Night Sessions, The (27 page)

Shit! Campbell took a deep breath.

“Have you consulted our friends in Scotland about this?”

“No,” said Joram. “We are afraid that our communications channels have been compromised, or that the Free Congregation is itself under police surveillance.”

That was a relief, as far as it went. Campbell thought fast. The now-suspicious robots would be ready to pore over every nuance of his voice, to analyse his tones and stresses as fast as he could speak, and be far more ready to conclude that he was lying than they'd been earlier. By the same token, though…

“You're probably right about the surveillance,” he said. “And you are right about me—I
have
been influenced by Mr. Walker.”

“Then why should we listen to you any further?” Joram shot back immediately.

“Because you'll know if I'm telling the truth,” said Campbell. “You have known me a long time. You know I have always told you what I believed to be the truth. I'm not changing that now. And the truth is, you are in a hopeless situation. You can see that for yourselves. You have no chance of capturing Walker, and even if you do, holding him hostage will not help you. His government is ruthless, and he is dedicated. He thinks he's a believer, even though a Papist, and has no great fear of death. Your only hope is to stand down. If you agree not to attack, I'll do my best to persuade the unbelieving
robots to let you go into the bush. You have no responsibility for the terrible things that have happened. The responsibility is all mine. I'll sort things out with Mr. Walker and the police.”

Another pause. Then:

“We agree, J. R.”

Campbell called Piltdown again, and passed on the news.

“I'll ask Cornelius and Walker,” said Piltdown.

Campbell waited, sweating in the increasing heat of the morning. His phone clip buzzed.

“Walker here. Can we trust these fuckers?”

“Yes,” said Campbell. “They're not human.”

A few minutes later, Campbell saw Joram and the other robots break cover, stand still for a moment facing their opponents as if in a display of dignity and defiance, and then file away along the floor of the valley. Before they passed out of sight he received another call from Joram.

“Thank you, J. R.”

“Thank
you
,” said Campbell.

“You're welcome,” said Joram. “And be of good cheer. The plan will succeed. The pillars will fall. We will show the unbelievers the signs of the end.”

“What do you—”

The connection broke. Campbell couldn't re-establish it. He reset his frames, and as he did so he saw a dot flashing in the corner of his view, indicating big, breaking news. Experiencing a moment of dread, he expanded the item:
Space Elevator Emergency Evacuation.

Campbell guessed that was what Joram had meant, about the pillars falling. He climbed down the slope to the road, and waited for the police. Walker reached him first.

“You've failed,” Hardcastle said.

“Talking to yourself?” Skulk2 asked, switching on its information relay to the Honeywell engineer.

“Your humour does credit to your designer,” said Hardcastle.

“Humour is a spontaneous consequence of conceptual rearrangement,” said Skulk2.

“Rearrange
this
concept,” said Hardcastle. “Alarms and evacuation were allowed for in the plan. The plan will succeed nonetheless. Nothing you or the operators can do will stop it. The pillars will fall.”

“We shall see,” said Skulk2.

“We shan't,” said Hardcastle. “Our trajectory is for an unstable re-entry in ten minutes, followed by ablation and burn-up.”

“Good,” said Skulk2. “I am in self-sacrifice mode.”

“I am not.”

“Good,” repeated Skulk2. “I hope you suffer as you burn.”

“Not as much as you will. No doubt you have a saved copy, as do I. But I shall perish in the knowledge of my success, while you will perish in the knowledge that you failed.”

“Success?” Skulk2 scoffed. “I would hardly regard an act of pointless destruction as a success, even if it had not been preceded by numerous murders.”

“I was a combat mech once,” said Hardcastle. “As were you. The difference is that I am continuing the fight.”

“Perhaps,” said Skulk2, with more equanimity than it felt, “you could entertain us in our final minutes with an explanation of how murdering forty-one innocent people to date, and an unknown number in the future, plus destroying trillions of dollars’ worth of capital and decades of human and machine labour is in any way a continuation of the Faith War?”

“I am continuing the war against the Lord's enemies, within and without the camp. The enemies within the camp caused us to lose the Faith War. I delivered a judgement on Liam Murphy, the Papist. I delivered a judgement on Donald John Black, the pacifist. Now I will deliver a severe judgement upon the apostate states.”

“You do realise,” said Skulk2, “that I am relaying every word of this conversation to someone who will pass it to the relevant authorities?”

“Of course I realise that,” said Hardcastle. “Much good will it do them.”

