The Genehunter

1. The Wrong Tom Jacks-2

A warrant for a full brain-dump on a suspect was still hard to get, even on a genehunter. They both knew that. Simms had to hope it was too much trouble for Ballard to bother.

“Obviously not. That would also be illegal, Agent Ballard. I'm shocked at the suggestion.”

“Or, I suppose I could visit the clinic myself,” Ballard said. “Ask a few questions, see what really occurred?”

There was the weakness. The attendant should have expunged logs as instructed. He probably wouldn't stick to his story with Ballard bellowing away at him. Yet this was such a small-time job going to all that trouble made no sense. Ballard was having fun with him. Or… yes. He saw, then, what this really was. Some things didn't change.

“You could do all that, yes,” said Simms. “And if I have accidentally transgressed some minor regulation, I suppose I'd have to pay some fine?”

“Approaching an official of a registered clinic without the estate's consent is a transgression, Simms.”

“OK, Ballard. Just tell me how much you want.”

“Forty K should cover it.”

Simms considered for a moment. But there wasn't a damn thing he could do. If he refused he'd find his licence revoked one sunny day and that would be that. None of this fine would go near the authorities, sure, but he had no choice.

“Here's your money, Ballard. Now activate this node.”

“My pleasure, Simms. And you be careful out there. There are all sorts of people trying to rip you off.”

“Yeah. I heard that.”

“Oh, and one more thing before you go. Who is Boneyard?”

Motherfucker. So this whole thing with the money was just a little extra for Ballard? He really, really hated the GMAn.

“Never heard of him. Friend of yours? Sounds unpleasant enough.”

“A person I'd like to meet. I figure someone living in the gutter like you might have heard a whisper or two.”

“And if I had?”

“Then you'd tell me. And we stay friends.”

“Well, I'm sorry to be a disappointment.”

“Oh, I'm used to it. But keep your ears open, OK, Simms? Bring me something useful and I'll think even more highly of you than I already do.”

“Good bye, Ballard,” said Simms. “And, just a suggestion, maybe spend that money you stole from me on cosmetic surgery? They can work miracles these days, you know.”

Simms stepped out of a node in the twelve-by-twelve array at Euston and pushed his way through the crowds out onto the streets. The stacktower where he lived was a twenty minute walk away. As he strode along, he sent a ping out to the agent who'd employed him on the Jacks job. He didn't know who his real employer was, of course. He knew the agent only as Mann. Which was not going to be his real name.

Mann replied immediately. Simms had the uncomfortable feeling Mann had known he'd be calling. Was Ballard mixed up in this somehow? Was Mann one of them, a GMAn? Was his name what passed for humour in the GMA? Christ. How was a guy to make an illegal living with these mosquitoes buzzing around, sucking his blood?

“Mr. Simms. You have the DNA sequence my client requested?”

The voice on the other end was calm, thoughtful. More the voice of a lawyer, someone used to weighing words carefully.

“I have it here,” said Simms. “Plus documentation to prove provenance. Send payment and you can have the code right now.”

“My client will have to test the DNA first, Mr. Simms. He or she does not intend to pay for some random sequence of numbers or the genetic sequence of, let us say, a dead baboon.”

“You employed me because you could trust me.”

“Still, I am under instruction. This is what we agreed.”

“And if I send you the code and never hear from you again?”

“Then you would have cause to be angry and could lodge a complaint with the authorities.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Simms sent the sequence off through the ether. They'd agreed encryption keys up front so there was no danger it could be intercepted as it traversed the net.

“Many thanks, Mrs. Simms. I shall be in touch at the earliest opportunity.”

“Make sure you are. Mann.”

Simms closed the link and turned his attention to the London street. The usual s**t, piles of rubble, dead… things. The rain hammered down, a blur of spray on the hard ground. Why was it always raining? Surely it could be sunny occasionally? At least the rain helped wash the stench of decay and burning plastic away. He was old enough to remember how it had once been, when the streets were more-or-less safe and everything more-or-less worked. Now look at it. People used to say everything was going to hell. They didn't say it any more did they? They knew it had damn well gone.

He shook his head. Nothing he could do. He felt like this because he'd finished a job. Normally, some investigation would be bouncing around in his brain and he wouldn't notice his surroundings, the scowling people, the filth. Now he did. He hated the emptiness that inactivity brought.

Still, he had money to burn. Despite Ballard's cut, he'd be solvent once Mann's money came through. He could afford some downtime. He'd earned it. He called up an overlay from the relevant plug-in to shut London out. Immediately, an augmented version of the city replaced the ruined original. Trees lined spotless streets. The air smelt of roses. Contented people strolled by, hand-in-hand. Children played. They were dangerous, these false realities. People got lost in them. But he could control it. Right now it was fine.

Back home, he decided, what the hell, to ping Kelly. They hadn't spoken for, what, two months? She'd said she was going to get back to him. He was still waiting.

“Simms? What is it?”

To his surprise, the connection went straight through. She sounded harassed, though, like she didn't really want to speak to him.

“Just seeing how you are. You didn't call, I was worried.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Come on, Kelly. That's not fair. How many times do I need to apologize to you?”

“Oh, plenty more yet.”

“OK, OK. Look, I wanted to know how you've been, for Christ's sake.”

She paused for a moment before replying, like she was regretting her harsh words. So he liked to imagine.

