“We lived with different men, all of them idiots and some viciously so. It was as if she was punishing herself for still being alive when Pop had gone. I think the only reason she bothered was because of me.
“One of these… men went too far with her and-and then I got Pop’s kilos and hers as well. I was seven. I never found the bastard who did it. Any time I need to kill anyone I pretend it’s him.”
“Any time?”
“If you grow up in the Outer Spheres you kill a lot very early on Charity. I was a sub-human, as the richer citizens of Diamond City like to call us.”
He smiles at me. I feel my face redden.
“I had a feral childhood,” he says, “mainly alone and moving fast. I spent enough time in kid farms to pick up the basics but always ran away, usually when the place changed hands.
“One day I had a few people with me. I don’t know where they came from, why they wanted me to lead them or where they thought we would go. I suppose Ma’s looks helped, along with Pop’s ridiculous idealism.
“And… I accepted who I was. Many subs don’t; they think their lives are a mistake but I felt my identity was valuable even though most people considered it worthless. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” I say.
“It’s easier to make money when people follow you, so I made money. Then I made more. I finally realised why Pop failed: he thought the rules meant something. And, Charity, they don’t. This whole place is proof of that. I don’t mean you can just ignore the rules but you don’t have to be trapped by them either. You need wit, determination and you need to know what you’re good at, because everyone has at least one gift. Mine is-”
“Seduction.”
“Yes.”
“What’s mine?” I say.
“I don’t know. I think it’s probably to do with resourcefulness but… It may also be that your complexity is the truest reflection of our world in anyone I’ve ever met.”
“I think you’re trying to seduce me.”
“I’m not,” Harlan says.
“Not what? Trying or seducing?”
“Do you want to hear my story?”
“Go on then.”
Harlan shifts as if making himself comfortable and then he shifts again.
“Eventually I got rich,” he says. “I moved into MidZone but there was no let-up in the constant fear and tension. I could never stay in one place for long because by then I had a lot of enemies.”
“What was it like?”
“It was like being alive and dead at the same time.”
“That sounds awful,” I say.
“In a way. But it was also incredible. If you know the second you’re living through might be your last you become so aware it’s almost supernatural.”
“What happened to your enemies?”
“They-they’re all gone.”
He hesitates.
“I beat them because of everything I knew, everything I understood about Diamond City. It took time, money. Friends.”
His energy, usually so inspiring, seems a bleak thing now as if he has led me somewhere dreadful.
“I remember when that part of my life ended,” he says. “I stood in a street between two MidZone sectors, where it was noisy and mad. The last man who wanted me dead had just gone into the floor and I had a hole in my leg that should have stopped me standing but didn’t.
“Then, thanks to some oddly appropriate timing, everything around me went quiet. I stood in the silence and knew that was it: I had survived. In the same instant I also realised to do so I had committed terrible… I’d…”
Harlan hesitates and swallows, his eyes haunted. I take his hand and he grips it.
“Although I walked away from that spot I’ve never walked away from that moment,” he continues. “It created change in me. Instead of just surviving I wanted to do good. Unfortunately I didn’t know what it meant.
“I did what I could for people, especially the ones who came with me from the Outer Spheres. I also sought learning, culture, refinement; everything I thought Centria would have given me. This went on for years; it was like an evolution. One day I simply came to the end of it, like I’d reached a plateau. What was I meant to do now?
“And then Jaeger found me. It was in some MidZone penthouse full of vacuous beautiful people, feeling worse than I did in the Outer Spheres where at least my life had purpose. The room was packed but Jaeger had a big space around him. And his eyes! It’s like he was more than human…
“He sizes up your soul and I wanted my soul sized up because I wasn’t even sure I had one. We talked and he asked me to join the New Form Enterprise as an agent.”
We sit quietly for a while.
“What is the New Form Enterprise?” I say.
Harlan rubs his cheek thoughtfully.
“It isn’t a cult or even an army,” he says.
“Really?”
“It’s got elements of both,” he says. “But in fact the NFE is an idea, a means to enable the last people alive to deal with our circumstances.”
“Sounds a bit vague to be honest.”
“Everyone is in stasis down here Charity. It can’t last. We will simply die out if we don’t establish a sustainable way to thrive.”
“How does Jaeger want to do that?” I say.
“Only he knows.”
“That’s trusting.”
“There’s an element of faith.”
“Well, yes Harlan, and for all we know the Basis really is a god called the Crystal Mind.”
“I don’t mean faith in that way. The NFE is an evolving philosophy, something I’m part of and am helping to form.”
“Jaeger is generous like that then is he?”
“I’ve seen Jaeger do incredible things,” says Harlan, “and with him I’ve found such truth.”
“But you lost the Ruby War.”
“There was never meant to be a war,” says Harlan. “We would have just taken what we wanted and gone.”
“The kilo source.”
“Or its location. I don’t think it’s in Centria.”
“Are the NFE just thieves then?”
“Diamond City doesn’t have to be the way it is Charity.”
“You sound like your dad.”
Harlan laughs.
“You’re shaped before you’ve got any choice in the matter,” he says.
