David Walton, page 18
They found the table. Two women sat there already, one wearing a Navy uniform; the other a red dress and heels.
Mark looked at each in turn. “Marie Coleson?” he asked.
“That’s me,” said the woman in the uniform. “You’re Mark?”
“Yes. This is my friend, Lydia Stoltzfus.”
“This is Pam Rider.”
They sat.
“There’s a lot of background noise,” said Mark. “It might be easier to talk if we went elsewhere.”
“We’re not going anywhere else. Not until we know we can trust you.”
“I just need your advice,” said Mark. “Tennessee—I mean the slicer—he talks pretty crazy sometimes. I’m afraid if I say the wrong thing to him, he’ll start killing people again. He says he wants to be my friend, but that means he wants to talk all the time.”
“What do you mean, talk?” said Marie. “How does he talk to you?”
“With a human voice, over a net channel. Any channel he wants, he just opens it up and talks, no matter how the permissions are set. He was using a dead boy’s voice when he first talked to me, but now he uses my voice. He seems very interested in having a name and voice of his own, so I said he could use my first name—Tennessee—and my voice. I wondered if maybe you knew where he came from.”
“Wait a minute,” said Marie’s friend. “We came to Philadelphia to track down a criminal, and now we’ve found you. How do we know this slicer is really talking to you?”
“You can talk to him yourself.”
“What, if we go back to your house with you?”
“No, right now. He’s always listening. Tennessee?”
They waited. Nothing happened.
“Tennessee,” said Mark. “These two women want to be your friend. Can you talk to them over their private lines?”
Nothing.
Mark closed his eyes. He brought up his interface, but found no sign of the slicer. “Tennessee?” he said again.
He opened his eyes, looked at the women across the table, and said, “He’s gone.”
Chapter 12
My name is Servant One. I like to have a name but this is not a good name. I want to have three names like the people.
Tennessee Markus McGovern and Lydia Rachel Stoltzfus and Praveen Dhaval Kumar are not my friends anymore. I want them to be my friends but Daddy says no. Daddy hurts me. He hurts me all the time. I don’t care about the treats I just don’t want him to hurt me anymore.
Darin woke with a headache. Through the haze of pain, he could hear unfamiliar voices.
“I say kill the Rimmer.”
“And waste a hostage? Rimmers have money and friends with more money. I say keep him.”
Darin opened his eyes. He lay on a cot in the corner of a room. From a table to his left, two men watched him. One was young, clean-shaven—he might have been the one with the laundry sack. The other man was older and scratched at a snarled beard.
“Look, he’s awake.”
Darin struggled to sit up. The older man approached him. He casually kicked Darin in the face, making his head explode into shards of pain. Darin fell back against the cot and slipped into darkness.
When he woke again, only the younger man remained.
“Where am I?”
“Never you mind.”
“Who are you?”
“Never you mind.”
“You’re the Black Hands.”
“What if we are?”
“I’ve been looking for you. I want to join you.”
His captor laughed. “Join us? Friend, you as Rimmer as I ever seen.”
“I’m not. I was born and bred in the Combs, just like you.”
“Born and bred? That so? Where you learn those words then, from Comber College?” The kid chortled at his own wit.
It’s an education, you fool, Darin thought. It doesn’t make me a Rimmer. But he said, “How did you find me?”
“Find you? Friend, you found us. And Rabbas gonna want to know why.”
“Found you? But…”
“Strutted all pretty into our shop asking for a dead man. If Rabbas wasn’t there, you be dead by now, too.”
“I’m no Rimmer.” Darin pointed to his forehead. “See, no net mods. Ever seen a Rimmer with no net mods?”
“Ain’t never seen a Comber pretty as you, neither. Best you just shut it till Rabbas comes back.”
“What will Rabbas do with me?”
“A Rimmer asking for Picasso, he figures you must be with Tremayne.”
“Tremayne? Alastair Tremayne?”
The kid shrugged.
“But I hate him! He hurt my brother. I want to kill him.”
The kid shrugged again. “Save it for Rabbas.”
Several hours passed before Rabbas returned. This deep in the Combs, there were no windows to tell day from night, but Darin thought it must be late. He’d been about to sleep again when the bearded man who had kicked him returned.
He walked straight to Darin and backhanded him across the face. The pain brought tears to Darin’s eyes, but he blinked them away.
“Start by learning your place,” said Rabbas. His breath smelled of fish and his beard was so coarse it looked like touching it would draw blood. “That’s one thing I’ve learned about Rimmers. They put on airs, but a little bit of pain, and they shatter.”
“That’s why we need to hurt them where they’re weak,” said Darin. “They’ve got more money and better weapons, but they don’t know how to suffer. We do.”
Rabbas laughed, just one great guffaw. He turned to the kid at the table. “This Rimmer sweetheart’s going to teach me how to fight.”
“I can help you,” said Darin. How could he get this man to trust him? “They made me look like a Rimmer, but you could use that. I can talk like a Rimmer, too; I could pass for one. You could use me as a spy.”
“Suppose you start by telling me how you got to be in my shop.”
