Fractions (69 page)

She settled in my lap, and on the map. ‘But if you let the Army in, what do you think will happen? The Army will get sucked into our way of doing things – the economic way, not the political way. They'll have to do deals and trade combat futures and take disputes to court companies and swap laws and all the rest of it.'

‘How do you know they won't just do things their way?' Mike asked.

‘Because Julie's right,' Annette said. ‘They don't want a fight on their hands. They don't want to conquer us, they want to buy us off. In fact it looks like they already have bought off the defence companies. And what's bought can be sold. Before they know it they'll be practising anarcho-capitalism without believing a word of it.'

‘Just like every other group that's come in here,' Julie said sourly. ‘And look where that's got us.'

‘Yes, look,' I said. ‘It's got us twenty years of peace and freedom, and tolerance between people who jointly and severally hated each others' guts!'

Juan, Mike and Julie had to laugh. It was a notorious fact that libertarians in Norlonto were rarer than communists in what Reid used to call the workers' states.

‘I think Annette has a point,' I said carefully, as if it wasn't what I'd been thinking all along and hadn't got around to articulating (I could never have gotten away with the passionate pacifism of her appeal). ‘There's another point we've tended to forget, and it's been bugging me recently. Over the years we've got so caught up in running Norlonto, in as much as it hasn't run itself, that we've tended to ignore what's been going on in space. I know, I know, it's been a sort of socialism-in-one-country versus world revolution thing, and Space Defense held the high orbits, and apart from Alexandra Port there wasn't much practical we could do. I remember years ago some of us tried setting up experimental laser-launchers, and got stomped on from a great height. But now Space Defense is out on a limb, and we have friends – comrades – in Lagrange and on the Moon trying to build ecosystems out of a rag, a bone and a tank of air. It's about time we did something about it. So I say, if the statists want Norlonto, let 'em have it. We can find better things to do.'

I sat back, feeling Annette's weight shift too, seeing the butterfly image tremble. The other three space movement leaders were looking at me and communicating under the table – as it were – with each other. I hoped they would be at least secretly relieved at the idea of saving the Movement's honour by
not
fighting.

Juan's fetch glowed with incoming information, dopplered back to an image of himself.

‘OK, Wilde,' he said. ‘We think we can sell it. Get ready to wake up early. Julie's going to fix up interviews with you on as many channels as possible. Now, I suppose it's time to…'

‘Get back to your constituencies, and prepare for government,' I said.

Nobody laughed.

When the others had faded from view I moved to take the VR glasses off, and felt Annette's hands catch my wrists.

‘No,' she said. She swooped into my face, passed out at the back and came around again. ‘This is fun. Why didn't you tell me about it before?'

She stood up, dragged me out of the chair and pulled me down on the real table, the virtual image of our stateless state swaying in front of my eyes. We groped and fumbled and fucked on the kitchen table, on the mapped city, while above us two butterflies mated in the infinite dark.

Dee is experiencing her first guilty pleasure. The pleasure comes from sitting on the grassy, boulder-strewn side of a valley, under Earth's sun. The sky is a different blue, the clouds a different white, to anything she's ever seen, even in her Story dreams. At the bottom of the valley, far below her, a brown river tumbles over black stones. Farther down the valley, the peace of the scene is disrupted by the clangour of construction on a vast pylon. But from where Dee sits, the distant noise only emphasises the surrounding quiet; the rush of work by half-a-dozen tiny, scrambling figures only reminds her that she has nothing to do but relax, and breathe deep of the clean, thick air of Earth.

The guilt comes from its all being an illusion: a full-immersion virtual reality which has her so spellbound that she understands exactly why this seductive subversion of the senses is so much frowned upon. The most decadent sybarite in the upper lofts of Ship City will sternly inform you that this kind of thing is unnatural, has rotted the moral fibre of great civilisations, and makes you go blind.

She's a little guilty, too, that Ax can't share it. He's stuck out in the real world, mooching in the back of the truck. The half-tracked vehicle is like a gigantic, elongated version of Jay-Dub's upper shell. Its brushed-aluminium skin conceals several centimetres of armour-plate. Its nuclear turbines can give it a top speed of a hundred kilometres an hour, with a flat surface and a clear run. In its stores are many fearsome and fascinating things, but VR immersion gear is not among them.

Dee's in via a direct cortical jack, plugged in to a socket behind her ear. Ax could do this too, but there's only one jack, and she needs it – or rather, it's needed for her. Ax is (she has to assume) still sitting under the raised visor of the tailgate, with his legs dangling over the end of the truck, and applying his electronic version of telepathy to the dodgy reception of an old television. He's also (she hopes) keeping a watchful eye out for predators, bounty-hunters, and dust-storms. The crawler's systems, and Jay-Dub's, are well prepared for all of them, but as Dee looks down the virtual valley, she suspects that they're more than a little preoccupied. She knows a thing or two about CPU time, and from here she can see a lot of it being used.