“How were you going to get access to Centria?” I ask.
Harlan smiles bitterly.
“Someone already inside was going to let us in,” he says.
26
I wake up with my cheek pressed against the soft, ridged cushion of the sofa. A faint play of warm air across my shoulders reminds me I’m naked. Through the dome I see a static view of distant curving walls, which border an empty plain beneath a huge concave ceiling. The Aer tells me I have slept for ten hours.
I stretch to ring out the last sleep and enjoy the slow spreading aches. With them come wonderful recent memories. Conscious of what happened at New Runcton, Harlan spent a long time gently kissing me better. I had expected to shut down; that trauma would have done for my explosive desire. However, the kissing went on, as did the stroking and the holding. Eventually, I was able to let go and blossomed again in his arms. I found I had more capacity than I thought and rewarded Harlan in every way I could think of. Afterwards he introduced me to more ways, then more again.
Dressed, he watches from a chair nearby. I stand and smile as if responding to him automatically. A cylinder grows around me and fills with hot soapy water. It goes to work like a million tiny hands that massage away the nice pain and the sweat. I duck under and enjoy the same feeling on my face and scalp. I surface and hang there in the lovely warmth, studiously ignoring Harlan as he watches me.
“So,” I say, “I was meant to be your next way in to Centria.”
“Yup,” he says happily.
I swish my hair in the water.
“Why me?” I say.
“Jaeger
favoured Ursula actually.”
“Typical!”
“He thought she was less ambiguous. Jaeger doesn’t like ambiguity.”
“So I’m ambiguous?”
“Even you don’t know who you are!”
I look at him finally.
“Did you research me?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Your decisions made a readable pattern in-Aer.”
He points at the cylinder.
“Are you done in that?” he says.
“Yes.”
The water drains straight into the floor and the cylinder follows. My jumpsuit walks onto me. I pull my hair dry and push my face into the crook of my elbow to emerge fully made up. I favour a heavy layer today.
“Mmmmm…” Harlan says.
He gifs a chair beside him. I sit and he hands me a mug of Soupergaz. I start to sip but it’s like I haven’t eaten in weeks. I take bigger mouthfuls and feel the gratifying spread of nutrition from my centre out.
“So what did you ‘read’ about me?” I say as I put the empty mug down.
“You don’t make any sense.”
“I could have told you that!”
“I mean,” Harlan says, “that it was like a lot of different people making decisions rather than just one, which made you unpredictable.”
“Didn’t that make your job harder?”
“Not if your loyalties were less secure than you thought.”
“Why aren’t I angry about all this?”
“Think back eleven hours.”
I do, to when his thumbs stroked the front of my hips and his long fingers were splayed over my cheeks, holding me in place as I shook and howled while his tongue made soft electrical bolts between my legs that crackled to the tips of my fingers and toes and nipples and every hair on my head…
He clicks his fingers a few times and I’m reluctantly back in the present.
“Right,” I say. “So what did you think when you met me?”
“You were the right one.”
“To be a traitor?”
“No. You would never have found out.”
“Would you have stayed with me afterwards?”
“Does it honestly matter now?”
He takes my hands and looks into my eyes.
“What happened to you and Ursula was horrible but at least you called me. Know this, Charity Freestone: there is no way I will leave you, unless you want me to. Do you want me to leave you?”
“No,” I say.
He looks relieved.
“I’ll probably never really trust you though,” I say.
“I will do everything I can to earn your trust,” he says.
His eyes are so sad, so full of terrible experience, regret and longing it’s hard to meet his gaze. I look down. His hands tighten on mine as if he’s trying to get me to look at him again but I can’t. I smile nervously.
“I wonder how Ursula is,” I say.
I feel him stiffen.
“Ah,” he says, “my rival.”
I laugh, but it’s a bit forced.
“Come on then,” he says.
We get up. He keeps hold of my hand as we walk down the ramp. His grip comforts as we walk through the assembly, two lovers in their own clothes amid a clan of orange-clad warriors.
I’m jumpy with eagerness as we reach Ursula’s room. I remember then how I set my Aerac to reject all communication. What if she tried to call me? Well, she can talk to me now if she’s awake. The door rises, I rush in but Ursula… Ursula is gone.
I make a weird sound that’s half grunt, half shriek and slump against Harlan. He puts his arm around my waist, which keeps me upright. I set my Aerac to accept messages, see one from Ursula and open it. The message says:
Baby, I am so sorry. I let them shoot you before I did anything. It is my fault. You are better off without me. You always were. Forgive me. I love you but do not try and follow me. I will be all right.
Ursula xx
No! I try and call her. She doesn’t reply. I picture my sister as she stumbles into a gang of hungry subs…
I’m out of the room so fast I have to duck under the door. The corridors of the NFE assembly are a jolting blur as I run through them. Soon I pound down a ramp onto the diamond plain. I speed up, barely aware of the impact of my feet on the hard floor.
The plain is bigger than it looks and I don’t seem to get anywhere. The only point of reference is the long diamond tube of the NFE assembly, which is now half a kilometre behind me and hard to see in the strange blue light. Distant walls form a yawning oval and the dizzying concavity far above swallows all sound. Overwhelmed by scale and exhaustion I slow to a halt, panting.
