DeathWeb (Fox Meridian Book 3) Read online

  ‘That probably explains it then,’ Fox said. ‘I’ve been getting various requests to accept delegations from cops all through the afternoon.’

  ‘And you said you didn’t like politics,’ Marie said from Fox’s other side. She had swapped her boots for heeled pumps, but was still in the same lemon outfit otherwise.

  ‘I don’t. I just get stuck with it a lot. Helen gave me her vote because she figured I had her best interests at heart.’

  ‘And I gave her mine,’ Sam added, ‘because I felt her personal and corporate ethics were in line with my views.’ Sam was in black slacks and a black silk shirt, his black hair pulled firmly back from his face, and he looked like an oriental god, probably an evil and seductive one.

  ‘And that was all fine,’ Fox went on, ‘because I knew them and it all seemed reasonable, but I’m not sure I should be collecting them. I’ve got… What’s the count now, Kit?’

  ‘Twenty-three detectives, four officers,’ Kit replied, not turning from her examination of the patrons around them.

  ‘I didn’t talk to that many,’ Dillan said, frowning.

  ‘I have put aside eighteen further requests which have come through this evening. From the names, these appear to be family members attached to the policemen.’

  Fox sighed. ‘Just accept them all for now and make sure we have their IDs. I’ll talk to someone about how to handle this stuff. I think I should probably send something out to them and tell them what my views are. Make sure they really want to give me their vote.’

  ‘And you say you have no head for politics,’ Dillan said, grinning. ‘How’re the house modifications coming along?’

  ‘Expected completion on the eleventh, but it might take a little longer. Experimental this, that, and the other, you know?’

  ‘No, but I can’t wait to find out. Can I come see? I’ll sign a waiver or whatever.’

  ‘Ask Terri. Isn’t she supposed to be here?’

