by Adam Roberts
‘Of course. By then I was in prison, burrowing rooms out of the rock of Lamy306. And all the time I was thinking precisely that: they would soon discover that Chag was an imposter. Then their next move would be to go through the other 889 prisoners they had seized in God’s P. They wouldn’t need to hurry it – for after all, we weren’t going anywhere. But neither would they stint. The Gongsi has records of every rock to which that batch of prisoners had been distributed; and eventually they would get round to my one. Once they took me it was all over. They would have me, and then they would have applied irresistible pressures to my mind, and the story of humanity would enter its closing straight. I had to get out.’
‘Joad mentioned it, that time on Korkura,’ said Diana, in a low voice. ‘The breakout that so baffled the authorities.’
‘That’s what she was talking about. I worked as quickly as I could, but it took time. And eventually I had to kill my fellow prisoners, in order to be able to make good my escape. I wasn’t happy about it.’
‘Six men. You killed them all?’
‘No,’ he said, a little too quickly. Then: ‘Some of them were already dead. There was . . . fighting within the little group. Some of them killed some others of them. But afterwards I killed the remainder. I took no pleasure in it. I did it only because it was perfectly unavoidable. If I had stayed, if I had decided just to serve out my sentence, then the Ulanovs would have got hold of me. And then things would have gone very badly for the whole human species.’
‘Because you had the gun?’
‘I didn’t have it about my person, not then. But I knew where it was cached. And they would have got that information out of me.’
‘But, wait a minute,’ she said. Her brain was lining up all the elements in the story, and snagging on those that didn’t fit. ‘When Bar-le-duc caught up with you again, in your own dome, you were willing to go along with him. The danger was the same: it was worse, because you had the actual gun about your person. The danger for the entire species. Wouldn’t you destroy yourself rather than fall into his hands?’
In all the years Diana had known Iago she had never seen him do what he did next. He blushed. His cheeks darkened, red, and his eyeline moved away from her. ‘That was different,’ he said.
‘Different.’
‘As I told Aishwarya, fighting him would have meant not only killing me; but killing you too.’
‘So? What do you mean, different? How was it different? You killed those other men in prison quick enough. The future of the whole species was at stake, you say! So, how was it any less at stake when Bar-le-duc pitched up at your house? How could your individual life, or mine, or Sapho’s possibly weigh in the balance against that outcome?’
‘The agreement I made with Bar-le-duc was the contract recorded in that RACdroid. That guarantees your safety. That was paramount.’
‘Goddess, why? Why was that worth giving yourself up for?’ she pressed. ‘Are you saying that stupid contract was worth putting the entire System at risk? The lives of trillions?’
He made as if to speak, but swallowed the words. Then he ran the palm of his hand over his bristly hair, and closed his eyes. Finally he said: ‘yes.’
‘Have you lost your mind? The entire population of humanity – the whole System? Trillions of lives, in exchange for my safety?’
Iago said: ‘because I love you.’
It made her feel angry to hear him say this. She wanted to counter immediately with ‘don’t be absurd’ or ‘idiot!’ or something of that nature. But looking at him she found she couldn’t simply rebuke him. A sword was sheathed, suddenly, in her heart; but it was pity, not love. Oh, it was uncomfortable, and acute, and worst of all unfitting. She thought to herself: I’m only sixteen! He’s a generation older than me. He’s the one who ought to know better, not me. And in an attempt to move the exchange into less emotionally dangerous territory, but knowing as she did so that it would make no difference, she said: ‘your loyalty to my family is a commendable thing, Iago. But nonetheless—’
‘It has nothing to do with loyalty.’
‘Don’t be foolish,’ she chided, vaguely.
‘It’s you,’ he said. ‘I love you.’
‘You told me you don’t even have any CRFs in your system. You told me my MOHmies didn’t dose you with them, because they needed your initiative and trusted your loyalty without them and all that.’
‘All that is true. When I say I love you, it’s – you know. My self speaking.’
