"That is true,” the android said, unmoved, “but we work on probabilities. It is probably safer if you do not enter a structurally unsound building which is on fire. Or do you disagree?”
“Are you being funny?”
“Not intentionally.”
Hammell was beginning to get frustrated. How can I lose the same argument from both sides?
Following the column of smoke from the barely visible building, he could see the thick blanket of cloud above glowing an angry orange, and could just make out the lights from the fire engines shining through. His roaming eyes fell on a distinctive dark green bubblecar coming in to land and he watched Asha Ishi emerge from it, along with another woman he recognised from somewhere. Her name was on the tip of his tongue when his implant jumped in: Hetty Balhoup. “I would have got there,” he grumbled, thinking that implants could be annoying like that. Sometimes he didn’t want to use the networks as his personal memory storage. Sometimes he wanted to use his memory as his personal memory storage. Your memory chips, his brain reminded him and he muttered to himself under his breath.
Hetty was a journalist; a particularly acerbic one who regularly argued in her network publication that the city was too slow to remove outdated systems, often using I.A.s as an example of a waste of resources. Why would Asha Ishi mix with the likes of her? The pair parted as they approached the barrier through the crowd, Asha Ishi striding directly up to the A.I.C., without even a glance at Hammell.
“Out of my way,” she growled.
“I am unable to-” the A.I.C. began.
“That is a direct order,” Asha Ishi said, “from Interpol Agent Asha Ishi, I.D. A282563114-7.”
“I am in command here,” the android said, “and I have determined that it is unsafe-”
“Are you disobeying my order?” Asha Ishi snapped, her eyes boring into it.
The android paused, presumably while it consulted someone or something, and Hammell began to wonder if there was some kind of software equivalent of fear. If there was, the A.I.C. was experiencing it right now. It looked a close run thing, but the android relented. Two of the rubbers unlocked their arms and the ring parted to allow his new partner through.
“Why did you…?” he said to the android as he looked back and forth between it and Asha Ishi. “How did she…? Fuck it. What she said.” And he followed in her wake.
A voice called out to him from behind, but he didn’t turn around. He had nothing to say to anyone in the press, let alone someone like Hetty Balhoup. “I.A. Hammell, can I get a quote?” she tried again. “What happened here, I.A. Hammell? What got you off of your backside?” Her grating voice thankfully faded into the distance. “What are you doing out of a whisky bottle?”
That one registered, but he managed to resist the urge to turn around and give a mouthful. That was exactly what she wanted. Instead he caught up to Asha Ishi and they walked together into the rapidly thickening smoke. She had already pulled up her scarf over her nose and mouth, and Hammell patted his pockets, looking for something similar. Nothing was easily removable except for his modern, chic, pencil-thin, utterly useless tie. For probably the first time in his life, Hammell experienced a feeling about fashion, and that feeling was aggravation.
“I don’t suppose you have a spare?’ he asked as Asha paused to tighten her scarf.
“Yes, I always wear two scarves.”
Hammell used his tie. He scrunched it into a ball and held it against his mouth as they set off towards the fire. “So,” Hammell said, “Hetty Balh-“
“No,” Asha said as she walked on more quickly.
That’s the end of that then.
Soon he could barely see a metre in front of him. There was no building and no fire, just smoke and a constant orange glow ahead and a determined looking Asha Ishi a half-step in front of him. The heat increased until he felt done to medium rare and he was certain his hair would soon catch fire and frazzle away. With each passing step, he became more and more convinced that he should have listened to the android. Even if there was something to see, there was no way to see it. Turning to Asha to tell her they should back off, the hot, smoky air scorched his throat and he choked trying to get the words out. Instead he touched her arm and pointed back, but Asha Ishi shook her head and ploughed on. If she hadn’t been next to him, he would have already turned back, but she was there and so he followed like the dumb sheep he was.
If she walks right into the fire, will you follow her there too? his mind asked him – exactly the kind of thing his father used to say when he was a boy. You know, I just might, he answered.
A dark shape loomed before them, gradually turning into a building. Thank fuck, Hammell thought as Asha Ishi finally came to a standstill. There was nowhere else to go. Looking all around, he could see nothing but orange fire and smoke belching from every broken window in sight. The building was so vast that he couldn’t see its edges, but he was sure now that the only things left here were the fire and the bones of the structure holding it in. A sickening grinding sound made Hammell look up sharply, but even this close the tower was obscured after a storey or two.
“We have to go!” he managed to call over to Asha Ishi, but she didn’t hear him. Or she did and ignored him.
Listening carefully for any hint that the megastructure was about to collapse, all he could hear was the roaring of the fire and the sirens from the fire engines hovering somewhere above. Then suddenly there was a burst of noise, an inhuman shrieking that sent shivers down his spine, and he realised with horror that there were animals still alive inside. The ecotower was a full working farm, complete with sheep, pigs, chickens, cows, ducks and all manner of other farmyard creatures for the high-end animal protein market. They were screaming as they burned.
