by Jones, Raya
‘Why? I’m not CSG.’
‘I know what you are. The CSG audits us all the time. Seven separate inquiries are going on at the moment, and they’ll find malpractice in at least two cases. It’s impossible to have an organisation this size without some corrupt personnel. But you’ll see that I run it fairly and decently to the best of my ability.’
Dusk descended on the dreary jungle of pylons, industrial chimneys, cooling towers, and wire fences. All around me, cyberspace opened up. The vast ocean of signals beat its rhythms. It felt like being able to breathe again, a breathing oblivious to the acrid dust in my nostrils and throat.
A request for my name flashed in my mind a split second before I twisted the ring. In my palm, a dialogue box with the same request popped up.
Closing my fist, my flesh-eyes watched the setting sun and at the back of my mind was the memory of seeing Fred at dawn for the first time. I thought ‘sunrise’ in Japanese, hi-no-de.
A pentagram appeared like a logo. There was no sense of danger. It rotated and opened up like a mechanical flower, becoming many geometric shapes of vivid primary colours, shapes rotating within shapes in beautiful symmetries. I thought myself deeper into the image. The colourful mandala dissolved into regions of seething bright mass like the surface of a sun.
Swaying spikes rose like solar flares, giant loops crashed down onto filaments of shimmering plasma flows connecting regions. The whole of Cyboratics fanned out in multiple dimensions.
All the androids in all the worlds became visible like multitudes of stars.
Wye Stan really is watching over them, I realised, astounded… and realised that he was gently shaking my shoulder to attract my attention. Heart pounding in awe, I took off the ring and handed it back to him.
He stashed it in his shoe, and met my gaze with a smug Surtr smile. ‘We can’t get more intimate than this.’
With this ring I thee wed, I thought. ‘This interface is awesome. Luciolite have excelled.’
‘My artisans have made modifications that Luciolite don’t know about. It’s still a trinket. But you, you are something else.’
The dusk deepened. There was chill in the air. We strode briskly to keep warm. Surtr talked excitedly. He couldn’t get over how deep I penetrated with ease. ‘You thought yourself in. Only Wye Stan 7 can crossover like that. And now you too. You even saw the androids.’
‘How do you know all that? You weren’t logged in.’
‘I’m never logged out.’
Wye Stan is a 100% Cyboratics, Fred had told me. Now Surtr was telling me that nobody else could see Cyboratics in its entirety like that. We are the evolutionary upgrade. The human species is evolving into a life form that is adapted to cyberspace just as how our remote ancestors had evolved from sea to land creatures.
A hundred yards down the road, I couldn’t stand it anymore. ‘That’s nonsense, Surtr. Evolution takes millions of years.’
‘That’s why we don’t leave it to nature anymore.’
We followed dirt tracks and broken remnants of tar roads that nowadays were used only by nomads. When it was almost too dark to walk on, a land vehicle heading our way trundled by, stopped and picked us up. We squeezed on top of bags and boxes with dirty children and smelly dogs. When Surtr asked the parents why they were taking children into a battle zone, they said that they intended to stay away from the fighting. They sought audience with the oracle, and had an idea how to find her.
The vehicle started a slow and torturous climb into the treacherous terrain of the rim. Over the ridge was the dizzying drop into the crater. The family decided to break for the night and tackle the descent in daylight. They slept in a tent, and let Surtr and me sleep in the car.
The two of us woke up at dawn and strolled to a high point to survey the crater. Thick haze filled it. Above the haze, biodomes’ tops glistened in the rising sun. Air traffic was unusually sparse, but pinpoints that could be military vehicles circled the distant centre of the crater. Vultures soared thermals nearer the rim. Surtr spoke. ‘See, it’s just like my dream: the three of us in Ground Zero.’
‘Gertrude is not Fairweather.’
‘My sister is with us in spirit. She’s a voice in my head telling me to help Gertrude get her identity back.’
My gaze was on Phoenix-3 far away. I tried to work out whether Fred’s uptown apartment would be above the haze—and suddenly, with hairs standing on the back of my neck, it felt as if Fred was standing at his window that very moment looking directly at me.
I heard myself mumble, ‘Your dream’s wrong. It didn’t factor in Fred.’
