The Hunt for Pierre Jnr (8 page)

With a hunger he’d long suppressed, he pushed himself atop her and began seeking out buttons and skin.

~ * ~

The now familiar corrugated walls of the hangar were a relief after the tumultuous day Pete had gone through. Colonel Pinter was waiting for them at the gate, a dressing gown over his uniform and a tin cup in his hand.

‘You’ve been having a rough time of it, I hear.’

‘You don’t know the half of it, Colonel.’ Tamsin laughed and dabbed a quick kiss on Pete’s cheek as she passed. ‘See you inside, Pete. I need a shower.’

Pete sighed and answered the Colonel’s raised eyebrows. ‘It’s not what you think.’

‘Your comms were down for nearly an hour.’

‘It’s not exactly what you think.’

‘Just watch yourself with that one. I’ve met men like her, but not so many women. If I wasn’t under orders to do so, I wouldn’t trust her.’

Pete nodded. ‘I don’t.’

‘Well, you’ve got some time to clean yourself up, then the three of you debrief. The ups want a plan from you by tomorrow.’

‘I wouldn’t mind one myself. After the homestead, I’m more lost than before.’

~ * ~

‘How do you want us to proceed, Colonel?’

Pinter raised his hands. ‘Sorry, Mister Lazarus, I really am just here as a functionary. You three go on as you wish. I’ll interject if the ups have something to add.’

Pete nodded, taking a moment to gather his thoughts. ‘Well, I guess, at best, that we discovered where Pierre Jnr has been hiding for the last eight years. Beyond that I’m not sure what we gained from our visit.’

‘If it helps, I’m taking him a bit more seriously than I was before. I apologise that I didn’t believe what you said about him,’ Tamsin offered to Pete. ‘I’ve never seen minds like that, so reworked and mashed. That was one of the most troubling elements of today.’

‘From my side this was a very productive encounter,’ Geof added. ‘Short of actually stumbling upon our target, we now have two footprints of symptomatic phenomena that indicate where Pierre might be or has been. He’s on the move now and we’ve just found a way to track him.’

‘So do you know where he is?’

‘Not yet, but give me until tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Pete was shocked and somewhat disbelieving. ‘That’s right,’ Geof said, winking. 
There’s nowhere to run from people like me, Pete, just remember that.
 N E W T O N P E M B R O K E, Geof queried through the symbiot. The link was almost telepathic. ‘Last seen thirteen days ago ... Wife missing from the same time. She wasn’t in the house. She was with Pierre Jnr, visiting a school ... So we’re thirteen days behind. A lot better than eight years, and we’ve only been on the case for under a few weeks.’

‘Do you think he’s with this woman? Gail Pembroke?’

‘What use could she be?’ Tamsin asked.

‘Cover. Camouflage,’ Geof answered.

‘Maybe,’ Pete considered. 
Maybe he is still a child needing a parent.

‘I don’t think so,’ Tamsin scoffed.

‘Why not?’

‘The farmers?’

‘And? We’re just objects to him. He doesn’t even see what he does as bad.’

‘If he can read minds, he knows right from wrong.’

‘That’s pretty simplistic. I don’t even know that sometimes.’

‘Okay, people, focus. This is getting off track.’ Pinter stood up and stretched, pushing his hands to his back as if holding his spine together.

‘Geof, can you show me how you’ll find him?’ Pete asked.

‘I can try. If you look at the streams here ... Pete, open up.’ Pete had to allow overlay access through his symbiot. Lines, diagrams and other data threw themselves over his eyesight, mostly transparent but concentrating on them made the world around him disappear. ‘What you see here is a flat globe and a mapping of anomaly patterns. I’ll block them out for you.’

‘They’re everywhere.’

‘Well, yes and no. This is why we call it the grey. But, I can clear up most of these, based on what we saw at the farmstead and the school ...’ — Geof counted them on his fingers — ‘... loss of linkups, uninterpretable behavioural fluctuations, unrecorded characteristics, lowered reporting and contact with the Weave. This could just be a natural anomaly, but when we scale the pattern to the rate of incidents, we home in on the places with the highest cumulative symptoms.’ Geof blinked, and Pete watched the clumps of data change colour and shrink down, leaving four grey patches of significant size. ‘Only three if you disregard the midlands.’

