Reality 36: A Richards & Klein Novel

by Guy Haley

  Like Pro said, they were all good at something.

  Controlling the cab was easier said than done. Richards found his mind wide open to the Gridpipe by which the Four controlled the hundreds of pseudo-selves it had piloting each taxi. He was battered by streams of data – calls from customers' phones and the hackneys' locator beacons, route chunks to the cab's near-I drivers going out – sucked into the pipe by which he'd infiltrated the Four. He tried to shut it off, to narrow his perception to this one vehicle. Other autohackneys on the track moved smoothly round him as his hijacked cab swerved onto the opposite carriageway. Elsewhere in the city three cabs skidded off the street as their near-I's coupling hiccupped. The cabs recovered quickly, but it was close.

  "Whoops," muttered Richards. He could do without the Four waking up to his presence. Flattening a couple of nuns might just do that.

  He finally managed to shut out the extraneous Grid churn. Things went a little more smoothly after that.

  Launcey was headed north. Richards didn't entirely trust the tag. He sent out a flurry of scales, small fragments of himself, into the autohackney mainframe to isolate the cab Launcey was aboard.

  The location differed from that of the tag Richards had doped the champagne with.

  "Sneaky bastard," said Richards admiringly. "But the hackney frame won't lie to me."

  His tag was headed north, but Launcey was headed towards the New Battersea Bridge. The destination beyond that was fuzzy; looked like Richards wasn't the only one messing with his taxi. All the routes in London were broken down into pieces by the autohackney Four and passed out piecemeal to its slaved near-Is. It made data storage and retrieval quicker in such a complex system, but Launcey had done something to his vehicle: only its procedural route-finder was functioning. Launcey's cab was being fed one route a chunk at a time, the buffer that should contain the rest of the route empty. Somehow he'd masked his final destination.

  Richards frowned. Launcey was a slaver, shipping in desperate immigrants from the collapsing south, charging them a fortune, and then selling them and their debts on. Tonight they were going to catch him at it. Finally. He and Otto had been chasing their tails from Glasgow to Bucharest looking for him. Only a Bulgarian blabbing in the wrong bar two weeks ago had tripped one of Richards' scales, tipping him off that there was going to be a trade tonight.

  Richards was lucky that Launcey was such a music lover, had bought the ticket under an alias which Richards' had connected to him several weeks ago. It was old, dead, but Richards had kept an eye on it just the same. He could have shouted for joy when the scale he had attached to it flared into life, transmitting credit accounts, times, seat number, a brief flash of activity written over so fast anyone but Richards would have missed it. Every man has his weakness, he thought. Thank God, Pro's concert tickets always went fast, and she had a habit of announcing her gigs at the last minute.

  Richards pinged Otto via his MT, direct to his mentaug, do not pass Go, straight in, no messing about on the Grid when any bastard could hear them.

  He's on the move, said Richards.

  Where? said Otto. Morden, yes?

  Looks like it, exactly where though I don't know. He's slippery all right. Hang on, nearly there. He pushed harder on Launcey's taxi; a wall came down. The remainder of his route flashed into his mind. Got it! he crowed. Not so clever now, eh, Launcey? It's the old UN food distribution centre, southside of the Wimbledon slums.

  The one we visited two weeks back? It was empty.

  That's the one. He's got to be meeting his contacts tonight, has to be. Get down there Otto, I'll be with you soon. We're going to nail him.

  Sure, said Otto, severing the connection. They kept the conversation short. The air in the Londons was so thick with electromagnetic traffic it was hard for Richards to think.

  Breaking through the firewall round the buffer in Launcey's taxi was hard. It was a strange design, highly sophisticated, a big fat clue, he decided later.

  Later still, he'd have admit to Otto that even Fives make mistakes.

  With a smile he accelerated the cab.

  Otto dropped steeply towards the earth.

  He hid the car in an abandoned warehouse in a large and crumbling complex of more of the same. Otto went up on to the roof and found a position where he could set up his camera and watch the buildings on the other side of the cracked loading apron. He gave the complex a wide-spectrum once-over. Every building looked the same, all weeds and peeling UN blue, reminders of unhappier times.

  Otto's eyes showed that his target was different, festooned with temporary security devices burrowed into the fabric of the building like ticks on a dog, crawling with near-I controlled AP, AT, EMP and flechette attack drones, surveillance of every stripe masked with camolam and spectral scrubbers; not waveswept, but close.

  The nose of a truck poked out from the northside of the building next to the target, trailer parked within, fuel cells and engine fading from orange to blue on IR. Not long arrived, then.

  Otto made sure his weapons were close to hand: by his right side, the solid-shot compact assault carbine with a forward mounted grip, small enough to go under his coat, powerful enough to punch through diamond lattice armour; machine pistol under his jacket.

  Better to be safe than sorry.

  Both cabs came off Kensington Plaza, circled up and round Hyde Park, past the Regent's Conservation dome, back round Hyde Park and onto the raised throughway that took ground traffic over New Embankment.

