One of Us

The clock looked up at me dubiously, still dabbing the mud off itself with a napkin and glass of water I'd acquired for it. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Just watch me,’ I said, not really knowing. My first plan was to simply talk to her. Tell her that what she'd done was bad, and get her to take the memory back. I'm an eternal optimist. If that didn't work, then it was going back into her head by force. Either way, she was coming with me. I had to get her in the same room as my receiver, and get hold of a transmitter from somewhere – hence my call to Quat. If she needed persuading, I'd use the gun, but I wasn't going to pull it out in this diner. The homeboys holding up the counter all looked far tougher than me: one flash of my piece and my guess was they'd be packing bazookas. If they were on contract I'd probably be okay, but if they were freelance they might just whack me speculatively and see if anyone was interested in paying after the fact. The sad thing about my life is that some people might well be. I slipped the clock in my pocket, left a couple of dollars by my cup, and left.

It was cold outside, and I took a second to lay a perfunctory curse on the head of a certain production company. Couple years ago they were shooting Northern Maine on the Mitsubushi lot, and couldn't be bothered with all the sprinklers and wind machines and stuff. So they got permission to change the microclimate for the afternoon instead. It got fucked up, naturally, and now you can never tell what the weather's going to be like. It's even more like living inside a madman's head than it used to be, but the movie went over big in Europe, so nobody likes to complain.

I jogged across the street, keeping my hands in my pockets and my head down, just part of the scenery, someone wanting to get someplace out of the rain. Up at the next corner I saw a car had been pulled over, police vehicle angled just ahead of it. Two guys stood with their hands on the hood, legs spread. One of the cops was methodically stamping on something on the floor, and I relaxed. Just a routine cigarette bust.

The hotel's foyer was quiet and dimly lit. A few plants lolled listlessly in pots around the walls, and the floor seemed fairly clean. It was one of those places where you wonder what the point of it is: not expensive enough to be worth going to on purpose, not sufficiently cheap to be the only place you could afford. Just part of the string of islands that salesmen and other salaried itinerants hop between, every room sanitized and bible-positive for their protection and comfort. I've stayed in a million such places myself, and they're like their own little country. Drab, anonymous suites; staff bored out of their tiny minds; the restaurant populated each night only by a scattering of men of uncertain ages, sitting at tables by themselves. Hair damp from a shower after a long day's drive, jeans with a crease ironed in, staring into the middle distance as they chew, their eyes dull from a preliminary check on what will be on the porno channels later on. I was always somehow surprised that such hotels didn't have their own graveyards out back, that their customers were evidently allowed to rejoin normal society after they'd finally had their coronaries.

The flunky I'd leaned on was nowhere to be seen, but that was okay. If I had to come back this way with a struggling woman in tow, I needed as little external input as possible. Laura Reynolds had a room on the second floor, so I took the stairs. It doesn't do to make elevators feel too important. More plants lurked at each bend in the staircase, suspiciously still, as if they'd been gossiping with each other only seconds before.

The corridor was long and quiet. I stood outside her room for a few moments, but couldn't hear anything inside. I realized then that I should have cornered the flunky after all, got a copy of the key to her room in case she refused to let me in. Probably he would have raised some footling objection, but I'm an old hand at dealing with that kind of thing. Used to be, anyhow. That I was out of practice was demonstrated by the fact that I'd completely forgotten about the whole issue of entry to the room. Sure, you can kick the door down, but it's not as easy as it looks and tends to be hard on the feet. Also it makes a shitload of noise, which is seldom desirable. Muttering irritably, I turned the handle anyway, already reconciled to tramping back down the stairs and making a nuisance of myself.

The door was on the latch.

I stood very still for a moment, waiting for the shouting to start. It didn't. So I carefully pushed the door open.

Inside was the usual stuff, the unnatural flora of mid-range hotel rooms. The corner of a bed. A battered dresser, with an old-looking teleputer squatting at the end. Beyond, a circular table with a lamp, and a pile of pamphlets that could only be invitations to the local attractions. Whatever the hell they were supposed to be. I still couldn't hear anything, not even the tuneless humming or occasional sighs most people feel obliged to undertake when alone, to smooth the quietness out.

