4.
Demonstrators dyed the fountain at Lincoln Center blood red.
They marched around the gruesome jets of water, shouting and resisting arrest. I sprinted across the plaza, trying to get there to see which side they were on before the police carted all of them away. Even from this distance I could tell they weren't dancers, not with those thick bodies. The electronic placards dissolved from HOW MANY MUST DIE FROM DENYING EVOLUTION! to FREE MEDICAL RESEARCH FROM GOVERNMENT STRAIGHTJACKETS! to MY BODY BELONGS TO ME! Pro-human bioenhancement, then. A holograph projector, which a cop was shutting down, spewed out a ten-foot high holo of Jane and June Welsh, Siamese twins who had been successfully separated only after German scientists had bioenhanced their bodies to force alterations in major organs. The holo loop showed the attached twins dragging each other around, followed by the successfully separated twins waving gaily. The cop did something and Jane and June disappeared.
"They died," I said to a demonstrator, a slim boy wearing a FREE MY BODY! button. "Ultimately, neither of their hearts could stand the stress of bioenhancement."
He glared at me. "That was their risk to take, wasn't it?"
"Their combined IQ didn't equal your weight. How could they evaluate risk?"
"This is a revolution, lady. In any revolution you have casualties that -- " A cop grabbed his arm. The boy took a wild swing at him and the cop pressed his nerve gun to the boy's neck. He dropped peacefully, smiling.
Abruptly more people gathered, some of them wilier than the boy. Demonstrators stood with their hands on their heads, singing slogans. Media robocams zoomed in from the sky; the live crews would be here in minutes. A group of counter-demonstrators formed across the plaza, in front of the Met. I backed away slowly, hands on my head, not singing -- and stopped abruptly halfway across the chaotic plaza.
An old woman in a powerchair was watching the demonstration with the most intense expression I had ever seen. It was as if she were watching a horrifying execution, judging it judiciously as art. Bodyguards flanked the chair. She wore an expensive, pale blue suit and large, perfectly-matched pearls. Her wrinkled, cold face was completely familiar. This was how Caroline Olson would look in forty years, if she refused all cosmetic treatment.
She caught me watching her. Her expression didn't change. It passed over me as if I didn't exist.
I took the chance. "Ms. Olson?"
She didn't deny the name. "Yes?"
"I'm a reporter with New York Now, doing an article on the New York City Ballet. I'd like to ask you a few questions about your daughter Caroline, if that's all right."
"I never give interviews."
"Yes, ma'am. Just a few informal questions -- you must be so proud of Caroline. But are you worried about her safety in light of the recent so-called ballerina murders?"
She shocked me. She smiled. "No, not at all."
"You're not?"
She gazed at the break-up of the demonstration. "Do you know the work on dancers' bodies they're doing in Berlin?"
"No, I -- "
"Then you have no business interviewing anyone on the subject." She watched the last of the demonstrators being dragged away by the cops. "The New York City ballet is finished. The future of the art lies with bioenhancement."
I must have looked like a fish, staring at her with my mouth working. "But Caroline is the prima ballerina, she's only twenty-six -- "
"Caroline had a good run. For a dancer." She made a signal, an imperious movement of her hand, and one of the bodyguards turned her chair and wheeled it away.
I trotted after it. "But, Ms. Olson, are you saying you think your daughter and her whole company should be replaced by bioenhanced dancers because they can achieve higher lifts, fewer injuries, more spectacular turn out -- "
"I never give interviews," she said, and the other bodyguard moved between us.
I gazed after her. She had spoken about Caroline as if her daughter were an obsolete Buick. It took me a moment to remember to pull out a notebook and tell it what she had said.
Someone dumped something into the fountain. Immediately the red disappeared and the water spouted clear once more. A bioenhanced dog trotted over and lapped at the water, the dog's owner patiently holding the leash while his pink-furred, huge-eyed poodle drank its fill.
#
After an hour at a library terminal at New York Now, I knew that Anna Olson was a major contributor to the American Ballet Theater but not to the New York City Ballet, where her daughter had chosen to dance. Caroline's father was dead. He had left his widow an East Side mansion, three Renoirs, and a fortune invested in Peruvian sugar, Japanese weather-control equipment, and German pharmaceuticals. According to Ballet News, mother and daughter were estranged. To find out more than that, I'd need professional help.
Michael didn't want to do it. "There's no money for that kind of research, Susan. Not to even mention the ethics involved."
"Oh, come on, Michael. It's no worse than using criminal informers for any other story."
"This isn't your old newspaper job, Susie. We're a feature magazine, remember? We don't use informants, and we don't do investigative reporting." He leaned against his desk, his peeled-egg face troubled.
"The magazine doesn't have to do any investigating at all. Just give me the number. I know you know it. If I'd been doing the job I should have for the last two years instead of sulking because I hate New York, I'd know it, too. Just the number, Michael. That's all. Neither you nor the magazine will even be mentioned."
He ran his hand through his hair. For the first time, I noticed that it was thinning. "All right. But Susan -- don't get obsessed. For your own sake." He looked at the picture of his daughter doing time in Rock Mountain.
