“You said we would be contacted,” Mancheff said. “Tempted. But the gift would not come without a price, and that price would not be immediately apparent.” To Marylin he continued: “I believe that we have received the offer. It's sitting in the mass-freighter behind me. So it does have a bearing. But on no account will I prostitute myself or my people without knowing who I'm bargaining with.” His voice became more forceful as he turned back to Jonah. “Will you tell me, Jonah McEwen? Do you have any intention of explaining yourself, or are you going to play mind-games with me all night?”
“I'm not playing games,” Jonah sighed. “I really don't know.”
Mancheff snorted in disgust, but whether because he thought Jonah was lying or telling the truth, Marylin couldn't tell.
“By the offer, I presume you mean the body.” She leaned forward, keen to press on. “What makes you believe it's connected to something Jonah said three years ago?”
“Not the body, Officer Blaylock. What came with it.” He gestured behind him with one hand, and the mass-freighter's double doors began to slide open. “The connection was tenuous until I contacted your superiors and received such an immediate response. If it wasn't for my firm grip on reality, I would almost believe that you were expecting my call.”
“Someone might have been,” she said, joining the two men in standing upright. “It's that person we're both trying to find.”
The doors of the mass-freighter reached their maximum extension and emitted a shrill beep.
“Take a look,” said the leader of WHOLE.
Marylin stepped forward, acutely conscious of Jonah, but no one else, following her.
The naked body lay more or less face down on the floor of the oversized d-mat booth. She stored snapshots of its positioning into her overseer until she ran out of free memory. It had been cut into four unequal pieces: the legs, hips and part of the abdomen; the rest of the torso, with a diagonal slice across the stomach trailing internal organs; left arm and head; and the right arm, severed just above the shoulder. How the body had been sliced up was not immediately apparent. There seemed to be no ragged edges or burns. There were burns elsewhere, however, that might have been caused by acid, vivid marks that stood out strikingly from the pale, dead flesh. There were also signs of an intense and prolonged beating with some kind of rod. Long, yellow-purple stripes stretched across the back, buttocks and thighs. The blows had been inflicted with enough force to leave marks, but not enough to break the skin. The face was invisible. Hair matted with blood lay plastered like seaweed to the scalp and neck. It looked black. Marylin felt safe assuming it had once been blonde.
She looked for the usual page of WHOLE propaganda but couldn't see one. That made sense, given the body's destination. Why preach to the converted? Still, it was an unexpected deviation.
The sound of someone gagging made her turn in annoyance.
“If you're going to throw up,” she told Jonah, “don't do it in here.”
“I—won't.” He swallowed, his face pale. “It's one thing to read about it, another entirely to see it in the flesh.”
“This is nothing,” she said, speaking harshly to focus his mind on her words more than his thoughts, and also for the benefit of her internal overseer, which was transcribing her words. She stepped gingerly around the body, leaning closer in places to examine it. “This is the most intact body we've had since the eighth victim. The skeleton seems mostly untouched: no dislocations or major breaks, apart from the obvious. It has extensive fatty deposits—there, under the skin—so she wasn't held too long before he killed her. There are, however, pronounced ligature marks around her throat, ankles and wrists. I'm betting that bruise just under her armpit will turn out to be from his thumb, although I doubt we'll get a print. No punctures that I can see; no nanoscarring; no repairs. He must've been in a hurry.”
“Only four days between disposals,” Jonah said, following her at a discrete distance.
“Yes.” She peered more closely at the blood pooled around and under the abdomen. “There's something else here. It looks like a footprint.”
“And splash marks on the skin,” Jonah pointed out.
Her lips tightened. “Has this body been moved?” she called to Mancheff.
“Yes,” he replied from outside the booth. “I lifted her to see who she was.”
“Show me where you touched her.” Marylin pointed with a gloved finger at the body's left shoulder. “Here?”
“Lower.”
“Here?”
