Beautiful Intelligence Read online

  Where they met Yuri.

  At first, Leonora thought the game was up. She sagged against Manfred. But Yuri acted weird. He spoke to them straight away, fidgeting with the bandana that covered his head down to his eyebrows. “Take me with you,” he said, “for I know what you plan and I share your goals.”

  “What?” Leonora said. “You–”

  “I am the man developing the new quantum computers, but my father will not allow me to follow my own research path, insisting that I follow his. It is the Japanese giri – obligation, you say. I am leaving the laboratories for the same reason you are.”

  “You spied on us? How?”

  “Did you think the dragon-watches were only a gift? I knew you were coming before you arrived because my father told me, and of course I knew of your reputations in artificial intelligence circles. So even then I aligned myself to you, creating the watches so that, at the lowest possible level – a megabyte per week, no more – I was able to observe you.”

  Joanna asked, “Giri… obligation, it motivates you?”

  Yuri shook his head. “I am not wholly Japanese. But my father feels the full weight of Japan’s expectation upon his shoulders. He’d rather die than fail his country.”

  “How did you get out?” Manfred spluttered.

  “How did you escape?”

  “I’m asking you–”

  “You misunderstand me. I was explaining that I escaped using an identical method to yourselves – except I had to ensure my father’s cats were not alerted.”

  Leonora felt her heart thumping. This was a disaster and an opportunity. “We have no choice,” she told Manfred, hoping he would not be able to see alternatives through the haze of his anger. “We have to take him with us.”

  Manfred swore, stamped, walked a few times around the boat. Threw sand in the air. “Hmm, so it seems.”

  “Quickly,” Leonora said, “can we go into town? I feel naked.”

  They put on fake spex and wristbands so suspicious locals would not think they were solos. New identities for them all, linked to ordinary bank accounts, then a soltrain to Beijing – they did not dare take a plane in case their mode of transport made them stand out as super-rich. Then a boat to Hong Kong. Another to Madras, where Leonora contacted Goodman Awuku to ensure their haven was ready. Days and days and days passing. Then on to Damascus by soltrain, like a trio of peasants, eating chips and lentils, with not even a moby between them. Proper poor.

  In a Damascus bazaar, one Hound met them.

  “I killed myself,” he said. “It was the only way–”

  “You what?” Manfred raged. Leonora, ever cool, said nothing.

  “It was the only way, man. Who’s this guy?”

  “You did yourself in?” Manfred said. “You know that’s the most obvious way to duck the nexus. Sheesh, I thought you were–”

  Leonora grabbed his arm. “He is the best, he really is, and we have to trust him now. Manfred, we have paid him, we cannot go back on that.” She paused, sighed. “This is Yuri Ichikawa.”

  Manfred, shaking, face white, said, “Okay… okay. I gotta go to the can. I won’t be a mo.”

  That was the last time Leonora saw her husband.

  ~

  Manfred ran like a fzzz-ed up brat along the alley behind the public toilets, skidding into a junkfood-splattered dead end. At the end wall he jumped, grabbing the birdshit-slippery top to heave himself up and over. He had just seconds. Leonora was not expecting this – he hadn’t expected it – but she would act as soon as she realised what was going on. To transfer the big money… the money. That was the key to the next few minutes.

  At a wall credo he stopped. If he accessed the Swiss account he would expose himself, but he had no choice. Without his money he was meat. Surely Aritomo couldn’t be onto him yet.

  “Fuckit,” he said. He accessed the bank through the credo screen, tapping in codes, then laying fingers on the ID bar. Double beep. Retinascan. Tap-tap-tap. The account.

  They had set it up so that if either of them transferred money an equal amount would automatically move to a single account owned by the other. Their joint account was in fact a triple system; he could not act without passing half their wealth to Leonora. But that still left him with a vast amount, even considering the fortune they had paid Goodman Awuku. And he had ideas. The precious hours of freedom he had enjoyed had already got his mind working.

  Tap-tap.

  Done.

  Exit.

  Now he had to run.

  He had just minutes to become somebody else. Already Aritomo would know that Manfred Klee was in Damascus. But, more important, the nexus would know. Journos across the world would be receiving shouts: Klee free!

