by Tim Kindberg
“You make it sound as though those are undesirable occupations,” said David. “I’m surprised at you, Dirac. You could be describing yourself. Your former self, anyway. You’re letting your personal feelings cloud your judgement.”
“Let us see what he has to say and get out of here,” Dirac snapped.
Higgs closed the case and looked up. “Oh, you won’t be leaving just yet. At least, I’d advise against it. This place has gone quite vodu-mad all of a sudden. There’s a fine example out there now.”
He turned on a feed from cameras all over Super Mare, and flicked through scenes of streets and squares empty except for gangs of bodais, until there was only the square with the fountain and their module.
Obayifa was standing still, her arms by her sides, her nose slightly raised into the air as though sniffing for prey.
A shadow crossed David’s heart, and he could see its cast over Pempamsie. He clasped her wrist. Dirac, who had not seen Obayifa before, took a closer look.
She stared into one of the cameras. She opened her mouth and rolled out her long tongue. Then she turned and walked away. They watched her make for the Grand Pier, stride beneath its entrance arch and head towards them.
“Obviously you know her,” said Higgs.
“She was briefly in my custody.” David’s voice faltered like a connection dropping. His vodu was excited, buffeting his mind. Pempamsie put her head briefly in her hands. Like animals in a zoo, roused at night by one of their own roaming free nearby, their vodus could scent Obayifa’s approach and were straining to reveal their presence to it.
“Can she get inside, Higgs?” Dirac’s face was grey.
“Of course not. We won’t be inviting her in. But I dare say we shouldn’t leave.”
“Tell us what you make of the bone circuitry,” said David.
“I’m guessing it belongs to the creature outside, who is able to track it, and that’s why she’s here. But it was I who brought these bones about.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Tongue
Obayifa had stopped at the entrance to the pleasure arcade, intact with its gambling machines, now silent and deserted. The sun was setting. Only her silhouette was visible. They watched her every move on the camera feed.
“Do tell us all about your heroic involvement in the bone circuitry. I’m interested to hear from the expert,” said Dirac.
Higgs had picked up the skull and was turning it gently through the small motions allowed by the web of connections. In the hands of a stranger it reminded David of how awkward, frail and unlikely was its construction: the antithesis of all the silicon, swarming with electrons, in racks at the poles.
“This is not my handiwork,” Higgs said, as though to himself. How long, David thought, had this man been the only flesh in Super Mare? He could feel Pempamsie pressing slightly against him.
“But I have been in touch with its makers. I wanted to see what they could achieve, starting from ideas we had each conceived.”
“Westaf is your workshop now, is it?” Dirac sneered.
“Not exactly. You say Westaf, but sometimes it’s hard to know when one is dealing with renegades who would present to me as agents of Westaf. They had made progress in, let us say, a parallel direction. We came to a mutual accord.”
“The impossible dealing with the devil,” said Dirac.
“What… what are they talking about?” Pempamsie was weakening. David helped her to a chair. His own vodu was pulling at its cage.
“What’s happening, Dirac?”
“Probably her vodu is responding to something here, or to Obayifa outside. Are you feeling it too?”
“Yes. Mine is straining, trying to reach something.”
“Higgs, what are you up to?” said Dirac.
“I’m not up to anything, although I concur. There is an interaction which I can’t explain.”
“Keep going; I want to hear what you have to say about these bones.” David crouched and placed a protective arm around Pempamsie.
“I have been researching a way to bring the network down. These bones are part of it. But they are a mere tool. The instrument I have mainly been developing is in the two of you, and the creature outside.”
“Vodus.” Pempamsie struggled to speak. “I, Pempamsie, would be rid of mine. I would have my clarity back.”
“Yes, vodus. By tradition, spirits supposedly entering our world from supernatural realms. At once a nonsense we can easily dismiss, and at the same time hardly more mysterious than our own consciousness. Evil, psychic vampires we would not want any truck with. And yet, our experiments—”
“Our?” said Dirac.
“Mine and certain agencies within Westaf, as I have indicated. Our experiments in artificial consciousness extend from your own discoveries, Dirac.”
“Whose perversion you brought about.”
“Ah, now we come to it. Not deliberately. I made a mistake. Showed psychblood to agencies I thought would help. I was wrong. I admitted it to you at the time.”
“Help? Help whom? The oligarchs of the multinats. That’s who it helped. You sealed the supremacy of IANI, the dehumanisation of the genpop. And now you’ve gone even further than they have: from mere mental content to mental agency, electro-psychotropically instilled in a fleshren host. A mind inside a mind. Wasn’t the world ruined enough by the Disruption already?”
“Dirac, I made a mistake. But you must know somewhere inside your bitterness that I wanted no part of their plans either. What do you think I’m doing here?”
“Is he… is he going to cure me?” Pempamsie was rocking in her chair, her head in her hands. David watched her helplessly, his own vodu banging against its cage, hitting its swirling, twining head on the bars.
“What the hell is going on with us? Can’t you do something?”
“Their plight may be due in part to the presence of Obayifa,” said Dirac. “But are you sure nothing else here is causing it? This has not happened before.”
