Jack Glass

by Adam Roberts

  A large crowd surrendering to its own ecstasy in zero-g is a striking sight. People had originally gathered in a loose pattern determined by guy-ropes and wall-fixtures, so as to permit the greatest visibility to the greatest number. But as levels of righteous frenzy increased, people loosed their hold, and floated or swam in a fishlike swarm. The view of the speaker was obscured. The chanting rose in volume, others began shouting ‘Mithras! Mithras!’ with an inspired vehemence. Cameras were knocked – advertently or otherwise – from position, and the whole meeting disintegrated into chaos. Or, if you prefer, integrated from rigidity into true human, democratic fluidity.

  From the other side of the space, not more than two hundred metres away, many people watched, with approval, or interest, or disgust. And amongst those many were three of particular concern to us: two young women, both with dark hair, and an older man with a face you might call careworn. Were you to look closely at him, you might notice grains of rust in at the roots of his hair – as if he had been dirtied with something, and had not had time properly to wash it all out again. As it happened, the thing with which he had been dirtied was not rust, but blood.

  This was not his own blood.

  Behind them was a RACdroid – one of those devices for witnessing and affirming contracts. Why they should bring such a piece of machinery to such a place was not immediately clear. One glance made it obvious that the entire place had been given over to a carnivalesque celebration of democratic revolution.

  One of the women said to the man: ‘this place is pretty frenzied.’

  And he to her: ‘they are true believers.’

  ‘So are you, Jack,’ she said. And then: ‘should I call you Jack? It doesn’t chime right.’

  ‘Stick with what you know,’ he advised.

  ‘They did find your house, after all,’ said the other. ‘Do you think they’ll trace us here?’

  ‘We can’t stay here long, certainly. But we need fuel. We need to find Aishwarya as quickly as possible, and have this RACdroid looked at. And then we need to move on.’

  ‘And find out who killed Bar-le-duc,’ said Diana.

  ‘Bar-le-duc,’ said the other woman. ‘The most famous policeman in the System, and it falls to us to investigate his death.’ She tutted.

  ‘I’m less worried about his death, Sapho,’ said Iago. ‘I care more for the authenticity of this RACdroid.’

  ‘The droid carries the answer to Bar-le-duc’s death,’ Sapho replied.

  ‘If it’s kosher. If. Come on.’

  They had flown in piloting a small sloop, a private craft: blocky, about the size of a freight container and not much more elegantly styled. Its name was Red Rum 2020. The docking area was cluttered with nearly a hundred craft, disposed higgledy-piggledy: they nudged in as close as they could to the nest of globes, but still had to unroll their own crawl-tube more than twenty metres before they could find an access point. This was one of those aspects of her new life to which Diana found it very hard to become accustomed. As the privileged daughter of a great and powerful house she had always been used to privileged docking – passing from ship to house or back again had only ever been simply a question of stepping across a threshold. Out in the Sump, however, she always seemed to find herself pulling through the interior of some scanty umbilicus or other; and every time she did so the thought went through her mind: only a few millimetres of eminently penetrable material separates me from the death of vacuum. Her experiences in Dunronin – only days before – had made this fear more acute.

  This particular cluster of shanty bubbles was called Garland 400. It was deep inside the Sump, a longtime home to anti-Ulanov sentiment and illegal democratic agitation; only its remoteness had protected it from the attention of the police. That and the relatively low-key nature of the revolutionary scheming. The police burst thousands of globes every year, exemplary punishments for breaches in the Lex Ulanova. But Garland 400 had been one of the millions of delinquent communities that had not drawn attention to itself.

  It was hard to see how they had evaded notice. As Iago, Diana, Sapho and their RACdroid pulled their way along the guy-ropes of the main bubble, they were surrounded on all sides by ecstatic revolutionaries: drunk on alcohol or cannaboids, blissed out with corticotopian connections, zapped on diamondanes. There were people to the left and right, before and behind them, above and below, chanting ‘OHOV! OHOV! OHOV!’ or singing hymns to Mithras, or bellowing the Marseillaise (or versions thereof). Many were naked, and some were copulating, in writhing clusters. It was a cacophonous obstacle course. Perhaps the speaker was still speaking: if so, it was no longer possible to hear her. A superbly wrinkled old woman, naked from the waist up, floated towards them repeatedly offering to buy their droid. Several people tried to tag them.

