Fairweather

by Jones, Raya

  Nowadays if you remove all my identities within identities, inside you’d find the sense of belonging, of family and home, that Fred has given me.

  If Fred and Jane told their cousin about my adoption, she probably assumed that I was one of Fred’s imaginary characters, I mused. Getting sleepy, I caught myself wondering whether I was imaginary, and whether I imagined my life with Fred. The only thing that felt acutely real, like a sharp pain, was the sinister Fred-shadow silently telling me… ‘Good grief, what are you doing sitting out here like this?’

  I jumped up to my feet and hugged him. Fred reciprocated, smiling warmly, and wanted to know why I didn’t do the obvious thing—fly from Inverness to the nearest place to Ground Zero, and then strip off the electronic gear before reaching the crater. I told him I was trying to shake off Surtr but he wouldn’t go away and followed me here.

  ‘What do you expect? If you say no to a Wye Stan he doesn’t drop it until he gets his way.’ Seeing worry on my face, he sniggered, ‘Don’t tell me he was amorous and you said no. Go do what you must do to get him off my property!’

  I told him that Wye Stan 8 was holding a summit meeting with the Luciolite president.

  ‘Luciolite is double-crossing us under my nose under my own roof, eh? I’m going to wipe the floor with her. Damn it,’ his tone changed, crestfallen, ‘I feel too happy and gooey inside right now to be nasty. I’m losing my touch. And it’s your fault I love you so much. Shall we go tell her that you’re my son who is going to inherit Luciolite?’ There was nothing to inherit. Fred’s father had forfeited his shares when marrying into Cordova. Fred wasn’t going to let legal facts get in the way of melodrama.

  Fred stormed into the dining room, interrupting their desert. ‘Akira is my son, è il mio figlio!’ he hollered in the language of operas. ‘Just because my son is a clone of Wye Stan’s late wife doesn’t make it right for you to treat him like an android!’

  I stood silently behind my father with the rucksack on my shoulder.

  Agostina glanced at me over the blancmange, and glanced away as if concluding that I was imaginary after all. ‘Give over, Fred. Do you really expect me to believe a story about a male clone of Perseverance Suzuki, let alone that this clone was kidnapped and raised by a tribe in the Edges? That’s over the top even for you.’ She turned to her guest, ‘I’m sorry about this. This unfortunately is Freedom Cordova. Freedom, this is Wye Stan Pan. Apologise for your outburst.’

  ‘Apologise? Hell’s bells, woman, if anyone should apologise, it’s you!’ He swung on his heels towards me for extra pathos, ‘Akira, go to your room and take your schoolmate with you. I need to talk with Cousin Jezebel here!’

  Surtr followed me to Fred’s childhood room, relieved. With the door closed we could hardly hear the cousins rowing. The window was still there. Surtr walked up to it like a tourist checking out a famous landmark, then turned to me and smiled. ‘I didn’t know what to do, Al. I had to play along. She came to Piramesse last year to start the negotiations. Thank you for playing along.’

  I didn’t realise I was grinning until he remarked that it was the first time he saw me smile since we hit the road. I said I was relieved to be back in civilization. Surtr disagreed. It was because Fred was here, he observed astutely.

  I told him that Fred would calm down after his moment of melodrama, and they could meet properly. Surtr shook his head. He wasn’t going to wait. A taxi was on standby to take him to Terra, and he intended to head back to Alpha Centauri straightaway. Taking our leave, Surtr reminded me of the invitation to Piramesse, adding, ‘Come when you finish in Cy City.’

  ‘Am I going to Cy City?’

  ‘Yes. A taxi is on standby to take you there when you’re ready.’

  ‘Why am I going to Cy City?’

  ‘Wye Stan needs you.’

  ‘Not you?’

  ‘We both do.’

  At last he was gone.

  I stood staring out of the window. It was raining heavily again. The gloom made it feel later than it was. I wondered whether I will enter darkness for good when I return to Cy City.

  After a while Fred came in and stood beside me, saying softly, ‘She bitches about this window. This is probably the only window left in Phoenix-3 that you can actually see through, and she wants it bricked up.’

