And your opportunity, Alice thinks.
Happy that the tether is secure, Helen fires a few bursts of air and gently directs them not down, but towards the roof of a nearby building.
A plate spins through the air and Helen minutely corrects her course to avoid it.
“I don’t have a free hand,” she explains. “And I see you’ve injured yours.”
“It’s not serious.”
“Best not take the dart out for now,” Helen counsels.
Alice sees the plate clip the edge of the building. It drifts there gently, but the momentum is enough for the impact to fragment it into several shards.
“Shouldn’t they be unbreakable?” Alice suggests. “Plastic, maybe?”
“It’s remarkable what you come to consider an exquisite luxury,” Helen replies. “But eating off china is definitely one of mine. The more advanced our technology, the more we appreciate basic tactile things.”
“Such as my feet touching the ground,” Alice agrees, as they skate between rows of rooftop vegetation, coming in fast. They skim off the surface of the topsoil and Helen skilfully uses the cylinder to brake so that she can grip a handrail before they float off again. Alice notices a tiny scar in the surface where her heel clipped what turns out to be a transparent membrane keeping the soil in place.
“You’re going to encounter that a lot here: the constant struggle between the future and the past. Everything is really new and really old at the same time. Here on CdC we’re relying on infrastructure technology that was put in decades ago. It’s ancient compared to what people are used to on Earth. And yet other things are cutting edge because they are developed here.
“My background is architecture and city planning. I consult on designing habitat and social environment, both for CdC and for the Arca. The whole thing is an exercise in never knowing what you need until after you need it, discovering how every one of your contingencies creates new problems. One of the biggest dangers is thinking the tech you are developing will save you from more basic concerns. Future versus past.”
“You mean like how by creating artificial gravity, we no longer need to worry about stray fluids ending up where nobody anticipated?” Alice asks, as a volume of what she takes to be hot coffee floats past and just misses their heads.
“Well, precisely.”
Helen attaches a tether from her waist to a railing and begins to pull them both around the edge of the roof towards the entrance to a staircase.
“Is it about to start up again?” Alice asks, failing to keep a hint of concern from her voice.
“Oh, no. They’ll sound an alarm before they do that, give everybody time to get someplace secure.”
“How long is it likely to take?”
Helen shrugs.
“Could be twenty minutes, could be ten times that. The knock-on disruption will be longer, though. Won’t be any shuttles landing on this wheel until they’re sure all the systems are responding properly.”
Helen opens a roof-access door and tugs them both gently down the stairs into the uppermost storey of the building.
“We’ll be safe waiting it out in here,” she explains. “There are plenty of anchor points inside.”
They bob their way into a room where Helen detaches Alice’s tether and reattaches it to a shelving unit that proves bolted into the floor. It appears to be a storage room for materials used in cultivating the vegetation above, rooftops being used for agriculture on CdC like they might host solar panels on Earth.
“So what is it that you wanted to talk to me about?” Alice asks. “Or more pertinently, what is it that Hoffman and Boutsikari didn’t want you talking to me about?”
Helen seems momentarily surprised then acknowledges Alice’s candour with a knowing smile.
“Oh, they just don’t want anybody messing with the airbrushed brochure version of this place.”
“And what’s the non-airbrushed version?”
“Like I already told you: future versus past. The tension between the old and the new. This is the most advanced place in the history of human civilisation, and yet some people seem intent on recreating a mid-nineteenth-century frontier town, or maybe Chicago circa the 1920s.”
“I’ve heard there is an illegal alcohol trade,” Alice says. She thinks of the bar prices on the terrace. “I suppose that was inevitable.”
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg, honey. And it’s an iceberg on a collision course with the Titanic. You know, once upon a time, bloated executives went to South-East Asia on corporate junkets so they could screw prostitutes half their age, a hedonistic playground far away from prying eyes, husbands, wives and consequences. Now they’re getting that in space.”
“Prostitution?”
“Any fleshly indulgence you can think of, it’s on sale up here. And where there’s criminality and exploitation, there’s also violence, but you aren’t gonna hear about that from Boutsikari and Hoffman. With you coming in, I’m hoping things can change. See, they could clean it all up if there was a genuine will to do so.”
“So why wouldn’t they?”
Helen gives her a look that is pitying of Alice’s apparent naïveté. It’s a manner Alice has always found useful in encouraging people’s candour.
“What you see here, CdC, the Arca, this whole glorious undertaking has been a product of people sacrificing the short-term view for the greater good. Thinking about what is going to benefit us all in five hundred years and not what is gonna benefit yourself individually in the next ten minutes or the next financial quarter. Not everybody sees it like that, though. It’s human nature. Some folks are always gonna be looking to make hay and to build their little fiefdoms.”
“You’re saying one of those people is Boutsikari and one of those fiefdoms is the Seguridad?”
“If only it were that simple. There are fiefdoms within fiefdoms, powerbases within powerbases. The Seguridad is riven with corruption but Boutsikari is a political animal and a pragmatist. He subscribes to the argument that the illicit trades here aren’t doing any real harm, that they keep everything ticking over, but he is being dangerously negligent. There is tension in this place. You can feel it. And it’s building up to something bad, something explosive.”
