Waking Hell

by Al Robertson

  It was only as she recovered herself that she began to feel disquiet.

  She was the only living creature within the room. She had no way of moving. She queried the room’s weave systems. She could look anywhere within it, but she didn’t have the access codes to move beyond it. She tried to step down on to the ground and then to jump to another location within the room, but Deodatus’ trap command remained in force. She could turn, look around, gesture, but she could not move. She experimented with a mail, wondering if it would find some way through and out of the room, but it just bounced back. There was no way for her to escape the room and no way for a message to get out of it.

  Leila wondered if anyone could get in. She assumed not. The god’s death must have triggered alerts elsewhere. But no fallen minds had come looking to see what had broken their master, no sweatheads had come searching for their god. Deodatus must have locked the room from within, so securely that nobody else could access it. Leila imagined his subjects battering away outside, trying to desperately to enter. The room was silent. It must be tremendously well soundproofed. On one level she was very glad to be alone. She would have no way of fleeing any attackers and they would, she suspected, make her life very painful indeed. She redoubled her attempts to find a way to escape the room, even just move within it.

  Then light and sound exploded around her. She spun up the skull face in case Deodatus’ servants had at last managed to penetrate the room. If that had happened she would go down fighting. Perhaps she’d be able to cut through them and escape. But she was still alone. The brilliance blazed in from outside. Every single building was lit by bright white spotlights. There was a high-pitched roaring, too regular and artificial to be a storm. Leila had her systems analyse it. It was the sound of scores of fusion-powered gravity generators, massively overstretched, starting into being all at once.

  ‘Oh no,’ she breathed.

  Deodatus had taken individuals and turned them into components in a machine. Even without him, it seemed that the machine still functioned. One of the tower-rings lifted into the air. Then another rose, and another, impossibly and unstoppably. A deep rumble shook the room, and Deodatus’ fortress climbed with them. The fusion generators knotted into the building rings were massively over-driving their anti-gravity generators, pushing the city into the sky.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said to herself.

  Perhaps by killing Deodatus all she’d done was clear space for a more efficient manager – the Rose, Holt, or some anonymous fallen mind – to take over the invasion. Or perhaps she’d created a mindless apocalypse, an unstoppable wave of destruction that would rewrite Station’s past before collapsing into purposelessness when its programming ran out. But there was nothing to be done. She could only watch powerlessly as the dead god’s city lifted itself up from the Earth, a seed thrown out from an exhausted host, ready to infect first Station, then perhaps the Solar System and even worlds beyond it with the all-consuming greed it still contained. Frustration filled her. Outside, clouds flashed past. Then there was nothing. The blue, empty sky was polluted with buildings. It darkened. They faced the sun. Deodatus’ city was a black scrawl across its white brilliance, a system of control imposing itself on the sky. There was only one small, sad point of hope. She hadn’t seen the fallen snowflake rise up. Cassiel’s sacrifice might have succeeded. The Totality could perhaps resist Deodatus, saving themselves if not Station.

  Then a shadow shimmered into being before her, becoming a man who was never quite himself.

  At last, Dieter had come to find her.

  Chapter 43

  Dieter hung before Leila, floating in front of the window. The brilliant sun made the dead god’s city a series of silhouettes – tower blocks bound together in rings, dark seeds waiting to fall into Station. They hung in the darkness like a wave, frozen in the moment before it hits the shore.

  ‘You’re here,’ gasped Leila. ‘Thank the gods. We’ve got to get out.’

  ‘At first it was impossible to get in.’ He sounded puzzled. ‘I spent hours trying to get through. Then all of Deodatus’ personal defences went down. It’s like he’s not here at all.’

  Leila considered telling him that Deodatus was dead. But she wasn’t quite sure how he’d react. She nodded towards the window. ‘Well, I’m sure he’s got other things on his mind.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so.’

