‘Both, really. Advice first, I think.’
‘Would you like to go away and calm down before I say any more?’
‘Do I sound that bad, John?’
‘I can’t say I blame you. I’ve done several of these deals before, and they always seem to have the same effect.’
‘All right. I’ll try to stop gibbering.’ Nick swigged the rest of his whisky, tried to concentrate on what Wellesley was saying.
‘I’ll make it easy for you. The bottom line is that it would be safe for you to sign the contract in the form in which they’ve handed it to you. There are international treaties that govern these deals. Are you prepared to submit to the electronic scanning—did they describe that to you?’
‘Yes.’
Acie Jensen had told him about it, but Nick had still been reeling from the news about the money. At times like that you tend not to pay close attention to the rest of what someone is saying.
‘OK, so long as you know what’s involved. I gather it’s no more unpleasant than having your blood pressure tested, but I haven’t done it myself so I can’t be certain. I believe there’s no physical risk, but the Valencia Treaty allows you to get medical advice without prejudicing the agreement.’
‘I’m not too bothered about that.’
‘OK. As for the money: which company is it?’
‘They say they’re Chinese, from Taiwan.’
‘Not the GunHo Corporation?’ said Wellesley.
‘Yes.’
‘Congratulations. They’re one of the biggest virtual-reality players. You’re home and dry, Nick. Their contract is always the standard one, so far as I know. From your description it sounds as if they’re still using it. If they are, it’s been tested in all the senior courts: the Supreme Court in the USA, the Appeal Court here, the European courts in The Hague and Strasbourg.’
‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ Nick said, impressed.
‘As I said, I’ve worked on several ExEx contracts in the last couple of years. How much are they offering you?’
Nick told him.
‘Not bad. In terms of the going rate, that’s medium to high. What’s it for?’
‘The Gerry Grove shootings in Bulverton. My parents were killed.’
‘Of course! I should have realized. Bulverton is just about the hottest ticket in town at the moment.’
‘I wasn’t even here when it happened,’ said Nick. ‘I keep wondering if they’ve made a mistake. It makes me nervous, in case it’s all going to fall through when they find out.’
‘That might have been a risk once. Until last year they only wanted people who actually took part in the events, or who were eyewitnesses. But they’ve been making big improvements in the software. If there are plenty of hearsay accounts, that’s apparently good enough. The results wouldn’t stand up in a court, but hell, this is rock ’n’ roll, this is showbiz. You’re living in your parents’ house, aren’t you?’
‘They ran a hotel, which I’ve taken over.’
‘What happened to your parents is probably why they want you. As I understand it, the problem with Bulverton is that many of the best witnesses were killed on the day. It’s partly why the virtual-reality people have taken so long to get around to it. Look, we’ve gone over the ground, as far as I’m allowed. The Law Society rules say I can’t promise you anything in advance, but would you like me to act for you?’
‘Er, don’t get me wrong,’ Nick said, ‘but if the contract’s as safe as you say, would there be any point in that?’
‘Depends if you want more money or not,’ said Wellesley.
‘Well…’
‘You’ve got something GunHo are obviously prepared to pay for, and in corporate terms they’re leaking cash from every pore. Have you any idea of the expected global take from extreme experience this year?’
‘No. Until recently I was only barely aware it existed.’
‘People used to say that about the internet. A pal of mine in the City puts it this way: if ExEx was a country, it would currently be the second largest economy in the world. It already has more paying customers every day than all the major soft drinks companies combined. And they charge substantially more than the price of a Coke.’
‘Are you saying you can get me more money for this? It already seems like a ludicrous amount.’
‘I can’t offer you that as an inducement to retain me. I’m a lawyer, Nick. We operate under rules.’
‘What would you say if you weren’t a solicitor?’
‘Well…since it’s you. Doubling the principal sum would be the easy bit. With that out of the way I could fight them for residuals like TV and movie rights, as well as royalties and translations. I can probably get most of them. The important ones, anyway. What about dependants? Have you married that girl you were living with?’
‘Amy? No.’
‘So there aren’t any children?’
‘No.’
‘That’s a pity. There are tax breaks if you have a family.’
‘At this exact moment, tax is the last thing I’m worrying about.’
‘You won’t be saying that a year from now.’
They talked for a few more minutes. Nick needed time to think and talk, a necessary part of the process of adjustment going on in his head. By the time they hung up, John Wellesley was formally acting for him. Wellesley said he expected that negotiations with GunHo would take about a week to complete, but that he should be able to obtain an upfront payment more or less straight away.
‘By the way, I shall have to charge you for this phone call,’ Wellesley said.
‘How much?’
Wellesley told him, laughing.
‘That’s an outrage!’ Nick said.
‘Yes, isn’t it? But in the time we’ve been talking you’ve made approximately fifty times as much as that in interest. You’ve become my cash cow, Nick. You can’t blame me for taking advantage of you.’
Reeling slightly from the shock of it all, Nick went downstairs, knowing that he must talk to Amy as soon as possible. She was still nowhere to be found, so he assumed she must have gone into the town on an errand.
