Icarus Effect de-1

by James Swallow

  Here, though, she seemed to be in the minority. A lot of the downtowner crowd were filing in to hear Taggart give his lecture, and after having heard the man on television, Anna had to admit he had charisma enough to hold your attention, and the kind of academic gravitas that many people admired. Along with plenty of his supporters, he was here to make his voice heard at the National Science Board meetings, to continue his campaign to decry augmentation; he would doubtless be a fixture at the pro-flesh demonstrations taking place over the next few days.

  As she entered the conference center atrium, as if on cue, a recording of Taggart's voice issued out of a hidden speaker. "Some people believe augmentation is the wave of the future. That replacing part of yourself with machines will make you superhuman… But the truth is, for every part of yourself you sacrifice, you are less than you were before. That's why I created the Humanity Front. Tonight, Fll tell you why you should be apart of it, too."

  Anna scowled slightly. The name made Taggart's anti-aug crusade sound like a paramilitary group, and Anna wondered if that might have been a deliberate choice. Some of the people who shared Taggart's views did a lot more than write books or give speeches; episodes of violence against augmented humans fanned the flames of a new breed of intolerance. Groups like the militants of Purity First were more than happy to twist Taggart's message toward aggressive ends.

  There were more than enough people who couldn't afford augmentation in the States and elsewhere-and she doubted any of them could have paid the extortionate ticket fee for the seminar either-as well as those who felt threatened by the new technology, just like they were by anything unfamiliar to them. The Humanity Front was selling itself as two things: a caring group out to show augmentees the error of their ways, and a force for retaining the status quo. Anna wondered if men like Taggart would ever understand that you couldn't put the genie back in the bottle.

  "Can I help you?" A tanned young guy sporting a blandly neutral prosthetic hand stepped up to greet her. He gave her a once-over, immediately spotting her cyberoptics, and his expression became almost pious. "Everyone is welcome."

  Over his shoulder, a shimmer passed through one of the holograph banners, the text changing. A new string of words formed: Kelso. Upper tier.

  Section G. Box 3. She gave him a tight smile. "Actually, no. I know exactly where I'm going."

  Anna had her hand on the butt of the Zenith as she entered the skybox. It was well appointed, with an excellent view of the stage below. The house lights were just starting to grow dim, and as the door closed behind her, William Taggart stepped out into the pool of light cast from above, to a tide of applause. She hesitated; the skybox's illumination was low and there were deep shadows everywhere.

  Down on the stage, Taggart began with some carefully rehearsed platitudes, and from the shadows, Anna heard someone make a spitting noise.

  "Yeah, that's enough from you, Billy." The voice was young and male.

  She went to low-light and a figure in a bulky jacket and baseball cap became clear in one of the low, dense seats. With a wave, the youth cut off the sound feed from the auditorium and turned to face her. "Let me guess. You're D-Bar?" He was a youth, no more than nineteen, slouching and cocksure.

  "Wow," he replied. "You're more of a looker in the real."

  "Whereas you are far more disappointing." She backed off a step. "I'm not in the mood for games, kid." Automatically, she started to profile him in her thoughts. He had an accent that didn't fit; it had a European twang, maybe French-Canadian.

  D-Bar stood up. He was gangly, and the puffed-up jacket hung badly on him, making him look even thinner than he was. A collection of data goggles and audio buds lay in a complex tangle around his neck. "Kid? Oh, come on, Agent Anna Kelso. Book by a cover and all that static? And here I was thinking you were a professional…"

  She looked around the room, searching for anything that screamed out ambush, and found nothing. "Fair point," she conceded. "It's just that the name 'Juggernaut'… well, it conjures up a different kind of person than you."

  D-Bar nodded sagely. "Oh, I hear you. I get that a lot."

  "Where's the rest of the 'we' you mentioned on the phone?"

  He tapped his hat, and she saw what looked like a minicam clipped to the bill. "Watching. If you try to ice me or anything, they'll wideband the pix to every screen in a five-block radius."

