It will flatten me if I run out into the road.
The Inspector’s eyes darted along two barren roadsides. Grass. Rocks. Dirt. Nothing big enough to stop the pink juggernaut.
As if it had seen her, the truck slowed. A high-pitched screech of brakes.
Praise be to Scientifically Proven God.
Finally, a sizzling sound, suggestive of engine coolant spilling. Icara had never heard the noise before. Combustion engines had been outlawed in the City for the best part of Frome’s reign. Evidently, here in the backwater of the Tranquelle Belt, people were still driving on petrol. The effort of what she had just endured, the pain in her arms and legs, and the relief of hearing the convoy come to a standstill – it was all too much for Icara.
She began to laugh. Uncontrollably. Hysterically.
She couldn’t even stop laughing when she saw the trucker’s arm emerge from the cab. A familiar dimpled arm. Licked by an inky lizard.
Icara felt terror wrap around her stomach, and an enormous hand close around her wrist like a vice. Gretna Greene.
‘You! You traitorous bitch! Go ahead! Kill me. End this nightmare! And go back to Frome, like the lap dog you are, Gretna!’ Icara screamed. ‘How could you? How could you work for her?’
‘How could you, sweedpea?’
Gretna dragged Icara into the cab. A firearm dangled loosely from one of her fingers. Icara thought she recognised it from the night with Gurk. It seemed Icara wouldn’t have to imagine what it felt like any more. A fork into protein mash. She would know.
‘How did you find me? How could you have known I’d come out of that tunnel mouth?’
Gretna thrust a hand into Icara’s pocket, pulled out one of the cracked Frome dollars, and peeled it in two, like a Glitz orange at Fromemass. Inside was a tiny transmitter. Icara was furious with herself. She had been so intent on avoiding the surveillance in her head that she’d completely forgotten to check for simpler stuff. Foiled by a tracker. Tech from the dark ages!
‘You…you…’
Gretna rolled her eyes. She looked tired. Very, very tired.
‘I’m tired, Icara. Very, very tired. Of you Bureaucrats and your pigeon shit, for the love of Scientifically Proven God! You’ve got your heads shoved so far up your precious Bureau you can’t see the real world. Nothing but carpeted interiors. And archived files. Good and bad in black and white. You can’t see what’s right in front of you.’
Something about the phrase carpeted interiors tipped Icara over the edge. Her body shook with violent sobs and laughter that came out in hysterical shrieks.
‘Death’s funny. Isn’t it? When you really think about it, Gret. I mean, after everything. You can escape it fifteen times. Jump over rivers of run-off. Narrowly dodge becoming Loop soup. But it finally comes for you in a huge, pink truck on a hot night in a Tranquelle field! Talking about carpeted interiors. As if it doesn’t care. As if you don’t matter. As if none of it matters!’
‘Shut up. Please. Shut up, sweedpea. You’re driving me crazy with the hysterics.’
Icara tried to stop the shrieking laughter, but she couldn’t. She laughed even as she imagined what the inside of her head would look like. Thoughts splashed like paint against the velvet seat back.
Gretna waved the gun about a bit, in irritation. And then she used it to light a thick, tobacco cigarette sticking out of one corner of her mouth. She laughed.
‘Come on. It was a good joke. I’ve been telling you to lighten up since you arrived at the Glitz! Is it my fault that you Bureaucrats can’t tell the difference between a firearm and a novelty lighter? Don’t give me that look. They sell them at all the novelty stores in Blue Haven. It was obvious!’
Gretna took a long drag. Then she rolled down the window, hacked and spat. The Public Hygiene Act had banned expectoration in public in the ’70s. Years of Government work vomited forth from Icara, stronger than relief. ‘That will be 350 Frome dollars, please,’ she said.
‘Now that…that’s funny,’ said Gretna. ‘God, sweedpea. You’ve got some serious trust issues. You’re my oldest friend. My friend! How many times do I have to say it?’
They shared the rest of the cigar as Gretna started the engine.
‘Where are we going?’
‘That’s your first question, sweedpea? What about, why didn’t you kill me, Gretna? Or maybe, are you really working for Frome?’
