Something Coming Through, page 7
part #1 of Something Coming Series
‘I have an air mattress,’ Maria said.
‘We should get in food,’ Alain said. ‘Wine too. Get it before the supermarkets are stripped.’
Skip said, ‘There are already big queues everywhere.’
Alain nodded. ‘We go straight from Landing Day into crisis mode. One thing, we will make good money on the overtime.’
‘We tried to buy some plastic sheeting,’ Skip said. ‘All gone. Hardboard too.’
‘I suppose you’ve never seen a storm before,’ Maria said.
‘A little one, in the Valley,’ Skip said. ‘Everyone has been saying we’re overdue a monster. I guess this is it.’
‘Seal the edges of every window that opens with mastic. Every door too, but one. You have a chimney? If you cannot cap it,’ Alain said, ‘put a balloon up it.’
‘There was a fist fight in the supermarket yesterday,’ Skip said. ‘I had to wade into the middle of it. Two guys duking it out over the last bags of rice.’
‘Get canned food,’ Alain said. ‘Dry food needs too much water. And if the power goes, you can heat cans over a camping stove. Or eat it cold.’
Vic listened to them talk, remembering the Big Blow. Two years after the first shuttle flight had arrived on Mangala. He remembered having to wear a respirator and hooded coveralls to go outside, remembered the dim light, the fog of dust thickening in every direction. Remembered navigating the rudimentary streets of the city by using lines strung between buildings. More than a hundred people had managed to get lost and die before they could find their way back to shelter. There had been a rash of suicides. He remembered the devil’s itch of dust in every crevice of his body, the iron taste of it, the grit between his teeth in every mouthful of food. None of the buildings had been completely sealed. If you left a glass of water out for ten minutes a faint scum would bloom on its meniscus. Every surface coated in red powder.
The Big Blow hadn’t been a local dust storm, like the one coming in: it had blanketed the entire planet for two sidereal years, a shade over sixty-two days. One day-year, one night-year. Polytunnels and greenhouses had collapsed under the weight of settled dust; eighty per cent of the crops had been lost. There’d been rationing, several murders over hoarding, a rumour about cannibalism in a stranded road crew. Everyone in the new colony had relied on food supplied by the shuttle, which had not been affected by the storm, arriving and leaving on schedule, as indifferent as God to the works of nature and man.
This storm was nothing compared with that monster. According to the weather people it would envelop Petra for no more than two or three weeks before it blew past. But the Mayor had already made an appeal for calm, and the news channels were showing queues for food and dry goods, interviewing people who’d fled from outlying settlements in Idunn’s Valley, and fielding pundits who questioned the city’s resilience.
‘The only good thing,’ Marie said, ‘it will lock down everyone. Civilians and bad guys. And afterwards people will be too busy digging themselves out to get into any serious mischief.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Alain said.
‘The last big storm we had, crime went down more than twenty per cent,’ Maria said.
‘And before it hits?’ Alain said. ‘We get an uptick in killings because gangs are out in force, supplying addicts and fighting each other over territory. Also in low-level crime, as addicts scramble for quick cash. Because while civilians are stocking up on canned goods and bottled water, shiners and meqheads are stocking up too. I tell you this, my friends: when the storm comes, we’ll be glad of the holiday.’
After Alain Bodin and Maria Espinosa were called into the autopsy suite, Vic and Skip waited in the hospital canteen for their turn, and caught up on paperwork. Vic had a court appearance in a couple of days, and went over his contemporaneous notes because the damn defence always liked to compare your version of the story with the perp’s. Skip took a phone call from one of the crime-scene techs: no useful traces on the victim’s clothes or skin; nylon and polyester-cotton fibres from two common brands of outdoor clothing caught in the wiregrass; a cast of tyre tracks that would be useful in identifying the van if it was ever found. He had also received a reply to the request he’d sent by q-phone to Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France. They were little miracles that fused human and Elder Culture technology, q-phones: paired handsets that shared entangled electrons whose quantum superposition enabled instantaneous transmission of information anywhere in the universe. The first q-phones had been as expensive as communication satellites, and using them to send an image had been like emptying a swimming pool through a straw; the second generation were no more costly than a villa in Bel Air and worked pretty much like regular phones. Skip had sent the images and passport details of John Redway and David Parsons, asking for further information. Now he told Vic that their passports appeared to be bogus, and there weren’t any records for Cybermat Technologies Inc at Companies House in London, or in the European Business Register.
