by Ian McDonald
Well, white knight, Angelo Brasil isn’t confined to just standing and applauding. Let’s match rigs, yours versus mine, see what happens down here in Mad-land, where nothing is certain or assured. Back into lynk, the briefest brush along the edge of madness, and the wall section was sliding open before him. Easy! Angelo Brasil laughed his high, whinnying laugh. Too fast, too young, too shiny, too blue for you, fat suckies! So, let’s play. Let’s play open and close and chase and lock. Let’s play running down smooth white curving corridors led by the visions projected onto our forebrains, let’s play opening doors before us and closing them behind us, let’s play lock out the plods, the peelers, the fat suckies. Spiraling inward, upward, the Man with the Computer Brain led the Love Police a merry dance.
Running down an apparently blind alley, he consulted the mental map and pulled shut the section of corridor behind him. Then with a beat of his lynkbrain, he willed the dead end ahead of him to open.
Nothing happened.
He paused to close his eyes and concentrate.
Nothing happened.
There definitely was a door in the end of the blind alley. He tried the door he had just closed.
Nothing happened.
A second pantycar tacked in across the labyrinth.
He tried to open the wall panel to his left that his readout told him was a door into an inner section of the maze.
Nothing happened.
This was getting scary. He reached in to reach out to the Final Arsenal’s computer guardian. A psychic blow smashed him against the smooth white walls; rejected. “Hi, there,” said the computer guardian. “It’s me. You locked me out of the maze, so I’ve locked you out of access to the computer. Good game. Good game.” Then he saw the face of his enemy rezz up in his visual cortex, the punk of the Scorpio from Room 1116, the rival, the enemy, the flashing blade in the engines of night, the chromium angel.
“Shug!” he shouted. “You, Scorpio, you and your saints and santrels and siddhi and all your shuggin’ Celestials!” The face of his enemy rezzed out in a flock of luminous pixels, and Angelo Brasil was returned to the smooth white box that was his prison. In his mind’s eye he could see the red dots swarming in around him. “Shug.” Soft and gentle and very, very bitter.
With a hum the wall sections opened.
The Love Police came for him.
ELSEWHERE: III
Doors opened and doors closed and doors closed and doors opened and Courtney Hall was no longer conscious of their openings and closings; she ran and she ran and she ran down the endless white corridors that were one white corridor, ran and ran and ran beyond any limits she had ever set for herself, ran and ran and ran out of the corridors and alleyways into the center. The mad machine that both harried and guided her had drawn her to that cylinder of iridescent light between the twin needles where The Unit floated in freegee.
It was indeed something like a ceramic flute and something like a short sword and not a whole lot like either. Courtney Hall reached through the light to take The Unit in her hands. She had expected it somehow to be heavy. It was light as a breath. It hummed in her hands. It was warm to her skin. It gave off tiny, flocking motes of black light that vanished before they were created. It smelt strongly of garlic, rust, and geraniums. Because it would not fit any of her pockets and she did not want her pack smelling of garlic, rust, and geraniums, she stuck it into her belt.
Then, at one almighty command, the doors into the labyrinth all opened and the Love Police came roaring out.
Just as she had remembered them.
Some things cannot be changed because to change them is to change the foundation and root of everything. Black is black and silver is silver.
She whipped The Unit from her belt and held it above her head in two hands. She turned so that every policeperson might see what she controlled.
