Salvation

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “You know what they say: If you want to know what the girl’s going to grow into, look at the mother.”

  Callum had a brief, if frightening, memory flash of his own father, standing in Pittodrie Stadium, cheering on The Dons, a beer can in each hand. “I would be delighted if you turned out like your mother.”

  Savi’s mouth parted to a wide O, which she covered with her hand as she laughed. “Oh, no, I married a horrific liar!”

  “Well, you have to admit, they are a bit conservative. And I am white.”

  She ran her hand through his short ginger hair. “White and red. Proper Scottish. I could get snow-blind staring at your skin.”

  “Hey, you said my freckles are cute.”

  “Freckles are cute on a ten-year-old, Cal; when you’re thirty-one they’re just funny.”

  “Oh, thanks.” Callum kissed her. Best way to shut that conversation down. “Anyway,” he said, shrugging, “it’s not family we really have to worry about.”

  “Ah, our bloody Connexion Corp lords and masters. I hate them!”

  “Company policy. Human Resources gets right tight-assed about personal relationships. They’re paranoid about sexual harassment lawsuits.”

  “I never had to harass you for sex.”

  “True.”

  “Actually,” she said, “it’s not HR that’s the problem.”

  “What?”

  “Anyone employed by the security division has to have their friends vetted.”

  “Vetted? You mean, they get to say who you can date? That’s outrageous! They can’t do that.”

  She grimaced. “Ah. You see, in fact, there’s this clause in my contract about who I can associate with outside work. It’s very clear.”

  “Wait…you didn’t sign it, did you?”

  “It’s the security division, Cal; it’s the way it is. If you work in security you have to know who you’re seeing. Exactly who. If another company is trying to launch an infiltration mission, we can’t afford to be vulnerable.”

  “Bloody hell, that’s depressing.”

  “I know. But realistic. The world is a bad place filled with bad people.”

  “Okay, so…what was my report like?”

  “Ah.” She flinched. “I haven’t actually told them.”

  “This doesn’t sound good.”

  “I…It’s…Cal, that day when we met, it was so much fun, remember? I thought it was…you know.”

  “What?”

  She sucked her lower lip in faux remorse. “I thought you were just going to be a one-night stand.”

  “Shit!” He slumped back and stared up at the ceiling, feeling quite petulant. “It wasn’t actually one night,” he said, acting the martyr.

  “Oh, the male ego! Yes, all right: a one-weekend stand. And when it turned out you wanted more than that, I was so happy. But, the point is, I didn’t report it at first because I thought I wouldn’t see you again, and you were Connexion, too. So it wasn’t a huge security risk, and a girl doesn’t want a big file of these things following her around. We still get judged, you know. It’s unfair. Men don’t.”

  “I get it,” he said.

  “So then, when we started seeing each other properly, I was in an awkward position.”

  “Is this going to cost you your job?” he asked, suddenly anxious.

  “No. Look, it’s still only been six weeks. Yuri will understand if the notification goes in a little late. He’s an okay guy.”

  “Yuri?”

  “Yuri Alster. My boss.”

  “All right. So we both come clean together, then, as soon as we get back. Good plan, actually. You go ’fess up to Yuri, and I’ll notify Brixton HR. We’ll say it was a spontaneous thing. Right; this is it, okay? We met here on Barbuda, we fell in love, we got married. It’s not really a lie. If people are going to be that reckless about love, it’s going to be on an island like this one.”

  Savi grimaced again. “Um, we might just have to wait.”

  “What? Why?”

  “It’s my current assignment.”

  “What about it? Actually, what is it, this assignment?”

  “Hey, no fair. You promised you would not ask about my undercover assignments.”

  “Sorry.”

  “There will always be aspects of what I do that I can’t tell you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it.”

  “You have no idea how hard it is for an Indian girl to make a decent career for herself in this business. I worked bloody hard to get into covert ops, and I love what I do. I can’t risk crashing it now.”

  It’s exciting, too, which is what you really like, he thought, but he wasn’t going to say that to her face. “Sorry, sorry. You know I just get concerned for you.”

