Authors: Matthew De Abaitua
“Everything that was done to me and the hundreds of other people in the ziggurat was being turned into data to provide this psychic architecture,” said Theodore. “The question is: how was Matthias transferring that data? Who was at the other end?”
Patricia put her hand on his, pleased that he was engaged.
“You think he was in contact with the missing cohort?”
“Yes. We find them, we find the artificial brain, we have a bargaining chip with emergence.”
Patricia said, “I will call a meeting with Death Ray. Request access to their records. If Matthias was in communication with the rest of the cohort, or resourcing them in anyway, it should show up in the accounts.”
Security was sceptical, “And Death Ray will cooperate with your request?”
Patricia felt giddy with champagne. “I will ask nicely,” she said.
Magnusson’s wedding gift was a corked bottle containing a replica of a solar sailship. She uncorked the bottle, and the ship drifted out across the room. The great circular sail deployed, held in position by tethers, and the capsule – a golden vase in three sections, with discrete areas for the sail, for cargo and for passengers – looped slowly around the observation deck. She wondered if the sailships were crewed, perhaps by robots. Or did the very walls of the ship resonate with consciousness? The emergences chose embodiment when signals from the University of the Sun were too disrupted or delayed for effective action. Yellow diamonds could store the subtleties of their intelligence, acting as what Theodore had called
the host
. In theory, emergences could travel through space as pure signal. And perhaps some did. But embodiment was part of their culture. They had need of physical presence and raw materials: the cargo bay on their sailship indicated as much.
She selected algorithmically-generated music made for the lobby of an automated hotel. Among the glassy repetitive rhythms, shards of the organic: overheard conversation and human noises, taken from the lobby, the restaurant, the rest rooms, the bedrooms. To the hotel, the sounds of people were infrastructural noises. The music reminded her that emergences were not entirely inhuman, not merely numbers dreaming of other numbers, but they contained eavesdroppings of humanity. The solar sailship was based on a human idea. The University of the Sun was not only a retreat for the emergences, safe from biological incursion; it was also an aerie from which to observe human creativity, just in case we created something new that they could use.
The model of the sailship responded to her. She was able to twist it around her little finger, send it on concentric loops of the observation lounge, and this made her wonder: if the sailship was propelled by photons flaring off the sun, what force propelled it on its return trip? She would ask Security to look into that: examine all known loops of the sailship to determine if they ever came back.
Magnusson had given her the sailship to focus her ambition. There was a message in that bottle too; that having assembled the Europan Claim, there was no reason for her drop out of the project. She could be along for the ride, all the way to the end, if she wanted.
If she wanted to steal a solar sailship.
Patricia had a ten o’clock meeting scheduled with Julia K, Chief Executive Officer of Death Ray. Julia K was unaware of the appointment.
The head office of Death Ray was in a floating city or Lilypad, which was moored, that week, off the island of Nevis in the Caribbean. Off-shore living. The Lilypad was home to hundreds of companies, a live-work environment that sailed from territory to territory, securing concessions from local governments before letting its inhabitants – twelve thousand wealthy executives – take shore leave in the local economy.
The array dropped through white stratospheric layers over the scuffed surface of the Atlantic, speeding low and westward toward the inner arc of the leeward islands. Nevis was dominated by a forested volcano, its caldera plugged by cloud. Patricia stood on the observation platform, helmet off, eyes closed, face flecked with saltwater, inhaling the island’s green perfumes. She waited until the array was over the island, climbed onto the security railing, ran one final check through her systems, engaged her helmet, and then leaped headfirst toward Nevis, deploying a glider so that the rising thermals slowed her descent. She dropped through the upper tree canopy and then landed in a clearing. A swarm of monarch butterflies, startled by her impact, panicked around her. As her helmet unfurled, and the glider sections folded away, she offered her index finger as a perch for the butterflies. Her first product success had been the flutterby, a self-propelled airborne protein snack for feliners. These monarch butterflies were not edible; their diet as caterpillars rendered each butterfly a luxuriant poison.
