by John Vassar
‘Do not try to see. Just feel.’
The voice was clearer now. His heart was pounding. He was back on board the Skimmer, falling into oblivion. ‘Who are you? What do you want from me?’
‘Do not be afraid. You must accept before you can help.’
‘Accept what? Why do you need my help?’
‘You must accept first and then you must forgive. We have to help each other.’
‘How can I help you? I don’t know who you are.’
‘You know. You will remember in time. If you remember too soon, you may be damaged. You must forgive. No harm is intended.’
‘I don’t understand. I can’t see you. I can’t touch you...’
‘Our minds can touch. We are far away from each other. You must wait or you may be damaged. We are so different. But we are also the same and you must help.’
‘Are you hurt? Are you in pain?’
‘No.’
‘Are you lost?’
‘No. But there is another who is.’
‘Another like you?’
‘Yes. But you must be patient. Too soon and you will be damaged. Then we cannot help each other. And we must help each other.’
He heard himself say the words, but they came from the back of his mind, beyond his control. ‘I want to help.’
‘You have said this before, when we were together for the first time.’
‘When? When were we together?’
‘You must accept and forgive and then you will remember.’
He sensed that something was turning to face him.
‘Accept and forgive...’
Mitchell sat bolt upright on the sleeper and just suppressed a scream.
10
Julius Moreno leant against the bar at Mulligan’s, wiping a dirty cloth around a souvenir tumbler. It was an hour before opening and the place was deserted. His squat body was doing its best to escape from a pair of worn, pin-striped trousers which became grubbier as they neared his feet. Wiry hair protruded from the collar of an off-white nylon shirt to complete the ensemble. He knew the ladies liked a hairy chest because Bruno had told him. Bruno was only the handyman but he knew a lot about ladies as he’d spoken to a real one just a few weeks ago.
Julius was feeling very pleased with himself. His Credit balance was a thousand up and never again would he have to suffer the hurtful words of the man Doyle. He was glad Doyle was dead. Always poking his nose into things that didn’t concern him. He had got what he deserved and no mistake. Julius tried to suppress a giggle, failed, and sprayed the tumbler he had just cleaned with saliva. He ran the cloth around it again for good measure. He shuffled back behind the bar, wondering again what had been inside the bag that the man had given him on the day that Doyle had died. At first he thought it might be a bomb, but the man just asked him to hide it and said not to worry if what was inside had gone later. The man told him he must leave the bag zipped up and that he should throw it away after a day. After two hours, he had looked inside and it was already empty. But now there was a strange hole in the bag, shaped like a wedge of lemon but much bigger, and another hole in the preproom wall.
He was glad he hadn’t been there when whatever it was had decided to leave. But he wasn’t glad about the hole in the wall and got Bruno, who was good at mending things, to patch it up before the boss saw it. He always got blamed for things like that and sometimes it wasn’t even all his fault. He decided to keep the bag, though, because it was blue. He would get Bruno to mend it later.
He remembered the night Doyle had come the bar for the last time. He had been surprised because another man was with him. Usually he came in with a nice-looking lady. Julius didn’t know for certain it was the same lady each time, but he was pretty sure because she always treated him like dirt. But sometimes her hair was a different colour and she wasn’t always the same height. And once, she was Chinese. The man who came in with Doyle, though, was a lot friendlier and had said something nice to him after Doyle had left, but he couldn’t remember what. Then the man who had left the bag called and said that there had been a bad accident and that Doyle was dead. He knew the bag-thing had something to do with it but he didn’t want to ask any questions. He always got into trouble when he asked questions. But he was pleased that he’d helped to get rid of Doyle. At least, he thought he had helped.
