Places in the Darkness

by Chris Brookmyre

  Bullshit, she thinks. If he’s laying on the compliments, it’s to take her eye off something else.

  She says nothing, letting him do the talking. Boutsikari is always playing an angle. The details and methodology are seldom obvious, but the one constant is the intended outcome, which is whatever best preserves or most benefits his expensively tailored ass.

  “The Quadriga has always been terrified of something like this happening,” he says, “but I think we should view it as an opportunity. Prove we can deal effectively with a homicide, and the FNG has less of a case for intervention.”

  “And what, the FNG is just gonna take our word that we dealt with it all proficiently, solved the case and got our man?”

  Boutsikari swallows. If he wasn’t floating right now, he’d be shifting uncomfortably on his feet.

  “Well, not exactly. I’ve agreed to have an FNG observer assigned to the investigation. Full access, so that the feds can have no doubts as to how we operate.”

  He is poker-faced as he says this, but Nikki doesn’t miss the warning, which is that under no circumstances should she let the feds know how she operates.

  “Absolutely,” she replies. “I’m sure that being accompanied by an FNG observer could only assist me in carrying out my duties efficiently and to the letter. So who’s my designated stoolpigeon?”

  Boutsikari glances back again.

  “Jessica,” he calls out. “You’re up.”

  Nikki glances at her in disbelief, then looks back at Boutsikari.

  “You’re kidding me, right? ‘Bring Your Daughter To Work Day’ is my observer?”

  Boutsikari allows himself a tiny smile, saying nothing.

  Nikki lenses the spare wheel again. There’s been an update on the girl’s details, or rather to Nikki’s access status now that Boots has given her this field promotion. The girl is nobody: FNG rather than Quadriga, and barely above the level of an intern. Nikki is sure she got the blueblood part right, though: young Jessica will be on the FNG fast track, and this ride-along is going to look good on her résumé.

  She wonders what deals were done in order for the FNG to assign an observer whose word won’t carry any weight in a he-said, she-said. That’s when she detects Hoffman’s hand in this: one last act of mutual back-scratching between him and Boots before he heads back to Earth. Once Hoffman’s successor arrives—whoever he is—the days of rosy reports going back to FNG could be over. But giving a role to an inexperienced and manipulable pawn would sure make it easier for Boutsikari to give the FNG whatever impression he wants.

  With this thought, the scales fall and Nikki finally sees the real reason she has been thrown into this. She’s his best shot at a result, Boots said, which is probably true, and if she delivers, great. But if she doesn’t, she is certain the observer’s report will demonstrate that it wasn’t the Seguridad’s procedures and policies that were at fault, but the lead investigator’s failure to follow them.

  She’s his fail-safe and insurance policy. As she previously observed, the case is a live grenade, and Nikki’s job is to fall on it in order to protect everybody else from the explosion.

  PART TWO

  UNDER SURVEILLANCE

  Nikki and her unwanted attachment walk through the doors of the NutriGen facility on Hadfield and are immediately confronted with a maze of a place: vats, pipes, machinery and displays floor-to-ceiling, forming an intimidating labyrinth of channels and corridors. Back on Earth, there would be a reception area and someone behind a desk to take their enquiry and point them in the right direction. Up here, there are no such luxuries of space or personnel.

  Plus, if you have business here, it is expected that you should know where you’re going. Company premises on Seedee get very few surprise visitors. Nikki definitely falls into that category.

  She calls out to attract the attention of a woman shoving a heavy-looking pallet, its towering pile of plastic-wrapped cubes glistening with condensation. As soon as she looks up, Nikki recognises her, even without the info now appearing on her lens. Her name is Vera Polietsky, and Nikki’s knowledge of her stems from her two other jobs. One is as a bouncer at a bar named Klaws, while the more lucrative involves the same establishment’s more clandestine attractions.

  As she approaches she eyes Nikki with conspicuous wariness, which is now mutual, as Nikki is concerned about what Vera might let slip merely from the briefest conversation.

