“The alternative being?”
“You help me…?” Excited again.
“Help you how?”
“Ah, ah, ah…’ She wagged her finger. “No spoilers. You in or not?”
I thought for a moment. Yes, I couldn’t go home, even I had figured that out. The NFC on my scuba diving cPad was pretty much my only source of funds so getting a hotel or transport of any kind was pretty much out of the question. So maybe I was feeling a little bit trapped. But I still wasn’t convinced. Not at all. There was an air of logic about what she was telling me, but it was the desperately thin air found only at the very upper reaches of plausibility. On the back of a grainy photograph of a grainy TV, the only thing I was ‘in’ at that point was two minds. Both of them seemed to have really bad headaches coming on.
“I need to see that cross,” I said. Firmly, like I’d made a decision. “Actually see it.” There were nuances I would know, if I saw them. At least, I convinced myself that there were. I also needed a lot more information about the ‘find’. About the well and the bodies. I needed hard facts from an expert, not ‘I saw it on the telly and got my camera out’ from an obsessive, semi-deranged junkie with some serious reality, technology, cleanliness and, above all else, daddy issues.
She smiled. Like she had won already. She was winning, but she hadn’t won. Not yet.
“Then I’ll take you. Tomorrow.”
“Where is it?” I asked. “Now, I mean?”
She looked puzzled. Like I was an idiot. “I told you already. England.”
I shook my head gently and laughed through my nose; resigned.
I mean, this just got better and better, didn't it..?
SEVENTEEN
Monday, October 31, 1644.
Arques, Perpignan, France.
Given her burgeoning condition, it might prove be some time before Béatrice managed to make any walk to church again so, rather then heading into Arques, she chose the same church her husband had chosen: the small but beautiful chapel at Serres. It would take around an hour and a half if she ambled gently but, save for the small hill into the village itself, the road was flat, the weather was fine and there was no real hurry. Today, as she came within perhaps a week or two of the labour that would deliver them a third child, she felt did not just want to feel closer to God today, but also to Hercule, wherever he may be. She would pray that the baby was delivered safe and that its father would also be delivered safe home not long after.
Béatrice had worry in her heart, but then she always had. Those who knew her, of course, also knew that she always had a smile on her face to counter. She was a beautiful young woman and a bright-faced optimist with an outwardly sunny demeanour on all things. Somehow, if she wore a happy face, she just knew that everything was going to get better. She could feel it in her smile. The war would end, her husband would find whatever it was that might sate his sense of depravation and the whole family would live long and happy lives.
As she passed through the deep Rialsesse escarpment at La Parade, she listened close to the echoes of the birds as they called to each other across the valley and from the hills above. Pipits and bee-eaters, shrike and rock thrush all chirping merrily from their forest hideaways. The sun was high in the sky, higher than the hovering griffon vulture eyeing its prey over the stream below, and she was determined to enjoy her days of freedom before the child was born. To her left as she walked, a beautiful Purple-Edged Copper butterfly landed softly on the petal of a za’faran flower and rested awhile. She smiled wider. She was always astonished by the colour and delicacy of detail to be found in the wings of a butterfly and she wandered slightly from the track to take a closer look.
Against the bright pink of the saffron petal, the orange wings with their fine veins of purplish black looked quite astounding, antennae of black and white twitching at the world which surrounded this tiny creature. Still as it was, she wondered for a moment if she might be able to catch such beauty and hold it for just a moment, so she cupped her hands and reached forward.
The butterfly flitted away, but not far; just a few flowers’ distance. Béatrice smiled to herself and moved forward again, readying to try one more time. This dance continued for a short time, as though the butterfly was playing with her, enticing her further and further from the track and down the hill toward the stream below. She smiled. Even if she did not get to hold this beauty, the game they played was still lots of fun.
