Dreamer's Cat: a sci-fi murder mystery with a killer twist Read online

  Fine. Ruth it is.

  At least Herbie didn’t go in for name-changing.

  Herbie was okay. He was a good choice as a minder. Anyone who wants to make a living looking after a Dreamer has got to be a first class diplomat, a tireless organiser and have the constitution of a carthorse. Anything I want, anything at all, Herbie has to get for me. Any food, any object, any girl. A good minder is like a genie, I rub his bottle and he fetches me my heart’s desire. Something else a minder needs: a complete absence of jealousy. Imagine it. The Dreamer has access to virtually unlimited funds and can try anything, do anything, that he wants. The minder has to arrange it. Sure, they get well paid for it, but it pales into insignificance compared with what we get. Assuming we fulfill our contracts. Three weeks to go says a small voice in my head, but Ruth isn’t there to tell me I’ll make it.

  Herbie’s voice interrupts my thoughts. ‘See anything you like?’ he says.

  I shake my head and sit back in my armchair, half floating because we’re so high above the ground and moving so quickly in a curved flight path.

  ‘You know me, Herbie. I’m a Dreamer, not a voyeur. But be my guest.’

  He refuses, even though I know he hates flying, too, and he’d much prefer to spend the time plugged into the psi-disc player.

  ‘What do you think’s going on, Herbie?’ I ask and he seems startled. His eyes narrow and he studies my face as if I’ve got spots.

  ‘With the Dreamers, you mean?’ he asks and I say yes, what else.

  He rubs his hands up and down his trousers as if wiping them clean. Maybe he’s sweating. Maybe he’s worried about something. Maybe he’s just scared of flying.

  ‘It could be just coincidence,’ he says but we both know that’s not it. Before this year no Dreamer has ever died in the studio. One went gloriously insane while laying down a Stalk and Slash horror disc but no one has ever died before. Now three have gone in as many months.

  ‘Could it be mechanical failure?’ I ask. ‘Electrocution or something. A power surge?’

  ‘If it was I’m sure the technical boys would have gotten it sorted out by now,’ he says, with a bit more confidence.

  ‘Yeah, well if it’s not coincidence and its not an accident then that can only mean it’s deliberate,’ I say. ‘Does the Corporation have any ideas?’

  Herbie shakes his head and I don’t like the way he seems to be holding something back. I wish I could see inside his mind, but even Dreamers can’t do that. Our skills, and our weaknesses, lie within our own skulls, the pound or so of neural matter that even the new Korean supercomputers can’t match when it comes to creativity.

  ‘You’ll have to ask them,’ says Herbie. ‘They tell me nothing, you know that. I was just told to bring you back early. Safe and sound.’

  ‘Yeah, in mind and body.’

  I miss Ruth. I wish she was here. ‘I’m not far away,’ says a voice in my head that might have been her. Or I might have imagined it. The throbbing in my brain is back. Stronger than before.

  *

  Ruth is waiting for me outside CBS Tower, prowling up and down the pavement like an anxious parent as the Corporation limo pulls up to the kerb. It’s a Toyota, top of the range, it comes with all the accessories including a psi-disc player and a rack of the Corporation’s new singles for passengers - maximum playing time 30 minutes. Herbie had given them the once over but hadn’t plugged in, instead he made small talk and tried to keep my spirits up.

  ‘Long time no see,’ says Ruth, rubbing her shoulder along the backs of my legs and purring. ‘Miss me?’

  Crazy cat.

  ‘Look who’s talking,’ she says, and follows Herbie and me through the glass doors and into the marbled foyer. The Tower is the tallest in Chicago, 180 storeys, and every one is staffed by CBS employees. On the way to the lifts we have to walk through the ultrasonic metal detector and are frisked by two armed doormen.

  ‘How long has security been this tight?’ I ask Herbie. He shrugs and says he doesn’t know.

  ‘Since the Dreamers started dying,’ says Ruth and sits down in front of the express lift that serves the recording studio floor. Herbie almost treads on her tail and she leaps out of the way, hackles up and spitting.

