The Administration Series (260 page)

"Here," Silis said, and whistled. A multicoloured bird flew down from the roof and perched on her hand. Silis stroked it for a moment, then jerked out two tail feathers, one purple, one yellow. The bird cocked its head and squawked.

"Off you go," Silis said, and it flew off to perch in a toffee-apple tree.

She offered Warrick the feathers. He took the purple one and sucked it experimentally. It didn't dissolve, but it did taste strongly of plum brandy. "Different flavour for each feather?" he guessed.

Silis nodded, twirling her own feather. "This one is Advocaat." She looked around the garden. "There are some marshmallow rabbits somewhere too. Kind of shy at the moment, but once you get hold of one it's snuggly as hell and they taste great. Perfect for kids."

The idea of taking a bite of a still-moving rabbit, even a virtual one, was mildly disturbing. "I don't remember mammals and birds in the contract."

Silis's enthusiasm abated slightly. "Er, no. But we were ahead of schedule and under budget, so I thought a couple of extra touches might go down well. The artificial life suite people loved the idea."

"I'm sure they did. And I'm sure the customer will be delighted, assuming they wish to teach their children to eat live vertebrates."

"Ah." Silis looked at the yellow feather in her hand. "I didn't . . . well, we just thought it would be cool."

Programmers, he thought irritably. "Major object additions have to be cleared by the project manager, you know that."

"Okay. Yes, I do know. I'm sorry." She looked up sheepishly. "Um . . . does this mean you don't want to see the sugar mice?"

"Sugar . . . ?"

Silis reached into her pocket and produced a squirming handful, which untangled itself into three life-sized mice which were, indeed, made of pink sugar. Not the smooth, amorphous mice that could be found in patisseries, though. These were clad in impossibly fine spun-sugar fur and had bright pink eyes and twitching whiskers. They sat up on their hind legs in Silis's palm, curved their tails behind them, and began to warble a three-part harmony arrangement of 'A Mouse Lived in a Windmill' in high treble voices.

"They are . . . " Warrick bent down and examined the creatures more closely. Every detail was flawless. It was a ridiculous waste of design and programming time . . . and exactly the sort of thing he would have done himself at one point, back when the sim was ninety percent inspiration and ten percent perspiration.

He straightened up to find Silis watching him anxiously. "They are absolutely perfect," he said, and grinned at her expression of relief.

"Try one," she suggested. "They're edible."

He gave it serious consideration for a couple of seconds until the mouse he was eyeing clapped its paws together and led the group into a change of key. "I couldn't possibly," he said.

"That's what everyone says."

"How do they taste?"

Silis smiled. "Like pink sugar mice. Or at least they're supposed to — I couldn't bring myself to eat one, either."

Warrick turned slowly, surveying the room, taking in every detail of the whole appalling, tacky, overly-cute monstrosity. He stepped back, down the path, to look up at the house. Gilded gingerbread walls, lollipop windows, barley-sugar thatching, icing trimmings . . . it was one of the most hideous things he had seen in his entire life.

Silis moved up beside him and placed a mouse on his shoulder. It stopped singing and stuck its nose in his ear, whiskers tickling.

"It's incredible," Silis said. "Not this room, the whole sim. Isn't it? I do envy you — I can't imagine how cool it must be to know you're the person who thought of it in the first place."

"Yes." Inexplicably, there was lump in his throat that it took him a moment to think away. "Yes, it is. Thank you. Although it's a team effort. It always has been."

In his heart, though, it was still his.

He left Silis there with her mice. As he worked his way out the straps, he tried to marshal his arguments to persuade Asher that the development programmes had to stay.

He found Asher in her office, with Lew Marcus already there waiting for him. When he entered, without knocking, they looked up, then at each other.

Lew sighed. "Silis showed you her bloody mice, didn't she?"

"I'm sorry?" Warrick said in surprise.

"There were rumours going around about budget cuts," Asher said. "I overheard a conversation in the canteen at lunchtime."

"Oh?" Warrick asked.

"A few of the senior programmers were hatching a plan to persuade you otherwise. Apparently they seemed to think they knew just how to appeal to you."

Lew nodded. "I knew we were in trouble when I heard you were in the sim."

Warrick started laughing. He simply couldn't help it. The idea that the primary way the programmers hoped to change his mind was by showing him again just how much fun — how cool — the sim was, made him unfeasibly happy.

"Keir," Lew said irritably. "Be serious."

"I'm sorry." He managed to get the laughter under control because he couldn't afford to annoy them.

Lew didn't look appeased by the apology. "We've got to make a decision, and one way or another it has to be now. And not on the basis of Silis's bloody mice."

"Keir," Asher said sympathetically, "I don't want to give you any extra stress just now, but we have to be sensible."

Sensible. The word finally gave him the opening he needed.

"Why start now?" Warrick asked. "Was it sensible when we founded SimTech? I turned down a perfectly good and very lucrative corporate contract to do it. Lew did the same with a solid Administration research post. You had an excellent future at the investment bank. We gave them up to work out of Asher's house. We all took risks. So did the people who came to work here from the neural remodelling project. We didn't make them any promises, because the odds were against us making it through the first year, never mind ending up with a saleable product. They trusted us to do our best to make SimTech work."

"And we are doing," Asher said. "I'm not suggesting sacking them."

"No, you're just taking away every reason that the staff we most need have to stay. The only edge we have are our people — the people who don't want to work somewhere like LiveCorp, somewhere with a culture that stifles creativity. People will start to leave, and it won't take that long."