“Citizen Courtney Hall of the yulp caste, in the name of the Compassionate Society, you are under arrest for the following PainCrimes: one, that you did, at or about twenty-thirty of February twenty-ninth, 453, unlawfully gain access to, and utilize, a restricted security code, and through use of same, did with full cognizance and malice aforethought, cause the general publication of material detrimental to the general populace as specified under Section 29C, Paragraph 12, subsection 6, of the Social Irresponsibility (Publications and Mass Media) Act: Satire, Irony, and Associated Nonconstructive criticism. Two, that you did unlawfully resist and evade arrest and reconditioning by the agents of the Compassionate Society. Three, that you did unlawfully aid and abet the absconded Elector of Yu, Jonathon Ammonier, under the Aids and Comfort Act, Section 19, Paragraph 12, subsection 88: Hospitality and Criminal Association. Four, that you did unlawfully and without official permission, remove from your person an Individual Citizen Monitoring Device, or tag. Five, that you did improperly and without lawful let, enjoy the use of services and devices reserved for the sole use of Entitled Personages, namely, the current Elector of Yu, Roberto Calzino, and that by improper use of said services and devices, deprive their rightful proprietor of their use. Six, that you did improperly obtain and make use of Informational Properties to which you were not entitled, namely, the stored personas of the first forty-three Electors of Yu, and that you did assist and abet the PainCriminal Jonathon Ammonier in the improper disposal of said commodities. Seven, that by dint of this information improperly obtained, you did gain access to a restricted security area. Eight, that you did unlawfully enter and trespass upon said restricted security area with intent to criminally obtain the entropic weapon system known informally as ‘The Unit’ for unlawful purposes. Nine, that you did intentionally and with malice aforethought, threaten duly appointed officers of the Compassionate Society with said entropic weapons system—”
“Sergeant …”
“How many times must I tell you, Constable?”
“Sergeant, I really think—”
“Please, Constable … with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, or death—”
“Sergeant, I really think she’s going to use that thing.”
Courtney Hall separated the twin halves of The Unit a crack. The whine swelled to a drone. Swarms of atemporal motes boiled out of the air. The stench of garlic, rust, and geraniums was overpowering.
Inside The Unit was something that looked like infected nasal goo.
“Just be careful,” said Courtney Hall, still turning slowly. “Just you be careful, you’ve no idea what this thing can do.”
But you know Courtney Hall.
Kills people.
Temporarily.
Ages them a thousand years. Crumbles them to dust and ashes. Not even bones. Dust. And ashes.
And brings them back.
But they have still been dead. They have still been dust and ashes.
She would have killed them. Surely as the Democrat, alone in the rain in the dark in the jungle at the bottom of the world, unmarked, unmourned, killed with a rain-wet knife.
Kills people.
She saw the Fen of the Dead.
Kills people.
Hurts people.
She had to. But she could not. She was only a yulp, after all. She snapped the two halves of The Unit together and slid it back through the shimmer-field to rest in freegee. Remain there, for another half millennium. Hands up. “I am sorry,” she said. “There’s a very good reason for all this. Really.”
She looked up at the sky.
The great circle of Love Police rushed in upon her.
Apostles III
THE WAY TO ARRIVE at Tamazooma is by air; a high-line cablecar or didakoi dirigible. The time to arrive at Tamazooma is just as night is falling: combine the two and it is an experience that would awe even a reluctant deity.
With night close upon it, Tamazooma can be almost frightening in its presence, a something caught somewhere between heaven and hell: the encircling darklands of abandoned factories and processing plants turn to blacker-than-black shadows and chaotic soft geometries as o
ne by one nerveways and ganglia of lights come alive and the tall chimneys belch out flares of burning tailgas. And at the heart of this disc of scablands, Tamazooma itself, three and a half vertical kilometers of crystal shafts and planes and levels, thrusting out of the darklands to pierce the cloudlayer, shining with its own internal light that rests neither by day nor by night as the workers of the TAOS Consortium keep the brains of Great Yu ticking away. On a half-kilometer-square videowall the wonderful TAOS girl (perfect face, perfect eyes, perfect smile, perfect ideal of Seven Servanthood) presides over tower and darkness and the flaring gasflames with her pick chip, flip chip, smile, fade, dissolve.
Without doubt, the way to arrive at Tamazooma is in the gondola of a passenger dirigible with the night closing in around the Class Tower.
So why did Kansas Byrne and Kilimanjaro West, a reluctant deity, arrive in Tamazooma Central pneumatique station in the very height of the morning crush-hour?
