Sharon switched her attention to him. ‘You have something to add, Mr Nance?’
‘I don’t know who reported what to you’ – he squinted suspiciously at the warrant, pulsing on the screen of the tablet where she had propped it on the table – ‘Detective Inspector, but this is a waste of time. You don’t have to take our word for it. Just check the datastream. You’ll see that none of our genestock is missing.’
Nance had been introduced as chief operating officer, an administrative role which freed up Chang to focus his scientific expertise on the research potential and policy conundrums of the archive itself. While Chang appeared bewildered, Nance seemed to feel it was part of his responsibility to deal robustly with any suggestion of malfeasance within the organisation. Sharon was also beginning to suspect that he had a problem specifically with her. There was more than a hint of recognition, and repugnance, in the looks he sent her way; a reaction she had become used to in the years since her marriage to Mikal. For her own part she could not shake the feeling that he too was somehow familiar, but the name had not triggered any alerts from her case files. She had concluded that he was simply yet another example of a type she knew well: middle-aged and middlebrow, a once solid physique beginning to run soft, the customary complacency of a thoroughly respectable life more than a little shaken by finding himself questioned by a senior police officer; and the buttons of his outrage further pushed by the facts of said officer’s personal life. He was dealing with the occasion as they often did, veering between pugnacity and defensiveness.
‘As I said, Mr Nance, I hope you’re right. We’ll know soon enough.’ She glanced over to her colleague. ‘Are we all set?’
He nodded. ‘They’re in position. As soon as these gentlemen unlock the storage units we can get started.’ He chewed at his lip, as though a thought had just occurred to him. ‘Of course we could just force the locks. See how hard it is, and what kind of alert it would actually generate.’ He gazed past her at Chang and Nance, who stared back, aghast. Sharon maintained her mask of impassive professionalism, but inside she was grinning.
‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary. Will it?’ This directed at the two men on the other side of the table.
‘Absolutely not,’ replied Chang stiffly. ‘We will cooperate fully with the police, of course. Ken?’
Kendrick Nance stabbed at the screen of his own tablet. He looked balefully back at Sharon. ‘You want us to open all of them, then.’ He looked ready to proceed, as though eager to prove the pointlessness of their visit.
‘No I don’t, Mr Nance. We’re going to open the units in sequence just as we discussed, and lock each set behind us before we move on to the next. We are also, as detailed in the warrant, going to add me and Detective Sergeant Achebe here as alternate third approvals. As of right now, nothing is accessible without us.’
‘I must say, Inspector Varsi, that this seems very heavy-handed—’
‘Dr Chang. You want us to confirm that there is nothing wrong here and bugger off as soon as possible. Well believe it or not, that’s what I want too. The best way to achieve that is to ensure we have a quick, clean count, with absolutely no loopholes for anyone to point out to us later.’ She held his gaze, keeping her voice even but firm. ‘As soon as our checks are complete we’ll remove the restriction and be on our way. If everything is in order it shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.’
‘We can let them crack on while we update the system,’ added Achebe, and Sharon nodded again, eyes front on Chang.
They watched while Nance, jaw tight with anger, entered a code and handed the tablet to Chang, who tapped in a series of commands. He then leaned forward for a retinal scan and gave the tablet back to Nance, who tapped some more before staring into the red pinpoint of the vidcam for his own scan. A soft beep sounded from the tablet.
‘You should have access now,’ Sharon said into her earset. She listened for confirmation and flipped a thumbs-up to Achebe. He stepped forward, reaching over Nance’s shoulder to press a memtab against one of the tablet’s intake ports.
Nance scowled at the screen as the logo of the Metropolitan Police flashed up. He spread his hands in a theatrical relinquishing of the tablet and stepped back, watching in silence as Achebe pulled up an input panel and added the new layer of security to the existing protocols. Nance and Chang were instructed to authorise it with a second set of retscans, and then Sharon and Achebe added their own scans, and the tablet was finally, politely, handed back to its owner.
