La Femme
Page 19
“I’m not interested in the money.”
“Of course you’re not, you’re an artist,” said Becker. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of all that. We just want you to be free to focus on what you do best.”
“And what’s that?”
Becker laughed again. “I mean, we can give you everything you need to realise your potential here. Out of that cramped apartment, space to work, away from that job, the pushers. Everything you could possibly need. New varieties to work with…”
Becker was halfway through outlining the results of their hybrid breeding cycle when he noticed Dani watching him, like a sprinter waiting for a gun to go off. No, like a scientist with a laboratory rat. The look she’d had in her room that day, when he’d watched her tend those apples.
“You know,” he said, “this tastes a little different from that last one you gave me. What did you put in it?”
“Ketamine,” said Dani.
Becker dropped the apple. Ketamine. The consonants felt odd in his mouth, his tongue and teeth like an hour after dental surgery. Becker tried to move his hands, watched them flex, disconnected, in front of him, as if grasping at the memory of the apple in his hand.
Standing was a bad idea. Becker tried to steady himself, grabbing at a raised bed as he lowered himself down. The edge felt like a million sawblade splinters dragging through his skin, yet no pain followed the sensation through. Something was in the way. One hand slipped, and it took him a moment of refocus to see that it was bleeding.
Becker sat heavily. How could he have been so stupid?
Then, reality tore into shreds.
Here was sound, in two – a rumbling tattoo, and a buzz, a hum that pulled static. Over here, the bright red lines in his hands, thrown into relief by the raised beds, rendered in pixelated grids that ran across the skyline and to infinity. Scent disintegrated. Becker tried to drag the pieces back into line as the picture fell sideways. Somewhere near, a bulbous shape carved over the stuttering slats of a bed. The apple, fallen, vacillated between a pinprick in the void and an eclipse of the world entire, pulsing out of sync with the voice somewhere behind him.
“I asked you if you were sure about this, didn’t I?”
It sounded like Cole. Like him, but as he hadn’t been in years.
“I told you she wasn’t interested. I told you not to go. And now look at yourself. Lying there like some drooling smackhead.”
Becker tried to turn, to answer, but felt his back come against the side of the box. A humanoid shape twisted in front of the 8-bit landscape, warping as it closed in.
The voice shifted, perverse.
“You were too busy thinking of the strapline, weren’t you? Another name on the wall. Another Jack Becker success story.”
And again. “How else did you think she’d managed to avoid the pushers?”
“Of course they were in on it.”
“Of course she didn’t care about the Collective.”
“All she could possibly need.”
The thrum resolved to a thudding, like giant footprints on stone. The pushers, had to be. Invasion over that pixelated skyline, come to destroy what had taken him a lifetime to build. Becker could hear them now, that pound-pound-pound against the rooftop thumping. But, from where his mind was now, that was far back down the tunnel. Back where his useless body could do nothing to stop them laying waste to everything he’d worked for. Assuming he did still give a shit about it. The tunnel twisted and something sloughed from Becker, tight and crawling, as light opened up ahead. Thank God, he thought, he’d be too far out of it to see it happen.
*
Gently, Danielle Hoffman moved Jack Becker into a recovery position on the floor, and checked his mouth again for any remaining pieces of apple. The panic that had gripped his face moments before had melted into dumb pliability. She checked her watch. Only a few minutes, at best, ‘til Becker’s pollinators came back. They would have to be enough.
Satisfied, Elle walked back between the rows, arms outstretched and wide, to drift across the fronds as they swayed.
At the box of wildflowers, Elle stopped. She untied her scuffed shoes, leaving them side-by-side at the box edge, as she climbed into the grass. For a moment, she just stood there, savouring the touch of the blades between her toes. Then she lay down on the grass, spread her arms and closed her eyes.
Elle listened to the lazy buzz of the drones above. The whine and bark of cars, once so close and overwhelming, were just a half-heard whisper, like the fading remnants of a dream on waking.
