Fractions (58 page)

‘So'm I,' he said. ‘A few years back, there was a display out there, Harriers flying backwards and Sea Kings looping the loop and all that, and I realised I was
proud
of those guys. Just like I used to be about the heroic Red Army and the Vietcong.'

‘Jesus.' I was shocked into a passing fit of sobriety. ‘You're telling me the armed forces of the British state are
freedom fighters?
I'm sure the Irish have a different story, for starters.'

‘Ah, fuck the Irish,' Reid said, fortunately not too loudly. ‘I must admit I did have a hang-up about the bold IRA for years. And then they went and turned up their toes, just jacked it in like the fucking Stalinists.'

‘But you always wanted something better than that –'

He glared into his Caledonian Eighty. ‘Even so, I stuck up for the workers' states. And then they all went down like – like dominoes! I'm not the one who deserted. I mean, my side surrendered, right? So I can do whatever the fuck I like.'

The bell rang for last orders. Reid laughed and drained his glass. ‘Same again?'

‘Yes please.'

He returned with two pints and two shots of whisky. The whisky may have had some responsibility for what happened later.

‘So what do you have to say to that?' he asked.

‘Schlanzhe…OK, OK. You're saying you used to admire the other side's armies, right? So what about all the peace-fighting, eh? What about CND?'

Peace-fighting, CND…something was bugging me.

‘Tactics. The Communists were probably sincere, funnily enough, but as far as we were concerned we saw CND work as running interference for the Russkies.'

‘No shit?'

‘No shit.'

‘Well,' I said, taken aback at this brazen admission, ‘I must say your new-found patriotism has a suspiciously damascene curve about it, as in going from one misguided view to what seems to be the complete opposite but is actually the same place –'

‘Bullshit. I'm not patriotic. All I'm saying is, we live in a dangerous world and I'm not going to pretend I don't know whose guns keep me safe.'

‘What about the people on the other side of the guns?'

‘Tough. I'm just lucky I'm on this side. Compared to anything else out there, it's the side of progress.
We
're the camp of the revolution.'

‘Explain yourself.'

‘Because your Yank dingbat libertarian pals are right – the Western democracies
are
socialist! Big public sectors, big companies that plan production while officially everything's on the market…sort of
black
planning, like the East had a black market. Marx said universal suffrage was the rule of the working class, and he was right. The West is Red!'

I had to laugh, not just at the audacity of Reid's rationalisation but at the grain of awkward truth in it. We explored this theory as we were cleared from the pub and made our way up on to the Road Bridge.

‘Shit,' Reid said, scrutinising the bus timetable, ‘we've missed it. Fucking private companies keep changing the services.'

‘Goddamn capitalist roaders. Let's get a taxi.'

‘From here? Nah. There's a hotel on the other side. Let's phone from there.'

I looked along the bridge's bright kilometre.

‘Bit of a walk.'

‘Might even be a bar open,' Reid said cunningly.

‘I'm game.'

We set off, past signs announcing that security cameras watched the bridge at all times. To the north and west there was still light in the sky. Cars and lorries thrummed past, every other minute. The section of the bridge before it reached the river made a slow ascent above streets and backyards and waste ground and the long arms of a marina. There was a high barrier on our left between the footway and the drop to the river, a lower but wider barrier between footway and road. Reid kept to a rapid pace, saying little. About halfway across I paused to light up a black cheroot which had (unaccountably, at that moment) turned up in my pocket.

Something on my mind. Peace-fighting, something to do with…ah!

Not a good time – but then, there never would be a good time.

I hurried to catch up with him.

‘Reid, old boy,' I said, from behind his shoulder, ‘I have a bone to pick with you.'

His shoulder twitched up. He didn't turn. ‘OK, man. Whatever.'

‘Well, the fact is, Annette told me about, you know, you. And her.'

‘Oh!' He stopped and faced me.

