Silent Order_Image Hand

by Jonathan Moeller

  “The pawnbroking business, that is?” said Cassandra.

  Eighty blinked his one organic eye and grinned at her. “That’s exactly right, Dr. Yarrow. The pawnbroking business.” He snorted. “Though you’d be surprised how often people try to pawn useless shit. Ready?”

  March nodded, and he and Cassandra followed Eighty down a flight of stairs to the building’s underground parking garage. Anything left on the street in this neighborhood would get stolen, so Eighty secured his vehicles underground. Air cars were too expensive, he informed them, and he preferred old-fashioned wheeled transport. He owned a dozen different vehicles – several cars, cargo vans, and a truck with a winch and a chain on the back.

  “Is that a tow truck?” said Cassandra, blinking.

  “You have a good eye, Dr. Yarrow,” said Eighty, walking towards an unremarkable four-door sedan.

  “A lot of need for tow trucks in the pawnbroking business?” said March.

  Eighty grinned and unlocked the car. “You’d be surprised. And sometimes for our mutual employer, I need to steal a car or three. Fortunately, Strykers are adaptable in all situations. It’s our motto, really.”

  March took the front passenger seat, and Cassandra got in the back and started unpacking her portable Eclipse device. She set the flat black machine on the back seat, produced a tablet computer, and booted it up. The display went black, and white text and numbers started to scroll across the screen.

  “You still haven’t made a graphical interface for that thing?” said March, amused.

  Cassandra shook her head and tapped a command into the tablet. “Mathematics are so much more elegant and precise than any crude graphical representation. You could chart the dark energy to gravitic dissipation curve using a chart, yes, but you could also see the underlying equation and reproduce the exact values.” She shook her head. “Graphical charts are the crutch of sloppy mathematicians, Jack.”

  “I will take your word for it,” said March.

  She looked up from the tablet and smiled. “Fortunately, you have many other excellent qualities.” Then she flushed a little and looked back at her tablet.

  “Ready?” said Eighty as he started the engine.

  “How long will it take to get to the University?” said Cassandra.

  “With the morning traffic, about fifteen minutes,” said Eighty.

  Cassandra nodded. “We’ll be configured and calibrated by then.”

  “Super,” said Eighty. “Let’s go do spy stuff.”

  He backed out of the space, drove through the garage door and up the ramp to the street, and into traffic.

  As Cassandra worked in the back seat and Eighty drove, March looked through the windows at the streets of Northgate City. Daylight did not improve the slum around the base of Arcology Twelve. The various gangs and loiterers had disappeared from the streets, but March supposed they had to sleep sometimes. There also seemed to be more police vehicles visible, their armored vans driving through the lanes.

  After about five minutes, Eighty turned and took an eight-lane road that climbed upward toward the glittering metallic sides of Arcology Twelve.

  “Dear God,” said Cassandra.

  Eighty nodded. “The rampway is an impressive feat of engineering. It spirals all the way from ground level to the highest level of the arcology, nearly a mile above ground. Every level of the arcology is about a half-mile across, and has its own street system…”

  “Yes, that’s all impressive, but that billboard,” said Cassandra, disgusted.

  “Hmm?” said Eighty. “Oh, yes. That.”

  The ramp rose towards a massive, broad arch that led into the heart of the arcology. Over the top of the archway was a huge holographic billboard displaying three men and one woman. All of them were naked, and all four people were enthusiastically engaging in a carnal act.

  It appeared to be an advertisement for window blinds, of all things.

  And it was just one of the thousands of billboards covering the sides of the arcology, most of them featuring nudity in some way or another. March wondered if the people piloting aircars ever had accidents from billboard-induced distractions.

  “I do forget how…er, unsettling Raetia can be for first-time visitors,” said Eighty.

  “Unsettling?” said Cassandra. “It’s depraved. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the Royal Calaskaran Church, but the Falcon Republic is making me come around to their point of view.”

