One of Us. Michael Marshall Smith

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СКАЧАТЬ way as dreams. They can't be erased, because they are a function of something that has happened in the real world. They can merely be blanked or stored somewhere else, on a temporary or permanent basis, and doing so is absolutely and completely illegal.

      For a start, it means that polygraphs don't work. If a suspect genuinely has no memory of committing a crime, fooling the lie detector is a breeze. In a way, it isn't even deception. As far as the guy's concerned, the incident has never happened.

      Plus this: people are their memories. What has happened is what you are. If you remove the childhood incidents where someone learnt right from wrong, you end up with a guy who's kind of difficult to deal with. He just doesn't care. Such people don't understand why they shouldn't steal, or rape, or murder – and that makes them better at it. In the unlikely event they do get caught, another memory dump just before the polygraph will blank that line of evidence straight away.

      A test case eighteen months before had settled the issue. A freelance proxy dreamer who'd agreed to carry a criminal's memory of a certain event during the trial was sentenced to two life terms – exactly half what the real culprit would have received had he been convicted.

      In other words, memories weren't a trade with prospects, and I said as much to Stratten. He heard me out, and when I'd ground to a halt, he let a silence settle. After it had gone so long that it seemed like what I'd said had been to another person on some other day, he began.

      ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The caretaking of criminal recall is illegal.’

      ‘Good,’ I said affably. ‘That's settled then. Where do I pick up my new receiver?’

      ‘However,’ Stratten continued, as if I'd said nothing at all, ‘the memories I'm referring to do not relate to illegal activities. I'm talking about trivial things, and only temporary transferrals.’

      ‘If they're that trivial, let the clients deal with them,’ I suggested. ‘And if it's only temporary, tell them to try a few beers instead. Nope, and no thank you. Also, no.’

      ‘Five thousand dollars a memory,’ he said. I stopped speaking before my mouth had even framed the next word. ‘The memory could be a single instant, an individual fact, and you'd never hold them for more than a week. Usually only a few hours. You could score a quarter million dollars over twelve months without breaking sweat. Plus you can still do the dreamwork.’

      He let that sink in for a while, and I thought about it. About pulling in seven figures a year. The last couple of years had been good, but wealth has a way of operating on a sliding scale. When you've bought all the stuff you can at your current level, you start noticing the things you still can't have. And start wanting them instead.

      Looked at another way: a couple years' work, some sensible investments, and I'd never have to lift a synapse again.

      ‘No,’ I said. I knew where I was, and I was doing okay.

      ‘You'll find the answer's “yes”,’ Stratten said, ‘when you ask me where you pick up your new receiver.’

      My mind was still dulled from the night's work, and I didn't get what he was driving at. I just fed him his line. ‘Where?’

      ‘Unless you accept my offer, you don't,’ he said. ‘You take memory work, or you're fired.’

      I stared at him. ‘You're a fucker, aren't you,’ I said.

      ‘I have heard that opinion expressed.’ His smile didn't waver, and I realized it wasn't a smile and probably never had been.

      I looked out the window for a while, more to keep him waiting than for any other reason. I understood now that Candy hadn't really liked me, and that she hadn't even been a Fed. She'd been nothing more than a manipulation tool, hired by Stratten. He would have known that I'd just woken up when he called, and that I'd be unable to judge the situation properly after a night full of heavy bonuses and bed-oriented frolicking. He was right. Candy had done her job well.

      In that moment I understood both that I didn't really have any idea of what Stratten was capable of, and that I just couldn't tell with women any more. I'm not sure which was worse.

      Stratten had me, and he knew it. Without dreamwork I was back on the streets. I had money squirrelled away, spinning round the tracks Quat had laid for it in the ether, but not enough. Too much of it had been pissed away.

      With memory work I could buy my own bar, if it came to it.

      ‘Okay,’ I said.

       Three

      At two-thirty in the morning I saw her, walking up the street towards a small hotel a couple blocks off the Boulevard. It was called the Nirvana Inn, but unless that ineffable plane has peeling paint on the outside and no room service after ten, I suspect the name was a bit of a misnomer. I was sitting in a diner opposite, drinking bad coffee and biding my time, and I recognized her immediately. It was Laura Reynolds. No question.

      This was the first time I'd seen someone I was caretaking for, and it felt disturbing, wrong. Like remembering you're dead, or seeing a doppelgänger who looks nothing like you. She was late twenties, thin and wired – trying to remember how to look like drift life after years of learning to forget. Her face was bony, pretty, intense. She walked like someone who'd spent most of the evening in a bar, and flash-lit by neon in the slanting rain she looked like a computer sprite which had suddenly found itself in the wrong video game, with no instructions.

      I sympathized, just for a moment. I felt pretty much the same way.

      ‘That's her, isn't it?’ said the clock, who was standing on the counter next to my cooling cup. I'd let it ride back with me in the car to LA. It seemed only fair.

      I nodded. ‘I owe you one.’ The clock had refused to tell me how he'd known where the woman was, saying it was a timepiece secret. I'd get it out of him sooner or later, but for the time being it didn't really matter. I'd found her.

      I stayed put for a while, in case the flunky I'd talked to in the hotel forgot the fifty I'd laid on him and told the woman someone was looking for her. When five minutes had passed without incident I slipped off my stool, stumbling slightly. I leaned on the counter for a moment, blinking rapidly and waiting for my head to clear.

      The clock looked up at me dubiously, still dabbing the mud off itself with a napkin and glass of water I'd acquired for it. ‘What are you going to do?’

      ‘Just watch me,’ I said, not really knowing. My first plan was to simply talk to her. Tell her that what she'd done was bad, and get her to take the memory back. I'm an eternal optimist. If that didn't work, then it was going back into her head by force. Either way, she was coming with me. I had to get her in the same room as my receiver, and get hold of a transmitter from somewhere – hence my call to Quat. If she needed persuading, I'd use the gun, but I wasn't going to pull it out in this diner. The homeboys holding up the counter all looked far tougher than me: one flash of my piece and my guess was they'd be packing bazookas. If they were on contract I'd probably be okay, but if they were freelance they might just whack me speculatively and see if anyone was interested in paying after the fact. The sad thing about my life is that some people might well be. I slipped the clock in my pocket, left a couple of dollars by my cup, and left.

      It was cold outside, and I took a second to lay a perfunctory СКАЧАТЬ