I stopped, leaning against the railing. Hundreds of feet below, the water gleamed like hammered lead. Reid fumbled out a cigarette, dropped it, picked it up and lit it.

‘What can I say?' he said. He spread his hands, swayed, and laid his right hand on the parapet. ‘It happened, what's the use denying it, and it was my fault, and I'm sorry.'

‘All right,' I said. ‘That's all you have to say.'

‘You're…' He drew hard on the cigarette, cupped glowing in his left hand. ‘You're a good bloke, Jon. She deserves you. And you deserved better of me. I abused your…hospitality, man. No excuse, except it was just fucking…'

His voice trailed off and he looked away from me, out at the distance.

‘
Just fucking
?'

‘…obsession, man, that's the word.' He laughed harshly. ‘I wish I
could
say it was just fucking.'

He looked back at me. The smoke was suddenly foul in my mouth. I sent the red ember spinning over the side, and watched its long slow fall.

‘But I can't,' he went on. ‘I'm not saying that wasn't wrong, but there was more than that. I once even tried to get her to leave you, if you can believe that. But she wouldn't, and she was right, and that was the end of it. Over. And I got over her, and she got over me.'

From that moment I've known that I'm capable of murder. He had one hand on the parapet, one at his side still holding the cigarette. He was again gazing into the distance. A grab for the collar and the belt, one good heave, and he would be over. It would have been easy, and I could have done it.

He turned to me. ‘That was when she told you, right?' There was something of admiration and cunning in his eyes. ‘I know, because that's when all the right-wing shit started arriving, from the Contras and Renamo and East European emigrés and the KMT and the NTS. Mixing it in with the old commies and the libertarians was a neat trick, but I got the message all right. You know some heavy guys, and they know where I live.' He laughed harshly. ‘I've got to hand it to you, Jon, you had me scared.'

I took a step towards him and punched straight for his mouth. It was a good punch – my childhood boxing-lessons hadn't been wasted – and he reacted with a hopelessly slow, country-boy, haymaking swing.

But his connected, and mine didn't. I was slammed against the railing. The top edge hit my lower ribcage and suddenly I was leaning away over it, looking straight down. Straight up, for an unreal moment, as my semi-circular canals turned over and the universe followed them round.

And then I was sick. A Mexican meal, a dozen pints, two whiskies, a portion of curried chips and the tar from a score of Silk Cut and one Mexican cigarillo poured through my mouth and nostrils in a cascade that spattered walkways and ladders and disturbed roosting birds before it fell, with literally sickening slowness, visible all the way, to the water.

‘Are you all right?'

I pushed myself away from the railing.

‘I'm all right,' I said. I blew a fragment of taco and a gobbet of spicy slime from my left nostril onto my fingers, then balled my fist for another go at him.

His eyes widened, but he was looking past me. Brakes squealed. A van pulled up beside us, on the footpath, not on the road.

The door opened and a man in a boiler-suit leaned out.

‘Come on, lads,' he said. ‘We've been keeping an eye on you two. You look like you could do with a lift.'

THE CONQUEST OF VIOLENCE

It's early afternoon and the watches are beeping fifteen. Dee follows Ax across a high, narrow bridge. The walkway is barely a metre wide, the parapets little more than a metre high. Beneath it is a hundred-metre drop to the roofs of a lower level. Above it, taller towers rise. The bridge slopes gently up, curves smoothly around to the right. Dee walks it fearlessly; this is familiar territory to her, the high locale of the high life of those who, in Ship City, pass for rich. Fortunately, however, she has never met Anderson Parris, the man whose residence they're approaching.

Dee has very little doubt that before the next hour is over, she'll have killed a human being. She hasn't done this before, and the prospect arouses in her a certain curiosity. The skills are there, of course, in Spy and Soldier. But she remembers rumours, as from a previous life (from her life before she awoke) that make her wonder if she can access those particular skills. If Sys has changed
the permissions
…There's no way of telling, because that itself is a part of Sys to which she has no access. She recalls people talking, talking as if she wasn't there, of the potential dangers of AIs wandering around in human guise, and she knows that humans set great store by
the permissions.