  “I know. It’s very sweet. But your work is physically dangerous, too; one slipup, and you’ve got a disaster area on your hands. And I know how dedicated you are. So just think how you’d feel if I asked you not to take the worst assignment.”

  “Emergency detoxification isn’t quite as extreme as the media plays it up to be. And I’m not asking you to give security up. I was just showing an interest in my wife’s work, like a good husband.”

  “Nice try,” she mocked.

  “Er, it’s not really unsafe, is it?”

  “You judge: There’s this evil billionaire with a fiendish plan for world domination—no: solar system domination. My assignment is to use all my feminine assets to seduce him and steal the plans from his bedroom safe.”

  Callum grinned lecherously. “That should work, ’cause those are amazing assets.”

  She laughed and kissed him again. “Actually, this one is really boring. I go around university campuses pretending to be a student and showing up at anti-corporate rallies and meetings—with particular attention to anti-Connexion gatherings—seeing who’s there, who’s the angriest of them all, who’s the silent smoldering type, who’s all talk…We’re monitoring potential future troublemakers.”

  “That sounds quite sinister, the company keeping profiles on a bunch of twenty-year-olds. Is it legal?”

  “They’re kids, Cal. Ninety-nine percent are just rebelling against their parents now they’ve finally left home. But they’re susceptible to radicalization. Somebody’s got to stop them being exploited by the real zealot shits; the university deans don’t do a damn thing.”

  “Also true.”

  “It’s important work. Work I’m proud of. Urban violence is in decline for the first time in decades, Cal.”

  “I wasn’t arguing. So how exactly does this prevent you from telling Yuri about me?”

  “I’m in the middle of an assignment. It was a miracle I managed to swing this four-day break. If I tell him about us on Tuesday when we get back, he’ll lift me from the job until you’ve been vetted. And if I’m away for too long, it might make the group I’ve been hanging out with suspicious. The whole assignment collapses.”

  He frowned in confusion. “It can’t take more than a couple of hours for them to read through my file, surely?”

  “That’s not how you vet someone, Cal. Internal Assessment will put a couple of case officers on reviewing you, and now that we’re married you’ll have to come in for an interview. If you’re clean, it’ll only take a week; but if there are any question marks, you’re looking at months for verification.”

  “Bloody hell! If I’m that questionable, how come they let me do what I’m doing? Look at how potentially dangerous my job can be; I could cause Connexion more grief than any street mob. Just one hesitation or wrong action, and tons of toxic crap leaks out, into the water, across a city…”

  “You’re not getting it. Intelligence gathering is about acquiring information and analyzing it. What we do is try to find the people who are looking to subvert you.
Yes, if you’d been turned you probably could cause two or even three bad toxic spills before Security realized you’d become a militant. Our job is to halt that subversion before it happens.”

  “Are you telling me if one of my cleanup operations does go pear-shaped, Security will come looking for links with fanatics?”

  “Depends on how big the damage is, but basically: yes. And if there are suspicious patterns in behavior or your data footprint, our division’s G5Turings will find them.”

  “Shit on a stick! I didn’t know that. It’s not even a whisper in the department.”

  “Which, as you’ve now got an undercover security agent lying about her relationship with you, is going to be really bad if they do stick a pattern analysis on you. So we’re both on the line here. Don’t screw up your next job.”

  “Hell! I’ll do my best.”

  Savi kissed him, resting her face against his. “I love you, husband.”

  “Not as much as I love you, wife. So how long before we can shock everyone with the announcement?”

  “Couple of weeks. No more, I promise.”

  “You’re not going to be away all that time, are you?” he asked in dismay.

  “I’ll try and finish as quickly as I can. But be prepared, contact’s going to be difficult while I’m active.”

  “Come on, you can sneak a minute to call me. Just an email will do. Let me know you’re okay.”

  “If I can, I will, but I can’t risk blowing my cover, Cal.”

  He found that frustrating, as if she wasn’t willing to make the effort. Which wasn’t fair. Like she said, to get where she was at just twenty-six must have been tough. That resolve of hers, pursuing what she wanted without hesitation every time, was intoxicatingly attractive.

