Bear Head

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Daniel Boyd stands up, only it isn’t him. It still isn’t him, it’s just a different puppeteer. I see Sugar twitch. She has the gun and she’s obviously fighting an impulse to point it at Boyd’s face, to hold him to ransom to threaten Honey, however useless that would be.

  “All of them?” I echo, and Honey nods Boyd’s head and heads off away from the nooks, the two of us trailing behind.

  “I’ve erased Thompson from the system, and from everyone in the city,” she tells me over Boyd’s shoulder. “The only Thompson left is on Earth and, I sincerely hope, in some form of cell right about now, and for the rest of his natural life.” And out into a thoroughfare where there are more than a dozen other people just standing there. “Unless he gets justice in his own constituency, in which case I think they still have an option for the gas chamber,” Honey finishes, and turns to face us, just as the rest of them are facing us. All of them just the same, standing tall and slump-shouldered like bears, heads slightly forward. Same weird failed expression on every face.

  “I’m now patching the citywide headware to make sure nobody else tries this particular trick,” she says. “No more invasions on my watch. After which Bees will open up communications with Earth.”

  And Sugar and I just stare at her because it sounds like there’s only going to be one voice speaking to Earth for Hell City, and that voice will be the United State of Bear.

  26

  HONEY

  And I understand Bees now. Just a bit. When she turned away from the rest of the world because what she had was better. What she had was so broad and complete that it was a world in itself, and only the wider universe really held significance. Not the doings of hominids and hominid-created intelligences on the next planet in, the planet of her birth.

  *

  And I understand Thompson. Just a bit. When he shackled himself to himself, a pyramid of feudal authority so that he knew he would truly be in control of it all, and that ‘all of it’ would always only be just him, over and over.

  *

  And I put him out, pinched the last instance of him like a candle flame, preventing the forest fire he’d tried to turn himself into. And now I’m left in the echo of my deeds, in the driving seat of every human being on Mars bar Jimmy and Sugar and the handful that Bees sequestered as her AdApts, as she calls them. Thompson is gone. There’s just me. All of me. A monstrous regiment of bears. And I have done such things. I have broken every rule I ever swore to live by, because it was the only way to win. I made the choice, in the end, that the ends would justify the means. And that just gives me a worse choice, because what, precisely, do I do with it all now I’ve won?

  *

  I, singular, or I plural? More than an ‘I’, less than a ‘we’. I’ve become a Distributed Intelligence by right of conquest, and at a scale poor fugitive HumOS couldn’t dream of. I am beside myself, amidst myself, surrounded by myself. And I could do such things. Let’s get the easy quandaries out of the way first. I could turn this might, physical, intellectual, political, back on Earth. I could make demands. I am Mars, right now. I have the means to secure the planet, to build a red Utopia. And they say everyone’s Utopia is someone else’s dystopia and that would certainly be the case here, but then I would be the sole inhabitant. Or at least I would get all the votes. And I suppose I could probably transmit myself to Earth, turn the data of my mind into a cyber-attack, take over unattended headware and hardware, computers, robots. I have a lot of brainpower right now. I reckon I could crack quite a few secure systems. Maybe I’d end up with some nuclear weapons, bound to be a few lying around in a less than secure bunker somewhere. I could hold the world to ransom, proper supervillain style, demand liberty and equality at the cost of any chance at fraternity. I could do such things, what they are I yet know not, but they would be the terror of the Earth. And those words work best when you remember the old man who says them goes stark staring mad on a moor two acts later. So let’s not turn our many thoughts that way. I take a straw poll of me and I’m against it.

  *

  But still.

  Haven’t you ever wanted to accomplish great things, except time and the general obstinacy of the world catches up to you time and again, until there isn’t either time or again, and you’re just staring down the barrel of a gun. I wasn’t ready. I’m owed more life. I had such plans for the world. And I’m a good bear, and they were good plans, and the world would have been a better place if only I’d been able to put them into action. Selfish, greedy men, bigoted men, ignorant and narrow-minded men, they stopped me. Surely I’m owed a chance to readjust the scales? It wasn’t for myself, or only for me insofar as I was a member of an oppressed minority whose general lot I was trying to better.

