Analog SFF, September 2006 Read online

  Not rot in hell. Rot. As in a literal threat. Had Trevor once talked rich, complacent me into some kind of flesh-eater? Perhaps because he knew he was a pussycat and needed a big gun to back up threats he didn't want to enforce? The worst of those were reserved for the IRS, but commercial ones could be pretty nasty—muscle atrophiers, rashes that deprived you of a month's sleep. Gads, the prospects were endless.

  * * * *

  My office is a dive. Once upon a time, I had digs in the financial district, back when I was a junior partner in the law firm of Lorencz Biggle Tracy & Epstein. My 43rd-floor window office had been only a mile from here on the map, but infinitely removed in the hierarchy of what-you-can-afford. Now Alexander Copley, Private Investigator, operates out of a hole-in-the-wall in Old Town, domain of drunks, derelicts, and druggies.

  Ours is one of several cities whose Old Towns boast of being the original Skid Row. Here, in the ancient logging capital of the Northwest, the term had a literal meaning: Skid Road was where timber was “skidded” into the river to be lashed into rafts for shipment downstream. Today, rather than being an embarkation point, it's where everything fetches up when it hits bottom, including yours truly. Rents are low, nanos mild to nonexistent, and if there's any mystique to being a PI, having your office in the most disreputable part of town doesn't hurt.

  The first order of business was caffeine. I scooped a healthy dose of instant coffee into a mug—no fancy AutoPot for the office—added water, and popped it into my economy microwave: you know, one of the mini-ones that convenience stores use to nuke stale hamburgers into a semblance of edibility. Mine wasn't a whole bunch cleaner than those in the convenience stores. Someday, I really should do something about that, but I figure that each time I turn it on, the radiation kills anything nasty growing inside. Or maybe I'm creating mutant superbugs that will someday take over the world. As far as I'm concerned, they can have it. Let them deal with the nanos.

  I should have seen the writing on the wall when I read about the first nanocontracts in the Bar Journal, but who in their right mind would put their bodies up as collateral?

  People take worse risks with loan sharks, though, and nanotech is a lot more respectable. Suddenly you couldn't even get a charge card without a nano. The first profession to suffer were bail bondsmen. Who needs bail if suspects can simply be given a nano nasty enough to guarantee they'll show up in court? For the same reason, prisons needed fewer guards.

  Soon, civil lawyers were also feeling the pinch. Nanocontracts still leave room for squabbling, but unless a court intervenes and orders Extension, they'd better be brief squabbles. Not the type that make attorneys rich. Then the insurance lobby pushed through the Tort Reform Nanobot Bill, which required plaintiffs to accept a nano before filing suit. Anyone could still have their day in court, but if you didn't win, you didn't receive the antidote. Frivolous lawsuits weren't the only ones to disappear—and with them went the bread-and-butter work of defense attorneys like me.

  By the time Lorencz Biggle, etc., were showing me the door, I was even hearing of nano-wills in which heirs had to take nanos before the reading of the will. Those who declined waived their inheritance; the rest could only obtain Release by agreeing not to contest the will. It was brutal but effective, and suddenly another class of attorneys was out of business.

  In Shakespeare's TheMerchant of Venice, the moneylender Shylock makes a loan to a man he despises. There are many things he could have sought as collateral, but what he wants is the option to extract a pound of flesh from the debtor's chest. The borrower, secure in a successful business, accepts this barbaric term, but ships sink and Shylock forecloses. Then, at the last moment, he is stymied by the fact that his contract said nothing about blood. He can seize his pound of flesh, but if he sheds one drop of blood in the process, he will be charged with murder.

  What Shylock needed were nanos. Off-the-shelf varieties aren't that nasty, but custom jobs can do just about anything. Fatal flesh-eaters are illegal except as bail for violent felonies, but if you're stupid enough to accept one, you're going to be more interested in getting the antidote than reporting it. Today, anyone with the money for black-market nanos can be Shylock.

