by Toby Frost
‘Nobody comes here unless they have to,’ Trinny replied. ‘You’re not here to trade – you’re here because you need to be. A trader would send a drone, not wet ware. You need something, otherwise you would use the True Reality, not the flesh. And what you need is probably information.’
‘Um,’ Carveth said.
‘So, what do you need to know? Our knowledge is the best in the metaverse. Knowledge is our only true weapon.’
‘And guns,’ Neil said. ‘Loads of guns.’
‘We need computer parts for a ship,’ Smith said.
‘Equipment to power a supralux drive.’
‘Supralux, huh? Figures, if you want to get out of here,’
Trinny replied. She glanced at Morris, struggled to peer through his lenses, and gave up. ‘If it’s black market equipment you want, there’s one person you need to talk to. Well, when I say person, I mean thing.’
‘Thing?’ Carveth said.
‘He’s reliable enough,’ she said. ‘I just wouldn’t trust him too far.’
‘Well, let’s see the cash, before you turn us over to Johnny Alien,’ said Smith.
‘Pipe down, crew!’ Carveth barked. ‘Who gives the orders here? It’s me, by the way. Now, can we see the money, before you turn us over to Johnny Alien?’
Trinny pulled a wad of creased notes out of her coat and tossed it onto the table. ‘Six thousand two hundred. That’s more than these weapons are worth. I’ll call up Lupin and Spandex and have them collect the guns.’
‘So where is this person who can get us the parts?’
Smith said. He would have let Carveth take control, but she was preoccupied counting and smelling the cash.
‘He… exists… elsewhere,’ Morris said. ‘In a place…different to this.’
It occurred to Smith that Morris might not be wise so much as a bit special.
‘We can take you to him,’ Neil said. ‘His name is Ordo.’
It was not easy to land legally on Deuteronomy. Dreckitt’s spacecraft was small, badly-lit and soon very smoky, and he left much of the driving to the autopilot while he sat about in his coat and cleaned the enormous pistol he used for killing humans. Once he was in orbit around Deuteronomy, he submitted his Warrant of Operation to the authorities and waited for a response. The security services of the Republic of Eden were notoriously complex.
The agency responsible for monitoring space traffic was the Department of Internal Liberty and Democracy Operations, which towards its upper end entered the Agency for Securing Security. The Agency for Securing Security was in turn connected to GROIN, the Government of the Republic’s Operational Intelligence Network. The whole arrangement was somewhat incestuous. It took a day before Dreckitt’s warrant was processed. He was sitting slumped in his chair, smoking a cigarette and raising a glass of cheap whisky to his lips, when the terminal began to beep. Startled, he opened his mouth, dropped his cigarette into his drink, and burned his eyebrows off. He had been granted clearance. In theory, the agencies of the Republic were supposed to monitor the influx of spies, terrorists and other subversives, then reduce their numbers by arresting them. In practice, the agencies increased the number of spies and so on by arresting large numbers of unusuallooking people and beating them until they confessed to being such. After this beating, the suspects, who if not unusual-looking before certainly were now, would be removed to Camp Joyful in the neutral wasteland area just outside Republic territory, and might on occasion be allowed to return in order to be publicly executed. Unsurprisingly, each suspect only received this privilege once.
The Devrin corporation was powerful enough to bypass most of the Republic’s security controls. Nobody bothered Dreckitt as his ship dropped into one of Deuteronomy’s seedier loading ports. Nobody demanded details of his mission: it was enough that the company had sent him. From then on he was left to his own devices. He pressed his finest pinstriped suit. He wore a white handkerchief in the top pocket and his best socks with clocks on them. He slid the Assassinator into his shoulder holster and put on the tie that nobody had ever tried to strangle him with. Dreckitt brushed down his hat and placed it carefully on top of his well-combed hair. He was reasonably presentable and he didn’t care who knew it.
Time to make a killing.
‘So then,’ said Isambard Smith, ‘tell me about this Ordo person.’
‘Shush!’ Neil hissed. ‘Keep it down, dude!’
They were walking through a colossal hall, one of Deuteronomy’s massive, vaultlike caverns. It seemed to be a gigantic shopping centre as far as Smith could tell. Little groups of teenagers – many of them dressed like Neil and his friends – loitered around benches, while herds of bored citizens ambled past. Uniformed guards strode up and down, shock-sticks and machine guns in their belts and caps pulled down low, the visors hiding their eyes.
