He checked his weapons, the stunner and the handgun he'd picked up from The Phenomenon of Man. A small cylinder he'd also collected from the armoury was safely in his pocket. He didn't expect any trouble, but there was no telling who might have discovered this place.
They pulled up outside a large two-storey house, surrounded by trees and with views down to a small lake. The neighbourhood was a long way upmarket from the LA apartment block Rik remembered. The old lady had done all right for herself.
The front door was heavy, panelled wood with smart-glass windows set in it – LCD filters that let the occupant look out while the visitor got to stare at their own, fuzzy reflection. Joanna Breezy opened her front door at the second ring of the bell, having taken her time inspecting her callers.
She looked at Rik as if he had come holding a begging-bowl. “What do you want?” she said. “I thought I'd seen the last of you.”
She was a tall, gaunt woman in her seventies, a little stooped, a lot wrinkled, but still looking as strong and fiercely independent as Rik remembered her.
“Hello, Joanna,” he said politely. “May we come in?”
The old woman took a long, up and down look at Rivers, and then turned back to Rik. “Who's your friend?”
Rik had been expecting the hostility. The last time he'd seen Joanna, she had been living in the apartment next door to him in LA. He had come home late after a long drinking session with some of the guys, and had found her comforting Maria on their sofa. That was just a week or so before Maria left him for good.
“This is Rivers. She's a business associate.”
“Looks like a goddamn whore to me. Why don't you take your damn business elsewhere? And your whore.”
Rivers moved forward with lightning speed and pushed the door wide. The old woman staggered back and fetched up against the banister at the foot of the stairs.
“This is bullshit, that's what it is.” Rivers barged in after the woman. “You think we're playing games here, Rik?”
The old woman was shaken and alarmed, but was rallying for another outburst. Rivers took her by the lapels and dragged her into the lounge, dumping her into an old Chesterfield sofa.
“That's enough!”
Rik caught Rivers by the shoulder and spun her round to face him. Her fist shot out at him like a striking snake, and because he'd been expecting it, he managed to move his head out of its way. Rivers was so surprised, she didn't strike again. She just looked at him and grinned.
“All right, smartass,” she said, walking past him. “Ask grandma some questions, and let’s get out of here. This place stinks of old people.”
“What are you?” the old woman asked her. “You're not human. You're one of those zombie things.”
“Joanna.” Rik placed himself between the old woman and Rivers. “Joanna, listen to me. I just want to ask if you know where Maria is. Tell me where to find her and we'll leave, straight away. No-one will harm you.”
Joanna's attention slowly drifted back to him.
“You always were bad news,” she told him. “I always said she was too good for you. That poor, sweet child. She should have left you long before she did. All that love, and you treated her like garbage.”
Rik couldn't have agreed more, but now wasn't the time for contrition.
“I'm trying to find her, Joanna. She's in danger. I want to help her.”
“What the hell kind of trouble have you gone and brought down on her now, you sorry excuse for a–”
“Joanna. Just tell me how I can reach her. I know she left a message with you. There's no-one else. It had to be someone we both knew, someone she'd trust with her life, somebody no-one else would know about. I've been through everybody, and you're the only one. If she left a message anywhere, it was with you.”
Rik felt himself shoved aside as if he was nothing, and Rivers was back in the old woman's face. She grabbed Joanna by her throat. “Or maybe she's hiding out here, yeah? Or did she give you the package to hide? Am I close, grandma? Maybe I should just wring your disgusting chicken neck until you start talking.”
“Rivers!”
The upload slowly turned her head to find Rik pointing his stunner at her. Its targeting laser painted a little green spot on her ribs.
“You think that can hurt me?”
Rik shrugged. “I don't know. Do you want me to try it?” Rivers released Joanna's neck and turned to face Rik, half-crouched, ready to spring at him. Rik felt his heartbeat quicken, feeling the menace in her posture. But seconds ticked by, and he realised his volatile partner didn't want to take the risk after all. His heartbeat slowed again. Nevertheless, Rivers still faced him.