‘Yes it did. There was the pentagram.’
‘Your logo?’
‘Why do you say that?’
When I told him that it had come up when his system registered my name, he visibly paled. It was not meant to be there. ‘Were you thinking of Freedom when you logged in? He’s the gatekeeper.’
‘What is it you’re not telling me about the pentagram?’
Surtr swallowed. ‘It’s the gate to the land of the dark sun.’
We heard talk of the oracle ever since leaving Inverness. She foretold every disaster that made the news and some that didn’t. The pathfinders regarded the streak of bad luck hitting corporate society as an omen in favour of their creed. They spoke in slogans: God is With Us. The Time of Reckoning is nigh. A Pale Woman from the Stars Foretells the Beginning of the End. This is the Age of Resurgence. Rebirth of Human Essence. I found such talk comical. Fred could have taught them a thing or two about recycling myths. But the political backlash was serious. Mandy’s stream of consciousness spoke in riddles, the faithful heard them as visions, and the visions led to bloodshed. A militant faction of the pathfinders decided to set up a permanent base in Ground Zero, convinced that the oracle advised it. Gangsters who wanted to control the area sponsored the Holy War.
We anticipated difficulties getting to meet Gertrude, but didn’t expect her to be guarded by samurai. Pathfinders and nihonjin didn’t usually mix. The war united the technophobe and technophile. The oracle was kept safe in a Japanese-style fortress built by the displaced nihonjin. On the second day of waiting outside the outer gates, Surtr and I, along with ten pilgrims, were finally let into an open courtyard in front of an inner roofed gate with steps leading up to it. It rained heavily and we were drenched to the bone, but were told to wait in the courtyard. We had to sit on the sodden earth. Some of the pilgrims huddled under plastic sheets they had brought with them. Seven samurai in full hi-tech adaptations of medieval costumes sat idly on an elevated platform under the shelter of the gate.
Nothing happened for a long time.
Surtr was losing his patience quietly but decidedly. I tried to dissuade him from approaching the samurai. ‘I’m only going to ask them what’s holding things up,’ he insisted.
‘She’s probably doing her nail varnish.’
‘She’ll see me,’ he argued. I argued back that first he had to convince the samurai that he was her brother. ‘Go ahead, give them an excuse to draw their swords. They look bored out of their skulls. They’re not nice people. They are gangsters in fancy dress.’
‘God is With Me!’ he declared crustily and rose.
I caught up with him on the steps and told him to leave everything to me. Addressing the samurai in Japanese, I requested that they either let us sit out of the rain or let us see my associate’s sister.
They stared at me curious. ‘Who are you?’
‘Kato Akira. I grew up in the Edges.’
‘So?’
‘It’s bad weather today.’
‘So it is.’
A senior samurai came out to see what was happening. He stood at the doorway and derided me for becoming a pathfinder. I was a disgrace to our people, he scolded. I replied that I had to come in disguise because if we carried our equipment the samurai wouldn’t have let us past the outer gate.
He agreed, and introduced himself as Kitayama.
We were allowed to
sit down with them. At least we were out of the torrential rain. They conversed with me in Japanese. Surtr kept silent. When they asked me who he was and why we thought that his sister was inside, I told them that he believed that the oracle was his sister. ‘She’s not,’ I added, ‘but when he sees her he’ll be cured of his delusion. It’s essential that his sanity is restored. I need what’s in his head.’
‘Our surgeon can remove it for you,’ Kitayama offered.
‘It’s not an implant. I need his expertise.’ I explained that my associate had a stolen prototype hidden in his shoe. It would help me to restore my family honour and tradition by starting a business in fake Luciolite artefacts. When Kitayama said that the Kato family was never in that line of business, I told him that I wasn’t related to those Kato. My great-grandfather used to live on Mars and made Luciolite artefacts, I said, truthfully enough since Fred’s paternal grandfather had founded that company. If they let us indoors, my associate could show them the gadget, I said.
Kitayama agreed.
Taking off our muddy shoes at the entrance, we stepped into a sparsely furnished Japanese room. Our dirty socks left wet footprints on fake tatami mats. The interior walls were mostly sliding shoji screens, decorated with stylised cherry blossom, tigers and birds. One wall was taken by a large portal. The standby screen showed images of samurai, geisha, Mount Fuji and other clichés fading into each other. I asked Surtr to let Kitayama examine the ring, and he obliged.
