Chapter Nineteen

 

Jacey's was a little more upmarket than Flappers, the ambience more sophisticated, with an interior that was all glass shelving and sweeping ferns in alcoves, dramatic arrangement and subtle uplighting. The floor was a harlequin mosaic of black and white tiles, while gentle muzak played in the background and cocktails were the order of the day.

There was no sign of Billy. Leyton strolled up to the bar and claimed one of the chrome pedestal stools that fronted it. The barman - slicked down black hair, black trousers with creases sharp enough to shave by, bright white shirt and black dickey-bow tie - stared at him a little oddly.

"Are you Leyton?"

He tried not to show his surprise or the jolt of fear that coursed through him. "Depends who's asking."

"Billy left this for you." The man held out a wric, one of the cheap and disposable knock-offs that kids on street corners tried to foist onto the unwary.

Leyton stared for a fraction of a second and then took it. The small display screen showed a photo. Of him, in profile, snapped at Flappers the previous evening, presumably as Billy was leaving. So this was how the barman recognised him.

Leyton thumbed the image away. A message appeared in its place - stark white lettering against a plain black background.

 

Give money to barman

 

He smiled. Trust Billy to get the important part of the proceedings out of the way first. Leyton reached into his jacket and withdrew a slender opaque shrink-wrapped parcel. It contained most of the winnings from the previous evening. Most, but not all. He intended to use the balance to buy something for Kethi on the way back to the shuttle. It felt a little strange to be handling real money rather than credit; stranger still to be contemplating buying a gift for somebody.

He handed the package over to the barman, who then moved away, leaving him to thumb the wric to the next screen. As he saw the message revealed, he froze. Two lines, four words, a message and a warning:

 

Virtuality

Get out now!

 

Leyton eased himself off his perch, nodded to the barman and strolled out of the bar, a study in nonchalance. He didn't hurry until he was in the street, where so many people were always in a rush to be places and he became just one more.

The wric he tossed into a disposal chute at the first opportunity. He then called Kethi. "On my way. Tell Joss to be ready." He closed the connection as soon as the words were out. It was a risk, that call, but a small one.

Billy's message had been long on import, short on detail. He trusted the little man's judgement but there was no way of knowing exactly how much trouble they were in or how much time they had. Clearly something had aroused suspicion - whether Kethi's little performance last night, her snooping on the net, plain bad luck, or Billy playing both ends of the situation and giving them away, Leyton couldn't be certain. It didn't matter. They had to be gone from this world as soon as possible.

Walking to the port would take him about twenty minutes, fifteen if he pushed it, but that might be too late. He decided to take a further risk and hail a cab - distinctive in their black and purple livery - and flagged one down almost immediately. The journey now took him only four minutes, despite city traffic. He kept an eye on the cabbie throughout, looking for signs of tension in the man's neck and shoulders, wary for any extraneous movements, but the brief ride passed without incident.

While sitting in the back of the cab, Leyton reflected on the fact that Billy's actual message had comprised of a single word: 'Virtuality.' Hell of an expensive word, in this instance. He could only hope it proved to be the key Kethi was looking for.

The cab's old but well upholstered seats had a whiff of fresh polish and detergent. Before he could spend too much time in unpleasant conjecture about what might have been on them recently that required such rigorous cleaning, they arrived at the port. Almost before the cab came to a halt he was climbing out, paying the fare, and hurrying to where the shuttle was berthed.

He breezed through customs, security failing to give him a second glance. Nothing struck him as obviously out of place as he strode through the port's various reception areas; everybody seemed as relaxed or preoccupied as they generally were, while there was no profusion of individuals loitering with suspicious lack of purpose. Although he didn't relax, Leyton did dare to hope that the danger might not be as pressing as he'd feared. Which was when he caught sight of the two dark-suited figures huddled around a desk at the far end of the vast terminal building, talking earnestly with one of the service staff. All right, they may have been asking for directions to the nearest loo or fast food dispenser, or have business relating to any of the other vessels currently landed, but Leyton wasn't about to bank on it. He moved past them quickly, making sure to keep people, kiosks, and every available object between him and the two suits.

