Xenoform (28 page)

‘They say...’ Her hands were fluttering up and down like startled birds in flight.

And then there was the unmistakable sound of a huge explosion from the west and the three had just enough time to exchange fearful looks. The director and the young woman hit the deck instinctively, but the smaller man sat frozen in his chair. A great locomotive of noise came roaring towards the police building, surfing on a tremendous pressure-wave. The triple-glazed windows of the office blew in, becoming a gale of glittering knives that shredded the smaller man where he sat. All throughout the district, the tremulous warbles of alarms began to rise in chorus.

By midday Sofi was pretty much slaughtered, although she showed few outward signs of it, and Tec, despite his slightly higher body-mass, was doing rather worse. He kept accidentally knocking items off the table with inadvertent swipes of his wildly gesturing arms. Whistler swayed slightly as she went to get another beer, throwing her empty into a bin in the corner with surprising accuracy. Even Debian had been convinced to start on the vodka. He was heatedly explaining to a disinterested Sofi about the finer intricacies of using avatars with maximum clandestineness. Tec, chain-smoking reeferettes, occasionally nodded in agreement, his head glowing a steady green. Whistler did wonder if this unplanned party was the most professional way to present themselves to their new client, but after her third beer she didn’t really care. Debian didn’t seem to care, either, she noted.
Ho-hum
. She uncapped the new bottle and weaved back to her seat through clouds of dope-smoke as thick as curtains.

‘
So,’ she said to Debian, leaning close enough to be heard. He smelled of vodka and soap, a fairly pleasant mixture. A thumping Undercity rap track was playing on the audio stream –
We run the sewers and sub-streets/ Deep in the blood of the enemy; seek the sun/ I run with the cybernetic thugs with smartguns –
and everybody seemed to be talking over each other. ‘You a career hacker, or what? Never occurred to me as a major industry before.’ She had decided that she believed him about the AI in the net.

‘No? Lots of people do it,’ he replied, slurring slightly.

‘Yeah, sure, I know that but–’

‘I was always into computers. My old man used to design embedded AI chips for household appliances. Pioneering work, actually, in its day. Minimisation and simplification of AI routines, and so on. Trying to get any semblance of intelligence into a fridge and still produce it at an affordable price is not that easy – at least, it wasn’t then. Of course, the damn things are everywhere these days. Thankfully, though, the power of this new monster intelligence in the net is so far unique. My old man wouldn’t believe it.’

‘Guess not,’ she agreed quietly. There was a moment of silence between them then during which Debian’s eyes grew unfocused and Whistler sensed the sadness descending on him again. She cursed herself for prompting it and noticed that the conversation of the others had faltered too, as they sensed the mood. She shrugged. ‘So you’re pretty much from a solid bloodline of geek stock, then,’ she commented. For a second Debian stared at her and she thought she might have offended him. But then he noticed that she was smiling and he began to laugh. Then they were both laughing and the moment had passed.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Pretty much.’ He drank from his glass of vodka and Whistler noticed that his sips had become long drags. His milky eyes were large and shiny. The greyness looked as if it was shifting in there, as if smoke billowed inside his head. ‘My mum was killed in the gang raids when I was little – you know, Click Thirteen and the Roughriders, all those upstart tech gangs – and I lived with my old man since I was seven. I got into the political scene – became a cyber-terrorist, attacking government services and banks. Later on I moved into commercial hacking. My old man pretty much pretended ignorance. He died about six years ago.’

‘
Shit,’ said Whistler. ‘That’s heavy.’ What else was there to say, really? And who
hadn’t
suffered in their life? Whistler had never known her parents at all, so seven years of mother seemed like a bonus to her. It was hard to sound sympathetic. Maybe they could talk about Tec’s early years as an e-thief and gang fighter in Click Thirteen – that would doubtless be popular.

‘Nah,’ he said, possibly detecting the reservation in her tone. ‘I mean, it was okay, really. We lived in a good part of High Hab, he was well-paid – I know he loved me and all that. It was okay.’