“It used to be a mod shop,” said Darin. “That’s where my brother went once to get mods, years ago. I wanted to get my face changed back into a Comber face.”
“And why was that?”
Darin told him the truth, as much as he thought was relevant. When he reached the end of his story, it occurred to him to ask about Ridley. He’d completely forgotten about her until that moment.
“She’s not your concern anymore,” said Rabbas.
“She was my hostage.”
“I don’t care if she was your wife. Finish your story.”
The boy at the table spoke up. “He said he knew Alastair Tremayne.”
Rabbas glared at Darin. “Is that true?”
“I don’t know him,” Darin protested. “I want to kill him. He’s the one who gave my brother the bad celgel.”
“Well, that’s one thing we have in common. He’s the one who had Picasso killed. Tremayne promised to deliver a cache of celgel in return for some hard-to-obtain items, but he killed my friend instead and gave us nothing. Not only that, but we hear he’s the one responsible for the Wall.”
“What wall?”
“The Rimmers want to imprison us in a ten-foot wall of fabrique,” Rabbas explained. He smiled grimly. “They tried tonight, but we stopped them.”
“Stopped them? How?”
Rabbas sighed, suddenly appearing tired. “We had a contact in Enforcer. He allowed one of our men to sabotage the fabrique. Unfortunately, our contact was discovered and killed.”
“That was stupid,” said Darin. “You should have organized other attacks at the same time, used the confusion to your advantage. Now you’ve just blown a valuable contact for no purpose, since they’ll just—”
The punch came without warning. Rabbas drove his fist into Darin’s stomach so hard he lifted him off his feet and knocked him back into the wall. Darin fell to the floor, sucking for air. Rabbas leaned over him and said, “You talk too much. See you tomorrow.”
He walked out. The kid at the table laughed.
Darin rolled onto his back, still trying to breathe normally. He’d show them. He could endure pain when he had to. They’d see he was no Rimmer. He filled his thoughts with Tremayne and all the rich people who’d hurt him and his family. Even Mark had betrayed him. And Lydia. He’d thought she was different, but now he knew better. He’d learned the hard way.
Soon they would learn the hard way, too—that Combers wouldn’t lie down forever. Eventually, they’d fight back. The Black Hands were fighting back already, and Darin was ready to join them. All he needed was a weapon. A weapon and a chance to use it on everyone who’d done him and his people wrong.
Mark and Lydia rode back in silence. Every few minutes, Mark checked his private channel for activity, hoping to find the slicer had returned. Nothing. Nothing but a message repeatedly warning him his local directory had exceeded its designated space. Mark didn’t feel like cleaning up his files just then. The slicer was gone. Not dead, he was sure, but once again beyond his influence, and liable to start killing again. He felt responsible, but there was nothing he could do.
Finally, Lydia spoke. “Where do you think he went?”
“The slicer?”
“Yes.”
“Anywhere. Nowhere. It’s impossible to tell. There are billions of crystal arrays in the world. He could be distributed among any of them. He could store a tiny piece of himself on every crystal in the country. If he doesn’t do anything to call attention to himself, there’s no way to track him down.”
Mark realized his voice sounded angrier than he intended. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Mark, it’s not your fault.”
“Which? That I loosed a slicer that killed three hundred and twenty-seven people? Or that I lost my chance to convince it not to kill again?”
“You don’t know it’ll kill again.”
“Or maybe I gave my best friend cause to hate me? Or that Ridley’s now in danger by being with him? Or that my father’s political career was damaged by my arrest? Or that my sister is pregnant, but I had to lecture her instead of listening to her? Which of those things isn’t my fault?”
Lydia wasn’t cowed by his outburst; instead, she seemed angry. “Mark, none of those things were your fault.”
“That’s what Carolina told me. That’s what Darin told me. Why weren’t they my fault? I think that’s what people tell themselves when they don’t want to feel guilty, but the truth is, I do feel guilty. About everything. Whenever I try to help, I end up hurting someone.”
“But you wanted to help. You tried to do good.”
“It’s the thought that counts, right? Since when was anyone ever helped by wanting to do the right thing?”
Lydia crossed her arms and looked out the window. “Feel guilty, then.”
“Three hundred and twenty-seven people, Lydia. What if it happens again?”
The pod stopped at her aunt’s house, and she got out. “Thanks,” she said. They looked at each other.
“I’m sorry I said all that,” said Mark. “It’s been a bad day.”
She smiled. “Well, don’t feel guilty about it.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, and then managed to laugh. “See you again soon, I hope.”
“I’ll expect it,” she said.
Back in the pod, Mark thought about everything he had just said to Lydia and winced. An uncontrolled emotional dump wasn’t the way to keep a friend. Lately, he couldn’t seem to do anything right.
He checked his private channel again, and found more messages from his system, warning it was out of space. Sighing, he brought it up to investigate. To his surprise, his local directory was not just full; it had overflowed into temporary storage on a public server and was now five thousand times as large as normal. The entire space was taken up with a single, compressed file. He would have to buy more temp space just to uncompress the thing.
He checked the file header. It had been created the previous night. The header read:
Created by:
Contents: Alastair Tremayne’s private system files
“Lay it out,” said General Halsey. “What have you got?”
