Once he was done with Edith, he approached Jens and, as they were speaking, he beckoned Helena over with an enthusiastic wave of his hands. Helena had only ever been on the internal end of the Relationship Management function: press releases about contracts signed and agreements reached. She had been watching him with curiosity.
‘Ah Lady Woolf,’ he said as she approached, his face cracking into a wide, toothy grin. ‘Mr. Dalgaard was just agreeing with me that the Woolfs singlehandedly rescued him and several dozen of his employees from Indexiv’s quite frankly murderous expeditionary force.’
‘Thank you, Jens,’ said Helena slowly.
‘No need to thank him,’ said the executive affably. ‘After all, it was you who did the rescuing.’ He clapped his hands together. ‘Jens, you’ll be met in the City by representatives of both Euros and Insel and the arrangements when I left were for a joint press conference to announce the victory here against Indexiv. As one of the architects of that result you will of course be required to be present.’
‘Of course.’ Jens nodded, seeming about to say more, but instead nodded again and let one of the medics usher him towards the transport on the beach.
‘Ms. Woolf, it is, if I may say so, remarkable to find you in one piece and all the more delightful that the situation has resolved itself in such a fashion.’
‘I can’t tell you how much I agree with that sentiment,’ said Helena.
‘I’ve managed to get some stunning footage here, simply perfect. The view out into the bay of the burning fleet isn’t quite as crystal as I’d have liked but it will supplement the other images we’ve collected quite adequately. Incidentally, I’m Leland Wales. What I really need now is some narrative. We’ve got enough of an understanding of what happened here to tell the basics but I’m hoping that you can add some colour.’ He came to a slow stop.
‘What is that?’ he asked, a curious tone in his voice, not quite hiding the disgust he was trying to suppress.
Helena did not need to look to realise Analise had approached. She smelled of youth, of fear and of sadness, but mainly of sodden earth and blood: she was fresh and acrid at the same time. ‘She helped us evade Indexiv’s troops,’ said Helena.
‘You helped her escape?’ said Leland. ‘Perfect. Where are her guardians?’ He looked round, hoping they were about to appear.
‘They were both executed by Indexiv as part of their program of extermination of the Normal population,’ said Helena.
Leland chuckled and wagged a finger in her face. ‘There you go again, you mischief maker you. I saw your last press conference. You make it very hard for the Company to reward you as a hero you know.’
‘How tragic,’ said Helena.
‘It is,’ said Leland, much more seriously. ‘We need people like you right now, even after last night. Euros needs Family members to step up and show we’re not for taking over. You’ve done it twice now when most others haven’t even woken up to the fact we might be taken over no matter what we do. Helena, if I can call you that, the world is holding its breath. The commandeering of Indexiv’s orbital platforms was unprecedented and unforeseen by any of the involved parties. I’d like to say it was Euros’ finest at work but we didn’t have a hand in it and are still waiting for the demands from the third party to land in our laps. Even now, as far as I am aware, Indexiv has still not retaken its own hardware from whoever is controlling it.’
‘Then we’re ahead,’ said Helena.
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Leland.
‘You’re worried that whoever had the resources to effect this kind of operation and yet remain entirely unknown could be a threat to parties other than Indexiv?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Leland, giving her a thumbs-up. ‘And right now Euros needs to take an admittedly equivocal stance that it was our own who engineered such a stunning turnaround for Indexiv here in Jutland.’
‘I will help,’ said Helena.
‘I never doubted you,’ said Leland in such a way as to let her know he felt exactly the opposite.
‘But I won’t be gagged again.’
‘There’s no need for that now,’ said Leland.
‘Good.’
‘No one will listen even if you do talk about it when you have the opportunity. The Families have realised, slowly and far from completely, it is true, but nonetheless they have realised what Indexiv hopes to achieve. They don’t have time for tales of woe about their assets.’
Helena couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Indexiv’s plan is to exterminate all Normals. That is their goal.’