Elision
Benjanun Sriduangkaew
In the clip she flickers and ghosts. The quality is low, audio a scratch, visuals shot through with artifacts and grain like ancient oak.
She is dismembered, very slowly. There is no sex, no lurid spread-eagled limbs on black mattress: this is not pornography. There is a chair, straight-backed and severe – it is almost matter of fact, and she sheds no blood as she comes apart.
One last lingering shot of her scattered around the room, a pale blunt hand here, a thick calf there, a fistful of hair, the lower half of a jaw. Brightly painted lips, smiling in isolation.
*
The log shows that Kita-Ushma has seen the footage precisely one hundred and seventy-four times, and that she has received upward of five thousand copies of the same. From across the hall, she watches the protagonist of the clip. In it she wears a long black dress, baring throat and shoulders like gifts. In person she is sheathed in scales and icons of the Song, whose notes alone uphold the turning of stars.
Ashenti Turyen walks the sanctuary, purifying each clutch of offerings, blessing supplicants. Kita-Ushma kneels when the priest comes close, gazing at sandals which do not quite hide toenails like predator teeth. “Revered, I would like to petition for a song.” She holds out a single void pearl nesting in her palm, stigmatic, smoldering with the shadows of dead nebulae.
The pearl disappears into the whispering lattice-notes of Ashenti’s sleeve. “Of course.” She has a liquid, shifting voice, a musical chameleon predisposed by genetics and honed by training to reach almost any range. When the priest’s song finishes, Kita-Ushma has an encrypted file in her private band and a key to it in the form of Ashenti’s notes.
That sunset she waits in a museum, making a desultory circuit through exhibits of disarmed warheads, guns stripped of their functional intestines, spent scarab shells singed at the edges. When the Song came, war ceased to be necessary; it is almost more procedure than it is worth to acquire carry permits as a civilian not affiliated with temple justice. Kita-Ushma doesn’t feel the lack – her part of the city, a mausoleum of entrepreneur hopes, was a gang battlefield pre-Song.
Ashenti emerges from behind a flayed engine, her vestments oddly soundless. She has threaded the void pearl through a slim silver chain, worn around her wrist. “Thank you for seeking me out, Kita-Ushma ul Sadan.”
She’s prepared for it, but hearing her name uttered by a voice twined to the Song is a frisson that sears the synapses. Spoken rather than sung or she would have been brought to her knees. Kita-Ushma inhales, her heart churning ecstasy. “Does this cause you trouble when all you want is casual conversation, small talk?”
The movement of the priest’s eyelashes is slow, considered. “I’ve tried to curb the effect. There are depressants that’ll numb you to it, but I don’t recommend them. Breathe to a measure; you will get used to it little by little. I take it you don’t attend prayers often?”
“I pray in private.” Defensive. “Is it true you can addict people to your voice? Make them do almost anything?”
“Probably. Wielded a certain way it can induce a rush, ping the reward centers, the same as some stimulants do. But this would be abuse of a specialty trained to spiritual purposes, and those of us who can do it are strictly regulated.” Ashenti moves her head from side to side, languid. “You’ve seen the clip. As I understand, it has reached… more pairs of eyes than I care to imagine.”
“You misunderstand,” Ashenti says. “This never happened. It’s all fabrication.”
“Then why didn’t you alert justice units in your temple?”
“The risk to my reputation is unpalatable.”
It is not in Kita-Ushma’s nature to be unduly suspicious, but to violate the sanctity of a priest in any way – her privacy, recordings of her voice, reproductions of her likeness – is to court destruction of the most thorough category. Suns have died to satisfy holy justice. “They’d be more effective than I am, no? They have access to resources I don’t.”
“They lack discretion, subtlety, or humanity.” The priest wraps the chain around her fingers, lightly rubbing the pearl. “Eight years ago you amputated a Song judge in self-defense. They perished shortly after, being on a remote station and unable to find medical help in time.”
“Are you blackmailing me?”
