by Al Robertson
‘Dieter, it’s me. I’m real. Far more real than anything in this bloody place. You must remember what they did to people, how they rewrote them.’ She wanted to grab him and shake him. ‘That’s what this place – what Deodatus – has done to you. All this – it’s just a Kneale Pit. A broken bit of history that’s still screwing people over. Nothing more.’
To Leila’s surprise, Dieter laughed. ‘Kneale Pit?’ His unfocused face smiled, and an entire history of his joy raced past her. The smile held the innocent joy of a ten-year-old, then the focused confidence of a brilliant twenty-something, then the stoned bliss of a teenager experimenting with his first high. ‘Oh, this isn’t a Kneale Pit, Leila. This is the real deal.’
Her timer pinged. Time was running out. ‘It’s destroying you.’ She shifted the pendant in her hands. Its dense weight reassured her. ‘And it’s going to destroy Station. When the laser fires, it’ll crack the Wart open. And that’ll be the end of everything.’
‘Bless you, Leila,’ said Dieter gently. ‘I always had to explain things to you, didn’t I? It’s not that at all.’
‘Oh for gods’ sake, Dieter. Don’t be so bloody patronising. I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m here to save you.’
He smiled. ‘You’re not rescuing me. I’m rescuing everyone on Station. From the Pantheon. From a past that’s a lie and a failure. And from a society that kills the dead.’ He smiled again, this time so very sadly. ‘That’s why they’ve sent you to try and stop me. My weakest link. Here you are, and it’s working. I can’t even bring myself to call security on you.’
That last comment heartened Leila. Perhaps she was getting through to him. ‘I’m your strongest link,’ she replied gently. ‘I’m not a lie. I’m the way things really were.’ She wondered exactly how much memory they’d taken. ‘Do you remember the last time I saw you?’
‘Just before you – my sister – chose a true death?’ Pain leapt across his face. ‘Of course I do. Don’t talk to me about that.’
Now it was Leila’s turn to smile sadly. ‘No. In this room. A few days ago. Ambrose and I came to find you.’ She wondered whether to mention Ambrose’s death. But Dieter might refuse to believe her. ‘Deodatus wiped it out of your memory. He’s taken so much from you.’ She held up the pendant. ‘I’ve come to give it all back. This’ll transfer the last two years to you. Highlights of our lives together.’
‘And where did you get these memories from?’
‘Dit.’
‘So you’ve even found him? The gods must have turned my life upside down. No wonder you’re so well briefed.’ Cynicism infected his smile. ‘I hope he put up a fight.’
The timer pinged again, more urgently.
‘Dieter. IT’S ME. I am Leila, I am your sister, I have always been your sister and I always will be. And we have to get you out of here.’ She threw caution to the winds. ‘A couple more minutes and we’re turning off the servers. The ones that hold this place. We’re deactivating the Shining City.’
‘That won’t touch the Shining City. The server henge is a gateway. A portal. Nothing else.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘You’ve got all the way down here – and that’s a long, long way from Station. You say it’s your second visit. And you’re telling me you don’t know where you really are? What this place really is?’ His voice became hard, dismissive. ‘You’re working the naivety thing too hard. Even my sister would have got that by now.’
The timer pinged a final warning. Thirty seconds left. ‘Fuck it,’ said Leila. She jumped, appearing right next to him. ‘You can finish patronising me later,’ she said, then raised her hand. ‘Once you’ve remembered who I really am.’ Then she pushed the pendant against his forehead, triggering the memory injection.
‘No!’ he howled.
Memories exploded out towards him. Leila wasn’t quite sure what she expected to happen next – the brief disorientation that Dit had predicted, a sudden transformation, Dieter turning to her and at last acknowledging the truth of his situation. And then they would flee together.
Instead, defences leapt into being.
‘Oh no,’ she breathed.
The link between them vanished and the data transfer slammed to a halt. Leila felt the memory block Dit had given her shatter as a cold, hard, alien presence smashed through it and tried to push into her mind. Her own shields snapped into place and the counter-attack bounced off them, but not before it had stabbed out and erased her copy of Dit’s memories. Then, there was nothing but chaos.
