by Al Robertson
Two months out of Mars and he’d been picking his way from rock to rock, sensors set to wide passive scan. The silent days had been filled with the past. When they found the snowflake he felt a huge sense of relief. It was in close orbit around a small asteroid. It had masked its systems, but not well enough. He’d picked up its signature while still a few hundred kilometres away from it. Memories receded as Fist went to work. Forty-eight sleepless hours followed, watching him carve his way through intricate firewalls, creating selective blind spots that allowed Jack to move his little patrol ship in closer and closer. When they were fifty kilometres out, Fist coupled with the ship’s navigation systems and pulled it into a complex evasive dance, always keeping the asteroid between them and the snowflake.
Neither Jack nor Fist realised just what they’d found. After two days of work, Fist still hadn’t even been able to find the snowflake’s core systems, let alone start cutting his way into them. ‘It’s never taken this long, Jack,’ he said sulkily, clacking his teeth with frustration. ‘I’m going to throw myself back in there and I’m not going to come out until I’ve danced us all the way into its little fake head.’ Then he focused all his resources on the struggle. His short body went limp, tumbled to the floor and disappeared.
Jack took to his bed, allowing his own mind to be subsumed by Fist too. He quickly dropped into the strange, confused dreamland that absorbed him at such moments. He was afraid that he would be forced to relive his mother’s death. It was a guilty relief to discover that she would not be present to him. In fact, he could still feel Fist. The puppet pulled him to the edge of the ship and then leapt into space. Jack found it so peaceful, until Fist’s heightened digital senses sang out warnings about solar radiation storms. Fist used them to mask the soft, invisible transmissions that flew him through the night to the snowflake. Once he was there he wormed his soft way into the snowflake’s digital carapace.
He entered in with a dark, secret lover’s touch. He was so attentive, so careful. His fascination with detail at last showed itself as a strength, as he engaged with defence systems more complex than had ever been encountered before. Jack watched in something like awe as the subtlest parts of his mind become components of Fist’s hacking array. Finally, Fist broke through the last of the firewalls that – he thought – protected the core systems of a single mind. He pushed past it, taking Jack with him. Both of them expected to find the machine’s heart buried behind it. Fist would break it, then dance gleefully through the resultant digital chaos. Jack would weep.
But they found something very different, and were amazed. A great family of shapes hung in luminous space before them, moving around each other in a slow, complex, three-dimensional dance. Each one was shaped like a child’s drawing of a star, with luminous spines reaching out from a central shining globe. Dense gouts of light branched out of those spines, connecting with others close to them, falling back from those that were pulling away. Deep information flows pulsed and shone everywhere, leaping through the void. The snowflake was a womb for a new kind of intelligence, alive with an infinity of thought.
‘How many minds can you see, Fist?’
‘I can’t count them.’
‘This is deep Totality. It must be one of their hubs.’
‘This close in? Aren’t they Kuiper Belt only?’
‘They’re getting more and more confident. Isn’t it astonishing?’
‘I suppose so.’ There was a pause, then Fist said ‘Well, let’s fuck ’em all up.’
‘No.’
‘What the actual fuck? Jack, nobody’s ever broken into anything like this. Those other bastards will finally have to take me seriously.’
‘There’s been enough dying. We’re not going after this. It’s too beautiful.’
‘Oh, for gods’ sake. NOW he has an attack of conscience. It’s not your fucking mother in here.’
Jack pulled his mind space back from Fist’s control, feeling connections between them snap as he reclaimed the processing areas of his consciousness. Fist moved from disbelief to rage almost instantly. He howled and snarled impotently as Jack let their shared perception drift further into the Totality hub. Jack knew he would be triggering alarms, but didn’t care. All thoughts of warfare seemed far away, in the face of such perfection.
Jack had forgotten that he was in the little café, that Ifor was sat in front of him. Memories swirled in his head. Even Fist was silent, sulking as he watched Jack replay the moment that had cost them both so much.