Then another colour caught her eye; a large swathe of bright red clearly visible just a few feet away in the long grass. With the trees and their deep shadows starting not far beyond, the colour was quite stark, though it had not been visible from the dirt road above. It was so clear now, however, so pronounced and so desperately out of place that her butterfly game was forgotten in an instant. She took a moment to catch her breath from the gentle chase, smoothed her dress and wandered over.
They were clothes, of that there was little doubt. Lots of them, all dumped in a worryingly clumsy pile with what appeared to be a bright red braided cloak laid on top. She could see that to be the case before she had even arrived at the pile. The closer she got, however, the more familiar these items looked, and that worried her more. The last ounce of knowledge - of actual, provable fact - that she was granted was that these were Hercule’s clothes. Her husband’s. Every last one of them.
And they had been discarded.
After that, she was left only with speculation.
As she reached the pile and crouched, picking and poring through the fabrics and lifting odd pieces, she could see that everything was there. Everything; every single item that she herself had folded neatly and and carefully placed in her husband’s trunk. Shirts, breeches, stockings, shoes. The cape, a spare wig and the wide-brimmed hat she had laid carefully on top of them all. Even the note of enduring love and good fortune she had secretly slipped in the folds of his favourite undershirt.
She struggled to her feet again, looking around. Even through the long grass and into the trees, she could see that there were no saddlebags in sight - the bags in which her husband kept his soaps, his perfumes and his valuables - and no sign of Eli, trustee of all these belongings.
All she could hear was the tweeting of the birds. It seemed very sombre and hollow to her now.
The train of thought began to break apart, each cart running its own path. Had Eli had an accident or a fall, she wondered? If so, where was he now? And where was the horse and the cart he took? Or the trunk itself? Had he perhaps been robbed by bandits or, worse, Spaniards? If so, why had they dumped the clothes and kept possession of the trunk? Perhaps it was simply that the trunk had fallen from the cart as Eli had idly trundled along the road above. He had just not noticed as it rolled away through the grass?
But if that was true, then why was the trunk itself nowhere to be found?
It all came down to the trunk, she realised. It was the key, though she could not work out why. What was so important about a very standard case passed through only a few generations which, as far as she knew, carried no intrinsic value of its own? If it was not here, then it had been taken, but she found herself asking why someone had taken her husband’s trunk and not his clothes? All of Hercule’s clothes were fine cut and even finer stitched and not without good value of their own. They would certainly fetch more for any robber in the markets than the trunk.
As the final train of thought started to veer off on its own course through her mind, her breathing began to quicken beyond her control and she suddenly felt very weak. Within a few seconds her abdomen started to tighten and, soon afterward, even though the sun was still high in a cloudless sky, she suddenly felt very, very cold. Despite that, her entire body began to sweat. Heavily. Her stomach clenched again and her teeth and fists clenched even tighter. She looked skyward, focusing her eyes and her mind on the hovering griffon and took long, deep breaths in an attempt to steady herself.
It didn’t work.
Suddenly, and without warning,
her legs felt desperately weak. Moments later, the membrane burst and a pool of liquid splashed to the grass from beneath her long skirt. She clutched her abdomen tight and collapsed to the floor, screaming and writhing in the twisting pain of contraction.
There was no-one to hear.
EIGHTEEN
Friday, August 20, 2043.
West of Bull Run Peak, California.
There was no way we were getting to England. Not a chance. If there was one thing I had realised, laying awake most of the night fully clothed on a hastily cleared second-hand sofa, the kind that still had painful springs embedded within it like some kind of iron maiden, it was that. At least, that’s what I thought.
Granted, I had no idea how high, or low, this whole ‘trying to kill me’ thing ran but I knew enough about my former employer to know that he had contacts in government about as high as one could get. And yes, I also knew that he was dead and one would have hoped that his demise would have been a permanent end to the situation. But seemingly it wasn’t, was it? If it had been, then there would not have been any need to peel two men who treated guns like fashion accessories from the sidewalk this morning and the city wouldn’t have suffered the subsequent traffic chaos it was no doubt still enduring even now. OK, so the traffic could be classed a daily occurrence, but gunmen tearing through the city, shooting and killing or wounding innocent bystanders..? That’s twice a week at best.