‘Do you think these guys could be spooks? From MI5 or whatever?’
‘If they are, it would be MI6, the extraterrestrial section,’ Vic said. ‘And I hope to God they aren’t, because it would drop us in a world of shit.’
At last Skip was bleeped and they rode the freight elevator down to the basement. Outside the cutting room, the pathologist, Heather Ngu, told them that the deceased was a white European male who had been in good health when he died, with no tattoos, mods, or other identifying marks.
‘He broke his left wrist some years ago. There’s also an old healed fracture of his left tibia. Bloodwork showed no alcohol, no drugs. He wasn’t any kind of smoker. And the ratio of stable isotopes indicates that he had been eating food from Earth, rather than local stuff.’
‘We already know he and his mate just arrived on the shuttle,’ Skip said. ‘I checked with immigration.’
Vic said to Heather, ‘Was he circumcised?’
‘After we sewed him up we put him back in the freezer. But if you want to look, investigator, we can wheel him out for you.’
Heather Ngu was a brisk capable woman dressed in a blue smock, black hair pinned up under a blue cap. She and Vic had had a brief thing ten years back. Vic remembered that she’d liked to shower together before and drink brandy afterwards, lazy as a cat in what she called the afterglow. Oh man. Good times. Now she was married with two kids, and Vic was freshly divorced and living in an efficiency in one of the municipal apartment buildings.
She said, ‘I can reveal that his last meal was a hamburger.’
Skip asked what kind.
‘A cheeseburger, with fries.’
‘I mean was it a Big Mac or what?’
‘We’re good, but we can’t yet tell the difference between a half-digested Big Mac and a Whopper,’ Heather said.
‘What about the cause of death?’ Skip said.
‘There was some superficial bruising to the face and trunk, but no significant tissue damage. No fractures to the skull, no broken bones, no sign of blunt force trauma to the liver or other internal organs. No gunshot or knife wounds. But I did find something significant,’ Heather said, and paused.
She liked to build up to the big reveal. When she and Vic had had their thing, she’d been writing a novel, said that it would be the first novel about the early days of settling and exploring Mangala. Last he’d heard, she was still working on it.
Skip took the bait. ‘What kind of significant something?’
‘A burn at the base of the skull, just here,’ Heather said, touching the back of her neck. ‘A charred spot three millimetres in diameter. Small enough to miss, if you don’t know what you’re looking for.’
‘Like a cigarette burn?’
‘Not exactly. There was no entry wound, but there was a line of cauterisation extending through the brain. As if someone had rammed a thin and very hot wire through it. It pierced the hypothalamus and the right cerebral lobe. Death would have been instantaneous.’
She was looking at Vic, as if expecting him to respond.
It took him a few moments to make the connection. ‘The ray gun.’
Skip said, ‘You mean like an actual ray gun, or some kind of laser?’
Vic said, ‘We’re on a planet littered with Elder Culture shit. Why should you be surprised that someone found themselves a ray gun?’
Heather said, ‘There have been other victims with similar injuries. The weapon has not yet been identified. Something that fires a tightly focused high-energy beam. Like a very powerful laser, or a plasma or particle-beam weapon.’
Skip had a blank look, not understanding that he’d lucked out.
‘Four other victims,’ Vic said. ‘Redway is the fifth.’
Skip still didn’t see it.
Vic said, ‘What we should do now is find Alain Bodin, tell him the news.’
Skip said, ‘And why should we do that?’
‘Because he took the call on the first ray-gun murder,’ Vic said. ‘Which means all the others are his. Including Redway’s.’
