The Dire Earth: A Novella (The Dire Earth Cycle)

by Jason M. Hough

  A security guard waited at the second-to-last door. The man, South Asian so far as Nigel could tell, inspected Nigel’s offered passport with more scrutiny than airport customs had and, finally, opened the door.

  Nigel found himself standing in an empty conference room. The walls were windowless. A huge monitor screen, currently off, made up the entire wall opposite him. Resting on the gaudy patterned carpet were six high-backed leather chairs and a large oval table with a green faux-marble texture.

  On the table sat a safe. It was square, seventy centimeters on a side and jet-black in coloration save for the large tumbler dial and handle in brass. An antique. Nigel hadn’t seen one like it in years.

  “He’s here,” the guard said.

  For a moment Nigel thought the man was talking to the safe, of all things, but then another voice emerged from a speaker concealed somewhere in the ceiling.

  “Mr. Proctor,” the voice said. It was gruff, Australian-accented with a hint of Indian upbringing.

  “At your service,” replied Nigel. “You must be Mr. Narwan.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I thought we’d meet in person. In fact it’s a standard procedure—”

  “You came here to convince us to upgrade our safe. I happen to be fond of this old mechanical kind and told your boss so. But he assures me you can prove such devices are easily bypassed.”

  “That’s true, but—”

  Narwan cut him off. “Open that safe inside ten minutes and we’ll talk.”

  “Why ten minutes?” Nigel asked.

  “Any safe can be opened given enough time,” the man said. “However, if some nefarious cocksucker had access to my safe for longer than ten minutes, I’ve got other problems. I’d rather an intruder never made it that far, and fund my security precautions accordingly.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “So. Can you do it?”

  “Yes,” Nigel said.

  “Without damaging the safe? Or leaving any evidence of tampering?”

  “Yes. But your man has to wait outside, and any cameras or other surveillance gear in here must be turned off. Trade secrets and all that.”

  A slight pause. “The guard stays, but he’ll face the wall. That okay with you, Jimmy?”

  “Fine with me,” the guard said.

  “Mr. Proctor?”

  Nigel grimaced but decided not to argue. A secondhand account might actually help add to the mystique his company enjoyed.

  “The clock starts now.”

  Nigel slid his comm from his pocket and glanced at it. “There’s still the matter of payment.”

  “Your fee,” Mr. Narwan said, “waits within.”

  There was a click as the man cut the connection from wherever he was. Probably the office across the hall, Nigel thought, but it mattered little.

  “Is he always so dramatic?” Nigel asked the guard.

  “Most of the time, yes,” Jimmy replied. He wheeled one of the chairs to the corner of the room, plopped into it, and turned himself to face the wall.

  “You’re going to hear some strange sounds,” Nigel said, opening his case.

  Jimmy raised one hand and gave a thumbs-up. “No problem, I’ve got the cricket test on.”

  Nigel grinned. Everyone had it on. Australia versus New Zealand, first round of the World Cup, live from Pakistan. Nigel didn’t care much for sport, but given that he was a Kiwi on enemy turf, so to speak, he hoped the Aussies would do well today and be crushed later on, after Nigel had flown back to Wellington.

  Focus, he told himself. Nigel set his heavy case on the conference table and opened it. Opening a safe like this was usually best solved with social engineering, unless one had the proper tool for the job. It just so happened Nigel did.

  From his large brown leather case he removed a smaller one with a hard, red plastic shell. He set this to one side and removed his slate, propping it up next to the safe and powering it on. Then he opened the red case and surveyed the contents.

  “How’s the test?” Nigel asked the guard.

  Without turning the man said, “We bowled a naught. Bad start. Wait, are you a Kiwi?”

  “I am.”

  “Your boys are batting now. I think you might have us today.”

  A silvery bag lay nestled in a foam cavity on one side, barely large enough to hold a sandwich. Attached to one end was a nozzle and a one-meter length of surgical tube, which in turn was capped with a syringe. In another cavity rested a black cylinder that resembled a fountain pen. Nigel removed it and slid it behind one ear. Then he twisted the nozzle at the top of the bag and lifted the syringe.

