He was frightening her. “Get out,” she said again, her voice as calm as if she was ordering a cup of coffee.
He put the glass onto the counter between them and stepped away towards the hallway.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Henry was pleading with her; something in the tone of his voice caused her to feel suddenly safer. He was no threat to her. He meant no harm.
Are you okay? asked her AI. What you are doing makes no immediate sense.
Yes, I’m fine, she snapped.
“Please Ms Woolf, don’t throw me out, I need to talk to you, Edward said you’d help me. He said you’d listen.”
“Henry Arken, I have told you once, I did not know Edward in the slightest. What makes you think he knew me well enough to make these claims upon my time and resources?”
Henry stopped talking and looked at her, wide eyed, like a boy spooked by a ghost story.
“He said you’d protect me from your uncle.” A tear of terror fell from his eyes and hit the floor with the quietest of splashes.
Shit, thought Helena.
“I am the eldest child. My parents agreed to enter me into one of Euros’ programs in order that they might be permitted to have a number of other children. Unlike Edward I grew up here, in London.” Henry sighed and turned to look over the city. “I’ve had some freedom, I certainly know more of the world than Edward did, but he was the best of us Helena, the one who led us. He knew what is only now becoming apparent to the rest of us.”
“Us?” asked Helena
“There are a number of us, how many I haven’t been able to determine, but at least sixteen. Edward was the first. We all come from lowly positioned Oligarchies. All our parents traded our lives for the right to have more children than they would otherwise have been allowed. They gave us up in order that our families might become more prominent.” He turned back to face her.
Henry sipped quietly at his fourth cup of water.
Helena decided to give him ten minutes to state his case. That he knew her uncle was enough to give him a little room and stopped her from calling the rest of her team to take him into custody immediately.
“Edward was linked to the research itself; the rest of us are like incubators, sleeping experiments, projects that were allowed to go their own way until required.”
“Anyway,” he continued. “For some reason they want us dead. None of us can see why. But the evidence is plain enough.”
“And that is?”
He looked at her blankly. “Edward is dead. He always told the rest of us that if he died…our link to one another… then we would not be far behind him.”
“Henry, his genetics were the key to some sort of military research. For some reason it resulted in his death, but it’s not unheard of for that to be part of the bargain. I’m sorry about what your parents did for their own gain, but there’s not a lot I can do for you.” She did not mention her assignment; it would only feed into his paranoia. Perhaps there would be a way of getting him to lead her to the rest of them. She was only listening to at all because she still didn’t trust Johannes’ version of events or that he had Euros’ own interests at heart.
“Ms. Woolf, it’s not about our lives, it’s about yours … you and the rest of the Oligarchs. We’ve concluded that the only reason Euros would kill us is if they expected to lose this war against Indexiv in a catastrophic manner.”
“I don’t follow.”
“There can be no doubt that Indexiv’s primary AIs have concluded the most efficient course of action is for Normal life to be extinguished, but it is not a finished debate even here in London. Or within Indexiv. That much, we have been able to fathom. The longer this war goes on, the more likely a number of other corporations will take the conflict as an excuse to act in Indexiv’s favour and kill their own Normals. There is no economic requirement for them anymore. We can live without them. Their right to life ended when technology enabled us to be self-sufficient without needing to work.
“Southern Africa is being emptied of human life. Siberia is already empty.
“Your uncle has arranged for us to be killed in a manner that suggests Indexiv assassinated us.”
Smart move, thought Helena.
“I won’t lie, I’m afraid to die. But it’s more than that. Our deaths will create an adequate excuse for widening the arena of conflict, of drawing in the other corporations into a global war. Not only that, but it will keep us from falling into the clutches of any other company.”
Helena did not know what to do; the news that Indexiv were killing people across two continents chilled her. Ngasi’s last words whispered in her ears.
“Henry, I’m not sure why you’ve come to me,” and I’m not sure how you could be linked to the deaths of millions, she thought.
How does he know all this when you’ve failed to make any headway at all? asked her AI.
“Ms Woolf, no one else in London believes Indexiv are rounding up and slaughtering millions. For all we know they’re even hiding it from their own people. It is something too grotesque to do openly. Edward said you had seen it with your own eyes, that you’d be willing to help us.”
“I don’t have access to anyone or anything important,” responded Helena guardedly. “What could I do even if I thought your life was worth saving?” she asked quietly, trying to throw him off. “Are you some sort of strategic intelligence unit, linked together in a neural net? It’s obvious you’re connected to the others somehow. Why would Euros want you dead rather than working for them?”
Henry shook his head for the first time, the look of worry returning.
“I’ve not been given the freedom to tell you, not yet anyway. Some of the others want to meet you. Including me, there are at least four of us in London. A number of us have fled south of the river, to the outskirts of the city. I came to ask you to come with me, to meet them, in actual fact, to escort me there safely. Would you be willing to come with me?”
Helena watched him and thought. Her AI had run through a number of possibilities and suggested to her that she needed to do two things; the second was to review its conclusions.
