by Jones, Raya
‘It’s safe to go in now,’ Surtr announced and started to rise.
‘Not yet. We can watch the sunrise. You don’t see that in Piramesse every day.’ He smiled at the joke. There’s no sun in Piramesse. He raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment when I retrieved my hidden rucksack. I took out water and passed it to him, asking if knew who wanted to kill him. Accepting the water, he assured me that nobody wanted to kill him.
‘Wye Stan doesn’t have enemies?’
‘Plenty, but killing me won’t eliminate Wye Stan.’
‘Do your enemies know that there are plenty more like you where you came from?’
‘I see your point. But you were the target, not me.’ Surtr spoke quietly and precisely, ‘You are a big prize, Jexu Jiu. If Freedom Cordova can’t have you for OK, he’d want to make sure that we don’t have you for Cyboratics. If he found out that I’m here he might think that we are negotiating a contract. Does he know about your escape route?’
I had to admit that Fred did.
A crow was watching us from a nearby rock. Surtr indicated it proudly, ‘One of mine. I’m not without protection here.’ My suit picked up ambient surveillance that could be the crow.
I whispered, covering my mouth, ‘Suppose I pull out a skiz and spike you right now. How exactly will the crow protect you?’
‘I haven’t thought of that,’ he admitted cheerfully, starting to rise, ‘Let’s have breakfast.’
I told him to stay down, gave him a ration bar to chew on, then took out a gadget and initiated a sequence of events. ‘What are you doing? This ration is awful,’ he moaned like an annoying little brother.
The gismo let me shift tagged objects by remote control. The previous night I set a bottle poised to fall to the kitchen floor. Now I gave it a remote shove. The domestic mishap was automatically detected by the maintenance system. A cleaner android must have arrived, for a violent explosion ripped the chalet apart.
‘One less android, sorry about the damage to your property.’
Surtr watched the flames and smoke, shocked. ‘You’ve anticipated a booby trap. I’m not used to this.’
‘Welcome to my world, Surtr. I don’t mean Earth.’ But it’s not my world. It’s Fred’s world. Fred had rigged the booby trap. We imagined several scenarios in which it might come in handy. None of those involved me trying to impress upon Wye Stan 8 that he’s in mortal danger.
He asked what we’re doing next.
‘You are going to call for a taxi to take you to Cy City.’
‘I’m staying with you.’
‘I’m not giving you a choice, Surtr.’
‘I’m not asking you, Al. I’m informing you.’
‘I’m going to take public transport to Ground Zero.’
‘Good. I’m coming.’
‘I’ll be staying with Freedom. You wouldn’t like that.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ he stated in an unwavering Wye Stan voice.
‘Why are you really here?’
He clammed up.
Maintenance machines arrived to fix the chalet. Surtr puzzled how it was possible that nobody came to check for casualties. I told him, ‘The place is run by androids. This is Cy world.’
‘In my Cy world humans come first,’ he declared.
We followed the coastal path to Torquay Bay. Surtr took great interest in the surroundings, merrily inquiring about the names of trees and shrubs as if we were on a leisure hike in the countryside. I spoke little and reluctantly, racking my brain for a polite way to get rid of him. When he commented on my silence, I muttered, ‘Don’t you have any survival instinct? Whoever has tried to kill you might be still around.’
‘You were the target. But I see your point,’ he said, thoughtful for a split second. ‘Seagulls, right?’ He meant the birds flocking overhead. I suggested that he got experts to show him around the nature reserve. ‘Will you come too?’ he asked eagerly.
‘I have things to do. Don’t you have an empire to run?’
‘Yes, but I have people to do it for me.’
It became a battle of wits.
Clouds gathered. Soon it started to rain. Surtr was delighted. He kept his hood off to feel the rain on his face. The path went up and down the rugged shoreline. Stopping to catch our breath after a steep climb, I told him that he could go to Cy City from here. ‘Look, your crow is following us. All you need to do is tell it to call for a taxi.’
He fixed me with an unwavering Wye Stan gaze. ‘I know what I need to do. And you need to take me to Ground Zero.’
‘You can get there without me.’