  Nikki shows her ID. It should already be appearing on Vera’s lens, but it’s an old habit that hasn’t died after all these years on Seedee.

  “Hey there. I’m Sergeant Nikki Freeman of the Seguridad, and this is Jessica Cho, official observer from the Federation of National Governments. Can you tell us where Dev Korlakian usually works? Big guy, sometimes known as Omega?”

  The relief in the woman’s face is unmissable. Whatever they want, it’s nothing to do with her.

  “He works upstairs in Processing, but I’m pretty sure I heard he didn’t show up today.”

  Nikki gets directions from her and leaves it at that, saying nothing further about why they are here. It is imperative that the general population remains oblivious that there is a murder investigation under way.

  The FNG is happy for Seguridad to have a crack at this mess as long as it stays contained. If reports of a murder on CdC get back to Earth, then it will be on every news bulletin on the planet within the hour. Every politician with an agenda regarding the FNG, the Quadriga and indeed the whole Arca project will be saddling up, turning the murder of one worthless asshole into the biggest clusterfuck in the solar system.

  For that reason, it’s not just the gen-pop that Nikki has to be circumspect with. There’s barely a handful of Seguridad officers she can trust not to blab, intentionally or otherwise, so she has a limited task force who are in the know. The rest are out canvassing under very carefully worded instructions, to keep them from realising what they are really asking about. (There’s always the risk that they might put it together by themselves, but from experience Nikki knows most of them are way too dumb, way too lazy, and often both.)

  Jessica reaches to grab the handrail as they climb the stairs, the action pulling back her sleeve to reveal the edge of a bandage.

  “You sprain your wrist?” she enquires.

  Jessica pulls her sleeve back down.

  “No. Burned it on the stove.”

  A mixture of smells hit them as they crest the second floor landing. It reminds Nikki quite pleasantly of the sea at first—briny with a hint of fish—but there is something else wafting in behind it that speaks more of the docks than the beach.

  “What is that smell?” Jessica asks, her button nose turned up in distaste.

  “They’re making a new cologne,” Nikki answers. “It’s called Eau d’FNG.”

  Nikki throws out the insult to see how the girl takes it. She gets no response, not so much like she’s ignoring it as that she doesn’t even realise it applies to her. Definitely new to the job.

  The second floor is more of a grid than a maze, rows and columns of tanks stretching half the depth of the chamber. These are where the beach part of the smell is coming from.

  Behind the grid is a black wall, pipes running in and out of it at all levels and angles. This is the source of the less welcoming odour. A sign above the double doors says Processing.

  Again, here on Seedee, up is down, down is up. On Earth, anything really heavy with structural implications for a building would be installed on the ground floor or in the basement. Here the giant tanks are up high for ease of moving things around in lower gravity. The weight is not in the tanks themselves, of course, but the thousands of gallons of seawater in each.

  “It’s fish,” Jessica answers for herself as she crests the stairs and gets her first view through the rows of thick glass.

  “Spot on. That’ll be why you got the gig as an official observer.”

  Jessica stops in front of a tank and stares inside, ignoring Nikki’s remark. There ar
e hundreds of the fuckers in there, swirling around each other.

  “So CdC does its own fish farming? It must be a big part of your diet,” she adds, taking in the scale of the operation.

  “Oh, it’s even bigger than you think. But we ain’t usually eating it pan-fried with lemon and butter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, they got the good stuff here too, Alaskan salmon and the like, that they serve up in the restaurants over in Central Plaza where I’m betting you ate so far. But most of this is for protein generation. S’why the company is called NutriGen: generating nutrition. Turns out farming fish is a quick and economical way to grow organic material for food fabrication.”

  Jessica looks towards the black wall and takes in the implications of the Processing sign.

  “And is that …”

  “Where the magic happens, yeah.”

  She looks a little sick.

  “Hey, don’t diss it. We live on that shit up here.”

  “What does it taste like?” she asks, distaste all over her cute-little-rich-girl dial.

