Fairweather

by Jones, Raya

  ‘Perhaps she’s never left.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘She became a spider.’

  I wasn’t smiling and he didn’t laugh. ‘Every time we teleport, our particles change,’ he mused. ‘We are flows of information. A young woman who died eight years ago comes back to life three years younger. Then she becomes a spider. Who says it can’t be done?’

  ‘All the top scientists,’ I replied.

  ‘Have you done a lot of theoretical physics since school?’

  ‘I’ve asked the five top living physicists. Are you sure you won’t have any pizza?’

  He declined the pizza. ‘You asked them “Is it possible for a woman to become a spider”? And they dignified it with an answer?’

  ‘I used words like metamorphosis.’ He eyed me sceptically. I added, ‘And used the identity of someone whose questions Teletek scientists answer immediately without asking any questions.’ I carried on eating.

  After a while he gave up waiting for me to elaborate. He studied my face and decided, ‘You are winding me up. You’re pulling my leg. I guess I have only myself to blame for filling your head with fairytales and metaphors.’

  He went to the bedroom and changed into his biosuit. ‘I’ve promised my sister to dine with her crowd tonight,’ he explained, returning.

  ‘Isn’t it a dress code violation to arrive at a dinner party in travel clothes?’

  He nodded vigorously, grinning. ‘I have to keep up the persona of the intolerable little brother.’ He sat back down. ‘I have a while yet before getting there an hour late.’

  I disposed the pizza box in the domestic chute, got myself water, and sat down on the floor facing him.

  After a while he said, ‘Put me out of my misery, Al. Have mercy, talk to me.’

  I did. I asked the physicists whether it was possible to swap someone’s looks and memories with those of someone else during teleportation. It was theoretically possible. Two of them gave the technology twenty years to catch up with the theory. But it didn’t require teleport technology to modify someone to look like Mandy, and then have her mind altered, I told Fred. ‘The third possibility does not bear thinking about.’

  He agreed.

  If Fairweather’s teleport pattern had been duplicated in Tao Ceti when she was nineteen, before she travelled to Alpha Centauri and met me there, then perhaps the technology already existed for Wye Stan to copy himself again and again, forever in his prime and with no loss of memories and skills. ‘Perhaps Version 7 lied to you when he said that there have been no more phases after me, Fred. Perhaps he wasn’t sincere when he offered you immortality.’

  ‘I wasn’t sincere when I said I wasn’t interested. The bastard.’

  ‘He didn’t even let you into his personal space when you called him last night.’

  Fred shut up.

  A moment later he said, ‘You didn’t even have the decency to fake surprise when I dropped the deliberate slip of the tongue.’

  ‘I assumed you called to thank him for returning your biosuit.’

  ‘You saw me order a new one.’

  ‘But you’re wearing the old one, I can tell by the barcode. You should consider the advantages of wearing a mass-produced suit that looks like a cheap uniform.’

  His face contorted into something between a grimace and a grin. ‘Trust you to memorise a decorative barcode. What possessed you to memorise it? Never mind. I’m better off not knowing how your mind works. Yes, he returned my gear, all of it. I shouldn’t have rushed to buy a new shaving kit. And it’s not what you think. He didn’t bug anything. He doesn’t need to. The keeper of the invisible wall sees everything… Which reminds me,’ he took a string of memory pearls out of his pocket and threw it over to me, ‘a little gift he put in my bag. His surveillance of our entire stay in that room. Keep it.’

  I held it, wondering about their relationship. ‘Was he monitoring us when we lived together in Ronda?’

  ‘We never lived together.’

  ‘So Swift tells me. You’ve made up a romantic story about us for ET’s benefit, and then wiped out any evidence that we actually lived together.’

  He jumped up, waving a finger at me, ‘No, no, we never “lived together”. Choose your words carefully. You stayed in my house as my guest.’ He reached the door. ‘If you can’t figure out why there’s no record of it, I’m washing my hands off you!’ He went out in a huff. The door closed behind him with a soft swish.

  I thought: he didn’t wipe out the evidence, and Swift wasn’t lying. She really didn’t know. Any evidence of my stay with Fred in Ronda had vanished into the invisible wall that Wye Stan kept around Fred. The moment I accepted his invitation to stay on the asteroid he called home, I became trapped in their weird realm.

