Helena’s Tertiary AI informed her that it was ten to midnight.
The city was buzzing. She was amazed. London never slept but it had the wide-eyed intensity of the twenty-four-hour market, the driven inability to relax. Windhoek shared none of that speed. People were awake because they couldn’t be bothered to sleep just because it was dark.
People of every skin and shape rubbed along together: brown, black, white, African, Asian and European. The mixing of race was so prevalent that it was nearly impossible to tell if any of them had a dominant ancestor.
Few cybernetic implants were on show. These people were too poor even to cheaply enhance their bodies. Glowing optics, filtration units for miners and the occasional metallic hand were the most common augmentations on display. In the cities of the North, only extreme wealth would have permitted such naturalistic displays of bland humanity.
Helena thought to herself about how the spectrum of mechanical human augmentation was bookended by the very poorest on one side and by the most privileged at the other both of whom were untainted human in appearance.
She laughed at the thought, none of her peers would be caught within twenty floors of terra firma. Their all lived high enough to look down on the cloud banks that drifted across London’s inconstant skies. Far above the crowded streets below.
Rex led her through the city. From his sure footed lead Helena assumed he had a specific destination in mind. She knew Euros would maintain hospitality suites high up in the downtown district of the city.
Few people openly paid them any attention. Even if both of them were over six feet tall and dressed in combat fatigues, whatever notice was being taken, any observers were careful to make sure it was never too studied or long in its assessment.
Indexiv was at war, and no one wanted that kind of attention right now. Turning from a side street crowded with low flying hover cars, Helena was confronted by the unbridled chaos of a market. Mangoes, avocados, peaches and apricots covered the stalls in front of her, their aromas tempting her to take one. She almost reached out her hand, to the applause of her AI, but the Hound grabbed it and gave her a disapproving look. She ground her teeth, waited for him to let go.
“Later,” was all he said as he led her onwards. There was a stink to the place that had nothing to do with overripe fruit. The smell of chilli, cinnamon, citrus and cumin wafted in clouds. Dead animals hung from makeshift abattoirs with foetid pools of blood drying beneath them. The sweat from a thousand armpits, some of them human, billowed with every passing stranger all held in place by the heat of the night.
Lanterns and lamps shone everywhere, yellow and white shots of light casting long dark shadows in a hundred directions. Each stallholder had their own unique take on what it meant to illuminate their wares. Helena quickly decided that the better the lighting the more likelihood that the goods were legal and, if it came to it, edible.
Apart from food, guns and clothes were the most popular items being traded. Ripped off technology was generally lit with the dimmest of lights, but nothing she could see caused anxiety. The most advanced implant she saw was a thirty-year-old Tertiary AI. She did not want to think about where, or from whom, it might have been obtained, but it would probably fail to interface with the Cloud whoever installed it. It was hardly a case of the masses appropriating the means of production for themselves.
More than one stall promised the wonders of nanotechnology, but her AIs said there was no evidence to support the claims of the traders. She could see nothing of value except food. It was all past its sell by date.
Why are the corporations so worried by piracy and intellectual property theft, she asked herself. Her AI flashed some of the statistics relating to those crimes. The numbers it showed her made it appear like a real problem, but she couldn’t tally what agencies were publishing with what she saw in front of her.
It is a middle class crime, said her AI. These people are not the middle class.
Enough people were picking over and poring through the goods to convince her that they had value to those who lived there. More than one customer was locked in spirited negotiations with a potential supplier. Helena allowed herself to gaze upwards every now and then, knowing it was pointless to try to see the stars from the ground.
The Hound stopped in front of one stall and talked animatedly with the man behind the counter. He was wearing garish yellow and red with a black-bordered poncho. His hair was European but his features were black African. He might have been shorter than Rex, but nothing could have forced him to back down. When Helena tried to listen in on what they were discussing she discovered that the Hound was using a sound dampener, because she could only hear a flat static after filtering out everything else around her.