I stepped into the little corridor, and closed the door quietly behind me. On my right was an open closet, with a few dresses on those hangers designed not to be stolen, presumably on the assumption that people paying seventy dollars a night for a room make a point of stealing a dollar's worth of coat hangers everywhere they go. Why would they do that? The next hotel's going to have its own stock, isn't it? And it means you can't use them to hang a shirt in the bathroom while you shower, which is as close to ironing as I ever get.

I took a cautious step into the main room. The door to the bathroom was shut, and I heard a faint splashing sound.

I let go of the gun in my pocket, and took a look around the room. A small suitcase lay open on the second bed, the interior a jumble of good underwear. A bottle of vodka stood on the bedside table, already missing about a third of its contents. Other than that she had made as little dent on the room as a ghost that walked especially lightly and tidied up as it went. A bedside combined clock-and-teamaker was staring at me with wide eyes, but I held my finger up to my lips and it remained silent.

I padded back to the door, and locked it. Then turned to the closet, took the dresses off their hangers with hardly any struggle at all, and folded them fairly neatly into her bag. I zipped it up, poured myself a smallish drink, and sat in the armchair to wait. Chances were she'd come out wrapped in a towel – most people do, even when they're alone. If not, I'd avert my eyes. I wasn't going to just charge straight into the bathroom. I try to be polite, and a few minutes' grace would help ensure the cops were gone from the corner outside.

I beguiled the time reading the hotel's literature, learning at some length of the management and staff's yearning to fulfil my every need. Probably they actually meant the person who was paying for the room, but I scrawled a note on the suggestions sheet anyway, asking for some proper coat hangers. I also discovered that the tariff included a complimentary continental breakfast, which annoyed me, as usual. Continental breakfast? Continental shit, more like. You sleep for eight hours, traverse great Jungian gulfs of unconsciousness, and what do they offer you on re-entry to our dread prison-world?

A croissant.

I mean, what? No sausage? No eggs, no fucking hash browns, even? What use is a croissant to anyone, especially first thing in the morning? And yet everybody sits there picking at it, pretending it's food, despite the fact that they would never eat it at home. Hotels around the world have seized on the continental breakfast not because it has any value, or because it's what anyone wants, but because it's cheap and requires no effort. If a hotel offers a complimentary continental breakfast, what they're really saying is: ‘There is no proper breakfast.’ Or: ‘There is, but you have to pay for it.’

When I realized I was on the verge of shouting I put the menu to one side and just waited instead.

After the meeting in Stratten's office life carried on pretty much the same, superficially at least. I could still go more or less where I wanted, though I took more care to cover my tracks. I gave up the one-night stands, with very little regret. If the only way you can feel alive is with a novel breast in your hand, you're not doing either of you any good. I closed out all my old credit cards, and got new ones under fake IDs. I worked maybe one, two nights on dreams, just to keep my hand in, then a couple of times a week I'd get a call and be told to be somewhere secluded, with my new machine, at a particular time. I had to let them know exactly where I was, because memories have greater weight than dreams and can only be transmitted somewhere specific, but I made sure I was on the road again an hour later. I also made sure I was alone at the moment of transferral, because when you're giving or receiving memories your mind's wide open, and it wouldn't take much for someone to implant a little suggestion there.

A momentary blackout, and then a part of someone else's life was in my head. Sometimes the fragments were as long as a few hours, but generally they were much shorter. I kept them for an afternoon, a couple of days, a week at the most, and then a similar session would take them away again.

Most of the memories were straightforward. I was never told why a client was leaving them with me, but it was pretty easy to guess. Once a week a guy would lose the fact he was married, so he'd feel less guilty while he was spending the afternoon with his mistress. An executive would obscure an object lesson his mother had given him about morality, so as to make fucking over a colleague a little easier. A woman would forget something harsh she said to her little sister, minutes before a car mounted the kerb and killed her, just so as to find a little peace.

