Into Everywhere (21 page)

She turned to him. Her expression behind the overlay of symbols and little windows in her visor was serious and sad. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Tony,’ she said.

‘If you can’t take me there I will find some other way.’

‘It isn’t that,’ Sade said. ‘You’re under arrest.’

Lisa scattered Pete’s ashes on a flat ridge that overlooked the dry wash where they’d often walked in the evening. Pete always running ahead, investigating rocks and undergrowth, chasing after critters he’d raised up. He had never lost that artless enthusiasm, the dumb old dog. Sometimes he would disappear for a couple of hours, tracking the spoor of something intensely interesting, returning with a sidling guilt he’d shake off as soon as Lisa forgave him. As she always did. She’d lived with Pete for six years, and in all that time the world had been ever fresh for him, born anew every day. She’d loved him for that, and he’d given her his unconditional love in return. Flopping beside her while she worked, putting up with her moods, sleeping at the foot of her bed at night. He’d loved Willie too, greeting him in a frenzy of delight whenever he turned up.

Lisa remembered the times when she and Willie had perched up here of an evening. A little fire flickering in a circle of stones. Stars coming out above the darkening shrub-steppe tableland as they talked about their lives and people they knew, talked about anything and everything except the Bad Trip and how it had split them in two. Willie had done most of the talking, now Lisa thought about it. His wild tales. They’d come out here on his fortieth birthday with his road dogs, the little gang of bikers he’d fallen in with after he’d bought a second-hand Harley Davidson Roadster. A year later he’d had to sell that bike to settle a gambling debt, but they’d had a fine old time that night. Building a big fire, firing roman candles at the stars, dancing to old songs and howling at the little lopsided moon as it jumped up from the western horizon. Lisa remembered how Willie had ridden his bike through the fire, scattering galaxies of sparks into the night.

Oh Willie. Oh Pete.

She climbed into her pickup truck and in the last light picked her way across country until she struck a county road, and then drove to the Trading Post, a store with a pit barbecue out back. She needed to eat before she set out, and it was a popular joint. If Nevers was somehow keeping watch on her, it would be good cover for what she needed to do.

She sat at one of the picnic tables under coloured bulbs strung criss-cross on poles, a couple of dozen people eating and chattering around her, and placed a call to a service that patched ordinary phones to a q-phone exchange. She gave the number Sheriff Bird had passed to her and while she waited for the call-back worked through a pulled-pork sandwich and a side order of slaw, demolished a portion of pecan pie. She was on her second coffee refill when her new smartphone rang and the exchange operator told her that the call was connected. A few moments later, a cool English voice was asking what she wanted.

‘My name is Lisa Dawes. You don’t know me, but we have an acquaintance in common. Adam Nevers.’

It was the usual miracle – talking in real time to someone on another planet halfway across the galaxy. No delay, the signal so clear she might have been gossiping with her next-door neighbour.

A pause. Then Chloe Millar said, ‘How did you get my number?’

‘My place was raided by Adam Nevers. He works for the geek police here on First Foot. The TCU. They killed my dog, and someone passed on your number because he felt bad about that.’

‘Adam Nevers killed your dog?’

‘Euthanised him because, allegedly, he might have been infected with an eidolon. I just now scattered his ashes. What it is, I’m in kind of a tight spot thanks to Mr Nevers. I’d be really grateful if you could spare a couple of minutes and tell me anything that might help me deal with him.’

‘Before this goes any further,’ Chloe Millar said, ‘I have to tell you that you aren’t the first person to call me about Adam Nevers. And I have to ask you, as I asked the others, not to go into any details about the kind of trouble you’re in.’

‘Okay.’

‘I looked you up when the exchange got in touch about this call. I know you deal in artefacts. I know you were involved in some kind of incident with one some years ago. And that’s all I want to know. I’m trying to have what passes for a normal life, even though I’m living on an alien planet full of alien ruins. I have a husband, two kids. I don’t want to become involved in anything that could attract attention. I don’t want my family involved.’

‘I understand,’ Lisa said. ‘But since you kindly agreed to talk, maybe you could tell me about your encounter with Adam Nevers. Your history with him.’

