Artificial Wisdom, page 24
“You need to move yourself to the middle,” October said.
He shook his head. “Clearly an accident. Collateral damage. The perfume and the vodka were meant to align solely for Martha.” He pointed at the perfume circle. “Look, it’s a Venn diagram. What if there were other people in the other circle? What if the perfume wasn’t individually contaminated at all? What if all of it is?”
She ran a hand through her hair. “Someone contaminates an entire batch of perfume with the agent and an entire bottle of vodka with the catalyst.”
“And the only person caught in the middle is Martha.”
“Okay, that’s good. Very good. Except …”
“Except what?”
She paced up and down. There was something there, at the edges, if she could just reach it. He started to speak, but she held up a finger. Perfume. Vodka. She looked at the initials again. MC, OC, MT, JP, FJ, DD, JYY. “Jiang,” she said. “She’d be wearing her own product. I’d be surprised if Flora wasn’t, too. So why aren’t they both dead?”
He swore and shook his head. “Well, it’s a starting point. Let’s test each of their ten products for any sign of the agent.”
41
Asmall group had gathered in the precinct lab waiting for Fernando to announce his results. Tully looked around at them all. Fernando was looking through some kind of scope into whatever analysis tool he was using. Jeffries was behind him, trying to look as if he was an active participant in the process. October was pacing at the far end of the lab. Moran was there, too, occasionally shooting frowns at Tully. He wasn’t sure why.
And then there was Jiang, chewing a fingernail, studying Fernando harder than Fernando was studying the pills. Tully thought back to the hospital and what Pedersen had yelled at her: You’ve been hiding this from me and hoping the problem would go away. What kind of pressure was she under right now? Sure, start-ups were always stressful, but she looked ready to implode.
“How’s business, Ying Yue?” Tully said.
Her head spun towards him and she snapped, “Fine.”
Fernando sighed and looked up. “Sorry, there nothing. None have agent.”
“Fuck,” Tully said. “I was so sure.” He thought he caught Moran rolling his eyes, and shot him a questioning glance, but the lieutenant just avoided his gaze.
“There you go,” Jiang said, her mood shifting to all bright and cheery. “There must have been another way it got contaminated, but it’s nothing to do with us.”
October had stopped pacing, and just shook her head.
“Very sorry,” Fernando said.
“Wait,” Tully said, and turned to Jiang. “You mentioned before that your recipe’s highly regulated and tested. Has it changed recently?”
Jiang shook her head emphatically. “No.”
That was the thing about truth. People tried to dole it out in slices, keeping some back, as if delivering the whole pie would be more damaging. But it always left you chewing away, revelation after revelation, long after a proper meal would have been fully digested. “When I first came to see you, we were interrupted.”
“So?”
“One of your colleagues told you that your new serum supplier still wasn’t answering. New serum supplier.”
“How could you possibly remember that?”
“I’m a journalist, perhaps you’ve noticed. I record every meeting and then jot down my reflections on a transcript. Years of that means I’ve developed a pretty good memory.”
“You didn’t ask my permission to record our conversation, and you don’t have permission to do so, nor to record what my employees tell me in your hearing.”
Tully snorted. He knew an evasion when he heard one.
“Permission be damned,” October barked. “Tell us about the serum.”
“It’s nothing significant,” Jiang said. “It’s just the carrying agent for the other chemicals. We don’t make it, though. We buy it in.”
“And you changed the supplier and they weren’t answering.”
“They’ve gone out of business. We’ve changed back to XSera, the old one.”
“When did you change back?”
“Three weeks ago.”
“Fernando,” Tully said. “Do you remember how many pills were left in Dr. Chandra’s package?”
The man nodded. “Of course, I ran test on all five.”
Tully clapped his hands. “MyScent ships a month’s supply. We need to test an old batch, from the previous supplier.”
“Ms. Jiang,” October said. “You said there are ten categories of your pills. Were you, Martha and Flora Jacobs in the same category?”
Jiang brought up a virtual screen, typed, then sighed deeply. “No. Martha was a type gamma. I’m a delta, Flora is an alpha.”
October nodded. “Well, that potentially explains how Martha was affected and you and Miss Jacobs weren’t. Ms. Jiang, can you have someone bring us some older boxes of the gamma category, immediately please?”
“We don’t keep stock around, you know. New Carthage isn’t built for warehousing. We run a just-in-time production driven by the customer orders, and eighty percent of our orders are international with production facilities on three continents.”
October sighed. “Then we’ll have to do it the hard way. I need the name and address of every single person living in New Carthage who ordered a gamma batch that could have been made while your missing supplier was in place.”
Jiang blanched. “That’s a massive violation of my customer database.”
“Oh, give it up!” October snapped, clearly at the end of her supply of patience. “Like you’re not going out of business anyway.”
“YOU’VE BEEN IGNORING me, Marcus,” Flora said, and bit her lip. She’d messaged Tully an hour ago suggesting a coffee. With October and her team drowning in a list of perfume customers, he’d needed something to do.
“Not at all,” Tully replied. “We’ve been trying to get to the bottom of all this mess about Martha. I’ve been helping October.”
