It’s not as dark as I thought, light’s getting in somewhere. There’s a kind of mezzanine level. And more mod cons than you’d have a right to expect.
“You built all this?” I ask.
“Nup,” says Mac. “Found it. Made some improvements, but the most important thing is the tower’s shielding.”
He’s pretty damn proud of it, just the same. I help him manoeuvre Eva up to the mezzanine and onto the bed, of which there is only one. She appears to be unconscious. Mac spends some time fussing with her. If it was anyone else but Mac, I’d ask him about his newfound surgical skills and how you measure the vital signs of a double. But I don’t. It may be wise, it may be foolish, but it’s the way it’s always been.
“Not a lot of water for a water tower,” I comment.
Mac smiles, but then he’s all serious. “Look, Brom—” he begins.
I shake my head.
“You’ve a right to know,” he continues anyway.
Yes, there’s a shitload of questions I’d like to ask. Why, for example, Mac seems intent on growing himself a girlfriend. How long he’s been in situ here, and whether he was ever living in the place I thought he lived. But I don’t imagine the answers to those questions will be either satisfactory or comforting. So I peel off the alternate-reality future phone and distract Mac with that instead.
He pokes at it for a while and he’s fascinated, he’s enthralled, but the peace and quiet don’t last as long as I’d hoped.
“There’s messages here,” he says.
“Yeah, from you.”
“They’re not from me, Brom. Not these early ones, anyway.”
“It’s not like anyone knows that number.” But then I remember sending it through, very early on, to someone I thought was Mac.
“Did you try and send messages to my phone?” I ask.
“No. I should have. I didn’t think that’d work, to be honest; I was working on the dragonfly.”
And distracted by Eva, I think, but don’t say.
There’s a clang which makes us both pause for a moment, but then nothing else.
“You made it?” I ask, because it belatedly occurs to me that the dragonfly represents some fairly impressive technology which you probably can’t knock up at home.
“Just modified it,” says Mac. He’s vague enough for me to think that he’s not going to be all that forthcoming. “But we need to know where these messages came from.”
“They look a lot like yours,” I say, partly to excuse myself.
Mac don’t reply. He’s fiddling with the phone.
“Guerra?” I suggest, because after all, I’m not that wildly popular that my friends and associates would seek to contact me in alternate realities.
“Not Guerra, but maybe Guerra’s phone.”
“Guerra’s phone.” I know I’m not adding to the conversation. It just seems a little hard to believe.
“He has a natural language interface.”
“So basically that’s just Guerra, then.”
Mack shakes his head. “A natural language interface is AI. Some of them are pretty advanced. This one seems to be…”
“Rogue, power hungry, a little too proactive?”
“Independent,” says Mac.
“That’s hard to believe.”
“Well somebody sent you those messages. Somebody was trying to get you home, pretty much the same way I was.”
“Somebody who knows about Eva.” And I realise I’ve taken the first step towards knowing more than I really want to.
“Yes,” says Mac. “And about Olwin Duilis.”
“Well that don’t have to be Guerra, then,” I say. “Or Guerra’s phone, just to clarify things.”
“I suppose not,” says Mac. I can see there’s more to say, but he doesn’t elaborate.
“They’re her parents, right?” I ask. “Judith and Ed, the ones on the farm?” Thinking all the while, say yes, don’t say it’s really a future you.
“Yes,” says Mac. “I think so.”
“So if we go to the farm, we’d find them there. Their younger selves.”
“Probably,” says Mac.
“And we’re hiding out right beside them. Is that wise?”
“I don’t think they know much, right now, Olwin’s—”
But then Eva stirs and calls out, and Mac hurries to her. I watch him fuss over her for a bit. But then I ferret around in the cooler, think about the advisability of taking a vial and slipping it into my pocket. There’s plenty left, one less is not going to hurt.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Green Jay
I FEEL SO strange. As if part of me is dying and part of me is coming alive. My arm hurts, of course, but that’s normal, that’s to be expected. I can never be truly human, but somehow I believe it’s possible. I am a strange, plant-like Pinocchio. This is one of Olwin Duilis’ memories, that is true, but I am adapting it for myself. I am stealing it from her and making it my own. That way she cannot touch me.
