Tea From an Empty Cup (18 page)

The pages flipped and came to rest on a picture of a wooden nickel; a mahogany nickel, if Konstantin wasn’t mistaken. She hesitated, and then said, ‘No. Try again.’ The pages flipped again and kept flipping, as if in a very high wind. Because there
was
a wind, she realized, coming from somewhere down in the old train tunnel. She could feel it and she could hear music again as well, except it was much thinner sounding, just one instrument, either a guitar or a very good synthesizer.

‘Pause,’ she told the book; it closed quietly for her and vanished. She climbed over one of the turnstiles, paused in case anyone wanted to arrest her for fare-jumping, and then walked out onto the platform to look around.

The man with the guitar was to her left, sitting cross-legged at the place where the platform ended and the tunnel began. His head was tilted back against the wall and his eyes were closed, so that he seemed to be in a state of deep concentration as he played. Konstantin wondered if he were going to sing, and then wondered exactly what kind of strange kick a person could get from spending billable time in AR alone in a vacant subway station, playing a musical instrument for nobody.

None, she decided. ‘Resume,’ she said, staring at the guitar player. The book returned to a visible state, pages flipping. ‘
Empty
subway,
downtown
.’

The pages fluttered to rest and she was looking at a bottle cap. CREAM SODA. It swelled up from the paper into a three-dimensional object and rolled out of the book to fall on the tile at her feet. Down by the tunnel, the guitar-player paused and turned his face to smile at her. His eyes were still closed. The lights changed, becoming just a bit warmer in color as the legend NOW ENTERING NEXT HIGHER LEVEL ran along the bottom of her vision like a late-breaking news bulletin on
Police Blotter
.

People were all over the platform, standing in groups, sitting on the turnstiles, grouping together down on the tracks, picking their way over the rails to the opposite platform, where there were even more people. At first, she saw only the same types she had seen on the shore in Shantih Love’s AR log. After a minute or so, however, she discovered that if she didn’t look directly at people too quickly, they would come into focus as characters far less clichéd and more bizarre.

She stayed where she was, keeping her gaze lowered. The light seemed to be changing, growing even softer and warmer, but she didn’t look up at it, or at anything else. The feeling of things altering around her came to her as a sensation of the air rearranging, as a plume of smoke or steam might coil and contort, reshaping itself without dispersing.

When she finally did look up, she was still on a subway platform, but it was a very hospitable subway, all the dirt gone or metamorphosed into glitter. The rails had become gleaming chrome rods laid on smooth, flawless onyx. Growing up out of the tile floor on the platform were large metal
things
that seemed to be mimicking plants, except at a rate a million times faster if still graceful. Metal knobs became branches bearing things that suggested a mating between blades and viscera, and flowered with blossoms that looked sexual to Konstantin without containing any elements that she normally associated with erotica.
Rorschach strikes again
, she thought, and almost chuckled in spite of herself.

More people had appeared from somewhere. Or was it just that more were becoming visible? She looked up slowly. Holos were moving among the people in the subway, some of them floating through the air – people, creatures, symbols, words, some animated, some drifting, some completely stationary but fading in and out of sight in a way that somehow made Konstantin think she would have been able to see them for a longer time if she had been on a higher level. She was sure that she might have been able to see them
better
, certainly, from a higher level, and found herself wondering exactly how she might manage that, since she didn’t have to worry about a personal on-line bill swelling to the size of the national debt.

Very seductive, this on-line stuff, she thought. Now she could see how easy it was to get caught up in things here, getting
stuff
. Going places, curiosity driving you on. Of course, curiosity had killed the cat – she touched the slightly ragged skin of Shantih Love’s throat. Of course, the cat could well be alive on eight other levels.

A holo designed to look like an old-fashioned neon sign drifted over to her at eye-level.
Welcome to Waxx24, where Reality goes to have a good time
. As she watched, the words sailed away from her, passing through an equally vaporous attendee wearing the body of an adolescent boy with the head of an antlered stag. If that really
was
an attendee, she thought, remembering the strange guy in white face and the gang that hadn’t really been there. Maybe some of these people were no more than phantoms that other people carried around for company. Were phantom friends another example of AR
stuff?

