“Astrophysics … I think. Something like that. Records are sketchy going back that far.”
I was looking around, thinking that at long bloody last I was making some progress on this damned case. Hydrogen Steel had done its level best to keep me from being here and learning these things, and it had failed. Now, equipped with spooky samurai from another dimension, I felt untouchable.
Come and get me! I was tempted to say aloud.
You’ll understand, then, my surprise when it did come and get me.
CHAPTER 25
One moment I was standing, shivering, in the middle of a blustering cold night in what had been the Fallows’ vegetable patch.
The next moment, I was somewhere else.
I was standing in a large room that smelled of medical machinery; sterile and clean. There were examination beds, ominous white and chrome machines suspended from the low ceiling. Immediately I sensed there was an air of urgency to what was happening. From outside I could hear a lot of busy noise: people hurrying by, odd metallic rattles, voices, announcements, and more.
I was wearing a thin, paper garment. I could not move. With me in the room were several other men and women, all of them wearing the same sort of paper garment, and all of them hairless.
They looked like organic statues. I could see them blinking and breathing, but that was all.
Attending to them were two women whom I understood were doctors. One — the older, presumably more senior doctor — was monitoring a series of large fixed Paper displays mounted on the wall, each of which showed a bewildering array of animated and charted information. There appeared to be a display for each one of us “statues”. The younger doctor was walking up and down in front of us, peering into our faces, and attaching small sticky things to our heads, or sometimes moving them from one spot on our heads to another. “Is that better?” she’d ask the older woman, who stood scowling at the displays.
The older doctor would waggle her hand. “Try again.”
The younger doctor stood in front of me, looking at me like I was some annoying and boring object she had to sort out before she could go on her break. She was conducting some kind of medical examination, moving the small sticky thing around my head. I happened to notice, though, that she was not simply wearing a doctor’s white coat; her coat bore a logo stitched onto the left breast pocket.
I recognized it, like something suddenly understood after a lifetime of confusion, like when I suddenly, in a flash, understood how to do algebra in SecondSchool after two years of miserable incomprehension.
Cytex Systems.
“McGee? God, are you all right?”
It was Gideon, leaning down to help me up.
I swore at the sudden chill blasting through me.
“I’m on the ground,” I said, looking around, bewildered.
“You fell over, completely ass over teakettle.”
I let him haul me upright. Theodorsen helped; for a skinny guy he was a lot stronger than Gideon.
There was the wreck of the Fallow house.
Standing there, shivering again, already missing the comparative warmth of where I’d just been, I hugged myself, wondering what the hell had just happened to me. “Smith…?”
“You suddenly collapsed. Just now.”
“Just now?” I thought I’d been in that lab for a few minutes, at least.
“Suppose the big walk up the hill might have been a bit much for you, eh?” he said, trying to cheer me up a little.
“Yeah, maybe,” I said, frowning.
I was no stranger to disturbing visions relating to Cytex Systems. This one, however, was different. This time I felt like I was there, not just dreaming, the way I had before. I could feel everything. The doctor’s breath, I remembered, smelled of something fishy she must have eaten recently.
“We could come back up here in the morning, McGee. It’s all right if you feel like a break,” said Gideon.
Theodorsen readily agreed.
I looked at them, and looked at the ruins.
“It knows we’re here.”
“What makes you think that?” said Gideon, his eyebrows up.
“I just know.” Distantly, over the screaming rush of the wind, I heard the deep and powerful rumble of heavy surf crashing against rocky cliffs. It was like the voice of Hydrogen Steel itself, letting me know it was always there, ready to crush me like a moth at any moment. My samurai bodyguards had been unable to keep the firemind from spiriting me away, somehow, to what I realized must have been my earliest days, going through routine post-construction diagnostics at the Cytex labs. Which left me wondering: was this a flashback because of some internal fault in my own programming, or was this little glimpse part of Hydrogen Steel’s gift of pain? And if it was Hydrogen Steel at work, as I suspected it was, why had it taken me there, to that moment? Was it demonstrating its awesome power, telling me that despite Otaru’s help it had still found me, and would always find me, no matter where I went or what I did to conceal myself from it?
We spent the rest of the night climbing and sifting through the ruins, looking for whatever might still be here. There were countless heartbreaking bits and pieces: molten jewelry, a surprisingly intact teddy bear, a few small screws, clothes, picture frames, one patent leather ladies shoe. Standing in what had been the bedroom, with the remains of the bed frame the only thing still upright, I remembered seeing Airlie’s murder. There was the wall where Kell had been flung, and where he sat, helpless, watching the assassin go about its brutal, silent business. I remembered that brief horrible moment when Airlie, almost dead, turned to look her husband in the eye, and she had that look not of terror but of confusion.
Some time around dawn, after working through the remains of the house for what seemed like the twentieth time, I came back to the main bedroom, and looked wearily around. I kept coming back because I kept thinking about the bed frame. There wasn’t much left to examine. It had been a traditional ornate wrought iron frame with wooden slats supporting some sort of mattress. I looked hard at the entire thing, what was left, and saw that the iron frame had begun to sag in places with the profound heat of the fire.
