As always when the streams had little to go on, they made up the difference in backstory and conjecture. It took them no time at all to determine that the suspect in custody was an Environmental Management officer, and to discover her identity.
“I’m really sorry,” Achebe said to Fayole, and left her to run interference with her bosses. Public records relating to the hydroponics site were likewise picked over, and the connections between it and multiple players in the energy game were made almost before the press briefing had concluded. Could this, several journalists wondered aloud, be the reason for the Met’s reluctance to elaborate? Was this the active line of inquiry to which Detective Superintendent Varsi had alluded? It was too juicy a prospect to ignore. They went off to lay siege to the press offices of Pure Fuel, Southern Warmth, and Bankside BioMass itself.
Sharon, looking at streamfeeds a couple of hours later, was moved to even deeper levels of cynicism by how so little actual information could generate so much erroneous content. There was no immediate response from Kaboom, but the stakeout teams had done their job: the identities of four of the five streamers were now known and they were under constant surveillance. At some point they would receive new instructions, and when that happened Sharon would have both them and their handler. In the meantime, all the froth and friction on the streams would serve to confuse, occupy, and misdirect. She awaited with interest the reaction of the Bankside corporate hierarchy, had a screaming match with her counterpart in Environmental Management, and then a few more quiet words with Achebe.
Among the profusion of reports, commentary, and “New Developments!” that weren’t, the evening newstreams carried a brief but tangentially related announcement. It was tagged “politics” and was therefore of little interest to many subscribers, though it raised eyebrows and fed speculation in both the halls of power and humbler homes throughout the land. The managing director of Thames Tidal, a divisive figure closely associated with talk of a new political movement within the gem community, had comprehensively put those rumors to bed.
Released as a personal statement, Pilan candidly admitted that forming a new party to focus attention on gem issues had been much discussed. He, for one, was now stepping away from the idea, and he was urging others to do the same.
“Recent events have convinced me of two things,” his statement read. “First: we’re still in danger from people who don’t think we have as much right to life and freedom as they do, but they’d sooner poison us in secret than stand up and say so. They know what the public reaction would be if they showed themselves. Second: withdrawing from the mainstream won’t help us defend ourselves against these forces. It would do more for their cause than ours. I know the majority of people, both gems and norms, truly believe in equality and inclusion, and so do I. We mustn’t become distracted by our differences. We’re lucky enough to have institutions that are committed to protecting all of us, and we need to focus on strengthening them.”
Anyone who knew Pilan well—or at all—would have detected a more conciliatory mind at work in the crafting of this message. “Nothing to do with me,” Mikal told a reporter when asked, which was more or less the truth: he had seen the post before it had gone onstream, and been unable to suggest improvements. He assumed Lapsa must have helped her partner write it, as did most others, but they were wrong: Pilan had gone straight to Gabriel.
“This isn’t a Thames Tidal job, obviously,” he’d said, “and you can tell me to go and jump in the basin if you want. It’s just that you’re the expert at finding the right way to say things onstream. I need this to sound like me, only not . . .” Pilan trailed off, groping for a way to explain.
“Not,” said Gabriel, hazarding a guess, “to piss anybody off?”
“Exactly. Did you pick up that language from me? Your mom’ll kill me.”
“I picked it up when people started poisoning my friends. Of course I’ll help.”
He listened while Pilan outlined what he wanted to say, looked at what he’d already written, then said, “I have some questions.”
“Okay.”
Gabriel pointed at the cranial band. “Can I turn this off while I ask them?”
“Can you . . . oh.” He hesitated. “Okay.”
It took Gabriel ten minutes of unfiltered conversation and half an hour of drafting to come up with the statement. He put in things that Pilan hadn’t thought to say out loud but that he sensed were part of what the Thames Tidal boss wanted to communicate. Pilan read the text with visible amazement.
“Did I tell you all that?”
“Yep.”
“It does sound like me,” Pilan said. “But only if I were—” He stopped, then started to laugh. “Damn. I could never have done this.”
Gabriel, his band back on standby and, unsure what was so funny, guessed again. “What, be a politician?”
“Yes.”
“Good thing you’ve given it up.”
Pilan was shaking with mirth. “That was a brief career: here and gone in one post.”
“Better be sure you got everything right, then.” He made Pilan go through the piece line by line, ticking off all the messages that were being sent or subtly rejected.
“What’s this bit about institutions?” Pilan asked.
“You’re going to back the UPP, right? And you want everyone who was getting excited at the idea of a new party to do the same, and you want this statement to lay the groundwork. But,” he added anxiously, “it should only say that if it’s what you actually mean. I thought that’s what I picked up, but we’ll take it out if I got it wrong.”
“You didn’t,” Pilan replied thoughtfully. “It’s something Jack Radbo said. I guess it stuck in my head.”
“That’s where I found it. Are you okay with it?”
Pilan read the whole thing over again, then walked around the room, gazed out the window, came back, read it once more. It seemed to Gabriel that he was undergoing some kind of reconciliation.
“Yes,” he said finally, “I’m okay with it. It’s stronger than I’d intended, but there’s no point being half-assed about things.” He straightened up and stretched. He was, thought Gabriel, looking and sounding much healthier and stronger, much more himself.
