Jack Glass

by Adam Roberts

  She saw Eva’s plane zip away, skimming low over the tops of the olive trees with a muffled whiffling sound, leaving the orchard threshing behind it in its turbulence.

  Gone.

  It was late in the afternoon. Iago brought Diana a glass of iced water and a selection of fruit pieces. ‘I saw Eva go.’

  ‘Your parents do not want both of you in the air at the same time. It’s only a precaution. When Miss Eva is on the ground at Tobruk and we have confirmation that the plasmaser car is ready, we will leave.’

  ‘How long?’ she asked.

  ‘Not long,’ he replied. ‘Twenty minutes.’

  ‘Can we be sure who has betrayed us?’

  ‘We cannot be sure,’ he said.

  She sipped the water, and ate a piece of apple. Its texture was firmly spongy, wet, flavoursome. She had another piece. ‘I know you think it was me,’ she said, shortly, not looking him in the face. ‘Contacting Anna, I mean. I know you think that’s what has . . . brought this about. But you ought at least to entertain the possibility that somebody else is responsible. Quite apart from the servants we brought down here with us, there must be thirty people on this island who know we are here. Any of them could have betrayed us.’

  ‘They are all dosed heavily with CRF. This makes them rather dopey, robs them of initiative, makes them rather emotional, all of which isn’t ideal in terms of actually – you know: running the place. But it means they could never consciously betray you.’

  ‘Unconsciously, perhaps? By accident?’

  ‘We have the place locked down, as far as all forms of communication go. Nobody could accidentally betray the location. It would have had to be done deliberately.’

  She thought about this for a while, and ate a particularly sweet piece of pear. How beautiful that taste! The piece was the colour, and shape and (for all she knew) the true flavour of the moon. She stared westward, over the sea. Clouds were starting to gather near the western horizon as the effortfully reddening sun bogged further and further down in the sky.

  ‘What about those two policepersons? The ones who came in, after Leron was found murdered? Of course we had to follow the letter of the Ulanov law, and of course we could not deny access to properly constituted policeperson authority. But they weren’t handservants, were they? They could easily have got a message to the others.’

  Iago shook his head. ‘They are also both dosed on CRF, perfectly loyal to the Clan.’

  ‘Really?’ Thinking back, they had seemed rather slow, initiativeless individuals. CRF would explain that. ‘Doesn’t it take a week or so to work on the brain,’ she asked? ‘Even at high dose?’

  ‘Yes. But both the individuals in question were dosed in advance.’

  ‘Goddess! Really? What – better safe than sorry, is it?’

  He looked at her, seemed to be gauging her reaction, and then said. ‘It hardly matters, now, Miss.’ She knew he was referring to the message she had smuggled out. Once again she blushed. Then she tried to compose herself.

  ‘I’m a fool,’ she told him, feeling her own words stinging her – though they were the truth. ‘Not yet sixteen – but that’s no excuse. If I misjudged Anna . . . then, well—’ She trailed off.

  ‘You were in love,’ said Iago, simply.

  Diana’s pressed her lips tight together, and clenched her hands, and stared back at him. But it was the truth. It was the idiotic and humiliating truth. It was the glorious, beautiful truth. She unclenched her hands and laid them on the table. Opened her mouth and sucked in a deep breath. ‘Nice use of the past tense, there, Iago-go-go.’

  ‘Love is a – complicating emotion.’

  ‘Complicated, did you say? It is certainly that.’

  ‘Complicating,’ repeated Iago.

  ‘We’ve a little time,’ Diana said. ‘Bring me up that hand-servant girl, Sapho.’

  Iago looked sharply at her. ‘Why?’

  ‘I have some more questions for her.’

  ‘I thought you said you had solved the mystery of the dead handservant?’

  ‘So I have. But there are one or two little details that I haven’t yet slotted into place in my mind. You know me, ear-gah. I like to tidy all the loose ends away. I like to cross the “t”s and dot the lower-case “j”s.’

  Awkwardly, Iago bowed. ‘I’ll have her driven over here, Miss. Only—’

  ‘Only what?’

  ‘Only we can’t take her with us, you know.’

