The Credulity Nexus (6 page)

She kept
coming as she spoke, leaving Rik no time to think. Somewhere inside
that tough robotic body was the woman's mind – her 'brain box', in
the jargon of the off-world construction sites, where uploads were
as common as human workers. It would be a small processor unit, an
armoured quantum computer that held the whole of the woman's mind.
It wouldn't be in her skull. It would be somewhere with more
body-mass around it, somewhere like her chest or abdomen. He aimed
at the woman's stomach and fired three rapid shots.

The upload
stopped and clutched at herself, her eyes widening with surprise
and alarm – the first emotions Rik had seen in her. He'd obviously
guessed right, even if he'd missed.

“Even uploads
can die,” he said, and switched the weapon to automatic.

The upload
leapt to the wall, then the ceiling, then charged at him. Rik
squeezed the trigger and threw himself aside. The weapon roared,
rasping out ten rounds a second in an ear-splitting scream. A
stream of bullets thudded into the woman's body, seeking out her
vulnerable belly no matter how she bent and twisted. The closer she
got, the better was Rik's aim, but she wouldn't stop. Even when he
could see the gun flash mirrored in her obsidian eyes, she came
on.

With a swipe
of her slender hand, she knocked the gun aside, almost breaking
Rik's fingers and silencing the racket that had engulfed them. She
looked down at him with what he took to be a kind of horror at what
she had risked and survived. Her pockmarked torso was grey with
dead, pulverised nanites, gobs of hot lead still embedded in her.
She raised her hand again to strike him across the head, and the
sounds of gunfire erupted again in the narrow corridor.

The upload
turned to face Shah and two others as they took up firing
positions.

“Aim for the
stomach,” Rik yelled.

The woman
turned quickly to him and snarled. Black teeth in black gums. She
fired a short volley at the agents, killing another one, and before
they could return fire, she tore her way through the wall of the
corridor and was gone.

To Rik's
surprise, Heathrow had its own police station, a big, busy place
with armoured vehicles parked in the yard. Shah took Rik in through
a side entrance and up two flights of stairs to a small interview
room.

The MI5 agent
fetched Rik and himself a mug of coffee. He had barely spoken since
they left the bloody wreckage of the departure lounge. Now he sat
opposite Rik and held his mug close to him, shaken and angry. Rik
kept quiet, letting the younger man calm himself and collect his
thoughts. When Shah finally spoke, it was in a subdued voice.

“The Berlin
police told us there had been a lot of deaths at GeneWerken, and
reports of a superhuman killer. Was it the same woman?”

“As far as I
can tell.”

“Some kind of
transhuman, right? I've never seen one in the...” He stopped and
swallowed.

“I'm pretty
sure it was the same one. Look, I'm sorry... about your
colleagues.” Two officers dead and two more critically injured. Rik
had been there, done that. He knew how it felt.

Shah nodded
absently. He clearly didn't want to deal with that now. “Tell me
what happened in Berlin. From the beginning.”

Rik obliged.
He told the whole story, leaving out only the package he'd
collected. Shah made no notes, but Rik was pretty sure the man's
cogplus would be recording sight and sound.

“So everybody
fled the crime scene,” Shah said. “And you came to London for a new
identity.”

Rik winced at
the construction Shah had put on it. It made him look guilty as
hell, but he let the agent go on thinking it.

“The upload
was already there when we arrived,” he said in his defence. “Most
of the killing had already happened. I was practically a
bystander.”

“Tell me what
you picked up for Mrs. Cordell at the lab.”

“I was
supposed to pick up a package and courier it to her husband, as I
said. But the upload was there. It didn't go as planned.”

Shah chose to
ignore the evasion. “What was in the package?”

“I was never
told. Perhaps the Berlin police could tell you. They must have
interviewed everybody who worked at the lab by now. Someone there
must know.”

Shah shook his
head minutely. “No-one who might have known is still alive. The
upload either shot them or tortured them to death. The lab itself
has been destroyed.”