  ‘Let’s go somewhere else. Your downtown place is more us.’

  ‘No, my office is us. You haven’t been there yet.’ He grabbed my elbow… ‘Well, “office” is overstating it,’ Fred conceded.

  It was a dimly illuminated storeroom crammed with units of shelves laden with guns, gadgets, and packaging boxes. There was barely room to move, and nowhere to sit but the dusty concrete floor. When we switched off our instruments, the place was electronically dead. When we didn’t speak, it was deathly silent like a catacomb.

  Fred chuckled in the shadows of his armoury to see me glancing right, left and centre. ‘If you’re looking for Code violations, you’ll find plenty here. But you didn’t even report my illegal server. That’s letting down the CSG big time. Yeah, yeah, you’re not CSG. And yet you’ve handed in your badge. I bet you’re wondering how I know that.’

  ‘You are in the business of knowing.’

  He smiled smugly. ‘This is just like old times when we used to have picnics in my maintenance chamber.’

  ‘It was only once.’

  ‘Trust you to spoil it with facts. Well, here we are the untouchables.’

  Perturbed, I said to deflect from the reason for my reaction, ‘You didn’t tell me that you already knew who I was when you first saw me in Terminal 37. You ordered town security to pick me up.’

  ‘How do you know that? I’ve had the record deleted. Never mind, I know you don’t share your methods. Didn’t it occur to you that I’d guess? I knew Suzie when she was a child and you were a spitting image of her. I knew there was a clone. I saw the empty baby cot in the lab with the linen still in it, so I suspected they didn’t terminate you. But I thought you were a girl. Why does it bother you so much?’

  ‘I don’t like to be manipulated.’

  ‘Then you’re in the wrong job, sunshine.’

  ‘What job is that? I’m freelance. I have no master. I do deep digging for clients, and I don’t do politics.’

  ‘And yet the deeper you dig, the more political you get, the more untouchable.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re on about,’ I lied.

  ‘Like hell you don’t. Let’s sit down.’

  We sat down on the concrete floor. ‘At least I brought a blanket to our picnic,’ I muttered to gain thinking time.

  ‘I’ve refined the minimalist concept.’

  The Untouchables are a secret group of incorruptible guardians overseeing the CSG. Members don’t know everyone’s identities. This way, decisions can’t be swayed by personal loyalties or grudges. Not everyone is recruited from the ranks of the CSG. It was plausible that Fred belonged to the group. The bogus research study that had given the CSG an excuse to send me to his home could have been a double bluff. I shook the mental kaleidoscope, and a new picture emerged: Fred sent the sumo message from the Man in the Moon. He was already an Untouchable before our paths crossed for the first time in Terminal 37. Freedom Cordova is not what he seems. I wish I could tell you what he is, said the old dean, who recruited me to the group shortly before Fred returned from RK-17.

  I shook the kaleidoscope again and a different picture emerged. If Fred isn’t one of the guardians, he knew too much.

  ‘You can’t pretend not to know about the Untouchables,’ he said plainly, ‘but what you don’t know is whether I’m one of you or your group has been compromised. Do you know the secret of Wye Stan’s empire?’

  ‘No. What is it?’

  ‘We don’t know.’

  ‘Is it we the Untouchables or we the Council of Nine?’

  ‘Good question.’

  He wasn’t going to tell me, and I wouldn’t have trusted anything he might say anyway.


  There was no secret about how Cyboratics became the most successful post-Apocalyptic empire. The organisation was highly efficient, competitive, and had the monopoly on androids. It also had a never-ending streak of good luck. Good luck is not a crime. But too much of it arouses suspicion. That was meant to be the focus of the deep digging I intended to do in Cy City. The mission was my own idea, but I wasn’t the one who had raised the question about Cyboratics in the first place.

  I thought now: Wye Stan sees through his androids. Fred can talk directly with Version 7 through android proxies. That’s why there’s no evidence of contact between them in cyberspace. He had no android in his asteroid home, but he made regular trips to Milkwood.

  ‘Penny for your thoughts?’

  ‘I’m thinking about your recent meeting with Version 7. Surtr told me.’

