Regeneration (14 page)

He dropped his hand back onto the table, looking defeated, until Lapsa picked it up and rested it against her stomach.

Mikal closed his eyes, giving them a moment's privacy. He felt relieved, and immensely sad: if Pilan had not been a sick man with huge responsibilities and a pregnant partner, he would have been far harder to persuade. This outcome might well be the opposite of what the terrorists had been hoping for, but to have achieved it with so little resistance only stoked Mikal's fury at them.

They made the necessary calls, then Pilan, clearly exhausted, was persuaded to go home and rest. Once Lapsa had messaged the project team, the couple said good-bye and walked away slowly, arm in arm. Mikal watched them go, then headed in the opposite direction.

Opening the door to the stairwell, he was met by Gabriel, as solemn-faced as Mikal had ever seen him, the cranial band with its blue standby light on his head and a tablet clutched to his chest. It was a pose oddly reminiscent of Herran, on the rare occasions when the little savant could be persuaded to leave his lair.

“Uncle Mik?” Gabriel sounded as serious as he looked. “Can I talk to you?”

“Of course. What—?”

But Gabriel shook his head and pointed, and in a minute they were back in the meeting room with the door firmly closed.

Gabriel drew a deep breath. For a moment he looked lost, as though, having gotten there, he did not know where to begin. “I've found something out,” he said finally. “It's part of my work for Thames Tidal, although I might have gone outside the lines a bit—but the thing is, I think it's a big deal, maybe really serious. But I'm not sure what to do about it.”

He looked anxious and tired, and suddenly much older than his seventeen years. Mikal, who had known Gabriel since he was Suri's age, was swept by another wave of sadness: the feeling that he was watching adulthood, with all of its grim truths and grimy compromises, settle like a shroud over the young man's shoulders.

“Tell me,” he said.

Less than a couple of miles away, Gabriel's mother was looking out at the walled back garden and worrying about her children.

The enormity of the situation her son was dealing with had crashed in on her when she'd heard the police bulletin, but she had already seen how weighed down he was when he'd arrived home from Herran's the night before. She and Bal had talked long into the night, wondering whether they had done the right thing in letting him take on so much when he was still so young. He had turned aside their concerns, and even with today's news he was so calm and steady, so insistent on remaining in post and doing an ever-more-necessary job, so certain that to pull out now would be to hand the terrorists a victory, that they'd relented and let him stay. She was still not sure it was the right decision.

And then there was Eve.

For days, even weeks now, she'd been growing increasingly convinced that something was different about Eve. Something was up. At first she had dismissed it as just the latest mood-swing; then she'd told herself that her little girl was picking up on the family's tension over Zavcka Klist's impending release. Then she decided that Eve was just reflecting the anxiety that had permeated the Squats since the TideFair. But she knew that her rationales contradicted each other, and that she was making excuses for not being able to put her finger on precisely what was wrong.

It was not Eve's cheek, because she had always been cheeky, but that precociousness was beginning to slide over into rudeness. It was not her boldness, because she had always been bold, but now her fearlessness was starting to feel like arrogance. Gaela knew too well where that could lead, and she also knew that whatever else was going on, she must act now to stop those occasional slips becoming habit.

One thing Eve had never been was secretive or withdrawn, but there was a new furtiveness about her, particularly when she did not have Mish or Suri or other playmates around. Gaela saw how she was always disappearing up to her room now, or vanishing to the end of the garden in response to the tiniest of rebukes; she saw that when Gabriel came home, his sister's first glance was for the blue light on
his cranial band. Others did that, but never
them,
never family. Gaela saw it all, and she did not like it.

And then at other times, like now, Eve was completely normal. Shouts and childish laughter floated up from the garden below, where a rambunctious game of tag was being played around the shrubbery. Gaela smiled to herself as a small blond figure peeled out from behind the apple tree, slapped the taller, dark-haired boy hard on the shoulder, dodged the flailing arm of the little one and pelted into the shadows behind the bushes; and thought that twilight was descending quickly and the children would soon find it far harder than she did to keep track of each other.