“
She went back?”

“
What do you mean?”

“
There were plenty of people still alive
and well when I left. She'd ransacked the lab. We disturbed her
while she was ripping the place up and she ran.” He pretended to
think about it for a moment. “She didn't get the package when she
went back, that's pretty certain, otherwise she wouldn't be chasing
me.”

Shah got to
his feet and paced the room. It looked like an attempt at keeping
himself under control. “You are so full of shit,” he told Rik. He
sounded more weary than angry, but the anger was there, below the
surface. “You brought that damned thing here. You knew it would be
hunting you because you know exactly where the package is.”

“
Have you got any aspirin? My head's
killing me. I got this cut-price deal on a cogplus upgrade
and–”

“
Just tell me where the package
is.”

“
Look, a lot of people don't like me. This
upload chick might just be an enforcer for the Turgu or someone –
my wives, maybe.”

With a heavy
sigh, Shah sat down again. “OK. Fine. You don't want to tell me.
Let's move on. Elspeth Cordell. How do you know her?”

“
I don't. We met that one time in Berlin.
She's my client. It was all arranged through a scum-sucking,
dickhead middle-man. I didn't even know what the job was until she
told me on the way to the lab.”

“
And what was the job?”

“
I'm sorry, that's confidential
information.”

“
What's your relationship to Rodney
Preston?”

“
Who?”

“
The boy you visited in East
Ham.”

“
You mean Skiver?”

“
If you keep messing me about like this,
I'm going to have to change tactics.”

Despite the
man's quiet tone, Rik did not take the threat lightly. “Honest, I
don't know the kid's real name. I don't know the kid at all. He was
squatting in my friend's house. I just needed to get some stuff I'd
left there.”

“
The chip wrangler you used to change your
identity.”

“
That's right. How did you guys find me
anyway?”

Shah smiled.
“The old-fashioned way. We used a blood-hound. Cute little chap,
about the size of a large spider. Followed your scent from the
house to the station. After that, finding where you'd gone was
easy.”

Rik nodded.
“Look... What was your name again?”

“
Shah. Rajan Shah.”

Rik grinned.
“Like 'Bond, James Bond', eh?”

“
Wrong agency.”

“
Yeah. Right. Look, Shah, I really need to
finish this job 'cause I really need the money. All these people
getting killed all around me is not exactly what I signed up for. I
don't like being used by people like Newton Cordell and his
charming wife, and I don't like being mixed up in something that's
likely to get me killed, or arrested, or both.”

“
So tell us where the package is and we'll
take it from here.”

“
You know, I'd really like to do that, but
I just can't. If I don't do what I was hired for, I don't get paid,
and I'll probably end up being killed anyway, either by Cordell's
people, or by the Turgu.”

“
Who are these Turgu people you keep
talking about?”

Rik shook his head wearily. “Turgu was a
13
^th
Century king of Babylon, or
some such crap. I don't know. There's a gang boss in Heinlein who
believes the 'spirit of Turgu' inhabits his little gang of
hoodlums, or something whacko like that. I helped someone out of a
jam who they thought shouldn't be helped. Turns out this guy owed
them money. He skipped. So now they say I owe them
instead.”

“
What a sordid little life you
lead.”

“
Well, you know, being shut up in here with
you isn't helping much. Look, can we get back to the point? Why
don't you tell me what's in this package of Cordell's so I can
understand why I'm suddenly target of the month for this transhuman
chick?”

Shah sighed
heavily. “We don't know what it is. We think maybe it's a
bioweapon. GSG 9 – the German Federal Police anti-terrorism group –
got a tip-off from someone at the lab that a special project was
underway that had extraordinary security. Their informant didn't
know what was going on. Now she's dead.”

“
Bioweapon, huh?” Of course, the idea had
occurred to Rik – how could it not? – but he'd suppressed it,
preferring to think he wasn't sending anything so deadly through
the post to his friend. “You're just assuming that,
right?”