“Yes.” She put her hand onto the dead woman's flesh—grateful the gloves kept the clammy sensation away from her own skin—and tugged upwards the way she guessed Mancheff must have. The body lifted with a slight sucking noise. The tissue was more pliable than she expected and reminded her of an obscene osso bucco. The face was a pulped, ugly mass.
There was something underneath.
“Can you see it?”
Jonah moved in closer to peer under her arm. “It's—oh, hell.”
“What?”
He shook his head and backed away with a shocked expression on his face.
Puzzled, she lifted the body higher so she too could see.
Underneath was a plain wooden sign inscribed with the words: There is no such thing as unnecessary death.
“You see it?” Mancheff called. “Do you know what it is?”
“It's a RAFT precept, isn't it?” she replied, letting the body roll back into its original position. Only half her mind was on the question. The rest watched Jonah. His shocked expression hadn't faded. If anything, it had become more pronounced.
“Exactly,” Mancheff went on. “They're behind this. I'm sure they are. Those—” He cursed too quickly in French for Marylin to follow. “They're trying to set us up!”
Marylin could see Mancheff's position, but doubted it was that simple. If RAFT was trying to implicate WHOLE, the usual WHOLE literature with the body would have been appropriate. More likely the Twinmaker was preaching a different lesson, one aimed at a different audience.
At WHOLE? she wondered. Or—
“Jonah?” She put a hand on his shoulder. “What do you know about this?”
His eyes were wide and tear-filled. “The sign. It came from Lindsay's study. The Twinmaker must have stolen it. He was in our house!”
The bodies of the two deceased men—Jason Hugues Fassini and Lon Johannes Kellow, both Public Officers (MIU, Active Field Agents, Class 3)—arrived for autopsy at MIU-ACOC shortly after midnight on July 1. The murder scene had been extensively examined by a squad of local Law Enforcement Officers which, while not up to the standard the EJC was accustomed to, had provided all the information necessary to establish what had happened. It wasn't the first time that EJC agents on official business had been murdered on Quebecois soil, but never before while on so sensitive a mission. The EJC and the MIU had jointly demanded an immediate explanation from the usual WHOLE spokespeople, but no reply had been forthcoming. The Quebec government was pointedly keeping its distance.
Despite the intense acrimony brewing over the incident, no word of the reasons for the MIU's presence in Quebec had yet leaked to the news services. Not even the local LEOs were fully informed. Media reports had focussed attention on the act itself rather than the reasons behind it, but that wouldn't last if the situation wasn't quickly defused. It was a frighteningly small step from questioning why the MIU had been in Quebec in the first place to learning about the Twinmaker. And news of a killer who stalked the d-mat network had the potential to destabilise the economy of the solar system.
Of all observers, QUALIA was in a prime position to guess what might be at stake. At worst, it could trigger a third Great Depression. At best it would result in external bodies being allowed access to the KTI network for the first time—an eventuality that Fabian Schumacher had formed the sympathetic MIU in order to prevent. The company as a whole would be forced to examine and, potentially, redesign its security procedures from every possible angle, a
nd if even that failed to prevent the Twinmaker from killing, every member of the organisation would become suspect once again. KTI, as a viable, independent entity, might as well cease to exist from that point onward. By the time its key patents had been revealed and its staff demoralised, the few remaining competitors it had not already bought out would, undoubtedly, be waiting in line to pick up the pieces—squeaky clean and willing to demonstrate their ability to adopt the global burden of d-mat traffic.
So QUALIA had nothing but sympathy for the MIU's chief officer in the field, Odi Whitesmith, as he did his best to keep the situation under control—or at least to maintain a fair pretence of doing so.
“You have the bodies of our agents?” he asked Indira Geyten during a conversation QUALIA monitored out of personal interest, to see how predictions of human behaviours under stress matched reality.
“Yes.” The face of the head of the MIU home team displayed little emotion, as always. Her hair was held back in an old-fashioned web. “The autopsy's under way now.”
