by Roger Levy
No, I was wrong. They were not simply moulded in this way. I saw, with a shock, that the visors were not quite opaque. Like half moons in night skies, I could make out the shadow of a face behind each visor.
Thirty-one
RAZER
Razer looked at the TruTale. It seemed hollow, now that Bale was really dead. His survival in the sewers had made him seem invulnerable.
She felt empty, the pen too light and unfamiliar. It felt like there was no reality to write about.
She raised her hand from the page, crying at the hopelessness of everything, at the death of Bale, and then she dried her eyes.
Not hopeless. There had to be something.
* * *
The streets were not well lit at this end of Lookout, and the roads were shattered. Razer saw a rat scuttle into a gap in the paving, something wriggling in its jaws. There were vigorous weeds, and the few lamp posts alternated with dying trees. She supposed that Paxers didn’t make enough money to live anywhere else. Like writers. She passed a small rank of shops and delivery outlets, a cluster of repair booths and a bar. She nearly stopped at the bar. It was cold, and she was the only one out walking. A few zipriders swung past, one of them making a point turn and circling her. She put a hand to her jacket to show the rider her gunstock, and the rider arced away in a snarl of engine noise.
Delta’s block was a slotbuild of metal and meld, a barely customised version of a standard package that Razer had seen and lived in throughout the System. The lobby stank. The stairs were sticky underfoot. All that made this slotbuild stand out were the cams, whose motors keened as the lens-heads swivelled to follow her along the corridors. It reminded her of an old, old soundless film she’d seen in the archives, scratched images of a wall lined with living, torch-bearing hands that lit the heroine along a gloomy passageway. There was no magic here, though, and certainly no heroine.
She leaned into the comms grille set into the dented metal door and said, ‘Delta Kerlew? Can I see you? I want to say thanks.’
The Paxer barely waited for Razer to be inside before pushing the door closed. She said, ‘I haven’t done anything for you to thank me.’
‘You have. At the Chute, the other day. After Bale…’ She couldn’t say the rest of it. ‘You could have held me longer.’
‘Pax could have. Not me. Don’t be cute. I’m not your friend. Why did you come here?’
Razer noticed Delta’s fists knotting and unknotting, and said, ‘There’s no one else. Please.’ She caught sight of her own reflection in the far window. As bruised and exhausted as she felt, little of it showed in her face. Every morning for the last week, she’d surfaced crying from rough sleep, feeling the grip of Millasco’s hands at her waist and seeing his face flooding with blood.
‘Sit down if you want,’ Delta said flatly, leaving the room for what Razer remembered was always a small kitchen. ‘I was making caffé.’
Alone in the room, Razer began reflexively to catalogue. On the shelves were blossom jars and travel mementos; the usual tatty obsidian carvings, a lamp, a nest of small green clay bowls. There were Pax certificates for weaponry and other proficiencies on the wall. They were signed Navid, which had been the name of the snitty officer who had come down to validate her statement over Bale’s death.
Alongside the certificates was a slim glass-fronted cabinet with a small matt-black handgun inside. Razer looked at it long enough for the eyetagger to register her attention and opaque the glass. A lozenge of greyed screenery on the opposite wall had a small Pax-blue oval pulsing in its corner.
It was a typical Paxer’s place, a barely individualised holding room, the objects on the shelves set out more as a record than as a flare of personality. It was a greater effort than Bale had ever made, but this was still no more than a Paxer’s downtime on display.
No – there was one more thing in the room: a curtain of broadmesh chainlink over some sort of cupboard in the corner of the room, reaching all the way down to the floor. Without thinking, Razer touched the polished metal and the mesh retracted sharply to the side.
A brilliant light shot out, filling the room. Razer gasped and took a step back, her eyes accustoming until she could stare at the glass tank full of dazzling stones.
It was mesmerisingly beautiful. They must have been taken from the shore. It was a crime to remove shore stones from Bleak, and Razer was fairly sure it was illegal even to remove them from the beach. There was movement in the tank too, the water rippling and spinning colours.
She went to kneel by the tank. ‘Oh,’ she murmured aloud. Tiny red-lipped fish flashed amongst the stones, their scales vermilion and fins scarab-blue.