  The door swished open and he strode back in, talking as if in mid-conversation. ‘Even if she is a teleport copy, it doesn’t explain her vanishing act in the Emporium. PertNet?’ Mobile devices generating temporary teleport fields had been available for several years. But if Mandy was extracted from the Emporium by someone operating a PertNet, there would be a detectable trace. There was none.

  Fred gave up and went to his sister’s party.

  He intended to sleep in the uptown apartment so that I’d have peace and quiet and the use of a proper bed. When I pointed out that he might be disturbed by his subordinates on their way to and from work, he chuckled wickedly, ‘Not half as disturbed as they are going to be when seeing me there.’

  After he left I folded away the sofa, unrolled my mat, dimmed the lights and logged in. Surprisingly, there was a message from Wye Stan 8 in my Jexu Jiu inbox, inviting me to contact him on a private link. He requested face-to-face. I fixed a camera to transmit my actual image. He returned my call almost immediately. Now older and without makeup, dressed in a formal suit, Surtr was unmistakably a Wye Stan, although he had his hair cut short and dyed blonde. ‘It’s good to see you again,’ he said at once. ‘You have your hair long like the image my sister created.’

  ‘And you are still trying not to look like your official portrait.’

  ‘We are individuals. You’ve met my older clone.’

  ‘Version 7 is not you.’

  ‘Only Freedom Cordova calls him that. Quite a character you’re associated with.’

  ‘What do you want, Surtr. Sorry. No disrespect. What would you like me to call you?’

  ‘Surtr is fine. I like that. Not many people use it anymore. Nobody, in fact. What should I call you?’

  ‘You can call me Harvey.’

  ‘I’d rather not. It sounds like a pink rabbit. You are quite a character yourself. I know what has happened in Cy City Earth. I don’t blame you for doing what you’ve done. Is there anything I can offer you in return for lifting the curse on my andronets?’

  ‘It’s not a curse. It’s not even a virus. Version 7 will figure out a way to disable it.’

  ‘I’m sure he will, but if you disable it before he does I can guarantee that he won’t harm you.’

  ‘The andronets are my guarantee for now. There’s nothing you can tempt me with, not even resurrecting Fairweather.’ I suddenly felt weak at the knees.

  ‘Her suicide hit you hard, I know. Thank you for being discreet about that unfortunate incident. I can help you in ways you’re not aware. You don’t realise what Freedom Cordova is getting you into.’

  ‘The Council of Nine?’

  ‘That’s a story he’s made up.’

  ‘The story has been around since the Apocalypse.’ My heart was racing for no apparent reason.

  ‘Recycling myths is a very OK thing to do. You have no idea how dangerous he is. You don’t know the mess into which he’s got my older one. I’d tell you about it but not like this. Come to my place as my guest. We’ll talk.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll consider it. I’ll be in touch.’

  I signed off and immediately keyed a code I had found in the pearls that Wye Stan 7 had given Fred.

  It was past midnight
in Cy City, and yet he returned my call at once, wide-awake. I kept my ‘live’ image transmitting, and he reciprocated with a transmission of himself standing in his marble hall. It was lit with large candles. The glass ceiling was black with the darkness of night. A ghostly six-foot tall pink rabbit shimmered on the periphery of vision behind him.

  Expressionless, the older Wye Stan waited for me to speak.

  I spoke with difficulty. ‘What mess did Fred get you into?’

  The candlelight made his sharp unsmiling face softer. He spoke quietly and precisely. ‘I need to show you. Come here and we’ll talk properly.’

  ‘You didn’t have to hide behind Surtr.’

  ‘Did the description of your sprite give me away?’

  ‘No, that was still Surtr speaking. You took over when I mentioned Fairweather.’

  ‘Did calling her suicide an “unfortunate incident” give me away?’

  ‘It was an unfortunate incident. You call things what they are, Version 7… sorry. Can I call you that? You can call me Al. I guess that’s the closest to a first-name basis we can get.’ He winced, ever so slightly. ‘It wasn’t anything you said, Version 7. I sensed your movement. You used the same spin-dive technique you’ve built into the hypo-tentacles.’

