by Al Robertson
‘Fuck, flies!’ gasped Leila, sitting bolt upright.
‘Hey, she’s awake,’ drawled the Caretaker. And then, to Leila: ‘You’ve got to stop worrying about the little dudes.’
Cassiel stood at a long, ceiling-to-floor picture window. ‘They’re bees,’ she said, the light of amusement flickering within her. Now that they were closer, it was much easier to read her.
‘Dammit,’ said Leila, shock turning to relief. Small black and gold creatures buzzed lazily between the flowers. She remembered the Caretaker appearing in the Shining City, surrounded by his tiny swarm. She sighed with relief.
‘Bees help flowers fuck and build cities that drip honey,’ smiled the Caretaker. ‘Far cooler than flies. They just eat dead shit and spread diseases. We made the switch a long time ago. Second best thing we ever did.’
‘Where are we?’ asked Leila.
‘Look,’ said Cassiel, indicating the windows.
They showed the same brown, dead landscape that Leila had so nearly died in. It was either dusk or dawn. Light glowed down another valley, this one much narrower and more steeply sided than the last. It seemed that they were halfway up one of its walls. Clouds loomed orange above them, lit from within by flickering lightning fire.
‘Like I said,’ drawled the Caretaker. ‘I bought you back to my place.’
Leila pinged the room’s virtual systems. ‘You have the weave on Earth?’
‘Have it?’ The Caretaker chuckled. ‘Dude, we invented it!’
He was reclining on a long, low sofa. He had a mouthpiece in his hand attached to a pipe that led to a gently bubbling shisha. It was a scale model of Station, set on one end. Homelands supported the Wart, from which the Caretaker’s pipe emerged. Then there was Docklands, with a tube reaching up out of it representing the Spine. He took another puff. Coals set on a little clay pot atop the Spine glowed red. There was a bubbling sound. Leila noticed that the model Station had a faded ‘II’ painted on it. The coals darkened again as he took the pipe out of his mouth. He held the smoke in for a second, then exhaled.
‘This is the good shit, man,’ he said. ‘I’d offer you some, but it’s a special blend. A bit much if you’re not a god. It suppresses all my corporate control systems. Keeps me out of the minds of my people. Makes sure they stay free.’ He puffed again. ‘I take care of them. Catch them if they fall. Full social safety net, all of that. Help out anyone with a bright idea. They sort the rest of it out for themselves.’ He beamed a huge smile. ‘Damn, this is good. I haven’t smoked with a real body for a long time!’
‘How did you find me?’ asked Leila, sitting up, her head not quite clear yet. ‘Did you home in on my message?’
‘The recipient got in touch,’ replied Cassiel.
‘You raised your voice to the heavens!’ announced the Caretaker. ‘And you were heard.’
‘It reached the Fetch Counsellor,’ explained Cassiel. ‘She went to East. They tracked the escape pods back to Earth. Found the Caretaker’s city, opened up a comms channel. They’re using the high-bandwidth maser array on the slow travellers’ satellite to talk to us.’
‘And we’ve got a meeting scheduled,’ continued the Caretaker. ‘A fucking meeting! First contact between Earth and Station in centuries. And it’s a meeting. Around a desk. People in suits. Someone taking minutes. Sheesh.’
‘And you’ve got your memory back?’ Leila asked him.
‘Yup. Like we found out, my real name’s Mandala,’ he told her. ‘And I know exactly who I am now. Good to meet you properly.’ He leant forward, offering a handshake. ‘As myself, at last.’ Unsure how to react, Leila took his hand. Her simulated presence meshed seamlessly with his. He laughed and squeezed her hand, then let go. ‘Just keep calling me the Caretaker, though, if that’s easier.’
‘And you’re a god?’
