DeathWeb (Fox Meridian Book 3) Read online

  The two avatars appeared, Kit waving and Belle executing a small bow, which seemed to fit their personalities quite well.

  ‘We met Belle on the door screen,’ Andrea said. ‘I’d assumed she was human.’

  ‘Belle is the household AI,’ Fox explained. ‘One of MarTech’s latest. She’s housed down in the basement, but she can be anywhere she needs to be. Kit is my personal assistant. That’s her server over by the wall. Drinks? Something cold, perhaps? Do we have any beer, Belle?’

  ‘I have cold beer in stock,’ Belle replied smoothly. ‘There is wine in the cooler as well as a variety of soft drinks.’

  ‘Beer, Dad? Mom, you’ll have a glass of wine?’ Getting nods, Fox smiled. ‘Two glasses of wine then, Belle, and a beer. Let’s sit down.’ Belle vanished with another bow of the head.

  ‘Your PA seems to have an unusual avatar design,’ Andrea said as she arranged herself on the sofa. Fox took the chair and let her father sit beside her mother.

  ‘I am a Kitsune dash five nine two personal AI, Mrs Meridian,’ Kit said. ‘My form was selected to match the name. Currently my series is not on the market, but will be soon.’

  ‘Jackson and Terri like throwing experimental kit at me for product testing,’ Fox added. ‘Apparently I’m good at it. Kit helps me with investigations, which is not something they originally planned but it’s worked well.’

  ‘Of course, we saw the reports about you rescuing Teresa Martins from terrorists,’ Andrea said.

  ‘Twice,’ Jonathan added.

  ‘She’s under orders not to let it happen again,’ Fox replied, ‘but that UA cell is now dead or in Rikers, so she’s probably safe.’

  ‘United Anarchy are still not your favourite people, I take it.’

  ‘Not really. You’re still farming, Dad?’

  Jonathan seemed to accept the change of subject without qualms. ‘Not like I did. Got enough money together to buy a patch of my own. We’re not entirely self-sufficient, but between what I can grow to eat and sell we do okay, and there’s enough to let us do the political work we want to do.’

  ‘I shouldn’t imagine you approve of that part,’ Andrea said, and the smile was too flat again.

  Fox stared at her for a second and then spoke before Jonathan could intervene. ‘I don’t like your politics, Mom, but I’m proud of you.’ Andrea’s eyes widened: she had not expected that. ‘You’re actually standing up and doing something about what you believe in. I respect that. That’s why I left. I wanted to take action, not talk about it. You didn’t understand that at the time.’

  ‘I… may have been… less than supportive.’ And Fox was fairly sure that was as close to an apology as she was going to get. ‘You’ve come a long way since you became a soldier.’

  ‘Army transferred me to the UNTPP. I was one of their top antiterrorism ops and they wanted someone like that in the new agency.’ Fox sighed. ‘The trouble with them and NAPA is the politics. It messes everything up. People are more concerned with how things will look than they are with getting the job done. This damn conference was more of the same. I’d be pissed off more, but the murderer I’m hunting at the moment is a slippery one and he’s technically NAPA’s case.’

  ‘Everyone heard about the body they found,’ Jonathan said. ‘That the man?’

  ‘That’s him. Kit’s been working his profile. The girl we found this week is his twelfth victim worldwide. He’s clever, meticulous, and mad as a bag of cats. But… I think he’s back in America for a reason. Back in New York for a reason. I think we’re going to nail him soon.’

  Fox paused and looked around as one of the arachnoform house drones came in with a tray of drinks balanced on its back. She stood up to hand out the drinks. ‘Thanks, Belle. Anyway, modern policing is complicated, especially on a case like this. I was negative about your chances of clearing up homicides before, but out in the Belt it’s not the same. You’ll mostly be dealing with domestics. Single deaths or groups of family members. As long as your investigators remember to question close relatives, boyfriends, and girlfriends, they’ll do okay. But the folks I remember from back there will try to find an outsider first. That’s where the training comes in. And I didn’t want to start this discussion over again.’

  ‘Ah,’ Jonathan said, ‘well, we did want to bring something up that’s related.’

