The Credulity Nexus

by Graham Storrs

  Rik raised his head and took a quick peek. Up ahead, at the exit, a dozen FBI agents were taking up firing positions, some of them packing more than standard-issue hardware. He cursed under his breath.

  “You know,” the upload said, as if nothing untoward was going on, “I was just beginning to think the last twenty-four hours had been a complete wash-out, and then, right out of the blue, you turn up in the back of my van. It's a miracle. The very man I was looking for just walks right into my hands. I can hardly believe it.”

  Bullets hit the windscreen like a summer downpour. The glass crazed and powdered where they hit, but it didn't break. Rik and Freymann ducked low, all thoughts of keeping their prisoner covered forgotten. A high-pitched whine cut through the racket of gunfire as a stream of buzz-gun pellets sliced across the windscreen, leaving a metre-wide gash in it. Even the upload kept her head down after that.

  The van shot past the blockade at high speed, the buzz-gun slicing through the side windows. A row of holes appeared down the opposite side of the van as armour-piercing bullets crashed through and out the other side, passing just a hand-span above Rik's back.

  The vehicle careened into San Vicente Boulevard. Brakes squealed all around them as they crossed the southbound carriageway, trying to make a left to go north. Rik and Freymann tumbled forwards as Rivers hit the brakes. On two wheels, they mounted the pavement and screeched their way along the concrete wall of a Macy's building before Rivers got the vehicle back under control and, eventually, back on the road.

  Almost immediately they swung off to the right, then right again onto Beverly Boulevard, and then a hard left. They were off the main roads and were soon driving through quiet, low-rise suburbs with no sign of pursuit. Even so, it would be only minutes before the LAPD traffic AIs put together their route from surveillance cameras and satellite images.

  “We've got to ditch this van,” Rik said.

  “No problem,” said Rivers, making yet another turn.

  “Where the hell are we going?” Freymann demanded.

  The upload didn't answer, but pulled into the entrance of a nondescript house and drove the van to the back of the building.

  “OK, this is where we change vehicles.” She reached for the door handle, but Rik pushed the barrel of the machine gun into her back.

  “Not so fast. Fariba, get out and cover her.”

  Freymann looked like she might object, but she climbed out the back and went to stand outside the driver's door. The upload climbed out, and Rik followed behind.

  There were two cars parked in the yard. Rik picked the big sports utility. He wanted all the room he could get for handling the long-barrelled Heckler-Koch. Inside, the vehicle had the usual seating: a bench across the back and swivel seats at the front. He made Rivers put the car on auto and sit at the front, facing back. He and Freymann took the bench seat, facing forward. Both guns stayed trained on the upload's midriff.

  They set the destination as LAX and the car moved off, in the smooth, unhurried way of robotic vehicles. Leaving the city seemed like a good idea to Rik, and neither of the women suggested a different plan. He figured the upload must have some kind of getaway planned, and he'd be happy to tag along. What he really wanted to do was to keep on calling Maria, and everyone else he might have put in danger, and warn them all to run for cover. But he didn’t dare take his attention off the upload for a second.

  “Who's your girlfriend?” Rivers asked as they rolled through the quiet streets.

  “I'm more interested in who you are,” Rik said.

  “I'm just a girl doing a job.” The upload seemed far too relaxed and confident for Rik's liking. He knew that they could turn their emotions up and down at will. Maybe she had just tuned out the anxiety she should be feeling. He hoped that was true. He didn't like the notion that she just didn't have anything to be anxious about.

  “Who are you working for?”

  “You'll see. You're invited to come and meet the boss.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. What should I call you?”

  “I don't usually give my name out to just any guy who asks, but you can call me Rivers.”

  “What's this all about, Rivers? What's in that package that's got everybody so worked up?”

  Rivers affected boredom. “I wish I could tell you, Rik, but I honestly don't give a damn. Somebody wants it. Somebody with a lot of money. Somebody who will kill you very, very slowly if you don't tell them where it is.” She turned to Freymann and gave her a smile. “And your friends, and your family, and everybody you ever knew.” She turned her smile back to Rik, but Rik wasn't smiling at all.

