Fox Hunt (Fox Meridian Book 1) Read online

  There was the sudden tightening deep between her legs. Her hands tightened on his shoulders in response, and her eyes jammed shut, and the tension grew until there was just so much that she knew she would break… And then the explosion. It was like an explosion, sort of, but it roared out from her sex and consumed her slowly, burning its way up her body and down her legs until it filled her brain with noise and… fell away into quiet aside from the sound of Draken of North Reach panting in her ear.

  ‘Lady Zorra,’ he said, his voice soft and hoarse, ‘I’ll be sure to look you up again should you return to Alexandria.’ Somehow he had gathered the mental capacity and coordination to take her hand and press four coins into it.

  ‘My pleasure, sir,’ Fox replied, standing and straightening her skirts and the thong he had pushed aside. Flashing him a smile, she strutted away down the alley. She would give Cleopatra the coins: it was not like she had an account to lodge the money with.

  ~~~

  Fox opened her eyes, blinked a couple of times, and laid aside the induction grip she was using to provide a cable connection to Kit’s server. Sighing, she squeezed the bridge of her nose and pushed aside the nagging sensation that her mind had partaken of an orgasm her body had not been privy to. And then she opened her eyes and wondered why she was seeing double.

  ‘Uh… Kit?’

  ‘One second, please. I need to synchronise my memories.’ There were two Kits sitting on the carpet facing each other, identical in every way including the look of slight annoyance. And then there was one, her mouth turning up into a smile. ‘There, now I am up to date with what happened within the viron. It seems you had a good time.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware that you could do that.’

  ‘I can partition off two additional copies of my runtime if required, executing one on my second quantum core and one on another, possibly external, processor. I could execute on your implant’s AI processor, but it would be… severely limiting.’

  ‘Right. So did you have a good time with Vali?’

  ‘We talked.’

  ‘That’s all?’ Fox raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I believe that Vali was interested in my mind,’ Kit stated firmly. ‘We talked about my inception and training, and I learned some things which you may find useful.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. I have the real name and identification of the gentleman who had you pinned against the wall.’

  Fox coughed. ‘You saw that, huh?’

  ‘Yes.’ Kit paused, getting to her feet and walking over to sit down beside Fox. ‘Might I ask what the experience is like?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I’m an AI. I’ve never engaged in that form of sensual experience and I’m not really sure I could do so. What is it like?’

  ‘Uh…’ Fox leaned back on the couch and looked up at the ceiling. ‘I think it’s different for everyone. I mean, there are bound to be similarities, but what we feel is probably different. I think. And for me it’s never quite the same in VR. It’s like there’s something missing. I always feel a little let down, especially when I’m out. It’s like I’ve had the mental and emotional release, but the physical has been denied me.’

  ‘Which it has. The nanoprobe implants in your brain isolate much of the physical signals which would normally propagate during the activities simulated in VR. It’s akin to the physiological shut-off during REM sleep and there for the same reason. Physical reaction to what happens in VR could–’

  ‘Result in physical harm if it were acted upon by the body. I know, Kit. It just makes sex seem… less fulfilling. But to answer your question… No, actually, I’m not sure I can answer it, but when it’s just right it’s one of the purest pleasures I know of. What was the other thing you learned?’

  ‘Miss Paretski was the one who first introduced Miss Trent to Niflhel.’

  Fox frowned. ‘Is that so? So she either has a really lousy memory or she was lying to me. What I’m not really sure of is why she’d lie.’

  ‘I would suggest that there is only one way to find out.’

  ‘Uh-huh. I’ll go ask her tomorrow.’

  ~~~

  ‘Best laid plans,’ Fox muttered as she rode the elevator to Jackson Martins’ apartment. She had received a request for her to go to the MarTech offices as soon as her eyes had opened: Jackson had news for her. It was Teresa Martins who was waiting in the lobby when the doors opened, however.