Which meant that somebody somewhere was still looking for me. They were probably looking for Victoria too if they bothered to check their files but I would certainly be highest on today’s list. I’ve seen enough films to know that failed chases rarely end in sentences like: ‘Oh, he got away? That’s a shame. Never mind, let him go!’
No, they were still looking because, when I say rarely, I mean never.
Which means ‘they’ would probably have my name on some kind of list and that list would have been fed to airports, bus terminals, MRT monorail terminals, ports, state passes; you name it. And not just my name either: my retina and my fingerprints too; our two primary methods of tracking citizens. Sorry, our two methods of ‘protecting the valued identity of our important citizens from crime and identity theft.’ So yes, both sets of my ‘personal security information’ would very probably have been distributed quite some time ago, ready to flash up a big red warning sign if I so much as tried to leave the state. They would be dotting my eyes and crossing my tent arches around, in and through just about every escape route possible.
I knew that.
So, it seems, did Victoria.
“I won’t make it through an airport,” I said. “They’ll be watching. Bet your ass.”
“Yes they will,” she said, almost excitedly. “But that’s OK because they’ll be watching for you. So you’ll be OK. You see?”
I think it’s fair to say that, for stunningly obvious reasons, I really, really didn’t.
She widened her eyes, expecting me to get it. And get it soon. I wasn’t getting it. Ever.
“So we make you not you. And me not me. Obviously. You can’t be you and I can’t be me because they’re not only looking for you but I think they’re still looking for me too. Once you’re in the system you’re in the system and they keep looking. So we can’t be us, can we..?”
“Er… so who can we be?”
“Anyone we like.”
She walked over to what I had taken to be simply a piece of furniture covered by a dust sheet, presumably so named because it now looked as though it was completely made of dust. She gave me one more ‘duh’ glance and then pulled the sheet.
In case you haven’t guessed, all I saw was dust. Lots of it. It filled the room.
But when it settled…
My eyes widened. “Je-sus,” I said slowly, standing and moving forward. I looked this… this… ‘thing’ over in complete admiration. I’d heard of them, sure, and I’d even seen pictures. I mean, I like tech. I love tech. But I’d never actually seen one for real. They’re illegal. Highly illegal. As in ‘without parole’ illegal. So where on earth was I ever likely to see one..?
“Where the hell did you get that?” I asked.
“I bought it,” she said, shrugging.
“You do know what that is…?”
She furrowed her brow. “Yeah, I do. I bought it.”
“And you know how much they cost?”
I had no idea how much they cost.
That look again. The one that says I’m the mad one. “Er… yeah…” she said. Again. Slowly. “I bought it.”
“How much did it cost?”
“A lot.”
From the dawn of technology there is only one industry that seems to move at a faster pace than security does, and that’s the industry of breaking it. From picklocks to computer viruses, from NFC interceptors to chip blockers it always seems that the bad guys are one step ahead. Of course, most people just figure that, once a security firm invents some improved form of security that they want to sell, the one other product they choose to (surreptitiously) release into the wild at the same time is a breach for the previous version, thereby rendering the old kit useless. So you have to buy the new stuff. As ever, it’s six and two threes as to just who the bad guys in this situations really are.
What Victoria had here was a very high-end breaker - a full A/LAIS system - an ergonomic brushed steel Anon-funded box which would not only search a built-in database of available identities and offer a suitable match based on age, height, facial features etc. (just in case any backup systems were checked) but would also then kick out that identity for you. A complete, working, usable identity. The name was a hacker pun on ‘Alias’ (obviously) but also, apparently, a nod to ‘Alais of Corinth’ - an ancient Greek courtesan who was said to be the most beautiful woman of the period and who apparently charged 1,000 drachmas for a single night. Basically, she sold her body to the highest bidder. Today, people sold their identities instead. Alive or dead, it didn’t matter. The dead were primarily those who had shuffled off and not bothered to report it (if you get my meaning), thereby bequeathing their identities to loved ones to sell for good money. Conversely, the ‘alive’ group were those who never really did much or went anywhere and who therefore sold their scans for whatever they could get. So long as they themselves didn’t catch a flight or enter a secure area on one side of the world at exactly the same time as you did the same thing on another, such ‘lidents’ worked just as well in the short term.
