by Tim Kindberg
Beyond them, two-cars and three-cars glided, ferrying flesh from node to glass-and-concrete node.
David’s beads registered like dull thoughts; he was struggling against his exhaustion. The vodu had been pacing in its cage all night, tapping around and making sleep impossible.
I need help. Someone to talk to about Obayifa and what she had done to Mr Charles. David had no fleshren colleagues in the ID police. Like other flesh detectives in the force, he was kept largely isolated: granted the services of bodais as and when he needed them but limited in his contact with flesh, rationed to particular needs. He worked for the force, but that meant only that he was an instrument in an algorithm.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Mr Charles. His only friend, gone. Mind-sucked by that creature. Dolled. And he had no idea what to do about the perpetrator, Obayifa. A sweet pain lay in his stomach. The vodu pricked him. He thought about having a girl at the Royal. He tried to pull himself together, to draw himself back to Breakage, waiting beside him in a warped simulation of patience. If Breakage had replied, David had not been paying attention.
“I’m still trying to understand why you’re working with me, Breakage. Don’t you have another case to work on? Anyway, since you’re here: where were they found, these remains?”
“Ceiling cargo bay. In hull. Dogs found them. Barked upwards. Twenty metres.”
“And just who ordered a dog search? I didn’t.”
“Breakage. Initiative.”
“You don’t have initiative. You’re not supposed to have any damn initiative.”
“Suggestion appeared for Breakage. Can’t find in logs.”
“Oh, nice, so you have intuition now. I’m proud of you, Breakage.” He examined the balding head, resisted a pat. “Why were these not found before?”
“No dogs before. Not available. Wrong node. Wrong time.”
“What condition are they in?”
“Dogs well.”
“I meant the remains.”
“Bones. Circuitry. In case. Took to forensics. Parkin.”
Parkin. Who had conspired in Obayifa’s release. Obayifa. He had sensed it was her real name when she first uttered it, but maybe it was a meaningless appellation, like a label in a surrealist painting. How to find her? The new network ID they had given her, supposedly hardened, was laughable given her powers, dissolving even during her detention. She’d nonned herself again, to class A*, vampire levels. Untraceable by network search, she would have to be physically found – an archaism in 2087. In his favour was the sheer intensity of her physical presence, which would get her noticed by flesh, at least. He could not help but think about her sexually, despite or because of her vodu nature: her limbs long and toned, her eyes a liquid swivelling towards the unknown, uncoupled from her actual thoughts, highly intelligent. Mentalmagicked. She wasn’t particularly strong physically, he guessed, but she would dominate any situation. David imagined her keeping her white-collar crew in line on the Mekhanik Pustoshnyy: not averse to slapping them, then aloof at the bow. He thought of her eyes piercing him, in the humid hut where she had answered none of his questions, and in the module, on the mad ride he had let himself be reckless enough to take with her.
Then she had dolled Mr Charles. Fuck her. He was going to get revenge.
Parkin looked pleased with himself, happy to have been part of wresting Obayifa out of David’s hands: a conspiracy whose real nature David could only guess at. And now he was clearly ecstatic to have received this new evidence from the Mekhanik Pustoshnyy before David knew anything about it.
And here David was in the copnode, humiliated. Parkin smiled at his victim’s exasperation. Then he twitched his nose, as he often did. David had no idea why he had become the enemy of this calculating man with cropped blond hair, but he wished he was not, wished he had not spurned him without realising it.
“I’m taking them with me,” David said, and coughed. He could feel a tightness in his throat, strangling the words as he tried to utter them. The vodu was wide awake. “This is none of your business. Breakage—”
“Breakage followed protocol,” Parkin interrupted. “Brought the evidence to the forensics officer assigned to the case.”
An aluminium attaché case lay on the desk between them. It was ribbed and rugged, big enough for some human bones, some of them intact, perhaps. How many were in there? And what had Breakage said about circuitry? David wanted badly to open the case for examination, but didn’t want to give Parkin the satisfaction of watching his reaction to what he, Parkin, had already seen.
David said, “The investigation of the crew is over, as you well know. However, as senior detective in connection with a crime scene, the Mekhanik Pustoshnyy, where these bones were found, I’ve decided that, due to developments only I am party to, I need the remains to be examined by a specialist. Now hand them to me.”
Parkin looked at Breakage. Flesh deferring to the network when it suited.
Don’t you dare, David thought. Breakage would be the network’s mouthpiece.
“Protocol states—” Breakage began.
“Protocol states,” said David, “that you will consult with your detective flesh and not take any initiative. You used initiative, which is forbidden to a bodai. Now.” David turned to Parkin. “I’ll have those remains.”
“All is known. Error. Give,” Breakage said to Parkin, who, after an insolent pause, pushed the case across the desk towards David. Then he twitched his nose again.
“This isn’t the last you’ll hear of this,” Parkin said, drumming his fingers.
