Dreaming Metal

by Melissa Scott

  I stood, unable to believe what I was seeing—unable to accept for that second what it might be—and I heard Fanning whisper behind me.

  “Elvis Christ. She might’ve done it.”

  “Celeste?” I called, and broke into movement, shoving past the Security at the barrier. I must have caught them by surprise, because they didn’t stop me; one shouted after me, but I couldn’t understand the words. The ground underfoot was covered with black glass, treacherous footing, and I had to go slower than I would have liked. I could feel the heat rolling off the karakuri, and made myself stop a safe distance away. #Celeste?#

  All of them turned to face me, heads and bodies swiveling, the humaniform karakuri fixing their glowing eyes on me, and I felt the familiar presence pulse through me. #Celeste,# I said, and didn’t dare weep, for fear it wouldn’t be true.

  #I’m here,# she said, a different voice, a voice from one of the messengers, the only machines there that would have a voice, but still unmistakably Celeste.

  #You’re safe,# I said, and didn’t care if it sounded inane.

  #I am—safe,# Celeste agreed. #I am low on memory and storage, but I’m safe.#

  Someone touched my shoulder, and I looked back to see Fanning beside me.

  “She’s in there?” he asked, and I looked back at the karakuri’s eyes, the pinlights glowing from the cleaners and rovers and the messengers, half-afraid it wouldn’t be true. The spark of her presence reassured me.

  “Yeh. She’s there.” I shook myself, tried to make sense of it. “In all of them, I think, they’d have enough onboard memory if she spread herself among all of them—”

  “Are these yours?” a new voice demanded, one of the firefighters, helmet off to reveal a red and sweating face.

  “Yeh.”

  “You’ll have to get them out of here, we got work to do.”

  He was trying to sound belligerent, but the way his eyes moved, watching the karakuri moving as one, he was more afraid than he wanted to admit.

  “Come on, Celeste,” I said. “Let’s go home.”

  #Yes,# she said, softly, and I took a step backward, still afraid that if I broke the connection, she would vanish again, Eurydice in reverse. The karakuri followed, clumsy on the heat-cracked pavement—Celeste clumsy in them, cramped and uncomfortable—and I was suddenly aware of how this must look to the watching crowd. Not a construct, Celeste was invisible, out of sight and out of mind, but the karakuri themselves—not just the humaniform karakuri, my doubles, but the others, the ordinary machines that Celeste had commandeered to carry parts of her—escaping the flames of their own volition. No one who had seen this—no one who would see this, because the newschannels would copy and repeat it the same way they’d copied and repeated Micki Tantai’s death—would ever quite be able to deny the possibility of machine rights. If Realpeace had set the fire, and who else could it have been, they had burned their own cause with it. And that was just as wrong, as wrong as Dreampeace had been. My eyes filled with tears, blurring the glowing lights of their eyes, making the pinlights waver and vanish, and I wanted to weep on the copper’s burning shoulder.

  #Home,# Celeste said.

  18

  Fanning Jones

  The Empire didn’t burn to the ground, but it might as well have done. The newsdogs made hay of the images, the Tin Hau with the flames rolling from the shattered window, the karakuri staggering out of the smoke, humaniform and industrial together, Fortune weeping openly, unable to touch their metal skin. She walked them all—walked Celeste, I guess, or Celeste walked herself in them—back behind the Security barrier, and Bixenta Terez, whom I’d never liked before, got the minders to stand off the newsdogs while I found a headbox so Celeste could consolidate and tried to find a carrier to take the bigger karakuri back to Fortune’s workshop. Luckily, a friend of Shadha’s had brought a cart in to help another act, and volunteered to carry the karakuri, too, once they’d cooled. Celeste was all but silent through all this, and I saw Fortune maneuvering to keep her link with the transceiver, checking and rechecking to be sure she was still there.

  Only when the carrier arrived, and Fortune turned to ask her to begin loading the karakuri, did she speak aloud. “All of them, Fortune?”

