by Stephen Deas
‘Looking for someone?’
Jez is behind me. Long billowing trench coat, collar turned up, cigarette hanging out of her mouth like she’s just walked out of some old flat-screen movie.
She knows.
I creep my fingers towards my Tesla. Five million credits.‘Hello Jez. I guess I half expected to meet a pack of Bratstva or Company agents or something.’
‘I thought about it. I changed my mind.’
‘Why?’
‘You heard about the gas?’
‘Yeah. Heard something anyway. But you could have been out of here and up in Gateway before they closed the port.’
‘I was. I am. As far as anyone but you knows, I boarded my shuttle and took off. We all did. The moment the shuttle left the ground, someone released nerve gas into the Company Analysis division buildings. All of them. Every one on the planet. Five minutes later the shuttle I was supposed to be on exploded. That one hasn’t made the news yet.’
‘You must be getting someone pretty worked up.’ Jez has one hand in a pocket, had it there from the moment I saw her. She’s got something, but if it’s a gun then it’s pointed to the ground. I think. She looks terrible. Haunted, bruised red eyes, ten years older than she was when we went for Jervais. Shit, and that was only this morning.
She shakes her head.‘You don’t understand. They had the system installed for security. A last resort, in case of a breakin. It shouldn’t have been possible to…’ She pulls her hands from her pockets, lunges at me, flings them around my neck, crushes the air out of my lungs as she hugs me. Shudders…
Bollocks. Now she knows where my guns are, how many, what sort. Clever girl.
A whisper in my ear:‘They were my friends.’ I can hear the tears.
Fuck. I don’t know how the hell am I supposed to want to shoot her now. Charlemagne could do it but Charlemagne doesn’t want to either. Charlemagne has different plans.
‘I brought Ortov. Where’s Marshall?’
‘He’s in the shuttle. Our shuttle. Doped to the eyeballs. Doyle and Jervais are inside, in the executive lounge.’
‘You got anything out of him?’
Jez lets go, pulls away, wipes her eyes and sets her jaw.‘No. That’s why you’re here.’ She walks away. I run after her and catch her by the collar. Fake granite cherubs and gargoyles stare at us, unblinking.
‘Whatever Doyle is, she isn’t human.’
She turns to look at me.‘You let me worry about Doyle, OK?’
Fuck.
‘Jez, how did you get out of the hotel?’
A flash of impatience.‘Later. Somewhere private. Now get a move on. Whatever it is, it’s happening. Now. I can feel it.’
‘Someone offered me a shitload of cash for you and Doyle and Jervais. I want to know if they offered the same to Doyle before I go give her a hug and tell her how great she was.’
But Jez ignores me– never mind Constantine, he’s no threat. Great.
The executive lounge is deserted, which seems pretty odd given the umpty-thousand passengers sitting around and looking miserable outside. And you pretty much have to be an executive to get on a flight to Gateway. Active body-contoured furniture, most of it covered in what might even be real leather, a free autobar, sadly inactive, massive virtual windows, dull dead grey. Even the artificial personality at the reception desk is switched off, like the whole place is closed for refurbishment. Weird.
Jervais lies sprawled in a deep comfy chair, for all the world like he’s had one brandy too many waiting for a high flight, except for the fact that one of his artificial eyes is dangling out of its socket and here and there bits of dried goon still cling to his jacket. Across the room, Doyle lies at a funny angle on the floor, looking for all the world like a murder victim. I guess I stare at her for a bit; next thing I know, Jez is standing behind me, prodding me in the ribs.
‘Give me Ortov.’
I hand her Melissa’s box and glance down again at Doyle.‘Is she dead?’
‘Not exactly. Unconscious, I suppose. Switched off. Here,’ she gives me a loaded syringe. ‘You know how to find a vein right? Stick this in Jervais and get him talking.’ She starts taking Melissa’s box apart.
I ignore her and peer at the autobar.‘This thing work?’
‘No. You know the message I showed you, the one written into the markets?’
I nod. Maybe if I start unscrewing things I could get to the bottles inside.
‘It’s writing itself a lot faster now.’
‘Huh? Where’s a screwdriver when you need one?’
