by Raya Jones
Angerford rose too. He stood taller than Jeremiah. There was menace about him, sinister airs. ‘Let me go right now.’
‘You are free to walk out.’
To Jeremiah’s bemusement, the Cyboratics man insisted on having the harmless MirXperma field switched off.
Chapter 42
Angerford sat down on the floor in his apartment, tired and still aching from the excursion to the Spare Lives lab, but resumed working. He had initiated the full-scale diagnostics. Before long, a wispy white plume started to weave in and out of the colourful swirls of the cyber-mind. This was Indigo. He set up an interface that enabled him to communicate with her directly.
He couldn’t get rid of Rinzler, but he could tell him to shut up.
He couldn’t make Rinzler shut up.
‘I still think it’s a hell of a gamble, letting an OK spy access your andronet,’ said Rinzler.
‘I don’t gamble. Indigo is dead. It’s just a file. I can delete it anytime. Be quiet.’
Rinzler was quiet until a further thought occurred to him, seconds later. ‘Aren’t you worried that your president might misinterpret what you’re doing?’
‘I’ll deal with that. Shut up, Rinzler.’
Rinzler shut up.
Three minutes later, ‘You know, if OK get a whiff of the existence of the soul file they’ll regard it as a hostile act. It could spark off a war.’
‘Don’t be melodramatic.’
‘I guess you’re right. Mitzi will want something for himself before taking it to the CSG.’
‘Let me deal with that. Shut up, Rinzler.’
‘Angerford…’
‘Don’t you have your own work to do?’
‘Yes, my office is packed full, clients are queuing outside the door. I’ll shut up now.’ Rinzler stretched on the bed and closed his eyes. Soon he began to snore gently.
Moments later, Angerford was interrupted by a phone call from Roke Steiner.
‘Tell me about an Indigo soul file,’ said Roke in his head.
‘Not now, Roke, I’m busy.’
‘So it does exist. OK are threatening to take us to the CSG over this. I need to know if they can back up the allegation.’
‘I have no idea what they can or can’t do,’ Angerford replied truthfully. ‘What makes you think that I know anything about such a file?’
‘Jeremiah told me.’
‘You have personal dealings with him?’
‘No. He believes that it was you he had kidnapped and interrogated just now. I’m sending you a copy of the interview for your information. He says that the soul theft was done through April.’
‘If it was done through April, it wasn’t done by us. We won’t be so careless or obvious, would we, Roke? I’m in the middle of diagnostics right now. I’ll check it later.’
When Roke was gone from his head, he disconnected the implant, and suddenly realised that Rinzler was wide-awake and watching him intently. ‘You’ve had a phone call,’ said Rinzler. ‘It showed on your face. Was it Wye Stan Pan?’
‘No. But he’s waiting for an answer. Rinzler, why should Samurai Sunrise go to such lengths to protect you?’
‘You mean the bukimi caper? You’re asking the wrong question,’ Rinzler replied at once, as if he had the answer worked out in advance. ‘You should be asking why he anticipated that April might try to kill me.’
‘It was Everild.’
‘Everild might be pulling April’s strings, but the puppet went bukimi because Samurai Sunrise had installed a safety catch. You are probably thinking that this rules him out from being Everild. But that’s exactly what he’d do. He’d make it appear that there are two people with conflicting agendas. I’m just the fall guy. I investigate things, so it looks as if Everild has a motive to kill me. Samurai Sunrise came here and set up a personal meeting with me, so it looks as if he has reasons to keep me alive.’
Angerford almost believed him.
Almost gladly, he gave Rinzler the domestic teleport code. It was the only way to get rid of him. Rinzler said he had to sort out something somewhere else, and it would be best if he returned directly indoors. This way he won’t disrupt Angerford. Angerford muttered that he didn’t mind having to open the door. Rinzler wouldn’t budge. Angerford gave in, making a mental note to change the code later.
And after all that nagging, Rinzler left on foot through the door.
