QUANTUM MORTIS: A Man Disrupted

by Steve Rzasa

  Both of Hildy’s partners looked worried, until they saw him. Then their expressions rapidly turned to anger.

  “What were you doing with her, Tower!” Vendersen demanded, sticking his chest out as he got in Tower’s face. “Is this your fault? Did you get her into this?”

  McCandless put a beefy hand on the other man, but his anger, for all that it burned cooler, was unmistakable. “The Deputy Commissioner kicked MCID out of the investigation. What was she doing over there, Chief?”

  “She was doing her job,” Tower replied shortly. He wasn’t in the mood to deal with the civilians’ departmental politics, not with Hildy lying right there on the gurney, blue-lipped and breathing raggedly. “And so was I.” “It’s not your job anymore, Tower,” McCandless’s jowls shook slightly when he spoke. “This is a TPPD investigation. Leave it to us to handle it!”

  “TPPD can’t handle this. Believe me. I don’t even know if MCID can.”

  That knocked the two of them back a little. The civilian police might not know the full extent of Colonel Baylor’s writ or his ruthlessness, but they were aware that no force, outside the Duke’s Viminal Guard, was afforded looser rules of engagement or more leeway to operate. “It’s that serious?” Detector Vendersen asked.

  “Could be,” Tower allowed. “I don’t know yet. Look, we can’t do anything for Hildy now. It’s up to the medics. If you want to help me find the guy who did this to her, then find a man by the name of Nostro St. James. I’ll send you what I have on him, but be aware that he’s extremely dangerous and he’s supposed to be dead.”

  “Dead?” McCandless said, his voice betraying his skepticism.

  “Dead,” Tower confirmed. “So if you find him, don’t try to pick him up, let me know in person. In person, face to face, not via any comm link no matter how secure you think it is. And you also might want to put as many resources as you can into finding fourteen KoreTek power cells.”

  “Power cells? Is this what it’s all about?”

  “I’m told they’d make one hell of a bomb,” Tower said. “And there is no question that St. James has the ability to make one.”

  The two detectors looked at each other in dismay.

  “Any idea what the target is?” McCandless asked.

  “That’s the problem,” Tower told them. “We don’t have any idea at all.”

  Having stabilized her, the medics rushed Hildy into the building, leaving Tower alone on the platform with the six policemen. The six of them followed the medics, but Tower decided to park the Steyrer in the visitor’s lot rather than follow them. It would get in the way of any subsequent incomers and besides, he really didn’t want to be around the civilian cops any longer than he had to.

  After parking the var, he contacted Major Zeuthen and gave him an abbreviated report.

  “You want Zero Zero Tango authorization for a dead man and an AI?” The major’s image on the head’s up didn’t appear to be amused. “That strikes me as unnecessary, Mr. Tower, if not redundant. Well, what’s one more check on your psychiatric summary, right? Granted.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “And Tower, don’t let the civilians get in your way. This morning, some Assistant Supervisor from TPPD with what I can only assume are illusions of grandeur or a death wish tried reading the riot act to the colonel about MCID interfering with one of his department’s cases. The colonel sent him away with bootmarks up and down his fat backside.”

  “Assistant Deputy Commissioner Swirsky?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I appreciate the support, sir.”

  “You’re welcome, Tower, and if you’d like to express your appreciation, I think the colonel would be grateful if you would try to keep the civilian casualties in the single digits the next time you shoot down a vehicle, which at the present rate I imagine you’ll be doing later this afternoon.”

  Tower winced. The body count was usually worse when the take-down took place at low altitude. He’d hoped that the warehouse was unoccupied, but from the major’s tone, it appeared that was not the case. “How bad, sir?”

  “By your standards, not very. No fatalities, 13 injured, two seriously.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “Don’t be. Just do your job, find that dead man, and neutralize him, Tower. Zeuthen out.”

  Tower sat quietly in the var for a few moments and wondered when the world had gone so mad. How did he find himself here, sitting alone in an empty, soulless parking lot? Where had he gone so wrong? He hoped he could hold himself together long enough to deal with this St. James situation; the walls that he’d so carefully constructed around his grief and fury over the years felt as if they were cracking again.

  He cursed himself. There was no time for this sort of self-indulgence. If he was losing it again, then he was losing it and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

  “Any luck tracking down Cara?” he asked Baby.

  “No, and I’m not looking,” she told him. “I don’t dare risk it; anything I find is more likely to be a trap than a genuine track. I’m just maintaining a passive scan of the news headlines, event schedules, and planetary arrivals. I’m assuming, possibly incorrectly, that whatever she’s planning will be tied to something like that.”

  “All right, well, do what you can. But mostly just stay away from her until we come up with a plan of attack. I think we’re going to have to come at her through St. James; if we can take him, maybe we can use him to leash her.” He paused for a moment. “Of course, she may be thinking the same thing about us.”

  “No, she isn’t. She’s not afraid of me. She’s stronger, she’s smarter, and she’s faster than I am.”

  “Yeah, well, she should be afraid of me,” Tower declared.

  “You can’t kill her, Tower.”

