Waking Hell

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Waking Hell Page 19

by Al Robertson


  ‘Like your minds did with the first two?’ replied Dieter absent-mindedly, reaching into the weaveself with one hand. Memories of his tinkering pierced Leila. He was still so much himself, despite his slow dissolution.

  ‘You’re not taking this seriously,’ complained Holt.

  ‘Oh, I’m taking it very seriously.’ Leila recognised Dieter’s tone of voice. He was deep in some intellectual problem, barely even registering Holt’s presence.

  [Setting up the bridge,] muttered Cassiel.

  ‘Imagine your sister were here,’ Holt told Dieter. Leila froze. For a moment she was afraid that Holt had sensed her. But the ghost cloak was still up. ‘Would she want you all spaced out?’

  Dieter’s attention snapped back into the moment. ‘I am not spaced out,’ he said. ‘I’m working fucking hard. Like I told Deodatus I would. Don’t you bring Leila into this.’

  Holt put his hands up. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I just want to make sure we get it right.’

  ‘You people were part of the problem.’ Kedrov’s weaveself was forgotten. ‘Fucking InSec, not taking any of it seriously. Do you know what fetch hatred can do to someone?’ Dieter’s voice was full of grief and anger. Leila wanted to reach out to him. But she was trapped inside the ghost cloak. If she revealed herself Holt’s flies would have her. ‘Sticks and stones, one of your lot told us. Sticks and fucking stones. Two weeks before the end.’

  ‘Dieter, I’m truly sorry,’ Holt told him. ‘If you’d come to me I’d have done all I could.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s a bit late for that now, isn’t it?’ Dieter looked around the room. ‘And here we are, back on Station. Oh, I hate this place.’ There was a bitterness to him that was entirely new. ‘Feels like a prison.’ Deodatus must have changed him again. ‘Let’s just get out of here.’ Dieter reached back into Kedrov’s weaveself and closed his eyes for a moment. ‘It’s all ready to go down to the workshop. How’s the Pornomancer coming along? Once we’ve got him too I can replace those two poor sods your idiots screwed up and do the job properly.’

  [And I’m in you,] muttered Cassiel. [Querying the swarm. Asking them where the portal leads.]

  ‘Let’s see,’ said Holt, looking profoundly relieved that Dieter’s mind was back on their task. He waved his hand towards the portal. It shimmered and the Shining City vanished.

  [Failed,] said Cassiel. [Got some basic info. The Shining City is a heavily virtual environment. Didn’t get a location.]

  ‘You done?’ Holt shouted through the portal.

  It took Leila a moment to parse the scene before her. The portal now gave on to a dingy little windowless room. There was a kitchenette in one corner. A battered sofa was littered with sex toys. Erotic images hung in the air. Naked sprites writhed together on a small coffee table. There was a full sensory stimulation deck in one corner of the room. A short, naked man was strapped into it. He was very skinny. He’d been terribly tortured. One arm had been cut off at the elbow. There were bloodied sockets that had once housed eyes. Another upside down triangle was buried in his belly. The skin around it was ragged. It looked like it had been forced in. A pool of thickening blood and ravaged hunks of flesh lay beneath him. And there was one other figure in the room – a fallen mind. Its blistered skin was covered in blood. It held a scalpel in one hand and a hammer in the other.

  [Oh.] gasped Cassiel. [No.] There was despair in her voice. [What it’s been forced to do. What it’s done.]

  Leila gagged.

  [I’m so sorry,] said the Caretaker.

  Another grey teardrop hung just next to the mind. ‘He refused our offer,’ the mind told Holt and Dieter. ‘I persuaded him to accept it.’ Its laugh was a breathy wheeze.

  ‘Did you really have to go that far?’ asked Dieter. He sounded disgusted.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ replied the mind, ‘if more time had been made available. But Deodatus has set us a very specific deadline.’

  [This Deodatus is a disease,] said Cassiel, her voice cold with rage. [He must be purged. If you decloak, Leila, I can reach through you and…]

  [Don’t tempt me,] said Leila, imagining her skull face tearing into Holt and the fallen mind.