  Now, standing in front of the safe, he loaded the medical imaging software on his slate and prepped it to receive. When the green status came up he delicately slid the syringe into the tiny gap between the combination tumbler and the door of the safe. Nigel slowly plunged the stopper of the syringe down. A thick silvery foam began to flow down the tube and then into the lock mechanism. It was thick stuff and not easy to squeeze through the needlelike apparatus, but after a minute or so a few bubbles began to froth out from the bottom part of the circular gap. Nigel slid the syringe out, set it in the case, and plucked the black pen from behind his ear. He glanced at his slate, confirmed a ready state, and clicked the cap of the “pen.” A thin, stiff wire protruded from the tip, barely a centimeter long. Nigel pressed it into the drop of silver goo that clung to the bottom of the lock tumbler and glanced at his slate.

  “No!” the guard shouted. “Meat-pie bowling motherfu …” He trailed off, remembering himself.

  “I need to concentrate here,” Nigel said evenly.

  “Sorry, mate.”

  A current in the wire activated the goo. The stuff, made for advanced medical imaging, was filled with thousands of tiny sensor packs. Each had a unique ID, and could sense the IDs of those around them in six directions. When the proper current was applied, they transmitted this information over microscopic near-field antennae, which the fluid conducted back into the “pen.” The pen then repeated these signals over to the program on the slate. This was Nigel’s understanding, anyway. It had been his boss’s idea to procure such advanced medical gear for this purpose. Whatever was actually going on inside, within a few seconds the slate translated all this data into a three-dimensional model of the interior of the lock mechanism. Coarse and wobbly, the image nevertheless appeared on the screen. Nigel felt a bead of sweat drip down his brow. He wiped it away. This part was always the hardest. The simple act of understanding just what the hell he was looking at. There were perhaps five thousand sensors in the fluid, but even that quantity resulted only in a model that looked like some kind of avant-garde artwork made of wax drippings. Worse, the image was not of the lock, but of the empty spaces within it. Nigel forced his mind to imagine the inverse of what he was seeing. He spun the blob around slowly by tracing his finger across the screen, then stopped when its orientation matched the physical thing. Up was up, down was down. Good.

  “Fucking hell,” the guard muttered.

  Nigel froze. “What’s wrong?”

  “Rumble on the pitch. Both teams are at it, plus a bunch of idiots from the stands. Sounds like a real piss-up. God. Even the announcers are at it. Wish I had video.”

  Rumble on the pitch. Nigel turned the phrase over and over in his head while urging the distraction into one distant corner of his mind and refocused. He gently rolled the tumbler counterclockwise, just one digit over on the dial. On the screen, a second passed without anything happening. He knew that, inside, medical goo had been stirred by that tiny motion. New positional data flowed in and the image updated. The bits that changed were highlighted in red by the software. He went three numbers clockwise and watched the update again, repeating this tiny back-and-forth motion a few times until he had what he wanted: a true mental picture of the mechanism inside.

  Four wheels, so only four numbers to the combination. Easy. Nigel did a little jig and set to work.

  The gua
rd in the corner whispered, “What the fuck?”

  Nigel turned, ready to kill the screen of his slate to preserve secrecy. But the man still faced the wall, engrossed in the cricket test. “Now what?” Nigel asked, his desire to ignore the man suddenly outweighed by the sheer astonishment behind the words.

  “The damn feed’s been cut. I mean, it was totally incomprehensible anyway, just shouts and shit banging into the microphone. But now? Dead air.”

  “Power loss, probably.”

  The guard had his own slate out now. He poked at it frantically. Probably tapping into the HocNets for news from people at the pitch.

