The Crying Machine

by Greg Chivers

  She stares down and swirls coffee around the now half-full mug, catching semi-dissolved granules stuck to the side. ‘Be patient, Clementine. This is all new to you, and there’s a lot competing for your attention. In time you can draw your own conclusions about what all of this means. That’s what we all have to do, and it never feels like you’ve got the information you need to make the decision.’ She nods towards the door. ‘Come on now. Show me your patient.’

  We have to cross a patch of open space to get back to the chapel and Hilda’s room. The sun setting over these dry hills bathes the dust at our feet in blood. Even the green circles of the farms on the valley floor are tinged purple in this red light. I stop for a moment. In the twilit figures of the workers still labouring in the fields, I see the ghosts of my brothers and sisters from the factory labs. Most of them will have met their fates months ago, never thinking to ask the questions that plague me now, comfortable in their ignorance until death. A sudden breath of cold wind catches me by surprise. The day has disappeared into my bedside vigil for Levi.

  Hilda waits for me by the chapel door and ushers me in. As we walk between benches empty of worshippers, I smooth away the goosebumps raised by the chill outside. She holds open the door of brown smoked glass and waits for me to go in first.

  My eyes go straight to the bed.

  Levi isn’t there.

  Behind me, Hilda gasps and I drag my gaze to where she’s looking. Levi is on the floor staring at us, or maybe through us to somewhere beyond. His eyes are wide open but dark, as though the pupil has expanded impossibly to swallow light; his body …

  He is naked apart from a T-shirt. There are streaks and spots of blood on the floor. It dribbles from small, messy gashes on his fingertips which he wields like a paintbrush of gore, arms twitching in a frenzy of movement as he marks out a broken pattern on the floor.

  In a low crouch, he lurches around the edges of a half-formed circle as if addressing the points of a compass or the Stations of the Cross. At the edge facing the bookcase he stops and leans back, his spine describing an impossible curve. Without thought, my mind delivers the equation, as if the solution was already within me. Suddenly I understand. His body is not him. It is geometry. It is a mathematical abomination, an expression of numbers conveying meaning no human can understand. Or survive.

  33.

  Silas

  I am surrounded the moment I set foot outside the door. Unusually, I have chosen to leave the city museum by its front entrance, but the imminence of the police raid on the Mission has forced me to bring forward the official announcement of my candidacy for the Justice Ministry. Of course, it was already an open secret, but for the sake of appearances the small scrum of press lining the steps has the look of a spontaneous gathering, dedicated newshounds reacting to the pulse of the city. The older ones know they’re having their strings pulled, but the young ones do so enjoy the fantasy of independence. Even the veterans don’t want their faces rubbed in the somewhat sordid truth, so we all dance the dance, knowing the public won’t see past the smiles.

  Somewhere among the pack are my two tame reporters, but I shouldn’t need them. On occasions like this they are a useful backup if one of the hacks is feeling unusually brave and starts asking difficult questions, but it’s important not to be too obvious about these things. My mother used to say, ‘When performing a quickstep, it doesn’t do to look at one’s feet, because people will see that you are trying, and there is nothing so repulsive as naked effort.’

  A thickset, stubbled man barks a question at me. ‘Doesn’t the recent loss of one of the most precious antiquities from the city’s collection cast a shadow over your re-election campaign?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid it does. Some of you will be aware that this is not the first of our city’s precious artefacts to go missing …’ The pack silences itself. As little as twenty-four hours ago, a public attempt to link me to missing antiquities would have been career ending. ‘… although it is perhaps the most famous, the most tragic loss to date. I am sorry to say these thefts are the result of corruption that permeates our city.’ Now, the only sound is the dull roar of evening commuter traffic in the distance as they listen, rapt at the prospect of something more enticing than what they came for. ‘I have come to the reluctant decision that this is an issue I cannot address adequately in my current capacity as Minister of Antiquities. Therefore I will be standing for election as Justice Minister, on a pledge to root out corruption and restore the law in our city.’

