The Orb

by Tara Basi

  “Sure, love, you nap. I’ll wake you up when we get there. Don’t mind old Lucy. I’ll keep meself entertained.”

  Zip closed her eyes. Not to sleep; a million questions buzzed around inside her head, like angry bluebottles. Maybe a detached review of the crazy chat with Quattro and Peter would throw up something she’d missed. Net or no Net, there was always a Record. The interface kicked in, and she began Replaying the surreal encounter in Peter’s bunker. But there were no new insights. There was no Replay, only a blizzard of static.

  Chapter Three – Mathew?

  The lift taking her down to the prison hell that was the Thermal Mines was disappointingly ordinary. It dropped from sunlight to Hades’ ninth circle without stopping off at Limbo or anywhere else. While the box fell, Zip stood up and admired herself in the mirrored doors. She was provocatively dressed in a tiny, tight French maid’s outfit. Peeking out from behind the black and white confection was a silky panther’s tail. It ended in a pink feather duster that swayed gently over her shoulder. After a few more twirls to satisfy herself that the ensemble and its holographic projection were perfect, Zip settled back down on the bench seat and tried to relax.

  An incoming call made her smile. It was Bella, Pip’s mother. They’d become friends after the surgical procedure that had placed Zara’s mind in Pip’s body. But Bella always found it difficult being around Zip. The shock of seeing her dead daughter walking and talking was too much for the old woman. Usually, they just spoke: no video and no VR. Bella had helped Zip understand the Tramp’s Revelation and the life of a Pilgrim while she’d been in recovery and getting used to her new body.

  Zip smiled, “How are you, Bella? It’s been a while.”

  “Sorry it’s only audio. I think, in time, I’ll be able to cope. Seeing Pip again. It’s just so hard. She, you, look, sound …”

  “Bella, I understand. You don’t need to explain. You’re not the only one. My own daughter doesn’t like me looking so young,” Zip sighed.

  “It’s natural. Kids want their mum to look like their mum, and I’d like my daughter …”

  Zip ran her fingers through her thick hair. “My daughter, Alice, she thinks I’m mad. Despises me. Can’t stomach my conversion. Insists it’s a reaction to the procedure, and I can be cured.”

  “Your daughter’s just worried about you, dear.”

  Was Alice really worried about her? Or just jealous of how gorgeous she looked? Zip bit her lip. That was a bitchy thought. “You’re right, Bella, and I’m such a hypocrite. It’s how I brought her up. All her life she’s heard me saying that there’s no god, we’re alone in the universe. And that Pilgrims are brainwashed victims of the Church.”

  “Sorry, Zip. Give her time.”

  “Anyway, enough about me. How are you? It’s been a while since we talked.”

  “I’m well, dear, thanks for asking.”

  For the first time, Zip noticed the catch in Bella’s voice. Something was wrong. “You sound a little upset, Bella. Is everything alright?”

  Bella didn’t answer straight away. She cleared her throat as though she was afraid to say what she was going to say. “The CEO has sent a message. Knowing what you think of the Church, they hoped you might listen to me.”

  Zip laughed to hide her unease. “The Church of the Orb CEO? I’m impressed. Why is she interested in this humble Church-hating Pilgrim?”

  “Professor Peter Morris is dangerous. The Church would prefer it if you didn’t help him.”

  Zip didn’t say anything right away; she focused on her breathing and regaining control of her accelerating pulse. The supreme head of one of the two most powerful organisations in the world was telling her to back off from Peter. What had she gotten herself into? Was it something to do with Quattro? The Church must be tracking Peter, so there was no point denying she knew him. There was really only one question. “Why?”

  Bella let out a long breath. “That’s all I was asked to say. Sorry, Zip, I don’t know anymore. This man, Peter, he doesn’t sound very nice. Is he a friend of yours? Maybe you shouldn’t see him anymore?”

  Zip shook her head. There was no point interrogating the old woman. Zara had been warring hot and cold with the Church for twenty years. All she wanted now was some peace to enjoy being Zip. “Maybe you’re right. Thanks. Bye, Bella.”

