by Jones, Raya
The deeper we went into it, the more forlorn it felt. It was maintained chiefly for green mass. The place used to be popular with teenage lovers when he was young, he told me. Still was, judging by the couples we passed. I asked him whether he used to come here with my mother. ‘No, we didn’t need to sneak around. Suzie used to lie to her parents about where she was spending the night, and my parents didn’t care. I’m taking you to what used to be my favourite place when I was a child.’
‘This is it,’ he announced when we emerged out of the woodland onto a broad walkway at the park’s edge, right up near the transparent shell of the geodesic dome. Between rods holding up the dome you could survey the crater on a clear day.
Not today. A sandstorm raged outside in eerie silence, swirling sheets of yellow dust lashing at the soundproof dome. ‘I remember these storms,’ I told him. ‘The wind howls so much, it’s deafening. Sand gets everywhere no matter how much you insulate your place.’
‘Mandy might be out there in this.’
‘She has a biosuit.’
We found a vacant bench at the dead-end of the walkway, where it was blocked off with a tall wall. As soon as we sat down, I repeated my query about the checkpoint.
‘Damn, you didn’t forget. Okay, but promise me you won’t do your nut. I used Akira. Not Kato. I had to improvise. Akira Cordova. Don’t look at me daggers, you’ve promised not to do your nut.’
‘I didn’t promise anything. How can I be a Cordova?’
‘I’ve adopted you.’
I stared at him, unsure whether he was kidding. His face gave nothing away. ‘Am I on the family tree now?’
‘Not yet. Updating it takes time.’
‘Backdating, you mean. Illegally inserting a fake son…’
‘No, Al. I want to do it legally. There’s nothing fake about how I feel about you. You are Suzie’s son and I’d look after you for that reason alone. I know you can look after yourself. You’re a bloody-minded cunning rascal, which makes me so proud of you as if you’re my own flesh and blood.’ He beamed.
I couldn’t help smiling back. ‘Will I have to wear designer clothes and go to dinner parties?’
‘If you turn into a bloody socialite I’ll disown you. I registered you last night. I meant to tell you when you woke up, but I didn’t know how you’d react.’’
‘Like this?’ I hugged him heartily, suddenly very happy.
Someone like Freedom Cordova can adopt anyone anytime. It meant I was entitled to a resident ID. To grant me legal status in the clan would require an explanation as to how I had the same DNA as Perseverance Suzuki Pan. He wanted to be able to say openly that I was her clone, but without disclosing that she lived many years after her funeral. Fred was concerned that her parents would be devastated if they find out. The only storyline he could come up with was that after experimentally cloning Suzie, unbeknown to her, Wye Stan banished the infant clone to the wilderness.
‘Why should he do that?’ I puzzled.
‘Why indeed? It’s the logic of myths and fairytales. Perhaps there was a prophecy that you’d kill him when you grew up, and he ordered a trusted servant—or, in his case, an android—to kill you, but the android took pity on you and left you to your fate in the wilds of the Edges where kind people took you in and raised you as their own.’
‘An android took pity on me?’
‘I know. Androids can’t feel compassion. Technology spoils mythology.’
‘Let me guess what happens next. I meet a sphinx who asks me a riddle. Then I kill the king who is my father and marry the queen who is my mother. Except that my mother is already dead, and I’m genetically her. It gets muddled here.’
‘See what I mean? Oedipus was fine for thousands of years until technology came along and spoilt the myth. Damn,’ he cussed suddenly, his eyes darting past me. ‘We’ve been spotted. It’s your fault. If we teleported here we would have finished by now. He’s hovering on purpose pretending to walk his thing.’
‘What thing?’
‘A thing on a lead that wags its tail. Don’t look now!’ He held my face in his hands to stop me from turning around. ‘I don’t want him coming here. I know you love animals, but that thing is too small for a dog. It’s probably made by Cyboratics. Now he’s standing there pretending that he doesn’t see me, the jerk! I’ll have to attract his attention.’ Fred’s face changed subtly into a jovial mask as he raised his arm and started to wave enthusiastically. ‘Why are you smirking?’