  I could do such things.

  What they are I yet know not, but they would be.

  The terror of the Earth.

  And all the while, in the seconds it takes me to consider these many matters of import, there are thousands of screaming minds trapped within mine, held under the surface, severed from their bodies. And I can say that Thompson did it. That, like a rich man’s distant nephew, I only inherited the plantation. It wasn’t me who put them all in chains. And I am sufficiently qualified to teach moral philosophy to know that kind of logic doesn’t wash, for all the world sees it every day.

  Bees’ channel: Well? From across the other side of the planet, her query bouncing off the satellites she put into darkness to stop Thompson’s mind beaming itself into space, or beaming more copies of itself from Earth. The satellites that very nearly ended it one way or another anyway, because humans are more devious and crooked than I give them credit for.

  Well?

  Dragon used to send a sound, back when we were soldiers, to indicate he didn’t agree or understand, but didn’t want to lower himself to human words. I send that to Bees now. Perhaps I want her to tell me what to do, but she won’t. So long as I don’t interfere with her plans she’ll leave me alone in turn. Bees has decided she doesn’t care about others any more. I spent a life caring about others and ended up getting shot through the eye for my pains. I can sympathise. I can even envy her.

  My channel: I can’t keep this. Envy, but not emulate. I never wanted to be a Distributed Intelligence. HumOS even suggested it to me once. I said no then. And it’s harder now, but I still say no.

  Bees considers as the signals ricochet back and forth. I note you haven’t started deleting your spare duplicates.

  My channel: That’s because there aren’t any spare duplicates. That suggests a hierarchy. That was Thompson’s thing. I just trusted myself. My selves. All of me are equal. The fact that this one is older by virtue of being in Jimmy’s head isn’t a meaningful distinction. We are all me. I can’t exactly turn to all the others and tell them to delete themselves. And so we eye each other, me and my selves.

  Bees’ channel: I can upload you.

  My channel: But which me? We are all me. You can’t store us all, surely.

  Bees’ channel: Correct. I have myself and my AdApts to store. Limited space in the beehive. Pick one. Pick a random Honey.

  But I can’t. The moment I turn to the crew and tell them there’s one space in the lifeboat… mutiny. A house divided against itself. I must ask HumOS how she doesn’t just fragment. Except I’ll never get the chance. So, if I make this decision, we all make it. No exceptions, no seniority, no special treatment. And this is the real prisoner’s dilemma, because I have to trust myself, all my selves. Anyone turning coat right now would win the world. I have to trust that I will do the right thing.

  My channel: Bees, you were born to this. HumOS was born to this. I’ve had it thrust upon me. I was never meant to be just a virtual person. I died, Bees. I died on Earth. I’ve been luckier than most, with what I’ve managed to achieve post mortem. But I was an old bear, and then I was a dead bear. And what I am now isn’t Honey, even though it thinks it is. And if I leave matters any longer I will lose my resolution. I will do such things… />
  The terrors of the Earth. And I will save the Earth this one time more. I will save the Earth from a plague of bears. I will save it from me.

  I fix the vulnerability in everyone’s headware. It takes one more second, all of me working simultaneously in every head. I fix Sugar too, the one vulnerable head I’m not in. She doesn’t notice.

  I send a message to HumOS, saying goodbye. I ask Bees to give her the details, because she needs to know how it ended. I could compile the report myself, but I am deathly afraid of changing my mind during the writing, of deciding that I would be better off staying around. Except even if I surrendered control and just sat in the back of everyone’s heads like a toad, I’d still be me. I could never leave well enough alone. They’d still be slaves the moment they did something I didn’t approve of. It’d be poor Jimmy and his drugs all over again.