  ‘Watch where you’re treading, Dog Breath,’ she says and fakes a swipe at his legs, claws out. The door hisses open and we file in, Ruth first, then Herbie, and then me. On the way up to the 89th floor the lift tells us how the main stock market indicators - the Dow Jones, the Nikkei and the People’s Daily - are doing, gives us the strength of the dollar, the yen and the yuan, and lists the top ten psi-discs. Seven of them are CBS products. One of them is mine.

  The lift has a woman’s voice, she sounds about 35 years old, with blonde hair and green eyes, soft creamy skin and a beauty mark on her right cheek, rounded breasts and good legs.

  ‘Sounds like a Clouded Leopard to me,’ says Ruth. ‘With sleek flanks and grey eyes and a long tail with evenly spaced stripes.’

  To each his own, I suppose. I wonder how Herbie perceives the throaty lift voice, but it’s all in the mind anyway, it’s computer-generated and is changed every week or so.

  The lift door opens into a grey foyer with lots of tall potted palms and a large abstract picture that looks expensive, every splash of paint carefully thrown at the canvas from across the room, you know the sort of thing. There’s a lot of red in it and not much green.

  I know the way because I’ve been here nine times before so I lead Herbie and Ruth down a white corridor with recessed fluorescent lights to the office of Max Blyth. Dr Max Blyth it says on the plaque on his door but Max isn’t pretentious, he only uses the title when booking restaurant tables.

  On the other side of the door is his secretary, a tall black girl with a close-cropped Afro haircut and a low-cut dress.

  ‘Probably types well, too,’ purrs Ruth.

  The secretary buzzes Max and he doesn’t keep us waiting, we’re shown right in. Max is Vice President (Recording) and has an office befitting his status, just about big enough for a half decent game of touch football. After the game the teams would have plenty of space to sprawl around the three long leather sofas that formed a seating area in one corner or they could have run a few laps of the good doctor’s desk to wind down.

  Max is already on his feet and walking towards us with his hand outstretched and he squeezes hard as we shake hands. He nods at Herbie and ignores Ruth. Max is real.

  ‘Leif, thanks for coming,’ he says and waves me towards the sofas. I sit in the middle of one, Herbie flops down into another, his trousers riding up around his calves showing lime green socks, and Max sits on the edge of the third one. Ruth lies down in the middle area and curls up with her head on her paws, one eye closed and the other watching me. Her tail slides slowly from side to side along the plush purple carpet making a soft scraping sound.

  ‘You’ve heard what happened to Jimmy Kratzer?’ says Max. He leans forward towards me, like a vulture examining a body to see if there’s any life left in it. Max is about the same age as Herbie, but whereas Herbie has gone grey with the strain of handling Dreamers, Max has gone virtually bald. There’s not a trace of vanity in either men, though, and while Herbie steadfastly refuses to dye his grey locks, Max won’t have a transplant even though it’s covered by Blue Cross. He wears glasses too, for God’s sake, when everyone else with eye problems either has laser surgery or has permanent contacts fitted. It’s as if Max wants everyone to be aware of how his body is gradually falling apart.

  He’s wearing his usual in-office attire - a white technician’s coat with three pens in the top pocket and a brass five-pointed star with the word Sheriff etched into it to show that he’s got a sense of humour. You’ve got to remember that most of the time he’s dealing with Dreamers who are barely out of their teens, which explains the big bowl of brightly-coloured jelly beans that dominates his desk and the Coke vending machine by the door.

  ‘Sure,’ I say. Why else would I be here t
hree weeks before deadline, I think, but I don’t say it because Max is a nice guy and one of the few people in the Corporation in my age group. Us old guys should stick together. Ruth snorts and opens both eyes and raises her head as if she’s going to say something but then thinks better of it and rests it back on her paws with a deep, mournful sigh.

  ‘And you also know that we’ve lost two other Dreamers. And they both went the same way.’

  ‘What way is that?’ I ask.

  ‘Complete brain death,’ says Max. He leans so far forward that his glasses slip down his nose and he pushes them back with the middle finger of his right hand. ‘Their whole neural networks just packed up. No electrical activity at all, anywhere in their bodies. We tried artificial respiration, everything, but there was nothing left. It was as if their lives had just been switched off.’

