The Resurrected Man (28 page)

Jonah closed the calendar. Whatever appointment Lindsay had been hurrying to make, the mysterious “final experiment,” presumably, it must have been important to force a compromise of his most deeply held beliefs. Or, alternatively, something urgent had kept him in the unit, making him late for the appointment and requiring a d-mat journey to make it in time.

The only thing left in the e-book was the unnamed file. Jonah tapped the icon with his fingertip, and it opened, revealing a handful of lines of text.

Jonah,

I'll be brief. By the time you read this, I will be dead. I'm sorry. There's nothing I can say to ease you through this difficult time, except to apologise for any pain I might inadvertently have caused you, now and throughout your life. You never knew, if I could help it, how much you meant to me. It may please you to know that the uncertainty was mutual.

Your father,
Lindsay

P.S. Do not grieve for me. The only consolation I can offer with a clear conscience will sound naive, but it's the best I have. If you can believe that I am now in a better place, it will help.

Jonah winced at the postscript. A “better place”? He refused to accept such a possibility. The hope of an afterlife was for fools: for fools who didn't have the intelligence or the courage to accept the truth of mortality;
for fools who wasted opportunities in this world in the hope of an easy life in the next; for fools like his father who should have known better. Or, rather, for the fool who had once been Jonah's father. The man himself was now nothing but dust and ashes circulating endlessly through the biosphere.

“Ready to take a trip?”

He looked up at Marylin. She was standing in the doorway, her expression bleak. Only then did he realise that he was crying. She didn't seem to notice either.

“What?”

“They've located the latest body. You must've guessed that.”

“Yes. Yes, I did. Where?”

“Quebec.”

“
Quebec?
But—”

“Wait. It gets even more interesting.” She moved closer. The look in her eyes became one of accusation. “It landed in WHOLE headquarters. That was Karoly Mancheff himself who called. He asked for you specifically. He says you told him something like this would happen, one day. He wants to know what you expect him to do about it now that it has.”

Jonah sank back into the seat. “I—honestly—have no idea what you're talking about.”

“I didn't think you would.” She leaned closer. “That's why we're going to look at the body ourselves, and talk to him at the same time.”

“‘We'?”

“You and me. Now.”

“You and me, and—?”

“No, that's it. We can take a full team into Quebec, but they won't let anyone else but us two into WHOLE HQ. They'll give us the body then.”

“But—”

“Don't stall, Jonah, if that's what you're doing. If there's something
I should know, tell me now, or just get on your feet and moving. We don't have time to screw around. There's a plane leaving for Montreal in an hour and a half, and we have to be on it.”

The urgency in her voice broke through his sense of shock. Quebec's decision to forbid the use of d-mat as a means of human transport dramatically complicated the issue of viewing the disposal site. They would have to travel to the interchange on the border then fly into the country. From there, it would be car all the way. What should have taken half an hour suddenly became a day trip or more. And if WHOLE didn't have a large refrigeration capacity in their mysterious headquarters…

He rose awkwardly to his feet and took the first step.

While Jonah changed out of the hospital gown and into clothes more suited to travel, Marylin finalised their itinerary. They would d-mat directly to Ottawa, on the border of the United States and Quebec, where five members of the MIU away team would meet them. Whitesmith would be one of them. The party would also include four field agents who would act as liaisons between the away
team and the locals. Marylin had requested that Jason Fassini be one of these. The moment Jonah was ready, she would bundle him into the unit's booth then head down the hill for the public enclosure to make her own journey. If Fassini wasn't there, she could safely assume that he was on his way, depending on whether he had been selected.

Once the eleven-strong team was assembled in Ottawa, it would fly by commercial jet to Montreal, then drive in hired vehicles out of the city. They had been instructed to head northeast towards Quebec City. At some point they would be “contacted,” as Mancheff put it.

She despised the deliberately inspired sense of foreboding in such a comment, and its vagueness. Whatever Mancheff had in mind, she doubted it would be in complete accord with the MIU's plans.

Her mind repeatedly flashed back to the conversation she had just had with the leader of WHOLE. The initial call had come from Whitesmith, with both Verstegen and Trevaskis in the wings. Trevaskis' mood had been poor, his contributions brief and to the point. Verstegen, on the other hand, had been expansive, offering suggestions and advice whether they were wanted or not. The difference in mood precisely matched the current ascendancies of the two directors. Verstegen had little to worry about in his position of Director of Information Security for all of KTI. Trevaskis, on the other hand, as head of an as-yet-unproven investigative branch funded by the same company, had hardly helped his position in the previous few days.

