All Fall Down (20 page)

Kate was still lost in anxiety, unsure where her ambition now lay. Becoming a General would mean being away from her family more than ever. Her parents, her brother. There was no partner, there had never been enough time. How Win kept his relationship going with a wife and young child she had no idea.

           
Kate paid little attention to the person who walked past her seat. Her eyes mechanically tracked the movement, and it was only when the figure disappeared into the darkness going towards the opposite end of the space, that she realised it was Administrator Daoud. Her body was half out of her chair before she mustered her inner voice to decide anything. Kate watched his back obscured by a closing door. As she quickened her pace, she put her thoughts in order. She hadn't made an opportunity to see him one-on-one, to pin him down and talk about the mission. He'd made it obvious that Sophie would deal things on his behalf.

           
She shook her head. There was a conspiracy on the planet. The Colony produced the minerals that kept the peace. She had to resolve this. She found some focus, some energy and jogged after him.

           
Through the door, a long gentle curve of white corridor framed Daoud's back. He was walking fast, disappearing just as Kate caught sight of him. She quickened her pace again. Colonists were in her way. She dodged round them, trying to keep an eye on Daoud's figure. If
 
she could catch him, she could find out if he also suspected Doctor Maki was murdered. It was the obvious place to start. Perhaps that was why she'd received a field promotion. An enticement to catch the killer. A reward dangled. Is that what it was then? A test? Had she been drifting, did Admiral Kim think she needed to focus?

           
Kate rounded a sharper turn, the corridor ahead stretched in a straight line for a couple of hundred metres. There was no sign of him. No doors were closing; they were all of them featureless, identical. Blank. Three women talked in a huddle. A Sagittan walked gracefully by. Kate looked behind her where the corridor curved back to the dark cavern. And on her other side an empty path, Daoud no longer visible, which no longer had any purpose.

           
At a nearby computer terminal she asked for Daoud's location. “Administrator Daoud is in his office on the Colony's upper floor.”

           
She looked around to make she was unheard, “That can't be right. I've just seen him here. Can you check again?”

           
The computer projected a mouse's face, dark eyes bright with hurt, “My good lady, I am never wrong.”

           
Kate pursed her lips, “Very well. Please send a message to my colleagues. Tell them I'll be in our meeting room if they need me. I'll expect to see them at team meet.” Looking from side to side, she wondered which was the quickest way to the top.

“Tell me more about Qin history.”

           
“What would you like to know?”

           
“You mentioned cyborgs were in the Common Quarters, but not in Qin Space. How come?” Kiran was piloting them home, the probes were released and had sent test signals.

           
“We had them, too, but they were rare. An elite class in the ruling party was allowed them.
 
That's why our AI technology was so advanced. We concentrated on that, not human augmentation. There was another reason, too. In the Common Quarters everybody wanted to be different. To stand out. People had implants, limbs replaced to help improve physical abilities, intellectual capacity, health, sexual performance. Some did it just to look, I don't know, interesting Eventually some humans gave up their bodies and put their brains into mechanical bodies. Things shaped like balls, tanks, spiders. Many historians say they were exploring the outer limits of humanity. We became the aliens we'd always imagined would be out here. But the Qin leaders wanted racial purity. Cloning programmes were established. People stopped having babies and simply cloned themselves. Some who did this manipulated the foetus to grow into their opposite gender. They would then mate with that clone to create a pure clone child.”

           
“What?”

           
“Yes, it sounds barbaric to us. When the Flight of Qin began, many clones were in the first waves, horrified at their parentage. We abandoned our culture so we could breed with non-clones.”

           
Kiran was quiet. Win looked out of the cockpit. Planet Fall was approaching.

           
“And this is all banned now, right? Out there, humans are humans?”

           
“Yes Kiran, they are. They're all like the system you visited, Spys. For almost four hundred years in the common counting. No one is allowed to deliberately change, augment or manipulate our genes or bodies, except for medical reasons of course. That's also in the Organic Edict.”

           
“Sounds like a nightmare. Things are simpler now. That's the way I like it.”

           
The shuttle approached Fall and at Win's request Kiran projected the pilot-assist onto Win's cockpit window. A tunnel of squares counted them into a fiery welcome as they entered Fall's atmosphere. The small shuttle shuddered as its exterior burned. “You still want to visit the old Colony?”

           
“Yes please, Kiran. If you can hold the ship over it for a few minutes, I'd very much appreciate it.”

           
They sped over the featureless desert expanse. Around the planet's curve they tracked the great storm, which had swung and was now on a slow return to the Colony.

           
After twenty minutes they reached the old Colony. The shuttle paused, catching its breath. Kiran was describing the surface, his words bringing to life the faint bumps in the sand. A small shadow betrayed an open wound in the desert floor.