  Why did the Church want her to stop helping Peter? What was the worst he could be up to? Jesus and the Tramp, if Peter really was messing with weapons-grade AI, Orb Industries and the Church would drop them both in the Clear and Safe. It seemed unlikely. Peter didn’t strike her as that dumb. So that left Quattro’s – or was it Kiki’s? – crazy idea that the Orb was talking. The Church wouldn’t like that, especially if it contradicted Church dogma. Orb Industries wouldn’t like it either if they couldn’t control the message. If the Orb was talking, Pilgrims everywhere would be desperate to know what their god was saying.

  Zip shook her head and laughed. The idea that the Orb was communicating was plain daft. If it weren’t that, then maybe one of hell’s souls in the Thermal Mines might know the reason for the Church’s warning. She’d do Peter the courtesy of seeing Kiki’s killer, Mathew, and reporting back, but that was it. Damn Peter. Zip was done.

  When the lift doors drew back like metal curtains, Zip was surfing through VR news trawls for any new rumours about the Orb. Millions of crazies and charlatans claimed the Orb was their talkative chum, discussing everything from the pending apocalypse to diet tips. Orb Industries was silent on the matter, just as it insisted the Orb was, and no one had ever proved otherwise.

  Beyond the doors was a wide, empty, black tunnel. It stretched ahead, dimly lit by an overhead track of lights. The air smelt faintly of burning rubber, and it was warm and dry against her skin. On her tongue, it tasted of soot and was thicker than surface air. Zip couldn’t shut down the associations, the images. Jerusalem besieged, melting like a candle under an incendiary barrage and overhung by a black pall filled with smoky particles. An unimaginable mass was pressing down on her. Zip stumbled and stretched out a hand to steady herself against the side of the tunnel. It was warm to the touch. Shaking her head, Zip straightened up and started off towards the prison visitor’s entrance, slowly at first and then with an outward show of jaunty determination. Her heels clicked loudly on the stone floor, and the sharp sounds bounced around the curved walls. The space ahead was narrowing, squeezing her lungs. Her heart was pounding in her chest. Zip clutched her breast and started running.

  Hyperventilating, trembling and sticky with cold sweat, she arrived at a blank wall that terminated the passage. The wall invisibly checked her credentials and scanned her in a myriad of ways, before shimmering away to reveal a door marked Visitor. The sign was reassuring: it confirmed she would be leaving again. The door lifted into the ceiling. Before stepping through, Zip doubled over, rested her hands on her knees, steadied herself and waited for the remains of the panic attack to fade.

  Beyond the door was a lonely metal chair growing out of the floor. Otherwise, the space was bare and dimly lit. Zip settled into the uncomfortable seat facing a blank granite wall and waited.

  “Audio is two-way. Do you require two-way or one-way vision?” a floating, mechanical voice asked.

  “Two-way,” Zip answered, feeling her confidence coming back. The sexy maid’s outfit wasn’t a whim; it might help loosen the killer’s tongue. Most men could be easily manipulated, even in hell, by a beautiful woman. With luck, Mathew was one of those men, and he’d tell her straight out that Kiki paid him to murder her. Case over, and she’d be done with Peter.

  “You have fifteen minutes,” the disembodied voice said.

  Zip gasped as the wall ahead turned into the face of the sun. A white-hot hurricane smashed up against the transparent barrier between her world and the view of purgatory beyond. The raging magma storm filled her vision. Tramp’s sake, why had he chosen this over VR incarceration? Momentarily, she felt sorry for Kiki’s killer. Where was the dammed
soul she’d come to see?

  The barest hint of a shadow in the distance suggested that something was approaching. In seconds, a vaguely humanoid shape could be seen wading through the liquid fire towards her. Fascinated, Zip stood up and approached the barrier for a better view. She stepped back when a giant machine emerged from the inferno. Despite its obvious mass, it was struggling to hold its position. One giant metal paw was pressed against the invisible barrier; the other was holding onto something out of sight. The machine swayed back and forth like a drunk on a storm-tossed ship, as wave after wave of molten rock crashed against its bulk.