  ‘That wasn’t why we asked to come,’ Andrea added hurriedly, ‘but we got some news from home last night which… Do you remember the Batesons?’

  Fox frowned, having to drag up her own memory since it had been before her implant. ‘Mal and Crystal? They had a daughter not long before I left.’

  ‘Sandy,’ Jonathan supplied, nodding. ‘Sandy has gone missing. NAPA suspect she’s run off to Chicago or Detroit and they’re looking for her there, but Mal thinks she was taken.’

  ‘Taken?’

  ‘There were people up from the Southern Protectorate this week for the market. Mal thinks one of them, maybe a group, grabbed her.’

  ‘We have a fund,’ Andrea said. ‘Lots of local people put into it to hire… extra security if it’s needed. Part of that supports the Watch, but we’d like to hire you to come home and see if your technology can find Sandy.’

  Fox frowned. ‘Mom, if she’s gone down into there…’

  ‘You can’t do worse than NAPA have already done. Call it an exercise in proving to us that what you have can do something we need. You know we have trouble from the dustbowl gangs from time to time.’

  Taking a drink, Fox considered her options and decided that she had one. There was a girl missing and possibly the captive of a gang of thugs. ‘I’ll run it past my management. I can fly out on Monday if they give me the go-ahead.’

  Part Three: Dust, Sweat, and Tears

  Topeka Agri-Zone, 28th June 2060.

  Hot wind from the south, driven across miles of flat arable land and then superheated to incandescence across the airfield, smacked into Fox’s face as she stepped out of the hangar which had been arranged for Pythia’s vertol. Or that was what it felt like anyway. ‘Damn. Mom complained about New York? I’d forgotten this place broils in the summer.’

  ‘Temperature and humidity figures are a little higher here,’ Kit agreed. She, of course, looked perfectly comfortable.

  ‘Just be thankful you can’t actually feel it.’ Looking south, Fox stared off into the distance, imagining the conditions three hundred kilometres away. Down toward Tulsa, where there was still a community worth giving the title to, the dust started. The boundary between the Kansas Belt and the Southern Protectorate followed the old Kansas state line down there, but that had been a matter of drawing maps. They still ran livestock down there, mostly sheep genetically modified for the conditions: more like goats really, someone had actually trademarked the design and called them arigeep, but the name had never really stuck.

  ‘We’re loaded up,’ Jonathan Meridian said. Fox turned and flashed her father a smile. ‘I’ve never seen a computer like that on wheels.’

  ‘Pythia’s designed to deploy where she’s needed. So they built her to unlatch from her mountings and move around. She’s not exactly fast, and she’s only got an hour before she needs to be put back on the mains, but she’s mobile. Thanks for coming out with the truck, Dad.’

  ‘Hey, we invited you down here to do this. Eddy Watts has the truck and barely uses it, and me driving means we don’t need to worry anyone else. You can set that big box up in the workshop. There’s air conditioning and three-phase power. No internet line, though.’

  ‘She’ll do fine over radio.’

  ‘Right. You still remember how to drive a Q-bug?’

  Fox laughed as she followed him back into the hangar. ‘I think I can still manage to avoid crashing. Jackson will be envious. He told me it was a shame people didn’t drive anymore.’

  ‘Seems like a sensible man, considering he’s some sort of genius.’

  ‘Jackson is… complicated. And nice. He’s a nice guy. I think you’d li
ke him. You’d disagree on politics and, obviously, he’s way more into technology than you, but he’s sensible, steady. He’d do anything for his daughter.’

  ‘Yeah, well… can’t really say we compare there, considering.’ Going silent, he climbed into the cab of the box truck he had borrowed and waited for Fox to get aboard. The engine, alcohol-fuelled, throbbed into life. ‘When you left, we all said some things that maybe we shouldn’t have let stand like that.’

  ‘We were all pretty angry.’

  ‘Maybe, but we shouldn’t have left it this long. You’re our child, Fox. Parents shouldn’t let their kids slip away like that without trying.’ He pulled the truck out and started across the concrete for the perimeter fence.

