The Twinmaker accessed the LSM codes essential for Resurrection. Was there anything stopping him from Resurrecting Lindsay and changing him in the process?
There was only one way to find out.
Try the door, the image of Lindsay had said.
Jonah stood and did exactly that.
Once the body of his seventeenth victim was on its way, and he was certain its arrival would have the desired effect, he allowed himself a moment to rest. There was always a moment for contemplation before the signal came, telling him it was time to return to his other duties. There was usually no immediate hurry, although he was conscious that he would have to return sooner rather than later.
ACHERON was spotless, as it always was. All his tools were gone. The rack still bore droplets of blood that had yet to be erased. He liked the effect on an aesthetic level, although it was rather too morbid for his present mood.
With nothing but his thoughts, now, to distract him, a moment's reflection could become severely depressing.
What had he done?
He looked down at his hands.
Seventeen.
The number was hard to comprehend. It was either too large or too small, depending on how he looked at it. Seventeen women killed. The originals might never know, but he did, and the people he was doing it for did. That was the important thing. Or so he told himself. But what had he done?
Killing wasn't his work, and he had hated it at first—or if not actually hated it, then despised its vulgarity. Torture he knew already, but the ending of a life was a quite different experience. Only with time had come an appreciation for the forbidden art. It was more than power, more than sex, more than religion. It was like creating a child, but in reverse. Primal, yet illuminating in the higher sense, it was magical, ineffable, numinous—beyond words.
His training in forensic psychology told him why he always felt so depressed afterwards; once the murder was over, there was nothing for him to do except return to the real world, where his personal power was inevitably reduced. How could it not be? The real world was dull, mundane, routine. He lacked control. There was little in the way of “flow experience,” to borrow a phrase. Here he was a god, looking down upon his creation with the power of life and death in his hands. In KTI he was just one of many shackled to Fabian Schumacher's outdated dreams of capitalist glory. No matter how much power he had, it was nothing compared to that which he exercised in ACHERON.
Even the reasons behind the murders were becoming less and less meaningful, as though the facade was beginning to crumble. It was hard to remember, now, whether the plan had required the murders or the murders had required the plan. Either way, the end result was that he was both hooked and jaded. He knew he couldn't stop, but at times he wasn't sure if he could be bothered continuing.
There were moments when he wondered whether some serial killers snapped under circumstances like these and returned to normal life—just as, in reverse, some previously mild-mannered clerks were finally pushed over the brink. Would memories of murder ever be enough for them? They certainly wouldn't be for him, if he gave up now. There was so much more to it than that. If he failed to finish what he had set out to do—whether it took seventeen murders or seventy-seven—then he would not be able to rest in peace, alive or dead.
He laughed bitterly. When he thought like that, his pomposity offended even him. What motive did he really need to kill except the desire to kill? Wasn't that enough? Telling himself that it was a game, or a vendetta, or whatever took his fancy, was little more than employing a shallow euphemism to keep the guilt away. But the truth was: he felt no guilt. So why did he feel the need to justify himself? It was strange. He could understand why the MIU had devoted so many resources to catching him. He was a fascinating individual.
Those fools in the MIU…His smile broadened as he thought of the way he led them along. It was almost second nature now. Mancheff and WHOLE were no better, if the RAFT precept—an obvious hint—failed to trigger a response. He had them so thoroughly confused that he could continue the game indefinitely, if he wanted to.
If he wanted to…
Where was that damned signal?
He pushed himself across the empty space of ACHERON and instructed his assistant to erase the mess on the rack. Calling a large, curved screen into existence, he began to browse through the systems he had installed in the network to ensure that everything was running properly. He also checked the time: 0915. The signal was at least an hour late. The minutes had flown by while he sat waiting.
Something was wrong.
He checked the KTI mass/energy budget. Taking into account all recent Resurrections, and his own manipulations of the system, the figure was roughly one thousand Luhrs less than it should have been.
Something was very wrong.
The obvious places to check next were the safe-houses, and even though he had already half-guessed what he might find, had known in his heart that it was bound to happen eventually, his expression turned to fury when he saw what one of them contained.
Him! His rage echoed wordlessly through the confined space of ACHERON. Traitor!
This was no accident. It was deliberate sabotage.
He resisted the impulse to open a line between ACHERON and the safe-house. There was no point trying to communicate, and no time for recriminations, or pleas. That would only rob him of the element of surprise. He had to act quickly, before the situation went too far out of hand.
It took a matter of seconds to coordinate the transfer. There was no way, in theory, his arrival could be anticipated for certain, but his journey would be cloaked by his assistant anyway. It paid to be thorough—especially when confronting someone no less thorough, and no less deadly or desperate, than himself. One of them had to die, and he would be damned rather than let it be him, if he wasn't damned already.
But it was all his own fault, he had to admit that. He had let his guard down, become too trusting. His plans of late had been going too well, and he had become complacent. It would take only one small error to bring it all to an end. He would not make that mistake again.
Cursing the ghost of Lindsay Carlaw, he submitted himself to the fire of d-mat, and let thoughts of vengeance carry him across the solar system to his quarry—
—and came out with pistol in hand, firing at anything that moved.
