Deep Core

by F X Holden

  “So you been to Whitehorse before?” Jen asked, lounging beside the scanner as they swiped their DNA and had their retinas scanned. She looked at Cassie’s face, made up Territory style. “Or maybe you’re from here?”

  “Born in Bloor, left the Territory as a kid,” Cassie said. “First time in Whitehorse.”

  “I’ve never been here either,” AJ said, bending to the eye scanner. As he straightened he expected an alarm to start ringing. Cyber! Armed and dangerous! Shoot on sight!

  But the lobby stayed cool and quiet.

  “Really? You look familiar,” Jen said.

  AJ straightened and glanced at her, but she still had the same polite smile on her face.

  She recognizes you, Cassie said. Now she’s playing with you, wondering if you recognize her.

  “I get that from a lot of cops,” AJ joked. “I’m starting to take it personally.”

  She let it lie, “Sorry, no insult intended! Look, I’d show you around a bit, but the Chief is pretty keen to see you. He canceled his appointments this afternoon and I got pulled out of a Shield Program hunt to come get you.”

  “Shield Program?” Cassie asked. A door into a glass elevator opened and they stepped inside. It moved slowly and AJ watched the floors going past. People, citizens and cybers, hung at work stations or talked in groups. A lot more cybers than citizens, it seemed to AJ. Which made sense in a way. It was probably harder to attract citizens here, away from their nice warm domes down south. A cyber wouldn’t care so much about climate, as they did about the ability to take on roles that might otherwise be prioritized for citizens. Like police work.

  Even better if you were a cyber who was trying to lie low.

  “Yeah, youth program thing,” she said, “Got to give them plenty to do or we lose them to the Coastal towns. We had a grizzly hunt planned today.” She sounded disappointed.

  “Sorry about that,” Cassie said. “I thought they were protected though?”

  “We don’t kill them,” Jen said. “We just try to lure them up out of their lairs and net them so the kids can get a look at them up close.”

  “Isn’t that kind of dangerous?” AJ asked. Grizzlies were indigenous predators about half the size of the animals they were named after, which lived in air pockets under the ice and dug a web of tunnels they used to ambush their prey from below. A single grizzly could dig a tunnel web that covered a square mile in diameter and hid up to twenty exits. Their favorite food was baboon or beaver, but they weren’t fussy. Any meat would do.

  “Well, yeah,” the woman said. “Or it wouldn’t be fun.”

  “Right.”

  “But the kids train on baboons before we let them go after grizzly.” She made a motion with her arm like she was throwing a lasso, “Bam! They throw the net right, those big foreclaws get all tangled up and then you can tranq them nice and easy.”

  “And if they don’t throw it right?” Cassie asked, looking at her with unabashed curiosity.

  She shrugged, “Then they get a lesson in first aid instead.”

  AJ let Cassie keep up the conversation, trying not to look directly at Jen, sure his face would give away his thoughts. Finally the elevator came to a clunking stop about five floors up.

  They stepped out into a different kind of lobby, clearly made for official receptions, three flags in a stand against the wall, one the Coruscant flag, another the Crest of Tatsensui and the last one the Inland Territory snowflake flag.

  “Don’t get to the fifth floor very often” Jen said, looking at the flags herself. “Atmosphere is a bit thick up here, if you get my drift,” she said, and winked. There was another cyber behind the glass partition at a reception desk who looked like any kind of cop you ever saw. Tan shirt, police badge, dark jacket. Sleepy but dangerous.

  Your ninja moves aren’t going to be as effective against these guys, AJ said. They’ll have reflexes like me. If she’s a cop, she might have augmentations too.

  Don’t worry, Cassie bragged. This body is full of tech that hasn’t even been invented yet. In case you didn’t notice back there in the car.

  “Visitors for Citizen Ferguson,” Jen said to the cop behind the glass. “Carly and FJ. Signed ‘em in downstairs.” She walked to the left where she held a palm to a scanner and a door swung open. “Welcome to ITMP Whitehorse!” she said. “Take the second door on the left.” And with that, she took a step back and the door closed between them.