  ‘Working late. She said she’d be over later. She promised. She made a couple of suggestions about what she wanted to do after so I’m pretty sure she’ll make it.’

  ~~~

  Terri strutted into 27Lex in an almost indecently short, scarlet dress with a very low, cowl neckline and barely any back to it. She looked tired and also like she owned the place.

  ‘You made it,’ Fox said.

  ‘I made it. Sorry I’m late, but we just got the deep education programming working for the forensics AIs.’

  Fox gave her a quizzical frown. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means we’ll have trial versions of the AIs available as soon as Poppa can get the prototype hardware ready, but please try to avoid needing Pythia for the next few days.’

  ‘That’s fast.’

  Terri gave a shrug. ‘Two weeks. Setting up a basic AI isn’t that hard, it’s the specialised training. Getting Pythia to do it means she can basically blast them through the training at speed, and they won’t stop for breaks. Training Pythia… Now that took some time.’

  ‘Wow. I thought I’d have more difficulty with this project.’

  ‘It’s not over yet. You’re going to need to have some of these things do the work and maybe re-educate them on how to do it the way you want. It’s kind of like training a human, but it can be faster for some things.’

  ‘Okay. I can work with that. I’ll give Ryan a heads-up on Monday. Now go do something about Helen before she drools all over the bar.’

  ‘She’s in a skirt. She’s got great legs.’

  Fox grinned. ‘Yeah, well, takes one to know one. What doll did you borrow that dress from?’

  Terri grinned back. ‘I haven’t been able to get into my doll clothes for years.’

  ‘You’re almost not in that.’

  ‘Hush you. Your young redhead can’t keep her eyes off you either.’

  ‘Ah the burden of adoration.’ Fox watched as Terri stalked across the space to Dillan, wrapping arms around exposed waist and smiling broadly. She noticed Sam sliding away from them too, though she was fairly sure he just wanted a word while the others were distracted.

  ‘No urges to throw Marie out of a window yet?’ Sam asked, confirming the suspicion.

  ‘No. Why?’

  He gave a slight shrug. ‘We’re all going to be living under more or less the same roof. You I know I can put up with. She seems like a nice girl, but I’ve not spent that much time with her.’

  ‘Her most annoying habit is hogging the mirror in the bedroom so that she can practise her acting. Oh, and wearing really bright colours first thing in the morning. On the other hand, she’s good eye candy, and she’s got her own space for the acting practice when she moves back into your basement.’

  ‘I can live with that. Isabella says the feedback she’s had from casting has been positive. Our young actress is likely to land something soon. She still lacks a little confidence when she’s in front of a director.’

  ‘Hard to believe. How can you lack confidence and go out to a club like this wearing an outfit with less cloth than a handkerchief?’

  ‘She’s got an ex-cop, a bodyguard, and a current cop looking after her here, and all she really has to worry about is wandering hands and lascivious stares. Plus, she’s doing it more to look nice for you.’

  ‘And when she’s doing a casting call, she’s alone and she’s doing it all for herself. Yeah. But she’s getting there. Little Marie Shaftsbury from Sioux Falls on the IB channels. Did you know she came out of the Kansas Belt?’

  ‘Uh… Yes. I think she mentioned it at one point when I first got the house. She was babbling a little as she showed me around the place.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Had a crush on you, but then what girl in her right mind doesn’t?’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘And what does that say about me?’

  5th June.

  Shopping was not one of Fox’s favourite activities, but Marie had suggested a walk around the mall levels and it was a Saturday afternoon sort of activity. It got them out of the apartment, and bed, which was not a bad thing. Looking at shoes was not so great, but what was actually bugging Fox just a little were the signs of the massacre that had happened there barely two weeks earlier.

  There was not much to see. A man had walked through the mall with a missile launcher and an automatic minigun, people had died, and now you could barely tell. The image-enhancement software Fox ran more or less routinely probably showed up more of the repair work than regular people would have noticed, but she could see the scars.

  ‘You are not looking like a woman enjoying herself,’ Marie noted as she noticed Fox’s reflection in a window.

  ‘I am. I’m… Okay, so this is where Sullivan had his little spree.’ Fox pointed upward at the frame the window was in. ‘See the fresh sealant there where they had to replace this window? Last time I came through here, this had been shot out.’

  Marie peered at the window, saw the whiter-than-usual sealant, but also spotted the bright green, mesh fabric platform shoes with the five-inch heels. They had small fans in the platform soles to force air between your toes, and they were incandescent. ‘You stopped him, and you limited the casualties. It was horrible, and I’m going to remember that day as long as I live, but you stopped him and I have to have those shoes!’

  Fox shook her head and followed Marie into the boutique. Shopping in 2060 was something of an odd affair. Clothes shopping was often doubly so. Frequently what you were buying was the pattern licence for the garment which you could have made up by a fabricator any time you wished. Many of the designs were expected to be worn once and recycled: Fox’s bodysuits followed that mould, as did the socks she wore with trainers. There were still things made from material which was built to stick around, or had sufficient complexity or bulk that durability was important. Shoes frequently fell into that category, so the shop actually had storage in the back for pre-sized footwear.

  ‘So… It’s an air-conditioned killer-pump?’ Fox said, watching Marie
try on a shoe which the assistant said was the right size.

  ‘Fourteen-centimetre heel and a four-centimetre platform… Not especially killer. And I’ll have cool toes.’

  ‘Heat rises, naturally,’ the assistant said, beaming, ‘so the coolest air is at your feet and this forces that up through the patented aeration sole.’

  Fox suspected that there was a fundamental flaw in this idea which had something to do with sun-baked sidewalks. Pretty soon now, people would be bitching about failures in the slideways as the heat messed up the mechanism; every year the city went through the same complaints as the summer temperature soared. Of course, the people who really suffered, the sprawlers, did not get to complain much, or loudly enough. NAPA would be out in the Sprawl already checking for people who were sick from the heat, or beyond saving. Absently, she wondered what was going to happen with that aspect of the system if it all went private.

  ‘That sounds suspiciously like bullshit,’ Marie said, ‘but you’ve got a sale anyway.’ She glanced up at Fox. ‘It’s powered by body heat and the pressure shifts from walking!’

  ‘And you can see all the fans whizzing around when it does its stuff!’ Fox replied, her eyes widening in fake enthusiasm.

  ‘Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.’

  ‘You do know that the only people who say that are the ones too dumb to understand it, right?’

  ‘Oscar Wilde said it.’

  Fox smirked at her. ‘Attributed to Oscar Wilde, in which case the full quote would be “Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, but the highest form of intelligence.” However, it’s only attributed, never written down where it can be proven. Kit’s faster at research tasks than LWOS.’

  ‘I should shut up while I’m holding my ground. You’d look amazing in those boots.’

  The boots in question had ridiculous spiked heels, an inch or so of platform, and seemed to consist of a lot of straps bound to a vertical strip which would sit over her calves. Fox tended to consider shoe heights in inches, rather than centimetres: America was still to get over its old system entirely, but people Marie’s age were more metric than the older ones. The boots were insane. Entirely impractical. ‘Do you do them in purple?’

  7th June.

  Fox watched as Marie practised her lines for an audition she was doing in the afternoon. Kit was also watching, and replaying the performance to the performer from Fox’s point of view. Fox thought that sounded far too complex, certainly too distracting. Marie seemed to be coping.

  Kit was certainly coping. While doing the relay job for Marie, she was happily continuing to function as Fox’s PA, and it was in that role that she began scrolling data across Fox’s vision field and popped up a 2D avatar to chat through. ‘Fox, I’ve received briefing documents through from Palladium. The Regional Private Policing Resolution, twenty sixty dash six nine one, has just received sufficient petitioners and is now scheduled for a vote on August second.’

  Fox frowned and Marie came to a sudden stop. ‘Did I do something wrong?’ Marie asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Fox told her, ‘you let yourself get distracted by your audience. Kit just gave me some information I was hoping wouldn’t turn up for a while.’

  ‘That vote?’

  ‘Uh-huh. You don’t need anyone to go with you this afternoon, do you? I have a feeling I’m going to get thrown into a lot of meetings.’

  ‘I’m fine on my own. No problem. You should start reading the resolution details and stop pretending I’m not boring you rigid.’

  ‘Reading the resolution is going to bore me rigid, and I’d rather watch you doing nude Shakespeare.’

  Giggling and starting off for the bedroom, Marie shook her head. ‘I’ll go practise out of sight and you can concentrate.’

  Fox smiled and let her go, and then sighed. ‘Kit, set me up a viron to work through all these documents, and let me know when Eaves wants to hold the meeting.’

  ‘You seem very sure there will be one,’ Kit replied.

  ‘I am very sure. Has Marie put any clothes on?’

  ‘No. She still wants me to run the feedback visuals for her, but has not bothered dressing.’

  ‘Then put a screen in the environment so I’ve got something extra to watch, would you?’

  ‘Of course, Fox,’ Kit replied, sounding distinctly amused.