“Safest way, safest time,” Kansas Byrne had said, running her marquin through the reader twice as the morning on-shift clashed with the homewarding off-shift at the barriers to the Salmagundy Street Jamboree line. She was not happy about using her marquin, memories of dreadlocks and all-seeing Selassic eyes were too fresh; undoubtedly the Love Police would have a seeker out on it. The early-morning soulswarm offered the best chance of anonymity, but for added security she’d purchased two tickets for Temple Circus, five stops farther down the line. “Hey, you coming?” She’d taken hold of Kilimanjaro West’s hand, unity in the herd. The massed lives made the realities of the night insubstantial: as if night and day were different and unconnected universes. She tried to mentally cross-section Salmagundy Street pneumatique station: these tubes and trains and pressing people were only a thin cutaneous layer over the machine flesh below, and beneath them, the living body of the Cosmic Madonna herself, her ovaries, her womb, her bowels, her bones anchored in molten bedrock, and down there, at the base of it all, the place the glass elevator would lead to, the wonderland of the angel-children, the race who would someday, any day ride up that brass and glass elevator and take the places of every one of these faces on the train.
She could not convince herself. She had hailed the man at the end of her hand the Advocate, the legendary judge of humanity, and here was the possible nemesis of the Compassionate Society being wedged into a pneumatique by an athleto packer. Had she really jumped through that kilometer of airspace? If she went down to the end of the platform, would she find a golden elevator hidden behind the shrine to the Cosmic Madonna? Klaxons sounded; the compressed citizenry braced itself for the heave of acceleration as they were bulleted through the underpinnings of Yu at two hundred kilometers per hour.
She’d squeezed his hand. Felt like flesh. Felt like a man should feel. He had smiled back, slightly distracted, not fully present. Where? Out there on the Infinite Exalted Plane? She looked at him—another distant, polite smile—and desired him like nothing she had ever desired before. In the same moment of desire she wished by all her gods she had never met him. Advocate and Apostles were breaking her apart.
Tamazooma Central was solid Scorpio: ninety percent of the TAOS Consortium were members of one caste, which was the highest percentage of any industry in Yu except for the white brothers. And the Love Police … It felt as if they were all there that morning, pushing, jostling, shoving of their comings and their goings and their meetings and their greetings. Third-busiest interchange in Yu, she reminded herself as she dragged Kilimanjaro West through the solid mass of congealed faces. Though she could not imagine why; if most Scorpios lived and worked within Tamazooma itself, what did they need to travel by pneumatique for?
“Look!” she cried, trying to shake Kilimanjaro West out of the overloaded numbness so many pressing, pushing people tended to induce. She pointed up through the glass dome of Tamazooma Central to Tamazooma itself, the freegee interior of the Class Tower. There were entire freegee communities hovering up there in the arcology’s hollow core: M’kuba had been brought up in one of them, fragile honeycomb things like the paper nests wasps sometimes made in the airco ducts in summer. People could fly like birds; up there, they slept like bats and mated on the wing, so M’kuba had said. Between the geodesic struts she saw tiny angel figures swooping and gliding embedded in solid light, and their freedom, their utter carelessness both thrilled her and filled her with envy. “Do you see that, do you see the flying?” she asked Kilimanjaro West. When he looked and saw nothing, she felt strangely crestfallen.
She worked the pneumatique trick backward on the tram. Bought tickets five stops short and sat through them all. Four hundred and fifty years of progressive industrial migration inward and upward into the tower had abandoned and depopulated the old industrial zones: those who visited it did so out of their own private reasons. The streetcar service did not even warrant a human driver. Kansas Byrne rubbed away the condensation from the window and looked out through the raindrops at the gigantic black processors and breeders and fermenters. She felt tightly constrained by them, capable only of movement in one preordained direction along silver lines. High overhead the waste gases flared blue and yellow from the chimneys. Mats of drooping, wet, gray lichen clung to the pipes and stanchions: yet more biotechnological by-products. Holy TAOS Mother came into view, dominating the end of the narrow street, indifferent and preoccupied.
“Where are we?” asked Kilimanjaro West unexpectedly. Kansas Byrne yelped in surprise.
“Tamazooma South. Where we’d arranged to meet if we ever got split up, like we did.”