  ‘I don’t intend to take her with us!’ Diana retorted, genuinely startled at the suggestion.

  Iago bowed again, and stepped away. Diana slumped deeper into her gel-chair and stared at the increasingly splendid western sky. Sunset opening the furnace door. All those gorgeous smelting colours of lava-red and flame-orange. The clouds crouched along the horizon, making their obeisance. She ate another piece of fruit.

  Four minutes later a car appeared, buzzing along the coast road and dragging a dark comet-tail of dust behind it. Sunset light rubied off its windshield. It drove into the main compound and stopped two hundred metres away, and it discharged two people: a policeperson – zooming it with her bId Diana could see that it was Officer Avraam Kawa – and the handservant Sapho. He was supporting her upright by fitting his shoulder jigsaw-wise into her armpit. Together they made their way slowly across the lawn.

  Iago had reappeared at her side: shimmered silently into place, like that Jeeves-butler chap in those funny stories. ‘You understand, Miss,’ he said, ‘that we have a quarter-hour, no more.’

  ‘It won’t take long, Iago,’ she replied.

  Sapho, panting, was deposited in a chair opposite Diana. Officer Kawa stood beside her, as if remaining upright in full g were the easiest thing in the world – which of course it was, to him. So Diana sent him back to the car and told him to drive off – ‘we’ll call you when we’re ready’. And – after glancing at Iago – he went.

  The buzz of the disappearing car mingled with the susurration of the surf.

  ‘So, Sapho,’ said Diana. ‘Fruit?’

  The servant looked at her, gap-eyed. ‘Miss?’

  ‘Try the pear. It’s real pear, grown down here on Earth. Not like the stuff you get in a shanty globe, I’ll wager.’

  Cautiously Sapho reached out a trembling hand (was it trembling with gravity? Or guilt?), took a piece of pear, and manoeuvred it into her mouth.

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ said the handservant. Then, looking unhappily up at Iago, and back at her mistress, she added: ‘we have cats.’

  ‘Cats?’

  ‘In Smirr – my home globe, Miss. We have many mice, an infestation in fact. And so we have cats.’

  Diana nodded. ‘You think that’s what I’m doing here? You think I’m a cat toying with a mouse? It’s not that. Quite apart from anything we don’t have time for that. I only have fifteen minutes—’

  ‘Twelve minutes,’ said Iago.

  ‘Twelve minutes. I just wanted a quick chat, that’s all.’

  Away to the left, Berthezene moved from his position. She glanced over at him, wondering idly what had disturbed him. Following the direction of his gaze she saw Deño, standing on the coast road looking out to sea. They were getting ready to whisk her away, she supposed. Still, she had time.

  ‘Here’s something I found buried in the data,’ she said. ‘Your religious affiliation is Ra’allah.’

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ said Sapho.

  ‘Tell me what that entails.’

  She said: ‘it’s not a secret cult, Miss. It is not illegal. Information about our faith is freely available.’

  ‘Tell me in your own words.’

  Sapho looked to the setting sun. ‘Ra is the sun, Miss,’ she said. ‘Allah is the God of the universe, the principle of law and compassion, of mercy of might. Mohammed was his prophet on Earth, but we do not live upon Earth. For us Ra is more than a prophet; more than an angel. Ra is the light of Allah, pouring into the cosmos.’

  ‘Sun-worship?�
��

  ‘We worship Ra’allah. We worship God, the only, and we recognise that the sun is the New Mecca, the New Metatron.’

  ‘What of the Ulanovs?’

  Sapho looked, sharply, at her. ‘What of them, Miss? They are only human beings, like you and me, Miss. We do not worship them.’

  ‘But isn’t it the case,’ she said, glancing at Iago, standing impassively beside her, ‘that you consider the Ulanovs holy and blessed? Over and above obeying the Lex Ulanova and so on?’

  ‘The Ulanovs,’ said Sapho, slowly, ‘have forbidden close approach to the Holy Face of the Sun.’

  ‘They have made it illegal to fly inside the orbit of Venus, yes – but that’s because they want to keep Mercury to themselves. For reasons of commercial exploitation, you know. It’s pretty much solid iron, that world. A fantastically valuable resource.’