The conversation ended abruptly. Rex nodded his head at Helena and pushed back into the crowd. She saw the stallholder watching them closely as they left, his dark eyes set in chubby cheeks squinting after them.
They were on Bülow Strasse heading slowly north-east towards the very centre of the city. She had expected the market to thin out and tall polysteel buildings to take precedence, but there were none. Coming to a T-junction, the street opened out into a low-rise area of town. The market lay behind her under the lobbies of a couple of high-rise buildings. Ahead of her was what looked like a park: an old colonial section of the city, with European architecture in whitened sandstone, defending itself from both the onset of modernity and the vibrant crush of the world it had once attempted to rule.
Rex took them along Independence Avenue, finally turning right onto a smaller pedestrianised street called Post St. Mall. The dripping fat of roasting chickens, antelope and boar made her mouth water. More stalls, more people; hemmed in now along both sides of the street by low-rise buildings. The stars were visible while large rocks and crystal formations were set into the pavements. Helena’s AI told her that the city had the largest collection of minerals in the world and that the museum, some three hundred years old, stood at the end of the mall.
Rex found a doorway close to halfway along the mall: a sheet of black in a wall of granite grey. A dozen buzzers and a small video phone were tacked onto the wall beside the entrance. He passed his hand across the access panel, Helena saw the light to flat five flash blue and the security door opened.
So much for hospitality, she thought. All the Hound had access to was a very normal flat.
Once inside, Helena stood around waiting for the Hound to make things clearer to her. The front door opened onto a bare room. A threadbare grey sofa was backed up against a blank wall. Directly opposite the door was a window with a view of the stalls on Post St. below. Two doors led from the room; one was open and led into a kitchen. She would have laid long odds on finding anything worth eating. If it was Euros’ property it had long been forgotten.
THE HOUND went into the kitchen. Left alone, Helena walked over to the window. With one hand on the glass she watched the world below go on living, for now at least.
How long will it be before Indexiv come here with the same orders as the mercs at Noenieput, thought Helena. The people beneath her might be pathetic, poor and unable to contribute anything worthwhile to her life, but there was no justification for the slaughter Indexiv had chosen to roll out like it was any other management strategy.
She knew that just a week before she’d have said she was in favour of the death penalty. Her family owned four Hounds themselves. She would have argued that it had to be for the right reasons, not simply on a whim.
In the Hound’s flat, staring at the people just a few floors below, she couldn’t shake the ghosts of Noenieput. That she’d killed people made her shake deep within. It didn’t matter that they’d been about to murder thousands. That they had murdered thousands.
What could justify how those people were murdered? she asked herself. To that, she had no answer. She had stumbled upon a rotten vein at the centre of what she believed was right with the world. The smell of decay and excrement from murdered childr
en hung like ghosts in her nostrils. Helena did not believe she would ever be free of it even as a part of her angrily wished to never to be released. She never wanted to forget the immediacy of what she’d felt watching from the rooftops, in the moment when she’d realised the child they’d left behind had lost its parents, lost its own life.
There was movement behind her from the kitchen; the Hound coming back through. Helena did not bother to turn round. She was watching the people bustling below her, progressing through the orbits of their worlds.
“Ma’am,” said a voice. It was Denholme.
She twisted on her feet, suddenly, unaccountably, hopeful. Denholme was looking at her; the Hound stood just behind him. In the shadows, Helena could not make out whether he was harmed or not, but he was alive.
“Rex, what are you doing?” she asked him. The Hound had a bunch of bananas in his hand and, brushing past Denholme, handed them over to Helena.
“Eat,” was all he said. She eyed Denholme, who shrugged his shoulders before she broke off the first piece of fruit from the bunch.
Denholme did not leave the kitchen, hovered on the threshold between the two rooms.
Rex came round and sat on the sofa.
“This is a Euros safe house,” he said, gesturing around him. “We have four hours before Indexiv trace us here. By then we must be halfway to Swakupmund.”
