The Complete SF Collection

by Morgan, Richard

  Regime Change was the end building on a thoroughfare that folded back on itself like a partially-opened jackknife. Music and noise spilled out onto the streets on either side from open-slanted floor-length glass panels in the ground floor and wide open sash windows above. There were a couple of queues at the door, but the doorman cast an experienced eye over Chris’s clothes and nodded him straight in. Chorus of complaint, dying away swiftly as Chris turned to look. He dropped the doorman a tenner and went inside.

  The ground floor bar was packed with propped and seated humanity, all yelling at each other over the pulse of a Zequina remix. A cocktail waitress surfed past in the noise, dressed in some fevered pornographer’s vision of a CI exec’s suit. Chris put a hand on her arm and tried to make himself heard.

  ‘Bolivia Bar?’

  ‘Second floor,’ she shouted back. ‘Through the Iraq Room and left.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Screwed-up face. ‘What?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  That got a strange look. He took the stairs at a lope, found the Iraq Room - wailing DJ-votional rhythms, big screens showing zooming aerial views of flaming oil wells like black and crimson desert flowers, hookah pipes on the tables - and picked his way through it. A huge holoprint of Che Guevara loomed to his left. He snorted and ducked underneath. A relative quiet descended, pegged out with melancholy Andean pipes and Spanish guitar. People sat about on big leather beanbags and sofas with their stuffing coming out. There were candles, and some suggestion of tent canvas on the walls.

  Liz Linshaw was seated at a low table in one corner, apparently reading a thin, blue-bound sheaf of paperwork. She wore a variant on her TV uniform - black slacks and a black and grey striped silk shirt buttoned closed at a single point on her chest. The collar of the shirt was turned up, but the lower hem floated a solid five centimetres above the belt of her slacks. Tanned, toned TV flesh filled up the gap and made long triangles above and below the single closed button.

  Either she didn’t see him approaching, or she let him get close deliberately. He stopped himself clearing his throat with an effort of will, and dropped into the beanbag opposite her.

  ‘Hullo, Liz.’

  ‘Chris.’ She glanced up, apparently surprised. ‘You’re earlier than I thought you’d be. Thanks for coming.’

  She laid aside what she’d been reading and extended one slim arm across the table. Her grip was dry and confident.

  ‘It’s.’ Chris looked around. ‘A pleasure. You come here often?’

  She laughed. It was distressingly attractive, warm and deep-throated and once again Chris had the disturbing impression of recall he’d had on the phone.

  ‘I come here when I don’t want to run into anyone from the Conflict Investment sector, Chris. It’s safe. None of you guys would be seen dead in here.’

  Chris pulled a face. ‘True enough.’

  ‘Don’t be superior. It’s not such a bad place. Have you seen the waitresses?’

  ‘Yeah, met one downstairs.’

  ‘Decorative, aren’t they?’

  ‘Very.’ Chris looked around reflexively. There was a long bar bent into one corner of the room. A woman stood mixing drinks behind it.

  ‘What would you like?’ Liz Linshaw asked him.

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  ‘No, I insist. After all, you’re making yourself available to me, Chris. It’s the least I can do, and it’s tax-deductible.’ She grinned. ‘You know. Research costs. Hospitality.’

  ‘Sounds like a nice way to live.’

  ‘Whisky, wasn’t it? Laphroaig?’

  He nodded, flattered that she remembered. ‘If they’ve got it.’

  Liz Linshaw pressed a palm on the table top and the menu glowed into life beneath her hand. She scrolled about a bit, then shook her head regretfully.

  ‘No Laphroaig. Lot of bourbons, and, ah, what about Port Ellen? That’s an Islay malt, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s one of the new ones.’ The sense of flattery crumbled slightly. Had she being doing research on him, he wondered. ‘Reopened back in the thirties. It’s good stuff.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll try it.’

  She pressed on the selection and swept a hand across the send patch. At the bar, the woman looked down, face stained red by the flashing table alert on her worksurface. She glanced across at them and nodded.

  ‘So, Chris.’ Liz Linshaw sat back and smiled at him. ‘Where did you develop your taste for expensive whisky?’