Helena agreed with it on both counts and turning to Henry said, “I’ll have made my decision by the morning, come back then.”
“Ms. Woolf,” said Henry, his voice breaking with fear. “We don’t have that much time. The dreams have stopped.” Helena gawped at him.
He looked puzzled at her response.
She thought of her own nightmares, how they too had faded away. “Come back tomorrow. If I choose to help you I need at least that much time to prepare. Now go.”
Henry did not say anything more but let himself be shown out into the gloom of the corridor. Helena sat alone for some time before going to her favourite cafe, a number of floors down, to think through everything she knew.
She felt no compunction to alert the team. Not yet at any rate. It would only get messy. The simplest course of action, and therefore the least likely to go hideously wrong, was to deal with it as a single agent, on her own. She asked her AI about the link to the genocide but it could not suggest any logic that led directly from Henry to Indexiv’s strategies or why his existence might forestall them. She searched her own imagination and, finding it lacking in plausible explanations, she finished up her espresso and went home.
IN HER DREAM a young man like Henry was stood at ground level, his feet spattering through the rain that fell like clockwork over the capital between the hours of three and six in the morning. His hair was drenched through but he did not take any notice. Behind him were shadows, chasing him down. Each time he looked over his shoulder they were closer, gaining, menacing. His heart sounded in his ears and there was resignation in his face.
There was little he could do now.
Others were with him; she could feel them crying out for him.
Not again, she said to herself. She tried to reach a hand out to grab him, to yank him away from the shadows pressing down on him,
but her fingers fell short. Then he had nowhere left to run. He looked for a way out through the shadows, past the darkness.
The night smiled when it reached him. He cried, he did not want to die; he cursed the shadows, his parents, even Helena. Helena shouted for him, but he was not listening, he could not hear her.
SHE WOKE with a start. It was early, more than an hour before she had set herself to wake up. She could remember flashes of a dream, not much but enough to know that it had left her breathless and full of terrified energy. Henry’s young face was a disjointed memory teasing her from her unconscious.
She lay in bed a while and wondered if, or when, Henry would be back.
He had not called before she left for work, and the day dragged as she waited. Her AI laughed at her; they both knew he could not risk contacting her at Euros. Nothing there was safe. Nevertheless, every time a call came into the office, she jumped. Her AI asked her why this made her so agitated when negotiating water treaties with other corporations for an entire planet had not given her such inability to work and focus.
I’m ignoring my job, she thought. No. I’m not, but I’m doing things my own way. She couldn’t bring herself to say, even in her mind, that everything she held important might ride on seeing Henry again.
She and Jane went for lunch. Jane noticed her distractedness the moment they sat down. “Hello, earth to Helena. What’s got your mind? I feel like I’ve hired an expensive automaton to sit across from me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Helena. “Just wondering if we’ll ever get those AI.”
Jane gave her a sceptical look but didn’t press.
Helena’s AI said nothing but purred contentedly when she avoided explaining to Jane what was on her mind.
“Are you looking forward to tonight?” asked Jane as they rose to return to the office.
Helena had no idea what she was talking about, suddenly panicked that somehow her friend knew what was going on. Jane looked at her for a moment. “You haven’t forgotten have you? A certain dashing young hero fighting against the odds?”
It was movie night.
Helena sighed theatrically. “No,” she replied, rallying quickly. “I haven’t forgotten, of course not. What else could I want except corny acting and low production values?”
Jane nodded slowly, still not quite sold on her friend’s preoccupation.
“J, I’m so sorry about today, my mind’s been so elsewhere. I had a bad night. Do forgive me.”
Jane smiled. “Of course, don’t mention it.” She paused. “You know Hels, if you want to talk about it, I’m here.” Their eyes met for moment then Helena looked away.
She put a hand on Jane’s arm. “Thanks J, I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about some of what’s happened to me, don’t know if I know myself yet.”
“Sometimes it helps to say it out loud, even when it’s a jumble; it’s only when you see the words out in front of you that you realise what you actually mean.”
“You’re right. You remain my confessor after all,” said Helena. “Let’s have dinner on Saturday and I’ll tell you what happened.”
“THAT MOVIE was ludicrous and not in a good way.” Jane was unimpressed. “I don’t mind bad. Bloody hell, that’s why we’re here in the first place, but this was just bad, bad. The plot was convoluted and tired like they they’d hired someone who didn’t give a shit.”
“You’d think, given how long AIs had been writing screenplays, that they’d have managed to teach them the basics about tension, character or plausibility.”
“It’s remarkable how many of their plots feel no more convoluted than a child’s attempt at mimesis.” Jane put on a squeaky voice “Oooh, I know, girl who loses the love of her life and, while working through her grief, finds another to fit neatly into his place.” She groaned at the end.
“Let’s agree that we’ll stick to the small independent movies written by humans, they at least take pride in what they’re doing.” Helena went back to Jane’s small apartment for a drink, eventually leaving for home an hour or so later, her mind having constantly dwelt upon Henry.
