Harmony (24 page)

“Can you explain this research?”

“They’re looking into the connection between human will and human action. I’m no expert on the subject, so that’s about as far as I got.”

“And then you killed the man who gave you this information?”

“My father was also killed. By Vashlov,” I replied, straining to keep my anger in check.

“That’s right. I hear he took a bullet for you. Can you explain why you went to meet with your father?”

“Because I had heard he was part of the Next-Gen group. My father is a famous scientist, the one who first postulated the basic theory that made WatchMe and medcare a possibility. It seemed not at all unlikely that such a group would call for his services.”

“Yet that doesn’t make sense. If everything you have told us is true, that would mean that this Vashlov fellow killed your father even though they were part of the same group.”

I thought for a moment. Two people were dead. One of them by my hand. There was only so far I could take this without revealing something. I needed to figure out how few of my cards I could show and how far I could get away with some harmless lies in order for Stauffenberg to be satisfied.

“Within this group, there are two factions, each with different ideologies. Vashlov identified himself as a heretic within the group. I can only speculate that he was referring to this internal conflict.”

“And now that your father and this Vashlov are both dead, there is nothing remaining to prove the existence of this conspiracy.”

No, that wasn’t true. Vashlov had told me that the SEC Neuromedical Research Consortium was merely a public front for the Next-Gen group.

“There is one other known collaborator by the name of Gabrielle Étaín.”

“Who is dead. Murdered. Three hours ago.”

“What?” I gasped.

Stauffenberg was staring me down. “It was a random killing, as random as any of the killings in the world have been these last few days. It happened in broad daylight, in a corridor of the Dian Cécht complex in Baghdad. With all the scientists, who tend to be more levelheaded than the average mob, there have been fewer killings and group suicides in Baghdad—but there have been some exceptions. Within Dian Cécht alone, there have already been fourteen untimely deaths, both murders and suicides in just the last two days. Already, the casework is far beyond what security and the Baghdad police can handle.”

“We could investigate the SEC?”

“We will. Though with such a vital source as Gabrielle gone, I have my doubts as to how far such an investigation would take us—where are you now, by the way?”

“In a PassengerBird. Upper deck.”

“To where?”

“Chechnya.”

“Why Chechnya? Another loose thread?”

“I can’t say.”

This was it. I could show no more of my hand. What I needed was a convenient lie.

“Vashlov told me that there were members of his group within the Helix Inspection Agency. I don’t know which superiors you report to, ma’am, but I think that the chances of them being sympathizers are high.”

This was my big bluff. Vashlov had said nothing of the sort. Although now that I thought about it, it did seem like an idea with some merit.

“Given a choice, I’d prefer not to telegraph our every move to our opponent.”

“You mean
your
every move. With Cian Reikado’s death, and now your father’s, this case has become quite personal for you, hasn’t it. It doesn’t bode well, Inspector Kirie.”

“And yet, I have made more progress than any other agent.”

Stauffenberg stared me in the eye. I couldn’t read anything in her expression. Maybe she was trying to read me. Or maybe she was just trying to accept reality. After five seconds of silence, Prime asked for everyone else to leave the session. One by one, the other Helix agents logged off, scratching their heads as they went. I was alone with Stauffenberg. She took a deep breath and said, “All right. I’ll be honest. It’s me.”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

“I’m an upper-rank member in the Next-Gen Human Behavior Monitoring Group.”

I laughed out loud, both at my bluff having hit the mark so well, and at the ridiculousness of my current situation.

“So you were following me the whole time?”

“Yes. Both sides of our group have been watching you. We had given you mostly free reign in hopes that you would contact Miach Mihie’s group or they you in the course of your investigation.”

“So it wasn’t the Tuareg card after all.”

“You were allowed to continue operating for the sole purpose of tracking down Miach Mihie’s whereabouts. You’re not the first Helix agent to disgrace herself in the field, and your past behavior certainly wouldn’t have bought you any of your current relative freedom.”

