Annabel Scheme

by Robin Sloan

  “What?”

  “After you’ve figured it out and saved the day in the sandbox—after that, return here, and finish your training. Stay with me for a year and a day.”

  Scheme breathed out, and it was shaky. She was never shaky.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll come back.”

  Carlotta nodded. “Good. Now, it couldn’t be easier. You need to introduce your friends to each other.”

  Scheme was silent. Waiting. Then: “That’s it?”

  Carlotta rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she said, “a hint and a gift.”

  She stood, reached into the galley’s cupboard, and pulled out a small, glinting silver thing. It had a jointed body with dark feathers down one side and a single curving hook. It was a fishing lure. She cupped it in her hands, brought it to her mouth, whispered words to it. Then she reached out, smiling, dangling the lure.

  “This,” she said, “will bring them together. I promise.”

  Scheme held out her hand, like a child, and Carlotta dropped the silver lure into her palm. Without another word, Scheme turned and stepped back out through the door and as she closed it—almost slammed it shut—I saw Carlotta smoothing back her white-blonde hair, closing the cupboard, looking straight at us, smiling.

  Scheme, are you really going to stay with her?

  “Let’s not talk about it now,” she said, hopping out of the tugboat. “But yes. I’ll have to.” She retreated back up the pier.

  I don’t understand the hint.

  “Neither do I, not yet,” Scheme said, “but I trust her. Carlotta is always cryptic, but never wrong.”

  Nelson was wandering in a slow circle around the car. Scheme snatched up her shoes with one hand and stepped onto the gravel with bare feet. At the sound, Nelson turned, and his eyes widened. Something was wrong. What?

  “Annabel, hey,” he said. His eyes were wide, and they flitted around Scheme’s face like they couldn’t find a place to land. “What’s wrong with—”

  Scheme cut him off. “I got what we need,” she said. “Let’s go.”

  She sat in the driver’s seat with her feet out the door, pulling on her shoes. Nelson piped up, meekly: “It, ah, looks nice.” When Scheme swiveled around to start the car, I saw what he was talking about. Her face in the mirror was pale and drawn, and her hair wasn’t bright red but light blonde, almost white. Even as I watched, color was seeping back, edging in from the roots.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Occupational hazard.”

  We pulled out onto the Embarcadero and Scheme accelerated around the curve. The tugboat disappeared behind us. In the mirror, her face loosened. She broke the silence: “One time I lost it altogether,” she said. “Turns out it’s really cold without hair. Especially way out in the Richmond.”

  Nelson laughed—an exaggerated guffaw. “Hey, I’m getting there,” he said, bowing his head down to show the premonition of a bald spot. “But”—he tugged his curly beard—“I have this to make up for it.”

  “One time I grew a beard, too,” Scheme said.

  “You’re making that up.”

  She was stone-faced for a moment, then giggled. Nelson laughed, too. Scheme’s hair was full-red again, bright and coppery. Both of her hands were on the steering wheel and she guided the Tata along the curve of the street, looking straight ahead.

  That was the last time I ever heard her laugh.

  ANGELUS NOVUS

  Scheme tried to kick Nelson out of the car on the corner of Mission Street. I mean, she really kicked him—foot in his face, heel striking dangerously close to his eyes—but he clung to his seat, protesting.

  “You can’t just ask for my help, then ditch me!” he cried.

  She relented, pulled away from the curb, and made a hard left into Fog City.

  Scheme, I think he has a crush on you now.

  She frowned, looked in the mirror right at me—she’d never done that before—and shook her head.

  Oh, come on. If he figured out the loophole in a demonic contract that ends up saving the day, that’s got to count for something.

  She didn’t smile.

  It was actually lighter in Fog City, as if photons that had wandered in during the day were still trying to find their way out. But the Shard was dark, without the tiniest twinkle of life. It was a chunk of black ice. Scheme parked right in front of it, directly across the street. She switched off the car, then palmed an earring and draped it across the rear-view mirror so it dangled down over the dashboard. Now I had one eye on her shoulder and another here in the Tata.

  “Watch for cops,” she said, “or anything else.”

  “Who, uh. Me?” Nelson said.

