Subject: Persephone - Cover Note
From: joel@netcomuk.co.uk (Joel Benford)
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996 09:52:52 GMT

"Hello Ratz."

"Good afternoon, Herr Manimenesh. What brings you in so early?"

"I just popped in to drop something off really. I expect I'll be back later
this evening. But do you think I could have a Singapore sling? It's so humid
here."

"I should think so." Ratz dials up the cocktail. "What have you got, then?"

"Oh, somebody asked me to drop the last installment of his story off." He
lays a chip on the bar. "He's very excited about it, apparently it's the
first story he's finished since his school days 15 years ago. He said
something about wanting feedback and being more interested in criticism than
praise, if he gets any. He's put a note in the header explaining it all..."

    ~~~~

Well, like the man said I finished my story. Ok, so Ken and I have put out
about half a novel with ISoN, but this is the first story I started and the
first I've finished.

Just finishing a story is, to put it bluntly, pretty good going in the
Chatsubo so I intend to glow smugly for about ten minutes. After that I'd be
downright revoltingly grateful for some criticism. If you don't like it,
tell me why. If you do, tell me it's weak points.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.

-- Joel

Subject: Persephone (Complete)
From: joel@netcomuk.co.uk (Joel Benford)
Date: Sat, 22 Jun 1996 09:53:05 GMT

Persephone, Copyright 1996 by Joel Benford 

Part 1
====== 

Young Adams was pouring champagne/Persephone mix into flute glasses and
handing them around the narcotic engineering lot. We'd laid on servants in
tuxedos for the launch party, but the real technical people couldn't quite
get the idea. They always had to play with the equipment for themselves, I
suppose. I took another glass of the star attraction and detached myself. 

Where was Charles Hughes? As marketing director this was his show, so he
really ought to be here. I wanted to plant some seeds in his mind about the
Persephone follow up. Persephone was the latest in a long line of designer
good time drugs, incremental developments on the original Selene, but the
competition was catching up and we couldn't milk the same basic line for
ever. It was time for some heavy R&D to find a new drug family to take us
into the next decade. 

Of course this would cost money. The Selene line was selling fine and the
fact that my people would be spending the money would not go unnoticed in
Other Visions. But when the launch came, marketing would be the centre of
the universe. 

There'd be no trouble getting Charles on board; he wouldn't even need it
spelt out. This was unusual for marketing with it's bright, talented young
fools. Charles was nobody's fool. He'd made sure he was the only crafty old
pro in his division and he didn't take long holidays. 

Looking across the room, I tried to pick him out of the crowd. The usual mix
of big chiefs, honoured guests and senior marketing types with their pretty
executive assistants chattered in clumps. The advertising people,
journalists and general hangers on were keeping each other off the decent
folks' backs. A few distinguished visitors from our rivals had come along
for the form. The old man's daughter Niamh was here too, back from Dartmouth
for Christmas, whacked already, probably looking to score a crate for her
friends. 

In the end I spotted Charles in an alcove, talking to a rather delicious
young man with "advertising" written all over him. I wandered their way. The
advertiser must be reasonably trustworthy because he'd obviously had the
blocker to take the edge off the Persephone. After all, we couldn't be
having our people jabbering secrets because of our own drug. The real
outsiders were starting to show the effects. In fact Hawkins, a sharp little
bastard who was number three at Wilkes-Beckham, was sprawled on a sofa
grinning like an idiot. He should know better than that. 

Our young friend would have to go, though. I'd be getting unsolicited
product ideas off his agency for months. Luckily he was straight, so a few
minutes aggressive cruising saw him off - there are some surprising
advantages to being gay in corporate life. Charles watched with amusement,
he knew the score. 

"Charles, I think it's time to have a look at the longer term." 

He spared me the usual "So Monday won't do, then" jokes and we got down to
some serious office politics. 

        ~~~~~~~~ 

An hour later the party was into its swing - louder talk, raucous laughter,
the lesser orders and that stupid harridan who ran personnel lurching back
and forth. The junior bio-engineering whiz kids were huddled in a corner
griping about access to the gene splicing lab. It was still a corporate
black tie affair though, the brass and other ranks staying within the bounds
of decorum in front of each other and the press. 

The lower orders wouldn't believe what the directors got up to on their
nights out after a board meeting. 

I looked around for a reason to stay. No business left to be done and all
the pretty boys who took my fancy (there is nothing intellectual about my
tastes) were better left alone for one reason or another. I wasn't sticking
around for an up market freebase workalike with a mild hallucinogenic tail.
I had better games to play at home. 