  * * * *

  Waiting for the water to heat, I scooped old mail from the table where I'd deposited it yesterday, flipped junk mail into the trash, and tried to decide whether to open the telephone statement. At least it didn't involve nanos. I'd opted for the pre-pay alternative, but that still gives the phone company plenty of leverage with the old-fashioned threat of simply turning off the service.

  My PI business had never turned a profit. The sad fact was that two out of every three attorneys were out of work and I wasn't the only one thinking that years of trial preparation might have taught me something about investigation. My main hope was that if I waited long enough, most of the competition would starve out.

  Still, I hadn't been losing a lot of money, so when necessary, I'd made it up from Marion's and my savings. Then she moved out. A week later, irony of ironies, she hired a hotshot attorney who froze the savings account so I couldn't spend any more of it until she got her share. If my own attorney was as good as he claimed, some of that money would eventually be mine, but it would be a long fight and meanwhile I was living hand-to-mouth.

  Pretty soon, I'd have to take the first of Trevor's little pills. In theory, I could hire someone to reverse-engineer the fulfillment code and make as many as I wanted—in Old Town, you can find people with some pretty arcane skills. It's another reason Trevor is too trusting. But if I had the money for that, I could pay the rent, so why bother? And there are some nasty rumors about what happens when fake Extension meets a nano that can tell the difference.

  Better would be to delay taking the first pill as long as I dared, then stretch the interval between them, hoping there was enough safety margin to gain me an extra day or so. I was getting desperate enough I might actually try it.

  I swiveled my chair, ignoring its squeak of protest. If I ever get rich, I'll buy a new one, but that's not exactly a high priority. Leaning back, I propped my feet on the bookcase that doubled as a credenza and stared through what passed for my window on the world.

  It really was a window, although the little daylight it yielded came from a ventilation shaft that provided even less ventilation than light. What it did offer was a view of the opposite wall, built eons ago of honest-to-goodness bricks. If we ever get the earthquake the doomsayers fret about, all those bricks will probably peel off and tumble below in a giant pile that will make me glad I'm on the fourth floor, even if half the time I have to walk up because the elevator's on the fritz or just too damn slow. Life sucks, but hey, if it all comes crashing down, I'd rather be on top of the pile than under it.

  Some people work crossword puzzles when they have nothing better to do. Me, I count bricks. The trick is to get the same number twice in a row. Some days, I can kill hours before I manage it. Yesterday, I'd tallied 413 on the first attempt and 415 on the second before getting two repeats of 416. Today I had a slightly different angle, so the number would be different.

  * * * *

  I was on my third recount—something on the order of 435 seemed to be today's tally—when there came a knock on the door.

  I don't get many visitors. Most of my clients are referred by Lorencz Biggle, where a few of the survivors do what they can to help keep me from starving. But those referrals are always preceded by phone calls, and the phone hadn't been disconnected—yet. This had to be someone who'd tracked me down from what little advertising I could afford.

  Walk-ins rarely amounted to much, but still, it paid to look like I had other work.

  “Just a moment,” I called.

  I scritched my chair back into alignment with the desk, woke up the computer, and was pulling a couple of files from a drawer when my client lost patience and walked in.

  My first thought was that she looked out of place—and not just because she was a she. Plenty of women v
enture into Old Town, though usually not in snappy business suits or carrying those discreetly elegant attaché cases that are the first and most useless purchases of on-the-make junior attorneys.

  Even in the financial district, her attire would have rung false. I'd served a stint on Lorencz Biggle's hiring committee, and there's a big difference between the jobseeker and the jobholder. This woman had dressed to impress, but the jacket, blouse, and black leather pumps were no more natural to her than being in Old Town. The ensemble was too perfect—as though she'd gotten it from a store clerk whose idea of lawyers was based solely on vid shows—but her hair flowed across her shoulders in a fetching style that mixed poorly with the crisp formality of her wardrobe. She was older than my fledgling attorneys—somewhere in her thirties, with body language that spoke of self-assurance, and poise that clashed with the job-interview attire.