‘Sorry,’ Smith said. ‘Didn’t realise it wasn’t safe.’
‘It is never safe,’ Morris observed from the rear of the group. ‘The… very notion of “safety” is… unfeasible in our age.’
‘Righto.’
‘They’re always watching,’ Neil said. ‘This way.’
It was an ugly place, Smith thought, all gleaming metal and soulless, wipe-clean surfaces. Where was the wrought iron and polished brass, the cogs and mock-gothic arches of the Empire? Deuteronomy was aggressively pleasant, as if built by people fanatically devoted to blandness. He glanced at what looked like a big carpet store, and was surprised to find that it was a church. Had Smith been a deity, he would never have gone inside. Unless he needed a carpet.
They stepped onto an escalator and rose fifty feet to the next floor. Amid the crowds of shoppers in their jolly, pastel clothes, they were a sombre, skinny little group. Neil pressed a button on the wall and a service door slid open. They stepped into a tiny lift, their coats squeaking as they pressed together.
Smith thought: if they try anything on me, they’re at least close enough to hit. Fend them off with the left and draw with the right. The lift started to descend.
‘We will need to wear filter-masks,’ Trinny remarked.
‘Ordo’s metabolism is unlike ours.’
The three of them took out black, gilled masks and sealed them over their mouths. Neil passed Smith a mask of his own. It looked like the kind of thing recommended for DIY.
Smith put it on. ‘He’s a Marty, is he, this Ordo?’
‘He is no mere human,’ Neil said. ‘He’s an amazing dude. He’s a master of black science. He’s like a dude who schemes with both hands. Except they’re tentacles.’
‘Marty, then?’
‘Ordo is one of the city’s most important blackmarketeers,’ Morris explained, in a rare burst of coherent speech. ‘He is vital to our mission, but he is concerned only with himself. Even his conversion to Edenism was false. We wear these masks because he lacks the immune system of a normal human being.’
‘So he’s a Martian, then?’
‘Yes, he’s a god-damn Martian,’ Trinny said, and she made a huffing noise. They finished their journey in silence.
The lift doors slid open and Neil stepped out. Smith followed him, casual but wary. ‘This way?’ he said, nodding down the corridor.
‘This way,’ Neil replied, and he led the group. This must be some kind of service corridor, Smith thought: the sides were rough concrete, the pipes exposed. Smith could feel the closeness of his new friends. They were well-positioned to attack him with their fists, but a little too close for gunplay. Duck low, he thought, barge them aside and turn round with a gun drawn. The Civiliser lurked under his arm, pressed against his side. Neil pointed at the doors at the end of the tunnel.
‘Here,’ he said. He leaned in to a crude-looking intercom bolted to the doorframe. ‘It’s us.’
A muted hooting came from the plastic speaker, like wind catching on a Swannee whistle. ‘Okay,’ Neil said, and he stepped back and looked up at a video camera installed above the doors.
The hooting began again.
‘Aw, c’mon,’ Neil said. ‘I can’t do that. I’m… y’know, with people. It’s embarrassing.’
‘Your Clanger chap sounds a bit demanding,’ Smith observed. Trinny turned to face him, her sunglasses hiding what he suspected would have been a withering stare. Neil continued to remonstrate with the whistle. A particularly vigorous burst of hooting parped out from the speaker, and sulkily Neil pulled his mask down, looked into the lens and took his sunglasses off. ‘Not fair,’ he said, blinking.
An iris-recognition system beeped. The speaker crackled and fell silent.
‘Looks like we’re in,’ Trinny said. The doors scraped apart, and they stepped inside.
They walked into a room-sized airlock, a corridor overgrown with wires and junk, like the hideout of some gigantic magpie. Trestle tables stood against the walls, piled high with manuals, tools, circuitry and halfdismantled components. Several of the ceiling panels had been opened up for no apparent purpose other than to use the wiring as bunting. A vaguely meaty smell hung in the air, like old pizza.
‘Batchelor, is he?’ said Smith.
‘We wait here,’ Morris said grimly. Fans spun in the ceiling, and the air suddenly acquired a detergent tang. Neil leaned in close. ‘Remember, dude, keep your mask on.’
