‘You’ve got hardware in your skull,’ she declared. ‘Advanced hardware.’
That was it then: he himself must be one of her experimental subjects, who had somehow escaped and now come back to exact his vengeance.
‘And an artificial intelligence living on Govnet,’ he added.
‘An artificial intelligence,’ she repeated woodenly. An artifcial intelligence on Govnet? None of her experimental subjects could have managed that . . . Then something heavy and terrifying came and sat on her chest. Someone possessing that kind of resource, who quite evidently also hated the Committee? Far far too much of a coincidence . . . but he was dead. She’d watched him die, so how could this have anything to do with him? Hannah just sat there in silence turning it all over in her head, lost in a haze of speculation which she only came out of as he pulled into a layby.
‘Vehicle change,’ he said, nodding towards an old hydrocar parked ahead. Then he explained, ‘This place is a cam deadspot.’
Now Hannah felt a weird species of bewilderment, as if she’d just stepped through a hole in reality. She could not remember any time in her life when there wasn’t an active camera watching her every move. In her early years, behavioural programs had judged her and passed on snippets of her life to political officers for assessment. In later years, such officers had kept her under constant watch. Not having them watch her now felt really strange. It meant she could do something now. Say something now.
‘Fuck the Committee,’ she said abruptly, then felt her face redden, her chest and her throat tightening up. She flicked her gaze towards the various ragged-looking people wandering aimlessly about the area, almost afraid that someone might have heard her. But no real immediate danger seemed to threaten here, which was why her ‘liar’ panic attack returned.
He glanced at her as he took a fuel can out from behind the seat.
‘Quite.’ He leaned across to open her door. ‘Out, now.’
She stepped out of the van, still feeling in a haze and reluctant to move away from the vehicle’s protective presence – out into the unwatched open. He rounded the front of the vehicle to stand before her, an electrical device of some kind clutched in one hand. ‘Step away from the van.’
Catching a whiff of diesel from the cab, she obeyed, fully expecting him to now torch the vehicle, but it turned out that the device he held wasn’t an igniter but some kind of scanner that he ran up and down her body, pausing for a moment each time it beeped.
‘Five trackers on you,’ he said, bringing the scanner back to the last detected point, where it beeped at her collar. He clicked another button, whilst holding the device in place, and she spotted a bar display rising on its little screen. When that reached the top, a green light blinked on. He pressed another button and a point of warmth expanded at her neck.
‘Focused microwave burst,’ she surmised, that sense of tight panic inside her fading with the warmth.
‘Burns them out,’ he supplied.
He found another two in her clothing: two dermal stick-ons which, after he dealt with them, left her skin reddened. He then paused the scanner device over her thigh.
‘I’m afraid this is going to hurt,’ he said fatly.
‘What . . . what do you mean?’
‘You’ve got a tracker embedded in the bone of your thigh.’
She saw the bar display rising and didn’t know how to protest. He triggered the device and at first the expected pain failed to register. But then it started to grow, a bone-deep ache that just kept climbing in intensity. She found herself gritting her teeth, her eyes watering, then her leg just gave way under her. He caught her around the waist, holding the device in place for a moment longer, till he finally retracted it.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
He helped her hobble over to the hydrocar, and she was more than glad to climb inside. Sudden light caught her eye and she looked round to see fire blooming inside the transvan cab. She then looked round at the scattering of indigents up above on the concrete bank, watching the show.
‘What about them?’ she asked.
‘They’ll disappear quick enough once the Inspectorate appear.’
He passed her a blister pack of painkillers and an analgesic patch, then concentrated on pulling the hydrocar out into a gap between passing autotrucks. Feeling no embarrassment, she pulled down her trousers and pressed the patch into place. She was so used to being watched. From behind came a whoomph and, glancing back again, she saw flames belch out of the gap where the transvan’s screen had been. Seeing this destruction too, the indigents began moving off.
‘You expected deeply implanted trackers?’ she said.
‘I expected more than just one.’
Another vehicle change ensued in an underpass, presumably another deadspot, and again it was a place inhabited by ragged, aimless people. But then where wasn’t, these days? Everywhere Hannah looked, she could see hopeless souls trudging about with the demeanour of seniles in late-stage dementia, even though many of them weren’t noticeably old. Her head felt light as she sat staring out of the windscreen at these sad beings, but, even so, something seemed to begin unwinding inside her – years and years of it. Her leg aching after having to walk from car to car, she swallowed some of the painkillers, then realized her abductor genuinely had expected more than just one deeply implanted tracker, for the pills were strong. She didn’t remember sleeping, but after an odd hiatus she found they were driving along a carbocrete rural road, then parking on a patch of old concrete, amidst fields. Here, at last, no people in sight – which seemed very strange.
He hid the vehicle under a filthy canvas sheet whose colour matched the concrete, then guided her round by a trampled path, to a hatch that he pulled up. He then led her down below, and lights came on as they entered some sort of underground bunker. Next he tore off his mask – the layer of silicone rubber she had somehow known was there – to reveal features that she recognized at once.
She gazed at him for a long moment, not quite sure how to handle this. Then she nodded slowly. ‘I thought Smith had killed you, Alan. I thought he’d finally got what he wanted.’
Thinner-featured, of course. Hair dyed a different colour from its usual acid white. Something almost unhuman wearing a human face and finding it didn’t quite fit. That was him; that had always been Alan Saul. Of course she was glad to see him alive, but it meant that a whole bunch of complicated emotions, once securely cached in her mind, were no longer quite so secure.
‘Smith,’ he echoed, momentary rage transforming his expression, shortly displaced by puzzlement. He shook his head. ‘I know my own name, but that’s about all I know.’
‘You don’t remember Salem Smith?’
‘No.’
She should not feel disappointed with his amnesia. Considering what Smith had done to him, it was miraculous he possessed a mind at all – or that he was even alive.
‘Alan Saul,’ she confirmed tightly. ‘But don’t even bother looking on Govnet or the Subnets for anything regarding yourself. You erased everything, and your work was so highly classified they put nothing back. Even I’m only allowed access to parts of it – after it’s been vetted by a committee of fourteen science-policy advisers.’
‘My work?’
She told him.
5
Prohibition Works!
The greater the power and extent of the state, the more room there is for corruption. The more inept state services and industries become, the more pies it takes its huge cut from and the more regulation it imposes, the greater the call for black markets. This last fact is one governments consistently failed to learn, even after the stark lesson of American Prohibition. Deadspots are where you’ll find them. Inspectorate officers grow rich in cash by selling the locations of such deadspots to the underworld, which in turn makes its cut from those it opens up such spots to. The breakers come there – those who burn out the tracers in stolen vehicles and disassemble them for their components, those who take apart computer hardware to sell on to others maintaining the Subnet, and those who chop up human bodies for usable organs – usually to be sold to low-echelon officials not yet enjoying twenty-second-century medical care. Retailers come to sell other blackmarket goods: food disapproved of by All Health, like high-fat dairy products, sugary drinks and sweets; cigarettes, drugs, illegal ABV booze, coffee and tea without the cumulative emetics to discourage abuse. And then there are the black surgeries dealing in illegal implants, ID implant excision and exchange, gunshot wounds, and all those injuries and illnesses not catered for under All Health – but only for those who can afford them.