She looked at him. Politeness doubtless called for a neutral expression, but the horrible thrill of revulsion went through her, and her features creased. She composed herself, with some difficulty. ‘Well,’ she said, shortly. ‘Don’t.’
A sad kind of smile broke across his face. ‘It’s not a matter of my volition I’m afraid.’
‘Now,’ she scolded him, ‘you know that I can’t feel that way about you – don’t you? I never could. It’s not just the fact that you’re male. It’s not just the age difference – if I’m honest, both those things play a part. But I don’t want you to think the impediments to, uh, us are, uh, details like that. Fond of you though I am, there is no marriage of true minds between you and I.’
‘I know,’ he said, simply. ‘It’s a love without hope. But love is not a fire that needs the oxygen of hope to burn. It is a different sort of combustion altogether. I can’t extinguish the way I feel about you.’
Diana opened her mouth and closed it again. This was a problem of a different kind altogether. She tried to consult her feelings on the matter, but discovered she didn’t know what she felt. Something occurred to her: ‘Is it a sexual thing?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Oh, it is not.’
‘You’re bound to say that,’ she said. But looking at him, she saw he was genuine. And since sex played, as yet, so minimal a part in her life, she was quite prepared to believe that it wasn’t quite the big human deal a person might think, from observing art and accessing gossip. But ‘sex’ at least would enable her to categorise the nature of Iago’s feelings for her. Without that, perhaps counter-intuitively, his feelings for her became more unsettling, not less. So she said again; ‘you’re bound to say that, aren’t you?’
He wasn’t looking at her. He was blushing. She had seen him blush before.
‘Why? Is it because of my position?’
‘You are you,’ he said. ‘That’s why. Not that you’re clever, and beautiful, though you are: because lots of people are that. But only you are you.’
‘I think perhaps you need to read up on Modulated Ova Haptide technology,’ she said. But she knew, herself, that this was no answer. ‘Jack,’ she said, because using his real name struck her as the right thing to do at a moment like this (although as she did so she found herself thinking: how do I know whether even that is his real name?). ‘You’ve explained yourself concisely, and I think I understand. So you’ll let me reply concisely too, won’t you?’
‘Your concision is, no, I think,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘I mean no.’ His blush deepened, and after a moment, it faded a little. ‘Goddess, I don’t know what I mean.’
‘I understand,’ he said.
After that Jack Glass slept. He was still recuperating: his wounds were not trivial, and the residue of the nerve toxin made him continually tired.
Diana thought about what he said. Of course she did. She left him, and went off to play Go with the ship AI. Four matches told her that with an eight-stone advantage she could always beat the machine, but with seven or fewer the machine won.
Eventually the4 arrived at a long string of bubbles called Judasalem, where Iago claimed to have reliable friends. They finally took their leave from the good doctor herself. Sapho made enquiries, and rented a house for the three of them – a simple limpet property, against the wall of the third bubble. Iago, who had paid the doctor her fee, also put up the money for this rental.
That evening, they ate at a restaurant: fish
, grown, the owner boasted, in Judasalem’s own aquarium. Sapho did not stay long; she was still feeling the coldturkey effects of the removal of her dosage, and went back to the house to sleep. But Diana felt her whole mood lifting. It had been so long since she had encountered anything so evidently civilised, so dependent upon at least a modicum of law and order, that Diana felt a wash of painful nostalgia for the way her life had been before.
Iago looked sad, though. She knew that things between them had changed in an irrevocable way.
They ate with their knees tucked under a bar. The fish was served wrapped in leaves, and accompanied by globes of hashwine. Their view was of the wide inward curving wall of the bubble, patched over variously with green vegetation and blue habitations.
She asked him: ‘What is it like?’ she asked. ‘Killing people?’
‘What a question!’ he replied, obviously startled.
‘I mean it genuinely. I feel like the outsider here. Sapho killed someone, and you have killed someone. Or many someones.’