‘I haven’t seen him for a long time. Eight years. He came back to Mangala once, made a point of seeing me. He felt that it was important to let me know he was still working. It was a matter of pride as far as he was concerned.’

‘I think I know what you mean.’

‘Is he still suited and booted?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘What does he wear, these days?’

‘Suits, silk ties, cufflinks . . . Sort of like one of those old movie stars. Pretty fancy for a cop.’

‘I noticed his clothes the first time I met him. Which isn’t something you can always say about a man. Especially a policeman. That was back in London, when he and I were on different sides of the search for these two kids who’d fallen under the influence of a Ghajar eidolon.’

‘And you found them, and they led you to the Ghajar ships.’

‘We found the place the ships returned to after spending who knows how many thousands of years in mothballs. And Nevers persuaded his bosses to allow him to chase us all the way to Mangala, and tried and failed to arrest us. The one thing you should know about him,’ Chloe Millar said, ‘is that he really does believe that he’s doing the right thing. And he doesn’t give up, and he has friends in high places.’

‘If you mean the Jackaroo, he brought an avatar along the first time he visited my place,’ Lisa said. She was about to explain about the raid and the follow-up, then remembered that Chloe had asked her not to give any details.

‘Was it Bob Smith?’ Chloe said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘That’s what the avatar Nevers was working with back then called itself.’

‘We weren’t introduced,’ Lisa said. ‘It was mostly tagging along as an observer.’

‘Nevers was carrying a kind of wire that generated a copy of that avatar,’ Chloe said. ‘It got into a fight with the Ghajar eidolon that called down the ships, and it lost. One of the !Cha once told me that the Jackaroo make a thing of preventing us finding and using certain kinds of Elder Culture technology because they know it will make it seem all the more desirable to us. Forbidden fruit, the apple in the Garden of Eden and so on. I don’t think Nevers understands that. That he may be helping the Jackaroo to manipulate us.’

‘You make him sound like some kind of fanatic,’ Lisa said.

‘He’s deadly serious about the dangers of Elder Culture technology. And he more or less lacks a sense of humour. Goes with his vanity, the way he presents himself. My advice is to take him as seriously as he takes himself. Because if he believes that you are dangerous, or if he thinks that you have found something that could be dangerous, he won’t let it go.’

‘That’s kind of why I called you.’

‘Because you aren’t going to let it go, either. Whatever it is that we aren’t going to talk about.’

‘I won’t go into any detail, like you asked,’ Lisa said. ‘But Ada Morange has an interest in this thing I’m caught up in. And I’ve reached a point where I may have to decide whether to throw in with her.’

A silence on the line. At the table next to Lisa’s a woman said loudly, ‘He told me he was so over it. But he so wasn’t.’

Chloe Millar said, ‘I can’t advise you about that. I haven’t met her or heard from her in years.’

‘But you chose to work with her, once upon a time.’

‘I was working for her from the beginning. For a little company, Disruption Theory, she’d bought a controlling share in. And then I got involved with the two kids infected with that Ghajar eidolon, and she gave us a great deal of help. She can be a good friend when your interests coincide with hers, but like all successful business people she can also be pretty ruthless. Using people to get what she wants.’

‘Nevers warned me about her followers. He made it sound like she’s running some kind of cult.’

‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ Chloe said. ‘She wanted me to stay on, afterwards. I said no thanks, and we parted I guess you could say amicably. But Fahad Chauhan, one of the kids infected with that Ghajar eidolon? He stayed on. And at first it worked out pretty well. He helped her company work out how other people could control Ghajar ships; she paid him a good salary, protected him and his little sister from a shitload of legal trouble. But she also encouraged him to take off on solo voyages, go anywhere he wanted to, because she believed that his eidolon might lead him to something super-interesting. The Ghajar home world, some place with a living remnant of an Elder Culture species . . . He was one of the first pilots to explore the New Frontier, and one day, about five years ago, he went out into that wormhole network and he didn’t come back. You could say that it wasn’t Ada’s fault. That he would have gone out there anyway. But she encouraged him. She enabled him. She used him for her own ends.’