‘I love watching you switch faces.’
‘Watch and learn, son. Watch and learn. Now he’s coming here as if he’s just noticed us. Be at your best bad behaviour.’ He ruffled my hair, a mischievous glint in his eye. ‘Your hair’s a mess. I can’t take you anywhere.’
Fred was still sneering at me, and I was still tidying my hair, when his acquaintance reached us. He was a small thin man with slanted eyes, a thin black moustache, and thin hair dyed yellow. He wore a velvety brown town-suit and held a brown smooth-coat Chihuahua on a lead. The dog took one look at Fred and burst into frenzied high-pitched barking. ‘For Heaven’s sake, doesn’t it have a mute button?’ asked Fred, and turned to me, ‘This is Hans Klaus, the new kid on the block. He has quite a pedigree. His mother’s brother is the father of Miranda Yang who’s married to Wye Stan 8.’
‘Fancy bumping into you here, Freedom,’ said Hans Klaus.
The dog barked incessantly at Fred. Hans tried in vain to hush it by yanking the lead. ‘Does your boy have a name?’
‘Akira Kato,’ I said stonily, before Fred had a chance to speak. At the sound of my voice, the dog stopped barking.
Hans eyed me, taking in my cheap biosuit and the rucksack at my feet. ‘Has Cordova told you to say that?’
‘No, Hans Klaus, he didn’t. And he didn’t tell me to ask you about the unregistered PertNet operating in OK territory.’
Hans told Fred, ‘I’ve heard about your practical jokes. Last night you didn’t mention knowing Akira Kato.’
‘You didn’t mention a PertNet operating under my nose.’
‘There’s no PertNet.’
‘I have evidence to the contrary,’ Fred said so smoothly that I wondered whether he did have evidence. ‘What is worse news for you, Akira Kato has the same evidence and he wants to share it with Jexu Jiu. I was in the middle of trying to dissuade him just now.’
‘It didn’t look like that kind of negotiation from where I was standing. Let me tell you what I think, Freedom. After I told you about Akira Kato last night, you told this nihonjin boy you’ve picked up in the Edges what to say to me. He is cute, your boy.’
‘I wish you stop calling him that. He’s my son.’
‘Oh, right, if that’s what you want to call it.’
I looked down at the dog. The dog looked up at me and wagged its tail.
‘He is my son,’ Fred insisted. ‘He started out half-Hispanic half-Italian like me, but then he had a teleport accident that turned him Japanese. I was going to sue your corporation but he’s cute like this.’
‘Cut it out, Freedom,’ Hans snapped, irate. ‘If you suspect that someone operated a PertNet in your territory, file a complaint with the CSG. Good day!’ He turned on his heels and started to walk away, dragging the dog after him.
‘I haven’t finished with you yet, Hans Klaus,’ I said, rising to my feet.
He stopped dead in his tracks out of sheer astonishment at my impertinence.
The dog took the opportunity to run back to me. I squatted to stroke it and scratch behind its ears, and it jumped into my lap to lick my face.
Giving up, Hans let go of the lead and sat down besides Fred, saying how astounded he was to see the dog behave so friendlily. He looked at me almost fondly, seeing me sit cross-legged on the path with his dog in my lap. When I asked about the dog’s name, he replied, ‘Montezuma. Is your name really Akira Kato?’
‘Of course not. It was the alias I used in 3T-gamma.’
It was an internal designation
, which as far Hans knew Fred couldn’t know. Hans seemed suddenly worried. ‘Freedom, I don’t know anything about any unauthorised PertNet. I’ll look into it. What kind of evidence do you have?’
Fred looked at me expectantly.
I rose, putting Montezuma down gently. ‘I’ll let it go just this once. Did you meet Surtr’s sister in Piramesse?’
Hans jumped up to his feet, addressing Fred, ‘What are you up to? Does he know who Surtr is?’
‘He knows Surtr personally,’ Fred replied, amused. ‘So did you meet the sister?’
Hans picked up his dog. ‘This conversation is too bizarre,’ he muttered and vanished at the touch of a pert.
