Assassin
            a short story 
            by Alison Sinclair 
    



"I think I've got an assassin," Glad greeted me when I arrived at the precinct 
that Wednesday morning. I was tempted to say not before it got me, but I didn't. 

Glad was pleased with herself: The mood beads in her crinkled black hair pulsed 
yellow and green. I leaned over her shoulder and murmured, "Is that avaricious 
yellow, I see." She gave me her wide-mouthed grin. The beads sparkled with the 
swirling blue and white of amusement overlaid with friendship, overlaid with a 
shimmer of lust. 
"Keep your mind on your work, and off your layover," I advised. 
"Shit," said Glad, and reached up beneath her hair and popped the connection 
between sensors and microprocessor. The beads faded to dull lilac but her blush 
glowed. I pretended not to notice. "What have you got?" 
What she had was a stub of code with enough path info to tell her which 
neuronode was being addressed. "Moodnode," she said. 
"Source?" 
"A PC." 
"Bootleg," I said. "Downloaded from one of the Joynets. Let their security 
handle it." 
"Coroner's office sent it over," Glad said quietly. "Woman took a header off a 
balcony. Not much left of her headware, so they checked out her PC. Last week 
it'd have been suicide; this week they've got cadets--" 
"Don't remind me." One of ours had locked up our system twice already. 
"And some bright pixel thought this was suspicious. Strangely enough he's right. 
This wasn't chewed up by the user's endonucleases; ends aren't right." 
"I take your word for it." 
She sighed profoundly. One of the things I like about Glad is she doesn't rely 
on beads to communicate for her. 
"This isn't any one of the user's--she had nine." 
"Nine ... paranoia rules." 
"Even paranoids have enemies ... And it isn't a Thrillnet one; I've got the 
system checking the other nets she accessed--she was heavily into it, 
FantasyNets, ThrillNets, JoyNets, LoveNets--those I can get any info on. We've 
got to do something about those bastards." 
"They won't admit their security isn't perfect. Lose customer confidence." 
"On the ThrillNets? They're not into safety; I'd be hard put to tell the 
difference between a virus and some legit ThrillWare." 
Ouch, I thought. "I still don't see why you think it's an assassin and not just 
an odd bit of bootleg code." 
"Because--" then she sighed. "Just a gut feeling. One, it's addressed to the 
mood circuits. Two, it isn't the fragment you'd expect for a legit program 
chewed up by the perscom programs or the nets. Three, it's off a suicide. I've 
sent out for records from other suicides--" 
"Kiss off your social life for the next century." 
"Give me some credit, Mouse. I'm looking for unexplained suicides of people with 
active mood inplants." 
"You think such a creature exists. People don't go for mood mod and synthesis 
because they're happy with their lives and want to get happier--" No, I thought, 
let's leave that. "So what you think is that the assassin fed our lady a downer, 
and she jumped." 
"Or upper. Send the correct set of overrides to a mood implant, and bang, 
instant florid schizophrenia. She may have thought she was a bird. Or the room 
was on fire. Or God was telling her she was an angel.... Whatever." 
"I'm surprised," I said, after a moment, "you found it." 
"So am I. Somebody's been careless, or there was some inhibitor in this PC's 
system." 
"Well, live right and maybe the dAIty'll smile on you."



Glad and I lunched in The Caverns, the developer's answer to city-center space 
limitation, five levels, going down. We patronize a salad joint called Charon's 
on the Styx--wonderful soup, don't ask where they grow the greens. Over salad 
and soup we talked about life, the universe, men and everything. Glad had met 
someone new; or someone else, anyway. Everything she said fitted a pattern; it 
wasn't going to last. Glad knew how to pick them for a short good time and no 
lasting regrets. I envied her. My layover, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, had been 
one long argument, latest installment of an even longer argument. Errel had 
become convinced he was missing out, careerwise, relationshipwise--he wanted to 
have input nodes implanted, mood and memory nodes. Fine; it was his brain and 
his bank account. But he wanted me along. He talked about our relationship; I 
talked about my work. I knew I wasn't telling him the truth and I had the 
feeling he wasn't telling me everything, so it went round and round. 