  Whatever she normally did, she'd been doing it long enough to take it for granted that she was good at it, but the business power suit wasn't part of it. I wondered why she felt the need to impress the likes of me. Not that I was in a position to be picky.

  “Mr. Copley?” Her voice was another conundrum: crisp, self-assured, polite—but, like the hair, too feminine for executive-standard. I was reminded of Marion's computer-geek friends, happiest in blue jeans and running shoes, but sometimes forced into greater formality for a wedding or the theater. She was rather pretty in a dark-skinned brunette manner—which, I admit, has always been my type.

  I pushed aside the still-unopened files in a move I hoped rang more true than her attire. “Call me Alex."

  Her handshake was firm but damp, producing an odd, almost electric tingle as our flesh met. Highly disconcerting. Was I so starved for female attention that a handshake was giving me the shivers? I suppressed an urge to wipe my palm on my pants leg, and gradually the tingle diminished. “What can I do for you?"

  “I have a problem,” she said, “but first, what's your billing rate?"

  It's one of those things people usually wonder about, though normally they're not so forthright. Again, I sized up the power suit and attaché case. Whatever message she intended to convey, she was making no effort to look poor.

  “I usually charge $195 per hour plus expenses. But I can come down a bit for an interesting case."

  It was one of those great lines that's sort-of true. That had been my minimum rate in my Lorencz Biggle days, and I'd done a lot more billing then than now, so the “usually” was almost accurate. Almost being the operative word. It was also the type of figure that ought to impress someone masquerading as a high-priced whatever-she-thought-she-was. Early in my PI days, I'd learned that you can more easily lose a client by citing a too-low rate than a too-high one because it makes them think you're incompetent. When they gasp and start for the door, you can always offer a discount. Then they think you're being generous.

  But my visitor merely gazed at me. Her eyes swept the office, taking in the desk, the unopened folders, the brick-view window. When she looked back, I'd have sworn she was puzzled. “Really?” She looked around again. “Even in today's economy?"

  She had me with that one. But her attire said money wasn't an object to her, so I wasn't going to let it stand in my way, either. “Yes."

  For a PI, lying is an important job skill. It's not that I'm inherently dishonest; it's just that sometimes it pays to preserve wriggle room. But now, my cheeks burned and I found myself sweating.

  She smiled tightly. “I don't think so. Could you work for, say $95 per hour?"

  “That's kind of low,” I said, but the sweating and blushing continued.

  “In fact, I bet you'd work for $45."

  This was the oddest negotiation I'd ever been part of. When she'd suggested $95, my heart had leapt because I'd figured we'd wind up somewhere in the middle, and if the job was big enough to be worth haggling about, it was going to be enough for me to deal with Trevor and the phone company and a few other things, as well. Offering $95, then dropping yet again was the weirdest tactic I'd ever heard of.

  “That's really low,” I said.

  “But would you do it?"

  I gulped. How could I get her back into triple digits? “No,” I said, and again found myself blushing and sweating.

  “I thought so.” She made it sound as though I'd accepted. “But I'll give you $1,600 a day, with the understanding that overtime is on you. No nanos, though. I'd rather do it the old-fashioned way."

  I nodded encouragingly. In theory, an exchange of nanos would work to both our benefits, forcing me to perform and her to pay. But unless you want to go completely black market, there end up being records of payments, extensions, and releases. She wouldn't be the first client to prefer cash.

  “No problem, but I'll need an advance."

  “Of course. What do you say to a week's pay as a retainer, with additional installments as you do the work?"

  What I'd say was something on the order of “Halleluiah!” but I wanted to preserve what was left of my dignity. “That sounds fair,” I said, and for once, I didn't blush.

  “More than fair, since you would have taken $45. But before I tell you how I know that, how good are you at keeping secrets?"

  “Very.” That's something else that comes with the Lorencz Biggle background. Every attorney learns early on the importance of client trust.