  First, get away from the credo. In ten seconds every surveillance cam in the street would be searching for him, face recognition and all. He ducked into an alley. Grabbed a shawl and pulled it around his shoulders. Bent over, picked up a metal pole and held it like a stick. Slowed down. Hobbled. When he saw ash on a doorstep he rubbed it into his hair. The fake wristband and spex should reassure any locals watching, though their own augmented realities would draw a blank on his identity. But, for now, that would have to be.

  He walked on, getting lost. Tempting to enter someone’s house, but if they threw him out with a fuss somebody watching through the nexus might notice. Behind a row of veg stalls he spotted someone’s discarded jacket. Though it was ripped he put it on, filling the pockets with mouldy oranges. Rubbed gutter grease into his trousers.

  He sat down on a step. Nobody noticed. It was evening, trade diminishing, the street gloomy. Good. Satellites wouldn’t be able to see much of him.

  The next job was to make a new Syrian identity and find real spex and maybe a wristband; without them, any mistake would expose him. He had to fit in, be a leaf in a forest. He spotted two coins beneath a slimy lettuce leaf. He picked them up: twenty rupees. The ball was rolling…

  With the cash he bought a blank duocard from a kid grifter. At a photobooth he reprogrammed the comchip, fooling the camera into depositing free a new photo onto the card and crediting it with twenty rupees. He called himself Kamal Ali Moussalli. Occupation: street fruit seller. Age: 41. Family… and so on and so on.

  Charged, the duocard allowed him to buy a pair of Singapore spex. Wristbands would have to wait, but they were mostly data banks and processors of little use in his present circumstances, so it didn’t matter. It was the spex that would count. He needed to see the nexus to move on. His reality needed augmenting.

  He dossed in an alley a kilometre out from the bazaar, camouflaged by a dozen other vagrants, warmed by hot air from the subway below, eating mouldy pittas and toms, squeezing the juice from his rescued oranges into a beer-stained mug. For sweet he had coconut flapjacks thrown out by a local supermarket. He raided their dumpsters for bread and veg. He didn’t miss Leonora at all.

  When the sun rose he walked to the nearest solbus station, buying a ticket for Beirut. He fell in with a pro fleeing her pimp, and managed to cadge lunch off her, then supper. She liked his stories. He told her of life in Japan, pretending to be addicted to their manga channels so he could seduce her into accepting him as a travelling companion; letting his charm shine through. Time passed easy. As the bus approached Beirut Central and she went for a waz in the chem at the back of the bus he grabbed her bag and jumped out of the window at a red-lit crossroads, vanishing into a maze of covered wagons – the local market. Twenty seconds and he was gone, bag raided, discarded. One twenty and he had bought white jacket and jeans. One eighty and he was newly disguised in the market can, washing his hair in the handwash stream, cleaning his face, paying for a disposable razor and a soapnob.

  Ten minutes and he was walking down streets a hundred metres away, the bus long gone, the pro bereft. A different man.

  With the remaining cash he bought a nexus standard card from a retailer, then had his hair cut to army grade, having the stubble bleached for good measure. He entere
d the nearest photobooth to once again reprogram the comchip and have another photo installed. New name: Ahmad Shehadeh, 44, saz salesman. New birthplace, new nationality. New identity, new life. So lucky his mother was Turkish, allowing him a wider range of local identities.

  From Beirut he scammed his way to Cyprus, Cannes, London, New York. He did not feel safe in New York so he took a solbus west. The shattered, petrol-free landscape appealed to him.

  His money was safe. He was safe. For the moment. A time would come when he would have to access and distribute that enormous wealth in order to make it disappear, and the eyes of the world would be waiting, waiting for him to reappear in the nexus, to claim what was his. But he would fool them again, and vanish. He would. Because the ideas he had on the long trip to Damascus could make him even more of a sensation than he had been before.

  CHAPTER 4

  Hound skimped into a position behind an olive tree in a pot from where he could better observe Tsuneko June. For a sec or two he felt sure it must be a nexus illusion, spex only, but, tipping his head forward, she didn’t disappear when he used his real eyes.

