She reached the concrete road at the end of the track, and straddled the p-bike. There was no traffic. She twisted the throttle, and set off towards Baransly’s outskirts, five miles ahead.
The city’s traffic management network was still functioning. It registered her p-bike as she crossed into the official city boundary. By now she was on Route Two, one of the main highways into the city, with the mid-afternoon traffic starting to build up around her. She told the network she wanted Lislie Road, and received a route authorization. Her vehicle licence had been accepted as current.
Lislie Road was in the middle of a pleasant residential suburb, with small dome-roofed houses grown out of air coral. Paula turned off the tree-shaded road itself onto the broad pavement, and started pedalling the p-bike. That way she was no longer monitored by the traffic network. She stopped outside number 62, and wheeled the p-bike up to the front door. It accepted the code she put in, and swung open for her.
Nelson Sheldon had paid Terrie Ority, the previous occupant, a handsome sum for his codes; just as he’d paid another Merioneth refugee for a bike licence. The preparations had taken over a month. Paula and Nelson had put the operation together on Augusta, the Sheldon Dynasty’s industrial world. It was the first time in nine decades that Paula had taken a holiday from the Directorate. She’d accrued eight years’ leave. The personnel office were delighted – her director curious.
Inside number 62 the air was musty. Terrie Ority was a fussy man: he’d turned off all the power before he left. He had also left behind most of the furniture. Paula switched the air conditioning back on, and ran the taps to cycle the plumbing system. A couple of ancient maidbots were sitting in their alcoves, fully charged, so she ordered them to start cleaning.
She spent the rest of the day establishing her legend identity in the civil and commercial systems. Her bank account was opened and loaded from a card. She registered with several local stores and had food delivered. Then she sat back and accessed the planetary cybersphere, with her e-butler extracting news summaries to build a picture of Merioneth after the wormhole had closed five months earlier.
It was like losing a short, brutal war. With half the population gone, whole towns had been abandoned. New consumer items were hard to find; not that it mattered. People simply reclaimed and recycled products from deserted homes. Food hadn’t quite been rationed in the winter, but a lot of favourites were no longer commercially available. She was interested to see that medical services, including rejuvenation clinics, had been nationalized on a temporary basis, so they could be reorganized for fair and equal distribution. Whole fleets of bots, especially civic ones, were breaking down; there were too few service and repair companies to keep them functional. Public transport was patchy, with priority given to maintain strategic links. Cars and lorries were also in need of maintenance, but again there was a huge number of abandoned vehicles which could be utilized. But on the plus side, this summer’s crops were going to produce big surpluses – nobody would go hungry. The tidal and hydro power stations were all functioning efficiently. Local currency was stabilizing after months of disastrous inflation. People were starting to adapt to their new life.
She started to research Svein Moalem. He was still Prime Minister, with his Nationalist Party holding two thirds of the remaining seats in Parliament. There were due to be elections in two years, when the new constituency boundaries had been established. The party had spent the months since Isolation revoking a whole host of ‘oppressive Commonwealth restrictions’; the majority of which were regulations covering genetic modifications and cloning. Helpfully, Moalem’s office provided a diary listing events he was due to attend.
The next day Paula started observing his movements within the city. They were typical of any high-ranking politician. Speeches to civic and community leaders, meetings with party officials. Parliamentary debates. Voter-friendly visits to schools, hospitals, and selected business. Trips to provincial towns.
He had bodyguards, of course, good ones. When he was due at an event, crowds were scanned using feature recognition software to check for repeat observers. The traffic network was analysed for any vehicle which kept cropping up in his vicinity. If he took a train or plane, passenger lists were reviewed. All well-established mid-level protocols.
As a consequence she kept her distance, content to follow his routes via some very sophisticated software her e-butler manipulated in the planetary cybersphere.
After a week she’d confirmed he would often abandon his official residence next to the Parliament building in favour of a grand private house in Baransly’s most exclusive Lake Hill district, where the last remaining multi-millionaires resided. It was a perfect place for his nest to operate from.