  “I understand,” he told her.

  “Thank you.” Savi rolled onto her back and stretched sensuously. “This is the first day of our honeymoon now, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That means I’m entitled to sex with my husband all day long.”

  “It certainly does.”

  “So what are you waiting for?”

  * * *

  —

  The alarm woke Cal, a vile, insistent buzz coming from the antique digital clock with numbers that glowed scarlet in the gloomy bedroom. He reached for it. But of course it sat on a neat stack of plastic storage boxes half a meter from where his fingers stretched to. “Bastard!” He had to scramble to the edge of the mattress and swing his legs out from under the heavy duvet before he could reach the cube of black plastic.

  In the silence that followed he shook his head, trying to wake up properly. An ex had set up the beyond-reach trick. Savi had thought it was a great idea, so he’d claimed it was all his own. Wives—so touchy about old girlfriends.

  He looked around at the empty bed and sighed. Five days without her now. There’d been no call, not even an email. How is some bunch of dickhead students going to notice anything wrong with a two-minute call? Do they all live together in a cult compound or something? That wasn’t a thought he wanted to explore.

  The alarm started off again. He’d only hit the snooze button before. Cursing, he switched it off properly and headed for the shower.

  His flat was on the top floor of a grand old Georgian terrace house in Moray Place, one of the best addresses in Edinburgh, so the estate agent swore: a small, beautiful park of ancient trees, circled by the New Town stone architecture the city was renowned for. That was why the flat was only four rooms, and even on his salary paying the rent was a stretch. But as a bachelor pad it was a classic.

  Maybe too much of a classic, he thought as he went back into the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and his hair still damp. He’d spent serious money on the king-size bed. But that was where the extravagance had to end. His clothes were all supposed to be put away in the three towers of plastic boxes along one wall, but mostly they were dumped on the washing pile in the corner. The Barbuda break had messed up his laundry service routine. It also seemed to have messed up his shopping program.

  “House,” he yelled.

  The wallscreen lit up with the G3Turing’s house utilities menu—two years since he’d installed it, and he still hadn’t gotten around to customizing the cheap, obsolete unit. “Good morning, Callum,” it said in a sharp female voice. He hadn’t changed that from the factory setting, either.

  “Why are we out of shampoo? I had to use the shower glass cleaner on my hair. It smells weird.”

  “Your household items replacement order has been placed on hold.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You are now over your preapproved monthly credit limit by three and a half thousand pounds. The credit company has suspended all future account payments until this is resolved.”

  “Shit! How did that happen?”

  “The last large payment was to the Drexon International Leisure Group for five thousand eight hundred and ninety pounds, which put you over the specified limit. Your credit company suspended the account at midnight and is now charging you double interest on the excess amount.”

  “Bloody hell.” He hadn’t realized Barbuda had been quite that expensive. Worth it, though. She married me! He gave the empty mattress a forlorn look. Five days, and it’s already unbearable without her.

  He started going through what was supposed to be the underwear box. There was only one clean pair of boxer shorts left. “House, why didn’t you warn me I was maxed out?”

  “You have told me to be silent six times in the last four days when I asked your permission to review your current financial status.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. You should have told me it was about the current account.”

  “I did. The credit company has issued five statutory warnings.”

  “Okay. Uh, next time just throw the debt figure up on all the wallscreens in red. I’ll catch it properly, then.”

  “Very well.”

  Callum could have sworn the G3Turing’s voice sounded disapproving.

  He found a fresh shirt and started putting it on. “Is there any breakfast in the kitchen?”

  “There is some printed bacon available. Eight containers of natural food currently need to be removed from the fridge for recycling. All have passed their use-by date. A new food and beer delivery is pending resumption of credit.”

  “Yes, mother,” he grumbled under his breath. “So resume it.”

  “You will first have to agree to a new overpayment charge with the credit company.”

  “Right. Look, just sort the thing out, okay? I get paid in a couple of days anyway.”

