The Crying Machine. Greg Chivers

anger vents in sharp, shallow breaths, a warning hiss, but Clementine doesn’t shift. The thought of tomorrow morning’s cleaning routine echoing infinitely into the future keeps her rooted to her seat.

      ‘Go on, move! If you breathe a fucking word to anyone, we will find you. Nothing moves in this city Yusuf doesn’t know about it.’

      Her head jerks around at the mention of the other man’s name. He’s still standing watchfully by the door, barring her exit, but there is no malice in his pose. The tablet lies tantalizingly out of reach, but she can almost taste the trickle of current flowing through the solid-state circuitry from the tiny block of lithium at its core. Just a little nudge …

      Blue light from the tablets suddenly illuminates Levi’s face. He blinks in disbelief. ‘What the fuck did you do?’

      ‘Like I said, I need see everything.’

      Heavy footsteps from behind warn of the big man’s approach, but Levi holds up a hand, and they stop. She feels the looming presence no more than a metre behind her.

      ‘May I?’ She gestures to the tablets shining through Levi’s caged fingers and he nods cautiously, pulling his hand away.

      The moment her index finger brushes the tablet’s casing, data rushes up to greet her, coursing through the fingertip interface into her grey matter, flowing in a stream of firing neurons into the tiny auxiliary processor at the base of her frontal cortex. An itch in her brain is a long dormant sub-routine kicking into life, processing, sorting through thousands of files. The storage is archaic: pointless partitions and fragmentation make it needlessly cumbersome, but a few microseconds suffice to realize it is mostly redundant information. Almost all the files are copies of each other with small, pointless modifications. This data is an illusion, a pantomime of rigour.

      ‘This isn’t everything.’ Clementine’s voice comes out in a lifeless monotone.

      ‘What do you mean? I have contacts. This is the skinny.’

      ‘Look.’

      The micro-projector on one of the tablets sparkles into life, and the photographs from its data files flicker into the air above the table on its beam of light. One after the other, they seem to hover, connecting with each other through some algorithmic alchemy to form a glowing three-dimensional wireframe of the target building that rotates slowly between Clementine and Levi.

      ‘Fuck.’ She turns in her chair at the sound of Yusuf’s voice. The big man is staring at the ghost building she’s conjured, mouth wide open.

      ‘How? How do you do that?’ Levi’s stare is intense, but his voice betrays a note of excitement.

      ‘It’s easier than the orange.’

      ‘That’s not an answer.’

      ‘You’re right, it isn’t. Is that going to be a problem?’

      A calculating look comes into his eyes, and he shakes his head. ‘What’s going on here?’ He points to one of five blurred areas in the rotating schematic. It stops, and the relevant area enlarges, obeying an unspoken command.

      ‘This is how I know you’re not being given everything – there’s no source data available for me to process into the larger model. Is there a reason your contact wouldn’t give you the whole picture?’

      ‘Maybe. Maybe these areas just aren’t important.’ He waves a hand, and the model continues its rotation. ‘This doesn’t change anything.’

      ‘I think it does. I think my fee is four thousand.’ Clementine pulls her finger away from the tablet and the schematic winks out of existence, casting them both into gloom. Levi emits something like a growl, a sound of reluctance from deep in his throat; then he leans forward, face cracking in a sudden smile.

      ‘Yeah, yeah, four thousand is cool. You bring a lot to the party. I can respect that. I think we should regard this as the beginning of a business relationship.’

      ‘No, I do this and then I’m out.’

      ‘Let’s just see how this goes and then maybe consider it further down the line.’

      Clementine breathes deep and shuts her eyes against memories: a year of running now. This is not her first opportunity to make money through crime. There were offers in Marseille as soon as people got a hint of what she was. Now, at the end of the money, choices are fewer. ‘This is not a career opportunity for me.’

      ‘I understand. I’m just saying things can change, that’s all.’

      ‘I hope we understand each other.’

      ‘Yeah, whatever, now do your thing.’

      Clementine gestures the light model into being and it resumes its rotation between them, white lines of the wireframe scrolling across their faces like moving scars. Levi points as he talks.

      ‘It’s a warehouse – the main storage facility for the state Museum of Antiquities. It’s split between three floors, each corresponding to a different level of security – A, B, and C, but the order is all messed up. C is the low-level stuff you might just dig up if you get lucky – coins, pottery. It’s on the ground floor – not heavy security but there’s only one door in, and there’s a guard on it 24/7. I’m guessing some pressure sensors and beams – nothing crazy.’

      He watches for any trace of a reaction. Clementine stays silent, mentally cross-referencing what he’s telling her with data already absorbed from the tablets, searching for inconsistencies. There are none. As far as she can tell, the picture they have is not false, merely incomplete, but that could be equally deadly.

      ‘The floor above C is A. I told you it was messed up. A is the really valuable stuff – this kind of thing, it’s either on the cover of the museum brochure, or they deny its existence, or maybe both, I don’t know. B is our destination, the top floor.’

      ‘Why aren’t we going for the valuable stuff?’

      ‘Because this is a real job. We’re getting what the client wants. That’s it.’

      ‘Who’s the client?’

      Disbelief flattens Levi’s voice. ‘You don’t know. You’re never going to know, so don’t ask.’

      ‘Fine, you’re right. I don’t need to know the backstory, but I can’t work with these gaps in information. A single unexpected camera or sensor could turn any plan I make into a very bad idea. These are problems I can solve, but I need to take a look and make some guesses at what we’re dealing with.’

      ‘Now?’ He looks uncertain, the brittle pride of a few moments ago cracked in the heat of practicalities. A good sign.

      ‘No, daylight’s better. We’ve got time, haven’t we?’

      ‘Yeah, time is one thing we got. Do what you need to do.’

      ‘OK. Give me a couple of days to work things out, then I’ll meet you back here after lunch. I’ve got to serve breakfast at the Mission and clear up.’

      ‘For those bums?’

      ‘For those bums.’ She owes that much, and more, for the kindness she’s been shown. This is already enough of a betrayal, and they have problems of their own. Before she left to come here tonight, Hilda had been worried about something: one of the elders, a man she called a prophet, had been arrested.

      Levi’s nose wrinkles as if he can smell the urine tang of the Mission gatehouse. ‘I could, like, advance you a little money – you get yourself a proper room somewhere.’ He hunches back into that jacket and it swallows him. All his edges are blunted but he still looks nervous about something, smoking with no hands while he fingers the tablet. The tip of the straggly cigarette glows to the sound of a sharp inhalation. Is he trying to make nice after the confrontation, or is this some convoluted attempt at a pass? No, he’s smarter than that. Then the realization hits her; she’s become an asset worth looking after, and even this