        ~~~~~~~~ 

On the way out through the lobby I met the old man. He wasn't expected that
evening, I must have given a mild start when we saw each other. He smiled
and changed direction to intercept me. 

"Off already then?" he said, with an amused undercurrent. He knows what
makes me tick. As boffins go, the man plays a mean mind game. He'd make a
good evil genius. 

"Not much here for me anymore," I said with a grin, "I've shown my face,
caught up with the people I was after. We weren't expecting you..." 

"Came to get a look at Niamh before she goes back. Find out what sort of
trouble I have to get her out of before school starts." 

"Not a problem I have." I backed away to the doors. 

He nodded good bye as he veered back to the elevators. "Sweet dreams, Joel."


Sweet dreams, huh. The old man knew all about me, more than my parents or
lovers or lawyers, but he didn't expand on that in front of the bodyguards. 

        ~~~~~~~~ 

I grab the long, dark hair at the nape of the boy's neck and slide his torso
face down across the sacrificial stone at the centre of the circle, bending
his hips at the edge. Press the sprung steel strap across the small of his
back and secure it, cutting into his smooth skin. He's hanging in there, not
quite freaking, probably knows what's coming but fighting it. He puts his
hands flat on the stone and tries a push up against the strap. Excellent. I
smash his right elbow with a foot of lead pipe. Then I grab his ankles, bend
his knees, splay him and bugger him pretty hard. I should certainly be
bleeding, judging by the pain. 

The boy, of course, is still suffering too much from his elbow to be worried
about anything else; but he does vomit after a minute or two. When I'm
finished I stay in him but sink onto his back, savouring his shoulder blades
against my ribs. I listen to him whimper for a few minutes to get my breath
back, shifting occasionally to make the elbow grind. Finally an endorphin
local in the elbow to nail the pain and bring him back. 

Then I put a small nick in his carotid artery and show him what a _really_
savage fuck is as his life ebbs away. The blood is salty. When it's over I
sink onto his back again and into a beautiful, blissful sleep. 

        ~~~~~~~~ 

The timer woke me half an hour after the neuro-stimulatory dream ended. I
pulled the various electrodes off and breathed at the ceiling for a while.
With that lot out of my system I could face another week of meetings. 

Philip was asleep face down beside me. I'd come in without waking him. I
wondered if I should now, see if I could interest him in reliving a spare
dream I had handy, but he looked so peaceful that I just kissed his shoulder
and lay propped on my side watching him sleep. Angelic face, perfect skin
and golden curls over his shoulders. In my mellow, post dream moods I almost
love my catamite. 

Is it true that there is telepathy between lovers? After a quarter of an
hour he stirred and turned towards me, the sheet flowing close over his
body, tying knots inside me. He looked up and smiled sleepily. We sank into
each other's eyes for a while, then he grinned and slid across the bed. 

My beeper went off. 

         ~~~~~~~~ 

It isn't just anybody who can page the Research Director after 2am. The old
man. A group of three other directors (there are only seven) acting
together. The head of security can't. The old man's P.A. can't do it, it
needs his personal encrypted signature. Neither can my own P.A. But Andrew
Carter, head of a certain discreet security consultancy which is nothing to
do with Other Visions at all, he can do it. Any time he fucking likes. 

"Hawkins is dead. The guy from Wilkes-Beckham at the Persephone launch party
tonight. He seems to have got off his head on the stuff, then gone all quiet
and withdrawn. At 1:15 he wasn't breathing. The boss says this is special,
there's something between him and WB, he wants to know what happened. The
Persephone should never have done it. None of the boffins at the party have
any guesses ... Post mortem's starting about now." 

I was never a brilliant individual researcher. Competent, sometimes clever.
A good organiser and a motivator of researchers. Solid management stuff, in
fact. But what got me where I am was a certain knack for spotting a fruitful
research path right at the start. I could send a project down the right
track and way out in front of the competition with an instinctive decision.
Forensic medicine is not and never has been my field, but if someone was
needed to direct the technical investigation into Hawkins' death then I was
an obvious choice. Though by the time I got there it would be well under
way. 

         ~~~~~~~~ 

I dressed and left. Philip might have asked when I'd be back (he'd never ask
where I was going) but I didn't listen or reply. 

                           ================= 

Part 2
====== 

When I'd made it to the office Carter headed me off for a private chat. 

"So, anything new?" I asked. 