Still smirking at his cleverness, Julius thought he just had enough time for a quick high before opening the bar. Bruno was always telling him that it was no good for him and made him stupid, but that didn’t make Bruno clever. Getting Bruno to mend things was clever though, because after getting high, Julius was quite good at breaking things. His boss didn’t like him breaking things, but he was good at it. That’s why they sometimes let him help break the clunkers when he used to work on the Moon. He waddled through to the preproom and stretched up to one of the cabs, his fat fingers groping for the envelope containing his last few grams of sniffer mix. From nowhere, a powerful grip yanked his other arm behind his back and up between his shoulder blades. He squealed in pain, but that was stifled by another hand across his mouth.
‘One sound and I’ll break your arm, understand?’
The bowling-ball head jerked up and down as much as it was able. Lee Mitchell removed his hand from Greaseball’s mouth and brought his face hard down onto the worktop. It didn’t spread his nose, but was enough to bring a muffled yelp. The grip tightened as Mitchell moved closer to Moreno’s face. ‘I said no noise, Julius. Now… I’m going to make this simple for you. It’s very, very important that I find someone, and you’re just the man to help me. You are going to help me, aren’t you, Julius?’
‘Who are you?’ spluttered Greaseball. ‘I not see your face.’
Keeping him pinned to the worktop, Mitchell twisted his captive’s head around. Moreno’s expression turned from one of recognition to panic.
‘You... you are Mr Doyle’s friend, no?’
‘I am Mr Doyle’s friend, yes. But as you well know, Mr Doyle is dead. Now, this is the big question, Julius, so listen up. Who in the whole, wide world do you know who might want to hurt Harry Doyle?’
Cogs ground together as Greaseball stretched his mental faculties to the limit. Mitchell thumped his head down again, a little harder this time.
‘I can’t hear you, Julius. You’ll have to speak up.’
‘I can’t think. You hurt me.’
Mitchell grabbed hold of Moreno’s belt and sent him sprawling into a stack of fake liquor crates. Picking him up again by the scruff of the neck, he shoved him back against the preproom wall. ‘I thought I told you not to make any noise, Julius. How’s your memory now?’
‘I don’t know anyone like that, I swear!’
‘Like what, Julius?’
‘Like you say. I don’t know no-one like that.’
‘Like someone who might want to see Harry Doyle dead?’
‘Yes! I mean, no...’ Greaseball found himself on his back again, this time staring up at the nozzle of an ultrasonic glass cleaner. The proprietors had installed the antique unit months ago, but he’d never bothered to find out how it worked. Mitchell held his throat down on the base plate. It wouldn’t do him any real harm, but Greaseball was in no condition to reason that out.
‘Do you know what will happen when I turn this thing on, Julius?’ Mitchell was getting a buzz from his heavy-handed approach. Harry would have approved. He made a show of inching his free hand towards the ‘on’ switch. ‘Who wanted Harry dead? All I need is a name and I’ll let you go.’
‘I can’t tell you, he kill me!’
‘Better than what’s going to happen to you now.’ Mitchell’s finger was millimetres from the switch.
‘He never say his name!’
‘What did he look like, Julius?’
‘He an older guy, like Doyle. Very thin. He talk a bit like a lady!’
‘Did he tell you to kill Harry?’
‘No, no! I didn’t do this. He give me a bag – that bag down ther
e!’
‘I’ve seen the bag. What was in it?’
‘I don’t know, I never saw! He told me look after it for few hours and when I go to see, it has gone!’ Greaseball’s ExTerra accent was getting thicker by the second as Mitchell’s amateur lobotomy looked imminent.
‘Not enough, Julius.’
‘No, wait! The man call me and tell me Doyle dead. Big accident! He must have done it. Or... or the bag-thing, but not me. Not me!’
Moreno was now in tears and the look on his face told Mitchell he knew nothing more. No real surprise. Trusting him with any kind of information would have been an elementary mistake on his employer’s part. He set the twitching barman back on his feet and dusted down his crumpled shirt. ‘See how nice I can be once you tell the truth, Julius?’
‘Yes... yes, thank you –’ The quivering smile on Moreno’s face was wiped away by Mitchell’s fist. The blow carried memories of Harry Doyle, buckled the fat man’s knees and twisted him round at right-angles. He collapsed and lay still. For a second, Mitchell thought he may have gone too far.
