Out on Blue Six

by Ian McDonald

  High above the city of Yu the pantycars rolled and came for them. Kansas Byrne swore at the approaching aircraft, an ugly, incongruous sound to Kilimanjaro West. Beneath their feet, the rooftops of Pendelburg gave way to the flaking pantiles of old Ranves, closing every second. The Love Police bore down on them.

  “Look, there’s an emergency procedure, listen good, if we ever get split up, we have it all arranged to meet in a safe place. If we get split up, make for …”

  Her instruction went unheard as the Love Police thundered in overhead, blatting orders from loudhailers. Landing jets sent the balloons hurly-burlying between the chimneys and carved gable ends. A malevolent gust of wind patted Kansas Byrne’s LTA eastward out of Ranves into the waterdistrict of ThreeJumpSpan. She tried to shout “Tamazooma!” to her apprentice, but the distance was too great, the roar of the jets too loud. Her last glimpse of Kilimanjaro West was to see him hovering over a flaking clay-tile rooftop in the center of a ring of hovering pantycars.

  “Oh, shug, I’m sorry Kaydoubleyou.” She saw, clear as any siddhic revelation from a street shrine, the man who called himself Kilimanjaro West reach for his red harness release button. And because no one had ever told him he could not do it, he punched the knob. The freed balloon leaped skyward, and Kansas Byrne saw Kilimanjaro West drop to the crumbling tiles and slide down the sheer roof to hang for a moment from the storm guttering. He turned to regard the five-story drop to the cobbles, and with a shrug, he launched himself into space.

  Then she saw him no more.

  Chapter 6

  TROPICAL NIGHTSONG.

  Can be.

  Magic.

  Long swooping whistles, river-running ripples of birdsong, low intimate chuckles, coos, clicks, maracca-macaw rattles. Twee-oo-ip. Twee-oo-ip. Cascades of quavers, glissandos, arpeggios; as if each night-calling bird were an instrument in an orchestra: some lyres, some oboes, some violas, some piping piccolinos. Some, pounding bass tympanis. Basso profundo, coloratura, tenor. Piercing, sweet soprano. Descant, harmony, counterpoint, fugue: the forest as orchestra, as opera: tropical nightsong.

  Can be.

  Terrifying.

  When you’re an overheight, overweight (not quite so as before; flab transmogrifying mystically, wonderfully into muscle) ex-cartoonist Category 8 PainCriminal subterranean adventurer/roving artist to an equally ex equally criminal Elector dying of radiation sickness crouching in the warm, damp tropical night among the root buttresses of some jungle hardwood besieged by lianas and orchids and luminous fungi. If you are utterly, irrevocably out of your element, lost amidst the alien cane, a stranger in a strange land, without the slightest idea of who is making what sound, and why, and where, and how, then that sweet tropical night is a terrifying place.

  Something laughed in the living darkness.

  “Fug, what was that?”

  Little eyes caught the light from the watch-fires beyond, a wet racoon nose gleamed.

  “Alas, this one’s knowledge of local flora-fauna limited.”

  “I meant, was that animal or human?”

  “Animal.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know.”

  Time passed, but in a night without stars or moon to measure its progress, Courtney Hall could not say how much, or how little of that time passed, only that it took many heartbeats for the camp to prepare for the night. Leather tents were erected, embers in a cooking pit brought to a red glow. Skewered meats were built into a tepee over the cooking pit. The smell of charring flesh nauseated Courtney Hall twice over. First, because as a citizen of the Compassionate Society, she was vegetarian. Second, because she had known some of those meats personally. Some of the Tinka Tae army moaned and chittered. She prayed her enemies would not be able to distinguish them from any other strand of the tropical nightsong. Voices rose in the camp: a tense-bound inflected proto-form of Cityese. Tongue of ancestral spirits. Spirits of ancestral tongues: within the murmurs of prehistoric language, the King of Nebraska’s voice sounded, clear and high as a great, mad bird.

  “No no no no no, I won’t eat it, I won’t, I won’t, I won’t, I want the Maison Yblis ’twenty-two, not this, can’t you see I’m nauseous, nauseous? Oh, take these vain beeves from my gaze, these vile viands, these poor roasted subjects, oh, my dears, I’m so sorry to have brought you to such a humiliating end. Bring me more wine! More wine! More wine, vicar! Ah, the dew upon the stems of yesterday’s wine glasses, the bloom of yesterday’s vines! Bring me my Maison Yblis ’twenty-two, louts, oafs, peasants!”