On the eighth night, with her monitor routines confirming his presence at a late-night Cabinet session, Paula broke in.
The perimeter alarm circuits and sensors were utterly ineffectual against her superior software and the active stealth covering of her light-armour suit. She started walking through the formal grounds, tracking the sentinel dogs prowling round. Spinneys of local trees provided excellent cover. The house was squatting on the summit of a mound which had been sculpted with high terracing. To Paula’s suspicious eye the mound would be perfect cover for an underground complex.
She climbed the dry-stone wall of the last terrace. Ahead of her the house was a three-storey construction of dark-grey stone, crowned with a lantern tower. The lawn between her and the wall was completely devoid of cover, and dotted with sensors. She used her inserts to neutralize several in her path. Her e-butler told her that several motion trackers up on the eaves were locking on as she jogged forwards. Data traffic in and out of the house began to increase.
Paula scurried up to large French doors and used a compact power blade to cut a circle through the glass. She found herself in a big hall which followed the principles of High Renaissance architecture, with square columns and a vaulting ceiling of decorated panels.
The lights came on when she was halfway to the vast curving stairs at the far end. Five security staff with high-rated maser rifles were lined up behind the polished stone banister.
‘Hold it right there.’
More armed security staff scurried in from ground-floor rooms and surrounded her. Their armour suits were a lot heavier than hers. She raised her hands as eleven energy weapons lined up on her, any one of which could probably cut through her protection.
‘Do not move. Deactivate all your systems.’
Paula switched the shimmering stealth layer off, then slowly reached up and removed her helmet. One of the armoured figures up on the stairs stood up, lowering their rifle. Paula’s inserts detected a large emission of encrypted data emerging from him, and suppressed a smile.
‘Investigator Myo,’ he said, taking off his own helmet. There was no resemblance to Svein Moalem in his features and his skin was the pale brown of a North African.
‘Correct,’ she said. ‘And whom am I addressing?’
‘Agent Volkep. I’m in charge of the Prime Minister’s security.’ He walked down the stairs. Paula’s e-butler told her the nodes in the house had closed their links to the cybersphere. More suppression shielding came on, sealing up the hall from any communication.
‘That’s convenient for you,’ Paula said archly as Volkep stood in front of her. His expression gave nothing away.
‘Take her over to the holding centre,’ he told the armed squad. ‘I want a full scan for weapon inserts; and be very thorough, hell knows what her Directorate equipped her with. Then bring her down to secure facility three. I’ll interrogate her there.’
Two electromuscle-enhanced gauntlets gripped Paula’s arms, almost lifting her off the ground. She turned her head to look at Volkep as she was hauled away across the hall’s marble flooring. ‘Nice seeing you again, Svein,’ she called out loudly.
That brought a flicker of annoyance to his face.
The holding centre was a simple concrete room with a
cage door and a single medical-style chair in the middle. It was equipped with malmetal restraints.
Four of the armoured bodyguards came in with her, powered up and shielded. They ordered her to strip. Paula obediently removed her own armour. ‘Keep going,’ they told her. She pulled off her sweatshirt, and slipped her long shorts down her legs. The OCtattoo glowed sapphire and jade on her abdomen, a circle encasing a tight geometry of intersecting curves that undulated slowly. Four gun muzzles lined up on the gentle light.
‘What’s that?’
‘Sensory booster,’ Paula said. ‘It’s wetwired into my nerves so I can receive a bigger sensation when I’m accessing porn from the unisphere. Don’t you have them here?’
‘Just get the rest of your clothes off, lady.’
She shrugged out of her bra and took her panties off. One of the suited bodyguards dropped all her garments into a big bag and carried it out. Paula was left standing in the cold concrete cell with the remaining three agents.
‘Not bad,’ one remarked.
‘You wouldn’t need a booster for anything with me,’ his colleague said. The others laughed.
Paula gazed at his blank shiny helmet and gave a small snort of contempt. Perhaps she had given the secret service agents too much credit after all.
