Regeneration

by Stephanie Saulter

  Sharon’s jaw tightened. “No, it’s not. Not anymore, anyway.” She remembered too well the kinds of things that had been said in east London, and elsewhere, when she’d first met Mikal. “So even if only a few individuals are in on it, this is a pretty sympathetic region for them to be based in.”

  “Exactly. It could be a local plot, or someone might have allowed their premises to be used without being too concerned with what they were being used for.”

  “A tanker could’ve been brought in well before it was needed,” Sharon said, thinking through it. “That would’ve increased the risk of someone noticing it and asking questions. But if you know the natives are friendly, you might not worry about that too much.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Achebe replied. “Also, people are less likely to connect something they noticed several days before with an event that they know happened on a specific date.”

  “And still less when it takes the police several more days to even know what they’re looking for, or where to look.” Sharon knew that, had it not been for the swift work of the medics and scientists, it could easily have taken much longer. “This was old news before we even got here.”

  “We’re off to a late start,” Achebe agreed, “but maybe not quite as late as they expected.”

  Achebe’s remark nagged at Sharon as she drove an indirect and unfamiliar route back toward what her brain stubbornly insisted on identifying as The City. She had wanted to travel some of the roads the algae might have been brought in on, get a feel for the neighborhoods where its creators might be sheltering. The journey wouldn’t take her out to the countryside, with its high-yield biomass farms and low levels of either wildlife or human habitation, but on a long, winding loop through the crumbling southern conurbations Fayole had spoken of. Still, the distance felt greater than it was, for the character of the world outside the windows of the car kept shifting.

  What had once been affluent suburbia was now a hinterland, neither city nor country, neither modern nor properly ancient, neither tamed nor truly wild. Instead it was an uneasy amalgamation of undecided environments, where time was in some places accelerated and in others strangely suspended. Glancing down from an elevated roadway she saw what might almost have passed for parkland, had it not been studded with the crumbling ruins of terraced houses like strings of mislaid, misshapen pearls. The corpse of a commercial district flashed past next, entombed in concrete, and all the more desolate for it. But even here, trees had erupted through the asphalt. Thick ropes of ivy shrouded the remains of a collapsed shopping center, its levels flattened into each other like a stack of unappealing pancakes. The land humans had abandoned was being reclaimed, slowly and untidily, but steadily nonetheless. The people who live around here must feel besieged, she thought.

  As if in confirmation, she found herself within a few seconds passing through a tired town center with a few offices, shops, and cafés bounded by residential streets. The buildings looked in reasonably good repair, but almost all were pre-Syndrome and the place had a shabby, disheveled look to it. There was a school on one corner, from which a crowd of rowdy preteens spilled onto a playing field, well used if the graffiti on the walls and damage to the institutional fencing were anything to go by. She wondered if the kids thought of themselves as Londoners, or if the city was to them a distant, foreign place: a strange land to be sampled on a day trip, for some to dream of and others to fear; for some to avoid and some, eventually, to escape to.

  For mile after mile she could see the struggles of the present and the scars of the past, but very little that looked much like a future.

  Finally the neighborhoods became busier, newer, and more crowded, until she was traveling between buildings gleaming with polished aggregate and biosynthetic finishes, surrounded by the constant low roar of traffic and trains, people shouting and sirens in the distance: the myriad sounds of urban life. The road swept around and up and as she drove onto a bridge that would take her across to the north bank of the Thames she looked out at the great gray-brown ribbon, thinking that few things could be at once so innocent and so ominous. The red buoys marking the most upstream of the river turbines winked in the distance.

  What had they expected, these people who had suborned the lifeblood of a city and turned it against its own? How long had they counted on a fruitless search for some local spillage to divert attention away from the real source of the poison, in the upstream heartland of those who sensed their own obsolescence? When it was eventually discovered, as they must have known it would be, what reaction had they anticipated from the police, the politicians, the public?