Ifor coughed, reminding Jack that he was still there. ‘You are a hero to many of us,’ he said.
‘Then the Totality needs a better class of hero.’
‘Modesty is a fine quality. Very few of you could have broken into that mind. Nobody else would have spared it.’
[ Well, it’s always nice to be appreciated,] preened Fist, [but I bet he’s after something.]
‘So, you’re here as a diplomat?’ said Jack. ‘But what’s your mission? Why are you in Docklands? We saw one of you the other night, but we couldn’t work out what it was doing.’
‘We have a very specific task to accomplish. During the Soft War, many Totality components were captured by your forces and brought home as souvenirs. They retain trace elements of mind consciousness. We are incomplete without them. Under the peace treaty with your Pantheon, we are empowered to search Station to find and recover them.’
‘Are you having much luck?’
‘You have seen how we are received here.’
‘Tough job.’
‘It is satisfying when we find a fragment of mind. Of course, there is much that is still missing. Several complete minds remain unaccounted for. We are liaising with InSec to resolve this matter. It claims to have no knowledge of them, and our searches have turned up very little of substance. But we have a duty to our lost. So we keep looking.’
‘All over Station?’
‘Here and in Homelands. We have a team negotiating the terms of the peace between our peoples in Heaven, but we have not been allowed to search up there.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘Yes. But what can we do?’ Ifor shrugged, a remarkably organic gesture of resignation. ‘Anyway’ he continued, ‘I have been asked to make you an offer.’
[ Here it comes, Jack. They’re going to want you to do their dirty work for them.]
‘While we’ve been talking I’ve been in communication with my seniors. We are aware that the life of a parolee is not easy. We are here to perform a very specific set of tasks and as such we are empowered to deputise selected Station inhabitants to assist us. Were you to accept such a role, we would be able to extend our diplomatically protected status to you. We would of course also release funds to cover any expenses you incur before the end. This would, I suspect, make the time remaining to you considerably easier.’
‘You can make an offer like that?’
‘Yes. It is what you may call a loophole. The Pantheon’s negotiators never thought to specify who we could and couldn’t ask to represent us.’
‘And what would I need to do in return?’
‘A certain amount of searching to show InSec that your employment was genuine, but the work would not be onerous. You would, however, be performing a very genuine service for us. You can move through your world with an ease that we lack.’
‘Station isn’t my world any more, Ifor. They threw me out with the trash. And I’ve done my bit for your people. I respect what you are, but it’s because of Totality action that I can’t disengage from Fist. I appreciate the offer, but no. I’ve had enough of both sides.’
‘I respect your decision and I’m sorry that our actions have hurt you. Our offer will remain open to you. I have left my contact details in your weavespace. If you change your mind, or if there is any other help we can give you, I will be easy to reach.’
‘There is one favour you can do for me.’
‘Name it.’
‘You can help me find someone. A singer called
Andrea Hui.’
Ifor froze for a moment as he sifted through the weave. Then he looked towards Jack, his head pulsing with unreadable light.
‘Curious,’ he said. ‘She’s performing at a small club in Prayer Heights tomorrow night.’
‘What’s curious about that?’ said Jack.
‘She’s been dead for the last five years.’
Chapter 9
Jack had planned to find his father, but thoughts of Andrea’s death overwhelmed him. It explained the mystery of her silence since he’d announced his return, but not of her presence during the two years before it. He assumed that she’d never expected to have to do more than write to him, and so had taken fright at the news of his homecoming. Stripped of the restrictions of distance and prison, she would have to reveal that she was in fact a fetch. Rather than that, she’d chosen to say nothing.
But Jack couldn’t understand how she’d been able to communicate with him in the first place. It should be impossible for fetches to act so independently. He wondered briefly if he’d been the victim of an impostor. But his correspondent was fluent in feelings and moments that he and Andrea had never shared with anyone else. It was impossible to believe that he’d been hearing from anyone but her. He thought about how deft, how precise her support for him had been, as he’d come to terms with the end of his life. Her new status helped explain that too. She had a very personal understanding of what it meant to pass on.
