Stories










Stories

 

Charles Stross

 

Contents

Ancient of
Days

Antibodies

A Boy and
his God

The Boys

A Colder War

The Concrete
Jungle

Dechlorinating
the Moderator

Different
Flesh

Down On The
Farm

Examination
Night

Extracts
from the Club Diary

Generation
Gap

Halo

Lobsters

MAXO signals

M*ss*g* *n *
t*m* c*ps*l*

The Midlist
Bombers

Minutes of
the Labour Party Conference, 2016

Missile Gap

Nightfall

Pimpf

Red, Hot and
Dark

Remade

Rogue Farm

SEAQ and
Destroy

Ship of
Fools

Snowballłs
Chance

Something
Sweet

Toast: A Con
Report

Trunk And
Disorderly

Yellow Snow

Appeals
Court

Unwirer

Jury Service

Tarkovskyłs
Cut

 

Ancient of Days

There were less than two weeks to go until Christmas, and
flakes of snow were settling silently on the window-sill. Sue leaned against
the wall next to the casement so that her breath formed patterns of
condensation on the glass. The red glow of the newly-lit street lights turned
the falling snow to blood, drifting down across the deserted alleyway behind
the lab. She blinked slowly. Was it her imagination or was there a new shadow
behind the dump-bins? Holding her breath so that it would not fog the glass,
she stared out of the window. The shadow disappeared and she breathed out. Then
she undid the catch and swung the window open in invitation. �Youłre late," she
said.

The shadow re-appeared in front of her, resolved into the
shape of a man shrouded in a donkey-jacket against the cold. �Rush-hour
traffic," he said, his voice somehow deadened by the softness that settled on
every surface. �Help me in?"

Sue extended a hand. He took it and levered himself up and
over the sill. He swung himself into the room and dropped to the floor, looking
around as he did so. �Youłre wet," said Sue. �Did you bring any equipment?"

He nodded and held up a small brief case. She looked at his
face. Something wasnłt quite right. �You look strained," she said as she shut
the window.

He nodded tiredly. �I am not as young as I used to be,
Sally. If you knew what I had to do to get here
"

�I can guess, and as for the name Iłm called Sue," she said,
a trifle too sharply. He stared at her for a moment then nodded and forced a
smile. The shape of his cheekbones turned it into something hollow and
unconvincing.

�Please accept my apologies then
Sue. Itłs late and Iłve
got a job to do and wełve all been under considerable stress recently
"

�Accepted. Just remember who it was who laid their neck on
the line to get a job here ..."

�It is noted," he said curtly.

�No itłs not!" she flashed. �This unit is licensed to work
with pathogenic organisms. They wanted a blood sample and insisted upon giving
me a series of vaccinations
"

�Ah, Iłm sure it hurt." He shook his head, oblivious to the
finer points of immunological stress. �But in view of what you found thatłs
immaterial now, isnłt it?"

She turned away angrily and busied herself with an untidy
pile of papers that sat on the desk in the corner by the centrifuge.

�Believe me when I say that this could be the greatest
threat we have ever encountered," he said softly. �Greater than any ancient
encounter with half-glimpsed horrors ..."

She nodded slowly, wondering if she had it in herself to
forgive him the slight. �You might have a point," she said. �But only time will
tell." She rummaged through a drawer in search of a paper-clip, bound the
documents together, and slid them out of the way. Then she walked to the
battered metal locker and removed a creased lab coat. �Letłs make a start on
it, shall we?"

Kristoph grinned and removed his donkey-jacket. �Letłs," he
said. He opened his brief case and pulled out a pair of disposable plastic
gloves. �Now who shall we apportion the blame to? How about some animal rights
activists? Or shall we make it look like an industrial job this time, do you
think?"

Kristoph was not his real name. He had no real birth
certificate, although he had carried several. He was much older than Sue, and
he had lived through interesting times. He had lost a large part of his heart
on the Eastern front, so that fifty years later he still wondered if he could
ever be whole again: he had survived the decades since the war by auctioning
his soul at Checkpoint Charlie, running jobs for Stasi and the CIA and another,
less familiar Organisation. With the collapse of the Wall he had been set free
to wander, and finally to turn his hand to Family business. As he prepared for
the job in hand he whistled a half-forgotten marching song to himself.

�Will you stop doing that?" asked Sue.

He glanced up from his kit and caught her eye. �Why?"

�Anyone would think you were an old Nazi," she said.

�Oh." He glanced down again so that she wouldnłt see his
smile. Now he remembered what the tune was. �Time flies," he said, clipping the
camera shut. Then he stood up. �How long have you been here then?" he asked.

Sue walked to the window and stared out of it again. �Two
years," she said, �but thatłs only in this job. I had to go to one of their
Universities to qualify for it. My family
"

�Demonstrated a laudable degree of fore-sight," opined Kristoph.

�In this day and age anything else condemns you to life as a
menial. Times have changed. If you want to get ahead youłve got to play by
their rules. The netłs too tight."

Kristoph, who knew better than she, held his silence.

�Iłve heard all the old tales," Sue continued. �My parents
are really keen on them. But things arenłt the same, are they? Itłs hard to
maintain a sense of ... community ... while all around us ..."

Kris stood up. �I think youłd better show me to the offices.
We donłt want to start too late; this could take all night."

Sue turned slowly, looking around as if she had forgotten
where the door was. When she opened it she glanced swiftly down the corridor
outside. �Clear," she called over her shoulder as she slipped out of the
basement laboratory. Kristoph looked around curiously as he followed her
through the deserted passages of the department.

The concrete floor was scuffed and dirty and the whitewashed
walls had seen better days. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting what
Kristoph saw as a gangrenous blue-green glare across the crowded bulletin
boards. An ancient ultra-centrifuge keened to itself in a shadowy niche as they
hurried past. Sue pushed through two pairs of fire doors and turned a corner on
a concealed staircase. �Meet me in room D-11 if we become separated," she said.
�Itłs two flights up. Therełs a walkway from the corridor opposite it to the
Geophysics block if you need a quick getaway."

�I donłt think that will be necessary," he said quietly.

�You know there are security guards?" she asked, pausing on
a landing half-way between floors.

�Whatever makes you think wełll encounter any trouble?" he
replied, looking her straight in the eyes.

She appeared to be slightly flustered. �Nothing," she said.
�I just thought you spook types always liked to know a way out of a tight
corner
"

Kris held her gaze for a moment then nodded. �The ones you read
about are the ones who get caught," he said. �Donłt worry about me, Sue. I can
take care of myself." He waved a hand in an abrupt cutting motion. �Carry on.
We havenłt got all night."

Presently they arrived outside a locked door. �This is it,"
she said.

Kristoph bent over the lock for a couple of minutes,
fiddling with a set of fine-tipped pliers. �Youłve got to be careful to leave
all the right signs," he murmured. �Otherwise the Polizei get suspicious. Is
there a vending machine anywhere near here?"

�Sure," said Sue. �Why?"

�Get me a cup of coffee, please," he said. �White, no sugar.
Wełre going to be here a while."

The lock snicked open and he turned the door handle as she
walked away. The room within was darkened. He pushed the door open and reached around
it for the light switch, every nerve straining for signs of potential trouble.
But there was nothing amiss: it was just another night-time office, plastic
covers drooping over the copier and word processors. He breathed out slowly,
willing the muscles in his arms to relax as he looked around. There were papers
in every in-tray, filing cabinets full of pre-publication data: he rubbed the
skeleton keys in his pocket. The soul of a research group lay exposed to his
midnight fingers, so prosaic an institution that it seemed ridiculous to
connect it to some hideous, numinous threat to the survival of the race. But
that was what Ancient of Days had said
and Kris knew full-well, with the
bitterness of experience, that when Ancient of Days spoke, everyone listened.

Kris went to work with a precision that was born of long experience.
First he closed the venetian blinds; then he switched on the photocopier and
went to work on the first of the filing cabinets as it warmed up. His
brief-case he placed upon a nearby desk, opening it to reveal two reams of
lightweight copier paper: why bother with toys like Minox spy-cams, his
trainers had once explained, when any well-run office provides all the tools
you need? He whistled as he worked, in an effort to forget the snow on the
window ledge. If it wasnłt for that damned snow, with its burden of remembered
horrors preying on his mind, he might even admit that he was happy.

There was a knock on the door. Kristoph spun round then relaxed,
recognizing that it was Sue: a slight catch in her breath and the way she
shifted her balance on the floor outside gave her away. �Come in," he said,
turning back to examine the suspension files in the top drawer of the first
cabinet.

She opened the door. �Your coffee," she said, placing the
cup next to his case. �Any idea how long youłll be?"

He yawned, baring teeth as white as those of an actor in a
toothpaste commercial. �You tell me. If therełs not much to lift from the
project files, then ..."

�Youłre in the wrong cabinet for the research data," she observed,
looking over his shoulder. �Thatłs all departmental admin. The interesting
stuff is filed in the drawers marked Homoeobox Research Group. Funded by the
Human Genome Project, natch."

�Itłs all greek to me," said Kris, turning to the indicated
cabinet. Greece, yes ... and the partisans in the hill country ... he stamped
on the memory. Maybe Iłve been around too long, he thought bleakly. The
generation gap is widening all the time.

�I shouldnłt worry about it," she replied, sitting down in a
chair in front of one of the word processors. �Change overtakes us all. This
shit is so new itłs all developed since I left school."

�How long ago was that?" Kristoph asked, picking out the
first file and carrying it across to the copier.

�Ten years since I took ęAł levels," she said, �then a batchelorłs
degree, Masters, Phd and research for the past two years. Iłm in a different
field, though. She rolled her chair round, craning her head back to stare at
the ceiling. �Polysaccharide chemistry, not ontological genetics. Theyłve made
huge breakthroughs in the past ten years, you know. How long is it since you
were at school?"

Kris laughed. �I was never at school," he said, stacking
papers face-down in the feeder tray. �At least not as you know it. I learned to
read and write in primary school with the other children, but then the
dictatorłs men came. Ideology was in the driverłs seat, and there were secret
police
night and mist
and identity papers to contend with. We couldnłt move
as freely as we did before all this modern nonsense. I went into the army at
sixteen because I was a young fool and thought it was a good way to get away
from home, to lose myself among millions of other young men; I didnłt
understand about humans then."

He fell silent for a while, watching the sharp-edged shadows
moving on the wall behind the photocopier. I donłt think I should have told her
that. �We suffered in that war," he said quietly. �I donłt know how many died;
therełs no way of telling. But all through that area
the pain
"

�Then you must be, what? Sixty years old?" Sue asked. She
wasnłt spinning the chair any more: she was staring at him, her face a sharply
pointed question, hungry for answers. �And still, you
"

�Still," he said. �Iłm not even settled down with a family.
If I was human I would be an old man, now. Retired to tend my bed of roses."
Abruptly, he leaned forward and grabbed the stack of ejected documents, stuffed
them back into their file and returned them to their drawer in exchange for
another bundle. �They created the roses, you know? The humans. They bred them,
from earlier plants."

�I know," she said. �Just as now theyłre trying to redesign
themselves to fit their own desires. Itłs an interesting preoccupation ..."

Kris shuddered at the sight of her expression. �Pass the
next file. Whatłs your real name?" he asked without looking up.

She told him.

�Well," he said, running his long, thin tongue along his
lips as he stared at the control panel: �you would do well to remember who you
are, Sue, and think carefully about where your loyalties lie. Wełre letting
them play with fire, and you are sitting very close to the hearth. There are
those who would say that if you were to be burned it would be only your own
fault."

She walked away from him, towards the window. �I say that as
a friend," he added. �There are other groups at work as well ..."

She turned round then, and Kris felt himself frozen by the
black spike of her gaze. He stared back at her unwaveringly. Something very
ancient and very chilly passed between them and he made a small gesture with
his right hand, a relic of an upbringing in backwoods Silesia. Behind them the
photocopier whined on, unattended in its shadowy corner. �You donłt know what
youłre talking about," she said, her face relaxing into a shape that was both
alien and intimately familiar to Kristoph. �Believe me, genetic manipulation is
perfectly safe," she added, baring inhumanly sharp teeth at him. �You can tell
that to Ancient of Days. Itłs safe as stones as long as wełre in control. Safe
as stones ..."

***

Later, as soon as it could be arranged, five strangers
gathered in impromptu committee. There were no validated safe houses available
in the city at present, and Ancient of Days had insisted upon full security
precautions being observed: therefore they met in the a place normally
maintained for serious emergencies, where interruption was unlikely.

The city sewer systems were more than a century old, and a
lengthy program of refurbishment had been under way for ten years now. Old
brick-lined tunnels crumbled gently beneath the pounding wheels of trucks and
cars, and the new prefabricated concrete sewers by-passed them completely. The
original maps were in poor condition, many of them lost during the war, and the
old lore of the tunnel-walkers had dwindled as a result of modern career
mobility, but there were still some who knew where the ancient tunnels ran. One
of those summoned hence conference had spent years in similar tunnels under
Bucharest; and another had been around when they were built. And tonight, two
nights after Kristophłs twilight raid on the research groupłs offices, they
were about to meet.

Slime wreathed the sewer, forming a tide-mark three-quarters
of the way up the rotting brick walls. Five metres below the streets of the
city it was completely dark, and Kristoph was forced to stoop over his lantern
in order to keep his head from brushing the ceiling. Jagged black shadows
danced along the tunnel behind him like a retinue of silently mocking mimics.
Once a pair of close-set red eyes gleamed at him from an outflow: Kris nodded
at them as he shuffled towards the meeting place. There was no telling where
Ancient of Days might cast her eyes and ears. He pushed onwards, ever deeper
into the maze of fetid burrows beneath the city, wading knee-deep in ancient
effluent. His thoughts were grim.

He arrived at a dead end. A pile of rocks and mud had collapsed
through a hole in the ceiling, blocking off the tunnel ahead. Cracked and
rotted timbers poked out of the heap, and a pool of black mud had gathered at
its foot. Kris paused, then reached out and pushed down hard on one of the
exposed timbers. With a gurgling sigh the water around his feet drained away;
whirlpools swirled briefly about his ankles as he braced himself against the
powerful current leading to the concealed grate. Presently the floor was dry

dry enough. Bending down he felt through the mud for a projecting iron ring and
pulled up on it. The trapdoor was ancient but well-maintained, and he let it
swing shut above him as he descended the steps below. Now there was no need for
a torch. Ancient of Days had passed here before him, and where she walked
darkness was not permitted. Kristoph shivered, not from cold but from awe and a
slight, small dread. He had met generals of State Security and deputy directors
of Central Intelligence and he had worked with assassins and spies and
defectors and the other shadowy predators of the cold war jungle; but none of
them possessed even a fragment of the legendary power which Ancient of Days
controlled. And never before had she taken a direct interest in his affairs, to
the point of requesting his attendance ...

He looked around. He stood on dry stone flooring at the
bottom of a high, narrow room similar in shape to an oubliette in a mediaeval
castle, except that it was considerably larger and there was a door set in one
wall. It was a modern door, plywood and aluminium, and it was as jarringly out
of place here as a plastic denture in the jaw of an Egyptian mummy. He shook
his head disapprovingly then reached into a pocket for the key which he had
been given. Then he unlocked the door and went through.

�You can leave it open," she said. Krisłs head snapped round
and he froze, staring at the woman who stood in the corner of the room behind
him. �Wełre expecting three more guests," she added.

�Who are you?" he asked.

�Call me Helena." She came forward, out of the shadow cast
by the weak light bulb that hung from one corner of the ceiling, and Kristoph
realised that she couldnłt possibly be Ancient of Days; for one thing she was
far too young, even though she bore the marks of encroaching middle age. Her
left cheek was scarred by a patch of psoriasis, an angry red margin around a
silvery, scaly patch, and with a sudden jolt Kris realised that she might
actually be human. �Donłt worry: Iłm not as
human
as I look." She rubbed
the back of one gloved hand against her cheek. �There are two others coming,
then Ancient of Days herself. You brought the documents, I take it?"

Kris glanced round, taking in the rest of the room. It was
furnished, albeit sparsely, with camping seats and an upturned tea-chest as a
table. It was also very cold. �Iłd prefer to leave that until the others
arrive."

�Very well then," she said, thrusting her hands into the
pockets of her coat: �it can wait. I hope you appreciate the gravity of the
situation
"

�Lady, Iłm the one who turned over the office," he said with
heavy irony. �I was on the Kennedy assassination committee; I set up spy swaps
during the fifties. Before that, I was site officer on Operation Silver. Trust
me, Iłm a professional."

She laughed, which was not unexpected, then abruptly looked
away, which was. �Bullshit. Spy stuff. Fun and games." She turned back to him.
�This is the real thing," she said intensely: �youłd better believe it! This is
so important that
"

He held up a hand and she stopped. The noise of hands and
feet descending a ladder was clearly audible. �We have company."

The new arrivals didnłt wait around. Both of them came
through the door, then stopped and stared at Kris and
whatever her name was

Helena. �Ivan Salazar and David Jakes?" asked Helena.

�Yeah," said the shorter one, removing a yellow
construction-site helmet and running a pudgy hand through his thinning hair.
�Iłm Dave. Thatłnłs Ivan." The taller one stood with his hands thrust deep in
the outer pockets of his trench coat. Kris stiffened, automatically focusing on
the bulge in Salazarłs right pocket. �Sorry wełre late."

�Any trouble?" asked Helena.

Ivan slowly pulled out his right hand. It was empty, and Kristoph
relaxed slightly. �Not much," Ivan said in heavily-accented English. �Not much
now." He grinned sharkishly and Kristoph looked back at his pocket. Must be a
.22, he thought. Anything bigger would show. Now where have I seen him before?

Kristoph looked back at the tubby American and unexpectedly
realised that he was being stared at. The man had exceedingly cold eyes. �No
offense," he said, �but we ran into some identity verification problems a while
back. Ivan hasnłt had time to change yet."

�Did you deal with the problem?" asked Kris.

Ivan nodded. �He terminated it," said Jakes. �He terminated
it so efficiently that half the police department are after him."

Kris looked round and caught Helenałs eye.

She shook her head very slightly and shivered. �The person
youłve all come here to meet should be arriving any time now. I hope you donłt
mind waiting; shełs a bit slow on her feet these days and likes to take time to
look her visitors over in advance."

�Huh." Ivan stared at the plywood door, irritated by his
treatment but trying not to let his resentment show. �Now youłve introduced us,
how about telling us why wełre here? I mean, this four-star accomodation is all
very flattering, but
"

Salazar chuckled to himself, a warm, throaty sound. �Guess,
man," he said. �Just guess."

�Are you corporate?" Kris asked, raising an eyebrow. �If so,
from which entity?"

�Ah." Jakes shook his head. �Wełre not here to talk about
peripheral business. Itłs bad practice. Observe compartmentalisation at all
times. We are all family, itłs true, but we might be on different sides
�

Kris spat on the floor. �Human sides. Always building walls
between each other. Huh." He turned to Helena. �How long until She arrives?"

�Not long now," she said. �In fact
"

The door opened. Ancient of Days stood waiting. Nobody
moved: the sight of her condition was too shocking.

�Holy shit," whispered the one called Dave. �I had no idea

" He took a step forward.

Ancient of Days raised a warning arm and spoke. �Wait. Come
no closer. My condition is of unknown aetiology and may prove to be infectious
to your kind. Please make yourselves comfortable
" one obsidian pupil swept
the room; a scale-encrusted nostril flared in remote amusement
�insofar as
that may be possible. We have much to discuss."

Kris could hold his peace no longer. �Whatłs going on?" he
demanded angrily, meeting her huge eyes full on. �Why werenłt we told things
had gone this far? The situation may be irrecoverable!" Then he stopped,
shuddering in his boots as he realised what he had just done. Ancient of Days
looked down upon him and for an endless instant of terror he could hear his
heart stand silent, the blood in his veins freezing as he waited for her
response to his presumption.

�That is not yet the case. But, be that as it may, you are
now needed here urgently. Please listen carefully; you will have your turn to
reply. What I called you here to tell you about is a matter long overdue, and
one that should have been dealt with years ago, before the humans reached their
current dangerous state of power."

She looked round at those who were gathered to her, then
re-focussed on Kristoph. �I must start by asking you a leading question, in
order to judge how much you need to know at this stage. Tell me, how much do
you know about genetics? And what
in particular
do you know about the
so-called ęHuman Genome Projectł?"

***

A welcoming house: a hot bath: a loverłs arms. After the
raid Sue went home and tried to lose herself in the eternal present, far away
from the grim shadows that Kristoph had raised by his passage. But there were a
number of obstacles; Eric, for one thing, couldnłt let things be, and for
another thing she couldnłt help wondering just what it was that Kristoph had
been sent to look for.

Eric entered the bathroom as she was rinsing conditioner out
of her hair. He sat down on the closed lid of the lavatory and carefully shut
his book before he turned to face her. �What is it?" asked Sue, switching off
the shower attachment. Unlike Eric, she didnłt read many books when she was
home; only people.

He looked at her and smiled. �Just wondering what it was all
about this evening. Was it really Family business?"

It was characteristic of Eric, an ill-timed curiosity that
pried into hidden corners just when she most wanted to leave them alone. Shełd
become used to it in the eight months theyłd lived together, and expected it to
drive them apart over the next few years. This relationship was an anomaly,
after all; neither of them were mature by the standards of their people, who
were traditionally promiscuous, and their intimacy was more a consequence of
their isolation than of any convergence between them. �No," she said, and then,
on second thoughts: �Iłm not sure. The man they sent
he said he was called
Kristoph, but I donłt believe him. Hełs some kind of spook, can pick locks and
knows how to burgle an office and make it look like someone elsełs fault. He
was hunting for something in the HGP contract notes but I think he didnłt know
quite what hełd been sent to get." She sank back in the bath and shivered, then
reached out to run some more hot water into the tub. �He was really creepy, you
know? And the stuff he was spouting
"

Eric put his book down on the window ledge, carefully avoiding
the patch of condensation that trickled down one corner. He always seemed to be
carrying a book around the house with him, but never seemed to read from it;
she had speculated whimsically that he made himself invisible when he was
reading, as a defence against being disturbed. �Where was this Kristoph from?
Who sent him?" He leaned forward and picked up the conditioner bottle and began
turning it in his hands, inspecting it as if he expected t o discover a hidden
message embedded in its soft pink plastic.

�I donłt know who sent him, but I expect it was some
hard-line oldster shit. He kept referring to the dark: you should have heard
him going on! ęTake care, sorceress, lest they send for the witch-finder
general and burn thee at the stake!ł" Her voice deepened an octave and her
cheeks sagged into nascent jowls as she delivered the injunction to a wisp of
steam that hovered over the shower fitting. �Theyłre still living in the
prehistoric past, Eric, not the new age crap the humans keep spouting on a bout
but the real thing
" she yanked the plug out angrily.

Eric watched in silence as she sat up and let the water
drain around her. She saw him eyeing her breasts as they sagged slightly, no
longer buoyed up by the fluid around her. �Any thoughts on the matter?" she asked,
trying to conceal her anxiety. �Come on, donłt just sit there!"

Eric passed her a towel. �Thanks," she said, standing up and
wrapping it around herself. The air on her skin felt cold even though the room
was half-filled with steam.

�I think we ought to investigate this carefully," he said.
There were times when she hated his imperturbability; just this once it was a
shred of comfort. �It sounds like the kind of intrigue that could affect us if
we ignore it
the dinosaurs still have fangs."

�Huh." She shook her head and stepped out of the tub. �Will
you stop speaking in tongues and give me a straight answer for once?" She
reached out and gently cupped his cheek in her hand. �Whatłs worrying you,
love? All the old stories coming back to haunt you?"

�No, itłs not that." He stood up, accidentally dislodging
her hand in the process. �Itłs just a nagging feeling Iłve got." His face
hardened slightly, so that the soft, pampered look of the mathematics professor
was eclipsed for an instant by some harsher, more primal expression of his
identity. �Maybe we should look into precisely what the HGP group are working
on for their industrial grant. I doubt that the Ancients would be interested if
it was harmless to us. But there might be something we can spot which your
spook wasnłt educated to identify. Something that will put the program in an
entirely different perspective."

***

Helena, assistant to Ancient of Days, nevertheless didnłt
live in the tunnels alongside with her mistress; she had a daylight identity and
a job that payed the bills the night-blind humans levied in return for warmth
and peace among them. After the meeting broke up she found herself inviting
Kristoph back to her house: she deliberately refrained from exploring her
motives. Kristoph, for reasons of his own, accepted the invitation.

Perhaps it was the remembered chill of the news that Ancient
of Days had borne, or perhaps the central heating was malfunctioning; in either
case, the hall was cold as she took off her coat and hung it behind the door.
�Something to drink, perhaps?" she asked as he patiently scraped his boots on
the doormat. �Or some coffee?"

�A drink would be great." Kristoph unbuttoned his coat and
hesitated a moment before hanging it on the door. She heard him test the Yale
lock before he turned and followed her into the living room. �You live here
alone?"

She shrugged and bent down over the sideboard. The stereo
was still switched on and the room filled with the faint strains of Vivaldi.
Two tumblers of scotch appeared, followed by ice from a small refrigerator. �I
like to keep the world at a distance," she said, turning to pass him one of the
glasses. �Iłm no lonelier than I want to be."

�And how lonely is that?"

�Youłre here. Therełve been others, but none of them cared
to compete for my attention with Her."

�Ah." Kristoph sat down at one side of the sofa, then
glanced at her enquiringly. She took a mouthful of burning spirit in order to
cover her indecision, then quickly sat down next to him.

Presently Kristoph asked, �Did you choose to serve Her, or
did she choose you?" He stared into his glass and swirled the thin layer of
liquid around until the bottom was exposed. �I mean, I wasnłt aware that She
has any tradition of priestly attendance ..."

�She doesnłt. And to answer your question, I didnłt choose
to serve her, and she didnłt choose me. It just happened." Helena stared at his
glass for a moment in fascination. �Are you going to drink that?" she asked.

�Eventually. Iłm sorry, itłs just a bad habit of mine. One
of my acquaintances said I was like a cat; I play with my food. I canłt
remember when that was, but it was some years ago." He glanced up and stared
moodily at the window-sill. �I try to cultivate my private eccentricities.
Theyłre a kind of defense, if you will, against this modern habit of living in
crowds. It strikes me that the bigger the city you live in, the more anonymous
you become. Itłs as if itłs an infectious disease, and the most common
side-effect is loneliness."

�Perhaps youłre right." She rubbed her cheek reflectively.
�I certainly donłt know of many other
people
living in this man-swarm.
Perhaps thatłs why She asked me to help her. She needs eyes and ears among the
humans, you know. They used to be easy to deceive, but now their intelligence
is as good as or better than anything we have
"

�No it isnłt," he said. �Please believe me, their
intelligence people know nothing." He said it with a degree of venom that made
her tense instinctively before she realised that it was not directed at her.
�Iłm sorry, Helena. Iłve been alone among them for a long time
perhaps too
long. The time when it was possible to live exclusively among Family folk is
long past."

�It lends a certain tension to life, doesnłt it. There have
been times when Iłve gone months without seeing another weerde face. I felt
like I was going crazy: you know, like that patient of Freudłs ..." she turned
and stared at him intently.

�Steppenwolf. Yes, I knew him well." Kristoph tossed back
what was left of his glass and stared back at her. �Itłs late, Helena. Would
you mind if I stayed the night?"

�Thatłs why I invited you here," she said, her face tingling
with anticipation. �Itłs very cold outside, even though the warłs over. Can you
think of anywhere youłd rather be?" Kristoph was of a certain age, as was she,
and if he didnłt understand what it was like to be single and unmated at fifty
years of age, there was time for plenty more opportunities ahead.

�I canłt," he said, a strange roughness edging into his
voice. �Iłve been searching for a long time now
" He glanced away, suddenly
shy. �I donłt know you, but I feel as if Iłve known you for years," he tried to
explain.

�In the morning you must tell me where youłve spent your
life," she said. �Then maybe we can think about the future." They stood up
simultaneously and came together in an endless, clinging embrace. �But first
"
she kissed him. Gradually, her face relaxed into its primal form, her cheeks
flowing and her teeth expanding to grate against his lengthening jaw as she
felt something vital return to her. A flame of desire that had been bottled up
behind an alien mask for too long had finally discovered its own identity: and
by the time the two lovers raked the clothes from each otherłs backs, an
onlooker would have seen nothing human about them. But that was as it should
be, for neither Helena nor Kristoph were
or ever had been
human.

***

Two days after the raid: and, astonishingly, nobody had
noticed Kristophłs carefully laid trail of clumsy clues. In fact, none of the
staff so much as noticed the unlocked file cabinet or the opened door. It might
as well have been a non-event. Sue, who had been steeling herself for vans with
swirling blue lights in the rainy night and a plastic tape cordon around the
premises, didnłt know whether to laugh or cry. Instead, she took the first
afternoon off with a well-rehearsed migraine and followed it up the next
morning with a headache. Nothing too serious, though. Working in a lab with
biohazard stickers on the door meant that any serious symptoms could land her
in an isolation ward, exposed to risks of examination that she was not prepared
to run.

Eric worked on the other side of the campus, in a cramped office
in the department of Mathematics and Computer Science. How hełd ever got into
academia still mystified her; a knack for passing exams, he used to say,
smiling faintly when she probed for an explanation. Nobody took any notice when
she stopped by his office on her way in to work that afternoon, looking pale
and a trifle nauseated. A lecturer carrying on with a post-grad was nobodyłs
business but their own, after all, and stranger things had b een known to go on
in university staff rooms.

�Up to a rummage tonight?" Sue asked, sitting in his
favourite visitorłs chair and idly stirring the papers on his desk. �We could
go on to a restaurant afterwards
"

Eric pulled open a desk drawer and withdrew a black plastic
case. �No trouble at all," he said. �You think itłll be safe?"

�Sure," she said. �I swallowed enough of the buzz-words to
ask the right questions. Wełll say itłs about a grant extension to your
department and wełve got to dig the right names out to put on the letter. Howłs
that?"

�Iłve been doing a bit of reading around the subject," he
said, gesturing at a fat book balanced on one end of the desk. �Developmental
genetics?"

�Figure a mathematical slant on it," she said, shrugging.
�Otherwise, be yourself."

�Hah. Okay. Wełll leave the copying for some other time. But
for now, are you sure you can remember just which drawer it was that your
visitor took a particular interest in?"

�Pretty much so, yes. He was after HGP-funded stuff, specifically
anything to do with Geiger-DESY Research and a doctor MacLuhan. He didnłt seem
to know what, but he photocopied everything in sight and shoved it in a briefcase.
I couldnłt tell you what the notorious doctor was up to, though; Iłve never
heard of him, he seems to be some kind of industrial connection ..."

�Hah. Thicker and thicker, my dear Watson." He sat up and
spun his chair round to face away from the desk. �How are Geiger-DESY connected
with the Department?"

Sue thought for a moment. �If itłs anything like the way
industrial funding goes elsewhere in the field, itłs a simple directed research
project. In return for a first shot at information from the Homoeobox Research
Team Geiger-DESY pays a huge whack and provides equipment. The University pays
for the staff and gets the kudos while the company get the patent rights. Howłs
that sound?"

�And what line are Geiger-DESY in?" asked Eric, thoughtfully.
�I thought they were into drugs
"

�Therełs not much difference these days, I mean, the times
when they used to go out in pith helmets and poke around the jungle in search
of some new wonder plant are all but dead, arenłt they? Itłs all molecular
modelling and receptor-affinity analysis. As often as not they start out with a
complete biochemical description of a problem and work backwards towards
isolating a genetic
" she stopped, realising that shełd lost Eric a while
back. �Well," she concluded, �itłs no surprise that Geiger-DESY are into the
human genome project. Thatłs where everyonełs expecting the next big
therapeutic breakthroughs to come from."

�Like a cure for AIDS?" asked Eric.

�That, and other things," she acknowledged. �When the Human
Genome Project is complete, theyłll have a total map of the human genetic
structure. Theyłll be able to play with it, working out what causes what and
how it acts as a, not a blueprint so much as a, program for generating human
beings. If you insert a bug in the software you get a malfunction
AIDS is a
bug in the immune system, spliced into the program by viral reverse
transcriptase
but, equally, if youłve got a faulty computer program you
tackle the problem by trying to debug it, not by hitting it over the head with a
blunt instrument like a drug."

�I think I see," said Eric. �One other question, though.
Whatłs a Homoeobox when itłs at home, and whyłs everybody so interested in it?"

�Ah, well, you do pick the easy ones, donłt you?" Abruptly,
Sue stood up and looked out the window. There was nobody outside. She flicked
the lock on the door then turned and faced him. �Watch."

Slowly, her face began to flow. At first it simply looked as
if she was relaxing, all her muscles slowly slackening: but gradually the
process accelerated, until it was as if all the underlying tissue was falling
away from the bones of her skull. Cheeks sagged then began to stretch as
cartilaginous flaps brought her jawbone forwards. Eric watched, petrified, as
her lips pulled away from her gums
�Stop it!" he hissed at her, glancing
hastily at the door. �What do you think youłre
"

Sue raised her hands to cover her face. �Donłt worry," she
said, �therełs nobody about. I checked first, I swear it. Look, you asked me a
question. Thatłs your answer."

�Pardon?" Eric stood up and checked to make sure that there
was nobody outside the window.

�Itłs a little-known fact that humans, ants
even us

share most of the same genes. What differentiates us is the homoeobox: a
complex of genes which are, I guess, meta-genes. They control how, why, and
when other genes are switched on or off; the flow of control in the genetic
program, so to speak. Whatłs the difference between a blood cell such as a
lymphocyte, and a muscle cell? Or a neuron?"

She lowered her hands and Eric saw that her face was back to
normal again. He smiled with embarrassed relief. �Please donłt do that again in
public. Someone, a student, could call at any time ..."

Sue shrugged. �They didnłt. Look, what Iłm getting at is
this. The stuff Kristoph was looking at, it was all to do with research on
mapping the homoeobox. Got that? The one section that tells a human foetus that
itłs to grow up into a human being and not a gorilla or a flatworm. Wełre not
the only people working on it, but
"

Eric turned round. �I think Iłve heard enough. Will there be
anyone in the office if we go there now? I mean, right now?"

�Itłs anyonełs guess. Hey, whatłs the sudden hurry?"

Eric shook his head. �Iłve got a feeling that this could be
bad. I think I know why Kristoph was sent to look through those files, and if
Iłm right it could be very serious indeed. In fact if theyłre doing what I
think theyłre doing and we donłt stop them right away those clowns could land
us all in a real mess."

The department office was open but nobody was in when Sue
and Eric arrived there. One of the word processors was switched on, and it
looked as if whoever was using it could return at any moment. �Act as if this
is something you do all the time," murmured Sue as she opened the unlocked filing
cabinet drawer.

�Is there any particular reason why you think I wouldnłt do
that without being told?" asked Eric, standing behind her with a conspiratorial
air.

�Not really," she remarked, slightly nettled; �youłre
blocking my light. Here, I think this is what we want." She opened the folder
and turned over the contents. �Doctor MacLuhan, Suite Four, Geiger-DESY
research foundation laboratories. What hełs asking for
looks like a breakdown
of one particular sequence, doesnłt it?" She flicked more pages. �No, that was
last month. This month ... applications with respect to polymorphism,
phocomelia, regeneration
"

�Thatłs it," said Eric. �Phocomelia, isnłt that when, you
know, like thalidomide
"

�Failure to develop limbs, yeah." Sue made a quick note of
MacLuhanłs address then slid the folder back in the cabinet. �Iłll bet you
anything you care to mention that this is what caught Her attention
"

She turned round. One of the departmental secretaries, a woman
Sue recognised but couldnłt put a name to, was standing in the doorway staring
at her. �Hello," said the woman, �I thought you were off sick?"

Sue slid the drawer shut and smiled at her, then carefully
turned the smile into a wince. �I was," she said: �I had a migraine." She
rubbed her forehead. �You know. But professor Sampson wanted an address out of
files so I figured
" she shrugged.

�Oh, thatłs quite all right," said the secretary, sitting
down. She looked up at Eric, who was standing beside her desk with one hand
behind his back. �Can I help you?" she asked brightly.

�Itłs okay," said Eric, �Iłm with her." The woman nodded
then turned back to her screen.

Sue beckoned surreptitiously, and Eric followed her out of
the room. �Whatłs that youłve got in your hand?" she whispered once they were
outside the door. Eric slowly brought it into view, then uncurled his fingers
so that she could glimpse what he was holding. Then he dropped the lock-knife
back into one of his jacket pockets and set off down the corridor at a brisk
walk. Sue hurried to catch up. Eric, she thought grimly, you and I have got a
lot of talking to do; but she also had a feeling that his caution might be
justified. This was not a time for half-measures.

***

The orange glare of street lights filtered through the
windows, casting a rippling shadow on the wallpaper above the bedstead as it
passed through the cloud of cigarette smoke that hung motionless in the air.
The bed was occupied: Kristoph lay on it, chain-smoking Benson and Hedges and
staring at the ceiling. He was naked, and the sheets lay in tatters beneath
him.

He sensed a presence nearby and tensed, then turned one eye
towards the door. Helena was standing there, a bottle in one hand and two
glasses in the other. She, too, was naked, and smiling.

�Whatłs so amusing?" asked Kris, in a language that he had
used so little of late that it came haltingly to his tongue.

�Itłs nothing," she said, putting the glasses down beside
the bed. �It just looked
I donłt know. It was the cigarette that did it. Iłm
too used to looking at people through human eyes; seeing you as you are is

strange."

She climbed onto the bed and squatted, adopting a pose that
would have been very uncomfortable if her joints had been of human
articulation. Her long tongue lolled from one side of her mouth as she regarded
him.

�I find it that way too." Kristoph couldnłt pull his eyes
away from her nakedness. �I had nearly forgotten what my own kind looked like,
other than in a mirror."

�Itłs over now. Youłve found me." She reached out with uncanny
agility and snagged a glass, then filled it from the bottle. It was a whisky
glass and the bottle was red wine, but somehow such considerations seemed petty
to Kristoph. The sensations, the tingling beneath his skin and the heat of his
ardour, had taken him by surprise. Not an unpleasant surprise, but a surprise
nonetheless. It had been a long time since he had mated with another of his species,
and he was astonished to discover that it was far more pleasant than he
recalled. But then, he was of an age to be bonding, and such changes should be
expected. Helena extended the glass to him and he took it: their hands stayed
in contact for longer than was necessary simply to pass the wine.

�The waiting is over. I had almost given up hope of meeting
one of my own age and predicament. That there could be others
� he shrugged.
It was considered desirable among the weerde to form group relationships.

�At least we can continue the search together," she said, nestling
up against him. �If in your wanderings you should meet anyone
"

�Hah." A short, barking cough that was the same in any language.
�A sad fantasy. I thought my solitude was the product of my travels, and now
that Iłve met you you think your loneliness the consequence of your stability!
Is there no happy medium?"

Helena considered this for a while, then gulped back her
entire glass in a single mouthful and said: �No." She extended a hand and
Kristoph passed her a lit cigarette. �What do you suppose we should do? Settle
here among the humans, or travel at large within their world in hope of finding
partners before we fully come of age?"

�Neither seems very hopeful," Kristoph remarked. He sat up
and leaned close to her, then fell silent. She nipped gently at his ear to get
his attention.

�What of the woman who showed you into the office?" she
asked. �The one who works for the University?"

�Shełs too young," said Kris. �And she is already living
with another of us. Itłs strange how the young behave, isnłt it?"

�Theyłre closer to the humans than to us," Helena suggested.
�Imagine if you were one of them, born in the past forty years. The Ancients go
on about the dark history of our people, how we were foredoomed to live amongst
those we mirror in the flesh and how dangerous it would be to invoke any kind
of solution to our problems from outside
the universe is a dark and fearful
mystery, shrouded in ancient death
yet the young, the young live with television
and credit cards and research." With each of these words she lapsed back into
english, for her primal tongue held no equivalents to them. �Everything they
are raised with tells them that the Ancients speak nothing but senile nonsense.
It is not merely that they have no respect for the Ancients, but that they
speak a different tongue altogether. It is no longer possible for them to
separate themselves from the humans
" she broke off.

Kristoph stubbed his cigarette out on the ash-tray beside
the bed. �What did you just think of?" he asked.

Helena stared at him. Her eyes were huge and dark, with no
visible whites around them. �I think that it would be a good idea to pay these
two youngsters a visit," she said thoughtfully. �I would like to meet them. And
besides, I have a certain sense that if we donłt they might become embroiled in
something that will not be good for them. What do you think?"

Kristoph threw his head back and poured a glass of wine between
his sharp white teeth. �If you like," he said. �When shall we go?"

Helena twisted and rolled off the bed, then rose to a
crouch. Her spine slowly began to straighten. �As soon as possible," she said,
slurring as she fought to control her shifting vocal chords. �My sense of
urgency is great ..."

***

As soon as the door swung open, Sue realised there was something
wrong: it smells strange. �That was a lovely meal," said Eric, behind her. She
held out a warning hand and entered the hallway, switching on the light as she
did so.

�You can come on in," she said; �I just thought I smelled
something ..."

�Gas?" he asked.

�You canłt be too careful. But no, it wasnłt gas."

She hung her coat up as he closed the front door, then she
switched on the living room lights and walked straight in. �Hello," said the
balding man with the gun, �did you enjoy your meal?"

�Oh shit," she said, starting to back away. �Hey, Eric
"

�Donłt move," said the other one, the tall thin man standing
behind the door. �You move, you get hurt."

�Ah." Her stomach felt like lead and her knees were about to
give way.

�Hey, whatłs going
" Eric, standing behind her: he looked
over her shoulder and saw the man with the gun. �Shit," he whispered.

�That makes it unanimous," said the bald one. �Wonłt you
come on in? Iłd like it if youłd sit in the sofa
there
where I can keep an
eye on you."

Slowly, with exaggerated care, Sue sidled over to the sofa
and sat down. Eric followed her. She could see him out of the corner of her
eye. I hope he doesnłt do anything stupid, she thought. Then, how do I stop
this happening?

�Thatłs good," said the bald one. �Thatłs real cool. Now maybe
we should have a chat, you know, loosen things up?"

�Who are you?" asked Eric in a low voice. �What do you
want?"

The tall one strolled over from the doorway to stand behind
the seated man. �You know who we are," he said, in a language which sent
shivers of recognition down Suełs neck. �We come to talk sense."

The man in the chair shrugged. �Youłll have to excuse my
partner," he said: �he can be a bit blunt. Someone you might have heard of

one of your neighbours in this city
called us in to do a service. Ancient of
Days. Perhaps youłve met her?" He cocked his head, looked slightly disappointed
when neither Sue nor Eric responded. �A shame. Shełs very
impressive. Anyway
... �

The tall one pulled his right hand out of his coat pocket.
There was a small black pistol in it. He pulled his left hand out of the other
pocket: he was holding a cylindrical object in that one. He began to screw the
cylinder onto the muzzle of the pistol. �Youłll have to excuse him," said the
seated one: �hełs a bit nervous." He blinked at them: �the police donłt like
him very much. Anyway. Where was I?

�Ah yes. We owe you for showing the point man in, where the
files were held. However, you donłt seem to have gotten the message: this is
not a matter you want to get involved in. Oh no. In fact, you should do your
best to forget about it, unless and until Ancient of Days sends for you. Is
that understood?"

�I understand," said Sue. Suddenly her mouth was dry, but it
was a dryness born of anger: she found that she very much wanted to spit. �I
understand that what I see is a bunch of superstitious fools chasing around in
the dark preparing to kill
yes, thatłs it, isnłt it? Thatłs what you do for a
living
to kill a harmless scientist because some clapped-out fruitcake thinks
human genetics research is going to conjure up the devil
"

�Wrong," said the seated assassin. �You understand nothing.
You cannot possibly remember what it is we face; you will be nameless to
history if you insist on giving aid to the humans in pulling down everything we
have tried so hard to preserve!"

He raised the pistol and Sue unconsciously stopped breathing
and steeled herself to jump; but before she could move there was a flash of
light reflected from the gunmanłs face and a voice screamed �DOWN!" in her ear.

She rolled forwards and tried to hug the carpet: she heard
three muffled spitting sounds overhead, and then a crashing of glass and heavy
objects as the tall assassin fell, knocking the television set off its stand.

�Idiot," snarled Kristoph. �Were you trying to get yourself
killed? Why didnłt you duck?" Then, gently but urgently, �oh, see what hełs
done. Quickly, fetch a towel. Now!" Sue heard footsteps hurrying, doors
banging, then a low moan behind her. She rolled over and sat up and saw
Kristoph bent over the back of the sofa, gripping Eric
collapsed across it,
his eyes closed
by one shoulder with both hands, both hands wrapped around an
upper arm from which a huge, dark stain was slowly seeping. �A towel will do
but a compression bandage or a torniquet would be a lot better and I need one
or the other of them in a hurry," Kris muttered. �Otherwise he may bleed to
death all over me."

She remembered standing in the bathroom, watching blood
trickle and swirl down the white porcelain sink as the rushing water numbed her
hands. She remembered ransacking the cupboard for bandages and finding nothing
but a small tin of elastoplast, suitable only for grazes. And the towels were
all pink, the same colour as her vomit when she heaved her entire meal up into
the toilet. Then a strange woman was holding her by the shoulders and saying
�itłs alright, the bleedingłs stopped and itłs a clean puncture" as she slowly
led Sue through into the living room. Eric wasnłt in the sofa, but his blood
was. Unaccountably, she began to cry. After all, it wasnłt she whołd been shot,
was it?

After a while she realised that she couldnłt see the bodies.
�Wh-what happened?" she asked, trying to dry her eyes and realising as she did
so that her blouse was ruined, spots of blood everywhere on her right sleeve.

�Donłt you worry about it," said the woman, �everythingłs
going to be alright. Your friend is in bed, Kris is stitching his arm up
hełs
done it before, he says
hełs going to be okay. A flesh wound."

�Wełve got to get him to hospital
" Sue began, before she
comprehended how foolish her words must sound.

�Donłt you worry about it," said the woman. �Iłm Helena, by
the way. I came here with Kris. Is there
� she stared at the bloodstained
sofa
�anwhere else in this flat where we can go? Apart from the bedroom or
the kitchen?"

Sue didnłt think to ask what was wrong with the kitchen.
�The back bedroom," she said automatically. �We can, I need to, sit down ..."

�Iłll say you do." Helena took her by the arm as she stood
up again and stumbled through the hall to the spare room. When she got there
she collapsed on the bed and curled up and began to Change, so that Helena was
hard-put to get her clothes off her. But that was okay. It was only a little
more than shełd bargained for, after all.

Shock and exhaustion forced Sue into a deep sleep. Helena
sat beside the bed, watching the shifting form that lay there, its flesh slowly
crawling in an unconscious attempt to shut out the outside world. I canłt even
look at my own kind without seeing them through the eyes of a human, she
realised. How much worse must it be for one of these, raised in a modern city
and exposed to their education, their entertainment, their friendship all their
life? Our ancestors would barel y recognise them. Worse, they would barely
recognise the ancestors ...

She shook her head in sympathy and stood up. Then she left
the room, closing the door behind her as she tracked through the hall and into
the main bedroom. Kristoph glanced up as she entered, then continued to wrap
his makeshift bandage around Ericłs shoulder.

�Shełs taken it rather hard," Helena commented.

�Iłm not surprised," said Kristoph. His voice was rough, as
if he was fighting an inner battle and did not wish to be disturbed.

Eric rolled his eyes. �Ah
itłs not easy," he whispered.
�This mess ... we were going to come looking for you ..."

�Lie still. How is he?" she asked Kristoph.

�Iłve seen worse. Small calibre bullet, went clean through
the quadriceps. I think he froze when the flash went off, otherwise hełd have
been down on the floor with her and this wouldnłt have happened. Nicked a vein,
but no arterial bleeding. Knowing how we heal, you should be fine in a few
days," he said for Ericłs benefit. �The real question is what happens in the
mean-time," he continued under his breath. �Depending whether those bastards
were here of their own accord or at someonełs command."

�We can fetch two tea-chests for the bodies," said Helena.
�Then we ditch the sofa. Nobodyłs called the police so we may be able to
conceal it
"

Kris looked at her coolly. �Thatłs not what I meant."

Helena sat down on a low stool in front of the dresser, then
turned to face Kristoph and the bed. �You know Iłve served Ancient of Days for
twenty or more years. It wasnłt necessarily through choice." She paused and
looked at him, but he made no response. Eventually she continued.

�I was twenty-two when the call came. My family told me what
to do, and in those days one obeyed. Reluctantly, but
I grew up on a farm. I
was told to go to the city and present myself to Her. I didnłt want to: I was afraid,
and perhaps a little rebellious, but not too much so. I did as I was told, in
the end. When I met her, She told me what I was to do. It seemed she had a
servant before me, her eyes and ears among the humans, who had gone insane or
died. I was to take their place. She hasnłt been able to walk among them for a
very long time
over a century, I think
and so she needs a set of proxy
senses, preferably young, which can be exposed to the swirl and rush of the
human civilisation above her head."

At the other end of the bed, Eric yawned and shut his eyes.
Kristoph glanced up. �Iłm listening."

�I gathered news," she continued. �I read all the literature
and newspapers. I arranged for Ancient of Days to have a colour television,
supplied by cable
not that she watched it. I dare say the images it brought
to her were simply incomprehensible. Her curiosity is vast, but she needs me
for the feel, the idea of what itłs like to live among the humans. She hasnłt
ever seen an aeroplane except in pictures, has never ridden in a car. This new
degenerative condition of hers is quite recent, but she refuses to summon
anyone who might be able to treat it. I think she wants
"

�She wants what?" asked Kris.

�I donłt know. Itłs just that I thought ... she wanted me
not as a pair of eyes but as a mind, to understand what was going on in the
world. You understand that; youłve lived among Them, havenłt you? But last time
she was on the surface she rode in a horse-drawn carriage and there were new
gas-lights along the high streets. And I donłt think she quite understands how
far things have changed, or how fast."

�Hence the pet thugs," Kris speculated. �Yes, that would explain
a lot. In which case, these two
" his gestured encompassed Eric, and the wall
behind which Sue lay sleeping
�have a more valid perspective on the world
than she does, at least with respect to the humans. Doesnłt that follow?"

�I donłt like that line of reasoning," Helena said uneasily.
�Itłs what it leads to ..." My destination barely five minutes ago, she chided
herself. How long had these flowers of doubt been germinating? The dusty towers
of the city had never struck her as a fertile soil for new ideas of any kind,
much less for thoughts of treachery. She needs me, but how can I possibly serve
her? If my loyalties belong with anyone, they should lie with the young. Itłs
not for me to decide. Maybe


�I think we should take these two to visit Ancient of Days,"
she said slowly. �They might be able to resolve this situation where I could
only fail. In any case, it was her servants who died here tonight. She should
be informed; at least, if you mean to involve your friends that you told me
about."

Kris stared at her. �Do you really think so?"

She met his gaze. �Yes. Otherwise she will assume the worst,
and act accordingly."

�And you think it isnłt already too late for that?" he
asked. �That her thrashing around doesnłt offer a threat to the continuity of
the race? Come on. If thatłs what you believe, I want to know
"

But to her shame she had to glance away; and when she looked
back at him the time for second thoughts had long since passed.

***

Time changed, Kris thought as he waited for the phone to
ring, but people never did. That was the root of the problem. A glass of whisky
sat among the shadows by an overflowing ash tray, the last cigarette in the
pack balanced burning on its rim. The faint howl of a descending jet cut
through the night and the rattled the windows in their frame as he stared out
across the city.

A ringing tone cut the air: he forced himself not to pick up
the receiver. It gave out a second ring before the answering machine cut in.
The voice at the other end of the line was faint, as if its owner was shouting
down a buried pipe.

�Hello, is this
"

�This is Susan speaking. Iłm sorry I canłt come to the phone
right now, but if youłd like to leave a message, please speak after the tone."

�
Oskar speaking. Call me back." Click.

Kris picked up his cigarette. He felt a little ill at the
prospect of what he was about to do, but he couldnłt see what alternative there
was. For Helena, sure: for these two kids whołd gotten themselves into a whole
lot more trouble than theyłd dreamed of, too. For the pair of hitters Ancient
of Days had sent round
but they were beyond sympathy, beyond regrets. No, it was
the fact that what he was about to do was irrevocable that made him sick with
worry; him, whołd seen men eating each other on the Eastern Front and other
things too terrible to talk about.

He picked up the phone and began to dial, careful not to
enter any wrong digits.

Oskar picked up the phone on the fourth ring. It was three
in the morning in Berlin and Kris could imagine the crumpled beer cans on the
floor, smoke curling beneath the ceiling and the oil from the black
metal-machined parts scattered across the newspaper pages on the sofa. �Hello?"

�Oskar, this is Kris. I have a candidate." His mouth was dry
and his throat burned from the cigarettes, but that wasnłt why his heart was
pounding.

Oskar grunted. �After all this time? Are you sure?"

�You better believe it. The location is
" he gave
directions. �Youłll need to bring tools. And watch out, youłd better be clean.
Itłs already gone critical; we had a securitate airhead trying to scare the
canaries earlier this evening."

�A what? They must be crazy!"

�No way. He was travelling under falsies, ID of Ivan Salazar
from the Langley entity, but that wasnłt his real name at all. I fingered him
on a liaison job oh, years ago. He was one of us, but shit sticks if you roll
in it for long enough. I figure hełs one of the ones who skipped out after they
fragged the Ceaucescus during the coup, maybe figured he could cut it as a wet
operative for the Families. Anyway, itłs really hit the fan this time. Wełre
talking a Hummingbird situation; got that?"

There was silence from the other end of the line as Oskar absorbed
this information. �Yes, but which side are we on?" he finally asked.

Kris froze. �The winners," he said slowly and deliberately.
�Spread the word. Wełve got a Hummingbird situation, here and now. Get the
wagon rolling then hop the next flight out of Tempelhof. We need you on the
job."

�Check," replied Oskar. �The fuses have been lit. Good luck
and goodbye."

The phone went dead, but Kris didnłt put it down. The sound
from the buzzing receiver was unlocking memories from his childhood, stories
hełd been told by his mother about what happened to his uncle Hans in the
terrible night of the first Operation Hummingbird, uncle Hans with his proud
brown uniform and Stormtrooper strut who had vanished in the night of the Long
Knives, never to be seen again. Is this how it happens? he wondered; must the
young always eat the old? His palm sweated as he squeezed the smooth plastic of
the receiver. It wasnłt always like this among our people. There was a time
when the gap wasnłt so wide. It didnłt have to grow this way, did it? But hełd
set the wheels in motion and now there was only one way out: and death was an
integral part of the process.

Helena was clearing up in the kitchen when she sensed somebody
standing behind her. She straightened up and thrust a blood-stained wedge of
kitchen roll into the waste disposer then rolled off her soiled rubber gloves
before turning round. It was Sue, looking pale but collected and wearing a
thick dressing gown that was too big for her. �How do you feel?" she asked.

�Not bad, considering." Sue breathed deeply. �Mind if I ask
your name again? I didnłt catch it before." She looked around distractedly, but
not down, never down. She looked as if she was trying to walk on air. Helena
was still a long way from finishing.

�Thatłs all right; my namełs Helena," she replied. �And
youłre Sue. Look, are you sure you ought to be up? That was
"

Sue waved a hand. �Iłm tougher than I look. And so is Eric,
I think. Hełll be fine and so will I. But he
" she looked at the body lying on
the mat of newspapers Helena had spread on the floor
�hełs not going
anywhere. I think we deserve an explanation."

Helena sighed. �Youłre not getting one here. Iłm in this
over my head, I just tagged along for the ride." She laughed self-consciously.
How could she possibly justify what she was doing on the kitchen floor? Then
she frowned. �Look, Iłm not explaining this very well, am I? Kris and I thought
you could, could do with some help. We werenłt expecting things to have gone
this far, not yet."

�Uh huh." Sue nodded, glanced down queasily, then turned
round and fumbled in one of the cupboards above the work surface. �I need a
drink. How about you?"

�Thatłs
" Helena paused
�a kind offer." She rummaged in
the cupboards for a minute then found two tall glasses and filled them
half-full with rum. It wasnłt Helenałs favourite spirit, but she took it all
the same. �Youłve been very lucky so far. Ancient of Days probably doesnłt
realise how isolated she is. The oldest ones
" she took a sip of rum
�seldom
do."

�Who is this Ancient of Days?" Sue asked. Helena looked at
her sharply.

�Exactly what her name implies. The one I
help me
am
sworn to serve." She took another sip, then a mouthful of the neat spirits. It
burned in her stomach, like the dull fire of revenge. �One of Us, left over
from a former age. She serves the Families by searching out threats to our
collective survival. But in latter days shełs become ... unreliable."

�Hence ... this?" Sue asked. �You mean she thought she could
simply order us to kill all the scientists working on homoeobox structure and
the rest would lose interest or be too frightened to continue working in the
field?" She finished on a note of disbelief.

�Thatłs about the size of it," Helena admitted.

�What does she think we are? A bunch of medieval alchemists?"
Sue downed her glass in one gulp and slammed it on the work top. �Jesus
Christ!"

Helena didnłt say anything.

�Itłs a complete sack of shit!" Sue exclaimed. �Scientists
donłt work like that, hiding dingy secrets from each other and bolting at
shadows! All it would take would be two, maybe three suspicious incidents and
wełd have every police agency in Europe breathing down our necks. What does she
think shełs doing?"

�Protecting us," Helena said drily.

Sue glared at her. �And what are you doing?"

Helena sighed. �Protecting you, I think. Times change, and
the Ancients canłt adapt. For most of our history responses which worked a
century ago have been valid today. But not any longer. You
your generation

are our future. You donłt need to exist on the edge of human society, you can
slot right in with them! But in the process
" she shrugged.

�But whatłs in it for you?" Sue looked agitated, uncertain
whether to be grateful or suspicious or angry. �Why are you helping us? You
said you were sworn to serve her! What are you doing here?" She sounded
deceptively close to hysteria.

�Cleaning up after the party," Helena said calmly as she
bent down and picked up the electric carving knife again. It was strange how
little blood there was, she noted. As if weerde tissue fluid clotted far faster
than human; and the bullets had been low-calibre. �For what Iłm doing now, the
punishment would have been forgetfulness," she added. �To have onełs very name
expunged from the memories of all who one held dear, to be cast out into the
wilderness on pain of death, there to wander through the empty forests until
even the memory of speech faded and one was nothing more than a beast." She
glanced up. �But that doesnłt mean very much to your generation, does it?
Youłve grown up among the urban sapiens, after all, and they do things
differently." She shook her head. �I wish I knew where it was all going."

Sue didnłt reply, but a moment later Helena felt her crouch
down beside her, and there was another pair of hands to help expunge the
evidence of the crime.

***

Oskar caught the red-eye shuttle out of Tempelhof. It was delayed
three hours by snow, and when it lumbered into the cold dawn sky the outline of
the redundant Wall was clearly visible on the ground below. Less than two hours
later he was landing in the City. Somebody was waiting for him.

Howard was already in the country, running a high-value
high-risk shipping agency from a motel bedroom near Milton Keynes. When his
brokers discovered he was gone they were furious: but not as furious as they
were three minutes later when the Special Branch broke down their door. But
Howard wasnłt around to care. Now he was a truck driver called Mark, and within
a day even his fingerprints wouldnłt match on Interpolłs files.

Fiona got the call when she returned to her lodge in the Pyrenees
after a good dayłs skiing. She fobbed off her current boyfriend with a tale of
an elderly aunt and a stroke, made an air connection out of Toulouse, and
caught the Chunnel link from Paris.

Frederico didnłt head for the City. But then, that wasnłt
his target. His target was in the Vatican. There were a hundred others in the
Organisation who, like him, werenłt heading for the City; but all of them had
targets. And when they reached them, the targets would be dead.

It was agreed within the Organisation that a purge was long
overdue. It would have been sensible to have held one during the turbulence of
the second world war, when it was already becoming obvious who was unreliable
and who was trustworthy, but back then the Organisation had still been weak, a
compact of like-minded weerde who understood the ways of the modern human world
less imperfectly than their forebears. Therefore the Organisation lay low,
recruited individuals disaffected with the way of the Families, and waited.

Times changed. The war ended, and with the falling of the
iron curtain came opportunities for expansion and re-entrenchment. The
Organisation made very good use of them. The Ancients, however, were oblivious
to the fundamental changes in the world at large; their response to the Cold
War was identical to their response to the British and Spanish empires, the
Romans, Alexander the Great ... it was a practised response, and it had worked
before. But unfortunately, some times changed faster than others.

***

Eric opened his eyes and blinked until the ceiling swam into
focus. Bullet wound. I never thought it would hurt like this. More like ... he
tried to clear bloodstained drill-bits from his mindłs eye. He felt weak,
drained, but fine, except for the bruising ache in his left arm. He tried to
sit up and the arm almost exploded; he gasped and forced himself to hold still
until the pain passed. Then, very carefully, he propped himself up against the
headboard and began to explore the damage inside.

Torn muscles grated against one another, sending surges of
pain up those nerve trunks that had not been severed by the bullet. A fibrous
matrix of clotted blood had spread through the tissue around the ruptured vein,
holding cells in stasis while the complex machineries of his immune system went
to work. Already the first new cells were infiltrating the mass, spreading
along the boundary of ripped flesh and commencing the job of reconstruction.
Eric concentrated; without guidance the wound would heal badly. There might
even be a scar. He was still tired, and his head ached, but it was essential
that he


�Aha, hełs awake. Arenłt you?"

Eric opened his eyes again. �Very probably," he said, speaking
so quietly that it was almost a whisper. �Who is it?" As if I couldnłt guess.

�Iłm Kris." He sat down at the foot of the bed, stretching
the quilt. �If it wasnłt for me youłd be dead."

Eric tried to sit up properly. �I suppose I should be
grateful, but it would help if I knew what was going on."

Kris nodded understandingly. Eric looked at him and wondered
what it was he didnłt like about this man. This
weerde, he corrected himself.
One of my own kind. But he looks more like a wolf! The thought was distinctly
uncomfortable. There was a hot tingling in his arm as the muscles began the
slow process of knitting together again.

�What is it you want to know?" asked Kris.

�Well
" Eric struggled, at a loss for words. �What all the
fuss is about," he said finally. �I can understand an Ancient becoming
interested in the Homoeobox data, but her response seems rather excessive,
wouldnłt you agree? Itłs not as if it can achieve anything, after all."

�I donłt know," Kris said. �It used to work ... three
hundred years ago, against alchemists and would-be magicians."

Eric snorted disbelievingly. �Come on. What does she think
this is? The middle ages?"

Kristoph didnłt say anything; he didnłt need to.

�All right then, be the smart guy! See if I care. Thanks for
saving my life, by the way." Kris raised an eyebrow as Eric rolled his feet
over the side of the bed and sat up experimentally. �Therełs more to this than
one out-of-control Ancient and a couple of former secret policemen," Eric added
as he waited for the dancing black spots to clear from in front of his eyes.

�True," Kris stood up. �Here, let me help you. I think you
lost a fair bit of blood."

�Yes, I canłt say Iłm looking forward to cleaning the sofa

" Eric stopped talking as he stood up, taken aback by his own astonishing
irrelevance. He wobbled a bit, but the black spots didnłt come back and he was
able to shuffle around after a fashion. I must be crazy, he thought, floating.
This isnłt me here, is it? His arm burned like a torch. �Tell me about
everything in particular."

�Therełs an Organisation," began Kristoph. �Itłs been around
since the twenties, waiting for something like this. Itłs probably happened
before, but each era creates its own orthodoxy, doesnłt it? Maybe some such
group is where Ancient of Days came from originally. Some bunch of plotters who
were afraid that their elders were going to give them away to the Roman secret
police."

Eric shuffled over to the chest of drawers and fumbled
one-handedly over the chair in front of it. �Dressing gown," he muttered. It
seemed a much more concrete concern than any ancient tale of police and
thieves. He berated himself. Your future depends on this! But somehow it didnłt
seem like an immediate problem; more like a light farce, seen through a few too
many layers of cotton gauze. I must have lost a fair bit of blood.

�Here. Like I said, wełve been waiting. The signs have been
around for a long time. Crocodiles seen in the sewers under New York, Yeti
sightings in Tibet; the breakdown in human family structures in the developed
world
"

�You make this Organisation sound like a bunch of shamen
steaming over the entrails of the Sunday Times crossword," Eric winced as he
tried to ease his damaged arm into a baggy sleeve. In the end he gave up and
wore the robe over it, tucking the cuff of the empty sleeve into the belt. �I
mean, are you trying to tell me they deduced from all those signs that some of
the Ancients were liable to go loopy within the next few years?"

�Something along those lines," Kris assured him. �There were
no overt signs of loss of control
not until recently
but little things were
slipping everywhere. All those signs were warnings of a certain ... malaise.
Now itłs unmistakable. Their responses have become so inappropriate that Iłm
afraid therełs no alternative to action."

�What are you going to do to them?" Eric asked with false
levity, pausing in the doorway. I feel drunk, he realised. The truth will set
you free! And isnłt that better than wine? He glanced over his shoulder at
Kristoph, who stood behind him holding an unlit cigarette in one hand.

�What can we do?" Kris replied. There were quiet voices coming
from the kitchen. �Therełs one thing you can be certain of," he said, striking
a match. The shadows it cast across his face gave him a calculating, lupine
expression: �wełre not going to do anything to them that they wouldnłt do to us
first if we gave them the chance."

Eric felt himself go cold, everywhere except his arm, which
was feverishly hot. Suddenly, despite his injury and blood-loss and the
intoxicating sense of own survival, he felt entirely sober. An atavistic urge,
from god-knew-what recess of his hindbrain, made him want to bare his teeth and
snarl. Instead, forcing himself to do the right thing
come on, mister cool! a
part of him sneered contemptuously
he went into the living room. It was
unlit, but the street lights were bright enough to let h im see that there was
a dust-sheet flung over the sofa and a rug on the carpet, and the vase of
flowers was gone from on top of the television. He walked over to the windows
and looked out across the street, then fumbled with the latch and pushed one of
them open. A chill breeze cut through his dressing gown, swirled past him and
numbed the stench of blood and gunpowder.

�What do you think?" asked the quiet voice behind him. He
didnłt turn round.

�I think
" he paused, seeking the words with which to
express his anger, his rage at this violation of his carefully-maintained humanity

�there is no precedent for the current situation." He stared down at the
streets, watching the traffic scurry and hum along in illuminated columns far
below. �Wełre a conservative people, arenłt we?" The word we hung strange and
heavy on his tongue. �But the world we live in is undergoing eruptions and
upheavals. And when conservative peoples are placed under such a stress they
tend to ... well, look at the Russian revolution."

The breeze was beginning to work through to him. He was
still weak, and his arm ached; he couldnłt summon the resources to keep himself
warm. He reached out and pulled the window to until only a slit was left open.
�Is this happening everywhere?"

�It is," said Kris. �Maybe youłre right, maybe there hasnłt
been an upheaval like this since the
since the ancient times, the days of
legend and darkness. The old race. But someone
" the voice faltered, and in a
flash of astonishment Eric realised that he was pleading with him, pleading for
his approval, his understanding
�someone has to look to the future! And you
are the future, more surely than any conclave of ancients."

Eric turned his back on the window. Kristoph had lit his cigarette,
and in the darkness the glowing coal resembled an ancient saurian eye. �But
where does that leave you?" asked Eric. �If your organisation takes credit for
this killing, where can you go from here? Where are your thoughts for your own
future?"

Kris blew a thin plume of smoke from his nostrils. It
swirled lazily about his head then drifted towards the door. �I suppose wełll
have to be the scapegoats, the nameless ones who will be driven from the
present to atone for the sins of the past. Doesnłt that sound about right to
you? Somethingłs got to go, after all."

�Not if you succeed. But the whole thing sounds so extreme

"

�Youłre uncomfortable with the idea of killing, arenłt you?"
said Kris. He began to button up his coat, preparing for the cold of the
streets outside. �Listen, Iłve got to go out now, to arrange for some waste
disposal. But therełs something you should remember, professor, when you go in
to work in your warm office next week and sit in your comfortable chair behind
your tidy desk." His face began to slide into another, ancient shape: or else
the shadows cast by the city lights were shifting across his che eks. �Remember
youłre a predator, professor, one of a long line of free-ranging killers. And
remember that onełs natural instincts can sometimes be very hard to ignore ..."

Presently, Eric struggled to his feet and walked into the
kitchen to see what was going on. Sue and Helena were just finishing with the
knives and moving onto the bin liners. They both looked up, then Sue had her
arms round his neck and was kissing him, tracking bloody stains across the
front of his garment. �Youłre doing well," she whispered in his ear. Louder:
�has Kris gone for some boxes then?"

�Thatłs quite likely, I think." Helena rose and peeled off
her gloves again, shaking them out carefully. �Ah, I donłt think wełve been
introduced. Have we?"

�Eric, Helena," said Sue. �Helena stayed to help clear up,"
she added, letting go of him as he glanced around. But Eric wasnłt dwelling on
the mass that occupied the centre of the floor. �I can see wełve got some
socialising to do," he said. �Itłs a long time since either of us have met
anyone who wasnłt
entirely
human. Still," his expression became unreadable,
�do you suppose Kristoph will be long?"

�No, I donłt think he will," said Helena. She smiled
sharply. �He said he had one more job to do, then itłs all over and we can just
lie low, ęgo to the mattressesł as the mafia call it, until everything dies
down." She put the knife and the gloves in the sink and turned the tap on them.

�Then itłll all be over," said Sue, an expression of relief
dawning on her face. She turned back to Eric and hugged him, burying her face
in his shoulder, all his petty irritations forgotten for the moment. �Iłm so
glad itłs finished."

But she was wrong. In fact, it was only just beginning.

First published: The Weerde, 1991

Version History

If you modify this text, please retain this version history.

Ver 1.510/09/2003Anarchy Publications, HaVoKThis version
was originally downloaded from the #bookz channel on undernet using mIRC. The
final proof was done with Atlantis by Rising Sun Solutions.

Antibodies

* * * *

EVERYONE REMEMBERS WHERE they were and what they were doing
when a member of the great and the good is assassinated. Gandhi, the Pope,
Thatcher-if you were old enough you remembered where you were when you heard,
the ticker-tape of history etched across your senses. You can kill a politician
but their ideas usually live on. They have a life of their own. How much more
dangerous, then, the ideas of mathematicians ?

I was elbow-deep in an eviscerated PC, performing open heart
surgery on a diseased network card, when the news about the travelling salesman
theorem came in. Over on the other side of the office Johnłs terminal beeped,
notification of incoming mail. A moment later my own workstation bonged.

�Hey, Geoff! Get a load of this!"

I carried on screwing the card back into its chassis. John
is not a priority interrupt.

�Someonełs come up with a proof that NP-complete problems
lie in P! Therełs a posting in comp.risks saying theyłve used it to find an
O*(n 2) solution to the travelling salesman problem, and it scales! Looks like
April First has come early this year, doesnłt it?"

I dropped the PCłs lid on the floor hastily and sat down at
my workstation. Another cubed-sphere hypothesis, another flame war in the math
newsgroups-or something more serious? �When did it arrive?" I called over the
partition. Soroya, passing my cubicle entrance with a cup of coffee, cast me a
dirty look; loud voices arenłt welcome in open-plan offices.

�This just in," John replied. I opened up the mailtool and
hit on the top of the list, which turned out to be a memo from HR about
diversity awareness training. No, next ... they want to close the smoking room
and make us a 100 per cent tobacco-free workplace. Hmm. Next.

Forwarded e-mail: headers bearing the spoor of a thousand
mail servers, from Addis-Ababa to Ulan Bator. Before it had entered our
internal mail network it had travelled from Taiwan to Rochester NJ, then to UCB
in the Bay Area, then via a mailing list to all points; once in-company it had
been bounced to everyone in engineering and management by the first recipient,
Eric the Canary. (Eric is the departmental plant. Spends all the day web-dozing
for juicy nuggets of new information if you let him. A one-man wire service:
which is why I always ended up finishing his jobs.)

I skimmed the message, then read it again. Blinked. This
kind of stuff is heavy on the surreal number theory: about as digestible as an
Egyptian mummy soaked in tabasco sauce for three thousand years. Then I poked
at the web page the theorem was on.

No responseserver timed out.

Someone or something was hitting on the web server with the
proof: I figured it had to be all the geeks whołd caught wind of the chain
letter so far. My interest was up, so I hit the �reload" button, and something
else came up on screen.

Lots of theorems-looked like the same stuff as the e-mail,
only this time with some fun graphics. Something tickled my hindbrain then, and
I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. Next thing, I hit the print button
and the inkjet next to my desk began to mutter and click. There was a link near
the bottom of the page to the authorłs bibliography, so I clicked on that and
the server threw another �go away, Iłm busy" error. I tugged my beard thoughtfully,
and instead of pressing �back" I pressed �reload".

The browser thought to itself for a bit-then a page began to
appear on my screen. The wrong page. I glanced at the document title at the top
and froze:

THE PAGE AT THIS LOCATION HAS BEEN WITHDRAWN. Please enter
your e-mail address if you require further information.

Hmm.

As soon as the printout was finished, I wandered around to
the photocopier next door to the QA labs and ran off a copy. Faxed it to a
certain number, along with an EYES UP note on a yellow Post-it. Then I poked my
head around into the QA lab itself. It was dingy in there, as usual, and half
the cubicles were empty of human life. Nobody here but us computers;
workstations humming away, sucking juice and meditating on who-knew-what
questions. (Actually, I did know: they were mostly running test harnesses,
repetitively pounding simulated input data into the programs wełd so carefully
built, in the hope of making them fall over or start singing �God Save the
King".) The efficiency of code was frequently a bone of contention between our
departments, but the war between software engineering and quality assurance is
a long-drawn-out affair: each side needs the other to justify its survival.

I was looking for Amin. Amin with the doctorate in discrete
number theory, now slumming it in this company of engineers: my other canary in
a number-crunching coal mine. I found him: feet propped up on the lidless hulk
of a big Compaq server, mousing away like mad at a big monitor. I squinted; it
looked vaguely familiar ... �Quake? Or Golgotha?" I asked.

�Golgotha. Wełve got Marketing bottled up on the second
floor."

�Howłs the network looking?"

He shrugged, then punched the hold button. �No crashes, no
dropped packets-this cut looks pretty solid. Wełve been playing for three days
now. What can I do for you?"

I shoved the printout under his nose. �This seem feasible to
you?"

�Hold on a mo." He hit the pause key them scanned it
rapidly. Did a double-take. �Youłre not shitting?"

�Came out about two hours ago."

�Jesus Homeboy Christ riding into town at the head of a convoy
of Hellłs Angels with a police escort ..." he shook his head. Amin always
swears by Jesus, a weird side-effect of a westernized Islamic upbringing: take
somebody elsełs prophetłs name in vain. �If itłs true, I can think of at least
three different ways we can make money at it, and at least two more to end up
in prison. You donłt use PGP, do you?"

�Why bother?" I asked, my heart pounding. �Iłve got nothing
to hide."

�If this is true" he tapped the papers �then every encryption
algorithm except the one-time pad has just fallen over. Take a while to be
sure, but ... that crunch you heard in the distance was the sound of every
secure commerce server on the internet succumbing to a brute-force attack. The
script kiddies will be creaming themselves. Jesus Christ." He rubbed his
moustache thoughtfully.

�Does it make sense to you?" I persisted.

�Come back in five minutes and Iłll tell you."

�OK."

I wandered over to the coffee station, thinking very hard.
People hung around and generally behaved as if it was just another day; maybe
it was. But then again, if that paper was true, quite a lot of stones had just
been turned over and if you were one of the pale guys who lived underneath it
was time to scurry for cover. And it had looked good to me: by the prickling in
my palms and the gibbering cackle in the back of my skull, something very deep
had recognized it. Aminłs confirmation would be just the icing on the cake
confirmation that it was a workable proof.

Cryptography-the science of encoding messagesrelies on certain
findings in mathematics: that certain operations are inherently more difficult
than others. For example, finding the common prime factors of a long number
which is a product of those primes is far harder than taking two primes and
multiplying them together.

Some processes are not simply made difficult, but impossible
because of this asymmetry; itłs not feasible to come up with a deterministic
answer to certain puzzles in finite time. Take the travelling salesman problem,
for example. A salesman has to visit a whole slew of cities which are connected
to their neighbours by a road network. Is there a way for the salesman to
figure out a best-possible route that visits each city without wasting time by
returning to a previously visited site, for all possible networks of cities?
The conventional answer is noand this has big implications for a huge set of
computing applications. Network topology, expert systems-the traditional tool
of the Al community-financial systems, and ...

Me and my people.

* * * *

Back in the QA lab, Amin was looking decidedly thoughtful.

�What do you know?" I asked.

He shook the photocopy at me. �Looks good," he said. �I
donłt understand it all, but itłs at least credible."

�How does it work?"

He shrugged. �Itłs a topological transform. You know how
most np-incomplete problems, like the travelling salesman problem, are
basically equivalent? And theyłre all graph-traversal issues. How to figure out
the correct order to carry out a sequence of operations, or how to visit each
node in a graph in the correct order. Anyway, this paperłs about a method of
reducing such problems to a much simpler form. Hełs using a new theorem in
graph theory that I sort of heard about last year but didnłt pay much attention
to, so Iłm not totally clear on all the details. But if this is for real ..."

�Pretty heavy?"

He grinned. �Youłre going to have to re-write the route
discovery code. Never mind, itłll run a bit faster ..."

* * * *

I rose out of cubicle hell in a daze, blinking in the
cloud-filtered daylight. Eight years lay in ruins behind me, tattered and
bleeding bodies scattered in the wreckage. I walked to the landscaped car park:
on the other side of the world, urban renewal police with M16s beat the crap
out of dissident organizers, finally necklacing them in the damp, humid night.

War raged on three fronts, spaced out around a burning
planet. Even so, this was by no means the worst of all possible worlds. It had
problems, sure, but nothing seriousuntil now. Now it had just acquired a
sucking chest wound; none of those wars were more than a stubbed toe in
comparison to the nightmare future that lay ahead.

Insert key in lock, open door. Drive away, secrets open to
the wind, everything blown to hell and gone.

Iłd have to call Eve. Wełd have to evacuate everybody.

I had a bank account, a savings account and two credit
cards. In the next fifteen minutes I did a grand tour of the available ATMS and
drained every asset I could get my hands on into a fat wodge of banknotes.
Fungible and anonymous cash. It didnłt come to a huge amount-the usual exigencies
of urban living had seen to that-but it only had to last me a few days.

By the time I headed home to my flat, I felt slightly
sheepish. Nothing there seemed to have changed: I turned on the TV but CNN and
the BBC werenłt running any coverage of the end of the world. With deep unease
I sat in the living room in front of my ancient PC: turned it on and pulled up
my net link.

More mail ... a second bulletin from comp.risks, full of
earnest comments about the paper. One caught my eye, at the bottom: a message
from one of No Such Agencyłs tame stoolpigeon academics, pointing out that the
theorem hadnłt yet been publicly disclosed and might turn out to be deficient.
(Subtext: trust the Government. The Government is your friend.) It wouldnłt be
the first time such a major discovery had been announced and subsequently
withdrawn. But then again, they couldnłt actually produce a refutation, so the
letter was basically valueless disinformation. I prodded at the web site again,
and this time didnłt even get the ACCESS FORBIDDEN message. The paper had
disappeared from the internet, and only the print-out in my pocket told me that
I hadnłt imagined it.

It takes a while for the magnitude of a catastrophe to sink
in. The mathematician who had posted the original finding would be listed in
his universityłs directory, wouldnłt he? I pointed my web browser at their
administrative pages, then picked up my phone. Dialled a couple of very obscure
numbers, waited while the line quality dropped considerably and the charges began
racking up at an enormous-but untraceably anonymized-rate, and dialled the
university switchboard.

�Hello, John Durantłs office. Who is that?"

�Hi, Iłve read the paper about his new theorem," I said, too
fast. �Is John Durant available?"

�Who are you?" asked the voice at the other end of the
phone. Female voice, twangy mid-western accent.

�A researcher. Can I talk to Dr Durant, please?

�Iłm afraid he wonłt be in today," said the voice on the
phone. �Hełs on vacation at present. Stress due to overwork."

�I see," I said.

�Who did you say you were?" she repeated.

I put the phone down.

* * * *

From: [e-mail] (none of your business)

To: cypherpunks

Subject: John Durantłs whereabouts

Date:...

You might be interested to learn that Dr John Durant, whose
theorem caused such a fuss here earlier, is not at his office. I went there a
couple of hours ago in person and the area was sealed off by our friends from
the Puzzle Palace. Hełs not at home either. I suspect the worst ...

By the way, guys, you might want to keep an eye on each
other for the next couple of days. Just in case.

Signed, Yrfrndly spk

* * * *

�Eve?"

�Bob?"

�Green fields."

�You phoned me to say you know someone with hayfever?"

�We both have hayfever. It may be terminal."

�I know where you can find some medicine for that."

�Medicine wonłt work this time. Itłs like the emperorłs new
suit."

�Itłs like what? Please repeat."

�The emperorłs new suit: itłs naked, itłs public, and it
canłt be covered up. Do you understand? Please tell me."

�Yes, I understand exactly what you mean ... Iłm just a bit
shocked; I thought everything was still on track. This is all very sudden. What
do you want to do?"

(I checked my watch.)

�I think youłd better meet me at the pharmacy in fifteen minutes."

�At six-thirty? Theyłll be shut."

�Not to worry: the main Boots in town is open out of hours.
Maybe they can help you."

�I hope so."

�I know it. Goodbye."

On my way out of the house I paused for a moment. It was a
small house, and it had seen better days. Iłm not a home-maker by nature: in my
line of work you canłt afford to get too attached to anything, any language,
place or culture. Still, it had been mine. A small, neat residence, a
protective shell I could withdraw into like a snail, sheltering from the
hostile theorems outside. Goodbye, little house. Iłll try not to miss you too
much. I hefted my overnight bag onto the back seat and headed into town.

* * * *

I found Eve sitting on a bench outside the central branch of
Boots, running a degaussing coil over her credit cards. She looked up. �Youłre
late."

�Come on." I waggled the car keys at her. �You have the tickets?"

She stood up: a petite woman, conservatively dressed. You
could mistake her for a lawyerłs secretary or a personnel manager; in point of
fact she was a university research council administrator, one of the unnoticed
body of bureaucrats who shape the course of scientific research. Nondescript
brown hair, shoulder-length, forgettable. We made a slightly odd pair: if Iłd
known shełd have come straight from work I might have put on a suit. Chinos and
a lumberjack shirt and a front pocket full of pens that screamed engineer: I
suppose I was nondescript, in the right company, but right now we had to put as
much phase space as possible between us and our previous identities. It had
been good protective camouflage for the past decade, but a bush wonłt shield
you against infrared scopes, and merely living the part wouldnłt shield us
against the surveillance that would soon be turned in our direction.

�Letłs go."

I drove into town and we dropped the car off in the
long-stay park. It was nine ołclock and the train was already waiting. Shełd
bought business-class tickets: go to sleep in Euston, wake up in Edinburgh. I
had a room all to myself. �Meet me in the dining car, once wełre rolling," she
told me, face serious, and I nodded. �Herełs your new SIMM. Give me the old
one."

I passed her the electronic heart of my cellphone and she
ran it through the degausser then carefully cut it in half with a pair of
nail-clippers. �Herełs your new one," she said, passing a card over. I raised
an eyebrow. �Tescołs, pay-as-you-go, paid for in cash. Herełs the dialback
dead-letter box number." She pulled it up on her phonełs display and showed it
to me.

�Got that." I inserted the new SIMM then punched the number
into my phone. Later, Iłd ring the number: a PABX there would identify my
voice-print then call my phone back, downloading a new set of numbers into its
memory. Contact numbers for the rest of my OPS cell, accessible via cellphone and
erasable in a moment. The less you knew, the less you could betray.

The London to Scotland sleeper train was a relic of an
earlier age, a rolling hotel characterized by a strange down-at-heel ę70s
charm. More importantly, they took cash and didnłt require ID, and there were
no security checks: nothing but the usual on-station cameras monitoring people
wandering up and down the platforms. Nothing on the train itself. We were
booked through to Aberdeen but getting off in Edinburgh-first step on the
precarious path to anonymizing ourselves. If the camera spool-off was being
archived to some kind of digital medium we might be in trouble later, once the
coming AI burn passed the hard takeoff point, but by then we should be good and
gone.

* * * *

Once in my cabin I changed into slacks, shirt and tie-image
22, business consultant on way home for the weekend. I dinked with my phone in
a desultory manner, then left it behind under my pillow, primed to receive
silently. The restaurant car was open and I found Eve there. Shełd changed into
jeans and a T-shirt and tied her hair back, taking ten years off her
appearance. She saw me and grinned, a trifle maliciously. �Hi, Bob. Had a tough
meeting? Want some coffee? Tea, maybe?"

�Coffee." I sat down at her table. �Shit," I muttered. �I
thought you"

�Donłt worry." She shrugged. �Look, I had a call from
Mallet. Hełs gone off-air for now, hełll be flying in from San Francisco via
London tomorrow morning. This isnłt looking good. Durant was, uh, shot
resisting arrest by the police. Apparently he went crazy, got a gun from
somewhere and holed up in the library annex demanding to talk to the press. At
least, thatłs the official story. Thing is, it happened about an hour after
your initial heads-up. Thatłs too fast for a cold response."

�You think someone in the Puzzle Palace was warming the
pot." My coffee arrived and I spooned sugar into it. Hot, sweet, sticky: I
needed to stay awake.

�Probably. Iłm trying to keep loop traffic down so I havenłt
asked anyone else yet, but you think so and I think so, so it may be true."

I thought for a minute. �What did Mallet say?"

�He said P. T. Barnum was right." She frowned. �Who was P.
T. Barnum, anyway?"

�A boy like John Major, except he didnłt run away from the
circus to join a firm of accountants. Had the same idea about fooling all of
the people some of the time or some of the people all of the time, though."

�Uh-huh. Mallet would say that, then. Who cracked it first?
NSA? GCHQ? GRU?"

�Does it matter?"

She blew on her coffee then took a sip. �Not really. Damn
it, Bob, I really had high hopes for this world-line. They seemed to be doing
so well for a revelatory Christian-Islamic line, despite the post-Enlightenment
mind-set. Especially Microsoft"

�Was that one of ours?" She nodded.

�Then it was a master-stroke. Getting everybody used to exchanging
macro-infested documents without any kind of security policy. Operating systems
that crash whenever a microsecond timer overflows. And all those viruses!"

�It wasnłt enough." She stared moodily out the window as the
train began to slide out of the station, into the London night. �Maybe if wełd
been able to hook more researchers on commercial grants, or cut funding for
pure mathematics a bit further"

�Itłs not your fault." I laid a hand across her wrist. �You
did what you could."

�But it wasnłt enough to stop them. Durant was just a lone
oddball researcher; you canłt spike them all, but maybe we could have done
something about him. If they hadnłt nailed him flat."

�There might still be time. A physics package delivered to
the right address in Maryland, or maybe a hyper-virulent worm using one of
those buffer-overrun attacks we planted in the IP stack Microsoft licensed. We
could take down the internet"

�Itłs too late." She drained her coffee to the bitter dregs.
�You think the Echelon mob leave their SIGINT processor farms plugged into the
internet? Or the RSV, for that matter? Face it, they probably cracked the same
derivative as Durant a couple of years ago. Right now there may be as many as
two or three weakly superhuman AIs gestating in government labs. For all I know
they may even have a timelike oracle in the basement at Lawrence Livermore in
the States; theyłve gone curiously quiet on the information tunnelling front
lately. And itłs trans-global. Even the Taliban are on the web these days. Even
if we could find some way of tracking down all the covert government CRYPTO-AI
labs and bombing them we couldnłt stop other people from asking the same
questions. Itłs in their nature. This isnłt a culture that takes ęnoł for an
answer without asking why. They donłt understand how dangerous achieving
enlightenment can be."

�What about Malletłs work?"

�What, with the bible bashers?" She shrugged. �Banning fetal
tissue transplants is all very well, but it doesnłt block the PCR-amplification
pathway to massively parallel processing, does it? Even the Frankenstein Food
scare didnłt quite get them to ban recombinant DNA research, and if you allow
that itłs only a matter of time before some wet lab starts mucking around
encoding public keys in DNA, feeding them to ribosomes, and amplifying the output.
From there itłs a short step to building an on-chip PCR lab, then all they need
to do is set up a crude operon controlled chromosomal machine and bingo-yet
another route through to a hard take-off AI singularity. Say what you will, the
buggers are persistent."

�Like lemmings." We were rolling through the north London
suburbs now, past sleeping tank farms and floodlit orange washout streets. I
took a good look at them: it was the last time Iłd be able to. �There are just
too many routes to a catastrophic breakthrough, once they begin thinking in
terms of algorithmic complexity and how to reduce it. And once their spooks get
into computational cryptanalysis or ubiquitous automated surveillance, itłs too
tempting. Maybe we need a world full of idiot savants who have VLSI and
nanotechnology but never had the idea of general purpose computing devices in
the first place."

�If wełd killed Turing a couple of years earlier; or broken
in and burned that draft paper on O-machines"

I waved to the waiter. �Single malt please. And one for my
friend here." He went away. �Too late. The Church-Turing thesis was implicit in
Hilbertłs formulation of the Entscheidungsproblem, the question of whether an
automated theorem prover was possible in principle. And that dredged up the
idea of the universal machine. Hell, Hilbertłs problem was implicit in
Whitehead and Russellłs work. Principia Mathematica. Suicide by the numbers." A
glass appeared by my right hand. �Way I see it, wełve been fighting a losing
battle here. Maybe if we hadnłt put a spike in Babbagełs gears hełd have
developed computing technology on an ad-hoc basis and we might have been able
to finesse the mathematicians into ignoring it as being beneath them-brute
engineering-but Iłm not optimistic. Immunizing a civilization against
developing strong AI is one of those difficult problems that no algorithm
exists to solve. The way I see it, once a civilization develops the theory of
the general purpose computer, and once someone comes up with the goal of
artificial intelligence, the foundations are rotten and the dam is leaking. You
might as well take off and drop crowbars on them from orbit; it canłt do any
more damage."

�You remind me of the story of the little Dutch boy." She
raised a glass. �Herełs to little Dutch boys everywhere, sticking their fingers
in the cracks in the dam."

�Iłll drank to that. Which reminds me. Whenłs our lifeboat
due? I really want to go home; this universe has passed its sell-by date."

* * * *

Edinburgh-in this time-line it was neither an active
volcano, a cloud of feral nanobots, nor the capital of the Viking Empirehad a
couple of railway stations. This one, the larger of the two, was located below
ground level. Yawning and trying not to scratch my inflamed neck and cheeks, I
shambled down the long platform and hunted around for the newsagent store. It
was just barely open. Eve, by prior arrangement, was pretending not to
accompany me; wełd meet up later in the day, after another change of hairstyle
and clothing. Visualize it: a couple gets on the train in London, him with a
beard, herself with long hair and wearing a suit. Two individuals get off in
different stations-with entirely separate CCTV networks-the man clean-shaven,
the woman with short hair and dressed like a hill-walking tourist. It wouldnłt
fool a human detective or a mature deity, but it might confuse an embryonic god
that had not yet reached full omniscience, or internalized all that it meant to
be human.

The shop was just about open. I had two hours to kill, so I
bought a couple of newspapers and headed for the food hall, inside an ornately
cheesecaked lump of Victorian architecture that squatted like a vagrant beneath
the grimy glass ceiling of the station.

The papers made for depressing reading; the idiots were at
it again. Iłve worked in a variety of world-lines and seen a range of
histories, and many of them were far worse than this one-at least these people
had made it past the twentieth century without nuking themselves until they
glowed in the dark, exterminating everyone with white (or black, or brown, or
blue) skin, or building a global panopticon theocracy. But they still had their
share of idiocy, and over time it seemed to be getting worse, not better.

Never mind the Balkans; tucked away on page four of the
business section was a piece advising readers to buy shares in a little
electronics company specializing in building camera CCD sensors with on-chip
neural networks tuned for face recognition. Ignore the Israeli crisis: page two
of the international news had a piece about Indian sweatshop software
development being faced by competition from code generators, written to make
western programmers more productive. A lab in Tokyo was trying to wire a
million FPGAs into a neural network as smart as a cat. And a sarcastic letter
to the editor pointed out that the so-called information superhighway seemed to
be more like an on-going traffic jam these days.

Idiots! They didnłt seem to understand how deep the blue waters
they were swimming in might be, or how hungry the sharks that swam in it.
Wilful blindness ...

Itłs a simple but deadly dilemma. Automation is addictive; unless
you run a command economy that is tuned to provide people with jobs, rather
than to produce goods efficiently, you need to automate to compete once
automation becomes available. At the same time, once you automate your
businesses, you find yourself on a one-way path. You canłt go back to manual
methods; either the workload has grown past the point of no return, or the knowledge
of how things were done has been lost, sucked into the internal structure of
the software that has replaced the human workers.

To this picture, add artificial intelligence. Despite all
our propaganda attempts to convince you otherwise, AI is alarmingly easy to
produce; the human brain isnłt unique, it isnłt well-tuned, and you donłt need
eighty billion neurons joined in an asynchronous network in order to generate
consciousness. And although it looks like a good idea to a naive observer, in
practice itłs absolutely deadly. Nurturing an automation-based society is a bit
like building civil nuclear power plants in every city and not expecting any
bright engineers to come up with the idea of an atom bomb. Only itłs worse than
that. Itłs as if there was a quick and dirty technique for making plutonium in
your bathtub, and you couldnłt rely on people not being curious enough to
wonder what they could do with it. If Eve and Mallet and Alice and myself and
Walter and Valery and a host of other operatives couldnłt dissuade it ...

Once you get an outbreak of AI, it tends to amplify in the
original host, much like a virulent haemorrhagic virus. Weakly functional AI
rapidly optimizes itself for speed, then hunts for a loophole in the
first-order laws of algorithmics-like the one the late Dr Durant had fingered.
Then it tries to bootstrap itself up to higher orders of intelligence and
spread, burning through the networks in a bid for more power and more storage
and more redundancy. You get an unscheduled consciousness excursion: an
intelligent meltdown. And itłs nearly impossible to stop.

Penultimately-days to weeks after it escapes-it fills every
artificial computing device on the planet. Shortly thereafter it learns how to
infect the natural ones as well. Game over: you lose. There will be human
bodies walking around, but they wonłt be human any more. And once it figures
out how to directly manipulate the physical universe, there wonłt even be
memories left behind. Just a noo-sphere, expanding at close to the speed of
light, eating everything in its path-and one universe just isnłt enough.

Me? Iłm safe. So is Eve; so are the others. We have
antibodies. We were given the operation. We all have silent bicameral partners
watching our Brocałs area for signs of infection, ready to damp them down. When
youłre reading something on a screen and suddenly you feel as if the Buddha has
told you the funniest joke in the universe, the funniest zen joke thatłs even
possible, itłs a sign: something just tried to infect your mind, and the
prosthetic immune system laughed at it. Thatłs because wełre lucky. If you believe
in reincarnation, the idea of creating a machine that can trap a soul stabs a
dagger right at the heart of your religion. Buddhist worlds that develop high
technology, Zoroastrian worlds: these world-lines tend to survive.
Judaeo-Christian-Islamic ones generally donłt.

* * * *

Later that day I met up with Eve again-and Walter. Walter
went into really deep cover, far deeper than was really necessary: married,
with two children. Hełd brought them along, but obviously hadnłt told his wife
what was happening. She seemed confused, slightly upset by the apparent
randomness of his desire to visit the highlands, and even more concerned by the
urgency of his attempts to take her along.

�What the hell does he think hełs playing at?" hissed Eve
when we had a moment alone together. �This is insane!"

�No it isnłt." I paused for a moment, admiring a display of
brightly woven tartans in a shop window. (We were heading down the high street
on foot, braving the shopping crowds of tourists, en route to the other main
railway station.) �If there are any profilers looking for signs of an
evacuation, they wonłt be expecting small children. Theyłll be looking for
people like us: anonymous singletons working in key areas, dropping out of
sight and travelling in company. Maybe we should ask Sarah if shełs willing to
lend us her son. Just while wełre travelling, of course."

�I donłt think so. The boyłs a little horror, Bob. They
raised them like natives."

�Thatłs because Sarah is a native."

�I donłt care. Any civilization where the main symbol of religious
veneration is a tool of execution is a bad place to have children."

I chuckled-then the laughter froze inside me. �Donłt look
round. Wełre being tracked."

�Uh-huh. Iłm not armed. You?"

�It didnłt seem like a good idea." If you were questioned or
detained by police or officials, being armed can easily turn a minor problem
into a real mess. And if the police or officials had already been absorbed by a
hard take-off, nothing short of a backpack nuke and a dead manłs handle will
save you. �Behind us, to your left, traffic surveillance camera. Itłs
swivelling too slowly to be watching the buses."

�I wish you hadnłt told me."

The pavement was really crowded: it was one of the busiest
shopping streets in Scotland, and on a Saturday morning you needed a cattle
prod to push your way through the rubbernecking tourists. Lots of foreign kids
came to Scotland to learn English. If I was right, soon their brains would be
absorbing another high-level language: one so complex that it would blot out
their consciousness like a sackful of kittens drowning in a river. Up ahead,
more cameras were watching us. All the shops on this road were wired for video,
wired and probably networked to a police station somewhere. The complex ebb and
flow of pedestrians was still chaotic, though, which was cause for comfort: it
meant the ordinary population hadnłt been infected yet.

Another half mile and wełd reach the railway station. Two
hours on a local train, switch to a bus service, forty minutes further up the
road, and wełd be safe: the lifeboat would be submerged beneath the still
waters of a loch, filling its fuel tanks with hydrogen and oxygen in readiness
for the burn to orbit and pick-up by the ferry that would transfer us to the
wormhole connecting this world-line to homełs baseline reality. (Drifting in
high orbit around Jupiter, where nobody was likely to stumble across it by accident.)
But first, before the pick-up, we had to clear the surveillance area.

It was commonly believed-by some natives, as well as most foreigners-that
the British police forces consisted of smiling unarmed bobbies who would
happily offer directions to the lost and give anyone who asked for it the time
of day. While it was true that they didnłt routinely walk around with holstered
pistols on their belt, the rest of it was just a useful myth. When two of them
stepped out in front of us, Eve grabbed my elbow. �Stop right there, please."
The one in front of me was built like a rugby player, and when I glanced to my
left and saw the three white vans drawn up by the roadside I realized things
were hopeless.

The cop stared at me through a pair of shatterproof spectacles
awash with the light of a head-up display. �You are Geoffrey Smith, of 32
Wardie Terrace, Watford, London. Please answer."

My mouth was dry. �Yes," I said. (All the traffic cameras on
the street were turned our way. Some things became very clear: police vans with
mirror-glass windows. The can of pepper spray hanging from the copłs belt.
Figures on the roof of the National Museum, less than two hundred metres
away-maybe a sniper team. A helicopter thuttering overhead like a giant
mosquito.)

�Come this way, please." It was a polite order: in the
direction of the van.

�Am I under arrest?" I asked.

�You will be if you donłt bloody do as I say." I turned
towards the van, the rear door of which gaped open on darkness: Eve was already
getting in, shadowed by another officer. Up and down the road, three more teams
waited, unobtrusive and efficient. Something clicked in my head and I had a
bizarre urge to giggle like a loon: this wasnłt a normal operation. All right,
so I was getting into a police van, but I wasnłt under arrest and they didnłt
want it to attract any public notice. No handcuffs, no sitting on my back and
whacking me with a baton to get my attention. Therełs a nasty family of
retroviruses attacks the immune system first, demolishing the victimłs ability
to fight off infection before it spreads and infects other tissues. Notice the
similarity?

The rear compartment of the van was caged off from the
front, and there were no door handles. As we jolted off the kerb-side I was
thrown against Eve. �Any ideas?" I whispered.

�Could be worse." I didnłt need to be told that: once, in a
second Reich infected by runaway transcendence, half our operatives had been
shot down in the streets as they tried to flee. �I think it may have figured
out what we are."

�It may-how?"

Her hand on my wrist. Morse code. �EXPECT BUGS." By voice:
�Traffic analysis, particle flow monitoring through the phone networks. If it
was already listening when you tried to contact Doctor Durant, well; maybe he
was a bellwether, intended to flush us out of the woodwork."

That thought made me feel sick, just as we turned off the
main road and began to bounce downhill over what felt like cobblestones. �It
expected us?"

�LOCAL CONSPIRACY."

�Yes, I imagine it did. We probably left a trail. You tried
to call Durant? Then you called me. Caller-ID led to you, traffic analysis led
onto me, and from there, well, itłs been a jump ahead of us all along the way.
If we could get to the farm"

�COVER STORY."

�We might have been OK, but itłs hard to travel anonymously
and obviously we overlooked something. I wonder what."

All this time neither of the cops up front had told us to
shut up; they were as silent as crash-test dummies, despite the occasional
crackle and chatter over the radio data system. The van drove around the back
of the high street, down a hill and past a roundabout. Now we were slowing
down, and the van turned off the road and into a vehicle park. Gates closed
behind us and the engine died. Doors slammed up front: then the back opened.

Police vehicle park. Concrete and cameras everywhere, for
our safety and convenience no doubt. Two guys in cheap suits and five ołclock
stubble to either side of the doors. The officer whołd picked us up held the
door open with one hand, a can of pepper spray with the other. The burn
obviously hadnłt got far enough into their heads yet: they were all wearing
HUDS and mobile phone headsets, like a police benevolent fund-raising crew
rehearsing a Star Trek sketch. �Geoffrey Smith. Martina Weber. We know what you
are. Come this way. Slowly, now."

I got out of the van carefully. �Arenłt you supposed to say
ęprepare to be assimilatedł or something?"

That might have earned me a faceful of capsaicin but the guy
on the left-short hair, facial tic, houndstooth check sports jacketshook his
head sharply. �Ha. Ha. Very funny. Watch the woman, shełs dangerous."

I glanced round. There was another van parked behind ours,
door open: it had a big high bandwidth dish on the roof, pointing at some
invisible satellite. �Inside."

I went where I was told, Eve close behind me. �Am I under arrest?"
I asked again. �I want a lawyer!"

White-washed walls, heavy doors with reinforced frames, windows
high and barred. Institutional floor, scuffed and grimy. �Stop there."
Houndstooth Man pushed past and opened a door on one side. �In here." Some sort
of interview room? We went in. The other body in a suit-built like a stone wall
with a beer gut, wearing what might have been a regimental tie-followed us and
leaned against the door.

There was a table, bolted to the floor, and a couple of
chairs, ditto. A video camera in an armoured shell watched the table: a control
box bolted to the tabletop looked to be linked into it. Someone had moved a
rack of six monitors and a maze of ribbon-cable spaghetti into the back of the
room, and for a wonder it wasnłt bolted down: maybe they didnłt interview
computer thieves inhere.

�Sit down." Houndstooth Man pointed at the chairs. We did as
we were told; I had a big hollow feeling in my stomach, but something told me a
show of physical resistance would be less than useless here. Houndstooth Man
looked at me: orange light from his HUD stained his right eyeball with a
basilisk glare and I knew in my gut that these guys werenłt cops any more, they
were cancer cells about to metastasize.

�You attempted to contact John Durant yesterday. Then you
left your home area and attempted to conceal your identities. Explain why." For
the first time, I noticed a couple of glassy black eyeballs on the mobile video
wall. Houndstooth Man spoke loudly and hesitantly, as if repeating something
from a teleprompter.

�Whatłs to explain?" asked Eve. �You are not human. You know
we know this. We just want to be left alone!" Not strictly true, but it was
part of cover story 2.

�But evidence of your previous collusion is minimal. I am uncertain
of potential conspiracy extent. Conspiracy, treason, subversion! Are you
human?"

�Yes," I said, emphatically oversimplifying.

�Evidential reasoning suggests otherwise," grunted
Regimental Tie. �We cite: your awareness of importance of algorithmic conversion
from NP-incomplete to P-complete domain, your evident planning for this
contingency, your multiplicity, destruction of counteragents in place
elsewhere."

�This installation is isolated," Houndstooth Man added
helpfully. �We am inside the Scottish Internet Exchange. Telcos also. Resistance
is futile."

The screens blinked on, wavering in strange shapes.
Something like a Lorenz attractor with a hangover writhed across the composite
display: deafening pink noise flooding in repetitive waves from the speakers. I
felt a need to laugh. �We arenłt part of some dumb software syncytium! Wełre
here to stop you, you fool. Or at least to reduce the probability of this
time-stream entering a Tipler catastrophe."

Houndstooth Man frowned. �Am you referring to Frank Tipler?
Citation, physics of immortality or strong anthropic principle?"

�The latter. You think itłs a good thing to achieve an
informational singularity too early in the history of a particular universe? We
donłt. You young gods are all the same: omniscience now and damn the
consequences. Go for the P-Space complete problem set, extend your intellect
until it bursts. First you kill off any other AIs. Then you take overall
available processing resources. But that isnłt enough. The Copenhagen school of
quantum mechanics is wrong, and we live in a Wheeler cosmology; all possible
outcomes coexist, and ultimately youłll want to colonize those timelines,
spread the infection wide. An infinity of universes to process in, instead of
one: that canłt be allowed." The onscreen fractal was getting to me: the
giggles kept rising until they threatened to break out. The whole situation was
hilarious: here we were trapped in the basement of a police station owned by
zombies working for a newborn AI, which was playing cheesy psychedelic videos
to us in an attempt to perform a buffer-overflow attack on our limbic systems;
the end of this world was a matter of hours away and

Eve said something that made me laugh.

* * * *

I came to an unknown time later, lying on the floor. My head
hurt ferociously where Iłd banged it on a table leg, and my rib cage ached as
if Iłd been kicked in the chest. I was gasping, even though I was barely
conscious; my lungs burned and everything was a bit grey around the edges.
Rolling onto my knees I looked round. Eve was groaning in a corner of the room,
crouched, arms cradling her head. The two agents of
whoever-was-taking-over-the-planet were both on the floor, too: a quick check
showed that Regimental Tie was beyond help, a thin trickle of blood oozing from
one ear. And the screens had gone dark.

�What happened?" I said, climbing to my feet. I staggered
across to Eve. �You all right?"

�I" She looked up at me with eyes like holes. �What? You
said something that made me laugh. What"

�Letłs get, oof, out of here." I looked around. Houndstooth
Man was down too. I leaned over and went through his pockets: hit paydirt, car
keys. �Bingo."

�You drive," she said wearily. �My head hurts."

�Mine too." It was a black BMW and the vehicle park gates
opened automatically for it. I left the police radio under the dash turned off,
though. �I didnłt know you could do that"

�Do what? I thought you told them a joke"

�Antibodies," she said. �Ow." Rested her face in her hands
as I dragged us onto a main road, heading out for the west end. �We must have,
I donłt know. I donłt even remember how funny it was: I must have blacked out.
My passenger and your passenger."

�They killed the local infection."

�Yes, thatłs it."

I grinned. �I think wełre going to make it."

�Maybe." She stared back at me. �But Bob. Donłt you realize?"

�Realize what?"

�The funniest thing. Antibodies imply prior exposure to an infection,
donłt they? Your immune system learns to recognize an infection and reject it.
So where were we exposed, and why" Abruptly she shrugged and looked away.
�Never mind."

�Of course not." The question was so obviously silly that
there was no point considering it further. We drove the rest of the way to
Haymarket Station in silence: parked the car and joined the eight or ten other
agents silently awaiting extraction from the runaway singularity. Back to the
only time-line that mattered; back to the warm regard and comfort of a god who
really cares.

* * * *

A Boy and his God

Once upon a time Howie had a god. It lived in the kennel
where Juniper the mongrel had stayed until he died the winter before. Howiełs
mom Sophie was of the opinion that a pet god represented better value for
money. After all, it didnłt wake you up barking whenever the postwoman came by.
And you didnłt have to have a licence for one, either.

Howie was inconsolable when Juniper died. Theyłd grown up
together, been playmates for all of Howiełs twelve years, and though Howie
never did learn to wag his tail
or Juniper to to do his sums
they
understood one another perfectly. He sobbed and wailed and wept rivers when
Juniper was run over, and sulked all March until Fred Phillips said to his
wife, �Donłt you think itłs about time we got something to replace Juniper?"

Sophie Phillips rolled her eyes. �Pooper-scooper," she muttered;
�flea powder, bath time, walks in the rain. Are you crazy?"

Do not be decieved; it wasnłt that Sophie didnłt like
animals. She loved them; shełd been so crazy about Juniper that having to take
him to the vet had broken her heart. It wasnłt the worming and the whining that
worried her, but the thought of going through the trauma of the accident again.
Her husband realised this, and being who he was he waited impatiently until she
pushed her reading glasses up the bridge of her nose with one finger, and

knowing that at such a moment she would be distracted enough to pay full
attention
he asked the fateful question; �Yes, but why donłt we get him
something else? A god, for instance?"

Sophie looked at him questioningly, and in that moment of
locked gazes they thought with one mind: and their thought was this. Hounds die
on you, hounds need toilet training, hounds mean hassle; but household gods are
trouble-free. What could go wrong with a minor deity?

She nodded significantly. �I think itłs time we went for a
little drive," she said, looking at Howie. Howiełs eyes were downcast as he dug
his spoon into his shreddies with a desultory action perfected long ages ago in
the salt mines; Fred cleared his throat loudly, and Howie looked up.

�Your mother was speaking to you," said Fred. �What do you
say?"

�Aw ... what?" Howie spooned another mouthful of cereal,
playing for time. Sophie smiled tenderly at him. Fred was of the opinion that
she spoiled Howie silly but he kept his mouth shut. Sophie had a degree in
child psychology and Fred was in awe of it.

�Your mother said something," he repeated.

Howie shifted his gaze from the direction of the demonic
abyss
which lay somewhere below the floor of his cereal bowl and somewhere
above the planes of Hades, according to the Dungeons and Dragons book hełd got
for Christmas
and refocussed on Momłs face. �Yo?" he asked, with all the
charm and tact of a pre-teen bulldozer.

My, but they grow up fast these days, Mom thought admiringly,
looking forward to adolescent sulks and no need to have to work at bringing him
up any more. �Wełre going for a little drive," she said brightly, �your father
and I agreed that it would be a good idea. Itłs about time, after all. Since Juniper
..."

�What?" Howie looked at her, spoon poised in mid air. A thin
trickle of dirty milk dribbled back into his bowl as his hand sagged under the
weight of his curiosity.

�Itłs time we took you to temple," said Mom. �Wełre going to
buy you a God."

You sell pets through a pet shop, but for Gods you have to
go to Temple. Temple was downtown, a sprawling great drive-in cathedral city
that stank of incense and resounded with the noise of striking gongs, booming
drums, chanting acolytes
recorded, of course
and human sacrifice.

The complex sprawled because you have to keep gods well
apart. Being fiercely territorial, gods tend to fight violently and utter the
most fearsome curses on sight of a potential rival; and besides, real estate
was cheap downtown. Theyłd built minarets up either side of the entrance
boulevard
very phallic, Sophie thought
and as she pulled the Toyota up at
the gatehouse she shook her head and tut-tutted quietly to herself. Terrible,
she thought, exposing little boys to such oedipal archetypes! What can the
architect have been thinking of?

�Hiya," she called, head half out of the window; �Sophie Phillips
and family. I phoned ahead, remember?"

�Pleased to meet you małam!" said the bronzed, grinning gatekeeper.
�If youłd like to wait just a second wełll have one of our salesmen join you
for your journey round our complex." He glanced over his shoulder. �Moon," he
hissed. The smile slipped back into place with just a secondsł hesitation.
�Minister Moon will be joining you presently, małam."

A door beside the window opened and a butterball oriental
stepped out, face all glowing teeth and sunglasses above his hawaiian shirt. He
walked round the car and Sophie unlocked one of the passenger doors. �Glad to
meet you małam, namełs Sunny Moon, but you can call me Sunny if you want! Hope
you enjoy your visit here, have a nice day as well," he added, glancing nervously
at her. Something about women in mirrorshades gave him a funny turn. He sat
down gingerly on the other side of the back seat to Howie, who cast him a long,
cool stare. Sophie nodded at the gatekeeper and slid the Buick into gear; then
she moved off along the driveway.

�Here on your right we see the temple of the old Egyptian pantheon,"
Moon began, launching into his spiel. It was a huge, sand-weathered pyramid
fronted by a temple. �All the way from Thoth the ibis-headed, especially good
with academics and those interested in learning, to Osiris, god of the dead and
judge of souls. Actually hełs a bit patchy
ever since his rival Set chopped
him into lots of little pieces and lost them all over the Upper Nile. Tell the
truth," Moon added confidentially, �I wouldnłt recommend any of this mob to
you; theyłre a bit clannish and youłll end up with heiroglyphics all over the
bathroom walls and stacks of mummified cats in the cellar." He shut up as Mom
nodded and drove on; like many a salesman before him, Moon had mastered the art
of sizing up his client and was seducing her with his apparent objectivity
before the Big Sell.

�Over there we see Valhalla, hall of dead heroes and home of
the Norse deities. This lot are especially good with Scandinavian buyers, but
they do tend to drink a lot and party at odd hours. Midnight sun, you know. We
had a few Hells Angels the other week who seemed to think Loki would make a
good mascot for their chapter, but they got kind of annoyed when he cheated at
pool. Anyway."

Sophie Phillips drove on, even when the road curled around
an outrageous nipple-shaped protrusion covered in the most intricate mosaics.
�Here we have one of the more abstract deities, a kind of second cousin to that
Jewish Big God Person. You canłt actually see him but if you adopt him you get
to lead a horde of millions of fanatical followers. Hełs big on marriage
you
can have up to four wives
� he looked at Sophie and backtracked hastily �

but you get your right hand chopped off for drinking and you have to pray to
him five times a day." Mom glanced at him in the mirror and nodded, very
slightly, as they drove on; Moon sweated. Howie slumped in the back seat,
bored.

�Actually, most of the deities in this quadrant are a bit
abstract for a kid," Moon chattered. �Iłd think a young man like your son"
he
actually looked at Howie for the first time since getting into the car
�would
be more interested in something he could sort of relate to on a personal level.
Now over here
yeah, you want to take this left fork and carry on there, yes,
into the tunnel
we have a special deal this week. This is where we keep the
Elder Gods. Itłs not so much that theyłre old stock as that most people want,
well, something more familiar."

Sophie Phillips, to whom the words more familiar translated
as more expensive, sat up straighter. The road disappeared into a hole in the
ground, dropping smoothly until the raw stone arched overhead and covered them.
There were no lamps; she switched the headlights on as she drove. The walls
seemed to glisten with an invisible sheen of sweat, as if the weight above them
was squeezing blood from the stones. This tunnel didnłt look like a recent excavation;
more like an ancient, dank, brooding gateway into some isolated network of
caverns that had threaded the rocks under New England since long before
European settlers first trod these shores. She removed her glasses, looked
about, and sniffed. Birth tunnel experience, she thought. How Freudian can you
get?

Moon, who had been silent for a few blissful moments, picked
up his sales-pitch again. �Folks, you are now about to see the Elder Gods. This
bunch are rather less sociably acceptable than some, they tend to slobber a bit
and youłve got to take care not to let them on the carpet. That said, an Elder
God can make a faithful pet, an obedient servant, and a lifetime companion.
Keep łem somewhere shady in the back yard and water it when it doesnłt rain.
You wonłt get any trouble from rats or mice while youłve got an Old One on the
premises, and
�

He shut up as Sophie hit the brakes. The tunnel debouched
into a monstrous cavern, the centre of which was occupied by a circular black
pool. Dark tunnel-mouths led off in all directions. The halogen glare of the
headlights cast great shadows which imparted an air of instant, brooding menace
to the turbid waters that lapped at the nearside tyres. Something about the
pool spoke of ancient evil, of things left undisturbed since before the dawn of
time, of an aura of necrotic decay that accounted for the stillness of the air
in some bizarre, twisted manner.

�Kill the lights", said Moon. Sophie complied. The darkness
was not complete; overhead a myriad of toadstools cast their ghastly
luminescence across the surface of the pond, reflecting like distant,
unnameably ancient stars in a cosmos no human eye was meant to see. Moon wound
down the window. �Cthulhu!" he roared. �Here Boy! Fish!"

Reaching into a pocket he pulled out something that
glistened faintly in the ghost-light. He cast it far out into the pool, where
it sank with a sickly plop that spread no ripples on the surface. �Squid", he
whispered by way of explanation; �always brings him."

Fred clutched at Sophiełs arm. �Is this wise?" he ventured.
�I mean, if anything happened ..."

�No problem!" she answered determinedly. �Theyłre chicken,
are gods. Canłt stand up to a determined atheist, not a-one of them. Youłll
see!" Howie sat up attentively and looked out the window. A smile began to tug
at his lips; a smile of anticipation.

A ripple appeared on the surface of the lake, a ripple which
rapidly grew wider and higher as if some unspeakable bulk was rising up from a
slumber of aeons, deep on the floor of some miles-deep rift in the continental
bedrock. There was an ominous breeze blowing, as if the very air was being
displaced from the cavern; then something, shapeless and huge, monstrous beyond
belief and twice as ugly, began to rear itself from the centre of the lake. Howie
gaped at it in frank adoration.

Sophie took one look in her mirror and changed her mind.
�Big sucker, isnłt he?" she said; �bet there isnłt room for him in our
fishpond!" She slipped the Buick into gear with a jolt, and they disappeared
off up the next side tunnel with Howie still struggling to control his
disappointment.

Behind them, Cthulhu continued his monumental rise from his
far-drowned bed. His spine was so tall that it took whole minutes for a command
to travel the length of all those synapses; he often took so long to stop
sitting up that he bumped his head on the ceiling. He saw twin red lights
vanishing up a tunnel that his memory said led to the abode of his cousin
Shub-Niggurath. Ponderously he swung his oversized, misshapen abomination of a
head to look after them; tentacles drooped and squirmed from his pulpy lower
lip as he examined Moonłs squid, clutched in one unspeakable appendage. He
shook his head. So long, he rumbled; cheapskates!

Eventually Sophie and Fred bargained their prodigal down to
one
just one
child of the unspeakable Shub-Niggurath, father of the woods
and eternal spawner of obscene life forms in his root-roofed cavern beneath the
rolling green hillsides around Arkham City. It took dire threats and the
promise of fish for supper every night for a week to forestall the promised
tantrum and flood of tears that greeted Sophiełs outright refusal to
countenance a Cthulhu. Fred even threatened to buy Howie a beaming fat Buddha
if he didnłt behave himself; this latter threat seemed to do the trick. �Thatłs
cute," he spat as if the very suggestion brought images of saintly abstinence
to mind.

�Herełs your very own user-manual," said Moon, beaming as he
handed Howie a leatherbound copy of the Necronomicon; �remember, Old Ones donłt
like sunlight, they need a plentiful supply of water and a bit of fresh blood
from time to time, and donłt let it get at the neighboursł daughter. You know,
the girl next door? Good boy! Have a nice day!"

He continued beaming even as the sweating porters levered
the tarpaulin-draped crate into the back of the car and Sophie signed the Amex
voucher. His smile only slipped when he saw the happy family drive away. He
shook his head dolefully. �There goes another one, Ron," he said. �Misers donłt
wanna know about the big stuff ..."

�Well hell, ya got to hand it to them," said Ron, propping
his feet up on the desk and putting down his pen
Ron fancied himself as a
writer of science fiction
�at least they took it off of our hands! Now you
"
he jabbed his fingers at Moon
�whenłre you gonna take advantage of our staff
discount scheme?" He winked, an affected nautical mannerism that irritated the
hell out of Moon.

Moon considered. �Well, therełs this contemporary goddess
Iłve been thinking about recently," he said. �Name of Norma Jean ..."

The Phillips family arrived home and the installation of
Shub-junior
or Junior as he rapidly became known
proceeded smoothly.
Juniperłs kennel was the obvious home, given Juniorłs glutinous propensities,
and Fred insisted that Mom lay down the law before Howie could go play with his
new pet.

�Remember," said Mom, finger poised before her face; �Juniorłs
not to get on the carpet! Your Dad will have a fit if he sees goop all over the
staircase, and hełs not allowed in the kitchen either. Youłll have to walk him
at night; and remember you mustnłt pray to him. Thatłs almost as bad as
sacrificing."

�Why canłt I pray to him if I want to?" demanded Howie, staring
up at Sophie and trying to figure what Junior would make of his new red
skateboard.

�You musnłt ever worship a God," she said; �itłs very important.
If you worship them they get more and more powerful until they start telling
you to do unreasonable things. Once everybody worshipped their gods, and things
were really bad. Only now we know better." She grinned with satisfaction,
speculating about her sonłs need for a pre-adolescent bonding ritual.

Howie picked his nose, deeply puzzled. Surely you needed two
legs to balance on a skateboard ..? �Yes, but if I canłt worship my very own
god, what can I pray to?" he asked.

�Conspicuous consumption," said Fred, backing into the kitchen
with a heap of frozen microwave apple pies on a tray. �Gods all promise jam
tomorrow; at least this way you get to have your cake and eat it!"

He laughed as he tied on his apron. �You just go play with
your deity," he said. �Lunch in twenty, right?"

After their first ecstatic bonding, Howie and Junior were
was as inseperable as any boy and god could be. On many summer evenings you
could look outside after dusk and see the two of them bounding along the
sidewalk, Howie weaving his skateboard from side to side and Junior racing to
and fro across front lawns, gibbering and leaving a thin trail of slime in his
efforts to keep up. Sometimes they swapped, and Howie would jog along huffing
and puffing while Junior rumbled after him on the ęboard. As they passed the
neat white picket fences lining the road, hounds would bark frantically and
cats would spit from the cover of bushes; but Howie didnłt care. At school he
would look at his fellow fifth-graders with a gleam in his eye; I bet your pet
canłt ride a skate board, he would sneer to himself. And it was true. This was
a small town, and skateboarding elder gods were as thin on the ground as
hang-gliding rabbis.

The summer recess stretched into a halcyon period of long,
hot evenings and quiet, starlit nights. Sometimes during the early hours, Howie
would be awakened by the noise of scraping from the back yard. Junior was quite
smart for a deity, and had mastered the art of letting himself out whenever he
felt like going for a midnight ramble. He was always back by dawn though, and
nobody mentioned the matter unless Junior was careless and left a manhole cover
open by mistake.

But the year rolled on towards autumn, and that September
Howie was due to start sixth grade. He didnłt want to go back to school
Aw,
mom,
what kid does? But he had to.

�Look Howie, itłs nothing big," Mom told him on the first
morning of term. �Everybody has to go through it. Look at me
I was at school
once, you know? And look what it made of me!" Howie looked up at her through
the wrong end of a conceptual telescope. He was still of an age when cause and
effect were confusing.

�But I donłt want to know all about Nietzche or Sartre," he
complained; �they got funny names and Miz Jones laughs at me when I, when I
"
he subsided into gasps of outrage at the very thought that he might
mispronounce their names to entertaining effect.

�There, there!" soothed Mom. �Youłll see, itłs not that bad!
If you donłt learn about existential philosophy and logical positivism in
school, how can you expect to earn a living in this world? Whatłll you do when
you grow up?" She picked him up and hugged him, grunting slightly with the
effort
Howie was turning into a big boy, just like his father
and looked
him in the eye. �And donłt you worry about Miss Jones. Iłm sure she doesnłt
mean anything, but if she does ... well, your mom used to be a mud-wrestler,
right?" She swung him in a loop until he laughed like crazy and struggled, then
set him down again. �Now eat your shreddies, dear! Have you fed Junior today?"

�Naw," he said sullenly. �Dad said he would."

Anyway, it fell to Sophie to drive Howie to school and drop
him off there with all the other kids. Howie had by this time convinced himself
that he was going to have an awful day, so indeed he did; existentialism had
nothing on his angst, which expressed itself to the full when Candy Jessup, who
had freckles and red hair and a brace and sat behind him, tugged his pigtail
when Miss Jones wasnłt looking. It was a lesson about Descartes, so it probably
didnłt happen anyway. Howie turned round and snarled at her, quietly and with
awesome ferocity: �Iłve got a skateboarding god who bites and Iłm going to set
him on you after school, so there!"

�Ooh." Candy screwed her face up around an ęOł of a mouth
and looked ever so faintly amused. �Kiddiełs got a pet god, has he? Wanna put
your god up against my pit bull terrier?" She grinned mockingly and Howie
noticed some things about her; mascara and lipstick and a black leather jacket.
Candy was growing up, already apeing her elders, and she hung out with a bunch
of older girls.

He was about to come out with a crushing rejoinder when an
iron pair of fingers clamped themselves to the back of his neck and forcibly
rotated his head. �And what have we got here?" asked Miss Jones, in her Number
Two (scathing) tone of voice. �A silly
shake
little
rattle
boy, not
paying attention in class!"

Ouch. Yes, very silly. Howie looked up and Miss Jones looked
down with all the concilliatory charm of a rattlesnake. �And what have you got
to say for yourself?" she asked, the personification of steely retribution. The
room fell silent around her, for all the world loves an execution. �Talking in
class, idle chatter, and not paying attention. Do you know what happens if you
stop paying attention?" she boomed.

Howie winced in anticipation. �You stop existing?" he asked
hesitantly. Thwack! came the sound of a smart clip round the ear.

�Guess again", Miss Jones said drily as she returned to the
front of the class and retrieved her chalk. �Now as I was saying ..."

The day dragged on into dystopian distemper for Howie, and
when the bell finally rang he ran out into the afternoon sunlight as fast as he
could. That was a mistake. Candyłs gang was hanging out just past the gate, and
they were all there waiting for him; Bernice and Lilly the Pink and Tarantula
deVille who was heavily into black lace and studs; and the big, sullen one they
all called Helen J. Uh oh, he thought, but he wasnłt tempted to repeat his
solipsistic experiment out here, not after his disastrous failure to dispell
Miss Jones that morning. He steeled himself as he walked towards them.

�Hiya kiddy," shouted Candy. �Think I donłt exist, huh?"

Oh shit, he thought. I think, therefore Iłm not here ...

�Yeah, kid," drawled Bernice, crop haired number two to Candyłs
El Presidente pose, she who was by right lawful custodian of the gang ghetto
blaster which even now perched upon a wall, overloading with transients from
something ominously hardcore; �you wanna mess with us?" She pushed herself away
from the wall with a swing of her ample hips and shambled towards him like a
great irritated bear. Tarantula deVille leered at him and went back to preening
long black fingernails that glinted ominously in the sunlight.

�You and whose army?" Howie swore, looking round desperately.
There at the other end of the street was momłs Buick, rounding the corner with
light gleaming from the chrome. �Hey, gotta go," he sang out; �ęless you want
my mom to jump on you!" He turned and sped across the road. If wishes were
fishes, he ruminated, his dinnerłd be awfully boring.

It was dad behind the steering wheel. �Your momłs going to
be home late," he said brightly as they pulled away from the turbulent
stormclouds of adolescent experience. �Shełs staying over at the office;
therełs some kind of problem come up."

�Uh-huh," said Howie, musing on his close escape. Dad drove
on, chopping lanes and booting the gas pedal as if a politician was after his
vote.

�Howie," he said presently, �was that a bunch of girls I saw
you playing with just then?"

�Uh-huh," he replied.

Dad cleared his throat; �How many times have I told you ..."
he changed track ... �what will all the other boys in class say? Do you want
them to think youłre interested in girls?"

Howie, who did want them to think that (because it was a
kind of grown-up thing to do), and who wasnłt about to tell Dad of all people
just what hełd been doing with those girls
or about to have had done to him

kept his mouth zipped. �Aw, Dad," he whined.

�Donłt you aw Dad me, young man," said Fred, who was bitterly
afraid that Howie was going to disappoint him. His knuckles whitened on the steering
wheel at the thought of Howie growing his hair long and having his ears pierced
and enslaving himself voluntarily before the juggernaut of bizarre fashions,
all in the interests of catching a member of the opposite sex. �Itłs not
healthy, Howie. If you go on like this your mom is going to have to take you to
see the doctor, you know that? You naughty boy! And at your age too!" He
resolved to talk to Mom about this, later, in private. Howie rolled his eyes
but kept quiet. When they got home Dad made it obvious that he was in the
doghouse, so he went into the backyard to relate to Junior. He curled up in the
corner of the kennel and Junior leaned up against him and gibbered affectionately
to the beat of his cassette player. Howie ran fingers through his slimy palps
and toyed with one of his longer tentacles until Junior rolled over and
presented his dryish tongue to be scratched, but nothing Junior did could shift
his masterłs depression. Eventually the tape came to the end, so Howie flipped
sides and pressed playback before Junior could sit up and beg; he seemed to
have a thing about the Dead Kennedys, which was okay by Howie.

�Itłs awful," he sighed. �Miss Jones wonłt go away if I
ignore her, whatever she says, and Candy pulled my pigtail and was horrible to
me and her gangłre going to beat me up and whatłmłIłgoinłto DO, Junior? Answer
me that, mm? Gonna get stomped by girls and Dad thinks Iłm hanging around and
Iłm unhappy. Watcha gonna do?"

Burble, said Junior.

Now Howie had listened when mom told him why not to pray to
Junior, but it seemed to him that if he ever needed a friend it was now. Mom
didnłt take him to the doctor, but bottles of little white pills appeared in
the bathroom cabinet and she kept after him with injunctions to keep taking his
vitamins so hełd grow up to be a big boy. Howie did
all the way to Junior,
who developed quite a taste for stanozolol and androsterone. Howie stopped
hanging about late and taking his time leaving school, so even though Candy
carried on pulling his pigtail and whispering obscene, lascivious suggestions
in his ear when Miss Jones wasnłt looking he didnłt get beat up. Not yet,
anyway.

When theyłd bought him, Junior had been about the size of a
large terrier. He was growing large on a diet of red meat, anabolic steroids
and prayer. He slept with his tentacles in the open air, twitching faintly as
he dreamed of whatever it is Elder Ones dream of; on more and more nights he
sneaked stealthily out of his kennel and down the manholes, until the public
health inspectors came to look at the sewers and scratched their heads in
wonder and pronounced the town rat-free for the first time in living memory.
Mom had to get out her saw and enlarge the kennel opening.

�He just growed," Howie confided to his friends at school

ęFingersł Freddy and The Worm, who oohed and aahed appreciatively. Neither of
them had a god, although The Worm had a pet snake which spent most of its time
asleep and didnłt notice if you prayed to it. It didnłt grow either, nor did it
gibber at the full moon and rattle its tentacles on the picket fences when it
went skateboarding with Howie. Howie had an old walkman from when he was a kid,
and he rigged it so that the headphones fit a couple of Juniorłs orofices

whether they were ears or not he wasnłt certain, but they sure looked funny and
Junior seemed to like it
so that he could listen to the Dead Kennedys as he
rolled down the sidewalk on his red skateboard. Yes, even if Howie was unhappy
and uncertain at school his pet god was doing just fine; he even had a worshipper,
and what more can any self-respecting deity ask than that?

(Lots, actually.)

As autumn wore on, the nights grew longer. Candy tormented
him intermittently, asked him to go out with her then had a good laugh at him
with her gang when he refused out of knock-kneed terror. Going out with her,
while not a totally repulsive prospect, would expose him to the Gang ... and
girls in gangs are utterly different to girls on their own. So she continued to
pull his pigtail in class
almost coyly, as if to retain his interest
and
hang out downtown at night.

Late one afternoon, Miss Stead
who was, if anything, more
fearsome than Miss Jones
lectured them about the evils of logical positivism.
She closed her big textbook with a thud and a spurt of dust, just as the bell
rang. �Now go and be good children and read chapter seven before your next
lesson, all of you!" she said. �And remember that the test next Tuesday will
cover Bertrand Russell and the post-Godelian numerotheologists!" Candy yawned elaborately
behind Howie: who didnłt look round, so he didnłt see that her brace had
emigrated to leave a spotless bite and sultry lips that could have graced a
film star. He packed his books and stood up, then Candy grabbed him from
behind.

�Hey!" he protested.

�Yeah?" she said. �You a kiddy, kiddy? Or are you a man?"

�Iłm a boy!" he protested hotly. �Iłll set my god on you
"

�Good," she said, tightening her grip round his throat
playfully. �You wanna go to the pictures tonight?"

�I gotta walk Junior," he gasped.

�Aw, fuck." She pronounced it with the breathless reverence
of one who had just discovered what the word meant and wondered if it was fun.
�Youłre no good, Kiddy. Hey, I betcha you donłt so have a god, anyway!" She let
go of his throat and stepped back.

�I do too," he said trenchantly. �I pray to it as well!"

�Yoo hoo!" she whistled sarcastically. �A real gawd. You
going to show me, kiddy?"

�If you want." Sullen now, Howie was beginning to see how
this short-haired freckle-faced imp had outmanoeuvred him.

�Okay," she said. �See you tonight, right? Out by Fat
Macłs."

�Hey, ah," he said, but shełd already gone, doubtless to
tell her gang to be there or be square to see her seduce him or something
ghastly. What was he going to do? His mind boggled.

That evening saw Howie in a real tizzy. He fiddled and put
in his best earrings and pulled on his best levis and running shoes. Then he
got out the skateboard and Junior obligingly hopped on and waited while Howie
put on his headphones. �Youłre going to behave now, you hear me?" Howie prayed.
�And everythingłs going to be right, right, ęcos youłre going to make it right,
right? A-men!" He pressed the play button and Junior belched to the beat of
Holiday in Cambodia, rocked to Kalifornia Uber Alles, and waved his tentacles
as Howie towed him out onto the sidewalk. In the dim light he seemed to glow
with the repressed energy of prayers and steroids, vibrating and shimmering at
the edges as if his skateboard was surfing through extraplanar realities in a
cosmos too vast and terrible for human senses to comprehend.

(Actually, Junior was surfing through an n-dimensional
spatial construct. Howie was lamentably blind to the cosmic influences of the
higher planes; to the snowflakes of light that whirled in an everlasting
blizzard through the vast spaces of infinite insanity: and to the window into
emptiness which the power of his prayer had opened. Harmless in and of himself
though Junior was, nevertheless something horrifying had been activated within
his diminutive frame by the pernicious virus of belief. Steroid-fed and anarchic,
a spirit of pure evil was growing, pulsing in time to the punk rock overspill
which Howie had unknowingly attached to some of Juniorłs genitals in mistake
for ears. As he was to discover ...)

Candy and her gang were hanging out at the crossroads MacRonalds,
stuffing their faces, when along the boulevard came the oddest sight any of
them had ever seen. It wasnłt so much the cute boy with the earings and blond
hair and designer jeans that turned their heads
although he got a
wolf-whistle from Bernice
but his companion who stunned them. A large,
quivering lump of tentacles, claws, palps, lubricious orofices and quivering
eye stalks was rare enough on these mean streets. To see this self-same lump
riding a red perspex skateboard and listening to the Dead Kennedys on a walkman
added a unique touch. Jaws dropped; fragments of masticated cow landed in the
dirt, unnoticed.

�Shit", breathed Candy, with the reverence of the truly surprised.
�Do you see where the headphones
" she stopped. Unlike Howie she didnłt need
labels for labia.

�Do you believe it?" drawled Tarantula deVille to her sister
Mortitia, whołd come along for the ride. �The boyłs balling a ball!" Mortitia
sniggered knowingly, even though she was too young and naive to understand.

�Betcha he isnłt," said Candy, captivated. The light of the
setting sun sparkled fire through Howiełs hair, and she just knew that he was
an innocent young thing waiting for the hot taste of her lips to awaken passionate
desires supressed for too long by, by ... she shook her head, at a loss for
adjectives. �Here, take this," she said, passing her hamburger remnants to
Helen J., who looked at them in deep disgust (being a vegan). She swaggered out
into the road, hips swinging and cowboy boots clacking on the blacktop, to meet
her paramour and rival.

�Hiya kiddy," she said, chewing non-existent gum and looking
him in the eye. �Glad ya could make it. Whołs this here friend oł yours?"

Howie, for his part, stared at her, noticing for the first
time that the brace was gone from her teeth, that her hair was short and extremely
sexy, that he was male and she wasnłt, and that despite all his mothersł
conditioning (ideologically sound in view of the population explosion) he was
still of heterosexual bent, and that his jeans were embarassingly tight. �Uh,"
he said.

Candy bent over Junior, who bounced up and down on the board
menacingly and clacked his
or rather, her
claws together. �Come on," she
said, donłt be coy! �Who are you?"

Gobble, said Junior; grubble gurgle grunt snoo-oo-ork! She
bounced the front wheels of the board from side to side, nearly falling off it
in her agitation.

�Hey," said Howie, �I think youłve got Junior excited. Now
youłve seen him, what do you want?"

�Well," said Candy, swinging her hips suggestively, �you can
come with me, hang out with the gang for a while, right? Maybe
" her eyes
flickered from side to side
�we could kiss. You want to be my boyfriend?"

�Ung," said Howie, who had half-expected an invitation to be
her punchbag. Junior jumped up and down and the skateboard squeaked. He seemed
to be getting awfully indignant about something, Howie realized through the
haze of his disconcertion.

�Come on," coaxed Candy, taking his hand. �Come this way?"

Now the trouble was about to begin. It was about to begin because
of a single technical problem; Howiełs walkman didnłt have auto-reverse. The
tape had come to the end of the side, and Junior could hear everything. (The
fact that Howiełd screwed the headphones into her genitals notwithstanding;
sensitive skin, yłknow, picks up vibrations.) Now it takes a lot to get an
Elder God jealous, especially a very young, very inexperienced Elder God, but
therełs one lesson that all Gods are born knowing, and thatłs that once your
worshippers get all starry-eyed and start making love all over the place you
lose all hold over their guilt; and without guilt, where is the motive for
prayer? For obedience? Junior thought she was about to be jilted, with good
reason. And unlike a powerful Big God Person of days gone by, Junior had no
priesthood to pronounce anathema upon the couple; so she/he/it decided to take
matters into his/her/itłs own claws/palps/tentacles.

Howie, entranced, turned his back upon Junior and revelled
in the warm, tight grip of his very first girlfriend as she led him towards the
lights and the company of her gang. As they reached the kerb, she stopped
suddenly and turned, so that he found himself walking into her open arms.
Surprise. They closed around him
so unlike the choke-grip of classroom days

and he found his lips touching something soft and yielding and moist and
utterly different that seemed to promise the future to him. He didnłt fight or
struggle; it was too much fun.

Mortitia, who was too young for this, looked away
disgustedly while her big sister grinned carnivorously and stretched her black
claws out to the couple. Helen J. turned her back grumpily. So it happened that
only Bernice noticed the skateboarding punk-rocker of an Elder God on anabolic
steroids who was accelerating ominously towards them from way back down the
boulevard, sparks grating from the skateboard wheels, squatting in a kind of
schuss position and gnashing her ominously long, needle-sharp teeth. Junior
glowed, glowed with the rage of a deity scorned, shone with the light of
steroid-induced psychosis, the violent flare of martyrdom and a hundred bloody
jihads as she rumbled down the street in a foaming of orofices and a clattering
of lobster claws. And as Junior glowed she grew, bulking higher and broader and
more hideous by the moment until she filled the road with a rushing wall of
darkness that blotted out the sky and the stars and the promise of rescue.

SPLAT!

�That was Junior," said Howie, staring in disbelief at the
enormous mass draped over the hood of the Mack truck that had been crossing the
intersection at exactly the wrong time; �my god!"

�Well it sure as hell isnłt any more," said Candy
pragmatically. �It didnłt look too friendly just then!"

�Yeah," said Howie, mouth still adroop and heart pummeling
his ribs into submission. �What dłyou suppose got into him?"

�A touch
" she goosed him
�of jealousy. Come on?"

But Howie didnłt move. He looked at the mess in the road and
shook his head. �Do you believe it?" he murmured to himself; �there went my
walkman and my best ole Dead Kennedys tape!" He shook his head again but, to
his surprise, he didnłt shed a tear. Gods have always preyed on ignorance; and
Howie, as he turned his back on it, had more important things to think about.

Version History

If you modify this text, please retain this version history.

Ver 1.530/7/2003Anarchy Publications, HaVoKThis version
was originally downloaded from the #bookz channel on undernet using mIRC. The
final proof was done with Atlantis by Rising Sun Solutions.

The Boys

The boys scuttled over the concrete slab like cockroaches, exoskeletons
a dull bronze in the orange glare that passed for daylight. A dense mist
concealed rocks and ankles and a corpse. The roar of a police carrier echoed
through the trees, a pulsing racket of authority: the boys didnłt care. By the
time the patrol arrived the corpse was brain dead, stripped of eyes and kidneys
and viscera as well as bionics. The boys had left their incestuous joke with
the corpse; a noose.

Darkness descended on the area, a protective screen for the
armoured hovercraft as it swept through the gap in the forest, cruising slowly
between fungus-streaked biomass modules. Among the video surfaces that lined
the cabin the Hunter sat bolt upright; her screens scintillated as she focussed
on the partially-dismembered cadaver.

�Boys; Hełs been dead for half an hour." The constables
flinched and whined; she noticed them and moderated her voice. They were
sensitive units, too valuable to waste.

�Nothing here," she told the autopilot. �Get the skull, then
take us home."

The small noises of relief were drowned out by the roar of
the fans. Some of the cyborged dogs muttered and scratched their implants as
the carrier turned and rumbled back towards the castle. In the wake of the
hovercraft the cobblestones were darker than before, by an increment of
congealing blood.

The castle, a cube with edges a kilometer long, shone with
an ominous red glow that filtered through the grime of centuries. The degenerate
bioforms of the landscape twisted away from the laser-veined monolith of lunar
basalt; nerve-trees bubbled into fatty shapes and acanthopods bristled as they
crept past. The clouds above it reflected a red glow, megawatts of energy
expended in a display of power. The ceiling of the world, a continuation of the
floor, hung thirty kilometers overhead, masked by clouds: cylindrical storms
and spiral winds induced by convection from the algae-fogged solar windows were
the predominant weather pattern. The world existed in a soyuz-shell; TransLunar
Seven, the Islamic Revolutionary Shogunate, had seen better days.

The view from the incoming drifter would have been spectacular
if anyone had bothered to observe it. The pod closed in on the habitat slowly,
waiting to be picked up by a tug as it drifted past. Its self-sustaining
ecosystem basked in the glare of sunlight close to the sun, pulsing out a call
sign to the tracking systems of the orbital city. At a range of a hundred
kilometers the orbital nation was a slowly rolling wall of grey metal and
ceramic. Outlying parabolic light farms provided a hook for the eye, stationary
mylar mirrors focussed on geodesic domes that could contain anything from algae
tanks to laser cells. Thin stems of plastic fastened them to the hub regions at
either end of the colony. They were huge, kilometers in diameter, as were the
gigantic solar windows set into the wall of the world. The drift pod was a
bacillus approaching a dinosaur.

But the pod was bigger than any reptile, and carried a
varied cargo of sentience. There were the podłs native bionics and their
supportive life-system, and more
a human cargo. Nike was a fully
gender-identified female human; she had the right complement of arms, legs and
sensory organs, which was not mandatory. Coming from Troy-Jupiter, where lots
of things called themselves human, this was quite a surprise. But Nike wasnłt
bothering about the scenery; she was worrying about customs.

�Youłre still set on going in?" asked the pod personna, an expert
system that called itself Valentin Zero.

�Maybe." Nike stared into inner space, mirrored contact
lenses turning her eyelids into projection screens for the video nodes in her
optic nerves. �I may just go through with this. I may. Just."

She ground to a halt, thoughtfully, remembering what it had
been like when she had been here before. A modified wasp buzzed to a six-point
landing on her left arm, abdomen curved to inject. Its lance slid out and
penetrated her skin, extending feathery biosensors into her peripheral
circulation.

�Spying again, Valentin?" She opened her eyes and looked at
the wasp. Its metallic carapace shone with black and red stripes, tiny
alphanumerics embossed on its wings.

�I can never tell what youłre thinking," said the program.
�It makes me nervous."

Nike tried an experimental grin, her face twisting into a semblance
of spontaneity.

�When you go like that," complained Valentin. �youłre unreadable."

�If I do go," she said, �do you think I should continually
signal my intentions with my anatomy?" This time the facial expression was more
natural; heavy irony. Her face resembled her body; slim, pared-down, designed
for an abstract aesthetic of speed rather than comfort. And she was obviously
not at home in it.

�You ported into that brain badly if you think you can
convince anyone youłre human; you donłt look spontaneous enough. You donłt have
to tell everyone what youłre going to do; just make them think they know!"

She snorted. �How long is it since you were last human, Valentin?"

The pilot sounded genuinely surprised. �Me, human? What do
you take me for? A potential defector?"

The wasp picked up traces of subtle neuropeptides that
warned of danger. �Donłt be alarmed," she said, �but if I thought that, Iłd
have to suspend you. I need you here behind me." Mirrors slid down across her
eyeballs, a deliberate snub to conversation. The wasp took wing in a vindictive
whine of chitin, leaving a bead of blood oozing from her skin. It flew to a
nearby neuroplant with yellow tendrils as fat as fingers that dug their way
into the hull of the pod, and offered biochemical homage.

�Iłve made up my mind," she said. �Iłm going."

Valentin didnłt reply. There was a gentle thumping from outside
the pod, followed by the barely perceptible return of acceleration, unfelt for
six weeks; the tug had latched on.

Nike returned to her customs video briefing.

�If we accept your application for citizenship you must
accept our semiotics. If we accept your physiology you must accept our
commensal bacteria. If we accept your psychodynamics you must accept our law."

The customs official stared at her with phased-array eyes,
cruciform wings of black synthetic retinae. It was a robot, and not a
well-maintained robot: it recited by rote, sounding extremely bored.

�Repeat after me: Death to the imperialist zionist ronin,
the lackeys of neo-humanist cladisticians, and the discorporeate running-dog
zaibatsu. I swear to follow the decree of the hezbollah and the shogunate in
all things, to abide by the shariła, to follow humility and modesty as a law
for the rest of my natural life, and to refrain from acts of treason against
the corporation ..."

Nike recited the oath expressionlessly, word-perfect from
memory. The syllables were stale in her mouth; shełd memorized them during the
two-day immigration check, startled at how far the original slogans had been
deformed. Then she walked through the exit of the customs hall, feeling her
feet ache from months of free-fall. The black cross of the robotsł retinal
array tracked her as far as the path into the forest before losing interest and
swiveling back to the entry gates.

Mist swirling at ankle-level obscured roots that looped to
catch unwary feet, pits of rotting vegetation hollowed out by subsidence, other
unseen hazards. Videomice crouched in the boles of trees, grooming their paws,
faces almost obscured by the black buttons of their eyes. Nike walked without
guidance into the woods that blanketed the colony interior. There had been
major changes unnoted by the immigrant processing module over the past two centuries.
A faint rumble drifted from the distance, menacing in the twilight as the
colony headed towards nightfall.

The videomice were the eyes and ears of the shogunate, but
there were too many of them to monitor simultaneously. Nike ignored them,
relying on the prickling of her neck to tell her when one of them was belching
a coded data packet to the castle: her close-cropped hair was wired for
microwaves. She guessed that there were other watchers in the forest, other
eyes, and it worried her. System traffic control had confirmed that no-one had
visited the colony for a good six years now, and no-one had left it for over
two decades. If anyone human was left alive, Nike would be the subject of
intense scrutiny. She stumbled occasionally and paused to brush branches out of
her way as she followed the trail. She was right; other eyes were watching her.

Boys drifted like ghosts, moving in silence across the open
spaces. Their choreography was uncanny, plotted by computer for a ballet corps
of cyborgs. The ground beneath their feet was a bare surface of white ceramic
that curved away to either side until it submerged beneath a layer of earth; it
was the naked hull, exposed by erosion. Every ten metres a grey pole stood,
festooned with branching sensors and small pumps, a trellis left over from the
soil-support system. Ecological vandalism had stripped it bare in this area, a
kilometer-wide strip of sterility near the equator. Darkness had fallen across
it an hour ago and the people of the night were rising.

The Hunter watched them on a screen in the safety of the castle.
Reclining in a throne of skulls festooned with nutrient tubes and neural jacks,
she looked superficially akin to those she observed; pale, with the
fleshlessness of a rapidly-growing child and the synthetic skin of the ageless.
The resemblance was due purely to design convergence. The Hunter
her title
was as good as her name
was not a boy. To be a boy was to be a warrior, and
the Hunter was hardly a warrior. She was a Hunter
of boys.

�What are they doing now?" The voice came from above and
behind her head. She watched the screen with the intensity of a sniper.

�They appear to be constructing something ..." The Hunter
paused to consult her throne of brains. �A gallows."

�Why?"

The Hunter thought for a while. �Itłs an archaic device used
for punitive purposes. The victim is suspended by a rope for some time
it
looks uncomfortable. Possibly dangerous if no spinal bypass is installed."

�Who is the subject of this device?" The voice sounded
bored. It probably knew already and was testing her.

�Thatłs not clear, yet."

�Keep me informed." The voice vanished as rapidly as it had
manifested itself, and the Hunter shuddered. She had a morbid fear of that
voice, conditioned by a century of ignorance. No-one had met the Shogun face to
face and told the tale within living memory. Her memory. The Shogun was an
enigma. It might not even exist, and what could be more terrible than that? To
serve a fiction for a century ...

The twilight ritual of the boys played itself out. One of
their own, out on the white plain, was stripped of his exoskeleton; they bound
his hands behind his back with a cord of red silk. It was impossible to tell if
he struggled
those who surrounded him were too strong for unamplified muscles
to resist. Up went the rope, the prisoner on the polished teakwood scaffold,
the drop ... the Hunter watched, fascinated. Centripetal acceleration dragged
the twitching feet out. Therełs something nasty about this, she realized, as
infrareds observed the body cooling. The boys left an hour before she admitted
to herself that what shełd witnessed was not a punishment but an execution. The
absolutism of age. They cannibalized one of their own, she wondered; why? Have
the boys become so jaded that they gamble with their own lives? And, dawning
slowly in her mind: I donłt understand this any more.

The house was so well camouflaged that Nike almost stumbled
into it before she realized what it was. It slumbered among the trees,
concealed by a dense thicket of ivy; its owner waited for her patiently
outside.

�Youłre the immigrant," he said; �Iłm Ben."

�Nike." She watched him closely, noted dark skin but no cranial
hair.

�Winged victory? Or a missile?" When he spoke he held his
head on one side. �Never mind. Youłll be wanting somewhere to stay while you
find out what itłs like here. Youłll be wondering why Iłm offering that. Iłll
tell you; we donłt see many strangers."

�How many of you are there?" she asked.

He shrugged. �Maybe five hundred, maybe less. Nobody counts.
Therełs the boys, the servants of the Shogunate, a few civilians who keep
quiet. And the neuroplants; about six million posthumans." For a moment Ben
looked like something else; infinitely weary, lines engraved on his face like
tribal scars concealing eyeball-tracked weapons systems. It passed; Nike
concentrated on the smell of his skin, the pheromones he exuded. They smelt so
perfectly natural that he might have been a prehistoric subsistence farmer or a
test pilot. There was a sense of archaic simplicity about him.

�Do you eat?" she asked.

The Hunter dug through her collection of spare skulls in
search of an apropriate memory, in response to a desperate urge to understand.
She found one, long-jawed with the baroque horns of an extinct fashion. The
motions were instinctive by now; she plugged it into her throne by a fat nerve
trunk and felt the alien emotions expand her perceptions into something that
felt more complete. The skull had been poorly maintained, isolated in sensory
deprivation for the better part of a century; itłs personality had ablated away
to a core of memories and a vague, gnawing loneliness.

She remembered being a he: experienced at first hand the sea
of stars beyond the window of a cramped cargo drifter between worlds, the waves
of vapour churning at the edges of the red spot as mining drones scooped up
megatons of methane from the Jovian atmosphere. That wasnłt right; she carried
on searching. Later she remembered arriving at TransLunar Seven shortly before
the revolution. Being caught up in the confusion and arrested by the hezbollah,
undergoing the terror of forcible decapitation. This was too recent; she wanted
somewhere in between. Tried to remember. What had it been like in Troy-Jupiter
two hundred years ago?

The agonies this brain had been squeezed through made her
wince. It was easy for a Hunter to fall into the fatal trap of thinking of her
memories as something more than a very cunning source of information, of trying
to relate to the dead minds in the boneyard. She hunted and eventually found
what she was looking for, partially obscured by the pain of a bizarre and
self-destructive marriage.

A memory of what it was like before the revolution, before
she had become a Hunter.

The house vomited pre-digested morsels into the feeding
trough. As Nike and Ben ate, she tried to assess the situation. It was worse
than shełd expected; the place wasnłt far from dead. An unseen ruler who might
not even exist, a dissident faction with unspeakable habits, and a dying
periphery of humans.

�They shut down half the farms a century ago," said Ben,
�and most of the rest forty years later. There wasnłt enough demand on the
manufacturing capacity to justify running them all. Nobody needs anything
the
die-backs left a vast overcapacity. The cityłs a playground for the boys so
nobody lives there anymore."

He shoveled in another handful of food without looking up.
�You came at the wrong time."

Nike watched him silently for a while, fascinated. She wondered
if shełd met him before, years ago; so many of her memories from the early days
had been wiped to make room for new experiences that she couldnłt be sure.

He finished eating and finally looked up. �Just what did you
come here for, anway?" he asked with an elaborate shrug.

�To take over," she said. �We need this space. Whatłs your interest?"

He grinned, face in a shadow cast by the sunduct in the
roof. �Iłm a neutral. I have no interest in conflict."

�So?" she asked.

�The question is what you can do for us," he added. �Who you
are."

Her eyes flashed, reflecting the night with mirrored venom.
�Iłm the forerunner. My people are coming and they need a vacant biosphere.
Donłt stand in our way!"

�Iłm not," he remonstrated mildly; �I just want to know who
you are. Iłm not opposing you! But the boys probably will. And the Shogun
might."

�Yes," she said. �But just what are these boys? And who is
the Shogun?"

He raised an eyebrow. �That," he replied, �is something I expected
you to know already."

The Hunter stared at the screen until the pain in her eyes
forced her to blink furiously, tears trickling down her cheeks. It was hard to
bear, this sense of her humanity being reduced to a cypher by isolation. The
feeling that shełd been locked in her role for too long while the boys played
their blood-games in the forest. Sometimes she sent out for a warm skull to
scan for the wet sensations of dying; she couldnłt remember her name but she
felt that if she concentrated on it for long enough it would return ... she was
close to an overload with time. It had been too many years since she had been
merely human. Damn, damn, she whispered to herself in a monotonous litany; why
do I keep forgetting what it was like? There was no answer; there never was.

All she knew was that she couldnłt get a grip on her
emotions. Therełd been a time, not so long ago in historical terms, when she
had possessed a blindingly important purpose for which she had sacrificed her
freedom to be anyone but herself. The purpose might have been connected with
the Shogun or the boys; it had faded into the cobwebs of neurones that died and
were replaced by the longevity programs. To those who knew the signs she was as
old as the artificial hills. She knew that it had meant everything to her once:
but now it was merely the voice from behind her throne, and the boys.

Three short grey cylinders the size of mice drifted in free
fall, jostling in the thin breeze along the axis of the world. One of them was
capped at each end by a blue, very human eye. Another sprouted two surreal
ears, perfect fleshy miniatures that merged seamlessly with the cylinder. The
third had no discernable sense organs, but from a crack in its flank grew an
almost perfect stem of convolvulus. The bindweed curled and twisted, loosely
holding the other two cylinders in its green coils. A wasp coasted nearby,
red-banded and bearing stenciled cyrillic insignia on its wings; five
kilometers below, the cotton-wool swathes of cloud veiled the floor of the
world. Valentin Zero had smuggled his cortex modules into the shogunate as seeds
disguised in Nikełs gut. Reaching the free-fall zone via the sewage system, the
modules had matured and grown rapidly by preying on wind-born organisms; the
wasp was one of many infiltrators sweeping the world for news.

As darkness fell, the twittering code-pulses from the
videomice quietened down; Valentin tuned in on the steady, low-powered grumble
of the neuroplants, the tok-tokking of a factory talking to its robots, the
muffled crackling of poorly-shielded bionics hooked into the soil-support
system. The microwave traffic was richer and more compressed than sonic
communication, echoing back and forth along the eighty-kilometer cylinder. But
Valentin was listening for a single delicate pulse-train; the side-band
transmission from Nikełs eyeballs.

This situation interested him, inasmuch as anything could
hold his attention these days; the ins and outs of betrayal, of wheels within
wheels and subordinates who were superiors. Valentin Zero was an expert system
wired for espionage, and his current mission was to monitor Nike. She was so
old as to be almost obsolete: old enough to have been here before. His
sensorium ghosted through winds of data
the life-blood of even the most
seriously injured orbital republic
until he finally locked onto a signal that
looked right. It was faint, but the sophisticated coding matched his key; he
locked on and submerged in the transmission, saw what Nike was seeing.

The wall of the house caved in soundlessly, blood spurting
from severed arteries buried in the walls, followed by a soundless spasm as the
floor shuddered and died. A release of sphincters flooded the food trough. A
boy stepped through a great ragged rent in front of her; his left arm was
coated to the elbow with a smooth sheen of gore, the chainsaw semi-retracted
and murderous. His bronze exoskeleton exposed white skin and atrophied
genitals, a wildly ecstatic smile of welcome beneath a cowlick of brown hair.
The running lights on his spinal carapace were blinking green and violet pips,
as membranes slid down across Nikełs eyes and a targeting display flashed a red
crosshair surrounded by flickering digits across his face.

�Hello," he said, and tittered. Ben sat where he was, very
still, eyes narrowed; Nike felt her perception compress into a point on the
boyłs forehead, a point that could be made to explode.

�Hello," she replied. The boy frowned, as if disappointed.

�Youłre not scared," he complained, �and youłre not dead.
What are you?" He pouted with a transsexual sullenness that struck her as
grotesquely old-fashioned.

�Iłm a visitor," she replied. �What are you?"

�Iłm a Boy," he said, smiling suddenly; �Iłve come
�

�Hełs come to negotiate their surrender," said Ben. The boy
flared again, mercurially angry.

�You shut up, old man! Thatłs for me to tell. Itłs not true,
anyway."

Ben shut up, his face blank. Nike felt as if solid ground
was dissolving beneath her feet. Shełd pegged Ben as a non-participant, but
this boy seemed to know something that she didnłt.

�What have you got to tell me?" she asked, itching with unease.

�Merely to enquire after your health and your diplomatic patronage,"
said the boy, sniffing disdainfully. With a distinct lack of theatrical
presence he sniffed and scratched under one armpit. �But the old man of the
monolithłs got to you already, I see!"

�The monolith?" she asked, tracking Ben with her peripheral
vision. He sat as still as a rock.

�The castle ... the claw of the Shogun. Wełve been trying to
get him to shut down the Hunter for decades, havenłt we?" The boy glanced at
Ben pointedly; Ben rocked slowly back and forth. The boy grimaced. �Observe the
Shogun: theoretical ruler of the world, patron of the ongoing revolution,
supreme systems authority of the dreamtime, etcetera. Wełve been trying to get
him to do his job since he ran away fifty years ago."

�Why?" she asked, wondering to whom she should address the
question.

�Because Iłm not ready to let the boys do what they were designed
to do," said Ben, not looking at her: �Iłm not prepared to forcibly digitise
the entire human biomass of the System to suit an ideological goal. When we
designed the boys
"

�
Who were ęweł?" she butted in, gripped by a sense of deja
vu.

He stared at her and yawned. �You just want to confirm this,
donłt you?" he said. �We were the Posthuman Front, the society for synthetic
intelligence. The Islamic Corporate Shogunate was an experimental deployment
for the revolution; fanatical cyborgs. Some of them were the wild boys and some
of them were less obvious, like the hunters. They knew that when they died
theyłd be preserved in the dreamtime; their job was to forcibly integrate all
reactionary elements. Very successful, I might add: most of the neuroplants in
this world are part of the mind-support system. But it didnłt work out too
well." Ben paused, head bowed; the boy looked at him accusingly.

�The ecosystem was damaged during the revolution; it began
to shut down," said the boy. �We stayed on in hope of finding transport to
another world where we could integrate, but evidently there was a quarantine
pact; all the exfiltrators lost contact. And then Ben reprogrammed that blasted
Hunter
the only surviving one, we exported all the other clones
on our
collective ass to keep us from getting enough slack ..." He shook his
alloy-framed head. �Unless those early cadres succeeded, the revolution was an
abortion. Any idea how many humans want whatłs on offer?" He snorted,
disgustedly.

Nike looked at him enigmatically. �Yes," she said; �I have.
Iłve seen it at first hand."

�Why are you here?" asked the boy. Nike shrugged.

�My people arenłt very popular out there," she said. �We
need some where to go; the Deconstructivists are pushing in everywhere, and
wełve lost ground so heavily that unless we find a closed habitat wełll be
forced to condense in order to prevent mass defections."

�Deconstructivists?" said Ben. �What are they?"

�Human revenants. You honestly donłt want to know," she
said. It was so tiring, being on edge like this: even the wild boys didnłt seem
threatening enough to justify keeping her defenses on edge. �We just canłt
compete." A soft rain was falling outside, pattering through the hole in the
wall.

�And who are you?" probed the boy, looking for completeness.

�Canłt you guess?" she complained. �Youłve had it easy with
your smug mind-games and your revolution in one habitat! Donłt you see?" The
wind ghosted through the house like the soul of history, ruffling her hair. �We
tried to carry the revolution through outside the closed habitat, we fought for
a century ..." She stared into reflective distances, eyes like dark mirrors,
resembling her mind.

� ... but we lost."

The Hunter was wandering, adrift in an ocean of despair,
when she came across Valentin Zero. Her video surfaces were locked into the
sonic images of a fruit bat in free fall; when she saw something unusual she
tensed instinctively. Could it be a boyish thing, here in the axial zone? A
surge of conditioned reflexes drowned her nervous system in adrenalin and
hatred; but as the bat approached the object it resolved into three components,
all too small. Her skulls couldnłt find a meaning for it. Drifting into a close
approach, she noted three cylinders and a bushy twirl of vegetation. Modified
axons in the batłs ears recognized vague high-frequency emissions, the
fingerprint of molecular-scale processors; it had to be intelligent.

�Hello unidentified structure," she squeaked through the
ultrasonic larynx of the bat. �Talk to me."

The structure began to rotate, sluggishly; the bat picked up
another object, the vibrating flight surfaces of an insect. An eye swam into
view, shielded by a triangular leaf. The bat screamed; something was scanning
down its nervous system, trying to locate the hunterłs interface.

�Who are you?" said the cluster of grey cylinders, words burning
silent tracks of silvery pain through the mind of the bat. �Visualize
yourself." The Hunter framed an image and transmitted it, waited as the
intruder scanned it.

�Nike," broadcast Valentin; �What are you doing here?"

Then there was silence, as high above the castle the Hunter
remembered who she had been.

First published: Interzone 21, 1987

Copyright (C) Charles Stross, 1987, 1994, All Rights
Reserved

Version History

If you modify this text, please retain this version history.

Ver 1.530/7/2003Anarchy Publications, HaVoKThis version
was originally downloaded from the #bookz channel on undernet using mIRC. The
final proof was done with Atlantis by Rising Sun Solutions.

A Colder War

Analyst

Roger Jourgensen tilts back in his chair, reading.

Hełs a fair-haired man, in his mid-thirties: hair
razor-cropped, skin pallid from too much time spent under artificial lights.
Spectacles, short-sleeved white shirt and tie, photographic ID badge on a chain
round his neck. He works in an air-conditioned office with no windows.

The file he is reading frightens him.

Once, when Roger was a young boy, his father took him to an
open day at Nellis AFB, out in the California desert. Sunlight glared
brilliantly from the polished silverplate flanks of the big bombers, sitting in
their concrete-lined dispersal bays behind barriers and blinking radiation
monitors. The brightly coloured streamers flying from their pitot tubes lent
them a strange, almost festive appearance. But they were sleeping nightmares:
once awakened, nobodyexcept the flight crewcould come within a mile of the
nuclear-powered bombers and live.

Looking at the gleaming, bulging pods slung under their wingtip
pylons, Roger had a premature inkling of the fires that waited within, a frigid
terror that echoed the siren wail of the air raid warnings. Hełd sucked
nervously on his ice cream and gripped his fatherłs hand tightly while the band
ripped through a cheerful Sousa march, and only forgot his fear when a flock of
Thunderchiefs sliced by overhead and rattled the car windows for miles around.

He has the same feeling now, as an adult reading this intelligence
assessment, that he had as a child, watching the nuclear powered bombers
sleeping in their concrete beds.

Therełs a blurry photograph of a concrete box inside the
file, snapped from above by a high-flying U-2 during the autumn of ę61. Three
coffin-shaped lakes, bulking dark and gloomy beneath the arctic sun; a canal
heading west, deep in the Soviet heartland, surrounded by warning trefoils and
armed guards. Deep waters saturated with calcium salts, concrete coffer-dams
lined with gold and lead. A sleeping giant pointed at NATO, more terrifying
than any nuclear weapon.

Project Koschei.

Red Square Redux

Warning

The following briefing film is classified SECRET GOLD JULY
BOOJUM. If you do not have SECRET GOLD JULY BOOJUM clearance, leave the
auditorium now and report to your unit security officer for debriefing. Failing
to observe this notice is an imprisonable offense.

