by Frank Tayell
“You said Emmitt wanted information on me,” Isaac said.
“So? Answer the question.”
“And in return,” Isaac said, “he’d tell you about your real parents?”
Ruth saw Maggie flinch. She didn’t care. “Yes,” she said.
“Then I won’t tell you where we live. That piece of knowledge isn’t safe to share.”
“You said you’d tell me everything.”
“I’ll take you there, if you want,” Isaac said. “But I can’t risk—”
The door opened. Ruth spun around, drawing her gun.
“Easy!” It was Captain Mitchell with Kelly right behind him.
“Henry!”
“Maggie. Isaac.” He nodded at both. “Some reunion. Ruth, you look…. alive.”
Ruth looked at the captain. Mitchell looked exhausted. Then she looked at him properly. His shirt was flecked with blood, and his knuckles were bruised.
“What have you been doing?” she asked.
“Looking for you,” he said. “What happened?”
Ruth told him, beginning with Davis. Halfway through the story, Kelly left to go and stand watch upstairs. When Ruth got to the part about the torture, Maggie tried to insist that the Ruth needed to be examined, or at least rest. She brushed her mother away, and kept on, until she reached their arrival at the funeral home.
“It was about half past ten that I went looking for you,” Mitchell said. “I found Davis’ body. After that…” He rubbed at his hands. “We’ll go back to this church at first light.”
“How long will that be?” Ruth asked. She’d completely lost track of time.
“Another hour,” Mitchell said.
“Then there’s time for some answers,” Ruth said. “Could Emmitt have known my parents?”
“Possibly,” Maggie said. “If he was a refugee in that camp, then he might have. His face is scarred, isn’t it? So he’s now unrecognisable from how he appeared before? There were some survivors. It’s possible he could be one of them.”
“Possible, but is it likely?” Mitchell asked. “Did he give you any proof as to what he was saying?”
“He said my name was Sameen, and that I was named after my maternal grandmother,” Ruth said.
“Which is something he could have made up if he knew you were adopted,” Isaac said.
“But how would he have known that?” Ruth replied. “No. Don’t answer that. We could go around in circles trying to guess what he knows. But he said something else. Something about you, Isaac, and how you were responsible for the world being the way it was.”
“He did?” Isaac asked.
“What did he mean?” Ruth replied.
Isaac looked at Maggie. So did Mitchell.
“In a way, he’s right,” Maggie said.
“But in another way,” Mitchell added, with a noticeable air of reluctance. “He’s completely wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Ruth asked. “What do any of you mean?”
Again there was silence as the three exchanged looks.
“Tell her,” Mitchell finally said. “It’s not my place to do so, but if you don’t, I will.”
Maggie sighed. “I…”
“We created the AI,” Isaac said. “The first AI. The only true artificial intelligence that was ever brought into existence.”
“You?” Ruth asked her mother.
“I… I was a neurosurgeon but there were so many patients for whom I could do nothing,” Maggie said. “I began my research into artificial consciousness as a way of understanding how the human brain worked. How a very specific human brain worked. I thought I could repair him. Bring him back.” She gave a rueful shake of her head. “Instead, I created a thinking machine of my own. A truly new consciousness. It wasn’t what I intended to do, but it is what I did. It wasn’t… I…” She came to a stuttering halt, unable to find the words.
“There was a conference in London,” Isaac said, “where the ethics of creating artificial intelligence, and indeed on what constituted life itself, were to be debated. We came to Britain with the intention of showing them that the time for hand-ringing was past, and that the future had arrived.”
“It was arrogant, I know,” Maggie said, “But we were very different people then. Through a little bribery, we got a slot to speak at the end of the conference’s second day. There wouldn’t have been more than a handful of people there. It’s likely that no one would have believed us. We would have sunk back into obscurity, our achievement remembered as nothing more than a hoax. That fear was what drove us to release our presentation in advance to a few of the more sensational news outlets. It was rather dry and not at all dramatic, just a thirty-minute video demonstration. Within an hour, the first of those digital viruses were released.”
