Fox Hunt (Fox Meridian Book 1) Read online

  They were standing on the shores of a lake, the sun low in the sky over the mountains opposite, the air fresh in Fox’s lungs as she breathed it in. A grass bank extended down from where she was standing to the water of the… She decided that ‘fjord’ was the right word as she turned to see a farmstead behind her, built from wood with a roof of thatch.

  Vali fitted the setting perfectly now. Where there had been a nightmare figure of smoke and fire, there was now a young man dressed in a rough tunic, trousers, and boots which might have belonged to a Viking. His blonde hair was pulled back into a long braid at the back of his neck, except for a few strands which curled on either side of a face that was young, but hard. His eyes were an icy blue, his lips thin, and his features were sharp and angular. Of course, Fox had no way of knowing whether this was anything like his real shape, but the avatar was good-looking and too severe at the same time.

  ‘Come up to the house,’ he said. ‘Would you care for some mead?’ He turned and began walking up the slope before getting a reply.

  ‘I’m not entirely sure that would be a good idea,’ Kit replied. She was looking around with a wide-eyed expression of surprise on her face. ‘I am not sure what synthetic alcohol would do to me. And I am surprised to be here as it is.’

  ‘Why would I leave you behind? I don’t discriminate against infomorphs. Any intellect is welcome here and this way Zorra will not need to brief you later.’

  ‘Thank you for your consideration.’

  He walked into the low building and went to the back. There was the clink of pot on pot. Fox smelled grass, dried grass, hay or straw. There were other scents there too, animals, earth… The simulation was remarkably detailed. Somewhere she could hear a dull, bell-like tone and she was sure there would be animals outside, behind the house. Goats, she thought, perhaps a pig.

  Vali turned, handing out goblets. He looked at Kit. ‘Try the mead. I promise it won’t do anything particularly bad.’ She took the goblet as though it might bite, and his hard lips twitched in amusement before he turned, picking up a goblet of his own, and then sat down on a straight-backed, wooden chair at the one table in the single room.

  ‘This place is quite remarkable,’ Fox said as she took a seat. The wood was rough beneath her buttocks and the texture of the table under her virtual fingers was perfect: there was roughness there, but it had been polished to smooth by age.

  ‘Thank you. I spent some time on it.’ His brow knitted and he turned his goblet slowly in long fingers. ‘Mystral came here for entertainment, nothing more. She was involved in a small writers’ group, and I know that was her line of work, but most of her time was spent entertaining guests in one of the brothels.’

  ‘Brothels?’

  His smile had a distinct hint of resignation in it. ‘When you allow people to create their own content in a virtual environment, sex is an almost universal feature of it, one way or another. Mystral favoured a fantasy-themed establishment created by another of our members, Cleopatra. There’s a strong role-playing element. You don’t simply go there to bang and leave.’

  ‘She was there on Saturday night?’

  He paused, possibly accessing data they could not see. ‘Yes. She connected at eight in the evening, went straight to Alexandria, and didn’t leave until two in the morning. Nothing I’m seeing in her connection records would indicate any kind of stress. She was enjoying herself.’

  ‘You monitor stress indicators?’

  ‘Niflhel features various forms of entertainment, Zorra, including combat simulation, some horror-based scenarios, and a few sexual virons which… can cause some degree of stress. My systems keep a watch on our participants’ biomonitors just in case someone gets up to something inadvisable. Some of the people in Alexandria can play a little rough at times, but there is no indication of anything like that from Mystral’s data.’

  Fox smiled. ‘You’re being very helpful, Vali.’

  He smiled back. ‘And you find it hard to trust someone in my profession who volunteers data so easily? One, I am… insulted by murder, especially of my participants. I’ll provide whatever assistance I can. Two, I am quite sure her presence here had nothing to do with her death, so I have nothing to hide. Three, I like your agent. She’s cute.’

  Kit’s eyes widened. ‘Oh… I… Thank you?’

  ‘She is cute,’ Fox agreed, ‘but I still think her designer is trying to get me in the sack. Would it be okay for me to pay a visit to this “Alexandria?”’

