by Project Itoh
“We could investigate the SEC?”
“We will. Though with such a vital source as Gabrielle gone, I have my doubts as to how far such an investigation would take us—where are you now, by the way?”
“In a PassengerBird. Upper deck.”
“To where?”
“Chechnya.”
“Why Chechnya? Another loose thread?”
“I can’t say.”
This was it. I could show no more of my hand. What I needed was a convenient lie.
“Vashlov told me that there were members of his group within the Helix Inspection Agency. I don’t know which superiors you report to, ma’am, but I think that the chances of them being sympathizers are high.”
This was my big bluff. Vashlov had said nothing of the sort. Although now that I thought about it, it did seem like an idea with some merit.
“Given a choice, I’d prefer not to telegraph our every move to our opponent.”
“You mean your every move. With Cian Reikado’s death, and now your father’s, this case has become quite personal for you, hasn’t it. It doesn’t bode well, Inspector Kirie.”
“And yet, I have made more progress than any other agent.”
Stauffenberg stared me in the eye. I couldn’t read anything in her expression. Maybe she was trying to read me. Or maybe she was just trying to accept reality. After five seconds of silence, Prime asked for everyone else to leave the session. One by one, the other Helix agents logged off, scratching their heads as they went. I was alone with Stauffenberg. She took a deep breath and said, “All right. I’ll be honest. It’s me.”
I had no idea what she was talking about.
“I’m an upper-rank member in the Next-Gen Human Behavior Monitoring Group.”
I laughed out loud, both at my bluff having hit the mark so well, and at the ridiculousness of my current situation.
“So you were following me the whole time?”
“Yes. Both sides of our group have been watching you. We had given you mostly free reign in hopes that you would contact Miach Mihie’s group or they you in the course of your investigation.”
“So it wasn’t the Tuareg card after all.”
“You were allowed to continue operating for the sole purpose of tracking down Miach Mihie’s whereabouts. You’re not the first Helix agent to disgrace herself in the field, and your past behavior certainly wouldn’t have bought you any of your current relative freedom.”
So the Next-Gen group wanted Miach, and Miach’s sect wanted Nuada, and both sides had been using me to get what they wanted.
“Both of you needed to track down the leader of the other group, which made me very valuable as the daughter of one and the friend of the other.”
“It just happens that you and we are after the same person. We were cooperating—as unintentional as it may have been.”
“It certainly does seem that way.”
“I’m sorry about your father, truly.”
Judging from the look on Stauffenberg’s face, she was telling the truth. It wasn’t hard to picture my father as a respected leader of his group. There was an ironic gap between that and my memory of him getting chewed out by that woman in the morality session all those years ago.
“Miach Mihie still possesses a limited ability to control feedback mechanisms within the brains of the constituencies of several admedistrations. She’s gone into hiding. What they have been doing is manipulating the feedback mechanism within the midbrain to instill a desire for death, causing people to kill themselves. We wanted to use you to get into contact with her so we could find out what her goals were in causing this current chaos, and attempt to stop her. You see, we have absolutely no idea what she’s up to.”
Had it only been me and Cian, and probably my father, who knew about Miach’s dark past? All those curses we dreamed up to cast on the world, huddled together at our desks on those dreary school days. Wasn’t Miach still carrying the hatred she had held in her heart back then? Wasn’t she just using her newfound power to put her fantasies into action—her power to make mincemeat of the society she so despised?
If that was true, then the current situation was an extremely private one for us, and now that Cian and my father were gone, I was the only one capable of understanding it.
There was a point to slowly releasing the shackles of our social system as she was doing, to using an abject fear of others to undo the little fetters around each of us one at a time—and I was the only one who got it.
A world where your body was your own. That was what the Miach I had known as a child wanted. A body that was hers, not beholden to a society or its rules.
“So, what can we do about this?” Prime asked.
“Who’s the agent in charge of monitoring life-issues between Chechnya and Russia?”
“That’s…Inspector Uwe Vol.”
“Then can you direct him to aid my investigation once I arrive?”
“Very well.” Stauffenberg went to cut our connection, then her hand stopped. “The fate of the world is resting on your shoulders, Inspector Kirie. Good luck.”
Words of personal encouragement were about the last thing I had expected from my typically venomous boss. This whole thing had started as a personal matter, and if anything, it had only gotten more personal as I went. Frankly, even with all the riots and mass suicide going on, I hadn’t been worried about the world at all. All I wanted to do was find Miach Mihie—who had killed Cian, and probably my father as well—and somehow get some closure from her. That was the only thing keeping me moving, the only thing I really felt.
I went off-line, feeling jumpy in the pit of my stomach. I asked the flight attendant for some caffeine. Something shamefully strong, I added. I was no longer worried about appearances, and it had been a while since I had gotten a good night’s sleep, so I needed the boost.
Uwe would be with the Chechen armistice monitoring group. That was where I was headed.