So the Next-Gen group wanted Miach, and Miach’s sect wanted Nuada, and both sides had been using me to get what they wanted.

“Both of you needed to track down the leader of the other group, which made me very valuable as the daughter of one and the friend of the other.”

“It just happens that you and we are after the same person. We were cooperating—as unintentional as it may have been.”

“It certainly does seem that way.”

“I’m sorry about your father, truly.”

Judging from the look on Stauffenberg’s face, she was telling the truth. It wasn’t hard to picture my father as a respected leader of his group. There was an ironic gap between that and my memory of him getting chewed out by that woman in the morality session all those years ago.

“Miach Mihie still possesses a limited ability to control feedback mechanisms within the brains of the constituencies of several admedistrations. She’s gone into hiding. What they have been doing is manipulating the feedback mechanism within the midbrain to instill a desire for death, causing people to kill themselves. We wanted to use you to get into contact with her so we could find out what her goals were in causing this current chaos, and attempt to stop her. You see, we have absolutely no idea what she’s up to.”

Had it only been me and Cian, and probably my father, who knew about Miach’s dark past? All those curses we dreamed up to cast on the world, huddled together at our desks on those dreary school days. Wasn’t Miach still carrying the hatred she had held in her heart back then? Wasn’t she just using her newfound power to put her fantasies into action—her power to make mincemeat of the society she so despised?

If that was true, then the current situation was an extremely private one for us, and now that Cian and my father were gone, I was the only one capable of understanding it.

There was a point to slowly releasing the shackles of our social system as she was doing, to using an abject fear of others to undo the little fetters around each of us one at a time—and I was the only one who got it.

A world where your body was your own. That was what the Miach I had known as a child wanted. A body that was hers, not beholden to a society or its rules.

“So, what can we do about this?” Prime asked.

“Who’s the agent in charge of monitoring life-issues between Chechnya and Russia?”

“That’s…Inspector Uwe Vol.”

“Then can you direct him to aid my investigation once I arrive?”

“Very well.” Stauffenberg went to cut our connection, then her hand stopped. “The fate of the world is resting on your
shoulders, Inspector Kirie. Good luck.”

Words of personal encouragement were about the last thing I had expected from my typically venomous boss. This whole thing had started as a personal matter, and if anything, it had only gotten more personal as I went. Frankly, even with all the riots and mass suicide going on, I hadn’t been worried about the world at all. All I wanted to do was find Miach Mihie—who had killed Cian, and probably my father as well—and somehow get some closure from her. That was the only thing keeping me moving, the only thing I really
felt.

I went off-line, feeling jumpy in the pit of my stomach. I asked the flight attendant for some caffeine. Something shamefully strong, I added. I was no longer worried about appearances, and it had been a while since I had gotten a good night’s sleep, so I needed the boost.

Uwe would be with the Chechen armistice monitoring group. That was where I was headed.

02

Pretty much everyone in the world knew that Russia’s only real concern in the region was control of the pipeline. It was a thorn in the side of every admedistration in the world, I was sure, that we hadn’t completely rid ourselves of the decidedly environmentally
un
aware oil economy. Fossil fuels

Unclean, unsafe, uncool.

Still, there were classic engines around that wouldn’t run without oil, and products made from oil. Compared to a hundred years earlier when the world had been in the grip of the black gold, oil had lost much of its allure, though it still clung to a vital position in the global market.

As Dubai had become an economic center thanks to the performance of the oil sector, Baghdad had vaulted to its current status as an economic powerhouse on the shoulders of the medical conglomerates. As the saying goes, trust in Allah, but be sure to tie up your camel. The Middle East had gone through a chaotic period of runaway fundamentalism before emerging into a more practical, tie-up-your-camel age. The smarter governments in the region had already begun uprooting their stakes in oil.