           
“That's in the trailing side of the storm. Think it leads to a lift shaft. Never got close enough to figure out if it was part of the Colony or part of the cruiser. Ground's very unstable round there.”

           
While Kiran talked, Win used one of his sensors to take a gravity and radar map of the ground. Perhaps there were cavities stable enough for something to hide inside, something biological. Eventually the shuttle banked and headed back to the Colony. Win left his sensors running, hoping to catch some hint of the secrets hidden on Fall.

Masjid paced the storage room.

           
Why didn't he come? Sophie had said that Daoud would be here to arrange things “imminently”. There wasn't even a bench to sit on. For sixty years he had run MI medical and scientific research programmes. MI knew how to treat their own when things went wrong. He trusted Daoud, of course, but Daoud was a civilian. It was easier to hide things when you were already the military. Masjid reflected on his decision to take up the post on Fall, thirty-odd years ago.

           
He had spent his life clawing up the ladder to land a research directorship. On his way he'd been to most of the major systems, been involved in ground-breaking programmes. And he'd upset a lot of people. In his time on Fall he'd had time to reflect on his younger years and his pursuit of power (which is what he realised it was; only here had he fallen in love again with the science, the pursuit of knowledge). He realised that his contemporaries had achieved the same level elsewhere with networks intact, both respected and liked. When he'd taken to Fall he had none of that. Respect, yes, though some of it had been based on fear. He had left behind a younger self who was not well-liked, whose networks had fallen to his own capriciousness. On Fall he had found again the focus to re-invigorate medical science. The science he pursued needed time and a single person's vision to achieve. As much as he shared his life with his partner, whom he'd met here, his scientific goals were now his real love.

           
The twenty three pods had been the icing on the cake, what had tempted him to Fall, where he knew he must spend his remaining years. But they had not, at least until a few days ago, been the great biological breakthrough Daoud had foreseen.
 
He had advocated destroying them many times. And now they were paying for keeping them.

           
All of his research was threatened, his programmes that would finally eradicate cancers, regenerate limbs fully, and complete the basic science into the full unravelling of the human genome, allowing it to live, grow, unfold, develop in an AI environment, without error. Medicine would never be the same. The goal of a thousand years of research, pulled from its path by war, by the abominations of human augmentation, cloning and the petty but rampant diseases that evolved and continuously distracted on the thousands of Colony planets. Masjid saw his name in the lights of history. The final words on phenomes, on the entanglement and disentanglement of genes and environment, would be spelled in the syllables of his name.

           
Why were the pods playing up now? And what about this MI team. This was surely a sham investigation into Huriko's death; Daoud wouldn't countenance the truth coming out. And there was the thing on the surface. He couldn't help but wonder if it was connected to the pods.

           
And now Peter's loss posed a greater problem. MI couldn't find out. Mustn't. Why had the Cadre sent this team? Daoud must arrange things, smooth things. He acted on the Cadre's behalf, in his own fashion. They had wanted a civilian in charge. Very well. It was their problem.

           
Masjid was cold.

           
Peter. His friend these last twenty-something years. Diligent, careful, good with the staff. They would quickly notice he was gone. What would he tell them? A second death so soon after Huriko's. They were on guard already; Daoud had better have a good plan. And then there was his family. “You must calm down,” his blurred reflection in a metal panel next to the door brought no comforting reply. He tried some deep breathing exercises, closed his eyes. “These are a young man's problems.” He distracted himself looking at containers, looking under sheets, looking in corners at what Fall considered essential spares. The door opened behind him.

           
“You took your time.”

           
“You would have preferred carrying a body through the Colony?” Daoud closed the door, a decisive movement.

           
“What are we going to do? The pods have gone berserk. They've killed Peter!”

           
“First, Doctor Currie, we are going to wait.” Daoud raised a warning finger, “I was followed by General Leland. She won't find us, and I know you will understand that requires calm voices and a modicum of patience.”

           
Masjid's jaw tightened. He stared at Daoud, who held his gaze. Finally, Daoud's wrist pad pinged.

           
“We are at liberty to talk now. This is what you're going to do, Doctor. You will arrange a memorial for Doctor Maki. You will re-assign duties, change rosters. Keep people distracted.”

           
Masjid waved him away, “I already have. General Leland suggested the same thing.”

           
“Then we are already halfway home. Re-arrange your duty rosters. You will ensure Doctor Cassel is locked into administration work. He will send a message saying he's too upset to attend the memorial tomorrow. A rumour will circulate that he and your researcher had a relationship. Tomorrow his body will be found on the surface, with lethal sunburn. Exposure. You will tell people that, overcome with grief about Doctor Maki, Peter committed suicide. A suicide note will attest to this.”

           
“Peter has a family!”

           
“Be. Quiet.” Daoud stared hard until Masjid had to look away. “He had a family. Now he's dead.”

           
“You can't do this to them. I've done some terrible things in my career, but never this. You can't do this to them.”