Tropic of Death

by Robert Sims

  Luker had to swallow his disgust and refrain from slamming the door behind him as he left. He took the lift down to the basement and walked through the connecting tunnel to the compound with a sense of unease over Maddox’s parting comment. It had left him wondering what he might find. The duty guard led the way into a small adjoining block and down a corridor to the holding cells, where he unlocked one of the doors. When the door was opened Luker groaned at what he saw.

  The body of Paul Giles, his bare feet dangling, hung limply from the bars of the cell window, eyes bulging, tongue protruding, skin bloodless, a torn strip of cotton shirt knotted around his neck. He’d been left hanging there for some time, as if his exit mattered to no one.

  55

  Rita woke feeling remarkably clear-headed after her night out with Jarrett. She’d remembered to drink water to offset the alcohol and counter any dehydration from too much dancing. He’d treated her to dinner at the sailing club, which was hosting a 1980s disco party, and they’d hit the dance floor with a vengeance. It was the sort of blow-out she’d needed. Afterwards, Jarrett brought her back to the hotel, dropping her at the entrance, where she’d rewarded him with an affectionate kiss on the cheek before saying goodnight. After showering, she towelled herself in the morning sunlight streaming across the balcony, pulled on a white shirt, denim skirt and sandals and headed down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast.

  Her mood was upbeat despite the prospect of more disk-chasing on behalf of Maddox. As long as she could put the nail-gun killings out of her mind, the chore seemed less arduous.

  She sat under a terrace umbrella, watching the parrots scavenging scraps from around the tables as she tucked into bacon, eggs and hash browns with a hearty appetite. The morning newspaper was spread in front of her. The front-page splash ran the latest revelations on the evil deeds of Billy Bowers - evil deeds he hadn’t committed, as it turned out, but that was classified.

  A shadow fell across the table as she pushed away an empty plate. She looked up to see Luker standing there in sloppy beach clothes and sunglasses, sporting the pallor of a hangover.

  ‘Sit down,’ she told him, gesturing to a waiter. ‘You’re in time for coffee.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, slumping into a chair. ‘You seem cheerful enough.’

  ‘I am. I had a night out on the town - drinking, dining and dancing. Just what I needed to forget all the crap I’ve had to deal with.’

  ‘Then it’s a pity I have to remind you.’

  ‘Why, what’s happened?’

  Luker pursed his lips and said nothing as the waiter returned with a coffee pot and filled their cups. They both liked it black.

  ‘So?’ asked Rita, as the waiter retreated.

  ‘I found Paul Giles dead in a cell at the base last night. He’d apparently hanged himself.’

  ‘Shit.’ Rita rested her elbows on the table. ‘You say apparently.’

  ‘When they got him back to the compound they washed and clothed him but didn’t call a doctor or provide medication. They locked him away and left him isolated. What effect do you think that would have?’

  ‘With his bipolar condition, it’s enough to induce suicide.’

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘You’re suggesting his death was a foregone conclusion?’

  ‘A conclusion that was helped along, one way or another. For all I know, he was lifted into the noose.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to Maddox?’

  ‘He almost dared me to challenge him. I can’t because there’s no proof and Maddox has powerful friends. But there’s something else,’ added Luker. ‘No one questioned Giles. There’s no record of an interview. I wasn’t informed and when I arrived it was too late. All I’ve got is a field report, illustrated with photos from the trophy shed, which has now been wiped clean.’

  ‘And you’re telling me this because … ?’

  ‘You spoke to him. You looked inside the shed. You’re the only witness.’ He sipped his coffee. ‘I’m the one who has to compile an official report for my masters in Canberra so I need to hear your impressions before I can judge what I’ve been presented with.’

  ‘If you insist.’ She spooned a little sugar into her cup, stirring absent-mindedly. ‘The shed housed a souvenir collection.

  Newspaper clippings, downloaded photos - a chronicle of the killings - and four sets of severed hands nailed to crosses. On a bench was a meat cleaver, bin bags and a cordless nail gun. The sight, the smell, the flies were gross, and thanks for making me recall it.’