Adolescent experiments with people of the same sex. Financial indiscretions. Sticky afternoons with borderline-legal prostitutes. The usual trivia of sin.

Others were stranger. Fragments, like a cat walking along a wall, jumping safely to the ground, and then turning a corner and disappearing. A girl's face, laughing, with branches moving gracefully in the wind overhead. The sound of a stream gurgling past an open window in a bedroom at night. I never got any context, just those little pieces of remembrance, and had no way of working out why someone might pay five large ones for a holiday from them.

It was kind of weird to spend an afternoon, once a week, convinced I had married someone called David, but I'm a fairly together guy and realized it wasn't likely I would forget something like that if it had really happened. Some of the dumps contained strong elements of their owners' more general personality: little parallel universes, sideways glimpses of other possible lives and fates. But most of the memories were already used to being shunted to the side, and didn't really mess me up. I hemmed them in with enough self-awareness to undermine the truths they purported to tell, and after the allotted time the client took them back, and they were gone from my head. I could remember what it was that I briefly held a memory of, but there was no confusion. I could tell, once it had gone, what was my experience and what had been someone else's.

I don't know if there were any side effects. Maybe a few. I found myself getting tired more easily, and misbehaving less, but that could have been any number of things. I'd been on the road too long. Maybe the time was coming when I needed to settle down again. Doing that would mean giving up the memory and dream work, because a stationary target would be easy for the Feds to find. I knew that what I did was harmless, but they'd be likely to see it another way. I didn't know if I was ready to stop earning this kind of money yet, and I didn't know whether Stratten would let me. Also there was the small question of who I'd settle down with. I had good friends in LA, like Deck, but nobody significant of the opposite sex. There hadn't been anyone like that, if the truth be known, for over three years. Most men, in their heart of hearts, believe that there's something that they can do, some change that can be made in their lives, which will help them find that special person. Find as many of them as possible, in fact, especially ones with cute bisexual friends. For me it was travelling around, but I was only looking for one. The one for me. I guess I believed that if I kept on moving, sooner or later, in some unregarded burg in the middle of nowhere, I'd turn a corner and find her – that person who'd always been looking for me too. It was my version of the trail that must start somewhere, I suppose. I also suspected that I'd already had that person, and that the trail had stopped there.

So I carried on, caretaking pieces of other people's lives, and wishing that once in a while someone would lend me a good memory for a change. I toyed with a little smack every now and then, just to dull the noise of other people's bad times in my head. I discovered what it was like to be someone else, and found myself even less inclined to own a gun. I got occasional headaches, bad enough to put me on the bench for a few days.

But for the most part it was okay, and if I needed a reason, I just watched the money flowing into my account.

Until three days ago, it had all been going fine.

I should have worked it out a lot sooner. The suite door left unlocked was a big clue, if nothing else, and I knew better than anyone what it was like inside her head. But I had no reason to expect her to do something stupid – had good evidence to think otherwise, in fact.

After about ten minutes I stood up and hung outside the bathroom door. Sure, women can spend untold amounts of time in the tub, but three o'clock in the morning is rarely the chosen time. They usually save that kind of indulgence for when you're already late for going out. I was prepared to be accommodating, because I know how important feeling clean can be, but I really didn't have time for this. The cops outside would be long gone, and I wanted to move. I had to talk to people, make arrangements. My head seemed to be fairly stable, but that wouldn't necessarily last. I also wanted to check the news.

Then I realized what was missing. I leaned my head close and listened. There was no sound now, no humming, not even the smallest swish of water being moved by a desultory hand. I tried the door. It was locked.

I kicked it down.

Laura Reynolds was lying in a tub of cooling water, still wearing her panties and bra. The rest of her clothes were folded neatly on the toilet seat. Her head had flopped across onto her shoulder, and her eyes were closed. Her sharp, pretty face had gone smooth and still. The water was red, and there was blood all over the tiled floor. Her skin was white, lips blue.

I started moving very fast.

I yanked the plug out the tub, grabbed a couple of hand towels from the rail. Her right arm was lolling just under the water. As I pulled it up I saw that the cut wasn't as deep as it could have been, and that she'd missed the major tendons. I wrapped it tightly in the towel and hung it over the edge of the tub, then reached across for the other arm.

