Fowler grunted approval. ‘Go on.’
‘To cut a long story short, we’ve already secured access to most of his accounts, and it won’t take more than another day or so to shut down the rest.’
Fowler nodded. ‘Excellent. Any idea who Hanover’s main Sphere contact is?’
‘Yes, a member of the Beijing diplomatic service, based in New York. We picked him up a few hours ago, along with a couple of other embassy workers we’re pretty sure were involved. That leaves Hanover with no evidence to show, and we’ve already arranged a diplomatic exchange.’ He rubbed his hands on his thighs. ‘Regarding him, do you want me to—?’
‘No.’ Fowler shook his head. ‘No termination. I’m going to let him live – for now, anyway.’
Donohue frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Trust me, he’s going to suffer more than you could imagine. What about the shipment?’
‘We know the hijackers landed at an airfield outside Tegucigalpa, and the shipment was then transferred to a cargo drone belonging to a shell company registered in the Philippines.’ Donohue paused, as if for effect. ‘Which turns out to be owned by a subsidiary of Shang-Gu Tech.’
Fowler could feel all the pieces drop into place. Shih Hsiu-Chuan was the original founder of Shang-Gu Tech, and still maintained a controlling interest in the company.
‘And after that?’
Donohue sat back with a sigh. ‘It’s confirmed that the cargo drone went down north of the Mariana Islands, and took the shipment to the bottom of the Pacific with it. We already knew the exact latitude and longitude of where the first of the growths would appear; by the looks of it, the drone crashed at the precise same coordinates.’
Icy tendrils creeping through his belly, Fowler recalled the recovered footage of the Pacific growth, dipping in and out of sight as the ship rose and fell on the turbulent waters. It had been wrapped in clouds of smoke and steam, big enough already it was almost certainly visible from orbit.
It was one thing, he thought, to have foreknowledge of future events. It was another matter entirely to see them so clearly confirmed.
Following the meeting on Luna, he had shown Amanda the full and unexpurgated video, noticing the way her lips had compressed into a thin white line as she watched it.
The view had swung away from the growth to show Amanda standing by a railing, with the Pacific blue and deep and restless behind her. Her eyes suddenly darted to one side, as if she saw something there that frightened her. After that, the video blurred and jerked rapidly before fading to darkness.
‘It’s going to be hard, you know,’ he remarked, almost to himself.
‘Sir?’
‘The colonial administrations,’ he explained, glancing directly at Donohue. ‘Most of them aren’t going to give up what little power they have without a fight. It might be all over in days, or it might take years – long, hard years.’
‘I understand that, sir.’
Fowler made a sound of irritation, aware that he sounded maudlin. He reminded himself that Donohue was nothing more than a weapon, and almost incapable – if his personnel file was anything to judge by – of anything resembling introspection.
‘Any news on Mitchell Stone?’ asked Fowler. ‘The one we brought back from the future,’ he added, by way of clarification.
‘I’m afraid not, so far. But the instant he shows himself anywhere near the Array, we’ve got him.’
Fowler nond wondered how he had managed to underestimate Stone’s resourcefulness quite so badly. His mistake, he saw now, had been in allowing a military intelligence unit to run the interrogation. His own people, even Donohue, surely couldn’t have made as big a mess.
‘Fine. Let him come to us, then,’ he said, regarding Donohue with a level stare. ‘And let me be perfectly clear on this: screw up again, and I’m going to wonder if you’re really competent of taking care of the tasks I assign you.’
‘Sir,’ said Donohue, standing up.
Once Donohue had left, Fowler leaned back and stared up at the stars displayed across the overhead screen. One of those points of light, he knew, was Galileo, only a few months’ journey away within the frame of reference of the ship and of Earth. Just another couple of weeks of deceleration, and radio communication with it would become possible. By then, however, the Earth would have been reduced to a lifeless wasteland.
And where will I be?
Fowler wondered. He was supposed to help rebuild the Coalition, under the light of some other star, but he was all too aware of how much of a liability he already represented to that nascent civilization: useful for facilitating the transition of power, but possessing too much knowledge to comfortably be allowed to live.
And if anyone were to be given the orders to terminate him, it would almost certainly be Donohue.
No, Fowler had already come to his decision: neither Donohue nor anyone else would get the chance to kill him. He would fulfil his duty in the meantime, and give whatever orders proved necessary in order to ensure preparations for the transition went as smoothly as possible. But any lingering doubts about staying behind had vanished in the wake of Amanda’s decision not to seek escape.
After all, as she herself had quickly pointed out,
someone
had recorded those images of her on that storm-tossed ship, with that incomprehensibly alien structure rising from the deep ocean behind her. And, in his heart, Fowler knew that person could only be himself.
Orlando, Florida, 2 February 2235
Not too many hours after Donohue had walked out on him in Hong Kong, Saul woke up in the back seat of a taxi, outside the four-storey walk-up in Orlando he’d called home for the past six years, to the sound of a recorded voice asking him to please get out.
He stumbled out into the night air, feeling bone-crushingly weary, and looked down at the stained shirt and ill-fitting trousers he’d been forced to wear the whole way back from Hong Kong. A woman walking her dog gave him a quick once-over and quickly crossed over to the far side of the street.
Saul tugged the collar of his shirt close to his nose, sniffed and winced, remembering the look on the face of the man forced to sit next to him during the sub-orb fligh
Closing his front door behind him, he activated his UP just long enough to check his mail, and found a message waiting from someone he hadn’t heard from in a very long time. Saul came to an abrupt halt in the narrow hallway, and stared at the name floating next to the message icon.
He resisted the impulse to open and read it immediately. Whatever Olivia had to say, it almost certainly wasn’t anything he wanted to hear.
At least, not right now.