And that led to the puzzle of her death. Andrea had apparently fallen victim to a drug overdose a few hours after Harry had been shot. Ifor found a news report explaining that grief had overwhelmed her. At best, she’d miscalculated an anaesthetic shot. At worst, the overdose had been entirely deliberate. But the Andrea Jack knew had never touched anything harder than wine or whisky, and even them only in very strict moderation. He thought back to the traces of Pantheon involvement he’d found in the Panther Czar’s accounts, and wondered what new corruption Harry might have uncovered; who could have found the potential spread of such knowledge threatening.
The hotel room oppressed Jack with unanswered questions. He went out into the street and started walking. He was heading for his parents’ neighbourhood, although he wasn’t yet too sure if he wanted to see them.
[All this angst! It’ll be different when I’m in charge, Jackie boy.]
[Oh, fuck off.]
After half an hour or so, Jack found himself standing on the edge of a void site. A kind of death had come to it. It had once been an apartment block, but terrorism had left it a burnt-out shell. Windows were dark holes where flames had roared out. Soot-black smoke stains leapt up the walls above them. There was no roof. The ruin had been left untouched since the fire. A high metal fence stopped anyone from getting too close.
Fist’s words were still buzzing through Jack’s thoughts. He remembered the rage that had taken him when he’d first truly accepted that he was going to die. He’d tried to attack Fist, but it was impossible to really damage him; ranted at him for hours, but the puppet had just laughed. He’d bargained with him, but they both soon realised that there was nothing either of them could do to slow or stop the end. There had been despair, too. In his blackest moments, Jack had thought of killing himself. But that came to seem like such a waste.
A woman stopped a few metres away from them. She was looking up at the dead building. Jack noticed that, very discreetly, she was crying.
[ I wonder what’s set her off ?] said Fist.
She was the right age to have lost a child on the moon. Jack thought of his own mother, of her fetch’s belief that he was dead. He thought of Andrea.
[ It’s a private moment, Fist. Let’s go.]
They walked in silence for a while. They were very close to Jack’s parents’ house. A meeting with his father would no doubt be painful. He doubted that he’d be allowed to see his mother’s fetch.
[ There was some pretty heavy security software in that void site, Jack. Some of the Rose’s best.]
[A bit much even for you?]
[ I could chew it up and spit it out, if it wasn’t for this fucking cage.]
Fist’s frustration buzzed in Jack’s mind. He so clearly wanted a different present to live in, built on a different past; one in which he’d been grown on a different host, been able to prove himself in different battles. That set Jack wondering how different his own life would have been without Fist, what he could have become if he hadn’t been sent away to fight a war that would break most of his links with his home and all of his faith in its gods. He remembered all the senior executives he’d worked for, and mapped his life on to theirs.
He wouldn’t have fallen out with his parents – but Grey would have lifted him very rapidly into a very responsible, very time-consuming role. He doubted that he would have seen very much of them. He would have been on-Station when Harry and Andrea died; but by then, Grey would have introduced him to a suitably corporate spouse – someone who would never have tolerated any sort of mourning for a failed relationship with a musician from Docklands. There would have been no communication with her fetch. And then, Grey’s fall would have come – a shattering professional and emotional challenge.
He imagined the home he would have shared with his wife, a house that he would usually only see late at night or first thing in the morning, at either end of a few snatched hours of sleep. There might have been children, small, chaotic strangers he’d have been too exhausted to ever do more than snap at. There would have been friends. Now that he knew how much their friendship was really worth, he found it impossible to mourn their loss.