“Good. I want them processed and the application in within the hour. The sooner we get them back, the sooner we can claim business as usual.”
Geyten raised an eyebrow. “Any news on Marylin?”
“No.” Whitesmith glanced away. “She's been out of contact for over three hours. We know she was taken from the scene in one of the vans that knocked us out, but we can't tell from orbital records exactly where it went. We lost a lukewarm trail south of Quebec City, but because we never managed to make a positive ID we don't know if that was real or not.” He stopped, rubbed the palms of both hands across his face. “Shit, sorry. You don't need me to tell you this. You've got enough on your hands.”
“That's okay, Odi. The autopsies are mostly automatic in an open and shut case like this. If I stick my nose in, it only slows things down.”
“Really?” He half-smiled. “Wish I could say that.”
QUALIA used the MIU personnel tracking data to observe Public Officer Whitesmith's present location. He had returned to Montreal where he was working to locate Marylin Blaylock, Jonah McEwen and the murderer of the two MIU agents. Little progress had been made thus far. The limited penetration of GLITCH into the Quebec region hampered any nonphysical search that could be conducted. The lack of eyewitnesses to the kidnapping was a further impediment, as was the local government's unwillingness to provide sufficient resources. In lieu of evidence, theories abounded.
One possibility that, to QUALIA's knowledge, had not been raised, was that McEwen and/or Blaylock had performed both murders themselves and subsequently escaped with the assistance of WHOLE accomplices. In the case of Blaylock, such an action—in actuality or merely by participation—ran strongly against character, but less was known about McEwen. SHE hesitated to rule out any possibility, no matter how unlikely, and duly despatched a brief text message outlining the theory to both team heads.
Whitesmith didn't read the note immediately. Geyten did, however, and responded within minutes.
“We have a saliva trace on one of the bodies that indicates a third person was present,” she said. “Spitting, as you know, is an indication of hostility. That, plus the fact that the murder weapon wasn't EJC-issue, makes me feel it is safe to assume that this third person was involved in the murder of Agent Fassini, and probably that of Agent Kellow as well.”
QUALIA absorbed the information with no great surprise. SHE was more interested in Geyten herself, the expression and tone she employed when speaking about the murder of the two agents. Grief was an emotion SHE had witnessed only rarely among the people QUALIA knew best. It was therefore difficult to hypothesise, even roughly, how Indira Geyten was feeling.
“Are you upset?” SHE asked.
The head of the home team turned away from the camera with a small laugh, and dabbed at her eyes. “Lord. Caught out by a computer, of all things. Yes, QUALIA, I am feeling emotional. It's not every day someone I know is killed.”
“But he will be returned to you in due course. You are aware of that?”
“Yes, I'm aware. That doesn't change the way it feels. He still died, and—god, I feel an idiot for saying this, me of all people—it's not easy.”
“What would make it easier, do you think?”
“Nothing, QUALIA.” Geyten shook her head. “Well, time, maybe. It will be hard to stop us from mourning when someone dies. We're programmed to view death as irreversible.”
“Humans have come to take many other things for granted.”
“Only because we don't think about them until we need to—usually when something goes wrong.”
“Immortality will give people plenty of time to think.”
“Resurrection isn't the same thing as immortality.” Geyten's smile became easier, less forced. “Yet. D-med might change that, though.”
QUALIA said nothing for a moment. Although withholding information did not constitute a deliberate falsehood, SHE was temporarily confused by an overwhelming impulse to reassure a distressed colleague. Resurrection and immortality were fundamentally different things, but Indira Geyten patently did not know—and did not need to know—how close she was to the truth.
“I'm glad you're feeling better,” SHE said, for Geyten's subconscious emotional cues did signal a slight improvement.
“Yes, thank you, QUALIA.” Geyten nodded to herself. “You'll have the RLSM application before long.”