‘I think we have a right to know,’ said Chang, ‘who has made this accusation. The suggestion that genestock has been stolen, and that we didn’t report it, is, is a serious one.’
‘It is indeed.’ Sharon nodded sagely. ‘However, you don’t have any right to know the identity of the source, and I couldn’t tell you even if you did. The report was made anonymously.’
‘You’re putting us through all this on the basis of a tip from someone you don’t even know?’ sputtered Nance. There was a triumphant note in his voice, as though his indignation had finally been justified. ‘I have a mind to call my—’
‘Call whoever you like.’ Sharon was getting tired of his sniping. She wondered if the real reason for it would boil out and into the open, and how Chang would respond if it did. ‘The police are obliged to review every allegation which is properly made and registered.’ She reeled off Sections and Codes and Acts of Parliament and was rewarded by the chastened look which descended on Chang’s round face, though Nance’s pugnacious expression remained much the same. ‘It’s not necessary for a complainant to identify themselves in a matter such as this, as long as they supply sufficient evidence for us to reasonably suspect that a crime may have been committed. Check with your own legal advisors if you don’t believe me.’
She was watching Nance keenly and openly, and saw him register the appraisal in her gaze. To her surprise he appeared to rein in his contempt. Instead he affected a look of boredom, as though he doubted what she’d said but could not be bothered to refute it. So: a private bigot, not quite up to the risk of airing his views in front of his boss.
Chang cleared his throat. ‘Can you tell us what this evidence was?’
‘No, I can’t. But if it proves baseless, rest assured I’ll turn my attention to finding out how it was produced and who sent it. I don’t like having my time wasted either.’ She glanced at Achebe, now seated and busy with his own tablet, sending searchbots trawling through the datastream as he tried to hunt down the source files for the screenshots that had brought them here. She did not tell them that the data detectives generally worked out who a whistleblower was within the first half-hour.
Nance shifted in his chair. ‘Look, okay, you’re only doing your job,’ he said, ‘but what this – person – has told you is impossible. It couldn’t have happened, and we couldn’t not know if it did happen. So I’m sorry if we seem a bit aggravated, but it’s just, well, you may not know how ludicrous this is, but we do.’ Though his words had turned conciliatory, there was still a drawling arrogance in his voice.
Sharon had spent a solid hour working through the supposed impossibilities, and emerged unconvinced. ‘How often do you take inventory, Mr Nance?’
‘It’s taken automatically. Every time a storage unit is opened, by anyone for any reason, it’s registered and the system records whether any of the genestock has been removed.’
‘Yes, but how often do you actually check the genestock? Do a hard count?’
‘There’s no need to. Don’t you understand? Quantities and lines were verified when the stock came over from the gemtechs, and it was put immediately into secure storage. It can’t be accessed without double authorisation – triple authorisation now that you’ve added yourselves – from a very limited combination of senior staff. If anyone was able to open the storage trays without using the proper protocol a whole series of alarms would go off, it would trigger a lockdown. When access is authorised, the date, time, who by and the rea
sons given are recorded, and notices are automatically routed to Dr Chang, myself, and several others. If what’s returned to storage is reduced by more than the authorised research requires, that also triggers the alarms.’ He waved his hands, as though at a loss as to how to explain it any more clearly. ‘There’s no way there could be a problem that we didn’t know about. The process is completely automated.’
‘I understand that. So how would you know if the system failed?’
‘How could it fail?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Nance. That’s not my question. How do you know, for certain, that it hasn’t?’
He stared at her, his mouth opening and closing again like some kind of great fish. Sharon could feel her own lips compress into a tight line. The worst thing about this, she thought, is that although he’s a bastard he could also be right, and I will be the one who ends up looking, and feeling, like a fool.
Over in the corner, Achebe inhaled sharply: surprise, discovery and, unmistakably, alarm. She turned to him, registered the hand signal that meant they should step outside.