Helena wanted to know why Denholme was still alive, why she was still alive, and what the Hound was keeping them alive for. Her mouth was too full of banana to ask.
The Hound used her silence to keep talking.
“My prey is the boy. You are my tool for hunting him. I will kill you if necessary.” He paused, confusion sliding across his face, “I think?” As if answering his own question, he continued. “Since you two are despatched to find him, you remain well for now.” He shook his head again, as if dazed. “My tasks are not fully clear.”
Helena wiped away a small piece of pith and asked the Hound, “Who are you working for?”
He expression softened, “Euros.”
Helena jammed another piece of fruit into her mouth. At least I know why the Hound kept Denholme alive. Sort of. There was a noise somewhere beneath them, a banging. The Hound heard it too, and shifted his posture.
“We need to go,” he said. “Now. Bring your bananas. You,” pointing at Denholme. “Come with me, Woolf can follow us.”
Helena heard the undertone, wondered who the Hound preferred. They left the flat through an alternate exit, as the security door on the ground floor was rammed down by Indexiv soldiers.
Chapter 7
THEY CLIMBED stairs onto a small pitched roof where the chips of stone skipped and ground under their feet. Rex waited for them to pass through the door before securing it. He led them across to the edge of the building.
Denholme glanced into the darkness below; the sounds of the market drifted up from the far side of the flats. He stepped back, hands thrust into his pockets, waiting for someone else to decide his fate.
The Hound jumped over the side coming to a stop a metre below the guard wall. Helena and Denholme followed him as he leapt from roof to roof, eventually coming to a halt at ground level.
The man Rex had argued with in the market was waiting for them. The Hound nodded at the trader then they ran through a narrow space between two taller buildings. Helena tried to make sense of the events of the last few hours. If the Hound had conflicting goals, he would be unpredictable. Attempting to overpower him would be even more dangerous, even assuming she could.
At least Denholme’s alive. She was surprised she felt quite so relieved, but she was glad he hadn’t joined the citizens of Noenieput. The sense of failure that crept up on her when she’d discovered he was missing had lifted a little.
A darkened doorway opened up in front of the trader and, after glancing at the rest of them, he darted into the dimly lit passageway that lay behind it. Helena followed with Denholme behind her and Rex bringing up the rear. They gently descended for a hundred metres before coming out in a large, well-lit, concrete bunker. A series of horizontal ridges ran around the edges of the room as if they were in a barrel. The clumsy lines, where the builders had laid only one metre of concrete at a time, dated the construction to an era before nanotech had been available. The dry smell of dust got into Helena’s nose. Unshielded wires and electrical conduits ran the length of the floor, walls and ceiling.
A dozen or so people were milling about, moving between a variety of vehicles that were all positioned near a sealed exit at the far end of the chamber. Some of them looked up as they entered but upon seeing the trader, they went back to what they were doing. Helena could smell something familiar but could not quite place it.
Her AI, as if reading her thoughts said Leak.
Smugglers? She asked.
What do you think? It asked her. She thought she could sense a deeply patronising tone in its communication. She was reminded again of the history of malfunctioning AIs. The last thing she needed was to have a fight for her own sense of self on her hands.
The Hound’s brought us to a Leak factory, she thought. The majority of the harvest would go north, towards the great cities of Asia and Europe. The Americas, for the most part, produced their own. Most of it was grown in the proto states of the Republic of Texas and New Mexico, reservations that were effectively brands for transnational corporations.
Everyone was armed, moving with a clarity of purpose which meant they weren’t on the drug. She knew it was the safest option. Most Leak users ensured they did not have access to weapons because of the chance that the thoughts and fantasies dripping into their consciousness were of the less pleasant variety.
Rex addressed the two of them as the trader moved through the room talking to each man in turn. Helena listened to the Hound, but kept her attention on the drug dealer.
