by Guy Haley
"Bear!" shouted Richards. The fire was rapidly becoming a searing inferno, and he was forced to shield his face with his arm. "Bear! We need to get the hell out of here!" The building grumbled as the structure shifted. A heavy beam hit the floor with a noise like a giant's xylophone. Embers rained down. It would not stand much longer. "Bear!" he hollered, his throat raw from the smoke. A squeal from a corner answered. Bear, now wholly hog, was making good use of his new tusks, goring the flayed lion, which lay unmoving upon the floor, ropes of grey intestines round his trotters. Bear-the-pig looked up with frenzied eyes, and for a moment Richards was sure he would charge. The corpse of Tarquin flickered from red to grey, and then lay solid and inflexible, a statue commemorating a brutal end. The bear-pig shook his head, and understanding returned to its face.
"We've got to get out of here!" Richards ran towards the doors, jumping flames, narrowly missing a dragon as it fell from the arch above, spitting sparks for the first and final time. Richards threw himself through the gap in the gates, and he was into the cool dark outside.
The pavilion cracked and roared, strips of firelight playing upon the flagstones. Beyond the circle of heat it was tranquil. Unperturbed, Lucas the pig rootled for rotten fruit in the orchard.
Bear trotted through the burning doors. His head was high, the smoking pelt of Tarquin clamped in his mouth.
"Lucas," called Richards. The other pig's head snapped up. "Come on, we're leaving."
Richards sat on a log. He stared at the brooch. The brooch stared back at him. The glow of the fire at the hilltop washed all with copper. Lucas and Bear waited expectantly nearby.
Richards pursed his lips. He'd tried to break his way back into the world structure without luck. He supposed his earlier success could have been the presence of the other Five, or the transmutational worm that was invading him, or even just plain anger, but now he was firmly locked back inside his human emulation. So he'd tried brandishing the brooch like Circus again, but little had happened. That left him with only one option. He hunted around for a stick and placed the eye-jewel on the log. He looked to the pigs. "Well," he said resignedly, "I really can't think of anything else. In here, I have to play by the rules, and those old games, they liked you to improvise." He raised the stick high and brought it down hard. There was a tiny cracking noise, then a huge bang. White light flooded the area, and Richards found himself sprawled between Lucas and Bear.
They were still pigs.
"Balls," he said.
"Richards, Richards!" A voice emanated from a dim glow above the log. The glow grew in strength, resolving itself into the shape of a young woman. Richards' heart skipped a beat.
"Pollyanna, Pl'anna?" he said.
The avatar of the other Class Five AI was a frail-looking thing, transparent, a soft whisper of damask on the night air. Sheer robes floated about her, ineffectively shielding her modesty. But though she was very beautiful, and though her clothes were very scanty, there was a purity about her. Pollyanna changed her looks often – above all things she loved to shop – but she had a peculiar form of naïve wisdom to her as deep as forest moss, and that never changed.
"Richards, oh, Richards, he has you too!" Her voice was like forty women whispering as one in a cloister, a sign that the subpersonalities in her were falling out of step with one another.
She was dying.
"k52," said Richards, his voice soft and small and sad. "Pl'anna, what did he do to you?"
Pl'anna sighed. "I disagreed with him, Richards. I went away. The next I knew, I was imprisoned in that brooch, made into a parody of everything I have ever been, but you have set me free. Thank you, Richards, thank you," said Pollyanna. "But he has you too! How?"
"Pl'anna, listen, he doesn't have me, not yet. I'm here to stop him. I came in, from outside, Pl'anna. What is k52 playing at?"
"Oh, Richards." She faded momentarily, the air shimmering. "He told us that he would save the world, Richards. He told us he could bring immortality to humanity."
"What? Dog men and bears, old toys and old games and fucking great vortices? How is that going to save anything?" said Richards.
"You do not understand."
Richards calmed. "Yeah. Yeah, I think I do. This world is not of k52's doing."
Pl'anna smiled. "It was here when we arrived. He wishes to destroy it, for it stands in the way of his plans. Something is pushing back, something has changed him. He has become part of this place. Something has forced itself into him. He is insane, Richards. Stop him."
The light from the figure dimmed, her words fading into the crackle of the dying fire on the hill.
"What did he want to do, Pl'anna? What were his original intentions! You must try and tell me!" Frustration grew in him, frustration that he could neither save her nor act directly and pull the information from her mind before she died.
The apparition bowed her head. "Omega Point, Richards, k52 seeks the Omega Point."
"How?" Richards called. He crawled forward, trying to will the other Five to stay.
"He promised an end to war and pain, and a place where everyone would be happy, and a time where the universe would sing with joy, but then we came here, and… he was lying." She looked behind her, as if expecting someone to call her. "I shall speed this wood on through the night, so you may continue your journey. And your friends too I shall restore, for it was through me that they were transformed, and I still have some influence on the world, now I am free of my prison." The figure had faded from view almost entirely, only the faintest ghost remaining, the voice going with it.
