by Adam Roberts
The alarm stopped. For moments there was silence. The flying submatrain rattled through Mornington Crescent.
‘@’
‘That,’ said Tonkatoi, as they were all recovered afterwards, ‘wasn’t ideal. I think I polarised the reversality. Inadvertent, like.’
‘How’s your arm?’ asked Thinity as she wiped her chin clean of foam.
‘Owi,’ he replied.
‘Did you manage to teach Nemo advanced fighting skills?’ Smurpheus asked.
Tonkatoi looked despondent. ‘Look, it’s really hard, owi? I’m not supposed to be the geezer doing the uploads, am I? That’s Judas’s job, innit?’
‘Did you manage to teach Nemo any fighting skills at all?’ Smurpheus pressed.
‘Basic playground,’ said Tonkatoi breezily.
‘Secondary playground? Or primary playground?’
‘Primary.’
‘So, as I understand it,’ said Nemo, ‘I have been uploaded with fighting skills such that a primary schoolboy might deploy in the school playground.’
All three of the Jeroboam crew nodded in unison.
‘Will that,’ he said, ‘be any use in a gent-fighting situation?’
They all shook their heads.
‘Right,’ said Nemo.
*****
‘It is clear what we must do,’ Smurpheus announced. ‘Nemo is a weapon that can win us this war against the EMIs.’
‘Agreed,’ said Thinity.
‘Oh,’ said Nemo. ‘Are you sure? I mean, I don’t want to sound defeatist, but.’ He considered. ‘Well, I wonder if I wouldn’t lead everybody to a defeat. So perhaps I do mean to be defeatist. But not in a bad way.’
‘You are the No One,’ said Smurpheus simply. ‘We can do nothing more from within the Jeroboam. Judas has abandoned us. His machinery is broken. You must go back into the McAtrix as you are – do you understand? You must return to the Orifice. You must ask her for directions—’
‘Directions?’
‘Directions to the source,’ said Smurpheus. ‘Directions to the Designer of Designers, to the evil genius who created the McAtrix. Only by confronting him will you be able to bring this war to an end.’
‘Righto,’ said Nemo, trying to give the word a hopeful inflection.
‘And we must end the war, Nemo,’ Smurpheus said. ‘Syon Lane is under direct threat. The EMIs have already captured me and tried to extract the information from me to get to it. When they do obtain that information, from whichever source – when they learn its location relative to their own system, they’ll tunnel through and smash it. Smash it!’
‘That would be a shame.’
‘Shame,’ said everybody, nodding ponderously.
‘But they didn’t learn the location from you, though,’ Nemo said. ‘Did they, Smurpheus?’
Smurpheus looked fiercely at the wall to his side. ‘Of course not,’ he said.
‘Did they?’ Nemo pressed.
‘No. No. No,’ said Smurpheus, in three separate sentences. ‘Honestly.’ He added, in a quieter voice, ‘Obviously I can’t remember too much. But I’m ninety per cent sure. Seventy per cent sure, and twenty per cent half-sure. Or, no – more like, sixty-five per cent sure, nineteen per cent half sure, one per cent quarter sure, and fifteen, or more precisely fourteen, per cent uncertain the other way, with the remainder . . .’
‘So what you’re saying is . . .’ began Nemo.
But he was interrupted by a yell from Tonkatoi: ‘SQUID attack!’
‘Action stations!’ bellowed Smurpheus, seemingly relieved that his conversation with Nemo had been interrupted. ‘Let’s go. Tonkatoi, divert the sub through . . . where are we now?’
‘Goodge Street,’ Tonkatoi yelled back.
‘Turn at Tottenham Court Road, head for Holborn and double back at Covent Garden and turn east.’ He leapt up and ran out of the compartment.
Suddenly the submatrain lurched and screeched. Nemo looked up to see several globular tentacled somethings banging against the window. The metallic sheen of their bulbous bodies, and the sinuous rattling of their tentacles, was terrible to behold. Nemo screeched like a macaw (rather belying his self-declared reputation for bravery) and leapt back from the glass. On all sides, he saw, as he reeled around the submatrain, monstrous robotic squids were clattering against the windows and trying to force open the doors.