  Was that her? AJ asked. What should we do?! The meeting with Ferguson was irrelevant now if Jen was who they thought she was. And she was getting further away with every minute they spent on the wrong side of the door.

  Definitely her, Cassie said. I tried to read her datasphere. It’s like she isn’t there. I’m the only one who would notice, but she’s got a zero-data footprint. I still want to talk to Ferguson before we make a move.

  18. ANY FRIEND OF THE CHIEF…

  The door Jen had pointed to led them to Ferguson’s former assistant, Gina, who turned out to be a short, round woman with thick metal eyeglasses, black hair in a tight bun and a thick Territory accent.

  “The Chief drinks tea,” she said to them. “So I have some really nice NS tea. Or I can offer you instant coffee,” she said, making it clear in her tone of voice, that coffee would be a really bad choice. So they sat drinking tea and looking at pictures on the wall of Chiefs past and present with people they assumed were local or even national identities.

  “Wow, look,” Cassie said, nudging AJ and pointing to a photo of an officer with a well-known music legend.

  “Yes, that’s Chief Ferguson with her, in ‘01,” Gina said proudly. “I met her too. Lovely, lovely woman. So professional.”

  “Where was that?” AJ asked.

  “Oh, that was when he was in Critical Incidents Command in Ketchikan,” she said. “There was a threat to one of her concerts once, I can’t really discuss it.” But she leaned forward, and whispered, “A total psycho stalker as it turned out. She was very grateful with how discretely it was handled. Never made the news.”

  “You were with him a while, by the sound of it,” AJ said.

  “Twenty years,” she said. “Right up until he retired, then I took over the new Chief. Chief Superintendents come and go, but not Gina.” She winked, “I know where all the bodies are buried. Figuratively.”

  “Is he currently in town?” Cassie asked. “The new Chief?”

  “No, he’s in Ketchikan all week. Territory Parliament. Leaves Citizen Ferguson in charge when he’s gone - un-official like,” she said. “No one dares question it though, and technically the Chief is still on a retainer.”

  At that moment a door to an inner office opened and an elderly man in dark trousers with a thin red strip down the side, white shirt and black collar was standing there. The news archives had shown him as a big, fit guy forty years ago, and he was still big and still fit, for his age. He stepped forward and grabbed AJ’s hand, shaking it once, and did the same with Cassie.

  “Inside please,” he said, pointing at his office. “More tea Gina?”

  “Coming up Chief,” she said.

  There were two chairs in front of a small desk which sat in front of a big window looking out over an ice-covered parade ground, which was about all AJ registered. It wasn’t the office of a serving Chief Superintendent, AJ could see that, but it wasn’t too shabby either.

  “Those IDs you signed in with are too clean to be real,” the man said as he sat down, not wasting any time on pleasantries. “So even though the face recognition matches the IDs and if I ran your DNA, that would probably match too, I’m going to assume they’re not.”

  It had been Cassie who spoke with the Chief from the car, so AJ waited, letting her take the lead, but she said nothing, just sat looking at him with a slight smile.

  Ferguson snatched a brown courier pouch off his desk and threw it at AJ, who was sitting closest.

  “And you’re telling me you didn’t come here to talk about that?”

&
nbsp; AJ fumbled with the pouch and then looked at the front. It was carrying Coastal City courier tags, but he couldn’t read the sender details, just a date, showing it had been sent a couple of weeks ago. It was addressed to Chief Superintendent Ferguson, ITMP Whitehorse. He turned it over and looked at the back, but there was no return address. It had been opened at one end, and he looked inside, but the pouch was empty. He handed it to Cassie.

  “Whatever it is,” AJ said. “We know nothing about it.”

  No matter how charming his people had been, Ferguson wasn’t interested in playing host. His former secretary brought in a pot of tea on a tray with cookies and milk and three cups, but after she left he only poured a cup for himself. Cassie didn’t mind, she got up and helped herself.

  “You said you had something for me from Dave Warnecke,” he said.