A female technician came in, followed by a trollybot loaded with sensor equipment. She frowned when she saw Paula’s OCtattoo. ‘Put her in the chair.’
The malmetal manacles flowed over Paula’s wrists and ankles. Sensor pads were applied to her skin over the twisting luminescence. More scans swept across her limbs and torso. Then her skull was given a thorough examination. The woman took samples of her blood and saliva. Nails were tested for toxins. Even the air she exhaled was sampled for any abnormality.
Finally, the technician nodded at the armoured figures. ‘She’s clean. Her inserts are sophisticated, but they’re all sensors, memory chips, and processor systems; no weapons of any kind. You can take her down to Volkep.’
‘So what’s that thing?’ one of the agents asked, pointing at Paula’s abdomen.
‘Receiver circuitry wired into her spinal cord, just like she said.’
Paula was marched back through the grandiose hall to a room at the back of the house. A lift took her deep underground. She wasn’t at all surprised when it opened on a junction of corridors. Volkep took over, dismissing the bodyguards. He took Paula by the arm and led her to a simply furnished office. Svein Moalem was waiting there, his opal necklace just visible inside the open collar of his shirt. Two other youths were with him, one obviously a full clone with identical features to Svein, just five years younger, the other had East Asian features; the one thing they had in common was a necklace. Volkep was still in his armour, so she couldn’t tell if he was wearing any kind of array.
‘I like the whole underground citadel thing,’ Paula said, looking round the office with its drab ceiling and dilapidated couch. ‘Quite the retro Criminal Mastermind secret headquarters.’ Her abdominal OCtattoo showed her the four of them were exchanging data at a huge rate, all of which originated from the ornamental arrays round their necks. She opened the additional bioneural chips in her cortex and started recording their emissions.
‘Why are you here?’ Volkep asked.
‘I talked to Dr Friland.’
‘Ah,’ Svein said, an exclamation simultaneously uttered by his youthful clone.
‘You fired the missile on Nova Zealand,’ Paula said.
‘Well that’s open to debate.’
‘In fact I suspect your nest is the Free Merioneth Forces in their entirety.’
‘Not completely. My Foundation colleagues are fully supportive in every respect.’
‘I see.’
‘Would you like to arrest them as well?’
‘I might get round to it.’
‘I’m fascinated how you got here. Did you come back before or after the wormhole closed?’
‘After. You killed a lot of Sheldons.’
‘Old concept,’ the East Asian youth said dismissively. ‘They’re all alive today.’
‘Interesting,’ Paula said. ‘Did you know your inflections are the same?’
Svein walked round in front of her. ‘Did you know I don’t care? Why are you here? Even with Sheldon support you can’t possibly expect to snatch all of me back to the Commonwealth. After all, you don’t even know how many of me there are.’
‘True. Did you get hot while you waited for the plane to take off? I did while I was out there. That desert has a terrible climate.’
‘You’d have to send a small army here for that, and even if Sheldon was determined enough there’s no guarantee he’d succeed. Were you sent to try and find out how much I’ve grown?’
‘I don’t care how many there are in your nest. Was the missile heavy when you lifted it up and aimed it at the plane?’
‘What do you mean you don’t care? Why are you here? Why did you break in to my home? Is it to snatch data on me?’
‘I have all the data I need. It was the reason for the Isolation which puzzled me. Now I know it wasn’t a financial or political ethos it makes perfect sense. Did you build the missile here? Did it kick when you launched it? Was the exhaust plume loud?’
‘Not political?’ Svein said it, but all four of the nest raised their eyebrows in unison, sharing the same slightly mocking expression. ‘What could be more political than developing a new kind of life, effectively a new species?’
‘Friland called you obsessional,’ Paula said. ‘I think he’s right. Did you actually watch the plane falling out of the sky? I bet you did. Who could resist that, no matter what type of human you are.’
‘Paula,’ all four of him assumed a mock-indignant expression. ‘Are you trying to provoke me?’
