“It is elusive. Even I can only gather hints of its passage.” The darkness closed back over Dr. Friland’s smile.
“Wait…We’re not talking about the Starflyer, here, are we?”
“No. This is a binary construction; it is not a child of biological life. But it did not come through the gateway. We would have felt its passage within the datastream.”
“Then what the hell is it?”
“I suspect you were close to the truth with your first question. Something this pervasive can only be here to observe the city and its inhabitants. What you should be asking is, who would want to gather information on such a scale?”
“Mellanie,” Stig hissed. “She wants to know how to meet us. She’s a reporter, so I guess she must have access to sophisticated scrutineer programs. I just didn’t think…” He fell silent, rubbing at the back of his neck with some embarrassment. “Me of all people, I shouldn’t be fooled by appearances.”
“This is the girl who came through the gateway yesterday?”
“Yes. Though I haven’t a clue who she’s working for.” He leveled a sly glance at the Barsoomian. “Do you know?”
“Alas, my people are not omnipotent. I have no more idea than you, perhaps even less. It is a long time since I left the Commonwealth.”
“You weren’t born here?” Stig knew he probably shouldn’t ask, but it wasn’t often a Barsoomian talked about anything, let alone his own background.
“No. I was born back on Earth, before Sheldon and Isaacs opened their first wormhole.”
“Dreaming heavens. I never knew anyone was that old. Not even Johansson dates back that far.”
“There are some of us still left from that time. Not many. Not now.”
“Right.” Stig shook himself, and started to walk up the stairs. He watched closely as the Barsoomian followed him, gliding across the gym’s dusty floorboards. The hem of his robe lifted just before he reached the bottom stair, flowing upward ahead of whatever feet it concealed. “I’m going to check with the team I’ve got watching Mellanie and Bose,” he said. “Do you want to stay around?”
“No thank you. They haven’t left the hotel yet. I thought I would visit the national gallery today. It’s been a while, and I hear good things about the new sculptors.”
Stig did his best to avoid checking over his shoulder. There was just no predicting the Barsoomians.
Dr. Friland was right: Rescorai and Bose hadn’t left the hotel yet. The team he’d assigned to them reported that they’d ordered breakfast in bed.
Stig told the webheads to start searching for a new distributed-operation monitor program in the city’s net. He desperately wanted to increase the number of people watching the young reporter, but the clans didn’t have enough people in Armstrong City for that. There was no way he could switch priorities based on his own feelings—Adam had certainly hammered that lesson in. Unless and until she did something radical, Mellanie was an unknown he had to regard as nonhostile. He still had to cover the daily gateway opening, and continue training and preparation for the blockade run. On top of that he had to maintain a thorough watch on the Institute personnel’s activities in Armstrong City, which continued to grow.
With the few clan members he could spare, he was lucky Mellanie didn’t spot them when she did finally leave the hotel to wander over the city. They stayed well back, and delivered hourly bulletins for him. She behaved just like any rookie reporter; even though he was convinced that was an elaborate front. He still hadn’t figured out what Bose was doing with her, not at all.
Mellanie had a thoroughly worthless first day in Armstrong City. After a long sleep to recover from the journey she headed off to the Governor’s House, where she spent over an hour in the press office, familiarizing herself with local events. Her expectation that her Michelangelo show credentials would give her special privileges and encourage the Governor’s media staff to confide rumors and civic gossip was badly misplaced. Nobody had ever heard of Michelangelo. The official line was that the Guardians were a bunch of scabby mountain bandits, irrelevant to the city. The Governor’s media people were keen to push the concept of how life was continuing normally on Far Away, that nobody was panicking.
A follow-up visit to the local news company, the Armstrong Chronicle, which maintained a public bulletin service and ran news shows on the city net, was almost as unproductive. The Chronicle reporters did at least supply some details on the ambush just outside the city. She was shocked to learn Trevelyan Halgarth and Ferelith Alwon were dead, and that the medical crews had retrieved their memory cells for shipment back to the Commonwealth. When she asked if it was the Guardians who’d mounted the ambush nobody knew anything other than the police statement that local crime syndicates were suspected.
She popped into one of the gyms that was doing such a roaring trade, recording a puff piece for Michelangelo about rich natives building their bodies up for life on a standard-gravity world. It was so ineffectual she was embarrassed to send it when the wormhole cycle opened.
In the afternoon she did some bog-standard man-in-the-street interviews. They were a little more revealing; several people said they thought the Guardians were behind the recent attacks on the Institute’s vehicles and property. If they were, she reasoned, then they must have a group based in the city.
When they got back to the hotel she reviewed the meager information the SIsubroutine had collected for her. “I have no direct evidence of any Guardian membership,” it told her. “However, when the wormhole was open earlier this afternoon, a great many encrypted messages flowed into the city net. Most were directed to the Governor’s House, and the Institute.”
“And the rest?”
“They were all addressed to individuals. Given the small physical size of the net, it should now be possible for me to correlate the physical location of each recipient.”
“I haven’t got the time to knock on the door of everyone who got an encoded message.”
