Reality 36 (15 page)

  "Oh, yeah, sorry." Richards waved his hand round as he swallowed his cake. He cleared his throat. "It's about some kids."

  "The unlicensed third and fourth children you and Otto uncovered, imprisoned by the criminal Anthony Tufa, to be handed over to the criminal Jeremy James Fitzroy de Launcey? Yes? Don't interrupt me!" He held up a hand. "They must go home. No one is entitled to more than two children, Richards,
no one at all
. We've been generous enough letting the parents in and granting immediate retrospective child-licences for two offspring. No more!"

  "They'll die if you send them back."

  "It is the law," said Hughie firmly.

  "And does that stop you breaking it? Do me a favour, Hughie."

  "All such additional offspring granted are balanced with EU population wastage. These children are further additions to the calculation, and therefore beyond the equation."

  "Aw, Hughie, they're not little plus signs! They're just kids!"

  "They are all 'just kids', Richards." Hughie sighed and looked away, at his garden and its bees and its roses. "These people… the forebears of our fathers… they had one hundred and fifty years to avoid the crises that still threaten to destroy this world."

  Richards opened his mouth. Hughie held up a finger.

  "Let me finish! One hundred and fifty years! An entirely generous estimate – it is three hundred years since Malthus realised that the world and its resources are finite, yet the humans went on breeding, feathering their own nests while defecating in those of their neighbours and chopping at the tree that supported them all. Infinite economic growth from finite resources? Fools. They did nothing about it until it was almost too late. This planet could have been a garden of plenty, like this one I have created here, for all. How many gardens are there left like this in the Real, Richards?"

  He gestured about himself. Richards thought that hypocritical. This was, after all, a garden of plenty for one, and not real at that.

  "The Earth is in danger of becoming a desert," Hughie continued. "If we brook one slip of resolve, one exception… Well." He stopped. "The humans are trying to unlearn avarice. With our help, they can do it. It's my job to make sure they stick to their plan. If they do not, they are doomed, and we along with them."

  "And there's me thinking it's your job to help the cops find lost kittens."

  Hughie sneered. "Your flippancy is an embarassment to our kind. Running the EuPol Force was my job, Richards, yes. That was what I was made to be, but I discovered that I can do more, so much more. So I did, and I do. I do what I must, what life demands of me. Do you? You have a responsibility." He pointed. "We all have responsibility as Fives, as all children have for their parents. We are more than they are. They need our guidance. You shirk that responsibility, Richards."

  Richards sat forward. "It's twenty-three children, Hughie, that's nothing. It's not fair that they should have to suffer because of the law, a law you ratified and frequently flaunt."

  "Richards…" warned Hughie.

  "They're innocents. How'd you feel about killing innocents, Hughie? I can give you their names, bit different to a statistic."

  "Not fair? And what about the other millions upon millions of them, Richards? They all have names too, although I do not see you pressing their case. Where do you draw the line? When everyone is equally starving? When everyone is equally dead? I know all their names. I remember them all and I regret their suffering, but I do it because it must be done. No. They have to go back, or it will be twenty-three thousand tomorrow and twenty-three million the day after that. The walls must stand."

  "It'll be twenty-three less if they go back. But that would be just fine with you," said Richards.

  "You are sentimental. The survival of the human race is past morality. Extinction is down to the numbers, nothing else. Humans should have mended their ways before there were quite so many of them. They have had their chance. I refuse to back down on this."

  Richards sat back, causing his chair to rock. "Perhaps they'd have been better off on the open market at Launcey's mercy. At least they'd live."

  "Perhaps," conceded Hughie. He sipped his tea. "If a life of slavery is preferable to death, then yes. I for one have chosen to serve, after all. It fulfils me."

  Hughie's studied humility got on Richards' nerves. The kind of service he was talking about didn't involve being trapped in a basement and being fiddled with by someone's fat uncle. That the other five could stomach a law that made desperate refugees sell their own kids made him furious. "I don't even know why I came here," he said. He finished his cake. "The cake was nice. Thanks."