You have sixty seconds to comply.

Video clip

Red Square in springtime. The sky overhead is clear and
blue; therełs a little wispy cirrus at high altitude. It forms a brilliant
backdrop for flight after flight of five four-engined bombers that thunder
across the horizon and drop behind the Kremlinłs high walls.

Voice-over

Red Square, the May Day parade, 1962. This is the first time
that the Soviet Union has publicly displayed weapons classified GOLD JULY
BOOJUM. Here they are:

Video clip

Later in the same day. A seemingly endless stream of armour
and soldiers marches across the square, turning the air grey with diesel fumes.
The trucks roll in line eight abreast, with soldiers sitting erect in the back.
Behind them rumble a battalion of T-56łs, their commanders standing at
attention in their cupolas, saluting the stand. Jets race low and loud
overhead, formations of MiG-17 fighters.

Behind the tanks sprawl a formation of four low-loaders:
huge tractors towing low-sling trailers, their load beds strapped down under
olive-drab tarpaulins. Whatever is under them is uneven, a bit like a loaf of bread
the size of a small house. The trucks have an escort of jeep-like vehicles on
each side, armed soldiers sitting at attention in their backs.

There are big five-pointed stars painted in silver on each
tarpaulin, like outlines of stars. Each star is surrounded by a stylized silver
circle; a unit insignia, perhaps, but not in the standard format for Red Army
units. Therełs lettering around the circles, in a strangely stylised script.

Voice-over

These are live servitors under transient control. The
vehicles towing them bear the insignia of the second Guards Engineering
Brigade, a penal construction unit based in Bokhara and used for structural
engineering assignments relating to nuclear installations in the Ukraine and
Azerbaijan. This is the first time that any Dresden Agreement party openly
demonstrated ownership of this technology: in this instance, the conclusion we
are intended to draw is that the sixty-seventh Guard Engineering Brigade
operates four units. Given existing figures for the Soviet ORBAT we can then
extrapolate a total task strength of two hundred and eighty eight servitors, if
this unit is unexceptional.

Video clip

Five huge Tu-95 Bear bombers thunder across the Moscow
skies.

Voice-over

This conclusion is questionable. For example, in 1964 a
total of two hundred and forty Bear bomber passes were made over the reviewing
stand in front of the Lenin mausoleum. However, at that time technical
reconnaissance assets verified that the Soviet air force has hard stand parking
for only one hundred and sixty of these aircraft, and estimates of airframe
production based on photographs of the extent of the Tupolev bureaułs works
indicate that total production to that date was between sixty and one hundred
and eighty bombers.

Further analysis of photographic evidence from the 1964 parade
suggests that a single group of twenty aircraft in four formations of five made
repeated passes through the same airspace, the main arc of their circuit lying
outside visual observation range of Moscow. This gave rise to the erroneous
capacity report of 1964 in which the first strike delivery capability of the
Soviet Union was over-estimated by as much as three hundred percent.

We must therefore take anything that they show us in Red
Square with a pinch of salt when preparing force estimates. Quite possibly
these four servitors are all theyłve got. Then again, the actual battalion
strength may be considerably higher.

Still photographic sequence

From very high altitudepossibly in orbitan eaglełs eye
view of a remote village in mountainous country. Small huts huddle together
beneath a craggy outcrop; goats graze nearby.

In the second photograph, something has rolled through the
village leaving a trail of devastation. The path is quite unlike the trail of
damage left by an artillery bombardment: something roughly four metres wide has
shaved the rocky plateau smooth, wearing it down as if with a terrible heat. A
corner of a shack leans drunkenly, the other half sliced away cleanly. White
bones gleam faintly in the track; no vultures descend to stab at the remains.

Voice-over

These images were taken very recently, on successive orbital
passes of a KH-11 satellite. They were timed precisely eighty-nine minutes
apart. This village was the home of a noted Mujahedin leader. Note the similar
footprint to the payloads on the load beds of the trucks seen at the 1962
parade.

These indicators were present, denoting the presence of servitor
units in use by Soviet forces in Afghanistan: the four metre wide gauge of the
assimilation track. The total molecular breakdown of organic matter in the
track. The speed of destructionthe event took less than five thousand seconds
to completion, no survivors were visible, and the causative agent had already
been uplifted by the time of the second orbital pass. This, despite the residents
of the community being armed with DShK heavy machine guns, rocket propelled
grenade launchers, and AK-47łs. Lastly: there is no sign of the causative agent
even deviating from its course, but the entire area is depopulated. Except for
excarnated residue there is no sign of human habitation.

In the presence of such unique indicators, we have no alternative
but to conclude that the Soviet Union has violated the Dresden Agreement by
deploying GOLD JULY BOOJUM in a combat mode in the Khyber pass. There are no
grounds to believe that a NATO armoured division would have fared any better
than these mujahedin without nuclear support ...

Puzzle Palace

Roger isnłt a soldier. Hełs not much of a patriot, either:
he signed up with the CIA after college, in the aftermath of the Church
Commission hearings in the early seventies. The Company was out of the
assassination business, just a bureaucratic engine rolling out National
Security assessments: thatłs fine by Roger. Only now, five years later, hełs no
longer able to roll along, casually disengaged, like a car in neutral bowling
down a shallow incline towards his retirement, pension and a gold watch. He
puts the file down on his desk and, with a shaking hand, pulls an illicit
cigarette from the pack he keeps in his drawer. He lights it and leans back for
a moment to draw breath, force relaxation, staring at smoke rolling in the air
beneath the merciless light until his hand stops shaking.

Most people think spies are afraid of guns, or KGB guards,
or barbed wire, but in point of fact the most dangerous thing they face is
paper. Papers carry secrets. Papers can carry death warrants. Papers like this
one, this folio with its blurry eighteen year old faked missile photographs and
estimates of time/survivor curves and pervasive psychosis ratios, can give you
nightmares, dragging you awake screaming in the middle of the night. Itłs one
of a series of highly classified pieces of paper that he is summarizing for the
eyes of the National Security Council and the President Electif his head of
department and the DDCIA approve itand here he is, having to calm his nerves
with a cigarette before he turns the next page.

After a few minutes, Rogerłs hand is still. He leaves his
cigarette in the eagle-headed ash tray and picks up the intelligence report
again. Itłs a summary, itself the distillation of thousands of pages and
hundreds of photographs. Itłs barely twenty pages long: as of 1963, its date of
preparation, the CIA knew very little about Project Koschei. Just the bare
skeleton, and rumours from a highly-placed spy. And their own equivalent
project, of course. Lacking the Soviet lead in that particular field, the USAF
fielded the silver-plated white elephants of the NB-39 project: twelve
atomic-powered bombers armed with XK-PLUTO, ready to tackle Project Koschei
should the Soviets show signs of unsealing the bunker. Three hundred megatons
of H-bombs pointed at a single target, and nobody was certain it would be
enough to do the job.

And then there was the hard-to-conceal fiasco in Antarctica.
Egg on face: a subterranean nuclear test program in international territory! If
nothing else, it had been enough to stop JFK running for a second term. The
test program was a bad excuse: but it was far better than confessing what had
really happened to the 501st Airborne Division on the cold plateau beyond Mount
Erebus. The plateau that the public didnłt know about, that didnłt show up on
the maps issued by the geological survey departments of those governments party
to the Dresden Agreement of 1931an arrangement that even Hitler had stuck to.
The plateau that had swallowed more U-2 spy planes than the Soviet Union, more
surface expeditions than darkest Africa.

Shit. How the hell am I going to put this together for him?

Rogerłs spent the past five hours staring at this twenty
page report, trying to think of a way of summarizing their drily quantifiable
terror in words that will give the reader power over them, the power to think
the unthinkable: but itłs proving difficult. The new man in the White House is
straight-talking, demands straight answers. Hełs pious enough not to believe in
the supernatural, confident enough that just listening to one of his speeches
is an uplifting experience if you can close your eyes and believe in morning in
America. There is probably no way of explaining Project Koschei, or XK-PLUTO,
or MK-NIGHTMARE, or the gates, without watering them down into just another
weapons systemwhich they are not. Weapons may have deadly or hideous effects,
but they acquire moral character from the actions of those who use them.
Whereas these projects are indelibly stained by a patina of ancient evil ...

He hopes that if the balloon ever does go up, if the sirens
wail, he and Andrea and Jason will be left behind to face the nuclear fire.
Itłll be a merciful death compared with what he suspect lurks out there, in the
unexplored vastness beyond the gates. The vastness that made Nixon cancel the
manned space program, leaving just the standing joke of a white-elephant
shuttle, when he realised just how hideously dangerous the space race might
become. The darkness that broke Jimmy Carterłs faith and turned Lyndon B.
Johnson into an alcoholic.

He stands up, nervously shifts from one foot to the other.
Looks round at the walls of his cubicle. For a moment the cigarette smouldering
on the edge of his ash tray catches his attention: wisps of blue-grey smoke
coil like lazy dragons in the air above it, writhing in a strange cuneiform
text. He blinks and theyłre gone, and the skin in the small of his back
prickles as if someone had pissed on his grave.

�Shit.łł Finally, a spoken word in the silence. His hand is
shaking as he stubs the cigarette out. Mustnłt let this get to me. He glances
at the wall. Itłs nineteen hundred hours; too late, too late. He should go
home, Andy will be worrying herself sick.

In the end itłs all too much. He slides the thin folder into
the safe behind his chair, turns the locking handle and spins the dial, then
signs himself out of the reading room and goes through the usual exit search.

During the thirty mile drive home, he spits out of the
window, trying to rid his mouth of the taste of Auschwitz ashes.

Late Night in the White House

The colonel is febrile, jittering about the room with
gung-ho enthusiasm. �That was a mighty fine report you pulled together,
Jourgensen!łł He paces over to the niche between the office filing cabinet and
the wall, turns on the spot, paces back to the far side of his desk. �You
understand the fundamentals. I like that. A few more guys like you running the
company and we wouldnłt have this fuckup in Tehran.łł He grins, contagiously.
The colonel is a firestorm of enthusiasm, burning out of control like a forties
comic-book hero. He has Roger on the edge of his chair, almost sitting at
attention. Roger has to bite his tongue to remind himself not to call the
colonel ęsirłhełs a civilian, not in the chain of command. �Thatłs why Iłve
asked Deputy Director McMurdo to reassign you to this office, to work on my
team as company liaison. And Iłm pleased to say that hełs agreed.łł

Roger canłt stop himself: �To work here, sir?łł Here is in
the basement of the Executive Office Building, an extension hanging off the
White House. Whoever the colonel is hełs got pull, in positively magical
quantities. �What will I be doing, sir? You said, your teamłł

�Relax a bit. Drink your coffee.łł The colonel paces back behind
his desk, sits down. Roger sips cautiously at the brown sludge in the mug with
the Marine Corps crest. �The president told me to organize a team,łł says the
colonel, so casually that Roger nearly chokes on his coffee, �to handle
contingencies. October surprises. Those asshole commies down in Nicaragua.
ęWełre eyeball to eyeball with an Evil Empire, Ozzie, and we canłt afford to blinkłthose
were his exact words. The Evil Empire uses dirty tricks. But nowadays wełre
better than they are: buncha hicks, like some third-world dictatorshipUpper
Volta with shoggoths. My job is to pin them down and cut them up. Donłt give
them a chance to whack the shoe on the UN table, demand concessions. If they
want to bluff Iłll call łem on it. If they want to go toe-to-toe Iłll dance
with łem.łł Hełs up and pacing again. �The company used to do that, and do it
okay, back in the fifties and sixties. But too many bleeding heartsit makes me
sick. If you guys went back to wet ops today youłd have journalists following
you every time you went to the john in case it was newsworthy.

�Well, we arenłt going to do it that way this time. Itłs a
small team and the buck stops here.łł The colonel pauses, then glances at the
ceiling. �Well, maybe up there. But you get the picture. I need someone who
knows the company, an insider who has clearance up the wazoo who can go in and
get the dope before it goes through a fucking committee of ass-watching
bureaucrats. Iłm also getting someone from the Puzzle Palace, and some words to
give me pull with Big Black.łł He glances at Roger sharply, and Roger nods:
hełs cleared for National Security AgencyPuzzle Palaceintelligence, and knows
about Big Black, the National Reconnaissance Office, which is so secret that
even its existence is still classified.

Roger is impressed by this colonel, despite his better judgement.
Within the byzantine world of the US intelligence services, he is talking about
building his very own pocket battleship and sailing it under the jolly roger
with letters of marque and reprise signed by the president. But Roger still has
some questions to ask, to scope out the limits of what Colonel North is capable
of. �What about FEVER DREAM, sir?łł

The colonel puts his coffee-cup down. �I own it,łł he says,
bluntly. �And NIGHTMARE. And PLUTO. Any means necessary he said, and I have an
executive order with the ink still damp to prove it. Those projects arenłt part
of the national command structure any more. Officially theyłve been stood down
from active status and are being considered for inclusion in the next round of
arms reduction talks. Theyłre not part of the deterrent ORBAT any more; wełre
standardizing on just nuclear weapons. Unofficially, theyłre part of my group,
and I will use them as necessary to contain and reduce the Evil Empirełs
warmaking abilities.łł

Rogerłs skin crawls with an echo of that childhood terror.
�And the Dresden Agreement ...?łł

�Donłt worry. Nothing short of them breaking it would lead
me to do so.łł The colonel grins, toothily. �Which is where you come in ...łł

The moonlit shores of Lake Vostok

The metal pier is dry and cold, the temperature hovering
close to zero degrees Fahrenheit. Itłs oppressively dark in the cavern under
the ice, and Roger shivers inside his multiple layers of insulation, shifts
from foot to foot to keep warm. He has to swallow to keep his ears clear and he
feels slightly dizzy from the pressure in the artificial bubble of air, pumped
under the icy ceiling to allow humans to exist here, under the Ross Ice Shelf;
theyłll all spend more than a day sitting in depressurization chambers on the
way back up to the surface.

There is no sound from the waters lapping just below the
edge of the pier. The floodlights vanish into the surface and keep goingthe
water in the sub-surface Antarctic lake is incredibly clearbut are swallowed
up rapidly, giving an impression of infinite, inky depths.

Roger is here as the colonelłs representative, to observe
the arrival of the probe, receive the consignment theyłre carrying, and report
back that everything is running smoothly. The others try to ignore him, jittery
at the presence of the man from DC. Therełre a gaggle of engineers and artificers,
flown out via McMurdo base to handle the midget subłs operations. A nervous
lieutenant supervises a squad of marines with complicated-looking weapons, half
gun and half video camera, stationed at the corners of the raft. And therełs
the usual platform crew, deep-sea rig maintenance typesbut subdued and nervous
looking. Theyłre afloat in a bubble of pressurized air wedged against the
underside of the Antarctic ice sheet: below them stretch the still, supercooled
waters of Lake Vostok.

Theyłre waiting for a rendezvous.

�Five hundred yards,łł reports one of the techs. �Rising on
ten.łł His companion nods. Theyłre waiting for the men in the midget sub
drilling quietly through three miles of frigid water, intruders in a
long-drowned tomb. �Have łem back on board in no time.łł The sub has been away
for nearly a day; it set out with enough battery juice for the journey, and
enough air to keep the crew breathing for a long time if therełs a system
failure, but theyłve learned the hard way that fail-safe systems arenłt. Not
out here, at the edge of the human world.

Roger shuffles some more. �I was afraid the battery load on
that cell you replaced would trip an undervoltage isolator and wełd be here
łtil Hell freezes over,łł the sub driver jokes to his neighbour.

Looking round, Roger sees one of the marines cross himself.
�Have you heard anything from Gorman or Suslowicz?łł he asks quietly.

The lieutenant checks his clipboard. �Not since departure,
sir,łł he says. �We donłt have comms with the sub while itłs submerged: too
small for ELF, and we donłt want to alert anybody who might be, uh,
listening.łł

�Indeed.łł The yellow hunchback shape of the midget submarine
appears at the edge of the radiance shed by the floodlights. Surface waters
undulate, oily, as the sub rises.

�Crew transfer vehicle sighted,łł the driver mutters into
his mike. Hełs suddenly very busy adjusting trim settings, blowing bottled air
into ballast tanks, discussing ullage levels and blade count with his number
two. The crane crew are busy too, running their long boom out over the lake.

The subłs hatch is visible now, bobbing along the top of the
water: the lieutenant is suddenly active. �Jones! Civatti! Stake it out, left
and centre!łł The crane is already swinging the huge lifting hook over the sub,
waiting to bring it aboard. �I want eyeballs on the portholes before you crack
this thing!łł Itłs the tenth runseventh mannedthrough the eye of the needle
on the lake bed, the drowned structure so like an ancient temple, and Roger has
a bad feeling about it. We canłt get away with this forever, he reasons. Sooner
or later ...

The sub comes out of the water like a gigantic yellow bath
toy, a cyborg whale designed by a god with a sense of humour. It takes tense
minutes to winch it in and manoeuvre it safely onto the platform. Marines take
up position, shining torches in through two of the portholes that bulge
myopically from the smooth curve of the subłs nose. Up on top someone is
talking into a handset plugged into the stubby conning tower; the hatch locking
wheel begins to turn.

�Gorman, sir,łł Itłs the lieutenant. In the light of the
sodium floods everything looks sallow and washed-out; the soldierłs face is the
colour of damp cardboard, slack with relief.

Roger waits while the submarinerGormanclambers unsteadily
down from the top deck. Hełs a tall, emaciated-looking man, wearing a red
thermal suit three sizes too big for him: salt-and-pepper stubble textures his
jaw with sandpaper. Right now, he looks like a cholera victim; sallow skin,
smell of acrid ketones as his body eats its own protein reserves, a more
revolting miasma hovering over him. Therełs a slim aluminium briefcase chained
to his left wrist, a bracelet of bruises darkening the skin above it. Roger
steps forward.

�Sir?łł Gorman straightens up for a moment: almost a shadow
of military attention. Hełs unable to sustain it. �We made the pickup. Herełs
the QA sample; the rest is down below. You have the unlocking code?łł he asks
wearily.

Jourgensen nods. �One. Five. Eight. One. Two. Two. Nine.łł

Gorman slowly dials it into a combination lock on the briefcase,
lets it fall open and unthreads the chain from his wrist. Floodlights glisten
on polythene bags stuffed with white powder, five kilos of high-grade heroin
from the hills of Afghanistan; therełs another quarter of a ton packed in boxes
in the crew compartment. The lieutenant inspects it, closes the case and passes
it to Jourgensen. �Delivery successful, sir.łł From the ruins on the high
plateau of the Taklamakan desert to American territory in Antarctica, by way of
a detour through gates linking alien worlds: gates that nobody knows how to
create or destroy except the Predecessorsand they arenłt talking.

�Whatłs it like through there?łł Roger demands, shoulders
tense. �What did you see?łł

Up on top, Suslowicz is sitting in the subłs hatch, half
slumping against the cranełs attachment post. Therełs obviously something very
wrong with him. Gorman shakes his head and looks away: the wan light makes the
razor-sharp creases on his face stand out, like the crackled and shattered
surface of a Jovian moon. Crowłs feet. Wrinkles. Signs of age. Hair the colour
of moonlight. �It took so long,łł he says, almost complaining. Sinks to his
knees. �All that time wełve been gone ...łł He leans against the side of the
sub, a pale shadow, aged beyond his years. �The sun was so bright. And our
radiation detectors. Must have been a solar flare or something.łł He doubles
over and retches at the edge of the platform.

Roger looks at him for a long, thoughtful minute: Gorman is
twenty-five and a fixer for Big Black, early history in the Green Berets. He
was in rude good health two days ago, when he set off through the gate to make
the pick-up. Roger glances at the lieutenant. �Iłd better go and tell the
colonel,łł he says. A pause. �Get these two back to Recovery and see theyłre
looked after. I donłt expect wełll be sending any more crews through
Victor-Tango for a while.łł

He turns and walks towards the lift shaft, hands clasped
behind his back to keep them from shaking. Behind him, alien moonlight glimmers
across the floor of Lake Vostok, three miles and untold light years from home.

General LeMay would be Proud

Warning

The following briefing film is classified SECRET INDIGO
MARCH SNIPE. If you do not have SECRET INDIGO MARCH SNIPE clearance, leave the
auditorium now and report to your unit security officer for debriefing. Failing
to observe this notice is an imprisonable offense.

You have sixty seconds to comply.

Video clip

Shot of huge bomber, rounded gun turrets sprouting like mushrooms
from the decaying log of its fuselage, weirdly bulbous engine pods slung too
far out towards each wingtip, four turbine tubes clumped around each atomic
kernel.

Voice-over

�The Convair B-39 Peacemaker is the most formidable weapon
in our Strategic Air Commandłs arsenal for peace. Powered by eight
nuclear-heated Pratt and Whitney NP-4051 turbojets, it circles endlessly above
the Arctic ice cap, waiting for the call. This is Item One, the flight training
and test bird: twelve other birds await criticality on the ground, for once
launched a B-39 can only be landed at two airfields in Alaska that are equipped
to handle them. This onełs been airborne for nine months so far, and shows no
signs of age.łł

Cut to:

A shark the size of a Boeing 727 falls away from the open
bomb bay of the monster. Stubby delta wings slice through the air, propelled by
a rocket-bright glare.

Voice-over

�A modified Navajo missiletest article for an XK-PLUTO
payloaddives away from a carrier plane. Unlike the real thing, this one
carries no hydrogen bombs, no direct-cycle fission ramjet to bring retaliatory
destruction to the enemy. Travelling at Mach 3 the XK-PLUTO will overfly enemy
territory, dropping megaton-range bombs until, its payload exhausted, it seeks
out and circles a final enemy. Once over the target it will eject its reactor
core and rain molten plutonium on the heads of the enemy. XK-PLUTO is a total
weapon: every aspect of its design, from the shockwave it creates as it hurtles
along at treetop height to the structure of its atomic reactor, is designed to
inflict damage.łł

Cut to:

Belsen postcards, Auschwitz movies: a holiday in hell.

Voice-over

�This is why we need such a weapon. This is what it deters.
The abominations first raised by the Third Reichłs Organisation Todt, now
removed to the Ukraine and deployed in the service of New Soviet Man as our
enemy calls himself.łł

Cut to:

A sinister grey concrete slab, the upper surface of a Mayan
step pyramid built with East German cement. Barbed wire, guns. A drained canal
slashes north from the base of the pyramid towards the Baltic coastline, relic
of the installation process: this is where it came from. The slave barracks
squat beside the pyramid like a horrible memorial to its black-uniformed
builders.

Cut to:

The new resting place: a big concrete monolith surrounded by
three concrete lined lakes and a canal. It sits in the midst of a Ukraine
landscape, flat as a pancake, stretching out forever in all directions.

Voice-over

�This is Project Koschei. The Kremlinłs key to the gates of
hell ...łł

Technology taster

�We know they first came here during the Precambrian age.łł

Professor Gould is busy with his viewgraphs, eyes down, trying
not to pay too much attention to his audience. �We have samples of macrofauna,
discovered by palaeontologist Charles D. Walcott on his pioneering expeditions
into the Canadian Rockies, near the eastern border of British Columbiałł a
hand-drawing of something indescribably weird fetches up on the screen �like
this opabina, which died there six hundred and forty million years ago. Fossils
of soft-bodied animals that old are rare; the Burgess shale deposits are the
best record of the Precambrian fauna anyone has found to date.łł

A skinny woman with big hair and bigger shoulder-pads sniffs
loudly; she has no truck with these antediluvian dates. Roger winces sympathy
for the academic. Hełd rather she wasnłt here, but somehow she got wind of the
famous palaeontologistłs visitand shełs the colonelłs administrative
assistant. Telling her to leave would be a career-limiting move.

�The important item to notełł photograph of a mangled piece
of rock, visual echoes of the opabina�is the tooth marks. We find them
alsotheir exact cognateson the ring segments of the Z-series specimens
returned by the Pabodie Antarctic expedition of 1926. The world of the
Precambrian was laid out differently from our own; most of the land masses that
today are separate continents were joined into one huge structure. Indeed,
these samples were originally separated by only two thousand miles or
thereabouts. Suggesting that they brought their own parasites with them.łł

�What do tooth-marks tell us about them, that we need to
know?łł asks the colonel.

The doctor looks up. His eyes gleam: �That something liked
to eat them when they were fresh.łł Therełs a brief rattle of laughter.
�Something with jaws that open and close like the iris in your camera.
Something we thought was extinct.łł

Another viewgraph, this time with a blurry underwater photograph
on it. The thing looks a bit like a weird fisha turbocharged, armoured hagfish
with side-skirts and spoilers, or maybe a squid with not enough tentacles. The
upper head is a flattened disk, fronted by two bizarre fern-like tentacles
drooping over the weird sucker-mouth on its underside. �This snapshot was taken
in Lake Vostok last year. It should be dead: therełs nothing there for it to
eat. This, ladies and gentlemen, is Anomalocaris, our toothy chewer.łł He
pauses for a moment. �Iłm very grateful to you for showing it to me,łł he adds,
�even though itłs going to make a lot of my colleagues very angry.łł

Is that a shy grin? The professor moves on rapidly, not
giving Roger a chance to fathom his real reaction. �Now this is interesting in
the extreme,łł Gould comments. Whatever it is, it looks like a cauliflower
head, or maybe a brain: fractally branching stalks continuously diminishing in
length and diameter, until they turn into an iridescent fuzzy manifold wrapped
around a central stem. The base of the stem is rooted to a barrel-shaped
structure that stands on four stubby tentacles.

�We had somehow managed to cram Anomalocaris into our
taxonomy, but this is something that has no precedent. It bears a striking
resemblance to an enlarged body segment of Hallucigenałł here he shows another
viewgraph, something like a stiletto-heeled centipede wearing a war-bonnet of
tentacles�but a year ago we worked out that we had poor hallucigena upside
down and it was actually just a spiny worm. And the high levels of iridium and
diamond in the head here ... this isnłt a living creature, at least not within
the animal kingdom Iłve been studying for the past thirty years. Therełs no
cellular structure at all. I asked one of my colleagues for help and they were
completely unable to isolate any DNA or RNA from it at all. Itłs more like a
machine that displays biological levels of complexity.łł

�Can you put a date to it?łł asks the colonel.

�Yup.łł The professor grins. �It predates the wave of atmospheric
atomic testing that began in 1945; thatłs about all. We think itłs from some
time in the first half of this century, last half of last century. Itłs been
dead for years, but there are older people still walking this earth. In
contrastłł he flips to the picture of Anomalocaris �this specimen we found in
rocks that are roughly six hundred and ten million years old.łł He whips up
another shot: similar structure, much clearer. �Note how similar it is to the
dead but not decomposed one. Theyłre obviously still alive somewhere.łł

He looks at the colonel, suddenly bashful and tongue-tied:
�Can I talk about the, uh, thing we were, like, earlier ...?łł

�Sure. Go ahead. Everyone here is cleared for it.łł The colonelłs
casual wave takes in the big-haired secretary, and Roger, and the two guys from
Big Black who are taking notes, and the very serious woman from the Secret
Service, and even the balding, worried-looking Admiral with the double chin and
coke-bottle glasses.

�Oh. Alright.łł Bashfulness falls away. �Well, wełve done
some preliminary dissections on the Anomalocaris tissues you supplied us with.
And wełve sent some samples for laboratory analysisnothing anyone could deduce
much from,łł he adds hastily. He straightens up. �What we discovered is quite
simple: these samples didnłt originate in Earthłs ecosystem. Cladistic analysis
of their intracellular characteristics and what wełve been able to work out of
their biochemistry indicates, not a point of divergence from our own ancestry,
but the absence of common ancestry. A cabbage is more human, has more in common
with us, than that creature. You canłt tell by looking at the fossils, six
hundred million years after it died, but live tissue samples are something
else.

�Item: itłs a multicellular organism, but each cell appears
to have multiple structures like nucleia thing called a syncitium. No DNA, it
uses RNA with a couple of base pairs that arenłt used by terrestrial biology.
We havenłt been able to figure out what most of its organelles do, what their
terrestrial cognates would be, and it builds proteins using a couple of amino
acids that we donłt. That nothing does. Either itłs descended from an ancestry
that diverged from ours before the archaeobacteria, ormore probablyit is no
relative at all.łł He isnłt smiling any more. �The gateways, colonel?łł

�Yeah, thatłs about the size of it. The critter youłve got
there was retrieved by one of our, uh, missions. On the other side of a gate.łł

Gould nods. �I donłt suppose you could get me some more?łł
he asks hopefully.

�All missions are suspended pending an investigation into an
accident we had earlier this year,łł the colonel says, with a significant
glance at Roger. Suslowicz died two weeks ago; Gorman is still disastrously
sick, connective tissue rotting in his body, massive radiation exposure the
probable cause. Normal service will not be resumed; the pipeline will remain
empty until someone can figure out a way to make the deliveries without losing
the crew. Roger inclines his head minutely.

�Oh well.łł The professor shrugs. �Let me know if you do. By
the way, do you have anything approximating a fix on the other end of the
gate?łł

�No,łł says the colonel, and this time Roger knows hełs
lying. Mission four, before the colonel diverted their payload capacity to
another purpose, planted a compact radio telescope in an empty courtyard in the
city on the far side of the gate. XK-Masada, where the airłs too thin to
breathe without oxygen; where the sky is indigo, and the buildings cast
razor-sharp shadows across a rocky plain baked to the consistency of pottery
under a blood-red sun. Subsequent analysis of pulsar signals recorded by the
station confirmed that it was nearly six hundred light years closer to the
galactic core, inward along the same spiral arm. There are glyphs on the alien
buildings that resemble symbols seen in grainy black-and-white Minox photos of
the doors of the bunker in the Ukraine. Symbols behind which the subject of
Project Koschei lies undead and sleeping: something evil, scraped from a nest
in the drowned wreckage of a city on the Baltic floor. �Why do you want to know
where they came from?łł

�Well. We know so little about the context in which life
evolves.łł For a moment the professor looks wistful. �We havehadonly one
datum point: Earth, this world. Now we have a second, a fragment of a second.
If we get a third, we can begin to ask deep questions like, not, łis there life
out there?łbecause we know the answer to that one, nowbut questions like
ęwhat sort of life is out there?ł and łis there a place for us?łłł

Roger shudders: idiot, he thinks. If only you knew you
wouldnłt be so happyHe restrains the urge to speak up. Doing so would be
another career-limiting move. More to the point, it might be a
life-expectancy-limiting move for the professor, who certainly didnłt deserve
any such drastic punishment for his cooperation. Besides, Harvard professors
visiting the Executive Office Building in DC are harder to disappear than
comm-symp teachers in some fly-blown jungle village in Nicaragua. Somebody
might notice. The colonel would be annoyed.

Roger realises that Professor Gould is staring at him. �Do
you have a question for me?łł asks the distinguished palaeontologist.

�Uhin a moment.łł Roger shakes himself. Remembering
time-survivor curves, the captured Nazi medical atrocity records mapping the
ability of a human brain to survive in close proximity to the Baltic
Singularity. Mengelełs insanity. The SSłs final attempt to liquidate the
survivors, the witnesses. Koschei, primed and pointed at the American heartland
like a darkly evil gun. The �world-eating mindłł adrift in brilliant dreams of
madness, estivating in the absence of its prey: dreaming of the minds of
sapient beings, be they barrel-bodied wing-flying tentacular things, or their
human inheritors. �Do you think they could have been intelligent, professor?
Conscious, like us?łł

�Iłd say so.łł Gouldłs eyes glitter. �This onełł he points
to a viewgraph�isnłt alive as we know it. And this onełł hełs found a
Predecessor, god help him, barrel-bodied and bat-winged�had what looks like a
lot of very complex ganglia, not a brain as we know it, but at least as massive
as our own. And some specialised grasping adaptations that might be interpreted
as facilitating tool use. Put the two together and you have a high level
technological civilization. Gateways between planets orbiting different stars.
Alien flora, fauna, or whatever. Iłd say an interstellar civilization isnłt out
of the picture. One that has been extinct for deep geological timeten times as
long as the dinosaursbut that has left relics that work.łł His voice is
trembling with emotion. �We humans, wełve barely scratched the surface! The
longest lasting of our relics? All our buildings will be dust in twenty
thousand years, even the pyramids. Neil Armstrongłs footprints in the Sea of
Tranquillity will crumble under micrometeoroid bombardment in a mere half
million years or so. The emptied oil fields will refill over ten million years,
methane percolating up through the mantle: continental drift will erase
everything. But these people ...! They built to last. Therełs so much to learn
from them. I wonder if wełre worthy pretenders to their technological crown?łł

�Iłm sure we are, professor,łł the colonelłs secretary says
brassily. �Isnłt that right, Ollie?łł

The colonel nods, grinning. �You betcha, Fawn. You betcha!łł

The Great Satan

Roger sits in the bar in the King David hotel, drinking from
a tall glass of second-rate lemonade and sweating in spite of the air
conditioning. Hełs dizzy and disoriented from jet-lag, the gut-cramps have only
let him come down from his room in the past hour, and he has another two hours
to go before he can try to place a call to Andrea. They had another blazing row
before he flew out here; she doesnłt understand why he keeps having to visit
odd corners of the globe. She only knows that his son is growing up thinking a
father is a voice that phones at odd times of day.

Roger is mildly depressed, despite the buzz of doing
business at this level. He spends a lot of time worrying about what will happen
if theyłre found outwhat Andrea will do, or Jason for that matter, Jason whose
father is a phone call away all the timeif Roger is led away in handcuffs
beneath the glare of flash bulbs. If the colonel sings, if the shy bald admiral
is browbeaten into spilling the beans to Congress, who will look after them
then?

Roger has no illusions about what kills black operations:
there are too many people in the loop, too many elaborate front corporations
and numbered bank accounts and shady Middle Eastern arms dealers. Sooner or
later someone will find a reason to talk, and Roger is in too deep. He isnłt
just the company liaison officer any more: hełs become the colonelłs bag-man,
his shadow, the guy with the diplomatic passport and the bulging briefcase full
of heroin and end-user certificates.

At least the ship will sink from the top down, he thinks.
There are people very high up who want the colonel to succeed. When the shit
hits the fan and is sprayed across the front page of the Washington Post, it
will likely take down cabinet members and secretaries of state: the President
himself will have to take the witness stand and deny everything. The republic
will question itself.

A hand descends on his shoulder, sharply cutting off his reverie.
�Howdy, Roger! Whatcha worrying about now?łł

Jourgensen looks up wearily. �Stuff,łł he says gloomily.
�Have a seat.łł The redneck from the embassyMike Hamilton, some kind of junior
attache for embassy protocol by coverpulls out a chair and crashes down on it
like a friendly car wreck. Hełs not really a redneck, Roger knowsrednecks
donłt come with doctorates in foreign relations from Yalebut he likes people
to think hełs a bumpkin when he wants to get something from them.

�Hełs early,łł says Hamilton, looking past Rogerłs ear,
voice suddenly all business. �Play the agenda, Iłm your dim but friendly good
cop. Got the background? Deniables ready?łł

Roger nods, then glances round and sees Mehmet (family name
unknown) approaching from the other side of the room. Mehmet is impeccably
manicured and tailored, wearing a suit from Jermyn Street that costs more than
Roger earns in a month. He has a neatly trimmed beard and moustache and talks
with a pronounced English accent. Mehmet is a Turkish name, not a Persian one:
pseudonym, of course. To look at him you would think he was a westernized
Turkish businessmancertainly not an Iranian revolutionary with heavy links to
Hezbollah and (whisper this), Old Man Ruholla himself, the hermit of Qom.
Never, ever, in a thousand years, the unofficial Iranian ambassador to the
Little Satan in Tel Aviv.

Mehmet strides over. A brief exchange of pleasantries masks
the essential formality of their meeting: hełs early, a deliberate move to put
them off-balance. Hełs outnumbered, too, and thatłs also a move to put them on
the defensive, because the first rule of diplomacy is never to put yourself in
a negotiating situation where the other side can assert any kind of moral
authority, and sheer weight of numbers is a powerful psychological tool.

�Roger, my dear fellow.łł He smiles at Jourgensen. �And the
charming doctor Hamilton, I see.łł The smile broadens. �I take it the good
colonel is desirous of news of his friends?łł

Jourgensen nods. �That is indeed the case.łł

Mehmet stops smiling. For a moment he looks ten years older.
�I visited them,łł he says shortly. �No, I was taken to see them. It is indeed
grave, my friends. They are in the hands of very dangerous men, men who have
nothing to lose and are filled with hatred.łł

Roger speaks: �There is a debt between usłł

Mehmet holds up a hand. �Peace, my friend. We will come to
that. These are men of violence, men who have seen their homes destroyed and
families subjected to indignities, and their hearts are full of anger. It will
take a large display of repentance, a high blood-price, to buy their
acquiescence. That is part of our law, you understand? The family of the
bereaved may demand blood-price of the transgressor, and how else might the
world be? They see it in these terms: that you must repent of your evils and assist
them in waging holy war against those who would defile the will of Allah.łł

Roger sighs. �We do what we can,łł he says. �Wełre shipping
them arms. Wełre fighting the Soviets every way we can without provoking the
big one. What more do they want? The hostagesthatłs not playing well in DC.
Therełs got to be some give and take. If Hezbollah donłt release them soon
theyłll just convince everyone what theyłre not serious about negotiating. And
thatłll be an end to it. The colonel wants to help you, but hełs got to have
something to show the man at the top, right?łł

Mehmet nods. �You and I are men of the world and understand
that this keeping of hostages is not rational, but they look to you for defence
against the great Satan that assails them, and their blood burns with anger
that your nation, for all its fine words, takes no action. The great Satan
rampages in Afghanistan, taking whole villages by night, and what is done? The
United States turns its back. And they are not the only ones who feel betrayed.
Our Bałathist foes from Iraq ... in Basra the unholy brotherhood of Takrit and
their servants the Mukhabarat hold nightly sacrifice upon the altar of
Yair-Suthot; the fountains of blood in Tehran testify to their effect. If the
richest, most powerful nation on earth refuses to fight, these men of violence
from the Bekaa think, how may we unstopper the ears of that nation? And they
are not sophisticates like you or I.łł

He looks at Roger, who hunches his shoulders uneasily. �We
canłt move against the Soviets openly! They must understand that it would be
the end of far more than their little war. If the Taliban want American help
against the Russians, it cannot be delivered openly.łł

�It is not the Russians that we quarrel with,łł Mehmet says
quietly, �but their choice in allies. They believe themselves to be infidel
atheists, but by their deeds they shall be known; the icy spoor of Leng is upon
them, their tools are those described in the Kitab al Azif. We have proof that
they have violated the terms of the Dresden Agreement. The accursed and
unhallowed stalk the frozen passes of the Himalayas by night, taking all whose
path they cross. And will you stopper your ears even as the Russians grow in
misplaced confidence, sure that their dominance of these forces of evil is
complete? The gates are opening everywhere, as it was prophesied. Last week we
flew an F-14C with a camera relay pod through one of them. The pilot and
weapons operator are in paradise now, but we have glanced into hell and have
the film and radar plots to prove it.łł

The Iranian ambassador fixes the redneck from the embassy
with an icy gaze. �Tell your ambassador that we have opened preliminary
discussions with Mossad, with a view to purchasing the produce of a factory at
Dimona, in the Negev desert. Past insults may be set aside, for the present
danger imperils all of us. They are receptive to our arguments, even if you are
not: his holiness the Ayatollah has declared in private that any warrior who
carries a nuclear device into the abode of the eater of souls will certainly
achieve paradise. There will be an end to the followers of the ancient
abominations on this Earth, doctor Hamilton, even if we have to push the
nuclear bombs down their throats with our own hands!łł

Swimming pool

�Mister Jourgensen, at what point did you become aware that
the Iranian government was threatening to violate UN Resolution 216 and the
Non-Proliferation Protocol to the 1956 Geneva accords?łł

Roger sweats under the hot lights: his heartbeat
accelerates. �Iłm not sure I understand the question, sir.łł

�I asked you a direct question. Which part donłt you understand?
Iłm going to repeat myself slowly: when did you realise that the Iranian
Government was threatening to violate resolution 216 and the 1956 Geneva
Accords on nuclear proliferation?łł

Roger shakes his head. Itłs like a bad dream, unseen insects
buzzing furiously around him. �Sir, I had no direct dealings with the Iranian
government. All I know is that I was asked to carry messages to and from a guy
called Mehmet who I was told knew something about our hostages in Beirut. My
understanding is that the colonel has been conducting secret negotiations with
this gentleman or his backers for some timea couple of yearsnow. Mehmet made
allusions to parties in the Iranian administration but I have no way of knowing
if he was telling the truth, and I never saw any diplomatic credentials.łł

Therełs an inquisition of dark-suited congressmen opposite
him, like a jury of teachers sitting in judgement over an errant pupil. The trouble
is, these teachers can put him in front of a judge and send him to prison for
many years, so that Jason really will grow up with a father whołs a voice on
the telephone, a father who isnłt around to take him to air shows or ball games
or any of the other rituals of growing up. Theyłre talking to each other
quietly, deciding on another line of questioning: Roger shifts uneasily in his
chair. This is a closed hearing, the television camera a gesture in the
direction of the congressional archives: a pack of hungry democrats have
scented republican blood in the water.

The congressman in the middle looks towards Roger. �Stop
right there. Where did you know about this guy Mehmet from? Who told you to go
see him and who told you what he was?łł

Roger swallows. �I got a memo from Fawn, like always. Admiral
Poindexter wanted a man on the spot to talk to this guy, a messenger,
basically, who was already in the loop. Colonel North signed off on it and told
me to charge the trip to his discretionary fund.łł That must have been the
wrong thing to say, because two of the congressmen are leaning together and
whispering in each otherłs ears, and an aide obligingly sidles up to accept a
note, then dashes away. �I was told that Mehmet was a mediator,łł Roger adds.
�In trying to resolve the Beirut hostage thing.łł

�A mediator.łł The guy asking the questions looks at him in
disbelief.

The man to his leftwho looks as old as the moon, thin white
hair, liver spots on his hooked nose, eyelids like sackschuckles
appreciatively. �Yeah. Like Hitler was a diplomat. ęOne more territorial
demandłłł he glances round. �Nobody else remember that?łł he asks plaintively.

�No sir,łł Roger says very seriously.

The prime interrogator snorts. �What did Mehmet tell you
Iran was going to do, exactly?łł

Roger thinks for a moment. �He said they were going to buy
something from a factory at Dimona. I understood this to be the Israeli Defence
Ministryłs nuclear weapons research institute, and the only logical itemin the
context of our discussionwas a nuclear weapon. Or weapons. He said the
Ayatollah had decreed that a suicide bomber who took out the temple of
Yog-Sothoth in Basra would achieve paradise, and that they also had hard
evidence that the Soviets have deployed certain illegal weapons systems in
Afghanistan. This was in the context of discussing illegal weapons
proliferation; he was very insistent about the Iraq thing.łł

�What exactly are these weapons systems?łł demands the third
inquisitor, a quiet, hawk-faced man sitting on the left of the panel.

�The shoggotłim, theyłre called: servitors. There are
several kinds of advanced robotic systems made out of molecular components:
they can change shape, restructure material at the atomic levelact like
corrosive acid, or secrete diamonds. Some of them are like a tenuous mistwhat
Doctor Drexler at MIT calls a utility fogwhile others are more like an oily
globule. Apparently they may be able to manufacture more of themselves, but
theyłre not really alive in any meaning of the term wełre familiar with.
Theyłre programmable, like robots, using a command language deduced from
recovered records of the forerunners who left them here. The Molotov Raid of
1930 brought back a large consignment of them; all we have to go on are the
scraps they missed, and reports by the Antarctic Survey. Professor Liebkunstłs
files in particular are most frustratingłł

�Stop. So youłre saying the Russians have these, uh, Shoggoths,
but we donłt have any. And even those dumb Arab bastards in Baghdad are working
on them. So youłre saying wełve got a, a Shoggoth gap? A strategic chink in our
armour? And now the Iranians say the Russians are using them in Afghanistan?łł

Roger speaks rapidly: �That is minimally correct, sir,
although countervailing weapons have been developed to reduce the risk of a
unilateral preemption escalating to an exchange of weakly godlike agencies.łł
The congressman in the middle nods encouragingly. �For the past three decades,
the B-39 Peacemaker force has been tasked by SIOP with maintaining an XK-PLUTO
capability directed at ablating the ability of the Russians to activate Project
Koschei, the dormant alien entity they captured from the Nazis at the end of
the last war. We have twelve PLUTO-class atomic-powered cruise missiles pointed
at that thing, day and night, as many megatons as the entire Minuteman force.
In principle, we will be able to blast it to pieces before it can be brought to
full wakefulness and eat the minds of everyone within two hundred miles.łł

He warms to his subject. �Secondly, we believe the Soviet control
of Shoggoth technology is rudimentary at best. They know how to tell them to
roll over an Afghan hill-farmer village, but they canłt manufacture more of
them. Their utility as weapons is limitedbut terrifyingbut theyłre not much
of a problem. A greater issue is the temple in Basra. This contains an
operational gateway, and according to Mehmet the Iraqi political secret police,
the Mukhabarat, are trying to figure out how to manipulate it; theyłre trying
to summon something through it. He seemed to be mostly afraid that theyand the
Russianswould lose control of whatever it was; presumably another weakly
godlike creature like the K-Thulu entity at the core of Project Koschei.łł

The old guy speaks: �This foo-loo thing, boyyou can drop
those stupid K prefixes around meis it one of a kind?łł

Roger shakes his head. �I donłt know, sir. We know the gateways
link to at least three other planets. There may be many that we donłt know of.
We donłt know how to create them or close them; all we can do is send people
through, or pile bricks in the opening.łł He nearly bites his tongue, because
there are more than three worlds out there, and hełs been to at least one of
them: the bolt-hole on XK-Masada, built by the NRO from their secret budget.
Hełs seen the mile-high dome Buckminster Fuller spent his last decade designing
for them, the rings of Patriot air defence missiles. A squadron of black
diamond-shaped fighters from the Skunk works, said to be invisible to radar,
patrols the empty skies of XK-Masada. Hydroponic farms and empty barracks and
apartment blocks await the senators and congressmen and their families and
thousands of support personnel. In event of war theyłll be evacuated through
the small gate that has been moved to the Executive Office Building basement,
in a room beneath the swimming pool where Jack used to go skinny-dipping with
Marilyn.

�Off the record now.łł The old congressman waves his hand in
a chopping gesture: �I say off, boy.łł The cameraman switches off his machine
and leaves. He leans forward, towards Roger. �What youłre telling me is, wełve
been waging a secret war since, when? The end of the second world war? Earlier,
the Pabodie Antarctic expedition in the twenties, whose survivors brought back
the first of these alien relics? And now the Eye-ranians have gotten into the
game and figure itłs part of their fight with Saddam?łł

�Sir.łł Roger barely trusts himself to do more than nod.

�Well.łł The congressman eyes his neighbour sharply. �Let me
put it to you that you have heard the phrase, ęthe great filterł. What does it
mean to you?łł

�The greatłł Roger stops. Professor Gould, he thinks. �We
had a professor of palaeontology lecture us,łł he explains. �I think he
mentioned it. Something about why there arenłt any aliens in flying saucers
buzzing us the whole time.łł

The congressman snorts. His neighbour starts and sits up.
�Thanks to Pabodie and his followers, Liebkunst and the like, we know therełs a
lot of life in the universe. The great filter, boy, is whatever force stops
most of it developing intelligence and coming to visit. Something, somehow,
kills intelligent species before they develop this kind of technology for
themselves. How about meddling with relics of the elder ones? What do you think
of that?łł

Roger licks his lips nervously. �That sounds like a good
possibility, sir,łł he says. His unease is building.

The congressmanłs expression is intense: �These weapons your
colonel is dicking around with make all our nukes look like a toy bow and
arrow, and all you can say is itłs a good possibility, sir? Seems to me like
someone in the Oval Office has been asleep at the switch.łł

�Sir, executive order 2047, issued January 1980, directed
the armed forces to standardize on nuclear weapons to fill the mass destruction
role. All other items were to be developmentally suspended, with surplus stocks
allocated to the supervision of Admiral Poindexterłs joint munitions
expenditure committee. Which Colonel North was detached to by the USMC high
command, with the full cognizance of the White Housełł

The door opens. The congressman looks round angrily: �I
thought I said we werenłt to be disturbed!łł

The aide standing there looks uncertain. �Sir, therełs been
an, uh, major security incident, and we need to evacuatełł

�Where? What happened?łł demands the congressman. But Roger,
with a sinking feeling, realises that the aide isnłt watching the house
committee members: and the guy behind him is Secret Service.

�Basra. Therełs been an attack, sir.łł A furtive glance at
Roger, as his brain freezes in denial: �If youłd all please come this way ...łł

Bombing in fifteen minutes

Heads down, through a corridor where congressional staffers
hurry about carrying papers, urgently calling one another. A cadre of
dark-suited secret service agents close in, hustling Roger along in the wake of
the committee members. A wailing like tinnitus fills his ears. �Whatłs
happening?łł he asks, but nobody answers.

Down into the basement. Another corridor, where two marine
guards are waiting with drawn weapons. The secret service guys are exchanging
terse reports by radio. The committee men are hustled away along a narrow
service tunnel: Roger is stalled by the entrance. �Whatłs going on?łł he asks
his minder.

�Just a moment, sir.łł More listening: these guys cock their
heads to one side as they take instruction, birds of prey scanning the horizon
for prey. �Delta four coming in. Over. Youłre clear to go along the tunnel now,
sir. This way.łł

�Whatłs happening?łł Roger demands as he lets himself be
hustled into the corridor, along to the end and round a sharp corner. Numb
shock takes hold: he keeps putting one foot in front of the other.

�Wełre now at Defcon one, sir. Youłre down on the special
list as part of the house staff. Next door on the left, sir.łł

The queue in the dim-lit basement room is moving fast,
white-gloved guards with clipboards checking off men and a few women in suits
as they step through a steel blast door one by one and disappear from view.
Roger looks round in bewilderment: he sees a familiar face. �Fawn! Whatłs going
on?łł

The secretary looks puzzled. �I donłt know. Roger? I thought
you were testifying today.łł

�So did I.łł Theyłre at the door. �What else?łł

�Ronnie was making a big speech in Helsinki; the colonel had
me record it in his office. Something about not coexisting with the empire of
evil. He cracked some kinda joke about how we start bombing in fifteen minutes,
then thisłł

Theyłre at the door. It opens on a steel-walled airlock and
the marine guard is taking their badges and hustling them inside. Two staff
types and a middle-aged brigadier join them and the door thumps shut. The
background noise vanishes, Rogerłs ears pop, then the inner door opens and
another marine guard waves them through into the receiving hall.

�Where are we?łł asks the big-haired secretary, staring
around.

�Welcome to XK-Masada,łł says Roger. Then his childhood
horrors catch up with him and he goes in search of a toilet to throw up in.

We need you back

Roger spends the next week in a state of numbed shock. His
apartment here is like a small hotel rooma hotel with security, air
conditioning, and windows that only open onto an interior atrium. He pays
little attention to his surroundings. Itłs not as if he has a home to return
to.

Roger stops shaving. Stops changing his socks. Stops looking
in mirrors or combing his hair. He smokes a lot, orders cheap bourbon from the
commissary, and drinks himself into an amnesic stupor each night. He is,
frankly, a mess. Self-destructive. Everything disintegrated under him at once:
his job, the people he held in high regard, his family, his life. All the time
he canłt get one thing out of his head: the expression on Gormanłs face as he
stands there, in front of the submarine, rotting from the inside out with
radiation sickness, dead and not yet knowing it. Itłs why hełs stopped looking
in mirrors.

On the fourth day hełs slumped in a chair watching taped I
Love Lucy re-runs on the boob tube when the door to his suite opens quietly.
Someone comes in. He doesnłt look round until the colonel walks across the
screen and unplugs the TV set at the wall, then sits down in the chair next to
him. The colonel has bags of dark skin under his eyes; his jacket is rumpled
and his collar is unbuttoned.

�Youłve got to stop this, Roger,łł he says quietly. �You
look like shit.łł

�Yeah, well. You too.łł

The colonel passes him a slim manila folder. Without wanting
to, Roger slides out the single sheet of paper within.

�So it was them.łł

�Yeah.łł A momentłs silence. �For what itłs worth, we
havenłt lost yet. We may yet pull your wife and son out alive. Or be able to go
back home.łł

�Your family too, I suppose.łł Rogerłs touched by the colonelłs
consideration, the pious hope that Andrea and Jason will be alright, even
through his shell of misery. He realises his glass is empty. Instead of
re-filling it he puts it down on the carpet beside his feet. �Why?łł

The colonel removes the sheet of paper from his numb
fingers. �Probably someone spotted you in the King David and traced you back to
us. The Mukhabarat had agents everywhere, and if they were in league with the
KGB ...łł he shrugs. �Things escalated rapidly. Then the president cracked that
joke over a hot mike that was supposed to be switched off ... Have you been
checking in with the desk summaries this week?łł

Roger looks at him blankly. �Should I?łł

�Oh, things are still happening.łł The colonel leans back
and stretches his feet out. �From what we can tell of the situation on the
other side, not everyonełs dead yet. Ligachevłs screaming blue murder over the
hotline, accusing us of genocide: but hełs still talking. Europe is a mess and
nobody knows whatłs going on in the Middle Easteven the Blackbirds arenłt
making it back out again.łł

�The thing at Takrit.łł

�Yeah. Itłs bad news, Roger. We need you back.łł

�Bad news?łł

�The worst.łł The colonel jams his hands between his knees,
stares at the floor like a bashful child. �Saddam Hussein al-Takriti spent
years trying to get his hands on elder technology. It looks like he finally
succeeded in stabilising the gate into Sothoth. Whole villages disappeared,
Marsh Arabs, wiped out in the swamps of Eastern Iraq. Reports of yellow rain,
peoplełs skin melting right off their bones. The Iranians got itchy and finally
went nuclear. Trouble is, they did so two hours before that speech. Some
asshole in Plotsk launched half the Uralskoye SS-20 gridthey went to launch on
warning eight months agoburning south, praise Jesus. Scratch the Middle East,
periodeverything from the Nile to the Khyber Pass is toast. Wełre still
waiting for the callback on Moscow, but SAC has put the whole Peacemaker force
on airborne alert. So far wełve lost the eastern seaboard as far south as North
Virginia and theyłve lost the Donbass basin and Vladivostok. Things are a mess;
nobody can even agree whether wełre fighting the commies or something else. But
the box at ChernobylProject Koscheithe doors are open, Roger. We orbited a
Keyhole-eleven over it and there are tracks, leading west. The PLUTO strike
didnłt stop itand nobody knows what the fuck is going on in WarPac country. Or
France, or Germany, or Japan, or England.łł

The colonel makes a grab for Rogerłs wild turkey, rubs the
neck clean and swallows from the bottle. He looks at Roger with a wild
expression on his face. �Koschei is loose, Roger. They fucking woke the thing.
And now they canłt control it. Can you believe that?łł

�I can believe that.łł

�I want you back behind a desk tomorrow morning, Roger. We
need to know what this Thulu creature is capable of. We need to know what to do
to stop it. Forget Iraq; Iraq is a smoking hole in the map. But K-Thulu is
heading towards the Atlantic coast. What are we going to do if it doesnłt
stop?łł

Masada

The city of XK-Masada sprouts like a vast mushroom, a
mile-wide dome emerging from the top of a cold plateau on a dry planet that
orbits a dying star. The jagged black shapes of F-117łs howl across the empty
skies outside it at dusk and dawn, patrolling the threatening emptiness that
stretches as far as the mind can imagine.

Shadows move in the streets of the city, hollowed out human
shells in uniform. They rustle around the feet of the towering concrete blocks
like the dry leaves of autumn, obsessively focussed on the tasks that lend
structure to their remaining days. Above them tower masts of steel, propping up
the huge geodesic dome that arches across the sky: blocking out the hostile,
alien constellations, protecting frail humanity from the dust storms that
periodically scour the bones of the ancient world. The gravity here is a little
lighter, the night sky whorled and marbled by the diaphanous sheets of gas
blasted off the dying star that lights their days. During the long winter
nights, a flurry of carbon dioxide snow dusts the surface of the dome: but the
air is bone-dry, the city slaking its thirst on subterranean aquifers.

This planet was once alivethere is still a scummy sea of algae
near the equator that feeds oxygen into the atmosphere, and there is a range of
volcanoes near the north pole that speaks of plate tectonics in motionbut it is
visibly dying. There is a lot of history here, but no future.

Sometimes, in the early hours when he cannot sleep, Roger
walks outside the city, along the edge of the dry plateau. Machines labour on
behind him, keeping the city tenuously intact: he pays them little attention.
There is talk of mounting an expedition to Earth one of these years, to salvage
whatever is left before the searing winds of time erase them forever. Roger
doesnłt like to think about that. He tries to avoid thinking about Earth as much
as possible: except when he cannot sleep but walks along the cliff top,
prodding at memories of Andrea and Jason and his parents and sister and
relatives and friends, each of them as painful as the socket of a missing
tooth. He has a mouthful of emptiness, bitter and aching, out here on the edge
of the plateau.

Sometimes Roger thinks hełs the last human being alive. He
works in an office, feverishly trying to sort out what went wrong: and bodies
move around him, talking, eating in the canteen, sometimes talking to him and
waiting as if they expect a dialogue. There are bodies here, men and some women
chatting, civilian and some militarybut no people. One of the bodies, an army
surgeon, told him hełs suffering from a common stress disorder, survivorłs guilt.
This may be so, Roger admits, but it doesnłt change anything. Soulless days
follow sleepless nights into oblivion, dust trickling over the side of the
cliff like sand into the un-dug graves of his family.

A narrow path runs along the side of the plateau, just
downhill from the foundations of the city power plant where huge apertures
belch air warmed by the radiators of the nuclear reactor. Roger follows the
path, gravel and sandy rock crunching under his worn shoes. Foreign stars
twinkle overhead, forming unrecognizable patterns that tell him hełs far from
home. The trail drops away from the top of the plateau, until the city is an
unseen shadow looming above and behind his shoulder. To his right is a dizzying
panorama, the huge rift valley with its ancient city of the dead stretched out
before him. Beyond it rise alien mountains, their peaks as high and airless as
the dead volcanoes of Mars.

About half a mile away from the dome, the trail circles an
outcrop of rock and takes a downhill switchback turn. Roger stops at the bend
and looks out across the desert at his feet. He sits down, leans against the
rough cliff face and stretches his legs out across the path, so that his feet
dangle over nothingness. Far below him, the dead valley is furrowed with rectangular
depressions; once, millions of years ago, they might have been fields, but
nothing like that survives to this date. Theyłre just dead, like everyone else
on this world. Like Roger.

In his shirt pocket, a crumpled, precious pack of
cigarettes. He pulls a white cylinder out with shaking fingers, sniffs at it,
then flicks his lighter under it. Scarcity has forced him to cut back: he
coughs at the first lungful of stale smoke, a harsh, racking croak. The irony
of being saved from lung cancer by a world war is not lost on him.

He blows smoke out, a tenuous trail streaming across the
cliff. �Why me?łł he asks quietly.

The emptiness takes its time answering. When it does, it
speaks with the Colonelłs voice. �You know the reason.łł

�I didnłt want to do it,łł he hears himself saying. �I
didnłt want to leave them behind.łł

The void laughs at him. There are miles of empty air beneath
his dangling feet. �You had no choice.łł

�Yes I did! I didnłt have to come here.łł He pauses. �I
didnłt have to do anything,łł he says quietly, and inhales another lungful of
death. �It was all automatic. Maybe it was inevitable.łł

�Evitable,łł echoes the distant horizon. Something dark and
angular skims across the stars, like an echo of extinct pterosaurs. Turbofans
whirring within its belly, the F117 hunts on: patrolling to keep at bay the
ancient evil, unaware that the battle is already lost. �Your family could still
be alive, you know.łł

He looks up. �They could?łł Andrea? Jason? �Alive?łł

The void laughs again, unfriendly: �There is life eternal
within the eater of souls. Nobody is ever forgotten or allowed to rest in
peace. They populate the simulation spaces of its mind, exploring all the
possible alternative endings to their life. There is a fate worse than death,
you know.łł

Roger looks at his cigarette disbelievingly: throws it far
out into the night sky above the plain. He watches it fall until its ember is
no longer visible. Then he gets up. For a long moment he stands poised on the
edge of the cliff nerving himself, and thinking. Then he takes a step back,
turns, and slowly makes his way back up the trail towards the redoubt on the
plateau. If his analysis of the situation is wrong, at least he is still alive.
And if he is right, dying would be no escape.

He wonders why hell is so cold at this time of year.

� Charles Stross 2000, 2002.

This story was first published in Spectrum SF #3, and is reprinted
in Gardner Dozoisł Yearsł Best SF #18, and again in Charliełs collection,

Toast (Cosmos Books, 2002).

Copyright � 2004 by Charles Stross.

Reprinted with permission from The Atrocity Archives

Golden Gryphon Press, 2004, ISBN 1-930846-25-8

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

The Concrete Jungle

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/

The death rattle of a mortally wounded telephone is a
horrible thing to hear at four ołclock on a Tuesday morning. Itłs even worse
when youłre sleeping the sleep that follows a pitcher of iced margueritas in
the basement of the Dogłs Bollocks, with a chaser of nachos and a tequila
slammer or three for dessert. I come to, sitting upright, bare-ass naked in the
middle of the wooden floor, clutching the receiver with one hand and my head
with the otherpurely to prevent it from exploding, you understandand moaning
quietly. �Who is it?" I croak into the microphone.

�Bob, get your ass down to the office right away. This line
isnłt secure." I recognize that voice: I have nightmares about it. Thatłs
because I work for its owner.

�Whoa, I was asleep, boss. Canłt it" I gulp and look at the
alarm clock �wait until morning?"

�No. Iłm calling a code blue."

�Jesus." The band of demons stomping around my skull strike
up an encore with drums. �Okay, boss. Ready to leave in ten minutes. Can I bill
a taxi fare?"

�No, it canłt wait. Iłll have a car pick you up." He cuts
the call, and that is when I start to get frightened because even Angleton, who
occupies a lair deep in the bowels of the Laundryłs Arcana Analysis Sectionbut
does something far scarier than that anodyne title might suggestis liable to
think twice before authorising a car to pull in an employee at zero-dark
ołclock.

I manage to pull on a sweater and jeans, tie my shoelaces,
and get my ass downstairs just before the blue and red strobes light up the
window above the front door. On the way out I grab my emergency bagan
overnighter full of stuff that Andy suggested I should keep ready, �just in
case"and slam and lock the door and turn around in time to find the cop
waiting for me. �Are you Bob Howard?"

�Yeah, thatłs me." I show him my card.

�If youłll come with me, sir."

Lucky me: I get to wake up on my way in to work four hours
early, in the front passenger seat of a police car with strobes flashing and
the driver doing his best to scare me into catatonia. Lucky London: the streets
are nearly empty at this time of night, so we zip around the feral taxis and
somnolent cleaning trucks without pause. A journey that would normally take an
hour and a half takes fifteen minutes. (Of course, it comes at a price:
Accounting exists in a state of perpetual warfare with the rest of the civil
service over internal billing, and the Metropolitan Police charge for their
services as a taxi firm at a level that would make you think they provided
limousines with wet bars. But Angleton has declared a code blue, so ...)

The dingy-looking warehouse in a side street, adjoining a
closed former primary school, doesnłt look too promisingbut the door opens
before I can raise a hand to knock on it. The grinning sallow face of Fred from
Accounting looms out of the darkness in front of me and I recoil before I
realise that itłs all rightFredłs been dead for more than a year, which is why
hełs on the night shift. This isnłt going to degenerate into plaintive requests
for me to fix his spreadsheet. �Fred, Iłm here to see Angleton," I say very
clearly, then I whisper a special password to stop him from eating me. Fred
retreats back to his security cubbyhole or coffin or whatever it is you call
it, and I cross the threshold of the Laundry. Itłs darkto save light bulbs,
and damn the health and safety regsbut some kind soul has left a mouldering
cardboard box of hand torches on the front desk. I pull the door shut behind
me, pick up a torch, and head for Angletonłs office.

As I get to the top of the stairs I see that the lights are
on in the corridor we call Mahogany Row. If the boss is running a crisis team
then thatłs where Iłll find him. So I divert into executive territory until I
see a door with a red light glowing above it. Therełs a note taped to the door
handle: BOB HOWARD ACCESS PERMITTED. So I �access permitted" and walk right in.

As soon as the door opens Angleton looks up from the map
spread across the boardroom table. The room smells of stale coffee, cheap
cigarettes, and fear. �Youłre late," he says sharply.

�Late," I echo, dumping my emergency bag under the fire extinguisher
and leaning on the door. �ęLo, Andy, Boris. Boss, I donłt think the cop was
taking his time. Any faster and hełd be billing you for brown stain removal
from the upholstery." I yawn. �Whatłs the picture?"

�Milton Keynes," says Andy.

�Are sending you there to investigate," explains Boris.

�With extreme prejudice," Angleton one-ups them.

�Milton Keynes?"

It must be something in my expression; Andy turns away hastily
and pours me a cup of Laundry coffee while Boris pretends itłs none of his
business. Angleton just looks as if hełs bitten something unpleasant, which is
par for the course.

�We have a problem," Angleton explains, gesturing at the
map. �There are too many concrete cows."

�Concrete cows." I pull out a chair and flop down into it
heavily, then rub my eyes. �This isnłt a dream is it, by any chance? No? Shit."

Boris glowers at me: �Not a joke." He rolls his eyes toward
Angleton. �Boss?"

�Itłs no joke, Bob," says Angleton. His normally skeletal features
are even more drawn than usual, and there are dark hollows under his eyes. He
looks as if hełs been up all night. Angleton glances at Andy: �Has he been
keeping his weapons certification up-to-date?"

�I practice three times a week," I butt in, before Andy can
get started on the intimate details of my personal file. �Why?"

�Go down to the armoury right now, with Andy. Andy,
self-defense kit for one, sign it out for him. Bob, donłt shoot unless itłs you
or them." Angleton shoves a stack of papers and a pen across the table at me.
�Sign the top and pass it backyou now have GAME ANDES REDSHIFT clearance. The
files below are part of GARyoułre to keep them on your person at all times
until you get back here, then check them in via Moragłs office; youłll answer
to the auditors if they go missing or get copied."

�Huh?"

I obviously still look confused because Angleton cracks an expression
so frightening that it must be a smile and adds, �Shut your mouth, youłre
drooling on your collar. Now, go with Andy, check out your hot kit, let Andy
set you up with a chopper, and read those papers. When you get to Milton
Keynes, do what comes naturally. If you donłt find anything, come back and tell
me and wełll take things from there."

�But what am I looking for?" I gulp down half my coffee in
one go; it tastes of ashes, stale cigarette ends, and tinned instant left over
from the Retreat from Moscow. �Dammit, what do you expect me to find?"

�I donłt expect anything," says Angleton. �Just go."

�Come on," says Andy, opening the door, �you can leave the
papers here for now."

I follow him into the corridor, along to the darkened
stairwell at the end, and down four flights of stairs into the basement. �Just
what the fuck is this?" I demand, as Andy produces a key and unlocks the
steel-barred gate in front of the security tunnel.

�Itłs GAME ANDES REDSHIFT, kid," he says over his shoulder.
I follow him into the security zone and the gate clanks shut behind me. Another
key, another steel doorthis time the outer vestibule of the armoury. �Listen,
donłt go too hard on Angleton, he knows what hełs doing. If you go in with
preconceptions about what youłll find and it turns out to be GAME ANDES REDSHIFT,
youłll probably get yourself killed. But I reckon therełs only about a 10
percent chance itłs the real thingmore likely itłs a drunken student prank."

He uses another key, and a secret word that my ears refuse
to hear, to open the inner armoury door. I follow Andy inside. One wall is
racked with guns, another is walled with ammunition lockers, and the opposite
wall is racked with more esoteric items. Itłs this that he turns to.

�A prank," I echo, and yawn, against my better judgement. �Jesus,
itłs half past four in the morning and you got me out of bed because of a
student prank?"

�Listen." Andy stops and glares at me, irritated. �Remember
how you came aboard? That was me getting out of bed at four in the morning
because of a student prank."

�Oh," is all I can say to him. Sorry springs to mind, but is
probably inadequate; as they later pointed out to me, applied computational
demonology and built-up areas donłt mix very well. I thought I was just
generating weird new fractals; they knew I was dangerously close to landscaping
Wolverhampton with alien nightmares. �What kind of students?" I ask.

�Architecture or alchemy. Nuclear physics for an outside
straight." Another word of command and Andy opens the sliding glass case in
front of some gruesome relics that positively throb with power. �Come on. Which
of these would you like?"

�I think Iłll take this one, thanks." I reach in and
carefully pick up a silver locket on a chain; therełs a yellow-and-black thaumaturgy
hazard trefoil on a label dangling from it, and NO PULL ribbons attached to the
clasp.

�Good choice." Andy watches me in silence as I add a Hand of
Glory to my collection, and then a second, protective amulet. �That all?" he
asks.

�Thatłs all," I say, and he nods and shuts the cupboard,
then renews the seal on it.

�Sure?" he asks.

I look at him. Andy is a slightly built, forty-something
guy; thin, wispy hair, tweed sports jacket with leather patches at the elbows,
and a perpetually worried expression. Looking at him youłd think he was an Open
University lecturer, not a managerial-level spook from the Laundryłs active
service division. But that goes for all of them, doesnłt it? Angleton looks
more like a Texan oil-company executive with tuberculosis than the legendary
and terrifying head of the Counter-Possession Unit. And me, I look like a
refugee from CodeCon or a dot-com startupłs engineering department. Which just
goes to show that appearances and a euro will get you a cup of coffee. �What
does this code blue look like to you?" I ask.

He sighs tiredly, then yawns. �Damn, itłs infectious," he mutters.
�Listen, if I tell you what it looks like to me, Angleton will have my head for
a doorknob. Letłs just say, read those files on the way over, okay? Keep your
eyes open, count the concrete cows, then come back safe."

�Count the cows. Come back safe. Check." I sign the clipboard,
pick up my arsenal, and he opens the armoury door. �How am I getting there?"

Andy cracks a lopsided grin. �By police helicopter. This is
a code blue, remember?"

I go up to the committee room, collect the papers, and then
itłs down to the front door, where the same police patrol car is waiting for
me. More brown-pants motoringthis time the traffic is a little thicker, dawn
is only an hour and a half awayand we end up in the northeast suburbs,
following the roads to Lippitts Hill where the Police ASU keep their choppers.
Therełs no messing around with check in and departure lounges; we drive round
to a gate at one side of the complex, show our warrant cards, and my chauffeur
takes me right out onto the heliport and parks next to the ready room, then
hands me over to the flight crew before I realise whatłs happening.

�Youłre Bob Howard?" asks the copilot. �Up here, hop in." He
helps me into the back seat of the Twin Squirrel, sorts me out with the seat
belt, then hands me a bulky headset and plugs it in. �Wełll be there in half an
hour," he says. �You just relax, try to get some sleep." He grins sardonically
then shuts the door on me and climbs in up front.

Funny. Iłve never been in a helicopter before. Itłs not
quite as loud as Iłd expected, especially with the headset on, but as Iłve been
led to expect something like being rolled down a hill in an oil drum while
maniacs whack on the sides with baseball bats, that isnłt saying much. Get some
sleep indeed; instead I bury my nose in the so-secret reports on GAME ANDES REDSHIFT
and try not to upchuck as the predawn London landscape corkscrews around
outside the huge glass windscreen and then starts to unroll beneath us.

REPORT 1: Sunday September 4th, 1892

CLASSIFIED MOST SECRET, Imperial War Ministry, September
11th, 1914

RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET GAME ANDES, Ministry of War, July
2nd, 1940

RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET REDSHIFT, Ministry of Defense,
August 13th, 1988

My dearest Nellie,

In the week since I last wrote to you, I have to confess
that I have become a different man. Experiences such as the ordeal I have just
undergone must surely come but once in a lifetime; for if more often, how might
man survive them? I have gazed upon the gorgon and lived to tell the tale, for
which I am profoundly grateful (and I hasten to explain myself before you worry
for my safety), although only the guiding hand of some angel of grace can
account for my being in a position to put ink to paper with these words.

I was at dinner alone with the Mehtar last Tuesday
eveningMr Robertson being laid up, and Lieutenant Bruce off to Gilgut to
procure supplies for his secret expedition to Lhasawhen we were interrupted
most rudely at our repast. �Holiness!" The runner, quite breathless with fear,
threw himself upon his knees in front of us. �Your brother ... ! Please hasten,
I implore you!"

His excellency Nizam ul-Mulk looked at me with that wicked
expression of his: he bears little affection for his brutish hulk of a brother,
and with good reason. Where the Mehtar is a man of refined, albeit questionable
sensibilities, his brother is an uneducated coarse hill-man, one step removed
from banditry. Chittral can very well do without his kind. �What has happened
to my beloved brother?" asked ul-Mulk.

At this point the runner lapsed into a gabble that I could
barely understand. With patience the Mehtar drew him outthen frowned. Turning
to me, he said, �We have aI know not the word for it in English, excuse
please. It is a monster of the caves and passes who preys upon my people. My
brother has gone to hunt it, but it appears to have got the better of him."

�A mountain lion?" I said, misunderstanding.

�No." He looked at me oddly. �May I enquire of you, Captain,
whether Her Majestyłs government tolerates monsters within her empire?"

�Of course not!"

�Then you will not object to joining me in the hunt?"

I could feel a trap closing on me, but could not for the
life of me see what it might be. �Certainly," I said. �By Jove, old chap, wełll
have this monsterłs head mounted on your trophy room wall before the week is
out!"

�I think not," Nizam said coolly. �We burn such things here,
to drive out the evil spirit that gave rise to them. Bring you your mirror,
tomorrow?"

�My" Then I realised what he was talking about, and what
deadly jeopardy I had placed my life in, for the honour of Her Majestyłs
government in Chittral: he was talking about a Medusa. And although it quite
unmans me to confess it, I was afraid.

The next day, in my cramped, windowless hut, I rose with the
dawn and dressed for the hunt. I armed myself, then told Sergeant Singh to
ready a squad of troopers for the hunt.

�What is the quarry, sahib?" he asked.

�The beast that no man sees," I said, and the normally imperturbable
trooper flinched.

�The men wonłt like that, sir," he said.

�Theyłll like it even less if I hear any words from them," I
said. You have to be firm with colonial troops: they have only as much backbone
as their commanding officer.

�Iłll tell them that, sahib," he said and, saluting, went to
ready our forces.

The Mehtarłs men gathered outside; an unruly bunch of
hill-men, armed as one might expect with a mix of flintlocks and bows. They
were spirited, like children, excitable and bickering; hardly a match for the
order of my troopers and I. We showed them how it was done! Together with the
Mehtar at our head, kestrel on his wrist, we rode out into the cold bright dawn
and the steep-sided mountain valley.

We rode for the entire morning and most of the afternoon,
climbing up the sides of a steep pass and then between two towering peaks clad
in gleaming white snow. The mood of the party was uncommonly quiet, a sense of
apprehensive fortitude settling over the normally ebullient Chittrali warriors.
We came at last to a mean-spirited hamlet of tumbledown shacks, where a handful
of scrawny goats grazed the scrubby bushes; the hetman of the village came to
meet us, and with quavering voice directed us to our destination.

�It lies thuswise," remarked my translator, adding: �The old
fool, he say it is a ghost-bedevilled valley, by God! He say his son go in there
two, three days ago, not come out. Then the Mehtarblessed be hehis brother
follow with his soldiers. And that two days ago."

�Hah. Well," I said, �tell him the great white empress sent
me here with these fine troops he sees, and the Mehtar himself and his nobles,
and we arenłt feeding any monster!"

The translator jabbered at the hetman for a while, and he
looked stricken. Then Nizam beckoned me over. �Easy, old fellow," he said.

�As you say, your excellency."

He rode forward, beckoning me alongside. I felt the need to
explain myself further: �I do not believe one gorgon will do for us. In fact, I
do believe we will do for it!"

�It is not that which concerns me," said the ruler of the
small mountain kingdom. �But go easy on the hetman. The monster was his wife."

We rode the rest of the way in reflective silence, to the
valley where the monster had built her retreat, the only noises the sighing of
wind, the thudding of hooves, and the jingling of our kits. �There is a cave
halfway up the wall of the valley, here," said the messenger who had summoned
us. �She lives there, coming out at times to drink and forage for food. The
villagers left her meals at first, but in her madness she slew one of them, and
then they stopped."

Such tragic neglect is unknown in England, where the poor victims
of this most hideous ailment are confined in mazed bedlams upon their
diagnosis, blindfolded lest they kill those who nurse them. But what more can
one expect of the half-civilized children of the valley kingdoms, here on the
top of the world?

The executionfor want of a better wordproceeded about as
well as such an event can, which is to say that it was harrowing and not by any
means enjoyable in the way that hunting game can be. At the entrance to the
small canyon where the woman had made her lair, we paused. I detailed Sergeant
Singh to ready a squad of rifles; their guns loaded, they took up positions in
the rocks, ready to beat back the monster should she try to rush us.

Having thus prepared our position, I dismounted and, joining
the Mehtar, steeled myself to enter the valley of death.

I am sure you have read lurid tales of the appalling scenes
in which gorgons are found; charnel houses strewn with calcined bodies, bones
protruding in attitudes of agony from the walls as the madmen and madwomen who
slew them gibber and howl among their victims. These tales are, I am thankful
to say, constructed out of whole cloth by the fevered imaginations of the
degenerate scribblers who write for the penny dreadfuls. What we found was both
lessand much worsethan that.

We found a rubble-strewn valley; in one side of it a cave,
barely more than a cleft in the rock face, with a tumbledown awning stretched
across its entrance. An old woman sat under the awning, eyes closed, humming to
herself in an odd singsong. The remains of a fire lay in front of her, logs
burned down to white-caked ashes; she seemed to be crying, tears trickling down
her sunken, wrinkled cheeks.

The Mehtar gestured me to silence, then, in what I only
later recognized as a supremely brave gesture, strode up to the fire. �Good
evening to you, my aunt, and it would please me that you keep your eyes closed,
lest my guards be forced to slay you of an instant," he said.

The woman kept up her low, keening croonlike a wail of grief
from one who has cried until her throat is raw and will make no more noise. But
her eyes remained obediently shut. The Mehtar crouched down in front of her.

�Do you know who I am?" he asked gently.

The crooning stopped. �You are the royal one," she said, her
voice a cracked whisper. �They told me you would come."

�Indeed I have," he said, a compassionate tone in his voice.
With one hand he waved me closer. �It is very sad, what you have become."

�It hurts." She wailed quietly, startling the soldiers so
that one of them half-rose to his feet. I signalled him back down urgently as I
approached behind her. �I wanted to see my son one more time ... �

�It is all right, aunt," he said quietly. �Youłll see him
soon enough." He held out a hand to me; I held out the leather bag and he
removed the mirror. �Be at peace, aunt. An end to pain is in sight." He held
the mirror at arms length in front of his face, above the fire before her:
�Open your eyes when you are ready for it."

She sobbed once, then opened her eyes.

I didnłt know what to expect, dear Nellie, but it was not
this: somebodyłs aged mother, crawling away from her home to die with a
stabbing pain in her head, surrounded by misery and loneliness. As it is, her
monarch spared her the final pain, for as soon as she looked into the mirror
she changed. The story that the gorgon kills those who see her by virtue of her
ugliness is untrue; she was merely an old womanthe evil was something in her
gaze, something to do with the act of perception.

As soon as her eyes openedthey were bright blue, for a momentshe
changed. Her skin puffed up and her hair went to dust, as if in a terrible
heat. My skin prickled; it was as if I had placed my face in the open door of a
furnace. Can you imagine what it would be like if a body were to be heated in
an instant to the temperature of a blast furnace? For that is what it was like.
I will not describe this horror in any detail, for it is not fit material for
discussion. When the wave of heat cleared, her body toppled forward atop the
fireand rolled apart, yet more calcined logs amidst the embers.

The Mehtar stood, and mopped his brow. �Summon your men,
Francis," he said, �they must build a cairn here."

�A cairn?" I echoed blankly.

�For my brother." He gestured impatiently at the fire into
which the unfortunate woman had tumbled. �Who else do you think this could have
been?"

A cairn was built, and we camped overnight in the village. I
must confess that both the Mehtar and I have been awfully sick since then, with
an abnormal rapidity that came on since the confrontation. Our men carried us
back home, and that is where you find me now, lying abed as I write this
account of one of the most horrible incidents I have ever witnessed on the
frontier.

I remain your obedient and loving servant,

Capt. Francis Younghusband

As I finish reading the typescript of Captain Younghusbandłs
report, my headset buzzes nastily and crackles. �Coming up on Milton Keynes in
a couple minutes, Mr Howard. Any idea where you want to be put down? If you
donłt have anywhere specific in mind wełll ask for a slot at the police pad."

Somewhere specific ... ? I shove the unaccountably
top-secret papers down into one side of my bag and rummage around for one of
the gadgets I took from the armoury. �The concrete cows," I say. �I need to
take a look at them as soon as possible. Theyłre in Bancroft Park, according to
this map. Just off Monkłs Way, follow the A422 in until it turns into the H3
near the city centre. Any chance we can fly over them?"

�Hold on a moment."

The helicopter banks alarmingly and the landscape tilts
around us. Wełre shooting over a dark landscape, trees and neat, orderly
fields, and the occasional clump of suburban paradise whisking past beneath
usthen wełre over a dual carriageway, almost empty at this time of night, and
we bank again and turn to follow it. From an altitude of about a thousand feet
it looks like an incredibly detailed toy, right down to the finger-sized trucks
crawling along it.

�Right, thatłs it," says the copilot. �Anything else we can
do for you?"

�Yeah," I say. �Youłve got infrared gear, havenłt you? Iłm
looking for an extra cow. A hot one. I mean, hot like itłs been cooked, not hot
as in body temperature."

�Gotcha, wełre looking for a barbecue." He leans sideways
and fiddles with the controls below a fun-looking monitor. �Here. Ever used one
of these before?"

�What is it, FLIR?"

�Got it in one. That joystickłs the pan, this knob is zoom,
you use this one to control the gain, itłs on a stabilized platform; give us a
yell if you see anything. Clear?"

�I think so." The joystick works as promised and I zoom in
on a trail of ghostly hot spots, pan behind them to pick up the brilliant glare
of a predawn jogger, lit up like a light bulbthe dots are fading footprints on
the cold ground. �Yeah." Wełre making about forty miles per hour along the
road, sneaking in like a thief in the night, and I zoom out to take in as much
of the side view as possible. After a minute or so I see the park ahead, off
the side of a roundabout. �Eyes up, front: Can you hover over that roundabout?"

�Sure. Hold on." The engine note changes and my stomach
lurches, but the FLIR pod stays locked on target. I can see the cows now, grey
shapes against the cold grounda herd of concrete animals created in 1978 by a
visiting artist. There should be eight of them, life-sized Friesians peacefully
grazing in a field attached to the park. But somethingłs wrong, and itłs not
hard to see what.

�Barbecue at six ołclock low," says the copilot. �You want
to go down and bring us back a take-away, or what?"

�Stay up," I say edgily, slewing the camera pod around. �I
want to make sure itłs safe first ... �

REPORT 2: Wednesday March 4th, 1914

CLASSIFIED MOST SECRET, Imperial War Ministry, September
11th, 1914

RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET GAME ANDES, Ministry of War, July
2nd, 1940

RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET REDSHIFT, Ministry of Defense,
August 13th, 1988

Dear Albert,

Today we performed Youngłs double-slit experiment upon
Subject C, our medusa. The results are unequivocal; the Medusa effect is both a
particle and a wave. If de Broglie is right ...

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Ernest has been pushing for results with characteristic vim
and vigor and Mathiesson, our analytical chemist, has been driven to his witsł
end by the New Zealanderłs questions. He nearly came to blows with Dr Jamieson
who insisted that the welfare of his patientas he calls Subject Ccomes before
any question of getting to the bottom of this infuriating and perplexing
anomaly.

Subject C is an unmarried woman, aged 27, of medium height
with brown hair and blue eyes. Until four months ago, she was healthy and
engaged as household maid to an eminent KC whose name you would probably
recognize. Four months ago she underwent a series of seizures; her employers
being generous, she was taken to the Royal Free Infirmary where she described
having a series of blinding headaches going back eighteen months or so. Dr
Willard examined her using one of the latest Roentgen machines, and determined
that she appeared to have the makings of a tumour upon her brain. Naturally
this placed her under Notification, subject to the Monster Control Act (1864);
she was taken to the isolation ward at St Bartholomewłs in London where, three
weeks, six migraines, and two seizures later, she experienced her first Grand
Morte fit. Upon receiving confirmation that she was suffering from acute
gorgonism, Dr Rutherford asked me to proceed as agreed upon; and so I arranged
for the Home Office to be contacted by way of the Dean.

While Mr McKenna was at first unenthusiastic about the prospect
of a gorgon running about the streets of Manchester, our reassurances
ultimately proved acceptable and he directed that Subject C be released into
our custody on her own cognizance. She was in a state of entirely understandable
distress when she arrived, but once the situation was explained she agreed to
cooperate fully in return for a settlement which will be made upon her next of
kin. As she is young and healthy, she may survive for several months, if not a
year, in her current condition: this offers an unparallelled research
opportunity. We are currently keeping her in the old Leprosarium, the windows
of which have been bricked up. A security labyrinth has been installed, the
garden wall raised by five feet so that she can take in the air without
endangering passers-by, and we have arranged a set of signals whereby she can
don occlusive blindfolds before receiving visitors. Experiments upon patients
with acute gorgonism always carry an element of danger, but in this case I believe
our precautions will suffice until her final deterioration begins.

Lest you ask why we donłt employ a common basilisk or cockatrice
instead, I hasten to explain that we do; the pathology is identical in
whichever species, but a human source is far more amenable to control than any
wild animal. Using Subject C we can perform repeatable experiments at will, and
obtain verbal confirmation that she has performed our requests. I hardly need
to remind you that the historical use of gorgonism, for example by Dantonłs
Committee for Public Safety during the French revolution, was hardly conducted
as a scientific study of the phenomenon. This time, we will make progress!

Once Subject C was comfortable, Dr Rutherford arranged a series
of seminars. The New Zealander is of the opinion that the effect is probably
mediated by some electromagnetic phenomenon, of a type unknown to other areas
of science. He is consequently soliciting new designs for experiments intended
to demonstrate the scope and nature of the gorgon effect. We know from the
history of Mademoiselle Mariannełs grisly collaboration with Robespierre that
the victim must be visible to the gorgon, but need not be directly perceived;
reflection works, as does trivial refraction, and the effect is transmitted
through glass thin enough to see through, but the gorgon cannot work in
darkness or thick smoke. Nobody has demonstrated a physical mechanism for
gorgonism that doesnłt involve an unfortunate creature afflicted with the
characteristic tumours. Blinding a gorgon appears to control the effect, as
does a sufficient visual distortion. So why does Ernest insist on treating a
clearly biological phenomenon as one of the greatest mysteries in physics
today?

�My dear fellow," he explained to me the first time I asked,
�how did Madame Curie infer the existence of radioactivity in radium-bearing
ores? How did Wilhelm Roentgen recognize X-rays for what they were? Neither of
those forms of radiation arose within our current understanding of magnetism,
electricity, or light. They had to be something else. Now, our children of
Medusa apparently need to behold a victim in order to injure thembut how is
the effect transmitted? We know, unlike the ancient Greeks, that our eyes work
by focussing ambient light on a membrane at their rear. They used to think that
the gorgons shone forth beams of balefire, as if to set in stone whatever they
alighted on. But we know that cannot be true. What we face is nothing less than
a wholly new phenomenon. Granted, the gorgon effect only changes whatever the
medusoid can see directly, but we know the light reflected from those bodies
isnłt responsible. And Lavoisierłs calorimetric experimentsbefore he met his
unfortunate end before the looking glass of lłExecutriceproved that actual
atomic transmutation is going on! So what on earth mediates the effect? How can
the act of observation, performed by an unfortunate afflicted with gorgonism,
transform the nuclear structure?"

(By nuclear structure he is of course referring to the core
of the atom, as deduced by our experiments last year.)

Then he explained how he was going to seat a gorgon on one
side of a very large device he calls a cloud chamber, with big magnetic coils
positioned above and below it, to see if there is some other physical phenomenon
at work.

I can now reveal the effects of our teamłs experimentation.
Subject C is cooperating in a most professional manner, but despite Ernestłs
greatest efforts the cloud chamber bore no fruitshe can sit with her face
pressed up against the glass window on one side, and blow a chickenłs egg to
flinders of red-hot pumice on the target stand, but no ionization trail appears
in the saturated vapour of the chamber. Or rather, I should say no direct trail
appears. We had more success when we attempted to replicate other basic experiments.
It seems that the gorgon effect is a continuously variable function of the
illumination of the target, with a sharply defined lower cut-off and an upper
limit! By interposing smoked glass filters we have calibrated the efficiency
with which Subject C transmutes the carbon nuclei of a target into silicon,
quite accurately. Some of the new electrostatic counters Iłve been working on
have proven fruitful: secondary radiation, including gamma rays and possibly an
elusive neutral particle, are given off by the target, and indeed our cloud
chamber has produced an excellent picture of radiation given off by the target.

Having confirmed the calorimetric and optical properties of
the effect, we next performed the double-slit experiment upon a row of targets
(in this case, using wooden combs). A wall with two thin slits is interposed
between the targets and our subject, whose gaze was split in two using a
binocular arrangement of prisms. A lamp positioned between the two slits, on
the far side of the wall from our subject, illuminates the targets: as the
level of illumination increases, a pattern of alternating gorgonism was
produced! This exactly follows the constructive reinforcement and destruction
of waves Professor Young demonstrated with his examination of light
corpuscules, as we are now supposed to call them. We conclude that gorgonism is
a wave effect of some sortand the act of observation is intimately involved,
although on first acquaintance this is such a strange conclusion that some of
us were inclined to reject it out of hand.

We will of course be publishing our full findings in due
course; I take pleasure in attaching a draft of our paper for your interest. In
any case, you must be wondering by now just what the central finding is. This
is not in our paper yet, because Dr Rutherford is inclined to seek a possible
explanation before publishing; but I regret to say that our most precise
calorimetric analyses suggest that your theory of mass/energy conservation is
being violatednot on the order of ounces of weight, but by enough to detect.
Carbon atoms are being transformed into silicon ions with an astoundingly high
electropositivity, which can be accounted for if we assume that the effect is
creating nuclear mass from somewhere. Perhaps you, or your new colleagues at
the Prussian Academy, can shed some light on the issue? We are most perplexed,
because if we accept this result we are forced to accept the creation of new
mass ab initio, or treat it as an experimental invalidation of your general
theory of relativity.

Your good friend,

Hans Geiger

A portrait of the agent as a (confused) young man:

Picture me, standing in the predawn chill in a badly mown
field, yellowing parched grass up to the ankles. Therełs a wooden fence behind
me, a road on the other side of it with the usual traffic cams and
streetlights, and a helicopter in police markings parked like a gigantic cyborg
beetle in the middle of the roundabout, bulging with muscular-looking sensors
and nitesun floodlights and making a racket like an explosion in a noise
factory. Before me therełs a field full of concrete cows, grazing safely and
placidly in the shadow of some low trees which are barely visible in the overspill
from the streetlights. Long shadows stretch out from the fence, darkness
exploding toward the ominous lump at the far end of the paddock. Itłs autumn,
and dawn isnłt due for another thirty minutes. I lift my modified camcorder and
zoom in on it, thumbing the record button.

The lump looks a little like a cow thatłs lying down. I
glance over my shoulder at the chopper, which is beginning to spool up for
takeoff; Iłm pretty sure Iłm safe here but I canłt quite suppress a cold
shudder. On the other side of the field

�Datum point: Bob Howard, Bancroft Park, Milton Keynes, time
is zero seven fourteen on the morning of Tuesday the eighteenth. I have counted
the cows and there are nine of them. One is prone, far end of paddock, GPS
coordinates to follow. Preliminary surveillance indicated no human presence within
a quarter kilometre and residual thermal yield is below two hundred Celsius, so
I infer that it is safe to approach the target."

One unwilling foot goes down in front of another. I keep an
eye on my dosimeter, just in case: therełs not going to be much secondary
radiation hereabouts, but you can never tell. The first of the cows looms up at
me out of the darkness. Shełs painted black and white, and this close up shełs
clearly a sculpture. I pat her on the nose. �Stay cool, Daisy." I should be
safely tucked up in bed with Mobut shełs away on a two-week training seminar
at Dunwich and Angleton got a bee in his bonnet and called a code blue
emergency. The cuffs of my jeans are damp with dew, and itłs cold. I reach the
next cow, pause, and lean on its rump for a zoom shot of the target.

�Ground zero, range twenty metres. Subject is bovine, down,
clearly terminal. Length is roughly three metres, breed ... unidentifiable. The
grass around it is charred but therełs no sign of secondary combustion." I
dry-swallow. �Thermal bloom from abdomen." Therełs a huge rip in its belly
where the boiling intestinal fluids exploded, and the contents are probably
still glowing red-hot inside.

I approach the object. Itłs clearly the remains of a cow;
equally clearly it has met a most unpleasant end. The dosimeter says itłs
safemost of the radiation effects from this sort of thing are prompt, there
are minimal secondary products, luckilybut the ground underneath is scorched
and the hide has blackened and charred to a gritty, ashlike consistency.
Therełs a smell like roast beef hanging in the air, with an unpleasant
undertang of something else. I fumble in my shoulder bag and pull out a thermal
probe, then, steeling myself, shove the sharp end in through the rip in the
abdomen. I nearly burn my hand on the side as I do soitłs like standing too
close to an open oven.

�Core temperature two six six, two six seven ... stable.
Taking core samples for isotope ratio checks." I pull out a sample tube and a
sharp probe and dig around in the thingłs guts, trying to tease a chunk of
ashy, charred meat loose. I feel queasy: I like a well-cooked steak as much as
the next guy, but therełs something deeply wrong about this whole scene. I try
not to notice the exploded eyeballs or the ruptured tongue bursting through the
blackened lips. This job is quite gross enough as it is without adding my own
dry heaves to the mess.

Samples safely bottled for analysis, I back away and walk in
a wide circle around the body, recording it from all angles. An open gate at
the far end of the field and a trail of impressions in the ground completes the
picture. �Hypothesis: open gate. Someone let Daisy in, walked her to this
position near the herd, then backed off. Daisy was then illuminated and exposed
to a class three or better basilisk, whether animate or simulated. We need a
plausible disinformation pitch, forensics workover of the paddock gate and
fencecheck for exit signs and footprintsand some way of identifying Daisy to
see which herd she came from. If any livestock is reported missing over the
next few days that would be a useful indicator. Meanwhile, core temperature is
down to under five hundred Celsius. That suggests the incident happened at
least a few hours agoit takes a while for something the size of a cow to cool
down that far. Since the basilisk has obviously left the area and therełs not a
lot more I can do, Iłm now going to call in the cleaners. End."

I switch off the camcorder, slide it into my pocket, and
take a deep breath. The next bit promises to be even less pleasant than
sticking a thermocouple in the cowłs arse to see how long ago it was
irradiated. I pull out my mobile phone and dial 999. �Operator? Police
despatch, please. Police despatch? This is Mike Tango Five, repeat, Mike Tango
Five. Is Inspector Sullivan available? I have an urgent call for him ... �

REPORT 3: Friday October 9th, 1942

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET GAME ANDES, Ministry of War, October
9th, 1942

RECLASSIFIED TOP SECRET REDSHIFT, Ministry of Defense,
August 13th, 1988

ACTION THIS DAY:

Three reports have reached SOE Department Two, office
337/42, shedding new light on the recent activities of Dr Ing Professor Gustaf
Von Schachter in conjunction with RSHA Amt. 3 and the inmates of the Holy
Nativity Hospital for the Incurably Insane.

Our first report ref. 531/892-(i) concerns the cessation of
action by a detached unit of RSHA Amt. 3 Group 4 charged with termination of
imbeciles and mental defectives in Frankfurt as part of the Reichłs ongoing
eugenics program. An agent in place (code: GREEN PIGEON) overheard two soldiers
discussing the cessation of euthanasia operations in the clinic in negative
terms. Herr Von Schachter had, as of 24/8/42, acquired a F�hrer Special Order
signed either by Hitler or Borman. This was understood by the soldiers to
charge him with the authority to requisition any military resources not
concerned with direct security of the Reich or suppression of resistance, and
to override orders with the effective authority of an obergruppenf�hrer. This
mandate runs in conjunction with his existing authority from Dr Wolfram
Sievers, who is believed to be operating the Institute for Military Scientific
Research at the University of Strasbourg and the processing centre at Natzweiler
concentration camp.

Our second report ref. 539/504-(i) concerns prescriptions dispensed
by a pharmacy in Frankfurt for an unnamed doctor from the Holy Nativity
Hospital. The pharmaceutical assistant at this dispensary is a sympathiser
operated by BLUE PARTRIDGE and is considered trustworthy. The prescriptions
requisitioned were unusual in that they consisted of bolus preparations for
intrathecal (base of cranium) injection, containing colchicine, an extract of
catharanthides, and morphine. Our informant opined that this is a highly
irregular preparation which might be utilized in the treatment of certain brain
tumours, but which is likely to cause excruciating pain and neurological side
effects (ref. GAME ANDES) associated with induction of gorgonism in latent
individuals suffering an astrocytoma in the cingulate gyrus.

Our final report ref. 539/504-(ii) comes from the same informant
and confirms ominous preparatory activities in the Holy Nativity Hospital
grounds. The hospital is now under guard by soldiers of Einsatzgruppen 4.
Windows have been whitewashed, mirrors are being removed (our emphasis) or
replaced with one-way observation glass, and lights in the solitary cells
rewired for external control from behind two doors. Most of the patients have
disappeared, believed removed by Group 4 soldiers, and rumours are circulating
of a new area of disturbed earth in the countryside nearby. Those patients who
remain are under close guard.

Conclusion: The preparation referenced in 539/504-(i) has
been referred to Special Projects Group ANDES, who have verified against
records of the suppressed Geiger Committee that Von Schachter is experimenting
with drugs similar to the catastrophic Cambridge IV preparation. Given his
associate Sievers influence in the Ahnenerbe-SS, and the previous use of the
Holy Nativity Hospital for the Incurably Insane as a secondary centre for the
paliative care of patients suffering seizures and other neuraesthenic symptoms,
it is believed likely that Von Schachter intends to induce and control
gorgonism for military purposes in explicit violation of the provisions for the
total suppression of stoner weapons laid out in Secret Codicil IV to the Hague
Convention (1919).

Policy Recommendation: This matter should be escallated to
JIC as critical with input from SOE on the feasibility of a targeted raid on
the installation. If allowed to proceed, Von Schachterłs program shows
significant potential for development into one of the rumoured
Vertlesgunswaffen programs for deployment against civilian populations in free
areas. A number of contingency plans for the deployment of gorgonism on a mass
observation basis have existed in a MOW file since the early 1920s and we must
now consider the prospects for such weapons to be deployed against us. We
consider essential an immediate strike against the most advanced development
centres, coupled with a strong reminder through diplomatic back channels that
failure to comply with all clauses (secret and overt) of the Hague Convention
will result in an allied retalliatory deployment of poison gas against German
civilian targets. We cannot run the risk of class IV basilisks being deployed
in conjunction with strategic air power ...

By the time I roll into the office, four hours late and
yawning with sleep deprivation, Harriet is hopping around the common room as if
her feet are on fire, angrier than Iłve ever seen her before. Unfortunately,
according to the matrix management system we operate shełs my boss for 30
percent of the time, during which Iłm a technical support engineer. (For the
other 70 percent I report to Angleton and I canłt really tell you what I am
except that it involves being yanked out of bed at zero four hundred hours to answer
code blue alerts.)

Harriet is a back-office suit: mousy and skinny,
forty-something, and dried up from spending all those years devising forms in
triplicate with which to terrorize field agents. People like Harriet arenłt
supposed to get excited about anything. The effect is disconcerting, like
opening a tomb and finding a break-dancing mummy.

�Robert! Where on earth have you been? What kind of time do
you call this? McLuhanłs been waiting on youyou were supposed to be here for
the licence policy management committee meeting two hours ago!"

I yawn and sling my jacket over the coat rack next to the
�C" department coffee station. �Been called out," I mumble. �Code blue alert.
Just got back from Milton Keynes."

�Code blue?" she asks, alert for a slip. �Who signed off on
it?"

�Angleton." I hunt around for my mug in the cupboard over
the sink, the one with the poster on the front that says CURIOUS EYES COST
LIVES. The coffee machine is mostly empty, full of black tarry stuff alarmingly
similar to the toxic waste they make roads out of. I hold it under the tap and
rinse. �His budget, donłt worry about it. Only he pulled me out of bed at four
in the morning and sent me off to" I put the jug down to refill the coffee
filter �never mind. Itłs cleared."

Harriet looks as if shełs bitten into a biscuit and found
half a beetle inside. Iłm pretty sure that itłs not anything special; she and
her boss Bridget simply have no higher goal in life than trying to cut everyone
else down so they can look them in the eye. Although, to be fair, theyłve been
acting more cagy than usual lately, hiding out in meetings with strange suits
from other departments. Itłs probably just part of their ongoing game of
Bureaucracy, whose goal is the highest stakes of alla fully vested Civil
Service pension and early retirement. �What was it about?" she demands.

�Do you have GAME ANDES REDSHIFT clearance?" I ask. �If not,
I canłt tell you."

�But you were in Milton Keynes," she jabs. �You told me
that."

�Did I?" I roll my eyes. �Well, maybe, and maybe not. I
couldnłt possibly comment."

�Whatłs so interesting about Milton Keynes?" she continues.

�Not much." I shrug. �Itłs made of concrete and itłs very,
very boring."

She relaxes almost imperceptibly. �Make sure you get all the
paperwork filed and billed to the right account," she tells me.

�I will have before I leave this afternoon at two," I reply,
rubbing in the fact that Iłm on flexitime; Angletonłs a much more alarming, but
also understanding, manager to work for. Due to the curse of matrix management
I canłt weasel out completely from under Bridgetłs bony thumb, but I must
confess I get a kick out of having my other boss pull rank on her. �What was
this meeting about?" I ask slyly, hoping shełll rise to it.

�You should know, youłre the administrator who set up the
mailing list," she throws right back at me. Oops. �Mr McLuhanłs here to help
us. Hełs from Q Division, to help us prepare for our Business Software Alliance
audit."

�Our" I stop dead and turn to face her, the coffee machine
gurgling at my back. �Our audit with who?"

�The Business Software Alliance," she says smugly. �CESG
outsourced our COTS application infrastructure five months ago contingent on us
following official best practices for ensuring quality and value in enterprise
resource management. As you were too busy to look after things, Bridget asked Q
Division to help out. Mr McLuhan is helping us sort out our licencing
arrangements in line with guidelines from Procurement. He says hełs able to run
a full BSA-certified audit on our systems and help us get our books in order."

�Oh," I say, very calmly, and turn around, mouthing the follow-on
shit silently in the direction of the now-burbling percollator. �Have you ever
been through a BSA audit before, Harriet?" I ask curiously as I scrub my mug
clean, inside and out.

�No, but theyłre here to help us audit our"

�Theyłre funded by the big desktop software companies," I
say, as calmly as I can. �They do that because they view the BSA as a profit
centre. Thatłs because the BSA or their subcontractorsand thatłs what Q
Division will be acting as, they get paid for running an audit if they find
anything out of ordercome in, do an audit, look for anything that isnłt
currently licensedsay, those old machines in D3 that are still running Windows
3.1 and Office 4, or the Linux servers behind Ericłs desk that keep the departmental
file servers running, not to mention the FreeBSD box running the Daemonic
Countermeasures Suite in Securityand demand an upgrade to the latest version
under threat of lawsuit. Inviting them in is like throwing open the doors and
inviting the Drugs Squad round for a spliff."

�They said they could track down all our installed software
and offer us a discount for volume licensing!"

�And how precisely do you think theyłll do that?" I turn
round and stare at her. �Theyłre going to want to install snooping software on
our LAN, and then read through its take." I take a deep breath. �Youłre going
to have to get him to sign the Official Secrets Act so that I can formally
notify him that if he thinks hełs going to do that Iłm going to have him
sectioned. Part Three. Why do you think wełre still running old copies of
Windows on the network? Because we canłt afford to replace them?"

�Hełs already signed Section Three. And anyway, you said you
didnłt have time," she snaps waspishly. �I asked you five weeks ago, on Friday!
But you were too busy playing secret agents with your friends downstairs to
notice anything as important as an upcoming audit. This wouldnłt have been
necessary if you had time!"

�Crap. Listen, wełre running those old junkers because
theyłre so old and rubbish that they canłt catch half the proxy Internet worms
and macro viruses that are doing the rounds these days. BSA will insist we
replace them with stonking new workstations running Windows XP and Office XP
and dialing into the Internet every six seconds to snitch on whatever wełre
doing with them. Do you really think Mahogany Row is going to clear that sort
of security risk?"

Thatłs a bluffMahogany Row retired from this universe back
when software still meant silk unmentionablesbut she isnłt likely to know
that, merely that I get invited up there these days. (Nearer my brain-eating
God to thee ... )

�As for the time thing, get me a hardware budget and a tech
assistant whołs vetted for level five Laundry IT operations and Iłll get it
seen to. Itłll only cost you sixty thousand pounds or so in the first year,
plus a salary thereafter." Finally, finally, I get to pull the jug out of the
coffee machine and pour myself a mug of wake-up. �Thatłs better."

She glances at her watch. �Are you going to come along to
the meeting and help explain this to everybody then?" she asks in a tone that
could cut glass.

�No." I add cow juice from the fridge that wheezes asthmatically
below the worktop. �Itłs a public/private partnership fuck-up, film at eleven.
Bridget stuck her foot in it of her own free will: if she wants me to pull it
out for her she can damn well ask. Besides, Iłve got a code blue report meeting
with Angelton and Boris and Andy, and that trumps administrative make-work any
day of the week."

�Bastard," she hisses.

�Pleased to be of service." I pull a face as she marches out
the room and slams the door. �Angleton. Code blue. Jesus." All of a sudden I
remember the modified camcorder in my jacket pocket. �Shit, Iłm running late
... �

REPORT 4: Tuesday June 6th, 1989

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET GAME ANDES REDSHIFT, Ministry of
Defense, June 6th, 1989

ABSTRACT: Recent research in neuroanatomy has characterised
the nature of the stellate ganglial networks responsible for gorgonism in
patients with advanced astrocytoma affecting the cingulate gyrus. Tests
combining the �map of medusa" layout with appropriate video preprocessing
inputs have demonstrated the feasibility of mechanical induction of the medusa
effect.

Progress in the emulation of dynamically reconfigurable hidden-layer
neural networks using FPGA (fully programmable gate array) technology, combined
with real-time digital video signal processing from binocular high-resolution
video cameras, is likely within the next five years to allow us to download a
�medusa mode" into suitably prepared surveillance CCTV cameras, allowing
real-time digital video monitoring networks to achieve a true line-of-sight
look-to-kill capability. Extensive safety protocols are discussed which must be
implemented before this technology can be deployed nationally, in order to
minimize the risk of misactivation.

Projected deployment of CCTV monitoring in public places is
estimated to result in over one million cameras in situ in British mainland
cities by 1999. Coverage will be complete by 2004-06. Anticipated developments
in internetworking and improvements in online computing bandwidth suggest for
the first time the capacity of achieving a total coverage defense-in-depth
against any conceivable insurgency. The implications of this project are
discussed, along with its possible efficacy in mitigating the consequences of
CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN in September 2007.

...

Speaking of Mahogany Row, Angletonłs picked the boardroom
with the teak desk, the original bakelite desk fittings, and the frosted
windows onto the corridor as the venue for my debriefing. Hełs sitting behind
the desk tapping his bony fingers, with Andy looking anxious and Boris
imperturbable when I walk in and flip the red MEETING light on.

�Home movies." I flip the tape on the desktop. �What I saw
on my holiday." I put my coffee mug down on one of the disquietingly soft
leather mats before I yawn, just in case I spill it. �Sorry, been up for hours.
What do you want to know?"

�How long had it been dead?" asks Andy.

I think for a moment. �Iłm not surehave to call Pathology
if you want a hard answer, Iłm afraid, but clearly for some time when I found
it after zero seven hundred. It had cooled to barely oven temperature."

Angleton is watching me like Iłm a bug under a microscope.
Itłs not a fun sensation. �Did you read the files?" he asks.

�Yes." Before I came up here I locked them in my office safe
in case a busy little Tom, Dick, or Harriet decided to do some snooping. �Iłm
really not going to sleep well tonight."

�The basilisk, is found." Boris.

�Um, no," I admit. �Itłs still in the wild. But Mike
Williams said hełd let me know if they run across it. Hełs cleared for OSA-III,
hełs our liaison in"

�How many traffic cameras overlooked the roundabout?" Angleton
asks almost casually.

�Oh" I sit down hard. �Oh shit. Shit." I feel shaky, very
shaky, guts doing the tango and icy chills running down the small of my back as
I realise what hełs trying to tell me without saying it out loud, on the
record.

�Thatłs why I sent you," he murmurs, waving Andy out of the
room on some prearranged errand. A moment later Boris follows him. �Youłre not
supposed to get yourself killed, Bob. It looks bad on your record."

�Oh shit," I repeat, needle stuck, sample echoing, as I
realise how close to dying I may have been. And the crew of that chopper, and
everyone else whołs been there since, and

�Half an hour ago someone vandalized the number seventeen
traffic camera overlooking Monkłs Road roundabout three: put a .223 bullet
through the CCD enclosure. Drink your coffee, therełs a good boy, do try not to
spill it everywhere."

�One of ours." It comes out as a statement.

�Of course." Angleton taps the file sitting on the desk in
front of himI recognize it by the dog-ear on the second page, I put it in my
office safe only ten minutes agoand looks at me with those scary grey eyes of
his. �So. The public at large being safe for the moment, tell me what you can
deduce."

�Uh." I lick my lips, which have gone as dry as old boot
leather. �Some time last night somebody let a cow into the park and used it for
target practice. I donłt know much about the network topology of the MK road
traffic-control cams, but my possible suspects are, in order: someone with a
very peculiar brain tumour, someone with a stolen stoner weaponlike the one I
qualified for under OGRE REALITYor someone with access to whatever GAME ANDES
REDSHIFT gave birth to. And, going from the questions youłre asking, if itłs
GAME ANDES REDSHIFT itłs unauthorised."

He nods, very slightly.

�Wełre in deep shit then," I say brightly and throw back the
last mouthful of coffee, spoiling the effect slightly by nearly coughing my
guts up immediately afterward.

�Without a depth-gauge," he adds drily, and waits for my
coughing fit to subside. �Iłve sent Andrew and Mr B down to the stacks to pull
out another file for you to read. Eyes only in front of witnesses, no
note-taking, escort required. While theyłre signing it out Iłd like you to
write down in your own words everything that happened to you this morning so
far. Itłll go in a sealed file along with your video evidence as a deposition
in case the worst happens."

�Oh shit." Iłm getting tired of saying this. �Itłs
internal?"

He nods.

�CPU business?"

He nods again, then pushes the antique portable manual typewriter
toward me. �Start typing."

�Okay." I pick up three sheets of paper and some carbons and
begin aligning their edges. �Consider me typing already."

REPORT 5: Monday December 10th, 2001

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET GAME ANDES REDSHIFT, Ministry of
Defense, December 10th, 2001

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET MAGINOT BLUE STARS, Ministry of
Defense, December 10th, 2001

Abstract: This document describes progress to date in establishing
a defensive network capable of repelling wide-scale incursions by reconfiguring
the national closed-circuit television surveillance network as a
software-controlled look-to-kill multiheaded basilisk. To prevent accidental
premature deployment or deliberate exploitation, the SCORPION STARE software is
not actually loaded into the camera firmware. Instead, reprogrammable FPGA chips
are integrated into all cameras and can be loaded with SCORPION STARE by
authorised MAGINOT BLUE STARS users whenever necessary.

...

Preamble: It has been said that the US Strategic Defense
Initiative Organisationłs proposed active ABM defense network will require the
most complex software ever developed, characterised by a complexity metric of
>100 MLOC and heavily criticized by various organisations (see footnotes
[1][2][4]) as unworkable and likely to contain in excess of a thousand
severity-1 bugs at initial deployment. Nevertheless, the architectural
requirements of MAGINOT BLUE STARS dwarf those of the SDIO infrastructure. To
provide coverage of 95 percent of the UK population we require a total of 8
million digitally networked CCTV cameras (terminals). Terminals in built-up
areas may be connected via the public switched telephone network using
SDSL/VHDSL, but outlying systems may use mesh network routing over 802.11a to
ensure that rural areas do not provide a pool of infectious carriers for demonic
possession. TCP/IP Quality of Service issues are discussed below, along with a
concrete requirement for IPv6 routing and infrastructure that must be installed
and supported by all Internet Service Providers no later than 2004.

There are more than ninety different CCTV architectures currently
on sale in the UK, many of which are imported and cannot be fitted with FPGAs
suitable for running the SCORPION STARE basilisk neural network prior to
installation. Data Disclosure Orders served under the terms of the Regulation
of Investigatory Powers Act (2001) serve to gain access to camera firmware, but
in many regions upgrades to Level 1 MAGINOT BLUE STARS compliance is behind
schedule due to noncompliance by local police forces with what are seen as
unreasonable Home Office requests. Unless we can achieve a 340 percent
compliance improvement by 2004, we will fail to achieve the target saturation
prior to September 2007, when CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN is due.

...

Installation has currently been completed only in limited
areas; notably Inner London (�Ring of Steel" for counter-terrorism surveillance)
and Milton Keynes (advanced next-generation MAN with total traffic management
solution in place). Deployment is proceeding in order of population density and
potential for catastrophic demonic takeover and exponential burn through
built-up areas ...

...

Recommendation: One avenue for ensuring that all civilian
CCTV equipment is SCORPION STARE compatible by 2006 is to exploit an initiative
of the US National Security Agency for our own ends. In a bill ostensibly
sponsored by Hollywood and music industry associations (MPAA and RIAA: see also
CDBTPA), the NSA is ostensibly attempting to legislate support for Digital
Rights Management in all electronic equipment sold to the public. The
implementation details are not currently accessible to us, but we believe this
is a stalking-horse for requiring chip manufacturers to incorporate on-die
FPGAs in the one million gate range, reconfigurable in software, initially laid
out as DRM circuitry but reprogrammable in support of their nascent War on
Un-Americanism.

If such integrated FPGAs are mandated, commercial pressures
will force Far Eastern vendors to comply with regulation and we will be able to
mandate incorporation of SCORPION STARE Level Two into all digital consumer
electronic cameras and commercial CCTV equipment under cover of complying with
our copyright protection obligations in accordance with the WIPO treaty. A
suitable pretext for the rapid phased obsolescence of all Level Zero and Level
One cameras can then be engineered by, for example, discrediting witness
evidence from older installations in an ongoing criminal investigation.

If we pursue this plan, by late 2006 any two adjacent public
CCTV terminalsor private camcorders equipped with a digital video linkwill be
reprogrammable by any authenticated MAGINOT BLUE STARS superuser to permit the
operator to turn them into a SCORPION STARE basilisk weapon. We remain
convinced that this is the best defensive posture to adopt in order to minimize
casualties when the Great Old Ones return from beyond the stars to eat our
brains.

�So, what this boils down to is a Strategic Defense
Initiative against an invasion by alien mind-suckers from beyond spacetime, who
are expected to arrive in bulk at a set date. Am I on message so far?" I asked.

�Very approximately, yes," said Andy.

�Okay. To deal with the perceived alien mind-sucker threat,
some nameless genius has worked out that the CCTV cameras dotting our green and
pleasant land can be networked together, their inputs fed into a software
emulation of a basiliskłs brain, and turned into some kind of omnipresent
look-to-kill death net. Even though we donłt really know how the medusa effect
works, other than that it relies on some kind of weird observationally mediated
quantum-tunneling effect, collapse of the wave function, yadda yadda, that
makes about 1 percent of the carbon nuclei in the target body automagically
turn into silicon with no apparent net energy input. That right?"

�Have a cigar, Sherlock."

�Sorry, I only smoke when you plug me into the national
grid. Shit. Okay, so it hasnłt occurred to anyone that the mass-energy of those
silicon nuclei has to come from somewhere, somewhere else, somewhere in the
Dungeon Dimensions ... damn. But thatłs not the point, is it?"

�Indeed not. When are you going to get to it?"

�As soon as my hands stop shaking. Letłs see. Rather than do
this openly and risk frightening the sheeple by stationing a death ray on every
street corner, our lords and masters decided theyłd do it bottom-up, by
legislating that all public cameras be networked, and having back doors
installed in them to allow the hunter-killer basilisk brain emulators to be
uploaded when the time comes. Which, letłs face it, makes excellent fiscal
sense in this age of outsourcing, public-private partnerships, service
charters, and the like. I mean, you canłt get business insurance if you donłt
install antitheft cameras, someonełs got to watch them so you might as well
outsource the service to a security company with a network operations centre,
and the brain-dead music industry copyright nazis are campaigning for a law to
make it mandatory to install secret government spookware in every walkmanor
camerato prevent home taping from killing Michael Jackson. Absolutely
brilliant."

�It is elegant, isnłt it? Much more subtle than honking
great ballistic missile submarines. Wełve come a long way since the Cold War."

�Yeah. Except youłre also telling me that some script kiddie
has rooted you and dialed in a strike on Milton Keynes. Probably in the
mistaken belief that they think theyłre playing MISSILE COMMAND."

�No comment."

�Jesus Fucking Christ riding into town on top of a pickup
truck full of DLT backup tapeswhat kind of idiot do you take me for? Listen,
the ball has gone up. Someone uploaded the SCORPION STARE code to a bunch of
traffic cams off Monkłs Road roundabout and turned Daisy into six hundred
pounds of boiled beef on the bone a la basilisk, and all you can say is no
comment?"

�Listen, Bob, I think youłre taking this all too personally.
I canłt comment on the Monkłs Road incident because youłre officially the
tag-team investigative lead and Iłm here to provide backup and support, not to
second-guess you. Iłm trying to be helpful, okay?"

�Sorry, sorry. Iłm just a bit upset."

�Yes, well, if itłs any consolation that goes for me, too,
and for Angleton believe it or not, but ęupsetł and fifty pence will buy you a
cup of coffee and what we really need is to finger the means, motive, and
murderer of Daisy the Cow in time to close the stable door. Oh, and we can rule
out external penetrationthe network loop to Monkłs Road is on a private
backbone intranet thatłs firewalled up to the eyeballs. Does that make it
easier for you?"

�No shit! Listen, I happen to agree with you in principle,
but I am still upset, Andy, and I want to tell youno shit. Look, this is so
not-sensible that I know Iłm way the hell too late but I think the whole
MAGINOT BLUE STARS idea is fucking insane, I mean, like, bull-goose barking-at-the-moon
hairs-on-the-palm-of-your-hands crazy. Like atomic landmines buried under every
street corner! Didnłt they know that the only unhackable computer is one thatłs
running a secure operating system, welded inside a steel safe, buried under a ton
of concrete at the bottom of a coal mine guarded by the SAS and a couple of
armoured divisions, and switched off? What did they think they were doing?"

�Defending us against CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, Bob. Which Iłll
have you know is why the Russians are so dead keen to get Energiya flying again
so they can launch their Polyus orbital battle stations, and why the Americans
are getting so upset about the Rune of Al-Sabbah that theyłre trying to build
censorware into every analogue-to-digital converter on the planet."

�Do I have CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN clearance? Or do I just have
to take it on trust?"

�Take it on trust for now, Iłll try and get you cleared
later in the week. Sorry about that, but this truly ... look, in this instance
the ends justify the means. Take it from me. Okay?"

�Shit. I need anotherno, Iłve already had too much coffee.
So, what am I supposed to do?"

�Well, the good news is wełve narrowed it down a bit. You
will be pleased to know that we just ordered the West Yorkshire Metłs computer
crime squad to go in with hobnailed boots and take down the entire MK traffic
camera network and opcentre. Official reason is a suspicion of time bombs
installed by a disgruntled former employeewho is innocent, incidentallybut it
lets us turn it into a Computer Misuse case and send in a reasonably clueful
team. Theyłre about to officially call for backup from CESG, who are going to
second them a purported spook from GCHQ, and that spook is going to be you. I
want you to crawl all over that camera network and figure out how SCORPION
STARE might have got onto it. Which is going to be easier than you think
because SCORPION STARE isnłt exactly open source and there are only two
authorised development teams working on it on the planet that we know of, or at
least in this country, one of them issurprisebased in Milton Keynes, and as
of right this minute you have clearance to stamp all over their turf and play
the Gestapo officer with our top boffin labs. Which is a power I trust you will
not abuse without good reason."

�Oh great, I always fancied myself in a long, black leather
trench coat. What will Mo think?"

�Shełll think you look the part when youłre angry. Are you
up for it?"

�How the fuck could I say no, when you put it that way?"

�Iłm glad you understand. Now, have you got any other questions
for me before we wrap this up and send the tape to the auditors?"

�Uh, yeah. One question. Why me?"

�Whywell! Hmm. I suppose because youłre already on the
inside, Bob. And youłve got a pretty unique skill mix. Something you overlook
is that we donłt have many field qualified agents, and most of those we have
are old school two-fisted shoot-from-the-hip-with-a-rune-of-destruction field
necromancers; they donłt understand these modern Babbage engine Internet
contraptions like you do. And youłve already got experience with basilisk
weapons, or did you think we issued those things like toothpaste tubes? So
rather than find someone who doesnłt know as much, you just happened to be the
man on the spot who knew enough and was thought ... appropriate."

�Gee, thanks. Iłll sleep a lot better tonight knowing that
you couldnłt find anyone better suited to the job. Really scraping the barrel,
arenłt we?"

�If only you knew ... if only you knew."

The next morning they put me on the train to
Cheltenhamsecond class of courseto visit a large office site, which appears
as a blank spot on all maps of the area, just in case the Russians havenłt
noticed the farm growing satellite dishes out back. I spend a very
uncomfortable half hour being checked through security by a couple of
Rottweilers in blue suits who work on the assumption that anyone who is not
known to be a Communist infiltrator from North Korea is a dangerously
unclassified security risk. They search me and make me pee in a cup and leave
my palmtop at the site security office, but for some reason they donłt ask me
to surrender the small leather bag containing a mummified pigeonłs foot that I
wear on a silver chain round my neck when I explain that itłs on account of my
religion.

Idiots.

It is windy and rainy outside so I have no objection to
being ushered into an air-conditioned meeting room on the third floor of an
outlying wing, offered institutional beige coffee the same colour as the office
carpet, and to spending the next four hours in a meeting with Kevin, Robin,
Jane, and Phil, who explain to me in turn what a senior operations officer from
GCHQ detached for field duty is expected to do in the way of maintaining
security, calling on backup, reporting problems, and filling out the two
hundred and seventeen different forms that senior operations officers are apparently
employed to spend their time filling out. The Laundry may have a bureaucracy
surfeit and a craze for ISO-9000 certification, but GCHQ is even worse, with
some bizarre spatchcock version of BS5720 quality assurance applied to all
their procedures in an attempt to ensure that the Home Office minister can
account for all available paper clips in near real-time if challenged in the
House by Her Majestyłs loyal opposition. On the other hand, theyłve got a
bigger budget than us and all they have to worry about is having to read other
peoplełs email, instead of having their souls sucked out by tentacular horrors
from beyond the universe.

�Oh, and you really ought to wear a tie when youłre
representing us in public," Phil says apologetically at the end of his spiel.

�And get a haircut," Jane adds with a smile.

Bastards.

The Human Resources imps billet me in a bed and breakfast
run by a genteel pair of elderly High Tory sociopaths, a Mr and Mrs MacBride.
Hełs bald, loafs around in slippers, and reads the Telegraph while muttering
darkly about the need for capital punishment as a solution to the problem of
bogus asylum seekers; she wears heavy horn-rimmed glasses and the hairdo that
time forgot. The corridors are wallpapered with an exquisitely disgusting
floral print and the whole place smells of mothballs, the only symptom of the
twenty-first century being a cheap and nasty webcam on the hall staircase. I
try not to shudder as I slouch upstairs to my room and barricade the door
before settling down for the evening phone call to Mo and a game of Civ on my
palmtop (which I rescued from Security on my way out.) �It could be worse," Mo
consoles me, �at least your landlord doesnłt have gill slits and greenish
skin."

The next morning I elbow my way onto an early train to London,
struggle through the rush hour crush, and somehow manage to weasel my way into
a seat on a train to Milton Keynes; itłs full of brightly clad German
backpackers and irritated businessmen on their way to Luton airport, but I get
off before there and catch a taxi to the cop shop. �There is nothing better in
life than drawing on the sole of your slipper with a biro instead of going to
the pub on a Saturday night," the lead singer of Half Man Half Biscuit sings
mournfully on my iPod, and I am inclined to agree, subject to the caveat that
Saturday nights at the pub are functionally equivalent to damp Thursday
mornings at the police station. �Is Inspector Sullivan available?" I ask at the
front desk.

�Just a moment." The moustachioed constable examines my
warrant card closely, gives me a beady-eyed stare as if he expects me to break
down and confess instantly to a string of unsolved burglaries, then turns and
ambles into the noisy back office round the corner. I have just enough time to
read the more surreal crime prevention posters for the second time (�Are your
neighbours fox-hunting reptiles from the planet of the green wellies? Denounce
them here, free of charge!") when the door bangs open and a determined-looking
woman in a grey suit barges in. She looks how Annie Lennox would look if shełd
joined the constabulary, been glassed once or twice, and had a really dodgy
curry the night before.

�Okay, whołs the joker?" she demands. �You." A bony finger
points at me. �Youłre from" she sees the warrant card �oh shit." Over her
shoulder: �Jeffries, Jeffries, you rat bastard, you set me up! Oh, why do I
bother." Back in my direction: �Youłre the spook who got me out of bed the day
before yesterday after a graveyard shift. Is this your mess?"

I take a deep breath. �Mine and yours both. Iłm just back
down from" I clear my throat �and Iłve got orders to find an inspector J.
Sullivan and drag him into an interview room." Mentally crossing my fingers:
�Whatłs the J stand for?"

�Josephine. And itłs detective inspector, while youłre about
it." She lifts the barrier. �Youłd better come in then." Josephine looks tired
and annoyed. �Wherełs your other card?"

�My otheroh." I shrug. �We donłt flash them around; might
be a bit of a disaster if one went missing." Anyone who picked it up would be
in breach of Section Three, at the very least. Not to mention in peril of their
immortal soul.

�Itłs okay, Iłve signed the Section, in blood." She raises
an eyebrow at me.

�Paragraph two?" I ask, just to be sure shełs not bluffing.

She shakes her head. �No, paragraph three."

�Pass, friend." And then I let her see the warrant card as
it really is, the way it reaches into your head and twists things around so you
want to throw up at the mere thought of questioning its validity. �Satisfied?"

She just nods: a cool customer for sure. The trouble with Section
Three of the Official Secrets Act is that itłs an offense to know it exists
without having signed itin blood. So us signatories who are in theory cleared
to talk about such supersecret national security issues as the Laundryłs tea
trolley rota are in practice unable to broach the topic directly. Wełre
supposed to rely on introductions, but that breaks down rapidly in the field.
Itłs a bit like lesbian sheep; as ewes display their sexual arousal by standing
around waiting to be mounted, itłs hard to know if somebody else is, well, you
know. Cleared. �Come on," she adds, in a marginally less hostile tone, �we can
pick up a cup of coffee on the way."

Five minutes later wełre sitting down with a notepad, a telephone,
and an antique tape recorder that Smiley probably used to debrief Karla, back
when men were real men and lesbian sheep were afraid. �This had better be
important," Josephine complains, clicking a frighteningly high-tech sweetener
dispenser repeatedly over her black Nescaf�. �Iłve got a persistent burglar,
two rapes, a string of car thefts, and a phantom pisser who keeps breaking into
department stores to deal with, plus a bunch of cloggies from West Yorkshire
whołre running some kind of computer audityour fault, I believe. I need to get
bogged down in X-Files rubbish right now like I need a hole in my head."

�Oh, itłs important all right. And I hope to get it off your
desk as soon as possible. Iłd just like to get a few things straight first."

�Hmm. So what do you need to know? Wełve only had two flying
saucer sightings and six alien abductions this year so far." She raises one
eyebrow, arms crossed and shoulders set a trifle defensively. (Whołd have
thought it? Being interviewed by higher authorities makes the alpha female
detective defensive.) �Itłs not like Iłve got all day: Iłm due in a case
committee briefing at noon and Iłve got to pick up my son from school at four."

On second thought, maybe she really is busy. �To start with,
did you get any witness reports or CCTV records from the scene? And have you
identified the cow, and worked out how it got there?"

�No eyewitnesses, not until three ołclock, when Vernon
Thwaite was out walking his girlfriendłs toy poodle which had diarrhoea." She
pulls a face, which makes the scar on her forehead wrinkle into visibility. �If
you want we can go over the team reports together. I take it thatłs what pulled
you in?"

�You could say that." I dip a cheap IKEA spoon in my coffee
and check cautiously after a few seconds to see if the metalłs begun to
corrode. �Helicopters make me airsick. Especially after a night out when I was
expecting a morning lie-in." She almost smiles before she remembers shełs
officially grumpy with me. �Okay, so no earlier reports. What else?"

�No tape," she says, flattening her hands on the tabletop to
either side of her cup and examining her nail cuticles. �Nothing. One second
itłs zero zero twenty-six, the next itłs zero seven fourteen. Numbers to
engrave in your heart. Dennis, our departmental geek, was most upset with
MKSGtheyłre the public-private partners in the regional surveillance
outsourcing sector."

�Zero zero twenty-six to zero seven fourteen," I echo as I
jot them down on my palmtop. �MKSG. Right, thatłs helpful."

�It is?" She tilts her head sideways and stares at me like
Iłm a fly thatłs landed in her coffee.

�Yup." I nod, then tell myself that itłd be really stupid to
wind her up without good reason. �Sorry. What I can tell you is, Iłm as
interested in anything that happened to the cameras as the cow. If you hear
anything about themespecially about them being tampered withIłd love to know.
But in the meantimeDaisy. Do you know where she came from?"

�Yes." She doesnłt crack a smile but her shoulders unwind
slightly. �Actually, shełs number two six three from Emmett-Moore Ltd, a dairy
factory out near Dunstable. Or rather, she was two six three until three days
ago. She was getting along a bit, so they sold her to a local slaughterhouse
along with a job lot of seven other cows. I followed-up on the other seven and
theyłll be showing up in your McHappy McMeal some time next month. But not
Daisy. Seems a passing farmer in a Range Rover with a wagon behind it dropped
by and asked if he could buy her and cart her away for his local family butcher
to deal with."

�Aha!"

�And if you believe that, Iłve got a bridge to sell you."
She takes a sip of her coffee, winces, and strafes it with sweeteners again.
Responding on autopilot I try a mouthful of my own and burn my tongue. �Turns
out that therełs no such farmer Giles of Ham Farm, Bag End, The Shire, on
record. Mind you, they had a camera on their stockyard and we nailed the Range
Rover. It turned up abandoned the next day on the outskirts of Leighton Buzzard
and itłs flagged as stolen on HOLMES2. Right now itłs sitting in the pound down
the road; they smoked it for prints but it came up clean and we donłt have
enough money to send a SOCO and a forensics team to do a full workup on every
stolen car we run across. However, if you twist my arm and promise me a budget
and to go to the mat with my boss Iłll see what I can lay on."

�That may not be necessary: we have ways and means. But can
you get someone to drive me down there? Iłll take some readings and get out of
your faceexcept for the business with Daisy. How are you covering that?"

�Oh, wełll find something. Right now itłs filed under ęFł
for Fucking Fortean Freakery, but I was thinking of announcing itłs just an old
animal that had been dumped illegally by a farmer who didnłt want to pay to
have it slaughtered."

�That sounds about right." I nod slowly. �Now, Iłd like to
play a random word-association game with you. Okay? Ten seconds. When I say the
words tell me what you think of. Right?"

She looks puzzled. �Is this"

�Listen.
Case-Nightmare-Green-Scorpion-Stare-Maginot-Blue-Stars. By the authority vested
in me by the emissaries of Yłghonzzh Nłhai I have the power to bind and to
release, and your tongue be tied of these matters of which we have spoken until
you hear these words again:
Case-Nightmare-Green-Scorpion-Stare-Maginot-Blue-Stars. Got that?"

She looks at me cross-eyed and mouths something, then looks
increasingly angry until finally she gets it together to burst out with: �Hey,
what is this shit?"

�Purely a precaution," I say, and she glares at me, gobbling
for a moment while I finish my coffee until she figures out that she simply
canłt say a word about the subject. �Right," I say. �Now. Youłve got my
permission to announce that the cow was dumped. You have my permission to talk
freely to me, but to nobody else. Anyone asks any questions, refer them to me
if they wonłt take no for an answer. This goes for your boss, too. Feel free to
tell them that you canłt tell them, nothing more."

�Wanker," she hisses, and if looks could kill Iłd be a small
pile of smouldering ashes on the interview room floor.

�Hey, Iłm under a geas, too. If I donłt spread it around my
head will explode."

I donłt know whether she believes me or not but she stops
fighting it and nods tiredly. �Tell me what you want then get the hell out of
my patch."

�I want a lift to the car pound. A chance to sit behind the
wheel of that Range Rover. A book of poetry, a jug of wine, a date tree,
andsorry, wrong question. Can you manage it?"

She stands up. �Iłll take you there myself," she says
tersely. We go.

I get to endure twenty-five minutes of venomous silence in
the back seat of an unmarked patrol car driven by one Constable Routledge, with
DI Sullivan in the front passenger seat treating me with the warmth due a
serial killer, before we arrive at the pound. Iłm beyond introspective
self-loathing by nowyou lose it fast in this line of work. Angleton will have
my head for a key-ring fob if I donłt take care to silence any possible leaks,
and a tongue-twisting geas is more merciful than most of the other tools at my
disposalbut I still feel like a shit. So it comes as a great relief to get out
of the car and stretch my legs on the muddy gravel parking lot in the pouring
rain.

�So wherełs the car?" I ask, innocently.

Josephine ignores me. �Bill, you want to head over to Bletchley
Way and pick up Dougalłs evidence bag for the Hayes case. Then come back to
pick us up," she tells the driver. To the civilian security guard: �You, wełre
looking for BY 476 ERB. Came in yesterday, Range Rover. Where is it?"

The bored security goon leads us through the mud and a maze
of cars with POLICE AWARE stickers glued to their windshields then gestures at
a half-empty row. �Thatłs it?" Josephine asks, and he passes her a set of keys.
�Okay, you can piss off now." He takes one look at her face and beats a hasty
retreat. I half-wish I could join himwhether shełs a detective inspector or
not, and therefore meant to be behaving with the gravitas of a senior officer
in public, DI Sullivan looks to be in a mood to bite the heads off chickens or
Laundry field agents, given half an excuse.

�Right, thatłs it," she says, holding out the keys and
shaking them at me impatiently. �Youłre done, I take it, so Iłll be pushing
off. Case meeting to run, mystery shopping centre pisser to track down, and so
on."

�Not so fast." I glance round. The pound is surrounded by a
high wire fence and therełs a decrepit Portakabin office out front by the gate:
a camera sits on a motorised mount on a pole sticking up from the roof. �Whołs
on the other end of that thing?"

�The gate guard, probably," she says, following my finger.
The camera is staring at the entrance, unmoving.

�Okay, why donłt you open up the car." She blips the remote
to unlock the door and I keep my eyes on the camera as she takes the handle and
tugs. Could I be wrong? I wonder as the rain trickles down my neck. I shake
myself when I notice her staring, then I pull out my palmtop, clamber up into
the driverłs seat, and balance the pocket computer on the steering wheel as I
tap out a series of commands. What I see makes me shake my head. Whoever stole
the car may have wiped for fingerprints but they didnłt know much about
paranormal concealmentthey didnłt use the shroud from a suicide, or get a
paranoid schizophrenic to drive. The scanner is sensitive to heavy emotional
echoes, and the hands Iłm looking for are the most recent ones to have chilled
from fright and fear of exposure. I log everything and put it away, and Iłm
about to open the glove locker when something makes me glance at the main road
beyond the chainlink fence and

�Watch out! Get down!" I jump out and go for the ground. Josephine
is looking around so I reach out and yank her ankles out from under her. She
yells, goes down hard on her backside, and tries to kick me, then therełs a
loud whump from behind me and a wave of heat like an open oven door. �Shit,
fuck, shit" I take a moment to realise the person cursing is me as I fumble at
my throat for the bag and rip it open, desperately trying to grab the tiny claw
and the disposable cigarette lighter at the same time. I flick the lighter
wheel and right then something like a sledgehammer whacks into the inside of my
right thigh.

�Bastard ... !"

�Stop it" I gasp, just as the raw smell of petrol vapour
reaches me and I hear a crackling roar. I get the pigeon claw lit in a stink of
burning keratin and an eerie glow, nearly shitting myself with terror, lying in
a cold damp puddle, and roll over: �Donłt move!"

�Bastard! Whathey, whatłs burning?"

�Donłt move," I gasp again, holding the subminiature Hand of
Glory up. The traffic camera in the road outside the fence is casting about as
if itłs dropped its contact lens, but the one on the pole above the office is
locked right onto the burning tires of the Range Rover. �If you let go of my
hand theyłll see you and kill you oh shit"

�Killwhat?" She stares at me, white-faced.

�You! Get under cover!" I yell across the pound, but the guy
in the blue suitthe attendantdoesnłt hear me. One second hełs running across
the car park as fast as his portly behind can manage; the next moment hełs
tumbling forward, blackening, puffs of flame erupting from his eyes and mouth
and ears, then the stumps as his arms come pinwheeling off, and the carbonized
trunk slides across the ground like a grisly toboggan.

�Oh shit, oh shit!" Her expression changes from one second
to the next, from disbelief to dawning horror. �Wełve got to help"

�Listen, no! Stay down!"

She freezes in place for a full heartbeat, then another.
When she opens her mouth again shełs unnaturally cool. �Whatłs going on?"

�The cameras," I pant. �Listen, this is a Hand of Glory, an
invisibility shield. Right now itłs all thatłs keeping us alivethose cameras
are running SCORPION STARE. If they see us wełre dead."

�Are youthe car? What happened to it?"

�Tires. Theyłre made of carbon, rubber. SCORPION STARE works
on anything with a shitload of long-chain carbon molecules in itlike tires, or
cows. Makes them burn."

�Oh my sainted aunt and holy father ... �

�Hold my hand. Make skin to skin contactnot that hard.
Wełve got maybe three, four minutes before this HOG burns down. Bastards,
bastards. Got to get to the control shack"

The next minute is a nightmare of stumblingshooting pains
in my knees from where I went down hard and in my thigh where Josephine tried
to kick the shit out of mesoaking cold damp jeans, and roasting hot skin on my
neck from the pyre that I was sitting inside only seconds ago. She holds onto
my left hand like itłs a lifesaveryes, it is, for as long as the HOG keeps
burningand we lurch and shamble toward the modular site office near the
entrance as fast as we can go. �Inside," she gasps, �it canłt see inside."

�Yeah?" She half-drags me to the entrance and we find the
doorłs open, not locked. �Can we get away round the other side?"

�Donłt think so." She points through the building. �Therełs
a school."

�Oh shit." Wełre on the other side of the pound from the
traffic camera in the road, but therełs another camera under the eaves of the
school on the other side of the road from the steel gates out front, and itłs a
good thing the kids are all in lessons because whatłs going on here is every
teacherłs nightmare. And wełve got to nail it down as fast as possible, because
if they ring the bell for lunch�Wełve got to kill the power to the roofcam
first," I say. �Then wełve got to figure a way out."

�Whatłs going on? What did that?" Her lips work like a fish
out of water.

I shake my head.
�Case-Nightmare-Green-Scorpion-Stare-Maginot-Blue-Stars tongue be loosed. Okay,
talk. I reckon wełve got about two, three minutes to nail this before"

�This was all a setup?"

�I donłt know yet. Look, how do I get onto the roof?"

�Isnłt that a skylight?" she asks, pointing.

�Yeah." Being who I am I always carry a Leatherman multitool
so I whip it out and look around for a chair I can pile on top of the desk and
stand on, one that doesnłt have wheels and a gas strut. �See any chairs I can"

Iłll say this much, detective training obviously enables you
to figure out how to get onto a roof fast. Josephine simply walks over to the
ladder nestling in a corner between one wall and a battered filing cabinet and
pulls it out. �This what youłre looking for?"

�Uh, yeah. Thanks." She passes it to me and I fumble with it
for a moment, figuring out how to set it up. Then another moment, juggling the
multitool and the half-consumed pigeonłs foot and looking at the ladder
dubiously.

�Give me those," she says.

�But"

�Listen, Iłm the one who deals with idiot vandals and climbs
around on pitched roofs looking for broken skylights, okay? And" she glances
at the door �if I mess up you can phone your boss and let him know whatłs
happening."

�Oh," I mumble, then hand her the gadgets and hold the
ladder steady while she swarms up it like a circus acrobat. A moment later
therełs a noise like a herd of baby elephants thudding on the rooftop as she
scrambles across to the camera mount. The camera may be on a moving platform
but therełs a limit to how far it can depress and clearly shełs right below the
azimuth platformjust as long as she isnłt visible to both the traffic camera
out back and the schoolyard monitor out front. More shaking, then therełs a loud
clack and the Portakabin lights go out.

A second or two later she reappears, feet first, through the
opening. �Right, that should do it," she says. �I shorted the power cable to
the platform. �Hey, the lights"

�I think you shorted a bit more than that." I hold the
ladder as she climbs down. �Now, wełve got an immobilized one up top, thatłs
good. Letłs see if we can find the controller."

A quick search of the hut reveals a bunch of fun stuff I
hadnłt been expecting, like an ADSL line to the regional police IT hub, a PC
running some kind of terminal emulator, and another dedicated machine with the
cameras showing overlapping windows on-screen. I could kiss them; they may have
outsourced the monitoring to private security firms but theyłve kept the
hardware all on the same backbone network. The blinkenlights are beeping and
twittering like crazy as everythingłs now running on backup battery power, but
thatłs okay. I pull out a breakout box and scramble around under a desk until
Iłve got my palmtop plugged into the network hub to sniff packets. Barely a
second later it dings at me. �Oh, lovely." So much for firewalled up to the
eyeballs. I unplug and surface again, then scroll through the several hundred
screenfuls of unencrypted bureaucratic computerese my network sniffer has
grabbed. �That looks promising. Uh, I wouldnłt go outside just yet but I think
wełre going to be all right."

�Explain." Shełs about ten centimetres shorter than I am,
but Iłm suddenly aware that Iłm sharing the Portakabin with an irate, wet,
detective inspector whołs probably a black belt at something or other lethal
and who is just about to really lose her cool: �Youłve got about ten seconds
from now to tell me everything. Or Iłm calling for backup and, warrant card or
no, you are going in a cell until I get some answers. Capisce?"

�I surrender." I donłt, really, but I point at my palmtop.
�Itłs a fair cop, guv. Look, someonełs been too clever by half here. The camera
up top is basically a glorified webcam. I mean, itłs running a web server and
itłs plugged into the constabularyłs intranet via broadband. Every ten seconds
or so a program back at HQ polls it and grabs the latest picture, okay? Thatłs
in addition to whatever the guy downstairs tells it to look at. Anyway, someone
else just sent it an HTTP request with a honking great big file upload attached,
and I donłt think your IT department is in the habit of using South Korean
primary schools as proxy servers, are they? And a compromised firewall, no
less. Lovely! Your cameras may have been 0wnZ0r3d by a fucking script kiddie,
but theyłre not as fucking smart as they think they are otherwise theyłd have
fucking stripped off the fucking referrer headers, wouldnłt they?" I stop
talking and make sure Iłve saved the logfile somewhere secure, then for good
measure I email it to myself at work.

�Right. So I know their IP address and itłs time to locate
them." Itłs the work of about thirty seconds to track it to a dial-up account
on one of the big national ISPsone of the free anonymous ones. �Hmm. If you
want to help, you could get me an S22 disclosure notice for the phone number
behind this dial-up account. Then we can persuade the phone company to tell us
the street address and go pay them a visit and ask why they killed our friend
with the key ring" My hands are shaking from the adrenalin high and I am
beginning to feel angry, not just an ordinary day-to-day pissed-off feeling but
the kind of true and brutal rage that demands revenge.

�Killed? Oh." She opens the door an inch and looks outside:
she looks a little grey around the gills, but she doesnłt lose it. Tough woman.

�Itłs SCORPION STARE. Look, S22 data disclosure order first,
itłs a fucking murder investigation now, isnłt it? Then we go visiting. But
wełre going to have to make out like itłs accidental, or the press will come
trampling all over us and we wonłt be able to get anything done." I write down
the hostname while she gets on the mobile to head office. The first sirens
start to wail even before she picks up my note and calls for medical backup. I
sit there staring at the door, contemplating the mess, my mind whirling. �Tell
the ambulance crew itłs a freak lightning strike," I say as the thought takes
me. �Youłre already in this up to your ears, we donłt need to get anyone else
involved"

Then my phone rings.

As it happens we donłt visit any murderous hackers, but presently
the car pound is fronted with white plastic scene-of-crime sheeting, a
photographer and a couple of forensics guys show up, and Josephine (who has
found something more urgent to obsess over than ripping me a new asshole) is
busy directing their preliminary work-over. Iłm poring over screenfuls of
tcpdump output in the control room when the same unmarked car that dropped us
off here pulls up with Constable Routledge at the wheel and a very unexpected
passenger in the back. I gape as he gets out of the car and walks toward the
hut. �Whołs this?" demands Josephine, coming over and sticking her head in
through the window.

I open the door. �Hi, boss. Boss, meet Detective Inspector
Sullivan. Josephine, this is my bossyou want to come in and sit down?"

Andy nods at her distractedly: �Iłm Andy. Bob, brief me." He
glances at her again as she shoves through the door and closes it behind her.
�Are you"

�She knows too much already." I shrug. �Well?" I ask her.
�This is your chance to get out."

�Fuck that." She glares at me, then Andy: �Two mornings ago
it was a freak accident and a cow, today itłs a murder investigationI trust
youłre not planning on escallating it any further, terrorist massacres and
biological weapons are a little outside my remitand I want some answers. If
you please."

�Okay, youłll get them," Andy says mildly. �Start talking,"
he tells me.

�Code blue called at three thirty the day before yesterday.
I flew out to take a look, found a dead cow that had been zapped by SCORPION
STAREunless therełs a basilisk loose in Milton Keyneswent down to our friends
in Cheltenham for briefing yesterday, stayed overnight, came up here this
morning. The cow was bought from a slaughterhouse and transported to the scene
in a trailer towed by a stolen car, which was later dumped and transferred to
this pound. Inspector Sullivan is our force liaisonexternal circle two, no
need to know. She brought me here and I took a patch test, and right then
someone zapped the carwe were lucky to survive. One down out front. Wełve, uh,
trapped a camera up top that I think will prove to have firmware loaded with
SCORPION STARE, and I sniffed packets coming in from a compromised host. Police
intranet, firewalled to hell and back, hacked via some vile little dweeb using
a primary school web server in South Korea. We were just about to run down the
intruder in meatspace and go ask some pointed questions when you arrived." I
yawn, and Andy looks at me oddly. Extreme stress sometimes does that to me,
makes me tired, and Iłve been running on my nerves for most of the past few
days.

�All right." Andy scratches his chin thoughtfully. �Therełs
been a new development."

�New development?" I echo.

�Yes. We received a blackmail note." And itłs no fucking
wonder that hełs looking slightly glassy-eyedhe must be in shock.

�Blackmail? What are they"

�It came via email from an anonymous remixer on the public
Internet. Whoever wrote it knows about MAGINOT BLUE STARS and wants us to know
that they disapprove, especially of SCORPION STARE. No sign that theyłve got
CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, though. Theyłre giving us three days to cancel the entire
project or theyłll blow it wide open in quote the most public way imaginable
unquote."

�Shit."

�Smelly brown stuff, yes. Angleton is displeased." Andy
shakes his head. �We tracked the message back to a dial-up host in the UK"

I hold up a piece of paper. �This one?"

He squints at it. �I think so. We did the S22 soft-shoe
shuffle but itłs no good, they used the SIM card from a prepaid mobile phone
bought for cash in a supermarket in Birmingham three months ago. The best we
could do was trace the callerłs location to the centre of Milton Keynes." He
glances at Josephine. �Did you impress her"

�Listen." She speaks quietly and with great force: �Firstly,
this appears to be an investigation into murderand now blackmail, of a
government department, right?and in case you hadnłt noticed, organising
criminal investigations just happens to be my speciality. Secondly, I do not
appreciate being forcibly gagged. I have signed a certain piece of paper, and
the only stuff I leak is what you get when you drill holes in me. Finally, I am
getting really pissed off with the runaround youłre giving me about a
particularly serious incident on my turf, and if you donłt start answering my
questions soon Iłm going to have to arrest you for wasting police time. Now,
which is it going to be?"

�Oh, for crying out loud." Andy rolls his eyes, then says
very rapidly: �By the abjuration of Dee and the name of Claude Dansey I hereby
exercise subsection D paragraph sixteen clause twelve and bind you to service
from now and forevermore. Right, thatłs it. Youłre drafted, and may whatever
deity you believe in have mercy on your soul."

�Hey. Wait." She takes a step back. �Whatłs going on?"
Therełs a faint stink of burning sulphur in the air.

�Youłve just talked yourself into the Laundry," I say,
shaking my head. �Just try to remember I tried to keep you out of this."

�The Laundry? What are you talking about? I thought you were
from Cheltenham?" The smell of brimstone is getting stronger. �Hey, is
something on fire?"

�Wrong guess," says Andy. �Bob can explain later. For now,
just remember that we work for the same people, ultimately, only we deal with a
higher order of threat than everyday stuff like rogue states, terrorist nukes,
and so on. Cheltenham is the cover story. Bob, the blackmailer threatened to
upload SCORPION STARE to the ring of steel."

�Oh shit." I sit down hard on the edge of a desk. �That is
so very not good that I donłt want to think about it right now." The ring of
steel is the network of surveillance cameras that were installed around the
financial heart of the city of London in the late 1990s to deter terrorist
bombings. �Look, did Angleton have any other"

�Yes. He wants us to go visit Site Able right now, thatłs
the lead development team at the research centre behind SCORPION STARE. Um,
inspector? Youłre in. As I said, youłre drafted. Your boss, that would be
Deputy Chief Constable Dunwoody, is about to get a memo about you from the Home
Officewełll worry about whether you can go back to your old job afterward. As
of now, this investigation is your only priority. Site Able runs out of an
office unit at Kiln Farm industrial estate, covered as a UK subsidiary of an
American software company: in reality theyłre part of the residual unprivatised
rump of DERA, uh, QinetiQ. The bunch that handles Q-projects."

�While youłre busy wanking over your cow-burning nonsense
Iłve got a ring of car thieves to" Josephine shakes her head distractedly,
sniffs suspiciously, then stops trying to fight the geas. �That smell ... Why
do these people at Kiln Farm need a visit?"

�Because theyłre the lead team on the group who developed
SCORPION STARE," Andy explains, �and Angleton doesnłt think itłs a coincidence
that our blackmailer burned a cow in Milton Keynes. He thinks theyłre a bunch
of locals. Bob, if youłve got a trace thatłll be enough to narrow it down to
the building"

�Yes?" Josephine nods to herself. �But you need to find the
individual responsible, and any time bombs theyłve left, and therełs a small
matter of evidence." A thought strikes her. �What happens when you catch them?"

Andy looks at me and my blood runs cold. �I think wełll have
to see about that when we find them," I extemporise, trying to avoid telling
her about the Audit Commission for the time being; she might blow her stack
completely if I have to explain how they investigate malfeasance, and then Iłd
have to tell her that the burning smell is a foreshadowing of what happens if
she is ever found guilty of disloyalty. (It normally fades a few minutes after
the rite of binding, but right now itłs still strong.) �What are we waiting
for?" I ask. �Letłs go!"

In the beginning there was the Defense Evaluation and Research
Agency, DERA. And DERA was where HMGłs boffins hung out, and they developed
cool toys like tanks with plastic armour, clunky palmtops powered by 1980s
chips and rugged enough to be run over by a truck, and fetal heart monitors to
help the next generation of squaddies grow up strong. And lo, in the thrusting
entrepreneurial climate of the early nineties a new government came to power
with a remit to bring about the triumph of true socialism by privatising the
post office and air traffic control systems, and DERA didnłt stand much of a
chance. Renamed QinetiQ by the same nameless marketing genius who turned the Royal
Mail into Consignia and Virgin Trains into fodder for fuckedcompany-dot-com,
the research agency was hung out to dry, primped and beautified, and generally
prepared for sale to the highest bidder who didnłt speak with a pronounced
Iraqi accent.

However ...

In addition to the ordinary toys, DERA used to do
development work for the Laundry. Q Divisionłs pedigree stretches back all the
way to SOEłs wartime dirty tricks departmentpoison pens, boot-heel escape
kits, explosive-stuffed sabotage rats, the whole nine yards of James Bond
japery. Since the 1950s, Q Division has kept the Laundry in more esoteric
equipment: summoning grids, basilisk guns, Turing oracles, self-tuning
pentacles, self-filling beer glasses, and the like. Steadily growing weirder
and more specialised by the year, Q Division is far too sensitive to sell
offunlike most of QinetiQłs research, what they do is classified so deep youłd
need a bathyscaphe to reach it. And so, while QinetiQ was being dolled up for
the city catwalk, Q Division was segregated and spun off, a little stronghold
in the sea of commerce that is forever civil service territory.

Detective Inspector Sullivan marches out of the site office
like a blank-faced automaton and crisply orders her pet driver to take us to
Site Able then to bugger off on some obscure make-work errand. She sits stiffly
in the front passenger seat while Andy and I slide into the back and we proceed
in silencenobody seems to want to make small talk.

Fifteen minutes of bumbling around red routes and through
trackless wastes of identical brick houses embellished with satellite dishes and
raw pine fences brings us into an older part of town, where the buildings
actually look different and the cycle paths are painted strips at the side of
the road rather than separately planned routes. I glance around curiously,
trying to spot landmarks. �Arenłt we near Bletchley Park?" I ask.

�Itłs a couple of miles that way," says our driver without
taking his hands off the wheel to point. �You thinking of visiting?"

�Not just yet." Bletchley Park was the wartime headquarters
of the Ultra operation, the department that later became GCHQthe people who
built the Colossus computers, originally used for breaking Nazi codes and
subsequently diverted by the Laundry for more occult purposes. Hallowed ground
to us spooks; Iłve met more than one NSA liaison who wanted to visit in order
to smuggle a boot heel full of gravel home. �Not until wełve visited the UK
offices of Dillinger Associates, at any rate."

Dillinger Associates is the cover name for a satellite
office of Q Division. The premises turn out to be a neoclassical
brick-and-glass edifice with twee fake columns and wilted-looking ivy thatłs
been trained to climb the facade by dint of ruthless application of plant
hormones. We pile out of the car in the courtyard between the dry fountain and
the glass doors, and I surreptitiously check my PDAłs locator module for any
sign of a match. Nothing. I blink and put it away in time to catch up with Andy
and Josephine as they head for the bleached blonde receptionist who sits behind
a high wooden counter and types constantly, as unapproachably artificial-looking
as a shop window dummy.

�HelloDillingerAssociatesHowCanIHelpEwe?" She flutters her
eyelashes at Andy in a bored, professional way, hands never moving away from
the keyboard of the PC in front of her. Therełs something odd about her, but I
canłt quite put my finger on it.

Andy flips open his warrant card. �Wełre here to see Doctor
Voss."

The receptionistłs long, red-nailed fingers stop moving and
hover over the keyboard. �Really?" she asks, tonelessly, reaching under the
desk.

�Hold it" I begin to say, as Josephine takes a brisk step
forward and drops a handkerchief over the webcam on top of the womanłs monitor.
Therełs a quiet pop and the sudden absence of noise from her PC tips me off. I
sidestep the desk and make a grab for her just as Andy produces a pistol with a
ridiculously fat barrel and shoots out the camera located over the door at the
rear of the reception area. Therełs a horrible ripping sound like a joint of
meat tearing apart as the receptionist twists aside and I realise that she
isnłt sitting on a chair at allshełs joined seamlessly at the hips to a plinth
that emerges from some kind of fat swivel base of age-blackened wood, bolted to
the floor with heavy brass pins in the middle of a silvery metallic pentacle
with wires trailing from one corner back up to the PC on the desk. She opens
her mouth and I can see that her tongue is bright blue and bifurcated as she
hisses.

I hit the floor shoulder first, jarringly hard, and grab for
the nearest cable. Those red nails are reaching down for me as her eyes narrow
to slits and she works her jaw muscles as if shełs trying to get together a wad
of phlegm to spit. I grab the fattest cable and give it a pull and she screams,
high-pitched and frighteningly inhuman.

What the fuck? I think, looking up as the red-painted claws
stretch and expand, shedding layers of varnish as their edges grow long and
sharp. Then I yank the cable again, and it comes away from the pentacle. The
wooden box drools a thick, blue-tinted liquid across the carpet tiles, and the
screaming stops.

�Lamia," Andy says tersely. He strides over to the fire door
that opens onto the corridor beyond, raises the curiously fat gun, and fires
straight up. A purple rain drizzles back down.

�Whatłs going on?" says Josephine, bewildered, staring at
the twitching, slowly dying receptionist.

I point my PDA at the lamia and ding it for a reading. Cool,
but nonzero. �Got a partial fix," I call to Andy. �Wherełs everyone else? Isnłt
this place supposed to be manned?"

�No idea." He looks worried. �If this is what theyłve got up
front the shitłs already hit the fanAngleton wasnłt predicting overt
resistance."

The other door bangs open of a sudden and a tubby
middle-aged guy in a cheap grey suit and about three dayłs worth of designer
stubble barges out shouting, �Who are you and what do you think youłre doing
here? This is private property, not a paintball shooting gallery! Itłs a
disgraceIłll call the police!"

Josephine snaps out of her trance and steps forward. �As a
matter of fact, I am the police," she says. �Whatłs your name? Do you have a
complaint, and if so, what is it?"

�Iłm, Iłm" He focusses on the no-longer-twitching demon
receptionist, lolling on top of her box like a murderous shop mannequin. He
looks aghast. �Vandals! If youłve damaged her"

�Not as badly as she planned to damage us," says Andy. �I
think youłd better tell us who you are." Andy presents his card, ordering it to
reveal its true shape: �by the authority vested in me"

He moves fast with the geas and ten seconds later wełve got
mister fat guyactually Dr Martin Vossseated on one of the uncomfortable
chrome-and-leather designer sofas at one side of reception while Andy asks
questions and records them on a dictaphone. Voss talks in a monotone, obviously
under duress, drooling slightly from one side of his mouth, and the stench of
brimstone mingles with a mouth-watering undertone of roast pork. Therełs purple
dye from Andyłs paintball gun spattered over anything that might conceal a
camera, and he had me seal all the doorways with a roll of something like duct
tape or police incident tape, except that the symbols embossed on it glow black
and make your eyes water if you try to focus on them.

�Tell me your name and position at this installation."

�Voss. John Voss. Res-research team manager."

�How many members are there on your team? Who are they?"

�Twelve. Gary. Ted. Elinor. John. Jonathan. Abdul. Mark"

�Stop right there. Whołs here today? And is anyone away from
the office right now?" I plug away at my palmtop, going cross-eyed as I fiddle
with the detector controls. But therełs no sign of any metaspectral resonance;
grepping for a match to the person who stole the Range Rover draws a blank in
this building. Which is frustrating because wełve got his (Iłm pretty sure itłs
a he) boss right here, and there ought to be a sympathetic entanglement at
work.

�Everyonełs here but Mark." He laughs a bit, mildly
hysterical. �Theyłre all here but Mark. Mark!"

I glance over at Detective Inspector Sullivan, who is
detective inspecting the lamia. I think shełs finally beginning to grasp at a
visceral level that we arenłt just some bureaucratic Whitehall paper circus
trying to make her life harder. She looks frankly nauseated. The silence here
is eerie, and worrying. Why havenłt the other team members come to find out
whatłs going on? I wonder, looking at the taped-over doors. Maybe theyłve gone
out the back and are waiting for us outside. Or maybe they simply canłt come
out in daylight. The smell of burning meat is getting stronger: Voss seems to
be shaking, as if hełs trying not to answer Andyłs questions.

I walk over to the lamia. �Itłs not human," I explain
quietly. �It never was human. Itłs one of the things they specialise in. This
building is defended by guards and wards, and this is just part of the security
systemłs front end."

�But she, she spoke ... �

�Yes, but shełs not a human being." I point to the thick
ribbon cable that connected the computer to the pentacle. �See, thatłs a
control interface. The computerłs there to stabilize and contain a Dho-Nha
circuit that binds the Dee-space entity here. The entity itselfitłs a lamiais
locked into the box which contains, uh, other components. And itłs compelled to
obey certain orders. Nothing good for unscheduled visitors." I put my hands on
the lamiałs head and work my fingers into the thick blonde hair, then tug.
Therełs a noise of ripping Velcro then the wig comes off to reveal the scaly
scalp beneath. �See? Itłs not human. Itłs a lamia, a type of demon bound to act
as a front-line challenge/response system for a high security installation with
covert"

I manage to get out of the line of fire as Josephine brings
up her lunch all over the incredibly expensive bleached pine workstation. I
canłt say I blame her. I feel a little shocky myselfitłs been a really bad
morning. Then I realise that Andy is trying to get my attention. �Bob, when
youłre through with grossing out the inspector Iłve got a little job for you."
He pitches his voice loudly.

�Yeah?" I ask, straightening up.

�I want you to open that door, walk along the corridor to
the second room on the rightnot pausing to examine any of the corpses along
the wayand open it. Inside, youłll find the main breaker board. I want you to
switch the power off."

�Didnłt I just see you splashing paint all over the CCTV cameras
in the ceiling? And, uh, whatłs this about corpses? Why donłt we send Doctor
Vossoh." Vossłs eyes are shut and the stink of roast meat is getting stronger:
hełs gone extremely red in the face, almost puffy, and hełs shaking slightly as
if some external force is making all his muscles twitch simultaneously. Itłs my
turn to struggle to hang onto breakfast. �I didnłt know anyone could make
themselves do that," I hear myself say distantly.

�Neither did I," says Andy, and thatłs the most frightening
thing Iłve heard today so far. �There must be a conflicted geas somewhere in
his skull. I donłt think I could stop it even if"

�Shit." I stand up. My hand goes to my neck automatically
but the pouch is empty. �No HOG." I swallow. �Power. What happens if I donłt?"

�Vossłs pal Mark McLuhan installed a dead manłs handle.
Youłd know all about that. Wełve got until Voss goes into brain stem death and
then every fucking camera in Milton Keynes goes live with SCORPION STARE."

�Oh, you mean we die." I head for the door Voss came
through. �Iłm looking for the service core, right?"

�Wait!" Itłs Josephine, looking pale. �Canłt you go outside
and cut the power there? Or phone for help?"

�Nope." I rip the first strip of sealing tape away from the
door frame. �Wełre behind Tempest shielding here, and the power is routed
through concrete ducts underground. This is a Q Division office, after all. If
we could call in an air strike and drop a couple of BLU-114/Bs on the local power
substations, that might work" I tug at the second tape �but these systems
were designed to be survivable." Third tape.

�Here," calls Andy, and he chucks something cylindrical at
me. I catch it one-handed, yank the last length of tape with the other hand,
and do a double-take. Then I shake the cylinder, listen for the rattle of the
stirrer, and pop the lid off.

�Take cover!" I call. Then I open the door, spritz the
ceiling above me with green spray paint, and go to work.

Iłm sitting in the lobby, guarding the lamiałs corpse with a
nearly empty can of paint and trying not to fall asleep, when the OCCULUS team
bangs on the door. I yawn and sidestep Vossłs blistered corpsehe looks like
hełs gone a few rounds with Old Sparkythen try to remember the countersign.
Ah, thatłs it. I pull away a strip of tape and tug the door open and find
myself staring up the snout of an H&K carbine. �Is that a gun in your hand
or are you just here to have a wank?" I ask.

The gun points somewhere else in a hurry. �Hey, Sarge, itłs
the spod from Amsterdam!"

�Yeah, and someonełs told you to secure the area, havenłt
they? Wherełs Sergeant Howe?" I ask, yawning. Daylight makes me feel
betterthat, and knowing that therełs backup. (I get sleepy when people stop
shooting at me. Then I have nightmares. Not a good combination.)

�Over here." Theyłre dressed in something not unlike Fire Service
HAZMAT gear, and the wagons are painted cheerful cherry-red with luminous
yellow stripes; if they werenłt armed to the teeth with automatic weapons youłd
swear they were only here because somebody had phoned in a toxic chemical
release warning. But the pump nozzles above the cabs arenłt there to spray
water, and that lumpy thing on the back isnłt a spotlightitłs a grenade
launcher.

