Fairweather

by Jones, Raya

  ‘Do you have evidence?’

  ‘No. That’s why we think it’s him. Or her. Nobody else can be so elusive.’

  ‘Why are you telling me that?’

  ‘It might help you with your inquiry.’

  ‘You don’t know what my inquiry is about.’

  She said with urgency, ‘Do you know where he’s been for the past month?’

  ‘Where was he?’

  ‘We have no idea. That’s why I’m asking. The day after Securos brought you here, he hired a car and disappeared without a trace. And then out of the blue this morning we saw him strolling downtown with you. He didn’t even warn us that you intend to inspect this facility. And I’ll tell you another thing. He doesn’t have a workstation here. I have no idea where he’s gone to.’

  ‘Vaporise the servers?’

  She let out a strangled shriek and ran down the corridor.

  I went back into the storeroom and checked out the electronic ambience more thoroughly. The only surveillance was the camera in plain view. There was no external signal. There was no teleport signal anywhere except in the cage. When I tried the pert, an Error message informed that the field configuration was unrecognisable. I packed away my gadgets, and followed the corridor to a large chamber housing several servers.

  A near wall was taken up with a large console with several workstations, only one of them occupied. A young red-haired man sat there. He looked up from his desktop display. ‘Hi, I’m El Niño, the one and only,’ he grinned broadly. ‘Swift said to brief you when you get here, but she was in such a hurry to catch up with the big boss she forgot to brief me about what I’m supposed to brief you about.’

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘I have no idea, dude. They’d arrive in the hotspot in Cordova’s apartment and from there they can go anywhere.’

  I went to see what was behind the servers. El Niño swivelled on his chair, calling after me, ‘There’s nothing there, solid rock. This whole place is dug into solid rock.’

  ‘What’s this door?’

  ‘You mean the toilet?’

  At the back of the chamber was another cage with an unrecognisable teleport configuration.

  I returned to the consoles, and sat down in front of an idle terminal. ‘This is it? The whole facility is a storeroom, this room, and a toilet?’

  ‘You’ve got it, dude. Spot on.’

  ‘Tell me El Niño the one and only, are you the only one here?’

  ‘No, you are here too.’ He grinned.

  ‘My presence doesn’t count for the safety regulations. Do you get my drift?’ His face told me that he did. ‘I must inform you that I’m shutting down this facility on a safety violation. I’ll monitor the protocol from here.’ I swivelled and activated the terminal in front of me, keying in a CSG code.

  ‘You can’t do that! Hey, these are our main servers!’

  ‘Initiate the shutdown procedure, El Niño.’

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘If you are alone in charge of the facility without knowing the shutdown protocol, that’s another serious violation.’

  ‘No, no, I know it but I can’t do it, man. I’ll get the chop. That’s the death penalty!’

  ‘You are protected by the Second Amendment to Safety Procedure Protocol 67/z. I’m recording this conversation to make sure that nobody can accuse you of sabotage. It’s not your fault,’ I added in a kindlier voice. ‘Swift shouldn’t have left you on your own.’

  El Niño said miserably, ‘She couldn’t help it, have a heart. The boss gave her a direct order. There are usually three of us per shift, but the other one didn’t turn up today. Swift raised the safety issue but Cordova said he’ll smooth it out with you later.’

  ‘El Niño, do you know who I am?’

  ‘Yes, you are Jexu Jiu, the CSG chief.’

  ‘I’m the chief bastard.’

  ‘That’s what Freedom Cordova calls you.’

  ‘If you don’t initiate the shutdown, I’ll come down on Freedom Cordova like a ton of bricks and then you’ll be in trouble when he looks for a scapegoat.’ My God, I thought in Fred’s voice, I speak like Freedom Cordova.

  Groaning and muttering that it wasn’t his day, he shouldn’t have agreed to swap shifts, El Niño started to set the protocol in motion, still pleading. ‘Look, chief, can’t you talk with the boss first? He’ll clarify things for you.’

  ‘The regulations are crystal clear. I’ll clarify them to him when I inform him about the fine.’

  ‘There’s a fine?’