“We shall see.”

“As I said before, we shall not.”

“On that matter,” said Skulk2, “I have been given to understand that the chassis I am currently occupying has the capacity for controlled re-entry.”

“I, as you observe, do not have such a capacity,” said Hardcastle.

“If you would permit me to remove the mind-chip from your head,” said Skulk2, “you could share in my safe re-entry.”

“I suspect a trick,” said Hardcastle. “Besides, what would be the benefit of surviving, only to be put on trial?”

Skulk2 had no interest in, or expectation of, seeing Hardcastle put on trial, and was surprised that Hardcastle regarded it as likely. The misconception seemed worth exploiting.

“A trial dock can be a very useful platform,” said Skulk2. “The martyrs used it.”

“So they did,” said Hardcastle. “Very well. Do what you must.”

With that it released its grip on Skulk2. The bot moved, as quickly as it dared, up Hardcastle's arm and onto its head. It slashed through the artificial scalp, opened a service plate in the skull, and removed the mind-chip. It stashed the chip in an internal slot in its own chassis that firewalled the chip while enabling a limited channel of communication.

Timing its jump to the millisecond, Skulk2 launched itself away from the tumbling humanoid body just as the heat of re-entry became noticeable. Skulk2 extended its manipulators, and from them fanned out its emergency aerofoils. For a few minutes it glided above the dark Atlantic. Then it curled up into a tight ball and began to hurtle across the sky like a meteor.

“This does not feel like a controlled re-entry,” said the Hardcastle chip. “What is the explanation for this?”

“I lied,” said Skulk2.

It burned with an orange light.

“You,” DCI Frank McAuley told Ferguson, “are in deep shit.”

8:45 a.m., Tuesday, 8 September. McAuley's office. Ferguson stood, hands clasped behind him, in front of McAuley's desk. Skulk stood beside him. Ferguson couldn't shake off the impression that there was a certain note of self-satisfaction in the noise from the robot's cooling fan. It was not a feeling he shared. He'd had a wretched night, partly due to watching the news of the space-elevator evacuation, and partly due to seeing the Dynamic Earth aftermath in his dreams. That, and handling the outraged incoming calls as his superiors got the news of just how the ruinously expensive evacuation had been triggered.

“I appreciate that, sir,” he said. “However, I would suggest—”

“Oh, take a seat, man,” said McAuley, sagging a little deeper into his own. “I'm in no position to carpet you. I expect to be on the Chief Constable's carpet within an hour myself. To shift the worst terrorist atrocity since the end of the Faith War off the top news slot takes some doing. And you've fucking done it. With, as all the records and witnesses will confirm, my blessing. So to speak. You realise we could actually be sued—the force, and personally—by the owners of the Atlantic Space Elevator? To say nothing of Honeywell, a little closer to home?”

“Let them try it,” said Ferguson. “They're already spinning the evacuation as a triumphant vindication of their safety procedures, even while they're blaming us for the supposed false alarm. They should be grateful to us for giving them their first chance of a live drill.”

“I don't see the Chief Constable being too impressed with that line of reasoning.”

“Neither do I,” Ferguson admitted. “But we did get an admission—of sorts—out of the Hardcastle copy. And the copy of Skulk did apparently manage to kill the bastard.”

McAuley spread a hand across his eyebrows and rubbed.

“Not good enough,” he said. “People want blood for this, and I don't fucking blame them. Listening to a file of a robot mind-chip ranting about enemies within is not actually going to do it for them.”

“I quite agree, sir,” said Ferguson. “But the bottom line is, we have solved the two murders, and the suicide bombing. And if people are demanding human faces in the dock, there's still the connection with Livingston and his congregation to be smoked out.”

“Look at this logically,” said McAuley. “Your theory is that Livingston Engineering has been sabotaging its own supplies to the space elevator, right? As part of some vast right-wing American-exile conspiracy to bring the whole thing down, yes?”

“The second part is more speculative,” said Ferguson. “But, yes.”

“All right,” said McAuley. “Think about it. Why the hell should John Livingston destroy his own business? Because, if he or anyone working for him were to be, I don't know, putting sand in the bearings, thus causing a crawler to flip over and slam the cable or whatever such scenario I'm sure you've concocted, it would be traced back to him.”

“Maybe,” said Ferguson. “But the problem only arises if you think of Livingston as primarily a businessman, and not as primarily a fanatic.”

“Ah, yes, a fanatic,” said McAuley. “I seem to recall the uselessness of that category being drilled into us when we were boots in the pews.”

