Approaching Oblivion Part 16

The thief materialized in the shadow of a conversing waterfall. The air sparked like a dust circuit for a moment, and then he was there; back flat to the wall, a deeper black against the shadow, a stretch fabric suit and hood covering every inch of his body from feet to fingertips. Only his eyes were naked to the night. He stood there, motionless, as the waterfall talked to itself. It had been programmed to deter suicides, and it was reciting rea.s.surances.

"You don't really think you'll find peace in killing yourself, do you?" the waterfall bubbled. "Who knows what lies on the other side? Perhaps it'll be just the same, and you'll be aware of yourself as an ent.i.ty, but you'll be dead, and helpless to save yourself, and you'll spend who-knows-how-long-perhaps an eternity-suffering the same anguish you knew when you were alive. But you'll be trapped in death, and unable to get out. Wouldn't that be awful? Instead, why don't we talk about what's troubling you-"

The thief dematerialized; the waterfall splashed on to itself.

He reappeared on the fiftieth level, in a frozen park. Standing beside a juniper encased in luminescent blue ice, he came into existence, checked the bag of electronic alarm-confounders, satisfied himself it was tied on securely, and started to wink-out again. He paused, half dematerialized, and stared across the park at the diorama of the Neanderthalers driving a herd of ibex off a cliff. The ice block was enormous, holding the cliff, the chasm, thirty of the graceful homed beasts, and half a hundred cavemen. It had been quarried from a site in Krapina, Yugoslavia, by a timelock team that had frozen the moment 110,000 years before. It was an excellent display, art-directed by someone prestigious, perhaps Boltillon under a grant from Therox.

For a moment longer he considered the great scene, thinking how trapped they were, thinking how free he was, not even walls of ice to contain him. Then he vanished.

He came back to existence, brute matter, on the three-quarter-inch ledge outside a dreamcell apartment on the ninetieth level. He was flattened against the force screen that served as wall. It was opaque, and he lay against it like a smear of rainbow oil. He could riot be seen from inside, where the wealthy ones he intended to rob lay quietly, dreaming. But he could be seen by the scanning tower at the top of the Westminster Cathedral complex. Invisible beams blanketed London from the tower, watching.

Registering intrusive action. He smiled and withdrew one of the confounders from the bag. It was a ladybug deranger; he palmed it onto the force screen wall and it tapped into the power source, and he felt the tension ease. Then he diffused himself, and reappeared inside the dreamcell.

The family lay in their pods, the gel rippling ever so slightly at every muscle spasm. The inner walls were a dripping golden l.u.s.trousness, molten metal running endlessly down into bottomless depths where the floor should have been. He had no idea what they were dreaming, but the women were lying moistly locked together in soixanteneuj and the men were wearing reflective metal headache bands over their eyes. The men were humming in soprano tones.

He vanished and appeared in the lock room. The force screens were up, protecting the valuables, and the thief went down on his haunches, the bag of confounders dangling between his thighs. He whistled softly to himself, considering the proper tool, and finally withdrew a starfish pa.s.s by. It scuttled across the floor and touched a screen with its dorsal cirri. The screens sputtered, changing hue, then winked out. The thief dematerialized and reappeared inside the vault.

He ignored the jewelry and the credit cards, and selected three pressure-capped tubes of Antarean soul-radiant. On the black market, worth all the jewels in the lock room.

He disa.s.sembled himself and winked back into existence outside the force screen perimeter, retrieved the starfish, and vanished again, to appear on the ledge. The ladybug went into the bag, and he was gone once more.

When he materialized on the fifty-first level, in the Fuller Geodex, the Catman was waiting, and before the thief could vanish again, the policeman had thrown up a series of barriers that would have required everything in the bag to counteract, plus a few the thief had not considered necessary on this job.

The Catman had a panther, a peregrine falcon and two cheetahs with him. They were inside the barrier ring, and they were ready. The falcon sat on the Catman's forearm, and the cats began padding smoothly toward the thief.

"Don't make me work them," the Catman said.

The thief smiled, though the policeman could not see it. The hood covered the thief's face. Only the eyes were naked. He stared at the Catman in his skin cape and sunburst eagle's helmet. They were old acquaintances.

The cheetahs circled, narrowing in toward him. He teleported himself to the other side of the enclosed s.p.a.ce. The Catman hissed at the falcon and it soared aloft, dove at the thief, and flew through empty s.p.a.ce. The thief stood beside the Catman.

"Earn your pay," the thief said. His voice was m.u.f.fled. It would make a voice-print, but not an accurate one; it would be insufficient in a court of law.

The Catman made no move to touch the thief. There was no point to it. "You can't avoid me much longer."

"Perhaps not." He vanished as the panther slid toward him on its belly, bunching itself to strike.

"But then, perhaps I don't want to," he said.

The Catman hissed again, and the falcon flew to his armored wrist. "Then why not come quietly.

Let's be civilized."

The thief chuckled deep in his throat, but without humor. "That seems to be the problem right there." The cheetahs pa.s.sed through s.p.a.ce he no longer occupied.

