Red Shadows (28 page)

Now they were both red.

EPILOGUE

THE GREAT ESCAPE

Carlyle was not dead.

Driving her lawmaster towards Psi Division Headquarters a few weeks later, Anderson brooded on that news as she rode along the megway. She had just received a call from Control informing her of the results of a DNA test performed on the remains of the two bodies on the luggage carousel. The DNA positively identified one of the bodies as belonging to William Ganz. Born in Brit-Cit of British parents, he had lived for most of his life in the Latin American city-state of Ciudad Baranquilla. The other body on the carousel had been identified as that of one Steven Christopher Lincoln, an unemployed former used car salesman reported missing by his family a month ago. The results had been checked and re-checked to ensure their accuracy, but as far as Anderson could see they meant only one thing.

Carlyle was not dead.

Given some thought, she could see how he must have done it. From what she had seen and felt of it, the extent of Carlyle's psi-talent was truly extraordinary. He must have kidnapped Steven Lincoln, subjected him to a face-changer to alter his appearance, and then used his powers from afar to control Lincoln and force him to play the part of an ersatz Carlyle. Presumably, the whole scene at the hoverport had been a gigantic ruse allowing Carlyle to fake his own death. Anderson remembered Mortimer telling her that Carlyle had enemies. She wondered how bad a man's enemies would have to be to make him go to such lengths. Then again, considering the nature of Carlyle himself, she could quite understand that he probably made enemies as easily and as regularly as other people used shampoo.

There had been an even more disturbing revelation recently, however. In their exhaustive trawl through HelixCorp's records, Tek Division had been able to find no reference to the processes that the researchers of Project Changeling had used to breed latent psychics. Worse, the Teks suspected that someone had systematically purged the majority of the information regarding the project from the records. In the meantime, HelixCorp had declared bankruptcy after becoming the target of a number of lawsuits and a dozen different ongoing Justice Department investigations. The remaining latent psychics from Changeling were currently undergoing evaluation while Psi Division decided what to do with them. The nagging suspicion remained that someone had escaped with the records of Project Changeling before purging all other copies from the HelixCorp database. That person now had control of a secret that was potentially worth billions, even trillions. Gambling on anything other than the Megalot might be illegal in Mega-City One, but Anderson would have been willing to put money on that person being Carlyle.

Still, there was at least one bright spark amid all this doom and gloom.

As she pulled into a parking space in front of the Psi Division Headquarters building, Anderson saw a group of new Psi-Cadet inductees being led down the steps by their Psi-Tutor. It was the most recent intake of cadets to be accepted for training. Most of them were five years of age, but one boy was older and taller than the rest. Strictly speaking, it was against protocol to distract cadets while their Psi-Tutor was talking to them, but Anderson waved at the boy all the same.

Smiling, Psi-Cadet Alexei Voysich waved back.

The synthi-veal parmesan was like chewing dead flakes of skin, the wine list was dismal, the service atrocious, and the robot Mariachi band did nothing for the ambience, but the view. The view made it all worthwhile.

Not the view from the window by his table overlooking the black and toxic waters of the Mediterranean. No, the view that Carlyle found almost enchanting, as he sat at his table in the La Bella Puttana restaurant in the Mediterranean Free States, was the sight of the sweating and overweight figure of Dmitri Vulkharin waddling towards his table.

Ah, the game begins again, he thought. Suddenly, the veal seemed passable and the wine's bouquet reminded him of the aroma of apricots and oranges, rather than sump oil. Even the Mariachi band's ill-considered rendition of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" did not seem entirely inappropriate.

"Carlyle!" As he sat at the table, Dmitri was all boisterous smiles and expansive gestures. "How are you, my friend? You know, I was concerned that you might not make our meeting. One hears the Judges of Mega-City One killed you." He roared with laughter as though he had made a joke.

"You know how it is, Dmitri." Carlyle lifted his glass to the oafish Sov Blocker in a toast. "It can do wonders for one's reputation to return from the dead every now and then."

"Da, I am sure, of course. But you know, friend Carlyle, a little bird tells me that your business trip to Mega-City One was not entirely concerned with such things. This bird, who shall of course remain nameless, tells me that you may have returned with some valuable information."

"Valuable?" Taking another sip, it occurred to Carlyle that the wine was actually quite palatable after all. "Say for example the records of a research project that successfully managed to breed latent psychics? Including all the raw data, experimental protocols, records of the drugs they used, the genes they spliced, and so on. Oh, and did I mention that I happen to have the only remaining copy of this information in the world? Yes, I suppose you could say it was valuable, Dmitri." Looking across the table, he saw the other man's eyes glittering like cold hard marbles. "Though, of course, you will understand if I insist that you meet my price in full before I can allow you to see it. But then, we both know this game of old, Dmitri.

"I'm sure in the end we will be able to come to some kind of
arrangement
."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mitchel Scanlon lives in Derbyshire, England and is a full-time writer. He has written both comic books and prose fiction. He also wrote the first Anderson PSI Division novel,
Fear the Darkness. Red Shadows
is his third novel.