The Administration Series (41 page)

His first impulse was to go back downstairs and kill Tanit and then try somehow to wipe the recordings. However, there were too many backups and safeguards that he had no idea how to circumvent. Nor would Sara, and she was the only person in the building he could trust to do it and keep quiet.

Tillotson might be able to fix it, or at least refer the question up to find who could. With a high enough level of authority behind it, transcripts could certainly be erased and altered. However, that meant trusting Tillotson not to sacrifice him if things went badly.

He'd rather trust corporates.

That unlikely sentiment gave him pause. He knew one person who might be able to erase the confession.

On the face of it, trusting Warrick, an outsider, looked insane. Fortunately, trust wasn't required. Warrick stood to lose from this too. The confession that went back to Justice with Tanit's corpse wouldn't be the one he'd extracted today but rather her first faked confession, which would destroy Warrick's personal reputation and take SimTech out of his control. Toreth wasn't sure which of those two Warrick would hate more, but either on its own ought to buy his help.

He locked the records up as completely as he could, as would be expected anyway with such commercially sensitive results. Thank fuck it was Saturday tomorrow and he could justify not showing the recordings to anyone until Monday.

Then he called SimTech.

With the surveillance he'd had installed at SimTech (not to mention whatever private arrangements Warrick had in his office), Toreth didn't want to risk a meeting there. Warrick was waiting by the lake on the main university campus when Toreth got there, staring out over the water. He didn't look round as Toreth walked up.

"If you're here to ask for Tara back, then you're wasting your time," he said coldly, before Toreth could speak.

"Back?" Last thing he'd heard they had her in the cells.

"She's in hospital again — we finally managed to retrieve her from I&I this morning. Don't tell me that you didn't know." His voice chilled even further, which Toreth would have said was impossible. "Or do you lose interest once you've broken your witnesses?"

"I missed the memo, and you're welcome to keep her. Listen, Warrick — I need your help."

Warrick laughed. "Oh?"

"It might interest you to know that Tanit has made a confession. To three of the five deaths."

He turned slowly. "Really? Well, I have to admit that with the methods available to you, the only real surprise is that she didn't confess to all of them."

Hardly an original accusation. "You want to try Justice for that — I'm not in the business of extracting false confessions. "Or at least not in this case. "Please, just hear me out."

Warrick said nothing, which Toreth was willing to take as encouragement.

He had debated his approach and had decided on honesty because, as at the bar in the Renaissance Centre, he only had one shot at convincing Warrick. He outlined the problem quickly and straightforwardly, trying not to let his nervousness show. Halfway through the explanation he felt certain Warrick would simply not believe him. The last thing he'd said at SimTech was that Tanit hadn't done it.

When he finished, Warrick stayed silent.

Having gone this far, Toreth saw no point in not taking the extra step and pleading. "Warrick, I swear it's all true — I checked the Mindfuck budget requests. And they approached your old boss, Le Tissiet, about the license reversion. He — "

"Yes, I believe you."

Toreth stopped, relief and surprise fighting for his attention. "You do? Why?"

"I told Marian that you knew about the toxin." Warrick held his hand up. "I'm sorry — it was an accidental slip of the tongue. However, once she'd heard that, she suggested that I should tell you about her old file. About her connection to Psychoprogramming. She must have known that you would make the link between that and —" His voice flattened. "— Tara's scan results."

Toreth nodded. "She wanted to be arrested before you could tell the sponsors the sim was in the clear. It's all to fuck SimTech — she wants to give the sim to Psychoprogramming. You can see that?"

"Of course. However," Warrick added, "I fail to see what you expect me to do about the situation."

"I don't know. Something. Anything." Panic surfaced briefly. "If anyone gets hold of this I'm dead. Literally and pretty fucking soon. And — " And you're almost as fucked as I am — but it was obvious that Warrick had realised this.

"All right," Warrick said. "Be quiet and let me think."

They walked round the edge of the lake in the thin sunshine. Eventually Warrick stopped and stared into mid-space. Toreth watched the ducks pulling up underwater weed and tried not to scream with impatience.

"I think I have an idea," Warrick said slowly. "Perhaps. I'll need to know a few things first." When Toreth nodded, he continued. "Do you have any names for the people behind it? Someone at Psychoprogramming?"

"No. A one-line description of Tanit's contact, that's all. I could get more from her, but I daren't risk putting it through the ident system. I might have blown it already by getting the Psychoprogramming budget requests."

"I see. Now, has anyone else seen the interrogation?"

"Not yet. Soon. Monday at the latest."

"Excellent. Is there tamper proofing on the recording?"

"Yes."

"Mm. Is your office under surveillance?"

Toreth blinked, then said, "I don't think so."

Warrick looked at him sharply. "Think isn't good enough."

"Well, then . . . no, it isn't. I'm sure." If it had been, then some of the things he'd done in there over the years would definitely have ended up in the edited highlights of life at I&I, screened every year by the head of security at the New Year parties.

"All right," Warrick said, "here's my idea. We mock up the interrogation room in the sim, record a version of the interrogation where she doesn't confess, and then substitute it for the real record in the I&I system. I should be able to fake the tamper proofing if you can give me access to the system. Will that work?"

Toreth considered it. Okay insofar as it went, but it only solved the immediate problem. If only the rep had given him an annex B — dies without talking.

"It's not enough. What we need is a short confession with a good motive, and then for her to die without getting a chance to say anything else."

Warrick stared. "
Die
?"

"Yes. I can't leave her alive. They'll give her to someone else if I don't get a result. And she
will
talk — she wants to. She only held out as long as she did at first to make it look good."