‘Yup. And this is my home. Where I first sensed you.’ He took another puff on the shisha. ‘Imagine! There I was, checking up on some weird shit from Deodatus. He was using my city as a kind of buffer self. There was an access point going all the way back to his place and a satellite uplink reaching up to orbit hidden in our condenser stack.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because he’s a bit of a shit. And it’s actually quite practical. If anyone on Station found the link and decided to send a missile or two down to Earth to zap whoever was on the end of it, they’d have followed it back here and hit me, not him. Anyway, I’d never have spotted it all, but all of a sudden you and Ambrose drop in from upstairs and pass through it. You don’t have any real security, so the uplink lights up like a firework. I followed you into it – zapped over to the Shining City – the swarm attacks – we sort them out – and I sent you back up to Station with the fly spray. Got to keep the comms tech Deodatus left here too, it’s how we’re talking back to the folks on Station.’
‘I wish you’d given me more spray.’
He took another puff, then exhaled. Smoke plumed out in front of him. ‘Yeah, well. Limited use. Those little guys recalibrate their defences so quickly. Anyway, that wasn’t the point. It also had a key in it. Woke up an old flesh printer. It built a meat avatar of me.’ He tapped his chest. ‘And then I came out to find you. The rest, you know.’
‘You’re a what?’ asked Leila, utterly baffled. ‘A meat avatar?’
‘Yeah. A bit like the pressure suit you’re in. I’m really a corporate consciousness.’ He waved at the window. ‘The tower houses my core systems – I run on them, on the bees, on my people. Like the Pantheon run on you guys. But I was involved with Station in its early days. I left some flesh printers up there. Dotted around the place, hidden away. Some of them survived. This body came out of one of them.’
‘So that’s why you didn’t remember anything…’
‘Yeah. The link to the Shining City went down too quickly. I sent core memories, some skills I thought I’d need, but there wasn’t time to transfer everything.’ He tapped his head. ‘You wouldn’t think so, but there’s a lot in here.’ He paused for a moment, looking reflective. ‘I left a general memory package hidden in the Shining City. When you helped me link into the city, the package found me, took me and unpacked itself into my mind. The bees popped out of it and showed me who I really am. Then I got you guys to the escape pods. And here we all are.’
‘And you’re still yourself?’
‘I’m still who I was. But I’m now fully merged with the virtual me that runs the city down here. So there’s a lot more of me.’ He peered at Leila. ‘Makes me a bit different from you guys. I’m in this body, but I extend beyond it too. You’ve got all of you on that disc of yours. And all of Cassiel’s in her nanogel.’
Leila nodded.
‘Not quite all of me,’ Cassiel said sadly. ‘There are aspects of me that exist beyond my immediate physical presence. I’ve been cut off from all them since I found out about the fallen minds.’ She sighed.
‘Hey, you’ll be back in touch with all of yourself soon.’ He smiled again. ‘We’re on the attack!’ A bee weaved hazily down towards him, coming to a halt just by his ear. He tipped his head to one side, as if listening. ‘Shit,’ he said, then: ‘Really sorry, got to go. Problem needs sorting out.’ He pushed himself to his feet, grunting as he stood. ‘I’ll be back in a bit. You kids make yourself at home in here, OK?’ And with that he was gone, loping purposefully across the room and out of the door. The bee hung there for a moment longer, a jewel suspended in midair, then turned and buzzed lazily back into the depths of the room.
‘Well,’ said Leila. ‘This all seems like a dream.’
‘It’s all very real. The Caretaker, the bees…’
‘It’s hard to think of him as Mandala. And how do the bees work? He didn’t even tell us that.’
‘They’re a command and control system. Just like the flies. Components of a single digital network. This city’s
nervous system. They move information between everyone who lives here, on behalf of the Caretaker. He’s explained it to me in some detail.’
‘But why bees? Why flies, for that matter?’
‘Both are simple, durable, highly flexible and fully pervasive. And both perfectly reflect the nature of their masters.’
‘Community or corruption,’ mused Leila. ‘But I’m sorry – all this, Mandala. I haven’t asked you how you are. How you arrived here.’
Cassiel took her hand and opened up her memory. ‘Let me show you.’