  They made it through in the end, through the crawl tube into the second globe – smaller, and much quieter. It was clear the party was going on in the main space. There was some merry-making above them: a long bar, linking curving wall to curving wall, was serving alcohol; several score people had their arms hooked about the metal, drinking and watching the goings-on next door on screens or via IP access, discussing it animatedly with their friends, and singing.

  ‘This one?’ Diana asked, glad to be out of the riotous space.

  ‘Next one along.’

  ‘It’s amazing the police don’t close this down,’ she cried. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the din.

  ‘If they knew about it,’ said Iago, ‘they would.’

  ‘It makes me shudder with horrible recognition,’ said Sapho. ‘I grew up in places like this – riotous, ungodly places. Ra’allah does not smile on drunkenness. He kindles sugar in the grape, but the grape can only make alcohol if it be hidden from his light.’

  They pushed off and flew straight to one of a number of exits, Iago guided by memory, or perhaps by access to his mysterious bId-that-wasn’t-bId. They passed through a short tunnel and found themselves in a green space: vegetation all around them, feeding directly off sunlight or clustering around light tubes. It took Diana’s eyes a moment to adjust to the marine quality of the light. She began to pick out various huts in amongst the foliage.

  ‘Aishwarya,’ said Iago, gesturing with his hand. Or, waving to her as the individual so named floated over towards them. The sounds of revelry from the first, biggest sphere were still clearly audible; but somehow they didn’t disturb the peace of this place. Faces appeared in the doorways to huts, and then disappeared back inside again. The guy-ropes stretched from wall to wall were garnished with vines. Tomatoes grew upon long pendant strips, like giant red flies snagged on huge stretches of flypapers.

  ‘Jack Glass,’ said Aishwarya, coming close. She did not sound pleased to see him. ‘You look different.’

  ‘Trivial adjustments to the face,’ he said. ‘Not the eyes, though.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed, looking at him. ‘The eyes are the same.’

  She was a very elderly individual; her close-trimmed hair was a pattern of white dots over dark brown scalp, her limbs long and spindle thin, her skin marked with interconnected patterns of lines, swirls and grooves like a magnified image of a fingerprint. It had evidently been a very long time, if ever, since she had spent time at the bottom of any gravity well. Her nose was a rather magnificent horn-shaped appendage, downward curving, and marred only by an oval area of pinkness where (a common sight in the uplands) a tumour had at some point in the past been cut away. But it was her eyes that held your attention. Though countersunk into the head, and surrounded by dark, puckered skin, they possessed a fierce, almost immortal brightness – proper ancient mariner eyes.

  ‘Aishwarya,’ said Iago. ‘I wanted to introduce you to Diana, here. She is the first person I have met in many decades who may be cleverer than you.’

  Aishwarya pulled a sour face. ‘Her? She’s a mayfly. How old are you, sweetpea?’

  ‘Sixteen,’ said Diana.

  ‘True wisdom comes with age, my darlin
g, and – oh! oho! Wait. You are Diana Argent?’

  Dia looked to Iago first, but answered: ‘I am.’

  ‘Good gracious! I forgive you, Jack Glass, for bothering me, since you have introduced me to such a human being! And you? Her servant?’

  ‘My name is Sapho,’ said Sapho, a little fiercely.

  ‘I see. Not a servant?’

  ‘Sapho hasn’t been taking her CRFs for some months now,’ said Iago. ‘Not since we all had to leave Earth in, uh, a hurry. But she’s still loyal to the Argent Clan. Aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Sapho said, grumpily.

  ‘CRF withdrawal has a complex of emotional effects,’ said the old woman knowingly. ‘Still, you’re better off without those pharmakons in your system, my dear. They blunt your initiative. And we all need our initiative, don’t we? We’re all living through interesting times, after all.’

  ‘They certainly seem to think so,’ said Iago, gesturing with his thumb behind him.

  This appeared only to annoy Aishwarya. ‘Such idiots. I don’t mind idiots, generally; but they have to be so extreme about it! They will bring destruction down upon us all. I have a sloop ready to run at the first sniff of a police craft.’