  Again, she made me feel as though I were under a microscope. Then she smiled, and for a moment, I might have been seeing a trace of whatever lay behind the falsely corporate exterior. Something warmer and a bit more playful. Or maybe she was just happy she could trust me—though I was baffled why she believed that when she hadn't believed the $95. Maybe she was simply a nice girl, about to get divorced and tired of acting tough. Yeah, right.A rich nice girl, looking for a way to stick it to her husband. Then I squelched the thought. I couldn't afford to cast my only client in Marion's image.

  Divorces are another arena in which lawyers have suffered: nanos add new meaning to the term “iron-clad prenuptial.” But in many cases, all that's done is shift the battleground from the lawyer's office to the streets. To the extent I have a bread-and-butter business, it's staking out soon-to-be-divorced husbands or wives in the hope of finding evidence for a court order neutralizing the nuptial nano. It's easy work because cheating spouses can be incredibly sloppy. Maybe tempting fate is part of the lure or maybe they're like teenagers and really don't think anything nasty could happen to them. Either way, it's fun to watch their faces when they're confronted with the evidence and realize they have old-fashioned, expensive legal fights on their hands. Just like I do, though in my case it's because Marion's and my marriage predated nanos.

  “Anything you tell me is completely confidential,” I added.

  “I know.” The smile vanished and she was again the faux-whatever. She snapped open her briefcase and pulled out a prepaid credit chit. “Is your computer set to read these?"

  “Yes. But don't you want to tell me what this is about, first?"

  “Not until I have you on retainer. Just in case you were playing word games with me about confidentiality.” She gave me the barest hint of the smile. “Like you must have been about your ‘usual’ fee."

  I logged onto the banking web, then let her plug the chit into my computer's credit-acceptance slot. She used her own keypad to authorize the deduction from what must have been a sizeable balance, and milliseconds later, $11,200 was in my account.

  “That's seven days,” she said. “Until this is over, you're working for me every day. Report at least once a week, never lie to me again, and you get another week in advance each time, until we're done or one or the other of us gives up. If, after I've explained it, you don't want the case, you can return the retainer—minus a suitable sum for the next few minutes. Are you okay with that?"

  I nodded, mesmerized by that $11,200 figure and the thought of more, just like it. “Normally, the consultation's free,” I managed to say.

  “That's okay. It's worth
it just to find out how you fooled me. Now, tell me, how can $195 be your ‘usual’ fee, when I know you'd take a lot less?"

  I thought about trying to dodge the question, but she had me thoroughly unnerved. Besides, with money in the bank, I could afford to be at least vaguely honest.

  “Prior life,” I said.

  She nodded as though that made perfect sense. “It had to be something like that."

  “So what's this about?"

  She leaned forward in my guest chair and tugged her skirt down toward her knees—one of those “modest” gestures that have the reverse effect of drawing attention to itself. I've never been sure whether women know this, and on the off chance they don't, I've never wanted to be the one to enlighten them. With difficulty, I prized my gaze back to her face and waited for her to begin.

  “My name is Megan Fordham,” she said. She pronounced it Mee-gan. “I work for a small nanotech company: an outfit called SNS. Once upon a time, that meant Southern NanoSystems, Inc., but now it's just SNS. Unless you're an industry insider, I doubt you've ever heard of us."

  I shook my head. Nano-providers are like chip manufacturers. There are a few big ones and a host of little ones.

  “We make custom nanos,” she continued. “Suppose you wanted one that would produce the symptoms of poison oak. Not just some generic itch, but honest-to-goodness poison oak, medically indistinguishable from the real thing. Why, I haven't a clue, but we're the type of company you'd turn to.

  “A couple of years ago, we began experimenting with highly time-sensitive nanos: ones you might give to chronically late employees to get them to work on time. The idea was that each time they came to work, they'd use a device like a time clock to reset their nanos for next time. We actually had an asthma nano that worked nicely—you'd start wheezing within about five minutes of schedule. But we never figured out what to do about sick days. Sure, you could use a remote reset for anyone who called in sick—just like the scans the banks use when you pay your mortgage at an ATM..."