  “Yes, you too,” Scheme said. “Back soon.”

  The Shard's front doors slid open without resistance. The lobby was dark. No alarms rang. No queries scrolled across the giant screens. Maybe the Shard’s batteries had finally run out.

  The same receptionist from before was slumped over the desk, head in her arms like she was sleeping. But I could see a spot under her nose—a dab of blood that looked black in the shadows. Another Grailer was sprawled out on the floor behind her, legs cycling slowly like he was treading water.

  The elevators were still running, and Scheme pressed her palm against the call button. The doors swished open.

  From Scheme’s other earring, dangling in the car outside, I watched the elevator climb up the side of the Shard. Inside, I saw her (and myself, I suppose)—she was a tall splotch of gray with a spark of red at the top, rising and fading into the fog.

  Nelson was playing with the Tata’s radio, trying to find a station, but it was all static.

  The forty-seventh floor was even darker than before.

  Jad wasn’t at his desk. Scheme crept through the antechamber and into the short corridor. She took slow, steady steps, hugging the wall. Finally, she peeked into the floor beyond.

  Jad was sitting at the makeshift tables, leaning into one of the screens. Sebdex was pacing the channels of the maze, walking slowly, muttering to himself, making his way towards the center. There, the quantum computer sat glimmering, just as before, with little flecks of yellow stuck to its plastic casing. But now there was something else laid out in the center, too. A long, black bag. A bag as big as a person. Oh no.

  I could hear what Sebdex was saying:

  “Who was Paul Klee? Who will I marry? What is a good credit score? What are the symptoms of goat flu? Where are you, Bel?”

  Scheme’s breath caught and she tensed. But no, he didn’t know she was here. He was talking to the darkness. He continued:

  “Why did China ban computers? What is the difference between brown and white eggs? What is love?”

  It was a weird catechism of queries.

  “It should be here by now,” Jad said, interrupting. I zoomed in on his screen. He was looking at Doctor Faustus; they could access it here, somehow.

  “It will be here,” Sebdex said. His whip-and-bones voice again.

  Scheme stepped into the maze.

  Outside, from my perch in the Tata, I could see that the fog was creeping in towards the Shard, flowing along streets and alleys like water running, slowly, for the drain. Nelson was shifting nervously in the passenger seat, adjusting and readjusting his seat belt.

  “Bel,” Sebdex said, turning to face her.

  “Sebastian. Stop this,” Scheme said. Her hands were in her pockets. “I think it’s finally your last chance.”

  Sebdex was breathing hard; the effort twisted and distorted his ribs. “I told you. I have a plan,” he said. “ I know how to do this, Bel. I’ve been outsmarting them for fifteen years.”

  Scheme shook her head. “I’m looking right at you, Sebastian.” His body was a bent-over jumble. He was gaunt and bald. His face was a ruin; it was worse than Jack Zapp’s, because it wasn’t monstrous, just sad. “You haven’t outsmarted anyone.”

  The windows were vibrating.

  From where we’d parked, the Shard was just across the
street, but I could barely see its outline anymore. All of the fog in Fog City seemed to be coalescing and condensing on this spot.

  Scheme. Something is happening outside.

  She didn’t have ears for me. “Even after everything,” she said, “I thought you were still the same person. And Sebastian Dexter wouldn’t hurt anyone—other than himself. But you’re not him anymore. Sebdex.” She spat it—“Sebdex”—and he flinched like he’d been hit. But then he shook his head back and forth, up and down; that strange off-axis rotation.

  “The best of all possible worlds, Bel,” he said, “and it’s going to be easy. Don’t worry about Fadi Azer’s soul. It’s just the bait. This”—he pointed a crooked arm at the quantum computer—“is loaded up with an hour’s worth of queries—billions—all in superposition. The demons have never seen anything like it. It’s like heroin. It might even kill it.” He grinned a goofy grin. He was missing teeth.

  Scheme had the silver lure in her hand.