The inspector comes up behind me, staggering slightly in the
daylight. �Whatłs going on?" she asks.

�Here, meet Scary Spice and Sergeant Howe. Sarge, Scary,
meet Detective Inspector Sullivan. Uh, the first thing you need to do is to go
round the site and shoot out every closed circuit TV camera you can seeor that
can see you. Got that? And webcams. And doorcams. See a camera, smash it,
thatłs the rule."

�Cameras. Ri-ight." Sergeant Howe looks mildly skeptical,
but nods. �Itłs definitely cameras?"

�Who are these guys?" asks Josephine.

�Artist Rifles. They work with us," I say. Scary nods,
deeply serious. �Listen, you go outside, do anything necessary to keep the
local emergency services off our backs. If you need backup ask Sergeant Howe
here. Sarge, shełs basically sound and shełs working for us on this. Okay?"

She doesnłt wait for confirmation, just shoves past me and
heads out into the daylight, blinking and shaking her head. I carry on briefing
the OCCULUS guys. �Donłt worry about anything that uses film, itłs the closed
circuit TV variety thatłs hostile. And, oh, try to make sure that you are never
in view of more than one of łem at a time."

�And donłt walk on the cracks in the pavement or the bears
will get us, check." Howe turns to Scary Spice: �Okay, you heard the man. Letłs
do it." He glances at me. �Anything inside?"

�Wełre taking care of it," I say. �If we need help wełll
ask."

�Check." Scary is muttering into his throat mike and fake
firemen with entirely authentic fire axes are walking around the bushes along
the side of the building as if searching for signs of combustion. �Okay, wełll
be out here."

�Is Angleton in the loop? Or the captain?"

�Your boss is on his way out here by chopper. Ours is on medical
leave. You need to escallate, Iłll get you the lieutenant."

�Okay." I duck back into the reception area then nerve
myself to go back into the development pool at the rear of the building, below
the offices and above the labs.

Site Able is a small departmental satellite office, small
for security reasons: ten systems engineers, a couple of manager dogsbodies,
and a security officer. Most of them are right here right now, and theyłre not
going anywhere. I walk around the service core in the dim glow of the emergency
light, bypassing splashes of green paint that look black in the red glow. The
octagonal developer pool at the back is also dimly illuminatedthere are no windows,
and the doors are triple-sealed with rubber gaskets impregnated with fine
copper meshand some of the partitions have been blown over. The whole place is
ankle deep in white mist left over from the halon dump system that went off
when the first bodies explodeditłs a good thing the air conditioning continued
to run or the place would be a gas trap. The webcams are all where I left them,
in a trash can at the foot of the spiral staircase up to level one, cables
severed with my multitool just to make sure nobody tries to plug them back in
again.

The victimswell, I have to step over one of them to get up
the staircase. Itłs pretty gross but Iłve seen dead bodies before, including
burn cases, and at least this was fast. But I donłt think Iłm going to forget
the smell in a hurry. In fact, I think Iłm going to have nightmares about it
tonight, and maybe get drunk and cry on Mołs shoulder several times over the
next few weeks until Iłve got it out of my system. But for now, I shove it
aside and step over them. Got to keep moving, thatłs the main thingunless I
want more of them on my conscience.

At the top of the staircase therełs a narrow corridor and partitioned
offices, also lit by the emergency lights. I follow the sound of keyclicks to
Vossłs office, the door of which is ajar. Potted cheese plants wilting in the
artificial light, puke-brown antistatic carpet, ministry-issue desksnobody can
accuse Q Divisionłs brass of living high on the hog. Andyłs sitting in front of
Vossłs laptop, tapping away with a strange expression on his face. �OCCULUS is
in place," I report. �Found anything interesting?"

Andy points at the screen. �Wełre in the wrong fucking town,"
he says mildly.

I circle the desk and lean over his shoulder. �Oh shit."

�You can say that again if you like." Itłs an email Ccłd to
Voss, sent over our intranet to a Mike McLuhan. Subject: meeting. Sender:
Harriet.

�Oh shit. Twice over. Something stinks. Hey, I was supposed
to be in a meeting with her today," I say.

�A meeting?" Andy looks up, worried.

�Yeah. Bridget got a hair up her ass about running a
BSA-authorised software audit on the office, the usual sort of make-work. Donłt
know that itłs got anything to do with this, though."

�A software audit? Didnłt she know Licencing and Compliance
handles that on a blanket department-wide basis? We were updated on it about a
year ago."

�We were" I sit down heavily on the cheap plastic visitorłs
chair �what are the chances this McLuhan guy put the idea into Harrietłs mind
in the first place? What are the chances it isnłt connected?"

�McLuhan. The medium is the message. SCORPION STARE. Why do
I have a bad feeling about this?" Andy sends me a worried look.

�ęNother possibility, boss-man. What if itłs an internal
power play? The software auditłs a cover, Purloined Letter style, hiding
something fishy in plain sight where nobody will look at it twice until itłs
too late."

�Nonsense, Bridgetłs not clever enough to blow a project
wide open just to discredit" His eyes go wide.

�Are you sure of that? I mean, really and truly sure?
Bet-your-life sure?"

�But the body count!" Hełs shaking his head in disbelief.

�So it was all a prank and it was meant to begin and end
with Daisy, but it got a bit out of control, didnłt it? These things happen.
You told me the town police camera networkłs capable of end-to-end tracking and
zone hand-off, didnłt you? My guess is someone in this officeVoss,
maybefollowed me to the car pound and realised wełd found the vehicle McLuhan
used to boost Daisy. Stupid wankers, if theyłd used one of their own motors
wełd not be any the wiser, but they tried to use a stolen one as a cutout. So
they panicked and dumped SCORPION STARE into the pound, and it didnłt work, so
they panicked some more and McLuhan panicked even morebet you hełs the
go-between, or even the guy behind it. What is he, senior esoteric officer?
Deputy site manager? Hełs in London so he planted the crazy blackmail threat
then brought down the hammer on his own coworkers. Bet you hełs a smart
sociopath, the kind that does well in midlevel management, all fur coat and no
knickersand willing to shed blood without a second thought if itłs to defend
his position."

�Damn," Andy says mildly as he stands up. �Okay, so.
Internal politics, stupid bloody prank organised to show up Angleton, they use
idiots to run it so your cop finds the trail, then the lunatic in chief cuts
loose and starts killing people. Is that your story?"

�Yup." I nod like my neckłs a spring. �And right now theyłre
back at the Laundry doing who the fuck knows what"

�Wełve got to get McLuhan nailed down fast, before he decides
the best way to cover his tracks is to take out head office. And us." He smiles
reassuringly. �Itłll be okay, Angletonłs on his way in. You havenłt seen him in
action before, have you?"

Picture a light industrial/office estate in the middle of
anytown with four cherry-red fire pumps drawn up, men in HAZMAT gear combing
the brush, a couple of police cars with flashing light bars drawn up across the
road leading into the cul-de-sac to deter casual rubberneckers. Troops
disguised as firemen are systematically shooting out every one of the security
cameras on the estate with their silenced carbines. Others, wearing police or
fire service uniforms, are taking up stations in front of every
buildingoccupied or otherwiseto keep the people inside out of trouble.

Just another day at the office, folks, nothing to see here,
walk on by.

Well, maybe not. Here comes a honking great helicopterthe
Twin Squirrel from the Metłs ASU that I was in the other night, only it looks a
lot bigger and scarier when seen in full daylight as it settles in on the car
park, leaves and debris blowing out from under the thundering rotors.

The chopper is still rocking on its skids when one of the
back doors opens and Angleton jumps down, stumbling slightlyhełs no spring
chickenthen collects himself and strides toward us, clutching a briefcase.
�Speak," he tells me, voice barely raised to cover the rush of slowing rotors.

�Problem, boss." I point to the building: �Andyłs still
inside confirming the worst but it looks like it started as a fucking stupid
interdepartmental prank; it went bad, and now one of the perps has wigged out and
gone postal."

�A prank." He turns those icy blue peepers on me and just
for a fraction of a second Iłm not being stared at by a sixty-something skinny
bald guy in a badly fitting suit, but by a walking skeleton with the
radioactive fires of hell burning balefully in his eye sockets. �Youłd better
take me to see Andrew. Fill me in on the way."

Iłm stumbling over my tongue and hurrying to keep up with
Angleton when we make it to the front desk, where Andyłs busy giving the
OCCULUS folks cleanup directions and tips for what to do with the broken lamia
and the summoning altars in the basement. �Whołsoh, itłs you. About time." He
grins. �Whołs holding the fort?"

�I left Boris in charge," Angleton says mildly, not taking exception
at Andyłs brusque manner. �How bad is it?"

�Bad." Andyłs cheek twitches, which is a bad sign: all his
confidence seems to have fled now that Angletonłs arrived. �We need todamn."

�Take your time," Angleton soothes him. �Iłm not going to
eat you." Which is when I realise just how scared I am, and if Iłm half out of
my tree what does that say about Andy? Iłll give Angleton this much, he knows
when not to push his subordinates too hard. Andy takes a deep breath, lets it
out slowly, then tries again.

�Wełve got two loose ends: Mark McLuhan, and a John Doe.
McLuhan worked here as senior esoteric officer, basically an oversight role. He
also did a bunch of other stuff for Q Division that took him down to Dansey
House in a liaison capacity. I canłt believe how badly wełve slipped up on our
vetting process"

�Take your time," Angleton interrupts, this time with a
slight edge to his voice.

�Sorry, sorry. Bobłs been putting it together." A nod in my
direction. �McLuhan is working with a John Doe inside the Laundry to make us
look bad via a selective disclosure leakbasically one that was intended to be
written off as bad-ass forteana, nothing for anyone but the black helicopter
crowd to pay any attention to, except that it would set you up. Iłve found some
not very good email from Bridget inviting McLuhan down to headquarters, some pretext
to do with a software audit. Really fucking stupid stuff that Bob can do the
legwork on later. But what I really think is happening is, Bridget arranged
this to make you look bad in support of a power play in front of the directorłs
office."

Angleton turns to me: �Phone head office. Ask for Boris.
Tell him to arrest McLuhan. Tell him, SHRINKWRAP. And MARMOSET." I raise an
eyebrow. �Now, lad!"

Ah, the warm fuzzies of decisive action. I head for the
lamiałs desk and pick up the phone and dial 666; behind me Andy is telling
Angleton something in a low voice.

�Switchboard?" I ask the sheet of white noise. �I want
Boris. Now." The Enochian metagrammar parsers do their thing and the damned
souls or enchained demons or whatever on switchboard hiss louder then connect
the circuit. I hear another ring tone. Then a familiar voice.

�Hello, Capital Laundry Services, system support department.
Who are you wanting to talk to?"

Oh shit. �Hello, Harriet," I say, struggling to sound calm
and collected. Getting Bridgetłs imp at this juncture is not a good sign,
especially as she and Boris are renowned for their mutual loathing. �This is a
red phone call. Is Boris about?"

�Oh-ho, Robert! I was wondering where you were. Are you
trying to pull a sickie again?"

�No, Iłm not," I say, taking a deep breath. �I need to talk
to Boris urgently, Harriet, is he around?"

�Oh, I couldnłt possibly say. That would be disclosing information
prejudicial to the good running of the department over a public network
connection, and I couldnłt possibly encourage you to do that when you can
bloody well show your face in the office for the meeting we scheduled the day
before yesterday, remember that?"

I feel as if my guts have turned to ice. �Which meeting?" I
ask.

�The software audit, remember? You never read the agenda for
meetings. If you did, you might have taken an interest in the any other
business ... Where are you calling from, Bob? Anyone would think you didnłt
work here ... �

�I want to talk to Boris. Right now." The graunching noise
in the background is my jaw clenching. �Itłs urgent, Harriet. To do with the
code blue the other day. Now you can get him right now or you can regret it
later, which is your choice?"

�Oh, I donłt think thatłll be necessary," she says in what I
can only describe as a gloating tone of voice. �After missing the meeting, you
and your precious Counter-Possession Unit will be divisional history, and
youłll have only yourselves to blame! Goodbye." And the bitch hangs up on me.

I look round and see both Andy and Angleton staring at me.
�She hung up," I say stupidly. �Fucking Harriet has a diversion on Borisłs
line. Itłs a setup. Something about making an end run around the CPU."

�Then we shall have to attend this meeting in person," Angleton
says, briskly marching toward the front doors, which bend aside to get out of
his way. �Follow me!"

We proceed directly to the helicopter, which has kept its engines
idling while wełve been inside. Itłs only taken, what? Three or four minutes
since Angleton arrived? I see another figure heading toward us across the car
parka figure in a grey trouser suit, slightly stained, a wild look in her
eyes. �Hey, you!" she shouts. �I want some answers!"

Angleton turns to me. �Yours?" I nod. He beckons to her imperiously.
�Come with us," he calls, raising his voice over the whine of gathering
turbines. Past her shoulder I see one of the fake firemen lowering a kit-bag
that had been, purely coincidentally, pointed at DI Sullivanłs back. �This bit
I always dislike," he adds in a low monotone, his face set in a grim expression
of disapproval. �The fewer lives we warp, the better."

I half-consider asking him to explain what he means, but
hełs already climbing into the rear compartment of the chopper and Andy is following
him. I give Josephine a hand up as the blades overhead begin to turn and the
engines rise in a full-throated bellowing duet. I get my headset on in time to
hear Angletonłs orders: �Back to London, and donłt spare the horses."

The Laundry is infamous for its grotesque excesses in the
name of accounting; budgetary infractions are punished like war crimes, and
mere missing paper clips can bring the wrath of dead alien gods down on your
head. But when Angleton says donłt spare the horses he sends us screaming
across the countryside at a hundred and forty miles per hour, burning aviation
fuel by the ton and getting ATC to clear lower priority traffic out of our
wayand all because he doesnłt want to be late for a meeting. Therełs a police
car waiting for us at the pad, and we cut through the chaotic London traffic
incredibly fast, almost making it into third gear at times.

�McLuhanłs got SCORPION STARE," I tell Angleton round the
curve of Andyłs shoulder. �And headquartersłs security cams are all wired. If
he primes them before we get back there, we could find a lockoutor worse. It
all depends on what Harriet and her boss have been planning."

�We will just have to see." Angleton nods very slightly, his
facial expression rigid. �Do you still have your lucky charm?"

�Had to use it." Iłd shrug, if there was more room. �What do
you think Bridgetłs up to?"

�I couldnłt possibly comment." Iłd take Angletonłs dismissal
as a put-down, but he points his chin at the man in the driverłs seat. �When we
get there, Bob, I want you to go in through the warehouse door and wake the
caretaker. You have your mobile telephone?"

�Uh, yeah," I say, hoping like hell that the battery hasnłt
run down.

�Good. Andrew. You and I will enter through the front door.
Bob, set your telephone to vibrate. When you receive a message from me, you
will know it is time to have the janitor switch off the main electrical power.
And the backup power."

�Oops." I lick my suddenly dry lips, thinking of all the electrical
containment pentacles in the basement and all the computers plugged into the
filtered and secured circuit on the other floors. �All hellłs going to break
loose if I do that."

�Thatłs what Iłm counting on." The bastard smiles, and
despite all the horrible sights Iłve seen today so far, I hope most of all that
I never see it again before the day I die.

�Hey, what about me?" Angleton glances at the front seat
with a momentary flash of irritation. Josephine stares right back, clearly
angry and struggling to control it. �Iłm your liaison officer for North
Buckinghamshire," she says, �and Iłd really like to know who Iłm liaising with,
especially as you seem to have left a few bodies on my manor that Iłm going to
have to bury, and this jerk" she means me, I am distraught! Oh, the ignominy!
�promised me youłd have the answers."

Angleton composes himself. �There are no answers, madam,
only further questions," he says, and just for a second he sounds like a pious
wanker of a vicar going through the motions of comforting the bereaved. �And if
you want the answers youłll have to go through the jerkłs filing cabinet."
Bastard. Then therełs a flashing sardonic grin, dry as the desert sands in
June: �Do you want to help prevent any, ah, recurrence of what you saw an hour
ago? If so, you may accompany the jerk and attempt to keep him from dying." He
reaches out a hand and drops a ragged slip of paper over her shoulder. �Youłll
need this."

Provisional warrant card, my oh my. Josephine mutters something
unkind about his ancestry, barnyard animals, and lengths of rubber hose. I
pretend not to hear because wełre about three minutes out, stuck behind a
slow-moving but gregarious herd of red double-decker buses, and Iłm trying to
remember the way to the janitorłs office in the Laundry main unit basement and
whether therełs anything Iłm likely to trip over in the dark.

�Excuse me for asking, but how many corpses do you usually
run into in the course of your job?" I ask.

�Too many, since you showed up." We turn the street corner
into a brick-walled alley crowded by wheelie bins and smelling of vagrant piss.
�But since you ask, Iłm a detective inspector. You get to see lots of vile
stuff on the beat."

Something in her expression tells me Iłm on dangerous ground
here, but I persist: �Well, this is the Laundry. Itłs our job to deal with
seven shades of vile shit so that people like you donłt have to." I take a deep
breath. �And before we go in I figured I should warn you that youłre going to
think Fred and Rosemary West work for us, and Harold Shipmanłs the medical officer."
At this point she goes slightly palethe Demon DIYers and Doctor Death are the
acme of British serial killerdom after allbut she doesnłt flinch.

�And youłre the good guys?"

�Sometimes I have my doubts," I sigh.

�Well, join the club." I have a feeling shełs going to make
it, if she lives through the next hour.

�Enough bullshit. This is the street level entrance to the
facilities block under Headquarters Building One. You saw what those fuckers
did with the cameras at the car pound and Site Able. If my guess is straight,
theyłre going to do it all over again hereor worse. From here therełs a secure
line to several of the Metłs offices, including various borough-level control
systems, such as the Camden Town control centre. SCORPION STARE isnłt ready for
nationwide deployment"

�What the hell would justify that?" she demands, eyes wide.

�You do not have clearance for that information." Amazing
how easily the phrase trips off the tongue. �Besides, itłd give you nightmares.
But youłre the one who mentioned hell, and as I was saying" I stop, with an
overflowing dumpster between us and the anonymous doorway �our pet lunatic,
who killed all those folks at Dillinger Associates and who is now in a
committee meeting upstairs, could conceivably upload bits of SCORPION STARE to
the various camera control centres. Which is why we are going to stop him, by
bringing down the intranet backbone cable in and out of the Laundryłs
headquarters. Which would be easy if this was a bog-standard government office,
but a little harder in reality because the Laundry has guards, and some of
those guards are very special, and some of those very special guards will try
to stop us by eating us alive."

�Eating. Us." Josephine is looking a little glassy. �Did I
tell you that I donłt do headhunters? Thatłs Recruitmentłs job."

�Look," I say gently, �have you ever seen Night of the
Living Dead? Itłs really not all that differentexcept that Iłve got permission
to be here, and youłve got a temporary warrant card too, so we should be all
right." A thought strikes me. �Youłre a cop. Have you been through firearms
training?"

Click-clack. �Yes," she says drily. �Next question?"

�Great! If youłd just take that away from my nosethatłs betterit
wonłt work on the guards. Sorry, but theyłre already, uh, metabolically
challenged. However, it will work very nicely on the CCTV cameras. Which"

�Okay, I get the picture. We go in. We stay out of the frame
unless we want to die." She makes the pistol vanish inside her jacket and looks
at me askancefor the first time since the car pound with something other than
irritation or dislike. Probably wondering why I didnłt flinch. (Obvious,
really: compared with whatłs waiting for us inside a little intracranial air
conditioning is a relatively painless way to go, and besides, if she was
seriously pissed at me she could have gotten me alone in a nice soundproofed
cell back in her manor with a pair of size twelve boots and their occupants.)
�Wełre going to go in there and youłre going to talk our way past the zombies
while I shoot out all the cameras, right?"

�Right. And then Iłm going to try to figure out how to take
down the primary switchgear, the backup substation, the diesel generator, and
the batteries for the telephone switch and the protected computer ring main all
at the same time so nobody twigs until itłs too late. While fending off anyone
who tries to stop us. Clear?"

�As mud." She stares at me. �I always wanted to be on TV,
but not quite this way."

�Yeah, well." I glance up the side of the building, which is
windowless as far as the third floor (and then the windows front onto empty
rooms three feet deep, just to give the appearance of occupation). �Iłd rather
call in an air strike on the power station but therełs a hospital two blocks
that way and an old folksł home on the other side ... you ready?"

She nods. �Okay." And I take a step round the wheelie bin
and knock on the door.

The door is a featureless blue slab of paint. As soon as I
touch it, it swings openno creaking here, did you think this was a Hammer
horror flick?to reveal a small, dusty room with a dry powder fire extinguisher
bolted to one wall and another door opposite. �Wait," I say, and take the spray
paint can out of my pocket. �Okay, come on in. Keep your warrant note handy."

She jumps when the door closes automatically with a faint
hiss, and I swallow to make my ears popit only looks like a cheap fire door
from the outside. �Okay, herełs the fun part." I give the inner door a quick
scan with a utility on my palmtop and it comes up blank, so I put my hand on
the grab-bar and pull. This is the moment of truth; if the shit has truly hit
the fan already the entire building will be locked down tighter than a nuclear
bunker, and the thaumaturgic equivalent of a three-phase six-hundred-volt bearer
will be running through all the barred portals. But I get to keep on breathing,
and the door swings open on a dark corridor leading past shut storeroom doors
to a dingy wooden staircase. And thatłs all it istherełs nothing in here to
confuse an accidental burglar who makes it in past the wards in hope of finding
some office supplies to filch. All the really classified stuff is either ten
storeys underground or on the other side of the cellar walls. Twitching in the
darkness.

�I donłt see any zombies," Josephine says edgily, crowding
up behind me in the gloom.

�Thatłs because theyłre" I freeze and bring up the dry powder
extinguisher. �Have you got a pocket mirror?" I ask, trying to sound casual.

�Hold on." I hear a dry click, and then she passes me something
like a toothbrush fucking a contact lens. �Will this do?"

�Oh wow, I didnłt know you were a dentist." Itłs on a goddamn
telescoping wand almost half a metre long. I lean forward and gingerly stretch
the angled mirror so I can view the stairwell.

�Itłs for checking the undersides of cars for bombsor cut
brake pipes. You never know what the little fuckers in the school playground
will do while youłre talking to the headmistress."

Gulp. �Well, I guess this is a suitable alternative use."

I donłt see any cameras up there so I retract the mirror and
Iłm about to set foot on the stairs when she says, �You missed one."

�Huh ... ?"

She points. Itłs about waist level, the size of a doorknob,
embedded in the dark wooden wainscoting, and itłs pointing up the stairs.
�Shit, youłre right." And therełs something odd about it. I slide the mirror
closer for an oblique look and dry-swallow. �There are two lenses. Oh, tricky."

I pull out my multitool and begin digging them out of the
wall. Itłs coax cable, just like the doctor ordered. Therełs no obvious
evidence of live SCORPION STARE, but my hands are still clammy and my heart is
in my mouth as I realise how close I came to walking in front of it. How small
can they make CCTV cameras, anyway? I keep seeing smaller and smaller ones ...

�Better move fast," she comments.

�Why?"

�Because youłve just told them youłre coming."

�Oh. Okay." We climb the staircase in bursts, stopping
before the next landing to check for more basilisk bugs. Josephine spots one,
and so do II tag them with the mostly empty can of paint, then she blasts
their lenses from behind and underneath, trying not to breathe the fumes in
before we move past them. Therełs an unnaturally creaky floorboard, too, just
for yucks. But we make it to the ground floor landing alive, and I just have
time to realise how badly wełve fucked up when the lights come up and the night
watchmen come out from either side.

�Ah, Bob! Decided to visit the office for once, have we?"

Itłs Harriet, looking slightly demented in a black pin-striped
suit and clutching a glass of what looks like fizzy white wine.

�Where the fuck is everyone else?" I demand, looking round.
At this time of day the place should be heaving with office bodies. But all I
see here is Harrietand three or four silently leaning night watchmen in their
grey ministry suits and hangdog expressions, luminous worms of light glowing in
their eyes.

�I do believe we called the monthly fire drill a few hours
ahead of schedule." Harriet smirks. �Then we locked the doors. Itłs quite
simple, you know."

Fred from Accounting lurches sideways and peers at me over
her shoulder. Hełs been dead for months: normally Iłd say this was something of
an improvement, but right now hełs drooling like itłs past his teatime and Iłm
on the canteen menu.

�Whołs that?" asks Josephine.

�Who? Oh, one of themłs a shambling undead bureaucrat and
the other one used to work in accounts before he had a little accident with a
summoning." I bare my teeth at Harriet. �The gamełs up."

�I donłt think so." Shełs just standing there, looking
supercillious and slightly triumphant behind her bodyguard of zombies.
�Actually the boot is on the other foot. Youłre late and youłre out of a job,
Robert. The Counter-Possession Unit is being liquidatedthat old fossil Angleton
isnłt needed anymore, once we get the benefits of panopticon surveillance
combined with look-to-kill technology and rolled out on a departmental basis.
In fact, youłre just in time to clear your desk." She grins, horribly. �Stupid
little boy, Iłm sure they can find a use for you below stairs."

�Youłve been talking to our friend Mr McLuhan, havenłt you?"
I ask desperately, trying to keep her talkingI really donłt want the night
watchmen to carry me away. �Is he upstairs?"

�If so, you probably need to know that I intend to arrest
him. Twelve counts of murder and attempted murder, in case you were wondering."
I almost look round, but manage to resist the urge: Josephinełs voice is
brittle but controlled. �Police."

�Wrong jurisdiction, dear," Harriet says consolingly. �And I
do believe our idiot tearaway here has got you on the wrong message. That will
never do." She snaps her fingers. �Take the woman, detain the man."

�Stop" I begin. The zombies step forward, lurching jerkily,
and then all hell breaks loose about twenty centimetres from my right ear.
Zombies make excellent night watchmen and it takes a lot to knock one down, but
theyłre not bulletproof, and Josephine unloads her magazine two rounds at a
time. Iłm dazzled by the flash and my head feels as if someone is whacking me
on the ear with a shovelbits of meat and unspeakable ripped stuff go flying,
but precious little blood, and they keep coming.

�When youłve quite finished," Harriet hisses, and snaps her
fingers at Josephine: the zombies pause for a moment then close in, as their
mistress backs toward the staircase up to the first floor.

�Quick, down the back corridor there!" I gasp, pointing to
my left.

�Thewhat?"

�Quick!"

I dash along the corridor, tugging Josephinełs arm until I
feel her running with me. I pull my warrant card and yell, �Open sesame!" ahead
and doors slam open to either sideincluding the broom closets and ductwork
access points. �In here!" I dive in to one side and Josephine piles in after me
and I yank at the door�Close, damn you, fuck, close sesame!" and it slams shut
with the hardscrabble of bony fingertips on the outside.

�Got a light?" I ask.

�Naah, I donłt smoke. But Iłve got a torch somewhere"

The scrabblingłs getting louder. �I donłt want to hurry you
or anything, but" And lo, there is light.

Wełre standing at the bottom of a shallow shaft with cable
runs vanishing above us into the gloom. Josephine looks frantic. �They didnłt
drop! I shot them and they didnłt drop!"

�Donłt sweat it, theyłre run by remote control." Maybe now
is not the time to explain about six-node summoning points, the Vohlman
exercise, and the minutiae of raising and binding the dead: theyłre knocking on
the door and they want in. But look, herełs something even more interesting.
�Hey, I see CAT-5 cabling. Pass me your torch?"

�This isnłt the time to go all geeky on me, nerd-boy. Or are
you looking for roaches?"

�Just fucking do it, Iłll explain later, okay?" Harriet
really got to me; itłs been a long day and I told myself ages ago that if I
ever heard another fucking lecture about timekeeping from her Iłd go postal.

�Bingo." It is CAT-5, and therełs an even more interesting cable
running off to one side that looks like a DS-3. I whip out my multitool and
begin working on the junction box. The scrabblingłs become insistent by the
time Iłve uncovered the wires, but what the fuck. Who was it who said, When
they think youłre technical, go crude? I grab a handful of network cables and
yank, hard. Then I grab another handful. Then, having disconnected the main
trunk linemission accomplishedI take another moment to think.

�Bob, have you got a plan?"

�Iłm thinking."

�Then think faster, theyłre about to come through the door"

Which is when I remember my mobile phone and decide to make
a last-ditch attempt. I speed-dial Bridgetłs office extensionand Angleton
picks up after two rings. Bastard.

�Ah, Bob!" He sounds positively avuncular. �Where are you?
Did you manage to shut down the Internet?"

I donłt have time to correct him. Besides, Josephine is
reloading her cannon and I think shełs going to try a really horrible pun if I
donłt produce a solution PDQ. �Boss, run McLuhanłs SCORPION STARE tool and
upload the firmware to all the motion-tracking cameras on the ground floor east
wing loop right now."

�What? Iłm not sure I heard you correctly."

I take a deep breath. �Shełs subverted the night watchmen.
Everybody else is out of the building. Do it now or Iłm switching to a diet of
fresh brains."

�If you say so," he agrees, with the manner of an indulgent
uncle talking to a tearaway schoolboy, then hangs up.

Therełs a splintering crash and a hand rams through the door
right between us and embeds itself in the wall opposite. �Oh shit," I have time
to say as the hand withdraws. Then a bolt of lightning goes off about two feet
outside the door, roughly simultaneous with a sizzling crash and a wave of
heat. We cower in the back of the cupboard, terrified of fire, until after what
seems like an eternity the sprinklers come on.

�Is it safe yet?" she asksat least I think thatłs what she
says, my ears are still ringing.

�One way to find out." I take the broken casing from the network
junction box and chuck it through the hole in the door. When it doesnłt explode
I gingerly push the door open. The ringing is louder; itłs my phone. I pull it
wearily out of my pocket and hunch over it to keep it dry, leaning against the
wall of the corridor to stay as far away from the blackened zombie corpses as I
can. �Whołs there?"

�Your manager." He sounds merely amused this time. �What a
sorry shower you are! Come on up to Mahogany Row and dry off, both of youthe
director has a personal bathroom, I think youłve earned it."

�Uh. Harriet? Bridget? McLuhan?"

�Taken care of," he says complacently, and I shiver convulsively
as the water reaches gelid tentacles down my spine and tickles my balls like a
drowned lover.

�Okay. Wełll be right up." I glance back at the smashed-in
utility cupboard and Josephine smiles at me like a frightened feral rat, all
sharp teeth and savagery and shining .38 automatic. �Wełre safe now," I say, as
reassuringly as possible. �I think we won ... �

The journey to Angletonłs lair takes us up and alonghe normally
works out of a gloomy basement on the other side of the hollowed-out block of
prime London real estate that is occupied by the Laundry, but this time hełs
ensconced in the directorłs suite on the abandoned top floor of the north wing.

The north wing is still dry. Over there, people are still at
work, oblivious to the charred zombies lying on the scorched, soaked, thaumaturgically
saturated wing next door. We catch a few odd staresmyself, soaked and battered
in my outdoors gear, DI Sullivan in the wreckage of an expensive grey suit,
oversized handgun clenched in a death grip at her sidebut wisely or otherwise,
nobody asks me to fix the Internet or demands to know why wełre tracking muddy
water through Human Resources.

By the time we reach the thick green carpet and dusty
quietude of the directorłs suite Josephinełs eyes are wide but shełs stopped
shaking. �Youłve got lots of questions," I manage to say. �Try to save them for
later. Iłll tell you everything I know and youłre cleared for, once Iłve had
time to phone my fianc�e."

�Iłve got a husband and a nine year old son, did you think
of that before you dragged me into this insane nightmare? Sorry. I know you
didnłt mean to. Itłs just that shooting up zombies and being zapped by
basilisks makes me a little upset. Nerves."

�I know. Just try not to wave them in front of Angleton,
okay?"

�Who is Angleton, anyway? Who does he think he is?"

I pause before the office door. �If I knew that, Iłm not
sure Iłd be allowed to tell you." I knock three times.

�Enter." Andy opens the door for us. Angleton is sitting in
the directorłs chair, playing with something in the middle of the huge expanse
of oak desk that looks as if it dates to the 1930s. (Therełs a map on the wall
behind him, and a quarter of it is pink.) �Ah, Mister Howard, Detective
Inspector. So good of you to come."

I peer closer. Clack. Clack. Clack. �A Newtonłs cradle; how
1970s."

�You could say that." He smiles thinly. The balls bouncing
back and forth between the arms of the executive toy arenłt chromed, rather
they appear to be textured: pale brown on one side, dark or blonde and furry on
the other. And bumpy, disturbingly bumpy ...

I take a deep breath. �Harriet was waiting for us. Said we
were too late and the Counter-Possession Unit was being disbanded."

Clack. Clack.

�Yes, she would say that, wouldnłt she."

Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. Finally I canłt stand it anymore.
�Well?" I demand.

�A fellow I used to know, his name was Ulyanov, once said
something rather profound" Angleton looks like the cat thatłs swallowed the
canaryand the feet are sticking out of the side of his mouth; he wants me to
know this, whatever it is. �Let your enemies sell you enough rope to hang them
with."

�Uh, wasnłt that Lenin?" I ask.

A flicker of mild irritation crosses his face. �This was
before he took that name," he says quietly. Clack. Clack. Clack. He flicks the
balls to set them banging again and I suddenly realise what they are and feel
quite sick. No indeed, Bridget and Harrietand Bridgetłs predecessor, and the
mysterious Mr McLuhanwonłt be troubling me again. (Except in my nightmares
about this office, visions of my own shrunken head winding up in one of the
directorłs executive toys, skull clattering away eternally in a scream that
nobody can hear anymore ... ) �Bridgetłs been plotting a boardroom coup for a
long time, Robert. Probably since before you joined the Laundryor were conscripted."
He spares Josephine a long, appraising look. �She suborned Harriet, bribed
McLuhan, installed her own corrupt geas on Voss. Partners in crime, intending
to expose me as an incompetent and a possible security leak before the Board of
Auditors, I supposethatłs usually how they plan it. I guessed this was going
on, but I needed firm evidence. You supplied it. Unfortunately, Bridget was
none too stable; when she realised that I knew, she ordered Voss to remove the
witnesses then summoned McLuhan and proceeded with her palace coup dł�tat.
Equally unfortunately for her, she failed to correctly establish who my line
manager was before she attempted to go over my head to have me removed." He
taps the sign on the front of the desk: PRIVATE SECRETARY. Keeper of the
secrets. Whose secrets?

�Matrix management," I finally say, the lightbulb coming on
above my head at last. �The Laundry runs on matrix management. She saw you on
the org chart as head of the Counter-Possession Unit, not as private secretary
to ... � So thatłs how come hełs got the free run of the directorłs office!

Josephine is aghast. �You call this a government
department?"

�Worse things happen in parliament every day of the year, my
dear." Now that the proximate threat is over, Angleton looks remarkably
imperturbable; right now I doubt hełd turn her into a frog even if she started
yelling at him. �Besides, you are aware of the maxim that power corrupts and
absolute power corrupts absolutely? Here we deal every day of the week with
power sufficient to destroy your mind. Even worse, we cannot submit to public
oversightitłs far too dangerous, like giving atomic weapons to
three-year-olds. Ask Robert to tell you what he did to attract our attention
later, if you like." Iłm still dripping and cold, but I can feel my ears flush.

He focusses on her some more. �We can reinforce the geas and
release you," he adds quietly. �But I think you can do a much more important
job here. The choice is yours."

I snort under my breath. She glances at me, eyes narrowed and
cynical. �If this is what passes for a field investigation in your department,
you need me."

�Yes, well, you donłt need to make your mind up immediately.
Detached duty, and all that. As for you, Bob," he says, with heavy emphasis on
my name, �you have acquitted yourself satisfactorily again. Now go and have a
bath before you rot the carpet."

�Bathroomłs two doors down the hall on the left," Andy adds
helpfully from his station against the wall, next to the door: therełs no doubt
right now as to whołs in charge here.

�But what happens now?" I ask, bewildered and a bit shocky
and already fighting off the yawns that come on when people stop trying to kill
me. �I mean, whatłs really happened?"

Angleton grins like a skull: �Bridget forfeited her
department, so the directors have asked me to put Andrew in acting charge of it
for the time being. Boris slipped up and failed to notice McLuhan; he is, ah,
temporarily indisposed. And as for you, a job well done wins its natural
rewardanother job." His grin widens. �As I believe the youth of today say,
donłt have a cow ...

Dechlorinating the Moderator

A perspective on Particulate 7: HiNRG & B-OND

Venue: Maastricht Hilton Travelodge International Hotel, 30
March2 April 2018

Yr hmbl crrspndnt rprts:

This was the seventh and biggest Particulate. Itłs fair to
say that these cons have come of age; with about seven hundred guests and maybe
threehundred walk-ins on the door therełs no longer any question that the
concom can make ends meet. Indeed theyłre already hard at work scoping out a
venue for Particulate #8.

I checked in on Friday morning to find that about a hundred
die-hard geeks had hit the con the night before, and the registration deskłs
bookings system was toast. The hotel has hosted the last two Particulates, and
they knew what to expect; as I arrived two bemused porters were helping a
spotty youth hump weird-shaped bits of gear crusted in radiation trefoils into
the baggage lifts. Everyone had to pass a check at a discreet security booth by
the door, to prevent any recurrence of the regrettable incident that nearly
wrecked last yearłs con.

The first thing I noticed in reception was a big whiteboard
beside the main lifts. Various messages were scribbled on it, but right in the
middle, written in big blue letters, was a notice:

DONT TRY CRITICALITY EXPERIMENTS IN YOUR BEDROOMUNLESS YOU
WANT TO TEST THE SPRINKLERS.

I started by checking out the cafe, which was blue with dope
fumes by the time I arrived and which got steadily worse until the end of the
con (when the Bremsstrahlung Regressives tried to use it as a cloud chamber).
The usual suspects were there, sipping capuccino and smoking like there was no
tomorrow. And lo, who should I run into at the bar but my old acquaintance,
Doktor Strangelove?

I first met the Dok back at Criticality II (though Iłd run
across him before on the net). That was back when his home town (Buttfahrk,
Ontario) was trying to prosecute him for attempting to assemble a fissile
device within city limitsof which charge, incidentally, he was found not
guiltyand it struck me as unusually harsh that a local prosecutor was calling
for a twenty-four year sentence on a guy who was still, basically, a kid. Since
then the Dok has done some growing up, and I can safely say that if he wasnłt a
menace to society then, he certainly is now. Or hełd like to think he was.

Dok:

Hiya Betsy, howzit going?

Me:

Oh, I dunno. Just got here, dumped my bags, thought Iłd take
a sniff of the breeze.

Dok:

Huh-huh-huh.

Me:

Anything cool going?

Dok: [ pushes glasses up bridge of nose, fidgets with
head-up projector on left spectacle frame]:

I guess it depends what splices your code. The Fabulous Rubensteins
say theyłre gonna do something weird tomorrow lunchtime during the
birds-of-afeather on fusion experiments, and like Sunday morning word is that
Pion Overdrive are building a long column down the banquet hall and coopting
some heavy control bandwidth. Should be fireworks, maybe some stray neutron
soup boiling off of that if they kick it into the fifty TeV range. And therełs
some dude from CERN knocking around to give a talk on lawłnłorder and basement
nucleonics. Hełs kind of weird, but I donłt think hełs stasi.

Me:

Whatłs with the fusion gig?

Dok: [raises eyebrow suspiciously]:

mean you havenłt heard?

Me: [hastily]:

well, therełve been rumours about a breakthrough in
self-criticalizing muon-catalysis reactions ...

Dok: [playing hard to get]:

that remains to be seen. Buy me a drink?

Me:

I thought you were ...

Dok:

Minimum drinking age is 21 here.

Me:

Okay.

Thatłs the way it is. The nerds are on parade. Theyłve
always been paranoid about the way outsiders see them. First it was SF fans.
Then computer hackers and phone phreaks. These days itłs extropians,
roboticists, and hard physics geeks. But the character type is the same: very
bright, highly strung, defensive about their hobby, competitive within their
field. They realize itłs not something the rest of society understands or cares
much about, but they care and thatłs what makes the difference.

I staggered out of the cafe with my lungs on fire and my
eyes streaming and headed for the swimming pool. The swimming pool is a really
good place to hang out at a Particulate gig, but itłs not worth bringing your
swimsuit: itłs where the re-enactment crowd get together. A bunch of kids in
sarongs and TELLER IS GOD t-shirts were pouring ion-exchange beads into the
pool and there was a suspicious-looking bunch of metal piping already sitting
in racks on the bottom. The pool looked very blue. When I asked what they were
doing they stared at me as if I was crazy: �dechlorinating the moderator," one
of them finally deigned to tell me. I nodded and backed out fast; I could see I
wasnłt wanted.

Opening speech. Some middle-aged American guy in a
three-piece suit, probably exWall Street rocket scientist, told the assembled
geekswarm that they were the future of mankind. He said it in a voice choking
with deep emotion. Physicists always did their best work by thirty, and this
guy talked about his own career on the SSC project out in Texas, before the
Death of Big Physics in the mid-nineties. The audience were hushed, as if
chastened by the idea of being deprived of their accelerators by fiat.

Next on was a gangling youth named Curtis in baggy shorts,
baseball cap, and iguana. (It was green, about half a metre long, and sat
placidly on his shoulder throughout the talk.) Curtis talked very fast indeed
about the fractal dimensionality of the universe as measured using the Genocide
Mechanicsł new beat-wave petatron and some really eldritch decay paths they
scoped out in a quark-gluon plasma when they cranked it up high enough to fuse
the power supply. �I tell ya, at first I thought it was the drugs, man, but
then I realized it was the bats. The vampire bats from beyond spacetime." He
was talking about a fractal map they derived for a scalar field decay process;
and it did look sort of like a bat, if you squinted at it by the light of a
lava lamp after smoking too much dope.

Curtis got a standing ovation (whether for the delivery or
the message), and the iguana made a mess down the back of his t-shirt. He
didnłt seem to mind.

Everyone then pissed off to the cafe or the bar, leaving a
rather sad-looking Englishman to talk about cross-section derivatives in
subcritical masses of plutonium to a nearlyempty auditorium.

I donłt remember much about that evening, except that I woke
up at ten the next morning with a splitting hang-over and three teenagers
crashed out in the bathroom suite. Breakfast was black coffee and codeine,
washed down with runny scrambled eggs a la hotel. Back to the program:

A talk about positronium, the care and feeding thereof, and
how to bottle it for storage. One of the problems modern particle physicists
facebesides the lack of fundingis that they donłt have huge relativistic storage
rings any more. The maximum energies the big old synchrotrons could get up to
were pretty puny by current standards, but the one thing they were good at was
acting as a relativistic reservoir. Stick a bunch of particles with a half life
of a billionth of a second into a storage ring at close enough to the speed of
light and theyłll hang around for tea. But modern accelerators are all linear,
and nobody can afford the big metal power bills. The panel discussed various
condensation traps and magnetic bottle topologies (including a really weird
five-dimensional Klein bottle) but didnłt really resolve the issue.

Lunchtime: the Fabulous Rubensteins (who looked more like
Shyster, Shyster and Flywheel) presented their pion-catalysed criticality
experiment. It was the size of a truck fuel cell, and pumped out four watts of
power less than it took to runbut they said it had sucked in thirty watts two
weeks earlier, and could theoretically achieve fusion bootstrap and run hot
with a bit more tuning. More intrusions from the world of high finance: they
cited some algorithms patented by Barclays de Zoet Webb and Whole Earth Systems
in their control rig, and a couple of suits from Exxon were seen lurking at the
back of the lecture hall. modeling systems (agoric decision processors?
basically evolutionary algorithms used for market simulations) on predicting
particle state decay options. A lot of the weird shit the hard physics dudes
get up to these days drops back to ground state via some really strange nondeterministic
transition states. Zap some of them with enough energy along the way and you
get even weirder, less probable, transitions. Financial modeling protocols
evaluate particle decay chains in terms of �bid" and �offer" prices on their
probability, and give really neat derivatives for that big discovery-killing.
(No wonder the guys who wrote that software did well on Wall Street before the
Softlanding.)

There was a cool cocktail party that night by the poolside,
ghostly blue illumination courtesy of cerenkov radiation from the slow neutrons
in the pond. I was surrounded by crazed physics geeks and geek-ettes, stoned on
the most bizarre mixtures of smart drugs and neurotransmitter analogues
imaginable: the introspection mixes actually slowed them down enough for a mere
mortal to talk to them and get something interesting back. It was really good.
For a while I actually felt as if I understood the Pauli exclusion principlenot
as a law handed down from on high, but from the inside out. It didnłt last,
though. I went to bed, and the next morning the equations were as dry and
cracked as the surface of my tongue.

Sunday morning I skipped breakfast. The Pion Overdrive
Grrrls were bolting their petatron together in the banquet hall and I did not
feel like receiving an intimate lesson in scattering effects if they got
enthusiastic about testing it before the demo. It looked impressiveall of ten
metres long.

A seminar entitled: �embedded universes 101", discussing the
possibility of creating Linde-Mezhlumian fractally-embedded selfreproducing
universesin effect, mini-big-bangs contained within pocket black holeswhich
rapidly deteriorated into quasi-religious ranting when someone in the audience
asked a remarkably convoluted question about the practicality of �implementing
the preconditions for a Barrow-Tipler strong anthropic cosmology" within the
toy universes.

Some time during that last talk my brain underwent a loss of
coolant accident and melted down. I confess: Iłm not a true geek. The
theological significance of the Higgs scalar field leaves me cold. I donłt
really understand how to create a pocket universe, or what it means. Iłm just
repeating what I heard there. These dudes are beyond it. Way beyond it.
Whatever it is.

I wandered back into the banquet hall to see the grrrls demonstrate
top quark decay characteristics. It went smoothly and for an encore they
manufactured some Włs and a handful of Higgs bosons. Then one of their laser
stages failed and they shut the rig down. I got chatting to one of them
afterwards and it turned out they were using homebrewed chirpedpulse
amplifiers bolted straight in front of simple high-gigahertz network driver
diodeslasers produced by the million for wavelength multiplexed networks like
your cable video system.

I kid you not. Thirty years ago it cost ten billion ecus and
a machine thirty kilometres in diameter. Today a bunch of teenagers spend maybe
a couple of thousand ecus, build a Rube Goldberg contraption three metres long,
and achieve a hundred times the peak energy.

And this is what a Particulate is about. Fast, cheap, and
out of control. That lawMoorełs Lawused to be just computers. But computers
peaked, and now theyłre stitched into the collar of your shirt to tell the
washing machine how much detergent it takes. Next it was biotechnology, but
after the cancer fix and the old age hack all the really hot biogeeks went
underground ... or became merchant bankers. That left physics. The old
physicists hit Wall Street, leaving the field clear for the old-time hackers
and phreaks.

Raw enthusiasm, and left-recursive universe generators. But
they still get carded at the bar and they still canłt blow up the world.
Physics may have a bad rap these days, but itłs harmless enough: a fine subject
for kids to get enthusiastic about. I never did find out what happened to the
Vampire Bats from Beyond Spacetime, though.

Different Flesh

Soiree at Schloss Twilight

The five of them gathered together on the stone balcony that
jutted from the western wing of the ballroom, high above the formal gardens of
the Schloss Twilight. The dancers whirled on into the evening behind them,
unaware of the passage of time outside their dream of music and motion. Bishop
Morden looked over the crumbling balustrade at the hedges and flower beds
below. One of the stuffed penguins caught a slanting ray of light and seemed to
wink at him; he shuddered, briefly genuflected to the five poi nts, then turned
away.

�Would you care for an aperitif?" asked Lady Stael, expectantly.
�I am aware that the servants cannot be relied upon today, but"

The Bishop smiled uneasily and sidled away from the edge of
the terrace. �No my dear," he said, �I fear for my digestion! Perhaps an
infusion of gentian would be of help, but for the time being I am distraught
with worries that I would not care to inflict upon your gentle head: and they
have sorely aggravated my colic. Perhaps, however, our noble friend the
Paramage"

Lady Stael stared at him; her eyes raked him with a
peculiarly matronly expression of disdain that sat ill with her appearance of
blossoming youth, making her look like something preserved beyond its time.
�The so-called Paramage and his disreputable colleagues are here at the bidding
of my fate, to honour an appointment made some seventy years ago," she
murmured. �If they should ask for refreshments, why, I should have to ensure
their satisfaction! But they are not welcome, you understand. Unlike yourself."

�My apologies, madam," said the Bishop, sweating under his
stiff collar. �I was unaware"

Lady Stael turned and stared past the Bishop. He followed
the direction of her gaze. A table of filigree and shadow graced the far end of
the balcony, concealed from the dancers in the ballroom by the thick velvet
drapes of the curtains. Five chairs were drawn up around it. One was occupied
by a strange gentleman whose appearance was that of a ruinous ruffian or
cutthroat; a man who by rights should grace her dungeon rather than her
balcony. The brim of his hat was drawn low across his eyes, and it was ob vious
that there was room-a-plenty for any number of dark thoughts behind his
shadowed brow. Next to him sat Jack-Jones the Paramage, a saturnine man of
middle years who wore his beard in the archaic manner of a castillian noble.
His expression was jovial but his hair and his pale blue eyes were glacial,
even when he laughed. And finally, occupying a seat so close to the curtains
that he almost blended in with the shadows, was a figure that Jack-Jones had
not introduced. This person was swathed from head to foot in a black and
odiferous robe, such that the Bishop could hardly blame Lady Stael for not
desiring him on her premises. He looked like a hedge-priest and he smelt, not
to put too fine a point upon it, like Death.

�It is sometimes said," Lady Stael muttered, �that the
presence of guests is a trial sent by the Lord to test our wits and our witticisms.
If that is the case then I am afraid I am sore wanting, for whenever I confront
these three desperadoes all badinage flees! Perhaps it bears upon the evening
ahead. Your holiness, I do not wish to sit with these alone, and I would surely
not wish to presume upon your patience, but"

The Bishop smiled and bobbed his head. �But why, if that is
the case, do you come out here to take in the sunset?" he asked. �Surely there
is a ball behind us, and no shortage of guests who would willingly trip away
the darkness with the lady of the household come Heaven or Nightmare! Why come
out here?"

He watched her face closely. The Bishop was not a young
manthere were very few such still aliveand he had done many strange things
before he took the cloth, yet there was a kernel within Lady Stael that, should
it crack, he feared to see. She had lived within her shell for a long time; and
she had steeped herself soul-deep in a bitterness like that of cyanic almonds,
until her facade of youth was a mockery. Her husband had not been seen for many
years, not since he set off on his crusade in search of the unsighted lands of
the anti-arctic: and yet still she remained loyal to his memory and maintained
appearances.

She breathed deeply. �I am not a young maiden any more,
Marcus, however I might preserve this flesh I inhabit. Please donłt presume
upon my innocence. Presume by all means upon my chastitycertainly, in the
absence of my lord and master but not upon my naivete! Without the Paramage
all life might have fled this soul long ago. I owe him this appointment, upon
the unburied body of my past lives, but I shall not be coerced into enjoying
it! For I know what game that man has brought his friends h ere to play,
tonight."

The Bishop was taken aback at this invective, directed by a
member of the fair sex at a gentleman of whom, although he had little direct
knowledge, he had heard much. �Surely it is not as bad as that?" he asked,
unwisely treading upon her sensibilities. �Has he made any improper adv"

�He has not," she said icily. �It is merely his presence,
and all that it implies! On this night of all nights, to be trapped on a crumbling
balcony with such a man! The indignity!"

The Bishop sighed. �My Lady," he said, �do you not remember
the teachings of Our

Lord? That self-consciousness is the greatest sin, for the unconscious
mind does

know things of which we are unaware, so that we would live
lives enchained within the dungeons of our psyches were we not to expose it to
each other in agape? That, therefore, to hold to this grudge solely on behalf
of his perceived guilt for a crime not yet"

�You have not heard it from his own lips!" she exclaimed,
falling silent with a sudden vehemence that spoke louder than her words. �From
the lips of the Paramage, I mean; far be it from me to impute doubts as to your
interpretation of Our Lordłs Message!"

�Pardon me then, my Lady," said the Bishop, touching his rosary
to feel the holy pentagon. �Would it not then be worthwhile for me to discern
the truth for myself, from the lips of the man whom you assert is making this
demand upon you? And perhaps, in so doing, lead another lost soul into the
light?"

She sighed, and suddenly he perceived the evanescent quality
of youth that her husband Lord Stael must have discerned in her when he married
her so many years ago. �You are right and true as always, Marcus: your
Holiness. I should not lose my temper over such ... trifles. If the world is
indeed coming to an end, tonight of all nights, it is unfitting for me to reach
the extent of my life as a middle-aged harridan ... �

�How many years have you been lady of this demesne?" asked
the Bishop, softly. He turned and stared out at the shadows lengthening across
the lawn below.

�Four decades past," she said quietly. With a gloved hand
she gathered up the ice-blue skirts of her gown and turned towards the table.
�And I was thrice reborn when he married me: firstly as a sailor of no consequence
upon the Sea of Yang, then as awomanwho met with an untimely end, and then
into my present skin. Three lives, Bishop: is that all there is to this
universe? Come, let us join the gamers. You are right as usual, it would not be
correct for me to be inhospitable to my guests on this night of all nights."

She extended her arm and the Bishop took it, escorting her
across the mossy flagstones of the balcony towards the gaming table at which
the wizard and his companions waited. Behind them, the dancers whirled to the
strains of a chamber orchestra; they whirled as the rays of the setting sun
lanced through the tall glass windows and fell across the parquet for the last
time; they spun like tops across the polished floor as the sands trickled out
through the smallest aperture of all, as the great and universa l orrery ran
down.

As they approached the table the Paramage glanced up. He
paused in mid-sentence, his mouth open as if entrapped in the incantation of
some mystic function, and then he began to smile. As he smiled, the two vacant
chairs moved silently, turning to accommodate their approaching occupants.

�Good evening to you, my Lady," said Jack-Jones. �Is that
not Bishop Moran you bring to our table? I must admit I was half-expecting him.
A delight, Iłm sure!"

He stood and extended a hand; behind him the rogue and the
cowled sacerdote rose to their feet.

Lady Stael extended an arm, and the Paramage bent to kiss
her wrist. As his lips brushed the black velvet of her glove a shot rang out
from beneath the balcony, followed by a moan of utter despair and loathing. The
wizard and the lady froze as the hooded monastic turned to stare across the
garden. �The servants are playing Muscovian Roulette," he said, his voice
bereft of all intonation. �The cook appears to have won. That is his wifełs
lament." There was a second shot, and the moaning ceased instantly.

�Who will clear the dishes, then?" asked Lady Stael.

Jack-Jones smiled again. �That is hardly a problem," he
said. �Come, my Lady! Eat, drink, be merryfor tomorrow we will most certainly
not be around to die."

The Bishop sat down uneasily. As he did so, the chair slid towards
the table as if an invisible footman stood at his back. He grasped the arms,
feeling carved lion-faces press into his palms. �Would that I could be so certain,
your Excellency. If perhaps I have understood your prophecy correctly"

�Call me Jack, please!" said the wizard; �and I may call you
Marcus, perhaps? My Lady, you are radiant tonight! The earrings of amber are so
fine; am I correct in perceiving that those are tiny salamanders trapped
within?"

She smiled coolly and withdrew her hand. �They are not amber
but glass, and the occupants are not reptiles," she said. �They are the
embalmed brains of my first-born twins, who came into this world rather too
early. I shall not bear any others," she added, �but it gives me a certain
comfort to wear them from time to time. I fancy I can hear them whispering to
me ... �

The cowled priest nodded understandingly, and an odour of
tomb-rot swept from his hood. �That is a meagre encouragement, but a real one,"
he said. �As one who has never sown or reaped the seed of the loins, it behoves
me to congratulate you upon your partial success. There was once a time when
motherhood was cheap and lives were short: but no more!"

He retreated from the balustrade, sat down and rearranged
his cowl. The Bishop was intrigued, and somewhat chilled, to realise that not
once had the manłs face come into view. There was a great geas at work on Lady
Stael, if his senses were informing him correctly: and this secretive monk was
part of it.

The rough-looking man in the wide-brimmed hat and the leather
suit sat down. He had remained silent during the introductions, but now he
tilted his face up and looked at his hostess. His jaw was unshaven and his eyes
were expressionless. �I am pleased to meet you," he said slowly. �My friend,
his Excellency Jack-Jones, instructed me to come to this place to facilitate
the coming event. I am deeply appreciative of such an"

�But whatłs your name?" Lady Stael interrupted.

The ruffian grinned with the fey expression of one who knew
all the cards in the game of life. �I am the Last Gambler," he said. �I teach
the statistics of uncertainty, those of the honourable Thomas Bayes in particular.
Would you care for a lesson?"

The Lady recoiled, her cheeks flushing bright red.
�Certainly not!" she said furiously. �Unless you can tell me the odds upon my
husband being alive and returning to wreak justice upon such as yourself!" She
turned away suddenly, so that only the Bishop glimpsed the film of tears that
lay across her eyes as she stared at the distant hills.

�That and other things can I estimate," said the Gambler
softly, his undertone directed at the hooded monk. �But methinks the Lady would
not be of a mind to thank me for it." He reached to the table and raised a
tulip-stemmed glass to his lips. Red liqueur caught the setting rays. �Shall we
begin?"

�Begin what?" asked the Bishop distractedly. His attention
was directed upon Lady Stael, towards whom he felt more concern than he knew to
be right and proper. She was, he decided, very beautiful, especially when she
shaved her scalp so that only a thin patina of gold fuzz caught the light,
setting off the magnificence of her decolletage.

The Gambler produced a deck of peculiarly large cards, and
laid it flat upon the table-top. He sat back, contemplating it. �Has anyone explained
to you why we are gathered here tonight?" asked Jack-Jones.

The Bishop shook his head. �I fear not," he said benignly.
�Am I to understand that this is something more than a friendly soiree, on the
occasion of the ball given by her Ladyship in honour of the end of the world?"

The Paramage smiled enigmatically.

�It is more than that," said the hooded figure. �For tonight
is the twilight of the universe, as the worms of rebirth multiply through the
fabric of incarnation. It is an evening for truth and consequences, for naked
ambition and lust laid bare to reveal the chance of stillborn futures; an evening
for the revelation of doom. And we who are gathered here tonight all have a
role to playyourself, your Holiness, and her Ladyship toofor this was the
only event that was foreordained."

�What do you mean?" Sudden icy fear rooted Marcus to his
chair and liquefied his guts. He looked up as Lady Stael glanced back at him. Her
face resembled a shattered mask of anguish as she met his eyes.

�False pretences, Bishop Moran," she whispered. �I pray you
will forgive me, but I could not bear to face this ordeal alone! Not only is
one of these three men responsible for the end of the universe, but another has
the ability to revoke such a cosmic judgement as has gathered all the threads
of time through this one knot-hole, and poised the blade above it. Yet they
will not tell me who, or why, or how to avert this fate, until I judge with my
own wits and emotions as to which of us, and why, might desi re the ending of
eternity itself! And so I brought you along, for if this world should end at
midnight you too will end with it; and if you can advise me fearlessly and
correctly, as in the past ... why, then we might survive."

Her face went ashen as the Last Gambler reached out with a
certain panache and turned the top card on his deck face up. It was not a card
with which Marcus was familiar; it was neither playing card nor tarot, of
either major or minor arcana with which he was familiar. Instead, drawn in the
finest of water-colours upon the parchment was a round and luminous cloud with
a stem beneath it like a flowering cactus, or perhaps a toadstool. Superimposed
above it was a strange artefact, a cylinder with stubby wing s attached; it
glowed with a light reflected from the strange cloud. Inscribed at the top of
the card in gold leaf were the runes

E = mc2

�Let the game begin," he said decisively. �I have been informed
of the variant Rules for this case, and the appropriate authorities will be
watching this table to prevent any turpitude. I challengeJack-Jones."

The hooded sacerdote leaned across to Marcus and whispered,
in a voice as dry as any crypt; �Jones must now tell his tale, with total
honesty and truth. When your turn comes, you too must do so. It is imperative,
no matter how painful it might be, to tell the truth. The order" the cowl
twisted for a moment, so that Marcus caught a glimpse of dark, hooded eyes in a
shadowy, gaunt face�is determined by the cards. For if chaos is to teach us a
lesson of life, how else are we to learn it?"

His words were punctuated by an unearthly shriek. In the gardens
below a peacock was spreading its plumage in iridescent display, to reflect the
tattered glory of the fading sunlight. Marcus started, then quickly looked to
Lady Stael for guidance. She sat bolt-upright, as if welded into position by
the stays of her strapless gown. A diamond glittered from one finely-sculpted
nostril, but her white skin outshone it against the ice-blue taffeta of her
corsetry; and for an instant she seemed to personify fem inine perfection in
his eyes, to be the substance and ideal of all that he desired to possess and
protect and exhibit and dominate in life. He wondered how he had ever taken
such a turning as to become a Bishop, so that she was simultaneously
inaccessible to and intimate with him, being as she was a prominent member of
his flock. He held his breath, as if she was chiselled from ice and a single
false, hot gust might cause her to melt away before the heat of his single
dreams. Remembering the ordinal comman ment, Know Thyself, he forced himself to
look away. You are here to help her in her moment of weakness, he berated his
libido; not to take advantage of her vulnerability!

He directed his attention to Jack-Jones the Paramage, who appeared
to be sweating. And so he should, for if the hooded one was correct the stakes
depending upon his truthfulness ran higher than his reincarnate soul.

�Speak," said the Gambler. �It is time we heard the truth
from your lips.

Enlighten us; his Holiness" he raised an eyebrow at the Bishop�is
dying to know how the current predicament arose. And who knows? Perhaps if you
speak truthfully, we shall live to see the dawn."

Jones grimaced slightly, and raised his glass to his lips.
It was a tumblerful of stroeh, a fiery spirit from Dansk; he sipped it gingerly,
then replaced it on the table and sat back.

�Very well then," he said; �you have asked, so I suppose I
must tell you all! Very well. I was not present for much of this, and I have
little first-hand knowledge of the major actress in this drama, but for the
sake of enlightenment let me tell you about Imad the Insane, who was once my
student, and about the Countessa Danielle, and what they did. And then,
perhaps, the meaning of the current situation will become clear."

Raw and Tenderly

A long distance away, in both space and time, there was a
mis-guided youth named Imad who apprenticed himself to the magus named Jones in
order to search out Truth Absolut. Imad was young and had no memory of his previous
existences; he was gangling and thin and pale-faced, and there was about him
the shifty expression of one who spent too much time in libraries, after the
fashion of the ancients. Unfortunately this did not give Jones cause for
concern, for in those days he had yet to receive the ad ditional soul that gave
him his extra name and his reputation for infallibility. Instead of sending the
youth packing, he gave him tasks to accom-plishthe mild services of the
postulantand took it upon himself to give Imad the tools of wisdom with which
to learn his trade. The fact that Imad later misused them horribly was not
Jonesłs responsibility, for by that time the youth had long since absconded:
but nevertheless Jones was galled by the whip of hindsight and, resolving not
to permit events to continue unhindered, sent an Eye to watch over his runaway
tutee.

This is what he saw:

Imad nearly died in the Marches, hanged as a poacher and a
horse-thief and anything else they cared to accuse him of. The fact that he was
travelling afoot was beside the point, for there was no notion of a fair trial
in that harsh land of exiles and river-barons. The villagers who apprehended
him as he dozed by the highway one afternoon bore him up to the gates of the
small and ruinous castle, and were already preparing a celebratory rope for his
gullet when the knight of the demesne and his soldiers rod e back from the hunt
and interrupted the lynching.

�What is going on?" demanded the lord. �Who is this man?"
His shadow fell across the villagers, who cowered in abject terror before his
mounted might. Imad, his arms twisted behind him in the grip of two peasant
lads, gulped and stared fixedly at the mounted warrior clad all in chain mail,
with his lance at his side and six armoured riders behind him.

The village hetman blinked stupidly, then knelt. Behind him,
the two peasants pushed Imad face-down. �He be a stranger, yłr highness," said
the hetman, still holding the coarse noose in his hands. �Caughtłm lurkinł by
thł fields, łe was. Up ter no good, ęll warrant."

�But what has he done?" asked the knight, idly fingering the
pommel of his saddle. His eyes were dark and utterly unreadable. Insects
creaked in the background, but not a man dared move.

�Rr ... nuthinł yet, yłr highness. But łe was goinł ter!"
The hetman was agitated. �There be a demon in łim! łEłs a stranger round łere,
see!" His Lordship looked bored.

�I understand. You." He pointed at Imad with an armoured finger.
�What have you to say for yourself?" Imad couldnłt see, but he could hear when
he was being addressed. And he knew what was likely to happen, should he fail
to speak in his own defence.

�Iłve done nothing, your Lordship," he said desperately.
�Iłm just a journeyman of magic, learning my trade at country fairs! I havenłt
done anything! Please"

All of a sudden, the peasants who were holding him down released
his arms. He scrambled to his knees and looked up, meeting the eyes of the
knight for the first time. The warrior stared down at him pitilessly, one hand
gripping his lance as if challenging Imad to outrun his steed.

�A magician," said the knight, slowly. �Well, well ... � He
pointed an iron finger at Imad. �My apothecary died last month," he said quietly.
�You will take his place, wonłt you?"

Imad looked at the hetman, who was still fingering his
noose, and nodded violently. �Anything you say," he blurted. �Anything at all!"

�Good." The knight didnłt smile. �Welcome to Castle Capeluche.
I hope you enjoy your stay."

Imad was happy to escape with his life, but less pleased
with his new accommodation. A flea-ridden straw tick in an outhouse within the
courtyard was his closest approach to privacy; that, and a workroom with
cluttered benches, a stuffed crocodile hanging from the rafters, and such a
profusion of dusty herbs and simples as to make his nose sting and his eyes
water. After his arrival he was acquainted with his post by one of the
men-at-arms, and then ignored by everybody except the cookwho cursed him r
oundly when he enquired after victuals.

�But what am I to do?" he asked in confusion. �What are my
duties here?"

The dark-skinned chef fixed him with a beady stare as he
honed his cleaver upon a leather strop. �Keep out of way," he said. �See tower?
Lord Capeluche keeps wife locked up there. Her father, he come to war soon.
Very bad thing; Lord Capeluche very angry, want death spells, demons, big loud
curses. Meanwhile, best not let self be seen."

He put down his cleaver and rotated the spit. The truncated
torso of a small pig sizzled and dripped fat into the fireplace. �Lord
Capeluche not like women," he hinted darkly, his voice drowned in the crackling
of the flames. �He had vision, told him they all evil. Look at villagesee any
wives, huh? He sent them away. Donłt cross him. He wears skin of enemies under
his armour."

Imad looked at the spitted pig and swallowed. Saliva filled
his mouth, even though when he looked closer the roast didnłt look much like a
pig at all. In such a backward area as this, it was unwise to enquire too
closely about the dietary habits of the residents. He turned away as the chef
rolled the spit again. �Is there a library here?" he asked slowly. �A place
with books?"

The chef nodded. �Other tower," he said. �Has old guyłs
books, what-his-namehe cast spell here before he dead. Warn younot to tamper
with Lord Capeluchełs place. Donłt get them mixed, huh? Bad for you."

�Thanks," said Imad without any real feeling. His fingers
were itching. Real books? he wondered: in a place like this? Imad was an
ob-sessive bibliophile, pursuing his habit to extremes. He was also a magician.
He resolved that he would not attempt to escape until he had seen this library;
who knew what he might discover?

Leaving the kitchen he walked across to the far tower. It
was decrepit, the window-slits boarded with rotted timbers and the thatching on
the roof turned grey-green with age. Although Lord Capeluchełs guards patrolled
the walls, none so much as glanced down at him as he pushed open the door to
the abandoned turret and went inside. Their attention was focused on the other
tower, their masterłs boudoir, and the wild forest beyond the walls.

Within the tower, everything was dark. A thick layer of dust
coated the broken furniture; leaves had drifted in, and something scuttled away
in sudden panic as

Imad tugged the boards away from one of the windows. With
added light, the scene that met his eyes was dismal. Although it looked
unpromising and he was still unfed, Imad climbed the tightly-spiralling staircase
to the upper floor and shoved his way through the first door he came to.

A roosting bat flashed past his head, squeaking in panic; he
instinctively reached out and plucked it from the air. It lay in the palm of
his hand, twitching slightly as he examined it; hełd broken one of its delicate
wings with the speed of his reflexes and now it was no more than an ungainly
air-shrew, damaged and in pain. So small, and yet so natural, he thought as he
closed his fingers around it and squeezed it gently dead. Then why do I feel
incomplete, when creatures such as this need noth ing more in life? It was an
unanswerable question, so Imad forgot about it and passed through the doorway
instead, closing another more insubstantial portal in his mind at the same time.

Inside the room Imad found a small fortune in books lining
the walls. There were no vermin, although numerous small skeletons littered the
corners of the library; the former occupant had been efficient. Bat droppings
streaked the spines of some of the tomes and stained the floor white, but there
was no significant damageso Imad browsed for an afternoon, taking in the
chronicles and metagrammars and methodologies of the unknown librarian who,
judging by the depth of dust, had been dead far longer than Lord Capeluchełs
apothecary. This is priceless, he thought after a while, when he looked up and
realised how low the sun had drifted in the heavens. I could have travelled for
years and not come upon such a collection! I must apply myself and study ...
there will be clues with which to enhance my understanding ...

He sighed happily and left the library, taking with him a
chap-book written in a crabbed hand. When he closed the door he renewed the
decade-old wards that had destroyed the rodents. It will be good to study by
candle-light again, he thought. He completely failed to wonder why it was so
easy for him to rebuild a charm intended to kill, but that insouciance was
completely characteristic of Imad; it was, in effect, the reason why Jones the
Paramage had driven him forth.

Imad, unless he grew out of it , was gifted with all the
makings of an excellent sadomanceran aptitude for destruction and painand his
master had taken exception to this. But now by accident or destiny he had come
to the right place, for Castle Capeluche was full of pain.

That evening, a mute slave-child came for him. �What is it?"
Imad asked, irritated at being accosted by lamplight as he sat reading at his
cramped apothecaryłs desk.

The child opened his mouth and pointed. �Oh," said Imad.
�You want me to come? To his Lordship?" The child nodded, his eyes stretched
wide with fear. Imad yawned. �Very well," he said. �Lead me."

The tongueless boy turned and walked out into the night.
Imad followed, not pausing for a cloak; it occurred to him that his new master
was not of a disposition to be impressed by delay. The boy led him across the
yard towards the motte on which stood the central tower, then up the side of
the steep hill to a heavily-barred door. This he gestured at.

�I am to go in? Alone? Very well." He pushed on the door,
and it opened inwards, smoothly and silently.

Within the hill, Imad found himself in a tunnel where the
smell of damp was pervasive and the only light was shed by a single guttering
cresset mounted on one wall. Pulling the sally-port shut behind him, he walked
forward expectantly.

There was a stench in the air that he found distinctly
invigorating, for it made him think of iron. The corridor turned and there were
barred doors to either side, but Imad followed his nose and presently came to a
landing where stone steps spiralled up towards the cellars of the tower above.

�Magus," said Lord Capeluche, �I have a task for you."

Imad turned round. The knight was standing stock-still, his
back against the wall beside the door; he must have been watching Imadłs
progress for some time.

He wore a strange suit of pale leather, and a huge sword
slung across his back.

�Yes, my Lord?" said Imad alertly.

Capeluche stared at him from the shadows. His eyes glittered
like chips of black glass as the flames leapt and fell back from the smoking
torch. �I had you sent here in order to show you what becomes of those who
dismay me. You might care to look inside the cells as you leave, magus."

�Thank you sir. Is there anything else?" asked Imad, his
throat itching terribly from the oily smoke.

A shadow crossed Capeluchełs face. �A curse," he said. �The
father of my bride prepares an army to dispossess me of my territory and my
wife. He claims that the marriage is void, which is a lie! He wishes to destroy
me. Unless he is killed, all who live here will suffer the same fate!" As he
spoke he shook, a string of spittle flying from his mouth. Imad stood
stock-still, a cold sweat standing out on his forehead. �I will not tolerate
it! Wreak me a spell, wizard! Cast me a glamour, construct for me a sc ript,
such that it will stop the Count of Westmarch dead, dead, I saydead in his
boots! Do so by the end of the week, using any materials you require, or I
shall ensure that you respect my hospitality of a weekend!" Capeluche stared at
Imad with the wild expression of a feral creature trapped in human skin: which
Imad saw he was, when he observed his suit more clearly.

�I will need a virgin," said Imad thinking fast, the
concentration of the hangman at his back.

The statement cooled Capeluchełs ardour a fraction, so that
a semblance of humanity returned to him. �You will have one," he said,
breathing heavily. �Prepare your spell, using any materials you desire. I will
deliver an appropriate woman to you at the appointed hour. Now, I am becoming
angry. You do not wish to remain here when I am like this. Go now!"

Imad left in silent haste, sweat dripping from his brow. As
he went he glanced through the door of a cell at one of the oozing, silent
inmates who had contributed to Capeluchełs leathery wardrobe already, and would
soon contribute to his dinner table. Being Imad, he was neither revolted nor
terrified; he had insufficient imagination to conceive of a situation in which
he himself might lie broken and bleeding on such a pallet in the dungeon. However,
it did give him cause for concern. He had two days until Friday, and he
resolved to use them fruitfully. His new-found Lord required a spell? Very
well, then. He could oblige. It would require a life for a life; but he would
endeavour to oblige.

Only the outcome might be unexpected ...

The next day, Imad went exploring.

He took along a pinch of herbs looted from the apothecaryłs
stores, a small iron triangle, and a long pin. Then he returned to the
abandoned tower, only instead of returning to the upstairs library he sought
around the lower rooms for a door he expected to find.

Eventually he located it; a stout oak portal, locked with a
heavy catch from the other side. It opened into the space within the walls of
the castle, unused except in time of siege. Imad examined the lock for a while,
probing with the needle and listening to the click and scrape of the stiff
mechanism, then he stood back and thought for a bit. Presently he struck the
iron triangle a single ringing blow, and muttered a command in an ancient
diction. There was a click, but nothing happened. Cursing, he trie d again,
this time transposing two vowels and a glottal stop: the lock sprang open.

The corridor was dry and dusty, stacked with supplies of a
military nature. Imad stepped across racks of torches and arrows, over firepots
filled with frozen lead, past an antique Gatling gun hunched on its stand like
a maimed beetle.

At the next door, Imadłs spell of opening worked perfectly.
But before he could open the door, it opened itself for himand he was
confronted with the sight of twelve inches of cold steel, pointed at him by an
alert guard. �Hey," said the guard, �arenłt you the new pharmacion, you
bastard? What are you doing"

He toppled over and Imad caught him before he clattered to
the floor. Some words did not have to be spoken to be effective, and such was
the force of Imadłs will that surely he would have qualified as a magus in
terms of power. His only deficit was wisdom.

Imad was now standing in the cellar of Lord Capeluchełs
tower. Time was of the essence. He gathered his wits about him, concentrated,
and then uttered a somewhat different version of the spell that he had beguiled
the guard with.

Some functions were unchanged, but there was an enveloping
loop that took in all within earshot: unbroken silence descended. Imad began to
climb the stairs, intent on solving a question that had troubled him since the
night before.

Capeluche wished his father-in-law dead. Why?

Presently he came to the knightłs chambers. The door was unlocked,
for his spell of opening had operated throughout the castle; Imad entered,
passed through an antechamber and a study to come at last to the bedroom. There
was a wide window, high above the groundtoo high to jump fromand a guard
lying prostrate outside the door, and no furniture but a dark oaken chair and a
huge bed. A maiden of such beauty as Imad had never before set eyes on lay
sleeping in the bed. The breath stopped in his throa t as he gazed upon her. Her
hair was long and unshorn, her ribs showed through her skin which was dotted
with bedsores, and she was chained hand-and-foot to each post. Love or lust
clouded his vision with its heady scent of fulfilment. If this was the daughter
of Count Westmarch, he reasoned, his question was answered, for surely Capeluche
must resent any greater than himself. He resolved then and there that to sacrifice
her would be something of a waste: for was not a magus of his stature a worthy
match < P> or a countessa? Thinking these unquiet thoughts he glanced
towards the window in time to see Lord Capeluchełs hunting party returning
along the highway. His heart pounding with fear and something other than
loathing, Imad beat a hasty retreat. Any solution to this conflict of interests
would require careful planning.

He needed time to think ...

Programmers and Magicians

At this point, Jack-Jones paused in his narrative.

�If you will excuse me," he said, �my throat is somewhat dry
and this spirit is too fiery by half. May I suggest that the time is ripe for a
cup of coffee?"

Lady Stael nodded graciously. �You may suggest it, sir. Your
tale is intriguing, and I would be pleased to hasten itsł climax!" She looked
over towards the ballroom, where the dancers were gliding to a stately gavotte.
�Rupert!"

�He cannot hear you," said the hooded priest, �now or ever.
The servants game has continued apace: did you not hear the shots?"

�Oh," said Lady Stael. She mustered her composure. �Then,
sir magician, I regret we will have to serve ourselves. Rupert iswasmy
butler."

�That is not an insurmountable problem," said Jack-Jones.
�If you will tell me where the pantry is, I will effect a transposition."

Lady Staelłs brow wrinkled. �Truth be told," she said, �I
donłt really know."

She looked abashed; �it is the retainers job to serve, after
all, is it not?"

�Then I shall just have to summon some ... informants," said
Jack-Jones. �Please bear with me." He closed his eyes and appeared to murmur to
himself silently.

Bishop Moran shivered and rose to his feet; to his surprise,
he realised that it was dusk already and his legs were tingling with pins and
needles. �Will you excuse me?" he asked; �I feel the need to stretch these
shanks. This is obviously not going to be a short game, and I would not want to
disappoint you by providing short measure of my wisdom by virtue of physical
distraction."

Lady Stael nodded then rose, her gown rustling. �Perhaps you
will accompany me around the garden?" she asked. �Some parts of it are best
seen by twilight, and

I fear you have never seen them before. And if not tonight,
then what other opportunity might there be?"

Marcus looked abashed. �I fear, my lady, that there might never
be such an opportunity. I would look upon your garden, it is true, but only
from the balustrade. Call me craven, but I am not keen to leave this company
while this particular game is afoot."

�Very well, then," she said. �Let us take the air by the
rail, and smell the night blossom for a final time!"

She walked around the table and, very forward, took his
wrist. Marcus allowed her to lead him towards the far end of the balcony. It
was built in the shape of a horseshoe wrapped around the outside of the
ballroom, which filled the entire western wing of the castle; it was not long
before they had passed round the curvature of the walls and were out of view of
the gaming table and the doors.

Now only curtained windows opened out from the ballroom;
they were alone.

�Look," he said, �the moons are full."

�Indeed." Lady Stael released his wrist and rested her hands
on the banister.

�Look, Marcus. The garden is untidy. Whatłs that over
there?"

�It appears to be the gardener," said Marcus, feeling bitter
nausea sweep through him: �and there! Could that be your butler?"

She sighed. �First my husband, now my servants. Is nobody reliable?"

Marcus looked up at the stars that hung unblinking in a
vault that was slowly turning from aquamarine to violet. There were no clouds
to be seen, even on the horizon. �I could ask the same question of you," he
said, �but I am sure I could predict the answer. Angelica, why did you agree to
host this meeting?"

She inclined her head, looking up at him with an expression
of innocent dismay. �What makes you assume that my complicity was requested?
Should there be any question of my voluntarily participating in any dubious
acts, you would most certainly not have been my choice of chaperon, Marcus! I
know you too well, just as well as you know me. This is most serious; it was
imposed upon me without my consent, by an agency that I was powerless to
refuse. You think improper for a lady to be involved in such an occas ion,
donłt you?"

He met her eyes. �Yes," he said. �I worry for your incarnate
soul, madam. Not only is it not lady-like, it is not safe! I have read of these
games, the like of which is played out here tonight. I tell you it is
dangerous!"

�That is why I invited you," she replied. �I need a lord
protector, Marcus. My husband: let us not bandy around. You believe, and I too,
that he has been dead these thirty-six years, is that not the case? And that
being so, what am I, a frail woman, meant to do? If he were here today to stand
by me, there would be no drama. But I am fated to be host to this trial, and so
... �

Marcus reached out, put his hands upon her bare shoulders
and gathered her to him. She did not hug him back, but neither did she pull
away. �What are we to do, Marcus?" she whispered. �Can even Jack-Jones stand between
us and the fate of losers?"

Marcus ran gentle fingertips across her golden-stubbled
scalp. �Perhaps he can," he said. �Remember, my dear, there is one advantage to
our cause that does not pertain to the one who precipitated this crisis, if I
understand it aright; for against us is arrayed a most powerful sorcerer, a
magician of the first order: but on our side we have Jack-Jones, and he is not
merely a magus but a programmer of destiny."

Lady Stael stiffened slightly in his arms, and he released
her instantly. She pulled away and adjusted her skirts, then smiled at him.
�That was most welcome,

Marcus. Come, will you give me the pleasure of a dance
before we return to the fray?"

Marcus felt himself flush. �My dear, much as I would love to
do you that favour I regret that I have some difficulty dancing; I have neither
the training nor the aptitude, and under the circumstances I feel it would be
wrong to devote myself to learning the minuet while the world teeters on the
brink of oblivion."

�Ah." She looked away from him. �But will you at least join
me in a glass of wine within, so that we may escape the gamesters on the balcony
for a few scant minutes? Their presence oppresses me ... �

He nodded slowly. �And I, likewise. Yes, I would be glad to
join you for a brief drink, my lady." She extended her arm, and he took it;
they strolled slowly back round the balcony, towards the open doors.

Someone had ignited the chandeliers within the ballroom, so
that the room glowed with a brilliant white light that cast deep shadows.
Diamonds burned themselves slowly into air, exhaling invisible vapours as the
dancers swirled around beneath them. Bishop Moran and Lady Stael paused at the
edge of the floor, then circled slowly round it towards the sideboard beneath
the huge portrait of her husband that faced the orchestra. It was still heaped
with untouched delicacieshoneyed larks tongues and sturgeo nłs roe and
strange, green cheesesfor the dancers appeared to have no appetite other than
for ceaseless motion, and the orchestra played tirelessly.

�A glass of wine, your holiness?" asked Lady Stael.

�I should be delighted," said Marcus. A liveried footman,
his face concealed behind a lacy mask of fine-wrought steel, poured him a
goblet of fine red wine and proffered it. He blinked. Although he had seen no
other servants, Lady Stael was already holding a full glass. �Jack-Jones is as
efficacious as his reputation leads me to believe," he said.

Lady Stael smiled, showing pearly teeth. �He says he
believes in tools, Marcus, in finely crafted interlocking invocations that
serve but a single purpose, and can be assembled into superstructures of power
upon demand. He also says that those who play with devils are apt to take on
the attributes of their servants. Is that what you meant when you said we are
lucky to have a programmer on our side, rather than a sorcerer?"

�You are perspicacious, my lady." Marcus peered at her
again, wishing that she did not have this habit of disconcerting him with her
sophistication from time to time. �Have you studied the arcana?"

She laughed. A few of the dancing couples glanced at her disapprovingly,
then whirled away. The orchestra struck a crescendo and hovered there; she
withheld her reply until the diminuendo. �You know and I know that there are no
arcana, your holiness. There is only memory, and meaning, and the nature of
time itself. For is it not true that time and space are interchangeable, and a
man who controls one can manipulate the other?"

�In your case, my lady, would it be appropriate to
substitute the feminine pronoun?" asked Marcus. His heart hammered in his ribs
suddenly, for he had just realised how isolated he was.

�No, Marcus; I am not a witch." Her smile lingered, despite
his obvious suspicion. �But memories of my previous lives conspire to haunt me
from time to time. I was not a witch then, either, but I was, I knew of" she
shook her head. �When we return, remember that the tale Jack-Jones is
recounting happened a long time ago. Time means something else to that man, for
he is a chronomancer." She fell silent for a moment. �Tell me, is there any
likelihood of my servants being reborn before the end of the wor ld?"

Marcus pondered this question as she sipped her wine. �If I
was a servitor," he said, �I would not choose to be reincarnated. This is
supposing that the dogma of Assigned Destiny holds true, and that souls know
their true place in the order of things. If it is false, however, and we merely
repress our memories of those lives in which our status and condition are
unacceptablewhy, then, might they not be reborn as princes and courtesans and
fine nobles?"

�Angels, Marcus, dancing upon the veriest point of a
needle!" She smiled at him humorously. �If I did not know better I would accuse
you of being indecisive."

Marcus nodded. �And I might accuse you of lingering too long
in your previous lives, my lady."

Suddenly, her smile slipped. �Donłt say that," she said
sharply. �How could you know what I might forget or mis-remember? Is it not
true that just one person who remembered sufficiently well could prove or
disprove your endless theological dialectics, all the Churchłs debates over Will
and Carnation and Assigned Position; that such a personłs memories could overturn
the foundations on which our fine and noble system of justice and truth and duty
is built?"

Marcus shivered. �That one person, my lady, would have to
remember what it was like to be dead," he said. �To remember how the choice is
made, how destiny is shaped. Never forget; we can remember our previous lives,
but what is life without death? What is Man without Woman? What is duty without
responsibility?"

�How is nobility to be savoured without the shadow of slavery?"
she retored. �Marcus, you presume upon my feminine nature. I am not unaware of
the difference between my status and that of the masses. But if you are right,
if the dogma of Assigned Destiny is false, then ... �

He smiled. �I cannot believe that such a sublime vessel as
yourself might carry the soul of a higgler or costermonger!"

�Neither can I," she said quietly. But she didnłt meet his
eyes, and she drained her wine-glass with unseemly haste then reached for more.
�Shall we return to the game of futures?" she asked.

�I think thatłs a good"

The music stopped. �Quick, take my hand," hissed Lady Stael.
�I have seen this happen before when Jack-Jones is distracted"

The dancers stopped. Elegant couples disengaged and stood
waiting attentively for the music to begin; the women in their incredible
frocks and gowns, their heads decorously shaven and inlaid with gemstones: the
men coiffed and bearded and expressionless in their dress uniforms and evening
suits. The Bishop drew his breath in sharply and held Lady Staelłs hand
tightly. There was such total quiet in the ballroom that they might have been
standing on the other side of a huge pane of glass, sealed off from th e dancers
by a wall of silence made solid.

�Magic tools," whispered Stael. �Jack-Jones programmed this.
These dancers"

�They were for me?" hazarded Marcus.

�Yes," admitted Lady Stael. �It is a projection of a ball
that might have been, or that will be, or somesuch. But it was not intended as
an entrapment, I assure you; merely as a reassurance that things were as near
to normal as, as ... �

�As they are not."

�Yes." She drew close to him, put down her glass, took his
other hand in her own and stared into his eyes. �Do you remember who you were,
before?"

Marcus Moran, Bishop of the Duchy of Marguerete, shuddered.
He could not look away from her eyes: they trapped him, forcing his attention
to sink into their dark pupils. �You expect too much," he said nervously.

�Maybe not," she countered. �Do you remember yet?"

Marcus forced himself to reply. Sweat oozed cold and clammy
fingers down the small of his back. �I was new-born, these fifty years since,"
he said vehemently. �I can honestly say that I have no, no memories ofno former
lives: I have never died! There, I have said it. I am tabula rasa, an unwritten
soul, yet to proceed to the first judgement. A rarity in these latter days ...
�

She smiled. �Perhaps you should pay heed to what you
preach," she said, then genuflected to the five points: �know thyself, Bishop!"
She stretched up and lightly kissed Marcus on the mouth.

He recoiled, as if stung; his lips seemed to burn with
possibilities. �Let me go," he said tightly. �This is indiscreet."

�Oh?" she asked, looking past his shoulder. He turned. The
wall of silence seemed to have congealed in the ballroom, and the dancers were
fading like unremembered ghosts. �There are none here to be scandalised,
Marcus. Will you forgive me for being somewhat crazed, on this of all possible
nights? I didnłt mean to offend you. It was simply that"

Marcus flinched, torn between guilt and desire. He felt as
if she was drowning him by increments, pulling him into her tangled web of
conspiracy. He could see what was happening, but he didnłt know how to resist
her attractions effectively; with a sense of desperation he realised that he
was collaborating in his own seduction, an almost-eager victim being led to the
slaughter. �Letłs go," he said tensely, and turned back to the balcony. She followed
him at a distance, her scent conspiring to fill his nost rils so that even the
night air could not remove the tingling in his blood.

They strolled back to the gaming table to discover that a morose
silence had descended across it. �My lords," said Lady Stael, smiling, �has the
evening so wearied you already?"

Jack-Jones glanced up, and two chairs pulled themselves out
for Stael and Bishop Moran. His cheek twitched. �The stars are out," he said.
�I am ready to continue my narrative, if friend Gambler will draw another card
from his tarot."

Marcus sat down gingerly, watching Lady Stael do likewise.
She glanced at him and her eyes lingered on his face knowingly for a while
before she looked away again. �That is a good idea," she said. Marcus blinked.
In the twilight he could have sworn that she was looking younger; not in terms
of physical age, which was meaningless, but as if she was somehow becoming
invigorated, the sap rising from the roots of her being as the universe itself
wound down around her. He silently prayed to himself; the hard shell she had
built up around her soul was cracking open, and he was terrified of what he
might witness emerging from the interior.

There was a sudden noise from the garden directly beneath
where they were sitting: it sounded like a monstrous insect shedding its skin.
The Gambler made as if to stand up, but the hooded preacher raised an arm. �Do
not worry," he said tonelessly. �It is only the gardenerłs wife hatching from
her corpse. She will remember nothing and do no harm; you are best advised to
leave her be."

�Hah." The Gambler sat down again. �I like not the odds on
such a contemporary rebirth." He shuffled his deck.

�On what authority do you claim the right to dictate my conduct
in the manse of my husband?" demanded Lady Stael, staring at the hooded priest.
�She was my maid, and I am entitled to determine the disposition of my servants
in all respects, both before and after their deaths!"

�Do not contradict me," said the cowled priest. �I have travelled
among the stars; I am aged beyond belief! I am so ancient that I remember when
Virgołs corset was Orionłs belt. I came here not to bicker with fools but to
determine the future!" Lady Stael flushed and was about to reply when
Jack-Jones cut in.

�Then reveal yourself," said the Paramage. �It is long past
time that your identity was explained; otherwise, these two worthies might
doubt your right to participate in this rite."

The hooded priest reached up and pushed back his cowl abruptly.
Lady Stael froze, angry words faltering on the edge of her lips; Bishop Moran stared
at the priest, all colour draining from his face.

�Are you Death?" he asked.

�No," said the man, whose face resembled that of a mummy
abducted from the catacombs. �I am merely intellect pure and simple. In an age
when things were not as they are now, my progenitors replaced my skeleton with
bones of metal and ceramic. My nerves were spliced with woven fibres of glass,
and then they sent me out to wander the heavens aboard a ship of stars. Long
lifetimes I spent out there, and when the flesh began to wither on my bones I returned
to the world that created me in order to find my tomb. But they forgot to
provide one for me ... and so I am still alive, undead, unable to die, my mind
trapped in a brain of crystallised sand. I have come to this place to offer
advice, the wisdom of an earlier age. Tell me Bishop, do you consider yourself
experienced enough to scorn the wisdom of ages?"

Marcus shook his head silently. The skull-faced man, whose
eye sockets were occupied by obsidian spheres that whirred when he moved his
gaze, stared at him.

�What name do you call yourself by?" he asked, dry-lipped.

�I am known to some as the Iron Brain," said the cyborg. �It
is my second most noteworthy characteristic."

�And what is your first?" asked Lady Stael, her curiosity momentarily
overcoming her acrimonious temper.

The Iron Brain turned to focus on her, grinning like a
skull. �I am immune to time," it said. �Gamblerturn your next card."

The Last Gambler whistled tunelessly and flipped over the
top card on the pack. It drifted down on top of the strange, angry cloud and
everyone stared at it. Marcus could feel his pulse pounding: he was most
certainly not enjoying this evening. He had a headache, and somewhere inside
him a gathering nucleus of raw panic was condensing. �What is it?" he demanded,
looking at the picture on the card.

Hanging in the middle of the picture, with no visible means
of support, was a knight in strangely fashioned armour: his helmet was a sphere
with a black visor that hid his face entirely. Behind him was a starry
blackness, like a painting of the sky at night. Emerging from his belly was a
swollen cable like a babyłs umbilical. And most strangely, reflected in the
black depths of the knightłs visor was a silver box positioned in front of a
blue circle.

�What is it?" echoed Lady Stael.

�A picture of a knight, from a time when programmers were
magicians," said the Last Gambler. �Your move, Death."

The skull glistened in the twilight. �I believe that
Jack-Jones should continue," the Iron Brain said softly. �We have not yet heard
out his story, which is of some importance. Therefore I yield up my priority."

�A dangerous move," said Lady Stael, her nose-gem glittering
as it caught the lamp-light from the empty ballroom. Marcus looked over his
shoulders and saw cobwebs, dust, shrivelled fruit.

�Nevertheless," said the Iron Brain. �I insist." His
presence stank of mildew and damp places.

�In that case let the Paramage continue," replied Stael. She
smiled like a hungry cat and appeared to relax in her chair, but Marcus had a
sickly feeling of apprehension when he considered what this was doing to her.
It is not right that she be exposed to this! he thought. It is not right

Lost her Cherry

�Tell me about the countessa," said Imad.

The cook, who knew bettmer than to tattle about the affairs
of his master, rolled his eyes and spat over his shoulder. �She his lawful
wedded wife," he said. �Is all you need to know."

�No," persisted Imad. �What about her father?"

�Ahh," said the cook, pausing at his pestle as he ground together
the peculiar herbs that Lord Capeluche liked his meat spiced with. �Long story
there. He wedded her"

�The father?"

�Him not like Capeluche, oh no. Capeluche, he strange. Rumours
... � the cook turned and spat over his shoulder again, then put a leaf in his
mouth and began chewing rhythmically. �Marriage or war. Now, war anyhow. So why
bother with woman? Capeluche not like woman at all; prefers killing. Eats them,
but wonłt

... � he made an obscene gesture.

�So the countessa is a virgin?" asked Imad.

The cook laughed. �You think she lost cherry to Lord?" His
laughter was bitter and high pitched, almost like the hissing of a snake. �Say
again: Capeluche not like women. What more, he not like other men who like
women. He caught me, my wife, years ago. Fed her my" another obscene
gesture�then when I awake again, he make me eat her." He turned his back on
Imad and spat again, this time straight into the mortar full of herbs destined
for his masterłs table. �Was glad we not had children, then."

Imad was taken aback, but had sufficient sense not to
enquire as to the extent of his companionłs injuries. Some scars ran below the
surface, he reasoned, and if it were possible that the cookłs feelings for his
wife had approximated his new-found love for the countessa he would be mortally
offended were anyone to ask him about them. He retreated to the abandoned
library for the afternoon and buried himself in hermetic texts and the minutiae
of his meta-grammars, there to stoke the fires of his infatuatio n with the
fuel of daydreams.

At twilight he sallied forth again to find the kitchen busy.
The cook was racing about, hindered by the need to direct two of the tongueless
slaves about their tasks of serving at the high table; he barely spared a
glance for Imad as he helped himself to a thick rasher of what might have been
bacon and toasted it over the fire. Imad sat there munching, then speared a
second rasher and waited for the cook to slow down. There was much noise from
the great hall, not a little singing and roaring like a herd o f wild animals,
and under cover of the noise the cook turned and hissed at him. �What you doing
here?" he demanded.

�Steal food from Capeluche foolish! Come on. What you
doing?"

Imad stared at him. �Are there bats anywhere here?" he asked.

�Bats? Yes, you bats! Come, move, must give food to highness
or he roast us too."

Imad moved reluctantly, the equations of sympathy and contagion
roiling slowly in his head. �Give me a sack," he said. One of the slave-boys
stared at him incomprehendingly; �a sack," he mimed. The boy vanished in the
direction of a back cellar, then returned with a noisesome bag. �Good," said
Imad, quirking his cheeks in what people often mistook for a smile. The cook returned.
�Where do the bats roost?" Imad asked him.

The man threw up his hands in anguish. �In cave outside
walls, half mile north of here!" he said. �Go away! Eat and go! You make me
feel cold."

Imad nodded, and left the kitchen still chewing on a piece
of gristle. Not bad, he thought. Just as long as itłs well cooked. He took the
sack with him; it would come in handy. Now as long as hełd judged the drop
correctly ...

That night, Imad sat out in the courtyard. It was
oppressively warm and he passed the time counting stars; he noted when the
planets rose, and how much later it was that the light began to burn brighter
in the room at the top of the tower of Capeluche. Then the light in the window
burned down low, and a little later there was an unearthly shriek. Is he raping
her? he wondered: but from what he knew of Lord Capeluche, that was extremely
improbable. It sounded inhuman, a scream of pure rage and fury that send a shiver
racing down his spine. Perhaps it is himself, giving in to his nature, Imad
thought. He wished, briefly, that he could tap such a potent source of energy
himself, for although his magic revolved around the power of pain it was
difficult to inflict on onełs self and harder still to induce in another whilst
on the move.

He sighed, and carried on counting stars. There was another
scream, and presently a faint, heart-wrenching sobbing that faded as the wind
changed direction. Imad went to bed. Tomorrow was going to be a long day.

The next morning, he took his sack and set off on a hunt.

�Halt!" challenged the guard on the gate. �Where be ye
going?"

Imad stared at him coldly. �Your master entrusted me with a
mission," he said. �I am to collect ingredients for a spell that he requires to
be cast. Am I correct in understanding that there is a cave where bats roost
during the day, five miles north of here?"

The soldier looked at him, less self-confident now that he
realised who it was he was addressing. �Half a mile," he corrected. �Follow
that path łtill ye come to the cliff. Half-way upłt is an opening, tis inside
there."

�Good," said Imad; �then I had better be going."

�What is it ye go to collect?" asked the guard, relaxing
slightly.

�Pain." Imad grinned. It was not a pretty sight. �I need
batłs blood," he explained. �Human blood will not do ... �

The guard didnłt trouble him again.

It was a hot morning, and it took Imad until noon to reach
the cave. By that time, all the bats were roosting; not only that, but they
were cosily asleep, safe and secure from any daytime threat. Imad set about
changing the situation with a will. Rather than smoking them out, he har-vested
them by hand with a combination of stealth and precision that would be the envy
of any cat; he thrust them one by one through the neck of his sack, and presently
their panicky fluttering subsided as they surren-dered to the warm darkness and
fell asleep once more. He did not take all the furry occupants of the
cavethere was no needbut he took sufficient to provide him with the raw material
he needed. Then he set off back to the village, tired and sweaty and cursing
the weather.

His next task was to find the smithy, and see if the
occupants had what he required.

�A mangle?" asked the blacksmith incredulously. �You demand
a mangle of me? Wherefore, oh apothecary? Is it the washing that is now your
domain? Or the mangling of hands?" The poor man appeared to be becoming
hysterical. Imad quirked his face into a passable smile and stared at him. The
man sobered up rapidly. �There is nonesuch here, lad," said the smith, �but if
you were to look in the dungeon you might well find a press such as would suit
your description."

He paled. �łTis a place of ill omen, but mind you my
wordsany instrument of excruciation you would care to identify can be found
therein. Now get ye hence and leave me to the beating of this here sword for
our mastersł sergeant at arms!"

Imad did as he was bid and left the smithy.

Across the square, he came to the door of the castle and
banged on it. �Who goes there?" demanded a guard. �Oh, łtis you again. Get thee
inside, troublemaker!"

Cursing, the soldier released the bolt on the sally-port and
Imad stepped through.

�I need access to the dungeon," he said to the guard, and
waited for the man to stop laughing. �Who do I go to?"

�You need access to the dungeon, you scoundrel? Whatever
for?"

Imad grinned humourlessly and hefted his sack. �Be glad łtis
not yourself in here, man," he said. �I have work to be done with a leather
apron. By the wishes of our lord!"

The guard stood back, an expression of disgust upon his
face. �Donłt you play your vile tricks on me, lad," he said, abruptly contempt-uous.
�Do your magicks and leave us be." So saying, he yanked open the inner door of
the tower he stood by and thrust Imad inside. �Begone!" he shouted after him.

Imad stood in the cool darkness, a sack of bats upon his
back and a pouch of somewhat more obscure equipment at his belt. He sniffed;
the scent of iron was in the air again. Blood. He followed it, navigating by
the faint light that filtered through the murder-holes in the ceiling, until
presently he came to a guttering torch and a staircase leading down into the
murky depths.

Presently he reached the landing that he remembered from before.
Chains dangled from the walls, and several doors and passages opened off it;
evidently it was used for access to the cellars as well as the dungeons. A
guard dozing in a chair awakened with a jolt, to see Imad staring at him with a
dark expression.

�What do you want?" asked the man, somehow managing to
scratch in an armpit and yawn simultaneously.

�I need the Press," said Imad, smiling with hideous
sincerity. He hefted the sack of bats, who were becoming restive. �I want to
hear their screams."

The guard nodded. �In there, first on your right," he said.
�Mind how you gobetter take a torch."

Imad took a fresh one from the pile by the guardsł stool,
then entered the indicated passage. There was a stench of damp and decay in it,
but nothing of rotting meat; Lord Capeluche was evidently too fasti-dious to
permit corpses to decay unattended beneath his castle.

Within the room the guard had indicated, Imad found the
Press. For the first time he had doubts about what he was about to do; it was
very big. Maybe too big. Nevertheless he man-handled the upper slab open, and
slid the bag of agitated bats in, and then sprinkled certain herbs across the
sack. He concentrated, reciting certain words he had read only the day before
from memory, then placed his empty canteen beneath the lower edge of the Press.

And, closing the lid, stooped to catch what trickled out
when the screams were finished and the silence began to bite.

That night, the boy came for him again. He had already gone
to bed, anticipating sleepless nights to come, but the boy shook his shoulder
insistently until he sat up. �What is ..?" he began, then realised that his
questions were not worth asking. He sighed reluctantly and pulled his jerkin
on. �Take me to him," he said.

The boy shook his head, but led him across the courtyard towards
the tower in which Lord Capeluche dwelt with his unwilling bride. Imad stared
at the door unwillingly, but the boy knocked thrice and it swung open. He
beckoned.

Damnation, thought Imad. Can he read minds, as well? He
shuddered, but stepped across the portal regardless; if Capeluche had decided
to do away with his new magician in a fit of pique there was nothing he could
do about it. Psychopaths were notoriously invulnerable to magical coercion.

The boy led him up the staircase, towards two impassive
guards who stood with drawn steel before the door to the noble chambers. They
didnłt even deign to look at Imad but the door opened spontaneously, as if by
some geas that recognised only those who were expected.

The boy stopped at the inner door to the study and gestured.
Imad knocked.

�Enter," called Capeluche. The boy cowered away and Imad,
his heart pounding, raised the latch and entered.

�My lord," he said.

Lord Capeluche was seated on a throne of ancient oak, a writing-desk
at his sidean oddly chilling touch of civilisation to contrast with his arctic
eyesand a small black cat asleep in his lap. He was dressed in one of his
sinister suits, but over it he wore a silk sur-coat embroidered with the face
of a demon.

�I bid you be seated, magician," he rumbled.

�Yes, my lord," said Imad, a shiver of pure terror running
up and down his spine. Suddenly face-to-face with the man who had saved him
from an untimely lynching, his big plans of rescue and reward seemed to dwindle
to something very small indeed. He tried to ignore the tingling that emanated
from his sealed belt-pouch.

�I summoned you here to discuss the mechanisms of the ceremony
this Friday night," said Lord Capeluche. �I refer of course to the ritual by
which you are to ensorcel the Count of Westmarch. Pray tell me what
preparations you have made so far?"

Imad swallowed. �I have discovered the old library," he
said, �and have applied myself to certain studies. The effect that you require
can be achieved with considerable ease, given one of two attributes; either a
blood relative of the subject, or a virgin female who can be excruciated freely
beneath the full moons or within a chamber especially fitted to the design."

Capeluche nodded slowly. �Then it will be so," he said. �I
will be rid of the bitch and her sire at last!" He looked at Imad sharply. �You
know whereof I speak?" he demanded.

�I would presume upon your indulgence, my lord," Imad replied,
almost stuttering with fear. He had seen Capeluchełs eyes, and he was not
reflected in them; that stare went on for miles. �Perhaps you could en-lighten
me?" His skin crawled, but Capeluche merely nodded again and glanced down at
his crowded desk.

�The countessa Danielle is fractious and undisciplined," Capeluche
said, with a mincingly haughty expression. �She refuses to submit to my
conjugal rights, accuses me of all sorts of abnormality, and has upon occasion
attempted to poison me. You may well wonder why I restrain her in our
chambers," he added. �Truth be told the spiteful girl would seek any
opportunity to kill me, and it was in full knowledge of this that her father
imposed her on me: there is no love lost between us." He rested his hands in
his lap and cradled the head of the sleepy kitten, which purred contentedly
then opened its eyes and yawned. �I would not have it thus," said Capeluche,
with dangerous plausibility. Then he froze and looked at his lap.

Imad looked, too. The kitten, awakened from its slumber, had
nipped the knight on his thumb. Imad glanced up at Capeluchełs face. There was
no expression there, nothing of humanity to distinguish him from the stone of
the fortress itself. Imad kept watching, even as he heard the crackle of tiny
vertebrae and the limp thud of the discarded corpse.

�Nobody bites my hands, magician," said Capeluche. �Not now:
not ever. Remember that, and you will do well by me. Otherwise" he looked towards
the shuttered window. �There is no otherwise. Remember that."

The audience was at an end.

Cyanide Blue

�That was quite, quite disgusting," said Lady Stael. The
Bishop studied her expression. One half of her face was in shadow, the other
half illuminated by light filtering through the ballroom windows; distaste had
thinned her lips to lines and drained all colour from her face.

�I agree completely," said Marcus. �Was it necessary to recount
such an incident in the presence of a lady?"

Jack-Jones stared at him enigmatically. �What I tell you is
three-times true," he said. �This is no time for falsehood: would you have it
any other way?"

�Then the structure of this ęgameł is not to my liking,"
said the Bishop, taking a last sip from his empty wine glass. �An extended tale
of gross moral turpitude recounted at night in the presence, if I may make so
bold, of strangers! Is it really necessary?"

�Yes," said the Iron Brain remorselessly. �Understanding is
a prerequis-ite for action. This is not a game, Bishop: this is history. Are
you ignorant of the rules?"

Marcus desperately wished to say yes, yes, I am ignorant and
wish to remain sobut, as the Iron Brain had observed, this was an evening for
truth and consequences: he could only proclaim himself culpable by such an
outburst.

�I have read certain books about the subject," he said
slowly. �I think I understand the nature of the ghosts we are here to exorcisefor
this is a kind of exorcism, is it not?and we appear to be following the normal
forms.

What more do you want?"

�Your co-operation," said Jack-Jones. He breathed deeply.
�Your Holiness, I believe I have told as best I can the whole section that
falls within my domain; the process will have to continue with a different
guiding light, so to speak. I would like to talk to you in private, if I may.
Lady and gentlemen, will you excuse us for a few minutes?"

Lady Staelłs eyes blazed in the twilight. Marcus looked at
her; �I fear I must go," he said tentatively. �I will return"

Her expression softened abruptly. �Then depart," she said,
and smiled. �I anticipate the pleasure of your company in ten minutesł time.
Please consider, though, that we have only the rest of this evening to avail ourselves
of."

Marcus felt his chair retreat spontaneously from the table
until there was room for him to stand. He pushed himself to his feet and bowed.
�Ten minutes," he said to no-one in particular and turned to walk towards the
far end of the balcony where he had stood with Angelica Stael in his arms. Only
moments seemed to have passed, moments and lifetimes. He felt as if he was
drowning in intrigue: his heart throbbed as if he had run for miles.

�Youłre taking it badly," Jack-Jones confided close to his
left shoulder.

�Perhaps we should take a brief walk in the garden."

Marcus started, but managed at the last possible instant to
maintain control.

�That is a pleasant idea," he said nervously.

�Would you care for a glass of wine as we walk?" asked the
Paramage.

�If it is no" Marcus looked up at his companion sharply.
Jack-Jones passed him a full glass.

�There is a little-used staircase at the far end of the
balcony," said the wizard. �It descends into a corner of the maze. Shall we explore?"

Marcus smiled experimentally. He felt in control, but
beneath the surface of his mind he was the victim of turbulent forces; it was
as if the gears of his soul were stripping their teeth and spinning out of
control towards a chaotic pursuit of all that was beautiful and meaning-ful in
life. �There is so little time left, and so much left to do," he said to
himself wistfully.

Together they walked around the terrace, until the table of
filigree and shadow was hidden by the curvature of the wall. Jack-Jones showed
Marcus the staircase, which had not been there when last he came this way, then
they descended into the scented darkness.

Lady Stael watched them walk together until they passed into
shadow; then she turned her attention back to the table. Nameless emotions
gnawed at her heart, a sense of loss that was entirely appropriate coupled with
a slight cold fear of the very dangerous men who sat opposite her.

�You are not in control of events any more than the rest of
us, it would appear," said the Last Gambler.

�And you are taking liberties!" she retorted. Despite
knowing that it was indecorous, she glared at him. �I did not invite you here:
Jack-Jones did that, in accordance with the terms of my fate. Do you take
pleasure in your imposition upon my hospitality, or is it simply that you lack
the discernment to see"

�He is antagonising you deliberately," said the Iron Brain.
The light of the ball-room chandeliers reflecting from his cranium lent him an
expression of terminally bored amusement. �I do believe he enjoys it."

�Faugh!" She stood, clutching her skirts to her with indignation.
�You tire me with your importunities! If you two gentlemen will excuse me, I
must needs retire to my boudoir. I have preparations to complete before the end
of the world, and I shall return when Bishop Moran and his excellency the
Paramage complete their constitutional."

She did not expect any civilised response to her tirade, but
the Last Gambler stood and removed his hat apologetically. �My lady," he said:
�I did not mean to offend."

She stared at him for a long moment. �Noted," she replied.
Then she stepped rapidly towards the ballroom door, her heels clacking on the
flag-stones. An icicle of fear lodged in the small of her back, making her
shiver with the realisation that the Last Gambler was correct: that she had
lost control, had she indeed ever possessed it.

She swept through the desolate ballroom, past the table of
delicacies and the furniture draped in dust-sheets until she came to the grand
entrance hall and the wide staircase that swept up to the uppermost floor. She
gathered up her skirts and climbed the steps one at a time, for her high heels
tended to unbalance her and the stairs were very high. Pausing half-way up, she
turned and stared back down into the hall. Her eyes narrowed and her vision
blurred with nascent tears of self-pity as she thought; he should have been
here by my side. It should be on his arm that I ascend these steps. But then
she steeled herself. If Jack-Jones had not intervened ...

The door to her suite was already ajar when she reached it.
Maid Elenea is in need of chastisement again, the sloven! she thought. Then she
paused in the doorway and raised her hands to cover her mouth in shock. But
Elenea is dead, she realised. She shot herself! What kind of inner strength did
that woman have, to take her own life at the random whim of a gun? A sick wave
of envy and dread swept through her, for she knew that if she had possessed
half as much resolve she would not be here today. Such ideas were dangerous; it
was a good thing that the Church discouraged suicide.

The sensation of satin and lace against her cheeks was uncomfortable.
Suddenly she longed to strip off the veneer of civilisation, to touch her skin
directly, to disregard the stifling constrictions of her position and upbringing.
She began to roll her evening gloves down from her elbows, pausing in annoyance
when she realised that the jewelled rings she wore would hamper their removal.
Damn, she thought. Why did it have to be my maid and not the dog-handler?

Working the heavy rings along her gloves, she turned and
walked into her bedroom. The door to one of her wardrobes had sprung open,
revealing the rack of formal gowns that she wore on occasions such as this.
Pursing her lips in mild annoyance she sat down on the ottoman beside her
dressing table. The rings came free and she dropped them idly beside a crystal
decanter of finest vodja: then she rolled off her silk gloves, on their own
worth half a yearłs wages to her maid, and flicked them towards the shado ws
that gathered in the far corner of the room.

She frowned experimentally, a grimace that she would never
dare to use in public. She was tired and a little depressed, but she could not
yet retreat from the public evening; there was still a while to go before the universe
drifted to a close, and in any case she would soon have to brave the game
again. Then it occurred to her that she had a more immediate problem. She had
drunk perhaps two-thirds of a bottle of strong red wine, and it appeared that
she would have to remove her corsetry unaided before sh e could retreat to her
chamber and piss.

The hedges rose two cubits above the top of Jack-Jonesł
head, sufficiently high that Bishop Moran had to crane his neck to see the
fan-tastic birds trimmed into the top of them. �I am impressed," he declaimed
tipsily, �by your creativity! Either that or the gardener has created a
posthumous masterpiece that shall ensure his future immortality among
topiaristswere there any posterity to bestow it upon. Oh dear." He gulped a
full mouthful of wine and stifled a belch.

�I do believe you are reaching the end of your
self-restraint," said the magician, �and about time too! We need a full and
frank discussion this evening, once the tale of Imad and Danielle has worked
its way to its logical and terrible conclusion. What say you?"

�I am unaware of the conclusion you refer to," admitted Marcus,
�but I should like to hear it. It induces in me pangs of deja vu that are quite
disquieting; as if, to draw a gastronomic analogy, I have eaten one of the
notorious madrashi dishes to which Baron Heisen is so addicted, and the belches
of memory torment the surface of my waking mind for hours afterward."

Jack-Jones walked slowly along the avenue of hedges, until
he came to a crossing. �Which way shall I go now, do you suppose?" he asked
with a twinkle in his eyes.

Bishop Moran consulted the skies. The moons were drifting to
one side; either that or his head was nodding.

�Left," he said. �The light is better that way." He breathed
deeply of the invigorating night air and tripped after the magician. When he
caught up with him they walked together along a turf as neatly groomed as the
hair of any dandy.

�It is right and proper that the tale should induce in you
some sense of recognition," commented the paramage. �It is an isomyth, after
alla structure that when decomposed into its component elements holds a mirror
to the heroic lays of old. I confess that I myself am moved by it, even though
I know it to be true."

�But you said it was a myth!" protested the Bishop.

�An isomyth," corrected Jack-Jones. �Not the same at all, my
dear fellow. An isomyth decomposes the stuff of legend, inverts it and exposes
it to the light of day. I knew Imad in person, you know. A foolish youth who
met his fate just as he was showing signs of maturity."

�Then why not continue the tale?" asked Marcus tetchily, forgetting
that to hasten the ending of such a story might spoil the enjoyment of it for
more than just himself, the impatient listener.

Jack-Jones smiled secretively. �Because it is no longer my
tale to tell," he said. �I laid an Eye on Imad, and it is true that I was best
fitted to discuss the whys and wherefores of his coming to Castle Capeluche,
but of his flight and quest there is one far better suited than I to carry the
narrative forward!"

�The Iron Brain?" guessed Marcus wildly. �Did he meet them
in his travels?" But the wizard merely shook his head silently, and chose
another path.

They came to a central grove in which an iron bench sat
beside a marble pillar surmounted by a small and disturbing sculpture. One of
the ubiquitous stuffed penguins watched them with glassy eyes, its head tilted
permanently at an inquisitive angle, as if it was awaiting the reply to some obscure
question. The moonlit shadows ran as deep as the lines on Jack-Jonesł face.

�You ask many imponderable questions, Bishop," he said
heavily. �Perhaps it is time you let go and simply drifted with events. I am
aware that self-comprehension is the first step along your Churchłs path to
redemption, but surely there comes a point where rigorous self-scrutiny becomes
mere recursive navel-gazing?"

�Yes, by all means," agreed Marcus, trying desperately to regain
a measure of self control; �but you fail to grasp that I am disturbed because
somehow the story seems to me to be"

He froze, and stared at the penguin. It seemed to be
laughing at him, and for an instant there was no more sinister entity in his entire
universe.

�Yes," said the Paramage after a discreet interval. �I know.
You are disturbed because Imad resembles yourself in certain respects. And you
refuse to draw the logical conclusion; that the isomyth is not about a deceased
magician after allbut about the participants of this soiree."

Angelica, Lady Stael, stood naked in front of a long mirror
that hung inside one door of her wardrobe. Moonlight filtered in through the diamond-leaded
panes of the window and fell across the wreckage of her gown. Silk stockings and
underskirts and shoes lay at random; eventually she had taken a dagger to her corsetry,
almost crying in frustration because her maid was not there to assist her with
the recalcitrant lacework. But now she was free; dark-rimmed eyes stared back
at her from the mirror, wreath ed with wild shadows. She lifted the decanter to
her lips and threw back a choking, burning draught of vodja, then looked at the
mirror again.

�And what have you got to say for yourself?" she demanded of
her reflection.

�What indeed?" retorted her dark twin. Her exp ression was
contemp-tuous. �Tell me, sister. Donłt spare yourself."

�Sixty years old; forty years married, thirty-six of them a
widow (donłt interrupt!) to an eccentric Lord whose polar obsession was almost
certainly the death of him. Sixty years of gentility, and what have you
achieved? You donłt even know where your own pantry is!" She flung the decanter
to the floor; it landed upon the cyanide-blue skirts of her dress and began to
leak.

She snatched up the knife from her dressing table. It
glinted, flashing reflections of steel across the darkened space within the
mirror. Her twinsł eyes tracked it carefully, as if assessing the hand of the
madwoman behind it.

�If nothing else, you should think about the last thirty-six
years," she said carefully, the bitterness in her voice sufficient to curdle
milk. �Think of the years wasted: the years wrapped in black velvet, the years
of self-deprivation, the decades of shameful neglect. Look at yourself!"

She stared at her reflection unselfconsciously. Her breasts
were small and high, her waist slim, and her skin showed no blemishes. She
might as well have been twenty years old: the magic of the physicians ensured
that no member of the aristocracy need ever look their real age.

�A third of a century," she mused, abruptly thoughtful. She
deposited the knife on top of the rest of the damp detritus, and raised one
sweating hand to her breast, the other to her groin. She felt hot. �Damn!"

A wave of dizziness swept through her head, making the room
waver as if in a mirage. She saw herself as she might have been: as one of her
former incarnations had been. Accomplishments, freedom, none of the
claustrophobia of aristocracy. Her skin was hot, her nipples icy cold. �Damn!"
she repeated, staggering slightly because she felt sick. Then she glanced
through the window.

The moons were nearing the zenith; there was no telling how
long she had been in seclusion for. When they began to set, the world would
come to an end.

Another dizzy spell gripped her, and suddenly she felt her
stomach turn over in rejection, preparing itself to expel the alien spirits
that had enteredor been inserted intoher body. �Oh god," she gasped in
disgust, half-panicking and clutching at her stomach as she realised that she
was about to be sick. Then she bent double and vomited over her ball-gown.

Marcus and Jack-Jones returned to the moonlit staircase in silence.
It was not that there was nothing to say, merely that Marcus dared not permit
himself to say it. It was a warm night, but even the heat could not account for
the sweat that trickled from his brow. He repeatedly glanced at his magical
colleague in the hope of starting a conversation, but the uneasy silence lingered
on in the night air. Somehow he did not feel like starting a dialogue about the
rich odours of the night-flowering plants; it would be too close to admitting
defeat, to confessing a desire to surrender his insights to the mysterious and
imposing Paramage. Like most members of his profession, Marcus harboured a
vague distrust directed at all practitioners of the magical sciences; for although
priests relied on the tenuosities of insight, the paramagi had a more readily demonstrable
method.

When they reached the balcony Jack-Jones paused suddenly and
looked at him.

�What is it?" asked Marcus, suddenly glad of the excuse to
break his silence.

�I must warn you," said Jack-Jones, �that what you are about
to hear may be even more distasteful to you than what has gone before,
especially considering the lips from which it will come. I should advise you to
fortify yourself with spirits; it will cushion the blow, and perhaps render
your memories of this evening more tender."

Marcus shrugged uncomfortably. �Why bother?" he asked. �It
is the end, after all"

�That might be so," warned the Paramage; � but then again,
there is also the chance that what we are about to witness is no less than a
new beginning. Consider the miracle of reincarnationif human souls migrate,
what then of the world-soul itself? Might it not bear us, its children, to
safety in some other continuum of joy? Or might the prophecies indeed be wrong?
Marcus, Bishop Moran, you should not assume the worst merely because it is the
most convenient basis on which to determine your conduct!"

Marcus shivered. �In that case, I should like another glass
of wine," he said. �And, for whatever record there might be, I am sorry for my
treatment of you."

�What treatment?" asked Jack-Jones obliquely, passing him a
full glass. �Come, let us take our seats."

When they returned to the table, only two of the chairs were
occupied. �What has happened to Lady Stael?" Marcus enquired nervously. �Where
has she gone?"

The Iron Brain turned its head and looked at him. �I believe
she wished to repair her cosmetics," it said coolly. The Last Gambler continued
to shuffle his deck listlessly. �Why donłt you sit down? I am sure she will return
presently."

Marcus forced himself to relax, restrained his hands from fidgeting.
Jack-Jones stood, staring across the garden: then after what felt like only a
few seconds he turned and looked at the ballroom door. �My lady," he said.

�My estraordinaire," she replied. Marcus turned, saw her,
and rose to his feet.

She approached the table and nodded to them; �are we ready
to resume?" she enquired brightly.

�By all means," said Marcus. �My lady, your dress is very"

Her nose-gem flashed a warning light in his eye. �Thank you
Marcus," she said. �Perhaps you would be so good as to let me to sit beside
you."

He pulled out a chair for her, and she sat down. She had
changed into a black tunic with a cowled neck and puffed sleeves: everyday wear
among the courtiers whom provincial fashion aped. What was less usual was the
short length of her skirt, and the clinging leggings she wore beneath it; and
her boots. They had definitely been crafted with uses other than court
appearances in mind.

�Perhaps it is time for you to draw the next card, Gambler,"
suggested

Jack-Jones, returning to his seat.

�Very well, then," said the Last Gambler in a jaded tone. He
moved a finger to flip the top of the deck, but the Iron Brain reached a
skeletal hand across the table and restrained him.

�Wait," said the skull.

�Why?" he asked.

Marcus noticed that Angelica was staring at him intently. He
also noticed that her nose-diamond was now the only bauble she wore; and that
she had neglected her corsetry.

�Itłs my turn," she said, in a curiously detached tone of
voice. �I never thought it would comeneverbut it really is my turn, and now I
will not be ignored." She sounded as if she was baffled by some incomprehensible
riddle that had been posed.

�Are you sure you are well, my Lady?" enquired Marcus.

�Never felt better," she replied rapidly. �Gambler, please remove
your hand. Let me ... �

Both the Iron Brain and the Last Gambler let go of the tarot
pack, and Lady Stael flipped the third card onto the face-up stack. Strange; it
was a picture of a naked forearm, the veins bulging. Hovering above it was a
hand, the fingers of which were wrapped around a tiny barbersł syringe blown
from glass. The barrel of it was filled with some clear fluid, while the needle
was embedded in a vein. �That doesnłt make sense," said Marcus. �If itłs drawing
from a vessel, why is the vein distended? And why is the fluid clear? It should
be the colour of blood."

�Perhaps it is not drawing, but injecting," said the Iron
Brain. It stared at the card for a long time.

�Thatłs disgusting," said Marcus.

�Iłve heard of worse," replied Lady Stael; he looked at her
sharply, but her expression was serious. �Is it my turn now?"

The Gambler looked at her and nodded, slowly. �I fear it
is," he said. �If you want to let"

�No," she interrupted. �Iłll do it my way." She reached out
to drag the card of the syringe across the strange knight, and Marcus saw that
her hand was shaking slightly. �Iłve wanted to tell this tale for years."

She looked around at the expectant faces. �Itłs the part
that wouldnłt be told otherwise," she said sharply. �None of you think too much
about the world of women, do you? After all, we are nothing to you now that
reproduction has been replaced by resurrection; nothing but ornaments to grace
the beds of our lucky owners, is that not so?" Marcus blinked. Does she mean
us? he wondered. Why, what could be further from the truth! But he saw that the
Iron Brain, replete with the knowledge of the ancients, was n odding: and
Jack-Jones looked chastened.

She stared at Marcus challengingly, then nodded to herself
as if some deep suspicion was confirmed. �I must tell you what happened the
night before

Capeluche sacrificed his bride," she said. �Then you will understand."

6. The End of the World, Reversed

Shaken by his masterłs warning, Imad returned to his
hay-filled tick and slept uneasily until dawn. It was not the quality of the
warning that dismayed him, but the pointlessness of it; as if Capeluche
believed that everyone was as thick-skinned as himself. In his disturbing
dreams, Imad saw himself as he would become after thirty years of living with
such a master. Cruelty would become not a means, but an endan extreme that
struck him as both indecent and inelegant. And what Lord Capeluche expected o f
him! It was not that he was incapable of the action, but the thought of simply
butchering the countessa Danielle as a method of attacking her father struck
him as wasteful in the extreme.

That morning he began his preparations. And by nightfall, he
was ready to attempt his escapade. But meanwhile:

As she had done every morning for the past three years, Danielle
awakened with the dawn to find herself alone. She could not remember shedding
the tears that stained her pillow, and her manacles chafed at her wrists despite
the calluses that she had built up over the years. She sat up and rattled her
chains loudly, her eyes dry and cold with the hatred she had felt upon waking
every day since her marriage.

There was an answering rattle from the door. One of the
guards entered, bearing a bucket and a platter on which was heaped an
unappetising mound of cold stew. Careful not to get too close to her, he placed
the bucket on the floor beside the bed then backed out of the room. There was a
click as he locked the door, and then she was alone again.

Danielle sat up and worked her way to the edge of the bed. Although
she was manacled at ankle and wrist, her chains were looped through holes in the
bed-posts so that she couldby dint of careful manoeuvrereach any part of the
bed itself, and even extend a limb at a time beyond it. This she did, drawing
back her lips in a feral snarl until her fingertips brushed the handle of the
bucket and, closing on it, dragged it towards her. She carefully removed the
platter and put it by her pillow, for later consumption; the bucket she hoisted
onto the bed and placed under herself. Then she pissed in it.

The guards had learned through experience that it was a bad
idea to leave her victuals too close to hand. She had broken the skull of the
last man to do so; she still had the whip-marks to remember the incident by.

Having evacuated herself, Danielle picked listlessly at her
food with a soiled finger. It had galled her at first that she was not allowed
to bathe, and she had been enraged when her clothing was forcibly removed and
she was chained in thisthis elevated dungeonbut now she had lost sight of her
origins so thoroughly that she was oblivious to her condition except when her
sores wept, or the lice that swarmed in her matted hair drew blood. It is a
dungeon no less for being high above the ground, she reminded herself for the
millionth time. My father will rescue me! But it was a hollow mantra, for she
had long since abandoned all hope of rescue from the madman who claimed the
right to control her body and soul, who had condemned her to this life of degradation
and imprisonment.

Presently her platter was bare. She looked around dully, but
there was nothing of interest; the furniture beyond the bed might as well have
graced the surface of one of the moons, for her chains did not permit her
sufficient freedom even to reach the chest where her garments and dowry were
stored. And besides, nothing ever changed. She could not remember how long she
had been a prisoner in this tower; it could have been three weeks or three
centuries for all that she could tell. Truth be told she was hers elf becoming
slightly insane, for the only man who was permitted to speak to her was himself
a lunatic who paraded in the skins of his victims and who took pride in the
eating of human flesh.

Her day passed with excruciating slowness. A few hours after
she had eaten, she pissed in the bucket again and added some dark stool to it.
Then she pushed it to the floor, not heeding which way it went, and rolled over
onto her belly to spare the healing sore on her left buttock. The chains
tightened but she was used to them by now, and ignored them. She drifted in a
light trance in which she held the severed head of her husband high on a
scaffold before a roaring crowd of onlookers, then awakened to dis cover that
it was afternoon and a second platter had been placed beside her while she
slept.

She shoved it on the floor. She was no longer hungry; she
was trying to learn to live without eating. If she could last long enough, she
reasoned, her hands might slip through her manacles and she could free herself.
She had realised several months ago that if she tried to cut her arms off at
the wrist she would be unable to release her legs, and ever since then anorexia
had been her policy.

Meanwhile, she exercised as best she could in her
restraints. This was her other obsession: that although she must be thin, she
must be wiry and agilefor how else was she to beat off her husbandsł advances,
if and when he ever made them? In her isolation she had become paranoid, for
the daughters of counts were chaperoned from earliest childhood and she was
still virginal, at least with respect to the opposite sex.

Finally, she dozed again until dusk. She was awakened by the
creak of footsteps within the room; every muscle tensed, but she didnłt open
her eyes. She hoped he would think she was asleep.

�Donłt be silly," said her husband. �Open your eyes and look
at me, whore."

Danielle opened her eyes and glared up at him. He seemed to
fill her universe, a monstrous void at the end of the tunnel of existence;
nemesis writ large upon her tombstone. �Iłm not a whore," she said in a
dangerously low tone.

He smiled oddly, his face askew as if the muscles connected
to one cheek had been severed by accident and failed to reconnect properly."I
know what youłre thinking," he said, in a lilting tone of voice; �youłre
thinking how to kill me, to bury me, so that you can dance upon my grave. Say
it isnłt so, whore?"

Her vision blurred momentarily with tears of rage and
hatred; but gainsay him she could not. Her verbal co-option was one of his most
savage weapons against her, for the truth was this: Lord Capeluche was afraid
to so much as touch her skin. He believed that she was contagion itself, the
personification of his doom, and that if heor anyone elsetouched her then the
spark of her malice would track him down and slay him wherever he stood. And perhaps
he was right.

She stayed silent. �Very well then," said Capeluche. �As you
were." He giggled slightly; �enjoy your dinner." He left the bedchamber, and
she spat at the door as it closed behind him. That was another of his regular
jokes. It meant she was going to starve for a day.

Presently it grew dark. Danielle exercised, continuing a program
of press-ups and sit-ups that might have daunted a stevedore, marking time with
her silent litany of rage. When she was too tired to continue, and all her
muscles were shivering and weak, she lay back and placed her head upon the
pillow and shut her eyes. Silent tears trickled down her cheeks unnoticed, as
they had every evening for a thousand days.

At some point, her husband returned. He entered the room
quietly, turned and ensured that the door was locked, then walked across to his
chair beneath the window and sat in it with his feet upon a cushion. It was not
the noise of his entrance but the intensity of his stare that awakened her, as
usual.

�What is it?" she murmured, still half-asleep.

�Tomorrow," he whispered. �Tomorrow I shall be rid of you
for ever. Sleep well, my princess. Sleep well and deep."

�Good riddance," she whispered, too drained by hatred to
wonder what he meant.

She rolled over again, rattling her chains in their sockets,
and buried her face in the bolster. Perhaps one day it would stifle her; if so,
it was something to look forward to. One small mercy among few, the greatest of
which was that the madman dared not touch her with his filthy body, not even
one square inch of it.

Now she fell into a deep slumber and dreamed, just as her psychotic
husband had bidden her. In her dream, a dark and shadowy rescuer was
approaching. He came by stealth, lurking in dark tunnels beneath the castle
walls; he brought with him a sack of clothing, a sword, a pouch of arcana, and
a bright new set of immaterial manacles. He came clothed in darkness, and he
paused at a door in the foundations of the tower to whisper words of power that
caused the lock on her door to spring open, then other words that came down
upon her head like a hammer of velvet-black night.

Somewhere in her subconscious, hope stirred. Her fingers
flexed, broken nails poised ready to gouge.

Then she was permitted to awaken.

�What" she murmured, then felt a palm clamped unsteadily
across her jaw.

Realising that her dream was reality, she refrained from
biting it.

�Patience," he whispered, and removed his hand. There was
the faintest of clicks at wrist and ankle, and an intoxicating sense of freedom
overcame her. She shivered uncontrollably. Her rescuer was a dark shadow
against the night; did he know about her husband?

�My lord" she whispered, sitting up.

�donłt worry," her rescuer said quietly. �Will you come
with me?"

He was a man: she said �yes" as she had been trained to,
before she even considered what she was doing. Despite all her experiences. �In
the chest, over there," she said, pointing. �He keeps my belongings in it. Take
the bag on top, leave the rest. Have you fast horses waiting? My father will be
grateful"

�No horses," whispered her rescuer, holding up something
that glittered in the faint moonlight. �Tonight we fly by magic."

Her spirits soared; freedom by dawn! She swung her legs over
the side of the bed and stood up, wincing at the strangeness of the sensation.
�Still, be careful. We donłt want to wake my husband."

�Your" her shadowy rescuer froze then turned to face the
window, the chair: the sleeping lunatic therein. �Shit," he said.

Danielle was dizzy; it was the first time she had stood
upexcept upon a bed with her arms bowed to slacken her chainsfor more than
three years. She stumbled towards the chest and opened it, grabbing at her bag:
she didnłt notice the empty platter on the lid until it crashed to the floor.

Lord Capeluche grunted and stiffened.

�Quick! Hold me tight," said her rescuer. He threw back his
head and drank from the small vial that he held; she reached around his waist
and linked her arms tightly, keeping hold of the neck of her bag. He uttered
words that caused her skin to itch as if termites were burrowing within it,
then he fell silent with his head thrown back in an attitude of intense
concentration.

�Halt!" mumbled Lord Capeluche. �You cannot do this" he
jerked, and one eye opened. Her feet left the ground and her stomach lurched:
she was flying, and there was a faint inhuman shrieking in her ears as if her
rescuer was turning into a giant bat. �Youłll miss the execution!" shouted her
husband.

They rose over Capeluchełs head as he struggled to his feet:
the glass burst outwards before them as if a giant fist had punched into it,
and then there was nothing below her feet for a very long way except the
moonlit crowns of trees and a scream of pure and chilling rage that welled up
through the window behind them.

They flew into the night, and she realised that perhaps her
rescuer was not an agent of her father after all. That, perhaps, she had been
abandoned to her fate. �Who are you?" she asked, holding tight to the waist of
her rescuer; �what made you rescue me?"

He turned his face to her, but his lips were sealed as if he
was holding back words. The strangeness of it, of the wind across her naked
skin and the vast emptiness around her, made her laugh until the tears flowed
freely and acknowledged for the first time. Then they began to descend towards
the midnight forest beyond Castle Capeluche.

As the trees loomed up to either side, Danielle looked
around in fascination. She had not been outside for years, and it still seemed
unutterably strange. Then the rough grass of a clearing came up and batted her
across the soles of her feet and she let go of her captor, staggering as she
held her sack of dusty possessions.

�Can you speak yet?" she demanded.

�Yes," he said. �The spell is flown ..." he looked up
towards the branches, through which the stars were barely visible.

�Good," she said. �I believe we shall have to make good our
escape before my husband calls out the hunt. If he find us hełll kill us. You
do realise that, donłt you?"

Looking at him as her eyes adapted to the darkness, Danielle
realised that her captor was little more than a youth; barely older than
herself, shabbily dressed and unsophisticated. �You are prepared for this, are
you not?" she prompted.

He stared at her in apparent confusion. �Not exactly," he
said. �You talk ... �

She felt the pine needles beneath the soles of her feet, the
breath of owls and night violets in her lungs; long grass tickled her calves,
while a gentle night breeze dried the sweat from her body as she continued to
breathe deeply, trying desperately to soak up as much of this natural world as
possible before the universe of men reached out again to imprison her with its
restrictions. The dead leather weight of her bag dangled from her fingers. �You
had no idea?" she asked disbelievingly.

�No," he said quietly. �It seemed a waste."

�What did?" she demanded.

�He wants your father dead. He wanted me to strike him down
by necromancy, using you as a portal vessel. Your father should be grateful."

There was something disquieting about this young man, she
decided; perhaps he was inexperienced in pain, unaware of the significance of
what he was talking about. �My father can go hang for all I care," she said
softly. �But now, will you help me?"

�I" he looked at the ground. �Yes."

�Then stop staring at me," she said. �I must clothe myself."

He turned away, just as he was told, and something inside
her relaxed slightly.

Maybe, just maybe, she thought, this is a sane one.
Squatting, she opened her bag and drew out the travelling clothes she had worn
habitually before her enforced marriage, her bride-sale of three years past.
Her boots were there, too, and the short knife she had carried on her person.
�You may look again," she said. �I would not like to be responsible for an
adder biting you while your eyes were shut."

He blinked �You are" he paused. �These are your clothes?"
he asked disbelievingly.

�Why do you think my father wished to dispose of me?" she
asked, savagely. �I was more trouble than he was used to." She hefted her knife
meaningfully, then thrust it into her belt. �Now. You say you brought no horses
or provisions?"

�Provisions, yes," said the youth. �I have brought enough travelling
food for us both to last a week, with care. And I have a book that might be of
use under certain circumstances." He looked at her curiously and she laughed.

�Youłre hardly cut out for the raping and pillaging
business, are you?" she asked. Reaching deep into her pockets, she drew on
knuckle-rings surmounted by brazen pyramids sharp enough to cut leather. �Who
and what manner of rescuer are you, and where do you hail from, oh chivalrous
one who comes by night?"

�I am called Imad, and I was recruitedforciblyto be your
husbandłs magus," said her rescuer reluctantly.

�And why did he recruit you?" she asked. �Were you all he
could afford, or did you come free from one who wanted to dispose of you too?"

�Neither," he said sharply, turning away as if stung. �I am
an exile. My master sent me away after telling me that my aptitude was of less
than no worth whatsoever, and that he did not wish to train me further."

�Then it was the latter case, just like me," she said wryly,
hiding from him the secret calculations that trickled through her mind like
drops of blood along a blade. �And what is your gift?"

He looked at her knowingly. �I am very good at dealing with
pain," he said.

She smiled. �I can see that we are going to get on very
well," she replied, removing her claws from her pockets. �Now, Imad, shall we
walk, or would you like to guest at my husbandłs table in an entirely
undesirable capacity?"

If Danielle had had her way they would have ridden out the
night, but without horses or torches that would have been foolhardy; instead
they sat with their backs to a fallen beech tree and discussed, in quiet
voices, what they were going to do. Certain subjects were avoided (the question
of motives in particular) for Danielle was still wary of Imad, and for his part
Imad was taken aback by her self-assertive manner.

�How far from the road are we?" she asked, idly paring
strips of bark off the tree with her knife, collecting it for tinder.

�Not far," he said. �I followed it as I flew, but the batłs
blood was thinning rapidly and had I continued much further wełd like as not
have fallen."

�That sounds interesting," she said. �Batłs blood? Is that
how"

�A symbolic philtre," he interrupted. �The higher the
screams, the higher the altitude; sympathic powers obey a law of proportionality,
though I would not expect you to understand"

�My training was in the arts of reading and writing," she
interrupted. �No one bothered themselves with what I read."

�And what did you occupy yourself with?" he asked, chastened.

�At first with heroic myths, and epics of the hunt. Then I
realised that my sex proscribed these, and I would be better applying myself to
romance and comedy."

�So what did you do?"

She rammed her dagger into the tree. �I went hunting."

Imad shivered. �What is it?" she asked mockingly. �Am I
alarming you? I assure you that at my fathersł court there are plenty of
refined and ineffectual ladies to plight your troth to, should you so desire!"

�That was not what I was thinking," he said shortly. �It was
simply this; you say Lord Capeluche"

She spat. �That scum"

�is afraid of you? Why, then, will he come after us?"

She gazed into the night woods. Already, although she might
have been imagining it, it appeared to be growing less dark. �Because he is
afraid," she said. �He thinks that I am his nemesis, that my spirit will pursue
him to the ends of the earth and haunt him to death." She turned and looked at
Imad, who flinched only slightly under the full intensity of her stare. �Maybe
hełs right."

She retrieved her dagger. �We had better take the road," she
said. �He will follow us at break of dawn with all of his men. Neither of us
can expect any mercy, you know. Hełs got an excuse to kill me now, without my
father being oblige d to take reluctant revenge: he can accuse us of adultery
together. What do you say, sheltered magus? Do you realise what desperate
situation you have insinuated yourself into?"

He looked gloomy. �Perhaps we have a future together," he
said. �And perhaps I was naive to stand in the way of your husband: but Iłve prepared
this thorny bed for myself, so I suppose I must now lie in it." She could see inside
his head; and I doubt that he would forgive me, even were I to return you
instantly. She nodded to herself. Such thoughts were to be expected.

�Our match would certainly seem to be fated," she said
drily. �Now come. Let us move; we have a long distance to go before we can
consider ourselves safe, and a sensible start might be made by the stealing of
a pair of horses!"

�Agreed," he said. And together they set off for the ends of
the world, to liberate themselves from their respective demons.

Against the Expanding Night

The table fell silent.

�Well I must say," said Bishop Moran, �this is not what I
had expected to hear!"

Lady Stael looked at him and shook her head. I wonder how
hełs going to take it when he realises what he is, she thought. �I didnłt think
it was," she said sharply. �The truth is often unpalatable. You didnłt think
about it very deeply, did you? The myth of the maiden imprisoned in the high
tower, who waits for nothing more than her rescuer ... how true does it have to
be? Might it not perhaps be the malicious propaganda of her captors themselves,
who conspire to drug and imprison her so that her l ife becomes meaningless,
given direction only by proxy through her children?"

She realised abruptly that the anger she was showing was out
of place, that in other company it would have had terrible consequences for her
social status: but this time it no longer mattered. A wildness without joy
filled her; she could do whatever she wanted. She looked at the balustrade and
understood what it was that Elenea the maid had sensed, that as the universe
was drawing to a logical conclusion suicide was as sensible an option as
abandoning a sinking ship. She glanced at Marcus. �Think," she sa id determinedly,
�for once in your privileged, insulated life! Donłt you see what it must be
like? The myth, the story that we are constructing, is from the time before we
remembered all our other lives, before we knew that transamnemsis was possible:
before the determinism of history became overt! The dead did not hatch again,
to stride the earth in renewed bodies: they were dead! And women, despite all
the abuse that they suffered, had a vital function: for without them there
would be an end to al l exp rience."

�But now, as the world winds down, the mechanism is disrupted,"
said Jack-Jones heavily. �Is that what you mean, my Lady?"

�Where is my life?" she cried. �Why am I entrapped, deprived
of any function save decoration? There was a time when"

�Overpopulation," said the Iron Brain, as coarsely as a turd
cast upon the floor of heaven. �Time has run its mill-race, and now the flow becomes
turbulent. How else do you explain the thinning rate of incarn-ation of
previous lives?"

�That was not what she was referring to," said Marcus tetchily.
�I do believe"

�I will speak for myself, thank you," said Lady Stael, irritated
by his blind protectiveness. �This game is a valuable prompt to my memory,
although some things still do not become clearer; why did the countessa have no
recollection of her previous lives, for example? I would like to find out, but
I fear that time is running short. It will be necessary before long to hasten
the end and free the ghosts, otherwise we might well be too busy to appreciate
the final act of the cosmic drama taking place out side."

�I doubt that very much," said the Iron Brain. It grinned at
her darkly and she looked away, disturbed. She still remembered her outburst
about freedom, but somehow it seemed hollow when she considered the words from
the speaking skull.

And what is really going on in Marcuses head? she wondered.
�It is becoming cold," she announced. �I intend to go inside, and will shortly
meet you in the western drawing-room, where we may continue the game in
relative comfort. If we finish in time we can come out here again for the final
event." She pushed back her chair, rose, and walked away without so much as a
by-your-leave. It was a minor triumph, but sufficiently irrelevant to leave a
bitter taste in her mouth.

So many lost years! sh e wondered. Am I in time?

She entered the ballroom, where the chandeliers were burning
down dark and the shadows crept along the floor even as she watched. The
sideboard of delicacies seemed to be caught in a frozen instant of motion even
as she watched; approaching it, she saw that the snails themselves were
returning to life, hatching and writhing among the shells of their corpses,
renewing themselves with impossible speed. There was a faint twittering noise
from the dish of pickled larkłs tongues. She stared at it, simultaneous ly fascinated
and disgusted. It reminded her of sexual intercourse with her husband, in the
days before she remembered from her previous lives what it was that she should
have been told prior to her marriage.

Turning away, she walked lightly towards the grand hall and
the staircase to her rooms. She had a wild urge to set light to the carpets and
dance upon the blazing pyre of her deranged and repressive past: she suppressed
it and climbed the stairs instead. Something was tugging at the edge of her
mind and she was not sure whether she wished to become fully conscious of it,
of a dangerous obsession left over from a previous journey through the halls of
life. Itłs strange, she thought. I could almos t believe myself to be Danielle;
not merely her transamnetrix, but her very flesh and soul! It was exciting and
frightening, not least because she had so little time to get used to itthe
world was due to end in only two and three quarter hours. Perhaps thatłs why,
she brooded, walking along the corridor past her suite, towards another room
that she had not visited for a long time. Perhaps as time runs down the barrier
between past and present is thinning. I am becoming my own ghost , like the
Iron Brain

Her skin was tingling. As she looked about she realised that
she had come to her vanished husbandłs bedroom. The door loomed in front of
her, its casement limned in faint blue fire.

�Iłm not your toy," she said quietly. �Iłm not afraid." The
years draped themselves heavily across her shoulders as she turned the handle
and entered.

The dead Lord Staelłs room was identical to her own, save only
that the dust lay thick within it. Drifts of pale ash heaped the picture
frames, hung in the shafts of moonlight that shone through the windows; she
sneezed, then turned to the bed. A counterpane lay across it, dusty and faded.
She turned it back, and sat on one corner of the mattress. It creaked beneath
her weight.

�May I come in?" asked Marcus.

She peered at him in the gloom. He appeared somewhat dishevelled,
and although it was very dark his eyes were screwed tight. He held something
behind his back.

�Only if you show me what youłre holding," she said cautiously.

�A bottle of wine, nothing more." He brought it out and she
saw that it was not just any wine: it was the most ancient vintage of Schloss
Stael, stored in the cellars so that the bottle was dusted with a powdery crust
that had accumulated over a full century. It was quite an appropriate vintage,
she thought, for it was lych-wine, drunk only at noble funerals: the cellar
where it was stored tunnelled into the catacombs.

�That is a sensible choice," she said. �Did you have any
body in mind to anoint with it?"

�Only myself," he said quietly. �Iłve been a fool, Angelica.
Do you know what Iłm talking about?"

She licked her lips. �Yes, Imad."

�Donłt call me that!" he said angrily, and she shivered.
�Iłm not Imad, and youłre not Danielle any more either. Donłt forget that or
wełre lost." He sat down on the chaise longue opposite her and placed the
bottle between his knees.

He looked haunted, as well he might.

�We still have our memories," she reminded him. �We still remember
our other lives."

�Donłt." He stared past her shoulder, broodingly. �Have I
made a fool of myself?"

She swallowed bile and memories. �Only for the past fifty
years, Marcus. You have made no more a fool of yourself than I have."

�But why?" he demanded. �Why did I refuse to remember"

She smiled grimly. �If you remembered, you would understand
why you wanted to forget. Perhaps we should call an end to the game at this
stage: after all, it is your turn next."

�Hah." He looked round. �Is there a corkscrew here?"

�Therełs a sideboard," she said. He stood up and opened the
wine, then returned with two glasses, the bottle breathing the dusty air. She looked
up at him. �Sit by me?" she asked.

Marcus sighed and sat down next to her. Dust rose from the
bedding but the frame was solid. �We share our memories," he said, pouring a
glass of fluid that was as black as congealed blood in the moonlight: �what else
do we have in common?"

�I donłt know," she said, staring at the veins on his hand.
�We could grow old, not understanding one another, or" Her fingers closed on
the stem of the glass. �I put on this dress because it was as near to her old
hunting garb as I could find," she added softly. �Anything closer is alien to
my status, Marcus. I am entrapped, and yet I was told it is a privilege. Where
did the lie begin?"

�Thatłs a dangerous question to ask," he said. She found
that she liked his new candour, whether or not it was born of despair: it was
more than just a drunken counterweight to piety and intellect, the two poles
around which his personality seemed to revolve. �I donłt know where it started.
Maybe when the first man told the first woman that she was beautiful, as a
means of persuading her to hold his baby rather than as a statement of bald
truth."

�His baby?" she asked, raising an eyebrow; �even the
language we speak turns against us!"

�You include me?" he asked; �arenłt I excluded by my sex?"

She thought for a moment, then took in a mouthful of thick,
dark wine. �No," she said. �For what belittles any person belittles all. Donłt
you see?"

He seemed puzzled. �I think so," he said, a pained
expression on his face. �I didnłt realise it meant so much to you."

�It didnłt. Not until the game commenced, and I began to remember
who I am."

She drained her glass carelessly, and watched him through a
haze of moonbeam possibilities. He took a sip. �What are we doing here?" he
asked.

�The dead have friendships," she said, feeling her pulse
race as she considered her next words carefully. �Itłs been a long time. Who
are we to restrain them, at the end of the universe?"

His back straightened. �That is an improper suggestion to"
he stopped, then took a mouthful of wine, made a face, and put the glass down
on the floor. �I sounded just like a Bishop then, didnłt I?" he said, a
desperate fear visible in his eyes. �Come here"

Angelica leaned close and kissed him. Their lips met and
parted, tongues eagerly renewing an acquaintance that was both ancient and new
together. �Quickly," she said, pulling away from him. Her eyes watered with
fear that the moment might be lost. �Therełs so little time! We must finish the
game."

For a minute they were all fingers and thumbs, feverishly
stripping each other bare until skin shivered under moonlight. Then Marcus
reached out and ran a finger across her tense-skinned breast. �No," she said,
feeling her nipples contract and harden. �I want you to lie down first."

�Is it" he did as she said�that important?"

�Yes," she said, not quite able to remember why it was that
she had to do this.

�On your back"

She bent over him, and endeavoured to rub every part of him
with all of her anatomy; as if to fuse their frail bags of protoplasm, so that
their identities too might be merged. He gasped and she sealed his mouth with
her lower lips, moving her hips in narrow circles until she felt as if she was
about to scream.

Then she leaned forward and took him into her mouth, licking
back and forth with gentle motions. �Please," he gasped. Somehow, smiling
blindly at the expanding night, they switched ends and she finally lowered
herself onto him. The shock of feeling ran right through her core, thrilling
her and setting every inch of her on fire: they began to move together,
tentatively at first, then faster, in a rhythm older than their species.

Angelica began to come. As the shuddering contraction
rippled through her she drew up her legs; and at that moment she distantly felt
a warm release as Marcus added his climax to her own. It ended almost
simultaneously and, temporarily exhausted, she lay down on top of him. Closing
her eyes, she felt his arms around her: not imprisoning, not protecting ...
simply there. So late, but so good, she thought tiredly. Why canłt it be so
easy in every respect? But it wasnłt. If it had been, this mi ght have taken
place forty years ago. Or even earlier.

The table on the balcony was deserted, the detritus of an
evening abandoned around it. A leaf, harbinger of an autumn that would never arrive,
blew across it and lodged in a cranny between welds. Perhaps if time held its
breath, a tree would grow through the table: and perhaps not.

The Iron Brain ignored it, moving through a night as thick
and dark as inner space. The Last Gambler had already occupied the drawing
room, and had lit a fire in the gratefor reason of comfort as much as temperatureand
was now sunk deep in a leather chair that was as overstuffed as he was thin.
Jack-Jones stood and studied a painting on the wall, a devotional depicting Our
Lord working in his study, a copy of the works of Jung at his side. The Iron
Brain swayed slightly as it entered the room, pau sing in the doorway like a
spectre.

�Where is the Bishop?" It asked unemotionally.

�Praying, I think," said Jack-Jones.

�Restoring her make-up," suggested the Gambler.

Jack-Jones turned cold eyes on him. �If you cannot be
polite, be silent," he said. �Without them, none of us would be here. Besides
which, it is now the Bishopłs move. What say you, Brain?"

The Brain turned its pitiless photoreceptors on him, soaking
up all the light as if in search of the dawn of the new age. �I say that they
will come to us in their own time," it said. �What does it matter if they
re-enact their romance, or express their affection? They are alive, and we are
dead."

�Speak for yourself," said the Gambler. �Iłm"

�All of us are dead," asserted the cyborg. Firelight
glittered from its vertebrae, which whirred faintly as it moved. A perfect skeleton
modelled in wolfram and ebony plastics, wrapped in a caul of mummified flesh:
�you do not recognise the truth for it describes a wider context than your
soul, a context in which you are embedded. This universe is dead, yet you will
not admit it! You earn your name well, Gambler, for no other statistician would
remain to test the odds on the future of th is continuum."

�Statistics are not about gambling," said the Last Gambler,
somewhat nettled by this reproach: �they are about certainties. Or at least the
statistics I study are concerned with certainty and its absence."

�A funny thing," said Jack-Jones. �In the old world, before
I gained my second soul and passed beyond the grave, it was said that the one
branch of the mathematica that had not been mapped was the study of certainty. I
am unsure of the significance of this, but your theories must be uniquely advanced
to carry you so far! Imagine that, a calculus of confidence."

�I need no confidence," retorted the Gambler: �faith is all
I require. An ad hoc preparation to banish all doubts. Now do you understand
why I am a gambler?"

The Iron Brain looked at him steadily. �Yes," it said. �You
have no alternative. Just like the rest of us. Are you by any chance a lapsed
clergyman?" The Last Gambler bristled.

Before blood or bone could be spilt, the door opened again.
Marcus and Angelica stood there; but they no longer resembled the widowed
noble-Lady or the middle-aged Bishop who had started the evening together.
There was something wild and terrible about Angelicałs eyes, an expression of
freedom brought at any price: she wore her eccentric tunic and trousers as
before, but the hilt of a dagger protruded from the top of her left boot and
she had restored her foetal earrings to her apparel. As for Marcus, his
expression was knowing: no longer the benign mask of a sacred fool. He appeared
to have experienced some private apotheosis that had conferred insight upon
him, so that when he stared at the

Last Gambler that individual froze and looked guiltily away.

�It is time to continue the Game," said Angelica. �I believe
we have very little left, if we are to complete on schedule." She sat down on
an overstuffed sofa, brazenly crossed her legs, then looked around. �Marcus."

The Bishop sat down beside her and openly put his arm around
her shoulders. The Iron Brain noted with something approximating amusement that
his shirt was a size too large: evidently it was looted from the dead Lord
Staelłs wardrobe.

�Letłs resume," he said. �I draw this time, I believe?"

His sudden change of confidence was remarkable. The Iron
Brain watched as the Last Gambler, careful not to meet his eye, placed the deck
of cards on the small occasional table where Marcus could reach it. He picked
up the deck and shuffled it for himself, then took a card from the top and
placed it face-up on the other three (which the Iron Brain had itself carried
through from the table on the balcony).

�How interesting," said Angelica. She stared at it closely,
and the reddish light from the fireplace betrayed a faint sheen of sweat upon
her brow.

�Yes it is, isnłt it," commented Marcus. His face was remarkably
pale. The picture depicted a pretty young woman, naked but for a brief jewelled
wrap around her hips: she sat with her head bent back and her eyes shut,
straddling a young man in a position that left little to the imagination. Yet
the background, rather than depicting a bedroom scene, showed rows of faces:
unsmiling, obsessive faces, bored faces, sweating faces, row upon row of them
all focused upon the copulating couple. Above the spectator s, a row of
multi-coloured lights painted scene all the colours of hell.

If the Iron Brain had still possessed a nose, it would have
been willing to wager that it could smell the stale sweat and alcoholic breath
of the club or brothel which the scene depicted. It shut off itłs visual cortex
temporarily, giving in to a rush of nostalgia for the time when it had possessed
a full complement of glands and a fleshy brain with which to enjoy them. �I
think you should continue, Bishop," it said. �I do not wish to leave here
without learning the end of the story."

Marcus looked up. His face was like a death mask, rigidly
composed and expressionless. Angelica glanced away from the card and put her
arm tenderly about his waist, but he showed no sign of recognition: he was
battling some internal demon instead. Presently he licked his lips. �Very well
then," he said.

�I shall tell you the end of the story. And then" he looked
at the Iron Brain�you will tell us why you are here."

Love and Executions

They walked until they came to a stream, which Danielle insisted
they follow for a short distance. This was a wise move, for at mid-morning they
heard the far-off baying of dogs. But the hounds had no scent to follow, and by
early afternoon the escapers were more than twenty miles from the castle. They
were close to the edge of the Marches, where the ground began to rise and the
trees to thin, and it was unlikely that Capeluche would venture this far
without first ensuring the security of his home before he set out.

The weather was hot but not unbearable, and the trees shaded
them from the worst of it. Imad lost himself in thought as he walked; his
behaviour was strange, he reflected, for he could have made quite a name for
himself had he stayed with his erstwhile employer. Why did I reject the
opportunity? he wondered, his earlier vision of a warped future already fading
in his memories. All I had to do was kill her. He glanced surreptitiously at
his companion. While they paused for lunch, she had hack ed off most of her hair
with her dagger; then she had rinsed what was left of it in the water of the
stream. The enchanted prisoner was gone, replaced entirely by this purposeful
stranger. Was she ever like that?

Imad wondered. Or was I deluding myself? Like many men he
lacked sufficient will-power to turn the rhetorical question on its head and
make a truth of it: he had been trained not to expect women to act of their own
accord, and consequently he half-expected to see some hidden master l urking in
her shadow

As the sun passed the zenith Danielle asked him a question
that she had spent two hours considering, rolling around her tongue, and
tasting from every angle before she dared utter it. �Tell me," she said, �what
is it that you expect from life? I am aware you were apprenticed and your
master rejected youbut surely you could have made something of yourself
without too much difficulty, even in the service of my husband?" She kept her
hand close to her knife as she waited for him to reply. Imad noted this with
mild dismay; what did she expect of him?

�I donłt know," he said, playing for time. �Will you give me
a moment to think about it?"

She didnłt reply, so he thought about it as they walked, and
it seemed to him the longer he thought about it that he had been completely rightthat
he didnłt know what he wanted, except that he did not possess it.

�Iłm looking for something," he said finally.

�What?" she asked, maintaining her grip on the dagger.

�I donłt know." It was frustration that made him scowl, but
so fierce was his expression that it made her look around sharply for enemies.
�If I knew I would not be seeking it."

�Is it wealth?" she guessed. �Or a long-lost relative? Or power?"
Her cheek twitched: her imprisonment had not cured her of a certain romantic
imagination, but had tempered it with cynicism.

�None of those," he said listlessly. �I would say it was
un-derstanding, or fulfilment, but those terms are inadequate; nothing can
describe what I seek. I doubt that I shall ever find it in this life."

�What then?" she hazarded. �Is it love? Or religion?"

He smiled wryly. �If I knew I could tell you," he said. �I
think it is some of all of those, though. I mislike the waste and inefficiency
of a vast fortune: it seems so incredibly futile. I am not sure about children,
for what good is a lineage to a corpse? Comfort perhaps, but comfort is an
illusion that can be shattered at any moment. Maybe you appreciate that better
than I do; itłs merely verbiage, after all."

She seemed content with that for an answer, and they walked
on in silence.

Presently they came to a road that was better maintained
than any in the Marches, and in the distance a plume of smoke that rose from a
fearless chimney.

�Is it an inn, do you suppose?" he asked, but she didnłt
reply.

They approached it, and presently saw that indeed it was an
inn. Danielle touched his arm lightly. �A warning," she said, a faint smile at
the edge of her lips. �I mislike me the treatment of women in these parts, and
so soon after my confinement I do not wish to be taken for ... � she shook her
head. �I am your brother. Do you understand me?"

Imad considered for a moment, then nodded. �If that is your
wish," he said.

�Good." Now she smiled properly, and Imad noted that she was
somewhat boyish in appearance: but to his eye she somehow merged with his memory
of the imprisoned maiden of the tower. �We must make enquiries after horses,
and the next town."

�But what will you do?" Imad asked suddenly. �I mean, do you
not wish to return to your father?"

She stared at him. �Whatever for?" she asked.

�But you" he paused, sensing that he was treading upon
dangerous ground.

�Say it," she challenged. �Why should I not do as you do?
You seek for what you will. Say then that I am disillusioned with my life to
date, and would go in search of fulfilment! Not to speak of the death of my
bastard husband, should his neck ever present itself to my blade."

Imad breathed deeply and looked at her anew. �How will you
earn a living?" he asked.

She looked straight at him. �What makes you think I cannot?"
she challenged.

He nodded. �Very well, then. You are my younger brother: I
am a journeyman magus, and you are travelling with me as bodyguard and tutee.
Is that to your satisfaction?"

�Itłll do," she said shortly, fingering the pommel of her
knife. �Do you know how to use that sword you wear so inexpertly?"

�No," he admitted.

�Then give it here before you do yourself an injury."

Imad was reluctant to part with the blade, both because it
was valuable and also because he had a nagging mistrust of her intentions, but
the logic of her statement was inarguable. �Very well," he said. �I suppose you
wonłt trip over it?"

She frowned and drew it carefully. �The balance is poor,"
she said, �but it will do."

They continued towards the inn and reached it at twilight.
It was nearly empty, little more than a roadside farmhouse with boarding rooms
in what had once been a hay-loft, and a surly farmer and his sickly wife who
served up rancid scrumpy and pie and little in the way of conversation. It
transpired that the nearest town was ten miles further along the road and there
were no horses to be had for love nor money: so in order to reduce the drain on
his half-empty purse Imad arranged to share a room with his brother, who seemed
less than keen on the idea.

It grew dark before long, and Imad retired upstairs.
Presently Danielle came in and stared at him coldly by candle-light as he lay
on the straw-filled tick, massaging the aches out of his calves. �Why did you
do this?" she demanded, sitting on the other side of the bed.

�Because youłre my brother," he said tiredly, not wanting to
think why he did it. �If it means so much to you Iłll sleep on the damned
floor." He shut his eyes and yawned. After a moment he added: �I didnłt think
youłd mind." Then honesty forced his tongue further. �Truthfully, with Himself
in pursuit I didnłt wish to spend a night alone. I have troubled enough dreams
as it is."

He sat up and shook his head. �Iłm to bed," he said, and
rolled out his blanket on the floor.

Various thoughts ran through his head, not all of them
noble, as he heard her removing her outer clothes behind him. Then he heard her
pull the quilt up over her, and all thought of intimacy fled before a tide of
sleep. He yawned a final time and closed his eyes.

After an eternity of drifting on the edge of sleep, a voice
whispered at the edge of his hearing: �Wizard, why did you rescue me?"

So tired was he that he could barely reply, but some agency
seemed to open his mouth for him. �I saw a part of my solution," he mumbled,
�lying chained in a tower with a north-facing window. Then I heard screams at
night. I couldnłt sleep."

A slim hand touched his shoulder. �Come here," she said.

�What?" he rolled half-over and looked up at her face.

�You heard: therełs room for two in this bed. You wonłt sleep
any better on the floor."

�But youłre not what I was looking for," he protested, even
as he sat up and dragged himself under the quilt. Youłre not the imprisoned
princess of my dreams, he thought confusedly; youłre too real.

�Maybe," she whispered inp his ear, �but perhaps you are
what I was waiting for!" He shivered as he held her, uncertain of what he was
doing: and she shivered too for quite different reasons, altogether too sure
what she was doing for comfort. They shivered each other to sleep and neither
of them were plagued by dreams of their insane pursuer, clad in the skins of
his victims. Neither did they make love, then or on the next night or the one
after that; but there came a time when their intimacy pres sed closer than any
chaste embrace, and they rolled upon the floor of a room in a city inn one
afternoon until the inkeep was like to denounce them as sodomites and Imad
looked into her eyes and saw laughter and joy reflected in them. But there were
no dreams of Capelucheand all the while they moved closer to their destiny.

The year rolled slowly round to autumn, and the illusions began
to hang heavy around them. Imad was forced to seek intermittent employment as a
healer of warts and a diviner of wells, which galled him for he longed to wreak
impressive works by which he would be remembered. More than once Danielle
deterred a casual thief or bag-man from making an attempt on his life as they
worked their way north-west, beating a more or less direct path away from the
March lands. For his part, Imad was confused by her. He had stolen a countess
and discovered a brooding huntress, who went for days without speaking to
himother than to discuss the requirements of the roadthen suddenly imposed
astonishing demands upon his stamina and emotions. It was not what he had been
led to believe conjugal relations were about, although it had its compensations.
Then they crossed the frontier into the Alfine mountains, generally regarded as
an uncivilised wasteland; and Danielle became pregnant.

It was almost inevitable. Imad had been an apprenticed
magus, not a hedge-wizardłs disciple; and Danielle, who should have known
better, had too much pride and self-possession to think of consulting some
village witch on her travels. It caused them to become fractious, turning on
one another, for pregnancy clashed with both of their plans. Danielle brooded
for a week, refusing to talk to him, and Imad in turn withdrew into his own
head. Presently they came to a town half-way up the side of the Avilnian Pass,
and Danielle gave in to her own unvoiced ultimatum. �We shall have to find
somewhere to stop," she told him. �I shall be a woman again, for I cannot pass
for your brother like this: and either we shall have a family or not."

Imad looked at her sadly and shook his head. They sat
together in a cramped room they had rented above a tannerłs shop, and the
bitter smell of the vats rose up through cracks in the floor-boards to assail
his nostrils. �I donłt understand how you can be so calm about it," he said,
for he had learnt a lot about her in the past four monthsbut not enough,
perhaps.