‘In that you are incorrect,’ said Leland. ‘Indexiv want to rule, they want to control. Normals are incidental to them and, whether they are successful in that goal or not, it will not deflect them from their overall task of acquiring power over the other Families and Companies.’
Helena remembered the Hound’s words: genocide is an adjunct for both Euros and Indexiv. Leland was right; whether the Normals lived or died remained a moot point for both Companies.
‘I’ll arrange for accommodation for the girl,’ said Leland.
‘No,’ said Helena, not quite sure where she was heading.
‘You’re surely not thinking of keeping her. Do you even have a license?’ Leland sounded amazed at the thought she might adopt Analise. Helena listened to his assumptions and tried to imagine looking after Analise. It seemed impossible to her.
‘Don’t be so sentimental,’ she said tartly. ‘The girl has displayed a possible code 219 genetic variant. Director Johannes De Magdeburg will need to see her. On that basis, I would hardly let her get lost with other Normals before ensuring her safe delivery to the appropriate destination. She could be most important to us.’
This will not work,said her AI.One dream does not imply she is telepathic.
I never said it did, but I’m not losing her before I’ve had chance to ask her how she knew what she knew.
So you believe her?
Helena pondered the possibility for a moment and thought, I don’t know. It’s unlikely, but it’s not impossible. We are alive after all.
So you’re not attempting to save her, came the reply.
From what?
From your conception of a corrupted world.
Don’t be absurd, she thought.
‘I see,’ said Leland. ‘Well I’ll do my best to arrange for her to reach her destination, but since she’s an employee of Insel, it may not be straightforward.’ Seeing Helena’s look Leland said, ‘I will do my best.’ He had been leaning forward but, with this, he straightened up and pulled his shirt cuffs out from his jacket sleeves.
‘Ms. Woolf, a full Euros market-facing media team will greet you when you arrive in the City. Please cooperate and they will ensure you are given maximum exposure to highlight Euros’ case before investors. Is there anything you need to tell me now?’
‘Yes, I lost my spleen a few days ago and it needs attention before any press conference. I may also have caused myself permanent neurological damage in pushing my use of sensory enhancement over the line.’
Leland looked her up and down indifferently. ‘You’re still standing, but I will arrange for medics to meet you immediately after the session; after all, an injured hero is so much more dramatic than an unscathed one.’ He indicated that she should make her way to the last transport with Analise. Helena took Analise’s hand and finally left Jutland.
Despite Leland’s view that Helena should not receive treatment until after the press conference, the medics demanded she submit to a once-over once she’d boarded the flight. She told them about her spleen, her secondary AI giving her the exact medical terminology. They immediately pumped her full of nanotech designed to mitigate the side effects of internal bleeding and contacted Euros in the City to arrange for a new one to be grown matching her genetic identity.
Of the two medics, one, Adrian Goodson, noticed her slow response times and asked to check her nerves. Helena explained what had happened and let him get on with
it. The expression of bewildered fear on his face, as if she’d just told him she was self-harming but would he be ever so kind as to give her some new blades while he bandaged her wrists, left her wondering what the long-term consequences would be from pushing herself so hard.
He moved away and the two medics chatted briefly among themselves, not once looking in her direction. Helena was too tired to listen to their whispering and, having seen Edith sitting facing in the direction of travel up ahead of her in the transport, she went to join her.
The transport was a modified, mid-ranking executive plane. The rear half of its seats and comforts had been replaced with medical equipment and some small arms and armour should it have to depart in less pleasant circumstances. Edith had placed herself halfway forwards and appeared, from behind at least, to be asleep. Helena knew from long and bitter experience that it would be expecting too much for her mother to have come and spoken with her but, nevertheless, some things hurt every time they happen. Right then she was in no state to tell herself it didn’t matter.
Analise had been separated from Helena the moment they had boarded the flight and the medics had taken over. Analise had been checked over before boarding and, once she was on the transporter, had been put with the other Normals. They had not been offered seats and, apart from those occupied by Edith, Leland and one or two attendant staff members, the seats in the front half of the flight were empty.
