Neal Asher - Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

‘Thank you, Elkin, that will be all.’

The woman gave her a brief nod and retreated.

Now alone, Serene called up the file located under the citizen code she had input, studied the current image of a squat muscular man who, after the treatments he could obtain as a valued SA, appeared to be in his forties. This man was actually eighty-six. She reflected on her brief thoughts about sex and, understanding where they had come from, felt a sudden annoying surge of unaccustomed guilt. She checked his history, starting from twenty-eight years ago at the point where she herself had diverged from it. Under tight political supervision, he’d spent a further nine years in Berlin, in the Brandenburg Tower, continuing his research on population genetics, related dynamics and psychology. He’d provided statistical analyses of great use to the Inspectorate: data that had resulted in large savings on resources. It was always useful to know precisely how hard you needed to wield the big stick, and precisely what degree of control might be necessary when dealing with vast populations.

At the end of those nine years, he had taken a partner, and produced twin daughters who, due to his past record, were immediately taken away from him. Next working in South America, his wife of four years, having been caught making illegal enquiries about his record, was sent off for adjustment. She died shortly after being released into supervised accommodation. The surface report cited a domestic accident with some kitchen appliance. The underlying report noted that her kitchen cam had failed and gone into a maintenance backlog, while she had sliced open her wrists with the blade removed from a Safecarver and bled to death on the kitchen floor.

Five years ago he had been sent back to work in Europe, sometimes in the Brandenburg Tower again, more often as an adviser to the four main European delegates. It annoyed Serene that he had been so successful in his way. Her aim had been to get him sent for adjustment twenty-eight years ago, but he had been far too useful for that.

Serene input his call code, ensuring a console contact only, since she wanted to see his face. He must have been waiting because he answered within just a few seconds. He looked haggard, dark under the eyes and, when he saw her, he jerked back from the screen, his expression showing a commingled disgust and fear. She couldn’t understand why he had sent her a message, then she noted him fingering his collar and realized why: he’d grown tired of waiting for the axe to fall.

‘Hello, Papa,’ she said, smiling calmly as she remembered her love for him despite his dictatorial ways. She remembered how, with her mother dead, she had tried to help him, tried at the age of twelve to relieve some of the pressure he was under. Serene knew all about sex, all about the needs of men, since her political officer had already shown her, and she wanted to take control. She wanted to supplant the various ‘nannies’ that visited, taking his attention away from her. But when she had tried, he had pushed her away, and that was the first time she saw that look on his face. The pain of rejection sent a wave of heat through her even now. Yes, she understood his fear, and she understood how he would have felt that to respond to her was plain wrong. But they had been different: they had always been different.

‘Serene,’ he said, ‘I see you’ve done very well for yourself.’

Serene had already found and cued up the code to his collar, and her finger now hovered over the send button. Then, as she gazed at his face, she withdrew her finger. She was now the dictator of Earth, with all Earth’s resources at her disposal. A sudden twisted excitement arose in her, almost sexual. She could do anything she wanted. She was in total control.

‘Yes, I have done very well, Papa,’ she replied. ‘I see that you haven’t done so badly either. You were an adviser to the four top European delegates, I understand.’

‘I did do well,’ he said bitterly, ‘despite being accused by my own daughter of beating and raping her. But I haven’t been trying to reach you so we can discuss the different routes our careers have taken . . . daughter.’ He spat out the last word, then reached up and touched his collar. ‘I want to know about this. When, Serene? When are you going to send the code to this and finish off what you started?’

What an arrogant self-obsessed idiot he was. That he wore such a collar was just chance, just wherever he came in the list, which included over half a billion other SAs. But through his self-obsession, through his belief that this had to be personal, he had revealed himself to her. Now she knew he was alive and well.

‘You are just one of many, Papa, but since you are my father, I will order that your collar be removed at once.’ No way did she want one of those occasional collar malfunctions to take him out, for they still had unfinished business. She paused, momentarily puzzled, not entirely sure what that unfinished business was. ‘I will also be sending an aero for you.’

‘Why?’ he said. ‘Do you want me to be facing you when you kill me? Didn’t you do enough when you reported me to your political officer for the very offence I refused to commit?’

Apparently not, since he had survived the experience.

‘And how did you do it? How did you fake the evidence?’ he asked.

The fact that, at twelve, she was no longer a virgin had been taken care of by her political officer a few months before. She was one of the many young girls that that particular guardian of Committee ideology had used as part of his personal harem. Faking the evidence against her father had been easy. She just waited until after a visit from one of the ‘nannies’ he employed, and then scraped it off his bedsheets.

‘That is all in the past now,’ she replied smoothly. ‘Right now I am in need of advisers in precisely your discipline, and your name has come up on a shortlist. It is in fact quite a happy coincidence that you yourself also tried to get in contact with me.’

‘Well, I guess with two-thirds of the original upper executive being fried, you need to know where to concentrate the razorbirds and shepherds next.’ He grimaced, looked to one side for a moment, then focused back on the screen. She remembered that he’d done a lot of work involving the deployment of shepherds, and also on techniques to increase the public fear of them. ‘But I think you’re lying to me,’ he continued. ‘You were always very good at it.’

‘We’ll talk further after you arrive, and, Papa,’ she gazed at him like a parent humouring a worried child, ‘please understand that the past remains the past. We, here and now, are making the future.’

‘Yeah, right.’

Serene cut the connection, then took a wet wipe from the pack on her desk, to cleanse her hands, which suddenly felt slimy. She felt her lies had sounded close to plausibility, but he had only accepted them because he had no choice. The only real alternative for him now, if he had even a gram of understanding, would be to kill himself at once. He must surely realize that the only person on the planet ever to have caused her to feel shame would have to pay a heavy price indeed.

‘Elkin!’

The woman was back through the door in a second. ‘Ma’am?’

‘Send a grab squad to pick him up at once,’ said Serene. ‘And tell them that if he dies, then they die shortly afterwards.’

‘Ma’am.’

‘I also want you to get Interrogator Nelson here, quick as you like.’ Serene waved a dismissive hand, noting Elkin’s brief look of fear at the mention of that particular interrogator. No one liked Nelson getting too close. He was someone Messina had personally recruited from an Inspectorate HQ in Bangladesh, and everyone knew what he could do. In Inspectorate circles he was known as Leonardo. This related to the artistry of his work, just as that work of his called to mind the anatomical sketches of Leonardo Da Vinci.