“Ursula!” I shout, my tiny voice futile. “URSULAAAA!”
Squatting on the ground I pull at my hair and groan like I’m injured but feel nothing, nothing… The sound is close in the space between my head and the floor.
Running footsteps close in. I jump up and point the n-gun but the runner is Harlan, who stops as I let my arm fall. My eyes ache; I realise they are stretched wide. Harlan spreads his hands in a calming gesture but Ursula’s absence is like a physical pain and my breath comes in jerks.
“She’s gone Harlan,” I say finally. “She said I was better off without her. I’m not though. I don’t want her to go.”
“I know,” he says.
“She’s lost,” I say.
“She isn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
Harlan looks around the empty plain uneasily.
“You won’t find her like this. Come back inside. It’s not safe out here.”
“Harlan…”
“She giffed a flybike and headed for MidZone. I don’t think she’s even in the Outer Spheres. She’s got friends Charity. Let her go.”
“You saw her?”
“Our security recorded it. Look.”
He sends me a file. I access it, shut my eyes and see Ursula in a dark outfit walk through the NFE assembly. She looks gaunt and ill, with shiny skin and limp hair. Her movements are slow but controlled, as if they take an effort to coordinate. A flybike grows out of the floor; Ursula gets on stiffly, starts the flybike and cruises down the corridor. A door opens at the end and the view changes to one from outside the assembly. Ursula passes overhead and recedes into the distance. I stand with my eyes closed and look at the recording of the empty plain. After a moment I watch the whole thing again.
“Charity,” I hear Harlan say.
I shake my head. Again, Ursula flies into the distance. Again I watch the empty plain. I feel weak suddenly.
“Come inside,” Harlan says.
I open my eyes. The view is the same as the one at the end of the recording. I try to call Ursula once more but there is still no reply. I let Harlan lead me back to the ramp and into the assembly again. The door closes behind us like a diamond knife that cuts me off from my sister.
We make our way down a level to an area set off from the rest of the assembly. A door opens into a room that can only be Harlan’s. The décor is dark with more than a touch of chaos but it’s tasteful and relaxing. There is a very thick pile carpet in alternating rich orange and brown stripes, through which a series of rough bronze poles emerge to support a low-slung seating system. The ceiling is black with spots of amber luminescence that keep the darkness gentle at the edges of the room. Through a door to the right I glimpse the side of a large wooden four-poster bed and wonder abstractly how many other girls he has brought here. He sees me look.
“None,” he says.
I nod, only half-hearing. He leads me to a large chair. I sink into it and stare at nothing. I don’t know how long I sit for. Harlan is a quiet presence nearby.
“Charity,” Harlan says eventually.
I focus as if seeing him for the first time.
“Do you want to know how I dealt with it, when I was in your position?”
“Yes.”
“It’s in you,” he sa
ys. “You think you’re lost. You think you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“That’s right.”
“But you do know what you’re doing Charity.”
“There’s just… nothingness in my head.”
“No,” Harlan says. “The answer is there. Don’t go trying to solve it all at once. Just think about what you need to do next.”
An answer comes but it seems too trivial.
“Well?” Harlan says.
I feel silly and self-conscious, which seems extraordinary given the way we make love so…
“I could look at some messages,” I say.
“There you go.”
I access my Aerac. Although it’s only accepted messages for a short time I’ve already got hundreds. I filter out those from people I don’t know and look through the remaining twenty. One is from Keris Veitch.
“What-?” I hear myself say.
I open the message. It says:
Charity, there has been a terrible mistake.
Come back to Centria now.
I will tell you everything.
27
The flybike is a faster one than usual. It handles well so I fly hard and nobody gets in my way. I bank right and soar over the broad, light MidZone chamber. Its building layout is pleasingly complex. Angular blocks form whorls and lines to link circles, a pattern that is simultaneously mathematical and mystical.
The landscape starts to change. One company has taken over another and is altering the environment accordingly. A delta of people floods out at ground level as a building that stretches along the wall to my left calmly sinks out of existence. Meanwhile, the complex pattern of blocks descends into the floor. The movement is not uniform; blocks disappear at different times as their kilos flow to new owners.
The buildings disgorge more people who run panicked into the changing streets. They flee on foot or in fast-giffed roadsters, which speed away to bump over panels that were roofs a moment ago. From up here the rush of humanity on the ground looks almost orderly until gunfire lights the shifting walls. To my left an explosion shocks and blooms amid the graceful orchestration of moving structures. I pull the flybike higher and speed out of range.
A circular tower grows ahead, sides adorned with rich gothic patterns. As it reaches the ceiling it spreads a vein-like ornamental network that flows and darkens in all directions. The last of the blocks disappears and simple yellow buildings form to radiate across the floor from the tower like petals. The movement of people below becomes less frantic as weapon fire dies away. There is a sense of calm or perhaps resignation.
Sons of the Crystal Mind (Diamond Roads Book 1) Page 18