  ‘You think it will come to that?’

  The old woman sniffed. ‘Maybe not. But they are such idiots! Now that they’re drunk, they think the time for revolution has arrived. When they sober up tomorrow they’ll go back to whining and stealing from their neighbours – not that there’s anything worth stealing. A life of pointless gang squabbles and living like beasts. I spent a week growing some special tomatoes, last month, and a group of teenagers smashed them! They didn’t even steal them and eat them! Or steal them and sell them back to me, like smart little gangsters! They just smashed them up for the hell of it.’

  ‘Poverty degrades people, that’s true,’ said Iago. ‘But perhaps we should at least consider that they may be right about one thing.’

  ‘What one thing?’

  ‘Timing. Maybe it is time for revolution.’

  She snorted. ‘Of course it isn’t! What, you think the present political instabilities could help germinate actual System-wide revolt? No, no. What we are witnessing is – saving your presence, my dear – one of the occasional pecking-order struggles that defines the hierarchy. The twin heads of the Argent Clan have gone into hiding; one of the heirs is who-knows-where, the other is . . . here, directly in front of my own eyes, bless me! Of course the other MOHhouses are – what’s the phrase? Jockeying for position. Of course the Ulanovs are throwing their weight around. It’s not revolution. It’s business as usual. But those idiots – they think Mithras is about to manifest himself and lead a wildfire revolt across the whole System!’

  A flock of duck chose that moment to dash away, squealing and parping and flurrying as they wagged their wings in a curious series of motions to move through the weightless air. They leapt from the walls of the world near where Aishwarya was standing, flew cumbrously through the middle of the globe and landed on the far side.

  The bubble’s scrubbers were designed to resemble little model trees and bushes. Sections of the globe were planted with toy forests. Broccoli clumps of green and yellow. Ash, oak, simul-tree, tree ferns of an unnatural, bright, plastic green.

  ‘And there was me thinking you were a devotee,’ said Iago. ‘I’m sure you used to be.’

  ‘Of Mithras?’ she shrieked, slapping at Iago’s chest with her hands and lurching half-a-metre backwards herself in equal-and-opposite motion. Without looking round, she found a foothold on a guy-wire, and pushed herself back. ‘Don’t insult me, Jack Glass. You know I follow Christ the Hindu.’

  ‘Isn’t that the same fellow?’ It was only at this point that Diana realised Iago was deliberately teasing the old woman.

  ‘That’s tantamount to blasphemious blasphemy,’ cackled Aishwarya. ‘Those Mithras fools don’t even know their history! They think the Romans were democrats! They cite the Roman senate as one of their models . . . as if anybody voted for Roman senators! But they have to do the doublethink they do, because Mithras was originally a Roman god, you know. Christ knew otherwise: he fought the Romans, because they were the Ulanovs of their day. Christ knew that true democracy begins with the democracy of the spirit, and spreads outward in communist apostledom. Christ organises a properly democratic congress of all three hundred and thirty million gods!’

  ‘Very good,’ said Iago. ‘Though they’re the ones having the party.’

  ‘They ought to be more careful,’ was Sapho’s opinion. ‘Worship of Mithras is proscribed.’

  ‘Oh they know it, I know it’ said Aishwarya. ‘Everybody knows it. They think they don’t have to keep it hidden any longer. OHOV is not an illegal chant – only because the Ulanovs don’t know what it means – but the ones shouting “Mithras, Mithras, Mithras” are just getting carried away. Well, we shall have to hope the police are too busy with other things to come and break up this riotous assembly. You expect me to invite you both into my hut?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Iago.

  ‘Well I won’t. I didn’t ask you to come here. You just turned up. What do you want?’

  Diana looked to Iago again, but he was smiling. ‘This is a RACdroid,’ he said.

  ‘I can see it’s a RACdroid,’ barked Aishwarya, slapping him again on his shoulder so hard she knocked him through a quarter turn and he had to reorient himself. ‘You ride on a pale horse, Jack Glass, and death comes with you. Why are you bringing a RACdroid to me? You don’t wish to affirm a contract, I suppose.’