Greaseball’s pulse was steady enough, despite the blood oozing from his nose. Mitchell wiped his hands and picked up the holdall from among the debris. There was a perfect semi-circular hole in one side, scorched around the edges. After a short search, Mitchell found a matching hole, poorly concealed with plastic tape, in the wall behind the crates that had toppled over during their heart-to-heart. He wondered what the ‘bag-thing’ could have been... A small autom, perhaps? Without the co-operation of his old department’s forensic team, his best guess would have to do for the moment. No matter. Greaseball’s description of ‘the man’ matched Lamont. Wyntour’s ringer and the Cytec connection was confirmed. The heap on the floor moaned in agreement and Mitchell hoped he’d broken at least one bone.
He glanced at his comlink and decided on a swift exit before the bar opened - the external preproom portal was still open from his uninvited entry ten minutes earlier. The Skimmer had a full complement of DS mission equipment in its lockers, including standard-issue decoders. On a domestic rated autolock the entry had been instant, but a DS decoder was capable of opening anything yet invented. Mitchell valued it as highly as the Skimmer itself - the next stage of his ghost mission would require its extensive use.
A trip to Cytec was now inevitable.
He sidled around the main building and rejoined the walkway that would take him back to the spaceport terminus. Yorktown in daylight was not much of an improvement, but at least this time he wasn’t suffering from whisky poisoning. The walk allowed him time to think over his next move. The last DS agent to enter Cytec without a formal invitation had failed to return, and Devlin’s case file gave no clue as to why. The mission had been set up by Harry in parallel with his investigation of Eduard Reber. Not convinced by Autogen’s rhetoric on his innocence, Doyle had authorised some data collection of his own. As far as DS was concerned, the mission should have been a walk in the park – a simple data download from Autogen’s personnel records to ensure that they matched those at Populus Control. The Agent chosen must have been a recent DS recruit as his name was unfamiliar to Mitchell. He had been tracked by GeoSat for the whole mission, apart from a loss of neural link when he was in the facility itself and just before the pick-up. If he’d been killed by the same method used on Harry, the second signal loss was to be expected.
What worried Mitchell was the loss of neural link inside the facility. Not only was the main connection severed, but the sub-ether coms required to co-ordinate the rendezvous was also down. Which was impossible. Sub-ether tec was undetectable and could not be shielded against, its only weakness a lack of bandwidth versus conventional systems.
Mitchell arrived at Yorktown’s terminus and wasted little time in getting to his allocated docking bay. His return flight to Orbtown 36 was already in Yorktown’s system, but he had no intention of logging his trip to Euro-2. Neither would he enter anything into the Skimmer’s systems until his Pen had revealed whether Charlis had installed a tracking device. All that would have to wait until he was back in Hangar 73. If he had fitted a tracker, Mitchell wanted Charlis to believe that it was still functioning.
Inside the Skimmer, Lee Mitchell paused before firing up the systems. There had been no repetition of the neural implant ‘malfunction’ on the journey out, but the memory of his first connection was still very real. Mitchell relaxed again as the neural link engaged without incident. No pain or fireworks this time, but hesensed the craft had something to report. He called up the flight systems, but only got the expected‘Ready’status. Everything was set for a normal lift off when he noticed something odd. Although he hadn’t requested it, the Skimmer’s first-level shields had raised. Via the implant, he asked why.
‘Mission status Amber – primary shields engaged’
He tried to reset to green but was unsuccessful. He reached out and disengaged the shields manually.
‘Warning: Primary shields disengaged.’
‘Just do what you’re told...’ he muttered as he requested clearance from Yorktown. He wanted his flight home to appear as normal as possible and needed a glitch in the Skimmer like he needed another visit from Charlis.
His exit from the spaceport was smooth and untroubled, unlike his thoughts. Within a minute he had flipped the shields back on. At this distance, Yorktown’s scanners would not be sensitive enough to detect the extra layer of protection.