‘Those too.’
‘I’ll explain on the way. We need to get you out of here. I estimate that in about three minutes a whole tide of really angry sweedpeas are gonna spill out of that tunnel mouth baying for the blood of Frome. They’re not all like me. Not very forgiving. And not such abstract thinkers. They see a Bureaucrat, they shoot to kill. Also, I promised Trucker Steve I’d have his rig back in an hour. He won’t let anyone else drive her for longer than that. She’s old and temperamental.’
The engine wouldn’t start. And then, after a few curse words and being threatened with the junk yard in Desert Ring 2, the rig miraculously roared into life. They were off.
Gretna did explain along the way.
It was like getting to know her for the first time. And in the name of Scientifically Proven God, there was a lot to know.
Gretna had been doing the dirty work of the Bureau on the Shadow-web for years. Recruited straight after the academy, but chosen long before. Frome had put her to work as an intelligence agent. She did her work well and earned Frome’s total trust. They were alike, Frome and Gretna. Both born of the Sub-Urbs. She gave Gretna a free pass. It was one of Frome’s few misjudgements. After years of faithful service, the old woman trusted her enforcer and muscle wordlessly. So Gretna had been operating safely as a double agent, part mole for Frome, part real Off-Gridder insurgent. Above suspicion.
Gretna hadn’t enjoyed lying to Frome. Partly out of genuine respect for the woman’s genius and a certain fondness for her self-titled mother, the woman who had pulled her from the Sub-Urban pit and given her a chance, however small, at survival. Partly because she was worried that Frome somehow knew she was being lied to. It was drummed into everyone. iRemember knows and sees everything. And Frome is iRemember.
Although the memories were getting worse and worse, if the Children of Frome had taught Gretna anything, it was patience. The war of the Off-Gridders was one of attrition. Like wind in the desert, they were turning iRemember into dust gradually, grain by grain.
‘Sometimes, sweedpea, I think she wants us to win. The Off-Gridders, I mean. I think she’s tired of it all. You know that’s why I think she took me on. Subconsciously, I am the fulfilment of her death wish, sweedpea. Maybe she can see her demise in me. I mean, she definitely needs a rest. I don’t know how she keeps going.’
Icara interrupted.
‘A double agent? How do I know you’re not just a single agent? I’ve seen a crateful of evidence that says you’re working for grandmother. The only evidence you’re not is that I’m still alive. What happened at Lot 458? What were you doing there? And where’s Lucian?’
‘That’s just it, sweedpea. Even Helena doesn’t know exactly what happened at Lot 458. The incendiary devices were yours truly, I freely admit it. I’d been following Lucian’s movements for a while, waiting for the right time to blow up the plant. Frome knew it was only a matter of time before someone realised those memories were there. She sent me there to destroy the servers, and stop the scandal. She didn’t know Gurk had already realised. And made a copy.’
Gurk.
‘Gurk. Gretna, how could you do it?’
‘I didn’t do it. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve done worse. But it’s like everywhere I went, someone got there first. The Superloop was me. I watched you in Memorial Park, but only because I was worried about you. I even hung out at Gurk’s for a while, waiting. I wanted to tell you everything then. But you took too long to show up. So I left. It turns out that was a stupid thing t
o do. Papa G made the best Belter food. He made late nights in the Sub-Urbs almost worth it. I don’t know what I’ll do without him.
‘And I didn’t kill Mag. Although maybe it’s my fault she’s dead. I never liked her much, but she was Gurk’s family, a good Off-Gridder, and a great doctor. I should have told her you were coming. I should have. But I didn’t think you’d end up there first. I assumed you’d come looking for Gurk. I thought you’d surely find the pigeon shop on your own. The connection to Gurk was pretty obvious in the land records on iRemember and in a bunch of Lucian’s memories from before he Totally Recalled. I assumed you’d find Gurk without needing to go through Magrat. It looked pretty obvious to me.’
‘You don’t have to keep saying it was obvious. It wasn’t bloody obvious. Nothing was obvious,’ said Icara.