A seven-foot-tall woman whose hip-length auburn hair seemed to have a life of its own looked down at her through opera glasses. ‘What sort of a creature are you?’ she asked in a voice so deep that it was more vibration than audible.

‘I think I’ve forgotten.’ Konstantin winced. The ’suit was reminding her
now
that it was full coverage, and that Shantih Love would have responded strongly to this woman. It was as if her body had decided to follow the example of the woman’s hair, which was curling and uncurling in shining, supple tendrils along her arms and her torso, and enjoy a life of its own. Her ex probably would have laughed at her and told her that it was no less than what she deserved for stealing someone else’s life.

I didn’t
steal
it. He lost it and I found it
.

Yeah, well. Finders weepers.

Konstantin wasn’t sure if having an imaginary argument with an ex after a breakup might not be even worse than having the breaking-up argument, but she was fairly sure that it was completely counterproductive to have it both on billable AR time and during a murder investigation. If that was what this really was, and not just a massive waste of time all around.

‘Do you know Body Sativa?’ she asked the tall woman.

‘Yes.’ The woman gazed at her a moment longer and walked away.

The people down on the tracks were dancing, or at least moving more or less in time to something that sounded like the rhythmic smashing of glass on metal. Konstantin hopped down off the platform onto the tracks and walked among them. Most of the people down here seemed to be affecting what her ex had called rough and shoddy sugar-plum. Konstantin had to admit that she found the look somewhat appealing, in a rough and shoddy way.

In this light, the ankle-length gown Shantih Love had preferred seemed to have more of a red tone, much more than she had thought. Even stranger was the texture – it looked like velvet but now it felt more like sandpaper, at least on the outside. Inside, the feeling was all but nonexistent; the hotsuit was full-coverage but not so complete in the detailing that she felt the gown swinging and brushing against her ankles. For that, she supposed, you had to have some kind of custom job.

But at least she never tripped on the hem, Konstantin thought as she moved among the dancers, still holding the map. The map had not changed, even though she was supposedly up on a higher level; no picture of Body Sativa appeared, not so much as a written description, or a hint as to which platform Konstantin could find her dancing on. Perhaps Body Sativa didn’t dance. She was just going to have to look around, see if she could get anyone to talk to her. And perhaps, she thought, remembering how the tall woman had looked at her and walked away, perhaps just asking a plain old straightforward question wasn’t the way to go about things.

Finding out what was, however, wouldn’t be easy. The people down on the tracks seemed honestly unaware of her, as if she were invisible. Which would seem to indicate she had found another level within a level. Levels within levels and boxes within boxes. Was there any purpose to it, she wondered – any
real
purpose other than to intrigue people into spending more billable hours solving the puzzle?

She moved over to a man who was a few inches shorter than she was. His idea of rough and shoddy was very old and very worn crushed velvet in a shade of blue that Konstantin’s ex had always called ‘heavenly,’ tunic and pants, almost like a Hindu. In the midst of everything else, its tastefulness was all but out of place.

Konstantin maneuvered around him, trying to catch his eye, but it was impossible. She might have been watching a holo of the man rather than the man himself. Perhaps she was? She tried putting her hand on his shoulder in a friendly but substantial way.

There was no actual contact that she could feel, but
some
sort of contact was made – a stream of heavenly blue water shot out from his shoulder, made a circuit around both of them, and flowed off into the shadows overhead. Almost immediately afterward came a torrent of flying insects, bees, hornets, and dragonflies, their tiny bodies increasing in size as they emerged from the man’s shoulder not in a way that suggested they were literally growing but more as if they were approaching from a distance. Konstantin blinked at the dragonflies. Strange that they would be among bees and hornets, as they were completely harmless, not stinging bugs at all. Maybe it was all looks and design – their long, slender bodies and narrow wings made a nice contrast to the others.