She has no doubt at all that Ax will be able to do it. Ax is a human being, and human beings don't need any
permissions.
Dee shivers, but not with fear or excitement. The wind is chill at this height, and her new clothes, even inside a green velvet cloak, do little to keep her warm.

 

The door is a bright, slightly convex steel panel, set back in the synthetic rock of the building. Dee admires her distorted reflection, practising transforms on it, while Ax exchanges a few words with a speaker grille. The door slides smoothly sideways, and Ax and Dee walk in. The entrance hallway has inward-sloping walls, and the rightward curve of its floor continues that of the bridge, further into the building. The hall is illuminated by a high skylight, and by tall windows in the outer wall. Electric lights hang at varying levels from the ten-metre-high roof, and likewise suspended bowls overflow with leaves and stalks, flowers and scents.

The door shuts behind them. Dee glances back for a moment, checking that it can be opened manually from the inside. It looks like it can, but Spy's subtler senses are on the job, tracking the pulse-patterns in the wires behind the walls, just in case. Ax's feet pad, Dee's heels click around the curve of the corridor. The wooden doors leading off the corridor are closed. After Dee and Ax have walked to a point where the outer door is no longer visible, the corridor widens out to a stairwell. A few steps up the spiral staircase, a man stands waiting. He's wearing a black kimono embroidered with deep-sky images. His fair hair is swept back from his high forehead. His face is narrow, lips thin, eyelashes sandy, expression serene. To Dee, his smooth and healthy features look old – older far than her, or Ax; almost as old as Reid. And yet they suggest some deeper immaturity, as well as a cruelty which Dee immediately sees as distinct from the cold ruthlessness which was the worst that Reid's most unguarded moments – even now, in replayed recollection – ever betrayed. This man is not like Reid, nor any of his friends or casual acquaintances. No burly businessman who ever ogled her at a meeting, or pawed her at a party, ever made her feel the way she does now, as his gaze inspects her.

Anderson Parris descends the stairs and smiles at Ax.

‘Well, hello,' he says, catching Ax's hands. ‘I'm delighted to see you, and your most interesting and beautiful friend.'

Dee opens a frogged clasp at her throat and removes her cloak. She swings the cloak across her left arm, concealing the bag in her left hand, and languidly extends her right.

‘I'm charmed to meet you, Anderson Parris.'

After a nonplussed moment the man realises she expects him to kiss her hand, and he does. His fingers are cold, his lips damp. As his head lifts from kissing her hand his gaze travels from her high-heeled boots, past her black leather leggings under her black lace skirt, up the ladder of silver clasps and tiny bows on her black satin boned corset-top; to her neck, where a steel-studded leather collar matches the buckled straps on her forearms; to her darkly shadowed eyes. When their eyes meet she looks straight back, with the slight smile of a shared secret.

Sex is in charge here, and Sex has no difficulty in detecting that she has him on a leash. He waves her politely ahead of him, and they go up the stairs. She walks up slowly, letting him have a good view of her tight-laced back. His murmured conversation with Ax carries oddly in the stairwell.

They ascend into a circular room built around the stairwell. Its ceiling is a glass dome above the two-metre-high walls. Dee sees the sun, and the darting manta-shapes of passing aircraft. Nothing else overlooks the room, which seems to combine the functions of a studio, a gallery and a bedroom. There's a drawing-console and a camera-array. Around the walls are chairs, low tables, and long couches which might be used as beds, though the artfully casual deployment of covers and cushions makes their function ambiguous. The walls are hung with ornate weapons – swords of beaten steel, lasers of brass and ruby – and with pictures, of children who look vulnerable and women who look invulnerable.

‘Would you like a drink, lady?'

‘I would,' she says distantly. ‘Dark Star.'