Nothing else in the room compared with the shock of the tank. She stood up and looked around again, but the few cupboards and chairs, the small metal table and the neatly ordered desk in the opposite corner were unremarkable, though now she noticed a few framed images of people on the desk, each launching at her glance into a brief gesture or a startled smile.
Razer touched the curtain again and it moved back across the tank. The room dulled. She wandered into the small kitchen and watched Delta take cups from a low cupboard. There must have been at least ten cups in there, and the same number of plates and bowls. The idea of that made Razer’s throat tighten, made her think of there being people who might sit with you in your own place for an evening just to talk and eat and drink. It made her think of Bale again, and of herself. And somehow of Tallen, too.
‘Are you in pain?’
She looked uncomprehendingly at Delta, who added without inflexion, ‘I thought you were crying.’
‘No.’
‘Good.’ Delta carried on making the caffé. She said, ‘I don’t like being watched.’
‘Sorry.’ Razer withdrew to the other room. The window overlooked a patch of ground littered with rubbish, and beyond it the wall of another slotbuild and a road. There was no colour to any of it.
Delta set the drinks on the table with a noise that made Razer jump, and sitting down in a chair, said, ‘So?’
‘You and Bale were friends,’ Razer said as she sat down across the table from Delta.
‘Not like you and Bale.’
Razer took a long breath. ‘You’re right, not like that at all. It didn’t work with us. Bale and I were using each other. With you, it was different. He told me about you.’
‘And now he’s gone, you want to use me instead, is that it?’
‘No.’ Razer closed her eyes and shuddered, seeing Bale dying in the Chute. ‘He talked about you a lot.’
‘You needn’t bother with this.’ Delta pushed herself back in the chair. ‘We both know why you’re here. You could have the courtesy to come out with it.’
‘I’m sorry. Really.’
‘I don’t care. Really. You want me to help you, I’ll do it in his memory. Not for you. Don’t expect anything else.’
‘Look,’ Razer said. ‘Maybe it’s my fault he’s dead. I should have believed him, but I didn’t. I’m sorry. He was a good man.’
‘A good man.’ Delta was silent for a moment, then she said, wearily, ‘No, not Bale. He could be a stone-headed shit. Mostly he was.’
Razer reached across the table, but Delta jerked away and said, ‘Don’t try and make yourself feel better. You can move away from Bleak, move on. I can’t. And don’t feel so damn guilty, either. You’ve got no right to guilt. I got him into this, not you. I sent him down after the K in the first place. You know what guts me? That he went to you.’
‘He tried to go to you.’
‘Not very hard, he didn’t. You don’t know him. He’s persistent.’ Delta squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Didn’t know him. You didn’t know him.’
‘He would have come back to you,’ Razer said quietly. ‘You know why he came to me? He thought I was involved in it. He wasn’t just flushing Millasco – he was checking on me.’
‘Millasco?’
‘In my statement. Haven’t you read it?’
; ‘No. No reason to.’
‘It’s how Bale died. You aren’t interested?’
‘I’d need a reason to see it. Pax is like that.’ Delta chewed her lip. ‘Bale was checking on you?’
‘Yes. He could have been right to,’ Razer said. She almost missed the flicker of Delta’s eyes towards the screenery. Realising what that meant, she said, ‘Oh. You’re recording this.’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Is your comms open, too? Is it feeding live?’
Delta hesitated. ‘No.’
‘Please. I don’t know what’s going on, but if Bale was right, his death isn’t the end of it. I’m trusting you, Delta, but you can’t trust anyone with this. Not even Pax. Bale thought Pax might be caught up in it.’
‘That’s a first, even for Bale,’ Delta said, but she said it quietly, and then she made a few precise hand movements at the screen, which whined briefly and settled.
Razer said, ‘Thank you.’
‘It doesn’t mean I trust you. Go on.’
‘I can’t stop thinking about it.’ She shook her head. ‘I think I may have been dummied. It sounds stupid, but it’s all I can think of. I connect with my AI every night. Someone could have used my body and taken me after Tallen.’
Delta didn’t react.
‘I was sent to Bleak, to Lookout, just in time for all this. I was even instructed to find and contact Bale. It’s a huge jump of coincidence, at least. The only thing I can think of is that I was dummied and used.’
‘Bale suggested that?’
‘He was heading more down the line that I was knowingly involved. I never got to telling him I thought I might have been dummied.’
Delta pushed her tasse around the table. ‘Dummied?’ She laughed. ‘What do you know about dummying?’