"Not really, they've taken some samples and put them into analysis. Doctor
Schroder has got his head straightened out to do the autopsy. I've arranged
to keep the police out, and Wilkes-Beckham have sent a couple of people over
to watch." 

I raised my eyebrows, rather pointedly. 

"They were invited, by the old man. We'll be handing the body over to them
to do their own tests later. Their security guy looks like he doesn't know
whether to gloat at us being in the shit or get his retaliation in first."
There had been some highly aggressive competition between the big drug
producers in the past. It was just quieter now we were legal. 

I noted the "us". Carter was one of "us" now, was he? 

"OK, what do we know so far then?" 

"There's not much. He seemed pretty ripped early in the evening. A lot of
people say he was too far out of it for someone that senior, especially in
front of the competition." 

"Yes, I remember him. Didn't think any more of it at the time..." 

"He was crashed out on one of the couches for a few hours, looked like he
was tripping. At about 1:15 one of the bio-technology specialists decided
his eyes looked wrong and had a look at him. He was dead then. From body
cooling all you can really say is that he died after he got here. Doesn't
help much really - a dozen people saw him walk in." 

Carter (who I like to think of as "The Spook", probably with good reason)
gave me a measuring look and decided that he wasn't scared of me and he
could annoy me as much as he liked, then said his piece: 

"There's no physical wounds. First guess has got to be poison or some kind
of drug reaction." He saw me tense, but continued "What are the chances of
some kind of allergic reaction to the Persephone?" 

I decided to play it absolutely straight, partly to cover my back and partly
because the answer was fairly innocuous anyway. "Well", I said, doing my
best impression of a scientist struggling to put things simply for a
know-nothing layman, "the odds are pretty slim. I mean, we paid off all the
health authorities to avoid the full test programmes but it's a mass
produced drug, it's pretty harmless. If it got out that it killed people
we'd never be able to sell it, they'd just buy safer drugs instead. This
isn't the 20th century you know, narcotics are a mature consumer market." 

I got the feeling that was exactly what he expected me to say. 

        ~~~~~~~~ 

Doc Schroder had decided to do the post mortem in the autopsy room we use
for animal testing work. It was the obvious place really, lots of gear for
studying the traces of drug effects on corpses. He'd had the chimps moved
out to make room around Hawkins' body and several extra workstations lined
the walls on trolleys. Four people were working with him on the autopsy.
With us two and the two wall flowers from W-B the room was full, but not
crowded. 

"So what have you got then, Doc". Doctor Schroder had been selected from all
those available as "Doc" for some reason unknown to me. Used to working in a
commercial environment, he gave us a quick answer instead of the delaying
tactics police pathologists are supposed to love. I don't know if that's
true, but Carter certainly looked surprised at the straight answer. 

"Well, I think we've got some of the story. Take a look at the sodium
distribution in his brain slices." He waved at a series of artificial colour
maps on one of the VDU's. "There's too much in the neurons and not enough in
the synapses. So it looks like some sort of nerve poison, or an allergic
reaction affecting the nervous system." He saw me wince. 

"But," prodding the air, "when we introduce Persephone from stock into nerve
tissue samples from his elbows, which can't have been affected by the time
he died because the Sodium distribution is normal, we get no reaction. So
it's not the drug per se." I glanced at Carter, feeling a little smug. He
was looking at Schroder, sensing something more. 

"Now for the interesting bit. We ran a few other things past Hawkins'
undamaged nerve tissue. When you mix it with dregs of champagne left over
from the party, the reaction sets in." He grinned like the cat who got the
cream. 

The Spook got the wrong end of the stick. "He was allergic to the
_champagne? But surely..." This time I got to grin like the proverbial cat,
as the Doc continued "It wasn't the champagne, samples from unopened bottles
have no effect. It was the glasses. Every champagne flute at the party was
dusted with the, well, biological agent." 

The security consultant looked at the rest of us. He hadn't been to the
party, but everybody except Hawkins was looking more or less alive. Schroder
and his team were unflustered, although one of his sidekicks was trying not
to laugh at the look on my face. I'd remember that. "It seems we have some
sort of genetically tailored narrowband virus, Joel. It degrades certain
nerve tissue in people matching Hawkins' DNA, killing them in a few hours
apparently. At a guess it's a standard cancer-cell killing smart-virus with
a new search mechanism and payload inserted. It wouldn't have shown on a
normal police autopsy, and if they took more than 24 hours to ship the body
off for advanced tests it would have sunk into the background." A pause. "It
seems somebody picked the wrong place for their perfect murder."  