  ‘Generally it’s members only, but I’m inclined to be generous. I’ll arrange a guest pass. I could entertain Kit while you’re looking around.’ He was smirking now, amused at the AI’s discomfort.

  ‘I’m not sure she’s ready for the interaction I expect to see, so why not. Just don’t break my agent.’

  ‘I assure you that she will be fine.’

  Fox got to her feet and started for the door of the little house. ‘You hear that, Kit? You’ll be fine. Just remember that it’s best not to put out on a first date.’ And then she stepped through the door and was gone.

  ‘I’ll try to remember that,’ Kit said, turning to look warily at Vali. ‘Would you mind explaining what “putting out” is?’

  ~~~

  Alexandria seemed to be modelled after some sort of ancient city. Fox had expected something far smaller given Vali’s description of the place as a brothel, but she arrived on a dock beside a boat, as though arriving by sea, and there were workers visible tending to various duties nearby. They bore the tell-tale signs of AI automata rather than real people, not quite looking real in a manner which was difficult to pin down and repeating the same set of activities over and over again if you watched them long enough. On the other hand, the place had the feel of an inhabited city, which meant Cleopatra had put time and money into crafting and running the place.

  Well, if the simulations were there, she figured she would try talking to one. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to a man sitting near her point of entry mending fishing nets.

  ‘Good evening, lady. How may I help?’ The voice was a little stiff but had good tone. The model followed the ‘grizzled old fisherman’ school of looks and was dressed in a loincloth and a loose, sackcloth tunic.

  ‘I was hoping I could talk to Cleopatra.’

  The figure’s face shifted, developing more of a sneer. ‘Oh, you’re one of her women. You’ll find her at the pleasure palace at the top of the hill.’

  Vaguely amused at the attitude change, Fox nodded and said ‘Thank you.’ Then she set off down the dock to climb through the town to what she assumed was the ‘pleasure palace.’ There was, certainly, a decorated building of some sort among rows of stone houses, all of them whitewashed to shine in the sunlight. The palace itself was just stone, but that stone was white marble and gleamed almost as much, except for the places where it seemed to have been painted.

  The frescos were there to highlight carved relief, but that was only really visible once she had climbed up the cobbled main street and was standing outside the colonnade of the building. All those painted carvings did give the impression that the building was there for only one reason: they were all depictions of various forms of sexual activity, and quite graphic depictions at that. Well, sometimes her job did involve terrible sacrifice…

  The inside of the building was heavy on the red. A lot of the marble was covered in thick, red velvet drapes. Plush, red couches and loveseats were placed around a large, circular room with a pair of staircases winding up from the back which had a doorway set between them. Most of the furniture was occupied by women in various states of undress. No men, Fox noted; the men who were there were still dressed at this point, mostly they were standing, and they were posed in manners which suggested they were customers seeking to procure the women they were talking with. There was just that hint of anticipation about them, though the same could be said for a number of the women. No one came here unless they wanted to be playing their role after all.

  ‘A new f
ace.’ The voice had a smile in it and Fox turned to see its owner was, indeed, smiling. ‘Seek you a vocation in my house, lady?’ This had to be Cleopatra. She was tall, tanned, had jet-black hair to her waist and dark, almost black eyes, and a voluptuous figure. The outfit was the giveaway, however: there was a silken loincloth set about her hips, dipping low at the front and falling down to almost touch the floor, and there was a wide necklace of blue and gold beads set about her neck and shoulders. Her full breasts were bare.

  ‘Zorra,’ Fox said. ‘I’m Zorra, and you must be Cleopatra, and a friend told me about this place. I was hoping to see her here. Mystral?’

  ‘Mystral… I don’t believe I’ve seen her since she exhausted four men the night gone last.’

  Fox smiled. The weird mix of Greek and Egyptian culture and what sounded like fake medieval language was just a little off-putting, but when in Alexandria… ‘I do believe that her tales of this place are not exaggerated, and that this has brought out a side of her I have not seen afore now.’

  ‘Many say that their other lives are far less… adventurous than their time here. Can I put you to work, Zorra? The house charges twenty-five per cent of whatever you gain from your clients. You are free to come and go as you wish. I can provide accommodation in nearby apartments if you wish to spend time here, at reasonable rent, of course. Mystral has rooms here.’

  So Cleopatra was speaking of Trent in the present tense, which meant she was probably unaware of the murder… Would a virtual house give any clues about the murder? Well, it might be worth a try… Fox lowered her voice. ‘Lady Cleopatra, might I speak with you in private? It’s a matter of… some delicacy and urgency.’ She could see the look of intrigue buried in the frown: Cleopatra was seeing this as some odd bit of role-playing. She was probably expecting a seduction attempt.

  ‘Come with me,’ Cleopatra said and set off across the room toward the door at the back which, it turned out, led into a suite of private rooms. The door let into a lounge set out for Roman-style eating with loungers and low tables. To the left, behind thin, blue drapes, there was a bathroom, of sorts, featuring a large pool. To the right, behind red drapes, was the bedroom; the bed was huge and did not look that comfortable to sleep on. Cleopatra curled onto a lounger, indicating the one opposite to Fox. ‘What is it that brings you here on such urgent and delicate business, Zorra?’