‘Technically yes, but so far everything is happening exactly as in my dream. Do you believe in dreams? I guess not,’ He responded to my expression, but told me anyway.
This was the dream. He, Fairweather, and I were in a place very much like this, and he knew it was Earth. We were carefree and happy. He was glad I was there, because even in the dream he remembered how I consoled him after Fairweather died. In the dream it didn’t seem odd that she was with us. It was midday, high noon, although the sky was the starry sky of a deep-space city—and that too seemed natural in the dream. Looking up to the starry sky, we saw the Apocalypse hurtling towards us. Next, Surtr was standing alone in the dead centre of the raw impact crater, surrounded by raging flames. Somehow he wasn’t affected. He was a fire giant. He woke up wondering what had happened to me in the dream. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ he concluded.
‘Are you telling me that you’ve come here to find out where I went to in your dream?’
‘Don’t twist it! I’ve come to see you.’
‘Now you’ve seen me. Go home.’ I strode away rapidly. I didn’t believe a word of that nonsense about the dream.
The village came into view when we were over the brow of the hill. It was a quaint, sleepy, ‘old’ fishing village. None of it was older than seven years, when the place was renovated in accordance with an artist’s impression of a historic village excavated in another continent. Halfway down the path widened, and Surtr fell into step beside me. I asked him how anything that had happened so far was exactly like his dream. He said lightly, ‘I don’t want to talk about it. You’re too cynical. I saw the ridicule that Freedom had to endure from you.’
Nearing the village Surtr felt that he’d better put up the veil. I advised against it. It would look odd and draw attention. People don’t expect to see Wye Stan walking around, and citizens know only his official portrait anyway. ‘If anyone says anything, let me do the talking,’ I advised, ‘and if the people who tried to kill you are still around, let’s hope they’re not inclined to shoot you in a busy harbour.’
To call the harbour ‘busy’ was an overstatement, but it was as busy as it gets before the influx of seasonal holidaymakers. The rain eased, and some of the long-term visitors strolled around. A dinghy ferried people to a small cruise ship out at sea. Near the harbour was a tiny airfield, its building integrated into the village’s newly acquired Old Look. The runway was made to look like an ancient motorway.
Checking the departures board, Surtr spotted an afternoon flight to Ground Zero. ‘That’s the one I’m not going to take. But you go ahead,’ I said. Of course he didn’t. A flight to Terra was due out soon. We bought cash tickets from a machine, got some food and water from other machines, with Surtr arguing loudly that we’d get better food on the flight to Terra. Then we queued for the boarding gate.
Before reaching the gate, I turned and rapidly walked away.
Surtr was right behind me, demanding to know why I was leaving. We were already outside. ‘Shut up or go your own way,’ I muttered without slowing down. Keeping pace, he stated in good humour that he tolerated my attitude because we’re brothers.
At the pier, I bought tickets for the Clearwater Cruise from the android operating the dinghy. It was a black-market transaction. I asked for two cabins, but was informed that there were no more vacancies. Surtr followed me to the dinghy and then the ship without a word. He re
solutely kept silent when we got into the cabin.
There was no onboard surveillance. In the privacy of the cabin I told him that I had noticed two women and a man who seemed out of place in the airfield. They could be day workers, but they kept staring at us when we were buying our tickets. One of them was within earshot when Surtr was loudly talking about the flight to Terra. They went ahead to board the same flight, so I made the U-turn once they were past the gate. I knew that Surtr too had noticed them. I saw him watch them covertly.
‘You mean my androids?’
They were prototypes controlled by a roaming andronet used by the military, he explained. ‘What’s on your mind?’ he asked, watching me with the same covert intensity with which he had watched those androids—and laughed when I said, exasperated, that if he had bothered to brief me about his security arrangements I wouldn’t have dragged him on this unnecessary cruise.
He replied that it was worth it to see me in action. He appreciated how thoroughly I protected him. ‘Just like my dream,’ he said.
‘Did you tell me everything about that dream?’
‘No. Not yet. You’re too sceptical.’
