Unlike Catriona, he had a firm technical grasp on the mechanism of cortical calls: the uniqueness of each brain’s encoding of sensory impulses adding a further layer of impenetrable encryption to the cryptographic algorithms routinely applied… A uniquely encoded thought struck him.
“Apart from someone lip-reading me, I guess.” He cupped his hand around his mouth. “OK?”
Catriona looked more irritated than reassured by this demonstrative caution.
“OK,” she said. She took a deep breath. “I’m very dubious about the next release of the upgrade, Angus. It has at least one mitochondrial module that’s not documented at all.”
“That’s impossible!” cried Angus, shocked. “It’d never get through.”
“It’s got this far,” said Catriona. “No record of testing, either. I keep objecting, and I keep getting told it’s being dealt with or it’s not important or otherwise fobbed off. The release goes live in a
“I don’t get it,” said Angus. “I don’t get it at all. If this were to get out it would sink Syn Bio’s stock, for a start. Then there’s audits and prosecutions… the Authority would break them up and stamp on the bits. Forget whistle-blowing, Catriona, you should take this to the Authority in the company’s
“I have,” said Catriona. “And I just get the same runaround.”
“What?”
If he’d heard this from anyone else, Angus wouldn’t have believed it. The Human Enhancement Authority’s reputation was beyond reproach. Impartial, impersonal, incorruptible, it was seen as the very image of an institution entrusted with humanity’s (at least, European humanity’s) evolutionary future.
Angus was old enough to remember when software didn’t just seamlessly improve, day by day or hour by hour, but came out in discrete tranches called
“They’re stonewalling,” Catriona said.
“Don’t worry,” said Angus. “There must be some mistake. A bureaucratic foul-up. I’ll look into it.”
“Well, keep my name out of—”
The lights came on for Earth Hour.
“That won’t be easy,” Angus said, flinching and shielding his eyes as the balcony, the room, the building and the whole sweep of cityscape below him lit up. “They’ll know our connection, they’ll know you’ve been asking —”
“I asked you to keep my name out of it,” said Catriona. “I didn’t say it would be easy.”
“Look into it without bringing my
“Yes, exactly!” Catriona ignored his sarcasm—deliberately, from her tone. She looked around. “I can’t concentrate with all this going on. Catch you later.”
Angus waved a hand at the image of his sister, now ghostly under the blaze of the balcony’s overhead lighting. “I’ll keep in touch,” he said drily.
“Bye, bro.”
Catriona faded. Angus lit his small cigar at last, and sipped the whisky. Ah. That was good, as was the view. The Sydney Harbour was hazy in the distance, and even the gleaming shells of the Opera House, just visible over the rooftops, were fuzzy at the edges, the smart dust in the air scattering the extravagant outpouring of light. Angus savoured the whisky and cigar to their respective ends, and then went out.
On the street the light was even brighter, to the extent that Angus missed his footing occasionally as he made his way up Macleay Street towards Kings Cross. He felt dazzled and disoriented, and considered lowering the gain on his eyes—but that, he felt in some obscure way, would have been not only cheating, it would have been missing the point. The whole thing about Earth Hour was to squander electricity, and if that spree had people reeling in the streets as if drunk, that was entirely in the spirit of the celebration.
It was all symbolic anyway, he thought. The event’s promoters knew as well as he did that the amount of CO2 being removed from the atmosphere by Earth Hour was insignificant—only a trivial fraction of the electricity wasted was carbon-negative rather than neutral—but it was the principle of the thing, dammit!
He found a table outside a bar close to Fitzroy Gardens, a tree-shaded plaza on the edge of which a transparent globe fountained water and light. He tapped an order on the table, and after a minute a barman arrived with a tall lager on a tray. Angus tapped again to tip, and settled back to drink and think. The air was hot as well as bright, the chilled beer refreshing. Around the fountain a dozen teenagers cooled themselves more directly, jumping in and out of the arcs of spray and splashing in the circular pool around the illuminated globe. Yells and squeals; few articulate words. Probably cortexting each other. It was the thing. The youth of today. Talking silently and behind your back. Angus smiled reminiscently and indulgently. He muted the enzymes that degraded the alcohol, letting himself get drunk. He could reverse it on an instant later, he thought, then thought that the trouble with that was that you seldom knew when to do it. Except in a real life-threatening emergency, being drunk meant you didn’t know when it was time to sober up. You just noticed that things kept crashing.
He gave the table menu a minute of baffled inspection, then swayed inside to order his second pint. The place was almost empty. Angus heaved himself on to a bar stool beside a tall, thin woman about his own age who sat alone and to all appearances collected crushed cigarette butts. She was just now adding to the collection, stabbing a good inch into the ashtray. A thick tall glass of pink stuff with a straw anchored her other hand to the bar counter. She wore a singlet over a thin bra, and skinny jeans above gold slingbacks. Ratty blond hair. It was a look.
“I’ve had two,” she was explaining to the barman, who wasn’t listening. She swung her badly aimed gaze on Angus. “And I’m squiffy already. God, I’m a cheap date.”
“I’m cheaper,” said Angus. “Squiffier, too. Drunk as a lord. Ha-ha. I used to be a lord, you know.”
The woman’s eyes got glassier. “So you did,” she said. “So you did. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Cameron.”
“Just call me Angus.”
She extended a limp hand. “Glenda Glendale.”
Angus gave her fingers a token squeeze, thinking that with a name like that she’d never stood a chance.
“Now ain’t that the truth,” Glenda said, with unexpected bitterness, and dipped her head to the straw.
“Did I say that out loud?” Angus said. “Jeez. Sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Glenda said.
She opened a fresh pack of cigarettes, and tapped one out.
The assassin crouched behind a recycling bin in the alleyway beside the Thai restaurant opposite the bar, his bicycle propped against the wall. He zoomed his gaze to watch the target settle his arse on the stool, his elbow on the counter, and his attention on the floozy. Perfect. The assassin decided this was the moment to seize. He reached for the bike and with a few practiced twisting motions had it dismantled. The wheels he laid aside. The frame’s reassembly, to a new form and function, was likewise deft.
Glenda fumbled the next lighting-up, and dropped her lighter. Angus stooped from the stool, more or less by reflex, to pick it up. As he did so there was a soft thud, and a moment later the loudest scream he’d ever heard. Glenda’s legs lashed straight out. Her shin swiped his ear and struck his shoulder, tipping him to the floor. He crashed with the relaxation and anaesthesia of the drunk. Glenda fell almost on top of him, all her limbs thrashing, her scream still splitting his ears. Angus raised his head and saw a feathered shaft sticking about six inches out of her shoulder.
The wound was nothing like severe enough to merit the screams or the spasms. Toxin, then. Modified stonefish, at a guess. The idea wasn’t just that you died (though you did, in about a minute). You died in the worst pain it was possible to experience.
The barman vaulted the counter, feet hitting the floor just clear of Glenda’s head. In his right hand he clutched a short-bladed sharp knife, one he might have used to slice limes. Angus knew exactly what he intended to do with it, and was appalled at the man’s reckless courage.