“I’m offering you a fee. I have the power to make the incident disappear completely, so you’ll no longer have to look over your shoulder and run from city to city, world to world, at the twitch of a judge’s shadow, at the gleam of a vow or the oath of a scalpel. Turn me down and I will simply leave this be, and you won’t have lost anything you haven’t already surrendered. Work for me and you stand to regain your peace.”
Kita-Ushma touches one of the Song’s talismans at her throat, a requirement for every Cotillion citizen to wear, titanium-girded cadenzas and diamond mantras. Some mark her as an initiate. “A good cleric would turn me in.”
“In our hierarchy there are bonds like the hilt of a sword, and their opposites like the blade, where everything is an edge waiting to cut and draw blood. The person you killed was no particular friend of mine, though neither were they an enemy. I’ve no pressing cause to avenge them.”
She lets go of the talismans. They settle into their places, in rank and file, of choir or army. “Aren’t those of the Song meant to be spiritually joined in eternal harmony?”
“Dogma and material reality are estranged partners at the best of times, when they aren’t entirely divorced. Even you must realize this much, to have earned the novice’s signs.” The priest pauses and it is as though there is an interruption of instruments, a melody cut off. “There are zealots, but one mustn’t count outliers.”
“I’ll take the job.” Kita-Ushma bites down on the inside of her cheek. Small pains distract. “Your fee’s good enough.”
*
Sunrise and she has not slept: she sits in the lobby of an employment agency, cradling a splinted arm, surrounded by drowsy job-seekers. Some are hyper-alert on stimulants, with fluttering hands and glittering eyes. Thin threads of pollutants needle the air, pricking the skin. In the corner a factory worker murmurs dawn chants in an unsteady contralto. The Song marks all things, dividing day from night, hours into minutes: for every chronological delineation there is a verse.
Kita-Ushma waits for a name to be called. Not hers, necessarily, but even under close temple regulations it is not so difficult to appropriate identities from rosters of the dead. When that name pulses on the nearby terminal, broadcasting across the lobby, she stands. Her steps drag and falter as she enters a small office armored by old bulkhead to withstand fire, standard demolitions, and handguns.
The broker takes off her headset, disconnects herself from a wall socket. “I swear I’ve seen you as often a man as a woman now. Bit fickle. Doesn’t it cost a fortune to modify?”
“I get a discount for being regular.” Kita-Ushma sits. The air smells of rust, engine exhaust, red and black spotting the furniture. “I don’t ask if being monogendered bores you to tears.”
“Broken arm?”
“Not really.” Kita-Ushma slips off the cast, shedding it as she would a glove. “Any leads on the file I sent you?”
Gwilin taps her fingers on her left forearm. A mercenary prosthesis mazed with folded blades and slots for ammunition charges, long since inert. “You know this is a terrible idea? The only reason a priest would skip on summoning temple judges is when she has something to hide.”
“Good money,” Kita-Ushma says lightly, “goes to solid data analysis, not unsolicited advice.”
“That clip’s circulated outside Cotillion space, not that anyone would recognize your client there. I’ve traced it back to a lot of infected cortices, entire network clusters scripted to dedicate just enough bandwidth – not sufficient to trigger alarms – to forward this. I haven’t been able to find out where the clip originated, but I did discover where it first appeared.”
“Save the suspense for someone else, friend.”
“Testy.” The broker gestures expansively with the prosthesis. Servos sing against each other, a modification Gwilin has adopted in place of talismans, which she calls sufficient as far as religious devotion goes. So far she hasn’t been fined for her lack of due reverence or sent to indoctrination. “It first turned up on Matharee Station, near the seventh planet in – easy, Kita, don’t break my chair.”
Kita-Ushma unclenches her hand. “Your furniture’s industrial-strength. Matharee Station?”
“Yeah.” Gwilin watches her, artificial eyes buzzing. “Some shithole. Miners’ home, mostly lawless. Barely connected, overseen by maybe a couple clerics. The most you could say for that place is you can get away with minor atheism.”
“Dreadful,” she murmurs and touches her icons. “A cradle of wickedness.”