  Freymann, who had been silent so far, said, “Rivers Valdinger. She's a small-time thief from Chicago. At least, she was until a few weeks ago. That's when she died in a police shootout.”

  “Hey, who are you calling dead?”

  “What crew was she with?” Rik asked, ignoring her.

  “Mostly freelance,” Freymann said, still reading data off the cogplus display on her wrist. “There's a possible connection to the Chicago Outfit. She may have been working with Marcello's crew.”

  “What?” Rik could hardly believe his ears. “The Mob wants bioweapons now? What the hell for? Oh, don't tell me. To sell to the highest bidder, right?” He glowered at Rivers, challenging her to deny it.

  Rivers just shrugged. “I've already told you. It's just a job. I deliver the package and my end's complete. What's your beef, anyway? You were doing the same job until the cops got hold of you. Just a different client, is all.”

  Rik opened his mouth and shut it again. The damned woman was right, of course. He had the moral standing of a small rat right now. His only defence was that he hadn't known what was in the package until Shah had told him. In fact, he still didn't know for sure. It could be Newton Cordell's wart ointment, for all he really knew.

  But he'd known it must be something bad, something seriously wicked, or Cordell wouldn't have hired him to transport it.

  A thought struck Rik. “Isn't Marcello dead? I read about it some years ago. The guy was a total whack-job.”

  Freymann shrugged. “The records still say Marcello is the kingpin. Must be Marcello Junior in charge now. They like to keep it in the family.”

  “So you work for the Chicago Mob?” Rik asked. “Is that right?”

  Rivers just smiled and said nothing. After a while, Rik eased back into his seat and they spent the rest of the trip in silence.

  Chapter 15

  Maria's only concern as she approached the house was how to break the news to David that it was over, but that changed as soon as she saw the car in the drive. It was an SUV, black with tinted windows. It immediately made her nervous. She slowed her pace a little, to give herself time to think.

  She and David didn't have a lot of visitors. Neither of them had family in New York, and neither of them had a wide circle of friends. Anyone who might call on them didn't own a hulking, mean car like that one.

  When she noticed that her front door was standing half-open, she stopped dead. She was still a hundred metres from the house. She couldn't see in through the windows.

  It was too much of a coincidence. Rik shows up out of the blue. A mysterious package is delivered from Blake. Then this car turns up in the drive. Something was very wrong.

  Two bright flashes from the dining room window made her jump as if she'd been stabbed with a pin. Gunshots! Silenced gunshots! They'd killed David! Someone had killed David!

  She put a hand to her mouth to stifle an involuntary cry. She had to do something. Hide. Call the police. But all she could do was stand there, frozen, in the middle of the street.

  They would come out now, surely. They'd rush out to their nasty, black car and drive away. But they didn't. She stood, watching the house, waiting, but nothing happened.

  Carefully, she went to crouch behind a shrub on a neighbour's lawn, still keeping the house in sight. A moment later, a man's head appeared at her open door, looked up and down t
he street and disappeared again. The door closed behind him.

  Maria's heart was thumping, but her brain was only slowly grinding back into motion. It was the package. It must be the package. That's why Blake had been so scared. He knew people were looking for it. People who would kill poor David and wait in her house like fat, ugly spiders, for Maria to come home.

  She turned away from the house and walked quickly away down the street. They were probably searching the house now, tearing open drawers, ripping up cushions, smashing things, looking for the package that wasn't there. The one she was carrying.

  She rounded a corner and began to run. Should she go to the police? But could they help her? What would they do, watch her twenty-four seven? And what about the package? If she told them about it, Rik would probably get into trouble – Blake too, maybe. Not that they didn't both deserve it, the bastards!