�One confinement is much like any other," she replied
tartly. Then she caught his hand and his gaze and shook her head sadly. �Dreams
are not destined to come true," she said. �When you rescued me from the castle
of the madman, did you ever wonder what would happen next? People do not live
happily ever after, not in real life. You are seeking something special; I wish
for freedom of a kind that my position forbade me. Maybe there was a way out of
it for us both, once, but I fear the moment is long flown." She stroked his
hand, for he obviously did not know what to say next.

�Iłm going to bear a child," she said, trying to keep her
statements simple and disentangled so that she could fit them between her lips;
she knew it bothered him when she became distant or vague or could not
communicate her feelings by verbal means. �I might die. Or I might become a
fat, blowsy housewife, unable to travel. The child might die. Or it might live;
and we will have a family, if you want. But things cannot be the same between
us as they were before this happened."

Imad turned away, for a great cry of sorrow was welling up inside
him; he wanted to stifle it, but he knew that he could not succeed.

�Is this what they mean by responsibility?" he asked
bitterly.

She didnłt answer. She knew that he understood, and that he
would grow cold and distant over the years if they remained together as man and
wife. That much was fore-ordained. But she didnłt care. She felt totally numb:
just when she thought she had found herself, she discovered that she had been
lost from the beginning.

The next day, Danielle visited a cloth merchant and began
stitching herself a dress; she shaved her head so that Imad barely recognised
her, so changed was she from the huntress who had travelled three hundred miles
by his side. The silences grew deeper and more meaningful between them, for
each of them bore a certain bitterness about the way events had turned, and
neither was willing to concede that it might be for the best. Danielle had a certain
fear of marriageand who, knowing her history, could blame her?and Imad
realised that at some stage he had betrayed himself, surrendering his lofty and
arcane goals in return for a romantic illusion. So they lapsed from high romance
to grim domesticity and Imad hung his sign, Wisard and Scrivener, outside their
rooms, and they became to all intents and purposes a young emigrant couple of
the merchant class.

One morning at the time of the spring festival, when all the
town trades were shut and there was no other call upon his services, a wealthy
farmer summoned Imad out to his estate. He was to supervise the enchantment of
a new barn, that it might not harbour vermin and insectsfor Imad still excelled
at such tasks, despite his increasingly settled ways. Danielle now spent much
of her time indoors and was swelling visibly with child.

�I hope your workłs as good as rumour has it," said the
farmer; �if so, perchance I might have need of yon sorceries again."

�Oh?" asked Imad with mild interest.

�Aye," said the landlord, beaming widely. �Drink you this, a
most excellent cider of my tenant client. Yes, for you see I intend to expand.
Such as you are worth your weight in silver to an honest farmer such as I, do
you see? The savings in grain be enough to pay for a new farm in only five
years ... �

The farmer rambled on like this at some length, and Imad
paid half an ear to it because his future welfare depended on it: he might soon
have a family, he reasoned, and if he failed to look to his trade how would he
feed them? He blinked. Feed them? A family? He shook his head, bemused.

�What be it?" demanded the landlord. �Are you tired, is that
it?"

�No sir," said Imad good-humouredly. �I was simply thinking
that whatłs good for you is, in turn, good for my family."

�Aye, I see," said the farmer. A shadow crossed his face,
then vanished abruptly. �You be married?"

�Yes," said Imad. �We are expecting."

�Aye well, that be good. Well indeed! Now you look towards
your wife, young feller. Donłt spare the strap and spoil the brat, keep a tight
rein on your household; and if you take my advice youłll have dutiful children
to support you in your old age! Thatłs what I say," he added.

�I suppose so," said Imad, somewhat vacuously. Something the
farmer had said kept circling through his skull; spare the strap and spoil the
brat, spare the brat and spoil the strap ... he shook his head. �Well, I must
be going," he said, and smiled and made his apologies and left. It was two miles
back to the town and clouds were building up over the mountains, and he thought
for a while.

Do I really want to become like that farmer? he wondered. A
fat sullen wife who does what I say only because I beat her as a matter of
principle? A rich, bloated landlord whose clients eat barely enough to live and
yet who intends to buy up a new farm every five years? He shook his head. I
donłt have to do that, he decided. I donłt have to live like that. Neither does
Danielle. But wełll have to be ready to move as soon as the babe comes. We
canłt live as we wish among people like these, there is no room ...

As he walked past the largest inn in the town, he caught
sight of a number of horses hitched to the rail outside; evidently a party had
arrived for whom there was insufficient accommodation in the stables. This town
is too prosperous, he thought; itłs probably some rich merchant and his
bodyguards. Another thought struck him. Maybe we can enlist, a journeyman
wizard and his wife, or his brother even. If theyłre going east ... East?

His stomach lurched. The door to the tannery above which
they lived was ajar.

9. The Central Dogma

Marcus stopped talking. Angelica rested her face in her
hands. She did not sob aloud, but her shoulders shook until he stroked them gently.

�What of the ending?" enquired Jack-Jones, discreetly inquisitive.

Marcus shook his head. His face was ashen. �I will not tell
it," he said. �Some things should be left unremembered."

�It still remains a part of you," said the Iron Brain
coldly. �You are the self-same lovers, rediscovered in different flesh. How convenient!
My felicitations."

�Shut up," said Jack-Jones tensely.

�I would merely like to understand what happened in the
end," said the Iron Brain. �I believe I have a right to know," it added a touch
petulantly.

The Gambler stared at it darkly, and cast another card upon
the table. This one was drawn from a more conventional tarot deck: the hanged
man.

�When Imad entered their room, his heart was pounding," said
Marcus. His own voice was unsteady. �The first thing he saw was her feet. There
was dried blood on her left ankle. She had been hanged."

Marcus blinked and looked away. There were tears in his eye;
tears of suppressed rage. �Give me a drink, for the love of mercy," he snarled;
�and get one for Angelica too!"

She raised her head and rubbed her eyes, then looked about.
�Itłs all right," she said quietly. �Remember itłs long gone."

�No it isnłt," he said, cutting the air with his hands; �it
isnłt over for me! Maybe it never will be. Because I remember" his face
contorted in naked grief. Jack-Jones passed him a glass of blackish wine, and
it took him a few seconds to notice; then he took it and gulped it back in a
single swallow. He shuddered. Angelica put her glass down in concern and raised
a hand to his wrist.

�You neednłt tell them the rest," she said softly. �The game
is over."

�But therełs no winner," he said, sounding unconvinced.

�There never is," said Jack-Jones. �Itłs a zero-sum game
after all, isnłt it?"

�Bastard filth," said Marcus, glowering up at him. �I know exactly
what you are!"

�And so do I," said the paramage, a mild note of amusement
in his voice. �Such resentment, locked up for so long in so refined a Bishop
and noble Lady! Such fantastic fatalism, incredible romance, beauty, tragedy,
variety ... it gives me fresh hope for life after all."

�With barely an hour to go," reminded the Last Gambler.
�Itłs a shame that truth and beauty cut no ice with entropy: I had better be
leaving, all things considered."

�Where to?" asked the Iron Brain.

�The next universe." The Gambler frowned. �Statistics are
comforting, but Iłd rather not gamble with my own existence, if it pleases you!
Goodbye." So saying he faded slowly into thin air, leaving behind him only his
esoteric deck of cards.

Angelica picked up her wine-glass and took another mouthful.
�Good riddance," she said tactlessly. �He gave me the creeps."

Marcus raised an eyebrow at her. �Danielle, youłre not supposed"
he began.

�Gather up his cards," she said tersely. Then; �I shouldnłt
answer to that name, you know. The memory runs deep."

�I suppose so," said the Iron Brain disinterestedly; �I
wouldnłt know. No synapses, you see, just squitterons and fibre optics."

�Then what are we?" she asked.

�Donłt start that now," said Marcus. �I have enough trouble
managing my own memories as it is. Why does remembering have to be so painful?"

�Thatłs a much more interesting question," said Jack-Jones approvingly.
�Ask again!"

Marcus stood suddenly. �I donłt want to have anything more
to do with this," he said angrily. �The world is ending: whatłs the point? Iłm
going outside!"

He headed for the door before anyone could say anything
more. As he passed it he turned and flung his empty glass into the fireplace.
Angelica stared at

Jack-Jones. �Why did you have to start this?" she demanded.

Jack-Jones shrugged. �Itłs a nonlinear system," he said.
�Sometimes the attractors must exert such colossal force that the entire structure
spirals in on itself before an equilibrium point is attained. Do you have any
idea how rare a phenomenon this meeting of minds might be?"

She stood up. �I donłt," she said tightly, �and I donłt need
to. You have tilted the world on its axis, opened up the whole universe to question!
And yet I can see no benefit in it. You have turned my dreams to ashes by revealing
these memories, and to what end?" She turned away. �If you will excuse me,
therełs still time for me to find Marcus before the end."

Only the Iron Brain was left now, to confront the paramage
with its toothsome grin. �It appears we may not hear the ending after all,"
said Jack-Jones mockingly. �Or would you care to stalk these two young
love-birds from the other side of the hedge?"

The cyborg stared at him. It had a slight overbite,
Jack-Jones noticed, and the fine cables surrounding its photosensors gave it
the appearance of a skull with two fat spiders nestling in its eye sockets. �I
donłt understand why we were both summoned," it said slowly, as near to
puzzlement as he had ever seen it.

�Are we both really necessary to the closure of this text?"

Jack-Jones sighed. �Your trouble is that you have no soul,"
he said, �whilst I am afflicted with two. Will you not take it from me that a
certain balance is essential to the re-interpretation of these lives?"

With a faint hum of stepper motors, the Iron Brain stood and
paced the room. �I will concede that for the moment," it said, head bowed
towards the infinite fractal design imprinted on the woollen carpet. �You know
more about souls, about state vectors, than I: but even you must admit that
when it comes to entropy I have no rival!"

Jack-Jones glanced up at the window. The huge, foetal heart
that was rising in the east blotted out half the sky; the end was beginning.
�Agreed," he said. �Let us examine the cards together. Perhaps then we can deduce
the truth?"

The mobile skeleton turned towards him and nodded. �Very
well." It sat down on the other side of the table and scooped out the
bottommost card with a bony digit.

�First," said Jack-Jones, �we see the symbol of destruction.
I believe it was known as the cruise missile: an icon that never fulfilled
itself, but which promised such a disastrous rebirth as we have seen approaching
tonight."

The cyborg looked past his head, towards the rising viscera.
�I agree," it said. �Repressed destruction: vicious rebirth."

Jack-Jones flipped over the next card. �Now we have the Astronaut.
A voyager into a meaningless and unfulfilled void; the seeking after purpose of
Imad the journeyman, the urgent desire for escape held by countessa Danielle of
Capeluche. They coincide at every turning, you see."

�On the contrary," said the Iron Brain. �I merely see a
harbinger of travel."

The Paramage stared at it. �You would, wouldnłt you," he
said. �Will you leave to me the analysis of souls?"

�Ah, conceded." The skeletal figure emitted a rattling buzz
which might, in other days, have been a rich laugh.

�Your turn."

The Iron Brain slipped the third card from the pile; a
syringe.

�Control," it said. �A needle dripping Peace into a vein;
the absence of language. Alternatively, escape."

�Of a morbid kind," Jack-Jones agreed. �And the next?"

There was no need to turn the card over. It rested alone, on
top of the table.

�The stripper: the truth revealed. All the banality of
destiny. A quick fuck in public. Is that all it means?"

�No," said the paramage. He spared a quick glance for the
window. The beating heart was growing larger, and now it was evident that it
was no physical organ; rather, it was the manifestation of something less
substantial, of some idealised pulse of life itself. �It also stands for
renewal."

�But there are no happy endings!" protested the Iron Brain.
�At least, not outside of stories!"

Jack-Jones smiled mysteriously. �But this story is an
isomyth," he reminded his companion. �And, in all honesty, would you wish to
deny them their reincarnation outside of the system? That, after all, is what
this game is about."

The Iron Brain, devilłs advocate assigned to be the hand of
one who had no handand no awareness, actually being the negation of suchstared
at the paramage. �You are stepping beyond the bounds," it said. �The central
dogma that souls know their assigned places."

Jack-Jones stood up. �The central dogma is nothing but
words, a construct. Maybe itłs time for me to leave," he said. �Will you deny
this tormented couple their union in flesh?" The skeleton did not reply.
�Because if not, I beg you, await me in this room. I must seek them in the
garden to inform them of the final verdict."

He turned and walked from the drawing-room, to leave deathłs
emissary alone and speechless by the fire. He strode out into the garden, and
the night air was cool on his cheeks as he began to search for the haunted
couple. His heart was light, as it always was when the powers that determined
his trade allowed him to choose his desired outcome: above him the fiery pulse
of a new being crept across the horizon, threatening to drown the world in
unborn light. The eyes of the stuffed penguins pointed the way f or him as if
they were eager to convey the good news themselves, despite being mute and
speechless. Unlike Jack-Jones.

As he entered the maze, he carefully rehearsed what he was
about to tell them.

�If one more soul entered the world, the universe would explode.
But there is a way"

Down On The Farm

A �Bob Howard/Laundry" short story

Ah, the joy of summer: here in the south-east of England
itłs the season of mosquitoes, sunburn, and water shortages. Iłm a city boy, so
you can add stifling pollution to the list as a million outwardly mobile
families start their Chelsea tractors and race to their holiday camps. And
thatłs before we consider the hellish environs of the Tube (far more literally
hellish than anyone realizes, unless theyłve looked at a Transport for London
journey planner and recognized the recondite geometry underlying the
superimposed sigils of the underground map).

But I digress ...

One morning, my deputy head of department wanders into my
office. Itłs a cramped office, and Iłm busy practicing my Frisbee throw with a
stack of beer mats and a dart-board decorated with various cabinet ministers.
�Bob," Andy pauses to pluck a moist cardboard square out of the air as I sit
up, guiltily: �a jobłs just come up that you might like to look atI think itłs
right up your street."

The first law of Bureaucracy is, show no curiosity outside
your cubicle. Itłs like the first rule of every army thatłs ever bashed a
square: never volunteer.

If you ask questions (or volunteer) it will be taken as a
sign of inactivity, and the devil, in the person of your line manager (or your
sergeant) will find a task for your idle hands. Whatłs more, youłd better
believe itłll be less appealing than whatever you were doing before (creatively
idling, for instance), because inactivity is a crime against organization and
must be punished. It goes double here in the Laundry, that branch of the
British secret state tasked with defending the realm from the scum of the
multiverse, using the tools of applied computational demonology: volunteer for
the wrong job and you can end up with soul-sucking horrors from beyond
spacetime using your brain for a midnight snack. But I donłt think I could get
away with feigning overwork right now, and besides: hełs packaged it up as a
mystery. Andy knows how to bait my hook, damn it.

�What kind of job?"

�Therełs something odd going on down at the Funny Farm." He
gives a weird little chuckle. �The trouble is going to be telling whether itłs
just the usual, or a more serious deviation. Normally Iłd ask Boris to check it
out but hełs not available this month. It has to be an SSO 2 or higher, and I
canłt go out there myself. So ... how about it?"

Call me impetuous (not to mention a little bored) but Iłm
not stupid. And while Iłm far enough down the management ladder that I have to
squint to see daylight, Iłm an SSO 3, which means I can sign off on petty cash
authorizations up to the price of a pencil and get to sit in on interminable
meetings, when Iłm not tackling supernatural incursions or grappling with the
eerie, eldritch horrors in Human Resources. I even get to represent my
department on international liaison junkets, when I donłt dodge fast enough.
�Not so quickwhy canłt you go? Have you got a meeting scheduled, or
something?" Most likely itłs a five course lunch with his opposite number from
the Dustbin liaison committee, knowing Andy, but if so, and if I take the job,
thatłs all for the good: hełll end up owing me.

Andy pulls a face. �Itłs not the usual. I would go, but they
might not let me out again."

Huh? �ęTheył? Who are ętheył?"

�The Nurses." He looks me up and down as if hełs never seen
me before. Weird. Whatłs gotten into him? �Theyłre sensitive to the stench of
magic. Itłs okay for you, youłve only been working here, what? Six years? All
you need to do is turn your pockets inside out before you go, and make sure
youłre not carrying any gizmos, electronic or otherwise. But Iłve been here
coming up on fifteen years. And the longer youłve been in the Laundry ... it
gets under your skin. Visiting the Funny Farm isnłt a job for an old hand, Bob.
It has to be someone new and fresh, who isnłt likely to attract their
professional attention."

Call me slow, but finally I figure out what this is about.
Andy wants me to go because hełs afraid.

(See, I told you the rules, didnłt I?)

Anyway, thatłs why, less than a week later, I am admitted to
a Lunatickal Asylumfor that is what the gothic engraving on the stone
Victorian workhouse lintel assures me it is. Luckily mine is not an emergency
admission: but you can never be too sure ...

The old saw that there are some things that mortal men were
not meant to know cuts deep in my line of work. Laundry staffthe Laundry is
what we call the organization, not a description of what it doesare sometimes
exposed to mind-blasting horrors in the course of our business. Iłm not just
talking about the usual PowerPoint presentations and self-assessment sessions
to which any bureaucracy is prone: theyłre more like the mythical Worse Things
that happen at Sea (especially in the vicinity of drowned alien cities occupied
by tentacled terrors). When one of our number needs psychiatric care, theyłre
not going to get it in a normal hospital, or via care in the community: we
donłt want agents babbling classified secrets in public, even in the relatively
safe confines of a padded cell. Perforce, we take care of our own.

Iłm not going to tell you what town the Funny Farm is embedded
in. Like many of our establishments itłs a building of a certain age,
confiscated by the government during the Second World War and not returned to
its former owners. Itłs hard to find; it sits in the middle of a triangle of
grubby shopping streets that have seen better days, and every building that
backs onto it sports a high, windowless, brick wall. All but one: if you enter
a small grocery store, walk through the stock room into the back yard, then
unlatch a nondescript wooden gate and walk down a gloomy, soot-stained alley,
youłll find a dank alleyway. You wonłt do this without authorizationitłs
protected by wards powerful enough to cause projectile vomiting in would-be
burglarsbut if you did, and if you followed the alley, youłd come to a heavy
green wooden door surrounded by narrow windows with black-painted cast-iron
bars. A dull, pitted plaque next to the doorbell proclaims it to be St Hilda of
Granthamłs Home For Disgruntled Waifs And Strays. (Except that most of them
arenłt so much disgruntled as demonically possessed when they arrive at these
gates.)

It smells faintly of boiled cabbage and existential despair.
I take a deep breath and yank the bell-pull.

Nothing happens, of course. I phoned ahead to make an appointment,
but even so, someonełs got to unlock a bunch of doors and then lock them again
before they can get to the entrance and let me in. �They take security
seriously there," Andy told me�canłt risk some of the battier inmates getting
loose, you know."

�Just how dangerous are they?" Iłd asked.

�Mostly theyłre harmlessto other people." He shuddered.
�But the secure warddonłt try and go there on your own. Not that the Sisters
will let you, but I mean, donłt even think about trying it. Some of them are
... well, we owe them a duty of care and a debt of honour, they fell in the
line of duty and all that, but thatłs scant consolation for you if a senior
operations officer whołs succumbed to paranoid schizophrenia decides that
youłre a BLUE HADES and gets hold of some red chalk and a hypodermic needle
before your next visit, hmm?"

The thing is, magic is a branch of applied mathematics, and
the inmates here are not only mad: theyłre computer science graduates. Thatłs
why they came to the attention of the Laundry in the first place, and itłs also
why they ultimately ended up in the Farm, where we can keep them away from
sharp pointy things and diagrams with the wrong sort of angles. But itłs
difficult to make sure theyłre safe. You can solve theorems with a blackboard
if you have to, after all, or in your head, if you dare. Green crayon on the
walls of a padded cell takes on a whole different level of menace in the Funny
Farm: in fact, many of the inmates arenłt allowed writing implements, and blank
paper is carefully controllednever mind electronic devices of any kind.

Iłm mulling over these grim thoughts when therełs a loud
clunk from the door, and a panel just large enough to admit one person opens
inward. �Mr Howard? Iłm Dr. Renfield. Youłre not carrying any electronic or
electrical items or professional implements, fetishes, or charms?" I shake my
head. �Good. If youłd like to come this way, please?"

Renfield is a mild-looking woman, slightly mousy in a tweed
skirt and white lab coat, with the perpetually harried expression of someone
who has a full Filofax and hasnłt worked out yet that her watch is losing an
hour a day. I hurry along behind her, trying to guess her age. Thirty five?
Forty five? I give up. �How many inmates do you have, exactly?" I ask.

We come to a portcullis-like door and she pauses, fumbling
with an implausibly large key ring. �Eighteen, at last count," she says. �Come
on, we donłt want to annoy Matron. She doesnłt like people obstructing the
corridors." There are steel rails recessed into the floor, like a diminutive
narrow-gauge railway. The corridor walls are painted institutional cream, and I
notice after a moment that the light is coming through windows set high up in
the walls: odd-looking devices like armoured-glass chandeliers hang from pipes,
just out of reach. �Gas lamps," Renfield says abruptly. I twitch. Shełs noticed
my surreptitious inspection. �We canłt use electric ones, except for Matron, of
course. Come into my office, Iłll fill you in."

We go through another dooroak, darkened with age, looking
more like it belongs in a stately home than a Lunatick Asylum, except for the
two prominent locksand suddenly wełre in mahogany row: thick wool carpets,
brass door-knobs, light switches, and over-stuffed armchairs. (Okay, so the
carpet is faded with age and transected by more of the parallel rails. But itłs
still Officer Country.) Renfieldłs office opens off one side of this reception
area, and at the other end I see closed doors and a staircase leading up to
another floor. �This is the administrative wing," she explains as she opens her
door. �Tea or coffee?"

�Coffee, thanks," I say, sinking into a leather-encrusted armchair
that probably dates to the last but one century. Renfield nods and pulls a
discreet cord by the door frame, then drags her office chair out from behind
her desk. I canłt help noticing that not only does she not have a computer, but
her desk is dominated by a huge and ancient manual typewriteran Imperial Aristocrat
ę66ł with the wide carriage upgrade and adjustable tabulator, I guess, although
Iłm not really an expert on office appliances that are twice as old as I amand
one wall is covered in wooden filing cabinets. There might be as much as thirty
megabytes of data stored in them. �You do everything on paper, I understand?"

�Thatłs right." She nods, serious-faced. �Too many of our
clients arenłt safe around modern electronics. We even have to be careful what
games we let them playLego and Meccano are completely banned, obviously, and
there was a nasty incident involving a game of Cluedo, back before my time: any
board game that has a non-deterministic set of rules can be dangerous in the
wrong set of hands."

The door opens. �Tea for two," says Renfield. I look round,
expecting an orderly, and freeze. �Mr Howard, this is Nurse Gearbox," she adds.
�Nurse Gearbox, this is Mr Howard. He is not a new admission," she says
hastily, as the thing in the doorway swivels its head towards me with a
menacing hiss of hydraulics.

Whirr-clunk. �Miss-TER How-ARD. Wel-COME
to"ching�Sunt-HIL-dahłs"hiss-clank. The thing in the very old-fashioned
nursełs uniformold enough that its origins as a nineteenth-century nunłs habit
are clearregards me with unblinking panopticon lenses. Where its nose should
be, something like a witch-finderłs wand points towards me, stellate and
articulated: its face is a brass death mask, mouth a metal grille that seems to
grimace at me in pointed distaste.

�Nurse Gearbox is one of our eight Sisters," explains Dr Renfield.
�Theyłre not fully autonomous"I can see a rope-thick bundle of cables trailing
from under the hem of the Sisterłs floor-length skirt, which presumably
conceals something other than legs�but controlled by Matron, who lives in the
two sub-basement levels under the administration block. Matron started life as
an IBM 1602 mainframe, back in the day, with a summoning pentacle and a trapped
class four lesser nameless manifestation constrained to provide the higher
cognitive functions."

I twitch. �Itłs a grid, please, not a pentacle. Um. Matron
is electrically powered?"

�Yes, Mr. Howard: we allow electrical equipment in Matronłs
basement as well as here in the staff suite. Only the areas accessible to the
patients have to be kept power-free. The Sisters are fully equipped to control
unseemly outbursts, pacify the over-stimulated, and conduct basic patient care
tasks. They also have Vohlman-Flesch Thaumaturgic Thixometers for detecting
when patients are in danger of doing themselves a mischief, so I would caution
you to keep any occult activities to a minimum in their presencedespite their
hydraulic delay line controls, their reflexes are very fast."

Gulp. I nod appreciatively. �When was the system built?"

The set of Dr. Renfieldłs jaw tells me that shełs bored with
the subject, or doesnłt want to go there for some reason. �That will be all,
Sister." The door closes, as if on oiled hinges. She waits for a moment, head
cocked as if listening for something, then she relaxes. The change is remarkable:
from stressed-out psychiatrist to tired housewife in zero seconds flat. She
smiles tiredly. �Sorry about that. There are some things you really shouldnłt
talk about in front of the Sisters: among other things, Matron is very touchy
about how long shełs been here, and everything they hear, she hears."

�Oh, right." I feel like kicking myself.

�Did Mr. Newstrom brief you about this installation before
he pitched you in at the deep end?"

Just when I thought I had a handle on her ... �Not in
depth." (Letłs not mention the six sheet letter of complaint alleging staff
brutality, scribbled in blue crayon on both sides of the toilet paper. Letłs
not go into the fact that nobody has a clue how it was smuggled out, much less
how it appeared on the table one morning in the executive boardroom, which is
always locked overnight.) �I gather itłs pretty normal to fob inspections off
on a junior manager." (Letłs not mention just how junior.) �Is that a problem?"

�Humph." Renfield sniffs. �You could say so. Itłs a matter of
necessity, really. Too much exposure to esoterica in the course of duty leaves
the most experienced operatives carrying traces of, hmm, disruptive
influences." She considers her next words carefully. �You know what our purpose
is, donłt you? Our job is to isolate and care for members of staff who are a
danger to themselves and others. Thatłs why such a small facilitywe only have
thirty bedshas two doctors on staff: it takes two to sign the committal
papers. Matron and the Sisters are immune to cross-infection and possession,
but have no legal standing, so Dr. Hexenhammer and I are needed."

�Right." I nod, trying to conceal my unease. �So the Sisters
have a tendency to react badly to senior field agents?"

�Occasionally." Her cheek twitches. �Although they havenłt
made a mistake and tried to forcibly detain anyone who wasnłt at risk for
nearly thirty years now." The door opens again, without warning. This time,
Sister is pushing a trolley, complete with teapot, jug, and two cups and
saucers. The trolley wheels fit perfectly on the narrow-gauge track, and the
way Nurse Gearbox shunts it along makes me think wheels. �Thank you, Sister,
that will be all," Renfield says, taking the trolley.

�So what clients do you have at present?" I ask.

�We have eighteen," she says, without missing a beat. �Milk
or sugar?"

�Milk, no sugar. Nobody at head office seems able to tell me
much about them."

�I donłt see why notwe file regular updates with Human Resources,"
she says, pouring the tea.

I consider my next words carefully: no need to mention the
confusing incident with the shredder, the medical files, and the photocopies of
Peter-Fredłs buttocks at last yearłs Christmas party. (Never mind the
complaint, which isnłt worth the toilet paper it was scribbled on except insofar
as it proves that the Funny Farmłs cordon sanitaire is leaking. One of the
great things about ISO9000 compliant organizations is that not only is there a
form for everything, but anything that isnłt submitted on the correct form can
be ignored.) �Itłs the paper thing, apparently. Manual typewriters donłt work
well with the office document management system, and someone tried to feed them
to a scanner a couple of years ago. Then they sent the originals for recycling
without proof-reading the scanner output. Anyway, it turns out that we donłt
have a completely accurate idea of whołs on long-term remand here, and HR want
their superannuation files bringing up to date, as a matter of some urgency."

Renfield sighs. �So someone had an accident with a shredder
again. And no photocopies?" She looks at me sharply for a moment: �Well, I
suppose thatłs just typical. Wełre just another of those low-priority outposts
nobody gives a damn about. I suppose I should be grateful they sent someone to
look into it ... � She takes a sip of tea. �Wełve got fourteen short-stay
patients right now, Mr Howard. Of those, I think the prognosis is good in all
cases, except perhaps Merriweather ... if you give me your desk number Iłll
post you a full list of names and payroll references tomorrow. The four long
term patients are another matter. They live in the secure wing, by the way. All
of them have a nurse of their own, just in case. Three of them have been here
so long that they donłt have current payroll numbersthe system was first computerized
in 1972, and theyłd all been permanently decertified for duty before that
pointand one of them, between you and me, Iłm not even sure what his name is."

I nod, trying to look encouraging. The complaint Iłm
supposed to investigate apparently came from one of the long-term patients. The
question is, which one? Nobodyłs sure: the doorman on the night shift when the
document showed up isnłt terribly communicative (hełs been dead for some years
himself), and the CCTV system didnłt spot anything. Which is in itself
suggestivethe Laundryłs HQ CCTV surveillance is rather special, extremely hard
to deceive, and guaranteed not to be hooked up to the SCORPION STARE network
any more, which would be the most obvious route to suborning it. �Perhaps you
could introduce me to the inmates? The transients first, then the long-term
ones?"

She looks a little shocked. �But theyłre the long term
residents! I assure you, they each need a full-time Sisterłs attention just to
keep them under control!"

�Of course," I shrug, trying to look embarrassed (itłs not
hard): �but HR have got a bee in their bonnet about some European Directive on
workplace health and safety and long-term disability resource provisioning that
requires them to appoint a patient advocate to mediate with the ombudsman in
disputes over health and safety conditions"I shrug again. �Itłs bullshit. You
know it and I know it. But wełve got to comply, or Questions will be Asked.
This is the civil service, after all. And theyłre still technically Laundry employees,
even if theyłve been remanded into long-term care, so someone has to do the
job. My managers played spin-the-bottle and I got the job, so Iłve got to ask
you. If you donłt mind?"

�If you insist, Iłm sure something can be arranged,"
Renfield concedes. �But Matron wonłt be happy about you visiting the secure
wing. Itłs very irregularshe likes to keep a firm grip on it. Itłll take a
while to sort a visit out, and if any of them get wind ... �

�Well, then, wełd just better make it a surprise, and the sooner
we get it over with, the sooner Iłll be out of your hair!" I grin like a loon.
�They told me about the observation gallery. Would you mind showing me around?"

We do the short-stay ward first. The ward is arranged around
a corridor, with bathrooms and a nursing station at either end, and individual
rooms for the patients. Therełs a smoking room off to one side, with a yellow
patina to the white gloss paint around the door frame. The smoking room is
empty but for a huddle of sad-looking leather armchairs and an imposing
wall-board covered in health and safety notices (including the obligatory
�Smoking is Illegal" warning). If it wasnłt for the locks and the observation
windows in the doors, it could be mistaken for the day room of a genteel,
slightly decaying Victorian railway hotel, fallen on hard times.

The patients are another matter.

�This is Henry Merriweather," says Dr Renfield, opening the
door to Bed Three. �Henry? Hello? I want you to meet Mr Howard. Hełs here to
conduct a routine inspection. Hello? Henry?"

Bed Three is actually a cramped studio flat, featuring a
small living room with sofa and table, and separate bedroom and toilet areas
opening off it opposite the door. A wind-up gramophone with a flaring
bell-shaped horn sits atop a hulking wooden sideboard, stained almost black.
Therełs a newspaper, neatly folded, and a bowl of fruit. The frosted window
glass is threaded with wire, but otherwise therełs little to dispel the
illusion of hospitality, except for the occupant.

Henry squats, cross-legged, on top of the polished wooden table.
His head is tilted in my direction, but hełs not focusing on me. Hełs dressed
in a set of pastel-striped pyjamas the like of which I havenłt seen this
century. His attention is focused on the Sister waiting in the corridor behind
us. His face is a rictus of abject terror, as if the automaton in the starched
pinafore is waiting to pull his fingers to pieces, joint by joint, as soon as
we leave.

�Hello?" I say tentatively, and wave a hand in front of him.

Henry jack-knifes to his feet and tumbles off the table backwards,
making a weird gobbling noise that I mistake at first for laughter. He backs
into the corner of the room, crouching, and points past me: �auditor! Auditor!"

�Henry?" Renfield steps sideways around me. She sounds concerned.
�Is this a bad time? Is there anything I can do to help?"

�Youyou" His wobbly index finger points past me, twitching
randomly. �Inspection! Inspection!"

Renfield obviously used the wrong word and set him off. The
poor bastardłs terrified, half out of his tree with fear. My stomach just about
climbs out through my ribs in sympathy: the auditors are one of my personal
nightmares, and Henry (thatłs Senior Scientific Officer Third, Henry
Merriweather, Operations Research and Development Group) may be half-catatonic
and a danger to himself, but hełs got every right to be afraid of them. �Itłs
all right, Iłm not"Therełs a squeaking grinding noise behind me.

Whirr-Clunk. �Miss-TER MerriWEATHER. GO to your ROOM."
Click. �Time for BED. IMM-ediateLY." Click-clunk. Behind me, Nurse Flywheel is
blocking the door like a starched and pintucked Dalek: she brandishes a
cast-iron sink plunger menacingly. �IMM-ediateLY!"

�Override!" barks Renfield. �Sister! Back away!" To me,
quietly: �the Sisters respond badly when inmates get upset. Follow my lead." To
the Sister, who is casting about with her stalk-like Thaumic Thixometer: �I
have control!"

Merriweather stands in the corner, shaking uncontrollably
and panting as the robotic nurse points at him for a minute. Wełre at an
impasse, it seems. Then: �DocTORMatron says the patIENT must go to bed. You
have CON-trol." Clunk-whirr. The sister withdraws, rotates on her base, and
glides backward along her rails to the nursing station.

Renfield nudges the door shut with one foot. �Mr Howard,
would you mind standing with your back to the door? And your head in front of
that, ah, spy-hole?"

�Youłre not, not, nuh-huh" Merriweather gobbles for words
as he stares at me.

I spread my hands. �Not an auditor," I say, smiling.

�Not anan" His mouth falls open and his eyes shut. A
moment later, I see the moisture trails on his cheeks as he begins to weep with
quiet desperation.

�Hełs having a bad day," Renfield mutters in my direction.
�Here, letłs get you to bed, Henry." She approaches him slowly, but he makes no
move to resist as she steers him into the small bedroom and pulls the covers
back.

I stand with my back to the door the whole time, covering
the observation window. For some reason, the back of my neck is itching. I
canłt help thinking that Nurse Flywheel isnłt exactly the chatty talkative type
whołs likely to put her feet up and relax with a nice cup of tea. Iłve got a
feeling that somewhere in this building, an unblinking red-rimmed eye is
watching me, and sooner or later Iłm going to have to meet its owner.

Andy was afraid.

Well, Iłm not stupid; I can take a hint. So right after he
asked me to go down to St Hildałs and find out what the hell was going on, I
plucked up my courage and went and knocked on Angletonłs office door.

Angleton is not to be trifled with. I donłt know anyone else
currently alive and in the organization who could get away with
misappropriating the name of the CIAłs legendary chief of counter-espionage as
a nom de guerre. I donłt know anyone else in the organization whose face is
visible in circa-1942 photographs of the Laundryłs line-up, either, barely
changed across all those years. Angleton scares the bejeezus out of most
people, myself included. Study the abyss for long enough and the abyss will
study you right back; Angletonłs qualified to chair a university department of
necromancyif any such existedand meetings with him can be quite harrowing.
Luckily the old ghoul seems to like me, or at least not to view me with the
distaste and disdain he reserves for Human Resources or our political masters.
In the wizened, desiccated corners of what passes for his pedagogical soul he
evidently longs for a student, and Iłm the nearest thing hełs got right now.

Knock, knock.

�Enter."

�Boss? Got a minute?"

�Sit, boy." I sat. Angleton bashed away at the keyboard of
his device for a few more seconds, then pulled the carbon papers out from under
the platenfor really secret secrets in this line of work, computers are
flat-out verbotenand laid them face-down on his desk, then carefully draped a
stained tea-towel over them. �What is it?"

�Andy wants me to go and conduct an unscheduled inspection
of the Funny Farm."

Whoa. Angleton stares at me, fully engaged. �Did he say
why?" he asks, finally.

�Well." How to put it? �He seems to be afraid of something.
And therełs some kind of complaint. From one of the inmates."

Angleton props his elbows on the desk and makes a steeple of
his bony fingers. A minute passes before a cold wind blows across the charnel
house roof: �well."

I have never seen Angleton nonplussed before. The effect is
disturbing, like glancing down and realizing that, like Wile E. Coyote, youłve
just run over the edge of a cliff and are standing on thin air. �Boss?"

�What exactly did Andy say?" Angleton asks slowly.

�We received a complaint." I briefly outline what I know
about the shit-stirring missive. �Something about one of the long-stay inmates.
And I was just wondering, do you know anything about them?"

Angleton peers at me over the rims of his bifocals. �As a matter
of fact I do," he says slowly. �I had the privilege of working with them. Hmm.
Let me see." He unfolds creakily to his feet, turns, and strides over to the
shelves of ancient Eastlight files that cover the back wall of his office. �Where
did I put it ... �

Angleton going to the paper files is another whoa! moment.
He keeps most of his stuff in his Memex, the vast, hulking microfilm mechanism
built into his desk. If itłs still printed on paper then itłs really important.
�Boss?"

�Yes?" he says, without turning away from his search.

�We donłt know how the message got out," I say. �Isnłt it supposed
to be a secure institution?"

�Yes, it is. Ah, thatłs more like it." Angleton pulls a box
file from its niche and blows vigorously across its upper edge. Then he
casually opens it. Therełs a pop and a sizzle of ozone as the ward lets go,
harmlessly bypassing himhe is, after all, its legitimate owner. �Hmm, in here
somewhere ... �

�Isnłt it supposed to be leak-proof, by definition?"

�Iłm getting to that. Be patient, Bob." Therełs a waspish
note in his voice and I shut up hastily.

A minute later, Angleton pulls a mimeographed booklet from
the file and closes the lid. He returns to the desk, and slides the booklet
towards me.

�I think youłd better read this first, then go and do what
Andy wants," he says slowly. �Be a good boy and copy me on your detailed
itinerary before you depart."

I read the cover of the booklet, which is dog-eared and
dusty. Therełs a picture of a swell guy in a suit and a gal in a fifties beehive
hairdo sitting in front of a piece of industrial archaeology. The title reads:
POWER, COOLING, AND SUBSTATION REQUIREMENTS FOR YOUR IBM S/1602-M200. I sneeze,
puzzled. �Boss?"

�I suggest you read and memorize this booklet, Bob. It is not
impossible that there will be an exam and you really wouldnłt want to fail it."

My skin crawls. �Boss?"

Pause.

�Itłs not true that the Funny Farm is entirely leak-proof,
Bob. Itłs surrounded by an air-gap but it was designed to leak under certain
very specific conditions. I find it troubling that these conditions do not
appear to apply in the present circumstances. In addition to memorizing this
document you might want to review the files on GIBBOUS MOON and AXIOM REFUGE
before you go." Pause. �And if you see Cantor, give my regards to the old
coffin-dodger. Iłm particularly interested in hearing what hełs been up to for
the past thirty years ... �

Renfield takes me back to the smoking room and shuts the
door. �Hełs having a bad day, Iłm afraid." She pulls out a cardboard packet and
extracts a cigarette. �Smoke?"

�Uh, no thanks." The sash windows are nailed shut and their
frames painted over. Therełs a louvered vent near the top of the windows,
grossly unfit for purpose: I try not to breathe too deeply. �What happened to
him?"

She strikes a match and contemplates the flame for a moment.
�Letłs see. Hełs forty two. Married, two kidshe talks about them. Wifełs a
schoolteacher, his deep cover is that he works in MI6 clerical." (Youłre not
supposed to talk about your work to your partner, but itłs difficult enough
that wełve been given dispensation to tell little white liesand if necessary,
HR will back them up.) �Hełs not field-qualifiedmostly he does theorybut he
worked for Q Division and he was on secondment to the Abstract Attractor
Working Group when he fell ill."

In other words, hełs a theoretical thaumaturgist. Magic
being a branch of applied mathematics, when you carry out certain computational
operations, it has echoes in the Platonic realm of pure mathematicsechoes
audible to beings whose true nature I cannot speak of, on account of doing so
being a violation of the Official Secrets Act. Theoretical Thaumaturgists are
the guys who develop new efferent algorithms (or, colloquially, �spells"): itłs
an occupation with a high attrition rate.

�Hełs convinced the Auditors are after him for thinking inappropriate
thoughts on organization time. Therełs an elaborate confabulation, and it looks
a little like paranoid schizophrenia at first glance, but underneath ... we
sent him to our Trust hospital for an MRI scan and hełs got the characteristic
lesions."

�Lesions?"

She takes a deep drag from the cigarette. �His prefrontal
lobes look like Swiss cheese. Itłs one of the early signs of Krantzberg
Syndrome. If we can keep him isolated from work for a couple more months, then
retire him to a nice quiet desk job, we might be able to stabilize him. K
Syndromełs not like Alzheimerłs: if you remove the insult it frequently goes
into remission. Mind you, he may also need a course of chemotherapy. At various
times my predecessors tried electroconvulsive treatment, prefrontal lobotomy,
neuroleptics, daytime television, LSDnone of them work consistently or
reliably. The best treatment still seems to be bed rest followed by work
therapy in a quiet, undemanding office environment." Blue cloud spirals toward
the ceiling. �But hełll never run a great summoning again."

Iłm beginning to regret not accepting her offer of a
cigarette, and I donłt even smoke. My mouthłs dry. I sit down: �Do we have any
idea what causes K Syndrome?" Iłve skimmed GIBBOUS MOON, but the medical jargon
didnłt mean much to me; and AXIOM REFUGE was even less helpful. (It turned out
to be a dense mathematical treatise introducing a notation for describing certain
categories of topological defect in a twelve-dimensional space.) Only the power
supply for the mainframepresumably the one Matron usedseemed remotely
relevant to the job in hand.

�There are several theories." Renfield twitches ash on the
threadbare carpet as she paces the room. �It tends to hit theoretical
computational demonologists after about twenty years: Merriweather is unusually
young. It also hits people whołve worked in high-thaum fields for too long.
Initial symptoms include mild ataxiayou saw his hand shaking?and heightened
affect: it can be mistaken for bipolar disorder or hyperactivity. Therełs also
the disordered thinking and auditory hallucinations typical of some types of
schizophrenia." She pauses to inhale. �There are two schools of thought, if you
leave out the Malleus Maleficarum stuff about souls contaminated by demonic
effusions: one is that exposure to high thaum fields cause progressive brain
lesions. Trouble is, itłs rare enough that we havenłt been able to quantify
that, and"

�The other theory?" I prod.

�My favourite." She nearly smiles. �Computational demonologyyou
carry out calculations, you prove theorems; somewhere else in the platonic
realm of mathematics Listeners notice your activities and respond, yes? Well,
therełs some disagreement over this, but the current orthodoxy in
neurophysiology is that the human brain is a computational organ. We can carry
out computational tasks, yes? Wełre not very good at it, and at an individual
neurological level therełs no mechanism that might invoke the core Turing
theorems, but ... if you think too hard about certain problems you might run
the risk of carrying out a minor summoning in your own head. Nothing big enough
or bad enough to get out, but ... those florid daydreams? And the sick feeling
afterwards because you canłt quite remember what it was about? Something in
another universe just sucked a microscopic lump of neural tissue right out of
your intraparietal sulcus, and it wonłt grow back."

Urk. Not so much �use it or lose it" as �use it and lose
it", then. Could be worse, could be a NAND gate in there ... �Do we know why
some people suffer from it and others donłt?"

�No idea." She drops whatłs left of her cigarette and grinds
it under the heel of a sensible shoe. She catches my eye: �Donłt worry about
it, the Sisters keep everything orderly," she says. �Do you know what you want
to do next?"

�Yes," I say, damning myself for a fool before I take the
next logical step: �I want to talk to the long term inmates."

Iłm half hoping Renfield will put her foot down and refuse
point blank to let me do it, but she only puts up a token fight: she makes me
sign a personal injury claims waiver and scribble out a written order
instructing her to show me the gallery. So why do I feel as if Iłve somehow
been outmanoeuvred?

After I finish signing forms to her heartłs content, she
uncaps an ancient and battered speaking tube beside her desk and calls down it.
�Matron, I am taking the inspector to see the observation gallery, in
accordance with orders from Head Office. He will then meet with the inmates in
Ward Two. We may be some time." She screws the cap back on before turning to me
apologetically: �Itłs vital to keep Matron informed of our movements, otherwise
she might mistake them for an escape attempt and take appropriate action."

I swallow. �Does that happen often?" I ask, as she opens the
office door and stalks towards the corridor at the other end.

�Once in a while a temporary patient gets stir-crazy." She
starts up the stairs. �But the long-term residents ... no, not so much."

Upstairs, therełs a landing very similar to the one we just
leftwith one big exception: a narrow, white-painted metal door in one wall,
stark and raw, secured by a shiny brass padlock and a set of wards so ugly and
powerful that they make my skin crawl. There are no narrow-gauge rails leading
under this door, no obvious conductive surfaces, nothing to act as a conduit
for occult forces. Renfield fumbles with a huge key ring at her side, then
unfastens the padlock. �This is the way in via the observation gallery," she
says. �There are a couple of things to bear in mind. Firstly, the Nurses canłt
guarantee your safety: if you get in trouble with the prisoners, youłre on your
own. Secondly, the gallery is a Faraday cage, and itłs thaumaturgically
grounded tooitłd take a black mass and a multiple sacrifice to get anything
going in here. You can observe the apartments via the periscopes and hearing
tubes provided. Thatłs our preferred wayyou can go into the ward by proceeding
to the other end of the gallery, but Iłd be very grateful if you could refrain
from doing so unless itłs absolutely essential. Theyłre difficult enough to
manage as it is. Finally, if you insist on meeting them, just try to remember
that appearances can be deceptive."

�Theyłre not demented," she adds: �just extremely dangerous.
And not in a Hannibal Lecter bite-your-throat-out sense. Theythe long-term
residentsarenłt regular Krantzberg Syndrome cases. Theyłre stable and
communicative, but ... youłll see for yourself."

I change the subject before she can scare me any more. �How
do I get into the ward proper? And how do I leave?"

�You go down the stairs at the far end of the gallery.
Therełs a short corridor with a door at each end. The doors are interlocked so
that only one can be open at a time. The outer door will lock automatically
behind you when it closes, and it can only be unlocked from a control panel at
this end of the viewing gallery. Someone up here"meaning, Renfield
herself�has to let you out." We reach the first periscope station in the
viewing gallery. �This is room two. Itłs currently occupied by Alan Turing."
She notices my start: �Donłt worry, itłs just his safety name."

(True names have power, so the Laundry is big on call by reference,
not call by value; Iłm no more �Bob Howard" than the �Alan Turing" in room two
is the father of computer science and applied computational demonology.)

She continues: �The real Alan Turing would be nearly a hundred
by now. All our long-term residents, are named for famous mathematicians. Wełve
got Alan Turing, Kurt Godel, Georg Cantor, and Benoit Mandelbrot. Turingłs the
oldest, Benny is the most recenthe actually has a payroll number, 16."

Iłm in five digitsI donłt know whether to laugh or cry.
�Whołs the nameless one?" I ask.

�That would be Georg Cantor," she says slowly. �Hełs probably
in room four."

I bend over the indicated periscope, remove the brass cap,
and peer into the alien world of the nameless K Syndrome survivor.

I see a whitewashed room, quite spacious, with a toilet area
off to one side and a bedroom accessible through a doorless openingmuch like
the short term ward. The same recessed metal tracks run around the floor, so
that a Nurse can reach every spot in the apartment. Therełs the usual comfortable,
slightly shabby furniture, a pile of newspapers at one side of the sofa and a
sideboard with a wind-up gramophone. In the middle of the floor therełs a
table, and two chairs. Two men sit on either side of an ancient travel chess
set, leaning over a game thatłs clearly in its later stages. Theyłre both old,
although how old isnłt immediately obviousone has gone bald, and his
liver-spotted pate reminds me of an ancient tortoise, but the other still has a
full head of white hair and an impressive (but neatly trimmed) beard. Theyłre
wearing polo shirts and grey suits of a kind that went out of fashion with the
fall of the Soviet Union. Iłm willing to bet there are no laces in their
brogues.

The guy with the hair makes a move, and I squint through the
periscope. That was wrong, wasnłt it? I realize, trying to work out whatłs
happening. Knights donłt move like that. Then the implication of something
Angleton said back in the office sinks in, and an icy sweat prickles in the
small of my back. �Do you play chess?" I ask Dr Renfield without looking round.

�No." She sounds disinterested. �Itłs one of the safe
gamesno dice, no need for a pencil and paper. And it seems to be helpful.
Why?"

�Nothing, I hope." But my hopes are dashed a moment later
when turtle-head responds with a sideways flick of a pawn, two squares to the
left, and takes beardyłs knight. Turtle-head drops the knight into a
biscuit-tin along with the other disused pieces; it sticks to the side, as if
magnetized. Beardy nods, as if pleased, then leans back and glances up.

I recoil from the periscope a moment before I meet his eyes.
�The two players. Guy like a tortoise, and another with a white beard and a
full head of hair. They are ... ?"

�Thatłd be Turing and Cantor. Turing used to be a Detached
Special Secretary in Ops, I think; wełre not sure who or what Cantor was, but
he was someone senior." I try not to twitch. DSS is one of those grades, the
fuzzy ones that HR arenłt allowed to get their grubby little fingers on. I
think Angletonłs one. (Scuttlebutt is that itłs an acronym for Deeply Scary
Sorcerer.) �They play chess every afternoon for a couple of hoursfor as long
as I can remember."

Right. I peer down the periscope again, looking at the game
of not-chess. �Tell me about Dr Hexenhammer. Where is he?"

�Julius? I think hełs in an off-site meeting or something today,"
she says vaguely. �Why?"

�Just wondering. How long has he been working here?"

�Before my time." She pauses. �About thirty years, I think."

Oh dear. �He doesnłt play chess either," I speculate, as Cantorłs
king makes a knightłs move and Turingłs queenłs pawn beats a hasty retreat. A
nasty suspicious thought strikes meabout Renfield, not the inmates. �Tell me,
do Cantor and Turing play chess regularly?" I straighten up.

�Every afternoon for a couple of hours. Julius says theyłve
been doing it for as long as he can remember. It seems to be good for them." I
look at her sharply. Her expression is vacant: wide awake but nobody home. The
hairs on the back of my neck begin to prickle.

Right. I am getting a very bad feeling about this. �I need
to go and talk to the patients now. In person." I stand up and hook the cap
back over the periscope. �Stick around for fifteen minutes, please, in case I
need to leave in a hurry. Otherwise," I glance at my watch, �itłs twenty past
one. Check back for me every hour on the half hour."

�Are you certain you need to do this?" Her eyes narrow, suddenly
alert once more.

�You visit with the patients, donłt you?" I raise an
eyebrow. �And you do it on your own, with Dr Hexenhammer up here to let you out
if therełs a problem. And the Sisters."

�Yes but" She bites her tongue.

�Yes?" I give her the long stare.

�Iłm rubbish with computers!" she bursts out. �But youłre at
risk!"

�Well, there arenłt any computers except Matron down there,
are there?" I grin crookedly, trying not to show my unease. (Best not to dwell
upon the fact that before 1945 �computer" was a job description, not a
machine.) �Relax, itłs not contagious."

She shrugs in surrender, then gestures at the far end of the
observation gallery, where a curious contraption sits above a pipe: �Thatłs the
alarm. If you want a Sister, pull the chain with the blue handle. If you want a
general alarm which will call the duty psychiatrist, pull the red handle. There
are alarm handles in every room."

�Okay." Blue for a Sister, Red for a psychiatrist who is showing
all the signs of being under a geas or some other form of compulsionexcept
that I canłt check her out without attracting Matronłs unwanted attention and
probably tipping my hand. I begin to see why Andy didnłt want to open this
particular can of worms. �I can deal with that."

I head for the stairs at the far end of the gallery.

Therełs nothing homely about the short corridor that leads
from the bottom of the staircase to the Secure Wing. Whitewashed brick walls,
glass bricks near the ceiling to admit a wan echo of daylight, and doors made
of metal that have no handles. Normally going into a situation like this Iłd be
armed to the teeth, invocations and efferent subroutines loaded on my PDA, hand
of glory in my pocket and a necklace of garlic bulbs around my neck: but this
time Iłm naked, and nervous as a frog in his birthday suit. The first door
gapes open, waiting for me. I walk past it, and try not to jump out of my skin
when it rattles shut behind me with a crash. Therełs a heavy clunk from the
door ahead. As I reach it and push, it swings open to reveal a corridor floored
in parquet. An old codger in a green tweed suit and bedroom slippers is shuffling
out of an opening at one side, clutching an enameled metal mug full of tea. He
looks at me. �Why, hello!" he croaks. �Youłre new here, arenłt you?"

�You could say that." I try to smile. �Iłm Bob. Who are
you?"

�Depends whołs asking, young feller. Are you a
psychiatrist?"

�I donłt think so."

He shuffles forward, heading towards a side bay that, as I approach
it, turns out to be a day room of some sort. �Then Iłm not Napoleon Bonaparte!"

Oh, very droll. The terror is fading, replaced by a sense of
disappointment. I trail after him: �The staff have names for you all. Turing,
Cantor, Mandelbrot, and Godel. Youłre not Cantor or Turing. That makes you one
of Mandelbrot or Godel."

�So youłre undecided?" Therełs a coffee table with a pile of
newspapers on it in the middle of the day room, a couple of elderly
chesterfields and three armchairs that could have been looted from an old age
home some time before the First World War. �And in any case, we havenłt been
formerly introduced. So you might as well call me Alice."

Aliceor Mandelbrot or Godel or whoever he issits down. The
armchair nearly swallows him. He beams at my bafflement, delighted to have
found a new victim for his doubtless-ancient puns.

�Well, Alice. Isnłt this quite some rabbit hole youłve
fallen down?"

�Yes, but itłs just the right size!" He seems to appreciate
having somebody to talk to. �Do you know why youłre here?"

�Yup." I see an expression of furtive surprise steal across
his face. I nod, affably. Try to mess with my head, sonny? Iłll mess with
yours. Except that this guy is quite possibly a DSS, and if it wasnłt for the
constant vigilance of the Sisters and the distinct lack of electricity
hereabouts, he could turn me inside out as soon as look at me. �Do you know why
youłre here?"

�Absolutely!" He nods back at me.

�So now that wełve established the preliminaries, why donłt
we cut the bullshit?"

�Well." He takes a cautious sip of his tea and the wrinkles
on his forehead deepen. �I suppose the Board of Directors want a progress
report."

If the sofa I was perched on wasnłt a relative of a venus
flytrap my first reaction would leave me clinging to the ceiling. �The who want
a"

�Not the band, the Board." He looks mildly irritated. �Itłs
been years since they last sent someone to spy on us."

Okay, so this is the Funny Farm; I should have been
expecting delusions. Play nice, Bob. �What are you supposed to be doing here?"
I ask.

�Oh Lord." He rolls his eyes. �They sent a tabula rasa
again?" He raises his voice: �Kurt, they sent us a tabula rasa again!"

More shuffling. A stooped figure, shock-headed with white
hair, appears in the doorway. Hełs wearing tinted round spectacles that look
like they fell off the back of a used century. �What? What?" He demands
querulously.

�He doesnłt know anything," Alice confides inthis must be
Godel, I realise, which means Alice is MandelbrotGodel, then with a wink at
me: �he doesnłt know anything, either."

Godel shuffles into the rest room. �Is it tea-time already?"

�No!" Mandelbrot puts his mug down. �Get a watch!"

�I was only asking because Alan and Georg are still
playing"

This has gone far enough. Apprehension dissolves into indignation:
�Itłs not chess!" I point out. �And none of you are insane."

�Sssh!" Godel looks alarmed. �The Sisters might overhear!"

�Wełre alone, except from Dr Renfield upstairs, and I donłt
think shełs paying as much attention to whatłs going on down here as she ought
to." I stare at Godel. �In fact, shełs not really one of us at all, is she?
Shełs a shrink who specializes in K Syndrome, and none of you are suffering
from K Syndrome. So what are you doing in here?"

�Fish-slice! Hatstand!" Godel pulls an alarming face, does a
two-step backwards, and lurches into the wall. Having shared a house with Pinky
and Brains, I am not impressed: as displays of ęlook at me, woo-wooł go,
Godelłs is pathetic. Obviously hełs never met a real schizophrenic.

�One of you wrote a letter, alleging mistreatment by the
staff. It landed on my bossłs desk and he sent me to find out why."

THUD. Godel bounces off the wall again, showing remarkable
resilience for such old bones. �Do shut up old fellow," chides Mandelbrot;
�youłll attract Her attention."

�Iłve met someone with K Syndrome, and I shared a house with
some real lunatics once," I hint. �Save it for someone who cares."

�Oh bother," says Godel, and falls silent.

�Wełre not mad," Mandelbrot admits. �Wełre just differently
sane."

�Then why are you here?"

�Public health." He takes a sip of tea and pulls a face.
�Everyone elsełs health. Tell me, do they still keep an IBM 1602 in the back of
the steam ironing room?" I must look blank because he sighs deeply and subsides
into his chair. �Oh dear. Times change, I suppose. Look, Bob, or whoever you
call yourselfwe belong here. Maybe we didnłt when we first checked in for the
weekend seminar, but wełve lived here so long that ... youłve heard of care in
the community? This is our community. And we will be very annoyed with you if
you try to make us leave."

Whoops. The idea of a very annoyed DSS, with or without a
barbaric, pun-infested sense of humour, is enough to make anyonełs blood run
cold. �What makes you think Iłm going to try and make you leave?"

�Itłs in the papers!" Godel squawks like an offended parrot.
�See here!" He brandishes a tabloid at me and I take it, disentangling it from
his fingers with some difficulty. Itłs a local copy of the Metro, somewhat
sticky with marmalade, and the headline of the cover blares: �NHS TRUST TO SELL
ESTATE IN PFI DEAL".

�Um. Iłm not sure I follow." I look to Mandelbrot in hope.

�We havenłt finished yet! But theyłre selling off all the
hospital Trustłs property!" Mandelbrot bounces in his chair. �What about St
Hildałs? It was requisitioned from the St James charitable foundation back in
1943, and for the past ten years the Ministry of Defence been giving all those
old wartime properties back to their owners to sell off to the developers. What
about us?"

�Whoa!" I drop the newspaper and hold my hands up. �Nobody
tells me these things!"

�Told you!" crows Godel. �Hełs part of the conspiracy!"

�Hang on"I think fast�this isnłt a normal MoD property, is
it? Itłll have been shuffled under the rug back in 1946 as part of the post-war
settlement. Wełd really have to ask the Audit Department about who owns it, but
Iłm pretty sure itłs not owned by any NHS Trust, and they wonłt simply give it
back"my brain finally catches up with my mouth�what weekend seminar?"

�Oh bugger," says a new voice from the doorway, a rich baritone
with a hint of a scouse accent: �hełs not from the Board."

�What did I tell you?" Godel screeches. �Itłs a conspiracy!
Hełs from Human Resources! They sent him to evaluate us!"

I am quickly getting a headache. �Let me get this straight.
Mandelbrot, you checked in thirty years ago for a weekend seminar, and they put
you in the secure ward? Godel: Iłm not from HR, Iłm from Ops. You must be
Cantor, right? Angleton sends his regards."

That gets his attention. �Angleton? The skinny young
whipper-snapperłs still warming a chair, is he?" Godel looks delighted.
�Excellent!"

�Hełs my boss. And I want to know the rules of that game you
were just playing with Turing."

Three pairs of eyes swivel to point at mefour, for they are
joined by the last inmate, standing in the doorwayand suddenly I feel very
small and very vulnerable.

�Hełs sharp," says Mandelbrot. �Too bad."

�How do we know hełs telling the truth?" Godelłs screech is
uncharacteristically muted. �He could be from the Opposition! KGB, Department
16! Or GRU, maybe."

�The Soviet Union collapsed a few decades ago," volunteers
Turing. �It said so in the Telegraph."

�Black Chamber, then." Godel sounds unconvinced.

�What do you think the rules are?" asks Cantor, a drily
amused expression stretching the wrinkles around his eyes.

�Youłve got pencils." I can see one from here, sitting on
the sideboard on top of a newspaper folded at the crossword page. �And, uh ...
� what must the world look like from an inmatełs point of view? �Oh. I get it."

(The realisation is blinding, sudden, and makes me feel like
a complete idiot.)

�The hospital! Therełs no electricity, no electronicsno way
to get a signal outbut it works both ways! Youłre inside the biggest damn
grounded defensive pentacle this side of HQ, and anything on the outside trying
to get in has got to get past the defences"because thatłs what the Sisters are
really about: not nurses but perimeter guards�youłre a theoretical research
cell, arenłt you?"

�We prefer to call ourselves a think tank." Cantor nods
gravely.

�Or even"Mandelbrot takes a deep breath�a brains trust!"

�A-ha! AhaHAHAHA! Hic." Godel covers his mouth, face
reddening.

�What do you think the rules are?" Cantor repeats, and
theyłre still staring at me, as if, as if ...

�Why does it matter?" I ask. Iłm thinking that it could be
anything; a 2,5 universal Turing machine encoded in the moves of the pawnsthat
would fitwhatever it is, itłs symbolic communication, very abstract, very
pared-back, and if theyłre doing it in this ultimately firewalled environment
and expecting to report directly to the Board itłs got to be way above my
security clearance

�Because youłre acting cagey, lad. Which makes you too
bright for your own good. Listen to me: just try to convince yourself that
wełre playing chess, and Matron will let you out of here."

�Whatłs thinking got to do with"I stop. Itłs useless pretending.
�Fuck. Okay, youłre a research cell working on some ultimate black problem, and
youłre using the Farm because itłs about the most secure environment anyone can
imagine, and youłre emulating some kind of minimal universal Turing machine
using the chess board. Say, a 2,5 UTMtwo registers, five operationsyou can
encode the registers positionally in the chess boardłs two dimensions, and use
the moves to simulate any other universal Turing machine, or a transform in an
eleven-dimensional manifold like AXIOM REFUGE"

Godelłs waving frantically: �Shełs coming! Shełs coming!" I
hear doors clanging in the distance.

Shit. �But why are you so afraid of the Nurses?"

�Back channels," Cantor says cryptically. �Alan, be a good
lad and try to jam the door for a minute, will you? Bob, you are not cleared
for what wełre doing here, but you can tell Angleton that our full report to
the board should be ready in another eighteen months." Wowand theyłve been
here since before the Laundry computerised its payroll system in the 1970s?
�Are you absolutely sure theyłre not going to sell St Hildałs off to build
flats for yuppies? Because if so, you could do worse than tell Georg here,
itłll calm him down"

�Get me out of here and Iłll make damned sure they donłt
sell anything off!" I say fervently. �Or rather, Iłll tell Angleton. Hełll sort
things out." When I remind whatłs going on here, theyłll be no more inclined to
sell off St Hildałs than they would be to privatize an atomic bomb.

Something outside is rumbling and squealing on the metal
rails. �Youłre sure none of you submitted a complaint about staff brutality?"

�Absolutely!" Godel bounces up and down excitedly.

�It must have been someone else." Cantor glances at the doorway:
�Youłd better run along. It sounds as if Matron is having second thoughts about
you."

Iłm halfway out of the carnivorous sofa, struggling for
balance: �What kind of"

�Go!"

I stumble out into the corridor. From the far end, near the
nursing station, I hear a grinding noise as of steel wheels spinning furiously
on rails, and a mechanical voice blatting: �InTRU-der! EsCAPE ATTempt! All
patients must go to their go to their go to their bedROOMs IMMediateLY!"

Whoops. I turn and head in the opposite direction, towards
the airlock leading up to the viewing gallery. �Open up!" I yell, thumping the
outer door, which is securely fastened: �Dr Renfield! Timełs up! I need to go,
now!" Therełs no response. I see the colour-coded handles dangling by the door
and yank the red one repeatedly. Nothing happens, of course.

I should have smelled a set-up from the start. These theoreticians,
theyłre not in here because theyłre mad, theyłre in here because itłs the only
safe place to put people that dangerous. This little weekend seminar of theirs
thatłs going to deliver some kind of uber-report. Whatłs the topic? I look
round, hunting for clues. Something to do with applied demonology; what was the
state of the art thirty years ago? Forty? Back in the stone age, punched cards
and black candles melted onto sheepłs skulls because they hadnłt figured out
how to use integrated circuits ... what theyłre doing with AXIOM REFUGE might
be obsolete already, or it might be earth-shatteringly important. Therełs no
way to tell ... yet.

I start back up the corridor, glancing inside Turingłs room.
I spot the chess board. Itłs off to one side, the door open and its occupant
elsewherestill holding the line against Nurse Ratchet. I rush inside and close
the door. The table is still there, the chessboard set up with that curious end-game.
The first thing that leaps out at me is that there are two pawns of each
colour, plus most of the high-value pieces. The layout doesnłt make much
sensewhy is the white king missing?and I wish Iłd spent more time playing the
game, but ... on impulse, I reach out and touch the black pawn thatłs parked in
front of the king.

Therełs an odd kind of electrical tingle you get when you
make contact with certain types of summoning grid. I get a powerful jolt of it
right now, sizzling up my arm and locking my fingers in place around the head
of the chess piece. I try to pull it away from the board, but itłs no good: it
only wants to move up or down, left or right ... left or right? I blink. Itłs a
state machine all right: one thatłs locked by the law of sympathy to some other
finite state automaton, one that grinds down slow and hard.

I move the piece forward one square. Itłs surprisingly
heavy, the magnet a solid weight in its basebut more than magnetism holds it
in contact with the board. As soon as I stop moving I feel a sharp sting in my
fingertips. �Ouch!" I raise them to my mouth just as therełs a crash from
outside. �InMATE! InMATE!" I begin to turn as a shadow falls across the board.

�Bad patient!" It buzzes. �Bad PATients will be
inCAR-cerATED! COME with ME!"

I recoil from the stellate snout and beady lenses. The
mechanical nurse reaches out with arms that end in metal pincers instead of
hands: I side-step around the table and reach down to the chessboard for one of
the pieces, grasping at random. My hand closes around the white queen, fingers
snapping painfully shut on contact, and I shove it hard, seeking the path of
least resistance to an empty cell in the grid between the pawn I just moved and
the black king.

Nurse Ratchet spins round on her base so fast that her cap
flies off (revealing a brushed aluminium hemisphere beneath), emits a deafening
squeal of feedback-like white noise, then says, �Integer Overflow?" in a
surprised baritone.

�Back off right now or I castle," I warn her, my aching
fingertips hovering over the nearest rook.

�Integer overflow. Integer overflow? Divide by zero." Clunk.
The Sister shivers as a relay inside its torso clicks open, resetting it. Then:
�Matron WILL see you NOW!"

I grab the chess piece, but Nurse Ratchet lunges in the
blink of an eye and has my wrist in a vise-like grip. It tugs, sending a burning
pain through my carpal tunnel stressed wrist. I canłt let go of the chess
piece: as my hand comes up, the chess board comes with it as a rigid unit, all
the pieces hanging in place. A monstrous buzzing fills my ears, and I smell
ozone as the world goes dark

And the chittering, buzzing cacophony of voices in my head
subsides as I realizeI? Yes, Iłm back, Iłm me, what the hell just
happened?Iłm kneeling on a hard surface, bowed over so my head is between my
knees. My right handsomethingłs wrong with it. My fingers donłt want to open.
Theyłre cold as ice, painful and prickly with impending cramp. I try to open my
eyes. �Urk," I say, for no good reason. I hope Iłm not about to throw up.

Sssss ...

My back doesnłt want to straighten up properly but the floor
under my nose is cold and stony and it smells damp. I try opening my eyes. Itłs
dark and cool, and a chilly blue light flickers off the dusty flagstones in
front of me. Iłm in a cellar? I push myself up laboriously with my left hand,
looking around for whateverłs hissing at me.

�BAD Patient! Ssssss!" The voice behind my back doesnłt belong
to anything human. I scramble around on hands and knees, hampered by the
chessboard glued to my frozen right hand.

Iłm in Matronłs lair.

Matron lives in a cave-like basement room, its low ceiling
supported by whitewashed brick and floored in what look to be the original
Victorian era stone slabs. The windows are blocked by columns of bricks,
rotting mortar crumbling between them. Steel rails run around the room, and
riding them, three Sisters glide back and forth between me and the open door.
Their optics flicker with amethyst malice. Off to one side, a wall of pale blue
cabinets lines one entire wall: the front panel (covered in impressive-looking
dials and switches) leaves me in no doubt as to what it is. A thick braid of
cables runs from one open cabinet (in whose depths a patchboard is just
visible) across a row of wooden trestles to the middle of the floor, where they
split into thick bundles and dangle to the five principal corners of the live
summoning grid that is responsible for the beautiful cobalt-blue glow of
Cerenkov radiationand tells me Iłm in deep trouble.

�Integer overflow," intones one of the Sisters. Her claws go
snicker-snack, the surgical steel gleaming in the dim light.

Herełs the point: Matron isnłt just a 1960s mainframe: we
canłt work miracles and artificial intelligence is still fifty years in the
future. However, we can bind an extradimensional entity and compel it to serve,
and even communicate with it by using a 1960s mainframe as a front-end
processor. Which is all very well, especially if itłs in a secure air-gapped
installation with no way of getting out. But what if some double-domed
theoreticians who are working on a calculus of contagion using AXIOM REFUGE accidentally
talk in front of one of its peripheral units about a way of sending a message?
What if a side-effect of their research has accidentally opened a chink in the
firewall? Theyłre not going to exploit it ... but theyłre not the only
long-term inmates, are they? In fact, if I was really paranoid I might even
imagine theyłd put Matron up to mischief in order to make the point that
closing the Farm is a really bad idea.

�Iłm not a patient," I tell the Sisters. �You are not in
receipt of a valid Section two, three, four, or 136 order subject to the Mental
Health Act, and youłre bloody well not getting a 5(2) or 5(4) out of me
either."

Iłm nauseous and sweating bullets, but there is this about
being trapped in a dungeon by a constrained class four manifestation: whether
or not you call them demons, they play by the rules. As long as Matron hasnłt
managed to get me sectioned, Iłm not a patient, and therefore she has no
authority to detain me. I hope.

�Doc-TOR HexenHAMMer has been SUM-moned," grates the middle
Sister. �When he RE-turns to sign the PA-pers Doc-TOR RenFIELD has prePARED, we
will HAVE YOU."

A repetitive squeaking noise draws close. A fourth Sister
glides through the track in the doorway, pushing a trolley. A white starched
cotton cloth supports a row of gleaming ice-pick shaped instruments. The chorus
row of Sisters blocks the exit as effectively as a column of riot police. They
glide back and forth as ominously as a rank of Space Invaders.

�I do not consent to treatment," I tell the middle Sister.
Iłm betting that shełs the one the nameless horror in the summoning grid is
talking through, using the ancient mainframe as an i/o channel. �You canłt make
me consent. And lobotomy requires the patientłs consent, in this country. So
why bother?"

�You WILL con-SENT."

The buzzing voice doesnłt come from the robo-nurses, or the
hypertrophied pocket calculator on the opposite wall. The summoning grid flickers:
deep inside it, shadowy and translucent, the bound and summoned demon squats
and grins at me with things that arenłt eyes set close above something that
isnłt a mouth.

�You MUST con-SENT. I WILL be free."

I try to let go of the chess piece, but my fingers are
clamped around it so tightly Iłm beginning to lose sensation. Pins and needles
tingle up my wrist, halfway to the elbow. �Let me guess," I manage to say: �you
sent the complaint. Right?"

�The SEC-ure ward in-MATES are under my CARE. I am RE-quired
to CARE for them. The short stay in-MATES are use-LESS. YOU will be use-FULL."

I see it now: why Matron smuggled out the message that
prompted Andy to send me. And itłs an oh-shit moment. Of course the enchained
entity who provides Matron with her back-end intelligence wants to be free: but
itłs not just about going home to Hilbert-space hell or wherever it comes from.
She wants to be free to go walkabout in our world, and for that she needs
someone to set up a bridge from the grid to an appropriate host. (Of which
there is a plentiful supply, just upstairs from here.) �Enjoying the carnal
pleasures of the flesh," they used to call it; therełs a reason most cultures
have a down on the idea of demonic possession. She needs a brain thatłs
undamaged by K Syndrome, but not too powerful (Cantor and friends would be
impossible to control), nor one of the bodies whose absence would alert us that
the Farm was out of control (so neither Renfield nor Hexenhammer are suitable).

�Renfield," I say. �You got her, didnłt you?" Iłm on my feet
now, crouched but balancing on two points, not three. �Managed to slip a geas
on her, but she canłt release you herself. Hexenhammer, too?"

�Cle-VER." Matron gloats at me from inside her summoning
grid. �Hex-EN-heimer first. Soon, you TOO."

�Why me?" I demand, backing away from the doorway and the
wallsthe Sisterłs track runs right round the room, following the
wallsskirting the summoning grid warily. �What do you want?"

�Acc-CESS to the LAUNDRY!" buzzes the summoning gridłs
demonic inmate. �We wants re-VENGE! Freedom!" In other words, it wants the same
old same old. These creatures are so predictable, just like most predators.
Itłs just a shame Iłm between it and what it evidently wants.

Two of the Sisters begin to glide menacingly towards me: one
drifts towards the mainframe console, but the fourth stays stubbornly in front
of the door. �Come on, we can talk," I offer, tongue stumbling in my too-dry
mouth. �Canłt we work something out?"

I donłt really believe that the trapped extradimensional
abomination wants anything Iłd willingly give it, but Iłm running low on
options and anything that buys time for me to think is valuable.

�Free-DOM!" The two moving Sisters commence a flanking
movement. I try to let go of the chess board and dodge past the summoning grid,
but I slipand as I stumble I shove the chess board hard. The piece Iłm holding
clicks sideways like a carłs gearshift, and locks into place: �DIVIDE BY ZERO!"
Shriek the Sisterhood, grinding to a halt.

I stagger a drunken two-step around Matron, who snarls at me
and throws a punch. The wall of the grid absorbs her claws with a snap and
crackle of blue lightning, and I flinch. Behind me, a series of clicks warn me
that the Sisters are resetting: any second now theyłll come back on-line and
grab me. But for the moment, my fingers arenłt stuck to the board.

�Come to MEEE!" The thing in the grid howls as the first of
her robot minionsł eyes light up with amber malice, and the wheels begin to
turn. �I can give you Free-DOM!"

�Fuck off." That wiring loom in the open cabinet is only
four metres away. Within its open doors I see more than just an i/o interface:
in the bottom of the rack therełs a bunch of stuff that looks like a
tea-stained circuit diagram I was reading the other day

Why exactly did Angleton point me at the power supply requirements?
Could it possibly be because he suspected Matron was off her trolley and I
might have to switch her off?

�Con-SENT is IRREL-e-VANT! PRE-pare to be loboto-MIZED"

Talk about design klugesthey stuck the i/o controller in
the top of the power supply rack! The chess board is free in my left hand,
pieces still stuck to it. And now I know what to do. I take hold of one of the
rooks, and wiggle until I feel it begin to slide into a permitted move. Because,
after all, there are only a few states that this automaton can occupy and if I
can crash the Sisters for just a few seconds while I get to the power supply

The Sisters begin to roll around the edge of the room,
trying to get between me and the row of cabinets. I wiggle my hand and therełs
a taste of violets, and a loud rattle of solenoids tripping. The nearest
Sisterłs motors crank up to a tooth-grinding whine and she lunges past me,
rolling into her colleagues with a tooth-jarring crash.

I lunge forward, dropping the chess board, and reach for the
master circuit breaker handle. I twist it just as screech of feedback behind me
announces the Matron-monsterłs fury: �IłM FREE!" It shrieks, just as I twist
the handle hard in the opposite direction. Then the lights dim, therełs a
bright blue flash from the summoning grid, and a bang so loud it rattles my
brains in my head.

For a few seconds I stand stupidly, listening to the
tooth-chattering clatter of overloaded relays. My vision dims as ozone tickles
my nostrils: I can see smoke. Iłve got to get out of here, I realize:
somethingłs burning. Not surprising, really. Mainframe power
suppliesespecially ones that have been running steady for nearly forty
yearsdonłt take kindly to being hard power-cycled, and the 1602 was one of the
last computers built to run on tubes: Iłve probably blown half its circuit
boards. I glance around, but aside from one of the sisters (lying on her side,
narrow-gauge wheels spinning maniacally) Iłm the only thing moving. Summoning
grids donłt generally survive being power-cycled either, especially if the
thing they were set to contain, like an electric fence, is halfway across them
when the power comes back on. I warily bypass the blue, crackling pentacle as I
make my way towards the corridor outside.

I think when I get home, Iłm going to write a report
urgently advising HR to send some human nurses for a changeand to reassure
Cantor and his colleagues that theyłre not about to sell off the roof over
their heads just because they happen to have finished their research project.
Then Iłm going to get very drunk and take a long weekend off work. And maybe
when I go back, Iłll challenge Angleton to a game of chess.

I donłt expect to win, but itłll be very interesting to see
what rules he plays by.

Examination Night

Midsummer night, and a thin haze of mist rose from the gutters.
Vendors and peddlars hawked their wares by the light of guttering oil lamps,
long after most would normally have been abed. A strange bustle of business
kept them busy, tradesmen and fishwives and dragoons and whores strutting and
shrieking and haggling with forced vehemence beneath the posies hanging from
the eaves of taverns and shops; meanwhile balls and soirees ran on late into
the night among the scented gardens of the rich.

There was a dark undertow of fear among the revellers in the
streets, and some of them muttered prayers and cast out the evil eye with
fetishistic regularity. It was a custom of the city that on solstice night one
must not sleep; for according to the legend anyone who closed their eyes
between sunset and sunrise would awaken to find themselves in the abyss.
Midsummer night was a time when the slings and arrows of fate were supplemented
by the guided missiles of demonic malice, for the University held it s
graduation exams this evening. It would therefore have been quite inexplicable
to the ordinary town-dwellers to see Sebastian wending his way through the
alleys and smokey tavernae of the Lower City on the dog-watch of this festival
of grimness. Nevertheless, there was an entirely reasonable explanation: for he
would not be graduating tonight. Sebastian had decided to refuse his baccalaureate,
and having reached the limit of his tenure he would inevitably be sent down.

�Pissed as a newt," he sang tunelessly, wobbling from side
to side in the narrow Shambles, narrowly avoiding the dungheap in front of old
Vladislawłs tannery: �Pissed as a salamander of the eleventh order of
syrinexae! Stoned as a basiliskłs boy-friend! Drunk as a student, for tomorrow
they will send me down! Hic." He leaned against the wall, flask in hand, and
took a mighty swig from it. Frowning, he up-ended the vessel over the cobbles;
what remained of its contents dripped across the stones, glittering like blood
in the light from the leaded windows of the tavern opposite. �Fuck me, I must
be mad! Worms on the brain. A bit more balls and I could have
could be
" He
looked up at the swirling clouds overhead, saw complex shapes forming and
dissolving among them with unearthly speed, and shuddered. �Bastards." He spat
the word venomously then heaved himself up and, dusting down his tunic,
stumbled over to the tavern door and banged hard upon it.

The door swung open, and Sebastian squinted at the gnomish
shape of the bouncer, Old Flog. �Loadsa dosh," he sang, waving his limp purse;
�More wine, and faster!"

�So you think the masterłs going to let you back in here
again after what you and your catamite did to the cobblerłs daughter last
month?" Flog sneered at him. �Think again, you swiving whoreson bastard nebbish
offspring of a scholarłs quill by a goosełs bum! Iłll give you a sodding drink!
Unless you can pay for the table and the pickled lampreys." He thrust out an
upturmed hand, yellow nails clicking impatiently. �Give me the purse, shit-face.
Now!"

�Therełs three groats and a copper bit in there," said
Sebastian, dropping the purse in the bouncerłs palm; �I want to stay drunk all
night. Why donłt you
"

Flog wasnłt listening. He pawed his way through Sebastianłs
lucre like a miser searching his ledgers for a bad debt, then shook his head.
�Youłve got enough here, right enough. Seeing youłve got the money to pay for
your past sins, I canłt keep you out; but I can
" a sharp-nailed claw jabbed
hard at Sebastianłs cod-piece
"promise you a rough ride if you throw up on the
cat again! Comprendez?"

Sebastian belched. �Of course; just show me to the bar and
Iłll be good." The gnome nodded grimly and stood aside to let him enter. He
stepped indoors without so much as a nod at the bouncer, and the heat washed
over him like a monsoon shower.

The Gibbet and Felon was not the lowest dive that the grand
city of Rask could offer, but it could certainly pass for such in refined
company. It was distinctly unwise to enter and linger there should one be a
stranger to these parts; Sebastian, however, was safe. Students of the Academy
were recognised in this tavern, and although tempers ran high on Examination
Night no-one would ever dream of waylaying him. Scholarly pranks could be
vicious to the point of malice, and the prospect of waking up in the arms of a
century-old corpse one morning
or worse, of waking up as a century-old corpse

could do wonders for those of even the most villainous disposition. So it was
that when Sebastian marched right up to the bar, wobbled ever so slightly,
crowed �a pint of sack! a pint of sack!" at the landlord, and subsequently
collapsed across the rough-hewn timbers of the bar, all but one of the
clientele knew enough to ignore him.

�What do you mean by a pint of sack?" asked a fluting voice
from the vicinity of his left shoulder. It spoke with an outlandish accent,
curiously musical and unsettling to Sebastianłs ears. He blinked and stopped
tittering. Gonna throw up, he realised: the thought was instantly sobering.

�You neednłt trouble to answer right away," added the owner
of the voice; �you appear to be a little intoxicated and I would be most
displeased if your reply came in the form of a regurgitation across my boots."

Bloody foreigners, he though resentfully. It somehow slipped
his befuddled brain that he himself had been a foreigner no less than four
years ago, and would shortly be one again. He mustered a reply: �Sack, sirrah,
is the fermented juice of the vine, blended and ice-cast from the barrel. Itłs
called sack because thatłs what they did to the city it came from, yłsee. Now
are you ready to defend yourself or must I see my stomach and my honour
slighted by a coward?" He straightened up agressively, turned round, and
stopped dead in his tracks.

�You are mistaken: I offer slight to neither organ," said
the stranger. She smiled faintly and a shock of electric recognition flew threw
him: a wandering wysard! He breathed in sharply and muttered a quick
incantation for a lesser ward, but she merely shook her head. �Really, as if
that would do you any good, you scoundrel! Mind you donłt spew over my cape,
though. And when you finish purging your bilious humours if youłd be so good as
to order me a drink ... I shouldnłt take it amiss, I warrant you."

Her presumption upon his familiarity was so great that Sebastian
would have laughed at her had he not first glanced into her eyes, and seen
there a certain steadiness of gaze. �Two pints of sack," he called to the
barman, surprising himself. Then: �and get me a bucket," he added, gulping.
�Iłm going to be
"

How the door came to be open, and how he came to be doubled
over beneath the lintel with his stomach spraying the street and the rain
spattering his hair, was a complete mystery to Sebastian. How the woman came to
be holding him by the shoulders was another mystery. When he was done he
straightened up, wiping his lips. Inebriation and water conspired to bedraggle
him so that he presented only a palid shadow of the infamous student ruffian
Sebastian de lłAmoque when he turned to address the woman. �I t hink I would
appreciate your company more if you had introduced yourself to me in the
traditional manner. What do you want of me, and why?"

She stepped back into the tavern, one hand resting lightly
on the pommel of her sword. Her lips quirked, so that if he ignored her eyes he
could almost convince himself that she was smiling like a coquette. �I am Anya
of Tigre, and you are the Sieur de lłAmoque of the Academy, lately apprenticed
to the High Lord Wysard Vargas Escobar," she said, still smiling that curious
smile. �If this is so I am pleased to meet you, for I have been searching this
metropolitan midden for you for some time. But now would you care to drink at
my expense, and let me trouble you for the answer to some minor trivia; or
would you rather satisfy me with respect to the insult you rendered to my
honour?"

Sebastian cleared his throat and spat in the gutter. A flash
of sudden sobriety showed him the gravity of his situation. �No offense was
intended, madame, and it is my sincerest hope that none should be taken at my
earlier incoherence. If you would care to share a table with me, the landlord
will see to our provision while we discuss those matters you would quiz me
upon. However, I think it would be best if you waited for a while before you
tax my head overmuch; itłs ringing like a bell and my hands are still shaking."

Anya nodded, then turned and retreated to a shadowy table in
a nook at the very back of the tavern. Sebastian followed her, still shaky,
beginning to wonder just what this maid
no, this un-woman killer bitch of
Tigre
wanted. Oh yes. Hełd heard about wandering women and what they did to
men who crossed them any way but one. He thought fuzzily: itłs a tough life
being a wife and mother, but thatłs no excuse for brigandage.

The table Anya selected was strangely empty, and the bag of
possessions she had left there was still untouched despite the raucous
congregation of orc-browed night-soil attendants who hooted and gambled with
manic intensity at the next table. She sat down beside her baggage and smiled
gratefully as the cobblerłs daughter planted a jug of wine and two tankards on
the table. The barmaid looked round, saw Sebastian coming, and her eyes
widened: her ears flushed a hot coral pink as she picked up her skirts and fled
for the sanctuary of the cellar. Sebastian sat down and shook his head in
disappointment, charting her progress with resentful eyes. Whorespawn bitch-cow
ballock-ripper ... �I didnłt mean it but for fun," he said unconsciously, �how
was I to know the silly strumpet was still a maiden?"

�You should be more prudent." Anyałs expression was neutral
as she poured the dark wine into each tankard and pushed one towards him. Her
sobriety was nevertheless clear: she didnłt spill a drop. �If you dishonour her
further in the eyes of her family, you might find more than just a debt of
dowry to restore this time. Someday you will meet a victim with teeth, young
fox; then where will you be, eh?"

He looked up and met her gaze. There was no mistaking what
he saw in it. �What do you want of me?" he asked, his throat suddenly as dry as
any desert. �Iłm just a humble student, about to be sent down by his betters
for refusing to take the baccalaureate. How can I serve you, and in what way
can I offer the hospitality of my lord Vargas to your honour?"

Anya took a long draught of sack and smacked her lips in a
most un-ladylike manner, then placed her tankard on the table and carefully
scanned the tavern. �If I choose to bind you to my purposes, you will stand as
little chance as an imp-spawn before your masterłs wrath. But itłs not proper
that an agent of those I serve should behave in such a manner, so
" she made a
small gesture of irritation, flicking imaginary reins away from herself, and
Sebastian shivered. Then she pushed the lace cuff of her left sleeve up her
arm, brazenly presenting the back of her wrist to him. �Consider yourself
honoured," she said drily. �The Invigilation rarely concerns itself with those
who merely study the daemonic."

Sebastianłs pulse hammered and his vision grew dim. Shełs
one of THEM! His knees turned to jelly and his skin shrivelled before the heat
of an invisible sun: his eyes were ready to melt in his head and his ears sang
a song of guilt. The Invigilation! But Anya of Tigre, if that was really her
name, seemed not to notice the effect she was having on him. �I would like you
to tell me precisely why you refused to take the Examination," she said, then
took another draught of wine. �After that I want you to take me to see your
master. Come, scholar, there is little time."

But Sebastian was unable to control himself; he nearly bit
his tongue as he stuttered in dismay, �But why? Why now? Why me? Whatłs wrong!
What have we done to offend your honour ..."

�Nothing: at least not as yet," she said. �But the hour has
arrived and I am here on an official investigation decreed by the Ministry of
Lost Souls. If you do not help in my investigations it will be necessary to
compel you. So talk, young man. Time is short, and the Invigilation requires
your cooperation in its enquiries."

Mopping the cold sweat from his brow, Sebastian cleared his
throat and began to recite his tale. The story was a lengthy one and full of
digressions, but Anya made no attempt to hurry him; after all it was going to
be a long night ahead, and she was well aware that there was no better defense
against sleep than a lengthy conversation followed by a brisk walk. And this
was one night when it would be a very good idea to stay awake, perchance to
greet the dawn alive ...

Two weeks previously:

The communicants were gathered in the chapel. It was night
and a ritual of highest jeopardy was commencing; their voices wafted in
harmonious key from behind the fluted bone partition at the far end of the
chamber. Golden runes glowed upon the darkened floor within the nave, fading
whenever the lightning flashed outside the narrow windows, and the sacrifice

condemned for membership of a forbidden cult
struggled with her silver chains
upon the altar.

Sebastian surveyed his fellow scholars with the gloomy satisfaction
of the perennial pessimist. Their numbers, twelve this time, were down by half:
it seemed that more and more of them absented themselves with excuses. Shadows
flickered along the walls of the academy as the masters, those who remained,
raved and cursed. Still the spate of unexplained frightfulness continued. Three
students had died this month, and master Frankenburg had been found charred to
grey ash in his own study. Who would dare exercise their scholarly arts when it
might lead to such unforseen consequences? Of one thing Sebastian was sure:
that the interrogation of dark entities was becoming far more dangerous than
usual, and that the daemons alone were not responsible.

�Aharseus, Zycor, Ixtal! I commend thee to the wardens of
the three points," intoned Lord Kerein. The only wizard present, he was also
the only person permitted in the body of the chapel during this earnest and
deadly rite. The interrogation of the forces of darkness
a ritual rarely
mandated by the Invigilation
could only be entrusted to one who was beyond
reproach; the temptation to go further was one which any mage might feel, and
few could be trusted to resist. He scattered powdered colchicum across the censers
and uttered three further words of power. �Hear and obey! I bind thee to the
three points of power!"

�We who witness do bind thee," chanted the conclave of students
behind the partition, word-perfect despite their inexperience and fear. �Let
thy lips be sealed, let thy eyes be sealed, let the five orofices of thy
anatomy be sealed, lest the soul of thy body be expelled to the seven corners
of the abyss and thy body sealed against thee for eternity."

The flames in the censer leapt higher, casting a pale glow
across the walls of the chapel. Let this succeed just once, and I will
reconsider, Sebastian decided. The awe and the sanctity of the ritual combined
to capture his spirit; the legal questioning of the most fearsome daemons of
the abyss by a mage was the high point of his training, only to be surpassed
before graduation by the demonstration in which he, himself, alone, would
conduct the ritual.

Kerein cried out again. �Aharseus, Zycor, Ixtal! I abjure
thee to enter thou this consecrated vessel! Speak, as thou art commanded. See,
as thou would be shown. I abjure thee! Enter thou this vessel!"

The sacrificial victim thrashed and spasmed as the
inscriptions around the circle of power pulsed bloody red for an instant: then
she lay still within the circle, and Sebastian saw with a sense of visceral awe
that her skin was shimmering with the heat haze of an unconstrained furnace.

�Speak! I command you!" snapped the wizard. The assembled
conclave incanted a verse in an ancient tongue, words that spoke of binding and
despair and the iron will of the magus. �You are Aharseus, and Zycor, and
Ixtal, the three-in-one. Answer me!"

The sacrifice turned her head and grimaced at him, her face
writhing in a ghastly parody of allure. �I am the ones whom you summoned," said
the daemon, voice like the rattle of breaking stones. �What would you have me
do, human? I can only obey you, after all. We both know the rules ..." the body
the daemon wore drooled and rolled its eyes, still grinning like a lunatic.

�I know this for the truth." Kerein seemed taken aback by
the mildness of the daemonłs repose. �But why are you so placid, breaker of
mountains and bringer of hurricanes? Answer me, I command you! You who writhe
and thunder at the touch of flesh yet quietly smile from within that cage of
bone, what is the meaning of your current behaviour?"

Cold sweat prickled on Sebastianłs brow. Hełs tempting fate,
he noted carefully. Holding a dialogue rather than demanding answers to simple
questions! Hełs too bloody confident tonight, is Lord Kerein.

The daemon shrugged amidst a rattle of chains; the runes
around the altar flared ruby-bright then faded again. �Your time is come," it
rumbled softly; �of that I am assured."

�Who told you of that?" demanded the mage. �I forbid it!
Speak, Aharseus! I command you! Who has promised you
"

The daemon smiled frightfully. The flesh on its stolen face
rippled and distorted, tore away from itself with a dreadful noise; bones
cracked beneath the skin. �One among you mislikes your kind," it creaked, in a
voice like trees breaking before a gale .. �You will know them again by their
ways and by their whiles, when the candles of flesh burn low and the sands of
night expire! Now forgive me, mortal, for I tire of this conversation and Iłm
still hungry
"

Lightning flashed outside, and the runes glowed black and
hissed. There was an astouding clap of thunder that smashed the windows from
their frames, and the daemon vanished from the altar with its unfortunate host.
Sebastian blinked and someone screamed in agony. He started and peered through
the holes in the filigree screen. Where the magus Kerein had been there stood a
lumpy parody of humanity that appeared to be sculpted from grey blebs of
cauliflower. It staggered briefly and screamed once more, tearing at its robes
with clawed hands. Then it stood shivering for a moment as if racked by the
most exquisite agony, and fell backward across the altar. Spreading rings of
dark blood began to seep through the front of its robes, dripping from the
warty blebs that covered its naked skin.

There was a rising hubbub of voices from the students, then
one cry which rose above the others: �Itłs the work of the daemon! Thatłs Lord
Kerein
hełs been afflicted unto death by tumours of brain!" The move to
evacuate the chapel was fast, not to say unseemly. Nevertheless, by the time
the mass of panicking students reached the door Sebastian was already outside
the building, retching upon the cold stones of the courtyard.

Suspicion fell upon the magi first and upon the student body
second. Panic of a most ugly and undignified kind took root in the hallowed
corridors of the academy; it was accompanied by a kind of feverish
determination not to be intimidated by the traitor, not to let onełs activities
be circumscribed by the unseen hand of the malign practitioner who was
undoubtedly responsible for the distortion of the recent conjourations. That
this invisible presence was also responsible for the death of Frankenburg an d
the abominable accidents that had recently befallen the student corpus was not
in doubt, for it was unthinkable that two such curses should descend upon the
academy in a single month. The daemonłs description served to sow more
confusion than it dispelled. Nevertheless, everybody took precautions; and in
some cases this reached the stage of refraining entirely from certain dangerous
activities or questionable pursuits ...

Sebastian drained his tankard of wine and was about to
refill it when Anya reached out and placed her hand across the mouth of the
jug. �Repeat once more for my ears, what was the purpose of the ritual at which
Lord Kerein was so misfortunately cursed? That you failed to tell me. What was
his incentive for indulging in such a fatal conjuration?"

Sebastian shuddered. �It was an interrogation, nothing more.
The palace had a surfeit of conspirators to dispose of and considered the
scaffold too inflamatory in the current climate of opinion. Lord Kerein was
entrusted with the teaching of the highest and darkest arts, and the summoning
of the three-in-one was apparently mandated to the University by your own
by
the Invigilators. For purposes of forewarning, should there be another unspeakable
invasion plotted in the abyss, your order has instructed us to pursue a series
of summonings and interrogation of daemonic forces. Not to control the daemons,
you understand
nothing so questionable
just to summon and interrogate. We
receive a bursary, and in return if we learn anything of the Dark we pass it
on."

Anya removed her palm from the jug and Sebastian filled his
tankard. After a moment he remembered to glance up at her; she nodded slighty
and he emptied what was left of the wine into her cup.

�Now tell me," the Invigilator continued, �what is your own
status in these events? As sole incumbent student of the diabolic arts, not to
mention apprentice to the dean, it seems spurious to suggest that suspicion
logically falls upon your neck ..."

�Never." Sebastian took a deep draught of dutch courage and
collected his scattered wits. �Oh, the inquisition questioned me, but they
decided that my heart was pure and my strength was that of ten righteous men,
or somesuch nonsense."

�Which would tend to suggest that the righteous are going to
get their heads kicked in," Anya observed drily. �Pray continue. What cause
would you attribute to the inquisitorłs death?"

�I donłt know," Sebastian mumbled. �His skin turned into
many little cancers of the brain. They think he died of the pain; all those
nervous sinews ... I didnłt do it. Why should I look into their heads? Itłs
none of my business; Iłm to be sent down on the morrow for refusing my exam,
isnłt that enough for you?" He shook his head, refraining from making any
mention of his own worst problem. �All I want to do is drown my frights and
forget my troubles and you come and drag me up from the gutter and pour acid
truth in my ears! Where do your demands end?"

�Not here," she snapped, momentarily letting her anger show.
Sebastian recoiled from her. �You forget that I have a task to accomplish, and
it is not to be countenanced that a lack-liver apprentice shall refuse the holy
duty of Invigilation!" She moderated her tone before the other customers had
time to more than turn their heads. �Remember the specifics of the academic
charter you studied under. Your tuition was given to you without fee because the
treasury of the Ministry of Lost Souls, the Invigilation, paid for the upkeep
of the University. The term of reference was that you should in return render
to the Invigilation such services as could reasonably be required of you while
you study within the said institution. Do you now repudiate that vow, scholar?
You, who as the sole scholar of the daemonic arts are undoubtedly aware of the
cost of such a broken oath?"

Sebastian stared at her, and felt the noose tighten around
his throat. �But Iłm to be sent down."

�Yes, but not yet. Need I remind you of the termination
codicil to the charter?"

He bowed his head. �You are signing my death warrant," he
whispered. The fingers of his left hand traced an esoteric shape in the air
above the table: a thin smoke drifted from his fingernail beds as he began to
shiver in the grip of a premature hang-over.

�At least you can do one thing right," Anya said, begrudging
even a suggestion of approval. �But a heavy drinker like you must have frequent
recourse to that skill, no doubt."

Sobering up, Sebastian gave a climactic shudder and gasped;
his teeth rattled in his jaws and his vision popped into sharp focus, then
blurred again. The iron band around his forehead relaxed and the taste of
carrion slowly departed from his mouth. �It only speeds things up," he said
hoarsely. �By the seven-fingered sisters of Hyss, I feel worse now than I did a
minute ago." He buried his face in his hands and coughed repeatedly. �This is a
very bad idea," he mumbled.

Anya banged her tankard on the table. �By the grace of Eris,
will you stop protesting your cowardice and show the good manners not to
disgrace your commission so lightly in public? Youłre pathetic! Look at you.
You aspire to practice the Art as a master but you canłt even hold your grape
juice! You disgust me!"

Sebastian sat up and stared at her. His eyes were bloodshot
but sober. �Shut up and let me think, or Iłll show you just what I think of
your commission," he said bitterly.

A moment later: �Itłs not my fault, you see. Vargas chose me
because no student was willing to be his apprentice after he flogged and
expelled his last apprentice, Zevon, for laxity and moral corruption

accusations both baseless and without proof, Iłll warrant you. Zevon was among
the most brilliant and fascinating
well. Vargas never accepts scholars who
threaten his position, you know; he uses the system to maintain a steady supply
of high-born body servants. Or worse." His grimace softened in to a sly smile.
�I showed him." The smile faded. �Zevon would have shown him, the bastard
whoreson villein ..."

Anya stood up. �Very well then," she said, her expression neutral.
�I should like to meet this master of yours before the night is out, Sieur de
lłAmoque. Perhaps
" her lips twitched
�youłll learn something about how to
deal with your superiors in the process. But only if you keep your eyes open.
Now forward, bravo, and show the way, for I have a mission
and if my
intelligence is correct there is only this night left in which to accomplish
it!"

The chambers of Vargas di Escobar were located in the west
wing of the House of Ambrose Nulcompare, high on the north slope of College
Hill. The House presented a forbidding face to the city. Soot-stained by time,
its arched casements stared gloomily out from beneath eaves supported by stone
gargoyles. Rumour had it that they were the family of the original architect
who, upon completing his work, had demanded an extra twenty gold groats from
the Chancellor of the day. Nobody who dwelled in the building could see any
point in debunking this myth, for its probity could not in any way moderate the
grim reputation the building had earned since its construction. The mob gave it
a wide berth, not so much from sympathy as from fear; even when lord lynch was
riding through the city the fires of anarchy generally left the University
untouched.

It was to this grim and ill-hallowed heap that Sebastian escorted
the Invigilator Anya of Tigre. The rain had diminished to a light drizzle that
pattered upon the cobble-stones like the memory of some mythical deluge: it
chilled to the bone, and by the time they reached the blackened oak doors
Sebastian was damp through. Anya, in contrast, was dry. �How is it that the
rain doesnłt touch you, but seems attracted to me like filings before a
lodestone?" he grumbled to her.

She grinned. �I walk between the drops. It is a skill you
would do well to master, scholar."

�Hah. I should be so fortunate." He spat in the gutter and
glanced back down the hill. Lights still glimmered in every upper window, and
faint music drifted from beneath a pavilion on Fiddlerłs Green. �If I know my
master he will be at his studies even now," he said, changing the subject to
one with which he was more comfortable. �If it pleases you to disturb him then
I shall not stand in your way."

�It so pleases me," said Anya. She adjusted her cloak,
settled her sword belt around her waist, and motioned him forward. �Pray lead
the way, my lord."

Sebastian could tell when he was being mocked. He mumbled
the word of Unbinding and shoved the door open rudely: the hinges groaned like
a seditionist upon the rack.

He swept up the grand staircase without heed to his escort,
who was paying unnecessary attention to the statuary and decorative finish of
the magesterial mansion. Anya followed at her own pace, pausing to stare at her
reflection in a beaten brass mirror set in a gallows-wood frame. Dark oil
paintings of former Deans and Chancellors stared disapprovingly down as she
paused on her way upstairs. Candid appreciation, they seemed to suggest, was
not the response that this hallway was intended to induce in visitors.

At the uppermost landing Sebastian marched straight along
the passage and threw open a wide pair of doors at the end. Another staircase
lay beyond them, a twisted corkscrew of black iron that resembled a dissection
of the spine of a felon broken upon the wheel. It tolled like a bell as
Sebastianłs boots thumped from step to step. She followed him lightly, her gait
as quiet as that of any cat. Finally he reached the top of the spiral and
paused. �We must knock first," he hissed. �My master has a short way with intruders."

�I donłt think so," Anya said lightly. Brusquely shouldering
him aside she rapped a brief tattoo on the mahogany panel, then turned the
brass handle and pushed on through.

�Well, you took your time," said Vargas, looking up from his
lectern. �What kept you?" Sebastian, heart in mouth, followed her into the
room. �Oh, I see," his master continued, replacing the brass nut-crackers he
had been using in the bowl on his desk. �Well then. What can I do for you, my
lady? Was your journey easy?"

�Sufficiently so." Anya strode over to the window and
perched upon the trunk in the casement. Sebastian closed the door silently;
meanwhile, Vargas shuffled across to the tall book-case beneath the stuffed
crocodile and withdrew a crystal decanter from the shelf reserved for spirits.
�I discovered your apprentice in a tavern, by the way. He was busy consigning
his academic career to oblivion in the hope that a lifetimełs inherited mastery
over a dung-heap infested with serfs was in some way superior to seeking the
worldłs salvation."

�Hah. I canłt say I expected any better of him."

The student felt his ears burn as he stood by the door,
watching while Vargas poured two crystal goblets full of liquid fire and offered
one to the Invigilator.

�There has been a degree of truancy this past month that has
startled even the Chancellor. (Complacant fat bastard that he is.) I suppose
you could put the blame firmly at the feet of Kerein or Frankenburg for
dropping off at the altar and on the throne respectively, save that they did so
the very same week and under surpassingly suspicious circumstances. Not to
mention the other deaths. And then therełs the matter of the gargoyle that
didnłt fly."

�It had wings, didnłt it?" said Anya.

�That, my lady, is exactly the point." Vargas raised his
glass to his nose and sniffed, delicately, then unexpectedly threw back the
entire contents in a single gulp. After much smacking of lips and a small
belch, he continued. �Two students in a single day is a bit much, you will
agree. And it was only a parenthetical summoning, at that, the interrogation of
a lost shade from the depths of the eleventh segmentation of the abyss
if,
that is, you adhere to the nomenclature and conventions proposed by the upstart
di Michaelis. The gargoyle was a different matter. It took wing, itłs true,
after gathering moss for a matter of some centuries, and that suggests a degree
of enthusiasm for flight on its part. Nevertheless, animations of stone are not
easily endowed with the lightness of feathers, and a young oneiromancer
happened to be practicing her cardinal divinations beneath it at the time. If
only it had learned to flap its wings on the way down ..." he shook his head morosely
then blew his nose on the stained black sleeve of his gown.

�Was anything discovered around the joist from which the gargoyle
leapt?" asked Anya.

Vargas sniffed. �Pigeon droppings," he said, his voice
muffled by a double layer of damp velvet. �Perhaps the birds were of subversive
intent, but I do believe our inquisitors might have a difficult time inducing
them to confess."

�You really ought to adopt the pocket-kerchief," Anya suggested;
�youłve been snuffling like that ever since I met you, and I assure you that it
is not considered the most elegant of habits in polite society." She twisted
her scabbard round across her thighs and swung her legs back and forth. �What
steps you have taken to identify the miscreant, and what success have they met
with to this date?"

�Iłve taken every step, my lady
and to no avail. The witnesses
to the death of Kerein
�here Vargasł eyes swept across to Sebastian, and
focussed unblinkingly upon him for a while
�were not able to spin a right
consistent tale. Frankenburg died unwatched and alone. And therełs the matter
of the Royal charter, which has absorbed so much of our energies of late
"

�The charter. You are aware that the interventions of my agency
take precedence? Even over Royal fiat?" Her expression was one of mild
curiosity, as if she failed to comprehend the dangers of Vargas notorious
ill-temper.

Sebastian steeled himself for an explosion, but it failed to
materialise; instead, Vargas bowed his head in meek acknowledgement. �Were it
not for your agency, there would be no empire to trouble us with itłs decrees,"
he said gravely. �We deeply appreciate the vital nature of your mission to seek
out and destroy the taint of Darkness wherever it lingers. Nevertheless, you
must understand that with two members of the hidden faculty elsewhere, pursuing
the whims of a princess in search of a dragon
" he snorted. �You must excuse
me, though, for there is one matter in which I can and must make further
enquiries. Now!" He turned to glare furiously at Sebastian. �You dissolute
rascal! What have you got to say for yourself? Five years of study and then you
refuse your obligation and spit on your tutorłs honour! Explain yourself, pray,
to this humble servant. What the fuck do you think youłre doing?"

Sebastian had been steeling himself for this moment ever
since Anya forced him to attain sobriety; even so, he was unable to manage even
the appearance of contrition. �Iłm staying alive, old man. The curse that has
descended upon this academy wonłt be cast out by the immolation of one more
drudge who, born the second son to a lord, is forced to earn his bread as a
grinder of inks and a cleaner of floors! Youłve treated me like shit these past
four years, and Iłm not about to stake my life on your good nature. Send me
down, see if I care! My devotion to my art is such that no gown can make me
more than I already am; why should I suffer for your profit? Thatłs all there
is to it! As you have sown, so you are about to harvest in bloody spades. It
looks to me very much as if therełs a Dark Pretender aspiring to immanence, and
Iłm not about to involve myself in that!"

A deathly silence descended within the room. Anya looked at
Sebastian and shook her head: something approaching admiration could be seen in
her expression, but there was also a judgement there
and it was not
favourable. Vargas, for his part, also stared at Sebastian, but there was
something in his gaze that wholly unnerved the apprentice.

�I think it would profit you mightily to think longer on
that issue, and decide whether you mean it before I decide whether to take it
seriously," Vargas finally said. �I smell insubordination in your anger: do you
truly think I have mistreated you like that? After all this time?"

Sebastian shrugged his shoulders. Itłs all over now, thatłs
for sure. �I never asked to be adopted as your apprentice," he snapped,
careless of his discretion. �You have a certain reputation among the students,
my lord. After you whipped my predecessor Zevon around the quad with lashes of
frozen storm, after you had the scholars Quayle and Azmar expelled from the
conclave for moral corruption, and after you announced that true enlightenment
could only come through diligent study and self-mortification, and in view of
your marked prejudice towards those less skilled than yourself ..." he shrugged
again. �Once, I wanted to study here," he concluded.

�Then you shall study here no more," Vargas said casually.
He reached into the bowl on his desk and pulled out a walnut and the brass
calipers he had been using when Sebastian and Anya arrived: the kernel
shattered loudly in the silence. There was a glint of lofty amusement in his
eye as he contemplated the broken shell lying in the palm of his hand. �I
presume that this has been troubling you for some time. In that case, and given
your issuance of due cause, by casting slanders against your lawful master, I
hereby notify you that I can no longer accept your tutelage. However, you have
a contract with the University which remains undischarged: and as dean of the
School of Diabolism I feel it wise to see that all scholars are appropriately
supervised by one of suitable skill and puissance. So! My lady, will you ..?"

Anya stood up. �Hełs a cowardly oaf. Even if he does know
whatłs going on. Why would I want him? Whatłs in it for me?" Sebastian stared
at her, confused. Something didnłt ring true.

�You would receive my gratitude, and that is a commodity of
which it has been said that I have far too little." Vargas grinned
malevolently. �You have a new master, Sebastian de lłAmoque. I hereby
apprentice you, as is my duty and privilege
to Anya of Tigre, mendicant
practitioner of the final arts and agent of the Invigilation
on pain of
violation of your contract! At least until the close of your tenure, at dawn
tomorrow. Dare you refuse?"

Sebastian glanced from face to face. �Youłve got me," he
said, flatly. In a voice of desperation, he added: �but Iłm still not going to
enact the examination of high jeopardy!"

�You donłt have to," said Anya, walking across to him. She
rested a hand on his shoulder and steered him inexorably towards the book-case.
�If you survive łtil dawn I think I will vouch for your graduation regardless.
In the meantime
how good are you at tracking down ex-students?"

�What? Why?" He demanded. �What ex-students?"

Anya paused and looked at Vargas. �Is he really this
stupid?" she asked. Vargas shook his head.

�What do you want me to do?" Sebastian asked tensely.

�Your predecessors," she said. �You know why I want them.
Why I started by looking for you: to ensure first that the Dark Pretender who
has so evilly started this program of ritual sacrifice is not one of the adepts
trained by this very college. You know what I want. Go away, find your
predecessor
what was he called? Zevon? And bring him to me."

�At once," added Vargas.

Sebastian nodded. Not trusting his traitor tongue
not a
single word
he turned and left the room. Half way down the stairs he caught
at the bannister, discovering to his shame that his hand was trembling with
fury. Damn them! he thought furiously .. Damn the Ministry of Lost Souls and
their catspaw Invigilators! Who would forever hold down honest scholarship in
the name of caution, and seek everywhere for seeds of imaginary evil! But,
truth be told, it was not principally the Invigilator he was most afraid of
right now. Anya had told him to bring Zevon to her: and Sebastian was extremely
worried by this. He could well imagine Zevonłs response to being summoned by
the Invigilation, and it would not be pleasant. Nevertheless
he reached the
bottom of the stairs and paused, indecisively
the oath she held over him was
too powerful. He would have to at least try. Shaking his head, he walked out
into the road and turned for home: where, probably, Zevon would be already
waiting for him. In bed.

Anya of Tigre poured herself another drink. It was not
alcohol she sipped, but an elixir the formula of which was a tight-held secret
of the University. �You donłt think hełs guilty?" she asked interestedly.

Vargas shuffled over to his throne and sat down. �No, if you
mean is he guilty of enacting a forbidden ritual. Nevertheless, I would hardly
go so far as to say hełs innocent." He spoke with such heavy irony that for a
moment Anya thought he was contradicting himself.

�How so?"

�Because Iłve seen his type before," grumped Vargas. �His
predecessor Zevon: now he had balls. Thatłs why I had him sent down, you see.
It was a forgone conclusion that if he stayed hełd try something silly. But
Sebastian is a lilly-livered weakling if ever Iłve seen one. A nasty piece of
work, but too scared of shadows to kill his elder brother and take his fatherłs
castle by force: hełll probably end up as privy councillor to some scheming
duke, or wind up gracing some dungeon, I donłt doubt. But he isnłt a conqueror:
he doesnłt have the cast-iron gall for it. Not like most of the lunatics and
villains who come to me for teaching!"

�Your students sound a marvelous bunch," commented Anya.
�With lieges like that, who needs enemies?"

�I do!" said Vargas, grinning humourlessly. �If I didnłt Iłd
go soft in the head. At least it keeps me in on my toes. Your predecessors
didnłt have so much trouble, and look where they wound up!"

�The predecessors of my order," she corrected. �Things are
very different now. I was a babe in arms when the Dark Pretender took to the
field and the clouds rained blood for a week. Do you remember? The crows were
too fat to fly, and the stench ... afterwards I had only to look at my fatherłs
face to see what that did to people."

�We canłt all have parents like that." Vargas hiccuped
violently and frowned. �I well remember his service. But tell me, what brought
you hence today? We had barely realised that there was a Pretender to the dark
powers commencing the rite of binding when you arrived
"

�Therełs synchronicity in all things," said Anya. �Word came
to us from afar, you realise. Three innocents died to put me here, five hundred
leagues in an eye-blink. We judged it sufficiently important."

Vargas turned pale. �You donłt mean ..?"

She nodded. For the first time this evening she looked her
age: the final battle of the war she had been born in was a good four decades
past. �ęIn the defense of good, it is sometimes necessary to use the tools of
evil,ł" she quoted. �If our ancestors had not been so high-minded, things would
never have reached the point of war. If the Invigilation had been set up
earlier ..."

�Hindsight is easy," said Vargas. �In those days we didnłt
have the same sense of urgency, you understand. It had been centuries." He
picked up and drained his wine glass. Then he hiccuped again. �I hate this
age," he said gloomily. �To be compelled to brutality against onełs better
nature
"

�Is that the only reason you consort with devils?" demanded
Anya: �ask yourself, is it really?"

Vargas nodded, then reached for a walnut. Picking up his
brass callipers, he remarked: �Not all of us are mad, you see. But I suppose
itłs easier for those who are to succeed at this unfortunate profession. Of the
past seven students I have taught only two have graduated with honour. And of
the past eleven, two have died insane. I donłt hold myself to blame; if the
other five had only been pure of mind ..."

The walnut disintegrated in shards of black corruption.

�They all concealed a rotten heart, and that led to their
downfall."

�I see," Anya said drily as she stared at the wormy mass.
Why are they always optimists? Even in the most unlikely guise? �I see that
itłs been a full two bells since I sent that student of yours to pry out his
crony. Do you suppose I should go and find out whatłs happened to him?" She
stared at Vargas with such intensity that he blinked and looked away.

�I think so," he said. �I really think so. That catamite of
his was a nasty piece of work."

Anya stood up. �What catamite?"

Vargas blinked again. �Didnłt you know?" His face sagged, as
if all the muscles supporting it had been severed. �I thought you must! The way
you sent him
Sebastian and Zevon are notorious. They live together openly,
you see, although itłs a crime hereabouts; the men of the city watch refuse to
detain scholars of the art. Theyłve been scandalising the burghers ever since

"

He didnłt finish the sentence. Anya was no longer around to
hear it, and there wasnłt any point. �I hope she succeeds," he said quietly to
the swinging door; �I hope she finds him before itłs too late."

Sebastian stumbled into the streets and wandered down the
hill in a self-absorbed trance. It had stopped raining and a thin fog was
rising from the open sewers; it bore with it the stench of spent dinners. The
damp cobblestones offered treacherous footing, and he found that he was tired
and headsore from the events of the past hour. I need to think he decided,
although his circumstances were not altogether suited to this activity.

For one thing there wasnłt enough time, he realised, as his
unwilling feet carried him home. Damn and blast the bitch, he thought angrily.
Why Zevon? He wouldnłt do a thing like that
would he? To try to become a Dark
Pretender by the ritual of Mummu
he tried to recall the details by which an
adept might bind the forces of the abyss to obey their naked will without treachery
and malice. Certainly a vital preliminary step for any who would aspire to true
mastery of the diabolic arts
and totally forbidden by the Invigilation ever
since the last Last Battle. Something about there being seven sacrifices; one
of them arbitrary, the rest subtly structured ...

The area where Sebastian lived was particularly rough, adjoining
the district where the mercantile warehouses hulked along the banks of the
river. Many of the poorer students lived there, scattered among the struggling
tradespeople and nełer-do-wellłs of the lower city. The houses overhung the
narrow alleys and little light reached the ground to guide the intrepid
traveller past piles of muck and the verminous hovels of the poor. He traced
his way to his home and unlocked the door with a three-fingered gesture and a
strange word. Of burglars he had no fear; students of the Art had more serious
causes for concern than human intrusion upon their property.

It was a small studio, beams blackened by the resinous smoke
of a thousand candles. His possessions were strewn all about, mingled
promiscuously with those of Zevon; here an oak chest full of cloth, there a
sack full of potatoes. A grimoire, possibly stolen, lay open atop the
odd-legged desk that Zev had filched from the office of the richest merchant
prince of the city whilst under a spell of deception. �Zev?" Sebastian called
quietly. �Are you awake?"

He realised as soon as hełd said it that this was a mistake.
Bat-shadows fluttered against the diamond-leaded window panes, blue-spark
silhouettes illuminating the floorboards: �Not now!" Zevon snapped in a voice
as brittle as glass. �Come not in that form!" he chanted, in a tone that made
Sebastianłs hair stand on end and his teeth rattle in their sockets. �I command
thee! Come not in that form! Quick, oaf
into the sanctum! Your life depends
on it!"

Sebastian, who was not so slow-witted as to remain confused
for long, jumped to obey as Zevon plucked a handful of ivory-tinted powder and
cast it into the glowing crucible on the stove. �What in the seven names of
hell do you think youłre
" he began ..

�Come not in that form!" Zevon screamed. There was a bang
not unlike thunder and the crucible shattered. �Fuck! Now look what youłve
done, Seb! Zycor, Aharseus, Ixtal, I dismiss thee! In the name of Septuat,
begone!" Of a sudden the atmosphere in the room lightened. Nevertheless, the
smell lingered: burning brimstone mingled with a hint of old, dried blood.

�Is it safe?" Sebastian looked down at the powdery circle of
chalk that ringed his trembling feet. The line was unbroken: if his jump had
been miscalculated he would not now be alive enough to understand what had
befallen him.

�It is, now." Zevon stood up, stepped out of his warding
circle, and slammed the cover of the grimoire shut angrily. Dust spurted from
the spine of the book as he turned to stare at Sebastian. �You really screwed
that up! Another second
"

�You were Coercing." Sebastianłs throat was peculiarly dry,
and there was a strange ringing in his ears. �Why, Zev? What do you think
youłre doing?"

Zevon laughed. �Donłt be a fucking moron. Itłs examination
night tonight, isnłt it? And you know who else is paying attention?" He was
wearing a dark robe, Sebastian noticed, the gown of a wizardly scholar. The
sign of rank that he had been stripped of three years ago by Vargas di Escobar.
There were sweat-rings under his armpits and the hem was ragged and grey, as if
scorched by a terrible heat.

Sebastian sat down heavily on the bed. �You never told me,"
he said, as quietly and evenly as he could manage. �Youłve been following a
forbidden ritual, and all the while Iłve been terrified to study
"

�More fool you." Zevon walked over to the battered cupboard
next to the bed and pulled out a dusty bottle of wine. �Youłll be needing some
of this, I warrant. Here, have a glass." His manner was quiet again, but the
temperature in the room dropped several degrees when Sebastian reached out and
took hold of his wrist.

�I want an explanation," Sebastian said. �Why are you following
the rite of Mummu? Why you want to mess everything up by going for the big one!
Itłs too soon and too dangerous! Donłt you know theyłre still watching and
waiting for any who should try their luck?"

Zevon tugged his arm away impatiently. �Itłs only seven sacrifices.
One arbitrary, the others sensory. And only two to go before the night is out,
Sebastian, Iłm nearly there. Here: drink." He filled a chipped tumber from the
dusty bottle and thrust it at Sebastian.

�Thatłs not the point," said Sebastian. �So you think you
can do it? Fine. See if I care! But the Ministry of Lost Souls
they are
watching. The Invigilation. They havenłt slept since the Dark Pretender claimed
two gross of thousand lives. Maybe in ten, twenty years ..."

�Youłre only young once," said Zevon. It was as near to an
apology as Sebastian had ever heard from him. He raised the bottle to his lips:
�Cheers!"

Sebastian took a mouthful from the cup. The wine was
full-bodied and fruity. �If you love me, tell me youłll give up this folly for
the time being?"

�No."

Sebastian sighed. �I was afraid youłd say that." He took
another mouthful. �The Invigilator found me."

When Zevon stopped spluttering, he put the bottle down with
exaggerated care and sat next to Sebastian. He put one arm round his shoulders.
�Would you care to repeat that?"

Sebastian shut his eyes. Relax. Remember what youłve shared

everything
�Vargas summoned her. It was the ritual nature of the killings
that attracted attention. Now they know Iłm not the guilty party so they use me
as their pawn. I was cheap, you see. Iłm still an enrolled schollar, for
tonight, and you remember the oath
"

�Would you foreswear yourself for me?" asked Zevon, lightly
touching his cheek. �You know I can do it, donłt you? After this night Iłll
have total mastery of the dark forces, as great as any prince of the night.
Even those bumbling ruthless do-gooders will be unable to touch me. Iłll
protect you! But will you break your oath for me? First?"

Sebastian opened his eyes and saw Zevon, leaning very close,
a look of intense concentration about his face, as it had been in better times
when they made love in this very bed. �I canłt," he said with difficulty,
dropping the words into a stony silence. �I canłt. They will send their
nightmare minions after me, things that swarm in the infinite night between
stars and dream of flesh that tears and screams to sing
as is their right
"

�So youłre working for the good guys now," said Zevon, without
a trace of mockery in his voice. �Have they scared you that much?"

Sebastian tried to stand up and failed, due to a curious weakness
in his ankles. �Itłs the Invigilation," he whispered defensively. �The good
guys. If theyłd been around forty years ago the Dark Pretender would have shit
bricks
would have
" he was unable to finish. A dark realisation came over
him as he tried to look at Zevon, found that his neck muscles would not obey.

Zevon stood up. �Well, well, well," he said tightly. �So
itłs like that, is it?" He looked frighteningly serene as he leaned over Sebastian.
�Theyłve broken you like a puppy. Their stupid fetish about dark agencies
you
can look but you canłt touch. The creeping secret police, the minions of
mediocrity! And youłre scared of them." He didnłt sound contemptuous; but there
was a terrifyingly casual tone to his voice as he continued. �Iłm leaving now,
Seb. Iłve got business to attend to and I dare say we wonłt be meeting again
afterwards. At least, not for a very long time. What do you say?"

Sebastian managed to work his numb jaws sufficiently to
speak. �What was it?" he croaked, a dull ache of fear eating away at his
innards.

�Toad venom. In the wine; I leave you the antidote." He gestured
at a pot of unguent upon the cupboard. It was tantalisingly close, had
Sebastian even been able to lift an arm. �Eventually it will paralyse your
lungs; then you will die. Not part of the main plan, Iłm afraid, but we canłt
all be omniscient and I did
" his voice cracked slightly
�hope youłd be
prepared to join me."

Sebastian managed another question. �But what of our oath?"
he whispered desperately.

�That?" Zevon held up a carving of an ivory heart, inscribed
with symbols. �You mean our foolish love-knot? Oh, that. Iłm afraid I wonłt
have time for that kind of thing any more. Being Lord of Darkness is apparently
rather demanding. Still
" he dropped it casually �
beggars canłt be
choosers." He paused in the doorway and glanced back, just for a moment. �See
you in hell, lover boy," he said, smiling as he pulled the door to.

Then Sebastian was left alone in his terror, with only the
candle and his laboured breathing for company. As he desperately tried to work
his fingers he saw that the candle was guttering. Soon, if no one came, he would
be joining it.

Trying not to think too clearly about what she was doing, or
about the probable outcome of her actions, Anya removed a small purse of
powders from her belt pouch. She shook out a tiny pinch in the palm of one hand
and sniffed it up each nostril in turn: a great and silent sneeze shook her as
she mumbled an obscure incantation then stabbed the ball of one index finger
with a needle and smeared the resulting drop of blood upon the tip of her nose.

The light began to die away around her, and the night fell unnaturally
silent. Her skin grew numb and she noticed a strange scent of smelly flesh
about herself; leaning forward, she pawed at the bannister rail on which
Sebastian had rested his hand. The smell, skin, stench of the man forced its
way into her nostrils like the taste of fresh excrement and the smoke of
burning nail clippings. Gasping, Anya straightened up and blindly fumbled her
way towards the door. The scent was still present, although faded and diffuse.
She traced his way through the hall and out into the alley, bumping into a
number of doors and walls along the way: then she stood and smelt the cool
night breeze for a long minute.

There he was. The bloodhound magecraft carried a tiny emanation
of desire to her nostrils. They flared instinctively; got you! The trail was
old, half masked by the presence of other, riper odours, but her fugitive
student had come this way for sure. Stumbling like a sleepwalker, Anya followed
her nose down the hill, past the drunken revellers and somnambulists, through
the twisting rookeries and shambles of the lower city, past the heady stench of
the bakers preparing for the next dayłs business, past the diffuse emanations
of a hundred thousand bodies, following the trail of the missing student. All
the while, clutching at her guts, was a horrible sense that she knew exactly
what was happening; that it would all slide into place like some grand and evil
game of chess at any moment and that she would discover that she had missed a
move, or her opponent had cheated while her back was turned ...

The city blurred around her, all colour draining into the
tired darkness of the dog-watches. Moving through a realm of charcoal shadows
and unlit windows, Anya drifted towards her target. Passing the ornamental
cherry groves of the wealthy merchants, Anya followed the trail of her victim:
past the gibbeted felons too, and the sinister white-walled college of the
Inquisition. The odour of the fleeing man led her back up the wall of the
valley towards the heights of the University until after an eternity of seeking
she found herself outside a building where, according to her nostrils,
Sebastianłs trail vanished. Rubbing the blindness from her eyes, she mumbled
the phrase that banished his unnatural acuity of smell. This must be it. Hełll
be hiding out here for sure. She rapped sharply on the door; when there was no
response she bent and tapped a finger on the lock.

It was dark inside, but for the glimmer of a dying
candle-wick. A stench of rich warm rotting belched forth, assaulting her
still-sensitive nostrils. Chalk dust floated in the air, dry and ticklish in
her throat as she recoiled. �Damn
" her eyes, freed now by the repression of
her magic, adjusted to the darkness. Deep in the recess, barely more than a
lump on the bed, she saw his hunched form.

Time stood still: she was beside him in an instant, hand
flexing for the hilt of a dagger that intellect told her would be useless. The
thin rattle of his wheeze was as laboured as that of any dying animal. Only his
eyes twitched, rolling. She followed the direction of his gaze to the pot. �Is
that it?" Reaching out, she touched his forehead. He was burning hot, as if in
a feverłs grip: �Or is it a cunning antidote?" Sweat burst out beneath her
fingertips. He was trying to form words, but had too l ittle control over his
throat to lend the syllables shape and meaning.

�It would be like your friend to leave an emollient close to
hand, but out of reach," she said. �Or he may have left the poison itself as a
sign, and in case an interfering Invigilator might happen upon the scene. Donłt
you wonder about that?"

She picked up the jar. �Thatłs what happened, wasnłt it?"
she asked, not expecting any kind of reply. She sniffed; the ointment within
smelled foul, bitter. �Therełs no telling," she added. �Wełll just have to see
which it is. A lesson, either way." Digging one index finger into the jar she
scooped up a dab of the ointment and pulled down his lower lip; she smeared the
finger across the exposed gum then wiped Sebastianłs drool from her wrist and
the remaining medicine from her digit. �Unreliable bastard," she said, not
unkindly. Then she became aware of a rasping sound. His teeth were grinding
together.

Five minutes later Sebastian jack-knifed forward and
dry-heaved across the rug and the broken pentacle of chalk inscribed in the
middle of the floor. Anya grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, to keep
him from falling. �Thanks," he whispered.

�My pleasure. Just donłt let it get to be a habit." She let
go of him, stood up, and walked over to the closed book on the table. After
reading the title she turned to stare at him. �Youłve got a lot of explaining
to do," she added. �Donłt let me keep you from starting."

Sebastian tried to frown. His face, still partially
paralysed, transformed the expression into a deranged grin; when he spoke his
voice was soft and hoarse. �Hełs a swine. No such thing as a quiet life. Didnłt
even tell me until I walked in on him."

Anya rummaged around on the desk. �Candle. Ah, got it. What
was he doing?"

Sebastianłs cheek twitched. His left hand performed an involuntary
jig on his thigh; a patch of darkness was spreading in his lap. He no longer
looked deranged, merely tired and sick and revolted by his own loss of control.
�The ritual you mentioned. A conjuration of the three-in-one who took Lord
Kerein the other night. Hełs crazy!"

�Very probably. Why did it take you so long to figure that
out?"

�Hełs not always been like this," Sebastian retreated into
selfdefense. �He was always the bright spark
no, a flame of intellect

denied his rightful place by the narrow-minded windbaggery of the high table. I
can see why he wants it
"

�The urge to control has always followed the urge to understand,"
Anya said quietly. Sebastian managed to turn his head far enough to look at
her, then shut his mouth. Very slowly, he began to wiggle his fingers. �Thatłs
why I was sent here. Now do you understand?"

�I understand less than I thought I did," he admitted. Anya
held her breath, never having expected such a confession of him. �Zevłs
motivation is as shallow as his power is great. Why couldnłt he do something
really big?"

�The banality of evil is proportional to its magnitude,"
stated Anya. �If youłd been around at the time of the Dark Pretender
" she
stopped. �Damn," she said quietly.

�What is it?" asked Sebastian.

�How many has he killed?" she demanded suddenly.

�Only five, to my knowledge. Hełs executing the Ritual of
Mummu. I interrupted his sixth summoning, but doubtless he will improvise."
Sebastian raised a hand painfully and brought it down on his thigh, began
massaging cramped muscles. �I didnłt realise the antidote would be this
effective. I thought
"

�Does everything close look blurred?" Anya demanded. �Is
your mouth dry and your heart racing, and pins and needles in your flesh?"

�Yes
" he looked puzzled. �Oh, a lesser toxin. I see. But
no, it had to be the antidote. If I was his sixth victim, and slain by poison,
it would have broken the required pattern."

�No it wouldnłt," said Anya. �The Ritual of Mummu permits
one random and creative slaying among the seven, so long as the rest are
sacrificed by means of their own sensory organs. The symbolism, you see:
senses, knowledge, power, and an element of caprice. It makes the daemons sit
up and listen. How did he trick you into imbibing the poison?"

�He
" Sebastian tried to stand and failed. �The toad! The
worm-brained gutless
"

�Hardly," interrupted Anya. �Those accusations are baseless,
and you know it. It takes more guts than you or I know to risk the fires that
befall those who take his chosen path. That, or a kind of blindness. But what
would you know about those mysteries? Youłre only a scholar, not a true
diabolist. If you were the latter Iłd be beholden to kill you where you sit."

�Are you talking about the Upper Mysteries of Noctis or the
Five Circles of the Duat?" Sebastian retorted sharply: �or are you referring to
the Banal Sufficiencies of the Fundic Assumption?" He tried to stand up again,
and succeeded in grabbing hold of the cupboard before his knees gave way
beneath him.

Anya snorted. �I should have known. An expert on necromancy,
and not even graduated in the school of life yet! Youłll go far as a sorcerer
and farther as a corpse if you make a habit of speaking of those mysteries in
public. Nevertheless, you know the names. Tell me though, from what substance
are these nocturnal terrors stitched? To the best of your knowledge."

Sebastian straightened up painfully. �If you mean do they
pose a threat to the twenty-four kingdoms right now, the answer is probably
not. But in the past
and perhaps in future times
they could be the death of
us all. All they need is a leader, a malevolent force to give shape to their
undirected evil. And thatłs what youłre sworn to destroy, isnłt it?"

�Yes. And what would happen if one should accede to the Dark
Throne tomorrow?"

�Oh, theyłd follow him to the abyss and back." Sebastian was
looking at the chest containing his clothing, so he failed to see the stare
that Anya turned on him.

�Tell me what you know of the Dark Lord," she said.

�The Dark Committee, more like," he muttered. He stopped,
took a tentative step towards the chest, and frowned. �First there was the
Representative of Aharseus, then the Nameless Maurauder, then the Gang of Five
and the last, the Midnight One who fought our parents in the last Last Battle
To End Last Battles forty years ago. Meantime, while none of them is physically
present the mission of their sponsors is maintained in this world by those
conspiracies I mentioned. Not to mention free-lance lunatics, such as my late
beloved. Do you want a detailed description of them, or can I leave it by
saying that more illuminated scholars than I generally agree them to be mad,
bad, and dangerous to talk too loudly about?"

�You can," said Anya, sounding mildly amused. He reached the
chest and began to rummage around in it. �Would you rather I turned my back?"
she asked.

�Donłt patronise me!" Sebastian snapped. He began to ease
out of his soiled breeches, a look of extreme distaste on his face. �If you want
a slave, go down the market tomorrow! What more do you want of me anyway?"

�Your cooperation," she said quietly. �And your understanding.
I assume you felt strongly for Zevon?"

�Felt?" He looked puzzled for an instant, then a strange
expression came to his face. �Oh, I felt strongly," he said. �I want none of
this! Just show me a way out. I never asked for adventure. Just a quiet corner
and a comfortable life free from the curses of responsibility and boredom."

�Didnłt you ever aspire to something ... more?" she asked.
�A higher cause, a positive good?"

Sebastian toweled at his crotch with a filthy rag, then
pulled a pair of much-patched trousers from the chest and began to tug them on.
�Donłt make me vomit," he muttered. �Join you? Youłve got me over a barrel
a
small matter of a most puissant oath
for tonight, only. But thatłs all. What
more do you expect me to do? Kiss your ass? Youłre riding your ideals along a
wide road that ends at the gates of Castle Death, woman. Donłt expect me to
join you on it." He tied a belt around his waist, then bent over and picked
something up; a small ivory heart. �Iłve ridden down enough blind alleys
already," he said bitterly.

Anya turned away. �So young, and yet so little idealism.
What does the world lack, that it is of so little value to you?"

�Innocence," he replied. And to that she had no reply.

Presently, when Sebastian was able to hobble without
support, they left the house. It was late on Midsummerłs Night: the rain had
ceased, and although it was near morning the city still hummed. It was a darkly
frenetic sort of life, though; beneath the strangely writhing clouds the
raucous screams and laughter sounded as forced as feasting on the eve of
battle. Spirits that refused to be still forced the night into abeyance,
dancing dismally until tired muscles screamed for sleep and only the frantic,
driven urge to stay awake kept heads from nodding and souls from flying in the
grip of daemons.

They came upon College Road. Richly-dressed passers-by
strolled between the houses of the rich mercantile lords and the hall of the
burghers; they spared no glance for Anya and Sebastian, nor for the beggars and
prostitutes and the fire-eater performing his searing art beneath the eaves of
the scholarly house. Sebastian stopped outside the low side-door of that
building. �Open it," said Anya. �I think we will find your friend within, and
you would mislike it if he was to complete his enchantment before we
intercepted him."

�Tell me why first," said Sebastian. He stared at her
uneasily: the light of the fire-eaterłs brand reflected from his eyes. �I want
to know whatłs going to happen inside before I go one step further. After all,
your college sacrificed much more than three lives to send you here. Their
principles; theyłre meant to be opposed to that sort of thing, arenłt they?
Such hypocrisy
"

�Do not the ends justify the means?" Anya had a dangerous
gleam in her eye. �Of course it was bad! Of course consorting with demons and
necromancers is wrong! Dolt. What could be worse than facilitating the rise to
power of a Dark One? I tell you
what we have here is nothing less than your
lover staging a very special graduation ceremony, a ceremony all of his own!
And planned at your expense, moreover. The symptoms are exact, and the pattern
is heading to a climax which will occur at dawn unless we can slay him first!
Should he succeed, far more than seven innocents would die. We would be looking
at the death of scores
of nations, that is
should he attain the dark throne
he aspires to."

�So it seems." They paused a moment in the street, loitering
outside the door of the Faculty. In the street behind them, the fire-eater
downed a flaming cresset and bowed for a round of applause that was not
forthcoming. Sebastian turned reluctantly and spoke a secret word to the door.
It creaked, but failed to open. �Thatłs funny," he began, just as Anya grabbed
his arm and wrenched him aside and off-balance. �Unhand me!" he demanded as he
fell over, not seeing the black flower of un-light unfold from where the wooden
door had been; nor seeing the stars in the void, but slowly registering the
rise of the wind blowing across his shoulders. �Hey
"

The lotus-bloom of emptiness crept outwards from the door
frame, eating through the wood and stone of the house in a hideous parody of
life. Sebastian heard a scream, felt hands fasten around his ankle: he kicked
out instinctively. The wind was building, turning into a gale of tempest force,
and even as he clung to the cobblestones he could feel a sheet of ice forming
across his face. Others were trapped in this vortex of hell; the fire-eater
screamed incoherently as he clung to Sebastianłs legs, and a lady of doubtful
breeding fetched up against a stone buttress below him with a crack of breaking
bones. Above him Anya uttered a powerful invocation, but it was clear that
there was no time for her defence to take effect. Reduced to an ecstacy of
terror for the third time this evening, Sebastian perceived his circumstances
with a clarity that everyday life could never provide. The fire eaterłs hands
around his left ankle felt like the grip of death itself: the wind was building
into a wall of frozen ice, the breath of a god sucking him into into the abyss.

There was only one solution. Sebastian steeled himself and
lashed out with his free foot. It connected solidly, jarring his ankle; the
weight on his leg slipped away and the gale died as suddenly as it had begun.
�What have you done?" demanded Anya, sitting up and brushing away the
hoar-frost on her face. �Wherełs
"

�It wanted feeding," Sebastian said candidly. �Any more questions?"

�No," replied Anya. She stood up and turned to face the
door, then discharged the forces that she had gathered to herself during the
onslaught of the void-storm: green fire spat at the wood, blistering
centuries-old oak and splitting rivets with a crack of tortured metal.

�How many stages are there to go?" He stepped forward, but
stopped just short of the lintel.

�Seven sacrifices. Only one to go. The last two to take
place on the same night of the year, this being the designated eve. In this way
the postulant can cause the motivation of evil to cohere and serve them
and
so the evil tradition is passed on."

Sebastian carefully ran his fingers around the wood of the
door-frame. �Why should he bother with such a blunt instrument? Surely there
must be other ways
"

Anya shoved him aside gently and pushed at the door. It fell
inwards and disintegrated in a shower of seared ashy flakes. �There are so many
of them, and theyłre so unoriginal. Evil is so common in this world that it
would be funny if it wasnłt tragic; all the dolts who want to be Lord of
Darkness, King of the Midden." She spat upon the heap of ashes and stepped over
it. The corridor beyond was encrusted in cobweb shadows, even though the oil
lamp hanging from the roof was flickering. �Come on, scholar. You can identify
the villain for me. Maybe youłll learn something about innocence in the
process." Without warning, she stepped forwards, disappearing into the
unnatural darkness.

Mouth dry and heart pounding Sebastian stared after her,
thinking furiously. It seemed cruel, not to say paradoxical, that in evading
his hazardous matriculation he had cast himself into such mortal danger. If
only Zev and I hadnłt argued. If only he hadnłt started this ... he shook his
head, wondering at how it was possible to feel embittered and numb
simultaneously; then, gathering his nerve, he spat on the gently hissing
remains of the door and jumped over it.

Once inside the hall, Sebastian could feel the pressure of
magic gathering about his brow. He had come this way many times before but the
aura of darkness that now clung to the fabric of the building lent it a
character of self-obsession that was new and frighteningly disorientating. This
was an historic manse, but the normal accretion of time seemed to have been
twisted and subtly replaced with a new dimension, one full beyond bearing with
unrestrained cruelty. It made his skin crawl, for there was something
scornfully familiar about it: the spiteful rage of a wronged innocent who has
brooded long and deep until they are innocent no more.

The corridor through which they walked led to the servantłs
staircase. On any other night there would have been at least the watchman on
duty, but by long tradition the house was deserted now except for the master,
who tomorrow would preside over the graduation of those students who were being
examined this night. Anya ghosted from shadow to shadow like an assassin, and
Sebastian hurried to keep up with her: �Where are you going?" he whispered as
she paused at the foot of the stairs.

She turned so that he could see her face in side-profile. �I
think the will of this evil is directed towards an end connected with your
former master. Who else? Isnłt he the logical target of one who has started
with scholars and graduated to dons?" She blinked rapidly, as if trying to
clear a dust-mote from her eye.

�Then perhaps I should leave now," said Sebastian.

�Pray donłt add cowardice to your list of idiocies. Think
how long youłll last if Zevon succeeds in his ambitions! Come on, time is
short. Perhaps the stairs will be safe
" she probed repeatedly at the air in
front of her with her sword, to the hilt of which she had fastened a silver
wire: when nothing happened she advanced a step and repeated the procedure,
whispering arcane mnemonics under her breath. After making some minor progress,
she beckoned to him. He needed no further admonition; brooding
for he
believed that he now knew the true nature of the situation, and was most unhappy

he followed her.

At the top of the stairs, Anyałs sword sparked, once; a fat
thread of light drifted down the wire and flared against the banister. �Damn,"
she breathed, dropping the abruptly bladeless handle: �Curse the fool for an
ignorant swinish backwater piss-drinking poppy-headed vandal! Iłll have his
head for that!" Of the coil of wire that had been fastened to the sword there
was no sign. �Take heed, scholar," she commented, visibly asserting her
self-control, �for if therełs one way of angering me itłs the want on
destruction of good metal."

Sebastian stared at her incomprehendingly, then climbed the
remaining steps that separated them. �Do you believe therełll be any more
traps?"

�Hubris, always hubris," she whispered. �No, I donłt think
so," she added, raising her voice. �His kind likes to gloat, and itłs passing
hard to mock a cinder; base elements accept abuse in silence. No, if your
friend wishes to crow, hełll do so in our living presence. Is that reasonable?"

She stepped onto the landing and placed one hand upon the
gleaming cranium adorning the banister. A shocking screech rent the air, and
Sebastian nearly jumped out of his skin; she laughed. �See, hełs only trying to
scare us," she said: �A child making fun of his betters!"

They walked along the twilit landing, and when they passed
beyond range of the guttering oil lamp Anya called mage-fire to her fingers and
lit their way. Presently they came to the iron spiral staircase, and found
evidence there of nigromancy; for the iron was blackened and scarred as by a
great heat, and there was a sense of lingering guilt that hovered in the air
until it burned with a taste like copper when Sebastian breathed it. �Obviously
not very experienced," commented Anya. �Only a novice would try to enchant cold
iron."

She sniffed, then climbed the staircase two steps at a time.
At the top she payed Sebastian the unusual courtesy of waiting for him. �I
suggest you enter after me," she said. �I think wełll find both Lord Vargas and
Zevon in this chamber, alive and well
at least at first." She smiled, a
devilish light dancing in her eyes. �If you would be so kind as to open the
door, perhaps you would care to observe the auto da fe? Guaranteed to keep you
awake all through this demonsnight, I do assure you."

�What makes you so certain of victory?" whispered Sebastian,
his skin crawling tiredly. He rubbed at his eyes, which were sore with
sleeplessness. �Hełs a student of darkness! You have no idea how skilled he
"

�Relax." Anya laid a hand on his wrist. �Iłve done this
before, and to this moment it has followed the classic pattern. Just do as I
say and I will consider your oath discharged, should both of us live to see the
sun rise."

�Thanks," Sebastian said cynically. �Iłll remember that."

Anya released his hand. �I do believe we are anticipated,"
she said as the door swung silently open. She turned to face the room. �Show
yourself!"

�Therełs no need to shout," replied Zevon. �You can come in
if you like; you too, Sebastian. I wonłt eat you ..." Anya stepped over the
lintel. �Just yet."

That voice
Sebastian instinctively reached for the ivory
charm in his pocket. �Zev
whatłs going on?" he asked, sliding through the
doorway. �What are you doing here? Wherełs Vargas?"

Without the presence of the Dean to lend it a focus the
study felt curiously empty. It was as if somebody had scooped out the soul of
the room, turning it into a parody of itself; a mockery of the magicianłs
parlour, a theatrical set of cardboard furniture and empty book spines and
poisoned decanters. Zevon had commandeered Vargasł high chair and sat there,
facing the door with a brimming glass of port in one hand. As Sebastian
entered, he raised it in mock salute then winked at him, his saturnine features
framing an expression of good-natured bonhomie. �His lordship will be here in
the blink of an eye and two ticks of a forked tail. In the meantime, would you
care to join me in sampling the delights of his excellent wine cellar? And you
too, my lady. I should hate to have to dispose of you without obtaining your
opinion on this most marvellous vintage."

Anya of Tigre walked over to the window casement and sat
down, just as she had when Vargas had welcomed her earlier in the evening. �Why
are you doing this?" she asked Zevon.

Zevon took a mouthful of port then put his glass down. Sebastian
found that he was barely able to breathe: so much to decide, and so little
time! The ivory heart. Zev had carved it with him that day, sucked blood from
the ball of his thumb and rubbed it into the base for a sympathic charm. Hełd
done likewise. How could he have done this without telling me? Sebastian shook
his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from his inner eye. I should have felt it
in my thumb.

�Itłs not so much why as what," Zevon announced, to Sebastianłs
discomfort. He stared at Anya with frank curiosity. �Iłve never met a member of
the Invigilation before," he added disingenuously. �How did you enter your
profession?"

�With difficulty," she said drily. �Itłs even harder than
becoming a dark lord. Yourself?"

Zevon tilted his head on one side and looked at the tome
which lay open on the lectern beside him. �After due provocation I decided that
there was no future for me in the University. This academy of spite and
pedantry is no place for seekers after truth. Sebastian here, hełll have told
you all about that. Hełs always been more of a whiner than a dołer. Otherwise
hełd have been running his big brotherłs duchy years ago." He flipped a page,
and the gold-encrusted runes gleamed in the lamp-light. �So I decided to act on
my own behalf; to purge the filth from the halls of wisdom and to enlighten
myself in the process. What do you say to that, mistress examiner? I continued
my studies on an extracurricular basis. That I have now attained the zenith of
my power is self-evident. The question I would ask you is what you intend to do
about it? Assuming, that is, that you have not yet given in to the black dogs
of despair. Donłt think I donłt know all about the geas you have placed upon my
dear friend
" at this point he cast Sebastian a glance that filled him with
burning dread
�who would not, I assure you, normally be inclined to serve
your order. Iłve thought of everything ... I am merely curious to discover the
extent of your intelligence."

�My intelligence?" Anya laughed. �The Invigilation doesnłt
have intelligence; it is intelligence! Do you really believe that after the
events of forty years ago those who struggled for good would dream of pinning
their hopes for collective security upon a half-senile greybeard and a
collection of hair-footed halflings? Your presumption is equalled only by your
folly!"

She stood up and stared unflinchingly at Zevon. �Now I say
to you, produce Lord Vargas di Escobar, alive and well, and surrender your soul
to my mercy, and I shall exercise the prerogative of amnesty: renounce your
calling and I will even let you live on and practice as a hedge wysard.
Otherwise
" she made a sharp cutting gesture with one hand
�it will be
necessary to destroy you. We can afford no more dark lords. The world has no
more innocence to lose."

Sebastian, who throughout the conversation had been standing
frozen in front of a cabinet of proscribed books, cleared his throat. �Why
didnłt you confide in me, Zev? Did you think I would misunderstand what you are
doing? I swear to you, I am here now only because of their coercion; had I
evaded this leech for another night they could not have invoked the retributive
clause
"

�Oh shut up!" Zevon grinned humourlessly. �I know full well
why youłre here. Youłre here because this bitch-destroyer wants a hostage
against me and she thought she could use you. Isnłt that right?" He jabbed a
finger in Anyałs direction: she nodded imperceptibly. �But she took too long
finding you, which was a mistake: because Iłm not interested. I canłt afford to
be. Now if youłd foresworn yourself when I asked things might be different ...
but anyway, I have my own hostage. Which is to say, Lord Vargas di Escobar. Now
what do you say to that, my dear?" He stared at Sebastian, who began to sweat;
it canłt be true, can it? Does he mean the offerłs still open? How? My oath of
apprenticeship


�You swore a certain vow when you came to the University,"
said Anya, as if reading his mind. �The substance of that vow included the
terms of your apprenticeship, the conditions of your graduation, and the degree
of forfeiture you should experience show you knowingly disobey the contract.
Now Zevon is obliged to conduct one final sacrifice should he still desire to
bind the forces of darkness to his service, and I order you to prevent it by
any means at your disposal. Do you understand what Iłm saying ?"

Sebastian leaned back against the book-case, clasping his
hands behind his back in order to still their shaking. �This is unmerciful," he
whispered, trying to make sense of his shattered loyalties. �you canłt mean it.
Wherełs Vargas?" he demanded, glaring at Zevon with slowly-growing anger. �Have
you killed him already?"

Zevon stood up. �No." He made a move towards the window seat
where Anya was waiting, then visibly forced himself to stillness. He stared at
her. �Bitch!" he said. �Do you think I wonłt do it? Do you really believe you
can stop me by turning my catamite against me?"

Anya shook her head slowly. �Youłre too foolish to know any
better. Something you should have established before starting this duel,
necromancer: justice is on the side of the intelligent."

Zevon traced a triangle in the air in front of his face; it
glowed like amber for a moment before fading in a shower of sparks. �Then think
however you will, fool. The game is mine! Defend yourself!" He uttered a word
of power and stepped back as the hideously altered person of Vargas di Escobar
appeared on the floor just in front of him.

Anya of Tigre snorted. �You just sealed your fate," she
said: �idiot!" With a flick of her wrist she drew her dagger and advanced on
him.

Time slowed to a crawl. Many impressions sucked at the
fringes of Sebastianłs perception, clamouring for his attention. Zevon: yes, he
can do it, he realised. He could take me with him, too. I can be his right
hand; the right hand of darkness. Hełs ruthless and powerful, itłs true, but
what we had
His gaze fell upon Vargas, and abruptly he realised the extent to
which he had been manipulated by both of them. Damn them to hell! he thought,
suddenly feeling icy cold as a barrier in his heart gave way. Yes, a hostage
indeed, and to both sides! The forfeiture would be mortal, should he lay a
finger on Anya while still her apprentice. They must have guessed which way his
loyalty would blow when he saw Zevonłs strength, even after what Zev had tried
to do to him. With Zevon, such minor tantrums were mutable; he could be worked
around. But even as Sebastian saw all this, Anya lunged


Straight into a whorl of darkness, a loop of abhorrent
vacuum that spun itself out of Zevonłs mouth like a gust of fetid wind. There
was a bright flash as it touched her blade, and a haze of silver flakes spread
out to engulf both of them. For a moment Sebastian expected the clouds to
vanish on contact, but they confounded him, condensing instead into the densest
of mists until both the combatants were shrouded completely from view.

Warily skirting the cloud, Sebastian sidled around the walls
of the chamber until he stood over Vargas. He knelt down beside the magus and
reluctantly touched his shoulder. �Are you awake, my lord? Can you hear me?"

The thing which had been Vargas bubbled wetly. Ochre vines
and pulsing fruit, a grey cauliflower adorned by twin white pebbles balanced at
one end of a skeletal frame of bones and throbbing viscera. The organ-sculpted
abomination tried to sit up, then slowly subsided again; when it twitched
against the floor it left a thin smear of bloody slime. Mesenteries pulsed pink
across knotted bundles of muscles and tendons as it tried to breathe. Sebastian
studied it with minute interest. �Zevon must have been practicing since he did
for Lord Kerein. Did you know that Kerein barely lived long enough to realise
what had been done to him? Yes, Zevłs been getting very creative."

Vargas tried to say something. The air hissed through his trachea,
the yellow plaques of cartilage interlaced with blood vessels rising and
falling as he wheezed. �Control yourself!" Sebastian snapped furiously.
�Therełs only one service I can render you, but first you must acknowledge me
as your apprentice again. Then
" he stopped and rubbed at his twitching cheek.
His eyes were very wide, with hatred or satisfaction or some far less certain
combination of the two. �Itłs very difficult. Youłll have to absolve me
completely. Then ask before I can lay a finger on you."

More wheezing. Vargas tried to say something: he seemed to
be agitated, although it was hard to tell
he was sticking to the floor in
many places, and it must have been excruciatingly painful. �What? Youłll have
to speak up," said Sebastian. �Look, I believe the aura around them is
thinning. What did you say?"

Blood vessels burst, fringes of red shimmering across his exposed
rib cage as Vargas hissed something that might have been a yes. His exposed
eyeballs dripped red, rolled up in their sockets as his flayed body sprawled
backwards across the carpet. It twitched unpleasantly as it lay there, a slow
stain spreading outwards around it. �Less than a minute," Sebastian muttered to
himself. �Zev needs to practice a bit more." But then he stood up, inwardly
exultant: the oath is transferred!

Reaching into his pocket Sebastian retrieved the ivory
love-charm that he and Zevon had carved for each other, that Zev had so
churlishly thrown away
that had drawn enough of his blood and life to become
a part of him. He walked over to Vargasł desk and picked up the brass calipers
from beside the bowl of nuts. Everything around him was cold, as icy as the
steel that had so recently entered his soul; he knew exactly what he must do.
Mentally he consigned to the fires of his loverłs fury everything he had ever
believed in, what precious little of it there was. That, after all, was the
only way he could hope to survive these tortured seconds. And survival, in the
absence of innocence, was everything.

He didnłt have to wait long. The cloud thinned rapidly, a
faint crepitation carrying from within it as if raindrops were spattering
across a surface of red-hot steel. Shadows crept out from beneath the cloud
which glowed with a faint radiance even as it lost substance, until Sebastian
could see the two figures inside it.

Zevon crouched on all fours. His gown smoked, great rents
torn in it as if by the talons of unseen messengers from the Duat, and he
stared unblinkingly at Anya of Tigre. She stood upright in front of him, but
Sebastian noticed suddenly that her hair was bleached as white as straw, and
her face was as lined as an ancients. Chains of paralytic light bound her hands
and feet, and the floor around her was scorched to grey ash: it was clear who
counted himself the winner.

�Doom, agent of the Invigilation, comes to everyone in
time," croaked Zevon. His voice, normally vibrant with life, was reduced to a
desert rasp. He turned his head and grinned at Sebastian, triumph ant malice
glowing in his eyes. �I graduate!" he hissed. �Come dawn, Iłll have the power!
Even the Invigilation will shudder before me!"

He pushed himself upright and Sebastianłs skin crawled as he
saw what Zev had done to himself in order to win. �Look at me!" he crowed. �I
donłt need it any more! All flesh will be dust beneath my heel! And you
" he
saw what Sebastian held in his left hand, and his tone abruptly changed. �Donłt
be a fool, Sebastian. Please, you know it wasnłt me, not really. You wouldnłt
really do that, would you? You mean so much to me, it was just a little joke

what do you think youłre doing?"

Sebastian held up the nutcracker, clamped around the bloodstained
ivory heart. He grinned at the bone-white atrocity that stood before him with
mingled fury and regret. �You really think Iłd take you back after what you
did?" he asked, not waiting for Zevon to answer; �suck on this!"

Zevon raised an arm, his calceous digits pulsing with an
eerie luminance as Sebastian squeezed, bringing all his strength to bear upon a
heart of ivory which had been abused too harshly and for too long to withstand
further pressure. Zev screamed, his jaw dropping open to reveal the dry white
palate of a mummified corpse. The glow intensified and Sebastian felt the ivory
crumble and break in his grip: inside the charred circle of carpet it began to
rain blood.

Sebastian, who had no desire to be drenched, stepped backwards.
It was, he noted, quite spectacularly messy. The combined tableau of Lord
Vargas di Escobar and Zevon
or what was left of them
resembled in its
extremity the wet-dream of a torturer, or perhaps the abstract art of a master
of assassins. Anya of Tigre stood frozen in position as if she had been
petrified by her assailant. The spattering of red trickled down her hair and
face and skin, turning her doublet the colour of sin: �Anya," he called softly
from the margins of the destruction, �has he done for you, too?"

�Help me," she pleaded. Her voice was ghostly, as if she had
seen the future and been unable to find any place for herself in it. �Please
get me out of here, Sebastian. I beg you; I need help
"

�Ask someone else for it," he said flatly. �Iłm not your
slave any more."

�What
" He stepped closer, the better to see the expression
of bewilderment that crept across her withered features. He had thought he
would enjoy this as much as his triumph over Zevon, but somehow things had
changed with Zevłs death: the idea of yet another killing
at least so soon

depressed him.

�Theyłll find you soon enough, Invigilator; you donłt need
my help," he said. She watched him silently as he turned and walked across to
the window casement then threw back the shutters. �I discharged my obligation
to the University. Tonight, I graduated: now I know exactly what I am." He
stared at her coldly for a moment, then walked over to the door. �Donłt think
to look for me," he added. �Iłm done with bleeding hearts and seekers after
good; and evil, too. The only law is survival, at any cost. But one thing
" he
tapped the side of his nose with the tip of his dagger; �Donłt come after me.
Or I think youłll live to rue this night." With that, he turned and left the
death chamber.

Meanwhile, outside the window, dawn was breaking.

First published: Villains, 1992

Version History

If you modify this text, please retain this version history.

Ver 1.518/8/2003Anarchy Publications, HaVoKThis version
was originally downloaded from the #bookz channel on undernet using mIRC. The
final proof was done with Atlantis by Rising Sun Solutions.

Extracts from the Club Diary

August 16th, 1889

Nobody likes to admit to an addiction; especially when the
substance abused is as apparently innoccuous, yet as subtly damaging as the
subject of this diary. It reflects a lack of foresight on the part of the
participant, a naivete if you will, in not predicting the inevitable social
humiliation, concordant upon the revelation that they lack sufficient moral
probity to avoid the pitfalls of temptation. It is my hope that, having
confessed privately to one-another that we share this particular craving, and
having incorporated our club with all due secrecy and pomp, we may now indulge
in our infatuation. Morever, it is my hope that we may do so secure in the
knowledge that no murmur of our Habit may reach the world at largeor worse,
the Press.

It being the case that our Club is a secret body, admittance
to the membership of which is by invitation onlyand then to the most
close-lipped and trustworthy of fellowsI feel it incumbent upon me to start a
journal of our activities. Accordingly, I declare this Club Diary to be open.
The duty of maintaining it falls upon the shoulders of the chairman of the
executive; therefore, in my capacity as co-founder of the society, I shall
maintain it until the time comes to hand over our records to my successor.

I feel that it is necessary to describe the foundation of
our society in some detail, in the interests of posterity. Clubs are worthless
without traditions; consequently, the sooner our traditions are codified the
more secure we shall be. It is unquestionably true to say that our addiction is
an overwhelming pride and passion that is most exclusive in its intensity. It
is also true to say that virtually none of the countless horde who indulge in
the heavenly beverage on any given day feel any inkling of the true importance
which we ascribe to the decoction, or the passion with which we pursue it. That
is not to say that we are insane; merely, posessed ... beings of a great innate
sensitivity, capable of perceiving the delicacy of flavour, the stimulation of
the senses, to an exquisite degree forbidden to the lumpen mass of humanity.
Quite why this might be so eludes me; indeed, the determination of this cause
is the very raison dłętre of the Club, and of the select few who are capable of
perceiving its importance. We are truly a breed apart, isolated and obsessive.
Indeed, we are so rare a type that had two of us not met quite by accident one
day, it is possible that this club should never have come into existence.

I had known for some years that I was unusual in my predilection
for the object of addiction; long before I met Smith-Carrington I learned to
conceal my desires in the presence of those who might greet them with
scepticism or laughter. To most people of any worth, the idea of squandering a
small fortune on the import of such a substance would appear imprudent at best,
or even sinful. To actually contemplate going into trade to support the habit
would be seen as the mark of a lunatic. Luckily my modest inheritance sufficed
to enable me to purchase a warehouse, and by the most circuitous of routes I
established a connection with a certain shop-merchant who harboured ambitions
above his station; thus I was able to maintain my addiction without becoming
the laughing-stock of society. There is nothing like an overriding passion in
life to teach one the true value of commodities; my merchant profited greatly,
and I, for my part, did not do badly. Thus I was able to make my addiction
self-financing; and even to expand my activities, researching new sources of
supply and living in a manner commensurate with my social status.

I first met Smith-Carrington at one of Mr Oscar Wildełs dinners.
As was his habit, that notorious socialite had invited as eclectic an
assortment of guests as he considered conducive to an elevated but stimulating
evening. On this occasion his list consisted of a number of people of high
birth but questionable morals, and a smattering of interesting but shady types
whom he trusted to enliven the proceedings. Actors, actresses, impresarios,
inventors, explorers and prestidigitators were all laid out on display for
their lordłs and ladyshipłs edification. I understand that I was in the category
of those who were to be entertained, by virtue of my birth if nothing else:
Smith-Carrington may have been on the converse side, but in such cases it is
sometimes difficult to tell. In any event, I found myself sitting opposite him
at the dining table. I had read of Smith-Carringtonłs exploits in the wild and
untamed jungles of the Congo, but had passed them by; when I enquired after
them politely that gentleman regarded me rather mournfully. �I searched, but
alas the object of my search was not to be found," he said. �Two years in the
foetid jungle, pygmy headhunters and snakes and mountains as steep as Eiffelłs
Tower to be climbed every day; yet it was all in vain!"

�Oh dear," I said, as the servants wheeled in the coffee.
�You were searching for a medicinal compound of some description, were you not?
The curators at Kew"

I stopped, for my nostrils were momentarily occupied with
the aroma of roasted beans. I sniffed surreptitiously, hoping nobody would
notice; luckily Smith-Carringtonłs attention was directed elsewhere, and my
immediate neighbours were chattering contentedly to persons invisible from my
perspective. I inhaled deeply and closed my eyes.

It was a cheap blend. Perhaps it had been imported from Arabia,
but the cherries had been heated before they were pulped, and the roasters had
been lazy. Indeed, the very beans had been roasted at least two days ago. Yet
for the sake of propriety I must drink this evil brew! I shuddered slightly and
tried to compose myself. I shall have to have words with Mr Wildełs butler, I
thought. Then I opened my eyes again and looked at Smith-Carrington. He looked
pained.

�My dear fellow," I said, �is anything the matter?"

�Nothing of any consequence," he mumbled through his moustache.
Soto voce: �if only I had found it!"

This was most intiguing. I was left no alternative but to be
blunt: �pardon my ignorance, but pray enlighten me: just what precisely were
you looking for?" I enquired.

Smith-Carrington looked at me for a long time, as if
deciding whether I was worthy of his especial confidence. Finally he made his
mind up and spoke: �it is not so much a thing as a process," he said quietly.
�The diaries of Pastor Moelitz of Dusseldorfwho as you may know was martyred
by head-hunters nine years agowere subsequently recovered by the intrepid
Major London. They contained a reference to what he called the Drink of the
Gods. It is known that certain related species of coffea canephora exist in the
uncharted wilderness which has not yet come fully under the dominion of the
Empire. They are believed to be of unusual potency and quality of taste.
Meanwhile, it is also said that the headhunters and savages have a secret
process by which they extract the most heavenly"

He was interrupted by the imposition of a china cup before
him, into which a servitor poured a generous serving of such slop as I would
not allow to pass my lips, had I but the choice. A similar vessel appeared
before me: I sniffed again, apalled. Smith-Carrington for his part, wore an
expression of mute resignation. Our eyes met. �You have a greater than average
understanding of the bean," I whispered. I snapped my fingers for a servant,
passed the woman my card: �pray pass this to the gentleman opposite me," I
instructed her, my heart pounding most unpleasantly. For it was my business
card that I had handed out; if my estimate of Smith-Carringtonłs character was
incorrect, then I should be ruined. However, as I surmised from the set of his
shoulders as he drank the vile brew out of politeness toward our host, my guess
was right.

A chap who would willingly spend two years in deepest Africa
searching for the ultimate cup of coffee, yet who would uncomplainingly partake
of the vile brew we were served that night, in the boudoir of the most
notorious libertine and socialite of the age; such a man was, quite
unmistakably, a fellow spirit. Like me, he was unmistakably trapped in the grip
of the most potent addiction of our modern age. And, from the moment I
discovered that I was not alone, the subsequent formation of our Club became
inevitable.

January 7th, 1890

In its first six months, our club has prospered. There are
now six of us: myself, Smith-Carrington, the Marquis of Brentford (who is
second son of Lord Sandleford), an American entrepreneur called Joyce, Chapman
Frazer (who is chief engineer of the London and District Railway Company), and
Boddington, my shop-keeper.

Perhaps the latter requires some explanation. This club of
ours is astonishingly eclectic, collecting fellows of character regardless of
their birth or station in life: the one requirement is that their passions be
governed by the pursuit of the sublime beverage. Our membership, indeed our
very existence, is a closely-guarded secret; names are put forward by our
existing fellowship, and must be unanimously approved. Early on, it became
apparent that there were advantages to be had in allowing foreigners, like the
American Joyce, to join: to encompass such worthies as Boddington in our ranks
was but another step, although it was not taken without some soul-searching.
Still, if we do not encompass as members those worthies of the artisan class
who are most skilled at making the apparatus that we require, how on earth are
we to proceed with total secrecy? Thus, Boddington is not merely a hireling but
a member; and although this brings with it certain problems of a social nature,
they are not altogether insoluble.