He instructed the house to run him a bath and meanwhile waited in the kitchen, dumping the clothes he’d been provided in the waste-disposal unit and pulling on a bathrobe. He ate half a tin of ravioli straight from the fridge, his gaze lingering on an old picture of Deanna and their daughter Gwen, until the house informed him ten minutes later that the bath was ready. He ordered a suit from a local fab-shop before easing himself into the warm water, some of the weight of the past few days sloughing away as he submerged.
He lay staring up at the bathroom ceiling, Olivia’s message occupying his thoughts far more than he wanted it to.
I could just delete it
, he thought. Reading it had every chance of making his life a lot more complicated than it already was.
When he finally emerged from the bathroom half an hour later, the house informed him that a shrink-wrapped package was waiting by the front door. He opened it, pulling out a jacket and a pair of trousers cut from soft dark cloth, and also a grey silk shirt. They hadn’t been cheap but, after what he’d been through the last few days, Saul really wasn’t inclined to give a damn.
He got dressed and checked himself out in the bedroom mirror, but something still didn’t feel right. Saul felt twitchy and on edge.
Maybe a little loup-garou
, he thought, remembering that he had some stuffed in a coffee jar at the back of one of the kitchen cupboards . . .
No. He remembered the look of contempt on Donohue’s face, Jacob’s body slumped in a chair. He turned away from the mirror, suddenly feeling ashamed, and left the house.
As he bought himself a steak dinner at a local eatery, thoughts of Olivia continued to nag at him, making him feel lonely even at the one time he felt he needed most of all to be on his own. By the time he’d finished eating and was on his way to Christy’s to get good and drunk, he’d noticed a second message had arrived.
Saul abruptly came to a halt, realizing he was only delaying the inevitable. After reading both messages, he changed direction and headed for another bar, one he hadn’t stepped inside for several years.
Some of the tension he’d worked so hard at shedding was starting to creep back. By the time he arrived at Harry’s Bar and Diner, Olivia was already sitting waiting for him by the bar.
It was early enough for the place to still be fairly quiet, no more than a half dozen people scattered around the tables. Pebbled-glass windows splashed diffused streetlight across leather couches and dark varnished wood.
Saul climbed on to the stool next to Olivia’s. ‘This was my plan for tonight,’ he said, resting his arms on the counter. ‘I was going to get drunk and maybe make up some bullshit about the hard week I’ve just had, for the benefit of anyone who would listen, then let them call me a ride home when I couldn’t stand up any longer. A simple, yet effective strategy, and now you’ve gone and messed it all up.’
Olivia set her drink down – it came in a tall narrow glass and struck him as an unhealthy shade of pink – and glanced at him sideways in amusement. She had wide dark eyes and black hair that fell across her shoulders, and her features revealed a complex ethnic heritage that included a Seminole father and Korean grandmother.
‘As soon as I sat down here, it brought back a whole lot of memories, Saul. Not all bad ones, either, but, if it makes you feel any better, that’s not why I’m here.’
Saul ordered himself a drink. ‘So why
are
you here?’
‘Actually, it has to do with Jeff.’
‘Your ex-husband?’
‘Do you know any other Jeffs?’
‘I guess not.’
The barman deposited a Drambuie on the rocks in front of Saul. Even after so many years, the details of their past affair remained fresh in his mind. Olivia and Jeff Cairns had already been separated by the time she’d started sleeping with Saul – not that this had offered any great reassurance to his wife at the time. However, he’d been well on the road to patching things up with Deanna when the Galileo gate had collapsed.
‘Hey, look at you.’ She leaned forward to examine him under the overhead lights, and he could tell, from the way her eyes moved, that she was studying the bruises on his face. ‘What the hell happened to you?’
He took a sip of the Drambuie. ‘All in the line of duty, ma’am.’
Her expression by now was a mixture of pity and horror. ‘Still trying to get yourself killed?’
‘Still playing amateur psychologist?’
‘Only a couple more months, and you’ll know if Deanna and your daughter are still alive, Saul.’
‘And if they’re not?’
She sighed, and shot a glance at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar. ‘It doesn’t take a shrink to figure you out, Saul. First you let Mitchell talk you into that insane orbital jump, then you started drinking too much, like you were deliberately trying to kill yourselft you.&quo
He glared at her. ‘I was
not
trying to get myself killed,’ he snapped, a little too loudly. Seeing the barman glance their way, he lowered his voice. ‘It’s just . . .’
‘Just what?’
He fingered his drink and, noticing the way she looked at it, gulped it down as if in defiance. It coated his tongue with a sticky numb fieriness.
‘There was more to the jump we made than that,’ he said firmly. ‘You remember Mitch’s brother?’
She nodded. ‘Danny? I only met him once.’
‘You know he died?’
She nodded.
‘Mitchell blamed himself for it,’ Saul continued. ‘Felt he hadn’t been there for him. Do you know the actual details?’
She hesitated. ‘In the sketchiest sense, yes. But all of that happened after . . . after us. After you’d moved on from the Jupiter station.’
Saul had first met Olivia on being assigned, along with Mitchell, to security on the Jupiter orbital platform. The station had been huge even then, constantly growing as pre-assembled units were shipped there via the Inuvik gate back on Earth. Her husband, Jeff, had worked on experimental helium-dredges dropped into the Jovian atmosphere, while Olivia herself had served as the platform’s communications specialist. The sheer scale of the station made it easy for the couple to avoid each other once they’d decided to separate.
‘Mitchell and Danny both grew up near the DMZ in post-partition Chicago,’ Saul went on, and Olivia nodded to signify that this much she knew. ‘It was still a pretty rough place, even a couple of decades after the war. Mitch joined the ASI just to get away from the gangs, but . . .’
‘Danny didn’t?’