  No, she needed go somewhere quiet and think this through. Right now, she was free. They were waiting for her to come home. She had, what? Half an hour? An hour? Then they'd be hunting her again. She switched direction and headed for the shops, slowing to a fast walk. She needed cash, as much as she could draw, and she had to buy whatever she could on credit right now. As soon as she left town, she couldn't so much as make a phone call using her netID, or they'd be able to track her. There was a mall up ahead and a used car lot farther down the street. Already she was making lists in her head.

  -oOo-

  Elspeth Cordell strode across the broad expanse of the sitting room like a nineteen-fifties screen goddess walking onto a set. Her husband watched her with appreciation. He had always admired the way she could do that, as if spacetime bent itself around her, drawing everything into her orbit.

  Cordell himself had none of Elspeth's charisma. He was a bland-faced, middle-aged man of medium height with wispy blonde hair and small, faded eyes. He was happy to disappear into the background whenever his wife was around. That was easier than ever now he was confined to a wheelchair. He gave her many things, riches beyond imagination, status enough to satisfy a queen, and love to the full capacity of his heart. Yet what she enjoyed most, the greatest yet simplest boon in his gift, was that he always gave her centre stage.

  The room was so large that the curvature of the floor could be seen if you looked carefully. Contemporary modern furniture decorated it artfully. If not for the magnificent vista of the crescent Earth filling the glass ceiling above them, it could have been a room in any trillionaire's mansion on any continent on the planet. Instead, it was high in geosynchronous orbit, part of a glorious palace of glass and steel, hanging above North America like Heaven itself.

  “I've been monitoring the situation,” Cordell said. His tone was petulant, even a little whiny. “That idiot courier has lost the package. Lost it! Can you believe that? How can a man be so stupid?”

  Elspeth stood beside him and took his head in her hands. “It will be all right, darling. We'll get it back.”

  Cordell frowned and moved away, not wanting to be comforted. “You told me he was up to the job. You said he was the one we wanted.”

  “He is, dear. I'm sure he'll get it back for us. And, if not, I have arranged for lots of other people to help look for it.”

  Cordell's face grew darker. “Nobody must know what it is they're looking for. You understand that? Nobody.”

  “Of course, darling, I–”

  “The Enemy is looking for it too.” He gave her access to the reports he'd been receiving. “One of his agents is a zombie. A filthy, undead upload! The Devil thinks he knows our plans, Elspeth. He's out to stop us with his unclean Hell-spawn. I hope the whole world can see the handiwork of Lanham and the demons of Omega Point in this.” His troubled eyes burned with anger.

  “Ghosts and zombies,” she said, holding out a hand to him. “What can they do to thwart us? We are doing His will. In this, even the undead are His instruments.” She took his hand in hers and smiled. “Come with me to the chapel. We should pray together and seek His guidance. Let the Lord take some of this burden off your shoulders, my love.” She pulled gently, and he moved with her.

  -oOo-

  “Holy crap!” Rik scowled out across the tarmac. “You said you had a chartered jet waiting,” he complained to the smiling upload. “Not this!”

  “Jet, scramjet, what's the difference? It'll take you far, far away from here.”

  “Yeah, too far, maybe. I'm after a hop to the next state, not a trip to the Moon.”

  They rolled steadily towards the Chinese-built AVIC StarLiner, a top-of-the-range private, rocket-assisted scramjet. Sleek and long, sharp-beaked and gleaming white, the ship looked like it might leap into the sky at any moment and tear off into space. As well it might. The AVIC StarLiner was designed to fly from the ground, accelerating to Mach 28, straight into orbit.

  When the car had passed straight through the airport's security checkpoints without so much as needing to slow down, Rik realised that the upload had plenty of money to throw around on bribes. Looking at the scramjet, he saw she had access to the kinds of funds that would make a pork-barrelling senator blush.

  “Did you ever get that list of Cordell's competitors?” he asked Freymann, out of curiosity.

  “Sure, but the Chicago Mafia isn't on it.”

  “Anyone especially nasty?”

  “Not unless you count Lanham Holdings.”