  Pretty much everyone said that Terri took after her mother. Jackson went so far as to add ‘thank God’ to that statement, but he generally ignored the fact that he had certainly provided Terri with a significant boost in brain power. Not that Lysandra Martins had been stupid, by any stretch of the imagination, but compared to her husband most people were dunces. Lysandra had, in fact, been quite an accomplished psychologist, but after her marriage to Jackson the media had focused only on the fact that she was a stunningly beautiful African-American and he was… not exactly her aesthetic equal. Clearly that meant she had married him for his money. Jackson had, apparently, been more annoyed about the assertion than Lysandra.

  Whatever the case, Terri had done well out of the union. She was a very attractive girl with long black hair, full lips, eyes which were somewhere close to a golden brown, faultless black skin, and a trim figure with quite enough curves, but not too much either. The gossip channels were constantly suggesting she was seeing some man or other from the rich and/or famous set, and as far as Fox was aware, they had never been right about a single one of them. Terri kept her private life private, and did not restrict her few physical relationships to men. Right now Terri was dressed in a short, grey tank dress and heeled pumps, doing her corporate employee thing, but she was grinning.

  ‘Clearly low gravity does you good. You’re looking well,’ Terri said by way of hello.

  ‘Low gravity makes me grumpy. I’ve had time to get over it. Your father requested my presence.’

  ‘I know.’ She turned and started for the solarium with all the poise several years of deportment training could provide. ‘How’s Kit?’

  ‘Cute, curious… maybe working out better than I’d expected.’

  ‘Poppa said you’d got her analysing a case.’

  ‘Summarising profiles, suggesting potential suspects. She is supposed to be good at working through a lot of data, right?’

  ‘That’s one of the things AIs are better at than humans, yes. She’s a good design, and I hope I’ve got the personality right. She’s easy to get on with?’

  ‘Yeah… Generally. If I hadn’t been dragged off-planet I’d be able to give you a better report. I think she got herself a boyfriend already.’

  Terri stopped, turning in the doorway to look back. ‘You’re kidding.’

  Fox shrugged. ‘We met a guy calling himself Vali who kept her company and said she had a nice mind.’

  ‘Huh. Have to keep an eye on that in the other test models. Poppa’s in his office. Come on.’

  The office was through the solarium and left into the lounge, which had a large window looking out on the park, and then back into the tower. Jackson had his bedroom and office away from the outside walls because he liked it dark when he slept, and he liked privacy when he was working on some projects. Terri led Fox into the quite large room with its huge array of screens and bank of consoles, made sure the door was closed, and then nodded to her father who activated the full security suite. Fox heard the locks engage and knew the physical barriers were the least of what had just been initiated.

  ‘You really don’t want this being overheard, do you?’ Fox said to Jackson as he tapped at keys and data began to appear on the wall. Jackson was happy with virtual consoles and in-vision displays, but also liked the solid kind for some tasks.

  ‘No. No, I don’t. We cracked the file and we’ve decrypted all of it and, as I surmised, it contains a lot of data from Jenner Research Station.’

  ‘We’ve already kicked off an investigation into how he managed to get it out
,’ Terri said, sounding annoyed.

  ‘However,’ Jackson went on, ‘I’ve gone over what’s here. It’s complete, but old. It looks like an archived database from two or three months ago. There were several significant problems still outstanding which have been resolved since then. If anyone tried to use this… They would not get what they were hoping for.’

  ‘What?’ Fox asked. ‘Are we talking grey goo scenarios? Weird infomorphs taking over the net? I’m still not clear on what you were working on that could be of any use to NIX or United Anarchy.’

  ‘They want the nanobot control software,’ Terri supplied. ‘It’s unique. It’s a paradigm shift in adaptive software. I mean… I can’t wait to be able to experiment with larger, wider-scale applications, but–’

  ‘But I’m a little worried about my daughter’s stroke of genius,’ Jackson said. ‘I wish to take things slowly.’

  ‘Terri’s idea?’ Fox asked.

  ‘It’s ours,’ Terri said. ‘Poppa will tell you it’s mine, but I just came up with the concept and let him use me as a sounding board while he turned it into something workable.’