  The silence survives the end of my little speech. That last bit was Sybil’s idea: a little mawkish for my tastes but it is the sort of thing people expect on occasions like this, and it plays well in small doses. The unshaven man is the first to recover his wits.

  ‘How do you respond to allegations that you, personally, are connected to the disappearances of several of these items?’

  ‘Forgive me, I don’t believe we’re acquainted. You are?’

  He ignores my invitation to identify himself, instead leaving a silence for me to fill with an answer. For some reason I am unable to place this slightly repulsive gentleman. This kind of aggression cannot be allowed to go unchecked. Still, the mark of a skilled dancer is the ability to improvise. I manufacture a laugh.

  ‘I don’t respond to allegations I haven’t heard: allegations no one, to my knowledge, has made apart from you. In the absence of any tangible evidence, or even a concrete accusation, I can only assume this is some kind of smear.’

  From there the questions rapidly descend to the platitudinous and the predictable. I field a few for the sake of appearances before passing the baton to Sybil, who takes the floor with the barely restrained eagerness of the apprentice wielding the master enchanter’s wand. Her appearance elicits soft howls of derision from the pack, who rapidly disperse, save a few who remain out of politeness, or perhaps a canny instinct for where the wind is blowing. Two minutes invested in Sybil now is a small price to pay for the potential returns after my office changes hands.

  It is only a short walk through the museum’s manicured gardens to where my car awaits. The soft leather embraces me with a muted squeak of contact. Unfortunately for us all, Sybil’s advancement is dependent upon my own, which still hangs in the balance. Amos remains a formidable obstacle simply through his continued presence and undeniable competence. This new imperative of his to take an active role in investigations, in defiance of a century’s tradition, is potentially disturbing. I have invested a substantial portion of my earnings from the Antikythera project with a cartel of Lebanon-based hackers to nudge the polls, but, as they take great pains to point out, the greater the influence, the greater the risk of detection. So, I must exercise tiresome restraint and persist with other schemes to ensure the desired outcome.

  As the car hums into movement, the data terminal chimes with an incoming call. I count to fifteen before answering. The cultural attaché for the Sino-Soviet Republic of Humanity can wait a little.

  ‘Silas. Big day. Are you sure you want this?’ He knows. Vasily usually knows, and there’s no reason to think today would be an exception.

  ‘Ha! It’s a little late for questions like that, don’t you think?’

  His voice softens, becomes contemplative, a touch emollient. ‘Perhaps. For someone of your gifts, perhaps not. From a purely professional standpoint, I hold you in the highest regard, but the Law? There is a certain unavoidable accountability. These are difficult things. Not pleasant things. They have a way of getting to a man.’

  Trust a Russian to get philosophical when business is pressing. ‘I’m touched by the compliment, Vasily, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Do you know how many languages I speak, Silas?’

  ‘Please, flabbergast me.’

  ‘Eight; seven if you discount old Ukrainian. Every single one has a phrase that translates as “Be careful what you wish for”.’

  And I thought I’d left the platitudes on the museum steps. ‘
Umm, Vasily, please don’t think me ungrateful for your pearls of wisdom, but I really wanted to talk about our arrangement.’

  ‘The terms are unchanged.’ His words are stone now, delivered direct from the Urals.

  ‘Yes, that’s understood. What I wanted to discuss was turnaround time. The polls are very nearly upon us, and I’m going to need documented evidence of Glassberg’s colourful past pretty quick for it to have time to sink in with the electorate. If I get you what you want, how quickly can you produce it?’

  There’s a faint sound that might be a whispered laugh, or perhaps just interference on the line. ‘Silas, Silas, I had the documents made and couriered from the state archives the same day you first mentioned the idea. They are in the safe in my office. They “prove” conclusively that Amos Glassberg was recruited as an FSB asset during his time as a student in Moscow. We’ve added a little colour about how he wanted to stay and become a citizen, but was ordered to go home, where he could become more useful. The authenticity is unquestionable. And if you try to steal them, I’ll have the thief shot and nailed to the city museum’s front door with a little note explaining how he got there. Is that businesslike enough for you?’