  Some sounds are both joyful and tragic.

  A breath of warm wind touched the back of Courtney Hall’s neck: fear, or the first stirrings of Angelo Brasil’s little divertisement?

  Strange allies, uninvited guests: part one. Angelo Brasil. Manners maketh the man, he’d kissed her hand, so! and whispered secrets behind his diamond smile; wrapped around his spine like a climbing vine was the one, the only, Series 000 biocomputer through which he could enter, control, possess any part, any unit of the Compassionate Society’s dataweb. “Lynk, my dear, lynk” was his name for what he could do. The cybernetic anarchist had smiled again, but his eyes were anthracite flecked with mica, a collapsar full of swallowed stars. Courtney Hall reminded herself never to trust him too much.

  Thunder growled up under the vaguely luminous roof of the world. The nightsong was silenced abruptly. Leaves rustled; then, note by note, the music resumed. The army of cooks, guides, interpreters, porters, engineers, and bottle washers waited, whiskers pressed to the leafmold. Slender, silent as their spears, sentries took position around the camp, thin silhouettes against the smudgefires. Watcher watched watcher. Born of an instantaneous society where no one was ever kept waiting for anything (except the odd bureaucratic rescheduling) Courtney Hall had never learned of the existence of patience and was mentally elsewhere. Strange allies, uninvited guests: part two.

  Xian Man Ray, the Amazing Teleporting Woman. Teleporting was a word she scorned: flip was her name for her short jaunts through the nonquantized probability domain of unspace. The very idea of it made this fat yulp’s head spin, but she knew she trusted Xian Man Ray where she did not trust her pseudobrother. And not merely because she was another woman, the only other woman she had met since diving down the service hatch in Kilimanjaro Plaza. She had talked as she went off to war with the Amazing Teleporting Woman and the Man with the Computer Brain, and within that first hour as they descended through the passive defense zone toward the central river, she knew here was someone who could be that rarest of things: a female friend. The remaining Tinka Tae engineers remained at the river with Angelo Brasil to build a raft from the balsa trees that grew in great stands down in the humid low latitudes. Angelo Brasil, with twenty-five gigabytes of bioprocessor coiled around his spinal column, had business of his own: a little diversionary lynk into the climate control systems that maintained the underground forest to play merry-andrew with the weather. Strategy and tactics. Be thankful of any cover you can get, even if that cover is climatic. Don’t fug with the boys who run the weather. Under Xian Man Ray’s captaincy the remainder of the tatterdemalion army (some fourteen malassorted racoons and an artist) continued upstream, following the riverbank. (“Easier to avoid traps,” the small woman explained as a freely sweating Courtney Hall struggled to keep pace with her.) They marched and they marched and they marched and the day grew hotter and hotter and hotter, and Courtney Hall would have loved to strip off something, but she was still a yulp and excruciatingly self-conscious. Think of something else to pass the time: strange allies and uninvited guests: part three: that cat that rode on Xian Man’s Ray’s zebra-striped shoulder.

  “Trashcan?” The small woman was eager for conversation. “Oh, don’t mind him. He’s on the side of the angels. He’s got chrome steel claws, rejiggered reflexes, enhanced senses, and a muscular feedback amplification system that makes him strong as a human and ten times faster. Hell on wheels, our Trashie.” The cat purred and switched its cybernetical
ly enhanced gaze from Courtney Hall to the patiently toiling Tinka Tae. Courtney Hall wondered what kind of reflection it was on subterranean society if people had pets like Trashcan.

  The day grew hotter. Courtney Hall calculated how far from the surface, how close to the center of the earth, this ground that she was walking upon might be. Small wonder it was warm.

  “It all went out of control a long long way back,” explained her companion, unasked for any explanation. “It was once an agrarium. ‘Bout hundred and fifty years or so after the Break, some disease got loose. Couldn’t exactly say what, but this was way back when biotech was still an infant science, so rather than risk possible famine as a consequence of the infection’s spreading through all the agrariums, they sealed this one off to let the thing burn itself out. They must have forgotten about it; that’s the only explanation I can think of how it came to be here.”

  The army of liberation toiled up the mossy side of a small waterfall. The spray was purest balm.

  “But how did it get from agrarium to jungle?” From the top of the falls Courtney Hall could see the jungle land falling away in great curtains of vegetation to the pointed end of the world.