  ‘Is this part of the interview?’

  ‘No, just warming you up. But, I’m curious. You grew up in the zones, didn’t you. East End, riverside estates. Not much Islay malt around there.’

  ‘No. There isn’t.’

  ‘Is it painful to talk about this, Chris?’

  ‘You’re a zone girl yourself, Liz. What do you think?’

  The drinks came, hers with ice. Liz Linshaw waited until the waitress had gone, then she picked up her tumbler and looked pensively into it. She swirled the drink and the ice cubes clicked about.

  ‘My zone origins are mostly, shall we say, artistic licence. Exaggerated for exotic effect. The truth is, I grew up on the fringes of Islington, at a time when the lines weren’t as heavily drawn as they are now. My parents were, still are, moderately successful teachers and I went to university. There’s nothing that hurts in my past.’

  Chris raised his glass. ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘Yes, that’s a fair description. You weren’t so lucky.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yet age nineteen you were driving for Ross Mobile Arbitrage. You were their top paid haulage operative, until you moved sideways into LS Euro Ventures. Two years after that Hammett McColl, headhunted. No qualifications, not even driver’s school. For someone with zone origins that’s more than remarkable, it’s nigh on impossible.’

  Chris gestured. ‘If you want out badly enough.’

  ‘No, Chris. The zones are full of people who want out badly enough, and then some. It gets them nowhere. The dice are loaded against that kind of mobility, and you know it.’

  ‘I know other people who’ve made it out.’ It felt strange to suddenly be on the other end of the argument he’d had with Mike Bryant that morning. ‘Look at Troy Morris.’

  ‘Do you know Troy well?’

  ‘Uhh, not really. He’s Mike’s friend more than mine.’

  ‘I see.’ Liz Linshaw lifted her drink in his direction. ‘Well, anyway. Cheers. Here’s to Conflict Investment. Small wars.’

  ‘Small wars.’ But there was something vaguely disquieting in hearing it from her lips. He didn’t like the way it sounded.

  She set down her tumbler. Beside it a microcorder. ‘So. How does it feel to be the rising star at Shorn CI?’

  The interview went down as smoothly as the Port Ellen. Liz Linshaw had a loose, inviting manner at odds with her screen persona, and he found himself talking as if to an old friend he hadn’t seen in many years. Such areas of resistance as he had, she picked up on and either backed smoothly away from the topic or found another way in that somehow he didn’t mind as much. They laughed a lot, and once or twice he caught himself on the verge of giving up data that he had no business discussing with anyone outside Shorn.

  By nine o’clock they were working up to Edward Quain, and he had drunk far too much to be able to drive the Saab safely.

  ‘You didn’t like him, did you.’ There was no question in her voice.

  ‘Quain? What makes you think that?’

  ‘Your form.’

  He laughed, slurring slightly. ‘What am I, a fucking racehorse?’

  She smiled along. ‘If you like. Look, you’ve made a total of eleven kills, including Mitsue Jones and her wingmate, plus the Acropolitic driver on the same run. Eight before that. Three at LS Euro, two tenders and one Prom and App duel. Then the move to HM, and out of nowhere you take Quain down.’

  ‘It was the easiest way to get up the ladder.’

  ‘It was off the wall, Ch
ris. Quain was the top end of your permissible challenge envelope. As senior as it gets without exempted partner status. At that level in some companies he would have been an exempted partner.’

  ‘Yeah, or out on his ear.’ Chris drained his current whisky. ‘You want to know the truth, Liz? Quain was a burnt-out old fuck. He wasn’t bringing in the business, he drank way too much, did too much expensive coke, he fucked his way through every high-price whore in Camden Town, and he paid for it all with bonuses taken out of money junior analysts on a tenth his income were generating. He was an embarrassment to everyone at Hammett McColl, and he needed taking out.’

  ‘Very public-spirited of you. But there must have been easier targets on the way up the HM ladder.’

  Chris shrugged. ‘If you’re going to kill a man, it might as well be a patriarch.’

