Jack Glass

by Adam Roberts

  ‘Why didn’t the door register that as a weapon?’ she said, pointing. ‘Surely it would register a metal knife as easily as a metal gun.’

  ‘A metal one, yes,’ said Iago. ‘But this knife is made from glass. Come along, Miss.’

  12

  Flight

  They went back outside, into a fragrant Korkuran dusk. Sapho – the handservant – was still sitting in the chair. She looked up at them, startled, as they came out.

  ‘Everything is different now,’ said Iago, fitting his knife back into its sheath. ‘This isn’t inter-Clan rivalry. The Ulanovs themselves are coming after you. We need to get upland, and we can’t trust any of the Argent facilities. And we certainly can’t trust any of the other MOHclans; they’ll be rubbing their hands with glee at the opportunities opening up for them. This is a very serious state of affairs, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Are my MOHmies alright? Is Eva alright?’

  ‘We must trust them to look after themselves. Right now we need to get away. We’ll go to Al Anfal; I have friends there. Once we’re there, we’ll figure out a way to get back upstairs. Come along.’

  ‘She comes with us,’ said Diana.

  Iago looked at the handservant, seated, staring up at them. ‘No she doesn’t.’

  ‘Yes she does.’

  ‘She will slow us down. She is safer here.’

  ‘Clearly she’s not!’

  ‘Quite apart from anything else,’ said Iago, grouchily, ‘she is a murderer.’

  ‘Oh, Iago,’ she said. ‘We both know that’s not true.’

  Iago was looking shrewdly at her. ‘Yes you’re good,’ he conceded. ‘Even though I’m guessing you don’t know the whole story.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ she admitted. ‘I couldn’t, for instance, have answered Ms Joad’s terrible question – back there. Could you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘She comes with us,’ Diana said again.

  Iago gave up fighting it. ‘Alright. Come along we three.’ He helped the handservant out of her seat. The three of them made their way through the thickening darkness, halting and slow. By the time they cleared the lawn dusk had thickened into actual night. The house was black behind them. Away across the bay, prickles of illumination adorned the town. But the shadows swallowed everything up.

  Stars were visible overhead.

  They got in amongst the shadows of the olive grove, where they rested for a moment. But no sooner did they stop than, behind them, two cradles of light and noise were lowered through the evening sky down onto the lawn in front of the house.

  Hiding behind a tree, Diana saw the two craft settle into the turf. Their doors opened, and a half-dozen strong-limbed agents, or soldiers, or policepersons (or whatever they were) dashed out and ran straight into the house.

  ‘Quietly,’ hissed Iago into her ear, putting a hand on her shoulder; ‘but quickly.’

  They all three slipped through the olive forest, and came out the other side behind a low wall of uncemented plates of slate-stone. Getting beyond this obstacle was not easy, despite its modest dimensions, but they managed it. Iago had to help Sapho up onto the top, and down on the far side. Puff, pant, puff. The black-purple sky. On the far side they crossed a road, the tarmac warm, still hoarding the day’s heat. Dia’s crawlipers clacked softly. Iago limped rapidly on, his right arm helping Sapho stay upright. Then they were across, and making their way over a wide downward-sloping field of lavender. The scent of the dark stalks was very strong, a clean, beautiful fragrance. Overhead the stars were distilling into full clarity. The spilled glitter of the milky way. The million cursor-points of bright stars. Somewhere in all that profusion was the single Champagne Supernova upon which Eva had been working. And this thought sent a small pang through Diana’s breast. Would her MOHsister ever finish that work?

  Behind them, something whooshed up into the air – one of the two craft that had landed outside the main house. They all turned; the machine, pricking with illumination and humming as it flew, was hovering above the house. A megaphone of light appeared at the underbelly, swivelling from left to right as the authorities swept the ground, looking for them. It rolled towards the coast, away from them.

  ‘We need to get off this island,’ panted Diana.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Iago.

