Salvation

by Peter F. Hamilton

  He left Salovitz to crank out the usual alerts and requests for cooperation to various global agencies, providing them with the new picture, and called Tansan.

  “It’s Cancer.”

  “Shit,” Tansan snapped. “Are you sure?”

  “The massacre at the portalhome is typical of her operation. That bitch would’ve made certain no one survived to tell us what actually happened, especially Koushick Flaviu, who was running the data break. I’m thinking the two teams didn’t kill each other quite as smoothly as it was laid out. Not that the theory matters, since I’ve just seen surveillance of a woman who fits her profile. But she vanished in Manila hours ago.”

  “This is serious. Those files need to stay secure.”

  “I’m sure the people she’s murdered will agree with you.”

  “I’m sorry about them, I really am. But the people I represent have other issues.”

  “And money.”

  “Money isn’t actually part of it, this time. This is political.”

  “Yeah. I accessed Nikolai Kristjánsson’s preliminary report. Those files she was trying to bust dealt with New York’s shields.”

  “Which is why this is attracting so much attention here on the Hill.”

  “Nikolai said he didn’t think they actually cracked the files.”

  “Not this time, but the fact someone was trying to bust them out is worrying. There’s only one reason you want those files, and that’s if you’re planning to obliterate New York.”

  “I don’t get it. There are enough freak-jobs in the solar system who can probably build their own nukes if they want to. But then you’d just bring the components in through hubs one chunk at a time and rebuild it on the ground. Shields are practically an anachronism.”

  “Not entirely,” Tansan said. “Pulau Manipa.”

  Alik winced. Pulau Manipa used to be an Indonesian island. Then, in 2073, a reasonably sized chunk of space rock hit the atmosphere above it. Earth’s atmosphere had provided a good level of natural protection against cosmic impacts since the end of the dinosaurs, with just a few little blips in its safety record, such as Tunguska in Siberia and Meteor Crater in Arizona. It even broke up the 2073 rock, which basically put Pulau Manipa directly under a cosmic shotgun blast rather than a single-shot impact. Astrophysicists and weapons techs were still arguing which kind of strike was worse: air burst or solid smackdown. Nobody on Pulau Manipa could be asked for their opinion. Between the multiple physical strikes, the overlapping blast waves, and the firestorms, none of them were left alive.

  Up until that incident, countries had been fairly halfhearted about building shields. They were the tail end of big military spending, and nobody was enthusiastic. There were plenty of political and religious fanatics still waging insurgency campaigns against governments and society in general, but they were slowly and quietly being dumped on Zagreus. The era of national wars and standing armies with nuclear-tipped missiles was long over.

  Shields were an artificially generated field that enhanced atomic bonds—a technology that emerged from molecular fabrication. Although air was a tenuous material even at sea level, if the bonds were enhanced within a thick enough section, it produced what was essentially a force field. Enhance a wall of air twenty meters thick, and it would be able to resist a hellbuster blast. But apply that same enforcement to a couple of kilometers of air, and you could set off a nuke outside a city, and all it would do is provide the residents with a grandiose light show.

  Had there been a shield over Pulau Manipa, the rock wouldn’t have made it through. So governments shifted shield construction contracts to civil authorities, and the old armaments companies got a last gulp of public Big Cash. Most large urban areas on the planet were equipped with fully operational nuke-proof shields. Of course, no wild-orbit asteroid would ever make it to within ten million kilometers of Earth now. The astro-engineering companies had so many people and so much ultra-sophisticated hardware up there that any approaching asteroid would be mined down to the last speck of gravel before it got inside lunar orbit. But no politician wanted to be responsible for a budget cut that would strip a layer of defense off their voters. City shields remained intact and alert. In the last ninety-nine years since Pulau Manipa, they’d mainly been used to ward off hurricanes.

  “But rocks falling on our heads can’t happen anymore,” Alik insisted. “We’re not fucking dumbasses like the dinosaurs; we’re here to stay. It’s Darwin.”