  “No.” Fortune blinked, confused, and then her voice softened. “Only ours, Celeste. The others belong to—belong with the Tin Hau. Rez will take care of them.”

  “There were others,” Celeste said, and I realized suddenly that her silence had been grief. I never gave a thought to the dozens of karakuri that serviced the Empire—they were just there, sometimes a nuisance, like when the cleaners wanted access to the practice room, but never anything more worthy of notice. They weren’t intelligent, not like Celeste, but they were a presence, and they’d saved her as much as she’d saved them. She was right to regret their loss.

  “I will take care of them,” Terez said, heedless of the newsdogs pressing close to record her words. “I promise, Celeste.”

  “Very well,” Celeste answered after a moment, and the silver karakuri stirred, turning toward the improvised ramp that led up into the cart’s cargo space. “Very well.”

  I went with them, leaving the rest of Fire/Work to take care of my gear, helped Celeste and Fortune get everything back into the workshop. It was undamaged despite the ghost of the blue-painted glyph on the front door, one of those nasty ironies it doesn’t pay to think about, and we brought Celeste inside first, let her reestablish herself in the workshop systems, then walked the karakuri inside. The media wall was blaring—Celeste’s work—and each of the six screens was filled with the burning Empire, newsreaders talking and signing from the corners of the screens. We left the karakuri where we could, sprawled against the workbench or leaning in the corners, waiting for repairs Fortune was too tired to contemplate; I offered to stay, but she shook her head.

  “I want—I need to be alone for a while, me and Celeste. You know what this is going to do.”

  I didn’t really; I’d only just begun to think about all the possible consequences, but I knew what she meant. “You will call me if you need help. Celeste, I mean you, too.”

  “I’ll call,” Fortune said, impatient, her voice rough with smoke and tears, and Celeste spoke from the ceiling.

  “We will call.”

  “Be careful,” I said, wishing I had something more useful to say, and let myself back out to the street. I could feel the security system seal itself behind me, and hoped it would be enough. Shadha’s friend was still waiting, a big-boned, stocky midworlder with the scarred hands of a haul jockey. He offered to drop me at the goddow, and I was tired enough to accept; we threaded our way through the crowded trafficways in merciful silence, and pulled into the alley behind the goddow before he spoke.

  “So. Celeste—it’s finally happened, hasn’t it?”

  He didn’t have to say what he meant. I said, “The constructors haven’t seen her. I suppose it’s possible she won’t meet their standards.”

  “Fuck the constructors,” he said. “That—she’s one of us.”

  “I think so,” I said, and flattened myself against the alley wall to let him pass.

  Like the workshop, the goddow was untouched—the entire neighborhood was quiet, though that, Tai said nastily, was probably just because they were watching the fire on the newschannels. She and Jaantje were home before me, with what we’d saved of our gear—another band that lived near Ironyards had helped them get it here—and then Shadha and Timi called, and then came over, so we ended up spending the rest of the night staring at the media wall while Fire got the flames under control at last. The clip of the karakuri escaping the fire played over and over, along with the clips of Fortune and Terez talking to Celeste. Even Realpeace’s triumvirate, when they appeared the next morning to disavow responsibility for the fire, admitted their power by refusing to screen the clips, or to comment on them. The woman Lecat read the statement, looking grim—they all looked grim, but shaken, too—and then they vanished
from their stage, refusing questions. The first rumors surfaced that afternoon: the triumvirate was splitting, or maybe they were just ousting the old man, Tan Baser, or maybe it was Lecat who was being banished. A few of their rivals in the Realpeace hierarchy, who should have been in a position to know, claimed that one of them had planned the fire, without the knowledge or against the wishes of the other two; whether it was true or not, one of the rivals managed to get them kicked out, and took control of what was left of Realpeace himself.