  “The Falcon Republic was founded in rebellion against the Royal Calaskaran Church,” said Eighty. They drove through the arch and into the arcology proper, following the gentle slope of the ramp as it climbed up through the arcology’s outer wall. More billboards covered the walls of the vast tunnel, all of them as explicit. “Personal freedom was the founding principle of the Republic. So long as people are adults, they can do what they like to themselves and with each other. That includes appearing in explicit ads.”

  “But freedom without discipline leads to self-destruction,” said March, thinking of the drug-addicted Citizens of Rustaril.

  “Undoubtedly,” said Eighty. “Which is why the Raetian Republic destroyed itself, and the Falcons took over. It mostly works, in the end. The breeders and the civilians sometimes destroy themselves with their personal freedom, or sometimes they do brilliant things and make a lot of money. We clones bring discipline and order.”

  “So why don’t you replace all the breeders with clones?” said Cassandra, scowling at her tablet. March could tell the explicit ads had offended her more than she wanted to show.

  “Eh, that would be a bad idea,” said Eighty. “For one thing, think about the dangers of too much genetic uniformity. Like if some of the regular army clones all share the same genetic vulnerability to a specific virus. There are millions of them in uniform and millions more who have gotten their citizenship and retired from service. One virus could wipe them all out. Harder for a disease to spread through a more genetically diverse population. Also,” Eighty sighed, “we’re not terribly creative.”

  “What do you mean?” said Cassandra.

  “We clones, I mean,” said Eighty. “I’m good at a lot of things. I’m also really good at following orders. I’m not that good at thinking up new things from scratch. Breeders are better at that.” He shrugged. “So, we have both. Clones to defend the Republic and run things, and breeders to think up new ideas, have children, and add dynamism to society. It’s not perfect, and it has a lot of problems, but it works most of the time.”

  “I’m sorry if that offended you,” said Cassandra. “It’s just…I really don’t like those ads, Mr. Eighty. I don’t think it’s right for people to take their clothes off for money like that. I just don’t.”

  “As it happens, I agree with you,” said Eighty. “Elizabeth changed my mind on the matter. Well, I say changed, but I never gave it any thought before I met her. She started out as a model and an actress and got a few minor parts. Her agent told her to appear nude in her next production, and she refused and got fired. Then she realized that there was more power and money behind the camera than in front of it, so she got into intellectual property law.”

  “Huh,” said Cassandra. “What do you think, Jack?”

  March looked at the passing billboards. Adelaide would have been disgusted, he knew, though March had long ago lost the ability to be shocked by the depths to which humans could sink. He had visited planets enslaved by tyrannical governments, yet when people had freedom, they often used it to debase themselves, and eventually became so corrupt that a tyrannical government arose to restrain their worst impulses.

  It was an insoluble dilemma. March didn’t know the answer. Maybe there wasn’t one.

  “I think,” said March, “that we have a job to do.”

  Cassandra laughed. “Practical as always.”

  “And speaking of that,” said Eighty, shifting to the right-turn lane, “here we are.”

  He took an off-ramp that led into one of the arcology’s levels
, and the car came to a surface street. March looked around with interest. The arcology level was a half-mile across, and it looked exactly like a small city neighborhood. Clever holography and lightning even created the impression of a blue sky and sunlight along the ceiling, and trees lined the streets, and grassy lawns encircled the base of the buildings. The buildings themselves were sleek things of glass and steel and polished marble. March saw many young men and young women walking along the sidewalks, backpacks slung over their shoulders. A large, impressive-looking sign proclaimed that they were entering the Northgate City campus of the University of Raetia.

  March had absolutely no use for academics or intellectuals and had only ever visited universities when his work for the Order took him to one. At best, he considered academics naïve and oblivious to the real world. At worst, they were the willing tools of men like Simon Lorre and Mr. Odin, diligently working to bring their home worlds beneath the slavery of the Final Consciousness.

