The Credulity Nexus (21 page)

Rik watched
her for a moment, then turned his attention back to Maria's
friend.

“
What, you're going to shoot me too, now?”
Joanna said.

Rik realised
he still had the stunner in his hand. He put it away. “No, of
course not. Please, I just need to know what Maria’s message said.
She did leave a message, didn't she?”

The old woman
looked shifty. “She didn't mention a package.”

Rik cast an
admonishing glance at Rivers, but she wasn't even looking his way.
“But she did leave a message, right?”

“
How can I trust you? You turn up here with
that... that–”

“
Joanna! For God's sake, what was the
message? Maria obviously wanted you to give it to me. She clearly
trusted me. So why don't you just trust her and do what she
asked?”

The old
woman's lips pursed, and she seemed to be having a protracted inner
argument until she blurted out, “Thermally activated.”

“
What?”

“
That was the message, all of it. She must
have figured you were smart enough to know what it
means.”

Rik thought
about pressing her for more, but he decided it was better to get
Rivers out of there before she turned homicidal again.

He called out
to the upload, “OK, blondie, let's go.”

He was
ushering his partner through the door when Joanna shouted from
behind him, “You didn't even ask how she was, you bastard. Some
kind of love that is.”

Rik managed
not to slam the door behind him as he left.

Rivers paused
in the drive and looked down at the lake through the trees. “So how
come she lives in a place like. In the car you said the last time
you saw her she lived in a dump in LA?”

“
She inherited money. It's no mystery. It
was years ago.”

Rivers nodded,
apparently satisfied, and Rik wondered if he had just saved Joanna
from a second visit.

“
So what's this ‘thermally activated’
crap?”

“
It's a place. A restaurant, at the top of
One, New York Plaza.” The restaurant where Rik had proposed,
sometime back when he did things like take holidays in New York,
fall in love, and make a fool of himself in front of a roomful of
grinning diners.

“
Stupid name.”

“
It's not the name. It's from an old story
about a fire in the building about a hundred years ago. They had
thermally activated elevator buttons, and the fire called all the
elevators to the floor where the fire was burning. People
died.”

“
Yeah? Just a different kind of stupid,
then. How do you know your ex didn't tell the old biddy about it
and she's using it to set a trap for us?”

“
Why would she do that? She's just a
retired schoolteacher. She doesn't know what's going
on.”

“
Maybe somebody got to her. She sure hates
you.”

Rik threw up
his hands. “All right, if you want to be paranoid, I suppose it's
possible.”

“
Possible?”

He gazed out
at the lake and the low hills beyond, and cursed himself for a
fool. Why wouldn't Maria have mentioned it, sitting alone with
Joanna through those long evenings when Rik was drinking with his
buddies? Maybe she told Joanna how good it had once been, how sweet
Rik had seemed at first, before the overwhelming burden of Maria's
happiness resting on his shoulders had crushed him under its
weight. She could have told the story of his proposal, of that
fairytale trip to the Big Apple. She could easily have done
that.

“
It's the only lead we've got. Do you want
to give up and go back to your boss empty-handed?”

Rivers
clenched her jaw, looking at him as if he had just crawled out of
the mud of the lake. She turned away and stalked back to the car.
“You're a fucking jerk, Drew.”

Rik was
inclined to agree. They set off for New York with a gentle whine
from the hire car. Oakland was leafy and well-manicured. He stared
at it glumly as it washed past him. If there was ever a chance that
he could end up in a nice, peaceful place like this, he'd blown it
years ago, probably the day Maria told him it was all over.

“
So what's the plan, partner?” Rivers
sneered.

He dragged his
gaze back into the car. “Walk in and see who's there. With any luck
it will be Maria.”

“
What the hell were they thinking, putting
you in charge? Do you give a damn whether we find the package or
not?”

Good question,
Rik thought. With his wives dead back in Heinlein, he felt as if
he'd been cut adrift from his last, tenuous anchor. It was hard to
find anything solid to hold on to. He was caught up in some crazy
hunt for a mind-altering virus. And even though he could see he had
to find it, had to keep it out of Cordell's hands, it didn't mean
all that much to him.