Shah caught
the anxiety in Rik's voice. “Bloody hell, man, what have you done
with it?”

“
With what? I never said I had the
package.” Rik sank back into his seat, scowling at the table. He
had to find a way to make sure Blake didn't open the damned
thing.

“
We need to get that package somewhere
safe, Rik.”

“
I wish I could help you.” He kept on
scowling at the table until a thought struck him. “What the hell
would Cordell want with a bioweapon, anyway? He's a legit
businessman, as far as I know. Richest man in the system. Bit of a
God botherer, but not some whack-job terrorist.” For an instant he
actually felt better, then he remembered just how devoutly
religious Newton Cordell was reputed to be. “Shit, you don't think
he's gone nuts and wants to wipe out the Muslims or something, do
you?”

Shah shook his
head in frustration. “We haven't got a clue what he's up to.
Neither have you, obviously. All we know is that that package would
be safer in our hands than wherever the hell you've stashed
it.”

“
Yeah, I bet. Don't you guys have enough
bioweapons already? You've got that Porton Down place cooking them
up all the time, right?”

“
We shut down that facility nearly thirty
years ago. But that's exactly the kind of place this stuff belongs.
Not in a locker at an airport, or in a hole at the side of the
motorway where some curious dog might dig it up.”

The more Shah
said, the more Rik wanted to get to a safe distance and call
Blake.

“
Look, I've been very co-operative,” he
said. “I've answered all your questions. Now I'd either like to get
on my way or I'd like to call my lawyer.”

Shah looked
tired. He seemed like he'd had enough for one day. Rik wondered
which way the man might jump if he pushed him a bit harder. These
days, every country had its anti-terrorism laws, under which they
could do pretty much whatever they liked. If Shah wanted to hold
him, question him, or even torture him, shouting for a lawyer
wouldn't do much good. Nevertheless, he had to get out of
there.

He stood
up.

“
OK, Shah, I've had enough of this crap. I
want–”

Shah put a
finger to his temple – meaning he was talking on his cogplus. Rik
clenched his jaw in frustration and sat down again.

“
There,” said Shah, putting his hand down.
“Sorry about that.”

There was a
light tap at the door and a woman walked in. She was a brunette in
her late twenties, pretty, but not excessively so, with an exotic,
Middle Eastern look about her. Her trim figure and precise
movements suggested good genes or a good workout regimen. Probably
both. She crossed the little room, click-clicking on the vinyl
floor, and shook hands with Shah. She was wearing a concealed
holster, and her handbag was too heavy not to contain a second
gun.

“
Mr. Shah,” she said.

“
Ms. Freymann,” he replied.

They both
turned to look at Rik.

Shah spoke
first. “Rik, I'd like you to meet Fariba Freymann. She works for
the U.S. Government.”

“
Don't tell me,” said Rik. “The IRS,
right?”

Shah ignored
him. “Ms. Freymann will be accompanying you on your trip to Los
Angeles.”

Rik hadn't
seen Shah in the role of gift horse until that moment, but now that
he did, he couldn't quite believe it. “What? You're trading me to
the CIA? For what? And why do they want me? I still don't have the
package.”

Shah smiled.
“Keep talking, Rik. You might just change my mind.”

Rik couldn't
help smiling back. He liked Shah. The man had that easy
sophistication that the Brits sometimes have. He was smart and cool
and knew the score. Rik imagined he could kick back with this guy
and have a beer. He didn't meet many people he could say that
about.

“
OK, but I hope you got a good price.” He
turned to the woman, Freymann. “When do we leave?”

She didn't
answer him but turned to Shah. “I'll get it organised. Can you keep
him here for two more minutes?”

“
Of course,” said Shah, and she
click-clicked out of the room. Both men watched her go.

“
Does she know what's chasing
me?”

“
She's fully briefed, and she's been
monitoring our conversation in here.”

“
Do you know her? Can she handle
it?”