The samurai examined the ring superficially and handed it back. Surtr slipped it on his finger.
Kitayama disclosed that the oracle wasn’t there. It was a ruse to throw off the militia, he said. Pilgrims had audience with her by videoconference. He suggested that he showed us some archives, and my associate could see that she’s not his sister. I told him that it wouldn’t work. My associate would suspect trickery. I turned to Surtr, ‘I told them that Mandy is your sister.’
‘You’ve been telling them a great deal more,’ Surtr observed dryly. ‘Now tell him to let her know that I’m here. Tell him she’ll want to meet with me. Face to face in the physical,’ he stressed, fixing Kitayama with a cold Wye Stan gaze.
Kitayama could understand him perfectly well, but kept speaking Japanese to me, ‘Who does he think he is?’
‘Wye Stan Pan. Last week it was Napoleon. Please, Kitayama-sama, this is my one big chance. I want to set up shop in the Edges and pay tax to your lord.’
We were told to wait. Kitayama disappeared behind screens that slid closed after him.
Left alone, I said loudly enough for their surveillance to pick up, ‘I’ve told them everything. I came clean. It’s best to be truthful with them. They know you’re going to help me to set up my family business of manufacturing Luciolite fakes when you get over the nonsense of being the oracle’s brother.’
He nodded, absently glancing at the changing display of Japanese clichés. His eyes widened in surprise as an ancient samurai morphed into a young man with slit-like eyes, in a sleek black biosuit, red headband, and long black hair flowing, poised like surfing on a mat of cyan glow. ‘Her gallery is supposed to be protected against plagiarism.’
‘Nihonjin are technologically resourceful.’
He stroked his ring. ‘I’m famished. My stomach’s rumbling. Is she even here? They could be relaying her image from anywhere.’
‘She is here.’
I was pretty sure about that.
Moments later, there was no doubt.
The screen door slid open and Mandy appeared, veiled and shrouded in loose white garments, Kitayama right behind her. ‘Surtr, little brother, you came! You knew where to find me!’ She removed her veil, and I saw Surtr’s pain to see her so young and pretty, so much like his dead sister and so unlike her. Her perfect face, like an exquisite porcelain doll, showed little emotion even as she rushed towards him spreading her arms to hug him.
He swallowed, ‘Gertrude...’
She froze, her arms falling to her side. ‘Who’s Gertrude? I’m Fairweather. You can call me Mandy but my professional name is Mandala.’ She glanced at me. Our eyes met, and in her vacant blue eyes, there was nothing, no recognition. Her stream of consciousness, or perhaps the sprite, spoke. ‘Surtr, little brother, how did you find me? Do you know I was nineteen for twenty-one years? You sent your ninja after me but he didn’t get me. Look, I’ve just done my nail varnish.’ She held her hands up for him to see. Surtr winced. She prattled, ‘Awful, isn’t it, so garish, I can’t get proper cosmetics here.’
‘Come home with me,’ he implored.
‘No!’ she said resolutely, like an echo of the real Fairweather. ‘People need me here. I tell them about the divine twins and they listen to me, people listen to me when I tell them how Jim and Jane show the true path. Go back to your wife, go to Miranda,’ she told Surtr, but was looking at me, and then addressed me, ‘He keeps you so close to him in the dazzling light like a dark sun in the desert of life. Who are you?’
I said, ‘Any chance of getting food and drink, Mandy?’
Panic distorted her face. ‘It’s you! You are the ninja! Kill him, kill him!’ she yelled as she bolted, running past Kitayama. The door slid closed behind her. The samurai drew his sword.
‘She is insane,’ I said in Japanese.
‘I know,’ replied Kitayama, his eye on Surtr who for a fleeting moment looked as if he was going to follow Gertrude. The moment passed. Kitayama sheathed his sword and told him directly, ‘She’s really your sister.’
‘No, she only believes she is. I have to take her home to be healed,’ Surtr replied.
‘I can’t let you do that. We have an agreement with the pathfinders.’
