Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (3 page)

There are cameras, of course, but there are also sensors for sound and light, including infra-red for body heat. There are motion sensors that detect changes in air pressure and sensors for the bioelectromagentic field produced by a living being’s nervous system. All the sensors have been coded to filter out staff members, as well as non-humans like chipmunks, insects, and stray cats. The entire array of artificial eyes, ears, and nerves scans an area that extends at least a half a click beyond the boundaries of Cloud City without a centimeter left unsurveilled.

The equipment is orchestrated by, and the sensory data streamed through, a top-grade AI which maps the output to known stalking and kidnapping cases, as well as to hypothetical scenarios dreamed up by experts. On top of that, the AI’s templates are updated daily with reports from police forces around the world, from top security research centers at universities and private think-tanks, and from boots-on-the-ground civilian security companies like mine.

He even has the dogs, for god’s sake, and they aren’t supposed to be available for civilian use. Dogware is a military anti-infiltration system. Its ‘dogs’ look vaguely like real dogs, just very large and abstract ones. They could have been made to look like anything at all, but the researchers who designed the system studied visceral fear responses using a variety of candidate designs and dogs turned out to work the best. They didn’t necessarily provoke the most fear in a particular subject, but dogs are so universally known from direct personal experience—not just from the sims or vicarious accounts—that a dog attack will produce a powerful panic reaction in just about anyone.

They are built with faux fur over a buckytube skeleton and stand about three feet high at the shoulder. Their claws and teeth are razor-sharp and their reflexes are faster than any human’s, except maybe a Tic’s. They are extremely powerful, feel no pain, and it’s virtually impossible to inflict damage on them. Even if they remain materialized, their core construction is impervious to almost anything: fists, kicks, blows from an iron rod, gunshots, being run over by an earth-mover. The thing is, though, that if you try to hit one, it 
won’t 
remain materialized. Instead it will disappear and, before you can draw a breath, it’ll reappear behind you, punch its paw through your back, and pull out your heart. That’s because the dogs are actually nanoswarms—vast armies of molecule-sized robotic devices that can assemble into any material in any form. They can also disassemble and disperse invisibly into the surrounding air in less time than it takes you to blink. In their downtime they float like motes of dust in the air, invisible.

The trouble is that despite the elegance of Max’s system, despite even the dogware, someone got in. Past the cameras, the motion sensors, and all the other high-end equipment, without setting off the alarm or leaving any recorded image. They took a shot at Max, then fled when he slapped one of the house’s ubiquitous alarm plates. Apparently the would-be assassin didn’t have the stomach to confront the L.A.P.D. Having seen the P.D. in action I didn’t wonder why—I think I’d rather fight the dogs.

The bullet hit Max in the shoulder, probably a failed head shot—maybe he moved unexpectedly just as they fired, all the assassin’s high-tech expertise foiled by the twitching and shaking of an addict. He roared in pain, flailing and screaming and bleeding all over the furniture, but he lived. Unfortunately he was, as always, drunk and stoned at the time, and by the time he was revived at the hospital he had no memory of the actual shooting at all. The last thing he remembered was the failure of the dogware. In a rare moment of lucidity and sobriety—enforced by his hospitalization—he told me about it as an extremely attractive private nurse puttered around us.

“Fucking things were at each others’ throats man. I mean 
fuck
. There were hundreds of them out on the lawn, disappearing and appearing all over the place, attacking each other and making these berserk sounds like shrieks. Most fucked up thing I ever saw.”

Carmen has been trying to trace the problem back to the source, but whoever caused the dogs to turn on themselves burned up their code as they went. All she’s found is randomized gibberish. So whoever attacked Max, whoever I’m supposed to protect him from, is good enough to hack the latest military equipment while protecting their identity at the same time. It gives me a cold feeling.

I wasn’t hired to investigate, to actually find out who attacked Max or why, just to improve his security architecture, to make it effective against any more attempts on his life. The thing is that as I look at his state of the art counter-intrusion apparatus and think about the person who simply walked past all of it, pitting the dogs against each other as they went, I don’t believe there’s a system in the world that can protect him. The killer failed once, but just barely, and there’s no reason to think they’ll fail again. The more I think about it, the more it seems that the only way to protect Max is to find that killer—that enchanted ghost who could laugh off the dogs—and take them out. The only way to protect him effectively is to understand and then to eradicate.