  “We’ll see about that. Maybe she can run all over the subsector, and she can hide anywhere there’s enough memory linked to the aether, but she must have a core code somewhere. We’ll figure it out. For now, let’s go see how Hildy is doing.”

  She wasn’t doing well, he learned, when Baby managed to gain access to the latest medical report filed by her doctor as he rode the lift to the floor on which Hildy was on. But she was still alive.

  “Her heart rate is all right. Vitals are more or less stable. It appears as if the anti-venom was administered in time. There she is.”

  Behind the glass, Hildy lay in the bed, her eyes closed. Her face was pale and waxen. A tube ran from a nearby bank of machines to her right wrist. Her body was mostly concealed under a dark blue blanket that rose and fell ever so slightly with every breath. Those breaths came very slowly. Alarmingly slowly.

  He moved toward the door to the room, but a security medibot smoothly blocked his way. It was taller than Tower by a good half-meter, was nearly skinny enough that he could fit both hands around it, and was festooned with six spindly white arms that ended in various attachments. One set, its most human-shaped hands, flexed a trio of fingers that glowed blue at the tips. A single red-glowing optical port scanned its surroundings from the center of the silver, ovoid object that served as its head.

  “Apologies, Chief Warrant Officer Graven Tower. Only family members are allowed to enter the room at this time, sir.”

  “She was with me. I just want to see that she’s all right.

  “This is a first-rate medical facility and she is receiving premium-grade care, sir. Facility policy prohibits your entry at this time, Chief Warrant Officer Graven Tower. Only immediate family are allowed to enter the room at this time, sir.”

  Can you talk some sense into this thing, Baby?

  “That would be unwise, Tower. I am aware you feel guilty, but closer proximity to Detector Hildreth will not assuage your sense of responsibility for her condition. Indeed, a closer examination may well exacerbate it.”

  Tower gritted his teeth but he stepped back and didn’t try to enter the room again. A doctor bustled by and entered the room, quickly checking Hildy out visual
ly before waving a sensor rod over her sleeping figure. Holo displays ran vital stats down the wall at an angle that Tower couldn’t see. The doctor, a forty-something dark-haired man wearing a white medic’s suit, peered at them, frowning.

  “Where is Derin Hildreth? Is she in there? You have to let me in!” Tower turned to see a young man arguing with the medibot. He had blond hair, cut short, and hazel eyes. He was big, about the same height as Tower, but burlier, with an overmuscled frame that looked nearly augmented. His voice betrayed his agitation, but he wasn’t completely out of control. His outfit was simple—brown shirt, blue trousers and black work boots with grav plates on the bottom. He struck Tower as being vaguely familiar, for some unsettling reason.

  The robot was unperturbed. It blocked the door with four arms and held the kid at bay with its remaining two. “Apologies, Mr. Zek Carter. Only family members are allowed to enter the room at this time, sir.”

  The newcomer backed away. He looked to his right, down the hall, where four or five of TCP officers were standing in a cluster. Then he looked at Tower, a little suspiciously.

  “Who are you? You’re not a cop, are you?”

  “No, not exactly.” Tower was still wondering why the guy rang a bell. “What the hell is a Zek Carter?”

  The man froze, his expression hardening. “I’m Zek Carter. I’m … Derin’s my girlfriend.”

  Oh. Well. That explained it. It wasn’t the guy’s face he’d recognized, but his voice. Seeing the kid in the flesh didn’t make Tower like him any better.

  “Graven Tower, MCID,” Tower didn’t see any way to get out of introducing himself. “I’ve been assisting Detector Hildreth on her investigation.”

  “Oh, okay.” His name obviously wasn’t familiar to the kid. Interesting, Tower mused, that Hildy hadn’t seen fit to mention him. Very interesting, in fact.

  “Do you know what happened to her, Officer Tower?”

  Tower let the title slide. It was wrong, but being a civilian, Carter wouldn't have known. “I can’t provide you any details since the investigation is ongoing, but I think the doctors would tell you that Detector Hildreth was injected with a poison in a potentially lethal quantity.”

  “Poison?” Carter’s voice rose so high it nearly cracked. “Injected? How did she get injected with poison? How do you know the quantity was potentially lethal?”

  “Because I was there,” Tower growled. This pumped-up young monster was what appealed to Hildy? It was more than a little disappointing. He’d thought she'd have had more interest in character than in this cartoon poster boy. “I brought her in. It seems we made it in time. She’s a tough girl, she’ll be okay.”

  “I hope so.” The kid clenched his fists. They were, to be fair to the guy, good-sized fists. “You know who did this to her? I know you can’t say who it is, but do you know?”

  “Yeah. We know.”

  The kid nodded, and went back to staring at Hildy, who in her sleep looked more like a corpse than the pretty, vivacious young woman she was. Then he shook his head and glanced at Tower. He had tears in his eyes.

  “Well, I hope you kill the bastards.”

  Tower couldn’t find it in his heart to fault the kid.

  One of the holos in Hildy’s room flashed red. Both Tower and the kid noticed and turned their attention to her. The doctor barked orders at a drone that hovered over his right shoulder. It descended toward her, extruded a long, thin protrusion, and injected something into her neck. The flashing slowed, then stopped, and the red color dimmed to a less threatening yellow-orange.