  She caught a glimpse of the gleaming curve of City Hall as she came off the bridge and turned right. As though it had been a trigger, her husband’s tale of his meeting with Gabriel came flooding back, now full of significance; it felt as though something that had been lurking at the back of her mind was now stepping forward and demanding her full attention.

  At the time she had been so focused on the political tightrope Mikal was about to walk, and so annoyed at Gabriel and Herran for their amateur investigating, that she had pushed it away until she was in a better frame of mind to consider its implications. But somewhere on the too-long drive back into London, as she pondered not only the resources but the thinking behind the Thames toxin attack, the likelihood of a connection became clear to her.

  Though one plot involved snark and spin on public streams and the other was a case study in black-lab bioengineering and black-ops execution, they played to the same whispered fears and simmering resentments. More than that, they shared a subtlety of implementation that she felt in her bones could not be coincidental, not when both had the same community in their sights.

  Her instincts, honed by a decade and more of detective work, told her that Gabriel had uncovered another front in a hidden war. With any luck, its perpetrators still had no idea they’d been found out. And he’d had the sense to take his discovery to his uncle, knowing Mikal could act as a bulwark against publicity. Gabriel was smart and careful, and she wished there was a way to keep him completely out of it from now on. Gaela and Bal would not be pleased.

  She considered the problem for a few more seconds, then shook herself in irritation, flicked her earset to active and called her husband.

  16

  Since he’d told his uncle about the Kaboom conspiracy, Gabriel had been overtaken by a covert conflict of an entirely different nature. Sitting at his Thames Tidal workstation the next day, he felt as if he had achieved a kind of equilibrium in the public relations battle: he knew how to spot and hit back at Kaboom’s avatars the moment they appeared onstream, and he’d decided to treat them as just another part of his overall responsibility to monitor and tag and post and respond, at least for now. It was what Uncle Mik—in his City Councillor Varsi incarnation—had advised, along with staying quiet until instructed otherwise. Gabriel was happy to comply. Uncle Mik would think it all through and talk to Aunt Sharon, and he would either find himself in trouble with Detective Superintendent Varsi, or not. But until then, there was nothing more he could do, and anyway his concerns about Kaboom had almost been eclipsed by the turmoil at home.

  He had been so preoccupied when he’d followed Mikal’s towering figure into the apartment the evening before that it had taken him a minute or two to realize something was amiss. Darkness had fallen as they’d walked over from Sinkat and the children were already inside, talking over the adults and each other, scrambling through a tangle of jackets and bags and unfinished sentences as Mikal corralled his boys to take them home. Gaela had sorted them out, chatting with her usual efficiency and good humor, and it was only when Eve had marched across the room, trailing a sweater in one fist and clutching her tablet in the other, loudly declaring her supremacy in whatever game they’d been playing, that he realized his mother had pulled normalcy on like a mask. It had slipped for the barest of moments, in the indrawn breath between telling Eve to pipe down and returning to whatever she’d been sayi
ng to Mikal. The strain he saw there, and the depth of its concealment, was enough to shock him into reaching up and flicking off his cranial band without a second thought.

  A swirl of thought and emotion washed over him: there was Misha, reluctantly accepting that the day’s play was over but already looking ahead to tomorrow. Sural was beginning to want his mother and ready to be peevish about the chilly walk back to Maryam House. Eve’s triumph at winning the game was both noisy and fleeting, her dragonfly mind already hunting for the next thing to focus on. He felt the deep currents of his uncle’s thoughts, overlaid by the prosaic need to get his children home, fed, and to bed at a decent hour.

  Gabriel tuned all of them out with the ease of long practice and focused on his mother, but he couldn’t make any sense of what he felt from her save for the clear knowledge that Eve was at the center of it. Gaela’s mind was a welter of anxiety and guilt and unfocused fear—there was something about a tablet, and whether it meant anything; whether she had done the right thing; whether she even knew what the right thing was. Her distress roiled beneath the surface while she held on to the need to reveal nothing, to be regular Mama and Aunty Gaela, to get the Varsis packed up and out and tend to her own family as though nothing at all was wrong.

