Regeneration (16 page)

Since he'd told his uncle about the Kaboom conspiracy, Gabriel had been overtaken by a covert conflict of an entirely different nature. Sitting at his Thames Tidal workstation the next day, he felt as if he had achieved a kind of equilibrium in the public relations battle: he knew how to spot and hit back at Kaboom's avatars the moment they appeared onstream, and he'd decided to treat them as just another part of his overall responsibility to monitor and tag and post and respond, at least for now. It was what Uncle Mik—in his City Councillor Varsi incarnation—had advised, along with staying quiet until instructed otherwise. Gabriel was happy to comply. Uncle Mik would think it all through and talk to Aunt Sharon, and he would either find himself in trouble with Detective Superintendent Varsi, or not. But until then, there was nothing more he could do, and anyway his concerns about Kaboom had almost been eclipsed by the turmoil at home.

He had been so preoccupied when he'd followed Mikal's towering figure into the apartment the evening before that it had taken him a minute or two to realize something was amiss. Darkness had fallen as they'd walked over from Sinkat and the children were already inside,
talking over the adults and each other, scrambling through a tangle of jackets and bags and unfinished sentences as Mikal corralled his boys to take them home. Gaela had sorted them out, chatting with her usual efficiency and good humor, and it was only when Eve had marched across the room, trailing a sweater in one fist and clutching her tablet in the other, loudly declaring her supremacy in whatever game they'd been playing, that he realized his mother had pulled normalcy on like a mask. It had slipped for the barest of moments, in the indrawn breath between telling Eve to pipe down and returning to whatever she'd been saying to Mikal. The strain he saw there, and the depth of its concealment, was enough to shock him into reaching up and flicking off his cranial band without a second thought.

A swirl of thought and emotion washed over him: there was Misha, reluctantly accepting that the day's play was over but already looking ahead to tomorrow. Sural was beginning to want his mother and ready to be peevish about the chilly walk back to Maryam House. Eve's triumph at winning the game was both noisy and fleeting, her dragonfly mind already hunting for the next thing to focus on. He felt the deep currents of his uncle's thoughts, overlaid by the prosaic need to get his children home, fed, and to bed at a decent hour.

Gabriel tuned all of them out with the ease of long practice and focused on his mother, but he couldn't make any sense of what he felt from her save for the clear knowledge that Eve was at the center of it. Gaela's mind was a welter of anxiety and guilt and unfocused fear—there was something about a tablet, and whether it meant anything; whether she had done the right thing; whether she even knew what the right thing was. Her distress roiled beneath the surface while she held on to the need to reveal nothing, to be regular Mama and Aunty Gaela, to get the Varsis packed up and out and tend to her own family as though nothing at all was wrong.

And maybe nothing
is
wrong.
The thought floated into his mind from hers as she bid Mikal farewell at the door, tucking treats into the boys' hands to keep them distracted along the way.
Maybe you're making too much of it, Gaela. Maybe it's what all the kids do—maybe this is what it's like to grow up in the world. Perhaps I'm the one who doesn't know any better, maybe it's me.

He could tell his mother was not remotely convinced.

She met his eyes as she came back into the room—of course she'd known the moment his band went off, she saw far more of its emanations than the tiny blue pinprick of the power indicator—and gave a swift, tiny shake of her head. He tilted his own head just as minutely. He couldn't ask her what was wrong while Eve was within earshot, and his sister had already bounced over to wheedle a treat of her own.

“Why do Mish and Suri get cookies and I don't?”

“Because Mish and Suri have a cold walk home, and longer to wait for their dinner when they get there. Yours is coming up in a few minutes, so go and finish your reading.”

The child pouted. “Well, what if Gabe wants a cookie?”

“He doesn't,” said Gabriel. “Don't be a baby, Eve.”

Eve looked daggers at him, knowing full well that trying to refute the accusation would only reinforce it. She chose to subject them all to the silent treatment instead, retreating to the furthest corner of the long living room and curling up with her tablet and an air of disdain.