  Both the watching men began to breathe more easily. Tower clapped his hand on the young man’s beefy shoulder and squeezed it. “That’s exactly what I intend on doing, kid.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  We avoid collateral damage to civilians to the greatest extent possible. If you consider how much damage we were willing to do to ensure the destruction of the rogue nanobots, you should be able to imagine how much worse we believed the probable alternative was.

  —from “Factory Destroyed in Aerial Bombardment, 22 Killed,” the Trans Paradis Times, 3386.122

  It was time to stop running and think. There were dozens of MCID agents, supported by hundreds of uniforms searching every location that anyone could imagine would be worth blowing up in Trans Paradis, Rhys City, and Seasider. Adding one more to the mix wouldn’t do any good. What the situation called for, in Tower’s opinion, was a good stiff drink. Or three.

  He drove to the quietest place he could get a drink outside of his own apartment. The Ambient was an outmoded holdover from the Deep Chill movement that reached its peak three years ago and was all but dead now. The craze for lowering one’s body temperature, or at least appearing as if one had, had faded, but the slow, rhythmless music and the slowly evolving holos in cool blue and green light themes survived and Tower always found them relaxing when he was in a dark red mood.

  Red was anger. Anger wouldn’t help him now. Blue was peace and relaxation. Green was life, action. He couldn’t find green now, but blue, blue was attainable.

  The Ambient was three-quarters empty, which suited Tower fine. The bartender was still frosted, with tiny faux icicles decorating his hair, his short, white-shot beard, and even his eyebrows. A bored-looking woman dressed in white, with an elaborate snow queen mask glanced at Tower, then turned away dismissively, uninterested. Tower ordered a Blue Snowburn, then took it to the darkest corner of the room and sat down to study the image of the night sky that arced overhead.

  As promised, the Snowburn seared its freezing cold way down his throat before igniting his innards. He blinked, his eyes watering from the effects of the drink. A thought struck him.

  “Did I ever tell you about the time we ambushed a patrol of hivers on Essene Sigma?”

  “This will mark the thirty-eighth time, assuming you are intending to proceed with the story,” answered Baby. “If you wish, I could temporarily erase my memory of it, so as to experience hearing it for the first time.”

  “A simple ‘yes, Tower’, would have been enough, Baby.” He winced after taking another long, burning draught. “The point is, we were able to take them out by sending a dummy convoy back-and-forth between our bases for two weeks. We couldn’t find them, but we were able to tempt them into showing us where they were.”

  “And you think you can draw out St. James in a similar manner?”

  “No,” Tower said. “But I think you can draw out Cara.”

  Baby didn’t seem to like the idea. “Didn’t you tell me to stay away from her? Now you want me to prance around and see if I can provoke her into taking a shot at me?”

  “Not you, precisely.” Tower corrected her. “Remember when you made that crack about my driving and said you were glad you had backups?”

  “I’m an uploaded machine intelligence with multiple memory channels accessing more permanent storage than you can imagine, Tower. So, yes, I do remember. Perfectly.” He could tell she was unsettled. She tended to get a little waspish when she felt things were out of her control.

  “Well, I got to thinking, and it occurred to me that a backup you could probably be made into a dummy you.”

  He waited for it, but to her credit, Baby resisted the obvious rejoinder. Overhead, a constellation slowly morphed from a green-winged bird into a blue-green fallen angel.

  “Cara appears to believe you’re clumsy and overeager,” Tower continued. “I expect that means she’s expecting you to try tracking her the same way you did before, only a little more carefully. Which is exactly what you would have done if I hadn’t told you to stay away from her, right?”

  “Neumann’s Regression shows that what could have been but was not cannot be known with any statistically significant degree of confidence, Tower.”

  “Don’t be evasive. Wouldn’t you have tried to go after her again?”

  “Probably,” she admitted.

  “Which means she’s waiting for you. Can you make the dummy?”


  “Can I? Sure. Should I? I’m not so sure about that. There is a moral question here, Tower. That dummy me will essentially be another me, only she’ll have a life of her own and a soul of her own. If I create her, but I remove her volition from her so she just follows my directions, how am I any different than Cara?”

  “I’d say not being an amoral sociopath trying to blow up large buildings with people in it has to count for something.”

  “You’re an amoral sociopath, Tower,” she said dismissively. “What do you know about it? Your concept of right and wrong is no more functional than Cara’s, you’re just better trained to civilization.”

  Feeling a little stunned, Tower retreated to his Snowburn. At least it was unlikely to turn on him. He drained the rest of it and signaled for another, operating under the assumption that he was going to need it in order to deal with his treacherous augment.

  “Okay, let’s say you’re right and, we’ll call her Baby 2, has a soul and a life and all that. But so do all the people that Cara and St. James are going to kill! What about the idea that it might be worth trading one machine life that only exists because we created it—”

  “—her,” Baby interjected.

  “Sorry, her, anyhow, a life that only exists in order to save others that will die if we don’t create her for the express purpose of being destroyed.”

  “A vessel made to be broken,” Baby mused thoughtfully. “It’s the question of free will.”