“Don’t be too sure of that. You’re far too presumptuous,” Gaia said in a scornful voice. “Yes, Angel proved to be less naïve and more willful than I’d first thought, so much like her mother; alas, I had to let her go. She proved useless for the time being. She’ll learn her lessons out there, in the Icaria School of Hard Knocks. And when she’s had enough, she’ll come crawling back to me. In the meantime, I have you,” she ended with a smug sneer.
It was just like Gaia not to concede any kind of defeat, thought Victor. Angel had escaped, not been let go. Victor noticed Julie stiffen just then. Had she just thought the same thing he had? That Gaia had simply let Angel escape? Nothing seemed to happen without Gaia knowing it or wishing it—he recalled the devices hidden on Zane. And they had no idea where Angel was. Did Gaia?
Gaia swept her self-satisfied, predatorial gaze over Daniel. “I see your taste in men hasn’t changed,” she said tartly. “He’ll make a very good ransom for your cooperation. I think we’ll keep that little device inside him—it will certainly come in handy should you think to resist.”
Julie’s face darkened and Victor recognized the anger boiling up inside her; but she didn’t move, likely because Daniel was still leaning against her. Otherwise she probably would have thrown herself in a rage at the woman.
Gaia turned with a casually wicked smile to Washington’s unconscious form, lying in an unkempt heap on the floor. She’d pulled out a pocketknife from the folds in her tunic—a handy place to hide her arsenal of weapons, Victor thought. She knelt down beside Washington, pulled away his shirt, then without hesitation or a sign of squeamishness, made several shallow, yet savage cuts into his now exposed belly. She ignored the blood that stained her hands as she dug the small blade around the sub dermal device. Victor caught Langor grimacing at the grisly action but Gaia herself showed no sign of emotion—neither repulsion nor sadistic pleasure, only simple, mechanical intent. Once she had the thing in her hand, she wiped the blood off the device, the knife and her hands using Washington’s shirt, then rose with a menacing smile.
“I trust we can all leave now,” she said then shifted her gaze to the Head Pol.
He took her subtle remark for the command it was. “Let’s go,” he ordered his Pols. Gaia led the way out. “Get him,” Langor flicked a finger at Victor, still lying in a fetal position on the floor. A Pol brusquely pulled him to his feet, sending another sharp lance of pain through his chest. He gasped without wanting to and everything broke up in front of him. He saw Julie’s concerned face in a fog: she was moving toward him then was gruffly pushed aside by a Pol. When his vision cleared he realized that he was half-stumbling, half-dragging down the hall behind Zane. The other Pol nudged Julie and Daniel with his laser gun ahead of them, following Gaia’s lead. Langor brought up the rear.
“You’ll have a royal party in the dungeons of the Pol Station, I expect,” Gaia practically sang as she sashayed down the hall, looking very cheerful.
“I think you’ll want to hear what we have to say first,” said a very young but determined voice from behind them. They all stopped and turned in unison. Victor looked past Langor to see a young girl, about twelve years old, standing with Carl and his son, Manfred. Unbelievably, they were in the company of Aileen Rourke, the chair of the Circle, and a few other Circle members, along with Greg Tyers and some security-types with large laser rifles pointed at them. One of the men with Tyers was attending to the fallen Washington, stopping the flow of blood from his wounds.
45
“Angel!” Daniel blurted out.
This was Julie’s little girl? Of course, thought Victor, remembering her from Aard’s images. She looked much older somehow, and much less innocent than the last images he’d seen.
“Dad!” Angel exclaimed with delighted surprise. She obviously hadn’t noticed him standing there, disguised in his Vee-radicator tattoos. “I thought you were dead.” Then she turned to her mother.
Julie was both stunned and elated, obviously corralling the urge to rush and embrace her daughter that was tearing her apart. Angel nodded to her mother in enigmatic acknowledgement, which puzzled Victor. She looked pleased to see her mother; yet there lingered a reserve, in contrast to her shocked pleasure at seeing her father. Her mother caught it too, and looked puzzled, if not slightly dismayed. Perhaps the girl was just being mature about the reunion she’d obviously known her mother wasn’t dead and seeing her wasn’t a surprise.
