The first thing Peter saw when he woke up on his back was a huge painting of people in a park. It filled the wall before him. It was a strange painting, but before he could figure out what made it so, his attention was drawn to Breena, who knelt on the floor beside him. A light green something sparkled over her entire body. Her hands rested on his shoulder. She seemed to be in a trance.
He noticed immediately that he felt much better than he had…
When…?
When he was in the car.
It all came back to him. He turned his head and saw Kathryn asleep on a couch. He had never seen her look so gentle before. Until now she always seemed to have a kind of war mask on, beautiful, but defensive—even when frightened. Now… Not more attractive—just another part of her.
He glanced around the room. It seemed like a living room, but he thought it might once have been an office. Paintings hung everywhere. Near the baseboards. Near the ceiling. Some on the ceiling. Pictures of colored squares. Pictures of minotaurs done in a cyberware motif. Wild colors in broad strokes covered the walls beneath the paintings. Colors everywhere. Undoubtedly it was Liaison’s handiwork. It had the same untamed palette as her clothes.
His gaze was drawn back first to Breena, who remained still and peaceful, and then to the painting in front of him.
He’d never seen it before, but he liked it. But he also didn’t like it.
What was it?
A couple walking together, dressed in old-fashioned clothing. A man sat on the grass smoking a pipe. A monkey on a leash. Many people, all enjoying a day in a park. Kind of. Their bodies were too stiff.
He realized the painting wasn’t made with strokes. Something else. Dots.
“Like it?” Liaison stood in the doorway. She wore an oversized blue shirt that hung down to her knees. Smears of red and green paint covered it.
“Where are we?”
“Our place. Breena’s and mine. In the Noose.”
“How’d you get me here?”
“Well, I didn’t do it. I was out. But apparently you were just conscious enough for them to guide you up the stairs.”
“I don’t remember.”
“You were nearly dead.”
“Oh.” He glanced at Breena. “Is she…?”
“She’s fine. She’ll be at it a few more minutes. But she’ll be out of it all day tomorrow. You were really hurting.”
“Did you get an address?”
“You bet.” She crossed the room and knelt down on his other side. He found her very cute. “A place called ABTech on the Westside. We checked the listing, didn’t find it anywhere. I went into the Matrix for a cursory check. Nothing. I’ll go in-depth tomorrow.”
She smiled down at him. “So. What do you think of the place?”
“It’s colorful.”
“You think so? I was thinking about trying to make it a bit brighter.”
He stared at her. He decided she wasn’t kidding.
“You like the picture?” she said and gestured to the painting in front of him.
“Yes.”
“It’s an original. I got it from the Art Institute.”
“You what?”
“Well, I didn’t get it. It’s from the Art Institute. A slag I knew, he got it from a friend, who stole it from an accountant, who stole it from a partner, who grabbed it out of the Institute when they shut it down after the IBM Tower collapsed. It’s my favorite painting.”
Peter looked at it again. “There’s something about it…”
“The dots. It’s the dots.” She got up and walked over to it. “Soorat, Georges Soorat, the guy who painted it, he made up this technique called pointillism. Breena looked that up for me. It’s all these dots, and they make up the picture. No lines. Nothing’s whole. Except the whole thing. He’s like a science-fiction painter. Or, I think he is, anyway, because he made paintings like computer graphics before there were computers. Which is wiz, if you think about it.”
He gave her a blank look.
“You know. Pixels of light, making up the whole picture. See, he used only the pure colors, red, blue, green. You can see purple back there, but there’s no purple in it. From a distance the red and the blue dots mix to look like another color. Really clever. It’s like old, flat televisions. And once I saw a thing called a comic book. Same idea. Dots mixing up to look like a whole.”
The more Peter looked at the painting, the more stiff and lifeless the people in it seemed to be. But he decided not to mention that to Liaison.
“What’s it called?”
