World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) (7 page)

“You’re saying someone knows you’re here and is gunning for you.”

“That would be the logical conclusion,” said Dev. “Someone’s unhappy about the presence of active ISS personnel on Alighieri. Someone doesn’t want me sniffing around. They’re targeting me, and trying to make it look like mishap rather than assassination.”

“Assuming that’s the case, any ideas who?”

“Too soon to say with any certainty. I’ve hardly got the lie of the land yet. But I’d like to start pursuing certain avenues of enquiry, and for that I’d like to beg a favour off you, captain.”

“I’m not particularly inclined to grant you one,” said Kahlo. “If you’re right, the three of us almost died because of you.”

“But fair’s fair, I saved your lives.”

“And Bilk
did
die because of you.”

“Unfortunate, but he was ISS. He must’ve realised there’s risk attached to that. I’m sure it’s mentioned in the welcome pack.”

“I don’t feel like I owe you anything, if that’s what you’re hoping. I’m not in your debt.”

“No, but do you want these shenanigans to end, or do you want things to get worse? Because, if the first, I’m your guy. Your best bet. Like it or not, it’s true.”

Kahlo was quiet. The pod rocketed from the tunnel, out into the barely fathomable vastness of the Calder’s Edge cavern. It traversed a bridge over the chasm where the geothermal plant was sited. Down below, far down, at the foot of an abyss, a thin line of magma wove its way like a golden thread.

“Not liking it,” she said at last. “But I’m willing to give you at least a chance. Benefit of the doubt.”

“That’s all I ask.”

“What do you want me to do?”

7

R
OUND UP THE
awkward squad
.

That was Dev’s request. Kahlo voiced misgivings, talking about ethics and due process, but eventually relented and put several squads of her officers onto it.

They bulldozed into bars and homes and dragged out the usual suspects: the people who liked a fight, the union firebrands, the habitual drunks, the young rebellious tearaways who were forever falling foul of the law. Anyone, in fact, who had long arrest records for infractions such as affray, public disorder and breach of the peace. The troublemakers.

They brought them back to the police HQ and dumped them in holding cells. It wasn’t a hassle-free procedure. There were scuffles. Disgruntled detainees objected; grievances were aired, loudly. These were the sort of people who tended to shout “I’ve done nothing!” whenever they were collared, and this time, for once, there was truth in their protestations.

Each was brought before Dev in the interview room, one after another. He sat across the table from them, where Kahlo had sat when interrogating him. He spent the first minute simply peering deep into their eyes, saying nothing.

“What are you staring at?”

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“What do you want, you perv?”

Dev ignored the comments. He tried to see past the pouting defiance, the resentful glares, the postures of calculated affront...

Tried to see if there was a particular absence behind the eyes.

Something missing.

Uncanny Valley.

Then he asked questions.

Mostly they were about God.

“Do you believe in a supreme being?”

“Do you believe in fate or destiny?”

“Were you created by a divine force, or are you just a random assemblage of molecules?”

“What’s going to happen to you after you die?”

The answers varied, but the common thread was incredulity.

“What are you on, man? This is the second century Post-Enlightenment. Are you having a joke?”

“Newsflash. God died. Like, a hundred years ago.”

“No heaven, no hell. Just oblivion.”

“I haven’t heard anything so daft in ages.”

“Oh, yeah, there’s a God. There are also fairies and unicorns.”

Only one person, out of the forty or so Dev spoke to, twigged what was going on. He was Ben Thorne, a miner who headed up one of the more militant unions, the Fair Dues Collective. Thorne led protest rallies calling for higher wages, better benefits packages and more generous pensions. He had clashed with the city’s governor several times on social media, branding him a corporate stooge and telling him to pull his head out of the mining companies’ backsides.

He was not popular with the Calder’s Edge authorities.

He was also fiercely smart.

“You want to know if I’m a Plusser, huh?” Thorne said after Dev had posed a couple of his God questions. “See if you can provoke me by challenging my faith.”

“Do you have faith?” Dev said.

“I have faith that you’re a chump. Do I look like I’m an AI sentience trying to pass myself off as human? Am I dead behind the eyes? Lights on but nobody home? Uncanny Valley, isn’t that what it’s called? Do you see that here?”

Dev did not, but he forged on anyway. ‘Union activist’ would be an ideal cover identity for a Polis+ agitator.

“Are you scared of death, Mr Thorne? Or do you live comforted by the falsehood that, when you pass on, your soul becomes subsumed into the Singularity?”

“Do I go to that big database in the sky when I die? I doubt it.”

“The Singularity is bullshit, right?”

“Maybe not to the Plussers, but as far as I’m concerned, yeah.”

“It’s a fantasy for fanatics. Does it upset you when I say that?”