"The latest," I told Glad, "is that now he's started talking about changing his 
name back to Joshua, and going home for a visit." I pushed a slice of tomato to 
the side of the plate: the blacklighting in Charon's on the Styx picked up a 
faintly iridescent, unhealthy sheen on its skin. Probably badly washed. Glad's 
eyes and teeth flashed purple-white. 
"Home as in West." 
"That's right. Talks about his parents getting older. Mellowing. I bit my 
tongue. Nothing he's ever said to me suggested they'd be the type to mellow. The 
only way he'd get back--or half way back--would be by casting himself as 
cautionary parable for the rest of his life." 
"What about the girl he was supposed to have married?" 
"Happily married, he understands. The innocent wonders how she can have any 
grudge." 
Glad nodded understanding. Sarah was the girl Errel who was Joshua was to have 
married, at the age of seventeen, until he glimpsed before him a life like his 
father's and grandfather's and great-grandfather's ... fifty, sixty, seventy 
years in a time-slipped enclave, punishing, denying, mortifying his curiosity. 
But even that he could have endured, he said, if he had not also seen himself in 
twelve years time laying righteous punishment on the back of a daughter or son 
into whom he had bred that curiosity. And so he had left a letter to his 
intended bride in the roadside postbox, amongst the letters of congratulation 
and best wishes, walked sixteen miles to the nearest monorail station, and with 
some of the money that should have started their married life, bought a one way 
rail ticket to the nearest city large enough to lose himself in. 
If she were happy now, I thought, she might forgive the marriage that had not 
happened, but what she would not forgive, I was sure, was what had happened, the 
humiliation, the weeks of hearing the story being told in whispers just out of 
her hearing. 
"Hell hath no fury," Glad commented, sharing my thought. "That doesn't go with 
his itch to be wired. What's brought this on?" 
"I wish I knew. He says it's got to do with work, but farmer's advocacy he can 
do as well unwired as wired, and the people he's doing it for trust him more for 
it. He's said it himself." 
"Got his eye on another job?" 
"Not that I know." 
"Do you think he'd stay out West?" 
"Not under their conditions." 
"Yeah, I know how he feels," Glad said. "I mean, Naturalists aren't as fanatical 
as some of the religious sects, but I'm always aware of having to screen 
everything just before I say it. And still I resent them a little for the 
fantasy world they live in, their choice, and giving me none--I mean, even my 
name, for Christ's sake. Galadriel." She sighs. "All the accommodation seems to 
have to be on my side. But I wouldn't be without them. I know how he feels." 
I, I thought, do not. But perhaps that is because all the emotion in me 
designated for parents is directed towards, concentrated on, the suddenly frail, 
suddenly old man in a ward at Beth Israel. "Are we going to see D'Inde tonight?" 

"Of course. It's Wednesday." 



I arrived home later than usual, and found Errel lighting up the inside of the 
hall with anger and impatience. I hadn't seen this particular headdress before; 
it looked spiky and mildly barbaric. 
I said, "Before you start, this is Wednesday, and on Wednesdays I go and visit 
the Old Man when I get done." 
"You couldn't bring yourself to make an exception just this once. I did ask." 
"And I said no," I said, and pushed past him, into our bedroom. 
"Particularly not for my friends," he said, following. "You've made it 
abundantly clear you weren't interested in going." 
With me and you and a bed for two, the air was getting squashed. "Errel, just 
let me get dressed." 
"You call that dressed," as I lifted down my thermocolour pantsuit from its bin. 

"Yes, I call it dressed." I laid it down, and sat beside it on the bed. I was 
not going to strip with him in the room in this mood; it felt too much like 
nakedness. "Maybe it's not chic amongst the banking set, but I'm not amongst the 
banking set; I'm just your arm accessory for the evening." 
"Les," he changed tack, "Lester, just do it for me. Wear your lights." 
"I do not feel like wearing my lights in a roomful of strangers. Particularly 
after this afternoon." 
"The Old Man?" 
That 'Old Man' made me set my teeth. One of the reasons we had come to be in 
this room together was Errel had always had exquisite judgment in the taking of 
liberties. Lately, though, his judgment seemed to have coarsened. Or maybe I was 
just oversensitive; even his squad used to call D'Inde The Old Man. 
