The Ghost in the Doll (Fox Meridian Book 6) (4 page)

‘And there I had to learn to do it,’ Jonathan said, grinning.

‘The wonders of modern technology,’ Fox replied.

‘Uh-huh, putting the little guy out of business since they invented the spinning jenny.’

‘James Hargreaves of Oswaldtwistle, Lancashire, England,’ Kit put in. ‘That was in seventeen sixty-four, and one could argue that the invention of the flying shuttle by John Kay some thirty years earlier began the deskilling processes.’

Fox glanced at her. ‘And you just felt you had to mention that there?’

‘Well, I just love the word “Oswaldtwistle.” I mean, what a great name for a place. The people who live there must think it’s awesome.’

‘I imagine they’d find “Topeka” kind of exotic,’ Jonathan said. ‘If they’ve ever heard of us. I mean, I can’t imagine Topeka is one of those places that springs to mind when people in England think of America. What are we famous for?’

‘Brown versus Board of Education,’ Fox replied.

‘That’s more American history. What does some Brit care about the end of segregation in schools?’

‘Probably not a lot. They don’t always like being called Brits, by the way.’

‘Huh, like I care. They’ve never heard of my home town.’

New York Metro.

‘Good morning, Helen,’ Kit said as Helen Dillan stepped out of the shower.

Helen paused to grab a towel and wipe water out of her eyes. ‘Morning, Kit. You know, when Fox actually comes back to work, I’m going to miss this.’

‘I’m sure you can get your own PA when I’m back full-time with Fox. I have Yuriko Fukui waiting on a conference line.’

‘Uh… Mask the video, please, and put her through.’

Yuriko appeared beside them, bowing toward them both. ‘Helen-san, Kit-san, I hope I have not called too early.’

‘No,’ Helen replied. ‘It’s nine here. I’m running a little late, actually. It must be… eleven at night in Tokyo so I assume this is important.’

‘I have determined, with little doubt, that the Fukui-kai is employing Doctor Hummel.’

‘That sounds like good news, but–’

‘My evidence came in the form of a polite request from Taro that I cease looking for him.’

Helen raised an eyebrow. ‘A polite request, huh?’ She finished drying herself, mostly, and reached for her panties. ‘I assume he was working on the giri thing?’

‘Nothing was mentioned, of course, but the implication was clear. It also seems clear to me that Taro would not have done this if I were not getting anywhere.’

‘Agreed, but what do we do about it? You’re not going to get much further with your contacts if Taro knows what you’re after. Back off for now. We need to figure out a new strategy.’

‘We need more information, Helen-san. I am afraid that I have failed in my first major investigation.’

‘No, you haven’t. When a major criminal organisation decides it has to warn you off, you haven’t failed: you’ve pissed them off.’

Topeka.

The river at the bottom of the Meridian farm was more of a creek really, but it was a valuable resource. Jonathan used drought-resistant crops like everyone else, but even so, it was not always viable to get a good crop from rain alone.

So, Jonathan had a fairly basic irrigation system which took water from the river when required, and the semi-porous pipes needed checking to make sure they were not too porous, the pumps needed checking to make sure they pumped, and the remote sensors needed to be checked to make sure they were sensing. It had taken a couple of hours, but it had all been done and now it was time for another part of small-scale farming: breaking for coffee.

Fox was drinking to be sociable, mostly. There was something of a psychological effect from drinking the stuff, but deep down she knew it was not really doing anything to her. ‘Maybe I should just take up
sniffing
coffee,’ Fox commented, lying back on the bank of the creek in the sun. ‘I mean, it never really tastes as good as it smells.’

‘Sad, but true. When did you get that belly piercing?’

Fox pushed onto her elbows and looked down at the anodised purple metal barbell in her navel. ‘Not long after I got skin. I kept talking about it before this happened. I was accused of having a mid-life crisis. Now… It took an hour before the skin healed around the metal.’

‘It normally takes a while, I guess.’

‘A couple of months to heal properly. You know, I figured Mom would ask about that before you did.’

‘Well, she noticed it. She was asking whether I thought it looked good.’

‘And you want ammo to stop her having it done too?’ Fox lay back down and closed her eyes.

‘Well, I’m not saying yours doesn’t look attractive, and I’m not saying it wouldn’t look good on her, but… Yes, I was looking for ammo. Sometimes she tries a little
too
hard to be younger.’

