Beautiful Intelligence (33 page)

“Forty minutes!” she shouted. “Or less!”

Those forty minutes passed like four. But then – quite suddenly it seemed to Pouncey, as if she woke from a dream – she found herself sitting behind the soltruck wheel, Manfred, Jo and Dirk at her side. A bit of a squeeze. Indigo sat on Dirk’s lap.

“It was only three of us before,” Manfred observed. “Dirk, you gotta give up smoking, you know?”

The smell was strong. Pouncey stared out of the front window. That odour was a potential security risk. Dirk was famous. Computers everywhere would be looking for him. There was such a thing as an artificial nose.

All three of them were staring at her. Joanna looked concerned. “We’re ready to go,” she said.

Pouncey nodded. She had fazed out for a few moments, her last hour a blur of motion lasting subjective minutes. “Yeah,” she said. “Right. Yeah. Let’s go.”

She drove the soltruck up the ramp and turned left into morning sunlight, leaving a trail of leaves from the green camouflage. Then an orange warning light winked on her spex. There was a synchronous beep in the front comp.

“What’s that?” Manfred asked.

Pouncey checked, then slammed on the brakes. “Shit,” she said. “The fake class!”

“What about them?”

“An error’s been spotted. All the real school kids have made earthquake plans, but not our fake class. Manfred, I gotta sort that now.”

“What? Why?”

“It’ll stand out like a sore thumb – Portland kids with no escape plan? You gotta be jokin’! There’ll be dozens of media computers sending
that
newsflash to the nearest stations, the voyeuristic fuckers. And if Aritomo spots–”

“Yeah, yeah. So give ’em a plan. Then drive on.”

Pouncey worked info as fast as she could. The ghost link on the school roster had alerted her class management soft to the fact that the fake class had no earthquake evacuation data, unlike the rest of the school. Somebody... no, some
thing,
some computer somewhere had noticed that anomaly. If it got out into local media, that would be just the sort of thing Aritomo might notice. He would be searching for anomalies.

Then Indigo said, “There are vultures circling overhead.”

Pouncey stared. Manfred stared at her.

Dirk said, “What you say, Mr Indigo?”

“There are vultures circling overhead.”

“What dat mean?” Dirk asked.

But Indigo said nothing more, lowering its head in a way that made Pouncey think at once of an aircraft crash posture.

“Get outa here!” Manfred shouted.

Pouncey used three more seconds to finish the school class update. Then she took a deep breath and revved the engine. “To the hills,” she said.

She turned the corner at the end of the street, then headed down a passage leading to the main route out of town – a dual triple lane road of pot-holed tarmac and shattered barriers. Algae-covered roadsigns littered the sides of the road, alongside less recognisable piles of rubbish.

Pouncey drove fast, but around the next corner she saw a roadblock. She skidded to a halt. Two solcars had stopped at the roadblock; a man gesticulated with tall black dudes in faded emergency overalls, yellow and orange.

“Highway department?” Pouncey muttered to herself. “Can’t be.”

“What is it, mmm?” Manfred asked.

Pouncey parked the soltruck, threw him a hi-vel pistol, then armed her own. “Gonna find out,” she said. “Manfred, open the window your side and cover me. If you hear a shot, Dirk – you drive. I might be injured. Got it?”

“Got it,” said Dirk, handing Indigo over to Joanna.

Pouncey stepped out, then ran over to the gesticulating man. “What’s going on?” she asked. She gestured at the roadblock. “Local, is it?”

Three heavyweights manned the roadblock: more muscles than wrestlers. Steam shot up from some manhole a few metres behind piles of rubble. The solcar driver spoke in broken Ameri-English. “Yeah, local. These men say splits in the road. We go back. He tell me to get the fuck out before the earthquake come.”

Pouncey glanced at the three dudes. They glowered at her, but said nothing. They made no move. Seemed legitimate. She turned to run back to the soltruck.

There came a shot. The front windscreen of the soltruck shattered, but it did not break free: triple laminated. Pouncey dived, rolled, ran along a barrier, then positioned herself at its end.

The soltruck stood three metres away. A second shot rang out and two men ran out from a building twenty metres off. Nearby there came the screech of wheels.

Nothing for it. This was a set-up – time for a risk.

She fired at the running men, then jumped up and flattened herself against the side of the soltruck. A bullet ricocheted off her boot heel.