Leyton didn't run - nothing was more likely to draw attention - but his gait was barely slower. Fortunately he was fully alert, or he might not have seen the man who lunged at him until it was too late. As it was, he caught a blur of movement in the corner of his eye and was able to begin his twist and turn before the half-seen form cannoned into his left side. Leyton's swivel effectively side-stepped the bone-jarring body-to-body impact the assailant had intended and instead turned the man's impetus against him. Only the left arm caught the former eyegee as he rolled out of the way, and he was able to get both hands on the man's back, shoving him forcefully while tripping him with his right leg, so that the would-be attacker hit the ground hard.

This seemed like a good time to run. Leyton sprinted for all he was worth. Shouts from behind, more than one voice, probably demanding he stop. Fat chance. They should have saved their breath for the chase. Would they risk shooting? There were people around, but not many, not enough to rely on for protection. A lumbering automated luggage transporter offered temporary cover. It hummed along like some giant segmented caterpillar, laden with cases and baggage, presumably fresh off a commercial flight. The thing was coming diagonally towards Leyton. He jinked his run, nearly colliding with a startled elderly couple as he zigged left and zagged right, now running with the transporter between him and those chasing.

A clear path ahead. He put his head down and gave it everything, arms and legs pumping, brain calculating how long until his pursuers would be free of the baggage train. About now, he'd reckon, and the corner that offered salvation was still a few strides away. Still, there was always the floor to consider... it was polished, slippery. He flung himself to the ground, just as a shot rang out, right on cue. Momentum sent him sliding forward. More shots sounded as he scrambled, rolled, was around the corner and back on his feet, running again.

The shuttle waited a short distance ahead, its door open and ramp down. He just hoped Kethi and Joss had understood his deliberately hasty message and were ready to take off. If not, presumably the gunshots would provide a clue. With relief, he realised that the engines were firing, ready to lift. A dark-clad figure appeared in the doorway and he felt a jolt of horror. Had the women been overpowered, the shuttle taken by ULAW? Was he running straight into a trap? No, almost immediately he recognised the figure as Kethi. She crouched in the entranceway, cradling an automatic weapon, and, as he charged up the ramp, she began to fire, covering his escape.

"Go!" he yelled as he took one final leap from the springy surface of the ramp and felt his foot land on the less forgiving floor of the craft proper, but the two women were ahead of him. Kethi drew herself back fully inside the door and slammed her palm against the control button while Joss began to take the craft up, even before he'd come to a stop against the far wall.

"This sort of thing's getting to be a habit," Joss called out from the craft's small cockpit.

Leyton was breathing hard. His legs might have stopped pumping, but the adrenaline hadn't. As he found a seat and activated the safety webbing, he voiced a whoop of joy. It felt good to be alive.

 

Virtuality was a phenomenon Leyton was aware of but had never really ventured into. Most ULAW worlds had developed their own versions of the place, and he knew that many people, particularly teenagers, spent a great deal of time there. He'd always considered the virtual world an excuse for self-indulgent navel gazing, but when he gave the sparse content of Billy's message to Kethi she seemed thoughtful rather than disappointed, which he took as a good sign.

"Virtuality," she murmured, "I wonder..."

As soon as they were reunited with The Rebellion, Kethi hurried to the bridge with a distracted expression he was coming to know well.

Within the hour, she summoned Leyton and all the ship's officers to a meeting. The former eyegee noted that Kyle was also included. Of course, as head of engineering he would be, though he looked far from comfortable at being there.

Humility was not a quality Leyton necessarily associated with Kethi. As a rule she trusted her own counsel implicitly and was fully confident in her own judgement and abilities, but he was coming to realise that she didn't entirely discount the opinions of others, that once the deductive trail had taken her as far as it could she was willing to listen to options.

This meeting offered further evidence of this, as she outlined her discoveries and thinking.

"The internal troubles we've noted in ULAW flared up comparatively recently," Kethi explained. "Doubtless divisions existed beneath the surface before this, but something specific has now forced then to the surface. Some of the actions taken by factions within ULAW have an air of desperation to them, as if time is running out and events have required a violent response. It all seems to have kicked off shortly before The Noise Within first appeared and began her campaign of piracy.

"I'm increasingly convinced that the advent of The Noise Within and the subsequent appearance of the Byrzaens at New Paris are the catalysts that have sparked the internal bickering. They knew the Byrzaens were coming. Individuals and cliques have been jockeying to put themselves in the most favourable position to take advantage of the fact. In their determination to undermine the opposition, different groups within ULAW set about killing key supporters and operatives of opposing groups, hence the number of accidents and assassinations we've identified."