‘
Then why the life of crime, man? I don’t get it. I was born into it, left on the doorstep of a gang-operated orphanage.
Blood Collective
. I was a true foundling. You know they set those places up to acquire kids to train into gang members? I got out of the Collective, though, in the end. That’s a story in itself. But you must have gone out of your way, right?’

‘Yeah, I guess.’ He looked thoughtful, distant. ‘I guess I did.’

Whistler studied him, wondering where his mind was. She sensed that he would speak no more of the subject for now and decided not to push it.

‘So what about you guys?’ Debian asked, seemingly returning to the room and now addressing the harvesters more generally. ‘What business are you in?’ Normally he would have been more cautious about asking this sort of question of obvious career criminals whom he barely knew, but the vodka had begun fizzing in his head and some lower part of his mind seemed to be assuming control by silent coup. ‘If it’s not rude to ask,’ the remaining, more cautious part of him managed to add.

Sofi swigged her beer – she only drank synthi – and stared straight at Debian, her conversation with Tec aborted. ‘We steal human beings,’ she said ghoulishly, but with total sincerity. ‘And we sell them to people who cut them up like stolen pods and re-sell the bits for profit. If it’s not rude to answer.’ She smiled broadly – a crocodile smile, heavy on teeth but light on warmth, and tapped a smoke from a battered packet with a pink-lacquered nail.

Debian sat stunned. Had he thought that these were his kind of people? What in the
fuck
was he doing sitting here drinking with these animals? ‘Oh,’ he said, his throat dry. ‘Really?’

Sofi nodded, lighting her reeferette with a micro-laser on her knuckle and scorching the ceiling at the same time. ‘Really. Nice eyes, by the way.’ She drew deeply on the joint, observing him mischievously through the veil of smoke.

‘Wow,’ Debian said, turning back to Whistler. ‘You steal people and sell them – what, to bodymod companies or something?’ Whistler nodded, clicking her talons on the neck of her beer bottle. Her expression was a mask of neutrality. ‘Never occurred to me as a major industry before.’

Whistler laughed to hear her words parroted back. ‘Well it is,’ she said. Tec leaned over and offered her a capsule of drifter, which she refused. ‘Isn’t it, Tec?’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed, well-trained. He swayed a little as he relaxed back into his chair. He looked reflectively at the strip of drifter caps, clearly considering whether he should take one and eventually put them away unused.

‘We steal people who have expensive mods, sometimes people who are just particularly good-looking. Anyone we like, really. Good faces sell well anywhere. We harvest bits and bobs for several big companies, one in particular. The money’s good, the perks’re good – almost blanket legal protection, for one thing. As long as certain requirements are met, of course.’

‘Of course,’ agreed Debian, having nothing else to say. ‘Harvest?’

‘Yeah, that’s what it’s known as. We are the scythe of humanity, man. Or some shit like that. Top up?’

‘Sure, why not?’

Whistler, unable to think of any reason why not, refilled Debian’s glass from the bottle on her side of the table and signalled Sofi, who was at the fridge again, looking for food this time, for another beer. Sofi, reeferette hanging from one corner of her mouth, reached for the beer and coughed explosively right into the fridge, showering out ash and embers with it.

‘
Oh fucking
nice
, Sofe!’ exclaimed Tec, throwing his hands up in exasperation. His head flashed red, but only for a split-second. ‘Give us all your fucking TB!’

‘Piss off!’ replied Sofi, laughing around the reeferette and throwing Whistler her beer. ‘There hasn’t been any TB for fucking centuries.’ She returned to her seat, still laughing.

‘Anthrax, then, or shivers or some such happy thing,’ Tec harried her, shoving her as she sat, unbalancing her. Sofi shoved back and reacquired her own beer from the table. ‘Dirty girl,’ he chided her.

‘So you guys have police immunity, then?’ asked Debian. ‘That’s pretty handy. Is it expensive?’