  Fred didn’t deny it. He told me where, when, and why they met. Wye Stan 7 held Fred responsible for the formation of the Mandy sprite.

  ‘Why? Is it because you’re the gatekeeper to the land of the dark sun?’

  ‘Mock you may. There’s a history you can’t get from archaeology, Al.’

  It was a history of motives, ambition, and greed for power. When Wye Stan 7 was sent to Sol in his teens, it felt to him like being exiled. Sol used to be a marginal sector in the Cyboratics universe. He has changed all that. Within a decade, becoming the President, he made Mars his powerbase. He didn’t care much for Earth. But he was aware of the propaganda value of the birthplace of humanity. He kept Cy City Earth as the admin centre, and used it to hold public functions, such as his wedding and his wife’s funeral. Going there for the funeral, Fred couldn’t resist the opportunity to hack Cyboratics close to the source. At the time Fred was still building up his own enterprise within OK, and was hungry for anything that could give him an edge. His tampering with Wye Stan’s system was like opening Pandora’s Box, he told me. Pandora couldn’t resist peeking into the forbidden box, and in so doing, released all the misfortunes of humanity.

  After the funeral Fred stayed several months in Cy City to help Wye Stan to limit the damage. ‘He’ll tell you that he has stayed on Earth ever since in order to keep a lid on it. But you must remember that he uses this power for his own gain. It was already at his disposal before I opened his box of tricks. My tampering somehow intensified it, but also made it localised. He stays on Earth to keep himself connected to it.’

  Fred remained always connected anywhere. He kept it at bay by never again going behind the audio-visual façades. Listening to him, I recalled how he used to watch me on my mat, his expression indecipherable. Seeing me in my element reminded him what he had to give up.

  As far as he knew, only Version 7 and I could sense it offline. That’s why I was seeing a shadowy Fred-form on the threshold of consciousness. He told me, ‘If you open up to it, if you look this evil in the eye, you’ll end up either in the twilight shallows like me or in the depths of darkness like him.’

  When he finished speaking, I suggested that since he knew Wye Stan’s secret, he ought to tell the Untouchables.

  ‘I just did. Heck, I’ve been telling you about it for ages, but you keep accusing me of mythology. Perhaps when you go digging in Cy City you’ll uncover the scientific explanation.’

  ‘Are you being sarcastic?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He fell silent.

  I asked him to teach me how to disconnect Wye Stan 7 from that power.

  ‘Your mission is only to gather information.’

  ‘I’m authorised to take action too.’

  ‘I know,’ he said miserably, ‘but just get in and get out. You are the one good thing that has come out of Wye Stan’s lab, like Hope coming out of Pandora’s Box last of all. For a very long time you’ve been my hope for redemption. I used to hope that if you disconnect Version 7 this curse will be lifted, and I’d be able to roam deep cyberspace again. But then it dawned on me that I’m already redeemed. I don’t want to change this shallow life I live if it means losing you.’

  ‘There’s a bigger picture than you and me.’

  ‘This is the bigger picture, Al. What we feel is what makes us human. If you come back alive, I’ll be waiting for you down here.’

  Three days later, all my preparations done, I boarded the taxi that Wye Stan 7 had provided. Cy City guards ushered me courteously to the presidential suite at the top of the ziggurat. There was no palatial grandeur in his abode. The reception room into which I was shown had been designed on principles of moderation, balance and proportion. It was furnished simply with high quality materials, like an understatement of immense wealth. Wye Stan 7 met me unceremoniously. He inquired whether I needed refreshments or use the bathroom. When I declined, he dismissed the guards and androids, and briskly led to an adjacent anteroom. Anything electronic had to stay there, he instructed, and left me alone to get changed. There was a cabinet made of real wood, empty but for a pair of cloth overalls like those I had to wear previously. This time the garment was made to my size. I put all my gear in the cabinet. I was tense and apprehensive, but there was none of the unnatural terror of my previous encounter with him.

  I followed him into the marble hall.

  Delicate scent of incense permeated it. Soft daylight shone in through the glass ceiling. Yet it felt like a place outside time.