  “Like a thousand different things, that’s the point. It’s used as a base material in the process of fabricating different foodstuffs. It’s not haute cuisine, but it’s a decent approximation, kind of in the same way McDonald’s is a decent approximation of a hamburger. Though I’m guessing you never ate much at Mickey Dee’s.”

  Jessica doesn’t respond to this either. She moves on, past an empty slot where they’re swapping out a tank, then stops in front of another, staring at the fish like she’s hypnotised.

  “Man, you don’t like to give much away, do you? Long as we’re stuck with each other, why don’t you tell me a little about yourself? Where you from?”

  Jessica frowns, not taking her eyes from the tank.

  “I grew up in lots of different places,” she replies.

  “Mom and Pop had FNG postings, huh? Okay, but everybody’s from someplace, in their heart. I mean, like, where did you go to college? Where do you hang your hat these days back down below?”

  Jessica doesn’t reply. She looks at the blank slot along the row.

  “Why is there no tank in that one?”

  Nikki sighs. This one’s all about reaching out and connecting with people. Fucking FNG.

  “They bring in new tanks pretty regular. Replenish the stocks.”

  “Why do they need to replenish the stocks? I would have assumed the whole point of this is that the stock is self-replenishing?”

  “Far as I understand it, it’s to widen the gene pool, dilute the effects of inbreeding.”

  “I see,” Jessica replies.

  She doesn’t seem satisfied by the answer. Or maybe it’s something else she’s not satisfied by. She’s still staring into the tank, like something in there doesn’t meet regulations on an FNG form she needs to fill out.

  “What?” Nikki asks, impatient to get them moving again, though not looking forward to what awaits them in Processing.

  “Why are the fish all avoiding that one corner? Do you see that?”

  “You asking me to be a fish psychologist now? How the hell would I know? Don’t look like anything to me.”

  It does, though. Nikki didn’t notice it at first, but if she stares for a few seconds it’s clear none of the fish are swimming into that area of the tank, like there’s an invisible force-field in place.

  It’s hardly a priority right now, though.

  “Come on,” Nikki orders.

  The smell hits them hard when they step through the automatic door. Nikki notices that the people working here have masks over their mouths and noses, but she figures she would still be smelling this through her ears. They’re wearing plastic caps too, so that their hair doesn’t reek of it when they clock off.

  “Smells like an anchovy’s asshole,” Nikki observes.

  Jessica looks like she’s fit to choke.

  “Aren’t all these processes automated?” she asks, sounding pissed. “Why does anyone even have to be in here?”

  Nikki laughs.

  “It is automated, but somebody’s gotta keep an eye on the systems. Oh, what, you imagined we’d have robots up here in Seedee, for doing all the nasty and dangerous jobs?”

  She looks kind of sheepish.

  “No, but I’d have thought a system like this would be self-monitoring.”

  “Yeah, I guess there’s a lot of myths about Seedee down below. There’s some of mankind’s most cutting-edge shit in development up in here but we’re no further forward than the scientists on Earth when it comes to the artificial intelligence problem. We can build the most sophisticated computer to monitor a system like this, but we still need a person on the spot to intervene if a gasket needs replaced.”

  “And we can’t build a robot that can do that?”

  “Maybe, as long as every gasket replacement operation was gonna be identical, which it ain’t. They say you can make a computer recognise a chair, but it still doesn’t understand what a chair is. If every tool or component is slightly varied, then you need a person and not a robot to fix stuff. And given every piece of trash is slightly different, then you even need a person and not a robot to deal with trash. Hence the shittiest jobs still need people to do them. That’s why Maria G is such a big deal.”

  Jessica looks quizzically at her.

  “You know, Professor Gonçalves? The lady somebody just took a shot at in Central Plaza?”

  “I hadn’t heard about that but I know who you’re talking about.”

  Nikki takes careful note of this response, then continues.

  “She was the one who realised we were on a fool’s errand trying to simulate the most complex thing in the entire universe, and so put all her efforts into understanding and enhancing the real thing.”