‘The Dome, Asia and the middle of the Pacific. What could be in the middle of the ocean?’ Pete asked.

‘Don’t worry about that one. That’s not him.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He can’t answer that,’ the Colonel cut in. ‘You now have two target zones, but how can you be sure of them?’

‘We can’t be 
sure.
 What is “sure” when it comes to data? I can only identify the grey areas,’ Geof parried.

‘We can debate data theory all night, or some of us can,’ Tamsin said, smirking at Pete and Geof, ‘but let’s assume there’s something to these two grey areas. If Pierre has gone to Asia, then he’s hiding. If he’s gone to the Dome, then he’s heading for the elevator.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because that’s what I’d do. I’d get off Earth. It’s hostile to him. We’re hostile to him.’

‘Does he know about us?’

‘Pete, we don’t know what he knows,’ Tamsin growled. ‘For all we know, he could have come into contact with a Ministry man and know more than we do.’

‘Colonel?’

‘Well, I won’t say it’s not possible, but it is unlikely.’

‘Why unlikely?’ Tamsin asked. ‘We don’t know where he is. It only takes five hours to blast around the globe, so tell me why it’s unlikely.’

‘No.’ Pinter’s watery eyes froze on her.

‘Why not?’

‘Because you are making demands again and you should know that won’t work with me.’

‘Colonel —’ she protested.

‘Tamsin Grey,’ Pinter cut her short. ‘Your status has been reclassified.’

‘That’s a little unnecessary, isn’t it?’ Geof spoke up. ‘Aren’t you just saying it is unlikely because the odds are against it? And secondly,’ Geof turned to face Pete and Tamsin, ‘the higher up you go, the more you are monitored. Anomalous behaviour would be noticed.’

Geof was trying to calm the room down; neither he nor Pete knew what the Colonel’s game was. Or Tamsin’s.

‘Colonel, Tamsin, with all due deference, this is wasting time,’ Pete said. ‘Geof, explain to me the grey patches again. How do we derive these?’

‘Okay, but this is the last time. You could just trust me, but never mind. This is a two-level patterning filter I’m showing. If you go back a step to the raw data, you see nothing much. I’ll keep this geographic for you to save confusion.’ As the overlays changed with Geof’s explanation, Tamsin and the Colonel dropped their staring match and she stalked out. ‘To this data we apply certain structural patterns. In this case, I’ve gone with established behaviourals, which is a data-set built up over time that tracks an individual’s behaviour. By knocking out what we expect, we are left with unexplained variations and unpredicteds. This is normal, don’t forget — we can’t predict everything people do — but based on a large enough survey, even a shift of one per cent is significant.’

‘Alright, you two. You’ve made your point.’ Pinter grinned. ‘I certainly don’t need to hear this again. It’s like basic training over and over.’ He stood up to go. ‘Let’s have a direction by morning. And, Pete, come by my rooms when you’re done here.’

‘Yes, Colonel.’

When he was gone, Geof expelled the air from his lungs and stood up. ‘Pete, my friend,’ he said as he headed for the kitchenette and gathered some snacks. ‘Do you ever feel that you’re in over your head?’

‘Just in this lifetime.’

‘I know what it’s like for outsiders. You see Services as a giant unfathomable system, but you never see how true that is.’

‘I’m not sure what you mean.’

‘I was bred for this game. I wasn’t given a choice.’

Pete was too slow with a response.

‘You see? Bigger and more unfathomable than you think.’

‘I just handed myself over.’

‘I know,’ Geof laughed. ‘You still think one psi child is worth it?’

Pete shrugged. ‘Yes. I think so. You saw what he did to those people. He doesn’t see us. We’re just clay in his hands. Have you ever seen anything like that?’

