Corilla looked up from her biology textbook, and flashed him a sullen expression – instantly reminding him of Jenifa’s greeting. What is it about covert meetings that makes everyone so grumpy?
‘Everyone says Basement is her best,’ she recited.
‘Pleased to meet you, Corilla. I’m Chaing. You’ll be reporting to me for now.’
‘Where’s Gorlan?’
‘Moved on to greater things.’
‘On this planet?’
He couldn’t reprimand Corilla; she was a reluctant PSR informant, not an officer. Major Gorlan, from the Eliter monitoring division, had offered her a deal when she applied to study physics at the university – guaranteed admission in return for divulging any radical activity on campus. As an Eliter, she would never normally get into a university, especially not to study physics.
‘Probably not,’ Chaing admitted.
‘Well, you’ve wasted your time today, Officer Chaing. Nothing to report.’
‘Good. And it’s just Chaing. Don’t risk blowing your cover with casual statements.’
She put her textbook down on the table. ‘I don’t get you people. Where does the paranoia come from? I mean, everyone complains about government. It’s only natural. Don’t tell me you think the People’s Congress is doing a good job?’
He sighed. Eliters were always philosophers, and mostly angry ones at that; she was a genuine walking talking cliché. ‘The Air Force clears Fallers from the sky, the regiments sweep them from the land, we pick up any nests that get through, and the Liberty astronauts are eliminating the Trees. I’d call that crudding good, wouldn’t you?’
‘That happens because we have to fight the Fallers. The only alternative is death. But I didn’t mean them.’
‘I know what you meant. But that strikes me as a very simplistic view.’
Corilla scowled and waved her hand dismissively. ‘You prosper from the status quo, but the irony is your own actions are ridding us of Fallers. When they’ve gone, people will look round with new eyes. They won’t like what they see. Mother Laura knew that.’
‘I’m sure she did. But in the meantime I have a world to protect.’
‘Well, still nothing to report, sir. Nobody planning to overthrow the People’s Congress. Nobody plotting to sabotage the railways or blow up bridges, or cut off the city’s water supply.’
‘I don’t care about that.’
Her hazel eyes narrowed suspiciously. ‘Who the crud are you?’
‘Not in the department that deals with political radicals, that’s for sure.’
‘A persecutor?’ She was trying to sound defiant, but he could hear the worry in her voice.
‘A what?’
‘The PSR department that makes our lives a misery.’
‘No. And that’s not their name, either.’
‘It’s what they do,’ she snapped back.
‘You have to be monitored, that’s all.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re different. You’re privileged, and privilege always leads to exploitation of the underclass.’
‘Privileged? Us? That’s a crudding joke. You have no idea what it’s like, to be abused and shunned from the moment you’re born, to be blamed for everything that goes wrong no matter what.’
‘I don’t blame you for anything.’
‘Your kind always do. And then you wonder why we hate you.’
He didn’t really have the time for this, but handling assets like Corilla in the past had taught him that appearing to tolerate their cause always got better results in the end. She was testing him, that was all, trying to find out how much of a Party man he was. ‘There was good reason for Slvasta’s Limiter Act,’ he said. ‘Eliters are a kind of aristocracy – no, not like the ones ruling Bienvenido in the Void, I admit – but your abilities set you apart. Above. Slvasta wanted a fair society. No one group could be allowed to take over again. If we hadn’t been careful, you would have elevated yourselves into a new exclusive regime. Bethaneve was trying to do that – imagine that, Slvasta’s own wife! We broke free of the Captain. Slvasta’s revolution destroyed his dictatorship, and Democratic Unity is going to make damn sure nobody’s going to replace it with another oligarchic regime.’
‘Oh, get real,’ she said. ‘As soon as we’re back in touch with the Commonwealth, every one of you will be begging to have Eliter genes.’
‘Not me. I’m happy just the way I am.’
‘Because you don’t know any better! My macrocellular clusters have a hundred times the memory of your brain. I can communicate with others directly through a link. We can monitor our own health practically down to a cellular level. Eliter biology is liberating.’