“Sunday Afternoon on the Grand Jetty. Or something like that. Anyway, it’s the pictures that matter. At least, that’s what matters to me. See, he painted this at the end of the nineteenth century, when tech was just getting cut. And he wanted to make up a kind of painting that, you know, had that idea. Like guns with interchangeable parts. A painting made up of dots of pure color.” She beamed at it.
“Like DNA.”
“Yeah, I guess.” She sounded doubtful at first, and then jumped. “Yes. Like DNA. Right. We’re these small dots of chromosotes or whatever, and we’re a whole thing also.”
“Chromosomes.”
“Right.”
She looked at him with a sly smile. “Are you really a professor?”
“No.” They both turned back to the painting. “Liaison,” he said after a pause, “what do you think of the whole painting?”
“The whole painting?”
“Yes. Not how it’s made, or the little dots. But that woman there, with the umbrella… What do you think of her?”
“I never…”
“I mean…what do you think of how she seems as a person?”
“I don’t know. I always thought of her as dots. She doesn’t seem like a real person.”
Breena lifted her hands and the glow subsided. Liaison hopped over to her and gave her a big hug. “How are you?”
“Very tired.”
“Bed?” Liaison suggested with a mischievous grin.
“Sleep,” Breena answered flatly. “Help me up.”
When she was on her feet, Breena’s stance was like a tired old woman’s.
“Thank you for healing me,” Peter said.
“Part of the job.”
“Right.” Did she ever let her guard down?
“We don’t have any more beds, so you have to sleep on the floor,” Liaison told him. “All right?”
“Sure.”
“There are some blankets over there.”
“Great.”
“All right. Good night.”
“Good night, Liaison. Good night, Breena.”
“Good night.”
The two women passed through a doorway, and then the lights in the room went out. Peter reached into his pocket and found the three My Cure chips. He crawled across the floor and tucked them behind a potted plant, then moved back to the center of the room.
Even though he could no longer see the painting in the dark, his eyes sought out the spot where it hung. At first he imagined the little dots floating off the canvas and smothering him in his sleep, but then finally his exhaustion took him off to blessed oblivion.
It was Kathryn’s voice that woke him while it was still dark. “Hello,” she said, more like a question than a statement. He was too groggy to answer immediately, and so she said it again. She sounded fearful.
“Kathryn?”
“Who is that?”
“Peter.”
“Oh, Peter.” She said his name again, this time with a strong note of relief. “Where are we?”
“Breena and Liaison’s place. In the Noose. An old office building, I think.”
“Right. Right. I remember now.” She sighed. “I’m not used to this. This moving around so much.” He heard her shift on the couch. “Do you do this a lot? Living like this?”
He thought about it. His life was actually more frenetic now than it had ever been. He said so. “But, to tell you the truth,” he added, “ever since I became a troll, at fifteen, my life has been consistently hectic.”
“Not mine. The only move I made was when I was three and my grandfather took Cell Works from Amsterdam to Chicago. I was practically raised in Cell Works. The entire organization was like an extended family. I traveled, for business, but it wasn’t like this. Everything was tied to my family, to Cell Works. I knew my place in the corporation, how I fit into the world. Not like today at all. Today is a whole new system. The whole plan was to live out my life within Cell Works. Safe. Good. I mean, a few hours ago I might have died. I was terrified.”
“Me, too.”
“Really?”
Her surprise flattered him, in an obviously male kind of way. He crawled over to the couch and sat beside it. She smelled of roses and other exotic scents. “Well, there were all these people shooting at me. Shooting at me and hitting me. Yeah. I was scared. But it’s different. This was probably your first time in something like this…”
“Yes,” she said, and laughed.
“I got beat up my first month out on the streets. I’m a bit more used it.”
“You lived on the streets?”
“Yeah.”
“I’d die. I’d die.”
“No you wouldn’t. You’d figure out what you had to do to survive, and you’d do it.”
“No, Peter. No. You and Breena and Liaison. You know how to survive. Me? I was raised in a corporation. The key was stability. Long-term profits carefully measured against the short term. Spontaneity was all right, as long as it was planned and kept under control.” She laughed and Peter joined in. “So, what happens now?”
