Emergence (Fox Meridian Book 5)

by Niall Teasdale

  Fox closed her eyes and tried to settle herself. Opening them, she looked up at Jason. ‘We both know you have to go.’

  ‘Non. I do not have to go. I–’

  ‘When did they tell you?’

  ‘Monday.’

  ‘So you’ve spent a week going over this in your head and worrying both of us sick, and you couldn’t come to a decision. That’s because you know what happens if you refuse. It’ll probably end your career, certainly stall it for years. “I can’t go, I’ve met someone” is not going to fly with the brass. We’re not married. They’ll look at it as putting sex ahead of the organisation. You don’t really need me to tell you that, do you?’

  Jason looked away. ‘Non.’

  ‘Right. Look, we can talk. The light lag to L-one isn’t that bad. Couple of seconds… We can talk, and I’ve got a fairly good excuse to visit the Moon more often at the moment so I could arrange to stop off on the way. MarTech has semi-regular flights to L-one.’

  ‘But–’

  ‘Jason, you have to take the job. And… And if we’ve got anything more going on between us than great sex, in three years you come back to Earth, or I move up there, or whatever. If we can’t make a long-distance relationship work–’

  ‘This is a very long-distance relationship.’

  ‘Yeah, but if we can’t make it work, maybe it’s better we find out now than when we’ve got a house and three kids to worry about.’

  He cracked a grin. It was weak, but it was there. ‘Three?’

  ‘I know you French guys. It’s all big families and constant fucking. I am not learning to cook like your mother.’

  ‘This would be a major disappointment.’

  ‘Uh-huh… When would you start?’

  ‘The first of March. I need to give them an answer on Monday.’

  Fox nodded and took a deep breath. ‘You tell them yes on Monday, and we get until the end of the month to… Um. Well, I’ll be in Japan for some of that, but still… Look, I’m not sure I’m quite up to a nightclub tonight. I need some time to sort my head out.’

  Jason bowed his head. ‘I understand. You know where I am. Call and I will come running.’

  ‘Count on it,’ Fox said. ‘We’ll talk soon.’

  Part Four: Rising Sun

  New York Metro, 12th February 2061.

  Jason opened the door of his apartment to find Fox standing there in a trench coat. That she was there was hardly a surprise since the building’s security system had informed him of his guest, but the serious look on her face gave Jason pause and short-circuited several critical-thinking pathways that should have kicked in.

  ‘We need to talk,’ Fox said and Jason stepped to the side as she walked in.

  ‘I was wondering whether you had misplaced my number,’ Jason replied.

  ‘I needed some time to think.’

  ‘Obviously.’ Mild irritation stirred. She had not spoken to him for a week, since he had told her of his new assignment. She had said they should make a go of it, and then nothing. Now she was marching in as though there was more to say?

  ‘It’s going to be hard, Jason.’

  ‘It will not be easy, but you said–’

  Fox spun on her heel and reached out an arm, stopping him in his tracks as she pushed against his chest, keeping him at arm’s length. ‘You don’t understand. It’s going to be really hard.’

  Anger surfaced and was pushed back as best Jason could manage it. ‘Yes, it will be hard’ – and Fox unbuckled the belt on her coat – ‘but I think that we can make this work and I am damned if I will…’ Jason faltered as Fox began unbuttoning her coat, but he rallied. ‘Damned if I will give up on…’ Fox sloughed off her trench coat, letting it fall behind her. Beneath, she was wearing a black-mesh teddy with a high collar and not much to cover the rest of her body. It and her black hold-up stockings had small hearts embroidered into the mesh. Her nipples were tenting the fabric as though they were straining to get closer to him. ‘You are right. It is getting harder already.’

  Fox smiled, and the bit of Jason’s brain which had been screaming at him for attention broke through to point out that she was wearing dark-red lipstick, a lot of black eyeliner, and press-on nail extensions painted the same colour as her lips: not exactly break-up make-up. ‘I am so glad to hear that, because I’m flying out to Tokyo tomorrow and I really don’t want to waste time on getting you interested.’

