Cates 05 - The Final Evolution (15 page)

I glanced at the gun again and took an easy step to my left, making as if to claim the empty seat next to the Indian Techie. “The human race is dying, and you want to stuff us all into
avatars
?”

“What choice? Every day, thousands of us perish—natural causes, people like you, bad fish—leaving us reduced. Time is running out quickly. When the patient is bleeding, you apply tourniquet.”

I nodded as if I gave a shit and was processing everything carefully. “And this has
what
to do with me, exactly?” I said carefully, trying to guide him where I wanted him.

He sighed, standing up. With an easy motion, he set his coffee down on the table, stepped over to the smaller table, and picked up the Roon and clips, turning and holding them out to me.

“Before you hurt someone,” he said, cigarette waggling up and down. “For fuck’s sake, Avery, you are not a
prisoner
. I have full confidence you will choose to help us.

“There is one problem with using the avatar stock: All are tied to Director Marin’s old network.” I groaned inwardly. Richard Fucking Marin. Everything had gone to hell the first day I’d met that artificial bastard, and here he was still haunting me.

I’m hurt, Avery
, his ghost or imprint or whatever whispered in my head, like he’d been doing for ye.
Your friendship has meant the world to me. Am I really destroyed in real life?

“Marin now exists only as a scatter of atoms floating through the atmosphere.” He sighed. “The avatar models are all System Police, and all are tied to an annual signal from Marin’s private key. This to prevent mutinies, you see—if Marin cannot send signal, the whole avatar network shuts down. Marin was destroyed right at the end—near a year ago.” He shrugged again. “This means all the avatar stock we have collected—as well as every System Pig still walking around in Europe, trying to hold the sand castle together—will shut down and be totally inoperative in about three months.” He picked up his coffee and spread his arms. “So you see: problem.”

I nodded, checking over the Roon. “Your confidence in me makes me want to be a better person, Grish,” I said. “But I’m still waiting to hear why my friend was killed and why a fucking Angel has been pushing his fat fingers into my head for three fucking weeks.” I racked the chamber and clicked off the safety. “And then maybe you could explain why I shouldn’t go back in the other room and make that piece of shit’s head explode.”

Grisha nodded as if this were a reasonable request he’d been expecting. From what I remembered about Grisha, maybe it was; he was a Techie, smart and skilled, and he was someone who could blow your head off and not flinch. He was probably the most dangerous bastard, one on one, in the whole damn world.

As I moved back toward the front of the room, he moved with me on the other side of the table. None of the other Techies moved, but they didn’t get out of my way, either.

“Marin was, you know this, a digital construct. A scan of the once-flesh Cal Ruberto, made into a god. He had programmed limits on his behaviors—this you know also, as your first interaction with him was designed to create a scenario that allowed him to elevate his security status and disable some of those restraints. The Joint Council knew enough to fear Marin when they created him, Avery, so they not only set up these limits, they programmed him to have override codes. In case he slipped his chains.” He waved the coffee around. “If there had been a functioning Joint Council when Marin pulled his stunt with you, this code would certainly have been used. It was not, obviously, and until recently the code itself was thought to be lost. It was not lost.”

Without warning, he took three quick steps and put himself in front of the door leading to the second container and put one hand up in a placating gesture. In honor of the friendship we had, I kept the Roon aimed at the floor and stopped for a moment, clenching my teeth.

“Avery, it is firmly established that
you
know where this code can be retrieved. With Marin’s override, we can disable his safeties on the avatar network and utilize the avatar stock safely.”

I opened my mouth, thought better of it, and then frowned, all thoughts of what I’d been doing gone. “That’s fucking insane, Grisha. I don’t know where Dick Marin’s fucking
override
codes are.”

You don’t
, Dolores Salgado whispered in my head, and I froze, my heart pounding.
But I do
.

THAT IS… UNFORTUNATE

I imagined Salgado walled up in a cell, behind inches and inches of old brick, her voice barely audible, muffled. Then I looked at Grisha.