  With the sun behind him it was difficult to make out his expression. Leila was grateful that she couldn’t really see him blurring through multiple versions of himself. Then he spoke again. ‘Leila,’ he said. There was pain and indecision in his voice. ‘It’s the Taste Refresh Festival just now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh yes. That’s why we have to stop Deodatus.’

  ‘Do you remember it? I do. The ocean in every street. The Twins in the sky, fishing for the best catch.’ He looked up at her. ‘From when I was young. From before Mum dying. Before she was on the drink, even.’ Dieter lifted his hand to his face and rubbed his forehead. ‘If that’s the way that history gets corrected – well, it seems so right, doesn’t it?’

  Leila forced her emotions back under her control, forced herself to pause and let calm sink into her. ‘It’s not right to rewrite people,’ she told him. She reminded herself that she was dealing with a broken fetch, an individual with a fractured past and an uncertain sense of the present. ‘You’ve got to release me. We’ve got to get out of here. Find a way of stopping all this.’

  ‘I don’t know if I should, Leila. I really don’t know.’ He sighed. ‘Perhaps this was a mistake. Maybe I shouldn’t have come.’

  ‘No!’ she almost shouted. Then, again, she forced herself to be gentle. ‘No.’ She needed him to stay, to keep talking – to give himself time to come round to her. ‘Stay with me, Dieter. You were asking about the festival? It’s happening right now. You’ve missed most of it.’

  He sighed again. ‘You know, it was one of the only things I enjoyed, after you died. The rest – I was just existing, not really living. All on my own. But when I could step out, and feel like I was underwater – in another world. Then, for a moment, I forgot this one.’

  ‘You’ve forgotten a lot,’ Leila told him.

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘Do you remember me being there at all?’ asked Leila. ‘Over the last few years?’

  There was a pause. ‘No. Not at all.’

  Leila thought back to the pyramid, to the way her false memories of exploring it hadn’t quite matched reality. ‘Is there anything missing? Anything that doesn’t quite hang together?’

  ‘There are moments. Ghost moments. When there should have been someone else around.’ He sighed. ‘Laughter in another room. Fixing the weave rig after someone broke it. Miwa in the flat. She’s one of your friends, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes. She was there because I was,’ Memory surged in Leila’s mind. For a moment she forgot the frozen panorama outside. ‘And the weave rig.’ It had happened just after her rebirth. ‘You never got round to recalibrating it for fetch viewing. And there was a new Linval Keiller drama coming out.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘It was your own fault. You should have sorted it out straight away.’

  ‘It took hours to fix. Someone scrambled all the sensory settings. Turned them all to maximum and fried the whole thing.’ He shook his head. ‘When I ask myself who did it – I don’t know, I never really bought anyone home. Especially not back then. I wouldn’t have imagined – you.’

  She smiled. ‘It was. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Was that in the memories you tried to give me?’

  She nodded.

  Then he said nothing.

  ‘Dieter, why are you here? If you’ve come to get me out of here, we need to get a move on. We’ve got to find a way of stopping that lot.’

  He turned to the window. ‘It’s pretty cool, isn’t it? A lot of work to get all those sleepers going
. Waking the past. And Deodatus has his digital attack cued up too.’

  ‘We have to stop him.’

  ‘But I want them to hit Station, Leila.’ He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as her. ‘I want to break the gods and fuck up all the people that fucked you up. I want people to forget they even existed. I want everything there to change.’

  He was so close to returning to her. Tact deserted her. ‘THEN WHY ARE YOU HERE?’ she shouted. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? Nobody screwed me up. I didn’t kill myself. I’m really me, I’m not some weapon that East and the Fetch Counsellor threw together from a few scraps of memory. And you must think I really am me, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. But you’re just standing there, telling me how wonderful it is that you’ve unleashed an undead horde on Station.’ She took a breath. ‘Sort. It. Out. Dieter.’

  ‘Well, you certainly sound like Leila.’ There was something approaching a smile in his voice. ‘I haven’t been yelled at like that for a while.’

