The transport department considered the effects such an icy blanket would have on brake response time, and ordered a general speed reduction to avoid accidents. The proscription was datavised into the control processor of individual vehicles.
“You want me to neutralize the order for this car?” Dick Keaton asked. Joshua gave the data security expert an edgy glance as he tried to decide. The answer was yes, but he said, “No,” anyway, because speeding when you’re a suspect foreigner in a nation on the brink of war and being followed by two local police cars is an essentially dumb thing to do.
Thanks to the general lack of cars, their tail was a prominent one, keeping a precise fifty metres behind. Its presence didn’t have much effect on Joshua and his companions. The two serjeants were as vigilant as mechanoids, while Melvyn stared out at the city covered in its crisp grey mantle, the opposite of Dahybi who sat hunched up in his seat, hands clasped and paying no attention to their surroundings, almost as if he were at prayer. Dick Keaton was enjoying the ride, a pre-teen excitement which Joshua found annoying. He was trying to balance mission priorities at the same time as he reviewed what he was going to say to Mzu. A sincere but insistent invitation to return to Tranquillity, point out the shit she was in, how he had a starship waiting. It wasn’t that he was bad with words, but these were just so damn important. Exactly how do you tell the semi-psychotic owner of a doomsday device to come along quietly and not make any fuss?
His communications block accepted Ashly’s secure datavise and relayed it straight into his neural nanonics.
“New development,” Ashly reported. “The Edenist flyers just activated their ion fields.”
“Are they leaving?”
“No sign of that yet. They’re still on the ground, but they’re in a rapid response condition. Their agents must be close to Mzu.”
“Bugger. Any news from orbit?”
“Not a thing. Lady Macbeth isn’t due above the horizon for another eight minutes, but the spaceplane sensors haven’t detected any low-orbit weapons activity yet.”
“Okay. Stand by, we’re approaching the hotel now. I might need you in a hurry.”
“Do my best. But if these flyers don’t want me to lift off, it could get tricky.”
“Lady Mac is your last resort. She can take them out. Use her if you have to.”
“Understood.”
Dahybi was leaning forward in his seat to catch a glimpse of the Mercedes Hotel as the car swept along the last two hundred metres of road.
“That park would make a handy landing spot for Ashly,” Melvyn commented.
“Acknowledged,” Joshua said. He squinted through the windscreen as the car turned onto the loop of road which led to the hotel’s broad portico. There was a car already parked in front of the doors.
Joshua datavised a halt order into their car’s control processor, then directed it to one of the parking slots outside the portico. Tyres crunched on the virgin snow as they pulled in.
The two police cars stopped on the road outside.
“What is it?” Dick Keaton asked, he was almost whispering.
Joshua pointed a forefinger at the car under the portico. Several people were climbing in.
“That’s Mzu,” one of the serjeants said.
After so long on the trail, so much endured, Joshua felt something akin to awe now he could finally see her. Mzu hadn’t changed much from the visual file stored in his neural nanonics during their one brief encounter. Features and hair the same, and she was wrapped up well in a thick navy-blue coat, but the flaky professor act had been dumped. This woman carried a deadly confidence.
If he’d ever doubted the Alchemist and Mzu’s connection to it, that ended now.
“What do you want to do?” Dahybi asked. “We can stop her car. Make our pitch now.”
Joshua held up a hand for silence. He’d just noticed the last two people getting into the car with Mzu. It wasn’t a premonition he got from them, more like fear hot-wired direct into his brain. “Oh, Jesus.”
Melvyn’s electronic warfare blocks datavised a warning. He accessed the display. “What the hell?”
“I don’t want to alarm you guys,” Dick Keaton said. “But the people in the next car are giving us a real unfriendly look.”
“Huh?” Joshua glanced over.
“And they’re aiming a multiband sensor at us, too,” Melvyn said.
Joshua returned the hostile stare from the two ESA agents in the car parked beside them. “Oh, fucking wonderful.”
“She’s leaving,” one of the serjeants called.
“Jesus,” Joshua grumbled. “Melvyn, are you blocking that sensor?”
“Absolutely.” He gave the agents a broad toothy smile.
“Okay, we follow her. Let’s just hope she’s going somewhere I can have a civilized chat.”
The five embassy cars carrying Monica, Samuel, and a mixed crew of ESA and Edenist operatives disregarded the city’s new speed limit altogether as they raced for the hotel. All the security police did was follow and observe; they were anxious to see where this was all leading.
They were still a kilometre from the Mercedes Hotel when Adrian Redway datavised Monica to advise her that Mzu was on the move again. “There’s definitely only four people with her this time. The observation team launched a skyspy outside the hotel. It looks like there’s been some sort of fight in the penthouse. Do you want access?”
“Please.”
The image from the small synthetic bird hovering above the park filled her brain. Its artificial tissue wings were flapping constantly to hold it steady in the middle of the snowstorm, producing an awkward juddering. A visual-wavelength optical sensor was scanning across the penthouse’s broad windows. One of them had a large jagged hole in the middle.
“I can see a lot of glass on the carpet,” Monica datavised. “Something came in through that window, not out.”
“But what?” Adrian asked. “That’s the twenty-fifth floor.”
Monica continued her review. The living-room doors had been smashed open. Long black scorch marks were chiselled deep into the one lying on the floor.
Then she switched focus to a settee. There was a foot dangling over the armrest.
“No wonder Mzu was in a hurry to leave again,” she said out loud. “The possessed have tracked her down.”
“Her car isn’t heading for the spaceport,” Samuel said. “Could the two locals with her be possessed?”
“Possible,” Monica agreed hesitantly. “But the observation team said she seemed to be leading the others. They didn’t think she was being coerced.”
“Calvert has started following her,” Adrian datavised.
“Okay. Let’s see where they’re all so eager to get to.” She datavised the car’s control processor to catch up with the observation team’s vehicles.
“Someone else has now joined us,” Ngong said. His voice was split between amusement and surprise. “That makes over a dozen cars now.”
“And poor old Baranovich said to come alone,” Alkad said. “Is he in one of them?”