Parris's quick, almost obsequious smile can't quite conceal his momentary grimace at her taste in liquor, but he goes over to a drinks cabinet and a fridge and prepares the mixture. He brings it over, ice clinking, and touches her glass with his own of chilled wine.

Parris smiles as she drains her glass. He discards his kimono. Under it he's wearing deeply unoriginal bondage gear, a costume of belts and clips. His cock is straining against what looks like a painfully tight jockstrap, ‘strap' being the operative word.

Ax, to her surprise, drops on all fours and scampers across the room to a big wardrobe. He nudges the bottom of the door with his head, and the door swings open to reveal an apparatus of chains and straps. Dee slams her (fortunately solid) glass down on the most expensive and delicate table-surface within reach, and turns on her heel and looks at Parris.

‘I understand,' she says coldly, ‘that you have been a very wicked man.'

Parris nods. His eyes are shining, in a face that's become a flushed mask of humility.

Dee lets the Sex program play out the scene. She slaps his face, a little harder than he perhaps expects.

‘I have come to judge you,' she says. She pretends to think, scrutinising him. She looks around the room, until her glance lights on the open cupboard. Ax is squatting beside it, his tongue hanging out. Dee's eyes widen in mock surprise. She points to the cupboard.

‘Over there,' she orders. Parris walks towards it. He flashes her a servile, collusive smile.

‘Eyes
down
!' Dee yells.

Parris obediently bows his head and walks to the door.

Dee has the whole protocol mapped out in her head, but she's not really into this sort of thing (being, if truth be told, more sub than dom) and she gives the finicky business of shackling and binding him perhaps less attention than it deserves. It ends with her squeezing his cheeks until he opens his mouth. She pops a rubber ball into his mouth, closes his jaws with a finger on his nose and a thumb on the point of his chin, and slaps a piece of insulating-tape (of a suitably shiny black) across his mouth.

She drops out of character for a moment.

‘OK?'

Parris nods. Dee checks the restraints. They're secure.

Ax, who all the while has been working his way slowly up from the man's toes to his knees with playful nips of his teeth, suddenly stands up and steps back. Dee steps back too, and together they look at the man hanging in the cupboard.

Ax smiles into Parris's suddenly troubled, puzzled stare. He reaches behind his neck, and the long knife is in his hand. He tosses it sideways into the other hand, and then back. He inspects the edge. The side of the blade catches flashes of sunlight; the edge betrays only the faintest flicker, as if even photons slide off it.

He looks again at Parris.

‘Woof,' he says.

 

Wilde had more than one cigarette-stub at his feet by the time he saw the girl striding towards him through the market crowd. He straightened up from leaning on the mainframe.

‘Tamara Hunter,' the machine said over his shoulder as the girl stopped and stuck out her hand. ‘Jonathan Wilde.'

She cocked her head sideways and looked him over as he shook her hand.

‘My God,' she said. ‘You really are him.'

Wilde grinned. ‘You look somehow familiar yourself.'

‘The pub last night,' Tamara reminded him. ‘Mind you, if ever anyone had eyes only for one woman, it was you.'

‘Ah, of course,' Wilde said. ‘You were with…Dee.'

‘Yes,' Tamara said. She looked about. ‘Where's your robot?'

‘Hah!' Wilde snorted. ‘You and I are supposed to be on the same side, according to this electric lawyer here, so don't you go saying “your robot”. I'm damned if I'll admit it's
my
robot. The fact is, it's fucked off on its own somewhere.'

‘Oh,' Tamara said. She glanced at the Invisible Hand mainframe. ‘We're going for a private discussion,' she told it.

‘Very well,' the machine said. ‘I shall proceed with the technical aspects of the case.'

Tamara turned to Wilde. ‘Talk about it over a beer?'

‘God, yes.'

They wended their way between stalls and under trees. The market boomed around them. When they were – as far as it was humanly possible to tell – out of Invisible Hand's earshot, Wilde asked, ‘Just as a matter of curiosity, is that piece of legal machinery self-aware?'