"You're simply all too b.l.o.o.d.y marvelous civilized; I crave a little crudeness."

"We've had this conversation before," said the Catman, and there was an odd note of weariness in his voice...for an officer of the law at last in a favorable position with an old adversary. "Please surrender quietly; the cats are nervous tonight; there was a gla.s.scab accident on the thirty-sixth and they wafted a strong blood scent. It's difficult holding them in check."

As he spoke, the pavane of strike and vanish, hold and go, pounce and invisibility continued, around and around the perimeter ring. Overhead, the Fuller Geodex absorbed energy from the satellite power stars DayDusk&DawnCo, Ltd., had thrown into the sky, converted the energy to the city's use, providing from its silver mesh latticework the juice to keep London alive. It was the Geodex dome that held sufficient backup force to keep the perimeter ring strong enough to thwart the thief. He dodged in and out of reach of the cats; the falcon tracked him, waiting.

"It's taking you longer to do it each time," said the Catman.

The thief dematerialized five times rather quickly as the two cheetahs worked an inwardly spiraling pattern, pressing him toward a center where the panther waited patiently. "Worry about yourself,"

he said, breathing hard.

The falcon dove from the Catman's shoulder in a shallow arc, its wingspread slicing a fourth of the ring at head-height. The thief materialized, laying on his back, at the inner edge of the ring behind the Catman.

The panther bunched and sprang, and the thief rolled away, the stretch suit suddenly open down one side as the great cat's claws ripped the air. Then the thief was gone...

...to reappear behind the panther.

The thief held the ladybug deranger in his palm. Even as the panther sensed the presence behind him, the thief slapped the deranger down across the side of the ma.s.sive head. Then the thief blinked out again.

The panther bolted, rose up on its hind legs and, without a sound, exploded.

Gears and cogs and printed circuits and LSI chips splattered against the inside of the perimeter ring...bits of pseudoflesh and infra-red eyeb.a.l.l.s and smears of lubricant sprayed across the invisible bubble.

The empty husk of what had been the panther lay smoking in the center of the arena. The thief appeared beside the Catman. He said nothing.

The Catman looked away. He could not stare at the refuse that had been black swiftness moments before. The thief said, "I'm sorry I had to do that."

There was a piping, sweet note in the air and the cheetahs and the falcon froze. The falcon on the Catman's shoulder, the cheetahs sniffing at the pile of death with its stench of ozone. The tone came again.

The Catman heaved a sigh, as though he had been released from some great oppression. A third time, the tone, followed by a woman's voice: "Shift end, Officer. Your jurisdiction ends now. Thank you for your evening's service. Goodspeed to you, and we'll see you nextshift, tomorrow at eleven-thirty P.M." The tone sounded once more-it was pink-and the perimeter ring dissolved.

The thief stood beside the Catman for a few more moments. "Will you be all right?"

The Catman nodded slowly, still looking away.

The thief watched him for a moment longer, then vanished. He reappeared at the far side of the Geodex, and looked back at the tiny figure of the Catman, standing unmoving. He continued to watch till the police officer walked to the heap of matted and empty blackness, bent and began gathering up the remnants of the panther. The thief watched silently, the weight of the Antarean soul-radiant somehow oppressively heavy in the bag of confounders.

The Catman took a very long time to gather up his dead stalker. The thief could not see it from where he stood, so far away, but he knew the Catman was crying.

The air sparked around him...as though he had not quite decided to teleport himself...and in fact he had not been able to make the decision...and the air twinkled with infinitesimal scintillae...holes made in the fabric of normal s.p.a.ce through which the displaced air was drawn, permitting the thief to teleport...the sparkling points of light actually the deaths of muons as they were sucked through into that not-s.p.a.ce...and still he could not decide.

Then he vanished and reappeared beside the Catman.

"Can I help you?"

The Catman looked away quickly. But the thief saw the tears that had run down the Catman's black cheeks. "No, thank you, I'll be all right. I'm almost finished here." He held a paw.

The thief drew in a deep breath, "Will you be home for dinner tonight?"

The Catman nodded. "Tell your mother I'll be along in a little while."

The thief went away from there, in twenty level leaps, quickly, trying not to see a black hand holding an even blacker paw.

They sit silently at the dinner table. Neil Leipzig cannot look at his father. He sits cross-legged on the thin pneumatic cushion, the low teak table before him; the EstouDade de Boeuf on his plate vanishes and reappears. It is wallaby, smothered in wine sauce and "cellar vegetables" from sub-level sixteen-North.

It continues to appear and disappear.

"Stop playing with your food," Neil Leipzig's mother says, sharply.

"Leave me alone; I'm not hungry," he says.

They sit silently. His father addresses his food, and eats quickly but neatly.

"How was your shiftday?" Neil Leipzig's mother says.

Neither of the men look up. She repeats the question, adding, "Lew." His father looks up, nods abstractedly, does not answer, returns to his plate.