Turning away from the window, she eyed her daughter's satchel where it was lying with Mish's and Suri's in a higgledy-piggledy pile on the floor. The flap was loose; the corner of Eve's tablet poked out. Gaela, the memory of her own crèche childhood with its constant inquisitions and utter lack of privacy still strong, felt an almost physical revulsion at the thought of taking it out, tapping it awake and using her override command to examine the stream trails and school chatter of an eight-year-old. It went against everything she and Bal had taught their children about openness and honesty and not keeping secrets. But while she knew that Gabriel had absorbed those lessons, she was not at all sure the same was true for Eve.

She remembered with bitterness how adept she had once been at hiding from her custodians the thoughts, feelings and friendships she had desperately wanted to keep for herself. There was no reason to believe that Eve was not equally capable; no reason at all. And she knew, as she removed the tablet, that this was the reason she had come back upstairs. It had been growing in her from the moment she'd noticed that Eve had left it behind, and been struck by how unusual that was these days. It was what she had realized as she followed the riotous children down to the garden, when it had occurred to her that the mental picture accompanying her new unease was of her daughter tucked away with it in a corner.

It was why she had stopped dead halfway down the stairs, as they barreled out through the back door and Eve called her to follow,
laughing. This was where that moment of comprehension had been leading.

She looked swiftly out of the window again, marking the children's locations in the gathering gloom. Then she looked at the grubby tablet resting in her hands and swiped it awake.

Seven days after the last objections had been overturned and the estuary's new quantum-storage power plant had begun supplying the city; four days following the news of the toxin in the Thames; two days since the first terrorist attack against modified humans in more than a decade had been confirmed; the morning after a troubled mother had violated her principles for the sake of her child, on a bright, breezy noonday at the end of the most tumultuous week that London had known since she last walked its streets, Zavcka Klist came home.

She had not been there in more than eight years.

The palatial apartment looked much as she had left it—too much, in fact. She walked the high-ceilinged and intricately corniced, elegantly furnished rooms with a feeling of displacement, a prickling, atavistic sensation of having stepped backward in time into a life that she remembered but that was no longer hers. Sunshine blazed through the sparkling-clean windows; fresh flowers glowed from a profusion of vases; the floors gleamed and smelled faintly of beeswax; the linens were as crisp and immaculate as the ruling of a high-court judge. It was too pristine, too desperately welcoming, and, oddly,
too warm—as though the staff had tried too hard to erase the dust and the chill, and the seasons of absence. She had instructed them to make the place ready and must now, she supposed, think kindly on their efforts; but she found herself wishing she had told them to leave things as they were, to let it be dank and unloved and empty. That would have given her something to be angry about on her return, to sink her teeth into, to grapple with and in the process to ground herself.

Standing at the window of her bedroom, she gazed out over the leafy square, rubbing her fingers together in the newly acquired habit she refused to think of as nervous, feeling the rough patches of skin and snagging nails but also noting that her hands were perfectly steady. She had taken her meds before leaving prison in anticipation of the aggravations the day would bring. Out in the hall she could hear the murmur of voices where the wardens who had transported her were laying down the law for some of those with whom she would now be permitted unscheduled and unsupervised contact.

Marcus, her housekeeper, would be unfazed; she had kept him on retainer these many years, recognizing that he possessed a combination of diligence, loyalty, and respect for protocol that was both increasingly rare and essential for her comfort. She was as certain as she could be that he would find it unthinkable to sell her to the streams, take on airs in response to her reduced state, or otherwise forget his station. Marcus had on her orders hired two assistants, as they'd had in the old days, to clean and to cook. She trusted that he had chosen well and that the new members of the household would also be disinclined to try and leverage their positions. It was a grim irony that much of her confidence came from knowing that they had also been vetted by the domestic-security arm of Offender Management—the very agents of her confinement.

The fourth recipient of the wardens' lecture was neither friend nor employee but a financial consultant from the firm that handled the bulk of her business affairs. He had been assigned not only to her account but also, apparently, to her. “Think of him as your assistant,” the firm's executive vice president had urged during their supervised conference a couple of days before. “Contact him as often as you like.
We've arranged clearance so he can be available to work with you offstream.” The woman had made that sound particularly meaningful. “We've been impressed by his performance and discretion, and he is of course covered by all our confidentiality clauses. We value your patronage, Ms. Klist, and we want you to know you've got a dedicated professional on call.”