Tamara laughed. ‘Nah, it's just an expert system. It has its little quirks, mind.'

‘Yeah, you could say that.' He looked at a cluster of tables around an array of counter, refrigerator and grill, all small and all scorched. A tall Turk stood in the middle, his hands dealing out drinks and sandwiches for greasy wads of money. ‘Here?'

Tamara nodded, with an appreciative smile at his good judgement. Wilde ordered two litres of beer. They sipped for a minute from the beaded brown bottles, in thirsty silence, and checked each other out.

‘Smoke?' Wilde said, retrieving a now battered pack.

‘No thanks,' Tamara said. ‘But go ahead.'

Wilde smiled at her. ‘This is my first pack for centuries,' he said as he lit up. ‘Not that that's much of an excuse. For one thing, to me it all happened the day before yesterday, and for another it's smoking that got me killed.'

Tamara frowned. ‘The books tell different stories, but I thought you died in some shoot-out.'

‘That was it,' Wilde nodded. ‘Tried to run faster than a bullet, but –' He looked ruefully at the cigarette, and took another drag as Tamara laughed.

‘This is weird,' she said. ‘I've talked to some people who were in the ship, and who actually came from Earth – hell, my grandparents did – but they never talk about having been dead. They talk about having been “in transition”.'

‘Yeah,' Wilde said sardonically. ‘“In denial” is the technical term for that frame of mind.'

‘But you do…and you being, like, a historical character. Wow, fuck!' She studied his features judiciously. ‘You look different in the pictures. Older.'

‘In
what
pictures?' Wilde demanded.

Tamara reached into an inside pocket, and passed to Wilde a plastic wallet containing a set of cards.

‘I, um, collect them,' she explained as Wilde began to spread them out. ‘They come free with, uh, a cereal that gets made in this area.'

‘Harmony Oats!' Wilde shouted with laughter. He spread out the wood-cut portraits. ‘Let's see…Owen, Stirner, Proudhon, Warren, Bakunin, Tucker, Labadie, Wilson, Wilde. They've got the ancestry right, but I doubt I deserve such exalted company. I'm not sure whether to be flattered or appalled.'

He looked down at the scored lines of the iconic faces, and passed a hand over his own fresh features. He shook his head.

‘When I first looked like I do now I was far from famous,' Wilde said. His voice sounded sad for a moment, cheerier as he added: ‘Perhaps it's just as well.'

‘Dead right!' Tamara looked around. ‘You're going to be famous all over again, when this gets out. Which it will, when the court case starts, if not sooner.'

Wilde shrugged. ‘I'd like to delay it as long as possible. My grasp of the politics of this place isn't strong enough to handle publicity to my advantage.'

‘OK,' said Tamara. ‘We have a more immediate problem. Before I learned that you were involved, I got a message from David Reid. You…knew him?'

‘Sure did. Once.'

‘Right, well he's suing me to get the gynoid, Dee, back. Fair enough, I expected that. I
want
to make a case of it. Invisible Hand has just told me you were being sued too, and that you wanted to combine forces. As a matter of fact you don't have much choice, as it's all part of the same case in actuality, so no other court is going to touch yours while ours is outstanding, and we'd have to bring you into it anyway, so you might as well go in on your own terms.'

Wilde spread his hands. ‘So what's the problem?'

‘The first person on our list of preferred judges is a bloke called Eon Talgarth.' She paused, waiting for some reaction. Wilde just raised his eyebrows. ‘He used to be an abolitionist,' Tamara went on, ‘and he now runs a court out in the Fifth Quarter. That's a machine domain. Most of the disputes he settles are between scrappies.'

‘Scrappies?'

‘People like me, who go into the machine domains and hunt for useful bits of machinery and automation. He's been known to let autonomous machines go free, and put injunctions on hunting them, but no other judge has accepted that as a precedent.'