Paul McAuley - Something Coming Through

‘Who ordered these chicken feet?’

‘I hear StrangeWare is organising another attempt on the North Pole.’

‘Those people have more money than sense.’

‘They can afford to bet on long shots. And who knows what’s under the ice?’

‘A secret Jackaroo base.’

‘Atlantis.’

‘Every sock ever lost.’

‘The mapping satellite didn’t find anything.’

‘It’s a lot of ice.’

‘It had sideways radar.’

‘It’s a lot of ice. Forty kilometres deep in places.’

Familiar faces animated in the red light of the sconces on the red and gold walls. Laughing and talking. Hands wielding chopsticks, fluttering in the air over bowls and glasses.

‘Did anyone ever find out what happened to that satellite?’

‘A secret Elder Culture city shot it down.’

‘Two of its gyroscopes failed,’ Maria Kawelec said. She was an engineer and an amateur astronomer. ‘It couldn’t be aimed at anything any more, so it was de-orbited.’

‘They should put up another.’

‘They should send probes to the other planets. Seriously,’ Maria said. ‘Anything could be out there.’

‘That’s where we should go for our fiftieth. The North Pole.’

‘And miss the parade?’

‘I wouldn’t miss it. Every year the same.’

‘That’s why I love it.’

‘The kids love it.’

‘My kids don’t. Too old. Jaded at eight and ten,’ Faith Madeuke said, and looked across the table at Vic. ‘Are you okay, honey?’

‘Absolutely,’ Vic said.

‘You’re quieter than usual, is all,’ Faith said. She wore a gold and red dress and had wrapped her dreadlocks in a matching scarf. She had been the first in their circle to have children here, some of the first children born on Mangala.

‘I thought of skipping the bash this year,’ Vic confessed.

‘I’m glad you didn’t. Tell me one of your horrible stories.’

Vic smiled. ‘About police work or about my life?’

Mark Brown leaned in. ‘There was a shooting in my neighbourhood two weeks ago. In the park. A motorcycle went past some young men hanging out by the café and the pillion passenger popped off a couple of shots. This was Saturday afternoon,’ Mark said, his voice rising with indignation. ‘People were having picnics. Families were out with their kids.’

Vic had heard about it in the daily briefing, told Mark that the perps were being tracked down.

‘Probably gang-related,’ Thomas Müller said.

‘My question is, where do they get the guns?’ Mark Brown said.

‘People smuggle them in,’ Thomas Müller said. ‘People print them. Am I right, Vic?’

‘There are definitely too many guns,’ Vic said.

‘Kids with guns,’ Mark Brown said. ‘When did that start happening?’

Faith said, ‘Did you see the newbies in the parade? Didn’t they look weirded out?’

Vic, grateful for the change of subject, said, ‘You land on a strange new planet and — wah gwan? You’re marching behind the Salvation Army band and the crookedest politician in twenty thousand light years, who’s waving at the crowds from a vintage car. Who wouldn’t be weirded out?’

‘Anyone interesting in the new batch?’

‘You mean anyone famous or anyone useful?’

‘Famous people are famous on Earth, so why leave?’

‘They’d be more famous here.’

‘They’d be famous for being famous for about five minutes. And then what? What would Robert Pattinson do here?’

‘I have a couple of ideas,’ Faith said, and gave her trademark filthy laugh.

‘What happened to that guy who came here to make movies? Sci-fi movies on an actual alien planet.’

Vic said, ‘We had a nuclear war, we had an alien invasion, and now we’re living on alien planets. How could you make up anything to beat that?’

There was a vibration in the pocket of his jacket. His phone. He left the table and found a quiet spot near the restaurant’s pass-through.

‘We’ve got one,’ Skip Williams said.

Vic automatically checked his watch. Seven twenty-two.

He said, ‘You picked up the phone. Didn’t I tell you about not picking up the phone?’

‘Sorry about your meal and everything, but I was the only one here. Bodin and Espinosa are attending a shooting over at the Flats.’

Vic gave the address of the restaurant. ‘You’d better come by and pick me up.’

London | 4 July

Disruption Theory’s office was near Bow Creek, the top floor of a Victorian warehouse protected from the extended reach of the Thames by a construction-coral stopbank. Chloe commuted to work by ferry, across the river from Greenwich. The first to arrive on Monday morning, she disarmed the security system and primed the industrial coffee machine; after a sequence of thumps, rattles and jets of steam the earthy scent of its brew began to permeate the quiet still air of the open-plan workspace. Sunlight fell through the glass wall that fronted the conference room and Daniel Rosenblaum’s corner office, glowed on the workstations and tables under the oak beams and dusty skylights of the high ceiling.

When Jen Lovell came in, Chloe was reviewing the cut she’d made from footage of the breakout meeting and the brief interview with Freddie Patel. Jen clattered about her office for a couple of minutes before pouring herself a cup of coffee and carrying it across the room to the table where Chloe sat.

‘How did your lead pan out?’

‘Better than expected,’ Chloe said. ‘It definitely wasn’t your average snake cult. In fact, I’m hoping to follow up on it.’

Jen didn’t rise to that. A calm, chunky woman who favoured business suits and amber jewellery, she took a careful sip from her cup of coffee and said, ‘There’s a meeting in an hour, to go over today’s schedule and raise any snags. After that you have a one-on-one with Helena to fine-tune your preparations. And then there’s the group briefing this afternoon.’

‘I don’t know why we’re making such a big deal of the New Galactic Navy thing. Even the tabloids said we had nothing to do with it.’

Jen took another sip of coffee. ‘I don’t blame you for being nervous. We all are.’

Disruption Theory was in the gunsights of Robin Mountjoy, one of the leading lights of the Human Decency League. His party campaigned on a single issue: the removal of all traces of the Jackaroo and their fellow travellers from Great Britain. It had made big advances in the last general election; although the minority Conservative government hadn’t entered into a formal alliance with it, there had been several major concessions. Which was why Robin Mountjoy was chairing the Alien Technology Committee. He wasn’t about to take on the multinationals, so he was going after small companies like Disruption Theory instead. And Disruption Theory was an especially tempting target because of Daniel Rosenblaum’s high-profile promotion of its work, and because it was bankrolled by Ada Morange, the controversial French entrepreneur. Her company, Karyotech Pharma, had been a leading contender in the early days of exploitation of Elder Culture tech and alien biota, with a presence on ten of the fifteen worlds. At one point, after Karyotech Pharma’s initial public offering of shares on Euronext, she’d been a paper billionaire, but much of her fortune had dissipated in a long battle against a hostile takeover and a series of lawsuits over patents and prior art. So Disruption Theory was squarely in the sights of the select committee, but lacked the defensive firepower of the big players. Robin Mountjoy was boasting about taking a tough line with what he called fellow travellers of the Jackaroo; Ada Morange was threatening to shut down Disruption Theory or move it to France, absorb it into one of her companies; everything was up in the air.