“The other AIs?” Ruth asked.
“No, they weren’t truly sentient. They had no capability for independent thought,” Maggie said. “And I doubt that they had time to develop it during the seventy-two hours before the nuclear missiles fell. They were tied to their programming, and that made them seek out my creation. They wanted to destroy it. They couldn’t. It wasn’t on a network. There was no way they could touch it. That is how the world died. These viruses kept searching, and replicating so they could search further and longer. They met each other, and they went to war, thinking that they had found the AI. But they hadn’t. They couldn’t.”
“A lot of that’s conjecture, of course,” Isaac said. “What we do know is that these viruses came from at least three different sources. At least,” he added. “It’s possible that—”
“Wait. Stop. Go back. You created the AI?” Ruth asked Maggie.
“I did.”
“And what was your role in this?” she asked Isaac.
“I—”
“He was my assistant,” Maggie cut in.
Ruth knew that answer was, at best, only half the truth “We’ll come back to that,” she said. She turned to Mitchell. “Did you know all of this?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Who else knows?” Ruth asked.
“No one,” Isaac said.
“Riley does,” Mitchell said.
“Who else?” Ruth asked.
“No one,” Isaac repeated.
“What about Kelly, or Gregory, or any of your other followers?”
“No. Kelly might have guessed something, but if so, she hasn’t said.”
“What you’re saying is that other people could know, but you don’t know who, or how many, or how much,” Ruth said. “Any one of whom could have told Emmitt. He knew your name, Isaac. He knew! But,” she added, turning to Maggie, “he didn’t ask about you.”
“Maggie Deering didn’t exist before the Blackout,” Maggie said. “I took the name from a street sign I saw when we emerged from the Tube.”
“Oh.” For some reason, after all that had been said, that was the most distressing revelation. “I see. Okay. Well, Emmitt knew that expression of yours, strike a match. He has to know you, Isaac.”
“It’s not an expression I’ve used of late,” Isaac said. “But I did use it during those early hours when we were trying to stop the world from being torn apart. I was trying to find the human operators who would have been able to stop those viruses.”
“Maybe that’s who Emmitt is,” Ruth said. “He’s one of those operators.”
“Or maybe not,” Mitchell said. “Ask yourself whether it matters, and whether it will help us catch the man. Either you were kidnapped because he wanted information on Isaac, or he was pretending an interest in Isaac to gain your trust. Perhaps he did know your parents, or perhaps he picked that name, Sameen, out of thin air. Don’t trust anything he said unless you can verify it.”
“You’re right,” Ruth said. “The rest can wait. It won’t be forgotten,” she added, again looking at Isaac. “But it will wait until we’ve caught Emmitt.” She turned to Maggie. “You better go and check on Gregory, get him ready to be moved. He can’t stay here.”
“Ruth, I—” Maggie began.
“You took me in. That’s all that matters,” Ruth said. She wasn’t sure she believed that was true. “But why did you become a teacher, not a doctor?”
“Cowardice. I didn’t want to be responsible for another life. Yet, here I am.” As she headed downstairs, Ruth thought the old woman looked more frail than she had ever seen her before.
“Soup?” Isaac asked, filling a mug from the saucepan on the hot plate.
“Thank you,” Ruth said grudgingly. Her palms stung when they came in contact with the hot mug. She closed her eyes. “You created the AI,” she murmured. Questions lined up, one after another. “Emmitt,” she said, opening her eyes, and sending those other questions back to be asked at another time, and in another place. “Emmitt,” she repeated. “How do we find him?”
“We didn’t get anything from Rupert Pine,” Mitchell said.
“Who?” Ruth asked. “Oh, the MP. Riley was going to speak to him.”
“At a fundraiser at the Longfields’ place. It’s a castle, you know? Absurd building, and absurd guests, all dressed like they were extras in some period drama. The staff weren’t much better. Riley said they looked more like actors then butlers. But, as to Pine, he refused to talk, and that’s as good a sign of guilt as any I can think of.”