‘I noticed she’d gone for shorts and a cropped top this morning.’

‘You’re a bad influence. Um…’ Jonathan’s tone shifted, becoming more serious, and Fox wondered what was coming. ‘We saw on the news that Reginald Grant had turned up dead, on the Moon.’

‘Uh-huh. I’d heard they ruled it an accident.’

‘That was what the reports said.’

Fox considered for a second. ‘I’m sure he didn’t
mean
to punch holes in his habitat while trying to shoot me, but he was a lousy shot. I didn’t kill him. I just didn’t do anything to save him either.’

‘I’d have happily shot him myself.’

‘That’s why I didn’t take a firearm with me.’

‘Probably a good choice. And matter closed, opinions expressed.’

‘Okay. What’s up next?’

Jonathan grinned. ‘Contemplating the wonders of nature for a little while longer…’

‘Yeah, I’m contemplating the bugs thinking about taking residence in my shorts right now.’

‘And then we go work on the Mark Threes.’

‘You’re still using those things?’

‘There is nothing wrong with Gorton-May Mark Threes…’

~~~

‘These things are older than I am,’ Fox said as she removed one of the service panels on the side of a large, roughly oblong, tracked cyberframe in the workshop beside the house.

‘That is an exaggeration,’ Jonathan said, doing the same with his second machine. ‘You were… eleven or twelve when the first of them rolled off the line.’

Gorton-May AgriTech had shot themselves in the foot a little with their Mark III agricultural cyberframe. They had proven very popular and had sold very well, but they were so easy to maintain and so reliable that the two updated models which had followed had seen poor reviews in comparison. Gorton-May were hardly going out of business since they continued to make parts for the Mark III, but they were going to have to perform magic to ever get a new model adopted. A lot of their newer units had been targeted at the city-based hydroponic farmer instead.

‘I guess if it works, don’t fix it,’ Fox said. ‘You got these second-hand?’

‘Of course. They don’t make them new, but I worked with Mark Threes for years and I couldn’t see using something newer when I got my own land. Must say, the implant made remote-operating them easier.’

‘See? Technology is great.’

‘Considering that it stopped me having to attend my daughter’s funeral, I am not exactly going to argue.’

‘I am just going to forget I heard that,’ Andrea said as she walked in with a tray, ‘and hand out the coffee.’

‘No point in denying it, Andy. She almost died, but she didn’t.’

‘Technically,’ Fox countered, ‘I did, but then I got better.’ Picking up a fibre-optic cable from where she had left it on top of the robot, she proceeded to plug one end into the machine and the other into her cable port. ‘In some ways, a lot better.’

Jonathan was plugging another cable into a handheld computer instead and raised an eyebrow. ‘You just plug in and run the diagnostics?’

‘Kit downloaded the software.’ Fox took a mug from the tray Andrea was holding out and smiled. ‘Thanks, Mom. Look at it this way, I’m bulletproof and I basically don’t age. I can’t catch diseases and if my leg falls off, I just get it replaced. Barring suicide or apocalypse, I’ll live forever. No need to worry about me ever again.’

‘And I suppose you think that’s comforting?’ Andrea replied. ‘What’s a mother supposed to do if she can’t worry about her child?’ Andrea set her tray down and settled herself with her back against the frame Jonathan was working on. It was a casual sort of pose, in a place which made talking to both husband and daughter easy, but it still managed to look a lot like she was posing for Jonathan.

‘Take up knitting? Or politics. I hear politics is pretty popular around here. Looking good there, Mom.’

Andrea preened a little. ‘I try. Um… was the piercing painful?’

‘No. Artificial skin.
You
would find it painful. They do clip-ons.’

‘Oh! They do?’

Kit made an appearance at that point, smiling in a manner which Fox had come to associate with the AI’s more mischievous side. ‘They do, Mrs Meridian. I can send you links to several sources. I was quite surprised at the variety of options.’

‘Really? Well, that would be interesting to look at.’

‘And not just for the navel. Ears, obviously, and the nose ones can be quite pretty, though not to my taste. Then there are the other ones.’

Andrea fell for it; Fox almost winced. ‘Other ones?’

Kit nodded enthusiastically. ‘Nipples, labia, and clitoris.’

Andrea let out a squeak which might have been a word. ‘I’ll stick to just the navel ones, I think.’