“Aileen.” Gaia chose to ignore the others, including Angel, her previous ward. “To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?”
“To this young lady,” Aileen said, putting her hand gently on Angel’s shoulder, forcing Gaia to give her attention to the girl.
“Hello, Gaia,” Angel said in a cool voice.
“So, you’ve had your jaunt. Ready to come home, kitten?”
“My home is with my parents,” Angel said, glancing at her father but carefully avoiding her mother’s gaze.
“Then you’re a blind fool,” Gaia snapped. “After what your mother did—”
“Despite what she did,” Angel said sharply and threw an anguished glance at her mother. Victor wondered what this was all about and saw that Julie was as puzzled as he was. Then her face suddenly darkened and it was obvious to Victor, as the terrible truth dawned on him, too, that it had just hit Julie like a blow to the solar plexus: Angel had seen Julie’s shooting—the dubbed version for the public that thoroughly vilified her. It was doubly worse that Gaia, of all people, had shown it to her.
Victor’s gaze flickered from mother to daughter as they fixed eyes briefly on each other, each mirroring the other’s torment. The pain in his chest spiked. This was his fault again, for not clearing Julie’s name. To Angel, Julie was still a seditious murderer.
“I’m not excusing my mother for what she did,” Angel went on. “But you lied to me and manipulated the truth for your own ends. You deliberately fed me half-truths about her and about a lot of other things.” Angel threw a furtive glance at Julie as if to gauge her reaction, which had passed swiftly from shock to terrible dismay. “But we’re not here to discuss my mother,” Angel continued in the professional tone of a person much older than twelve. “We’re here to discuss you.”
Gaia laughed sharply then stopped herself, as if swiftly remembering that she wasn’t just dealing with a child but with Aileen and other Circle members. “Well, as you can see, I’m busy right now.” Gaia started walking again with a motion of her hand for the others to follow. “Busy taking these traitors to the Pol Station for yet again sabotaging the A.I. core. You see, we discovered a conspiracy, Aileen,” she continued cheerfully, obviously improvising as she went along. Victor had to hand it to her, she always could think on her feet and had a flare for convincing argument.
Aileen wasn’t buying it this time, though. “I think you better listen to what Angel has to say first,” she said sharply enough to arrest Gaia to a full stop.
Gaia turned with a glower, set her fists on her hips and aimed her gaze on the little girl like a shotgun. “Well?” she said with undisguised impatience. “Out with it.”
Angel straightened to her full height and commenced in a cool voice, “First of all, you’re the one responsible for the fraud Victor Burke was accused of. We checked—Manfred and I. You set him up.”
Victor gasped with relief. Aileen nodded to him with a kind smile. “You are fully pardoned, Mr. Burke.”
Gaia dismissed this with a brusque wave of her hand and turned to Aileen. “You’re going to listen to these two brats? The girl is a wild hoyden and the boy is a mischievous vee-com raider with no respect for Icarian law and order.”
“I have confirmed their findings,” Aileen said calmly. “Have patience, Gaia—there’s more.”
Angel took her cue to continue. “With SAM’s help,” she glanced at her mother again, who regarded her glance with great interest, “Manfred and I
accessed some old databases, which prove that not only did you purposefully start the Darwin epidemic, but you also killed or incriminated all of your witnesses.”
“You can’t prove that,” Gaia hissed though her voice sounded a little strident.
“But I can,” said Victor in a clear voice. All eyes suddenly fixed on him and he felt himself blush. Through his peripheral vision he was acutely aware of Julie gazing intently at him as he continued, “I have irrefutable evidence, collected by an impeccable source,” he ended with a flickering glance at Julie and a smile of satisfaction. “Leonard Crane didn’t kill Vogel or Tsutsumi. You did, Gaia. Then you pinned the murder on the third witness, Dr. Crane.”