  Not my problem, Nigel reminded himself, and focused once again. Hardly anyone used mechanical locks like this anymore. The manager of the hotel probably thought this worked to his advantage. Nigel readied his usual diatribe against the flawed theory of “security through obscurity” as he rolled the wheel slowly to the right. Each second or so the model on the screen updated. Being able to see the interior of the lock made cracking it something even a child could do. He rolled the tumbler until the notch on wheel one caught that of wheel two, then went clockwise until he had wheels three and four. The fence fell into place then. Silently. He doubted even with an earpiece he could have heard it. And that was a good thing. He didn’t want the guard to turn around expectantly. Nigel tapped in the combination on his slate, then inserted a different syringe into the lock. A new signal coursed through the foam, forcing it to slacken. Nigel pulled the plunger back and sucked the modeling fluid out. Vaguely he wondered what the guard would make of the slurping sound. He glanced the man’s way just to make sure he wasn’t looking, but he was too busy with his slate. “Anything on the Hocs?”

  “I don’t … they seem to be offline. Pakistan, I mean. The whole goddamn place. Just like Africa yesterday.”

  That gave Nigel serious pause. There’d been no shortage of theories on what was happening in Africa. And yesterday parts of southern Europe had gone dark. And now Pakistan? Whatever it was, it was spreading, and fast. Some kind of computer virus, that was the theory Nigel subscribed to. “Well,” he said, “worry about it later. Take me to your boss.”

  The guard turned in his seat, and goggled when he saw Nigel brandishing the single envelope that had been inside the safe.

  _

  An hour later Nigel was in the bar, keen to drink to his success. Novak & Sons would soon have a contract to supply the hotel—indeed all eighteen locations in the chain—with modern safes and the procedures that dictated their proper use.

  “Martini,” he said to the bartender. “Shaken or stirred, I don’t give a shit. Very dirty is my only requirement.”

  The woman leaned against the inside edge of the bar, her back to the customers, face tilted up and blue-lit by the sensory screen she stared at. She and everyone else, Nigel realized.

  He followed her gaze. Three screens were mounted high on the wall behind the bar. They all showed the same thing: the wretched scene from Pakistan. The guard had been right, it was an epic piss-up. RUMBLE ON THE PITCH scrolled by in big block letters at the bottom of the sensory as perfect, vivid images of the melee were streamed one after a-gut-wrenching-nother. Nigel looked away as a fist caught one of the players on an already bloodied mouth.

  “Amazing what people are capable of,” Nigel said to no one in particular. “I mean, it’s supposed to be a civilized sport, isn’t it? Rumble on the pitch, indeed. Drink, barkeep!”

  The woman didn’t move. The people sitting on either side of him were still. Nigel glanced back up at the screen. A trio of evening newscasters was discussing the footage. He’d not gestured for sound to be beamed his way and heard nothing, so subtitles appeared in cartoonish bubbles. He caught only snippets. Things like “… mystery ailment sweeps through Pakistan …” and “… total information lockdown.”

  The last, “outbreak of biblical proportions,” seemed excessive to the point of irresponsibility.

  Nigel’s comm bleeped. Not the fancy sensory-grade model he used for legitimate business, but the throwaway he’d bought upon arrival in case a special assignment arose. The sort of work that required discretion. A little tingle ran up his spine. He fished the thin plastic slab from his duster’s inner pocket and pressed it to his ear. No need to check the caller’s name; only one person had the number. It took a few seconds for the encrypted link to complete its handshake, then came the sound of labored breathing on the other end. Nigel lowered his voice to a sort of whispered shout. “Boss man! Are you watching this atrocity?”

  “Of course I am.” This came as a surprise. Novak cared little for sport. The business was his life. “Everyone is. Was. It’s unbelievable.”

  “At least you’re not among Aussies.” Nigel cast a sidelong glance at the other patrons. “I thought they’d be happier.”

  Novak spoke again. His breaths came in quick rasps. “Look. Something’s come up. Are you in your room?”

  “I’m at the bar. Untended!”

  “Well get back to your room. Someone will be along to collect you.”

  Without a drink to finish, Nigel shrugged. “What about the job? We got it, by the way. Just paperwork now.”

  “Forget it. This one is more important.”

  _

  In the elevator “The Girl from Ipanema” had given way to a horrendous interpretation of ~/funk’s latest megahit, “Orgasm Organism.” Even rendered by soulless piano the beat set Nigel shuffling from foot to heavy foot.

  The door opened.