  She shouldn’t know anything about Malta. Sure, she had her own support savvy, even tools and protection, but how had she located this place? He had made the mole link one hundred percent secure, and nobody knew nexus links like he did.

  There were two possible answers: she had outside help or she had another contact inside the AIteam.

  Inside the AIteam… not Leonora, not Yuri. Dirk, then. For a few moments he pondered the loyalties of Dirk Ngma, before dismissing his speculation. No, it was an outside job. And he had thought of a name.

  Suddenly he felt exposed, paranoid. He wiggled his hips and touched his trouser fly to pretend finishing an outdoor waz, then turned and walked away. Inside someone’s flower shed off the main street he took out his moby, but then paused. This could be a trap. Despite his shock and the danger he couldn’t risk a com line into the caves.

  He walked back up the street and into the nearest bar, where he grabbed a spritzer, chatted to the bar girl, made improper suggestions, then visited the can. In seconds he was out of his trousers and jacket. He never wore non-reversible clothes. A minute later his grey garments were white garments, he had a NY baseball cap on his head and a fake ’tash. Then out the can window and into the back lanes of the village. No satellite-riding goon would spot him now.

  Back in the cave, he convened an emergency meeting. They sat around a wrought iron table, tea and biscuits between them. Hound said, “It was her. No doubt, man. She knows I’m round about somewhere.”

  “You?” Leonora said.

  He nodded. “It don’t mean she knows we’re all here, caveside. But me being her contact, she knows I’m somewhere.”

  “How?”

  “She’s got help.”

  Leonora crumpled. “Manfred. He’s found us.”

  Hound shook his head. “No way. Okay… unlikely, say.” He shrugged. “I got a much more likely name. A Japanese gentleman.”

  Leonora turned to look at Yuri.

  “No,” Hound said, tapping the table to regain her attention. “Not the son! The daddy.”

  Leonora sat back, her face white. Dirk looked shocked, Yuri afraid… in fact Yuri looked horrified. Hound nodded once at him. “Yeah,” he said.

  “But…” Leonora murmured.

  “How?” Hound supplied. “Man, don’t know.” He shook his head. “But think. You lose two of the greatest artificial intelligence researchers you got. From a team nobody is s’posed to leave. What d’you do? You follow ’em. Tsuneko June might have thought the same. She might’ve thought, I can’t do this. I’ll get help. And she knows where you and your ex came from.”

  “But why leave da BIteam?” Dirk asked.

  Again Hound shrugged. “We can’t know. Tsuneko was light on info, even though she was good. Classic unhappy mole. We gotta deduce from what we see. I’m telling you man, I’m setting up our escape route right now. Africa. Desert, maybe. I got contacts in Tunisia. We could shufti into West Libya. Get tents, camels. No satellite rider’s gonna see us.”

  “No,” Leonora said. “I’m sorry, but we cannot leave the caves, not with Zeug so close to fruition.”

  Hound laughed. “You don’t realise,” he said. “Aritomo Ichikawa, he lost everything. So he’ll do anything to get it back.”

  Yuri nodded. “I regret to say that I agree with Mr Hound. My father will try anything and everything. The security assessment is valid.”

  Hound stood up. “So. I’m off outside again. I left a pinpoint ultra on her. Man, she won’t escape me. Get yourselves ready. Get Zeug ready. Maybe we’ll stay, maybe we’ll run, I don’t know. But prepare to run.”

  He left the cave pod. They didn’t look happy.

  ~

  Back in the village Hound sat at a roadside bar gaming on his moby, settling in, making himself seem ordinary. After an hour he saw Tsuneko emerge from the village hotel – it was more of a converted farm, with chickens and hydroponic silos – then head towards the geologists’ bar. He followed. When she paused to take something out of her bag he walked on, knowing that an observed synchronised stop/start could be fatal. But as he passed her, so close he could smell her jasmine scent, he noticed something. She was checking a duocard.

  He walked on, stopping at a bar to buy tea and sit by the road. A duocard. His skin went cold.