  ‘It’s cumulative. The safety violation is being compounded and the fine is growing exponentially with every second you dawdle.’ He quickly keyed in the password for finalizing the initiation of the shutdown protocol. I continued conversationally, ‘Cordova just stood here waiting for Swift?’

  ‘No, he spoke with me.’

  ‘Scary.’

  ‘No, we go back a long way. He taught me everything I know. Chronologically I’m much older than I am. I was born in…’

  I interrupted. ‘Don’t tell me your life story unless you can work at the same time.’

  El Niño got busy rerouting flows of information. Watching him in action, I appreciated why Fred kept him. He was fast and efficient. Once committed to executing the protocol, he did it almost enthusiastically, rising to the technical challenge. He could have done it less efficiently so as to buy himself time until one of his colleagues turned up, but perhaps it didn’t occur to him that he’d be able to abort the shutdown as soon as there were two of them as required per safety regulations. I wondered why Fred has kept him.

  Swift returned when the shutdown was 82% complete, almost an hour later, carrying her mat. She looked flustered and tense, and quickly appraised the situation. ‘For Heaven’s sake, abort already,’ she told El Niño. She too sounded like Freedom Cordova. She turned to me, ‘I know why you had to do it, but you didn’t have to.’

  ‘I play by the book.’ I stood up.

  ‘If you play by the book you must inform us why you are here.’

  ‘Correct. I’ll inform your boss. Please teleport me to him now.’

  ‘Sure. He’s expecting you in his apartment.’

  Fred expected me with smug smiles, but it wasn’t the apartment I knew. It was a tiny living room. The furniture and fixtures were stowed in wall cavities, except for a compact dining unit where Fred sat, wearing a homely caftan. An open interior door led to a room with a bed in disarray and an opaque window. ‘Glad you could join me for lunch,’ he said brightly. ‘No automatic chef here, but I can order us anything you want. Pizza?’ He burst out laughing when I took out the bug detector. ‘It’s only us recording each other here. Forget pizza. Let’s have noodles, your favourite.’

  I put the device away and sat down opposite him.

  ‘You’re supposed to ask about this place. Right, I see. I’m getting the silent treatment. Well, this is my downtown apartment. Cheer up, Al. Think of what you’ve already achieved today before lunch: terrifying children half to death, shutting down the nerve centre of OK military, stealing all our passwords. I delayed Swift for as long as I could,’ he indicated the bedroom suggestively. ‘I hope it helped. Forget noodles. Let’s have real food: spaghetti.’

  ‘I didn’t copy any of your passwords.’

  ‘Did you plant parasites in my system?’ he asked hopefully.

  I shook my head.

  ‘You are telling me that I had sex with Swift for nothing?’

  ‘For all I know you tossed in bed alone while she was working on her mat monitoring my connection to the CSG. I’ll eat in Phoenix-1.’ I got up, picking up the rucksack, and switched on the pert. There was no signal.

  ‘You can jaunt from the courtyard,’ he said, ‘but you don’t need to go. You can use this place for as long as you like and then we’ll move on. You can sleep on the floor here, you don’t have to use the sofa which might be too comfortable for you, and I’ll have the room with the bed and window. I have to
stay here because my staff are using the uptown apartment to teleport to HQ.’

  I sat back down. ‘Does Cousin Isabella actually exist?’

  ‘Of course she exists. If you want us to live uptown instead, we can. But this place is more us.’

  ‘There’s no “us”, Fred.’

  ‘Can you imagine life without me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lied. I stood up again. ‘I’ll be in touch. I’ll visit sometime. Let me know which apartment.’

  ‘You’re up and down like a yoyo. Sit down. Relax. You did a good day’s work. You went into my HQ and did exactly like we planned.’

  I stayed standing. ‘I don’t recall doing any planning with you.’

  He looked surprised. ‘But I told you I was throwing a surprise party.’

  ‘You sent me there on the pretext of suspecting a coup to find out how much Swift had figured out.’ I caught the glint in his eye, and abandoned the hypothesis. It was what he wanted me to believe. ‘Whatever it was, Fred, I’ve played right into it by ordering the shutdown, didn’t I?’ I suddenly felt angry, angry with myself for letting him manipulate me.