‘FUCK!’ yelled Dieter.
He strobed through multiple versions of himself, static glitching his whole body. His image generators crashed and rebooted, pulling him out of then back into existence. ‘UCKUCKUCKUFFFFF,’ he howled, his voice a series of cracked, broken repetitions. As his avatar broke down the artificial in him overwhelmed all else, and his living self was lost.
‘NO!’ screamed Leila. She tried to pull her brother to her but her arms went through him. ‘Shit,’ she said, looking around desperately. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ Dieter’s voice had become an abstract digital howl. She remembered the last time she’d been here – pressure men bursting through the door, surfing a wave of flies. Soon they’d come again.
But someone else arrived first.
‘Hey there,’ drawled the Caretaker, dropping into being. ‘Here you are.’
‘I’ve broken Dieter,’ she gasped, panicked.
Dieter gave one last howl and winked out of existence.
‘Gods. He’s dead.’
‘No, that just looked like an emergency shut down. No biggie.’
Leila’s alarm hit zero and howled.
‘Oh, and don’t worry about Cassiel crashing the city,’ he reassured her as she hushed the alarm. ‘I don’t think she can. Turns out Cormac Redonda don’t know shit about this place.’
Leila noticed a gentle buzzing. Dark insects orbited him.
‘No.’ She started backing away. ‘You’ve fallen. You’re one of them.’
‘What? Oh, the little guys.’ He chuckled. ‘No way, Leila. These aren’t flies. They’re bees.’ A huge, confident smile. ‘Much more my scene.’
‘What are you?’ breathed Leila.
‘Still working that one out.’ The Caretaker looked up, as if listening. ‘Shit. Cassiel’s got problems. Here…’ He held his hand out. ‘Come with me.’
‘We can’t leave without Dieter.’
‘We’ll find another way to reach him. And without us, Cassiel’s in deep shit.’ Yellow-black insects buzzed lazily around them. One of them was perched on his shoulder. Another nestled by his ear. He saw her looking at them. ‘You see? Bees. They’re pretty cool. But we really need to go. If Cassiel goes down and we get caught, you won’t be able to do shit for your brother.’
One last glance around the room. No sign of Dieter. The Caretaker was right. There was no other choice. She took his hand. The Shining City vanished.
They were in the store room again. ‘Welcome back,’ said Cassiel. ‘About bloody time. I cut the power cables to the servers, but they have an internal back-up. I was getting ready to blow them up.’
‘That won’t make any difference,’ replied Leila. ‘They don’t hold the Shining City. Dieter said they were just a gateway. To somewhere very far from here.’
‘Then we’re screwed.’
And then there was a buzzing roar and a storm of flies burst through the arch. Fallen minds were just visible behind them, hurtling in to attack. Leila felt fear explode out of Cassiel. There was a vast shame, too, and a deep, anguished sense of loss. Leila felt empathy fill her. She understood the mind’s despair. She’d failed to rescue Dieter and lost the key that would unlock his true past.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ said the Caretaker. ‘I’ve got this.’ He reached a hand out. The flies stopped and hung in the air for a second, and then gravity took them and they were a thousa
nd black raindrops pattering to the floor.
Cassiel tossed Leila’s disc to him. Lightning filled her. She howled with savage joy and was on the fallen minds like a weaponised demon.
Chapter 32
Two of Cassiel’s opponents fell at the door, their bodies collapsing into liquid and splashing to the ground. Three went down behind her as she moved into the main room. More staggered towards her, not quite recovered from the swarm’s crash. Cassiel moved through them, a martial blur, and they were a shower of nanogel drops tumbling through space.
‘Whoa,’ said the Caretaker.
‘No wonder she’s been so frustrated, if she can do that,’ replied Leila, awed.
Cassiel came to a halt. The rest of the minds pulled back, wary now that their fellows had fallen.
The Caretaker joined her. ‘You just keep back,’ he called out. ‘All’s cool, just keep back.’ He turned to Cassiel and whispered: ‘I can zap the flies. But not the minds.’