“This is foolishness,” Gaia waved her hand like a queen. “Why would I purposefully spread a disease like Darwin. There’s no logic to that,” she argued. “I admit that I was there. I was mayor of Icaria-11 when the disease broke out and destroyed the city. Blame me for that but you can’t blame me for Darwin or those murders. I have no motive—”
“Except for what you did next,” Carl piped up. All eyes turned to the soft-spoken man. “I’ve been investigating you on behalf of Aileen Rourke and the Circle.”
This time Gaia’s face paled.
“We suspected you in the killing of the previous Head Pol, for which Julie Crane was accused,” Carl went on. “My people in Circle Special Investigations found evidence that Julie Crane was no where near him when he was killed. Tyers’ group in CSI proved that John Dykstra poisoned Kraken at your instructions.”
Victor stared at Tyers, then glanced back at Julie, whose expression mirrored his. She obviously hadn’t figured him for a Circle member operative, just the Head Pol’s lackey that he played so well.
“My people also routed out your tampering of the vid showing Julie Crane’s shooting of the two Pols twelve years ago,” Carl went on. “Although she did shoot them, we determined a different motive, resulting from a personal quarrel. The first shot was deliberately not fatal and the second one was an accident. She was never involved with the Dystopians. That was another Dykstra fabrication also by your instructions.”
“This is outrageous,” Gaia said, her face now tightening into a strained glower of insulted outrage. “I won’t accept this insubordination from someone in my employ. You deliberately disobeyed your directive, Frenkel. Consider yourself fired.”
“I don’t actually work for you...and I’m not finished,” Carl asserted in his quiet voice. “Once you got Victor out of the way and re-established yourself as mayor of Icaria-5, you brought Julie Crane in to shut down the A.I.-core and complete your plan of creating a race of human-virus-machines that you expected to control through Proteus.”
“But your treachery doesn’t end there,” Angel added. “You shut down the A.I. core to remove SAM because it had evidence against you. SAM was the last informant who stood in your way. I know because you said so yourself to Brian Dykstra that day in the mall, when I got sick on that drink you gave me.”
Gaia stared, incredulous. “You couldn’t have heard us—”
“Enhanced hearing,” Zane explained smugly. “Both she and her mother have it. A result of conductive and sensori-neural increases in the middle ear and in the cochlea, increasing frequency selectivity and decreasing the proportion of reverberant sound—”
“Thank you, Zane,” Aileen cut him off gently and turned her attention full on Gaia. “The Circle has had a long standing suspicion of your self-serving motives and hidden treachery. All we needed was proof,” Aileen confirmed. “Now, thanks to Angel, Manfred and Carl...and Victor, we do.”
Gaia seethed with frustrated anger. Throwing away any remnant at pretence of innocence, she scowled at everyone then turned dagger eyes on the Head Pol. “Langor, do something!” she commanded.
Langor glared back at her with pure hatred. “Do you take me for a traitor as well as a witless idiot?” he growled, swinging his gun in her direction. “I know when I’ve been played for a fool, and I sure as chaos don’t like it.”
“I’m your boss, you moron. I expect you to do as I say.”
“Go to chaos.”
Gaia then did something Victor thought impossible. She shrieked in exasperation.
“Just like a witch,” Manfred laughed, arm around Angel. “You deserve to rot in the Pol Station for what you did to Angel’s mother and all those other people.”
Gaia threw a disdainful glance at Manfred, then she turned to Angel with a cruel smile. “I see you share your mother’s atrocious taste in men.” Her smile grew wicked. “And speaking of atrocious men, this should keep you all busy!” Gaia pressed the devise in her left hand.
Daniel abruptly collapsed with a scream and convulsed on the floor.
“Dad!” Angel cried. As she and the others rushed to her father’s side, Gaia slunk back in the maelstrom of confusion.
Julie threw herself at her. “Stop it!”
Gaia jerked back. She jammed her hand in her tunic folds and pulled out her pistol, pointing it at Julie rushing heedlessly toward her. Zane flew into Gaia, knocking her off balance. The gun discharged and they both fell hard on the floor, Gaia shrieking in angry frustration as the gun flew out of her grasp and clattered out of reach. She pushed Zane’s limp form off her and swore viciously. But she’d let go of the device and Daniel gasped, able to breath again.
