Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [110]
‘Do you think it was the ANR who broke into your lab?’
‘No, I…What made you think of that? Sounds more likely the more I think about it. Hell, yes. Not the creeps – they’d have wrecked the place. Not academic espionage – they’d have hacked into the data. Not the state – they’d have just marched in and taken it. Somebody who wanted the physical stuff because they couldn’t reproduce it easily, but who knew what to do with it. But why would they do it? They’re not anti-tech.’
‘The crank raid on the AI block at the same time, could that just have been a coincidence?’ Kohn moved his fingertip around on her impressively flat belly, as if doodling. ‘Or a joint action? Nah, that’d be too cynical – the ANR really hates the cranks. Now why do they hate them – ah-ha! Got it!’
‘Ouch.’
‘Sorry. It’s like this, see. The ANR is heavily into the Cable – it’s the Republic’s baby after all – not to mention the Black Plan. After the state and security systems, their worst enemy has got to be Donovan’s campaign of nasty infections. So they must at the very least keep a close watch on CLA activities, actual and virtual. Uh-huh. They knew about that raid and used the opportunity.’
Janis shrugged. ‘OK, but I still don’t see why they should be interested in my research.’
‘Because it was part of their research?’ Kohn sat up with a jolt, then turned around and caught Janis’s shoulders. ‘Could the whole thing have been meant for me, planned all along? Could your whole damn project have been set up just to jog my fucking memory?’
‘No,’ Janis said. ‘That’s crazy. That’s just too paranoid.’
He wasn’t reassured. He felt his stomach muscles and his jaw tense, and willed them to relax. He rolled away on to his back and let his arm flop over the side of the bed. His fingertips touched the gun.
The gun! He put one hand on the floor and with the other heaved the gun on to the bed and across his knees.
‘Wha—’ Janis sat up too as Moh hooked up the weapon’s comm gear and fumbled for his glades.
‘Your project was the last thing I sent the gun’s programs chasing after,’ he explained, ‘before this all started and the weird stuff got downloaded…Never thought to ask it what it found.’
‘Find project definition/Taine/Brunel,’ he told it.
‘Hey, that might be—’
White light flared in the glades; white noise blared in the phones. Kohn cursed and ducked and pushed the equipment off his head.
‘—risky,’ Janis finished. ‘Are you all right?’
‘What the hell was that?’
‘Watchdog proggie,’ Janis said. She sounded mildly amused. ‘One of those university in-house security jobs you were so cutting about. Your gun must’ve saved it.’
Kohn rubbed his eyes and ears. ‘Wipe that!’ he snarled at the gun, which was still wasting power setting his teeth on edge. The distant-sounding screech stopped.
‘Anything behind that shield?’ he asked the gun.
‘Not…translatable,’ came from the tiny speaker, with what sounded like effort.
‘So much for that.’
Janis had stolen the bedcover again. ‘What about going round the back?’ she suggested. ‘Could you call Jordan from here, see if he could hack it?’
Kohn scanned the room and spotted the familiar white plastic plate of a net-port low down on one of the walls. ‘I could if I wanted to,’ he said slowly, ‘but…I left a message for him to get off the case and get on with his life, and I’ve taken the gun off-line even from shortwave, because…well, the rumour I heard is that some levels of security might be unreliable, right? That was why the femininists were so coy about contact. Small risk, yeah, but it ain’t worth it.’
Janis looked back at him silently. He laid a cold hand on her warm shoulder and squeezed gently.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s get up, let’s see what our new republic has in store for us.’
The house