“Of course not. But once I have identified the building where an encoded message was received, I can review the electronic hardware it contains for evidence. Be advised; there is one place I will not be able to venture: the Barsoomian residence in the Chinese quarter. There are some strange processing units connected to the net at that node. My routines do not run correctly in them. I have withdrawn myself from that area.”
“The Barsoomians, they’re some kind of ultra-green radical group, aren’t they?”
“That was one of their founding concepts. They are humans who wish to explore the potential of unrestrained genetic modification within themselves and their environment, thereby leaving mainstream society behind. Far Away was the ideal planet for them to establish themselves. Without a global government it cannot enforce the kind of restrictions on genetic modification which most Commonwealth worlds have.”
“Are they connected to the Guardians?”
“I do not know. It seems improbable the two groups are unaware of each other. There are several archive reports at the Armstrong Chronicle of Guardians using unusually large horses. The Barsoomians would be an obvious source of breeding stock.”
“That is interesting. All right, let me know if you find anything at those buildings.”
Mellanie and Dudley had dinner in the hotel restaurant. The curry she chose was a lot hotter than most she’d eaten before, but she managed to get it down, aware of the waiter smiling in the background when she puffed out her cheeks and drank copious amounts of cold mineral water to wash it down. Dudley wasn’t so lucky. He was complaining of a bad stomach even before they reached their suite.
“I thought I remembered liking spicy food,” he mumbled the second time he returned from the bathroom.
“It’s probably an acclimatization thing,” Mellanie said. “Your new body isn’t ready for curry just yet.” She retrieved her small white cocktail dress from her bag—not one from her own range, a nice Nicallio that had been tailored to fit her just perfectly—and she knew she loo
ked sensational wearing it.
If she didn’t have any success tracking down the Guardians tomorrow, then she’d just have to extract information the old-fashioned way. During her visit to the Armstrong Chronicle, several male staff members had managed to swing past and tell her how delighted they’d be to show her around the big city at night.
Looking at the dress with its nearly nonexistent skirt, Mellanie gave a mildly resentful sigh. She would fuck whoever it took to get a contact name, of course she would. But lately—actually, since the Prime invasion—she’d begun wondering about other ways to accomplish her job, because that’s how most other reporters got things done. When she tried to count up just how many people she’d slept with, she couldn’t. Life had just swept her away since that awful court case; she’d done what she could to stay in charge and in control, but the events powering her along had been so overwhelming. It had been an exciting ride, though, she couldn’t deny that. At times, that is. Frightening, too.
But there have been so many people.
As she’d told dear old Hoshe Finn all those eons ago, she wasn’t ashamed about her sexuality. Really, she wasn’t. It was finding out about Alessandra that caused the most pain. The betrayal. Alessandra had just whored her for the Starflyer; never caring, never interested.
I should have said yes to that money-junkie sleezeball Jaycee when he tried to whore me. At least he was honest about what I’d be doing for him in those kinds of TSIs.
“Are you all right?” Dudley asked.
“What? Yes.”
Dudley still had one hand pressed firmly across his belly. With the other he reached out to her face. “You’re crying.”
“No I’m not.” She moved back out of range, hurriedly swiping her hand across her eyes.
“I thought… Oooh.” Dudley hurried for the bathroom again.
Mellanie grunted at Dudley’s departing back, and flopped down on the bed. The town was almost silent outside; she should be able to get a good night’s sleep. Dudley certainly wouldn’t be pestering her tonight.
The loud and unpleasant sound of Dudley’s digestive suffering came clear through the bathroom door. Mellanie searched around in her bag for the earplugs she’d been given on the Carbon Goose, pushed them in, and hauled the duvet over herself.
The following morning Mellanie decided to get professional. It wasn’t as though she’d had to sit through lessons or courses on how to be a reporter when Alessandra took her on; but she’d picked up enough around the office to know the basics of starting an investigation in a strange town.
“I want a full analysis of city court cases going back two years,” she told the SIsubroutine. “Get me a listing of every case the police brought against the Guardians, even people who are only suspected of membership. We can cross-reference it with the locations of those encoded messages.”
“I can’t do that. Official court records are archived in an isolated memory core.”
“That’s ridiculous. All government records are supposed to be publicly available. It’s in the Commonwealth constitution, or something.”
“Article 54, yes. However, the Armstrong City grand court has used this archiving method for security purposes. Like most of the Governor’s House electronics, the court’s systems are old. There is no money available for upgrades, which leaves them vulnerable to anyone coming through the gateway with modern aggressor software. Records could easily be destroyed or tampered with.”
“Damn it.”
“You may visit the court in person and request copies.”
“Okay, all right. I’ll do that, then.”
“The Armstrong Chronicle has many cases on file which I can access. I can give you a list of possible court cases to research.”
“Thank you.”
Dudley wanted to come with her.
“I don’t think you’re up to that,” she said diplomatically. Despite the earplugs she’d heard him scamper off to the bathroom several times in the night. Sitting opposite her in the deserted dining room for breakfast, all he’d managed was a cup of weak milky tea and a slice of toast. He looked like he’d got the mother of all hangovers.
“I’m fine,” he said grumpily.