“The garden,” Dancey announces, taking me out of my thoughts, then turns quietly to leave me to my business.  I look through a broad green arch at the garden.  I leave the carpeted hallway and gravel crunches under my feet.

Cloud City is a paradise. The swooping lines of the main house shine, crisp and white in the Cali sunshine. There are also at least twelve smaller buildings to house staff and guests, plus two small lakes. There is a small but well-stocked art museum, with exhibits borrowed on a rotating basis from major museums around the world. There’s a stable, a horseracing track, a large forested area. The staff uses motorized carts, like miniature convertibles, to get around.

Despite all of this, it’s forlorn. The vast green spaces are empty except for the staff who tend them. The staff houses are full, but the guest houses are empty. Without guests, and with Max withdrawn into his fantasy world, there’s no one to view the art except the guys who hang the pictures, no one to ride the horses except their grooms, and no one to swim in the lakes at all. Attendants clear the forest floor regularly so you can stroll through it unmolested by underbrush, but no one ever does.

The main house is a spooky place haunted by a living man. It’d be beautiful if it belonged to anyone else. The furniture is tasteful and subdued. The art is original, varied, and imaginative, and isn’t limited to paintings or photographs hanging on the walls. There are sculptures that are enjoyed as much with the fingertips as with the eyes and there are holo installations by some of L.A.’s brightest young stars.  Dancey occasionally identified a piece or an artist as he led me through the house, but I only half listened—my attention was focused on the art itself.  Even the air is filled with a subtle fragrance, carried on an aerosol through the ventilation system. Dancey says it’s different every day, usually floral, but today it’s a citrus combination of lime and tangerine, while tomorrow it might be a blend amber and vanilla.

The carpet is lush and spotlessly white. It has a thick nap, which not only lends a spring to your step, but also apparently helps when Max spills things or throws up, both of which he regularly does. The stained patch can be removed and replaced, the nap of the new piece combed into that of the old, and the appearance of an unbroken expanse of snow-like whiteness is restored with no visible seams.

The front door opens directly into a huge living room, and one progresses downward by stages through several clusters of furniture. In some places the floor is stepped, in others one glides down a smooth, ramp-like structure. Overall it’s like entering an artficial and immaculate sand dune, an impression enhanced by large, potted tropical plants. In the background, almost as subtle as the house’s scent, is a soundtrack of Max’s own music, mostly soft ballads. In this way the young, sane, sexy Max haunts the house too, but unlike the old, frothing, ugly Max, the young one really is dead.

The house has a kitchen, which is rare these days for someone with Max’s money. I’d asked Dancey about it and he’d answered expressionlessly, without betraying his own thoughts.

“Max would rather mistrust a staff of chefs and sous-chefs than a machine.  He can spy on people, yell at them.  You can’t bully a machine.  If someone is going to try to poison him, he wants it to be a human being—he feels he has a better chance of catching them.”

After entering through the front door, one can descend into the dune of the living room, or instead one can pass to the right or the left. In either direction there are hallways discreetly hidden by the curvature of the walls. The passage to the left leads to the sleeping quarters, Max’s music studio, and his unused personal gymnasium. The one to the right—the one along which Dancey had taken me—leads to the kitchen, the security office, and the garden.

It’s not a garden in the usual sense, but a large, indoor, tropical overgrowth, bursting with flowers, ferns, and even medium-sized trees, all contained beneath a high ceiling of glass panels. There are gravel paths and park benches in some areas, while other areas are carpeted and have clusters of more comfortable furniture: sofas and armchairs. It’s a strange combination of outdoors and indoors which Max created at least two decades ago but never visits anymore and it’s here that I’ll interview Porsche.