  “Your next salary payment is in six days.”

  “Whatever. Get my credit flowing again.”

  “The new extension terms they are offering are not favorable.”

  “Hey, stop being such a bloody lawyer! You’re supposed to be adaptive software, right? Well, pay attention and learn. I don’t like being distracted with this kind of crap while I’m working. This is why I buy programs like you, so, just…make my life easier, okay?”

  “Very well, Callum.”

  He held back on a bad-tempered reply. That easier life could have been real if he’d bought a fifth-generation Turing. They were so much smarter; one of them would have picked up on all his nuances and understood what he wanted, sparing him this grief of having to spell everything out. But a G5 was beyond his current budget.

  Next time I get promoted…

  Callum pulled on his trousers. There were no clean socks. “Fuck’s sake!” He tugged a reasonable-ish pair out of the washing pile. His trainers still had beach sand in them; he grinned fondly at that as he strapped them up. Next to the alarm clock was the tube with his e-contacts, and next to that was a pair of basic screen glasses. He chose the glasses. Somehow this morning he was in no mood to faff ab
out with contact lenses. Damn, I miss her.

  Finally he put his smartCuff on, a simple band three centimeters wide that could have passed as black glass if it hadn’t been so flexible. Once he’d slipped it over his knuckles it shrank to a perfect fit around his wrist. It ran a biometric to check his identity and immediately linked to his dermal grains through mInet. A neat column of sapphire data slid down the left-hand side of his screen lens.

  He didn’t bother reading it. Just having it there, up and active, was reassuring. The mInet made him part of the world again.

  “Hey there, Apollo, are we running smooth?”

  “Good morning, Cal,” the mInet’s electronic identity replied through the audio grain embedded in his ear. Everybody gave their mInet a tag; and Callum had been obsessed with the Apollo moonshot when he was in his teens, to the extent of building flying models of Saturn V’s.

  “You’ve got full mInet connectivity with your peripherals,” Apollo said. “Your blood sugar levels aren’t good.”

  “Yeah, it’s morning, pal. Keep a watch on House; I want to know when my credit’s back up.”

  “You’re already solvent again.”

  He would have said thank you to House, but some deep Luddite part of his mind refused to recognize the G3Turing as a genuine personality.

  Like all meat these days, the bacon was printed, with a use-by date eighteen months away. He dropped a couple of rashers in the frying pan. He didn’t need to check the bread’s use-by; it was moldy, so no bacon sandwich. There was one egg left, a natural one. He couldn’t scramble it because the buttermilk was ripe enough to make his eyes water when he sniffed it; and as his grandmother had drilled into him, that was the only true way to make scrambled eggs. Black coffee, then. He shoved a capsule into the outsize chrome-plated Italian barista machine and waited while it ran through its usual tune of choking steam noises.

  “Stream the overnights for me,” he asked Apollo as he cracked the egg on the side of the frying pan. By some miracle the yolk didn’t break.

  The kitchen wallscreen produced a grid of news streams determined by adaptive preference filters. He sipped the coffee with growing satisfaction as five of the ten news channels focused on disasters across Europe. He scanned them quickly to see if any of them threatened to contaminate the surrounding area; those he might well wind up dealing with during his shift. The major one that had developed while he slept was a blaze in a Frankfurt theatre. Seven fire tenders were dealing with it, sending long white arcs of foam playing over the inferno. “No,” Callum said. Apollo tracked his gaze slipping to the second grid and pulled that one to the front. A landslide in Italy brought on by excessive rains, three houses in a mountain village washed away. He glanced at the next grid. A sinking yacht in the sea off the coast of Malta, surrounded by Coast Guard ships and news drones. “Sorry, my friend, can’t help you.” He flipped the bacon. Fourth, a radioactive waste disposal facility just outside Gylgen, Sweden, which had undergone an evacuation during the night. Unconfirmed reports that the waste storage containers had cracked. “Crap.” A live feed gave him a company spokesman standing outside the gates, assuring reporters that evacuation was “just a precaution,” and there was absolutely no spillage.