~
Travel in Britain was difficult. Only Germany had been worse hit by the Depression. Overcrowded, importing too much of its food, urbanised to the max and riven with strife, it declined like America: violently. With fuel impossible to obtain and a poor energy infrastructure it descended into semi-chaos, voyeuristically staring at its own demise through countless sensational nexus broadcasts. These days, half the country was owned by China and Korea. The other half wasn’t worth owning.
But Rosalind was lucky. In 2092 she had been rich. At the first hint of an economic slide she sold her wine business for a tenth of its value and moved to a five acre plot in Wiltshire with her boyfriend. They began growing their own food at once. They bought bicycles. They saw which way the wind was blowing.
But now Rosalind and Tsuneko stood sea-side, one hundred and thirty kilometres from safety.
“It’s not so bad,” Rosalind said. “We could probably make it along the coast to Southampton. Then we’d have to strike out inland for Salisbury.”
“You lead and I will follow,” Tsuneko replied.
Half dead Britain. With nothing to export except services and knowledge – qualities the rising Pacific Rim had little need of – the British government had been forced to restrict solbuses to the major urban centres, leaving rural communities to fend for themselves. Only one in five families used a solcar; there was simply no way to pay for them. One in five thousand retained a petrol fuelled vehicle.
Rosalind transferred cash from her Shanghai account to her britcard, paying for two seats on the only bus of the day heading west. Info in her spex told her the solbus would terminate at Havant, but in fact it never reached Havant, breaking down twenty kilometres out of Brighton. They managed to find a room in a one star dive, which, miserably, they shared. Next day another solbus from Brighton took them to Havant, from where a third took them to Southampton.
Roads north were potholed, where they were not vandalised; solbus services nonexistent. With no other options Rosalind paid the 2092 equivalent of a month’s wages to hire a solvan to Salisbury, where she and Tsuneko were dumped.
“We walk from here,” Rosalind announced.
The five acre plot lay a day’s walk north of Salisbury. They rested overnight in a barn stinking of cow dung, rain pattering on the corrugated metal roof; sleep impossible. As grey clouds cleared and the sun rose they trudged on, arriving after noon. But Rosalind’s house was comfortable. That evening, bathed, rested and fed, Rosalind and Tsuneko planned their visit to Mr Bloodhound.
“He lives by Avebury,” Rosalind said. “D’you remember how to ride a bike?”
So quiet was the Wiltshire countryside, so free of the noise of cars, that in the sun the following day Tsuneko relaxed, almost enjoying the bicycle ride. Overgrown verges squeezed navigable roads to a central channel. Contrails in the sky were a rarity, to be pointed out and laughed at: military jets from Chinese bases, EU officials, African test-planes. Alive with the sound of bees, the air smelled of flower perfumes.
Local communities tilled fields, kept sheep. Few now could afford to live as a single family. The community was king, sharing unavoidable.
“Before, we lived on borrowed time,” Rosalind remarked. “This time.”
Mr Bloodhound lived in a community of twenty based in a huge farmhouse set amidst fifty acres of prime arable land. A community elder, he resided in a two-storey straw house filled with electronic gear salvaged from military bases on Salisbury Plain, powered by the latest Algerian solar panels. He was quite the local celebrity.
He was small, pale, white-haired and hunched, and he smelled of beer. “Rosalind!” he said, his eyes bright with pleasure as they entered his parlour.
“Mr B,” she replied. “This is Tsuneko June.”
He stared. “Tsuneko June? Good… heavens. But yes, I recognise you now.”
“You’ve heard of me?” Tsuneko said.
Rosalind pushed Tsuneko into a chair. “For goodness sake! Lots of people know who you are, we do watch the news.”
“I am sorry,” Tsuneko told Mr Bloodhound, “I haven’t been in Britain for fifteen years.”
“Well, you haven’t been on the news for a while,” he replied, “but nobody with my interests forgets the word biograin.”
Uncomfortable, Tsuneko tried to smile.
“Mr B,” Rosalind said, “Tsuneko has a favour to ask you. Paid, of course.”
“Excellent, excellent. What’s the deal?”