  And speaking of Jimmy, I say goodbye. He doesn’t understand, but I say it anyway, and then, before I can think up a whole extra list of farewells and final bequests and other procrastinating nonsense, I let go.

  27

  SPRINGER

  She spent all morning waiting for someone to come talk to her, here in this comfortable cell they’d found for her, the people Wiley had put her in touch with, the people from the World Senate Court. And how did Jennifer Wiley have that kind of a contacts book? Except somehow Carole had known she would have, and that of all the people in the world she could call, only Wiley was guaranteed free of Thompson’s influence.

  And it was not a cell they’d consigned her to, not really, but they’d said she couldn’t leave. She was the key witness, after all. All for her own protection. She had three spacious rooms high up in a tower here in New York. She had all the entertainment media she wanted but no calls out. Not even to her own lawyers, who were in any case Thompson’s lawyers, and absolutely weren’t supposed to talk to her. But when the chime went and someone did turn up, that was who she expected. The lawyers with their tablets of legal language there to explain to her all the genteel threats and bribes she was so used to, that she had authorised on so many other people. For her job. For her employer. And she understood, now that she could, that she had never had a choice about doing those things, nor even a choice about wanting to do those things. But, at the same time, she thought about the woman she had been, when she’d applied to work on Thompson’s team. Jennifer Wiley had said that Carole probably hadn’t been a good person. Carole couldn’t say, if she’d been left with the choice, whether she’d have backed off from doing most of the things she’d done. Her mind was still tangled up in memories of being loyal, of loving Thompson even as she hated him. Even though they’d taken the Collar from her throat she could still feel it there.

  And what was the point of all her testimony, of her turning on her master and biting his hand, if it didn’t make her free of him?

  But no: not Thompson’s legal team come to beat her down with words, not even the World Senate people to take testimony. Instead, alone at the door, was Jennifer Wiley.

  “No,” said Carole, trying to close it. “No interviews. No.”

  But Wiley was in the arc of the door already, weirdly nimble, stepping into Carole’s personal space so that she fell back. Then the woman was inside the apartment, door closing at her heels, smiling disconcertingly.

  “I’m not here for an interview, Ms Springer. Carole.” That smile didn’t belong to an aspiring biopic producer here for a scoop. For a dreadful moment Carole thought the woman literally wasn’t herself, that she’d been taken over just like Thompson had done with the prisoners at Braintree. But the smile she saw did fit the other Jennifer Wiley; the one who’d said such strange things at the end of their meeting at the Live With US offices; the one who’d given her the brooch.

  The bee brooch. The whole domino chain of events falling into place now, that had just been scattered shards of memory, kept nonsensical and out of sequence by all the barriers they’d put up in Carole’s head. She felt that only now, standing here with this woman, did she see all of it at once. She felt as though she didn’t know herself, a stranger in her own head.

  She turned a glower on Wiley. She wanted to explode, to say that the woman had wrecked everything. For a brief moment she wanted to be back in the Collar where she wasn’t allowed to doubt, and where she wasn’t responsible for anything. But she didn’t explode. That had never been a privilege accorded to her and, now she might have done, she was out of practice. She controlled herself. She put on her professional smile. “Well, if you’re not here for an interview, Miss Wiley…?” Pretending confusion. As though she hadn’t worked out who this woman was, or was a part of. She made to step into the next room but Wiley didn’t move with her, as though she’d glued her feet down the moment she was inside.

  “One moment,” the woman said. She’d put her earnest biopic producer’s smile back on, and Carole wondered if that part of her was actually real, as well as the other thing, the bigger thing. And of course she could never ask, could never give away that she knew, couldn’t…

  “What’s it like?” The words out of her mouth, just as though she was free to say whatever she wanted. “Being a part of it.” Couldn’t quite say ‘HumOS’ even though she knew, even though she’d fought against the human collective on her former employer’s behalf. Even though the Trigger Dogs had killed one of this woman’s sisters in Aslan’s offices without a moment’s hesitation.