  “Seeds came down the river: other agrariums, botanic gardens, even houseplants and domestic biotech. Should see the marijuana groves, though. Ah! The presiding spirits went to pieces, climate control fell apart, and this place warmed up. Kind of deep underground here, the rock temperature is just the right level for a full-blown climax rain forest. As you’ve probably noticed.”

  “So, what happened then?”

  “Well, it grew away to itself for about a century ago until our friends here took it over. The revenants … Ah.” She rubbed the corner of her jawbone just beneath her ear. “Angelo calleth. He’s lynked through the defense programs—poor old things aren’t up to very much—and is into the main memory. Says he’s working on a small typhoon but it’ll take some time for it to brew.”

  A prescient eddy of wind snaked slick hair into Courtney Hall’s-eyes.

  “Revenants?”

  “Fug, yes, I was telling you about them, wasn’t I? Revenants. From before the Break. History lesson. Column! Column, take five.” The two women sought shelter from the wet heat beneath an umbelliferous tree whose leaves dripped water. Trashcan the cat sat on a stump and groomed itself.

  “Okay. Improbable as it may seem to you, a citizen, not everyone was overjoyed when the Compassionate Society emerged from the general mayhem at the time of the Break. There were some on both sides, military and politicals mainly, who refused to accept what was happening. ‘Humans’ll never consent to be ruled by a bunch of machines, give it six months, a year, they’ll be down on their knees begging us to come back’; that sort of thing. So they holed themselves up in their deepest, safest bomb shelters and waited. Long wait; all sitting down there in their respective holes holding their elections and party congresses. Well, of course it wasn’t too long before they started running out of tinned blini and flash-frozen burger and time came for a move. Luck, fate, whatever your particular belief is, brought them here. Two tribes: Democrats and Communists. ‘Land of the Morning Star’ to the Communists. ‘Land of the Great White Eagle’ to the Democrats. Now, you’d think that they’d have wiped each other out decades ago; not so. Two hundred or so years of, well, comparative, peace. Can’t afford a big war. Balance of power, you see. Communists, they came upriver and control the endwaters down there. They’ve built big sluices; push the comrades too hard and this place turns into one big fish pond. Democrats, they control the lights. They got this big pueblo up there on the side of the world, built right into the control computers. So, maybe they don’t have Angelo’s fine touch, but all you need is a big enough stone ax and that’ll do the job. And without light this place is as dead as surely as if it were filled up to the roof with water. So, what you have, in brief, is two tribes of cavemen, both needing each other, both hating each other’s hides. Crazy.

  “Craziest of all: each side is indistinguishable from the other. Petty despotism, Communist and Democrat both. Got to keep the Land of the Great White Eagle strong against Communism, you see. Got to make the workers of the Land of the Morning Star safe from the evils of Democracy. Pathetic. If they didn’t take it so seriously.”

  “So, which side is it has kidnapped Jonathon Ammonier?”

  “Democrats, I would reckon. Several reasons. First off, to them he’s not a Communist, but he’s not a Democrat either. Duh, they say, what do we do with this? Uh, dunno, but we better be sure the Commie pinko bastards can’t have him. Even though he is of absolutely no value to either side.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Said it would be, didn’t I? This is DeepUnder, sister. Crazy is normal down here.” Xian Man Ray stood up, brushed soily hands on thighs. “Time to be off. Trashie, take point.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s back into Democrat territory from here on. Booby traps. To us, that is. To the Democrats, it’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Whatever the fug they call it, Trashie’s rejiggered senses can pick it out before we hit it. Or it us.”

  The Tinka Tae bearers uncurled to shoulder their poles, leant into their travois harnesses. The long march continued. Over the succeeding hours, while her mind should have been focused on pitfalls, pungi stakes, and poison arrows, Courtney Hall found her attention wandering to form a question. Not any question. The Question. The Question was: just why should an Amazing Teleporting Woman and a Man with a Computer Brain (plus power-assisted cat) care what happened to an ex-Elector of Yu, now self-crowned King of Nebraska and his Underground Dominions?

  Crouched amidst the root buttresses of a geneform teak with her army of racoons waiting for her battle cry, she still could not find any answer to the Question that satisfied her.

  Suddenly Xian Man Ray was there. No shiver of air. No luminous interdimensional gateway. No bamfi of sulfurous flame. Nothing so stereotypically teleportational. One moment she wasn’t there. Next she was.

