Bear Head

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  And of course the ‘Humaniforms’ are us, Sugar and me and everyone else who got fitted out by the Building Mars guys.

  “She ever talk to you ’bout the Southampton Method?” Brian asks. “She talk to you about Axelrod Prisoner Tournaments?”

  “That’s enough,” Sugar decides, and I know she’s turned off the speaker ’cos Honey’s suddenly bitching in my ear about it. “What’s Bees offering me except vague threats, Bri? What’s Bees got that’s more than some rich Earth guy’s big bag of cash? Going to offer me all the kingdoms of Mars, make me Duchess of Olympus Mons? Come on, Bri, what’s your pitch?”

  “Maybe you all be needin’ Bees, when it turns,” Brian says, like he’s some Old Testament prophet striding out of the rust-orange desert. “Bees don’t know just what, yet. Bees still tryin’ to get into Braintree, find out the plan, but she got the shape of it. Bad news for Hell City, Sugar. Bad news and who gon’ stand between you and the end? You gon’ need Bees, and if Bees done call her up, maybe it’s ’cos you gon’ need Honey too. You sell her back to the badmen back home, you got no-one when they come for you. And maybe Bees don’ care enough to save you either. Bees don’ care ’bout so much these days. Bees got big plans, gon’ places she don’t need think about humans. Bees don’t like us very much, man. Not since she did all that work and we turn on her.”

  “That ain’t much of a pitch,” Sugar tells him. The weird thing is, though, she’s doing all the casual act in the world but it’s not quite sticking. Yours Truly sees through it. Sugar’s heard some things, I’ll put hard scrip down on it. Something of what Brian’s telling her is ringing bells, and I think of Honey saying how our headware, that Braintree made for us, is way more than we need, and since when did anyone overspend on working schmoes like us when they didn’t need to.

  “Back when I knew Bees, back in the beginning,” Honey says sweetly in my ear, “her attitude was that killing people was what she was for. I think she’s come along quite a way, don’t you?”

  “You,” I tell her, “are a fucking barrel of laughs.”

  Then Sugar’s standing, just kicking up from her crate throne in one movement, and the two bears are on the move, too. For a moment I think she’s going to set them on Brian, send his head back to Bees as a declaration of war. Brian, by the way, doesn’t goddamn flinch, even though I’m cowering back from all the violence and mauling I’m sure must be about to happen.

  “Posse’s coming,” Sugar says flatly. “Looks like Old Doggo ran out of patience. Or got fresh orders from Admin.”

  “So what?” I realise I haven’t had much to say for a long time. Grown-ups were talking, like she said, and I don’t know jack about any Southampton Method or any crap like that. “You going to sell me to the sheriff now? I don’t reckon you’ve got a chance to make your deal with this Thompson guy.”

  Sugar looks at me like she’s forgotten I was anything other than virtual bear storage. “We’re moving,” she decides. “Murder, take point. Jakob’ll stall them as long as he can.” One of the bears shambles past me, the rivet gun held in both hands, and when I’m not right on her heels Sugar gives me a shove in the chest.

  “You got control of your legs right now, Jimbles? ’Cos I need you using them.”

  I end up scurrying off into the back end of Storage Nineteen, into a warren of crates and stacked cases, empty, full, legit, illegal, who the hell knows. Murder’s just shouldering on ahead of me, Sugar and Brian behind and then Marmalade’s got rearguard, rolling along on four feet like most bears seem more comfortable with even after all the Bioform mods.

  Then there’s shooting and we all stop for a second, until Sugar hisses an order and Murder’s off again. Shooting, and I reckon that probably marks the end of her man Jakob’s ability to stall. Actual firearms activity within Hell City, and the reason we have the Bad News Bears is that you don’t go letting off weapons inside, in case parts of the inside become joined to the outside by inconvenient goddamn holes. And yes, we’re not like the moon men, or like natural Earth people would be, where one little hole means decompressive death or suffocation, but it’s still going to screw with a whole load of the internal machinery that doesn’t have the cold, pressure or dust tolerances of the tough kit we use outside. And also, Sheriff Rufus just shot a guy. Maybe more than one. Just shot an actual member of the Hell City construction crew because of what I’ve got in my head. And suddenly I get a whole horizon of perspective I never wanted. Suddenly it’s not just about me, because I don’t know who the fuck Jakob is but he just died because of Honey and because of Yours Truly Jimmy Marten.