"So what sort of odds are there on a random match, then?" I asked. 

"Depends on the virus, but 10,000 to one might be typical. We'll work on
analysing it, set all the tests and simulations up now then let them brew
until the morning. We might have some useful data by noon." 

Carter stepped in. "Ok, you've got all the samples you need?" Doc nodded. He
turned to the W-B people, who hadn't said a word, presumably under orders.
"We'll release the body now, then. I've arranged a vehicle, I'll have you
taken down." To Doc "Can you send the body down to the security booth in the
car park?" He left, guests in tow. 

Schroder came over to talk to me. "Doesn't muck about, does he?"  

"Nah. Anything else, now they're gone?" 

"Not really, except why kill someone from a bio-genetics firm with a
tailored virus? It's about the only target where the autopsy might detect
it, surely. Anybody who can do a fancy job like that would know it. Hell,
between us we probably know half the people who could do it." 

"Yes, I think there might be more to it than meets the eye." 

I had an uneasy feeling. Even in all the stuff stacking up wrong, something
was stacking up to the wrong sort of wrong. "Look, do something for me.
Cross match Hawkins' gene map against all the staff records, and anybody
else we've got records on. 10,000 to one isn't enough; the police are bound
to want to eliminate everybody else at the party as possible targets." 

I could see the Doc didn't quite believe the bit about the police. Apart
from the fact that we'd been riding roughshod over the judicial system for
years, my hunches were notorious in Other Visions. 

        ~~~~~~~~ 

I went back home to Philip. This time I didn't wake him up, or play a dream.
I just lay back and thought hard, eventually sleeping. 

A murder on our premises by such clumsy means that we were bound to see
through them could be just what it seemed. One of our staff with a personal
grudge against Hawkins' might have done it, but they should have known it
would be detected. 

If it was an outsider that had done it then why choose our party? To make us
look bad? They'd never make it stick. Nobody had needed an excuse to start a
war since Pearl Harbour; and anybody who wanted window dressing could bribe
the appropriate media to plant it retrospectively once they'd got their
first strike in. 

There had to be something deeper, something tied into whatever the boss had
going with Wilkes-Beckham. The Spook was operating on a need to know basis
there; he'd told me just enough to let me know it was important and I'd
better haul my ass into work then left me hanging. 

So was I going to avoid this one like the plague, or adopt attack as the
best form of defence? 

                           ================= 

Part 3
====== 

Doc's first results were due in about noon. I made it back to the office at
10:30 and started to see what I could dig up on Hawkins and Wilkes-Beckham.
I used public and commercial sources - R&D generally has its industrial
espionage done at arm's length by third parties so it would have taken a few
days to set something up. 

Nobody knew what Hawkins really did. 

He was listed as a vice president without portfolio reporting to the
president. That could mean anything from a hatchet man to an expensive IT
consultant brought in to revamp their computers. There were plenty of senses
for "hatchet man", too. 

His death wasn't public yet so I put a head hunting recruitment agency onto
him, telling them that I'd met him and liked the feel of him and I wanted
some background. They boasted a customised data trawler which, within its
field, was about as near to Artificial Intelligence as you get outside the
military. It hit me with a summary inside five minutes. He was a fixer. And
not small time. 

There are things most people would omit from their curriculum vitae. Dumping
toxic waste in an out of the way canyon, sending a black ops team in
gunships to kill the travellers who camp on top of it, buying off the local
police and arranging road accidents for the ones who won't be bought,
getting inquisitive journalists the sack, that kind of stuff. When you reach
a certain level you start to include them again. 

Not in so many words of course; but when a reader working through your joint
marketing agreements and corporate acquisitions finds a stray mention of a
four day visit to a small subsidiary in Nevada it rings bells. They tend to
cross reference it to contemporary news records and put two and two
together. The FBI and NCRU can do this too but they don't generally risk
their lives or loved ones unless there's more money or political mileage in
it than usual. You have to watch the Christian vigilantes of course. 

So Hawkins could play dirty. He had a high powered background in straight
business too - those joint marketing agreements and corporate acquisitions.
But I couldn't really fathom what he'd been up to lately.

On the face of it, he'd spent the last couple of months glad handing
academia. Endowing chairs of this and that. Sponsoring research programmes.
Funding laboratories. Setting up student sponsorship programmes -
management, marketing, biotech, genetics and virology. Pissing about with up
market high schools even. All very commendable, but why was a knife artist
like him doing it? This was a job for some PR jockey. 