"The Byrzaens," Kyle muttered, beside Leyton, and gave an exaggerated shudder.

The reaction struck him as an odd one. Evidently Kethi overheard the comment and thought the same. "Did you actually meet one while you were on The Noise Within?"

"No, not there."

"Where then?"

"Well, it wasn't even a real one. At least, I don't think it was."

"Even so...?"

"In Virtuality," he said. "But, like I said, I'm pretty sure it was just someone pretending to be a Byrzaen, not the real deal."

"Virtuality." She nodded as if taking this as confirmation of something. "Yes, that would fit."

Kethi then continued to explain herself in a manner Leyton hadn't seen before, and which he couldn't help but admire. Such an inclusive approach was a sign of good leadership in his eyes, and something he'd experienced all too infrequently during his ULAW days.

"Despite this growing conviction, I was missing a piece. I couldn't pin down the link that connected humans to Byrzaens prior to New Paris. Until the recent trip planetside, that is. As Kyle just suggested, that link is Virtuality. What better route for clandestine contact than a hidden world which most people over a certain age dismiss as trivial, a playground for the youthful? I'm now close to certain that this is how ULAW has been communicating with the aliens... somehow. The thing is, I can't begin to envisage how such communication is possible. I know nothing whatsoever about the place."

Nor would anyone native to the habitat. Leyton knew from previous conversations that their own dabbling in the field had never gone beyond the occasional game and the odd training scenario.

"I'm open to suggestions on where we go from here," Kethi finished.

"I can't pretend that I'm all that familiar with Virtuality myself," Leyton said into the silence that followed her words, "but I know a man who ought to be an expert on the place by now. After all, he lives there."

Kethi slowly turned her head to look at him. He could see in her eyes that she knew exactly who he meant. "Philip Kaufman," she said. "Of course."

 

Leyton didn't much enjoy the role of outlaw. He'd spent all his adult life hunting down and dispatching ULAW's enemies, and now he'd become the very thing he was trained to kill. Life at this end of the relationship was proving to be far more restrictive and claustrophobic than he could ever have imagined. Since taking up with the habitat, his home had been this ship, his world defined by its logically designed environment - metal corridors, uniform spaces and cramped rooms - and he didn't imagine this was likely to change any time soon. He'd been given a reminder of life beyond when they picked up Kyle and went after Billy, and he was about to be granted another, but these were no more than temporary reprieves. It was not what he'd envisaged at all.

The door shushed open, interrupting his reveries. Kethi stuck her head into the room.

"You ready?"

"Yes," he assured her. "I'm ready."

He took a deep breath and stood up.

"Good." She stepped fully into the room, her right hand behind her back, her face alight with a mischievous grin. "Only I've got something for you."

She slowly brought her right hand into view and held it out towards him.

He stared in disbelief at the familiar shape that lay across her palm. Smooth, curved handle, slightly bulky stock and a fatter barrel than you might expect. Some might think it ugly, cumbersome, but not him.

"My gun."

"Your newly sanitised, AI free gun," she corrected, and laughed.

He took the proffered weapon, opening and closing his hand around the grip and instantly noticing a difference.

"The AI's dead, but we've installed a simple computer chip to handle the switches from one function to another," Kethi explained. "Lacking the software ULAW had packed into your skull, we haven't yet perfected a voice operated system that's going to be foolproof in the noisy confusion of an all out battle, so for the moment you're going to have to live with a dial switch, but we'll sort out something on the voice front which doesn't involve wires and a face mounted mike as soon as we can."

A dial? And he thought the habitat was supposedly founded by scientific geniuses. He flicked the small wheel sunk into the gun's handle with his thumb, gazing at it to memorise which function was where. At least the action was smooth enough, easy to flick between the various settings. He ran the dial from one end to the other - projectile, grenade, armour piercing, energy - and then back again, wondering how easy it was going to be to accidentally skip one of those steps in the heat of a battle and fire an armour piercing shell when he wanted a grenade. Still, given the choice between this and any other hand weapon, he knew which he'd go for in a flash.

"Obviously this isn't going to provide the sort of intelligence support the old gun and visor combination gave you, but..."