“This is what you were going to talk to me about down on the terrace, in front of Hoffman and Boutsikari?”
Helen fixes her with a fiery stare.
“I most certainly was, and don’t you for one minute imagine otherwise. This whole mess is the result of keeping things under wraps that should be out in the open. I’d have let Boutsikari know that once you take over from Hoffman, I don’t expect things to simply keep ticking over.”
“And what is it you think I can do?”
“It’s what Boutsikari thinks you can do that matters. His great fear, one that is widely shared around the Quadriga, is that if they aren’t running a tight ship, you will report back with the recommendation that FNG takes over the policing of this place. If you let it be known you’d rather merely bring the Seguridad to heel, you’ll get the support and protection you’ll need.”
“Protection? So you’re anticipating that the people running these illegal operations will make me a target?”
“Naturally. If you can’t be bought—and I’m betting you can’t—then they’ll have to solve the problem some other way. But trust me, honey, the gangsters are not the people you need to worry about. The biggest threat is gonna come from the cops. So I’m about to do you a favour here and now by warning you who’s the most dangerous one …”
MOONLIGHTING
Nikki crouches over Kobra, feeling for a pulse. It’s there, strong as ever, but he’s out cold and she doesn’t understand why he went down the way he did.
There are no firearms on Seedee. Put a hole in the canopy and you could kill yourself and everybody in the immediate vicinity before the emergency seals contained the damage. That’s why people print their own flechette pistols. If you want to hurt somebody, to litera
lly make your mark on them, these little plastic darts will do the job. They are messy, bloody and painful, which is why Nikki carries one primarily as a deterrent. They will do some nasty damage, so you don’t want to be shot, but they’re not intended to kill. You could theoretically die from blood loss if you were real unlucky, but Kobra hasn’t sustained that kind of damage, and besides, he dropped right away.
Kobra moves, suddenly lurching as though in shock. He puts a hand to his injured mouth.
“Fuck. What the hell?”
“You okay? You went down with a thump.”
“Something turned the lights out, just for a second. Don’t know what.”
“One of those darts was tipped, maybe,” Nikki suggests.
They scramble back the way they came in, down the maintenance ladders, figuring that if they were seen, their pursuers will be searching the publicly accessible areas. They are breathless and numb in their egress, Felicia finally breaking the silence as they crawl along the conveyor belt.
“Who the hell were those bastards? They weren’t Julio’s people, but we’re definitely getting jacked.”
“That was private security.”
“Private security? Ain’t that we’re paying you for, Nikki Fixx?”
“Did you see how they responded? To a threat enjoying an elevated angle of fire? They didn’t blink, they didn’t flinch and they didn’t miss. That’s serious training. I’m talking a whole other order of magnitude. Answerable to and protected by the highest high.”
“Then what are they doing stealing our contraband? Our money’s a speck in the sky to those assholes.”
“You don’t understand, Felicia. You ain’t getting jacked. It’s worse. You’re getting shut down.”
Nikki sees a message appear on her lens, tagged high priority. She reads the details, acknowledges.
“Fuck,” says Felicia. “What the hell am I supposed to tell Yoram?”
“Not my problem.”
“The hell it ain’t. You were there. This is your mess too.”
“Maybe, but you’re out of time. Right now I gotta go do my day job.”
CONTAINMENT
Alice stands upon grateful feet in a private room off the lobby of the Ver Eterna hotel, enjoying the certainty of her own weight.
After the wheel resumed spinning and the gravity came back on, a paramedic located her as she emerged from the building where she and Helen had waited out the all-stop. He removed the dart with a specialised sterile device and treated the superficial wound with a speed and expertise that all combined to indicate this type of injury was far from a rarity. The paramedic then asked her to come with him, she assumed to the infirmary or a first aid station for further checks. Instead he escorted her here and asked her to wait.
Boutsikari enters a few minutes later, his expression a dark contrast to the relaxed geniality of the terrace. He is accompanied this time not by Hoffman but by a senior Seguridad officer, his face so stony-set that for a split second Alice wonders if she is about to be arrested. He doesn’t introduce himself, but her lens tells her who he is: Captain Rapresh Jaganathan.
“Dr. Blake, we have just learned of a very serious situation,” he says.
“Is it Professor Gonçalves?” she asks, fearing what tragic development she might have missed. “Is she all right?”
“She was unharmed in the incident. And my apologies for your injury. We are making rigorous efforts to apprehend whoever fired the flechette, and ordinarily it would be our number one priority.”
“What knocked it off the top spot?”
Boutsikari trades glances with the officer accompanying him, still as yet not formally identified. Whatever this is, they need time to build up to it.
“We believe we may be dealing with a murder. A body has been found down in the Axle.”
He leaves it at that for a few moments, giving her time to catch up on the implications. There has never been a homicide on CdC.
“You may be dealing with a murder. You mean you’re not sure?”
“Actually, we’re damn sure,” Boutsikari replies gravely. “I’m heading there in person right after this to assess for myself, but going by the images that have just been sent by the officers on-scene, there’s not much room for doubt.”
