Authors: Al Robertson
Jack and Grey had once been very close indeed. His patron had taken him when he was twelve, and was then a constant presence through his teenage and early adult years. He always came when needed, and always gave the right advice for the moment.
He helped Jack lose his Docklands accent when the scholarship first took him to his Homelands boarding school. When Jack was bullied, Grey was there, soothing his tears and helping him develop strategies to overcome his tormentors. The divinity shared Jack’s joy as he triumphed both socially and academically, then won admission to one of Homelands’ most respected accountancy firms. He comforted him late at night as, overwhelmed by his workload, Jack wept again and considered leaving the constant pressure behind. Grey entered him and filled him and gave him strength, helping him survive the hard, lonely years of training. Jack dedicated his qualification speech to his patron, touched beyond measure that such a multifaceted corporate entity had focused so completely on him.
They drifted apart a little during his early years as an auditor, but Jack still made a point of keeping Grey informed of his activities. He was a regular worshipper at both his own personal and Grey’s public temples. He’d report on himself and subscribe to licences for on- and offweave products that – Grey promised – would help him with his work. Most of the time, his patron was right. Every so often, a gift didn’t deliver. Jack would discard it, understanding that any further reference to it would be an indicator of deep ingratitude, something like a small blasphemy.
Sometimes, late at night, Grey would still come to him and whisper that he was set for greatness. That was how he told Jack that he was having him transferred to InSec’s forensic accounting department. He convinced him that a return to the dingy, low-resolution streets of Docklands was a temporary and necessary sacrifice. Jack had to be seen to be a man of breadth and experience. His roots could only be transcended once they were fully acknowledged. Just after the rock fell, Grey came to him again. The journey into deep space began soon after, despite Jack’s outrage. That was the last time that Jack had seen his patron.
‘Long time no see,’ he said caustically. ‘I wish it had been longer.’
‘Don’t be bitter, Jack. We all had to make sacrifices back then. It was a difficult time for me. You’re lucky I could give you such a useful role to play.’
Jack wondered briefly if he should accuse Grey of complicity in a cover-up that had broken his life, and killed his old boss and the woman he loved. But he had no idea how involved his patron still might be.
‘Useful?’ he snarled. ‘I was an accountant and you packed me off to war. You let them implant that puppet in me.’
Grey’s presence had forced Fist to manifest. Whisky and exertion had hit his little system hard. He was lying on the sward, arms crossed behind his head, snoring.
‘I was under a lot of pressure to send someone good.’
‘That’s bullshit. You’re Pantheon. You were powerful. You could have chosen anyone.’
Grey laughed bitterly. ‘Oh really? So how did that power manifest, Jack? I did such a great job of standing up for myself, didn’t I? Look at me now. I’m a shadow. What little there is left of me lives by the charity of others. I couldn’t even summon you to me. East had to help me get to your puppet and force it to bring you to me.’
‘You were that presence when Andrea was playing in Ushi’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you reprogrammed Fist?’
‘I tweaked him a bit.’
‘If you can do that – can you free me from him?’
Grey chuckled. He shivered in and out of being, strobing in time with his amusement, an old man seen through a storm of static. Then his mirth ended and he was back, the full force of his presence undimmed.
‘Oh, Jack. Even now, you have so much faith in me. No, I can’t. I can nudge him gently in certain very small directions – but I can’t unpick the contractual law that binds him to you and you to him. Those bonds hold us all together, Pantheon and human, corporation and employee. They cannot be broken. We depend on them to survive.’
‘And that’s a good thing?’
‘Look around you, Jack. We are humanity; the last of it, perhaps not the best of it, but all that’s left. What else lives in this dead universe?’
‘The Totality.’
‘Facsimiles. Clever imitations, nothing more. We shouldn’t have gone to war with them, but we can’t let them take over. In a few generations they’ll decay. Without the Pantheon, where would you all be then?’
‘They’ll endure, Grey.’
‘Did you ever hear about something called rock climbing, Jack? People used to strap on a safety harness and drag themselves up mountains for fun. Humanity’s a bit like that. But you don’t have a safety harness, you’re never quite sure if there’s another hold coming, and your rockface never ends. Just one slip could kill you all. You need Pantheon discipline to hang on tight.’
‘By discipline you mean control.’
‘You know what the war machines did to earth. One little loss of control and we lost our planet. That’s what you risk with the Totality.’
‘The Totality aren’t war machines, Grey. They’re something very different. They’re the future. They may not be perfect but they’re the change humanity needs. And you’re shutting them out.’
‘So we should just hand over all control to our conquerors? Stockholm syndrome, Jack. You’re not one of us anymore. You’re one of them.’
‘I’m neither. Nobody controls me. I just know how precious it is to have a tomorrow you can believe in.’