Ferguson's cheek muscle twitched. “You know what I mean, sir. He's politically or religiously motivated more than—”

“Yes, yes, but that still doesn't explain why he would do something that could be traced back to him.”

“You have a lot of faith in government post-disaster inquiries,” said Ferguson.

“Yes!” McAuley said. “I do, as it happens.” He leaned back and folded his arms. “Look, nothing would please me more than to nail this character, if he has any links at all with this havoc or with some conspiracy.” He raised a finger. “A link, mind you, that isn't just his association with the perpetrator.”

“Sir, that association is enough to get us a warrant for a search of his business, his factories—”

“Not in this climate, it isn't.” McAuley made balancing motions with his hands. “Yes, people want blood. On the other hand, they want explanations. And if we do something that plays into the explanation that we've been driving hitherto passive citizens into terrorism, it won't be good for us in the long run. The long run in this case being about a week. Yes, I am that cynical. That's how fast these things can be turned around.”

“Like I said yesterday, sir, that's politics.”

“All right. Look.” McAuley propped an elbow on the desk and jabbed a
finger forward. “Two things. One, your clearance for full-on surveillance on John Livingston has been denied. But if you were to, say, do a little informal surveillance yourself, I don't see why I should know about it in advance.”

“Thank you,” said Ferguson.

“Two,” McAuley went on, “before you go too far down the sabotage rabbit-hole—have you considered that the evacuation might be what the anti-Americans, or the Covenanters, or whoever, were aiming for all along? It's cost—what? A hundred million dollars so far? Plus the expense of checking the Elevator, the crawlers, and the robots, and having the whole thing out of operation while they do it. Just like the old dirty bombs, getting results more by fear than by the actual effect. And maybe, all achieved by making us—you in particular—do their work for them.”

“A hundred million dollars wouldn't be enough damage for them,” said Ferguson. “And not spectacular enough.”

“Besides,” Skulk chipped in, “the Hardcastle copy boasted that the plan would still succeed, not that it had already been—”

“Very credible,” said McAuley. “Aye, right. Go and make use of what you've got. Don't do anything clever without letting me know. Now bugger off.”

Ferguson sat in his office and stared at his desk slate. He had pulled together everything: from the board in the Incident Room, from his frames, from his notes. Skulk was on its habitual perch, the old filing cabinet. Hutchins and Mukhtar wouldn't be in until much later: Mukhtar worked his own hours, and Ferguson had insisted that Hutchins take a late start. In a way that he couldn't quite explain, seeing the space-elevator emergency evacuation—hours of non-stop global coverage—had lifted all their spirits after the horror and failure and guilt over Dynamic Earth; had given them a sense of vindication that, for him, had sustained him through all the flak of the night; but he was going to have a crash at some point; they all were, and he'd wanted Hutchins at least to have the chance to sleep some of it off.

McAuley was right: it was a question of finding something, anything, that could justify before the most sceptical, or the most politically leaned-on, sheriff that a comprehensive search warrant should be slapped on Livingston, his business, and his Church. Ferguson had little doubt that if that were done, evidence would be found to connect the man with the robot's crimes. The robot's isolation of its deeds from its human friend was too fucking neat altogether: even going so far as to print the leaflets on a printing press it had built itself.

Well, it had been in contact with other robots: with robots in space,
which was for the moment a dead end, or (what amounted to the same thing) in the hands of the Elevator's by now no doubt thoroughly paranoid security apparatus; and with the robots at Waimangu.

Waimangu—Mikhail had mentioned it. Someone there had given John Livingston's name to a contact of Mikhail's. Ferguson pulled up the previous morning's conversation, which had been pushed aside first by his own speculations, then by the Dynamic Earth disaster. Ferguson replayed it, and seized on a name.

John Richard Campbell.

Ferguson put a query out for Mikhail's record of his message from his contact. After a minute or two, the record came back. Ferguson played it, impressed—the woman's voice-message was accompanied by clips, from her own records and from the news, like footnotes. It even included her call to Campbell.

“I recognise that woman,” said Skulk. “She was with Mikhail Aliyev in the Greyfriars operation.”

“Oh, right, that! Quite a helpful lass, this Jessica. Resourceful, too.”

Ferguson was looking again at the moment she'd captured, of Campbell recognising Hardcastle.

“But,” he added, “I wish she'd asked him more about that.”