  On the far side of the lavender field was another road, and Iago led them a hundred metres or so along it before turning off into a much larger area of forest. These trees were much taller than olives; and the scent of pine, fierce in the nostrils though pleasant, was very strong. It was now so dark that they could see nothing, and moved with arms outstretched, passing themselves from tree trunk to tree trunk. The ground beneath their feet was spongy with pineneedles. For what seemed to Diana a very long time they passed, painstakingly, through this blind environment.

  Finally they came into a clearing; stars visible again above them. Iago pulled a fabric web off a small flycar, and keyed the door open.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d hidden a flitter here,’ said Diana.

  They all clambered inside. The smell of plastic. Iago closed the door, and put the inside light on – eye-stinging yellow. It was a cupboard-sized space; there was barely room inside for all three of them. ‘When we actually get going, I’ll have to drive without lights,’ Iago said; ‘and low. It may be a little hair-raising, I warn you.’

  ‘How far will this toy take us?’ Diana asked as she fastened her clenchbelt. In the pale lemon-coloured light of the flycar’s cabin, Sapho was sitting awkwardly, hugging herself and looking wide-eyed. ‘You need to fix your belt – I’ll show you,’ said Diana.

  ‘Thank you, Miss,’ the handservant said, sitting passively as Dia fixed her clenchbelt for her. ‘What you said – back at the house, Miss?’

  ‘What did I say?’

  ‘The gentleman said I was a murderer, and you said, no.’ Sapho looked to Iago, who was booting up the interface from the driving seat. ‘He was right, Miss. I am a murderer.’

  ‘It’s more complicated than that, Sapho,’ Diana said. At that moment, Iago extinguished the interior lights, and Dia felt the unpleasant stretching sensation in her gut as the flycar rose into the night.

  ‘Where did you say we’re going, Iago?’ she asked, into the dark.

  Iago rendered all the walls transparent, like a tourist bark, the better to be able to navigate by the faint starlight. Diana saw, indistinctly, his silhouette, blacker against this dark ground.

  ‘We’re going,’ he replied, ‘to Al Anfal Li’llah. It’s beyond Turque.’

  ‘Will this car get us there?’

  ‘No, it’s too far. But it will get us off the island, which is the more pressing concern.’

  They swished away through the air, flying so low that the tops of the pine trees spanked the bottom of the car with intermittent, shuddery, resonant slaps. Then they were clear of the forest, and passed down a long sloping trajectory that missed the lip of the coastline by a metre or less. The transparency of the flycar walls was a disconcerting thing, adding to Diana’s sense of exposure and vulnerability; but at least it gave them a superb view of this portion of the island. Many lights were on at the main house now, and one of the Ulanovs’ crafts still parked on the lawn. The other was visible in the sky, away to the east, moving meticulously forward, sweeping its searchlight back and forth like a pendulum.

  In the bay west of the island a large ship was anchored, balanced on the gleaming constellation of its own lit reflection. The ship had not been there before. ‘Is it Ulanov?’ Diana said as they passed, low and quiet, half a thousand metres away from the ship.

  ‘I presume so,’ said Iago.

  They left the ship behind them and Iago flew the car round the headland. Diana’s bId buzzed with a call waiting, and before she thought what she was doing she answered it.

  There, shining right in the middle of the car, was Ms Joad. ‘My dear girl,’ she said. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Turn that
off,’ Iago instructed her.

  ‘Don’t trust him!’ said Joad. ‘Don’t you know who he is?’

  ‘I know!’ retorted Diana.

  ‘Well how can you know who he is and then still trust him? How can you do anything apart from run in terror?’

  ‘I should trust you?’ returned Diana, a flush of anger overriding her common sense. ‘You were going to cripple me!’

  ‘Nonsense. You’re much too valuable intact – that was just playacting. And look at me now, poor lonely Ms Joad with one collapsed lung! But you, my dear, you are currently fleeing into the night with the single most dangerous man in the entire solar system! Come back, and here’s the deal: Clan Argent to retain their position of eminence at the Ulanovs’ right hand, yourself in the as-it-were throne, whatever your sister might expect – in return we take Mr Glass into custody. Simple as that.’

  ‘Diana,’ said Iago. ‘Please turn that off.’

