Once upon a time, her favorite Saint had been Yuri Alster because of his logic and perseverance. Now, though, her allegiance had shifted to Alik Monday, in appreciation for showing her how ruthless you sometimes had to be, how self-belief kept you strong.
Yirella rose silently, making sure she didn’t disturb him. She put on a simple robe and slipped into the den next door, where Uma and Doony were awake. She smiled at them, impressed that Uranti was right. They’d woken with her, even though there was a wall separating them. Maybe the empathy bond wasn’t telepathy, but it certainly had a kind of magical quality excluded from the rest of her life.
Her soft motions, the way she held herself, prevented them from making a big burst of noise and movement that was their usual greeting. Smiling in welcome—false, so false, yet it fooled them—she stroked their soft pelts in reassurance. They regarded her expectantly, and she tilted her head in a playful gesture. The three of them slipped out of the bungalow and into the warm early-morning air.
The lake was half a kilometer from the snug crescent of bungalows, surrounded by tall, lush trees. Swans sailed calmly on the still waters, twisting their heads to give her curious looks as she appeared through the undergrowth.
Without hesitating, she waded straight into the water, shivering slightly at its cool embrace. She held Uma and Doony’s hands, urging them in with her. Her posture was so perfect, so easy, that they walked along beside her eagerly, keen to share whatever adventure she was embarking on.
Feet pressed into the mud and the water rose to her waist. The little forest was serene and lovely. A nice sight for your last.
Her arms curled around the muncs’ shoulders. “My choice,” she told them guilelessly, so they would know this was the right thing, that this was what she wanted. Her knees bent until they too were sinking into the thick mud. Uma and Doony knelt obediently by her side. Her head was well above the surface, but the water closed over their scalps.
Uma struggled a little, as she suspected it might. Doony was completely passive as Yirella held them both under the water. She kept her face completely composed as her little companions died in her tight embrace. There were no tears.
And that was the most frightening aspect of the whole scene for Alexandre and the others who eventually came crashing through the trees, far, far too late.
THE ASSESSMENT TEAM
FERITON KAYNE, NKYA, JUNE 25, 2204
By the time Yuri finished telling us about finding Horatio, we still had another five hours on the Trail Ranger before we reached the crash site. Outside the long window, I could see Nkya’s landscape changing again as we descended onto the dusty plain carpeted with red-gray regolith. The beacon posts stretching away to the sharp horizon were almost twice as high as the oddly smooth rocks littering the ground. Ahead of us, the wheel tracks of the earlier caravans cut across the pristine ground, their dark, laser-straight lines a monstrous act of graffiti against a geology untouched since dinosaurs walked the Earth.
“So what did happen on Althaea?” Alik asked.
“We’re still not sure,” Jessika said. “I spent a year on the post-mission analysis. A hellbuster was a good choice. Most of building seven was vaporized, so there was very little physical evidence for our forensic labs to analyze. My findings were inconclusive.”
She was being modest; I’d checked her report myself. There were some interesting facts to be had amid all those secure files. Ainsley Zangari had certainly thought so. For a start, it’s how Yuri claimed the prize: head of Connexion Security. The boss rewards loyalty.
“But the kid came out of it okay, right?” Kandara asked.
I thought she sounded rather amused, as if Yuri had recounted some traditional fairy tale.
“Yes, my father made a full recovery,” Loi said. “Thank you for asking.”
Like everyone else in the Trail Ranger, apart from Yuri, I turned to look at Loi in surprise. I only knew he was one of the third generation of Ainsley Zangari’s offspring, but I hadn’t actually bothered going deep enough into his file to check parentage. I admit the coincidence was slightly unnerving.
“You?” Jessika asked. Her face was lit up with a smile of pure fascination. “You’re Gwendoline and Horatio’s son?”
“Yeah.”
“That is one hell of an impressive how-my-parents-met story,” Eldlund said in admiration.
Loi took a while finishing his espresso. “Depends on your viewpoint. But, yeah, I guess.”
“Nice happy ever after,” Alik mocked. “But I’m biting.” He leveled a finger at Jessika. “What were your findings? Bad enough to make you switch allegiance back again?”
She gave a reluctant nod, almost as if she was embarrassed. “That kind of criminality, snatching helpless low-visibility people for profit, simply doesn’t happen in the Utopial society. And I really am an office girl at heart. So I went back, looking for the quiet life. How dumb is that?”
Yuri let out a dismissive grunt but didn’t actually challenge her. “That whole case certainly justified Ainsley’s suspicion about the Olyix,” he said.
“How?” Alik said. “They helped you.”
“That they did. They gave me all the information I asked for about using Kcells for a brain transplant, and how the whole concept remains pure science fiction. All very diplomatic and cooperative. But Hai-3 also said: man.”
“I don’t get it,” Eldlund said.
“The exact words it said to me were: I will pray for your success in recovering the unfortunate man who has been abducted.”
“You didn’t say who you were looking for,” Alik said, clicking his fingers. “Male, female, or omnia.”
