Abaddonian Dream

by M. K. Woollard

  Can I murder someone in cold blood? he asked himself as he watched the slender assassin from across the room. He’s a murderer too, his mind told him. He deserves it.

  It was hard to argue with that, and yet something was giving Hammell pause. Is it only fear of killing that’s holding me back? Is there some secret, deeply-buried fear for my own life? Am I just waiting for the right moment, or is there something else?

  Hammell had noticed that whenever Ettore stopped dancing for a moment to catch his breath, his smile would drop and his mind would turn inwards. He was faking happiness, Hammell knew. In spite of Asha Ishi, in spite of the threats against his own life, in spite of what had happened today, Ettore just didn’t seem like the ruthless assassin he’d been depicted as on polnet. Or maybe I’m reading too much into a facial expression, Hammell thought. So what if he’s introspective, even regretful? It doesn’t change what he’s done, what he is.

  Sometime later, Hammell found an opportunity to sit down next to the new undisputed leader of the Red Hands, who was absently flicking his straight razor open and closed. The revellers had largely dispersed now, disappearing into distant corners of the mansion. A few had dropped where they’d stood – one man was busy snoring in the middle of what had been the dancefloor. It was safe to say the party was winding down.

  Now’s the time, if you’re ever going to do it.

  Keeping his hand on the gun in his pocket, Hammell scooted along the sofa to get closer, deciding he would take no chances – it would be a headshot from point blank range, quick and painless. He could feel his hand getting sweaty on the grip as he stared at Ettore’s temple – the place he would put the bullet; coincidentally the very place Ettore’s guerillas had drilled into Hammell’s own head.

  “Is there a problem?” Ettore asked, having noticed Hammell sidling up to him to stare at the side of his head.

  Do it! his mind urged, but he forced himself to be patient. He still had questions and he knew drunk men tended to be more talkative, from personal experience. He would never get another opportunity to find anything out after this.

  “Your name is wrong for your knife,” Hammell said eventually.

  Ettore looked at him with red, watery eyes. “My knife is wrong for my name,” he corrected as he held up the blade. “Scalpel, because my cuts are precise.” He smiled. “Or maybe because I trained as a surgeon once.”

  “What happens to me now?” Hammell asked, even though he strongly suspected he could just walk out the front door and nobody would stop him. Still, he wanted to see what Ettore’s plans for him were before…

  “You’ll be shot.”

  Hammell’s hand tightened on the gun. “What?”

  “I mean discharged, released,” Ettore said, a glint in his eye. “English, you know?” He gave Hammell a punch on the shoulder. “Lighten up. Today was a good day.”

  “Yes,” Hammell said, “I really should try to find more humour in my possible execution.”

  “Eva Valentine,” Ettore went on. “You will be released into her care until this is all over. She will be responsible for you and your actions. She says she knows you and will vouch for you.”

  “Until what is all over?”

  “This,” Ettore said, gesturing to the room. “All of this.”

  “Where is she - Eva?”

  Ettore shrugged. “She is here somewhere, I think. Maybe she is sleeping it off in her rooms.” He looked at Hammell with his sharp eyes. “She was on the rooftops today.”

  Hammell nodded and his mind went back to his apartment and Eva’s shaking hand when she’d pulled the pistol on him. He remembered thinking that she was no killer. Maybe I misjudged her.

  “Roy Brown’s body,” Hammell said, before recalling there wasn’t one. “His… remains. Whatever’s left. You have to show Intergov. Prove it to them somehow. It might stop I.T.F.”

  “It won’t,” Ettore said. “Roy Brown, Ettore, we’re all the same to them. We’re all illegals. We’re all Red Hands.” He glanced at Hammell. “But they’ve been informed anyway. Everyone should know.”

  Hammell nodded, feeling that the time was right to move on to Asha Ishi’s question, to the question. “The war is still coming, then,” he said.

  Ettore shook his head. “It won’t be a war.”

  “Asha... ” Hammell said and he swallowed as the words caught in his throat. He wondered whether Ettore knew they had been partners. “She was an I.A. - she had a theory. That you, the Red Hands, the illegals… That you’re all…” His voice trailed off.