  She controlled herself again, forcing down her anger. She remembered another time she’d yelled at him. ‘Yeah, the last time was the tuna salad sandwich incident. Do you remember that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lucky for you. I’m almost as pissed off with you as I was then. Letting it drop down behind the sofa and then going away for the weekend. The smell of it!’

  ‘Yeah, I can see how that would piss you off.’ Another moment of silence. ‘And Deodatus deleted that?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Maybe I should thank him,’ he said ruefully. He pulled the pendant out of his pocket. ‘I’ve been looking at this. The recent bits – they’re so different from the shape of me now. This is the real me?’

  ‘It’s the shape of your memories from before you died. Before Deodatus took you and edited you. You haven’t been yourself. You’ve been working for the bad guys.’

  ‘I so want you to be you, Leila. I so want you to be alive. I’ve missed you so much.’ He held up the pendant. ‘But how can I know you’re really you?’

  Leila relaxed a little. ‘You’ve just got to ask yourself who you really trust. Me. Or Holt and Deodatus. Your sister, or a slimy little perv and his boss the blinged-up corpse.’

  ‘But what if the gods made you, too? What if you’re just another manipulation?’

  ‘Dammit, Dieter, I’m the only one not manipulating you!’ She remembered her conversations with Holt and Deodatus. ‘You’re just a tool to the rest of them. Look, I’ve got some memories here…’

  He put his hands up. ‘Oh no, not again.’

  ‘I’m not trying to kill you, Dieter.’ A moment as she wondered whether she could risk a little dig at him. ‘Though I would actually quite like to just now.’

  A flicker of a smile. ‘Yeah, well, thanks. That’s really helping.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Look, you know what I mean. And here you are.’ A tiny blue ball popped into being between them. ‘Pure memories. Scan them, you can see there’s no threat. Me talking to Holt, me talking to Deodatus. And both of them going on about how they’ve been using you.’

  A moment’s pause.

  ‘I’m not going to force them on you,’ Leila told him. ‘But you really should watch them.’

  Dieter reached out cautiously and took the globe in his hand. ‘These are just memories?’

  ‘From the last few hours.’

  His hand closed round it. ‘Seems safe,’ he said. He took the globe and popped it into his mouth. A second as the memories meshed with his, then he looked profoundly shocked and said: ‘Motherfucker.’

  ‘You see? This is what I’ve been trying to tell you the whole time. Those bastards are using you.’

  ‘Gods. I think you’re actually telling the truth.’

  ‘There’s no “think” about it. Bloody hell, Dieter, I may just be your little sister, but I am actually right sometimes. And this is one of those times.’

  ‘We should talk to Deodatus.’ He looked around. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Er, yeah. I kind of killed him.’ It slipped out without her really thinking about it.

  ‘You did what?’

  ‘Fried him.’

  ‘How?’ Dieter was staggered. ‘He’s over a thousand years old. And he’s a god.’

  ‘With the skull face.’

  ‘Ah…’ A look of concentration. ‘Actually, I can see how that would work. Cool…’ Then, a little more seriously: ‘He was a piece of history, Leila. You could have just knocked him out.’

  ‘Yeah, well, there you go. That’s what you get if you come between me and my big brother.’

  Dieter was on her before she even saw him move, wrapping himself around her in the strongest hug she’d ever had from him. ‘I’m so glad you’re you, Leila,’ he said into her neck, his voice slightly muffled. ‘I’ve missed you so much. I’m so glad you’re back.’

  A moment of surprise, then she was hugging him back, fiercely. Time dissolved. She held him in the present, remembered him in the past and was so confident that they’d move into the future together. She’d lost Cassiel and she ached for her, but she’d found Dieter again. For an instant, that was all that mattered.

  A minute or so, and they were standing apart again. He handed her the pendant. ‘You’d better have this back,’ he told her.

  ‘Thank you.’ She dropped it over her head, enjoying the return of its reassuring weight.

  ‘So, what now?’ Dieter said.