“Step aside,” I said slowly, keeping every muscle under conscious control to stop myself from leaping for his throat. “I am going to kill that fucking thing in there.” The Pusher had killed Remy. I couldn’t change that, but I could make him wish he hadn’t.

Grisha smiled sadly and shook his head. “Avery, I do not imagine I can trade body blows with you. I have seen you work. But you cannot be permitted to kill that man until we have debriefed him. Until we have debriefed
you
.”

I heard the scrape of a chair behind me, and ticked my head slightly. “Tell your friend with the cattle prod he’s not going to touch me.”

Grisha didn’t say anything, but his eyes moved over my head and he shook his head just slightly. He looked back at me and shrugged. “I am not moving, Avery. You will have to attack me.”

I swallowed with difficulty; it felt like I had someone alive in my throat, clawing its way up. I couldn’t bring anyone back to life. I couldn’t go back ten years and do everything differently, but I could kill the fat old bastard in a cage in the next room. I could kill him so hard it left a fucking mark, and it was all I wanted to do. The Angels. I didn’t need Grisha to draw me a fucking picture. I was sure the Russian had info I could use—he always did—but I didn’t need it that badly. I’d find them.

“Grish—”

With a sudden jerk of his arm, he dashed his lukewarm coffee into my face.

“Avery,
listen
. We are not talking about your wounds, your losses. Hell, we have all
lost
. Do you imagine you are the only person who has survived a global war? The only person who has fought and killed?”

I stood there in numb shock, coffee dripping off my face. Grisha had never done anything like that, and I didn’t know how to react. He shook his head. “You cannot be this
arrogant
.” He tossed his empty cup to the floor with a savage disdain that made me hesitate. “This is not about you. The whole world is dying, Avery. The
whole fucking world
. You
will
not be allowed to derail this process for petty revenge.”

I wanted him to
move
, to let me past, but I found I could not lift my gun against Grisha. We had been through a lot, and he had been a true friend, back in Chengara and afterward, even if he had tried to kill me once. For a second or two we both just stood there, and I could hear the harsh rasp of my breath in and out of my nose.

I looked down at my hands. “Fuck, Grisha,” I said slowly, begging. “I don’t fucking
know
anything.”

I heard Salgado—a whisper in my head, silent and clear, years ago, back when I was being tortured inChengara Penitentiary for information I didn’t know
then
, either: I
know that Marin did not suspend
all
of his programmed overrides. I know that there are bare-metal panic codes built into his design. I do not know the overrides myself. But I know the identity of the one person who
does.

The person who
does,
I thought.

I looked back up at him, and for a moment we just looked at each other, and I felt my shoulders roll. I couldn’t fuck with Grisha. He’d never done me wrong, and I could not ignore that.

“Salgado,” I said.

He nodded. “Salgado.” He reached up and put a hand on my shoulder. “I am sorry, Avery. We must intrude upon you again.”

“Dolores Salgado,” the Indian Techie, named Lokprakash—who everyone wisely called Lok—read from a thick hard copy. I hadn’t seen so much paper in years. “Original undersecretary, originally serving under Councilman Cavendish. Prior to Unification, she was retired.” His accent was English, bitten off with cheerful relish, as if words were fun. “She served as undersecretary for the Australian Department and generally got good grades, right up until Marin arrested her under authority of the Emergency Stabilization Directive, colloquially known as the Monk Act, as it was issued during the Monk Riots that followed the collapse of the Electric Church.” He looked up at me and
winked
. I resolved to break his nose at the earliest opportunity.

I was not secretary
, Salgado suddenly said in my mind. For years she’d been mostly silent, hiding, and now she was ready to talk and showed no signs of stopping.
I drew my salary from the State Department, but I was no damn diplomat.

“Those were the days, yes?” Grisha suddenly interjected, shaking with suppressed coughing. “When there were such things as formalities like official directives?” He sighed, swallowing phlegm and bile. “Civilization.”

