Criminal Minds (Fox Meridian Book 4) Read online

  Naomi smiled. ‘I’ll see if I can arrange a sit-in on one of our advanced classes. We do courses for performance artists, stage and vid. That’s likely a little more… explicit than you’ll need, but it may be useful.’

  ‘Thank you. You’re being really helpful.’

  ‘I’d be inclined to help simply because… Well, Sam hasn’t shown any inclination to romantic involvement since me. You must be quite special, Marie.’

  Marie blinked. ‘You and Sam were…’

  ‘He didn’t mention it?’ Naomi winced. ‘Sorry, I’d assumed…’

  ‘He didn’t say it,’ Fox said, ‘but I got the impression you’d been something more than student and teacher. Marie hasn’t known him as long as I have.’

  ‘If that causes problems, I apologise.’

  ‘No,’ Marie said quickly. ‘No, it’s fine.’

  Fox was fairly sure it was not entirely fine, and she was sure that Naomi knew it too, but the Sister Superior just said, ‘We’ll have coffee and I’ll go over a few things for next week, and then we’ll take the tour. Fox will get to see her company’s work, and you’ll have some idea of where things are before you start.’

  ‘That sounds great,’ Marie replied, and Fox decided that she was going to have to intervene later or that was going to stew for weeks.

  ~~~

  ‘And this is our primary memetics lab,’ Naomi said as they entered a large room with dark painted walls and subdued lighting. Around it, sitting on ergonomic office chairs, were around twenty women in uniform, all of them working over virtual terminals. The rear wall of the room was displaying a big, complex network of some sort.

  ‘They’re studying the private policing legislation,’ Kit, Fox’s personal assistant AI, said inside Fox’s head. ‘That is a memetic ecology map of the key groups.’

  ‘You’re looking at the private policing legislation?’ Fox asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Naomi replied. ‘I’m sure you have a team examining it too. We have eight people working to ensure there are no issues with it affecting us. It would not be the first time that someone tried to sneak something into law which restricts our business. I wasn’t aware that memetics was in your portfolio.’

  ‘My AI is better at that kind of thing than I am. Kit, why don’t you introduce yourself?’

  Kit appeared, or her avatar transmitted itself for resolution by the implants of those around Fox. She was a cute, very pretty, anime-style character with long, ash-blonde hair which formed ear tufts at the top of her head, big green eyes, and a silky white fox’s brush emerging from her back. Her outfit was a short, white, strapless dress, collar and cuffs, a frilled bolero-style jacket, and high-heeled knee boots.

  ‘Good afternoon, Sister Naomi,’ Kit said.

  Naomi looked delighted. ‘Hello, Kit. You are just the cutest thing I’ve ever seen, and knowledgeable.’

  ‘Class four AIs have something of a talent for memetics,’ Kit replied. ‘We think much as a human would, and we have an innate ability to examine our own thought processes.’

  ‘A class four? And you’re running on an implant?’

  Fox raised her right arm. ‘Artificial more or less to the elbow. There was… an incident. Anyway, there are a couple of quantum processors in here and Kit executes on one in place of a standard VA. She has a full server at home with a bit more room for her mind, but she does an excellent job when we’re in the field.’

  Naomi smiled. ‘Oh, you have to stay visible, young lady. The girls will just love you.’ Her voice raised a little. ‘I can see that everyone here is suddenly ignoring their terminals.’ There was a rustle of fabric, audible in the following quiet as twenty heads wearing wimples were turned suddenly to stare at virtual screens.

  ‘Perhaps I would be too much of a distraction,’ Kit suggested.

  ‘Exactly. Let’s see how good their discipline is. And I haven’t had a good laugh in far too long.’

  Fox found that difficult to believe: Naomi seemed like a good-humoured woman. ‘Have we met before today?’ Fox asked. ‘I’d swear I’ve seen you… Sheela Na Gig. You were at Sheela Na Gig the first night we went there.’

  ‘I do frequent that club, yes. When I practised full-time, I specialised in BDSM.’ Well, she certainly had the look to pull off a good dominatrix. ‘I like to keep my hand in now and again so I play the Mistress there when I can. Yes, I remember seeing both of you there with Sam. You seemed to be entertaining yourselves so I didn’t intrude.’