“Ah, Commander October. So prim and boring.” His embarrassment must have shown because she laughed and said, “Relax, I’m only joking. But seriously, she could do with chilling out a bit. So, you’re making progress?”
“Sometimes it feels as if we are, but it just keeps getting more complicated. And now with Danberg’s death …”
She clamped her hand over her mouth and shook her head. “Yeah, that was awful. The whole thing’s awful. The gossip is that he found out Martha was going to that fertility clinic and he flipped and poisoned her. Then tried to kill poor Johan to cover it up.”
Perhaps it was that simple. Perhaps it really did have nothing to do with the tabkhir story or even the election. Just a cup of jealousy and a teaspoon of secrets. He and October had discussed that possibility multiple times, but the perfume revelations implied a dynamic way more complex than Danberg would have been able to pull off alone.
“Do you think we’ll ever know what really happened?” she said.
“I’d like to believe the truth will emerge, one way or another. That’s the thing about truth, it usually does, but never through the clean, fresh air; always through the sewers.
Flora laughed and shook her head. “Truth.”
“You don’t think the truth’s worth knowing?”
“I don’t think most people welcome the truth. I think they prefer to be told what to believe instead of discovering it for themselves.”
“Well, I guess there are only a few key sources of persuasion. You know, people who can set the public view on things. There’s government, certainly, but that tends to be more parasitic, riding the wave of what voters currently believe in order to get elected. Then there’s the media, people like me, reporting on it all. And you have the authors, filmmakers and other artists. And there’s people like you, influencers with a voice. Then everyone else adds their flavor of opinion.”
“Exactly, Tully. An elite layer telling everyone what to think. Don’t you see how dangerous that is?”
Dangerous? “Well,” he said, slowly, “it’s not like there’s a single uniform viewpoint, on really anything, that an elite layer agrees upon.”
She sniffed. “The mainstream viewpoints align well enough. People like Bamphwick and Farenthold Jr might sit on opposite sides of the aisle, but they’re still debating the same narrative.”
“I’m not sure,” he said, “that I really follow.”
She smiled and stood. “Enough of this far-too-serious chatter. A friend’s come to visit and I haven’t offered him a drink yet. Let me remedy that right away.”
“I’m really okay.”
“Nonsense. I’ll get some champagne. Wait right here.” She disappeared into the kitchen and he digested her words, which seemed tinged with something he couldn’t put his finger on, like she was speaking by rote, repeating what she’d heard elsewhere rather than responding intuitively.
He walked over to a bookcase lined with beautifully bound hardback classics in a stunning array of vibrant colors. Impressive. So few people had physical books now. Ebooks and their more recent successor, the augmented-paper xBooks, had forced most physical printers out of business. He pulled down a copy of Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and flicked through the pages. They were still stiff from the binding, like the book had never been read. Next to the bookshelf was a glass and gold trolley of spirits. He admired the choice of rum—not everyone stocked that kind of thing—and then frowned at a beautiful crystalline bottle. He heard her come back in. “Siberian. You like vodka?”
Flora cleared her throat. “And champagne.” He turned as she popped a cork and poured some into two glasses. The sound of the fizz of bubbles filled the room for a moment. She handed him a flute. “Cheers.”
“What are we celebrating?” he asked.
“Champagne isn’t for celebrating,” she replied. “It’s for four o’clock.”
42
Tully was too tired to check the Kuwait footage. It was the champagne, he told himself. Instead, he scrolled through an endless feed of non-election news on Minds. None of it was good. A typhoon had hit Nepal. The remaining citizens of Australia were negotiating mass emigration after a decade of wildfires had scorched life on the island. More concerning, two billion people in sub-Saharan Africa were experiencing a combination of famine and drought never before seen in a region famed for such plights. Nigeria had descended into anarchy, not a good sign for a country with the third largest population in the world.
He pulled off his earset, unable to take any more, and went in search of company. Haymaker and Livia weren’t there again, presumably in their rooms, so he called on Solomon.
The artilect materialized. “How are you, Marcus?”
Tully shrugged. “Tired. Stuck. If I’m honest, it feels like things get a little bit more complicated with every turn we take. We know Martha was killed with a combination of perfume and vodka, both of which were contaminated. We think Danberg may have put something in the vodka, but he’s dead, and the perfume was possibly contaminated by a supplier, but they’ve gone missing. It’s like something from a mob movie.”
Solomon nodded. “My understanding is that humans have a unique capacity to solve problems when they’re not focused on them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, consider taking a break. Spend some time on non-investigative stuff. See what your friends are up to. Inspiration might strike.”
Solomon might think he understood humans, but he didn’t understand Marcus Tully. “Talking of being stuck,” Tully said, “did you get anywhere on finding anything about the geo-engineering tech Martha built for Lockwood?”
Solomon nodded. “I haven’t forgotten. It’s a bit more complex than Cavanagh’s emails.”
Tully sagged slightly but nodded. “Okay. Something else, then, while I’m here … It’s a biggie, I’m afraid.”
“I’m listening.”
“Do you really think you can save us? Humanity, I mean? Did we leave it too late? There seems like so much to solve.”