Iago thought for a while before answering. ‘It is not pleasurable,’ he said. ‘There is a part of me, as there is of many people, capable of doing it. But I keep that part locked away inside me. It feels like there’s a – box. A box, inside me.’
‘And inside the box?’
He looked at her. ‘Combustion,’ he said. ‘You’re going to tell me we must separate, aren’t you.’
The directness of this startled her; but she maintained her composure. Her question to him had been an attempt to startle him, after all. ‘Why?’ she stuttered. ‘Why do you say that?’ But immediately she decided there was no point in fencing with him. ‘No, you’re right. I have been thinking. I have been thinking that.’
‘Because?’
‘Oh, Iago,’ she said, feeling tears somewhere inside her, ready-to-hand, prepared to emerge. But she held them back. ‘After what you told me, on Doctor Zinovieff’s ship? I’m very fond of you.’
‘That’s a degree towards love,’ he pointed out.
‘Perhaps it is! I suppose it is. We do have a . . . bond, I suppose, you could say. I owe you a great deal. But you and I could never – just, never – oh, dear Iago! Even if we were young, how could we?’
‘Even if we were young, how could we,’ he repeated, in a neutral voice. ‘The conditional again. You’re fond of the conditional tense.’ He sighed. ‘Ah well, my darling,’ he said, lifting the globe of hashwine. ‘I will do as you think best.’ To hear herself called darling was like a mild electrical shock. It was impossible to say whether it was a pleasant or an unpleasant experience. ‘Where will you go, though?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Sapho will come with me, of course. I suppose,’ she said, the thought just occurring to her, ‘that I will need money.’
‘I can help you with that,’ said Iago.
‘I will go find my parents, I think,’ said Diana, staring past Iago to the green motley of the sphere’s far wall. ‘They have hidden themselves away, true, and it won’t be easy to find them. But what is that, except a problem to be solved? And what am I, if not good at solving problems? I may also go visit Anna Tonks Yu, in the flesh. Why not?’
Iago looked away. It was not possible to see, from where Diana was sitting, whether his eyes were brimming, or not. ‘All this would break my heart,’ he said, in a level voice. ‘If I had a heart.’
‘Don’t be like that, Iago. The mouth can say never, and the rational mind can predict it. But never isn’t part of the heart’s vocabulary.’
He brightened at this, a little: nodded, and even smiled. But he didn’t meet her gaze. ‘There’s a bigger problem to solve than the location of your parents, I think,’ he said, shortly. ‘That’s the problem of the system as a whole. Revolution. Historically, I suppose revolution has been driven by despair, when a people have nowhere lower to sink and nothing to lose. But ghunk, and living space have made it harder to fall so low. The problem is: how can we make people make things better for themselves?’
‘Hope,’ she said.
‘Exactly,’ said Iago. ‘Of course I am aware of the dangers. It is an understatement to say: the stakes are high. If the FTL pistol had fallen into Ulanov hands – or into the hands of your MOHsister – or any other faction, it could easily have been a disaster, and on the largest scale. Maybe it would have been more politic simply to destroy the device. But I didn’t do that. I didn’t, because it represents the seed of hope – that people might be able to leave this System altogether, and go whither they choose.’
‘Freedom,’ said Diana. They sipped their globes for a while, and Diana felt simultaneously excited and mournful, a kind of painful thrill at the open-ended nature of her future. Very grown up. Very much so. ‘And if we’re to spread hope around the entire solar system,’ she added. ‘Then we can certainly spare a little hope for you. Don’t you think?’
He smiled again, but again didn’t meet her eyes. ‘That would be nice.’
‘You say you have no heart,’ she added, feeling her way with her words. ‘But I don’t believe you. You have a great heart. You’re resourceful, and clever, and you have brought me life. That’s probably a cause of hope. Wouldn’t you say?’
‘Wouldn’t I say?’ Jack repeated. ‘It’s one of the better conditionals, that wouldn’t.’
They sat in silence for a while.
‘You understand,’ she asked, shortly, ‘why I have to go off?’