  The subtext is unmistakeable. Silas Mizrachi, you are a big fish in the small, dirty pond that is Jerusalem. I am the representative of one of the world’s great powers. If you start asking favours of us, it is on our terms. Of course, if his masters become too demanding, they will discover precisely how toxic Jerusalem can be to empires, but for now it suits me to play along.

  ‘OK, Vasily. You made your point. I’ll get you your knick-knack within forty-eight hours. At some point, I do hope you’ll tell me what you plan to do with the wretched thing.’

  My attempt at levity receives only a grunted acknowledgement before he ends the call. The car’s data terminal chimes the instant my back makes contact with the seat leather. Sybil’s face appears in an arc of light. She’s still wearing make-up from the speech. The effect is disconcerting.

  ‘I thought you were wowing the press.’

  ‘There’s not much to say, is there? Not yet, anyway. Something came through. I thought it was urgent.’

  ‘Everything is urgent today. What is it now?’

  ‘Your expensive Korean data miner has finally done something to earn his money. He’s worked out how Peres pulled off the Antikythera theft.’

  ‘Interesting, but isn’t that rather redundant information now? We’re going to take collection of the artefact in a matter of hours, after all.’

  ‘If your man is right about what he’s found, the raid could pick up something more valuable than the Antikythera Mechanism.’

  ‘More valuable? What are you talking about?’

  ‘He says he’s identified an intrusion into the warehouse network. Despite extensive counters, it left a unique data signature. It’s a human-AI hybrid.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Organic artificial consciousnesses implanted in human bodies – only a few known to exist. Most of them are failed experiments. They go mad. Loneliness, apparently.’

  ‘Loneliness?’

  ‘They have no common experience with true AIs, and they get freaked out by real people – too strange and demanding – so sooner or later they always find a way to end themselves.’

  ‘Why the fuck should we care whether these monstrosities get lonely? I still don’t get why you’re bringing this up now. We have other fish to fry, Sybil.’

  Her jaw tightens in irritation, and then relaxes. For a moment Sybil seems almost to stare through me from the screen.

  ‘How much do you think Vasily Tchernikov would pay to get his hands on a tame Machine?’

  34.

  Clementine

  Levi’s head turns in a twitching motion. A joint pops as his body attempts to describe a sine curve, then wobbles upright, one bloodied hand on the bookcase. Red eyes do not see us.

  ‘What did you read to him?’ Hilda’s voice drags me from the horror.

  ‘Read? What’s that got to do with anything?’ One of the hands comes away from the bookcase, and the Levi thing takes a staggering step. ‘I don’t know –some old bit of the Bible.’

  ‘Clementine, I need you to trust me that this is important. Which bit?’

  I see the dark-bound volume with the flaked gold lettering on a shelf behind his head. ‘That one, The Book of Maccabees. Something about a witch and a battle and a sacrifice. I’m not sure, it was like some kind of weird poetry, but it seemed to calm Levi when he heard it.’

  Hilda’s nodding in comprehension while I speak. Before I finish talking, she kneels down and starts rooting in the detritus underneath her desk. She emerges from the chaos of papers and books with the green plastic unit containing the defibrillator kit she used to revive me. Wordlessly, she flicks a black switch and twists a dial adjusting the current.

  ‘What are you doing? That could kill him!’

  Her fingers grip the handles of the defibrillator paddles and she speaks without looking at me. ‘If I’m right about what’s happened to him, he’s dying in front of us. I don’t know how long we’ve got. We might already be too late.’

  An electric whine fills the air. Ionizing molecules pop as the defibrillator’s charge builds. Even as the eyes stare into nothing, something within Levi senses threat. His lips part, showing teeth stained crimson from worrying at his own fingertips. The half-naked body jerks upright in a sickening limbo motion.