The cut there was a lot deeper, probably the opening slice. Though maybe not: could be the weaker cut had been the first, and when she'd seen the tunnel open in front of her had decided she might as well run down it as fast as she could. Blood was still slicking out of the wrist in major quantities, and once the towel was round it I saw this wasn't going to be enough. Hot water and alcohol had thinned her blood, and it was eager to come out and play. A hotel dressing gown hung on the back of the door, and I tugged the belt out and tied it tight round her upper arm. She stirred then, for the first time, one of her eyelids flickering like some bug's sluggish wing.

Bracing myself with one foot on the other side of the tub, I leaned forwards and tried to pull her up. Though slim, she was about as easy to manoeuvre as the hotel, and I nearly pitched forward onto my face. Eventually I got her slumped against the back wall, and held her there while I grabbed the gown and wrapped it round her shoulders. I tried getting her arms through the holes, but it was too difficult and I didn't want to dislodge the towels. In the end I just tipped her over my shoulder and carried her into the bedroom.

She moaned quietly as I lay her on the bed, but made no sign of moving. I re-opened her suitcase, grabbed a few handfuls of clothes and pushed them into the pockets of my coat. Then I hauled her back over my shoulder and carried her out into the corridor. A quick look either way told me no-one was about, which was good, because this was going badly enough as it was. It didn't even occur to me that I should have looked for her purse until the elevator doors had shut behind me, and at that point I decided she'd just have to live without it.

I was halfway across the lobby downstairs when I heard an exclamation behind me. I turned unsteadily – unconscious bodies are difficult to manage – to see the flunky staring at me open-mouthed, hand already reaching for the phone.

‘Private joke,’ I said.

The flunky eyed the blood-soaked towels. ‘Excuse me?’

‘She's a heavy sleeper. Sometimes I just come along and take her somewhere weird so when she wakes up she wonders where the hell she is.’

‘Sir, I don't believe you.’

‘Does this help?’ I asked, pulling my gun out and pointing it straight at his head.

‘Very amusing,’ he said, and his hand crept back to his side.

‘Keep laughing for a while,’ I suggested. ‘Or I'll come back and explain it again.’

I lurched around the corner to where I'd parked the car, and laid Laura Reynolds across the back seats. Then I got in and drove away, knowing that if I didn't get her to a doctor within a very short time my life had just got even worse.

As I two-wheeled onto Santa Monica Boulevard I nearly totalled us both, swerving to avoid a small group of chest freezers making their way across the road. I could have just driven straight at them, but I make a policy of not tangling with white goods. They're really heavy.

When we were safely heading in the right direction I called Deck. It took him a while to understand what I was saying, but he agreed to do as I asked. Then I flipped the phone to the Net and tried Quat again. It rang and rang, but there was still no answer. I frowned, cut the connection, redialled. Okay it was late, but Quat was always up, and whenever he was awake he was in the Net. Still no answer.

I left it on callback with a redirect to the apartment, and concentrated on the road as we crossed Wilshire and into Beverly Hills. You should know that I'm not a big fan of driving. Never have been. I realize this undermines me in the view of any red-blooded American, but so be it. Lot of people still bemoan the fact that kids spend all their time in computer games: I say it's the only thing that's going to prepare them for real life. Driving equals long stretches of boredom, during which lunatics will randomly pop up and try to kill you – interspersed with pockets of hell where absolutely everything is out to get you. They call these pockets ‘cities’, and they're best avoided unless you happen to live there. Give me a fist fight in a bar, and I'll hold my own. Send me round the beltway at rush hour – fuck off. I'll take a cab. Or walk.

I glanced back at Laura Reynolds continually as I drove, and after the turn onto Western pulled over to get a proper look at her. She was still breathing, but the rise and fall of her chest was shallow. The blood round the cut on her right arm was congealing nicely, but the other still looked wide open. I loosened the tourniquet for a moment, then re-tightened it before setting off again. I really hoped Deck got hold of Woodley, or I was fucked. The only alternative was taking her to a hospital, in which case I'd lose her. I couldn't stand guard the whole time, and she'd already proved she was determined to escape one way or another.