  ‘And what I find curious is the duels after Quain. Four more kills, none of them even close to as brutal as Quain’s and—’

  ‘Murcheson burnt to death,’ Chris pointed out. The screams, he did not add, still came back to him in his nightmares.

  ‘Yes, Murcheson was trapped in wreckage. It was nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Hardly nothing. I created the wreckage.’

  ‘Chris, you ran over Quain five times. I’ve seen that footage—’

  ‘What are you, Liz? An X fan?’

  The crooked smile again. ‘If I was, I’d have been pretty unhappy with your performance for the next eight years. Like I said, four more kills, all clean bar Murcheson, who was an accidental burn. And alongside that, another seven inconclusives, including one you actually rescued from wreckage and drove to hospital. That’s not going to get you an honourable mention on any of the Xtreme sites, is it.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘Relax, Chris. I didn’t say I was an Xer. But when you’re trying to build a profile, this stuff matters. I want to know what you’re made of.’

  He met her eyes, and the look lasted. Went on far longer than it should have. He cleared his throat.

  ‘I’m going to go home now.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re going to drive?’

  ‘I.’ He stood up, too fast. ‘No, maybe not. I’ll get a cab.’

  ‘That’s going to cost you a fortune, Chris.’

  ‘So. I earn a fortune. ’s not like the fucking army, you know. I get well paid for murdering people.’

  She got up and placed a hand on his arm.

  ‘I’ve got a better idea.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Suddenly he was aware of his pulse. ‘What’s that, then?’

  ‘I live in Highgate. That’s a cheap cab ride, and there’s a spare futon there with your name on it.’

  ‘Look, Liz—’

  She grinned suddenly. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, Faulkner. I’m not about to tear your clothes off and stuff your dick down my throat, if that’s what you’re worried about. I like the men I fuck to be sober.’

  Unwillingly, he laughed. ‘Hey, give it to me straight, Liz. Don’t let me down gently.’

  ‘So.’ She was laughing too. ‘Do we get this cab?’

  They ordered the taxi from the same table menu as the drinks. This early in the evening, it wasn’t hard to get one. Liz cleared the tab, and they left. There was frenetic dancing in the Iraq Room, harsh, mindless beats drawn from early millennium thrash bands like Noble Cause and Bushin’. They ducked through the press of bodies, got the stairs and made it out into the street, still laughing.

  The taxi was there, gleaming black in the late evening light like a toy that belonged to them. Chris fetched up short, laughter drying in his throat. He glanced sideways at Liz Linshaw and saw the hilarity had drained out of her the same way. He could not read the expression that had replaced it on her face. For a moment they both stood there, staring at the cab like idiots, and like a Nemex shell the realisation hit Chris in the back of the head. The sardonic amusement on the phone, the maddeningly familiar note in her deep-throated laugh. The sense of recall about this woman came crashing down on him.

  She reminded him of Carla.

  Carla when they first met. Carla, three or four years back. Carla before the creeping distance took its toll.

  Suddenly, he was sweating.

  What the fu—

  It was the fear sweat, chasing a rolling shudder across his body. A feeling he’d left behind a decade ago in his early duels. Pure, existential terror, distilled down so clear it could not be pinned on any single identifiable thing. Fear of death, fear of life, fear of everything in between and what it would do to you in time. The terror of inevitably losing your grip.

  ‘Oy, are you getting in or what?’

  The driver was leaning out, thumb jerked back to where the door of the black cab had hinged open of its own accord. There was a tiny light on inside, seats of cool green plush.

  Liz Linshaw stood watching him, face still unreadable.

  The sweat cooled.

  He got in.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Westward, there were mountains spearing up grimly under gathered blue cloud. Weak ladders of late afternoon sun fell through at infrequent intervals, splashing scant warmth where they hit. Carla shivered slightly at the sight. There was no darkness yet - this far north, daylight held the sky as it would for another full month, but the Lofoten skyline still looked like the watchtowers of a troll city.

  ‘Cold?’ Kirsti Nyquist glanced sideways from the jeep’s driving seat. Her ability to pick up on her daughter’s moods and feelings sometimes verged on the witchy. ‘We can close the hood, if you want.’