  He recognized that his dislike of academics was a prejudice, but he had seen little enough to contradict it. In hindsight, he hadn’t expected to fall in love with an archaeologist. Though in his opinion Adelaide was more of a popular writer and entertainer than an academic, but he wouldn’t tell her that. He supposed Cassandra was an academic as well, but she was a hard scientist, and hard scientists were generally more useful than practitioners of the social sciences. That, and Cassandra had had no interest in politics until her government had tried to kill her at the behest of the Final Consciousness.

  “How far to Slovell’s building?” said March.

  “The RSCFMA,” said Eighty.

  “What?”

  “The Roger Slovell Center For Media Arts,” said Eighty. “He donated enough money to the University that they named the building after him.”

  “Jesus,” muttered March.

  “He didn’t donate any money, so the Lord doesn’t get a building named after him.”

  “What a pompous name,” said Cassandra. “I think…”

  She sat up straighter, peering at her tablet.

  “What is it?” said March.

  “I’m picking up a quantum distortion effect consistent with…uh, with the technology the Machinists have used in the past,” said Cassandra.

  That meant she had encountered a reading of a device of the Great Elder Ones.

  March frowned. “I thought the Eclipse had a range of twenty-seven kilometers inside a planetary gravity well.”

  “It does,” said Cassandra, tapping at the tablet. “I didn’t account for the quantity of metal in the arcology. And the amount of shielding around the building’s reactor. I’ll have to work out an equation to compensate for that. For that matter, while I haven’t been able to prove it yet, I think the readings can be less reliable in an area with a large number of people. People about to make a choice, even a trivial one, are in a state of minor quantum flux, and that actually does have a small but measurable effect on any quantum…”

  “Okay,” said March. He recognized the tone of voice Cassandra used when she was winding up to give a lecture. “What’s the end of the equation?”

  Cassandra blinked a few times as she accelerated to the end of her train of thought. “I think inside an arcology this densely constructed and populated, the Eclipse device will only have an effective range of about two to six kilometers.”

  Eighty grunted as he stopped the car to let a mass of students cross the street. The students seemed to be ignoring the traffic signs and wandered into the street whenever they felt like it. “Explains why we didn’t pick up that quantum effect until we got to the University level. Can you tell me what that is, or is it classified?”

  “It is massively classified,” said March. “But here’s what you can know. The Machinists use technology from an extinct alien race in some of their weapons. That technology gives off a distinctive and highly rare quantum effect. Dr. Yarrow has a machine to detect it.”

  Eighty nodded. “So, if you’re detecting that quantum effect here, it’s almost certainly coming from Slovell’s building.”

  “Yup,” said March.

  “Well, no one studies dark energy physics at this branch of the University,” said Eighty. “That’s all in Sunrise City a few thousand miles away. I reckon we had better drive to the RSCFMA and have a look.”

  “And you said you have no imagination, Mr. Eighty,” said Cassandra.

  Eighty laughed and eased the car further into the maze of the University complex. “I don’t have much imagination, let’s say.” He glanced at the crowds lining the sidewalks and shook his head. “But I have enough imagination to realize what would happen if someone set off a radiation-based weapon of any kind inside a place as densely populated as a Falcon Republic arcology. Probably good we’re investigating this.”

  March looked at the student crowds and imagined hundreds of withered, crumbling corpses strewn across the sidewalks. Maybe even thousands.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  About five minutes later they drove past the Roger Slovell Center For Media Arts. The building looked just as pompous and expensive as March expected. It was a sprawling rectangle of polished marble with enormous glass windows. Banners hung between the posters, some of them advertising the videos made by the film students. (There was, unsurprisingly, a great deal of nudity.) Most of the banners advertised the dates of an upcoming film festival, with a grand prize of a quarter of a million credits to be announced by a panel of judges overseen by Slovell himself.

  “Is that film festival a big deal?” said March.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Eighty. “Shows up in the planetary media and everything. Contestants bring entries from all over the Falcon Republic and neighboring worlds. Usually, Slovell takes the opportunity to rail against the Kingdom of Calaskar, and he makes sure the grand prize goes to the most anti-Calaskaran film of the bunch. He’s never forgiven the Kingdom for failing to appreciate his artistic genius.”