  ‘Sorry, I needed corroboration. Why the nails and the crosses?’

  ‘Crucifixions. Paul was steeped in symbols of the Roman Empire.’

  ‘I see.’ Luker rubbed his chin, his worry lines tightening. ‘The report includes what passes for a confession and a motive. It’s a single sentence typed on a sheet of Whitley Sands notepaper, signed by Giles. I can quote it exactly: I tracked them with Panopticon and executed them because they posed a lethal threat to the Zillman project, which must be preserved as her legacy. What do you make of that?’

  ‘They’re not his words. When I spoke to him, he was nowhere near that coherent. Besides, he never referred to “the Zillman Project”, he talked about Audrey. He said he had to protect her.’

  ‘Well, at least that fits.’

  ‘You think so?’ Rita drank her coffee and looked out over the sea, which seemed empty with the aircraft carrier gone. A rising wind was whipping up the waves. ‘I’m not cheerful anymore.’

  ‘And I’ve still got my suspicions.’

  ‘There’s one other person who can help,’ sighed Rita. ‘You should talk to her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Audrey, of course.’

  ‘But that’s impossible,’ said Luker.

  ‘If you’re going to put security protocols in the way …’

  ‘No, no, no - you don’t understand,’ he interrupted. ‘It’s impossible to talk to her because Audrey is dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ Rita nearly spilt her coffee. ‘I spoke to her on the weekend.’

  ‘You did?’ asked Luker sceptically.

  Rita felt genuinely upset. ‘When was she killed?’

  ‘No one killed her, she’s not another victim,’ he said. ‘Audrey died a year ago.’

  She stared at him, bewildered. ‘Am I going crazy, or are you?’

  ‘Neither of us.’ Luker rubbed his temples. ‘This will take some explaining.’ He dragged a glass ashtray towards him. ‘You’re more intimate with Panopticon than I’d guessed. I didn’t realise you’d experienced direct contact with it.’

  ‘You’re talking about it when I want to hear about her: Audrey.’

  ‘ It and her are the same thing!’ Luker raised his eyebrows. ‘I feel like a host on Strange But True. ‘

  Rita was losing patience. ‘So start explaining.’

  ‘The Audrey you spoke to was the interactive control system of Panopticon.’

  She gave him a hard look. ‘I’ve been talking to a computer?’

  ‘It’s a bit more than that.’ He got one of his French cigarettes into his mouth and lit it. ‘It’s state-of-the-art machine intelligence.’

  ‘You’re talking technology,’ she protested. ‘But Audrey and I had actual conversations.’

  ‘That’s the whole point. Real-time talkback. The raw input of Panopticon is beyond anyone’s capacity to cope with. Instead of relying solely on keyboards and search engines, system operators can also communicate directly with the AI to retrieve and collate sequences from the database.’ He gave her a quizzical look. ‘But you need Whitley Sands operational clearance for that, so how did you contact it?’

  ‘ It contacted me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To resolve a discrepancy.’

  ‘Intriguing. I was told, in practical terms, it learns and adapts as it interacts.’ Luke blew out a plume of smoke. ‘It can’t think of course. It’s just a machine.’

  ‘With a human personality. Why Audrey Zillma
n’s?’

  ‘Why not? She created it and lived with the implants, almost until the day she died.’

  ‘What from?’

  ‘Cancer.’

  Rita shook her head. ‘Well this is one I didn’t see coming. No thanks to Paul Giles, either. He spoke as if Audrey was still alive.’

  She ran a hand through her hair. ‘Though it adds a new dimension to his personality - an Oedipal fixation with a virtual lover.’

  ‘And if he saw the disk as a death threat against her,’ Luker ruminated, ‘it makes his motive for murder more plausible.’

  Rita squinted at him in the sunlight. ‘You’re not convinced he did it,’ she said. ‘That’s why you’re asking me questions.’

  ‘Maybe. Do you have any doubts about what you found?’