A moment, then one of them stepped forwards. It moved awkwardly but its voice was clear. ‘Our victory is certain,’ it called. ‘You have an avatar of Mandala, but his powers are limited here. And we outnumber you.’
‘Who’s Mandala?’ whispered Leila.
‘Er, I think that’s my real name,’ replied the Caretaker, sounding a bit embarrassed.
‘We believe that the fetch Leila Fenech is with you,’ the mind continued. ‘Deodatus wishes to talk with her. He has an offer to make her. She can be of great service. Her co-operation will help us manage her brother, sparing him any further pain. And it will benefit you, too. If you surrender her to us, we will remove your memories of Deodatus and let you both go. Unharmed.’
‘They can’t see me,’ hissed Leila. ‘They’re not sure if I’m here. If it was really me looking for Dieter.’
‘Let’s keep them confused,’ replied Cassiel. Then she called out: ‘That wasn’t Fenech. It was a weapon that failed.’
‘Surrender. You have no choice.’
‘And then the Totality will fall. And Station too,’ shot back Cassiel.
‘Fuck that,’ said Leila. ‘Can we fight our way out?’
‘The fallen mind’s right,’ hissed Cassiel. ‘There are too many of them. Victory is uncertain.’
As she spoke, a high wailing began, reaching out from the passageway that led back up to the room above. There was the sound of running feet, a bare slapping that threatened an invasive rush.
‘We don’t fight, we run,’ said the Caretaker. He nodded towards the unblocked tunnel. ‘We’re going that way.’ He set off, still holding his hand out towards the minds. ‘Or at least, I am.’
The howling grew louder and louder.
‘He’s right,’ said Leila.
‘Agreed,’ the mind snapped, already moving. ‘Opening my mind to you. We need to stay as close as possible to get through this.’ Leila felt new connections grow between them as Cassiel gave her deep access to the workings of her consciousness. Leila opened herself up in return.
‘You’re worried,’ said Cassiel.
‘No map beyond here,’ replied Leila. ‘Could be a dead end.’
‘It’s not,’ said the Caretaker. He glanced back as he entered the tunnel: ‘Holy shit!’ he gasped.
Leila looked back with him. A storm of sweatheads exploded out of the passageway, knocking into and scrabbling over each other in their eagerness to attack. The first two or three toppled and fell and those behind piled into them, falling over themselves, creating a great, tumbled crush at the bottom of the stairs. Wooden and plastic attachments bounced across the floor, revealing absences where eyes and cheeks, noses and ears, and even hands and feet had once been. The rest of the crowd slowed and clambered over them. A broken, rhythmic wheeze coughed out from them. Mouths were open, chests were heaving, dry tongues rattled like pebbles against yellow teeth.
‘FUUUUUCCCKKKK!!!!’ yelled the Caretaker as he took off down the tunnel.
Cassiel sprinted behind him. She leapt on to the wall as she passed him, letting her body spread out into a rushing animal shape, barely looking back. Leila felt the mind’s desperate hope for escape. And there was deep pain, too, at the possibility that their mission had failed. As she felt that thought, sadness and guilt once again shot through Leila. She’d found Dieter, but she’d only managed to wound him. And she had no idea where to go next, because she didn’t know where the true location of the Shining City was.
With that, she remembered giving the cuttlefish permission to check out some problematic geo-spatial data. She queried it. Co-ordinates leapt into her mind, precisely pinning down the city’s actual location. There were images too, taken from real world cameras surrounding the city. She looked at them, then looked again. She refused to believe what they told her. She asked the cuttlefish to double- then triple-check the city’s location data. Its small, precise mind leapt to obey her, returning precisely the same conclusions each time. There was no possibility of error. Leila was stunned. She found that she couldn’t speak.
She barely noticed as the Caretaker stumbled and nearly fell, and Cassiel stopped, and reached back, and swept him up in an arm that became a nanogel band wrapped round his chest. The howling from behind them, now becoming louder again, made little impact on her. The corridor ended in another round room. Five tunnels led out of it. There was also small platform, with narrow gauge rails running alongside it, and a tiny engine, about as high as her waist, attached to several coffin-shaped goods trucks.