  Zip shivered. She’d been expecting a mechanical host but not this. It was an old AI man-of-war: a Mutiny-era mass killer, the Shiva of all assault weapons. They’d fought with her, and she’d fought against them, and the carnage was brutal. It was a shocking sight. Today’s second unwelcome surprise. Hadn’t they all been dismantled and recycled? It looked the same as she remembered from fifteen years ago. A three-metre-tall humanoid with two-metre-wide shoulders, hands as big as shovels and a skull head with cold insect eyes. Only the armament pods were missing. Its nearly indestructible, grey, graphene body was covered in battle scars and the obscene anti-human graffiti of the rebel AI. During the Mutiny, Pilgrim, heretic or atheist, the machines had happily killed them all. Even after all these years, the giant metal golem still scared the shit out of her.

  “Cute.”

  It took her a moment to recognise that the machine was speaking. She took a deep breath and reminded herself of the plan. Zip pirouetted slowly and smiled shyly from behind her tail, which she held close to her face. “You like?”

  “Business,” the machine said, its tone curt, cold and grindingly mechanical.

  Mathew in the machine wasn’t going to be that easy. There was no point wasting time. “Why did you kill Kiki?”

  “Money.”

  “Whose?”

  “Hers.”

  “Sure?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Details.”

  “Such as?”

  Mathew’s responses had been so rapid that Zip wondered if there had been a malfunction when he didn’t immediately reply. “Did you hear me?”

  Beyond the barrier, the machine’s huge skull moved slowly and deliberately, as though it were crushing a diamond under its chin. It had nodded.

  Zip waited. He wasn’t going to be rushed, despite the relentless buffeting waves of the burning plasma storm.

  After another moment of silence, Mathew spoke. “You have a new body.”

  Zip was startled but didn’t see any point in denying something she was proud of. “It’s a transplant. How did you know?”

  “You wear it like a little girl with a new party dress, Colonel Hardy.”

  Zip was startled. How in the hell did he know her real name? “It was Zara Hardy; it’s Zip now.”

  “Remember me?”

  “Remember you?” Zip was unsettled. Suddenly, she was the one being interrogated.

  “Thirty Third Specials, Gunner Mathew.”

  Her tail, which had been dancing seductively around her lithe body, fell to the floor like a dropped anchor chain. These were old names from the God War. “Gunner Mathew is dead.”

  “Necropolis.”

  Zip was shocked into silence. No one outside the Thirty Third knew about the Necropolis mission, and there was something about the clipped way Mathew was talking that was disturbingly familiar. This was not how things were supposed to go.

  Mathew carried on, “Headless corpse.”

  It was true. Gunner Mathew’s head was missing when they found him. Was he transplanted? How had he managed that in the middle of a war? Impossible. It didn’t matter. Whoever was inside the monstrous graphene shell was as good as dead now. “I’m here about Kiki and that’s all. Tell me what you know.”

  “Out first.”

  Zip’s face crumpled in disbelief. “Out?”

  The giant machine ignored her question and turned away from the barrier. It leaned into the firestorm and began battling its way through the waves, swaying from side to side as it waded waist-deep through the lava. In moments, the God War monster had disappeared, leaving only an angry sea of boiling rock crashing against the barrier.

  The view abruptly vanished as the wall turned back to stone and a voice announced, “Visiting time is over.”

  Zip sat in the lift and shivered. The world of the Thirty Third Specials was a decade ago. She’d paid for that; she wasn’t paying again. Curse him if he was Gunner Mathew. Why had he reappeared now? She’d started over. Zip was fresh, clean. Out? How could he get out? His body was gone, incinerated; his brain was forever locked in the core of the man-of-war. Nothing could change that. He’d be thermal mining till the sun went out or his brain fried.

  Dire thoughts scrambled for attention, each one darker than the last. Peter was right: there was something more to Kiki’s death. She’d at least tell him that. Zip was young again; the past was behind her, and she wasn’t letting it come back. The Church was involved and now this. She was definitely quitting.

  She received a VR call, which was tagged urgent and verified relevant. Zip accepted it as a welcome diversion from wondering what exactly she’d tell Peter and Quattro.