The old-style government of Russia remained the largest single system among the clustered admedistrations that controlled Eurasia, though this hadn’t kept the admedistrations from roundly criticizing their oversized neighbor’s policies when it came to control of the oil pipeline. Not a few admedistration commissioners had wondered openly why Geneva Convention forces had been pulled in to help Russia enforce its claims of ownership.

Russia, the nation, wanted war with Chechnya. Russia, the collection of admedistrations, each wanted to save the Chechens from their own unhealthy ways, and they each had different ideas as to how best to achieve their goal. This meant that Uwe was dealing with far more than just armed Chechen groups, the Chechen government, and the Russian government. There were over a hundred different admedistrations within Russia, and all of them had something to say, and all of them said it to him. Russia, eager to generate international support, had invited the Helix Inspection Agency in to investigate, whereupon they found that the Chechen people were not living sufficiently lifeist, healthy lives, which gave Russia a sufficient pretext to call in the Geneva Convention troops.

Oddly enough, for the last several days Uwe’s work had been relatively tranquil. The mass suicides and the declaration and the possible second coming of the Maelstrom had kept the people who were responsible for sending him multi-gigabyte reports detailing their specific demands busy—either killing someone or hiding in their houses or summer cottages.

“Uwe? Duty calls.”

The Helix Inspection Agency office within the Chechnya Armistice Monitoring Group camp had been built in the ruins of an old city hall. I pressed my finger to the door to give my ID and let myself in. Uwe was asleep at his desk amid a mountain of printouts.

“Wakey, wakey,” I said, giving him a slap on the back.

He blinked and looked befuddled for a second before his WatchMe kicked in and stimulated him to full alert mode. “Oh, hey, Tuan. Heard you were coming from Prime. She didn’t deign to tell me why, though.”

“Quite the office you got here. Isn’t all this paper a fire hazard?”

“Meh. ThingList + NoTime = WhyClean?”

“Another victim of ThingList, huh? That seems to be going around.”

Uwe shrugged his shoulders and cleared a teetering pile of papers from his desk onto the floor with a sigh.

“Have you been briefed on my current strategic action?”

Uwe raised an eyebrow. “Strategic action? I heard you were leading a one-woman idiot brigade, Miss Senior Inspector Tuan Kirie.”

“Well let’s make it two idiots then. I need your help.”

“Let me guess. This has something to do with the six thousand suicides and the enforced murder dictate,” Uwe said, though his expression told me that he really didn’t know why I was here.

“That’s right. You’re familiar with the Anti-Russian Freedom Front?”

“Very. I arrange police protection for their negotiations—we’ve had a few with them already. Been trying to get them to agree to a lifestyle survey. They’re one of Russia’s top worries, but those of us wearing this symbol have to at least pretend to be neutral parties.” He tapped the entwined serpents around the staff on his shirt.

“What makes them a top worry?”

“They’re real good at moving around through the mountains. Guerrilla warfare at its finest. With all the cliffs and ravines up there, you can’t even get a WarDog or WarDoll into play, so surrogate combat is completely out. Russia’s been hiring every military resource supplier they can find to hit them where it hurts…and every single one has come running back down the mountain with their tails between their legs. What they really need is an elite squad—which the Russian national army has, but they’re very reluctant to put actual soldiers into combat situations. I mean, hey, they might
die for real.
Not very popular with the folks back home.
We spend all this tax money on robots, so why do you go sending people in to die?
That sort of thing. It’s a waste of human resources, and all that.”

So Russia had gotten her fingers burned by the Freedom Front, and most of their people were probably in Moscow and St. Petersburg anyway, trying to keep the recent chaos in check. This meant that troops would be light on the ground out here on the front lines. I couldn’t have picked a better time to contact the resistance.

“You still have an open channel with the Freedom Front?” I asked, suddenly recalling Vashlov’s face as he said those words with his dying breaths.

“’Course. That’s my job, after all.”

“I need to get in contact with them. Right now.”