  ‘Spin-dive,’ he echoed. ‘I haven’t heard it called that before.’

  ‘I’ve made it up. I don’t know what you call it. What do you call it?’

  ‘I don’t call it anything. Nobody else knows about it.’ For a fleeting moment, he spoke almost with emotion. ‘You sensed the precise moment I spin-dived. There’s something I must show you about the man you call Fred.’

  ‘You too call him Fred.’

  ‘Come. I won’t harm you when you come at my invitation.’

  I said again, ‘Thanks, I’ll consider it.’

  I signed off.

  I was shaking so much, I had to go offline.

  The infrastructure of my webs was barely restored. If he attacked now, I’d be out of action for many years. Yet he didn’t attack, just as he didn’t have his guards shoot me when I came to his city. He wanted me alive. I couldn’t fathom the purpose for which he wanted me alive.

  I went to bed but lay there tossing and turning, troubled by terrible unease. Intrusive imaginings of Version 7’s horrific experiments with the dark power he had kept tormenting me—and then I realised that I must cherish the memory of Fred telling me about it.

  I must fix in my mind the memory of Fred’s broken voice and his expression. I must hold in my unaided brain every detail of that moment on the cliffs, the moment when all his masks fell away. This was my only assurance about which side Fred was on.

  Sometime before dawn Fred sneaked in beside me. The bed was large enough for him not to disturb me, and he was very careful. Soon he started to snore. I pretended to be asleep. The man is impossible, I thought. We can’t go on like this. I fell asleep trying to work out practical solutions that didn’t involve sharing a bed with him and didn’t mean losing the good feeling I had when being with him. I slept soundly.

  When I woke up the room was flooded with soft daylight through the opaque window. He was out of bed, sitting on the floor in his caftan, his back resting against the bathroom door. I remembered that he used to love seeing the light of dawn on my mother’s face when she slept in his bed. ‘Are you thinking about my mother?’

  ‘I never stop thinking about her. I’ve been thinking how I didn’t know her when she was your age. You must’ve been five.’

  When I was five years old we used to live in a place full of Japanese people, the nihonjin tribe. My earliest memory is of my mother coaching me what to tell people about us when we first arrived there, two years earlier. After living with the nihonjin for a few years we suddenly had to move again. She didn’t tell me why. I had to learn new things to tell people about us, and forget the name Kato Akira that she had invented for me when I was three years old.

  He chuckled. ‘Oh yes, Akira Kato, the name that makes Teletek physicists jump to attention and answer any question. Go on, Kato-san, ask me how I know. I’ll tell you,’ Fred said before I had a chance to ask. ‘My sister introduced me to someone from 1Step last night. I asked him, “Who’s the biggest pain in the butt apart from the chief bastard Jexu Jiu?” and without hesitation he said, “Akira Kato”.’

  The 1Step man told Fred how Akira Kato had joined a Teletek lab in Alpha-10, pretending to be a trainee technician, when the CSG were auditing the facility. Kato uncovered a corrupt deal between the CSG auditors and the corporation. Fred smirked at me, ‘That’s your real role in the CSG. You are their Internal Affairs.’

  I’ve had enough. I crossed the room past him into the closet-sized bathroom and closed the door behind me, wondering how to tell him about Wye Stan. To gain thinking time, I called out, ‘I thought you were spending the night uptown.’

  He spoke through the closed door. ‘I couldn’t sleep there. People kept coming and going on their shifts. I had to keep dashing out of the bedroom half-naked on some excuse and see the horror on their faces. Then the shift rotation ended, so there was no point staying there.’

  We can’t go on like this, I thought, washing my hands.

  ‘We can’t go on like this,’ echoed his voice through the door. ‘I need my own space.’

  My toiletries were in the rucksack. I came out to fetch them. ‘I’ll go back to the inn.’