“Tracing some people,” said Rosalind. “They could be anywhere. It’s just your sort of thing. Tell her.”
Mr Bloodhound turned to Tsuneko. “You know what I do?” he asked.
“I… can guess,” Tsuneko replied.
He grinned. “You see, in the old days, when the Japanese were rolling out the nexus, we all realised the benefits. But we didn’t notice the drawbacks. We should have though – seventy years of social networking on the internet to use as evidence. An inexorable erosion of the concept of privacy, of a person’s private life. Everything shared regardless… ugh!” He shivered. “Eastern peoples don’t have the same view of individuality that we Westerners have, you know, but we ignored the dangers all the same.”
“Tell her about the tracing,” Rosalind said.
Mr Bloodhound frowned at her, then smiled at Tsuneko. “The key difference between the internet and the nexus is location. In the nexus, realtime location is everything, it’s how the nexus knows where everybody in the world is, all the time. Everybody with a proper data incarnation, that is. And so we all live under the weight of the thing, observed twenty four hours a day so that this tide of tremendously useful info can be pushed our way. I’m being ironic.”
“So how do you track an individual with a fake data incarnation, or none at all?” Tsuneko asked.
“Ha ha! That’s my art. I won’t be telling you any of my tricks. But you see, the nexus is a near-perfect copy of the real world, and as such it uses certain procedures.”
“What like?”
“Well, for instance the dating of timelines. Everybody’s life is recorded in the nexus, manipulated for convenience into a data incarnation – a copy of themselves, continuously updated. Timeline orders can be altered, yes, but if that happens certain inevitable errors are left. Minuscule, but visible to a man with patience and a beady eye. Fake timelines are even easier to spot if you know what you’re looking for.”
“And you do.”
“Oh, I do. Then there are contextual clues. I might look for inconsistencies in a person’s life story and their recorded history, that kind of thing. It’s no science, it really is an art. But they don’t call me Mr Bloodhound for nothing.”
Tsuneko nodded. “Then you have a choice of people to trace,” she said. “Leonora Klee. Dirk Ngma. Yuri Ichikawa.”
He laughed. “Good heavens! You’re serious?”
Tsuneko replied, “I used to work for a team opposing them.”
“Paralleling them?” Rosalind said. “Not opposing exactly.”
Tsuneko shrugged. “You might be right, Ros… though Manfred was always badmouthing her.” To Mr Bloodhound she added, “Leonora’s ex Manfred is the leader of the team I used to work for.”
“The Ichikawa breakout. Then this scene would be artificial intelligence research?”
Tsuneko nodded.
“I see. You do realise Leonora Klee will buy the single most talented security man on the entire planet?”
“He is called Hound.” She smiled. “Not his real name.”
Mr Bloodhound nodded. “I believe I will trace Leonora Klee. As she is the leader of her team the others, if they still work for her, will be alongside. I accept your challenge! But it will be expensive.”
“Money is no object,” Tsuneko replied with a sigh and a glum face.
Silence fell for a few moments, leaving just an old-style clock ticking.
“You know,” Mr Bloodhound said, “I can see now you’ve had a bad time of it lately. Why not sta
y with us here until I’m done? Maybe a week… a fortnight. You’d have to help out on the farm, but, well, exercise releases happy chemicals, or so I’m told by my biochemist grandson.”
Tsuneko nodded, but Rosalind said, “I’ll have to cycle back home a few times… partner to help, land to work, fish to catch. You don’t mind, Tsuneko?”
Tsuneko shrugged, feeling she had little choice. An overwhelming sense of isolation grew inside her as tears ran down her cheeks.
~
Mr Bloodhound’s study was extraordinary. A bank of ten real-rez monitors fed into various computers, most of them anonymous lumps of silico-drive lacking any corporate sigil. He wore spex, but also used a parallel display due to long sight caused by age, a display that occasionally he would consult, squinting at it as if into the sun.
Days passed. Tsuneko met the Avebury community, made a few friends, and, with little else to do, threw herself into the challenge of working the land. Evenings she slept, exhausted: not used to manual labour. She worried at her blisters and began biting her nails. Then, ten days later, Mr Bloodhound called her into his study.
