The Persistence of Memories - A Novel of the Mendaihu Universe (41 page)

“Madeleine knows he's somewhere around here.
He's not dead, and he's not offworld.”

So Caren's next-door neighbor was a
soulsenser. Interesting…

“We've got to get a hold of him as soon as
possible,” he said. “Anando and Caren have been scanning various
points in the city, trying to narrow down where he might be hiding.
Vigil wants to use the ESD, but they're not sure if they'll still
have access after tonight. Besides, the only one who can access it
is unfortunately preoccupied.”

He was steering this somewhere and she
couldn't yet figure it out. Did he want her to drop everything and
help him find this priest for Goddess knew what reason? Or did he
expect her to do more research on whatever the hell the Shenaihu
nuhm'ndah were planning?
One or the other, Alec,
she
thought.
I can't handle both.
She silently waved at him to
continue.

“Reverend Miriam is one of the few pure
Mendaihu in this province whose strength is unequaled. Not even
Nehalé comes close. Nowhere near the One of All Sacred of course,
but close enough for it to matter. He once was B-town's top
Mendaihu sehndayen-ne. He's gone into hiding and we need him if
we're going to do anything about the Shenaihu.”

“Okay,” Christine nodded. “Why the map?”

Poe continued zooming in and repositioning.
He found a specific point and slowly pushed his index finger
towards it. The streets pulled ever closer until they were on the
southern outskirts, south of the river. Just past Sachers Island, a
dozen or so smaller neighborhoods lined the river's banks, from the
mouth all the way up to the outskirts of West Brandenville.
Technically these villages were part of Bridgetown Province proper,
yet they pulled enough clout to be their own private communities,
ignoring the day-to-day chaos that kept the city going.

“We're guessing Reverend Miriam took shelter
in one of these communities, though we're not sure which one. This
is also the area where most of the CNF Councillors live, though I'm
expecting this to be coincidence. Again, Vigil's working on that,
so are Caren and Anando.”

“And my role is?”

Again with the smirk.

“Alec...” she groaned. “Don't pull any more
shit on me. Not now.”

“One quick question — do you have an
Edwin-Akandia converter on you?”

“A…wait.” She shuddered as it all suddenly
fell into place, and quite differently than she'd expected. A
converter? Goddess, was he thinking of hacking into Tigua Space
Station? That was impossible. She let out a long breath and shook
her head. “Off the record, I do have a permit to use an EA
converter, but to say I have one currently in my possession could
pose some ethical and legal problems. So let's say I know where one
is.
”

“Good enough,” he smiled. “Okay. I'm about to
drop you a data packet in a few moments. I highly suggest you
download it and keep it offline. It may help in your research as
well.”

“No questions, huh?”

“Sorry.”

Pashyo, Alec.
“You're going to turn me
into a johnny, aren't you?” she grumbled. “You know how much I hate
using those damn things. They're never reliable. And besides, my
bandwidth is nowhere near as fast as ARU’s. One look at my
half-assed avatar and anyone would piss themselves laughing.”

“Don't worry about it,” he said. “If you run
straight off the Branden Hill server, you won't need to deal with
bandwidth.”

“Security?” she asked.

“A few guys downstairs owe me,” he said.
“You're connected via the ARU. Officially, the records are showing
you still work there. You're a sleeper agent right now.”

She didn't need to contest that fact.
Officially, she had not resigned; she had taken an extended leave
of absence with an open return date. That she was still on the roll
surprised her. It came as an odd comfort that that one forgotten
link would serve her now. She was not entirely taken by the idea of
helping Alec in this fashion, but she was intrigued by their search
and what would happen once he had contact with the priest.

“Fair enough,” she said. “So what needs to be
done on my end?”