The doors at the end of the corridor slid apart. Neil nodded to Smith and as a group they walked into a single large chamber. This place had been an apartment once: traces of the partitions still remained. Clusters of screens filled the corners. A red potplant had climbed up one of the walls. Slowly, the being in the centre of the room turned around – or rather, the machinery that supported it did.
It looked like a fat octopus on stilts. The bulk of the thing, at once bloated and sagging, overhung a delicate arrangement of joined metal limbs, like a walking gallows. There were clumps of slender tentacles at the front of the thing, just below its eyes and beak. As Smith watched, disgusted, it put out a ropy limb and lifted a tool from its metal waist and held it in front of its mouth. Speakers on the waist crackled into life. The voice that came out of the translator was rich and deep. ‘No-one would have believed, in the middle of the twenty-sixth century, that my affairs would have been of sufficient significance to be watched from across the void of space. And yet, here is a visitor. I am Ordo. Welcome, sir. Feel free to put on some gloves and shake my approximation of a hand.’
‘I’m well, thank you,’ Smith said coldly. ‘I’m here to do business.’
‘A harsh attitude, sir,’ Ordo replied. ‘I welcome the British. I find you a pleasant, cultured, flammable race. Still, perhaps we can find some common ground to talk about, maybe?’
Ordo’s eyes were reflective lenses. Smith looked around the room. Had it not been full of women, nerds, aliens and half-baked mystics, all of them foreign, he might have been unnerved.
‘Well, let’s get down to business,’ he said. ‘I need a plotting unit for a Sheffield light freighter, and I gather you can help me.’
Half an hour later the four humans left Ordo’s lair. They walked silently down the corridor and Neil pressed the button to call the lift.
‘Dude,’ said Neil, ‘this is where we split, like two console jocks riding the same hack.’ Before Smith could work out if this was vulgar he added, ‘Thanks for the deal. I hope it comes through alright for you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Smith. ‘And good luck overthrowing the government.’
‘Well, we’ve got some really important stuff to do, back in the True Reality,’ Neil said. ‘Maybe we’ll meet again, either in the world of flesh, or the digital reality. If ever you happen to jack into the matrix, I’m a level forty-two wizard in Galaxy of Battlecraft.’
‘Goodbye,’ Trinny said.
‘Bye. And bye to you too,’ Smith added, as Morris started to speak. ‘You don’t need to say any more. I never liked long goodbyes. Best of luck, all.’
He stepped into the lift and the doors slid closed. The cyberpunks did their equivalent of waving, and the lift carried him out of their sight.
The shopping centre was full of slow-moving fat people. Above them, a huge TV screen was showing some girls dancing in very little. It didn’t do a lot for Smith, especially since they were dancing round a huge crucifix. A guard watched the screen, tapping his shock-stick against his leg in time with the music. He hardly noticed Smith as the captain walked past.
Hearing a sudden sparking noise, Smith glanced over his shoulder and was rewarded with an unusual sight. One of the dancers had begun to shake her backside in an odd, spasmic manner, which had prompted the guard to tap his leg harder and harder, until his shock-stick went off. He was currently lurching about like a newborn wildebeeste, a zombie on ice. Smith stood there a moment, feeling that there was some important meaning in the scene, but also aware that he was far too much of a heathen to work it out.
He returned to the ship.
‘Reckon y’all best mosey back to your homeworld,’ the television said. ‘There ain’t nothin’ here ‘cept me and Clyde – and Clyde’s mighty quick with a positronic disintegrator.’
Suruk pressed his yellow eye to the view-slit and opened the front door.
‘What’s going on?’ said Isambard Smith as he closed the door behind him.
‘Much has changed. A woman and man wish to spawn, but the cowardice of the man delays their unwholesome rubbings. Meanwhile, slaying is done on a desert world, for the sake of meagre coins. Life is cheap.’
‘Meaning that you’ve all sat watching Space Confederates for the last two hours, while I’ve been risking my hide dealing with the lowest beings known to man: treacherous aliens and computer scientists.’
The door to Carveth’s room opened and she skipped out. ‘Hello there!’ she said merrily, and she hurried past him. She was wearing her blue dress.
‘Why the Alice in Blunderland get-up?’ Smith said, following her into the sitting room. ‘You’ve not been chasing trouser while I’ve been away, have you?’
