“You think it’s a protector sent by the bioformers?” Vance asked.
“That is the most logical conclusion. I’ve considered others. Perhaps that it is a hunter and we are its sport. Or it is rogue in some way. But the protector theory is the strongest. I’m not sure why it slaughtered everyone in Bartram’s mansion, perhaps something to do with the Norths contaminating its world. But we can be certain why it has singled out Wukang rather than any of the other forward camps and supply bases. We are the ones with the weapon capable of destroying St. Libra.”
“And how do you explain its humanoid form? Evolution as we understand it is not going to replicate our own bipedal structure; there are too many random factors involved. Let alone give it a hand with five fingers.”
“It has that shape so it can walk among us.”
“But I’ve seen it,” Vance said. “Twice; I watched the image the brainscan pulled from Angela’s mind, and I saw her iris smartcell recording from last night. It’s human-shaped, but not human.”
“I considered that,” Antrinell said. “That’s what has bothered me since we began this expedition, and it’s the single glaring flaw in all the theories that political opponents like Scrupsis and Passam can use against us every time. In which case the simplest explanation is the most likely: It’s human-shaped when it’s in attack mode. That would explain just about everything that’s happened. We’ve already postulated it’s from a civilization with a very advanced technology base.”
Vance glanced at Jay, who was looking extremely uncomfortable. His mind was racing, trying to come up with an explanation that would exclude such an idea. But he had traveled inside the terrible wonders of a Zanthworld, seen what
alien
truly meant, the potential involved. When everything, every possibility however remote, had to be taken into account, a shapeshifter was eminently reasonable. “But who?”
“Who’s the one person who’s been in every murder location?” Antrinell said.
“It can’t be Tramelo,” Vance said. “I simply won’t accept that. We’ve scanned her, taken DNA samples. And the real proof it wasn’t her is the Newcastle murder.”
“Where did she come from? Why has she not changed appearance in twenty years? And do we know her exact position at the moment of each slaying? How fast is the creature? How stealthy? It has never been captured by any sensor. All we have is her accounts of its appearance.”
“She’s human,” Vance said, resenting how he was regressing to simple stubbornness to fund his argument.
“I’m sure she is—when it’s convenient for her to be. Or maybe she doesn’t even know what she is. What if it only emerges from within when there is a reason for it to do so?”
“Jay?” Vance asked.
“You know I’ve never trusted her.”
“Let me ask you this,” Antrinell said. “If it’s not her, then who?”
It was a question Vance couldn’t answer. That kind of analysis and interpretation process had been the bedrock of intelligence operations for centuries, forming a large section of his basic training courses. If there was an answer it lay somewhere in the personnel files of the expedition members. He’d have to review them all carefully, looking for discrepancies, some clue of a legend.
The notion made him stiffen in surprise. When he’d allowed Angela to help them with simple administration tasks after Mullain’s death he’d loaded some discreet monitors in the network to keep watch on her access. One of the first things she did was review the personnel files. Had she worked this all out a month ago?
“All right,” he said. “We’ll start with the assumption that it isn’t one of us three. If the creature is here to gain access to the warheads—well, the three of us have that access.”
Jay and Antrinell nodded grudging agreement.
“Tag Angela again,” Vance told Antrinell. “She’s got some clever programs that can spot an ordinary smartdust emission, so use some of our smartmicrobe bugs this time.”
Jay grinned. “I can do that.”
“I’m going to ask Vermekia to run our personnel records through an AI confirmation routine. If there are any anomalies, that should find it. In the meantime—” He waved a hand at the wall pane with its vivid yellow-and-purple blotch of approaching cloud. “—I want us properly prepared for the blizzard this time.”
“And the evacuation?” Antrinell asked.
“I think it’s inevitable. We’ll use the blizzard downtime to start gearing up.”
Twenty minutes later he was talking to Vermekia again.
“I’m sorry, Vance, but the general said no. We ran the visual you gave us through AI analysis. The creature’s proportions are human, as is the gait. Whatever Tramelo saw, it’s human. We think you’ve got a psychopath in the camp, not an alien. Presumably it really is her accomplice.”