“I’ve got to show it to a couple of people,” Pilan said, “but I don’t think I’m going to let anybody change anything. I like it. Let’s drop it into the mix and see what happens.”
The first thing that happened, at least as far as Gabriel was concerned, was that he was hailed from all corners when he poked his head into the hum and chatter of the café. The long tables were crowded with regulars, and Pilan’s about-face was running level with the day’s incendiary police bulletin as the major topic of discussion. He threaded his way between the tables, stopping to return greetings and assure the diners that the Thames Tidal boss was quite well and had most definitely not been abducted or brainwashed.
“He’s fine, really,” he protested to Aster: bone-white, violet-eyed, imperious, and disbelieving. “I think he just realized it was time to make a decision one way or another. He’s in good shape.”
“Too good to be true, if you ask me,” she said. “If he’d sounded that impressive from the start, I might have backed the idea.” She sniffed. “Too late now.”
Gabriel grinned and finally made it to the counter, where his mother was checking orders before Delial delivered them to the tables. Eve, standing next to Gaela, was diligently organizing cutlery, although it wasn’t the sort of job that would normally hold her attention for long. Their father was busy at the big cooking range, wreathed in steam, alongside his two assistants. He could see they were working flat out, but Gaela shooed him away when he offered to help.
“We’re fine, honey,” she said, as Eve grumbled, “I’m helping,” sotto voce from her station with the spoons and forks. Gaela looked down at her with a smile that was slightly less troubled than it had been, if no less weary. Relations were apparently not quite as fraught as yesterday
, but Gabriel suspected that might change if they were all crammed in behind the counter. “You’ve had a long day,” Gaela went on. “I’ll get Horace in if I need him. Aryel’s here; go and join her and the others. I’ll send over some dinner.”
Aryel was at her favorite spot in the front corner, where she could sit with her back to the wall and not worry about her wings being in anyone’s way. At least, that was the reason she always gave, and he knew it was true; but he also knew she was well aware that a glimpse of her through the window was the best advertising the business could have. Eli was sitting with her, along with Callan and Rhys.
Gabriel worked his way across to her, glad to no longer be the center of attention, overhearing snatches of conversation along the way: mostly about the police investigation and the likelihood of further attacks, some about Bankside, Pilan or politics, and, for blessed relief, occasionally something else entirely.
“Strange things happening with the share price,” he heard Aryel say as he reached her table. She looked up at him and smiled. “So,” she murmured, leaning across as he slid into an empty seat, “win a bet for me. Did you write this thing that Pilan wrote?”
“How’d you know?” he asked, alarmed. “We tried not to make it obvious.”
“It isn’t, don’t worry. Process of elimination. I knew he must have had help, and I didn’t think it was Lapsa—she’s a good speaker but not a great writer. Mikal ruled himself out, and it’s not his style anyway. So—” She inclined her head at him. “Well done. Your next job will be speechwriting if you’re not careful.”
“Not unless Pilan changes his mind,” he murmured back, to knowing chuckles from around the table. He would have liked to talk to his aunt about Kaboom, and Eve. It was unimaginable that any injunction to secrecy, either from the Varsis or his own family, was meant to include Aunt Aryel, but the café was too busy and noisy and public, and although Uncle Eli and Rhys and Callan were family too, he knew that bringing them in would be a step too far. So he sat back and let his mind wander, until he was brought back to alertness with a jolt.
“Only one still in the hospital,” Rhys was saying. “He’s finally showing some improvement, but the damage—” He shook his head bitterly.
“Is that Tamin?” asked Gabriel. “Isn’t he going to get better, like the others?”
“I hope so, Gabe, but the scarring on his gill tissue is the worst we’ve seen. He might never be comfortable underwater again.” Rhys was speaking quietly, his face serious. “Don’t repeat that, obviously.”
“I won’t—but why was it so much worse for him?”
“We’re not sure. He might just have been more susceptible. I’ve been combing through his genetype looking for anomalies, but . . .”
He paused while Delial and Horace, who had been drafted in from the empty grocery next door, delivered five laden plates to the table. For a few minutes there was no sound except for the clinking of cutlery and chewing. Gabriel, enveloped in the aroma of seashore pie, discovered that he was ravenous. It was one of his father’s specialties, and one of his favorites, made from fish and shellfish farmed out in the estuary. He tucked in with relish—and then remembered that Tamin had worked on one of those farms.
“If that’s not it,” he said to Rhys, “what else could it be?”
The young doctor examined a prawn on the end of his fork as though it might have the answer. “Another possibility is that his exposure was greater. Cal and Eli saw him swim in from the river and he was immediately symptomatic, whereas it took a while for most patients to start feeling ill.” Eli and Callan both nodded, their mouths too full to speak. “If he was the only one who swam through a cloud of algae as it was releasing the toxin, then he would’ve gotten more of a hit than anyone else.”
“That would mean it was being released in the river,” Gabriel pointed out, “not actually inside Sinkat.”
“I’m leaning toward that view, especially since he then went back into the water and swam across the basin—that suggests the problem wasn’t actually in the basin yet.”