‘Yeah,’ said Tec. ‘We don’t pay for it, though. And it’s not total, y’know
–
some of the smaller forces give us grief now and then. Nothing we couldn’t handle so far.’

‘So, Debian,’ said Whistler. ‘Is this AI of yours capable of making these mutant organs by hacking nanovats? Could it do it? Forget about
why
for now – just could it?’

He puffed his cheeks out, swirling the vodka in its glass. ‘I think the thing I came across could do anything it wanted. It attacked me – or whatever it did – by EM induction. It seemed incredibly voracious as well as capable.’

‘
Okay,’ said Whistler. ‘Imagine we’re stupid or ignorant –
what
?’

‘I wasn’t even connected to it, I don’t think. It was in a supposedly isolated terminal.’

‘Right,’ said Sofi. ‘So what does that mean?’

‘
It’s a technique I helped to pioneer myself. Quite well known now, but it involves specialist kit and knowledge to do. That should have suggested a set-up to me, because the AI’s machine was physically connected to the induction equipment. Why, is the real question – who would have actually done it? Maybe if I’d worked it out a second or two earlier I would have got out in time. Anyway, an artificial intelligence has never been known to do it before. It’s the same technology that some of the more advanced scrambler-baits use, but they run a very simple induction-pattern from a chip. It’s entirely passive. To use it smartly
–
to change the code on the fly and use it as an organic attack mechanism
–
that takes real intelligence. Neural simulations, intelligent robots, smart programs – they’re all kinds of AI, but under the hood they’re all pretty simple, really. This is something else. If not in type then in magnitude. Maybe not artificial in the same sense at all.’ Some of the longer words stuck in his throat a little, but the intention was clear enough. He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter. Just take it as read that this thing is very capable. Yeah, I think it could do it.’

‘
Okay,’ said Whistler. ‘So it’s just
why
, then.’ Debian, blank-faced, shook his head. ‘And can it be stopped? That, too.’

‘
Also,’ said Sofi, ‘if the AI hacked the vats, made the greenshit, it would have been doing it
before
Debian’s contact with it. Right?’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Whistler thoughtfully. ‘Maybe Debian’s contact with it was...I don’t know...Do you think it can be stopped?’

‘
Judging by the problems reported on the news, I’d say that it’s already spreading through the net very rapidly by now. Stop it? It’s stronger than I am
–
I lost my only argument with it.’

Whistler felt a lump in her throat. She tried to swallow, couldn’t. ‘And you’re the best around, right? Then it’s gonna spread like wildfire. If it wants to.’

‘Nuts to this!’ declared Sofi, springing clumsily from her seat. ‘I hate this gutter-rap shit. Let’s do some sinistro or something.’

She began to hunt around the counter-top, flinging objects out of her way. She turned back with a glossy red data-spot on one outstretched fingertip, which she adhered to the reader on the back of her hand. Heavy sinistro beats interrupted the newsreader who had come back onto the audio-stream. Tec fired up the mini holo-projector on the table and a multicoloured hologramatic bird began to move through the air in time to the music, swooping low over the table, its huge body confined by the walls of the kitchen, its long tail twining around it. The projector didn’t do forcefield, and occasionally the bird would snap its massive beak harmlessly at one of the humans. They all watched it in silence for some time. Some tricks never got old. Presently, the bird began to spout blue bolts of mock-electricity from its beak. These crackled around the room, arcing from one person to another in time with the music, before burying themselves in walls or ceiling, where they vanished.

Whistler jumped as one of the bolts arced to her, bathing her form in a blue nimbus. She held her hands in front of her face, turning them over in fascination. They wore gloves of light like auras. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said. Her head was beginning to spin, made worse when the energy bolt arced from her into Sofi as the bass-pattern of the music changed. The bird seemed to be becoming angry – its beak was snapping constantly now, and it was showing clear signs of agitation as it writhed around the room. Its beady amber eyes were rolling madly in its head. ‘Turn it off, Sofe!’