  Fred shrugged nonchalantly. ‘No harm’s done, eh? Information got routed, a few commands got delayed, some memos bounced back, like glitches in the system.’ He stood up. ‘Why don’t you have a shower? The bathroom is through here.’ He rushed to the bedroom. I followed to tell him that I’d shower in Phoenix-1. ‘No, that won’t work. I want to see you naked.’

  ‘Okay Fred, have it your way.’ I switched off all my monitoring apps. ‘This is as naked as I get.’

  He laughed. ‘See? You knew what I was after just like that,’ he clicked his fingers. ‘We don’t need to do “planning”. Now you can tell me what you’ve done. Okay, don’t,’ he pre-empted my silence. ‘Tell me why I wanted to show you my servers.’

  ‘So that I know where they are. I don’t mean their physical location. You’ve taken a hell of a risk letting me see…’ I caught his alert glance, and lowered my voice to a bare whisper, ‘the unregistered server.’

  ‘What will you do about it?’

  ‘I don’t have to do anything,’ I lied, feeling very uncomfortable about it. It was my duty to report something like that. The illegal server was small, its range limited to Earth and Luna, but running it was a major violation that could cost OK dearly if the CSG were to find out. El Niño did his best to hide it from me. I did my damnedest to hide the fact that I detected it.

  ‘Will you be able to find it again?’

  I nodded. I had memorised the locator. He hugged me happily, whispering into my ear, ‘It was a gamble you’d spot it. But if you hadn’t, your mission wouldn’t stand a chance. Wye Stan doesn’t know about it.’

  I stepped away, agitated. He wasn’t supposed to know about my mission.

  He went on, ‘I can put you in the right place at the right time, but when the time comes, doing the right thing will be your call.’ Speaking, he turned to the window. There was nothing to look at. The frosted glass showed only patches of light and shade.

  I switched my apps back on. ‘Your people are very loyal to you.’

  He turned towards me, arms folded. ‘Aha. A result. I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about it. I was looking forward to some mischief. I guess you want to collect your fee, but I bet you already know. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that Fairweather had learned about Wye Stan’s peculiar powers. You realise, don’t you, that her death probably wasn’t suicide?’

  It did occur to me that Wye Stan used his remote mind control to force Fairweather into taking the suicide pill. At the very moment she was taking that pill, inexplicable panic came over me. But I was away working in a Teletek lab, and didn’t recognise yet the icy rays of the dark sun.

  To stop ruminating about it, I asked Fred why he showed me the Teletek cavern.

  ‘So you’ll know it’s there.’

  ‘And the pentagram?’

  ‘What pentagram?’

  ‘The one I stepped on when I was pulled by Swift.’

  He glared at me nonplussed, and then exploded, ‘Hell’s bells, you can’t go stepping on occult symbols willy-nilly!’

  ‘Get real, Fred. Next thing you’ll tell me that the pentagram is a gateway to a hell dimension.’

  ‘You may mock. There is a hell dimension and you know its gatekeeper,’ he said—

  Terrible blackness

  Icy tendrils making the flesh crawl

  Symmetries of shapes within shapes

  A pulsating heart of a cosmic machine

  Sucking deeper and deeper into

  Confluences of gaps

  I passed out. When I came to, he was sitting on the edge of the bed. I tried to sit up and swooned again. ‘Take it easy, just lie down,’ he said, his voice muffled as if under water. It felt as if he was persuading me in another voice, spoken in a hidden dimension: Stop resisting. Open up. Yield.

  Bright daylight streamed in through the window, yet it felt weirdly dark. Fred was both an invisible shadow and fully visible. If I yield, I’ll know how this works. I so desperately want to know. I need to know.

  I managed to sit up, and the weirdness stopped. I found my voice shakily, ‘Who are you?’

  He frowned, worried. ‘Are you okay? Do you remember who you are? What date it is?’

  ‘I haven’t lost my memory.’ I shot up to my feet and rushed to the other room, not looking back. I grabbed my rucksack and was out through the external door like a shot.