  “I’m starting the diversionary tactics now,” she said. And was gone. No bamf! of sulfurous flame. No luminous interdimensional gateway. No shiver of air.

  There had been a briefing. Of sorts. War virgin Courtney Hall had sat converting a pair of pants from the Victorialand wardrobe into shorts while Xian Man Ray assembled a bow from sections in her backpack and explained how one teleporting woman can look like a whole army.

  Courtney Hall had not remembered one word of her orders.

  The long, shafting sound of an arrow in flight terminated in a solid thunk. Sprouting a cloth-yard of tube steel, a missile-totem teetered and fell. Instant confusion in the camp. To arms, to arms! Running, shouting, standing still. Always one, left standing still. With a roar and a hiss the fire pit was doused. The night was suddenly filled with eyes.

  Arrowstorm. From everywhere at once. Shouts, cries, screams. Courtney Hall saw Xian Man Ray flicker into transient being, loose an arrow from her laser-guided, gyro-stabilized bow, and vanish. Firing as fast as she could teleport: flip flip flip flip flip … The arrowstorm ended. Voices. Replies. Someone somewhere was retching in the dark. Skirmishers edged into the darkness. A Democrat sentry advanced to within centimeters of Courtney Hall’s covert and squatted, arrow nocked to his technologically less advanced but no less deadly bow. The Tinka Tae stirred. Sharpened stropped vegetable knives glittered in the dim night-glow from the ceiling lights. Courtney Hall frantically signaled for stillness. She could not remember the last time she had taken a breath, felt a heartbeat.

  Explosions. Mushrooms of orange smoke. Arrows. Screams. A flare was tossed into the Democrat encampment. By its light Courtney Hall saw a man stumble and fall. Blood sprayed from severed arteries. Hair and blood; his scalp was hanging over his eyes. And that dark slither, bounding away into the darkness … a cat? Panic. Enemies here, there, everywhere, nowhere. Dirt was scuffed over the flare, the gas grenades lobbed out into the forest. But not before another arrowstorm sent the defenders ree
ling for cover. And in the midst of the burning and the blood and the bedlam, Jonathon Ammonier stood up, proud, mad bird, clapping his hands and shouting, “Is this for me? All for me? Oh, how wonderful, how wonderful, how wonderful!”

  Forgetful of the present danger, Courtney Hall jumped up and screamed, “Get down, you stupid fugger! Get down!” The crouching sentry fell over backward in surprise. Arrow slipped from bow, bow from fingers. Fingers found knife in belt. There was a flash of lightning. Revealing: the sentry. Blue blade clutched in fingers. A steel vegetable knife straight through his throat. Liquid gurgled and-surged around the blade. All in a flash, in an instant revealed.

  The air disappeared. A blast of hot wind howled upward, uprooting totems, tent leather, tearing leaves from trees, breath from lungs. For a second, one second, the whole twenty-kilometer cavern boomed like a temple gong to the miniature typhoon.

  “Forward, racoons!” shouted Courtney Hall. The Tinka Tae came pouring out of the floor of the forest. The rains began.

  “Rain” does not adequately describe the process of precipitation Angelo Brasil had initiated. The downpour began. The deluge began. Drops hard and sharp as needles. Drenched, combing the hair out of her eyes, Courtney Hall led the bedraggled racoons through the cloudburst.

  The bulk of the raiding party were hip-hollerin’ in pursuit of the pervo-devo-freako-pinko Commie bastards, as Xian Man Ray had predicted. The Tinka Tae with their vegetable knives overwhelmed the few dazed guards left around the King of Nebraska.

  And suddenly Courtney Hall herself was overwhelmed. Overpowered. Overcome. Flash-flashing steel lightning blades. She had seen someone killed, a life ended, witnessed final moments, heard the liquid sucking of final breath. Killed. Permanently. No return, no refund if dissatisfied. She had seen death, and the face it wore was not the closet-sanitized mask of the Phantom of the Arcologies, knocking at a door here, a door there, polite, almost apologetic—I’m sorry, but it really is time, you know … Death riding the tip of a blade, unmourned, unmarked. Ludicrous that something as slight as the blade she held in her hand could call down death. She tried to throw her knife away from her into the rain, but it remained stuck to her palm like an accusation. On every side, death, summoned, capered; mesmerizing, hypnotizing, dazzling. She fell to her knees in the rain and the mud and the ashes, looking at her hand, her knife.