Authors: Peter F. Hamilton
"What time did you leave your barracks?" Galliani asked.
"Twelve minutes past eleven."
"And when did you return?"
"Twelve past two. That's when the sensor was inactive, see? Twelve minutes past every hour."
"If you don't know where this brothel is, how did you get back to your barracks?"
"The madam called a taxi for me. I got back to the barracks about quarter to two. I had to hang around and wait before I could actually get in."
"Did anyone see you?"
"No, man, I wasn't supposed to be there. I hung around in the alley; I guess there weren't even many people on the street that time of morning. But the taxi driver can vouch for me."
"Was it the same driver who took you to the brothel?"
"Yeah."
"I don't suppose you know his name, or even which taxi company this was?"
Hal shrugged awkwardly. "No. But I think he was using AS control when we left. You'll be able to trace him through the traffic regulator logs."
"We'll certainly check."
"And so will we," Bralow murmured. He met the detective's gaze levelly.
"So," Galliani said. "We've established you were out on the streets at the same time this alleged rape took place, and that no one can actually confirm exactly where you were."
"The taxi driver can, the madam can, Avril sure as shit can—" Hal was checking them off on his fingers.
"Avril?"
"The whore I spent half the night screwing. There were a couple of other whores I saw there, as well. Don't know their names, though."
"But you'll recognize them when you see them?"
"Yeah, no problem."
"So all we have to do is find this taxi, and the brothel, and you're in the clear?"
"Yeah." Hal smiled happily. "Yeah, you got it, man."
"So how do you explain your semen being found inside the victim's vagina?"
Hal's smile dried up. "I don't know. It's a sting. A frame-up. It can't be anything else."
"And the girl's story? That you attacked her in Sheridan Park? That you threatened to set off her collateral necklace if she didn't do what you wanted?"
"Hey, that's your bullshit, man. None of that crap happened. None of it. I wasn't in Sheridan Park. She's lying. She's a part of all this."
"All this? So it's a conspiracy, then?"
Hal glanced at Bralow.
"Zantiu-Braun personnel would be the obvious victims of any rogue criminal elements in Memu Bay," the lieutenant said. "And we both know there are some."
"You've been having a tough time from our hooligan element," Galliani said. "But there's no organized resistance group, is there?"
Captain Bryant cleared his throat. "No. There is no organized resistance group in Memu Bay."
Hal twisted around in his seat to stare at the captain. "You've gotta be jerking me off. You were at the fucking soccer match, for Christ's sake. You saw Graham Chapell get blown to shit by KillBoy's bastards. You saw that!"
"We're still investigating the soccer game incident," Bryant said to Galliani. "We're not yet sure what happened."
"Jesus fucking wept."
"So there may or may not be someone, or some group of people, capable of setting you up for rape," Galliani said.
"Damn betcha there is," Hal told him. "It's that bastard KillBoy you should be looking for. Not me."
"Which means the rape victim must be part of the conspiracy?"
"You bet. You call her in here and give her the third degree. She'll crack."
"Strange how this comes back to the oldest conflict the human race has."
"What do you mean?"
"One of you is lying."
"It's her, man, I swear it. She's jerking you around. She's saying everything KillBoy told her to."
Galliani paused, as if considering something. Then he called up a file from one of the desktop pearls. Its pane displayed a girl's face. Hal was very aware that the detective was watching him closely.
"For the record, Mr. Grabowski, have you ever seen her before?"
Hal frowned, not quite understanding what was going on. "That's Avril. How did you get her picture?"
"Avril?"
"Yeah. The whore at the brothel. You do know where it is. Why did you say you didn't?"
"Let us be quite clear about this. You're saying that girl is Avril, whom you met in a brothel last night?"
"Yeah. Have you known this all along?"
"Mr. Grabowski, did you at any time last night have sex with the person you call Avril?"
"What, that's not her real name?"
"Did you have sex with that girl?" Galliani's finger tapped impatiently on the pane.
"Sure. I got my money's worth. I keep telling you. She's the one. I was there in the whorehouse with her last night."
There was another moment of silence. The detective appeared almost embarrassed.
"Mr. Grabowski, did you notice anything out of the ordinary about Avril?"
"Like what?" Hal wasn't committing himself. There was something badly wrong about this, he knew it. Damn but he wanted the sarge to be here.
"Did she, for instance, have a collateral necklace fitted?"
The question surprised him. "No. No way."
"You're sure about that?"
"Hey, I got to see a damn sight more than her neck, man. She wasn't wearing no necklace. What is this crap?"
"I think I've heard all I need to at this point, thank you," Galliani said. "We'll take a break. And I really think you need to have a long talk with your lawyer, Mr. Grabowski."
"Just what the hell is going on?" Hal demanded. "Okay, so I fucked some whore. That's not a crime. She wasn't even much good. I should have had a refund, man."
Someone in the office roared wildly. Hal searched around for the noise, just in time to see the man in the expensive suit charging at him. His face was red and contorted in feral rage, arms held out straight in front of him, hands ready to tear and throttle. He jumped at Hal, who didn't have time to move aside. The two of them crashed to the floor, thrashing about. Then Galliani and the senior policeman were pulling him off. Bralow hung on to Hal, who was game for getting back up and decking the old maniac.
"What the fuck..." he shouted.
The man was quickly hustled out of the door. He was sobbing now, a wretched gulping sound that was clearly audible even after the door was shut.
