Clearly, Alpha Earth is the better version, but we seem to miss that spark that creates the extraordinary, or maybe it just stands out more here because of all the awfulness. One thing we had less of in Alpha was the sublime. If we drew something, it was pretty and people appreciated it. On Beta, the painting was imbued with passion, with blood and fear, with rapture and awe. We just didn't do those extremes. And in our culture, that showed. Maybe that's why we appreciated Beta's stuff more than they did.
My earpiece buzzed and I tapped Ramin’s call through. I called out to Clio, who was now cleaning the guns and preparing our first-aid kits. We didn't plan on getting shot, but our guns fired electrical pulses which caused a heart to spasm. It generally never killed anyone, but it stopped them in much the same way that a house falling on your head would. Our version left no trace though. Beta guns on the other hand ripped through skin and bones, leaving blood leaking all over the place and an unacceptably high possibility of death. Our technology still hadn’t mastered portable forcefields, so we had to rely on speed, general superiority, great triage kits and not getting shot at in the first place.
As soon as Clio joined me I flicked on the projection. Ramin was standing in front of us. Behind him we could just about make out the River Vistula. Again, he had chosen his hotel on the river. We just couldn't help it. Besides, a river made for a quick getaway in a crisis. Confirming that the room was contained, I told him to report.
‘It's not here. Paul went to the location of the hot spot but the lead was dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘Literally.’ Paul stepped into view. ‘When I got to the suggested address, the police were there. I stepped away until they had gone and then came back to chat to the neighbours. Turns out it was the residence of an old woman called Zofia Guskov, the lead we had. Neighbours said that prior to her death, she had met an Englishman called Charles Bradshaw. Zofia had given her neighbour his calling card, saying he paid well for old tat. They couldn't tell me anything more, but I think the combination of mysterious death and English stranger suggests I was at the right location.’
‘Did the neighbour pass on this man’s name to the police?’ asked Clio.
Paul laughed. ‘No. The neighbour has very clear views on the police.’
I praised the guys on their intel gathering, especially getting the name of the English man. That was a real lead.
‘Right, get back over here as fast as you can. Clio and I will spend the rest of the day tracking down this Charles and then we'll make plans when you’re back.’
Switching off, I looked over to Clio who was already typing away on her keyboard, writing subroutines to hack into various websites including Google and Facebook. Between the two of them, we could cover most people in the UK.
I decided to go for a run. When I got to the foyer, I was gutted to discover great big flakes of snow falling. I ran along the embankment for a while and then gave up. The pavement was becoming slippery and everyone was waving umbrellas around like they were lethal weapons. I grabbed a hot chocolate, one of the things I did love about being here, and sloped back to the hotel. A news kiosk proclaimed that a dolphin had been seen in the Thames yesterday. It wasn't a crocodile, but it was good news. For a few decades it had looked as though they had managed to destroy their river. We couldn't rescue geological features, and we had all watched in misery as they frittered it away. Now life was returning and it couldn't help but cheer us up. Even if it was so cold that my gooseflesh now had gooseflesh. The hotel had a steam room, so, finishing my drink I headed off to warm up in there instead and try to unknit my freezing joints.
Once I felt vaguely human again I headed back to the room. Clio had been researching Cambridge as the extraction point for the egg. Every scenario showed it ending there. But if we could snatch it quietly before the big finale, so much the better. Fewer ripples in the young timeline.
The room was beautifully warm and there were various plates of canapés dotted around. Clio had got busy with room service again. The joy of an expensive hotel was that they never so much as blinked an eye when you put in strange requests. Like her request for French Fancies. That girl did love those little sponge cakes.
‘I ordered some dim sum as well. They're on that tray by your laptop and the cafetiere has Ethiopian roast in it.’
The joy of having your best friend as your partner.
‘Did your jog take you further than the sauna?’
I ignored the sarcasm and referred her to the snow. ‘It doesn't help things, does it?’
It could clear up later or gridlock the whole city. Beta Britain was full-on rubbish with snow. They could see how other countries dealt with it, but they failed to implement the same measures. Their reasoning was that those measures were simply not cost effective for just a couple of days every other year. It was almost as if they enjoyed the chaos and closures.
As I powered up my laptop, Clio shared her intel on Cambridge and then we decided to find an earlier extraction point. The other problem with a live shot is that if we missed the egg's extraction point, that was it. We failed.
‘Okay. Let’s start at the beginning,’ I said. ‘We know Charles Bradshaw met with Zofia Guskov. According to the Q Field, the egg moves from Poland to Cambridge. I think it’s safe to assume that