  Cassandra scoffed. “Some genius. He tells his actors to stand in front of a camera without their clothes. What a brilliant artist. How did he possibly come up with this brilliant and unprecedented idea.”

  March smiled. “What’s the Eclipse say?”

  “The quantum effect is definitely coming from somewhere inside the building,” said Cassandra. “I’m not sure, but I think it’s underground.” She grimaced. “Well. Somewhere below the floor, given that we’re half a mile above the ground already.”

  “All right,” said March. “I’m going to go inside and have a quick look around. I’ll take my phone and earpiece, and have it forward the video data to you. Then we can hopefully get a better idea of where the quantum device is located.”

  Eighty nodded, pulled over to the curb, and put on his warning lights. They spent a few moments getting ready. March slid an earpiece with a microphone and a camera into his ear, and Eighty dug out a laptop computer. He pulled up the official map of the RSCFMA on the screen, and March synced his phone to the computer.

  “Okay,” said Eighty. “Three things. First, I can’t stay parked here.” He nodded out the window. On the sidewalk, a boxy blue drone on treads rolled closer, a flashing yellow light atop its frame. “Too much longer and I’m going to get a parking ticket. Second, they have weapon scanners at the front doors. You won’t be able to take your gun and stunner inside.”

  March grimaced, but pulled out his weapons and secured them in the glove compartment.

  “Third,” said Eighty, and he produced a plastic ID card. “Forged student ID. If anyone tries to run it, say that you just came from the IT department with a new card. The University’s IT department is notoriously bureaucratic and incompetent.”

  “When the card’s record isn’t in the database,” said March, taking the card, “no one will be surprised.”

  “Right,” said Eighty. “Unfortunately, you do look rather suspicious.”

  “That’s harsh,” said Cassandra.

  Eighty shrugged. “He’s nearly tw
o meters tall and has a cybernetic left arm. He looks like he can kill someone with his bare hands, which makes sense because I suspect he actually can.”

  “Good point,” said Cassandra.

  “I’ll try to stay inconspicuous,” said March in a dry voice. “I’d better move. Too much longer and you’re going to get that parking ticket.”

  “Right,” said Eighty. “Good luck.”

  March nodded and got out of the car, regretting the absence of any weapons in his pockets. His cybernetic arm and experience with unarmed combat meant that he could handle himself in a fight without weapons, but a good plasma pistol trumped any amount of unarmed combat experience. Eighty pulled away from the curb and got into the flow of traffic. The parking enforcement drone came to a sudden halt on the sidewalk. March thought the robot looked disappointed at the escape of its quarry.

  “All right.” Eighty’s voice crackled in March’s earpiece. “I’m going to circle the block a few times, and then park at a public lot about a third of a mile to the west. Bloody expensive, but if we circle the block too many times that will draw notice.”

  “Better just go to the parking lot,” said March.

  “The quantum device is functional,” said Cassandra, “and I’m getting a clear reading on the effect. It hasn’t changed or moved.”

  “Do you recognize the effect?” said March. In her past two years with the Eclipse project, he knew that Cassandra would have developed profiles of every single known artifact of the Great Elder Ones.

  Unless, of course, the artifacts could change their quantum profile.

  “I do not,” said Cassandra. “It’s very similar to ones I’ve seen before, but nonetheless new.” She paused. “That said, it is in the same class of effects we’ve encountered earlier.”

  That meant it was a relic of the Great Elder Ones.

  “Great,” said March, grimacing. The presence of a relic of the Great Elder Ones confirmed his fears. The Machinists had indeed developed a radiation weapon of some kind, and Slovell was helping them to test it. On the plus side, if March started tugging on this threat, he could unravel the entire tapestry. “We’ll have to do a complete circuit of the University and see if we can find any other readings.”