“
While I'm doing what Lanham wants, he'll
keep you and all the rest of his scumbags away from my friends and
family. If finding that damned package means I might find Maria,
I'm the most motivated PLEO on this planet. The rest of it, zombies
and ghosts, crazy religious nutcases, all your sick games of world
domination, means nothing at all. You can all go back to Omega
Point and burn in Fantasy Hell.”

Fariba
Freymann woke in a small room. She ached from lying awkwardly on
the floor, and got to her feet with a deal of discomfort and a wave
of nausea. She saw a bed, wardrobe, chair, table, and a door
leading into a bathroom. The room was clean and the bed was made.
For a moment she wondered if she was in a hotel room, and tried to
remember what kind of party she'd been at the previous night.

Then she
remembered the men in her apartment, the jerk on the floor shooting
her with a stunner.

She could not
find a phone and her cogplus gave her a 'no service' message when
she tried it.

There was a
window. She went to it and looked out. She was on the second floor
of what seemed to be a large, white-painted building. There was no
balcony, and the window would not open. She saw gardens stretching
for hundreds of metres, stopping abruptly at a low a wall which
curved away left and right. Beyond the wall, a desert landscape
undulated its way to a distant mountain range. The sun was going
down, and the shadows were long in a world tinged with gold.

She went to
the door. It was locked.

She found the
wardrobe had some of her own clothes in it. So did a small chest of
drawers. In the bathroom, she found her own toothbrush. She also
found a plush bathrobe with an elaborate crest embroidered on the
breast. The crest didn't mean a damned thing to her.

She sat down
on the bed, not least because she felt as though she might fall
over if she didn't.

She was a
prisoner, she reasoned. They expected to keep her for quite a
while, hence the clothes. She was in no immediate danger. She was
no longer in the UK; probably not even in Europe, given the extent
of the wilderness outside. So, most likely, a lot of time had
passed while she'd been out. Apart from the burn on her hip, the
ache in her joints and the urge to throw up, she hadn't been hurt.
What it all added up to, she supposed, was that somebody wanted
something from her, somebody who was patient enough to wait a while
to get it.

She sighed and
sank back onto the bed. She needed to sleep. They must have kept
her drugged for a long, long time. Sleep was the best thing for her
now, because whatever was going to happen next, she'd be better off
if she didn't feel quite so crap when it happened.

The last thing
she thought before she drifted off was, “This is all about Rik and
that fucking package.”

-oOo-

One, New York
Plaza looked much as it had done a hundred years ago, only now it
was standing alone in the East River with just a narrow bridge
connecting it to Manhattan. Of its bottom ten storeys, two were
under water and the rest had fallen into the river. Massive
concrete pylons reached up from the water to support the platform
that had been put under the remaining forty storeys.

There were
other towers that had been rescued and reclaimed this way all along
the New York shoreline, but the island piles of collapsed concrete,
and the twisted steel skeletons that etched the skyline, attested
to the dozens that had not been saved.

“
You came here to propose?” Rivers asked as
their car rolled across the bridge.

Rik shrugged.
The building had just been renovated at the time, and was
considered the last word in chic. Already, he could see, the bloom
had gone off the place and it was starting to look a little
neglected. Too many vicious Atlantic storms had broken against its
dimpled façade, and a procession of owners, unable to make the
property pay, had been keener to sell it on than to maintain
it.

“
The restaurant's on the top floor,” Rik
said, as they let the building systems take the car for parking. A
gaudy lobby between the towering pylons gave them access to the
elevators. In silence, Rik, Rivers and her two bodyguards rode up
to the fiftieth floor.

A maître d'
stopped them with a smile at the restaurant's entrance.