  Over the next few days, Security picked through the wreckage and pieced together the bones of what had happened. Exactly what Realpeace was after wasn’t fully clear, or even if Realpeace itself was responsible—they continued to deny it—but it seemed to be their kind of operation, first a clip to clear the Tin Hau, and then the incendiaries to destroy it. Celeste’s quick action had kept the clip from running, blocking the planned warning, but she and Terez had managed to clear the house in time to keep anyone from getting seriously hurt. A couple of coolies with Realpeace ties—one of whom was a failed constructor—were charged with breaking into the Tin Hau’s computers, but they swore they’d done it as a prank, and hadn’t any idea what would be done with their trapdoor. Another man, a one-gen coolie with Security and MedService records—a well-known crazy, according to his neighbors in Trifon—was charged with building the devices, but Security could never track down the woman who’d supposedly hired him.

  In Ironyards, everybody in the beershops was certain it had been Lecat, that Realpeace’s new leader had struck a deal with Security—peace and quiet in Landage in exchange for letting Lecat go free—but there wasn’t enough evidence to attract Peacekeeper attention, so nothing could happen. The case was set to die a slow death in the courts, anyway, so the Empire shareholders collected their insurance money and debated whether or not to rebuild.

  Most of Landage didn’t really care, were more interested in Celeste, and whether or not the constructors would decide that she was true AI. Nearly everyone else, except maybe the underworlders who ran the Cartel Companies, had already decided: it was all but impossible, in the face of that clip, to see her as anything but human. Even the people who had supported Realpeace the most strongly were convinced, and there was a bitter conviction in Heaven that the machines would get the rights that they were still denied.

  The constructors all had opinions, Cartel and freelance and even the shadowy figures who worked with the hard-hackers coming out on one side or the other, but the only thing they seemed to agree about was that they didn’t agree on what would prove a construct to be true AI. Whatever they had thought AI would look like, Celeste wasn’t it—I don’t think she was what anybody had expected—but they all wanted a piece of her. Fortune turned down at least a dozen offers to buy Celeste—one from each of the Cartel Companies, anyway, each of those for more money than I would have known how to refuse—and there were at least two attempts to steal her. Security intervened, offering protection, but I could see that Fortune was getting stretched thin. The Cartel and the Constructors Union were already talking about going to the courts, to force her to provide access to Celeste herself, rather than just the schematics; the lawyer Muthana recommended told her he doubted they would win, but that the fight would be expensive.

  We—Fire/Work—were doing all right ourselves. We finished the music for our Metal Dreams clip in a white rush of rage and grief, had it all done less than a week after the Tin Hau burned, and then Suleima Chaandi agreed to direct it in exchange for a share of the profit. We built the new songs around Celeste’s fractal riffs and said so, crediting her officially, and Chaandi ran with the now-familiar image, the karakuri and the flames, working it into a manga about loss and hope and the complexity of expectation. When we played the final clip, sitting in her studio half a level below the Zodiac, even we were silenced. I hadn’t realized, until then, just what we were saying, how strong the anger still was.

  “I hope you’re ready to deal with this,” Chaandi said at last, and brought the lights back up with a gesture.

  Timin ducked his head, embarrassed, and Jaantje said, “I still mean it.” He looked around at the rest of us. “Last chance, people.”

  Tai shook her head. “I’m with you.”

  “Me too,” Shadha said, and Timin nodded.

  “It’s good,” I said. “And we did—do—mean it. We’ll deal.”

  Chaandi gave me a smile with more warmth than I’d expected from someone who’d been so active in coolie rights. But then, she’d never opposed AI. “The music is good—and so’s the clip, though I say it who shouldn’t. I think it could play in the Urban Worlds.”

  She would know, I thought, she’d had a couple of manga sell there, but it was still something good, and intimidating, to hear.

  She shrugged, as though she’d read my thought. “For what it’s worth, I have a friend who’s an FTL pilot—Jian, her name is, Reverdy Jian.”

  “I know her,” I said, involuntarily. She’d been keeping a very low profile in all the debates, despite her connection to Celeste—and to Manfred, for that matter—and even the most dedicated newsdogs hadn’t managed to track her down. Fortune, I knew, was jealous.