  ‘You will regret—’ Ms Joad began to say, in her pleasantly modulated voice, as Diana severed the connection.

  ‘They’ll know our heading now,’ said Iago, as he rolled the car into a tight turn. Diana’s stomach heaved and yawed. ‘It makes getting away more of a gamble.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Diana. ‘I shouldn’t have answered it.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Iago. ‘You shouldn’t.’

  Diana felt the sting of this rebuke. ‘It was an automatic reaction.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to close down your bId,’ said Iago. ‘It is compromised. If you use it at all, for even the most trivial reason, the Ulanovs will locate you. Can I ask you please to lock it down and erase access?’

  Diana was going to object that this would leave her entirely and literally isolated – she hadn’t done without bId since she was a toddler. But there were no grounds to argue. Iago was correct. So she closed it all down, and tickled the erase codes from their reluctant caches.

  Being bIdless magnified her sense of vulnerability.

  She asked Sapho if she were fitted with a bId, but of course she had nothing like that: she was only a servant, and a shanty bubble kid, after all.

  They flew on, Iago keeping close to the coast and finally striking out towards open sea. After twenty minutes or so, Diana began to believe that they had indeed slipped away.

  She slept fitfully, sitting up, her head at an awkward angle. When she woke her neck was sore, but the sky to the east was glorious with the colour of oranges. Sapho was snoring, her body in harness but her head lolling forward. Iago was still at the controls. ‘Are you alright?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We will stop soon, and I’ll find a craft suitable for the longer journey.’

  ‘My mouth is dry,’ she reported. ‘And I need to relieve my bladder.’

  ‘A contradictory state of affairs, it might be thought.’

  ‘Does this car not have facilities?’

  ‘It’s too small for such luxuries, I’m afraid. A short-hop model only. Another ten minutes,’ he added, ‘and I’ll come down.’

  They passed over a dun-coloured landscape, sharp-edged escarpments and inky hollows, as the eastern light slowly gathered itself ready for another dawn. It wasn’t clear where Iago was going until the last minute, when they popped over a ridge and landed in the yard of a large farmhouse. This consisted of a lead-coloured, seven-storey barn, with a star-and-crescent logo painted upon it. Four agri-pros were parked outside – the place was very evidently fully automated. Nevertheless a human being was standing in the yard waiting for them. ‘How did she know to be here?’ Diana asked as they touched down.

  ‘He. And he knew because I called ahead.’

  ‘Why haven’t you erased your bId? It will be just as compromised as mine.’

  ‘The system I’m carrying,’ he said, ‘is not bId.’

  Iago opened the door. They roused Sapho, and all three clambered stiffly from the car into the cool predawn. Iago went over and spoke to the stranger, as Diana and Sapho stretched their limbs. ‘Where are we, Miss?’ Sapho asked. ‘I’ve no more idea than you, Sapho,’ Dia replied.

  Iago returned. ‘My friend has brought a larger craft,’ he said. ‘But we’ve no time to hang about.’

  The three of them went round the corner of the barn to find a proper-sized machine; stealth aerials all over it. Iago opened the side and all three climbed in. Diana made first use of the toilet cubicle, with Sapho going in after. Iago was priming and launching several dozen decoy drones in several directions. Diana explored the small kitchen and dug out some supplies. She drank some sugarjuice, and ate a strawberry muffin. It was a little stale but took the edge off her hunger. Iago came back, took a long draft of water, and went back up to the cabin. Diana had to chivvy Sapho into breaking her fast.

  Dawn was heating the bar of the eastern horizon red hot by the time they were airborne. They flew straight east and the air clarified and brightened all around them.

  Diana had never travelled in quite so primitive a craft before. The engine made a continuous sequence of crunching noises, as if its business was breaking its own innards. Small shard-puffs of smoke came out of its exhaust. Diana pondered what manner of engine it could possibly be. Something from the bronze age, maybe; something from the time of Homer. Something.

  Sunlight the colour and thickness of honey.