  Carla shook her head. ‘I’m fine. Just thinking.’

  ‘Not happy thoughts, then.’

  The road unwound ahead of them, freshly carved from the bleak terrain and laid down in asphalt so new it looked like liquorice. There were none of the luminous yellow markings as yet, and they kept passing raw white rock walls that still had defined grooves where the blasting holes had been sunk. A sign said Gjerlow Oceanic Monitoring - 15 kilometres. Carla sighed and shifted in her seat. Kirsti drove the big Volvo All-Terrain with a care that, to Carla’s London-forged road instincts, seemed faintly ridiculous. They’d seen five other vehicles in the last hour, and three of those had been parked outside a fuelling post.

  ‘Tunnel,’ called her mother cheerily. ‘Mittens.’

  Carla reached for her gloves. This was the second tunnel of the trip. The first time, she’d ignored her mother’s warning. They were less than two hundred kilometres inside the Arctic circle, and the weather had been pleasant since she got off the plane at Tromsö two days ago, but tunnels were another matter. Deep in the mountain rock, an Arctic chill hit you in the lungs and the fingers before you’d gone a hundred metres.

  Kirsti flipped on the headlamps and they barrelled down into the sodium yellow gloom. Their breath frosted and whipped away over their shoulders.

  ‘Now you’re cold, hey?’

  ‘A bit. Mum, did we really have to come all this way?’

  ‘Yes. I told you. It’s the only chance we’ll get to see him.’

  ‘You couldn’t invite him up to Tromsö?’

  Kirsti made a wry face. ‘Not any more.’

  Carla tried primly not to laugh. Kirsti Nyquist was well into her fifties now, but she was still a strikingly handsome woman and she changed her lovers with brutal regularity. They just don’t grow with me, she once complained to her daughter. Perhaps that’s because they’re all young enough to be your children, Carla had retorted, a little unfairly. Her mother’s choices often were younger men, but not usually by more than a decade or so, and Carla herself had to admit most of the options in the fifty-plus male range weren’t much to look at.

  The tunnel was six kilometres long. They made the other side with teeth chattering and Kirsti whooped as she drove into the fractured sunlight outside. The temperature upgrade soaked into Carla’s body like tropical heat. The chill seemed to have gone bone-deep. She tried to shrug it off.

  Ge
t a fucking grip, Carla.

  She was already missing Chris, a lack for which she berated herself because it felt so pathetic alongside her mother’s cheerful self sufficiency. The anger at him that had driven her out of the house was already evaporating by the time her plane took off, and all she had by the time she arrived in Tromsö was maudlin drinking talk of distance and loss.

  Now, out of the mess she had laid out for her mother the night she arrived, Kirsti had snatched the possibility of meaningful action. Carla wondered vaguely what you had to do to attain operational pitch like that - have a child, write a book, lose a relationship? What did it take?

  ‘There it is.’ Kirsti gestured ahead, and Carla saw the road was dropping down to meet one side of a small, stubby fjord. On the other side, institutional buildings were gathered in a huddle, lit up shiny in a wandering shaft of sunlight. It looked as if the road ran all the way up to the end of the inlet and then back round to the monitoring station.

  ‘So this is all new as well?’

  ‘Relocated. They were based in the Faroes until last year.’

  ‘Why did?’ Carla remembered. ‘Oh, right. The BNR thing.’

  ‘Yes, your beloved British and their nuclear reprocessing. Gjerlow reckons it’s contaminated local waters for the next sixty years minimum. Pointless taking overview readings. None of the tests they do will stand the radiation.’

  Not for the first time, Carla felt a wave of defensiveness rising in her at the mention of her adoptive home.

  ‘I heard it was just heat exchanger fluids - not enough to do much damage.’

  ‘My dear, you’ve been living in London too long if you believe what the British media tell you. There is no just where nuclear contaminants are concerned. It’s been a monumental disaster and anyone with access to independent broadcasting knows it.’

  Carla flushed. ‘We’ve got independent channels.’