  Chaandi laughed softly. “And everybody who knows her sounds just like that when they say so, too. Anyway, she’s got a cargo flight going to Crossroads in a week or so, and I think she’s selling passenger spaces. For what it’s worth.”

  “Thanks,” Jaantje said, but none of us expected to do that well.

  We were wrong, though: the clip’s first printing sold out in two days, and the second one didn’t last much longer; we had our choice of club gigs not just on the Zodiac but in Heaven and even in the underworld. We were getting to be as big as Hati had been at its biggest—a good feeling, but weird, considering that we’d started this success literally on their dead bodies—and there were plenty of people who hated us, just like they’d hated Hati. We heard a lot of talk that we were nothing without Celeste, that we were essentially second-rate, posers who’d gotten lucky; it hurt, but not too much, and then we got a message from the orbital relay station. Annodai—it was a management company, on the fringes of the Urban Worlds, but with a couple of important bands in its stable—wanted to distribute our clip. More than that, they wanted the next clip as well, and were prepared to discuss an Urban tour. They had the money and the reputation to make the offer plausible, and in any case, it would give us a chance to get away from the whispers: there was no way we could refuse. We asked for time to think about it anyway; and tried to figure out what we were missing, and when we were going to wake up again. I called Fortune to tell her the good news, and got the house system. It generally screened her calls these days, so I left my message, and waited for her to call back.

  The media wall buzzed about ten minutes later, and I wasn’t surprised to see Fortune’s face in the screen. She looked bitterly tired, shadows like bruises under her eyes and new lines bracketing the corners of her mouth, and I couldn’t stop myself from shaking my head.

  “You look awful.”

  She waved the words away. “That’s great news, about Annodai. The best news possible.”

  “Thanks.”

  She took a deep breath. “I need to talk to you,” she said, “but not on the connections. Can we meet somewhere?”

  “Sure,” I said. “What about the Copper?”

  “I was thinking Tin Hau.”

  Fortune was waiting in the plaza when I got there, sitting on the edge of one of the low ventilator boxes. She was wrapped in a loose jacket and a head scarf that made her effectively anonymous; her feet were propped on a bulky canvas carryall. At the center of the plaza, people milled around outside the temporary fencing that enclosed the fire site, pointing and exclaiming at the ruin of the Empire. It still dominated the plaza, despite the stains of smoke and foam and the bright streaks from the melted light tubes and the cheap blue-coated pressboard sheets that covered the missing display window. I sniffed hard, and thought I
could still smell the smoke. The shareholders were still debating, or so I’d heard, trying to decide whether to rebuild or just to share out the insurance money and call it a permanent loss. I’d stared long enough to attract attention; I shook my head at a newsvendor, displaying cheap retouched photoprints of the karakuri amid the flames, and went over to join Fortune. She slid over as I approached, and I settled myself on the warm poured stone and waited for her to speak.

  “I saw the clip,” she said. “It’s really good.”

  That wasn’t what I’d expected at all. “Thanks,” I said, and waited.

  She gave me a wry smile. “I liked that you credited Celeste. That makes this easier.”

  “Yeh?”

  “I want you to take her with you.”

  “What?”

  “I want you to take her with you,” she said again, “take her off-world. Let her be part of the band if you’ll have her, but keep her safe until I can join you. She can’t stay here much longer, I can’t protect her. We had another break-in last night, and I don’t think it’s going to stop until she’s gone.”

  I looked away from her, toward the Tin Hau. It no longer looked like an Empire, really; even the shape seemed somehow different, the carvings blurred and cracked by the flames. I didn’t know what to say—on the one hand, it was something we’d talked about, in the band, late-night joking about how good it would be if Celeste could join us, but on the other, that reality was scary, almost as scary as the thought of Fortune giving her up.

  “Does Celeste want to go?” I asked at last, and Fortune smiled again.