David took Breakage on a five-car that trundled up as they left the copnode. It was a relief to board. Parkin had looked as though he wanted to murder David and trash the bodai.
The five-car rose to the level of turbines and silos. Huge ships sat moored or sailed to and from Avonmouth.city, letting out low moans. The Mekhanik Pustoshnyy lay out of view, awaiting the network’s logistical decision as to its fate.
The find lay in the attaché case on his lap. He was still anxious to open it, to see the cause of this new fuss, but there were passengers’ eyes upon him. The case might in principle have been unrelated to the sixteen crew, a relic from some earlier voyage. But he didn’t believe that. A gap appeared in the vaporous manifold of the sky, and sunlight fell suddenly like a bolt of gold cloth onto the case, as though to affirm its significance.
And there was something he couldn’t put his finger on about the readings from his beads since he had collected it.
Breakage stood along the car from him. Bodais didn’t sit, by default. When they considered it appropriate to do so, they were often wrong.
After two stops the balding middle-aged man disembarked to fulfil a logistical calling, and a young woman came on board. Breakage stood in the same place in this form, holding on to a strap and looking directly at David. The young woman bore an expression of near reproach, as though the scene with Parkin in the copnode had caused embarrassment that this female bod could sense in a way the man bod couldn’t. Which made no sense, since the same AI, Breakage, operated the two.
David got off and walked the transitways to another Spoons. His life seemed to consist largely of N-cars and Spoons. Breakage followed.
A few moments elapsed before Breakage realised he was expected to come closer to talk to David. David always sat by the window, mildly claustrophobic at the best of times and not least since his inner space had been invaded by a vodu. He placed the case between his feet. A spotty young bodai took his order. To his left, a flesh messily ate an unmeatburger in a hurry.
Close up, you could see the sheeny plasticity of a bodai’s face, the nearly imperceptible stepper motor shifts of mouth, eyes and skin distenders. It was always embarrassing to be this close to one, to see them looking around as though they meant it, or addressing you as though they wanted to. David forced himself to keep looking at Breakage. It was mind-boggling to talk to them if you thought about it, as though faced with the unknowability of y
our own self.
The vodu stirred, shifted in a pretend sleep; its whole body was a blur of twisted meat.
“Breakage.” David looked around to see if Messy Eater or any other flesh was witnessing the awkward, compelling spectacle of flesh and bodai in conversation. “Breakage, who told you to search the ship again, and to take what you found to Parkin?”
Breakage pretended to think and then said, “Network.”
“I see.” Of course network did.
“What agency?”
“Unknown. Graph and crypto complexity exceeded. All is known.”
“Yes. Quite,” David said. This was pointless, wasn’t it? He went on, nonetheless. “What do you intend to do, now that I’ve contradicted the network?”
“It is for ID detective to—”
“No, you are listening to network too. Are you working for me – really working for me?”
“Yes. Network too. Always. All is known.”
“Breakage, I want you not to listen to the network.” David felt Breakage with his beads as he said this.
“Very well.”
“What?”
“When network calls, will consult David first.”
“Are you sure?” Stupid question.
Breakage said nothing, took to looking around falsely, now at the flesh walking outside, now at the bustling interior of the Spoons. He even looked at Messy Eater.
David picked up the case. “Are you sure there are bones in here?” Without waiting for the answer, he opened the case just enough to see what could be a ribcage, embedded in packing material. And something else, more solid.
“Certain. Identical as found.”
“Where should we take them? Parkin will have alerted the rest of forensics to treat them like a case of plague.”
“David say.”
“Give me options.”
Breakage blinked once. “Option. Professor Dirac.”
David almost smiled. He’d heard about the professor, who assisted in investigations with technical advice, but never met him. Dirac’s reputation, passed unreliably through the scattered flesh within the ID police, was for a dark, brooding brilliance. It was said that as the father, the inventor, of psychblood, he had run rings around the network. Hence the network had demoted him and stripped him of most of his resources, assigning him to a low-level technical role within the ID police, based at an out-of-the-way labnode.
“That’s what I hoped you’d say. We’ll go. It’s late now. Tomorrow.”
Should he not look Breakage, this gift robot, in the mouth? Not as long as he was useful. But he must remain wary. The vodu tapped an alien rhythm on the bars of its cage.
The hot soup that passed for air slicked all around him, instantly producing sweat as he walked back to his desres, soaking his clothes. Reluctantly he entered the swarm of ones milling along the pavement, hundreds of flesh and bodais marching or shuffling incuriously. A module swept up, looking for his interest in a lift, accelerated away when David waved it along.
He found himself alone on the transitway as he neared his dwelling. The case, becoming heavy in his hand, was producing the faint, unusual feeling through his beads again.
When he climbed the steps to his desres there was a group of men in dressing gowns waiting by his door. He recognised one of them as his recent visitor, the dem who had come knocking. The others looked as though they could have escaped from the same carie. Some were muted, staring into space or at their feet, standing unnaturally still; others were muttering, restless.