  “So why did Cancer try and bust the files out?”

  Alik ran his hand back through his hair, but not even an imagination pumped by playing innumerable Hong Kong fantasy drama games could give him a viable suggestion on that. “We’re going to get some answers on the multiple homicide soon; that’ll point me in the right direction,” he told Tansan. “But I might need some of those dark funds to finish the case.”

  * * *

  —

  It turned out the South African Coast Guard did still have some aircraft, a couple of squadrons of Boeing TV88s. They weren’t drones, though they could deploy swarms of airborne and underwater drone clusters kitted out with all kinds of high-grade sensors. They even had actual humans in the cockpit telling the G6Turing pilot what to do. Two of them had zoomed out to the area where the Jörmungand Celeste had been at eleven o’clock New York time. They found the life raft easily enough, even though the beacon had been disabled. That told Alik just how scared the Lorenzo and Farron families were.

  The TV88s had a portal door on board, so as soon as the families had been winched up, they were brought into the twentieth precinct—seventy minutes after the South African Coast Guard had officially been asked to help. Alik was impressed.

  The two families arrived like refugees from some disaster area, hunched up, hair and clothes sodden with seawater, a silver blanket around their shoulders, clinging to water bottles and candy bars. It wasn’t rescue workers triumphantly bringing the six of them in, but a trio of pissed-off cops.

  Salovitz didn’t put them into interrogation; he was saving that for the first wrong answer. They sat in a row of chairs at the back of the case office. For people who’d just had their lives threatened then spent hours in the same lifeboat in the middle of an ocean, they certainly didn’t look like best buddies.

  Delphine Farron had her arm around Alphonse’s shoulders. The boy was only ten, but he’d already perfected a teenager’s sulk. He scowled at Salovitz, pouting away like a runway model caught breaking her diet.

  The Lorenzos were only slightly more civilized. Alik tried not to stare too hard at Rose. She was a real trophy wife; Shango’s splash told him she’d modeled for various brands a decade ago—couture and upmarket lingerie. Now she fitted into the perfect corporate spouse mold. Telomere treatments had preserved early-twenties looks, and surrogates had made sure her body wasn’t punished by pregnancy, allowing her to play the chic, sultry babe to perfection. Even disheveled from the ocean ordeal, she stayed classy. He guessed she was also a tiger mom; her kids were kept by her side as they sat, her arms around them. Kravis Lorenzo was the other half of the stereotype package deal family: Ivy League, preened almost as much as Rose, sitting stiff-backed and defiant, maintaining the kind of pose that said “my criminal law colleague is on fast-access call.”

  “Quite a night,” Salovitz said. “Five people dead.”

  Delphine Farron let out a short hiss of breath, but that was the only hint of emotion. Rose Lorenzo pulled her children in even tighter.

  “So let’s be quite clear,” Salovitz continued. “Any smartass answers, any lies, and we take this way on down to the holding cells. City Social Division will claim the kids. And you know what they say. The difference between City Social and a rottweiler is that a rottweiler will eventually let go.”

  “You can’t threaten us,” Kravis Lorenzo blustered. “My God, man, what we’ve been through!”

/>   “It’s not just five, though, is it?” Alik said. “We can add Riek, whom they pulled out of the marina a couple of days ago. And Samantha—maybe not dead, but still in the hospital with a face cut up so bad a gorilla would puke at the sight of it.”

  “Who are these people?” Kravis asked.

  “Wrong answer,” Salovitz said. “Let’s get you down to holding. We’ll charge you and start the formal interviews.” He stood up, beckoned—

  “Wait!” Kravis said. “What do you want?”

  “For you to cut the bullshit,” Salovitz bounced back at him. “What in the fuck have you people gone and done? There’s a gang war broken out in my precinct, and you’re the heart of it. Why?”