Mellanie couldn’t be bothered to argue. She dressed for her day in a simple dove-gray T-shirt and jeans, tying her hair back into a loose tail with a brown leather band. They took a cab, for Dudley’s sake, waving on the first three until she finally saw one with a Governor’s House license.
“I think someone is following them,” Olwen said.
Stig was in the middle of a briefing for the team members left at Halkin Ironmongery. Over half of his people were running around town trying to keep up with their assignments. He held up a hand to his audience, and asked, “Who?”
“Not sure,” Olwen replied. “The pair of them have been in the grand courthouse for two hours. I’m having trouble staying inconspicuous. But there’s someone else lurking here, having the same kind of problem. He’s not on any file we’ve got.”
“Have you found out what she’s doing there?”
“Going through court records. I don’t know which ones yet. Finley was going to talk to the court officials after she leaves.”
“Okay, I’ll get you some electronic coverage. Stand by.” He went up to the first-floor room where the team’s arrays were set up. Keely McSobel and Aidan McPeierls were both fully interfaced with the city net. He told them to review the area around the courthouse to see if there was anybody using encrypted messaging.
“You’re right,” Stig told Olwen five minutes later. “We’ve located at least three hostiles in the courthouse.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“Nothing. Keep Bose and Rescorai in sight. I’m coming straight over with some reinforcements.”
Mellanie was making good progress. The SIsubroutine had given her seven cases where the Chronicle mentioned a possible connection with the Guardians. All of them involved attacks on the Institute, either against their vehicles or personnel in Armstrong City. The police had caught few suspects. Those they did haul before a judge were just local punks, all of whom had a suspicious amount of wealth either in cash or in newly purchased goods. Obviously, they’d been paid to harass the Institute; not that they admitted to anything. Invariably, they had good lawyers.
Mellanie smiled when she read that for the second time. Three prominent city lawyers seemed to represent most of the accused, and they didn’t come cheap.
“There is an increasing amount of electronic activity in and around the courthouse,” the SIsubroutine told her. “I believe you are under observation.”
Mellanie rubbed her eyes and switched off the desktop array that was displaying the cases. It ejected the memory crystal that the clerk of the court had supplied her. “Police?” she asked.
“No. The systems they are using are more advanced than the police have on this world. Some of the signal traffic is strange. It appears there are two separate groups operating independently.”
“Two?” Mellanie rubbed at her bare arms where goose bumps had suddenly appeared. It wasn’t cold in the little office that the clerk had let her use. Midday sun was streaming in through the double-glazed window, stirring the air-conditioning unit into desultory life, while outside the season’s warm humid air hung over the city like a possessive spirit. If there were two groups interested in her, she knew one of them had to be from the Starflyer. Had Alessandra found out she’d traveled here? Or am I being too paranoid?
Dudley was curled up in a chair on the other side of the desk, his youth and pose giving him a strong resemblance to some sulky schoolboy. His eyes were closed, and moving like someone in REM sleep as he accessed a file from his inserts.
For an instant, she was tempted to creep out and leave him there. Except he’d panic when he realized she’d gone, and cause a big scene. And he was completely incapable of looking after himself if a Starflyer agent did want to abduct him.
Maybe bringing him along was
n’t so smart after all.
“Come on, Dudley.” She shook his shoulder. “We’re leaving.”
Mellanie put on her sunglasses as soon as they went outside. Dudley seemed to shrink away from the warm light. He was sweating and shivering as they walked away from the big old courthouse onto Cheyne Street.
Silver lines appeared just below Mellanie’s skin, like deep-sea creatures rising tentatively to the surface. They began to spread and multiply along her arms and up her neck to envelop her cheeks in a delicate filigree. Some of them she activated herself; the simple systems that she understood, sensors that amplified her perception of the surrounding area. The SIsubroutine was tapping into others.
Cheyne Street was busy. It was close to the center of town, a boundary line between the sector that housed the main government buildings and the start of the commercial district. Traffic was constant along the road, vehicle exhausts releasing dark fumes into Far Away’s crisp air. Cyclists wore filter masks as they weaved through the slow-moving cars and vans. Mellanie pushed her way along the crowded pavements, trying not to think what the fumes were doing to her lungs.
“We need to keep this simple,” she told the SIsubroutine. “Find me a car here that can take us back to the hotel.”
A long list of vehicles slid down Mellanie’s virtual vision, everything the SIsubroutine could find on Cheyne Street, either moving or parked. None of them were less than ten years old. As they’d all been imported from the Commonwealth, they all had drive arrays, not that they were used much in Armstrong City, which lacked even a basic traffic management system.
“Two Land Rover Cruisers registered with the Institute office have just turned onto Cheyne Street,” the SIsubroutine said. “They are heading toward you.”
Mellanie’s inserts and OCtattoos revealed a multitude of signals flashing through the city’s ether. She saw the Cruisers establish links to several people on the pavement. Two of them were very close, twenty meters behind, and walking quickly toward her. She turned her head to see a couple of men dressed in the dark tunics worn by the Institute troopers. Her virtual vision superimposed iridescent data pixels over the image. The two figures were separated from the rest of Cheyne Street’s pedestrians by haloes of tangerine and scarlet grids.
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