The floors throughout the house had been polished wood, and were in most places long gone. The bed frame stood, sagging, on the ash and nearly-frozen dirt beneath. I was surprised to see there was no cellar or basement to the house.
There was, however, a short, straight line in the cold, rocky dirt that looked very odd. It was about twenty centimeters long, and noticeable only because it was straight.
It looked like an edge of something. Directly beneath the bed frame.
I called Gideon and Theodorsen. We had a hard time digging through the hard ground, but what was buried there was not buried deep. Something about the object, as soon as I saw it and touched its cold surface, made me think it was Airlie’s, and that she had buried it. It was the strangest flash of intuition, doubly strange for me. I think I’ve only had about three moments of intuitive insight in my life — the real and imaginary — and each time it had hit me like the answer to a problem I didn’t know I had.
The hole was probably as deep as Airlie could manage by herself. I imagined her busily cutting a trapdoor of some sort in the bedroom floor sometime while Kell was out patrolling the island’s weather stations. She’d have plenty of time, and the job required only minimal skill, mainly to make sure not to cut through any of the supporting joists. She’d cut a square section out of the floor, perhaps only thirty or so centimeters square. It either lifted out or there was a hinge. It didn’t matter. Under that she’d dug a modest hole. And in the hole she’d buried a strong, fireproof ceramocomposite box. The sort of box people routinely use to preserve family heirlooms, treasures and memories, in case of fire. The fire here had been stronger than most, and the box looked a little the worse for wear, but it was
intact and heavy. Gideon and Theodorsen wiped the dirt off it, and they marveled at finding such a thing in the midst of all this wreckage. Theodorsen remarked that the official police investigation into the Fallow multiple homicide had not been aware of this box, and the more recent inquiry into the massive attack on the whole island certainly hadn’t been too interested in what might be buried under the Fallows’ bedroom floor. Not knowing there was anything there to find, they hadn’t looked.
“Do you want to do the honors, McGee?” Gideon said.
I kept looking at the box. It could simply be full of Kell and Airlie’s treasures. There might be a wedding certificate, on actual handmade paper, marked with handmade ink. There could be memory pods of family images and videos, and perhaps odd little mementos of their life together, their real life together, not some fake memories implanted in their heads. They would be worthless to anyone else, but rich with meaning for the family.
The pale, cold sun was rising. The world outside was returning to life.
I was scared.
Hydrogen Steel must know we’d found this box, and we had to assume it was something of which the firemind had been unaware until now. I could practically feel it breathing over my shoulder as I sat there looking at the box.
“Don’t open it,” I said. “We’re taking it with us.”
Gideon, seeing the look on my face, didn’t question my decision.
We returned to orbit. I sent a message to the Otaru Emulation, asking for their help.
They responded immediately, in real time, and said they’d be right here.
This alacrity surprised me. “Are you still here in New Norway orbit?”
The woodcut illustration Otaru node executed what could only barely be described as a smile. “We are nearby.”
Less than a minute later, Gideon, monitoring ShipMind’s nav displays, said from his side of the table, “An Otaru ship has just appeared in New Norway space.”
“What do you mean, just appeared?”
He looked spooked but impressed. “It just appeared. Presto! It’s there. Looks like they’re matching orbit with us.”
“Ships don’t just appear, Smith.”
Gideon looked at me like I was an idiot missing something obvious.
“Oh!” I said, getting it suddenly. “That displacement thingy.”
“That would be my guess.”
The Otaru woodcut man on my display card announced that they were sending a shuttle. It would dock with us shortly.
I made sure I had Airlie’s box with me.
If the ship Otaru had given us was, at least in the living area, like a traditional Japanese house, then the Emulation ship’s living area was like a magnificent mediaeval castle — and that was only the areas we could see. The shuttle that ferried us across had no windows. Gideon, studying the nav displays, reported that the Emulation vessel was exceedingly big. Freighter big. Liner big.
One live Otaru node man met us at the airlock and welcomed us aboard and offered us tea. It felt like the polite thing to go along with all the formality. He took us into the castle. We stared and stared and felt like children. I got a sore neck from craning my head back to see everything.
An old-fashioned, beautiful geisha conducted a tea ceremony for us. We were in what looked and felt like a small pavilion perched over a calm pond. Misty forest loomed nearby. I wondered how much of this was real and how much was illusion.
At length, the node man returned. The geisha bowed and left.
“You seek Otaru’s assistance with your work, Inspector.”
I produced Airlie’s box and placed it, gently, on the table. The box looked filthy in all this elegant splendor.
The node studied the box without touching it.
“Hydrogen Steel knows I’ve got it,” I said.
“You are aware of the firemind’s presence despite our protection?”
“You could say that.”