  And maybe nothing is wrong. The thought floated into his mind from hers as she bid Mikal farewell at the door, tucking treats into the boys’ hands to keep them distracted along the way. Maybe you’re making too much of it, Gaela. Maybe it’s what all the kids do—maybe this is what it’s like to grow up in the world. Perhaps I’m the one who doesn’t know any better, maybe it’s me.

  He could tell his mother was not remotely convinced.

  She met his eyes as she came back into the room—of course she’d known the moment his band went off, she saw far more of its emanations than the tiny blue pinprick of the power indicator—and gave a swift, tiny shake of her head. He tilted his own head just as minutely. He couldn’t ask her what was wrong while Eve was within earshot, and his sister had already bounced over to wheedle a treat of her own.

  “Why do Mish and Suri get cookies and I don’t?”

  “Because Mish and Suri have a cold walk home, and longer to wait for their dinner when they get there. Yours is coming up in a few minutes, so go and finish your reading.”

  The child pouted. “Well, what if Gabe wants a cookie?”

  “He doesn’t,” said Gabriel. “Don’t be a baby, Eve.”

  Eve looked daggers at him, knowing full well that trying to refute the accusation would only reinforce it. She chose to subject them all to the silent treatment instead, retreating to the furthest corner of the long living room and curling up with her tablet and an air of disdain.

  He must really have hurt her feelings; she wasn’t even insulting him inside her head. He shrugged and turned back to his mother, who said wearily, “Not now.” Then she added quietly, “Do you know—?”

  “No,” he said, just as quietly. “You’re too upset to make sense of.”

  She made a sound that might have been a snort of laughter or the beginning of a sob, though he couldn’t tell which; she was making herself breathe deeply and steadily, consciously bringing her mental state under control, and he felt her growing calmer, pushing the source of her disquiet further away, out of his reach.

  “I’ll explain later,” she said. Her voice already sounded less ragged, more like herself, as did her mind. “I’ve got to go downstairs and help—they’ve been slammed since lunchtime. People are sitting for hours.”

  He heard the thought she did not say. “It’s because of Sinkat—knowing it was deliberate,” he said.

  “Yes—it’s only natural, I suppose. People are frightened, and there’s nothing they can do except hope it doesn’t get worse. It’s like—” She caught herself, but he knew she had been about to say the old days.

  “You mean the bad old days, surely, Mama.” He tried to sound lighthearted, but she shook her head at him reprovingly.

  “You don’t need to pretend it’s less scary than it is, my darling. Not with me or your father. And you in the thick of it—if we’d had any idea this could happen—”

  “Mama.”

  “I’m just saying, there’s no need for you to tough it out. I’m worried about you too, Gabe.”

  “Mama, I’m fine. I’ve got it under control.” He hoped that was true. “What can I do about this?” He looked meaningfully across at Eve’s small blond head.

  “Stay with her; make sure she’s done her schoolwork. I’ll send up some dinner.” And leaning closer, whispering although the thought was loud in her head, “If she complains that something’s wrong with her tablet, you don’t know anything about it—and don’t mention it if she doesn’t.”

  He had done as he was asked, and just before Delial rapped on the door to deliver supper he registered a wave of bafflement, followed by the frantic sense of searching for something misplaced, until the noise of the door shutting reminded Eve that he was there. She dropped a blanket over her inner turbulence, shutting it down almost as completely as he had earlier shut down his band. She put the tablet aside without comment and came to eat without fuss. He gently insisted on reviewing her schoolwork with her, thinking she wouldn’t be able to resist chattering about whatever had startled her, or at least thinking about it while they were both gazing at the smeared screen of her battered old tablet, but she stayed surly and mostly silent, allowing no stray thoughts to form. By the time his tired parents came upstairs, he had long since sent her to bed, and he was none the wiser.