He must really have hurt her feelings; she wasn't even insulting him inside her head. He shrugged and turned back to his mother, who said wearily, “Not now.” Then she added quietly, “Do you know—?”

“No,” he said, just as quietly. “You're too upset to make sense of.”

She made a sound that might have been a snort of laughter or the beginning of a sob, though he couldn't tell which; she was making herself breathe deeply and steadily, consciously bringing her mental state under control, and he felt her growing calmer, pushing the source of her disquiet further away, out of his reach.

“I'll explain later,” she said. Her voice already sounded less ragged, more like herself, as did her mind. “I've got to go downstairs and help—they've been slammed since lunchtime. People are sitting for
hours
.”

He heard the thought she did not say. “It's because of Sinkat—knowing it was deliberate,” he said.

“Yes—it's only natural, I suppose. People are frightened, and there's nothing they can do except hope it doesn't get worse. It's like—” She caught herself, but he knew she had been about to say
the old days.

“You mean the
bad
old days, surely, Mama.” He tried to sound lighthearted, but she shook her head at him reprovingly.

“You don't need to pretend it's less scary than it is, my darling. Not with me or your father. And you in the thick of it—if we'd had any
idea
this could happen—”

“Mama.”

“I'm just saying, there's no need for you to tough it out. I'm worried about you too, Gabe.”

“Mama, I'm fine. I've got it under control.” He hoped that was true. “What can I do about this?” He looked meaningfully across at Eve's small blond head.

“Stay with her; make sure she's done her schoolwork. I'll send up some dinner.” And leaning closer, whispering although the thought was loud in her head, “If she complains that something's wrong with her tablet, you don't know anything about it—and don't mention it if she doesn't.”

He had done as he was asked, and just before Delial rapped on the door to deliver supper he registered a wave of bafflement, followed by the frantic sense of searching for something misplaced, until the noise of the door shutting reminded Eve that he was there. She dropped a blanket over her inner turbulence, shutting it down almost as completely as he had earlier shut down his band. She put the tablet aside without comment and came to eat without fuss. He gently insisted on reviewing her schoolwork with her, thinking she wouldn't be able to resist chattering about whatever had startled her, or at least thinking about it while they were both gazing at the smeared screen of her battered old tablet, but she stayed surly and mostly silent, allowing no stray thoughts to form. By the time his tired parents came upstairs, he had long since sent her to bed, and he was none the wiser.

Thinking about it the following afternoon, while feeds scrolled past and his monitor apps tagged and aggregated news items and idle chatter, Gabriel was still not sure what to make of the socialstream account his mother had found and blocked, or of the archived streamchats that had left her so upset. The way Eve had whined about her family, him included, was really hurtful, and she had told her
anonymous stream-friends far more about herself than was wise, but the exchanges were childish and he could easily see how she'd drifted—or been led—into them. But there was an
intrusiveness
about the questioning that made him uneasy, even though it was in keeping with the hectoring tone of the stream. They could all see how that kind of boasting and cattiness might stoke the less pleasant aspects of Eve's character.

More worrying was how she'd found her way there in the first place, for it was invitation-only, accessed via a clever link that managed to circumvent the parental blocks. His mother had no idea who among Eve's friends was responsible, but maybe Eve would tell when Mama confronted her today; maybe by the time he got home from work that mystery at least would be solved.

It might be completely innocent, of course, but it didn't
feel
innocent, and the more he thought about it, the more it troubled him; so much that he'd started wondering if he could persuade Herran to go in and look. Though he knew the answer would almost certainly be
no
, he'd begun composing a message when his earset pinged.

“Gabe?” Mikal's voice was sonorous, a bit nasal, and very serious. “The police would like to speak with you. And Herran.”