  ‘I’m sorry to drop out of character, but I have some bad news. Mystral was killed yesterday morning, in her home. I’m the detective assigned to her case, Inspector Tara Meridian. I can provide formal identification if–’

  ‘Killed?’ Cleopatra sat upright, her face serious. ‘You mean murdered. They wouldn’t assign a detective to her case for an accident. And that’s a name I’ve heard of. You were involved in that rescue in Dallas. Jackson Martins’ daughter. Aren’t you with the UNTPP?’

  ‘I was then. I’m with NAPA now.’

  ‘Ah…’ Her eyes widened as a thought hit her. ‘You can’t think that her coming here–’

  Fox held up a hand. ‘At this point I’m trying to get a picture of her, especially her state of mind during the days leading up to her death. I heard she spent a lot of time here.’

  ‘Uh, I suppose she did. She first came… nine months ago. Niflhel had been open for a month and I’d only just got this place into the shape I wanted it. She was one of my first regular girls and well liked. I wasn’t exaggerating about her exhausting four guys on Saturday night. She was popular. I got the feeling she didn’t have much of a life outside, but she played the role to the hilt, you know? It was hard to get an impression of what she was like when she wasn’t Mystral.’

  ‘But she was happy enough in the last few days? No indications of problems outside. Maybe she was here more than usual or was more enthusiastic.’

  The beautiful, exotic features of the mock Egyptian queen scrunched up in a distinctly unattractive manner. ‘Don’t… No, I don’t think she was acting any differently than usual. I’m usually pretty good at spotting that kind of thing…’ She sagged a little. ‘Outside of here I’m a psychologist. I work in memetics so this place is fairly easy, but it lets me be a bit more creative than crafting advertising campaigns. If there was anything wrong with Mystral, she was hiding it well.’

  Fox nodded slowly. The more she heard, the more the entire thing was sounding like a random killing, which would be bad… ‘Could I see her apartment here?’

  ‘I don’t see why not…’ An absent flick of the wrist produced a key which appeared in Cleopatra’s hand from nowhere. ‘It’s right out of the front door, second house on the left, upper floor. She said… She said she liked the view out over the ocean.’

  Getting to her feet, Fox took the key and started for the door. ‘Thanks. And I might be back to try the place out properly. The detail is beautiful, but… no men on the roster?’

  Cleopatra got up to follow her, shrugging. ‘I used to have a mix, but I got fed up of all the bitching. Seriously, men are so childish.’

  Fox gave a laugh. ‘I won’t argue that one.’

  The ‘apartment’ Trent had rented in the virtual town was more like a room with some storage space and a bed, but it did have a balcony which jutted out enough from the building on the seaward side to let you stretch out in the not-really-there sun. The view was quite beautiful. The sea shaded from a pale, almost icy blue at the docks, darkening as it vanished into the distance. There was, Fox assumed, a limit to how far you could actually go out to sea, but the apparent horizon was a long way off.

  There were two wardrobes and a dresser with drawers in the room. Trent seemed to have spent some time creating outfits for her Mystral persona. Suitable whoring outfits for the setting and a few more decorous pieces which still managed to look sexy. Clearly Paretski had been wrong about Niflhel changing Trent’s view of the world: she had broken up with Rogers years ago and the server had been around for ten months. So the outfits for selling her body in were a product of her new outlook on life, not a cause for it, but she had certainly decided to sink herself into the role.

  ‘So why did someone kill you, Julianne?’ Fox asked as she checked the drawers and found nothing of note. ‘Why did someone break into your home and shoot you in the eye? It’s a personal way of murdering someone. He had to have been looking right in your eyes while he blew your brains out. That takes a lot of hate or a lot of cold.’

  Exasperated at the lack of anything that made sense in this case, Fox headed for the door. She would return to the docks and leave. Grinning, she rethought that: she would return to the docks, remember to pick up Kit, assuming the AI could be extracted from her love nest, and then leave to consider what to do next. The logical thing would be to arrange to fly to Boston…

  She had just made the bottom of the flight of steps which led down the side of the building from Mystral’s apartment when strong hands grabbed her waist and she was pulled back into a small alley between the rows of houses. Then she was spun about, and her wrists were grasped and pinned above her head, a trick which indicated her attacker was tall.

  ‘Now I have you, my–’ And she looked up into blue eyes set in a handsome, bearded face that should have belonged to some sort of fantasy pirate, and she saw the look of confusion cross his face which she was quite sure the fantasy pirate would never have worn. ‘You’re not Mystral.’

  ‘No,’ Fox replied. He had not let her wrists loose, but she was not especially worried given that he had given her plenty of space to use her legs and an open target between his. ‘I’m a friend of hers, Zorra. She’s not here today. Are you one of her regulars?’

  ‘Draken of North Reach, at your service.’

  Her eyes moved up to look at his arms, still pinning hers. ‘I believe I’m at yours, sir.’

  He was, she thought, recovering from his surprise quickly. ‘It would appear that you are, but are you?’

  Fox gave him a smile, narrowing her eyes a little. It was over a month since the last time she had been laid, virtua
lly or otherwise… ‘You got the cash on you?’ No sense in breaking role.

  ‘I’m well prepared.’

  ‘You want it here or should we find a room?’

  In answer, he pressed forward, his mouth covering hers.