As she got to her feet the comlink to the search team pinged in her earset. She raised a finger to tell Achebe to hold on, said ‘Yes?’ and listened.
She let a satisfied little smile settle onto her face even as her heart sank. Across the table, Chang’s face was a picture of trepidation. She caught his eyes and held them while the bioforensics officer down amongst the refrigerated units finished her report and pinged out.
‘Well,’ she said quietly. ‘It appears there may be a problem here after all.’
*
The airwalk ran for more than a mile, parallelling the high walls of the embankment, passing the last crumbling foundations of ancient wharves and lumps of less identifiable marine archaeology. Every hundred paces or so the passage ballooned out to become a wider room dedicated to some aspect of underwater life, from which other rooms or side corridors extended. At each of the nodes there was the closet-sized pustule of an airlock, through which gillungs came and went.
With the tide still coming in, the top of the tubular construction was a couple of feet clear of the water. Late-morning sunshine sparkled as it glanced off wavelets on the surface, a shifting diamond cascade that dazzled eyes looking up from below. It filled the airwalk with natural light, an elongated bubble of submerged brilliance against which the colour of the water column changed from topaz to amber, to the deep silty brown of the riverbed. Tall weeds brushed up against the walls, bent over by the current as though in some silent, peaceful gale. Fish darted past. A shadow detached itself from the murk, the slippery ripple of an eel swimming languidly along beside them for a while before curving away and disappearing behind one of the anchor cables that they could see spearing down into the mud.
Callan was enchanted. Rhys, who had spent much of the past forty-eight hours being secretly awed by the grandeur and casual sophistication of the city, felt a surge of partisan pride for the gillung technology.
‘What happens when the tide’s out all the way? It’d be too bright and hot then, surely. Not to mention the lack of privacy.’
Rhys shook his head. ‘The whole thing is built on a biopolymer scaffold. It maintains rigidity, and it’s also photosensitive below about here.’ He reached up, his fingers at full extension brushing the inward-curving plastic barrier. ‘As the water level drops and more light hits the tunnel, the walls gradually tint darker and darker. But there’s also a chemical override that can trigger the reaction without light. Sleeping quarters are generally just left set to opaque.’
‘You’ve slept in one of these? Underwater?’
‘Many times.’
‘What’s that like?’
‘Weird the first time. You have the sounds of the water all around, and it’s louder on the coast than in a river. You sort of have to convince yourself that it isn’t going to collapse and drown you in your sleep. And gillungs generally prefer a lower temperature than us topsiders. But once you throw on an extra blanket, it’s fine.’
Callan stopped in another swelling, and tipped his head back to look up at the circle of bright water overhead. The fireglow of his hair shone like a halo against the darkened water-wall of the room.
‘It’s nice and warm now. Temperature control is built into the walls as well?’
‘Yes … well, sort of. There are capacitors grouped in amongst the oxygen-exchange cells. They store excess heat to vent back in, and they can also dump it outside if there’s an overload. There are more of them along the top in a tidal configuration like this, to capture as much heat as possible. But solar radiation isn’t enough, especially in winter or deep water. The tidemills are where the heat mostly comes from.’
They had explored the power generation system in the first of the nodes, peering through the walls to watch a paddle array billow lazily in the river’s tidal surge. Rhys pulled up vidcam feeds and interactive schematics that showed how every degree of movement translated into so many joules of energy, captured and directed to the needs of the underwater complex. He had glanced up at one point, felt a moment of vertigo as he found himself gazing into the green depths of his companion’s eyes, and then became aware with a start that they were surrounded by visitors. It looked like an amalgamation of two or three norm families, complete with scampering youngsters and a pair of serious teenagers who wanted to know all about everything he had already explained. He had answered politely, found them an infostream module that let them model their own power station and handed them over to the citrine-haired man who swam in through the airlock to the children’s shrieks of delight. They escaped while he was patiently explaining why he couldn’t put them in it to experience the blasts of hot air from the dryer for themselves.