The problem was, then it hadn't been a joke, and now it wasn't. 
I put a hand down on my pantsuit leg, and watched an aura of blue grow around 
it, as my body heat reached it. 
"Every time I go there I have to hold back from hitting the therapist who 
burbles on about how much they've been able to do for him. All I can think about 
is the D'Inde I knew wouldn't have let them wire up his brain." 
The blue developed a slight tinge of green around my fingers and palm. 
"He'd have preferred to have been a vegetable? Or dead?" 
"How should I know?" People who picked up that I wasn't thrilled at the miracles 
of modern medical technology kept asking me that. I didn't have an answer. The 
only person who could answer that was a man who no longer was. The green became 
a distinct band, within the blue. 
"One of the worst things about it all," I heard myself say, "is purely selfish. 
That man knew things about me that aren't even on record, that don't even exist 
in any form other than in my memory and in his. Now that's gone, because they 
can only give him back what's on record. I feel as though part of me has 
vanished along with part of him." 
Like the person I used to be, before I became Lester. 
"Well," Errel said, sliding his hand down my shoulder, "maybe some day you'll 
want to tell someone else these things." 
I did not know whether to let myself melt or be furious; to avoid the decision, 
I stood up and returned the thermosuit to its bin and pulled down a plain black 
catsuit and mood-bead veil, small but pricy, because of the EEG circuitry. I saw 
Errel's smile framed by indigo. "You are down," he said, softly. 
"I told you I was," I said, unable to prevent myself from stressing told. 
"No, don't take them off," he said. "I want to apologise, and I'd like to 
see--if it takes." 
"We used to be able to do that without light-effects." 
"We thought we did," he said. "I've had the feeling that maybe we were--maybe we 
didn't understand each other as well as we thought." 
I kept my eyes on his face, not on the slivers of yellow crowning his head. 
"What do you mean?" 
"Les, I've always wanted to know what I missed; I thought you understood that." 
"I get 'planted, I go on the Nets, I can't work Virus-squad any more." 
"We don't have to go on the Nets." 
"You'll want to know what comes next, won't you?" I was distracted by a colour 
change at my peripheral vision, green changing to yellow, on its way to red, if 
I were not so--so what? The beads could only indicate simple emotion, and mine 
were anything but. The yellow fixed, and I watched his eyes shift from one side 
to the other, waiting for them to change, and then reached up and janked the 
whole apparatus off. "Now watch my face," I told him. "And listen: I'll tell you 
what I feel. I'm wondering what happened to the man who moved in with me, 
because I don't think it has anything to do with proper understandings or not. 
I'm not standing in the way of your getting yourself implanted, but don't 
pressure me to follow and make out that our relationship will be nothing if we 
can't see each others' moods in lights and couple through a computer. I think 
it's been good between us, and I'd like to keep thinking it's been good, so 
leave if it's not enough, but don't try and trample my memories on the way out!" 

"If it's your work--" 
"It's not my work," I said, before I thought better of it, but I'd got so far 
into the habit of being truthful with this man that I'd only just started not 
regretting the things I hadn't told him. Fortunately he was not listening. 
"Forces in Chicago and LA interface; they've got security circuits nobody could 
touch. This is a backwater here--but things could change, if people like you 
stop resisting--" 
"People like me." 
"D'Inde's people. He's been the fanatic about keeping cops clear of the 
interface. Now he's gone--I'm sorry, Lester, but he's gone; I know you loved the 
Old Man--he was your mentor and father figure, but he's gone, and the situation 
he based his opinion on is history, and when people's opinions are based on 
history, they just become prejudice." 
"Not prejudice," I said, suddenly exhausted. "We're investigating a 
suicide--possible assassin virus. Something came through the ThrillNets, 
scrambled this woman's implants, and she took a dive off her balcony. Maybe 
she's not the only one." 
And then I was very glad that my net of beads hung dimly in my hand, for I 
surely would have responded to what I saw in his. Just for an instant they 
turned white, under powerful emotion--fear? anger?--and then back to yellow. His 
face showed nothing; quite possibly he did not know what had happened. 
"Who's on it?" he said. "Who picked it up?" 
But for that flash I would have told him it was Glad. "Somebody new; a real 
bright pixel. Jepthe Levin. You'll be hearing about him." 
