“We’d better hustle,” Felicia says, already starting to head out of the dock.
“I’ll catch you up,” Nikki replies.
She turns to Lind.
“Just want to apologise for my colleague there, Brock. She’s under a lot of pressure to meet targets.”
“Don’t worry about it. Who isn’t?”
“Still, you were just doing your job, and she shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. So I’d like to make reparation by way of a little heads-up.”
“About what?”
“You’re new, aren’t you?”
“Not to Seedee, but this is a new position, sure. I worked in cargo management before.”
“You had a safety inspection lately, from the FNG Compliance people?”
“Not since I started here, no.”
“Well, forewarned is forearmed. They can issue on-the-spot fines for code violations. There’s a scam they run, a health-and-safety deal to do with pressure seals on the platform access hatch. Let me show you.”
Nikki leads him around the side of the shuttle, out of sight of the freight handlers. She crouches down next to a maintenance channel leading down into the shaft through which the shuttle platforms pass. Upon her fingers brushing the interface panel, an LED sign illuminates, warning her that she must be wearing a safety harness and tethered to two anchor points before entering. She twists the hydraulic safety bolts and slides back the lid, a blast of cold escaping from the gap.
“You see this?” she asks Lind, pointing inside.
He crouches beside her and leans forward.
Nikki sweeps his legs and pitches him over, thrusting his head into the shaft until he is pivoting on his thighs, prevented from falling only by the grip she has around his ankles.
He looked just a moment too long, after he asked “What you gonna do?” That’s all it took to give away that he was lying. He’d been covering it pretty good, but he was anxious and he wanted reassurance that they were buying it.
“Holy shit, what the fuck you doing?” he asks. His voice disappears into the vastness of the shaft.
“Where’s our stuff? Who paid you off, you little prick?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I swear. I just got transferred here. Jesus Christ.”
She lets go for a fraction of a second. Enough for him to feel himself drop.
“I asked you a fucking question, Brock. What happened to our shipment?”
“Okay, I’ll tell you,” he whimpers. “Just pull me up.”
“Wrong way round. Answer first.”
“Dock Nine. The Hermia is landing at Dock Nine.” He answers in an urgent squeal, breathless and desperate.
“Why did you tell us Dock Two? Who you got on Nine waiting to steal our shit?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he gibbers. “I got a pay-off to reroute Hermia. Guy in a bar last night. I don’t know his name. Never saw him before. He wasn’t the kind of guy you ask a lot of questions. Please pull me up, oh Jesus.”
“What he look like? Send me his pic.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Bullshit. You didn’t record him? Weird stranger comes up in a bar and bribes you and you don’t take the guy’s fucking picture at least?”
“He made me delete.”
“Describe him.”
“It was dark. I only—”
She lets him slide another couple of inches.
“Okay, big, blond, tan jacket. Tattoo on his neck, some kind of Greek symbol.”
Omega. One of Julio’s people.
Fuck.
OPEN SPACE
“An interesting choice of example,” Boutsikari observes. “Tailored to her audience, perhaps. I very much doubt the professor’s thoughts ever turn to the beach.”
They are standing on the terrace in front of the Ver Eterna hotel, where most of the audience has congregated after exiting the lecture theatre. There is a busy clamour to talk to the professor, who appears to be putting a brave face on confronting such an eager throng. She is standing close to the glass walls of the lobby, protected by an ever-vigilant entourage who are not only ensuring she is not overwhelmed, but also, Alice is sure, subtly vetting who does and doesn’t get close enough for a one-on-one. Alice would love to talk to her but suspects there is little of substance she could discuss in the few moments she would be permitted.
The others seem content with merely being able to say they have met a remarkable individual in the flesh, but Alice does not understand what satisfaction people derive from this.
“Not one for vacations,” Hoffman agrees. “She would regard a day away from her work as a day irretrievably wasted. I suspect she is counting the minutes right now. I wouldn’t like to contemplate what has been traded behind the scenes to get her to do this.”
“I wasn’t merely alluding to her dedication to her job,” Boutsikari says.
“You’re talking about her personal experience,” Alice suggests. “Raised amid civil war and spending years of her childhood in a refugee camp.”
The Seguridad chief nods. “Yes. I doubt we would enjoy hearing the examples she could have chosen to illustrate her point.”
“Is it true that she has never left CdC since arriving here?” Alice asks.
“I believe so,” Hoffman replies. “It’s not an uncommon phenomenon. People can begin to feel disconnected from Earth, particularly if there are memories they don’t wish to be reconnected to.”
The terrace fronts on to Central Plaza, the showpiece “open air” precinct that has been designed to be W2’s social hub. It is the widest open space on CdC. Strictly speaking the biodomes along the Axle are larger, but as well as having no artificial gravity, they are dedicated to agricultural experimentation and only accessible to a small number of authorised personnel. Hence Central Plaza would still be a popular destination even if its sides were not lined with upscale bars and restaurants.