“I have news for you,” he said.
Tsuneko felt her heart begin to pound.
“This Hound is a clever, clever man. I believe I know who he really is, you know.”
“Have you found Leonora?”
“Yes… and no.”
“How do you mean?”
He sat down, and Tsuneko wondered if he might be embarrassed, for he had yet to look her in the eye. Then he said, “You must’ve realised that Mr Bloodhound is not my real name.”
Tsuneko nodded.
“I support a number of almost identical fake data incarnations, twenty eight at the last count. It is one way of confusing nosy people, albeit a rather complex way. But Hound has managed to perfect a method of fading data incarnations in and out of the nexus over time. You see, researchers like me rely on sudden data transitions – gaps, alterations and so forth, for which there is no rational explanation. So Hound has bypassed me.”
“Then, you know where Leonora is or not?”
“I know where she should be. You see, there is only one man who I know for sure has done such a thing. Goodman Awuku.”
“The firewall buster? He died.”
Mr Bloodhound clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Nobody uses firewalls these days, they’re rather an outdated mechanism. Everything is smoke and mirrors. And nobody in my line of work believes Goodman Awuku died on that boat. But, you see, I can’t locate Leonora, Yuri or Dirk. I believe I have located Hound, however.”
“How come? He should be the hardest to spot.”
“Correct. But there is a fifth member, and indeed a sixth in Leonora’s team. Did you know?”
Tsuneko shook her head.
“The fifth is a Tunisian spoon bender. But the sixth… the sixth is a mystery.”
“How so?”
“I do not believe the sixth is human. And it, my dear, is watching Hound very carefully, and thus is leaving the shallowest of wakes in the nexus. If you follow that wake to its source I think you’ll find Leonora and her team.”
Tsuneko took a deep breath, sat back. “Where are they?”
“Algeria.”
Tsuneko sat back. “Go to Africa? I’d have to go solo, else Aritomo would spot me. But in theory it could be done.”
Mr Bloodhound smiled. “I have various old travel guides – paper, believe it or not. Likely you’ll need them.”
CHAPTER 9
Joanna saw horror in Manfred’s face. “You crate the bis,” he shouted at her. “I’ll collect the computers and things. And get my pistol. Defend the bis!” He stamped on the glitched fly with a groan of frustration.
They leaped into action. In less than five minutes they stood ready at the apartment front door. Manfred listened, his ear on the wood. Nothing. He opened the door, hustled Joanna and the crates out. No sign of anybody on the stairs.
He turned, jetted lighter fluid over the carpet, lit a match and threw it in. With a whumph it caught, and he leaped back, surprised by the intensity of the heat.
“Can you manage six crates?” he asked.
She nodded. The bis were making weird mewing noises. She wanted to stop, listen, analyse, but there was no time. Manfred pulled on his main rucksack, picked up Pouncey’s then grabbed the nylon handles of the remaining three crates so that he could lift them as a bundle.
“If Pouncey’s not about we’ll hide in the garages opposite the office block,” he said. “Best not to be in here. Aritomo’s hands will search the place from top to bottom, if that fly was his.”
They clattered down the stairs, knowing it would be impossible to stay silent, hoping nobody walked in before they got out. In the debris-strewn ground floor hall they paused, listened; heard distant bikes splashing through puddles, a car alarm, reverberated music a few streets away. No sign of people close by though. Manfred peered around the shattered doorway, looked left – two old men walking away – and right – nobody. He gave the all-clear and they ran across the street.
The garages were a tumbledown collection of steel and concrete, mostly destroyed, a few filled with mattresses and the ash-choked remains of campfires; beer cans and greasy paper fragments. Somebody’s home.
They waited. Joanna took a torn tarp from the rear of the garage in which they hid and covered the crates. The mewing subsided. Manfred peered out through a tear in the steel drop-down door.
They waited. It began to rain. No sign of Pouncey, nor of the enemy.
Ten minutes later they heard a vehicle drive up the street, saw a small soltruck with blacked-out windows stop outside the tower block. Seconds later Pouncey jumped out. Manfred nodded to Joanna then ran across the street.