  ‘Same could be said for kids and their parents. In the Army, I was too busy, and too pissed off, to do anything. In the UNTPP… I met a guy, Pieter. We weren’t really talking about it, but there was an undercurrent of potential marriage. He was big on family, both parents still alive, two brothers and a sister. Dutch. His family had money. He wanted me to get back in touch with you. Didn’t nag or anything, but he’d quietly push it and I was breaking down.’

  ‘Lots of past tense in there.’

  ‘He was on my team when we went into MarTech Dallas.’

  ‘Ah. I didn’t realise it cost you that much.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, after that I wasn’t very social. Two years in New York and I had three friends. Two of those were Jackson and Terri. Sam’s hard not to get on with and he was next door. We were in and out of each other’s apartments and he’d drag me out to clubs. I mostly worked, finding my feet with NAPA, trying to bury being the so-called hero of Dallas.’

  ‘You and Sam… you’ve, uh…’

  Fox grinned. ‘No, me and Sam haven’t uh. He’s a licensed prostitute and bodyguard. He doesn’t do much recreational sex and I needed a friend, not a lover.’

  Jonathan was silent for a moment: Fox figured he was a little shocked, maybe a lot. ‘Well, he certainly was a good-looking man.’

  ‘You have no idea. Trained in martial arts, body like a god. Tends to walk around barefoot and with no shirt on.’

  ‘Huh. A father does not like to hear this kind of thing from his daughter, you know?’ Fox laughed at that. ‘Anyway, um, Marie seems like a nice girl.’

  ‘She is. Pretty, smart, and I won’t mention her other attributes to save your blushes. Dad, I know you’re not homophobic, and I know you’re not entirely comfortable with same-sex relationships. You don’t have to make nice about it, but it’s there and I like her, so maybe we should just keep quiet about my personal relationships.’

  ‘Works for me, I guess. Remember Daniel Berkewitz? You were seeing him for a while in your teens.’

  ‘Danny? Sure. I remember Danny.’

  ‘Oh, he’s Daniel now. He’s a minister.’

  ‘Danny?! You’re not serious!’

  ‘Church of God’s Mind. His parents didn’t speak to him for a couple of years, but he brought them round. They say he’s still a Christian, and that’s what counts, even if he has some funny ideas.’

  ‘They’re the ones who want to join with God by uploading onto the internet, right? He always did like technology and his parents thumped that Bible pretty hard. Huh, Danny a minister. I remember him fumbling with my bra hooks.’

  ‘And we’re back to places I don’t want to hear about.’

  Fox laughed again. It was nice, driving toward Topeka with her father. When she had left, it had been on a local bus. Topeka had a small maglev system but it did not go out to the airport then. ‘Hey, did they ever take the train lines out to the airport?’

  ‘Three years ago. By local subscription. Never could get the budget from central government.’

  ‘Central government doesn’t have a budget. Or I never saw any of it in NAPA. It’s the same all over, you know? Minimal government. You asked for it, you got it, and it’s pretty damn useless. No point in complaining about it.’

  ‘You may be right,’ he said after a short pause. ‘You know how it is out here. All the administration is out on the east coast and we feel like we’re forgotten. We produce half their damn food and they don’t seem to know we’re here.’

  Fox was silent, partially because he was right. The problem was that they had got where they were because that was what people wanted, and instead of moving back, they just seemed to want to go forward. And she was not interested in talking politics; it would just lead to arguments. ‘City hasn’t changed much,’ she said.

  Topeka was a fairly low city. An enterprising property baron had built one arcology there, in the north of the city, but it was different from the designs in the more space-strapped east. This one was a huge, stepped pyramid, buttressed and fitted with retractable shields to prevent damage if a tornado happened to hit it. The rest of the city was, as far as she knew, not that different from how it had been at the beginning of the century. They were not going far in, the house she had grown up in was on the south-east side and the airport was to the south, but she remembered going to malls and coffee shops in the city with friends.

  ‘If you get the time, you should go in,’ Jonathan said. ‘It’s changed a bit in a decade, but you’ll still find places you know. University’s still there. Remember when you wanted to go there to study agriculture?’