“Here?”
“I’ve explained this to you. M’kuba has friends here, persona runners.” The reason for the others on the tramcar. Persona running fluttered on the edge of legality and far beyond respectability: paying to share another life on a biochip implant was trans-casting in every sense but the technical. The Ministry of Pain chose to look away; it did not hurt anyone, therefore it was not a PainCrime.
And performing with the Raging Apostles was?
She laid her head against the solid presence of Kilimanjaro West’s chest. She found to her amazement how close she was to crying.
“I can’t take this, you know? I cannot take all this, the Love Police and the Raging Apostles and you and everything that happened last night.”
“Everything that happened last night is true.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Gods and incarnations and advocates: I am only one woman and this is too much for me. And you. I really can’t take this.” Arms around her, lips to her ear, a whisper, “I do love you.”
It made everything so right and so wrong.
All hugged up in slick silver, his chromium jangle-bangles clanking on his arms, the King of the Darkland’s stretch-plastic-covered ass felt like a block of marble by the time they came off the tram. Cold stroke numb stroke sore from five hours straight on wet steel up on Number Two converter. Two sasses; one em, one eff: had to be them. Didn’t look like soulers. A jiggle into his whisper tooth called off the other brors (no doubt every bit as cold stroke numb stroke sore stroke bored) as the King of the Darklands, but just for safety he watched them through his scanshades before making rapprochement. Let them be themselves a little, see how they settle out. The eff: nice for a tlakh. Score probability flashed up in his field of vision: under one percent, shug. Pity, nice ass, must be a dancer, prancer, neh. Check em: matter of professional discretion … wow, gosh, whistle, check and recheck that, shift scanspectrum up one, down one, in one, out one; Sainze but that em is positeevely throwing off biofrequency transmissions—what the, how the, why the …
Uh oh, no questions, no queries, seel voo play, that was the agreement, there’s Love Police (and worse (?)) interested in this em and this eff so be sure you find them first. Lurv Poleece … better not leave them looking lost too long … The King of the Darklands uncoiled from Number Two converter in a flex of lithe silver.
No questions asked, and none answered, best way to do business, but
Sainze, that tlakh mustn’t’ve heard of the agreement because she kept chipping, chipping, chipping in her two fennig-worth, and shug, what she expect him to know, he’s only doing a favor for a bror, no questions asked, none answered. Pick up a couple of sasses and bring them to the Heartbreak Avenue settling plant. At least that em knows something about agreements, save breath for walking stroke climbing stroke crawling, still, why does the King of the Darklands still get this funny feeling off him like he’s something which almost shouldn’t be there at all? Wad! What this tlakh ass about now?
“Where are you taking us? This isn’t the Geno fermentation plant.”
“Sorry, sib, but new orders. Say take you to Heartbreak instead.”
“Why? Is something wrong? Tell me, something’s wrong, that’s it … Hold on, how can I trust you are who you say you are? How do I know you aren’t another Love Police agent?”
I mean, shug … Once again that em had the right idea.
“I think we’ll just have to trust him, that’s all. If the worst is going to happen, it will happen. This is the kind of place you’ve got to trust other people.”
Well, that’s sure as taxes, em! Let’s go, shall we. Cross the Talleywalk, up the stairs onto the gantry along the side of the freegee chromatography tanks, thank all you Sainze, not far now …
“Look, will we be there soon, wherever it is you’re taking us?”
“Sib, you’re there now.” Open the door to the tank and good shoot to the both of you.
The open door threw a wedge of gray cloudlight into the tank, across the faces gathered around the dull globe of a heat bulb in the center of the-makeshift plastic floor: three faces, one Scorpio, one athleto, one tlakh, one brother, one twin. Her fear of confined spaces was overcome by the sheer delight of seeing those three faces again. She threw herself onto her brother, squeaked little exaltations of delight and joy and pleasure and wonder and “Oh Yah, oh Yah, oh Yah, it’s so good to see you, so good, and you, too, M’kuba, and you, Pyar, so good to see you; now tell, where are the rest, eh?”