  ‘We are not concerned with such things,’ said Sapho.

  ‘You know the Ulanovs have their own ships mining Mercury as we speak? Not to mention all the police cruisers and remotes necessary for maintaining the legal blockade. They fly within Venus’s orbit. They don’t bother you?’

  ‘If some other power took over the Solar System,’ said Sapho, ‘and threw down the Ulanovs – do you think they would keep the space around the Holy face of the Sun so free of contamination? Relatively free, I mean, Miss, because you’re right it is not a perfect emptiness. Only, I would say, things are better than they might be.’

  Dia nodded slowly. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘But here’s the thing: Leron wasn’t a follower of Ra’allah, was he?’

  Sapho immediately dropped her gaze. ‘No, Miss.’

  ‘What was he?’

  ‘He worshipped Godravity. It is a terrible faith, the faith of bullies and pagans.’

  Her bId fed her some details. ‘Terrible because they deny your God?’

  ‘They deny the oneness of God. They think of gravity as the divine principle in the universe: that only gravity gives shape and order to the cosmos. They think every particle of matter has the potential to be divine, but that when it accumulates beyond a certain point it acquires literal godhood. They worship black holes – the devourers – as the true gods, and this means that they worship ten million gods. They believe all these devil objects will form one giant God at the end of time, and He will be called Fenrir, and will swallow us all. It is a savage religion, Miss. Leron believed that only force gave shape, order and meaning to nature. He believed force to be beautiful.’ All this came out in a long, rapidly-spoken monologue, and after she had finished speaking she looked flushed and unhappy.

  ‘Did he force himself on you, Sapho?’

  ‘Miss,’ she assented. She closed her eyes, and opened her mouth. Her lower lip was shivering with grief, or perhaps just under the unforgiving tug of gravity.

  ‘It seems a strange thing,’ mused Diana, ‘for two such antithetical religions to occupy the same shanty bubble. Usually – as I understand it – each bubble contains one community, and one faith. It’s not as if there’s a great deal of space for anything more.’

  ‘Leron and his family came from another globe, Miss,’ said Sapho, pulling herself a little straighter in her chair. ‘It was destroyed by a police cruiser, and they took refuge with us.’

  ‘Good of you to give them a home.’

  ‘Ra’allah rewards compassion,’ said Sapho. ‘And besides: they paid.’

  ‘Why did a police cruiser burst their home globe?’

  ‘Because,’ said Sapho, glancing up at Iago. ‘Because they are rebels and vile people. They do not respect the authority of the Ulanovs, as we do. They plot revolution. They are friends of Jack Glass, they are followers of the principle of political force majeure.’

  ‘What a curious thing!’ said Diana, also looking up at the standing Iago. ‘For a man who personally vetted these twenty handservants – to allow through an individual with such criminal and dangerous political views?’

  ‘Two minutes, Miss,’ said Iago, impassively.

  ‘You were aware, Iago, that the deceased Leron was a followed of Godravity?’

  ‘Of course I was, Miss Diana,’ said Iago. ‘Sapho, here, exaggerates the revolutionary leanings of that particular faith. Some followers of Godravity harbour terroristical views, I concede. But most don’t.’

  ‘Still – to recruit handservants from a shanty bubble containing two competing faiths, each at war with the other,’ said Diana. She eyed him knowingly. ‘Odd, no?’

  Iago was looking over towards the sea, where Deño could be seen, still standing. ‘Less than two minutes, Miss,’ he said.

  ‘Sapho,’ said Dia, turning her attention back to the hand-servant. ‘I’m afraid in a moment I must leave. But I want you to understand something. I know that Leron sexually assaulted you.’

  Sapho looked levelly back. ‘Miss.’

  ‘I believe it. I am going to do what I can to have your punishment kept to a minimum.’

  ‘My – punishment, Miss?’ Sapho faltered.

  ‘Killing a human being is still killing a human being, even if the human being you killed was vile. And the Lex Ulanova cannot be circumvented, of course. But I think I can use my influence to have the sentence extenuated. It seems my influence is, um, um, on the grow.’