  ~~~

  Dia Barrera was a very attractive woman of Mexican descent, not very tall, but with a lush body, full lips, curly black hair, and large, Bambi-like brown eyes. And anyone who took her at face value was asking to have their guts ripped out and spread out for the vultures to feast upon. Barrera had been lured out of academia by Mariel Hoarsen, MarTech’s CEO, to be their head political analyst. Hoarsen never hired anyone personally who was not exceptionally good at their job and Barrera had a mind like a cross between a steel trap and a hunting tiger shark. The only thing about Barrera that gave away her predatory nature, in Fox’s view, was her nails, which she invariably wore long and painted some shade of red.

  ‘The resolution itself is quite conservative,’ Barrera said from her place at the table in the main conference room in the MarTech tower. Hoarsen was there, Jackson Martins was there, and Fox was sitting watching her too. The rest of the Palladium board, including David Graves the chairman, were there via telepresence, their images projected into the room via everyone’s implants. ‘Basically, the intent is to expand the existing ability to provision local policing via local vote and contract. It applies only outside the metro zones. The wording on validation of policing policy references the existing rules and regulations for NAPA and proposes that NAPA becomes responsible for enforcing standards. There are quite detailed budgetary analyses, and while that is not my area, our initial scan through them indicates accuracy and thoroughness. There is every possibility that this vote will pass with a good majority.’

  ‘Do you have forecasted percentages yet?’ Jackson asked.

  ‘A little early. Give me a day.’ Barrera gave him a smile and he nodded. ‘I would suggest that damage limitation is appropriate here rather than fighting the case. It is unlikely that we can sway opinion against this resolution, but we should point out the potential hazards and press for as much oversight as possible. I’ve begun a process to put in an amendment which will increase the frequency of audits. We have fourteen days to submit any amendments we feel deserve attention, and I plan to use all of that time.’

  ‘There were a bunch of amendments presented with the resolution,’ Fox said. ‘Number six caught my attention.’

  Barrera favoured Fox with a smile. She had very white teeth. ‘I understood you disliked politics, Miss Meridian. You seem to have done the homework.’

  ‘This is important and I like to know what I’m up against.’

  ‘Indeed. Amendment six is likely not something to worry about. It’s a toe in the water. In short, the amendment proposes that the same privatisation rules apply to metro zones, but there are no detailed proposals, no budget. The proposers know that it will be a simple matter for their opponents to point this out and they do not expect this to pass.’

  ‘But they want to see what the vote looks like. If they can get a high enough percentage in the metro zones, they can be sure of a good result when they launch the next step.’

  ‘Precisely. Everyone is going to be watching that amendment. And you say you’re no good at politics…’

  ‘Neither Fox nor I like politics,’ Graves said, ‘but both of us have training in strategy. Amendment nine was the one which made my palms itch.’

  This time Barrera frowned. ‘Nine is the national security directive.’

  ‘It’s basically pressing for NIX to become involved in the audit process,’ Fox said. ‘They would get direct oversight and influence of every company bidding for policing contracts.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Graves said. ‘I think I see a fair amount of NIX in this entire vote. I’m sure they put resource into compiling the budget figures. There simply aren’t the names among the pro
posers to command this kind of resource. Amendment nine is them tipping their hand, if you’re looking for it.’

  Barrera nodded a little slowly. ‘It’s badly phrased, vague. It needs significant work to make it solid, but that could be a problem. It could pass as an “obvious idea.” The need for a security consideration in policing could be seen as a simple, basic requirement, and then the National Intelligence Executive could step in as the nation’s security experts.’ She pursed her pretty lips. ‘We play it as too obvious. No need for a separate statement of requirement because it’s implicit in the regulations already.’

  ‘It is,’ Fox stated. ‘NAPA is required to inform NIX of any case with security implications. Private contractors would need to do the same. That amendment pushes NIX into a position of direct oversight and that is something which was denied them when they were formed.’

  ‘Their idea of oversight will undoubtedly involve them poking their noses into places they should not be poking them,’ Jackson said. ‘Given that Technologies is going to be providing equipment to Palladium, and Services contracts to Palladium for the supply of computing resources and technical support, they could be digging through most of the business, stealing whatever they felt like under the auspices of an audit.’

  ‘And they would get people in the door at NAPA. We know they have them in covertly, but these ones would be official, recognised. They’d be agents working on the process of internal policing.’

  The political analyst looked up the table to where Jackson, Hoarsen, and Graves were seated. ‘I need General Graves and Miss Meridian working on the presentation for this one.’