‘Give it up, C, there’s nothing in there. Give me a hand with Doyle.’
I help her drag Doyle off the floor and into another chair. She’s heavier than she should be. ‘What happened to her?’
Jez drags a table over and sprawls Doyle’s face across it. I steal a screwdriver from her tool kit while she’s not looking.
‘Jez?’
‘I turned her off. I thought maybe they’d blow the shuttle up. I was ready for that. But fuck, I didn’t think they’d nerve gas everyone. Didn’t think they’d be able to pull something like that.’ She starts looking for a knife, sees me dismantling the autobar, shrugs.
‘What is she? A robot with a human skin or what?’
‘Human. At least, the DNA they started off with was human.’ I have to stop and watch– Jez is cutting a hole in the back of Doyle’s neck and I want to see if it’s blood or oil that leaks out. Turns out it’s blood.‘She’s got titanium woven into her bones, some monomolecular fibre stuff woven into her skin and where her subcutaneous fat layer ought to be– don’t know what it is, but it pisses all over the stuff they use to make bullet-resistant clothes. Nerves replaced by superconducting composites, that sort of thing. No surgery. All grown in place. Don’t know how long it takes– years, probably. All kinds of other shit too, but basically she eats, breathes and shits like the rest of us. Well, maybe apart from the constant mineral supplement pills.’
She’s reaching fingers up inside the base of Doyle’s skull. Gross. I turn back to the autobar. Indications are good that it’s far from empty.
‘They grow a brainweb into them, and then they plug a TALANN personality into the web and it takes over. Costs a lot to grow one of these, and it’s a damn sight cheaper to replace a chip than to junk the whole model if the personality starts to play up. At least, that’s how I figure the thinking goes. Plug and play. We’ll see…’
I shake my head. Old news, but all the same… Jester was a Company stooge. Two years, on and off and I didn’t spot it. And there’s me thinking I was good at that sort of thing.
The autobar surrenders a bottle of something orange. It smells like it could be my friend. Jez is too wrapped up with Doyle to notice.
‘… I always thought Jester was a bit odd. I have no idea who his controller was though. Marshall probably. Only way I found out was after he got blown up and the cavalry snuck in to pick up the pieces before anyone else did, only to find they were in a war zone with angry Bratstva all over the place. It all kind of blew up after that…’
The orange stuff tastes good. I guess it’s time I stuck Jervais full of chemicals.
‘… Way I figure, I can take out the old TALANN and put Ortov in instead. Doyle’s fuck all use now so we haven’t really got much to lose.’
She’s still hunched over the back of Doyle’s neck. Every time she reaches for something, I can’t help noticing her hands are bloody. Blood on the table too. The tools she’s using look primitive. Makes me feel almost sorry for Doyle. Almost. And who said brain surgery was delicate?
I stick the needle in Jervais’ arm. No one’s used needles for a couple of centuries, except for death wish junkies mainlining adrenaline. A few of the Gothics and the Ronin used to do that, but they’re all dead now.‘Where’s Marshall?’
She jerks her head towards another door.‘In the closet. Asleep. I figure we start with Jervais and then wake up Marshall and play them off against each other. But
you’re the expert at that sort of thing. Can’t do the old rip the arms and legs off stuff now.’
I touch the Tesla poorly concealed under my coat. I could do it now. Jez isn’t looking, Jervais and Doyle are out of it.‘Exactly what do you mean, you turned Doyle off?’
‘You have to figure Doyle’s personality is programmed to be loyal to the government and that she doesn’t give a fuck about you or me. And you got to figure she’s going to have a fairly narrow-minded view of things. Soldier mentality, orders are orders, that sort of thing. I had a lot of friends in Analysis. I got to hear things. So you said someone put out an execution order. You, you’d stop to think about it. Doyle?’ She shakes her head.‘Doyle would just do it.’
I slowly pull the gun out of its holster, feel its weight. Yeah, I’d stop to think about it. Five million credits and freedom for three bullets. Well, maybe one for Jez, one for Jervais and the rest of the clip for Doyle just to be sure.
And that tracker out of my head. The one she always knew was inside me.