‘I’m going to sit down,’ Helena announced to the medics, prompting Adrian to scuttle back to her.
‘Do you still have tingling in your fingers and toes?’
Helena tried to concentrate on what her body was feeling. ‘To my slight alarm, I tingle there and at my knees, elbows and across the back of my neck.’
‘And your lungs?’ asked Adrian.
‘I’m sorry?’ said Helena not wishing to understand what he was asking.
‘Do you have any pain in your lungs when you breathe? For that matter, does it hurt to blink?’
Helena took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Apart from the stale, reconditioned taste of the air, she felt clear. ‘No, no pain. My head is fine apart from the tingling.’
‘I didn’t ask you about the tingling Ms Woolf, I asked about pain.’
‘There is no pain,’ said Helena.
Adrian nodded. ‘OK, it’s fine for you to sit up front.’ Helena got up to move, but Adrian wasn’t finished. ‘But when the headache starts, I want you back here because it’s then we’ll have to act.’
‘How do you know that?’ Helena was compelled to ask.
He raised an eyebrow as if to ask her why she needed to ask such a question but said only, ‘Just come back then.’ With that, he moved back to his colleague to discuss the various cases they’d picked up in the evacuation.
Helena could not quite reach her mother; the aches and pains provoked by the last few days were making themselves felt, like bad neighbours whose loud music is, after a delicious pause, thumping through the walls once more. Edith turned halfway around in her seat and watched as Helena placed herself gingerly onto the edge of an aisle seat.
‘You burned out?’ she asked, narrowing her eyes at Helena as if able to look through her skull directly at her brain and its frazzled neurons. Helena wasn’t surprised she had been eavesdropping.
Letting it slip, she said, ‘Possibly. That and a missing spleen.’
‘Nothing that a couple of days rest won’t cure.’ Edith looked at her fingers. ‘Your father will have to wait a few more days for your visit.’
‘Thanks for the discretion,’ said Helena.
Edith gave the smallest of shrugs. ‘Like any of them care.’ She made the slightest tilt of her shoulders in the direction of Leland.
‘Why are you so careless?’ said Helena, exasperated by her mother’s incorrigibility. ‘It’s not always about you.’
‘Ha!’ laughed Edith. Genuine laughter, thought Helena in surprise. ‘It’s always about me. It’s always about you. Since when was anything we did about other people? We are Family. The world is ours; of course it’s about us.’
Helena said nothing.
‘You disagree? I don’t see it in you. You might think the world needs saving, girl, but it’s you doing the saving isn’t it. Don’t try to fool me with the illusions you’ve painted for yourself. If you feel guilt, ask yourself why. If you feel anger, work out how to express it. What I don’t hear you asking is why your emotions matter more than mine, or more than theirs.’ With this, Edith nodded at the Normals, bunched up, some standing, others sitting on the floor of the plane.
‘I do care,’ said Helena.
‘Of course you do, about yourself, your own conscience. You’ve begun acting as if you need to save the world, my girl. Honestly, the most disturbing item in that phrase is the implication you think the world needs saving.’
Helena was annoyed. She had planned to challenge her mother on why she insisted all of Insel’s staff were safely evacuated, but instead here she was on the sharp end of a skewer, Edith carving up her emotions with the skill of a surgeon.
Feeling frustrated, mostly with herself for not having more composure under the circumstances, Helena said, ‘You insisted on evacuating the Insel staff.’
‘Not the same,’ said Edith quickly.
‘Of course it is; you made sure they were safe.’ Helena knew, or at least strongly suspected, that Edith had not been acting from a newly discovered sense of altruism. She wanted to understand what was driving the decision.
‘Insel were neutrals. Of course, they now owe Indexiv less than nothing, but acts like mine will help ensure they fall in with Euros rather than let themselves be taken over. I have to admit saving Jens and co was good work. They won’t, at least with good conscience, be able to reject overtures of aid. We may even get a member on their board because of this.’
