Originator (5 page)

“If my family were like
those
Indians, how do you think I got a name like Raylee?”

“It's a plot,” said Ari. Raylee laughed. “It's all a plot.”

The elevator let them out on the upper podium, beneath the main hotel towers. Here were swimming pools, gardens and multiple DJs, entertaining what looked like a thousand guests, all flashing lights, dancing, fancy clothes, food and drink.

“Just so you know,” said Ari, as they walked into it, “I can't afford this.”

“
Legally
you can't afford this,” said Raylee.

“Don't start.” Even here, people looked at Raylee, men and women both. Even in practical clothes she stood out. “You'd be useless under cover.”

“Don't start.” Raylee Sinta had heard it all before. “Where is he?”

“This way.” There were ceremonies going on in different places, some with priests and priestesses, others with garlanded statues of various gods, different gatherings for different family members, even a cool area for kids older than six who in the Tanushan way of things would
not
be in bed if the party was big enough.

Some tent awnings between palm trees made a new ambiance. Ari pushed in and indicated a man in a white vest and turban, conversing with several guests.

“That's him,” said Ari. “You do it. They freak when it's me.”

Raylee walked to him and pulled her badge. “Excuse me, Kamal Moily? Detective Sinta, TPD. Can I take a moment?”

“Of course.” Moily was youngish, smooth, and completely unbothered by the approach. He went with Raylee to a slightly less crowded corner beside a table of drinks,
so
unbothered Ari knew it was all an act. A genuine innocent would be at least a little concerned, approached by the police at a wedding.

“Do you know this man?” Raylee reversed her badge to show the image—Subject A, back when his head was still intact.

Moily frowned at it. “That's Mr Rowan. He and I have done some business. Is he in some kind of trouble?”

“He's dead, Mr Moily.” Very predictable surprise. “We have reason to believe that Mr Rowan, as you call him, was from the League. We think that
he was killed in relation to the same business that you were doing with him. We also think there's a large possibility that the same people who killed him might also attempt to kill you.”

It was remarkable how fast a man's studied calm could disappear when confronted with something that made his previous act seem unimportant. Fear and fast thinking. All these Tanushan hucksters and hustlers, Ari thought tiredly. Meet some League operative, hear some story of fast profits, and never a thought to the morbidly high mortality rate with anyone who dealt with League operatives lately. They always thought they could handle it.

“Oh my god,” Moily murmured, eyes wide. “That moon that . . . this doesn't have anything to do with that, does it?”

Raylee studied him. “What exactly do you do, Mr Moily?”

“I . . . we don't have time for this, you have to protect me!”

“Well, I can't really protect you unless I know what you're into. What do you
do
, Mr Moily?” Damn, she was good, thought Ari.

“I'm . . . I'm a zodiac readjustment therapist.”

Raylee frowned. Turned and looked at Ari, then back. “You're a
what
?”

“Star signs, zodiac signs, it's all so important at Indian weddings.” Raylee's very Indian features showed fading patience. “And people want their prospective matches' personalities to match also. Only sometimes they don't, sometimes the Aries aren't so stubborn, and the Capricorns aren't so disciplined . . . and it doesn't make a good match. So I run them on a personality readjustment program, you know, tape teach, VR and meditation sessions to get the new couple's personalities to match up just like on the star charts. . . .”

“
All bullshit
,” Ari formulated. “
Only the super-rich are stupid enough to fall for it
.”

“And what business did Mr Rowan do with you?” Raylee persisted.

“I . . . introduced him to some friends of mine.” Evasively, eyes darting.

“Please describe these friends.”

Real fear on Moily's face. These people scared him. Scared him worse than League operatives, by the look of it. Personality readjustment, bullshit as it was . . . and now League splinter group agents fishing for contacts. . . .

“Excuse me,” said Ari, leaning in with his own badge, “Mr Moily, could you tell me if any of these faces are familiar?” He flashed his badge, uploading
links onto the reverse display . . . a series of faces flashed across it. The facial-recognition software would have caught Moily's response, but Ari didn't need it.