‘Not as much as ciao, bloody Klaus, those upstart 1Step people have no manners,’ Fred complained cheerfully. ‘You’ve bonded with his little dog pretty fast.’
‘Well, you know how it is. Cy products stick together.’ I sat down beside him. ‘It’s artificial like you said.’
‘Well, blow me down. Do you think Hans knows?’
‘I’m serious, Fred. You were right. How did you know? You’ve spotted it a mile off. I had to check for the socket in its belly.’
‘No, Al, it fooled me. I speculated that it was artificial because Hans Klaus has struck me as the kind of person who’d go for a pet that doesn’t eat or shit. I spotted him a mile off. That conversation was bizarre. He could have pretended not to recognise the name Surtr.’
‘Last night I spoke with Surtr and Version 7.’
His face clouded. It really was news to him.
I had the download ready. Fred played it in the palm of his hand, listening through an earpiece. I watched the sandstorm swirl furiously against the dome and imagined the shriek of the wind.
‘What’s your analysis?’ he asked when the playback finished.
‘Version 7 was too chummy. When we were in Cy City, you had a hell of job getting him to acknowledge that I’m a human being. He’s trying to reel me in. He tells me what I want to hear. He says that the Council of Nine is a story you’ve made up, and he quotes me saying that recycling myths is an OK thing to do.’
‘No, he used to say that about OK a long time before you were born. He’s right to say that I’ve made up the story about the Council. I know, I know, you’ve accused me of that. But you are wrong and he knows what he’s talking about.’
‘You told me that he recruited you to the Council.’
‘I didn’t lie about that. I recycled the myth of a Council of Nine, but I didn’t create the group into which he recruited me. They are real. I gave you names and facts that you can verify. Have you started looking into it? It’s priceless information for the CSG.’
‘The CSG haven’t hired me to find out about that. Are those people you want out of the way? It’s a win-win situation for you.’
‘There are perks. Al, I’m not a nice person.’
In his childhood he was the kind of boy who’d find out something personal that other children were desperately embarrassed about, and post it on the Schoolyard for all to see. Version 7 singled him out and nurtured that nasty streak in his character. ‘He was my secret mentor when I was a teenager, part of my fantasy world,’ Fred said. One day he challenged Fred to plan the perfect crime: how to murder Wye Stan 6 in Sirius B without the death being traced to anyone on Earth. It was make-believe, an intellectual game. Or so the young Fred believed. But when he came up with a workable plan, Version 7 did it for real. It was the same with the Council. ‘I fantasised about a Council of Nine, how powerful we could be, and he made it happen.’
When I didn’t speak, he said, ‘Penny for your thoughts.’
I was thinking about how he was nudging Version 7 into making the myth of the Unborn Other become real, recycling me into it. Aloud I said, ‘He took over from Surtr the moment I mentioned Fairweather.’
‘We must find her.’
It took us a few hours to get back to the Emporium. Fred decided to pick up his bag from the downtown apartment. It was already lunchtime, so he ordered some food. Meanwhile I went online, all the while thinking about being his son and wondering why it felt so good, so right, even though I suspected he had an ulterior motive.
The storm was spent by the time we left town, but the air was still thick with acrid dust. We activated our biosuits’ protective headgear. A hood and veil formed around our head, and then collapsed back into the collar when we entered the Emporium. The interior was filled with yellow-tinged haze. Everywhere was covered with sand. We went to the back room. Nothing had changed apart from sand that had blown in through the open door. The previous day I was too spooked to linger. Now I closed the door and stepped near it, imagining Mandy standing there when she heard us coming into the Emporium. Perhaps the scarf fell out of her pocket when she reached for something else.
The door was covered with a film of dusty cobwebs that rippled when I closed it.
The cobwebs continued to ripple weirdly, the faint outline of a pentagram shimmering through—
It happened extremely fast.
My mind registered pain in my shoulder when hitting the wall where Fred had thrown me clear of the door, himself tumbling down next to me, a split second before a hissing beam of blinding light shot out of the pentagram and seared the wall opposite it.
We sprang up to our feet.