“Well, Liaison got an address of an ABT. She’ll check it out in the Matrix tomorrow. I should go stake it out. Breena will probably rest, and you’ll probably stay here, too. You’re pregnant, and the last thing you need is to make a habit of getting involved in gun battles.”
“True.” They sat silently for a moment. “So what was your favorite story?” she asked suddenly.
“What?”
“The Wizard of Oz? The Odyssey? All the stories I loved as a kid were about people in strange places, taking risks. Now I’m finally living it, and I don’t know how all those people could stand it.”
“I was partial to Alice in Wonderland.”
“I never read that one.” She leaned in closer. “I did see the simsense, though.”
“They made a simsense of Alice in Wonderland?”
“Sure. They make simsenses of anything.”
“I never tried them.”
“Really?”
“I… I’ve spent my whole life trying to get my body back. The idea of living out an experience through a recording of someone else’s nervous system… It’s too much to bear.”
“Well, the Alice simsense had this great part where you fall down the White Rabbit’s hole. It was so frightening. You just rushed toward the ground. All you could see was the ground getting closer and closer…. And the fear… Whoever they got to feel that fall… She was terrified and I was terrified.”
Something about the description struck Peter as wrong, but he couldn’t remember the original text, so he dropped it.
“Kathryn,” he began hesitantly, then curiosity drove him on, “if Cell Works was your family…” He paused, hoping she would pick up the thread of the conversation. She didn’t. “Leaving just seems…”
“I need this for my baby, Peter. I need to know he’ll be all right. Cell Works wouldn’t sponsor the research. I needed to know what was going on, and I needed to know it now. The more my child grows, the more cells to be transformed. If someone was doing the work, I wanted to know about it. Your father was going to be my lead to the cure.”
“But all this for an unborn child—”
“He’s not just an unborn child, Peter. He’s the son of the man I wanted to marry.”
“Yes. I heard he died. I’m sorry.”
“Yes,” she laughed harshly. “A car accident. A stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid car accident. We can do so much, but we can’t always prevent cars from spinning out of control. We can’t save a man every time. We can’t always save the person we love the most.”
He reached his clumsy hand out in the darkness and touched the warmth of her arm. She pulled back at first, but settled down and let him slide his fingers up to her shoulder.
When she spoke again, her voice had become quiet. “You see, I want my son to be born, this son, this child, this part of John. I want him to live, and I want him to live a good life. I need to know that he’s going to be all right. I want to protect him. And I know Breena thinks that makes me terrible, but I…” She sighed. “I just don’t want to lose him, too. I need something to be set.” She laughed slightly. “Actually, I want everything to be set. But now I don’t know. I’ve given up everything I had. Everything I had to offer my son, I gave it all up to keep him safe in another way.”
“You’ll manage. You’re tough.”
“No. I’m only tough where I know the rules. Like in the corp world.” She pulled away and he thought she must have buried her face in her hands. “What have I done to my life? To my son?” She began to cry. Peter sat quietly. After a while, she sniffed, her tears ended for now. “I’m sorry.”
“Shhh. No. Shhh. You have nothing to apologize for. I think we both need some sleep, though.”
She sniffled again. “Yes.”
“You going to be all right?”
“Yes.” She stretched out on the couch. “Yes, I just need some sleep.”
He waited for a moment, and when she seemed settled, he said, “Good night.”
“Good night, Peter. You don’t seem like a killer, you know.” He remained quiet, uncertain how to respond. “I mean, I thought you were one way—you had that gun pointed at me, after all—but there’s something else to you.”
“I’m sorry about that.”
“You were doing your job, right?”
A shame filled him. He’d become so used to his job that only now did it strike him as odd that he had held a stranger hostage at gunpoint. “Yeah. Time for a new job.”
“Good.”
He watched her roll over on the couch, then made his way back to his blankets and closed his eyes.
He dreamed of Alice, and of her fall, but when he awoke, he could not remember the details.