Future Crimes Part 31

Lane thought he might have pushed him just that bit too far, but ian's eyes were bright and alert.

The disk finished and Lane switched on the car's communication.

Listened for a minute: calls about track-downs, ID abuse at a supermarket, a computer blackout, and more of the usual calls. He switched it off.

They sat there, listening to the car's air-conditioner humming in the background, both silent and lost deep in their own thoughts.

Finally ian said, "Why?"

"Because I thought you had a right to know."

There was a long pause.

"What do you want me to do with all this?"

Lane shrugged.

"Tell others, tell Male--let them know what happened, what's happening."

"And what about you?"

Lane looked away and said a moment later, "Don't have to worry about me, I'll be okay."

"I got to think about this- It's all ... well, just too much to take in."

"It's a beginning."

They were waiting for him when he got back home.

Dani was standing by the window; Burke Foster was leaning up against the breakfast bar, and the two security men stood close to him.

Dani turned around as the door opened.

Lane stepped into the room and felt a sudden sinking sensation in his stomach.

"You didn't think you'd get away with it, did you?"

said Foster.

Lane walked into the room, ignoring the question, and headed over to his wife.

"You okay?" he asked.

She nodded her head but couldn't force herself to look at him.

"You should be worried about yourself," said Foster.

"Not really."

"Don't be so arrogant!"

"Don't preach to me about arrogance!"

The security guards made to move in, but Foster waved them off. He signaled to one to leave the room.

To Lane he said, "How you could compromise my daughter?"

"She had nothing to do with it."

"You put her at risk."

Lane admitted to himself that obviously there had been risks but felt that he was in a position not to exactly stop what was going on but to minimize what he considered the misuse of biometric technology.

He said to Foster, "The risks were mine alone. No one, no government or power has the right to do what you and your biometrics henchmen have been doing."

"That's such a narrow-minded view, Jerry."

"At least I can use my mind. What about all those people you've robbed of their past--their heritage?"

Foster rubbed a hand over his face.

"What gives you the right to decide to play G.o.d? Everything we've done has been for a reason--a very good reason."

Lane certainly knew some of the things the Biometrics Information Corporation had been doing. That over the last three years they had been systematically erasing the memories of those living in the outer city.

The computer and electrical collapse brought about by the solar flares at the beginning of the century had given BIC the opportunity to bring about a ma.s.sive change in society. Those not selected to be involved in the rebirth had been ostracized outside the city walls and gradually had been brought to the centers to be given vaccines. The Corporation had defiled their minds. Another freedom stripped from the less fortunate. And in the meantime those living within London's city walls benefited from BICs technological advances. He had proof in the data stored in the mini disk The security guard came back into the room carrying the mini-disk that Lane thought he had hidden.

He waved it in the air, silently goading Lane, before handing it over to Foster.

Lane's shoulders slumped in resignation as though the discovery of the disk had drained him of the fight.

Foster turned the disk over and over in his hands.

"What you have here is far more dangerous than anything we have done.

The whole infrastructure of our society could have been undermined and set us back a hundred years or more. I'm only too glad that Dani had the sense to contact me." He saw the couple exchange looks.

"That's right Lane, she told me of her fears; Rosi did, too, and this disk confirms everything."

Lane said, "You'll do whatever you'll need to do."

Foster moved away from the breakfast bar saying, "There's no way we can overlook this. You realize that, don't you?"

Lane wasn't in a position to make ultimatums. He had ruined himself for a worthwhile cause but still had some dignity left.

"You'll leave Dani out of this. She wasn't involved. I'm the one who's to be punished.

not her," he demanded.

Foster silently nodded his consent. It Lane had him labeled as a plutocrat, then at least he could be magnanimous to his own flesh and blood.

Lane walked over to Dani and put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched away from him. Untouched by Dani's rejection. Lane looked out over the landscape and inside his heart was rea.s.sured that whatever Foster had in store for him, ian Palmer was out there, Everything wasn't lost.

by Jerry Sykes

Jerry Sykes's short stories have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies including Cemetery Dance, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and The Year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories. He is the editor of Mean Time, a collection of crime stories set around the end of the millennium. In 1998 he was awarded the Crime Writers' a.s.sociation Gold Dagger for Short Story of the Year.

MY first a.s.signment as a cop had been to herd rubber neckers away from the broken suicides that lay at the foot of the Millennium Ferris Wheel. Twenty years on and I was still herding people away, only this time the wheel was on its side and the people were the vagrants who made their home in the giant rusted cage that was all that was left of the wheel.

It was a hot evening, and the sun burned a moving red spectrum on the gla.s.s towers of the City making it look like they were on fire. I drove slowly along the embankment to Millennium Park, windows open, the acrid smell of the Thames in my nostrils, and looked out over the river. It was low tide, and I could see beachcombers down by the water. On either side of the river, barely a hundred feet wide at this time of year, people moved in slow motion, eyes scanning the baked mud, twists of wood, and metal breaking the surface like the bones of a desiccated corpse. Many of the searchers carried Hessian sacks on their shoulders, others huddled their findings to their chests, distrustful of their neighbors.

I backed the shuttle up to the gate and killed the engine.

The Ferris Wheel, with a span of over five hundred feet, had once been the centerpiece of the Millennium Festival, visible from Blackheath to Primrose Hill, when the night sky would be filled with the cries of the innocent rolling through scrolled neon and into new worlds limited only by their imaginations. The structure had long since been formally abandoned, and lowered on to its side to prevent further suicides, and was now a makes.h.i.+ft shelter to the constant flow of vagrants that ghosted through London. The top and sides of the wheel were covered with an urgent tapestry of plastic sheets, blankets, and tarpaulins; inside, the wheel was divided into separate dwellings by more tarpaulins and blankets.

My remit as a shuttle operator was to move these vagrants out to holding camps until they could be allocated government support through the Realignment Bill. Twice a week I would come down to the park and herd fifty of them into the shuttle and s.h.i.+p them out. It was a never-ending cycle, not least because the process of realignment took so long, many people would often drift away from the camps and make their own way back to where they had come from before they could be processed.

Across the street a group of vagrants climbed over the embankment wall; they had the staccato movements and the jaundiced look of donors.

I turned to Denny.