‘I don’t know,’ Jonathan said, his attention apparently fixed on his handheld. ‘Sounds kind of interesting…’

Andrea made strangling noises. ‘I’ll… take a look. I’m not promising anything.’ Fox had to bite her lips to avoid giggling.

Jonathan leaned over, cupped Andrea’s cheeks in his hand, and kissed her on the brow. ‘For an intelligent woman, love, you can be far too easy to wind up.’

Pouting, Andrea said, ‘You know that just makes me want to try it. It’s like a dare now.’

‘Just so long as I don’t hear what happens when you do,’ Fox said, ‘you can try whatever you like. That was a gamble, Kit. How did you know my mother wasn’t that kinky?’

‘Careful observation,’ Kit replied. ‘Usually, observation is the most I can do.’

‘I thought you were such a nice girl too, Kit,’ Andrea said.

‘Huh,’ Fox said, ‘she’s got a boyfriend, and you do
not
want to see her browser history.’

‘It’s all perfectly legitimate research,’ Kit countered.

‘That,’ Jonathan said, ‘is what they all say.’

30
^th
March.

Washburn Mall was not one of the largest in the city, but it was not far from the house, near to the university and not far from both the Palladium and Watch facilities. It also had a fair number of clothing shops, both the pattern-display kind for those who wanted to fabricate their own and more bespoke resellers.

It also held the shop that Drew Maple and Sandy Bateson ran, selling various things made in the Southern Protectorate. Fox walked in expecting to be recognised and was not disappointed.

‘Miss Meridian!’ Sandy squeaked, rushing over. ‘It’s really good to see you.’ Her face fell a little. ‘We, uh, heard about what happened.’

Fox gave a shrug. ‘Well, I get a couple of weeks here out of it. It’s not all bad.’ In all probability, half the city probably knew that Fox had been kidnapped and tortured. She doubted any of them, aside from her parents and Bart Wade, knew how badly.

‘Always a bright side. Are you looking for anything special?’

‘Mom’s got a party planned for Friday.’

‘I know. We’re invited. Me and Drew and Mom.’

‘I was hoping you would be. Otherwise I’d have had to invite you. Anyway, I can’t turn up to that in anything old. Have to outshine my mother, otherwise she’ll think I’m not trying.’

‘I’m not sure we carry that kind of outfit,’ Sandy said, looking around at their stock. Mostly it was leather and metalwork, all handmade, because it was usually easier to get cloth goods out of a fabricator, but Fox spotted an embroidered comforter hanging on display which looked rather familiar.

‘No, I wasn’t really expecting to see anything like that in here, but I’m also just browsing and I couldn’t come here without stopping in. I haven’t seen this place yet.’ Fox pointed at the comforter. ‘I see my mother has though.’

‘Those sell
really
well. Seriously, we can’t get enough of them. There’s a special flag on our notification channel to let people know we have new stock.’

Fox raised an eyebrow. ‘You have a notification channel?’

‘Oh yes. Mister Runyard helped set it up. He says we’re a “prime example of how Topeka is moving forward into an integrated future.” I know it’s kind of bullshit, but he
gave
us both the money to get implants put in and he’s been very supportive. Your Mom’s subscribed to the channel. It used to be just a message when new stock came in, but the last couple of months we started doing vids of us unboxing some of the choicer items. That’s been popular.’

Fox shook her head. ‘People watch the weirdest things.’

Sandy giggled. ‘Well, it’s all pretty new to me. You know, ’cause of Malcolm. I’m like a kid in a candy store.’

Fox did know: Malcolm Bateson had kept his daughter off the internet as much as possible, largely to hide what he was doing to his daughter. Still, he was serving a long sentence in Rikers now. ‘Is Drew here?’

‘Uh-huh. He’s in back. He’ll probably come out and say hello when it seems like we’re not acting like groupies or something. He’s got that cool, protectorate outlaw image to keep up, you know?’

‘Somehow, I never really thought of Drew as a cool outlaw.’

‘Aww, Hell,’ Drew said, emerging from the stockroom with a swagger in his step, ‘and I try so hard.’ He was, in a shopping mall in Topeka, still dressed in leathers and rough cloth which would have looked right at home in the dustbowl to the south.

‘Shop costume?’ Fox asked.

‘Yeah…’ Drew sagged a little as he said it. ‘It’s kind of town and dustbowl.’ He indicated Sandy’s quite pretty, not-quite-formal, knee-length dress. ‘Thematic, you know?’