He went into some detail about needing her to
rip into high-security files of a company named Sumassi Data
Processing. SDP stored readings as a data library of millions of
Bridgetowners, much like Central Intelligence's library of concrete
facts and figures on the same. Her ARU status did offer limited
access to their files, but with whatever Alec was now uploading to
her system, she'd have almost total access. Technically she would
be using these files on a proprietary basis, as she would only be
looking for specific details and not sharing it publicly, only with
a fellow ARU agent in the course of investigation. It was a shady
excuse at best, but it was doable.

The next explanation of his plan went into
even heavier detail, with a list of specific names to search for.
She was to attain their full dockets, make a cloud copy, and report
back to him when done. She'd done this before, plenty of times
during her stay at the ARU. A non-transferable copy would be made
as a read-only file that would self-expire in a specific amount of
time. In this case, thirty days. The beauty of a cloud copy was the
ability to grab a sensitive file and hide it in a specific place
with set coordinates that only the user could access. It was saved
directly to an unregistered cloud, rather than on a drive or a
crystal. Only those using it would know where to look for it, and
it too would frag itself after thirty days.

She was surprised at her own willingness to
take part in Alec’s questionable activities. It left her with a lot
more questions than she'd started off with, but they would be
answered in due time. Despite Governor Rieflin's initiative to
shoot himself in the foot, they still had time to gather as much
information together as they could before another Embodiment
uprising started. Perhaps this could even keep it from happening.
She also wondered why no one seemed to be questioning the spiritual
aspects of a Mendaihu/Shenaihu standoff, even though that was the
main reason for contacting Reverend Miriam, and the overall reason
for all these intense preparations. Surely they weren't getting
paranoid over someone's bad vibes?

Alec wrapped up the conversation with a quick
reminder to keep the contents of the data packet offline. Once she
accessed her mail, she'd have to download the packet, disconnect,
unwrap the packet and lodge Vigil's software into her own system.
If Vigil were smart, they'd barricade their doors with a good
strong firewall as well.

Meanwhile, she decided to follow Alec's
initiative by opening one of her own avatars and set its
pseudo-consciousness to investigation/research mode. She chose what
she called her 'toned' avatar, a buffer and more intimidating
version of herself with bronze skin. She'd named this one Tinagore,
her least favorite nickname of her youth, and it was the strongest
and most reliable bot she had in active status. She’d put this
avatar through hell and back in some of her livelier cases over the
years, and it had never let her down. Tinagore had to be replaced
only once during her time, and reprogrammed or upgraded at least a
dozen times. She was sturdy, she was faithful, and she got the job
done right the first time.

I may just enjoy this,
Christine
thought. She plugged in the avatar and set it to work.

By late afternoon, she was starving. She'd
successfully downloaded Vigil's mystery software and set Tinagore
to run a full diagnostics test on it. It would give her just enough
time to run up the street to the Meraladian restaurant for takeout.
If she got there early enough, they'd still have bowls of that
delectable
lishna dell fae
soup she loved so much. A tin of
churlo d'avalik
, the Meraladian version of chicken with
gravy-soaked mashed potatoes, would be a quick and filling lunch
for her. Her mind free of tasks for the moment, she let her
thoughts drift as she strolled. She couldn’t remember a day that
had unfolded so strangely...the denial of access at the DRL, the
news about Rieflin, Alec’s request, all within the span of four
short hours. She did not want to tempt fate by wondering what else
it had in store.

Once at the restaurant, she chose to eat in
after all, and found a booth at the front window. She watched the
transports make their way up and down busy Holgate Street,
impressed by the BMPD's traffic department and the wonderful job
they were doing, diverting traffic around the area surrounding
Moulding Warehouse. There were still hundreds of Awakened,
cho-nyhndah and otherwise, hanging around in a sort of tight
network, bringing in newer milédayen-ne and sending others out into
society. She had no problems with them, but she knew that was not
her type of crowd. She was the hard-nosed fact finder, just like
Caren. Large collectives like that made her nervous.