A barrage of moments spun through Leila’s head, showing Cassiel falling from space, losing contact with Leila – a surge of grief and fear here – and then falling to Earth. The storm let Cassiel and the Caretaker’s capsules pass. Their parachutes deployed safely. But the mind still landed a little off-target. Cassiel found herself standing high up the steep edge of a valley. Unlike Leila’s landing site, it was empty of ruins. She looked across it to a tear-shaped cluster of dozens of skyscrapers all wrapped in green, gilded by sunset light. At their heart stood a single, white tower, reaching hundreds of metres up into the heavens from a round, saucer-shaped base.
‘The city of Mandala,’ Cassiel told Leila. ‘We’re in the tower.’
Vertical gardens grew up the sunward sides of the tower blocks. Looking closer, Cassiel saw a riot of colours exploding out of green foliage – fruit and vegetables, hanging over the city, bulging with growth, all ready to feed its inhabitants. Where there wasn’t foliage there were lights, and the silhouettes of figures, bustling behind windows as they prepared for the evening. Streets were visible too. More people bustled down them. There were green open spaces between the blocks, dotted with cows and sheep. Tiny figures whipped them into herds, rounding them up to head in for the evening. Cassiel could just make out distant shouts, soft moos and tiny bleats. The round base of the central tower had more streets scored into it, broken by squares dotted with clumps of trees.
One end of the city was bought to a sharp point by a great, sloping wall, as high as the blocks it protected. It faced down the valley. Cassiel remembered the storm and imagined winds howling up towards it. Its smooth surface looked highly polished. She wondered how many centuries of storms the wall had guided round the city. The only building to rise above it was the tower. It too had been wind-buffed to a shine. Cassiel thought of a ship’s bridge, guiding its charges safely through turbulent seas. A circle of colour flapping at its base caught her attention. It was an escape pod parachute, the twin of her own. The Caretaker had landed very precisely on target.
The walk to the city took longer than expected, for it was further away than she’d first calculated. As Cassiel walked, she worried about Leila. Grief and loss alternated with a fierce determination to find her. Leila was both surprised and touched by such powerful emotion. The setting sun smeared a dull, exhausted orange across the sky. Night fell quickly. She kept walking. Torches flickered ahead of her, then there were four people, overjoyed to see her. ‘We saw your parachute. We came out to find you,’ they told Cassiel. They led her down through the city to the central tower. At last Cassiel was brought before the Caretaker, who allocated her quarters and then did his best to help her find Leila.
‘He’s definitely in charge here?’ said Leila.
Cassiel laughed. ‘Yes. He’s a precursor deity, Leila. An old god of Earth.’
‘Like Deodatus?’
Cassiel nodded. ‘He and Deodatus are the last of the land powers. Two opposites. Deodatus tried to stay in control as the planet died and the Pantheon broke away. Fought the rest of his divine siblings, took over as many as he could. Mandala just let go. Freed everyone who worked for him. Gave them full autonomy. And they started to build this city. Come to the window and have a look.’
They looked down from the peak of the white tower. The city shone beneath them, a jewel in the dirt. It was early evening. Flocks of animals moved towards sleep, complaining their way through the streets. There were people too, walking purposefully between the herds. Some headed for green-hung tower blocks. A noticeable surge flowed towards the tower’s base. Thin, dark metal struts reached out from each of the buildings, arcing up and over the streets then back down again. They reminded her of the struts attached to the tumbled buildings in the desert.
‘What are they?’ she asked Cassiel, pointing.
‘Legs,’ replied the mind. ‘All of these buildings can move. Walk themselves across the landscape. They’ve each got gravity management systems built into them.’
‘The struts on the building you found me on – I thought they looked like legs. But that seemed too crazy…’
‘They’re a sane solution to a crazy situation. The ancients had to deal with vanishing resources, and weaponised geological and weather systems spinning out of control. They had to set their cities moving. Otherwise they’d have starved or been destroyed. And so they became the land powers – mobile city states run as corporate entities, each housing a few hundred thousand humans and controlled by its own god. There were air powers and sea powers too.’