He hadn't just been working on the raw eggheads, he'd been inside the
Beltway talking to politicos and the bureaucracy. In this business relations
with the authorities are generally of a discreetly financial nature so this,
this _romancing_ of the education establishment was totally out of
character. Hawkins must have been up to something really big, but all I
could get from the data trawl was the names of people he had met. There was
no telling what he really talked to them about.

        ~~~~~~~~

It was coming up for noon. I chucked it in and went to see Doc. He was back
in the post mortem room with a couple of sidekicks, all in their white lab
coats poking at VDUs. 

Carter the spook was there too, gazing at assorted graphs as if they meant
something to him. Graphs are meant to abstract useful information, but I
couldn't see him making much sense of a DNA spectrum however clearly it was
presented to him. It seemed a bit diplomatic for him, thinking of an excuse
to hang around. Maybe he was just bored.

After a few nods and hellos I asked Doc "So, have we got anything then?"

"Well, it seems I was right about the narrowband virus. It does look like he
used a modified cancer killer for the search mechanism too. It's a bit of a
bodge, though - it looks like a first effort, it's not the result of a
commercial development programme. It's a home-brew. No corporation would
ever put anything like that on the market, it could hit one in a thousand."

"It does seem to be keyed into nerve cells, but we're still working on the
payload. It's got to be some kind of nerve poison or inhibitor, but it'll be
interesting to see whether it's got anything we recognise in it. If it has,
that might be a clue."

"How long?" interjected Carter.

"Three or four hours more. We put the interesting tissue fluids into the
centrifuge a couple of hours ago, it's a four hour spin to separate it all
then we'll analyse it."

"So have you done the DNA match on Hawkins against the records?" I asked,
figuring I might as well say it in front of Carter.

"Adams set it off last night. One of the computers has been correlating his
data against all the other sets we've got and dumping the results to file. I
haven't looked at it but it must be done by now. Can you get it up on
screen, Jeff?"

There was a moment of confusion as all three of them tried to port the data
into a charting program in slightly different ways. Then they realised they
didn't want it graphed, we needed a straight sort by correlation results and
a list of names in order of matching. Nothing changes.

The name on the top of the list matched Hawkins to within a thousandth of a
percent of population - not bad for a parental relationship, pretty far out
for a random match. It was a name we all recognised.

I turned to the spook, very slowly. "Have you seen him this morning?"

"Yes, he was fine."

"If he ingested it, he'd be dead by now" said the Doc.

"I think we'd better go see him. Now. Come on, Doc." We headed for the
fourth floor office of Brian Simpson, eminence gris of the consumer
narcotics industry, our great leader and chief executive, the Old man.

        ~~~~~~~~~

Once Doc Schroder had taken a pulse and stared into his eyes and pretty much
manhandled him into sick bay to grab samples, he headed back to his office
with the spook. To my surprise I was invited.

The boss usually played himself as an affable, chatty sort of person who
liked to chew the fat a bit before coming to the point but this time there
was no messing. "Ok, Joel. It looks like this is going to turn into a very
technical operation, so I guess I'll have to involve you." He paused a
fraction, then continued with "I don't mean to insult you, but you know what
I've got on you so you'd better keep your mouth shut. Hmm?" The shadow of a
nod. "There's some stuff you'll need to know."

"First up, I guess, is that Hawkins was no relation. He's just about young
enough to be my kid but I was a nerd in those days and I don't suppose I've
got any children I don't know about running around. I have had plenty to do
with him lately, though. I had a joint op going with Wilkes-B, very quiet.
He handled the public side and Carter here arranged the dirty work."

Now that was quite something. "I got the feeling he could look after
himself" I said, in a cautiously level tone.

"Yeah, I saw you were looking at those agency files on him this morning.
Believe me, that's not half of it. But W-B wanted some deniability if this
one blew up, and it is very risky."

Maybe I should have avoided this one like the plague, after all.

"We've been trying to do two things, both very touchy if they come out the
wrong way. I'll be simplistic. We've been trying to get our hooks into
academia, turn the bits that are still worth having into corporate
satellites before they go down the pan too. And we've been trying to get a
better hold on some of the students. You know how hard it is to get decent
graduates nowadays. These sponsorship programs are no use, it used to be
you'd find some kid without rich parents and pay the price of a house to put
them through a degree. Then they'd work for you for three years and fuck off
with half your secrets. Now they don't even finish high school without
outside funding; and we need to give them a job for life whether they want
it or not. Can't afford not to. Some would say I'm trying to reinvent feudal
servitude, and maybe I am, but if nobody does anything for much longer the
whole world is gonna keel over."