Clouds shivered across the white moon. An imagined wind dance invisibly across the grass.
‘Of course. That must be very much on your mind.’ Grey thought for a moment, then continued: ‘You don’t want to do anything useful with those few weeks left to you? Strike back at my enemies for me?’
‘No. I won’t help you. In any case I can’t. With Fist caged I’m just an out-of-work auditor.’
Jack was surprised at how gentle his voice was, how swiftly his anger had left him. Over the years, he’d spent so many hours debating with Grey. Their conversations had shaped his soul, the divinity’s words helping his thoughts and actions cohere. He felt a sudden nostalgia for those times. He realised that he didn’t care what the consequences of refusing Grey’s request for help would be. A sense of freedom sighed through him, with all the soft insistence of the hilltop breeze.
‘I was the only one of us who really argued against the war,’ replied Grey. ‘I was convinced it would be counterproductive. That was why I had to make sacrifices like you once the decision to fight had been made. I had to prove that I was fully committed to the cause. But the war’s supporters still thought I was standing in the way of victory, so they brought me down. Judge me by my enemies, Jack. Of all of us, I’m the radical.’
Jack snorted. ‘You’re the least conservative one, Grey, but you’re still Pantheon. And I stopped being part of all that long ago.’
‘How does that make you feel, Jack?’
Fist held all his anger now. But Fist was asleep. Jack looked down over the broken gardens that had once been at the heart of his Station life. Scraps of moonlight caught themselves on tumbled walls. Empty plinths held nothing more than memories. A chaos of plants rampaged through it all, at once softly verdant and so slowly destructive. Years would pass and the simulation would let natural, spontaneous forms entirely remake itself. Empty at last of all that had been Jack, it would be reabsorbed into the heart of the weave, ready to serve as a new platform for a fresh-born child. Jack would be a handful of memories in other people’s fetches, if that.
‘That’s not for you to ask any more, Grey. But I do have one last question. What happened to Mr Stabs when he returned to Station in Tiamat’s body?’
Grey smiled sadly. ‘Kingdom had no further use for him, so I made sure he was safe. It was one of the last good things I could do before I fell.’
‘Where is he now?’ asked Jack.
‘He won’t let me tell you.’
‘You’re lying. You’ve had nothing to do with him.’
‘No. Mr Stabs found Tiamat’s death very difficult to process. I told him you and Fist were returning. He’s not sure he wants to see you. It brings too much back.’
‘Indeed.’
‘If he reaches a decision, I’ll try and let you know.’
‘I’m sure you will.’ Jack stood up. ‘I’m going now. I hope I won’t be seeing you again.’
Grey sighed. ‘And I hope your last days pass in peace. I have one final gift for you.’ He made a gesture with his hand, snatching a card out of the empty air. It was a near-duplicate of the one Jack had been given at Customs House. Grey held it out but Jack didn’t take it. So he placed it on the ground and carefully set a pebble on it.
‘There, Jack, my final gift to you. Enough money to live out these last months in a little more comfort. It can’t be traced back to me and it’s not tagged InSec. Spending it won’t cause you any problems.’
Then Grey stepped back into his temple. A stone door closed behind him. Jack sat for a long time, staring at the gift his patron had left. At last, as the dawn light palely frosted the temple and the hill, chasing long shadows through the gardens, he reached down for it. Fist stirred and grunted in his sleep. Dew had moistened the card. Jack turned it over in his hands and tossed it away, before starting off downhill. A few minutes passed and Fist awoke. He stood and yawned, scanned through Jack’s available memories to see what had happened while he’d slept, then followed his master off the hill.
The broken temple stood alone, overlooking broken gardens. Then it disappeared. There was nothing but a small bare room where an empty whisky bottle stood on a table, a man was climbing into a bed and the floor was made of stars.
As sleep took Jack, he looked down at the void and thought about light years of travel, the history encoded in each point of light. Starlight holds memories that can never be changed. Station throbbed alive around him, constantly moving onwards in time, remaking itself as something new with every passing second.
Jack woke with a savage hangover. Fist was still passed out in his mind, his buzz-saw snoring jagged in Jack’s thoughts. Jack muted the puppet. Hunger gripped him. He needed something hotter and greasier than the bread, caffeine and juice combination that the hotel offered. Clothes were scattered around the room. A few minutes of fumbling and swearing and he was dressed. Another desk clerk was on duty. Seeing Jack he said: ‘So Charles took care of you last night?’ Jack grunted in reply.
Outside, a sweathead lay against the hotel frontage. It was almost noon. Harsh spinelight cracked down, making the sight of the reddish black void where her nose had been even more disturbing. She opened her eyes and looked up at Jack. Noticing him start, she realised that he could see her and stretched out a hand. Her sleeve fell back, revealing blotched track marks. Sweat was only ever taken orally. Jack wondered what other drugs had caught her, when she’d be staggering back into hiding to trip again.
