by Carl Neville
He has calculated it all quite precisely: a twenty-minute window on the building’s alarm system, the three-minute delay at the door will not give them enough time to access and download anything pertinent from Bewes’s ROD. They will leave frustrated but the upload to the system will be instantaneous, and his own alibi, should anything be detected before he leaves, could not be more watertight, more Waterston. He almost laughs. He is surprisingly tense, can’t check the ROD at such a profound moment unless, perhaps.
Sorry, do excuse me a moment, he says, may be Jennifer. Waterston smiles, continues to scrutinize him. Takes out the ROD, smiles and nods sympathetically at the message for a second then quickly taps out a response.
There is an up to 180 second delay on the door.
Re-pockets it.
Ah, just the one, he says as a shot of vodka is passed to him, exchanges reminiscences and condolences for twenty or so minutes then, well, I should get back for Jennifer. No doubt I will see you all at the house soon enough. The funeral, he says solemnly.
Yes, Waterston says, I shall call in tomorrow.
Very well, Dominic says.
He leaves, turns left and walks at a measured pace toward the ROD collection point on the corner across from the building. Lifts the cover, there is just one in there, Alan Bewes’s. Excellent, they have turned out to be highly reliable. He pockets it, turns the next corner and heads down to the carpool under the leisure complex on Harpington Road, returns to the house, greets the counsellors who have arrived, excuses himself, goes upstairs and puts the ROD back in his grandfather’s bedside cabinet then goes to the bathroom where a tremendous surge of relief and anxiety overwhelms him and he holds on to the edge of the sink and closes his eyes; a livid euphoria that pulses at the edge of pain, hard to imagine how much greater it would have been without the virus to shield him. He has done it.
Seven days now and he will be on the plane to the States, the moment he touches down he will defect, cash in all the credits he has accumulated, taste the air of another planet, live forever. Nothing to do now but quietly wait and monitor the situation.
Let me bring the food out, he says, hearing a car pulling up outside. Jennifer half turns, thanks him in a whisper, prepares herself. He stands beside her for a moment, watches Waterston get out of the car, straighten, hands pressed into the small of his back before he goes into the kitchen to put the kettle on, then to answer the door, takes Waterston’s heavy coat and hangs it on the peg, returns to the kitchen and then to the living room with the tray. His nose itches, eyes a little tickly, must be all the flowers, never had hay fever before, perhaps the virus and a lack of sleep are depleting his immune system. His thoughts drift as they chat, eyes wandering across the photos of Jennifer and Alan Bewes on the mantelpiece, a picture of her daughter Soldemaine, nothing of Dominic’s father or all of them together.
Dominic, a word, Waterston says.
What might his mother look like now? She was a handsome woman certainly, his father a beautiful man no doubt, his own beauty is a…
Dominic, a word, Waterston says again, pulls him out of the shallow reverie. Tired, no matter what enhancements are running in the background, after a while sheer fatigue takes over. They step into the kitchen
There has been a break-in, it seems.
He feels it like a distant kick in the guts. Where? For a moment he can’t or doesn’t want to process the information.
The Office. Bewes’s office.
He nods. A break-in? When?
Saturday morning, he lowers his voice. We have called in a team, very scrappily put together at the last minute, people called back from holiday or out of retirement. Squires is keen to head it up, bring in the PCSDF, of course.
An investigation, he says. He is behaving strangely but he is grieving his grandfather and so any unusual behaviour may be attributed to that. How did they?
Very crude, just broke the lock. Yet had some way of bypassing the alarm. Obviously, the timing and this disabling of the security system suggests… his voice trails off.
They broke the door down? He feels a ghostly self pivot on its heels and roar, raise its arms to the heavens. Why would they do that? What has happened? Instead he says, I see. Perhaps I could be patched into the investigation, keep an eye on it? The Mantis smoothing everything out.
Waterston pauses. I wonder if they aren’t trying to send us some message with this. Combination of force and high-level technical know-how. Aren’t you on compassionate leave?
Officially but…
Well yes, we can try to run a feed to your remote server so you don’t have to go into the office. If SSF will clear that. Very strict now though of course. Squires.
Dominic checks his feed, still no patch through to the investigation and being outside an ongoing situation is untenable. He will go into the office and press them on setting one up.
Squires, Waterston. What deeper game are they playing? If they know the alarm has been bypassed perhaps they will order an audit of the whole system, perhaps that is why Solchenko and all his crew are here, milling about the offices, waiting for something certainly, some command, some agreement.
No sooner has he arrived in his office than he has a message from Jonathan Barrow offering his condolences and asking to come in to see him. Routine he assumes, but one never knows. He uses the internal phone to get the relevant department in SFF4 and sits on it for thirty minutes tapping his Squareback pen on the desk repeatedly until someone answers, then he insists in quite forceful terms that they expedite his access to the remote feed, only to be told that under no circumstances will information be relayed off-site. Can he request an on-site patch in then?
Certainly.
A soon as humanly possible? His voice is starting to crack slightly, sounds a little strange to his own ears. He has always used his voice as one of his weapons, a part of his armoury of seduction, its deep, inviting call, but it seems to be taking on a life of its own. Puts the phone down then sits back and closes his eyes until the Passocon beeps that the feed has been set up.