‘So if I throw in with her, I should watch my back.’

‘Like with any business deal.’ Chloe paused, then said, ‘If you do throw in with her, you’ll probably meet a !Cha who calls himself Unlikely Worlds. He’s following her story, the way the !Cha do, and she lets him. Partly out of vanity – that’s one of the things she and Adam Nevers have in common. Partly because she thinks he can be useful to her. If you do meet him, be careful.’

‘Is this the one who told you about the Jackaroo?’

‘I think that the !Cha manipulate people too,’ Chloe said. Most people didn’t bother with it, but she had the pronunciation of the click consonant, halfway between a sneeze and the sound of a cork pulled from a bottle, down to a T. ‘The Jackaroo do it because they want to help, whatever that means. The !Cha do it to jazz up the stories they’re following. At the end of the thing with the Ghajar eidolon, Unlikely Worlds gave me something I thought I wanted. As a reward, you know, for making Ada Morange’s story more tasty. I’d been looking for it for the longest time. I guess you could say it was my heart’s desire. It turned out that it wasn’t what I wanted at all, but that wasn’t his fault . . .’

Another pause. Then Chloe said, ‘My mother died in the Spasm. The suitcase nuke that took out Trafalgar Square, in London? She was there.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Lisa said.

‘I tried to find out how she died,’ Chloe said. ‘What she was doing, whether it was slow or mercifully quick. It was sort of how I got involved with Disruption Theory, so I suppose you could say it was how I got caught up in the Ghajar eidolon thing, too . . . Anyway, Unlikely Worlds showed me her last moments, and it was quick. Thank God. She died quickly. But that isn’t the point. The point is that he knew. I don’t mean that the Jackaroo and the !Cha had anything to do with the Spasm, or any of that truther nonsense, but they definitely knew about it. They knew what was going to happen. Where it was going to happen. And they let it. They let it happen, and then they came to help.’

‘They’d been watching us for a long time before First Contact,’ Lisa said.

‘Yes. And they know more about us than we can imagine. They know us better than we know ourselves. So watch out, if you meet Unlikely Worlds. Because he might try to fuck around with you. To spice up the story he’s following, or because it’s his idea of fun.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t been much help.’

‘I think I have a better idea about what I’m up against.’

‘As far as I’m concerned? I still don’t know the half of it, and I probably never will. But whatever you choose to do, I hope it works out. I really do,’ Chloe said, and terminated the call.

A couple of moments later, a robot voice told Lisa how much it had cost. It was a healthy bite from her bank account, but she thought that it had been worth it.

She went into the rest room, pulled out the smartphone’s SIM card and snapped it in half and flushed it. An hour later she was out on Highway One, heading for the desert and the City of the Dead.

Tony was exiled to a tank farm some forty kilometres north-west of the city. He was supposed to be learning how to run the place – starting afresh from the bottom and working his way back up, as Ayo put it – but it was really just one step away from house arrest. He had been stowed there because the family had chosen to reserve their decision about how best to punish him until after the Commons police had completed their investigation of the assault on Skadi. Out of sight, out of mind.

He had not been allowed to attend the funeral of Junot Johnson, the quiet, wry man who had served with him for two years of freebooting. Running errands, giving him unobtrusive advice during negotiations, checking out markets and rivals and potential clients . . . A dutiful, loyal sidesman, and also, Tony realised, too late, a good friend.

His phone privileges had been revoked. He could not access the family or the public nets, could not communicate with anyone outside the boundary of the farm. And Ayo refused his request to arrange a meeting with Danilo. That little fling was over, she said.

‘I know that isn’t your idea,’ Tony said. ‘It reeks of Opeyemi’s petty spite.’

‘It was going to end sooner or later, brother. That kind of affair always does.’

‘Danilo was an innocent party in all this,’ Tony said. ‘Promise me that he will not be hurt. Give me that, at least.’

‘He has been interrogated and released. And he will be of no further interest to us as long as you keep away from him.’

‘What do you mean, interrogated? Was he put to the question?’

‘He gave a statement about your little affair,’ Ayo said. ‘Nothing more than that. We are not monsters, Tony.’