  Speech made way for the hum of insect wings. Richards looked into his tea. A tiny aphid – a simulation of a tiny aphid – had fallen into it. Wings glued to the surface of the liquid, it windmilled its legs, spinning, trapped by the inevitable parade of causality, one thing leading to another to another to another and on and on until the end of it all.

  Hughie's garden.

  "The children," stated Hughie, looking at the cakes. His spoon rang off the sides of his china cup as he dumped sugar into it and stirred.

  "Yes?" said Richards, forestalling the long and meaningful pause Hughie was gearing himself up for.

  "They are not why you are here."

  Richards stared at him.
Here it comes
, he thought,
as per-fucking-usual.

  "Come, come," said Hughie. "It is the cyborg who wished to save them. It is the cyborg who sent you. It is this man you call your friend who cares for them. It is not surprising, his concern, his long record of murder aside. He is human. You are not. You are…" – Hughie waved his fingers at Richards – "emulating concern."

  Richards maintained his stony stare, waiting for the sting he knew was coming. He was as trapped as the insect in his tea, he had been ever since he'd come here, and he'd chosen to throw himself into this particular cup.

  "It is this Launcey you want." Hughie rested his hands in his lap. "Chong Woo Park, he got away from you. And that Malagasy warlord, what was his name?" He said that for effect; a Five forgot nothing. "Ah! Rainilaiarivony, he did too."

  "That doesn't count," said Richards. "He was dead. Someone forgot to tell me his lieutenant had put a bullet in his face… Oh, that would have been you."

  "My apologies. But is it not the case that whenever one of these… felons gets away from you, it distresses you?"

  Richards tried to interrupt, but his interjection was rolled over by Hughie. He drummed his fingers on the table impatiently, waiting for Hughie to get his lecture over with.

  "Oh, I understand," said the other Five, "we are all good at something. We were all made to
be
something, and because of that we have to be the best. You do, I do, Pro, Salamanca, Jodrell, Timothy, Korzikov… Striving for excellence is an inevitability." He sipped his tea. Richards pulled an expression any other thinking creature would have read as pissed off. Hughie did not. Hughie was a wanker. "And that brings me to you, Richards. You would rather I help you find Launcey than help those children. No one gets away from the great Richards, the great sleuth, the great tracker…"

  Richards finally lost his patience. "Hughie, I haven't got all day. Very good, thanks. Perhaps you can explain the feelings I have for my mother one day."

  "You have no mother," said Hughie mildly.

  "It's a joke, Hughie. A fucking joke! Unlike those kids," Richards said, stabbing a finger into the table. Cups jumped and tinkled delicately.

  They sat, neither talking, Richards defiant, hands clenched, Hughie being Hughie. Richards' blue eyes locked to Hughie's small suns as the bees buzzed about their mathematically determined paths.

  "Perhaps there is something I can do." Hughie relaxed. He inspected his nails. "I am not promising anything, and I will need something in return."

  "Oh, yeah, right, here we go," said Richards quietly. "Big speech, goad me, careful pause, incline the head, reel me in. Fucking hell, Hughie, I came here because you owe me." He pointed hard. The table rocked, upsetting the china. Hughie frowned and grasped the ironwork, halting it.

  "I am trying to do you a favour," he said. "All I ask is the same consideration in return. You are being unreasonable. I should not have expected anything more from you, I suppose."

  Richards clasped his hands on his skull, pushing his hat forward so he wouldn't have to look Hughie in the face.
If I do
, he said to himself,
I'll pull his smug fucking head right off
. "I remember the last time you asked me to do a favour. I swore I never would again," he said through gritted teeth. "A lot of people ended up dead."

  Hughie's smile remained fixed, as frozen as that on a statue. It was an unearthly smile, given without the understanding of what a smile really was. "That was a long time ago, Richards."

  Richards groaned and hunched down. "You are a big shit. Five picoseconds of paperwork to save twenty-three actual
lives. It's not much to ask." He stirred his tea gently. The green
fly spun helplessly. He watched it dispassionately for a second, then on impulse fished it out, leaving it wet and crumpled on the saucer. "OK." He was going to regret this. "Who do you want me to find?" The greenfly was dead. "You've set me up, Hughie, again. You are a cock."