‘Hold tight,’ screamed Tonkatoi from the driver’s cabin.
The train lurched abruptly to the right. SQUIDS were scattered from the left side of the train like water droplets from a shaking dog. But on the other side more of the devices clung to the fabric of the train.
Thinity sprinted through, and tossed a long stick to Nemo. ‘Use this,’ she yelled, ‘if they get inside the compartment.’ She continued running.
‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Laser rifle? Electro-crackle gun?’ But as he called to her he looked down, and he could see it was a plain iron crowbar.
Thinity had gone.
He hefted the crowbar, steeled himself, and made his way towards the side of the submatrain still covered with SQUIDS. One of the things had managed to squeeze open a door and insert a tentacle. In addition to the rushing and whining noises made by the train hurtling through the tunnel, the occasional clanks and bangs, Nemo could hear a weird high-pitched whistling noise, a sort of monstrous cooing or singing. With a stomachly lurch he realised it was proceeding from the mouthparts of the SQUID. They weren’t attractive mouthparts, looking as they did as if they were designed for rending flesh. Nemo found himself wondering why they’d given a robot hunter-seeker mouth-parts in the first place, but none of the answers he came up with reassured him in the slightest.
Suddenly the submatrain door was wrenched open a foot, a yard, and the SQUID got three more tentacles and the front of its body section inside.
Nemo thwacked it with his crowbar. It shrieked and tumbled back into the darkness, and other SQUIDS squirmed and crawled over the windows towards the partially open door. Nemo, positively yelping with fear, hauled the twin doors shut, and started banging the insides of the windows with his crowbar. He did this because he couldn’t think of anything else to do, but it seemed to be effective. The SQUIDS shuddered and scuttled, several falling off. The submatrain took another sharp corner, and the remaining few scattered.
For long moments Nemo stood, holding his crowbar in front of him and breathing heavily. He did not notice when Thinity came into the compartment until the moment when she placed her hand upon his shoulder.
‘You OK?’
‘That,’ he said, ‘was fairly frightening. Does it happen often?’
‘From time to time,’ she said. ‘But we’ve found that the best defence against them is the EMP.’
‘EMP?’
She patted the crowbar in Nemo’s hand. ‘Elementary Metal Pole,’ she said. ‘They don’t like it up ’em. Or brought down sharply from above. They really don’t. Jars them, I reckon.’
+0/0->
‘Nemo,’ said Smurpheus. ‘You must go into the McAtrix, and visit the Orifice now.’
‘Must I?’ said Nemo.
‘Yes. We will insert you into the McAtrix, and you will find her in a certain shop selling maps of the stars’ homes.’
‘Right, OK. Good, actually. Well I’ve a notion to give her a piece of my mind. Telling me I had to choose between you dying and my dying. Telling me I wasn’t the No One, when it turns out I am. What kind of a prophetess is she?’
‘We need her advice badly,’ said Smurpheus. ‘The news from Syon Lane is distressing. The Council of Wrinklies suspects the EMIs are trying to tunnel out of their system so as to be able to attack Syon Lane. We must counter-attack at once.’
‘Right,’ said Nemo resolutely.
‘And to that end,’ added Thinity, ‘we need to know how best to use your special skills.’
‘Oh, well, no – really,’ said Nemo, his mouth seeming to fill with glue as he tried to look her in the eye. ‘Sure, whatever.’ He felt
a powerful urge to dig a hole, get into it, and then pull the dirt over on top of himself. Unrequited love is a miserable thing.
Chapter 2
The Orifice Revisited
Nemo found himself, once more, propelled into the McAtrix. He stepped away from the phone booth as the litter and dead leaves slowly settled to the ground. It occurred to him that whenever they entered the McAtrix they always seemed to arrive just as a miniature whirlwind was dying down. Puzzling.
He walked swiftly, making sure not to tread on the cracks in the pavement. It was no good. He couldn’t bear life aboard the Jeroboam now that Thinity had made her feelings plain. His heart was dead and rotting inside him. Thinity hated him. She must hate him, or she wouldn’t have crushed his hopes so brutally. Didn’t she realise how much he loved her?
