Twist rezzed into the office, grey at first, before finding definition and turning toward Chas.
Twist: Hey.
Chas: Where the hell have you been, Twist? I’ve been calling and calling. Ever since you left that message.
Twist: Hey, calm down, Chas, I’m here now. What’s been happening?
Chas: Nothing’s been happening! I’ve been treading water till you got in touch.
Twist: No, I mean with the investigation in SL.
Chas: Nothing that can’t wait, Twist.
Chas’ impatience was very nearly palpable.
Chas: You said you’d found RL and SL connections between Smitts and Mathews.
Twist O’Lemon sighs.
Twist: Yeh. Turned out to be a total dead-end. Sorry, Chas. Didn’t mean to get your hopes up like that.
Twist paused for several long seconds, during which Chas’ dashed hopes were allowing despair to creep back in.
Twist: I’m just reading your IM about the geckos. Good work. You actually went to Sandbox Island? I hope you were well-armed.
Chas: You made sure I was.
Twist: LOL. So I did. Anyway, tell me what you found out about the Mathews girl in SL.
Chas: Not much, I’m afraid. She danced at a shemale club, as well as several straight clubs, and worked as an escort. She had a huge private house and a smaller place she called the Whorehouse. It’s where she took her clients and where we found her dead AV.
Twist: Oh. You actually found her, then? Were there any clues as to what might have happened?
Chas: She’d been shot. Blood all over the place. But that was it. No trace of the killer. Nothing incriminating left behind that we could see.
Twist: We?
Chas: Yeh, me and Doobie.
Twist: Oh. Doobie. Right.
Chas: So what was it you found that made you think there was a link between Smitts and Mathews? And me, for that matter.
Twist stood going through his range of animated poses, but failed to respond. Chas waited. For nearly half a minute.
Chas: Twist? Are you still with me?
Twist: Sorry, Chas, I had incoming IMs. Anything else been happening while I was away?
Chas restrained an urge to shout. Twist seemed blissfully unconcerned by his predicament. He dragged the two notecards on the Dionysus case on to Twist’s AV and waited until Twist had confirmed receipt.
Chas: That guy got in touch just before you logged in. Wants us to catch his old lady
in flagrante delicto.
Twist: Just reading through it.
A pause.
Twist: Hahaha. Swingers in love. Almost a contradiction in terms. Let’s go check it out.
Chas: The swingers’ club?
Twist: Sure. I’ve never been to a swinger’s club. Might be interesting.
Chas felt the tension in him ratcheting up several more notches. Not only had Twist’s lead on the Smitts-Mathews connection fallen apart, but Twist himself now seemed quite unconcerned about his partner’s increasingly unhappy predicament. He shook his head in frustration but had no idea what else to do. His pursuit of the killer in both RL and SL seemed to have come to a dead end. And so he responded with reluctant acquiescence and a deep inward sigh.
Chas: I guess.
Twist: Okay, TP from the LM and I’ll see you there.
The Echangiste Swingers Club was in Zurich City. Chas rezzed into a large, marble-floored hall just seconds before Twist. Windows looked out into the city streets of old Zurich. There were two doors, but neither of them led anywhere except out again. In the centre of the floor stood a large box constructed from still shots of the interior of the club. Yellow text above it urged, Please take a card for Club Echangiste information by touching this box.
Chas clicked on the box and immediately received a notecard describing the purpose and facilities of the club.
CLUB ECHANGISTE (Swingers Club) — Sex with Elegance.
Club Echangiste is an exclusive, invitation-only club for open-minded, nonjudgemental men and women who enjoy their sexuality and want to explore intimate and group sex in a refined, elegant environment.
Here, you will find a romantic ballroom, “group activity” room, beautiful private rooms for couples or small groups, a 50’s drive-in theater park with movies and TV, and a holodeck with twenty-five scenes. All well equipped with the best sex toys around!
A green pad on the floor read, Teleport to Club Echangiste. Chas right-clicked and selected Teleport. But it only turned him around, and left him standing where he was.
Twist: It must know, somehow, if you’re a member of not.
Chas looked around. A constantly evolving slide-show on one wall depicted naked men and women in various sexual poses, but apart from the two exit doors, there didn’t seem to be any way in or out of the club itself.
Chas: How are we going to get in, then?
Twist: This is just some kind of welcome lobby. I’ll bet the club itself, and the various sex rooms and holodeck, are actually skyboxes.
Chas: Then there’s no way of getting to them without an LM.
Twist: Of course there is. We’ll fly. Do you have a flight feather?
Chas: What’s that?
Twist: It’s an attachment to help you fly straight up. Measures your altitude and lets you hover when you get there.
The offer of a flight feather appeared from Twist. Chas attached it invisibly to his left hand. Twist clicked on the main door and went out into the street. Chas followed.
Immediately opposite, a three-storey greystone building with a colonnaded arcade on the ground floor rose into a blue sky. Further along the street, a square building flew the Swiss flag, and open green lawns were bounded by tall office blocks. It was completely deserted. Chas looked up and saw that there were another four storeys above the lobby, and the building advertised itself as the Savoy Hotel. There was no sign of anything up in the sky.
Twist: Follow me.
And Twist took off, straight upwards, spiralling as he went. Chas put his arms at his side and followed, as instructed. The city fell away below him, and he had a view of the twin towers of the cathedral, a huge square building with a strange, domed construction on its roof. In the distance he saw the sea, before piercing the scattering of clouds overhead and rising at speed into the blue.
At three hundred metres, he flew past a square grey building floating in the sky, tall windows and a balcony running around all four sides. He nearly crashed into Twist, who had stopped and was hovering just above it.
Chas: There don’t appear to be any doors. I don’t see how we can get in.
Twist: Well, we don’t need to get in. We can just take a look from here.
Twist O’Lemon grins.
Twist: An old griefer’s trick for getting in and out of buildings.
Chas Chesnokov: I know. It was just about the first thing you showed me.