  [Hey, guys,] soothed the Caretaker, [this is bad. But let’s not win the battle and lose the war…]

  ‘Well, you can send his weaveself down to my workshop yourself,’ Dieter told the mind. ‘I’m fucked if I’m coming into your charnel house.’

  ‘You’ve left the meat behind, Fenech,’ replied the mind. ‘Why do you object to this?’

  Dieter turned away. ‘We shouldn’t have used those bastards. Too brutal.’ A moment’s pause, then: ‘We’re surgeons, not butchers. I don’t want to see him, Holt. Link us back to my workshop and we’ll move Kedrov’s weaveself.’

  Holt looked broken. ‘We’d have had to do the same to her if she hadn’t accepted.’ He waved a hand at the portal and it shifted back. ‘But this will soon be over,’ he said, as if he was trying to convince himself. Dieter’s workshop shone out of the portal, its silent peace contrasting with the shambles the mind had presided over.

  ‘You know, sometimes I just want to shut the door on it all,’ said Dieter, sounding deeply weary.

  Holt looked panicked. ‘Think about your sister. Don’t you want revenge?’

  ‘Oh, I want Deodatus to break the Pantheon,’ replied Dieter. ‘And I want him to write the fetch-hating world they created out of history.’ He touched Kedrov’s weaveself and it drifted towards the portal. ‘I’ll build him the army he needs to do it. You don’t need to worry about that.’

  Leila felt so much empathy with his rage, because that was how she felt about Deodatus. She would delete him from existence, if she could.

  Cassiel spoke: [I’ve sent another location query to Holt’s swarm,] she said, forcing neutrality into her tone. [About to get a reply.] She obviously had to work hard to control herself.

  Kedrov’s corpse stared dumbly out, a statue built from skin and bone. Her weaveself vanished into Dieter’s workshop.

  [Location coming through… Confirmed.]

  Dieter stopped in the portal and turned back. ‘But I still hate seeing broken people, Holt.’ His voice was grim. ‘I know there’s no choice. I know it’s for the greater good – but I saw Leila break and choose true death. I came home to an empty flat and a suicide note. That was enough for me.’

  Leila gasped. Agony shattered through her. If he’d stayed for an instant longer, she would have dropped her invisibility and rushed to take him back, to reassure him that she still lived, regardless of the consequences.

  The portal vanished before she could move.

  Chapter 25

  Leila jumped back to the safe house, shocked to the core. Not only did Dieter think she’d been forced into a true death – he was going to rewrite Station’s past by way of revenge.

  The first thing she said was: ‘Where is he?’

  ‘The portal led back to the Wart,’ said Cassiel. ‘That’s where we’ll find the Shining City. It’s probably an entirely virtual environment. It’ll be sitting in a dedicated weave server somewhere in there.’

  ‘The Wart?’ asked the Caretaker. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Oldest part of Station,’ explained Leila. ‘It’s the asteroid that holds Docklands and Homelands together. Mostly just wasteland and ancient ruins. The kind of place Dieter loves. We have to get him back.’

  ‘And stop Deodatus,’ said Cassiel. ‘We need to get in there.’ The frustrated anger in her voice mirrored Leila’s emotions.

  ‘Totally,’ said the Caretaker. ‘The Shining City looked familiar. Might trigger some memories.’ It was the first time Leila had heard anything approaching sadness in his voice.

  ‘It’s not a good place for fetches,’ said Leila. ‘There’s not much weave coverage in there. I’d need to find a way of piggybacking on yo
u two to manifest in most of it. I can’t go there on my own.’

  ‘And if we leave the flat, then the Rose agents will find us almost straight away.’ Cassiel’s voice was bitter. ‘We could explore it, but we can’t leave this flat. You can leave the flat, but you can’t explore it.’

  A thought struck Leila. ‘Don’t be so sure of that,’ she said, remembering the InSec agents she’d watched. ‘The Rose’s people are following a specific search pattern. I mapped some of it. If we can understand it, then we’ll know where they’re going to be when, and we can avoid them.’

  ‘Well, that gets us moving,’ said Cassiel thoughtfully. ‘I can mask the Caretaker and me again. If the Fetch Counsellor’s right, we’d have a little time before the Rose’s cameras spotted us.’ She sighed. ‘But what then?’