‘What do they do for you apart from clutter your courtyard? You’ll have a better ally in me.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I speak on behalf of Cyboratics.’
Kitayama burst out laughing. ‘You are Pan but not Wye Stan. We scanned your bio. There’s no DNA match with the president of Cyboratics.’
It took considerable skill to do have done that. Wye Stan didn’t make it easy to access his DNA decoy. His real DNA code was nowhere in cyberspace. I grabbed Surtr’s elbow and steered him to the door. Kitayama’s voice stopped me in my tracks. ‘And who are you?’
They must have scanned my bio too, discovered that I was Akira Cordova, and could know my genetic relation to the Suzuki of Phyfoamicals. I said, ‘I’ve told you the truth. My mother fled to the Edges and I grew up here. Since then I’ve found a new family.’
Kitayama accepted my answer or didn’t care. He said, ‘We must honour our agreement with the pathfinders. It will take an OK commando to remove her from here.’
We bowed farewell.
Surtr and I walked a fair distance in the rain before speaking. Clusters of haphazard dwellings sprouted on top of ruins around the fortress, and beyond those were factories. A bus stop was within sight when Surtr finally spoke.
He spoke with sadness, but tried to sound business-like. ‘How did you know she was doing her nail varnish?’
‘I was being sarcastic.’
‘Oh. I thought you were tapping to the sprite configuration, silly thought.’
We waited at the bus stop in case the service was resumed. Surtr commented on how smoothly I had handled the samurai. ‘They’re very hi-tech,’ he remarked. I asked him whether he was stupid enough to activate a locating signal inside the fortress. He nodded sheepishly. ‘But they let us go,’ he pointed out.
‘Of course they did. They want the oracle off their hands as badly as you want to take her home.’
Just when we started to wonder how long it would take to walk to Phoenix-3, an unmarked vehicle landed in front of us. A man leaped out waving his arms. ‘Hey dude, dudes, over here!’
I responded, ‘Hey El Niño. Are you a field operative now? Is this a promotion or demotion for you?’
He grinned, shaking his head, and explained that he was sent because he knew what I looked like. ‘The
big boss said you’ve gone native and don’t have any ID on you. My orders are to drop you in town and ask no questions. Why are you dressed like this? Are you auditing the pathfinders? Why…?’
I cut him off, ‘Obey his orders. No questions.’
That night OK commando extracted Gertrude. They had surprisingly little difficulty finding her. The samurai naturally wanted to give a heroic fight, but inexplicably kept missing the intruders in the maze of shoji-screened rooms, corridors, and tiny teahouse gardens. Nobody lost face and no lives were lost. Gertrude was transported directly to Cy City. Soon afterwards she was sent back to Tao Ceti for the identity restoration.
Thus ends the tale of the woman who didn’t open her eyes in time and became a spider. The malevolent spider who became ‘her’ still lurked in Cyboratics’ virtual space, spinning its web in the digitised consciousness of humanity.
My plan was to book a room at the inn, clean up, and then meet Fred without Surtr. But all inns and hotels were full up with travellers stranded because of the transport disruptions. We retrieved our gear in Terminal 37, changed and cleaned up in public toilets. Then I headed to the uptown apartment with Surtr in tow. Cleaned up and in his white biosuit, only his sunburnt face and chaffed lips bore evidence for his recent adventure.
Fred’s domestic security barrier had a new password I didn’t know. 1Step downloaded us in the public domain outside his front door. A middle-aged woman whom I didn’t recognise opened the door. Before I could say Cousin Isabella, she exclaimed excitedly, ‘Wye Stan Pan! You are here in person, what a surprise!’
‘Hello Agostina Rossi, it’s a pleasure to see you again,’ he responded without batting an eye.
She was the President of Luciolite.
‘Your bodyguard can stay out here.’ She meant me.
Surtr suggested that leaving his bodyguard in the foyer might attract attention. Agostina Rossi agreed to let me in, but I was confined to the utility section with the hired domestic android. The android served them a meal fit for presidents. I was given pot noodles that Agostina had overlooked when clearing the place after Fred. I sat on the floor and closed my eyes. I thought how in moments like this the cliffs of the Western Rim used to unfold inside me, and how now those cliffs are just a good memory.