We were all seated at the tight wooden table, and I’d finally accepted a cup of coffee, which sat in front of me like regret in lukewarm liquid form. I tried to concentrate, but I kept seeing Remy, thinking back on it. Trying to see where I should have anticipated a trap, protected the kid. Belling telling me he was
bait
. The old bastard still clinging to some hope that he’d come back, get back on top—that he’d survive. Otherwise he might have tipped me off. Belling and I weren’t friends, and I’d come there to kill him, but we were both
professionals
.

“She was processed through Chengara Pen and never heard from again, but so were several thousand other people, not to mention the people who churned through the other five EOT installations Marin had built around the world.” He paused and cocked his head. “There may be cold iron under those prisons with thousands of human minds burned onto them, come to think of it.”

I shook my head. “My impression was they uploaded as fast as they cracked us open.”

Lok leaned forward slightly. His hair was long but stiff and slightly curled, standing up from his head in a glossy black wave that shifted gently like grass when he moved. “So, you were really there? You really got seventy-nined?”

I cocked my head and squinted at him, duplicating his own expression, and then I leaned forward, slapped both hands onto his head, and smashed his face down onto the table. He bounced up and back, ending up sitting perfectly straight and staring at me in complete shock for a moment while his nose sent out a thick stream of dark blood.

“Avery!” Grisha shouted, his tone almost amused. “You are among friends, you animal.”

I pointed at Lok. “That’s for the rod, back there,” I said, leaning back and extracting one of the cigarettes they’d been good enough to give me and sticking it between my lips. It was like I’d never gone several years without smoking. “That’s today’s lesson: You cattle prod someone, you better keep them down.” I smiled as Grisha handed the still-stunned Lok a rag. “Be happy, comrade. We’re even now.” I picked up the communal lighter from the table. “You done with the history lesson?” I looked around. “I’ve got Dolores Salgado in my head, yeah. Years ago she told me she knew about Marin’s codes, sure. I forgot, because people kept shooting me and arresting me and pressing me into the fucking army and I always had better fucking things to do than worry about Director Marin. I got processed. Or almost processed. They got, like, eighty percent of me, and I got a head full of psychic backwash.” I lit up and sent a plume of smoke into the air. “Only three of them still talk to me, though.” I decided not to mention Marin or Squalor’s ghosts; this bunch might get excited and gang rape me on the floor if those names started floating about. “You want to tell me why the Angels decide to stop trying to execute me and send a Pusher to kill my… kill my friend and follow me around?”

Lok, holding the rag to his nose, half stood, swayed a little, and sat down heavily. I watched Grisha, who was clearly in charge. He looked at Lok and sighed, then looked back at me, his pinched face cheerful behind his stupid glasses.

“They know, somehow, of Salgado inside you. They realize that even if you were a man who submitted to torture—and all men have a breaking point, Avery—that you likely do not even know the information they seek. There is a theory that Salgado would feel all your sufferings if you were handled correctly, but this is theory. They might torture you until death and still get nothing useful, if she is walled off and impervious to your own sufferings.” He smiled. “They believe a prolonged exposure might yield results. Subtle Psionic pressure over weeks or months might reveal to them what Salgado knows, or allow the Pusher to access Salgado directly. They did not count on your propensity for being kidnapped and sold on the black markets, however.”

I shook my head, sucking in smoke. “She doesn’t know the codes. She knows who has—or had—them.” I shrugged. “This was years ago, and just about everyone who was alive years ago is dead now, I think.” I winked at Lok. “Or will be soon, eh?”

“That scans,” Lok said, his voice muffled by the rag. I’d knocked some of the insane cheer out of him, at least, and I was impressed that he was still conscious and able to speak. “These codes would have been created when the Joint Council was still conscious and in control. As an undersecretary, she would not have clearance for the information. This likely emboldened Marin; he probably thought
no one
had his overrides. No one still alive.”

We sat for a moment, quiet. A smog of cigarette smoke had filled the container, making everything hazy. Grisha cleared his throat and sat forward. “Avery, have you asked her?”

I blinked. I’d spent years trying to shut the fucking ghosts up, to keep them at bay. The idea of purposefully asking Dolores Salgado a question seemed… crazy. I stared at Grisha for a moment and then closed my eyes, taking a deep drag on my cigarette.