  ‘Of course I do. But I’m trying to disengage. I’ve experienced exactly what Steinberg described - a no-man’s land where the normal rule of law doesn’t apply.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Luker nodded slowly, drawing in smoke as if it were oxygen. ‘Tell me your doubts.’

  ‘Paul’s psychology, for a start. From the moment I met him there were signs of a breakdown, but not those of a paranoid schizophrenic or a psychopath. He was suffering a bipolar collapse, with a loss of reality.’

  ‘And that doesn’t fit the crimes?’

  ‘The killings were organised and efficient. The trophy shed was neat, laid out methodically. But Paul was increasingly confused and disorganised. I seriously doubt he had the mental stability to do any of it.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘He never actually confessed to me - almost the opposite -

  as if he was trying to comprehend why he would have done it.

  He actually questioned the reality of what he’d seen in the shed.

  More importantly, his supply of lithium had gone. What if it was removed?’

  ‘It would trigger a breakdown?’

  ‘And render him helpless. You know, when he first approached me it was to say he was scared of being set up as a fall guy.’

  ‘You think it’s possible?’

  ‘His relationship with Audrey and the fact he was a Roman nut were common knowledge. So perhaps he was the perfect choice.’

  ‘If he was the fall guy,’ said Luker, ‘you and I are the dupes.

  That would be very clever, aimed at making my official report nothing but a rubber stamp. The trouble is there’s no way of proving it.’

  ‘There is another source,’ said Rita.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Panopticon. Do you have level-seven access?’

  ‘Of course not. That’s a highly restricted defence system. Only the scientists and military intelligence have access. I’m just a public servant, as I’m often reminded. If I were to try to get at it I’d be hauled over the coals.’

  ‘That’s a pity,’ murmured Rita, deciding not to mention the access key that Paul had given her.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  They sat in silence, finishing their coffee, Luker moving smoothly from one cigarette to the next, the waiter gliding over to refresh their cups. A few fellow guests settled around a table at a comfortable distance. They began to order breakfast, their conversation peppered with holiday laughter. Their relaxed banter was consistent with the mood of the day.

  Then Rita said, ‘Tell me more about the computer.’

  ‘All I’ve had is an introductory session on the way it works and how it was developed.’

  ‘So tell me.’

  ‘It’s the AI control system that’s cutting edge. It employs methods similar to those in the human brain to encode and process information.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Neural networks, self-organising algorithms, molecular loops

  - that sort of stuff. The boffins are full of terms that go straight over my head. Nonlinear feedback, associative memory. The list goes on. Holographic organisation, fractal modelling. Mean anything to you?’

  ‘I’m getting used to it. My boyfriend talks nerd-speak. And the system was developed by Audrey Zillman?’

  ‘From what I gather, she was already creating it in early 2004 when she got the final prognosis that her illness was terminal. I might be cynical, but I think she discovered a form of immortality.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, the machine intelligence that drives Panopticon is interactive and needs a human voice, face and personality. She gave it her own. It was her way of cheating death.’

  ‘How long did it take?’

  ‘It was up and running by February 2005,’ he went on. ‘After a few months of diagnostics and adjustments it was ready for the scanning. Around her thirty-seventh birthday, Audrey underwent a general anaesthetic to have microchips implanted in her skull and spinal nerves.’

  ‘Why, for God’s sake?’

  ‘To relay signals from her nervous system and cortex to the computer, which in turn fired electronic impulses back into her body. Sounds creepy but it’s all clinically respectable. It meant the machine intelligence was able to monitor, record and stimulate biochemical activity in Audrey while communicating directly with the neuronal circuits in her head.’ Luker seemed to enjoy the topic. ‘We’re in the twenty-first century, Van Hassel. The future has arrived.’

  ‘So I’m told. Did she live to see her work completed?’

  ‘Just about. She clocked up more than a thousand hours in a VR

  studio, wired to sensors, while the machine mapped her memory, thought structures and personality, downloading something like a trillion gigabytes of information directly from her brain. Her closest colleagues, among them Paul Giles, watched her living with the machine and dying with it. They were on hand to observe the implants filing vast amounts of data into the logical reconstruction of her mind. But by late autumn a year ago she was too ill to go on.’

