Read Online city blues 02 - angel city blues by jeff edwards - Free Book Online
Authors: jeff edwards
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centimeter of this one was alive with video. But this was not just one giant movie. The inside of the dome was sub-divided into several hundred vid screens, each showing a different movie, or program, or commercial. The air was a solid wall of jabbering sound; the audio track for every one of the video feeds was playing at the same time. It was not uncomfortably loud, but the unrelenting babble seemed to confuse my brain. I began to feel slightly dizzy.
“It helps if you look at the floor,” said a man’s voice.
I turned my head toward the center of the room and the source of the voice. A man sat, or rather reclined, in a chair-like contraption that looked like a cross between a dentist’s chair and the contoured acceleration couch of a suborbital shuttle.
“Either that, or concentrate on one or two screens,” the man said. “It is difficult for an unconditioned mind to assimilate large quantities of simultaneous and conflicting optical and audio stimuli.” He reached for the arm of his chair and made some sort of adjustment. “I can turn the audio down a little. It should help.”
The babble faded to a murmur, still audible, but not nearly as difficult to deal with.
I walked closer to him. “Thanks. It does help.”
I stopped about three meters away from his strange chair. He touched the armrest again and the chair swung about twenty degrees to his right and reclined itself a little farther.
“Please don’t be offended if I don’t make a great deal of eye contact,” he said. “My peripheral vision is highly developed. I can see you quite clearly, unless you happen to be almost directly behind me.” His speech was clipped: his words clearly and quickly annunciated, without very little inflection.
His chair swung farther to the right and angled him up to a more upright position. I quickly discovered that this was to be the pattern of our visit. Every few seconds he would spin in one direction or another and take in a different area of the video dome. I had no way of knowing if he made these movements at random, or whether he was following some sort of logical sequence.
I watched him. His forehead was a bit larger than most, and the ridge of his eyebrows was more pronounced than usual, but he didn’t look like one of the bulbous-headed Brainiac characters that seem to inhabit science fiction vids. If anything, the heavy brow line made him look a bit Neanderthal. His brown hair was limp and rather badly cut, as though he didn’t have patience for anything so frivolous as personal appearance.
“I appreciate your taking the time to see me,” I said. “My name is David…”
His chair swung abruptly to the left, showing me the other side of his face. “I am Gary Thurman, and you are Mr. David Stalin. I am Leanda Forsyth’s primary supervisor, and you are a Private Detective investigating her disappearance. Please don’t take it personally if I forego the niceties. As you can see, I am working. I will begin by answering all four of your major questions, and we can fill in the little ones afterwards.”
“I don’t mean to sound dense,” I said, “but what makes you think I have four big questions? I might have three, or sixteen.”
Thurman’s chair spun to face me. We locked eyes for a fraction of a second. “You and I are in much the same business,” he said. His chair moved again and our eye contact was broken. “We dig around in peoples’ trash cans in search of fragments and details. We sift through seemingly unrelated odds and ends until we have enough information to synthesize a gestalt. If we do our jobs properly, that gestalt will bear at least a passing resemblance to the truth. In short, I suspect that you will ask the same fundamental questions that I would ask.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll play along. What questions am I going to ask?”
Thurman’s chair swung nearly 180 degrees. “Number one,” he said. “Do I know where Leanda is? An affirmative answer to this
“It helps if you look at the floor,” said a man’s voice.
I turned my head toward the center of the room and the source of the voice. A man sat, or rather reclined, in a chair-like contraption that looked like a cross between a dentist’s chair and the contoured acceleration couch of a suborbital shuttle.
“Either that, or concentrate on one or two screens,” the man said. “It is difficult for an unconditioned mind to assimilate large quantities of simultaneous and conflicting optical and audio stimuli.” He reached for the arm of his chair and made some sort of adjustment. “I can turn the audio down a little. It should help.”
The babble faded to a murmur, still audible, but not nearly as difficult to deal with.
I walked closer to him. “Thanks. It does help.”
I stopped about three meters away from his strange chair. He touched the armrest again and the chair swung about twenty degrees to his right and reclined itself a little farther.
“Please don’t be offended if I don’t make a great deal of eye contact,” he said. “My peripheral vision is highly developed. I can see you quite clearly, unless you happen to be almost directly behind me.” His speech was clipped: his words clearly and quickly annunciated, without very little inflection.
His chair swung farther to the right and angled him up to a more upright position. I quickly discovered that this was to be the pattern of our visit. Every few seconds he would spin in one direction or another and take in a different area of the video dome. I had no way of knowing if he made these movements at random, or whether he was following some sort of logical sequence.
I watched him. His forehead was a bit larger than most, and the ridge of his eyebrows was more pronounced than usual, but he didn’t look like one of the bulbous-headed Brainiac characters that seem to inhabit science fiction vids. If anything, the heavy brow line made him look a bit Neanderthal. His brown hair was limp and rather badly cut, as though he didn’t have patience for anything so frivolous as personal appearance.
“I appreciate your taking the time to see me,” I said. “My name is David…”
His chair swung abruptly to the left, showing me the other side of his face. “I am Gary Thurman, and you are Mr. David Stalin. I am Leanda Forsyth’s primary supervisor, and you are a Private Detective investigating her disappearance. Please don’t take it personally if I forego the niceties. As you can see, I am working. I will begin by answering all four of your major questions, and we can fill in the little ones afterwards.”
“I don’t mean to sound dense,” I said, “but what makes you think I have four big questions? I might have three, or sixteen.”
Thurman’s chair spun to face me. We locked eyes for a fraction of a second. “You and I are in much the same business,” he said. His chair moved again and our eye contact was broken. “We dig around in peoples’ trash cans in search of fragments and details. We sift through seemingly unrelated odds and ends until we have enough information to synthesize a gestalt. If we do our jobs properly, that gestalt will bear at least a passing resemblance to the truth. In short, I suspect that you will ask the same fundamental questions that I would ask.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll play along. What questions am I going to ask?”
Thurman’s chair swung nearly 180 degrees. “Number one,” he said. “Do I know where Leanda is? An affirmative answer to this
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