She looked genuinely surprised. "I think our staff have more loyalty than you give them credit for. Besides, in the current climate, I think they'll prefer to keep the jobs they have."

With that she might have a point, or even two points. But that was a risk
he
wasn't willing to take. "And if you're wrong? What have we got left if they leave?"

"Technology," Asher said firmly. "Patent revenue and proprietary tech licensing that can nurse us through until the unit sales pick up."

"And when the sales do pick up and all our best people have gone? Who'll do the work the new customers want?"

No one spoke. Warrick stood in the centre of the room, and it suddenly occurred to him that he'd been lecturing, something that both Asher and Lew hated. Asher sat at her desk, straight and immovable. Lew was still leaning on the edge of the desk, rubbing his thumb along the top edge of Asher's screen. Warrick couldn't read his expression — he looked to be absorbed in watching his hand move.

"We have to make the decision," Asher said. "We can't put it off forever."

"You both know what my position is," Warrick said.

Lew didn't look up.

"Then if we can't agree, we'll have to vote," Asher said. "I say we cut the research programme back, as outlined in my proposals."

"I don't object to savings in principle," Warrick said. "Of course not. But we have to keep the long-range, speculative development. It's what keeps the programmers happy and they're SimTech's future. I can't support your plan. I say we hold out for as long as we can, even if we have to eat into the reserves, while you try to find someone to pick up more licensing. Lew?"

Lew looked up. "Were the mice really that good?"

"Yes."

He smiled thinly. "Maybe I should have a look at them. It's a while since I've been in the sim."

"Lew," Asher said. "Vote, please."

He straightened up. "I vote with Warrick. Nothing personal, Asher."

Asher nodded. "Well, Keir, I hope you're right. Because if we take this risk and it doesn't work out . . . "

"I know," he said.

Sara authorised the transcript of the previous interview, then switched on the screen to watch the progress of the latest one. It should be finished soon, which meant yet another transcript and yet another late night. She wouldn't complain about it.

Toreth stood in front of his prisoner, listening to her confession, turning an injector over in his hand. Given that he must have read the terms of the waiver out to the woman, it was amazing how he still managed to give the impression of having available near-limitless unpleasant options. Sara wondered how long it would take for the reputation of I&I to fade to the point that simple fear of the uniform would no longer work as an interrogation tactic.

Without noticing, she nibbled the last patch of nail varnish from her thumbnail and moved on to her index finger, worrying at a chip on the edge.

What was going on down on the interrogation levels?

Kel had asked her about it again at coffee that morning and she'd had to say she couldn't tell him. She couldn't admit that she didn't really know. She knew was that whatever it was had something to do with Warrick's brother. She knew Citizen Surveillance had asked for Toreth specially — Jenny had told her that but hadn't known why. And that was all she knew.

'I want every part where Tarin Marriot is accused of being or implied to be an informer. That's the single most important thing. Even if it doesn't have high direct evidential value, it goes in. Got that?'

Toreth had given her the orders on the first day, once and once only; he put nothing in writing. She'd nodded, expecting that he'd say something about
why
. To start with, why he was handling the case at all, given the rules about personal involvement with prisoners. However, that first conversation had also been the last one that hadn't dealt purely with the details of the case. She'd barely even seen him since, despite the fact that he was still sleeping on her sofa on the nights he came home at all.

Although she tried not to, although she told herself Toreth knew what he was doing, she worried about not understanding the case. If she wasn't up to speed, how would she spot if she messed up the transcripts? How would she know if something on the admin network was relevant, or if there was danger from somewhere inside the division?

Most of all, she wished he'd tell her because she wanted to know that he still could.

What had he told her, really, since Carnac had left? He'd come to her flat too stoned to know where he was and she'd fucked that up by trying to give him something he couldn't accept. He'd told her about moving in with Warrick, except that really he'd let that slip by accident, and she'd messed it up in two seconds flat.

He was as friendly with her as he'd ever been, but that meant nothing at all because he could socialise flawlessly with people he'd happily see dead. Carnac had been right about one thing: all that made her different was that he trusted her. Had trusted her.

He was just her boss, that was all. It seemed a very long time since that had been the mantra she'd lived with. Not a friend — just her boss, just a para. Not, supposedly, someone who could care at all, or be hurt.

Well, the division psych assessors could take their para profiles and stick them where the sun didn't shine.

On the screen, the guards were helping the woman up from the chair, and Toreth glanced up at the camera. The corner of the screen indicated the feed was no longer an active interrogation, so Sara closed it and got back to work.

To Warrick's great relief, Cele had offered to come to the hospital with them. She stood close beside Dilly, her hand resting in the small of Dilly's back. She'd provided calm, silent support while Doctor Caillat went through the treatment options for the last time. Warrick had taken charge of Philly. She kept her eyes fixed on the tank, never looking away, rarely even blinking.

The last of the sickening mess of burned flesh had been concealed since Warrick's last visit. The synthetic skin matrix covered Tarin, smooth, hairless, wrinkled and folded in odd places. It — he — looked nothing at all like Tarin. Tarin had had a mole on his thigh, Warrick remembered. He remembered more than he would have guessed from their childhood together, about Tarin as he'd been as a teenager and a young man, when he'd seemed so impossibly much older, so grown-up. All in the distant past, before Warrick had made the mistake of looking on Kate's computer.

If it was a mistake. Looking back on it, he didn't know whether or not he wished he'd had the sense to stay away. How would things have gone? He didn't know, and he certainly didn't know that they would be better. Would Kate still be here, or could things have gone worse for all of them?