  ‘No, that won’t work.’ He stood by the window as if studying the patterns of light and shade. When I suggested renting a two-person apartment, he swivelled to face me. ‘This is a two-person apartment. That’s why there’s a double bed. That’s why there’s a bedroom the size of a snuffbox, separate from a living room the size of a matchbox. Citizens are supposed to raise a family in a place like this. No wonder kids like Marrakech turn to crime! There’s plenty of space in my uptown place, but I’ll have to evict Cousin Isabella and redecorate. I couldn’t possibly live in a Mu Tashi package. It’s so cheap and passé. Mandy told me.’

  ‘It’s unfair to evict your cousin if she exists.’

  ‘Of course she exists. She can use my estate on Mars.’

  ‘You have an estate on Mars?’ I paused at the bathroom door.

  ‘You used to know my biography by heart. Who are you? What have you done with my Al?’

  Laying out my toothbrush and shaving kit by the sink, I saw him in the mirror leaning against the doorframe, his arms folded, watching me thoughtfully. I wondered whether he already knew about my contact with Wye Stan. ‘Your grandfather’s place on Mars? Doesn’t your father live there?’

  ‘He died two years ago.’

  ‘Did you tell me that before?’

  ‘No.’

  I stared at him in the mirror, the toothbrush in my hand, not sure what to say. He used to say that his father was nobody the son of nobody. The Rossi had no executive pedigree. Fred seldom admitted that his paternal grandfather was a very successful self-made man, the founder of Luciolite. ‘Fred, would I know it if I’ve been altered, if I’m not me, like Mandy who is not Fairweather?’

  ‘Heck, I don’t know if you would know, but I’d know. You’ll be nice to me suddenly. Are you going to stand there all day with your toothbrush on pause? I need to use the bathroom too. Hurry up. I haven’t got all day.’ He disappeared from the doorway.

  I took a long time showering.

  When I came out, he was dressed in his biosuit and sitting at the dining table, reading his email, like he used to do when we lived together—or not—on his asteroid-home. Now he switched it off and rose at once, saying we could grab breakfast on the hoof. There was somewhere uptown he wanted to show me. I told him that I too had to show him something. He frowned. ‘Sounds ominous. Does it involve Version 7?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In that case it must to wait. I can’t stomach him on an empty stomach.’

  Fred wanted to show me the park at the very top of Phoenix-3. It took us nearly an hour getting there by escalators a
nd elevators because I wanted to see more of the town. We bought food and ate on the move. Teleport barriers and automated checkpoints segregated the executives’ quarters from commoners’ spaces. Fred could invite any low-life into his uptown home, but non-execs couldn’t enter uptown public places without a permit. I hesitated at the checkpoint. ‘Go ahead, you’ll be let in,’ Fred prompted. I walked through. The gate scanned my biometrics and opened.

  I asked him which of my aliases he had used for authorizing my access.

  ‘Not Jexu Jiu,’ he said shiftily, heading up a broad promenade that looked pretty much like the downtown ones, except that the bars and boutiques were more expensive, the people snootier, and the robot cleaners had shinier metal bodies.

  ‘Harvey Schmidt?’

  ‘No.’ He strode very fast. I kept up with him and wouldn’t drop the matter.

  It wasn’t Akira Kato either.

  I persisted. ‘You had to supply a name to go with the biometrics on the file. How did you authorise me?’

  He blurted without slowing down, ‘I didn’t authorise you.’

  ‘Who did?’

  He stopped walking, glancing around to ensure that nobody was within earshot, and lowered his voice. ‘The name that matches your biometrics is Perseverance Suzuki Pan. Use your brain. I could delete the “Deceased” stamp, couldn’t I?’ he said airily, and resumed walking quite fast.

  I wouldn’t let it go. ‘Did you also falsify her medical records to show when she had the sex change? I’m your Suzie with modifications.’

  This made him angry. ‘You are not your mother. Get it out of your head. You are something else entirely, God help us.’

  We were soon surrounded by people. We couldn’t speak openly until after reaching the park and walking some distance away from the gates across a meticulously mowed lawn. I asked him again. He looked around as if hoping that someone would come near and save him from having to answer me. There were few people about, and most of them headed to themed gardens located more centrally. The robots tending the herbaceous borders stayed away from us, too. Fred was heading to an area of dense shrubbery and trees. Several narrow paths snaked through the miniature woodland.