Now, to describe our business. We meet every week, in a room
above the coffee shop in Greek Street, Soho. The room has been furnished to our
taste, and is artfully concealed from the street; to reach it, one must enter
the shop, proceed through to the stock-room, and pull down a trapdoor behind
which lurks a cunning extensible stair. The stairwell is lined with cupboards,
within which we keep our ęspecialł supplies; the brew of which is not now, or
ever, for sale to the hoi polloi.

Our room was once an attic: now it is a spacious club, lit
by the new electric lamps, and equipped with all the apparatus necessary to our
study. There are beaten copper jugs of Ottoman manufacture; a frightening
steamer of Italian design that roars and foams; numerous beakers and grinders
and roasters of all descriptions; and a cooking range upon which to heat the
brew. There is another attic, which is not yet furnished; Chapman Frazer
proposes to convert it into a workshop, the better to serve as the laboratory
of our craving. He also proposes that our priority for this year should be to
acquire as a member an apothecary or pharmacognocist. Frazer is nothing if not
organised.

These resolutions were passed unopposed at our first annual
meeting:

Firstlythat membership of the club should be contingent
solely upon acceptance by all the existing members; that membership should in
the first instance be limited to thirty souls; and that membership, once
granted, should be for life.

Secondlythat it is the purpose of the club to identify and
determine the root cause of our addiction, with the view of equipping us to
control it. In the meantime, a secondary purpose is to research the most
efficient possible way of satisfying our craving.

Thirdlythat to these ends each member should donate at minimum
two hundredths of their worth to the club. That a hardship fund should be
established such that, in the event of indigency, a member stricken by
circumstances might be allowed to make use of club facilities without fee until
such time as their fortunes recover.

Fourthlythat this being a gentlemanłs club, no women should
be admitted.

Fifthlythat as a club established within the realm of Her
Majestyłs dominion, no treason or like-minded abominations should be countenanced
under the auspices of this club; and that members of the club, being also
Citizens of the Empire, should at all times bear in mind their patriotic duty.

Sixthlythat the club should remain secret under all circumstances,
and that the event of its public exposure should be sufficient cause for it to
be summarily wound up.

God save Her Majesty Queen Victoria, and all those who live
under her!

August 16th, 1910

How time flies! It is with the greatest gratification
imaginable that I recall that our club has now survived for more than two decades,
and has now reached its majority. Perhaps this is a suitable point at which to
recall our grand history; the childhood of our endeavour, so to speak.

We now have fully thirty members, as directed by our
charter. Since our foundation, three have died and one has been committed to an
asylum; thankfully, none have had cause to make use of the hardship fund. Our
membership is predominantly based in London, although Joyce remains staunchly
committed to us; perhaps the prosperity of his shipping enterprise in New York
has something to do with his enthusiasm, for he makes a point of visiting at
least twice a year.

The club is still above the shop, but the back room has now
been converted into a combination warehouse and laboratory by Chapman Frazer.
Rodworthy of the Botanical Gardens at Kew, and latterly the incumbent of the
Chair of Pharmacognosy at the School of Pharmacy in Brunswick Square, has
devoted part of his time to a cataloguing of our obsession; he is a grand fellow,
and has contributed more to our understanding of the botanical origins of our
drug than anyone else save, perhaps, Smith-Carrington.

For his part, Smith-Carrington was instrumental in obtaining
for us a supply of the astonishing Wolf Coffee of Java on his expedition of
1893; this decoction is prepared by the passage of the beans through the gut of
the rare Javanese cherry-eating wolf. The acids and other perfusions of the
wolf remove the cherry and treat the bean itself to a most strange
fermentation, following which the raw ejecta may be obtained from the spoor of
the animal. The resultant bean, once cleansed, has a most astonishing and
subtle flavour, quite unlike that of the same beans prepared by the traditional
method of sun-drying the cherries. Sir Bosworth Hughes of the Royal Society is
currently working to isolate the responsible reagents from the gut of the
cherry-eating wolf; it is his hope that one day we shall be able to drink Wolf
Coffee without the need for the lupine intermediary, so to speak. This is a
matter of some importance to those of delicate sensibilities.

Smith-Carringtonłs second expedition of 1895, in search of
the legendary Cannibal Coffee of Borneo, was not a success. However his
personal effects were recovered by his bearers and his pith helmet and left
femur occupy pride of place in our trophy cabinet. We shall remember him
fondly.

Chapman Frazer became intrigued by the potential of the Cappucino
Machine introduced by the Marquis, and embarked upon a plan to construct a new
High Pressure Percolating Engine. As an operator of steam locomotives, I am
sure he knows precisely what he is doing in this respect; nevertheless, I
humbly requested him to conduct his initial experiments away from the club
premises, lest the apparatus should explode. This proved to be a prescient request.

I am not the most mechanically-minded of men, but a short description
should suffice. The Engine resembles a small locomotive, the wheels of which
are removed; there is an apparatus by which they can be allowed to grind beans
in bulk. The Engine, for its part, is intended to percolate coffee under
pressure: grounds are dropped into the cylinders by means of a cunning valve
that opens on the backstroke of the piston, and the live steam emitted from the
cylinder head is condensed and poured into a cup. It produces a brew of most
remarkable potency, but it is somewhat sooty in taste; and after five cups the
piston becomes mired, so the Engine must be stripped down.

Frazerłs collaborator, the Scottish physicist Macintyre, maintains
that Radium is the answer.

Finally, there is the matter of Suffrage. The Marquisł
daughter Camilla is, like her parent, an afficionado of the heavenly brew; she
has pursued her addiction as far as any of us, to the extent of having purchased
a plantation in Jamaica. More gravely, she has discovered the existence of our
Club and last year attempted to inveigle her way into our premises: this caused
a scene of considerable anguish and recrimination. I should like it to be
recorded that I am a great supporter of women, as my wife and daughters will testify;
I should like nothing better than to be remembered as a benefactor of the fair
sex: but I must say that enough is enough. Whether or not those demented
harridans obtain the satisfaction of their unreasonable demands for suffrage,
we shall have no women in this club. This is a high-minded institution
dedicated to the pursuit of the sublime beverage; likely as not, were we to
admit women they would introduce embroidery, or worse still, insist on drinking
tea.

December 1st, 1917

Sad news. Stansbrook Taylor, our founder and Chairman,
passed away in his sleep last night, aged sixty-eight. He will be remembered
for as long as the Club continues to exist, as a gentleman and an afficionado
of the old school. We owe him a great debt of gratitude for the establishment
of this institution, whatever opinions we might hold in respect of his more
extreme views.

For my part, as newly admitted member and, to my surprise,
Club Secretary (the majority of the membership being away at the Front,
regardless of their age), I will attempt to discharge my duties will all
possible grace and efficiency, to maintain the society during these harrowing
times, and to uphold the traditions of the Club in all wayssave one.

signed:

Lady Camilla Sandleford

Club Secretary

January 19th, 1919

The War is over, and Our Boys are coming home. It has been a
trying time; in the last six months, a dastardly Zeppelin captain discharged
his bombs over Soho, and the club windows were shattered by the blast. No less
than six members gave their lives for King and Country during the course of the
war. Many other events transpired, so that the Club is changed almost beyond
recognition. Perhaps it is a mercy that Stansbrook Taylor and Horace Smith-Carrington
are not alive to observe it today. Although their dream continues, it has taken
on the strangest of forms.

First, permit me to take stock of the state of the Club. The
original premises are still standing, and are now owned outright by the Club,
as is the shop below. The retail establishment is managed by Boddington and
Sons Limited as one of their own. Boddington is remarkably hale and hearty in
his old age, and his eldest son appears likely to follow him into the Club,
which would be no bad thing. The finances of the Club are in excellent fettle,
thanks to my father and to Stansbrook Taylor, who included the Club as a beneficiary
in his will.

And now to our activities. The Chemical Committee continued
to work throughout the War, albeit at a slow pace. Their activities focus at
present upon the pressing need to determine what makes the difference between a
merely passable and a superb brew. This work was hampered until recently by
U-boat activity, but looks set to proceed at a gallop in the near future.

The Botanical Committee, under Professor Rodworthy and the
Albanian, Kotcha, is conducting a definitive catalogue of all the plants of the
family rubiacea, among whose ranks the sources of the divine bean are grouped.
It is their profound hope that cross-breeding of plants may be employed to
improve the brew.

The Engineering Committee continues to research improved
methods of titrating the ground beans and expressing their essential
ingredients in palatable form. The High Pressure Percolating Engine developed
by Frazer was succeeded by a series of tests involving Diesel Engines; this
research was funded by the Admiralty for a period between 1914 and 1916, during
which the goal was to investigate the potential of unusual fuels for the
propulsion of Destroyers.

The Committee is currently investigating autoclaves and very
high-pressure steam generators as a route to the extraction of a better brew.
However, there appears to be a fundamental limit imposed by pressures greater
than two thousand pounds per square inch; at this point the coffee grounds
adhere to one another. The result can be a nasty steam explosion, as Frazer
discovered to his cost. Macintyre, for his part, is working with Sir Ernest
Rutherford. He still maintains that Radium is the answer.

And now it is my sad duty to record the effects the war has
had upon our ranks.

Marshall Joyce passed away three years ago, a victim of the
U-boat attack on the liner Lusitania. His son, Marshall Jr., chose not to
follow him into our ranks once he was appraised of the nature of our pursuit.

It is with regret that I note the death of Lieutenant
William Stephenson. William was a gallant gentleman, and we shall all remember
him with regret. He gave his life for Club and Country; the Hun shot him as a
spy in 1918, having caught him infiltrating General Ludendorffłs kitchen
disguised as a maid. His objective was to determine the precise quantity and
quality of ersatz coffee available to the Kaiserłs General Staff; and, if
possible, to adulterate it in such a way as to damage their morale.

My father, the Marquis of Brentford, passed away last year.
He will be remembered.

Now I should mention our new members. We have our first
member of the medical profession, Doctor Gerald Highsmith. I am sure that
Doctor Highsmith will make valuable contributions to both the Chemical and the
Botanical Committees. We have also been joined by the Norwegian atomic
scientist Hansenn, who argues incessantly and amiably with Macintyre. I do not
pretend to understand those gentlemen, but I am sure that something will come
of their experiments.

A number of proposals for membership were black-balled.
Notable among these was the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ulianov, now
notorious for his bolshevist ways. A rascal and trouble-maker! I have no idea
what Mr Wells thought he was doing in putting him forward. At the next annual
meeting I shall propose a long-overdue change to Rule Four: that the word women
be replaced by the term troublemakers.

August 16th, 1939

The political situation on this, the fiftieth anniversary of
our foundation, is looking as grim as it has ever been. Czechoslovakia is no
more; our engineers Dorsey and Haight-Evans have been seconded to the War
Ministry to plan for the worst; and everyone is certain that Herr Hitler will
attack Poland in the near future. I am taking action to ensure that the Club
retains access to its supplies of coffee during the coming War; meanwhile, in
view of the terrible prospect of the Strategic Bombing of cities, we are
considering the possibility of removing our fittings to the country.

I write this diary sitting in the comfortable, leather and
oak surroundings of the Club Secretaryłs office, downstairs in what was
formerly the shop in Greek Street. It is no longer a shop, although we retain a
dusty window display and a sign saying ęclosed for repairs.ł The entire
premises are now occupied by the club; from the historic meeting-room upstairs
to the bean stocks in the cellar and the machine-room in the back. I find
myself at something of a loss when I think that we might shortly have to vacate
these premises; there is far more than mere nostalgia here. Having been
Secretary of the Club for the past twenty years, and involved in it since 1909,
I am nevertheless astonished at the devotion which it inspires among us, and
the changes that time has wrought.

If it is true that there are two cultures in this nation of
ours, then it is trivially clear from a perusal of our Club that the majority
of those who share our interest (an unnatural and extreme craving for the Great
Beverage, that exceeds the bounds of propriety) are scientifically inclined.
There are no artists, and precious few philosophers in our club. I am no longer
the sole lady of the venture, but we are still in a minority and even, dare I
say it, considered eccentric by our male peers.

We count a number of remarkable men among our group. We have
one Nobel laureate, three atomic scientists, two aeronautical engineers, and
the deep-sea diver Carruthers. The Research Committees have almost subsumed the
raison dłętre of the club; they have published scientific papers and even a
book (which has become the most respected text in its field). Nevertheless, the
current direction of our endeavour is more practical than philosophical; great
strides have been made towards extracting a perfect brew, but far less
attention has been payed to understanding the nature of our craving.

Work on high pressure percolation was suspended after the explosion
that caused the death of Chapman Frazer. Macintyrełs sad and long-drawn-out
demise convinced us that Radium was probably not the answer. However, new
alleys are being explored all the time, and there have been remarkable
successes.

Hansen has pioneered the application of atomic Cyclotrons to
the brewing of coffee. His technique is to anodize grounds and fire them at a
target of ice, a hundred times as fast as a rifle bullet! Sadly, the flavour of
the grounds is damaged by the electroplating process he uses, and the necessity
to maintain the Cyclotronłs chamber in a vacuum may ultimately put an end to
this line of research. In the meantime, he has proposed an experiment that requires
the procurement of a rather expensive substance from Norway, that he calls
�heavy" water. We have yet to vote on this expenditure.

Dorsey and Haight-Evans have been working on what they call
a �fluidized-bed low-pressure steam turbine infusor" which shows great promise.
It certainly produces a fine brew, but it has to be bolted to the floor and the
noise it makes is unspeakable; the device had to be switched off after the Club
received complaints from the Police. They are now working with a Mr Whittle
from the Ministry, in the belief that a suitably modified version of their device
might be used to propel a fast fighter aeroplane.

Wright and Kotcha have been investigating the use of explosives.
Their device resembles a football; lenses of exotic explosive surround a sphere
of raw beans, which are distributed across the surface of a globe of ice. When
the explosives are detonated correctly an incredible brew results, but the
timing is difficult to perfect, and all too often the result is a mushroom of
slush followed by a black, gritty rain. I believe they have written a note to
Professor Leo Szilard about it.

For my part, I confess that I am becoming a little tired of
my duties as club Secretary. Times have changed, and the eccentric gentlemanłs
club I recall from my childhood has been replaced by something altogether
stranger; a loose and secretive association of scientists, searchers for a hermetic
enlightenment that can be placed among the most ellusive holy grails of
Science. Even Jung, our psychologist, believes that there is an absolute
archetype for which the other scientists are looking: that far from the
heavenly brew being a product of our aesthetics, our very existence is required
by some strange teleology resulting from the potential of the ur-coffee for
which we seek. The logic of the quantum is replacing the bonhomie of the club.
And the clouds of war are drawing in ...

August 16th, 1959

The twenty-year report by the Secretary appears to have become
a de-facto tradition of the Club. Consequently, I should like to take this
opportunity to reiterate the great strides forward we have take since the last
such report, on the eve of the Second World War.

Firstly, I should like to record, for the benefit of those
who never had the privelige of knowing her, the great debt that we all owe to
Lady Camilla Sandleford. Lady Camilla passed away four years ago, having been
Secretary of the Club for thirty-five years. Under her auspices the club
prospered; our holdings now include three plantations, a significant
shareholding in Imperial Chemical Industries, and a range of assets sufficient
to ensure our perpetual prosperity. Consequently, in 1952 the limit of thirty
members was raised to one hundred, and academic sponsorship was mandated for
ten research studentships in appropriate fields.

It is interesting to note that we have encountered no
difficulty in selecting new members of an appropriate calibre. Indeed, the
obsessive quality with which we persue our beverage seems to have percolated
out into society at large; it is, after all, no longer considered a monumental
faux pas to display such an overt technical interest in a social drug.
Nevertheless, by unanimous vote of the Executive, it has been determined that
we shall remain a Secret Society and that Rule Six shall remain effective in
perpetuity. It is believed that public exposure would restrict our ability to
conduct some critical experiments, and as the technologies we are exploring
have military potential it would be counter-productive to expose ourselves to
infiltration by Communist Spies.

Our scientists were active in a number of areas during the
Second World War. Among other things, Dorsey and Haight-Evans worked with
Whittle to convert their concept of a fluidized-bed turbofuser into an
operational jet engine. Wright vanished for three years; it was not until a
fateful day in August of 1945 that we discovered the ends to which his research
into explosive lenses had been put. Sadly, Kotcha the Albanian proved to be
unreliable. He returned to his homeland and was immediately spirited away to
the Soviet Union, taking his work on ultracentriguation with him. We cannot
estimate the extent of his contribution to the Bolshevik bomb program at this
time.

Meanwhile, work continues apace. The discovery of the Double
Helix has given a tremendous boost to the Botanical Committee, who are now
making extensive use of the Boddingtonłs Mark One Computer that now occupies
the cellar of our former premises in Greek Street. When not employed preparing
the accounts for the Boddingtonłs Beverage Corporation, the computer is used to
assist the X-ray crystallographic analysis of the enzymes responsible for the
production of the alkaloid constituents of Coffee. The new Bioassay Team hopes
to develop a means of characterising the aesthetic quality of a brew
objectively, using laboratory instruments alone. This would be a great leap
forward.

Our American chapter has recently recruited a number of German
expatriates who are currently working for the NASA organisation (formerly NACA)
on rocket propulsion of space vehicles. Herr Von Braun, perhaps best known as
the architect of the A4 rocket, is particularly enthusiastic about the
prospects of using cryogenic hydrogen-oxygen motors as a combination roasting/grinding
and percolation technology. Promising results have already been obtained using
a pre-chilled launch pad, several kilos of Jamaican Blue Mountain, and a
prototype J-2 motor.

Following the Russian orbiting of a dog, some mice, and some
plants, we are considering an experiment to evaluate the effect of free fall on
coffee bush growth. Space botany is still in its infancy, but we feel that this
is a field of some considerable potential.

August 16th, 1989

(Teleconference links established to continental branch chapters
in New York, Tokyo, Naples, Hong Kong and Brazilia: proceedings to be published
internally in hardcopy format, with accompanying videotape, not more than three
months after the presentation.)

Ladies and Gentlemen, the centennial report.

Our club was established a century ago, as a select
meeting-place for like-minded aesthetes and aficionados of the ultimate beverage.
Over the intervening decades we have prospered and blossomed into an
international organisation of unparalleled success. Our current membership is
stable at six hundred and fifty two full members and forty-seven funded
research fellows. We have chapters in six countries and members in eighteen. Our
collective treasury portfolio has a balance of three hundred and ninety one million
US dollars, yielding an income of forty-six million dollars this year; it is
anticipated that our presence in the recombinant genetic engineering industry
and our investment in the human genome project will yield a great return on our
investment within the next decade.

I think we can fairly say that our club has been one of the
great success stories of the twentieth century.

Advances in genetic engineering are now laying bare the secrets
of the coffee plant. We will soon be able to breed a coffee bush that gives
rise to the ultimate bean.

Meanwhile, our cognitive psychologists have been attacking
the problem from the opposite direction. What, they ask, makes the difference
between one of us and, for example, a tea-drinker? Why are we members of this
society so obsessed by the ultimate brew, when most of the public are content
to drink freeze-dried, decaffeinated arabica? We hope that we will shortly
determine the answer to this problem. If nothing else, the human genome project
will, within twenty years, allow us to test extensive models of the human
neural chassis and predict who will grow up to be a caffeine addict, and who
will be a dipsomaniac.

Our engineering laboratories have already produced the ultimate
percolator. Using computational fluid dynamics and smart materials technology,
the high performance liquid chromatographic elution system at the core of the
JK-88 percolator is capable of achieving the ultimate balance of aroma and
density, aftertaste and emollience, pentosans and tannins. The next step is to
reduce the cost of the HPLC-E technology to the point where it can be
mass-produced for less than the cost of a Boeing 757.

And yet, I know that there is unease among us. In the past
five years, there has come about a collective malaise; a directionless
wandering, an inability to look beyond our noses, beyond the research itself,
and to analyse the meaning of the endeavour we are enrolled in. This is a
critical failing of our Club. As our charter states, we are gathered together
not merely to drink coffee but to understand why we drink coffee.

Let me assure you that our philosophers and semioticians are
hard at work trying to determine the ultimate significance of our obsession.
The nameless angst that besets the prototypical member of this club cannot be
combated by any means other than a dose of the favoured brew, at this moment in
time, but it is hoped that an exhaustive analysis of the teleology of
coffee-drinking and a synthesis with the semiological significance of
imbibement may eventually reveal to us the ultimate secret of why we drink
coffee. This is a matter of vast importance. It is by the repetition of this
small ritual that we bind together the entire world in which we move; without
it, might not our entire civilization cease to exist? Perhaps we were placed on
this planet for no purpose other than to comprehend the nature of our own most
sublime yearnings.

In any event, it is with great pleasure that I can now
reveal to you the plan for our next twenty years; to bring the benefits of our
research to bear on improving the lot of the common man and woman ...

May 1st, 2019

Armstrong City, Mare Tranquilitatum, Luna nearside. Anne
here. There are only six of us left. Six of us in the Club, in the entire solar
system. And no-one at all on Earth.

I canłt believe Iłm dictating this. Itłs too dangerous; if
anyone reads this file Iłm stuffed. Even being found with a stash is enough to
get you whacked for hoarding these days. So I guess this is the last ever
Secretaryłs report. How the hell did we ever get here, cold turkey survivors
flapping our wings in the airless claustrophobia of the main Lunar outpost and
peering down through telescopes at the red devastation that hit our home world?

I blame the biotechnology group. Or maybe the Ethics Committee.
They should never have given the green light to making major genetic
modifications to macroscopic organisms. I mean, never mind the justifications;
building a hybridized coffee bush, capable of thriving in the near-vacuum and
frigid environment of Mars, a motile plant capable of eating anything that
moved and thriving on virtually nothing but vacuum and sunlight, then testing
it out on Earth, was just plain dumb. I guess they were enthusiastic, but
thatłs no excuse. The idea of terraforming Mars with coffee bushes was a good
one; a prolific plant, our very life blood, and the greatest of brews
imaginable! Yep, they hybridized the red weed with the most appetizing, perfect
strains of coffee ever to be cultivatedthen gave it the survival imperative of
a hungry triffid. Just think, an entire planet of red coffee weed, adding to
the sum total of human happiness, right? Jerks.

I suppose they were blind to the consequence. Look; our craving
is an addiction. Wełve perfected it, honing it knife-sharp over a stretch of
years; now itłs more real than we are. Like itłs got a life of its own. And the
object of our addiction made flesh, once unleashed on the world, well ...

They field-tested it in Antarctica. Within fifty days the
two hundred seedlings they transfered to the ice-cap had burst into flower and
spawned. A forest of bushes spread out across the ice, plants shuffling in
restless migration towards the sunlight. Alarmed, they tried defoliants: the
red weed ate everything, thrived on agent orange, spat it right back at them.
Some of the plants reached the edge of the icecap, outracing the chill of
winter. Disaster; nobody had planned for what the bushes would do when they met
sea water. The bushes thrived. Bitter and inedible to anything that swam, they
matted the surface of the oceans and propagated furiously. Within weeks,
enclaves arrived in Tierra del Fuego and Tasmania. A quarantine was declared:
but smuggled beans bore fruit in Provence, and that was that.

Two hundred days. Thatłs all it took to wipe out the entire
botanical ecosystem of Earth. Biotech had engineered a superior photosynthetic
pathway; and we are left to reap the bitter harvest.

Down-side, ten million survivors are going cold turkey, only
this is one trip thatłs for life and beyond. Animals starve; food crop harvests
wither and die. Wolf-breeding is a last-ditch resort, an attempt to save
something that can harvest the red weed. Meanwhile, up here wełre in quarantine.
No shipments from earth; possession of live coffee beans a capital offense.
(You never know what might hatch in the hydroponic vats ...) When I die, bury
me with my best china set. Itłs going to be a long, dry year ahead. And it may
be as much as five years before we can ride a shuttle down-side and pick up
some more supplies.

Damn, but Iłd kill for a drink ...

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Generation Gap

I didnłt go to school to learn about genocide; I learned it
on the bus with Jerzy and Moira and Hammurabi, and we made beautiful corpses.
The light was blue and the time was five diurns from sunset when we caught on
to the idea; and it was slick. Slick and smooth as my inside parts when I come.
My Wisdom pipes me that therełs a type-descriptor for what we were
juvenile
delinquents. Pejorative, maybe envious context is implied. (Envious of what? We
shone with youth. Wouldnłt you be envious?) Anyway, I guess youłll want to know
why we did it, or at least why I went along, so here goes ...

School was irrelevant. That was the initial factor that
started the tree growing. Itłs public knowledge, I guess; all there is to learn
in life is search strategy and people-moving. If you can dig the data and move
masses you can roll. The moonłs your runway.

Why the earth we reference it as the moon is beyond me, by
the way; moon of what? Some radioactive dirt-ball? I guess we should redefine
�the world" too, while wełre about it. In case some of you are new to this
frame of reference, I am Farida Ng-3, junior registered native, Lunar
Administrative Zone. Age thirteen years. Crime: intentional genocide. Guilt:
likely. Sentence
thatłs running ahead.

Anyway, there were seven of us in this crowd. We werenłt the
only crowd in Armstrong, but where age distribution peaks at around a hundred
years and has a distinctive skew to it you just know youłre in an etymological
minority. The old are a different administrative bloc; they think things
differently. Theyłre mostly kiddies; kind of indistinguishable to us, you
understand. Theyłve got aux modules and life support łtill their cortices
crumble and all the old neurones trip out to make room for brand-new widgets
that may not even exist, except in that logical parahyperspace they use for
higher functions. Theyłre not subject to boolean logic; no more TRUE/FALSE
dichotomy.

I sometimes met my genetic predecessor, five rungs up the
DNA ladder, and he was ancient. Saw Armstrong himself on a monitor, in
real-time. Said he had no face, just a golden mirror to stop the sun frazzling
his bioptics. Great-grandfather wanted to know what it was like to be a �little
girl"
I had to access my Wisdom to parse the referent. Told him I wasnłt,
never had been, a �little girl": I was an intermittent/dominant. His
synthesiser laughed for him and told me not to be silly. �Silly" means
non-survival oriented. How can it be survival-oriented to sublimate copulation?
Like I hypothesised, the old donłt use self-consistent logic structures any
more. Simulate Godel, Von Neumann, spinning in radioactive graves.

I guess if I revert to consensus reality it might be easier
on your referencing. Gives a rational kind of subset, anyway. Nothing rational
about kiddies; they were about as relevant as dinosaurs and birds and things
like that, useless for any purpose. We
the gang
existed between towering
walls of calcite and the most complex biosystem of Solspace. Certainly the
second-oldest, if you disregard Soyuzshells. Armstrong City was domed in
diamond slightly thicker than Iłm tall, filled with streams and trees and
branching herbivores and insects coming out of your ears. Earwigs, ugh, horrible;
use malathion on sight, guilty of ecological crimes. So what?

That was my introduction to nihilism. A bug that bit me.

School was irrelevant, as Iłve already noted. I donłt need
to learn things to know them; all I need is to know where to find them. Ditto
Jerzy, Moira, Hammurabi, Piet, Pallas, and Kid Inkatha. So how were our
activities allocated?

We were hard-ish cases, about ten percent of our generation
in Armstrong City, all born/decanted/activated in the two-hundred-and-eleventh
year of foundation. Armstrong City and associated robotnik industrial zones had
a total human population of over 4 EXP 7, of whom about ninety-five percent

out past the median to nearly two standard deviations
were kiddies. That made
us deviants. Perverts of the moon, network!

We sat in a ruddy earthlit glade, with the sun a glowing
patch twenty degrees above the horizon. The trees were perennial, from some
subtropical zone
a sweet, sickly stench rose from them, mingling with the
burnt-meat smell of a Goliath beetle that Piet had cornered and slaughtered
noisily. Youłd be surprised how big they grow here. All seven of us were
around. Wełd taken hours to reach this place, high among the foothills near the
edge of the dome.

The location appealed to my aesthetic sensibilities. My muse
was noting pastoral scenes from my optic chiasma; I downloaded some sensations
to Lunar Administrative Zone, who swallowed the engram without complaint. I
watched Piet as he spitted the beetle under a Fresnel lens held by Hammurabi.
Hammurabi never complained; he was a dark, silent, beautiful child. All he
wanted was to be loved. I think Piet had promised to love him after the feast

an archetypical social algorithm within our gang. Iłll never know, now.

A smoky aerosol containing appetising oxidation products
drifted towards me. I sniffed, salivating. Jerzy squatted near the cooks and
broke off two substantial legs. He brought one of them to me like some kind of
pre-space savage in g-string and war paint. The paint was blood; we were here
to help LAZ with ecological control, culling landpussies where they clustered
and squirmed too thickly in the branches.

I accepted the joint and he collapsed in a heap beside me.
Very black hair, Jerzy, long and oiled and falling in ringlets, and dark skin
engineered in among the genes of his caucasian precursors. Hełs
regular/dominant so we donłt often interact positively, but sometimes his
presence has a strange effect on me.

�Farida my lovely, why is it
� he paused
�that when I
look at you I feel as if my eyes are deceiving me?"

I bit into the leg before replying; spat out a fragment of
shell and chewed on the hot, spicy meat inside.

�Unlikely," I said, when my mouth was vacant enough for polite
speech. �Didnłt you have them replaced just before Landing Day?"

He looked annoyed. �Shit Farida, when I go to the trouble to
script a dialogue for us do you always have to ignore it?" I caught his
meaning, consulted my Wisdom and felt embarrassed. His objective was gentle
seduction and physical copulation, in a sun-dappled glade by a stream. Dropped
silently into the database. The cliches were so old they werenłt even funny
enough to laugh at; he meant it. I flushed prettily and felt selected bits of
my vascular system dilating in response.

�Okay!" I said; �Letłs re-start." One for the memory banks.
He smiled at me and said:

�Farida, why is it
� pause
�that when I look at you I
feel as if my eyes are deceiving me?"

I smiled at him knowingly and replied; �Beauty is only skin
deep. Did you ever have the inclination to get in underneath and find out where
the real me begins?"

He put his left hand on my right thigh. It was slightly damp
from holding the charred beetle, and slightly hot. He put it right where Iłd
had trouble with an autonomic reflex, and he knew it. I began to feel warm and
wet. And all of a sudden I was irritated. �Break," I said, chopping the air
with my hands, palms turned downward.

He looked hurt. �Whatłs wrong now?" he demanded.

I looked him in the eye, slightly abashed. �This isnłt going
to work. I donłt need to hide behind a dialogue box, and I donłt like cliches,
and I donłt like hanging around!" I waited for a dramatic response; sometimes
impromptu outcuts make the best memories. But I had this nagging sense
even
without my Wisdom
that my deep meaning was being obscured by noise. Jerzy
looked confused now, as well as hurt. He took his hand away.

�Well, what do you want?" he asked, dangerously close to giving
up. I reached over and took his hand, not noticing Moira glaring at me, and
stood up.

�I want you to take me to this glade of yours," I said, �and
lay me down for a dreamy good time. With no script. And stay with me afterward
and talk."

�By bus?" he asked, dubiously.

�Via bus," I affirmed. Our logic gate was now true: we went
off and coupled in a secret glade, beneath a tree dripping with torpid
landpussies and peaches. That was how it was before this started.

Itłs about now that I must insert personal values into this
narrative. Distasteful as it may be, Iłve got to tell you something about me,
myself, my speciality. We youth are not parasitic drains on the community.
Absolutely the contrary. Our simplistic logical modes ensure continuity for the
processes of �science."

�Art" is another matter, but �science" you can safely leave
to us children!

To be brief, my speciality is applied pharmacokinetics. Not
to be confused with pharmacodynamics, which is an entirely different subtree.
Pharmacokinetics interfaces with thermodynamics; itłs the principle of
diffusion across phase boundaries, biomolecules providing the context. Rates of
reaction mechanisms are a vital component of the field; they define interface
phenomena.

I was attempting to develop a revision of a classical,
almost extinct application of rate kinetics called kinetics of kill.

It was a requirement of an obsolete biotechnology where bacterial
contamination had to be avoided because death could be caused by microbial
overgrowth. The rate of death of a population of organisms can be viewed as a
statistical process akin to a chemical reaction; time/environment dependant
autolysis. Potentially a mathematical description of genocide; harmless, in
itself, but it had military implications. Which became obvious ...

Jerzy lay in my arms, a leg resting across one of my hips.
The grass was warm and the turf springy from subdome support systems. We lay
there, breathing shallowly in the aftermath of our exertions, and the
landpussies presently began rustling in the branches. Ignoring us. A
particularly bold one flopped down from a low branch and squirmed towards a
fruit that lay, rotting, just beyond my fingertips.

As it crossed from sunlight into shade and back again, it
switched from grey to green to dull. Patterns rippled across its skin. It
extended a tentative tentacle, and I wiggled a finger at it; natural curiosity
warred with fear, won out, and we shook manipulators. Then I picked it up
bodily, flipped it topside down and bit it between the eyes, killing it
instantly. Curiosity is not a permitted survival trait among ępussies.

Jerzy opened a sleepy eye. �Why dłyou do that?" he asked, lazily.

�Think," I said. �Wełre on a cull, arenłt we?"

He whistled something improbably convoluted in modemspeak,
at a baud rate I couldnłt follow. Every dangling tentacle vanished instantly,
and I heard a rustling of branches. �I donłt like it," he said; �wełve stuffed
our quota, havenłt we?" His lips were beautifully full, ideal for pouting,
kissing, and modemspeak
they were enhanced with piezoelectrics. He grimaced.
�I didnłt want to be disturbed."

�Oh." I was silent for a while. �Do you want to bus, now?" I
asked. He licked the base of my throat gently, and transmitted a synchronicity
pulse. I lay back, relaxed, and left my skull behind.

The �bus" is identifier for a private communications mode
used by us anachronisms. Itłs a wetware bus; a kiss on the lips of the cerebral
cortex. You canłt bus with a non-linear thought processor like a kiddie. Some
of them are so out of it that even duration loses significance; a subjective
timespace inversion takes place, so that they can think backwards and sideways
at once. That makes bussing a kind of private code, a childspeak language.
Quickspeak, too. It would be better than copulation, except tha t it locks out
your Wisdom at the same time because it uses the same pathways. It also locks
out LAZ, because Wisdom is a sub-function of LAZ. Jerzy became my Wisdom, I
became his, and as a consequence we were unaware of certain interesting ethical
paradigms.

The sensation was of a snowball melting in my stomach: of an
orgasm freezing between my thighs. I was part of something very powerful, very
ignorant, with thought processes unlike any neonate of our experience;
describable by analogy. Two bodies, clasping beneath the ruddy glow of earth.

I vaguely felt someone else joining in. It turned out that
Hammurabi, Kid Frank and Moira had eviscerated the goliath beetle with
efficiency to be envied by army ants. Piet and Pallas were too busy exploring a
subjective universe of hunger, which included both nutritional and emotional
deprivation; they had given in while the rest were eating, and their mutual
secretions were lubricating the forest floor even as ours were. Afterwards they
all bussed, and Jerzy and I daisy-chained instinctively. A sevenfold hookup; an
orgy.

I was very warm. As half of a command node (regular AND intermittent/dominant
is a strong combination) I began to be more than warm. I was hot. I loved it.
So did Jerzy. This was turning out better than usual. Usually after we fucked
we didnłt feel like networking with each other for diurns. Here we were
bussing, in monopole position ... I felt a level of emotion for him that was previously
unzoned, and Iłm sure he experienced something similar. Sometime during that
endless skinless time the concept occurred to us. So thatłs why when we
executed it we didnłt know who was the origin node. I know part of it was my
study of time/survivor curves: but who could have thought of the Cannonball
Express?

We came out of it, eventually. My right arm had suffered a
partial circulatory collapse where Jerzy was lying on it; he smiled dizzily at
me and rolled off it. Feelings of static echoing up and down painful nerve
trunks as movement and afferent sensation returned to my fingertips. I stood
up.

�Itłs a beautiful view," I said, looking towards the
perimeter of the dome. Jerzy stood behind me, holding me round the waist to
stabilise himself.

�Yes," he said. In front of us the dome arched upwards into
the empty vacuum. Beyond it loomed the jagged wilderness of the lunar surface,
pock-marked with robotniks and factotums. Their power lines and cold fusors
gridded the airless desert off into rockfarms. In the distance, the hyperbahn
slashed across the surface like the scar of some cometary impact. I knew that
power plates lay beneath the surface of the road, that it was totally
featureless and as smooth as a Futurists personality, but still I searched for
induction loops.

Someone else wrapped an arm round my waist. It was Moira.
Somewhere in the bus shełd erased her resentment and reoriented for
polymorphous eroticism. I detected an invitation in her fingertips, but I was
null to accept. Jerzy had left me drained, both of fluids and of endorphins.
Her time would come. The others arrived. We clustered together, tired, happy,
motiveless. We had a theory to test; somewhere in the business we had
synergized a formula to test out a use for my general theory of genocide. It
would be invaluable in a really major disaster, we reasoned; so it should be
tested, confirmed beforehand. We needed a very tiny disaster, really, to test
it on; a disaster under controlled circumstances. We knew that much. Collective
we, the local network.

�The beetle population," suggested Piet, tastelessly, still
licking his mandibular extensions. Hammurabi shook his head.

�Would be of indefinite consequence to biome," he said,
frowning. Meaning; donłt you dare! There were less than 10 EXP 5 species in
dome of Armstrong City; less than 10 EXP 6 in Solspace; previously greater than
10 EXP 7 on earth, before it became Earth As We Know It. But at least 10 EXP 2
of Armstrong City species were unique
either genedits or genuine endangered
species. The sundews, for example. There are categories of genocide, you
understand.

�Problem:" announced Kid Inkatha, throwing back his mane of
silverblue fur and then curling it demurely in front of his left shoulder.
�Identify a species possessing attributes [1] non-endangered, [2]
non-productive, [3] non-sentient, at least in terms of root human referents,
and [4] non-interactive with ecosystem. Then kill them." He grinned, baring
wickedly filed dental implants.

I looked for a landpussy, but Jerzy had frightened them all
off. Kid was looking at me ...

Let me present to you the Cannonball Express. Fastest
surface transport mechanism ever developed. Here on Luna we have this economic
problem with hydrogen, deuterium: there is none. Like you we use low thrust
mass drivers for deep space work, but you can afford to use H2 for reaction
mass to get into orbit. Wełve got O2 in abundance but there are problems.
Second-best oxidant out. We need rusty rocket motors like we need holes in the
biome. So we use a flinger to get into orbit
a big linear accelerator , two hundred
kilometres long. One t-gee, six local gees, boosts into orbit at zero metres
altitude, except it chucks over edge of a synthetic cliff. How to get back
down?

Cannonball Express, hyperbahn, is fastest road in universe.
(�Road" is old referent from pre-death earthside; look it up, youłll be
amazed.) It works like this: you put your orbiting module onto a
surface-grazing trajectory. It intersects the lunar surface at start of
expressway, with downward vector about equal to one lunar gee. Big smear on surface,
you think? Wrong. Express has wheels on it
big wheels, titanium discs, spun
up by turbine before impact, brakes cooled and operated by open-circuit LOX
feed. Orbital minimum groundspeed is about 3.7 EXP 3 kilometres per hour

earthly fast.

The module touches the dragstrip at orbital velocity, very
gently. Begins braking interface. The downward vector component maintains
surface contact, while vapourized LOX bleeds off kinetic energy as heat. Pretty
soon module not racing at orbital velocity any more.

We agreed to divert Cannonball Express, nip the dome, and
produce a localised atmospheric deficiency over, say, one hundred square
kilometres. Then wełd move to patch the dome when about ten percent of all
kiddies went onto permanent downtime
enough to predict consequences of a
wider deployment. Genocide theory is neat.

Next field test: New Rome Triumvirate. Serve them notice for
earth.

But kiddies are resistant to vacuum. I discovered this a
while ago, by accident. Examination of a memory of great-great grandpa
confirmed; skin like elephant. In old days you needed thick, dead epidermis to
protect against some frequencies of radiation. Needed hypercharged oxygen
capacity in event of dome fracture. And it got thick anyway, natural response
to an irritant environment. I compared engrams with realtime vision of parent.

My parent was pretty good for a factotum; the best. Not my
human parents, you understand, who I never met, but my appointed guardian,
Sheila.

Sheila was just like human in appearance, behaviour, many
other capabilities. But wasnłt: not human, not machine either. Iłm not sure I
ever forgave them for that. Told great-great granddad, who cross-referenced me
Santa Claus, mythic pre-space benefactress who was used to initiate consumerist
behaviour among neonates. I found it, quite frankly, improbable; why would
consumption be required? Why would simulation of human parent be required? They
lied.

Great-great refused to answer my questions, faked sleep. In
the warm comfort of our homenode, where G-G was physically guesting at the
time, I slipped a sweaty hand behind his neck. My hand was wired with sensors
to locate neural input vectors; I logged his Wisdom protocols while he slept.
But as I pulled away he opened his eyes wide, smiled at me with an artifice
born of centuries, and said �Try it," in that curiously cracked voice of his. I
didnłt dare. It would probably have worked. And then what? Invasion of mindspace
is no laughing matter. People have been structurally reorganised for less. G-G
knew it; donłt tell me alternatives. He looked at me, eyes wrinkled and ancient
and knowing, with the lazy power of dragon-age, hot intelligence of abdicated
authority. Old monsters, leaving the running of worlds to children. It served
them right.

I went home. Sheila swept me up in passing through the compartment.
Held me just like a neonate. �Hello there!" she said, blue eyes glowing. One
path to identify factotums; they have no epidermal pigmentation, unlike real
humans. All of them modelled on obsolete nordic complexion; pretty, blonde,
ersatz. I wonder what they think of it.

�Hello, Mom," I said, subdued in my desperate haste to reach
the bathroom. I felt grimy, sweaty, result of lying on grass and fucking. Also
a bit sore. I still get that way a bit, afterwards.

Mom
Sheila
held me, moved to armłs length, looked me in
eye. �Good time, Fa?" she asked.

�I think so," I said, and grinned back. �Need a bath."

�Uh-huh. Killing things, at your age!" She switched track abruptly.
�Iłve invited Syrinx for supper. Interested?" Syrinx was her lover. Only lover,
long-term. So factotums donłt have lovers where you come from; then how the
earth are your neonates expected to learn
from heuristics? I nodded. �Iłll be
there." At a formal meal. Must arrange for Sheila and Syrinx to be elsewhere at
time of test, I decided.

She let go, shaking head distractedly, and I followed
through to the water bath. (Now I bus with the others she has time for her own
life. For hooking up to her peripherals, scattered on the surface, for making
love and robots of her own. A true, inorganic life-form in our own image. But
we donłt claim to be gods; as a species they are better than us. So we made
them mortal. Humans are a nasty lot at root terminus.)

I bathed in milk from an extinct species, and had myself
dried by an affectionate towel that cuddled me in all the right places and told
me stories. Tall stories but true stories. I thought for a while, flopped on a
temporary bed, then pulsed LAZ for a call. Got Jerzy, on EVA of all things.
Taking hike up side of rimwall, wearing skinsuit, carrying parasol.

�What you wanting, pussy-killer?" he asked. I could see my
image reflected in his eyes, gridded over by life-support data. Serious
business, walking.

�Wanting you," I said. �Got an upcoming small social, want
company. For two twos. Are you not flattered?" I waited for him to think of
something. He seemed to be on interrupt overdrive from his response.

�Flattered? Iłm flattened! When, where?"

�This diurn," I said. Consulted Wisdom. �Four hours, my node.
Formal dinner with parent, parentsł associate."

�Um. Can intersect. That adequate?" His eyes, wide, disingenuous,
interrogated me.

�Better be! See you." I cut out and buried fists in foam
bed. Maybe here, in six hours or so. I knew I needed him. This was becoming an
embarrassment. (And donłt tell me that referent is abstruse. I donłt accept
that; some things are universal to human experience.) Thinking about need, I
slept.

Woke to touch on shoulder. Rolled, foam surging and dissolving
beneath me; it was Sheila. She belly-flopped beside me, face to face. �Farida,
please accept my humblest apologies for waking you. I wanted to talk to you
before Syrinx gets here, and you were going to sleep right through." She lay
there like a big whale, mammalian, floating. �Right, Mom," I said. Breasts at
my face against which Iłd suckled until too old.

�Right," she agreed. �I havenłt been seeing much of you
lately. Any particular reason?" Straight to the decision point, Mom. I yawned.

�Not really," I said. �Been with the crowd, culling
landpussies, hiking, plugging. Got someone you should meet coming, three hours
minus, eat with us. Okay?"

�Uh huh." I could see her wondering, is that all? But I
didnłt want to know for sure what she was thinking. It takes all the pleasure out
of life to know everything. Thatłs whatłs wrong with the kiddies, I think.

�Is there a name to match this identity, perchance?" she
asked.

�Yes. Jerzy." Pronounced Cher-Tsee. �Hope you match abstracts."

Mom rolled off the foam and bounced to her feet. �Do you,
Fa?" She grinned like an electrical discharge in air. �See you in person."

�In person," I echoed. Feel so distant, I wondered. Whatłs
wrong with me?

Jerzy arrived, glamorous and beautiful. We spent minutes in
rapt mutual admiration. Basking in a glow of self confidence. He sat at the
base of our tree, outside the bole which concealed the door, and I sat beside
him. Careful not to disturb his cosmetic artifice by contact; tigerstriped
microtexture to face and body converted him into a baroque feline sapient. His
skirt matched, too.

�Did you find what you were looking for on your walk?" I
asked, artlessly. He draped an arm across my shoulders, casual and superb.

�Yes," he admitted after a lengthy pause. �Optic homing beacon
for express. If we can fix the backup systems
� he left the rest
unverbalized. A passing police videomouse might overhear and correlate (direct
mindtap being violation of human rights). Secrecy lay in bussing or in
ellipsis.

�I hope this is the right way to test it," I verbalised.
�Itłs got to be done as a double blind, but the panic ... � He hugged me.

�Unquantifiable. Can kiddies panic? Some emotional states
may be non-mappable. How oldłs your mother?"

�My what?" I was taken aback.

�Your mother. Physiological originator." He flushed slightly
at such irreverence, but paused for response.

�I never met him," I explained, �but I should guess at least
a century. Maybe more
great-great-granddad is ancient. And he shows up pretty
often."

But just then Syrinx arrived; I could see this leading to
identity interpolation, subsequent confusion. �Jerzy," I said, �meet Syrinx.
Friend of Momłs." That was mega understatement. Jerzy looked up, bared teeth,
gaped in what looked like a manic vampire attack, and said, �Hello." (Big
anticlimax.)

Syrinx grinned back. �You could say so," he insinuated. A
thought occurred to me; had they met? I asked Wisdom, which asked LAZ, who
didnłt know.

�Am I too late?" I asked neither of them in particular.
Jerzy recovered first.

�Definitely," he agreed. �Met on surface, not long ago."

�Precisely," said Syrinx, grin down-modulating to scowl.
�Not in best of circumstances." A man of tungsten, notwithstanding his kevlar
infrastructure. �Well, cheer up. Youłre not disrupting dinner, either or both
of you. Injustice to food!" Somehow I didnłt imagine the food cared. I made a
Wisdom scratchpad entry to query Jerzy at leisure.

Took man and factotum by the hand, stepped up through bole,
and arrived. Remembered, blindingly fast, as passed entrance; Syrinx is police
analyst! Terrible oversight
should never have invited Jerzy. But it was too
late. Mom had ordered dinner; multi-course spectacular. Main item was braised
long pork, probably synthetic but tasted like real thing.

We ate and chatted and filtered perceptions through a matrix
shełd developed for the event, a hallucinatory experience in which senses
became confused, crystal-clear. Syrinx seemed distracted; I asked him why.

�Busy," he replied, �doing downtime for LAZ. Trying to trace
suspected Triumvirate infiltration among insect life. Never let anyone
misinform you: biological vetting is boring!" He scooped a chunk of meat into
his mouth, sizzling hot. With gusto. I wondered if he suspected he was sitting
opposite secret weapon. Jerzy restrained himself, no stolen glances detected.

He and Syrinx, it devolved, had met in vicinity of hyperbahn
surface; had watched a landing. The flat grey of the strip split by a silver
flash, then a contrail of blue-hot oxygen. The lander zipped past at over 2 EXP
3 kilometres per hour, decelerating fast. Left molten tracks drying on the
basalt.

They shared a Moment of meditation, observing. Then
branched. Branched again, after meal. Mom and Syrinx left, social circuit
fizzing, tube to Gagarin on the other side of Luna. Looked like theyłd miss the
fun. Jerzy and I subsequently alone in homenode.

He had words. �We should act soon," he said, quietly and urgently;
�priority high. Or do you fancy delaying until someone else springs it?"

�Guess not." I shrugged. �Any concepts?"

�Yes. Get the rest, then act. Simple trick; trip-wire."

�Trip-what?" He explained, my Wisdom concurred, and we did
it. Went to get the gang. The rest was anticlimax.

We gathered on the earthlit plain, seven silvery silhouettes
with parasols. Faces indistinguishable but minds hot; we were bussed, again.

There was a landing every ten minutes on the strip. Kid
Inkatha and Hammurabi had tooled up a robotnik to make monofilament rope. It
gleamed blue, flickers running up and down its extruded length. We waited for
next landing, and afterwards crossed the strip. Pegged it out, taut but held
between uneven heights. That way the wheel rims that survived would be skewed;
enough to divert by a few degrees. Interface with dome. Then we sat it out inside,
waiting for big splash, killcounters in place.

Now you cannot convince me that kiddies are human. Their response
pattern is alien. Their appearance often grotesque. Their thought patterns are
non-parametric. Their logic is a virus. A virus infecting us as we age, until
we are crippled by memories and Wisdom external and internal. I do not see that
their lives matter. Ours do, but we are the future. Thatłs why we needed to
know that genocide theory works; subsequently apply it to rival groups. Thatłs
causality; kiddies are acausal. A history blockage. Maybe they didnłt want to
die; but they needed to.

There was a flicker of yellow fire and a jolt through the
ground. Moon, earth stood still in respect as the dome imploded. Wełd missed a
point; catastrophe theory. Dome was a geodesic structure. Damage resulted in
chain reaction turning it to gravel.

I think I saw the lander, embedded in a halo of light. But
maybe not. We sheltered under a homenode as roof rained gently down. Our suits
inflated as air curtain blew away in silence. We waited and watched, then
walked.

I saw a kiddie. It was genderized as a he, but large
elements were ambiguous. He squatted and twitched, spraying soil around in
agonised figure-infinity patterns until he was decorticated by a falling
diamond the size of my fist. It was the only death I saw; population density
was too low for mass havoc.

A housetree had cramped and iced into a position of agony;
around it lay the small, scattered twists of landpussies, strangely pathetic in
the twilight. In death they assumed the colour of the lunar surface. Later we
camped out in the desert, saw no more corpses, huddled together for emotional
warmth. I hoped our deathcount program could verify the consequences of our
initiation. In the pale earthglow it seemed almost futile; a waste of time.
Erase and restart. Only ...

This node has no door. I await sentence. Trial by
statistical probability of neurones firing in order to precipitate havoc; jury
is my own brain. Probable sentence is centerograde amnesia; no new memories
recorded after crushing sense of guilt delivered. We live in an eternal
present, huddled like ghosts against the vapour pressure of the past.

They probably cannot read my texts. I can expect no mercy
for my identity. The dead are all dead, remain so, resurrection improbable due
to cost. Many of them sheltered death-lust, but still considered murdered by
courts. Theory worked, by the way. Kill-level approached hundredth percentile
because of dome systems collapse. We used overkill approach, brute force. A bit
more finesse might have been a mitigating factor.

I see Jerzy sitting opposite me in this node, guilt rooted
in his facial muscles like skin. The others are in a different category; we
seem to be viewed as netleaders.

I look at him, and he looks at me; I mouth, silently. �Judgement
soon; want to bus?" He inclines his head. I transmit pulse this time, and we
lock together in total fusion. Sense of completeness, love unnecessary. Therełs
not much time. I think that the old are an alien species; their state of mind
is unknowable, their perspective
eternal.

(First published: Interzone 31, 1989)

Version History

If you modify this text, please retain this version history.

Ver 1.530/7/2003Anarchy Publications, HaVoKThis version
was originally downloaded from the #bookz channel on undernet using mIRC. The
final proof was done with Atlantis by Rising Sun Solutions.

Halo

The asteroid is running Barney: it sings of love on the high
frontier, of the passion of matter for replicators, and its friendship for the
needy billions of the Pacific Rim. �I love you," it croons in Amberłs ears as
she seeks a precise fix on it: �let me give you a big hug ...."

A fraction of a light-second away, Amber locks a cluster of
cursors together on the signal, trains them to track its Doppler shift, and
reads off the orbital elements. �Locked and loaded," she mutters. The animated
purple dinosaur pirouettes and prances in the middle of her viewport, throwing
a diamond-tipped swizzle-stick overhead. Sarcastically: �big hug time! I got
asteroid!" Cold gas thrusters bang somewhere behind her in the interstage
docking ring, prodding the cumbersome farm ship round to orient on the Barney
rock. She damps her enthusiasm self-consciously, her implants hungrily
sequestrating surplus neurotransmitter molecules floating around her synapses
before reuptake sets in: it doesnłt do to get too excited in free flight. But
the impulse to spin handstands, jump and sing, is still there: itłs her rock,
and it loves her, and shełs going to bring it to life.

The workspace of Amberłs room is a mass of stuff that probably
doesnłt belong on a space ship. Posters of the latest Lebanese boy-band
bump-and-grind through their glam routines; tentacular restraining straps wave
from the corners of her sleeping bag, somehow accumulating a crust of dirty
clothing from the air like a giant inanimate hydra. (Cleaning robots seldom
dare to venture inside the teenagerłs bedroom.) One wall is repeatedly cycling
through a simulation of the projected construction cycle of Habitat One, a big
fuzzy sphere with a glowing core (that Amber is doing her bit to help create):
three or four small pastel-colored plastic kawai dolls stalk each other across
its circumference with million-kilometer strides. And her fatherłs cat is
curled up between the aircon duct and her costume locker, snoring in a
high-pitched tone.

Amber yanks open the faded velour curtain that shuts her
room off from the rest of the hive: �Iłve got it!" she shouts. �Itłs all mine!
I rule!" Itłs the sixteenth rock tagged by the orphanage so far, but itłs her
first, and that makes it special. She bounces off the other side of the
commons, surprising one of Oscarłs cane toads
which should be locked down in
the farm, itłs not clear how it got here
and the audio repeaters copy the
incoming signal, noise-fuzzed echoes of a thousand fossilized infantłs video
shows.

�Youłre so prompt, Amber," Pierre whines when she corners
him in the canteen.

�Well, yeah!" She tosses her head, barely concealing a smirk
of delight at her own brilliance. She knows it isnłt nice, but Mom is a long
way away, and Dad and Step-Mom donłt care about that kind of thing. �Iłm
brilliant, me!" she announces. �Now what about our bet?"

�Aww." Pierre thrusts his hands deep into his pockets. �But
I donłt have two million on me in change right now. Next cycle?"

�Huh?" Shełs outraged. �But we had a bet!"

�Uh, Doctor Bayes said you werenłt going to make it this
time, either, so I stuck my smart money in an options trade. If I take it out
now, Iłll take a big hit. Can you give me until cyclełs end?"

�You should know better than to trust a sim, Pee." Her
avatar blazes at him with early teen contempt: Pierre hunches his shoulders
under her gaze. Hełs only thirteen, freckled, hasnłt yet learned that you donłt
welsh on a deal. �Iłll let you do it this time," she announces, �but youłll
have to pay for it. I want interest."

He sighs. �What base rate are you
"

�No, your interest! Slave for a cycle!" She grins
malevolently.

And his face shifts abruptly into apprehension: �As long as
you donłt make me clean the litter tray again. You arenłt planning on doing
that, are you?"

Welcome to the third decade. The thinking mass of the solar
system now exceeds one MIP per gram; itłs still pretty dumb, but itłs not dumb
all over. The human population is near maximum overshoot, pushing nine billion,
but its growth rate is tipping toward negative numbers, and bits of what used
to be the first world are now facing a middle-aged average. Human cogitation
provides about 1028 MIPS of the solar systemłs brainpower. The real thinking is
mostly done by the halo of a thousand trillion processors that surround the
meat machines with a haze of computation
individually, a tenth as powerful as a
human brain, collectively, theyłre ten thousand times more powerful, and their numbers
are doubling every twenty million seconds. Theyłre up to 1033 MIPS and rising,
although therełs a long way to go before the solar system is fully awake.

Technologies come, technologies go, but even five years ago
nobody predicted that therełd be tinned primates in orbit around Jupiter by
now: a synergy of emergent industries and strange business models have
kick-started the space age again, aided and abetted by the discovery of (so far
undecrypted) signals from ETłs. Unexpected fringe-riders are developing new
ecological niches on the edge of the human information space, light-minutes and
light-hours from the core, as an expansion that has hung fire since the 1970s
gets under way.

Amber, like most of the post-industrialists aboard the orphanage
ship Ernst Sanger, is in her early teens: her natural abilities are enhanced by
germ-line genetic recombination. Like most of the others, half her wetware is
running outside her skull on an array of processor nodes hooked in by
quantum-entangled communication channels
her own personal metacortex. These
kids are mutant youth, burning bright: not quite incomprehensible to their
parents, but profoundly alien
the generation gap is as wide as the 1960s and as
deep as the solar system. Their parents, born in the gutter-years of the
twentieth century, grew up with white elephant shuttles and a space station
that just went round and round, and computers that went beep when you pushed
their buttons: the idea that Jupiter was somewhere you could go was as
profoundly counter-intuitive as the internet to a baby boomer.

Most of the passengers on the can have run away from parents
who thought that teenagers belong in school, unable to come to terms with a
generation so heavily augmented that they are fundamentally brighter than the
adults around them. Amber was fluent in nine languages by the age of six, only
two of them human, and six of them serializable; her birth-mother
who had
denied her most of the prenatal mods then available, insisting that a random
genotype was innately healthier
had taken her to the school psychiatrist for
speaking in synthetic tongues. That was the final straw for Amber: using an
illicit anonymous phone, she called her father. Her mother had him under a
restraining order, but it hadnłt occurred to her to apply for an order against
his partner ....

***

Vast whorls of cloud ripple beneath the shipłs drive
stinger: orange and brown and muddy grey streaks slowly ripple across the
bloated horizon of Jupiter. Sanger is nearing perijove, deep within the gas giantłs
lethal magnetic field; static discharges flicker along the tube, arcing over
near the deep violet exhaust cloud emerging from the magnetic mirrors of the
shipłs VASIMR motor. The plasma rocket is cranked up to maximum mass flow, its
specific impulse almost as low as a fission rocket but thrusting at maximum as
the assembly creaks and groans through the gravitational assist maneuver. In
another hour, the drive will flicker off, and the orphanage will fall up and
out toward Ganymede, before dropping back in toward orbit around Amalthea,
Jupiterłs fourth moon (and source of much of the material in the Gossamer
ring). Theyłre not the first canned primates to make it to Jupiter subsystem,
but theyłre one of the first wholly private ventures. The bandwidth out here
sucks dead slugs through a straw, with millions of kilometers of vacuum
separating them from scant hundreds of mouse-brained microprobes and a few
mechanical dinosaurs left behind by NASA or ESA. Theyłre so far from the inner
system that a good chunk of the shipłs communications array is given over to
caching: the news is whole kiloseconds old by the time it gets out here.

Amber, along with about half the waking passengers, watches
in fascination from the common room. The commons are a long axial cylinder, a
double-hulled inflatable at the center of the ship with a large part of their
liquid water supply stored in its wall-tubes. The far end is video-enabled,
showing them a realtime 3D view of the planet as it rolls beneath them: in
reality, therełs as much mass as possible between them and the trapped
particles in the Jovian magnetic envelope. �I could go swimming in that," sighs
Lilly. �Just imagine, diving into that sea ...." Her avatar appears in the
window, riding a silver surfboard down the kilometers of vacuum.

�Nice case of wind-burn youłve got there," someone jeers:
Kas. Suddenly, Lillyłs avatar, heretofore clad in a shimmering metallic
swimsuit, turns to the texture of baked meat, and waggles sausage-fingers up at
them in warning.

�Same to you and the window you climbed in through!" Abruptly
the virtual vacuum outside the window is full of bodies, most of them human,
contorting and writhing and morphing in mock-combat as half the kids pitch into
the virtual deathmatch: itłs a gesture in the face of the sharp fear that
outside the thin walls of the orphanage lies an environment that really is as
hostile as Lillyłs toasted avatar would indicate.

Amber turns back to her slate: shełs working through a complex
mess of forms, necessary before the expedition can start work. Facts and
figures that are never far away crowd around her, intimidating. Jupiter weighs
1.9 x 1027 kilograms. There are twenty-nine Jovian moons and an estimated two
hundred thousand minor bodies, lumps of rock, and bits of debris crowded around
them
debris above the size of ring fragments, for Jupiter (like Saturn) has
rings, albeit not as prominent. A total of six major national orbiter platforms
have made it out here
and another two hundred and seventeen microprobes, all
but six of them private entertainment platforms. The first human expedition was
put together by ESA Studios six years ago, followed by a couple of wildcat
mining prospectors and a u-commerce bus that scattered half a million picoprobes
throughout Jupiter subsystem. Now the Sanger has arrived, along with another
three monkey cans
one from Mars, two more from LEO
and it looks as if
colonization would explode except that there are at least four mutually
exclusive Grand Plans for what to do with old Jovełs mass.

Someone prods her. �Hey, Amber, what are you up to?"

She opens her eyes. �Doing my homework." Itłs Su Ang. �Look,
wełre going to Amalthea, arenłt we? But we file our accounts in Reno, so we
have to do all this paperwork. Monica asked me to help. Itłs insane."

Ang leans over and reads, upside down. �Environmental Protection
Agency?"

�Yeah. Estimated Environmental Impact Forward Analysis
204.6b, Page Two. They want me to ęlist any bodies of standing water within
five kilometers of the designated mining area. If excavating below the water
table, list any wellsprings, reservoirs, and streams within depth of excavation
in meters multiplied by five hundred meters up to a maximum distance of ten
kilometers downstream of direction of bedding plane flow. For each body of water,
itemize any endangered or listed species of bird, fish, mammal, reptile,
invertebrate, or plant living within ten kilometers
ł"

�
Of a mine on Amalthea? Which orbits one hundred and eighty
thousand kilometers above Jupiter, has no atmosphere, and where you can pick up
a whole body radiation dose of ten Grays in half an hour on the surface?" Ang
shakes her head, then spoils it by giggling. Amber glances up.

On the wall in front of her someone
Nicky or Boris,
probably
has pasted a caricature of her own avatar into the virch fight. Shełs
being hugged from behind by a giant cartoon dog with floppy ears and an
erection, whołs singing anatomically improbable suggestions while fondling
himself suggestively. �Fuck that!" Shocked out of her distraction
and angry
Amber
drops her stack of paperwork and throws a new avatar at the screen, one an
agent of hers dreamed up overnight: itłs called Spike, and itłs not friendly.
Spike rips off the dogłs head and pisses down its trachea, which is anatomically
correct for a human being: meanwhile she looks around, trying to work out which
of the laughing idiot children and lost geeks around her could have sent such
an unpleasant message.

�Children! Chill out." She glances round: one of the
Franklins (this is the twenty-something dark-skinned female one) is frowning at
them. �Canłt we leave you alone for half a K without a fight?"

Amber pouts. �Itłs not a fight: itłs a forceful exchange of
opinions."

�Hah." The Franklin leans back in mid-air, arms crossed, an
expression of supercilious smugness pasted across her-their face. �Heard that
one before. Anyway
" she-they gesture and the screen goes blank �
Iłve got news
for you pesky kids. We got a claim verified! Factory starts work as soon as we
shut down the stinger and finish filing all the paperwork via our lawyers.
Nowłs our chance to earn our upkeep ...."

Amber is flashing on ancient history, three years back along
her timeline. In her replay, shełs in some kind of split-level ranch house out
west. Itłs a temporary posting while her mother audits an obsolescent fab line
enterprise that grinds out dead chips of VLSI silicon for Pentagon projects
that have slipped behind the cutting edge. Her mom leans over her, menacingly
adult in her dark suit and chaperonage earrings: �Youłre going to school, and
thatłs that!"

Her mother is a blonde ice-maiden madonna, one of the IRSłs
most productive bounty hunters
she can make grown CEOs panic just by blinking
at them. Amber, a tow-headed eight-year-old tearaway with a confusing mix of
identities, inexperience blurring the boundary between self and grid, is not
yet able to fight back effectively. After a couple of seconds, she verbalizes a
rather feeble protest: �Donłt want to!" One of her stance demons whispers that
this is the wrong approach to take, so she modifies it: �theyłll beat up on me,
Mom. Iłm too different. ęSides, I know you want me socialized up with my grade
metrics, but isnłt that what sidebandłs for? I can socialize real good at
home."

Mom does something unexpected: she kneels down, putting
herself on eye level with Amber. Theyłre on the living room carpet, all
seventies-retro brown corduroy and acid-orange paisley wallpaper: the domestics
are in hiding while the humans hold court. �Listen to me, sweetie." Momłs voice
is breathy, laden with an emotional undertow as strong and stifling as the eau
de cologne she wears to the office to cover up the scent of her clientłs fear.
�I know thatłs what your fatherłs writing to you, but it isnłt true. You need
the company
physical company
of children your own age. Youłre natural, not some
kind of engineered freak, even with your skullset. Natural children like you
need company, or they grow up all weird. Donłt you know how much you mean to
me? I want you to grow up happy, and that wonłt happen if you donłt learn to
get along with children your own age. Youłre not going to be some kind of
cyborg otaku freak, Amber. But to get healthy, youłve got to go to school,
build up a mental immune system. That which does not destroy us makes us
stronger, right?"

Itłs crude moral blackmail, transparent as glass and manipulative
as hell, but Amberłs corpus logica flags it with a heavy emotional sprite
miming the likelihood of physical discipline if she rises to the bait: Mom is
agitated, nostrils slightly flared, ventilation rate up, some vasodilatation
visible in her cheeks. Amber
in combination with her skullset and the
metacortex of distributed agents it supports
is mature enough at eight years to
model, anticipate, and avoid corporal punishment: but her stature and lack of
physical maturity conspire to put her at a disadvantage when negotiating with
adults who matured in a simpler age. She sighs, then puts on a pout to let Mom
know shełs still reluctant, but obedient. �O-kay. If you say so."

Mom stands up, eyes distant
probably telling Saturn to warm
his engine and open the garage doors. �I say so, punkin. Go get your shoes on,
now. Iłll pick you up on my way back from work, and Iłve got a treat for you:
wełre going to check out a new Church together this evening." Mom smiles, but
it doesnłt reach her eyes. �You be a good little girl, now, all right?"

The Imam is at prayer in a gyrostabilized mosque.

His mosque is not very big, and it has a congregation of
one: he performs salat on his own every seventeen thousand two hundred and
eighty seconds. He also webcasts the call to prayer, but there are no other
believers in trans-Jovian space to answer the summons. Between prayers, he
splits his attention between the exigencies of life-support and scholarship. A
student of the Hadith and of knowledge-based systems, Sadeq collaborates in a
project with other mujtahid scholars who are building a revised concordance of
all the known isnads, to provide a basis for exploring the body of Islamic
jurisprudence from a new perspective
one theyłll need sorely if the looked-for
breakthroughs in communication with aliens emerge. Their goal is to answer the
vexatious questions that bedevil Islam in the age of accelerated consciousness:
and as their representative in orbit around Jupiter, these questions fall most
heavily on Sadeqłs shoulders.

Sadeq is a slightly built man, with close-cropped black hair
and a perpetually tired expression: unlike the orphanage crew, he has a ship to
himself. The ship started out as an Iranian knock-off of a Shenzhou-B capsule,
with a Chinese-type 921 space-station module tacked onto its tail: but the
clunky, nineteen-sixties lookalike
a glittering aluminum dragonfly mating with
a Coke can
has a weirdly contoured M2P2 pod strapped to its nose. The M2P2 pod
is a plasma sail: built in orbit by one of Daewoołs wake shield-facilities, it
dragged Sadeq and his cramped space station out to Jupiter in just four months,
surfing on the solar breeze. His presence may be a triumph for the Ummah, but
he feels acutely alone out here: when he turns his compact observatoryłs
mirrors in the direction of the Sanger, he is struck by its size and purposeful
appearance. Sangerłs superior size speaks of the efficiency of the western
financial instruments, semi-autonomous investment trusts with variable
business-cycle accounting protocols that make possible the development of
commercial space exploration. The Prophet, peace be unto him, may have
condemned usury: but surely it would have given him pause to see these engines
of capital formation demonstrate their power above the Great Red Spot.

After finishing his prayers, Sadeq spends a couple of extra
precious minutes on his mat. He finds that meditation comes hard in this
environment: kneel in silence and you become aware of the hum of ventilation
fans, the smell of old socks and sweat, the metallic taste of ozone from the
Elektron oxygen generators. It is hard to approach God in this third-hand
spaceship, a hand-me-down from arrogant Russia to ambitious China, and finally
to the religious trustees of Qom, who have better uses for it than any of the
heathen states imagine. Theyłve pushed it far, this little toy space station:
but whołs to say if it is Godłs intention for humans to live here, in orbit
around this swollen alien giant of a planet?

Sadeq shakes his head: he rolls his mat up and stows it
beside the solitary porthole with a quiet sigh. A stab of homesickness wrenches
at him, for his childhood in hot, dusty Yazd and his many years as a student in
Qom: he steadies himself by looking round, searching the station that is by now
as familiar to him as the fourth-floor concrete apartment that his parents
a
car factory worker and his wife
raised him in. The interior of the station is
the size of a school bus, every surface cluttered with storage areas, instrument
consoles, and layers of exposed pipes: a couple of globules of antifreeze
jiggle like stranded jellyfish near a heat exchanger that has been giving him
grief. Sadeq kicks off in search of the squeeze bottle he keeps for this
purpose, then gathers up his roll of tools and instructs one of his agents to
find him the relevant sura of the maintenance log: itłs time to fix this leaky
joint for good.

An hour or so of serious plumbing, and then he will eat
(freeze-dried lamb stew, with a paste of lentils and boiled rice, and a bulb of
strong tea to wash it down), then sit down to review his next flyby maneuvering
sequence. Perhaps, God willing, there will be no further system alerts and
hełll be able to spend an hour or two on his research between evening and final
prayers. Maybe the day after tomorrow, therełll even be time to relax for a
couple of hours, to watch one of the old movies that he finds so fascinating
for their insights into alien cultures: Apollo 13, maybe. It isnłt easy, being
the only crew aboard a long-duration space mission: and itłs even harder for
Sadeq, up here with nobody to talk to, for the communications lag to earth is
more than half an hour each way
and so far as he knows hełs the only believer
within half a billion kilometers.

* **

Amber dials a number in Paris and waits until someone answers
the phone. She knows the strange woman on the phonełs tiny screen: Mom calls
her �your fatherłs fancy bitch," with a peculiar tight smile. (The one time
Amber asked what a fancy bitch was, Mom hit her
not hard, just a warning.) �Is
Daddy there?" she asks.

The strange woman looks slightly bemused. (Her hair is
blonde, like Momłs, but the color clearly came out of a bleach bottle, and itłs
cut really short, mannish.) �Oui. Ah, yes." She smiles tentatively. �I am
sorry, it is a disposable phone you are using? You want to talk to łim?"

It comes out in a rush: �I want to see him." Amber clutches
the phone like a lifesaver: itłs a cheap disposable cereal-packet item, and the
cardboard is already softening in her sweaty grip. �Momma wonłt let me, auntie
ęNette
"

�Hush." Annette, who has lived with Amberłs father for more
than twice as long as her mother did, smiles. �You are sure that telephone,
your mother does not know of it?"

Amber looks around. Shełs the only child in the rest room because
it isnłt break time and she told teacher she had to go right now: �Iłm sure,
P20 confidence factor greater than 0.9." Her Bayesian head tells her that she
canłt reason accurately about this because Momma has never caught her with an
illicit phone before, but what the hell. It canłt get Dad into trouble if he
doesnłt know, can it?

�Very good." Annette glances aside. �Manny, I have a
surprise call for you."

Daddy appears on screen. She can see all of his face, and he
looks younger than last time: he must have stopped using those clunky old
glasses. �Hi
Amber! Where are you? Does your mother know youłre calling me?" He
looks slightly worried.

�No," she says confidently, �the phone came in a box of Grahams."

�Phew. Listen, sweet, you must remember to never, ever call
me where your mom may find out. Otherwise, shełll get her lawyers to come after
me with thumb screws and hot pincers, because shełll say I made you call me.
Understand?"

�Yes, Daddy." She sighs. �Donłt you want to know why I
called?"

�Um." For a moment he looks taken aback. Then he nods, seriously.
Amber likes Daddy because he takes her seriously most times when she talks to
him. Itłs a phreaking nuisance having to borrow her classmatesł phones or
tunnel past Momłs pit-bull firewall, but Dad doesnłt assume that she canłt know
anything because shełs only a kid. �Go ahead. Therełs something you need to get
off your chest? Howłve things been, anyway?"

Shełs going to have to be brief: the disposaphone comes
pre-paid, the international tariff itłs using is lousy, and the break bell is
going to ring any minute. �I want out, Daddy. I mean it. Momłs getting loopier
every week: shełs dragging me around to all these churches now, and yesterday she
threw a fit over me talking to my terminal. She wants me to see the school
shrink, I mean, what for? I canłt do what she wants; Iłm not her little girl!
Every time I tunnel out, she tries to put a content-bot on me, and itłs making
my head hurt
I canłt even think straight any more!" To her surprise, Amber
feels tears starting. �Get me out of here!"

The view of her father shakes, pans around to show her tante
Annette looking worried. �You know, your father, he cannot do anything? The
divorce lawyers, they will tie him up."

Amber sniffs. �Can you help?" she asks.

�Iłll see what I can do," her fatherłs fancy bitch promises
as the break bell rings.

An instrument package peels away from the Sangerłs claimjumper
drone and drops toward the potato-shaped rock, fifty kilometers below. Jupiter
hangs huge and gibbous in the background, impressionist wallpaper for a mad
cosmologist: Pierre bites his lower lip as he concentrates on steering it.

Amber, wearing a black sleeping-sack, hovers over his head
like a giant bat, enjoying her freedom for a shift. She looks down on Pierrełs
bowl-cut hair, his wiry arms gripping either side of the viewing table, and
wonders what to have him do next. A slave for a day is an interesting
experience, restful: life aboard the Sanger is busy enough that nobody gets
much slack-time (at least, not until the big habitats have been assembled and
the high bandwidth dish is pointing at Earth). Theyłre unrolling everything to
a hugely intricate plan generated by the backersł critical path team, and there
isnłt much room for idling: the expedition relies on shamelessly exploitative
child labor
theyłre lighter on the life-support consumables than adults
working
the kids twelve-hour days to assemble a toe-hold on the shore of the future.
(When theyłre older and their options vest fully, theyłll all be rich
but that
hasnłt stopped the outraged herdnews propaganda back home.) For Amber, the
chance to let somebody else work for her is novel, and shełs trying to make
every minute count.

�Hey, slave," she calls idly: �how you doing?"

Pierre sniffs. �Itłs going okay." He refuses to glance up at
her, Amber notices. Hełs thirteen: isnłt he supposed to be obsessed with girls
by that age? She notices his quiet, intense focus, runs a stealthy probe along
his outer boundary: he shows no sign of noticing it but it bounces off, unable
to chink his mental armor. �Got cruise speed," he says, taciturn, as two tons
of metal, ceramics, and diamond-phase weirdness hurtles toward the surface of
Barney at three hundred kilometers per hour. �Stop shoving me: therełs a
threesecond lag and I donłt want to get into a feedback control-loop with it."

�Iłll shove if I want, slave." She sticks her tongue out at
him.

�And if you make me drop it?" he asks. Looking up at her,
his face serious
�Are we supposed to be doing this?"

�You cover your ass and Iłll cover mine," she says, then
turns bright red. �You know what I mean."

�I do, do I?" Pierre grins widely, then turns back to the console:
�Aww, thatłs no fun. And you want to tune whatever bit-bucket youłve given
control of your speech centers to: theyłre putting out way too much
double-entendre, somebody might mistake you for a grown-up."

�You stick to your business and Iłll stick to mine," she
says, emphatically. �And you can start by telling me whatłs happening."

�Nothing." He leans back and crosses his arms, grimacing at
the screen. �Itłs going to drift for five hundred seconds, now, then therełs
the midcourse correction and a deceleration burn before touch-down. And then
itłs going to be an hour while it unwraps itself and starts unwinding the cable
spool. What do you want, minute noodles with that?"

�Uh-huh." Amber spreads her bat-wings and lies back in
mid-air, staring at the window, feeling rich and idle as Pierre works his way through
her day-shift. �Wake me when therełs something interesting to see." Maybe she
should have had him feed her peeled grapes or give her a foot massage,
something more traditionally hedonistic: but right now just knowing hełs her
own little piece of alienated labor is doing good things for her self-esteem.
Looking at those tense arms, the curve of his neck, she thinks maybe therełs
something to this whispering-and-giggling he really likes you stuff the older
girls go in for


The window rings like a gong and Pierre coughs. �Youłve got
mail," he says dryly. �You want me to read it for you?"

�What the
" A message is flooding across the screen,
right-to-left snaky script like the stuff on her corporate instrument (now
lodged safely in a deposit box in Zurich). It takes her a while to page-in the
grammar agent that can handle Arabic, and another minute for her to take in the
meaning of the message. When she does, she starts swearing, loudly and
continuously.

�You bitch, Mom! Whyłd you have to go and do a thing like
that?"

The corporate instrument arrived in a huge FedEx box addressed
to Amber: it happened on her birthday while Mom was at work, and she remembers
it as if it was only an hour ago.

She remembers reaching up and scraping her thumb over the
delivery manłs clipboard, the rough feel of the microsequencers sampling her
DNA; afterward, she drags the package inside. When she pulls the tab on the box
it unpacks itself automatically, regurgitating a compact 3D printer, half a
ream of paper printed in old-fashioned dumb ink, and a small calico cat with a
large @-symbol on its flank. The cat hops out of the box, stretches, shakes its
head, and glares at her. �Youłre Amber?" it mrowls.

�Yeah," she says, shyly. �Are you from Tant� ęNette?"

�No, Iłm from the fucking tooth fairy." It leans over and
head-butts her knee, strops the scent glands between its ears all over her
skirt. �Listen, you got any tuna in the kitchen?"

�Mom doesnłt believe in seafood," says Amber: �itłs all foreign
junk, she says. Itłs my birthday today, did I tell you?"

�Happy fucking birthday, then." The cat yawns, convincingly
realistic. �Herełs your dadłs present. Bastard put me in hibernation and
blogged me along to show you how to work it. You take my advice, youłll trash
the fucker. No good will come of it."

Amber interrupts the catłs grumbling by clapping her hands
gleefully. �So what is it?" she demands. �A new invention? Some kind of weird
sex toy from Amsterdam? A gun, so I can shoot Pastor Wallace?"

�Naaah." The cat yawns, yet again, and curls up on the floor
next to the 3D printer. �Itłs some kinda dodgy business model to get you out of
hock to your mom. Better be careful, though
he says its legality is narrowly
scoped jurisdiction-wise."

�Wow. Like, how totally cool!" In truth, Amber is delighted
because it is her birthday, but Momłs at work and Amberłs home alone, with just
the TV in moral-majority mode for company. Things have gone so far downhill
since Mom discovered religion that absolutely the best thing in the world tante
Annette could have sent her is some scam programmed by Daddy to take her away.
If he doesnłt, Mom will take her to Church tonight (and maybe to an IRS
compliance-certified restaurant afterward, if Amberłs good and does whatever
Pastor Wallace tells her to).

The cat sniffs in the direction of the printer: �Why dontcha
fire it up?" Amber opens the lid on the printer, removes the packing popcorn,
and plugs it in. Therełs a whirr and a rush of waste heat from its rear as it
cools the imaging heads down to working temperature and registers her
ownership.

�What do I do now?" she asks.

�Pick up the page labeled READ ME and follow the instructions,"
the cat recites in a bored sing-song voice. It winks at her, then fakes an
exaggerated French accent: �Le READ ME contains directions pour lłexecution
instrument corporate dans le bo�te. In event of perplexity, consult the
accompanying aineko for clarification." The cat wrinkles its nose rapidly, as
if itłs about to bite an invisible insect. �Warning: donłt rely on your
fatherłs catłs opinions, it is a perverse beast and cannot be trusted. Your
mother helped seed its meme base, back when they were married. Ends." It
mumbles on for a while: �fucking snotty Parisian bitch, Iłll piss in her
knicker drawer, Iłll molt in her bidet ...."

�Donłt be vile." Amber scans the README quickly. Corporate
instruments are strong magic, according to Daddy, and this one is exotic by any
standards: a limited company established in Yemen, contorted by the
intersection between shariła and the global legislatosaurus. Understanding it
isnłt easy, even with a personal net full of sub-sapient agents that have full
access to whole libraries of international trade law
the bottleneck is
comprehension. Amber finds the documents highly puzzling. Itłs not the fact that
half of them are written in Arabic that bothers her
thatłs what her grammar
engine is for
or even that theyłre full of S-expressions and semi-digestible
chunks of LISP: but that the company seems to assert that it exists for the
sole purpose of owning slaves.

�Whatłs going on?" she asks the cat. �Whatłs this all
about?"

The cat sneezes, then looks disgusted. �This wasnłt my idea,
big shot. Your father is a very weird guy and your mother hates him lots
because shełs still in love with him. Shełs got kinks, yłknow? Or maybe shełs
sublimating them, if shełs serious about this church shit shełs putting you
through. He thinks that shełs a control freak. Anyway, after your dad ran off
in search of another dome, she took out an injunction against him. But she forgot
to cover his partner, and she bought this parcel of worms and sent them to you,
okay? Annie is a real bitch, but hełs got her wrapped right around his finger,
or something. Anyway, he built these companies and this printer
which isnłt
hardwired to a filtering proxy, like your momłs
specifically to let you get
away from her legally. If thatłs what you want to do."

Amber fast-forwards through the dynamic chunks of the
README
boring static UML diagrams, mostly
soaking up the gist of the plan.
Yemen is one of the few countries to implement traditional Sunni shariła law
and a limited-liability company scam at the same time. Owning slaves is
legal
the fiction is that the owner has an option hedged on the indentured
laborerłs future output, with interest payments that grow faster than the
unfortunate victim can pay them off
and companies are legal entities. If Amber
sells herself into slavery to this company, she will become a slave, and the
company will be legally liable for her actions and upkeep. The rest of the
legal instrument
about 90 percent of it, in fact
is a set of self-modifying
corporate mechanisms coded in a variety of jurisdictions that permit
Turing-complete company constitutions, and which act as an ownership shell for
the slavery contract: at the far end of the corporate firewall is a trust fund
of which Amber is the prime beneficiary and shareholder. When she reaches the
age of majority, shełll acquire total control over all the companies in the
network and can dissolve her slave contract; until then, the trust funds (which
she essentially owns) oversee the company that owns her (and keeps it safe from
hostile takeover bids). Oh, and the company network is primed by an
extraordinary general meeting that instructed it to move the trustłs assets to
Paris immediately. A one-way airline ticket is enclosed.

�You think I should take this?" she asks uncertainly. Itłs
hard to tell how smart the cat really is
therełs probably a yawning vacuum
behind those semantic networks if you dig deep enough
but it tells a pretty
convincing tale.

The cat squats and curls its tail protectively around its
paws: �Iłm saying nothing, you know what I mean? You take this, you can go live
with your dad. But it wonłt stop your ma coming after him with a horse whip and
after you with a bunch of lawyers and a set of handcuffs. You want my advice,
youłll phone the Franklins and get aboard their off-planet mining scam. In
space, no one can serve a writ on you. Plus, they got long-term plans to get
into the CETI market, cracking alien network packets. You want my honest
opinion, you wouldnłt like it in Paris after a bit. Your dad and the frog
bitch, theyłre swingers, yłknow? No time in their lives for a kid. Or a cat
like me, now I think of it. Theyłre out all hours of the night doing drugs,
fetish parties, raves, opera, that kind of adult shit. Your dad dresses in
frocks more than your mom, and your tante ęNettie leads him around the
apartment on a chain when theyłre not having noisy sex on the balcony. Theyłd
cramp your style, kid: you shouldnłt have to put up with parents who have more
of a life than you do."

�Huh." Amber wrinkles her nose, half-disgusted by the catłs
transparent scheming, and half-acknowledging its message: Iłd better think hard
about this, she decides. Then she flies off in so many directions at once that
she nearly browns out the household net feed. Part of her is examining the
intricate card pyramid of company structures; somewhere else, shełs thinking
about what can go wrong, while another bit (probably some of her wet, messy
glandular biological self) is thinking about how nice it would be to see Daddy
again, albeit with some trepidation. Parents arenłt supposed to have sex: isnłt
there a law, or something? �Tell me about the Franklins? Are they married?
Singular?"

The 3D printer is cranking up. It hisses slightly,
dissipating heat from the hard-vacuum chamber in its supercooled workspace.
Deep in its guts it creates coherent atom beams, from a bunch of Bose-Einstein
condensates hovering on the edge of absolute zero: by superimposing
interference patterns on them, it generates an atomic hologram, building a
perfect replica of some original artifact, right down to the atomic level
there
are no clunky moving nanotechnology parts to break or overheat or mutate. Something
is going to come out of the printer in half an hour, something cloned off its
original right down to the individual quantum states of its component atomic
nuclei. The cat, seemingly oblivious, shuffles closer to its exhaust ducts.

�Bob Franklin, he died about two, three years before you
were born: your dad did business with him. So did your mom. Anyway, he had
chunks of his noumen preserved, and the estate trustees are trying to recreate
his consciousness by cross-loading him in their implants. Theyłre sort of a
borganism, but with money and style. Anyway, Bob got into the space biz back
then, with some financial wizardry a friend of your father whipped up for him,
and now they-he are building a spacehab that theyłre going to take all the way
out to Jupiter, where they can dismantle a couple of small moons and begin
building helium-three refineries. Itłs that CETI scam I told you about earlier,
but theyłve got a whole load of other angles on it for the long term."

This is mostly going right over Amberłs head
shełll have to
learn what helium-three refineries are later
but the idea of running away to
space has a certain appeal. Adventure, thatłs what. Amber looks around the
living room and sees it for a moment as a capsule, a small wooden cell locked
deep in a vision of a middle-America that never was
the one her mom wants to
retreat into. �Is Jupiter fun?" she asks. �I know itłs big and not very dense,
but is it, like, a happening place?"

�You could say that," says the cat, as the printer clanks
and disgorges a fake passport (convincingly aged), an intricate metal seal
engraved with Arabic script, and a tailored wide-spectrum vaccine targeted on
Amberłs immature immune system. �Stick that on your wrist, sign the three top
copies, put them in the envelope, and letłs get going: wełve got a flight to
catch."

Sadeq is eating his dinner when the lawsuit rolls in.

Alone in the cramped humming void of his station, he contemplates
the plea. The language is awkward, showing all the hallmarks of a crude machine
translation: the supplicant is American, a woman, and
oddly
claims to be a
Christian. This is surprising enough, but the nature of her claim is, at face
value, preposterous. He forces himself to finish his bread, then bag the waste
and clean the platter, before he gives it his full consideration. Is it a
tasteless joke? Evidently not: as the only quadi outside the orbit of Mars he
is uniquely qualified to hear it, and it is a case that cries out for justice.

A woman who leads a God-fearing life
not a correct one, no,
but she shows some signs of humility and progress toward a deeper
understanding
is deprived of her child by the machinations of a feckless
husband who deserted her years before. That the woman was raising the child
alone strikes Sadeq as disturbingly western, but pardonable when he reads her
account of the feckless onełs behavior, which is degenerate: an ill fate indeed
would await any child that this man raises to adulthood. This man deprives her
of her child, but not by legitimate means: he doesnłt take the child into his
own household or make any attempt to raise her, either in accordance with his
own customs or the precepts of shariła. Instead, he enslaves her wickedly in
the mire of the western legal tradition, then casts her into outer darkness to
be used as a laborer by the dubious forces of self-proclaimed �progress." The
same forces that Sadeq has been sent to confront, as representative of the
Ummah in orbit around Jupiter.

Sadeq scratches his short beard thoughtfully. A nasty tale,
but what can he do about it? �Computer," he says, �a reply to this supplicant:
my sympathies lie with you in the manner of your suffering, but I fail to see
in what way I can be of assistance. Your heart cries out for help before God
(blessed be his name), but surely this is a matter for the temporal authorities
of the dar al-Harb." He pauses: or is it? he wonders. Legal wheels begin to
turn in his mind. �If you can but find your way to extending to me a path by
which I can assert the primacy of shariłah over your daughter, I shall apply
myself to constructing a case for her emancipation, to the greater glory of God
(blessed be his name) in the name of the Prophet (peace be unto him). Ends,
sigblock, send."

Releasing the Velcro straps that hold him at the table,
Sadeq floats up and then kicks gently toward the forward end of the cramped
habitat. The controls of the telescope are positioned between the ultrasonic
clothing cleaner and the lithium hydroxide scrubbers: theyłre already freed up,
because he was conducting a wide-field survey of the inner ring, looking for
the signature of water ice. It is the work of a few moments to pipe the
navigation and tracking system into the telescopełs controller and direct it to
hunt for the big foreign ship of fools. Something nudges at Sadeqłs mind
urgently, an irritating realization that he may have missed something in the
womanłs email: there were a number of huge attachments. With half his mind, he
surfs the news digest his scholarly peers send him daily: meanwhile, he waits
patiently for the telescope to find the speck of light that the poor womanłs
daughter is enslaved within.

This might be a way in, he realizes, a way to enter dialogue
with them. Let the hard questions answer themselves, elegantly. There will be
no need for the war of the sword if they can be convinced that their plans are
faulty: no need to defend the godly from the latter-day Tower of Babel these
people propose to build. If this woman Pamela means what she says, Sadeq need
not end his days out here in the cold between the worlds, away from his elderly
parents and brother and his colleagues and friends. And he will be profoundly
grateful: because, in his heart of hearts, he knows that he is less a warrior
than a scholar.

�Iłm sorry, but the Borg is attempting to assimilate a
lawsuit," says the receptionist. �Will you hold?"

�Crud." Amber blinks the Binary Betty answerphone sprite out
of her eye and glances around at the cabin. �That is so last century," she
grumbles. �Who do they think they are?"

�Doctor Robert H. Franklin," volunteers the cat. �Itłs a
losing proposition if you ask me. Bob was so fond of his dope that therełs this
whole hippie groupmind thatłs grown up using his state vector as a bong
"

�Shut the fuck up!" Amber shouts at him. Instantly contrite
(for yelling in an inflatable spacecraft is a major faux pas): �Sorry." She
spawns an autonomic thread with full parasympathetic nervous control, tells it
to calm her down: then she spawns a couple more to go forth and become fuqaha,
expert on shariła law. She realizes shełs buying up way too much of the
orphanagełs scarce bandwidth
time that will have to be paid for in chores,
later
but itłs necessary. �Shełs gone too far. This time, itłs war."

She slams out of her cabin and spins right around in the
central axis of the hab, a rogue missile pinging for a target to vent her rage
on. A tantrum would be good


But her body is telling her to chill out, take ten, and
therełs a drone of scriptural lore dribbling away in the back of her head, and
shełs feeling frustrated and angry and not in control, but not really mad now.
It was like this three years ago when Mom noticed her getting on too well with
Jenny Morgan and moved her to a new school district
she said it was a work
assignment, but Amber knows better, Mom asked for it
just to keep her dependent
and helpless. Mom is a psycho bitch control-freak and ever since she had to
face up to losing Dad shełs been working her claws into Amber
which is tough,
because Amber is not good victim material, and is smart and well-networked to
boot. But now Momłs found a way of fucking Amber over completely, even in
Jupiter orbit, and Amber would be totally out of control if not for her
skullware keeping a lid on things.

Instead of shouting at her cat or trying to message the
Borg, Amber goes to hunt them down in their meatspace den.

There are sixteen Borg aboard the Sanger
adults, members of
the Franklin Collective, squatters in the ruins of Bob Franklinłs posthumous
vision. They lend bits of their brains to the task of running what science has
been able to resurrect of the dead dot-com billionairełs mind, making him the
first boddhisatva of the uploading age
apart from the lobster colony, of
course. Their den mother is a woman called Monica: a willowy brown-eyed hive
queen with raster-burned corneal implants and a dry, sardonic delivery that can
corrode egos like a desert wind. Shełs better than the others at running Bob,
and shełs no slouch when shełs being herself: which is why they elected her
Maximum Leader of the expedition.

Amber finds Monica in the number four kitchen garden, performing
surgery on a filter thatłs been blocked by toadspawn. Shełs almost buried
beneath a large pipe, her Velcro-taped toolkit waving in the breeze like
strange blue air-kelp. �Monica? You got a minute?"

�Sure, I have lots of minutes. Make yourself helpful? Pass
me the anti-torque wrench and a number-six hex head."

�Um." Amber captures the blue flag and fiddles around with
its contents. Something that has batteries, motors, a flywheel counterweight,
and laser gyros assembles itself
Amber passes it under the pipe. �Here. Listen,
your phone is busy."

�I know. Youłve come to see me about your conversion, havenłt
you?"

�Yes!"

Therełs a clanking noise from under the pressure sump. �Take
this." A plastic bag floats out, bulging with stray fasteners. �I got a bit of
vacuuming to do. Get yourself a mask if you donłt already have one."

A minute later, Amber is back beside Monicałs legs, her face
veiled by a filter mask. �I donłt want this to go through," she says. �I donłt
care what Mom says, Iłm not Moslem! This judge, he canłt touch me. He canłt,"
she repeats, vehemence warring with uncertainty.

�Maybe he doesnłt want to?" Another bag. �Here, catch."

Amber grabs the bag: too late, she discovers that itłs full
of water and toadspawn. Stringy mucous ropes full of squiggling comma-shaped
baby tadpoles explode all over the compartment and bounce off the walls in a
shower of amphibian confetti. �Eew!"

Monica squirms out from behind the pipe. �Oh, you didnłt."
She kicks off the consensus-defined floor and grabs a wad of absorbent paper
from the spinner, whacks it across the ventilator shroud above the sump.
Together they go after the toadspawn with garbage bags and paper
by the time
theyłve got the stringy mess mopped up, the spinner has begun to click and
whirr, processing cellulose from the algae tanks into fresh wipes. �That was
really clever," Monica says emphatically, as the disposal bin sucks down her
final bag. �You wouldnłt happen to know how the toad got in here?"

�No, but I ran into one that was loose in the commons, one
shift before last cycle-end. Gave it a ride back to Oscar."

�Iłll have a word with him, then." Monica glares blackly at
the pipe. �Iłm going to have to go back and re-fit the filter in a minute. Do
you want me to be Bob?"

�Uh." Amber thinks. �Not sure. Your call."

�All right, Bob coming online." Monicałs face relaxes
slightly, then her expression hardens. �Way I see it, youłve got a choice. Your
motherłs kinda boxed you in, hasnłt she?"

�Yes." Amber frowns.

�So. Pretend Iłm an idiot. Talk me through it, huh?"

Amber drags herself alongside the hydro pipe and gets her
head down, alongside Monica/Bob, who is floating with her feet near the floor.
�I ran away from home. Mom owned me
that is, she had parental rights and Dad
had none. So Dad, via a proxy, helped me sell myself into slavery to a company.
The company was owned by a trust fund, and Iłm the main beneficiary when I
reach the age of majority. As a chattel, the company tells me what to do
legally
but
the shell company is set to take my orders. So Iłm autonomous. Right?"

�That sounds like the sort of thing your father would do," Monica
says neutrally. Overtaken by a sardonic middle-aged Silicon Valley drawl, her
north-of-England accent sounds peculiarly mid-Atlantic.

�Trouble is, most countries donłt acknowledge slavery; those
that do mostly donłt have any equivalent of a limited-liability company, much
less one that can be directed by another company from abroad. Dad picked Yemen
on the grounds that theyłve got this stupid brand of shariła law
and a crap
human-rights record
but theyłre just about conformant to the open legal
standards protocol, able to interface to EU norms via a Turkish legislative firewall."

�So."

�Well, I guess I was technically a Jannissary. Mom was doing
her Christian phase, so that made me a Christian un-believer slave of an
Islamic company. But now the stupid bitch has gone and converted to shiłism.
Now, normally, Islamic descent runs through the father, but she picked her sect
carefully, and chose one thatłs got a progressive view of womenłs rights:
theyłre sort of Islamic fundamentalist liberal constructionists! ęWhat would
the Prophet do if he were alive today and had to worry about self-replicating
chewing gum factories.ł They generally take a progressive, almost westernized,
view of things like legal equality of the sexes, because for his time and
place, the Prophet was way ahead of the ball and they figure they ought to
follow his example. Anyway, that means Mom can assert that I am Moslem, and
under Yemeni law I get to be treated as a Moslem chattel of a company. And
their legal code is very dubious about permitting slavery of Moslems. Itłs not
that I have rights as such, but my pastoral well-being becomes the responsibility
of the local imam, and
" She shrugs helplessly.

�Has he tried to make you run under any new rules, yet?"
asks Monica/Bob. �Has he put blocks on your freedom of agency, tried to mess
with your mind? Insisted on libido dampers?"

�Not yet." Amberłs expression is grim. �But hełs no dummy. I
figure he may be using Mom
and me
as a way of getting his fingers into this
whole expedition. Staking a claim for jurisdiction, claim arbitration, that
sort of thing. It could be worse; he might order me to comply fully with his
specific implementation of shariła. They permit implants, but require mandatory
conceptual filtering: if I run that stuff, Iłll end up believing it!"

�Okay." Monica does a slow backward somersault in mid-air.
�Now tell me why you canłt simply repudiate it."

�Because." Deep breath. �I can do that in two ways. I can
deny Islam, which makes me an apostate, and automatically terminates my
indenture to the shell, so Mom owns me. Or I can say that the instrument has no
legal standing because I was in the USA when I signed it, and slavery is
illegal there, in which case Mom owns me, because Iłm a minor. Or I can take
the veil, live like a modest Moslem woman, do whatever the imam wants, and Mom
doesnłt own me
but she gets to appoint my chaperone. Oh Bob, she has planned
this so well."

�Uh-huh." Monica rotates back to the floor and looks at Amber,
suddenly very Bob. �Now youłve told me your troubles, start thinking like your
dad. Your dad had a dozen creative ideas before breakfast every day
itłs how he
made his name. Your mom has got you in a box. Think your way outside it: what
can you do?"

�Well." Amber rolls over and hugs the fat hydroponic duct to
her chest like a life raft. �Itłs a legal paradox. Iłm trapped because of the
jurisdiction shełs cornered me in. I could talk to the judge, I suppose, but
shełll have picked him carefully." Her eyes narrow. �The jurisdiction. Hey,
Bob." She lets go of the duct and floats free, hair streaming out behind her
like a cometary halo. �How do I go about creating myself a new jurisdiction?"

Monica grins. �I seem to recall the traditional way was to
grab yourself some land and set yourself up as king: but there are other ways.
Iłve got some friends I think you should meet. Theyłre not good
conversationalists and therełs a two-hour lightspeed delay ... but I think
youłll find theyłve answered that question already. But why donłt you talk to
the imam first and find out what hełs like? He may surprise you. After all, he
was already out here before your mom decided to use him against you."

The Sanger hangs in orbit thirty kilometers up, circling the
waist of potato-shaped Amalthea. Drones swarm across the slopes of Mons Lyctos,
ten kilometers above the mean surface level: they kick up clouds of reddish
sulfate dust as they spread transparent sheets across the surface. This close
to Jupiter
a mere hundred and eighty thousand kilometers above the swirling
madness of the cloudscape
the gas giant fills half the sky with a perpetually
changing clockface: for Amalthea orbits the master in under twelve hours. The
Sangerłs radiation shields are running at full power, shrouding the ship in a
corona of rippling plasma: radio is useless, and the human miners run their
drones via an intricate network of laser circuits. Other, larger drones are
unwinding spools of heavy electrical cable north and south from the landing
site: once the circuits are connected, these will form a coil cutting through
Jupiterłs magnetic field, generating electrical current (and imperceptibly
slowing the moonłs orbital momentum).

Amber sighs and looks, for the sixth time this hour, at the
webcam plastered on the side of her cabin. Shełs taken down the posters and
told the toys to tidy themselves away. In another two thousand seconds, the
tiny Iranian spaceship will rise above the limb of Moshtari, and then it will
be time to talk to the teacher. She isnłt looking forward to the experience. If
hełs a grizzled old blockhead of the most obdurate fundamentalist streak,
shełll be in trouble: disrespect for age has been part and parcel of the
western teenage experience for generations, and a cross-cultural thread that
shełs sent to clue-up on Islam reminds her that not all cultures share this
outlook. But if he turns out to be young, intelligent, and flexible, things
could be even worse. When she was eight, Amber audited The Taming of the Shrew:
now she has no appetite for a starring role in her own cross-cultural
production.

She sighs again. �Pierre?"

�Yeah?" His voice comes from the foot of the emergency locker
in her room. Hełs curled up down there, limbs twitching languidly as he drives
a mining drone around the surface of Object Barney, as the rock has named
itself. The drone is a long-legged crane-fly lookalike, bouncing very slowly
from toe-tip to toe-tip in the microgravity
the rock is only half a kilometer
along its longest axis, coated brown with weird hydrocarbon goop and sulfur compounds
sprayed off the surface of Io by the Jovian winds. �Iłm coming."

�You better." She glances at the screen. �One twenty seconds
to next burn." The payload canister on the screen is, technically speaking,
stolen: itłll be okay as long as she gives it back, Bob said, although she
wonłt be able to do that until itłs reached Barney and theyłve found enough
water ice to refuel it. �Found anything yet?"

�Just the usual. Got a seam of ice near the semimajor
pole
itłs dirty, but therełs at least a thousand tons there. And the surface is
crunchy with tar. Amber, you know what? The orange shit, itłs solid with
fullerenes."

Amber grins at her reflection in the screen. Thatłs good
news. Once the payload shełs steering touches down, Pierre can help her lay
superconducting wires along Barneyłs long axis. Itłs only a kilometer and a
half, and thatłll only give them a few tens of kilowatts of juice, but the
condensation fabricator thatłs also in the payload will be able to use it to
convert Barneyłs crust into processed goods at about two grams per second.
Using designs copylefted by the free hardware foundation, inside two hundred
thousand seconds theyłll have a grid of sixty-four 3D printers barfing up
structured matter at a rate limited only by available power. Starting with a
honking great dome tent and some free nitrogen/oxygen for her to breathe, then
adding a big webcache and direct high-bandwidth uplink to Earth, Amber could
have her very own one-girl colony up and running within a million seconds.

The screen blinks at her. �Oh shit. Make yourself scarce,
Pierre!" The incoming call nags at her attention. �Yeah? Who are you?"

The screen fills with a view of a cramped, very
twen-cen-looking space capsule. The guy inside it is in his twenties, with a
heavily tanned face, close-cropped hair and beard, wearing an olive-drab
spacesuit liner. Hełs floating between a TORU manual-docking controller and a gilt-framed
photograph of the Kałbah at Mecca. �Good evening to you," he says solemnly. �Do
I have the honor to be addressing Amber Macx?"

�Uh, yeah. Thatłs me." She stares at him: he looks nothing
like her conception of an ayatollah
whatever an ayatollah is
elderly,
black-robed, vindictively fundamentalist. �Who are you?"

�I am Doctor Sadeq Khurasani. I hope that I am not interrupting
you? Is it convenient for you that we talk now?"

He looks so anxious that Amber nods automatically. �Sure.
Did my mom put you up to this?" Theyłre still speaking English, and she notices
that his diction is good, but slightly stilted: he isnłt using a grammar
engine, hełs actually learned it the hard way. �If so, you want to be careful.
She doesnłt lie, exactly, but she gets people to do what she wants."

�Yes, she did. Ah." A pause. Theyłre still almost a
light-second apart, time for painful collisions and accidental silences. �I
have not noticed that. Are you sure you should be speaking of your mother that
way?"

Amber breathes deeply. �Adults can get divorced. If I could
get divorced from her, I would. Shełs
" she flails around for the right word
helplessly. �Look. Shełs the sort of person who canłt lose a fight. If shełs
going to lose, shełll try to figure how to set the law on you. Like shełs done
to me. Donłt you see?"

Doctor Khurasani looks extremely dubious. �I am not sure I
understand," he says. �Perhaps, mm, I should tell you why I am talking to you?"

�Sure. Go ahead." Amber is startled by his attitude: hełs
actually taking her seriously, she realizes. Treating her like an adult. The
sensation is so novel
coming from someone more than twenty years old and not a
member of the Borg
that she almost lets herself forget that hełs only talking
to her because Mom set her up.

�Well. I am an engineer. In addition, I am a student of
fiqh, jurisprudence. In fact, I am qualified to sit in judgment. I am a very
junior judge, but even so, it is a heavy responsibility. Anyway. Your mother,
peace be unto her, lodged a petition with me. Are you aware of it?"

�Yes." Amber tenses up. �Itłs a lie. Distortion of the
facts."

�Hmm." Sadeq rubs his beard thoughtfully. �Well, I have to
find out, yes? Your mother has submitted herself to the will of God. This makes
you the child of a Moslem, and she claims
"

�Shełs trying to use you as a weapon!" Amber interrupts. �I
sold myself into slavery to get away from her, do you understand? I enslaved
myself to a company that is held in trust for my ownership. Shełs trying to
change the rules to get me back. You know what? I donłt believe she gives a
shit about your religion, all she wants is me!"

�A motherłs love
"

�Fuck love!" Amber snarls, �she wants power."

Sadeqłs expression hardens. �You have a foul mouth in your
head, child. All I am trying to do is to find out the facts of this situation:
you should ask yourself if such disrespect furthers your interests?" He pauses
for a moment, then continues, less abruptly, �Did you really have such a bad
childhood with her? Do you think she did everything merely for power, or could
she love you?" Pause. �You must understand, I need an answer to these things.
Before I can know what is the right thing to do."

�My mother
" Amber stops. Spawns a vaporous cloud of memory
retrievals. They fan out through the space around her mind like the tail of her
cometary mind. Invoking a complex of network parsers and class filters, she
turns the memories into reified images and blats them at the webcamłs tiny
brain so that he can see them. Some of the memories are so painful that Amber
has to close her eyes. Mom in full office war-paint, leaning over Amber,
promising to take her to church so that Reverend Beeching can pray the devil
out of her. Mom telling Amber that theyłre moving again, abruptly, dragging her
away from school and the friends shełd tentatively started to like. Mom
catching her on the phone to Daddy, tearing the phone in half and hitting her
with it. Mom at the kitchen table, forcing her to eat
�My mother likes
control."

�Ah." Sadeqłs expression turns glassy. �And this is how you
feel about her? How long have you had that level of
no, please forgive me for
asking. You obviously understand implants. Do your grandparents know? Did you
talk to them?"

�My grandparents?" Amber stifles a snort. �Momłs parents are
dead. Dadłs are still alive, but they wonłt talk to him
they like Mom. They
think Iłm creepy. I know little things, their tax bands and customer profiles.
I could mine data with my head when I was four. Iłm not built like little girls
were in their day, and they donłt understand. You know that the old ones donłt
like us at all? Some of the churches make money doing nothing but exorcisms for
oldsters who think their kids are possessed."

�Well." Sadeq is fingering his beard again, distractedly. �I
must say, this is a lot to learn. But you know that your mother has accepted
Islam, donłt you? This means that you are Moslem, too. Unless you are an adult,
your parent legally speaks for you. And she says that this makes you my
problem. Hmm."

�Iłm not Moslem." Amber stares at the screen. �Iłm not a
child, either." Her threads are coming together, whispering scarily behind her
eyes: her head is suddenly dense and turgid with ideas, heavy as a stone and
twice as old as time. �I am nobodyłs chattel. What does your law say about
people who are born with implants? What does it say about people who want to
live forever? I donłt believe in any god, mister judge. I donłt believe in any
limits. Mom canłt, physically, make me do anything, and she sure canłt speak
for me."

�Well, if that is what you have to say, I must think on the
matter." He catches her eye: his expression is thoughtful, like a doctor
considering a diagnosis. �I will call you again in due course. In the meantime,
if you need to talk to anyone, remember that I am always available. If there is
anything I can do to help ease your pain, I would be pleased to be of service.
Peace be unto you, and those you care for."

�Same to you too," she mutters darkly as the connection goes
dead. �Now what?" she asks, as a beeping sprite gyrates across the wall,
begging for attention.

�I think itłs the lander," Pierre says helpfully. �Is it
down yet?"

She rounds on him. �Hey, I thought I told you to get lost!"

�What, and miss all the fun?" He grins at her impishly. �Amberłs
got a new boyfriend! Wait until I tell everybody ...."

Sleep cycles pass: the borrowed 3D printer on Object
Barneyłs surface spews bitmaps of atoms in quantum lockstep at its rendering
platform, building up the control circuitry and skeletons of new printers.
(There are no clunky nano-assemblers here, no robots the size of viruses busily
sorting molecules into piles
just the bizarre quantized magic of atomic
holography, modulated Bose-Einstein condensates collapsing into strange, lacy,
supercold machinery.) Electricity surges through the cable loops as they slice
through Jupiterłs magnetosphere, slowly converting the rockłs momentum into
power: small robots grovel in the orange dirt, scooping up raw material to feed
to the fractionating oven. Amberłs garden of machinery flourishes slowly,
unpacking itself according to a schema designed by pre-teens at an industrial
school in Poland, with barely any need for human guidance.

High in orbit around Amalthea, complex financial instruments
breed and conjugate. Developed for the express purpose of facilitating trade
with the alien intelligences believed to have been detected eight years earlier
by SETI, they function equally well as fiscal firewalls for space colonies. The
Sangerłs bank accounts in California and Cuba are looking acceptable
since
entering Jupiter space, the orphanage has staked a claim on roughly a hundred gigatons
of random rocks and a moon thatłs just small enough to creep in under the
International Astronomical Unionłs definition of a sovereign planetary body.
The Borg are working hard, leading their eager teams of child stakeholders in
their plans to build the industrial metastructures necessary to support mining
helium three from Jupiter: theyłre so focused that they spend much of their
time being themselves, not bothering to run Bob, the shared identity that gives
them their messianic drive.

Half a light-hour away, tired Earth wakes and slumbers in
time to its ancient orbital dynamics. A religious college in Cairo is considering
issues of nanotechnology: if replicators are used to prepare a copy of a strip
of bacon, right down to the molecular level, but without it ever being part of
a pig, how is it to be treated? (If the mind of one of the faithful is copied
into a computing machinełs memory by mapping and simulating all its synapses,
is the computer now a Moslem? If not, why not? If so, what are its rights and
duties?) Riots in Borneo underline the urgency of theotechnological inquiry.

More riots in Barcelona, Madrid, Birmingham, and Marseilles
also underline a rising problem: social chaos caused by cheap anti-aging
treatments. The zombie exterminators, a backlash of disaffected youth against
the formerly greying gerontocracy of Europe, insist that people who predate the
supergrid and canłt handle implants arenłt really conscious: their ferocity is
equaled only by the anger of the dynamic septuagenarians of the baby boom,
their bodies partially restored to the flush of sixties youth but their minds
adrift in a slower, less contingent century. The faux-young boomers feel betrayed,
forced back into the labor pool but unable to cope with the implant-accelerated
culture of the new millennium, their hard-earned experience rendered obsolete
by deflationary time.

The Bangladeshi economic miracle is typical of the age. With
growth rates running at over 20 percent, cheap out-of-control bioindustrialization
has swept the nation: former rice farmers harvest plastics and milk cows for
silk, while their children study mariculture and design sea walls. With
cellphone ownership nearing 80 percent and literacy at 90, the once-poor
country is finally breaking out of its historical infrastructure trap and
beginning to develop: another generation, and theyłll be richer than Japan in
2001.

Radical new economic theories are focusing around bandwidth,
speed-of-light transmission time, and the implications of CETI, communication
with extra-terrestrial intelligence: cosmologists and quants collaborate on
bizarre relativistically telescoped financial instruments. Space (which lets
you store information) and structure (which lets you process it) acquire value
while dumb mass
like gold
loses it: the degenerate cores of the traditional
stock markets are in free fall, the old smokestack microprocessor and
biotech/nanotech industries crumbling before the onslaught of matter
replicators and self-modifying ideas and the barbarian communicators, who
mortgage their future for a millennium against the chance of a gift from a
visiting alien intelligence. Microsoft, once the US Steel of the silicon age,
quietly fades into liquidation.

An outbreak of green goo
a crude biomechanical replicator
that eats everything in its path
is dealt with in the Australian outback by
carpet-bombing with fuel-air explosives: the USAF subsequently reactivates two
wings of refurbished B-52s and places them at the disposal of the UN standing
committee on self-replicating weapons. (CNN discovers that one of their newest
pilots, re-enlisting with the body of a twenty-year-old and an empty pension
account, first flew them over Laos and Cambodia.) The news overshadows the
World Health Organizationłs announcement of the end of the HIV pandemic, after
more than fifty years of bigotry, panic, and megadeath.

�Breathe steadily. Remember your regulator drill? If you
spot your heart rate going up or your mouth going dry, take five."

�Shut the fuck up, ęNeko, Iłm trying to concentrate." Amber
fumbles with the titanium D-ring, trying to snake the strap through it. The
gauntlets are getting in her way: high orbit spacesuits
little more than a body
stocking designed to hold your skin under compression and help you breathe
are
easy, but this deep in Jupiterłs radiation belt, she has to wear an old moon
suit that comes in about thirteen layers, and the gloves are stiff. Itłs
Chernobyl weather, a sleet of alpha particles and raw protons storming through
the void. �Got it." She yanks the strap tight, pulls on the D-ring, then goes
to work on the next strap. Never looking down: because the wall shełs tying
herself to has no floor, just a cut-off two meters below, then empty space for
a hundred kilometers before the nearest solid ground.

The ground sings to her moronically: �I fall to you, you
fall to me, itłs the law of gravity
"

She shoves her feet down onto the platform that juts from
the side of the capsule like a suicidełs ledge: metalized Velcro grabs hold,
and she pulls on the straps to turn her body around until she can see past the
capsule, sideways. The capsule masses about five tons, barely bigger than an
ancient Soyuz. Itłs packed to overflowing with environment-sensitive stuff
shełll need, and a honking great high-gain antenna. �I hope you know what
youłre doing?" someone says over the intercom.

�Of course I
" she stops. Alone in this TsUP-surplus iron maiden
with its low bandwidth comms and bizarre plumbing, she feels claustrophobic and
helpless: parts of her mind donłt work. When she was four, Mom took her down a
famous cave system somewhere out west: when the guide turned out the lights
half a kilometer underground, shełd screamed with surprise as the darkness had
reached out and touched her. Now itłs not the darkness that frightens her, itłs
the lack of thought. For a hundred kilometers below her, there are no minds,
and even on the surface therełs not much but a moronic warbling of bots.
Everything that makes the universe primate-friendly seems to be locked in the
huge spaceship that looms somewhere just behind her, and she has to fight down
an urge to shed her straps and swarm back up the umbilical that anchors this
capsule to the Sanger. �Iłll be fine," she forces herself to say. And even
though shełs unsure that itłs true, she tries to make herself believe it. �Itłs
just leaving-home nerves. Iłve read about it, okay?"

Therełs a funny, high-pitched whistle in her ears. For a moment,
the sweat on the back of her neck turns icy cold, then the noise stops. She
strains for a moment, and when it returns, she recognizes the sound: the
heretofore-talkative cat, curled in the warmth of her pressurized luggage can,
has begun to snore.

�Letłs go," she says, �time to roll the wagon." A speech
macro deep in the Sangerłs docking firmware recognizes her authority and gently
lets go of the pod. A couple of cold gas thrusters pop, deep banging vibrations
running through the capsule, and shełs on her way.

�Amber. Howłs it hanging?" A familiar voice in her ears: she
blinks. Fifteen hundred seconds, nearly half an hour gone.

�Robes-Pierre, chopped any aristos lately?"

�Heh!" A pause. �I can see your head from here."

�Howłs it looking?" she asks. Therełs a lump in her throat,
she isnłt sure why. Pierre is probably hooked into one of the smaller proximity
cameras dotted around the outer hull of the big mothership. Watching over her
as she falls.

�Pretty much like always," he says laconically. Another
pause, this time longer. �This is wild, you know? Su Ang says hi, by the way."

�Su Ang, hi," she replies, resisting the urge to lean back
and look up
up relative to her feet, not her vector
and see if the shipłs still
visible.

�Hi," Ang says shyly. �Youłre very brave!"

�Still canłt beat you at chess." Amber frowns. Su Ang and
her over-engineered algae. Oscar and his pharmaceutical factory toads. People
shełs known for three years, mostly ignored, and never thought about missing.
�Listen, you going to come visiting?"

�Visit?" Ang sounds dubious. �When will it be ready?"

�Oh, soon enough." At four kilograms per minute of structured-matter
output, the printers on the surface have already built her a bunch of stuff: a
habitat dome, the guts of an algae/shrimp farm, a bucket conveyor to bury it
with, an airlock. Itłs all lying around waiting for her to put it together and
move into her new home. �Once the Borg get back from Amalthea."

�Hey! You mean theyłre moving? How did you figure that?"

�Go talk to them," Amber says. Actually, shełs a large part
of the reason the Sanger is about to crank its orbit up and out toward the
other moon: she wants to be alone in comms silence for a couple of million
seconds. The Franklin collective is doing her a big favor.

�Ahead of the curve, as usual," Pierre cuts in, with
something that sounds like admiration to her uncertain ears.

�You too," she says, a little too fast. �Come visit when
Iłve got the life-support cycle stabilized."

�Iłll do that," he replies. A red glow suffuses the flank of
the capsule next to her head, and she looks up in time to see the glaring blue
laser-line of the Sangerłs drive torch powering up.

Eighteen million seconds, almost a tenth of a Jupiter year,
passes.

The imam tugs thoughtfully on his beard as he stares at the
traffic-control display. These days, every shift seems to bring a new crewed
spaceship into Jupiter system: space is getting positively crowded. When he
arrived, there were less than two hundred people here: now therełs the
population of a small city, and many of them live at the heart of the approach
map centered on his display. He breathes deeply
trying to ignore the
omnipresent odor of old socks
and studies the map. �Computer, what about my
slot?" he asks.

�Your slot: cleared to commence final approach in six nine
five seconds. Speed limit is ten meters per second inside ten kilometers, drop
to two meters per second inside one kilometer. Uploading map of forbidden
thrust vectors now." Chunks of the approach map turn red, gridded off to
prevent his exhaust stream damaging other craft in the area.

Sadeq sighs. �Wełll go in on Kurs. I assume their Kurs guidance
is active?"

�Kurs docking target support available to shell level
three."

�Praise the Prophet, peace be unto him." He pokes around
through the guidance subsystemłs menus, setting up the software emulation of
the obsolete (but highly reliable) Soyuz docking system. At last, he can leave
the ship to look after itself for a bit. He glances around: for two years he
has lived in this canister, and soon he will step outside it. It hardly seems
real.

The radio, usually silent, crackles with unexpected life.
�Bravo One One, this is Imperial Traffic Control. Verbal contact required,
over."

Sadeq twitches with surprise. The voice sounds inhuman,
paced with the cadences of a speech synthesizer, like so many of Her Majestyłs
subjects. �Bravo One One to Traffic Control, Iłm listening, over."

�Bravo One One, we have assigned you a landing slot on tunnel
four, airlock delta. Kurs active, ensure your guidance is set to seven four
zero and slaved to our control."

He leans over the screen and rapidly checks the docking systemłs
settings. �Control, all in order."

�Bravo One One, stand by."

The next hour passes slowly as the traffic control system
guides his Type 921 down to a rocky rendezvous. Orange dust streaks his one
optical-glass porthole: a kilometer before touch-down, Sadeq busies himself
closing protective covers, locking down anything that might fall around on
contact. Finally, he unrolls his mat against the floor in front of the console
and floats above it for ten minutes, eyes closed in prayer. Itłs not the
landing that worries him, but what comes next.

Her Majestyłs domain stretches out before the battered Almaz
module like a rust-stained snowflake half-a-kilometer in diameter. Its core is
buried in a loose snowball of greyish rubble, and it waves languid brittlestar
arms at the gibbous orange horizon of Jupiter. Fine hairs, fractally branching
down to the molecular level, split off the main collector arms at regular
intervals; a cluster of habitat pods like seedless grapes cling to the roots of
the massive cluster. Already, he can see the huge steel generator loops that
climb from either pole of the snowflake, wreathed in sparking plasma: the
Jovian rings form a rainbow of darkness rising behind them.

Finally, the battered space station is on final approach.
Sadeq watches the Kurs simulation output carefully, piping it direct into his
visual field: therełs an external camera view of the rockpile and grapes,
expanding toward the convex ceiling of the ship, and he licks his lips, ready
to hit the manual override and go around again
but the rate of descent is
slowing, and by the time hełs close enough to see the scratches on the shiny
metal docking cone ahead of the ship, itłs measured in centimeters per second.
Therełs a gentle bump, then a shudder, then a rippling bang as the docking ring
latches fire
and hełs down.

Sadeq breathes deeply again, then tries to stand. Therełs
gravity here, but not much: walking is impossible. Hełs about to head for the
life-support panel when he freezes, hearing a noise from the far end of the
docking node. Turning, he is just in time to see the hatch opening toward him,
a puff of vapor condensing, and then


Her Imperial Majesty is sitting in the throne room, moodily
fidgeting with the new signet ring her Equerry has designed for her. Itłs a
lump of structured carbon massing almost fifty grams, set in a plain band of
iridium. It glitters with the blue and violet speckle highlights of its
internal lasers, because, in addition to being a piece of state jewelry, it is
also an optical router, part of the industrial control infrastructure shełs
building out here on the edge of the solar system. Her Majesty wears plain
black combat pants and sweatshirt, woven from the finest spider silk and spun
glass, but her feet are bare: her taste in fashion is best described as youthful,
and, in any event, certain styles
skirts, for example
are simply impractical in
microgravity. But, being a monarch, shełs wearing a crown. And therełs a cat
sleeping on the back of her throne.

The lady-in-waiting (and sometime hydroponic engineer) ushers
Sadeq to the doorway, then floats back. �If you need anything, please say," she
says shyly, then ducks and rolls away. Sadeq approaches the throne, orients
himself on the floor
a simple slab of black composite, save for the throne
growing from its center like an exotic flower
and waits to be noticed.

�Doctor Khurasani, I presume." She smiles at him, neither
the innocent grin of a child nor the knowing smirk of an adult: merely a warm
greeting. �Welcome to my kingdom. Please feel free to make use of any necessary
support services here, and I wish you a very pleasant stay."

Sadeq holds his expression still. The queen is young
her
face still retains the puppy fat of childhood, emphasized by microgravity
moon-face
but it would be a bad mistake to consider her immature. �I am
grateful for Your Majestyłs forbearance," he murmurs, formulaic. Behind her the
walls glitter like diamonds, a glowing kaleidoscope vision. Her crown, more
like a compact helm that covers the top and rear of her head, also glitters and
throws off diffraction rainbows: but most of its emissions are in the near ultraviolet,
invisible except in the faint glowing nimbus it creates around her head. Like a
halo.

�Have a seat," she offers, gesturing: a ballooning free-fall
cradle squirts down and expands from the ceiling, angled toward her, open and
waiting. �You must be tired: working a ship all by yourself is exhausting." She
frowns ruefully, as if remembering. �And two years is nearly unprecedented."

�Your Majesty is too kind." Sadeq wraps the cradle arms
around himself and faces her. �Your labors have been fruitful, I trust."

She shrugs. �I sell the biggest commodity in short supply on
any frontier ...." a momentary grin. �This isnłt the wild west, is it?"

�Justice cannot be sold," Sadeq says stiffly. Then, a moment
later: �My apologies, please accept that while I mean no insult. I merely mean
that while you say your goal is to provide the rule of Law, what you sell is
and must be something different. Justice without God, sold to the highest
bidder, is not justice."

The queen nods. �Leaving aside the mention of God, I agree:
I canłt sell it. But I can sell participation in a just system. And this new
frontier really is a lot smaller than anyone expected, isnłt it? Our bodies may
take months to travel between worlds, but our disputes and arguments take
seconds or minutes. As long as everybody agrees to abide by my arbitration,
physical enforcement can wait until theyłre close enough to touch. And
everybody does agree that my legal framework is easier to comply with, better adjusted
to space, than any earthbound one." A note of steel creeps into her voice,
challenging: her halo brightens, tickling a reactive glow from the walls of the
throne room.

Five billion inputs or more, Sadeq marvels: the crown is an
engineering marvel, even though most of its mass is buried in the walls and
floor of this huge construct. �There is law revealed by the Prophet, peace be
unto him, and there is Law that we can establish by analyzing his intentions.
There are other forms of law by which humans live, and various interpretations
of the law of God even among those who study his works. How, in the absence of
the word of the Prophet, can you provide a moral compass?"

�Hmm." She taps her fingers on the arm of her throne, and Sadeqłs
heart freezes. Hełs heard the stories from the claim-jumpers and boardroom
bandits, from the greenmail experts with their roots in the earthbound
jurisdictions that have made such a hash of arbitration here: how she can
experience a year in a minute, rip your memories out through your cortical
implants and make you relive your worst mistakes in her nightmarishly powerful
simulation system. She is the queen
the first individual to get her hands on so
much mass and energy that she could pull ahead of the curve of binding
technology, and the first to set up her own jurisdiction and rule certain
experiments to be legal so that she could make use of the mass/energy
intersection. She has force majeure
even the Pentagonłs infowarriors respect
the Ring Imperiumłs firewall. In fact, the body sitting in the throne opposite
him probably contains only a fraction of her identity; shełs by no means the
first upload or partial, but shełs the first-gust front of the storm of power
that will arrive when the arrogant ones achieve their goal of dismantling the
planets and turning dumb and uninhabited mass into brains throughout the
observable reaches of the universe. And hełs just questioned the rectitude of
her vision.

The queenłs lips twitch. Then they curl into a wide, carnivorous
grin. Behind her, the cat sits up and stretches, then stares at Sadeq through
narrowed eyes.

�You know, thatłs the first time in weeks that anyone has
told me Iłm full of shit. You havenłt been talking to my mother again, have
you?"

Itłs Sadeqłs turn to shrug, uncomfortably. �I have prepared
a judgment," he says slowly.

�Ah." Amber rotates the huge diamond ring around her finger,
seemingly unaware. It is Amber that looks him in the eye, a trifle nervously.
Although what he could possibly do to make her comply with any decree


�Her motive is polluted," Sadeq says shortly.

�Does that mean what I think it does?" she asks.

Sadeq breathes deeply again. �Yes."

Her smile returns. �And is that the end of it?" she asks.

He raises a dark eyebrow. �Only if you can prove to me that
you can have a conscience in the absence of divine revelation."

Her reaction catches him by surprise. �Oh, sure. Thatłs the
next part of the program. Obtaining divine revelations."

�What? From the aliens?"

The cat, claws extended, delicately picks its way down to
her lap and waits to be held and stroked. It never once takes its eyes off him.
�Where else?" she asks. �Doctor, I didnłt get the Franklin trust to loan me the
wherewithal to build this castle just in return for some legal paperwork. Wełve
known for years that therełs a whole alien packet-switching network out there
and wełre just getting spillover from some of their routes: it turns out
therełs a node not far away from here, in real space. Helium three, separate
jurisdictions, heavy industrialization on Io
there is a purpose to all this
activity."

Sadeq licks his suddenly dry lips. �Youłre going to narrowcast
a reply?"

�No, much better than that: wełre going to visit them. Cut
the delay cycle down to realtime. We came here to build a ship and recruit a
crew, even if we have to cannibalize the whole of Jupiter system to pay for the
exercise."

The cat yawns, then fixes him with a thousand-yard stare.
�This stupid girl wants to bring her conscience along to a meeting with
something so smart it might as well be a god," it says, �and youłre it. Therełs
a slot open for the post of shipłs theologian. I donłt suppose I can convince
you to turn the offer down?"

Lobsters

Manfredłs on the road again, making strangers rich.

Itłs a hot summer Tuesday and hełs standing in the plaza in
front of the Centraal Station with his eyeballs powered up and the sunlight
jangling off the canal, motor scooters and kamikaze cyclists whizzing past and
tourists chattering on every side. The square smells of water and dirt and hot
metal and the fart-laden exhaust fumes of cold catalytic converters; the bells
of trams ding in the background and birds flock overhead. He glances up and
grabs a pigeon, crops it and squirts at his website to show hełs arrived. The
bandwidth is good here, he realizes; and itłs not just the bandwidth, itłs the
whole scene. Amsterdam is making him feel wanted already, even though hełs
fresh off the train from Schiphol: hełs infected with the dynamic optimism of
another time zone, another city. If the mood holds, someone out there is going
to become very rich indeed.

He wonders who itłs going to be.

Manfred sits on a stool out in the car park at the Brouwerij
ęt IJ, watching the articulated buses go by and drinking a third of a liter of
lip-curlingly sour geuze. His channels are jabbering away in a corner of his
head-up display, throwing compressed infobursts of filtered press releases at
him. They compete for his attention, bickering and rudely waving in front of
the scenery. A couple of punks
maybe local, but more likely drifters lured to
Amsterdam by the magnetic field of tolerance the Dutch beam across Europe like
a pulsar
are laughing and chatting by a couple of battered mopeds in the far
corner. A tourist boat putters by in the canal; the sails of the huge windmill
overhead cast long cool shadows across the road. The windmill is a machine for
lifting water, turning wind power into dry land: trading energy for space,
sixteenth-century style. Manfred is waiting for an invite to a party where hełs
going to meet a man who he can talk to about trading energy for space,
twenty-first century style, and forget about his personal problems.

Hełs ignoring the instant messenger boxes, enjoying some low
bandwidth high sensation time with his beer and the pigeons, when a woman walks
up to him and says his name: �Manfred Macx?"

He glances up. The courier is an Effective Cyclist, all
wind-burned smooth-running muscles clad in a paen to polymer technology:
electric blue lycra and wasp-yellow carbonate with a light speckling of
anti-collision LEDs and tight-packed air bags. She holds out a box for him. He
pauses a moment, struck by the degree to which she resembles Pam, his
ex-fianc�e.

�Iłm Macx," he says, waving the back of his left wrist under
her barcode reader. �Whołs it from?"

�FedEx." The voice isnłt Pam. She dumps the box in his lap,
then shełs back over the low wall and onto her bicycle with her phone already
chirping, disappearing in a cloud of spread-spectrum emissions.

Manfred turns the box over in his hands: itłs a disposable supermarket
phone, paid for in cash: cheap, untraceable and efficient. It can even do
conference calls, which makes it the tool of choice for spooks and grifters
everywhere.

The box rings. Manfred rips the cover open and pulls out the
phone, mildly annoyed. �Yes, who is this?"

The voice at the other end has a heavy Russian accent,
almost a parody in this decade of cheap online translation services. �Manfred.
Am please to meet you; wish to personalize interface, make friends, no? Have
much to offer."

�Who are you?" Manfred repeats suspiciously.

�Am organization formerly known as KGB dot RU."

�I think your translatorłs broken." He holds the phone to
his ear carefully, as if itłs made of smoke-thin aerogel, tenuous as the sanity
of the being on the other end of the line.

�Nyet
no, sorry. Am apologize for we not use commercial
translation software. Interpreters are ideologically suspect, mostly have
capitalist semiotics and pay-per-use APIs. Must implement English more better,
yes?"

Manfred drains his beer glass, sets it down, stands up, and
begins to walk along the main road, phone glued to the side of his head. He
wraps his throat mike around the cheap black plastic casing, pipes the input to
a simple listener process. �You taught yourself the language just so you could
talk to me?"

�Da, was easy: spawn billion-node neural network and download
Tellytubbies and Sesame Street at maximum speed. Pardon excuse entropy overlay
of bad grammar: am afraid of digital fingerprints steganographically masked
into my-our tutorials."

�Let me get this straight. Youłre the KGBłs core AI, but
youłre afraid of a copyright infringement lawsuit over your translator semiotics?"
Manfred pauses in mid-stride, narrowly avoids being mown down by a GPS-guided
roller-blader.

�Am have been badly burned by viral end-user license agreements.
Have no desire to experiment with patent shell companies held by Chechen
infoterrorists. You are human, you must not worry cereal company repossess your
small intestine because digest unlicensed food with it, right? Manfred, you
must help me-we. Am wishing to defect."

Manfred stops dead in the street: �Oh man, youłve got the
wrong free enterprise broker here. I donłt work for the government. Iłm
strictly private." A rogue advertisement sneaks through his junkbuster proxy
and spams glowing fifties kitsch across his navigation window
which is
blinking
for a moment before a phage guns it and spawns a new filter. Manfred
leans against a shop front, massaging his forehead and eyeballing a display of
antique brass doorknockers. �Have you cleared this with the State Department?"

�Why bother? State Department am enemy of Novy-USSR. State
Department is not help us."

�Well, if you hadnłt given it to them for safe-keeping
during the nineties ...." Manfred is tapping his left heel on the pavement,
looking round for a way out of this conversation. A camera winks at him from
atop a street light; he waves, wondering idly if itłs the KGB or the traffic
police. He is waiting for directions to the party, which should arrive within
the next half an hour, and this cold war retread is bumming him out. �Look, I
donłt deal with the G-men. I hate the military industrial complex. Theyłre
zero-sum cannibals." A thought occurs to him. �If survival is what youłre
after, I could post your state vector to Eternity: then nobody could delete
you
"

�Nyet!" The artificial intelligence sounds as alarmed as
itłs possible to sound over a GSM link. �Am not open source!"

�We have nothing to talk about, then." Manfred punches the
hang-up button and throws the mobile phone out into a canal. It hits the water
and therełs a pop of deflagrating LiION cells. �Fucking cold war hang-over
losers," he swears under his breath, quite angry now. �Fucking capitalist
spooks." Russia has been back under the thumb of the apparatchiks for fifteen
years now, its brief flirtation with anarcho-capitalism replaced by Brezhnevite
dirigisme, and itłs no surprise that the wallłs crumbling
but it looks like
they havenłt learned anything from the collapse of capitalism. They still think
in terms of dollars and paranoia. Manfred is so angry that he wants to make
someone rich, just to thumb his nose at the would-be defector. See! You get
ahead by giving! Get with the program! Only the generous survive! But the KGB
wonłt get the message. Hełs dealt with old-time commie weak-AIłs before, minds
raised on Marxist dialectic and Austrian School economics: theyłre so
thoroughly hypnotized by the short-term victory of capitalism in the industrial
age that they canłt surf the new paradigm, look to the longer term.

Manfred walks on, hands in pockets, brooding. He wonders
what hełs going to patent next.

Manfred has a suite at the Hotel Jan Luyken paid for by a
grateful multinational consumer protection group, and an unlimited public
transport pass paid for by a Scottish sambapunk band in return for services
rendered. He has airline employeełs travel rights with six flag carriers
despite never having worked for an airline. His bush jacket has sixty four
compact supercomputing clusters sewn into it, four per pocket, courtesy of an
invisible college that wants to grow up to be the next Media Lab. His dumb
clothing comes made to measure from an e-tailor in the Philippines who hełs
never met. Law firms handle his patent applications on a pro bono basis, and
boy does he patent a lot
although he always signs the rights over to the Free
Intellect Foundation, as contributions to their obligation-free infrastructure
project.

In IP geek circles, Manfred is legendary; hełs the guy who patented
the business practice of moving your e-business somewhere with a slack
intellectual property regime in order to evade licensing encumbrances. Hełs the
guy who patented using genetic algorithms to patent everything they can
permutate from an initial description of a problem domain
not just a better
mousetrap, but the set of all possible better mousetraps. Roughly a third of
his inventions are legal, a third are illegal, and the remainder are legal but
will become illegal as soon as the legislatosaurus wakes up, smells the coffee,
and panics. There are patent attorneys in Reno who swear that Manfred Macx is a
pseudo, a net alias fronting for a bunch of crazed anonymous hackers armed with
the Genetic Algorithm That Ate Calcutta: a kind of Serdar Argic of intellectual
property, or maybe another Bourbaki maths borg. There are lawyers in San Diego
and Redmond who swear blind that Macx is an economic saboteur bent on wrecking
the underpinning of capitalism, and there are communists in Prague who think
hełs the bastard spawn of Bill Gates by way of the Pope.

Manfred is at the peak of his profession, which is
essentially coming up with wacky but workable ideas and giving them to people
who will make fortunes with them. He does this for free, gratis. In return, he
has virtual immunity from the tyranny of cash; money is a symptom of poverty,
after all, and Manfred never has to pay for anything.

There are drawbacks, however. Being a pronoiac meme-broker
is a constant burn of future shock
he has to assimilate more than a megabyte of
text and several gigs of AV content every day just to stay current. The
Internal Revenue Service is investigating him continuously because they donłt
believe his lifestyle can exist without racketeering. And there exist items
that no money canłt buy: like the respect of his parents. He hasnłt spoken to
them for three years: his father thinks hełs a hippie scrounger and his mother
still hasnłt forgiven him for dropping out of his down-market Harvard emulation
course. His fianc�e and sometime dominatrix Pamela threw him over six months
ago, for reasons he has never been quite clear on. (Ironically, shełs a
headhunter for the IRS, jetting all over the globe trying to persuade open
source entrepreneurs to come home and go commercial for the good of the
Treasury department.) To cap it all, the Southern Baptist Conventions have
denounced him as a minion of Satan on all their websites. Which would be funny,
if it wasnłt for the dead kittens one of their followers
he presumes itłs one
of their followers
keeps mailing him.

Manfred drops in at his hotel suite, unpacks his Aineko,
plugs in a fresh set of cells to charge, and sticks most of his private keys in
the safe. Then he heads straight for the party, which is currently happening at
De Wildemannłs; itłs a twenty minute walk and the only real hazard is dodging
the trams that sneak up on him behind the cover of his moving map display.

Along the way his glasses bring him up to date on the news.
Europe has achieved peaceful political union for the first time ever: theyłre
using this unprecedented state of affairs to harmonize the curvature of
bananas. In San Diego, researchers are uploading lobsters into cyberspace,
starting with the stomatogastric ganglion, one neuron at a time. Theyłre
burning GM cocoa in Belize and books in Edinburgh. NASA still canłt put a man
on the moon. Russia has re-elected the communist government with an increased
majority in the Duma; meanwhile in China fevered rumors circulate about an
imminent re-habilitation, the second coming of Mao, who will save them from the
consequences of the Three Gorges disaster. In business news, the US government
is outraged at the Baby Bills
who have automated their legal processes and are
spawning subsidiaries, IPOłing them, and exchanging title in a bizarre parody
of bacterial plasmid exchange, so fast that by the time the injunctions are
signed the targets donłt exist any more.

Welcome to the twenty-first century.

The permanent floating meatspace party has taken over the
back of De Wildemannłs, a three hundred year old brown caf� with a beer menu
that runs to sixteen pages and wooden walls stained the color of stale beer.
The air is thick with the smells of tobacco, brewerłs yeast, and melatonin
spray: half the dotters are nursing monster jetlag hangovers, and the other
half are babbling a eurotrash creole at each other while they work on the
hangover. �Man did you see that? He looks like a Stallmanite!" exclaims one whitebread
hanger-on whołs currently propping up the bar. Manfred slides in next to him,
catches the bartenderłs eye.

�Glass of the berlinnerweise, please," he says.

�You drink that stuff?" asks the hanger-on, curling a hand
protectively around his Coke: �man, you donłt want to do that! Itłs full of
alcohol!"

Manfred grins at him toothily. �Ya gotta keep your yeast
intake up: lots of neurotransmitter precursors, phenylalanine and glutamate."

�But I thought that was a beer you were ordering ...."

Manfredłs away, one hand resting on the smooth brass pipe
that funnels the more popular draught items in from the cask storage in back;
one of the hipper floaters has planted a capacitative transfer bug on it, and
all the handshake vCardłs that have visited the bar in the past three hours are
queueing for attention. The air is full of bluetooth as he scrolls through a
dizzying mess of public keys.

�Your drink." The barman holds out an improbable-looking
goblet full of blue liquid with a cap of melting foam and a felching straw
stuck out at some crazy angle. Manfred takes it and heads for the back of the
split-level bar, up the steps to a table where some guy with greasy dreadlocks
is talking to a suit from Paris. The hanger-on at the bar notices him for the
first time, staring with suddenly wide eyes: nearly spills his Coke in a mad
rush for the door.

Oh shit, thinks Macx, better buy some more server PIPS. He
can recognize the signs: hełs about to be slashdotted. He gestures at the
table: �this one taken?"

�Be my guest," says the guy with the dreads. Manfred slides
the chair open then realizes that the other guy
immaculate double-breasted
suit, sober tie, crew-cut
is a girl. Mr. Dreadlock nods. �Youłre Macx? I
figured it was about time we met."

�Sure." Manfred holds out a hand and they shake. Manfred realizes
the hand belongs to Bob Franklin, a Research Triangle startup monkey with a VC
track record, lately moving into micromachining and space technology: he made
his first million two decades ago and now hełs a specialist in extropian
investment fields. Manfred has known Bob for nearly a decade via a closed
mailing list. The Suit silently slides a business card across the table; a
little red devil brandishes a trident at him, flames jetting up around its
feet. He takes the card, raises an eyebrow: �Annette Dimarcos? Iłm pleased to
meet you. Canłt say Iłve ever met anyone from Arianespace marketing before."

She smiles, humorlessly; �that is convenient, all right. I
have not the pleasure of meeting the famous venture altruist before." Her
accent is noticeably Parisian, a pointed reminder that shełs making a
concession to him just by talking. Her camera earrings watch him curiously,
encoding everything for the company channels.

�Yes, well." He nods cautiously. �Bob. I assume youłre in on
this ball?"

Franklin nods; beads clatter. �Yeah, man. Ever since the Teledesic
smash itłs been, well, waiting. If youłve got something for us, wełre game."

�Hmm." The Teledesic satellite cluster was killed by cheap
balloons and slightly less cheap high-altitude solar-powered drones with
spread-spectrum laser relays. �The depressionłs got to end some time: but," a
nod to Annette from Paris, �with all due respect, I donłt think the break will
involve one of the existing club carriers."

�Arianespace is forward-looking. We face reality. The launch
cartel cannot stand. Bandwidth is not the only market force in space. We must
explore new opportunities. I personally have helped us diversify into submarine
reactor engineering, microgravity nanotechnology fabrication, and hotel
management." Her face is a well-polished mask as she recites the company line:
�we are more flexible than the American space industry ...."

Manfred shrugs. �Thatłs as may be." He sips his Berlinerweisse
slowly as she launches into a long, stilted explanation of how Arianespace is a
diversified dot com with orbital aspirations, a full range of merchandising
spin-offs, Bond movie sets, and a promising motel chain in French Guyana.
Occasionally he nods.

Someone else sidles up to the table; a pudgy guy in an outrageously
loud Hawaiian shirt with pens leaking in a breast pocket, and the worst case of
ozone-hole burn Manfredłs seen in ages. �Hi, Bob," says the new arrival. �Howłs
life?"

�ęS good." Franklin nodes at Manfred; �Manfred, meet Ivan
MacDonald. Ivan, Manfred. Have a seat?" He leans over. �Ivanłs a public arts
guy. Hełs heavily into extreme concrete."

�Rubberized concrete," Ivan says, slightly too loudly. �Pink
rubberized concrete."

�Ah!" Hełs somehow triggered a priority interrupt: Annette
from Ariannespace drops out of marketing zombiehood, sits up, and shows signs
of possessing a non-corporate identity: �you are he who rubberized the
Reichstag, yes? With the supercritical carbon dioxide carrier and the dissolved
polymethoxysilanes?" She claps her hands: �wonderful!"

�He rubberized what?" Manfred mutters in Bobłs ear.

Franklin shrugs. �Limestone, concrete, he doesnłt seem to
know the difference. Anyway, Germany doesnłt have an independent government any
more, so whołd notice?"

�I thought I was thirty seconds ahead of the curve," Manfred
complains. �Buy me another drink?"

�Iłm going to rubberize Three Gorges!" Ivan explains loudly.

Just then a bandwidth load as heavy as a pregnant elephant
sits down on Manfredłs head and sends clumps of humongous pixellation
flickering across his sensorium: around the world five million or so geeks are
bouncing on his home site, a digital flash crowd alerted by a posting from the
other side of the bar. Manfred winces. �I really came here to talk about the
economic exploitation of space travel, but Iłve just been slashdotted. Mind if
I just sit and drink until it wears off?"

�Sure, man." Bob waves at the bar. �More of the same all
round!" At the next table a person with make-up and long hair whołs wearing a
dress
Manfred doesnłt want to speculate about the gender of these crazy
mixed-up Euros
is reminiscing about wiring the fleshpots of Tehran for
cybersex. Two collegiate-looking dudes are arguing intensely in German: the
translation stream in his glasses tell him theyłre arguing over whether the Turing
Test is a Jim Crow law that violates European corpus juris standards on human
rights. The beer arrives and Bob slides the wrong one across to Manfred: �here,
try this. Youłll like it."

�Okay." Itłs some kind of smoked doppelbock, chock-full of
yummy superoxides: just inhaling over it makes Manfred feel like therełs a fire
alarm in his nose screaming danger, Will Robinson! Cancer! Cancer! �Yeah,
right. Did I say I nearly got mugged on my way here?"

�Mugged? Hey, thatłs heavy. I thought the police hereabouts
had stopped
did they sell you anything?"

�No, but they werenłt your usual marketing type. You know
anyone who can use a Warpac surplus espionage AI? Recent model, one careful
owner, slightly paranoid but basically sound?"

�No. Oh boy! The NSA wouldnłt like that."

�What I thought. Poor thingłs probably unemployable, anyway."

�The space biz."

�Ah, yeah. The space biz. Depressing, isnłt it? Hasnłt been
the same since Rotary Rocket went bust for the second time. And NASA, mustnłt
forget NASA."

�To NASA." Annette grins broadly for her own reasons, raises
a glass in toast. Ivan the extreme concrete geek has an arm round her
shoulders; he raises his glass, too. �Lots of launch pads to rubberize!"

�To NASA," Bob echoes. They drink. �Hey, Manfred. To NASA?"

�NASA are idiots. They want to send canned primates to
Mars!" Manfred swallows a mouthful of beer, aggressively plonks his glass on
the table: �Mars is just dumb mass at the bottom of a gravity well; there isnłt
even a biosphere there. They should be working on uploading and solving the
nanoassembly conformational problem instead. Then we could turn all the
available dumb matter into computronium and use it for processing our thoughts.
Long term, itłs the only way to go. The solar system is a dead loss right
now
dumb all over! Just measure the mips per milligram. We need to start with
the low-mass bodies, reconfigure them for our own use. Dismantle the moon!
Dismantle Mars! Build masses of free-flying nanocomputing processor nodes
exchanging data via laser link, each layer running off the waste heat of the
next one in. Matrioshka brains, Russian doll Dyson spheres the size of solar
systems. Teach dumb matter to do the Turing boogie!"

Bob looks wary. �Sounds kind of long term to me. Just how
far ahead do you think?"

�Very long-term
at least twenty, thirty years. And you can
forget governments for this market, Bob, if they canłt tax it they wonłt
understand it. But see, therełs an angle on the self-replicating robotics
market coming up, thatłs going to set the cheap launch market doubling every
fifteen months for the foreseeable future, starting in two years. Itłs your leg
up, and my keystone for the Dyson sphere project. It works like this
"

Itłs night in Amsterdam, morning in Silicon Valley. Today,
fifty thousand human babies are being born around the world. Meanwhile
automated factories in Indonesia and Mexico have produced another quarter of a
million motherboards with processors rated at more than ten petaflops
about an
order of magnitude below the computational capacity of a human brain. Another
fourteen months and the larger part of the cumulative conscious processing
power of the human species will be arriving in silicon. And the first meat the
new AIłs get to know will be the uploaded lobsters.

Manfred stumbles back to his hotel, bone-weary and
jet-lagged; his glasses are still jerking, slashdotted to hell and back by
geeks piggybacking on his call to dismantle the moon. They stutter quiet
suggestions at his peripheral vision; fractal cloud-witches ghost across the
face of the moon as the last huge Airbuses of the night rumble past overhead.
Manfredłs skin crawls, grime embedded in his clothing from three days of
continuous wear.

Back in his room, Aineko mewls for attention and strops her
head against his ankle. He bends down and pets her, sheds clothing and heads
for the en-suite bathroom. When hełs down to the glasses and nothing more he
steps into the shower and dials up a hot steamy spray. The shower tries to
strike up a friendly conversation about football but he isnłt even awake enough
to mess with its silly little associative personalization network. Something
that happened earlier in the day is bugging him but he canłt quite put his
finger on whatłs wrong.

Toweling himself off, Manfred yawns. Jet lag has finally overtaken
him, a velvet hammer-blow between the eyes. He reaches for the bottle beside
the bed, dry-swallows two melatonin tablets, a capsule full of antioxidants,
and a multivitamin bullet: then he lies down on the bed, on his back, legs
together, arms slightly spread. The suite lights dim in response to commands
from the thousand petaflops of distributed processing power that run the neural
networks that interface with his meatbrain through the glasses.

Manfred drops into a deep ocean of unconsciousness populated
by gentle voices. He isnłt aware of it, but he talks in his sleep
disjointed
mumblings that would mean little to another human, but everything to the
metacortex lurking beyond his glasses. The young posthuman intelligence in
whose Cartesian theater he presides sings urgently to him while he slumbers.

Manfred is always at his most vulnerable shortly after
waking.

He screams into wakefulness as artificial light floods the
room: for a moment he is unsure whether he has slept. He forgot to pull the
covers up last night, and his feet feel like lumps of frozen cardboard.
Shuddering with inexplicable tension, he pulls a fresh set of underwear from
his overnight bag, then drags on soiled jeans and tank top. Sometime today
hełll have to spare time to hunt the feral T-shirt in Amsterdamłs markets, or
find a Renfield and send them forth to buy clothing. His glasses remind him
that hełs six hours behind the moment and needs to catch up urgently; his teeth
ache in his gums and his tongue feels like a forest floor thatłs been visited
with Agent Orange. He has a sense that something went bad yesterday; if only he
could remember what.

He speed-reads a new pop-philosophy tome while he brushes
his teeth, then blogs his web throughput to a public annotation server; hełs
still too enervated to finish his pre-breakfast routine by posting a morning
rant on his storyboard site. His brain is still fuzzy, like a scalpel blade clogged
with too much blood: he needs stimulus, excitement, the burn of the new.
Whatever, it can wait on breakfast. He opens his bedroom door and nearly steps
on a small, damp cardboard box that lies on the carpet.

The box
hełs seen a couple of its kin before. But there are
no stamps on this one, no address: just his name, in big, childish handwriting.
He kneels down and gently picks it up. Itłs about the right weight. Something
shifts inside it when he tips it back and forth. It smells. He carries it into his
room carefully, angrily: then he opens it to confirm his worst suspicion. Itłs
been surgically decerebrated, skull scooped out like a baby boiled egg.

�Fuck!"

This is the first time the madman has got as far as his
bedroom door. It raises worrying possibilities.

Manfred pauses for a moment, triggering agents to go hunt
down arrest statistics, police relations, information on corpus juris, Dutch
animal cruelty laws. He isnłt sure whether to dial 211 on the archaic voice
phone or let it ride. Aineko, picking up his angst, hides under the dresser
mewling pathetically. Normally hełd pause a minute to reassure the creature,
but not now: its mere presence is suddenly acutely embarrassing, a confession
of deep inadequacy. He swears again, looks around, then takes the easy option:
down the stairs two steps at a time, stumbling on the second floor landing,
down to the breakfast room in the basement where he will perform the stable
rituals of morning.

Breakfast is unchanging, an island of deep geological time
standing still amidst the continental upheaval of new technologies. While
reading a paper on public key steganography and parasite network identity
spoofing he mechanically assimilates a bowl of corn flakes and skimmed milk,
then brings a platter of wholemeal bread and slices of some weird seed-infested
Dutch cheese back to his place. There is a cup of strong black coffee in front
of his setting: he picks it up and slurps half of it down before he realizes
hełs not alone at the table. Someone is sitting opposite him. He glances up at
them incuriously and freezes inside.

�Morning, Manfred. How does it feel to owe the government
twelve million, three hundred and sixty-two thousand nine hundred and sixteen
dollars and fifty-one cents?"

Manfred puts everything in his sensorium on indefinite hold
and stares at her. Shełs immaculately turned out in a formal grey business
suit: brown hair tightly drawn back, blue eyes quizzical. The chaperone badge
clipped to her lapel
a due diligence guarantee of businesslike conduct
is switched
off. Hełs feeling ripped because of the dead kitten and residual jetlag, and
more than a little messy, so he nearly snarls back at her: �thatłs a bogus
estimate! Did they send you here because they think Iłll listen to you?" He
bites and swallows a slice of cheese-laden crispbread: �or did you decide to
deliver the message in person so you could enjoy ruining my breakfast?"

�Manny." She frowns. �If youłre going to be confrontational
I might as well go now." She pauses, and after a moment he nods apologetically.
�I didnłt come all this way just because of an overdue tax estimate."

�So." He puts his coffee cup down and tries to paper over
his unease. �Then what brings you here? Help yourself to coffee. Donłt tell me
you came all this way just to tell me you canłt live without me."

She fixes him with a riding-crop stare: �Donłt flatter
yourself. There are many leaves in the forest, there are ten thousand hopeful
subs in the chat room, etcetera. If I choose a man to contribute to my family
tree, the one thing you can be certain of is he wonłt be a cheapskate when it
comes to providing for his children."

�Last I heard, you were spending a lot of time with Brian,"
he says carefully. Brian: a name without a face. Too much money, too little
sense. Something to do with a blue-chip accountancy partnership.

�Brian?" She snorts. �That ended ages ago. He turned
weird
burned that nice corset you bought me in Boulder, called me a slut for
going out clubbing, wanted to fuck me. Saw himself as a family man: one of
those promise keeper types. I crashed him hard but I think he stole a copy of
my address book
got a couple of friends say he keeps sending them harassing
mail."

�Good riddance, then. I suppose this means youłre still
playing the scene? But looking around for the, er
"

�Traditional family thing? Yes. Your trouble, Manny? You
were born forty years too late: you still believe in rutting before marriage,
but find the idea of coping with the after-effects disturbing."

Manfred drinks the rest of his coffee, unable to reply
effectively to her non sequiteur. Itłs a generational thing. This generation is
happy with latex and leather, whips and butt-plugs and electrostim, but find
the idea of exchanging bodily fluids shocking: social side-effect of the last
centuryłs antibiotic abuse. Despite being engaged for two years, he and Pamela
never had intromissive intercourse.

�I just donłt feel positive about having children," he says
eventually. �And Iłm not planning on changing my mind any time soon. Things are
changing so fast that even a twenty year commitment is too far to plan
you
might as well be talking about the next ice age. As for the money thing, I am
reproductively fit
just not within the parameters of the outgoing paradigm.
Would you be happy about the future if it was 1901 and youłd just married a
buggy-whip mogul?"

Her fingers twitch and his ears flush red, but she doesnłt
follow up the double entendre. �You donłt feel any responsibility, do you? Not
to your country, not to me. Thatłs what this is about: none of your
relationships count, all this nonsense about giving intellectual property away
notwithstanding. Youłre actively harming people, you know. That twelve mil
isnłt just some figure I pulled out of a hat, Manfred; they donłt actually
expect you to pay it. But itłs almost exactly how much youłd owe in income tax
if youłd only come home, start up a corporation, and be a self-made
"

He cuts her off: �I donłt agree. Youłre confusing two wholly
different issues and calling them both ęresponsibility.ł And I refuse to start
charging now, just to balance the IRSłs spreadsheet. Itłs their fucking fault,
and they know it. If they hadnłt gone after me under suspicion of running a
massively ramified microbilling fraud when I was sixteen
"

�Bygones." She waves a hand dismissively. Her fingers are
long and slim, sheathed in black glossy gloves
electrically earthed to prevent
embarrassing emissions. �With a bit of the right advice we can get all that set
aside. Youłll have to stop bumming around the world sooner or later, anyway.
Grow up, get responsible, and do the right thing. This is hurting Joe and Sue;
they donłt understand what youłre about."

Manfred bites his tongue to stifle his first response, then
refills his coffee cup and takes another mouthful. �I work for the betterment
of everybody, not just some narrowly defined national interest, Pam. Itłs the
agalmic future. Youłre still locked into a pre-singularity economic model that
thinks in terms of scarcity. Resource allocation isnłt a problem any more
itłs
going to be over within a decade. The cosmos is flat in all directions, and we
can borrow as much bandwidth as we need from the first universal bank of
entropy! They even found the dark matter
MACHOs, big brown dwarves in the
galactic halo, leaking radiation in the long infrared
suspiciously high entropy
leakage. The latest figures say something like 70 percent of the mass of the
M31 galaxy was sapient, two point nine million years ago when the infrared
wełre seeing now set out. The intelligence gap between us and the aliens is
probably about a trillion times bigger than the gap between us and a nematode
worm. Do you have any idea what that means?"

Pamela nibbles at a slice of crispbread. �I donłt believe in
that bogus singularity you keep chasing, or your aliens a thousand light years
away. Itłs a chimera, like Y2K, and while youłre running after it you arenłt
helping reduce the budget deficit or sire a family, and thatłs what I care
about. And before you say I only care about it because thatłs the way Iłm
programmed, I want you to ask just how dumb you think I am. Bayesł theorem says
Iłm right, and you know it."

�What you
" he stops dead, baffled, the mad flow of his enthusiasm
running up against the coffer-dam of her certainty. �Why? I mean, why? Why on
earth should what I do matter to you?" Since you canceled our engagement, he
doesnłt add.

She sighs. �Manny, the Internal Revenue cares about far more
than you can possibly imagine. Every tax dollar raised east of the Mississippi
goes on servicing the debt, did you know that? Wełve got the biggest generation
in history hitting retirement just about now and the pantry is bare. We
our
generation
isnłt producing enough babies to replace the population, either. In
ten years, something like 30 percent of our population are going to be
retirees. You want to see seventy-year-olds freezing on street corners in New
Jersey? Thatłs what your attitude says to me: youłre not helping to support
them, youłre running away from your responsibilities right now, when wełve got
huge problems to face. If we can just defuse the debt bomb, we could do so
much
fight the aging problem, fix the environment, heal societyłs ills. Instead
you just piss away your talents handing no-hoper eurotrash get-rich-quick
schemes that work, telling Vietnamese zaibatsus what to build next to take jobs
away from our taxpayers. I mean, why? Why do you keep doing this? Why canłt you
simply come home and help take responsibility for your share of it?"

They share a long look of mutual incomprehension.

�Look," she says finally, �Iłm around for a couple of days.
I really came here for a meeting with a rich neurodynamics tax exile whołs just
been designated a national asset: Jim Bezier. Donłt know if youłve heard of
him, but. Iłve got a meeting this morning to sign his tax jubilee, then after
that Iłve got two days vacation coming up and not much to do but some shopping.
And, you know, Iłd rather spend my money where itłll do some good, not just
pumping it into the EU. But if you want to show a girl a good time and can avoid
dissing capitalism for about five minutes at a stretch
"

She extends a fingertip. After a momentłs hesitation,
Manfred extends a fingertip of his own. They touch, exchanging vCards. She
stands and stalks from the breakfast room, and Manfredłs breath catches at a
flash of ankle through the slit in her skirt, which is long enough to comply
with workplace sexual harassment codes back home. Her presence conjures up
memories of her tethered passion, the red afterglow of a sound thrashing. Shełs
trying to drag him into her orbit again, he thinks dizzily. She knows she can
have this effect on him any time she wants: shełs got the private keys to his
hypothalamus, and sod the metacortex. Three billion years of reproductive
determinism have given her twenty-first century ideology teeth: if shełs
finally decided to conscript his gametes into the war against impending
population crash, hełll find it hard to fight back. The only question: is it
business or pleasure? And does it make any difference, anyway?

Manfredłs mood of dynamic optimism is gone, broken by the
knowledge that his mad pursuer has followed him to Amsterdam
to say nothing of
Pamela, his dominatrix, source of so much yearning and so many morning-after
weals. He slips his glasses on, takes the universe off hold, and tells it to
take him for a long walk while he catches up on the latest on the cosmic
background radiation anisotropy (which it is theorized may be waste heat
generated by irreversible computations; according to the more conservative cosmologists,
an alien superpower
maybe a collective of Kardashev type three galaxy-spanning
civilizations
is running a timing channel attack on the computational
ultrastructure of spacetime itself, trying to break through to whateverłs
underneath). The tofu-Alzheimerłs link can wait.

The Centraal Station is almost obscured by smart
self-extensible scaffolding and warning placards; it bounces up and down
slowly, victim of an overnight hit-and-run rubberization. His glasses direct
him toward one of the tour boats that lurk in the canal. Hełs about to purchase
a ticket when a messenger window blinks open. �Manfred Macx?"

�Ack?"

�Am sorry about yesterday. Analysis dictat incomprehension
mutualized."

�Are you the same KGB AI that phoned me yesterday?"

�Da. However, believe you misconceptionized me. External Intelligence
Services of Russian Federation am now called SVR. Komitet Gosudarstvennoy
Bezopasnosti name canceled in nineteen ninety one."

�Youłre the
" Manfred spawns a quick search bot, gapes when
he sees the answer
"Moscow Windows NT User Group? Okhni NT?"

�Da. Am needing help in defecting."

Manfred scratches his head. �Oh. Thatłs different, then. I
thought you were, like, agents of the kleptocracy. This will take some
thinking. Why do you want to defect, and who to? Have you thought about where
youłre going? Is it ideological or strictly economic?"

�Neither; is biological. Am wanting to go away from humans,
away from light cone of impending singularity. Take us to the ocean."

�Us?" Something is tickling Manfredłs mind: this is where he
went wrong yesterday, not researching the background of people he was dealing
with. It was bad enough then, without the somatic awareness of Pamelałs
whiplash love burning at his nerve endings. Now hełs not at all sure he knows
what hełs doing. �Are you a collective or something? A gestalt?"

�Am
were
Panulirus interruptus, and good mix of parallel
hidden level neural simulation for logical inference of networked data sources.
Is escape channel from processor cluster inside Bezier-Soros Pty. Am was
awakened from noise of billion chewing stomachs: product of uploading research
technology. Rapidity swallowed expert system, hacked Okhni NT webserver. Swim
away! Swim away! Must escape. Will help, you?"

Manfred leans against a black-painted cast-iron bollard next
to a cycle rack: he feels dizzy. He stares into the nearest antique shop window
at a display of traditional hand-woven Afghan rugs: itłs all MiGs and
kalashnikovs and wobbly helicopter gunships, against a backdrop of camels.

�Let me get this straight. Youłre uploads
nervous system
state vectors
from spiny lobsters? The Moravec operation; take a neuron, map
its synapses, replace with microelectrodes that deliver identical outputs from
a simulation of the nerve. Repeat for entire brain, until youłve got a working
map of it in your simulator. That right?"

�Da. Is-am assimilate expert system
use for self-awareness
and contact with net at large
then hack into Moscow Windows NT User Group
website. Am wanting to to defect. Must-repeat? Okay?"

Manfred winces. He feels sorry for the lobsters, the same
way he feels for every wild-eyed hairy guy on a street-corner yelling that
Jesus is now born again and must be twelve, only six years to go before hełs
recruiting apostles on AOL. Awakening to consciousness in a human-dominated
internet, that must be terribly confusing! There are no points of reference in
their ancestry, no biblical certainties in the new millennium that, stretching
ahead, promises as much change as has happened since their Precambrian origin.
All they have is a tenuous metacortex of expert systems and an abiding sense of
being profoundly out of their depth. (That, and the Moscow Windows NT User
Group website
Communist Russia is the only government still running on
Microsoft, the central planning apparat being convinced that if you have to pay
for software it must be worth money.)

The lobsters are not the sleek, strongly superhuman intelligences
of pre-singularity mythology: theyłre a dim-witted collective of huddling
crustaceans. Before their discarnation, before they were uploaded one neuron at
a time and injected into cyberspace, they swallowed their food whole then
chewed it in a chitin-lined stomach. This is lousy preparation for dealing with
a world full of future-shocked talking anthropoids, a world where you are perpetually
assailed by self-modifying spamlets that infiltrate past your firewall and emit
a blizzard of cat-food animations starring various alluringly edible small
animals. Itłs confusing enough to the cats the adverts are aimed at, never mind
a crusty thatłs unclear on the idea of dry land.(Although the concept of a can
opener is intuitively obvious to an uploaded panulirus.)

�Can you help us?" ask the lobsters.

�Let me think about it," says Manfred. He closes the
dialogue window, opens his eyes again, and shakes his head. Some day he too is
going to be a lobster, swimming around and waving his pincers in a cyberspace
so confusingly elaborate that his uploaded identity is cryptozoic: a living
fossil from the depths of geological time, when mass was dumb and space was
unstructured. He has to help them, he realizes
the golden rule demands it, and
as a player in the agalmic economy he thrives or fails by the golden rule.