There was no room service. People took the cruise to socialise. A brochure pasted to the door informed that the evening meal was served in the dining lounge. A hologram showed people in tuxedos and evening gowns dining under grand crystal chandeliers in a wood-panelled hall. Leaving Surtr to check his mail, I went to inquire about our dining arrangements. All the staff seemed to be pre-andronet androids, whose limited mind couldn’t handle my inquiry. When I demanded to see a human, I was directed to the bridge.
A swarthy man in a captain’s uniform slouched on an armchair, immersed in an OK movie. He didn’t notice me enter the bridge. I sat down on the floor, waiting, and watched the monitor screens. After a while I activated a feature of my suit that tapped into the ship’s computer. The Clearwater was an independent business authorised to operate in Cyboratics’ waters. The ship had the capacity for 144 passengers, but there were only 38 on board. I wondered how the captain could afford to run it.
He suddenly noticed me through the haze of whatever movie he was watching, and removed the headgear. ‘Damn, what the heck are you doing on my ship?’
It was the sort of reaction you’d expect if he took me for CSG. I told him that my friend and I decided to take the scenic route to Inverness on a whim, and didn’t bring any formal dinner wear. He burst out laughing, ‘You are a paying passenger? Don’t worry about dressing up for dinner. It’s a private commission and everyone knows you anyway.’
‘Do I know you, Captain Clearwater?’
‘I hope not. I’m not as famous as the Chinese nephew of Freedom Cordova.’
All the other passengers were long-term visitors at Torquay. They had chipped in for a three-day cruise and were in a merry mood. Quite a few of them dined in their biosuits. There were no crystal chandeliers or wood panels, because they didn’t care to pay extra for the virtual façade. Surtr and I chose the remotest table. Our seclusion wasn’t to last. ‘Let me do the talking,’ I whispered as three of Fred’s ‘girls’ homed in on us.
There was no getting rid of them. They had an extra chair brought over so that all of them could join us. Fred nicknamed them the Weird Sisters after a mythological trio who told fates: one told the past, one told the present, and one told the future. Now one asked, ‘Where did your uncle disappear to?’ and one commented, ‘The party is too boring without him,’ and the one who told the future announced in pathos, ‘I will drain him dry as hay. Sleep shall neither night nor day hang upon his penthouse lid. He shall live a man forbid.’
I stared at her alarmed. Surtr smiled like getting a joke I didn’t.
‘Macbeth,’ Odessa clarified for my benefit. ‘Freedom chose it for our next production so that he could cast us as the three witches. How cliché is that?’ They all shook their heads at Fred’s silliness, and as if on cue recited in unison, ‘The weird sisters, hand in hand, posters of the sea and land, thus do go about.’ When they stopped reciting and laughing, Rose Quartz addressed me business-like, ‘We love Freedom. Torquay is not half as dull as it used to be before he came. We humour him when he tells us things, but we know he’s not retired. He’s too young. What does he really do?’
‘He tells lies,’ I replied.
‘His line of business, I mean,’ Rose Quartz intoned in a no-nonsense tone. All three of them used to be influential Cyboratics chiefs.
‘Information management,’ I said.
Odessa cheerfully opined, ‘Information misalignment. We know you’re not Chinese. Meihui can tell. Tell him, Meihui. She used to be in body design. This was created by her team.’ Odessa indicated the oriental-looking android waiter approaching to take our orders.
Meihui grunted in confirmation, adding, ‘If you were our product we’d get sued. You look like a Suzuki.’
Surtr suppressed a chuckle.
All the while the women kept glancing at him inquisitively. He kept quiet and I didn’t introduce him, but they didn’t get to be in high management by taking silence for an answer. Rose Quartz addressed him directly, ‘And you are the spitting image of Wye Stan Pan.’
‘That’s because he is,’ I quickly said, ‘an illegitimate son. His name is Shakespeare.’
Three pairs of steely eyes pierced us sceptically.
‘So tell us, Shakespeare,’ Rose Quartz inquired, ‘are you in the same line of business as Luigi Li Po?’
Before he could answer, I said that we knew each other from school.
‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair,’ Meihui declared.
‘What?’ I stared at her, again alarmed for no reason.