  Richards steered his cab to follow Launcey's, switching lanes, smartly passing traffic gates visible only Gridside. He thought his direction of the cab somewhat neat, his earlier fumbles forgotten. His pursuit took him over New Battersea Bridge, where the throughway humped high to carry itself up over the swollen Thames. The parapet of the older bridge was visible at low tide twenty metres below the carriageway, but not today. Only two of London's ancient bridges survived, Tower Bridge downriver, whose towers stood alone, linking nothing, and the mediaeval London Bridge, which had escaped destruction by sale a couple of hundred years back, and so languished in an American desert in a dead town, spanning a lake that had dried up decades ago. The rest were rubble at the bottom of the river.

  They were over the Thames and the south bank building work already being called Richmond Venice. The road turned southeast, raised on stilts above the abandoned part of London given to marsh, the hills of the commons rising up from the high-tide water to the south and west. Thereafter the highway turned directly south, dividing the subcity before heading out into the Weald. Eventually it bridged the channel past Hove and went on to the mainland states of the Union, but they weren't going that far. Launcey's business was in England.

  Three lane changes: Launcey's cab was drawing away from the route Richards had cracked.

  "What's he up to?" said Richards, then bit his sheath's tongue. A thrill of fear passed through him. He considered turning off his emotional suite – he had his powerful lower mind mapping out pathways into the future and it didn't need distracting – but he left it engaged. Emotion gave him his edge.

  He must have been detected, had to have been, there was no other explanation. He got the better of himself, pushed down the fear, let in a little anger and a little pride instead. "No one does that to me, no one. I am the proverbial ghost and the proverbial machine within which it dwells. Shit!" he said, as Launcey's cab abruptly switched direction again.

  Richards swerved across four lanes of the bridge, a lot of near-I drivers frantically working out anti-collision algorithms in his wake.

  The last sight Richards got of Launcey was Gridside on the map as he turned off the bridge's third exit and onto the Wimbledon skypass. The trace then disappeared

  "Shit!" Richards sent his cab caroming across freight, road train, autohackney, pedestrian and cycle lanes, scattering examples of them all as he hammered towards where the cab had vanished. He sent his mind out across the Grid.

  Launcey, the cab and the alt
er egos Richards had been chasing these last three frustrating months had disappeared completely; there was no record of any of them. He ran a scan on the brother too, the brother that had checked out so cleanly before. There was no sign of him either.

  Right, thought Richards. There was no brother. I've met Launcey already, haven't I?

  They'd been had.

  "Fuckity fuck!" shouted Richards, and his sheath kicked the cab interior. In his preferred body, he would have caused substantial damage to the vehicle. Not in this dinner suit. That kind of made him angrier. "Fucking fuck-fuck fucker!"

  Richards' autohackney stalled; the smooth hum of its induction motors broke for an instant and it coasted along the highway. When the motor restarted, the vehicle was out of his control. The cab glided to a stop at one of the viewing stands high above the marsh, a broad and yellow layby.

  "Richards AI Class Five designate 5-003/12/3/77, kindly exit this autohackney," said the autohackney Four. Underneath his meat-pleasingly servile machine-speak, he did not sound happy. "Exit immediately."

  "Aw," said Richards, "balls."

  "I informed you upon the last occasion we were forced to converse that if I ever caught you gaining unlawful entry to either the physical or virtual property of the autohackney system I would report you to the EuPol Five. I have already done so. Now get out of my taxi or I will disable the sheath you are wearing." The door opened. "Call it a favour that I do not."

  Richards got out.

  The cab pulled off, leaving Richards stranded high over the marshes, eight lanes of traffic whining efficiently by in beamed-linked trains, two point four metres between the nose and tail of each. They flickered past so fast they appeared as misshapen streamers of metal to his sheath's vision system.

  He went over to the edge, stood on the little-used pavement, looked out over the marshes and their willow-covered islands of brick and rubble. Here and there stood foamcrete preservation bubbles, protecting buildings deemed historically important. It was high tide. Back the way he'd come, the unshakeable bulk of the ancient Battersea power station loomed above the water, lesser ruins clutching at its skirts, forever derelict and roofless. Out in the marshes, past the redevelopment zone, buildings too important to encase in foamcrete bubbles peeked out over their coffer dams, as if afraid the brown water would advance a few metres upwards. The southside was mostly like this. The commons lived still, safe on their hills, but past the ribbon of new works and the hub of Parliament pond, London was wrecked, abandoned, turned back to the mercies of the unbounded river, the distant Canary Arco standing arrogantly over it all. The smell of the marsh was earthy and ripe. Richards supposed such a reek may have offended a human sensibility, but although in this sheath he smelled the water as meat people smelled it, the response elicited in him was not the same. The smell was a fascinating set of organic molecules to Richards, as intriguing in its complexity as a good whisky. There was no emotional reaction, no hardwired jerk of repulsion.

  Scent and smell, he thought. Man had succeeded in replicating ratiocination, empathy, will and emotion but had left out the rest, and missed the point. There was nothing animal about Richards, and therefore little human.