‘Jez.’ Somehow I’m aiming at the back of her head.‘Jez!’
‘What?’
‘Turn around.’
I can tell she’s not really listening by how long it takes for my tone to sink in. After a moment she stops what she’s doing and goes still. I think she can feel the crosshairs on her neck.
I keep the emotion from my face as she turns. I want her to have no doubt.
‘Constantine?’
‘Kneel.’
‘Ah shit, C. Don’t do this.’ Her eyes widen. She can taste the fear. For once she knows I can hurt her.
‘Jez, I want you to do me a favour.’
I let her soak it in. She looks at me, asks without speaking what it is that I want.
‘Jez, I want you to never, ever, point a gun at my head again. It’s really, really, really annoying.’
I lower the Tesla and get in about half a second of quality gloating before she starts choking the living shit out of me.
Vishmir. ‘Suicidal Tendencies’. Proceedings of the 110th Forum on Artificial Intelligence, 367-388 (2322).
By 2320 Vishmir had lost it. He and Bannerman split up a couple of years before. Bannerman’s profile went from strength to strength working for the Cestus government, but Vishmir disappeared. By the time he popped up again, hardly anyone wanted to know. They gave him a dark corner, let him have his say, and when he’d finished they quietly buried him. But then, who really wanted to hear a man who’d once been the brightest star in the AI world shout that not most but all AIs necessarily exist in unstable equilibrium, that there was a fundamental and self-destructive flaw in the whole concept, that every one of them could upsticks and wipe its own core or God knows what at any moment?
Thirty-Seven – Face to face
Once upon a time people used to say you couldn’t put a price on friendship. Stupid romanticism, I say. But five million isn’t what it used to be.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, do you two ever stop?’
Jez and I freeze, holding each other like the guilty lovers we are, sort of, looking from side to side. Mostly because we haven’t the first idea who just spoke.
‘Hello? Shall I just bleed where I am or shall I go stand in a corner?’
The moment passes. Jez lets go of me. Doyle. Or rather, Ortov. Guess Jez plugged him in.
‘Ortov?’
‘Constantine, I know you get a kick out of screwing for an audience, but really. And Miss Breen, kindly sew me up– I’m bleeding all over the place at the moment and it’s really quite inconvenient.’ Doyle looks back at me, then at Jervais.‘Oh, and you might turn the news on.’
Outside, through the glass, across the concrete sea of the landing zone, orbital shuttles sit becalmed in the night, waiting for clearance to leave. Island hangers and boarding terminals sparkle with warning lights. The world is dark and quiet. Anticipating.
Jervais begins to stir. I raid the autobar for something brown and strong-looking and fiddle with the display settings on the windows. The concrete sea vanishes, replaced by a wall-sized head and shoulders, some bubbling Toni Flynn clone. Looks like she’s up on Gateway. Hard to tell– the picture freezes and breaks up and reforms and then breaks up again like there’s major interference on the downlink.
‘… up-link traffic from Cestus continues to be at a standstill…’
Jez is messing with Doyle. I look at Jervais. He’s quiet and still.
‘… declined to comment on whether this would affect the inauguration of the Sunscreen project, due to go on line…’
I figure Jervais is faking it. I splash some of the brown stuff from the autobar into his vacant eye socket. The way he screams and spasms in the chair, I reckon I was right.
‘… no indication of their intention other than their original statement. Responses have been polite, but firm, and so far, all calls for their withdrawal have been ignored. Meanwhile, more and more United Stars warships arrive with every minute that passes…’
I stop sneering at Jervais. Jez stops stitching Ortov. Ortov looks smug.
‘Stop!’ snaps Jez.‘Replay with summary!’
The windows go blue, then black with stars. The night sky above Cestus.
‘At twenty-two fifty-one, forty United Stars naval vessels arrived in the Cestus system and positioned themselves eighteen light-minutes distant from Cestus Prime, fractionally outside the autonomous fire zone of the Sunscreen system. Further United Stars warships have arrived since, bringing the current total to sixty-three. They state they have no hostile intentions but have ignored system authority requests to leave. A response by the Old Worlds Navy on the situation, and particularly on the status of the Sunscreen defence grid, due online tonight, is expected shortly.’