‘Obviously you don’t know Shakespeare from school.’
Surtr spoke quietly and precisely. ‘We were in Cy-High together.’ The sound of his Wye Stan voice momentarily hushed the retired chiefs. He went on in the same voice, ‘He’s a disgrace to our school, always skipping the humanities classes.’
They kept interrogating him. Surtr told them that he grew up in Olympia. They quizzed him about that place, where Meihui and Odessa used to live. He told them truthfully that he lived inside the palace and didn’t know the places they mentioned.
Surtr was a skilled conversationalist. Soon the women were telling him all about themselves, and asked no more about him or me. They prattled endlessly. Dinner dragged on. It transpired that Meihui once worked on a project with Ingrid Pan. She told us how gifted an artist Ingrid was, and how she left Wye Stan of her own accord. ‘Best thing she did for herself but Design has lost a treasure,’ Odessa said with feeling.
Meihui picked up her napkin and, pushing aside her desert dish, spread it out on the table to show us a logo that Ingrid had designed. The dazzling white square of the napkin filled my field of vision, and in my ear, Meihui said like reciting, ‘Here is the shape of things to come.’ A shimmering pentagram formed on the napkin. I watched it in terror, unable to move as if paralyzed, a hissing beam of darkness shooting out—
Imperceptible shapes within shapes
Forever rotating
A deep dark mandala pulsating
Gaps in signals
Absences of light
Hell dimension
My own scream woke me up. Surtr put the light on. The ordinariness of the cabin snapped me out of the terror. The sensation of the pulsating mandala became the ship’s gentle rocking. ‘Are you okay?’ Surtr stared at me from his bed, concerned. I mumbled, ‘It was a nightmare… the dinner…’
Memories readjusted. I recalled making my excuses and leaving when Meihui picked up her napkin to wipe her mouth. Surtr stayed on to dance with them. He said now, ‘Miranda might call it a nightmare, dining with citizens. But it wasn’t that bad. Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘Yes. Just a stupid dream. Sorry I woke you up.’
‘I wasn’t asleep yet. To sleep! Perchance to dream… Literary references are wasted on you. Do you believe in dreams yet?’
/> ‘No.’
He sighed and decided to tell me anyway. ‘What I didn’t tell you is that when the three of us looked up to sky we saw the Apocalypse come from nowhere. Nobody knows how it got to Earth.’
Everybody knows exactly where the asteroid had come from. Its path was never a mystery, and the whole chain of coincidences, miscommunications and judgment errors, that enabled it to hurtle unhindered to Earth, had been minutely uncovered afterwards. ‘You mean nobody knew in your dream.’
Surtr shook his head. ‘In the dream we knew what it was. We looked up to the sky and saw a strange constellation. You said it was the shape of things to come.’
‘I said that?’ A chill ran down my spine.
‘Yes. You told Fairweather it was her logo.’
‘I did?’ Fair is foul and foul is fair. Ingrid’s logo, Fairweather is Ingrid’s clone... Things connect and the connections don’t make sense. This is the hell dimension.
Surtr went on, ‘Then the asteroid shot out of it. It was like a cartoon in a children book, the stars joined up with shimmering lines to make a pentagram.’
I shot up to my feet in panic, automatically grabbing my rucksack on the way out.
Seconds later, opening the door, it didn’t feel like the hell dimension anymore. I turned to Surtr. ‘The pentagram was the scary bit in your dream?’
He fixed me with the steady and remote gaze of Wye Stan. ‘No, Al. I wasn’t afraid at all. It was a good dream. I rose from the inferno. I’m going to have my nation back.’
He is Wye Stan, never forget it, I reminded myself in Fred’s voice. Only Teletek can invent a weapon like the pentagram, and Wye Stan 8 is married to them. I wondered whether telling me about the pentagram in his dream was a subtle way of getting me to divulge that I knew about such a weapon. In any case, he didn’t hide his ambition. Fred once told me the Norse myth of Surtr, the leader of the fire giants. Surtr ruled the realm of fire. At end of the world he will make war against the gods, triumph over them, and burn the whole world. Wye Stan 8 knew the myth.