Angerford gave up trying to fathom Rinzler’s reasons.
Chapter 43
Ghosts don’t tire. Indigo went on scanning April’s records while Angerford slept fitfully. He was woken up by the doorbell, immensely annoyed with Rinzler for not using the domestic code. But when he tried to get off the bed, he found his way blocked by Rinzler’s boxes. Rinzler sat squeezed in the little space left on the floor. ‘Expecting visitors?’
‘Only you,’ said Angerford. He climbed off the bed around the boxes, and reached the door just as the doorbell rang again. ‘Interesting. It is you standing out there,’ he told Rinzler.
‘Are you going to let Roke Steiner in?’
‘There’s no room and I’m fast asleep,’ said Angerford, returning to his bed.
It occurred to him that Rinzler had left through the door and returned by teleporting indoors so that he wouldn’t be seen to spend such a long time at Angerford’s. He appreciated Rinzler’s discretion.
But Rinzler also used the domestic code to bring in his possessions. ‘You can remove these boxes… and this too,’ Angerford indicated a salvaged deck on the floor. ‘Find somewhere else.’
‘Come on, please, it will be only for a couple of days,’ pleaded Rinzler. ‘There’s no point paying the inn when I’m hardly ever there.’
‘Think of the inn as a storage facility. Get them out of my place.’
‘But if we fold the bed away and push them against the wall, we can sit on them.’
‘I can sit on the bed. I need to work, Rinzler.’
Rinzler pleaded, ‘Just for a few hours until I figure out where to put my things.’
‘What do you have in these boxes?’ asked Angerford, suspicious.
‘Things, that’s all.’
‘What things? If I’m having them in my place, I need to know.’
Rinzler got up, pressed his palm on the nearest box, and the lid slid open a little, not enough for Angerford to see inside past Rinzler, who was hunched over it. Things tinkled and rustled as Rinzler rummaged in the box. ‘Oh, this might come in handy,’ he muttered to himself, and pocketed something, his hand moving too fast for Angerford to see what it was. He examined something else out of Angerford’s sight, muttering to himself, ‘Hmm, this… no, maybe not.’ He let it drop with a plastic thud, and spotted something else. ‘I forgot I had this!’ Whatever it was, Angerford didn’t find out.
Rinzler closed the box and sat on it. ‘Thanks. I really appreciate it. I did some work when you slept. The Gemini story checks out. There is a Gemini prototype, and she really is a trainee technician in Ivory Towers.’
The information was in the public domain. Gemini was part of an experiment run jointly by Moore-Dent and Teletek. It was ‘big news’ last year, but nobody took any notice. It was advertised as a New Concept in android science, or rather a very old concept with new technology: entirely autonomous units, unlike Cyboratics’ networked ones. The Android Awareness Association loved the idea of having a ‘biologically challenged person’ treated like any normal human student. Everyone else, namely Rinzler, thought it was pointless. What’s the point of creating an android that is just like a human? We already have humans for that.
Angerford opened his mouth to say that he didn’t consent to keeping Rinzler’s boxes, but Rinzler continued, ‘Here’s the really interesting finding. Gemini is still there. I’ve checked class lists, and she handed in assignments she completed a few days ago.’
‘Obviously it jaunted away in the nick of time. Your boxes…’
Rinzler shook his head, enthusiastically. ‘No, no, Gem
ini was not here when she met Indigo. Not that Gemini.’
‘It’s an android. They can make copies. These boxes…’
‘That was my immediate thought. But then I discovered that Gemini did come here on a student exchange six months ago. She visited the Mineshaft when Indigo wasn’t there and met April.’
Suddenly the boxes seemed irrelevant.
Angerford climbed off the bed around them, and resumed his intense monitoring of April.
An alert of incoming communication from Roke appeared. Ignoring it, he began to disconnect his deck. When Rinzler asked what he was up to, Angerford told him that he was going to book into a hotel. ‘Roke knows about the soul file. He’ll keep knocking on my door. I haven’t got time to deal with him right now.’