  ‘When did she die?’

  ‘The middle of last year. But two months before her death, the system driving the Panopticon computer was already speaking with her voice and projecting her image. She set out to reverse-engineer the content of her brain, and the patterns now line the core. Identity as product. I think of her as the ghost in the machine. Or Wordsworth’s phantom of delight - And now I see with eye serene the very pulse of the machine. ‘

  ‘Yes,’ said Rita. ‘Now I feel like I was talking to a ghost.’ She gazed at a yacht struggling against the wind and waves that were driving it towards the shore. ‘Why is her death a secret?’

  ‘It’s not. Her instructions were followed to the letter.’

  ‘Which were?’

  ‘No death notice, no announcement, with people informed only on a need-to-know basis. Her parents were child refugees in Britain after the war, both dead, no other relatives.’ Luker gave her a bleak look. ‘She also wanted the location of her grave kept secret, so it’s classified.’

  ‘But you’ve seen the file?’

  ‘I have, but Paul Giles hadn’t. I suppose in a way he was entitled to think she just went off and abandoned him.’

  ‘Was there a funeral ceremony?’ asked Rita.

  ‘A private burial. Just a few monks present.’

  ‘Monks? Who’d have thought?’ The yacht finally won its battle and headed out to open sea. ‘In a way, I’m sad. I was actually looking forward to meeting Audrey at some stage. Now I never will.’

  56

  Rita hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the door of her hotel room, locked it and carried her laptop out to the table on the balcony. Once she’d gone online, she sat back and made herself comfortable, drinking from a chilled bottle of water.

  Below her the fronds of palm trees flapped in a warm wind that fanned the sunbathers sprawled in deck chairs and ruffled the sea in lines of breakers. The harbour and town were dappled in sun and shade from a procession of white cumulus clouds, while along the streets moved a stream of traffic and pedestrians wandering at a lethargic pace.

  Rita was ready.

  She turned to the laptop and plugged in the a
ccess key. It took a little less than a minute to call up the sign-in page for Panopticon. Rita typed in the password: Descartes. Within seconds she was being logged onto a live email link with the computer.

  Panopticon: Standby. Checking VPN code. Confirmed. Checking email ID Van Hassel. Confirmed. Checking status. Associate Officer Whitley Sands Security Force. Confirmed. Police Delegate to Whitley Sands Security Review. Confirmed. Checking security clearance. Level 1 upgrading to level 7. Updated.

  Welcome. You have level-7 access to the Panopticon database.

  For assistance click on HELP or type a specific question.

  Van Hassel: Was my first online contact to resolve a discrepancy?

  Panopticon: Correct.

  Van Hassel: Repeat to me why that was necessary.

  Panopticon: To maintain the integrity of the data.

  Van Hassel: Is that an essential function of the computer system?

  Panopticon: Correct.

  Van Hassel: To fulfil it, can the system communicate independently of the Whitley Sands research base authorities?

  Panopticon: Correct.

  Van Hassel: Explain.

  Panopticon: Data integrity protocols provide for autonomous decision-making in data preservation, the resolution of information anomalies, anti-virus protection, electronic defences and the operation of the firewall. Anti-terrorist protocols provide for autonomous evaluation from surveillance input of organised threats, hostile acts and ongoing terrorist attacks, and the issuing of automatic security alerts to approved personnel.

  Van Hassel: Is that why a red alert was sent to me?

  Panopticon: Correct. As an Associate Officer of the Whitley Sands Security Force you were automatically granted approved status. As a level-7 contact your security privileges have been upgraded.

  Van Hassel: Do the data integrity protocols cover internal tampering with surveillance content?

  Panopticon: Correct.

  Van Hassel: Paul Giles claimed that footage had been deliberately corrupted. Is that true?

  Panopticon: Correct. Data had been erased.

  Van Hassel: That contradicts the protocols.

  Panopticon: The contradiction has been resolved.