  ‘A friend of mine, Helen, was celebrating her freedom from NAPA. The blonde with the Asian look to her? She works for me now.’

  Naomi nodded, and Fox bet she never forgot a face even without her implant. ‘I remember her. A little more conservatively dressed than you were. You would make quite the dom yourself.’

  ‘Terri did want to beg to kiss your boots,’ Marie chimed in.

  ‘I admit to a slight urge to do the same,’ Naomi said, her tone bland. ‘Shall we continue? Let’s see who else Kit can distract.’

  The middle part of the house was offices and the rooms of the Senior Sisters and, on the second floor…

  ‘Our clinic,’ Naomi said as they entered a white-walled room with ten beds, each surrounded by a fairly comprehensive set of medical equipment. There was a single attendant on duty, dressed in black, but there were no patients in. ‘Marie, we’ll need to give you a full physical when you come in on Monday. It’s standard practice–’

  ‘Every three months,’ Marie said. ‘I know from Sam.’

  ‘Quite. Sister Anne, would you put Marie Shaftsbury down for a standard induction physical at nine thirty on Monday, please?’

  ‘Of course, Sister Superior,’ Anne replied, smiling. ‘New blood?’

  ‘Marie will be joining us for the week. She’s an actress, but she’s willing to put the time into learning her role.’

  ‘Admirable. We’ll be ready for you, Marie.’

  ‘Thank you, Sister,’ Marie replied.

  ‘Anne. Sister Anne if you feel like being formal, or you want to start practising that role early.’

  ‘I’ll wait for Monday, Anne.’ Marie flashed a smile and Anne returned it. ‘See you on Monday.’

  ‘You certainly will.’

  They left the clinic and started toward the north wing. Technically it was the north-east wing, but they called it the north wing.

  ‘The cameras are a little randomly placed,’ Fox commented as they walked.

  ‘Not randomly,’ Naomi replied. ‘We value our privacy. We had your people go over all the camera coverage, optimising it so that no one could enter without being seen, but the private areas were not covered.’ She lowered her voice a little. ‘There is quite extensive coverage where we’re going, but we don’t advertise that fact.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, this side is the brothel.’

  Compared to the more austere look of the rest of the building, the north wing was sumptuous. Decorated in a lot of red and gold with v-tagged additions, the corridor they walked in on had a lot of doors off it and Fox got the impression she knew what was behind them.

  Naomi confirmed it. ‘We have fifteen suites, each with a different theme. One is set up for bondage and S and M play, and one is a white room.’

  ‘White room?’ Marie asked.

  Fox smiled. ‘She’s young. For medical role play, Marie.’

  ‘I’ll make sure we put some briefing notes on common fetishes in your induction pack, Marie,’ Naomi told her. ‘Downstairs we have a common room for meeting the girls, and the garage. We have a number of private transports which we use to collect clients. We can bring them in and they can enter the building unobserved.’ She stopped walking and turned. ‘Up above we have a lab for diagnostic work, a briefing room, and some storage. It’s not very exciting and I’d prefer not to be seen showing people around the common room.’

  ‘I think that’s fair,’ Fox said, and she lowered her voice before going on. ‘The cameras are good. I can’t spot an
y of them, but I saw this corridor when we were in the control room.’

  ‘Your people did a wonderful job. With the old system, we would get the occasional person spotting something, but now… One of our clients actually complimented us for being more trusting.’

  ‘If only they knew.’

  ‘Hopefully, they never will. Come on, we’ll go see where Marie will be spending most of next week.’

  The south wing had no external doors apart from monitored fire doors, and so there were no cameras in it. Fox thought some monitoring on the corridors might have been a good idea, but it was not her call. Down on the ground floor they had refrigerated storage for foodstuffs, and a fabricator facility which had a fair number of 3D printers, but also plenty of hand-operated equipment. The Sisters liked to be able to use their hands to build things.

  Up at the top were the dorms: sixteen, ten-bed bunkrooms with each room laid out as two groups of five and a social area with light cooking facilities. The idea was to have four novices or Sisters with a Senior Sister for each group, but they were rarely at capacity.