First, he skims through the team members and their investigation backgrounds. One possible advantage is that Abhishek, one of the key members of the team processing the Partition breaches for Squires, has been diverted to the break-in. That takes some of the heat off that investigation, but opens up a new field of anxiety. He is dangerously competent and the rest of the team seem similarly accomplished, but rather unfamiliar with the mechanics of PRB SSF departments, their inexperience will prove to be a drag on the investigation. He takes a few moments to gaze at the photograph on Katja’s profile. All he needs is time to be on his side. A second later the downstairs scanners announce that Barrow has entered the building and is presumably on his way up to the office.
He skims the rest of the feed quickly and sees they have done an autopsy. Then scanned the results through a level five filter and discovered the presence of XV2
Both Waterston and Barrow have requested an autopsy independently.
They are on to him.
No. Not necessarily. Standard suspicion at this heightened time, etc.
Breathes out slowly. What are they looking for? This should all have gone undetected. That one slip, not telling them in time that the door had a delay on the lock.
Another blow.
Barrow must be in the lift up by now.
The Mantis activates to shield him from, well, events,
Dear boy.
Unravelling, everything unravelling.
Events.
There’s a tap at the door.
Come, he announces, keeps his eyes on the feed for a few seconds more, flicking through pages of personpower requests as the door creaks open, sees that the investigation has become a murder inquiry now and instantly looks up, keeps his face absolutely composed, stands with a smile, extends his hand. Is it shaking slightly, guiltily, damp?
Barrow, Barrow says.
Bewes, how can we help?
How long will the p
aperwork for the search of the house take to process? Given the seriousness and the urgency, even with SSF4’s notorious tardiness, not more than an hour or two. He waits until he is sure Barrow is in the lift then takes the stairs. A car. Permissible under the circumstances, though he has a tendency to take them much more than other SSF workers and he doesn’t want anything to get flagged up at this late stage. Legitimate that he would want to get back to prepare his dear grandmother for the shock of the search though. He approaches the carpool desk and is surprised to see that PRB 438971-2 “Priscilla” with whom he flirts on a semi-regular basis is not behind the desk today. Personnel shortages because of the Games perhaps, meaning they have drafted someone in from another unit, an overweight middle-aged woman, no make-up, greying hair scraped back, wearing a shapeless SSF uniform.
His smile goes unreturned and he explains he will need a car to go to his address in Birmingham. Which address? He gives it. Some tapping at the Passocon. Is told that if he waits thirty minutes there is already a team booked to go out to that address from across the quadrangle.
Must be Barrow’s team.
Well, he says, it is important that I get there earlier. I have some rather bad news to break to someone. He leans forward on the desk, adopts a serious and sincere demeanour. She’s unlikely to be susceptible to his charms and he thinks immediately that he may have misjudged the situation.
Perhaps you could ask the others to wait in the car while you go in first.
No, that would be very inconvenient given the sensitivity of the situation, he says.
You are well over your vehicle allocation for the year, she says. You used a vehicle for two intercity journeys just on Saturday. On non-official visits.
They were official, they related to death in the family. A high-ranking member of SSF1, he says.
She is unmoved. Your usage is double everyone else’s. Let me consult with my colleagues, she says. After a certain amount of tapping. You are locked out. It’s automatic, she says. Prevents abuse of the system.
He smiles, I would very much appreciate it if you could unlock the system just this once, he says, glances at the clock on the wall behind her. I am on compassionate leave officially, I believe there will be an emergency release clause under such circumstances.
She taps away, squinting at the Passocon’s screen.
I’ll have to talk to a colleague, she says.
By all means, he replies.
He estimates that he is about ten minutes ahead of them if they are sticking to mandated speed limits as he must in his driverless car. He sits with his hands folded in his lap, the Mantis controlling his breathing. Just breathe deeply, trust that Fortune will smile upon you.
He thinks through the consequences of the break-in. If they have accessed the room earlier, even by a minute or so, then they may have had time to download information onto the RODs. Bewes’s ROD will show that it was accessed at 10:33 on the Saturday, if they take the time to investigate it thoroughly and get past his attempt to screen out the records. So far, he knows, it is sitting in the Inforensics department untouched. At some point they will start to go through it. Should he request that he is the one who runs analytics on that or would it only alert Squires, make him more suspicious? He will find some way to monitor that too, ask to be patched in to all elements of the investigation.
Yes, you are one of the chosen ones, a favoured son, there is no car in the street outside the house. Up the steps and in, calling out to Jennifer, who is in the living room, he walks as serenely as possible up the stairs and into his bedroom, slips his shoes off, goes around, over, every squeaking floorboard, pulls the case containing the ampules of XV2 out from under the bed and takes it into the room Tom has been staying in, removes them and drops them into his bag, zips it up. Keeps a single ampule in his pocket in case of arrest, trusts that the signal from Tom’s room will be so overpowering that it will go undetected.
