The Hunt for Pierre Jnr (18 page)

‘The Colonel has been called before the Primacy,’ he said.

‘Is that bad?’

‘It could be. Though it’s the Primacy itself you should worry about.’

Pete must know everything that had passed between him and the Colonel. That the suspicion had caught hold.

I want you to trust me,
 Peter projected to his friend.

It’s hard to, Peter. I want to, I do, but the thought has been planted now.

I understand. You’re right. I can show you what you want to see though. Then you can decide whether you can trust me or not.

What are you going to do?

I’m going to show you how I escaped.

‘Can you give me some water?’ Pete asked. Geof raised the sipper to his lips and waited until Pete nodded that he’d had enough. He sat back in his chair and waited for something to happen.

‘You see, Geof,’ Pete said, his voice back to normal after a drink, ‘it is not that I am strong, but that I am good.’ He shuffled in the pallet to focus more directly on where Geof was sitting. Abruptly Pete swung his legs off the bed and began detaching the splints from his arms and chest.

‘Should you really be doing that?’

‘I’m fine, Geof, don’t worry. They’re just being cautious with me, trying to keep me in here longer. See?’ Pete jumped agilely off the bed and stood feeling the floor with his toes.

Geof helped him get dressed and then held the tent flap up for him to duck through. A few metres down the canvas corridor Pete stopped and turned to Geof. ‘This is as far as I can go.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I haven’t seen what is down the corridor and you didn’t pay enough attention. If I extend the illusion, it will be too thin a version of reality. We’re also getting too far from your body. Your senses will protest soon.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You’re still sitting in the chair by my bed, Geof. My bones are too weak to stand like this.’

‘You’re putting all this in my head?’

‘Yes.’

Geof looked around him, pressed his fingers to the grain of the canvas, then pushed at the flesh of his own arm. ‘How long can you maintain it?’

‘We’re in it together. You have to stay convinced. If you want out, it’ll end.’

‘You can’t hold me here?’

‘I could try, but you would become nauseous.’ Geof sensed this was indeed starting to happen; as soon as he was told it wasn’t real his stomach became unsettled. ‘Close your eyes,’ Pete suggested.

‘But —’

‘Just do it. It stops the sensory conflict. Good. Now, you are in my room, you are sitting in a chair facing my bed ... Open your eyes.’

Geof blinked and looked around him, at the reality. It looked the same. He looked at Pete, bandaged and bruised in his bed.

That’s what I can do.

‘Why didn’t Pierre kill you?’ Geof asked.

‘I don’t know. He didn’t kill Tamsin either.’

‘You know she’s gone, don’t you?’

‘Gone? Where?’

‘She disappeared when you were in the hospital. Hasn’t anyone told you?’

I knew, Geof. But I couldn’t let them know I knew. The suspicion on me would be even worse.

‘No one speaks to me in here, Geof. How did she get away?’

‘I don’t know and I can’t find out.’ He patted his symbiot. ‘I’m cut off for now too.’

‘What are you doing in here?’ a voice screeched from behind him. The nurse entered the tent with a tray of food.

‘I was just leaving.’ Geof stood. ‘Goodnight, Pete.’

Goodnight, Geof.

~ * ~

At the end of the corridor a squad of armed Servicemen was waiting for him. Geof held up his hands.

‘If this is about —’

‘Please come with us, sir.’ The leader indicated the direction with his weapon and Geof was marched out, three soldiers in front and three behind.

They led him back toward the launching area where an open squib waited for him. ‘Where am I going?’ he asked.

‘Sorry, sir. That information is privileged above my level.’

The squib windowed shut and lifted into the sky. All he knew was that he was heading north and east. The squib was on autopilot and closed off to him. If he wasn’t on trial already, he would be tempted to override it.

This thought was interrupted when a connection tapped in from Ryu Shima, the man the Weave was pushing to be the new Prime.

Geof: Ryu Shima, this is an unexpected honour. Congratulations on your escalation.

Ryu: My humble thanks to you. I hope my call is not entirely unexpected.

Geof: I suppose it shouldn’t be, but I have been out of contact.

Ryu: Your access must remain Limited while your trial proceeds. I expect it to end soon.

Geof: What am I on trial for?

Ryu: Your entire team is under suspicion after the Dome event. With the unexplained departure of Tamsin Grey, we must examine all the evidence thoroughly. I hope you understand.

Geof: We have done nothing wrong.

Ryu: That really depends on how we interpret ‘wrong’. The operation was a debacle, you must appreciate that.

Geof: We did the best that we could.

Ryu: I certainly hope that isn’t true. If this hunt is to continue, I will expect a lot more from you.

Geof: So we are to continue?

Ryu: Of course. The apparent threat has not dissipated. Now we must start over so it can be expunged.

Geof: And may I ask about Peter Lazarus?

Ryu: I fear his trial will be more prolonged than yours. He is a known telepath and was in the zone when the event took place.

Geof: I cannot believe he had anything to do with it.

Ryu: Your support for Mister Lazarus has been noted.

Geof realised that everything he said would become part of the trials: his, Pete’s and probably the Colonel’s. He refused to believe that Pete had been complicit with Pierre ... Then again, after Pete’s demonstration, perhaps he could have been.

Geof: I acknowledge that you have grounds for suspicion.

Ryu: An excellent choice, Mister Ozenbach. I am glad you have the rational mind I surmised you had. As part of my inquiries, I must ask what you think happened on the day and where it went wrong. This is not a debrief, I simply want your opinions.