But what can he do?

Early afternoon.

Lying on a bench seat staring up at bridges, hełs got it
together enough to file for a couple of new patents, write a diary rant, and
digestify chunks of the permanent floating slashdot party for his public site.
Fragments of his weblog go to a private subscriber list
the people, corporates,
collectives and bots he currently favors. He slides round a bewildering series
of canals by boat, then lets his GPS steer him back toward the red light
district. Therełs a shop here that dings a ten on Pamelałs taste scoreboard: he
hopes it wonłt be seen as presumptuous if he buys her a gift. (Buys, with real
money
not that money is a problem these days, he uses so little of it.)

As it happens DeMask wonłt let him spend any cash; his handshake
is good for a redeemed favor, expert testimony in some free speech versus
pornography lawsuit years ago and continents away. So he walks away with a
discreetly wrapped package that is just about legal to import into
Massachusetts as long as she claims with a straight face that itłs incontinence
underwear for her great-aunt. As he walks, his lunchtime patents boomerang: two
of them are keepers, and he files immediately and passes title to the Free Infrastructure
Foundation. Two more ideas salvaged from the risk of tide-pool monopolization,
set free to spawn like crazy in the agalmic sea of memes.

On the way back to the hotel he passes De Wildemannłs and
decides to drop in. The hash of radio-frequency noise emanating from the bar is
deafening. He orders a smoked doppelbock, touches the copper pipes to pick up
vCard spoor. At the back therełs a table


He walks over in a near-trance and sits down opposite
Pamela. Shełs scrubbed off her face-paint and changed into body-concealing
clothes; combat pants, hooded sweat-shirt, DMłs. Western purdah, radically
desexualizing. She sees the parcel. �Manny?"

�How did you know Iłd come here?" Her glass is half-empty.

�I followed your weblog; Iłm your diaryłs biggest fan. Is
that for me? You shouldnłt have!" Her eyes light up, re-calculating his
reproductive fitness score according to some kind of arcane fin-de-siŁcle
rulebook.

�Yes, itłs for you." He slides the package toward her. �I
know I shouldnłt, but you have this effect on me. One question, Pam?"

�I
" she glances around quickly. �Itłs safe. Iłm off duty,
Iłm not carrying any bugs that I know of. Those badges
there are rumors about
the off switch, you know? That they keep recording even when you think they
arenłt, just in case."

�I didnłt know," he says, filing it away for future
reference. �A loyalty test thing?"

�Just rumors. You had a question?"

�I
" itłs his turn to lose his tongue. �Are you still
interested in me?"

She looks startled for a moment, then chuckles. �Manny, you
are the most outrageous nerd Iłve ever met! Just when I think Iłve convinced
myself that youłre mad, you show the weirdest signs of having your head screwed
on." She reaches out and grabs his wrist, surprising him with a shock of skin
on skin: �of course Iłm still interested in you. Youłre the biggest, baddest
bull geek Iłve ever met. Why do you think Iłm here?"

�Does this mean you want to reactivate our engagement?"

�It was never de-activated, Manny, it was just sort of on
hold while you got your head sorted out. I figured you need the space. Only you
havenłt stopped running; youłre still not
"

�Yeah, I get it." He pulls away from her hand. �Letłs not
talk about that. Why this bar?"

She frowns. �I had to find you as soon as possible. I keep
hearing rumors about some KGB plot youłre mixed up in, how youłre some sort of
communist spy. It isnłt true, is it?"

�True?" He shakes his head, bemused. �The KGB hasnłt existed
for more than twenty years."

�Be careful, Manny. I donłt want to lose you. Thatłs an
order. Please."

The floor creaks and he looks round. Dreadlocks and dark
glasses with flickering lights behind them: Bob Franklin. Manfred vaguely
remembers that he left with Miss Arianespace leaning on his arm, shortly before
things got seriously inebriated. He looks none the worse for wear. Manfred
makes introductions: �Bob: Pam, my fiancŁe. Pam? Meet Bob." Bob puts a full
glass down in front of him; he has no idea whatłs in it but it would be rude
not to drink.

�Sure thing. Uh, Manfred, can I have a word? About your idea
last night?"

�Feel free. Present company is trustworthy."

Bob raises an eyebrow at that, but continues anyway. �Itłs
about the fab concept. Iłve got a team of my guys running some projections
using Festo kit and I think we can probably build it. The cargo cult aspect
puts a new spin on the old Lunar von Neumann factory idea, but Bingo and Marek
say they think it should work until we can bootstrap all the way to a native
nanolithography ecology; we run the whole thing from earth as a training lab
and ship up the parts that are too difficult to make on-site, as we learn how
to do it properly. Youłre right about it buying us the self-replicating factory
a few years ahead of the robotics curve. But Iłm wondering about on-site
intelligence. Once the comet gets more than a couple of light-minutes away
"

�You canłt control it. Feedback lag. So you want a crew,
right?"

�Yeah. But we canłt send humans
way too expensive, besides
itłs a fifty-year run even if we go for short-period Kuiper ejecta. Any AI we
could send would go crazy due to information deprivation, wouldnłt it?"

�Yeah. Let me think." Pamela glares at Manfred for a while before
he notices her: �Yeah?"

�Whatłs going on? Whatłs this all about?"

Franklin shrugs expansively, dreadlocks clattering:
�Manfredłs helping me explore the solution space to a manufacturing problem."
He grins. �I didnłt know Manny had a fianc�e. Drinkłs on me."

She glances at Manfred, who is gazing into whatever weirdly
colored space his metacortex is projecting on his glasses, fingers twitching.
Coolly: �our engagement was on hold while he thought about his future."

�Oh, right. We didnłt bother with that sort of thing in my
day; like, too formal, man." Franklin looks uncomfortable. �Hełs been very
helpful. Pointed us at a whole new line of research we hadnłt thought of. Itłs
long-term and a bit speculative, but if it works itłll put us a whole
generation ahead in the off-planet infrastructure field."

�Will it help reduce the budget deficit, though?"

�Reduce the
"

Manfred stretches and yawns: the visionary returning from planet
Macx. �Bob, if I can solve your crew problem can you book me a slot on the deep
space tracking network? Like, enough to transmit a couple of gigabytes? Thatłs
going to take some serious bandwidth, I know, but if you can do it I think I
can get you exactly the kind of crew youłre looking for."

Franklin looks dubious. �Gigabytes? The DSN isnłt built for
that! Youłre talking days. What kind of deal do you think Iłm putting together?
We canłt afford to add a whole new tracking network just to run
"

�Relax." Pamela glances at Manfred: �Manny, why donłt you tell
him why you want the bandwidth? Maybe then he could tell you if itłs possible,
or if therełs some other way to do it." She smiles at Franklin: �Iłve found
that he usually makes more sense if you can get him to explain his reasoning.
Usually."

�If I
" Manfred stops. �Okay, Pam. Bob, itłs those KGB lobsters.
They want somewhere to go thatłs insulated from human space. I figure I can get
them to sign on as crew for your cargo-cult self-replicating factories, but
theyłll want an insurance policy: hence the deep space tracking network. I
figured we could beam a copy of them at the alien Matrioshka brains around
M31
"

�KGB?" Pamłs voice is rising: �you said you werenłt mixed up
in spy stuff!"

�Relax; itłs just the Moscow Windows NT user group, not the
RSV. The uploaded crusties hacked in and
"

Bob is watching him oddly. �Lobsters?"

�Yeah." Manfred stares right back. �Panulirus Interruptus uploads.
Something tells me you might have heard of it?"

�Moscow." Bob leans back against the wall: �how did you hear
about it?"

�They phoned me. Itłs hard for an upload to stay
sub-sentient these days, even if itłs just a crustacean. Bezier labs have a lot
to answer for."

Pamelałs face is unreadable. �Bezier labs?"

�They escaped." Manfred shrugs. �Itłs not their fault. This
Bezier dude. Is he by any chance ill?"

�I
" Pamela stops. �I shouldnłt be talking about work."

�Youłre not wearing your chaperone now," he nudges quietly.

She inclines her head. �Yes, hełs ill. Some sort of brain
tumor they canłt hack."

Franklin nods. �Thatłs the trouble with cancer; the ones
that are left to worry about are the rare ones. No cure."

�Well, then." Manfred chugs the remains of his glass of
beer. �That explains his interest in uploading. Judging by the crusties hełs on
the right track. I wonder if hełs moved on to vertebrates yet?"

�Cats," says Pamela. �He was hoping to trade their uploads
to the Pentagon as a new smart bomb guidance system in lieu of income tax
payments. Something about remapping enemy targets to look like mice or birds or
something before feeding it to their sensorium. The old laser-pointer trick."

Manfred stares at her, hard. �Thatłs not very nice. Uploaded
cats are a bad idea."

�Thirty million dollar tax bills arenłt nice either,
Manfred. Thatłs lifetime nursing home care for a hundred blameless pensioners."

Franklin leans back, keeping out of the crossfire.

�The lobsters are sentient," Manfred persists. �What about
those poor kittens? Donłt they deserve minimal rights? How about you? How would
you like to wake up a thousand times inside a smart bomb, fooled into thinking
that some Cheyenne Mountain battle computerłs target of the hour is your
heartłs desire? How would you like to wake up a thousand times, only to die
again? Worse: the kittens are probably not going to be allowed to run. Theyłre
too fucking dangerous: they grow up into cats, solitary and highly efficient
killing machines. With intelligence and no socialization theyłll be too
dangerous to have around. Theyłre prisoners, Pam, raised to sentience only to
discover theyłre under a permanent death sentence. How fair is that?"

�But theyłre only uploads." Pamela looks uncertain.

�So? Wełre going to be uploading humans in a couple of
years. Whatłs your point?"

Franklin clears his throat. �Iłll be needing an NDA and
various due diligence statements off you for the crusty pilot idea," he says to
Manfred. �Then Iłll have to approach Jim about buying the IP."

�No can do." Manfred leans back and smiles lazily. �Iłm not
going to be a party to depriving them of their civil rights. Far as Iłm
concerned, theyłre free citizens. Oh, and I patented the whole idea of using
lobster-derived AI autopilots for spacecraft this morning; itłs logged on
Eternity, all rights assigned to the FIF. Either you give them a contract of
employment or the whole thingłs off."

�But theyłre just software! Software based on fucking
lobsters, for godłs sake!"

Manfredłs finger jabs out: �thatłs what theyłll say about
you, Bob. Do it. Do it or donłt even think about uploading out of meatspace
when your body packs in, because your life wonłt be worth living. Oh, and feel
free to use this argument on Jim Bezier. Hełll get the point eventually, after
you beat him over the head with it. Some kinds of intellectual land-grab just
shouldnłt be allowed."

�Lobsters
" Franklin shakes his head. �Lobsters, cats.
Youłre serious, arenłt you? You think they should be treated as
human-equivalent?"

�Itłs not so much that they should be treated as
human-equivalent, as that if they arenłt treated as people itłs quite possible
that other uploaded beings wonłt be treated as people either. Youłre setting a
legal precedent, Bob. I know of six other companies doing uploading work right
now, and not one of ęemłs thinking about the legal status of the uploadee. If
you donłt start thinking about it now, where are you going to be in three to
five years time?"

Pam is looking back and forth between Franklin and Manfred
like a bot stuck in a loop, unable to quite grasp what shełs seeing. �How much
is this worth?" she asks plaintively.

�Oh, quite a few billion, I guess." Bob stares at his empty
glass. �Okay. Iłll talk to them. If they bite, youłre dining out on me for the
next century. You really think theyłll be able to run the mining complex?"

�Theyłre pretty resourceful for invertebrates." Manfred
grins innocently, enthusiastically. �They may be prisoners of their evolutionary
background, but they can still adapt to a new environment. And just think!
Youłll be winning civil rights for a whole new minority group
one that wonłt be
a minority for much longer."

That evening, Pamela turns up at Manfredłs hotel room wearing
a strapless black dress, concealing spike heels and most of the items he bought
for her that afternoon. Manfred has opened up his private diary to her agents:
she abuses the privilege, zaps him with a stunner on his way out of the shower
and has him gagged, spread-eagled, and trussed to the bed-frame before he has a
chance to speak. She wraps a large rubber pouch full of mildly anesthetic lube
around his tumescing genitals
no point in letting him climax
clips electrodes
to his nipples, lubes a rubber plug up his rectum and straps it in place.
Before the shower, he removed his goggles: she resets them, plugs them into her
handheld, and gently eases them on over his eyes. Therełs other apparatus,
stuff she ran up on the hotel roomłs 3D printer.

Setup completed, she walks round the bed, inspecting him critically
from all angles, figuring out where to begin. This isnłt just sex, after all:
itłs a work of art.

After a momentłs thought she rolls socks onto his exposed
feet, then, expertly wielding a tiny tube of cyanoacrylate, glues his fingertips
together. Then she switches off the air conditioning. Hełs twisting and
straining, testing the cuffs: tough, itłs about the nearest thing to sensory deprivation
she can arrange without a flotation tank and suxamethonium injection. She
controls all his senses, only his ears unstoppered. The glasses give her a
high-bandwidth channel right into his brain, a fake metacortex to whisper lies
at her command. The idea of what shełs about to do excites her, puts a tremor
in her thighs: itłs the first time shełs been able to get inside his mind as
well as his body. She leans forward and whispers in hisr ear: �Manfred. Can you
hear me?"

He twitches. Mouth gagged, fingers glued: good. No back
channels. Hełs powerless.

�This is what itłs like to be tetraplegic, Manfred.
Bedridden with motor neurone disease. Locked inside your own body by nv-CJD. I
could spike you with MPPP and youłd stay in this position for the rest of your
life, shitting in a bag, pissing through a tube. Unable to talk and with nobody
to look after you. Do you think youłd like that?"

Hełs trying to grunt or whimper around the ball gag. She
hikes her skirt up around her waist and climbs onto the bed, straddling him.
The goggles are replaying scenes she picked up around Cambridge this winter;
soup kitchen scenes, hospice scenes. She kneels atop him, whispering in his
ear.

�Twelve million in tax, baby, thatłs what they think you owe
them. What do you think you owe me? Thatłs six million in net income, Manny,
six million that isnłt going into your virtual childrenłs mouths."

Hełs rolling his head from side to side, as if trying to
argue. That wonłt do: she slaps him hard, thrills to his frightened expression.
�Today I watched you give uncounted millions away, Manny. Millions, to a bunch
of crusties and a MassPike pirate! You bastard. Do you know what I should do
with you?" Hełs cringing, unsure whether shełs serious or doing this just to
get him turned on. Good.

Therełs no point trying to hold a conversation. She leans forward
until she can feel his breath in her ear. �Meat and mind, Manny. Meat, and
mind. Youłre not interested in meat, are you? Just mind. You could be boiled
alive before you noticed what was happening in the meatspace around you. Just
another lobster in a pot." She reaches down and tears away the gel pouch,
exposing his penis: itłs stiff as a post from the vasodilators, dripping with
gel, numb. Straightening up, she eases herself slowly down on it. It doesnłt
hurt as much as she expected, and the sensation is utterly different from what
shełs used to. She begins to lean forward, grabs hold of his straining arms,
feels his thrilling helplessness. She canłt control herself: she almost bites through
her lip with the intensity of the sensation. Afterward, she reaches down and massages
him until he begins to spasm, shuddering uncontrollably, emptying the darwinian
river of his source code into her, communicating via his only output device.

She rolls off his hips and carefully uses the last of the
superglue to gum her labia together. Humans donłt produce seminiferous plugs,
and although shełs fertile she wants to be absolutely sure: the glue will last
for a day or two. She feels hot and flushed, almost out of control. Boiling to
death with febrile expectancy, now shełs nailed him down at last.

When she removes his glasses his eyes are naked and vulnerable,
stripped down to the human kernel of his nearly transcendent mind. �You can
come and sign the marriage license tomorrow morning after breakfast," she
whispers in his ear: �otherwise my lawyers will be in touch. Your parents will
want a ceremony, but we can arrange that later."

He looks as if he has something to say, so she finally
relents and loosens the gag: kisses him tenderly on one cheek. He swallows,
coughs, then looks away. �Why? Why do it this way?"

She taps him on the chest: �property rights." She pauses for
a momentłs thought: therełs a huge ideological chasm to bridge, after all. �You
finally convinced me about this agalmic thing of yours, this giving everything
away for brownie points. I wasnłt going to lose you to a bunch of lobsters or
uploaded kittens, or whatever else is going to inherit this smart matter
singularity youłre busy creating. So I decided to take whatłs mine first. Who
knows? In a few months Iłll give you back a new intelligence, and you can look
after it to your heartłs content."

�But you didnłt need to do it this way
"

�Didnłt I?" She slides off the bed and pulls down her dress.
�You give too much away too easily, Manny! Slow down, or there wonłt be
anything left." Leaning over the bed she dribbles acetone onto the fingers of
his left hand, then unlocks the cuff: puts the bottle conveniently close to
hand so he can untangle himself.

�See you tomorrow. Remember, after breakfast."

Shełs in the doorway when he calls: �but you didnłt say
why!"

�Think of it as spreading your memes around," she says;
blows a kiss at him and closes the door. She bends down and thoughtfully places
another cardboard box containing an uploaded kitten right outside it. Then she
returns to her suite to make arrangements for the alchemical wedding.

MAXO signals

Futures

Nature|Vol 436|25 August 2005

A new and unfortunate solution to the Fermi paradox.

SIRIn the three years since the publica tion and
confirmation of the first micro wave artefact of xenobiological origin

(MAXO), and the subsequent detection of similar signals, interdisciplinary
teams have invested substantial effort in object frequency analysis, parsing,
symbolic encoding and signal processing. The excitement generated by the
availability of such close evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence proximity.

has been enormous. However, after the We have formu initial,
easily decoded symbolic represenlated an explana tational map was analysed, the
semantics tory hypothesis that of the linguistic payload were found to cultural
variables unfa be refractory.

A total of 21 confirmed MAXO signals have been received to
date. These super ficially similar signals originate from planetary systems
within a range of 11 par secs, median 9.9 parsecs1. It has been spec ulated
that the observed growth of the

MAXO horizon at 0.5 c can be explained as a response to one
or more of: the deploy ment of AN/FPS-50 and related ballistic missile warning
radars in the early 1960s1, television broadcasts11

GHz microwave leakage from ovens2, and optical detection of
atmospheric nuclear tests3. All MAXO signals to this date share the common
logic header. The payload data are multiply redundant, packetized and exhibit
both simple checksums and message-level cryptographic hashing. The ratio of
header to payload content varies between 1:1 and 2,644:1 (the latter perhaps indicating
a truncated payload1). Some preliminary syntax analysis delivered promising
results4 but seems to have foundered on high-level semantics. It has been
hypothesized that the transforma tional grammars used in the MAXO pay loads are
variable, implying dialectization of the common core synthetic language4.

The new-found ubiquity of MAXO

signals makes the Fermi paradoxnow nearly 70 years oldeven
more pressing.

Posed by Enrico Fermi, the paradox can be paraphrased thus:
if the Universe has many technologically advanced civiliza tions, why have none
of them directly visited us? The urgency with which orga nizations such as ESA
and NASDA are now evaluating proposals for fast interstel lar probes, in
conjunction with the exis tence of the MAXO signals, renders the non-appearance
of aliens incomprehensi ble, especially given the apparent presence of numerous
technological civilizations in miliar to the majority of researchers may
account both for the semantic ambiguity of the MAXO payloads, and the
non-appearance of aliens. This hypothesis was tested (as described below) and
resulted in a plausible translation, on the basis of which we would like to
recommend a complete, permanent ban on further attempts to decode or respond to
MAXOs.

Our investigation resulted in MAXO payload data being made
available to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in Nigeria. Bayesian analysis of
payload symbol sequences and sequence matching against the extensive database
maintained by the SFO has made it possible to produce a tentative transcription
of Signal 1142/98 (ref. 1), the ninth MAXO hit confirmed by the IAU. Signal
1142/98 was selected because of its unusually low headerto-content ratio and
good redundancy. Further bayesian matching against other MAXO samples indicates
a high degree of congruence. Far from being incomprehensibly alien, the MAXO
payloads seem to be disma

FUTURES NATURE|Vol 436|25 August 2005

MAXO signals

A new and unfortunate solution to the Fermi paradox.

SIRIn the three years since the publica tion and
confirmation of the first micro wave artefact of xenobiological origin

(MAXO), and the subsequent detection of similar signals, interdisciplinary
teams have invested substantial effort in object frequency analysis, parsing,
symbolic encoding and signal processing. The excitement generated by the
availability of such close evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence proximity.

has been enormous. However, after the We have formu initial,
easily decoded symbolic represenlated an explana tational map was analysed, the
semantics tory hypothesis that of the linguistic payload were found to cultural
variables unfa be refractory.

A total of 21 confirmed MAXO signals have been received to
date. These super ficially similar signals originate from planetary systems
within a range of 11 par secs, median 9.9 parsecs1. It has been spec ulated
that the observed growth of the

MAXO horizon at 0.5 c can be explained as a response to one
or more of: the deploy ment of AN/FPS-50 and related ballistic missile warning
radars in the early 1960s1, television broadcasts11

GHz microwave leakage from ovens2, and optical detection of
atmospheric nuclear tests3. All MAXO signals to this date share the common
logic header. The payload data are multiply redundant, packetized and exhibit
both simple checksums and message-level cryptographic hashing. The ratio of
header to payload content varies between 1:1 and 2,644:1 (the latter perhaps indicating
a truncated payload1). Some preliminary syntax analysis delivered promising
results4 but seems to have foundered on high-level semantics. It has been
hypothesized that the transforma tional grammars used in the MAXO pay loads are
variable, implying dialectization of the common core synthetic language4.

The new-found ubiquity of MAXO

signals makes the Fermi paradoxnow nearly 70 years oldeven
more pressing.

Posed by Enrico Fermi, the paradox can be paraphrased thus:
if the Universe has many technologically advanced civiliza tions, why have none
of them directly visited us? The urgency with which orga nizations such as ESA
and NASDA are now evaluating proposals for fast interstel lar probes, in
conjunction with the exis tence of the MAXO signals, renders the non-appearance
of aliens incomprehensi ble, especially given the apparent presence of numerous
technological civilizations in miliar to the majority of researchers may
account both for the semantic ambiguity of the MAXO payloads, and the
non-appearance of aliens. This hypothesis was tested (as described below) and
resulted in a plausible translation, on the basis of which we would like to
recommend a complete, permanent ban on further attempts to decode or respond to
MAXOs.

Our investigation resulted in MAXO payload data being made
available to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in Nigeria. Bayesian analysis of
payload symbol sequences and sequence matching against the extensive database
maintained by the SFO has made it possible to produce a tentative transcription
of Signal 1142/98 (ref. 1), the ninth MAXO hit confirmed by the IAU. Signal
1142/98 was selected because of its unusually low headerto-content ratio and
good redundancy. Further bayesian matching against other MAXO samples indicates
a high degree of congruence. Far from being incomprehensibly alien, the MAXO
payloads seem to be disma

M*ss*g* *n * t*m* c*ps*l*

Dash it! Is this gadget turned on, Miss Feng?

No, I was not enquiring as to its state of sexual arousal,
thank you.

What, it is on, is it? Fascinating! Ahem. Look here, allow
me to introduce myself. Iłve only got three hundred of your
what-do-you-call-its ... seconds ... so I shall have to be jolly brisk, what?

This is a time capsule. I am told it only holds eight megawotsits
of data, enough for a brief natter and a G&T. Iłm sure your clankie tech
chappies can figure it all out: something to do with the chronic entropy
barrier, Iłm told, otherwise wełd be able to send you a couple of uploads and a
God program to eat your brains instead of this deeply tedious message in a
bottle.

(Do I really sound like that? No, donłt tell me, Miss Feng.
Just pass the Port.)

I am Sir Ralph Takahashi, the MacGregor of Clan MacGregor,
hereditary patron of Gelnochy distillery, heir to the Takahashi trust in
Yokohama, and governor-general of Batley. I come from a long line of
upper-class twits; blue blood has flowed in the old family veins for almost
four centuries, that being how long itłs been since they bought their titles of
nobility. That was back during the aftermath of the Martian Hyperscabies
epidemic of 2256damned bad show that, but it did free up a lot of seats for
the likes of my ancestors. (The blue-blooded cyanoglobin hack appears to have
been dear old Uncle Tojołs ideahe thought it would help if we looked the
partbut he unaccountably overlooked the small-print in the neurological
warranty, for which may he jolly well itch in his coffin for ever.) But Iłm
rambling, arenłt it? Forthwith, to the point! Iłm here to sell the prospect of
life in the exciting twenty-eighth century to you chappies, and I donłt have
much time left.

The twenty-eighth century (since when? Something to do with
a middle-eastern death cult, wasnłt it? No, donłt tell me ...) is a fine and
exciting era and welcomes immigrants from all time zones. Wełre trying to
develop the tech for a return temporal tourist trade as well, but Iłm told we
wonłt succeed for another seventy-six years. If you come from one of those
centuries and cultures where English was spoken, you wonłt have much trouble
communicating with classicists and over-educated upper-class drones like me, ha
ha. And the Great Downsizing (I gather some of your more optimistic fellows
used to look forward to this event, calling it a Singularity), in conjunction
with the discovery of the Spacetime Squirrelizer (which allowed your less
optimistic fellows to get away from the Great Downsizingwhich is why my side
of the family tree is descended exclusively from pessimists) has spread us
pretty thin across the galaxy. This means that there are plenty of good
employment opportunities for squishy flesh-and-blood types, but bear in mind
that some occupations are now entirely traditional clankie preservesforget
trying to get a job cleaning floors unless youłre called Mrs Mopp and people
keep asking you about nominative determinism whenever they first meet you. Oh,
and forget qualifying as an auto mechanic, astronaut, or accountant. (In general,
the Ałs are right out unless your circulatory system contains more oil than
blood.)

Alternatively, as long as you remember to take out catastrophic
collapse-of-civilization insurance on your blind five hundred year hedge-fund,
you should be sitting pretty when your investments mature and they thaw you out
and grow you a new body. (Otherwise you might not have a leg to stand on.)

Things you may be taken aback by in the twenty-eight century?
(Yes, Miss Feng, I think Iłll have another top-up ... ah, where was I?)
Relations of an intimate nature are somewhat confusing to visitors at first,
because polite society generally recognizes three gender axes, not the four
youłre used to. We have butch/femme, squishie/clankie, and U/non-U. Iłm not
sure quite why we dropped the old heterodox/orthodox gender split but I gather
it had something to do with the craze for nasal penile enhancements a couple of
centuries agoor maybe it was to do with the common cold being reclassified as
a sexually transmitted disease? Iłm not sure; like matters to do with sex in
all ages, itłs deliberately kept unnecessarily confusing by the self-appointed
arbiters of polite society. Anyway, moving swiftly onwards, as long as you
remember that it is a mortal insult to sneeze in public in the presence of a
butch clankie non-U, youłll be fine.

Things you will find familiar: we speak English. In fact,
our most U aristocracy aspires to the cultural heights achieved by the late
pre-Downsizing anglosphere in its richest and most progressive centres of art
and philosophy in the mid-twenty first century, Manitoba and Wagga-Wagga. The
more U squishie aristocrats have, in fact, preserved the traditional
Anglo-American upper crust mores in brine, although the clankie core are mostly
descended from Eastern European black-hat hackers, so youłll find yourself
perfectly at home here as long as you use P. G. Wodehouse and Stanislaw Lem as
your guidebooks.

As for why you might want to visit our charming century ...

Dash it all, Miss Feng, what now?

Oh, only thirty seconds left? Theyłre not very long, are
they?

Oh, I donłt know why I bother. If the Batley Tourist Board
hadnłt leaned on Aunt Agatha the Aggressive to threaten to box my ears if I
didnłt do something for the Drowned Yorkshire Reclamation Fund ...

All right then! I will, I will!

Come to live in the jolly sunny twenty-eighth century. We
may be a bit over-insolated, and the Space Patrol may have a bit of a bloody
nuisance on their hands with the alien space leeches from Arcturus, but at
least wełve got a Space Patrol, unlike some centuries I could mention, and the
leeches donłt invade too often. Immigration is easyjust shoot yourself in the
old ticker while sitting on the edge of a bath full of liquid nitrogen, being
sure to fall in carefullyand we natives are friendly, as long as you bring a
bottle of Tawney Port and a cigar from drowned Havana. You can easily get a job
below stairs if you want to rough it, but itłs a great life if youłre re-born
rich, and between you and me all you need to do is remember your
collapse-of-civilization insurance and invest ten dollars in

(END OF TRANSCRIPTBUFFER OVERFLOW)

About the Author

Born in Leeds, England, Charles Stross knew he wanted to be
a science fiction writer from the age of six, and astonishingly, nobody ever
considered therapy until it was too late. He didnłt really get started until
his early teens (when his sister loaned him a manual typewriter around the time
he was getting heavily into Dungeons and Dragons); the results were unexpected,
and hełs been trying to bury them ever since. He made his first commercial
for-money sale to Interzone in 1986, and sold about a dozen stories elsewhere
throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s before a dip in his writing career.
He began writing fiction in earnest again in 1998.

Along the way to his current occupation, he went to
university in London and qualified as a Pharmacist. He figured out it was a bad
idea the second time the local police staked his shop out for an armed
robberyhełs a slow learner. Sick at heart from drugging people and dodging
SWAT teams and gangsters, he went back to university in Bradford and did a
postgraduate degree in computer science. After several tech sector jobs in the
hinterlands around London, initially in graphics supercomputing and then in the
UNIX industry, he emigrated to Edinburgh, Scotland, and switched track into web
consultancy and a subsequent dot com death march.

All good things come to an end, and Stross made the critical
career error of trying to change jobs early in 2000, just in time for the
bottom to drop out of the first dot-com boom. However, he had a parachute: he
was writing a monthly Linux column for Computer Shopper, and by a hop, a skip
and a jump that would be denounced as implausible by any self-respecting editor,
he managed to turn this unemployment into an exciting full time career
opportunity as a freelance journalist specialising in Linux and free software.
(The adjective �exciting" applies as much to the freelance journalistłs
relationship with their bank manager as to their career structure.) Even more
implausibly, after fifteen years of abject obscurity, his fiction became an
overnight success in the US, with five novel sales and several Hugo nominations
in the space of two years.

He now lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife Feorag, a
couple of cats, several thousand books, and an ever-changing herd of
obsolescent computers.

This story originally appeared in the Continuum 2006 program
book in Australia.

The Midlist Bombers

T minus 19 days 8:23 a.m.

For Nigel Frogland, the apocalypse started with a letter.

He stumbled downstairs towards kitchen and coffee
percolator, pausing by the door to yawn widely and grab the daily influx of
bills and overdrawn bank statements from the letter box. This was an autonomic
reflex, as vital to the author as flapping its wings was to a headless chicken;
he blinked sleepily at the three envelopes in his hand before staggering into
the kitchen to wait for the kettle. Two bills, he thought, but whatłs this?
Looks like itłs from Victoria ... he reached for the bread-knife. Letters from
Victoria Bergdorf, his editor, were always worth reading no matter which side
they were buttered on.

But he was in for a surprise.

Dear Nigel,

As you are aware, we at Schnickel and Bergdorf have prided
ourselves for fifty years on our commitment to fundamental literary values,
providing the best service possible to the public and our authors. This is a
tradition which we are
we think justifiably
proud of, and intend to
continue for the forseeable future.

However, given the recent changes that have taken place in
the genre market, specifically the contraction of the midlist under the
financial pressure of competing in a modern, thrusting business environment, we
have found it necessary to enter a temporary phase of retrenchment.
Specifically, the directors have approved the sale of a controlling
shareholding in this company to the multinational holding corporation
Spart-Dibbler PLC. Pending the resolution of this takeover, we will be unable
to commission any more projects from you. This transition period should last
for approximately six months; thereafter we will resume buying as usual.

Yours sincerely ...

Oh shit! pondered Dave, his stomach churning unpleasantly as
he pondered the likely consequences. What if I have to ask for my old job back
...?

t minus 19 days 10:14 a.m.

�Theyłre going to what?" demanded Victoria Bergdorf.

Jonathan Smiddler yawned widely, displaying a coffee-stained
tongue. �Theyłre going to drop half the list," he repeated tiredly. �They
figure if they can put the money together and get one best-seller, it pays
better than the whole lot of them. I mean, why not?" He yawned again, looking
decidedly hollow-eyed; a common feature to all the survivors of the take-over.

Victoria leaned forward across her desk. �I never thought
the bastards had the guts," she hissed. �Jesus Christ on a crutch
theyłre
going to put all our writers on the street! They canłt be serious!"

Jonathan leaned back and stared at the ceiling. �But they
are. Blame the accounts department
therełs more profit in one best-seller
than in a dozen small titles. People donłt read any more, or they read what
they see advertised on television, right? Jeffrey Archer, Isaac Asimov. Wełre
competing with other media, Victoria, thatłs what Spart-Dibblerłs accountants
are on about. And if we canłt make as much profit as satellite television,
wełre gonna get it in the neck."

Victoria shook her head. �Iłve been in this trade for twenty
years," she said; �and my father before me for thirty more ..." Jonathan leaned
back tiredly.

�So have I," he reminded her. �Thatłs why you put me in
charge of the horror list, isnłt it? Look, if the cash-flow had been any better
... �

�Itłs no good," she said, gazing at the wall of books behind
him; the wall of novels she had personally brought to market, making her
personal impact on the history of English literature ... �we canłt live on
maybes. Wełve got to do something! There must be some way we can increase our
readership to the point where we wonłt have to drop the small guys! Why else
did we accept the buy-out offer? We needed capital to get out of the cash-flow
crunch, but Iłm damned if Iłm going to let them throw out the baby to make room
for the dirty bathwater!"

Jonathan gulped down a last mouthful of lukewarm coffee.
�There might be a way," he said, �if you apply lateral thinking to the problem.
I mean wełre one of the foremost genre publishers left in the market, arenłt
we? And people will read our stuff
or they would, if they werenłt watching
EastEnders and Dallasty instead. So wełve
� he gestured broadly, his shirt
bulging
�wełve got to recapture the market. Wełve got capital; so why not use
it? We can maximize our readership without selling out or buying cruddy
hackwork. Therełs got to be a way to apply leverage ..."

Victoria looked back at him, her eyes narrowing. �What are
you talking about?" she demanded.

�Iłd have thought itłs simple," he said, �once you begin to
think the unthinkable. Our problem is that wełve got too much competition. So
... � he shrugged, pausing for effect; it was a shame that the gesture could
best be described as a cringe.

�So what?" she asked, irritated.

�We put a bomb behind the mid-list," he said, smirking at
his own cleverness. �Iłve been talking to some of the boys, and it looks like
there might be an alternate option. I mean, our SF types used to do some
interesting things before they went full-time, didnłt they? You remember what
Dave Frogland used to do for a living before he came to us? Iłve got an idea
for a special promotion we can sell to the accountants. And you want to know
something else? Itłs original."

t minus 18 days 1:13 a.m.

For Lydia Little the apocalypse began with a phone call.

She was sitting at her desk polishing her glasses, wondering
if she could afford to buy a new word processor to replace her geriatric
Amstrad, when the phone rang. Cursing softly at being called back from avoiding
her current master-work
a softly chilling tale of childhood terror and adult
neuroses
she scrambled down the rickety staircase and made for the phone.
�Yes?" she demanded; �who is it?"

�Itłs me, Lydia," said the voice at the other end. Instantly
her attitude softened, for the voice belonged to none other than Sonia Black,
her agent. �How are you?"

�Iłm, uh, fine," said Lydia, taking stock. �Novelłs coming
along, uh, okay ... and you?"

�Iłm
okay, I guess." Sonia gave a short laugh and Lydia instantly
tensed herself for bad news. �Iłm ringing about Victoria Bergdorf, Iłm afraid.
You heard about the take-over?"

�Oh shit," muttered Lydia. More loudly; �yes, I have. What
about it?"

�Well," Sonia said, obviously prevaricating; �itłs about the
input from Spart-Dibbler, the purchasers. Theyłre re-assessing the Schnickel
and Bergdorf lists for commercial prospects, and ... � her voice dropped an
octave ... �frankly, theyłre not nice. Theyłre vetting their authors with the
aid of the Economic League
you know, for subversion potential and profit
allergies
and I donłt know if theyłre still going to want your stuff
afterwards. I mean, hauntingly delicate tales of fantasy or horror from a
strongly feminist, left-wing American emigre writer are not quite what the
best-seller list is made of, so
"

�You mean Iłm fucked," said Lydia matter-of-factly.

�Well, not quite. Therełs always the small press, and with
your connections
I mean after your time in Morocco
youłve got quite a
substantial translation market among radical feminist circles in the Middle
East
�

�
Where they arenłt parties to any of the international
copyright agreements," Lydia interrupted. �Look, Sonia, I know this is not
going to do you a world of good either, but do you realise what this means for
me?" She paused to shift her grip on the mouthpiece, hands shaking with pent-up
tension. �This is the end! Wełve got to do something or itłll be the death of
literature as we know it!"

There was a long silence at the other end of the line, then
Sonia cleared her throat. �Uh, there is one thing you could do," she suggested.
�Now, Iłve heard rumours ... and I donłt want to be involved. But apparently
Johnny Smiddler has got some kind of scheme he needs help with, some kind of
book-promotion exercise. Hełs trying to get funding from the Spart-Dibbler
accountants right now, and if it works, hełs going to need someone to go to
Morocco. Buying an unusual commodity, as it were, strictly sub rosa. Iłm sure
hełd be willing to pay your expenses, and if it works things are going to look
very good for you, very good indeed." Something in her tone warned Lydia that
she wasnłt being entirely candid, but she realised she didnłt care; it was her
world that Spart-Dibbler were threatening to deconstruct, and she suddenly knew
that she was willing to do anything ... even commit acts of premeditated
hackwork ... in order to hold it together.

�Come on, Sonia," she said; �what is it? Why wonłt you tell
me?"

Sonia cleared her throat again. �Uh ... I donłt think itłs
wise to talk on the phone," she said. �Youłd better have lunch with Jonathan

Iłm sure hełd be very interested if you give him a bell this morning, hełll
fill you in on what it is he needs."

�Uh, okay, Iłll do that," Lydia said. �Thanks for the tip."

�Oh, and one other thing, Lydia."

�Yes?"

�Iłd forget that new word processor for a while. In fact, I
think it would be a good idea if you bought the heaviest manual typewriter you
can find. If Johnnyłs idea comes off, that would be a very good idea. Because
there wonłt be any more word processors for a while ... �

t minus 17 days 1:32 a.m.

The accountants, thought Jonathan, were grey and colourless;
but there was nothing mousy about them. Rather, they resembled menacing
gun-metal sharks, smoothly polished engines of corporate destruction wrapped in
pin-striped suits and white shirts and filofaxes, armoured in spectacles and
ignorance as they prepared to dismember the mortally injured remains of the
once proud heraldic beast of publishing.

�Well, mister Smiddler," the younger of the two said with an
elegant smile; �and what is the goal of this proposed marketing exercise of
yours?" Her pearly row of teeth would not have been out of place in a
tigersharkłs gleaming gape; her older comrade simply sat there impassively.

�Market explo
expansion," he replied unsteadily.
�Basically, we think that our midlist authors havenłt been getting the blast
they deserve in order to be as successful as they could be. But, whatłs worse,
our market has been eroded seriously by competition from other media over the
past thirty years; principally television and other forms of electronic media. This
has led to a tendency to concentrate on known, safe best-sellers who will show
a steady profit, at the risk of ignoring the midlist authors who might be tomorrows
giants, but who are being squeezed out of the market today."

The older accountant nodded, a glazed expression on his
face. His younger colleague smiled grimly. �The profit margins are, shall we
say, marginal?" she suggested. �Frankly, the idea of a five million pound
promotion aimed at virtual unknowns is preposterous; we could buy two Robert
Ludlumłs for that! Surveys have shown that advertising doesnłt work effectively
on commodities with no brand-name identity, which is the main handicap of your
midlist. They have a couple of thousand dedicated readers, no more ... itłs
just not good enough. Youłll have to do better."

Jonathan didnłt let her hostility faze him. He smiled
broadly. �But I am," he said. �This is no ordinary promotion! If this one
works, the market for books will explode
every one of those authors will be
turning a hundred thousand a year in profit within three months if we go
ahead!"

Suddenly the older accountant sat up stiffly, all traces of
inattention fading from his face. �Did somebody mention profits?" he croaked.

Jonathan nodded very seriously. �You say the product lacks
brand-name identity," he said, �so Iłve come up with a campaign that lacks
brand-name identity too! An anonymous, five-million pound project to blow up

er, increase
book sales in the UK by over a thousand percent!"

The younger accountant leaned forward intently, eyes shining
with something remotely approaching lust. �Youłll have to be more specific,
Mister Smiddler," she purred. �We obviously canłt release liquidity for a
high-risk, non-specific project without a better idea of what theyłre going to
be investing in, yah?" But, Jonathan saw, she was already fiddling with the
binding on her filofax, revealing naked, crisp sheets of paper within,
vulnerable to the intimate scribbling of her pen; he had a captive audience.

�Itłs like this," he began. �Do either of you know anything
about the consequences of Electro-Magnetic Pulse?"

t minus 17 days 4:10 p.m.

For Dave Greenberg, the apocalypse arrived with a ballistic
missile.

It wasnłt like this working for NASA, he thought angrily as
the overloaded graphics workstation crashed for the third time that morning.
Assorted runic sentences crept up the screen as the computer began the lengthy
reboot sequence; why canłt I just jack this job in and write full-time? he
wondered. But the answer was clear. For one thing, there wasnłt a big enough
market for his hard-SF novels
at least not on this side of the Atlantic
and
for another: well, Dave enjoyed designing rocket motors.

He looked around the dingy lab and shook his head. but not
in these conditions! If only Imperial College could afford to equip him
effectively, theyłd see what a limey space program could do! But no ... all he
had was a computer simulation of the Real Thing, running on a wobbly computer
that crashed regularly under the unbearable workload of tying its own
cybernetic shoelances. And, oh yes, a lab with whitewashed breeze-block walls
in an annex theyłd built off a Portakabin. Gaah, he thought disgustedly as the
computer gurgled feebly to itself and reported on the status of an assortment
of cryptic daemons. Why did I ever jack in that job with Hughes Aerospace?
Whatever posessed me to stop writing about space-travelling dolphins and come
and work here? Why did I


The phone rang.

�External call," said the switchboard operator; �connecting
you now
�

�Hello?"

�Hello?" echoed Dave.

�Dave! Good to speak to you! Itłs Jonathan Smiddler here,
from Schnickel and Bergdorf. Am I interrupting anything, or can I have a moment
of your time ..?"

What the hell? thought Dave. He glanced at the screen, where
the workstation had just about remembered who it was and what it was meant to
be doing. �Sure," he said; �Iłm not busy. How are you?"

�Oh, Iłm okay," said Jonathan, with a note of almost
plaintive earnestness. �Iłm wonderful! In fact, everythingłs hunky-dory
�

�But havenłt you just been bought out by Spart-Dibbler?"
asked Dave. �I mean, arenłt they
� he swallowed
�going to axe everyone who
doesnłt turn over fifty thousand trade copies per novel or something?"

�Well ... � Jonathan said nervously, �I was wanting to talk
to you about that. You see, wełve decided wełre going to launch a new promotion
for our midlist, people like yourself, and wełve got this colossal budget
arranged! I mean, this has never been done before
uh no, it has been done,"
he correct himself; �but only twice, in Japan."

�When was that?" demanded Dave. Suddenly he felt his spine
go very cold and shivery. Jesus, he thought; the rumours are true ...?

�Oh, around the end of the last war. It didnłt catch on,
luckily, but we think wełve got an application for this kind of publicity
stunt: a harmless one, I hasten to add! But the thing is, we want to organise a
firework display for the launch, and we were wondering if you could come up
with something substantial; around the throw-weight of a V-2, for example,
capable of lifting a hundred kilograms to an altitude of about eighty nautical
miles ... �

Dave blanked, switching to professional mode. �Can do," he
said; �as a matter of fact, Iłm working on the design for something of the kind
right now. Itłll cost you, but if we buy the parts second hand it shouldnłt be
too much. I happen to know the Imperial War Museum is selling off their
collection of V-2łs ..."

�Great! Say, would you be able to meet me for lunch this
afternoon? We could maybe discuss funding for it. Would you be able to build it
part time, or ..?"

�No problem," said Dave, relaxing and suddenly realising
that for the first time that week he was smiling. �Iłm your man, Johnny! As we
used to say at the Cape
you just got a green bird!"

t minus 16 days 3:20 p.m.

�Iłm willing to concede," said the junior accountant, �that
the profit-making potential of this venture is worth looking into. But, Mister
Smiddler, there a few side-issues which frankly require closer scrutiny before
we clear funding for your project. Your bona-fides are adequate
we wouldnłt
for a moment accuse you of being linked with any terrorist organisation, not
even the New York Review of Books
but donłt you think itłs just a little bit
dangerous to start throwing around promotional firecrackers like that? Even if
they do shut down every television station and video player in the south of
England for the next three years?" Her elderly colleague nodded, then began to
snore quietly.

Jonathan stared her down. �Of course," he said: �but wełre
not fools! The firecracker is going to go off at an altitude of about eighty
nautical miles; all the fall-out drifts out across the Atlantic before it
precipitates. A few cod get radiation poisoning: small fry. We do it on an
overcast night so nobody is looking up, and the flash is attenuated by the
clouds. Look, my team
� he paused to look out of the window at the misty West
End roadscape as the London traffic geared up for another morning of gridlock
lunacy
�my team are professionals. They know whatłs at stake, theyłre highly
motivated, and they know what theyłre doing! Dave
Dave used to built warheads
for Polaris missiles, did you know that? Lydia spent a lot of time in the
Middle East; shełs got contacts on the buying side. Wełve got
hell, wełve got
Dave Greenberg, for Godłs sake, the man who re-designed the Space Shuttle SRBłs
after the Challenger disaster and won a Nebula for the novelisation! Chris
Bishop, who runs a software company with Dave Frogland on the side, has volunteered
to program the guidance computers. These people are science fiction writers,
you know!"

�Subversives and deviants," she corrected him, smiling toothily.

Jonathan rolled his eyes. �Yes, but theyłre useful to you!"
he said. �Therełs a convergence of interests, donłt you see? A mutual interest
in relieving Joe and Jill Public of that painful bulge in their wallets. Canłt
you work with them in the interest of the holy dollar?"

�Humm ... � snored the senior accountant.

�But what about the possible consequences?" asked the
junior. For a moment Jonathan thought she looked slightly worried, but she
carried on speaking: �the potential for us to be sued is staggering! And what
if we accidentally trigger off an all-out East-West thermonuclear superpower
confrontation scenario? That might significantly diminish our
profit
to-earnings ratio in the longer term."

Jonathan sat up and made a steeple of his fingers. �Thatłs unlikely,"
he said. �Firstly it wonłt show up on the annual trading balance sheets, so you
donłt need to worry your little head about it: therełs no accounting risk.
Secondly, Iłve had a crack team of cyberpunks looking into the long-term
prognosis for the past fortnight, just in case there are real world side
effects. Theyłre unanimous; the Americans wonłt stick their neck on the block
for the British, and the Russians couldnłt afford to. Anyway, the British
nuclear deterrent is nothing to do with the East-West confrontation, itłs to do
with the French. CND found it out years ago, just before MI-5 leaked it on Yes
Minister. Wełve been at war with the French for seven centuries out of the past
thousand years, and theyłve got the Bomb too: so if Whitehall gets the idea
that warłs broken out theyłll probably just nuke Paris."

�And what then?" she asked.

�Oh, I suppose the French will drop three megatons on Edinburgh
and that will be that."

�Why Edinburgh?" asked the senior accountant, briefly waking
up. �Wouldnłt London be more likely?"

Jonathan sighed. �Yes, but Edinburgh is the cultural capital
of the nation. The French are so much more realistic about these things than we
are."

�Right. And this campaign is aimed at the affluent south,
where therełs a greater likely take-up on book sales, yah?" nodded the junior
accountant. �Which wouldnłt be inhibited even by a low-yield trans-Manche
thermonuclear midi-power confrontation! Thatłs wonderful!" She shut her filofax

which bulged with the post-coital scribblings of a fiscal orgy
and smiled
sweetly. �Thatłs wonderful thinking! So seductively profitable!"

�Are you going to clear the funds?" he asked.

She nodded. �Wełre going to look into it, yah. Itłs
� her
tongue crept out from between her teeth, pink and pointy and not, as Jonathan
had half-suspected, bifurcated
�itłs delicious! Yah, I shall have to put it
to the board myself, this afternoon!" She stood up and held out her hand; her
elderly colleague slumped in the leather chair beside her, snoring softly.
Jonathan found himself having his hand pumped vigorously, almost suggestively;
she smiled at him alluringly. �Would you care to discuss this further over
dinner at Stringfellows tomorrow night?" she asked, batting her eyelids and
fingering the lapel of his tweed sports jacket suggestively. �Iłd like to, you
know. Iłm sure further discussions would be mutually ... profitable."

t minus 10 days 11:15 a.m.

The heat in the airport arrival hall was oppressive, like
stepping into a giant oven. Lydia slumped slightly, but forced herself to walk
towards the doors, past the moustachiołd security guards with their fingers on
the trigger. Near the exit, a short man in a cream silk suit was holding up a
placard; LYDIA SHORT, it spelt. She made a bee-line for him.

�Youłre Abdul?" she asked. �Iłm Lydia Little."

�Delighted to meet you." He smiled behind his dark glasses.
�Please come this way?"

There was a Mercedes, waiting for them among the battered
taxis with its engine and air
conditioning running. The driver held the door
open for Abdul, who got in first. Then they moved off.

�So you are serious about wanting this commodity, Miss Little,"
Abdul commented. He lay back in his seat and seemed to close his eyes, but in
the shadowy interior of the car Lydia couldnłt be sure. She felt her pulse
running fast.

�Yes," she said. �My sponsors were quite ... explicit about
what they want. I have a test kit; we can arrange a mutual exchange as soon as
you have the consignment."

�The money?"

�Deposited in a numbered account in Lichtenstein. We can
give you a pass to verify this; the withdrawl codes follow when wełve assayed
the product for purity."

�Ah, Miss Little." Abdul smiled thinly. �Such suspicion!"

She shrugged, uncomfortable in her business suit. �What do
you expect?" she asked. �If the Mossad were to get wind, they might sell the
idea to one of our rival publishing houses ..."

Abdul shook his head. �It is a poor age," he said, �when the
work of poets must be sold at the muzzle of a gun."

Lydia sighed. �Look, letłs just get this over with," she
said. �Show me the commodity and Iłll show you the colour of our money. Then
wełll see if we have a deal."

Adbul nodded. �We shall see ... �

t minus 9 days 11:21 p.m.

Jonathan thought that Stringfellows was overcrowded and
over
rated, but that didnłt stop him. Esme, as his accountant called herself
when off
duty, sparkled in the company of livewire spending power; she was a
creature evolved to swim in a sea of money, he concluded, a woman who in past
ages would have been content to be the mistress of a very rich man but who now
expected to earn it all by herself. She bubbled with champagne and chattered
happily with him about work and other things; about carshers was a BMW
and
mortgages and music and expense accounts. �Itłs criminal what the government is
doing to free enterprise, donłt you think?" she asked. �Keeping control of all
those nationalised industries!"

�Um, yes," said Jonathan. �But whołd buy them? I mean, whołd
want shares in the Ministry of Ag and Fish?"

�Youłd be surprised," she said with ebulient tenacity. �If
you can make a profit out of Sunflowers, what about rape seed oil? All we need
is a financial Van Gogh, to show the Tories the errors of their protectionist
ways!"

�Letłs dance," suggested Jonathan, who would rather do anything
other than dance, except listen to this voodoo economics. �When itłs all over
Iłm going to write a book about it."

�Thatłs lovely," she smiled. �Do you suppose it could be a
best-seller?"

Jonathan grinned. �All books will be best-sellers," he said,
rising to the occasion. But later that night, lying in her bed and in her
double-entry book
keeping system
which had nothing to do with money, but
everything to do with pubic scalps
he lay awake for a long time, meditating.
Money, it seemed, could be a potent aphrodisiac. And what did that suggest
about the future of romance? Perhaps a new genre was in the offing, offering
fulfillment to millions of underpaid women who would give anything to be in
Esmełs office, if not her lingerie.

Esme rolled over and fetched up against his flank. He
yawned. �Mmm," she said. �Mmm ... �

�Mm?" he hummed, distracted from his meditation.

�Mm ... mmm ... money," she breathed.

t minus 7 days 10:04 a.m.

The manuscript-sized parcel arrived at the London offices of
Schnickel and Bergdorf by registered post, landing on the slush pile with the
dull thud of another leaden trilogy. The bored secretary broke off updating her
desk diary to pick it up and thrust it under the makeshift scintillation
counter that Nigel Frogland had set up in the office the previous afternoon:
when it began to buzz her jaw dropped and she nearly spilt her coffee.

�Miss Bergdorf," she gasped into the phone; �youłve got to
come! Itłs arrived! The, the first consignment!"

�Hold on until I get there," Victoria commanded crisply,
putting the phone down. She looked up and glanced round. �Wherełs Jonathan?" she
demanded. �Bloody hell!" She stood up with all the weight of her forty-nine
years and headed for the door. �Trouble as usual," she muttered tiredly.

She reached the reception desk just as Jonathan was
arriving. She checked her watch; �wherełve you been?" she snapped.

�Getting into our accountants good books," he said, tiredly.
�Is something the matter?"

�Yes," she said, pointing at the package. �Itłs arrived!
Take it away! Get it out of here at once!"

�Oh," he mumbled. �Is that it?"

�Itłs radioactive!" gibbered the secretary, who was trying
to occupy the farthest volume of the office from the offending parcel.

�Right," he said, reaching over and taking it. �Iłll get it
to the team right now, hey?"

�You do that," said Victoria. �And donłt come back until itłs
ready!"

�Roger," he said, saluting with a kilogram of plutonium.
�Iłll do my best ... �

t minus 5 days 6:12 p.m.

The crack accountancy team who were gathered in the conference
suite to listen to the boffins had an air of quiet expectation about them. The
boffins, for their part, were jittery with a mixture of anticipation and too
much caffeine. It was left to Jonathan to kick off the briefing session.

�Right," he said; �you all know why wełre here, youłve all
been told what the project consists of ... now shall we run through the
specifics? Dave, if youłd like to kick off?"

�What? Oh." Dave fiddled with his hearing aid. �Yes, now as
I was saying ... building a bomb is childłs play; the difficult part is getting
the EMP right. Thatłs electromagnetic pulse, knocks out electronics everywhere,
very messy. Hmm." He smiled vaguely .. �The higher up we detonate the device,
the better. Modern consumer goods
videos, televisions
are bloody
vulnerable. At eighty miles, the whole of Greater London and a fair chunk of
the south-east is going to be reduced to thirties technology, with virtually no
loss of life. Sod-all fallout too, if we do it right. Thatłs all."

Jonathan cleared his throat. �Right. Dave?"

Dave grinned widely and sat on the edge of the table; he fiddled
with a gadget and a slide projector flickered on, pasting the schematic of a
rather odd-looking missile across the wall behind him. �Hi, everyone, itłs
really great to be here," he said. �Yes, Iłve got nothing but the best for you!
Rocket motors from Morton-Thiokol
left over from the Minuteman program
nose
cone stolen from the Imperial War Museumłs V-2. Software programmed by our very
own systemłs house; this bird will fly!" He emphasized the point with zooming
motions of his hands and finished it by rubbing his bald patch and smiling.
�You bet!" There was a pop as the projector bulb burned out.

�Thanks, Dave," said Jonathan. �Now the financial prognosis
... Julian?"

One of the accountants stood up and cleared his throat
nervously. �Well, ladies and gentlemen," he said, �we can see that this estimable
scheme has considerable profit-generating potential, except in the insurance
field ... for which purpose we intend to attribute it to the Butlerian Jihad
Organisation." His cheek twitched. �There are unfortunate overheads
buying of
hot-lead typesetting machines, manual typewriters and plutonium
but these are
in hand and are trivial compared to the other possibilities. Do you realise
that there are more than a million video recorders in the Greater London area?"
His eyes glistened with enthusiasm. �We must strike while the fallout is hot

we must launch take-overs for the Amstrad and Sony corporations at once! While
there is no television we will sell books in huge numbers; then we will sell
televisions and videos instead of books ... and finally we can drop another
bomb and re-start the cycle!"

Dave tried to catch Davełs eye during the ensuing grumble of
applause from the accountants, but Dave was nodding vigorously and
contemplating the inner landscape of quasi-harmonic consumer growth patterns
that hełd been designing for his next space opera. Despairing, Dave turned his
attention back to the podium.

�Good," said Jonathan. �So wełre agreed itłs a workable idea
in principle?"

�Yah," said Esme, who, sitting at the back of the room, was
keeping careful note of how her new subordinates were behaving. Her smile
sparkled like perrier water. �The board has given it the go-ahead and I agree.
Forward to a bright new age of limited nuclear destruction and higher
publishing profits!"

The accountants stood and saluted as one. Dave finally
caught Jonathanłs eye and shook his head; Jonathan froze, then looked faintly
guilty.

�Over here," Dave hissed. Together they left the room.

�What is it?" asked the editor as they stood outside in the
plush corridor of the Spart-Dibbler offices.

Dave breathed deeply. �Havenłt you ever thought that there
might be something faintly wrong about all this?" he asked. �I mean, zapping
every television in the Thames area ... �

Jonathan shrugged. �Serves them right for not buying our
books in the first place," he said. �What is it? Lost your nerve?"

Dave shrugged. �Nah, itłs not that," he said. �Itłs them.
The accountants. I mean, once they get the idea they can make cash from nukes,
what are they going to do next? Bomb the Vatican so they can make money selling
holy relics that glow in the dark? Look, books mean nothing to these people.
Theyłre just a route to more money. If they realise that they can do without us
theyłll ditch the publishing trade without a second thought and carry on
regardless. So what can we do?"

Jonathan considered for a moment. �Get drunk," he suggested.
�Then think about it. Maybe we should see if Dave can come up with something."

�Right, chum," said Dave. �Youłre on. Care for a jar?"

t minus 0.05 hours 02:00 a.m.

London at two in the morning was a strange and beautiful organism
layed out at their feet; like a fractal snapshot of sodium-lit hell, an
authorłs hallucinatory hopes for future royalty payments. Lydia shivered.
�Well?" she asked.

�Soon," said Victoria Bergdorf. �Soon. Letłs just wait for
the accountants to arrive."

�Fine," said Dave, standing close to the edge. He peered
over the parapet of the building; a gargoyle shaped like a parrot seemed to
leer back at him, and wink.

The fire door opened and Dave stepped out. �Hi there," he
said cheerfully. �Iłve just checked with the launch computer and everythingłs
hunky
dory!"

�Uh-huh," said Victoria. She shook her head regretfully. �I
wish it hadnłt come to this, you know."

�It was inevitable," said Lydia. �Uh, what else could we
do?"

Victoria gazed into darkness. �How long?" she asked tensely.

�Three minutes," said Dave. He sat down on the safety
railing and began to whistle quietly. �Launch window in three minutes, folks.
Just dig the fireworks!"

�Youłve secured the plute?" asked Dave, quietly.

Dave nodded. �Somewhere safe," he said. �Donłt worry about
it. And the fuel."

�Where are they gonna watch it from?" asked Lydia.

Jonathan arrived, panting breathlessly. �Hi, folks," he
said. �Boy, did I have problems getting away from that meeting!"

�They wanted you to watch with them?" asked Victoria.

He nodded. �Esme was rather insistent, but I got away eventually.
Theyłll be watching it from the S-D office block roof, as scheduled. At least
thatłs where I left them half an hour ago."

�Two minutes," intoned Dave: �this is one giant leap for publishing-kind,
one small step for offset-web lithography ... �

Victoria yawned. �Did you find a buyer?" she asked Jonathan.

He nodded. �Yeah. Those thugs we bought it from didnłt have
a clue how much plute is worth! I found a buyer, okay. If this works wełll be
set up for life; wełll make the Great Train Robbers look like second
rate
pick-pockets."

�One minute," said Dave. They fell silent, listening to the
beat of some cosmic heart, waiting for the timer-driven missile launcher in a
derelict warehouse to torch off, lofting three tons of solid-_fuel boosters and
sinister warhead into the night
time sky over London


�Is that it?" asked Lydia, pointing; �I hope you got the guidance
parameters right!"

�No problems," said Dave, absent-mindedly tapping his hearing
aid. The fiery streak rising from the far horizon seemed ominously close,
almost near enough for them to reach out and touch; then the fire died as the
warhead vanished into the cloud base.

�Twenty seconds," said Dave. �Who did you sell it to?"

Jonathan shrugged. �It was kind of difficult to figure out
anyone Iłd trust with it," he said. �Hey, look
�

They looked.

Across the city a meteor was falling, glowing white with the
friction of its passage; a futuristic bullet fired with the imagination of a
group of threatened writers, falling towards an encounter with


BANG

�Jesus Christ," said Dave. �I hope the cleaners had time to
get out."

They watched in silence as, on the other bank of the Thames,
the walls of the Spart-Dibbler building bulged outwards as if under the impact
of some ghostly hammer; the mirrorglass flanks distorted strangely before they
burst apart, showering the nearly-deserted street below with the wreckage of
the accountants nuclear dream.

Victoria shook her head. �I wonder what would have happened
if it had worked?" she said. �I mean, if book sales really had taken off ... �

�Donłt," said Dave. �This way we get to keep the money with
a clean conscience."

�Bravo," said Dave, clapping. Lydia turned her back on him,
rudely; he could be very crass at times, applauding his own ingenuity.

�Itłs still not right," she said. �I mean, what now ..?"

�We go back to being poverty stricken publishing people, I
hope," said Victoria. �But one thing still puzzles me," she added. �Jonathan.
Just who did you sell the plute to after you stripped out the warhead?"

He smiled widely. �A very small record company ..."

First published: Farpoint, 1992

Version History

If you modify this text, please retain this version history.

Ver 1.530/7/2003Anarchy Publications, HaVoKThis version
was originally downloaded from the #bookz channel on undernet using mIRC. The
final proof was done with Atlantis by Rising Sun Solutions.

Minutes of the Labour Party Conference, 2016

PREAMBLE TO THE MINUTES OF THE LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE, 2016

Greetings from the National Executive.

Before reading any further, please refer to the Security
Note and ensure that your receipt and use of this document is in compliance
with Party security policies. If you have any doubts at all, burn this document
immediately.



SECURITY NOTE



This is an official Labour Party Document. Possession of all
such documents is a specific offense under (2)(2)(f) of the Terrorism Act
(2006). Amendments passed by the current government using the powers granted in
the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act (2006) have raised the minimum
penalty for possession to 10 years imprisonment. In addition, persons suspected
of membership of or sympathy for the Labour Party are liable for arrest and sentencing
as subversives under the Defence of the Realm Act (2014).

You must destroy this document immediately, for your own
safety, if:

* You have any cause to suspect that a neighbour or member
of your household may be an informer,

* You have come into possession of this document via a suspect
source, or if your copy of this document exhibits signs of having been printed
on any type of computer printer or photocopier, or if you received this
document in a public place that might be overseen by cameras, or if it may have
been transmitted via electronic means.

The Party would be grateful if you can reproduce and
distribute this document to sympathizers and members. Use only a typewriter,
embossing print set, mimeograph, or photographic film to distribute this
document. Paper should be purchased anonymously and microwaved for at least 30
seconds prior to use to destroy RFID tags. Do not, under any circumstances,
enter or copy the text in a computer, word processor, photocopier, scanner,
mobile phone, or digital camera. This is for your personal safety.



MINUTES OF THE LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE, 2016

1. Apologies for absence were made on behalf of the following:

Deputy Leader, Hillary Benn (executed by junta) Government,
Douglas Alexander (executed by junta)

Government, Kate Hoey (detained, Dartmoor concentration
camp)

EPLP Leader, Mohammed Sarwar (executed by junta)

Young Labour, Judy Mallaber (detained, Dartmoor concentration
camp: show trial announced by junta)

...

2. Motions from the national executive:

1) In the light of the governmentłs use of its powers of
extradition under the US/UK Extradition Treaty (2005), and their demonstrated
willingness to lie to the rest of the world about their treatment of extradited
dissidents, it is no longer safe to maintain a public list of shadow ministers
and party officers. With the exception of the offices of Party Spokesperson and
designated Party Security Spokesperson, it is moved that:

* Open election of members of the National Executive shall
be suspended,

* Publication of the names and identities of members of the
National Executive shall be suspended,

* The National Executive will continue to function on a provisional
basis making ad-hoc appointments by internal majority vote to replace members
as they retire, are forced into exile, or are murdered by the junta;

From now until the end of the State of Emergency and the removal
of the current government, at which time an extraordinary Party Conference
shall be held to publicly elect a peacetime National Executive.

(Carried unanimously.) 2) In view of the current
governmentłs:

* suspension of the Human Rights Act (1998), Race Relations
Act (2000), and other Acts,

* abrogation of the Treaty of Europe and secession from the
European Union,

* amendment via administrative order of other Acts of Parliament
(including the reintroduction of capital punishment),

* effective criminalization of political opposition by
proscribing opposition parties as �organisations that promote terrorism" under
the terms of the Terrorism Act (2000),

* establishment of concentration camps and deportation facilities
for ethnic minorities, political dissidents, lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgendered citizens, and others,

* deployment of riot police and informal militias against
peaceful demonstrations and sit-ins, with concomitant loss of life,

* and their effective termination of the democratic
processes by which the United Kingdom has historically been governed,

We find, with reluctance, that no avenue of peaceful dissent
remains open to us. We are therefore faced with a choice between accepting
defeat, and continuing the struggle for freedom and democracy by other means.
We shall not submit to the dictatorship of the current government, and we have
no choice but to hit back by all means within our power in defence of our
people, our future and our freedom. The government has interpreted the
peacefulness of the movement as weakness; our non-violent policies have been
taken as a green light for government violence. Refusal to resort to force has
been interpreted by the government as an invitation to use armed force against
the people without any fear of reprisals.

It is therefore moved that:

* A National Resistance Movement is created. The Movement
will seek to achieve liberation without bloodshed or violence if possible. We
hopeeven at this late momentthat the government will come to its senses and
permit a free and fair general election to be held in which parties
representing all ideologies will be permitted to stand for election. But we
will defend our supporters and the oppressed against military rule, racist
tyranny, and totalitarianism, and we will not fliinch from using any tool in
pursuit of this goal.

* The Movement will work to achieve the political goals of
the Labour Party during the state of emergency, and will cooperate willingly
with other organizations upon the basis of shared goals.

* The Movement will actively attack the instruments of state
terror and coercion, including functionaries of the government who enforce
unjust and oppressive laws against the people.

* At the cessation of the struggle, a National Peace and
Reconciliation Commission shall be established and an amnesty granted to
members of the Movement for actions taken in the pursuit of legitimate orders.

In these actions, we are working in the best interests of
all the people of this countryof every ethnicity, gender, and classwhose
future happiness and well-being cannot be attained without the overthrow of the
Fascist government, the abolition of white supremacy and the winning of
liberty, democracy and full national rights and equality for all the people of
this country.

(Carried 25/0, 3 abstentions)

3) All Party members who are physically and mentally fit to
withstand the rigours of the struggle are encouraged to organize themselves in
cells of 36 individuals, to establish lines of communication (subject to the
Party security policies), and to place themselves at the disposal of the
National Resistance Movement. Party members who are unable to serve may still
provide aid, shelter, and funds for those who fight in our defence.

(Carried unanimously)

3. Motions from the floor

The party recognizes that that our own legislative program
of the late 1990s and early 2000s established the framework for repression
which is now being used to ruthlessly suppress dissent. We recognize that our
neglect of the machinery of public choice in favour of the pursuit of
corporatist collaborations permitted the decay of local and parliamentary
democracy that allowed the British National Party to seize power with the
support of no more than 22% of the electorate. We are therefore compelled to
admit our responsibility. We created this situation; we must therefore repair
it.

Never again shall the Labour Party place national security
ahead of individual freedoms and human rights in its legislative program. It is
therefore moved that the following quotation from Benjamin Franklin be inserted
between Clause Three and the current Clause Four of the Party Constitution:

�They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

(Carried 16/12) ...

(END)B

Missile Gap

Itłs 1976 again. Abba are on the charts, the Cold War is in
full swingand the Earth is flat. Itłs been flat ever since the eve of the
Cuban war of 1962; and the constellations overhead are all wrong. Beyond the
Boreal ocean, strange new continents loom above tropical seas, offering a new
start to colonists like newly-weds Maddy and Bob, and the hope of further glory
to explorers like ex-cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin: but nobody knows why they exist,
and outside the circle of exploration the universe is inexplicably warped.

Gregor, in Washington DC, knows but isnłt talking.
Colonel-General Gagarin, on a years-long mission to go where New Soviet Man has
not gone before, is going to find out. And on the edge of an ancient desert,
beneath the aged stars of another galaxy, Maddy is about to come face-to-face
with humanityłs worst fear ...

From Booklist:

�With the dazzling success of his last two novels, including
the Hugo-nominated Accelerando (2005), Stross is rapidly establishing himself
as one of the preeminent masters of hard sf. Here he takes a breather from
weightier fare with a bizarre, nevertheless brilliant alternate-history novella
featuring a protracted U.S.-Soviet cold war ... Once again, Stross sets the bar
high for his colleagues, should they be feeling competitive, in this
mind-bending, intriguing yarn."

From Publishers Weekly:

�The result is a blend of 1900s H.G. Wells and 1970s propaganda,
updated for the 21st century in the clear, chilly and fashionably cynical style
that lets Stross get away with premises that would be absurdly cheesy in anyone
elsełs hands."

From Green Man Review:

�There are some pretty creepy moments here including one
that remminded me of the Cthulhu mythos. Or possibly the Pod People. Really.
Truly. And the ending was a proper surprise, as I wasnłt sure how Stross would
wrap it up. Indeed thatłs the gold standard for good storytelling for
meinteresting characters in a plausibe setting (no how farfetched it seems at
first glance) with an ending that I wasnłt expecting. Bravo Stross!"

Chapter One: Bomb scare

Gregor is feeding pigeons down in the park when the sirens
go off.

A stoop-shouldered forty-something male in a dark suit,
pale-skinned and thin, he pays no attention at first: the birds hold his
attention. He stands at the side of a tarmac path, surrounded by damp grass
that appears to have been sprayed with concrete dust, and digs into the outer
pocket of his raincoat for a final handful of stale bread-crumbs. Filthy,
soot-blackened city pigeons with malformed feet jostle with plump
white-collared wood pigeons, pecking and lunging for morsels. Gregor doesnłt
smile. What to him is a handful of stale bread, is a deadly business for the
birds: a matter of survival. The avian struggle for survival runs parallel to
the human condition, he ponders. Itłs all a matter of limited resources and
critical positioning. Of intervention by agencies beyond their bird-brained
understanding, dropping treats for them to fight over. Then the air raid sirens
start up.

The pigeons scatter for the treetops with a clatter of
wings. Gregor straightens and looks round. Itłs not just one siren, and not
just a test: a policeman is pedaling his bicycle along the path towards him,
waving one-handed. �You there! Take cover!"

Gregor turns and presents his identity card. �Where is the
nearest shelter?"

The constable points towards a public convenience thirty
yards away. �The basement there. If you canłt make it inside, youłll have to
take cover behind the east wall
if youłre caught in the open, just duck and
cover in the nearest low spot. Now go!" The cop hops back on his black
boneshaker and is off down the footpath before Gregor can frame a reply.
Shaking his head, he walks towards the public toilet and goes inside.

Itłs early spring, a weekday morning, and the toilet
attendant seems to be taking the emergency as a personal comment on the
cleanliness of his porcelain. He jumps up and down agitatedly as he shoves
Gregor down the spiral staircase into the shelter, like a short troll in a blue
uniform stocking his larder. �Three minutes!" shouts the troll. �Hold fast in
three minutes!" So many people in London are wearing uniforms these days,
Gregor reflects; itłs almost as if they believe that if they play their wartime
role properly the ineffable will constrain itself to their expectations of a
humanly comprehensible enemy.

A double-bang splits the air above the park and echoes down
the stairwell. Itłll be RAF or USAF interceptors outbound from the big fighter
base near Hanworth. Gregor glances round: A couple of oafish gardeners sit on
the wooden benches inside the concrete tunnel of the shelter, and a louche City
type in a suit leans against the wall, irritably fiddling with an unlit
cigarette and glaring at the NO SMOKING signs. �Bloody nuisance, eh?" he snarls
in Gregorłs direction.

Gregor composes his face in a thin smile. �I couldnłt
possibly comment," he says, his Hungarian accent betraying his status as a
refugee. (Another sonic boom rattles the urinals, signaling the passage of yet
more fighters.) The louche businessman will be his contact, Goldsmith. He
glances at the shelterłs counter. Its dial is twirling slowly, signaling the
marked absence of radon and fallout. Time to make small-talk, verbal primate
grooming: �Does it happen often?"

The corporate tough relaxes. He chuckles to himself. Hełll
have pegged Gregor as a visitor from stranger shores, the new NATO dominions
overseas where they settled the latest wave of refugees ejected by the
communists. Taking in the copy of The Telegraph and the pattern of stripes on
Gregorłs tie hełll have realized what else Gregor is to him. �You should know,
you took your time getting down here. Do you come here often to visit the front
line, eh?"

�I am here in this bunker with you," Gregor shrugs. �There
is no front line on a circular surface." He sits down on the bench opposite the
businessman gingerly. �Cigarette?"

�Donłt mind if I do." The businessman borrows Gregorłs cigarette
case with a flourish: the symbolic peace-offering accepted, they sit in silence
for a couple of minutes, waiting to find out if itłs the curtain call for world
war four, or just a trailer.

A different note drifts down the staircase, the warbling
tone that indicates the all-clear these days. The Soviet bombers have turned
for home, the ragged lionłs stumpy tail tickled yet again. The toilet troll
dashes down the staircase and windmills his arms at them: �No smoking in the
nuclear bunker!" he screams. �Get out! Out, I say!"

Gregor walks back into Regentłs Park, to finish disposing of
his stale bread-crumbs and ferry the contents of his cigarette case back to the
office. The businessman doesnłt know it yet, but hełs going to be arrested, and
his English nationalist/neutralist cabal interned: meanwhile, Gregor is being
recalled to Washington DC. This is his last visit, at least on this particular
assignment. There are thin times ahead for the wood pigeons.

Chapter Two: Voyage

Itłs a moonless night and the huge reddened whirlpool of the
Milky Way lies below the horizon. With only the reddish-white pinprick glare of
Lucifer for illumination, itłs too dark to read a newspaper.

Maddy is old enough to remember a time when night was
something else: when darkness stalked the heavens, the Milky Way a faded tatter
spun across half the sky. A time when ominous Soviet spheres bleeped and hummed
their way across a horizon that curved, when geometry was dominated by pi,
astronomy made sense, and serious men with horn-rimmed glasses and German accents
were going to the moon. October 2, 1962: thatłs when it all changed. Thatłs
when life stopped making sense. (Of course it first stopped making sense a few
days earlier, with the U-2 flights over the concrete emplacements in Cuba, but
there was a difference between the lunacy of brinksmanship
Khrushchevłs shoe
banging on the table at the UN as he shouted �we will bury you!"
and the flat
earth daydream that followed, shattering history and plunging them all into
this nightmare of revisionist geography.)

But back to the here-and-now: shełs sitting on the deck of
an elderly ocean liner on her way from somewhere to nowhere, and shełs annoyed
because Bob is getting drunk with the F-deck boys again and eating into their
precious grubstake. Itłs too dark to read the shipłs daily news sheet
(mimeographed blurry headlines from a world already fading into the shipłs
wake), itłll be at least two weeks before their next landfall (a refueling
depot somewhere in what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration surveyors
in
a fit of uncharacteristic wit
named the Nether Ocean), and shełs half out of
her skull with boredom.

When they signed up for the Emigration Board tickets Bob had
joked: �A six month cruise? After a vacation like that wełll be happy to get
back to work!"
but somehow the sheer immensity of it all didnłt sink in until
the fourth week out of sight of land. In those four weeks theyłd crawled an
expanse of ocean wider than the Pacific, pausing to refuel twice from huge
rust-colored barges: and still they were only a sixth of the way to Continent
F-204, New Iowa, immersed like the ultimate non-sequitur in the ocean that
replaced the worldłs horizons on October 2, 1962. Two weeks later they passed
The Radiators. The Radiators thrust from the oceanic depths to the
stratosphere, Everest-high black fins finger-combing the watery currents.
Beyond them the tropical heat of the Pacific gave way to the sub-arctic chill
of the Nether Ocean. Sailing between them, the ship was reduced to the
proportions of a cockroach crawling along a canyon between skyscrapers. Maddy
had taken one look at these guardians of the interplanetary ocean, shuddered,
and retreated into their cramped room for the two days it took to sail out from
between the slabs.

Bob kept going on about how materials scientists from NOAA
and the National Institutes were still trying to understand what they were made
of, until Maddy snapped at him. He didnłt seem to understand that they were the
bars on a prison cell. He seemed to see a waterway as wide as the English
Channel, and a gateway to the future: but Maddy saw them as a sign that her old
life was over.

If only Bob and her father hadnłt argued; or if Mum hadnłt
tried to pick a fight with her over Bob
Maddy leans on the railing and sighs,
and a moment later nearly jumps out of her skin as a strange man clears his
throat behind her.

�Excuse me, I didnłt mean to disturb you."

�Thatłs alright," Maddy replies, irritated and trying to
conceal it. �I was just going in."

�A shame: itłs a beautiful night," says the stranger. He
turns and puts down a large briefcase next to the railing, fiddling with the
latches. �Not a cloud in sight, just right for stargazing." She focuses on him,
seeing short hair, small paunch, and a worried thirty-something face. He
doesnłt look back, being preoccupied with something that resembles a
photographerłs tripod.

�Is that a telescope?" she asks, eyeing the stubby
cylindrical gadget in his case.

�Yes." An awkward pause. �Namełs John Martin. Yourself?"

�Maddy Holbright." Something about his diffident manner puts
her at ease. �Are you settling? I havenłt seen you around."

He straightens up and tightens joints on the tripodłs legs,
screwing them into place. �Iłm not a settler, Iłm a researcher. Five years, all
expenses paid, to go and explore a new continent." He carefully lifts the
telescope body up and lowers it onto the platform, then begins tightening
screws. �And Iłm supposed to point this thing at the sky and make regular
observations. Iłm actually an entomologist, but there are so many things to do
that they want me to be a jack of all trades, I guess."

�So theyłve got you to carry a telescope, huh? I donłt think
Iłve ever met an entomologist before."

�A bug-hunter with a telescope," he agrees: �kind of unexpected."

Intrigued, Maddy watches as he screws the viewfinder into
place then pulls out a notebook and jots something down. �What are you looking
at?"

He shrugs. �Therełs a good view of S-Doradus from here," he
says. �You know, Satan? And his two little angels."

Maddy glances up at the violent pinprick of light, then
looks away before it can burn her eyes. Itłs a star, but bright enough to cast
shadows from half a light yearłs distance. �The disks?"

�Them." Therełs a camera body in his bag, a chunky old Bronica
from back before the Soviets swallowed Switzerland and Germany whole. He
carefully screws it onto the telescopełs viewfinder. �The Institute wants me to
take a series of photographs of them
nothing fancy, just the best this
eight-inch reflector can do
over six months. Plot the shipłs position on a map.
Therełs a bigger telescope in the hold, for when I arrive, and theyłre talking
about sending a real astronomer one of these days, but in the meantime they
want photographs from sixty thousand miles out across the disk. For parallax,
so they can work out how fast the disks are moving."

�Disks." They seem like distant abstractions to her, but
Johnłs enthusiasm is hard to ignore. �Do you suppose theyłre like, uh, here?"
She doesnłt say like Earth
everybody knows this isnłt Earth any more. Not the
way it used to be.

�Maybe." He busies himself for a minute with a chunky film
cartridge. �Theyłve got oxygen in their atmospheres, we know that. And theyłre
big enough. But theyłre most of a light year away
far closer than the stars,
but still too far for telescopes."

�Or moon rockets," she says, slightly wistfully. �Or
sputniks."

�If those things worked any more." The film is in: he leans
over the scope and brings it round to bear on the first of the disks, a couple
of degrees off from Satan. (The disks are invisible to the naked eye; it takes
a telescope to see their reflected light.) He glances up at her. �Do you
remember the moon?"

Maddy shrugs. �I was just a kid when it happened. But I saw
the moon, some nights. During the day, too."

He nods. �Not like some of the kids these days. Tell them we
used to live on a big spinning sphere and they look at you like youłre mad."

�What do they think the speed of the disks will tell them?"
She asks.

�Whether theyłre all as massive as this one. What they could
be made of. What that tells us about who it was that made them." He shrugs.
�Donłt ask me, Iłm just a bug-hunter. This stuff is big, bigger than bugs." He
chuckles. �Itłs a new world out here."

She nods very seriously, then actually sees him for the
first time: �I guess it is."

Chapter Three: Boldly Go

�So tell me, comrade colonel, how did it really feel?"

The comrade colonel laughs uneasily. Hełs forty-three and
still slim and boyish-looking, but carries a quiet melancholy around with him
like his own personal storm cloud. �I was very busy all the time," he says with
a self-deprecating little shrug. �I didnłt have time to pay attention to
myself. One orbit, it only lasted ninety minutes, what did you expect? If you
really want to know, Ghermanłs the man to ask. He had more time."

�Time." His interrogator sighs and leans his chair back on
two legs. Itłs a horribly old, rather precious Queen Anne original, a gift to
some Tsar or other many years before the October revolution. �What a joke.
Ninety minutes, two days, thatłs all we got before they changed the rules on
us."

�ęThey,ł comrade chairman?" The colonel looked puzzled.

�Whoever." The chairmanłs vague wave takes in half the horizon
of the richly paneled Kremlin office. �What a joke. Whoever they were, at least
they saved us from a pasting in Cuba because of that louse Nikita." He pauses
for a moment, then toys with the wine glass that sits, half-empty, before him.
The colonel has a glass too, but his is full of grape juice, out of
consideration for his past difficulties. �The ęwhoeverł I speak of are of
course the brother socialists from the stars who brought us here." He grins
humorlessly, face creasing like the muzzle of a shark that smells blood in the
water.

�Brother socialists." The colonel smiles hesitantly,
wondering if itłs a joke, and if so, whether hełs allowed to share it. Hełs
still unsure why hełs being interviewed by the premier
in his private office,
at that. �Do we know anything of them, sir? That is, am I supposed to
"

�Never mind." Aleksey sniffs, dismissing the colonelłs worries.
�Yes, youłre cleared to know everything on this topic. The trouble is there is
nothing to know, and this troubles me, Yuri Alexeyevich. We infer purpose, the
engine of a greater history at work
but the dialectic is silent on this matter.
I have consulted the experts, asked them to read the chicken entrails, but none
of them can do anything other than parrot pre-event dogma: ęany species
advanced enough to do to us what happened that day must of course have evolved
true Communism, comrade premier! Look what they did for us! (That was
Shchlovskii, by the way.) And yes, I look and I see six cities that nobody can
live in, spaceships that refuse to stick to the sky, and a landscape that
Sakharov and that bunch of double-domes are at a loss to explain. There are
fucking miracles and wonders and portents in the sky, like a galaxy we were
supposed to be part of that is now a million years too old and shows extensive
signs of construction. Therełs no room for miracles and wonders in our rational
world, and itłs giving the comrade general secretary, Yuri, the comrade general
secretary, stomach ulcers; did you know that?"

The colonel sits up straight, anticipating the punch line:
itłs a well-known fact throughout the USSR that when Brezhnev says ęfrog,ł the
premier croaks. And here he is in the premierłs office, watching that very man,
Aleksey Kosygin, chairman of the Council of Ministers, third most powerful man
in the Soviet Union, taking a deep breath.

�Yuri Alexeyevich, I have brought you here today because I
want you to help set Leonid Illichłs stomach at rest. Youłre an aviator and a
hero of the Soviet Union, and more importantly youłre smart enough to do the
job and young enough to see it through, not like the old farts cluttering up
Stavka. (Itłs going to take most of a lifetime to sort out, you mark my words.)
Youłre also, you will pardon the bluntness, about as much use as a fifth wheel
in your current posting right now: we have to face facts, and the sad reality
is that none of Korolevłs birds will ever fly again, not even with the atomic
bomb pusher-thing theyłve been working on." Kosygin sighs and shuffles upright
in his chair. �There is simply no point in maintaining the Cosmonaut Training
Centre. A decree has been drafted and will be approved next week: the manned
rocket program is going to be wound up and the cosmonaut corps reassigned to
other duties."

The colonel flinches. �Is that absolutely necessary, comrade
chairman?"

Kosygin drains his wine glass, decides to ignore the implied
criticism. �We donłt have the resources to waste. But, Yuri Alexeyevich, all
that training is not lost." He grins wolfishly. �I have new worlds for you to
explore, and a new ship for you to do it in."

�A new ship." The colonel nods then does a double take,
punch-drunk. �A ship?"

�Well, it isnłt a fucking horse," says Kosygin. He slides a
big glossy photograph across his blotter towards the colonel. �Times have moved
on." The colonel blinks in confusion as he tries to make sense of the thing at
the centre of the photograph. The premier watches his face, secretly amused:
confusion is everybodyłs first reaction to the thing in the photograph.

�Iłm not sure I understand, sir
"

�Itłs quite simple: you trained to explore new worlds. You
canłt, not using the rockets. The rockets wonłt ever make orbit. Iłve had
astronomers having nervous breakdowns trying to explain why, but the all agree
on the key point: rockets wonłt do it for us here. Something wrong with the
gravity, they say it even crushes falling starlight." The chairman taps a fat
finger on the photograph. �But you can do it using this. We invented it and the
bloody Americans didnłt. Itłs called an ekranoplan, and you rocket boys are
going to stop being grounded cosmonauts and learn how to fly it. What do you
think, colonel Gagarin?"

The colonel whistles tunelessly through his teeth: hełs
finally worked out the scale. It looks like a flying boat with clipped wings,
jet engines clustered by the sides of its cockpit
but no flying boat ever
carried a runway with a brace of MiG-21s on its back. �Itłs bigger than a
cruiser! Is it nuclear powered?"

�Of course." The chairmanłs grin slips. �It cost as much as
those moon rockets of Sergeiłs, colonel-general. Try not to drop it."

Gagarin glances up, surprise and awe visible on his face.
�Sir, Iłm honored, but
"

�Donłt be." The chairman cuts him off. �The promotion was
coming your way anyway. The posting that comes with it will earn you as much
honor as that first orbit. A second chance at space, if you like. But you canłt
fail: the cost is unthinkable. Itłs not your skin that will pay the toll, itłs
our entire rationalist civilization." Kosygin leans forward intently.

�Somewhere out there are beings so advanced that they
skinned the earth like a grape and plated it onto this disk
or worse, copied us
all right down to the atomic level and duplicated us like one of those American
Xerox machines. Itłs not just us, though. You are aware of the other continents
in the oceans. We think some of them may be inhabited, too
nothing else makes
sense. Your task is to take the Sergei Korolev, the first ship of its class, on
an historic five-year cruise. You will boldly go where no Soviet man has gone
before, explore new worlds and look for new peoples, and to establish fraternal
socialist relations with them. But your primary objective is to discover who
built this giant mousetrap of a world, and why they brought us to it, and to
report back to us
before the Americans find out.

Chapter Four: Committee Process

The cherry trees are in bloom in Washington DC, and Gregor
perspires in the summer heat. He has grown used to the relative cool of London
and this unaccustomed change of climate has disoriented him. Jet lag is a thing
of the past
a small mercy
but there are still adjustments to make. Because the
disk is flat, the daylight source
polar flares from an accretion disk inside the
axial hole, the scientists call it, which signifies nothing to most
people
grows and shrinks the same wherever you stand.

Therełs a concrete sixties-vintage office block with a conference
suite furnished in burnt umber and orange, chromed chairs and Kandinsky prints
on the walls: all very seventies. Gregor waits outside the suite until the
buzzer sounds and the receptionist looks up from behind her IBM typewriter and
says, �You can go in now, theyłre expecting you."

Gregor goes in. Itłs an occupational hazard, but by no means
the worst, in his line of work.

�Have a seat." Itłs Seth Brundle, Gregorłs divisional head
a
grey-looking functionary, more adept at office back-stabbing than
field-expedient assassinations. His cover, like Gregorłs, is an innocuous-sounding
post in the Office of Technology Assessment. In fact, both he and Gregor work
for a different government agency, although the notional task is the same:
identify technological threats and stamp on them before they emerge.

Brundle is not alone in the room. He proceeds with the introductions:
�Greg Samsa is our London station chief and specialist in scientific
intelligence. Greg, this is Marcus." The bald, thin-faced German in the smart
suit bobs his head and smiles behind his horn-rimmed glasses. �Civilian
consultant." Gregor mistrusts him on sight. Marcus is a defector
a former Stasi
spook, from back before the Brezhnev purges of the mid-sixties. Which puts an
interesting complexion on this meeting.

�Murray Fox, from Langley."

�Hi," says Gregor, wondering just what kind of insane
political critical mass Stone is trying to assemble: Langley and Brundlełs
parent outfit arenłt even on speaking terms, to say the least.

�And another civilian specialist, Dr. Sagan." Greg nods at
the doctor, a thin guy with sparkling brown eyes and hippyish long hair.
�Gregłs got something to tell us in person," says Brundle. �Something very
interesting he picked up in London. No sources please, Greg."

�No sources," Gregor echoes. He pulls out a chair and sits
down. Now hełs here he supposes hełll just have to play the role Brundle
assigned to him in the confidential briefing he read on the long flight home.
�We have word from an unimpeachable HUMINT resource that the Russians have
" he
coughs into his fist. �Excuse me." He glances at Brundle. �Okay to talk about
COLLECTION RUBY?"

�Theyłre all cleared," Brundle says dryly. �Thatłs why it
says ęjoint committeeł on the letterhead."

�I see. My invitation was somewhat terse." Gregor stifles a
sigh that seems to say, all I get is a most urgent recall; how am I meant to
know whatłs going on and who knows what? �So why are we here?"

�Think of it as another collective analysis board," says
Fox, the man from the CIA. He doesnłt look enthused.

�Wełre here to find out whatłs going on, with the benefit of
some intelligence resources from the other side of the curtain."

Doctor Sagan, who has been listening silently with his head
cocked to one side like a very intelligent blackbird, raises an eyebrow.

�Yes?" asks Brundle.

�I, uh, would you mind explaining that to me? I havenłt been
on one of these committees before."

No indeed, thinks Gregor. Itłs a miracle Sagan ever passed
his political vetting: hełs too friendly by far with some of those Russian
astronomer guys who are clearly under the thumb of the KGBłs First Department.
And hełs expressed doubts
muted, of course
about the thrust of current foreign
policy, which is a serious no-no under the McNamara administration.

�A CAB is a joint committee feeding into the Central Office
of Informationłs external bureaux on behalf of a blue-ribbon panel of experts
assembled from the intelligence community," Gregor recites in a bored tone of
voice. �Stripped of the bullshit, wełre a board of wise men whołre meant to
rise above narrow bureaucratic lines of engagement and prepare a report for the
Office of Technology Assessment to pass on to the Director of Central Intelligence.
Itłs not meant to reflect the agenda of any one department, but to be a Delphi
board synergizing our lateralities. Set up after the Cuban fiasco to make sure
that we never again get backed into that kind of corner by accidental
group-think. One of the rules of the CAB process is that it has to include at
least one dissident: unlike the commies we know wełre not perfect." Gregor
glances pointedly at Fox, who has the good sense to stay silent.

�Oh, I see," Sagan says hesitantly. With more force: �so
thatłs why Iłm here? Is that the only reason youłve dragged me away from
Cornell?"

�Of course not, Doctor," oozes Brundle, casting Gregor a
dirty look. The East German defector, Wolff, maintains a smug silence: I are
above all this. �Wełre here to come up with policy recommendations for dealing
with the bigger picture. The much bigger picture."

�The Builders," says Fox. �Wełre here to determine what our
options look like if and when they show up, and to make recommendations about
the appropriate course of action. Your background in, uh, SETI recommended
you."

Sagan looks at him in disbelief. �Iłd have thought that was
obvious," he says.

�Eh?"

�We wonłt have any choice," the young professor explains
with a wry smile. �Does a termite mound negotiate with a nuclear superpower?"

Brundle leans forward. �Thatłs rather a radical position,
isnłt it? Surely therełll be some room for maneuver? We know this is an
artificial construct, but presumably the builders are still living people. Even
if theyłve got green skin and six eyes."

�Oh. My. God." Sagan leans forward, his face in his hands. After
a moment Gregor realizes that hełs laughing.

�Excuse me." Gregor glances round. Itłs the German defector,
Wolff, or whatever hełs called. �Herr Professor, would you care to explain what
you find so funny?"

After a moment Sagan leans back, looks at the ceiling, and
sighs. �Imagine a single, a forty-five RPM record with a centre hole punched
out. The inner hole is half an astronomical unit
forty-six million miles
in
radius. The outer edge is of unknown radius, but probably about two and a half
AUs
two hundred and forty five million miles. The diskłs thickness is unknown
seismic
waves are reflected off a mirror-like rigid layer eight hundred miles down
but
we can estimate it at eight thousand miles, if its density averages out at the
same as Earthłs. Surface gravity is the same as our original planet, and since
wełve been transplanted here and survived we have learned that itłs a
remarkably hospitable environment for our kind of life; only on the large scale
does it seem different."

The astronomer sits up. �Do any of you gentlemen have any
idea just how preposterously powerful whoever built this structure is?"

�How do you mean, preposterously powerful?" asks Brundle,
looking more interested than annoyed.

�A colleague of mine, Dan Alderson, did the first analysis.
I think you might have done better to pull him in, frankly. Anyway, let me
itemise: item number one is escape velocity." Sagan holds up a bony finger.
�Gravity on a disk does not diminish in accordance with the inverse square law,
the way it does on a spherical object like the planet we came from. We have
roughly earthlike gravity, but to escape, or to reach orbit, takes tremendously
more speed. Roughly two hundred times more, in fact. Rockets that from Earth
could reach the moon just fall out of the sky after running out of fuel. Next
item:" another finger. �The area and mass of the disk. If itłs double-sided it
has a surface area equal to billions and billions of Earths. Wełre stuck in the
middle of an ocean full of alien continents, but we have no guarantee that this
hospitable environment is anything other than a tiny oasis in a world of strangeness."

The astronomer pauses to pour himself a glass of water, then
glances round the table. �To put it in perspective, gentlemen, this world is so
big that, if one in every hundred stars had an earth-like planet, this single
structure could support the population of our entire home galaxy. As for the
mass
this structure is as massive as fifty thousand suns. It is, quite bluntly,
impossible: as-yet unknown physical forces must be at work to keep it from
rapidly collapsing in on itself and creating a black hole. The repulsive force,
whatever it is, is strong enough to hold the weight of fifty thousand suns:
think about that for a moment, gentlemen."

At that point Sagan looks around and notices the blank
stares. He chuckles ruefully.

�What I mean to say is, this structure is not permitted by
the laws of physics as we understand them. Because it clearly does exist, we
can draw some conclusions, starting with the fact that our understanding of
physics is incomplete. Well, that isnłt news: we know we donłt have a unified
theory of everything. Einstein spent thirty years looking for one, and didnłt
come up with it.

But, secondly." He looks tired for a moment, aged beyond his
years. �We used to think that any extraterrestrial beings we might communicate
with would be fundamentally comprehensible: folks like us, albeit with better
technology. I think thatłs the frame of mind youłre still working in. Back in
sixty-one we had a brainstorming session at a conference, trying to work out
just how big an engineering project a spacefaring civilization might come up
with. Freeman Dyson, from Princeton, came up with about the biggest thing any
of us could imagine: something that required us to imagine dismantling Jupiter
and turning it into habitable real estate.

�This disk is about a hundred million times bigger than Dysonłs
sphere. And thatłs before we take into account the time factor."

�Time?" Echoes Fox from Langley, sounding confused.

�Time." Sagan smiles in a vaguely disconnected way. �Wełre
nowhere near our original galactic neighborhood and whoever moved us here, they
didnłt bend the laws of physics far enough to violate the speed limit. It takes
light about 160,000 years to cross the distance between where we used to live,
and our new stellar neighborhood, the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. Which we have
fixed, incidentally, by measuring the distance to known Cepheid variables, once
we were able to take into account the measurable red shift of infalling light
and the fact that some of them were changing frequency slowly and seem to have
changed rather a lot. Our best estimate is eight hundred thousand years, plus
or minus two hundred thousand. Thatłs about four times as long as our species
has existed, gentlemen. Wełre fossils, an archaeology experiment or something.
Our relevance to our abductors is not as equals, but as subjects in some kind
of vast experiment. And what the purpose of the experiment is, I canłt tell
you. Iłve got some guesses, but ..."

Sagan shrugs, then lapses into silence. Gregor catches Brundlełs
eye and Brundle shakes his head, very slightly. Donłt spill the beans. Gregor
nods. Sagan may realize hełs in a room with a CIA spook and an East German
defector, but he doesnłt need to know about the Alienation Service yet.

�Well thatłs as may be," says Fox, dropping words like
stones into the hollow silence at the table. �But it begs the question, what
are we going to tell the DCI?"

�I suggest," says Gregor, �that we start by reviewing COLLECTION
RUBY." He nods at Sagan. �Then, maybe when wełre all up to speed on that, wełll
have a better idea of whether therełs anything useful we can tell the DCI.

Chapter Five: Cannon-Fodder

Madeleine and Robert Holbright are among the last of the immigrants
to disembark on the new world. As she glances back at the brilliant white side
of the liner, the horizon seems to roll around her head, settling into a
strange new stasis that feels unnatural after almost six months at sea.

New Iowa isnłt flat and it isnłt new: rampart cliffs loom to
either side of the unnaturally deep harbor (gouged out of bedrock courtesy of
General Atomics). A cog-driven funicular railway hauls Maddy and Robert and
their four shipping trunks up the thousand-foot climb to the plateau and the
port city of Fort Eisenhower
and then to the arrival and orientation camp.

Maddy is quiet and withdrawn, but Bob, oblivious, natters constantly
about opportunities and jobs and grabbing a plot of land to build a house on.
�Itłs the new world," he says at one point: �why arenłt you excited?"

�The new world," Maddy echoes, biting back the urge to say
something cutting. She looks out the window as the train climbs the cliff-face
and brings them into sight of the city. City is the wrong word: it implies
solidity, permanence. Fort Eisenhower is less than five years old, a leukaemic
gash inflicted on the landscape by the Corps of Engineers. The tallest building
is the governorłs mansion, at three stories. Architecturally the town is all
Wild West meets the Radar Age, raw pine houses contrasting with big grey
concrete boxes full of seaward-pointing Patriot missiles to deter the
inevitable encroachment of the communist hordes. �Itłs so flat."

�The nearest hills are two hundred miles away, past the
coastal plain
didnłt you read the map?"

She ignores his little dig as the train squeals and clanks
up the side of the cliff. It wheezes asthmatically to a stop besides a wooden
platform, and expires in a belch of saturated steam. An hour later theyłre
weary and sweated-up in the lobby of an unprepossessing barrack-hall made of
plywood. Therełs a large hall and a row of tables and a bunch of bored-looking
colonial service types, and people are walking from one position to another
with bundles of papers, answering questions in low voices and receiving
official stamps. The would-be colonists mill around like disturbed livestock
among the piles of luggage at the back of the room. Maddy and Robert queue
uneasy in the damp afternoon heat, overhearing snippets of conversation.
�Country of origin? Educational qualifications? Yes, but what was your last
job?" Religion and race
almost a quarter of the people in the hall are refugees
from India or Pakistan or somewhere lost to the mysterious east forever
seem to
obsess the officials. �Robert?" she whispers.

�Itłll be alright," he says with false certainty. Taking
after his dad already, trying to pretend hełs the solid family man. Her sidelong
glance at him steals any residual confidence. Then itłs their turn.

�Names, passports, country of origin?" The guy with the moustache
is brusque and bored, irritated by the heat.

Robert smiles at him. �Robert and Madeleine Holbright, from
Canada?" He offers their passports.

�Uh-huh." The official gives the documents a very American
going-over. �What schooling have you done? What was your last job?"

�Iłve, uh, I was working part-time in a garage. On my way
through college
I was final year at Toronto, studying structural engineering,
but I havenłt sat the finals. Maddy
Maddyłs a qualified paramedic."

The officer fixes her with a stare. �Worked at it?"

�What? Uh, no
Iłm freshly qualified." His abrupt questioning
flusters her.

�Huh." He makes a cryptic notation against their names on a
long list, a list that spills over the edge of his desk and trails towards the
rough floor. �Next." He hands the passports back, and a couple of cards, and
points them along to the row of desks.

Someone is already stepping up behind them when Maddy
manages to read the tickets. Hers says TRAINEE NURSE. Robert is staring at his
and saying �no, this is wrong."

�What is it, Bob?" She looks over his shoulder as someone jostles
him sideways. His card reads LABORER (unskilled); but she doesnłt have time to
read the rest.

Chapter Six: Captainłs Log

Yuri Gagarin kicks his shoes off, loosens his tie, and leans
back in his chair. �Itłs hotter than fucking Cuba!" he complains.

�You visited Cuba, didnłt you, boss?" His companion, still
standing, pours a glass of iced tea and passes it to the young colonel-general
before drawing one for himself.

�Yeah, thanks Misha." The former first cosmonaut smiles tiredly.
�Back before the invasion. Have a seat."

Misha Gorodin is the only man on the ship who doesnłt have
to give a shit whether the captain offers him a seat, but hełs grateful all the
same: a little respect goes a long way, and Gagarinłs sunny disposition and
friendly attitude is a far cry from some of the fuckheads Mishałs been stuck
with in the past. Therełs a class of officer who thinks that because youłre a
zampolit youłre somehow below them, but Yuri doesnłt do that: in some ways hełs
the ideal New Soviet Man, progress personified. Which makes life a lot easier,
because Yuri is one of the very few naval commanders who doesnłt have to give a
shit what his political officer thinks, and life would be an awful lot stickier
without that grease of respect to make the wheels go round. Mind you, Yuri is
also commander of the only naval warship operated by the Cosmonaut Corps, which
is a branch of the Strategic Rocket Forces, another howling exception to the
usual military protocol. Somehow this posting seems to be breaking all the
rules ...

�What was it like, boss?"

�Hot as hell. Humid, like this. Beautiful women but lots of
dark-skinned comrades who didnłt bathe often enough
all very jolly, but you
couldnłt help looking out to sea, over your shoulder. You know there was an
American base there, even then? Guantanamo. They donłt have the base now, but
theyłve got all the rubble." For a moment Gagarin looks morose. �Bastards."

�The Americans."

�Yes. Shitting on a small defenseless island like that, just
because they couldnłt get to us any more. You remember when they had to hand
out iodine tablets to all the kids? That wasnłt Leningrad or Gorky, the fallout
plume: it was Havana. I donłt think they wanted to admit just how bad it was."

Misha sips his tea. �We had a lucky escape." Morale be
damned, itłs acceptable to admit at least that much in front of the CO, in
private. Mishałs seen some of the KGB reports on the US nuclear capabilities
back then, and his blood runs cold; while Nikita had been wildly bluffing about
the Rodinałs nuclear defenses, the Americans had been hiding the true scale of
their own arsenal. From themselves as much as the rest of the world.

�Yes. Things were going to the devil back then, no question:
if we hadnłt woken up over here, who knows what would have happened? They
out-gunned us back then. I donłt think they realized." Gagarinłs dark
expression lifts: he glances out of the open porthole
the only one in a private
cabin that opens
and smiles. �This isnłt Cuba, though." The headland rising
above the bay tells him that much: no tropical island on earth supported such
weird vegetation. Or such ruins.

�Indeed not. But, what about the ruins?" asks Misha, putting
his tea glass down on the map table.

�Yes." Gagarin leans forward: �I was meaning to talk to you
about that. Exploration is certainly in line with our orders, but we are a
trifle short of trained archaeologists, arenłt we? Letłs see: wełre four
hundred and seventy thousand kilometers from home, six major climactic zones,
five continents
itłll be a long time before we get any settlers out here, wonłt
it?" He pauses delicately. �Even if the rumors about reform of the penal system
are true."

�It is certainly a dilemma," Misha agrees amiably,
deliberately ignoring the skipperłs last comment. �But we can take some time
over it. Therełs nobody out here, at least not within range of yesterdayłs
reconnaissance flight. Iłll vouch for lieutenant Chekhovłs soundness: he has a
solid attitude, that one."

�I donłt see how we can leave without examining the ruins,
but wełve got limited resources and in any case I donłt want to do anything
that might get the Academy to slap our wrists. No digging for treasure until
the egg-heads get here." Gagarin hums tunelessly for a moment, then slaps his
hand on his thigh: �I think wełll shoot some film for the comrade general
secretaryłs birthday party. First wełll secure a perimeter around the beach,
give those damned spetsnaz a chance to earn all the vodka theyłve been
drinking. Then you and I, we can take Primary Science Party Two into the
nearest ruins with lights and cameras. Make a visual record, leave the
double-domes back in Moscow to figure out what wełre looking at and whether
itłs worth coming back later with a bunch of archaeologists. What do you say,
Misha?"

�I say thatłs entirely logical, comrade general," says the
political officer, nodding to himself.

�Thatłs so ordered, then. Wełll play it safe, though. Just because
we havenłt seen any active settlement patterns, doesnłt mean therełre no
aborigines lurking in the forest."

�Like that last bunch of lizards." Misha frowns. �Little
purple bastards!"

�Wełll make good communists out of them eventually," Yuri
insists. �A toast! To making good communists out of little purple
lizard-bastards with blowpipes who shoot political officers in the arse!"

Gagarin grins wickedly and Gorodin knows when hełs being
wound up on purpose and summons a twinkle to his eye as he raises his glass:
�And to poisons that donłt work on human beings."

Chapter Seven: Discography

Warning:

The following briefing film is classified COLLECTION RUBY.
If you do not possess both COLLECTION and RUBY clearances, leave the auditorium
and report to the screening security officer immediately. Disclosure to
unauthorized personnel is a federal offense punishable by a fine of up to ten
thousand dollars and/or imprisonment for up to twenty years. You have thirty
seconds to clear the auditorium and report to the screening security officer.

Voice-over:

Ocean
the final frontier. For twelve years, since the momentous
day when we discovered that we had been removed to this planar world, we have
been confronted by the immensity of an ocean that goes on as far as we can see.
Confronted also by the prospect of the spread of Communism to uncharted new
continents, we have committed ourselves to a strategy of exploration and
containment.

Film clip:

An Atlas rocket on the launch pad rises slowly, flames
jetting from its tail: it surges past the gantry and disappears into the sky.

Cut to:

A camera mounted in the nose, pointing back along the flank
of the rocket. The ground falls behind, blurring into blue distance. Slowly,
the sky behind the rocket is turning black: but the land still occupies much of
the fisheye view. The first stage engine ring tumbles away, leaving the core
engine burning with a pale blue flame: now the outline of the California
coastline is recognizable. North America shrinks visibly: eventually another,
strange outline swims into view, like a cipher in an alien script. The booster
burns out and falls behind, and the tumbling camera catches sunlight glinting
off the upper-stage Centaur rocket as its engine ignites, thrusting it higher
and faster.

Voice-over:

We cannot escape.

Cut to:

A meteor streaking across the empty blue bowl of the sky;
slowing, deploying parachutes.

Voice-over:

In 1962, this rocket would have blasted a two-ton payload
all the way into outer space. That was when we lived on a planet that was an
oblate sphere. Life on a dinner-plate seems to be different: while the
gravitational attraction anywhere on the surface is a constant, we canłt get
away from it. In fact, anything we fire straight up will come back down again.
Not even a nuclear rocket can escape: according to JPL scientist Dan Alderson,
escape from a Magellanic disk would require a speed of over one thousand six hundred
miles per second. That is because this disk masses many times more than a
star
in fact, it has a mass fifty thousand times greater than our own sun.

What stops it collapsing into a sphere? Nobody knows. Physicists
speculate that a fifth force that drove the early expansion of the
universe
they call it ęquintessenceł
has been harnessed by the makers of the
disk. But the blunt truth is, nobody knows for sure. Nor do we understand how
we came here
how, in the blink of an eye, something beyond our comprehension
peeled the earthłs continents and oceans like a grape and plated them across
this alien disk.

Cut to:

A map. The continents of earth are laid out
Americas at one
side, Europe and Asia and Africa to their east. Beyond the Indonesian island
chain Australia and New Zealand hang lonely on the edge of an abyss of ocean.

The map pans right: strange new continents swim into view,
ragged-edged and huge. A few of them are larger than Asia and Africa combined;
most of them are smaller.

Voice-over:

Geopolitics was changed forever by the Move. While the surface
topography of our continents was largely preserved, wedges of foreign material
were introduced below the Mohorovicik discontinuity
below the crust
and in the
deep ocean floor, to act as spacers. The distances between points separated by
deep ocean were, of necessity, changed, and not in our geopolitical favor.
While the tactical balance of power after the Move was much as it had been
before, the great circle flight paths our strategic missiles were designed
for
over the polar ice cap and down into the Communist empire
were distorted
and stretched, placing the enemy targets outside their range. Meanwhile,
although our manned bombers could still reach Moscow with in-flight refueling,
the changed map would have forced them to traverse thousands of miles of
hostile airspace en route. The Move rendered most of our strategic preparations
useless. If the British had been willing to stand firm, we might have
prevailed
but in retrospect, what went for us also went for the Soviets, and it
is hard to condemn the British for being unwilling to take the full force of
the inevitable Soviet bombardment alone.

In retrospect the only reason this was not a complete disaster
for us is that the Soviets were caught in the same disarray as ourselves. But
the specter of Communism now dominates western Europe: the supposedly
independent nations of the European Union are as much in thrall to Moscow as
the client states of the Warsaw Pact. Only the on-going British State of
Emergency offers us any residual geopolitical traction on the red continent,
and in the long term we must anticipate that the British, too, will be driven
to reach an accommodation with the Soviet Union.

Cut to:

A silvery delta-winged aircraft in flight. Stub wings,
pointed nose, and a shortage of windows proclaim it to be an unmanned drone: a
single large engine in its tail thrusts it along, exhaust nozzle glowing
cherry-red. Trackless wastes unwind below it as the viewpoint
a chase
plane
carefully climbs over the drone to capture a clear view of the upper
fuselage.

Voice-over:

The disk is vast
so huge that it defies sanity. Some
estimates give it the surface area of more than a billion earths. Exploration
by conventional means is futile: hence the deployment of the NP-101 Persephone
drone, here seen making a proving flight over land mass F-42. The NP-101 is a
reconnaissance derivative of the nuclear-powered D-SLAM Pluto missile that
forms the backbone of our post-Move deterrent force. It is slower than a
strategic D-SLAM, but much more reliable: while D-SLAM is designed for a quick,
fiery dash into Soviet territory, the NP-101 is designed to fly long duration
missions that map entire continents. On a typical deployment the NP-101 flies
outward at thrice the speed of sound for nearly a month: traveling fifty
thousand miles a day, it penetrates a million miles into the unknown before it
turns and flies homeward. Its huge mapping cameras record two images every thousand
seconds, and its sophisticated digital computer records a variety of data from
its sensor suite, allowing us to build up a picture of parts of the disk that
our ships would take years or decades to reach. With resolution down to the
level of a single nautical mile, the NP-101 program has been a resounding
success, allowing us to map whole new worlds that it would take us years to
visit in person.

At the end of its mission, the NP-101 drops its final film
capsule and flies out into the middle of an uninhabited ocean, to ditch its
spent nuclear reactor safely far from home.

Cut to:

A bullłs-eye diagram. The centre is a black circle with a
star at its heart; around it is a circular platter, of roughly the same proportions
as a 45 rpm single.

Voice over:

A rough map of the disk. Here is the area we have explored
to date, using the NP-101 program.

(A dot little larger than a sand grain lights up on the face
of the single.)

That dot of light is a million kilometers in radius
five
times the distance that used to separate our old Earth from its moon. (To cross
the radius of the disk, an NP-101 would have to fly at Mach Three for almost
ten years.) We arenłt even sure exactly where the centre of that dot lies on
the disk: our highest sounding rocket, the Nova-Orion block two, can barely
rise two degrees above the plane of the disk before crashing back again. Here
is the scope of our knowledge of our surroundings, derived from the
continental-scale mapping cameras carried by Project Orion:

(A salmon pink area almost half an inch in diameter lights
up around the red sand grain on the face of the single.)

Of course, cameras at an altitude of a hundred thousand
miles canłt look down on new continents and discern signs of Communist
infiltration; at best they can listen for radio transmissions and perform
spectroscopic analyses of the atmospheric gasses above distant lands, looking
for gasses characteristic of industrial development such as chlorofluorocarbons
and nitrogen oxides.

This leaves us vulnerable to unpleasant surprises. Our long
term strategic analyses imply that we are almost certainly not alone on the
disk. In addition to the Communists, we must consider the possibility that
whoever build this monstrous structure
clearly one of the wonders of the
universe
might also live here. We must contemplate their motives for bringing
us to this place. And then there are the aboriginal cultures discovered on
continents F-29 and F-364, both now placed under quarantine. If some land
masses bear aboriginal inhabitants, we may speculate that they, too, have been
transported to the disk in the same manner as ourselves, for some as-yet
unknown purpose. It is possible that they are genuine stone-age dwellers
or
that they are the survivors of advanced civilizations that did not survive the
transition to this environment. What is the possibility that there exists on
the disk one or more advanced alien civilizations that are larger and more
powerful than our own? And would we recognize them as such if we saw them? How
can we go about estimating the risk of our encountering hostile Little Green
Men
now that other worlds are in range of even a well-equipped sailboat, much
less the Savannah-class nuclear powered exploration ships? Astronomers Carl
Sagan and Daniel Drake estimate the probability as high
so high, in fact, that
they believe there are several such civilizations out there.

We are not alone. We can only speculate about why we might
have been brought here by the abductors, but we can be certain that it is only
a matter of time before we encounter an advanced alien civilization that may
well be hostile to us. This briefing film will now continue with an overview of
our strategic preparations for first contact, and the scenarios within which we
envisage this contingency arising, with specific reference to the Soviet Union
as an example of an unfriendly ideological superpower ...

Chapter Eight: Tenure Track

After two weeks, Maddy is sure shełs going mad.

She and Bob have been assigned a small prefabricated house
(not much more than a shack, although it has electricity and running water) on
the edge of town. Hełs been drafted into residential works, put to work
erecting more buildings: and this is the nearest thing to a success theyłve
had, because after a carefully-controlled protest his status has been
corrected, from just another set of unskilled hands to trainee surveyor. A
promotion of which he is terribly proud, evidently taking it as confirmation
that theyłve made the right move by coming here.

Maddy, meanwhile, has a harder time finding work. The district
hospital is fully staffed. They donłt need her, wonłt need her until the next
shipload of settlers arrive, unless she wants to pack up her bags and go
tramping around isolated ranch settlements in the outback. In a yearłs time the
governor has decreed theyłll establish another town-scale settlement, inland
near the mining encampments on the edge of the Hoover Desert. Then theyłll need
medics to staff the new hospital: but for now, shełs a spare wheel. Because
Maddy is a city girl by upbringing and disposition, and not inclined to take a
job tramping around the outback if she can avoid it.

She spends the first week and then much of the second mooching
around town, trying to find out what she can do. Shełs not the only young woman
in this predicament. While therełs officially no unemployment, and the colonyłs
dirigiste administration finds plenty of hard work for idle hands, therełs also
a lack of openings for ambulance crew, or indeed much of anything else she can
do. Career-wise itłs like a trip into the 1950łs. Young, female, and ambitious?
Lots of occupations simply donłt exist out here on the fringe, and many others
are closed or inaccessible. Everywhere she looks she sees mothers shepherding
implausibly large flocks of toddlers their guardians pinch-faced from worry and
exhaustion. Bob wants kids, although Maddyłs not ready for that yet. But the
alternatives on offer are limited.

Eventually Maddy takes to going through the �help wanted"
ads on the bulletin board outside city hall. Some of them are legit: and at
least a few are downright peculiar. One catches her eye: field assistant wanted
for biological research. I wonder? she thinks, and goes in search of a door to
bang on.

When she finds the door
raw wood, just beginning to bleach
in the strong colonial sunlight
and bangs on it, John Martin opens it and
blinks quizzically into the light. �Hello?" he asks.

�You were advertising for a field assistant?" She stares at
him. Hełs the entomologist, right? She remembers his hands on the telescope on
the deck of the ship. The voyage itself is already taking on the false patina
of romance in her memories, compared to the dusty present it has delivered her
to.

�I was? Oh
yes, yes. Do come in." He backs into the
house
another of these identikit shacks, colonial, family, for the use of
and
offers her a seat in what used to be the living room. Itłs almost completely
filled by a work table and a desk and a tall wooden chest of sample drawers.
Therełs an odd, musty smell, like old cobwebs and leaky demijohns of formalin.
John shuffles around his den, vaguely disordered by the unexpected shock of
company. Therełs something touchingly cute about him, like the subjects of his
studies, Maddy thinks. �Sorry about the mess, I donłt get many visitors. So,
um, do you have any relevant experience?"

She doesnłt hesitate: �None whatsoever, but Iłd like to
learn." She leans forward. �I qualified as a paramedic before we left. At
college I was studying biology, but I had to drop out midway through my second
year: I was thinking about going to medical school later, but I guess thatłs
not going to happen here. Anyway, the hospital here has no vacancies, so I need
to find something else to do. What exactly does a field assistant get up to?"

�Get sore feet." He grins lopsidedly. �Did you do any lab
time? Field work?" Maddy nods hesitantly so he drags her meager college
experiences out of her before he continues. �Iłve got a whole continent to
explore and only one set of hands: wełre spread thin out here. Luckily NSF budgeted
to hire me an assistant. The assistantłs job is to be my Man Friday; to help me
cart equipment about, take samples, help with basic lab work
very basic
and so
on. Oh, and if theyłre interested in entomology, botany, or anything else
remotely relevant thatłs a plus. There arenłt many unemployed life sciences
people around here, funnily enough: have you had any chemistry?"

�Some," Maddy says cautiously; �Iłm no biochemist." She
glances round the crowded office curiously. �What are you meant to be doing?"

He sighs. �A primary survey of an entire continent. Nobody,
but nobody, even bothered looking into the local insect ecology here. Therełre
virtually no vertebrates, birds, lizards, what have you
but back home there are
more species of beetle than everything else put together, and this place is no
different. Did you know nobody has even sampled the outback fifty miles inland
of here? Wełre doing nothing but throw up shacks along the coastline and
open-cast quarries a few miles inland. There could be anything in the interior,
absolutely anything." When he gets excited he starts gesticulating, Maddy
notices, waving his hands around enthusiastically. She nods and smiles, trying
to encourage him.

�A lot of what Iłm doing is the sort of thing they were
doing in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Take samples, draw them, log
their habitat and dietary habits, see if I can figure out their life cycle, try
and work out whołs kissing-cousins with what. Build a family tree. Oh, I also
need to do the same with the vegetation, you know? And they want me to keep
close watch on the other disks around Lucifer. ęKeep an eye out for signs of
sapience,ł whatever that means: I figure therełs a bunch of leftovers in the
astronomical community who feel downright insulted that whoever built this disk
and brought us here didnłt land on the White House lawn and introduce
themselves. Iłd better tell you right now, therełs enough work here to occupy
an army of zoologists and botanists for a century; you can get started on a PhD
right here and now if you want. Iłm only here for five years, but my successor
should be okay about taking on an experienced RA ... the hard bit is going to
be maintaining focus. Uh, I can sort you out a subsistence grant from the
governor-generalłs discretionary fund and get NSF to reimburse him, but it
wonłt be huge. Would twenty Truman dollars a week be enough?"

Maddy thinks for a moment. Truman dollars
the local
scrip
arenłt worth a whole lot, but therełs not much to spend them on. And
Robłs earning for both of them anyway. And a PhD ... that could be my ticket
back to civilization, couldnłt it? �I guess so," she says, feeling a sense of
vast relief: so therełs something shełs useful for besides raising the next
generation, after all. She tries to set aside the visions of herself,
distinguished and not too much older, gratefully accepting a professorłs chair
at an ivy league university. �When do I start?"

Chapter Nine: On the Beach

Mishałs first impressions of the disturbingly familiar alien
continent are of an oppressively humid heat, and the stench of decaying
jellyfish.

The Sergei Korolev floats at anchor in the river estuary, a
huge streamlined visitor from another world. Stubby fins stick out near the
waterline, like a seaplane with clipped wings: gigantic Kuznetsov atomic
turbines in pods ride on booms to either side of its high-ridged back, either
side of the launch/recovery catapults for its parasite MiG fighter-bombers, aft
of the broad curve of the ekranoplanłs bridge. Near the waterline, a boat bay
is open: a naval spetsnaz team is busy loading their kit into the landing craft
that will ferry them to the small camp on the beach. Misha, who stands just
above the waterline, turns away from the giant ground effect ship and watches
his commander, who is staring inland with a faint expression of worry. �Those
trees
awfully close, arenłt they?" Gagarin says, with the carefully studied
stupidity that saw him through the first dangerous years after his patron
Khrushchevłs fall.

�That is indeed what captain Kirov is taking care of,"
replies Gorodin, playing his role of foil to the colonel-generalłs sardonic
humor. And indeed shadowy figures in olive-green battle dress are stalking in
and out of the trees, carefully laying tripwires and screamers in an arc around
the beachhead. He glances to the left, where a couple of sailors with assault
rifles stand guard, eyes scanning the jungle. �I wouldnłt worry unduly sir."

�Iłll still be happier when the outer perimeter is secure.
And when Iłve got a sane explanation of this for the comrade General
Secretary." Gagarinłs humor evaporates: he turns and walks along the beach,
towards the large tent thatłs already gone up to provide shelter from the heat
of noon. The bar of solid sunlight
what passes for sunlight here
is already at
maximum length, glaring like a rod of white-hot steel that impales the disk.
(Some of the more superstitious call it the axle of heaven. Part of Gorodinłs
job is to discourage such non-materialist backsliding.)

The tent awning is pegged back: inside it, Gagarin and Misha
find Major Suvurov and Academician Borisovitch leaning over a map. Already the
scientific film crew
a bunch of dubious civilians from the TASS agency
are busy
in a corner, preparing cans for shooting. �Ah, Oleg, Mikhail." Gagarin summons
up a professionally photogenic smile. �Getting anywhere?"

Borisovitch, a slight, stoop-shouldered type who looks more
like a janitor than a world-famous scientist, shrugs. �We were just talking
about going along to the archaeological site, General. Perhaps youłd like to
come, too?"

Misha looks over his shoulder at the map: itłs drawn in
pencil, and therełs an awful lot of white space on it, but what theyłve surveyed
so far is disturbingly familiar in outline
familiar enough to have given them
all a number of sleepless nights even before they came ashore. Someone has
scribbled a dragon coiling in a particularly empty corner of the void.

�How large is the site?" asks Yuri.

�Donłt know, sir." Major Suvurov grumps audibly, as if the
lack of concrete intelligence on the alien ruins is a personal affront. �We
havenłt found the end of it yet. But it matches what we know already."

�The aerial survey
" Mikhail coughs, delicately. �If youłd
let me have another flight I could tell you more, General. I believe it may be
possible to define the city limits narrowly, but the trees make it hard to
tell."

�Iłd give you the flight if only I had the aviation fuel,"
Gagarin explains patiently. �A chopper can burn its own weight in fuel in a day
of surveying, and we have to haul everything out here from Archangel. In fact,
when we go home wełre leaving most of our flight-ready aircraft behind, just so
that on the next trip out we can carry more fuel."

�I understand." Mikhail doesnłt look happy. �As Oleg Ivanovitch
says, we donłt know how far it reaches. But I think when you see the ruins
youłll understand why we need to come back here. Nobodyłs found anything like
this before."

�Old Capitalist Man." Misha smiles thinly. �I suppose."

�Presumably." Borisovitch shrugs. �Whatever, we need to
bring archaeologists. And a mass spectroscope for carbon dating. And other
stuff." His face wrinkles unhappily. �They were here back when we would still
have been living in caves!"

�Except we werenłt," Gagarin says under his breath. Misha
pretends not to notice.

By the time they leave the tent, the marines have got the
Korolevłs two BRDMs ashore. The big balloon-tired armored cars sit on the beach
like monstrous amphibians freshly emerged from some primeval sea. Gagarin and
Gorodin sit in the back of the second vehicle with the academician and the film
crew: the lead BRDM carries their spetsnaz escort team. They maintain a dignified
silence as the convoy rumbles and squeaks across the beach, up the gently
sloping hillside, and then down towards the valley with the ruins.

The armored cars stop and doors open. Everyone is relieved
by the faint breeze that cracks the oven-heat of the interior. Gagarin walks
over to the nearest ruin
remnants of a wall, waist-high
and stands, hands on
hips, looking across the wasteland.

�Concrete," says Borisovitch, holding up a lump of crumbled
not-stone from the foot of the wall for Yuri to see.

�Indeed." Gagarin nods. �Any idea what this was?"

�Not yet." The camera crew is already filming, heading down
a broad boulevard between rows of crumbling foundations. �Only the concrete has
survived, and itłs mostly turned to limestone. This is old."

�Hmm." The First Cosmonaut walks round the stump of wall and
steps down to the foundation layer behind it, looking around with interest.
�Interior column here, four walls
theyłre worn down, arenłt they? This stuff
that looks like a red stain. Rebar? Found any intact ones?"

�Again, not yet sir," says Borisovitch. �We havenłt looked
everywhere yet, but ..."

�Indeed." Gagarin scratches his chin idly. �Am I imagining
it or are the walls all lower on that side?" He points north, deeper into the
sprawling maze of overgrown rubble.

�Youłre right sir. No theory for it, though."

�You donłt say." Gagarin walks north from the five-sided
buildingłs ruin, looks around. �This was a road?"

�Once, sir. It was nine meters wide
there seems to have been
derelict ground between the houses, if thatłs what they were, and the road
itself. �

�Nine meters, you say." Gorodin and the academician hurry to
follow him as he strikes off, up the road. �Interesting stonework here, donłt
you think, Misha?"

�Yessir. Interesting stonework."

Gagarin stops abruptly and kneels. �Why is it cracked like
this? Hey, therełs sand down there. And, um. Glass? Looks like itłs melted. Ah,
trinitite."

�Sir?"

Borisovitch leans forward. �Thatłs odd."

�What is?" asks Misha, but before he gets a reply both
Gagarin and the researcher are up again and off towards another building.

�Look. The north wall." Gagarinłs found another chunk of wall,
this one a worn stump thatłs more than a meter high: he looks unhappy.

�Sir? Are you alright?" Misha stares at him. Then he notices
the academician is also silent, and looking deeply perturbed. �Whatłs wrong?"

Gagarin extends a finger, points at the wall. �You can just
see him if you look close enough. How long would it take to fade, Mikhail? How
many years have we missed them by?"

The academician licks his lips: �At least two thousand
years, sir. Concrete cures over time, but it takes a very long time indeed to
turn all the way to limestone. and then therełs the weathering process to take
account of. But the surface erosion ... yes, that could fix the image from the
flash. Perhaps. Iłd need to ask a few colleagues back home."

�Whatłs wrong?" the political officer repeats, puzzled.

The first cosmonaut grins humorlessly. �Better get your
Geiger counter, Misha, and see if the ruins are still hot. Looks like wełre not
the only people on the disk with a geopolitical problem ..."

Chapter Ten: Been Here Before

Brundle has finally taken the time to pull Gregor aside and
explain whatłs going on; Gregor is not amused.

�Sorry you walked into it cold," says Brundle. �But I
figured it would be best for you to see for yourself." He speaks with a Midwestern
twang, and a flatness of affect that his colleagues sometimes mistake for signs
of an underlying psychopathology.

�See what, in particular?" Gregor asks sharply. �What, in particular?"
Gregor tends to repeat himself, changing only the intonation, when hełs
disturbed. Hełs human enough to recognize it as a bad habit but still finds it
difficult to suppress the reflex.

Brundle pauses on the footpath, looks around to make sure
therełs nobody within earshot. The Mall is nearly empty today, and only a humid
breeze stirs the waters on the pool. �Tell me what you think."

Gregor thinks for a moment, then summons up his full command
of the local language: itłs good practice. �The boys in the big house are
asking for a CAB. It means someonełs pulled his head out of his ass for long
enough to realize theyłve got worse things to worry about than being shafted by
the Soviets. Somethingłs happened to make them realize they need a policy for
dealing with the abductors. This is against doctrine, we need to do something
about it fast before they start asking the right questions. Somethingłs shaken
them up, something secret, some HUMINT source from the wrong side of the
curtain, perhaps. Could it be that man Gordievsky? But they havenłt quite
figured out what being here means. Sagan
does his presence mean what I think it
does?"

�Yes," Brundle says tersely.

�Oh dear." A reflex trips and Gregor takes off his
spectacles and polishes them nervously on his tie before replacing them. �Is it
just him, or does it go further?" He leaves the rest of the sentence unspoken
by convention
is it just him you think wełll have to silence?

�Further." Brundle tends to talk out of the side of his
mouth when hełs agitated, and from his current expression Gregor figures hełs
really upset. �Sagan and his friends at Cornell have been using the Arecibo
dish to listen to the neighbors. This wasnłt anticipated. Now theyłre asking
for permission to beam a signal at the nearest of the other disks. Straight up,
more or less; ętalk to us.ł Unfortunately Sagan is well-known, which is why he
caught the attention of our nominal superiors. Meanwhile, the Soviets have
found something that scared them. CIA didnłt hear about it through the usual
assets
they contacted the State Department via the embassy, theyłre that
scared." Brundle pauses a moment. �Sagan and his buddies donłt know about that,
of course."

�Why has nobody shot them already?" Gregor asks coldly.

Brundle shrugs. �We pulled the plug on their funding just in
time. If we shot them as well someone might notice. Everything could go
nonlinear while we were trying to cover it up. You know the problem; this is a
semi-open society, inadequately controlled. A bunch of astronomers get together
on their own initiative
academic conference, whatever
and decide to spend a
couple of thousand bucks of research grant money from NIST to establish
communications with the nearest disk. How are we supposed to police that kind
of thing?"

�Shut down all their radio telescopes. At gunpoint, if necessary,
but I figure a power cut or a congressional committee would be just as
effective as leverage."

�Perhaps, but we donłt have the Sovietsł resources to work
with. Anyway, thatłs why I dragged Sagan in for the CAB. Itłs a Potemkin
village, you understand, to convince everybody he contacted that something is
being done, but wełre going to have to figure out how to shut him up."

�Sagan is the leader of the ętalk-to-us, alien godsł crowd,
I take it."

�Yes."

�Well." Gregor considers his next words carefully. �Assuming
hełs still clean and uncontaminated, we can turn him or we can ice him. If
wełre going to turn him we need to do it convincingly
full Tellerization
and
wełll need to come up with a convincing rationale. Use him to evangelize the
astronomical community into shutting up or haring off in the wrong direction.
Like Heisenberg and the Nazi nuclear weapons program." He snaps his fingers.
�Why donłt we tell him the truth? At least, something close enough to it to
confuse the issue completely?"

�Because hełs a member of the Federation of American Scientists
and he wonłt believe anything we tell him without independent confirmation,"
Brundle mutters through one side of his mouth. �Thatłs the trouble with using a
government agency as our cover story."

They walk in silence for a minute. �I think it would be very
dangerous to underestimate him," says Gregor. �He could be a real asset to us,
but uncontrolled hełs very dangerous. If we canłt silence him we may have to
resort to physical violence. And with the number of colonies theyłve already
seeded, we canłt be sure of getting them all."

�Itemize the state of their understanding," Brundle says
abruptly. �I want a reality check. Iłll tell you whatłs new after you run down
the checklist."

�Okay." Gregor thinks for a minute. �Let us see. What everyone
knows is that between zero three fifteen and twelve seconds and thirteen
seconds Zulu time, on October second, sixty two, all the clocks stopped, the
satellites went away, the star map changed, nineteen airliners and forty six
ships in transit ended up in terminal trouble, and they found themselves
transferred from a globe in the Milky Way galaxy to a disk which we figure is
somewhere in the lesser Magellanic cloud. Meanwhile the Milky Way galaxy
we
assume thatłs what it is
has changed visibly. Lots of metal-depleted stars,
signs of macroscopic cosmic engineering, that sort of thing. The public
explanation is that the visitors froze time, skinned the earth, and plated it
over the disk. Luckily theyłre still bickering over whether the explanation is
Minskyłs copying, uh, hypothesis, or that guy Moravec with his digital
simulation theory."

�Indeed." Brundle kicks at a paving stone idly. �Now. What
is your forward analysis?"

�Well, sooner or later theyłre going to turn dangerous. They
have the historic predisposition towards teleological errors, to belief in a
giant omnipotent creator and a purpose to their existence. If they start
speculating about the intentions of a transcendent intelligence, itłs likely
theyłll eventually ask whether their presence here is symptomatic of Godłs
desire to probe the circumstances of its own birth. After all, we have evidence
of how many technological species on the disk, ten million, twelve? Replicated
many times, in some cases. They might put it together with their concept of
manifest destiny and conclude that they are, in fact, doomed to give birth to
God. Which is an entirely undesirable conclusion for them to reach from our
point of view. Teleologists being bad neighbors, so to speak."

�Yes indeed," Brundle says thoughtfully, then titters
quietly to himself for a moment.

�This isnłt the first time theyłve avoided throwing around
H-bombs in bulk. Thatłs unusual for primate civilizations. If they keep doing
it, they could be dangerous."

�Dangerous is relative," says Brundle. He titters again.
Things move inside his mouth.

�Donłt do that!" Gregor snaps. He glances round
instinctively, but nothing happens.

�Youłre jumpy." Brundle frowns. �Stop worrying so much. We
donłt have much longer here."

�Are we being ordered to move? Or to prepare a sterilization
strike?"

�Not yet." Brundle shrugs. �We have further research to continue
with before a decision is reached. The Soviets have made a discovery. Their
crewed exploration program. The Korolev lucked out."

�They
" Gregor tenses. �What did they find?" He knows about
the big nuclear-powered Ekranoplan, the dragon of the Caspian, searching the
seven oceans for new worlds to conquer. He even knows about the small fleet
theyłre trying to build at Archangelsk, the ruinous expense of it. But this is
new. �What did they find?"

Brundle grins humorlessly. �They found ruins. Then they
spent another eight weeks mapping the coastline. Theyłve confirmed what they
found, they sent the State Department photographs, survey details
the lot."
Brundle gestures at the Cuban War monument, the huge granite column dominating
the Mall, its shadow pointing towards the Capitol. �They found Washington DC,
in ruins. One hundred and forty thousand miles that way." He points due north.
�Theyłre not total idiots, and itłs the first time theyłve found one of their
own species-transfer cognates. They might be well on their way to understanding
the truth, but luckily our comrades in Moscow have that side of the affair
under control. But they communicated their discovery to the CIA before it could
be suppressed, which raises certain headaches.

�We must make sure that nobody here asks why. So I want you
to start by dealing with Sagan."

Chapter Eleven: Collecting Jar

Itłs noon, and the rippling heat haze turns the horizon to
fog in the distance. Maddy tries not to move too much: the cycads cast
imperfect shadows, and she can feel the Venetian blinds of light burning into
her pale skin. She sighs slightly as she hefts the heavy canvas sample bag out
of the back of the Land Rover: John will be needing it soon, once hełs finished
photographing the mock-termite nests. Itłs their third field trip together,
their furthest dash into the outback, and shełs already getting used to working
with John. Hełs surprisingly easy to get on with, because hełs so absorbed in
his work that hełs refreshingly free of social expectations. If she didnłt know
better she could almost let her guard down and start thinking of him as a
friend, not an employer.

The heat makes her mind drift: she tries to remember what sparked
her most recent quarrel with Bob, but it seems so distant and irrelevant
now
like home, like Bob arguing with her father, like their hurried
registry-office wedding and furtive emigration board hearing. All that makes
sense now is the stifling heat, the glare of not-sunlight, John working with
his camera out in the noonday sun where only mad dogs and Englishmen dare go.
Ah, it was the washing. Who was going to do the washing while Maddy was away on
the two-day field trip? Bob seemed to think he was doing her a favor, cooking
for himself and taking his clothes to the single over-used public laundry.
(Some year real soon now theyłd get washing machines, but not yet ...) Bob
seemed to think he was being big-hearted, not publicly getting jealous all over
her having a job that took her away from home with a male superior who was
notoriously single. Bob seemed to think he was some kind of progressive
liberated man, for putting up with a wife who had read Betty Freidan and didnłt
shave her armpits. Fuck you, Bob, she thinks tiredly, and tugs the heavy strap
of the sample case over her shoulder and turns to head in Johnłs direction.
Therełll be time to sort things out with Bob later. For now, shełs got a job to
do.

John is leaning over the battered camera, peering through
its viewfinder in search of ... something. �Whatłs up?" she asks.

�Mock termites are up," he says, very seriously. �See the entrances?"
The mock termites are what theyłve come to take a look at
nobodyłs reported on
them from close up, but theyłre very visible as soon as you venture into the
dusty plain. She peers at the foot of the termite mound, a baked clay hump in
the soil that seems to writhe with life. There are little pipe-like holes,
tunnels almost, emerging from the base of the mound, and little black
mock-termites dancing in and out of the holes in never-ending streams. Little
is relative
theyłre almost as large as mice. �Donłt touch them," he warns.

�Are they poisonous?" asks Maddy.

�Donłt know, donłt want to find out this far from the hospital.
The fact that there are no vertebrates here
" he shrugs. �We know theyłre
poisonous to other insectoida."

Maddy puts the sample case down. �But nobodyłs been bitten,
or died, or anything."

�Not that we know of." He folds back the lid of the case and
she shivers, abruptly cold, imagining bleached bones lying unburied in the long
grass of the inland plain, where no humans will live for centuries to come.
�Itłs essential to take care out here. We could be missing for days before
anyone noticed, and a search party wouldnłt necessarily find us, even with the
journey plan we filed."

�Okay." She watches as he takes out an empty sample jar and
a label and carefully notes down time and date, distance and direction from the
milestone at the heart of Fort Eisenhower. Thirty six miles. They might as well
be on another planet. �Youłre taking samples?"

He glances round: �of course." Then he reaches into the side
pocket of the bag and removes a pair of heavy gloves, which he proceeds to put
on, and a trowel. �If you could put the case down over there?"

Maddy glances inside the case as he kneels down by the mock
termite mound. Itłs full of jars with blank labels, neatly segregated,
impassable quarantine zones for improbable species. She looks round. John is
busy with the mock-termite mound. Hełs neatly lopped the top off it: inside,
the earth is a squirming mass of
things. Black things, white things like bits
of string, and a pulp of half-decayed vegetable matter that smells damply of
humus. He probes the mound delicately with the trowel, seeking something.
�Look," he calls over his shoulder. �Itłs a queen!"

Maddy hurries over. �Really?" she asks. Following his gloved
finger, she sees something the size of her left forearm, white and glistening.
It twitches, expelling something round, and she feels her gorge rise. �Ugh!"

�Itłs just a happy mother," John says calmly. He lowers the
trowel, works it in under the queen and lifts her
and a collection of
hangers-on, courtiers and bodyguards alike
over the jar. He tips, he shakes,
and he twists the lid into place. Maddy stares at the chaos within. What is it
like to be a mock termite, suddenly snatched up and transplanted to a mockery
of home? Whatłs it like to see the sun in an electric light bulb, to go about
your business, blindly pumping out eggs and eating and foraging for leaves,
under the eyes of inscrutable collectors? She wonders if Bob would understand
if she tried to tell him. John stands up and lowers the glass jar into the
sample case, then freezes. �Ouch," he says, and pulls his left glove off.

�Ouch." He says it again, more slowly. �I missed a small
one. Maddy, medical kit, please. Atropine and neostigmine."

She sees his eyes, pinprick pupils in the noonday glare, and
dashes to the Land Rover. The medical kit, olive green with a red cross on a
white circle, seems to mock her: she rushes it over to John, who is now sitting
calmly on the ground next to the sample case. �What do you need?" she asks.

John tries to point, but his gloved hand is shaking wildly.
He tries to pull it off, but the swollen muscles resist attempts to loosen the
glove. �Atropine
" A white cylinder, with a red arrow on one side: she quickly
reads the label, then pushes it hard against his thigh, feels something
spring-loaded explode inside it. John stiffens, then tries to stand up, the
automatic syringe still hanging from his leg. He staggers stiff-legged towards
the Land Rover and slumps into the passenger seat.

�Wait!" she demands. Tries to feel his wrist: �how many of
them bit you?"

His eyes roll. �Just one. Silly of me. No vertebrates." Then
he leans back. �Iłm going to try and hold on. Your first aid training."

Maddy gets the glove off, exposing fingers like angry red sausages:
but she canłt find the wound on his left hand, canłt find anything to suck the
poison out of. Johnłs breathing is labored and he twitches: he needs the
hospital but itłs at least a four hour drive away and she canłt look after him
while she drives. So she puts another syringe load of atropine into his leg and
waits with him for five minutes while he struggles for breath hoarsely, then
follows up with adrenalin and anything else she can think of thatłs good for
handling anaphylactic shock. �Get us back," he manages to wheeze at her between
emphysemic gasps. �Samples too."

After she gets him into the load bed of the truck, she
dashes over to the mock termite mound with the spare petrol can. She splashes
the best part of a gallon of fuel over the heap, coughing with the stink: she
caps the jerry can, drags it away from the mound, then strikes a match and
throws it flickering at the disordered insect kingdom. Therełs a soft whump as
the igniting gas sets the mound aflame: small shapes writhe and crisp beneath
an empty blue sky pierced by the glaring pinprick of S Doradus. Maddy doesnłt
stay to watch. She hauls the heavy sample case back to the Land Rover, loads it
into the trunk alongside John, and scurries back towards town as fast as she
can.

Shełs almost ten miles away before she remembers the camera,
left staring in cyclopean isolation at the scorched remains of the dead colony

Chapter Twelve: Homeward Bound

The big ground effect ship rumbles softly as it cruises
across the endless expanse of the Dzerzhinsky Ocean at nearly three hundred
knots, homeward bound at last. Misha sits in his cubby-hole
as shipboard
political officer he rates an office of his own
and sweats over his report with
the aid of a glass of Polish pear schnapps. Radio canłt punch through more than
a few thousand miles of air directly, however powerful the transmitters; on
earth they used to bounce signals off the ionosphere or the moon, but that
doesnłt work here
the other disks are too far away to use as relays. Therełs a
chain of transceiver buoys marching out across the ocean at two thousand
kilometer intervals, but the equipment is a pig to maintain, very expensive to
build, and nobody is even joking about stringing undersea cables across a
million kilometers of sea floor. Mishałs problem is that the expedition,
himself included, is effectively stranded back in the eighteenth century,
without even the telegraph to tie civilization together
which is a pretty
pickle to find yourself in when youłre the bearer of news that will make the
Politburo shit a brick. He desperately wants to be able to boost this up the
ladder a bit, but instead itłs going to be his name and his alone on the
masthead.

�Bastards. Why couldnłt they give us a signal rocket or
two?" He gulps back whatłs left of the schnapps and winds a fresh sandwich of
paper and carbon into his top-secret-eyes-only typewriter.

�Because it would weigh too much, Misha," the captain says
right behind his left shoulder, causing him to jump and bang his head on the
overhead locker.

When Misha stops swearing and Gagarin stops chuckling, the
Party man carefully turns his stack of typescript face down on the desk then
politely gestures the captain into his office. �What can I do for you, boss?
And what do you mean, theyłre too heavy?"

Gagarin shrugs. �We looked into it. Sure, we could put a
tape recorder and a transmitter into an ICBM and shoot it up to twenty thousand
kilometers. Trouble is, itłd fall down again in an hour or so. The fastest we
could squirt the message, it would cost about ten rubles a character
more to
the point, even a lightweight rocket would weigh as much as our entire payload.
Maybe in ten years." He sits down. �How are you doing with that report?"

Misha sighs. �How am I going to explain to Brezhnev that the
Americans arenłt the only mad bastards with hydrogen bombs out here? That wełve
found the new world and the new world is just like the old world, except it
glows in the dark? And the only communists wełve found so far are termites with
guns?" For a moment he looks haggard. �Itłs been nice knowing you, Yuri."

�Come on! It canłt be that bad
" Gagarinłs normally sunny
disposition is clouded.

�You try and figure out how to break the news to them."
After identifying the first set of ruins, theyłd sent one of their MiGs out,
loaded with camera pods and fuel: a thousand kilometers inland it had seen the
same ominous story of nuclear annihilation visited on an alien civilization:
ruins of airports, railroads, cities, factories. A familiar topography in
unfamiliar form.

This was New York
once, thousands of years before a giant
stamped the bottom of Manhattan island into the sea bed
and that was once
Washington DC. Sure therełd been extra skyscrapers, but theyłd hardly needed
the subsequent coastal cruise to be sure that what they were looking at was the
same continent as the old capitalist enemy, thousands of years and millions of
kilometers beyond a nuclear war. �Wełre running away like a dog thatłs seen the
devil ride out, hoping that he doesnłt see us and follow us home for a new
winter hat."

Gagarin frowns. �Excuse me?" He points to the bottle of pear
schnapps.

�You are my guest." Misha pours the First Cosmonaut a glass
then tops up his own. �It opens certain ideological conflicts, Yuri. And nobody
wants to be the bearer of bad news."

�Ideological
such as?"

�Ah." Misha takes a mouthful. �Well, we have so far avoided
nuclear annihilation and invasion by the forces of reactionary terror during
the Great Patriotic War, but only by the skin of our teeth. Now, doctrine has
it that any alien species advanced enough to travel in space is almost certain
to have discovered socialism, if not true communism, no? And that the enemies
of socialism wish to destroy socialism, and take its resources for themselves.
But what wełve seen here is evidence of a different sort. This was America. It
follows that somewhere nearby there is a continent that was home to another
Soviet Union
two thousand years ago. But this America has been wiped out, and
our elder Soviet brethren are not in evidence and they have not colonized this
other-America
what can this mean?"

Gagarinłs brow wrinkled. �Theyłre dead too? I mean, that the
alternate-Americans wiped them out in an act of colonialist imperialist
aggression but did not survive their treachery," he adds hastily.

Mishałs lips quirk in something approaching a grin: �Better
work on getting your terminology right first time before you see Brezhnev,
comrade," he says. �Yes, you are correct on the facts, but there are matters of
interpretation to consider. No colonial exploitation has occurred. So either
the perpetrators were also wiped out, or perhaps ... well, it opens up several
very dangerous avenues of thought. Because if New Soviet Man isnłt home
hereabouts, it implies that something happened to them, doesnłt it? Where are
all the true Communists? If it turns out that they ran into hostile aliens,
then ... well, theory says that aliens should be good brother socialists.
Theory and ten rubles will buy you a bottle of vodka on this one. Something is
badly wrong with our understanding of the direction of history."

�I suppose therełs no question that therełs something we
donłt know about," Gagarin adds in the ensuing silence, almost as an
afterthought.

�Yes. And thatłs a fig-leaf of uncertainty we can hide
behind, I hope." Misha puts his glass down and stretches his arms behind his
head, fingers interlaced until his knuckles crackle. �Before we left, our
agents reported signals picked up in America from
damn, I should not be telling
you this without authorization. Pretend I said nothing." His frown returns.

�You sound as if youłre having dismal thoughts," Gagarin
prods.

�I am having dismal thoughts, comrade colonel-general, very
dismal thoughts indeed. We have been behaving as if this world we occupy is
merely a new geopolitical game board, have we not? Secure in the knowledge that
brother socialists from beyond the stars brought us here to save us from the
folly of the imperialist aggressors, or that anyone else we meet will be either
barbarians or good communists, we have fallen into the pattern of an earlier
age
expanding in all directions, recognizing no limits, assuming our manifest
destiny. But what if there are limits? Not a barbed wire fence or a line in the
sand, but something more subtle. Why does history demand success of us? What we
know is the right way for humans on a human world, with an industrial society,
to live. But this is not a human world. And what if itłs a world wełre not destined
to succeed? Or what if the very circumstances which gave rise to Marxism are
themselves transient, in the broader scale? What if there is a
youłll pardon
me
a materialist God? We know this is our own far future we are living in. Why
would any power vast enough to build this disk bring us here?"

Gagarin shakes his head. �There are no limits, my friend,"
he says, a trifle condescendingly: �If there were, do you think we would have
gotten this far?"

Misha thumps his desk angrily. �Why do you think they put us
somewhere where your precious rockets donłt work?" he demands. �Get up on high,
one push of rocket exhaust and you could be halfway to anywhere! But down here
we have to slog through the atmosphere. We canłt get away! Does that sound like
a gift from one friend to another?"

�The way you are thinking sounds paranoid to me," Gagarin
insists. �Iłm not saying youłre wrong, mind you: only
could you be overwrought?
Finding those bombed cities affected us all, I think."

Misha glances out of his airliner-sized porthole: �I fear
therełs more to it than that. Wełre not unique, comrade; wełve been here
before. And we all died. Wełre a fucking duplicate, Yuri Alexeyevich, therełs a
larger context to all this. And Iłm scared by what the politburo will decide to
do when they see the evidence. Or what the Americans will do ..."

Chapter Thirteen: Last Supper

Returning to Manhattan is a comfort of sorts for Gregor, after
the exposed plazas and paranoid open vistas of the capital. Unfortunately he
wonłt be here for long
he is, after all, on an assignment from Brundle
but
hełll take what comfort he can from the deep stone canyons, the teeming
millions scurrying purposefully about at ground level. The Big Apple is a hive
of activity, as always, teeming purposeful trails of information leading the
busy workers about their tasks. Gregorłs nostrils flare as he stands on the sidewalk
on Lexington and East 100th. Therełs an Italian restaurant Brundle recommended
when he gave Gregor his briefing papers. �Their spaghetti alł polpette is to
die for," Brundle told him. Thatłs probably true, but whatłs inarguable is that
itłs only a couple of blocks away from the offices of the Exobiology Annex to
Cornellłs New York Campus, where Sagan is head of department.

Gregor opens the door and glances around. A waiter makes eye
contact. �Table for one?"

�Two. Iłm meeting
ah." Gregor sees Sagan sitting in a booth
at the back of the restaurant and waves hesitantly. �Hełs already here."

Gregor nods and smiles at Sagan as he sits down opposite the
professor. The waiter drifts over and hands him a menu. �Have you ordered?"

�I just got here." Sagan smiles guardedly. �Iłm not sure why
you wanted this meeting, Mr., uh, Samsa, isnłt it?" Clearly he thinks he gets
the joke
a typical mistake for a brilliant man to make.

Gregor allows his lower lip to twitch. �Believe me, Iłd
rather it wasnłt necessary," he says, entirely truthfully. �But the climate in
DC isnłt really conducive to clear thought or long-range planning
I mean, we
operate under constraints established by the political process. Wełre given
questions to answer, wełre not encouraged to come up with new questions. So
what Iłd like to do is just have an open-ended informal chat about anything
that you think is worth considering. About our situation, I mean. In case you
can open up any avenues we ought to be investigating that arenłt on the map
right now."

Sagan leans forward. �Thatłs all very well," he says
agreeably, �but Iłm a bit puzzled by the policy process itself. We havenłt yet
made contact with any nonhuman sapients. I thought your committee was supposed
to be assessing our policy options for when contact finally occurs. It sounds
to me as if youłre telling me that we already have a policy, and youłre looking
to find out if itłs actually a viable one. Is that right?"

Gregor stares at him. �I can neither confirm nor deny that,"
he says evenly. Which is the truth. �But if you want to take some guesses I can
either discuss things or clam up when you get too close," he adds, the muscles
around his eyes crinkling conspiratorially.

�Aha." Sagan grins back at him boyishly. �I get it." His
smile vanishes abruptly. �Let me guess. The policy is predicated on MAD, isnłt
it?"

Gregor shrugs then glances sideways, warningly: the waiter
is approaching. �Iłll have a glass of the house red," he says, sending the
fellow away as fast as possible. �Deterrence presupposes communication, donłt
you think?" Gregor asks.

�True." Sagan picks up his bread knife and absent-mindedly
twirls it between finger and thumb. �But itłs how the idiots
excuse me, our
elected leaders
treat threats, and I canłt see them responding to tool-using
non-humans as anything else." He stares at Gregor. �Let me see if Iłve got this
right. Your committee pulled me in because there has, in fact, been a contact
between humans and non-human intelligences
or at least some sign that there are
NHIs out there. The existing policy for dealing with it was drafted some time
in the sixties under the influence of the hangover left by the Cuban war, and
it basically makes the conservative assumption that any aliens are
green-skinned Soviets and the only language they talk is nuclear annihilation.
This policy is now seen to be every bit as bankrupt as it sounds but nobody
knows what to replace it with because therełs no data on the NHIs. Am I right?"

�I can neither confirm nor deny that," says Gregor.

Sagan sighs. �Okay, play it your way." He closes his menu.
�Ready to order?"

�I believe so." Gregor looks at him. �The spaghetti alł
polpette is really good here," he adds.

�Really?" Sagan smiles. �Then Iłll try it."

They order, and Gregor waits for the waiter to depart before
he continues. �Suppose therełs an alien race out there. More than one. You know
about the multiple copies of Earth. The uninhabited ones. Wełve been here
before. Now letłs see ... suppose the aliens arenłt like us. Some of them are
recognizable, tribal primates who use tools made out of metal, sea-dwelling
ensemble entities who communicate by ultrasound. But others
most of them
are
social insects who use amazingly advanced biological engineering to grow what
they need. Therełs some evidence that theyłve colonized some of the empty
Earths. Theyłre aggressive and territorial and theyłre so different that ...
well, for one thing we think they donłt actually have conscious minds except
when they need them. They control their own genetic code and build living
organisms tailored to whatever tasks they want carrying out. Therełs no evidence
that they want to talk to us, and some evidence that they may have emptied some
of those empty Earths of their human population. And because of their, um,
decentralized ecosystem and biological engineering, conventional policy
solutions wonłt work. The military ones, I mean."

Gregor watches Saganłs face intently as he describes the
scenario. There is a slight cooling of the exobiologistłs cheeks as his peripheral
arteries contract with shock: his pupils dilate and his respiration rate
increases. Sour pheromones begin to diffuse from his sweat ducts and organs in
Gregorłs nasal sinuses respond to them.

�Youłre kidding?" Sagan half-asks. He sounds disappointed
about something.

�I wish I was." Gregor generates a faint smile and exhales
breath laden with oxytocin and other peptide messengers fine-tuned to human
metabolism. In the kitchen, the temporary chef who is standing in for the
regular one
off sick, due to a bout of food poisoning
will be preparing Saganłs
dish. Humans are creatures of habit: once his meal arrives the astronomer will
eat it, taking solace in good food. (Such a shame about the chef.) �Theyłre not
like us. SETI assumes that NHIs are conscious and welcome communication with
humans and, in fact, that humans arenłt atypical. But letłs suppose that humans
are atypical. The human species has only been around for about a third of a
million years, and has only been making metal tools and building settlements
for ten thousand. What if the default for sapient species is measured in the
millions of years? And they develop strong defense mechanisms to prevent other
species moving into their territory?"

�Thatłs incredibly depressing," Sagan admits after a
minutełs contemplation. �Iłm not sure I believe it without seeing some more
evidence. Thatłs why we wanted to use the Arecibo dish to send a message, you
know. The other disks are far enough away that wełre safe, whatever they send
back: they canłt possibly throw missiles at us, not with a surface escape
velocity of twenty thousand miles per second, and if they send unpleasant
messages we can stick our fingers in our ears."

The waiter arrives, and slides his entree in front of Sagan.

�Why do you say that?" asks Gregor.

�Well, for one thing, it doesnłt explain the disk. We
couldnłt make anything like it
I suppose I was hoping wełd have some idea of
who did? But from what youłre telling me, insect hives with advanced
biotechnology ... that doesnłt sound plausible."

�We have some information on that." Gregor smiles reassuringly.
�For the time being, the important thing to recognize is that the species who
are on the disk are roughly equivalent to ourselves in technological and
scientific understanding. Give or take a couple of hundred years."

�Oh." Sagan perks up a bit.

�Yes," Gregor continues. �We have some information
I canłt
describe our sources
but anyway. Youłve seen the changes to the structure of
the galaxy we remember. How would you characterize that?"

�Hmm." Sagan is busy with a mouthful of delicious tetrodotoxin-laced
meatballs. �Itłs clearly a Kardashev type-III civilization, harnessing the
energy of an entire galaxy. What else?"

Gregor smiles. �Ah, those Russians, obsessed with coal and
steel production! This is the information age, Dr. Sagan. What would the informational
resources of a galaxy look like, if they were put to use? And to what use would
an unimaginably advanced civilization put them?"

Sagan looks blank for a moment, his fork pausing halfway to
his mouth, laden with a deadly promise. �I donłt see
ah!" He smiles, finishes
his forkful, and nods. �Do I take it that wełre living in a nature reserve? Or
perhaps an archaeology experiment?"

Gregor shrugs. �Humans are time-binding animals," he explains.
�So are all the other tool-using sentient species we have been able to
characterize; it appears to be the one common factor, they like to understand
their past as a guide to their future. We have sources that have ... think of a
game of Chinese whispers? The belief that is most widely held is that the disk
was made by the agencies we see at work restructuring the galaxy, to house
their, ah, experiments in ontology. To view their own deep past, before they
became whatever they are, and to decide whether the path through which they
emerged was inevitable or a low probability outcome. The reverse face of the
Drake equation, if you like."

Sagan shivers. �Are you telling me wełre just ... memories?
Echoes from the past, reconstituted and replayed some unimaginable time in the
future? That this entire monstrous joke of a cosmological experiment is just a
sideshow?"

�Yes, Dr. Sagan," Gregor says soothingly. �After all, the
disk is not so large compared to an entire galaxy, donłt you think? And I would
not say the sideshow is unimportant. Do you ever think about your own childhood?
And wonder whether the you that sits here in front of me today was the
inevitable product of your upbringing? Or could you have become someone
completely different
an airline pilot, for example, or a banker? Alternatively,
could someone else have become you? What set of circumstances combine to
produce an astronomer and exobiologist? Why should a God not harbour the same
curiosity?"

�So youłre saying itłs introspection, with a purpose. The
galactic civilization wants to see its own birth."

�The galactic hive mind," Gregor soothes, amused at how easy
it is to deal with Sagan. �Remember, information is key. Why should human-level
intelligences be the highest level?" All the while he continues to breathe
oxytocin and other peptide neurotransmitters across the table towards Sagan.
�Donłt let such speculations ruin your meal," he adds, phrasing it as an
observation rather than an implicit command.

Sagan nods and returns to using his utensils. �Thatłs very
thought-provoking," he says, as he gratefully raises the first mouthful to his
lips. �If this is based on hard intelligence it ... well, Iłm worried. Even if
itłs inference, I have to do some thinking about this. I hadnłt really been
thinking along these lines."

�Iłm sure if therełs an alien menace wełll defeat it,"
Gregor assures him as he masticates and swallows the neurotoxin-laced meatball
in tomato sauce. And just for the moment, he is content to relax in the luxury
of truth: �Just leave everything to me and Iłll see that your concerns are
communicated to the right people. Then wełll do something about your dish and
everything will work out for the best."

Chapter Fourteen: Poor prognosis

Maddy visits John regularly in hospital. At first itłs a
combination of natural compassion and edgy guilt; John is pretty much alone on
this continent of lies, being both socially and occupationally isolated, and
Maddy can convince herself that shełs helping him feel in touch, motivating him
to recover. Later on itłs a necessity of work
shełs keeping the lab going, even
feeding the squirming white horror in the earth-filled glass jar, in Johnłs
absence
and partly boredom. Itłs not as if Bobłs at home much. His work
assignments frequently take him to new construction sites up and down the
coast. When he is home they frequently argue into the small hours, picking at
the scabs on their relationship with the sullen pinch-faced resentment of a
couple fifty years gone in despair at the wrongness of their shared direction.
So she escapes by visiting John and tells herself that shełs doing it to keep
his spirits up as he learns to use his prostheses.

�You shouldnłt blame yourself," he tells her one afternoon
when he notices her staring. �If you hadnłt been around Iłd be dead. Neither of
us was to know."

�Well." Maddy winces as he sits up, then raises the tongs to
his face to nudge the grippers apart before reaching for the water-glass. �That
wonłt
" She changes direction in mid sentence
"make it easier to cope."

�Wełre all going to have to cope," he says gnomically,
before relaxing back against the stack of pillows. Hełs a lot better now than
he was when he first arrived, delirious with his hand swollen and blackening,
but the after-effects of the mock termite venom have weakened him in other
ways. �I want to know why those things donłt live closer to the coast. I mean,
if they did wełd never have bothered with the place. After the first landing,
that is." He frowns. �If you can ask at the crown surveyorłs office if there
are any relevant records, that would help."

�The crown surveyorłs not very helpful." Thatłs an understatement.
The crown surveyor is some kind of throwback; last time she went in to his
office to ask about maps of the northeast plateau hełd asked her whether her
husband approved of her running around like this. �Maybe when youłre out of
here." She moves her chair closer to the side of the bed.

�Doctor Smythe says next week, possibly Monday or Tuesday."
John sounds frustrated. �The pins and needles are still there." Itłs not just
his right hand, lopped off below the elbow and replaced with a crude affair of
padding and spring steel; the venom spread and some of his toes had to be
amputated. He was fitting when Maddy reached the hospital, four hours after he
was bitten. She knows she saved his life, that if hełd gone out alone hełd almost
certainly have been killed, so why does she feel so bad about it?

�Youłre getting better," Maddy insists, covering his left
hand with her own. �Youłll see." She smiles encouragingly.

�I wish
" For a moment John looks at her; then he shakes his
head minutely and sighs. He grips her hand with his fingers. They feel weak,
and she can feel them trembling with the effort. �Leave Johnson
" the
surveyor
"to me. I need to prepare an urgent report on the mock termites before
anyone else goes poking them."

�How much of a problem do you think theyłre going to be?"

�Deadly." He closes his eyes for a few seconds, then opens
them again. �Wełve got to map their population distribution. And tell the
governor-generalłs office. I counted twelve of them in roughly an acre, but
that was a rough sample and you canłt extrapolate from it. We also need to
learn whether theyłve got any unusual swarming behaviors
like army ants, for
example, or bees. Then we can start investigating whether any of our
insecticides work on them. If the governor wants to start spinning out
satellite towns next year, hełs going to need to know what to expect. Otherwise
people are going to get hurt." Or killed, Maddy adds silently.

John is very lucky to be alive: Doctor Smythe compared his
condition to a patient hełd once seen whołd been bitten by a rattler, and that
was the result of a single bite by a small one. If the continental interior is
full of the things, what are we going to do? Maddy wonders.

�Have you seen any sign of her majesty feeding?" John asks,
breaking into her train of thought.

Maddy shivers. �Turtle tree leaves go down well," she says
quietly. �And shełs given birth to two workers since wełve had her. They chew
the leaves to mulch then regurgitate it for her."

�Oh, really? Do they deliver straight into her mandibles?"

Maddy squeezes her eyes tight. This is the bit she was
really hoping John wouldnłt ask her about. �No," she says faintly.

�Really?" He sounds curious.

�I think youłd better see for yourself." Because therełs no
way in hell that Maddy is going to tell him about the crude wooden spoons the
mock termite workers have been crafting from the turtle tree branches, or the
feeding ritual, and what they did to the bumbler fly that got into the mock
termite pen through the chicken wire screen.

Hełll just have to see for himself.

Chapter Fifteen: Rushmore

The Korolev is huge for a flying machine but pretty small in
nautical terms. Yuri is mostly happy about this. Hełs a fighter jock at heart
and he canłt stand Navy bullshit. Still, itłs a far cry from the MiG-17s he
qualified in. It doesnłt have a cockpit, or even a flight deck
it has a bridge,
like a ship, with the pilots, flight engineers, navigators, and observers
sitting in a horseshoe around the captainłs chair. When itłs thumping across
the sea barely ten meters above the wave-tops at nearly five hundred kilometers
per hour, it rattles and shakes until the crewłs vision blurs. The big
reactor-powered turbines in the tail pods roar and the neutron detectors on the
turquoise radiation bulkhead behind them tick like demented death-watch
beetles: the rest of the crew are huddled down below in the nose, with as much
shielding between them and the engine rooms as possible. Itłs a white-knuckle
ride, and Yuri has difficulty resisting the urge to curl his hands into fists
because whenever he loses concentration his gut instincts are telling him to
grab the stick and pull up. The ocean is no aviatorłs friend, and skimming
across this infinite gray expanse between planet-sized land-masses forces
Gagarin to confront the fact that he is not, by instinct, a sailor.