Alice was sceptical as to both the “open” and “air” parts of this, imagining from descriptions that it would feel much like simulated outdoor environments she has visited in Las Vegas and Jadid Alearabia. However, as she glances at the crowds passing through the square between the hotels and office complexes, she does genuinely feel like she is outside. Partly it is the movement of cool air in random eddies rather than a constant chilling blast. Partly it is the way the sound carries; or rather the way it does not. But mainly it is the sunlight shining down through the transparent canopy: the way it plays on the surfaces around her and the feeling of its warmth on her skin.
It is constantly jarring to feel so aware of strong sunlight and look up to see a black rather than blue sky, but the crucial thing is that it does feel like a sky rather than a ceiling.
“She has written that coming here made her feel hope again,” Alice says, having been quite inspired by this notion. “She admitted that she had been close to suicide. She called it the hope that saved her life. After everything she witnessed and endured, relocating herself to CdC allowed her to believe we are capable of outgrowing our basest instincts.”
“Well, hopefully not all of them,” Hoffman says. “Otherwise Andros here would be out of business.”
Alice spies a flash of annoyance in Boutsikari’s face, which she infers is related to her own presence. Perhaps he is concerned that Hoffman’s humour is inappropriately flippant. However, the German has a warm twinkle in his eye to which the Seguridad chief cannot help but respond with a smile.
Alice suspects he is merely trying to lighten the mood, as the conversation was threatening to take a gloomy turn. Back at the FNG building in New York she often heard it said of Hoffman that he is effective in his job because he is a people person. This was usually by way of implication that a contrasting lack of such qualities in Alice might prove problematic when she takes over from him.
Before being appointed as Principal of the Security Oversight Executive, Hoffman had been a high-ranking officer in the Frankfurt police. As well as boa
sting such extensive hands-on experience, there was the added consideration of his having worked in one of the world’s major financial centres, giving him an appreciation of the subtleties required in balancing state and private interests.
Alice has studied law enforcement first-hand on three continents, but knows there is going to be resistance bordering on resentment towards anyone who has not walked the walk. The fact that her job is not law enforcement itself, but assessing its policies, procedures and effectiveness, is unlikely to temper this resistance; indeed, she anticipates it will probably make it worse.
So far Boutsikari hasn’t shown her anything but courtesy, though how long that lasts will be the real question. As the chief executive of CdC’s private police force, she is sure he will be trying hard to keep his FNG overseer sweet, but doubts he is happy about having someone as congenial—and compliant—as the incumbent being replaced.
Alice takes a sip from her iced water and subtly looks Hoffman up and down, assessing the shoes she is going to have to fill. The first thing to strike her is that they are exorbitantly expensive shoes.
Alice is in a smart enough suit; one she reserves for social duties rather than everyday office wear. On this terrace she feels, if not underdressed, then conspicuously like the government worker among so many high-level Quadriga management personnel and senior executives from major sub-contractors. As head of Seguridad, she knows Boutsikari is earning at least ten times her salary, his clothes looking commensurate with that. And yet technically he is answerable to her, which in time will present a great number of awkward issues to be negotiated. Right now, the most immediate of these is regarding how well her predecessor has scrubbed up.
As well as the suit and the shoes, Hoffman has had very pricey cosmetic work done too. For a man of his experience, he looks a lot younger than the file photos taken before he left for this post more than five years ago.
Part of her remit is to look into how some of the FNG overseers up here might be getting too cosy with the people they’re supposed to be supervising. She had thought she would have to dig for evidence of this, but it appears to be staring her in the face. Unless, of course, Hoffman bought all this with an advance on his next salary. He is taking up a position on the board of a private law enforcement and security company back on Earth, one wholly owned by the same corporation as Seguridad.
It has often been proposed that FNG personnel who have held supervisory posts on CdC should be barred from accepting jobs inside Quadriga corporations within five years of leaving their current positions, but there has never been the political muscle to get it through. The contrary argument has always been that with the Quadriga comprising the four largest corporate entities on Earth, this would place an unfair restriction on future employment.
The counterargument is that there will always be plenty of opportunities for individuals of such valuable experience, to which the standard response is that individuals of such experience should be at the disposal of whoever is prepared to pay the market rate.
When it comes to such intractable disputes, the arguments matter less than practical political strategy. Alice is sure that her lack of interest in material wealth is one of the principal reasons the Oversight Committee chose her for this job—and one of the reasons she will not be a popular appointee.
Alice has another look towards the professor, who is now signing a book and thus instantly multiplying its value by a dizzying factor, should the copy make it back to Earth.
“You sure we can’t get you something a little stronger than that?” Boutsikari asks, indicating her glass of water.
She had a look at the price list when she first got to the hotel. Alcoholic drinks and even coffee are expensive on CdC, as she was warned, but eye-wateringly so in a place such as the Ver Eterna. Boutsikari has repeatedly made it clear he is picking up the tab, but while this does not exactly constitute taking a bribe, there are still ethical implications, and accepting such gratuities is explicitly prohibited by FNG directives.
“No, I’m sticking to this, at least while I acclimatise. I have barely been here twenty-four hours.”