“Right,” Yuri confirmed. “Ainsley never quite believed the Olyix being so saintly. And this proves it. They’ve taken on the aspects of our greed and run with it to an extreme, because they see that as a normal human trait. Unchecked, it’s a bad attitude. And it is unchecked, because they don’t really understand us, they just mimic us. No moral filter, remember? They just don’t have it. That’s why we keep a very special watch on them now.”
He glanced at me, and I nodded confirmation for everyone to see. But I understood now where his prejudice came from; it was quite reasonable given the circumstances. Yuri wasn’t an agent for alien disinformation; Hai-3 had been stupid. Its mistake there in the embassy had strengthened Yuri’s paranoia, and in turn he’d gone on and convinced Ainsley Zangari to suspect the Olyix of limitless intrigue in the pursuit of money. Subsequently, every crime committed in the Sol system, from jaywalking to political manipulation, Ainsley blamed on the Olyix.
Okay, so eliminating Yuri as a suspect was a step forward, but I still didn’t understand where the whole Kcell-enabled brain transplant myth originally came from. Because that is now embedded so deeply in popular culture, it’s never going away. I’d been hoping for a clue in Yuri’s tale, but he was clearly as puzzled by that as I was.
“You think the Olyix fired the hellbuster missile at you?” Alik asked.
“Not directly,” Jessika said. “That was Cancer.”
Alik’s reaction was interesting. He sat bolt upright. “You’re shitting me!”
“No.”
“Je-zus. Can you back that up?”
“Not in a court of law. But our G7Turings went through a lot of data. We composed a digital simulation of Bronkal for the three days prior to Yuri and I arriving, and extending two days after. She turned up with two associates when we were in the middle of interviewing Joaquin Beron. We backtracked her through the hubs to Tokyo. Before that, we have no idea. The Japanese criminal intelligence agency was unaware she was in their country.”
“And the hellbuster missile? Don’t tell me she came through your hubs carrying it?”
“No,” Yuri said. “We have deep sensors on every trans-stellar hub. You can’t carry weapons between star systems.”
“You did some good work there, tracing him,” Alik said.
“We lost seven of the tactical team members in that explosion,” Yuri said in a dangerously level voice. “And Christ knows what Baptiste’s people did to poor old Lucius as well. Ainsley made sure we had whatever resources we needed afterwards.”
“The hellbuster part wasn’t difficult,” Jessika said. “We found Korrie Chau and his taxez ten hours later, in a parking lot less than two kilometers from the docks. Cancer had slit his throat.”
“Yeah, she doesn’t leave loose ends,” Alik said.
“Forensics tore Chau’s place apart. We shipped entire rooms back to our crime labs for analysis. Forensic accounting tracked his payments, but they were all from one-shot finance houses based on independent asteroid settlements. Most of them don’t even have a human population; they’re just a bunch of G5 and G6Turing rock squatters.”
“So you don’t know who paid him?”
“No.”
“But you think it’s the Olyix?”
“Not directly, but their actions, their acceptance of what they see as our normality, were ultimately what started this,” Yuri said. “I told you, there are consequences to what they have been doing. We know Baptiste Devroy went on the run as soon as Jessika and I turned up at Horatio’s flat. So he’d obviously got some kind of monitor there. And Hai-3 knew who I was trying to find when I showed up at their Geneva embassy. Whatever people are getting snatched for, the Olyix are at least aware of it.”
“Why, though?” Kandara asked. “What’s their motive?”
“Our working theory is illegal medical research,” Yuri said. “Twenty-one percent of the total medical expenditure in the Sol system involves Kcell replacement treatments. That is serious money, because, let’s face it, we are a species of hypochondriacs.”
“But the research and development of new applications is slow,” I explained. “Human regulatory agencies have pretty strict restrictions and protocols. The simple and easy Kcell applications, like a new heart, were first to gain approval, and still form the bulk of their sales. But the more complex organs and glands take time. The Olyix’s human research partners have to proceed cautiously, and they’re the ones making the investment. We think they might be aiming to shortcut that process. And if they propose an underground deal, the Olyix will adopt that mind-set. After all, it’s human.”
“Shit!” Kandara looked shocked. “Are you saying they’re experimenting on live humans?”
“Not the Olyix themselves,” I said. “It’ll be the companies doing the Kcell functionality research, who’ve set up some dark labs to accelerate the work. They only get a small percentage of Kcell sales, but everything is relative. And new Kcell medical treatments hitting the market bring in more legitimate money. Which is the Olyix goal. They’re complicit; they have to be. As Yuri says, the amount of money involved is phenomenal. Buying enough energy to recharge an arkship for interstellar flight doesn’t come cheap.”
“Are they still doing it? Kandara asked. “Are people still going missing?”
Yuri’s laugh was more a groan of despair. “People are always going missing. Most cases are suspicious. We simply don’t know if this kind of illegal experimentation is still going on.” He shrugged. “There have been some good Kcell transplant products released over the last thirty-seven years; the spleen, lymph nodes, stomach lining tissue; not to mention the cosmetics.”
“The Universal authorities must have some idea if people are being snatched,” Eldlund said. “How many people go missing each year in suspicious circumstances?”