“OK,” he said. “I'm sure your deranged boss likes to see this kind of gung-ho stupidity. She probably thinks you've got a real can-do attitude. But let me remind you, I'm in charge here. We do it my way, and we might get what we're after. If you fuck this up – yet again – that mental defective with the double-D bra fixation is not going to offer you another chance.”
Rivers glared at him as he gave her a moment to think it through. “I can see you love being a living doll,” he continued, “but you and I both know that Madame Strange up there probably had your shiny new brainbox fitted with a radio-controlled off switch. I bet she carries a remote trigger tucked into her G-string, just so she can fry your cute little ass if you ever piss her off.”
The upload spun on her heel and strode away. One moment she was a lethal machine, ready to tear him apart, the next she was a bored young woman, slinking across the room to curl into a chair and wait for the grown-ups to finish their business. She didn't actually say, “Whatever!” and she didn't actually start filing her nails, but she may as well have done.
Rik watched her for a moment, then turned his attention back to Maria's friend.
“What, you're going to shoot me too, now?” Joanna said.
Rik realised he still had the stunner in his hand. He put it away. “No, of course not. Please, I just need to know what Maria’s message said. She did leave a message, didn't she?”
The old woman looked shifty. “She didn't mention a package.”
Rik cast an admonishing glance at Rivers, but she wasn't even looking his way. “But she did leave a message, right?”
“How can I trust you? You turn up here with that... that–”
“Joanna! For God's sake, what was the message? Maria obviously wanted you to give it to me. She clearly trusted me. So why don't you just trust her and do what she asked?”
The old woman's lips pursed, and she seemed to be having a protracted inner argument until she blurted out, “Thermally activated.”
“What?”
“That was the message, all of it. She must have figured you were smart enough to know what it means.”
Rik thought about pressing her for more, but he decided it was better to get Rivers out of there before she turned homicidal again.
He called out to the upload, “OK, blondie, let's go.”
He was ushering his partner through the door when Joanna shouted from behind him, “You didn't even ask how she was, you bastard. Some kind of love that is.”
Rik managed not to slam the door behind him as he left.
Rivers paused in the drive and looked down at the lake through the trees. “So how come she lives in a place like. In the car you said the last time you saw her she lived in a dump in LA?”
“She inherited money. It's no mystery. It was years ago.”
Rivers nodded, apparently satisfied, and Rik wondered if he had just saved Joanna from a second visit.
“So what's this ‘thermally activated’ crap?”
“It's a place. A restaurant, at the top of One, New York Plaza.” The restaurant where Rik had proposed, sometime back when he did things like take holidays in New York, fall in love, and make a fool of himself in front of a roomful of grinning diners.
“Stupid name.”
“It's not the name. It's from an old story about a fire in t
he building about a hundred years ago. They had thermally activated elevator buttons, and the fire called all the elevators to the floor where the fire was burning. People died.”
“Yeah? Just a different kind of stupid, then. How do you know your ex didn't tell the old biddy about it and she's using it to set a trap for us?”
“Why would she do that? She's just a retired schoolteacher. She doesn't know what's going on.”
“Maybe somebody got to her. She sure hates you.”
Rik threw up his hands. “All right, if you want to be paranoid, I suppose it's possible.”
“Possible?”
He gazed out at the lake and the low hills beyond, and cursed himself for a fool. Why wouldn't Maria have mentioned it, sitting alone with Joanna through those long evenings when Rik was drinking with his buddies? Maybe she told Joanna how good it had once been, how sweet Rik had seemed at first, before the overwhelming burden of Maria's happiness resting on his shoulders had crushed him under its weight. She could have told the story of his proposal, of that fairytale trip to the Big Apple. She could easily have done that.
“It's the only lead we've got. Do you want to give up and go back to your boss empty-handed?”