  Then there’s the back door to Storage Nineteen, which is an interesting development because on the plans there is no back door to Storage Nineteen. It’s rimmed with messy weals of melted metal where Sugar’s people cut too big and then had to fill to get a seal round their new hatch, and it’s only just big enough for Murder to squeeze through. Behind us I can hear Rufus shouting, and for a moment he’s in my ear, on my radio channel, midway through a threat I never hear the end of. Sugar’s jamming comms, jamming tracking, putting her makeshift systems to the test to screw any attempt to pin us down. Probably she’s just brought down the network for Storage Three through Thirty to cover for us. Sugar’s the sort of person who goes big on contingency plans.

  Then there’s shooting ahead, too, and the bing-bing-bing of the rivet gun, and Murder bellows. I stop, but Sugar shoves me through anyway, and Murder almost treads on me as I roll out. She’s fighting – I see Albedo, the fat-cat Bioform who’s Rufus’s second, and behind her there’s a badger model, also badged up as part of the posse, holding a big calibre pistol and trying to get a good shot. Murder’s living up to her fucking name, though, and though Albedo’s doing her best there is red blood and white fur everywhere.

  “Go!” Sugar tells me, and I don’t need another reminder. I leg it, and at every turn she’s yanking me one way or another, back-seat driving the escape plan without ever telling me actually where we’re heading. And then we’re at a hatch I know is one of the old exterior locks, from Stage Two Construction way back.

  “Out,” she says.

  I turn to look at her. “What… like, outside out?”

  “What, your mods fell out while we were running?”

  “This is your plan?” I demand.

  Sugar’s face is like iron. There’s no give in it. “Out, Jimbles, or I’ll have Marmalade tear your arms and legs off to make you easier to carry. You have to fucking go and going out there is literally your fucking job and so what is the fucking problem?”

  “We can’t just run… Sugar, we can’t stay out there forever. It doesn’t work like that. Maybe we can…”

  “Murder’s down,” Sugar tells me. “They are coming for us. And I will kill you and that thing in your head before they kill me, because they want it and they have fucked with me. Rufus just shot Murder, right this moment, Jimbles. And you and I are going out for a walk. Because there is nowhere inside Hell City we can get away from Rufus.”

  13

  SPRINGER

  The next day Carole had to go meet a media producer, talk through a biopic proposal. Warner S. Thompson hadn’t even won a seat at the World Senate yet, and half the world was saying he was too much of a loose cannon to ever do so, but he made himself the subject of the dialogue, he set the agenda. He was the man people wanted to talk about. On that metric he was already the winner.

  She went to the meeting with a weight in her mind. This was routine stuff. She should breeze through it and then be back with Thompson for his fundraiser dinner, a hundred darlings of the Collaring lobby paying through the nose into his campaign chest just so they could be in the same room as him. And he’d press the flesh and gift them with his smile and fill the room with his unbounded confidence. And then he’d end up in the hotel room staring at the wall, staring at the screen. Or he’d want to find a game, or have her find a girl. Or have her.

  Or he’d do the other thing. He was in New
York another two days, but Carole could feel the need building in him, and he was never a man to let needs go unanswered. The thought was a weight in her mind. The weight was an image of a bear, a grey old sagging bear, sitting down there against the stained concrete walls of the Shambles. Honey wouldn’t leave her alone.

  She’d thought she was meeting with a man called Brock Hustedter, but when she got to the Live With US offices a woman met her, bright and pert and dressed in something like a mirror to Carole’s own skirt suit, red instead of blue and tailored the opposite side. As though they were mirror universe versions of each other, or opposite numbers in some team computer game.

  “Jennifer Wiley, hi, how are you.”

  “Where’s Hustedter?” Carole asked.

