Emergence (Fox Meridian Book 5)

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘You will still stay at home if you visit, won’t you?’ Fox’s mother asked as they stood watching various construction frames busy at their work. Fox and Andrea, along with the rest of the VIP contingent, were doing the tour and, for once, Fox got to sit back while Ray Rogers did the talking.

  ‘Well, I don’t know, Mom. Official business and all that…’ It was just a little weird: Andrea was treating Fox more like a girlfriend than a daughter, but with just a little proprietary pride showing through to hint at the true relationship. At first Fox had found it uncomfortable, but that had faded rapidly. They had not really been mother and daughter for a decade, and Andrea did look more like an older sister. Friends was possibly the best way their relationship could go.

  ‘We’re not that far away,’ Andrea countered. ‘Just a few minutes on your Q-bug, and we do have telepresence.’

  Fox smirked. ‘Maybe if my room got redecorated.’

  ‘We were thinking about that anyway,’ Jonathan put in. ‘If you bring Jason over here next Christmas, it might be nice if he had a place to sleep.’

  ‘That seems a long way off…’ Fox shook her head and returned her attention to Rogers.

  ‘We expect to have this residential facility up before the end of the month, complete with its new, state-of-the-art fabrication system which will be able to service the needs of the main office as well as the residents. We’ll be largely self-sufficient for energy in there, and able to produce most of our own food so long as we don’t mind plastic meals all the time. Personally, I’m still going to be buying at the market in the park.’ Rogers got a rumble of laughter from the crowd. ‘Let’s get back inside,’ he suggested, and he led the way in through some large, roller-style shutters.

  ‘The garage here houses eight Q-bugs and two larger vehicles,’ Rogers went on. ‘One of those is ground transport for our Pythia unit.’

  ‘But you have permission for a vertol for transporting that, correct?’ The speaker was Jameson Cochran, the local NAPA captain.

  ‘Yes, sir. Thanks to support from several of our guests here, we received permission to run a vertol out of here.’ Turning, Rogers walked through an open door at the back of the garage. Fox noted the thickness of the metal and that the masonry had been reinforced, and guessed what was on the other side. ‘And this is where she sits,’ Rogers said as the sleek-but-functional aircraft came into view. ‘Normal procedure is to have the server unit in place in the ship where we can deploy rapidly if needed, but we can also connect her up to the network.’

  ‘Her?’ Cochran asked.

  ‘Pythia,’ Fox supplied. ‘She’s a class three, not a class four, but she’s very bright, articulate. You tend to think of her as “she” fairly quickly if you spend much time with her.’

  ‘She spent a few days in my workshop, Jim,’ Jonathan said, ‘and I was thinking of her as… I don’t know, the lady who lived in the box. I kind of missed her when she left. She’d say “good morning, Mister Meridian” when I walked in, all polite and happy to see me.’

  ‘Huh,’ Cochran grunted. ‘So why the van, Rogers?’

  ‘Practicality, sir,’ Rogers replied. ‘Finding a landing spot in Topeka is often a lot harder than moving the server out into a van and transporting everything by road. It’s only necessary for major scenes anyway. Pythia’s quite capable of operating by remote throughout the city.’

  ‘You’re better off than New York there,’ Fox said. ‘There are areas of the Sprawl in Brooklyn and Jersey that have barely any wireless connectivity. Topeka’s well served across most of the urban area.’

  ‘Our “Sprawl” is the Southern Protectorate,’ Cochran said.

  ‘And that’s why this facility is here. We have contracts in various parts of the south and north-west which don’t require extensive investigative cover, but now we can service them the way we’d like to instead of having someone rush out from New York.’

  ‘We have pulled off something of a coup,’ Ross Runyard said, ‘having Palladium base their operations for the southern region here.’ Runyard was a local politician of some standing and was there with his wife, Sheila, who had similar political sway. They had been allowing the Meridians to make much of the running so far today, however. One or the other dropped in an astute little comment here and there, possibly to remind everyone they were there. ‘I’d like to see us make more of that link in the future.’