  Then, there was another shape in the room. It didn’t walk in; it was just there. It was shaped like a person, but it was dark and fuzzy and shifting, like a badly-compressed video, and it was ten feet tall. Little flecks of rainbow sped across its skin. It had arms and legs that were too long, and fingers and toes that spread out like little arms and legs themselves. It had a face like a man, but it was simple, almost cartoony, with wide-open eyes and lips shaped like a little cupid’s bow. For hair it had thick, dark curls—they fuzzed and shifted, too.

  Angelus Novus.

  Sebdex took a sharp rattling breath—and stepped forward. The demon regarded him silently. Something crackled in its eyes; little blue arcs of electricity. Sebdex bowed low, then swept a jumbled arm towards the black bag and the white quantum computer.

  “Something—extra,” he rasped.

  Angelus Novus bent down low over the offerings in the center of the maze. Its long fingers slowly traced the length of the black bag, then reached out to caress the quantum computer. Its face swiveled back to look at Sebdex, then over to Jad—who had pushed himself back up against the glass wall—and then finally to Scheme. Its lips curled into a mannequin smile, and a zig-zag of electricity traced through its hair.

  “Take this, too,” Scheme said, and tossed the silver lure into the center of the maze. It landed on the floor with a bright clink.

  The windows all exploded at once.

  THE TIGHTROPE

  The glass crashed inward, battered down by a wave of fog that came rolling in from all around us, a 360-degree tsunami. All I could see was gray—rushing, striated gray—and red tangles of Scheme’s hair whipping in the cyclone.

  Outside it was different. The fog came tumbling down. It fell out of the sky like an old gray bandage suddenly unpinned. For the first time in six years, you could see the stars in Fog City.

  That’s not all you could see.

  There was a dark shape winging through the buildings, first curving up above the rooftops in a high parabola, then swooping low, almost skimming the street.

  It was Jack Zapp. He’d gotten the hang of that body. His missing eyes gaped, black and bottomless, and his mouth was pulled into an open grin. He flashed past the Tata, almost scraping the car with one of his black wings, then lifted sharply, screaming straight up the side of the Shard.

  Jack Zapp careened into the forty-seventh floor, through a jagged empty window frame, and came to a clattering halt, tumbled down on all fours.

  Sebdex yelled—it came out a hoarse scratch—and scuttled back. Jad jumped under a table. Scheme held her ground. Angelus Novus just peered at Jack Zapp with that glazed look, those curling lips.

  He rose to his feet and faced Angelus Novus. His jaws pulled wide, and from somewhere deep inside of him—his lips didn’t move—came an urgent wail: “Youuu-uuu-uuu!”

  He flung himself at Angelus Novus and they fused into a dark tangle of teeth and hair and overlong limbs. Jack Zapp was biting and screaming, and Angelus Novus was smiling, but now jagged licks of lightning were lashing out of its eyes and fingers, whipping at the floor and ceiling. They didn’t touch Jack Zapp.

  Scheme. That’s the demon that killed him.

  “What?” she whispered.

  Angelus Novus killed Jack Zapp.

  Jack Zapp was tearing at it, swiping his huge black hands across its face, one blow after another. Then he got it by the hair, a clump of dark curls in each fist, and he pulled. Corded veins stuck out on his rubberized muscles. There was a deep, distorted tearing sound—everything fuzzed red-blue—and Angelus Novus started to split apart, right down the middle. There was more lightning now, arcing and popping and reaching out to stroke the computers, the cables, the banana box. The whole room was vibrating with thunder, a steady shuddering roar.

  But Jack Zapp was untouched, and he was still wailing; it wasn’t words now, just a high angry sound. He stretched and strained, gave a great final heave—and Angelus Novus fell apart into a pile of dark sparks that each crawled and spun on the ground for just a millisecond before giving out with a hollow pop.

  Holy shit.

  Now Jack Zapp turned. He turned to Scheme. I was expecting catharsis, maybe even a hug, but he didn’t seem satiated. No, he seemed angry—angry and powerful. He took a step forward. Scheme took a step back to match. She balled up her fists, and she growled. She actually made a little noise that was a growl. Grrr.