“What upsets me is that this is illegal arrest,” said Thorne. He sat back in his chair with the cocksure aggressiveness of a man who knew his rights. “The cops have just hauled in a bunch of citizens for no good reason whatsoever. That’s a lawsuit in the making. Someone, somewhere, will pay for this.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

“I think I did. Pretty well, too. One call when I get out of here, and my union’ll sick its best lawyer onto Calder’s Edge PD.” He rubbed index and middle fingers against thumb. “I smell a big fat compensation claim.”

“Do you hate people like me? Just like your nonexistent Singularity tells you to?”

“You’re persistent, I’ll give you that. Like a moleworm gnawing a scroach. All those trigger words – ‘falsehood,’ ‘bullshit,’ ‘fantasy.’ Designed to make a Polis Plusser lose their cool. Get them to flip out and break role. Military-trained, huh?”

“This isn’t about me.”

“Couple of my co-workers fought in the war too. They’ve told me how you’re taught to bust Plusser infiltrators and spies. Not easy, but if you push the right buttons hard enough...”

Dev studied the man. If Thorne
was
Polis+, a digital sentience housed in a flesh casing and trying to pass for human, then he was doing a superb job. More likely he was just what he appeared to be. A very cool customer, too.

“You can go,” Dev said.

“Oh, thank you, my lord,” the miner drawled. “Too kind. Tell the chief of police I’ll see her in court.”

There was only one other detainee who caught Dev’s attention. He was a young unemployed man who, according to Kahlo, was a confirmed user and dealer of illegal homemade pharmaceuticals, and such a frequent offender that they were thinking of installing a revolving door at police headquarters especially for him.

His glazed, watery eyes, with their hugely dilated pupils, gave away little. He was off his face on some sort of psychoactive substance, probably one of the customised opiate alkaloids or partial dopamine agonists he synthesised on a printer in his apartment. His responses were slow and puzzled.

Of course, if you were a Polis+ infiltrator and wanted to pass the Uncanny Valley test, you could do worse than pose as a dull-witted junkie.

Dev spent quarter of an hour with the dopehead – his name was Franz Glazkov – before concluding that it was hopeless carrying on. The kid kept drifting off mid-sentence, or else simply repeated Dev’s questions back at him. Drug use had turned his brain into a kind of echo chamber, where sounds reverberated meaninglessly.

Doubts remained, however, even after Dev had dismissed him.

“I’m going to follow Glazkov, see where he goes and what he gets up to,” he told Kahlo. “I’d like you to release him from custody first and let the other detainees stew a little longer.”

“He’s just a junkie. Knowing him, he’ll head off somewhere to score or deal, one or the other. Waste of your time.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

“Fine.” Kahlo shrugged. “Me, I’m off to the rail network HQ. I’ve managed to get through at last to the controllers.”

“They worked out what happened?”

“No clue as yet. All they can tell me is that it was some kind of mass systemic failure. They lost all power to the mainframe, the backups didn’t kick in, and they were impotent for about ten minutes, not to mention incommunicado. Blind, deaf and dumb. Couldn’t do a thing, not even activate a complete network shutdown. It happened twice. Once around the time of the first crash, and again when the shuttle came after us.”

“Have them check for an externally transmitted virus.”

“As in a Polis Plus virus?”

“Could be. Just have them run a Polisware scan. They might not have thought of that. They can download the software off the ISS central office hub if they haven’t got their own.”

“Okay,” said Kahlo, “but only because I think it’s a good idea. Don’t get the impression I’m taking orders from you, Lieutenant Harmer.”

“Ahhh. ‘Lieutenant.’ You’ve been doing some homework on me, captain. I’m flattered.”

“Don’t be. I’m thorough, that’s all. Lieutenant Dev Harmer of the Ninth Extrasolar Engineers. You were a sapper. Speciality: neutralising and demolishing Polis Plus hardware in the field, mainly mechs. Served all nine and a half years of the Frontier War. Started out as a private, rose rapidly as you racked up the combat hours until you were leading your own platoon. Highly decorated.” Narrowing her eyes a smidgeon, she added, “Also, a veteran of the Battle of Leather Hill – or should I say a ‘survivor’?”

Dev deflected that last statement as quickly as possible. “Yes, well, before my head swells too large, I should point out that I’m not in the army any more, so strictly speaking I’m not a lieutenant now, and none of those other facts are pertinent. Also, the police hierarchy and the military hierarchy aren’t compatible, so you don’t outrank me.”

“You’re a civilian in my city, so I do.”

“Fair enough. Good luck with your enquiries. Let me know what you find out.”

“If I feel like it,” said Kahlo. “Mostly, though, I’m looking forward to tearing someone a new hole.”

“Then enjoy.”

“Believe me, I’m going to.”

8

F
RANZ
G
LAZKOV LEFT
CEPD headquarters. Dev followed a little way behind.

Glazkov hopped the first train back to the city centre. Dev lurked in the next carriage along, keeping a surreptitious eye on him through the window of the connecting door. He had a feeling that this would be a fruitless journey, just as Kahlo had said. But as long as there was a chance, however slender, that Glazkov was Polis+, it was worth a shot.