Two thoughts made him smile as the slugs hit home. One: it was odd to think of this person as “quarry.” And two: from an external viewpoint, the final outcome was difficult to determine. Who, exactly, had won?
He knew, and that made all the difference. If his quarry had expected him, and hadn't been slow drawing his own pistol, maybe it would've ended differently.
But it didn't. He knelt by the body for a moment, feeling the delicious afterwash of adrenalin tug away the regrets and uncertainty he had felt earlier. It was good to have a direction again, to have a focus for his anger. It left him feeling oddly cleansed, although he could never have justified that sensation—even to himself.
Marylin rolled over, reached for something, and was startled to find it missing. Dream-fogged, she half-opened her eyes and struggled for full consciousness. What was she looking for? She found nothing familiar. This wasn't her bed. It wasn't even her room. She could hear booted clomping feet not far away. Where the hell—?
Then the door burst open, and she sat bolt upright. It was supposed to be locked! Realisation hit her. Jonah?
“Marylin!”
She was alone on the bed, and she wasn't dreaming. The man standing in the doorway was Odi Whitesmith.
“Boy, am I glad to see you,” she said.
He moved forward, allowing a flood of MIU agents into the room.
“Are you okay?” he asked, helping her up.
“Yes,” she said. “I think so. I've been asleep for—I don't know how long. How did you get here?”
“Crossed the river from Ottawa. You're in Hull, just on the Quebec-USA border. All this time we've been looki
ng for you and you've been practically next door.” A medic pressed between them and she waved her away. “QUALIA picked up Jonah's d-mat signature in the network,” Whitesmith went on. “His departure point was the mass-freighter in the basement, here. We moved in and searched room by room until we found you.”
“Where's ‘here’?” she asked.
“The De Gaulle Hotel. There's no sign of anyone else, apart from staff.”
She tried to think. “They must've gone, left us here. But Jonah—You said he left via d-mat?”
“Undoubtedly. His destination is off-Earth, but we can't tell much more than that. The receiver isn't listed in GLITCH.”
Off-Earth, she echoed. Free-fall? The Twinmaker?
She felt hollow.
Whitesmith studied her closely, with some concern. “We're going to have to examine you, Marylin. You know the procedure. Forensic first, then medical.”
“Okay, okay.” She stood. “But I'm fine, really. Just exhausted. They locked us in here and told us to sleep.”
“Who?”
She condensed the story into as few words as possible, knowing a full and detailed testimony could wait until later. First priorities were Jonah and the body of the latest victim.
“You saw it?” he asked when she reached that point. “And…?”
“Messy, but not as bad as it has been; I think he was in a hurry. She met all the other criteria, though, except for the note.” She described the RAFT precept found at the disposal scene and its connection to Jonah.
“You think that means something?”
“I think it was a dig at both Jonah and Mancheff. More head-games.”
“Is there any way we can be sure of that?”
“Only by asking him.” She looked around the room, at the agents examining it, recording its tiniest details for later perusal. Jonah's absence shocked her deeply. How had he got out? And where had he gone? After everything that had happened the night before, she felt betrayed, used.
The time in her overseer was 1105. So not the night before at all. Her circadian rhythms were completely screwed. She had been asleep less than two hours.
“Jonah must've left a while ago,” she said. “An hour or more. Has someone followed him?”
“We're trying. The receiver is jammed. QUALIA thinks it might be in use, but how it could be operating without a recognisable signal emerging from it is anyone's guess.”
She shook her head, as mystified as he. Her head ached with unanswered questions. No doubt Whitesmith felt the same. From his position, her story must have sounded paper thin, and she was grateful that he seemed to believe her. She had, after all, let an important suspect escape from her care. Extenuating circumstances or not, the matter deserved to be reviewed, and at a later date she would submit to the process gladly. Now, though, there were more important things.
She wanted to tell him about ACHERON, WHOLE's leak within KTI, but she couldn't, not with so many people around and so much attention focussed on her. She would have to get him alone first. Besides, the process of examination made talking difficult. She was moved out of the room and into the hallway to allow investigation of the room to continue unimpeded. Her skin and clothes were swept clean by a tide of nanomachines, beginning at her extremities and working inward, tickling faintly as they went, to the small of her back, where they were collected and taken away for examination. Among the data recorded were the position and type of every particle not native to her body. Some of those foreign particles would have come from the van and the WHOLE head office. Some may even have drifted from Kuei or Mancheff, allowing genetic records to be checked. Some would certainly have come from Jonah.
A brief medical examination confirmed that she was as fit as she thought she was. Once given the go-ahead, she reclaimed the remainder of her clothes and dressed as fully as she was able to. The active armour would have to wait until later, when she could get it back from the forensic team.
“Now where?” she asked Whitesmith as he guided her along the hallway.
“There's a rack of mobile booths in the carpark. We're going to follow this trail while it's hot. Are you up to it?”