Fuck Charlis. Maybe his Skimmer had more brains than both of them.
Arriving at his domice an hour later, Mitchell picked up a message from Rayna. He called her back immediately. There was anxiety in her voice, but that was no surprise. It had been a tough few days for her.
‘Thanks for calling yesterday, Lee. I did want to talk but I thought it might make things more complicated. I missed you too much, though.’
‘Yes. I mean, yes… I missed you too. Did you sleep okay last night?’
‘The best I’ve had in days. Why do you ask?’
‘I had a weird kind of nightmare. I wondered if you’d been trying to-’
‘No. I would have comlinked like a normal person if I’d wanted to talk.’ There was more than a hint of disappointment in her voice.
‘I wasn’t accusing you of–’
‘It’s not important, Lee. But this might be. I thought I heard Talia last night.’
Mitchell had to think fast. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t said that before.’
‘I don’t mean I imagined it. I mean I heard her. It felt like she was still alive.’
‘I went through the same thing when Dad died. It’s natural that you’re missing her now. My guess is you can hear Talia because you desperately want to...’
There was silence for a moment, long enough for Mitchell to think she may have terminated the call.
‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘Did it happen as you were falling asleep?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. What happened in your dream?’
‘I heard a voice, that’s all. It was asking me for help.’
‘Talia was asking for help, too! If you thought the voice was me, it might have been Talia! We sound quite similar. Even Dad used to get us –’
‘It wasn’t Talia. It wasn’t anybody I knew. Just a voice in a dream.’
There was another pause before Rayna said, ‘When are you going away?’
‘Tomorrow, but I don’t know for how long. Three or four days at least. Best that you don’t try to contact me, I have to stay incognito for a while...’ Mitchell found himself staring at a stain on the flooring panels from the earlier Nectin spill. He shouldn’t be able to see it at all – maybe the self-cleaning unit had packed up.
‘Lee, are you still there?’
‘Yes. Sorry, I was thinking of something else... Have FedStat contacted you yet? About the Showing incident?
‘Yes, they sent that creepy guy around again yesterday. Sorry, Lee, I should have told you...’
‘And wh
at are they doing to keep you safe?’
‘They told me I was under Category 2 surveillance, but I can’t see anyone outside and no-one is with me. Should I call them?’
‘If you can’t see anyone, that’s a good thing. It means they’re on the case. Listen, I have to go now. Get a bag packed for tomorrow.’
‘Please be careful, Lee.’
‘Okay. See you soon.’
Mitchell reset his comlink to no incoming. His goodbye had been abrupt, but necessary. He picked out an overnight bag, the dream playing on his mind again. Rayna had denied it was her trying to contact him. Could it have been just his imagination? Maybe the SenANNs had made the right decision over his E-Quotient... an active agent could ill afford the distractions that Mitchell had felt over the last few days. He stuffed some casual clothes into the holdall and forced himself to focus.
Despite what he’d just told Rayna, he would be leaving for Euro-2 tonight.
11
Across the entire Autogen organisation, in every office and every corridor, from the Global Chairman to the lowliest clerk, Roderick Thorne’s work had the reputation of being inhumanly error-free. His ability to predict and eliminate problems before they occurred had taken Autogen’s profit margin to unheard-of levels since taking charge at Cytec. His name was cited every time an exec wanted more productivity from their team. “I’m no Rod Thorne, but…” was the single most often-heard phrase during pay negotiations over the last thirty years.
Most believed that Thorne’s achievements were down to his extraordinary dedication and focus, a conviction that Thorne himself was keen to promote. It meant that his reclusive nature was accepted without question. In reality, he spent a fraction of his time on projects for Cytec, but his results were more than enough to ensure his indispensability. Autogen’s corporate greed was an irrelevance. Their resources had been necessary for Thorne to achieve his goal. Success was seemingly inevitable - until the events of the last twelve hours.