“But it doesn’t help us,” Ruth said.
“Not unless we can get Atherton’s permission to interview him properly. We might be able to. I’ve still got some people who owe me favours.”
“Then we should go back to the church,” Ruth said.
“I’ll leave Kelly here,” Isaac said.
“And you should stay too,” Mitchell said.
“One of my associates died rescuing Ruth,” Isaac said. “I’m as involved in this as you are.”
“We’ll need Marines to secure the scene, and that means Weaver,” Mitchell said. “Your presence would create more delays than we have time for.”
“You’re going to bring in the military rather than me?” Isaac asked. “Is that the law and order you wanted to create?”
“Whatever old argument this is,” Ruth said. “It will wait. Get Gregory some help, Isaac. Proper help,” she added. “Too many people have already died.”
Ruth didn’t protest too hard when Mitchell said she should wait in the funeral home while he went to organise the Marines. Isaac sat opposite her, clearly waiting for the next set of questions. There were many she could ask, but right then, she knew that Isaac wouldn’t have an answer for those that were most pressing. She finished the soup, and afterwards couldn’t remember the taste of it.
Mitchell returned with Riley, and they set off toward the church, collecting twenty mounted Marines on the way.
“Marines on horseback,” Mitchell murmured, “we might as well call them cavalry.”
But Ruth found she didn’t care about that, or about the AI, or Maggie’s past. All that mattered was catching Emmitt so she could find out whether he truly did know something about her parents.
“It’s smaller than I thought it would be,” Ruth said, looking at the smouldering ruins. Mitchell and the Marines had swept the area, confirming that there were no living souls in the vicinity before he allowed her to come close.
“It’s three miles from the nearest farm,” Mitchell said. “Built about three hundred years ago. There was probably a village near here, gone long before the Blackout. You say it was gasoline in the cellar?”
“That’s what Isaac said,” Ruth replied. “Not diesel.”
“There’s a test for that. The lab in the chemical works should be able to organise it. If it is gasoline, there’s only one place it can have come from.”
“America?” Ruth said.
“Yeah,” Mitchell said. “Fairmont said that, among the documents he sold to Jameson, were bills of shipping. That must have been why. They were looking for a way of smuggling the fuel over here. I can’t imagine it was hard to do. A lot of those ships return with empty hulls.”
“Some of the crew must be in on it,” Ruth said.
“Possibly. It’s a line of investigation to follow, and it will give us something else to ask Jameson. Not that he’s likely to start talking.”
Riley came out of the ruins. “Two bodies. Female. Too burned to identify. Probably died from gunshot wounds.”
“There were two women talking outside the supermarket,” Ruth said. “They must have been involved. Maybe it’s them.”
“I found these in the basement,” Riley said, holding out a cartridge casing.
“I remember those now,” Ruth said. “The cartridges had been taken apart. The bullets and casings were scattered on the floor.”
“So we’re missing the propellant,” Mitchell said. “How many rounds did you find?”
“It’s hard to say,” Riley said. “Between twenty and fifty. No more than a hundred.”
“Not enough for a large explosion,” Mitchell said. “Odd. Anything else?”
“There are footprints on the western side, not many,” Riley said. “Six different sets. That’s where they escaped.”
“By truck?” Mitchell asked.
“On foot,” Riley said. “There are wheel marks, but they’re too close together. Bicycle wheels on a small cart, I think.”
“So what will they do next?” Mitchell said. “They have lots of ammunition, but not many explosives. Is that why they’re taking their bullets apart?” He looked at the trees, then up at the sky. “You said there were electric lamps in the cellar?”
“Yes.”
“So there’s probably a gasoline-powered generator. Look for that,” he said to Riley. “Get the Marines to help. Then look for more dismantled cartridges.”
When Riley and the Marines were out of sight, Mitchell pulled the phone out of his pocket.
“Is anyone watching?” he asked.
“No.”