His eyes were shining slightly. Oh shit. I mean, what he said made perfect
sense and things have gone that way now, but the naked megalomania was
pretty unnerving. When you've got a psychotic streak of your own you don't
feel too comfortable about working for another nutter who'd have you killed
if it suited him.

He slowed down a bit and smiled. "It's all these legalised designer drugs,
they're eroding everything. They're not tearing it down like they were
before they were legal, but something will have to change sooner or later
and it'll be less painful if it starts now."

I felt an urgent need to change the subject.

        ~~~~~~~~

"So I haven't got a clue why anybody would want to kill me now more than
usual, apart from the deal with Wilkes-Beckham. Same for Hawkins. As for
going about it this way... Do you know who was the closer match?"

"No", I replied, "I'll put Doc Schroder on it."

"Can't you do the work yourself?"

"Oh, it's like that is it? Well yes, I don't see why not. He'll have to
finish the analysis with his team, but they can just turn the results over
to me. His people will know about the match to you though, that's going to
be all over the firm by now."

"Never mind. Let 'em know I'm all right and we're investigating. They should
all be used to secrets at work by now, anyway."

        ~~~~~~~~~

Later that afternoon, about 4:30, the two of us were back with the Old man.
Carter, or "Andy" now he was telling me "everything", was doing his
detective bit.

"They worked out the genetic make up of the virus' ideal target, the person
it would have been a perfect match for. It was a better match for you than
him - it would have killed you in minutes, apparently it took hours to do
for Hawkins. But it doesn't add up to anything, really. It's pure chance we
had Hawkins details on file, if anybody was out to get both of you this way
they must have seen our records, there's not much chance they'd know from
elsewhere. It'd almost have to be an inside job, except it's such a crazy
way to do it. There's only a couple of dozen suspects to choose from."

"But it's too freaky for coincidence." Replied the boss. "On the other hand,
once you accept the basic coincidence of two people with this good a match
being in the same room to start with, the rest is not so unlikely. And it
really was chance that we have the same gene pattern and we're associated."

"Yes, the real questions are did the killer know you were matched and if so
did they care, or were they going for both of you anyway." The spook stated
the obvious with a sigh.

I put my two cents in. "The targeting spread on the virus was too wide.
Anyone who could manufacture that could do it right, with the correct focus.
The process is complicated but it's damn near automatic once you know how to
work the kit - it would either work really well or not at all. Somebody was
either aiming for both of you or aiming for Hawkins and trying to make you
look like the target. Either means inside knowledge." This was backed by one
of my hunches, I _knew_ it was an inside job. Nobody bowed down and
worshipped me or anything, though.

We all gazed into space for a while, looking frustrated. Eventually Carter
spoke.

"Right, we might as well start the nitty gritty. Who knew that you and
Hawkins would be at the party?"

The Old man snorted. "Loads of people knew about him, I expect. It was me
who wasn't supposed to be there, I only dropped by to see Niamh but she was
off her face and we had a row so I didn't stop for a drink."

I tell you, I felt ice going down my spine. The boss went for the phone.

        ~~~~~~~~

It seems that Niamh Simpson died alone in her apartment back at Dartmouth
around lunch time that day. There were no visible injuries.

                           ================= 

Part 4
====== 

It's good stuff, Persephone, even if it is a bit tame. Niamh was looking
pretty happy for someone sprawled on a couch in a pool of their own urine,
with blotchy skin and a rictus smile. 

The Spook had taken me along to Dartmouth with a couple of his forensic
people and assorted technicians. It was dark by the time we got there. He,
or somebody, had arranged for the local cops to leave and let us poke around
in peace. They'd already taken scene of the crime photos and swept for
prints and so on. Carter got them to hand over their evidence to save his
team the bother. He set them to searching the apartment instead.

Once they'd started turning the place upside down we had to decide what to
do with the body. "You want to send her back to the lab?" he asked. 

I nodded.

"Should we get an ice wagon to carry her?"

"No, ship her in one of the choppers. The preservatives they put in food
these days, there'll be no decay for three of four days anyhow. If we freeze
her they'll only have to thaw her again to take samples."

"They?" he asked.

I nodded. "It'll have to be Schroder and his people who do the autopsy, but
we can limit the results of the sample analysis to two or three people. Us,
him, and maybe one of his computer people I should think."