  ‘I think we’ll slot you into one of the threesomes,’ Naomi said as they toured through the bunkrooms. ‘You’ll have more people to observe and all the support you’re likely to need. It may take a little while to get used to sleeping in a dorm, but most people adjust and we can provide mild tranqs for the first couple of nights if you need them.’

  ‘Why would I need them?’ Marie asked.

  ‘It’ll be like barracks,’ Fox replied. ‘Unfamiliar bed, people moving around you, strangers at that. And then there’s the snoring. Someone always snores. It’s like a universal rule or something.’

  Naomi let out a throaty chuckle. ‘I believe it’s actually in Proverbs. “And God made sure that one person in a tent will always grate them out like a bandsaw.”’

  ‘That is not in the Bible.’

  ‘Theology joke. We do actually offer some procedures to fix it if it’s really bad. Nasal cavity modifications, usually. Snoring is often considered unattractive in a sleeping partner.’

  Fox shook her head. ‘Weird stuff we do… Mind you, I could have really gone for that in boot camp. I remember this guy four bunks down. Sounded like heavy machinery when he got going, but after that I never had trouble with live fire exercises. Cakewalk compared to trying to sleep beside Corporal Havering.’

  ‘I’m told I have a cute snore,’ Marie put in, blushing a little.

  ‘You do. More like a purr. It’s actually mildly soporific.’ There was a slight pause and then, ‘Of course, the thumb sucking is a bit noisy.’

  ‘I do not suck my thumb in my sleep! I’d… wake up with a soggy thumb.’

  ‘I assume from your awareness of Marie’s nocturnal sucking habits that you and her have been an item, Fox?’ Naomi seemed quite happy to continue the ribbing, but she probably had a purpose behind her question.

  ‘We… dated for a couple of weeks,’ Fox replied. She was a little surprised to find that her stomach still lurched a little at the mention of it. ‘I gave her up to Sam. Sort of a public service. Like you said, he’s never shown any signs of wanting anything outside work.’

  ‘And you moved on to Jason pretty quickly,’ Marie said.

  Fox affected a sorrowful tone. ‘Consolation. I needed the consolation.’

  ‘Oh yeah, he’s so not a consolation prize. Tall, blonde, godlike, and he understands all the cop stuff.’

  ‘He’s the local UNTPP captain,’ Fox explained. ‘Kit pushed me into it.’

  ‘I did not push!’ Kit squeaked.

  ‘But it’s working out pretty well. We both understand work pressure and we’re not too worried about making it complicated. That just leaves the lecture theatres, right?’

  Naomi accepted the change of topic with a smile. ‘That’s right. I assume you studied the floorplans. There are cameras in there, but they are rather specialised. They record lectures and student performance for later review. It’s not often easy to see what you can improve when you’re doing it, so we video and dissect.’

  ‘You could probably make a fortune marketing some of those vids.’

  ‘It would be a little too clinical for most viewers. We do market the best vids made for the advanced performance classes, but those are full productions for the final grading exercise. We take a cut, as with the brothel, and the performers and technicians get payment per unit sold. I wouldn’t say we’ve made any millionaires, but we’ve had some successes.’

  Despite the fact that stairs were ‘killers in these heels,’ there were no elevators in the south wing. Naomi showed no signs of discomfort, or lack of grace, as she tripped down the stairs to the next floor down. Then she placed her finger to her lips and slipped through a door into a classic, sloping lecture theatre. Below them, a woman was standing at a lectern, in the middle of some sort of lecture.

  Naomi patched through a private telepresence connection conferencing Fox and Marie into it. ‘This is a professional behaviour and ethics lecture. It’s not all perfecting fellatio and correct bondage techniques.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was,’ Marie replied. ‘I’ve been around Sam long enough to know he’s very ethical about his clients.’

  ‘He doesn’t talk about them,’ Fox said, ‘except anonymously. Well, there’s Felix and Isabella Bournville, but those are rather specific cases.’

  ‘Sam told me about Felix,’ Naomi said. ‘That was sad. You cracked the case, right?’

  ‘Yes. Not that the person responsible is locked up, but… August is under house arrest and Sam believes that’s good enough, given that August is pretty remorseful about it.’