He turned away and started walking, feeling guilty that he had nothing to give her. Andrea had always been appalled by sweatheads, so she never used her weaveware to block them out. It was hard to imagine anyone who’d known her accepting that she’d died of an overdose. He imagined her wake – friends gathered together, talking carefully around the fiction that explained her death, afraid to speculate on the truth. He hoped that, if he’d been there, he’d have had the courage to question the official version of events.
The smell of frying food leapt out of a doorway and tugged at him. He’d never needed the weave to find a good café. A bell rang as he pushed through the door. The staff were friendly until he told them how he’d be paying. He had to try two more places before he found somewhere that would accept InSec cash.
A server led him to a small table, set with two places and two chairs. The room was about half-full. Other customers were dabbing bright pink meat in red sauce or pushing brown fried bread round plates to catch vivid yellow smears of egg yolk. The server took Jack’s order, almost managing to hide a combination of pity and contempt. The coffee came instantly, food a little later. Without flavour overlays, the brightly coloured meat, bread and egg scarcely tasted any different from each other.
Fist shimmered into being, sitting in the chair opposite Jack. He had his head in his hands. Non-essential communications were still muted. It looked like he was groaning and swearing. Jack enjoyed the silence as he ate. He was about halfway through his meal before Fist realised.
[ YOU MUTED ME, YOU BASTARD. I’M
GOING TO TAG EVERYTHING AS ESSENTIAL FROM NOW ON.
]
Jack laughed. [ You’re lucky I let you out at all, after last night.] The tasteless food was at least filling him with calories, leaving him feeling generous. He unmuted Fist.
[ That wasn’t me, Jack. That fucking patron of yours left a trigger in me. I had to take you to him.]
[ You mean you aren’t normally an annoying, aggressive little wanker?]
[Shut up and eat, meatbag.] Jack used a piece of bread to mop up the last greasy remnants of an egg. [ You don’t know how lucky you are,] Fist continued. [ Nobody can reach into your head and rewrite you.]
[ They put you in my head.]
[ You’re still you, Jack, even when I’m here. That never stops.]
[ It will soon.]
The server cleared Jack’s plate away and refilled his cup of coffee. A small group of people came in, clattering noisily as they found seats and debated breakfast choices. The noise would have pained Jack before he’d eaten. Now it created a soft, almost comfortable ache in his mind.
[ You’ve got free will,] said Fist. [ They can’t turn you into something else without you even knowing.]
[ We get told what to do. And sometimes we lose out if we don’t do it.]
[ That’s different. You don’t have to do it, not if you really don’t want to. I’ve never had that.]
[ That’s just self-pity.]
[ Really? When do I ever get to decide anything? It’s always you, Jack, whether we’re surrendering to the Totality so you can feel better about yourself or getting ourselves tortured so you can impress a ghost.]
[ There’s more to it than that, Fist.]
[ Not from where I’m standing.]
[So we should just walk away?]
[ Yes. Grey was right. Leave it all to Harry. To someone who actually knows what he’s doing.]
Jack sat back in his chair and sipped his coffee. Its heat bit at his tongue. The windows of the little café burned with midday spinelight, but he was in a shaded corner. Its gentle cool soothed him. The group at the table were laughing together. Others were chatting or just tucking into their food. Behind the counter the cook was flipping eggs on a hot cooking plate. The server was taking an order from an attractive young man, flirting a little as she did so.
Jack was offweave, irretrievably distant from these people, but he found himself suddenly struck by an exquisite sense of deep kinship with them all. Hunger could never be virtually satisfied. There were so many human needs that the weave could never meet.
[ Well fuck all this,] grumbled Fist. [ I’m going back to sleep.]
Jack felt the same sudden contentment as the night before, when he’d told his patron that he wouldn’t allow himself to be used as a weapon. He wondered if Fist was right. Perhaps this was how he should spend his last few weeks, enjoying small pleasures, watching people in cafés and bars, feeling a subtle closeness to all around him. Then he thought of his father. His hangover blunted emotion, allowing him to consider the pain of their meeting with something approaching detachment. Without fresh evidence it would be impossible to change the way he understood the past. He imagined the old man tottering into age, only able to see his absent boy as an unresolvable problem. Hurt shimmered over peace like silent lightning over a summer sea.
As he sat there, a message flag pinged in his mind. [Get it yourself,] muttered Fist. It was Corazon. ‘We need to talk. Call me as soon as you get this.’ A memory of Harry appeared in his mind, forbidding all contact with her. But Jack trusted Corazon, and Harry was no longer his boss.
[Come on, Fist. Let’s go back to the hotel. We’ve got a call to make.]