Blue Jay is here. He helps me sit up, move around, and I walk with him to make him happy. I would prefer to stay on the bed; when I move I feel dizzy and not myself. It will take time, he says, but how long neither of us know. It is all a strange experiment.
The Crow sits downstairs, lurking. He has not been up to visit me and I have not been down to talk to him. I suppose I should be grateful. He brought the box back, Blue Jay keeps reminding me. The Crow has a strange story to tell about being pulled away to a different world. It is less than believable, but something happened to him. He walks too stiffly and he has lost his calm. There is something on the inside of his left wrist which he looks at all the time. He takes it off, puts it on, plays with it. I cannot tell what it is, and, I think, neither can the Crow. Not really. There are scabs on his hands and legs and he spends a lot of the day picking at them when he thinks no-one is looking. Blue Jay wants him to tell me about the girl that he met in my greenhouse. The hints he has given almost makes me think I am in one of the fairy tales from Guerra’s bookshelf, but the Crow is untrustworthy.
Blue Jay is working with the casing of the Time Locked box, trying to fashion something that looks to me like armour. He has gloves too, gloves which the Crow brought back from his fairy tale land. They look just like dirty old garden gloves to me. There is something about them that makes me happy, but that is probably only because Blue Jay is working on them.
The water tower is protecting us, like a castle. One day we will have to burst out and fly away, but not yet. For now, it is comforting to hide.
But not for the Crow. He wants to get out now. It is only Blue Jay that is keeping him here. That, and he has nowhere to go.
Crow
IT’S COOL HIDING out in the water tower and all. That is, it was cool for an hour or so. But it’s been three days and now I’m bored. Mac’s playing with Ed’s gloves and the stuff the Time Locked box was made out of; between his scientific investigations and his doctoring, he’s got something to do. Eva’s time is pretty much all caught up with languishing. I suppose I could go talk to her. I don’t really want to.
The thing about the inside of a water tower is that it echoes. I suppose if whoever had started the renovations had got around to finishing them, it would all be different. But right now, sound travels in weird and disconcerting ways. And there’s just the three of us. Or really there’s the two of them and the one of me. There’s a set of stairs that takes you right the way up to the top of the tower. And I’ve found me a room a couple of flights up. That’s good. But it’s not enough.
My phone, my new phone, gets another message from time to time. It’s a bit creepy, but Mac says not to worry. Stay in the water tower, says Mac, and you can’t be traced. But seriously? Staying in the water tower is a joy that is far past its use by date.
So I’ve started replying, and probably that’s ill-advised, but then what else is there to do?
Who is this? I ask my mysterious correspondent. That is to say I text them, I don’t
phone them directly; even I’m not that stupid. The texting thing took a while to figure out, but it’s easy if you peel off the phone and shake it into its stiff card form. Whole thing becomes a touch screen. Pretty cool. I tried to show Mac, but he’s more interested in the leftover pieces of the Time Locked box. God knows what he thinks he can do. Move himself holus-bolus into an alternate reality, most likely, without the aid of dragonflies, or phones, or being attached to a box with its own agenda. He’s got the dragonfly buzzing around helping him, but sometimes it buzzes over to me, just for a hello, and I’m so bored I’m kind of glad when it does.
In any case, it turns out the name of my messenger is Eila. Which tells me precisely nothing, but it’s nice to have a name.
Eila and I have embarked upon an intermittent and at times incomprehensible correspondence. She won’t tell me why she contacted me back in the Judith-and-Ed days, only that she knew I needed help. Does she know Olwin Duilis? No, apparently not. But then why is she sending me her picture, albeit superimposed over a map? It was just a picture that she’d seen. Which, I have to say, is most probably a lie. She seems to know that I’m not in trouble any more. That I’m back in—wherever, whenever you want to call this. But she don’t ask.