Kethi seemed uncertain, perhaps disappointed at his lack of visible reaction. He smiled, and said as reassurance, "Thank you. Feels great to have it back."

Despite everything, it did.

 

Leyton's initial reaction to Catherine Chzyski was complicated. At first glance she had an open expression and a disarming, welcoming smile - the sort of kindly demeanour which, combined with her age, made you want to relax and suspect that she might be about to offer you a home-baked cake and a mug of hot chocolate. Look a little closer, however, especially at the eyes, and you'd see there calculation and a sharpness that suggested your first impression might be a trifle misleading. She was clearly well into her - what, seventies? - yet she moved with the vitality and confidence of someone half her age. No hesitant fear of brittle bones here, instead the assured confidence of someone at ease with herself and her age.

"So," she said, once he and Kethi were seated, "you're Jim Leyton; the man who was present when Philip Kaufman was murdered and who hunted down and killed the killer."

"I am," Leyton admitted.

"Pity about that last part, mind you. Who knows what we could have learned from the Cirese woman, had she lived?" Her smile only softened the implied criticism by a fraction. "Still, no helping that now."

"Indeed," Leyton agreed. "Particularly as it emerges that if I had taken her into custody I might well have been handing her over to the very people she was working for."

He said this to get a reaction, but Chzyski's smile gave nothing away. If his words came as a shock or surprise, Leyton couldn't read the fact, and he was trained to.

"Can I get either of you a drink?"

A cool one, no doubt about it.

"No, thank you," the two of them, almost in harmony.

They were taking a chance in coming here, but his gut told him the risk was worth it and Kethi agreed, though not without reservations. Kaufman Industries were one of the corporations that made ULAW tick. They had designed the engines that powered ULAW's starships and supplied the government with the needle ship squadron that ambushed The Rebellion... and yet... Philip Kaufman's assassination made them potential allies if Kethi's assessment was correct, and Catherine Chzyski was known to be staunchly loyal to the Kaufmans, going back to the time of Philip's father. This was an association that seemed set to continue, since both the transhuman Kaufmans had been taken on by KI as consultants.

It was that last that was the clincher, which persuaded them to gamble, relying on Leyton's wits and Kethi's skills to get them out of a scrape if it proved necessary. He felt increasingly confident, though, that it wouldn't.

"You do realise, I presume, how great a risk I'm taking in even having you here, Mr Leyton," Catherine said. "You're not exactly ULAW's favourite son at present. While you, young lady," she nodded towards Kethi, "don't even appear to exist as far as official records are concerned."

"True," Leyton agreed. "Yet here we are."

"Indeed, and one has to wonder why that is."

"As I explained to your... partial?" Leyton was aware that downloaded personality fragments were commonly used for what amounted to secretarial purposes on some worlds, but this was the first time he'd ever encountered the practice directly. Encouraged by Catherine's nod of confirmation, he continued. "We're hoping you can put us in touch with Philip Kaufman."

Catherine laughed. "Philip has the freedom of Virtuality. You could have contacted him from anywhere."

"Perhaps," Kethi said, sitting forward, entering the conversation for the first time, as if to emphasise that she was just as relevant to proceedings as Leyton. "But we wanted to make sure we had his attention."

"Oh, I think you can safely assume you have that," Catherine said. "The question is, why do you want it?"

This was the moment of commitment, when they either damned themselves by admitting what amounted to treason in front of one of the government's strongest supporters, or found a much needed ally. Kethi gave Leyton the shallowest of nods, relinquishing the floor to him. "We have evidence that Philip's assassination was part of a wider campaign of murders instigated by factions within the ULAW government and triggered by the appearance of the Byrzaens. Further, we believe that elements of the government have been in contact with the aliens prior to New Paris, and wish to explore the possibility that said contact was facilitated via Virtuality. We'd like to hear Philip's take on this."

He thought that put the situation pretty succinctly.

"I'll bet you would," said a new voice as two figures materialised beside the Kaufman Industries CEO.

"Philip." Leyton nodded towards the younger of the two. "I had a feeling you might be listening in. I presume this must be Malcolm."

"Indeed it is. Hello, Jim, good to see you. And Kethi, is it? Interesting name; I'd like to hear more about that. In fact, it sounds to me as if we've got a great deal to talk about all round."