Everything here is expensive, partly because most things have to be imported, but also as an inevitable inflationary consequence of wages being high compared to Earth. This has led to accusations of what Marxists used to call the Great Money Trick, whereby an employer controls the sale of essentials to his workers and thus ends up recouping all their wages. However, the Quadriga was devised to create a permanently evolving internal market on CdC, with the added safeguard of price controls on basics.
Alcohol is categorised as a luxury, so Alice derives some satisfaction from seeing just how pricey it is. There were those who argued that CdC should have been a dry zone from the beginning, but Alice had a PhD in why that was never a viable option.
Drug prohibition had been among the most catastrophic governmental policies of all time, wreaking havoc for over a century until the mass scandals of the 2020s. Leaked information revealed the extent to which lawmakers across the globe were in the pockets of those who stood to lose the most if the war on drugs ever ended. Retrospectively it made perfect sense of their otherwise inexplicable intransigence, which is why the scandal was referred to thereafter as “2020 vision.”
Their very illegality had made some drugs more desirable. Once that had been removed, people’s choices and decisions were based on different considerations. But while the appeal of other drugs had proven fickle and transient, the popularity of alcohol remained stubbornly enduring. It had been part of human culture for thousands of years, and implicated in the worst of human behaviour for just as long. As someone with an interest in criminology and law enforcement, Alice wishes it could be simply disinvented.
As she takes another sip of water she feels an uncomfortable sense of scrutiny, but not from her two wine-quaffing chaperones. A moment ago she had another glance across the plaza, and something must have caught her eye. In Professor Gonçalves’s terms, her conscious mind was belatedly adding it to the narrative.
She looks again and this time she sees it. About thirty metres away she catches a glimpse of a man standing still among the throng criss-crossing the plaza. She only sees him for a second before she loses him in the moving crowd, but he is looking in her direction, an intent expression in his fixed gaze.
She thinks of the most taciturn of her travelling companions on the journey from Earth, the glow in his lens letting her know he was recording her. With a shiver she wonders with whom Kai Roganson has shared his grabación, and to what end.
A more rational thought counsels against such paranoia and its roots in egotism. Alice is surrounded by wealthy and influential people, any one of whom would be a more plausible subject of an angry glare from a passer-by.
She looks again but can’t find him. Indeed, her view of the plaza is blocked by the approach of someone who most definitely has her eye on Alice.
“Dr. Blake? I would appreciate an opportunity to speak with you.”
The woman addressing her has a severity about her attire, matched by a facial expression that is pointedly unsmiling. This is in contrast to everyone else who has been presented to Alice since she got here. Whatever the newcomer wants to talk about, Alice doubts it will feature recreational recommendations.
Alice recalls catching her eye as they filed out of the lecture. The woman was up near the back, trapped by the exiting crowd as Alice was escorted towards the door by Boutsikari and Hoffman. Significantly, both of them take a step to block off her access again now. It is an unmistakably defensive gesture, but Alice is not sure whether it is she who is being protected, or her two male companions.
“Helen, why don’t you let Alice’s feet touch the floor a while before you start dictating your to-do list?”
It is Hoffman who makes the suggestion, his tone genial. He leads the new arrival away by the arm while Boutsikari similarly guides Alice in the opposite direction. Evidently it is not only Professor Gonçalves whose
interactions are being carefully vetted.
“What the hell just happened?” Alice demands, barely managing to contain her anger. “That was staggeringly rude. Who was that woman, and what makes you think I can’t decide for myself who to have a conversation with?”
Boutsikari lets out a sigh.
“I apologise, but please believe me when I say that we are merely trying to ease you into things and avoid uncomfortable confrontations until you at least have your foot in the door.”
“Who was that woman?”
“I’m sure you’ll find out soon enough, and you will be retrospectively grateful for the postponement. Let’s just say that in your new position you’re going to meet a lot of people who believe your agenda should be their agenda.”
“And your protecting me from her wouldn’t be because my agenda will have implications for your agenda, would it?”
Boutsikari gives her a practised diplomatic smile.
“City-wide or in a crowded room, I do what it takes to keep the peace.”
Alice feels a stinging pain in her forearm and the glass leaps from her hand in a reflexive twitch of her fingers, smashing to the ground at her feet.
A number of things happen during the same microsecond. Alice hears someone shout “Gun!,” and as her eyes sweep around in search of the threat, she sees a figure in a mask on the far side of the plaza. He fires off another shot in her direction as Boutsikari hauls her out of the way, then he is gone, disappeared into the oblivious crowd.
Back on Earth, this would have been the cue for anonymous guests to reveal themselves as bodyguards, flocking to their charges like a Roman legion into formation. Here, only the professor’s entourage respond, huddling about her with the speed of instinct while screams ring out and people wheel around in startled panic.
And that’s before the gravity goes off.
MARKET FORCES
They take a static over to Resnik Street. Nikki and Felicia are sitting opposite Tug and Kobra in a car full of construction workers, the smell of sweat and plaster dust filling the air. Resnik is a quarter turn away but not as far as Dock Two. Lind intended to send them halfway around the ring to get them as far out of the picture as possible while Julio’s people made off with Yoram’s shipment.
Places in the Darkness Page 6