MAKING HER WAY home, she was stopped at the external lobby on the eightieth floor by someone from the city’s own security service. The officer was in early middle age, although it was hard to place precisely because of the cybernetics covering much of his face.
She suspected that one of his optical implants was low light, the other a camera. Regardless of their utility, both his original eyes had gone, as had one of his ears and the left side of his nose. Helena was faintly repulsed up close and wished he had spent the extra energy it would have cost to give the chrome exteriors a fleshy tone. Apart from a substituted foot, which left him clanking with every other step, the rest of him was human enough. He stood at the entrance to the building, turning away most of those who approached. When she reached him, she flashed her ID into his mind. He stopped her with a look of satisfaction.
“Lady Woolf.” He said matter of factly.
“Officer, I’m tired and have to work in the morning, please make this quick.”
He bobbed and backed away deferentially. “Ma’am. My guv’nor wants to see you, that’s all.”
She thought about it a moment and said, “Fine.”
She followed his short frame into the lobby and across the marbleised atrium to his senior officer. Like most of the larger towers, her own building was split into residential sectors based upon price tag. Along with commercial and maintenance sections, it had more than a dozen neighbourhoods. Each of these microcosms had their own entrance floors that, depending on the opulence of those protected behind them, could be anything from a small reception to an entire floor of open lobby, decked out like the entrance to a grand hotel.
As soon as she spotted him, Helena saw that the officer in charge was an Oligarch. His back was turned to her, but his demeanour, and the attitude of those around him, placed him near the top of the chain of the command.
He was wearing a long coat and something about its fake grime and overly careful aging was so clichéd that it was difficult for her to concentrate on the rest of the lobby. Drawing her gaze from one side of the space to the other, Helena saw six security officers, all variations on the theme adopted by her escort. Apart from the commander they were all Normal. Three of them were bunched together to her right, surrounding the concierge who had been on duty before they arrived. To her left, an officer was sitting with a young woman in a cleaner’s uniform on one of the plush settees that rested with their backs to the walls. The girl had ugly protrusions from her scalp, a sign that she was renting her AIs out as part of some Corporation’s low end super computer. The girl was talking to the officer, but Helena wasn’t interested.
The fifth officer was stood with his hands in his pockets looking back at Helena; his mouth was slightly open as he checked her out. She caught his eyes and he turned away, blushing, and not a little worried that she would mention it to his commander.
The sixth officer, whose strips indicated he was a sergeant, stood reporting something to the commander. Seeing her approach, his eyes flicked his commander’s attention over his shoulder, the Oligarch turned to greet her.
She smiled openly at the Oligarch, he nodded his head and her escort disappeared, the man’s time suddenly full of the sergeant’s opinion.
“Lady Woolf,” said the commander.
“Commander,” she said. “What has happened?”
He looked round as if noticing the activity surrounding him for the first time. “Murder, I’m sorry to say.”
Her eyes went wide and she tried to stop herself thinking about Henry.
Her AI calmly said He left the building last night; there is nothing for you to worry about.
“Anything the matter Lady Woolf?” asked the commander, watching her carefully. A cold thrill went through her as she realised he knew what he was looking for and had something in mind. Her AI expressed its surprise at her sense of excitement, but she quieted it and let her
Secondary AI take control of her physical responses to emotional stimuli, as if she was about to negotiate again on behalf of the company.
She realised then just how much she missed her old job.
But you’ve nothing to hide, said her AI in astonishment.
She shrugged mentally, it’s more the idea of negotiating I find exhilarating.
“I have to confess,” she said, leaning in slightly, “it is a bit disturbing to find such a commotion on one’s return home.”
His shrugged in sympathy, then, looking around him, again giving the impression that it was the first time he was seeing all the other people in the room, he motioned towards the reception desk.
“This way, the concierge will be busy with my men for some time yet I think; we can use his office.”
The office was sparsely furnished, but somehow the concierge had made it seem crowded. Papers were scattered on every surface. He’d moved the monitors, which watched the entrance on this level and the twentieth floor, so that they faced one another. There was no way he could watch both at the same time. On top of a pile of notes at the front of his desk was a copy of Farner’s History of the European Commerce Zone 2249 → 2261. Helena thought it was an unusual choice of material for a Normal to be reading.
Because you’re such an expert, sniped her AI.
The light supplied by the bulbs was faulty; a deficit of red light gave the room an ailing jaundiced feel like a poor simulation of reality.
The commander slumped casually into the concierge’s chair and waited for Helena to sit on one of the other chairs.
“Is this better Ms. Woolf?” he asked, when she had removed some leaves of paper from her seat and stopped moving about in a vain effort at getting comfortable.
No one from the lobby could hear them; it was back to common titles.
“If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to know your name,” said Helena.
“Of course,” said the commander, sounding expansive. “Regional Commander Chalmers. David Chalmers.”
A Family War: The Oligarchy - Book 1 Page 23