Rhianna was sitting in front of a screen on which spacecraft were dogfighting. Smith had a feeling that the screen had been connected to something rather important in the past. She beckoned them in. ‘There’s a good part coming up.’
Carveth dropped into a chair. ‘Right,’ Smith said, pulling up a seat. ‘I’ve got some good news, everyone. I’ve managed to find a new plotting computer. Bad news is that it’s currently in the possession of a Marty.’
‘What’s a Marty?’ Rhianna said.
‘What you’d call an Aresian,’ Carveth said. ‘Galactic nomads, originally from Daluria. They used to have a base on Mars. It’s long gone now. Last used in the late Victorian era.’
‘Martians? You mean, Martian martians?’
‘The sort from Mars? Yes, that sort.’
‘Well, I never knew that. I thought it was just fiction.’
‘Government cover-up,’ Smith explained. ‘Of course, H.G. Wells exaggerated terribly, but they landed all right. The thing is, they’re incredibly vulnerable to disease and they dropped dead as soon as they came into contact with Surrey. One of them got as far as Egham before he keeled over, but then, nobody likes Egham very much.’
‘Yeah,’ said Carveth. ‘Jeff Wayne tried to blow the lid off it back in the twentieth century, but he weakened his case by doing it through rock opera. That’s always a mistake. It was centuries before the truth was acknowledged. Still, it’s surprisingly easy to hide alien stuff. Eh, Rhianna?’
‘I really wouldn’t know.’ Rhianna frowned. ‘But if it wasn’t mankind that drove them from Mars, who did?’
Carveth looked shocked to hear such a basic question.
‘Durr. The spiders, of course. Everyone knows that.’
Smith sensed bickering and woman stuff on the horizon. ‘The being in question tells me that he can have the part ready by nine this evening, local time. Once I’ve collected it, we need merely wire up the ship and go.’
‘The wiring’s not difficult,’ Carveth said. ‘It’s just a matter of clipping it
in place. You could do that in orbit.’
‘Good thing too. The sooner we’re away from this awful place the better. Midlight may have criminals, but at least they’re human. If I’m going to deal with a black marketeer, I’d much rather deal with one that doesn’t have hundreds of tentacles.’
‘And presumably many offspring,’ Suruk said.
‘ Tentacles, Suruk.’
‘I see.’ Lounging by the door, Suruk had taken a little file from his belt and was carefully sharpening his tusks. Smith glanced away and realised that he still did not know why Carveth was wearing her dress. ‘Why are you dressed like that, anyway?’
‘Like this?’ She smiled. ‘Ah, I have a date.’
‘You can’t have a date, Carveth. That’s absurd. We’ve been on this wretched planet about three hours. Even you don’t work that fast.’
‘That’ll be my android super-senses.’
‘Or your complete lack of taste. The people here are either police thugs or pastel-coloured blimps. I’d be very disappointed if you’d chosen the latter. And very disgusted with the former.’
‘It’s not either. He’s a commercial traveller, like us. He’s from somewhere called Carver’s Rock. It’s kosher, I promise: he’s got entry permission and everything.’
‘He does work fast,’ Rhianna said. Surprised to hear her making innuendo, Smith glanced at Rhianna and she winked. Unbidden, his mouth became an imbecilic grin.
‘Well, alright,’ Smith said. ‘but make sure you’re back by eleven. Because we’re moving then.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely. I mean it: as soon as I’ve got that part we are leaving. Besides, if we miss out on this opportunity we’ll be shopping with Doctor Apocalypse and his mutant lobsters. Now, if nobody minds, I’m going to my room to have a nap.’
Smith slept for two hours. Someone knocked at the door.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s me, Rhianna.’
He opened up.
She was dressed as if about to appear in a play crudely satirising herself: she wore a floor-length skirt with some half-formed swirly pattern, an undersized and non-matching T-shirt and a huge cardigan that looked as if it had been knitted by ogres out of rope. It was unable to cover both shoulders at once. She had done something with her hair, or failed to do it, so that it had formed ratty dreadlocks. Her usual plastic sandals had been replaced with a grubbier pair. From the looks of her, she had dressed at random and would smell of fresh sweat. God, what a woman, Smith thought.