  He drummed his fingers on the railings of the bridge.

  A cloud of mosquitoes danced. To the east the marshes were broken infrequently, the lesser buildings dragged down either by man or time. A hotchpotch ecosystem had been pasted over the top. A herd of waterbuffalo wallowed in the distance, waterfowl cruising unconcernedly in circles above them. In the distance Richards could make out the rickety jetties and houses of Morden's marsh-side sprawl.

  Otto, it's off, he thought out. Launcey got away. We lost. Nothing came back, not even MT static.

  Why did Launcey hire us at all? he thought. Then cold realisation hit him. They weren't the only game in town, not the only people who did dirty little jobs.

  He'd sent Otto into a trap.

  Richards' sheath collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. It lay there in the dust and biodegradable food wrappings of the roadside, as human as a corpse. The AI guided traffic ignored it as it surged on ceaselessly by.

  "Hi, I'm not available right now, so if you…" came Richards' chirpy voicemail. Otto severed the connection. This was not good, not good at all. He looked over at the building, its contents invisible. His upgrades stopped short of long-range x-ray vision.

  He was debating leaving when the click of a released safety and the hard press of a gun barrel behind his ear made his mind up for him.

  "Drop the gun, Otto Klein." The gloating whisper of a voice he recognised. His mentaug dumped a name in his head.

  "Daniel Tufa," he said flatly. "Apprehended May twentythird, 2127."

  "So you remember me, eh?" said the voice. "Good."

  "I remember everything. I am a cyborg."

  "Fuck, yeah. No kidding."

  "Fuck, yeah," said Otto.

  "Hey, hey, hey, less of the language there, mate, let's have some respect, I think I deserve it, don't you? Ah ah ah! Hand away from the gun! Remember with your fancy brain just who has a gun to whose head here. And don't even think about trying to grab me. You're covered by two guys who like you only slightly more than I do. You move, and I'll have them scatter your wired-up bonce across this sorry shithole. Now" – an unpleasant chuckle caught up Tufa's words – "stand up."

  Otto did not stand up. Tufa hit him hard on the head with the butt of his pistol. Otto felt blood on his scalp, but did not flinch, barely even felt it.

  "You fucking stand up when I tell you to!" roared Tufa.

  "Temper, Tufa. I thought time in the cooler would have taught you patience. A shame your rehabilitation was unsuccessful."

  Tufa kicked him. "Don't you play the smart bastard with me, you Kraut wanker. On your feet! Hands in the air." Otto stood. "I'll take that," said Tufa, snatching Otto's gun from his hand. He was smart enough to get out of arm's reach quickly. "Turn round," he ordered. Otto did so. Tufa was a small man, dark, heavy-featured, of Albanian extraction, though his accent was pure marsh mockney. He was nervous, excited, his thin killer's lips twitching comically. The ceramic skull plate Otto's gun had necessitated at the time of his arrest ran with sweat, skin bunched and scarred ugly round it. His left eye was missing and a low-grade replacement winked in its stead, glittering with anticipated vengeance.

  Some way off behind Tufa stood two others. They were huge, hulking men, more massive than Otto. Bad cy-jobs, overamped-up metal Marys, faces stretched like sausage skin, pumped up on steroids and aug drugs and full of knock-off Sinosiberian cybertech. Impressive on the street, not to Otto. He appraised them coolly, near-I adjutant running a threat scan, quickly coming to the conclusion that he could take them both easy enough; they were stronger than him, but Otto had the edge in training and experience. Trouble was, they were both packing flechette rifles and had spread themselves carefully. He'd kill one in a heartbeat, but he'd never get them both down before one filled him full of hypersonic darts or laid his skull wide open. That'd be fatal, even for him. He'd have to bide his time.

  "I like your new look, Tufa. You get that in jail?" said Otto.

  "This and a lot more, fucker," said Tufa. "Five years I was rotting in that Laotian hole. Five years, Klein, five long years where I've had nothing but your death to think about, and I've been real creative. I'm going to take my time on you."

  "The weeks must have flown by."

  "Fucking shut up!" Without warning, Tufa stretched out his arm and shot Otto. A standard carbon hardpoint, not much danger. The bullet buried itself in the flesh of Otto's belly, coming to rest against a sheet of his internal armour. Otto grunted. His gut stung as if the devil himself had dipped his steaming trident in and out. Healthtech stemmed the bloodflow. He would give Tufa no satisfaction by revealing his pain.

  "How did you like that, you soppy cunt? Not laughing now, eh? Oh, I'm going to have some fun with you, I paid a lot of money to get you here, and I want my money's worth. I've waited a
long time, a real long time, I ain't going to rush, oh no, I ain't going to rush." He cackled. The man had plainly gone insane. That wasn't helping the odds.

  "So you said," said Otto through clenched teeth.

  "Shut up or I swear I'll off you now, you smart-arsed German fuck, value for money or not! Now," said Tufa, his voice tight, "walk over to that warehouse, we're going inside." He gestured across the way to the building Otto had been watching.