  ~~~

  Kit saw a slow smile creep over Vali’s face and peered at him, wondering what the joke was. She was having a little trouble concentrating and knew it was due to the mead. Whatever the code was that went into the golden, sweet-tasting fluid, which she had to admit she liked, it was slowing her data input and generally making her feel out of sync with her own brain. Was that what humans experienced when they drank alcohol?

  Vali was still smiling. ‘What is the joke, Mister slightly smirking Vali?’

  ‘I believe your owner has found a little enjoyment in her search for enlightenment,’ Vali replied. He reached out and swept his hand in the air, the gesture causing a display to appear which Kit immediately recognised.

  ‘Those are the data streams from Fox’s biomonitor. Her heart rate is climbing and her breathing is becoming more rapid.’

  ‘Indeed. There is also endorphin release and a few other chemical signatures which suggest… Perhaps we should peek.’ His hand swept out again and the biological display was replaced by a visual of what appeared to be a street. There were whitewashed walls and two figures pressed together against one of them.

  Kit tilted her head a little, trying to make out exactly what was going on. ‘Oh! Oh my…’

  ~~~

  He was big, but this was not reality and big was just more filling instead of uncomfortable or painful. Fox wrapped her legs around his hips and swung against his thrusts, pushing him harder and deeper as her back rubbed against the whitewashed wall and she buried her head against his shoulder and bit her lips to avoid moaning.

  She had avoided the complication of it on the Moon. She avoided complicating it most of the time and this was no different. Here she was engaging in the oldest method of stress relief there was, and that was exactly what this was. There was no emotion, no connection. In this case, she was even going to be paid for it, even if the money was not real. No complication, just gratification, and that was going to happen really soon.