The Otaru node looked minutely troubled. I took this to mean that things were catastrophically bad if Hydrogen Steel could display enough power to get inside my head, even with Otaru’s invisible bodyguards around to protect me.
“You should have been safe anywhere on New Norway,” said the node.
“I’m guessing it was staking out the Fallow house, just in case somebody came by to have a look around the old place.”
“Even so, your bodyguards…”
“Very cool, don’t get me wrong. They’re great. But there are things Hydrogen Steel can do that the guys can’t stop.”
Gideon, who had been listening closely, cocked an eyebrow. “McGee? Your fall?”
I explained what had happened, and where I’d been. Gideon blinked several times and looked pale. He fidgeted with his doubloon. The Otaru node nodded slowly and looked both very dignified, but also very embarrassed. Was this a loss-of-face thing? I hoped not. We didn’t have time for that.
“I want to open this box and see what’s in it. I mean, for all I know it’s just a bunch of family pictures, knickknacks, some paper documents, and that kind of thing. But it was carefully buried in difficult ground, where, probably, only the person who put it there would even know about it.”
“You are hoping for our protection.”
“Hydrogen Steel might be able to do things to get around your bodyguards, but can it interfere with the Emulation? Surely you could tell if it was trying to attack or intrude, right?”
“We will do our best, Inspector.” He essayed a small bow.
“Right. Okay…” I glanced at Gideon. He looked encouraging and supportive.
The box’s lid was tight. My freshly-minted arms did what they could but only budged the lid a little. Gideon had a go, going purple and sticking his tongue out the side of his mouth with effort, and dislodged it further. The Otaru node separated the lid from the box with minimal effort, making it look like a refined ballet move. He returned box and lid to me, looking grave.
There was a sheaf of handwritten letters in the box, carefully folded inside their envelopes. They were addressed to Airlie and appeared to be from several friends in other systems. You hardly ever saw handwritten letters these days; it was something practiced mainly by people with an interest in ancient history. I let Gideon have a look at them. The first thing he did was sniff the envelopes and letters. “For traces of perfume,” he said. “Airlie might have been having an affair with at least one of these other men.”
He found nothing suspicious, but he did keep looking at the letters, examining the handwriting, peering at them with intense concentration.
Also in the secret box was a handful of Magic-brand memory pods, heavy-duty holostatic storage cubes. My headware quickly interrogated the pods, which spat back directory listings.
They were full of money. It was undenominated, plain label financial credit, the monetary equivalent of raw undifferentiated protein, usable absolutely anywhere in human space, once you converted it into some form of national or state currency. It was the nearest thing to cash you could get, and Airlie’s box had tonnes of it. Looking at the directory listings, we determined that, down on New Norway it would be worth somewhere around three and a half million, depending on where on the planet you tried. Enough to get you quite a way from this star system.
One of the memory pods, apart from money, also contained an encrypted file. Gideon said, “One moment, please,” and I sat back and waited for the secrets of the mystic East to do their thing.
Except he raised his eyebrows and glanced at me. “Er, this is odd.”
“Odd?” I said.
“I can’t crack it.”
“You can’t crack it?”
He looked embarrassed. He also looked deeply worried. “Otaru-san…?” His voice was barely a whisper. His hands shook slightly.
The node bowe
d and Gideon handed him the memory pod.
The Otaru node took it in his long, sensitive hands, and closed his eyes for a moment. He opened them an instant later looking a little startled.
“Well?” I said, waiting for the lightning bolt to hit me right in the back of my head.
“This is military quantum encryption.”
Under my breath, I swore. I saw why Gideon’s hands shook. “Is that right?” I said, keeping my voice very quiet, and trying for a light tone.
Gideon leaned in closer, “Can you…?” He nodded at the small, innocuous-looking memory pod, as unremarkable a thing as you’d see anywhere in human space.
“One moment … ah, yes.” The Otaru node allowed himself a tiny smile, and handed the pod back to me.
My headware scanned its directory listing, and now the encrypted file was readable.
It was a bank account access key. “Somewhere to put all the money?” I said.
Gideon frowned, and studied the details of the revealed document. “Not that kind of bank, McGee.”
“No?” I swallowed. A cold breeze wafted around us. I felt my hair moving.
“This is the sort of bank where you store things that you want kept extraordinarily safe.”
“Blind security deposits?”
“Look at the first eight digits of the bank ID. That’s Heritage Credit Europa.”
I didn’t recognize the name, other than something to do with one of Jupiter’s moons. “Dealt with them back at the firm?”
“Once or twice.”
“Bad guys?”
“Worse. Neutral guys.”
I swore again, and apologized to the node, feeling a little embarrassed. “So, Europa it is, then?”
“If we make it,” said Gideon.
“Could you give us a lift?” I asked the node.
There must have been something in the way I looked at him, or the way my voice wavered a little, or something, because he nodded. “Otaru will provide whatever you need, Inspector.”
I nodded. “I hope it’s enough.”
Hydrogen Steel Page 25