  Fox had a feeling she was supposed to respond to that, but her father rescued her before she had to work out what to say. ‘Ross, we talked about this,’ Jonathan said. ‘We’ll have an informal chat with Fox this evening, but she’s not who you need to talk to about that.’ Fox felt Andrea squeeze her arm in a gesture which might have been reassurance. If Jonathan was involved, whatever Runyard wanted, it would have been vetted to ensure Fox did not strangle anyone over it.

  ‘Shall we go through and see the lab and the incident room?’ Rogers suggested. ‘We have state-of-the-art facilities here to handle communications throughout the protectorates…’ And they started off into areas which Fox knew more about, though she was left wondering what Runyard wanted.

  ~~~

  The Topeka Watch had taken over what had once been a school about a kilometre away from the Palladium building. It gave them classrooms, a sports hall, plenty of space to set up operations rooms and to store equipment, and there was ample space outside for vehicles and exercise.

  Fox watched with an amused expression as Palladium instructors put the watchmen through their paces in the cool, January air. None of them looked cold as they worked their way through a swiftly manufactured obstacle course, but several of them looked like they might have to stop to throw up fairly soon.

  ‘That looks strenuous,’ Andrea commented.

  Fox gave a little shrug. ‘NAPA has a basic fitness benchmark which is mostly designed to make sure officers are up to the job. It’s not actually required as part of the audit process, but it’s advisable. I know cops and doughnuts are supposed to be inseparable, but it’s better if the doughnut shape doesn’t settle around your waist.’

  ‘Clearly it hasn’t on you.’

  ‘I have a tough regimen of running, aerobics, and as much sex as I can get.’

  ‘I see. Well, your father and I are getting on a little. We’ve had to cut back on the running and aerobics.’

  Fox grinned. ‘See, that should embarrass me, but I’m just pleased you two are a proper couple again. Ray mentioned that Druss had been indicted for tax fraud.’

  ‘Oh… That’s just the charge that’s become generally known.’ Andrea leaned closer to her daughter and lowered her voice further. ‘Embezzlement of funds within the Watch, and he’s being looked at for a number of voting irregularities.’

  ‘Ouch. If they can get him on anything serious regarding votes, they’ll drop him in a hole in Rikers until he grows mould.’

  ‘I’m prejudiced, but I don’t think it could happen to a nicer person. Lisette is, of course, standing by her husband through thick and thin.’

  Fox frowned. ‘Really?’

  ‘No, she’s agreed to provide any information she can to avoid going down with him.’ Andrea paused, frowning, and turned to Fox so that their eyes met. ‘I knew nothing about the tricks he was playing to manipulate votes, Tara. I might have been foolish enough to let him… use me in certain ways, but–’

  ‘I believe you, Mom. Now, what is it Runyard wants?’

  ‘Oh, that? He’s angling to get more MarTech investment in the area. Biotechnology. He’s interested in modified crops, perhaps in some adaptations to humans to make them better suited to the environment.’

  ‘Huh, well, I can talk to him, but for stuff like that, he’d be talking to BioTek and they’re based in space.’

  Andrea giggled. ‘Ross Runyard in space. Now that would be worth seeing.’

  ~~~

  ‘The biotechnology stuff is really not my area of expertise,’ Fox explained. ‘Candidly, it creeps me out a little.’

&n
bsp; Andrea had been fairly subtle about the evening’s drinks party at the Meridian house. It was primarily a working thing and Fox was happy with that because she had been expecting it. However, along with the local VIPs, several of the upper-ranking trainers from Palladium were there, and Fox knew them by sight at least; Ray Rogers was there, and there were a few purely social guests. Bart Wade was sitting in front of the fire, and Fox had set herself up on the arm of his chair because the old man was more fun than a lot of the other people there. And Crystal and Sandy Bateson were there with Sandy’s boyfriend, Drew Maple.

  Sandy and Drew were nearby when Ross Runyard had brought up the subject of BioTek Microtechnologies’ latest developments and they were now hanging on every word. While the couple were, it seemed, happily set up in Topeka selling goods produced by various groups from the Southern Protectorate, they were still interested in getting Sandy fitted out for survival in the dustbowl of the south.