She opened the door and jumped in. “Close your window you fool!” she shouted at Manfred.

He shut the window. Dirk gasped, “It da Aritomo men! Dey block da road.”

Pouncey stamped on the accelerator then swung the soltruck around. Through luck and nothing else the two attackers were right in her way: she ran them over as the three black dudes raked the back of the soltruck with semi-automatic fire.

“They want us alive!” Pouncey gasped. “This is kid gloves, yeah? Hold tight!”

“But–”

More gunfire – and then a sight of the vehicle that she’d heard. A big fat car with racing wheels and what sounded like a petrol engine. Pouncey quailed. That was not good. That was concentrated energy.

Again through luck she was well positioned to dodge the vehicle as it screeched into the street. Somebody leaned out of a window and fired a semi-automatic at the back of the soltruck. Bullets thundered into the metal and she heard one of the doors rattling. Then she heard the
whumph
of a car impact.

“If that door opens, our five bis are done for,” she said.

Joanna glanced over her shoulder. “I think the door
is
open!” she cried.

Pouncey span the wheel and drove the soltruck into a side road. She screeched to a halt. “Manfred! Cover me!”

She ran to the back of the soltruck to see that two crates had fallen out, but they were invisible – in the other street. Too far away now.

She slammed the right door shut, grabbed a jump lead from the tool bay on the inside of the other door, then closed it and wired both doors. A vehicle engine revved around the corner. Voices yelled. She ran back to the comp, jumped in and slammed her door shut.

“They’re all there?” Manfred asked, trying to peer into the gloom at the back of the soltruck. “All five?”

Pouncey did not answer. Pedal to the metal, she was already doing twenty kilometres per hour.

“They were all
there?
” Manfred shouted.

Pouncey said nothing.

“Stop!” Manfred screamed. “Stop
now!
We can’t lose
any
of the bis, that’s what Aritomo wants.”

Before Pouncey could reply he opened his door and leaped out. She saw a bouncing, rolling body on the pavement in her mirror. She slammed on the brakes.

“Manfred!” Joanna cried out, moving to the open door.

“No!” Pouncey said. “Gunmen! Following us!”

As if to underline her point a weapon fired, and she saw orange flashes in the rear view mirror.

“Do as I tell you!” she yelled. “Don’t think, just
obey!
If we don’t escape together we’re dead!”

“But... Manfred!”

Pouncey jumped out of the comp and surveyed the scene. Twenty metres away Manfred struggled to his feet. He was injured. In the street to her right a vehicle approached – the crashed petrol guzzler. It still moved: not disabled. Twenty seconds away maybe. It was not in a hurry. But the soltruck was secure and they retained four bis.

Then she saw two children jump out of a side passage.

Not children: Green and Yellow. Green had been in the improvised case, which like as not had shattered when it fell out of the soltruck.

Manfred limped over to her. Then the petrol guzzler accelerated, appeared, screech to a halt.

Pouncey raised her hi-vel and shot the two bis, who disintegrated into bioplas splats that covered the wall behind them like cartoon freeze-frames. “Into the soltruck or you’re dead!” she shouted.

She fired at random, hoping the chase would duck for cover. Manfred gasped at the bioplas waste, then uttered a wail of despair.

“Into the
soltruck!
” she yelled. “Or I’ll shoot you too!”

He hobbled to the soltruck. Pouncey followed. A gun fired. Bullets ricocheted off the soltruck base – they were aiming for the tyres. Pouncey jumped into the comp, stamped on the accelerator and, tyres screeching, drove off.

“Now I gotta lose ’em,” she said. “Get down! Hold tight. Hold Indigo!”

They did as she told them. At the end of the street she swung the soltruck left, then returned to the route out of town. The damaged petrol racer followed. It would always be able to out-perform the soltruck, she knew – oil was concentrated energy, more so than solar. So she had to use wits; and hope for luck.

A few kilometres on, the traffic became thicker. No queues yet, but people were escaping the city as fast as they could. Pouncey, pedal to the floor, weaved in and out of car lanes, waiting for an opportunity. She had done over a thousand hours of 3-D role playing in vehicles as part of her training. She knew a few tricks.