9. Carbon-Based Life Form
London | 6 July
The police released Chloe after three hours, told her that they would escort her home. It was the kind of offer she couldn’t refuse, but after a brief argument she persuaded them to take her to Disruption Theory’s office instead of to her flat.
They gave her a ride in a police launch, banging up the centre of the river past embankments of construction coral and rakes of pontoon apartments and clusters of houseboats. She called Daniel and told him she was okay.
‘How were the police? Did they treat you all right?’
‘They interviewed me and let me go. Right now they’re bringing me back to the office. In, guess what, a police launch.’
She was hunched over her phone on the bench seat behind the helmsman and a policewoman, earbuds plugged in, speaking close to the screen. Her hands trembling ever so slightly. Spray gusting over her as the launch passed under Blackfriars Bridge.
Daniel said, ‘I wondered why all the noise.’
‘I’ve decided it’s the only way to commute. I asked them to turn on the siren and lights, but the guy driving this thing— Wow.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘We went over a bump or a wave or something. The guy said I’d already attracted enough attention.’
She was trying to make light of it, to assure Daniel that she was okay. To assure herself.
Daniel said, ‘Helena tried to get access to you. So did I. They invoked the usual terrorism bullshit. Jen and I are with Helena in her chambers right now, in fact. Did they make you sign anything?’
‘They took a statement.’
‘But did you sign it?’
‘They didn’t ask me to sign anything,’ Chloe said. ‘And I only told them the truth. If you want to check it, I have a copy.’
‘I’ll take a look. So will Helena.’
‘I didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘I know. Did you say they were taking you to the office?’
‘I didn’t want to go home.’
‘I’ll get there as soon as possible,’ Daniel said. ‘Hang in there. Don’t talk to anyone.’
She wanted to ask him about Ram scooping up fragments of the disintegrating avatar, but he’d rung off.
There were no journalists waiting for her at the little dock that stuck out from the low wall of the stopbank, no journalists waiting outside the entrance to the warehouse. She stood in the shadowy street under the plaque on the wall that indicated the new level of the river and called Neil. Because she wanted him to know that she was okay; because she needed to ask him something.
He’d seen a clip of the attack on the BBC news, wanted to know if she was all right.
She told him she was fine. ‘Did you know there are police cells in Kingdom Tower? I was locked up in one for more than an hour before they realised that I didn’t have anything to do with the so-called assassin.’
‘Apart from knocking him to the ground,’ Neil said.
‘By total accident. I was trying to brain him, and splashed that stupid knife thing of his instead. I had no idea it would blow up like that. Anyway, the police took a statement, released me without charge, and gave me a ride back to work.’
‘You did the right thing,’ Neil said.
‘I’m not so sure. The one thing you’re never supposed to do when something kicks off is get in the middle of it. And by the time I reacted, it was too late.’
‘You did the right thing,’ Neil said again. ‘My sister, the hero. A reporter from the Daily Mail called me. She got hold of my mobile number, offered cash for photos of you.’
‘I hope you accepted. She’d be paying for what everyone can get for free on the web.’
‘She wanted childhood photos,’ Neil said. ‘You know, with Mum.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t worry. I told her exactly where to go.’
‘I bet you did.’ Chloe smiled, imagining Neil’s freezing politeness.
He said, ‘If you need a place to hide out until this blows over, Sue and I can put you up. We’ll put up the barricades, send out for some Indian from Raja.’
‘I don’t want to put you guys in the middle of this. And I think my boss is going to come up with some kind of plan.’
‘As long as you’re okay.’
‘I’ll tough it out.’ Chloe paused, then said as casually as she could, ‘By the way, did you get around to checking that database, and asking your friend if he could help out?’
Only Ram Varma was in the office. He wasn’t surprised to see Chloe: Daniel had told him she was on her way.
‘You’re famous,’ he said. ‘All over the media.’