  ‘I was twelve, but yeah, I remember.’ A year later, Susy Linekar had died in a mall in Topeka and Fox had known she needed to do something else with her life. Her parents had never understood and she did not feel like bringing that up now. ‘Is there a local fabricator I can order from? I need a change of clothes, or two. How can Mom complain about the temperature in New York for God’s sake?’

  ‘Ha! Your mother’s so used to complaining about the metros that she couldn’t stop herself, even when she was cooing over the shops. Bought three new dresses while we were there.’

  ‘Yeah, what’s with that? I remember her in jeans and sweaters, respectable dresses in summer.’

  ‘Huh.’ He was silent for a little too long and then, ‘She got herself a new lease of life when I “retired” and she started up the politics. She’ll be showing off one of her new outfits tonight, I’d imagine. We have a few people coming over, you know, welcoming you back, sort of.’

  Fox grimaced. ‘Oh, right…’

  ‘I tried to talk her out of it, but she was determined. You and her have always had a stubborn streak.’

  ‘Can’t argue that one, I guess. I’d say we know what we want. And I grew out of it, mostly.’

  ‘I’ll take that on advisement. Anyway, you’ll like some of the folks coming. Old Bart Wade’ll be there.’

  ‘He’s still alive?’

  ‘Ninety-three and still the same old curmudgeon. Had a bit of a scare a couple of years back. Had to have an artificial heart put in. He got his hips and knees replaced five years ago. He was slowing down a little before that. Doesn’t smoke as much as he did, but he still drinks like a fish. His liver will be next. Joke is he’ll be the first man in Topeka to have his whole body converted to cybernetics. He says he’s worth more as scrap than he is for anything else.’

  ‘I doubt that. I still remember him telling me stories on his front stoop.’

  ‘He still sits out there of a summer evening, watching the world go by. Some things change, but plenty stays the same as always.’

  ~~~

  The house, a two-storey building of wood with shutters on the windows and broad, overhanging eaves, had not changed any since Fox had last seen it, though it looked to have been repainted where it needed it. It had been put up in the Revived Prairie School style and Jonathan had always liked the construction, solid, well-built, what he called ‘honest workmanship.’ There was still a garden at the back, and the trees set around the house did not seem any taller than they had been, or smaller for that matter.

  There were a couple of new buildings on the plot, however. Some of the garden had been lost to a brick-built structure roofed to follow
the same lines as the house. That had a garage at the front and a workshop at the back, which was going to be Pythia’s home for their stay. Behind the garden was a more workmanlike barn and where there had been scrub land down to the river, there were fields and a greenhouse.

  There was space in the garage to house Pythia’s mobile frames, so they were unloaded quickly and then Fox supervised Pythia rolling onto the truck’s rear lift to proceed into the workshop. Pythia did not comment, despite not really needing the help, and the delaying tactic did not really work since Andrea came out after a few minutes.

  It was Monday, nearing lunchtime, and Fox was happy to see that her mother seemed to have some sense since she was wearing a fairly simple, blue summer dress, though the pleated skirt was a little shorter than Fox remembered from her childhood.

  ‘Welcome home, Tara,’ Andrea said, smiling.

  ‘Thanks. It’s actually nice to be back. Once I’ve got Pythia hooked up to the mains, I’ll come in.’

  ‘Of course. That’s a very big box.’

  ‘Pythia’s a class three, but she’s very intelligent and, so I’m told, the basic code behind artificial intelligence doesn’t scale well. So for such a bright mind, you need a stupidly powerful processor.’

  ‘Oh, don’t tell Danny Berkewitz that. He won’t want to know there’s something, well, not quite right about the way they’re made.’

  ‘Huh,’ Fox grinned. ‘Dad said he’d joined the Church.’

  ‘A church, certainly. You know, he told me once that some of them believe that AIs are angels sent from God.’

  ‘Really? Kit, are you an angel sent from God?’

  The foxy avatar appeared, looking a little perplexed. ‘If I am, no one mentioned it to me.’

  ‘I thought Kit was, um, “housed” in that server in your house,’ Andrea said.

  ‘I am, Mrs Meridian. However, I am able to spawn copies of myself which can act independently. The copy you are talking to executes on a quantum processor in Fox’s arm.’