Vance took a moment to consider the AI’s analysis, perturbed by how many factors were converging. “Tramelo shot at it.”
“But she didn’t hit it, did she?”
Vance almost laughed. The kind of laughter that diverted a bellow of anger. “Very well, in that case I’d like you to have an AI analyze the personnel records of everyone at Wukang. Look for a legend, someone who’s been planted on us.”
“That I can do.”
“We’re going to put the evacuation into motion. I don’t expect the e-Rays to survive this next blizzard, but I have five emergency comm rockets; they should be able to reach an altitude that’ll allow a brief relay to Abellia’s network. If I use one, it’ll be because the creature is real. So could you at least have a ski Daedalus on standby?”
“I’ll call in some favors. I know one of us in tactical command. It’ll be written off as a readiness exercise.”
“Thank you.”
“Take care out there, Vance. I know that Jesus is testing you with this mission. I will pray for your deliverance.”
*
Detective Ian Lanagin was back down on the fourth floor, assigned to the city command office, helping orchestrate the police response to the gateway blockade—which was an indication of his status with O’Rouke. It was a good duty after the workload of the North case; he’d had nothing to do for the last two days. The GE Border Directorate troops were tough fellas; nobody had gotten through from St. Libra, despite near-daily attempts to break the line. But each time the Highcastle residents were better organized, and more violent. Meanwhile the GE commissioners sat around their fine oval tables in Brussels, sipping mineral water and avoiding anything that resembled a decision about what to do with the people of St. Libra. Other national leaders were starting to put pressure on, making statements about their concern over GE’s inability to accomplish anything.
And still the bioil flowed from St. Libra’s reserve tanks. Ian knew damn well that was all Brussels cared about. But it gave him time to relax and drink tea and swap gossip with his colleagues. The city command office was circular, with two rings of desks staffed by twenty detectives and specialist tactical constables, reporting to the duty sixth-grade detective in the center. Ian had a desk on the inner ring, where he was assigned to handle the reserve placings. He’d gotten twenty-three big GroundKings full of agency constables parked around Dunston Hill and along the A1, ready to deploy if anything got out of hand in Last Mile. From the data flowing across his grid and the console zone links to civic meshes, it wasn’t going to be the St. Libra mob that would be their main problem. Newcastle was backing up with would-be refugees. Most had traveled across continents and oceans to reach the gateway; some had even made it from other worlds. Ian had never listened to them before, they were a background noise he’d grown up with, as much a part of Newcastle as the Tyne Bridge. But now, as he hunted around for something to fill his boring days, he accessed the transnet news, whose reporters were covering the gateway closure. The impoverished refugees told stories of the hardships they’d endured, how they’d spent everything they had to escape from persecution and violence and intolerance and oppressive ideology, how they’d been forced to leave everything behind, including loved ones and family in some cases. The countries and governments they named and denounced so avidly surprised Ian—he didn’t consider them especially corrupt or repressive. But then he’d never held the kinds of strong convictions that Directorates or People’s Committees or Security Agencies or Religious Police disagreed with.
These refugees, however, were driven by anger and fear, determined to reach the haven of the Independencies, where their new life could begin in joyous freedom, and the past finally cast loose. Now, thanks to a diktat from unseen unelected bureaucrats, sunspots and weather were the excuse preventing them from joining comrades and brethren and fellow believers. They’d fought their way out of prisons or worse; they really weren’t the kind of people plastic barriers across the road were going to stop for very long. The Red Cross had set up temporary shelters for them, but resentment was building fast.
Ian had thirty eurofrancs that the first riot would kick off on Friday. Constable Merkrul who ran the Market Street book hadn’t given him good odds.
At nine o’clock when he was already on his second cup of tea from the canteen, his e-i reported that one of the monitor programs at Newcastle station was registering activity. Ian carefully suspended his official log and pulled the monitor data into his grid.
Boris Attenson was catching the London express train. Ian smiled grimly at the station mesh feed showing Boris and two colleagues striding down the long curving platform to the first-class coaches at the front of the train. He hated the arrogance the besuited man demonstrated, the casual wealth in his handmade shoes and long tailored camel-hair coat. Hated the braying laughter as the three of them conversed. Hated the face.