  ‘Sam’s like that. He’s always been one of the most grounded men I know. After… When we were together, we were very much in love, but then I got the promotion. He told me I should go. That this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He would follow me when he could.’

  ‘So he did and…’

  ‘It took him ten months to move down from Boston, and then he was setting up and busy, and things had just… cooled off.’

  Fox flicked a glance at Naomi. Maybe Sam had cooled off, but she had not. Back then anyway. The relationship seemed to be pure friendship now, but Fox doubted it had been the same ten years ago when Sam had moved to New York.

  ‘Miss Bournville is my agent,’ Marie said. ‘Sam introduced us. She’s one of his clients, but he didn’t mention a name until he’d asked if she would see me.’

  ‘I know Isabella,’ Naomi said. ‘Good woman. Helluva sub. That’s confidential, obviously.’

  ‘Wait… Miss Bournville, who can cut you in half with a look, is a submissive?’

  ‘Quite a lot of strong-willed people have a desire to relinquish control at times. It’s a release valve. I do it myself on the rare occasion I find a woman I trust and respect enough to give control to.’

  ‘Not men?’

  ‘I enjoy men, but not for that. I’ve never found a man I trusted like that. Well, there was one, but he’s not inclined that way. We have another two theatres like this, and two which are used for group practical tuition.’ The change of subject was a little sharp. ‘Sam’s in one of those helping with a class. One of our main reasons for having lay brothers is to provide tuition with people we know we can trust, and who know what they’re doing, obviously.’

  ‘And, uh, I’d be doing some of those classes?’ Marie asked.

  ‘You’ll be doing beginners’ courses. If you’ll pardon the crudity, we assume that if you’re joining us, you know how to fuck. At least at the basic level and, frankly, if you’re with Sam, I’d imagine you’ve picked up a few things.’

  ‘I… might have learned a few things.’

  Naomi pressed her lips together, fairly obviously to avoid laughing out loud. ‘I’d imagine so. He’s quite a good instructor.’

  ‘Uh… yeah.’

  ‘You’ll need to get over that hesitancy, Marie. Part of what we do is make sure our students are suitable for the job. Now
, you aren’t aiming for the job, but your character is a professional.’

  ‘I think it’s just talking about it and, so long as I’m acting, I should be fine. Living in the same house as my lover and my ex-lover, I’ve mostly got over being embarrassed about sex, but I do tend to get teased some.’

  ‘Mea culpa,’ Fox said.

  ‘Well, there’ll be no teasing next week. Plenty of critical evaluation, but we take a dim view of teasing.’

  15th August.

  Fox poured herself coffee from the jug Sam had made. She had spent most of Saturday going over legislation documents and they had been buzzing around in her brain until the early hours. She really needed the coffee.

  ‘Where’s Marie?’ Fox asked.

  ‘Studying,’ Sam replied. ‘You want me to get something to eat sent up?’

  ‘No, I just need coffee. About a boatload. And to never see another legal document. Ever.’

  ‘Think that’s likely?’

  Fox fell onto the sofa, demonstrating her considerable grace and skill by not spilling a drop of coffee. ‘No. It’s not. Not until October. After that, it’ll be contract documents.’ Her tone turned to sobbing. ‘Legal contract documents through to January.’

  Reaching out, Sam patted Fox on the shoulder. ‘There, there. It’ll all be over before you know it.’

  ‘I can feel the life draining out of me. If I turn into a zombie, you’ll shoot me in the head, right?’

  ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  ‘True friends know when to shoot you in the head.’ Fox drank coffee. Neurons fired. ‘What’s Marie studying?’

  ‘Naomi sent over a briefing pack on being a novice. They usually get a week of induction prior to donning the wimple, but Marie doesn’t have the time, so she’s doing the crash course.’

  ‘And then she’s going to need to have the script worked through before shooting starts. It’s a lot of work.’

  ‘Yes. She’s stressing over it, but she can do it. It’s important to her. If this works out, it could be a big break for her, and it’s fast. Maybe it’s a little too fast, but I think she’s grounded enough to handle it.’

  Fox smiled. ‘She’s got you to fall back on. You’ll keep her feet on the ground. Or keep her standing if she falls.’