'Griff.' It queried her to verify the dimunitive, and cross-referenced.
Lines of text began to appear on the screen. She sorted through them as the computer found Griffin's personal code and a nonsecure file giving his location.
Yucca Valley, California, four miles out from Dream Park… in a rattysection of town, she thought. Nigel's program was still at work. A moment later it had found a voice.
''…sure how she died yet. Apparent accident. Drowned in a fucking bathtub.'
'Dammit, what was she doing there last night?'
'Assignation. '
'Wasn't she on duty?'
'No.'
Acacia listened to the freeze in the speaker's voice and then realized that she was listening to Alex. The voice was flat, almost metallically emotionless. 'What do you think?'
She knew that tone, knew the pain it concealed. The dead woman had meant something special to Alex Griffin.
As much as she, Acacia, had meant?
More?
'I want the complete forensics report by noon. Preliminary workup in two hours. Sheriff Osterreich will handle any interviews.'
'Griff?'
'Yes. '
'I'm sorry.'
Pause. 'So am I.' He sounded tired.
Then Griffin signed off.
Acacia sat staring at the screen, troubled.
Someone close to Alex Griffin was dead. An employee of Dream Park, so it seemed. Drowned. Freak accident.
No real concern to her, except…
Where had Nigel been last night? He'd come back powerfully in rut, and in the morning had data she'd never seen, coded against theft. Not so strange, that, but was it new? Stolen? And what had caused the frenzy of sexual excitation?
She rubbed her eyes and killed the computer screen, trembling.
Her brain chattered reassuringly to her even as her gut twisted with suspicion. Acacia was proud of herself: she made it two-thirds of the way to the bathroom before champagne and hors d'oeuvres and cherry-frosted cake came spilling back up over her lips, marking her trail to the toilet.
7
Wednesday, July 20, 2059 — 11:00 P.M.
Alex Griffin dialed through a series of nine preprogrammed illusions. An igloo next to an ice hole, a castle and moat, a tropical isle and moonlit inlet, an alien world with a vast red sun and a foamy, crimson sea… Each had its own sour smell, its own irritating soundtrack.
He dialed 0. Once again he faced bare walls, a bed mat with rounded corners, a rug/floor with a wide, wild range of textures, a big oval sunken spa with shower heads above it. There were enough hooks, magnets, and suction devices to support a whole wonderful world of sexcessories. An alcove was stocked with sensory skin-quits, direct-nerve-induction stuff.
There was a hole chipped into one wall, high up, the size of his smallest toe. Below it on the rug was a trace of powdered plaster. Vacuuming would have picked it up: it had to be fresh.
Here in this dreary little box, Sharon Crayne had died.
The service door stood open. Local cops streamed in and out, searching, checking, finding little, trying to pretend not to notice his anguish. Failing.
Within the featureless cube of the Mate 'N' Switch building was an open, central well. It was lined with catwalks and resembled the backstage or substage at a Broadway show, or maybe a low-level Gaming area. Gaming Dome X?
The pleasure palace was shut down while Moshe Osterreich, Yucca Valley's understaffed, overworked sheriff, attempted to extract information from the staff of Mate 'N' Switch.
Sharon's body was gone, removed by the county coroner. Again Alex scanned the room, shrinking from its stark and vulgar utility, and found no excuse to edit the pictures in his mind.
Sharon had checked in of her own will, in health, unaccompanied. He-surely not she, or they, though the evidence showed nothing of… He had entered sometime later, and together they had romped in the big bed.
Afterward, the lover had left. Sharon, perhaps tipsy and too relaxed after being well laid-though there was no evidence of alcohol or other funny chemicals-had taken a bath. Her foot slipped, and her head cracked into the rim. It was flush with the floor, but nothing else was hard enough to raise a bruise. She must have flipped like a gymnast.
Momentum had carried her rolling into the bath…
More likely: Thumbs. Ouch! She rubs her head, curses, and slides into the sunken tub. Arms wrap around her head. She's making a keening squeak of rage and pain, like when she stubbed her little toe against the doorjamb in Griffin's mobile apartment. Doesn't know how badly she's been hurt. Blood leaks into brain tissue, shorting signals. Her head slips under the water…
Hours later, shortly after checkout time, a maintenance crew finds her as dead and cold as the water around her.
Who, then? Whom did she meet?
Alex tried to retain a modicum of professionalism, but it wasn't working. 'I'm getting out of here, Moshe,' he said to Osterreich.
The sheriff was a thin, wiry man with Groucho Marx eyebrows and a hawklike nose. 'It's been a long day for you, Alex,' he said. 'Usual six A.M. roust?'
'Up at five. I'm beat, but I can't sleep. Not yet. See you later.'
Alex shouldered his way through the door and fled to his skimmer. His blunt fingers dug into the dashboard.
He was under control. You have to stay under control, or life will eat you.
He said, 'Home,' thinking that the skimmer would take him to Cowles Modular Community, not really remembering that the beacon had been reassigned to MIMIC. The vehicle rose to its legal altitude of two hundred meters and hummed out across Yucca Valley, the community surrounding Dream Valley.
The Town that Cowles Built.
The car more or less drove itself, leaving him no distractions. He needed to put his mind somewhere; there were too many questions.
As security chief of Dream Park, he had immense leverage in Yucca Valley, but the truth was, he had no real right to interfere with Osterreich's investigation.
But Sharon had died in that sleazy sex shop after a sleazy assignation. Her life would be sieved by the minds guiding the Barsoom Project. Griffin's relationship with her would be dissected and analyzed. If, at the end, her only business at the Mate 'N' Switch had been the scratching of a physical itch, they would hand back the fragments of his memory, say 'Sorry,' and let him carry them meekly away.
Griffin guided his skimmer in toward MIMIC's rooftop landing pad. It was almost midnight, and the roof parties had died. A few robots scooted about picking up trash. He stepped out of the car. As soon as he slammed the door, it took off again, spiraling up and over the lip of the roof, down to the parking structure at MIMIC's base.