  ‘You’re asking me?’ replied Leila, surprised. ‘You’d normally just tell me what to do.’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘Yeah. Then you’d tell me why I was wrong and come up with something better. I figured I’d just cut to the chase. After all, you have just killed a god and rescued me.’

  She smiled. ‘Well, the first thing to do is get back to Station. We’ll tell East and Lei where we’re at.’ Joy and relief mingled with deep, aching loss. ‘And we need to confirm that Cassiel has stopped the fallen minds.’

  ‘Who are Lei and Cassiel?’

  ‘Lei’s a copy of me. Dit created her. A pressure man rewrote her memory so she thinks you abandoned her when she was a kid. She’s got all the Deodatus money. She’s bought an asteroid and thrown it at the location of his city on Earth.’

  Dieter looked a bit boggled. ‘I see,’ he said uncertainly. ‘What about Cassiel?’

  ‘She is – was – a Totality mind. A close friend. She’d want us to stop the asteroid, too.’ Leila couldn’t bring herself to say anything else about her. She remembered Cassiel’s advice. ‘Too much perspective,’ she whispered to herself. She forced herself to focus on the practical. ‘Let’s go save the future from the past.’

  Chapter 44

  Each wave broke hard against the beach, climbing it and then withdrawing with a roar – and then another would follow it, and then another. Leila watched a large one roll in, a long, sharp crest of water that even as it grew had started to fall in on itself, spray leaping out of its in-curling peak. It fell as it hit the shore, breaking forwards to become white spume rolling up across the sand. It spent the last seconds of its life pushing hard to enter another world, but failing, and then at last disappeared back into the ocean.

  There was a low peal of thunder from above. The sky flickered with electric life. Lightning crawled across the underside of dense, dark clouds. It flickered within them too, possessing them with light. Deodatus was dead and so his invasion was stillborn, but the forces in the pyramid were untouched and – cornered and hopeless – were engaged in a suicidally aggressive defence. East had activated her army of gun kiddies against its occupants. Her hackers had already shut them out of the gravity drives that lay beneath Docklands, preserving it from instant destruction. Now foot soldiers were moving into the pyramid and the complex beneath it. The sky reflected the digital side of the battle.

  T
he Twins had deactivated the Taste Refresh Festival and the Rose was out of action. Grey had locked up her senior management systems with an aggressive takeover bid, forcing them to focus exclusively on elaborate defence manoeuvres. Then East hit every single InSec member with a media blast describing the situation. The uncorrupted majority moved instantly against their colleagues. Most were quickly captured. Some resisted fiercely. Holt was dead, although in the confusion it was unclear whether he’d been killed or taken his own life. The Fetch Counsellor had taken steps to isolate his weaveself, deep in the Memory Seas. The gun kiddies were helping manage the InSec situation too, supporting the Rose’s uncorrupted agents in combat. They were also running patrols through Docklands and Homelands, maintaining the rule of law while InSec purged itself.

  Totality minds were in action everywhere. Cassiel had been largely successful. The infection had been isolated and contained, ensuring both the security and efficacy of her people. Snowflakes surrounded Deodatus’ space-borne city. They were also preparing to intercept and destroy the rock that Lei and East had thrown at its Earthly location. As much as possible would be preserved. The Solar System’s history was not just safe – it was going to be very substantially augmented. ‘The attack city and the fallen Station are memories too,’ declared a senior Totality diplomat. ‘We will safeguard them.’

  None of that was Leila’s problem anymore. Once she was sure that she and Dieter had done all that they could to guarantee victory, they left the battle behind and came down to the Coffin Drives and the shores of the memory seas. A great emptiness lay on the city of the dead. Most fetches were up in Station, helping where they could, thrilled by the new respect they found there. East had made it very clear that a fetch had been instrumental in saving Station from Deodatus. Leila and Dieter travelled to the shores of the memory seas, where they settled down in a small wooden beach hut, one of the Fetch Counsellor’s refuges. When Dit arrived, Leila left the two different aspects of her brother to talk. Wondering how they were getting on, she looked back up the beach towards the hut. They hadn’t emerged yet.