He stopped outside a shop selling maps of the stars’ homes, looked up and down the street with a heavy expression and pushed the door open. Inside, a middle-aged East Asian man was standing with his arms by his side. He looked somehow familiar, but Nemo couldn’t quite place his face.
‘Good evening!’ he announced brightly. ‘You are Nemo?’
‘That’s me. I’m looking for the Orifice, don’t know if you can help.’
The man trotted over to Nemo, still smiling, and stood before him. Suddenly he flicked out his hand: the palm slapped noisily against Nemo’s cheek, stinging him. In a swift motion, the man took two steps back and folded his arms in front of him. ‘Ow!’ Nemo called out, his own hand going to the spot where he had been hit. ‘What’d you do that for?’
‘Ah,’ said the man. ‘I had to make sure you are who you say you are.’
‘By slapping me?’
‘You do not really know somebody unless you fight them.’
‘And that counts as fighting, does it?’
‘Close enough.’
‘You don’t know someone till you fight them?’ Nemo shrilled, still rubbing his cheek. ‘What on earth does that mean? You’re saying that a person is more intimately acquainted with some bloke they got drunk with and thwacked in a pub car park than with their best friend of twenty years?’
‘Indeed,’ said the strange man. ‘You must slap your friend. From time to time. To maintain intimacy.’ He bowed.
‘You’re a major loon,’ Nemo opined.
The man did not seem bothered by this judgement. ‘I will,’ he said, ‘take you to the Orifice now.’
Still rubbing his cheek, Nemo said, ‘Well, all right, thank you.’
‘This way.’ The man was pointing at a door in the corner of the shop, on which was the CLUEDO™ logo, and a sign saying ‘SECRET PASSAGEWAY’. ‘This direction, if you please,’ said the man. ‘Step through the Mr Benn door.’
‘Mr Benn door?’ queried Nemo.
But the man had opened the door and stepped through into a bright-lit corridor. Nemo followed.
[:=|]
The two of them walked a little way along a nondescript corporate-looking corridor. ‘This is a secret passageway, isn’t it?’ Nemo panted. ‘It was the fact that the door had a sign on it saying “secret passageway” that gave it away.’
‘This way, please,’ said the hyperpolite gentleman, opening a second door on to what looked like a school playground. ‘The Orifice will see you now.’
‘You’re the Orifice’s – what? Guardian? Manservant?’
The man smiled, and stepped through. As Nemo followed he was startled by a loud distinctively female yell. The Orifice, displaying an agility that belied her apparent age, had leapt from behind the open door and smacked her manservant on the side of the head with a gracefully managed karate kick. The recipient tumbled down, screaming, tried to roll with the fall and get to his feet, his arms in front of him karate style.
As Nemo watched, boggling, the Orifice slammed him with a left, slammed him again with a right, and finally smacked him so that he fell backwards over a wooden bench. He was lying motionless.
The Orifice stepped over him. ‘That’s much better,’ she said, indulgently. ‘You’re getting better all the time, Kato. Reflexes much improved.’
The heap of humanity lying on the concrete moaned something that might, perhaps, have been, ‘Thank you, ma’am.’
‘Why did you do that?’ asked Nemo, stepping forward. ‘You just punched his lights out. I thought he was your manservant. Was he an enemy in disguise?’
The Orifice was closing the door behind Nemo. ‘Enemy? Not at all. Don’t you worry about Kato there. It’s a sort of game we play. Look on it as a kind of training. The McAtrix is a dangerous place these days. I’m trying to hone his responses.’
‘That’s a pretty savage honing,’ said Nemo.
‘You must be,’ said the Orifice, ‘the only person in the world not to have seen the Pink Panther movies.’
‘I’m phobic about the colour pink,’ said Nemo. ‘Brings me out in hives.’
‘Come,’ said the Orifice, beaming at him. ‘Sit, sit.’
Glancing again at the groaning heap of the floored Kato, Nemo lowered himself on to the bench. He found himself in an urban schoolyard: a small concrete ground between three high walls. Low cross-barred goalmouths were painted on two opposite walls, and goalies’ areas were painted on the floor; but the paint was old and scuffed and could barely be made out. Beyond a wire-mesh fence Nemo could see a deserted stretch of road, with a discount sofa warehouse over the way. Some pigeons pecked at the leftover crumbs of packed lunches. The door he had come through was revealed now as the fire escape to a tall brick building. Nobody was about but he himself, the Orifice and the still moaning Kato on the floor.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Here we are.’