She looked at him and saw his exhaustion plainly through a facade of determination. He must have been working without rest for—how long? She couldn't even begin to guess. For a moment she felt guilty about the hour or two she had snatched in the hotel room.
The guilt didn't last long, however. She had a feeling she would soon be grateful for that rest. It might be a long time before she next had the opportunity.
“Get me a coffee,” she said, “and I'm all yours.”
Information moved faster than she did. By the time they arrived at the MIU operations centre, a room barely large enough for five adults with no free wall space for visual displays, the booth that was Jonah's destination had been reopened. One armed, heavily armoured and pressure-suited agent had been sent to investigate. An attempt to trace her signal through the KTI network failed, as it dipped briefly through the Pool, passed through a secure anonymous relay, then presumably returned to the KTI network at a far removed point. The route had obviously been designed to baffle pursuit by the highest levels of KTI. Not even QUALIA could tell where the agent would end up—let alone what or who would be waiting for her.
Marylin was very glad that she had managed to avoid that particular job, even though she would have done it if asked. It was good to be back in her proper place—overstressed, underappreciated and just as lost as ever.
There wasn't time for coffee. First she downloaded the images she had recorded of the body of the latest victim and handed them over to Indira Geyten and the home team for analysis. Next, she sent a trace through GLITCH, looking for the woman who had been with Mancheff, and came up with a Nataline Kuei DuBas, missing for three years since a medical accident. Then she organised a search of registered mass-freighters in the former Canadian region, looking for firms or people who also possessed a license to transmit restricted items. There were one hundred and seventeen matches. Fifty of those owned booths that matched the dimensions of the one in the WHOLE head office. Thirteen of these were known to be portable. None were supposed to be in the region in which Jonah and Marylin had been pinged, which, it turned out, had been in a predominantly rural area several hours' drive north of Hull.
The information was passed on to the LEOs in Quebec. Whether anything would be done with it remained to be seen. The lead was tenuous, and the motivations of the local LEOs far from certain.
Before she could move on to the next task, which was to see how Fassini's Resurrection was proceeding, word finally came from QUALIA. Twenty minutes had passed since she had arrived at ACOC, almost forty since the agent had left to follow Jonah's trail.
“We're detecting a UGI broadcast matching that of Agent Bresland in the Noctis Labyrinthus region of Mars.” The AI sounded pleased, and Marylin could well understand why. The response had come more quickly than it could have; if the receiver had been much further out-system, perhaps in the asteroid or Kuiper belts, they might not have known for hours. “Robinson Outpost reports an automated weather station in that region,” QUALIA continued. “There are no permanent settlements nearby.”
“Why would a weather station have a d-mat booth?” Marylin asked.
“I presume the booth is not an official installation,” QUALIA said. “It may have been added at a later date, for reasons as yet unknown.”
“It's in a GLITCH shadow,” Whitesmith observed. “And its KTI address is untraceable. It's probably a safe-house of some kind, or a relay point.”
Marylin nodded. “What about Bresland? Any voice contact yet?”
“Attempts have been made to establish a VTC link. Please bear in mind that this information is several minutes old by the time it reaches us. We must be patient—” The AI stopped. “Yes. The link has now been established. At this point, Agent Bresland is alive and well.”
The tension level in ACOC dropped a notch at the news that there
was, so far, one less colleague to mourn. Marylin keyed her implants to the feed coming from the distant agent and settled back to watch.
She saw a blank wall. Bresland had, sensibly, not left the d-mat booth until she was certain the information she was transmitting was reaching its destination at Robinson Outpost.
A hand appeared in one corner of the field and a gloved fingertip tapped for the booth to open. The sound of Bresland's breathing was loud as the panels slid aside. There were no sudden shifts of air pressure. Telemetry recorded by the suit indicated that the environment she had just exposed herself to was close to Earth normal, apart from gravity. In appearance, it looked like nothing more than an empty prefab corridor.
Bresland stepped forward, ultraviolet discharge weapon—which wouldn't cause punctures in sealed environments—in one hand and eyes constantly scanning ahead. The corridor was indeed empty. The booth was a portable unit tucked into a cul-de-sac at the inner perimeter of what appeared to be some sort of geodesic dome made out of translucent orange plastic. The corridor led inwards, then turned left.
There were streaks of a dark-coloured fluid on the floor, leading along the corridor to the booth or in the other direction. Bresland knelt to examine the streaks and to take a sample. Close up there was no doubt that the fluid was blood.
“Shit,” Whitesmith said, half under his breath but loud enough to startle Marylin.
Bresland moved carefully along the corridor until she reached the corner, then inched around it. A slight movement in the corner of her eye made Marylin start, until she realised that it was caused by a palm leaf turning in an artificial breeze. The interior of the dome was full of plants. Not all of them were green.
Again Whitesmith spoke. “An air refinery. Someone must've thought about living here. Doesn't look like anyone's maintained it in a while, though. Any guesses why McEwen came here?”
Marylin shook her head, unconsciously holding her breath as Bresland surveyed the jungle-like interior of the dome. Plants pressed in on every side. There were hundreds of hiding places. She half-expected an ambush at any moment. It would be all too easy.
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