‘Yes, but it’s your biology. You keep it for yourselves.’
‘Set us free, give us the freedom to research genetics, and you can all share it with us. But no, because that’s not the status quo. That would mean people having a say in power, in how their lives are run.’
Chaing sighed, suddenly weary of her. This argument was so old. ‘I didn’t come here for this.’
‘So sorry. Was I getting uppity?’
‘You were wrong about what I do for the regiment. I work for the Faller incursion division.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘Because you may be able to help me. That is, if your ideals will permit you to help stop your fellow citizens from being eaten, or worse.’
Corilla’s wide mouth lifted into a very sly smile. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’
‘What?’
‘It means I am quite happy to help you with anything regarding Fallers.’
‘Don’t tell your . . . friends this, but I have reason to believe there’s a nest in Opole.’
‘Friends? You mean, my type? The filthy Eliters?’
He regarded her uncertainly. He hadn’t quite expected an Eliter to be so hostile. She had confidence, too – also unusual. ‘I mean anybody. We cannot afford a city-wide panic.’
‘Yeah, I get it. Nice change for me to be on the side of the good guy types for once.’
‘All right. Firstly, have you ever heard of Xander Manor? Has somebody mentioned it recently? Maybe a party being held there? Anything like that?’
‘No. What is it, a club?’
‘No, an old house on the edge of town. It may hold a nest. That’s what I’m investigating.’
‘First stage or a breeder?’ she asked without hesitation.
‘What?’ he answered automatically.
‘Is the nest made up of first-stage Fallers, or breeders?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he retorted automatically – standard PSR denial, slap down any mention hard and fast. Breeder Fallers, even more ferocious than ordinary Fallers, were another fiction the Eliters used to try and undermine confidence in government.
She quirked her lips. ‘I thought you said Fallers are your speciality?’
‘They are.’ He got the uncomfortable impression she was trying to establish some kind of intellectual superiority. It wouldn’t work, of course. Typical Eliter mind game.
‘Well, you should know, or be briefed, that first-stage Fallers are the ones that emerge from the eggs. Breeders are the offspring of the first stage. They can be real brutes – or so I’ve heard. They’ll lead the Faller Apocalypse, you’ll see.’
‘Stop it,’ he said angrily. ‘Nobody believes this pathetic propaganda.’
‘Whose propaganda? The Fallers’? When did they ever get hold of a newspaper or a political platform?’
‘They certainly seem to have infiltrated Eliter communication links,’ he retorted sharply. ‘Spreading mendacities like that can get you sent to the Pidrui mines.’
‘You’ll need more than one mine if you’re going to round up everyone who knows about the breeders,’ she muttered.
‘You’re not to repeat that. Understand? I won’t have a PSR asset spreading sedition and damaging public morale.’
‘But no
body knows I’m a PSR asset. It’s not the kind of thing I can broadcast, now, is it? Face it, you’d throw me in prison for breaching state secrets if my fellow students didn’t lynch me first.’
‘Can we just get back to the point?’ he said, alarmed at how he was losing control of the narrative. Assets, especially informers, weren’t supposed to argue back.
‘Sure.’
‘Okay. Do you know Valentin Murin? He’s registered as a history and economics student here on campus. He lives at Xander Manor.’
‘Again, no, I don’t know him.’
‘I’d like you to try and meet him. Find out who his friends are, if anyone he knew has left recently.’
‘Crud, that’s active undercover-agent work. I’m just supposed to betray radicals and their stupid notions of actual democracy!’
‘Are you saying you won’t do it?’
‘No. I’m just pointing out what a good girl I’m being.’
‘Noted. I also want to know—’
‘Officially noted?’
‘What?’
‘Are you going to put that on my record? I could do with having a bit of credit from you people. You might even consider offering me some tolerance – although that’s probably wishing for a miracle.’