‘I accept it,’ replied Iago, still not looking at her. ‘Which is better.’
Coda
Sapho, however, refused to go with Diana Argent. Diana was surprised at this, but she ought not to have been. Sapho – or I should say, I (for I have been the doctorwatson here, as perhaps you have already guessed) – preferred to stay with Jack Glass, as his companion and amanuensis. He and I have things in common; and the more the CRF diminishes, unreplenished, in my bloodstream the less I experience that debilitating intensity of doggish loyalty to her and her family. This is not to say that I wished her ill. On the contrary. I helped Jack do what he could to prepare her for her journeys: we hired a bodyguard – an essential thing, of course – and rented space in a trading sloop. She went, finally, taking the RACdroid with her (for surety, Jack said); and I wept a little at her departure, and so did she, and only Jack did not, though I think he wished he could. But I have made my choice, now, which is to stay by his side. To listen to his account of his time, and his varied experiences. To tell his story.
To tell his story to you.
Jack Glass Glossary
Antinomians Umbrella term for the various groups opposed to the Lex Ulanova, or Ulanov law.
bId The Biolink iData point of connection with larger reservoirs of AI datapools.
Bovrilcohol Delicious meat-based alcoholic beverage.
Bubbles Orbital habitats, of varying size and degrees of luxury. Fashioned from a silicate-carbonchain weave (raw materials mined from asteroids or moons, augmented with long-string molecules derived from gen-engineered algae grown by many orbital Facs) in very large numbers, there are hundreds of millions of these simple transparent or semi-transparent globes orbiting the sun.
Corticotopia A widespread affiliation of drug-adapted ‘mind citizens’. Members of this idealistic community put little store by their physical location, believing instead that true human social harmony can only be achieved by a particular regimen of brain alteration. The specific nature of this regimen is disputed amongst different Corticotopian sects.
CRF Corticotropin Releasing Factor. A modified pharmakon dispensed by some organisations to their staff to guarantee loyalty. It is most effective in cases where loyalty is particularised on a single family or (best of all) individual; although even in small doses the drug reduces initiative and independent motivation.
Gongsi Any commercial organisation, corporation or company of sufficient size and wealth, often monopolistic in nature. Any trading or manufacturing company might be called a ‘Gongsi’ depending on the scale
of its operations. See also: Merchant Houses.
IP ‘Ideal Palace’; a data-generated simulacrum or worldtual, inside which a user may model equations, experiments, discourses, games or anything else that takes her fancy. What distinguishes an IP from other worldtuals is that it is a sealed-away and secure environment, accessibly only to the one user.
Lex Ulanova After the Three Wars, the Ulanovs established their dominance over the entire System, reinforced by the establishment of a new overarching legal code, the Ulanov Law or Lex Ulanova. This superseded the hundred or so local codes, and was markedly stricter than most of them: enforcing the Lex, and punishing delinquents, became a major industry, and many of the third-tier organisations owe their prominence to its existence.
Merchant Houses. A strategic alliance of managerial MOH-individuals and Gongsi trading corporations. Originally the Ulanovs were themselves a Merchant House; but after the Merchant Wars, and their seizure of control, they broke up the old structures into constituent parts.
MOH The technology of Modulated Ova Haptide genetic manipulation.
Plasmaser Elevators A system of ground-to-space (or space-to-ground) mass transport. Elevator cars descend, buoyed on a semi-coherent column of laser-focused plasma; the downward force of this pools the material in the system’s groundstation, and in turn is used to push up a counterweight car to orbit. More efficient and much cheaper to set-up than conventional space elevators, and much more so than ballistic orbital or re-entry systems.
Police The structures of System policing are complicated: police functions overlap largely with military and contract enforcement; and several largely independent forces – all notionally enforcing the Lex Ulanova – in practice compete with one another. Broadly, ‘police’ describes forces operating in space generally; ‘policiers’ (originally a belittling diminutive) operate on planets, ‘militia’, as a term, covers a wide range of armed officers.