“
My name is Rik Sylver 3–” He stopped
himself. Now that his wives were dead, he was no longer part of a
3-unit. His wives had insisted on a lunar wedding and that they
adopt the fashionable lunar name, including the numeral. It meant
nothing now, except to enumerate what he'd lost. He started again.
“My name is Rik Sylver. I think there may be a message for
me.”

“
Ah, yes. You are expected. If I could just
ask you to wait here one moment?” The man scuttled away with that
vacant look that showed he was holding a silent conversation with
someone else.

“
Here we go,” Rivers said. “I seem to
remember mentioning that this was going to be a trap.”

Quiet Muzak
drifted on the air, mingling with the aromas of high-priced food. A
small, square-set man in an expensive, old-fashioned suit strode up
to them from inside the restaurant. He had two very much taller
women with him; they wore white catsuits and moved like athletes.
Their eyes flicked across Rik's group, and lingered on Rivers
before coming to rest on Rik.

“
Mr. Drew,” the small man said. His voice
was surprisingly deep, and he made no attempt to smile. “My name is
Clermont. The Boss wants to see you.” He pointed with his chin in
the direction of Rivers and the two heavies behind her. “He didn't
say nothin' about bringing your friends.”

Rik looked
carefully at Clermont. He could not see signs of a gun under the
man's well-cut jacket. There was bound to be one somewhere, though.
The two tall women looked fast and mean. Their sprayed on catsuits
left no room for hiding anything at all, but that didn't mean too
much, either. He glanced at the bangles one of them wore on her
left wrist. He'd seen trick jewellery turn into all kinds of nasty
weapons in his time. Some of the girl gangs in LA specialised in
it. So, three of them, probably all armed. They wouldn't stand a
chance against Rivers all on her own.

He took a
casual glance around the room. Three men had wandered in from the
bar and were watching them from a few metres away. Four people
seated at a table nearby had risen, leaving their meal half-eaten,
and were hanging around the table, chatting but keeping an eye on
Rik. That made ten. He realised that the foyer behind him had gone
quiet. He turned to Rivers.

“
How many?”

“
I make it fifteen. You're a real popular
guy.”

“
Can you take them?” The little man shifted
uneasily. Perhaps he didn't know about Rivers.

“
Sure, but I can't guarantee
you'll
survive the
experience.”

Rik assumed
she wasn't worried about how many bystanders might not survive,
either. He looked the little guy in the eye. “I came here for
information about Maria Dunlop. Just tell me what I need to know,
and you and everyone else can leave here alive. My companion here
is an upload. Until you've seen her in action, you probably can't
believe just how fast she could pull your head off.”

The little man
grinned, but it was all bravado. His sharp little eyes were looking
nervous as hell. “Yeah?” he said. “That's all bullshit. Cute little
girl like that ain't no threat. No offence, doll, come and see me
afterwards and I'll make it up to you.”

Rivers treated
the man to a big smile and took off her sunglasses. The minute he
saw her flesh-coloured eyeballs, his grin disappeared
completely.

“
Look, Drew,” he said, his voice tight with
rising tension. “I don't know about no woman called Dunlop. All I
know is, you gotta come with me.” He made a small hand gesture, and
his small army of armed thugs stopped pretending to be customers.
They pulled their weapons and came in closer.

Rivers and her
men also drew their weapons. People in the restaurant and at the
bar, seeing the guns, jumped to their feet with a clatter of chairs
and tables. Glasses and crockery fell and smashed. Everyone seemed
to start shouting at once.

Rik took a
step forward and held up his hands. He raised his voice, speaking
to Clermont. “Wait a minute. Everybody just calm down. I'm coming
peacefully.” Over his shoulder he said, “Sorry, Rivers, I'm not
about to start a bloodbath in here.”

“
Yeah?” she said, swinging her Uzi
automatic his way. “Well, if I can't have you, honey, nobody
can.”

Rik gaped in
horror as the gun lined up on him. So fast! There wasn't a damned
thing he could do about it. But, of course, she would have had
orders to kill him if there was ever a chance he'd fall into
Cordell's hands. If only he'd thought any of this through before
he'd come chasing after Maria.