  Outside was a small courtyard surrounded by closed doors. I didn’t pause to look around. I jaunted directly to Terminal 32 and paused amidst the bustle just long enough to set the pert to an arbitrary location in the town’s industrial girdle.

  After an hour of wandering I found the yard with the derelict Emporium. The youngsters’ music box was gone. I entered the Emporium. The room at the back was now wide open.

  It was empty of furniture. Cobwebs were everywhere, and litter, mostly food packaging, lay about. There was a scorched patch on the concrete floor, like the remains of a small fire, as if the place had been used by vagrants. Opposite the door was a meshed window. It too was covered with dusty cobwebs. I brushed the cobwebs away to see through. On the other side was a high drop directly to the path of high-speed trains.

  I turned back to the door. It was manual, hinged, and opened into the room. I looked behind it.

  Mandy’s canary yellow headscarf lay on the floor.

  A small spider descended on a silken thread in front of my face.

  Fred opened the door of his downtown apartment still wearing the caftan. Seeing me standing there, he grunted, ‘Oh, you again, not the milkman.’ I followed him in. The dining unit was stowed away and a plain sofa was pulled out instead, positioned to face the early evening news playing on the wall. The bulletin showed colourful graphs of trade statistics. Fred switched it off. We sat down on the sofa. He smiled broadly. ‘I didn’t expect you back so soon. It’s only been a few hours. If you say you’ve missed me, you’ll see a side of me you never wish to see!’

  ‘I already saw it.’

  He stopped smiling.

  I told him about the hallucination I had, that shadow, like a source code behind his outward appearance. He listened, his expression impenetrable. I added, ‘But I wasn’t afraid. I always feel safe with you.’

  ‘That’s a false sense of security, sunshine. I might be keeping you near me in the dazzling bright shadow of the dark sun. Yes, my team have found her gallery.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘My shadow is not dazzling bright? My ego is so bruised,’ he grumbled, making light of it, but went on speaking seriously. ‘What do you think will happen if you open up to it?’

  ‘Perhaps my own shadow will become dazzling bright. I haven’t eaten since breakfast. No wonder I’m having hallucinations.’

  He burst out laughing. ‘So that’s why the runaway kid came back home: food!’

  ‘I also need to charge one of
my mats.’

  ‘Go ahead, son, you don’t need to ask. It’s your home. Any place of mine is yours.’

  I plugged the mat to the power source. He ordered a pizza.

  Fred had assigned one of his junior trackers to chart Mandy’s movements in Ground Zero. As soon as data started to come in, he checked to see where she went after visiting him. He told me, complaining, ‘The girl doesn’t teleport if she can help it.’ When she vanished from his uptown apartment, he assumed she jaunted away. But she simply walked out of the delivery door. If he checked, he could have caught up with her. Mandy found her way out of the residential complex by trial and error. Arriving at the promenade, she spotted the express elevator to Terminal 32. She headed to the Phoenix-1 bus, but then spotted Marrakech and her gang, and approached them instead. They jaunted together to that yard. Then the surveillance inside the Emporium showed Mandy entering it alone. She spotted the backroom and went in, closing the door behind her. There was no camera inside the room. Fred puzzled aloud, ‘Why should she go there?’

  ‘Perhaps it was a call of nature. There’s human excrement at the back of that room.’

  ‘Fresh? I’ll send a forensic team.’

  ‘It looked old.’

  She must have heard us enter the Emporium. The video showed us arrive and teleport away. It showed Marrakech enter there an hour later, looking around. She peered into the office room and walked away leaving the door wide open behind her. It showed me arrive and leave.

  Mandy didn’t leave that room by walking or teleporting, and yet the room was definitely empty. She didn’t go through the window even if there was anywhere to go. The cobwebs hadn’t been disturbed for years. I had checked the floor and walls. There were no hidden passages or trapdoors.

  The pizza arrived, delivered by an android to the doorstep. Fred let me eat it all by myself. Meanwhile he read the latest update: ‘She hasn’t been spotted anywhere since entering the Emporium. I’d understand it if she left and then disappeared in the Edges. It’s not supposed to be possible to enter and leave the Emporium undetected.’