“The bone circuitry must be causing it,” said Higgs. “An interaction. I—”
“Switch it off,” said Dirac.
“You know as well as I do that there can be no ‘off’. They would lose their function and I cannot allow that.”
“Let me see.” Dirac pushed Higgs aside to examine the bone circuitry.
“My God, what have you done to them?”
“I merely attempted a tweak in a patch I found: an anomaly. I thought—”
“Well you thought wrong. It was my patch, an attempt to minimise their emanations, to make it harder for the creature to find them. They’ve been intensifying, maybe responding to her presence. My patch was all that prevented this from happening.”
Dirac touched his beads to the circuitry and began manipulating it.
“Be careful,” said David, now barely capable of thought, wrapping both his arms around Pempamsie, who was losing consciousness.
Then it stopped.
“What happened? What did you do?” said David.
“I undid his meddling.”
“I’m sorry,” said Higgs. “I had no idea—”
“You always were naive,” said Dirac.
Pempamsie was still holding herself, breathing hard. But the rocking had ceased.
“It was trying to leave me, but it couldn’t. It was stuck. There was nothing I could do.”
Dirac’s voice was filled with contempt. “Inadvertently or otherwise, Higgs increased the emanations which evidently are also a kind of lure. In fact, I would be surprised if the creature outside had not experienced some of the same pain. The question arises: how to unblock the bone circuitry so that a vodu can enter the cranial and thoracic spaces but then be confined by their force field? The stopper to the jar which we need to put the Jinnis in.”
Obayifa had disappeared from view. Higgs flicked through the cameras to no avail.
“You’ve helped in the engineering of vodus because you wanted a way to non all of us,” said Dirac. “Am
I right?”
Higgs, now subdued by his mistake, nodded.
“Because you think they can non the genpop, and relieve them of sensa. That what is evil in concentration, as in the creature Obayifa, can be constrained or diluted – as with our friends here. But these vodus are not under your control, are they. Their interaction with the psyche – as David and Pempamsie can both attest – lies some way beyond your or your partners’ understanding. And that is hardly to touch upon the monstrosity that is waiting for us out there.”
“I may be simple-minded,” said David to Higgs, “but is there really no other way you can think of to undermine the network than synthetic consciousness derived from evil spirits?”
“Obviously we thought we had taken the evil out of the equation. But what else would you suggest? I removed my beads, but it took months and we can’t physically do that to the entire genpop. We hack Big Mind with software attacks but they block us immediately. Beads can be compromised to a certain extent, but how should we achieve that for the genpop en masse? By spreading vodus through the network we can, in principle, psychoactively block sensa. There would be nothing IANI could do about it. We could shut down their whole operation, which depends on their telepathic manipulation of the genpop’s minds.”
“But look what you’re dealing with! Vodus are not harmless software patches. Obayifa is not a saviour of flesh. She is a monster. Pempamsie has been reduced and her memories redacted by what’s inside her. And mine…” David’s vodu stared back at him as he spoke, its mouth wide open, its protruding tongue quivering. “Mine is some kind of monster too. So how exactly are you going to start from these botches to arrive at the salvation of our fleshren, eh? Always supposing the genpop agreed they needed to be saved. You’ve been alone too long. Do you know what state they’re in, our fleshren in the Between? They’ve been subjugated. They don’t even realise what they’ve lost.”
Higgs looked pained, but drew himself up.
“You’re right that I mustn’t underestimate the magnitude of our task. I also want to say that I welcome your arrival, notwithstanding the poor start I’ve made with you. And I should perhaps keep this thought to myself, but it’s only fair to warn you. I’m afraid Obayifa is possibly more horrific than you think.”
“Oh?”
“It’s bad enough that she consumes the minds of flesh. But evidently vodus – her kind, anyway – procreate. When we speak of Obayifa, we speak of vodu-inhabited flesh. Ask yourself how the vodu came to be there.”
“I see what you mean.”
“Their feeding, I believe, is more fundamentally sexual, as with other vampiric forms. The vodu penetrates minds to feed, yes, but also to plant its seed. Where the act brings about fertilisation, it leaves offspring behind.”
“Which grow and take over the vacated body.” Dirac nodded grimly as he absorbed Higgs’ words. “As with Obayifa herself.”
“Exactly.”
“But of all the dolls we’ve seen, none has become vampiric – not that I’m aware of,” said David, looking to Dirac for confirmation. But Dirac looked embarrassed, nonplussed to hear of this new peril. His thin lips remained sealed.
“I did say when the act brings about fertilisation,” Higgs said. “I don’t know how often that occurs. My knowledge of vodus is sparse, to say the least. Dirac is right about that, at least.”
The room became silent except for the panting of the dogs.
Higgs clapped his hands together. “Come, we have work to do.”
“You really seek to unleash these self-replicating creatures, which you admit you don’t understand, on the genpop?” said David. “I don’t want to be a part of that.”
“We’re only at the beginning. I believe we can control vodus of a lesser nature, such as exists inside Pempamsie. The bone circuitry is a start at manipulating vodus. It also is the key to salvation for the two of you.”
He spread out his hands. “I really don’t know what else to do.”