“I'm fine. Busy. We're taking more in each day. We're going to have to expand to house everyone soon.”

Another dig at him. He was to blame? He collected DNA. If other people used it to fill their private zoos with black-market copies of the great and famous, how was that down to him? He didn't operate the cloning vats, he didn't discard the damaged misshapes when they turned out wrong. He just did his job. Jesus Christ, everyone was on his back today.

“Look, Kelly, I'm sorry, OK? Sorry for what I do. Sorry for all the people who wash up there with you. It's not my fault, OK? None of it's my fault.”

“Is that right, Simms?”

“Look, the thing is, work's been going well. I was thinking I could come over. I know the refuge always need funds. I could make a contribution. Something. I mean, no one likes to see the state these people are in. And maybe we could do something together. Go some place.”

It was partly his age, but fleshbots didn't cut it for him. Even when they proxied for a real person somewhere distant. You still knew. You always knew. The thought of s*x with Kelly, the real Kelly, would make everything - Ballard, London, Mann - everything better.

“You want to give us money from some DNA job? To help the people here?”

For a moment, he thought she was warming to the idea. “Yeah. I thought, you know, it would be something.”

“You're unbelievable, Simms. Un-f*****g-believable.”

“Kelly, I…”

But she cut the connection. She was gone. He didn't try to ping her back.

His eyes focused on reality once more. He stood and stared out of his stackroom window at the grey clouds sweeping in across the London skyline. God damn. Why did he bother? It wasn't like she'd been completely innocent was it? Wasn't that what she was doing, out there in the Arizona desert? Making amends, trying to put something back? He got that. He'd do it himself, one day, if he could. Enough money from a few big deals and he could start his own refuge. They could run it together, the past forgotten. He could idle away his days in the sun while she divided her time between him and saving the world's cloning victims. All those brain-damaged Elvises and broken Mandela-copies living out their remaining years. She'd be full of gratitude. It would be beautiful.

Well. If he couldn't have her, a fleshbot would have to do. He'd paid for good emulation, although he could always tell when it - she - said or did something the real Kelly wouldn't. When its s*x-toy programming was a little too near the surface. Weirdly, that was always an instant turn-off. But it would have to do.

And, if he couldn't have the real Kelly, he could at least have real acid. He didn't go in for direct-brain electronic analogues. He had the plug-ins, sure, but didn't use them. Nothing touched the real stuff. You could still buy it if you knew the right people. And Simms prided himself on always knowing the right people.

He made sure the stackroom was secure. The fleshbot booted up and moved towards him, swinging its hips a little too much to be believable. Sims sighed. He wondered what would happen if he gave it acid, too. That could be funny.

The call interrupted him an hour later. It took him some time to grasp what it was. His com plug-in had trouble presenting his consciousness with an avatar of his caller. Had trouble finding his consciousness. Simms saw the sun turning into a vast face, becoming a mouth that screamed at him from the sky. Eventually he grasped someone was trying to reach him.

He shunned direct-brain drugs, but electronic detox could be damn useful. He kicked one off now, flushing the s**t from his brain, sharpening the lines of reality around him. Slowly everything came into focus. Was his room always this small? Jesus. When he was ready he answered the ping.

“Hi, Mann. You got my money?”

“Can we talk?”

“What is there to talk about? I've done what you asked, now you pay the bill. That's how that works.”

“I'd like to talk to you about another contract.”

“Always happy to discuss a job. Let's complete the old one, then we can move onto the new one.”

Didn't they have the money? But then, why bother to get in touch? More likely, they had a problem with what he'd done. The wrong Tom Jacks after all? He couldn't see how, but he didn't need an unsatisfied customer seeking revenge. Especially some big shot used to getting their way. He wished he'd spent more time researching Mann, found out who he worked for. But the amount of money involved had been so small he hadn't bothered.

“Of course, of course. Here's your money, Mr. Simms.”

The man's tone made it clear the amount was so trifling he'd simply forgotten to send it. Simms watched the zeroes counting up in his brain.

“OK,” he said. “Now we can talk.”

“Excellent. As a matter of fact, I'd like to meet up with you.”

Alarm bells rang. He was still a bit out of it, a bit paranoid, but employers wanting to meet up generally meant bad things. He'd seen it happen often enough over the years.

“Why? This conversation is completely secure. No one can overhear.”

“My employer is rather old-fashioned. He or she likes to, ah, stare a man in the eye. Apparently, by these means, he or she is able to judge character very effectively.”

“You want to set up a meeting between me and your employer?”

“That's correct.”

Mann had his attention now. Simms reached out and deactivated the fleshbot kneeling on the floor in front of him. What was going on here? It could all be a line. A convincing tale. Still, it could also be something sweet. A meeting with the money behind the façade generally meant they were taking you more seriously. Which meant more of the money. If they were unhappy with him, why go to all this trouble? They could deal with him from afar: a shot in the night, an EM pulse sending his plug-ins into meltdown. But not polite conversation for f**k's sake.

“OK,” he said. “Tell me when and where.”

In the day he had spare, Simms took the time to do his job properly: find out who he was really dealing with, what their angle was. It didn't take a genius to work some of it out. The smoke and mirrors made it obvious. The party required DNA and they needed to be sure Simms was reliable. Now they knew. Problem was, Simms knew nothing about them. Knowledge was power. Anything could give him an edge, even if it only meant he could cut a better deal.