  ‘I spent a few days at the BioTek station at L-four when I started the job,’ Fox went on. She frowned a little. ‘I don’t think the accents help. BioTek was a German company that bankrupted itself building the station and Jackson wanted a biotech company to fit into the group. So you have all these guys with European accents talking about nanomachines transforming the human body and you get this real Frankenstein vibe.’

  Runyard chuckled. ‘Perhaps, but from our perspective, they’ve created a technology that allows surgery-free implantation of biological modifications. Anyone who travels regularly in the protectorate needs to be able to cope with the dust and irregular water supply. Even here, some drought tolerance has advantages.’

  ‘Agreed, but BioTek aren’t ready for that kind of modification yet. The current releases are cellular modifications rather than gross anatomical modification. I’m allowed to say that they’re working on that kind of thing, but they’re not there yet.’

  ‘So,’ Sandy jumped in, ‘instead of having organs grown and having to have surgery to put them in, I’d have an injection and wait a while?’

  ‘That’s the theory,’ Fox said. ‘I don’t have details. I think it would still be recommended that you spent at least some time in hospital. The changes to the liver, for example, to give drought tolerance would require these little bugs to do a huge amount of re-engineering on a major organ. I think you’d want to monitor that pretty carefully in case something goes wrong.’

  ‘Yeah… I guess that makes sense.’

  ‘And all I’m asking,’ Runyard said, ‘is that MarTech consider doing clinical trials here in Topeka. When they’re ready, obviously. Candidly’ – he flashed Fox a grin – ‘I’m hoping that we can become a major centre for this work going forward. We’re well placed for it and our young friends here are an example of our growing integration with the more civilised elements in the south.’

  Fox looked thoughtful for a second. ‘Look, I’ll mention it to Mariel and then… Well, the buck will be passed. It’ll be up to you to convince her. You should realise that there are going to be problems. There were protestors camped outside two of the MarTech arcologies when they announced the existing Morphogenesis products. Biomod products will be more contentious.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Bart said. ‘You’re not the only one to get Frankenstein vibes from this stuff, Fox. And that’s coming from the neighbourhood cyborg.’

  Runyard chuckled again. ‘You know they could probably use this stuff to just rebuild natural tissue instead of bolting in metal and plastic.’

  ‘Oh, we’ve got one better coming,’ Fox said. ‘You know the new fabricator they put in at the Palladium facility? Yliaster, it’s called. Teresa Martins says they’re working on a medical version. You drop someone in a tank of goo and you can basically fix anything that’s gone wrong. I mean like… Had your head cut off and your body incinerated? We can rebuild you, good as new. I think that’s a way off yet though.’

  ‘Has to be a limit to that though,’ Bart said. ‘Some things you can’t fix.’

  ‘Brain damage, just like standard resuscitation techniques. This could probably fix you up if some parts of your brain were gone where that would be fatal currently. But unless you had some kind of… blueprint for how the brain was laid out before the damage, if the bits that handle memory and… and what makes you you are gone, then you’d get a blank slate. You’d be alive, but you wouldn’t be the same person, so what’s the point?’

  ‘And they can’t make a map like that?’ Drew asked.

  ‘No, they– Actually, I happen to know that they can, but the only way they can do it is by pulling the original apart. So you’d have to die so they could rebuild you, and then if you died again they could rebuild you the way you were when they made the first map. I don’t think that’s going to be a saleable product.’

  ‘Until they can do it with some sort of scanner, and how far off is that? No one would ever have to die!’ Drew’s face fell a little as he realised what he had just said.

  There was silence for a few seconds as that comment sank in. ‘Well, that hit the nail right on the head,’ Bart said. ‘Great big oil drum of worms that one is. Not that I’m saying I wouldn’t like a few more decades, but I’m not sure I want to live forever. And where would you put everyone?’

  ‘I guess we’d better get on with terraforming Mars and Venus,’ Fox said.

  ‘Yeah, but what are them Martians going to say about it?’ Fox saw the glint in Bart’s eye and knew he was going to shift the conversation somewhere less serious. ‘Mind you, if it comes to diplomacy with a Martian princess, I’m your man.’