  VR ozone tickled her nostrils. She’d appeared in a small dingy office, not unlike her own. On the other side of the desk was a rotating cypher. She had no idea who she might be talking to and what or who they might represent. Immediately, she started to exit the VR.

  “Please don’t go,” it said. “I represent Gunner Mathew. I’m a registered criminal lawyer, class one.”

  Zip laughed at the dark absurdity of the lawyer’s statement. “How in Tramp’s name can he be Gunner Mathew? That poor soldier is most definitely dead. I saw his decapitated body.” She shook her head, unsure whether to continue with the conversation. She thought back to Peter’s house, standing at the entrance and knowing that if she stepped foot inside that everything would change. “Why the cypher?”

  “In such violent criminal cases, the courts allow advocates to remain anonymous. Unless of course you are a client. Legally, my client has now been reidentified as your Gunner Mathew. His brainwave signature has just been cross-referenced and verified with military records.”

  Zip groaned and threw up her hands and tail. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Why didn’t this come out before?”

  “Mathew is a known contract killer. His brainwave signature is linked with several assassinations. However, his full identity was unknown, and he was never found. His brainwave couldn’t be matched to any records. Mathew himself pointed us towards sealed war records for the Specials. That’s how he was identified.”

  Zip growled in frustration. “Rubbish! I’ve seen the trial vids. That Mathew, the one in the dock, he looked nothing like Gunner Mathew.”

  “Zip looks nothing like Zara Hardy, but legally you are Zara Hardy.”

  Zip thought about leaving and telling Peter she was ending her involvement right now. This case was beyond insane. Mathew killed Kiki? She had to know more. “What do you want with me? Did he tell you why he did it? Who paid him?”

  “Mathew says very little. I would surmise that he wants revenge. Someone betrayed him to the authorities, probably the individual who hired him. Mathew tells me he has information that will help you and your client, Peter Morris. You, uniquely, can get him released, for a while, to help find Kiki’s real murderer.”

  That’s the last thing Mathew had said to her. He wanted out and then he’d help. Zip sighed. This was ridiculous. It just couldn’t be him. “Mathew was killed a long time ago. That thing is just a monstrous killing machine with whoever’s … brain locked in it. There’s nothing to get out.”

  “Mathew understands the realities of his situation. I have explained it to him very carefully. But there is a way for him to be released.”

  Zip shook her head. “Really?”

  “Veteran’s Rehab
ilitation Act, section twelve, clause thirty-four. Mathew’s a veteran, you were his commanding officer, and you have been assigned the victims’ rights. In your custody, he has the right to try and redeem himself but not escape his sentence. The law is clear. If you can make the case, which you can, Mathew, the man in the machine, will be temporarily released to help the family of his victim.”

  Zip stifled a string of expletives. She wanted to wake up and start the day properly. “You’re telling me I can get a deadly man-of-war released to help me investigate Kiki’s death, even though he was the one who killed her? And afterwards he goes back to milking plasma?”

  “Almost. It will be a VR avatar release and under strict conditions. His physical self will remain in the Thermal Mines. I’ve prepared all the submissions; I just need your brainwave.”

  Zip groaned and blinked out, ending the conversation, and was back in the ascending lift. If Peter found out about the offer from Gunner Mathew, or whoever the hell he was, she was sure he’d want to take it up. Her thoughts went back to the warning that Bella had delivered from the Church CEO. The CEO, for Tramp’s sake. It wasn’t a veiled threat. She couldn’t stand the thought of going back to war with the Church, and with one of the killers from her past tagging along. Zip couldn’t even imagine how a decapitated Mathew resurrection could be remotely possible. It was obviously some sort of scam. Without the protection of Orb Industries, she’d be like a snowflake going up against a fire-breathing dragon if she dared challenge the Church.

  She would see Peter and resign.

  Another alert arrived: a special, urgent delivery to her office from her daughter. It required her immediate attention. Zip couldn’t think of any reason why her daughter would be sending her anything. They’d only spoken or, more accurately, shouted at each other a couple of times since her transplant and conversion. There’d been no contact for months. She doubled-checked it wasn’t some kind of trick. Everything confirmed the delivery was from her daughter. Fine, she’d swing by the office before telling Peter she’d quit.