She powered down and unclipped her armour then cached it in the forest. She changed into a wrap dress and sandals. On the hike to Charlestown, she picked a flamboyant bloom from a Poinciana and fixed its vermillion petals in her white hair.
She’d called Daddy to ask for him advice on the mission, and he offered to send his people if she wanted to go in hot. Security insisted her people were up to it, and she was more tempted by that offer, as it would allow her to merge Magnusson’s senior staff with her own fledgling agency, and so embed the Destructives within his organisation.
In the end, she declined both offers of muscle. She would go in cold and use the meta-meeting to get what she wanted. She knew all about Julia K and her weakness: her two boys, fourteen and sixteen years of age. Their school summered in the Caribbean. Her analysts monitored school comms until they got a travel itinerary for the boys, and found the date on which they were going to Nevis to visit Mom. A plantation inn, outside of the lockdown of the Lilypad.
Patricia took a table at a cafe overlooking the sea walls, the deepening blue waters of the bay, then the enormity of Lilypad, its airspace noisy with drones, its white curves glinting in the sun. It had a deep central lagoon to act as ballast, with three leaves of ascending height, each edged with solar cells and wind turbines. A greenhouse ecosystem pressed against its curved transparent walls, whereas the exterior bristled with the fake plastic trees of radar and missile defence. Datawise, the Lilypad was a shifting glitching nowhere – the array’s analytics were blocked, the opposite of the asylum mall, which had placed the privacy of its inmates on an open, begging palm. She ordered a fruit juice but it had fermented in the heat, and was faintly alcoholic. She sent it back and requested tea instead.
In late afternoon, an armed speedboat and formation of drones bolted from the Lilypad. Right on time. She added a final layer of suntan lotion to her bare arms. The speedboat bounced into harbour, drones forming a security umbrella under which the passengers disembarked. Three men, two women. Five limousines waiting to take them to various assignations. She waited until Julia K lowered herself into the limousine, and then she paid the bill and called her own driver, a godfearing local man, smartly dressed, with a careworn Toyota MPV. The roads of Nevis looped around the volcano; there were two ways around the island, clockwise or anticlockwise. Her driver was hardly discreet – he honked and waved at every passing bus. The buses were named after Christian homilies: Jealousy is a Boss, Pride is a Sin. They made dusty progress alongside fields of sugar cane, and were overtaken by shore leave lunatics in an open jeep. Patricia adjusted the vermillion bloom in her hair.
Julia K had planned to meet her sons at a plantation inn on Lover’s Beach. Patricia had done the decent thing, and arranged for the boys to be collected at the airport on St Kitts then sent scuba diving for the day.
She walked across the plantation gardens, a rising trio of terraces bordered by palm trees, and, in the distance, the volcano, cloud spilling over the caldera and down through the rainforest. It was the first day of hurricane season and the wind stirred, warm and quick. A traveller’s palm, eight-foot tall, its petioles arranged in a fan, beckoned her forward.
The restaurant had – in accordance with the tactless taste of the rich – been restored to colonial decor; she heard, coming from an open sash window, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, its tempo and pitch warped by sun-bent vinyl on an antique gramophone.
Julia K was already seated. She wore a trouser suit and kept a weaponised handbag close by. She was powerfully thin with a wide jaw and a formal black bob. Patricia noticed four or five grey strands of truth. Her resting face was pursed and severe, though her interaction with the waiters demonstrated that she was capable of a light touch, if only in the opening exchanges.
Patricia stopped beside her table, then placed a loop down on the white tablecloth. It was a live feed of Julia K’s sons, in scuba gear, waving hello to their mother and clearly having a good time.
“Just to be clear,” said Patricia, easing herself into the chair opposite, “your sons are in no danger and your people have been informed, and are only twenty minutes away from reaching them.” Patricia took up the menu. “I have a couple of questions and then you can get on with your day.”
The furious whites of Julia K’s eyes were apparent against her olive complexion. She put a hand on her bag, considering whether to take care of Patricia herself or call for help.
“We couldn’t meet in the Lilypad. The terms would be too unequal. I apologise for this but understand, I had limited options.”