“Across fifteen solar systems and a thousand habitats? Who knows?” Yuri said. “On Earth alone, the figure is tens of millions a year. Most of them are what the agencies class as ordinary missing persons—people who are depressed or want out of their relationships or families, or petty criminals or people with debts, or they’re girls and boys who’ve been groomed and get trafficked. Some turn up again, but plenty don’t. There is just no way of knowing which of them are snatched by bastards like Baptiste.”
“That many?” an aghast Eldlund exclaimed. “It can’t be.”
“It is,” I told hir. “It always has been. The percentage is slightly down from twenty-first-century levels because our economy is so much better now, which reduces the level of disaffection in society. But the numbers are still staggering. Worse, they are too great even for our networks and G7Turings to cope with. People are always claiming we live in overpoliced states where authoritarian governments oversee every aspect of life. In truth, governments—Universal ones, anyway—really don’t care about individuals.”
“Until you don’t pay your taxes,” Callum muttered.
“Touché,” I conceded.
“The Utopial governments take more care about citizen welfare,” Jessika said. “It’s fundamental to our constitution.”
“Bravo you,” Kandara said. “But you still have your dropouts.”
“The percentage is minimal.”
“We’re here to assess an alien spaceship,” I reminded them. “Not have a political pissing contest.”
Alik snorted. “So whomever Baptiste was snatching people for hired Cancer to destroy all the evidence?” he asked.
“That’s the conclusion we came to,” Jessika said. “A medical research company, with money, zero ethics, and underground contacts.”
Down the other end of the cabin, Eldlund put down hir cup. “This Cancer assassin, or dark mercenary, whatever she is—did you ever find her? Are you still looking?”
“We’re always looking for her,” Yuri said. “Just like everyone else.”
“The bitch is good,” Alik grunted. “Even the Bureau can’t find her.”
“You know her, then,” Callum said shrewdly to Alik.
“She cropped up in one of my cases, yeah.”
“Did you catch her?”
I watched Alik’s rigid muscles creak into a scowl. “No. But it was an odd case.”
“Odd how?” Callum asked.
“It wasn’t strictly a Bureau matter. I was called in as a favor—friend of a friend kind of deal, someone who knows people connected to a globalPAC.”
THE CASE OF ALIK’S FAVOR
AMERICA, AD 2172
January fourteenth, quarter to midnight, and the snow was blasting across New York City like the devil had left his gates open when he hit the town to party. And, Alik decided, the dark prince had partied hard indeed. He was staring down at the corpse when one of the crime scene cops pulled the coroner’s sheet back. That spoiled his interrupted dinner and didn’t leave him too keen on breakfast now, either.
The girl was a genuine blonde, he could tell. The roots always gave it away. And whatever psycho had scalped her had left some roots. At least her head was still on her neck, because there wasn’t much left of her limbs. Alik studied the wall behind her, which was now a sick mural of thick blood splatter with gobs of flesh embedded in the blast craters. While the victim was standing, someone had used a bulled-up shotgun to take her down. His educated guess was that they blew her arms off first, then followed up with her lower legs. The scalping was last. She might have been alive for it, but blood loss and shock would have rendered her unconscious by that time. Thankfully.
“Je-zus fuck.” Alik turned back to Detective Salovitz.
The cop’s face was the color of a dead fish, but Alik preferred that to looking at the murdered blonde.
“I warned you,” Salovitz said. “The others aren’t much better.”
“She’s the only one in here, right?” Alik had arrived thirty minutes after the NYPD had crashed into the apartment, following all sorts of alarms—neighboring apartments and home security sensors screaming out that gunfire had been detected. He didn’t care about that; he’d been asked to check out a specific digital problem originating in the apartment. However, the multiple homicides gave him a legitimate reason to observe and assist the NYPD. His cover, not that anyone would have the balls to query it, was to provide cross-jurisdictional authority, which was highly credible given the nature of the homeowner’s apartment.
“Yeah,” Salovitz agreed. “The rest are all over the place.”
Alik took a proper look around the room. It was a big space, with a classy art-deco layout; walking into it was a time-step back into the 1920s. The ostentatious genuine period furniture was all arranged to make you look in one direction. That was understandable; he was on the seventeenth floor of a typical Central Park West block. One wall was floor-to-ceiling glass, providing a billionaire’s view out across the park, all snug under its thick, fluffy snow blanket. He went over to check it out. The glass was programmable, allowing it to flow open onto the narrow balcony outside.
When he looked through, he could see footprints in the snow. “Come take a look at this,” he called to Salovitz.
Salovitz pressed his face against the glass, leaving faint mist streamers on the cold surface below his nostrils. “So?”
“Footprints. Three, maybe four, sets.”
“Yeah. Nobody went over, if that’s what you’re thinking. We’d have found the body on the street when we came in.”
Alik bit back on a sigh. He liked Salovitz, he really did. The detective had seen enough of life’s dark side to know how things worked, the dirty political wiring underneath the city that powered things along so smoothly. Every time Alik turned up on a case, no matter how cruddy the given reason, Salovitz knew not to question it. But there were times when Alik thought Salovitz must have gotten his badge on the back of some positive discrimination bullshit for terminal dumbasses. “Look again. Tell me which way those footprints are heading.”
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