  “Never heard of them. What's interesting about them?”

  “Only that their chairman, Martin Lanham, is dead, just like our friend Rivers.”

  “An upload?” Rik was getting a queasy feeling about this. He had nothing against uploads in general, but a lot of people thought there was something very sinister about the whole idea of dead people owning big chunks of the world. It occurred to him that maybe there was something to the paranoia after all.

  “Yeah, but he's no zombie like Black Beauty here – he's a ghost. Runs the world's biggest information market from an orbiting mega-computer called Omega Point.”

  “Is that who's paying for the scramjet?” Rik asked Rivers. “This Lanham guy?”

  “Never heard of him,” Rivers answered, apparently truthfully.

  Rik nodded. Whatever was going on, this was where he and Freymann got off. Rivers could take her billion-dollar scramjet and go where she liked. He needed to get onto the Feds and find out if Brie and Blake were OK, get back to searching for the package, and find out why no-one he knew was answering his calls. The first step in all that was to get Rivers on the plane and make sure she left town.

  And that would only go well if she co-operated.

  The car trundled to a stop close to the aircraft. A door stood open in the jet's long fuselage, and a set of steps led from there to the ground. There was no sign of any security.

  “OK, here's the deal,” said Rik. “You get on the plane and fly away. We stay here and find ourselves another ride. I'm sure you've worked out by now that my colleague and I only really have the advantage while we have our big guns close to your brainbox. That's why we're all going to get out of the car together and walk to the plane.” He scrutinised the upload for a reaction, but didn't see one. The woman sat calmly in her seat and listened.

  “When you start to climb the steps, my colleague here will turn her gun on the aircraft's engines. Those things are made of lightweight composites, and I'm sure you can see what a mess a Heckler-Koch MG6 would make of them. You'd lose your escape route, airport security would be alerted, and the Feds would probably be out here before you'd worked out what to do next. Right?”

  Rivers looked out of the window for a moment, gazing at the gleaming aircraft beside them. When she looked back, her expression was regretful.

  “That's not a bad plan, Rik, and you know, it might have worked. Except–”

  Rik felt the machine gun being yanked out of his hands at the same instant that he realised Rivers had grasped the barrel. The upload, moving with inhuman speed, had snatched the weapons and disarmed both Rik and Freymann befo
re either could react.

  Rik tried to launch himself at the black android, hoping he could distract her long enough to let Freymann pull her gun. But he was nowhere near fast enough. He heard Freymann shout an oath, and saw the upload's hard little fist shoot towards his face.

  After that, there was only pain and blackness.

  Chapter 16

  Veb Degen 1 Rea had seen some weird shit in his time – you hang out long enough at The Harsh Mistress and nothing surprises you any more – but this bunch took the biscuit. The Turgu mostly hung out in the Sump, the deepest level of the city, emerging only to mug tourists and steal liquor. Down there, they were kings of their stinking domain. Up in the more civilised levels, they were treated like the nasty pests they were. The other street gangs would attack them on sight. So would the cops. They were a sick blend of obscure religious cult and organised crime syndicate, and Veb was not happy to see them in The Mistress.

  Kadashman Turgu, their boss and spiritual leader, sat cross-legged on a micro-dirigible. The ultra-light, vacuum-filled platform was about the size of an armchair. Small turbo-fans were attached to its edges, and they twitched back and forth, maintaining its position. Turgu himself seemed oblivious to the constant, swaying shuffle of the machine, his large, hairy head managing to remain almost still while the thing slid around under him.

  He was a small person. If he ever left his dirigible and stood on the ground, he wouldn't come up to most men's chests. It was possibly because he never left his floating throne that his body had become a small pyramid of blubber. His belly rolled over his scrawny legs, and his backside spread across the cushioned seat. Yet his face, bobbing and weaving above it, bristling with a coarse ginger beard and hair to match, had a sharp, manic look. His black eyes never seemed to blink, and his thin lips were always pursed, as if in fierce concentration.