He sat in the bar, the empty whisky glass on the counter in front of him. The temptation to have another drink swept over him, but he resisted it. To put space between him and the temptation, he left the bar again and went to see if he could find Amy. She had become the priority. Nothing more could be thought about, dreamed about, planned for, without her. Suddenly, everything had changed.
He met her coming into the hotel through the door at the rear. She was flushed and hectic, and she was holding a draft contract that looked identical to his.
Amy left the hotel for the rest of the day. After she had gone, Nick found her contract lying on the chair in the bedroom where she usually placed her clothes overnight. He phoned Jack Masters and asked him if he would come in and serve behind the bar that evening, and then he went through to the dining room to prepare for the guests’ dinners. They were all there, sitting, as usual, at two tables at opposite ends of the room. Teresa Simons sat with her back to the other four. Nick wondered if Acie Jensen would mention the contract to him, but she said nothing.
Nick cooked the meals as quickly as he could, thinking, The second thing I’m going to do is sell the hotel, but before that the first thing I’m going to do is employ a chef.
There was still no sign of Amy, and by the time he and Jack closed the bar at the end of the evening Nick had convinced himself that she had gone for good. He stayed up until after one o’clock, still restless, wide awake and possessed by the circling thoughts about the prospect of imminent wealth. It was the most distracting thing that had happened to him in his life, even including those terrible hours after the Grove massacre.
Amy finally returned. She came quietly up the stairs, saw him lying awake in bed, and went through to the bathroom. He waited while she showered, wondering if this would be the last night they would have together, ever.
; She said nothing, but climbed in beside him, snuggled up as affectionately as always, and soon they were making love. It was not the wildest, most exhilarating session they had ever had, and afterwards Nick was preoccupied and sad.
Amy said, ‘You’ve always wanted to get out of this place. Is that what you’re going to do now?’
‘Why should I?’ he said, prevaricating.
‘You’ve got the money, or you will have. There’s nothing to stop you any more. Here’s your chance.’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’
‘That means you’re probably going to, but don’t want to say.’ She moved around restlessly in the bed, throwing back the covers, sitting up. He could see her body in the darkness, outlined against night light from the uncurtained window. He sat up too, and then could see the high curve of the top of the satellite dish on the van. ‘Well, I’ve been making plans of my own for weeks. I want out, Nick. I never want to see Bulverton again, as long as I live.’
‘All right. That’s more or less how I feel.’
‘I was going to leave you,’ she said. ‘As soon as I could get away. I’ve never felt so trapped in all my life. You and Jase, the hotel, all that. But this…everything’s changed. It’s not the money. It’s what the money will let us do. No pressure, no worries about how to make a living. I know money isn’t the answer to everything, but it does give us a way out of this. Couldn’t you come with me? If you don’t want to make any promises now, that’s OK, but let’s do whatever we have to do with those people, then get out of town.’
‘Did you say you want me with you?’ Nick said, amazed. ‘Did I hear right?’
‘Yes.’
He laughed. ‘Say “please”.’
‘Yes please, Nick. But what about you? Don’t you want to go off on your own?’
‘Oh no,’ he said, meaning it as never before. ‘Not now.’
In the morning, after a sleepless night of plans, decisions, fantasies expressed aloud, they went downstairs to prepare the breakfasts for their guests.
Nick said, ‘I never want to do hotel work ever again. Of all the underpaid, unappreciated, unsocial, unrewarding jobs…’
‘Do you realize,’ Amy said, as she cleaned out the coffee percolator, and took from the fridge the low-caffeine, low-sodium, high-zinc, economically sustainable non-exploitative coffee grounds they had expensively obtained from an independent shipper in West London, ‘do you realize that this might be the last time in your life you will have to do this?’
‘Nothing ever changes that quickly,’ he said.
‘Remind me you said that in three hours’ time,’ she said. ‘At nine o’clock.’
‘What’s going to happen at nine o’clock?’
‘Something I spent all day yesterday setting up for you.’
‘What is it?’
‘Wait.’
Half an hour later, with the guests’ breakfast preparations complete, they sat together in the kitchen and drank some of their own instant coffee from the jar: high in caffeine, high, probably, in sodium, and zinc contents unknown.
Amy said, ‘We shouldn’t trust these people an inch. You should get yourself a lawyer.’
‘I already have,’ said Nick. ‘So should you.’
‘That’s something else I did yesterday.’
CHAPTER 27
Teresa was starting to feel self-conscious whenever she went to the ExEx building; she had become a familiar figure to the staff. She was not used to that. She had been trained to be unobtrusive, to function but to stay low. The knowledge that she lay unconscious in the tiny cubicle, while she roamed the inner worlds of ExEx, made her feel more vulnerable than anything else in her adult life. Perhaps it was this, by reversal, that made her feel so at home exploring the actual scenarios. She was the secret intrusive presence in these fragments of drama, the undetected mind, the will that could be exerted to override the programming and yet remain undetected.
She was learning how to push at the limits of the scenarios. There was a freedom involved. At first it had seemed to be one of landscape: distant mountains, roads leading away, endless vistas and promises of an ever-unfolding terrain. She had tested the limits of landscape, though, with results that were usually disappointing, and at best only ambiguous.
