Context (51 page)

TERRA
AD 2142

<Story>>

[8]

The
missile silo, after two centuries in the desert sands, remained intact. The
dark green nose cone, removed from the ICBM—though it still seemed pregnant
with threat—sat above ground. The original launch-tube cover was open;
plexiglass protected the sunken vertical shaft from the elements.

In their hired TDV, Ro and Luís
scanned the horizon through the blue-tinted windows. No sign of anyone.

‘He’s not here yet,’ said Luís. ‘But
he will be.’

‘Let’s go inside.’

The TDV’s door swung downwards,
forming a ramp, and Ro walked slowly out. Hot dry air pressed upon her skin.

Above an abandoned ancient
helicopter, a blurred holo hung. Ro squinted against the sunshine to read it.

WELCOME
TO THE

TITAN
MISSILE

AND

TWENOEN
PARANOIA

PAVILION

Luís headed straight for a low,
white building. Doors to an empty foyer slid open at their approach.

‘My uncle says it’s automated. No
staff.’

Inside, conditioned air brought
cool relief.

‘Good.’

Ro used an anonymous cred-ribbon,
instead of her info-strand, to pay their entrance fees. Once through the inner
doors, they bypassed the 1950s domestic tableaux—simple androids in period
dress, preparing meals, listening to the wireless news broadcasts (all cold war
tension and hysteria), stocking their fallout shelters—and the Montreal 2092
display, showing the terrorists’ final minutes before they remotely took down
the CommEd clean-fusion clusters (in the name of the Drowned Isles and other
dirty-fuel ecotastrophes) and Detroichago disappeared forever.

Instead, they hurried downwards,
into the facilities where four-person military teams (including women:
surprisingly enlightened for the times) had kept constant watch, ready to
launch nuclear death with the twist of a key—two keys, in fact: at least two
people had to agree on Armageddon—and the touch of a button.

The
control room was painted metal: no ceramics or smart-material in sight. Big
dials, status lights and buttons decorated the control panels. There were
technical manuals—the watch teams had been scientist/engineers as much as
soldiers, keeping the nuclear missile’s launch systems operational—but they
were hardcopy: metal-bound paper books.

A disembodied voice asked:
‘Would
anyone care to launch a missile? Please take the two indicated controls seats.’

Holo-arrows pointed the way, but
neither Ro nor Luís moved.

‘In that case, let us
demonstrate.
’

Two simple androids walked
jerkily into the control room, took their seats, and made ready to twist the
launch-enabling keys.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Ro.

Luís looked at her. ‘Don’t worry.
He told me that he’ll be here, so he will. We’re related by—’

On the other side of the room, a
heavy metal hatch swung slowly open.

Countdown lights flickered:
extinguished one by one ...

Someone’s here
...

Ro spun and crouched, hands
upraised.

Weapon
—

The square, bronze-skinned hand
was visible first, and it bore a scatterspray pistol. But then the big Navajo
police officer stepped inside—Sergeant Arrowsmith—and slowly lowered his weapon,
and smiled.

‘I trust you.’ And, reholstering,
he added: ‘Enough to come alone.’

‘Good.’ Ro relaxed, let out a
shaky breath. ‘Because I’m not sure—’

Vibration and she crouched again.

Betrayal?

The control room shook on its
suspension springs; the recorded sounds of lift-off roared in the trembling
air. Slowly, slowly the imaginary launch completed, the missile’s sound
faded...

Sergeant Arrowsmith appeared
unmoved.

‘It seems’—his voice was deep,
rhythmic—‘that paranoia still survives, in the twenty-second century.’

After
the display had ended, Luís and Ro occupied the chairs; Sergeant Arrowsmith
insisted that he remain standing.

‘I didn’t see the crystal myself,’
said Luís. ‘Or the debug scans. But it sounds just like Anne-Louise.’

The sergeant’s eyes were dark,
unflinching. ‘But it’s just a fiction, something she made up. You said that.’

‘Agreed. Yet there’s more to it:
information encoded, correlated with the story line. I think Ro’s correct.’

‘And the chess-board ...’ Ro
stopped.

‘Position K7.’ Sergeant
Arrowsmith sounded mournful.

‘But pronounced
ka-sept.
In
French, it used to be an acronym.’ Ro shrugged. ‘I know it seems feeble, but...’

‘Like, if a dog had been involved’—Luís
spoke seriously—‘and the piece had been at K9, you know? If there were such a
thing as the ninth row. And if she’d been Anglophone, instead of Quebecoise.’

My God, it sounds so stupid: a
contrived whodunnit clue.

And the crystal-cassette had
disappeared, with no traces remaining in the holopad’s active memory or cache.
No proof at all.

‘But it’s exactly,’ Luís added, ‘the
way she wrote. The way she
thought.’

Sergeant Arrowsmith merely
nodded.

Ro stared at him. Did he trust Luís’s
judgement that much?

Luís... How can I make you stay?

What could she offer him to
replace the stars, the strange sights of the mu-space continuum?

‘So what does it mean?’
Arrowsmith made a slight gesture with his wide shoulders. ‘The story itself?’

‘A stranger, in peril.’ Ro shook
her head. ‘A cliché, but somehow wrong. There was a ghost in the story, which
didn’t fit the other background ... It showed me where to look.’

For a moment, she thought
Sergeant Arrowsmith might have shivered: to a Navajo, she had learned, all
chindhí
are to be feared, regardless of how good a person had been in life. All
that is fine and true perishes; only evil lives on in spirit.

‘You believe us.’ Luís looked
certain.

Sergeant Arrowsmith stared at
him, then touched his own lapel.

It was a signal. Ro sensed an
approaching presence, but no threat. And, as footsteps became audible, she
looked out of the hatchway, along the grim metal catwalk, and recognized the
slim white-haired figure walking towards her.

‘Hello.’ The woman was elegant,
taut-featured. ‘We met at the Police HQ, over lunch. You had some interesting
facts to share about vomiting sea creatures.’

‘Yes ... I’m sorry, I don’t
remember your name.’

‘Why should you? I’m Hannah. And
you’re Ro.’

She held out her hand, and they
shook.

‘And I don’t believe,’ Hannah
added, ‘that your roommate was killed by a psychopath either. Not in the normal
sense of the term.’

Ro felt a momentary sense of
joyless vindication.

Joyless, because the alternative
was that Anne-Louise’s death was the action of a professional, disguised to
look like an amateur—who had somehow slipped past DistribOne’s security—whose
allies or employers must have Ro under observation. How else to explain the
cassette’s disappearance?

And, whether it was a sexual
predator or a paid assassin who had erased her from existence, poor Anne-Louise
was just as dead, either way.