“Can you flash them to my lens?”
“If you insist, but with the caveat that they are extremely disturbing.”
“I insist,” Alice says.
Two seconds later she is regretting it.
“That’s … definitely not a suicide,” she responds, fighting hard against the queasy feeling in a stomach that is still recovering from the effects of the all-stop.
Boutsikari stiffens, seeming to stand a little taller even as she reels from the images overlaid in her lens.
“Captain Jaganathan here will be in charge of the investigation,” he states. “He is one of my most experienced and trusted officers.”
The stony-faced Jaganathan gives her the curtest of nods, as though concerned that no informality should contaminate the seriousness of the situation.
“You will, of course, have full access to all reports and communication,” Boutsikari goes on. “But it is imperative that what we are dealing with remains strictly confidential. As you will have ascertained from these images, there is an extremely dangerous and highly disturbed individual at large on CdC, and in such a contained environment, the potential for panic is something of which we have to be acutely conscious. That is why I am recommending—and indeed humbly requesting—that no details regarding this incident reach Earth until we have a firmer command of what we are dealing with.”
Jaganathan takes a step forward to stand alongside Boutsikari, both of them towering over Alice in the tight little room.
“I would just like to concur with Mr. Boutsikari,” he says. “This is already a volatile and delicate situation, but for the moment we have the option to contain it. If it leaks down below, whether the conduit be FNG or Quadriga, we will find ourselves at the eye of an almighty storm. I for one always find it easier to do my job when the weather is calm and clear.”
Alice takes half a step back in response, both of their gazes locked on her in a manner that takes her very little time to decode. They look determined, resolute, calm and in control.
They are crapping themselves.
She wonders how long Boutsikari deliberated keeping the whole thing secret from her, hoping the Seguridad could solve the case and present it as a fait accompli before she found out. It must have been tempting, but ultimately not worth the risk. Instead he had opted to bluff by playing Mr. Take-Charge, figuring Alice wouldn’t want to be making a major call on something as massive as CdC’s first ever homicide before she had even officially taken up her post.
He is right, too. She hasn’t had time to assess the landscape, so she isn’t about to make a move when she has no reckoner for calculating the consequences. There is no question but that this is a crisis, and that is the worst time to be doing anything rash. But equally, she understands that in every crisis there is an opportunity. She is here to stare down all that Hoffman turned a blind eye to, and she knows Boutsikari is not going to make that easy for her.
She recalls what Helen Petitjean just told her, regarding the Seguridad chief’s greatest fear.
If you let it be known you’d rather merely bring the Seguridad to heel, you’ll get the support and protection you’ll need.
“I completely agree,” she tells them. “We all understand the consequences of this reaching Earth. And that’s why I want a homicide detective leading the investigation. With respect, Captain Jaganathan, I don’t believe that’s your principal area of experience.”
The two men look at each other, wrong-footed and wary. Nor will what she is about to say next put them at ease.
“Who do you have in mind?”
“There’s an officer whose methods I’ve been hearing very interesting things about,” she says, fixing Boutsikari with a look that confirms they bo
th know what she means. “Very interesting things indeed. Her name is Nicola Freeman, and according to her record she is the person most qualified to handle a case such as this. I think I could learn a great deal about policing here on CdC from observation of how she operates.”
“Fuck me,” says Jaganathan. “Nikki Fixx? Are you serious?”
“She’s serious,” Boutsikari replies gravely, already reading the game.
MURDER ONE
Nikki propels herself up the last hundred metres of the shaft, a strong tug on a handle enough to send her hurtling like a bullet along a barrel. As her body is rapidly reacquainted with the sensation of zero-g motion, it occurs to her that she should have hit the head before she left. It’s been a while since she’s been to the Axle, which is why she forgot that it’s wisest to go on an empty bladder, because you don’t want to be taking a piss there if you’re not used to it. With any luck she won’t be kept too long. She doesn’t even know why they need her up here. Down here. Whatever.
People always talk about going up the spoke away from the wheel, but when they get there they refer to being down in the Axle. That’s Seedee for you. Up becomes down, and what’s really messed up is the old and the new. A lot of advanced science stuff goes on down here because of the zero-g environment, and yet it’s the oldest, clunkiest part of CdC. In fact, the Axle is what was here before anyone really thought there was going to be a CdC. Parts of it are more than seventy years old, and it never fails to creep Nikki out.
Anyplace else on Seedee, you can forget where you really are. Even up on high levels where the gravity is weak, you’re still in what is recognisably a living space or a work environment. But here, you might as well be on the ISS. Every second Nikki spends here she is unnervingly conscious of being in a decades-old tin can floating in space, the barrier between life and instant freezing death mere millimetres thick. It is a thought Nikki prefers to be in chronic denial about.
Security is tight here at the best of times, not only because of the science labs, but because you have to pass through the Axle to get to the dry dock. Access to the test vessels themselves requires ultra-high-level clearance, but you ain’t even getting near the gantries unless you’re absolutely supposed to be there.
Places in the Darkness Page 8