  “The human brain, you mean,” Jessica confirms. “Implantable memory technology.”

  “Course, there’s always rumours that they have invented super-intelligent androids that pass for human, except they never told nobody, and they’re keeping people doing shitty jobs as part of the cover.”

  “I can imagine how people would get paranoid up here in this environment,” Jessica observes. “And you’re right about the myths people have down on Earth regarding CdC. It’s irrational, but it’s still a scary idea that what you think is a person could actually be a machine.”

  “No,” Nikki tells her. “That’s only a little bit scary. What’s terrifying, once you let that idea loose in your head, is the thought that you could be an android yourself and not even know.”

  There is a control booth up ahead, from which a woman in grey overalls is reluctantly emerging to investigate their unexpected presence. Nikki is guessing the ventilation system is pretty good inside there, as she isn’t wearing a mask.

  As she draws near, Nikki gets an ID on her lens: Angela Gloustein, Assistant Manager, Processing.

  “Can I help you?” she asks.

  Nikki straightens to attention, holds up her badge.

  “I’m Sergeant Nikki Freeman of the Seguridad, and this is Jessica Cho, official observer from the Federation of National Governments. We’re making inquiries about Dev Korlakian. We believe he didn’t turn up for his shift today. We’d like to talk to anyone who works with him or who knows him personally.”

  “He’s not on my phase but I know who you mean. I think he’s buddies with Sol Freitas and Alex Dade. They’re not here right now, though. They’re all on Atlantic time.”

  Nikki is familiar with both names. Freitas and Dade are part of Julio’s crew, bag men and muscle just like the late Mr. Korlakian. She knows where she might find them but she can’t go talking to these guys while Jessica is hanging around, because the only incriminating information they are likely to disclose will be on Nikki. She’ll catch up with them later, when her spare wheel is safely tucked up in her FNG-approved bed for a regulation quantity of shut-eye.

  “Oh, and there’s also their shift supervisor, Frank Jacobs. He left a cou
ple of hours ago, though.”

  “You know where he lives?” Nikki asks. Jacobs sounds like just the sort of guy she wants to talk to in front of Jessica: Omega’s day-job line manager, who will know precisely jack shit about the activities that got him killed. A quiet little chat in the guy’s apartment, all protocols strictly followed, line of questioning carefully controlled. She will learn nothing, but more importantly, so will the FNG.

  “I can look it up for you. I think he’s somewhere over in W2, though.”

  Even better.

  “No need,” says Jessica, fingers working her lens via an invisible interface. “According to his tracker, he’s in a bar called Radiation, on Mullane. That’s only twenty minutes from here,” she adds chirpily.

  Shit.

  Jacobs is a typical corporate get-along. Theoretically, everybody on Seedee can be located at any time “for safety purposes,” subject to the usual clearance hierarchy, unless they choose to disable the setting. It’s entirely up to the individual: the Quadriga is very forthright about that freedom, and it states that nobody should ever feel they will be judged for choosing to go dark, especially on their own time. But ain’t it funny how so many people in management positions never go dark?

  Is it the case that ambitious people tend to be less protective of their privacy, or is it that the Quadriga tends to promote people who are willingly compliant?

  Hmmm. Tricky one.

  “Let me get that home address from you, Angela,” Nikki says. It’s desperate, but if she can drag her feet, then there’s a chance Jacobs might finish up his after-work Qola and head for home before she and girl-scout reach Mullane.

  “I’ve got that information too,” Jessica announces. “Sending it to you now.”

  “Well ain’t you just indispensable.”

  OPPOSITION RESEARCH

  It is Alice’s first time on a static. The motion is smooth and frictionless due to the magnetic repulsion system, making the sense of acceleration unnerving. It feels like falling sideways, totally unlike any motion she has experienced before. She can’t help eating it up, eagerly taking in every detail of her surroundings, which makes her grateful that being a wide-eyed newbie is part of her cover.