The Credulity Nexus (8 page)

It was their
fault. They'd screwed up, not her. And when they sent her to
Heathrow to get the guy who was supposed to have taken it, they
didn't say anything about a load of British secret agents with
machine guns. It wasn't right. Celestina's people were supposed to
be the best. They should be giving her better intel – a bit of
support, for Christ's sake!

But, as usual,
Rivers was on her own. The story of her life.

She looked
down at the scarring on her abdomen. Whatever her new body was made
of, it was tough. That guy had emptied a clip into her at close
range, and all she had to show for it now was a sprinkling of
little grey marks. Maybe she shouldn't have run for it when the
spooks showed up. Maybe she could have taken them. But it had
creeped her out, the way that Rik guy had kept firing right at her
brain box, like he knew just where it was.

The roboticist
at the hospital had told her that her body could stand a lot of
punishment, but that she needed to protect her brain box at all
costs. That was the only part that wouldn't regenerate, the only
part that could kill her if it was damaged. At the time, she'd
thought that made her pretty much invulnerable. Now she wasn't so
sure.

It was a safe
bet Celestina also had some way of killing her if she felt like it.
She'd worked for the old bitch for enough years now to know she
always had some way of getting at the people she wanted to punish.
But that had never worried Rivers before. She'd always been the
Golden Girl, a star performer, teacher's pet. There wasn't a
smarter, faster, more successful cat burglar on the East Coast. At
twenty-two, Rivers had been at the top of her game, taking only the
best jobs, getting her commissions directly from Celestina herself,
with the weight of the whole organisation behind her if she needed
intel, or enforcement, or some official to turn a blind eye. They
called her the Black Cat, and she had it all.

Then those
asshole cops somehow managed to stake out the museum job, and came
bursting in on her and her team, shouting and yelling like madmen.
“Police! Drop your weapons! Down on the floor! Do it!” The
bastards. It still made her blood boil, remembering it.

She took down
three of them before they managed to return fire. Served them
right.

The engines
suddenly screamed into life. Rivers felt her mass shift. Weight was
returning, climbing slowly up to one-and-a-half-G. The hopper was
braking, falling out of the sky in a controlled arc that would hit
Los Angeles International Airport smack on the hopper's designated
landing pad.

She should
call Celestina now. She might not have a chance in LA. But what
could she say? Celestina's image came into her head as clearly as
if she was on a comm link. It was how she had looked when Rivers
woke up in the hospital.

“
I thought I was dead,” Rivers had said,
looking around. She felt fine. No pain. No wooziness. Just clear,
bright hospital light, and that smell of antiseptic chemicals
masking something worse. “Where am I?”

Celestina
looked stunning. She always dressed like she was at a film
première, in slinky, revealing designer dresses and fabulous
jewellery. But Celestina could do that, because she wasn't real any
more. She was an upload, her mind running in a computer
somewhere.

She had said,
“You're with me in Omega Point, dear. Don't worry, only your body
died.”

Automatically,
Rivers looked down at herself. Apart from the hospital gown, she
looked perfectly normal. She touched her left arm with her right
hand. It felt exactly the way it should.

Celestina was
smiling. “Don't let that fool you, dear. Nothing here is quite what
it seems.”

“
I can't afford this.” It surprised Rivers
that this was the first thing she thought, but it was true. Her
skills had earned her what most people would consider riches, but
nothing like the kind of wealth needed to make it to Omega
Point.

“
No, you can't,” Celestina agreed. “But I
need a special job doing, and you are the one who is going to do it
for me.”

That's how
she'd got into this mess. Celestina's generosity. She opened a call
to her benefactor's private netID while she was still feeling angry
and resentful enough to do it.