  Sapho looked at her with her tired eyes. For a moment, perhaps, she hovered on the edge of denying everything. But the moment passed. She lowered her gaze again, and spoke in an exhausted voice. ‘The punishment for murder is death,’ she said. ‘Death is beyond extenuation.’

  ‘Not necessarily. With extenuation you will instead get imprisonment, I think,’ said Diana. ‘He had raped you before. I assume he was trying to rape you again when you killed him?’

  The setting sun was shining across her face, smoothing out the irregularities of colour and giving the whole a wholesome ruddiness. Despite the grim shapes into which gravity was sagging her face, she looked almost beautiful. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Diana said: ‘I looked around the store-room – where it happened – a couple of times.’ She was speaking for Iago’s benefit, although still looking at Sapho. ‘At first I was distracted by a foolish theory that the murderer had activated a gardening robot to commit the crime; but of course that wasn’t it. And although I ignored it at first, the crucial detail did stick in my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The way the walls were adorned with fins – vanes – stubby little wings. I couldn’t immediately think why, and I didn’t initially pay it much attention. Not being used to them, you see. Not needing them upland. But it came to me in the car yesterday. I knew what those fins, vanes, wings were. They are called shelves. People down here use them to store things on. You can put something on a shelf, you see, and gravity will keep it there. You can store light things upon them. Or heavy things.’

  Iago was looking at her, but his eyes were unfocused. Checking something on his bId.

  ‘Sapho,’ said Diana. ‘Leron chased you, didn’t he?’

  ‘He wished me to do certain things to him, sexual things, whilst he lay on his back,’ said Sapho. ‘I did not want to, and he grew angry. So he came after me and I ran away – though the running was hard, and we both moved stilted and slow, like through water, like in a nightmare, because of the gravity.’

  ‘You ran into the storeroom.’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘And he almost caught you – but you scrambled up the carapace of one of the robots stored there.’

  ‘I wished to evade him, Miss.’

  ‘It must have been hard, in the gravity! But somehow you managed it – a foot on the robot elbow, another on its shoulder, and then up onto the shelf fixed into the wall. Was he too worn out, gravity-tired, to climb up after you?’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  ‘So I suppose he stood there – taunted you. Told you to come down?’

  ‘Yes, Miss.’

  Diana smiled. ‘Perhaps we should tell the authorities that what happened next was an accident. It coul
d easily have been an accident, you know.’

  ‘It was not an accident. I saw the hammer at the far end of the shelf, and so I scurried along – like a mouse. And below, Leron lolloped to follow me. He was very angry. He was calling up to me, and puffing, and wheezing with the effort of doing so. He told me: remember what Petero and I did to you in the dizzy dummies? Remember how that hurt, and made blood came out of you? I shall do worse to you now, he said.’

  ‘So you killed him?’

  ‘I got between the wall and where the hammer was, and pushed my arms out. I had to judge it just so, Miss. It was not easy. But Leron was standing below me, and I got the heavy chuck of the hammer to fall straight down – and it made a thoc sound, like a butcher’s cleaver striking a rack of raw meat. The weight of it broke through his skull; for a life without gravity makes bones weaker. It felled him; his knees bent and his torso went straight down, and then keeled back and his legs kicked out. The hammer fell away and clanged on the floor. A great deal of blood came out of Leron’s head – but it didn’t turn to droplets as it normally does. Instead it formed a flat plate of dark red, and swelled on the floor like a tumour.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I climbed back the way I came,’ said Sapho. ‘I was crying and shaking, Miss, and in my heart I felt the mixture of glee and fear. I stumbled back through to my room, and fell on the bed. But it was not long before the other handservants went through. It was not the yelling that attracted their attention, you see. The yelling was just Leron enjoying himself, and the others thought it best to leave him alone. It was not the yelling that made them go through; it was the suddenness of the silence.’

  ‘Iago,’ said Diana. ‘Surely my two minutes were up ages ago? Shouldn’t we be on our way?’

  Iago looked down at her. ‘Things are considerably worse than we realised, Miss,’ he said, gravely. ‘I’m afraid we must change our plans.’