He smiled. "I'd watch your back, then."



Glad called me in to an interview booth on Friday--soundproofed, screened and 
monitored. 
"We've known each other a long time," she began, seeming at a loss. She was 
beadless; her face was strained, looking down at interlocked hands which pulled 
against each other. "If it had been anyone else but you, I wouldn't be doing 
this, but we've worked together and we're friends, and maybe there is another 
explanation--" She stopped, gathering herself. 
"Remember you asked about the assassin and I told you I had nothing; I was 
lying--" another deep breath, "until I could decide what to do. Then I thought 
there are two people who could use that node, and if it weren't you, you had to 
be warned. And then I started checking into your records more closely, and I 
didn't know what to think--" 
"You've left out something I need to know before this makes sense." 
She glanced at me again. Finding me too calm, I thought. 
"Oh." She said, "Yes--I think I found the thread for the assassin, and traced it 
back. One of the originating nodes was your home PC." 
On actually hearing it, I felt much less surprised, and much sicker than I 
thought I would. The sickness showing in my face made Glad relax slightly. 
"You said 'one'," I said after a while. 
"I haven't--I haven't traced the others back yet. I've been distracted. I've 
been looking into your records." 
She paused, significantly, watching me. 
I took it straight: "I hope you appreciate art. The Chief and I spent days on 
those records." She stared. "Try the name Julie Beaumont for the other half of 
the story. Don't take the date of death as literal." 
"How about you tell me?" The cop again. 
"I'm probably going to have forgotten details. It's been almost twenty years, 
and I wasn't in very good shape, then." Glad's face hardened slightly. I didn't 
care; it might be an excuse for discrepancies between what I told her and what 
the records showed, but should appreciate what one could do with records from 
what D'Inde and I had done. 
"Julie Beaumont was Juvenile S in the case trials that restricted mood implants 
into juveniles; you'll remember that case." 
She nodded. 
"I was Julie Beaumont." 
I'd said that more for effect than anything, but immediately saw that Glad had 
not until that moment realized the connection. She stared at me. "But--" I 
waited. She threw herself back into her chair and whistled through her teeth. 
"Now there's something I need to know to make sense of this." 
"Alright. Julie Beaumont: fourteen years old, gifted and underprivileged; a 
troublemaker. School is understaffed and overcrowded, parents overextended with 
a disabled child needing ongoing therapy. Mood circuits are ideal for cases like 
this, the psychiatrists say. Quite cost effective, can be monitored through 
computer. Implants for a couple of years, until the upheavals of adolescence are 
over. Everything goes swimmingly until Juvenile S meets an older man who logs 
her onto a ThrillNet." And suddenly I am no longer narrating, but remembering. 
Remembering him telling me what a lucky girl I was, and here's how to bribe the 
policeman. Feeling hands tickling the back of my neck where only the doctors' 
touched before. Feeling the little thud in the skull as the lead went in. And 
then--There aren't words for it. Pleasure beyond description. I used up most of 
his allotment for the month, he said, while he simply sat and stared at my face. 
He'd never seen a human being look so happy. It made him feel strange, he said; 
made him understand that trying to make someone happy could be more than just an 
expected gesture with an expected return. 
"Nowadays, after the controversy over her case--and others--therapeutic implants 
are metered; nowadays this couldn't happen, or so they say. Because she was poor 
and gifted and resentful she had learned how to tap into nets. The thrill of 
doing, of pitting her skill and intelligence against the minds of the 
privileged--almost as good as any high from the Nets. 
"But her understanding of neurochemistry was nil. She did not appreciate 
feedback mechanisms, that overstimulated circuits become less sensitive, 
understimulated ones more so. Classic addiction, complete with withdrawal. She 
needs the nets to live. But depression impairs performance, impairs her ability 
to break in. One day after six hours of nothing, she cuts open her wrists 
instead." 