  “Oh, ah.” A moment of awkwardness. “He’s… off the project. Sorry, did they not tell you? I’ll do just as good a job, you can be sure. I’m just dying for the chance to work with Mr Thompson. He’s such an iconic figure of the modern age, you know?”

  They sat in the senior employee lounge, which Wiley greeted with such glee Carole reckoned she wasn’t allowed in there most of the time. They had it to themselves, and Carole made sure there wasn’t any pre-emptive recording going on. Wiley didn’t strike her as someone who’d pull that kind of trick, though. She was so enthusiastic. Carole was already listing her reservations. She’d go through with the meeting, get an idea of what the project was about, whether it would play nicely with the other fragments of image that Thompson’s campaign was weaving around him to fill out the gaps in his personality. But she looked at Jennifer Wiley and reckoned that they’d go up a few rungs at Live With US and ask for someone else to helm the project. Get Hustedter back, or else get some other elder statesman who could sit with Thompson over a drink and laugh and shake the man’s hand, play a round of golf, exchange anecdotes, boys with boys. That was the sort of social scenario Thompson was safest in. Not this beaming young woman with her tight waist and two buttons of her blouse open, just like Carole herself because that was the way Thompson liked it. Not her, because that was the way Thompson liked it. Just the same way he liked them young and enthusiastic and so very keen to work with him.

  You don’t want to work with him. The thought shocked her, was fought down immediately with stabs of guilt and reproach. Disloyal! How dare you! But she did not think Jennifer Wiley should be allowed to interview Thompson, to spend time with him, go back to the bar after, go to his room. All things that might happen once Thompson took a shine to her. All things that would happen the moment he decided they should, just the same way the world always bent about him like light around gravity.

  And yet Wiley was still chattering on, now introducing Carole to her assistant, now recounting some sparkling story about when she worked with some film star, some musician. Carole nodded, laughed along. Even appreciated the glittery little façade the woman had made for herself, that gave her enough hard and slanted edges to burrow into the harsh, competitive world that Brock Hustedter hadn’t managed to navigate. For a moment she wondered. Sudden replacements discovered on the day could mean all sorts of trouble. Thompson had enemies after all. But they were also very much the order of the day in an industry where the tides of favour went in and out to the pull of far too many moons. And probably Wiley had already had to orbit a few of those moons more closely than she’d wanted, to get where she was. Probably ending up underneath Thompson’s rutting, grunting body wouldn’t be overly novel for her. But Thompson wasn’t like other people, not inside his head. It was Carole’s job to make sure the world didn’t see that, only saw the masks he put up to fool them. Better not to let a bright young thing like Jennifer Wiley have a chance to see the real face. And besides.

  And besides.

  Carole stared into that earnest, animated face and thought about last night, when Thompson had been flush with glee at having Honey locked up in the Shambles and nobody the wiser. He’d wanted an outlet for all that satisfaction. She’d been his outlet. She’d been there for him like a good PA. Knelt before him, then zipped him up after and wiped the smile back onto her face. And now she sat and laughed with Wiley and in her head the words Get off me get off me get off marched round and round the edge of the concrete pit, and down below the bear stared mournfully up at her, the bear with a woman’s voice, with the university education, the media career and the long history of good causes. And right now nobody knew where she was except Thompson’s people, and Carole was just waiting for Scout and some other discrete parties to confirm that nobody was sniffing about.

  “We’ll want some other perspectives, of course. Views on the great man from people who knew him on the way up,” Wiley was saying happily, coming back to their little table with more coffee, with a tiny plate of tinier cookies that would lie untouched between them. “Could always see he was touched with greatness, some human interest piece from before anyone had heard of him, just little touches to round him out in the minds of the viewer.”

