Peter Hamilton - Judas Unchained

“Come in,” Paula said.

Mellanie followed her to the middle of the ancient cobbled courtyard. She looked around at the whitewashed walls with their narrow windows. Over half of them had their shutters drawn back, revealing glimpses of rooms. Flickers of pale green light were coming from inside as holographic portals played out the evening’s unisphere news and entertainment. A sad reflection on the residents; this was the kind of block where single professionals would flock while they were taking a break between marriage contracts. Sanitized little apartments where they could rest in safety between the work and play that otherwise occupied their whole day.

“This will do,” Paula said. “We’re secure here if we don’t talk too loud.”

Mellanie wasn’t sure about that, but didn’t want to argue. “You know about it, don’t you?”

“Did Alessandra Baron send you in search of an exclusive? Is that why you’re here?”

“No.” Mellanie gave a short, edgy laugh. “I don’t work for her anymore. Check with the production company if you don’t believe me.”

“I will. Why did you leave? I imagine it was quite lucrative, and your report from Randtown helped secure your celebrity status.”

“She works for the Starflyer.”

Paula tilted her head to one side and gave Mellanie a searching look.

“That’s an interesting allegation.”

“But don’t you see it makes perfect sense? She’s always been tough on the navy. She’s just spinning the Starflyer’s propaganda, causing trouble for the one organization which can defend us.”

“You used her show to criticize me. Does that make you a Starflyer agent?”

“No! Look, I want to help. I know about the Cox. That’s how I found out about Baron. When I told her, she altered the records.”

“I’m sorry, you’ve lost me now. What is this Cox?”

A little flare of temper made Mellanie put her hands on her hips. This wasn’t going the way she’d imagined it. She’d thought the Investigator would welcome offers of help from anyone who knew about the Starflyer and the huge danger it represented. “The education charity,” she said acerbically, which should jog the Hive woman’s memory. “The one that funded Dudley’s observation.”

“The break-in,” Paula said, reading something in her virtual vision. “The Guardians suspected the whole Bose observation was a deliberate manipulation.”

“And they were right.”

Paula’s eyebrows lifted slightly. “Really?”

“You know they were,” Mellanie hissed.

“I don’t.”

“But you must have. The Cox is a total fraud.”

“Not according to our investigations.”

“But…” Mellanie felt the skin down the back of her neck cooling rapidly. She didn’t understand the way Myo was reacting at all. Unless the Starflyer had got to her as well. “I’m sorry. I’m wasting your time. I…It was tough on Elan.” She turned and hurried back to the door. Backing off from people she used to trust was turning into a bad habit.

“Wait,” Paula said.

Mellanie froze, suddenly fearful. She reviewed the icons in her virtual vision, trying to work out if she could use any of the SI inserts to extricate herself if things turned nasty. Trouble was, she didn’t really understand half of them yet. She’d have to yell to the SI for help. The gold snakeskin of her virtual hand poised above the SI icon.

“You think I know something about the Cox,” Paula said. “Why?”

“You put me on to Dudley Bose. You must have known I would discover this.”

“I pushed you toward Bose because his wife once met Bradley Johansson. I was expecting you to go down that route to the Starflyer. Media allies would be useful to me. The only reports I recall on the break-in were that the Cox charity was legitimate.”

“It’s not. Well, it wasn’t. Baron had the records altered.”

“Interesting. If you’re telling me the truth, then the actual state of the Cox was withheld from me.”

“I am telling the truth,” Mellanie protested. She almost said, Ask the SI. But that would have given away too much. She still didn’t trust Paula.

“All right,” Paula said. “I’ll look into it.”

“Then what?”

“What did you come here for?”

“To see what you were doing, and to help.”

“And coincidentally wind up with the ultimate story.”

“Were you going to keep it secret?”

“If it’s all true, then no. But I really don’t think having a media celebrity dogging everything I do is helpful, do you?”

She couldn’t even say “reporter,” Mellanie thought. Bitch. “Fine. Whatever.” She pushed at the big door, opening a way back out onto the relative safety of the street.

“If you do find anything concrete, then please come to me,” Paula said. “Not the navy.”

“Right.” Mellanie took a few paces out, then stopped to gather her thoughts. She knew she’d unsettled Paula, but pleasant though it was, that wasn’t what she’d wanted to achieve. Right now, Mellanie needed someone to turn to with the terrible knowledge of Baron and the Starflyer, someone in authority, someone who would do something about it. Just like some kid running to her parents.

Well, if the great Paula Myo was suspicious or undecided, she’d just have to damn well sort the problem out herself. With that thought, Mellanie nodded her head confidently and set off for the nearest Metro station.

***

Dawn found Hoshe Finn on his balcony, slumped in a cheap plastic patio chair looking out across the twinkling urban grid. Oaktier’s sun was sliding up over the eastern districts of Darklake City, cloaking the tips of the glass and marble towers with an energetic rose-gold glow. Colorful birds started chirping from inside the tall evergreen trees standing around the base of his apartment block, while gardenbots moved along the narrow moat of dewmoistened gardens, performing their daily tidy-up routine.

Sometime in the small hours, he’d woken up in the middle of the dream again, jolting up on the bed in a fever-sweat as the too-real images of collapsing buildings and quaking ground drained away into the darkness of the room. Every night since the Prime attack it had been the same. He refused to call it a nightmare. This was just his subconscious coming to terms with what had happened. All very healthy. Playing it back in sleeptime, letting all those nasty little details wind out from his mind where they’d been compressed like some secure file in a crystal lattice. Like the woman who’d been crushed in two by a broken bridge support—glanced at briefly as he’d carried Inima past. The children wailing outside the smoking rubble that had been their house, lost and dazed, filthy with dust, soot, and blood.

Yeah, a really healthy way of dealing with it all.

So he’d pulled on his old amber bathrobe and limped out onto the balcony to watch the sleeping city, thinking like some frightened kid that maybe dreams only came to people in bedrooms. He’d dozed fitfully for the rest of the night as his burns throbbed and the clammy ache down his back cycled from hot to cold over and over. Not even the rum and hot chocolate helped; it just made him feel sick.

What he wanted was Inima. The reassurance of having her lying beside him at night; the exasperated tolerance she turned on whenever he was ill and moping around the house instead of going in to work. But the doctors weren’t going to let her out of the hospital for another ten days at the earliest. He still tensed up every time he thought about her. Pulling her out from the broken four-by-four on Sligo, the way her legs were bent and blackened, fluid weeping from the tarlike encrustation that had been her jeans. Her low whimpers, the sounds that only the seriously injured make. A few vague memories of first aid flitting through his brain, utterly useless as he stared at his wife in disbelief that anything like this could possibly happen. Cursing himself the whole time for being so helpless.