  He led to a corner that was partitioned off with a freestanding screen. Within the enclosure were tatami mats, and upon them a traditional Japanese table and floor cushions, tea utensils and a small portable stove with an iron cast kettle, gently bubbling. It seemed to me like a calculated insult. My irate voice rang harsh in my ears, ‘I don’t care for Japanese clichés.’

  ‘I hear you’ve become a cliché yourself, the iconic cyber ronin.’ A slight suggestion of a smile, reminiscent of Surtr, flickered on his face. ‘Fred should have warned you about my tea ceremony. I find it helps to focus the mind. He used to complain. He can’t sit still for more than five minutes.’

  We sat down.

  Ill at ease and on edge, I watched him clean each of the utensils in strict order and place them in an exact arrangement of his liking. I forced myself not to fidget. He measured green tea powder into a small rustic cup, added hot water, and whisked it. He served me the tea. I took a sip and put it down. He prepared tea for himself in the same precise motions.

  It took forever.

  It felt as if the noisiest thing in the room was the flutter of thoughts in my head. I forced myself not to giggle at the thought of how Fred might react to all this. I was thinking: surely Version 7 didn’t pick up the tea ceremony from my mother. She didn’t care for those rituals. I had so many questions to ask him about my mother and the man I’ve come to think of as my father. But I was determined not to ask anything. If he obliged me with answers, I’d be indebted to him. The prospect of being indebted to him was unbearable. Restless, I drank up.

  He took my empty cup and started to clean it in preparation for refilling it.

  I told him that I didn’t want more.

  ‘It’s not optional. I need you focused and unemotional for the job. We’ll sit here drinking tea until you are.’

  ‘What job is that?’

  ‘You’ll dismantle the parasite configuration.’

  ‘You can do it yourself.’

  He finished preparing my tea before answering. ‘It takes two men.’

  I accepted the tea reluctantly. ‘Surtr can help you.’

  ‘No. We tried. He can’t do what you can.’

  We sipped tea slowly, speaking sparsely. At some point he asked whether Fred had told me what happened when he was there for the funeral. I answered, ‘He said something about Pandora’s Box.’

  ‘Letting the genie out of the bottle would be more accurate.’

  The diffused daylight changed subtly.

  The incense burned low and eventually expired.

  Between silences, Wye Stan 7 told me in his laconic manner that he kept the genie under control
with his ring. The gismo was crafted in his laboratories on Mars. He gave me technical information about it. But when talking about the force released by Fred’s meddling, he spoke in metaphors, sounding like Fred. The genie tries to get out. It finds cracks. It has found Fred—and Fred had to give up doing what he loved best, what he was best at. ‘Fred was a brilliant hacker when he was still a schoolboy,’ said Wye Stan. He noticed my surprise. ‘You’ve checked his school records and saw that he had mediocre grades. We altered the records retrospectively so that people like you won’t wonder why he doesn’t do it anymore.’

  I gazed into the thin pale green tea at the bottom of the cup in my hands. Fred could be lying about Wye Stan, I thought. Fred was hateful and bitter, but it wasn’t Wye Stan’s fault that Fred had been snooping. Perhaps the ordeal Version 7 put me in my previous visit was a test. Why did he edit out our brief exchange from the record he gave Surtr? He must have anticipated that Fred and Surtr would give me their copies. I could imagine how it could be advantageous to the Wye Stan clones to dupe me into believing that they each played me against the other.

  Only the circumstances of Fairweather’s death didn’t fit the story of a benevolent Version 7.

  He went on mixing fairytale with technology. The genie was able to latch to Gertrude because he had had an experience-gatherer installed in her brain when she first came to Cy City. It coincided with Fred landing here unexpectedly. Fred’s presence intensified the genie’s power. Wye Stan didn’t realise it at the time—or he wouldn’t have allowed her to be let loose with the implant intact. It was finally removed after Gertrude was retrieved from the Edges.

  The Mandy sprite lost its anchor in physical reality. But sooner or later, it would find another organic body. The sprite was too dangerous to let be. Wye Stan 7 couldn’t dismantle it and protect Cyboratics at the same time. It was a two-man job, requiring intuitive synchronizing.