  Thinking about it the following afternoon, while feeds scrolled past and his monitor apps tagged and aggregated news items and idle chatter, Gabriel was still not sure what to make of the socialstream account his mother had found and blocked, or of the archived streamchats that had left her so upset. The way Eve had whined about her family, him included, was really hurtful, and she had told her anonymous stream-friends far more about herself than was wise, but the exchanges were childish and he could easily see how she’d drifted—or been led—into them. But there was an intrusiveness about the questioning that made him uneasy, even though it was in keeping with the hectoring tone of the stream. They could all see how that kind of boasting and cattiness might stoke the less pleasant aspects of Eve’s character.

  More worrying was how she’d found her way there in the first place, for it was invitation-only, accessed via a clever link that managed to circumvent the parental blocks. His mother had no idea who among Eve’s friends was responsible, but maybe Eve would tell when Mama confronted her today; maybe by the time he got home from work that mystery at least would be solved.

  It might be completely innocent, of course, but it didn’t feel innocent, and the more he thought about it, the more it troubled him; so much that he’d started wondering if he could persuade Herran to go in and look. Though he knew the answer would almost certainly be no, he’d begun composing a message when his earset pinged.

  “Gabe?” Mikal’s voice was sonorous, a bit nasal, and very serious. “The police would like to speak with you. And Herran.”

  Herran didn’t leave home lightly, or without preparation, and in any event Detective Superintendent Varsi hadn’t wanted them to be seen together where they might be noticed and commented on. Fortunately, Maryam House was only half an hour’s walk from Sinkat and barely fifteen minutes from the café, so just a couple of hours later Gabriel found himself seated at his aunt and uncle’s big dining table with his father on one side of him and Herran on the other. Mikal sat next to Herran, and Sharon faced them all. Detective Inspector Achebe rounded out the group, coming in on a secure channel and listening intently as Gabriel took them step by step through what he and Herran had discovered about the avatar-disguised provocateurs he’d dubbed Kaboom.

  “Why didn’t you tell us about this?” his father had demanded tightly as they walked up the couple of flights from Herran’s small apartment to the Varsis’ much bigger one.

  “I
was afraid if we’d done something wrong by tracing them and I told you or Mama, I’d be getting you involved,” Gabriel had protested. “Then I worked out that it would be okay as long as I told Uncle Mik first, and after that I was going to tell you, when I got home. But that was last night, and by the time we were done with everything else . . .”

  He’d trailed off miserably, looking at Herran trotting on up the stairs, oblivious. Bal had reached over as they got to the landing, wrapped a powerful arm around his son, pulled him close and dropped an exasperated kiss on top of his head. “Gabriel, we are your parents. We’re supposed to get involved—it doesn’t matter what else is going on.”

  “Okay.” He’d shrugged out of the hug and tried to sound steadfast, but his heart felt much lighter. Bal tsked at him and tousled his hair, and by the time Mikal had opened the door to them a minute later, with an apologetic face for Bal and a reassuring one for his nephew, Gabriel’s anxiety was greatly reduced.

  It had jumped again when he saw Aunt Sharon—Superintendent Varsi, now—speaking swiftly and in clipped tones to her inspector via the tablet. She looked over and smiled at him, but her eyes were stern.

  Now he was explaining what he had observed onstream, why he had gone to Herran and how they had followed the trail, while Herran sat beside him, clutching his tablet and rocking a little more noticeably than usual, interjecting monosyllabic confirmations whenever Sharon asked a question. The blue light on his cranial band pulsed softly; he was still onstream, maybe just trying to keep himself calm. Gabriel had set his own to standby, the better to concentrate fully on the matter at hand.

  When he finished, he faced his aunt with an expression he hoped was equal parts inquiring and contrite. Her own face remained inscrutable.