She realized that the man could see the water and the insects; he was watching them with an expression of surprised delight. As he turned his face in her general direction, something white began to issue from between his lips, rising into the air like a balloon.

In the next moment, she saw that it
was
a balloon – a good old-fashioned word balloon.
Would you care to chat? Press one: YES NO

Konstantin reached up and pushed the word
YES
with her index finger.

There was no warning and no transition; she lowered her arm to find herself standing alone in a room not quite as big as the one where the kid had died. To her right were a small round table and two chairs. In the center of the table was an open fan dividing the surface of the table in half; the design on her side was a portrait of a Japanese woman in traditional costume playing a guitar-like musical instrument. A Geisha?

The man she had approached melted into existence on the other side of the table. Obviously able to see her now, he smiled and gestured at the one other chair in the room.

‘Well, this really
is
an honor,’ he said, and his voice sounded just slightly tanky, as if he were speaking from the bottom of an enormous metal container. ‘I had a feeling that if I just managed to stay on long enough, this would be my lucky night. So here I am, singled out by the legendary and redoubtable Shantih Love for the chat booth. What do you have in mind for me, Shantih? Whatever it is, I’m completely yours. I surrender.’ He leaned an elbow on the table and rested his chin in his hand, giving her a dreamy smile so adoring it frightened her. ‘Fill me where I am empty, empty me where I am full, roughen me where I am smooth, smooth out my rough places. I know the drill.’ He sighed happily.

Oh my god
. Konstantin took a breath. ‘You know me?’

‘Do I know you. Ask me anything.
Anything
.’ He sat forward a little.

‘Where do you know me from?’

‘Ferocious Windows, 30th Zentury, Body&Soul, and, of course, Waxx24. Those are your favorite haunts, though you’ve been spotted at others from time to time.’ The man laughed a little. ‘Pretty toff, huh? Ask me a hard one.’

‘What are those?’

‘What are what?’

‘Ferocious Body, Waxx24, the others.’

The man’s expression went from bewildered to suspicious. ‘Is this a joke?’

Konstantin tried to look stern. ‘Am I laughing? Answer the question.’

‘But –’ He let out a breath. ‘Well, we’re
in
Waxx24. And it’s not Ferocious Body, it’s –’

‘Body Sativa,’ Konstantin said. ‘Bring her to me at once.’

Now the man looked aggrieved. ‘What’s got into you?’

‘Did I tell you to ask questions when I ask questions?’

He looked at her from under his brows. ‘If they let us hunt up people on your side I’d have tracked
you
down a lot sooner than this.’

‘If
they
let you? What
they
is
that?
’ Konstantin winced.

‘Are you gonna
do
something with me?’ the man demanded. ‘Or are you just gonna waste my billable time?’

‘What do you want me to do with you?’ asked Konstantin, trying to sound both authoritative and accommodating.

He sat back and studied her for a few moments and Konstantin knew that she had fumbled. ‘
You’re
not Shantih Love,’ he said finally.

‘Don’t tell me who I’m not.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Con somebody else, if you can. I know all about Shantih Love, I know all the stories. Shantih Love doesn’t waste time talking. For future reference, Citizen Wannabe, or whoever you are, brush up on your tantric yoga and
Kama Sutra
, although I hear that Shantih Love’s imagination is one of those things you
can’t
study for.’ He looked to one side. ‘Excuse me, I got some consumer-warning to take care of concerning an impersonator –’

‘Fail,’ Konstantin said imperiously, turning her head as if speaking to an invisible assistant.

The guy froze halfway out of his chair. ‘What?’

‘I said,
fail
, you fool, what did you think I said?’ Konstantin refused to look at him. ‘Do you think Shantih Love would just swoop down on
any
pretty face and carry him off to Nirvana?
Everyone
must pass an initial interview test of my devising before I empty them where they are full and so forth. Sometimes they know it’s an interview, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes I come in disguise and sometimes I don’t. Go ahead, go out there, warn all the consumers. You’ll only be advertising the fact that Shantih Love gave you a try-out and you failed. Hold your head high.’