Fred’s vaporiser materialised. He blasted the wall next to the door, creating a large hole, and pushed me through it whilst a pentagram started to shimmer on the wall directly opposite us. I heard the hissing beam as I ran out. Diving out immediately after me, Fred quickly reset the vaporiser, threw it back into the room, and continued to run clear of the place.
We ran like hell to the nearest exit at the back, the room ablaze behind us.
Seconds later we were out in a narrow enclosure.
The whole building was collapsing in flames and black smoke, parts of it vaporising in white plumes. We kept on running, debris falling all around us.
A wire fence separated the enclosure from railway tracks. We scrambled over it.
A slow freight train was shunting away from the city. Most of the wagons were loaded with shipping containers. Then a boxcar came along, its side doors open. Fred jumped on and I followed, both of us falling down on the floor as the train picked up speed.
The boxcar was full of rugged-looking men, women, and children sitting amidst their luggage. They wore assortments of clothes that looked like cast-off town clothes. Some wore filter masks. None wore anything that had nano-fabric or techno-accessories. We barely caught our breath when four of them approached us. A blond man with long matted hair and a beard pointed an antiquated gun at us, and demanded that we left. Fred spread his hands out in a pacifying gesture. ‘We’re not armed. We won’t be any trouble. There’s plenty of room.’
‘It’s a long journey and we don’t want the likes of you with us. Get off or we throw you out!’ the man said. Another man advised us to do what Sven said.
The train was already moving too fast to jump off. Bleak industrial constructions and high fences rushed past in a blur. Fred put his arms down. I could see him getting annoyed. I told Sven, ‘You are pathfinders.’
‘Is it that obvious?’ he said sarcastically.
‘Your tribe used to camp where I grew up in the Edges.’
A dark-skinned woman said, ‘I remember trying to camp near nihonjin once. Your samurai chased us away. How come you’re travelling with a corporate?’
‘It’s a long story and I don’t care to share it with you. We’ll get off as soon as the train slows down.’
Sven said, ‘I’ll let you live. Start emptying your pockets now and hand over your bags.’
‘Not on your Nellie!’ Fred exploded.
‘On my what?’
I intervened. ‘Before you rob us, Sven, there’s something you should know. Our samurai come after anyone who hurts any of us. This button is recording everything, and it’s on live feed.’ I indicated an amber-glowing button on a chest pocket, w
hich I had activated seconds earlier. It was a live link to my mailbox at the CSG. ‘My people are seeing this conversation even as we speak. Samurai will wait for you at the other end.’ People at the back began talking agitatedly about samurai. ‘We’ll get off as soon as the train slows down.’
I sat down to wait. Fred followed suit.
They left us alone.
Soon enough the train started to slow down. We stood at the doorway waiting for an opportunity to jump off. The track ran too close to a concrete wall. Eventually it veered off into an immense yard with stacks of freight containers on conveyor belts. Sticking our heads out, we could see the front of the train disappearing past a bend. Giant cranes working at speed lifted containers off conveyor belts and dropped them onto vacant wagons with deafening thuds. Other cranes picked up containers off the train as it trundled on.
‘Now’s a good time,’ Fred urged. He threw out his bag, and jumped off after it. A sudden tightening gripped my stomach—
Shapes rotate within shapes
Lapses and glitches in vortexes of data
Becoming codes
Land of dark sun
I heard my voice yell above the noise of the train and din of the yard, ‘Get off, all of you, now! Get off! It’s too dangerous, get off now! Save your children!’
Pathfinders responded with loud abuse, telling me to get lost. Outside, Fred was running to keep up with the train, manoeuvring around yard constructions that protruded close to the track. Still shouting ‘Get off! Get off!’ I threw out my rucksack and jumped after it.
Fred reached me when I got up to my feet, and handed me my rucksack. ‘Are you okay? Let’s go fetch my bag,’ he said. It was still back where he had thrown it. I stayed staring after the receding boxcar as if mesmerised, desperately wishing the people to jump off.
None did.
The cranes busily coordinated their mechanical dance, like giant spider legs, their robot arms rising and falling, lifting and dropping, swinging mechanically. A giant robot arm lifted up the boxcar to great heights and swung it to a crusher site on the other side of the track.