‘Yes, I’ll put it on your record,’ he grunted. ‘Though I might put another entry on there about how everything is always an argument with you.’
Her grin was sardonic.
‘Also,’ he continued with some force, ‘are there any missing persons on campus? Not students formally reported missing, but a rumour, perhaps, someone saying they’ve not seen a friend around for a while, and how odd that is?’
‘That’s easy enough. I’ll keep alert for gossip.’
He nearly fell for it, nearly retorted to the not-quite-mockery. ‘Good. You know your dead drop if you have urgent information?’
‘I know my dead drop. I know my fallback dead drop. I know my contact time for this cafe. I know my cover-blown signal. I know my emergency telephone number. I even kept the midget camera Gorlan gave me. I’m still waiting for my secret-agent pen gun.’
‘All right.’ He stood up. ‘Don’t let me down. Don’t let Bienvenido down. But be careful around Valentin Murin. Be very careful.’
She gave him a fast, derisive salute.
Chaing walked away, wondering how in the empty heavens Gorlan had ever managed to get her to agree to being an informer. I need to read her file. All of it.
*
The PSR’s records division belonged to Ashya Kukaida, a one-hundred-and-seventy-two-year-old who ruled the two extensive basement halls as if she was running a Void-era aristocrat’s fiefdom. Office directors and department deputy-directors came and went, but Ashya Kukaida went on forever. Her phenomenal (natural) memory was the Opole office’s greatest weapon in the fight against Faller incursions. Her obstinacy was legend, and the loyalty of her clerks fanatical. If you gained her disapproval, you had no future in the Opole PSR office. Any serious operation needed her cooperation to succeed.
Chaing knocked respectfully on her office door.
‘Come,’ she said.
Her office’s brick walls were painted a gloss white. Double the usual number of caged bulbs were fitted to the arched ceiling, making it seem more like a solarium than an underground haunt. There was only one desk (also white), and one chair. She sat there in her usual grey suit and white blouse, her thinning hair arranged in a tight bun. Three middle-aged clerks in identical black suits were in attendance, holding files and boxes of photographs. The desktop had twenty-five photographs arranged in a neat square, which she was studying through her thick glasses.
‘Colonel Kukaida.’ Chaing gave a small bow.
‘Ah yes, Captain Chaing.’ She looked up from the photographs. ‘You seem to have impressed Director Yaki. I was asked to prioritize your operation.’
‘Yes, colonel. I believe a nest may have infiltrated Opole.’
‘Well, of course you do. You’re in the Faller incursion division; what else would you be investigating?’
‘I am determined to expose and eliminate them.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘Could you please tell me if you know anything about the Elsdon family?’
‘Let me see.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Pre-Transition merchants, not true aristocrats like everyone thinks. You needed to have at least ten generations of wealth behind you to qualify for that. They were only on their third generation when we underwent the Great Transition. But they would have got there eventually. Their wool mills produced some exceptionally fine products. Half the houses in Opole will have one of their blankets on a bed somewhere. It was a shame the council shut down the mill.’
‘Apparently it was out of date.’
‘Age does not automatically imply obsolescence, captain.’
‘No, colonel.’ He finally saw the photos on the desk were the ones Jenifa had taken of Caden. ‘That’s one of my suspected Fallers. Do you recognize him?’
‘We don’t have a file on the gentleman in question, which is interesting. Normally someone in his profession will have encountered the sheriffs at some stage. Well, we do now. My clerks are contacting the City Registry to see if he’s a native. A background will be compiled.’
‘Thank you. Every detail will be helpful.’
Ashya Kukaida pushed her glasses back down and returned to the photographs. ‘Lieutenant Lurvri is in the index office on the second level,’ she said without looking up. ‘I have assigned two clerks to assist your enquiries.’
Which was all Chaing really wanted to know. ‘Thank you, colonel.’