Herran didn't leave home lightly, or without preparation, and in any event Detective Superintendent Varsi hadn't wanted them to be seen together where they might be noticed and commented on. Fortunately, Maryam House was only half an hour's walk from Sinkat and barely fifteen minutes from the café, so just a couple of hours later Gabriel found himself seated at his aunt and uncle's big dining table with his father on one side of him and Herran on the other. Mikal sat next to Herran, and Sharon faced them all. Detective Inspector Achebe rounded out the group, coming in on a secure channel and listening intently as Gabriel took them step by step through what he and Herran had discovered about the avatar-disguised provocateurs he'd dubbed Kaboom.

“Why didn't you tell us about this?” his father had demanded tightly as they walked up the couple of flights from Herran's small apartment to the Varsis' much bigger one.

“I was afraid if we'd done something wrong by tracing them and I told you or Mama, I'd be getting you involved,” Gabriel had protested. “Then I worked out that it would be okay as long as I told Uncle Mik first, and after that I
was
going to tell you, when I got home. But that was last night, and by the time we were done with everything else . . .”

He'd trailed off miserably, looking at Herran trotting on up the stairs, oblivious. Bal had reached over as they got to the landing, wrapped a powerful arm around his son, pulled him close and dropped an exasperated kiss on top of his head. “Gabriel, we are your
parents
. We're
supposed
to get involved—it doesn't
matter
what else is going on.”

“Okay.” He'd shrugged out of the hug and tried to sound steadfast, but his heart felt much lighter. Bal
tsked
at him and tousled his hair, and by the time Mikal had opened the door to them a minute later, with an apologetic face for Bal and a reassuring one for his nephew, Gabriel's anxiety was greatly reduced.

It had jumped again when he saw Aunt Sharon—Superintendent Varsi, now—speaking swiftly and in clipped tones to her inspector via the tablet. She looked over and smiled at him, but her eyes were stern.

Now he was explaining what he had observed onstream, why he had gone to Herran and how they had followed the trail, while Herran sat beside him, clutching his tablet and rocking a little more noticeably than usual, interjecting monosyllabic confirmations whenever Sharon asked a question. The blue light on his cranial band pulsed softly; he was still onstream, maybe just trying to keep himself calm. Gabriel had set his own to standby, the better to concentrate fully on the matter at hand.

When he finished, he faced his aunt with an expression he hoped was equal parts inquiring and contrite. Her own face remained inscrutable.

“Reprehensible though they may be, you were right to conclude that the posts and streamchats you've identified do not in themselves justify police involvement,” she said. “And we do not ever recommend that private citizens—or corporations—conduct investigations of this nature on their own recognizance, as there is a risk that they
will not appreciate the boundary between legitimate inquiry and invasions of privacy. Not to mention acts of espionage.”

His father shifted irritably, but to Gabriel's relief he held his tongue. The meeting was on the record; Uncle Mik had warned them that there would be a degree of officiousness in the language Sharon would be obliged to use. Gabriel had taken that to mean he could expect a telling-off, but he hadn't thought he would actually find her so intimidating.

“I'm sorry,” he said to Sharon. Even to himself his voice sounded small.

“No,” she replied matter-of-factly, “you noticed an unusual pattern of onstream activity and in the course of consulting with your app developer”—she nodded at Herran—“you uncovered several facts which suggested a conspiracy to engage in libelous and inflammatory discourse. With the aim of discrediting a minority group,” she added, with a glance at the tablet screen; they could see Achebe was now looking down and to the side and they could hear the soft, swift tap of his fingers as he frantically took notes.

“You weren't sure whether this discourse constituted hate speech, but were nevertheless deeply concerned about the implications and you rightly relayed those concerns to your City Councillor,” Sharon went on. She glared at Mikal, who was chuckling softly. “That is correct, is it not?”

The glare shifted across the table to Gabriel and a visibly perplexed Herran. His father grunted appreciatively, and nudged him.

“I . . . ah . . . Yes, that's correct,” said Gabriel. “That's exactly what happened, right, Herran?” He turned and gave the little gem an encouraging nod; he sensed rather than saw that behind him, his father was doing the same.