Zavcka had to admit that it showed a fine bit of anticipation for the kind of instructions she would be giving, although she was of the view that the dedicated professional should have been the vice president herself. But she had always found the woman too brash for her tastes; and she knew that someone clever enough to anticipate Zavcka Klist's needs would also be clever enough to stay clear of becoming directly responsible for fulfilling them. So she had agreed to the arrangement with the ill temper of one who is more accustomed to predicting and manipulating than being predictable or manipulated. Her impression of the “assistant” when they'd met a few minutes earlier was that he was older, more diffident, and better looking than she'd expected, but she was still sufficiently miffed to dismiss him as a lightweight; she hadn't bothered with more than a cursory hello.

His boss was not present, although she, along with Zavcka's solicitor and physician, made up the rest of the paltry crew with whom the prisoner was now allowed unmonitored contact.
Seven people
, she thought, turning wearily away from the window.
The limits of my life, all that I'm allowed under this wonderfully humane system of ours. Seven people, none of them equals, none of them friends, and three of them not even here.

She knew her isolation was largely a consequence of decisions made long ago, long before the crimes and machinations that had drawn the attention of Sharon Varsi and Rhys Morgan, before the discovery of Ellyn and the unborn infant, before Aryel Morningstar had uncovered the deepest of Zavcka's secrets and revealed it to the world. Throughout her protracted life, her circle had rarely been much larger than the seven to whom she was now limited. There had been no one to make friends with as a child, and the need to protect herself from scrutiny had kept her aloof as the years passed
by. She had always been able to slip out of relationships as if shedding an unwanted coat, to walk away without hesitation from those she'd claimed to care for, or anyone foolish enough to care for her. But those disappearances had felt like a choice, a game, an exercise of power that she could wield differently if it suited her. Now she had no choice in the matter at all. Except, she thought wryly as she crossed to the bathroom, of the most petty kind: she could hide out here and avoid having to witness the details of her humiliation being imparted to her staff.

It was a small, hollow victory and she felt its meaninglessness as she straightened up from washing her hands and bathing her face, and caught sight of herself in the mirror. She saw herself framed there, without glamour or subterfuge, every line and seam cast in bold relief; but the thing that drew her gaze, the focal point of her reflection, was the finger-thick strip of shaped polymer and bonded metal like a pliable piece of flattened rope wrapped snugly around her neck, glinting malevolently, far too ugly to be mistaken for jewelry.

They had put it on her that morning. She sat still as a statue, refusing either to flinch or to speak as the ends were pressed together and the molecular locks activated, sealing into place and beginning at once to transmit her location and basic biodata. It would be many long years before she could hope to be free of it—long enough to be as good as forever for anyone else.

In her case it was just possible she might outlive the limits of her sentence, but until then she would be tagged and tracked, and alarms would be raised and armed response dispatched if she ventured beyond whatever bounds were currently approved for her. The review board might have agreed to let her come home, but
home
was as far as she could go. Even to step outside her own front door would revoke the release and return her to prison. “You are prohibited from leaving for any reason,” they'd told her, “save an imminent threat to your own life.” The technician who'd been fitting the collar had smiled weakly as though to soften the pronouncement. “We don't expect you to stay in the building if it's on fire, for example.”

“We also don't expect you to set the building on fire so that you have an excuse to get out of it,” said the warden, one of those who
would form her homecoming party. He appeared to have assigned himself the role of reminding her at every juncture that she was no less a criminal or a prisoner, and still subject to the sufferance of the state. “Or for any other reason.”

The technician had ducked her head, tightened her lips, and looked uneasy. Zavcka had raised her eyes fractionally to rake the warden with a cool, contemptuous gaze. After a moment he'd felt compelled to add, in a tone he must have hoped she would find daunting, “It's been tried.”

Not by me,
she'd wanted to retort. Not that she could foresee doing such a thing; she was equally ready to snap that she had owned the building for longer than either of them had been alive and valued its beauty and history in ways such tiny minds would fail to understand; moreover, that burning oneself out of one's own home was both crude and conspicuous. Only an idiot would try something that obvious.