Rinzler pointed out that a hotel was the worst option. Roke Steiner would be there like a shot.
‘Any idea, Rinzler?’
Rinzler had ideas.
Annoying as Rinzler could be, Angerford had to admit that he couldn’t have managed without his local knowledge and lateral thinking.
They jaunted somewhere in the Greys, and from there walked out of public surveillance to the Zohar Memorial train. The museum had hireable rooms for people who wanted to study local heritage. There were more rooms than a demand for them, since most people are uneasy about lingering out of teleport range. You can study the same history in the safety of your home. Rinzler recalled an obscure Scholarly Association for Understanding Our World, for whom he did some work years ago, and booked a room in their name.
As soon as they arrived there Angerford linked his ring with the workstation, and Rinzler set about planting locusts in public surveillance systems to cover their tracks. This could gain them several hours. If they needed to outstay the time that members of the Scholarly Association may reasonably spend at the museum, Rinzler had a few more names lined up for hiring the facility. He was enjoying himself, creating avatars of non-existing people that will be seen arriving and leaving by a succession of cameras.
Soon there was little for Angerford to do but routinely keep the pressure on April through monitoring it, wait for Indigo to report something, and watch Rinzler in his element. He couldn’t resist commenting that what Rinzler was doing reminded him of Samurai Sunrise’s methods.
‘Yes, I’ve learned a lot from him.’ Rinzler leaned back and grinned smugly. ‘You could rightly call me his apprentice.’
Chapter 44
Jeremiah impatiently drummed his fingers on his glass desk, increasingly more frantically. The deadline he gave Angerford had long passed. The last thing that Jeremiah wanted was to take the matter to the CSG. Then, when at last Angerford made contact, Jeremiah told him, ‘You’re lucky I’ve been too busy with other matters to initiate the complaint procedure.’
Angerford spoke coldly. ‘I’m ready to make a deal.’
‘What sort of a deal?’
‘The file deleted for something I’ll tell you in confidence.’
‘This is a secure line.’
Angerford pointed out that it was secured by OK. He wanted to meet somewhere neutral, just the two of them.
‘How about meeting in usual moment?’ Jeremiah meant their corner of the Whodunnit-3010 demo.
Angerford stared at him blankly as if not getting the reference.
The word ‘usual’ wasn’t an accurate description, Jeremiah admitted privately. They had met in the game domain only twice, briefly, and nothing happened except for Jeremiah’s imagination being fired by what they could be doing. I could have made it memorable for you, he thought in Mitzi’s voice. Aloud, he conceded, ‘Maybe not. You’re right. It’s an awful setting.’
Angerford had in mind the Zohar Memorial. Out there, neither man could surprise the other with armed personnel popping out of thin air. ‘If it makes you feel safe, have your bodyguards with you on the train, but they mustn’t get off,’ instructed Angerford. ‘I’ll be monitoring. You can monitor me and ascertain that I’m alone.’
Jeremiah put on his pristine white Mu Tashi biosuit. He rarely left his quarters. He didn’t know about the Zohar Memorial until now. Now he had Acid Burns set a comprehensive monitoring of the route. The public surveillance showed Angerford travelling alone. Nobody else was on the train. Jeremiah ordered a check of all earlier trains that day. He was informed that only two elderly women had gone there earlier. They hadn’t returned yet. A reading room was currently used by some scholars, probably those ladies.
Jeremiah was nevertheless nervous when he left his bodyguards on the train and ascended the escalator alone. Alone, he stepped off into the spacious foyer and saw the cameras. ‘Do you have visual of me?’ he asked Acid Burns. Her voice chirped in his earpiece, ‘Yes, site surveillance is visual only but I see you as clear as day, Chief. You can wave to me.’
He didn’t.
He called Angerford and told him that they either meet in the foyer or call it off.
Angerford agreed. Without seeing his face, his voice had an unpleasantly impatient quality that Jeremiah hadn’t noticed before.