At last she was realizing there were other landscapes, other highways, the inner world of the consciousness, the one she touched directly the moment she entered a scenario.
This was a terrain that could be explored, this was a landscape that had only tenuous limits. She remembered the way she had felt herself become Elsa Durdle, and liked doing so; how even without speaking his language she had managed to influence Gendarme Montaigne’s movements; even further back, the old FBI training scenarios, when she briefly influenced events, or failed in trying.
Two days after her first visit to the cowgirl skin-flick scenario Teresa again exercised the privacy option, and returned to the makeshift film set.
Luke, the actor in the false whiskers, was waiting on the set beside her, reading the sports page of the tabloid newspaper. In Shandy’s guileless persona Teresa tried starting a conversation with him, hoping to move the scenario in a different direction, but nothing she could do or say would divert him from his newspaper until they began filming.
When Willem, the magnificently endowed young Dutchman who played the cowboy, came leaping in on cue to throw a false blow at Luke’s jaw, Shandy ducked away from him and deliberately went after Luke. But Luke had become inert again, simply lying in the wreckage of the prop furniture he had fallen against.
While the director yelled at her in fury to get back to the action, Teresa withdrew from Shandy, and, with a quick incantation of the LIVER mnemonic, she aborted the scenario.
* * *
You have been flying SENSH Y’ALL
* * *
* * *
Fantasys from the Old West
* * *
* * *
Copyroody everywhere—doan even THINK about it!!
* * *
The moronic music jangled at her again, seeming interminable.
It was the next day. She returned to being a cowgirl.
This time, Teresa waited passively at the back of Shandy’s mind, while the young woman went with remarkably spontaneous excitement through the explicit but now predictable motions of making the video.
When the cameras had stopped, and Shandy and Willem were collecting the various pieces of their discarded costumes, Teresa deliberately moved forward in Shandy’s consciousness. She spoke to Willem, and tried setting up a date with him. Willem spoke only a little English, but Teresa/Shandy pestered him until he agreed to meet her outside for a drink.
Shandy walked naked towards the shower cubicle in the corridor behind the set, clutching the tiny costume against herself. Teresa loved the way the young woman’s body felt from inside: she seemed to glow with healthy relish from the series of convulsing orgasms she had gone through, and she walked with an easy grace. A couple of the men who worked behind the cameras grinned at her as she went by.
Once she was inside the shower cubicle with the door closed, her demeanour changed. She spat dramatically on the floor of the shower, growling in her throat, clearing herself out. She put her lips to the cold-water tap, drank a quantity of the water, then swilled some of it around her mouth. She gargled three or four times. When she was showering she washed herself thoroughly, using soapy fingers to clean the parts of her body Willem had penetrated, and lathering herself energetically where he had jetted his seed on to her skin.
* * * SENSH * * *
She took her street clothes from a locker outside the shower, and dressed quickly. She put on light make-up: a little eye-liner, a touch of blush, no lipstick. After a final look in a mirror she went to meet Willem.
Outside, Teresa found they were in London. She was immediately struck by the details: especially the noise, the crowds, the traffic, the red buses, the advertising signs, the dismal weather, the overall
sense of minutiae beyond the strictly essential.
Willem led her to a pub in nearby Rupert Street, and sat by himself at an unoccupied table while she went to the bar to order drinks. He had asked for a Dutch imported beer called Oranjeboom, which for some reason made Shandy laugh. She softly hummed a jingle while she waited to be served. The barman knew her and obviously liked her, and between serving other customers chatted to her about someone they both knew; Shandy apparently had a number of jobs around the West End, working for clubs and escort agencies, and in hotels.
Teresa, fascinated by this glimpse into the young woman’s life, lost interest in Willem and listened instead to Shandy talking about the people who owed her money, the man (boyfriend? pimp?) who seemed to control her, the hardships she sometimes had to endure, the late nights, the harassment she received from the police, and most of all the problem of her elderly mother, who lived in the Midlands. Her mother was having trouble with a disability allowance that was being reduced by some interpretation of the rules, and which might mean she would have to move to London to live with her daughter. Shandy’s apartment wasn’t big enough for two, so she would have to move.
* * * SENSH * * *
Teresa thought, This is real! This is Shandy’s life! I could stay here in her mind, follow her around, see how she lives, what she eats, where she sleeps.
She glanced back at Willem, who was still sitting at the table, waiting for her to return with the drinks, apparently stranded by her lack of interest in him.
The barman slipped Shandy a scrap of paper with a phone number written on it, and she took out her bag, found a diary and placed the piece of paper between its pages. Just as Shandy was about to return the diary to her bag, Teresa decided to have a look at it, and laid it on the counter. She flipped through the pages.
Shandy’s real name was Jennifer Rosemary Tayler, Teresa discovered from the first page, where the young woman had filled in her personal details in disarmingly childish handwriting. She had an apartment in London NW10. The entries in the diary—the year was 1990, which Teresa wouldn’t have known otherwise—were mostly phone numbers and amounts of money; on a whim, Teresa led Shandy across to the call box on the wall by the entrance to the toilets, and dialled one of the numbers.