02
Pretty much everyone in the world knew that Russia’s only real concern in the region was control of the pipeline. It was a thorn in the side of every admedistration in the world, I was sure, that we hadn’t completely rid ourselves of the decidedly environmentally unaware oil economy. Fossil fuels
Unclean, unsafe, uncool.
Still, there were classic engines around that wouldn’t run without oil, and products made from oil. Compared to a hundred years earlier when the world had been in the grip of the black gold, oil had lost much of its allure, though it still clung to a vital position in the global market.
As Dubai had become an economic center thanks to the performance of the oil sector, Baghdad had vaulted to its current status as an economic powerhouse on the shoulders of the medical conglomerates. As the saying goes, trust in Allah, but be sure to tie up your camel. The Middle East had gone through a chaotic period of runaway fundamentalism before emerging into a more practical, tie-up-your-camel age. The smarter governments in the region had already begun uprooting their stakes in oil.
The old-style government of Russia remained the largest single system among the clustered admedistrations that controlled Eurasia, though this hadn’t kept the admedistrations from roundly criticizing their oversized neighbor’s policies when it came to control of the oil pipeline. Not a few admedistration commissioners had wondered openly why Geneva Convention forces had been pulled in to help Russia enforce its claims of ownership.
Russia, the nation, wanted war with Chechnya. Russia, the collection of admedistrations, each wanted to save the Chechens from their own unhealthy ways, and they each had different ideas as to how best to achieve their goal. This meant that Uwe was dealing with far more than just armed Chechen groups, the Chechen government, and the Russian government. There we
re over a hundred different admedistrations within Russia, and all of them had something to say, and all of them said it to him. Russia, eager to generate international support, had invited the Helix Inspection Agency in to investigate, whereupon they found that the Chechen people were not living sufficiently lifeist, healthy lives, which gave Russia a sufficient pretext to call in the Geneva Convention troops.
Oddly enough, for the last several days Uwe’s work had been relatively tranquil. The mass suicides and the declaration and the possible second coming of the Maelstrom had kept the people who were responsible for sending him multi-gigabyte reports detailing their specific demands busy—either killing someone or hiding in their houses or summer cottages.
“Uwe? Duty calls.”
The Helix Inspection Agency office within the Chechnya Armistice Monitoring Group camp had been built in the ruins of an old city hall. I pressed my finger to the door to give my ID and let myself in. Uwe was asleep at his desk amid a mountain of printouts.
“Wakey, wakey,” I said, giving him a slap on the back.
He blinked and looked befuddled for a second before his WatchMe kicked in and stimulated him to full alert mode. “Oh, hey, Tuan. Heard you were coming from Prime. She didn’t deign to tell me why, though.”
“Quite the office you got here. Isn’t all this paper a fire hazard?”
“Meh. ThingList + NoTime = WhyClean?”
“Another victim of ThingList, huh? That seems to be going around.”
Uwe shrugged his shoulders and cleared a teetering pile of papers from his desk onto the floor with a sigh.
“Have you been briefed on my current strategic action?”
Uwe raised an eyebrow. “Strategic action? I heard you were leading a one-woman idiot brigade, Miss Senior Inspector Tuan Kirie.”
“Well let’s make it two idiots then. I need your help.”
“Let me guess. This has something to do with the six thousand suicides and the enforced murder dictate,” Uwe said, though his expression told me that he really didn’t know why I was here.
“That’s right. You’re familiar with the Anti-Russian Freedom Front?”
“Very. I arrange police protection for their negotiations—we’ve had a few with them already. Been trying to get them to agree to a lifestyle survey. They’re one of Russia’s top worries, but those of us wearing this symbol have to at least pretend to be neutral parties.” He tapped the entwined serpents around the staff on his shirt.
“What makes them a top worry?”
“They’re real good at moving around through the mountains. Guerrilla warfare at its finest. With all the cliffs and ravines up there, you can’t even get a WarDog or WarDoll into play, so surrogate combat is completely out. Russia’s been hiring every military resource supplier they can find to hit them where it hurts…and every single one has come running back down the mountain with their tails between their legs. What they really need is an elite squad—which the Russian national army has, but they’re very reluctant to put actual soldiers into combat situations. I mean, hey, they might die for real. Not very popular with the folks back home. We spend all this tax money on robots, so why do you go sending people in to die? That sort of thing. It’s a waste of human resources, and all that.”
So Russia had gotten her fingers burned by the Freedom Front, and most of their people were probably in Moscow and St. Petersburg anyway, trying to keep the recent chaos in check. This meant that troops would be light on the ground out here on the front lines. I couldn’t have picked a better time to contact the resistance.
“You still have an open channel with the Freedom Front?” I asked, suddenly recalling Vashlov’s face as he said those words with his dying breaths.
“’Course. That’s my job, after all.”
“I need to get in contact with them. Right now.”
Uwe’s eyes went from narrow with suspicion to wide open. Boy he’s easy to read.
“You kidding? It’s way too dangerous. Whenever we hold negotiations we have to set a meeting place days in advance and arrange for contracted security. It’s not something that can happen right now or even forty-eight hours from now.”