And not only by Jay-Dub and the vehicle. One reason why she's been sent off up the hill and instructed to do as little as possible is that her own systems are almost fully engaged. Her body, out in the real world, is lying in the back of the truck, limp as a rag-doll. All but two of the figures working on the skeletal tower, just below the long, low house whose graceful shape juts out of the slope like an overhang, are aspects of herself. Soldier is there, and Scientist, and Spy and Sys, helping two other entities with their strange work. Stores and Secrets don't manifest themselves in VR as anything like people: instead, they're tangled, almost impenetrable bundles of live wires and sharp thorns and equally discouraging objects. The dark figures dance and poke around them, and now and again snatch something from the thickets and carry it off triumphantly to add to the bristling tower.

The two other entities are the ones that inhabit Jay-Dub all the time. She met them after Jay-Dub had taken them in its boat up the Stone Canal, far out into the desert, last night. They are the old man and the young girl who spoke to her from the truck. (The truck, indeed, is a version of this vehicle, and she can understand the attraction of its illusory, cluttered cab.) Away from the cab, in the valley and in the house, Meg is a graceful, elegantly dressed woman, but in the cab she's a slut. Her face and eyes are the same in both virtual environments; but her eyes always seem larger and darker, when her smile haunts your memory, than they are when you see them again.

Ax has been given the task of watching the news, and following the court case when it starts. Meanwhile Wilde, the old man in the robot's mind, has harnessed all the resources of its mind and hers to crack the problem – as he puts it – independently of the outcome. He and Meg, and the spectral shapes of Dee's separate selves, are running about like ants at a fire.

And Dee is up here, on the hillside, all by her Self.

 

Tamara caught Wilde's elbow. His fists were clenched, his heels were off the ground. He was leaning forward, staring after Reid and Reid's companions.

‘You can always kill him afterwards,' she said. ‘If it comes to a fight.'

Wilde relaxed somewhat. Slowly his hands uncurled. He gave Tamara a smile to set her at her ease, and looked down at the cigarette Reid had given him. It was still smouldering, the filter tip flattened between his fingers. He took a last long drag of it, and threw it away.

‘He said I was a puppet, and Wilde was dead.' He shook his head, then shivered. ‘If Jonathan Wilde is dead, who killed him, eh?'

‘NOT ADMISSIBLE,' the MacKenzie adviser told him.

Wilde snorted, blinked away a floating footnote about rules of evidence, and sat down on one of the seats. He crushed his paper cup and stuffed it into the mug that Reid had left. He reached for Tamara's hand and drew her to a seat. She sat down on it sidelong, facing him.

‘What was all that –' her voice dropped ‘– about the fast folk?'

Wilde glanced around. Seats around them were filling up, as people settled down to await the beginning of the case: Reid's supporters and theirs, as well as an increasing number of people who didn't fit in either camp, and who were drifting in from the main gate. These visitors, as distinct from the litigant alliances, made a colourful showing, with their hacked genes, elective implants or biomech symbionts. News remotes prowled about, some on the ground, some – supported by small balloons or tiny haloes of rotor-blades – drifting or hovering overhead. Up at the front someone tested microphones, generating howls of feedback.

‘There's no time,' Wilde said. He sighed and repeated, as if to himself, ‘There's no time.' Then he clasped Tamara's hand and said urgently, ‘Look, you've seen something of what Reid really thinks. I don't know if he'll try that in court – he can't very well claim I'm human, and Jay-Dub's owner, and then turn around and say what he just said. But there's a lot more at issue than the matters before the court. If the outcome goes against him, there's no way Reid will go along with it. And if it goes against us, there's no way
we
can go along with it!'

‘We could challenge him to single combat,' Tamara said, as if it were a good idea. Wilde laughed at her.

‘Do you really fancy my chances?'

Tamara thought it over, eyed him critically. ‘Nah. Not really. You're bigger, but he's faster.' She brightened. ‘But I'd have a chance, or I could call on an ally. Shit. Wish Ax was with us.'

‘Forget it,' Wilde said. ‘You're fighting no battles for me.'

‘Battles…' Tamara sat up straight. ‘You said there might be big trouble. I can tell the comrades to get ready. In Circle Square we've got a few good fighters, and people who've studied all the great anarchist battles – Paris, Kronstadt, Ukraine, Barcelona, Seoul, Norlonto…'

‘Yeah, right,' said Wilde. ‘Well, I hate to break this to you at such a late date and all, but there's one vital thing all the great anarchist battles of history have in common.'

‘Yes?'

Wilde stood up and got ready to move down to the front row. He grinned at Tamara's eager enquiry.

‘They were all defeats,' he said.

 

Wilde took his seat, with Tamara at his right and Ethan Miller at his left. The others who'd come with him filled the other seats on either side. Farther to the left, across a passage between the files of seats, Reid and his immediate supporters had positioned themselves. The rest of the hundred or so seats were occupied, and twice as many more people – human or otherwise – made shift to stand or sit on the grass. In front of all of them was the wooden dais with its simple furnishings, and an array of microphones and cameras. From the labels stuck on them they appeared to be from the news-services rather than part of the court's arrangements, but some of them had been cabled to loudspeakers at the rear of the seats, the cobweb threads of the cables shining on the damp and now trampled grass. Ethan ostentatiously checked the mechanisms of his rifle.