Glad was watching me silently, appalled. And I realized that if it were anyone 
else's story, my rendition would be appalling. The last part of the story, the 
part nobody knew, I told in my own voice: "There was a man there while I was 
recovering. I thought he was a psychiatrist and told him to go to Hell and I'd 
see him there. But he wasn't; he was a policeman. I asked if he was going to 
arrest me, and he said, probably not. He put me in my place by telling me 
bedtime stories about larceny, extortion, murder, terrorism; the great crime 
syndicates and families--Until the medics put a stop to it. I'll give those 
medics this much, they tidied up my neurochemistry nicely. It didn't hurt of 
course that after all the publicity there was all kinds of money suddenly 
available to pay for a prolonged course of pharmotherapy. Of course they didn't 
want their lovely work spoiled by some policeman who wasn't going to charge me 
but kept coming back. So one day he didn't come and I went home all ready for a 
fresh start, to get out of my grim surroundings the dull, honest way. Then I 
started going for college interviews. Getting asked when I was planning on 
implants... Being told: about curricula are being upgraded to utilize the 
ability to interface with databanks, about most professional jobs requiring 
basic implants, about loan schemes available as part of the total educational 
loan package ... money need be no object. I'd smile at that; it was the only 
thing I could find to smile at. You'll know." 
"I know," Glad said, quietly, eyes on my face. 
"No reputable surgeon would touch me, with my history; back then there was 
better than even chance I'd reject. Their faces'd change, and they'd say, very 
sorry, but--" Glad nodded. "I started small--hacking into college systems and 
making a minor nuisance of myself. Say dropping the first digit from file 
identifiers at random ... I'd make a round of public terminals--those tenner-fed 
ones they used to have--so I couldn't be traced. Then after a particularly 
degrading interview I turned an endocodase loose in that system." 
Glad whistled. 
"Next day I had a summons from D'Inde. I went along through sheer bravado and a 
determination to spit in somebody's face for the last time. By the time I left 
he'd offered me a job. He could see the interface virus problem 
arising--criminal and terrorist attacks directly through interfaces, and wanted 
to set up a unit of people who would be immune--because they weren't interfaced; 
keyboard and mouse people. I had the talent, and I was implant-proof. Problem 
was there was no way someone with my history would be approved with central. 
Julie Beaumont had to go." 
Glad said, "He took a big chance on you." 
"Oh," I said, "Not really. He was a better psychologist than any of the 
professionals. He knew what I needed, and made sure I got it until I grew up 
enough not to need it." 
"Les, with that history--" 
"Surely you can't believe I would be so clumsy as to use my home terminal--or, 
after all these years, start taking out Netters?" 
"I could think of two reasons. The Boss and Errel." 
I took a deep breath, slowly realizing that my candor had, if anything, cost me. 

"What's happened to the Boss, or Errel putting pressure on me to be implanted 
driving me off the deep end, you mean?" 
"Yes," Glad said simply. 
"How wonderful it is to have friends who have faith in you," I said, dryly. 
"Glad, I know something you don't know. I know I didn't do it. And I do not 
believe Errel would." 
"Look, Glad, he's sharing the spot for suspect number one, for the same reason. 
He was brought up as a fundamentalist--" 
"Which he rejected--" 
"Traumatically." 
"But hasn't he spoken about going back recently?" 
"I don't remember telling you that," I returned, very sharply, though I did; I 
wanted to see how she'd react to a direct challenge. She paused, looked at me, 
and said, "Lunch, last week." 
"Yes," I said, "I did. But I don't see how that pertains. For one thing, Errel's 
people aren't murderous. Their main concern is to save the souls of our own; as 
far as they're concerned, God will deal with the rest of us in his own sweet 
time." 
"Has anyone else used your PC?" 
I returned stare for stare. 
"No." 
"And threads are unique to their machine of origin." 
I didn't answer. 
"So it's either you or Errel." 
"Yes," I said, "Yes, alright, I'll accept that. Either Errel or I loaded it. 
Knowingly or unknowingly." 
"Unknowingly--you? Since when was your hygiene that bad?" 
"Look," I said. "You're showing a dangerous bias." 
"What should I have done? Reported you and had you investigated?" 
"By the book, yes. Just--take precautions, Glad. I'm not admitting anything, but 
don't tell me about them." 
She raised both eyebrows, but didn't say anything, so it was up to me to spell 
it out. "Either I'm responsible, and you will have to contend with me, or I'm 
not, and if I look into it--as surely you know I will--and I find trouble, that 
trouble could find its way back to you." 