"Why is it impossible to get a civil word out of you in the evening," she says. There is an emerging tone in her voice, a tone of whitewater rapids just beyond the bend. "I ask: why is it impossible for you to speak to your family?"

Keep eating, don't let her do it to you again, Neil Leipzig thinks. He moves the cubes of soybean curd around in the sauce madere until they are all on the right side of the plate. Keep silent, tough up, he thinks.

"Lewis!"

His father looks up. "I think I'll go downstairs and take a nap, after dinner." His eyes seem very strange; there is a film over them; something gelatinous; as though he is looking out from behind a thick, semi-opaque membrane; neither Neil nor his mother can read the father's thoughts from those eyes.

She shakes her head and snorts softly, as though she is infinitely weary of dealing with those who persist in their arrogance and stupidity; there was none of that in what the father had said. Let him alone, can't you? Neil Leipzig thinks.

"We're out of deeps," the mother says.

"I won't need them," the father says.

"You know you can't sleep without a deep, don't try and tell me you can. We're out, someone will have to order more."

Neil Leipzig stands up. "I'll order them; finish your dinner."

He goes into the main room and punches out the order on the board. He codes it to his mother's personal account. Let her pay, he thinks. The confirmation tones sound, and he returns to the table. From the delivery chute comes the sound of the spansules arriving. He stands there staring down at his parents, at the top of his father's head, black and hairless, faintly mottled; at his mother's face, pale and pink, heavily freckled from the treatment machine she persists in using though the phymech advises her it is having a deleterious effect on her skin: she wants a tan for her own reasons but is too fair and redheaded for it to take, and she merely freckles. She has had plasticwork done on her eyes, they slant in a cartoon imitation of the lovely Oriental curve.

He is brown.

"I have to go out for a while."

His father looks up. Their eyes meet.

"No. Nothing like that," he lies. His father looks away.

His mother catches the exchange. "Is there something new between you two?"

Neil turns away. She follows him with her eyes as he starts for the tunnel to his own apartments.

"Neil! What is all this? Your father acts like a burnout, you won't eat, I've had just about enough of this! Why do you two continue to torment me, haven't I had enough heartache from the both of you? Now you come back here, right here, right now, I want us to have this out." He stops.

He turns around. His expression is a disguise.

"Mother, do us both a favor," he says, quite clearly, "kindly shut your mouth and leave me alone."

He goes into the tunnel, is reduced to a beam of light, is fired through the tunnel to his apartments seven miles away across the arcology called London, is retranslated, vanishes.

His mother turns to her husband. Alone now, freed of even the minor restraints imposed on her by the presence of her son, she a.s.sumes a familiar emotional configuration. "Lewis."

He wants to go lie down. He wants that very much.

"I want to know! "

He shakes his head gently. He merely wants to be left alone. There is very little of the Catman now; there is almost too much of Lewis Leipzig. "Please, Karin...it was a miserable shiftday."

She slips her blouse down off one perfect breast. The fine powder-white lines of the plasticwork radiate out from the meaty nipple, sweep down and around and disappear under the lunar curve. He watches, the film over his eyes growing darker, more opaque. "Don't," he says.

She touches a blue-enameled fingernail to the nipple, indenting it slightly. "There'll be bed tonight, Lewis."

He starts to rise.

"There'll be bed, and s.e.x, and other things if you don't tell me, Lewis."

He slumps back into his round-shouldered dining position. He can hear the whine of generators far back in his memory. And the odor of dead years. And oil slicks across stainless steel. And the rough sensuality of burlap.

"He was out tonight. Robbery on the ninetieth level. He got away with three tubes of the Antarean soul-radiant."

She covers her breast, having won her battle with nasty weaponry, rotted memories. "And you couldn't stop him."

"No. I couldn't stop him."

"And what else?"

"I lost the panther."

Her expression is a combination of amazement and disgust. "He destroyed it?" Her husband nods; he cannot look at her. "And it'll be charged against your account." He does not nod; she knows the answer.

"That's it for the promotion, and that's it for the permutations. Oh, G.o.d, you're such a burnout...I can't stand you!"

"I'm going to lie down."

"You just sit there. Now listen to me, d.a.m.n you, Lewis Leipzig. Listen! I will not go another year without being rejuvenated. You'll get that promotion and you'll get it bringing him in. Or I'll make you wish I'd never filed for you." He looks at her sharply. She knows what he's thinking, knows the reply; but he doesn't say it; he never does.

He gets up and walks toward the dropshaft in the main room. Her voice stops him. "You'll make up your mind, Lewis."

He turns on her. The film is gone from his eyes. "It's our son, Karin. Our son!"

"He's a thief," she says. The edge in her voice is a special viciousness. "A thief in a time when theft is unnecessary. We have everything. Almost everything. You know what he does with what he steals.

You know what he's become. That's no son of mine. Yours, if you want that kind of filth around you, but no son of mine. G.o.d knows I have little enough to live for, and I'm not going to allow your spinelessness to take that from me. I want my permutation. You'll do it, Lewis, or so help me G.o.d-"