  “This is all wrong,” Rose said. “We didn’t want any of this to happen. That’s the truth.”

  “What did Samantha warn you about?” Alik asked. “And before you claim memory loss, she’s the one that gave you a massage with added extras. I’ve already talked to her tonight—in her hospital bed.”

  Rose gave Delphine an anxious glance. All the housekeeper did was stare at her toes.

  “Waiting,” Alik said.

  “She assaulted my wife,” Kravis said heatedly. “A sexual assault.”

  “Gonna count to three,” Salovitz said. “And if I don’t get an answer—”

  “She told me to back off Delphine,” Rose said wearily.

  “I never asked her to do anything to you,” Delphine said quickly. “I don’t even know her.”

  “Back off why?” Salovitz asked.

  “All I said was to return Bailey’s game matrix, and I wouldn’t enter a formal complaint with the housekeeping agency,” Rose said.

  “You’re saying my boy stole from you?” Delphine said in outrage. “Lying bitch! Alphonse is a good boy, aren’t you, honey?” She gave him a reassuring squeeze. The kid’s head was bowed.

  “He was with you the day it went missing,” Rose countered. “Who else would take it? And you never asked permission to bring him into my home.”

  “It was the goddamn Christmas vacation! What am I supposed to do with him?”

  “Ask his father to look after him?” Rose sneered. And Alik suddenly understood why Kravis married her, not just for plenty of hot sex with the finest piece of ass on the block. She belonged in his uptown world just as much as he did.

  “Fucking bitch!” Delphine spat.

  “Cool it, both of you,” Salovitz said. “So”—he eyed Delphine—“Rose accuses your boy of stealing, and you go running to Rayner? That’s the story here?”

  “I didn’t do that. What am I, stupid? It’s only a goddamn matrix, a couple of hundred bucks. And that brat has dozens of them anyway. He probably just put it in the wrong case.”

  “You’re blaming Bailey?” Rose shrieked.

  “You called Al a thief!”

  “Je-zus wept,” Salovitz grunted.

  “Alphonse,” Alik said softly. The boy still didn’t look up. “What did you tell your uncle Rayner?”

  All that happened was the kid shook his head.

  Delphine suddenly gave her son a suspicious look. “Hey! Did you go and see Rayner?”

  “I don’t know,” Alphonse sobbed. “Maybe.”

  “You dumb—”

  For a moment Alik thought Delphine was going to smack him in the head there and then.

  “Did you take that matrix?” she challenged. “You answer me! You tell me the truth right now. Did you?”

  The boy’s shoulders were shaking now as tears dripped onto the floor. “I was going to give it back,” he wailed. “I was. Next time we went back there, honest. It’s Star Revenger Twelve, it’s only just come out. I wanted to see what it was like. That’s all.”

  The expression of satisfaction on Rose’s face was so brutal Alik wanted to give her the smack Alphonse deserved.

  “Your mom was all over you about the matrix,” he said to Alphonse. “Right? So you asked Uncle Rayner, man to man, to get Rose to back off. That way you could sneak it back in.”

  “I guess,” Alphonse mumbled.

  “Did he laugh? Did he say yes? Did he say well done for taking it? ‘I knew you were one of us, kid,’ is that what he said?”

  Alphonse’s sobs got louder.

  Alik turned to Kravis. “And you.”

  “What about me?”

  “Why did Riek go and kick the shit out of Samantha, after she hijacked your wife’s massage?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Really? Because I have a list of your law firm’s clients. My altme ran a cross-check. Longpark Developments mean anything to you?”

  “No. I’ve had no dealings with it.”

  “Ha; lawyer’s answer. It happens to be owned by Javid-Lee. In fact, that’s one of fifteen perfectly legal companies owned by him that pay your firm retainers.”

  Kravis glared at Alik in stony silence.

  “You went to him, didn’t you—after the massage?” Alik carried on. “She’s your wife, after all. You didn’t want justice, not for what Samantha did. You wanted vengeance.”