She sorted through all the implications of that. "How long do I give you?" 
"Don't tell me that, either." 
"Anything I can do to help?" 
"No."



When the brass called me over for an in-person meeting that afternoon to confirm 
office rumours that I was being touted for D'Inde's job, I responded with a 
giggle of suppressed hysteria, which I hope they ascribed to surprise and 
delight. I did not go back to the squad office afterwards, but walked over to 
the Beth Israel to look in on D'Inde alone. He hadn't been doing well; I knew 
from the hospital record I'd hacked into that they had had to implant a 
pacemaker to control an arrhythmia, so that along with his brain, his heart was 
hooked up to the hospital mainframe. I sat down beside his bed, met his silent 
eyes, which always looked to me like burned almonds. I was almost used to his 
shrunken appearance, and the ash overlay on his brown skin, but I still couldn't 
stand the lost expression in those eyes. I didn't look at him as I talked. I 
told him about Glad's virus, about its origin, about my knowledge that I had not 
done it, and about what that meant. I told him it looked like the man I had 
loved for six years--wanting to go home and knowing it was impossible--had begun 
to kill. Thinking perhaps that he was buying back his innocence, buying his 
acceptance. I told him that Errel who had been Joshua might have gone mad with 
his irreconcilable worlds. I told D'Inde I understood how that could happen, and 
asked him if there was something I did not know, something that could be 
blinding me. It was like talking to a statue. Except when, at the end, I looked 
up. Statues do not cry. I knew then what I was going to do. 
Searching your own apartment is not easy--you know all the myriad nooks and 
cubbyholes where things may be hidden--least of all if you do not want to leave 
a mess that screams: I've been searched! I might as well not have bothered. I 
picked a lock on the bottom drawer in Errel's desk in our joint 'study'--a cop 
and a farmer's advocate don't make enough for a three bedroom--pulled it open, 
and saw a dot of light flash off my thumb as I reached in for the single disc I 
found there. The high tech equivalent of the old strand of hair. I had until 
Errel came home, no longer. 
I isolated our PC from the nets, took the hard drives off line and loaded the 
disc. The first thing that came up was a pair of lips, suggestively vertical, 
outlined in red. It was the last thing I expected. The lips swung round to 
horizontal, puckered, and in the pucker six silver dots appeared. Password 
needed--it figured. If I played around with it I might erase the disc; I'd wait 
for Errel. I considered going on with the search, but I had the feeling that if 
this were not what I wanted, it could be used as a lever to give me what I 
wanted. I set the disc aside and reconnected the hard drives, and started 
working on the other part of my plan. 
Errel had the grace to come home late--about twelve thirty. I'd just finished 
putting on the finishing touches when the intercom buzzed, and I had time to 
shut down the system and settle down in the living room with the disc on my lap 
and my gun down between the cushions when he opened the door. The gun down the 
side of the cushions was the easy part of my set up. But Errel, raised under the 
eye of an omniscient and unforgiving God, and scarcely less omniscient and 
unforgiving elders, took one look at the disc as I held it up, and I didn't need 
mood beads to see shock, guilt and dismay written all over him. 
For the second time that day, I almost cried. 
"Why?" I said. 
"I don't know," he told me, shaking his head very slowly, dazedly. "It's not as 
though--I haven't been happy with you, and please believe me, Les, I wouldn't 
endanger what we had. But--" he blinked, "The only thing that comes to me is 
right out of the Bible--'She tempted me and I did eat.' Which I know you won't 
let me off with, and I shouldn't be let off with either. She's beautiful and 
careless and exciting, and I didn't have--I didn't have the sense to refuse 
her--even if--even if she hadn't made promises about the help she could give me 
and the people I work for. I felt guilty the whole time--for what it's worth." 
This made no sense to me; he was not defending himself against the charge I had 
to level. "What about the rest of it?" I demanded, and when he started towards 
me, said, "No! Stay there." 
He stopped, looking bewildered and hurt. I kept my hand over the gun. 
"The interfaces, you mean," he said. "She was the one. She said--" 
"No," I said. "The viruses." 
"What--viruses?" 
I looked straight at him. "Are you conning me, Errel?" 
"I don't know anything about viruses," he said. "I thought you'd--" he gestured 
towards the disc, "I thought you'd seen what is on that disc." 