“He’s agreed to get us away from the city. Indexiv’ll think we’re using proper means to escape Windhoek. They don’t know where we’re going and they won’t be looking for three people.” He eyed Denholme briefly. Helena realised his survival had nothing to do with nostalgia or moral reticence.
Helena was about to speak but the Hound spoke over her.
“We don’t get much equipment, nothing but some small arms. Pilot, can you fire a gun?” Denholme nodded. Rex handed him a small pistol, little more than a peashooter. Helena wondered whether the Hound trusted the pilot or if the smugglers were too tight to give them decent weapons.
“Woolf, the best I could do for you was your knives, from the transport. And this.” He held out a small, nasty looking, high explosive pistol, better than the pilot’s by far, but still nothing particularly impressive.
Her bowie knives were nowhere to be seen.
“You’ll get your knives when we leave,” said the Hound. Helena rested a hand on her hip and waited for him to continue. She wanted to tell him she knew who was in charge.
She rolled her tongue in her mouth, comforted herself that once she was back in London she would be free of him. Those who had sent him after her were another matter. There was a whole other war waiting for her back home and she wasn’t sure which side she was currently on.
The trader came back. “As agreed we’ll take you as far as Swakupmund. How will you pay?” he asked the Hound.
Rex looked at Helena, then back at the smuggler, “Euros will ensure you’re paid. I will not access the Cloud until we have our cargo, but the Oligarch will leave a deposit of good faith with you.”
“What?” said Helena in surprise; the smuggler chuckled to himself.
“I see you’ve not told your master she is to pay your bill.”
“It’s her bill,” said the Hound calmly. “Woolf, the deposit is a number of your nanomachines.”
Helena didn’t know how to respond; if she continued to show her astonishment she’d put all of them in danger. If the traffickers didn’t believe she was actually in control, and that the Hound was simply acting as her negot
iator, they’d carve them into pieces taking what they were currently prepared to buy. She was being forced to follow where the Hound led, yet again. It was not a good precedent to allow. Even attempting to negotiate the number of nanomachines that she had to hand over might betray her predicament to them.
“How many have you in mind?” she asked.
“Ten to the five,” came the reply, as cool as could be. Her AI laughed inside her head. Please yourself, you have several orders of magnitude more than that, it said.
That’s not the point, she responded.
“No,” she said to the trafficker.
He shrugged, “Ten to the four.” His English was perfect, the accent indefinably South Atlantic African, the syllables too crisply pronounced to be Anglo Saxon European. The long vowels received most emphasis.
She frowned while nodding her agreement. Regardless of the impact of negotiating a meaningless reduction in the number of nanomachines to be relinquished as payment, it was the appearance of the willingness of an Oligarch to freely dispense their technology that mattered. Besides, if she had given him what he wanted, he’d immediately assume there was more to be had than he’d first believed. The suspicion that would ensue from such an easy win could never be resolved in her favour. She felt a sense of triumph in knowing diplomacy was the same whatever the context.
The trader would be happy to get any number of nanomachines, even ten. She ordered her Tertiary AI to deactivate the reproductive capability and degrade the learning capabilities of the nanomachines she was to give the traffickers, all while she smiled encouragingly in the trader’s direction.
“Excellent.” His big black eyes beamed. Helena doubted anything useful would come of his acquiring the tech, but she understood the prestige he would acquire in having secured them at all.
“We’ll need some food of course,” she said casually.
“Naturally,” said the negotiator, without thinking. He lifted up his left hand and a number of the men tending to the machines in the room came across to them. One of them stood behind him, the others standing casually around the group of travellers. The Hound had said nothing while Helena had been agreeing their ransom price. He watched Helena carefully, but she knew he did not have the capacity to predict her own likely actions. His predictive engineering gave him an advantage when he was trying to think through where she would go and why, but right then he was both content and forced to let her do what she did best: organise others to do her bidding.
A Family War: The Oligarchy - Book 1 Page 15