Rivers clenched her jaw, looking at him as if he had just crawled out of the mud of the lake. She turned away and stalked back to the car. “You're a fucking jerk, Drew.”
Rik was inclined to agree. They set off for New York with a gentle whine from the hire car. Oakland was leafy and well-manicured. He stared at it glumly as it washed past him. If there was ever a chance that he could end up in a nice, peaceful place like this, he'd blown it years ago, probably the day Maria told him it was all over.
“So what's the plan, partner?” Rivers sneered.
He dragged his gaze back into the car. “Walk in and see who's there. With any luck it will be Maria.”
“What the hell were they thinking, putting you in charge? Do you give a damn whether we find the package or not?”
Good question, Rik thought. With his wives dead back in Heinlein, he felt as if he'd been cut adrift from his last, tenuous anchor. It was hard to find anything solid to hold on to. He was caught up in some crazy hunt for a mind-altering virus. And even though he could see he had to find it, had to keep it out of Cordell's hands, it didn't mean all that much to him.
“While I'm doing what Lanham wants, he'll keep you and all the rest of his scumbags away from my friends and family. If finding that damned package means I might find Maria, I'm the most motivated PLEO on this planet. The rest of it, zombies and ghosts, crazy religious nutcases, all your sick games of world domination, means nothing at all. You can all go back to Omega Point and burn in Fantasy Hell.”
Chapter 24
Fariba Freymann woke in a small room. She ached from lying awkwardly on the floor, and got to her feet with a deal of discomfort and a wave of nausea. She saw a bed, wardrobe, chair, table, and a door leading into a bathroom. The room was clean and the bed was made. For a moment she wondered if she was in a hotel room, and tried to remember what kind of party she'd been at the previous night.
Then she remembered the men in her apartment, the jerk on the floor shooting her with a stunner.
She could not find a phone and her cogplus gave her a 'no service' message when she tried it.
There was a window. She went to it and looked out. She was on the second floor of what seemed to be a large, white-painted building. There was no balcony, and the window would not open. She saw gardens stretching for hundreds of metres, stopping abruptly at a low a wall which curved away left and right. Beyond the wall, a desert landscape undulated its way to a distant mountain range. The sun was going down, and the shadows were long in a world tinged with gold.
She went to the door. It was locked.
She found the wardrobe had some of her own clothes in it. So did a small chest of drawers. In the bathroom, she found her own toothbrush. She also found a plush bathrobe with an elaborate crest embroidered on the breast. The crest didn't mean a damned thing to her.
She sat down on the bed, not least because she felt as though she might fall over if she didn't.
She was a prisoner, she reasoned. They expected to keep her for quite a while, hence the clothes. She was in no immediate danger. She was no longer in the UK; probably not even in Europe, given the extent of the wilderness outside. So, most likely, a lot of time had passed while she'd been out. Apart from the burn on her hip, the ache in her joints and the urge to throw up, she hadn't been hurt. What it all added up to, she supposed, was that somebody wanted something from her, somebody who was patient enough to wait a while to get it.
She sighed and sank back onto the bed. She needed to sleep. They must have kept her drugged for a long, long time. Sleep was the best thing for her now, because whatever was going to happen next, she'd be better off if she didn't feel quite so crap when it happened.
The last thing she thought before she drifted off was, “This is all about Rik and that fucking package.”
-oOo-
One, New York Plaza looked much as it had done a hundred years ago, only now it was standing alone in the East River with just a narrow bridge connecting it to Manhattan. Of its bottom ten storeys, two were under water and the rest had fallen into the river. Massive concrete pylons reached up from the water to support the platform that had been put under the remaining forty storeys.
There were other towers that had been rescued and reclaimed this way all along the New York shoreline, but the island piles of collapsed concrete, and the twisted steel skeletons that etched the skyline, attested to the dozens that had not been saved.
“You came here to propose?” Rivers asked as their car rolled across the bridge.
