What You Make It: Selected Short Stories. Michael Marshall Smith

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      I called the first few lines of the first file onto the screen, and saw that it too had come from [email protected]. Then, reaching shakily for a cigarette, I downloaded the rest. When my connection was over I slowly stitched the text files together and then booted up the viewer.

      It was Jeanette, again. Wincing slightly, hating myself for having access to photos of her under these circumstances when I had no right to know what they might show, I looked briefly at first one and then the other.

      j2.gif looked as if it had been taken immediately after the first I'd seen. It showed Jeanette, still sitting on the arm of the chair. She was undoing the front of her top, and had got as far as the third button. Her head was down, and I couldn't see her face. Trembling slightly from a combination of emotions, I looked at j3.gif. Her top was now off, showing a flat stomach and a dark blue lacy bra. She was steadying herself on the chair with one arm, and her position looked uncomfortable. She was looking off to one side, away from the camera, and when I saw her face I thought I had the answer to at least one question. She didn't look very happy. She didn't look as if she was having fun.

      She didn't look as if she wanted to be doing this at all.

      I stood up suddenly and paced around the room, unsure of what to do. If she hadn't been especially enthralled about having the photos taken in the first place, I couldn't believe that Jeanette condoned or even knew about their presence on the net. Quite apart from anything else, she wasn't that type of girl, if that type of girl indeed existed at all.

      This constituted some very clear kind of invasion by her boyfriend, something that negated any rights he may have felt he had upon her. But what could I do about it?

      I copied the two files onto a floppy, along with j1.gif, and threw them off my hard disk. It may seem like a small distinction to you, but I didn't want them on my main machine. It would have seemed like collusion.

      I got up the next morning with no more than a mild headache, and before I left for work decided to quickly log onto the net. There were no more pictures, but there was something that made me very angry indeed. Someone had posted up a message whose total text was the following.

      ‘Re: j-pictures {f}: EXCELLENT! More pleeze!’.

      The pictures had struck a chord with some nameless net-pervert, and they wanted to see some more.

      I spent the whole morning trying to work out what to do. The only way I could think of broaching the subject would involve mentioning the alt.binaries.pictures.erotica group itself, which would be a bit of a nasty moment – I wasn't keen on revealing the fact that I was a nameless net-pervert myself. I hardly got a chance to talk to her all morning anyway, because she was busy on the phone. She also seemed a little tired, and little disposed to chat on the two occasions we found ourselves in the kitchen together.

      It felt as if parts of my mind were straining against each other, pulling in different directions. If she didn't know about it, it was wrong, and she should be put in the picture. If I told her, however, she'd never think the same of me again. There was a chance, of course, that the problem might go away: despite the net-loser's request, the expression on Jeanette's face in j3.gif made it seem unlikely there were any more pictures. And ultimately the whole situation probably wasn't any of my business, however much it felt like it was.

      In the event, I missed the boat. About 4.30, I emerged from a long and vicious argument with the server software to discover that Jeanette had left for the day. ‘A doctor's appointment’. In most of the places I've worked that phrase translates directly to: ‘A couple of hours off from work, obviously not spent at the doctor's’, but that didn't seem to be the general impression at the VCA. She'd probably just gone to the doctor's. Either way she was no longer in the office, and I was slightly ashamed to find myself relaxing now that I could no longer talk to her.

      At 8.30 that evening, after my second salad of the week, I logged on and checked the group again. There was nothing there. I fretted and fidgeted around the apartment for a few hours, and then tried again at 11.00. This time I found two more: j4.gif, and j5.gif, both from the anonymous address.

      In the first, Jeanette was standing. She was no longer wearing her skirt, and her long legs led up to underwear that matched the bra I'd already seen. She wasn't posing for the picture. Her hands were on her hips, and she looked angry. In j5 she was leaning back against the arm of the chair, and no longer wearing her bra. Her face was blank.

      I stared at the second picture for a long time, mind completely split in two. If you ignored the expression on her face, she looked gorgeous. Her breasts were small but perfectly shaped, exactly in proportion to her long, slender body. It was, undeniably, an erotic picture. Except for her face, and the fact that she obviously didn't want to be photographed, and the fact that someone was doing it anyway. Not only that, but broadcasting it to the planet.

      I decided that enough was enough. After a while I came up with the best that I could. I loaded up my email package, and sent a message to [email protected]. The double-blind principle the server operated on meant that the recipient wouldn't know where it had come from, and that was fine by me. The message was this …

      ‘I know who you are.’

      It wasn't much, but it was something. The idea that someone out there could know his identity might be enough to stop him. It was only a stop-gap measure, anyway. I now knew I had to do something about the situation. It simply wasn't on.

      And I had to do it soon. When I checked the next morning there were no more pictures, but two messages from people who'd downloaded them. ‘Keep ’em cumming!’ one wit from Japan had written. Some slob from Texas had posted in similar vein, but added a small request: ‘Great, but pick up the pace a little. I want to see more FLESH!’

      All the way to work I geared myself up to talking to Jeanette, and I nearly punched the wall when I heard she was out at a venue meeting for the whole morning and half the afternoon. I got rid of the morning by concentrating hard on one of her databases, wanting to bring at least something positive into her life. I know it wasn't much, but all I know is computers, and that's the best that I could do.

      At last three o'clock rolled round and Jeanette reappeared in the office. She seemed tired and a little preoccupied, and sat straight down at her desk to work. I loitered in the main office area, willing people to fuck off out of it so hard my head started to ache. I couldn't get anywhere near the topic if there were other people around. It would be hard enough if we were alone.

      Finally, bloody finally, she got up from her desk and went into the kitchen. I got up and followed her in. She smiled faintly and vaguely on seeing me, and, noticing that she had a bandage on her right forearm, I used that to start a conversation. A small mole, apparently, hence the visit to the doctor. I let her finish that topic, keeping half an eye out to make sure that no one was approaching the kitchen.

      ‘I bought a camera today,’ I blurted, as cheerily as I could. It wasn't great, but I wanted to start slowly. She didn't respond for a moment, and then looked up, her face expressionless.

      ‘Oh yes?’ she said, eventually. ‘What are you going to photograph?’

      ‘Oh, you know, buildings, landscape. Black and white, that kind ofthing.’ She nodded distantly, and I ran out of things to say.

      I ran out because in retrospect the topic didn't lead anywhere, but I stopped for another reason too. I stopped because as she turned to pick up the kettle, the look on her face knocked the wind out of me. The combination of unhappiness and loneliness, the sense of helplessness. It struck me again that despite the anger in her СКАЧАТЬ