The big monitor on his workbench was patched with half a dozen windows playing loops of the assassination. From the committee room’s cameras, from the TV crew’s camera, from Jen Lovell’s phone. There were feeds from BBC 24 and Sky News, too. The avatar smiling at the assassin as the knife came down, a blur of motion off to one side resolving into Chloe swinging at the man with the water jug, a white flash, the man and the avatar collapsing. Different angles. Slow-motion recaps. Stills.
According to the BBC, the assassin was Richard Lyonds, an unemployed accountant. He’d been fired from his accountancy firm for stealing from a client’s account, had just been released after spending two months in prison for shoplifting, did not appear to have been associated with any of the anti-Jackaroo groups.
‘He used a taser knife,’ Ram Varma said. ‘They aren’t commercially available, but there are build instructions on the net. Take two thin blades, glue them together with an insulating spacer, wire them up to a battery and capacitor stack in the handle, and you’re good to go. You shorted out the capacitors when you threw water over the guy. He got the full benefit of their stored charge.’
‘How did he get it past security?’
‘He hid in a cleaning cupboard, sneaked out when the session began. Someone in security is going to catch it,’ Ram said. ‘Bad luck for the avatar that it was so lax, but good luck for me.’
He told Chloe that he’d just received the preliminary results of the analysis of the avatar fragments that he’d dropped into ice-cold mineral water and managed to smuggle out in the confusion after the attack.
‘I rode down in a lift full of policemen, sweating like a pig. And once I was outside I realised that I couldn’t do my prize justice. So I called one of Ada Morange’s people, an exobiologist I met at that conference in Lyons last year. Ten minutes later a courier on a motorcycle appeared, and rushed it over to a lab in Imperial College. They did a quick combustion analysis, and ran a sample through an atomic-absorption spectrometer,’ Ram said, and pulled up graphs of spiky lines on the big monitor.
‘I see it, but I’m not sure I understand it,’ Chloe said.
‘It’s mostly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. A carbon-based life form. Also calcium and phosphorus,’ Ram said, pointing to different spikes. ‘Potassium and sulphur, sodium, small amounts of iron and copper…Pretty similar to the composition of the human body. The stable isotope ratio suggests that either it was made here, or it was doped to make it look as if it was. The Americans probably know this stuff already, and much more. The Chinese and the Russians and Indians too. The Brazilians…Anyone who has managed to get hold of a fragment. But no one shares information, and there’s a ridiculously high signal-to-noise ratio in the rumour mill. So all of this is new to us. I’m told that Dr Morange herself is very interested.’
Ram was smiling like a kid whose every Christmas had come at once. He was about Chloe’s age, soft-spoken and capable, one of the smartest people she knew.
‘It was a cool move,’ Chloe told him. ‘Actually pulling something useful from this mess.’
‘Most of the sample had dissolved by the time it reached the lab, but the people at Imperial managed to filter out and stabilise what appear to be fragments of a giant macromolecule. Like DNA, but much, much bigger. Maybe the avatars are woven from a single such molecule. Different sections could have different properties, different functions. Memory storage, information processing, musculature and so on. Amazing, right? Way ahead of anything we can make. As you might expect. Right now, I’m waiting for the results of electron and atomic force microscopy. Hopefully before the police and security services work out what I did. Because while we’re analysing the fragments, they’ll be analysing every microsecond of footage of what went down. It’s like a race where you know you won’t reach the finish line, but try to get as close as possible.’
Ram switched the monitor back to the tiled news feeds. One of them showed a woman scurrying from the front door of her house to a taxi, barging through a scrum of reporters and cameramen and photographers. Richard Lyonds’s ex-wife, according to the chyron. Chloe felt a pang of sympathy.
‘There you are,’ someone said.
Chloe turned, saw Daniel Rosenblaum and Jen Lovell in the doorway.
‘Let’s go into my office,’ Daniel said. ‘We need to talk.’
He asked if she wanted coffee or tea or maybe something stronger. She said that she’d drunk about a gallon of bad coffee when she’d talked to the police, and handed over the envelope containing a copy of her statement. Two pages, single-spaced. Daniel gave it to Jen, asked her to copy it to Helena.