Richards felt himself grow frantic. "Where are you going? How will you save yourself?"
Her voice replied, a sigh on the wind. "I cannot. k52 had us leave our base units and bound our coding into this world. I am sustained by the Realm machinery; my being is written into the land. All those places that held me are gone; the tower was the last of it. I must expend the remainder of myself to aid you, but do not mourn me. Thank you, for oblivion is sweet to that which was my fate before. Find Rolston – he was in Pylon City, last I knew." She smiled, and then dismay came upon her. "Richards. Oh, Richards, I am sorry, but I did not know what to do."
And that, thought Richards, had always been Pl'anna's problem. She knew everything, but understood nothing.
The figure leaned forward. A cool breeze enveloped Richards, soothing his scorched skin. He felt a tingling kiss on his lips, and Pl'anna exploded into a burst of stars. It illuminated his surroundings, a glorious firework, and was gone.
A last whisper, fierce and loud, echoed in his ears. "Omega Point, Richards, Omega Point."
He felt suddenly tired.
Juddering, the island broke free of Circus's cursed orchard. Streams of soil and twigs fell from the edges, their tinkling a cold counter to the sounds of the blaze. Their refuge bobbed alongside the larger island, slowly turning and picking up speed.
"Well, that was an adventure!" Lucas squatted, naked as the day he was born and a sight dirtier, a pile of singed rags at his feet. Bear lay on the floor by him, a heavy paw over his eyes.
"Urgh," growled Bear. "I'll never eat pork again." He propped himself up on his elbows, smacking his lips with a grimace on his face. "And I love pork."
"Steady on, Bear!" said Lucas. "You're losing a lot of stuffing."
"Ah, don't worry about me, pal," he said, "I'll stitch."
"With what?"
"Here." There was a soft noise, and Bear plunged his paw deep into his side. He fumbled about in his own gut, his tongue held daintily between his teeth in concentration. "What?"
"That's mildly disconcerting," said Richards.
Bear grinned. "Look. Geckro." Bear undid and redid his side flap a couple of times. He sighed. "I was a pyjama case!" he said, and produced a needle and thread from his innards.
The island drew away from the burning tower of Circus. Richards left Lucas to help Bear patch himself up. He watched the fire recede. Pl'anna's Gridsig had gone. At the very edge o
f Richards' consciousness, Rolston's stuttered on, warped and broken by the patchwork world, and Richards feared to think in what state he'd find him.
Richards knew the Omega Point. That stage of the universe theorised by the Jesuit thinker Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as being prior to the end of the universe, the end-game of a reality undergoing a process of evolution toward a perpetual state of cosmic grace. A universe driven on toward ever greater complexity by the observations of those within it, in a process started by the God it would ultimately create, a process made possible simply because there were people there to see it happen.
It was neat. It had its proponents. Some in the Real saw the advent of the machines as proof of Teilhard's philosophy of increased complexity; on the other hand some people saw the machines as godless blasphemies, others as the heralds of technological singularity, others as domestic appliances. It was all self-reflexive bollocks, as far as Richards was concerned, more nonsense made up by apes scared of death. The universe was as it was, and went on as it would. What he could touch, see and feel, whether through the senses of a machine or through mathematics, that was what Richards believed in. But if there was a God – Richards would not count that out – and if He had a plan, then he doubted it would be so easy to figure out.
Thing was, k52 seemed to believe it, if Pl'anna could be trusted. Where's he going with this? thought Richards. How would he achieve it? And what would be gained by bringing the universe into a state of spiritual bliss? Well, quite a lot, I suppose, another part of him countered. But that's not k52 at all, he's too logical for all that. A noble aim, though…
There was another option, of course – the level of organisation at the Omega Point could lead, theoretically, to an infinite amount of processing power, if it could be harnessed. Impossible, in the Real, thought Richards, but maybe not in a simulation. There's an awful lot of power in the Realm servers, he thought. And if done right, there'd be nothing to stop someone like, say, k52 forcing an artificial world to that stage, because here time can be accelerated… Qifang did say he'd seen some kind of chronaxic fluctuation… Richards chewed his lip. This was a troubling line of thought. So what, he tailors a world he can command, hothouses it to its Omega Point and then… If he did that, and the theory was correct, and it worked, he'd be unstoppable. Teilhard's philosophy called for the last sentient survivor of the complex universe to become "Christ Personal". Richards had a sneaking suspicion he knew who that might be. Forget there being a God or not, k52 would fill the role. Dammit, digital apotheosis. That's what he's going for.
But if that's the case, what's all this with the talking animals and all that shit? This is like a little girl's VR paradise gone haywire. Who's responsible for all that? Richards leaned against a tree, and drummed his fingers against a trunk that felt far too real.
There was a crash and a hissing sound. Richards looked back to Circus's island, behind them in the dark. The thick pylon rope had finally given. It fell like a whip through the air from the top of the tower, shattering into glowing particles as it passed the base of the dwarf's – of Pl'anna's – tiny world and hit the void. The winching wheel atop the pagoda sank suddenly onto one side and fell into the tower. With a roar, the upper half of the building collapsed into itself. Embers and flame spilled out, dappling Richards' face with red light, a short-lived flower of fire in the endless fields of the night.