At a minute before ten, the voices hushed, and the other sounds – of breathing, of shifting, of recording – seemed louder, as Eon Talgarth walked up the central aisle. Heads and cameras turned. Talgarth faced straight ahead.

He was a slight-built man, of medium height, with wispy brown hair slicked back under a tall hat. He wore a plain black suit and white shirt, with a blue tie. His features conveyed a greater maturity than Ship City's fresh-faced fashions normally affected. When he reached the dais he bounded up on it, and sat down carefully on the canvas seat. He filled his glass with a yellow liquid, sipped it, and lit a cigarette. His narrow-eyed gaze swept the crowd.

‘Right,' he said, in a London accent that sounded archaic and drawling by comparison with the clipped local speech. ‘Begin.'

 

Reid stood up at once and walked to the nearest microphone.

‘Objection,' said Wilde, rising. ‘My charge is the more serious, and should be heard first.'

‘Over-ruled,' said Eon Talgarth. ‘His claim was prior.'

Wilde turned an incipient shrug into a polite bow, and sat down. ‘WORTH A TRY,' the adviser told him.

Reid addressed the judge.

‘Esteemed Senior,' he said. ‘Thank you for hearing us.'

‘Thank you for honouring the court with your custom,' Talgarth said. ‘Now, what's your charge?'

Reid paused, and then spoke as if reading from a note: ‘My charges are against Jonathan Wilde, and Tamara Hunter. My charge against Jonathan Wilde is that the robot known as Jay-Dub, property of the same Jonathan Wilde, was used to corrupt the control systems of a Model D gynoid, known as Dee Model, property of myself. My charge against Tamara Hunter is that she illegally took possession of the gynoid, subsequently claimed that Dee Model was abandoned property, knowing that the gynoid was not abandoned, and raised an improper defence of the gynoid's falsely claimed autonomy against the recovery agents of its lawful owner.'

Talgarth looked at Wilde and Tamara.

‘Do you accept these charges, or contest them?'

They both stood up. ‘We contest them.'

‘Very well,' said Talgarth. With one airy wave he gestured for them to sit, and Reid to continue.

‘The material evidence for these charges,' said Reid, ‘has been brought to your attention through the First City Law Company, and I wish to introduce it formally. One: a transcript of an interaction between my gynoid, known as Dee Model, and another artificial intelligence. Two: personal records of interactions I have had in the past, with an artificial intelligence embodied in a robot known as Jay-Dub. The authenticity of these records can be, and has been, independently verified.'

Talgarth nodded. ‘The court accepts their provenance.'

‘Challenge?' Wilde murmured into his adviser's mike.

‘NO CHANCE.'

‘Three,' Reid went on, ‘the public record of the ownership of Jay-Dub, posted many years ago with the Stras Cobol Mutual Bank. Its owner is identified as Jonathan Wilde, my opponent in this case.'

‘Will the person identifying himself as Jonathan Wilde please rise?'

Wilde complied, turning around so that every eye and lens in the place could see him.

‘Thank you,' said Talgarth, with a curt nod to Wilde. ‘You may sit.' He turned again to Reid. ‘Continue.'

‘Fourth, and finally,' Reid said. ‘An autonomy claim posted through Invisible Hand Legal Services, by Tamara Hunter, also in this court –'

The identification ritual was repeated.

‘– and alleged to be on behalf of Dee Model, an allegedly abandoned automaton.'

Talgarth took another sip of his drink, and fixed his eye on Tamara.

‘We accept that this claim was posted,' she said.

‘Fine,' Talgarth said. He tapped a cigarette out of a pack, and lit it.

‘So that's the evidence,' he said. ‘You needn't introduce evidence about Tamara Hunter's defence of Dee Model, as the incident is a matter of public record. The court acknowledges that there's a case to answer, on the face of it.'

Wilde stood up, blinking spasmodically as the MacKenzie downloaded a sudden screed past his eyes.

‘We are prepared to answer it, and to lay counter-charges,' he said. ‘However, I need a few moments to assimilate some new information. I crave the court's indulgence for…ten minutes?'

A ripple of impatience and derision disturbed the crowd.

‘You have seven,' said Talgarth.

 

What the MacKenzie adviser was telling Wilde, and which he précised to Tamara and a huddle of their supporters, was this:

Invisible Hand's sub-contracted software agents, on a (necessarily slow) trawl of Ship City's vast, unencrypted public records – which, in the absence of anything resembling a civil service, suffered from inadequate maintenance, low compatibility and shoddy indexing – had uncovered a single, intriguing reference to Jay-Dub and Eon Talgarth. They had never had any recorded contact since the landing, but they had been on the same work-teams back on the other side of the Malley Mile.

‘Does this change anything?' Tamara asked.

‘I don't know,' Wilde said. ‘But Reid must know about this, just as he must know that Talgarth took a pretty dim view of my activities back on Earth.'

Ethan Miller thrust his face forward. ‘We should get the trial called off, man! The judge is biased against you, and maybe against Jay-Dub as well.'

‘We can't,' said Wilde. ‘We've agreed to him, I've said publicly I trust his judgement, and we can't turn round now and say we didn't know.'