Then Mancheff himself had been patched in, speaking slowly through the clipped ambience of heavy cipher. His image was in black and white only, and jerky, due to either poor equipment at his end or continued congestion in the Pool. A swarthy yet charismatic man with thinning grey hair, he looked more like a genial uncle than someone wanted on several dozen counts of sabotage and terrorism. His accent was a thick French-Canadian, although his English was good.

“Why don't you tell us again, from the beginning, what happened?” Trevaskis had said.

“Why should I? You have it on file. Besides, I'm not saying another word until I know who I'm talking to.”

Trevaskis did the rounds, introducing Verstegen first of all. Whitesmith he must have spoken to before. When it came to Marylin, Mancheff raised an eyebrow.

“Blaylock,
hein
?” His manner was disconcertingly casual. “You knew Lindsay Carlaw's son. Worked with him, is that right?”

“Yes,” she said as evenly as she could.

“Why isn't he part of this?”

“He doesn't work for the MIU.”

“But he's involved. He must be. He warned me something like this might happen.”

“What do you mean by that?” Whitesmith asked, his image leaning forward in its window.

“If you don't know, I see no reason to illuminate you. Ask him yourself.”

“We will,” Verstegen assured him, breaking in. “But first we have something more important to discuss, no?”

“We do,” Mancheff agreed. “You want the body. I want it taken away. The odds are good we can come to some sort of arrangement.”

“Good. Now, I—”

“Not so fast. That's not all I want. I want to know what it's doing here in the first place.”

“That makes five of us.” Verstegen smiled thinly. “I didn't think you were supposed to have d-mat facilities.”

Mancheff winked, unfazed by Verstegen's attempt to shift suspicion onto him. “Aie, you
would
think that, but we're practical. Believe me when I say it's only with the utmost reluctance that I allow d-mat to be used for freight, as permitted by Quebecois law. Strictly freight only, I assure you. So imagine my surprise when I opened it up an hour ago and found a body in it. It's still warm, by the way.”

Marylin didn't want to know how he could be certain of that. “Why don't you just d-mat it here?” she asked.

“And have you trace the transmission? I'm not stupid. If you don't already know where it is, I'd like to keep it that way.”

“So you want us to travel all the way there to pick it up?”

“That depends. Do you want it badly enough to do that?” Mancheff watched their expressions. “Of course you do. It isn't going anywhere on its own, I can assure you of that.”

“No one must touch it,” Trevaskis said. “The site should be preserved as much as possible.”

“
Ouais
, yes. I'm not a moron either. Everything has been recorded for posterity.”

“Couldn't you at least send us that information?”

“I prefer to let you sweat.” His grin was triumphant. No doubt he enjoyed holding the MIU to ransom. If he only knew, Marylin thought, exactly what he'd stumbled across—or what had stepped on
him.

“How do we know you're telling the truth?” she asked.

Mancheff acknowledged the point with a nod and assumed a more businesslike expression. “Fair question. Let me ask you one in return. Why would I lie? Bad enough to be reporting a mysterious body in a d-mat booth I'm not supposed to have. Even worse if I'm making it up, especially when you're so interested. I don't want to incriminate myself, or my people.” He shrugged lightly, as though the thought of being “incriminated” didn't really bother him. “We can probably use the body to our advantage, wherever it came from, but the damage could bounce back on us all too easily. I prefer to hand it in and be done with it, once and for all. If anything in life can be that simple.”

Marylin found herself warming to his prickly pragmatism. “Where is it, exactly?”

“Our head office. I can't tell you where that is, obviously, but I will direct you to a point from which you can be taken the rest of the way. Not too many of you. Unarmed, of course. I don't want any tricky business.”

“
How
many, exactly?”

“Two.” The smile returned. “Jonah McEwen, and—let's see. How about you, Officer Blaylock?”

Her stomach sank, but she didn't let it show in her voice. “Why me? And why Jonah, for that matter?”

“Well, I've met McEwen, and I knew his father. We can catch up on old times. Maybe he can tell me what the hell is going on. And you—you look like you need a holiday.”

Mancheff's smile, then, had a nasty edge.

“We'll need more than that to conduct a proper investigation,” Whitesmith interjected.

“I understand. Bring as many as you think you might need. We won't let them in, but they won't be far away when we let the others out.”

“You make us sound like hostages,” Marylin said.

“Unintentionally, I assure you.”

“You want us to trust you?”

“Yes.”

“With what guarantee?” She met his gaze squarely. “You're asking me to put my life on the line. I need more than your word to do that.”

“You will not be harmed. Our fight is not with you, but with the people who pay your wages.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Really. I'll remember that next time I go to use a booth and it's software has been vandalised by one of your viruses.”

“
Ouf.
Very well. I will allow you to bear arms, but that is all. I will concede nothing else.”