And so it goes, back and forth, tall tales and true. But the curious thing is that she bothers to engage me at all. I know what’s in it for me, but what’s in it for her? Until she wants to show me something. Something that means stepping out of the water tower. I say yes and I immediately feel guilty. Not that I’m a prisoner, not that Mac wouldn’t let me go if I asked him.
But I’m not going to ask.
It’s night. The tower’s quiet except for the hum of Mac and Eva’s conversation. I climb the flights of stairs to the very top and make my way out onto the roof. I more than half expected to have to scrape back a heavy, noisy door, which would have alerted Mac and stopped me making a fool of myself. But no, the exit to the roof is quiet.
This isn’t where Eila’s asked me to be, incidentally. This is me being cautious and wise and scoping out the lay of the land before I make my move. This is me hedging my bets. Also, I’m bringing along one of the gloop vials as insurance, a kind of bargaining chip if the situation gets all desperate.
It’s good to breathe proper, non-tower air. I mean there’s vents and shit inside the tower, but not enough, not when you’re stuck there day and night. I spread out my arms and suppress the urge to whoop. Actually, I don’t suppress it entirely, but it’s a quiet whoop just for me and the night air. I look down at the farm and it’s all quiet. There are lights on in the main house, the one I stayed in, but the rest is dark. There’s music drifting faintly from an open window. Some kind of folk shit, adding to the hippy vibe.
And then I look over at the High Track. It looks pretty dark apart from the lights along the railings. But then I guess my eyes adjust, and I see that there’s a kind of coloured fog in the area just to my left. Tenties, it has to be Tenties, and if you can tell anything by the colour—and with Tenties you always can—they’re not happy campers. Is this what Eila wants me to see? It’s not like she was all that forthcoming with details. On the other hand, she wanted me over at the marketplace, and I doubt that you can see this part of the High Track from there, not with the big screen and all. So this is another mystery altogether. One which I’m sure Eva and Mac would be mightily interested in, one which I hope I can leave alone.
If I remember things right, there’s a long metal ladder that leads up from the ground right to the top of the tower. I find it, it don’t look particularly safe, but it’s a way out. I have a moment of doubt as I fling my feet over the side. Why the first rung can’t be closer to the top I don’t know. But then I’m climbing down, I’m away, and I find myself on the cool ground at the bottom of the tower with a grin on my face.
It’s easy enough to sneak into the marketplace from here. I’ve done it before, hundreds of times. And before you know it, I’m truly back home, back into my Barlewin. I get a kebab, just to cement the feeling. This, I acknowledge, is probably a mistake, and it’s the last of my meagre supply of ready cash, but such is my mood that I don’t care. I’ve taken some time with my clothes and I don’t think anyone’s going to look twice at me. I’ve left my old phone at home, and the new one’s inside my shirt pocket. Probably I should have left that back in the tower too, but it’s turned off and detached from my wrist. That’s as much caution as I’m willing to take.
I take a look up at the High Track. From here, everything looks peaceful and right, or as peaceful and right as it can be with Guerra in charge. I see the Chemical Conjurers and I toy with the idea of saying hello, but as much as I trust them, the thing with robots is that it’s relatively easy to get inside their brain. Not that I think Guerra’s tried that yet, but I wouldn’t put it past him. People seem to be gathering in from of the big screen, and so I position myself at the back of the crowd. I’m off to the side and a few people in, so I’m not conspicuously at the back, but I’m still close enough to the water tower that a quick getaway’s not out of the question. That or into the tenements, but that’s a last resort option I’m hoping I don’t have to take. The idea of tonight is to scratch the itch of curiosity before it becomes too annoying. That’s all.