  "Cute trick." It was likely a threat he could make good on; Anna had read up on the Juggernaut Collective's impressive hacking expertise. It was a matter of public record that they had bankrupted two Fortune 500 companies, crashed the Syrian intelligence agency's mainframe, and brought the Seattle traffic grid to a standstill. "Maybe I should just arrest you, then. I could use a win right about now."

  That got her a flash of real worry; but then the youth shuttered it away. "You don't want to do that, Anna. We're the good guys, yeah? Like you.

  Serving the cause of justice and all that stuff."

  This time she snorted. "Now who's being patronizing? You expect me to buy into the whole 'white hat' hacker thing? Juggernaut are information terrorists. You're not Robin Hood, you're a cybercriminal."

  D-Bar gave a mock shudder. "Ooh, yeah. Don't you think things always sound cooler when you put the word 'cyber' in front of them?" He gave a short, nasal laugh. "Okay, so we rob from the rich and we keep it. Can't deny. But what we also do is oppose inequality."

  "By breaking the law?" she snapped.

  "We're the thorn in the side of heartless megacorps who wanna turn the world into their personal chum-bucket!" he insisted.

  "What, is that your recruitment speech?"

  D-Bar chuckled. "I don't have to recruit you. You're already on our side."

  "Don't count on it." Kelso licked her lips, an earthy taste in the back of her throat. Her hands tightened as her annoyance built. "You've got ten seconds to tell me why the hell I am here, or I'm dragging you out in cuffs."

  "I thought the choice of locale was, y'know, ironic." When he saw the hard edge in her gaze, he paled a little. "Okay, okay. Look, for a while now, we've been bumping up against the edges of something…" D-Bar paused, feeling for the right word. "Shadowy. There's a group out there. An organization with a long reach and a lotta patience. They've been systematically using info-war and assassination to target midlevel corporates

  – "

  "Isn't that what you people do?" she broke in.

  The youth's eyes flashed. "Juggernaut doesn't kill people, lady. And if you let me finish, I was gonna say it's not just corporations getting the knife. Other free groups like us are going dark. These bad guys are taking people down with blackmail, extortion, entrapment, absorption…"

  Anna's patience was wearing thinner by the moment. She folded her arms across her chest. "And this concerns me how?"

  "The Tyrants," D-Bar sounded out the name, and she couldn't stop herself from reacting to it. "Yeah, that get your attention? The Tyrants are their attack dogs, Agent Kelso. This… group, whoever they are? Those black-ops bastards are doing their dirty work for them." He leaned closer. "We're both looking for the same thing. We're both asking the same question." She was silent for a long moment, her irritation warring with her curiosity. Finally, she gave it voice. "What do they want?"

  Knightsbridge-London-Great Britain

  Saxon felt cool, clammy concrete against his back and he rolled slightly, his head swimming, clearing from the effect of the stun-dart.

  He heard a woman's voice, distant but light and playful. Gradually, he leaned up from where he lay and caught sight of a short, unfinished corridor stretching away from him. He was inside the hidden spaces behind the picture on the wall, under the stark light of a fluorescent bulb.

  At the edges of the shadows around him, he glimpsed Barrett, Hardesty, and the Russian woman. Hermann was nearby, slowly pulling himself into a pained crouching position. The chamber they were in was no bigger than the conference room, but it was sparse and had the feel of a place one might use fo
r a purpose that needed a little space, like a sparring court. Or an interrogation room.

  Hermann tried to get up, but that drew a guttural, negative noise from Barrett. "You stay right there, son," he told him. The German frowned and ran a hand through his short, dirty-blond hair.

  The woman at the far end of the corridor was talking to Namir, and in that moment he knew who she was: the wife. He didn't understand

  Hebrew, but he recognized the rhythm of it. Their voices had the casual, easy pace of two people who knew each other intimately. Saxon closed his eyes for a moment and tried to marry the voice he heard with the Jaron Namir he knew from firsthand experience. Just as with the picture on the landing, the two things refused to mesh. He was listening to a warm and personable man, a father joking with the mother of his children, not the stone killer he knew from sorties into the deep black. Saxon had seen Namir kill men in the time it took him to blink, and do it calmly and cleanly. He wondered how he could be both of those people at once.

  A child called out and the wife stepped away. After a moment, Namir came back down the corridor and Saxon saw Hardesty grin in the darkness, in anticipation of something.