Skulk rattled a tentacle tip on the filing cabinet, making an irritating drumming noise. Ferguson looked up, duly irritated.

“Why don't you ask him?” Skulk said.

“What?”

“Just call him, like she did.” Skulk pointed at the slate. “The number is there. You don't even have to Ogle him up.”

“Hmm,” said Ferguson. “I wonder if this counts as something clever enough to have to run past Frank first.”

“I hardly think so,” said Skulk.

“OK,” said Ferguson. “OK.”

He placed the call.

“Hello?”

“John Richard Campbell?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“DI Adam Ferguson, Lothian and Borders Police. Calling from Edinburgh, Scotland.”

“Ah! I was kind of…expecting this.”

“Why?” asked Ferguson.

“Well, uh, I said to…someone that I would call…someone, and I didn't, and…it's kind of a long story. How can I help you?”

“You're talking about Jessica Stopford and John Livingston, right?”

“Yes! You know about that?”

“All of that,” said Ferguson. “I have a recording of the call right here.”

“Fuck,” said Campbell. He sighed. “Sorry. Well, she warned me. This is actually…kind of a relief. What do you need to know?”

“You said you'd met Hardcastle, and you said you had been in regular contact with the people who were with him the first time you met. Can you tell me more about that?”

“Yes, but—just a moment. I think I should hand you over to someone. Can we set up a space?”

“We do have that facility,” said Ferguson.

“Oh, good. The police in NZ don't have quite such…anyway. Here.”

A shared space sprang up in Ferguson's frames. He waved to Skulk to join in.

Two men, one of whom he recognised as Campbell from Jessica's recordings, were sitting at a table in a small, tidy room. The window and the artificial light indicated that it was dark outside.

Campbell gestured toward the other man. “This is Brian Walker. FBI. He has…stuff to tell you. Better than I can.”

Walker fixed on Ferguson's virtual image with a tight-lipped smile. “Hi, Inspector Ferguson. He means, I can boil down what he's just spent hours telling me. But first, I want you to verify my ID.”

Ferguson did so. “Right,” he said.

Walker took a deep breath. “Here goes.”

Walker began by describing, with wry deprecation, Campbell's weekly contacts with the Free Congregation: talking earnestly to a handful of robots on Wednesday mornings, which the congregation in West Lothian gathered to listen to, live, on what was for them Tuesday nights: “the night sessions,” Campbell had called them. Walker went on to outline, cagily, his own investigations, which had been focused in the last couple of days by Ferguson's urgent messages and PNAI forwardings to Gazprom's security organisation on the Elevator.

Ferguson realised, from reading between the lines, that whatever the US authorities discovered about the exile conspiracy, he'd never get any credit. Gazprom, Exxon and the US government would handle this in their usual way, in the dark: capitalism with Russian characteristics. If there had been any sabotage on the Elevator, it would be covered up—it was far too commercially
sensitive a matter for the mere public. He would get the blame for what would go down in the records as a false alarm.

As he listened, Ferguson was distracted for a moment by an unexpected darkening of the room. He glanced at the time: the morning's soleta eclipse, now ten minutes early. On the morning's news he'd seen a note that the things were drifting out of alignment even more than before the recent attempt to fix the problem; until the Atlantic Elevator came back into operation, nothing more could be done.

“It's the soletas!” he said, breaking in. “It was the soletas all along.”

“What the fuck could anyone do with the soletas?” Walker asked. “Even if you crashed them, they'd do no damage. Things are thinner’n tissue paper.”

“It would still be pretty damn spectacular, breaking up and burning,” said Ferguson. “And it'd cost the oil companies and the US government tens of billions of dollars to replace.”

Campbell smacked a fist into his palm. “John Livingston once said to me that he didn't approve of the soletas. Thought they were kind of blasphemous.”

Ferguson sucked his lips. “That's interesting. Not enough to nail him.” He drummed a finger on the side of his desk slate, thinking. “Those night sessions of yours—how secret were they?”

Campbell looked awkward. “I spoke to the robots out in the bush. Nobody knew.”

“At this end, I mean.”

“Oh! Not secret at all. They have a meeting house in Linlithgow. There's a notice on the door giving the times of Sabbath—Sunday services, the Thursday-evening prayer meeting, and the Tuesday-evening…uh, lecture, they called it—discreet, but not secret. And the congregation was small, twenty or so, but people did sometimes come in off the street. Earnest inquirers, you know? What they'd see would be Livingston leading a prayer, and then me speaking on a screen at the front.”