Saul sat down on the edge of his bed, unable to fight a sense of disappointment. It wasn’t hard to guess that if there was anything that might help him find Jeff, it was hidden in one of the restricted drawers. He called Olivia and explained the problem.
‘Maybe you could forward the files to me?’ she eventually suggested.
Having sent them over, and now feeling obliged to wait for her to get back to him, he pulled on his shoes, thinking maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to try and walk off some of his pent-up frustration.
The air outside was chill and sharp but, to his surprise, Saul found himself enjoying it. His mind felt clearer, more focused as he breathed in the fresh mountain air. He walked a few blocks until he came to the start of a nature trail, little info-bubbles popping up along its length as he approached. A faint white line joined the bubbles together, snaking upwards and over the crest of a hill.
He had supper later that evening in the hotel’s restaurant, where a TriView provided him with a selection of UP-compatible news feeds. Most were focused on volcanic activity near the Mariana Islands out in the Far East.
Olivia got back to him before he could watch any more. ‘I’m stumped,’ she told him, as he made his way back up to his room. ‘Whoever set up the encryption, they did a scarily good job. This is military-level work.’
‘You sound hurt.’
‘I
am
hurt,’ she replied. ‘It makes me feel like he didn’t trust me.’
Or maybe
, thought Saul,
he was trying to protect you
. ‘Don’t you have any more keys or whatever that you can use?’
‘The tools I’d need to get past encryption that strong could only come from the ASI, and everything I can access from the work servers is tracked and tagged. My own security protocols would flag an unauthorized action and sound an alert.’
‘It’s funny how you’re suddenly worried about attracting the ASI’s attention, but just a little while ago you were feeling frustrated because you couldn’t get them involved.’
‘Yeah, well . . .’ She paused. ‘It’s different now. Now that I’m sure he’s alive.’
Her breathing had turned coarse and ragged as she made this last statement, and Saul guessed she was weeping.
‘Olivia?’
‘I’m sorry, Saul.’ She cleared her throat and, when she spoke again, she sounded a little calmer. ‘Looking at what you sent me reminded me of a detail I’d almost forgotten. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it before.’
‘Go on.’
‘There’s a man called Farad Maalouf,’ she explained. ‘When Jeff wouldn’t tell me where he was going, before he disappeared, he told me he’d make up for it. He said that, once he’d done whatever it is he had to do, he was going to take me to Newton, to see Farad. He said Farad had family there – and that we’d both be safe.’
‘Safe from what?’
‘I don’t know, Saul. I’m not really sure I even want to know.’
‘This Farad guy, do you know who he is?’
‘I met him about the same time I met Dan Rush, back at the Florida Array. He was another of Jeff ’s colleagues.’ She paused. ‘The thing that made me remember Maalouf just now is that he’s an encryption specialist. He’s well known in certain specialized technical fields. I couldn’t think at first why Jeff would need to hide something with military-grade locks on it, but then I remembered him talking about Maalouf and Newton and, with everything else going on, I wondered if maybe there was some connection with the files. It seemed strange he’d bring up Maalouf, of all people. And, even if there isn’t a connection, if there’s anyone that could break the encryption on those files, my guess is it would be Maalouf.’
‘And that’s everything you know? Are you absolutely sure there isn’t anything else you need to remember?’
‘Nothing, I swear.’
Saul found it hard to hide his irritation. ‘Jesus, Olivia,
military
-grade encryption? What exactly is it you think Jeff’s got himself involved in?’
‘I already told you I don’t know,’ she said, her voice taking on a ragged edge once more. ‘I just want to know he’s safe.’
Saul was surprised at how much her last words cut him. He’d thought he’d left his feelings for her far behind him, but it looked like he’d been wrong.
He sighed and fell back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. ‘What makes you so sure this Maalouf guy could get inside those files?’
‘He’s got a fearsome reputation. He’s published a few articles, most of it pretty arcane stuff. If you want to build an encryption system, he’s the man you call up.’
‘Too arcane even for a dedicated systems specialist like yourself?’
She laughed. ‘Even for me.’
‘Say I managed to get hold of him, how do we know we can trust him?’
‘Well, he did work with Jeff,’ she said tentatively, ‘and I had the definite sense they were friends – maybe even close friends. That must count for something.’
‘D’you think
he
might know where Jeff is?’
‘It’s possible. Maybe I should try and get in touch with Maalouf myself. I know I’ve asked too much of you already.’
‘No,’ he said, sitting up, ‘I don’t want you getting any more involved than you already are.’ He had a mental image of dark figures struggling by a moonlit shore, shots ringing out. ‘I can start by taking a look in the ASI’s personnel databases – see what I can find about him from there.’
She let out a sigh that was comprised in equal parts of relief and worry. ‘Thank you, Saul, from the bottom of my heart. Really.’
‘There’s a lot more going on here than just one missing scientist,’ he said. ‘I assume you realize that by now.’
‘I do.’
‘If nothing else, I can go to Newton and track Maalouf down in person – or at least try to find out where he might be.’
And maybe he can tell me just what the hell is going on
, he thought.
Once she had signed off, Saul found himself reliving his memories of her body, the way she had whispered his name over and over as he moved inside her, all those many years ago. It had been hard sitting next to her the day before in the bar, wanting to reach out and touch her but keeping his distance nonetheless.
He sighed and pulled himself off the bed, striding across the darkened room. Sleep clearly wasn’t coming any time soon. He dropped himself into an armchair by the window and linked into the ASI’s security databases, and from there to its personnel files.