"This place is a fucking loony bin," Hal announced. "What the hell is going on here?"
Bralow sat down, sighed, then pulled the desktop pearl to
w
ard him. The girl's face was still on its pane. "She's the... the alleged victim," he said.
"Avril? No way, man. No goddamn way. I paid for her!"
"That's not her name."
Hal looked at the closed door, suddenly curious. "Who was that? The guy that went for me?"
"Her father. The mayor of Memu Bay. And she does have a collateral necklace. Ebrey Zhang put it on her himself."
"Oh, Jesus fuck," Hal whispered. He sat down heavily beside Bralow as real fright took hold. None of this was making any sense, goddamnit. "Lieutenant, you've got to get me out of this."
"That might be difficult now."
* * *
The
Norvelle
was in a thousand-kilometer orbit around Thallspring, its inclination of five degrees providing it with line of sight on Durrell each time it passed through the planet's prime meridian. At ten-fifteen in the morning it rose above the capital city's horizon. As the sensors acquired the sprawl of buildings, a low-power laser was fired from one of the huge vehicle's five communications bays, seeking out the East Wing of the Eagle Manor. It was detected by a small electronic receiver unit on the roof, which immediately sent an answering laser pulse back to the starship. With the beams locked on their respective sensors, their width reduced until it was less than two centimeters at the target point, providing a link that could not be intercepted. The rooftop receiver unit was connected to a module in Simon Roderick's office by an armored fiber optic cable. Again, splicing into the cable was impossible. The system provided him with the most secure link possible to the starship. Only five people knew of its existence. Simon had been waiting for the call since he arrived at the office that morning. His usual routine of administrative work had been delegated to his assistants and personal AS. Instead, his time had been spent reviewing information filed under the generic name "The Opposition." As he ran through it all he conjured up probable attack scenarios, which grew steadily more exuberant as the morning progressed. It didn't matter how fanciful he made them, he still couldn't determine what they were actually planning. Nothing quite fit into what was clearly an impressive capability. The more he went over it, the more he was convinced they were holding back, waiting to deliver the hammer blow.
The secure communication module chimed melodically, and a sheet screen on the wall lit up, showing one of the
Norvelle's
cabins. A man was sitting in front of a freefall work bench, with straps holding him down in the light gravity field. He looked into the camera and gave it a thin smile. "Good morning. It looks very sunny and warm down there today."
Simon settled back behind his desk and looked at the face on the screen. It was his own, but fifteen years older. That particular batch of clones, the SF9s, were notorious for their phlegmatic temperament. Each generation tended to have its own quirk, which they put down to the individuality of the crèche nursing staff and the inevitable influence they exerted during the clones' formative years. The SK2 batch, to which the Simon in the study belonged, were often regarded as the more peppery of the breed. Although they were positively mild compared to the short-tempered SC5s (whose proclivity had sparked a wholesale review of crèche staff screening procedures). But whatever their behavioral nuances, they were all totally dedicated to the company that they controlled.
"Morning," the SK2 Simon replied. "So what's the result?"
"Well, the good news is it wasn't a bomb."
"I never expected it would be. Far too coarse for our friends."
"Young Braddock Raines was most thorough. The space-plane cabin was scanned and analyzed down to a molecular level. He also had the accessible systems removed and reviewed in the starship's lab. There was no detectable foreign genetic residue. However, somebody had opened an access panel. There were metal traces in the Allen screws. The alloy doesn't correspond with the tools issued to our maintenance people."
"Thank heavens for that I was beginning to think they were almost infallible."
"Quite. The panel gives access to several electronic components, including a major network junction. None of the components had any trace of tampering, except the junction. And that took some finding. The nuclear macroscan revealed some very peculiar stress patterns in the casing's molecular structure. Our so-called solid state physics experts are apparently baffled. They don't know what could have caused it"
"Interesting."
"The word is alarming. I don't like the idea of Thallspring having technologies that we don't understand. Especially when they're being used against us."
"Their development has been very well hidden. We've run all the usual financial audits through the Treasury network. They couldn't spot any kind of government funds being diverted for clandestine technology projects in the last ten years."
"Hardly surprising when you consider we're talking about people who can walk into our spaceplanes whenever they feel like it. Whatever they've got it's real enough."
"Assuming whatever the intruder did to the junction gave him access to the spaceplane's network, what do our experts think he achieved?"
"The theory they're throwing around up here is total sub
v
ersion. The IT boys have dumped the spaceplane's entire AS program into a storage core for analysis. So far they can't find a single extraneous code line. The best conjecture they can come up with is a hidden command compressed into the original code."
"In other words we don't know for certain what the hell the intruder did."
"Absolutely."
"Damn." The SK2 didn't waste time considering the puzzle. That was the advantage of having multiples working on the same problem: whatever solution his clone sibling came up with, it would be the same as the one he would eventually arrive at. And the SF9 had been thinking about this for over an hour already. "Recommendations?"
"This intrusion has to have been some kind of reconnaissance mission. The interest our friends have in the space-plane demonstrates they want to get up here in one form or another, and as it's a Xianti they must be targeting the star-ships as a final destination. If they could fly up already, it would have been done. Therefore, they're still in the preparation stage. For myself, I believe he copied the AS to study our procedures."
"I see. So what else do they need?"
"For a hijacked flight to pass unnoticed, the only other consideration will be communications. We must hope they haven't already been there."