Angerford entered the foyer from the museum’s side. Jeremiah watched him stride across the polished floor.
At her workstation, Acid Burns watched Jeremiah watch Angerford.
She saw her boss’s mouth open to speak, but couldn’t hear what he was telling Angerford.
She saw Angerford pull the gun.
The zap ray sliced the air like a flash of lightening.
Eyes wide with horror, Acid Burns saw Jeremiah collapse to the floor with an ugly charred hole spreading on the chest of his white biosuit.
Angerford strode out of camera’s range.
She contacted Jan at once.
Jan was furious that she hadn’t been told about the meeting, but instantly took command. The bodyguards were ordered to seek and seize Angerford. They arrived back at the Memorial 7.09 minutes later, and broke into an orderly run the instant their boots touched the platform.
They ran past an elderly woman waiting for the train.
They ran up the upward escalator, taking two steps at a time.
They ran past Jeremiah’s body, one man pausing just long enough to confirm that he was dead.
Their instruments detected life signs of only two persons, both in the same room.
‘One of them must be Angerford,’ confirmed Jan, who’d been briefed by Acid Burns about the scholarly ladies. ‘He has an elderly civilian hostage there. Don’t storm in.’
She spoke with Acid Burns on a one-to-one line. ‘We don’t want this blown out of proportion. It must stay confidential.’
‘But, Jan…’
‘You will address me as Chief or ma’am. I’m your Acting Chief now.’
‘With all due respect, an OK executive has been murdered in plain sight by Cyboratics, that’s an extreme hostile act. It’s a Code 7-rho. I don’t even know what degree it is on the serious violations scale. We can’t cover it up.’
‘I’m going to say this only once, Acid Burns. Jeremiah isn’t worth starting a war over. There will be no cover-up, only the truth will come out. He had contact with his killer for some time. You know about Mitzi. They used to meet in one of our free game demos. Check it out. If there isn’t enough material to show a perverse sexual relationship gone sour, make sure that enough evidence is put there before the official inquiry starts.’
Meanwhile, the bodyguards took strategic positions in front of the closed door of the room with two occupants. The captain spoke loudly, ‘Please open this door and nobody will get hurt.’
Nobody expected the door to open without lengthy negotiations.
It slid open at once.
The bodyguards fixed their guns on the doorway, anticipating hostilities.
Inside were only two elderly women, seated at a central workstation with displays of a mining heritage archive. They stared disconcertedly at the armed personnel. One woman frowned, the other one tried to smile, saying, ‘Can we help you, dear?’
‘Didn
’t we pass you on the platform just now?’ frowned the captain, suspicious.
‘No, dear, we haven’t left this room for…’ she glanced at her friend, ‘how long have we been here already? I didn’t realise we’ve outstayed our time.’ She turned back to the man at the threshold, grinning, ‘We’ve never been kicked out of here at gunpoint before. Ooh, that’s exciting!’
The captain hesitated. Something wasn’t right. The entire room was in plain view, but he wondered whether he should enter it anyway. He stepped forward.
Just then someone from Division.53 screamed in his head to get their backside out of there. They had let the killer escape. He already got off the train in town. Get on the next one and catch him!
They left in an orderly run back to the platform.
On the train, they all agreed that OK were utterly incompetent. They themselves saw with their very own eyes in physical reality an elderly woman getting on the train. They saw the two other women in the room. Obviously one of the old crones did it, and her cronies tampered with the surveillance to make it look as if a Cyboratics man did it. Would Cyboratics be so reckless as to kill an OK executive in plain sight? Unlikely!
It was an idle debate. It wasn’t their problem. They were a private firm hired by Jeremiah. His death meant they had to look for new jobs. They were probably the only people saddened by his death.
Chapter 45
Angerford felt shaken, thinking what might have happened if Jeremiah’s bodyguard walked through the visual façade that Rinzler had created. ‘What would you have done if he entered?’
‘How do I know? Open my mouth and hear what comes out,’ Rinzler heard himself say.