“It makes sense,” Aryel said. “They haven’t found anything in Sinkat that could have acted as the catalyst, and it would’ve been easier to get whatever it was into the main channel without being noticed. Mind you, they haven’t found anything there either.”
“The police liaison told Lapsa they think they’re looking for some kind of bioplastic or polymer,” Gabriel added, keeping his voice low. “I thought the whole point about those is that they’re not reactive, but they took samples from all the wet buildings, buoys, lane markers, even the hulls of boats. Everything that’s underwater.”
Rhys was shaking his head. “The idea was that the catalytic compound might have been incorporated into some perfectly innocent material. Think of the way quantum-energy cells are embedded in the biopolymer structure of the Thames Tidal building—that’s pretty sophisticated, but the basic technique has been around a long time. With all the new development in Sinkat recently, the police thought maybe the terrorists had snuck something in through the regular supply chain.” He shrugged and stabbed another prawn. “But there’s nothing, not there, or in the river. So I don’t know how they did it.”
“We’re missing something,” Aryel said. Her eyes, huge and bright in the bronze oval of her face, rested on Gabriel. “There’s more going on here than a protectionist energy market or a reactionary political movement or even plain old-fashioned prejudice. It has elements of all those things, but it’s bigger than any one of them. And I can’t shake the feeling that we’re being so bombarded by events and information, we’re failing to notice something obvious.”
QUANTUM
19
Mikal Varsi was delivering three noisy children to school early the next morning when his earset buzzed.
“Honey? Have you dropped the kids yet? Oh, you haven’t—why are they making such a racket? I’ve got news.”
“They have decided to form a band,” Mikal told Sharon solemnly. “It will be a global sensation. They are going to travel the world and be on every stream, everywhere, all of the time. Won’t that be lovely? I’ve been treated to their first rehearsal.”
He ushered the children through the school gate, across the narrow front yard, and up to the building’s entrance, managing to keep a straight face as down the line Sharon dissolved into helpless laughter. The aide checking pupils in and dispatching them to their classrooms took in the dancing, prancing, screeching trio and planted herself in front of them with arms folded and a look of polite inquiry. The clamor died away with a speed that Mikal, who had suggested in vain that they lower the volume during the tramp through the misty, sleepy streets of Riveredge Village, found little short of miraculous. The woman, who moved with the solid grace of an athlete, had tattooed hands and glowing teal-colored hair and an expression that said she’d seen it all before but would be happy to accept an explanation if one were to be forthcoming. Eve, Misha, and Sural grinned up at her. She gazed down at them thoughtfully, as though they were a particularly interesting and knotty problem, before turning her querying expression on Mikal. He decided it would be wrong to deny her the joy of discovery and returned his most sympathetic look.
“Morning, Teri. Children?”
“Good morning Miss Teri,” they chorused raggedly.
“Good morning, Mikal,” she said, imperturbable. “Good morning, Misha. Good morning, Eve. Good morning, Sural. In you go. We are walking, not running, and talking, not shouting, correct?”
They scampered past with a volley of “Yes, misses,” and an added, “Singing isn’t shouting,” from Eve.
Mikal called, “Have a good day!” after them, thinking that in their case the encouragement was entirely unnecessary, waved at Teri, and backed away, pointing at his earset. She flapped an understanding hand at him, and he made his escape.
“Sharon? You still there? I’ve handed them over to Terissa. Is it too late to go back to bed?”
“Not for you.”
/> “If it’s just me, there’s not much point.”
“I can’t help you with that at the moment, Councillor,” she said sedately. “Maybe later. I do have some other diversions that you might appreciate.”
“I’ll take what I can get.”
“Our two terrorist suspects have been identified. They have a history of working together, even before this latest venture. I thought you’d like to know that both are recent ex-employees of Bankside BioMass.”
That bombshell stopped Mikal dead on the pavement, where other hurrying parents almost collided into him. He sidestepped, mumbling an apology, and strode swiftly out of their hearing. “You don’t say.”
“I do say. Several former colleagues got in touch overnight, all giving the same names. They were checked against the employment records, and the EM officer arrested yesterday has now looked at their file photos and confirmed that they are indeed the men she met. I’m about to update the bulletin.”
“Has Bankside responded?”
“Not exactly,” Sharon said drily. “The press officer I just spoke to was dumbfounded. Given that no one in the chain of command has come up with a credible explanation for how a random pair of low-lifes gained access to their hydroponics farm, I can’t imagine why. I expect someone rather more senior will be in touch any minute now.”
“Any leads on where the terrorists are?”
“Hmm . . .”
He sighed. “Oh, right, you’re not supposed to tell me that. Shall I just assume there’s no sign of them at their last addresses, and known acquaintances have no knowledge of their current whereabouts?”
“I couldn’t possibly comment, except to observe that you would have made an excellent detective.”
He laughed. “Nice to know there might be a career for me to fall back on. Although that news should smooth my way today considerably.” He remembered that it was not the news he’d been expecting. “Is this what they called you in at the crack of dawn for? I thought it was Kaboom-related.”
Regeneration Page 19