Porsche Prince is Max’s granddaughter. Max picked the name—Porsche’s mother Selena, his only child, was in rehab at the time. Max was never the kind of actor to dabble in the classics. He’s probably never heard of Shakespeare and, if he has, he hasn’t read him or acted in any of his plays, so she’s not “Portia.” She’s named after the car.

On the surface Porsche seems to be my prime suspect for all the obvious reasons. Max’s fortune is vast to the point of immeasurability. Selena was his only child, and she drowned long ago in her own bathtub, maxed out on vodka and overproof barbiturates while riding the visions of Sunday Best, a hallucinogen known for producing beatific visions. Suicide, not suicide? Who knows? Selena had been an unpredictable wreck from childhood, so it could have been either. Since she’s dead and her ex-husband was cut out of the action with a prenuptial agreement, that leaves Porsche as Max’s sole heir. He could write her out of his will, maybe donate his fortune to charity, but he’s too self-regarding for that. He clings to the notion that something of him lives on in her and therefore his empire must devolve to her. It’s a pathetic miscalculation borne of egotism. There is nothing of Max in Porsche, neither his early artistry nor his later foolish bumbling.

Nor does Porsche resemble her aimless, self-destructive mother—not at all. She’s focused, ludicrously ambitious, self-controlled, and controlling of others. She uses her father’s name as a key to open doors to innumerable deals—sim roles, recording contracts, product endorsements—which inevitably fall apart before they’ve begun or stutter to an abortive end partway through because her talent at anything artistic is inversely proportional to her greed. All she has going for her, apart from naked avarice, is her looks.

She was born beautiful, but that isn’t enough for her. She’s had herself enhanced to the point that it’s hard to believe she’s a real person and not an erotic cartoon character. She is stacked and wasp-waisted, with shimmering blonde hair, icy blue eyes, and perfect skin. At twenty-four—not exactly ancient to begin with—she has the body of a sixteen year old cheerleader crossed with a porn queen. The only flaw in her appearance is her face: it should be beautiful, but it betrays her soul a little too openly. Her lips are thin, and usually wear an expression that is either haughty or overtly cruel. Her eyes are narrow and piercing. She looks like what she is, a spoiled little rich girl for whom nothing is ever enough.

Her face makes things difficult for me. I’ve met some beautiful women in my work, and been tempted by a few, but for whatever perverse reason it’s precisely this kind—the manipulative, selfish, shallow kind—that attracts me the most. I’ve never thought long enough about this to work out why it should be so. Maybe I’m a masochist. Or maybe the sheer transparency of women like that, the openness of their self-promotion, makes them seem more naked than other women can ever be. Or maybe I’m just fucked up. I could see a shrink, but introspection is not my forte. I sometimes indulge in self-analysis for a moment here and there, particularly after being fucked over by someone like Porsche who’s traded me in for a richer or better looking guy, but I can never stick with it. Maybe the real secret is that I’m just as shallow as they are.

In any event, that face is a problem, because she’s a suspect and I can’t afford to allow my perceptions to be clouded by my hormones. To make matters worse, her appearance isn’t the only thing she’s had augmented. Porsche Prince is dedicated to living the life her body is suited to. Her nerves have been finely tuned to enhance her responsiveness during sex, turning ordinary parts of her body into erogenous zones, and her erogenous zones into roiling seas of erotic sensitivity. I know this because everyone knows it. She makes no bones about her inclinations or the delicate surgical enhancements she’s undergone to allow her to indulge them with as much abandon as possible.

I’m examining some flowers I can’t identify when Porsche enters through the garden arch.  She’s wearing jeans and a cut-off T-shirt that displays her tight midriff and rides high on the tide of her breasts, their undersides just visible. She throws herself full-length onto a sofa and lies on her side, one arm bent so that her hand supports her head. I sit in an armchair.

“So are you going to arrest me?” she chides. Her expression is somewhere between an amused smile and a sneer. “I’m not a cop,” I remind her.

“Oh, right, I forgot. You’re hired muscle.”

“Actually, it’s my brain Max is paying for.”

“Hmm.”

She says this in a non-committal way that could mean anything. It’s hard to know what to say in response to such an ambiguous sound.