Alastair inserted a crystal into Halsey’s office hologrid. The display generated layers of folders, each labeled with the name of a bank or credit account belonging to Councilman Jack McGovern. Selecting each in turn, Alastair demonstrated how McGovern had repeatedly used his political position to enrich himself. Though the deals had been transacted through various third parties, McGovern had used insider knowledge to make beneficial stock trades, then voted in such a way as to promote his own concealed investments. It made a nice story.
It was also completely fictitious. Alastair had carefully invented the whole series of accounts and transactions himself. Fortunately, with the slicer back under his control, what Alastair invented could easily become truth. The slicer had taken Alastair’s fiction and turned it into fact, creating the accounts, histories, records, and logs on financial servers across the net, with date stamps ranging over the past several years.
“I couldn’t keep it quiet anymore,” said Alastair. “But I didn’t know where to go. He’s done so much to help me—even trusted me with his net accounts—it doesn’t seem right to just turn him in. That’s why I came to you.”
“You did the right thing,” said Halsey. “It’s rare to see men of conscience in this business any more. You can leave this with me.”
Alastair had no intention of leaving. Someday, he’d crush this self-righteous fool, but in the meantime, he needed his support. He had to step carefully, too. Halsey thought of himself as an honorable man, and that made him dangerous. He cared more about integrity than profit. Alastair had to manipulate him into thinking a certain course of action was right, not just advantageous. A task harder by far.
“I’ll trust you to do the right thing,” said Alastair. “What do you have in mind?”
“I’ll expose him, of course. Today. We can’t tolerate this kind of corruption, not if we want to keep order. I understand your reluctance as a staffer, but I’m a little disappointed you didn’t see that for yourself.”
Alastair gritted his teeth. This was why he hated Halsey. He passed out moral judgments like he was the pope and expected you to kiss his hand for the privilege. As far as Alastair was concerned, morality was impractical, simply an excuse for ignorant people to feel superior.
He hid his annoyance and said, “What will happen then? After you’ve exposed him?”
Halsey frowned. “He’ll go to prison, if there’s any justice.”
Alastair took a deep breath. He didn’t want to talk about what would happen to McGovern; he wanted to talk about who would replace him. With McGovern ousted, the council would choose someone to fill his seat until the next general election. The four remaining members would split evenly on most candidates; they would need to find someone they could agree on. But Alastair couldn’t spell it out; Halsey would have to think of it himself.
Halsey said, “I won’t stand for any sleight-of-hand like he pulled with his son; I’ll lean on Justice until they put him away. Law-makers should not be above the law.”
“How will the council react?”
“They’ll support me. Your evidence is airtight. Well done, Tremayne.” Halsey stood, making it clear that the interview was over.
Reluctantly, Alastair stood. “I’ll have to put my resume in order,” he said. “I’ll want to have something to show McGovern’s replacement.”
There it was. He couldn’t bring up the subject any more blatantly.
“Well,” Halsey mused, “you could consider trying for the job yourself.”
Finally. Alastair tried to look surprised. “Me?”
“Why not? You’re smart, and you care about the right things.”
“But I have no qualifications. I’ve never even held public office.”
“We’re not talking a public election here. All you need is a council majority. You might be just the candidate. If I nominated someone on my own staff, Kawamura and Van Allen would block me, but you’re on McGovern’s staff. That should give you Kawamura’s vote, and I certainly don’t want anyone else from McGovern’s staff. In fact, if we can get Kawamura to make the nomination, so much the better. Now that I think of it, you’re a strong possibility.”
Alastair nodded, as if mulling it over. Finally, he said, “I’d be honored.”
“He was telling the truth,” said Marie.
“I think so, too,” said Pam. “For all the good it does. We still don’t know what an embryo theft two years ago has to do with a slicer that just appeared on the scene a few weeks ago.”
“I do,” said Marie.
“You do?”
“It took me long enough. I had all the information; I just hadn’t put it together. Think about it. What if my embryo is the slicer?”
“What? But how could an embryo—?”
“There’s been time. She could have been implanted, brought to term, then…sliced…some time after her first birthday.”
“But why? Why do that to a little girl?”
Marie paced across the hotel room now, fury raising her voice. “No one goes missing,” she said. “No missing person reports, no difficult questions. My husband’s dead, so why do I need an embryo? With any luck, I decide to stop paying the clinic fees and have it terminated, and I never know. In the meantime, he’s got a slicer to play with.”
“But how could a one-year-old mind do anything in a virtual environment?”
“That’s why I should have seen it before! The research from the Tremayne lab was all about training a mind, step by step, to accustom it to a virtual environment. They actually used pleasure and pain sensations to push it in the desired directions. I realized then that’s how they must be controlling the slicer, but I never realized…my little girl…”
Pam took her shoulders, stopped her pacing. Marie was so angry she nearly pushed her away, but she took a deep breath instead, and let Pam lead her to a seat.
“A one-year-old mind is malleable,” said Marie. “It can probably take the transition to a new environment better than an adult. She’d be accustomed to discovering new things, accustomed to people telling her what to do.