Raylee saw it too. “
Pyeongwha
,” Ari formulated to her. “
Neural Cluster Technology, wonderful. Subject A was talking to the Pyeongwha-nians about NCT
.”

Raylee wasn't good enough with internal formulation to bother with replying. “I think we'd better get you into custody real fast,” she told Moily drily. “Come with us, please.”

All the lights, save the independent candles and ambience gas burners, flicked off. Then the emergency services–mandated voice began, warning of a fire alarm. All wedding guests stopped what they were doing and stared at each other in disbelief.

“Not good,” Ari said grimly. “Let's move.” He pulled his pistol and moved fast, indicating for Raylee to bring Moily. Ari paused at the tent rear exit, then strode quickly about the rim of a pool, past milling guests in no real haste to move to the exit . . . and Ari recalled an action memo from somewhere that Tanushans in a fire drill would never move fast, being unable to conceive of an actual fire in Tanushan-designed buildings. About which they were of course correct; Tanushan buildings wouldn't catch fire unless deliberately set alight—and thus his alarm.

Something zipped in the air. Ari spun and saw a hotel waiter fall to the ground.

“
That was me
,” came Rhian's voice before he could yell warning. “
Gun, left hand, he was drawing
.” Amidst fallen drinks, Ari saw the gun, the “waiter” shot neatly through the shoulder. Raylee paused from dragging Moily to stare back across the road, figuring where Rhian must be. . . .

“Move!” Ari snapped. They made fast for the rear stairwell, then down, shouldering past reluctantly moving guests, then quickly outpaced all guests as the stairs descended along the rear glass wall of the entertainment, convention, and ballroom levels . . .

. . . and suddenly the glass wall lit them up, bright lights glaring as Ari's vision augments struggled to adjust. Shots hit the stairs as glass broke, concussion blasts and gas.

“Go go!” Ari yelled, shoving Raylee and Moily ahead of him down the stairs, following as they reached the next floor ahead. Armoured figures crashed in, a well-trained combat entry, rolling amidst the shattering glass.
Raylee hauled Moily away from the stairs and, diving for cover behind potted plants in the adjoining hall, Ari struggling to follow as the armoured figures came up kneeling and aimed. . . .

And were hit from behind, a new entry through shattered glass, landing amongst them and firing all ways at once. Leg-swept one, spin-kicked another into a wall with bone-crushing force, then aimed behind her out the window to plaster the hovering cruiser there with fire. The glaring light vanished, then Sandy—because it could only be her—leaped at Ari as grenades hit behind and pinned him onto the ground by a wall as they exploded.

“
Rhi
,” she formulated calmly even as Ari struggled to get his head back into order, heart pounding and lungs choking with the smoke, “
trace the cruiser, would you? It's silent but I put holes in it. I'm not allowed to shoot it down over people
.”

Satisfied that the threat had passed, she lifted Ari to his feet, as effortless as a child lifting a teddy bear. “You hurt?” she asked. Ari managed a shake of the head. Sandy smiled, kissed him on the lips, and strolled past Raylee with a wink, reloading pistols.

Raylee stared at Ari in disbelief. “You're fucking kidding me,” she said.

“Yeah,” Ari conceded, gasping. “I know, right?”

Raylee emerged from interrogation two hours later, blinkingly tired.

“Nice work,” said the FSA lead interrogator, Sriharan, and walked to his own debrief, to which she was
not
invited. Leaning against a wall opposite was Kresnov. Watching her. Raylee still found that disconcerting. Something about Kresnov—
Sandy
, Ari always insisted she should call her—was so effortless. Calm, in a way normal humans were never calm. Interrogating her would be a nightmare.

“It was good work,” Sandy affirmed.

“You were watching?” Sandy tapped her ear. She'd been watching real time in her head, then. Ari could do that too. Raylee tried sometimes, but it gave her a headache and sometimes made her nauseous. “Right.”

“You want a coffee?”

The coffee machine was in a hall by big windows, surrounding offices still quite busy despite it being two hours from dawn. Sandy took hers strong, milk, no sugar. Raylee, even stronger.

“You're not attending debrief?” Raylee wondered.