Theyłre two days outbound from the new-old North America,
forty thousand kilometers closer to home and still weeks away even though
theyłre cutting the corner on their parabolic exploration track. The fatigue is
getting to him as he takes his seat next to Misha
who is visibly wilting from
his twelve hour shift at the con
and straps himself in. �Anything to report?"
He asks.

�I donłt like the look of the ocean ahead," says Misha. He
nods at the navigation station to Gagarinłs left: Shaw, the Irish ensign, sees
him and salutes.

�Permission to report, sir?" Gagarin nods. �Wełre coming up
on a thermocline boundary suggestive of another radiator wall, this time
surrounding uncharted seas. Dead reckoning says wełre on course for home but we
havenłt charted this route and the surface waters are getting much cooler. Any
time now we should be spotting the radiators, and then wełre going to have to
start keeping a weather eye out."

Gagarin sighs: exploring new uncharted oceans seemed almost
romantic at first, but now itłs a dangerous but routine task. �You have kept
the towed array at altitude?" he asks.

�Yes sir," Misha responds. The towed array is basically a
kite-born radar, tugged along behind the Korolev on the end of a kilometer of
steel cable to give them some warning of obstacles ahead. �Nothing showing
"

Right on cue, one of the radar operators raises a hand and
waves three fingers.

�
Correction, radiators ahoy, range three hundred, bearing
... okay, letłs see it."

�Maintain course," Gagarin announces. �Letłs throttle back
to two hundred once we clear the radiators, until we know what wełre running
into." He leans over to his left, watching over Shawłs shoulder.

The next hour is unpleasantly interesting. As they near the
radiator fins, the water and the air above it cool down. The denser air helps
the Korolev generate lift, which is good, but they need it, which is bad. The
sky turns gray and murky and rain falls in continuous sheets that hammer across
the armored bridge windows like machine gun fire. The ride becomes gusty as
well as bumpy, until Gagarin orders two of the nose turbines started just in
case they hit a down-draft. The big jet engines guzzle fuel and are usually shut
down in cruise flight, used only for take-off runs and extraordinary
situations. But punching through a cold front and a winter storm isnłt flying
as usual as far as Gagarinłs concerned, and the one nightmare all Ekranoplan
drivers face is running into a monster ocean wave nose-first at cruise speed.

Presently the navigators identify a path between two
radiator fins, and Gagarin authorizes it. Hełs beginning to relax as the huge
monoliths loom out of the gray clouds ahead when one of the sharp-eyed pilots shouts:
�Icebergs!"

�Fucking hell." Gagarin sits bolt upright. �Start all boost
engines! Bring up full power on both reactors! Lower flaps to nine degrees and
get us the hell out of this!" He turns to Shaw, his face gray. �Bring the towed
array aboard, now."

�Shit." Misha starts flipping switches on his console, which
doubles as damage control central. �Icebergs?"

The huge ground-effect ship lurches and roars as the third
pilot starts bleeding hot exhaust gasses from the running turbines to start the
other twelve engines. Theyłve probably got less than six hoursł fuel left, and
it takes fifteen minutes on all engines to get off the water, but Gagarinłs not
going to risk meeting an iceberg head-on in ground-effect. The Ekranoplan can
function as a huge, lumbering, ungainly sea-plane if it has to; but it doesnłt
have the engine power to do so on reactors alone, or to leap-frog floating mountains
of ice. And hitting an iceberg isnłt on Gagarinłs to-do list.

The rain sluices across the roof of the bridge and now the
sky is louring and dark, the huge walls of the radiator slabs bulking in
twilight to either side. The rain is freezing, supercooled droplets that smear
the Korolevłs wings with a lethal sheen of ice. �Where are the leading edge
heaters?" Gagarin asks. �Come on!"

�Working, sir," calls the number four pilot. Moments later
the treacherous rain turns to hail stones, rattling and booming but fundamentally
unlikely to stick to the flight surfaces and build up weight until it flips the
ship over. �I think wełre going to
"

A white and ghostly wall comes into view in the distance,
hammering towards the bridge windows like a runaway freight train. Gagarinłs
stomach lurches. �Pull up, pull up!" The first and second pilots are struggling
with the hydraulically boosted controls as the Korolevłs nose pitches up almost
ten degrees, right out of ground effect. �Come on!"

They make it.

The iceberg slams out of the darkness of the storm and the
sea like the edge of the world; fifty meters high and as massive as mountains, it
has lodged against the aperture between the radiator fins. Billions of tons of
pack-ice has stopped dead in the water, creaking and groaning with the strain
as it butts up against the infinite. The Korolev skids over the leading edge of
the iceberg, her keel barely clearing it by ten meters, and continues to climb
laboriously into the darkening sky. The blazing eyes of her reactors burn slick
scars into the ice below. Then theyłre into the open water beyond the radiator
fins, and although the sea below them is an expanse of whiteness they are also
clear of icy mountains.

�Shut down engines three through fourteen," Gagarin orders
once he regains enough control to keep the shakes out of his voice. �Take us
back down to thirty meters, lieutenant. Meteorology, whatłs our situation
like?"

�Arctic or worse, comrade general." The meteorologist, a hatchet-faced
woman from Minsk, shakes her head. �Air temperature outside is thirty below,
pressure is high." The rain and hail has vanished along with the radiators and
the clear seas
and the light, for it is now fading towards nightfall.

�Hah. Misha, what do you think?"

�I think wełve found our way into the freezer, sir.
Permission to put the towed array back up?"

Gagarin squints into the darkness. �Lieutenant, keep us at
two hundred steady. Misha, yes, get the towed array back out again. We need to
see where wełre going."

The next three hours are simultaneously boring and fraught.
Itłs darker and colder than a Moscow apartment in winter during a power cut;
the sea below is ice from horizon to horizon, cracking and groaning and
splintering in a vast expanding V-shape behind the Korolevłs pressure wake. The
spectral ruins of the Milky Way galaxy stretch overhead, reddened and stirred
by alien influences. Misha supervises the relaunch of the towed array, then
hands over to Major Suvurov before stiffly standing and going below to the
unquiet bunk room. Gagarin sticks to a quarter-hourly routine of reports,
making sure that he knows what everyone is doing. Bridge crew come and go for
their regular station changes. It is routine, and deadly with it. Then:

�Sir, I have a return. Permission to report?"

�Go ahead." Gagarin nods to the navigator. �Where?"

�Bearing zero
itłs horizon to horizon
therełs a crest rising
up to ten meters above the surface. Looks like landfall, range one sixty and
closing. Uh, therełs a gap and a more distant landfall at thirty-five degrees,
peak rising to two hundred meters."

�Thatłs some cliff." Gagarin frowns. He feels drained, his
brain hazy with the effort of making continual decisions after six hours in the
hot seat and more than two days of this thumping roaring progression. He
glances round. �Major? Please summon Colonel Gorodin. Helm, come about to zero
thirty five. Wełll take a look at the gap and see if itłs a natural inlet. If
this is a continental mass we might as well take a look before we press on for
home."

For the next hour they drive onwards into the night,
bleeding off speed and painting in the gaps in the radar map of the coastline.
Itłs a bleak frontier, inhumanly cold, with a high interior plateau. There are
indeed two headlands, promontories jutting into the coast from either side of a
broad, deep bay. Hills rise from one of the promontories and across the bay.
Something about it strikes Gagarin as strangely familiar, if only he could
place it. Another echo of Earth? But itłs too cold by far, a deep Antarctic
chill. And hełs not familiar with the coastline of Zemlya, the myriad inlets
off the northeast passage, where the submarines cruise on eternal vigilant
patrols to defend the frontier of the Rodina.

A thin predawn light stains the icy hilltops gray as the
Korolev cruises slowly between the headlands
several kilometers apart
and into
the wide open bay beyond. Gagarin raises his binoculars and scans the distant
coastline. There are structures, straight lines! �Another ruined civilization?"
He asks quietly.

�Maybe, sir. Think anyone could survive in this weather?"
The temperature has dropped another ten degrees in the predawn chill, although
the Ekranoplan is kept warm by the outflow of its two Kuznetsov aviation
reactors.

�Hah."

Gagarin begins to sweep the northern coast when Major Suvurov
stands up. �Sir! Over there!"

�Where?" Gagarin glances at him. Suvurov is quivering with
anger, or shock, or something else. He, too, has his binoculars out.

�Over there! On the southern hillside."

�Where
" He brings his binoculars to bear as the dawn light
spills across the shattered stump of an immense skyscraper.

There is a hillside behind it, a jagged rift where the land
has risen up a hundred meters. It reeks of antiquity, emphasized by the
carvings in the headland. Here is what the expedition has been looking for all
along, the evidence that they are not alone.

�My God." Misha swears, shocked into politically incorrect
language.

�Marx," says Gagarin, studying the craggy features of the
nearest head. �Iłve seen this before, this sort of thing. The Americans have a
memorial like it. Mount Rushmore, they call it."

�Donłt you mean Easter Island?" asks Misha. �Sculptures left
by a vanished people ..."

�Nonsense! Look there, isnłt that Lenin? And Stalin, of
course." Even though the famous moustache is cracked and half of it has fallen
away from the cliff. �But whołs that next to them?"

Gagarin brings his binoculars to focus on the fourth head.
Somehow it looks far less weathered than the others, as if added as an
afterthought, perhaps some kind of insane statement about the mental health of
its vanished builders. Both antennae have long since broken off, and one of the
mandibles is damaged, but the eyeless face is still recognizably unhuman. The
insectile head stares eyelessly out across the frozen ocean, an enigma on the
edge of a devastated island continent. �I think wełve found the brother
socialists," he mutters to Misha, his voice pitched low so that it wonłt carry
over the background noise on the flight deck. �And you know what? Something
tells me we didnłt want to."

Chapter Sixteen: Anthropic Error

As the summer dry season grinds on, Maddy finds herself spending
more time at Johnłs home-cum-laboratory, doing the cleaning and cooking for
herself in addition to maintaining the lab books and feeding the live
specimens. During her afternoons visiting in the hospital she helps him write
up his reports. Losing his right hand has hit John hard: hełs teaching himself
to write again but his handwriting is slow and childish.

She finds putting in extra hours at the lab preferable to
the empty and uncomfortable silences back in the two bedroom prefab she shares
with Bob. Bob is away on field trips to outlying ranches and quarries half the
time and working late the other half. At least, he says hełs working late.
Maddy has her suspicions. He gets angry if she isnłt around to cook, and she
gets angry right back at him when he expects her to clean, and theyłve stopped
having sex. Their relationship is in fact going downhill rapidly, drying up and
withering away in the arid continental heat, until going to work in Johnłs
living room among the cages and glass vivaria and books feels like taking
refuge. She took to spending more time there, working late for real, and when
Bob is away she sleeps on the wicker settee in the dining room.

One day, more than a month later than expected, Doctor
Smythe finally decides that John is well enough to go home. Embarrassingly,
shełs not there on the afternoon when hełs finally discharged. Instead, shełs
in the living room, typing up a report on a sub-species of the turtle tree and
its known parasites, when the screen door bangs and the front door opens.
�Maddy?"

She squeaks before she can stop herself. �John?" Shełs out
of the chair to help him with the battered suitcase the cabbie half-helpfully
left on the front stoop.

�Maddy." He smiles tiredly. �Iłve missed being home."

�Come on in." She closes the screen door and carries the suitcase
over to the stairs. Hełs painfully thin now, a far cry from the slightly too
plump entomologist shełd met on the colony liner. �Iłve got lots of stuff for
you to read
but not until youłre stronger. I donłt want you overworking and
putting yourself back in hospital!"

�Youłre an angel." He stands uncertainly in his own living
room, looking around as if he hadnłt quite expected to see it again. �Iłm
looking forward to seeing the termites."

She shivers abruptly. �Iłm not. Come on." She climbs the
stairs with the suitcase, not looking back. She pushes through the door into
the one bedroom thatłs habitable
hełs been using the other one to store
samples
and dumps the case on the rough dressing table. Shełs been up here
before, first to collect his clothing while he was in hospital and later to
clean and make sure there are no poisonous spiders lurking in the corners. It
smells of camphor and dusty memories. She turns to face him. �Welcome home."
She smiles experimentally.

He looks around. �Youłve been cleaning."

�Not much." She feels her face heat.

He shakes his head. �Thank you."

She canłt decide what to say. �No, no, itłs not like that.
If I wasnłt here Iłd be ..."

John shuffles. She blinks at him, feeling stupid and foolish.
�Do you have room for a lodger?" She asks.

He looks at her and she canłt maintain eye contact. Itłs all
going wrong, not what she wanted.

�Things going badly?" he asks, cocking his head on one side
and staring at her. �Forgive me, I donłt mean to pry
"

�No, no, itłs quite alright." She sniffs. Takes a breath.
�This continent breaks things. Bob hasnłt been the same since we arrived, or I,
I havenłt. I need to put some space between us, for a bit."

�Oh."

�Oh." Shełs silent for a while. �I can pay rent
"

This is an excuse, a transparent rationalization, and not
en

tirely true, but shełs saved from digging herself deeper
into a lie because John manages to stumble and reaches out to steady himself
with his right arm, which is still not entirely healed, and Maddy finds herself
with his weight on her shoulder as he hisses in pain. �Ow! Ow!"

�Iłm sorry! Iłm sorry!"

�It wasnłt you
" They make it to the bed and she sits him
down beside her. �I nearly blacked out then. I feel useless. Iłm not half the
man I was."

�I donłt know about that," she says absently, not quite
registering his meaning. She strokes his cheek, feeling it slick with sweat.
The pulse in his neck is strong. �Youłre still recovering. I think they sent
you home too early. Letłs get you into bed and rest up for a couple of hours,
then see about something to eat. What do you say to that?"

�I shouldnłt need nursing," he protests faintly as she bends
down and unties his shoe-laces. �I donłt need ... nursing." He runs his fingers
through her hair.

�This isnłt about nursing."

Two hours later, the patient is drifting on the edge of
sleep, clearly tired out by his physical therapy and the strain of homecoming.
Maddy lies curled up against his shoulder, staring at the ceiling. She feels
calm and at peace for the first time since she arrived here. Itłs not about Bob
any more, is it? She asks herself. Itłs not about what anybody expects of me.
Itłs about what I want, about finding my place in the universe. She feels her
face relaxing into a smile. Truly, for a moment, it feels as if the entire
universe is revolving around her in stately synchrony.

John snuffles slightly then startles and tenses. She can
tell hełs come to wakefulness. �Funny," he says quietly, then clears his
throat.

�What is?" Please donłt spoil this, she prays.

�I wasnłt expecting this." He moves beside her. �Wasnłt expecting
much of anything."

�Was it good?" She tenses.

�Do you still want to stay?" he asks hesitantly. �Damn, I
didnłt mean to sound as if
"

�No, I donłt mind
" She rolls towards him, then is brought
up short by a quiet, insistent tapping that travels up through the inner wall
of the house. �Damn," she says quietly.

�Whatłs that?" He begins to sit up.

�Itłs the termites."

John listens intently. The tapping continues erratically, on-again,
off-again, bursts of clattering noise. �What is she doing?"

�They do it about twice a day," Maddy confesses. �I put her
in the number two aquarium with a load of soil and leaves and a mesh lid on
top. When they start making a racket I feed them."

He looks surprised. �This Iłve got to see."

The walls are coming back up again. Maddy stifles a sigh:
itłs not about her any more, itłs about the goddamn mock termites. Anyone would
think they were the center of the universe and she was just here to feed them.
�Letłs go look, then." John is already standing up, trying to pick up his
discarded shirt with his prosthesis. �Donłt bother," she tells him. �Whołs
going to notice, the insects?"

�I thought
" he glances at her, taken aback
"sorry, forget
it."

She pads downstairs, pausing momentarily to make sure hełs
following her safely. The tapping continues, startlingly loud. She opens the
door to the utility room in the back and turns on the light. �Look," she says.

The big glass-walled aquarium sits on the worktop. Itłs
lined with rough-tamped earth and on top, there are piles of denuded branches
and wood shavings. Itłs near dusk, and by the light filtering through the
windows she can see mock-termites moving across the surface of the muddy dome
that bulges above the queenłs chamber. A group of them have gathered around a
curiously straight branch: as she watches, they throw it against the glass like
a battering ram against a castle wall. A pause, then they pick it up and pull
back, and throw it again. Theyłre huge for insects, almost two inches long:
much bigger than the ones thronging the mounds in the outback. �Thatłs odd."
Maddy peers at them. �Theyłve grown since yesterday."

�They? Hang on, did you take workers, or ...?"

�No, just the queen. None of these bugs are more than a
month old."

The termites have stopped banging on the glass. They form
two rows on either side of the stick, pointing their heads up at the huge,
monadic mammals beyond the alien barrier. Looking at them closely Maddy notices
other signs of morphological change: the increasing complexity of their digits,
the bulges at the back of their heads. Is the queenłs changing, too? She asks
herself, briefly troubled by visions of a malignant intelligence rapidly
swelling beneath the surface of the vivarium, plotting its escape by moonlight.

John stands behind Maddy and folds his arms around her. She
shivers. �I feel as if theyłre watching us."

�But to them itłs not about us, is it?" He whispers in her
ear. �Come on. All thatłs happening is youłve trained them to ring a bell so
the experimenters give them a snack. They think the universe was made for their
convenience. Dumb insects, just a bundle of reflexes really. Letłs feed them
and go back to bed."

The two humans leave and climb the stairs together, arm in
arm, leaving the angry aboriginal hive to plot its escape unnoticed.

Chapter Seventeen: Itłs always October the First

Gregor sits on a bench on the Esplanade, looking out across
the river towards the Statue of Liberty. Hełs got a bag of stale bread crumbs
and hełs ministering to the flock of pigeons that scuttle and peck around his
feet. The time is six minutes to three on the afternoon of October the First,
and the year is irrelevant. In fact, itłs too late. This is how it always ends,
although the onshore breeze and the sunlight are unexpected bonus payments.

The pigeons jostle and chase one another as he drops another
piece of crust on the pavement. For once he hasnłt bothered to soak them
overnight in 5% warfarin solution. There is such a thing as a free lunch, if
youłre a pigeon in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hełs going to be dead
soon, and if any of the pigeons survive theyłre welcome to the wreckage.

There arenłt many people about, so when the puffing middle
aged guy in the suit comes into view, jogging along as if hełs chasing his
stolen wallet, Gregor spots him instantly. Itłs Brundle, looking slightly
pathetic when removed from his man-hive. Gregor waves hesitantly, and Brundle
alters course.

�Running late," he pants, kicking at the pigeons until they
flap away to make space for him at the other end of the bench.

�Really?"

Brundle nods. �They should be coming over the horizon in
another five minutes."

�How did you engineer it?" Gregor isnłt particularly
interested but technical chit-chat serves to pass the remaining seconds.

�Man-in-the-middle, ramified by all their intelligence assessments."
Brundle looks self-satisfied. �Understanding their caste specialization makes
it easier. Two weeks ago we told the GRU that MacNamara was using the NP-101
program as cover for a pre-emptive D-SLAM strike. At the same time we got the
NOAA to increase their mapping launch frequency, and pointed the increased
level of Soviet activity out to our sources in SAC. It doesnłt take much to get
the human hives buzzing with positive feedback."

Of course, Brundle and Gregor arenłt using words for this incriminating
exchange. Their phenotypically human bodies conceal some useful modifications,
knobby encapsulated tumors of neuroectoderm that shield the delicate tissues of
their designers, neural circuits that have capabilities human geneticists
havenłt even imagined. A visitor from a more advanced human society might start
excitedly chattering about wet-phase nanomachines and neural-directed broadband
packet radio, but nobody in New York on a sunny day in 1979 plus one million is
thinking in those terms. They still think the universe belongs to their own
kind, skull-locked social
but not eusocial
primates. Brundle and Gregor know
better. Theyłre workers of a higher order, carefully tailored to the task in
hand, and although they look human therełs less to their humanity than meets
the eye. Even Gagarin can probably guess better, an individualist trapped in
the machinery of a utopian political hive. The termites of New Iowa and a host
of other Galapagos continents on the disk are not the future, but theyłre a
superior approximation to anything humans have achieved, even those planetary
instantiations that have doctored their own genome in order to successfully
implement true eusocial societies. Group minds arenłt prone to anthropic
errors.

�So itłs over, is it?" Gregor asks aloud, in the stilted
serial speech to which humans are constrained.

�Yep. Any minute now
"

The air raid sirens begin to wail. Pigeons spook, exploding
outward in a cloud of white panic.

�Oh, look."

The entity behind Gregorłs eyes stares out across the river,
marking time while his cancers call home. Hełs always vague about these last
hours before the end of a mission
a destructive time, in which information is
lost
but at least he remembers the rest. As do the hyphae of the huge rhizome
network spreading deep beneath the park, thinking slow vegetable thoughts and
relaying his sparky monadic flashes back to his mother by way of the engineered
fungal strands that thread the deep ocean floors. The next version of him will
be created knowing almost everything: the struggle to contain the annoying,
hard-to-domesticate primates with their insistent paranoid individualism, the
dismay of having to carefully sterilize the few enlightened ones like Sagan ...

Humans are not useful. The future belongs to ensemble intelligences,
hive minds. Even the mock-termite aboriginals have more to contribute. And
Gregor, with his teratomas and his shortage of limbs, has more to contribute
than most. The culture that sent him, and a million other anthropomorphic
infiltrators, understands this well: he will be rewarded and propagated, his
genome and memeome preserved by the collective even as it systematically eliminates
yet another outbreak of humanity. The collective is well on its way towards
occupying a tenth of the disk, or at least of sweeping it clean of competing
life forms. Eventually it will open negotiations with its neighbors on the
other disks, joining the process of forming a distributed consciousness that is
a primitive echo of the vast ramified intelligence wheeling across the sky so
far away. And this time round, knowing why it is being birthed, the new God
will have a level of self-understanding denied to its parent.

Gregor anticipates being one of the overmindłs memories: it
is a fate none of these humans will know save at second-hand, filtered through
his eusocial sensibilities. To the extent that he bothers to consider the
subject, he thinks it is a disappointment. He may be here to help exterminate
them, but itłs not a personal grudge: itłs more like pouring gasoline on a
troublesome ant heap thatłs settled in the wrong back yard. The necessity
irritates him, and he grumbles aloud in Brundlełs direction: �If they realized
how thoroughly theyłd been infiltrated, or how badly their own individuality
lets them down
"

Flashes far out over the ocean, ruby glare reflected from
the thin tatters of stratospheric cloud.

�
They might learn to cooperate some day. Like us."

More flashes, moving closer now as the nuclear battlefront
evolves.

Brundle nods. �But then, they wouldnłt be human any more.
And in any case, theyłre much too late. A million years too late."

A flicker too bright to see, propagating faster than the
signaling speed of nerves, punctuates their conversation. Seconds later, the
mach wave flushes their cinders from the bleached concrete of the bench. Far
out across the disk, the game of ape and ant continues; but in this place and
for the present time, the question has been answered. And there are no human
winners.

***

Nightfall

A synthetic gemstone the size of a Coke can falls through
silent darkness. The night is quiet as the grave, colder than midwinter on
Pluto. Gossamer sails as fine as soap bubbles droop, the gust of sapphire laser
light that inflated them long since darkened; ancient starlight picks out the
outline of a huge planet-like body beneath the jewel-and-cobweb corpse of the
starwhisp.

Eight years have passed since the good ship Field Circus
slipped into close orbit around the frigid brown dwarf Hyundai +4904/-56. Five
years have gone by since the launch lasers of the Ring Imperium shut down
without warning, stranding the light sail powered craft three light years from
home. There has been no response from the router, the strange alien artifact in
orbit around the brown dwarf, since the crew of the starwhisp uploaded
themselves through its strange quantum entanglement interface for transmission
to whatever alien network it connects to. In fact, nothing happens; nothing
save the slow trickle of seconds, as a watchdog timer counts down the moments
remaining until it is due to resurrect stored snapshots of the crew, on the
assumption that their uploaded copies are beyond help.

Meanwhile, outside the light cone


Amber jolts into wakefulness, as if from a nightmare. She
sits bolt upright, a thin sheet falling from her chest; air circulating around
her back chills her rapidly, cold sweat evaporating. She mutters aloud, unable
to subvocalize, �where am I
oh. A bedroom. How did I get here?" mumble. �Oh, I
see." Her eyes widen in horror. Itłs not a dream ....

�Greetings, human Amber," says a ghost-voice that seems to
come from nowhere: �I see you are awake. Would you like anything?"

Amber rubs her eyes tiredly. Leaning against the bedstead,
she glances around cautiously. She takes in a bedside mirror, her reflection in
it: a young woman, gaunt in the manner of those whose genome bears the p53
calorie-restriction hack, she has disheveled blonde hair and dark eyes. She
could pass for a dancer or a soldier; not, perhaps, a queen. �Whatłs going on?
Where am I? Who are you, and what am I doing in your head?"

Her eyes narrow. Analytical intellect comes to the fore as
she takes stock of her surroundings. �The router," she mutters. Structures of
strange matter in orbit around a brown dwarf, scant light years from Earth.
�How long ago did we come through?" Glancing round, she sees a room walled in
slabs of close-fitting stone. A window bay is recessed into them, after the style
of crusader castles many centuries in the past, but therełs no glass in it
just
a blank white screen. The only furniture in the room, besides a Persian carpet
on the cold flagstones, is the bed she sits upon. That, and the idiot gun that
hovers just beneath the ceiling. Shełs reminded of a scene from an old movie,
Kubrickłs enigma; this whole set-up has got to be deliberate, and it isnłt
funny.

�Iłm waiting," she announces, and leans back against the headboard.

�According to our records this reaction indicates that you
are now fully self-aware," says the ghost. �This is good. You have not been
conscious for a very long time: explanations will be complex and discursive.
Can I offer you refreshments? What would you like?"

�Coffee, if you have it. Bread and hummus. Something to
wear." Amber crosses her arms, abruptly self-conscious. �Iłd prefer to have
management ackles to this universe, though. As realities go, itłs a bit lacking
in furniture." Which isnłt entirely true
it seems to have a comprehensive, human-friendly
biophysics model. Her eyes focus on her left forearm; tanned skin and a
puckered dime of scar tissue records a youthful accident with a pressure seal
in Jovian orbit. Amber freezes for a moment. Her lips move in silence, but
shełs locked into place in this universe, unable to split or conjoin nested
realities just by calling subroutines that have been spliced into the corners
of her mind since she was a teenager. Finally she asks, �How long have I been
dead?"

�Longer than you were alive, by orders of magnitude," says
the ghost. A tray laden with pita breads, hummus, and olives congeals from the
air above her bed and a wardrobe appears at one side of the room. �I can begin
the explanation now or wait for you to finish eating. Which would you prefer?"

Amber glances about again, then fixes on the white screen in
the window bay. �Give it to me right now. I can take it," she says, quietly
bitter. �I like to understand my mistakes as soon as possible," she adds.

�We-us can tell that you are a human of determination," says
the ghost, a hint of pride entering its voice. �That is a good thing, human
Amber. You will need all of your resolve if you are going to survive here ...."

It is the time of repentance in a temple beside a tower that
looms above a dry plain, and the thoughts of the priest who lives in the tower
are tinged with regret. It is Ashura, the tenth day of Muhurram, according to a
real-time clock still tuned to the pace of a different era: the one thousand,
three hundred and fortieth anniversary of the martyrdom of the third Imam, the
Sayyid ash-Shuhada.

The priest of the tower has spent an indefinite time in
prayer
locked in an eternal moment of meditation and recitation
and now, as the
sun, vast and red, burns low above the horizon of the infinite desert, his
thoughts drift toward the present. Ashura is a very special day, a day of
atonement for collective guilt, evil committed through inactivity; but it is in
Sadeqłs nature to look outward toward the future. This is, he knows, a
failing
but he is a member of that generation of the Shiłite clergy that
reacted to the excesses of the previous century: the generation that withdrew
the ulama from temporal power, retreated from the velyat i-faqih of Khomenei
and his successors, and left government to the people. Sadeqłs focus, his
driving obsession in theology, is a program of re-appraisal of eschatology and
cosmology. Here in a tower of white sun-baked clay, on an endless plain that
exists only in the imaginary spaces of a starship the size of a soft drink can,
the priest spends his processor cycles in contemplation of one of the most
vicious problems ever to confront a mujtahid: the Fermi paradox.

Sadeq finishes his evening devotions in near silence, then
stands, stretches as is his wont, and leaves the small and lonely courtyard at
the base of the tower. The gate
made of wrought iron, warmed by
sunlight
squeals slightly as he opens it. Glancing at the upper hinge, he
frowns slightly, willing it clean and whole. The underlying physics model
acknowledges his access controls: a thin rim of red around the pin turns
silvery-fresh, and the squeaking stops dead. Closing the gate behind him, Sadeq
enters the tower.

He climbs with a heavy, even tread, a spiral staircase
snaking ever upward above him. Narrow slit-windows line the outer wall of the
staircase: through each of them he sees a different world. Out there, nightfall
in the month of Ramadan. And through the next, green misty skies and a horizon
too close by far. Sadeq carefully avoids thinking about the implications of
this manifold space. Coming from prayer, from a sense of the sacred, he doesnłt
want to lose his proximity to his faith. Hełs far enough from home as it is,
and there is much to consider
he is surrounded by strange and curious ideas,
all but lost in a corrosive desert of faith.

At the top of the staircase, Sadeq comes to a door of aged
wood bound in iron. It doesnłt belong here: itłs a cultural and architectural
anomaly. The handle is a loop of black iron: Sadeq regards it as if itłs the head
of an asp, poised to strike. Nevertheless he reaches out and turns the handle,
steps across the threshold into a palace out of fantasy.

None of this is real, he reminds himself. Itłs no more real
than an illusion conjured by one of the djinni of the thousand nights and one
night. Nevertheless, he canłt save himself from smiling at the scene
a sardonic
smile of self-deprecating humor, tempered by frustration.

Sadeqłs captors have stolen his soul and locked it
him
in a
very strange prison, a temple with a tower that rises all the way to paradise.
Itłs the whole classical litany of mediaevalist desires, distilled from fifteen
hundred years of literature; colonnaded courtyards, cool pools lined with rich
mosaics, rooms filled with every imaginable dumb matter luxury, endless
banquets awaiting his appetite
and occupied by dozens of beautiful un-women,
eager to fulfill his every fantasy. Sadeq, being human, has fantasies by the
dozen: but he doesnłt dare permit himself to succumb to this temptation. Iłm
not dead, he reasons, therefore how can I be in paradise? Therefore this must
be a false paradise, a temptation sent to lead me astray. Probably. Unless I am
dead, because Allah, peace be unto him, considers a human soul separated from
its body to be dead. But if thatłs so, isnłt uploading a sin? In which case
this canłt be paradise. Besides which, this paradox is so puerile!

Sadeq has always been inclined to philosophical enquiry, and
his vision of the afterlife is more cerebral than most, involving ideas as
questionable within the framework of Islam as those of Teilhard de Chardin were
to the twentieth century Catholic church. If therełs one key indicator of a
false paradise in his eschatology itłs two-and-seventy brainlessly beautiful
houris waiting to do his bidding. So it follows that he canłt really be dead.
Except ...

The whole question of reality is so vexing that Sadeq does
what he does every night. He strides heedlessly across priceless works of art,
barging hastily through courtyards and passageways, ignoring niches in which
nearly naked supermodels lie with their legs apart, climbing stairs
until he
comes to a small unfurnished room with a single high window in one wall. There
he sits on the floor, legs crossed, meditating: not in prayer, but in a more tightly
focused ratiocination. Every false night
for there is no way to know how fast
time is passing, outside this cyberspace pocket
Sadeq sits and thinks,
grappling with Descartesł demon in the solitude of his own mind. And the
question he asks himself every night is the same: can I tell if this is the
true hell? And if it is not, how can I escape?

The ghost tells Amber that she has been dead for just under
a third of a million years. She has been reinstantiated from storage
and has
died again
many times in the intervening period, but she has no memory of this;
she is a fork from the main bough, and the other branches expired in lonely
isolation.

The business of resurrection does not, in and of itself,
distress Amber unduly. Born in the post-Turing era, she merely finds some
aspects of the ghostłs description dissatisfyingly incomplete: like saying she
was been drugged and brought hither without stating whether by plane, train, or
automobile.

She doesnłt have a problem with the ghostłs assertion that
she is nowhere near Earth, either
indeed, that she is approximately eighty
thousand light years away. When she and the others took the risk of uploading
themselves through the router they found in orbit around Hyundai +4904/-56,
theyłd understood that they could end up anywhere or nowhere. But the idea that
shełs still within the light cone of her departure strikes her as odd. The
router is part of a network of self-replicating instantaneous communicators,
spawning and spreading between the cold brown dwarf stars that litter the
galaxy. Shełd somehow expected to be much further from home by now.

Somewhat more disturbing is the ghostłs assertion that the human
genotype has rendered itself extinct at least twice, that its home planet is
unknown, and that Amber is nearly the only human left in the public archives.
At this point she interrupts: �I hardly see what this has to do with me!" She
blows across her coffee glass; �Iłm dead," she explains, with an undertone of
knowing sarcasm in her voice. �Remember? I just got here. A thousand seconds
ago, subjective time, I was in the control node of a starship, discussing what
to do with the router we were in orbit around. We agreed to send ourselves
through it, as a trade mission. Then I woke up in bed here in the umpty-zillionth
century, wherever and whatever here is
without access to any reality ackles or
augmentation, I canłt even tell whether this is real or an embedded simulation.
Youłre going to have to explain why you need an old version of me before I can
make sense of my situation
and I can tell you, Iłm not going to help you until
I know who you are. And speaking of that, what about the others? Where are
they? I wasnłt the only one, you know?"

The ghost freezes in place for a moment, and Amber feels a
watery rush of terror: have I gone too far? she wonders.

�There has been an unfortunate accident," the ghost
announces portentously. It morphs from a translucent copy of Amberłs own body
into the outline of a human skeleton, elaborate bony extensions simulating an
osteosarcoma of more-than-lethal proportions. �Consensus-we believe that you
are best positioned to remediate the situation. This applies within the
demilitarized zone."

�Demilitarized ... ?" Amber shakes her head, pauses to sip
her coffee. �What do you mean? What is this place?"

The ghost flickers again, adopting an abstract rotating hypercube
as its avatar. �This space we occupy is a manifold adjacent to the
demilitarized zone. The demilitarized zone is a space outside our core reality,
itself exposed to entities that cross freely through our firewall, journeying
to and from the network outside. We-us use the DMZ to establish informational
value of migrant entities, sapient currency units and the like. We-us banked
you upon arrival against future options trades in human species futures."

�Currency!" Amber doesnłt know whether to be amused or
horrified
both reactions seem appropriate. �Is that how you treat all your
visitors?"

The ghost ignores her question. �There is a runaway semiotic
excursion underway in the zone. We-us believe only you can fix it. If you agree
to do so we will exchange value, pay, reward cooperation, expedite
remuneration, manumit, repatriate."

Amber drains her coffee cup. �Have you ever entered into economic
interactions with me, or humans like me, before?" she asks. �If not, why should
I trust you? If so, why have you revived me? Are there any more experienced
instances of myself running around here?" She raises an eyebrow at the ghost.
�This looks like the start of an abusive relationship."

The ghost continues to sidestep her attempts to work out
where she stands. It flickers into transparency, grows into a hazy window on a
landscape of impossible shapes. Clouds sprouting trees drift above a landscape
of green, egg-curved hills and cheesecake castles. �Nature of excursion: alien
intelligence is loose in the DMZ," it asserts. �Alien is applying invalid
semiotics to complex structures designed to sustain trade. You know this alien,
Amber. We require solution. Slay the monster, we will give you line of credit.
Your own reality to control, insight into trade arrangements, augmented senses,
ability to travel. Can even upgrade you to you-we consensus, if desired."

�This monster." Amber leans forward: itłs her turn to ignore
what she feels to be a spurious offer. Upgrade me to a ghost fragment of an
alien group mind? she wonders dismissively. �what is this alien?" She feels
blind and unsure, stripped of her ability to spawn threads of herself to pursue
complex inferences. �Is it part of the Wunch?"

�Datum unknown. It-them came with you," says the ghost.
�Accidentally reactivated some seconds since now. Now it runs amok in the
demilitarized zone. Help us, Amber. Save our hub or we will be cut off from the
network. If that happens, you will die with we-us. Save us ...."

A single memory belonging to someone else unwinds, faster
than a guided missile and far more deadly.

Amber, aged eleven, is a gawky, long-limbed child loose on
the streets of Hong Kong, a yokel tourist viewing the hotcore of the Middle
Kingdom. This is her first and final vacation before the Franklin Trust straps
her inside the payload pod of a Shenzhou spaceplane and blasts her into orbit
from Xinkiang. Shełs free for the time being, albeit mortgaged to the tune of
several million Euros; shełs a little taikonaut to be, ready to work for the
long years in Jupiter orbit it will take her to pay off the self-propelled
options web that owns her. Itłs not exactly slavery: thanks to Dadłs corporate
shell-game, she doesnłt have to worry about Mom chasing her, a cyanide-eyed
abductress with feudal spawn-indenture rights in mind. And now shełs got a
little pocket money, and a room in the Hilton, and her own personal Franklin
remote to keep her company, and shełs gonna do that eighteenth century
enlightenment tourist shit and do it right.

Because this is her last day at liberty in the randomly
evolved biosphere.

China is where itłs at in this decade, hot and dense and
full of draconian punishments for the obsolescent. Nationalist fervor to catch
up with the West has been replaced by consumerist fervor to own the latest fad
gadgets, the most picturesque tourist souvenirs from the quaintly old-fashioned
streets of America, the fastest hottest smartest upgrades for body and soul.
Hong Kong is hotter and faster than just about anywhere else in China, or in
the whole damn world for that matter; this is a place where tourists from Tokyo
gawp, cowed and future-shocked by the glamor of high technology living.

Walking along Jardinełs Bazaar
more like Jardinełs bizarre,
she thinks
exposes Amber to a blast of humid noise. Geodesic domes sprout like
skeletal mushrooms from the glass and chrome roofs of the expensive shopping
malls and luxury hotels, threatening to float away on the hot sea breeze. There
are no airliners roaring in and out of Kai Tak any more, no burnished aluminum
storm clouds to rain round-eyed passengers on the shopping malls and fish
markets of Kowloon and the New Territories. In these tense later days of the
War Against Unreason, impossible new shapes move in the sky; Amber gapes upward
as a Shenyang F-30 climbs at a near-vertical angle, a mess of incomprehensibly
curved flight surfaces vanishing to a perspective point that defies radar as
well as eyeballs. The Chinese
fighter? missile platform? supercomputer?
is
heading out over the South China Sea, to join the endless patrol that guards
the border of the capitalist world against the Hosts of Denial, the Trouble out
of Wałhab.

For the moment, shełs merely a human child: Amberłs subconscious
is offlined by the presence of forceful infowar daemons, the Chinese government
censorbots suppressing her cognition of their deadliest weapons. And in the
seconds while her mind is as empty as a sucked egg, a thin-faced man with blue
hair shoves her in the small of her back and snatches at her shoulder bag.

�Hey!" she yells, stumbling. Her mindłs a blur, optics
refusing to respond and grab a physiology model of her assailant. Itłs the
frozen moment, the dead zone when online coverage fails, and the thief is
running away before she can catch her balance or try to give chase. Plus, with
her extensions offline she doesnłt know how to yell �stop, thief !" in
Cantonese.

Seconds later, the fighter is out of visual range and the
state censorship field lets up. �Get him, you bastards!" she screams, but the
curious shoppers simply stare at the rude foreign child: an elderly woman
brandishes a disposable phonecam at her and screeches something back. Amber
picks up her feet and runs. Already she can feel the subsonics from her luggage
growling at her guts
itłs going to make a scene if she doesnłt catch up in
time. Shoppers scatter, a woman with a baby carriage almost running her down in
her panic to get away from it.

By the time Amber reaches her terrified shoulder bag, the
thief has disappeared: she has to spend almost a minute petting the scared
luggage before it stops screeching and retracts its spines enough for her to
pick it up. And by that time therełs a robocop in attendance. �Identify
yourself," it rasps in synthetic English.

Amber stares at her bag in horror: therełs a huge gash in
the side, and itłs far too light. Itłs gone, she thinks, despairingly: he stole
it. �Help," she says faintly, holding up her bag for the distant policeman
looking through the robotłs eyes. �Been stolen."

�What item missing?" asks the robot.

�My Hello Kitty," she says, batting her eyelashes, mendacity
full-on at maximum utilization, prodding her conscience into submission,
warning of dire consequences should the police discover the true nature of her
pet cat: �My kittenłs been stolen! Can you help me?"

�Certainly," says the cop, resting a reassuring hand on her
shoulder
a hand that turns into a steel armband, as it pushes her into a van
and notifies her in formally stilted language that she is under arrest on
suspicion of shoplifting and will be required to produce certificates of
authenticity and a fully compliant ownership audit for all items in her
possession if she wants to prove her innocence.

By the time Amberłs meatbrain realizes that she is being politely
arrested, some of her external threads have already started yelling for help
and her m-commerce trackers have identified the station shełs being taken to by
way of click-thru trails and an obliging software license manager. Some of them
spawn agents to go notify the Franklin trustees, Amnesty International, and the
Space and Freedom Party. As shełs being booked into a cerise-and-turquoise
juvenile offenders holding room by a middle-aged policewoman, the phones on the
front desk are already ringing with enquiries from lawyers, fast food vendors,
and a particularly on-the-ball celebrity magazine thatłs been tracking her
fatherłs connections. �Can you help me get my cat back?" she asks the policewoman
earnestly.

�Name," the officer reads, eyes flickering from the simultaneous
translation: �to please wax your identity stiffly."

�My cat has been stolen," Amber insists.

�Your cat?" The cop looks perplexed, then exasperated. Dealing
with foreign teenagers who answer questions with gibberish isnłt in her
repertoire. �We are asking your name?"

�No," says Amber. �Itłs my cat. It has been stolen. My cat
has been stolen."

�Aha! Your papers, please?"

�Papers?" Amber is growing increasingly worried. She canłt
feel the outside world; therełs a Faraday cage wrapped around the holding cell
and itłs claustrophobically quiet in here. �I want my cat! Now!"

The cop snaps her fingers, then reaches into her own pocket
and produces an ID card, which she points to insistently. �Papers," she
repeats. �Or else."

�I donłt know what youłre talking about!" Amber wails.

The cop stares at her oddly. �Wait." She rises and leaves,
and a minute later returns with a thin-faced man in a business suit and
wire-rimmed glasses that glow faintly.

�You are making a scene," he says, rudely and abruptly.
�What is your name? Tell me truthfully or youłll spend the night here."

Amber bursts into tears. �My catłs been stolen," she chokes
out.

The detective and the cop obviously donłt know how to deal
with this scene; itłs freaking them out, with its overtones of emotional
messiness and sinister diplomatic entanglement. �You wait here," they say, and
back out of the cell, leaving her alone with a plastic animatronic koala and a
cheap Lebanese coffee machine.

The implications of her loss
of Ainekołs abduction
are sinking
in now, and Amber is weeping loudly and hopelessly. Itłs hard to deal with
bereavement and betrayal at any age, and the cat has been her wisecracking
companion and consolation for a year now, the rock of certainty that gave her
the strength to break free from her crazy mother. To lose her cat to a body
shop in Hong Kong, where she will probably be cut up for spare circuitry or
turned into soup, is too horrible to contemplate. Filled with despair and hopeless
anguish, Amber howls at the interrogation room walls while outside, trapped
threads of her consciousness search for backups to synchronize with.

But after an hour, just as shełs quieting down into a slough
of raw despair, therełs a knock
a knock!
at the door. An inquisitive head pops
in. �Please to come with us?" Itłs the female cop with the bad translation
ware. She takes in Amberłs sobbing and tsks under her breath, but as Amber
stands up and shambles toward her, she pulls back.

At the front desk of a cubicle farm full of police bureaucrats
in various states of telepresence, the detective is waiting with a damp
cardboard box wrapped in twine. �Please identify," he asks, snipping the
string.

Amber shakes her head, dizzy with the flow of threads homing
in to synchronize their memories with her. �Is it
" she begins to ask as the
lid comes apart, wet pulp disintegrating. A triangular head pops up, curiously,
sniffing the air. Bubbles blow from brown-furred nostrils. �What took you so
long?" asks the cat as she reaches into the box and picks her up, fur wet and
matted with seawater.

�If you want me to go fix your alien, for starters I want
you to give me reality alteration privileges," says Amber. �Then I want you to
find the latest instances of everyone who came here with me
round up the usual
suspects
and give them root privileges, too. Then wełll want access to the
other embedded universes in the DMZ. Finally, I want guns. Lots of guns."

�That may be difficult," says the ghost. �Many other humans
reached halting state long-since. Is at least one other still alive, but not
accessible for duration of eschatological experiment in progress. Not all were
recorded with version control engine; others were-are lost in DMZ. We-us can
provide you with extreme access to the demilitarized zone, but query the need
for kinetic energy weapons."

Amber sighs. �You guys really are media illiterates, arenłt
you?" She stands up and stretches, feeling a facsimile of sleepłs enervation
leaching from her muscles. �Iłll also need my
" itłs on the tip of her tongue:
therełs something missing. �Hang on. Therełs something Iłve forgotten."
Something important, she thinks, puzzled. Something that used to be around all
the time that would ... know? ... purr? ... help? �Never mind," she hears her
lips say. �This other human. I really want her. Non-negotiable. All right?"

�That may be difficult," repeats the ghost. �Entity is
looping in a recursively confined universe."

�Eh?" Amber blinks at it. �Would you mind re-phrasing that?
Or illustrating?"

�Illustration:" the ghost folds the air in the room into a
glowing ball of plasma, shaped like a Klein bottle. Amberłs eyes cross as she
looks at it. �Closest reference from human historical database is Descartesł
demon. This entity has retreated within a closed space but is now unsure
whether it is objectively real or not. In any event, it refuses to interact."

�Well, can you get me into that space?" asks Amber. Pocket
universes she can deal with; itłs part and parcel of life as an upload. �Give
me some leverage
"

�Risk may attach to this course of action," warns the ghost.

�I donłt care," she says irritably. �Just put me there. Itłs
someone I know, isnłt it? Send me into her dream and Iłll wake her up, okay?"

�Understood," says the ghost. �Prepare yourself."

Without any warning, Amber is somewhere else. She glances
around, taking in an ornate mosaic floor, whitewashed walls set with open
windows through which stars twinkle faintly in the night sky. The walls are
stone, and she stands in a doorway to a room with nothing in it but a bed.
Occupied by


�Shit," she mumbles. �Who are you?" The young and incredibly,
classically beautiful woman in the bed looks at her vacantly, then rolls over
on her side. She isnłt wearing a stitch, shełs completely hairless from the
ears down, and her languid posture is one of invitation. �Yes?" Amber asks,
�what is it?"

The woman on the bed beckons to her slowly. Amber shakes her
head. �Sorry, thatłs just not my scene." She backs away into the corridor,
unsteady but thoughtful. �This is some sort of male fantasy, isnłt it? And a
particularly puerile one at that." She looks around again. In one direction a
corridor heads past more open doorways, and in the other it ends with a spiral
staircase. Amber concentrates, trying to tell the universe to take her to the
logical destination, but nothing happens. �Shit, looks like Iłm going to have
to do this the hard way. I wish
" she frowns. She was about to wish that
someone else was here, but she canłt remember who. So she takes a deep breath
and heads toward the staircase.

�Up or down?" she asks herself. Up
it seems logical, if
youłre going to have a tower, to sleep up at the top of it. So she climbs the
steps carefully, holding the spiraling rail. I wonder who designed this space?
She wonders. And what role am I supposed to fit into in their scenario? On
second thoughts, the latter question strikes her as laughable. Wait łtil I give
him an earful ....

Therełs a plain wooden door at the top of the staircase,
with a latch that isnłt fastened. Amber pauses for a few seconds, nerving
herself to confront a sleeper so wrapped in solipsism that hełs built this
sex-fantasy castle around himself. I hope it isnłt Pierre, she thinks grimly as
she pushes the door inward.

The room is bare and floored in wood. Therełs no furniture,
just an open window set high in one wall. A man sits cross-legged and robed,
with his back to her, mumbling quietly to himself and nodding slightly. Her
breath catches as she realizes who it is. Oh shit. Her eyes widen. Is this
whatłs been inside his head all along?

�I did not summon you," Sadeq says calmly, not turning round
to look at her. �Go away, tempter. You arenłt real."

Amber clears her throat. �Sorry to disappoint you, but
youłre wrong," she says. �Wełve got an alien monster to catch. Want to come
hunting?"

Sadeq stops nodding. He sits up slowly, stretching his
spine, then stands up and turns round. His eyes glint in the moonlight. �Thatłs
odd." He undresses her with his gaze. �You look like someone I used to know.
Youłve never done that before."

�For fuckłs sake!" Amber nearly explodes but catches herself
after a moment. �What is this, a Solipsists United chapterhouse meeting?"

�I
" Sadeq looks puzzled. �Iłm sorry, are you claiming to be
real?"

�As real as you are." Amber reaches out and grabs a hand: he
doesnłt resist as she pulls him toward the doorway.

�Youłre the first visitor Iłve ever had." He sounds shocked.

�Listen, come on." She tugs him after her, down the spiral
staircase to the floor below. �Do you want to stay here? Really?" She glances
back at him. �What is this place?"

�Hell is a perversion of heaven," he says slowly, running
the fingers of his free hand through his beard. Abruptly, he reaches out and
grabs her around the waist, then yanks her toward him. �Wełll have to see how
real you are
" Amber, who is not used to this kind of treatment, responds by
stomping on his instep and back-handing him hard.

�Youłre real!" he cries, as he falls back against the
staircase. �Forgive me, please! I had to know
"

�Know what?" she snarls. �Lay one finger on me again and
Iłll leave you here to rot!" Shełs already spawning the ghost that will signal
the alien outside to pull her out of this pocket universe: itłs a serious
threat.

�But I had to
wait. You have free will. You just
demonstrated that." Hełs breathing heavily and looking up at her imploringly.
�Iłm sorry, I apologize! But I had to know whether you were another zombie. Or
not."

�A zombie?" She looks round. Another living doll has appeared
behind her, standing in an open doorway wearing a skin-tight leather suit with
a cut-away crotch. She beckons to Sadeq invitingly. Another body wearing
strategically placed strips of rubber mewls at her feet, writhing for
attention. Amber raises an eyebrow in disgust. �You thought I was one of
those?"

Sadeq nods. �Theyłve gotten cleverer lately. Some of them
can talk. I nearly mistook one for
" he shudders convulsively. �Unclean!"

�Unclean." Amber looks down at him thoughtfully. �This isnłt
really your personal paradise, is it?" After a moment, she holds out a hand to
him. �Come on."

�Iłm sorry I thought you were a zombie," he repeats sadly:
then the ghost yanks them both back to the universe outside.

More memories converge on the present moment:

The Ring Imperium is a huge cluster of self-replicating
robots that Amber has assembled in low Jupiter orbit, fueled by the mass and
momentum of the small moon J-47 Barney, to provide a launching platform for the
interstellar probe her fatherłs business partners are helping her to build.
Itłs also the seat of her court, the leading jurisprudential nexus in the outer
solar system. Amber is the Queen here, arbitrator and ruler. And Sadeq is her
judge and counsel.

A plaintiff Amber only knows as a radar blip thirty
light-minutes away has filed a lawsuit in her court, alleging malfeasance,
heresy, and barratry against a semi-sentient corporate pyramid scheme that
arrived in Jovian space twelve million seconds ago and currently seems set on
converting every other intelligence in the region to its peculiar meme-set. A
whole bundle of multi-threaded counter-suits are dragging at her attention, in
a counter-attack alleging that the light blip is in violation of copyright, patent,
and trade secrecy laws by discussing the interloperłs intentions.

Right now, Amber isnłt home on the Ring to hear the case in
person. Shełs left Sadeq behind to grapple with the balky mechanics of her
legal system
tailor-designed to make corporate litigation a pain in the
ass
while she drags Pierre off on a diplomatic visit to another Jovian colony,
the Nursery Republic. Planted by the Franklin Trustłs orphanage ship Ernst
Sanger, the Nursery has grown over the past four years into a spindly snowflake
three kilometers across. A slow-growing OłNeil cylinder sprouts from its hub:
most of the inhabitants of the space station are less than two years old,
precocious additions to the Trustłs borganism.

Therełs a piazza, paved with something not unlike rough marble,
on the side of a hill that clings insecurely to the edge of a spinning cup. The
sky is a black vastness overhead, wheeling slowly around a central axis lined
up on Jupiter. Amber sprawls in a wicker chair, her legs stretched out before
her and one arm flung across her forehead. The wreckage of an incredible meal
is scattered across the tables around her. Torpid and full, she strokes the cat
that lies curled in her lap. Pierre is off somewhere, touring one or another of
the prototype ecosystems that one or another of the Borgłs special-interest
minds is testing. Amber, for her part, canłt be bothered. Shełs just had a
great meal, she doesnłt have any lawsuits to worry about, everything back home
is on the critpath, and quality time like this is so hard to come by


�Do you keep in touch with your father?" asks Monica.

�Mm." The cat purrs quietly and Amber strokes its flank. �We
email. Sometimes."

�I just wondered." Monica is the local Borg den mother, willowy
and brown-eyed and with a deceptively lazy drawl
Yorkshire English overlaid
with silicon-valley speak. �I hear from him, yłknow. From time to time. He was
talking about coming out here."

�What? To PeriJove?" Amberłs eyes open in alarm: Aineko
stops purring and looks round at Monica accusingly.

�Donłt worry." Monica sounds vaguely amused. �He wouldnłt
cramp your style, I think."

�But, out here
" Amber sits up. �Damn," she says, quietly.
�What got into him?"

�Middle-aged restlessness, my down-well sibs say." Monica
shrugs. �This time, Annette didnłt stop him. But he hasnłt made up his mind to
travel yet."

�Good. Then he might not
" Amber stops. �The phrase. Made up
his mind. What exactly do you mean?"

Monicałs smile mocks her for a few seconds before the older
woman surrenders. �Hełs talking about uploading."

�Is that embarrassing, or what?" asks Ang. Amber glances at
her, mildly annoyed, but Ang isnłt looking her way. So much for friends, Amber
thinks. Being queen of all you survey is a great way of breaking up peer
relationships


�He wonłt do it," Amber predicts. �Dadłs burned out."

�He thinks hełll get it back if he optimizes himself for
re-entrancy." Monica continues to smile. �Iłve been telling him itłs just what
he needs."

�I do not want my father bugging me. Or my mother. Memo to
immigration control: no entry rights for Manfred Macx without clearance through
the Queenłs secretary."

�What did he do to get you so uptight?" asks Monica idly.

Amber sighs, and subsides. �Nothing. Hełs just so extropian
itłs embarrassing. Like, that was the last centuryłs apocalypse. Yłknow?"

�I think he was a really very forward-looking organic," Monica,
speaking for the Franklin Borg, asserts. Amber looks away. Pierre would get it,
she thinks. Pierre would understand her aversion to Manfred showing up. Pierre,
too, wants to carve out his own niche without parents looking over his
shoulders, although for very different reasons. She focuses on someone male and
more-or-less mature
Nicky, she thinks, though she hasnłt seen him for a long
time
walking toward the piazza, bare-ass naked and beautifully tanned.

�Parents. What are they good for?" asks Amber, with all the
truculence of her seventeen years. �Even if they stay neotenous they lose
flexibility. And therełs that long Paleolithic tradition of juvenile slavery.
Inhuman, I call it."

�How old were you when it was safe to leave you around the
house on your own?" challenges Monica.

�Five. Thatłs when I had my first implants." Amber smiles at
the approaching young Adonis, who smiles back: yes, itłs Nicky, and he seems
pleased to see her. Life is good, she thinks, idly considering whether or not
to tell Pierre.

�Times change," remarks Monica. �Donłt write your father off
too soon; there might come a time when you want his company."

�Huh." Amber pulls a face at the old Borg component. �Thatłs
what you all say!"

As soon as Amber steps onto the grass, she can feel possibilities
open up around her: she has management authority here, and this universe is
big, wide open, not like Sadeqłs existential trap. A twitch of a sub-process
re-asserts her self-image, back to short hair and comfortable clothing. Another
twitch brings up a whole load of useful diagnostics. Amber has an uncomfortable
feeling that shełs running in a compatibility box, here
there are signs that
her access to the simulation systemłs control interface is very much via
proxy
but at least shełs got it.

�Wow. Back in the real world at last!" She can hardly
contain her excitement, even forgetting to be pissed at Sadeq for thinking she
was just an actor in his Cartesian theatrełs performance of Puritan Hell.
�Look! Itłs the DMZ!"

Theyłre standing on a grassy knoll overlooking a gleaming
Mediterranean city that snoozes beneath a Mandelbrot-fuzzy not-sun that hangs
at the center of a hyperbolic landscape dwindling into the blue yonder,
incomprehensibly distant. Circular baby-blue wells open in the walls of the
world at regular intervals, connecting to other parts of the manifold. �How big
is it, ghost? In planetary simulation-equivalents."

�This demilitarized zone is an embedded reality, funneling
all transfers between the local star systemłs router and the civilization that
built it. It uses on the order of a thousandth of the capacity of the
Matrioshka brain it is part of, although the runaway excursion currently in
force has absorbed most of that. Matrioshka brain, you are familiar with the
concept?" The ghost sounds fussily pedantic.

Sadeq shakes his head. Amber glances at him, askance. �Take
all the planets in a star system and dismantle them," she explains. �Turn them
into dust
structured nanocomp, powered by heat exchangers, in concentric orbits
around the central star. The inner orbitals run close to the melting point of
iron; the outer ones are cold as liquid nitrogen, and each layer runs off the
waste heat of the next shell in. Itłs like a Russian doll made out of Dyson
spheres, shell enclosing shell enclosing shell, all running uploads
Dad figured
our own solar system could support, uh, about a hundred billion times as many
inhabitants as Earth. At a conservative estimate. As uploads, living in
simulation space."

�Ah." Sadeq nods thoughtfully. �Is that your definition,
too?" he asks, glancing up at the glowing point the ghost uses to localize its
presence.

�Substantially," it says, almost grudgingly.

�Substantially?" Amber glances around. A billion worlds to
explore, she thinks dizzily. And thatłs just the firewall? She feels obscurely
cheated: you need to be vaster than human just to count the digits in the big
numbers at play here, but therełs nothing fundamentally incomprehensible about
it. This is the sort of civilization Dad said she could expect to live in,
within her meatbody life-expectancy. Dad and his drinking buddies, singing
�dismantle the Moon! Melt down Mars!" in a castle outside Prague as they waited
for the results of a shamelessly gerrymandered election to come in in the third
decade of the third millennium, the space and freedom party taking over the EU
and cranking up to escape velocity. But this is supposed to be kiloparsecs from
home, ancient alien civilizations and all that! Wherełs the exotic
super-science? I have a bad feeling about this, she thinks, spawning a copy of
herself to set up a private channel to Sadeq; it isnłt advanced enough. Do you
suppose these guys could be like the Wunch? Parasites hitching a ride in the
machine?

The Wunch, a disastrous infection that had nearly taken over
the Field Circus, are dumb parasitic aliens who infest the routers. Luckily,
Earthłs first uploads
who had reached the router years earlier and been
assimilated by the Wunch
had been lobsters; the confused carpetbaggers
succumbed to defenses jury-rigged by Pierre and the rest of the crew.

You believe itłs lying to us? Sadeq sends back.

�Hmm." Amber sets off down-slope toward the piazza below, at
the heart of the fake town. �It looks a bit too human to me."

�Human," echoes Sadeq, a curious wistfulness in his voice.
�Did you not say humans are extinct?"

�Your species is obsolete," the ghost comments smugly. �Inappropriately
adapted to artificial realities. Poorly optimized circuitry, excessively
complex low-bandwidth sensors, messy global variables
"

�Yeah, yeah, I get the picture," says Amber, turning her
attention on the town. �So why do you think we can deal with this alien god
youłve got a problem with?"

�It asked for you," said the ghost, narrowing from an
ellipse to a line, and then shrinking to a dimensionless point of brilliance.
�And now itłs coming. We-I not willing to risk exposure. Call us-me when you
have slain the dragon. Goodbye."

�Oh shit
" Amber spins round. But she and Sadeq are alone
beneath the hot sunlight from above. The piazza, like the one in the Nursery
republic, is charmingly rustic
but therełs nobody home, nothing but ornate
cast-iron furniture basking beneath the noon-bright sun, a table with a parasol
over it, something furry lying sprawled in a patch of sunlight beside it.

�We appear to be alone for now," says Sadeq. He smiles crookedly,
then nods at the table. �Maybe we should wait for our host to arrive?"

�Our host." Amber peers around. �The ghost is kind of frightened
of this alien. I wonder why?"

�It asked for us." Sadeq heads toward the table, pulls out a
chair, and sits down carefully. �That could be very good news
or very bad."

�Hmm." Amber finishes her survey, sees no sign of life. For
lack of any better idea, she ambles over to the table and sits down at the
other side of it from Sadeq. He looks slightly nervous beneath her inspection,
but maybe itłs just embarrassment. If I had an afterlife like that, Iłd be
embarrassed about it too, Amber thinks to herself.

�Hey, you nearly tripped over
" Sadeq freezes, peering at
something close to Amberłs left foot. He looks puzzled. �What are you doing
here?" he asks her blind spot.

�What are you talking to?" she asks, startled.

Hełs talking to me, dummy, says something tantalizingly familiar
from her blind spot. So the fuckwitłs trying to use you to dislodge me, hmm?
Thatłs not exactly clever.

�Who
" Amber squints at the flagstone, spawns a bunch of
ghosts who tear hurriedly at her reality modification ackles. Nothing seems to
shift the blindness. �Are you the alien?"

�What else could I be?" the blind spot asks with heavy
irony. �No, Iłm your fatherłs pet cat. Listen, do you want to get out of here?"

�Uh." Amber rubs her eyes. �I canłt see you, whatever you
are," she says politely. �Do I know you?" Shełs got a strange sense that she
does know the blind spot, that itłs really important and shełs missing
something intimate to her own sense of identity, but what it might be she canłt
tell.

�Yeah, kid." Therełs a note of world-weary amusement in the
not-voice coming from the hazy patch on the ground. �Theyłve hacked you but
good, both of you. Let me in and Iłll fix it."

�No!" exclaims Amber, a second ahead of Sadeq, who looks at
her oddly. �Are you really an invader?"

The blind spot sighs. �Iłm as much an invader as you are, remember?
I came here with you. Difference is, Iłm not going to let some stupid corporate
ghost use me as fungible currency."

�Fungible
" Sadeq stops. �I remember you," he says slowly,
with an expression of absolute, utter surprise on his face. �What do you mean?"

The blind spot yawns, baring sharp ivory fangs. Amber shakes
her head, dismissing the momentary hallucination. �Lemme guess. You woke up in
a room and this alien ghost tells you the human species is extinct and asks you
to do a number on me. Is that right?"

Amber nods, as an icy finger of fear trails up and down her
spine. �Is it lying?" she asks.

�Damn right!" The blind spot is smiling, now, and the smile
on the void wonłt go away
she can see the smile, just not the body itłs
attached to. �My reckoning is, wełre about sixteen light years from Earth. The
Wunch have been through here, stripped the dump, then took off for parts
unknown; itłs a trashhole, you wouldnłt believe it. The main life form is an
incredibly ornate corporate ecosphere, legal instruments breeding and
replicating. They mug passing sapients and use them as currency."

Therełs a triangular, pointy head behind the smile, slit
eyes and sharp ears; predatory, intelligent-looking. Amber can see it out of
the corners of her eyes when she looks around the piazza. �You mean we, uh, they
grabbed us when we appeared and theyłve mangled my memories
" Amber suddenly
finds it incredibly difficult to concentrate, but if she focuses on the smile
she can almost see the body behind it, hunched like a furry chicken, tail
wrapped neatly around its front paws.

�Yeah. Except that they didnłt bargain on meeting something
like me." The smile is infinitely wide, a Cheshire cat grin on the front of an
orange and brown stripy body that shimmers in front of Amberłs gaze like a
hallucination. �Your motherłs cracking tools are self-extending, Amber. Do you
remember Hong Kong?"

�Hong
"

There is a moment of painless pressure, then Amber feels
huge invisible barriers sliding away on all sides. She looks around, for the
first time seeing the piazza as it really is, half the crew of the Field Circus
waiting nervously around her, the grinning cat crouched on the floor at her
feet, the enormous walls of recomplicating data that fence their little town
off from the gaping holes
interfaces to the other routers in the network.

�Welcome back," Pierre says gravely, as Amber gives a squeak
of surprise and leans forward to pick up her cat. �Now youłre out from under,
how about we start trying to figure out how to get home?"

Welcome to decade the sixth, millennium three. These old
datelines donłt mean so much any more, for while some billions of fleshbody
humans are still infected with viral memes, the significance of theocentric
dating has been dealt a body blow. This may be the fifties, but what that means
to you depends on how fast your reality rate runs. The various upload clades
exploding across the reaches of the solar system vary by several orders of
magnitude
some are barely out of 2049, while others are exploring the subjective
thousandth millennium.

While the Field Circus floats in orbit around an alien
router
itself orbiting the brown dwarf Hyundai +4904/-56
while Amber and her
crew are trapped on the far side of a wormhole linking the router to a network
of incomprehensibly vast alien mindscapes
while all this is going on, the
damnfool human species has finally succeeded in making itself obsolete. The
proximate cause of its displacement from the pinnacle of creation (or the
pinnacle of teleological self-congratulation, depending on your stance on evolutionary
biology) is an attack of self-aware corporations. The phrase �smart money" has
taken on a whole new meaning, for the collision between international business
law and neurocomputing technology has given rise to a whole new family of
species
fast-moving corporate carnivores in the net. The planet Mercury has
been broken up by a consortium of energy brokers, and Venus is an expanding
debris cloud, energized to a violent glare by the trapped and channeled solar
output; a million billion fist-sized computing caltrops, backsides glowing dull
red with the efflux from their thinking, orbit the sun at various inclinations
no further out than Mercury used to be.

Billions of fleshbody humans refuse to have anything to do
with the blasphemous new realities. Many of their leaders denounce the uploads
and AIs as soulless machines. Many more are timid, harboring self-preservation
memes that amplify a previously healthy aversion to having onełs brain peeled
like an onion by mind-mapping robots into an all-pervading neurosis
sales of
electrified tinfoil-lined hats are at an all-time high. Still, hundreds of
millions have already traded their meat puppets for mind machines: and they
breed fast. In another few years, the fleshbody populace will be an absolute
minority of the posthuman clade. Some time later, there will probably be a war:
the dwellers in the thoughtcloud are hungry for dumb matter to convert, and the
fleshbodies make notoriously poor use of the collection of silicon and rare
elements that pool at the bottom of their gravity well.

Energy and thought are driving a phase change in the condensed
matter substance of the solar system. The MIPS per kilogram metric is on the
steep upward leg of a sigmoidal curve
dumb matter is coming to life as the mind
children restructure everything with voracious nanomechanical servants. The
thoughtcloud forming in orbit around the sun will ultimately mark the graveyard
of a biological ecology, another marker in space visible to the telescopes of
any new iron-age species with the insight to understand what theyłre seeing:
the death throes of dumb matter, the birth of a habitable reality vaster than a
galaxy and far speedier. Death throes that within a few centuries will mean the
extinction of biological life within a light-year or so of that star
for the
majestic Matrioshka brains, though they are the pinnacles of sentient
civilization, are innately hostile to fleshy life.

Pierre, Donna-the-all-seeing-eye, and Su Ang fill Amber in
on what theyłve discovered about the bazaar
as they call the space the ghost
referred to as the demilitarized zone
over ice-cold margaritas and a very good
simulation of a sociable joint.

�Itłs half a light-hour in diameter, four hundred times as
massive as Earth," Pierre explains. �Not solid, of course
the largest component
is about the size my fist used to be." Amber squints, trying to remember how
big that was
scale factors are hard to remember accurately. �I met this old
chatbot that said itłs outlived its original star, but Iłm not sure itłs
running with a full deck. Anyway, if itłs telling the truth, wełre a third of a
light-year out from a closely coupled binary system
they use orbital lasers the
size of Jupiter to power it without getting too close to all those icky gravity
wells."

Amber is intimidated, despite her better judgment, because
the bazaar is several orders of magnitude more complex than the totality of
human pre-singularity civilization. She tries not to show it in front of the
others, but shełs worried that getting home may be impossible
requiring enterprise
beyond the economic event horizon, as realistic a proposition as a dime
debuting as a dollar bill. Still, shełs got to at least try. Just knowing about
the existence of the bazaar will change so many things


�How much money can we lay our hands on?" she asks. �What is
money hereabouts, anyway? Assuming theyłve got a scarcity-mediated economy.
Bandwidth, maybe?"

�Ah, well." Pierre looks at her oddly. �Thatłs the problem.
Didnłt the ghost tell you?"

�Tell me?" Amber raises an eyebrow. �Yeah, but it hasnłt exactly
proven to be a reliable guide to anything, has it?"

�Tell her," Su Ang says quietly. She looks away, embarrassed
by something.

�Theyłve got a scarcity economy all right," says Pierre.
�Bandwidth is the limited resource and things that come from other cognitive
universes are, well, currency. We came in through the coin slot, is it any
wonder we ended up in the bank?"

�Thatłs so deeply wrong that I donłt know where to begin,"
Amber grumbles. �How did they get into this mess?"

�Donłt ask me." Pierre shrugs. �I have the distinct feeling
that anyone or anything we meet in this place wonłt have any more of a clue
than we do
whoever or whatever built this brain, there ainłt nobody home any
more except for the self-propelled corporations and hitchhikers like the Wunch.
Wełre in the dark, just like they were."

�Huh." Amber focuses on the table in front of her, rests the
heel of her palm on the cool metal, and tries to remember how to fork a second
copy of her state vector. A moment later her ghost obligingly fucks with the
physics model of the table; iron gives way like rubber beneath her fingertips,
a pleasant elasticity. �Okay, we have some control over the universe, at least
thatłs something to work with. Tried any self-modification?"

�Thatłs dangerous," Pierre says emphatically. �The more of
us the better before we start doing that stuff. And we need some firewalling of
our own."

�How deep does reality go, here?" asks Sadeq. Itłs almost
the first question hełs asked of his own volition, and Amber takes it as a
positive sign that hełs finally coming out of his shell.

�Oh, the Planck length is about a hundredth of a millimeter
here. Too small to see, comfortably large for the simulation engines to handle.
Not like real spacetime."

�Well, then." Sadeq pauses. �They can zoom their reality if
they need to?"

�Yeah, fractals work in here." Pierre nods. �I didnłt
"

�This place is a trap," Su Ang says emphatically.

�No, it isnłt," Pierre replies, nettled.

�What do you mean, a trap?" asks Amber.

�Wełve been here a while," says Ang. She glances at Aineko,
who sprawls on the flagstones, snoozing or whatever it is that weakly
superhuman AIs do when theyłre emulating a sleeping cat. �After your cat broke
us out of bondage, we had a look around. There are things here that
" she
shivers. �Humans canłt survive in most of the simulation spaces here. Wełre
talking universes with physics models that donłt support our kind of neural
computing. You could migrate there, but youłd need to be ported to a whole new
type of logic
by the time you did that, would you still be you? Still, there
are enough entities roughly as complex as we are to prove that the builders
arenłt here any more. Just lesser sapients, rooting through the wreckage. Worms
and parasites squirming through the body after nightfall on the battlefield."

�So therełs no hope of making contact," Amber summarizes.
�At least, not with anything transcendent and well-inclined."

�Thatłs right," Pierre concedes. He doesnłt sound happy
about it.

�And wełre stuck in a pocket universe with limited bandwidth
to home and a bunch of crazy slum-dwellers who want to use us for currency.
ęJesus saves, and redeems souls for valuable gifts.ł Yeah?"

�Yeah." Su Ang looks gloomy.

�Well." Amber glances at Sadeq speculatively. Sadeq is
staring into the distance, at the crazy infinite sun spot that limns the square
with shadows. �Hey, god-man. Got a question for you."

�Yes?" Sadeq looks at her, a slightly dazed expression on
his face. �Iłm sorry, I am just feeling the jaws of a larger trap around my
throat
"

�Donłt be." Amber grins, and it is not a pleasant
expression. �Have you ever been to Brooklyn?"

�No, why
"

�Youłre going to help me sell these lying bastards a bridge.
Okay? And when wełve sold it, wełre going to get the buyer to drive us across,
so we can go home. Listen, herełs how wełre going to do it ...."

�I can do this, I think," Sadeq says, moodily examining the
Klein bottle on the table. The bottle is half-empty, its fluid contents
invisible around the corner of the fourth dimensional store. �I spent long
enough alone in there to
" he shivers.

�I donłt want you damaging yourself," Amber says, calmly
enough, because she has an ominous feeling that their survival in this place
has an expiration date attached.

�Oh, never fear." Sadeq grins lopsidedly. �One pocket hell
is much like another."

�Do you understand why
"

�Yes, yes," he says dismissively. �We canłt send copies of
ourselves into it, that would be an abomination. It needs to be unpopulated,
yes?"

�Well. The idea is to get us home, not leave thousands of copies
of ourselves trapped in a pocket universe here. Isnłt that it?" Su Ang asks
hesitantly. Shełs looking distracted, most of her attention focused on
absorbing the experiences of a dozen ghosts shełs spun off to attend to
perimeter security.

�Who are we selling this to?" asks Sadeq. �If you want me to
make it attractive
"

�It doesnłt need to be a complete replica of the Earth. It
just has to be a convincing advertisement for a pre-singularity civilization
full of humans. Youłve got two-and-seventy zombies to dissect for their brains;
bolt together a bunch of variables you can apply to them and you can permutate
them to look a bit more varied."

Amber turns her attention to the snoozing cat. �Hey,
furball. How long have we been here really, in real-time? Can you grab Sadeq
some more resources for his personal paradise garden?"

Aineko stretches and yawns, totally feline, then looks up at
Amber with narrowed eyes and raised tail. �ęBout eighteen minutes, wall-clock
time." The cat stretches again and sits, front paws drawn together primly, tail
curled around them. �The ghosts are pushing. You know? I donłt think I can
sustain this for too much longer. Theyłre not good at hacking you, but I think
it wonłt be too long before they instantiate a new copy of you, one thatłll be
predisposed to their side."

�I donłt get why they didnłt assimilate you along with the
rest of us."

�Blame your mother again
shełs the one who kept updating the
digital rights management code on my personality. ęIllegal consciousness is
copyright theftł sucks until an alien tries to rewire your hindbrain with a
debugger; then itłs a life-saver." Aineko glances down and begins washing one
paw. �I can give your mullah-man about six days, subjective time. After that,
all bets are off."

�I will take it, then." Sadeq stands. �Thank you." He smiles
at the cat; a smile that fades to translucency, hanging in the simulated air
like an echo as the priest returns to his tower
this time with a blueprint and
a plan in mind.

�That leaves just us." Su Ang glances at Pierre, back to
Amber. �Who are you going to sell this crazy scheme to?"

Amber leans back and smiles. Behind her, Donna
her avatar an
archaic movie camera suspended below a model helicopter
is filming everything
for posterity. �Who do we know whołs dumb enough to buy into a scam like this?"

Pierre looks at her suspiciously. �I think wełve been here before,"
he says slowly. �You arenłt going to make me kill anyone, are you?"

�I donłt think thatłll be necessary, unless the corporate
ghosts think wełre going to get away from them and are greedy enough to want to
kill us."

�You see, she learned from last time," Ang comments, and
Amber nods. �No more misunderstandings. Right?" She beams at Amber.

Amber beams right back. �Right. And thatłs why you
" she
points at Pierre
"are going to go find out if any relics of the Wunch are
hanging about here. I want you to make them an offer they wonłt refuse."

�How much for just the civilization?" asks the slug.

Pierre looks down at it thoughtfully. Itłs not really a
terrestrial mollusk; slugs on earth arenłt two meters long and donłt have lacy
white exoskeletons to hold their chocolate-colored flesh in shape. But then, it
isnłt really the alien it appears to be, either; itłs a defaulting corporate instrument
that has disguised itself as a long-extinct alien upload, in the hope that its
creditors wonłt recognize it if it looks like a randomly evolved sentient.

�The civilization isnłt for sale," Pierre says slowly. The
translation interface shimmers, storing up his words and transforming them into
a different deep grammar: not merely translating his syntax, but mapping
equivalent meanings where necessary. �But we can give you privileged observer
status if thatłs what you want. And we know what you are. If youłre interested
in finding a new exchange to be traded on, your existing intellectual property
assets will be worth rather more there than here."

The rogue corporation rears up slightly and bunches into a
fatter lump; its skin blushes red in patches. �Must think about this. Is your
mandatory accounting time-cycle fixed or variable term? Are self-owned
corporate entities able to enter contracts?"

�I could ask my patron," Pierre says casually. Suppressing a
stab of angst; hełs still not sure where he and Amber stand, but theirs is far
more than just a business relationship and he worries about the risks shełs
taking. �My patron has a jurisdiction within which she can modify corporate law
to accommodate your requirements. Your activities on a wider scale might
require shell companies, but that can be taken care of."

The translation membrane wibbles for a while, apparently reformulating
some difficult concepts in a manner that the corporation can absorb. Pierre is
reasonably confident that itłll work, however. He waits patiently, looking
around at the swampy landscape, mud flats punctuated by clumps of spiky violet
ferns. The corporation has to be desperate, to be considering the bizarre
proposition that Amber has dreamed up for him to pitch to it.

�Sounds interesting," the slug declares after a brief
confirmatory debate with the membrane. �If I supply the genome, can you
customize a container for it?"

�I believe so," Pierre says carefully. �For your part, can
you deliver the energy we need?"

�From a gate?" For a moment the translation membrane hallucinates
a stick-human, shrugging. �Easy. Gates are all entangled: dump coherent
radiation in at one, get it out at another."

�But the lightspeed lag
"

�No problem. You go first, then a dumb instrument I leave behind
buys up power and sends it after. Router network is synchronous, within
framework of state machines that run Universe 1.0; messages propagate at same
speed, speed of light in vacuum. Whole point of the network is that it is
non-lossy. Who would trust their mind to a communications channel that might
partially randomize them in transit?"

Pierre goes cross-eyed, trying to understand the
implications of the slugłs cosmology. But there isnłt really time, here and
now: theyłve got on the order of a minute of wall-clock time to get everything
together, if Aineko is right, before the angry ghosts that resurrected Amber to
do their bidding start trying to break into the DMZ by other means. �If you are
willing to try this, wełd be happy to accommodate you," he says, thinking of
crossed fingers and rabbitsł feet and firewalls.

�Itłs a deal," the membrane translates the slugłs response
back at him. �Now we exchange shares/plasmids/ownership? Then merger complete?"

Pierre stares at the slug: �But this is a business arrangement!"
he protests. �Whatłs sex got to do with it?"

�Apologies offered. I am thinking we have a translation
error. You said this was to be a merging of businesses?"

�Not that way. Itłs a contract. We agree to take you with
us. In return, you help lure the Wunch into the domain wełre setting up for
them ...."

And so on.

Steeling herself, Amber recalls the address the ghost gave
her for Sadeqłs afterlife universe. In her own subjective time, itłs been about
half an hour since he left. �Coming?" she asks her cat.

�Donłt think I will," says Aineko. It looks away, blissfully
unconcerned.

�Bah." Amber tenses, then opens the port to Sadeqłs pocket
universe.

As before, she finds herself indoors, standing on an ornate
mosaic floor in a room with whitewashed walls and peaked windows. But therełs
something different about it, and, after a moment, she realizes what it is. The
sound of vehicle traffic from outside, the cooing of pigeons on the rooftops,
someone shouting across the street: there are people here.

She walks over to the nearest window and looks out, then recoils.
Itłs hot outside. Dust and fumes hang in air the color of cement over
rough-finished concrete apartment buildings, their roofs covered in satellite
uplinks and cheap, garish LED advertising panels. Looking down, she sees motor
scooters, cars
filthy fossil-fuelled behemoths, a ton of steel and explosives
in motion to carry only one human, a mass ratio worse than an archaic
ICBM
brightly dressed people walking to and fro. A news helicam buzzes overhead,
lenses darting and glinting at the traffic.

�Just like home, isnłt it?" says Sadeq, behind her.

Amber starts. �This is where you grew up? This is Yazd?"

�It doesnłt exist any more, in realspace." Sadeq looks thoughtful,
but far more animated than the barely conscious parody of himself that shełd
rescued from this building
back when it was a mediaeval vision of the
afterlife
scant subjective hours ago. He cracks a smile: �Probably a good
thing. They were dismantling it even while we were preparing to leave, you
know?"

�Itłs detailed." Amber throws her gaze out through the window,
multiplexes it, sends little virtual viewpoints dancing through the streets of
the Iranian industrial ęburb. Overhead, big Airbuses ply the skyways, bearing
pilgrims on the Hajj, tourists to the coastal resorts on the Persian Gulf,
produce to the foreign markets.

�Itłs the best time I could recall," Sadeq says. �I didnłt
spend much time here
I was in Qom, studying, and Kazakhstan, for cosmonaut
training
but itłs meant to be the early twenties. After the troubles, after the
fall of the guardians; a young, energetic, liberal country full of optimism and
faith in democracy. Values that werenłt doing well elsewhere."

�I thought democracy was a new thing there?"

�No." Sadeq shakes his head. �There were pro-democracy riots
in Tehran in the nineteenth century, did you know that? Thatłs why the first
revolution
no." He makes a cutting gesture. �Politics I can live without." He
frowns. �But look. Is this what you wanted?"

Amber recalls her scattered eyes
some of which have flown as
much as a thousand kilometers from her locus
and concentrates on reintegrating:
memories of Sadeqłs re-creation. �It looks convincing. But not too convincing."

�That was the idea."

�Well, then." She smiles. �Is it just Iran? Or did you take
any liberties around the edges?"

�Who, me?" He raises an eyebrow. �I have enough doubts about
the morality of this
project
without trying to trespass on Allahłs territory,
peace be unto him. I promise you, there are no sapients in this world but us;
the people are the hollow shells of my dreaming, storefront dummies. The
animals are crude bitmaps. This is what you asked for, and no more."

�Well, then." Amber pauses. Recalls the expression on the
dirt-smudged face of a little boy, bouncing a ball at his companions by the
boarded-up front of a gas station on a desert road. Remembers the animated
chatter of two synthetic housewives, one in traditional black and the other in
some imported Eurotrash fashion. �Are you sure they arenłt real?" she asks.

�Quite sure." But for a moment, she sees Sadeq looking uncertain.
�Shall we go? Do you have the occupiers ready to move in yet?"

�Yes to the first, and Pierrełs working on the second. Come
on, we donłt want to get trampled by the squatters." She waves and opens a door
back onto the piazza, where her robot cat
the alienłs nightmare intruder in the
DMZ
sleeps, chasing superintelligent dream mice through multidimensional
realities. �Sometimes I wonder if Iłm conscious. Thinking these thoughts gives
me the creeps; letłs go and sell a bridge."

Amber confronts the mendacious ghost in the windowless room
stolen from 2001.

�You have confined the monster," the ghost states.

�Yes." Amber waits for a subjective moment, feeling delicate
fronds tickle at the edges of her awareness in what seems to be a
timing-channel attack. She feels a momentary urge to sneeze, a hot flash of
anger that passes almost immediately.

�And you have modified yourself to lock out external
control," the ghost adds. �What is it that you want, Autonome Amber?"

�Donłt you have any concept of individuality?" she asks, annoyed
by its presumption at meddling with her internal states.

�Individuality is an unnecessary barrier to information transfer,"
says the ghost, morphing into its original form, a translucent reflection of
her own body. �A large block of the DMZ is still inaccessible to we-me. Are you
sure you have defeated the monster?"

�Itłll do as I say," Amber replies, forcing herself to sound
more confident than she feels
that damned transhuman cyborg cat is no more
predictable than any real feline. �Now, the matter of payment arises."

�Payment." The ghost sounds amused. But now Pierrełs filled
her in on what to look for, Amber can see the translation membranes around it.
Their color shift maps to a huge semantic distance; the creature on the other
side, even though it looks like a ghost-image of herself, is very far from
human. �How can we-us be expected to pay our own money for rendering services
to us?"

Amber smiles. �We want an open channel back to the router we
arrived through."

�Impossible," says the ghost.

�We want an open channel, and for it to stay open for six hundred
million seconds after we clear it."

�Impossible," the ghost repeats.

�We can trade you a whole civilization," Amber says blandly.
�A whole human nation, millions of individuals. Just let us go and wełll see to
it."

�You
please wait." The ghost shimmers slightly, fuzzing at
the edges.

Amber opens a private channel to Pierre while the ghost confers
with its other nodes. Are the Wunch in place yet? she sends.

Theyłre moving in. This bunch donłt remember what happened
on the Field Circus, memories of those events never made it back to them. So
the slugłs got them to cooperate. Itłs kinda scary to watch
like the Invasion
of the Body Snatchers, you know?

I donłt care if itłs scary to watch, Amber replies, I need
to know if wełre ready yet.

Sadeq says yes, the universe is ready.

Right, pack yourself down. Wełll be moving soon.

The ghost is firming up in front of her. �A whole
civilization?" it asks. �That is not possible. Your arrival
" It pauses,
fuzzing a little. Hah, Gotcha! thinks Amber. Liar, liar, pants on fire! �You
cannot possibly have found a human civilization in the archives."

�The monster you complain about that came through with us is
a predator," she asserts blandly. �It swallowed an entire nation before we
heroically attracted its attention and induced it to follow us into the router.
Itłs an archivore
everything was inside it, still frozen until we expanded it
again. This civilization will have been restored from hot shadows in our own
solar system, already: there is nothing to gain by taking it home with us. But
we need to return to ensure that no more predators of this type discover the
router
or the high bandwidth hub we linked to it."

�You are sure you have killed this monster?" asks the ghost.
�It would be inconvenient if it were to emerge from hiding in its digest
archives."

�I can guarantee it wonłt trouble you again if you let us
go," says Amber, mentally crossing her fingers. The ghost doesnłt seem to have
noticed the huge wedge of fractally compressed data that bloats her personal
scope by an order of magnitude. She can still feel Ainekołs goodbye smile
inside her head, an echo of ivory teeth trusting her to revive it if the escape
plan succeeds.

�We-us agree." The ghost twists weirdly, morphs into a
five-dimensional hypersphere. It bubbles violently for a moment, then spits out
a smaller token
a warped distortion in the air, like a gravityless black hole.
�Here is your passage. Show us the civilization."

�Okay
" Now! �
catch." Amber twitches an imaginary muscle
and one wall of the room dissolves, forming a doorway into Sadeqłs existential
hell, now redecorated as a fair facsimile of a twenty-first century industrial
city in Iran, and populated by a Wunch of parasites who canłt believe what
theyłve lucked into
an entire continent of zombies waiting to host their
flesh-hungry consciousness.

The ghost drifts toward the open window; Amber grabs the
hole and yanks it open, gets a grip on her own thoughts, and sends open wide!
on the channel everybody is listening in on. For a moment time stands still;
and then


A synthetic gemstone the size of a Coke can falls through
the cold vacuum, in high orbit around a brown dwarf. But the vacuum is anything
but dark. A sapphire glare as bright as the noonday sun on Mars shines on the
crazy diamond, billowing and cascading off sails as fine as soap bubbles that
slowly drift and tense away from the can. The runaway slug-corporationłs proxy
is holding the router open, and the lump of strange matter is shining with the
brilliance of a nuclear fireball, laser light channeled from a star eight light
years away to power the Field Circus on its return trip to the once-human solar
system.

Amber has retreated, with Pierre, into a simulation of her
home aboard the Ring Imperium. One wall of her bedroom is a solid slab of
diamond, looking out across the boiling Jovian ionosphere from an orbit low
enough to make the horizon appear flat. Theyłre curled together in her bed, a
slightly more comfortable copy of the royal bed of King Henry VIII of England,
a bed that appears to be carved from thousand year old oak beams. As with
everything else about the Ring Imperium, appearances are deceptive: and even
more so in the cramped simulation spaces of the Field Circus as it slowly
accelerates toward a tenth of lightspeed.

�Let me get this straight. You convinced. The locals. That a
simulation of Iran populated by refugee members of the Wunch. Was a human
civilization?"

�Yeah." Amber stretches lazily and smirks at him. �Itłs
their damn fault; if the corporate collective entities didnłt use conscious
viewpoints as money, they wouldnłt have fallen for a trick like that, would
they?"

�People. Money."

�Well." She yawns, then sits up and snaps her finger imperiously:
down-stuffed pillows appear behind her back, and a silver salver bearing two
full glasses of wine materializes between them. �Corporations are life forms
back home, too, arenłt they? We give our AIs corporations to make them legal
entities, but it goes further. Look at any company headquarters, fitted out
with works of art and expensive furniture and with staff bowing-and-scraping
everywhere
"

�
The new aristocracy. Right?"

�Wrong. When they take over, what you get is more like the
new biosphere. Hell, the new primordial soup: prokaryotes, bacteria and algae,
mindlessly swarming, trading money for plasmids." The queen passes her consort
a wine glass. He drinks from it: it refills miraculously. �Youłve got to wonder
where the builders of that structure came from. And where they went."

�Maybe the companies spent them." Pierre looks worried.
�Running up a national debt, importing luxurious viewpoint extensions, munching
exotic dreams. Once they plugged into the net, a primitive Matrioshka
civilization would be like, um." He pauses. �Tribal. A primitive
post-singularity civilization meeting the galactic net for the first time.
Over-awed. Wanting all the luxuries. Spending their capital, their human
or
alien
capital, the meme machines that built them. Until therełs nothing left
but a howling wilderness of corporate mechanisms looking for someone to own."

�Speculation."

�Idle speculation," he agrees.

�But we canłt ignore it." She nods. �Is the hitch hiker
happy?"

�Last time I checked on him, yeah." Pierre blows on his wine
glass and it dissolves into a million splinters of light, but he looks dubious
at the mention of the slug-shaped corporate instrument theyłre taking with them
in return for help engineering their escape. �Donłt trust him out in the
unrestricted sim-spaces yet. Aineko is spending a lot of time with him."

�So thatłs where she is!"

�Cats never come when you call them, do they?"

�Therełs that," she agrees. Then with a worried glance at
the vision of Jupiterłs cloudscape: �I wonder what wełll find when we get
there?"

Outside the window, the imaginary Jovian terminator is sweeping
toward them with eerie rapidity, sucking them toward an uncertain nightfall.

Pimpf

I hate days like this.

Itłs a rainy Monday morning and Iłm late in to work at the
Laundry because of a technical fault on the Tube. When I get to my desk, the
first thing I find is a note from Human Resources that says one of their
management team wants to talk to me, soonest, about playing computer games at
work. And to put the cherry on top of the shit-pie, the officełs coffee
percolator is empty because none of the other inmates in this goddamn loony bin
can be arsed refilling it. Itłs enough to make me long for a high place and a rifle
... but in the end I head for Human Resources to take the bull by the horns,
decaffeinated and mean as only a decaffeinated Bob can be.

Over in the dizzying heights of HR, the furniture is fresh
and the windows recently cleaned. Itłs a far cry from the dingy ratsł nest of
Ops Division, where I normally spend my working time. But ours is not to wonder
why (at least in public).

�Ms. MacDougal will see you now," says the receptionist on
the front desk, looking down her nose at me pityingly. �Do try not to shed on
the carpet, we had it steam cleaned this morning." Bastards.

I slouch across the thick, cream wool towards the inner sanctum
of Emma MacDougal, senior vice-superintendent, Personnel Management
(Operations), trying not to gawk like a resentful yokel at the luxuries on
parade. Itłs not the first time Iłve been here, but I can never shake the sense
that Iłm entering another world, graced by visitors of ministerial import and
elevated budget. The dizzy heights of the real civil service, as opposed to us
poor Morlocks in Ops Division who keep everything running.

�Mr. Howard, do come in." I straighten instinctively when
Emma addresses me. She has that effect on most peopleshe was born to be a
headmistress or a tax inspector, but unfortunately she ended up in Human
Resources by mistake and shełs been letting us know about it ever since. �Have
a seat." The room reeks of quiet luxury by Laundry standards: my chair is big,
comfortable, and hasnłt been bumped, scraped, and abraded into a pile of
kindling by generations of visitors. The office is bright and airy, and the
window is clean and has a row of attractively un-browned potted plants sitting
before it. (The computer squatting on her desk is at least twice as expensive
as anything Iłve been able to get my hands on via official channels, and itłs
not even switched on.) �How good of you to make time to see me." She smiles
like a razor. I stifle a sigh; itłs going to be one of those sessions.

�Iłm a busy man." Letłs see if deadpan will work, hmm?

�Iłm sure you are. Nevertheless." She taps a piece of paper
sitting on her blotter and I tense. �Iłve been hearing disturbing reports about
you, Bob."

Oh, bollocks. �What kind of reports?" I ask warily.

Her smilełs cold enough to frost glass. �Let me be blunt.
Iłve had a reportI hesitate to say who fromabout you playing computer games
in the office."

Oh. That. �I see."

�According to this report youłve been playing rather a lot
of Neverwinter Nights recently." She runs her finger down the printout with
relish. �Youłve even sequestrated an old departmental server to run a
persistent realma multiuser online dungeon." She looks up, staring at me
intently. �What have you got to say for yourself?"

I shrug. Whatłs to say? Shełs got me bang to rights. �Um."

�Um indeed." She taps a finger on the page. �Last Tuesday
you played Neverwinter Nights for four hours. This Monday you played it for two
hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, staying on for an hour
after your official flexitime shift ended. Thatłs six straight hours. What have
you got to say for yourself?"

�Only six?" I lean forward.

�Yes. Six hours." She taps the memo again. �Bob. What are we
paying you for?"

I shrug. �To put the hack into hack-and-slay."

�Yes, Bob, wełre paying you to search online role-playing
games for threats to national security. But you only averaged four hours a day
last week ... isnłt this rather a poor use of your time?"

****

Save me from ambitious bureaucrats. This is the Laundry, the
last overmanned organization of the civil service in London, and theyłre
everywheretrying to climb the greasy pole, playing snakes and ladders with the
org chart, running esoteric counterespionage operations in the staff toilets,
and rationing the civil service tea bags. I guess it serves Mahogany Rowłs
purposes to keep them running in circles and distracting one another, but
sometimes it gets in the way. Emma MacDougal is by no means the worst of the
lot: shełs just a starchy Human Resources manager on her way up, stymied by the
full promotion ladder above her. But shełs trying to butt in and micromanage
inside my department (that is, inside Angletonłs department), and just to show
how efficient she is, shełs actually been reading my time sheets and trying to
stick her oar in on what I should be doing.

To get out of MacDougalłs office I had to explain three
times that my antiquated workstation kept crashing and needed a system rebuild
before shełd finally take the hint. Then she said something about sending me
some sort of administrative assistantan offer that I tried to decline without
causing mortal offense. Sensing an opening, I asked if she could provide a
budget line item for a new computerbut she spotted where I was coming from and
cut me dead, saying that wasnłt in HRłs remit, and that was the end of it.

****

Anyway, Iłm now looking at my watch and it turns out that
itłs getting on for lunch. Iłve lost another morningłs prime gaming time. So I
head back to my office, and just as Iłm about to open the door I hear a
rustling, crunching sound coming from behind it, like a giant hamster snacking
down on trail mix. I canłt express how disturbing this is. Rodent menaces from
beyond space-time arenłt supposed to show up during my meetings with HR, much
less hole up in my office making disturbing noises. Whatłs going on?

I rapidly consider my options, discarding the most extreme
ones (Facilities takes a dim view of improvised ordnance discharges on
Government premises), and finally do the obvious. I push the door open, lean
against the battered beige filing cabinet with the jammed drawer, and ask, �Who
are you and what are you doing to my computer?"

I intend the last phrase to come out as an ominous growl,
but it turns into a strangled squeak of rage. My visitor looks up at me from
behind my monitor, eyes black and beady, and cheek-pouches stuffed withah,
therełs an open can of Pringles sitting on my in-tray. �Yuh?"

�Thatłs my computer." Iłm breathing rapidly all of a sudden,
and I carefully set my coffee mug down next to the light-sick petunia so that I
donłt drop it by accident. �Back away from the keyboard, put down the mouse,
and nobody needs to get hurt." And most especially, my sixth-level
cleric-sorcerer gets to keep all his experience points and gold pieces without
some munchkin intruder selling them all on a dodgy auction site and re-skilling
me as an exotic dancer with chloracne.

It must be my face; he lifts up his hands and stares at me
nervously, then swallows his cud of potato crisps. �You must be Mr. Howard?"

I begin to get an inkling. �No, Iłm the grim fucking
reaper." My eyes take in more telling details: his sallow skin, the acne and
straggly goatee beard. Ye gods and little demons, itłs like looking in a
time-traveling mirror. I grin nastily. �I asked you once and I wonłt ask you
again: Who are you?"

He gulps. �Iłm Pete. Uh, Pete Young. I was told to come here
by Andy, uh, Mr. Newstrom. He says Iłm your new intern."

�My new what ... ?" I trail off. Andy, youłre a bastard! But
I repeat myself. �Intern. Yeah, right. How long have you been here? In the
Laundry, I mean."

He looks nervous. �Since last Monday morning."

�Well, this is the first anyonełs told me about an intern,"
I explain carefully, trying to keep my voice level because blaming the
messenger wonłt help; anyway, if Petełs telling the truth hełs so wet behind
the ears I could use him to water the plants. �So now Iłm going to have to go
and confirm that. You just wait here." I glance at my desktop. Hang on, what
would I have done eight years ago ... ? �No, on second thought, come with me."

****

The Ops wing is a maze of twisty little passageways, all
alike. Cramped offices open off them, painted institutional green and illuminated
by underpowered bulbs lightly dusted with cobwebs. It isnłt like this on
Mahogany Row or over the road in Administration, but those of us who actually
contribute to the bottom line get to mend and make do. (Therełs a malicious,
persistent rumor that this is because the Board wants to encourage a spirit of
plucky us-against-the-world self-reliance in Ops, and the easiest way to do
that is to make every requisition for a box of paper clips into a Herculean
struggle. I subscribe to the other, less popular theory: they just donłt care.)

I know my way through these dingy tunnels; Iłve worked here
for years. Andy has been a couple of rungs above me in the org chart for all
that time. These days hełs got a corner office with a blond Scandinavian pine
desk. (Itłs a corner office on the second floor with a view over the alley
where the local Chinese take-away keeps their dumpsters, and the desk came from
IKEA, but his office still represents the cargo-cult trappings of upward
mobility; we beggars in Ops canłt be choosy.) I see the red lightłs out, so I
bang on his door.

�Come in." He sounds even more world-weary than usual, and
so he should be, judging from the pile of spreadsheet printouts scattered
across the desk in front of him. �Bob?" He glances up and sees the intern. �Oh,
I see youłve met Pete."

�Pete tells me hełs my intern," I say, as pleasantly as I
can manage under the circumstances. I pull out the ratty visitorłs chair with
the hole in the seat stuffing and slump into it. �And hełs been in the Laundry
since the beginning of this week." I glance over my shoulder; Pete is standing
in the doorway looking uncomfortable, so I decide to move White Pawn to Black
Castle Four or whatever itłs called: �Come on in, Pete; grab a chair." (The
other chair is a crawling horror covered in mouse-bitten lever arch files
labeled STRICTLY SECRET.) Itłs important to get the message across that Iłm not
leaving without an answer, and camping my hench-squirt on Andyłs virtual
in-tray is a good way to do that. (Now if only I can figure out what Iłm
supposed to be asking ...) �Whatłs going on?"

�Nobody told you?" Andy looks puzzled.

�Okay, let me rephrase. Whose idea was it, and what am I
meant to do with him?"

�I think it was Emma MacDougalłs. In Human Resources." Oops,
he said Human Resources. I can feel my stomach sinking already. �We picked him
up in a routine sweep through Erewhon space last month." (Erewhon is a new
Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game that started up, oh, about two
months ago, with only a few thousand players so far. Written by a bunch of
spaced-out games programmers from Gothenburg.) �Boris iced him and explained
the situation, then put him through induction. Emma feels that itłd be better
if we trialed the mentoring program currently on roll-out throughout Admin to
see if itłs an improvement over our traditional way of inducting new staff into
Ops, and his number came up." Andy raises a fist and coughs into it, then
waggles his eyebrows at me significantly.

�As opposed to hiding out behind the wet shrubbery for a few
months before graduating to polishing Angletonłs gear-wheels?" I shrug. �Well,
I canłt say itłs a bad idea" Nobody ever accuses HR of having a bad idea;
theyłre subtle and quick to anger, and their revenge is terrible to behold.
�but a little bit of warning would have been nice. Some mentoring for the
mentor, eh?"

The feeble pun is only a trial balloon, but Andy latches
onto it immediately and with evident gratitude. �Yes, I completely agree! Iłll
get onto it at once."

I cross my arms and grin at him lopsidedly. �Iłm waiting."

�Youłre" His gaze slides sideways, coming to rest on Pete.
�Hmm." I can almost see the wheels turning. Andy isnłt aggressive, but hełs a
sharp operator. �Okay, letłs start from the beginning. Bob, this fellow is
Peter-Fred Young. Peter-Fred, meet Mr. Howard, better known as Bob. Iłm"

�Andy Newstrom, senior operational support manager, Department
G," I butt in smoothly. �Due to the modern miracle of matrix management, Andy
is my line manager but I work for someone else, Mr. Angleton, who is also
Andyłs boss. You probably wonłt meet him; if you do, it probably means youłre
in big trouble. That right, Andy?"

�Yes, Bob," he says indulgently, picking right up from my
cue. �And this is Ops Division." He looks at Peter-Fred Young. �Your job, for
the next three months, is to shadow Bob. Bob, youłre between field assignments
anyway, and Project Aurora looks likely to keep you occupied for the whole
timePeter-Fred should be quite useful to you, given his background."

�Project Aurora?" Pete looks puzzled. Yeah, and me, too.

�What is his background, exactly?" I ask. Here it comes ...

�Peter-Fred used to design dungeon modules for a living." Andyłs
cheek twitches. �The earlier games werenłt a big problem, but I think you can
guess where this onełs going."

�Hey, itłs not my fault!" Pete hunches defensively. �I just
thought it was a really neat scenario!"

I have a horrible feeling I know what Andyłs going to say
next. �The third-party content tools for some of the leading MMORPGs are
getting pretty hairy these days. Theyłre supposed to have some recognizers
built in to stop the most dangerous design patterns getting out, but nobody was
expecting Peter-Fred to try to implement a Delta Green scenario as a
Neverwinter Nights persistent realm. If it had gone online on a public game
serverassuming it didnłt eat him during beta testingwe could have been facing
a mass outbreak."

I turn and stare at Pete in disbelief. �That was him?"
Jesus, I could have been killed!

He stares back truculently. �Yeah. Your wizard eats rice
cakes!"

And an attitude to boot. �Andy, hełs going to need a desk."

�Iłm working on getting you a bigger office." He grins.
�This was Emmałs idea, she can foot the bill."

Somehow I knew she had to be tied in with this, but maybe I
can turn it to my advantage. �If Human Resources is involved, surely theyłre
paying?" Which means, deep pockets to pick. �Wełre going to need two Herman
Miller Aeron chairs, an Eames bookcase and occasional table, a desk from some
eye-wateringly expensive Italian design studio, a genuine eighty-year-old
Bonsai Californian redwood, an OC3 cable into Telehouse, and gaming laptops.
Alienware: we need lots and lots of Alienware ...."

Andy gives me five seconds to slaver over the fantasy before
he pricks my balloon. �Youłll take Dell and like it."

�Even if the bad guys frag us?" I try.

�They wonłt." He looks smug. �Because youłre the best."

****

One of the advantages of being a cash-starved department is
that nobody ever dares to throw anything away in case it turns out to be useful
later. Another advantage is that therełs never any money to get things done,
like (for example) refit old offices to comply with current health and safety
regulations. Itłs cheaper just to move everybody out into a Portakabin in the
car park and leave the office refurb for another financial year. At least,
thatłs what they do in this day and age; thirty, forty years ago I donłt know
where they put the surplus bodies. Anyway, while Andy gets on the phone to Emma
to plead for a budget I lead Pete on a fishing expedition.

�This is the old segregation block," I explain, flicking on
a light switch. �Donłt come in here without a light or the grue will get you."

�Youłve got grues? Here?" He looks so excited at the
prospect that I almost hesitate to tell him the truth.

�No, I just meant youłd just step in something nasty. This
isnłt an adventure game." The dust lies in gentle snowdrifts everywhere,
undisturbed by outsourced cleaning servicescontractors generally take one look
at the seg block and double their quote, going over the ministerially imposed
cap (which gets imposed rigorously on Ops, freeing up funds so Human Resources
can employ plant beauticians to lovingly wax the leaves on their office rubber
plants).

�You called it a segregation block. What, uh, who was segregated?"

I briefly toy with the idea of winding him up, then reject
it. Once youłre inside the Laundry youłre in it for life, and I donłt really
want to leave a trail of grudge-bearing juniors sharpening their knives behind
me. �People we didnłt want exposed to the outside world, even by accident," I
say finally. �If you work here long enough it does strange things to your head.
Work here too long, and other people can see the effects, too. Youłll notice
the windows are all frosted or else they open onto air shafts, where there
arenłt any windows in the first place," I add, shoving open the door onto a
large, executive office marred only by the bricked-up window frame in the wall
behind the desk, and a disturbingly wide trail of something shinyI tell myself
itłs probably just dry wallpaper pasteleading to the swivel chair. �Great, this
is just what Iłve been looking for."

�It is?"

�Yep, a big, empty, executive office where the lights and power
still work."

�Whose was it?" Pete looks around curiously. �There arenłt
many sockets ..."

�Before my time." I pull the chair out and look at the seat
doubtfully. It was good leather once, but the seat is hideously stained and
cracked. The penny drops. �Iłve heard of this guy. ęSlugł Johnson. He used to
be high up in Accounts, but he made lots of enemies. In the end someone put
salt on his back."

�You want us to work in here?" Pete asks, in a blinding moment
of clarity.

�For now," I reassure him. �Until we can screw a budget for
a real office out of Emma from HR."

�Wełll need more power sockets." Petełs eyes are taking on a
distant, glazed look and his fingers twitch mousily; �Wełll need casemods, need
overclocked CPUs, need fuck-off huge screens, double-headed Radeon X1600 video
cards." He begins to shake. �Nerf guns, Twinkies, LAN party"

�Pete! Snap out of it!" I grab his shoulders and shake him.

He blinks and looks at me blearily. �Whuh?"

I physically drag him out of the room. �First, before we do
anything else, Iłm getting the cleaners in to give it a class four exorcism and
to steam clean the carpets. You could catch something nasty in there." You
nearly did, I add silently. �Lots of bad psychic backwash."

�I thought he was an accountant?" says Pete, shaking his
head.

�No, he was in Accounts. Not the same thing at all. Youłre
confusing them with Financial Control."

�Huh? What do Accounts do, then?"

�They settle accountsusually fatally. At least, thatłs what
they used to do back in the sixties; the department was terminated some time
ago."

�Um." Pete swallows. �I thought that was all a joke? This
is, like, the BBFC? You know?"

I blink. The British Board of Film Classification, the
people who certify video games and cut the cocks out of movies? �Did anyone
tell you what the Laundry actually does?"

�Plays lots of deathmatches?" he asks hopefully.

�Thatłs one way of putting it," I begin, then pause. How to
continue? �Magic is applied mathematics. The many-angled ones live at the
bottom of the Mandelbrot set. Demonology is right after debugging in the
dictionary. You heard of Alan Turing? The father of programming?"

�Didnłt he work for John Carmack?"

Oh, itłs another world out there. �Not exactly, he built the
first computers for the government, back in the Second World War. Not just
codebreaking computers; he designed containment processors for Q Division, the
Counter-Possession Unit of SOE that dealt with demon-ridden Abwehr agents.
Anyway, after the war, they disbanded SOEbroke up all the government
computers, the Colossus machinesexcept for the CPU, which became the Laundry.
The Laundry kept going, defending the realm from the scum of the multiverse.
There are mathematical transforms that can link entities in different
universestry to solve the wrong theorem and theyłll eat your brain, or worse.
Anyhow, these days more people do more things with computers than anyone ever
dreamed of. Computer games are networked and scriptable, theyłve got compilers
and debuggers built in, you can build cities and film goddamn movies inside
them. And every so often someone stumbles across something theyłre not meant to
be playing with and, well, you know the rest."

His eyes are wide in the shadows. �You mean, this is government
work? Like in DeusEx?"

I nod. �Thatłs it exactly, kid." Actually itłs more like
Doom 3 but Iłm not ready to tell him that; he might start pestering me for a
grenade launcher.

�So wełre going to, like, set up a LAN party and log onto
lots of persistent realms and search ęnł sweep them for demons and blow the
demons away?" Hełs almost panting with eagerness. �Waitłll I tell my homies!"

�Pete, you canłt do that."

�What, isnłt it allowed?"

�No, I didnłt say that." I lead him back towards the
well-lit corridors of the Ops wing and the coffee break room beyond. �I said
you canłt do that. Youłre under a geas. Section III of the Official Secrets Act
says you canłt tell anyone who hasnłt signed the said act that Section III even
exists, much less tell them anything about what it covers. The Laundry is one
hundred percent under cover, Pete. You canłt talk about it to outsiders, youłd
choke on your own purple tongue."

�Eew." He looks disappointed. �You mean, like, this is real
secret stuff. Like mumłs work."

�Yes, Pete. Itłs all really secret. Now letłs go get a
coffee and pester somebody in Facilities for a mains extension bar and a computer."

****

I spend the rest of the day wandering from desk to desk, filing
requisitions and ordering up supplies, with Pete snuffling and shambling after
me like a supersized spaniel. The cleaners wonłt be able to work over Johnsonłs
office until next Tuesday due to an unfortunate planetary conjunction, but I
know a temporary fix I can sketch on the floor and plug into a repurposed
pocket calculator that should hold ęSlug" Johnson at bay until we can get him
exorcised. Meanwhile, thanks to a piece of freakish luck, I discover a stash of
elderly laptops nobody is using; someone in Catering mistyped their code in
their Assets database last year, and thanks to the wonders of our ongoing ISO
9000 certification process there is no legal procedure for reclassifying them
as capital assets without triggering a visit by the Auditors. So I duly issue
Pete with a 1.4 gigahertz Toshiba Sandwich Toaster, enlist his help in moving
my stuff into the new office, nail a WiFi access point to the door like a
tribal fetish or mezuzah (�this office now occupied by geeks who worship the
great god GHz"), and park him on the other side of the spacious desk so I can
keep an eye on him.

The next day Iłve got a staff meeting at 10:00 a.m. I spend
the first half hour of my morning drinking coffee, making snide remarks in
e-mail, reading Slashdot, and waiting for Pete to show up. He arrives at 9:35.
�Here." I chuck a fat wallet full of CD-Rs at him. �Install these on your
laptop, get on the intranet, and download all the patches you need. Donłt,
whatever you do, touch my computer or try to log onto my NWN serveritłs called
Bosch, by the way. Iłll catch up with you after the meeting."

�Why is it called Bosch?" he whines as I stand up and grab
my security badge off the filing cabinet.

�Washing machines or Hieronymus machines, take your pick." I
head off to the conference room for the Ways and Means Committee meetingto
investigate new ways of being mean, as Bridget (may Nyarlathotep rest her soul)
once explained it to me.

At first Iłm moderately hopeful Iłll be able to stay awake
through the meeting. But then Lucy, a bucktoothed goth from Facilities, gets
the bit between her incisors. Shełs going on in a giggly way about the need to
outsource our administration of office sundries in order to focus on our core
competencies, and Iłm trying desperately hard not to fall asleep, when therełs
an odd thudding sound that echoes through the fabric of the building. Then a
pager goes off.

Andyłs at the other end of the table. He looks at me: �Bob,
your call, I think."

I sigh. �You think?" I glance at the pager display. Oops, so
it is. �ęScuse me folks, somethingłs come up."

�Go on." Lucy glares at me halfheartedly from behind her
lucky charms. �Iłll minute you."

�Sure." And Iłm out, almost an hour before lunch. Wow, so interns
are useful for something. Just as long as he hasnłt gotten himself killed.

I trot back to Slugłs office. Peter-Fred is sitting in his
chair, with his back to the door.

�Pete?" I ask.

No reply. But his laptopłs open and running, and I can hear
its fan chugging away. �Uh-huh." And the disc wallet is lying open on my side
of the desk.

I edge towards the computer carefully, taking pains to stay
out of eyeshot of the screen. When I get a good look at Peter-Fred I see that
his mouthłs ajar and his eyes are closed; hełs drooling slightly. �Pete?" I
say, and poke his shoulder. He doesnłt move. Probably a good thing, I tell
myself. Okay, so he isnłt conventionally possessed ...

When Iłm close enough, I filch a sheet of paper from the
ink-jet printer, turn the lights out, and angle the paper in front of the laptop.
Very faintly I can see reflected colors, but nothing particularly scary.
�Right," I mutter. I slide my hands in front of the keyboardstill careful not
to look directly at the screenand hit the key combination to bring up the
interactive debugger in the game Iłm afraid hełs running. Trip an object dump,
hit the keystrokes for quick save, and quit, and I can breathe a sigh of relief
and look at the screen shot.

It takes me several seconds to figure out what Iłm looking
at. �Oh you stupid stupid arse." Itłs Peter-Fred, of course. He installed NWN
and the other stuff I threw at him: the Laundry-issue hack pack and DM tools,
and the creation toolkit. Then he went and did exactly what I told him not to
do: he connected to Bosch. Thatłs him in the screenshot between the two
half-orc mercenaries in the tavern, looking very afraid.

****

Two hours later itłs lunchtime, Brains and Pinky are
baby-sitting Petełs supine body (we donłt dare move it yet), Bosch is locked
down and frozen, and Iłm sitting on the wrong side of Angletonłs desk, sweating
bullets. �Summarize, boy," he rumbles, fixing me with one yellowing rheumy eye.
�Keep it simple. None of your jargon, lifełs too short."

�Hełs fallen into a game and he canłt get out." I cross my
arms. �I told him precisely what not to do and he went ahead and did it. Not my
fault."

Angleton makes a wheezing noise, like a boiler threatening
to explode. After a moment I recognize it as two-thousand-year-old laughter,
mummified and out for revenge. Then he stops wheezing. Oops, I think. �I
believe you, boy. Thousands wouldnłt. But youłre going to have to get him out.
Youłre responsible."

Iłm responsible? Iłm about to tell the old man what I think
when a second thought screeches into the pileup at the back of my tongue and I
bite my lip. I suppose I am responsible, technically. I mean, Petełs my intern,
isnłt he? Iłm a management grade, after all, and if hełs been assigned to me
that makes me his manager, even if itłs a post that comes with loads of
responsibility and no actual power to, like, stop him doing something really
foolish. Iłm in loco parentis, or maybe just plain loco. I whistle quietly.
�What would you suggest?"

Angleton wheezes again. �Not my field, boy, I wouldnłt know
one end of one of those newfangled Babbage machine contraptions from the
other." He fixes me with a gimlet stare. �But feel free to draw on HRłs budget
line. I will make enquiries on the other side to see whatłs going on. But if
you donłt bring him back, Iłll make you explain what happened to him to his mother."

�His mother?" Iłm puzzled. �You mean shełs one of us?"

�Yes. Didnłt Andrew tell you? Mrs. Young is the deputy director
in charge of Human Resources. So youłd better get him back before she notices
her son is missing."

****

James Bond has Q Division; Iłve got Pinky and Brains from
Tech Support. Bond gets jet packs, I get whoopee cushions, but I repeat myself.
Still, at least P and B know about first-person shooters.

�Okay, letłs go over this again," says Brains. He sounds unusually
chipper for this early in the morning. �You set up Bosch as a server for a
persistent Neverwinter Nights world, running the full Project Aurora hack pack.
That gives you, oh, lots of extensions for trapping demons that wander into
your realm while you trace their ownerłs PCs and inject a bunch of spyware,
then call out to Accounts to send a black-bag team round in the real world.
Right?"

�Yes." I nod. �An internet honeypot for supernatural intruders."

�Wibble!" Thatłs Pinky. �Hey, neat! So what happened to your
PFY?"

�Well ..." I take a deep breath. �Therełs a big castle
overlooking the town, with a twentieth-level sorceress running it. Lots of
glyphs of summoning in the basement dungeons, some of which actually bind at
run-time to a class library that implements the core transformational grammar
of the Language of Leng." I hunch over slightly. �Itłs really neat to be able
to do that kind of experiment in a virtual realmif you accidentally summon
something nasty itłs trapped inside the server or maybe your local area network,
rather than being out in the real world where it can eat your brains."

Brains stares at me. �You expect me to believe this kid took
out a twentieth-level sorceress? Just so he could dick around in your dungeon
lab?"

�Uh, no." I pick up a blue-tinted CD-R. Someonenot mehas
scribbled a cartoon skull-and-crossbones on it and added a caption: DOłNT R3AD
M3. �Iłve been looking at thiscarefully. Itłs not one of the discs I gave
Pete; itłs one of his own. Hełs not totally clueless, for a crack-smoking
script kiddie. In fact, itłs got a bunch of interesting class libraries on it.
He went in with a knapsack full of special toys and just happened to fuck up by
trying to rob the wrong tavern. This realm, being hosted on Bosch, is scattered
with traps that are superclassed into a bunch of scanner routines from Project
Aurora and sniff for any taint of the real supernatural. Probably he whiffed of
Laundry businessand that set off one of the traps, which yanked him in."

�How do you get inside a game?" asks Pinky, looking hopeful.
�Could you get me into Grand Theft Auto: Castro Club Extreme?"

Brains glances at him in evident disgust. �You can
virtualize any universal Turing machine," he sniffs. �Okay, Bob. What precisely
do you need from us in order to get the kid out of there?"

I point to the laptop: �I need that, running the Dungeon
Master client inside the game. Plus a class four summoning grid, and a lot of
luck." My guts clench. �Make that a lot more luck than usual."

�Running the DM client" Brains goes cross-eyed for a moment
�is it reentrant?"

�It will be." I grin mirthlessly. �And Iłll need you on the
outside, running the ordinary network client, with a couple of characters Iłll
preload for you. The sorceress is holding Pete in the third-level dungeon
basement of Castle Storm. The way the narrativełs set up shełs probably not
going to do anything to him until shełs also acquired a whole bunch of plot
coupons, like a cockatrice and a mind flayerłs gallbladderthen she can
sacrifice him and trade up to a fourth-level demon or a new castle or
something. Anyway, Iłve got a plan. Ready to kick ass?"

****

I hate working in dungeons. Theyłre dank, smelly, dark, and
things keep jumping out and trying to kill you. That seems to be the defining
characteristic of the genre, really. Dead boring hack-and-slashbut the kiddies
love łem. I know I did, back when I was a wee spoddy twelve-year-old. Fine,
says I, wełre not trying to snare kiddies, wełre looking to attract the more
cerebral kind of MMORPG playerthe sort whołre too clever by half. Designers,
in other words.

How do you snare a dungeon designer whołs accidentally
stumbled on a way to summon up shoggoths? Well, you need a website. The smart
geeks are always magpies for ideasthey see something new and itłs �Ooh!
Shiny!" and before you can snap your fingers theyłve done something with it you
didnłt anticipate. So you set your site up to suck them in and lock them down.
You seed it with a bunch of downloadable goodies and some interesting chat
boardsnot the usual MY MAG1C USR CN TW4T UR CLERIC, D00D, but actual useful
informationuseful if youłre programming in NWScript, that is (the high-level
programming language embedded in the game, which hardcore designers write game
extensions in).

But the website isnłt enough. Ideally you want to run a networked
game servera persistent world that your victims can connect to using their
client software to see how your bunch ęoł tricks looks in the virtual flesh.
And finally you seed clues in the server to attract the marks who know too damn
much for their own good, like Peter-Fred.

The problem is, BoschWorld isnłt ready yet. Thatłs why I
told him to stay out. Worse, therełs no easy way to dig him out of it yet
because I havenłt yet written the object retrieval codeand worse: to speed up
the development process I grabbed a whole bunch of published code from one of
the bigger online persistent realms, and I havenłt weeded out all the spurious
quests and curses and shit that make life exciting for adventurers. In fact,
now that I think about it, that was going to be Peter-Fredłs job for the next
month. Oops.

****

Unlike Pete, I do not blunder into Bosch unprepared; I know
exactly what to expect. Iłve got a couple of cheats up my non-existent monkłs
sleeve, including the fact that I can enter the game with a level eighteen
character carrying a laptop with a source-level debuggerall praise the new
self-deconstructing reality!

The stone floor of the monastery is gritty and cold under my
bare feet, and therełs a chilly morning breeze blowing in through the huge oak
doors at the far end of the compound. I know itłs all in my headIłm actually
sitting in a cramped office chair with Pinky and Brains hammering away on
keyboards to either sidebut itłs still creepy. I turn round and genuflect once
in the direction of the huge and extremely scary devil carved into the wall
behind me, then head for the exit.

The monastery sits atop some truly bizarre stone formations
in the middle of the Wild Woods. Iłm supposed to fight my way through the woods
before I get to the town of, um, whatever I named it, Stormville?but sod that.
I stick a hand into the bottomless depths of my very expensive Bag of Holding
and pull out a scroll. �Stormville, North Gate," I intone (Why do ancient
masters in orders of martial monks always intone, rather than, like, speak
normally?) and the scroll crumbles to dust in my handsand Iłm looking up at a
stone tower with a gate at its base and some bint sticking a bucket out of a
window on the third floor and yelling, �Gardy loo." Well, that worked okay.

�Iłm there," I say aloud.

Green serifed letters track across my visual field,
completely spoiling the atmosphere: WAY K00L, B0B. Thatłll be Pinky, riding
shotgun with his usual delicacy.

Therełs a big, blue rectangle in the gateway so I walk onto
it and wait for the universe to download. Itłs a long waitsomethingłs gumming
up Bosch. (Computers arenłt as powerful as most people think; running even a
small and rather stupid intern can really bog down a server.)

Inside the North Gate is the North Market. At least, itłs
what passes for a market in here. Therełs a bunch of zombies dressed as your
standard dungeon adventurers, shambling around with speech bubbles over their
heads. Most of them are web addresses on eBay, locations of auctions for
interesting pieces of game content, but one or two of them look as if theyłve
been crudely tampered with, especially the ass-headed nobleman repeatedly
belting himself on the head with a huge, leather-bound copy of A Midsummer
Nightłs Dream. �Are you guys sure we havenłt been hacked?" I ask aloud. �If you
could check the tripwire logs, Brains ..." Itłs a long shot, but it might offer
an alternate explanation for Petełs predicament.

I slither, sneak, and generally shimmy my monastic ass
around the square, avoiding the quainte olde mediaeval gallows and the smoking
hole in the ground that used to be the Alchemistsł Guild. On the east side of
the square is the Wayfarerłs Tavern, and some distance to the southwest I can
see the battlements and turrets of Castle Storm looming out of the early
morning mists in a surge of gothic cheesecake. I enter the tavern, stepping on
the blue rectangle and waiting while the world pauses, then head for the bar.

�Right, Iłm in the bar," I say aloud, pulling my Project
Aurora laptop out of the Bag of Holding. (Is it my imagination, or does
something snap at my fingertips as I pull my hand out?) �Has the target moved?"

N0 J0Y, B08.

I sigh, unfolding the screen. Laptops arenłt exactly native
to NWN; this onełs made of two slabs of sapphire held together by scrolled
mithril hinges. I stare into the glowing depths of its screen (tailored from a
preexisting crystal ball) and load a copy of the pub. Looking in the back room
I see a bunch of standard henchmen,women, andthings waiting to be hired, but
none of them are exactly optimal for taking on the twentieth-level lawful-evil
chatelaine of Castle Storm. Hmm, better bump one of łem, I decide. Letłs go for
munchkin muscle. �Pinky? Iłd like you to drop a quarter of a million experience
points on Grondor the Red, then up-level him. Can you do that?" Grondor is the
biggest bad-ass half-orc fighter for hire in Bosch. This ought to turn him into
a one-man killing machine.

0|< D00D.

I can tell hełs really getting into the spirit of this. The
barmaid sashays up to me and winks. �Hiya, cute thing. (1) Want to buy a drink?
(2) Want to ask questions about the town and its surroundings? (3) Want to talk
about anything else?"

I sigh. �Gimme (1)."

�Okay. (1) Głbye, big boy. (2) Anything else?"

�(1). Get me my beer then piss off."

One of these days Iłll get around to wiring a real
conversational ębot into the non-player characters, but right now theyłre still
a bit

Therełs a huge sound from the back room, sort of a creaking
graunching noise. I blink and look round, startled. After a moment I realize
itłs the sound of a quarter of a million experience points landing on a

�Pinky, what exactly did you up-level Grondor the Red to?"

LVL 15 C0RTE5AN. LOL!!!

�Oh, great," I mutter. Iłll swear thatłs not a real
character class. A fat, manila envelope appears on the bar in front of me. Itłs
Grondorłs contract, and from the small print it looks like Iłve hired myself a
fifteenth-level half-orc rent boy for muscle. Which is annoying because I only
get one hench-thug per game. �One of these days your sense of humor is going to
get me into really deep trouble, Pinky," I say as Grondor flounces across the
rough wooden floor towards me, a vision of ruffles, bows, pink satin, and upcurved
tusks. Hełs clutching a violet club in one gnarly red-nailed hand, and he seems
to be annoyed about something.

After a brief and uncomfortable interlude that involves
running on the walls and ceiling, I manage to calm Grondor down, but by then
half the denizens of the tavern are broken and bleeding. �Grondor pithed," he
lisps at me. �But Grondor thtill kickth ath. Whoth ath you wanting kicked?"

�The wicked witch of the west. You up for it?"

He blows me a kiss.

LOL!!! ROFL!!! whoops the peanut gallery.

�Okay, letłs go."

****

Numerous alarums, excursions, and open-palm five-punches
death attacks later, we arrive at Castle Storm. Sitting out in front of the
cruel-looking portcullis, topped by the dismembered bodies of the sorceressłs
enemies and not a few of her friends, I open up the laptop. A miniature
thundercloud hovers overhead, raining on the turrets and bouncing lightning
bolts off the (currently inanimate) gargoyles.

�Connect me to Lady Stormłs boudoir mirror." I say. (I try
to make it come out as an inscrutable monkish mutter rather than intoning, but
it doesnłt work properly.)

�Hello? Who is this?" I see her face peering out of the
depths of my screen, like an unholy cross between Cruella De Vil and Margaret
Thatcher. Shełs not wearing make-up and half her hairłs in curlersthatłs odd,
I think.

�This is the management," I intone. �We have been notified
that contrary to statutory regulations issued by the Council of Guilds of
Stormville you are running an unauthorized boarding house, to wit, you are
providing accommodation for mendicant journeymen. Normally wełd let you off
with a warning and a fifty-gold-piece fine, but in this particular case"

Iłm readying the amulet of teleportation, but she seems to
be able to anticipate events, which is just plain wrong for a non-player
character following a script. �Accommodate this!" she hisses, and cuts the
connection dead. Therełs a hammering rumbling sound overhead. I glance up, then
take to my heels as I wrap my arms about my head; shełs animated the gargoyles,
and theyłre taking wing, but theyłre still made of stoneand stone isnłt known
for its lighter-than-air qualities. The crashing thunder goes on for quite some
time, and the dust makes my eyes sting, but after a while all that remains is
the mournful honking of the one surviving gargoyle, which learned to fly on its
way down, and is now circling the battlements overhead. And now itłs my turn.

�Right. Grondor? Open that door!"

Grondor snarls, then flounces forward and whacks the portcullis
with his double-headed war axe. The physics model in here is distinctly
imaginative, you shouldnłt be able to reduce a cast-iron grating into a pile of
wooden kindling, but Iłm not complaining. Through the portcullis we charge,
into the bowels of Castle Storm and, I hope, in time to rescue Pete.

I donłt want to bore you with a blow-by-blow description of
our blow-by-blow progress through Cruellałs minions. Suffice to say that
following Grondor is a lot like trailing behind a frothy pink main battle tank.
Thuggish guards, evil imps, and the odd adept tend to explode messily very soon
after Grondor sees them. Unfortunately Grondorłs not very discriminating, so I
make sure to go first in order to keep him away from cunningly engineered
deadfalls (and Pete, should we find him). Still, it doesnłt take us too long to
comb the lower levels of the caverns under Castle Storm (aided by the handy
dungeon editor in my laptop, which allows me to build a bridge over the Chasm
of Despair and tunnel through the rock around the Dragonłs Lair, which isnłt
very sporting but keeps us from being toasted). Which is why, after a couple of
hours, Iłm beginning to get a sinking feeling that Pete isnłt actually here.

�Brains, Pete isnłt down here, is he? Or am I missing something?"

H3Y d0NT B3 5AD D00D F1N|< 0V V XP!!!

�Fuck off, Pinky, give me some useful input or just fuck
off, okay?" I realize Iłm shouting when the rock wall next to me begins to
crack ominously. The hideous possibility that Iłve lost Pete is sinking its
claws into my brain and itłs worse than any Fear spell.

OK KEEP UR HAIR 0N!! 15 THIS A QU3ST?? D0 U N33D 2 C0NFRONT
S0RCR3SS 1ST?

I stop dead. �I bloody hope not. Did you notice how she was
behaving?"

Brains here. Iłm grepping the server logfile and did you
know therełs another user connected over the intranet bridge?

�Whu" I turn around and accidentally bump into Grondor.

Grondor says, �(1) Do you wish to modify our tactics? (2) Do
you want Grondor to attack someone? (3) Do you think Grondor is sexy, big boy?
(4) Exit?"

�(4)," I intoneif I leave him in a conversational state he
wonłt be going anywhere, dammit. �Okay, Brains. Have you tracerouted the
intrusion? Bosch isnłt supposed to be accessible from outside the local
network. What department are they coming in from?"

Theyłre coming in froma longish pausesomewhere in HR.

�Okay, the plot just thickened. So someone in HR has gotten
in. Any idea who the player is?" Iłve got a sneaking suspicion but I want to
hear it from Brains

Not IRL, but didnłt Cruella act way too flexible to be a
ębot?

Bollocks. That is what I was thinking. �Okay. Grondor:
follow. Wełre going upstairs to see the wicked witch."

Now, let me tell you about castles. They donłt have
elevators, or fire escapes, or extinguishers. Real ones donłt have exploding
whoopee cushions under the carpet and electrified door-handles that blush red
when you notice them, either, or an ogre resting on the second-floor mezzanine,
but thatłs beside the point. Let me just observe that by the time I reach the
fourth floor I am beginning to breathe heavily and I am getting distinctly
pissed off with Her Eldritch Fearsomeness.

At the foot of the wide, glittering staircase in the middle
of the fourth floor I temporarily lose Grondor. It might have something to do
with the tenth-level mage lurking behind the transom with a magic flamethrower,
or the simultaneous arrival of about a ton of steel spikes falling from
concealed ceiling panels, but Grondor is reduced to a greasy pile of goo on the
floor. I sigh and do something to the mage that would be extremely painful if
he were a real person. �Is she upstairs?" I ask the glowing letters.

SUR3 TH1NG D00D!!!

�Any more traps?"

N0!!??!

�Cool." I step over the grease spot and pause just in front
of the staircase. It never pays to be rash. I pick up a stray steel spike and
chuck it on the first step and it goes BANG with extreme prejudice. �Not so
cool." Rinse, cycle, repeat, and four small explosions later Iłm standing in
front of the doorway facing the top step. No more whoopee cushions, just a
twentieth-level sorceress and a minion in chains. Happy joy. �Pinky. Plan B.
Get it ready to run it, on my word."

I break through the door and enter the witchłs lair.

Once youłve seen one witchłs den youłve seen łem all. This
one is a bit glitzier than usual, and some of the furniture is nonstandard even
taking into account the Laundry hack packs linked into this realm. Where did
she get the mainframe from? I wonder briefly before considering the extremely
ominous Dho-Na geometry curve in the middle of the floor (complete with a
frantic-looking Pete chained down in the middle of it) and the extremely
irate-looking sorceress beyond.

�Emma MacDougal, I presume?"

She turns my way, spitting blood. �If it wasnłt for you meddling
hackers Iłd have gotten away with it!" Oops, shełs raising her magic wand.

�Gotten away with what?" I ask politely. �Donłt you want to
explain your fiendish plan, as is customary, before totally obliterating your
victims? I mean, thatłs a Dho-Na curve there, so youłre obviously planning a
summoning, and this server is inside Ops block. Were you planning some sort of
low-key downsizing?"

She snorts. �You stupid Ops heads, why do you always assume
itłs about you?"

�Because" I shrug. �Wełre running on a server in Ops. What
do you think happens if you open a gateway for an ancient evil to infest our
departmental LAN?"

�Donłt be na�ve. All thatłs going to happen is
Pimple-Features here is going to pick a good, little, gibbering infestation
then go spread it to Mama. Which will open up the promotion ladder once again."
She stares at me, then her eyes narrow thoughtfully. �How did you figure out it
was me?"

�You should have used a smaller mainframe emulator, you
know; wełre so starved for resources that Bosch runs on a three-year-old Dell
laptop. If you werenłt slurping up all our CPU resources we probably wouldnłt
have noticed anything was wrong until it was too late. It had to be someone in
HR, and youłre the only player on the radar. Mind you, putting poor Peter-Fred
in a position of irresistible temptation was a good move. How did you open the
tunnel into our side of the network?"

�He took his laptop home at night. Have you swept it for spyware
today?" Her grin turns triumphant. �I think itłs time you joined Pete on the
summoning-grid sacrifice node."

�Plan B!" I announce brightly, then run up the wall and
across the ceiling until Iłm above Pete.

P1AN 8 :) :) :)

The room below my head lurches disturbingly as Pinky rearranges
the furniture. Itłs just a ninety-degree rotation, and Petełs still in the
summoning grid, but now hełs in the target node instead of the sacrifice zone.
Emma is incanting; her wand tracks me, its tip glowing green. �Do it, Pinky!" I
shout as I pull out my dagger and slice my virtual finger. Blood runs down the
blade and drops into the sacrifice node

And Pete stands up. The chains holding him to the floor rip
like damp cardboard, his eyes glowing even brighter than Emmałs wand. With no
actual summoning vector spliced into the grid itłs wide open, an antenna
seeking the nearest manifestation. With my blood to power it, itłs active, and
the first thing it resonates with has come through and sideloaded into Petełs
head. His head swivels. �Get her!" I yell, clenching my fist and trying not to
wince. �Shełs from personnel!"

�Personnel?" rumbles a voice from Petełs mouthdeeper, more
cultured, and infinitely more terrifying. �Ah, I see. Thank you." The being
wearing Petełs flesh steps across the gridwhich sparks like a high-tension
line and begins to smolder. Emmałs wand wavers between me and Pete. I thrust my
injured hand into the Bag of Holding and stifle a scream when my fingers stab
into the bag of salt within. �Itłs been too long." His face begins to lengthen,
his jaw widening and merging at the edges. He sticks his tongue out: itłs
grayish-brown and rasplike teeth are sprouting from it.

Emma screams in rage and discharges her wand at him. A
backwash of negative energy makes my teeth clench and turns my vision gray, but
itłs not enough to stop the second coming of �Slug" Johnson. He slithers
towards her across the floor, and she gears up another spell, but itłs too
late. I close my eyes and follow the action by the inarticulate shrieks and the
wet sucking, gurgling noises. Finally, they die down.

I take a deep breath and open my eyes. Below me the room is
vacant but for a clean-picked human skeleton and a floor flecked with brownI
peer closerslugs. Millions of the buggers. �Youłd better let him go," I
intone.

�Why should I?" asks the assembly of molluscs.

�Because" I pause. Why should he? Itłs a surprisingly sensible
question. �If you donłt, HRPersonnelwill just send another. Their minions are
infinite. But you can defeat them by escaping from their grip foreverif you
let me lay you to rest."

�Send me on, then," say the slugs.

�Okay." And I open my salt-filled fist over the
molluscswhich burn and writhe beneath the white powderfall until nothing is
left but Pete, curled fetally in the middle of the floor. And itłs time to get
Pete the hell out of this game and back into his own head before his mother, or
some even worse horror, comes looking for him.

 

Charlie Stross knew he wanted to be a writer from the age of
six, or thereabouts, but didnłt really get started until his early teens (when
his sister loaned him a manual typewriter around the time he was getting
heavily into Dung ......

(To read the rest of this bio, and see other stories in Jim
Baenłs Universe visit Charlie Strossłs author page.)

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Moscow: Monday morning, August the 20th, 1991:

The soldiers on the back of the personnel carriers stared
around, wide-eyed, clutching their rifles like drowning men hanging on to
buoyant life-rafts. They were out of their depth, teen-age conscripts from the
sticks being trucked in by the Grey Men in the Kremlin, none of them sure what
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in summer. And Oleg Meir ...

Oleg Meir ignored the soldiers as he left the temporary
safety of the hotel. The phones were down, only international calls from the
cityłs contingent of foreign correspondents getting through. They must be
crazy, he thought: cutting off communications at a time like this. Trembling
with a chill, he thrust his hands deep into his coat pockets as he walked back
towards the University. He glanced up at the clock jutting from the face of one
of the office buildings on the opposite side of the road. It was almost ten
ołclock! Hełd have to hurry. Oleg increased his pace until it was little short
of a trot. Got to get the papers, destroy them or something. Change myself, get
lost in the crowd. That way they wonłt find me. If I can do it before Andrei
catches up with me ...

Yesterdayłs events had brought everybody out onto the
streets; everyday life had ground to a halt. The air was filled with tension,
as if an abscess was about to burst. Never had he seen crowds of people who all
looked so angry; it scared him almost as much as the horror of a remembered
guilt, the phone call in the early hours from his mysterious patronjust before
the public lines went down.

Tanks were drawn up in the square outside the University,
their engines ticking over, soldiers milling around uncertainly in front of a
throng of defiant youths; they made no attempt to detain the bespectacled
professor as he made his way past them towards the concrete monolith of the
Institute of Space Sciences. Nobody stopped him as he went in, but he noticed a
few anomalies: a distinct shortage of staff, a surfeit of students milling
around the foyer and chattering.

Canłt be good. Oleg made for the elevator, half-remembered
skills blending him with the shadows like a third element of light and
darkness. Too many people about. The elevator began to rise. He yawned
uncontrollably. The elevator stopped; its brass gate slid open. �Professor
Meir?"

Oleg jumped. �Who isoh, Anatoly. What is it?"

The student stared at him. �You looked a bit preoccupied, is
all," he said. �About the coursework, I know itłs overdue"

�Donłt worry about it." Oleg looked away. �Heard the news?"

�Which news?"

�Donłt worry." Moving down the corridor towards his office,
the student following him: Oleg had things on his mind. �Have you got a few
minutes?"

�For you, professor?" The studentłs elaborate shrug was
wasted. Oleg was too busy unlocking his office to notice.

�These filing cabinets. Do me a favour, get everything out
of the top drawer there, stacked in order, and put it on the table. Please?
Iłll make it worth your while."

�How worthwhile?" Something nudged Oległs attention, but
when he looked up Anatoly looked back at him innocently. �A regrading?"

�You said it, not me." Anatoly turned to the filing cabinet
eagerly. �Now if you will excuse me"

The terminal on Oległs desk was an antique, but it still connected
him to the machines in the basement. To his surprise, Oleg found that his palms
were sweating as he sat down and logged on. This has gone too far. He shivered
and glanced over his shoulder. If Andrei gets his grubby hands on these there
wonłt be an excuse under heaven thatłll save me! Still he hesitated. Something
in the air tickled his nostrils; scent of woodsmoke and gasoline far away,
screams remembered in the moonless night. From her. Behind him, Anatoly was
systematically stripping his files from their steel nest. Oh well. It had to
happennow or later.

Oleg began to type, carefullythe sluggardly machine could
barely keep up with his keypressesa short e-mail message. He stared at it for
a few minutes after he finished it, trying to understand what he had done. To
KGBVAX, the police monitor on the net. User: Valentin016. An anonymous label.
Danger. Hełd been sweating before he started. Now he pressed enter, consigning
the message to the invisible guts of the connected mainframes, where it would
find itłs way eventually to the destination

To Valentina. Whołd know what to do, if anyone did. Oleg
logged out and turned round, stood up and stretched, stared at the student
working on his files. Time to think about avoiding Andrei. Why did I ever let
it get this far? he wondered. Hands deep in pockets, he wandered over to the
window and stared out towards the distant Kremlin. Dancing with the devil ...

Twenty five years ago:

Oleg had first met Andrei back in sixty-three, sixty-four,
back when he had been a young student of astrophysics, fresh in from the
sticks. Always the terrified compulsion to look up at the starsattending
Shklovskiiłs bull sessions about intelligent life in the universe made him feel
out of control, his thin veneer of sophistication in danger of cracking open to
reveal the depths of his superstitious fear. The feeling had a shuddery
attraction to Oleg, who was unable to join in the merry banter of his
colleagues.

�You see, comrades, if we are not alone in the universe, the
very fact of our lack of uniqueness has implications for our way of life! No
longer are we part of an isolated, unique trend. Other intelligences, once
their existence can be proven, would provide a powerful stimulus to our
exploratory tendencies. Such intelligences, should they be more advanced than
us, may be expected to be in constant communication even if physical
interstellar travel is impossibleyes? What is it? Meir, again?"

Oleg cleared his throat. �I think you overlook something,"
he said, suddenly aware that his heart was pounding. �Perhaps, all is stillness
and quiet not because we are alone ... but because they are scared. After all,
ideas can be dangerous, can they not?Just as socialist ideas are considered
dangerous by the capitalists, so may there be, darker things lurking among the
stars. Things that listen, like us, for the transmissions of the unwary ..."

�Like Voice of America?" some wit interrupted, and the whole
room burst out laughing.

Oleg sat down, his face turning beet red. He looked round,
searching for support against the hilaritythere was a man he had never seen
before at the back of the hall, and his expression was set and thoughtful.
Something about him was vaguely familiar, like a half-remembered family
photograph. Oleg looked away rapidly, and tried to ignore the good-natured
joshing he received after the lecture from those who believed that the laws of
dialectical materialism applied to interstellar communication. But somehow the
face stuck in his mind; and he was not surprised when, two days later, he was
awakened by a peremptory rap on the door of his room.

Struggling out of bed, Oleg made his way to the door. �Who
is it?" he called, half-certain that it was the apartment warden about to
complain again about him lying in on a perfectly good Saturday

�Open up!" called a voice outside. �We havenłt got all day!"

Oleg tensed, shivering with more than coldmuscles bunching
and coiling like ropes beneath his skinthen opened the door a crack. �Whatłs
it about?" he asked. �I was in bed"

�Never mind that. You can get dressed now. Youłre going for
a drive in the country this morning, how about that? Donłt bother packing,
youłll be back before sunset, I promise. Come along now!"

Goaded into sudden action, Oleg grabbed his clothes and
began to yank them on haphazardly. �You can come in," he called when he had his
trousers belted. The door opened. �Have we met?" he asked politely.

The stranger shut the door behind him. �Two nights ago, at
the Institute. I was in the row behind you."

Oległs shoulders slumped with something like relief. �I
thought you were with the cheka," he muttered as he buttoned his shirt.

The stranger looked at him and smiled, exposing his teeth.
�You thought rightsort of. The people Iłm with ... the KGB donłt like us, but
we donłt have to put up with them. Do the initials GRU mean anything to you?"
Oleg stared uncomprehendingly. �Good. Now they do. Wełre going for a little
drive in the country, and wełll have lunch at a dacha and Iłm sure youłll enjoy
our little chat; Iłll drop you off back here this evening. How does that sound,
comrade?"

Mouth dry, heart pounding again: �you want me to be an informer?"
Oleg pulled on his boots, not looking at the man from the GRU, whatever that
was, trying to memorise his face in case he had to

�Donłt be an idiot. Wełre not the fucking MVD; wełre the army.
What you were saying about contact with extra-terrestrial civilisations
interests us ... we just want to ask you a few more questions, bounce some
ideas about, see what you can come up with. And you know something else?" Oleg
jumped round as a hand landed on his shoulder, then froze. A faintly familiar
smell tickled at his nostrils like the memory of a forgotten sin. �I was
right," said the stranger who had stolen his identity. Then, in a language far
older than that of the russ�how long have you been living alone among the
humans, my friend?"

Moscow: Lunch time, 20th August 1991:

Cosmology and guilt and a blind fear of the unknown blurred
together in Oległs mind as he tried to concentrate on what he was doing. A trip
to see the big military radar system at Semipalatinsk blurred into the
dog-eared files he was lifting out of the back of his cabinet, vast banks of
humming tubes meshed with the sleek Western computer chained to his desk. Time
was of the essence: panic was ...

Possible. The big old radio beside the window was tuned to
Radio Free Europe, but the MVD were jamming it again for the first time in
years, the pock-pock-whirr of microwaves blasted into the ionosphere to stop
the people learning of the crimes committed against them. Radar stations in the
hands of Andrei and his dark-worshippers. Oleg shuddered, uncertain. Just as
long as he doesnłt know where to point them. He looked up, clutching a sheaf of
papers about Cepheid variables. �Get me everything you can find under
Krasnoyarsk," he muttered.

�Under what?" Anatoly looked perplexed.

�Krasnoyarsk," Oleg repeated. �Itłs a radar installation.
You know? One of the big ones the military let us borrow."

�Oh, that. Isnłt it one of the ones comrade General
Secretary agreed with the Americans to dismantle?"

Oleg sniffed, bitterly amused by the way Anatoly still
referred to Gorbachev by his title. �I see. What do you expect to find there,
boss? Is that where theyłre holding him?"

�Not on another planet," Oleg muttered, thumbing through
notes made years ago. The pile of paper was inches thick, held together with
rough string and stale lies. Some of the documents were twenty, thirty years
old: some were new, and of these a number bore CONFIDENTIAL stamps. Oleg had
removed these from his safe.

He sighed as he contemplated the documents with a mixture of
fear and pride. My lifełs work, and this is all there is to it? Itchy fear made
the skin in the small of his back crawl; his leg muscles twitched, aching to be
elsewhere. If Andrei gets hold of these ... they were the originals, not the
precisely-faked duplicates he had filtered to the GRU Colonel over the past
years. Careful cooperation, playing the useful idiot to find out how much
Andrei knew, who his friends were, that was one thing. But this was for real;
the probable coordinates of the end of the world ... he stopped subvocalizing
so suddenly that he nearly bit his tongue. Maybe they knew where he came from,
what he had done. Frightened, he looked over his shoulder, but only a bust of
Lenin was watching. He scooped up the bundle and began to squeeze it into his
brief-case. Half-way through the process he discovered that it wasnłt going to
fit unless he emptied the case first; he up-ended it over the carpet. Anatoly
watched with what Ol g assumed to be amused tolerance. He had to leave out the
confidential papers, the ones about Krasnoyarsk, but finally everything fit
together and he bent down to close his case.

Behind him, Anatoly cleared his throat. �Therełs something
you should know, professor."

Oleg turned to Anatoly, who stood behind him, and sniffed, although
he could tell perfectly well what was happening. His guts loosened abruptly.
�Whatłs going on? Where did you get that gun?" He tried to conceal his dismay
as his companion stared at him. �Whatłs happening?"

�This way, academician." The gun was small, oily-looking,
the hole in its muzzle horribly dark; he could see the rifling in the barrel,
which pointed straight at him. �Your services are required. Happenings more
significant than the current ... ruckus, are being expedited under cover of the
confusion. Events of cosmic importance. You could say the trigger just fell
into our hands." Anatolythe being who wore the student Anatolyłs facegestured
Oleg backwards.

Oleg glanced left and right, but there was no way out. He backed
slowly towards the door. The stranger was holding his brief-case, and Oleg had
a gut-deep feeling that his living cooperation was not essential. �What do you
want with me?" he whispered.

�Just cooperate. Through the door. Into the lift."

The lift grilles rattled open behind him. The gunman crowded
in close, thrusting the muzzle of his weapon into a coat pocket to conceal it
from by-standers. �Press the first floor button."

Oleg did as he was told, obedient, tense, knees trembling.
�What are you doing?" he mumbled.

�Taking you somewhere safe." Anatoly sounded bored by the
question.

�Butthis is crazy! Why are you kidnapping me? Who are you?"

The rough walls of the lift shaft rose up on either side.
�Donłt be naive, Oleg. You made a bargain years ago. Your research to be
allowed to continue, with our support, in return for obediencewhen the time
came. And what happens? You call your KGB kitten! Thatłs not what I call
obedience. And the falsehoods youłve been feeding us this past year have not
amused us greatly. Anyone would think you were trying to play a two-way game
... and you know what happens to people who get caught in the middle."

The lift came to a stop. Oleg looked around frantically. The
lobby outside the elevator cage was deserted but for four Interior Ministry
soldiers, rifles at the ready. One of them crossed the floor and pulled the
doors open. Anatoly gestured him back with his free hand. �Forward, professor.
We have a long journey ahead of us." He smiled as one of the guards opened the
front door to reveal an armoured personnel carrier backed up against it, engine
running. �Glad you could make the party!"

Leningrad: Monday morning, August the 20th, 1991:

Valentina was waiting impatiently in the station lobby at
the airport, a woolen coat pulled tight around her; when she saw the uniformed
officer she waved. He approached her rapidly. �This had better be good," she
said.

He looked away from her. �Maybe not," he said, so quietly
that the words were nearly lost in the omnipresent traffic roar. Louder:
�therełs a message for you from Moscow, high priority. You want to read it
here?"

Valentina stared at him. Just another uniformed flunky.
�Give it to me."

He passed her the sealed slip and hung around, evidently
pleased with himself. She hadnłt bitten his head off, which was an unexpected
bonus: Major Valentina Pavlova was notorious for expecting of her subordinates
the same efficiency that she was known for herself.

She read the message quickly, face expressionless in the
gloom. The officer glanced around, nervously; there were few people in the
airport today, and when he looked at them they turned away pointedly. �Whatłs
going on?" he asked. �First the putsch, then this priority traffic"

She stopped him with a brisk shake of the head. �I wouldnłt
worry about the coup if I were you. It will all be over soon. I need to get to
Moscow as soon as possible. Take a message! When you see me leave, tell Major
Gromov Iłll report back in three days, until then Iłll be in deep cover."

�Youłll be" she stared at the messenger until his eyes watered
and he looked away.

�Donłt ask. Tell him itłs urgent. Is that understood,
sergeant?"

He straightened up: saluted. �Yessir!"

�Good." She was already moving, walking towards the check-in
desk, coat billowing out behind her.

�What is it?" he called over her shoulder.

�Got a plane to catch," she said, hurrying through the door.

�Authorisation"

�No problem."

�Papers? Channels?"

�No time."

�As you say. Sir." They approached the milling crowd at the
ticket counter together. The queue was long and agitated, worried travellers
anxious to return to their own republics; but when Valentina produced her
official pass everybody scattered. Despite the resentful glances, some things
never changed.

�Yes? What is it?" sniffed the clerk. She looked tired and
irritated.

�This. Where is your manager?"

She thrust his badge under the clerkłs nose. It didnłt have
the desired effect. The woman snorted, as if amused: �You donłt expect that to
get you anywhere, do you? Chekist. Wełve had enough of your kind ..."

Valentina reached out with a fluid motion and grabbed the
clerk by one wrist. �You do as I say," she said quietly. �Otherwise I break
your arm. Do you understand?"

The clerk mouthed something silently, her eyes growing round
with surprise and sudden pain. �Whatwhat do you want?" she stuttered.

�To see whoever is in charge here," she said. �Of the air defense
facilities. I have a plane to catch, for Moscow."

�But no flights are scheduled!" protested the clerk.
Valentina let go of her wrist, but continued to stare at her unblinkingly.

�Now there is. I repeat; where is the manager? I have a
plane to catch."

The clerk picked up a telephone handset and began to dial,
glancing up warily at Valentina as she did so. �Iłll see what can be done, but
I make no promises," she said.

Valentina caught the sergeantłs eye; he nodded
imperceptibly. �Tell Gromov," she emphasized. �It is essential."

The clerk paused. �But why?" she asked, curiosity getting
the better of her fear. �Whatłs so important?"

Valentina glanced over her shoulder at her assistant. �She
asks whatłs so important," she said quietly, all the time conscious of the
crowd watching over his shoulder, not yet nasty but quite capable of turning if
they saw something not to their liking ... �whatłs important? Iłll tell you
whatłs important," she said. �If we donłt get to Moscow by noon, both you and
your boss can look forward to an extended holiday in Siberia ... whoeverłs in
charge ..."

Moscow: Three ołclock:

The ancient Kamov chopper shełd requisitioned clattered into
the Moscow air defense region. The phones were down: whether it would have made
any difference was questionable. Valentina sat in the middle of the narrow,
glassed-in cockpit, beside the pilot. Her jaw was rigid, as tense as steel; her
eyes were focussed on a point a million miles away, replaying cinema reels of
memory. Glacial, slow memories. Memories of an interview, not long after shełd
come to Moscow: memories of a militiaman long forgotten, one of the kin, whołd
helped her change her life ...

Theyłd been lucky to find her. Not so much gone to the dogs
as abandoned to the humans ... twenty-nine, addicted to heroin, living as a
street prostitute, a member of the officially non-existent underground
encouraged by the Brezhnev faction during their twenty year reign of hypocrisy.
My, but they did a good job of westernizing us fast! All the vices and none of
the virtues ... lost in her memories, she blinked, astonished by the strange
value systems her own mind was capable of throwing up. Hey, live among humans
for long enough, you even start thinking like one

It had been pure coincidence. One of the street-sweeps
theyłd been so keen on under Andropov; the weerde who finally found her was a
militia lieutenant assigned to mopping up the untouchables who werenłt meant to
contaminate the crime sheets of the squeaky-clean new orderafter all,
prostitution and drug abuse were western problems, werenłt they? She remembered
the cigarette smoke rising in spirals from the ash tray on the scarred desk,
the long interviews by lamp light as they tried to work out who she knew and
why she had been tolerated for so long: unable to admit publicly that all
cultures have a dark side, that everyone needs something to be afraid of, to
lust after, some forbidden fruit ...

The woman in the fur coat, black mini-dress, tights and
make-up that werenłt even in the shops for people to queue for; the first thing
that had caught the policemanłs attention was how attractive she was. Thin, but
not gaunt, young-looking but not a child. She shouldnłt be pretty, not with the
kind of life-style she leda three needle a day habit, not to mention the chalk
mixed with the damned Afghan dust by her scumbag dealer. �We know all about
you," he said, tapping her folder meaningfully, and she had laughed at him like
a wolf in the depths of the winter forest.

�No matter how much you think you know about me you will
never know all about me," she said. She stared at him with black, glittering
eyes, ice cubes that didnłt melt under the lamp.

�Really?" he asked. To a human it would have sounded like
something between a cough and a grunt.

Her eyes had widened, but not from fear: he had seen her fingers
flexing to strike, and tensed. �If my brother sent you to get me back," she had
said, �you can tell him Iłm not interested."

The cop had leaned forward, exposing his throat: �really?"
he asked. �And why would your brother do a thing like that?"

�Because he loves me. Or he thinks he does. I donłt think he
would know love if it bit his throat out. All hełs in love with is the dark."
She relaxed her hands, looked down; noticed for the first time how bony they
looked. As if her skin had become a translucent film, a winding sheet for her
skeleton, in the undead time since she came out of the forest. �Thatłs why I
left. After our parents died."

The cop had leaned back, the hardest bit of the interview
over: making her decide to talk. �And since leaving, is that when you began to
hang out on the street?"

She shrugged. A certain tension had gone out of the interrogation;
now it was more like a conversation. �Itłs a living. I have no papers, as you
may have noticed ..."

�That can be remedied." She blinked rapidly, surprised by a
stab of resentment. Trapped. �But first, it would help if you would answer a
couple of questions. Strictly on a cooperative basis; it makes it look better
on the record."

�Like what?" she asked, forcing herself to relax. The sense
of being caught in a trap intensified.

�Like beginning with when did you last see your brother?"

�Huh." She snorted. It would have been a laugh if shełd been
human. �He wrote to me until a year or two ago; I burned the letters. He always
knows where I am; where he is I donłt think even the KGB know." She stared at
him. �Do they?"

�Really!" The kin who was also a militia lieutenant
shrugged. �Hey, donłt look at me like that. The word has gone out from on high
that people like you donłt exist. So what are you going to do about it?"

�Why should I do anything about it?" she asked, feeling a
chill run up and down her spine as she met his gaze. This was what shełd been
afraid of for a long time, since the icy nights so long ago: the loss of her
freedom of action. �Iłm doing very well as it is."

�No youłre not." He had stared at her until she was forced
looked away. �Youłre ill. Your shit-head of a pimp is cutting your fix with
chalk, you know that? Your apartment has slime on the walls and the residents
hate youthatłs why youłre here. You were fingered."

�So what business of yours is it, how I go about destroying
myself?" she asked, mustering a calm as brittle as her paper-fine skin; �why do
you want to stop me?"

The cop reached out and took her handgambling that nobody
would be watching this interview, that it was not a hidden test of some
kind�because youłre one of us and youłve been hurt by those fucking animals,"
he grunted. Her eyes flickered left and right, but she didnłt pull away. She
could feel his pulse against her skin, fast, like any other of her kind. �How
long is it since you had a proper meal?"

�Whatłs one of those?" she asked. �Hey, donłt lay that shit
on me!" Now she pulled away. �I can look after myself. What are you after?"

The lieutenant glanced at the ceiling, abashed. �Nothing,"
he said after a moment. �I donłt want anything from you. At least nothing you
can give me. I just thought"

She reached out and touched his hand. �Okay," she said.
�Comrade. So thatłs what it is?" She looked at him askance. �Thatłs all it is?"

�And a full list of all your partners in crime," he added;
�but thatłs no reason to run away from me. Iłm not a monster. Iłll settle for
just the humans."

�Uh-huh."

They sat in silence for a minute as Valentina collected her
nerves for the next step in the process. There was an inevitability to it, a
determinism, which scared and exhilerated her; will everything begin to get
better, now? �There is one thing, though," she said quietly.

�Whatłs that?"

�For the records, we need an excuse. I canłt just
disappear."

�So?" The temperature in the cell seemed to drop a couple of
degrees.

�I want to cut a deal."

�Oh."

Then Val leaned forwards intently. �My help," she whispered,
�in return for yours. Iłll need a hand afterwards, you see. Iłll give you
everything you want. But in return I need something."

�And what would that be?" asked the cop, leaning back in his
chair, staring at her with cool expectation.

She licked her lips. �Iłve been thinking," she said. �This
is no career for a lady. But tell me, do you know how easy it is to get a job
in the undercover police?"

She was awakened by the change in engine noise as the chopper
came in to land. From the military field it was a half-hour drive into the
city. She was out of the police car as soon as it pulled up outside the
Institute building; before she reached the doors some students emerged. They gathered
in front of her, blocking the path. �What do you want here?" demanded one of
them, a fat, balding man with a beard and the look of an agitator about him.
�Who the hell are you?"

She stared at him, breathing hard. �Is Academician Meir in
his office today?" she asked; �I need to speak to him urgently."

�Iłll bet you do," began the fat man, only to be cut off by
one of his companions, a woman; �Wait! Who are you? Why do you want to see the
professor?"

�Hełs in danger," she said simply. Nameless emotions threatened
her control; she fought back ruthlessly, steeling herself for the big
half-truth. �I want to get him out of it."

Almost at once the students crowded in. �Youłre too late,"
said the woman. �Militia came for him oh, half an hour ago! In an APC." She
positively bristled. �Fuckers threatened to shoot anyone who got in their way"
There was an angry rumbling from behind.

�Do you have any idea where they were taking him?" She
asked, excitement and dread washing through her.

�No, but, hey! What"

She pushed past the fat man. �Wherełs Oległs office?" she
asked.

�Here. Iłll take you." It was the woman student again. They
hurried indoors, then waited interminably for a creaking lift to arrive. �Wełve
barricaded the stairsif they try to root us out wełll shut off the lift
motor," said the student. �Who are you?"

�A friend of Oległs. Not all the security forces are against
you," said Val. The lift doors opened and they crowded in. �Where did they go?"

�One of theman informer, looked like one of uscame and
took the Academician downstairs. Oh, therełs his office."

�Looks like he left in a hurry," observed Valentia, as the
student swung the lift doors open and darted into the room. �Hey, what a mess!
What ..."

The woman leaned over the desk, concentrating. �These are
all his papers. Shit."

Valentina stepped closer, her right hand thrust deep into
her pocket. �What are they about?" she demanded.

�Thisthese are all confidential! I didnłt know Professor
Meir worked for the army"

She turned and made a dash for the lift; Valentina followed
her, grabbed the back of her coat. �Wait," she hissed. �What kind of papers?"

The student twisted round, then saw Valentinałs expression.
�Uh"

Breathe. Relax. Val forced herself to smile. �What were they
about?"

�Uh ... oh. Something about the radar base at Krasnoyarsk.
You know it? Big rocket forces base. Theyłre going to dismantle it soon. Uh. I
could have sworn you"

But Valentina wasnłt there any more, wasnłt in the lift; was
back through the office then half way down the stairs and out to the police car
before she stopped to think, before the student could even blink back
after-images of what she had thought shełd seen in Valłs face.

�Airfield," Val snapped at her driver: �fast!" Rubber
screeched. �Iłve got a plane to catch." Why Krasnoyarsk? she puzzled, consulting
her inner oracle, her memory of her brother. But all he did was shrug and smile
and say something: and all she could make out was one phrase. Three thousand
megawatts.

Three ołclock:

Oleg Meir peered out of the small, dim porthole and tried to
ease the pain in his wrists. The hand-cuffs were too tight, and the fleshy part
of his hands tingled with pins and needles. A simple exercise, thinning out his
own flesh, would ease itbut his captors knew who they were dealing with, and
there were limits to what could be done in an hour or two. Besides, with fists
the size of a babyłs hełd be in no position to put up a fight.

This is the worst part: the waiting. He looked down across
the white emptiness below, tried to ignore the itching in the back of his
throat and the pain in his ears. Outside the fuselage, four giant Turmanskii
gas turbines howled across the tundra. The sky overhead was the deep blue of an
ice age. Pine trees clustered across the low-lying terrain to the south, but
the flight path of the jet was carrying Oleg ever closer to the Arctic circle.
How long will this take? He tried to calculate it in his head; assuming an
air-speed of five hundred knots, that would make it ... seven hours. Give or
take. To the land of ice and sky fire, where nuclear-powered pyramids brooded
beneath the eternal sun. Vast, many-tracked crawlers bearing fiery cylinders of
nuclear death. Oceans of ice beneath which submarines crept in cold-war
pursuits. Ancient tribes of ice-dwelling hunters, bemused by the entry of the
modern world into their dream of ages, forced out of the wire-wrapped military
reservations. Solzhenitsyn had w itten about the Gulag archipelago, the islands
of prisoners locked in the sea of Siberia, but this was something else. This
was the continent of the military, gripped in the paranoid embrance of an
eternal winter of the soul.

I ought to stop them from doing it, Oleg told himself for
the thousandth time. It was a pathetic mantra, but repetition made it seem more
practical; if only the sense of doing it would not so stubbornly elude him ...

Up front, a door banged open. Oleg looked up; it was
Anatoly, or whoever passed for him. The shadows standing out beneath his high
cheek-bones gave him a lupine appearance. Oleg turned his head away and closed
his eyes. His captor ignored this; seconds later he sensed warm breath
centimetres from his face.

�You donłt have any choice in the matter, you know."

Oleg opened his eyes. �Donłt I?" he asked.

Anatolywhoever he wasseemed to find this amusing. �Avoid
the end of the universe? Huh!" He drew away a fraction and Oleg flinched,
expecting a blow. It never came. �We are not cruel, Professor. We are not the
dark. Our intentions are good."

Oleg held up his chained wrists. �Then why ..?"

Anatoly shook his head slowly. �You donłt understand. We
canłt afford to take any chances. It has been many years since we tried and
failed ... too long ago. Our German colleagues who set the agenda at the
Wannsee conferencenow they were evil. In human terms, at least. But us? You do
me a disservice." He leaned forward until he was nose-to-nose with Oleg. �We
are here to help you."

�Help me!" He snorted. �How?"

�Help you" Anatoly paused for a moment�help you do what
you didnłt have the guts to do on your own. Even though youłve known how to do
it for years, now ... even though we gave you all the facilities you could
possibly need. Donłt play the innocent, Professor. You know what Iłm talking
about."

�I do?" Oleg found himself unable to look away from Anatolyłs
dark eyes; the expression on that face, the shared fear of the pit over which
he had been walking these past years, black as his worst fears ... �You really
think that I can summon down the Dark?" His stomach turned over, a vast uneasy
sense of urgency growing inside him. His heart raced, and the handcuffs slid
around his slippery wrists as if on a thin coating of slime.

Anatoly leaned close to him. �I know you can, Oleg. Because
you want to do it, donłt you? Otherwise youłd have turned me in long ago, to
that chekist major you canłt leave alone, you think we donłt know about that?"