‘Did you feel satisfaction when it exploded?’
‘Two can play this game. Did Friland tell you we’re related, you and me?’ The Svein body grinned.
The Volkep body stood beside Svein. ‘And he was the original,’ Volkep said, tapping Svein on the shoulder. ‘Our minds are rooted in the same ancestor, Paula.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ she admitted. ‘Were you nervous when you ran back to the boat? That was a weak point. Someone might have seen you.’
‘Friland originally funded the Foundation from the clinic he used to run in Grenada back in the twenty-first century,’ Svein said. ‘He sold baseline germ treatments to wealthy Westerners whose own countries banned such tinkering. That way he amassed a massive germ bank, a good percentage of the wealthy and powerful people of the day came to visit at some time and have their children enhanced. Their money and DNA were a good foundation for his Foundation.’
‘Standing on Ridgeview station platform waiting for the train, you must have been buzzing on adrenalin,’ Paula persisted. ‘You’d know me or someone like me would have the trains stopped. You might have been stranded there, with the police closing in. No way to get back to Sydney and establish your alibi.’
‘I looked up the records in Grenada. Our ancestor is Jeff Baker, apparently he invented crystal memories. A famous man in his time. A very smart man, too. Friland needed that level of intelligence in his research team, which is why I was created from Baker’s old sperm samples. You, I imagine, require a similar analytical ability. A lot of other sequences were included, which is where we start to diverge, but genetically he’s equivalent to our grandfather. Which makes us cousins, Paula. We’re family. And you always thought you were unique, isolated and alone. You’re not, Paula. We not only share flesh, we think the same.’
‘Were you watching when my Directorate team arrested your Fiech body? Some clever little vantage point nearby, perhaps?’
Svein pressed his face up close to Paula, his mouth parting with an angry snarl. ‘That obsession you mock in me is exactly the same one that runs through you, Investigator Myo. Friland didn’t have to sequence it in to your genome quite as much as you were led to believe. It’s not artificial,
it’s you. It’s your heritage. It’s my heritage. It’s what we are. And this is our world. You’re home, Paula. Welcome back.’
She smiled lightly. ‘I know what I am, and I know where my home is. Good luck finding yours.’
The Svein body took a half step back from her. All four of the nest were frowning in annoyance now. ‘Why are you here?’ they demanded in unison.
‘To ensure the sentence passed on Fiech is carried out in full,’ Paula told them.
‘I thought it had been,’ the Volkep body said coldly.
‘It hasn’t been yet, because you made sure that part of you didn’t remember. But memory’s a funny thing, it’s triggered by association. And your mind is shared.’ Paula gestured around at the empty air. ‘It’s all around us, if you know how to look.’ Her virtual hand touched Nelson’s communication icon.
‘I’ve got enough,’ she said out loud.
‘What . . .’ all four nestlings grunted.
The wormhole opened behind her, expanding out from a micron-wide point to a two-metre circle. Bright light shone through, silhouetting Paula’s naked body. She stepped backwards, crossing the threshold to be enveloped by the light. Lost her footing as Augusta’s slightly heavier gravity claimed her, and fell on her arse in a completely undignified manner. Svein and his nestlings never saw that. The wormhole closed the instant she was through.
She was sitting in the middle of the alien environment confinement chamber of the CST Augusta Exploratory Division, a huge dome-shaped chamber with dark radiation-absorptive walls. In front of her was the five-metre-wide blank circle of the wormhole gateway, its grey pseudo-substance emitting strange violet sparkles. Halfway up the curving surface behind her was a broad band of reinforced windows with the big operations centre behind it. Nelson Sheldon was pressed up against the super-strength glass, grinning down at her. Behind him, the hundred-strong staff controlling the wormhole were peering over the tops of their tiered rows of consoles, curious and eager to see the conclusion to their oddest operation ever. Tracking her movements on Merioneth and keeping the wormhole close by had stretched the machinery to its limit.