  ‘Mon chère, you have had my interest since the moment you first walked into my office.’

  ~~~

  ‘I’m… away… for Valentine’s… day,’ Fox said as best she could under the circumstances. ‘I thought… we’d do… it now.’

  Jason was not stupid enough to try to reply. Diverting power to his speech centres right now was out of the question and would likely have resulted in him answering in French. He was fairly certain that his brain was suffering from oxygen deficiency anyway.

  ‘You don’t… have to answer…’ Fox grunted. ‘Just… come if you agree!’ The last words came in a rush and she dug her nails into his back as she arched and clamped down around him. She was dimly aware of something French escaping from his throat as he filled her, and she did not care what he had said, only that he felt like Heaven.

  ‘I’ll take that as a yes then,’ she whispered when she could speak again. She had managed to get Jason out of his clothes, but she was still in her teddy and stockings, even if the teddy was in something of an unconventional arrangement. One of her pumps was still on her foot too. The other had gone missing, along with Jason’s clothes. She had no idea where those had gone.

  ‘I think,’ Jason said in a hoarse whisper, ‘that you have broken me.’

  ‘Better not have. I want round three. Preferably soon. I’ll give you a rest later. Before round six at least.’

  Jason let out a low chuckle. ‘I see. You wish to make of me an invalid, such that I cannot leave the planet.’

  ‘No… But I’m going to make damn sure you don’t forget me while you’re up there with all those space girls in their tight suits.’

  ‘I assure you that I would find it impossible to forget you, Fox.’

  ‘That’s what they all say. Then they see a girl in a tight-fitting spacesuit with zero-G boobs and they forget all about the girl back home.’

  ‘Prokhorov Station has spin gravity.’

  ‘Half-G boobs then. Don’t attempt to deflect my perfectly reasonable paranoia with facts. Did you know that there was an attempt to ban any woman with more than a B-cup from space-based military installations in the late forties? They said it was a distraction.’

  ‘I find it a little difficult to believe…’

  ‘They mandated sports bras instead. It’s a legitimate concern. No distractions for you.’

  ‘Unless they come from you?’

  ‘Damn right.’ Pushing, Fox rolled Jason onto his back, never relinquishing her hold on his lower body as she did so. She sat up and squeezed her inner muscles around him, and Jason groaned. ‘I can distract you as much as I like, and there’s not a Goddamned thing you can do about it.’

  ‘Oui, you are right. I am, as you say, your puppet.’

  Fox’s hips began a slow rotation. ‘Well, you certainly seem to have wood…’

  13th February.

  ‘The sun’s coming up,’ Fox said. She was lying in Jason’s arms, her eyes on the bedroom window. Neither of them had slept, even when the sex had turned to cuddling.

  ‘Appropriate,’ Jason said, ‘since you will be in the Land of the Rising Sun soon.’

  ‘Yeah… Wish I didn’t have to be.’

  ‘You have your duties, as do I.’

  ‘Yeah, but better timing would’ve been nice.’

  ‘In a week you will be back, and then I will not let you out of my sight. I will have arranged most of the handover by then and I get a week all to myself. I was planning a few days in Toronto. Perhaps you could join me.’

  Fox smiled. ‘Send Kit the dates, I’ll
see what I can arrange. Maybe now’s the time for us to take a trip to Topeka too.’

  ‘Perhaps, yes. For now, I think you should get a couple of hours of sleep before you have to run off.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. I just want to watch the sunrise first. I’ve always liked sunrise. Warm and comforting.’

  ‘The start of a new day.’

  ‘Nah, that’s when I wake up and have to leave. For now, it’s just you, me, and the sun. Warm and comfortable.’

  Tokyo, Japan.

  Hasta hypersonic transport aircraft were among the fastest in the world, one of MarTech Technologies’ largest products, and still capable of reaching Mach 5.3 at their operating altitude. It took only two and a half hours to fly the trans-polar route from New York Metro to Tokyo, but the flight Fox was on still arrived in the dark, the day after she left.

  ‘This is not going to be an easy time-zone shift,’ Fox grumbled as she headed for the door. ‘We’ve lost a day.’

  ‘You’ll get it back,’ Helen said. ‘And maybe you’d be having less trouble if you’d got some sleep last night.’

  ‘Bringing up reality at a time like this is not going to help your next performance review. I’m making a note. “Points out the nature of real life when her boss is tired.” It’s not looking good.’

  ‘At least your sense of humour isn’t too damaged. You’ll probably need it to get through all the bowing.’

  There was a lot of bowing. Yuriko Fukui was waiting for the party along with a squad of armed police headed up by the Superintendent-General and his entourage. Sakura seemed to take it all in her stride, with Iberson trying her absolute best to be polite. Fox figured that had to be causing actual bodily harm in the perennially snarky celebrity. Fox found all the formality annoying, but she had been through enough such experiences between the Army and the UNTPP that she managed to hold her fraying temper in check until they could be escorted to the vertol which would take them to the MarTech arcology.

  Fox sighed as the aircraft lifted into the air. It was going to be a very short flight from Haneda Airport to the arcology which was located on an island in the bay, but at least she was out of the crowd. ‘Not wishing to seem rude,’ Fox said, ‘but all the formality here makes my teeth itch.’

  ‘Even though it’s deeply ingrained,’ Sakura said, ‘it is one of the reasons I left.’

  ‘It is necessary,’ Yuriko said. ‘Perhaps a little overdone given the changes in modern society, but necessary.’

  ‘Necessary?’ Fox asked.

  ‘There are over twenty-five million people in Tokyo Metro, double what it was at the turn of the century. Japan has always been a land of high population density. Everyone lives in close proximity to their neighbours. It is necessary to be polite to those you hate.’

  ‘Yeah, but those twenty-five million mostly live in huge towers with plenty of space. It’s not like the typical housing you had sixty years ago.’

  ‘As I said, perhaps a little overdone now, but culture does not change overnight.’

  ‘I know. I’m just tired. Rehearsals start at nine, right?’

  ‘Ten,’ Sakura said. ‘We will leave for them at nine. There will be more social matters to deal with before I can get down to work.’ Beside her, Iberson groaned.

  Fox nodded and looked at Yuriko. ‘We can get there by vertol?’

  ‘Yes. Koma has a rooftop heliport. There are some tactical issues with Koma as a venue which–’

  Fox held up her hand. ‘As soon as we get into the arcology, I’m going to grab a few hours’ sleep. I’ll be up at eight, hopefully with a working brain. You can brief me then, because otherwise I’ll forget what I’m supposed to be worried about. I assume Ryan’s people are fully briefed?’

  ‘Yes. The security team all know the potential problems.’

  ‘Great. Then I’m sure we have nothing to worry about.’