  Namir saw it, too, and drew a handgun, throwing the American a flat look. "Scott. Go see to Laya and the children, would you?"

  The sniper's face fell. "I thought-"

  "Do it now," said Namir. "I'll handle this."

  There was a moment when it looked like Hardesty might argue; but then he grimaced and walked away. Saxon heard the sniper call out and a child laugh in reply; then the hidden door closed and the sound died.

  Namir worked the slide of the automatic pistol and ejected all but one round into the palm of his hand, then pocketed the bullets.

  At last, Saxon spoke. "What's going on?"

  "One of you is disloyal," Namir said, without looking at them. "I know which. And the other needs to prove himself." He gestured with the gun.

  "So, two birds and one stone."

  "One bullet, more like," Barrett noted dryly.

  Hermann gave Saxon a fierce look. "I am no traitor!"

  Saxon got to his feet. "Are you serious? Disloyal how, exactly?"

  Namir tossed the loaded pistol onto the floor between them. "I'll explain it to you if you live past the next five minutes."

  "You actually expect me to-" Hermann never let him finish. The German was swift and he came up hard, striking with that armored fist of his in a short, hammer-blow punch. Saxon barely had time to deflect it.

  He was aware of the others drawing back and away as Hermann moved in and came at him again. This time, Saxon was a half second too slow and the metal-clad fist clipped him across the shoulder. Even a glancing impact was enough to rob him of a little balance and Saxon shifted his weight. Even if he wasn't sold on this sudden, enforced bout of trial-by-combat, the younger man certainly was. Hermann glared at him, sizing him up; the way he did it made it clear to Saxon that the German had given plenty of thought to how he would fight him if the opportunity arose. He had a sudden mental image of Gunther taking him down, stripping his corpse for parts to bolt on to himself like a hunter taking the skull and pelt of a kill.

  Saxon dodged the next punch, and the next, but then his luck ran out. Hermann connected with a heavy strike to the sternum that rattled

  Saxon's rib cage and ghosted the taste of blood up his throat. The other man glimpsed the flash of pain in his eyes and for the first time since he'd met him, Saxon saw something approximating a smile flicker briefly over the German's face. He came back in like thunder, a flurry of fast kicks and faster punches that Saxon had to work to deflect, never once getting the chance to attack in turn. The young man's nerve-jacked speed was far in advance of Saxon's own reflex booster, maybe a custom model or something the Tyrants had granted; it didn't matter. Trying to match Hermann blow for blow wouldn't work.

  Instead, Saxon let the other man's overconfidence take the lead. He let his guard go loose, and the hammer-blows started to land. Finally,

  Hermann connected with a punch that sent Saxon reeling, down to the concrete floor.

  He blinked away pinwheels of pain from behind his eyes. Hermann went down in a looping sweep, grabbing for the pistol; he took his gaze off

  Saxon in that moment, chancing that his opponent was winded. His mistake, then.

  As the German snatched up the weapon, Saxon rocked off his augmented legs and collided with Hermann, sending him reeling toward the edge of the light cast from the overhead bulb. The hand gripping the gun came up and it turned into a wrestling match.

  For long moments they both strained for the superior position, but Saxon had the power, and the will to take the long road. Finally, with a savage twist of his wrist, he pulled the pistol away and elbowed Hermann hard in the throat, putting him on the ground.

  Saxon weighed the gun in his hand.

  "You gonna do it?" asked Barrett.

  At the periphery of his vision, Saxon saw Namir shift slightly, his hand moving out of sight. Hermann looked up at him, silently furious.

  "No," Saxon said at length. "I'm not going to do it. Because there isn't any bloody traitor, and I don't play games like this. I'm a professional." He flipped the gun over and held it out, butt first, to Namir.

  The Tyrant commander took it with a nod. "The right call, Ben. If you had pulled the trigger, I would have shot you myself."

  Hermann got up slowly. "Then both of us would be dead."

  "Rounds in the gun were blanks," said Barrett. "We've done this before. We ain't stupid." A smile crossed his scarred face. "You did good there. You got steel. I'm impressed."