Geof hesitated before answering, but Pete caught remembered visions flickering through: fields of reanimated bodies, grey and jerky; a battle of cyborgs where human bodies were used for shields; a ship deck sloshing with blood and a bearded woman enjoying a cigarette. ‘Well, not exactly the same, but just as bad.’

They said nothing for a moment. Geof ate pickled eggs, cheese and dried fruit, thinking as little as possible. It struck Pete that they still weren’t taking Pierre as seriously as he was; to them he was just one threat amongst many.

‘For what it’s worth,’ Geof went on, ‘I think Tamsin is right. But there is an easy way to settle this: we wait. I’ll keep tracking the grey overnight. A natural anomaly probably won’t have direction, it will stay in one place. If there is a clear vector for one, then that’s the one we follow. If it goes well, you could be face to face with Pierre by midday tomorrow.’

‘Why midday?’

‘Let’s at least keep it until after breakfast.’

‘Excellent,’ Pete replied, chuckling. ‘Let’s call that a plan. Now I’d better go see what the Colonel wants with me. Perhaps I’m being reclassified too.’

~ * ~

The Colonel welcomed him with surprising cheer. ‘Ah, there you are, Lazarus. I was hoping you’d join me for a drink.’

Pete noticed the Colonel’s lodgings were very different to his own, with many touches that added to the comfort: recliners with blankets and cushions, a sideboard littered with trinkets, the leather armchair he had carried to him whenever he would be sitting somewhere long, and a thick rug that almost entirely covered the slab floor. The central light above was dimmed by a lampshade that looked to be made of animal skin. Something about the eclecticism implied that every piece was a memento of some sort.

‘Real Scotch? I’m not sure what there is to celebrate, but a good drink is cause enough for me.’

‘I’m not sure what there is to celebrate either,’ the Colonel grumbled as he broke the seal of the bottle and fumbled about for a matching pair of glasses.

‘Oh,’ Pete responded emptily, trawling through what was on his superior’s mind.

‘Don’t read ahead, Pete. Talking may be redundant to you people, but I still require the outlet.’

‘Of course. If I may ask, how did you know?’

‘You’re too obvious. Despite the assumption that a telepath is always reading your mind, you struggle to do two things at once.’

‘I’ll try to remember that.’

‘A good thing to practise in your line of work.’

The Colonel poured two-finger measures into the crystal, watching the light playing through the caramel-gold liquid. ‘I was once stationed on the Skye Isle, some time ago, and became quite close with a young couple who had inherited a distillery. Every year they send me a bottle.’ There was more behind the story he didn’t speak of, but he had no intention of taking it further than the twitch of a smile he couldn’t control. ‘And every year,’ the Colonel continued, passing one of the glasses to Pete, ‘my wife and I would have the first drink together. It is a little tradition we have continued since we were married. This year, of course, we can’t be together and she has sent the bottle on.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s not 
all
 your fault.’ The old man raised the glass to his nose and swirled the liquid about. His soft eyes melted a little more. ‘She’s chosen to be rejuvenated. Do you know what that means?’

‘Yes.’ Pete decided he wouldn’t take a sip until the Colonel did. It was important for him to talk this through.

‘It means when I go back to her, she will effectively be forty years younger than me.’

‘Perhaps that’s not all bad?’

‘No, no ... of course not. She was a beautiful woman at that age. A most beautiful woman.’ He sighed deeply. ‘She insists that nothing will change between us, that she will still be my wife, but...’

‘She is going to suddenly be a young woman with her life ahead of her.’

‘And I will be an old man with a life behind him.’

‘You could rejuvenate.’

‘I don’t think so.’ He shook his aged heavy head. ‘I don’t think I have it in me to be young again.’

Pete was silent. He found older minds harder to read, memories overlapped so much and the consciousness switched between them almost without connection. The Colonel’s thoughts circled his options: divorcing his wife, or staying with her and growing older until he died, not being able to satisfy her. He could hardly blame her for wanting to live longer — most people wanted that. If only he did. Mixed with the present was his Serviceman life with all the horrors and victories he had been a part of.