“I don’t need protection. I have something to give to one of the leaders of the front. Something very, very small. I don’t even have to meet them in person, just get it to someone who can get it to them. Don’t tell me you can’t even do that?”
Uwe scrunched down into his gelatin seat and began tapping one finger on his chin. My guess was he was worried less about how to pull off my request and more about whether or not I was worth the trouble.
“Know what Stauffenberg told me?” I said. It wasn’t really my style, but if there was ever a time to pull rank, now was it. “She said the fate of the world was resting on my shoulders.”
“For real?”
“Feel free to call her up on your HeadPhone.”
“No thanks. I spend enough time trying to avoid her calls as it is.”
Uwe turned to look me straight in the eye and smiled. I detected a glimmer of irony. “This must be pretty serious for you to go pulling the Os Cara card.”
“People are dying all over the world right now, and a lot more will be soon. If that’s not serious enough, I don’t know what is.”
Uwe stretched in his chair and laughed out loud. The sound echoed off the walls of the spacious room. “No, no. I’m surprised you are serious about this, Tuan. I know your profile. I’ve heard the stories. Don’t tell me you give a shit about what’s going on in the world. You have some personal connection to this, don’t you? That, and the thing with your dad—sorry about that, by the way. You don’t strike me as the vengeful type, so I’m going to say you’re after something. A little revenge on the side would just sweeten the deal. Look, I’m not one to point fingers. I’m here in this camp half for the booze and the smokes myself. As are the guys we got from your Niger operation. You’re not the only one who wandered out here to get out of the kindness compactor and found themselves somehow responsible for the well-being of the whole fucking world.”
I was shocked, a little, to find that there were others of like mind outside of the crew I had cultivated at my old post.
“You’re working for yourself. Admit that, and I’ll do what I can to help you.”
I sighed, though to tell the truth I wasn’t unhappy. I was starting to like this guy. “You might say it’s a private affair.”
“Private, eh? Sexy. I approve.” Uwe’s lips curled into a smile and his hand went to one ear to make a call. “Call the kid from the Fawn, will you? I doubt they have much business these days anyway. Right. Later.”
≡
The Fawn was an eatery across the street from the old city hall where the camp was located. Much to my surprise, they had beer on the menu. Previously, their clientele had been mostly city officials. Portraits of several soldiers had been printed out and hung on the walls—memories of numerous conflicts this land had seen. I asked about them and Uwe chuckled.
“Those aren’t printouts, Tuan. They’re called photographs.”
“Photographs?”
“Yeah. Bitch to make. You need all this film and photo paper and developing fluid. Really annoying protocol. It’s not like just changing the cartridge in your printer.”
“Another dead medium, then.”
“Guilty as charged. Though for dead media, it’s still pretty alive in these parts.”
“Speaking of things I thought were dead and gone, I’m a little surprised they’ve got beer on the menu.”
“Yeah. That’s the kind of thing the Russians love to grumble about,” Uwe said with a grin. “I can’t tell you how many thousands of reports I’ve read about the ‘shocking consumption of dangerous libations in this hopelessly backward region.’”
“I can imagine.”
“Funny thing is, I looked into it and it turns out that out of all the thousands of admedistrations in the world, only twentysix have laws on the books actually prohibiting al
cohol. Just twenty-six that forbid their members to imbibe. In all the rest, it’s just not done.”
“I’m sure the SA analysts have something to do with that.”
“Oh, I know. That’s how the social assessment points work. As long as enough people agree about something, it starts being reflected in your points, and before you know it, you’d better behave or else. And enforcement is built in.”
I smiled. “You know, I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.”
“How nice of you to say that. I wouldn’t mind—ah, here comes the food.”
We were alone in the restaurant. The proprietor brought out our food on a large platter, placing it on our table before retreating to the kitchen.
“You think he’s wondering what he should do before the deadline?” I asked, eyeing the retreating man.
“I doubt it. I certainly haven’t given it any thought.”
“That so?”
“You can believe me or not, makes no difference to me. I plan on taking whatever happens that day as it comes. More importantly, this here’s a Chechen specialty. Zhizhig galnash. In other words, meat.”
It was, literally, a mound of meat on a bed of what looked like penne. I dug in, the stench of mutton filling my nose. “You dip it in this,” Uwe said, pushing a saucer of garlic oil across the table. It did a lot to improve the flavor. Still, the meat was unbelievably tough. I really had to go at it with fork and knife for a while before I made any progress.
The dishes kept coming out. There were lamb dumplings. And then more lamb. Eager to wash the taste out of my mouth, I found myself ordering a beer—right in front of a fellow Helix agent.
“Good call. I’ll have one too. Don’t see anyone else coming in tonight anyway.”
“How do fool your WatchMe?”
“Ah, turns out that by agency regulations, the health risks associated with any consumption of alcohol during negotiations in regions where drinking is common isn’t counted in your SA score. All I have to do is write a report. You went the DummyMe route, am I right? My way involves a little paperwork, but you got to hand it to the agency for showing a little common sense now and then.”