"All right," he nodded. "We'll bag her in the van and run it out to meet a
chopper. I'll have it seen to."

        ~~~~~~~~

While the Spook was taking the furniture apart I went and had a look at her
school papers. It was a pretty slick pad for a student - the lounge, study
and bedroom were all separate and she had the lot to herself. Niamh was a
biochemistry grad student funded by her father; though judging by the work
lying around, and the supervisor's comments, she'd been in no danger of
following in his footsteps. From what I'd seen of her on her summer
internships at Other Visions she was more interested in getting wasted, or
perhaps a hostile occupation of the Dean's office.

Sitting at her desk, it struck me that she might be just as good a suspect
as anybody else if she hadn't ended up dead. She might have had access to
the genetic records at work, to know Hawkins' spectrum. She could just about
have knocked up the custom virus on university facilities if she read up
first. It looked like a second rate job anyway, from what Doc Schroder had
said. Should be about her level then.

But she'd been there at the party, swigging champagne out of the same
glasses as everyone else.

        ~~~~~~~~

One of Carter's hacker types came in to interrogate her computer, so I left
him to it and went off to see what  the rest of the gumshoes were up to.
They'd given the kitchen the once over, trashing it quite impressively. The
bits would be crated later. Carter was talking into his phone ordering
trucks, equipment and more people to use them. There wasn't much for me to
do so I righted a chair in the lounge and sat and watched them, toying with
the idea of going back with the body for the post mortem.

Half an hour later the fun started.

        ~~~~~~~~ 

The box file was in the bottom of the wardrobe, folded into some clothes.
Not brilliantly hidden, but enough to stop anybody stumbling on them by
chance. 

"Recognise this one?" Carter asked me.

"I surely do." I told him, feeling very tired all of a sudden. The old man
was going to be really pissed. It was a letter outlining what I was looking
for in the graduate recruitment line, printed on the splendid embossed note
paper I used to messenger when I wanted to stroke someone. It was quite
harmless in itself, Hawkins had been specifying the silent quid pro quo's
behind my back. It was, indeed, separated off from most of the file along
with a pleasant enough letter from a student loans company expressing
concerns over the vetting given to applicants by the university.

I knew what the rest of the letters were going to be before he showed me
them.

I'd never read them before, though the Spook recognised a few which had
passed through his hands at the sending end. But I'd learned what was in
them earlier that day. Mostly they were Hawkins' discussions with Dartmouth
about our new education projects. A couple were in the original envelopes,
with Wilkes-Bekham's franking. With these, anybody who had half a clue what
was going on could provide a very convincing description of W-B's nasty evil
plot to the rest of the world. We were not implicated.

Clever, boss.

"I don't suppose they've told you they missed these yet?" I asked him. The
question was only part rhetorical, he might have known about it for weeks
without bothering to mention it to the likes of me.

"They haven't said, though most of these egg heads haven't got much of a
clue. I guess we'll have to put the fear of god into them. I need to do it
from Wilkes-Beckham though. We'd better check out her student friends too."

I nodded. It was going to be a bad week to be a student activist once he got
hold of the university's confidential files.

He continued, tapping a single sheet he'd separated from the rest. "But this
is the real problem. The fucking locals released news of her death, this
could be effective by now." He was talking about the only letter in the
collection originating from Niamh. It was one of those "in the event of my
death" letters, addressed to two law firms, a news daily and a civil
liberties group. A little time bomb.

That would not be the easiest thing in the world to keep quiet, but Carter
obviously planned to give it his best shot because he sent me out of the
room while he made some calls to the sort of people who might arrange it.

Outside I found a very excited computer jockey who'd been told not to
disturb us. He was almost was hopping from foot to foot, so I let him tell
me all about these files on Niamh's computer with Hawkins' name on them. He
sputtered a load of nonsense about cell wall permeability, tripping over the
technical terms, but he was very sure he'd found Corpse #1's name noted in
Corpse #2's study.

I read over the medical stuff. She'd been pretty smart, within her limits,
but not quite smart enough.

        ~~~~~~~~

I made it in at 9 p.m. and walked in on the end of the autopsy. I hadn't
explained the finer points of Niamh's computer files to anybody, I wanted to
have the whole story before I decided who was going to break it to the old
man.

Somebody was sewing the skin back over the holes they'd drilled in her
skull. Others were putting the collected samples onto slides and loading
test tubes into centrifuges. Schroder sat at one of the computers, looking
at pictures scanned from the early slides with one eye and supervising the
end of the autopsy with the other. He pulled a mock groan when he saw me.
"Uh oh. Here we go again. I actually managed to get something to eat while
you were gone, I knew it couldn't last."