“
Celestina? It's Rivers. I'm en route to LA
on the same flight as the target. Everything went pear-shaped in
London. He had government agents protecting him. I almost didn't
get out alive. What's going on, Celestina? When I get to the
States, will I have the fucking FBI shooting at me, too? This
little project of yours isn't looking as simple as it did a few
days ago. You'd better tell me who this guy is and what his
connections are, 'cause right now I have no fucking idea what I'm
up against.”

There. The
message was sent. Let the old tranny chew on that. Maybe if Rivers
had made more of a fuss about this from the start she'd be getting
better support right now.

But she had
been so astonished by Celestina's offer, so glad to be alive again,
that she had let her guard down.

“
Just one job, and I get keep the body?”
She'd kept checking because it had seemed too good to be
true.

She had even
got to choose the robot, have it customised to her own
specifications. She'd insisted on the gecko skin for her hands,
feet, forearms and shins, with an eye to making a living
afterwards. Celestina had suggested incorporating another little
trick skin addition, so she could change colour at will.

All that had
been great. Picking the body with Celestina, trying on different
shapes, was like going shopping with a girlfriend. That was
something Rivers had never done before. She'd practised with the
robot while she stayed in Omega Point – everything simulated, of
course, but so like the real thing that the transition to the
actual body was completely smooth.

It was only on
Earth, after spending the long trip down crated up in the hold of a
company freighter, that she began to realise she might have been
misled about how simple the job was.

But there was
no time to fret over that now. She could hear a thin keening from
outside. The aircraft was falling through atmosphere, just a few
miles up. They would be landing soon. When they hit the tarmac in
LA, she had to find a way to get off the hopper and keep the target
in sight.

She climbed up
the landing strut so she wouldn't be dangling out in the open when
the gear went down, and hoped that she'd have plenty of time to
work out her exit before the passengers disembarked.

Somewhere over
the North Atlantic, Rik decided to dump all his half-formed plans
for escape and do the sensible thing: co-operate. Whatever Cordell
was up to, if Rik's attempts to shake off the government led to the
upload and whoever she represented getting hold of this bioweapon,
the outcome could be something he didn't want on his conscience. He
wasn't that keen on the government – any government – having it
either, but he had to admit it was probably safer with them than
with some unknown killer, or with Cordell, for that matter.

So he stopped
scowling out the window and told his new best friend, Agent Fariba
Freymann, that he'd do whatever he could to help her get the
package. It didn't stop her frowning, and it certainly didn't make
her chatty. She kept on eyeing him with closed-mouthed suspicion
all the way from London to LA. But it made Rik feel better. In
fact, he felt like a huge weight had been lifted from him. It could
just have been his body finally adjusting to Earth's gravity. He
preferred to think it was his conscience feeling glad he was no
longer doing something so morally dubious as transporting a weapon
of mass murder around the system.

Of course, the
fact that he wouldn't get paid would complicate his life in all
kinds of ways he'd rather not think about, but for now he felt OK,
and that was good enough. All that remained was to take his grumpy
watchdog to Blake and get the package. Then maybe he'd call
Greet-Greet, threaten to pull his pointy little head off, and get a
good night's sleep.

He gave
Freymann a good, long look. She had a fine-featured, intelligent
face, with big brown eyes, and lips that would look a lot nicer if
they smiled once in a while.

“
I suppose you didn't want this job,” he
said, trying to empathise.

She gave him a
suspicious look. “What do I care? I get a trip back to the
States.”

“
You sound like a New Yorker. LA isn't
exactly home.”

She shrugged
and turned away.

“
I'm from Palo Alto originally,” he went
on. “Moved to LA as soon as I could afford the bus
fare.”

“
I know, I've just been reading your
file.”

“
What? The CIA's got a file on
me?”

“
It does now.”

Rik sat back
in his seat and thought about that for a while. It didn't bother
him much. Everybody had files on everybody. It was the Information
Age. Still, he wondered what the latest entries would be, and how
that might affect him in the future.

“
What made you join the Company?” he asked,
still trying to be nice.

“
I've got a natural talent for keeping my
mouth shut. I bet you could do it too, if you tried.”