He folded his arms and leaned back in the shot.

Marylin allowed herself a slight feeling of satisfaction. It wasn't much of a concession, but it was better than nothing.

“Give us sixty seconds to talk about it,” Whitesmith said. “Can we call you back?”

Mancheff didn't even dignify the suggestion with a verbal
response. The window containing his face closed, and Marylin was left facing Whitesmith, Trevaskis and Verstegen.

“My feeling is that we should do it,” said KTI's Director of Information Security.

“For once we agree,” said Trevaskis. “It'll be worth it just to get someone inside WHOLE.”

“Marylin?”

“Odi, you know better than anyone that I'll do what I'm told,” she said, unwilling to commit herself either way with such an audience watching.

“I think it's a big risk,” he said, echoing her private thoughts. “It'll just be the two of you in there, and McEwen might not be much help.”

“Or worse,” she said. “He's working with us now, but that mightn't last long, depending on what he learns in Quebec. Likewise, I might not want to work with him.”

“He is—or was—involved in this,” Trevaskis said. “Mancheff seems to have confirmed that. We need to follow that lead more than that of the body itself.”

“Again we agree,” said Verstegen, his blond fringe wafting like a falling handkerchief in the low gravity of Artsutanov Station. “Yes. What we stand to gain surely outweighs any risk we have to take.”

Easy for you to say
, she thought to herself.

“Will Jonah agree?” Whitesmith asked.

“I think so,” she said. “He's as curious as we are.”

“He still has memory loss?” Trevaskis asked.

“Mostly.” She didn't want to say too much without concrete evidence to back her up. “We're making some progress.”

A red light began to flash in the display.

“That's him,” said Verstegen. “Are we decided?”

“What about the source of his call?” Marylin asked before she lost the chance. “Have we traced him?”

“We can't,” Whitesmith said. “It's coming from an anonymous outlet.”

“So we don't even know roughly where this ‘head office' is?”

“No.”

She shrugged. “Guess I didn't have much choice anyway.”

Whitesmith nodded. “Guess not.”

Mancheff reappeared. “Well?”

“We'll agree to your terms, if you agree to ours,” Whitesmith said. “I want a fully equipped skeleton crew on hand to cover contingencies. Without knowing what sort of condition the body is in—”

“Messy,” said Mancheff with a grimace.

“—we don't even know what equipment to bring. I'm not sending any of my officers in without some sort of backup.”

“Understood.” Mancheff studied the faces before him with the sharp eye of a determined negotiator. “But only those two—Blaylock and McEwen—come all the way to head office.”

Whitesmith paused for a split-second to allow anyone to disagree. “Okay.”

“
D'ac.
We have a deal, at least in principle,” Mancheff had said with a satisfied look that, no matter how often Marylin analysed it, she still could not interpret as being overtly malignant. Despite the long-standing antagonism between WHOLE and KTI, she had a feeling that she could trust this man when he said he meant them no harm. “Now, let's look at the details of how to get you here…”

Marylin jumped when Jonah emerged from the bedroom, so deeply immersed was she in her thoughts. A sudden sense of dislocation rushed through her when she saw what he was wearing.

“It hangs a little loose, now,” he said, fingering the lapels of the interactive coat she'd bought him on a whim four years ago. This was the first time she'd seen him wear it. Deactivated, the fabric looked like nothing more remarkable than cotton dyed dark grey with a slightly metallic tinge.

“Don't you have anything else?” she asked. Underneath he was wearing jeans, pullover, sneakers, the first things to hand.

“It's going to be chilly at night, even this time of year, and—” He hesitated. “Memories.”

She couldn't tell if he was trying to avoid them or provoke them. “Whatever. Have you packed what you need?”

“It's on the bed. You'll have to carry it. I can't do that and walk, yet.”

She retrieved the overnight bag from his room and took it through the unit to the d-mat booth. He followed at a much slower pace, using a hand to steady himself on walls, the backs of chairs and bookcases. His face was pale, and she belatedly remembered that he had had hardly any time to rest since awakening from the d-med procedure.

“Are you feeling all right?”

“Less than average, I'll admit,” he said, “but I'll manage. You?”

She ignored the question. Putting the bag in the booth, she gestured for him to enter. “Someone will be waiting for you at the other end. I'll put in a request for a chair. There'll be some walking to do before we get on the plane, and I don't want you holding us up.”

“Understandable.” He passed her on the way through the open door of the booth. With one leg still outside, he stopped. “Did Mancheff say anything about Lindsay?”

“No.”

He nodded and drew the leg in after him. She let the door shut. With a click, it sealed vacuum-tight. A low hum indicated that it had begun powering-up. She stepped away and went about the business of following him.