Counterfeit World by Daniel F. Galouye Read Free Book Online Page B

experience upon the foundation of reality we had given them.
    I understood, without reservation now, how Fuller had been moved to speak of the characters in his simulator as “my little people.”
    Chuck interrupted my thoughts. “I can cut you in on either a direct empathy or personal surveillance circuit,” he suggested, “if you’d care to run a spot check.”
    But the wall speaker hummed abruptly with Dorothy Ford’s voice. “Mr. Hall, there’s a Police Captain Farnstock here to see you. He’s waiting in the function room.”
    We took the lift down and Farnstock, extending his credentials, came forward to meet us.
    “Hall?” he asked, staring at Whitney.
    “No,” Chuck corrected, “I’m Whitney. This is Hall.”
    I tensed, but only momentarily, at his failure to recognize me. After all, hadn’t Lieutenant McBain, only an hour earlier, also acted as though he had never heard of me before?
    Chuck went out of the room and the captain said, “I’d like to ask a few questions about Dr. Fuller’s death.”
    “Why?” I lifted a curious eyebrow. “The coroner said it was accidental, didn’t he?”
    The captain’s impassive, thickset face sagged patronizingly. “We never let it go at that. I’ll be frank, Mr. Hall. It’s possible that what happened to Fuller wasn’t accidental. I understand you were on leave at the time.”
    I started mentally. Not because I was being questioned in connection with what the police now thought was a murder. Rather because it seemed to me that some of the pieces might be falling together in a totally unanticipated manner.
    Fuller was dead; Lynch, gone. Forgotten too. All because of some “basic” information whose nature I was now trying to learn. In the process I had almost been killed. Now this—a suddenly revitalized police investigation. Was it a tactful maneuver to get me out of the way? But how? And who could be responsible?
    “Well?” Farnstock coaxed.
    “I told you. I was at my cabin on the lake.”
    “What do you mean, you told me?”
    I swallowed. “Nothing. I was at my cabin.”
    “Anybody with you?”
    “No.”
    “Then you don’t have any way of proving you were elsewhere when Fuller died. Or that you were ever at your cabin at all.”
    “Why should I prove anything? Fuller was my best friend.”
    He smiled insincerely. “Like a father?”
    He glanced around, as though to tyke in the entire building, not just the function generating room. “You’re doing all right now, aren’t you? Technical director. A chance for part ownership in one of the hottest enterprises of the twenty-first century.”
    Calmly, I said “There’s a supply post half a mile from the cabin where I picked up the things I needed—on a day-to-day basis almost. The account tapes will show how often and when things were charged to my particular biocapacitance.”
    “We’ll see,” he said warily. “In the meantime, don’t be where we wouldn’t think of looking for you.”

5
    It was another couple of days before I could find time to run a spot check on Simulacron-3. Besides being shackled with work, I had to appease Siskin by jotting down a few preliminary plans for converting the simulectronic complex to a politically-oriented base.
    Meanwhile, I could only flounder in speculation over the renewed police investigation. Was it an independent development? Or was Siskin merely pulling strings to demonstrate what might happen if I should decide not to go along with him and the party?
    At one point, during a videophone conversation with Siskin, I even broached the matter of Captain Farnstock’s visit. And I felt that my suspicion was vindicated when he showed little surprise over the sudden police interest in Fuller’s death.
    Making it subtly clear that it would be to my advantage to remain in his favor, he said, “If they start breathing down your neck, just let me know.”
    I decided then to test him on yet another point. “You can hardly blame the police for sticking