There’s no sound, just images, and at first they make no sense to me. It’s almost as if the Tenties made the footage—it has the same kind of bio-obsessiveness that reminds me of them—but then I see it’s showing the internal workings of a 3D printer. It’s showing the layering of biostuff. It’s all sped up so it don’t get boring, although people are beginning to get restless, because it’s not like we haven’t seen this kind of thing before. And then out of the printer comes the complete copy. Only it’s not a copy, it’s a double, it’s Eva. At this stage she’s not really green at all. And I can tell that, because she’s completely naked, and while she waits for the clothes to be printed out, she stretches, tries out the body. This results in some appreciative comments from sections of the audience, though not too loudly because it’s a fine line that nobody wants to advertise crossing, and then Eva’s up and away.
You see her moving through the marketplace, and then out to the farm. It’s not continuous footage, it’s obviously been put together from security video and the like, but there she is, walking into the farm, talking with some gardeners, going into the shed. And then she’s out, running, and you see her with the Chemical Conjurers and you see, very obviously, that after a bit of a chat, they’re providing some smoke screen distraction, but not before there’s a flash of tentacles, and a Tentie—probably T-Lily, but who can say—grabs her and drags her away.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Green Jay
I CURL UP with Blue Jay the way we did in the early days. We are on the floor in the very middle of the tower. There is only moonlight, and even that’s probably my imagination. A while ago we heard the Crow climbing the stairs. “Let him be,” said Blue Jay, “he’s restless and bored.” We heard him climb higher and higher and I am sure that he is out on the roof.
I envy him that. I have tried to persuade Blue Jay to let me bask on top of the tower, but he won’t agree. He says it is too dangerous, too clearly visible from the High Track. I am sure that no-one will be looking, though when I think of the High Track, I think mostly of Rose-Q. I hope that Guerra has not blamed her, although of course he must. I hope she thought to run, too. I hope she was able to escape.
But mostly, I am glad the Crow is not here. I mentally push him off the roof of the tower, urge him to jump, to fly away, although of course that would mean we would no longer be safe. Blue Jay curls his fingers through mine, and for a moment I allow myself to be happy. It is only now, now that that I have pulled his life into this strange shape, that I wonder if this is enough. I know that Blue Jay is devoted to me—I do not doubt him—but I am always reminded that I am not human, even though I was fashioned from one. So much has been done to me that I hardly know how to describe my body. What t
o hope for. How to be.
Sometimes I wonder if Blue Jay is not just trying to keep me alive, but also trying to make me more acceptable. I could hardly blame him, if that is so. But if I am honest, I don’t really care if I am human or not. I just want to be me, truly me. Green Jay.
Silence streams down through the tower. It has been a long time since we have heard the Crow move and it worries me. What is he doing? I shouldn’t care, I should lie here with Blue Jay, relaxing. But that strange man troubles me, and I still do not trust him. A minute ago, I wanted him gone; now I want to know where he is.
“What is he up to?” I ask.
“Hush,” says Blue Jay.
It would be so easy for the Crow to betray us. Get back in with Guerra, by showing him where we are. I don’t think he’d do that to Blue Jay. I know he’d do it to me. “What if he is caught?”
“Brom won’t get caught.”
“Are you sure?”
“Mmm,” says Blue Jay and it is half a snore.
Crow
WELL THAT WAS a curious piece of propaganda from, presumably, Guerra. Designed to flush out Eva. He has an interest in her that’s bordering on obsession. Perhaps she represents a very well-paid commission. What’s really interesting is the way the crowd reacts. Seems to me that in their minds they’ve either been shown the wanton capture of an innocent double by some Tenties and the Chemical Conjurers, or they’ve been shown a renegade double escaping with the aid of some Tenties and the Chemical Conjurers. Either way it don’t look so good for my robot friends, but it’s the Tenties people seem to have decided to blame. There’s a few of them in the crowd, though I don’t recognise any of them. But they seem surrounded by people with, let’s say, pressing questions. They’re filling the air with a murky yellow cloud, and there’s enough of them that the air’s become foggy.
Green Jay and Crow Page 11