Stepping nervously from his left foot to his right, he glanced over at Asha Ishi and her still-impassive face. This is stupid, he told himself. You have to force her to leave. He reached out to grab her, and that was when the balcony came down. Hammell dived clear as a giant frame containing three full-size apple trees emerged through the smoke above his head and shattered on the ground, spraying him with leaves, burning splinters and bits of fruit. When he was reasonably confident he wasn’t about to die imminently, he leapt back to his feet and looked all around for his partner. The twisted metal lattice lay on the ground right where she had stood.
“Asha!” he called out, his voice breaking in the scorching, smoky air. Scrabbling around the burning trees, he glanced nervously up as he reached the far side of the frame, but his partner wasn’t there. The wind turned, sending the smoke directly towards him and he had to drop to the ground to breathe.
You won’t get out either if you don’t leave soon, his brain told him.
“ASHA!” he tried again, but there was no reply. He crawled towards the apple trees to see if he could spot a body or a limb trapped underneath, but he couldn’t see deep enough to be sure. “AAASHAAAA!” he tried one last time, but it was no use. One way or another, she was gone, and there was nothing to do but get himself out before he cooked or was flattened.
Reluctantly he began to crawl away, but he quickly became disoriented, losing sight of all points of reference in the swirling smoke. Using the heat from the fire to orient himself, he tried to keep his bottom burning as he inched along, and slowly, gradually, the air became more breathable.
“What are you doing down there?” a voice said and Hammell looked up to see a figure looming above him.
“Looking for you,” Hammell spluttered as he clambered back to his feet. “The smoke was… The apple trees came down and … Wait, weren’t you looking for me? Why weren’t you looking for me?”
Asha Ishi turned her head away and Hammell followed her gaze. “What the fuck…?” he whispered.
As if they were in the eye of a storm, the air suddenly became eerily still. The sounds of the fire and the fire engines were still present, but somehow they faded into the background. The spinning wind blew away enough of the smoke f
or him to see clearly for the first time. Half of one side of the ecotower was gone. It was a miracle that the rest was still standing. Beyond the broken Reservation Line he could see the enormous machines of the Restoration, dozens of them, all broken and burning. And yet none of this was what Hammell was staring at. Strewn all around them, as far as he could see in every direction, were people - bodies - hundreds of them, scattered amidst the rubble. Severed legs, arms, even a head, all covered in dirt and dust and twisted, broken metal. There were android parts too; a robotic leg here, a mechanical arm there, and over all of it, hoverbots buzzed as they picked up the pieces.
The building creaked, an ear-splitting sound. The miracle would not last much longer. “We have to go,” Hammell said urgently, but Asha Ishi ignored him. “Asha!”
“Where’s Stein?” Asha Ishi asked in a voice which was far too calm for the situation. “Where’s forensics?”
“What?” Hammell replied, thinking that this was clearly one of the many questions for later.
Asha Ishi set off again - but in the wrong direction, following the hoverbots as they carried their grisly cargo over the crumbled walls of the Reservation Line.
“Asha!” he called after her, but he knew it was useless. She had clearly decided that she wasn’t in enough peril here and needed to stand directly beneath the leaning megastructure.
She’s mental, he thought. You knew that, his mind responded, and yet he still found his feet were hurrying after her; he was beginning to wonder if all of his different body parts had minds of their own.
Picking his way across the rubble, avoiding touching body parts wherever possible, another dark shape appeared through the haze, just as he heard the steel girders begin to pop behind him one by one. The shape became a vehicle, a big one, and he rushed towards it to see what kind. He stopped suddenly as he realised, frowning. “What the fuck…?” he said again, but then a huge crack rang out and he knew the ecotower was done. “Asha!” he called, but he didn’t wait to see if she was coming. Sprinting in a straight line away from the megastructure as fast as his legs and lungs allowed, there came a deafening roar behind him and chunks of metal and glass the size of cars and houses began to fall all around him. He hopped over part of a broken multicrane as the dust cloud enveloped him, a sudden rush of wind which knocked him off his feet.
He raised his face from the concrete just as a burning cow exploded into the ground beside him, showering him in blood, guts and poorly butchered steak. Debris continued to rain down as he staggered to his feet, but he had survived the worst - as had Asha Ishi, who he could see a short distance away.
“Moo,” she said in the sudden quiet, her face as blank as ever.
Wiping the mud and blood from his eyes, he looked back through the settling dust at the mass of metal and shattered glass which until a moment ago had been a major part of the city’s skyline. The collapse of the megastructure had blown the fire out, thankfully also putting the animals inside out of their misery. But the bodies too were gone, utterly obliterated by the mass of material dumped on top of them. The waste disposal vehicle had figured that out too. Its engines fired up and it rose slowly into the sky as its trash compactor slowly crushed the body parts inside like so much garbage.
What the fuck happened here? Hammell asked himself.
Part III: I.T.F.
Chapter 18
It was painful to breathe through his scorched throat and clogged up lungs and the oxygen was making him feel dizzy. The medical android however insisted that he keep the mask on. Not in the mood for another argument with a machine, he held it to his face lightly and took it away again when no-one was looking.