“
Nah, I don't think it would work. I just
love asking questions. I like to know things. I have a probing
intellect.”

She gave him a
tight smile. “Gee, I suppose that's why you became a rocket
scientist.”

Rik held up
his hands in surrender. “OK, if you're going to be nasty about it,
I'll just sit here and read a book. I won't bother you again.” And
he didn't, all the way to LA.

Freymann had
an autolimo waiting for them when they cleared customs at LAX. As
soon as they were on the road, Rik put in a voice-only call to
Blake. The call diverted to Blake's wife, Brie. Rik glanced at the
silent woman sitting beside him, wanting to share the concern that
had gripped him. Freymann gazed back at him with the same cool
disdain to which she'd treated him since they met, and Rik changed
his mind.

“
You! You fucking bastard!” Brie's voice
was loud inside his head, and he recoiled at the wild emotion he
was hearing. “I don't know how you have the fucking nerve to call
after what you've done. What've we ever done to you, you bastard?
Blake has always been your friend, for Christ's sake. And you pull
a selfish, stupid stunt like this!”

It was a while before he got a word in.
“What happened, Brie? Are you OK? Is Blake OK?” They'd opened one
of the phials, he thought. They were sick. They were both dying.
Maybe the whole neighbourhood was affected. What
had
he done? To his friends! To
hundreds of strangers!

“
They shot him, Rik. That's what. They
fucking shot him, and he's in a coma, and–” Her tirade ended in a
sob.

Rik was
stunned and, to his shame, relieved. He pulled his thoughts back
into line. “Who shot him, Brie? Did they get the package?” He hated
himself for asking, but he had to know.

There was
silence on the other end. When Brie spoke again she was no longer
shouting. “You bastard,” she spat at him, and hung up.

“
What was that all about?” Freymann
asked.

He ignored her
and gave the limo a new destination.

Freymann read
it off the display. “The Cedars-Sinai Medical Center? What's going
on?”

“
Are you really CIA?” he asked her. It had
suddenly struck him that she should have known about Blake
already.

She sneered at
him. “Are you really a PLEO? 'Cause you ask some really dumb
questions. Now tell me what you're doing.”

They cruised
up the San Diego Freeway and along Santa Monica Boulevard. Rik
explained the situation to Freymann in-between attempts to get a
medical update on his friend from the hospital's systems, and from
old acquaintances in the LAPD. He even tried to call Brie again,
but she was barring his calls.

“
You sent a potential bioweapon through the
post?” Freymann's level of contempt seemed to be reaching new
heights.

“
It was a specialist courier service, and
the phials were very securely packaged.” Which didn't sound like
much of a defence, even to himself. “And I didn't know it was a
weapon at the time. I didn't know what it was. Can we focus on the
important issues here?”

“
Which are?”

“
That somebody sent a gunman round to get
the package from Blake. Somebody knew I'd sent it to him. God knows
how! Which means that robotic psycho-chick isn't the only one
working against us. Now, if I didn't have my very own Company girl
in tow, I'd suspect the good ol' US of A had a hand in this. So, is
there anything you'd like to tell me?”

Freymann
shrugged. “We're a bit out of my jurisdiction, here. You might want
to try the FBI.”

“
Great idea. I'll give them a call. Better
still, why don't you get your buddies at Langley to do
it?”

They pulled up
outside the hospital's main entrance and got out. The car synced
with the building's parking system and drove itself away to wait
for them. Meanwhile a nurse appeared to guide them to Blake's
bedside – not a real nurse, of course, just a rather poor
cogplus-mediated hallucination – a lucie, as they were popularly
known. Despite the scale of the hospital – a gigantic campus that
grew a little taller and a little denser each decade – it employed
just a few hundred human nurses. To be sick these days meant being
in the hands of robots and administrative AIs. The fact was, most
patients insisted on it, not to mention the insurance
companies.