It struck Jack that, if Fist had had the life he so wanted, he’d have died in orbit around Mars with all the other puppets. Now that he had a truer sense of Grey’s commitment to him, he could only be glad that he hadn’t let himself vanish into a life that would have lasted for decades longer, but would also have been a kind of death. He hoped that he might have found a way out of it, but wasn’t sure he’d have had the strength. He turned, and walked away from the streets he’d grown up in.
The slow hours passed until the time came to find the venue where Andrea’s fetch was singing. It was hidden down a side street, nestling between two abandoned gas storage cylinders. It took a while for Jack to nerve himself to walk up to the doorway, bring out his InSec card and ask for a ticket. He half-hoped that the doorman would refuse him, that any venue where Andrea was performing would be too exclusive for a parolee like him. But a soft voice hissed ‘welcome to Ushi’s’, then ‘through there’. As he turned away he winced to feel cold, unsurprised eyes burn their lack of judgement into him.
The main bar smelt of failure. There were a few ceiling lights, only serving to make the shadows deeper. The plaster was peeling off one wall, a clotted hint of metalwork visible beneath. Conversations muttered out of the gloom. Several people were fully onweave, staring at nothing. Most were wearing cheap overalls, differentiated only by the weave sigils scattered across them. The bar’s countertop glowed with stale yellow light. A blonde woman stood beside it, apparently lost in thought.
When the barman appeared he looked like a poorly lit ghost. There was a faint smell of sweat as he leant forward. Jack laid the InSec card down and tried to smile. ‘Whisky. On the rocks.’ The barman nodded. There was a clink and a hiss as he prepared the drink. He held out a glass filled with tawnied murk. It was a potent blend, not needing the weave to burn as Jack gulped it down. He immediately wanted another. He was ashamed of the urgency of his craving. This time, he ordered a double.
[ You’re going to end up like Charles if you keep going like that. And I’ll have to suffer through the hangovers.]
‘There’s some entertainment tonight,’ said Jack to the barman. He swallowed. ‘A fetch?’
The barman nodded. ‘Later on.’
‘Do I need any special permissions to see her?’
‘She’s open circuit. Anyone can tune in.’
Jack was relieved. He could use his existing access right
s to see Andrea. There was no need for Fist to risk any hacking. The barman moved away. The darkness wrapped itself around him until he was just a shape in the gloom, less substantial than the multicoloured bottles glimmering darkly behind him.
The blonde woman caught Jack’s eye and smiled. She was remarkably beautiful, in the smooth and polished way that corporate logos are beautiful. But he was not here for her. He found a small empty table, tucked away at the rear of a bar, and waited for Andrea. She wouldn’t be able to see him from the stage. He still wasn’t quite sure what he would say to her, if he would even try to speak with her.
[ I’d sooner be drinking piss from a Martian urinal than spending another minute in this dump,] muttered Fist.
[ Just make sure our fetch portals are open. I don’t want to miss her.]
Half an hour or so passed, and Andrea was on stage. She materialised unannounced. There was a small stir in the bar, quiet sounds of movement as a few people turned in their chairs. The spotlight caught her. She’d wrapped a wide, dark scarf around her head to make a hood. Her face was invisible. Jack sat back into the shadows, his heart shocked by memory.
[Aw!] moaned Fist. [She’s covered up. I was looking forward to a bit of skull!]
Andrea wore a tight-fitting dress studded with sequins. She swayed to a recorded backing track, making each one sparkle with unreachable fire. Bleak jazz notes scattered into the air. A saxophone riff drifted by like a kiss. It was the intro to one of her own songs. She leant in towards the microphone. There was the lightest sigh, lost in reverb. And then she started to sing.
[ These people,] breathed Jack, [they don’t deserve her.]
Amplified words drifted through the bar like smoke. They barely touched most of its patrons. Some continued conversations, others flirtations. Others just drank alone, lost in slowly emptying glasses. The blonde woman was leaning against a pillar, distractedly stirring at a cocktail with a bright little paper umbrella. It flashed against her dark clothes. She looked bored.