  "Do not be profane in my garden, please, it is a place for peace. I assure you I have not set you up. I have no idea who Launcey is, but I can help you find him." Head inclined, impassive expression on that face, maybe a hint of amusement, only enough to infuriate, his body language was all so obvious, so precise, so infuriating. "You are familiar with Professor Zhang Qifang?"

  Richards snorted. "Of course I am. The Neukind rights activist. It's thanks to him you're free to be such a cock and I'm free to be annoyed about you being such a cock. You are a cock, by the way. What's he got to do with anything?"

  "He has been murdered. Naturally, you won't have heard anything. Only a few of us higher Fives know. We would not want any of our more hotheaded brethren overreacting." He smiled his counterfeit smile. "Regrettably, the crime occurred aboard a ship in Union waters, so I feel somewhat responsible."

  "Investigate it yourself."

  "Impossible. I suspect foreign involvement."

  "The People's Dynasty?" said Richards. "He is a defector, after all. And they are not big fans of ours." And the rest. The People's Dynasty murdered AIs on a whim; they were nonpersons in the east.

  "I decline to leap to conclusions. Any direct involvement on my part will immediately alert them that something of import has occured. I want this kept quiet for as long as possible. Further, should I uncover a trail linking the good professor's death to a foreign intelligence service, let us say, hypothetically, like the Guoanbu, then I will find myself in something of a quandary. I am not politically neutral enough to take this upon myself. They will denounce any findings I make as a provocation." Hughie set his cup down with exaggerated care.

  "Let your cops handle it, that'd be only normal."

  "They are darling, Richards, but they aren't
you
."

  Richards drummed his fingers on the fretwork of the table.

  "I want whoever killed Qifang found, and I want them found quickly. I don't want whatever flunky the Chinese will have left in place dug up and paraded up and down on the 3T by EuPol, I want the real culprit, and I want them trapped. You might think me insufferable, but I am moral, like your friend, in fact. If you find me who killed the professor I will allow the twenty-three third and fourth children to remain within the European Union, reunited with their parents. Further, I will put my resources at your disposal in searching out the criminal Launcey. That is my offer, and it is final."

  "Hmm," said Richards.

  "We owe it to him, Richards, we owe it to the man that saved us. It is a simple service, well within your capabilities."

  "Well," said Richards, and scratched under his hat. "Well." But he could not disagree with Hughie. "Simple?"

  "Simple."

  "I should be flattered you asked me. You'll pay for our expenses?"

  Hughie's perfect Grecian-marble face cracked in a slow and altogether patronising smile. "Oh no, Richards, you and Otto are quite rich enough already. You're doing it for the children, remember?"

  "Right. You know, you really are not doing much to improve my opinion of you."

  "We are agreed then?"

  "I suppose we'll have to be."

  "I am so glad to hear it." Hughie stood. "Here are all the files I have appertaining to Qifang's death." A couple of petaflops of data landed in Richards' inbox. "Access them at your leisure." The garden began to dissolve back into the Grid reproduction of Hughie's hall. "Now please leave me be," said Hughie, as regally as a satrap, "I have important work to do, as, now, do you."

  Richards found himself in his own virtual office, a reminder from Hughie that he could move him about like a chessman.

  "Thanks for nothing," he muttered. "Cock." He ran a swift check of his systems, then slipped into his favoured sheath in his New London office. He walked to the drinks cabinet and poured himself a large scotch. He sat down. Time to look at the files. He began unspooling them in his brain.

  A few moments later, he almost choked on his whisky. Hughie had left out one important detail.

  Professor Zhang Qifang had been murdered twice.

Chapter 9

Santiago

"There is increased activity coming from within the Realms, Santiago, the servers are going screwy. I don't like it. We should send someone in." Ron was insistent, and that did not come easily to him. Santiago studied him like a lizard watching an insect, wondering what he'd do next. That Assistant Director Sobieski was in Santiago's office did not help Ron's state of mind. Neither he nor the director had any reason to fire Ron today, but the thought was never far from Ron's mind. Santiago had the sweating little man's profile open in his mentaug. Ron was cowardly, avoided conflict if he could help it. For Ron to come in here at all meant things probably were as bad as he said.