The elevator sank down toward the security hutch. Griffin was still brooding.
God. So fast. Everything had fallen.
She meant so much to me, and so quickly…
And he hated himself for the next thought: Got under my skin quick, didn't she?
At the Security Center he found Hasegawa and a couple of other people. The room was mostly empty. Condolences had already been offered, but were offered again.
A cold wedge of pepperoni pizza stared at him from a cardboard coffin. What little nudge of hunger he might have felt vanished instantly.
Mitch was offering coffee. Alex sniffed it. Tasted it, glad that his ulcer hadn't bothered him recently.
Hadn't, in fact, since meeting Sharon.
Splash. Coffee stain on the cuff. Shit.
Numbly, he mopped it up.
Sharon. What were you doing in that place? Your tastes weren't that exotic. Why couldn't you have met him in your room? Or his?
Because they work here. At MIMIC. She didn't want me to know.
Griffin's eyes wanted to water. He clenched his eyelids against the sting.
A buzzing sound penetrated his concentration, and he punched up the line. 'Griffin.'
'Osterreich here.'
'Yeah, Moshe. Go ahead.'
'We have the preliminary coroner scan. Full workup in about five hours.'
'Pump it through. '
Sharon Crayne appeared onscreen. First the usual stats of inches and pounds. Then scars, muscle tone, apparent age. Makeup and recent beauty treatments. The prescription of her contact lenses. The plastic pin in her left wrist.
More intimacies: the nutritional content of her last meal. An ounce and a half of dark rum imbibed an hour before death. No other funny chemicals whatever.
And…
There was no semen in her vagina. Or her throat, or anus… or anywhere on her body… or anywhere in the room.
Okay, Mr. X hadn't screwed her yet. Maybe she was getting ready for him.
But the bed pad was wrinkled. Had it been used?
He studied the report. Traces of her perfume and body oils, a few cells, a strand of hair…
But no one else's. Nothing at all that didn't match her. Not male, or female, and as for the llama and the spayed gerbil… nothing.
Did she check in to masturbate, or what?
What were you doing there, Sharon? What was in the wall?
All right. Let's think this through. You had an assignation with a married man. You were in love…
Alex's ego wouldn't allow him to think that. There had been no one in her heart. There had been room for him. He knew it. He'd felt it. It had to be true.
Then Sharon: You wanted to call the affair off. You agreed to meet him one last time. You The hole in the wall was right for a wide-angle scan. Sharon could have gotten her hands on a pinhead camera.
All right. You wanted… he wanted? Sharon checked into the motel. She would have had time to mount the camera. He wouldn't.
She wanted evidence. Information…
And that other, nasty thought coiled and hissed in his hindbrain. She got under your skin mighty fast, didn't she, Griff?
You let her into the security lines, past your defences faster than you had to, because she was going to be taking over in two weeks. So she had access.
To what?
May I? she had asked.
'Playback,' he said. 'Last access Sharon Crayne date July nineteenth security files.'
There was a momentary pause-more, he suspected, for the psychological benefit of the user than from any need of the system. Then the screen flashed NO ACCESS CODE THAT DATE SHARON CRAYNE.
He thought of Sharon poring over the files. A smile struggled to surface, succeeded but lost its warmth along the way. It hung there on his mouth, cold and lifeless.
How long have you been dead now, Sharon? Thirteen, fourteen hours? And a file that doesn't exist is the last thing that you looked at.
The smile was deathlocked onto his face. He felt ghastly.
Somebody walked by his workstation and dropped a plastic data sheet off next to him. With an unoccupied splinter of attention he heard a rustle. saw a shadowy figure, heard somebody talking behind him.
He refused to come up from his search, even when he felt the hand on his shoulder.
'Griff!' Tony said louder this time.
Alex jerked and stared up at the sympathetic face above him. For the first time, it was Griffin who looked away, who couldn't meet and hold his gaze.
'You want to know what Sharon was looking at last?'
'Just… want to look at it.'
'I can do better than that. I have a complete playback loop. Every word, every command. Sometimes you get a weird effect in programming and can't figure out how you did it, so you'd like to go back and-' Tony sat next to Alex, and his fingers became a blur. '-watch over your own shoulder…'
Alex, still numbed, watched without enthusiasm. He wanted to tell Tony to go away.
'Funny,' Tony said. 'I can't pull up her visual…'
'Why would that be?'
'She may have put a block on it? Let's see the keystrokes.' Tony continued to work while Alex watched. 'I've still got some tricks.'
'Breaking and entering type tricks?'
'I'm shocked, shocked that you would-' The structures of MIMIC began to appear. The view rotated, then zoomed in. '-accuse me of such a… preposterous… There.'
Suddenly Alex was watching Sharon again, and his heart broke.
She was totally absorbed in her work, busy, typing and writing occasionally, triggering some of the inputs with eye and head movements alone. She was alive, and he knew that he loved her. The urge to reach out and touch her, to speak the words he had never spoken, lashed him like a bitter wind.
'Griff, it looks like she called up the ScanNet system for the entire Gaming area.'
Tony pulled back to a broader image of MIMIC, encompassing all nineteen floors. Some of the corridors flashed red: Sharon had been into them.
'Here, here, and here,' Alex said, 'we have the radiation signs.'
'Why would she want those locations?'
'Don't those signs seal out Gamers?'
'They do. Strongest mantrap in IFGS: cost of opening that door by any means, one absolute death. No saving throws, no defence.'
'Cute notion,' Alex said. 'Yours?'
'Doris and El.' Tony sat back, and watched the play. 'You know, Alex…'
'What?'
'We don't have a playback from the correct angle, but the way she's doing this reminds me of something.'
'What?'
'Well, it's the way she's acting. The pattern. Trying to block the record, that too. She's recording ScanNet sensor locations.'
'Maybe she wanted to look at the whole thing later, at her leisure. '
Tony chose his next words carefully. 'Maybe, but why not just have it pumped into her room?'