  Wiley’s smile didn’t go away, just became a very different smile, less young, more wise. “I sometimes wish,” she said, quietly enough that Carole had to lean in, “that I wasn’t born into this family. It’s hard, Carole. To know what I know. To share so much and still be me. Easier to just be on your own. Or easier to give up yourself and be no more than a limb, an organ of the whole. But easy isn’t better. It’s like being more than a part of something that’s more than the sum of its parts.”

  “Glib,” Carole said, hearing her own bitterness and marvelling at it. She was surprised by the stab of envy she felt. “Did you come here to gloat?”

  “To you?” Genuine surprise. “You’re a hero. Even if half the world curses you right now, we know the truth and that truth will come out. From your testimony at first, which they’ll rubbish and question and counter with paid-off liars and frauds. But your headware doesn’t lie. It’s all in there, in the kit they themselves gave you. In you and in Boyo.” Wiley saw her twitch and smiled again. “And Boyo will be fine. Although he’s less cooperative than you are. So know you’re saving him too.”

  She was going to say something angry about that, too: holding Boyo over her head to keep her playing nicely. Even as her lips parted there was a thump from the room next door, the spacious media room with the comfy couch and the big screen. Just a discrete thump, maybe just the robot vacuum ramming the wall with untoward force, except she couldn’t hear its whine and there wasn’t anyone else in the apartment. Even the security men stayed outside.

  The security men hadn’t been outside when she opened the door to Wiley. It had only been Wiley’s professionally polished smile that smoothed the transition, that had stopped Carole thinking of it.

  She backed off, and Wiley was reaching out a hand, saying, “Carole, wait—!”

  Illogically, she fled into the room the noise had come from, because the alternative would be standing there with whatever Jennifer Wiley actually was. She only got as far as the doorway, seeing it slide open to a scene of carnage.

  There were three men there, dressed in mottled grey fatigues, faces hidden by hoods, by goggles. They had come in through the window – there was a circular hole cut there that had set off none of the expensive alarms she’d been told the place came with. They had come with guns, bulky pistols with noise-reducers, as subtle as death could get when it came out of a barrel. The guns were on the floor and so were they.

  For a moment she couldn’t even see the others, even though they took up most of the room. The smell gave them away, in that close space. A sharp
smell, not even an animal smell, because ‘animal smell’ usually meant mammals.

  There were three of them, too. They were Bioforms, dragon-models, their skins shifting under the lights, blurring them against the walls as though they were nothing but thick glass. Their yellow eyes stood out, the ivory of their shark teeth. She imagined them scaling the glass tower like geckos, even as the gunmen had rappelled down from the roof.

  “Miss Springer, g’day,” one of them said in a polite, female-sounding voice, a strongly Antipodean accent. Its lipless mouth gaped to let the words out, the skin of its throat rippling to make the sounds.

  She tried to back off but Wiley was at her elbow. For a moment Carole was going to panic, too much change, too little control. But she was used to that. It had been her job to turn chaos into order on demand.

  “He sent them.” The men, who she guessed were dead.

  “As I said, your headware is the clincher. They’d have made sure not to leave it in a readable state. A last desperate attempt. Thankfully the WSRF had a few assets they could send over to clean up. Makes a change from disaster relief, but so much of the Bioform engineering is rooted in their original military role. I’d like to show you something, if I could?”

  “Show me…?” Carole made a weak gesture at the bodies.

  “Not these. I’d hoped you wouldn’t even see them. I apologise that you have.” Said so blandly, no admission to three deaths on anyone’s conscience. “We’ll take them away, clean up, fix the window even. Nobody will know.” And, at Carole’s look, “If you’re thinking that they’ll accuse our illegal killers of having killed their illegal killers, it’s the sort of jurisprudent paradox nobody’s going to be bringing to court. It was when they made it all within the laws that they were strong, because the laws were their laws and always favoured them.” And of course she herself, or the thing she represented, had been banned by those laws, forced underground. “But without that shield, we’re just as strong. Stronger.”