  He and Cassie had discussed how to tell it, and who should tell it, and they’d agreed AJ would do the telling and she’d chip in if needed. AJ relaxed a little, since this was no longer about finding Jen. Then he remembered that they had found Jen, and she knew who he was, and she was an armed ITMP officer and he unrelaxed again.

  “I’ll give you the short version,” AJ told him. “That OK?”

  “I’m all ears,” the guy said. Actually, it was a little funny, because he did have very big ears, but AJ pushed that thought aside.

  “I work at a TGA treatment center in South Coast City, for people with early symptoms. About a month ago, we got a new resident, name of Dave Warnecke,” AJ said.

  Biodata spike, Cassie said. Emotional hit.

  His face didn’t show it. “Go on,” he said, in a neutral voice.

  “I work at Sol Vista as a maintenance technician, and Citizen Warnecke got it in his head I was spying on him. He seemed convinced I was working for a Capitol Congressman called Winter, and he was hostile at first, then he asked me to show Winter that he had been working on a manuscript. He called it his ‘confession’. Turned out he really did know the Congressman -he came to Sol Vista soon after that, to visit him.”

  “This is Congressman Kevin Winter?”

  “Yeah. So after the Congressman left, Citizen Warnecke showed me a part of this manuscript, and asked me to take it to Winter.”

  “He threatened you,” Cassie said to AJ. “In a way.”

  Ferguson frowned, “How so?”

  “Well,” AJ said. “Citizen Warnecke didn’t exactly threaten me, he said Winter was avoiding him and he showed me he had a gun and said he would shoot himself and the manuscript would go to the press if Winter didn’t go public about what was in it.”

  “You’ll get to what was in this manuscript soon I hope,” Ferguson said.

  “That’s where it gets interesting,” Cassie said.

  “Thank you miss,” Ferguson said, waving a hand at AJ impatiently, “Go on.”

  “I decided I better call the Congressman and tell him about this, and he arranged for me to go to the Capitol and meet with him. I gave him the page of the manuscript Warnecke had given me and he introduced me to a guy, a private security contractor, called Troy McMaster and they told me not to worry about it, Citizen Warnecke was a sick man and they would handle it.”

  “They followed him,” Cassie said.

  “Who followed who?” Ferguson asked.

  “Someone followed me, in the Capitol. I think it was McMaster’s people,” AJ said, leaving Leon out of it for now. “I saw them in the Capitol, and then again when McMaster came over to South Coast City to ask me to steal the manuscript from Warnecke.”

  “Congressman Winter asked you to steal this manuscript?” Ferguson asked, clearly dubious.

  “No, it was his ‘security adviser’, McMaster. There were two people following me in the Capitol, a man and a woman. I saw the man again, at a bar in South Coast City and then another time, at Sol Vista, around the time I was meeting with McMaster.”

  “Did you steal the manuscript?” Ferguson asked.

  “No, I refused,” AJ said. “Citizen Warnecke asked me to help him edit it, so I did that. It was a bunch of conspiracy theories, is the best way to describe it. Then a week ago, all this is going on, Citizen Warnecke dies in his sleep. South Coast City police said it was a combination of booze and an overdose of blues, and filed it as suicide. When I went around his house to…pay my respects … I found some personal items. I collected them … to send on to his family.” AJ reached into his backpack, and took out Warnecke’s document box. “Then I found out that in his will, Warnecke wrote that he wanted you to have them. So here they are.”

  “Well, aren’t you kind,” Ferguson said drily. “Put the box on the desk please.”

  AJ leaned forward and dropped it in front of Ferguson who reached into a drawer and pulled out blue gloves.

  How am I doing? AJ asked

  You’re doing fine. Let’s see how he reacts when he sees the photos of Jen.

  Once Ferguson had the gloves on, he pulled the envelope out of the box and emptied the photographs out onto the table. He picked up one of them, looking at it closely.

  Major bio-spike, Cassie said. Bullseye.

  I can see that in his face, AJ told her. What’s the deal here?

  He dropped the photo on his desk, stood, looked out his window, then turned around again. If they thought he was about to open up to them, they were disappointed.