  Carole nodded, because they’d been through this before for other interviews, for other studios. There weren’t any such people. No elements of human interest, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t make them up from whole cloth. The trick was that you had to get Thompson interviewed first, let him engage in the sort of piledriving conversation that passed for raconteurship with him; let him tell, with utter conviction, anecdotes that were nothing but the shimmering web he wove around his past. A camouflage, refracting light from him until to the casual observer there was something there that looked not just human but more human than human, a colossus, possessing all the virtues the viewer might want to see. Then Carole would bring in one of their regular actors who’d take the noncommittal details Thompson had given and perjure themselves, become witness to the invisible, mock up some foundations to the man’s cloud castle.

  “And there’s you, of course,” Wiley said.

  Carole froze. There must have been a second in which Wiley saw it, the complete, terrified paralysis. It was covered a moment later, the regular smile being trotted out, the just-one-woman-to-another shake of the head, demurring, little laugh to show how silly the idea was. “Oh no, nobody’s interested in me. I’m just a PA.”

  “But you must spend more time with Mr Thompson than just about anyone,” Wiley pointed out earnestly. “You get to see how it all works, see the great man when he’s vulnerable, human. You go with him everywhere.”

  “Well I really don’t.” Smile, little laugh, fighting back the spikes of panic. “I mean, I’m here and he’s not, for example. I just make arrangements. Obviously it keeps me busy, what with the trajectory of his career right about now, but it’s nothing anyone would be interested in.”

  “You sell yourself short, Carole.” Wiley leant forwards, touching Carole’s hand with an odd shock of contact, suddenly intimate. “I know you’ve been working for the man during his, frankly, meteoric rise. Back when you first started, who’d have taken Warner S. Thompson in politics seriously? And now he’s the man everyone in the world’s talking about, love him or hate him.”

  “It’s all his doing,” Carole said firmly, almost desperately. Thompson would not brook anyone taking credit for him. And he was right to, she knew. He was his own architect. Oh, other people actually made things happen – her, Felorian, his succession of campaign managers briefly held to the light and then discarded – but they were all just organs of the central mass that was Thompson.

  “We think it would give a very relatable perspective,” Wiley chattered on, looking straight into her eyes now, almost hypnotic. “The woman who paves the way for greatness. We could do some soundbites with you, maybe a little reminiscence about when things weren’t going so well, about how the team pulled together. I think a lot of our audience would really want to know what it’s like to be so close to a man like Thompson. About the demands he makes of you, up all hours, day and night. He’s such a powerful man. It must be hard to find time for yourself. It must be hard to say no.”

  Caro
le tried to say something, tried to keep that sunny smile on, tried to politely remove her hand from the light touch of the other woman’s, but no words came out. There was a sound. Although it came from her throat, most of her couldn’t imagine why or even how she had made that sound. It was like she’d heard a cat make once, that was terrified of something. She almost felt her ears folding back, as though she was about to hiss at Jennifer Wiley in threat.

  “It is, isn’t it,” and Wiley’s cheery all-girls-together manner was just gone, the all-girls-together that was left given an entirely different character. “Hard to say no. I’m right, aren’t I? Because he trusts you implicitly. Because you’ve been there for everything, for years.” Wiley’s fingers like a nail pinning her hand to the table, for all the pressure was a feather’s. “And he wouldn’t take no for an answer anyway, I imagine, but with you he wanted to be sure. Was that what happened at Braintree?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And right about now Carole should be standing, making her apologies, just storming away; blacklisting Wiley, the whole of Live With US; never work in this town, this country, this world again. But the words had locked her in and she was thinking about saying no, saying no to Thompson. That terrifying, unthinkable thing. Of course she couldn’t say no. And the daylight part of her mind was telling her that of course she’d never want to say no, not with how devoted she was to the man, a slightly hysterical thread of internal monologue as brittle and cheery as Wiley’s patter had been just moments before. And beneath that, some part of her bucked and fought and cried out, Please, no, and knew that ‘no’ was the one thing Thompson never took as an answer.

  “They never want us to have a choice,” Wiley said quietly. “Because the thing they’re most terrified of in all the world is that we might say no. No, you’re not so great. No, we don’t want you to put that in us, not now, not yours, not ever. No, we don’t want to get through life in your pocket, with no pockets of our own. And if you say no to a man like Thompson, if nobody ever said yes to him, what would be left?”