She'd held her tongue as they'd checked the bond and calibrated the signal, recited the rules to her and made her acknowledge each one, then fidgeted impatiently while she'd silently read through the small print. She had finally scrawled her acceptance into a tablet, validated it with a finger ident and retinal scan, suffered through a brief farewell speech by the prison's governor and equally insipid assurances from the staff psychologist. She'd had to be reminded to take the bioplastic bag with her pitiful collection of what Offender Management had termed “personal items.” It would not have been politic to refuse.

Now, walking back into the bedroom, she caught sight of the clear bag, dumped unceremoniously on the floor and kicked halfway under a chair, and thought if there was anything here she wished to burn, it was that.

There was a sound of quiet footsteps in the room beyond, a tap at the half-open door and Marcus's voice saying, “Ma'am?”

“Yes?”

He stepped into view, just. “Sorry to disturb you, ma'am, but they've finished with us. They say they need to see you before they leave.”

“Do they.” She sighed and strode to the door. As he stood back to let her pass, she said, “Thank you, Marcus. And, ah . . .”

She must say something to this faithful servant, somehow reconfirm the essential dynamic of their relationship. She glanced back at him, for once in her life unsure how to proceed, and another strong wave of dislocation rocked her. She realized that she stood spotlighted in a puddle of sunshine. The plush and polish of her surroundings felt transient and unreal, like a stage on which she was now obliged to perform.

She resisted the urge to put a hand to her throat. What came out felt like a tiny triumph, as disingenuous as it was truthful. “The place looks lovely. Well done.”

Sometime later, she was interrupted by a hesitant throat-clearing as she sat, tablet in hand, on what had been her favorite sofa. She had chosen it deliberately, determined that its luxury would become familiar again, and her awareness of it had indeed begun to drift away as she read. Even with the redactions on her stream access so much more was available to her now than in prison, and the desire to catch up was an almost physical urge, a visceral need to become fully reoriented in the chatter and conflict and flow of events. She was immersed in an onstream argument about the new Thames Tidal Power facility and whether direct action was a legitimate form of protest when the noise made her look up. She was almost too surprised to be annoyed by the sight of the financial-services flunky she thought she had ignored out of existence an hour before.

He had approached silently and stood just inside the sitting room, hands clasped behind his back, head inclined in a posture of deep respect, while his eyes scanned her face and form with an avidity that suggested something else as well, though quite what that something else was, she did not know. The intensity of his attention did not feel sexual, exactly, or threatening, or anything else she could easily put a name to. It wasn't how he'd looked at her earlier, either, when others had been present. It felt unsettling, without being either dangerous or attractive.

Zavcka rested the tablet on her lap and raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“I beg your pardon, Ms. Klist,” the man said. “I wanted to introduce myself. Properly.”

“I think you already did,” she replied, puzzled. She reached for his name, struggling to recall it. Something nondescript, pedestrian. Thinking back through the conversation with his boss, she arrived at
Patrick Crawford
. It triggered a memory of him murmuring the name earlier, when he had been one of the strangers assembled in the hall to welcome her home.

“Mr. Crawford, I believe?” she said, and his face lit up to an entirely unwarranted degree.

“Yes, madam. I am very pleased to be at your service.”

There was something strangely antiquated about his phrasing. Zavcka was known to prefer formal speech herself, and anyone assigned to her would be briefed accordingly, but this felt excessive, as though the requirement had been embraced with an unlikely degree of enthusiasm.

“Thank you,” she said. “It may take me a day or two to settle in and examine the details of the portfolio.” She knew its details by heart, but one learned more about a subordinate's capabilities by concealing the full extent of one's own. “I expect I'll be making some changes.”

“Very good, Ms. Klist. I am at your disposal. You are no doubt aware that your current investments are performing exceptionally well, but I am ready to carry out any instructions you might have.”

So he wasn't here with a list of recommendations upon which he would make a tidy commission. But the quiet intensity of his voice and his gaze had not diminished.

She was baffled, and beginning to be suspicious. “I'm glad to hear it,” she said. “But to be frank, Mr. Crawford, I'm surprised to find you so eager. I can hardly be a plum assignment.” She extended her arms along the back of the couch, displaying the collar and looking him full in the face. “Many would argue that I shouldn't even be here, much less have someone like you available to me. Surely you'd prefer a client with a less . . . questionable reputation?”