That did surprise her.
‘What the fuck?’ said Cassiel, also momentarily astonished.
‘Even the bad guys need a transport system,’ gasped the Caretaker. ‘Lots of tunnels down here. Too much walking. That train’ll take us down the right one.’
‘How do you know?’
‘A bee told me.’ More howling behind them. ‘Let’s move!’
The Caretaker leapt into one of the trucks. Cassiel threw herself into the one behind the engine and the train shook. She shot an arm forward and smashed it into the control panel. The train jerked forward, then stopped. Cassiel groped around the panel again, her touch softer this time, and the train started up. Their pursuers burst out on to the platform as it accelerated.
One of them leapt for the last truck, stumbled and fell, tumbling back off the platform and on to the tracks. Electricity sizzled through its shaking body. Another accelerated past it, and – with a final burst of speed – hurled itself off the end of the platform and into the final truck. An instant, then it reared up, dead mouth roaring with a savage joy, a sledgehammer firm in its hands. It raced towards them, leaping from truck to truck, cackling wildly, its eyes alive with glee. The others, left far behind, cheered it on from the platform.
The Caretaker was a few trucks down. It was going to reach him first. He glanced back at them.
‘You can’t hold it off,’ shouted Cassiel. Leila felt her tense herself, ready to leap forward and stop their attacker.
‘Relax,’ said the Caretaker, still looking back at them. ‘This fucker’s dead already. He just doesn’t know it yet.’
As he spoke, the sweathead reached the carriage behind his. It scrabbled for footing, then stood straight up, hefting the sledgehammer, its entire attention focused on its target. It started towards him just as something dark rushed over Leila’s head. The little train’s roar grew louder as walls squeezed in on either side. The tunnel had a low roof, and its lip took the sweathead like a hammer, smashing it backwards and away from them. It tumbled back down the little coaches, its upper half a bloody smear, and then fell past their edge and out of the side. The train shook as hard wheels rolled over it, then there was just the rattle of forward motion.
‘Not very bright, those guys,’ said the Caretaker.
‘Thank the gods,’ breathed Leila.
‘I’d have stopped him,’ said Cassiel. ‘He’d neve
r have touched you.’
A moment to get her breath back, then Leila said: ‘Now we’re a bit safer, there’s something you guys need to see.’ She pumped the information out to Cassiel and the Caretaker. A moment, then shock rippled out of the mind.
‘THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE.’
‘I know. But it’s real.’
‘Ouch. This makes my head hurt,’ groaned the Caretaker.
Cassiel ignored him. ‘You’ve checked this?’ she asked Leila. ‘You’re sure?’
‘This is what it found. So far outside normal parameters that it triggered a full local audit. The geo-location and image systems passed. And then I had it re-run all tests twice. There’s no doubt that it’s real.’ She took a moment to let it sink in. ‘East’ll never put that in her documentary.’
Then she bought the pictures up to hang in front of them. There was a whole series of images, taken from a single camera panning across a landscape. They had a blurred, out of focus quality to them. Colours were pale and muted. Leila thought of spinelights fading as evening approached; the way that, slowly and inevitably, shadows conquered Station. These pictures showed another world half-lost to darkness.
At first glance, the images were very mundane. There was a city, and it was built from tower blocks. The blocks were arranged in circles of seven or eight buildings, connected by walkways and scaffolding. Leila assumed each group must be an individual housing estate or business unit. The buildings were all battered, blasted by climate and time. Soft lights glowed within them. Machineries clustered in the murk at the base of each building – long, narrow struts that looked like tumbled cranes. They made her think of the flies, of their dark little stop-motion legs. There was something like the edge of a mountain in the background of some of the pictures. Others showed a tall, thin, construction, about a hundred metres high, looking more like an antenna than a building. It glowed with dirty purple light. The building clusters vanished into the distance behind it. And, far beyond them, there were those two impossible things – a flat horizon that bisected the image and a dark sky, suffused with clouds.