Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [6]
O’Hara sat down with a fresh cup of coffee at the counter and started reading. He liked having a hard copy to read. The same information could be gleaned off a computer screen, but there was something about actually having it in his hand which helped him to concentrate. A small eccentricity. A minor vice. He supposed it was a waste of paper and therefore of trees – although of course that didn’t matter any more.
O’Hara sipped his coffee and read.
The house was quiet around him. He and his wife had spent the evening with their young son Patrick. A family evening, Anne Marie called it. They’d watched television together. Then they’d given Patrick his bath and put him to bed. After that Anne Marie and O’Hara had gone to bed themselves and made love. Afterwards O’Hara lay in the dark bedroom, waiting patiently until his wife had fallen asleep. Then he’d come downstairs to work.
There was still a lot to be done.
O’Hara skimmed quickly through the day’s reports from the construction crews. Cost and target completion estimates. A memo about pilfering from the canteen; a report about a fight that had broken out between the Korean and Japanese technical teams; a request for better surveillance hardware, after one of the perimeter cameras had been smashed by a boy with a slingshot. Through the windows of the kitchen O’Hara could see the dark shapes of trees and the occasional flash of light through them. He reflected that trees like this had once covered the slopes of these mountains. He had a sense of history, an important quality in a man who had a task like his.
At his wife’s request, O’Hara had interfered with the clearing of the mountain and had preserved the last few trees nearest the house. As it turned out, it wasn’t a bad idea. The trees acted as a barrier to the sound of construction that continued, day and night, further down the mountain slope.
O’Hara watched the intermittent lights of earth‐moving machinery through the trees. He found the sight reassuring. Finally he looked back at the papers in front of him. On top were two pages of notes, one headed Cattersan, the other Lindhurst. He put these away and turned to the remaining papers. The two sheets were personnel records. On the top right‐hand corner of each was a photograph. The name on the top of one sheet was Mancuso, Tessa Anne; on the other it was McIlveen, James Haines. Both the man and woman in the photographs wore police uniforms. The emblem of one of the New York City police services ran down the side of each sheet of paper.
O’Hara left the documents on the counter and wandered out of the kitchen, taking his coffee with him. In the living room he settled on to the black silk‐covered couch and put his feet up. He let the matter of the decision fade from his mind. His subconscious could worry away at the problem for him.
‘On,’ said O’Hara to the empty room.
In a dark corner by the stone fireplace a small blue light snapped on, showing the outlines of a stack of flat black boxes. There was a faint, transient hum as the Bang and Olufsen system came to life.
‘Television,’ said O’Hara.
A second blue light came on at the side of a second flat box. ‘News interpreter,’ said O’Hara. There was a pause as the B&O analysed news broadcasts of the last twenty‐four hours, choosing or discarding information according to O’Hara’s recorded preferences. A small shutter opened silently and the dim light from the kitchen was caught and reflected on the precision glass of the projector’s lens.
O’Hara lay back sipping his coffee and watching the hologram take shape on the dark carpet near the couch. ‘Further back,’ he said. Patrick had been playing with the settings. The boy always sat too close to the television.
The glowing patch skipped back to the normal viewing position, in the centre of the carpet, halfway between the couch and the fireplace. ‘A little further,’ said O’Hara, and it was just as well he did.
Even so, he almost poured his coffee in his lap when the image snapped into sharp focus