Her lishna dell fae soup came blessedly fast.
She downed half the bowl quickly before she got herself under
control and savored the last half. Her entree came soon afterwards,
which she chased down with a large glass of ice water. She smiled
in satisfaction; it was quite possibly the first healthy meal she'd
had in two weeks. She'd be leaving a hefty gratuity after this.

Her pager went off as she paid the bill.
There were two messages blinking on the tiny mat screen: Tinagore
was sending a non-urgent message stating the diagnostic run was
complete, and that Jenn had just returned her call. She glanced at
her watch and noticed she'd only been gone for a half hour. The
waitress, a young Meraladian girl with sparkling brown eyes and a
wide, friendly smile, finished off the transaction while enticing
her with offers for dessert. She passed on them, regretfully. Maybe
next time. It was time to head back.

Jenn picked up after the second ping. “Hey,”
she said. “What's up, kiddo?”

“Hey there, Chris,” she answered
distractedly. “Didn't expect you to call back so quickly. Just
thought I'd catch up with you, apologize for this morning.”

“No need to,” she said. “You were just doing
your job. Did you figure out what happened?”

“Seems it was province-wide,” Jenn said with
a bit of irritation. “A good number of people working on Season of
Embodiment files were shut down. It’s made my workload a hell of a
lot lighter, but everyone is pissed at the DRL now for going along
with it. I guess you have to go through Rieflin if you’re going to
get anywhere. You’re probably better off going through other
channels if you can.”

“I have a few contacts,” she said.

“Good. I was worried, but it sounds like you
have it under control,” she said, and lowered her voice. “Listen,
there was something else I wanted to talk to you about. You said
most of the work you were doing at the DRL was just fact-checking.
How far did you get on that, by the way?”

“Far enough to know that most of it is
useless,” she grumbled. “I’ve gone through so many different points
of reference that I’m dreaming this crap now. And it’s definitely a
new Season coming. This whole thing reeks of it. Our previous
Season of Embodiment twenty-five years ago claimed and changed a
hell of a lot of lives. I can read the dry histories and the
analyses and the first-person narratives — and believe me, I think
I have — but there’s something missing. I know there's more to it
than what all the books and the archives say.” Pursing her lips,
she made a quick decision. She could trust the girl. “I think I
need another library.”

Jenn lingered for a moment before answering.
“I’ll be honest, I gave you more access than you were supposed to
get. But that wasn't why you lost it today. That was Rieflin's
doing. But even with what I gave you? You’re damn right, there's
something missing. No real files on what the Mendaihu
or
the
Shenaihu went through during those days.”

Christine nodded, kind of proud to have
helped turned this girl she once babysat into a young woman of
intellect and unrelenting curiosity, especially when it came to
important matters she felt strongly about. Those unwritten words
were exactly what she had been searching for all this time. Perhaps
she needed to drop all this pointless data filtering and do some
spiritual research.

“Why is that?” she asked, more as a
rhetorical question than anything else.

“There
are
files, they're just not
available,” Jenn explained. “They were sequestered by the
Provincial Governor's Council after the Season ended.”

“I’m going to assume Rieflin doesn't even
know they exist.”

“More than likely. They're either somewhere
in his office, or somewhere within the Mirades Tower. Maybe Shirai
has them.”

There were a number of people who would have
such sensitive information hidden in their offices. The most
obvious place she could think of was the Earth offices of the
Crimson-Null Foundation. They were definitely withholding
information, they always did. She thought of two people within the
CNF who could possibly know about it: the emeritus member Kelley
James, and his replacement, Jack Priestley. That was one more thing
Caren would have to ask of edha James, if she was able to contact
him at all.

And she’d just come up with one of the first
places she’d have to insert her avatar.

“I'll see what I can find,” Christine said.
“In the meantime, I've got another project I have to dig into right
now. Can I call you back on this? I can call this number?”

“That’s fine,” she said. “But don't be
surprised if a guy answers. Guy named Matt, friend of mine.”

Christine laughed. “Say no more. Good
luck.”

“You too,” she said, and hung up.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Opening