Ahead she saw two small flat-back vans loaded with furniture – families leaving Portland. They looked useful. She slowed, timed her move, watched the racer behind, then dodged a phalanx of solbikes to position herself between the two vans. Then she turned the wheel hard left, then hard right.

The soltruck smashed into the right vehicle, but it did not deviate, nor did any furniture fall off. But the other van lost its load and then skidded into the central barrier. As it jack-knifed, Pouncey dived into the space before it, then accelerated. Looking into her rear view mirror she saw the traffic collapse into a chaotic mess. Vehicles, furniture everywhere. The road was blocked.

She drove on as fast as she could, getting off the road at the next exit – wrong side, so she had to squeeze through a barrier maintenance gap. But there was almost no oncoming traffic heading for Portland, so it was safe. Then up the ramp at top speed the wrong way, and then the security of no street lamps and no traffic.

The chase was over. She heard distant vehicle horns, saw a hint of flames on distant tarmac.

“Now where to?” asked Dirk.

“Well, Portland is quite low lyin’,” she replied. “The Columbia River ain’t too far away. We need to get high–”

“There’s no
earthquake!
” Manfred yelled. “No damn earthquake at all, Pouncey! Aritomo found us. It was all a hoax.”

“Nothin’s certain,” Pouncey replied. Her anger was all played out, now – she felt calm. “You don’t know anythin’, Manfred. It’s guess, guess, guess with you.”

“Yeah, and you’re the queen of America,” he snarled back. “You shot–”

“I
had
to! Else the guys in the petrol racer would’ve got ’em both, which was what they wanted. And you don’t
want
that, remember? Listen, we got out with our skins intact. They were tryin’ to disable the soltruck. They want
you
alive, Manfred! Think about it. You wanna work for Aritomo again? You want Aritomo to get a sample bi to dissect? No, no,
no!
So you listen to me and do as you’re told. In an emergency,
my
rules count, not yours.”

Manfred sat back, arms folded, scowling, like a school kid. Pouncey swerved to avoid a dead car, then flashed up the headlights to main beam.

“Where are you driving us?” Joanna asked.

“Uphill. We need to secure the soltruck. It’s been badly damaged. We can’t afford to lose anything else.”

Aritomo and Ikuo sat in front of a single 312cm monitor screen, on which a raft of data floated, like a golden barge on a sea of indigo blue.

“I cannot locate the source at all,” Ikuo said.

Aritomo sat back. They had spent almost twenty hours deciphering the signal, moulding it, translating it, discarding child results, then returning, perplexed, to the source.

“It is impossible for the nexus not to know the geographical location of this signal,” Aritomo said. “Therefore the source must be concealing its location in an original way, that so far no software anywhere on the planet has encountered. So the nexus itself cannot tell us where this source is. We must therefore analyse the signal until meaning is discovered.”

“The meaning must be you,” Ikuo replied. “Your name is the only decipherable component. The signal is
tagged
to you.”

“Yes, but I could invent a hundred and one meanings for that fact. The person who sent it knows me. The computer who sent it likes me. The software that sent it was designed by me. And so forth.”

Then Ikuo leaned forward. “What if this is not a verbal message?” he said.

“Audio?”

“Visual!”

Aritomo nodded. “An interesting notion. Apply all standard image formats to the data.” He paused for thought. “Use phone and cam formats first. Professional formats last.”

At once Ikuo began work. Aritomo stood up, made green tea for himself, then sat down again. After sipping for a few minutes, he said, “You may take a brief while to make yourself one cup.”

“Thank you, Mr Ichikawa, thank you.”

Ikuo returned to work thirty seconds later. Then, as the two men watched, the golden raft dissolved into a picture.

It was a photograph.

Aritomo leaned forward. Already banks of analytical computers were matching the scene to known images, but he could see useful details already with his own eyes. An urban scene. There – a clock on a wall. There – a reflection in shattered glass of the red sun low on the horizon. There – a sign in white on blue, in a distinctive US font, marking a computer intelligence corporation.

Results flooded in. “Photograph taken 06:59. Probable location 122 degrees longitude – sun reflection indicates West Coast America. City: possible Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, Springfield, Portland, Seattle.”

“Somebody has sent us that deliberately,” said Aritomo. “Somebody wants to contact us again. He wants me to know his location. Yet he concealed himself in the nexus. He must therefore have been afraid of discovery. He must be in a stressful situation.”