Appalled silence, then Warrick said, "If I could talk to her, convince her to keep quiet —"

"It wouldn't matter. If she doesn't come through for Mindfuck, she's dead and she knows it. Besides —" This wasn't the time to consider Warrick's squeamishness. "You haven't seen her. She's broken. She'll break again, even if you or I could talk her into trying not to. There won't be any questions about the death — I can guarantee that."

Warrick shook his head, but his next words weren't a refusal. "How can you be sure?"

Toreth hesitated, then decided that it wouldn't make any difference. Not with the kind of trouble he was in already. "I've been told to make sure she doesn't get to trial."

"There has to be another way," Warrick said.

Toreth clenched his hands behind his back, fighting to keep his voice calm. "Fine. You think of one. Because at the moment the only other way is that she confesses and dies anyway, SimTech loses the sponsors, and you're out on the streets or in prison. Psychoprogramming gets the sim to do whatever the hell they want with, and I'll be dead."

Warrick turned away, looking out over the lake, and Toreth fought down the urge to grab him, to shake him into agreement.

"What does it matter?" Toreth said. "Christ, they'll execute her anyway, even if we don't kill her at I&I. She killed Nissim, and the Justice system won't give a fuck that she claims it was a mistake."

Eventually, Warrick nodded. "Very well. Get me the plans for the room, pictures if you can, and a copy of the recording we need to replace. Marian is on file at SimTech, or we wouldn't be able to do it in time."

He collected the things as quickly as he could, managing to avoid Sara, and delivered them to SimTech. He didn't see Warrick — his admin said that he was in the sim and that he'd left a message saying he would call — so he put everything in Warrick's office, waiting until he knew that Warrick had been told they were there.

Sara had left already by the time he got back to I&I. She usually went a little early on a Friday, although Toreth thought that a full two hours was taking the piss. He filled time by writing an informal disciplinary note for her to ignore. After four versions came out vitriolic enough to require apology-flowers, he decided to give up and leave early too.

On the way to the lift, Toreth remembered the surveillance he'd had installed at SimTech. He sent a security team out to remove it right away, and they were happy enough for the overtime. Still, the incident left him cold. If he hadn't thought of it, God knows what might have been recorded and left lying on file. At the very least the surveillance would show himself and Warrick at SimTech, working together for hours. It was just the kind of thing to interest Internal Investigations.

He remembered Marian talking about estimates. One pitfall in the plan he'd barely avoided. Could he possibly miss all the rest he hadn't yet even considered?

Leaving instructions that his prisoner could speak to no one except him, Toreth went home.

He woke up early on Saturday morning, the sheets drenched in sweat, his ears still ringing, and his shoulders aching from fruitless struggles against the dream hands holding him under the water.

Once the worst of the sickness had abated, Toreth lay back, trying to calm his breathing. When he looked at the clock, it read six am. Too early to get up, but he'd be lucky to sleep again now. Kirkby's fault for bringing the old nightmares back so vividly. Fucking sadist. Toreth had always thought that spending too much time with the dead couldn't be healthy.

Abandoning any idea of getting back to sleep, Toreth showered and dressed, and settled down on the sofa to consider the contents of Marian Tanit's final confession. Warrick might have his own plans, but the result needed to be satisfactory for Toreth's career, as well as for SimTech.

But for Warrick's involvement, he could use the first, fake confession verbatim and make Psychoprogramming into happy little mindfuckers. Much as he disliked Psychoprogramming and the know-all shits who worked there, it would be by far the safest path. However, he'd still need Warrick's help to erase the second confession, which named Psychoprogramming. Warrick would never agree to anything that would damage SimTech and Toreth had no leverage over Warrick. No power over him at all.

Pushing that nasty idea firmly out of his mind, he got to work. After several elaborate starts, he went for the simple and unverifiable. Tanit was paid to discredit the sim by one of the numerous disgruntled corporations which had been disappointed in its hopes of investing in the sim. Unable to partake in the spoils, it had resolved to destroy the fledgling corporation instead and buy back the rights from the Administration. Tanit had been contacted by an anonymous third party — she knew no names.

An ordinary tale of corporate sabotage, exactly, ironically, as he had always maintained it was. It would be nice to be proved right, even by an illusion.

When he'd polished the story to his satisfaction, he sent the file to Warrick, receiving a terse note of acknowledgement a few minutes later. Then he could do no more except wait for Warrick to call.

By late Saturday afternoon, Toreth was almost frantic with worry. If Warrick was unable to set up the mock interrogation room soon, it was probably too late to think of another plan.

Then the comm chimed. Not Warrick in person, simply a message reading
come
. When he reached SimTech, a technician met him in reception and showed him straight up to the sim suite, where Warrick was already in the sim. To Toreth's surprise — and relief — there were no security guards in the sim room. He hoped that their dismissal wouldn't cause comment.

Setting up the sim seemed to take three times longer than normal. He almost yelled at the technician to hurry up as he checked the straps, ran the calibration, and finally lowered the visor.

Opening his eyes, Toreth found himself somewhere very familiar indeed.

Warrick sat at the table, working on the virtual control panel, which was the only incongruent thing Toreth could see except Warrick himself.

"How is it?" Warrick asked, without looking up.

The room was creepily like work, and he said so.

"It's not finished. Many of the items on the bench over there you can't pick up. You can handle the items you used in the interrogation but they aren't all fully interactive. I couldn't find sufficiently close templates for some things. Let me know if there's anything else you need functional and I'll see what I can do."