  ~~~

  Fox narrowed her eyes at Yuriko. ‘Where is Shinjuku?’

  ‘The Shinjuku Koma Theatre was quite a famous music venue until the early part of this century,’ Yuriko replied. ‘It was reopened on an entirely new site only thirty years ago. The site is just north of Kabukichō.’

  ‘Now I see why you said there were issues.’

  ‘For the person without any local experience?’ Helen said. ‘I mean, “Kabukichō” rings a bell, but…’

  ‘Kabukichō is a famous red-light district. Loads of sex hotels, hostess bars, brothels, as well as night clubs and restaurants. Big tourist destination, but you wouldn’t catch me in the place.’

  ‘No host bars?’

  ‘Lots of yakuza.’

  ‘Oh… Now I see the problem.’

  ‘There was an attempt to crack down on crime in the area fifty years ago,’ Yuriko said. ‘It worked until the economic problems of the thirties and forties. Since then, the Fukui-kai have grown in number. They have at least some influence in almost every business in Kabukichō, and they were involved with the new Koma. Koma’s management were not happy that Miss Sakura was bringing in her own security detail.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ Fox muttered. ‘Have we run background checks on the staff at Koma?’

  ‘The police have. I have had considerable difficulty in getting authorisation to run my own.’

  ‘Things like that seem to be a theme lately. Kit, I want you to chase up the legal department and get those authorisations. Then you can transfer off onto a server to give you some more space to work in and go over everything.’

  Kit appeared beside Fox. ‘Of course, Fox,’ she said. Inside Fox’s head, that was followed by, ‘Having one of my copies off-world is not convenient.’