‘I looked on the Song. I couldn’t think of anything else that might fit.’
‘You’ve had any sublims recently? Like ghosting flashbacks?’
‘Only from the Chute.’
‘You’d have had a lot more if you’d been dummied. It’s completely obsolete tech. Dummies are really slow, too. It’s illegal, of course, highly risky to the dummy, and unreliable. Even the Whisper hardly uses them now. You only really use a dummy when you want an expendable observer, and this wasn’t that.’ She looked at Razer dismissively. ‘No, you weren’t dummied. Nevertheless, big coincidence, like you said.’
They fell silent. Delta left the table and touched the tank’s curtain. As it shot back and the light exploded into the room, she said, ‘The curtain doesn’t sit straight. Bale always said he’d fix it.’ Razer watched the fish flickering among the brilliant stones.
Eventually Delta said, ‘You can just walk away from this. Or are you staying for the story?’
Razer said, ‘I want Bale not to be a waste. I want to tell the story, but I want to do something right, too.’ She found herself without the words she needed, and fell back on, ‘I just want to do something.’
Delta touched the curtain again, holding her palm against the metal as it closed over the tank. The room darkened. Delta shook her head. ‘You want to do something,’ she said, her voice heavy with mockery. ‘Shit. Bale would be proud of you.’
Suddenly furious, Razer made to stand up, but Delta said, ‘Sit down. You want to do something, writer? Let’s do something, then.’
* * *
In her room, Razer coded herself into TruTales.
‘Cynth? I’m going to write a story on Delta Kerlew. I’ll link it to Bale. I think there’s some good stuff here.’ A TruTale about Delta might keep Cynth at bay. She felt her augmem unload, and sighed. She was exhausted.
THIS DATA IS GOOD, KESTREL DUST, BUT DO NOT WRITE KERLEW STORY.
‘You don’t want it, you don’t pay me. It’s been five years. I’m due some leave.’
NO LEAVE PERMITTED AT PRESENT. BALE SUBJECT SATISFACTORILY CONCLUDED. REPEAT DO NOT WRITE KERLEW STORY. NEW SUBJECT ALLOCATED.
She stared at satisfactorily concluded, then whispered, ‘What in hell are you based on, you goddamn shit of a program?’
THIS PROGRAM IS A PROGRAM, IT IS NOT A YOU. KERLEW IS NOT YOUR STORY, KESTREL DUST. YOUR STORY IS NOW TALLEN.
‘Tallen? Oh, really? Is it? Do you know who killed Bale? Is that your story, Cynth?’
YOUR STORY IS NOW TALLEN.
‘You don’t act like a programmed AI. You haven’t acted like one since I came to Bleak. Why don’t you want me working with Delta? Did you know Bale would be killed?’
YOUR STORY IS NOW TALLEN.
‘I’m not doing anything until I know what’s happening. And I’m not finished with Bale either. Did you arrange Bale’s death? His satisfactory conclusion?’
The screen remained empty.
‘Fine. Hell with you. You can repeat yourself forever, but I’m not doing a thing.’
THIS PROGRAM REGRETS YOUR MISINTERPRETATION OF THE WORD ‘SATISFACTORILY’. KESTREL DUST’S STORY AND DATA WERE SATISFACTORY. BALE’S DEATH WAS NOT A SATISFACTORY OUTCOME.
‘No, it wasn’t.’
TALLEN’S DEATH WOULD NOT BE A SATISFACTORY OUTCOME.
‘What?’ The hairs rose at the nape of her neck.
THIS PROGRAM HAS REVIEWED BALE’S STORY AND BELIEVES TALLEN TO BE AT RISK AND A GOOD SUBJECT FOR KESTREL DUST.
Razer slowly relaxed again. Cynth was just a cracked AI, and Razer was so lonely she was reading words in the stars. She said, ‘You aren’t so well-informed, Cynth. I’ve checked on him. Tallen’s on a rig. I can’t contact him. No one can.’
TALLEN IS REGISTERED ON STARHEARTS.
‘So?’ For a moment, the idea of Tallen searching for someone made her heart beat faster. She said, ‘And how do you know that?’
STARHEARTS IS A SUBSIDIARY OF AFTERLIFE. THIS PROGRAM HAS CROSS-ACCESS.