‘Are they still around?’
Cassiel nodded. ‘Living in their elements. They’ve played out their own power struggles, over the centuries. And their environments have changed them. Apparently they’re not even remotely human anymore. Some of the land powers went that way too.’ She gestured out across the landscape. ‘There are entire living cities out there. Independent entities in their own right. Their biological, mechanical and architectural elements have merged. Now their buildings flock together across the dead plains of Earth, wild and uncontrollable. Free.’
‘Wow,’ said Leila, trying to imagine one. ‘So is this city mobile?’
‘No. The main tower’s movement systems were destroyed back when the Pantheon broke away from the Earth. Apparently there was total chaos for a while. It’s stuck here, so the rest of the city is too. Word got out that Mandala – the Caretaker – was creating a refuge for free humans. So, over the centuries, as the storms waned, people who wanted to stay people walked their buildings in to join it.’
‘So the tower is the Caretaker’s true home…’
Cassiel nodded. ‘Look down at its base. The saucer.’ It was softly lit by a profusion of gentle lights. There were trees and flowerbeds everywhere. Small squares were linked by circular streets. ‘The Pleasure Gardens of Mandala,’ said Cassiel. ‘Or rather, of the Caretaker. Which doesn’t sound quite as good.’
Leila thought of the scrubby parkland of Station, of how much it cost to enter and use. ‘Must be pretty expensive,’ she said.
‘It is all free. Everything works on an exchange basis. People give their talents and their time, and get all they need to live in return. Much like the Totality, in fact.’
‘Wow.’ Leila had spent her whole life and most of her death worrying about money, constantly planning new ways to make it stretch as far as it could. She couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to have that stress lift off, to receive support according to need rather than wealth.
‘Look at the base’s street plan,’ Cassiel told her, interrupting her reverie. ‘Remind you of anything?’
White buildings fringed circular streets. Leila imagined a pale moon and a black sky above them. She remembered looking up from pale, moonlit streets and seeing a white tower rise into the dark sky.
‘Oh,’ she breathed, understanding. ‘The Shining City. That’s the Shining City.’
‘The Caretaker’s version of it,’ explained Cassiel. ‘The structure of Deodatus’ tower is identical to this one. It holds the Shining City. And the Caretaker can get us to it. We’ll have this meeting to see how the powers of Station can help us. Then we’ll travel to Deodatus’ city. I can break the Totality’s infection at its source. And you will find Dieter and bring him home. If he’ll come with you.’
Leila smiled. ‘I think I’ve worked out how to p
ersuade him.’ She held up the pendant.
‘It didn’t work the first time.’ Cassiel sounded dubious. ‘And you’ve lost Dit’s memories.’
‘That doesn’t matter. He can compare it with the current shape of his memories and understand just how much Deodatus has changed him. And I’ll tell him how wrong I was. Trying to rewrite him to suit myself. I’ll tell him I’m sorry. That I’m his sister and I just want him to realise what he’s lost. And then he’ll come back to me.’
Cassiel radiated doubt. ‘If he believes you,’ she said. ‘He already thinks you’re a weapon. And that pendant could easily be a fake. You’re putting a lot of faith in him.’
‘I have to. He’s my brother.’
The mind said nothing.
Frustration overwhelmed Leila. ‘I don’t have a choice, Cassiel. You’re right, I can’t prove that my version of the past is the right one. Gods, anyone can fake up anything. Everything’s so damn malleable, these days. So logic’s irrelevant – there’s only emotion. I have to ask Dieter to decide which version of his life he wants to be true. Which one feels right. It’ll get him thinking. If he decides to trust me – well, then we’ve won. And if he ignores me, if he’d rather live in Deodatus’ world – then I’ve already lost him. And I’ve got one more reason to bring the creepy old fuck down.’