Neal Asher - The Departure

Entering the monitoring room required passing through just as much security as at the gate into the Cell Complex. He went through first, the guard following, but once inside he gestured the man towards the stairs ahead, while scanning the foyer as he did so. No one in evidence down here but still plenty of Complex staff busily hurrying to their next appointments outside, so at any time one or more of those might enter behind him. His driver climbed the stairs ahead of him, glancing over his shoulder.

‘They’ll know you’re here,’ he said conspiratorially, as if he himself had nothing to do with informing them.

‘That won’t be a problem.’ Saul awarded him a brief smile.

Double doors opened into the monitoring room. Sitting at consoles lining three of the walls were seven staff, all wearing enforcer uniforms. A suited woman likely to be Inspectorate Executive began walking towards him, her expression slightly puzzled. Slanting outwards from above the consoles, windows overlooked the mazelike network of cell blocks, and from here he could see readerguns positioned on every roof at each corner. Just for a second he hesitated, some stab of conscience slowing his hand. But it swiftly evaporated.

‘You are citizen Avram Coran,’ began the Inspectorate woman, her mouth tightening as prissily as that of the woman who’d sat next to him on the rotobus.

He stepped forward, past his erstwhile driver, reaching out as if to shake her hand, then locked his stance and chopped backwards, hard. Cartilage gave under the edge of his hand, and his driver staggered back making wet choking sounds. Dropping his briefcase Saul turned and stepped in close to the man, tearing both the machine pistol and the ionic stunner from his belt. He then turned and fired one short burst from the machine pistol. The Inspectorate woman flew backwards, that burst of fire also stitching holes across the backs of two of those at the consoles immediately behind her. Even as she crashed to the floor, he fired to the right with the machine pistol and to the left with the stunner. Two staff managed to get to their feet and grope for weapons at their belts. Shattered glass rained down outside from the monitoring room, shortly followed by one of them. The second danced an electric quickstep until Saul shot him through his forehead.

Saul’s driver lay on the floor, still making gurgling sounds. Clicking the machine pistol down to three-shot bursts, he fired once into the man’s chest and shut him up. One of the console operators, a fat greying man, was trying to crawl for cover, his back bloody and his legs dead behind him. Three more shots spread his brains across the marble-effect tiles. Somewhere out of sight, someone was emitting short panting gasps. Stepping round one of those government-approved vending machines, he found her huddled up against the wall, in a spreading pool of blood.

‘No . . . why? No . . .’

‘Doubtless a question you ask yourself every day,’ he suggested, before he shot her in the face.

Nice to be able to so clearly identify the bad guys, and as far as he was concerned, anyone found within the confines of this place, and not a prisoner, did not deserve to live. That was a privilege of which he now intended to deprive a very large number of them.

4

All Health

Even after national health services across the world turned into a lethal joke for the recipients of treatment, the Committee insisted upon amalgamating them to establish a worldwide service, free to every user. However, with status classification being established in parallel, what free treatment you received from All Health depended on how useful you were to society. Of course, since bureaucrats and politicians ran society and were, in their own opinion, the most useful members of it, they planned their own health care to be some leagues above that of the average citizen. But with the Committee world bureaucracy consisting of over 20 per cent of the population, even before taking into account the useful workers of state-run industries and services like All Health itself, there just weren’t the resources to go around, and therefore their plan lay far from reality. Only the top percentile received twenty-second-century medicine: the cancer-hunting microbots and anti-ageing drugs, the bespoke magic bullets and grafts or even organs grown from their own body tissue, the internal monitors and offline heart pumps ready to spring into action should the actual organ fail. At the other end of the scale, zero-asset citizens received healthcare on a par with that of the decrepit national health systems of the twentieth century, but with the not inconsiderable drawback that the superbugs now enjoyed a lead of a century and a half. Treatment in long-established hospitals presented a major risk, and people fought not to be taken in unless very sure that their ailment would otherwise kill them. Mobile hospitals were a slightly better option, and mobile black hospitals better still, but if you were zero-asset you were unlikely to be able to afford them unless you too were making cash money illegally.

Antares Base

Var backed off and scanned the interior of the crawler. Gisender’s knapsack lay beside her seat, so Var hoisted it up on to the console and opened it. Inside she found a flask, empty, and a lunchbox, empty too, both so prosaic and pathetic, but also a data disc. She powered up the crawler’s com screen, glad to see it still working despite the bullet holes torn through the console, popped the disc out of its case and inserted it into the slot below the screen. It whirred up to speed and immediately a menu appeared. For the moment she ignored it, reaching down next to pick up Gisender who, now dried out like a mummy, was as light as if made of balsa, and carried her into the rear of the crawler. She placed her gently down on the floor, her body reclined on its side since it had frozen in the sitting position, and found a tarpaulin to cover her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said and, as tears started to well in her eyes, she turned away angrily and re-entered the cockpit to occupy Gisender’s seat, and there began scanning the menu.

Var assumed there must be some problem with the crawler’s computer or the disc itself, for the file containing personal messages directed to base personnel was empty, as were the other files containing software updates, Govnet search results and even the latest shipment manifest. However, some files were full: eyes-only stuff for Ricard, which she could not access, and the one containing the latest announcement from Delegate Margot Le Blanc – the usual weekly lecture that all base personnel had to sit through in the community room. Var opened it and let it play.

Le Blanc blinked into existence on the screen. As usual she was seated at her wide, polished and empty desk in her office in Brussels, above her head the space-exploration logo affixed to the wood-panelled wall behind her: a space plane penetrating the ring chain of the united world, all its links differently coloured to represent the various regions of Earth. The woman looked grave, but then that was nothing unusual, and Var felt a sneer appearing on her own face – such as she could never allow herself while watching such a broadcast within view of Ricard or any of his staff. Above desk level, Le Blanc wore a tight grey jacket straining at the buttons over her matronly running-to-fat body and a short-collar blouse, whilst out of sight she doubtless wore a neatly matching skirt and sensible shoes. An Inspectorate brooch cinched her blouse at the throat, but she wore no other jewellery, no make-up, had her hair in a page-boy cut, and a white and utterly utile fone in her ear. Her hands were neat, but meaty, the nails unvarnished. It seemed to Var that cloning technology must be more advanced than she had supposed, for many women in the upper echelons of the world bureaucracy looked just like Le Blanc.