  ‘You checked the equipment?’

  ‘They were in three different studios when it happened. And we stripped down the system each time,’ he explains patiently. He seems to be humouring me, which makes me think he already knows what’s going on but doesn’t want to tell me. I decide to stop asking questions and to just listen. If nothing else I want to find out why the Corporation has suddenly become so interested in security. We sit in silence for a while, the only sound I can hear is Ruth’s gentle purring.

  Max folds his arms across his chest and pushes his glasses back again. Still nobody speaks. Herbie coughs nervously. Both Ruth’s eyes are closed and I think she’s asleep.

  ‘You wish,’ she says, but her eyes are still closed.

  ‘Max,’ I say eventually, ‘there’s something you’re not telling me.’

  Max gets to his feet and walks over to his massive desk. Luckily he doesn’t disturb Ruth. He leans on the edge of his desk and then decides that’s not cool enough so he lifts himself up and sits on it, swinging his legs slowly.

  ‘We think the clue to what happened to the three Dreamers lies in the psi-discs they were laying down. All three were about six hours into their discs when they died.’

  ‘The same time?’

  ‘Not quite, but within half an hour of each other.’

  ‘Have you played the master discs back?’

  Max looks embarrassed and Herbie starts to study his shoes.

  ‘We tried it with the first one, but we lost two technicians,’ says Max. ‘Lost?’

  ‘They died, Leif. At exactly the same point as when the Dreamer died.’

  ‘And they went the same way?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Max. ‘They’re fine right up until the psi-disc ends, and then every nerve just stops dead. Brain, heart, muscles, everything.’

  ‘Why two?’ I say. ‘Why did you do it twice if you knew what would happen?’

  Max stands up again and walks back behind his desk to sit in his big, black executive chair. The man is obviously on the defensive.

  ‘The first time we didn’t know what we were up against. We played the disc right the way through and the technician just died. So we took the disc and put a block on it about five seconds before it was interrupted and we tried it again. He died, too. We’re not sure if he died because of what’s on the psi-disc or because of the jolt the sudden ending gave him. We think the latter…..’

  ‘But you’re not sure,’ I say, and he nods his head in agreement.

  ‘And they want you to make sure,’ says Ruth quietly, and she does not appear happy with the idea.

  ‘And you want me to make sure,’ I say, and I am not happy with the idea either.

  ‘That’s it in a nutshell,’ says Max, and from the look on his face I can see he’s far from pleased as well. At least we’re all in agreement. ‘We want you to plug into the three psi-discs and work your way through them, to find out what the hell is going on,’ says Max.

  Ruth sits up and is studying Max. From where I’m sitting she seems to be examining his throat and weighing up the distance she’d have to spring in order to rip it clean out. She is growling, a menacing sound like a two-stroke motorbike engine.

  ‘Why me, Max? What have I done to deserve this?’

  He holds his arms out towards me, appealing for understanding. He looks like one of the bums you pass in the street begging for $10 for a cup of decaf and there is the same pleading whine in his voice when he says ‘I hate asking you to do this but you are next in line…..’

  He leaves the sentence hanging, but I get the drift. I’m the next Dreamer due to lay down a psi-disc - three weeks to go and counting - and they are holding me to it. And we all know that if I go and lay down the disc then the same thing is going to happen to me. So why not be a good boy and do what they want - find out what killed the first three - make that five, let’s not forget the backroom boys - and help them make sure it doesn’t happen again so that I can fulfill my contract and get the hell out of the business.

  Ruth walks over to me and puts her head in my lap, thrusting herself forward, her lips slightly parted so that I can feel her warm breath through the material. She seems to be the only one in the room who is concerned about me. I move my hand forward and gently scratch her in the place she likes, in the middle of the forehead, but I make it look as if I’m rubbing my own leg. She purrs and moves her head from side to side with pleasure, narrowing her eyes. She wags her tail like a dog.

  ‘I heard that,’ she growls, but she’s joking. ‘You wish,’ she purrs.