  Jack Zapp ratcheted his black wings out behind him, roared back at her, and took another lumbering step. His funny hat was long gone, and now he had more in common with a locomotive than a conductor, all dark unstoppable power—

  The conductor. Of course. I had an idea—a detective’s assistant kind of idea—and I acted on it. Five hundred milliseconds passed, a thousand. Everything slowed to a crawl as I worked at server-speed—reached out and did the tiniest thing. Scheme’s hair, frozen in mid-tangle. Jack Zapp’s face, frozen in rage and—I saw it—anguish.

  Success. The monster that used to be the ghost that used to be the detective that used to be Sherringford Jackman doubled over, in pain or ecstasy or both, and his wings broke into screws and bolts and shreds of steel and clattered onto the floor, and his skin flushed pink again, almost red like a newborn, and when he looked up, he had eyes, brown eyes, above a drooping brown mustache.

  “My god,” he said. He was looking at me—I could tell he was looking at me, not at Scheme—and he said, “Miss Nineteen. Thank you.” Then he disappeared.

  Outside, in the car, Nelson fidgeted, scratched his chin, and wiped his nose. When his hand came away, there was a dab of blood on it.

  “Whtd you doohoo,” Scheme mumbled. She pressed her palms into her forehead, as if re-compressing its contents, and said more slowly: “Hu. What did you do.”

  This is what I did: From Locust Grove, I logged in to World of Jesus. I thought Jack Zapp’s character might still exist there. There’s a market in the game, and you can send gifts to other players. I sent Jack Zapp twenty-six hundred denari, which, on the open market for game currency, is worth exactly five cents.

  I gave him a nickel, Scheme. The first nickel of a new life.

  “Yrr promoted,” she said. She dug her fingers into her temples and forced the words out: “You’re. Promoted.”

  What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she talk—oh. Outside the maze, on the floor near the wall, I saw the quantum computer. It was lying on its side, and a scorched seam had split open across the plastic. Now its contents were oozing out—a neon trickle of tiny blue marbles so fine it was almost like sand.

  The quantum computer was broken, and it was leaking. Each tiny marble sparked and shone like a little galaxy, and where the trickle touched the floor it melted and flowed into a spreading pool of—something bad. It looked like a puddle of warped mirror. It had seeped from the floor up into the wall, and now the air above it was shimmering like glass. It was spreading fast.

  Scheme. We should go.

  She ran for the elevator.

  Outside
, the Shard was cycling through a set of different shapes, flickering taller, shorter, rounder, sharper. Ghostly figures appeared in the street, some bright like film projections, some barely shadows. There were thousands of them—a whole new kind of fog. Many had gray Grail jumpsuits. Some wore jackets with gold buttons, and they had bushy beards and mustaches. Some had jeans and bright t-shirts and long hair tied back with string. Some wore barely any clothes at all.

  Two figures zig-zagged down the street, one pulling the other by the arm, both laughing. Pam and Ryan. Was this them, six years ago? Was it them today—some other today? They were half-transparent, and as they ran, they split apart and multiplied. It was a whole crowd of Pams and Ryans, every possible Pam and Ryan.

  The feed from the earring fuzzed, colors shifting red-blue, and now some of the people in the street were dressed like fishers and farmers from Jerusalem. And there, just beyond the Shard’s front doors, shining in the shadows, was Mary. She stepped slowly, her footprints glowing gold just as before.

  Nelson was slumped over in the passenger’s seat.

  On the forty-seventh floor, the elevator doors bent and and distorted as they swished together. We started to sink. Scheme leaned heavily against the glass.

  Scheme, what happened to Sebdex?

  “Dnt care nmore,” she mumbled, shaking her head.

  I caught the reflection of her face. Under her nose, across her lip, there was a wide stripe of red.

  When we reached the bottom, the ground-floor lobby was lit up in lurid rainbow colors. The screens were running on overdrive, scrolling faster than I could track, all blurring into each other:

  WHAT IS A GOOD ELECTRIC GLIDER

  WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF SPIDER FLU

  WHAT DO METAWOMEN WANT

  Scheme stopped, leaned, and puked.

  “Hu,” she said, “rrr you still thrr?” Her speech was slurred.

  I’m here, Scheme.

  “Good—ohhh god. Hate banana boxes. We gdda go.”