Gwilin sneers at the gesture. “I set out to see if there was a better copy, and actually there were lots. The older the copy the better it was. The file’s set to… introduce artifacts, damage the audio, each time some condition is met. Every time that happens, other copies would synchronize, degrade to match the same state.”
“Specifically what condition?” Kita-Ushma is well aware the footage – not being executable – cannot do that by itself, but given the proliferation, it must be embedded with some script that draws on the resources of each host cortex to accomplish the change.
“I haven’t the faintest. But.” Gwilin taps a desk projector. “I cross-referenced, made a timeline. For most of its eight year lifetime, this file – this virus – was lossless, perfect integrity. Only recently has it started exhibiting this behavior. I can’t be as precise as I’d like, what with temple filters, but I pinpointed the grid addresses as best I could.”
Eight years. A shiver razors over her nerves with a torturer’s slow affection. “Thanks, that’s something to work with, I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“It’s routine data analysis. Time-consuming, I’m sure, and trying on the patience…”
“My usual fee and no lower,” the broker says flatly. “Don’t tempt me to charge by the hour.”
“No sentiment in you,” Kita-Ushma says, but her mind is already elsewhere. A hunch. A pinch of anxiety taking root.
*
Ashenti returns her call immediately, even though this hour the priest ought to have been performing an evening rite. “Did I read that right? You want a copy of my passport?”
“Or a log of your travels since –” Kita-Ushma glances at Gwilin’s timeline. “Fourteen months ago. Fourteen months, nine days, sixteen hours ago.”
“That’s very specific.”
“Revered, with due esteem, you engaged me to solve a problem.”
The priest is holding a bouquet, a haphazard arrangement of ferns and bromeliads: too unpolished to have been a temple offering. She strokes the glossy petals, ringed fingers disappearing between leaves the color of late bruises and midnight prayer. “The logs are yours to peruse. You are the only layperson I’ve ever permitted such access.”
“I appreciate it, Revered.” She takes a draw of cigarette, breathes it out, a simmering heat in her chest. The window of her apartment is fogged blue with long years of smoke, warped by weapon fluxes from gang skirmishes. Pre-Song, and so for all intents
and purposes – under the theocratic calendar – prehistoric. “I’ll get back to you.”
Kita-Ushma spent some years in remote places, so remote that he couldn’t obtain body modification when he wanted it, so remote his network implants didn’t work. It was not a good time, where needs went unmet, familiar comforts were denied; he was desperate enough for surgery access to kill a Song judge. Ashenti saying it was self-defense is only half-right.
Mostly it was an assassination, because sometimes a choice is not a choice at all when the other path is destruction. Kita-Ushma hasn’t taken on that kind of work since, has barely laid hand on a weapon, has nearly forgotten how a gun feels in her hand.
She paces the confines of her apartment. Two partitions, the most minute of a bathroom. Once she would have been able to afford better, but eight years ago it took all he had to secure passage from that station, to pay the bribes. He believed, was certain, that his trail had been covered. A change of identity, an erasing of birth signatures, and three years serving at a Song monastery as novice to accumulate certain icons, certain signifiers of devotion. She touches those now, a nervous habit that’s time and again resisted breaking. At the monastery –
Dread coils in the depths of her gut. There are particular details, on that station, eight years ago, that she no longer recalls. Novices are reconditioned, slightly, not an indoctrination but there can be lapses of memory. Accidental for the most part. It was a price willingly paid.
Kita-Ushma examines the logs Gwilin compiled, at the one Ashenti sent her. The cross-referencing has already been made as soon as Ashenti gave her access. It’s impossible to have a complete set of data; what the broker could obtain on short notice is already exemplary. But the instances of overlap are too many, too often, to be coincidence. Each time the file makes contact with Ashenti Turyen in virtuality, it breaks down a little more.
She takes another draw, goes through the other dozen videos Gwilin found. The same footage – or at least, the same surrounding, setting, format. The face and body change each time. An elderly man with the thick build of an Udendi native. A hard-faced person of indeterminable gender. A bald woman. A teenager, sixteen at most.