Having input data about yourself and been offered a number of potential matches on the screen, apparently all one had to do - according a documentary I once saw on 625 trafficking - was select the one you felt you could best get away with (perhaps one whose language you knew or, at the very least, whose accent you could pull off) and the machine would, in a few hours, kick out a perfect I.D. complete with unique baryta-paper ROM chip which stored your identity as a series of ‘binary pixels’ on difficult-to-forge photographic paper, plus a set of contact lenses. Then came the hard part. The painful part, as I understood it. One placed one’s index finger (both hands, one set at a time) into a small hole and onto a small magnesium plate. Over the course of around ten to fifteen minutes, the fingerprint you had been carrying your entire life would then be burned away completely and a new one lasered in. The effects would last for up to a full week before your print became completely unreadable as the true print started to work its way back through. No travel, apparently, for two to three weeks after that. In about four to five weeks, once your real print had completely come to the fore again you were, quite literally, back to feeling your old self again.
“Wow,” I said, still basically drooling. “That is so damn cool.”
If this thing worked as well as I had heard they worked, or even close, then we would sail through any airport we chose and, given that both the car and the cPad had been dumped, there was no way on earth that whoever was looking for me would ever track me down.
Or was there? Suddenly I had a thought. A bad t
hought, and it stuck. Something Milton had said at the funeral.
“We have a problem,” I said. It sounded urgent because, all of a sudden, it was. I nodded to the previous decade’s top of the range PC. “Before we do anything, I’m going to need to borrow that computer.”
* * * * *
“There’s a goddam car down here as well,” the diver said, holding the small metal device up for Grainger to see.
He hated having to come out here himself, but his choices now seemed to have boiled down to approximately none. If he left it to others and they screwed up, again, then his entire political career - a career bolstered only by the support of Scalise and her cohorts - would crumble like a biscuit skyscraper before the day was out. He had lain awake all night thinking about this one. If Scalise’s plan didn’t work out then both Strauss - and Grainger’s own career prospects - would simply slip further and further away. But they had already been tracking the car until it disappeared off the grid last night and so this morning he had decided on a new tack: the cPad. That had meant a few calls within KRT to get the relevant tracking codes but he had pulled it off. Now he just had to use them. If he saved the day, and saved Strauss from fleeing, then might also save his own prospects. What he was never going to do, however, was leave this completely to the hired hands. They’d already proven that they were more than adept at the awkward fumble, so he had to supervise. He had to be a little bit ‘hands on’. Which did not, for obvious reasons, mean diving into a freezing lake and retrieving Strauss’ discarded cPad for himself. Just being out here in person would do. Jeez, he didn’t like getting his hands dirty, he sure as hell wasn’t about to get them wet.
Looking at the cPad in the diver’s hand, he smiled. “I thought there might be.”
Even scientists were stupid, he mused. And they were the ones who built this stuff. Neutrinos: at last count 74% of cell phones on the planet were using them and, as market leader, every current KRT model used them exclusively, including the ones that relied on cPads to route the info or the call to glasses or hands-free kits. Obviously, if Strauss had had the brains to smash the thing to bits so that he could disconnect the Everlife battery contained within, then tracking him might have been a little more difficult. As it was, it had been easy. Easier than easy. Neutrinos go through anything. They go through the earth and out of the other side if you target them correctly. Twenty metres of some of the cleanest natural water the United States Alliance (the proposed third word - Corporate - never having made it past the old school senators) still had to offer was never going to act as any kind of effective cloaking mechanism.
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