When I turned off Los Feliz I was happy to see there wasn't much of a queue for entry into Griffith. There's only twenty entrances around the entire district, and at certain times of day it can be a complete pain in the ass. As we approached the wall I saw a knot of armed guards peering in the direction of the car, and was pleased to note that even at this advanced hour they were working for the inhabitants' protection.

In 2007 someone decided that Griffith Park wasn't operating to its full potential. They felt the whole ‘park’ thing, in fact, was a little bit twentieth century. It was all very well having a huge open space with a couple of golf courses and areas for boy scouts to tramp around, but there were other uses the land could be put to. Up-scale residential, for example. The nice areas of LA were pretty full by then, and the well-heeled craved new Lebensraum – especially after plate analysis revealed that, come the next quake, Brentwood was going to end up in Belgium. There was a pitched battle with the local history fanatics and the poorer people who liked having a place to barbecue, but the problem with those guys is they don't have much money. The developers did. They won, more or less. A solution was reached.

An area was marked off, bordered by the Ventura and Golden State freeways in the North and East, and Los Feliz in the South. A hundred-metre wall was built along this entire stretch, and along the boundary with Mount Sinai Memorial Park in the West, creating an entirely closed area. The exterior of this wall was painted with high-resolution LED, and the whole surface was wired into a central computer. Certain interior features, like Mount Hollywood and small areas of the old wild lands, were left untouched. Even the developers realized the Hollywood sign was inviolate. This, along with stored images of how the park used to be before the development, was seamlessly displayed on the videowall – creating the illusion that nothing was there. From wherever you stood in LA, you could still see the sign, and the Hills and park to the North East. Unless you walked right up to the wall and punched it – which the guards were there to prevent you from doing – the illusion was perfect. It was like nothing had changed.

Inside the district the same idea was deployed in reverse, with views of Burbank, Glendale and Hollywood constantly updated right up to the sky. LA got a whole new district, but kept the same view, and access tunnels leading from the outside to the three preserved areas even meant that there was technically still a public park. The environmentalists were a bit pissed about the whole thing, claiming this wasn't the point, but they never have any money at all and weren't even invited to the meetings.

As we approached the gate – a ten-by-six-foot hole in the otherwise flawless panorama – I laid my finger over the sensor in the dashboard. This relayed my name, genome and credit rating to the matrix built into the car's shell, for reading by the entrance computer. The matrix was treble-encrypted with a top-of-the-line government DES algorithm, and thus had probably taken someone a good twenty minutes to crack. I simply don't believe that all the people you see driving round Griffith have the money to live there. Particularly those who hang around my block.

I passed, and was allowed through the barrier. The outer doors shut behind me, leaving me in the access tunnel through the wall. The car hummed as it was conveyed towards the inner door. At the end the doors opened gracefully, and I drove out into the world again.

I locked the car to Griffith's auto system and told it to get me home as quickly as possible.

On the inside Griffith looks like it was designed by someone who took acid in Disneyland. The hills provide perching space for split-level houses of high cost and loveliness, but the rest is wall-to-wall fun. The valley areas are split up into regular grids of stores and restaurants, and you're never more than five minutes' drive from a Starbucks or Borders or Baby Gap, the building blocks of Generica. Extensive areas are pedestrianized, and each storefront has been built up into an hysterical shout of commerciality. Restaurants in the shape of food and stores in the style of their products: the shoe stores look like shoes, the video stores are thin and rectangular, and Herbie Crouton's – where the owner, Herbie, sells over two hundred different flavours of small cubes of toasted bread – looks like an enormous crouton. You don't even have to be literate to know where to shop: the perfect, post-verbal landscape. There's a spanking new subway, complete with designer graffiti, a cluster of big hotels in the middle, and little enclaves of speciality shops nestling in the canyons. Nothing is older than ten years, and even the smog is artificial and guaranteed free of pollution.