I called the Robin Hood and arranged to see him. He was young -- they all are -- maybe as young as twenty, operating out of a dingy apartment in Tribecca. I couldn't judge his equipment: beyong basic literacy, computers are as alien to me as dancers. Like dancers, they concentrate on one aspect of the world, dismissing the rest.
The Robin Hood furnished the usual proofs that he could tap into private databanks, that he could access government records, and that his translation programs could handle international airline d-bases. He promised a two-day turn around. The price was astronomical by my standards, although probably negligible by his. I transferred the credits from my savings account, emptying it.
I said, "You do know that the original Robin Hood transferred goods for free?"
He said, not missing a beat, "The original Robin Hood didn't have to pay for a Seidman-Nuwer encrypter."
I really hadn't expected him to know who the original Robin Hood was.
When I got home, Deborah had fallen asleep across her bed, still dressed in practice clothes. The toes of her tights were bloody. A new pair of toe shoes were shoved between the bedroom door and the door jamb; she softened the stiff boxes by slamming the door on them. There were three E-mail messages for her from SAB, but I erased them all. I covered her, closed her door, and let her sleep.
I met with the Robin Hood two days later. He handed me a sheaf of hardcopy. "The City Ballet injury records show two injuries for Caroline Olson in the last four years, which is as far back as the files are kept. One shin splint, one pulled ligament. Of course, if she had other injuries and saw a private doctor, that wouldn't show up on their records, but if she did see one it wasn't anybody on the City Ballet Recommended Physician List. I checked that."
"Two injuries? In four years?"
"That's what the record shows. These here are four-year records of City Ballet bioscans. All negative. Nobody shows any bioenhancement, not even Jennifer Lang. These are the City Ballet attendance figures over ten years, broken down by subscription and single-event tickets."
I was startled; the drop in attendance over the last two years was more dramatic than the press had ever indicated.
"This one is Mrs. Anna Olson's tax return for last year. All that income -- all of it -- is from investments and interests, and none of it is tied up in trusts or entails. She controls it all, and she can waste the whole thing if she wants to. You asked about unusual liquidation of stock in the last ten years: There wasn't any. There's no trust fund for Caroline Olson. This is Caroline's tax return -- only her salary with City Ballet, plus guest appearance fees. Hefty, but nothing like what the old lady controls.
"This last is the air flight stuff you wanted: No flights on major commercial airlines out of the country for Caroline in the last six years, except when the City Ballet did its three international tours, and then Caroline flew pretty much with everybody else in the group. Of course if she did go to Rio or Copenhagen or Berlin, she could have gone by chartered plane or private jet. My guess is private jet. Those aren't required to file passenger lists."
It wasn't what I'd hoped to find. Or rather, it was half of what I'd hoped. No dancer is injured that seldom. It just doesn't happen. I pictured Caroline Olson's amazing extension, her breathtaking leaps; she reached almost the height expected of male superstars. And her crippled horror of a mother had huge amounts of money. "Caroline had a good run."
I would bet my few remaining dollars that Caroline Olson was bioenhanced, no matter what her bioscans said. Jennifer Lang's had been negative, too. Apparently the DNA hackers were staying one step ahead of the DNA security checkers. Although it was odd that the records didn't show a single dancer trying to get away with bioenhancement, not even once, even in the face of Privitera's fervency. There are always some people who value their own career advancement over the received faith.
But I had assumed that Caroline would have needed to leave the country. Bioenhancement labs are large, full of sensitive and costly and nonportable equipment, and dozens of technicians. Not easy to hide. Police investigators had traced both Jennifer Lang and Nicole Heyer to Danish labs. I didn't think one could exist illegally in New York.
Maybe I was wrong.
The Robin Hood watched me keenly. In the morning light from the window he looked no older than Deborah. He had thick brown hair, nice shoulders. I wondered if he had a life outside his lab. So many of them didn't.
"Thanks," I said.
"Susan -- "
"What?"
He hesitated. "I don't know what you're after with this data. But I've worked with friends of Michael's before. If you're thinking about trying to leverage anything to do with human bioenhancement ... "
"Yeah?"
"Don't." He looked intently at his console. "That's out of both our leagues. Magazine reporters are very small against the kind of high-stakes shit those guys are into."
"Thanks for the advice," I said. And then, on impulse, "Would you by any chance like a home-cooked meal? I have a daughter about your age, seventeen, she's a dancer ... "
He stared at me in disbelief. He shook his head. "You're a client, Susan. And anyway, I'm twenty-six. And I'm married." He shook his head again. "And if you don't know enough not to ask a Robin Hood to dinner, you really don't know enough to mess around with bioenhancement. That stuff's life or death."
Life or death. Enough for a bioenhancement corporation to murder two dancers?
But I rejected that idea. It was always too easy to label the corporations the automatic bad guys. That was the stuff of cheap holovids. Most corporate types I knew just tried to keep ahead of the IRS.
I said, "Most life-and-death stuff originates at home."
I could feel him shaking his head as I left, but I didn't turn around.