don't have my notes."

"I was the last one," I said. "In the superBeamer."

"Oh, sure. How could I forget? The patient one." Her voice was still cautious, but now carried a trace of the smile I remembered. My pulse quickened, but her next remark was pure business. "I'm afraid the lab found nothing on the sign. That makes it hard to catch the guys in the van until they get greedy and try it again—which they probably will. As for the hacker, all I can tell you is that these things take time, but it's only through folks like you that we can catch them when they slip up."

"That's not what I was calling about," I said to spare her from having to give me another PR line. I told her about Bobby's request. "He'd like to nip this thing in the bud, and could use whatever technical information you can share."

"You know Bobby Montgomery?" I belatedly realized that in her field, Bobby was something of a legend and that I could probably move up in her eyes by telling her how well I knew him. I was startled by how much I wanted her approval. If I was subconsciously in love with Jill, why the hell did I care about impressing Tina?

But some things are sacrosanct, and I wasn't about to use Bobby to score points with a woman. "Yeah," I said, "but that doesn't mean I know all that much about computers."

Surprisingly, she laughed. Then she shifted the subject. "I should probably tell you that you created quite a stir in the precinct by asking for ‘Officer Nakamura,'" she said. "In the police subculture, ‘officer' means something quite specific and it's not me. I'm just a sometimes-consultant who gets called in for a few of the more difficult computer cases. In real life, I'm an ABD in cultural anthropology."

"ABD?"

She had a very pleasant laugh. "Sorry, that's Ph.D. shorthand for ‘All but Dissertation.' It covers a rather wide range. If I don't finish soon, they'll kick me out. You didn't catch me at home; I spend a lot of time at the university."

"Sorry," I said, "I saw the badge and jumped to a conclusion."

I couldn't see her, but I had a hunch she was rolling her eyes. "It's not a badge—it's an ID card. Even the janitors have them." The exasperation left her voice. "Actually, it was kind of cute. Sergeant McLusky darn near transferred you to Officer Louise Nakagawa in Vice. Now
that
would have been entertaining if you'd started with the same line about Viagra you gave to McLusky. Louise has
no
sense of humor."

ABD Tina must have reached Bobby in record time, because he was back to me fifteen minutes later. He must also have learned about the promotion I'd accidentally given her, because he thought it was as funny as she thought it was cute.

"You've got to come out of that hole of yours more often and see how the rest of the world lives," he teased, and I was startled by how much the friendly jibe stung. As he spoke, vague images of running, hiding, and saber-tooth tigers flitted at the edges of my mind like shadows around a primeval campfire. Between Bobby, Tina, and Jill, I was feeling a growing pressure. When the moment of truth came, would the result be an explosion, or an implosion?

Bobby was still talking. "For starters, the four of us—you, me, Jill, and plain-simple-‘Tina'—are going to get together tonight at Museum by Night. There's a jazz combo playing that Jill and I wanted to catch anyway, and Tina's checking with the precinct to see what data she can share, given that it's an ongoing investigation. At a minimum, she ought to be able to give me the download from your car, because I could always just download it from you again, from scratch. It's also unlikely that they'll stop her from sharing her general observations—even if some privacy thing kicks in to protect the other downloads. That's enough to give us a good start. If her bosses get obstreperous, I'll just hire her out from under them at double her current salary and make her part of the project, with or without the data. There's no law to stop her from going private-sector whenever she wants."

I suggested to Bobby that a concert might not be the ideal place for a business meeting, but he wasn't buying it. An evening meeting would give him all day to finish his current project, he said, and it would be fun to get acquainted with Tina in an informal setting. "‘Officer' Nakamura," he added. "Man, you gotta get
out
."

Museum by Night had begun as a quiet fundraiser for the art museum, where artists performed in an atrium, flanked by modern sculpture and impressionist paintings. It's grown into one of the city's larger singles-mingles, although couples like Bobby and Jill also attend. The couples are the ones who find seats at the cabaret-style tables and actually dance or listen to the music. For everyone else, it's a once-a-week opportunity to swill pricey wine and try out sophisticated pick-up lines in an upscale cacophony in which you have to press close together merely to exchange a few words. I attend once or twice a year, mostly as an exercise in culture watching. Better than any men's magazine, it's my clue to the latest trends in urban clonewear, and I'm always amazed by how the fashion elite can shift attire in unison, moved by some signal I never manage to hear.

Last year, black turtlenecks had been the rage. This year, button-down collars had come back when I wasn't looking. But the real name of the game was "monochrome" in any dark hue. Some of the young men looked like classic Goth in navy blue. Truly weird, but if you're bold enough and young enough, you can make just about anything work.

Tina arrived shortly after I did, and I spotted her the moment she stepped into the atrium. Unlike me, she'd heard the fashion-change signal and was suitably attired in head-to-toe dark leather. Me, I'd gotten it halfway right with my trusty, black calfskin jacket. But the soft, comfortable material was starting to show highlights at wear points on the arms and torso—
trés
chic if the fashion dice had landed on neo-Bohemian, a bit shabby by the standards of what I saw around me. Damn, I loved that jacket and didn't want to replace it.

One thing that never changed was that the women were all jacked up on three-inch heels, trolling for six-foot guys. Since I'm not a six-footer, that leaves most of them gazing across the top of my head as though I don't exist—an effective, if subtle, putdown.

Tina had bucked this trend and was wearing low-heeled black loafers. When we said hello, her eyes were right where a woman's should be.
Probably about where Jill's are
, a warning bubbled up from my subconscious, but Tina was frightening enough by herself, without unnecessary thoughts of Jill.

There is a sociological theory that says we're most strongly attracted to people we see as slightly more attractive than ourselves. It's as though we're instinctively trying to move up an invisible fraternity/sorority pecking order, but only in realistic increments. By those standards, Tina was out of my league. This morning, she'd been of the girl-next-door mold, wriggling in the grit beneath my superBeamer's dashboard. Now she was this black-leather fashion goddess. Why on earth had I let Bobby talk me into this?

Timeliness has never been Bobby's forte. He'd suggested meeting forty-five minutes before the music started, but I knew he'd be lucky to catch the first set. That left me to make getting-to-know-you conversation above a crowd babble so intense that the simple act of asking Tina if she wanted a drink forced me to lean close enough to catch a hint of one of those mind-muddling perfumes designed to convert ordinary males into stammering schoolboys. If I'd been lucky, the drink queue might then have kept me occupied for several minutes, but I caught a lull and had secured two glasses of wine within as many minutes. Meanwhile, Tina had staked out a table for four not far from the dance floor.

I never know what to say under these circumstances, so after fending off a few questions about myself and how I knew Bobby, I shifted to the safest terrain I knew: asking questions of my own. "How did you wind up as a police consultant?" I began.

A sideways glance from Tina let me know she'd spotted the evasion—surprising, because most people don't notice. Instead, they tell me I'm a great listener, which I am, because that's the best way to avoid having to say much of anything about myself. I had a suspicion that if she'd chosen to become a real cop, Tina might be a lot better in the interrogation room than I'd given her credit for this morning.

For the moment, she answered directly. "Before graduate school, I worked for a big computer company, so when I was looking for a dissertation topic, I landed pretty quickly on the idea of studying Internet subcultures. I won't bore you with details except to say that in anthropology, that's a really hot field because it's so new. And it's fun because it has many of the features of older cultures, all mixed into a wonderful, anarchic mess."