Asha Ishi, by contrast, was being surprisingly compliant, lying obediently on the stretcher in the back of the ambulance, hands clasped together over her stomach, clear plastic mask covering her mouth and nose. The medic was checking her over, having determined that she was the higher priority without even looking at Hammell, which he found mildly irritating. Especially since that probably meant it had connected to his black box without asking.
He watched his new partner as the android scanned her lungs. She was tiny; the stretcher could have fit two of her, maybe even three at a push. Her face could have been attractive - everything was in essentially the right place - if only the expression on it would vary occasionally. Her ethnicity leaned towards Asian, giving her a somewhat exotic air, at least compared to Hammell’s run-of-the-mill well-mixed genetic cocktail. Ethnicities had largely mingled into one now, though there were still some people around who displayed stronger influences from specific races, especially if their families hailed from more rural areas. People in parts of central Africa and Asia still showed differences, as well as those from the most northerly parts of Europe, among others. Comparing continents meant broad trends could be identified, but on the whole the people in the cities and megacities particularly were fairly well blended. There’s something nice about that, Hammell thought, a togetherness.
But there was also something sad about it too. Wasn’t it better if everyone wasn’t the same, in spite of the fear and mistrust that always arose between different cultures and races? His implant reminded him of the commonly held belief that the mingling of races and blurring of international borders had been major factors in achieving world peace… but Hammell had an idea that peace would only last until new lines were drawn. The colonists on Abaddon and Bellerophon lived in very different conditions to those left behind on Earth. They had harder lives with a higher mortality rate. Evolution would be licking its lips. First there had been tribe against tribe, then country against country, then came the intercontinental World Wars. It seemed logical to Hammell that war hadn’t ended, but had merely been paused until it could resume again on an interplanetary scale. Now there’s a happy thought.
“What?” Asha Ishi asked and he realised he was staring at her.
“Sorry,” he mumbled as he took away his mask. “I was just thinking-” He coughed suddenly and violently, his lungs feeling like he’d chain-smoked the entire pack of Arthur’s acid-laced cigarettes. He gratefully accepted a cup of water from the medic, sipping as he struggled to breathe normally, and saw that Asha Ishi was still scowling at him.
“What were you thinking?” she asked, her voice muffled by the mask.
“Not about you,” Hammell said in a thick, husky voice. “Not exactly…” And he wondered what to say next, how to get her talking without antagonizing her. “You came to see the fire too,” he said finally.
“Well, I can see why you became a detective.”
“Why did you come?” he asked, and he noticed a flicker cross her face. Was that indecision? He recalled that her previous partner had been fired months ago. Maybe she needed someone to bounce things off as much as he did… “What are you thinking?” he asked and instantly regretted it.
“Are we dating?” Asha Ishi snapped. “Are you a girl?”
Containing his frustration, he sat back and again contemplated the abrasive slip of a woman on the stretcher across from him. She had a fearsome reputation, and she was a loon, but she was also an I.A., one of the last. And, for better or worse, she was his partner now. Can I talk openly to her though?
“If you keep staring like that,” she growled, “you’re going to lose the ability.”
Hammell sighed. We work with what we have. "Ok,” he said, “one of has to start this.”
“Start what?” Asha Ishi asked, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.
“Our... co-operation,” Hammell replied. And, taking a breath, he laid it all out there: His suspicions about the hack; how he had come to the site of the explosion because he no longer trusted Providence; what might have happened to Toskan; all of it. Asha Ishi remained stony-faced throughout. She’d probably look that way if I told her I had irrefutable proof that the tooth fairy exists and then handed her a tiny corpse.
Sitting up slowly and deliberately, she slipped off her mask and shook out her perfect hair, ignoring the medic�
��s protests. “What do you want from me?”
“To know whatever you know,” Hammell said, the one-way nature of this conversation beginning to grate on him. “Who were those dead people? Why were their bodies being thrown away? How did your hair remain styled? Why would the Red Hands want to blow up an ecotower? Anything.”
“You’re stupid,” Asha Ishi said, reacting at last.
“Right,” Hammell said. “Ok. Why in particular right now?”
“You don’t have any idea what’s going on, do you?”
“No,” he said through gritted teeth. “That’s why I’m investigating.”
“Get out,” she said, turning to the medic which was now bandaging up a gash on her leg.
“I need to check I.A. Hammell next,” the medic began, but Asha Ishi was already shoving it out of the ambulance onto the street. Pulling the doors closed behind it, she connected to the ambulance’s speaker system, blasting out some kind of heavy metal which stretched the boundaries of what could be called music.
“We have a minute or two at best,” Asha Ishi said. “Talk fast.”
Hammell stared at her, open-mouthed. “I already did,” he said. “It’s your turn to… Why am I stupid?”
“I have no idea. I guess you were born that way.”
“I mean-”
“Because,” Asha Ishi said, interrupting him, “you were openly talking about the infiltration of Providence in full view of Providence.”
He glanced towards the ambulance doors and the departed medic. “So?” he said, but it came out sounding sullen and petulant.
“So?” Asha Ishi retorted. “Go on.”
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