  ‘My daughter is entirely too modest, and her ideas about using this to create an entirely new type of AI are hers, and hers alone.’

  Terri giggled. ‘It’s the integration of multiple swarm intelligences that’s the key.’ Fox looked blankly at her. ‘Our current AI software is limited by the processing power of the computer executing it, yes? And we tend to find that throwing power at the problem produces diminishing returns. It doesn’t make sense. Someone with an IQ of one-sixty does not have a significantly more powerful brain than someone with an average IQ, but to get that kind of difference in an AI, we’d need…’

  ‘Something like a million billion times the processing power,’ Jackson supplied. ‘Clearly we are doing something wrong. Clearly the model we use to create our AIs does not scale well. Teresa believes that this “fractal connective model” will provide better scaling, and possibly result in more effective AIs using lower-powered processors.’

  ‘We’re already seeing it in the nanobot swarms we’ve been testing at Jenner. They have really weak processors, but they are proving capable of far more complex behaviour than their combined power should allow. The sum of the parts is proving greater than the whole.’

  Fox’s brow creased, and her index finger tapped on pursed lips. ‘So… you could create an AI which utilised whatever processing power it could find, linking it all together to add to its… distributed brain? Every added component raising its intellect beyond the level of the combined components?’

  Terri nodded. ‘It’s the complexity and efficiency of the network which matters, not the power of the nodes.’

  ‘I can see why you’re worried, Jackson. This is nightmare stuff.’

  Terri pouted. ‘It’s not. It’s–’

  ‘Terri, the idea is scary, as in it’ll scare people. They’ll be seeing this as a “virus taking over the internet” thing, but it’s also heading right for that old “Singularity” concept. You could easily end up with something you can’t understand or control.’

  ‘Well, I admit it needs some careful planning and a lot of simulation, but the point is that the UA would likely use it to try to take over the net and NIX…’ Terri frowned and looked at her father.

  ‘I believe that NIX have substantial AI assets deployed in monitoring internet traffic,’ Jackson said. He held up his hand to forestall the comment Fox was about to make. ‘I know it’s a conspiracy favourite, that NIX watches everything we do, that it’s the real Big Brother, but I’ve some evidence to suggest that there is a kernel of truth there. A more powerful AI, or a distributed AI technology, would be highly useful in the espionage business, even if they don’t already spy on everything we do.’

  Fox gave a shrug. ‘I’ll concede that point. I’ve never bought into them being that effective, but I could certainly see them wanting to be. And I agree that UA would love this. If either has the data on the stick, what do they have?’

  ‘The communications protocols scale badly. Beyond a few tens of thousands of nodes, adding more degrades performance rather than increasing it. No super-intelligence, and no internet-swallowing virus.’

  ‘Okay. That’s what they were after. Why did they kill Hunt before he could get it back to Earth?’

  ‘That,’ Jackson said, ‘I don’t know. If it’s all right with you, I’m going to have the information my people at Jenner find funnelled through to you. Perhaps if we find out how he got in and out with the information it will shed some light on why he did not get all the way.’