  ‘So you’ll do it?’ says Max. Herbie is fidgeting and obviously wishes he was somewhere else. ‘What else can I do, Max? I assume the Corporation is holding me to my contract?’

  Max nods, but at least he has the decency to look shamefaced about it.

  ‘When?’ I ask, and I’m not surprised when he says as soon as possible. Tomorrow.

  *

  I spend the night in my flat. Herbie bought it for me soon after I signed my Corporation contract, or rather he paid for it with his chipcard. Nothing a Dreamer buys while he’s under contract is actually his property, it can all be taken away if he drops out before the five years and 10 psi-discs are up. The way the Corporation looks at it is that Dreamers should have access to any experience they want so that they can incorporate it into their psi-discs. But anything that is bought with the chipcard remains the property of the Corporation. I guess it makes sense. Any other way and you could buy a jet plane or an ocean-going liner or even a bloody space ship and then sell it straight away and pocket the money. No, the last thing the Corporation wants is Dreamers with stacks of cash, it wants us lean and hungry, chasing after the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, otherwise we’d just lay down one psi-disc and then take the money and run. That’s why they tie us to a five year, ten disc contract, so that we’ll keep playing with madness. And maybe, just maybe, some smart-arsed accountant somewhere up on the 90th floor had figured out that if enough Dreamers fall by the wayside the Corporation’s bottom line would look a whole lot healthier.

  Anyway, the deal is that for five years we get to live out our dreams courtesy of the black card and pick up a seven-figure salary, but that the real pay off has to wait until the end of the contract. Then we are talking about serious money, so serious that you are set for life. For a hundred lifetimes. That’s why I’ll be laying down a psi-disc within the next three weeks, I’m certainly not doing it for the creative kick.

  Herbie decorated the flat and I left it up to him. The lounge area is all glossy black leather and grey thick pile carpet with the latest Vietnamese video and hi-fi equipment - including the obligatory psi-disc player and collection of Corporation discs - and is about the size of Max’s office. There are four bedrooms but I’ve only ever been in one, the master bedroom which has one of the three bathrooms. There’s a kitchen somewhere but I’m not a great one for cooking so I’ve never gone looking for it.

  The bedroom is like something out of Arabian Nights, silk-lined walls and a sort of tent-like canopy over the bed and all the furniture is gilded with little twiddly bits on the ends and there’s a huge mirror
on the wall opposite the end of the bed. I think Herbie did it as a joke, so I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of mentioning it. Anyway, I’ve only slept there a dozen or so times, before or after laying down a disc. Tonight I cannot sleep. I am lying on my back, naked under the black silk sheet, looking up into the silver canopy above my head. It’s like lying under a rocket.

  I’m trying to push the noise out of my head but it won’t go, there’s a buzzing sound as if there’s a tormented fly trapped in my skull and the sound of waves washing onto a stony beach. Once or twice I manage to quieten my mind down but I still don’t drift off to sleep, I remain trapped in an uncomfortable limbo, too bodily tired to go out or read and too restless to dive into the black void of sleep.

  There’s a bump at the end of the king size bed and I feel Ruth walk along the sheet, placing each paw carefully so as not to step on me. The bed rocks with each step she takes until her head is directly over mine. She blinks her eyes slowly and licks the end of my nose with the roughness of her tongue. Her breath smells vaguely meaty.

  ‘Can’t sleep, huh?’ she says. She smiles at me, then arches her back up and stretches from her nose to the tip of her stub of a tail, clenching and unclenching her claws before dropping down next to me, her head turned sideways and resting on my chest, tucked under my chin. At full stretch she’s almost as long as I am and I feel her warmth right down the edge of my body. I put my arm around her and she cuddles up next to me, purring loudly.

  ‘You’re worried?’ she asks. ‘About tomorrow?’

  ‘Today,’ I correct her. ‘It’s two in the morning. Yeah, I’m worried.’

  ‘You’ll be okay,’ she says. ‘They’ll stop the disc before the dangerous bit, and you know what you’re doing. You’re not some low grade technician, you’re a Dreamer. If there is anything, you’ll see it coming.’

  ‘The three Dreamers didn’t.’

  ‘They didn’t know what they were looking for.’