Now Callan was gazing thoughtfully around the node they were in, this one showcasing offshore permaculture. ‘This isn’t just about self-sufficiency, is it? Aryel’s been saying so for a while, but I hadn’t quite got it before.’
‘No. It’s also how much they can sell to everybody else. These systems, they’re incredibly productive and low-impact. And the tech gets better all the time.’
‘And the tech is owned by gems?’
‘The new stuff is.’ Rhys grinned. ‘The gemtechs are welcome to the original versions. Less efficient, less comfortable, less safe.’
‘What a brilliant new slogan for Gempro.’
Rhys snickered approval. Callan treated him to versions of the phrase in German, Russian and Japanese, each delivered more sententiously than the next, until they were both doubled up with laughter. Other visitors to the airwalk cast bemused glances in their direction. Rhys was wiping his eyes and wishing in a confused way both to stay in the moment forever, and to already be where it felt as though it were heading, when a sealed door leading into a side passage hissed open and Reginald peered around it.
‘Good gods. It’s that quiet, well-behaved boy of mine. Graca, darling, fetch me my smelling salts.’
Graca stepped out of an airlock into the passage behind him, shaking her quick-dried hair into a shimmering lime-green cloud. ‘Sorry, Reg. Wrong century. And Rhys can laugh all he wants.’ She padded over to give him a peck on the cheek and look around at the display. ‘Although I didn’t think it was that bad.’
‘It’s great. We were appreciating,’ said Callan, and was introduced. Graca looked from him to Rhys, nodded approvingly and said, ‘Well you’d better come and see the rest of it, then.’
She had been putting the finishing touches to a coastal garden, surrounded by a loop of airwalk that kept the briny water and sealife separate from the river while allowing it to be viewed from all sides. They walked around admiring while she unlocked the entrance at the far end and updated the display’s infostream. By the time Callan, Rhys and Reginald emerged into the main airwalk again the intervening wall was as transparent as the rest, and the norm troupe they had left behind in the power centre were ooh-ing and aah-ing at a spider crab. Rhys caught Callan’s eye and they both turned
hastily away. Reginald fell into step beside them, looking amused.
‘So the point,’ said Callan to Reginald, as if continuing a conversation that had not actually been taking place, ‘is to demonstrate all this wonderful stuff to the norms, while in the nicest possible way making it clear that it’s not anything they can actually go off and do by themselves. If they want it, they’re going to have to work with gillungs to get it.’
He ran his hand along skeins of algae-based textiles as he spoke, soft and fine as silk. The back of his hand brushed Rhys’ as his arm fell back to his side, and Rhys felt his fingers twitch towards it in response. Two of them were captured, hooked by two of Callan’s, who kept his head politely cocked towards Reginald walking on his other side. The twining fingers tightened. Rhys swallowed and stared straight ahead.
Reginald chuckled. ‘That’s not exactly how the product infostreams put it, but yes.’
‘And what if they don’t go for it?’
‘They’re already going for it. Orders have started to come in. The idea is the bigger the market, the faster the tech can develop. But they haven’t had a lot of funding up to now, just the Gempro settlement, and look.’ He gestured grandly, barely missing Graca, who ducked as she caught up with them. ‘It’s happening anyway. The only question is, who wants to come along for the ride.’
A questing thumb had found the palm of Rhys’ hand, and was inscribing slow circles in the middle of it. He wondered dazedly if Graca had noticed as she came up behind, and decided he didn’t care. The three of them were chatting away about integrated subaquatic villages and five-year action plans; maintaining the appearance of composure was as much as he could manage. He felt almost grateful when an approaching group of visitors forced them out of their four-abreast stroll and into double file. Callan released his hand in an unhurried way as they swung into the new formation and Rhys closed it into a fist, trying to hold on to the feeling.
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