Geof: As you wish. It is hard to say, for me, what went wrong. We were simply tracking a possible target that we had pinpointed due to a pattern established from earlier evidence. We landed Tamsin and Pete, who were to attempt an intercept. Very quickly we lost the data connection with Pete and Tamsin, as well as with our drones and the neighbourhood passives. You must know the rest.

Ryu: Would it be fair to say that the threat was underestimated?

Geof: Yes. By myself at least. I admit I had no conception of what we were tracing. I’ve never encountered anything like it.

Ryu: And what would you do differently, knowing what you know now?

Geof: I think the evidence we had of the farm, and from the school, should have heightened our precautions, but I don’t see how we could have approached the Paris target differently.

Ryu: I concur. There was insufficient data regarding the threat and while the operation seems clumsy in hindsight, it followed all standard procedures. Do you think it was possible that one of the psis could have warned the target?

Geof: Everything is possible. The limousine was more than two hundred metres from Pete’s location, which is outside of his known reach.

Ryu: Known reach?

Geof: If the information we received from Tamsin Grey was correct.

Ryu: Which would be hard to verify.

Geof peered out the window. The vegetation below looked like a museum model.

Geof: What happens now?

Ryu: Your trial will be resolved, then the hunt will begin again under my supervision.

Geof: You have an impeccable record.

Ryu: That is true, but I am not so filled with hubris to think that this incident is similar to the collections my squads make. Do you know that the Weave has dubbed this incident the manifestation of Pierre Jnr?

Geof: I did not.

Ryu: Do you think that is what it was?

Now that the question was asked he wasn’t so sure. A day before he had only thought of it as Pierre Jnr, but all he had actually seen was a data drop-out, a dust cloud and the aftermath.

He related these thoughts and in return Ryu Shima fed him some of the new evidence, visuals and forensics from the site.

Geof nearly gagged.

Ryu: Do you still think this was the work of an individual?

Geof: I couldn’t be sure.

Ryu: Concur. That is an excellent starting point, Mister Ozenbach.

Geof: So what do we do now?

Ryu: We start over. Clearly this operation was misconceived from the start so we must begin again.

Geof: No presumptions.

Ryu: Exactly. What is the nature of the enemy we face?

Geof: I no longer know. How do we know it is our enemy?

It was Ryu’s turn to pause. In a conversation of symbiot messages, any lag in response time allowed the receiver to re-notice the outside world. Geof felt the glide of the flight, the constant tuning of his senses as the gravity became lighter then heavier as the squib rose and fell. He looked down at the desert pixellating into farmland and the edge territory of what could only be Seaboard.

Ryu: The results of its passing can only be interpreted as a destructive force. Your question is whether it is conscious or not. Vindictive or ignorant?

Geof: Concur.

Ryu: We shall make that part of your task. You will find new evidence, you will examine old evidence. You will determine the nature of the threat and follow it to its source. Then we will disable it.

Geof: How will we do that?

Ryu: There are many people already working on that problem. The Will is behind you now. A way will be found. You will assemble a new team, of your choosing. You will have full access to my squads, they hold the most experience, but half will be needed for training programs.

Geof: What about Colonel Pinter? And Pete?

Ryu: We will see what happens with their trials. If they are released, you may approach them for your team.

Geof: How should I start?

Ryu: You are a capable man. Your record is faultless, which I admire and respect.

Geof: Shouldn’t I be part of the hunt?

Ryu: Geof, have I not made myself clear? You are the hunt.

Merde,
 Geof cursed.

Geof: Yes, I understand. I thank you, Shima san.

Ryu: Start at the beginning. I have little doubt that the threat we know as ‘Pierre’ will manifest itself again whether we pursue it or not.

Geof: Understood. I won’t let you down, sir.

Ryu: I will expect daily progress reports. Out.

Geof: Out.

As a reward for his cooperation, Shima opened up Geof to a select but plentiful flow of raw data from the Dome investigation, and reconnected him to the Weave. The ability to immediately check and verify information felt like an ecstatic release and he plugged in deep to catch up on what he had missed.

The sun was just beginning to come up and the water of the harbour was scraped with dawn light. Geof was deposited in a Services tower block that was raised above the megapolis of Seaboard, the city that got higher and higher. It had never experienced the ravages of the wars on the larger continents. If anything, it became a safe haven for many during the collapse, and had built on top of itself multiple times to manage the influx.

It was good to be connected again. It was like waking up. He took a long shower, staying on the Weave the whole time, water and data washing over him.

Then Geof sat on the end of the bed in his damp towel and worked backward, skipping swiftly over the horrors of the explosion, into the data drop-out and back to the moment when Pete and Tamsin first had visual contact with the limousine.

He tried not to think it, but watching it again, knowing what came after, he couldn’t help but wonder who pulled the trigger. Was it Pete? Tamsin? Or whatever was in that limousine?

~ * ~

Ryu reviewed his conversation with the weaver and was pleased. If there had been any manipulation from the psi in the first team, he would be able to erode its influence quickly. Next he would have to tackle the telepath, but for now he had a full day ahead.

The farewell ceremony began at dawn and in the afternoon he had to jet to Den Haag for the first sitting of the Primacy. His ascendancy had doubled his collection load as well as requiring him to make public statements and allow interviews.

He sat impatiently in the palanquin with his mother and father, Alpha and Regent of Shima, as the sun rose on the green web of Yantz and the overwhelming enthusiasm of the local residents.