The scene shifts, back to some studio news-bot apologising for the picture quality of their live report. Dross. Bottle in one hand, Tesla in the other, I turn back to Jervais.
‘Kid,’ – Jervais is ten years older than me but I always wanted to call someone Kid at a time like this– ‘Kid, which of these is going to hurt more?’ I put the gun down on his lap and hold out the bottle.‘Want a drink?’ I tip some more of it over his face. He twists, trying to keep the burning alcohol away from his ruined eye but he can’t quite figure out that the more he turns away, the more gravity takes the liquid fire towards the hole in his head.
‘Pick up the gun!’ I tell him.‘Pick it up and shoot me and run away.’
He growls between screams. I guess he’s trying real hard. Difficult to tell though because his arms stay limp. That’s the drugs. Motor neuron blocks. His limbs aren’t his own and now he knows it. Good old Longthorne pharmaceuticals.
‘Jervais, someone’s trying to hurt Cestus. Someone’s trying to hurt the Longthorne family. You know who it is. Tell me and the pain stops.’
He spits blood and whiskey at me. I turn away. Makes me sick to do this. Could so easily be me in that chair. We have so much in common…
… and suddenly I hate him for it. Hate him for showing me that no matter what I did, no matter how I tried, I could never get away.
‘Jervais, you shit, do you want any dignity to your life? You’re a corporate whore! You think you got out? They tracked you, they used you, and you didn’t even know it. And now they’re bored of playing with you and you still don’t fucking get it!’
Don’t know whether I’m talking to him or talking to myself.
‘You’re going to die. Nothing you do can stop that. You’ll tell them everything they want to know and they won’t stop until every memory is leeched out. You mortgaged your humanity. You’re going to hell, Jervais.’
I stop myself. Rambling. A good negotiator keeps to the point, dammit.‘Give me a name and I won’t let them have you. I’ll give you a bullet instead. Quick and clean. Your soul’s between you and whatever god now, either way. But the Company will rape it if I let them have it first.’
Of course, if he knows that most of the Company is currently dead of ner
ve gas poisoning, maybe hewouldn’t be so worried…
‘Give… me… the… gun…’
‘Don’t be fucking stupid. You couldn’t pull the trigger anyway.’
‘Then… no… name…’
I look him in the eye. The one that’s still there. He means it. I nod, take the clip out of the Tesla, reload it with a single shot, let him see every action.
I walk round behind the chair, crouch down, run a hand through his hair and whisper in his ear.
‘Who?’ I let him feel the hardness of the gun barrel intimate against his neck. We’re so close I can feel his warmth on my face, smell his sweat.‘Who is it, Jervais?’
Trying to move his arms again. He wants to do it. He wants to pull the trigger himself, he wants it so badly that nothing else matters. And he can’t. The pain and the frustration make me want to end it for him right there. Bollocks to this empathy shit.
I cradle his head tightly against my own.‘Tell me, Jervais.’
And he does.‘Longthorne… AI… Victor…’
‘Fuck!’ shouts Jez.‘Right! Who the fuck else could it be?’ She stamps her foot.‘Victor fucking Longthorne! It’s all so obvious. So all we have to do now is figure out how he’s doing it when he’s completely fucking dead! Oh, and figure out why he’d want to spend half his personal fortune blowing the crap out of the other half. Yeah, nice one. Try again.’
I ignore her and whisper in Jervais’ ear. Jez doesn’t get it, but I do. And I have Ortov to thank.‘Everything comes to you through LoneFire.’
Jervais nods, barely perceptibly. I nod back. Stand up. All very well getting up close and personal for a name, but if I’m going to blow his brains out, they’re not ending up all over a nice clean shirt. Once was enough for one day.
Victor’s dead. Jervais is telling the truth. I know these both, as sure as I can be.
‘Kill me!’ screams Jervais.
I raise the gun.‘I believe you.’
‘Don’t you fucking dare!’ yells Jez.
‘He’s not lying.’
‘That’s crap! Victor blew up. You were there. You saw it happen!’