The first one to spot him yelled, “It’s the bastard!” The others looked with varying degrees of befuddlement; some shouted, hurtling expletives at him. He stopped a few metres away, two of them shaking their fists now, between him and his front door.
Then they saw his case.
“When can we go home?” one said. “Pack and go home? When can we go home?”
A group of bodais arrived swiftly upon his call. They took away his visitors with gentle but firm grasps, immune to the curses that a greyed, frail woman spluttered at them. Why the interest in his desres? Or was it him the men had waited to see? David was perturbed by these gowned escapees. In his loneliness, their visits were salt upon his wounds.
When David entered, carrying the attaché case, the desres was mildly alarmed. It bleated that someone unidentified was entering along with him. David had to override its concerns, but that fact would be logged in Big Mind. David reported a malfunction. This would not stand up to forensic scrutiny. Why was he behaving like someone with something to hide? He laughed mirthlessly to himself. You ask yourself that, you with a vodu caged up inside your mind?
The vodu was standing, its bare arms raised up along the bars of its cage, clutching their cold solidity.
David opened the case. There were indeed bones inside: parts of a human skeleton, packed closely and carefully in protective foam. There was an almost complete skull, the radius and ulna of a forearm and the upper half of an otherwise intact ribcage. Harnesses of intricate wiring connected them. The skull’s look landed on him as soon as he opened the case, as if reproaching him for meddling, expecting someone else. Beads encircled the radius and ulna at the wrist. Presumably the beads were the source of the emanations, although he needed to check everything in the case. The assemblage appeared to be a circuit of some kind.
The attaché case was of robust construction, its shell apparently double-walled. Carefully, David lifted out its contents. He took the empty case back out into the hot night air and placed it in a recess a few hundred metres away. No one else was around. Next to a column, a figure appeared. Yaa, in the blue dress he had bought for her twelfth birthday, the last time he had ever successfully chosen a garment for her to wear. Her hair was braided. Sometimes he couldn’t help himself, allowed himself to conjure her for one brief second in his loneliness. The vodu shifted hungrily. He quickly thought of Obayifa, to drive the vision away.
When he returned, he asked, “How many ones in desres?”
“Two,” it replied.
The desres was not capable, as far as he knew, of detecting his vodu: only he perceived its caged presence within his consciousness. Its reply therefore confirmed that the emanations came from the circuit of bones rather than the case. He left his desres again to fetch the case, wary lest the vision of Yaa should return. It was eerie to leave something with a macro-identity in his home. What was it capable of?
His vodu shifted as he thought these thoughts. It was a swirl of articulated lines, like a painting of exposed flesh. Was it aware of the ID emanating from the bone circuitry? How was he supposed to know what it knew or did not know, except the fact that he loved Yaa? He only thought he could recognise, sometimes, its reactions to the world.
“Desres,” he said into the air, “who is with me?”
“Unknown entity,” it replied.
“Has it been here before today?”
“No.”
“Who was here yesterday?” The messenger girl. Not a girl at all.
“Unknown.”
“Suppress emanations to the outside from the one inside that is not me.” Better not to have anyone poking their nose in.
“Unable to comply.”
And this was the desres of an ID cop. He thought, by contrast, about the relatively puny improvised Faradays used by ID felons in the genpop: desreses hacked to prevent their owners’ beads from revealing something they didn’t want the network or fleshren enemies to know. It was a futile act of desperation. Offline was online: an absence of a known ID in the network was detectable as much as a presence. An algorithm would detect the anomaly and signal an alert. A swift visit from a bodai dispatch team – and an ID cop like him if the felony was serious – would lead to their arrest.
“Desres, tell me when someone leaves or enters.”
In the night, Yaa haunted him, begging him to look at her, but eventually he managed to sleep. The desres woke him.
“One has left, one has arrived. Without do
or.”
He checked his small desres just to be sure: the bathroom, the kitchenette he never used, behind the sofa. Was the bone circuitry transmuting its own ID, then? Perhaps Professor Dirac would know.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Pempamsie
I, Pempamsie, wanted to become a non. To disappear, beyond the knowledge of the icestation. And Swirling Suit obliged. Expertly.
However, the bytecoins with which I paid him were not what they seemed to be. They looked like the sum we agreed. It was a good rendition. You don’t mess with a man like that. Never kid a kidder, they used to say.
I may look like a million, and yet, detached from IANI, I was almost destitute.
I left that half-building in the outer suburbs of Accra.city, that impromptu surgery of his; I said goodbye to its pink facade and the sky-pointing girders of its undone upper floor, to be gone. Really gone. A non. The very thing he made me helped me get away from him. Not offline, online – but not me.
Such an old trick: what seems to be data is code. Once I had left, my payment spun itself into his systems and, just as the coffers of Swirling Suit opened to swallow it, wiped away not only itself but the fact of its non-existence.
IANI would assume I had defected to Westaf, the cyber-engineering workhorse of the world, which left Silicon Valley behind in its wake long ago.