CHAPTER 9
Transiberia
They went by rail; the roads were not safe. The trains, run in partnership by the corporate Muscovite clans and the Chinese, were huge and armoured, a thin line of civilisation cutting across the lawless Russian east.
"Things have been bad here since the purchase," said Lehmann, watching Novosibirsk roll by. The train went slow here, negotiating damaged points to a frost-buckled side line. To one side of the train great machines laid new track, on a massive embankment broad enough to carry the newer locomotives. To the other, the dirty and dishevelled shell of what had once been Russia's third largest city. Windowless apartment blocks of grey concrete surrounded the place, the population having shrunk into its historic centre. Even there, the roads were cracked, the buildings long unpainted. Whole streets, those abandoned early when the government still had money to put them up, sported steel shutters. There were few modern machines in evidence, no AI and less wealth. Only the train, gleaming with money from Russian plutoprinces and Chinese development funds, seemed fit for the twenty-second century.
"They were bad before," said Otto. "Pollution, crime, alcoholism. The population has been nose-diving since the Soviet Union fell apart a hundred and fifty years ago."
Lehmann shook his head. "This is the product of slow decline. But it is nothing. It gets worse as we go further east. They say the purchase was a peaceful transaction, but we were not far off full-scale war. I was there, I fought in the Secret War."
Otto snorted.
"I didn't invent the name, Leutnant," said Lehmann irritably.
Novosibirsk's shiny station welcomed them in like a weary old brothel madame, decrepitude painted over with fresh make-up and a knowing smile. They stayed on the train as passengers came and went, the smart minions of the resource barons and oligarchs pouring from first-class carriages, rough-clothed people pouring in a long flood from the cheaper cars down the platform. Many, both rich and poor, wore biofilter masks, protection against the flu, yet another variant of which had ripped across Eurasia last winter.
The station was like the train, clean and hi-tech. A high wall ran around it. Money was finally coming back into the region, Chinese money. Valdaire reflected ruefully. Industrialisation wasn't a new dawn as the economists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had thought, but a passing phase, jobs moving from region to region like ripples as the industrial revolution washed round the world, bringing prosperity, population expansion and finally collapse into poverty. The money went wherever the cheap labour was, and to think they once thought shopping could fill in once the factories had gone. Its only lasting legacy in places like this was overpopulation and environmental damage. Just like now, she thought, only we're more honest about it. They were idiots back then to think whatever benefits it brought would last.
The train filled up again. Armed men in the uniform dress of the Don Cossack Great Host made their way down the train and scanned their identities and travel documentation for the hundredth time since they'd boarded. Valdaire's 'ware was good, and their fake sigs held.
The train pulled away with a sigh, the thrum from its induction motors vibrating the carriages. Valdaire found the effect soporific, but did not sleep. She watched Novosibirsk slide by. Outside the city evidence of past environmental despoliation was everywhere, crumbling industrial complexes, weed-choked pits gouged out of the earth, the hulks of giant drag cranes rusting to pieces in their hearts. Some of these mines were active, giant automata worrying the soil with great steel teeth. Mountains stood with their tops lopped off, forests of trees black and dead around them. They rushed past trains loaded with lumber, ore and grain, all, like them, heading east; and everywhere the ideograms of the Orient. They were still hours away from the Sinosiberian demilitarised zone, but even this far west the influence of the People's Republic was apparent, the resources they took from the mountains and forests fuelling the ravenous economy of this second Chinese century.
Between ran mile upon mile of unbroken forest. Sometimes the remains of buildings could be seen poking out from among the trees, villages and towns cleared out by economic failure and flu. Russia was a broken empire, its hinterland abandoned to poverty while the plutoprinces of Moscow drowned in luxury. Elsewhere they travelled for hours through prairie fields, steppe land tilled by machine, not a human in sight.
As they travelled further east, the influence of the Chinese became more pronounced. Self-contained factories took the place of the abandoned relics, pod-like barracks of Han migrant workers incongruous in the forests and farmlands round them.
Lehmann had urged Otto
to sleep, an activity he was reluctant to undertake, as Valdaire had discovered for herself. Chures stared out of the window. Lehmann pulled his seat into a reclining position and closed his eyes.
"Both of you are going to sleep?" said Valdaire.
"Yes," said Lehmann. "Kaplinski might well be on this train with us, but he'll not act. He would not find what we know, and if he managed to escape with his own skin intact, he'd be hunted. The Cossacks hate him. You not sleeping?"
Valdaire shook her head, and slipped Chloe's tablet out of its case.
"Suit yourself," said Lehmann. He was soon fast asleep. He snored.
Valdaire scanned the phone's screen. Through her she could see all the systems on the train; the interiors of all the cars, poor, rich and private, the long sweep of the roof, the front and rear major engines, the subsidiary drive units under each carriage. Nothing unusual.