He paused before bringing up Farad Maalouf ’s data. What he was doing now had gone beyond just helping a friend, and he knew as well as Olivia that he’d be leaving a data trail that might trigger an alert, should someone else have already linked Maalouf’s ASI files to Jeff’s. But his anger at the way Donohue had treated him drove him on, regardless.
What little information he found on Farad Maalouf proved to be out of date. The most recent records were more than a year old, at which point Maalouf had presumably ceased to be employed by the ASI. Then Saul found something that puzzled him. He should have been able to find information on where Maalouf had gone after departing the ASI, but instead there was nothing. It was as if he’d simply vanished for the better part of a year.
Saul felt a prickling sensation throughout his body when he found the situation was much the same with Jeff Cairn’s own personnel records. The curious gaps in the data trail for both men might be explained by their working off-world but, if so, there was no official record showing their time of departure. And hadn’t Olivia told him that Jeff had returned from his work only a few days ago? Again, there was no evidence, either way, that he had passed through the Array.
Of course, Olivia had pointed out that Jeff was working on some secret project for the ASI, therefore it was entirely conceivable it had been secret enough for the security services to want to conceal both men’s movements.
He next checked Dan Rush’s files, and felt little surprise when it turned out to be the same story all over again. He subsequently ran a side-by-side comparison, and found they had all ceased to be in the official employ of the ASI on the exact same date, two years previously.
He lastly checked Mitchell’s records. His death was recorded as having taken place a month earlier, but wen Saul tried to pull up the post-mortem report, he quickly discovered even his own security clearance wasn’t high enough to let him see it.
He woke several hours later, still sprawled in the armchair, to find another call alert waiting for him.
‘Saul,’ Olivia sounded breathless, when he returned her call, ‘have you seen the news?’
Saul pulled his rumpled form upright, the muscles in the back of his neck protesting at the awkward angle they’d been forced into for much of the night. It was still dark outside.
He glanced at the wall-mounted TriView at the other end of the room. ‘Why?’ he mumbled.
‘Just turn it on, Saul. Turn it on
right now
. Then get back to me.’
He disconnected and watched the news, while he waited for the room to make him some coffee. By the time it was ready, the first glimmer of dawn had started to push its way above the mountains.
Everything else in the news – even the border incidents down Mexical way – had been pushed to one side by the appearance of what some people described as an artificial island, and a few others were even calling an alien invasion.
Endless aerial shots paraded across the screen, one after the other, of a vast flower-like growth rising out of the Pacific Ocean near the Mariana Islands. There were reports of loud booms being heard and seismic activity within the vicinity, which some claimed were both connected to the rash of earthquakes that had already claimed thousands of lives throughout the Asian Pacific region in just the last few days. Saul struggled to take any of it seriously, deciding it was too much like some overwrought science-fiction drama to be remotely believable.
He pulled up other news feeds, expecting to find nothing but the usual sober mix about politicians and murder hunts. Instead he saw those very same politicians being forced to admit they had no idea what was happening out in the Pacific.
It dawned on him gradually that what he was seeing was
real
– and now, it seemed, there were more of them pushing up from the deep rock-bed of the ocean floor, scattered at distances from the first growth of up to a few thousand kilometres.
Badly shaken, Saul kept a news feed running as his car pulled back out on to the road an hour later, heading south-west. A tsunami had just hit the south-west coast of Japan, and news of further quakes was coming in from other parts of the world. Two talking heads argued over whether or not those things were powering their massive growth with thermal energy drawn from the Earth’s deep crust, which just might explain the unprecedented build-up in seismic activity. By the time the interview ended, the two of them were nearly coming to blows.
He switched to another feed, and listened to a Harvard biotechnology specialist suggesting that the booming sounds were the result of that same furious rate of growth. At the rate the first ‘growth’ was expanding, it would reach more than a kilometre in hight within a few days.
Saul shut down the feed, his skin coated in a cold sweat, and thought of weeds infesting a garden. He leaned back, the seat adjusting to his new position, and watched the mountains slide past under a dawn sky, as the hire car sped him towards a regional hopper port.
Something above and beyond the sheer preposterousness of that thing growing in the Pacific niggled at him, until he realized, with a cold clenching in his gut, that it wasn’t located so very far from the shores of Taiwan.
Arcorex Facility, Omaha, 4 February 2235
The Arcorex facility was located in a business park just outside the Omaha city limits, and consisted of half a dozen three- and four-storey buildings gathered around manicured lawns and picnic areas, their pale walls now gleaming dully in the moonlight.
‘Their tags claim they’re a toy manufacturer,’ muttered Mitchell, frowning, as he peered through the forward windscreen. They were parked on the opposite side of the road, only a short distance from the main gate.
Jeff shook his head. ‘Trust me when I say they aren’t.’ He removed the fake contacts Mitchell had given him, the corporate logos floating above the buildings vanishing from sight for a few moments while he swapped them for his own. He would need to have access to his own Ubiquitous Profile if he was going to have any chance at all of getting past building security.
‘You ready?’ asked Mitchell, as Jeff blinked his contacts into place.
Jeff shrugged and gave him a look that said
ready as I’ll ever be
.
Mitchell touched the dashboard, which lit up beneath his fingers, and the van started to move back out on to the road. They drove straight on past the Arcorex lot before turning off into a car park adjacent to it.
Jeff stared out at his old workplace as they came to a halt once more. ‘I’m still struggling to get my head around everything you’ve told me,’ he said, ‘but I guess you know that.’
‘I do.’ Mitchell nodded towards Arcorex. ‘By the way, I didn’t get a chance to thank you for helping me.’