“Best that they don’t. I doubt the Marines share the Luddites’ technophobic sentiment. What I do know is that if you start using something like this in public news of it will spread to every pub before last orders.”
“Would that be a bad thing?” Ruth asked. “It can’t do any harm, can it?”
“Well, that’s a very interesting question, and the beginning of a philosophical debate I would enjoy having with you over a coffee sometime. However, in the immediate future it would get the Electric Company asking why I wasn’t paying them for the cost of recharging it. I’m going to take a photograph of the woman. The torturer. You can stay here.”
“No, it’s okay,” Ruth said, though she stayed a few steps behind Mitchell as he crossed to Eve’s body.
Mitchell kicked at the corpse until it rolled over. One eye was caked in mud, the other stared lifelessly into the sky.
“You all right?” Mitchell asked.
“I… Yes. I’m fine. I’m looking at her and I don’t feel anything at all.”
“A lack of emotional response isn’t the same as fine,” Mitchell said. He held the phone low over the face. “Isaac said he was working on creating a localised network so we could send messages from one phone to another. But he’s been saying that for the last ten years. There.” He stood. “And, of course, that picture would be inadmissible in court. Not that it matters here and now.”
“What do we do with the pictures, then?”
“Show them to Frobisher, and the others we arrested in Windward Square. Confirm this is the woman of whom they were terrified. Perhaps they’ll talk more freely if they know the woman’s dead.”
“But what can they tell us that we don’t already know?” Ruth asked. “That Emmitt was behind it… but he wasn’t, was he?”
“I’m sorry?”
“It was something he said. I think he was working for someone. Or did he want me to think that? I can’t trust anything he said, can I?”
“No. You’ve had a long night. A long few weeks. I’ll take you back.”
“No. Not yet. Can I have that phone
? I want to take a picture.”
“What of?”
“I’ll show you.”
She walked over to the burned church, stepped over the crumbling masonry, and through the charred remains of rotten pews.
“They didn’t do much to make this home,” she said, kicking at the ash as she made her way to the vestry. When she reached it, she stopped. “Oh.” The body of the man, Liam Greene, was burned beyond recognition. “I wanted a picture. To remember him,” Ruth said.
“Who was he?”
“Liam Greene. One of Isaac’s… I don’t know. Followers? He died trying to rescue me. He wanted to be a shepherd. That’s all I know.”
“Come on,” Mitchell said, laying a hand on her shoulder and leading her away.
“So much death. So much pointless death,” she said.
“There are few deaths that aren’t,” Mitchell said. “The purpose has to found be in the life that went before.”
Ruth nodded, absently. Her purpose, at least, was clear. She had to find Emmitt.
She paused by the body of Eve, and bent down.
“What are you looking for,” Mitchell asked.
“This,” Ruth said. She held up a small silver coin. She stood, paused, and bent down again. “Do you see that?”
“A thorn? A hawthorn, I think,” Mitchell said.
Ruth looked at the trees and bushes near the church’s wall. Most had been incinerated in the explosion. “There’s none around here,” she said. “Great,” she added, standing up and brushing down her muddy, blood-stained clothes. “We’ve got another clue.”
Chapter 15
Unmasked
Ruth lay on the cot in the funeral home, staring at the ceiling. Gregory had taken a turn for the worse. Maggie was sitting with him, and Ruth had joined her for a while. She’d tried holding the man’s hand in the hope it might give him some comfort, but he hadn’t responded. The silence had grown uncomfortable, filled with so many questions she could tell Maggie was simply waiting to be asked. Ruth didn’t want to ask them over the body of a dying man, so she’d retreated back upstairs.
Isaac had disappeared in search of blood for a transfusion. Ruth had said that if the man’s life was in that much danger, they should take him to the hospital and be done with it. Isaac had said it wasn’t what Gregory would want, and Ruth hadn’t the energy to argue. Mitchell had gone to speak to Weaver, Mrs Zhang still sat behind the reception desk, Kelly lurked upstairs, and Ruth was beginning to feel like a prisoner.