They returned to their primary tasks. Whitesmith had responded to QUALIA's e-mail with a brief, “Possible,” which SHE knew carried an implied, “but unlikely.” Far from being piqued, SHE continued perusing the data gathered so far. Another detail omitted in most of the reports was the fact that the pursuers had known which car Blaylock and McEwen had occupied. That implied one or both of two things: that the MIU away team had been observed from the time of its arrival in Quebec by people who knew what the targets looked like, and/or that someone in the MIU, or with access to its personnel tracking data, had leaked the information.
When SHE sent a second brief e-mail to Whitesmith outlining that observation, his reply was more rapid.
“A leak?” he said. “One I could be forced to accept, but not two. And if you're implying that the Twinmaker actively helped WHOLE get their hands on Marylin and McEwen so they could investigate his latest murder, then I find it hard to believe.” His expression was one of ragged concentration. SHE wondered which cocktail of psychopharmaceuticals he was using and whether SHE should recommend a change. “Of course,” he went on, “that doesn't mean you're wrong. It wouldn't be the first time in the last couple of days that I find something hard to credit.”
“I sympathise, Officer Whitesmith. Most likely Karoly Mancheff knew what Jonah McEwen looked like prior to his arrival. The assumption that he would be sharing a vehicle with Marylin Blaylock was not an unreasonable one.”
“And the—likely—” Whitesmith's voice faded out for a second, and his image greyed. “—when the—shit. Sorry. I was saying that it wouldn't have been hard to guess which car they were in.” He stopped as the image greyed briefly again. “Communications are still unreliable down here. If WHOLE does have a leak in the MIU, I'd love to know how they manage to talk to each other.”
Interdepartmental telecommunications was an area QUALIA monitored but to which SHE paid little conscious attention; it was a matter for eikons and orthodox AIs. “Is the problem localised? It may be possible to negotiate an increase in resources from the local government.”
“With these clowns? I doubt it. Anyway, it's not strictly local. The main problem's in the Pool. We're geared to transmit most of our data that way, and when it's busy…” For an instant SHE thought the line had interrupted him again, but he had simply paused to shrug. “There's not much we can do except put up with it. And complain. Seems like every time we really need the Pool, these days, it's jammed.”
“That is an unexpected observation, Odi. On what data do you base it?”
Whitesmith smiled in affectionate
amusement. “Don't take me seriously, QUALIA. It was only a joke.”
He returned to his work still smiling. Once again, it seemed, SHE had restored the spirits of a valued coworker. That was something to be pleased about. And SHE in return had been given something to ponder while waiting for the revival request to arrive from Indira Geyten. It didn't matter that Whitesmith believed it to be only a joke. Humans were prone to reach conclusions based on little or no facts, then regarding them as amusing. Some of them were worth pursuing.
Seems like every time we really need the Pool, these days, it's jammed.
SHE commenced a surface investigation by examining public listings of Pool and Pool-related statistics: peak-use periods, demand by location, mean latency, quality of service, and so on. SHE was most interested in mean latency—the measure of the response time of various sites around the globe. It fluctuated regularly in response to user demand but was also influenced by unforeseeable catastrophes, such as node breakdowns or backbone failures, and solar activity. Some special uses of the Pool also affected its behaviour. Groundbreaking artistic endeavours had been known to consume vast percentages of the network's total resources, just as the most recent attempt to finalise a Theory of Everything by fifteen of the world's foremost physics theorists had preoccupied the major nodes, built around universities, for almost eighteen hours. The peaks and troughs in mean latency formed an irregular chart across the entire lifespan of the Pool, uncannily like the jagged lines of an EEG.
The causes of the highest surges were well-known, as were those for the brief periods when demand had been low. But there were lesser fluctuations that couldn't be explained. Many of these possessed regular or semiregular periods and amplitudes. Some had cycles of years, months, weeks, or even hours. Most came out of nowhere, lasted long enough for people to notice them, then died away the moment an attempt was made to predict their behaviour. A handful aroused enough popular interest, in a similar fashion to the Kondratiev Long Cycles in economic theory or astronomy's Titus-Bode law, to warrant naming.
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