  ‘I am pretty sure there are no naked women running around on Mars laying eggs, Bart.’

  ‘A guy can dream, can’t he?’

  New York Metro.

  ‘That’s the third attempt.’

  Helen turned, taking in the virtual consoles the security team were working with. The alarm was apparent in the form of a flashing red rectangle around a solid red box with white text in it. Worm detected: UA Glitter-Wyrm variant. As the tech had stated, this was the third attack of the evening, each with a different vector.

  ‘Someone’s probing vulnerabilities in the network?’ Helen asked.

  ‘That’s how it looks to me. Nothing new or hugely sophisticated yet. That bugs me, because anyone worth calling a hacker should know we would have these tricks– Hold it…’

  Another flashing box appeared and Helen frowned at the text. Worm detected! Unidentified vector. Level three threat!

  ‘What’s a level three threat?’ Helen asked.

  ‘It means it breached the outer firewalls. Hold that thought.’

  Helen held the thought because it seemed like every network tech in the room had suddenly gone into overdrive. She knew that there were more minds at work on the problem than the human ones: there were dozens of infomorphs of one form or another running on various servers who would be swarming all over the new threat. It seemed like minutes before the activity dropped away, but Helen guessed it was maybe only ninety seconds. The red indicators went green as the infiltrator was eradicated.

  ‘Okay, that was a nasty one,’ the tech said. ‘Multi-payload, polymorphic Trojan. The Glitter-Wyrm was just a launch mechanism and it slid its payload right past our outer defences without us even noticing.’

  ‘That sounds sophisticated,’ Helen said.

  ‘That was sophisticated. We think we’ve got the basic signature now so it probably won’t work as well a second time, but someone with that kind of tech is likely to have some more tricks in their bag.’

  ‘Any idea what he was going for?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s the weird part. He was aiming for the video feed aggregator for the cambots. Not the control system.’

  Helen bit her lip for a second. ‘He wanted to watch the show?’ Her attention turned to the bank of video feeds the aggregator was generating, each showing the view from one of the many cyberframes scooting around the stadium where Nishi Sakura was performing. Several of them gave very good
views of the current, rather energetic, number.

  ‘Kind of crazy, right?’ the tech added. ‘I mean, the tickets don’t cost that much.’

  Helen considered the profile she had been developing with Kit. Minotaur, if that was who was hitting their network, was a classic nerd, but maybe it was more than that. ‘I’m betting this guy doesn’t go to many concerts. Any idea where the attacks are originating?’

  ‘Going to take the AIs a while longer to hunt through the trails. The immediate sources are Chicago, Berlin, Beijing, would you believe? And this last one was launched from a public server cluster in London.’

  Setting up a telepresence call to Kit to brief her on the latest details, Helen said to the tech, ‘Okay, I’m betting they all trace back to America somewhere. Let me know as soon as you have anything.’ She sighed. ‘Though I doubt that’ll get us anywhere we can use.’

  ‘Agreed. This guy knows what he’s doing. He’ll have covered his tracks.’

  Topeka Agri-Zone.

  ‘How are you doing, Crystal?’

  Sandy’s mother smiled, her eyes flicking up to meet Fox’s briefly. The blue was clearer than it had been when Fox had first seen those eyes in the summer, but Crystal was still a little timid. Her skin was a lot paler than it had been, but there were no bruises marring it.

  ‘I’m… doing well,’ Crystal said.

  ‘You’re looking better than you were in June,’ Fox said, meaning it.

  Crystal nodded. ‘The trial was… hard, and then there was the aftermath. I had to find a job. I sold the house, which helped. And there’s the divorce, of course.’

  ‘Where are you living now?’

  ‘Oh, I got an apartment in the same building as Sandy and Drew. Not right next door, because they have to have their independence. I’m not going to be that kind of mother. But they’ve been wonderful.’ Fox saw tears forming at the corners of Crystal’s eyes as her voice cracked a little on the last word. ‘Sorry, sometimes it just hits me.’ She dabbed at the corners of her eyes and swallowed. ‘But they have. Sandy forgave me. She actually apologised for leaving me with… with him. Drew treats me like I’m his mother.’