“How did you rid yourself of your beads?” said Pempamsie.
“I realised I could do it after my first experiments with the supervirtual. Not vodus exactly, but an active inhibitor. I partially blocked the interface inside my mind, a mental anaesthesia that lasted until the physical surgery had healed. There was no intolerable anguish as you, like any flesh, would experience if you tried to remove your beads now. I can do it for you, by the way. I have done it for others.”
“What others?”
“Super Mare may be a no-place, but some have found out about me, others I have let know. These flesh arrive in boats, and leave again by the sea. After I have freed them.”
“Freed them?” said David.
“Removed their beads. But, as I said, I can hardly do that for all the flesh of the Between, now can I?”
There was a banging on the outside door. It was not a bodai. Bodais never knock.
“Bring up an image,” said David.
“I wish I could,” said Higgs.
“You have CCTV all over Super Mare. All over the pier,” said David.
“There appears to be a malfunction. She’s probably disabled that particular camera.”
“We can’t just stay here and do nothing,” said David. “You’re the best qualified humans on the planet to dispatch a psychic vampire, and we have the bone circuitry which almost works. I’m prepared to go out there and use it on her. What should I do?”
“She has the extra beads, remember,” said Dirac. “They may be needed for vodus to enter the bone circuitry. We need either the beads or something that would enable us to circumvent them. Otherwise her vodu won’t be able to leave her, as you have just experienced in relation to your own.”
“Or I take your gun and shoot her.”
Dirac’s expression was grim. “Now that you say that, I don’t think it would be wise. Another factor has occurred to me. She too may be required for the bone circuitry to operate.”
“What do you mean?”
“She consumed the crew’s minds. There may be something in their minds that functions as a key. And those minds are in hers.”
“All this is screwing with my mind.” David walked over to a window looking out to sea, the sea that led back to Yaa. There were two doors between them and Obayifa. If he left, Pempamsie would remain safe with the two scientists. Apart from Yaa, she was the only person he cared about, including himself. No one would miss him; he was dead to Yaa by now. Just as there was no one to miss Pempamsie. They shared that fact, along with their inhabitance.
“You two geniuses need to work out a way of pointing the bone circuitry at a vodu and extracting it. But what if I succeeded in capturing hers? How would you help Pempamsie? Can the bones hold more than one vodu? One in the ribcage, one in the skull?”
There was more banging on the outside door, sending a chill along David’s spine. Dirac, struggling to ignore it, said, “It’s a very good question. We’re venturing into the unknown. But Higgs’ meddling does suggest to me a way of adapting the bone circuitry for the creature outside, even lacking what she possesses: the vestiges of the crew’s minds. Only we’d need Breakage.”
At the mention of the name, David felt a rush of anger with the bodai for getting lost. But the memory of the garden quickly replaced it, the thought of experiencing for the first time a near-human side to the bodai, and the peace that he had momentarily found there.
“You will remember,” continued Dirac, “the recordings of C15’s brain function which I used to trace him. Whatever we had from Obayifa at the time of her custody had mysteriously disappeared. However, you used Breakage to confront Obayifa – with the fake case. In the light of Breakage’s rather special role in our investigation, I took the liberty of having him record brain functions routinely. Data that is unique to her exists, and we may be able to tune the bones to her with it – to make them accept her.” Dirac looked at Higgs, who nodded. “But we need Breakage in order to retrieve her data. We must find him.”
The bang
ing on the door increased, rattling its hinges.
David turned to Higgs. “I’m guessing you know the bodai we’re talking about, since you know everything that goes on here. Breakage entered Super Mare before us and we lost contact. But I bet you know his whereabouts.”
A fleeting cognisance passed across Higgs’ face.
“It was you,” David said. “You know all about Breakage, don’t you? From the start.”
Higgs shrugged, while Dirac’s questioning stare also bore down upon him. “He’s been useful in getting you here, hasn’t he? I merely wanted to afford you a little assistance: some independence when it came to dealing with the network, shall we say. He’s a work in progress. I’ve been trying to make him even more helpful once this is over. Let’s say that a germ of humanity, or rather a faculty for absorbing the more humane elements in the flesh around him – compassion, for example – has been allowed to affect his algorithms. All while seeming to be operationally routine, of course. And yes, I think I know who has him now. The bodais in this place, if they like the look of a new arrival, one of their own kind, they induct them. It’s of no matter.”
“Were you also behind the way Breakage stopped the network’s sensa reaching my brain?” said David. “That is, by sending a stream of inverse psychblood perturbations, which annulled it? Can’t you do that with the genpop at large?”
“I am afraid not,” said Higgs. “That was a hack which cannot be made to scale beyond an individual or two. And by the way, it was an idea that I can be said only to have sown the seeds of. Breakage brought it to realisation himself.”
“I knew it,” Dirac said. “More meddling. You just can’t stop yourself from trying to control the course of events. Which” – Dirac swept his arm around to indicate the isolated station that contained them at the end of the pier – “you clearly cannot entirely do.”
“Let’s keep to the subject of Breakage and those bodais of yours. What does ‘induct’ mean?” David asked.