  “What?” Ettore asked. “Fucked?”

  “That you’re…” Hammell continued, feeling almost embarrassed to say it aloud, “...andromorphs.”

  Ettore didn’t laugh. He simply turned his head slowly and stared at Hammell, his eyes unblinking.

  “Is it true?” Hammell asked, but Ettore turned away again, an unreadable look on his face, and the moment was gone. The slender man was soon pulled up again by an attractive young woman who wanted to slow dance. Hammell watched the pair swaying to the music with their eyes closed, feeling the warm metal in his pocket. Taking the pistol out into the open, he held it in his lap as the pair began to kiss. You owe it to Asha, he told himself and he stood up and raised the gun, training it on Ettore’s head. At least he’ll go happy. His finger squeezed the trigger, tighter and tighter, feeling the resistance that meant the next little pull would send the bullet…

  But he couldn’t do it. Andromorphs or not, I’m no murderer. Placing the handgun back on the coffee table where he’d found it, he left Ettore and his partner to it.

  “Eva?” he called out, having searched half the mansion, walking in on several people sleeping and one group engaged in acts that put Hammell’s night with the assassin and the sexulator to shame. Today is a day for images I won’t be able to get out of my head. “Eva?” he tried again.

  “I’m here,” a faint female voice replied, coming from somewhere in the west wing rooms.

  He walked along the hallway until he was fairly sure he’d located the right door, knocked and opened, and for a second was dazzled by the brightness. Morning had arrived without him realising and the sun had made one of its rare breakthroughs; light was streaming in through a huge set of open French windows. Standing in the breeze in a plain white dress was Eva Valentine. To complete the vision, she was at a minibar fixing a drink.

  “It’s so rare, isn’t it?” Eva said, her head thrown back, bathing in the light. The sun vanished again and she went back to her stirring her cocktail. “You have to appreciate these fleeting moments.”

  “Yes,” Hammell agreed, and he wondered if she ever got up before the sunrise to watch for it as he did. He stared longingly at the drink in her hand. He’d abstained for the past few hours so his head could be clear for his decision on Ettore and now he was salivating. The liquid was pale amber, apparently whisky based. “Can I get one of those?”

  Eva took out another glass and Hammell nosed around as he waited, noting that the living room was part of a fully self-contained apartment. Everything Eva needed was here, except maybe for a kitchen. This was more the sort of place he’d imagined for her – something classical and classy, not old and doily-infested like the apartment in the city.

  “It’s not mine,” Eva said as she followed his train of thought. “None of us owns anything out here. Nobody is allowed to own anything. We’ve used this place for about six months now. I was lucky - I was given good rooms.”

  “You’re important.”

  “I was bait,” Eva said.

  Hammell nodded. There was no point denying it if that was what she thought. “And now he’s dead. What will you do now you can’t be bait anymore?”

  “I’m not sure,” Eva said as she poured some of the brown liquid from a crystal decanter over ice, making Hammell lick his lips. “I never dared think that far ahead. What about you?”

  “I don’t know either,” Hammell said. “I always thought about…” He stopped before s
aying it. Why am I telling her that?

  “Abaddon?” Eva asked and Hammell looked up sharply. She held out a glass. “You look the type.”

  “I don’t know,” he mumbled as he took it.

  “You couldn’t anyway,” Eva said as she coolly sipped her drink. “You’d be executed if you even tried to set foot on a shuttle.”

  “The assassins?” Hammell asked. No doubt she was right. Just because Roy Brown was dead, it didn’t mean the orders he’d given had been automatically rescinded. Androids had a way of doggedly following orders no matter what. “How many are still out there?”

  “Oh, you poor fool,” Eva muttered with a shake of her head. She stared at him shrewdly. “Would you go, if you could? I mean for real?”

  Hammell considered as he sipped his drink, disappointed to discover that it tasted of almonds and lime and was weak.

  “You don’t like it?” Eva asked.

  “It’s fine.”

  “You’re a bad liar. Especially for a policeman.”

  “An ex-policeman.”