Sitting opposite, elbows on knees, Sandy shook her head. “I get the summary. Nice thing with being the kinetic asset, I get to stay a few degrees separate from all the talking. Form my own opinions.”

“Sounds more like you're the overview than just the kinetic asset.” Sandy shrugged. Raylee couldn't deny that it made her edgy. So much power this woman had acquired. At this range, she looked astonishingly normal, shortish hair, wide features, strong figure. She had a power about her, a poise, like the gym junkies Raylee had known who walked and sat with rippling muscle, never a slouch or an awkward pose. Ari swore by her, this killer with the blood of hundreds on her hands, as though she'd never had an evil thought. Surely that wasn't possible, given what she was, and what she'd done.

But her three victims from two hours ago, she'd been astonished to learn, were all still alive. And the one Rhian had shot.

“So, what do you think?” Sandy asked with a jerk of her head back to the interrogation room.

“Well, he was the go-between,” Raylee summarized. “Between your Subject A and some of the Pyeongwha radicals you haven't caught yet.”

“Quite a few of those, sadly,” Sandy said into her coffee. “The question is, what does a League splinter group guy want with Pyeongwha radicals?”

“Well, Mr Moily's no help there. But they're all into mind alteration, aren't they? Moily's just a low-grade hack, but he's interested in personality change, technologically induced psychology. Which is pretty interesting, when it comes to Pyeongwha.”

Two years ago, the FSA had ended the regime of the planet Pyeongwha. Consensus was that Pyeongwha's brand of uplink technology, called Neural Cluster Technology, was causing radical sociological extremism, leading to a paranoid regime sabre-rattling at its neighbours, and massacring its own noncompliant citizens by the tens of thousands. NCT caused humans to go mad in groups. Now, word was, the entire League had caught a similar disease.

“Seems pretty strange that the representative of a group that just murdered an entire moon would be seeking out a group even more radical than his own,” said Sandy. “They've no other connection. Pyeongwha's never had direct League contacts, they were xenophobic about other
Federation
worlds, let alone League worlds.”

“Seems logical that a group that's going insane might want to find out more about the condition,” Raylee reasoned.

“Can ideology recognise its own extremes as insanity? Most of humanity's genocides have been carried out by lucid and rational individuals.”

“You think?”

“It's not an opinion, it's basic psych analysis. Radical politics is a natural function of human society. Pyeongwha's condition isn't something new, it's just
created
by something new. The condition itself has been observed thousands of times before in human history, statistically frequent enough to be considered normal.”

And this was disconcerting too. Kresnov was crazy smart. Even Ari thought so, and Ari was so smart it sometimes made Raylee's head hurt. Why these two had ever left each other, she didn't know. They seemed a perfect match.

“Those guys who tried to kill us,” said Raylee. “Ari thinks they're FedInt.”

“Well, Ari would.” Sandy sipped coffee. “They're underworld, scary well equipped, and they're not talking.”

“Employed by FedInt. Ari insists. He says they do that sometimes, to hide their tracks.”

“Which raises the question, why would FedInt want Mr Moily so badly? On his own, he's nothing.”

“Same reason they killed Subject A,” Raylee said tiredly. “To cover up some kind of connection between FedInt and the people who just killed Cresta. Ari says.”

“You believe everything Ari says?”

“Hell, I don't know,” Raylee said tiredly, rubbing her eyes. “He's a spook, I'm just a cop.”

“So you keep insisting.” Raylee just looked at her, sipping coffee, waiting for that remark to be explained. “You thought you turned down this offer of employment, didn't you?”

“I did turn down this offer of employment.”

“And yet here you are.” With mild amusement. “Again.”

Raylee blinked. “Well, Ari asked, and . . .”

“And you keep saying yes. You do realise how this works? You accepted FSA-standard augments and uplinks, now you're accepting FSA jobs that
require FSA-level secrecy. Soon you'll barely be able to talk to your old police friends because you can't share any of this with them. And you get this deeply entwined with FSA investigations, we'll just put you on permanent attachment.” Gazing at her, with those deep-blue eyes. “But you said no.”