‘I suppose I knew what to look for. I guess it’s easier to figure stuff out when you don’t assume everyone plays by the rules. Anyway, it’s funny, for the longest time I didn’t know if I could even trust you. Someone dangerous and clever is at work. And, somehow, they’re avoiding all the surveillance systems. There was so little to go on that for a while Frome even thought it might be you!’
Icara shivered. Someone capable of closing Frome’s eyes, alone and practically unknown to the Off-Gridders. Some kind of monster.
‘Well it isn’t. I wish it was. And what about Lucian? Was he just collateral? Just an accident? It’s too horrible.’
‘No. I’m a magician at blowing stuff up. Accidents like that don’t happen to me. It was planned. Someone tampered with my devices. They wanted Lucian to Totally Recall. When I figured out it wasn’t you, that meant it had to be another Off-Gridder. I thought no one knew I was working for Frome. But they must have found out. Frome’s been under pressure lately, making mistakes. She’s old, sweedpea. She doesn’t see clearly any more. She can feel her grip loosening. She’s scared.’
‘If she knew all of this before I even came back to the City, why did she fire me? Why didn’t she ask me to help?’
‘You know, sweedpea, I don’t know. I think in her own, twisted Frome way she cares about you. She’d talk about you sometimes and it was the only time there was any softness about her. You believed in iRemember, and you believed it could be good and pure. You kept the hope she’d lost. She hesitated in signing you up to Project Eraser at all because she didn’t want anything going wrong. But you were one of the best operatives for the job. In the end, she thought it would look suspicious if she didn’t. When Lucian went missing, we knew something was very wrong. She asked me to protect you. There have been whispers on the Lethene River for a few months of something big. An assassination attempt to rival all others. That’s what I’ve been looking into.’
Icara couldn’t feel anger at her grandmother any longer. Whenever she thought of her she thought of a sad, empty woman. A shell.
‘If you really want to end iRemember, why don’t you just stop looking? Let the assassination attempt…succeed?’
‘I want to topple iRemember, not just kill Helena Frome, sweedpea. That’s not the same thing. Say the assassination attempt succeeds? Who’s behind it? What are their motives? Maybe they just want to replace Frome. In my experience iRemember is like a hydra. You can cut off the head. Another will just grow in its place. We’re not living in the dark ages any more. Getting rid of the leader won’t finish the army. Those memories hanging around your neck are the key. We have to make sure people know. But we have to be careful. If we release them at the wrong time, we might as well not bother at all.’
It was a lot to take in. Icara’s view of reality was shapeshifting before her eyes. She was struggling to refocus.
‘Maybe I can help you find whoever’s behind this. Tell me everything. What have you got?’
Gretna sucked her teeth. ‘Nothing. Just a few tiny clues. But they all lead to nowhere.’
She’d been talking to all the dodgiest wheelers and dealers in the Sub-Urbs, grubbing in the City’s darkest corners, and had been surfing iRemember and the Shadow-web for anything she could find. So far, all that had emerged were the remains of the clean-up operation in the disused paper mill. And that little bit of wearable tech near the lifeless corpse of Doctor Magrat Smog.
‘But we’re getting closer. Louis is having the tech analysed.
Icara’s face puckered at the mention of Frome’s nasty secretary with the haircut.
‘It must have a footprint, the name of a maker, something,’ said Gretna.
‘When will you know?’
‘Maybe in the next few days. Louis and I are going to speak by holo-link. But all Helena’s eggs aren’t in one basket. She’s also had me set a few traps. She’s been in hiding for the past few months.’
‘What?’
‘Her doubles are making all her public appearances. And private, actually.’
‘What the Scientifically Proven Hell? I was fired by a clone?!’
Gretna laughed at the indignant tone.
‘Would you rather she had done it in person?’
After a brief, irate silence, Icara decided to focus on what was really important.
‘You said it must be someone from the cave? Do you suspect anyone?’
‘I don’t know. If working for Frome has taught me anything, sweedpea, it’s that things aren’t always what they seem. I’m just collecting clues, until a picture comes together. Not jumping to any conclusions. It’s good to keep your options open.’
‘Which leaves the question, where are we going?’