  “Yes,” Eva agreed. “An ex-policeman. There’s nothing keeping you here now, is there?”

  “You want me to go?” Hammell asked as he took another sip. It wasn’t so bad, in point of fact. He’d just been caught off-guard expecting something else. “Why are you so insistent that I leave?”

  “Because I can help you to leave,” Eva said. “I know Hector’s people, the ones who help him hide.”

  “Why would you want to help me?”

  “If I don’t, you’ll be killed.”

  “So?”

  Eva turned away and wandered over to an old fireplace. There was no evidence of a fire in the grate, but unlike Yun’s this was an original feature which could contain a real one. The breeze could even be heard coming down the chimney. “You did come to die, didn’t you?” she said.

  “I didn’t expect it to work,” Hammell said cautiously. “I never thought I’d actually get him.”

  “You didn’t get him. Ettore did.”

  “Using my information. And your bullets.”

  She looked up at him, wounded. “It was what I signed up for.”

  Spotting some familiar items on a shelf, Hammell walked over to take a look, downing his drink as he went.

  “I’m a fool too,” Eva said as she watched him approach the bookshelf. “A sentimental one.”

  Flicking through one of the books, a textbook of some kind, Hammell sniffed at the pages. “I get why they don’t print anymore, but there’s something about a book, isn’t there?”

  “Yes,” Eva agreed. He could smell her perfume as she appeared behind him. She took the book off of him and placed it carefully back on the shelf. “Do you own any?”

  “No. Not since I was a kid. I liked stories back then, not… this kind.”

  “These were all seminal works in their time,” Eva said as she ran her hand along the shelf. “Encyclopedias, dictionaries, reference books. I’ve been collecting them for years.”

  “But the knowledge is out of date,” Hammell said. “You can get this stuff more accurately from the networks.”

  “Yes,” Eva said, “but these are windows into the past. It makes them more precious.” She picked up a different book, a medical text titled Gray’s Anatomy. “Take this one, for example. This is an early print of a landmark text in understanding the body.” She thumbed through it and Hammell caught glimpses of drawings of organs and skeletons within. There was something gruesome about it, but also something primal. He was hyperaware of her closeness as she ran her hand down an image of the muscle structure on a torso. “Take it,” she said suddenly, snapping the book closed and holding it out to him.

  “I couldn’t,” Hammell said. It was far too precious a thing to give away. There must have been so few copies left in the world.

  “I insist,” Eva said and she forced it into his hands.

  He looked down at the hefty tome, thinking that the subject matter was extremely apt. He wondered whether Eva had chosen it deliberately to nudge him towards the question he was so reluctant to ask. Asha’s question. There was only so long he could avoid it - he had to have his answer, even if it destroyed the floating, dream-like mood he was experiencing. He placed the book down gently on the table, knowing this was the moment. “Is it possible?” he asked quietly.

  “Is what possible?” Eva asked as she glided back across the room towards the mini bar, an empty glass in each hand.

  “Sentimentality…”

  “I’ve heard tell of it,” Eva said as she opened the cover of the tiny ice machine, “even in the city.”

  “...for an andromorph?” He watched her carefully as he finished the sentence. She stopped dead, frozen for a moment, before continuing to pour from the decanter. She pointedly didn’t deny it and the question didn’t seem to surprise her. He noticed that her hand was trembling.

  It had been Asha’s crazy idea, and though he still struggled to believe it, it was the only thing that made sense. Crazy Asha really wasn’t crazy after all.

  Eva returned with the drinks, handing Hammell’s over without looking at him. She moved off around the room, touching pictures on the shelves, ornaments on the mantelpiece, subtly repositioning everything. He followed her with his eyes, attempting to view her dispassionately, asking himself whether it made a difference. Andromorph or no, he found her just as alluring as ever. What that meant regarding his opinions about androids, he had no idea, but those were thoughts for later.

  She had stopped again by the fireplace, and he noticed this time that she was fixated on the painting hanging above the mantelpiece. It was fairly modern, maybe twenty or thirty years old, depicting the burning of a factory by fanatical soldiers. The faces of the people trapped in the windows were haunting.

