Ian Hocking - The Amber Rooms

There were times when Beckmann could outpace his anxiety at Brandt’s disappearance, but they were seldom. He was a political man. He had an instinct for anything that weakened him. His ignorance of Brandt’s whereabouts was one such weakness. She was, with luck, long-dead of tuberculosis, a slit throat, or the madness that time travel would surely inflame. But if that chip at the back of her brain had survived in a grave and was found, and reverse-engineered, then the law would come to Beckmann on his comfortable little Croatian island, and the charges would make a Class A nanotechnology possession look like littering. The FIB had bent more than one law and indentured its agents under the quasi-legal status of the Richter Ruling. That charge was inescapable. It didn’t matter that Beckmann was following orders.

Hand on heart.

There had been—how many?— nine of those self-interfacing cerebral chips. Each had been the size of the pills he used to take for his circulation before the i-Core became his one treatment. It had been the Hartfield Foundation that had pushed for their application in law enforcement. The risk had been great, and not just to those sorry criminals whom Beckmann had picked by hand. In truth, nobody understood how those glass lozenges worked. Nobody understood how it was possible for them to work. And nobody, as far as Beckmann could discover, knew where they had come from.

Another weakness.

With the exception of Brandt and Klutikov, the remaining FIB agents had died in the line of duty. All, that is, apart from his final recruit, Shangxiang. She had disappeared on a mission to the Arctic. Her death had been probable but never verified.

He took a deep breath, pressurising his heart as one might squeeze a hand in reassurance, and looked at the vast, blank ceiling of his bedroom. He liked the blankness. He liked the simple geometry and the colourless. But this eyrie would be different if he had family. It would be warmer, fuller.

Shangxiang had been codenamed for a third-century warrior and noblewoman known as Lady Sun.

He closed his eyes.

When the sun touched Beckmann’s clifftop house, its tinting layers darkened, pushing back the light, maintaining a certain gloom in its chambers. Beckmann would watch the process most mornings as he ate breakfast on one of the higher balconies. The tinting reminded him of slowly closing eyes. It reminded him of his death. When the evening came, and the tint faded, Beckmann liked to think that this was the house waking. It was a night-thing, like him. That was why he called his house the Moonflower.

Beckmann had an uncomfortable erection. He reached into his pyjamas, pushed it to one side, and tried to sleep. Two minutes later, thoughts entered his head that were not his own.

’…related to that gunshot earlier. Entry attempted. Not sure how many.’

Beckmann woke fully. The words had entered his head via a connection to the cortical region of his auditory pathway. The connection was mediated by the i-Core, and Beckmann had given one person alone the authority to break into his consciousness: Klutikov, his head of security.

Klutikov? thought Beckmann, passing his thoughts along the same channel. Give me a—

He was overwhelmed by a rushing wall of light. It faded, calibrating, until he perceived the gate that blocked the switchback road leading to the inner security barrier for the garage beneath Moonflower. Klutikov had said, ‘Entry’: there was a security breach. But was it virtual or physical?

What am I meant to be seeing? he sent.

’I think I saw her. I’m redeploying men. Stand by.’

The direct auditory connection preserved tone of voice. Klutikov sounded anxious. That was unlike him.

Klutikov, stay focused. Give me a report. What do you mean by ‘her’?

The scene was a virtual plane eight metres from his face. Beckmann looked around it. He could see no signs of trouble. The enhanced image showed the exterior wall—intact—and the gates, which were closed.

’Sir, five minutes ago, an individual was sighted near the front gate. She matches the description of Lady Sun. Repeat, I’m moving men into—’

She died years ago, said Beckmann, cutting him off.

’It’s her.’

An augmentation in Beckmann’s mind informed him that the vocal stress complexes in Klutikov’s voice were more than three standard deviations from his mean. He was losing control. Beckmann sighed. Klutikov had always been his most stable FIB agent, and he had been an exemplary bodyguard for much of his later career—until an incident six months previously when he had called an abort on Beckmann’s annual skiing holiday because he claimed to have sighted Lady Sun.

Have you actually seen her? Show me the video.

The display before Beckmann shimmered as it clicked back four minutes, then five. It stopped on a guard walking on his perimeter control. It was one of their Taiwanese, name of Qiyu.

I’m not seeing her. Is this the correct time?

There was no reply.

Klutikov? Keep the channel open.

’She’s reached the garage. Christ, she’s good. I’m passing her description to the automated systems.’

Beckmann sat upright. He dismissed the image of the front gate, pushed his duvet aside and slipped from the bed. Automatic lights brightened. He put his mind through a series of discrete intentions, each of which were identified and tagged by his standard neural implants. The bedroom door locked; metal blades slid down the window, where they stacked to reinforce the glass. He moved towards his wardrobe but hesitated when a thumping sound came from inside.

Knocking. Slithering. It made him think of a trapped snake.

He suppressed his fear and approached the wardrobe. It would not open to his touch. He put his fingers into the gap between the two large doors and managed to slide open the lefthand door. His day suit — a shiny sack of fabric that would assume his form and interface with his i-Core — was twisting and struggling on its hanger. Its control code had malfunctioned.

As Beckmann closed the door, he cursed aloud. He did not want to meet a threat wearing his pyjamas. However, the thought was irrational and wasteful. A weakness. He dismissed it.

He felt a drumming through is feet and heard a distant rattling.

He had never known the large-calibre ballistic weapons of Moonflower to fire. Whatever was happening beyond his bedroom, whatever had breached the compound, was serious enough for the automated systems to risk the structure and its inhabitants.

He took the hint. He reached out to the drawer near his bed, which was already opening. A fist-sized pebble of smart matter flew slowly to his hand. Once gripped, it became a gun.

Beckmann looked at the weapon. He rarely used smart matter, but his neural augmentations were able to clean up his half-memory of a training session from two years before and present the knowledge to him in a form that made him feel expert and capable. He thumbed the safety twice. When it turned red, he knew that the gun was under local control and could not be hacked like his day suit.

Klutikov, what’s that firing?

’Qiyu and Zelan are down, sir. I don’t understand. Stay where you are.’

What image did you give the house systems? Show me, as an overlay.

In a moment, the bottom left corner of his vision showed the target that Klutikov had ordered the house to attack: Qiyu. So the guard had been killed by the Moonflower’s own systems. Beckmann could only guess at the end of Zelan. Perhaps he had come to the aid of his friend and been cut down en passant .

Listen to me, Klutikov. You’ve been compromised. Take no further action.