  From their elevated perspective the landscape approached cartographic simplification: interlocking shapes of light and dark. Innumerable hexagon-fields of wheat. A stumpy range of half-mountains passed below them, and on the far side of that a wide expanse of ash-coloured crops – edible cotton, she guessed.

  They approached an eastern coastline. Northward and southward the sea bunched itself like blue cloth into a great many ruffles and pleats. They overflew the beach and left the land wholly behind. A great slab of sea lay immobile beneath them.

  They flew for a long time over the sea.

  The sun was high in the sky by the time the continental coastline appeared beneath them: Turque, and beyond that presumably the realm of Al Anfal Li’llah where they were going. The mountains came bulging up as they approached; flanks marbled with brown and black, and summits capped in great panes of ash-blonde snow. Diana thought to herself: the sun is always true north, irrespective of the vagaries of mundane electromagnetic orientations. The sun is always at the bottom of the well. The sun is the one true point in all this uncertainty.

  She spent some time gazing at the endlessly renewing sky; and then watching the pattern of shadows the sun inked upon the landscape. The mountains below them were a mode of monotony. Nothing could grow upon them. Most food came from the uplands, of course, from the innumerable Facs and globes. Some luxury products, and some subsistence crops, were grown below. But a large portion of the lowlands were lying fallow. Or were giving way to desertification.

  She left the sun, white as paper, and the sky, blue as water, and closed her eyes. Sleep didn’t come. Instead the ghostly shapes of her MOHmies loomed alarmingly, and she had to open her eyes. Here was the cabin. She put her hand on the wall beside her, and she could feel it shivering.

  She was crying.

  This would never do.

  So she sat down and told herself: she had no reason to believe her MOHmies were dead. She had no evidence that Eva was dead, or even that she had been taken into Ulanov custody. She had to show herself as somebody possessing the character to endure adversity and triumph over it. Crying would not do.

  So, to distract herself from her own self-pity, she went and sat next to Iago. The view from the cockpit was the same as the view from the cabin windows: parti-coloured mountains; valleys in which giant firs loomed minaret-like over the canopies of regular trees. The same sky, the inescapable sun. The sun was grief. Grief was as hot and as unavoidable as the sun. It is what we all rotate our lives about, whether we realise it or not.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘You are Jack Glass.’

  He hummed for a while: a tune she did not recognise, four notes t
he same followed by a downward melody with a trill in the middle. Then he said: ‘some people call me that.’

  ‘Joad said it wasn’t your real name.’

  ‘The whole concept of real names,’ Iago said, ‘isn’t a terribly coherent one, I think.’

  ‘And you have killed people. Thousands of people!’

  ‘Millions,’ he said, glancing at her. ‘If you believe some stories.’

  She thought about this. ‘You haven’t killed millions of people.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or thousands?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You have killed people, though?’

  ‘You yourself just witnessed me putting an end to Dominico Deño’s life. That was a shame. I liked him. He and I played Go together.’

  ‘And I saw you stab Ms Joad. But you didn’t kill her.’

  ‘I could have done that better, I agree. But nobody’s perfect.’

  ‘Do my MOHmies know who you are?’

  ‘They do.’

  ‘They hired you anyway? You expect me to believe that they were happy to hire you to work in close proximity to their daughters?’

  ‘They hired me not despite who I was, but because of it. They paid for these legs, and arranged for my face to be surgically reconfigured. They know what I’ve done and why I’ve done it. The plain fact is the Clan Argent and I share a similar goal; and that protecting you and Eva is part of achieving that goal.’

  ‘The Ulanovs,’ Diana said.

  ‘Exactly. Their downfall. And, as for placing me near you and your MOHsister – well, I do have certain skills. As I’ve just demonstrated with Ms Joad and her agent. Though skills is a tendentious way of putting it, I suppose. I’d say a skill ought to be something constructive. What I’ve just done is hardly that.’

  ‘My knees thank you,’ she said. ‘At any rate.’

  And he smiled.

  ‘I can’t believe my MOHmies could have been planning something so – seismic.’

  ‘You can’t believe it? Or you can’t believe you weren’t in on it?’

  Diana stared out of the window. ‘I’m not even sixteen,’ she said.