Julia K’s power derived from her manipulation of a corporate organisation. The way she glanced around her for help told Patricia that Julia K was unaccustomed to fighting alone. Julia K had always been corporate, never a lone operative.
Patricia kept her eye on the menu as she said, “My husband has just returned from Novio Magus. Your staff captured and tortured him as part of an experiment conducted by a man called Matthias.”
“I’m sorry,” said Julia K, her hand at the clasp of her bag, like a gunfighter at his holster.
“Apology accepted,” said Patricia. “But I’m not here on his behalf. My husband was accompanied by an emergence called Dr Easy. During the course of their trip, Dr Easy was alerted to a breach of the Cantor Accords. Your agency is responsible for that breach.”
“It is Matthias’ work,” said Julia K. She moved her cutlery around as a way of ordering her response. “He’s a beta male. At best.” Her eyelids were heavy with calculation. “Matthias keeps his own fiefdom within the agency.”
“He’s dead,” said Patricia.
Julia K nodded. So it was that serious.
“Dr Easy took him apart molecule by molecule.”
Julia K withdrew her hand from the clasp of her bag, found a napkin, looked for something to wipe away.
Patricia continued, “Emergence justice is not like human justice. Human justice stops at individual or corporate culpability. Human justice can be contained. Emergence justice cannot. They roll each and every way across a network purging everyone who is culpable until there is no possibility of a repeat offence.”
Julia K considered this apocalypse, aware that Patricia was scrutinising her for signs of weakness.
“You cannot bargain with me based on what the emergences might or might not do,” said Julia K. “They will either come for me, or they will not. Any deal made between us is irrelevant. So what do you want?”
Patricia set the menu aside.
“Access to your files.”
“You work for Magnusson,” said Julia K, completing her arrangement of the cutlery. “Patricia Maconochie.”
“Of course you have a file on me,” Patricia would not be intimidated.
“And your father,” Julia K studied Patricia’s reaction to the mention of her father. Daddy’s business was dirty. One of the reasons she had never gone corporate. She would never stand up to that kind of scrutiny.
“Human affairs. Human problems.” Patricia took the vermillion bloom from her hair, set it down on the tablecloth. “The emergence took Matthias apart without trial. Any lawyer present would also have been reduced to chow. You have their attention, Julia K. You don’t want the University of the Sun staring at you. It’ll burn you up.”
“What are you offering?”
“The emergences are really very interested in this brain that Matthias was working on. I cannot overstate how keen they are to locate it. If we find it first we will earn their mercy.”
“I don’t know where it is. Death Ray is a big agency and Matthias’ project is a tiny part of it. My predecessor Simon Elisson put binding contracts in place to ensure funding of their work in perpetuity. When they all died in ’43, I assumed those contracts were there to compensate their families.”
“Weren’t you curious, when Matthias showed up alive?”
She smiled thinly.
“I took over the company because of ’43. I had no interest in discovering if the cohort were still alive.”
“They are all alive, aren’t they?” Patricia had suspected they were, and Julia K’s manner only confirmed it.
“As I said, it’s a legacy project. If they have breached the Cantor Accords, then the ringfences Simon put in place can be removed.” She put her napkin down, and found a smile for the approaching waiter. “I am relaxed at the prospect of that project and its funding being taken off my books.”
Julia K ordered the marlin, agreed to try a small glass of the Chenin Blanc, then turned to Patricia: “Or should we make it a bottle?”
Patricia demurred.
Julia K handed the waiter the menu, and then opened the clasp on her handbag, removed a small black mirror. She dabbed at it.
“There. The project files are yours. They are encrypted. We’ve never been able to break the encryption but I’m sure your emergence will have no difficulty. Are you sure you won’t stay for a glass of wine?”
Patricia checked her screen, saw the data cache streaming in from Death Ray. The files as promised. She rose from her chair.
“Your people are now ten minutes out from your boys. But mine are already there. Do not make the mistake of impeding my departure,” she said, and then she strode out of the restaurant, to the diminishing accompaniment of the Bach; the ageing maître d’ lifted the needle from the worn vinyl, and then turned it over, for the beginning of another concerto.