"What's on that disc?" 
"Letters. Messages. Games--we played." 
I wanted to believe him. I stood, knowing that if I were wrong, if he were lying 
to me, I was taking a risk in getting near him. I don't overestimate my physical 
prowess against a man. I considered taking the gun, but if he were not lying, if 
it were only an affair and his being used as a dupe, what we had might be 
salvageable--without the gun. I left it behind, between the sofa cushions, and 
walked over to give him the disc. 
But I wasn't going to back off on the rest of it. 
"Load it," I said quietly, "I want to show you something." 
He loaded it; the lips came up, tilted, puckered, and he blushed to the roots of 
his hair. I took note of the six digit code he typed in, and then commented, in 
as near to a normal voice as I could muster, "At least it was only outline red. 
Solid red would have been too tacky." 
I wasn't sure I would find what I had been looking for. If I'd written those 
viruses at leisure I'd have been certain that once sent off, the code would be 
overwritten. But then I'd have been sure than nothing survived at the other end. 
Once we were in I initiated a search for a fragment homologous to the one Glad 
had identified from the suicide. Errel said only, "What are you doing?" 
"I'm looking for a bit of code." 
Otherwise we did not talk. After three point two four one of the longest minutes 
of my life, a match flashed up. 
"Amateurs," I said. 
"What is it?" 
"A killer virus," I said. "You've been used by your beautiful, careless, 
exciting lady as a carrier of a virus that's killed at least one person and 
possibly more. Have you got any more of these discs?" 
"No," he said, numbly. "I--she liked us to pass that one back and forth." 
"Figures," I said. "We'll go down to the station. We'll need names, etc. Then 
once you're cleared," I couldn't bring myself to say 'if you're cleared', 
"probably you should take a holiday somewhere. Quiet. Until we've got them. 
You're about to become an informer." 
He did not say anything, made no protest, merely got up and took his coat from 
the back of the chair where he'd put it. I kicked out the disc and handed it to 
him, and we went down to the station. 
While we were at the station, with Glad, the call came through from the 
Hospital. D'Inde had just died: a malfunction of his pacemaker, coupled to a 
temporary breakdown in monitoring equipment. I took care not to be the first to 
say it was for the best.



I put Errel on a train West a week later, three days after The Old Man's 
funeral, and walked back from North Station above ground, hands deep in pockets, 
breath like a cold scarf wrapping itself around my neck. The snow creaked 
underneath my boots; it was the coldest February on record. I wondered what 
would happen now. We had Errel's exciting lady, but she wasn't cooperating; we 
were in for a spring of long, hard slog. We had three confirmed, five possible 
victims, and the inklings of something like a motive, from what we'd gleaned 
from vice and finance about the goings on in the financial sector, and the 
loves, hates and rivalries above those high livers. The killings were not 
random. 
I'd never accounted for the flash of white I saw in Errel's beads when I told 
him about the virus. Could have been an intuition, a sense of unease he would 
not admit to himself about his lady's morals; but I would prefer to believe it 
was simple fright at the thought of how close he'd come to getting on those 
nets, coupled to guilt at the agent of his persuasion. Somehow the finer degrees 
of his innocence no longer mattered to me. I wondered what he would find when he 
reached 'home'; I wondered if he would ever be back, or if I'd be here when I 
came back. 
I'd done my best to cover myself, but I hadn't had much time, only nine hours 
between seeing D'Inde on that Friday afternoon and making my decision, and Errel 
coming home and putting in that disc on Friday night. I'd kept the code as 
simple as I could, just the routing and insertion information, and set 
transmission to coincide with the assassin disk being activated, but I'd had to 
create two viruses and autodigest instructions in nine hours--and I was out of 
practice. There was an investigation at the hospital, but large institutions are 
always hyperaware of adverse publicity, so it had been strictly internal. Their 
people are not nearly as sharp as D'Inde's--now mine--as Glad, for instance. 
Sometimes I wonder at the way Glad looks at me, but I may be imagining it, and 
she hasn't said anything. 
I do a lot of wondering, but I regret nothing. 



© Alison Sinclair 1991, 1998 
This story first appeared in BBR, Summer 1991.