  ‘You’re the infiltration expert,’ Leila told her, tossing over memories of her search pattern observations. ‘That’s your problem. And while you’re solving it, I’m going to find Cormac Redonda. Make him talk to me. We need to know as much as we can about what we’re heading into and he’s the only expert we’ve got.’

  ‘I hope he’s willing to talk to you,’ said Cassiel.

  Leila thought of her poor lost brother, of the damage he could help Deodatus do. ‘Oh, he will. I’ll make damn sure of that.’

  The streets flickered by, filled with evening bustle. The gods looked down, apparently pleased with the world they controlled. They had always seemed complacent. Now Leila felt that they were completely out of touch. She hurried to the Flurrytown restaurant where Redonda had looped out. It was on a little broken street, a clutter of abandoned office blocks and emptied shops. A gun kiddy crew had scrawled graffiti across their broken fronts. Leila imagined how lively this lost little street must once have been. The estate agent in her rose up, suggesting ways of selling it. Ripe for regeneration, up and coming and similar phrases drifted through her mind.

  As she reached the restaurant, Leila thought about how East’s entertainment areas were always evolving. The god liked to flatter each new generation by creating novelty, making those who partied in her realms feel that they occupied a world that was freshly made for them and them alone. Then the masses would move on and there would be small, local collapses, leaving empty streets like this. But they wouldn’t stay empty for long. Soon the rebellious pioneers would come, reworking empty space on their own terms. Subversive creativity would flourish. East would bless it with low rents. The old would marvel at East’s ability to regenerate and the young would flock to these fresh new entertainments. A new standard would be set. East would win the gratitude of a new generation of creators and – through them – consumers. And so all would adore her and her power would flow on.

  It’s a racket, thought Leila. She remembered East in her room, trying to force stardom on her. She thought of Dieter, so totally controlled by Deodatus. I won’t be anyone’s puppet, she told herself. And as she did so, she realised how she could free her brother. Dit remembered their life together over the last couple of years. If she could copy those memories and share them with Dieter, then she could restore her brother to his original self. And then he’ll stop all this bullshit and leave the Shining City with me, she thought.

  Heartened, she sent a call out to Flurrytown’s internal audio-visual systems. They clicked into life, letting her move into the shop. It had once been a bustling family restaurant, one of a chain that was still very popular. Now she found herself in a wilderness of broken tables and chairs, graffiti-clotted walls and strands of dangling wire. A fire had burnt up and out in one corner, a record of an attempt to either squat or vandalise the space. Leila supposed that East would be equally happy with either. Both were transformative.

  The restaurant’s AV systems had decayed, so to Leila the room had a low-resolution, pixelated look, like a memory that had already begun to fade. She looked towards its rear, where the darkness was particularly thick. It took her a moment to register the presence of first one figure, then several.

  ‘Hello?’ said Leila uncertainly, forgetting for a moment that she was both invisible and inaudible.

  She moved a little further into darkness, then smiled to herself as decayed remnants of Flurrytown’s cartoon house band faded into view. There was Flurry Beaver, Wilo Hedgehog, Zamboo the Cat and the rest of them, incarnate in a series of broken plastic sculptures. Years ago, their weave avatars would have been bouncing around the room, laughing with both children and parents. Now they were dormant. Leila remembered them from her own childhood. She’d always been at Flurrytown for someone else’s party, never her own. She touched her pendant for luck, then let her ghost cloak reach out. Sensors pinged in her mind. There was another cloak operating in the room. Hers began to mesh with it. Leila stood still, waiting for it to open up Cormac’s paradise to her.

  There was silence for a few seconds. Then a sound leapt at her from behind – a child’s soft, high-pitched giggle. Leila spun round. There was nobody there. Dust motes lazed through long beams of spinelight. Then footsteps ran behind her and vanished. She caught her breath. Reality flickered. A child’s silhouette shimmered in and out of being. Leila took a step back. For an instant the walls were covered in brightly painted images of the Flurry band. There was a burst of music, loud and echoing, then voices singing ‘Happy Birthday’, chanting faster and faster until they became a vanishing scribble of sound. Unease grew in Leila, although she knew there was nothing to be scared of. She’d never thought of fetches as being akin to ghosts, until now.