  Fox nodded. ‘Of course it’s fine. Encrypt it and send it through Kit though. I don’t think I want Canard seeing it unfiltered.’

  ~~~

  ‘So far,’ Canard said, leaning back in his chair and contemplating the ceiling, ‘you’ve got industrial espionage, and someone took out the spy before he could return to Earth. There’s nothing to tie that to NIX. Actually it suggests MarTech would be suspects more than anyone else.’

  ‘If they’d known what he was up to before I told them,’ Fox replied.

  ‘You said Martins suspected Hunt beforehand.’

  ‘Of being NIX, or something similar, not of having got his hands on anything. Besides, if they had done it, they could have covered up their involvement very easily. They could have just swallowed the data, created a fake, or told us they’d failed to decrypt it.’

  Canard gave a grunt, conceding the point. ‘Do you think you’ll get anywhere with this unless MarTech’s enquiry comes up with anything?’

  ‘You want to send me back out to Shackleton? Maybe with a side trip to Jenner?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Then we’re waiting for Jackson’s people to find something. Besides, I’ve got the Trent homicide to deal with too. I’d like to go up to Boston to interview some of the people she was working with up there. I have found a way of cutting the expenses though.’

  He lifted his head and looked at her, raising an eyebrow. ‘You have?’

  In-flight, Northbound to Boston Metro, 21st January.

  ‘Oh yeah… This is how travel is supposed to be.’ The pilot, sitting back in the seat beside Fox’s, laughed as he heard her over the headsets they were wearing. She was pleased to note that he did not seem concerned over her current flight plan, which was skimming over the Atlantic at a height of ten metres and a speed just a bit in excess of two hundred knots. It was not especially close to the vertol’s top speed, but she did not feel like pushing it.

  ‘You ever fly one operationally?’ the pilot asked.

  ‘The combat models? No. Training, sure, but I never needed to fly one in anger. You’re ex-military?’

  ‘I did five years on aerospace tactical operations. Not that we got to do a whole helluva lot of real ops, but we did a lot of exercises.’

  ‘And now you ferry MarTech personnel up and down the coast.’

  ‘Better paid, and I’m home at night with my wife and daughter.’

  ‘I guess that’s way too much plus to ignore. I admit it’s nice to have a place I can really call my own to go home to.’ Her implant flagged up a course change relayed from the flight computer and she swung the nimble little aircraft to port. ‘Five minutes out. I guess you should take over.’

  The pilot sighed and reached for his stick. ‘Yeah… I guess I should.’

  Boston Metro.

  Boston had managed to keep a big chunk of its central city area intact thanks to a lot of old New England money. You had to get out as far as the I-90 before you saw arcologies, and the Sprawl which covered much of the west of New York Metro was kept well back from the genteel city in the north. Fox had to take an autocab from the MarTech building in South Boston across the bay to East Boston, which was where the city planners had decided the newer, slightly uglier, semi-industrial buildings should be hidden away beside the airport.

  The offices of Mystery and Mayhem were distinctly less well sit
uated than those of their competitor, occupying a building which looked more like a warehouse than an office in a business park with a high wall surrounding it. Fox passed the reason for the wall on the way in: the Sprawl had made it here in the form of various random constructions of scrap and cast-offs which people were using as their homes.

  Instead of a human receptionist, the station had a perfectly presentable but off-the-shelf gynoid apparently being run by their administrative AI. It was not an uncommon practice when you did not expect many visitors to your building, but Fox was a little surprised to see it in a media company.

  ‘Inspector Meridian,’ the machine said, smiling. It had a nice voice, she had to admit that. ‘Mystery and Mayhem are pleased to welcome you. Mister Poll is available in office three which is to your right.’

  ‘Thank you, uh, Sheila is it?’ There was a name plaque on the reception desk, but it just gave the one name, Sheila.

  ‘The staff like to call this frame by that name. They say that it gives it more personality.’

  ‘Right… thanks.’ Fox turned right and immediately spotted a door at the side of the reception area labelled with a ‘3.’ The admin AI, she decided as she headed for the office, was not a class 4 like Kit, but a lot of people felt that class 2s and 3s did the job and were less likely to decide to take over the world. They were cheaper too.

  Grant Poll looked like a man with too much on his mind. He was attractive, of course, and not too old according to the profile she had on him. His hair was black and he had sharp, blue eyes, and not a single wrinkle to be seen, but he looked harried. He glanced at Fox as she walked in and she saw irritation flicker across his features. He was not best pleased with her turning up to talk to him.

  ‘Mister Poll? I’m Inspector Tara Meridian, NAPA precinct nineteen. I’m doing background interviews regarding the death of Julianne Marie Trent.’

  ‘I know who you are and why you’re here, Inspector.’ Poll waved at a seat, his irritation not subsiding. ‘You understand that I’m short a principal writer on my premier show because of this.’