I played along for the benefit of the assembled masses. "Hey, we'll have you
on bread and water yet, Doc."

We chatted away for half an hour or so, me doing my best impression of
cheerful banter as he found a general lack of oxygen throughout her body
tissue. It was the wrong colour. If the heart and lungs had given out
slowly... then that wouldn't clash with anything in her files at all. The
others gradually went home to let the tests run over night, until there were
just the two of us left.

There was no particular reason for Doc to be hanging around either, but he'd
obviously twigged that I wanted to talk to him alone because when the last
of the autopsy team were safely out the door he turned and asked me "So, was
there something you wanted Joel?"

I fished an optical disk out of my pocket and slotted it in the workstation.
"Take a look at this. Am I imagining it, or is it the design for the
narrowband virus?"

He played with it for twenty minutes or so, checking Niamh's computer files
against our reverse engineered design model for the virus that killed
Hawkins, before confirming what I had thought. "Your right, it is. But this
design is targeted at Hawkins specifically, the manufactured virus was a
better match for the boss."

"This is the sort of error you could get in manufacture? Especially an
amateur job?"

"Yes, I should think so. And this is definitely not the work of a
specialist. I mean look..." he pointed out a small list of definitions
buried in the design notes. I was familiar with half the terms, and I could
probably have defined a quarter. "A specialist would just know those, they
wouldn't have to note them. Whoever did this, they were doing it for the
first time."

And the last, I thought. "So," I said, taking a significant deep breath,
"take a look at this other design model. Would this by any chance be a
blocker for the narrowband virus?"

After a minute or so he said it sure looked that way. In another half an
hour he was sure, but he didn't think much to the quality of the work. That
was no surprise given where I'd found it. "So, Doc," I asked, "how long will
it take to find out whether both these substances are in Niamh's body?"

"Both?" he gave me a long look. I nodded, fractionally. He absorbed that for
a moment. "The full results won't be in until the morning, but we ran
specific tests for that virus. They'll be ready for us to look at in an hour
or so. We should get a fair idea about the blocker from those as well."

"I'll wait."

Schroder gave me a nasty glare for that, but he decided not to say anything.
I pushed my luck a bit further.

"While we wait, can you have a look at the design for the blocker and tell
me what you think of it?"

"Why the hell not."

        ~~~~~~~~

The narrowband virus had been fair to middling, but it had at least done its
job. The blocker wasn't as good. Doc reckoned it probably wouldn't do the
job, but it might keep the user alive a bit longer when the virus hit them.
By the time he'd worked that out from the design the results were in from
the autopsy samples to prove it. In Niamh Simpson's case it staved off  the
effects for about twelve hours.

        ~~~~~~~~

I went off to phone the old man at home. I got him third ring, wide awake.

"Hello, Joel. Where'd you leave Carter?"

Thanks a bunch, boss. It's nice to know where you stand. "I found something
technical at Niamh's place and brought it back. He was busy plugging
Wilkes-Beckham's leaks so I left him to it."

"Oh, it's a joint operation. They're just carrying the publicity risk while
we carry the financial." Just the way you'd want it really. "Anyway, what
can I do for you?"

"Tell me, do you often have rows with Niamh in public like you did at the
party?"

"No, never. We've had a few in private, but... What's on your mind?"

"It was a big surprise then. It made you storm out without having a drink?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so." He gave me a hard look. "You're about to tell me
something."

I told him what I'd found on her computer, how she'd designed the virus to
kill Hawkins, that she'd somehow got it onto all the champagne glasses at
the party, and that she'd given herself the blocker that had failed.

"I figure when you showed up she started the argument to stop you drinking
the champagne. So far as she knew it was all Wilkes-B, she had no idea you
were really behind it all. I don't suppose we'll ever know quite why she
used the virus and so on. It's not entirely rational, but I guess she was
pretty worked up about..."

He'd cut the connection. The fucker was human after all.

                           ================= 

Part 5 (6 Years Later)
======================

So anyway, I think that's when he started to lose it. It took me a couple
of years to find the other chinks in his armour and get this job off him. I
see we're encountering some congressional opposition to extending corporate
sponsorship programmes into junior high schools. That will be expensive, but
I dare say Andy Carter can handle it smoothly. And Clytumnestra will pay the
bill now it's on the market.


                                 THE END