  A man stood just outside, back to the elevator as if he’d not been waiting, but standing guard. His posture, the suspicious glance backward, his dark comfortable clothes … all of it put Nigel on instant alert.

  “Mr. Proctor?” the man asked.

  A myriad of clever replies flittered through his head. He chose “Yes?”

  The man looked him up and down, then tilted his head and pressed one finger against a small black disk adhered to his neck just below the ear. “He’s here. Yeah. Understood.”

  Nigel glanced past the man. Down the hall, standing in a patch of yellow light that spilled from the door of his own room, were two more stiff-backed gentlemen in dark clothing. Presently another pair emerged. The first, a woman, had Nigel’s briefcase in one hand and dragged his overnight roller with the other. She looked vaguely familiar, as did the man who emerged behind her. He carried two black trash bags.

  The group made their way toward the elevator.

  On instinct Nigel moved back into the corner. He watched the approaching people closely, finally realizing where he knew the man and woman from. “Some holiday, eh?”

  The woman swept into the waiting elevator first, pressing his briefcase into his chest. He clutched it. Her hand went to her pocket, came back out with a hotel keycard. “Thanks for allowing us into your room, Mr. Proctor.”

  He took the offered card, realizing belatedly it had been in his front left duster pocket when he’d ridden down. “I have an open-door policy,” he said lamely.

  The others filed in, cramming the small car. The woman selected the top floor, 83, and within seconds the chime began to count their progress.

  Nigel glanced around. “I assume you’ll explain who you are and where we’re going?”

  The woman turned her head slightly. “Were you not contacted?”

  “Boss said to wait in my room. That a new job had come up and someone would be by to collect me.”

  “Which we’ve just done.” She flashed a half smile. “Search him.”

  Nigel ignored the hands pawing at his duster and pant legs. “Penthouse suite safe, I’m to gather? The jewels of some wealthy dignitary? An executive’s datacube, perhaps?”

  Her smile ticked wider.

  They examined the two locksmithing kits he carried in his coat, showing them to the woman, who gave the slightest of nods at each. Both comms were studied, thumbed alive for a few seconds, then returned along with the kits. “He’s clean,” one of the men said.


  When the doors slid open the woman exited first. She turned left at the penthouse doors and continued down the hallway to a door marked ROOF ACCESS, where she paused and stared up at a discreet bubble camera mounted just above. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then an audible click from somewhere within the wall broke the silence. The woman pushed the door open and powered up a flight of stairs. Nigel followed.

  A stiff, chaotic wind brought faint smells of the streets far below. He followed the woman out onto a landing pad. A clunker of an aircraft waited, white surface worn to bare metal in places. Little streams of black scarring trailed from every rivet, and the porthole windows were scratched and yellowed.

  Five minutes later the cabin door hissed shut and they were airborne, powering into the sky on the wail of vertical thrusters. Out the window the pin-light jungle of Sydney slid by to the south and east, falling away with every passing second. Nigel shifted in his seat. They’d guided him to the middle row of three. The handsome wag sat in front of him, the woman across the aisle. Neither had spoken since entering the aircraft, their attention held rapt by the glowing screens of their pocket comms. Every now and then they’d glance at each other simultaneously, concerned.

  Nigel checked his own devices. The cheap one simply demanded more credit to continue working. He stuffed it into the seatback pocket in front of him, happy to be rid of it. His other device, the high-end model, showed the usual steady connection of the state-run network, plus thirty-seven HocNets. These he unified into a single river of information and dipped in.

  Garbage. Chatter. Kids, speaking a cryptic language anyone over twenty would struggle to understand. As a rule Nigel avoided this kind of shit. Anyone could say anything with as much anonymity as they desired. Information sloshed about, leaked, dried up in a frenetic unreliability that the youth mistook as energy. But in certain situations—an election, a catastrophe—the Hocs were useful. Nigel forced his brain to follow the flow rather than the individual ripples, hoping trends would emerge. The information drifted by, networks falling away as the plane gained altitude and distance, replaced by new ones almost as fast. Almost, but not quite. Steadily the counter dropped until, at cruising altitude and a hundred kilometers from Sydney, the river dried up.