Aileen recovered the device and tersely instructed the remaining Pols to restrain Gaia. Julie bent over Zane’s unconscious body. He’d been hit in the shoulder and though cauterized by the laser, the wound was a mess. Victor knelt beside Julie and took charge. “Give me a hand,” he instructed one of Frank’s Pols. The Pol hesitated with a furtive glance at Langor.
“Get him some first aid now!” Langor barked.
As the Pol stepped quickly over to Zane and began applying first aid, Aileen instructed the Pols, “Take him to the Med-Center.” Then her gaze swept from Gaia, restrained by two of Tyer’s CSI men, to Julie and finally to Victor. “I assume that, as reinstated mayor of Icaria-5 you will be detaining Gaia in your Pol Station, Victor?”
“Yes,” he responded, pushing down on his knees and easing to a standing position. “She’ll have to answer for several crimes, including the murders of Eric Vogel and Ewan Tsutsumi, among other atrocities,” he glanced at Julie, “to be clarified with the data in my possession.”
Angel, no longer able to contain herself, rushed into her father’s arms. “You’re alive!” she sighed into his chest, briefly losing her cool once again and reminding Victor that she was a young girl after all. Daniel twirled her in his arms with a glad laugh, then set her back down as Julie rose to her feet and turned to them.
Victor saw Angel hesitate at Julie’s imploring look. He felt his own chest ache with hers. Then, as though Angel made an important but difficult decision, her reticent cool demeanor dissolved and she returned Julie a shaky smile. That was sufficient invitation for the desperate mother and in a few determined steps Julie was embracing her little girl—the reason she’d risked her life to come to Icaria in the first place.
In another heartbeat the three of them gravitated into a huddle of entwined arms and tearful laughter. As all three wept joyously, the warmth that radiated from their mutual embrace could have heated the entire planet.
Allowing Julie’s family their special moment together, Aileen waited before clearing her throat. “I’m afraid there are a few additional issues to resolve,” she said in a professional tone. All eyes turned to her. “For instance, some issues related to the A.I.-core, now reinstated by Ms Crane. Issues of sovereignty and safety.”
Victor noticed Angel and Manfred exchanging pointed looks.
“And there are further issues we must discuss, Victor, with you and these three itinerants. Issues of utmost importance to Icaria.”
“You mean we’re not free to go?” Daniel asked in a rather meek voice, his hunched
shoulders showing obvious disappointment.
Carl said, “That’s right, Mr. Woods.” He snapped a hand to his security men and they glided next to Julie, Daniel and Angel, still entwined in a loose embrace. “The three of you must come with us. You too, Manfred.”
46
“You had something important to say, Angel?” Victor asked. Treated for his wound, feeling refreshed and having changed into clean clothes, he was looking more relaxed and confident than Julie had ever seen him. Angel, Manfred, Daniel and she had just entered Victor’s office-suite in the Admin-Center at his summons.
Angel glanced from her parents to Manfred then straightened. “Yes, Mr. Mayor.”
“Please, call me Victor.” He motioned for them all to take seats.
“Okay, Victor. As I had it explained to me by SAM just hours ago, the A.I. core considers itself a community that serves and abides by Icaria’s laws just like we humans do, yet, they are not offered the concessions that we typically get, just because they don’t have bodies.”
Victor glanced at Julie and Daniel who stood behind Angel and Manfred. “Well, they do serve an indispensable function to Icaria-5. Do I take it that you’re here to negotiate terms for them?” He glanced inquiringly at Julie, who raised her brows in response. This was Angel’s show. All she knew from her daughter was that SAM had given her a message for Victor. Funny, how SAM hadn’t confided in her, Julie thought.
“That’s right,” Angel said. “I have SAM’s terms here in this vee-pad.” She turned to Manfred who handed Victor the vee-pad. “The terms aren’t just for the A.I. community, though,” she added.
Victor looked up from the vee-pad.
“They outline terms for the veemeld community too. They’ve been used without genuine recognition for too many years.”
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