  “You’ve got yourself in a real mess here haven’t you?” he said. “Old man with TGA, mysterious manuscript, powerful Congressman and his evil henchman, humanitarian mission to the Inland Territory?” He fixed Cassie with a cold stare. “And where do you come in? You’re the girlfriend?”

  “Yes,” Cassie said. “I didn’t want him to make the trip up here on his own.”

  “So thoughtful,” Ferguson said. He turned to the window again. “You don’t happen to own a red Scarlatti planer, by any chance?”

  Keep quiet, Cassie said. He can’t link it to us. Let me answer.

  “No, we hitched a ride with a freighter to just outside Ketchikan, and had to hire a car from there,” she said.

  “Uh huh,” Ferguson said. “Bit of early advice for you both, since we only just met? Don’t try to sell that long steaming pile of beaver-dung you just told me to anyone else in this building.”

  AJ swallowed.

  Ferguson sat back down at his desk, looked out his window and sighed. It was a huge, deep sigh. The kind of sigh a man might sigh if he had to watch a loved one get exhumed.

  AJ couldn’t contain himself any longer, “The woman in those photographs. It’s Citizen Warnecke’s daughter?”

  Ferguson didn’t look at him, just kept looking out his window.

  “Yep.”

  “Jen,” AJ continued. “The officer who showed us in here. That’s her, right?”

  “Yep.”

  We know that much already AJ, Cassie said. The question is how the hell, why the hell, and what the hell?

  “So, uhm, your connection to Citizen Warnecke, that is...”

  “You know,” Ferguson said, turning back to them, ignoring AJ. “Back in those days, as a young officer here leading the search and rescue team, I ran plenty of missing person searches in these parts. We had only one where the person was never found - because sooner or later they all turn up, dead or alive - but that one was Farley O’Halloran. Forty years later, and I still have no idea what happened to him.”

  They just looked at him and waited.

  “Or, I should say, I had no idea,” he said, pointing at the envelope he’d given to AJ. “Until last week, when that package arrived.”

  Ferguson peeled off his gloves and threw them on the desk. He reached over and from his desk drawer he pulled out a folder and opened it. Inside was a rolled page, in its own clear cellulose sleeve. AJ had never seen police evidence but he’d seen plenty of VR and he could tell he was looking at it. The folder was labeled, numbered and dated, and so was the cellulose folder holding the page.

  From where he was sitting, AJ couldn’t
see what was on the rolled page, and Ferguson wasn’t about to show them. He turned it face down and sat with his hands on top of it, glaring at them.

  “I’m not one for games, as you might have guessed. So I’m going to ask you two some questions and you …" he pointed at Cassie, not AJ “...will answer yes or no and if you try to sell me any more lies, so help me, I will club you both in the head and drop you down a grizzly hole, because that’s how much you are irritating me right now.”

  “Fine,” Cassie said.

  Are you serious? AJ asked.

  I trust him, she said.

  What? You have no instincts!

  Don’t need them. I checked his service record, his personal data, his taste in VR shows. I trust him.

  “Good,” Ferguson said. “First question. Fake IDs as good as you are traveling with, aren’t easy to come by. Are you government?”

  She shook her head, “No.”

  “Private contractors?”

  “No.”

  He frowned, “Are you working for Congressman Kevin Winter in any official and/or private capacity?”

  “No.”

  He put a finger on the document in front of him, “And you didn’t come here looking for this?”

  “No, we came here to give you those,” she said, pointing at the photographs.

  “So sweet of you both. That’s not the only reason you came here, is it girl?” he asked

  “No.”

  AJ held his breath. Was she about to open up about Jen? About her real identity? Already? He knew that would be a bad idea, and that was based on true human intuition.

  “OK, enough of the yes/no,” Ferguson said. “Now I’m asking why.”

  “Well, we...” AJ began, but Ferguson held up his hand to stop him.

  “Not you son, I was asking your boss.”

  AJ could feel his blood begin to boil, but Cassie broke in, Easy tiger. He’s just assuming that I’m the citizen and you’re the cyber, so I’m your employer.

  Backward Territorian hick, AJ replied. Never heard of self-determination?