Icara stared out at the road. A Tranquelle continuum. To her all the parcels of land looked the same. They’d taken a number of turnings, but to Icara they might as well have been driving in circles.
‘To a little place I know where we can get some rest, and lie low until we can decide our next steps. Steve said he’d meet me there. We’re running late.’
The rig hurtled on through the Belt. Tranquelle stalks bent in the rush of air in its wake.
***
‘Just do it, Jinx. Don’t make me threaten you. My threats are like my promises. I always make good on them,’ Emily ended the second holo-link of the early hours. It was a strange experience. Half-teleportation, half-dream. It always left her feeling tired. Even she was surprised with how glibly it had rolled off the tongue and into the junkie’s ear. But there are certain things that cannot stand in the way of world-domination. No matter how many hours of labour you went through to bring these things into the world.
She and Icara had never been close. Frome had taken that away from her. Which of course wasn’t Icara’s fault. Which is why she had reneged on her original plan to kill Icara.
She puffed on a long, thin Lethene pipe.
The trial date was set. The transit pod was ready. Her bag packed. Trials at the Temple were always in person. The Brethren and their obsession with analogue. Trials were important.
‘They are the cornerstones of this democracy.’
The Cardinal (Big Brother) had a reedy voice, which belied his girth and stature. He spoke over enormous dishes of expensive cuisine and he pronounced the word ‘democraseee’. The long vowel at the end left an unhealthy possibility. It left space. For questions.
A trial. With an actual courtroom. And actual wigs. How old-fashioned. How needlessly theatrical. But that was the Temple under Frome. Like a stage play. When she was in power, there would be some modernisation. Big Brother would be easy to persuade. Give him a pigeon wing big enough and he’d let you ride him like a transit pod and call him Simon.
Did she really have to do everything herself?
If Jinx couldn’t do it, the answer was yes. She needed the stick. She could use the Bad Memories to help blackmail any stubbornly loyal Cabinet members. Loyalty to Frome was nothing but a mutation which would have no evolutionary benefit in Emily’s brave new iRemember world. The sooner the Cabinet l
earned that, the better.
Just get one Scientifically Proven God-damned memory stick! How hard could it be? Jinx was becoming a liability, making too many mistakes. And all those implants were expensive. She was in the wrong business. Perhaps it was time to end him as well. She should have known not to work with a junkie. Too volatile.
She rubbed her temples.
Her irritating, meddling offspring was defenceless and alone. A Bureaucrat among Off-Gridders. A piece of paper in a laval flow. It was incredible she wasn’t dead already! If Emily wasn’t so irritated, she’d admire the staying power. Plucky little Bureaucrat. She had had so much potential. Frome had spoiled her. Shame.
To take her mind off the irritation, she peered into Lucian’s enclosure.
Lucian Ffogg licked the gritty gravel floor. And in his present state, there wasn’t much else he cared about. It felt good. Each perfect, unique lump. Each square centimetre a unique flavour of floor. He thought no thoughts.
She pressed the little pink button on the console one last time. A nice long draught of Tranquelle gas spritzed.
If I were a philosopher, Lu, I’d write about you and me. And how most of humanity writhes, licking grit. Waiting for life to be brought to them. While others rise above. And take what’s rightfully theirs. Most of humanity is collateral. Well, I refuse to be Frome’s collateral. She’s going to be mine.
She sashayed up the stairs, taking a final glance at ex-Government employee Lucian Ffogg. A man who had once had such a promising career.
Soon Frome will know. What happens when you relegate me to the desert? I don’t lie down and die like Mr Ffogg here.
On the writing desk behind her, in the finest calligraphic hand, was a sealed envelope, addressed to Mem-Convict.
***
The place they could lie low in turned out to be a motel hidden among the Tranquelle stalks in the Belt. A little-known pit-stop frequented by Belt-hardened Tranquelle truckers and eloping Belter teens. They gave the keys to the rig back to Trucker Steve, who gave Gretna an earful about being gone longer than an hour. And they ate something called ‘Belter Special’, which might have been giant insect parts floating in something that might have been Tranquelle root soup. Then they slept.
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