Rik shrugged. The building had just been renovated at the time, and was considered the last word in chic. Already, he could see, the bloom had gone off the place and it was starting to look a little neglected. Too many vicious Atlantic storms had broken against its dimpled façade, and a procession of owners, unable to make the property pay, had been keener to sell it on than to maintain it.
“The restaurant's on the top floor,” Rik said, as they let the building systems take the car for parking. A gaudy lobby between the towering pylons gave them access to the elevators. In silence, Rik, Rivers and her two bodyguards rode up to the fiftieth floor.
A maître d' stopped them with a smile at the restaurant's entrance.
“My name is Rik Sylver 3–” He stopped himself. Now that his wives were dead, he was no longer part of a 3-unit. His wives had insisted on a lunar wedding and that they adopt the fashionable lunar name, including the numeral. It meant nothing now, except to enumerate what he'd lost. He started again. “My name is Rik Sylver. I think there may be a message for me.”
“Ah, yes. You are expected. If I could just ask you to wait here one moment?” The man scuttled away with that vacant look that showed he was holding a silent conversation with someone else.
“Here we go,” Rivers said. “I seem to remember mentioning that this was going to be a trap.”
Quiet Muzak drifted on the air, mingling with the aromas of high-priced food. A small, square-set man in an expensive, old-fashioned suit strode up to them from inside the restaurant. He had two very much taller women with him; they wore white catsuits and moved like athletes. Their eyes flicked across Rik's group, and lingered on Rivers before coming to rest on Rik.
“Mr. Drew,” the small man said. His voice was surprisingly deep, and he made no attempt to smile. “My name is Clermont. The Boss wants to see you.” He pointed with his chin in the direction of Rivers and the two heavies behind her. “He didn't say nothin' about bringing your friends.”
Rik looked carefully at Clermont. He could not see signs of a gun under the man's well-cut jacket. There was bound to be one somewhere, though. The two tall women looked fast and mean. Their sprayed on catsuits left no room for hiding anything at all, but that didn't mean too much, either. He glanced at the bangles
one of them wore on her left wrist. He'd seen trick jewellery turn into all kinds of nasty weapons in his time. Some of the girl gangs in LA specialised in it. So, three of them, probably all armed. They wouldn't stand a chance against Rivers all on her own.
He took a casual glance around the room. Three men had wandered in from the bar and were watching them from a few metres away. Four people seated at a table nearby had risen, leaving their meal half-eaten, and were hanging around the table, chatting but keeping an eye on Rik. That made ten. He realised that the foyer behind him had gone quiet. He turned to Rivers.
“How many?”
“I make it fifteen. You're a real popular guy.”
“Can you take them?” The little man shifted uneasily. Perhaps he didn't know about Rivers.
“Sure, but I can't guarantee you'll survive the experience.”
Rik assumed she wasn't worried about how many bystanders might not survive, either. He looked the little guy in the eye. “I came here for information about Maria Dunlop. Just tell me what I need to know, and you and everyone else can leave here alive. My companion here is an upload. Until you've seen her in action, you probably can't believe just how fast she could pull your head off.”
The little man grinned, but it was all bravado. His sharp little eyes were looking nervous as hell. “Yeah?” he said. “That's all bullshit. Cute little girl like that ain't no threat. No offence, doll, come and see me afterwards and I'll make it up to you.”
Rivers treated the man to a big smile and took off her sunglasses. The minute he saw her flesh-coloured eyeballs, his grin disappeared completely.
“Look, Drew,” he said, his voice tight with rising tension. “I don't know about no woman called Dunlop. All I know is, you gotta come with me.” He made a small hand gesture, and his small army of armed thugs stopped pretending to be customers. They pulled their weapons and came in closer.
Rivers and her men also drew their weapons. People in the restaurant and at the bar, seeing the guns, jumped to their feet with a clatter of chairs and tables. Glasses and crockery fell and smashed. Everyone seemed to start shouting at once.
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