  Saxon frowned. "A test?"

  "In a way," said Namir. He nodded to them all, and when he spoke again his tone was all command. "We've got another assignment, in America.

  We fly out tomorrow, so make the most of your downtime tonight and be sure to prep your gear."

  "That's it?" Saxon took a step after him as he walked away. "You got nothing else to say?"

  Namir glanced over his shoulder. "What do you want, Ben? A membership card? You both proved yourselves. You're part of the Tyrants. Until death."

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Ohama Center-Washington, D.C.-United States of America

  "We don't have all the answers." Anna watched the hacker as he crossed to the minibar behind the skybox's line of seats and did something to the lock to make it open, fishing inside for a slender can of Ishanti. He popped the cap and drained the energy drink in a single, long pull. "Ah.

  Better."

  Beyond the sound-screened window, she saw William Taggart bow slightly as something he said earned a round of applause from his audience.

  The resonance of the clapping was distant, like faraway waves.

  "What do you know?" Anna demanded. "I'm tired of your games."

  "Games haven't even started yet," said D-Bar. "Not for you, anyhow." He sighed. "Let me put it another way… You ever heard of something called 'the Icarus Effect'?"

  "Sounds like a Las Vegas magic show."

  The youth chuckled and discarded the empty can. "Yeah, I guess. The Tyrants certainly have a way of making people vanish, that's for sure."

  He came closer, became more animated. "You know the story of Icarus? Guy and his dad build a set of wings, guy gets bold and flies too high, too close to the sun, guy gets dead. Same idea. It's a sociological thing, see? A normative process created unconsciously by a society in order to maintain the status quo, keep itself stable." D-Bar talked with his hands, making shapes in the air. "Whenever someone threatens to do something that will upset the balance, like flying too high… the Icarus Effect kicks in. Society reacts, cuts them down. Stability returns." He sighed. "That's what the Tyrants do. They enforce that effect for their masters, only they don't wait for it to happen naturally. They choose whose wings are gonna be clipped, if you get me." He jabbed a finger at the air. "These creeps, they're all about power. Anyone who threatens them, anyone who makes waves, gets dealt with." />
  "Threatens them how, exactly?" said Anna.

  "You know what they say; if you wanna make enemies, try to change something. People invested in keeping things the same don't like it when you make waves." He fished in his pocket and pulled out a data slate. "Look at this. These places and faces mean anything to you?"

  Anna glanced down and images scrolled past her: a highway accident in Tokyo that claimed the life of a cybernetics researcher; a string of missing-persons reports from a Belltower law enforcement detachment in Bangalore; the violent mugging of a senatorial aide in Boston; an augmented teenager killed by police snipers in Detroit.

  At first, she saw nothing that registered with her; then a face she recognized from her own investigations passed by-Donald Teague, an advisory staffer at the United Nations, shot dead in Brooklyn by unknown assailants. An eyewitness report talked about an ambush of Teague's car and three men in black combat gear, and of the almost military precision with which the kill had been made…

  She blinked, and for a moment the dark memory of a day in Georgetown pressed in on her thoughts, threatening to overwhelm her. Anna stiffened, forcing the recall out of herself. She read on. There were other points where the files connected to those she had discovered on her own. Men and women from corporations, government figures, those with international or UN connections like Teague. All of them either dead, missing, or assaulted. She halted on one image in particular; Senator Jane Skyler, caught by a stringer's camera six months ago as she was wheeled through the doors of a private D.C. medical clinic. Matt Ryan's blood was rust-red on her expensive silk blouse.

  "And there's more we don't even know about," D-Bar told her. "The ones who were leaned on instead of getting roughed up or murdered. The ones who buckled, who did what they were told to."

  "Assassination, extortion, coercion…" Anna said aloud. "The Tyrants are behind all these incidents? How could they be doing that? They would need global reach, unparalleled access to secure information-"

  The hacker seized on her words. "Ah, now that, that we do know something about. The group, the guys with their hands on the leash of the dogs… they've penetrated hundreds of agencies. They got a spy network that spans the world." He nodded to himself. "That Skyler thing, fer'ex. How'd they explain away the shooters knowing exactly where and when to find the senator?"