Chaing made his way down the glass-walled central stairs. The record halls stretched out on every side, row after row of metal filing cabinets illuminated by stark electric bulbs hanging from the arched brick ceiling. Just looking at them made Chaing faintly depressed. The Opole office alone held over a million and a half files on citizens, and it was nowhere near the largest PSR office on the planet.
As he made his way to the second level’s index office he found himself wondering how much of the information Corilla could hold in her macrocellular stores. Was a hundred times the memory of an ordinary brain enough to hold the files around him? Had she even been telling the truth about that? What if it was a thousand? Or ten thousand? He was fairly sure his memory, wonderful though it was, couldn’t hold anything close to the stacks of information he was walking through. It was a shame. Having so much knowledge just a thought away would give him a phenomenal advantage over the Fallers. For a start he wouldn’t have to pander to the whims of a belligerent old woman who should have been retired decades ago.
The index office had floor-to-ceiling metal shelving which held hundreds of Rolodex drums. Ashya Kukaida had been true to her word. Two of the black-suited clerks were there, helping Lurvri – checking the Rolodexes for file numbers, then bringing the requisite folders to the table where he sat. They’d clearly had a busy afternoon. Files formed a half-metre tower beside Lurvri, their cardboard folders old and creased, faded to a uniform brown. The desk’s anglepoise lamps cast a bright pool of light on the sheets of paper and old photos he was studying.
‘What have you got?’ Chaing asked, as he slid into a spare chair beside his partner.
‘Elyse had two brothers and a sister,’ Lurvri said, waving his hand over some of the files. ‘The Geale family was right: they all left Opole. The sister went to Varlan, married a captain in the Marines. We don’t know where the brothers went. I’ve sent out a priority-three request to other PSR offices to check residency registration – which is a long shot, given they left damn near two hundred years ago. But I talked to the Opole city land and buildings bureau. The so-called cousins, Valentin and Rashad, applied for an ownership-continuation certificate for Xander Manor three years ago. Their residency permits were issued by Gretz county.’
‘Have you contacted the Gretz office?’
‘Yes. Their records hall promise
d to get back to me before midday tomorrow.’
‘Good work.’ He signalled one of the clerks over. ‘I want Opole’s missing-persons statistics for the last fifteen years, and the files of everyone reported missing during the last three years.’
The clerk hesitated. ‘The chief sheriff’s office hasn’t submitted their returns for the last six months.’
‘Oh, for— Get me what you can now, and call the chief sheriff’s office. I want their paperwork here by tomorrow morning.’
‘Yes, captain.’
Chaing looked round. ‘We’re going to need a command office. This is too small.’
‘Building management has the allocation forms,’ Lurvri said.
‘Yaki promised me more people.’
‘Good!’
Chaing glanced out of the office’s window. At the far end of the records hall aisle, jail-style metal bars protected the restricted files section. ‘I want another file,’ he told the clerk. ‘An Eliter called Corilla. She’s an active informant, handled by the political division.’
‘Yes, captain.’
Lurvri was giving him a curious look. ‘Problem?’
‘I just want to know how reliable she is, that’s all.’
‘Right.’ Lurvri lowered his head to study the spread of paper on the table, but not quick enough to hide the knowing smile elevating his lips.
Chaing let it go.
Within minutes the clerks had checked the Rolodexes and started bringing the files. Chaing was surprised by the number of missing persons – over twenty-five a year from the city alone. The county statistics were a lot higher. And this in a world where someone vanishing was always a cause for concern. Then, starting three years ago, the numbers had risen. ‘Does no one ever check these?’ he demanded.
‘Statistics aren’t terribly accurate predictors,’ Lurvri said with a shrug.
‘They’re an ideal way to monitor possible nest activity.’ He forced himself not to voice any more criticism in front of the clerks; no doubt a report of everything he said would be quietly delivered to Colonel Kukaida.
He was making notes on the locations people had gone missing from when Jenifa arrived, bursting through the index office door. She was out of breath, sweat beading on her face, blue cord jacket flapping open.
Night Without Stars (Chronicle of the Fallers Book 2) Page 8