  ‘It may be a rogue,’ said Diana. ‘Its seals seem to be in order – though I’m no expert. But its data is all jumbled.’

  ‘I need to know if its seals are indeed in order,’ said Iago.

  ‘Oho!’ said Aishwarya, who found this last statement oddly hilarious. ‘And you can’t simply take it to the authorities! Oh! Oho!’ She laughed to herself for a while. ‘Well, well, I can have a look. What will you pay?’

  ‘What will you charge?’

  ‘Hundred credits.’

  ‘Eighty.’

  ‘Ninety,’ said the old woman. ‘Tampering with a RACdroid’s a serious offence under the Lex.’

  ‘We’re not asking you to tamper with it – just check its seals.’

  ‘Quibbles! I’m not an authorised RACdroid agent under the law, and you’re asking me to do something illegal.’

  ‘Listen to that chanting,’ Iago observed. ‘They are literally fomenting revolution next door. And you’re worried about performing an illegal RACdroid examination? Eighty credits.’

  ‘Eighty five.’

  ‘Eighty,’ repeated Iago.

  For a brief moment, a demon of fury passed visible across the old woman’s face. ‘May the Mahadeva Jesus Christ rain destruction upon your wicked head, Jack Glass, for cheating an old woman of five credits!’ But an instant later the rage had passed entirely away, and she was smiling again. ‘Eighty it is,’ she said, blithely. ‘Come along then.’

  Aishwarya led them, and the RACdroid, over towards a hut. She disappeared inside, reappearing a moment later with a glove on her right hand. With this she began fondling the device. It observed her with its impassive exhaustless machine patience. ‘Seals seem alright,’ she said. ‘Kosher machine. The real thing. Oh! I see that this RACdroid belongs to the celebrated Bar-le-duc.’

  ‘You know him?’ Diana asked.

  ‘Of course I do! He’s the most famous of the Ulanovs’ senior policemen! Ah but you mean, do I know him personally? And actually, and oddly enough, he was here a few days ago. Nevertheless you should ask your companion. Bar-le-duc is an old friend of yours, isn’t he, Jack Glass? So you have his RACdroid. How is Bar?’

  ‘Dead,’ said Iago.

  The smile went from Aishwarya’s face. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Two days ago. And since you want to know how, I shall tell you. He was cut in half.’

 
‘He was cut in half?’ repeated Aishwarya. When she frowned, as she was now doing, adding wrinkles to wrinkles, her eyes almost entirely disappeared into her head.

  ‘Vaporised. Smashed to atoms. He was shot with an impossible gun.’

  The old woman thought about this. ‘What do you mean, Jack Glass, when you say an impossible gun?’

  ‘A projectile weapon of some kind,’ said Diana. ‘Except that the projectile vanished. Impossibly.’

  ‘Or else the shooter did,’ said Iago. ‘It is fair to say that the circumstances of his death are – mysterious. This is one reason why we need to access the data contained inside this RACdroid. It was there. It was a witness.’

  ‘But – murder?’ breathed Aishwarya.

  ‘Yes, the murder. But something else,’ said Iago. ‘Before Bar-le-duc was killed, he and I agreed a contract. A legally binding contract. That was why he brought the RACdroid along – to affirm it. The contract guaranteed the immunity from prosecution of my companion, Diana here. I’d like to make sure that that contract still holds.’

  ‘Did he have the authority to make such a deal?’ Aishwarya asked, in an amazed voice.

  ‘He had the Ulanovs’ direct authority.’

  ‘Gracious me. Saraswati protect me. And he came here! A week ago! He was floating right where you are! It’s a good job those fools weren’t chanting “Mithras-Mithras” then, since I now see he must have been on the Ulanovs’ official business!’

  ‘Why did he come here?’ Iago asked.

  ‘He was looking for you, Jack Glass.’

  ‘Did you tell him where to find me?’

  ‘I did not! The idea! How would I know? But he found you anyway, I guess.’

  ‘Of all the places in the System to visit,’ said Iago, wrinkle-browed. ‘Of all the gin joints. This one? And then – straight to my house? It’s fishy, you must agree.’

  ‘I must nothing. I suppose he was following the trail. I guess he was visiting your old friends,’ said Aishwarya with a shrug.