Even as he comes down the stairs, the sound of the flushed toilet still gurgling through the pipes behind him, he can see them standing on the pavement through the frosted glass of the door, steps sideways into the living room as someone comes up the steps. Jennifer, he says, smiles. More bad news I’m afraid, prepare yourself dear, goes to where she sits and can’t help but put his hand out and place it on hers where it rests on the arm of the chair. Her head has whipped round, eyes wide. Dominic? she asks, surprised, too preoccupied to have even registered his entering the house. He crouches as the doorbell rings.
The death is suspicious, he says softly, watches her take in the news for a moment. There’s a team here to go through the place. I wanted to be the one to come first to prepare you. Should I ask them to wait a little while? She looks out of the window again for a moment then turns back to him with what he worries for a second is a slightly sceptical, appraising look, he imagines suddenly she will ask him: Dominic, what have you done? Instead she simply shakes her head.
Now is as good a time as any, she says. Her face softens into a sad smile and his own sudden anxiety lessens. She suspects nothing and he is so grateful to her for her misplaced trust that he leans in and kisses her forehead, finds a single tear has dropped from his eye onto her cheek.
Very well, he says and goes to answer the door, finds that despite everything that is unfolding he can’t help but be struck by how attractive the blonde girl leading the team is.
They have arrested Tom and Julia. For the moment they are interested in interrogating the suspects, that should keep them occupied fruitlessly for a day or two. And if they discover that they really know nothing beyond all doubt? He rolls over, well, it is the nature of modern espionage that one can never be beyond doubt, there may always be some deeper level on which the programme is running, some more sophisticated means of avoiding detection, some finer and more granular level into which the control system has been imbricated.
Yes, they will plug away fruitlessly at it. He will go into the office tomorrow to assess how things are developing, perhaps he could wander over to chat to the blonde who was so brusque and efficient in her search of the house. Yes. That wouldn’t be out-of-character behaviour precisely because it is a little inappropriate, certainly less out of character than all this hiding around at home.
Trust in the Mantis, the Mantis will guide and protect you. The situation has become chaotic, things are not going to plan, you have entered a domain of deep uncertainty which may grow even more uncertain and you will have to ride the feedback the way a child…
A memory takes hold of him, a memory of his father. A holiday down on the coast, the last holiday they had, how old would he have been? Impossible memories, they would say, and yet he has them, his father picking him up and carrying him into the water, how he struggled as the waves grew closer and cold drops began to spray him, shouting out and wriggling away, his father ploughing remorselessly on, eyes fixed straight ahead, seemingly oblivious to his son’s distress and he had no idea whether his father would stop, hurl him out into the water and return to the shore to watch him drown or clasp him closer and keep on until they were both submerged. Lifted in those arms and carried to his death, his father looking down, grinning, taking pleasure in his trappedness, his writhing, and yet if he did break free from his father’s embrace, he would surely die.
He remembers his fear, it courses distantly through him, swirls around the edge of the armour his father has sent to protect him.
Father, only you can save me from the fear you have instilled in me.
A sound from the bedroom across the hall which he thinks is Jennifer weeping. She should be asleep. Why hasn’t she taken a Dev? He listens more closely but it has faded now, perhaps he had imagined it. He would like to get out of the house and stay elsewhere in Birmingham for a few days, make the most of the PRB before he leaves it forever, before it disappears. He has had pleasures here, certainly.
Another thought, as he tends to the roses in the back garden on his grandmother’s behalf, Jennifer still understandably o
ut-of-sorts, perhaps they have also accessed the room early enough to have downloaded everything. Those few seconds might have made all the difference. Assume the worst then, that they have had full access to the database, have copied and seen everything they need to. What is their plan? Assassination, he assumes. They have been looking for guns, he had promised weapons that he had no intention of delivering but sees now a potential route to eliminating them. Important that he gets something to them quickly before they look elsewhere, and the situation slips further beyond his control.
Can he risk sending another message given the increased scrutiny and monitoring? He should be remaining as unobtrusive as possible, radio silence. Still, this standoff between Squires and Waterston means the investigation is under-resourced.
The unforeseeable consequence of every action, every inaction. A million scenarios rise, die and finally settle as he prunes, snipping away at the tough green stems with the secateurs in the same way the Mantis has sorted and sifted through all available options, moves, helped him to understand the best course, be resolute. He will use a backchannel on one of the black RODs he keeps for covert and strictly non-departmental business, send a message to the An-Ams: Tools delivered tomorrow.
And, yes, it is rather elegant, he sees how he has set the Mantis a problem and it has churned through his memories, dredged up all kind of relevant and synthesizable connections that, left to his own devices, he may never have made. The main overseer of one of the main SSF storage centres for all manner of impounded tech and pharms is heavily in his debt for looking past several breaches in the Partition and shortfalls in audits over the past few years that Dominic has kept officially unreported as leverage. The same facility contains mountains of probably still serviceable guns from one of the great post-Breach amnesties when the population was demilitarising.
He will arrange for access to a couple of rifles from the vast store. Send out the tiny vial of XV2 he has kept with a courier, tell the overseer to take two of the guns, expose the handles to the XV2, vacuum seal them in plastic and have them dispatched to the An-Ams current operating address. If they try them out, as they almost certainly will before attempting any mission, they will be exposed.