  “Do you want to kill me now?” she whispered, seeming almost afraid as he put down his glass and walked up behind her. “Like I.T.F.? Like Asha?”

  “No,” Hammell said, his voice thick. “I don’t.” He reached out for her and she did not stop him.

  Chapter 35

  They lay together in the dim light of morning in a room which was light and airy. The bedsheets were so crisp and white that Hammell felt he was soiling the place with his very presence. He knew sleep wouldn’t come, but today it wasn’t a source of frustration, largely because Eva seemed intent on lying awake with him. She appeared to be a fellow insomniac, or at the very least a night owl, which he supposed made sense for a nightclub singer.

  As he lay there, he let his mind drift and it came to him that he’d lost all of his safety nets in his life. With his mother long gone and his father long dead, his crutch had been his job and his boss and his tiny circle of close friends. When the last of those had gone too, he’d felt it as oppression, but here and now he felt liberated in a way he never had before. Instead of a gaping chasm in his chest, he felt something close to contentment. He had money in the bank and no ties; he could go anywhere, do anything – he was free.

  If I died now, I’d go happy, he realised, which seemed a strange thought considering what he knew was coming. How fitting that I find happiness at the end of the world.

  “What is it?” Eva asked and Hammell realised he was smiling.

  “Oh, nothing,” he said. “I just knew it, that’s all.”

  “Knew what?”

  “That making the model of you was a tiny bit endearing.”

  “No,” Eva said, her face suddenly serious. “That’s still serial-killer creepy. You deleted it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t, did you?”

  “No,” he said. “Now I have enough data to finish it.”

  “We’re still not joking about that,” she said. “I’m serious. Delete it.”

  “Don’t worry, I will,” Hammell said. “When it’s safe to go back to my apartment. I don’t need it now anyway. I have the real thing.”

  Eva smiled strangely and Hammell lay back and stretched out, shaking his head
. “I still can’t believe I just…”

  “Fucked a robot?” Eva suggested.

  “Don’t be upset with me,” Hammell said. “It was kind of my first time.”

  “As far as you know.”

  Hammell nodded. “I suppose so, but I haven’t been out in the Reserves much trying to pick up women… I probably would have, if I’d known there were any there.”

  “You don’t know anything about women,” Eva said, shaking her head, “and even less about andromorphs.”

  “I know a few things about andromorphs,” Hammell said. “Wasn’t there a war of some kind? What was it called again? Oh yes, World War Three.”

  “You’re not nearly as funny or charming as you think you are,” Eva said. “All you know is what you read on your editable networks.”

  “As opposed to your uncorrectable books?” Hammell parried and Eva threatened to hit him with a pillow. He propped himself up on his elbow. “Ok, I’m listening. Tell me what I don’t know.”

  “That would take quite a while.”

  “I’ve got no plans… ever.”

  So Eva did. Lying back and speaking to him in her quiet, melodious voice, she told him how, decades ago, the world experienced a major breakthrough in artificial intelligence, caused in part by an increased understanding of the human mind and brain and how they worked together. She told him about how organic data storage became possible and how andromorphs became widely available, though they were prohibitively expensive at first. She told him how the rise in andromorph labour began to create a problem with the economy as jobs for humans began to decrease and unemployment rose. She explained how laws were hastily brought in limiting andromorph numbers in various ways so that, between that and the cost, the spread of andromorphs was initially slower than expected... apart from the sex doll version.

  She explained how stories of perversions carried out on sex dolls began to appear across the networks. Beaten sex dolls would even sometimes be found wandering the streets, having been discarded when they were too badly damaged. Sometimes even child models would be found - though they were illegal to produce, some underground factories did so, since the business was lucrative. People were outraged, more about the appearance of apparent rape and torture victims in the streets than about the actual harm being done to the andromorphs. Nevertheless, some began to campaign for stricter controls on how the dolls were sold and used, with a minority even arguing for the rights of the dolls not to be sex slaves. They did, after all, have a rudimentary intelligence equivalent to that of a small child - and would it be right to subject a child to such abuse?