Ian switched monitors. Today Tallulah was wearing a pleated amethyst skirt and dark orange blouse under a white jacket with gold buttons and a broad collar. He thought she looked good in those colors; they set her chestnut hair off nicely. She’d caught the metro train to Gateshead at her usual time, then walked to her office on Bensham Road to arrive there just before eight thirty. He watched the image from civic meshes smeared across buildings along the street, pleased that she had a spry smile on her face when she met a co-worker for the last twenty meters, the two of them chatting away avidly.
His surveillance ended at the building’s entrance. Accessing the interior meshes would be difficult; it could be done, but real-time access authority for a private building would be logged by the Market Street network; not even Elston’s phished codes could circumvent that.
Ian didn’t mind. He’d be able to see her again at twelve forty when she took her lunch break. She usually took the metro back down to the city center with friends. They visited cafés and some of the smaller chain restaurants. On Monday when it had been sunny, she’d walked over the swing bridge with a whole group from her office and sat out in a pub garden near the Guild Hall overlooking the river. She’d worn a floral dress that day, with her navy-blue jacket buttoned against the lingering chill in the air blowing off the Tyne. He preferred that outfit to today’s; not that she ever wore anything that was less than swish and stylish.
With Tallulah safe at work, and Boris racing down the east-coast main line at 320 kilometers per hour, Ian called Mitchell Rouche, a detective working for the London Metropolitan police force. They’d teamed up a couple of times on cases that encompassed their respective cities, and drunk a few beers together in the process. He and Mitchell were comfortable with each other, sharing the same opinion of the world and the people who occupied its various strata.
“I may need a favor today,” Ian said.
“Okay, nothing too rich, I hope,” Mitchell replied.
“No, man, there’s someone on the train down to you. I don’t like him. And he truly believes that heat in his arse is the sun shining out of it. He needs to learn it’s my boot that’s stuck up there.”
“What do you want to happen?”
“Same thing for anyone who breaks the law, he should be arrested. That’s our job, man.”
“How big a law does he break?”
“Well, there’s the beauty of this. He’ll be visiting clubs tonight, he always does. I’ve got a monitor on his secondary account. When he buys something he shouldn’t, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay. I’ll have to move some shift work around, but I can cover that.”
“Thanks, man, I’ll owe you.”
“Certainly will.”
Which was why at eleven thirty-five that night Ian was riding Mitchell’s iris smartcell visual as the detective led a pair of agency constables into the Thames Europina hotel on the south bank. The glass cage lift took him up the outside of the building to the thirty-third floor where Boris Attenson had rented a suite for the night. Mitchell stared out at the ancient Millennium Dome half a klick away, whose third plastic roof was finally being replaced by link-chain molecule sheeting printed directly into place by large spider-like automata.
“I’ve sent the payment transfer order to the Scotland Yard network,” Ian said. “That’ll provide a reason for you to query his identity.”
“Okay,” Mitchell said. “What do you want me to do with the girl?”
“Nothing. You’re just inquiring about a payment transfer, it’s part of an ongoing investigation into the club and if they’re trafficking. Attenson will do the rest, especially if you don’t show due deference”
“You ever going to tell me what he’s done?”
“He’s a banker.”
“’Nuff said.”
Mitchell activated his jacket badge as he walked along the short corridor. He told his e-i to open the suite’s door with the override provided by hotel security. His e-i sent out a general broadcast as he shouted: “Police, do not move, remain where you are.”
The two constables rushed in as the room lighting came up, their Tasers drawn. Mitchell followed at a slower pace. There were squeals coming from the bedroom.
Ian grinned at the cliché scene that was revealed through Mitchell’s iris smartcell feed. The dancer from the club was sitting up in bed, silk sheet gripped tight to her neck as if it were some kind of invincible shield. A short dress of purple sequins was lying on the floor. Her scarlet thong was draped over Boris Attenson’s head. It was the only piece of clothing he wore.