“Pouncey!” he hissed.
She span, her hi-vel in her right hand, fear masking her face. “What the–”
“Get us out! Glitched fly – someone could be on the way right now.”
Joanna began loading the crates into the back of the soltruck. It looked in poor condition. Manfred ran back, grabbed the three remaining crates, handed them to Joanna in the middle of the street, then ran back for the rest of the gear. A minute later they locked the rear doors and leaped into the forward comp, Pouncey driving, Joanna in the middle, Manfred on the right.
“You stole this?” he asked.
Pouncey turned to stare at him, silent, her face set surly.
“You look–”
“I bought it,” she snapped. “Okay?”
Manfred sat upright. “What? With–”
“Your money. We were done for. Aritomo might know we’re here – a street gang got me into a fight. I tried to tell you, aye, I did. My face on PD computers and I had to blank a wristband. I would have been driving you out of Philly fly or no fly. Time here is over, okay?”
She started the engine, checked the batt power, and revved.
“If you shout at me Manfred,” she continued, “you’ll regret it. While we’re in this heap of junk you’ll do as you’re told.”
The soltruck lurched forward. Pouncey glanced in the rear mirror.
Joanna heard a gunshot.
Pouncey threw the vehicle into second and screeched up the street.
“If they’ve got a copter we’re fucked,” she said.
Manfred held on to the doorside armrest as Pouncey flung the soltruck around a corner. “If they’ve got a solcar we’re–”
“Manfred, I think I can take on a solcar. But aerial, they’ll win. Start prayin’.”
Joanna clung on to Manfred, leaning right, giving Pouncey more space.
“Hold tight, you two,” Pouncey warned.
Ahead stood piles of concrete debris heaped into a roadblock: local crims hoping to trap the unwary. Pouncey slammed on the brakes and forced the soltruck past in first gear, left side screeching against a brick wall; then accelerated forwards. Gunshots rang out, but Joanna couldn’t tell where from. Could be crim or pursuit. A bullet grazed
the windscreen but the angle was so oblique it only left a white scar. She hoped they didn’t have target sights good enough to see the vehicle’s tyres.
“There’s an old paper map by your feet,” Pouncey told her. “I need to know the way to the Vine Street Expressway.” She glanced out of the window to her left. “This is Callowhill Street. Direct me to the nearest junction.”
Joanna tried to read the map, but it was way too dark. Manfred flicked on the white LED on his keyring.
She said, “Right turn, straight down to Vine Street, then left until you hit the junction.” She threw the map to the floor and gripped Manfred’s arm.
“Aye,” Pouncey said, “looks like those men outside the block were foot patrols. Advance guard. But we need speed, soon as poss. Or they’ll have us.”
Pouncey drove at eighty kilometres per hour down the pothole spattered street, the expressway to their right. She looked in the rearview.
“Trouble,” she said. “Solcar, big. Closing on us.”
She wrenched the steering wheel to get onto the junction roads, but braked at the top, glancing down to see the top of the pursuing solcar.
“I’m takin’ a risk,” she said, accelerating onto the westbound exit road. On the expressway ahead ragged groups of solcars whizzed by. The exit road, though – just a couple of solcars there, so she drove against them. Choosing a mini-gap in the westbound flow she flung the soltruck across the carriageway, then smashed through the central barrier and drove up the sliproad on the other side. Two cars screeched out of her way. The pursuit headed east. She braked, judged the flow, then screeched across the junction to reach the westbound entrance road. And away, at top speed.
“Never do that,” she remarked. “It damages the vehicle.”
Joanna glanced into the right hand rearview. “Will they realise?”
“Aye, maybe five minutes, ten. We’ll be off the expressway before then.”
“Where to?”
“South on the seventy-six, then south again on the ninety-five.”
“Out of Philadelphia?”
“Way out,” Pouncey confirmed. “Into the Outlaw. I’m aimin’ for the west coast – Baltimore, Cincinnati, St Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City, Boise, Portland Oregon. Then maybe we’ll rest.”
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