  Hilda rubs the paddles’ faces against each other in a slow circular motion, making sounds of sliding metal, eyeing Levi like a primeval hunter facing a sabre-tooth ready to pounce.

  ‘What are you doing? He’s just standing in front of the bookcase. There’s no reason to shock him.’

  ‘The thing standing in front of the bookcase isn’t Levi, not any more.’ She speaks low and fast, not taking her eyes off him.

  ‘What do you mean? What’s happening?’ Her words are a jumble of impossibilities, but the fear they strike into me is real. Levi is a corporeal human, his psychic self inextricably linked to his body since birth. The technology to override the link does not exist, not even in the Machine sanctums. What can he be if not Levi?

  ‘That passage you read ends with a summoning rite for Dagon. Something inside Levi responded.’ She takes a half-step towards him.

  ‘That’s insane.’

  She turns her head to draw my attention to where the defibrillator box lies on the floor behind her feet. ‘Move it forward. The leads aren’t long enough for me to get to him from here.’

  The whine from the defibrillator becomes high-pitched. I shake my head to deny the reality of what’s happening, but the sound pours in from either side. In spite of myself, I pick my way through the mess on the floor and shove the plastic case forward with my foot, creating some slack in the curled cables tethering Hilda. She takes a step towards Levi. The air around the edges of the paddles hums and crackles.

  Levi moves almost too quick to see. His palsied left arm slashes into a blur of motion. Blood trails from the gashed fingertips as it smashes the defibrillator from Hilda’s grip in one backhand blow. The sub-routines in my cortical enhancement modules recognize the dynamics of a threat situation before the paddles hit the floor. They land in the corner with an audible pop as the current discharges and my body assumes a combat stance, chin tucked low, forearms and elbows guarding my head, with no conscious thought. I stand still like that, twitching and nauseous with the sudden dump of adrenaline, watching Levi ignore me as he bulls past Hilda’s prone form to grab the straps of the canvas bag containing the Antikythera Mechanism.

  ‘STOP HIM OR HE’S GONE FOREVER!’

  Her voice booms out, and my body twists to obey. The lead foot pivots at the ball, generating momentum which travels up the length of my body to my shoulder, amplified by the muscles of the hips and core. All the hand has to do is form a fist and allow itself to be whipped around by the force the arm transmits. The resulting punch lands flush with th
e centre knuckle on Levi’s temple. He blinks and turns to face me. The force of throwing the blow coils my core like a spring. I expend the momentum with a high, spearing knee into the solar plexus that forces air from his lungs, and follow it with an upward elbow.

  His nose explodes with a wet crack. He should be unconscious. The punch was a clean knockout. The knee should have overloaded his nervous system. The pain from his nose should be excruciating. None of it’s working. I’m going to have to break bones if I want to stop him.

  He shoves through me and I pivot aside on my left foot, allowing him to take two steps towards the door, but setting my bodyweight for a low kick that will wreck his knee joint. His bloody hand spasms onto the door handle and jerks it inward and open, but a robed figure fills the doorway, blocking his path. Suddenly, Levi’s body starts to twitch and I hear a buzzing and a clicking. I pull the kick back just in time to prevent my shinbone connecting with his kneecap. Levi falls back anyway, trailing two wires from his chest. They connect to something that looks like a shaving tool. I have to blink before I recognize the hand holding it as Ludmila’s. Her thumb stays pressed against a red button in the centre of the tool and Levi’s body keeps twitching in its palsied dance, saliva pouring from the corners of his mouth. I feel Hilda’s bulk behind me and turn to see her coming to her feet, the paddles of the defibrillator gripped firmly once more.

  ‘No! Can’t you see he’s had enough?’ Statistics conjure themselves into my forebrain unbidden – percentage risks of heart failure, clinical outcomes from system shock, symptoms of brain damage, all of it useless. I have no data for what is happening to Levi.

  Hilda shakes her head grimly and advances. ‘This is how we brought you back. Don’t you think we tried everything else first? If we don’t do this, he’s not coming back.’