  “You can’t prove that.”

  “Don’t be so sure. You went to him because you believed he was deniable. Wrong. Sure, he won’t give you up; you’re in too deep with him now. He fucking owns you, which I’ll bet hasn’t even registered yet. You made a deal with the devil, Kravis. He’s got your soul by the balls now. But if we looked hard enough, if we leaned on the right people, the little people, there would be witnesses. I could send you down as an accessory to a multiple homicide. How long would you last on Zagreus, do you think, a nice well-bred guy like you? Those cannibal rumors, they had to start for some reason.”

  “Javid-Lee is a client,” Kravis said in a shaky voice. “I discuss many legitimate business details with him. That’s all I’m prepared to say.”

  “There’s one thing I don’t get,” Alik said. “Delphine, why did you go to the Lorenzos’ place last night?”

  “Koushick called me,” she said grudgingly. “I knew him back in the day. He said Javid-Lee was looking to hit back against Rayner for some kind of firebomb attack on one of his clubs, and that it was getting out of hand, which meant I could be a target. Said we should go quiet for a few days until it was all settled. I was scared; I know what Rayner’s life is like. We’re not tight, but to these people, we’re all family, all the same. So I knew the Lorenzos were off for the weekend, away with their fancy friends on a boat. It was the last place anyone would look for us.”

  “Who was the woman?” I asked.

  “What woman?”

  “Javid-Lee sent two others with Perigine Lexi that night: Duane Nordon and Lisha Khan. While Rayner used Koushick Flaviu and Otto Samule—the two that didn’t make it—along with a third, a woman. She survived the bloodbath. Who was she?”

  “I don’t know. Really, I don’t. I told you, I’m not involved in that part of the family life.”

  Alik glanced at Salovitz. “I’m out of questions.”

  “Six people dead,” Salovitz said quietly. “Another in the hospital. You started a gang war that’s still going on because a kid steals a fucking virtual game. A game. Do you have any idea…Je-zus H. Christ!”

  “I didn’t know—” Kravis began.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Salovitz bellowed. “You don’t get to talk, not after what you’ve done!”

  “What happens now?” Rose asked. Her kids were pushing up against her so hard it was like they were trying to bury their heads in her ribs.

  “Darwin,” Alik told them.

  Salovitz gave him a filthy look.

  “I don’t understand what that means,” Rose said.

  “Survival used to be down to how fast and strong you were, how good a hunter,” Alik told her. “That was back when we all lived in caves and got frightene
d by thunder. Today, it’s all about being the smartest.”

  “Just tell us,” Delphine said. “Please, tell us the smart thing to do.”

  “Option one, we charge you all with criminal conspiracy. Given what’s happened tonight, that’s an easy trip to Zagreus, certainly for you and Rose and Kravis. Your kids will be taken into City Service’s care, or handed over to any remaining family.”

  “Or?” Kravis asked.

  Alik almost grinned. He should have known. After all, Kravis was Wall Street; he could recognize a deal on the table from a block away.

  “I make a report to my boss that you were all in the portalhome when two rival crews broke in, trying to burgle the place. You naturally fled and saved your families. All very dramatic, but you’re not involved in any criminal act. But that would be a big favor I’d be doing you. And as we’ve all learned tonight, those kind of favors don’t come cheap.”

  “You want money?” a puzzled Rose asked.

  “No. I want the two of you to do me a favor in return. A simple personal call. That’s all.”

  * * *

  —

  The Black Mariah went for Javid-Lee first. He was in the Costado restaurant on Broadway, sitting by himself, with three of his lieutenants at the bar where they could watch the patrons coming in, alert for anyone who might have been sent by Rayner; the war was still nuclear-hot. He was by himself because Kravis Lorenzo hadn’t yet shown up.

  Five guys in FBI jackets came in. The lieutenants sat up. Hands went to their holsters. They looked at the boss, not knowing what to do.