‘You want me to do a StarHearts search for him? I can’t make a story out of a HeartSearch.’
KESTREL DUST CAN CONTACT TALLEN THROUGH HIS HEARTSEARCH. TALLEN IS REGISTERED AND IS AT RISK AND A GOOD SUBJECT FOR KESTREL DUST.
‘This program sounds sentimental to me.’ Words in the stars. She wanted there to be words in the stars. A ghost in this machine. Something out there. She did feel lonely. Did Tallen?
THIS PROGRAM IS NOT A STORY. THIS PROGRAM IS A COLLATER OF STORIES. TALLEN IS A GOOD SUBJECT FOR KESTREL DUST. KESTREL DUST IS A CONTRACTED SUPPLIER. THIS PROGRAM IS LOGICAL. KESTREL DUST IS RESPONDING EMOTIONALLY.
Razer pressed her thumbs into her eyes. She remembered Tallen lying in the bed across from Bale, a man in a metal scaffold. What might that be like, to be without the slightest movement, to have no control? And to have the memories Tallen might have. It would be a good story.
But he’d been able to recall nothing.
She looked at the screen telling her she was reacting emotionally. Bale would have wanted her to take this on, to question Tallen.
And she wanted to talk to him again. It wasn’t about Bale at all, or about Tallen’s story. ‘Okay. I’ll try to contact Tallen.’
THIS PROGRAM HAS ALREADY INITIATED KESTREL DUST’S STARHEARTS REGISTRATION WITH IDENTITY PROGRAMMED TO PSYCH-MATCH TALLEN. THIS PROGRAM WILL VALIDATE AND PROMOTE THE HEARTSEARCH TO TALLEN.
‘You don’t waste time, do you?’
THIS PROGRAM’S DECISIONS ARE ITS ACTIONS.
‘And mine are predictable? Is that it? You knew I’d agree.’
KESTREL DUST’S DECISIONS ARE ALWAYS SATISFACTORY, EVENTUALLY.
‘Hell with you, Cynth,’ and then she added, ‘This supplier thanks this program,’ feeling ridiculous for throwing sarcasm at putery. As she was closing the contact, she barely registered the last brief words.
KESTREL DUST SHOULD BE CAREFUL.
Thirty-two
ALEF
SigEv 36 Salvation
The screenery and readouts on the walls were flickering. The levels didn’t quite enter the highlighted grids that indicated stable rv ranges, and I wondered whether the units were malfunctioning. Pellonhorc di
dn’t seem concerned, though.
There were other devices too, scattered around the room. Tools, like some of the tools in the previous room, though these were more disordered. Pellonhorc made some adjustments at a wall console, saying, ‘These are extraordinary machines, Alef.’ He reached out and rapped the nearest unit with a knuckle. It returned a dull chime. ‘It’s not just a binary switch; yes and no; sleep and wake; up and down…’ He was clicking his fingers as he recited his list. He stopped, then clicked them once more. ‘… Live and die. It’s not at all straightforward.’ He ran a finger almost sensuously over the curve of a machine’s hip. ‘Not like you, Alef.’ He considered me a moment longer. ‘Although, of course, you aren’t simple. Not altogether. You’re unique, like me.’
When I said nothing to this, he added, ‘You and I are more than special. You do realise this, don’t you. We’ve always known it.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Straight to it, Alef. That’s what I mean. Now, as I was saying, these are delicate and complex devices. Let me show you. If I do this…’
As soon as the visors began slowly to sink back, there was movement. The head to the left shivered and its eyes opened wide, instantly full of alertness, darting from side to side and then staring straight ahead. Nothing more was possible, as the head was firmly braced face-forward. I looked across at the other head, which was identically fixed by cheek-bars. The two men had no choice but to face each other directly.
Ethan Drame and Spetkin Ligate. Their faces were contorted, muscles jerking in their cheeks and temples as they strained hopelessly to move.
‘What are you doing?’ I said to Pellonhorc, when I could speak.
Pellonhorc frowned. ‘Sometimes science is for its own sake, isn’t it? One doesn’t know at the time. The thing is to ask the questions.’
Drame’s eyes were drawn so wide that the irises were almost lost in their pools of white, and Ligate’s lips were stretched thin and pale. Both men were breathing sharply and shallowly, almost hissing. It was as if they were punctured. The atmosphere in the room was terrifying.