‘Is that it?’ asked Helena.
‘Three hours ago we were lost. You were preparing to die in front of a ruined old building at the hands of rapacious Normals. Don’t tell me you had stopped thinking about what you might do if, by some small stroke of perversity, the world turned your way again?’
Helena looked away.
‘These plans were laid down over the course of months, Helena. The fact that they bear this sort of fruit is most obviously a coincidence, but a happy one looked for in advance.’
‘I’m not arguing with that,’ said Helena.
‘So what is it?’ asked Edith holding up a hand. ‘I was talking to Lapo.’
Helena sighed inwardly. Lapo was Edith’s agent and it meant she was already capitalising on the events they had just survived.
‘What are you planning on doing?’ asked Helena.
‘Well, I thought about visiting Northern America,’ said Edith, her eyes glinting.
Helena moved quickly to stop the blood draining from her face, but Edith was already cackling. ‘Don’t worry sweetie, I just wanted to see your face. In case you weren’t paying attention, there’s a hostile takeover occurring and we’re on the losing side.’ Edith paused. ‘Well we were; which is why we must move rapidly to cement what will otherwise be a gracelessly temporary advantage. I heard about your calling the child a Code 219. I’ll be interested to see the examination results. At least it’s more imaginative than requesting her as your own.’
Helena smiled at her mother’s warming compliment. She knew it wasn’t a permanent solution, but for now, she was starved of inspiration for a more persistent resolution to seeing Analise fading back into a life of being Normal.
Yet, as a Normal, she will never want for clothes, or food. She will have education and a job. What will she lack? asked her AI and Helena found, in spite of a growing feeling of unease, she did not have an answer.
Conversations with David came to mind, and Helena decided he would have been able to help her articulate her rationale. I miss the arse, she thought.
Does he really know you better than all others, that it is his counsel you would seek?
asked her AI.
No, thought Helena. Don’t be so precious. It’s that, of all people, he might understand what I’m beginning to think.
How is that statement not an affirmative answer?
Because I suspect he arrived at the conclusion first, that he would articulate his own conclusions and I would understand myself through hearing him.
It seems probable others exist who share his metanarrative.
Possibly, thought Helena. Definitely. But where are they?
‘Helena, if you’re done demanding I justify myself for your own catharsis then, please, I have duties which must be attended to,’ said Edith crisply. Helena nodded and moved away, finding a row a few metres from Edith. As the first intimations of a headache began to gracelessly introduce themselves, she fell asleep.
HELENA AWOKE to the sensation of a breath upon her face. It was Adrian. There was a soft hum, accompanied by the faintest of blue luminescence, as he used a skein of nanomachines to examine her.
‘Headache begun, has it?’ he asked rhetorically. It was evident from his expression he knew the answer. Helena tried to sit up but her skull refused to agree with her decision, insisting in a very blunt way that she stay still and shut out the world. ‘The intracranial pressure began about an hour ago by my estimates. You were still awake then, Ms. Woolf. I asked you to come back to me when it began.’
Helena was in too much pain to reply, sarcastically or otherwise; it felt as if her brain had come loose from its moorings.
Can’t you help? She asked her AI.
I have been requested to refrain from administering pain relief.
‘You bastard,’ said Helena in exasperation and immediately regretted it; even her teeth hurt.
Adrian snorted. ‘Neuralgia can be murder.’ He leant back and slowly the coloured membrane linking him to Helena receded, like smoke blown in reverse. ‘You’re a fortunate woman, Ms Woolf. It seems some quick calculating by your secondary and primary AIs have limited the damage. I’ve instructed your primary to permit pain alleviation when the press conference begins, but not before. This is something you have to live through if your body and mind are going to kiss and make up. Right now they are more like two lovers holding a cricket bat and tennis racket respectively, daring the other to make the first move. If, like them, you don’t deal with the pain, it will all end badly. To stretch the analogy to breaking point, in both cases it normally ends with someone at the undertakers.’
A People's War (The Oligarchy Book 2) Page 28