‘Here we are indeed,’ said the Orifice.
There was an awkward pause.
‘So,’ said Nemo. He cleared his throat. ‘And how are you?’
‘Fine,’ said the Orifice.
‘Good,’ said Nemo.
There was another awkward pause.
‘Was there some particular reason you wanted to see me?’ said the Orifice, eventually.
‘Well,’ said Nemo, shifting on the bench a little. ‘Well, what it is, is – well. Look. Put it like this. Um. You told me I wasn’t the No One.’
The Orifice nodded.
‘I’m not one to complain,’ said Nemo, ‘but it, sort of, turns out I am the No One after all. I stood in a stream of Peugeot 308s, and it didn’t hurt even a little bit. It was most disconcerting.’
‘Congratulations,’ said the Orifice, rather smugly.
This stoked up Nemo’s outrage a notch or two. ‘Now look,’ he said. ‘As I say, I’m not one to complain. Only you definitely told me I wasn’t, and it turns out I was. Am. In addition to which, you said – I remember this distinctly – that a situation would arise in which I would have to choose between my death and Smurpheus’s. You said I was going to be given a choice, let Smurpheus die and carry on living myself; or die myself to save Smurpheus.’
‘And?’
‘And I’m still alive, aren’t I!’
‘Are you complaining about that?’
‘Not complaining about that,’ said Nemo. ‘No. I’m worried about the accuracy of your prophecies. You’re supposed to know the future. But what you said didn’t happen.’
‘Didn’t it?’
Nemo put both his palms up in front of his chest, which was his own just-invented sign language for ‘of course not, I’m still alive aren’t I?’
‘You crossed the river of cars,’ said the Orifice. ‘You returned to the real world.’
‘And I didn’t die, and neither did Smurpheus, that’s my point. You said that either the one or the other would happen, and neither did.’
‘So, let me ask you: what happened,’ purred the Orifice, ‘when you asked Thinity to go out with you?’
Nemo paused. ‘That doesn’t count.’
‘Wasn’t that a sort of death?’
‘Oh,’ said Nemo, losing his rag, or at least misplacing it momen
tarily. ‘That’s so lame. You didn’t say that I ran the risk of a metaphorical death resulting from a disappointment in my love life, you said I was really going to die. Not “die inside”, actually die. You really had me going. I was scared. Really, very.’
The expression on the Orifice’s face was placid and implacable. ‘I can’t help how you choose to interpret my words. You need to pay attention to an oracle if you want to follow her advice. Read between the lines. Didn’t you ever see Macbeth?’
‘Are you saying that you were deliberately trying to mislead me?’ said Nemo, growing heated. ‘Like a cryptic crossword?’
‘Not at all. I was playing the game. This is how the game is played.’
‘The game?’
‘This is how celebrities speak: politicians, movie stars, famous people. Have you ever known a politician, movie star or celebrity give a straight answer to a question? Of course not. And I’ll tell you why: because celebrity is about evasion. A celebrity is somebody evading the fundamental truth – that they don’t matter. Nobody matters. Everybody exists, nobody has value. Eventually the sun will explode and swallow the earth. Eventually the universe will die a cold death. What will celebrity matter then? Nothing. In order to inhabit celebrity it is necessary to avoid this truth, or else it corrodes your fame. Hence double-talk.’
‘Politicians,’ Nemo said cautiously, ‘maybe. But celebrities in general? Are they so evasive? I’m not convinced.’
The Orifice clucked, a noise like two billiard balls colliding. ‘They’ll say we’re very much in love, I’m wearing a vial of my life-partner’s blood around my neck to signify our eternal connection, and three months later they’re both with other people. They’ll say it was a joy and a pleasure working with X, when what they mean is I hate him, he stole my limelight, I wish he were dead. They’ll say before I collect this award I’d like to thank the following people, when what they mean is Me! Me! I did it! My glory!’