  One of the tables – tumbled into a corner – was suddenly upright, and covered in drinks and food. There was a man and a woman. Each handed snacks to invisible children. The rest of the restaurant was still dusty and cobwebbed. Now they were singing ‘Happy Birthday’, this time at the right speed. Then the couple watched a small boy unwrap his presents. Leila recognised Cormac, his wife and his son. A sudden, blinding flash, and all came online at once, and Leila, still invisible, was standing in the middle of a six-year-old’s party.

  At first, it was indistinguishable from reality. Children ran, orbiting a table dense with weave-coded junk food and shredded wrapping paper. There was a scattering of presents at one end of it – bright little cars, fierce-looking robots, cuddly toys and a couple of already discarded educational jigsaw puzzles. The Flurry band charged around, its bouncier members leading games, its quieter ones nursing the tired and the tearful. Adults clustered in one corner of the room, sipping at brightly coloured cocktails. A murmur of conversation drifted over. ‘So generous of them. They’ve taken over the whole restaurant.’

  A waiter appeared with a birthday cake. Flurrytown sprites danced across its candles. Cormac and his wife stood by their little boy. A metal exo-skeleton, chunky little wheels at its base, supported his frail body. His legs dangled uselessly. ‘Yes, yes, it’s your cake!’ she heard Cormac say. ‘Now blow!’ The child looked up at his parents, his face alive with joy, and said ‘Really? ALL mine?’ His mother nodded. The exo-skeleton turned his head back towards the cake and let it drop forwards towards the cake. He blew hard and the candle flames leapt sideways, then vanished. ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Oh!’ Behind his head, his father leant forward and kissed his mother.

  The loop ended and the moment juddered out of being. A second of the drab, empty room and then the memory flared up and began again, a haunting that would repeat itself for ever. Children scurried around the room. Parents applauded the party. There was that drift of dialogue again: ‘So generous of them. They’ve taken over the whole restaurant.’ The cake was carefully placed on the table. Leila noticed how the little boy’s eyes shone. Candles flared and died. The parents kissed again, then vanished.

  Leila watched the scene play through three or four times. She didn’t want to bring Cormac Redonda out of his fugue too quickly. She wove herself gently into the repeated scene, appearing first as a flicker and becoming more present each time it played through.
She hoped her repeated presence would begin to trigger Redonda’s deeper self, the dormant part of him that had life beyond this one, repeated moment.

  He began to notice her. At first, he just glanced over at her. As she faded in, he became more engaged, more worried. Sadness drifted across his face. At last, he left his child and started towards her. Now he looked angry. She hoped she’d be able to talk him into helping her. The room reset, and for a moment there was nothing. When the memory restarted, he’d reach her and they’d talk. Leila realised that now she was the ghost – an unwelcome intrusion from another time, stepping into a settled moment and shattering its coherence.

  ‘You really should let him be, you know.’ It was a woman’s voice, calm and confident.

  Leila jumped with shock. The cloak had failed her. The Rose had found her.

  But when the woman spoke again Leila realised that she was wrong. ‘It would be too cruel to bring this version of him back into the world. And besides, after the Fetch Counsellor blundered in here I promised I’d stop anyone else from reaching him.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Leila, as white light flared up and she felt a jump being forced on her. ‘Gods.’

  ‘No,’ replied East, ‘just god.’

  Chapter 26

  The white light died away.

  Leila was surrounded by a forest of silver statues, life-sized images of men and women. Each shone with brilliant light, reflected from above. She was dazzled for a moment, until her eyes adjusted to the glare. Looking up, she saw a great glass dome. Vision recalibrated again, showing her the sun, a vast brilliance in deep darkness. Her location sensors pinged information. East had force-jumped her several thousand miles. She was in an entirely real environment, but she was far away from Station. There was just enough weave overlay for her to manifest.

  ‘Over here,’ shouted the god, her voice echoing back through the statues. ‘There’s a viewing platform. Just follow the pathway.’

 

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