Solomon was quiet for a time. “On the current trajectory, I’m not going to win, so this may be a moot question. I was always an outsider, and Lockwood is a fighter who has made this an ‘us vs them’ battle and positioned me as the ‘them’.”
“There’s still a chance, though. It’s not over yet.”
“True. So let’s imagine I did win. It won’t be an overnight fix, and it won’t be easy. The planet is an extraordinarily complex, intertwined set of systems.”
“But can you do it?” Tully persisted.
Solomon looked grave. “I can’t give you a definite yes. I can say that I’m your best chance.”
IT WASN’T PARTICULARLY late, but a day of phone calls had left October tired and she was ready for an early night. She slipped under the sheets, but sleep wouldn’t come. She pictured Tully sitting on his bed and she could hear the blood pounding in her ears.
She’d never been one for breaking rules. It didn’t come easy when your father and grandfather had been in the police. And she’d never been a rebel. Never wanted to be, either. But the idea that she could walk like an invisible ghost around Tully’s apartment, with absolutely no way of anyone realizing, was intoxicating. She’d never experienced anything like it. She couldn’t explain it. It was bad. It was wrong. And it was delicious. The previous night she’d told herself enough was enough and resisted. But the craving to jump back in, unseen and unheard, was deep in her bones.
She turned and put the pillow over her head. He did have motive. Wasn’t it her duty to keep an eye on him, make sure he really was who he seemed to be?
She threw off the pillow and grabbed her headset.
Within minutes she was in Panopticon and was standing in the living room. She saw Tully heading up the stairs towards his bedroom, and a few seconds later, his door closed. She closed her eyes, felt the dig of her nails into her palms, took deep breaths to steady her pumping heart and teleported after him.
LIVIA COULDN’T SEE or hear Solomon in the footage, only gauge the context from Tully’s responses. She was glad about that. She’d not been able to bring herself to visit the artilect since Martha’s death. He reminded her too much of the family she’d lost.
“We know,” Tully said, “Martha was killed with a combination of perfume and vodka, both of which were contaminated. We think Danberg may have put something in the vodka, but he’s dead.”
No, wrong track. She could still remember the puppy-dog grin on Danberg’s face the day they arrived and the way he’d looked at Martha. No way had he poisoned the vodka. But if he hadn’t, who had?
She’d missed what Tully said next and rewound the footage.
“And the perfume was possibly contaminated by a supplier, but they’ve gone missing. It’s like something from a mob movie.”
This was far more complex than she’d ever imagined. Martha would have figured it out in an instant. She’d have loved it. If there was one thing Martha had been good at, it was handling complexity. Still, Livia herself was pretty good at handling complexity too, right? If there was one thing she was learning from watching Martha, it was to not to put herself down. There would be a pattern in the noise, she was sure of it, and Constellation could help her find it. Solomon too, perhaps, and he worked well with Constellation.
Still, the idea made her nervous. She didn’t feel ready for it. Not yet. She’d lost so much, but she was going to figure out why.
“Search for any mentions of perfume,” she told the system.
43
October sat in the squad room at the precinct, staring at a blank virtual screen, waiting on a call, on hold, while members of her team worked and chatted around her. Her lead officers, were all running through the call lists supplied by MyScent. There was a rumble from her stomach, and she checked the clock. Too early for lunch. Her mind wandered while she waited, and her cheeks warmed as she recalled her snooping from the night before. She swallowed. She really needed to get a grip of herself.
There was a subtle change in the acoustics of the call as it was taken off hold at the other end. “I’m sorry, Commander,” said the woman, a wealthy MyScent customer who lived a few blocks from Petersen. “I checked and it seems I’ve been through that batch for at least a week.”
October thanked her, cut the call, sighed and surveyed the room.
Hake groaned and hung up too. “Another dead end. That’s fifty calls in a row. Everyone I’ve spoken to takes their stuff every day and has got through their existing supply. Wake up, pop a vit-D for your health, pop a perfume pill for your smell.”
García snorted. “Perhaps you should add one to your own routine, Hake. You know, for the benefit of those of us working in close proximity to you.”
Hake tilted his head and wiggled his eyebrows. “Y’all just can’t handle how masculine I smell.”
“Yeah, like a lion, right?” García said.
“That’s it,” Hake agreed. “I’m like a lion.”
García sniffed at the air. “A dead lion, maybe.”
Hake grinned and opened his mouth to reply, but fortunately Moran got there first. “Ho, Commander, I got something. There’s a lady two blocks away that has one of the old batches. She was sick with flu for a fortnight after two weeks’ vacation in Portugal. They caught her elevated temperature on arrival, ran a viral breathalyzer and, long story short, she was quarantined for two weeks. Left her four weeks behind on perfume and she asked to pause it for a month.”
“Well, what are you waiting for?” October said. “Oh, and take Hake. He needs some fresh air.”
OCTOBER LED TULLY to a formal interview room at the station and gestured for him to sit, but this time he was on her side of the table, and Jiang sat opposite them. The past few days seemed to have broken the startup CEO. Her proud, professional sneer had collapsed into a worried grimace. Her recalcitrance had dissolved into a grumpy cooperation. Her challenging eyes now looked quickly away.