  ‘She’s doing important work, remember. We’ll make do.’ Aloud, Fox said, ‘Okay, so we could have problems, but we’ll have our own staff on network security the night of the concert.’

  ‘I’m afraid that that is not the only problem,’ Yuriko said. ‘Koma is a venue complex. The hall occupies two storeys above a three-level structure containing an entrance lobby and mall, and three separate clubs. Koma was chosen for its large seating capacity, but also to allow other fans to attend at the clubs where the concert will be screened via v-tag displays. The building will be crammed with potential threats of one form or another.’

  ‘Do we have clearance to field our own armed security within the hall?’

  ‘Yes. Police security forces will handle the external perimeter. Within the hall itself, it is Palladium’s game. All of our people will be carrying electrolaser carbines. Using a non-lethal weapon made getting the clearances easier.’

  ‘Good. Go through the liaison and get permission to have assault weapons as backup.’ Yuriko nodded her assent. ‘We’ll talk more about the Fukui-kai angle later. For now, let’s get through these rehearsals without any problems.’

  ~~~

  In daylight, Tokyo probably looked much the same as it had fifty years earlier, just taller. Arcology spears rose high into the sky, flanked by shorter, but still tall, apartment buildings, offices, and mall structures. The airwaves were jammed with v-tag traffic since, it was estimated, over ninety-six per cent of the urban populace had implants, a higher figure than America. Japanese society was massively social and highly centralised, and not being connected to the internet made you something akin to an outcast. So, everywhere you looked there were advertisements and public information displays plastered over every available surface. Tokyo looked the same as it had in movies of the early twenty-first century, but more so.

  The Koma building, at six storeys including the heliport, was actually relatively short, but it covered a large area. At ten a.m. the mall level was open, but not overly busy. Fox could almost enjoy walking the area to get a feel for it. The numerous shops displaying various Harajuku-based street styles were not exactly to her taste, especially the more modern, cyberpunk-inspired costumes, but at least the place was colourful.

  The citizenry seemed entirely unfazed by the passage of a foreigner through their space. Pre
sumably it was not uncommon, though Fox saw few others. Everyone walked around with the slightly distracted expressions of those using fairly cheap implants, bombarded on all sides by v-tags they were unable to filter effectively. Fox had taken one look at the sea of virtual images and had Kit filter out everything but information notices.

  Some of the adverts cheated. Just as she was about to leave, Fox found herself confronted by an overly cute, stylised girl in garishly bright colours and pigtailed, blonde hair. ‘You must not leave without checking out the fashions at Kogal Kitty. They’re paru-kawaii!’ The figure leaped into the air at the end of her little speech, arms flung out and high in joy, while a small message appeared below her bent knees stating that this was a public information announcement.

  Kit appeared beside the frozen display, shaking her head. ‘I am embarrassed to have had my avatar modelled after anything to do with this concept.’

  Fox smirked. ‘But Kit, you’re paru-kawaii too.’ She started walking again, through the still-suspended image, toward the exit, and Kit hurried to follow her.

  ‘I don’t know what Terri was thinking when she designed my avatar.’

  ‘She was thinking “that’ll improve sales.” Kawaii has been pretty popular worldwide for decades. Plus, I seem to recall Terri spent a month over here right before she started your project. What’s “paru-kawaii” anyway? It used to be cho-kawaii, didn’t it?’

  ‘Injection from Western culture. “Paru” is a pearl. “Pearl” or “pearlescent” is used to mean ultimate or special. So instead of “totally cute” you have “ultimate cute.”’

  ‘I am embarrassed to have come from a culture which has infected Japanese society in such a negative…’ Fox trailed off as she reached the door and turned around. ‘You put your avatar out on general broadcast, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I usually– Oh!’ Kit vanished, producing various cries of displeasure from the crowd which had gathered around her and Fox.

  ‘She’s a MarTech Kitsune five nine two model AI,’ Fox called out, and then turned around to leave. ‘That should improve sales in Japan,’ she added silently.

  ‘I don’t want to be famous! I had enough of that with all the chat shows.’