  He had assumed that she had traced him somehow. But the duocard suggested an alternative explanation. As AIteam security man, the only way he interfaced with the nexus and thus left records was financial. The data incarnation known as Hound would have a spending pattern attached, and that spending pattern could be analysed.

  It could be sought.

  He shuddered. He realised he had been wrong at the cave meeting just now. Tsuneko June had not followed a lead to Malta. Aritomo Ichikawa had sought a spending pattern. Leonora’s.

  Leonora’s last known position was Damascus. Through the nexus Hound accessed public records of Ichikawa Laboratories purchases, logging in to a Korean library database for safety. There: a thirty trillion yen computer and the staff to use it. They must have analysed the spending profiles of data incarnations in ever-increasing radii out from Damascus, an incredible task, a prodigious task, but a mathematically possible one; and at last, by accident, they had stumbled across Hound spending Leonora’s money in Valletta for things Leonora wanted. Hound found that he was trembling. He had utilised his own ’ware to conceal ID patterns in Valletta. He was safe. Fairly safe.

  He looked up. Tsuneko walked by, glancing at him. He returned his gaze to his moby and she walked on.

  He realised that her presence in the village was in fact a coincidence. The trail would have gone dead in Valletta, the spending profile meaningful but linked to an untraceable alias, though that alias in itself suggested the presence of a nexus witch doctor. Such as himself.

  He began to wonder if the death of Goodman Awuku might be probed by Japanese investigators.

  For a few vertiginous seconds he looked down upon himself – followed, watched, in peril, drinking at a roadside bar but only hours away from capture. Paranoia crept up on him. He shouldn’t have accepted Leonora’s offer. He’d made a mistake there. Maybe he should get out now, before the heavies arrived.

  He blew air through his lips, then breathed in deep.

  “Another tea, sir?”

  The waiter hovered at his shoulder. “Sure man,” he said. “And the bill.”

  He only used cash in the village, buying food and drink. Untraceable.

  He sighed again. His loyalty was to the AIteam.

  He got to work. Through his wristbands he sent a packet of info to the naval base at Valletta, buying a four-seater Skud-Fli and enough jet fuel to get it to France. He had it kitted out with gecko pads so nobody could steal it and a chameleon coat so nobody could see it. He set the drop point to a hillside fifteen kilometres north west of Valletta, on the coast, in sight of Camino and
Gozo. Now he would have to ride naked on his solbike to that point then fly the thing to the valley.

  He walked back along the village street to the bar where he had made lewd suggestions to the serving girl. The place was tourist notable because of the stables at the rear housing the riding club, and he liked the look of those horses. It was easy enough to scout out routes, check the security of the stables, eye up some horses, then leave, an escape plan in mind.

  But he was going to need good luck to get through this scare.

  He rode the solbike along dusty, rock-strewn paths, the vehicle bouncing fit to smash his spine. At least that marked him out as a local. At the coastal hillside he vizzed the plane, but decided not to approach until night. He ate olives, feta cheese and bread as the sun dipped scarlet into the sea; he drank lime water.

  At midnight he crept up to the plane and located the belly switch that activated the cockpit. This now was the most risky part. Flying the plane would create a thermal trace that could be spotted by satellite eyes. Inside, he stashed his bike then activated the autofly. A twenty minute flight: nothing happened, except his nerves were shot to pieces.

  Valleyside, he secured the plane then pushed the solbike – batts empty – back to its hide. Then he walked to the village and strode into the only bar still open; swift costume change, and he was out.

  ~

  Yuri and Leonora watched Zeug as he paced around the theatre pod.

  “The nexus is a complete model of the real world,” Yuri said, “created by Pacific Rim programmers to supersede the internet. Similarly, the model inside Zeug’s brain is a model of the world, but it is far from complete, and requires much educating.”

  “Are you suggesting that we spoonfeed him? Just because Hound thinks we are in peril?”

  “By no means!” Yuri paused, then continued, “If we are to find ourselves trekking across Libya on the ships of the desert, then Zeug will need to speak. What do you imagine we would do – pretend perhaps that he is a mute, and an idiot? The idea does not commend itself to me, and if I am correct in my thinking, it does not commend itself to you either.”