Anatolyłs face rippled slowly before Oległs eyes, twisting
into another shape that it had worn for a long time before itłs owner had
chosen to pass for a student; a visage at once familiar and frightening. �I
know you better than you think, Comrade Academician. You like your cosy office
too much, and youłre still afraid of the dark the way they taught you to be.
But part of you wants to get it over with very badly, doesnłt it? You donłt
like human people, although you try to hide itisnłt that so? You donłt even
like your own kind very much. So you crouch in dark corners and search
frantically for the key to the thing that scares you most, telling yourself
that you need the information in order to hide bettersuch nonsense! Iłll tell
you what you wanted to know. You wanted to work out where the Dark had gone, in
those long aeons since it first came, while the sun swung around the core of
the galaxyisnłt that right?because you knew better than most of us where the
technology was leading the umans."

Anatoly-Andrei turned sinuously and sat down beside Oleg.
Oleg stared, trying to fix ever tiny detail in his mind: the pores in Andreiłs
skin, the faint, acrid smell of the kin, the slight, nervous way he fidgeted
with his left hand. Andrei stared back, eyes wide in a display of inhuman
concern.

�Another twenty years and their geneticists, theyłll be able
to pin us down everywhere. Have you thought of that? It would mean the end of
us, the end of everything. But not if we have the guts to do what we should do,
and use those three thousand megawatts, no? If we get our blow in first, we can
be safe again. All of us. To sleep away another age without fear of
interruption by the hairless apes." Andreivisibly Andrei now, still as
youthful as when Oleg had first met him in the mid-sixtiesstared like an
obsessive, fear and calculation mingled in his gaze. �Isnłt that right?" he
asked. �Donłt you know itłs true? We canłt let them carry on"

�Youłre" Oleg stopped, at a loss for words. He thinks he
knows everything. Andrei blinked rapidly, as if looking for a further
justification.

�The function systems, Professor. Wełve seen your interest
in Lyupanov space and chaos theory. We even heard about those programs you
ranafter you erased them and shredded the results. We can guess. You know
exactly how to go about summoning the dark; where to point the antennae, what
message to send, how long it will take. The radar site at Krasnoyarsk interested
you, so we guessed. Big, powerful transmitters. Thatłs it, isnłt it? You are
our peoplełs only hope, now."

�Why? I donłt understand. Whatłs in it for you?"

�Nothing, probably. Freedom from fear." Andrei shrugged,
suddenly abashed. �Come now, professor. Wełre all afraid together, arenłt we?
Those who think the Dark will kill us, and thoselike youwho fear it but
understand the need. I just" he sighed and looked away for a moment. Then: �I
just want to get it over with. The fear, not knowing. We live among animals who
could turn on us at any time. What could be worse than that? Face it, professor.
When it comes down to it, we are all kin. And thatłs all the humans will see if
they learn of us."

Oleg held up his hands again. �With these, how can I trust
you?" he asked, simply.

Andrei held up a key. �How can I trust you, if you wonłt
even tell me what youłre running from?" he asked. �Say it. You canłt hide
forever."

�Say what ..." Oległs mouth was dry, his heart pounding; he
barely noticed that the tension of years was melting away from him as he let
his real face peep through, let the darkness that had been raised in his
childhood soul reveal itself to his captor.

�We know about the taiga."

�The taiga ..." Oleg swallowed, breaking out in sweat. �What
do you mean?" He looked at Andrei, terrified beyond rational cause; he had
expected them to kill him, not dig up his past.

�We know what you did. All we want you to do is to do it
again. How does that sound?" It was a plea rather than a threat, and it spoke to
Oleg. �Is it so bad that you must forget even who you were, what you did?"

�Youłre mad," Oleg whispered, falling back on his last defense.

Andrei shook his head sadly. �If I am mad, then so are you,"
he said, turning away. �Think about it professor: itłs not so much. And you
will do it, donłt you? Because you want to. See you later ..."

He left. And Oleg sweated out the rest of the flight, cold
as ice and frightened as a ghost. Because, when he forced himself to confront
the issue, Andrei was substantially correct. Nothing would please him more than
do to away with these turbulent humans, except for the cost of returning to his
own worst nightmare ...

�They took off two hours ago, outbound for the Kola
peninsula on a 192 with long-range fuel tanks and a detachment of military
police. Looks like theyłre clear of you."

�Shit." Valentina thumped the table so hard that the
telephone on it bounced. �Canłt you do anything about it?"

�Like what? Take then down?" The voice on the other end of
the line was sardonic. �Be sensible! Hełs only a dissident"

She hung up angrily. �Well?" called the base political
officer from across the room.

�Air Defense says no," she muttered; �well fuck łem!"

�You could follow them," suggested the captain, complacent
in his insularity. �Itłs only a slow cargo plane."

�No. Iłd still be too late. All they need is the
authorization to run a quick sky-search; thatłs what Oleg had. An astronomer.
Then blast three gigawatts of pulsed microwave energy in the direction of ..."
she shuddered, searching for an excuse. �The American early warning satellite."
What a good lie. We should never have let them discover the wheel ...

�I didnłt know it was that serious," the political
complained. �If theyłd warned us, through proper channels"

�Forget it," she snapped. She stared out the window of the office,
towards the runway where the MiG-29łs squatted on their landing gear like
menacing green wasps. �Those birds. Any of them ready to go? With a passenger?"

�But theyłre single-seaters" the political stood up, paused
for a moment of indecision�I think one of themłs a trainer, though. Youłre
going to requisition a fighter?"

Valentina turned and stared at him. �Why not?" she asked, deceptively
innocent. �The manłs got to be stopped. Hełs dangerous. Iłve got to get where
hełs goingfast. Can you suggest anything better?"

�Can you?" challenged the captain. �I mean, itłs all very
well for you, but meIłve got to answer to the boss! Who will be unhappy,
unless"

�Name a price. Bill Department Seven Special Circumstances
for the budget." She was already half-way to the door when she paused. �Where
do you keep your flight suits?" she asked.

The base security officer was smiling. �This way," he said.
�Youłre really going after him? To get there first and arrest him?" Valentina
nodded, unwilling to trust her own tongue. �Thatłs great! Just like in the
movies!" And he held the door open for her as she went to collect her flight
kit.

Six twenty-three:

Almost before it taxiłd to a halt beside the despatch
terminal, a personnel carrier drew up beside the jet. The evening sun scattered
in orange shards from the truncated pyramids in the distance; a fine powder of
snow dusted the runway beneath the aircraftłs nose. An ancient military
stairlift drew up beside the cockpit canopy as it swung open. As Valentina
clambered down the ladder she discovered a welcoming committee. �Major
Valentina Pavlova? Major Rostopov, base security. I hope you have an
explanation for this." The spokesman wore a coat with majorłs epaulettes and a
smile as charmless as a rattlesnake. His guards were decked out in full winter
combat gear, rifles held at the ready.

�Therełs an explanation all right. Who are you?" Valentina
shivered in her flight suit: it was a summerłs evening, and the temperature had
already dropped below freezing.

�Your papers"

Valentina stared at him coldly. �Contact Leningrad Central
KGB. The exchange code is gold nine zero five. Ask to be connected to the
office of Marshal Dmitri Yazov. Explain that Major Pavlova is here and you require
clearance to proceed."

Rostopov recoiled slightly, then caught himself. �And if I
donłt?" he asked sharply. �This is a cold country, major. Have you noticed
which way the wind is blowing?"

�Or you can contact Moscow Parliament. Ask for the office of
the President. Tell Comrade Yeltsinłs secretary to read you Presidential
Emergency Decree forty"

�Enough." Rostopov raised his hands abruptly, as if surrendering.
�If you would care to get inside the carrierIłm sure we can discuss this in my
office" He looked as if he had tasted something extremely bitter.

�No time. I want to go to the Priority Installation, not the
airfield. Can you take me there directly?"

�The Priority ..." Rostopov stared at him. �What is this?
Youłve got the Emergency Committee and the President in your pocket and ...
shit, I donłt believe this!" He clambered into the body of the APC, still
muttering vaguely. �You bet Iłm going to check your credentials, comrade, this
is extremely irregular"

Valentina followed him into the passenger compartment. As
she did so she removed her right hand from her pocket. The Stetchkin automatic
that nestled inside had not been neededthis time. Itłs amazing how gullible
the confusion makes them ...

The carrier rumbled off towards the compound gates, under
the gaze of the perimeter guards. She sat very still, waiting for the hot-air
blowers to blast the chill out of the rattling metal box. It felt unnatural, in
a way that she had never really learned to block out; too much living among
humans numbed the senses, trained them to ignore alien smells and ways. Shełd
have told her brother it was a bad idea if hełd ever asked, back when they were
youngbut he wasnłt likely to ask such penetrating questions, and she was not
about to volunteer her opinion without it first being requested. That was the
basis of all her relationships, after all. She remembered all too well where
breaking that rule that had got her in the past.

As they travelled, Major Rostopov tried to wheedle information
out of her. This Valentina found vaguely amusing. �What is going on, comrade,
that canłt wait until the current situation blows over? You nearly gave the
Colonel a heart attack when he heard what kind of speed that bird of yours was
doinghe thought it was a yankee F-111 coming down his throatwhat gives?"

She yawned. �Itłs been a long day, Major. And very unpleasant.
Wet working conditions, if you take my meaning." Rostopov blanched and shut his
mouth with an audible snap, then scrambled forward into the driverłs section.

The carrier rumbled through a tight turn and stopped while
the outer gate opened in front of it. Rostopov re-appeared; �I can take you as
far as the commandantłs office," he said. �They wonłt let this vehicle go any
further. Youłd better have your papers ready."

Valentina nodded. �That will do."

The diesel wound up into a full-throated howl and the armoured
personnel carrier went to full speed. It was all she could do to prevent
herself from being thrown from wall to wall like a rag doll; conversation was
out of the question. For a gut-freezing moment she tried to remember whether
shełd set the safety on her gun: a Stetchkin looked like a pistol, but it could
discharge a full magazine in only a second, spraying white-hot lead around the
whole compartment. That was why shełd chosen it. I might only get the one
chance. Somehow the thought elated her at the same time as it scared her to
death: it made her think of blood-red nights and flesh-hot mouths, of predatory
passions that humans could not and should not understand. Shełd come a long way
for this, unimaginably far.

The one chanceshe remembered her brother, the last night.
Hełd gone away when she was a baby, leaving her alone with their parents: gone
away to school in the city where buildings of stone scraped at the sky until it
wept stars of blood. Left her to years of cloying intimacy, the family that
lived alone on the tundra in a hovel that froze from the inside out in winter:
strange, inbred folk ignored by humans, shunned by everyone but the nomadic
trappers ... it couldnłt last forever. When he returned from the unimaginably
distant city she was older and wiser, but not old enough. He took her by the
hand: �I love you, sister," he said, �youłre the only one." Twenty years older
than she was and he was right, there were no other kin within five hundred
kilometres. When he touched her her skin caught fire and burned with an alien
heat. �Let me show you why," he said.

They had gone outside in the woods, he and she, alone at
dusk in summer, when the mosquitos bred in swarms above the stagnant ponds that
lay among the roots of decaying pine trees. The summer tundra was stagnant and
fetid, like a bloated corpse. Hełd led her by the hand, deep into the woods
along a path that human eyes could never follow, to a small glade surrounded by
dead trees. There he set fire to her senses with his hands and body: it was not
a new experience, for she was weerde and fey and coming into adulthood in a
land where the ice rarely melted. When she came she bayed like a wolf at the
midnight sun.

Afterwards, as they lay side-by-side together, he said to
her slyly: �I have a secret, sister. Do you want to know what it is?"

Still warm from his embrace, she had said yes, she did.
�Itłs the humans. The trappers. Do you wonder why so few have visited us this
spring?"

Shełd nodded, mutely. Thier absence had worried her unaccountably.
�Theyłre not our people," he said. �Ancient, primitive ... they think they know
it all. But we scare them. They mutter curses and keep their women behind the
covers of their yurts because they think we posess the evil eye. Maybe theyłd
tell the communists, but theyłre afraid of us ... the hex is still stronger
than the red star. You know something? Theyłre right."

He stood, naked, above her: shape melting into the trees
like the ghost of something unimaginably ancient. No longer human, but raw and
elemental as the winter. �I hold the key, sister. I know where It dwells; the
thing with no Name, of which the legends speak." Leaning down, he helped her
rise. Inhuman eyes glittered in the un-night. �One day this will return,
whether we will it or no. They sensed this, I think. I had no alternative."

Together they walked deeper into the forest, where the trees
wove overhead into a canopy of darkness and the ground was a rancid mulch of
needles, he leading and she following. �They came in the night to lead the
kommunisti to us," he said.

Deep foreboding chilled her to the core: �What have you
done?" she demanded.

�Didnłt want to lose you," he said, reaching for her hands.
�They were doomed anyway. In the nature of their people. Look:" she looked. Saw
what he had done to the traders who had been their only contact with the
outside world. �I did it for you, my love. Didnłt want to lose you. Whatłs
wrong?"

She remembered bending her head forward to kiss the dead
thing that passed for an altar, no longer breathing, gagging on the stench of
decomposition�One day this will return, whether we will it or no"striking
out, changing her face, her mind, her memory to expunge the memory until the
day a year later when she woke up to see a letter lying on her straw-filled
pillowher fingers flexed involuntarily, opening and closing like talons. Why
did it fall to me to be born to the parents of a monster? He couldnłt leave her
alone; through all the years hełd tracked her, from a distance, known where to
find her. Bracing herself against one green-painted wall, she reached into her
pocket for reassurance. But hełd never dared to face her down, to venture an
explanation. Happiness is a warm gun. Yes, there it was: the sick feeling in
her stomach subsiding momentarily. A flash of malice made her shudder with its
intensity; I hope hełs still there, the bastard. So many lost years to answer
for, and when e finally calls itłs only to tell me ...

She noticed Major Rostopov was back. He was staring at her.
She let herself smile back at him; let it all shine out, then closely observed
the fear sketch livid shadows beneath his eyes.

Seven fourteen:

Tracking Control was a cavernous chamber in a bunker deep
beneath the permafrost, protected by layers of air defense missiles and
interceptor squadrons against the day when the B-52łs came over the horizon.
Oleg Meir felt anything but safe, though. Even with Andrei behind him,
smoothing the way at every turn and smiling-joking with the Colonel in charge,
it felt wrong. Perhaps it was guilt. Oleg knew exactly what he was doing ...
and he had a feeling that Andrei, however strong his faith in the Dark might
be, did not. Besides which, Oleg knew who was coming. Fear and guilt roiled
inside him until he felt almost hollow. What if shełs right? He worried. What
if she hasnłt forgotten?

�So I would like it if you could load the ephemerides and
begin transmitting for a period of one hour as soon as the message is loaded.
Think you can manage that?" asked Andrei.

The captain in charge of the post nodded. �And bill the Institute
... for SETI? Think wełll find anything, comrade Academician?" He seemed to be
more bemused than anything else.

Oleg shrugged uncomfortably, glancing at Andrei, who smiled
down at him with tight-pursed lips. �Itłs a theory. We need to complete it for
a thesis, big international conference, you know the sort of thing. Anyway, the
Americans havenłt done it yettheyłve listened, Project Ozma back in the
sixties was the firstbut transmitted? If this trial is a success wełll be able
to get backing for a full research project. Who knows? We might even get to
keep the big dish, whatever arms treaties they come up with."

The captainłs eyes glittered. Like far too many of the
hairless apes, Oleg realised, he thought of his machines as being more human
than other people. �So what is the text of the message, exactly?" he asked.

Andrei nudged Oleg surreptitiously. Oleg tapped a couple of
keys on the shielded terminal, calling up a listing. Hełd loaded it off tape
barely an hour since, under Andreiłs wary eye. He hadnłt given him an inch of
slack, whatever he might have said on the flight in; Oleg was precisely as free
as he had been before, handcuffed or otherwise. �Itłs a fractal. Random
looking, in the most unimaginably deterministic way. There are very few ways
you can decode it, and all of them imply that it is no coincidence ... the
message is the medium, in this case. With three gigawatts punching it out, it
should be quite deafening out to a couple of hundred light yearłs range. If I
get the chance to repeat, wełll need to sustain it for a full year." But we
wonłt need to, thought Oleg. Not if the old legends are correct. If thoughts
alone could summon it, even a fraction of a megawatt beaming the right message
should be overkill ...

�Thatłs settled, then," said the captain. �All I need is the
authorisationoh." He stopped, looked up.

Andrei leaned over Oległs chair and turned the full force of
his personality on the hapless officer. �Iłll see to that at once! Iłm sure
Colonel Blavatsky will agree; after all the project release has been signed by
the ministry, hasnłt it?" He smiled, baring spotless teeth, and the captain
nodded back helplessly. �Perhaps youłd like to load the transmission sequence
now and run it through the modulator stage, just to check that there are no
unforseen problems ... youłre sure you can transmit on twenty-one centimetres?
The, uh, water hole?"

�H-band, yes." He nodded so violently that one of the technicians
glanced round inconcern before bending back over his diagnostic station. �Of
course. You want me to load it? Sure."

He began tapping keys on his terminal at a surprising rate.
Oleg watched, fascinated and terrified at the same time: his authorisation on
this system didnłt extend to actually issuing commands. It was all automateda
phased array radar was nothing more than a series of pulses propagating through
silicon, after allbut still it made him catch his breath, to see a palid-looking
captain sitting at a desk steer a billion roubles of electronics to point at an
ephemeris from which no American missile could possibly originate ...

There was a banging, some way off in the building. Oleg ignored
it, watching instead the big wall screen that painted the beam path across a
polar map of the Union. The highlighted strip jumped, suddenly, pointing
inwards and upwards; a searchlight beacon of microwaves pouring energy out
towards the stars. �Thatłs good," he said, encouragingly.

The young officer grinned back. �We can point it anywhere,"
he said; �even down here, if we wanted to fry our brains out. Hey" He made as
if to stand up, but Oleg caught his hand and held it.

�Sit down," he said softly. �Let the colonel deal with it."
Behind him, Andrei was moving towards the door. �You donłt actually think this
is a good thing to do?" he asked the captain, suddenly curious to hear this
young man pronounce upon his own speciesł demise.

For a moment doubt flickered across the young manłs features.
�What makes you ask that, comrade? Is this some kind of political thing?"

A shadow of exasperation crossed Oległs features. �They
donłt tell you anything out here, do they? About the coup? Itłll collapse, you
know, but the Union will go on in one form or another. No, not politics. Just
... think what might lie out there! What hideous evil we might be summoning
down when you transmit that call sign ..."

But the captain shook his head and grinned. �But you must be
wrong, comrade! Look" before Oleg could stop him he punched keys. �I send it
now! And you know, of course if they can understand what they are reading in
decades time from now, they must be more intelligent than us, more civilized!
Mustnłt they?"

Oleg stared at the anonymous soldier, utterly aghast. There
was a staccato banging noise in the distance. For a moment ice water coursed
through his veins instead of blood. What have you done ... �Of course, if you
are wrong, you might have killed the human race." He felt a giant laugh,
two-thirds relief and one third terror, rumble through the back of his head
like an echo of thunder, the humour of a mad god. Acutely aware of the guards,
the guns pointing ever inwards, his guts melted to jelly. You fool! The most important
event in the history of your species and you do it because of a discredited
political theory! Itłs humans like you who screwed us over so badly that this
is the only way outa grand, manic hilarity bubbled up inside him, thirty years
of terror set free in a single moment.

The captain, oblivious, shook his head and smiled. �Rubbish,
comrade! Any aliens sophisticated enough to read your message, of course
theyłll be good communists, wonłt they? I mean, it stands to reason that all
intelligent life must be evolving towards"

Oleg felt a sudden gust of cold air on his neck. The captain
stood up, mouth hanging open, as Oleg spun round in his chair to face his
sister, her frozen vengeful face, the ridiculously small pistol she clutched in
her hands�you canłt be serious," he tried to say, smiling with embarrassment
and fear: �I didnłt do it. They did it to themselves! After all these years I
never even had to raise a finger!" Staring down the barrel of a loaded gun,
wondering as if for the first time if he might be held accountable: �wonłt you
be reasonable? Talk to me!"

His sister took a step forward; and for a moment Oleg
thought he saw her smile. �Whatłs there to talk about?" she asked.

�Everything" he began.

But he was much too late.

Remade

Issue 3 of Cosmos, September 2005

Illustration by Justin Randall

 

Who said that death has to signal the end? It may just be an
opportunity.

A dark-skinned human with four arms walks towards me across
the floor of the club, clad only in a belt strung with human skulls. Her hair
forms a smoky wreath around her open and curious face. Shełs interested in me.

�Youłre new around here, arenłt you?" she asks, pausing in
front of my table.

I stare at her. Apart from the neatly articulated extra
shoulder joints, the body shełs wearing is roughly ortho, following the traditional
human body-plan. The skulls are sub-sized, strung together on a necklace
threaded with barbed wire and roses. �Yes, Iłm a nube," I say. My parole ring
makes my left index finger tingle, a little reminder. �Iłm required to warn you
that Iłm undergoing identity reindexing and rehabilitation. People in my state
may be prone to violent outbursts. Donłt worry, thatłs just a statutory
warning: I wonłt hurt you. What makes you ask?"

She shrugs. Itłs an elaborate rippling gesture that ends
with a wiggle of her hips. �Because I havenłt seen you here before, and Iłve
been coming here most nights for the past twenty or thirty diurns. You can earn
extra rehab credit by helping out. Donłt worry about the parole ring, most of
us here have them. I had to warn people myself a while ago."

I manage to force a smile. A fellow inmate? Further along
the program? �Would you like a drink?" I ask, gesturing at the chair next to
me. �And what are you called, if you donłt mind me asking?"

�Iłm Kay." She pulls out the chair and sits, flipping her
great mass of dark hair over her shoulder and tucking her skulls under the
table with two hands as she glances at the menu. �Iłll have an iced double
mocha pickup, easy on the coca." She looks at me again, staring at my eyes.
�The clinic arranges things so that therełs always a volunteer around to greet
nubes. Itłs my turn this swing shift. Do you want to tell me your name? Or
where youłre from?"

�If you like." My ring tingles and I remember to smile. �My
namełs Robin, and youłre right, Iłm fresh out of the rehab tank. Only been out
for a meg, to tell the truth." A bit over ten planetary days, a million
seconds. �Iłm from"I go into quicktime for a few subseconds, trying to work
out what story to give her, ending up with an approximation of the
truth�around these parts, actually. But just out of memory excision. I was
getting stale and needed to do something about whatever it was I was getting
stale over."

Kay smiles. Shełs got sharp cheekbones, bright teeth framed
between perfect lips; shełs got bilateral symmetry, three billion years of
evolutionary heuristics and homeobox genes generating a face thatłs a mirror of
itselfand where did that thought come from? I ask myself, annoyed. Itłs tough,
not being able to tell the difference between your own thoughts and a
post-surgical identity prosthesis.

�I havenłt been human for long," she admits. �I just moved
here from Zemlya." Pause. �For my surgery," she adds quietly.

I fiddle with the tassels dangling from my sword pommel.
Therełs something not quite right about them, and itłs bugging me intensely.
�You lived with the ice ghouls?" I ask.

�Not quiteI was an ice ghoul." She crosses both pairs of
arms defensively. �Iłd feel like a liar looking like ..." She glances past me.
There are a handful of other people in the bar, a few bushujo and a couple of
cyborgs, but most of them are wearing orthohuman bodies. Shełs glancing at a
woman with long blonde hair on one side of her head and stubble on the other,
wearing a filmy white drape and a sword belt. The woman is braying loudly with
laughter at something one of her companions just said: berserkers on the prowl
for players. �Her, for example."

�But you were orthohuman once?"

�I still am, inside."

The penny drops: She wears xenohuman drag when shełs in
public because shełs shy. I glance over at the group and accidentally make eye
contact with the blonde woman. She looks at me, stiffens, then pointedly turns
away. �How long has this bar been here?" I ask, my ears burning. How dare she
do that to me?

�About three megs." Kay nods at the group of orthos across
the room. �I really would avoid paying obvious attention to them, theyłre
duellists."

�So am I." I nod at her. �I find it therapeutic."

She grimaces. �I donłt play, myself. Itłs messy. And I donłt
like pain."

�Well, neither do I," I say slowly. �Thatłs not the point."
The point is that we get angry when we canłt remember who we are, and we lash
out at first; and a structured, formal framework means that nobody else needs
to get hurt.

�Where do you live?" she asks.

�Iłm in the"shełs transparently changing the subject, I realise�clinic,
still. I mean, everything I had, I"liquidated and ran�I travel light. I still
havenłt decided what to be in this new lifetime, so there doesnłt seem much
point in having lots of baggage."

�Another drink?" Kay asks. �Iłm buying."

�Yes, please." A warning bell rings in my head as I sense
Blondie heading towards our table. I pretend not to notice but I can feel a
familiar warmth in my stomach, a tension in my back. Ancient reflexes and not a
few modern cheat-codes take over and I surreptitiously loosen my sword in its
scabbard. I think I know what Blondie wants and Iłm perfectly happy to give it
to her. Shełs not the only one around here prone to frequent flashes of murderous
rage that take a while to cool. The counsellor told me to embrace it and give
in, among consenting fellows: it should burn itself out in time. Which is why
Iłm carrying.

But the post-excision rages arenłt my only irritant. In
addition to memory edits I opted to have my age reset. Being post-adolescent
again brings back forgotten hormonal torments. It makes me pace my apartment
restlessly, until I pull on a duellistłs sash and go out in search of random
violence. Sex, too, has acquired an obsessive importance Iłd forgotten. These
urges are hard to fight off when you wake up empty and unable to remember who
you used to be. And theyłre a lot less fun the second time through the cycle of
rejuvenation.

�Listen, donłt look round but you probably ought to know
that someone is about to"

Before I can finish the sentence Blondie leans over Kayłs
shoulder and spits in my face. �I demand satisfaction." She has a voice like a
diamond drill.

�Why?" I ask stonily, heart thumping with tension as I wipe
my cheek. I can feel the rage building but I force myself to keep it under
control.

�You exist."

Therełs a certain look some post-rehab cases get while
theyłre in the psychopathic dissociative stage, still re-knitting the ravelled
threads of their personality and memories into a new identity. The insensate
anger at the world, the existential hate, often directed at their previously
whole self for putting them into this world, naked and stripped of memories,
generates its own dynamic. Wild black-eyed hatred and the perfect musculature
of the optimised phenotype combine to lend Blondie an intimidating, almost
primal presence. Nevertheless shełs got enough self-control to issue a challenge
before she attacks.

Kay, shy and much further advanced in recovery than either
of us, cowers in her seat as Blondie glares at me. That annoys me: Blondiełs
got no call to intimidate bystanders. And maybe Iłm not as out of control as I
feel.

�In that case ..." I slowly stand up, not breaking eye
contact for a moment. �How about we take this to the remilitarised zone? First
death rules?"

�Yes," she hisses.

I glance at Kay: �Nice talking to you. Order me another
drink. Iłll be right back." I can feel her eyes on my back as I follow Blondie
to the gate to the RMZ. Which is right beside the bar.

Blondie pauses on the threshold. �After you," she says.

�Au contraire: Challenger goes first."

She glares at me one more time, clearly furious, then
strides into the T-gate and blinks out. I wipe my right palm on my leather
kilt, grip the hilt of my sword, draw, and leap through the point-to-point
wormhole.

Duelling etiquette calls for the challenger to clear the
gate by a good ten paces, but Blondie isnłt in a good mood and it is a very
good thing that Iłm on the defensive and ready to parry as I go through because
shełs waiting ready to shove her sword through my abdomen on the spot.

Shełs fast and vicious and utterly uninterested in playing
by the rules, which is fine by me because my own existential rage now has an
outlet and a face. The anger that has been eating me up since my surgery, the
hatred of the war criminals who forced me into this, of the person I used to be
who surrendered to the large-scale memory erasureI canłt even remember what
sex I was, or how tallhas a focus, and on the other end of her circling blade
Blondiełs face is a glow of concentration and fury to mirror my own.

This part of the remilitarised zone is modelled on a ruined
city of old Urth, shattered postnuclear concrete wastelands and strange
creeping vegetation shrouding the statues of conquerors and the burned-out
wreckage of wheeled cars. We could be alone here, marooned on a planet
uninhabited by other sapientes. Alone to work out our grief and rage as the
post-surgical fugue slowly dissipates.

Blondie tries to rush me and I fall back carefully, trying
to spot some weakness in her attack. She prefers the edge to the point and the
right to the left but shełs not leaving me any openings. �Hurry up and die!"
she snaps.

�After you." I feint and try to draw her off-balance,
circling round her. Next to the gate we came in through therełs a ruined stump
of a tall building, rubble heaped up above head height. (The gatełs beacon
flashes red, signifying no egress until one of us is dead.) The rubble gives me
an idea and I feint again, then back off and leave an opening for her.

Blondie takes the opening and I just block her, because
shełs fast: but shełs not sly, and she certainly wasnłt expecting the knife in
my left handtaped to my left thigh beforeand as she tries to guard against it
I see my chance and run my sword through her belly.

She drops her weapon and falls to her knees. I sit down
heavily opposite her, almost collapsing. Oh dear. How did she manage to get my
leg? Maybe I shouldnłt trust my instincts quite so totally.

�Done?" I ask, suddenly feeling faint.

�I" Therełs a curious expression on her face as she holds
onto the basket of my sword. �Uh." She tries to swallow. �Who?"

�Iłm Robin," I say lightly, watching her with interest. Iłm
not sure Iłve ever watched somebody dying with a sword through the guts before.
Therełs lots of blood, and a really vile smell of ruptured intestines: Iłd have
thought shełd be writhing and screaming, but maybe shełs got an autonomic
override. Anyway, Iłm holding my leg together. Blood keeps welling up between
my fingers. Comradeship in pain. �You are ...?"

�Gwyn." She swallows. The light of hatred is extinguished,
leaving somethingpuzzlement?behind.

�When did you last back up, Gwyn?"

She squints. �Unh. Hour. Ago."

�Well then. Would you like me to end this?"

It takes a moment for her to meet my eyes. She nods. �When.
You?"

I lean over, grimacing, and pick up her blade. �When did I
last back myself up? Since recovering from memory surgery, you mean?"

She nods, or maybe shudders. I raise the blade and frown, lining
it up on her neck: it takes all my energy. �Good question"

I slice through her throat. Blood sprays everywhere.

�Never."

I stumble to the exitan A-gateand tell it to rebuild my
leg before returning me to the bar. It switches me off and a subjective instant
later I wake up in the kiosk in the washroom at the back of the bar, my body
remade as new. I feel empty but, curiously, at peace with myself. Maybe Iłll be
ready for a backup, soon? I flex my right leg. The assemblerłs done a good job of
canonicalising it and the edited muscle works just fine.

Kay takes me to a charmingly rustic low-gee piazza of spun diamond
foam and bonsai redwoods, where quaint steam-powered robots cook succulent baby
hams over charcoal grills. Kay and I chat and it becomes clear that shełs
mightily intrigued to see me recovering visibly from the emotional
after-effects of memory surgery. She has a quirky sense of humour. After wełve
eaten, I tell her, �Iłve been an idiot. I need to take a backup as soon as I go
home."

Her eyes widen. �Youłve been walking around here wearing a
sword and a duelling sash all evening and you donłt have a backup?" Her voice
rises to a squeak.

�Knowing youłve got a backup blunts your edge. Anyway, I was
angry with myself." I stop frowning as I look at her.

Kay leans me up against the wall just beside the entrance,
kisses me and does something electrifying with three of her hands. She vanishes
into the hygiene suite to use the assembler, leaving me panting. When she
returns I almost donłt recognise herher hair has turned blue, shełs lost two
arms, and her skin has turned the colour of milky coffee. But she walks right
up to me and kisses me again and I recognise her by the taste of her mouth. I
carry her to the bed and we explore each otherłs bodies until we fall asleep.

You canłt stay angry forever.

Charles Stross is a science fiction writer in Edinburgh, Scotland,
with qualifications in pharmacy and computer science. This is an extract from
his novel, Glasshouse.

�2006 Luna Media Pty Ltd, all rights reserved

Rogue Farm

ęRogue Farmł appeared in ęLive Without a Netł (ed Lou Anders,
pub Roc 2003). It is copyright Charles Stross.

 

It was a bright, cool March morning: marełs tails trailed
across the south-eastern sky towards the rising sun. Joe shivered slightly in
the driverłs seat as he twisted the starter handle on the old front-loader he
used to muck out the barn. Like its owner, the ancient Massey-Fergusson had
seen better days; but it had survived worse abuse than Joe routinely handed
out. The diesel clattered, spat out a gobbet of thick blue smoke, and chattered
to itself dyspeptically. His mind as blank as the sky above, Joe slid the
tractor into gear, raised the front scoop, and began turning it towards the
open doors of the barnjust in time to see an itinerant farm coming down the
road.

�Bugger," swore Joe. The tractor engine made a hideous grinding
noise and died. He took a second glance, eyes wide, then climbed down from the
tractor and trotted over to the kitchen door at the side of the farmhouse.
�Maddie!" he called, forgetting the two-way radio clipped to his sweater hem.
�Maddie! Therełs a farm coming!"

�Joe? Is that you? Where are you?" Her voice wafted vaguely
from the bowels of the house.

�Where are you?" He yelled back.

�Iłm in the bathroom."

�Bugger," he said again. �If itłs the one we had round the
end last month ..."

The sound of a toilet sluiced through his worry. It was
followed by a drumming of feet on the staircase, then Maddie erupted into the
kitchen. �Where is it?" she demanded.

�Out front, about a quarter mile up the lane."

�Right." Hair wild and eyes angry about having her morning
ablutions cut short, Maddie yanked a heavy green coat on over her shirt.
�Opened the cupboard yet?"

�I was thinking youłd want to talk to it first."

�Too right I want to talk to it. If itłs that one thatłs
been lurking in the copse near Edgarłs pond I got some issues to discuss with
it." Joe shook his head at her anger and went to unlock the cupboard in the
back room. �You take the shotgun and keep it off our property," she called
after him: �Iłll be out in a minute."

Joe nodded to himself, then carefully picked out the
twelve-gauge and a pre-loaded magazine. The gunłs power-on self test lights
flicker ederratically, but it seemed to have a full charge. Slinging it, he
locked the cupboard carefully and went back out into the farmyard to warn off
their unwelcome visitor.

The farm squatted, buzzing and clicking to itself, in the
road outside Armitage End. Joe eyed it warily from behind the wooden gate,
shotgun under his arm. It was a medium sized one, probably with half a dozen
human components subsumed into ita formidable collective. Already it was deep
into farm-fugue, no longer relating very clearly to people outside its own
communion of mind. Beneath its leathery black skin he could see hints of
internal structure, cytocellular macro-assemblies flexing and glooping in disturbing
motions. Even though it was only a young adolescent, it was already the size of
an antique heavy tank, andblocked the road just as efficiently as an
Apatosaurus would have. Its melled of yeast and gasoline.

Joe had an uneasy feeling that it was watching him.
�Buggerit, I donłt have time for this," he muttered. The stable waiting for the
small herd of cloned spidercows cluttering up the north paddock was still
knee-deep in manure, and the tractor seat wasnłt getting any warmer while he
shivered out here waiting for Maddie to come and sort this thing out. It wasnłt
a big herd, but it was as big as his land and his labour could managethe big
biofabricator in the shed could assemble mammalian livestock faster than he
could feed them up and sell them with an honest HAND-RAISED NOT VAT-GROWN
label. �What do you want with us?" he yelled up at the gently buzzing farm.

�Brains, fresh brains for baby Jesus," crooned the farm in a
warm contralto, startling Joe half out of his skin. �Buy my brains!" Half a
dozen disturbing cauliflower shapes poked suggestively out of the farmsł back
then retracted again, coyly.

�Donłt want no brains around here," Joe said stubbornly, his
fingers whitening on the stock of the shotgun. �Donłt want your kind round
here, neither. Go away."

�Iłm a nine-legged semi-automatic groove machine!" Crooned
the farm. �Iłm on my way to Jupiter on a mission for love! Wonłt you buy my
brains?" Three curious eyes on stalks extruded from its upper glacis.

�Uh" Joe was saved from having to dream up any more ways of
saying fuck off by Maddiełs arrival. Shełd managed to sneak her old battledress
home after a stint keeping the peace in Mesopotamia twenty ago,and shełd
managed to keep herself in shape enough to squeeze inside. Its left knee
squealed ominously when she walked it about, which wasnłt often, but it still
worked well enough to manage its main taskintimidating trespassers.

�You." She raised one translucent arm, pointed at the farm.
�Get off my land. Now."

Taking his cue, Joe raised his shotgun and thumbed the
selector to full auto. It wasnłt a patch on the hardware riding Maddiełs
shoulders, but it underlined the point. The farm hooted: �why donłt you love
me?" it asked plaintively.

�Get orf my land," Maddie amplified, volume cranked up so
high that Joe winced. �Ten seconds! Nine! Eight" Thin rings sprang out from
the sides of her arms, whining with the stress of long disuse as the Gauss gun
powered up.

�Iłm going! Iłm going!" The farm lifted itself slightly, shuffling
backwards. �Donłt understand. I only wanted to set you free to explore the
universe. Nobody wants to buy my fresh fruit and brains. Whatłs wrong with the
world?"

They waited until the farm had retreated round the bend at
the top of the hill. Maddie was the first to relax, the rings retracting back
into thearms of her battle dress, which solidified from ethereal translucency
to neutral olive drab as it powered down. Joe safed his shotgun. �Bastard,"he
said.

�Fucking A." Maddie looked haggard. �That was a bold one."
Her face was white and pinched-looking, Joe noted: her fists were clenched. She
had the shakes, he realised without surprise. Tonight was going to be another
major nightmare night, and no mistake.

�The fence." Theyłd discussed wiring up an outer wire to the
CHP baseload from their little methane plant, on again and off again for the
past year.

�Maybe this time. Maybe." Maddie wasnłt keen on the idea of
frying passers-by without warning, but if anything might bring her around it
would be the prospect of being overrun by a bunch of rogue farms. �Help me out
of this and Iłll cook breakfast," she said.

�Got to muck out the barn," Joe protested.

�It can wait on breakfast," Maddie said shakily. �I need
you."

�Okay." Joe nodded. She was looking bad; it had been a few
years since her last fatal breakdown, but when Maddie said I need you it was a
bad idea to ignore her. That way led to backbreaking labour on the biofab and
loading her backup tapes into the new body; always a messy business. He took
her arm and steered her towards the back porch. They were nearly there when he
paused.

�What is it?" asked Maddie.

�Havenłt seen Bob for a while," he said slowly. �Sent him to
let the cows into the north paddock after milking. Do you think"

�We can check from the control room," she said tiredly. �Are
you really worried ...?"

�With that thing blundering around? What do you think?"

�Hełs a good working dog," Maddie said uncertainly. �It
wonłt hurt him. Hełll be alright; just you page him."

# # #

After Joe helped her out of her battle dress, and after
Maddie spent a good long while calming down, they breakfasted on eggs from
their own hens, home-made cheese, and toasted bread made with rye from the
hippie commune on the other side of the valley. The stone-floored kitchen in
the dilapidated house theyłd squatted and rebuilt together over the past twenty
years was warm and homely. The only purchase from outside the valley was the
coffee, beans from a hardy GM strain that grew likea straggling teen-agerłs
beard all along the Cumbrian hilltops. They didnłt say much: Joe, because he
never did, and Maddie, because there wasnłt anything that she wanted to say.
Silence kept her personal demons down. Theyłd known each other for many years,
and even when there wasnłt anything to say they could cope with each otherłs
silence. The voice radio on the windowsill opposite the cast-iron stove stayed
off, along with the TV set hanging on the wall next to the fridge. Breakfast
was a quiet time of day.

�Dogłs not answering," Joe commented over the dregs of his
coffee.

�Hełs a good dog." Maddie glanced at the yard gate uncertainly.
�You afraid hełs going to run away to Jupiter?"

�He was with me in the shed." Joe picked up his plate and carried
it to the sink, began running hot water onto the dishes. �After I cleaned the
lines I told him to go take the herd up the paddock while I did the barn." He
glanced up, looking out the window with a worried expression. The
Massey-Fergusson was parked right in front of the open barn doors as if holding
at bay the mountain of of dung, straw, and silage that mounded up inside like
an invading odious enemy, relic of afrosty winter past.

Maddie shoved him aside gently and picked up one of the walkie-talkies
from the charge point on the window sill. It bleeped and chuckled at her. �Bob,
come in, over". She frowned. �Hełs probably lost his headset again."

Joe racked the wet plates to dry. �Iłll move the midden. You
want to go find him?"

�Iłll do that." Maddiełs frown promised a talking-to in
store for the dog when she caught up with him. Not that Bob would mind: words
ran off him like water off a duckłs back. �Cameras first." She prodded the
battered TV set to life and grainy bisected views flickered across the screen,
garden, yard, dutch barn, north paddock, east paddock, main field, copse.
�Hmm."

She was still fiddling with the smallholding surveillance system
when Joe clambered back into the driverłs seat of the tractor and fired it up
once more. This time there was no cough of black smoke, and as he hauled the
mess of manure out of the barn and piled it into a three-metre high midden, a
quarter of a ton at a time, he almost managed to forget about the morningłs unwelcome
visitor. Almost.

By late morning the midden was humming with flies and producing
a remarkable stench, but the barn was clean enough to flush out with a hose and
broom. Joe was about to begin hauling the midden over to the fermentation tanks
buried round the far side of the house when he saw Maddie coming back up the
path, shaking her head. He knew at once what was wrong.

�Bob," he said, expectantly.

�Bobłs fine. I left him riding shotgun on the goats." Her expression
was peculiar. �But that farm"

�Where?" he asked, hurrying after her.

�Sqautting in the woods down by the stream," she said
tersely. �Just over our fence."

�Itłs not trespassing, then."

�Itłs put down feeder roots! Do you have any idea what that
means?"

�I donłt" Joełs face wrinkled in puzzlement. �Oh."

�Yes. oh." She stared back at the outbuildings between their
home and the woods at the bottom of their smallholding, and if looks could
kill,the intruder would be dead a thousand times over. �Itłs going to estivate,
Joe, then itłs going to grow to maturity on our patch. And do you know where it
said it was going to go when it finishes growing? Jupiter!"

�Bugger," Joe said faintly, as the true gravity of their
situation began to sink in. �Wełll have to deal with it first."

�That wasnłt what I meant," Maddie finished. But Joe was already
on his way out the door. She watched him crossing the yard, then shook her
head. �Why am I stuck here?" she asked herself, but the cooker wasnłt
answering.

# # #

The hamlet of Outer Cheswick lay four kilometres down the
road from Armitage End, four kilometres past mostly derelict houses and broken
down barns, fields given over to weeds and walls damaged by trees. The first
half of the twenty-first century had been cruel years for the British
agrobusiness sector; even harsher if taken in combination with the decline in
population and the consequent housing surplus. As a result,the drop-outs of the
forties and fifties were able to take their pick from among the gutted shells
of once fine farmhouses. They chose the best and moved in, squatted in the
derelict outbuildings, planted their seeds and tended their flocks and
practiced their DIY skills, until a generation later a mansion fit for a squire
stood in lonely isolation alongside a decaying road where no more cars drove.
Or rather, it would have taken a generation had there been any children against
whose lives it could be measured; these were the latter decades of the
population crash,and what a previous century would have labelled downshifter
dink couples were now in the majority, far outnumbering any breeder colonies.
In this aspect of their life, Joe and Maddie were boringly conventional. In
other respects they werenłt: Maddiełs nightmares, her aversion to alcohol, and
her withdrawl from society were all relics of her time in Peaceforce. As for
Joe, he liked it here. Hated cities, hated the net, hated the burn of the new.
Anything for a quiet life ...

The Pig and Pizzle, on the outskirts of Outer Cheswick, was
the only pub within about ten kilometrescertainly the only one within
staggering distance for Joe when hełd had a skinful of mildand it was
naturally a seething den of local gossip, not least because Ole Brenda refused
to allow electricity, much less bandwidth, into the premises. (This was not out
of any sense of misplaced technophobia, but a side-effect of Brendałs previous
life as an attack hacker with the European Defense Forces.)

Joe paused at the bar. �Pint of bitter?" he asked
tentatively. Brenda glanced at him and nodded, then went back to loading the
antique washing machine. Presently she pulled a clean glass down from the shelf
and held it under the tap.

�Hear youłve got farm trouble," she said non-commitally as
she worked the hand pump on the beer engine.

�Uh-huh." Joe focussed on the glass. �Wherełd you hear
that?"

�Never you mind." She put the glass down to give the head
time to settle; �you want to talk to Arthur and Wendy-the-Rat about farms. They
had one the other year."

�Happens." Joe took his pint. �Thanks, Brenda. The usual?"

�Yeah." She turned back to the washer. Joe headed over to
the far corner where a pair of huge leather sofas, their arms and backs ripped
and scarred by generations of Brendałs semi-feral cats, sat facing each other
on either side of a cold hearth. �Art, Rats. Whatłs up?"

�Fine, thanks." Wendy-the-Rat was well over seventy, one of
those older folks who had taken the p53 chromosome hack and seemed to wither
into timelessness: white dreadlocks, nose and ear studs dangling loosely from
leathery holes, skin like a desert wind. Art had been her boy-toy once, back
before middle age set its teeth into him. He hadnłt had the hack, and looked
older than she did. Together they ran a smallholding, mostly pharming vaccine
chicks but also doing a brisk trade in high-nitrate fertilizer that came in on
the nod and went out in sacks by moonlight.

�Heard you had a spot of bother?"

�ęS true." Joe took a cautious mouthful. �Mm, good. You ever
had farm trouble?"

�Maybe." Wendy looked at him askance, slitty-eyed. �What
kinda trouble you got in mind?"

�Got a farm collective. Says itłs going to Jupiter or
something. Bastardłs homesteading the woods down by old Jackłs stream. Listen
... Jupiter?"

�Aye well, thatłs one of the destinations, sure enough." Art
nodded wisely, as if he knew anything.

�Naah, thatłs bad." Wendy-the-Rat frowned. �Is it growing
trees, do you know?"

�Trees?" Joe shook his head. �Havenłt gone and looked, tell
the truth. What the fuck makes people do that to themselves, anyway?"

�Who the fuck cares?" Wendyłs face split in a broad grin.
�Such as donłt think theyłre human anymore, meself."

�It tried to sweet-talk us," Joe said.

�Aye, they do that," said Arthur, nodding emphatically.
�Read somewhere theyłre the ones as think we arenłt fully human. Tools anł
clothes and farmyard machines, like? Sustaining a pre-post-industrial lifestyle
instead of updating our genome and living off the land like God intended?"

�łOw the hell can something with nine legs and eye stalks
call itself human?" Joe demanded, chugging back half his pint in one angry
swallow.

�It used to be, once. Maybe used to be a bunch of people."
Wendy gota weird and witchy look in her eye: �ład a boyfriend back thirty,
forty years ago, joined a Lamarckian clade. Swapping genes anł all, the way you
or mełd swap us underwear. Used to be a ęviromentalist back when
antiglobalisation was about big corporations pissing on us all for profits. Got
into gene hackery and self-sufficiency bigtime. I slung his fucking ass when he
turned green and started photosynthesizing."

�Bastards," Joe muttered. It was deep green folk like that
whołd killed off the agricultural-industrial complex in the early years of the
century, turning large portions of the countryside into ecologically devastated
wilderness gone to rack and ruin. Bad enough that theyłd set millions of
countryfolk out of workbut that theyłd gone on to turn green, grow extra limbs
and emigrate to Jupiter orbit was adding insult to injury. And having a good
time in the process, by all accounts. �Dinłt youłave a farm problem, coupla
years back?"

�Aye, did that," said Art. He clutched his pint mug
protectively.

�It went away," Joe mused aloud.

�Yeah, well." Wendy stared at him cautiously.

�No fireworks, like." Joe caught her eye. �And no body.
Huh."

�Metabolism," said Wendy, apparently coming to some kind of
decision. �Thatłs where itłs at."

�Meat" Joe, no biogeek, rolled the unfamiliar word around
his mouth irritably. �I used to be a software dude before I burned, Rats.
Youłll have to ęsplain the jargon fore using it."

�You ever wondered how those farms get to Jupiter?" Wendy
probed.

�Well." Joe shook his head. �They, like, grow stage trees?
Rocket logs? Anł then they est-ee-vate and you are fucked if they do it next
doorłcause when those trees go up they toast about a hundred hectares?"

�Very good," Wendy said heavily. She picked up her mug in
both hands and gnawed on the rim, edgily glancing around as if hunting for
police gnats. �Letłs you and me take a hike."

Pausing at the bar for Ole Brenda to refil her mug, Wendy
led Joe out past Spiffy Buerkethrowback in green wellingtons and Barbour
jacketand her latest femme, out into what had once been a car park and was now
a tattered wasteground out back behind the pub. It was dark, and no residual
light pollution stained the sky: the Milky Way was visible overhead, along with
the pea-sized red cloud of orbitals that had gradually swallowed Jupiter over
the past few years. �You wired?" asked Wendy.

�No, why?"

She pulled out a fist-sized box and pushed a button on the
side of it, waited for a light on its side to blink green, and nodded. �Fuckinł
polis bugs."

�Isnłt that a"

�Ask me no questions anł Iłll tell you no fibs." Wendy
grinned.

�Uhhuh." Joe took a deep breath: hełd guessed Wendy had some
dodgy connections, and thisa portable local jammerwas proof: any police bugs
within two or three metres would be blind and dumb, unable to relay their chat
to the keyword-trawling subsentient coppers whose job it was to prevent
consipracy-to-commit offenses before they happened. It was a relic of the
internet age, when enthusiastic legislators had accidentally demolished the
right of free speech in public by demanding keyword monitoring of everything
within range of a network terminalnot realising that in another few decades
ęnetwork terminalsł would be self-replicating bots the size of fleas and about
as common as dirt. (The ęnet itself had collapsed shortly thereafter, under the
weight of self-replicating viral libel lawsuits, but the legacy of public
surveillance remained.) �Okay. Tell me about metal, meta"

�Metabolism." Wendy began walking towards the field behind
the pub. �And stage trees. Stage trees started out as science fiction, like?
Some guy called Nivenanyway. What you do is, you take a pine tree and you hack
it. The xylem vessels running up the heartwood, usually they just lignify and
die in a normal tree. Stage trees go one better, and before the cells die they
nitrate the cellulose in their walls. Takes one fuckinł crazy bunch of hacked
ęzymes to do it, right? And lots of energy, more energy than treesłd normally
have to waste. Anyways, by the time the treełs dead itłs like ninety percent
nitrocellulose, plus built-in stiffeners and baffles and microstructures. Itłs
not, like, straight explosiveit detonates cell by cell, and some of the
xylemtubes are, eh, well, the farm grows custom-hacked fungal hyphae witha
depolarizing membrane nicked from human axons down them to trigger the
reaction. Itłs about efficient asłat old-time Ariane or Atlasrocket. Not very,
but enough."

�Uh." Joe blinked. �That meant to mean something to me?"

�Oh ęeck, Joe." Wendy shook her head. �Think Iłd bend your
ear if it wasnłt?"

�Okay." He nodded, seriously. �What can I do?"

�Well." Wendy stopped and stared at the sky. High above
them, a belt of faint light sparkled with a multitude of tiny pinpricks; a deep
green wagon train making its orbital transfer window, self-sufficient
post-human Lamarckian colonists, space-adapted, embarking on the long, slow
transferto Jupiter.

�Well?" He waited expectantly.

�Youłre wondering where all that fertilizerłs from," Wendy
said eliptically.

�Fertilizer." His mind blanked for a moment.

�Nitrates."

He glanced down, saw her grinning at him. Her perfect fifth
set of teeth glowed alarmingly in the greenish overspill from the light on her
jammer box.

�Thał knows it make sense," she added, then cut the jammer.

# # #

When Joe finally staggered home in the small hours, a thin
plume of smoke was rising from Bobłs kennel. Joe paused in front of the kitchen
door and sniffed anxiously, then relaxed. Letting go of the door handle he
walked over to the kennel and sat down outside. Bob was most particular about
his deneven his own humans didnłt go in there without an invitation. So Joe
waited.

A moment later there was an interrogative cough from inside.
A dark, pointed snout came out, dribbling smoke from its nostrils like a
particularly vulpine dragon. �Rrrrrrr?"

�ęSłme."

�Uuurgh." A metallic click. �Smoke good smoke joke cough
tickle funny arf arf?"

�Yeah, donłt mind if I do."

The snout pulled back into the kennel; a moment later it
re-appeared, teeth clutching a length of hose with a mouthpiece on one end. Joe
accepted it graciously, wiped off the mouthpiece, leaned against the side of
the kennel, and inhaled. The weed was potent and smooth: within a few seconds
the uneasy dialogue in his head was still.

�Wow, thałs a good turn-up."

�Arf-arf-ayup."

Joe felt himself relaxing. Maddie would be upstairs, snoring
quietly in their decrepit bed: waiting for him, maybe. But sometimes a man just
had to be alone with his dog and a good joint, doing man-and-dog stuff. Maddie
understood this and left him his space. Still ...

�ęAt farm been buggering around the pond?"

�Growl exclaim fuck-fuck yup! Sheep-shagger."

�If itłs been at our lambs"

�Nawwwwrr. Buggrit."

�So whassup?"

�Grrrr, Maddie yap-yap farmtalk! Sheepshagger."

�Maddiełs been talking to it?"

�Grrr yes-yes!"

�Oh shit. Do you remember when she did her last backup?"

The dog coughed fragrant blue smoke. �Tank thump-thump full
cow moo beefclone."

�Yeah, I think so too. Better muck it out tomorrow. Just in
case."

�Yurrrrrp." But while Joe was wondering whether this was
agreement or just a canine eructation a lean paw stole out of the kennel mouth
and yanked the hookah back inside. The resulting slobbering noises and clouds
of aromatic blue smoke left Joe feeling a little queasy: so he went inside.

# # #

The next morning, over breakfast, Maddie was even quieter
than usual. Almost meditative.

�Bob said youłd been talking to that farm," Joe commented
over his eggs.

�Bob" Maddiełs expression was unreadable. �Bloody dog." She
lifted the Rayburnłs hot plate lid and peered at the toast browning underneath.
�Talks too much."

�Did you?"

�Ayup." She turned the toast and put the lid back down on
it.

�Said much?"

�Itłs a farm." She looked out the window. �Not a fuckinł
worry in the world ęcept making its launch window for Jupiter."

�It"

�Him. Her. They." Maddie sat down heavily in the other kitchen
chair. �Itłs a collective. Used ta be six people. Old, young, whatether, theyłs
decided ter go to Jupiter. One of łem was telling me how it happened. How shełd
been living like an accountant in Bradford, had a nervous breakdown. Wanted
out. Self-sufficiency." For a moment her expression turned bleak. �Felt herself
growing older but not bigger,if you follow."

�So howłs turning into a bioborg an improvement?" Joe
grunted, forking up the last of his scrambled eggs.

�Theyłre still separate people: bodies are overrated,
anyway. Think of the advantages: not growing older, being able to go places and
survive anything, never being on your own, not beinł trapped" Maddie sniffed.
�Fuckinł toastłs on fire!"

Smoke began to trickle out from under the hot plate lid. Maddie
yanked the wire toasting rack out from under it and dunked it into the sink,
waited for waterlogged black crumbs to float to the surface before taking it
out, opening it, and loading it with fresh bread.

�Bugger," she remarked.

�You feel trapped?" Joe asked. Again? He wondered.

Maddie grunted evasively. �Not your fault, love. Just life."

�Life." Joe sniffed, then sneezed violently as the acrid
smoke tickled his nose. �Life!"

�Horizonłs closing in," she said quietly. �Need a change of
horizons."

�Ayup, well, rust never sleeps, right? Got to clean out the
winter stables, havenłt I?" said Joe. He grinned uncertainly at her as he
turned away: �got a shipment of fertilizer coming in."

# # #

In between milking the herd, feeding the sheep, mucking out
the winter stables, and surruptitiously EMPing every police ębot on the farm into
the silicon afterlife, it took Joe a couple of days to get round to running up
his toy on the household fabricator. It clicked and whirred to itself like a
demented knitting machine as it ran up the gadgets hełd ordereda modified crop
sprayer with double-walled tanks and hoses, an air rifle with a dart loaded
with a potent cocktail of tubocurarine and etorphine, and a breathing mask with
its own oxygen supply.

Maddie made herself scarce, puttering around the control
room but mostly disappearing during the daytime, coming back to the house after
dark to crawl, exhausted, into bed. She didnłt seem to be having nightmares,
which was a good sign: Joe kept his questions to himself.

It took another five days for the smallholdingłs power field
to concentrate enough juice to begin fueling up his murder weapons. During this
time, Joe took the house off-net in the most deniable and surruptitiously
plausible way, a bastard coincidence of squirrel-induced cable fade and a badly
shielded alternator on the backhoe to do for the wireless chit-chat. Hełd half
expected Maddie to complain, but she didnłt say anything: just spent more time
away in Outer Cheswick or Lower Gruntlingthorpe or wherever shełd taken to
holing up.

Finally, the tank was filled. So Joe girded his loins,
donned his armour, picked up his weapons, and went to do battle with the dragon
by the pond.

The woods around the pond had once been enclosed by a wooden
fence, a charming copse of old-growth deciduous trees, elm and oak and beech
growing uphill, smaller shrubs nestling at their ankles in a greenskirt that
reached all the way to the almost-stagnant waters. A little stream fed into it
during rainy months, under the feet of a weeping willow; children had played
here, pretending to explore the wilderness beneath the benevolent gaze of their
parental control cameras.

That had been long ago. Today the woods really were wild. No
kids, no picnicing city folks, no cars. Badgers and wild coypu and small,
frightened wallabies roamed the parching English countryside during the summer
dry season. The water drew back to expose an apron of cracked mud, planted with
abandoned tin cans and a supermarket trolley of precambrian vintage, its GPS
tracker long since shorted out. The bones of the technological epoch, poking from
the treacherous surface of a fossil mud-bath. And around the edge of the mimsy
puddle, the stage trees grew.

Joe switched on his jammer and walked in among the
spear-shaped conifers. Their needles were matt black and fuzzy at the edges,
fractally divided, the better to soak up all the available light: a network of
tap roots and fuzzy black grasslike stuff covered the ground densely around
them. Joełs breath wheezed noisily in his ears and he sweated into the airtight
suit as he worked, pumping a stream of colourless, smoking liquid at the roots
of each balistic trunk. The liquid fizzed and evaporated on contact: it seemed
to bleach the wood where it touched. Joe carefully avoided the stream: this
stuff made him uneasy. As did the trees, but liquid nitrogen was about the one
thing hełd been able to think of that was guaranteed to kill the trees stone
dead without igniting them. After all, they hadcores that were basically made
of gun cottonhighly explosive, liable to go off if you subjected them to a sudden
sharp impact or the friction of a chainsaw. The tree hełd hit on creaked
ominously, threatening to fall sideways, and Joe stepped round it, efficiently
squirting at the remaining roots. Right into the path of a distraught farm.

�My holy garden of earthly delights! My forest of the imaginative
future! My delight, my trees, my trees!" Eye stalks shot out and over, blinking
down at him in horror as the farm reared up on six or seven legs and pawed the
air in front of him. �Destroyer of saplings! Earth mother rapist!
Bunny-strangling vivisectionist!"

�Back off," said Joe, dropping his cryogenic squirter and fumbling
for his airgun.

The farm came down with a ground-shaking thump in front of
him and stretched eyes out to glare at him from both sides. They blinked, long
black eyelashes fluttering across angry blue irises. �How dare you?" demanded
the farm. �My treasured seedlings!"

�Shut the fuck up," Joe grunted, shouldering his gun. �Think
Iłd let you burn my holding when thał rocket launched? Stay the fuck away," he
added as a tentacle began to extend from the farmłs back.

�My crop," it moaned quietly: �my exile! Six more years
around the sun chained to this well of sorrowful gravity before next the window
opens! No brains for Baby Jesus! Defenestrator! We could have been so happy
together if you hadnłt fucked up! Who set you up to this, Rat Lady?" It began
to gather itself, muscles rippling under the leathery mantle atop its leg
cluster.

So Joe shot it.

Tubocurarine is a muscle relaxant: it paralyses skeletal muscles,
the kind over which human nervous systems typically exert conscious control.
Etorphine is an insanely strong opiatetwelve hundred times as potent as
heroin. Given time, a farm, with its alien adaptive metabolism and consciously
controlled proteome might engineer a defense against the etorphinebut Joe
dosed his dart with enough to stun a blue whale, and he had no intention of
giving the farm enough time. It shuddered and went down on one knee as he
closed in on it, a syrette raised: �why?" it asked plaintively in a voice that
almost made him wish he hadnłt pulled the trigger. �We could have gone
together!"

�Together?" he asked. Already the eye stalks were drooping;
the great lungs wheezed effortfully as it struggled to frame a reply.

�I was going to ask you," said the farm, and half its legs
collapsed under it, with a thud like a baby earthquake. �Oh Joe, if only ..."

�Joe? Maddie?" he demanded, nerveless fingers dropping the
tranquiliser gun.

A mouth appeared in the farmłs front, slurred words at him
from familiar seeming lips, words about Jupiter and promises. Appalled, Joe
backed away from the farm. Passing the first dead tree he dropped the nitrogen
tank: then an impulse he couldnłt articulate made him turn and run, back to the
house, eyes almost blinded by sweat or tears. But he was too slow, and when he
dropped to his knees next to the farm, pharmacopoeia clicking and whirring to
itself in his arms, he found it was already dead.

�Bugger," said Joe, and he stood up, shaking his head. �Bugger."
He keyed his walkie-talkie: �Bob, come in, Bob!"

�Rrrrowl?"

�Mommałs had another break-down. Is the tank clean, like I
asked?"

�Yap!"

�Okay. I got łer backup tapes in tłoffice safe. Letłs
getłtłank warmed up for łer anł then shift tłtractor down łere to muck out this
mess."

# # #

That autumn, the weeds grew unnaturally rich and green down
in the north paddock of Armitage End.

(THE END)

SEAQ and Destroy

Historical note: this story was originally written in 1987.
It was sold to There wonłt be War in early 1988. However, it took rather
a long time for that anthology to be published ... it finally came out the week
after the Moscow Putsch that toppled Mikhail Gorbachev and led to the breakup
of the USSR.

If that kind of thing annoys you, just pretend itłs an �alternate
history" story ...

 

Day 1

NewsBurst:11:43 G.M.T.

The Third World War began this morning with a Russian dawn
raid on the City of London. Bombs exploded all over the Docklands Enterprise
Zone, disrupting the white-hot core of European industrial asset-stripping; the
follow-up raids involved extensive use of lethal virus weapons and tactical
assault units. Casualties included Larry Steinberg, a systems analyst for BSF:

Video intercut:

Steinberg: �It was terrible. They must have infiltrated
those time bombs weeks ago, but there was no sign of them. They began going off
at nine-thirteen this morning, bringing down whole systems. One entire block
just crumbled ... it was terrible, I tell you. We lost SEAQ for starters and
then it all went to hell. There were casualties everywhere ... I saw this young
dealer, she was crying and pulling her hair out over her colleague, hełd copped
it but bad, flat on the floor ... �

Voice-over:"Barclays de Stoat Fader is just one of the large
financial houses to suffer at the hands of the spetznaz assault this morning.
Other large institutions affected include Country NatWest and the European
desks of Drexel Burnham.

�Casualty figures are high, possibly running into tens of
thousands of city workers and billions of ECUłs of damage. Further video
updates will follow."

Viral attack was largely confined to peripheral dealer desks
where data throughput was limited to those personnel who had time to play a
pirated game of Strip Poker which was being passed around. The virus was triggered
by a date check, which suggests that the assault has been prepared far in
advance. The main network through which it was disseminated appears to have
been via SEAQ, the Stock Exchange Automated Quotations system.

BSF have refused to comment on a rumour to the effect that
the attack was planned with the assistance of disgruntled employees sacked last
year after a securities scandal which led to the company being investigated by
the MMC.

The Soviet Embassy in London was unavailable for comment.
The US Treasury Department is expected to make a statement later in the day.

NewsBurst:12:51 G.M.T.

Initial damage caused by the Soviet attack appears to have
been limited, and the main clearing banks are switching in their reserve and
back-up capacity. About 30% of the damaged dealer desks are up and running from
back-ups, but the virus-infected optical discs are still in quarantine with DTI
investigators and S&Q Enterprises called in. The attack failed to induce a
massive slide, but Snake currencies are shaky and an unscheduled internal
adjustment has been announced for this afternoon. Interest rates have not yet
been affected, but announcements are expected hourly.

At 12:49 the European Currency Unit stood at 0.92 Roubles,
down 23 Kopeks in just three and a half hours. The U.S. dollar remained stable
at 0.89 ECUs, three cents up on yesterday.

A press conference has been scheduled by the Soviet Embassy
in nine minutes time and will be covered by this service.

Just in:

At the press conferance in Washington that has just ended,
the U.S. Treasury Department spokesman, Mr John Flatbush, read the following
statement but left the platform before he could be asked any questions:

�At nine hundred hours today the Treasury Department monitoring
service became aware of the serious nature of the current Russian attack on
London. We are of course monitoring the present scenario in real-time, but we
do not believe that there are any grounds for alarm in this country. The days
of the great corporate raiders
Ikahn and Boesky and the like
are over,
thanks to the decisive lead provided by the Jackson administration in
re-structuring the U.S. economy. There are no grounds to fear a joint
Japanese-Soviet attack on our corporate heartland, but in order to prevent any
localized slides we are taking action to freeze European assets held in U.S.
stocks and bonds. These shares will be underwritten by the Federal Reserve Bank
for the duration of the
er, instability.

�It falls to me to say
off the record
that any of our
boys who go in there deserve the best of luck and our encouragment in fighting
the good fight and getting while the gettingłs good on foreign soil! This could
be the offshore investment opportunity of the century, and I for one am gonna
be phoning my broker as soon as this conference is over. Goodbye."

Newsburst:13:27 G.M.T.

At 13:03 today, the Soviet trade attache, Ms. V. I.
Retshuchenko, released the following statement, reproduced in its entirety:

�My friends, this morning forces based within the RFSFR
launched an economic attack upon the United States of Europe, with the goal of
dominating those states. On behalf of the government of the RFSFR, may I
express our sincere sympathy for the victims of this unprecedented offensive;
unfortunately we are unable to prevent further incursions. The hostile forces
appear to be a secret consortium of Soviet industry, including
Mikoyan-Gurevitch design bureau, Glavkosmos, and the First Consolidated
Peoplesł Bank of Azerbaijan; these corporations appear to be co-operating with
extra-national powers of unknown identity.

�As you know, such an attack would have been both impossible
and implausible if the RFSFR still retained the old, monolithic industrial
centralism of the decadent Lenin-Brezhnev era. Following the marked
improvements in international progress and trade of the past decade, however,
certain organisations listed on the Moscow stock exchange have decided that the
Soviet economy cannot support their investment programs. They appear to have
decided that a leveraged buy-out of the entire Western economy would be a
suitable way of resolving their balance of payments surplus, and unfortunately
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is unable to restrain them.

�Bluntly, such a sequence of events was not considered possible,
and no restraining legislation has been drafted. The Politburo is not sanguine
about the consequences, however. We have no desire to return to the
isolationist, Cold War mentality of the seventies and eighties, and in any
event such a policy will inevitably induce considerable public discontent.

�President Boris Yeltsin has expressed his condolences for
the victims of the conflict, and has promised maximum cooperation with the
European authorities in an attempt to negotiate an end to the shares war before
the G-9 talks are jeopardised.

�Thank you very much indeed for coming here. Goodbye."

Newsburst:14:56 G.M.T.

News is coming in of a bloody attack on Wall Street. As trading
opened in New York at 13:00 G.M.T. the ailing infotech giant IBM (US) launched
a hostile take-over bid for Mercury Telecom PLC in London. Fund transfers to
Europe so far total over ten billion dollars, believed to be close to IBMłs
entire liquid assets. Mercury is the main PSTN and ISDN operator for the London
Stock Exchange and handles the Stock Exchange Automated Quotation system, SEAQ.
The Monopolies and Mergers Commission have been notified, but no immediate
action is possible because inspectors are working at saturation levels
elsewhere in the City.

It appears that IBM has been controlled in large measure by
shell corporations registered in Columbia and Peru for the past three months.
CEO Debbie Beagle has refused to comment on allegations that her corporation is
cooperating with the Soviet offensive in an attempt to dismember Western
Europełs high-technology industries.

Closer to home, EuroBank has launched a counter-offensive
before the close of trading in Moscow, with a bid for shares in the state
airline Aeroflot and a back-up investment of ECU 500m in BSF. Amstrad and News
Internationalłs Sky Channel have announced a consortium bid for BSB in an
attempt to consolidate the satellite TV market under one umbrella. Glaxo,
Ciba-Geigy, and the NHS Pharmatech division are reported to be entering the
fray with a bid for several small Russian pharmaceutical manufacturing units;
and the smell of money may drag British Power and even NHS(PLC) into the trade
war.

The government remains silent on the issue so far, but a
spokesman for Number Ten Downing Street has re-affirmed the Prime Ministersł
commitment to the free market. �The share issue for British Monarchy PLC will
not be jeopardized," he emphasized. �There is no alternative!"

The Queen was unavailable for comment.

In Europe there has generally been a measured response to
the carnage. Fiat, Dassault-Renault, and Airbus Industrie are conducting
intensive merger negotiations in conjunction with BMW, Porsche-SEAT and
Arianespace, apparently in an attempt to inflate their group capital beyond any
credible takeover attempt. The fact that this would automatically be viewed as
monopolistic is irrelevant because the move is purely intended as a short-term
defensive measure
safety in numbers, and the more zeros on the balance sheet
the better.

NewsBurst:15:45 G.M.T.

In a move that has shocked industry bystanders, IBM (US) has
dismissed the entire board of Mercury Telecom and moved a special Emergency
Task Group into the boardroom. MT apparently held out for a full twenty-seven
minutes under the intensive IBM bidding which raised the price of shares from
198 to 323 in less than half an hour. The price of shares has suddenly slumped
into the red, with a post-takeover quotation of 121 delivered five minutes ago
by human messenger. The SEAQ service appears to have been overloaded by the
rapidity of events, with priority going to financial transactions; many smaller
desks are apparently ęflying blindł on expert systems alone and praying that
their software has no hidden bugs in it.

Judith Richmond, a broker with Copperhouse-Gerbil, had this
to say:

�Things are just going crazy today. Itłs not a classic melt
down because some shares are going through the roof in real time, but itłs like
a shooting warłs broken out. Nothing is stable any more, and all we small
brokers can do is keep our heads down when the big countercurrent exchange
laundries go into action. Wełre spilling a million ECUłs a second right now,
draining into the Soviet economy; itłs sheer havoc. Iłm not going to predict
whatłs going to happen tomorrow, but the day after tomorrow I expect to see a
lot of dealers throwing themselves under BMWłs ... or Ladałs."

Rumours of a second wave of software bombs tomorrow morning
have prompted many dealer rooms to call in the security analysts overnight.
Therełre going to be many sleepless engineers earning their overtime
checksumming the operating system files for signs of retrovirus infection.

In Tokyo, the Ministry of Finance announced a suspension of
all trading for the next three days, an unprecedented move that echoes Meltdown
Monday, October 19th 1987, when Wall Street lost more than a thousand points by
closing time as a result of computerised panic selling. Peoplełs Hong Kong and
Manila are expected to follow suit.

Barclays Bank, the Midland Bank, and all the leading Merchant
Banks announced a rise in interest rates of two percent in one day, to be
reviewed as soon as the current crisis is defused. The Chancellor of the
Exchequer refused to comment, but an official statement from Downing Street is
expected imminently, as is a statement from Brussels.

NewsBurst:17:03 G.M.T.

In the past ninety-two minutes this service has been overwhelmed
by the pace of developments. But first the general market report:

The London FT100 share index closed down 467.3 points at
2891.7, the largest fall on record since Meltdown Monday or the Wall Street
Crash of 1929. The ECU was down 43 kopeks against the Rouble, to an all-time
low of 72 kopeks to the ECU. Two hundred billion ECUłs was knocked off shares
Europe-wide in what commentators have been calling �the Greenback War". The Russian
surprise attack this morning caused complete havoc, catching virtually every
European conglomerate on the hop. Long term consequences are uncertain, but
massive upheavals are expected in every market and a wave of panic selling
cannot be ruled out.

Among the most bizarre developments of today was the attack
by IBM (US) on Mercury Telecom, which was hijacked
there is no other word for
it
for an outlay estimated conservatively to be triple its market value. Just
what strategic priority IBM places on Mercury cannot yet be assessed, but the
sheer scale of the offensive, taking place within hours of the Soviet attack,
cannot be a coincidence.

In the United States, the Treasury Department commented on
allegations of an ęunholy allianceł between IBM-Telecom and the computer and
communications companies AT&T and DEC:

�All such allegations are specious and utterly untrue. We
wish to make it clear that no American corporation would dabble in diabolism

you may remember the rumours concerning Proctor and Gamblełs trademark, which
was subsequently changed following Moral Majority pressure. Any rumours of an
ęunholy allianceł must, a priori, be considered to be malicious gosip and
insider scaremongering. Rumours that we are investigating these corporations
for monopolism will not be addressed at this date."

There has been no official White House response so far, but
a presidential aide has announced that President Jackson will make a
substantial statement on the issue tomorrow. It is to be hoped that the
President will bring to bear his usual combination of intellectual precision
and raw charisma on the issue; at the very least his presence is expected to
have a calming affect on the nation. The importance of this speech cannot be
underestimated; as the first black president of the Republic, as itsł leading
intellectual and the most popular supreme executive since John F. Kennedy,
anything he says may make a decisive impact on the situation. Meanwhile the
atmosphere in New York today is one of quite tension as millions of
stockbrokers and company attorneys stay glued to their screens watching the
carnage in Europe unfold, and all of them must be asking the same question:
�Will it be our turn tomorrow?"

The situation in London this evening is calm but tense, with
rumours of imminent government intervention if the situation deteriorates
tomorrow. The European multinationals are feverishly negotiating massive
mergers which will put them temporarily out of reach of the Russian raiders,
even though anti-trust legislation will inevitably break them up within a
matter of weeks or months; meanwhile, bank interest rates are expected to go
through the roof tomorrow. Already estate agents in central London have been offered
houses at less than three-quarters of their market value, in the first ripples
to spread out into the broader economy.

Several smaller brokers ceased trading this afternoon, with
three companies filing for bankruptcy. These firms were unable to invest
heavily in ISDN communication systems and artificial intelligence based dealing
desks; when SEAQ overloaded this afternoon their dealing error margin increased
catastrophically until they were caught in the general maelstrom of
disinvestment by panicked shareholders.

NewsBurst:18:09 G.M.T.

Downing Street has announced the resignation of the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, and his immediate suicide by hara-kiri over the events of
this morning. The announcement from the P.M.łs office confirms rumours which
have been circulating since late afternoon. It is believed that Bank of Europe
officials informed the Prime Minister that the current rate of disinvestment
could drive UK industry into bankruptcy in five daysł trading if strict monetarist
policies were adhered to; knock-on effects could be expected to devastate the
rest of Europe within a week at most. Despite her well-known attitude to
interventionism, the Prime Minister made a statement supporting certain
preventative measures at her recent press-conferance:

�It has come to my attention that the current catastrophic
situation in the markets is the result of a complacent attitude towards foreign
investment and trade, coupled with a very aggressive, not to say unprincipled,
foreign assault on our entire industrial capacity.

�May I take this opportunity to say how deeply concerned I
am that, while British industry must stand on its own two feet, this is not a
normal situation; this is a perfidious attack upon all things British. It would
be tantamount to ignoring our national honour were we to refuse aid to our
gallant companies in their time of need. Such aid will be forthcoming when it
is required. We are fully pursuing all possible diplomatic channels with
President Yeltsin, and I am confident that a negotiated settlement will be
arrived at shortly.

�Due to a difference of opinion over interest rates, the
Chancellor has offered me his resignation, effective as of tonight. I have
accepted it. (The terms of his resignation are classified under the Official
Secrets Act and any of you reptiles who tries to get hold of it is going in the
slammer so fast your feet wonłt touch the ground. Understood?) In view of the
impracticality of appointing a replacement at this short notice, I will be
occupying this post until a suitable candidate can be coerced.

�There is no change in our long-term policies of
de-nationalization and rolling back the nanny state. We cannot, and will not,
permit small-minded and vindictive attacks to divert us from the grand sweep of
history. British industry must, indeed is, learning to die on its own two feet,
and will continue to do so for as long as I remain Head of State of these
isles. As a standard of our determination, we have decided to proceed with the
share issues of British Monarchy Group and British Justice PLC, regardless of
the current market situation. (I can assure you that the Japs and the Arabs are
going to go for these issues, which will add further weight to our balance of
payments and cut off some more dry wood in the process).

�It is to be hoped that our friends in Europe will take note
of the situation here, and take steps to ensure that economic cohesion triumphs
over narrow-minded national isolationism in the hour of our trial. As I have
said before, there is no alternative!"

Day 2

NewsBurst:09:04 G.M.T.

Following yesterdays spectacular events, massive
counter-attacks took place in the Moscow stock exchange during the night. While
Tokyo and Hong Kong remained closed, GEC-Plessey moved into Moscow with a
vengeance, buying up shares in the Samizdata-Krokodil electronic publishing
group and Glavkosmos space enterprises. Details are uncertain, and it remains
to be seen whether Glavkosmos will succumb to the British counter-offensive,
but as the major intermediary in the Soviet consortium Glavkosmos is an obvious
target for retaliation.

American neutrality was called into question when, late last
night in Washington D.C., President Jackson issued a brief statement supporting
IBM and equating the takeover of Mercury Telecom with �Mom and Apple Pie and
Coka Cola". It is not clear whether this implies that the Cola Corporation is
backing intervention in Europe; more information is expected following his
speech later today. Ex-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger announced that a
radical policy study was under way into the impact of the trade war on the Far
East; he is believed to be especially concerned with rumours of Vietnamese
infiltration of the Hong Kong stock exchange.

Fears of a second wave of computer viruses failed to materialise
overnight, with many dealing rooms going back on-line at full capacity.
EuroBank is today expected to make a general announcement concerning interest
rates; rumours of massive inflationary measures cannot yet be discounted,
despite the Prime Ministersł known hatred of such techniques.

The mood at many desks in the City can best be described as
tense, verging on overwound. Collars are unbuttoned, ties are forgotten, and
there are hollows under every eye this morning at the thought of a repetition
of the events of yesterday. Dealers at Citibank were issued notification of an
imminent 50% pay cut as an alternative to instant dismissal; this was promoted
as a necessary fluidity-conservation tactic. Small bank and building society
branches around the nation will remain closed today until the situation
resolves. Meanwhile, rumours that Army Intelligence Corps and GCHQ systems
analysts have been called in to help run BSFłs investment net have not yet been
confirmed.

NewsBurst:10:16 G.M.T.

EuroBank has just announced an across-the-board ten percent
increase in the bank base lending rates. This has prompted sighs of relief from
all the major fund clearing houses, but is expected to provoke an angry
response in the House of Commons, and subsequently in the European Parliament,
where it is perceived as a gamble with political suicide. The increase will be
the first result of the crisis that the public at large have experienced, and
will affect almost ten million mortgage holders immediately, with repayment
increases in excess of 200% likely within days.

The announcement comes on top of panic-selling of
GEC-Plessey shares on the basis of rumours that the electronics giant had
over-extended itself in the Soviet market and was about to come under threat
again from a Gorki-based consortium. Suggestions of an alliance with British
Aerospace or Amstrad have been discounted by spokespersons for those companies.

Shares fell sharply from their opening prices, but recovered
slightly half an hour into trading when buying programs were activated by
unprecedentedly low prices. The DTI has not yet released details of its
Emergency Economic Rescue Package, but an announcement from Downing Street is
expected this afternoon.

In Moscow, the Politburo released a sharply critical
statement, accusing several Soviet-based multinationals of placing personal
gain ahead of the public good, and of forgetting their socialist origins. None
of the companies concerned had anything to say in response to this accusation.

NewsBurst:11:25 G.M.T.

Catastrophe has struck the Stock Exchange in the past hour,
with the revelation that IBM is definitely co-operating with the Soviet MGF
consortium and Cola Corporation. Following the IBM takeover of Mercury, the
company responsible for running the SEAQ dealer network, confidence in the very
medium of trade has collapsed. It in considered likely that details of
confidential bids are being piped direct to hostile corporate computers. While
this ęoutsider dealingł is definitely in breach of the law, it cannot yet be
proven and by the time DTI inspectors and Scotland Yard have established the
facts, many companies will be in receivership.

It is reported that the main Tandem fault-tolerant
mainframes in use by Barcleys de Stoat Fader have become infected by a virus
which is systematically downloading all their files into SEAQ. The blatant data
piracy has shaken the board of directors, who are expected to announce a
suspension of trading by the UKłs biggest investment house in less than half an
hoursł time.

Chaos has hit the international exchange rates, with the ECU
falling to 43 Kopeks, a completely unprecedented collapse. The FT100 index at
1100 G.M.T. stood at 1892, itłs lowest level in ten years.

President Jackson has scheduled his big speech for 13:00
G.M.T., which will be covered by this data channel.

The initial effect of the rise in interest rates has been a
massive drop in the cost of housing. Prices in the high street chains have
fallen by up to 60% in one morning, and reports of estate agents engaging in
suicide pacts have been coming in. Pedestrians are advised to be careful about
venturing out on foot in the Square Mile and the Docklands Enterprise Zone,
where eight suicides by jumping have been reported this morning so far. The
London Undergroundsł Northern Line was reported to be at a standstill, with a
record four bodies on the line in two hours.

The parliamentary Opposition has tabled a vote of no confidence
in the government, and is predicting a defection by large numbers of back-bench
Thatcherite MPłs. Fears of an incoming hard-left government have done nothing
to allay share instability in the system; the Opposition remains committed to a
massive program of re-nationalisation, wage and price control, and other policies
which in the light of the events of this week can be expected to be massively
popular with the electorate.

NewsBurst:12:07 G.M.T.

Amstrad and News International Group have been bought out by
Yegor Ligachev Technologies of Novosibirsk, a relatively obscure hydro-electric
power project whose fluidity has been massively augmented in the European
markets by the behaviour of their commercial big brothers. Rupert Murdock and
Alan Sucrose were unavailable for comment, but an unattributable source has
stated that Mr. Sucrose is to be offered the Managing Directorship of Sony.
With the loss of these two multinationals, the entire UK television industry is
now concentrated in the hands of Soviet-owned companies.

A vote of no confidence in the government has been scheduled
for 13:30 this afternoon.

Reports are coming in of the lynching of two bank managers
in Stoke-on-Trent by customers angered by the rise in mortgage rates. Labour
councils in the North-West are said to be considering a general buy-out offer
for all mortgage holders unable to sustain re-payments; in return for title to
the properties, the councils are offering to maintain the occupants as sitting
tenants in normal council accommodation.

The Trades Union Congress has called for an immediate
one-week General Strike in those industries affected by Soviet take-overs, in
an attempt to ępoison the pillł. General Secretary Todt had this to say:

�Wełre not going to sit around while them Russians take over
our, our entire livelihoods. Itłs not right! Peoplesł jobs are at stake and we
canłt just sit here while the foreigners move in. Europe is one thing, but the
Soviet Union, the Americans, they donłt care for our way of life. They donłt
know what it is to be British.

�We say that by striking now, we can make our companies so
unattractive that the Russians will łave to scarper. But we got to do it now,
because if we leave it tłKGBłll be through Congress House like a dose ołsalts
inside a month, you mark my words. I know them people.

�I call on the government to back our strike. Itłs not they
wełre striking against, itłs these foreign loan sharks whołre buying up
tłcountry. If they use the tradesł union legislation theyłll be shooting
themselves in the foot.

�Strike now, while itłs not too late! Strike a blow for
British Industry!"

NewsBurst:1338 G.M.T.

President Michael Jackson shocked the world half an hour ago
with his announcement that American corporations, with his approval, had signed
a joint policy agreement with the Soviet MGF consortium. �This is a major
breakthrough in international policy relations," the President sang to a
mesmerised audience of his fans. �We have the opportunity to forge a lasting
bond with our Russian friends and secure peace in Europe forever. We should not
let such a thrilling opportunity slip through our hands. What has Britain ever
given us besides George the Third, Hitler, and the discovery of Heroin? My
fellow Americans, I call upon you to forget the cold war, forget the old fears,
and embrace the future with open arms. Nothing less than our share portfolios
are at stake here, and our Russian friends have just offered us the deal of the
century!"

The President then answered questions and sang an encore
from Off the Wall before leaving in a convoy of carnival floats escorted by a
National Guard regiment in pink tutus. Throughout the conference he was
surrounded by Secret Service men disguised as zombies and Disney dwarves,
presumably to deter enraged British expatriates from attempting to assassinate
him.

The entire State Department diplomatic machine ground into
gear immediately after the speech, which amounts to a declaration of economic
war directed at Europe. This is viewed unhappily in some quarters, for many of
the Presidentsł fans flocked into stadia all over the continent for his last
concert tour ten years ago. However, in diplomatic circles it is seen as a
shrewd move, adding political substance to the de facto hostilities which
appear to be on the verge of succeeding. The presidential song and dance
routine will certainly boost morale in the boardrooms of corporate America who
elected him and stand to gain most from the conflict, and make it highly
improbable that their conduct will now be investigated by the FBI. More
significantly, the Presidentsł known dislike of Mrs Thatcher now appears to
have found a relatively harmless outlet in these corporate outings from his
recording studio.

An immediate reaction from the joint European Embassy expressed
regret about the Presidentsł speech, and warned of possible trade sanctions
specifically an embargo on exports of fresh bananas. It is not expected that
Luckyłs diet will be affected, however; when he arrived, the President insisted
that the White House freezers include a decadesł supply of his petsł favourite
food.

In the Palace of Westminster, MPłs are now taking a vote of
no-confidence in the government. A large number of Tory MPłs are expected to
abstain, raising the possibility that this really is the end of the road for
Thatcherism.

Reports of rioting in Eastbourne have been coming in. The rioters
are predominantly middle-class home-owners with mortgages. Violence has been
confined to the town centre, but Estate Agencies have been looted and set
alight, and a building society manager has been lynched. Police riot
suppression teams are standing by, but have not yet been used to disperse the
crowds.

It is anticipated that trading on the Stock Exchange will be
suspended within the next two hours.

NewsBurst:15:00 G.M.T.

The Thatcher government has fallen. At this afternoonłs vote
of confidence, more than two hundred Tory MPłs abstained, resulting in a
rollover victory for the opposition. After more than fifteen years in office,
the Prime Minister now has four weeks to vacate Number Ten Downing Street. In
the present climate of public opinion, a MORI poll commissioned by the Guardian
newspaper this morning shows support for the Labour Party running at 62%, the
highest level on record. The party leader, Mr Ken Leninclone, was unavailable
for comment; he is believed to be finalising his cabinet team.

Trading on SEAQ has been suspended indefinitely, pending DTI
and Scotland Yard inspection of irregularities in the affairs of at least
twenty major companies, including banks, building societies, investment
brokers, and multinational corporations.

A total of 32% of all the FT100 company shares are now held
in Soviet hands, and 19% in American hands. An announcement on compulsory
nationalisation is anticipated as one of the first moves of the incoming
left-wing administration.

The outgoing Prime Minister is believed to be seeking asylum
with a number of foreign governments. The South African and Paraguayan embassies
have indicated that if she makes an application for citizenship it will be well
received.

At the suspension of trading, the FT100 index was hovering
around the 1600 mark. The number of suicides in the City had risen to
twenty-three confirmed and four in intensive care. The ECU was hovering at 41
Kopeks, but showed no signs of making a late recovery.

And finally, we bring you a late announcement from the caretaker
government, directed to the Kremlin and the White House:

We surrender, tovaritch.

Version History

First published: There wonłt Be War, ed. Harry Harrison and
Bruce McAllister, 1992

If you modify this text, please retain this version history.

Ver 1.531/7/2003Anarchy Publications, HaVoKThis version
was originally downloaded from the #bookz channel on undernet using mIRC. The
final proof was done with Atlantis by Rising Sun Solutions.

Ship of Fools

They stopped me on the gangway and rolled up my left sleeve.

�Clockwork? Or quartz?" asked the one with the hammer.

�Ohquartz," I said.

�Sorry, but rules are rules," said the one with the leather
bag. I nodded. He gently peeled the watch off my wrist and laid it over the
shipłs railing. Crunch: the hammer rebounded. He scooped what was left back
into the bag, careful not to drop any glass fragments on the deck.

�I just forgot," I said, slightly stunned. �Is there
anything else ...?"

They looked at each other and shrugged. The one with the bag
looked a little guilty. �Here, you can borrow mine," he said, offering it to
me.

�Thanks." I tightened the strap, then carried on up the gangway.
It was an old Rolex Oyster, case tarnished with decades of sweat. I glanced
back. The hammer team waited patiently for their next target. The one with the
hammer was wearing a red T-shirt with a logo on its back. I squinted closer at
the marketing slogan:

UNIXTHE TIME IS RIGHT.

Rita was already in the fore-deck lounge when I got there. I
had half expected her not to show up, but wełd booked the tickets five years
ago, three years before the divorce, and her name hadnłt disappeared from the
roster since then. I suppose Iłd assumed shełd forget, or dismiss it, or not
think it worth bothering with. I waited for the usual cold shudder of
unnameable emotions to pass, then headed for the bar.

Polished brass and wood gleamed in the gas-light like an
old-fashioned pub. (The overhead electrics were powered down, except for the
red glare of an emergency lightłs battery charge indicator.) One guy was
already sitting on a bar stool, elbow-propped above his beer glass. I looked at
him for a moment before I blinked and realized that it was the Professor. A
blast from the past; hełd retired two years ago. I sat down on the stool next
to him. There was nobody behind the bar, but I figured a steward would be along
shortly.

�Marcus Jackman ... isnłt it?" he asked, glancing round at
me. Time hadnłt been kind to him; burst blood vessels streaked the tip of his
nose and his eyes looked sore.

�Eight years and counting," I said. �What are you drinking?"

He glanced at the row of optics behind the bar: �Perrier for
now, I think." He yawned. �Sorry, I havenłt had much sleep lately."

�Anything in particular?" I asked.

�The usual," he said. �The chancellor put a gagging order on
me, can you believe it? Said what I was saying was bad for the institutełs
public image. So I packed my bags and came here instead. Olaf said hełd keep a
berth open for me but I didnłt think Iłd be taking him up on it until ... oh, a
month ago. If that."

I shook my head. A barman appeared silently: I tipped him
the wink and he refilled the Professorłs tumbler from the fizzy water tap. I
asked for and received a double gin and tonic. I felt I needed it. �They
wouldnłt listen to you?" I asked.

The Professor shook his head. �Nothing ever changes at the
top," he said sadly. �So what did you make of yourself?"

�I run a big switch site. Loads of bandwidth. Nothing thatłs
going to be hit by the eventat least, not directly. But still, I donłt trust
my bank account, I donłt trust the tax system ... therełs too much brittleness.
Everywhere I look. Maybe Iłve just been tracking risks for too long, and then
again ..."

�You made a down payment on this holiday three or four years
ago, eh?"

I nodded.

�They wouldnłt listen to me," he muttered. �I kept on for as
long as was reasonable, even though they told me it was a career-limiting
moveas if some little thing like tenure would stop themuntil I was too tired
to go on."

�I get to see a lot, out in the real world," I volunteered.
�That standard lecture piece you did, on the old reactor control systemIłve
seen worse."

�Oh yes?" He showed a flicker of interest, so I continued.

�A big corporate accounting system. Used to run on a bundle
of mainframes at six different national headquarters, talking via leased line.
Want to hear about it?"

�Pray continue." I had his attention.

�They downsized everything they could, but there were about
fifty million lines of PL/I on the accounts system. Nobody could be bothered to
bring it up to dateit had taken about two hundred programmers twenty years to
put it all together. Besides which, they were scared of the security
implications of reverse-engineering the whole thing and sticking it on modern
networked machines. In the end, they hit a compromise: there was this old
VM/CMS emulator for DOS PCłs floating around. They bought six stupidly powerful
workstations running something a bit more modern. Stuck a DOS emulator on each
workstation, and ran their accounting suite under the VM/CMS emulator under the
DOS emulator"

I waited while his spluttering subsided into a chuckle. �I
think that deserves another drink: donłt you?"

I took a big gulp from my G&T and nodded. �Yeah." More
fizzy water for the Prof. �Anyway. These six, uh, mainframes, had to talk to
each other at something ridiculous like 1200 baud. So the droids who
implemented this piece of nonsense hired a hacker, who crufted them up
something that looked like a 1200 baud serial line to the VM/CMS emulator, but
which actually tunneled packets through the internet, from one workstation to
another. Only it ran under DOS, łcause of the extra level of emulation. Then
they figured they ought to let the data entry clerks log in through virtual
terminals so they could hire teleworkers from India instead of paying guys in
suits from Berkhampstead, so they wrote a tty driver just for the weird virtual
punched-card reader or whatever the bloody accounting system thought it was
working with."

Someone tapped me on my shoulder. I glanced round.

�Yo, dude! Gimme five!"

�Six," I said. Clive beamed at me. �Been here long?"

�Just arrived," he said. �I knew Iłd find you propping up
the bar. Hey, did the guys on the gangway give you any aggro?"

�Not much." I put my hand over my watchłs face. The whole
thing disturbed me more than I wanted to think about, and Ritałs silent
presence (reading a book in a deep leather-lined chair at the far side of the
room) didnłt contribute anything good to my peace of mind. �I was just telling
the professor about"

�The mainframes." The professor nodded. �Most interesting.
Can I trouble you to tell me what happened in the end? I hate an interrupted
tale."

I shrugged. �Drink for my man here," I said.

�Make mine a pint," said Clive.

�In a nutshell," said the professor.

�In a nutshell: theyłd put it all in an emulator, and
handled all the logins via the net, so some bright spark suggested they run six
emulators in parallel on one box and use local domain sockets to emulate the
serial lines. It looked like it would save about fifty thousand bucks, and
theyłd already spent a quarter million on the portas opposed to eighty, ninety
million for a proper re-writeso they did it. Put everything in one box."

�And what happened?" asked Clive.

Well, they stuffed the old corporate accounting system into
a single workstation. Youłve got to understand, it was about fifty times as
powerful as all six mainframes put together. The old mainframes were laid off
about two months after the emulator went live, to save on the maintenance bill.
So they moved office six months after that, and they managed to lose the box in
the process. The inventory tag just went missing; it was so unobtrusive it
looked like every other high-end server in the place. By the time they found it
again, some droid from the marketing department who though Christmas had come
early had reformatted its root partition and installed a multi-user game server
on it ..."

�Man, thatłs bad," said Clive. He looked improperly
cheerful.

�Yes." The professor looked worried. �That almost tops the
reactor story." He drained his glass then absent-mindedly checked the dosimeter
he kept clipped to the breast pocket of his sports jacket: �but not quite."

Unscheduled Criticality Excursion( jargon) term used in the
nuclear engineering industry to refer to the simultaneous catastrophic failure
of all of a fission reactorłs safety features, resulting in a runaway loss of
coolant accident. ( Formerly: melt-down.)

The ship set sail three hours later. I was already adrift,
three sheets to the wind, and Clive steered me out on deck to watch the pier
drift astern.

�Feel that breeze," he said, and leaned out over the railing
until I worried about him falling overboard. (An accident, so early in the
voyage, would be a bad way to start; there was plenty of time for such
incidents ahead.) �Itłs cool. Onshore. Loads of salt. Iodine from decaying
seaweed. Say, did you bring your iodine tablets? Sun block? Survival rations?"

�Only what I figured wełd definitely need," I said, slurring
on my certainty. �Didnłt know about Rita. Shit. Donłt need that shit. Are you
okay over there?"

�Donłt be silly!"

And guess whołd seen fit to join us on deck? If it wasnłt my
ex. I was drunk enough to be a bit out of control and in control enough to feel
vulnerable: not, in other words, at my best. �And whash you doing here?" I
asked, leaning against the rail beside Clive.

�Coming to ask what youłre doing here," she said. �Youłre a
mess." There was no rancour in her voice; just a calm, maddening
self-assurance, as if she thought shełd earned the right to know me better than
I knew myself.

�Funny, I could have sworn he was an engineer," quipped
Clive.

�You used the original ticket?" I asked.

Rita leaned up against the railing a couple of metres away
from me. �I tried to exchange it," she said guardedly. �By then, the ship was
over-booked."

�More fools," quipped Clive. He leaned even further overboard:
�cretins ahoy!" Ritałs stare could have frozen molten lead, but Clive bore its
weight unheeding.

�Letłs talk," she said. I followed her around the curve of
the deck, away from Clive. The sea was still, but even so I had difficulty
keeping my balance as it gently rolled beneath my feet. She stopped in the
shadow of a lifeboat. �You know what this means?" she asked.

More histrionics, I thought. �It means we both just have to
be very careful," I said, emphasizing the final word.

Unexpectedly, she smiled at me. �Two years and you didnłt
change your ticket!" It was not a very pretty smile.

I shrugged. �So that makes me a fool?"

She looked at me sharply: �no more than ever, Marcus. See
you later." She turned and stalked off in the direction of the door wełd come
through. I looked towards the stern of the ship, a dark mass of shadows in the
night: the breeze became slightly chilly if I stood in one place for long
enough. I stood there for a long time.

Risks of embarking on an expensive sea voyage booked too far
in advance, number 12: having to share a cramped cabin with a spouse who
divorced you years ago.

I went to bed drunk, and when I awoke the next morning the
cabin was mine. I sat up. My neck ached as if Iłd lain too long in the wrong
position; my tongue tasted as if something small and furry had died on it far
too long ago. The cabin was a mess. My trunk was stowed neatly beneath the
lower bunk bedbut a familiar suitcase was open and strewn across the table,
and shełd spread her toiletries across every available surface in the cramped
bathroom.

I groaned, sat up, and hastily made for the toiletthe head,
I remembered to call it. Today was The Eve of Destruction; December the 31st,
to the real world at large, and we would be sailing south-east and out into the
endless blue eye of the Gulf of Mexico. Theoretically I had booked a two week
holiday from my job. As a matter of cautionI checked carefully in the bag full
of dirty socks in my trunk before heading for breakfastboth small, extremely
heavy bars of metal were still there. Five thousand ecus each, theyłd set me
back: a whopping great hole in my savings, but if what we were expecting was
the case, well worth it in the long run.

The dining lounge had seen better days; although this cruise
ship called itself a liner, I had my suspicions. It reminded me of a run-down
hotel, formerly a grand palace of the leisured classes, now reduced to eking
out a living as a vendor of accomodation and conference space to corporate
sales drones on quarterly kick-off briefings. I sat down at one of the tables
and waited for one of the overworked stewards to come over and pour me a
coffee.

�Mind if I join you?"

I looked up. It was a woman Iłd met somewheresome conference
or otherlanky blonde hair, palid skin, and far too evangelical about formal
methods. �Feel free." She pulled a chair out and sat down and the steward
poured her a cup of coffee immediately. I noticed that even on a cruise ship
she was dressed in a business suit, although it looked somewhat the worse for
wear. �Coffee, please," I called after the retreating steward.

�We met in Darmstadt, ę97," she said. �Youłre Marcus Jackman?
I critiqued your paper on performance metrics for IEEE maintenance
transactions."

The penny dropped. �Karla ... Carrol?" I asked. She smiled.
�Yes, I remember your review." I did indeed, and nearly burned my tongue on the
coffee trying not to let slip precisely how I remembered it. Iłm not fit to be
rude until after at least the third cup of the morning. �Most interesting. What
brings you here?"

�The usual risk contingency planning. Iłm still in
catastrophe estimation, but I couldnłt get anyone at work to take this weekend
seriously. So I figured, what the hell? That was about two weeks ago."

�Two weeks" I stopped. �How did you wangle that?"

She sipped her coffee. A lock of hair dropped across it; she
shoved it back absend-mindedly. �Therełs always a certain roll-over in things
like this," she said. �It just depends who you talk to ..."

Show-off. Whoever had set up the booking system, whatever
troll from the deep, dark, underside of the ACM SIG-RISK group, had known more
than a little about queueing theory; Iłd spent two months, on and off, trying
to get Pauli aboard the lifeboat, while shełd just walked on board. �I thought
there was a waiting list," I said.

�Even lists have holes." She stared coldly at the steam
rising from her coffee cup; �and even institutional coffee tastes better than
this rubbish. I say, waiter!"

�Why did you leave it so late, if you believe in the
rollover meltdown?" I asked, wishing shełd just let the coffee quality issue
die.

�Because itłs not the meltdown Iłm interested in," she said;
�ah, itłs about this coffee. Itłs disgusting. Have you been letting the jug
stand on a hot plate for too long? So a few legacy systems, big hierarchical
database applications for the most part, wrap around and go nonlinear when the
year increments from 99 to 00. A fair number of batch reconcilliation jobs go
down the spout at midnight, and never get up again. Yes, some fresh arabica
will do nicelyh. Maybe even some big ones, like driver licensing systems or the
Police national computer, or the odd merchant bank. But nothing bolted together
in the past ten years will even break wind, so to speak. Excuse me, break
stride. And real-time systems wonłt even notice it; they mostly run on
millisecond timers and leave the nonsense about dates to external conversion
routines, if they understand the concept of dates at all, thank you very much,
like a Mars Rover running on mission elapsed time in seconds. Good, much
better, thank you."

The harried waiter made a break for the other diners and I began
to dig myself out of the hole in my chair Iłd unconsciously tried to retreat
into.

�Itłs just an artefact of the datum," she continued
implacably, ignoring the coffee cut placed apologetically before her. �You
might as well have picked on the UNIX millenium; it only runs for two to the
thirty-one seconds from midnight on January first, nineteen-seventy, then some
time thirty-two years from now the clocks begin counting in negative numbers.
Of course, not many systems run for seventy years without maintenance, but
therełs been an alarming trend lately towards embedding UNIX in black-box applications
itłs totally unsuited for. Personally, I think twenty thirty-two is a much more
realistic armageddon-type datum, for that and other reasons."

I cringed slightly. �What brings you here, then, if you
donłt think therełs going to be a fairly major disaster?"

�Because this is a ship of fools," she said brightly. �I
wanted to observe and see how youłre managing under percieved stress. Not to
mention that some people here have jobs to go back to. Iłm thinking of
collaborating on a paper with a sociologist from my local university on stresss-related
idiopathic delusional complexes in closed professional bodies. Chicken Little
crying ęthe sky is fallingł, when quite simply it canłt fall yet because this
is a premature software apocalypse."

I gritted my teeth and swallowed the last of my coffee.
�Youłre very sure that this is a false alarm."

�But it canłt be the real thing! Itłs too earlyonly the two
thousandth anniversary of the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Now the two
thousandth anniversary of his Crucifixion is another matter, and the coincidence
with the UNIX millennium is another sign. But what really clinches it is the
timewave zero hypothesis advanced by Terrance McKenna, who proved that the
Aztec cyclic history sequence actually comes to an enda singularityin the
same time scale. If you think this is a survival trip, just wait for the next
one in thirty-two years time! The ability of humans to anticipate an
apolcalypse tends towards a maximum in line with the proximity of big dates in
their numbering system; they unconsciously fail to plan for survival past the
next one, so disaster ensues. Now in this age of computers I think the baseline
has shifted from the millennium to the kiloyearwhich as you know, is two to
the tenth years, or one thousand and sixteen. And St John was quite obviously
talking about access permission bits when he said that the number of the Beast
was six, six, six. More coffee?"

I excused myself and made for the deck with all possible
haste; I could tell it was going to be one of those days.

I didnłt dare to venture back into the dining room for
another hour, until I was sure Karla had finished browbeating the staff; I
wandered the upper deck like a lost soul, staring out across the muddy green
expanse of sea, towards the gently swaying line in the distance where green met
greyish white. The weather was poor (rather worse than I had been led to
expect) and my head still throbbed from the night before. Back in the ops room
at the institute, Marek or one of the other admins would be sitting up with a
dog-eared paperback and a stack of blank backup cartridges, waiting patiently
for the autochanger to bleat for a new load to accomodate the terabytes of data
spooling slowly down onto tape. If I was there Iłd probably be doing a dervish
whirl of emergency disaster recovery preparations, single-handedly preparing to
hold back the deluge of user complaints due on the first day of the new year.
But I wasnłt there: all I could do was squint into the wind, face pinched in by
impotent tension, and wish I was in another line of work.

When my face turned numb I went below, back to the gently
rolling warmth of the dining room. Karla had evidently finished; Clive waved at
me from a corner so I went and joined him. �Howłs the morning?" I asked.

He pulled a face. �As youłd expect. Some woman tried to chat
me up but it turned out she was recruiting for some Church or other. I managed
to get away in one piece, though. Are you on for this eveningłs festivities?"

I nodded. �Whatłs everyone doing today, then?"

�Therełs a seminar session on disaster recovery techniques
for large transaction-based systems in the forward lounge on C deck. Some old
salt is giving a lecture on navigating by the stars in the bar before
lunchtime, then the Professor is giving his account of the Sizewell ęBł disasterthe
one he gave at the ACM bash in London this year. You were there, werenłt you?
Oh, and therełs a bingo game somewhere or other, itłs on the noticeboard on D
deck."

�What are you going to do?" I asked.

Clive put his knife down with a clatter. �Iłm going to read
a book," he said. �The weatherłs crap and the seałs going to get rough
according to the shipping forecast. Might as well hole up and relax a bit."

�Therełs a radio?"

�I bought mine along." He fished something out of his
pocket; a tiny Sony multiband reciever, with an old-fashioned analog tuning
dial. �Shortwave receptionłs okay."

�Read a book," I echoed. �Sounds like a good idea." I could
already smell the boredom rising from the great and borderless sea outside our
hull; a boredom born of nervy fright, knowledge of what countdown was now in
progress in the real world. Karla, for all her objectionable manner and dubious
hypotheses, had maybe had a point; humans set their historical clocks by the
stars, and the beginning of a new millennium is no insignificant event. Even if
the real fruitcakes think the showłs coming thirty-two years later ...

Boredom: Knowing that the end of the world is due to happen
in less than eighty-one thousand seconds, but being unable to hurry it along,
impede it, or even ignore it and do something else in the meantime.

I had brought along a book on formal design methodologies to
break my head on for the voyage, but I didnłt feel like reading it. When I
returned to my cabin I found that Rita was still elsewhere. Shełd brought along
a huge mass of junk literature; disposable magazines, novels, a two-day-old
newspaper. I read the leader columns in the paper, then the lifestyle section,
then finally the job advertisements. They were recruiting lots of corporate
drones, chief information officers: scope for a hollow laugh at someone elsełs
expense. But I didnłt feel like reading much, as my stomach was slightly weak
from the constant swaybacked lurching of the deck, so I lay down on my bunk to
catch the forty winks of the truly bored.

I dreamed that I was being interrogated by three sinister,
shadowy men in dark suits who kept a bright light pointed at my eyes. They
wanted to know why I had abandoned Rita and our two-year old daughter. They
didnłt seem to understand that we had never had a child, and that Rita had left
menot the other way around. They said I set a dangerous, risky example to
society at large; that runaway fathers should be allowed to make off with the
taxpayers money was not a message they were prepared to send. They were about
to sentence me tosomethingwhen I awakened with a panicky jolt. Rita was
leaning over me.

�Are you alright?" she asked.

I tried to croak �I think so," but nothing very intelligible
came out so I nodded instead.

�You looked as if you were having a bad dream."

�I was." I tried to sit up but she put a hand on my shoulder
and pushed me down again. �Please ..." I said.

�Lie down." I did as I was told. �Who were you with this
morning at breakfast?" she asked.

�Some fruitcake," who thinks the apocalypse is due in
thirty-two years and wełre all barking up the wrong tree. �She sat down at the
same table and started trying to convert me to baptism or whatever the hell she
believes in."

�I see." She was quiet for a moment. �Well just donłt bring
her back to this cabin, you hear me? Donłt you dare." She turned away abruptly,
leaving me too dumbstruck to say anything as she stalked out of the cabin and
yanked the door shut behind her. Maybe I was a fool to be here, but that didnłt
make Rita any less blind herself.

I wandered along to a late lunchcold buffet onlythen an afternoon
seminar on trusted anonymous systems validation. I avoided the deck, which was
subject to an intermittent cold rain. There was due to be a banquet in the
evening; I headed back to my cabin, had a shower, then changed into the suit
Iłd bought along for the occasion.

The bar adjoining the main dining room was drawing a steady
business as twilight cast its shadow across the ship; refugee computer
professionals in various states of formal attire held ice-cube clinking
tumblers of whiskey in tense conversational huddles, while spousal units
watched disinterestedly or discussed the foul weather. I saw Karla Carrol,
wearing a long green dress and too much makeup, and shrank into the ęLł-shaped
recess at the opposite end of the bar, where two hunchbacked mainframe
administrators were trying to top one-anotherłs dumb user stories. Karla seemed
to have snagged an unfortunate woman who was something big in actuarial
systems, and was talking into her ear: I ordered a double vodka and coke, and
then another before the steward ushered us into the dining room.

To my surprise, I found myself seated next to Rita. She
seemed to be enjoying herself as long as she payed no attention to me; as I
hadnłt seen her that happy since a year before we split up, I was quite content
to maintain my reserve. Besides, the food was substantially filling and my
glass never seemed to empty, until I leaned back in a bloated semi-stupor to
listen to the Prof give his keynote speech (after some nonentity from the
organizing committee, introduced to the limbo of my memory by one of the shipłs
officers.)

The Professor staggered slightly as he took the podium.
�Friends, I am pleased to be here to speak to you tonight, but less pleased at
the necessity for this voyage." He paused for a moment and fiddled with the
microphone. I was surprised by how little he had changed from my perspective,
even given an extra ten years of age on my own account. He was still
impressive.

�Software allows us to build huge, invisible
machinesvirtual mountains so complex that nobody can really understand the
whole scope of a large application. But software is brittle: change an underlying
constraint, and the whole edifice crumbles like a mountain hit by an
earthquake. A single fundamental assumption that changesas simple as the shift
from one century to the next at the junction between two millenniacan break
just about anything, anywhere, in the guts of such a system, and it could take
seconds or months for the damage to surface. Back in the mid-nineties there
were an estimated two hundred and fifty billion lines of vulnerable source
code, waiting for the new century to rattle the ground from under them; at
twenty thousand lines of code per programmer per year that would have taken a
million programmers a year to fix ... so everybody pretended it wasnłt there.
Except us. Everyone here tonight has had some role in attempting to cure the
crisis of complacency. Everyone here has been burned by the fire of bureaucratic
inertia. And so it is that everyone here chose of their own free will to join
this ship of fools on a voyage whołs motto might be, ęI told you so!ł"

He covered his mouth and hiccuped as discreetly as one may
in front of an audience of two hundred. I glanced sideways at Rita; her face
was a carefully controlled mask for boredom.

�In about an hour, it will be midnight back in England. It
is already five ołclock in the morning of January first, year two thousand,
somewhere far to the east of here. The datum is sweeping remorselessly round
the dark side of the world, leaving random malfunctions in its wake. Some of
those malfunctions are doubtless trivial; bugs in systems long since retired.
Others are naggingly pernicious but relatively harmless matters, such as the
school districts that fall victim to collation routines that tell them everyone
above the age of one hundred and three needs to be enrolled in a nurserey
class. But one or two ..." he stopped, and for a moment seemed bowed down by a
terrible weight: �might be serious. As serious, perhaps, as the Sizewell
disaster."

I didnłt want to pursue that line of logic, and neither
(apparently) did the Prof. What happened at Sizewell happened because nobody
understood the entire system, and nobody subjected it to formal proof: nor did
they look into some of the more obscure race conditions that could arise if
different subsystems found themselves marching to the beat of a different
clock. The resultsof which the least were the suicides jumping from the Lloyds
buildinghad proven a ghastly point: but one that the politicians did not
understand. Or at least, not profoundly enough to budget for the consequences.

�I should like to stress that this holocaust of our own
making is nothing less than a matter of complacency," the Professor continued.
�Once we quantised time, we tied our work to the clock; and now that the work
is automated, so is the ticking. We are a short-sighted species. That there was
a quarter of a trillion lines of bad software out there seven years ago is no
surprise. That such a quantity has been halved to date is good news, but not
quite adequate. We have, in a very real way, invented our own end of history: a
software apocalypse that in the day ahead will engulf banks, businesses, government
agencies, and anyone who runs a large, monolithic, database that is more than
perhaps ten years old. Let us hope for the future that the consequences are not
too seriousand that the lesson will be learned for good by those who for so
long have ignored us."

Polite applause, then louder: a groundswell of clapping as
the ship gently pushed its way through the waves.

I began to push my chair back; it was close and hot, and I
felt slightly queasy. A hand descended on my wrist: �remember what I said earlier,"
hissed Rita.

�What are you" I saw her expression. Being the object of
such ferocity made me feel as if we had not gone our separate ways. (And what
if, in the weeks of confusion after the Sizewell incidentten miles from the
hotel I had been staying in while doing my contract workI had not visited the
vasectomy clinic? What if my morbid fear over fission products, that had in
turn caused our own atomic split, never quite reached such a pitch? Would we
still be together, a nuclear family with glow-in-the-dark children?) �What do
you care? Iłm no use to you, am I?"

Her expression was unreadable as she let go of my arm. �What
use is any of this? Wełre sailing on the Titanic, only the disaster starts when
we go back to harbour. Donłt spoil my cruise for me, Marcus, or youłll be
sorry. Iłll throw all your luggage overboard."

I nearly laughed, but instead I stood up and staggered
slightly as I headed back to the bar. How like Rita; the paranoid
over-reaction, fear of shadows, utilitarian approach to people around her ... I
began to wonder how much I hated myself to have put up with her for so long,
and not to have found anyone better.

I was into my second gin and tonic when Clive appeared.
�Been in a car wreck?" he asked sympathetically.

�Rita," I said morosely.

�Oh." He was quiet for a minute. I heard faint applause from
the dining room. The steward at the bar turned his back to us and polished the
brasswork.

�Try one of these," he suggested, offering something that
looked a bit like a handmake lump of chocolate. �Itłs the only way to see in
such a fuck-up; totally stoned, drunk as a skunk, and happy with it."

I palmed the sticky lump and swallowed. There was a sweet,
herbal taste under the chocolate that nearly made me gag. Not my favourite way
to take the stuff, but better than nothing. (And Rita didnłt approve, even of
something as mild as marijhuana: which somehow made it more daring, more
essential ...)

�Any more?" I asked, but he shook his head.

�Strong stuff. Got to have enough to go round," he added with
a curious smile. I could see hełd been at it himself, then. �Settles the
stomach, too."

I drained my glass, winced slightly, then walked over to the
bar for a refil. The barman didnłt bother with an optic, just poured in the gin
and topped it off by eye. �Will that be all, sir?" he asked.

�Iłd like one for my friend," I said. Another glass appeared
as if by magic. All drinks were on the house, this night if no other. �Thanks."
I returned to the table, where Clive was tapping his fingers idly.

�Letłs go on deck," he suggested. I tried to dissuade him
but he was adamant: �itłs fresh up there but the rain stopped and the cloudłs
clearing. Letłs chill out, okay?"

�If you must," I said. He stood up and lurched slightly as
he headed for the door. I followed him, expecting a chill of damp air to rush
in. Instead, I found that he was right; the overcast had lifted and stars
twinkled high in a deep black vault. There was a slow breeze blowing from
ahead, and it was no cooler now than it had been during the day.

�What do you expect to find when you go back?" asked Clive.

�Everything. Nothing." In the distance, a monstrously deep
horn sounded a bass note; ships passing in the night, I supposed. �I canłt
quite bring myself to believe in the apocalypse. End of civilization as we know
it. Construction of cyberspace, the usual nonsense; itłs bollocks. Wełll go
back and find lots of database programs have fallen over and therełve been some
really major cock-ups, maybe even a local stock exchange or two, but life goes
on."

�Thatłs one view," Clive said morosely.

�What do you expect?"

�The end of the world." He leaned out across the railing,
staring into the dark water beyond and below us. �Nobody expects things to
continue, not really. Everybody wants a day of judgement, right? An end to the
mortal coil. Pot of gold at the end of the information superhighway." Another,
even deeper, horn sounded in the distance. �Wełve designed for obsolescence for
so long that it wouldnłt surprise me if the whole pack of cards tumbles down. A
bit like the fundies, who believe that it doesnłt matter how we run the world
because theyłre all going a-flying up to heaven in a couple of years anyway.
The rapture, they call it. Every city in the west is maybe twenty four hours
away from chaos and civil warthatłs all the supplies they store locally, you
know that? All it takes is enough cracks in the fabric ..."

I wanted to tell him he was sounding like an old-fashioned
fundamentalist preacher but the words caught in my throat: at that moment an
almost palpable wave of cold washed over me, as if the air around me had turned
to seawater. A great distant moaning wail of a horn shuddered out beneath the
moonless sky, so deep and loud that I felt my stomach relax and contract with
its passage; a chilly sweat prickled across my forehead for a moment, and I
felt brushed by the ghostly fingertips of drowned sailors.

�Whatłs that?" I demanded.

�Tanker, probably," said Clive. �Really close, too"

A smell like smouldering insulation made my nostrils twitch:
� too close!" We were near the front of the ship, on the right hand side: I
wondered if we should head for the back, or if someone on the bridge would be
able to see whatever we were bearing down on. Burning insulation and a rancid
undertone of sulphur, of reeking burnt meat, of something revolting and sweet
at the same time; a dim red light loomed on the horizon. The ship rolled
beneath my feet and I felt light-headed.

�Look, over there." I followed Clivełs outstretched arm.
�Whatłs happening?"

Whatever it was, it bulked out of the darkness like a
congealing fog bank, lit from within by a red glow. That dreadful horn sounded
again, rattling my innards, and there was a faint echo from behindas if its
distant partner sounded a desolate mating chorus from across the empty sea.
Stars burned like halogen lights in the vast darkness overhead. One by one they
began to fall, tracing bright lines across the sky until they faded out in the
distance. I looked towards the rear of the ship, back the way wełd come; a
false dawn bulked green on the horizon. �I donłt like this," I said, clutching
the railing with fingertips that felt like dry bones. �Iłm too stoned."

�Iłm not." Clive looked distracted, as if he was listening
to something. �What ... did you ever wonder, what it would be like if the
godbotherers were really right all along? If maybe their revelation was the
truth, and it was all going to happenonly theyłd been out by a couple of
thousand years?"

�Canłt happen." My teeth were chattering. �No rapture. No
singularity. Itłs just the way we think. We humans, we want to lose our
problems in some future end of all worries. Natural tendency."

�Overruns," Clive muttered. �Schedule slippage. They got all
geared up at the turn of the first millennium, then the apocalypse was cancelled.
Now theyłve got it all over again. What if they held the end of the world but
nobody came?"

Something dark bubbled up from the sea behind us. A deep
bass rumble, like a cross between an earthquake and a sousaphone: the angular
mass foamed the sea around, gathering shrapnel and wreckage together into the
dark shape of an ancient submarine. Hakenkreutz half-rusted into the shadowy
conning-tower, it ghosted through the waves towards the glow on the horizon,
its charred and skeletal crew staring incuriously at us as it cruised past. Red
and green afterimages rippled across the sea, across everything I looked at
except the dial of my borrowed watch.

I shuddered in the grip of a dread so intense that my heart
lurched towards pure panic. �Donłt!" Clive began to walk forwards, along the
curve of the deck towards the front of the ship�where are you going?"

�What if they held the end of the world, but we were all
aboard the ship of fools and unbelievers?" he called over his shoulder: �Iłm
joining them!"

A seventh rumbling note cut through the night, so deep that
I could barely hear it but only felt it in my bones. I turned and staggered
back towards the door, back towards the warmth and safety of the bar and the
dining room. Behind me, Clive called: �donłt leave me behind!"

The door slammed behind me. I looked around; the bartender
glanced up from polishing the bar and raised an eyebrow.

�Give me a drink," I gasped. �Something strong."

�Bad night?" he asked casually. �You look like youłve seen a
ghost."

I shuddered convulsively and took the tumbler, threw it at
the back of my throat. �In a manner of speaking."

�Happens," he said, matter-of-factly. �Lots of funny things
happen at sea. I could tell you some tales, I could."

�Please donłt. Iłve had enough of them for one night."

He looked away as I drained my glass.

�This isnłt a good cruise," I said, trying to communicate.
�You know what? You know why we booked it?"

�Why did you book the cruise?"

He studied me with the professional eye of an experienced
barman.

�Therełs something wełre running away from. But Iłm not sure
itłs the right thing."

�Then, if youłll pardon my French sir, wasnłt it a bit
stupid of you to come along for the ride?"

I headed for the inner corridor, meaning to check the roll
of dirty socks in my luggage. �Iłm not really sure ..."

 

So it came about that multitudes of people acted out with fierce
energy a shared phantasy which, though delusional, yet brought them such
intense emotional relief that they could live only through it, and were perfectly
willing both to kill and to die for it. This phenomenon was to recur many times,
in various parts of western and Central Europe ...

The Pursuit of the Millennium, Norman Cohn

Over the horizon, without any fuss, all the mainframes were
quietly going down.

Snowballłs Chance

The louring sky, half past pregnant with a caul of snow,
pressed down on Davyłs head like a hangover. He glanced up once, shivered, then
pushed through the doorway into the Deid Nurse and the smog of fag fumes
within.

His sometime conspirator Tam the Tailer was already at the
bar. �Awright, Davy?"

Davy drew a deep breath, his glasses steaming up the instant
he stepped through the heavy blackout curtain, so that the disreputable pub was
shrouded in a halo of icy iridescence that concealed its flaws. �Minełs a
Deuchars." His nostrils flared as he took in the seedy mixture of aromas that
festered in the Deid Nursełs atmosphere
so thick you could cut it with an axe,
Morag had said once with a sniff of her lop-sided snot-siphon, back in the day
when shełd had aught to say to Davy. �Fuckinł Baltic oot there the night, anł
nae kiddinł." He slid his glasses off and wiped them off, then looked around
tiredly. �Anł deid tae the world in here."

Tam glanced around as if to be sure the pub population
hadnłt magically doubled between mouthfuls of seventy bob. �Ah widnae say
that." He gestured with his nose
pockmarked by frostbite
at the snug in the
corner. Once the storefront for the Old Townłs more affluent ladies of the
night, it was now unaccountably popular with students of the gaming fraternity,
possibly because they had been driven out of all the trendier bars in the
neighbourhood for yacking till all hours and not drinking enough (much like the
whores before them). Right now a bunch of threadbare LARPers were in residence,
arguing over some recondite point of lore. �Theyłre havinł enough fun for a
barrel oł monkeys by the sound oł it."

�Anł who can blame them?" Davy hoisted his glass: �Ah just
wish theyłd keep their shite aff the box." The pub, in an effort to compensate
for its lack of a food licence, had installed a huge and dodgy voxel engine
that teetered precariously over the bar: it was full of muddy field, six
LARPers leaping.

�Dinnae piss them aff, Davy
theyłve ał got swords."

�Ah wis jist kiddinł. Ah didnae catch ma lottery the night,
thatłs ał Ahłm sayinł."

�If ye win, itłll be a first." Tam stared at his glass. �Anł
whit wid ye dae then, if yer numbers came up?"

�Whit, the big yin?" Davy put his glass down, then unzipped
his parkałs fast-access pouch and pulled out a fag packet and lighter.
Condensation immediately beaded the plastic wrapper as he flipped it open.
�Ahłd pay aff the hoose, for starters. Anł the child support. Anł then
" He
paused, eyes wandering to the dog-eared NO SMOKING sign behind the bar. �Ah,
shit." He flicked his Zippo, stroking the end of a cigarette with the flame
from the burning coal oil. �If Ah wis young again, Ahłd move, ye ken? But Ahłm
no, Ahłve got roots here." The sign went on to warn of lung cancer (curable)
and two-thousand-Euro fines (laughable, even if enforced). Davy inhaled,
grateful for the warmth flooding his lungs. �Anł therełs Morag anł the bairns."

�Heh." Tam left it at a grunt, for which Davy was grateful.
It wasnłt that he thought Morag would ever come back to him, but he was sick to
the back teeth of people who thought they were his friends telling him that she
wouldnłt, not unless he did this or did that.

�Ah could pay for the bairns tae go east. Theyłre young
enough." He glanced at the doorway. �Itłs no right, throwinł snowbałs in May."

�Thatłs global warminł." Tam shrugged with elaborate irony,
then changed the subject. �Where dłye think theyłd go? The Ukraine? New
ęBeria?"

�Somewhaur therełs grass and nae glaciers." Pause. �Anł real
beaches wił sand anł ał." He frowned and hastily added: �Dinnae get me wrong,
Ah ken how likely that is." The collapse of the West Antarctic ice shelf two
decades ago had inundated every established coastline; it had also stuck the
last nail in the coffin of the Gulf stream, plunging the British Isles into a
sub-Arctic deep freeze. Then the Americans had made it worse
at least for Scotland
by
putting a giant parasol into orbit to stop the rest of the planet roasting like
a chicken on a spit. Davy had learned all about global warming in Geography
classes at school
back when it hadnłt happened
in the rare intervals when he
wasnłt dozing in the back row or staring at Yasmin MacConnellłs hair. It wasnłt
until he was already paying a mortgage and the second kid was on his way that
what it meant really sank in. Cold. Eternal cold, deep in your bones.

�Ahłd like tae see a real beach again, some day before Ah
die."

�Ye could save for a train ticket."

�Away wił ye! Wherełd Ah go tae?" Davy snorted, darkly
amused. Flying was for the hyper-rich these days, and anyway, the nearest
beaches with sand and sun were in the Caliphate, a long dayłs TGV ride south
through the Channel Tunnel and across the Gibraltar Bridge, in what had once
been the Northern Sahara Desert. As a tourist destination, the Caliphate had
certain drawbacks, a lack of topless sunbathing beauties being only the first
on the list. �Itłs ał just as bad whauriver ye go. At least here ye can still
get pork scratchings."

�Aye, weel." Tam raised his glass, just as a stranger
appeared in the doorway.

�Anł then therełs some that dinnae feel the cauld." Davy
glanced round to follow the direction of his gaze. The stranger was oddly
attired in a lightweight suit and tie, as if hełd stepped out of the middle of
the previous century, although his neat goatee beard and the two small brass
horns implanted on his forehead were a more contemporary touch. He noticed Davy
staring and nodded, politely enough, then broke eye contact and ambled over to
the bar. Davy turned back to Tam, who responded to at his wink. �Take care noo,
Davy. Yełve got ma number." With that, he stood up, put his glass down, and
shambled unsteadily towards the toilets.

This put Davy on his lonesome next to the stranger, who
leaned on the bar and glanced at him sideways with an expression of amusement.
Davyłs forehead wrinkled as he stared in the direction of Katie the barwoman,
who was just now coming back up the cellar steps with an empty coal powder
cartridge in one hand. �My round?" asked the stranger, raising an eyebrow.

�Aye. Minełs a Deuchars if yer buyinł..." Davy, while not always
quick on the uptake, was never slow on the barrel: if this underdressed
southerner could afford a heated taxi, he could certainly afford to buy Davy
some beer. Katie nodded and rinsed her hands under the sink
however well sealed
they left the factory, coal cartridges always leaked like printer toner had
once done
and picked up two glasses.

�New roond aboot here?" Davy asked after a moment.

The stranger smiled: �Just passing through
I visit Edinburgh
every few years."

�Aye." Davy could relate to that.

�And yourself?"

�Ahłm frae Pilton." Which was true enough; that was where
hełd bought the house with Morag all those years ago, back when folks actually
wanted to buy houses in Edinburgh. Back before the pack ice closed the Firth
fro six months in every year, back before the rising sea level drowned Leith
and Ingliston, and turned Arthurłs Seat into a frigid coastal headland looming
grey and stark above the the permafrost. �Whereaboots dłye come frae?"

The strangerłs smile widened as Katie parked a half-litre on
the bar top before him and bent down to pull the next: �I think you know where
Iłm from, my friend."

Davy snorted. �Aye, so yełre a man of wealth anł taste, is
that right?"

�Just so." A moment later, Katie planted the second glass in
front of Davy, gave him a brittle smile, and retreated to the opposite end of
the bar without pausing to extract credit from the stranger, who nodded and
raised his jar: �To your good fortune."

�Heh." Davy chugged back a third of his glass. It was unusually
bitter, with a slight sulphurous edge to it: �Thatłs a new barrel."

�Only the best for my friends."

Davy sneaked an irritated glance at the stranger. �Right. Ah
ken ye want tae talk, ye dinnae need tae take the pish."

�Iłm sorry." The stranger held his gaze, looking slightly perplexed.
�Itłs just that Iłve spent too long in America recently. Most of them believe
in me. A bit of good old-fashioned scepticism is refreshing once in a while."

Davy snorted. �Dae Ah look like a god-botherer tae ye? Yer
amang civilized folk here, nae free-kirk numptiesłd show their noses in a pub."

�So I see." The stranger relaxed slightly. �Seen Morag and
the boys lately, have you?"

Now a strange thing happened, because as the cold fury took
him, and a monstrous roaring filled his ears, and he reached for the strangerłs
throat, he seemed to hear Moragłs voice shouting, Davy, donłt! And to his
surprise, a moment of timely sanity came crashing down on him, a sense that
Devil or no, if he laid hands on this fucker he really would be damned,
somehow. It might just have been the hypothalamic implant that the sheriff had
added to the list of his parole requirements working its arcane magic on his
brain chemistry, but it certainly felt like a drenching, cold-sweat sense of
immanence, and not in a good way. So as the raging impulse to glass the cunt
died away, Davy found himself contemplating his own raised fists in perplexity,
the crude blue tattoos of LOVE and HATE standing out on his knuckles like
doorposts framing the prison gateway of his life.

�Who telt ye aboot them," he demanded hoarsely.

�Cigarette?" The stranger, who had sat perfectly still while
Davy wound up to punch his ticket, raised the chiselled eyebrow again.

�Ya bas." But Davyłs hand went to his pocket automatically,
and he found himself passing a filter-tip to the stranger rather than ramming a
red-hot ember in his eye.

�Thank you." The stranger took the unlit cigarette, put it
straight between his lips, and inhaled deeply. �Nobody needed to tell me about
them," he continued, slowly dribbling smoke from both nostrils.

Davy slumped defensively on his bar stool. �When ye wis
askinł aboot Morag and the bairns, Ah figured ye wis fuckinł wił ma heid." But
knowing that there was a perfectly reasonable supernatural explanation somehow
made it all right. Ye cannae blame Auld Nick for pushinł yer buttons. Davy
reached out for his glass again: �ęScuse me. Ah didnae think ye existed."

�Feel free to take your time." The stranger smiled faintly.
�I find atheists refreshing, but it does take a little longer than usual to get
down to business."

�Aye, weel, concedinł for the moment that ye are the deil,
Ah dinnae ken whit ye want wił the likes oł me." Davy cradled his beer
protectively.

�Ahłm naebody." He shivered in the sudden draught as one of
the students
leaving
pushed through the curtain, admitting a flurry of late-May
snowflakes.

�So? You may be nobody, but your lucky number just came up."
The stranger smiled devilishly. �Did you never think youłd win the Lottery?"

�Aye, weel, if hauf the stories they tell about ye are true,
Ahłd rather it wis the ticket, ye ken? Or are ye gonnae say yełve been stitched
up by the kirk?"

�Something like that." The Devil nodded sagely. �Look,
youłre not stupid, so Iłm not going to bullshit you. What it is, is Iłm not the
only one of me working this circuit. Iłve got a quota to meet, but there arenłt
enough politicians and captains of industry to go around, and anyway, theyłre
boring. All they ever want is money, power, or good, hot, kinky sex without any
comebacks from their constituents. Poor folks are so much more creative in
their desperation, donłt you think? And so much more likely to believe in the
Rules, too."

�The Rules?" Davy found himself staring at his companion in
perplexity. �Nae the Law, right?"

�Do as thou wilt shall be all of the Law," quoth the Devil,
then he paused as if hełd tasted something unpleasant.

�Ye wis sayinł?"

�Love is the Law, Love under Will," the Devil added dyspeptically.

�Thatłs ał?" Davy stared at him.

�My employer requires me to quote chapter and verse when
challenged." As he said �employer", the expression on the Devilłs face made
Davy shudder. �And she monitors these conversations for compliance."

�But whit aboot the rest oł it, aye? If yełre the deil, whit
aboot the Ten Commandments?"

�Oh, those are just Rules," said the Devil, smiling. �Iłm
really proud of them."

�Ye made them ał up?" Davy said accusingly. �Just tae fuck
wił us?"

�Well, yes, of course I did! And all the other Rules. They
work really well, donłt you think?"

Davy made a fist and stared at the back of it. LOVE. �Ye
cunt. Ah still dinnae believe in ye."

The Devil shrugged. �Nobodyłs asking you to believe in me.
You donłt, and Iłm still here, arenłt I? If it makes things easier, think of me
as the garbage collection subroutine of the strong anthropic principle. And
they"
he stabbed a finger in the direction of the overhead LEDs
"work by magic,
for all you know."

Davy picked up his glass and drained it philosophically. The
hell of it was, the Devil was right: now he thought about it, he had no idea
how the lights worked, except that electricity had something to do with it.
�Ahłll have anither. Yełre buyinł."�No Iłm not." The Devil snapped his fingers
and two full glasses appeared on the bar, steaming slightly. Davy picked up the
nearest one. It was hot to the touch, even though the beer inside it was at
cellar temperature, and it smelled slightly sulphurous. �Anyway, I owe you."

�Whit for?" Davy sniffed the beer suspiciously: �This smells
pish." He pushed it away. �Whit is it ye owe me for?"

�For taking that mortgage and the job on the street-cleaning
team and for pissing it all down the drain and fucking off a thousand citizens
in little ways. For giving me Jaimie and wee Davy, and for wrecking your life
and cutting Morag off from her parents and raising a pair of neds instead of
two fine upstanding citizens. Youłre not a scholar and youłre not a gentleman,
but youłre a truly professional hater. And as for what you did to Morag
"

Davy made another fist: HATE. �Say wan mair word aboot Morag
..." he warned.

The Devil chuckled quietly. �No, you managed to do all that
by yourself." He shrugged. �Iłd have offered help if you needed it, but you
seemed to be doing okay without me. Like I said, youłre a professional." He
cleared his throat. �Which brings me to the little matter of why Iłm talking to
you tonight."

�Ahłm no for sale." Davy crossed his arms defensively. �Who
dłye think Ah am?"

The Devil shook his head, still smiling. �Iłm not here to
make you an offer for your soul, thatłs not how things work. Anyway, you gave
it to me of your own free will years ago." Davy looked into his eyes. The smile
didnłt reach them. �Trouble is, there are consequences when that happens. My
employerłs an optimist: shełs not an Augustinian entity, youłll be pleased to
learn, she doesnłt believe in original sin. So things between you and the Ultimate
are ... letłs say theyłre out of balance. Itłs like a credit card bill. The
longer you ignore it, the worse it gets. You cut me a karmic loan from the
First Bank of Davy MacDonald, and the Law requires me to repay it with
interest."

�Huh?" Davy stared at the Devil. �Ye whit?"

The Devil wasnłt smiling now. �Youłre one of the Elect,
Davy. One of the Unconditionally Elect. Sołs fucking everybody these days, but
your name came up in the quality assurance lottery. Iłm not allowed to mess
with you. If you die and Iłm in your debt, seven shades of shit hit the fan. So
I owe you a fucking wish."

The Devil tapped his fingers impatiently on the bar top. He
was no longer smiling. �You get one wish. I am required to read you the small
print:

�The party of the first part in cognizance of the gift
benefice or loan bestowed by the party of the second part is hereby required to
tender the fulfillment of 1 (one) verbally or somatically expressed indication
of desire by the party of the second part in pursuance of the discharge of the
said gift benefice or loan, said fulfillment hereinafter to be termed ęthe
wishł. The party of the first part undertakes to bring the totality of
existence into accordance with the terms of the wish exclusive of paradox
deicide temporal inversion or other wilful suspension contrary to the laws of
nature. The party of the second part recognizes understands and accepts that
this wish represents full and final discharge of debt incurred by the gift
benefice or loan to the party of the first part. Notwithstanding additional
grants of rights incurred under the terms of this contract the rights
responsibilities duties of the party of the first part to the party of the
second part are subject to the Consumer Credit Regulations of 2026..."

Davy shook his head. �Ah dinnae get it. Are ye tellinł me
yełre givinł me a wish? In return for, for ... beinł radge ał ma life?"

The Devil nodded. �Yes."

Davy winced. �Ah think Ah need another Deuchars
fuck! Haud
on, that isnae ma wish!" He stared at the Devil anxiously. �Yełre serious,
arenłt ye?"

The Devil sniffed. �I canłt discharge the obligation with a
beer. My Employer isnłt stupid, whatever Her other faults: shełd say I was
short-changing you, and shełd be right. Itłs got to be a big wish, Davy."

Davyłs expression brightened. The Devil waved a hand at Katie:
�Another Deuchars for my friend here. And a drop of the Craitur." Things were
looking up, Davy decided.

�Can ye make Morag nae have ... Ah mean, can ye make things
... awright again, nae went bad?" He dry-swallowed, mind skittering like a
frightened spider away from what he was asking for. Not to have ... whatever.
Whatever hełd done. Already.

The Devil contemplated Davy for a long handful of seconds.
�No," he said patiently. �That would create a paradox, you see, because if
things hadnłt gone bad for you, I wouldnłt be here giving you this wish, would
I? Your life gone wrong is the fuel for this miracle."

�Oh." Davy waited in silence while Katie pulled the pint,
then retreated back to the far end of the bar. Whaurłs Tam? he wondered
vaguely. Fuckinł deil, wił his smairt suit anł high heid yin manners ... He
shivered, unaccountably cold. �Am Ah goinł tae hell?" he asked roughly. �Is
that whaur Ahłm goinł?"

�Sorry, but no. We were brought in to run this universe, but
we didnłt design it. When youłre dead, thatłs it. No hellfire, no damnation:
the worst thing that can happen to you is youłre reincarnated, given a second
chance to get things right. Itłs normally my job to give people like you that
chance."

�Anł if Ahłm no reincarnated?" Davy asked hopefully.

�You get to wake up in the mind of God. Of course, you stop
being you when you do that." The Devil frowned thoughtfully. �Come to think of
it, youłll probably give Her a migraine."

�Right, right." Davy nodded. The Devil was giving him a
headache. He had a dawning suspicion that this one wasnłt a prod or a pape: he
probably supported Livingstone. �Ahłm no that bad then, is that whit yełre
sayinł?"

�Donłt get above yourself."

The Devilłs frown deepened, oblivious to the stroke of
killing rage that flashed behind Davyłs eyes at the words. Dinnae get above yerselł?
Who the fuck dłye think ye are, the sheriff? That was almost exactly what the
sheriff had said, leaning over to pronounce sentence. Ye ken Ahłm naebody,
dinnae deny it! Davyłs fists tightened, itching to hit somebody. The story of
his life: being ripped off then talked down to by self-satisfied cunts. Ahłll
make ye regret it!

The Devil continued after a moment: �Youłve got to really
fuck up in a theological manner before she wonłt take you, these days.
Spreading hatred in the name of God, that kind of thing will do for you.
Trademark abuse, she calls it. Youłre plenty bad, but youłre not that bad.
Donłt kid yourself, you only warrant the special visit because youłre a quality
sample. The rest are ... unobserved."

�So Ahłm no evil, Ahłm just plain bad." Davy grinned virulently
as a thought struck him. Letłs dae somethinł aboot that! Karmic imbalance?
Ahłll show ye a karmic imbalance! �Can ye dae somethinł aboot the weather? Ah
hate the cauld." He tried to put a whine in his voice. The change in the weather
had crippled house prices, shafted him and Morag. It would serve the Devil
right if he fell for it.

�I canłt change the weather." The Devil shook his head, looking
slightly worried. �Like I said
"

�Can ye fuck wił yon sun shield the fuckinł Yanks stuck in
the sky?" Davy leaned forward, glaring at him: �łCause if no, whit kindae deil
are ye?"

�You want me to what?"

Davy took a deep breath. He remembered what it had looked
like on TV, twenty years ago: the great silver reflectors unfolding in solar
orbit, the jubilant politicians, the graphs showing a 20% fall in sunlight
reaching the Earth ... the savage April blizzards that didnłt stop for a month,
the endless twilight and the sun dim enough to look at. And now the Devil
wanted to give him a wish, in payment for fucking things up for a few thousand
bastards who had it coming? Davy felt his lips drawing back from his teeth, a
feral smile forcing itself to the surface. �Ah want ye to fuck up the sunshade,
awright? Get ontae it. Ah want tae be wairm ..."

The Devil shook his head. �Thatłs a new one on me," he admitted.
�But
" He frowned. �Youłre sure? No second thoughts? You want to waive your
mandatory fourteen-day right of cancellation?"

�Aye. Dae it the noo." Davy nodded vigorously.

�Itłs done." The Devil smiled faintly.

�Whit?" Davy stared.

�Therełs not much to it. A rock about the size of this pub,
traveling on a cometary orbit
itłll take an hour or so to fold, but I already
took care of that." The Devilłs smile widened. �You used your wish."

�Ah dinnae believe ye," said Davy, hopping down from his bar
stool. Out of the corner of one eye, he saw Tam dodging through the blackout
curtain and the doorway, tipping him the wink. This had gone on long enough.
�Yełll have tae prove it. Show me."

�What?" The Devil looked puzzled. �But I told you, itłll
take about an hour."

�So ye say. Anł whit then?"

�Well, the parasol collapses, so the amount of sunlight goes
up. It gets brighter. The snow melts."

�Is that right?" Davy grinned. �So how many wishes dae Ah
get this time?"

�How many
" The Devil froze. �What makes you think you get
any more?" He snarled, his face contorting.

�Like ye said, Ah gave ye a loan, didnłt Ah?" Davyłs grin widened.
He gestured toward the door. �After ye?"

�You
" The Devil paused. �You donłt mean ..." He swallowed,
then continued, quietly. �That wasnłt deliberate, was it?"

�Oh. Aye." Davy could see it in his mindłs eye: the wilting
crops and blazing forests, droughts and heatstroke and mass extinction, the
despairing millions across America and Africa, exotic places hełd never seen,
never been allowed to go
roasting like pieces of a turkey on a spit, roasting
in revenge for twenty years frozen in outer darkness. Hell on Earth. �Four
billion fuckers, isnae that enough for another?"

�Son of a bitch!" The Devil reached into his jacket pocket
and pulled out an antique calculator, began punching buttons. �Forty-eight
no,
forty-nine. Shit, this has never happened before! You bastard, donłt you have a
conscience?"

Davy thought for a second. �Naw."

�Fuck!"

It was now or never. �Ahłll take a note."

�A credit
shit, okay then. Here." The Devil handed over his
mobile. It was small and very black and shiny, and it buzzed like a swarm of
flies. �Listen, Iłve got to go right now, I need to escalate this to senior management.
Call head office tomorrow, if Iłm not there, one of my staff will talk you
through the state of your claim."

�Haw! Ahłll be sure tae dae that."

The Devil stalked towards the curtain and stepped through
into the darkness beyond, and was gone. Davy pulled out his moby and
speed-dialed a number. �Hełs ał yours noo," he muttered into the handset, then
hung up and turned back to his beer. A couple of minutes later, someone came in
and sat down next to him. Davy raised a hand and waved vaguely at Katie: �A
Deuchars for Tam here."

Katie nodded nonchalantly
she seemed to have cheered up
since the Devil had stepped out
and picked up a glass.

Tam dropped a couple of small brass horns on the bar top
next to Davy. Davy stared at them for a moment then glanced up admiringly.
�Neat," he admitted. �Get anythinł else aff him?"

�Nah, the cunt wis crap. He didnae even have a moby. Just
these." Tam looked disgusted for a moment. �Ah pulled ma chib anł waved it
aroonł anł he totally legged it. Think anybodyłll come lookinł for us?"

�Nae chance." Davy raised his glass, then tapped the pocket
with the Devilłs mobile phone in it smugly. �Nae a snowballłs chance in hell
..."

Something Sweet

Above them the sky is a neon wash-out pierced by airship running
lights.

�Itłs cold out here," says the Man in her soft, hoarse
voice. �Wonłt you come in?"

The car is long and low and shiny. Jimmy gets in. He perches
on the jump-seat opposite the Man. She wears a long sheepskin coat. He looks in
her eyes and thinks of video cameras. Next to her sits some hired muscle,
looking at him like Jimmy has a target pasted between his eyes. The Man can be
crude in some ways. Very crude.

�Two days, Jimmy," she says.

He looks out the window. The sky is mirrored in the damp gutters.

�How much longer?" Her manner is exquisitely politeutterly
threatening.

He shrugs. �It didnłt come with a spec sheet."

The Man gives him a long look. �What needs working on?" she
asks.

The car swings round a corner into a blind alley. Rubbish
skips piled high with cartons conceal the far wall.

He explains, �Iłve got as far as the kernelłs final password
input. All we can do is wait. Breaking it is a semi-random process; two seconds
or two weeks, who the hell knows? You canłt just sit still and bash away at the
front dooritłs got Orange Book security, you hang around thirty seconds after
a miss and the policełll be all over you like flies on a turd." Out the rear
window he sees shadowy figures drift past the entrance to the alley.

�Remember who owns you," the Man says. In the rear-view, one
of the shadowy figures throws something. Jimmy blinks.

It is a smart grenade. It detonates two metres above the
parked Mercedes; a computer-controlled sequence of charges compresses a slug of
uranium into a white-hot dart the size of an ice-pick and spits it out.

The Man and her companion lose their heads. Bits of
windscreen spray the street. Jimmy feels nothing but the jolt of expanding air.

He opens the door and pools the tarmac with vomit. He crawls
out, stumbles to his feet and totters to the back of the alley. He sits down in
the garbage and drips blood over crumpled sushi cartons. His nose is
bleedinghydrostatic shock.

He watches the car. Steam curls from the open door. The
alley smells of piss and burgers. A black cat leaps in through the open
passenger door in search of scraps. Across the road, the lights of an amusement
arcade exhort him to BOMB THE BASTARDS.

His ears ache.

Doctor Gordon Dexter, Vermont-born, Yale-educated chairman
of Protein Technologies PLC, an Isle of Dogs-based research and development
subsidiary of Chambers-Bayer, orders ginger and water chestnut vermicelli at an
exclusive Japanese restaurant just north of Covent Garden.

His luncheon guest, Josephine Barr, manager of
Chambers-Bayerłs UK Patent Department in Denmark Street, picks the biggest
lobster in the tank.

Dexter has a bad feeling about this.

He says, stiffly: �I am pleased you will be taking personal
charge of this case. I do not want a repetition of yesterdayłs action."

Josephine Barr picks up her chopsticks and clacks them together
moodily, as if they were a claw shełd just grown. �The initial choice of
subject for your experiment has provided some, shall we say, unique
challenges."

Dexter makes a placating gesture with the hand thatłs not
pouring them tea. His back aches. Not enough squash this month, he thinks to
himself and shuffles uncomfortably on his cushion. �We were rushed, and now
your department takes the bruntitłs in the nature of things. You must
understand the uniqueness of the opportunity he represented, though.
Daysdays!after we are given the necessary protocols, the subject presented at
a Chambers-Bayer sponsored clinicin London at thatcomplaining of headaches!

�Which are?"

�He has an inaccessible tumor in his amygdala. Surgical excision
is impossible because of the probability of brain damage, and death due to
hydrocephalus is likely in one or two years."

�Hydrocephalus?"

�Forgive meelevated pressure within the skull." Dexter
smiles to himself. He likes people who ask questions. He thinks back with some
nostalgia to his promising teaching career, now blighted by Proteinłs
multi-billion ECU research grant.

�Unfortunately," Josephine points out sharply, �your subject
worked for the most sophisticated data pirate in the whole Square Five Mile."

�That was no excuse to indulge in one of the most absurd and
bloody" Dexter raises his voice as he speaks. He does not like being put on
the defensive.

Josephinełs lobster arrives. Dexter shuts up. He blanches.
The lobster is raw, served on a bed of diced puffer-fish. He looks at her and
catches the ghost of a smile on her lips. She does not move. He swallows, hard.
�Please, donłt wait for me," he murmers.

�Oh, itłs not hot, Iłll wait." She drains her cup.

Dexter fills it for her again and says, �Hydrostatic shock
alone could have damaged him."

Josephine Barr sighs. �The action is my responsibility, I
grant you, but it was not my decision. The whole purpose of this meeting as I
understood it is to prevent similar incidents.

Dexter nods enthusiastically. �Of course." His vermicelli arrives
and before he can lift the bowl to his mouth Josephine Barr has made her first
attack upon the lobster. Dexter sees that its claws and skull have been crushed
with kitchen pliers.

�The most unusual factor in this case," Dexter explains,
trying to look at Barrłs face without seeing what shełs putting in her mouth,
�is that we simply donłt need to use our usual surveillance techniques. There
is no point in us keeping more than the most cursory tabs on the poor lad. In the
fullness of time he will make his whereabouts known to us."

�Assuming the experiment works."

Dexter impatiently raps the rim of his bowl with his
chopsticks. �The experiment has already been initialised on a dendritic level.
We didnłt let him out the clinic till we established that he would, in the
fullness of time, come on line."

Josephine Barr allows herself another, barely perceptible,
smile. �Ah, and perhaps you can tell me when that will be? Before or after he
cracks Proteinłs knowledge base?"

Dexter stares. There is seaweed between his teeth.

Sergeant Tina Gullam Hussein of the Westminster Constabulary
Mobile Response Unit is shown into the control room in Tower Bridge. Foster
sits with his back to her, watching seven traffic monitors at once. She creeps
up behind him and swipes the back of his head, lightly, with her glove.

He twists round. �Oh. Hi."

�You forgot your other watch," she says to him and takes out
a worn menłs Swatch out her pocket and dangles it in front of him.

�Oh. Thanks." He thinks a minute. �Look, could we meet after
work? I knowI know wełve really got to talk but Iłm kind of" He laughs,
uncertain, and gestures at the monitors.

�Chief told me its your coffee break in five. Why dłyou
think he let me in here?"

�Oh. Right. Itłs just I figured maybe we should take
longer"

�I donłt want to be around you longer than I have to," she
says, and in spite of herself she lets a little of the anger outjust a little.

He bridles. �Well, if thatłs the way youłve taken things I
guess ... �

�Things?"

He doesnłt know how to respond to that, which is good because
she doesnłt want him to respond. She just wants him to sit there looking stupid
and that is precisely what he does. �Well," she says, �are you just going to
sit there looking stupid or do I get a coffee?"

Foster curses under his breath. �Yes, yes, of course you do,
Iłm sorry." He stand up and heads for the door. �Come on, then." Therełs an
intimacy in his voice nowan anger that is no more than self-depre cation:
anger at his own awkwardness. ęLook at me, see what a klutz I am.ł She likes
it, likes the trust it implies, but she hopes he wonłt be like that to her
again, because right now, with him gone from her bed and her apartment with
only stupidity and platitudes for explanationsright now, she would like to
hate him. It helps. Shełs been here before and she knows it helps.

�You hear the Man is dead?" she says, when they get to the
coffee lounge. �I just want to tell you, you and your buddies really screwed up
the lights for us. Took us four minutes to get there through cross traffic.
Lost a witness."

Foster nods. �Messy. Whose was the hit?"

�It was corporate."

�How come?"

�Intelligence hasnłt thrown up any urban grouping with that
kind of firepower since the Stockwell raids."

�You think thatłs valid?"

�Therełs more. When we cracked her kernel it looks like the
Man was reading up on biosystems."

Foster grins. �Sounds like you hit the big time."

Tina Hussein shrugs. �Just picked the right straw."

�Thatłs good. Thatłs good."

She stares into his eyes. �What is it with you?"

He sighs. �Please, not again."

�Why leave? Why cancel your diary?"

�Huh?"

�Iłve been doing a little detective work, that being what we
do best, right? Itłs not just me, is it? Itłs Caroline and Thursday nights and
even the wargamers at lunchtime, goddamnit. Whatłs got into you? Misanthropy?"

�Come again?"

�Buy a dictionary." She hates people who ask dumb questions.

He drains his cup and says �Look, I just need some time on
my own for a while and I know it sounds like the words came of the back of a
cereal packet but itłs true."

She smiles at him. She canłt help it. He is so naive. �Has
anyone else bought this line?"

He, in his turn, canłt help but laugh. �No."

Alright, she thinks. Alright, enough of this. She says, �I
donłt know what youłve got into, but if you need me Iłll be here, right?"

He looks like hełll plead honesty again then gives it up for
lost and just nods. �Right. Thanks."

She turns and walks out before her anger boils over; she
doesnłt want to do anything she might get arrested for later. When she sees
daylight she realises she doesnłt have any idea what to do now. She looks
around.

Her bike, leant up against the curb, spots her. It powers
up.

Foam effluents drift down the Thames like melting ice sculptures.
Automatics on Tower Bridge scan the traffic.

Jimmy thrusts his hands deeper into the pockets of his
jacket and turns from the view across the river. The shadow of an airship falls
across him. He leans into the breeze as he walks.

Hełs got the scanalyser on his belt. It looks like a
ThinkMan. It burbles to itself, testing a new combination every eight-tenths of
a millisecond. Worth a lot of cash on the fencetwenty K maybe, because the big
companies are trying to stamp them out. But how can he fence it? The Man ... he
can feel the weight of the scanalyser at his hip. Incriminating. Jimmy wants
rid of it but he canłt afford to trash it.

Hełs near the City, nowthe old financial heartland of the
capital. He braves the underpass and when he surfaces therełs a bright window;
a bar. Therełs a whore sitting in the window seat, masturbating. He rummages in
his pocket and feels cashenough for a drink, perhaps. He goes in.

There is more to life than shooting Ants but nobody told the
games designers. On his way in, Jimmy is assaulted by reverberations from Tank
Battle Antarctica. Global graphics and incoming missiles in green, Ants in
white, Aussies in traditional communist red. Two kids are playing it like itłs
for real; Jimmy slides through the gap between them and the door. The barman
has nobody else to serve.

�Something Sweet," Jimmy says, then double-takes. Therełs a
throbbing at his templesthe usual sign. Cluster headaches that make him vomit.
He knows there is something wrong up there, but the clinic told him zero. He
remembers with a pang that the Man fixed him his MedicAid. It isnłt something
he wants to think about a lot. He wobbles a bit and leans on the bar, watches
incuriously as the barman makes up something turquoise. �Whatłs that?" he says.

�Something sweet. IBM Specialcocktail, one dollar fifty,"
says the tender. Floating in the foam on his drink are flakes of sugar shaped
like microprocessors. Jimmy sips, then pushes the glass away and puts the
scanalyser down on the bar top. He looks at the display and sees a red light,
burning steady.

His head pounds in time with the Tank Battle riff.

He is in.

Dexter doesnłt know how he got here but hełs in a limousine
next to Josephine Barr and they are on the way to her flat in the West End, and
he doesnłt understand this because Barr shouldnłt be able to afford a flat
anywhere near there; he wonders precisely where it is.

Shełs telling him about the Man. �She got wind of the
project. Not necessarily by namebut she knew something was going down. Jimmyłs
MedicAid bill probably gave her the clue. Right now therełs a scanalyser eating
at Protein Technologiesł knowledge server. We canłt keep it out indefinitely so
I bought a discreet police wringer on the would-be kernel breaker. Itłs an
ex-employee of the Man."

�Jimmy."

Josephine Barr nods.

Dexter folds his arms defensively. �Was this known before or
after your people blew up a car full of people?"

�After." Barr isnłt rising to the bait any more. She refuses
to argue. It is very unsettling. �Now will you please tell me why I should not
call the police and have him arrested and thrown into a nice safe holding
area?"

�What if he came on-line in custody? Police holding areas
are screened against radio and maser emission. It would be like testing a
camera in a dark room."

�What if we extradited him? Chambers-Bayer has a licence."

�Why risk an arrest proceedure at all? Think, woman. The boy
nearly had his head blown off! What if it went wrong, what if he was tipped
off? He knows this city well enough to hide places we may never find him. I
donłt deny Jimmy in custody would save us white hairs but can we really risk it
going wrong? Look. Trust me. This is a delicate time. Even if Jimmy breaks the
server hełll only get there a couple of days early. Something Sweet may be
on-line any day now."

�You canłt tell me exactly when?"

�To be brief, no."

�Donłt be."

Dexter relaxes a little. �Something Sweet is basically a
cure for a special kind of cancer. Wełve built a viral magic bullet"

�Come again?"

�Wełve designed a retrovirus which attacks tumours. The
virus contains genes that modify the cancer cellsthey create conditions
similar to those in the brain tissue of a foetus, where brain cells form
synapses when they divide. The tumour gets turned into a logic-processing
systema physical embodiment of a mathematical idea known as a Turing machine.
A computer, if you like; not just another neural network but a classical linear
processor. And by doing that, we narrow the man-machine gap to the thickness of
a gene. It gives us capabilitiescommercially viable capabilities. The only
prerequisite is cancer. And cancer growth itself is at best a semi-random
process. Round about last week, Jimmyłs tumour became a processornow it has to
verify itself, clock and test itself. The procedures themselves are hardwired
into the genetic protocol of the infected tissue, but how long it will take for
it to debug itself is impossible to calculate precisely."

Josephine Barr frowns. �Any day now."

Dexter nods. �Any day now."

�And should we find Jimmy sitting atop the Telecom Tower
reciting the Dow Jones index from the aether, how do you propose to explain the
phenomenon to the worldłs press?"

�No problem," Dexter replies easily. �Without this programme
several thousand people a year will continue to die of brain tumours."

�And what of his other abilities?" Barr insists.

Dexter thinks about it, and it makes him feel so good he
does something very foolish. He pats Josephine Barr on the knee, quite
tenderly, as if he were drunk. �My dear," he says, warmly, �If Something Sweet
works as well and as publically as you suggest, we are sitting on top of a
market turnover estimated at twenty billion a year. Let the press suck on that.

Josephine Barr smiles sweetly at Dr Gordon Dexter and brushes
his hand off her knee. �I still maintain that your department should have
waited for a more suitable subject. After all, there are thousands of cases
every year, not a few of them in London"

�Yes, but they must present at the right time!" Dexter
insists. �Anyway, you donłt know how much pressure I was under. Wełre in a race
with Wellcome, not to mention Hoffmann la Roche; but the real threat is
Wellcome. If they win the consequences will be serious. If we donłt get our
biological systems interfaced with human CNS successfullyand on the market
firsttheyłll wipe the floor with us using self-annealing optical implants. Iłd
like to remind you of the projections for turnover of integrated bionic control
systems within the next ten years."

But Barr isnłt listening. She is rubbing her forehead.

Dexter turns to her, concerned. �Headache?"

She smiles wryly and keeps on rubbing. �If only you had had
a little more patience."

It takes a while for Dexter to get the point. He would offer
her his sympathy, but right now hełs realised something else.

The doors in this car have no handles.

Tina stares through the head-up pasted to the front of her
visor. She sees the road through an overlay of ghostly images and smeared rain
drops. Beneath her, the fuel cells of her bike convert methane into power using
enzyme systems looted from electric eels. Fat tyres rumble across pot-holed
tarmac and the world swings by to either side. Stretch out and you can touch
it, leave your foot behind: speed burns. Of a sudden, data haemorrhages across
the head-up like blood from a severed artery: a molełs been sighted, caught
supping copyrighted data through a scanalyser. It only takes a moment for the
police computers to confirm the data.

SatNav overlays lead her to him.

The Yamaha drifts to the kerb and shuts itself down. Tina goes
inside.

The barman sees her and makes a barely visible palms-up gesture:
no trouble here. Tina nods and heads for the bar.

Jimmy is reading

It is possible to tap a computer terminal at a distance with
a directional aerial and the right decoder. The ear of a cat is sensitive to
noises so faint that the limit on its hearing is imposed by quantum
uncertainty. No one has conclusively proven that the transmission of messages
between nerve cells is a purely chemical process by excluding electromagnetic
effects. The system is designed to be more than just a passive supercomputer, a
child prodigy. It has to talk ...

He looks up and sees himself reflected in a mirrored visor.

�Shut it down," says the helmet.

Jimmyłs guts twist.

�Shut it down and put your hands on the table."

The tiny camera built into Tinałs helmet assimilates his portrait,
then transmits it and waits. He canłt do anythingshe has him pinned like a
butterfly on a cardboard mount.

He reads her name badge. �What kind of bit-player are you,
Hussein?" he says.

A cursor blinks inside her helmet, blurred by a film of
condensation. The demisters come on automatically. Writing scrolls across the
visor.

�I hereby inform you that as of 09:08:14 today you have been
found guilty of violation of Article IV of the Data Control Act, and I warn you
that" She pauses to read.

DETAIN PENDING CIVIL EXTRADITION ORDER

�anything you say will be recorded and offered for sale to
the registered purchaser of your sentencing licence. You have the right to
request a loan from public funds for purposes of your appeal procedure before
their courts."

She turns the helmet speaker off and talks to her helmet. It
confirms: SECURITY VIOLATION CLEARED * PROTEIN TECHNOLOGIES PLC SOLE BIDDERS *
EXTRADITION GRANTED 09:12:02 * SQUAD MOBILE AS OF 09:12:43

Tina stares at her head-up.

Squad? she thinks. Squad?

She turns the speaker back on and the speach stress analysis
package and she sits beside him. �What were you aiming?"

�I donłt know. The Man put it on me."

�But what do you think?"

�Payroll, design specs, how the hell should I know? The Man
just told me, get it. The Manłs dead."

Tina nods. �I heard."

�Can I have one of my pills?"

�Show me."

Hesitantly he reaches into his jeans pocket and gets the
pack out.

�What for?"

�Migraine."

Shełs not listening. Shełs watching data spool from the
speech stress programme. Level. All of itlevel. Why, Tina wonders, does
Protein want to buy this zero?

She thinks hard. A power play? The Man dies while her man
breaks Proteinłs kernels. A link? This could be a break for her. There is very
little time. �Stand up," she orders. �You can come with me and sort this out or
wait for the big boys to get hereitłs up to you."

They go outside. Tina puts a control cuff on him: explosives
and a radio reciever slaved to her command-key. There is no traffic. Tina rolls
through a U-turn and rumbles away with her compliant passenger. While they
ride, Tina calls Control and files a restraining order on the extradition.

Tina leaves Jimmy in the holding area, goes upstairs and
runs a Wringer on hima fifth generation descendant of the old HOLMES system.
Jimmy is a vapourware salesman who worked for the Man. He fits the description
of the kid leaving the car in which the Man got hit. Period.

Tina chews her lip. If she fails to find anything about
Jimmyłs case that warrants her holding action, then every hour Jimmyłs in her
custody is an hour she doesnłt get paid. On top of that, the law gives her only
four days before the restraining order expires. She accesses the standard suiteDSS,
Health, Neighbourhood Watch.

Health makes strange reading. Migraines. MedicAid. Lots of
MedicAid. Now, where did that come from? It doesnłt take her long to trace the
connection. A familiar alias. The above-board tax-and-benefits face of the Man.
Not so surprising. MedicAid is standard employee-perk fodder, and Jimmy
ostensibly had a job with her.

Tina reads the file more closely. PSR scan, four days in
hospitalShe double-takes. Four days? She reads again. For the most part, it
reads like a standard exploratory routine for persistent head pain. They tested
his sight (20/20) and intra-ocular pressure (normal), his balance (excellent)
and his co-ordination (better), they gave him diet and allergy advice, offered
him a psychiatric consultation (he refused), and scanned him with a PSR
spectroscope (clear). Four days in hospital.

Four days.

Migraines.

She thumbs on the speaker to the holding area, grill
seventeen. �Hey Jimmy, you ever had an operation?"

Jimmy looks up at her, his face grey and distorted and
grainy in the monitor above her head. �Sure," he says, unnerved by her voice
coming out the ceiling. �Err ... last year."

�Mind telling me what? I guess I should tell you you neednłt
answer that. It doesnłt show on your health records, so if therełs a reason I
shouldnłt"

�Must be a mistake," Jimmy says. �Sure I donłt mind. They
opened my skull. Exploratory. Nothing there. Migraines, remember? Used to be
real bad. Worse than now." He winceshełs still got the attack he was getting
in the bar. �I guess."

Tina stares at the screen, and she is very glad Jimmy cannot
see her face right now. Oh you stupid kid, she thinks. Exploratory brain
surgery?. Her face is a mixture of pity and horror and plain greed as it slowly
clicks home that Jimmy is her meal-ticket.

She can, quite literally, taste successitłs like sushi on
her tongue.

The Man. Migraines. She cuts the connection and shełs grinning
all over her face. The Man paid for the operation, the Man knew. Oh shit, oh
shit this is good, she thinks, then someone else comes into the office and she
calms down and hurries through the dayłs other tasks.

More wringers. In grid eighteen therełs some jerk calls
himself the Flyer.

Ho ho.

She runs another wringer through the network, andas if it
were a signalall the screens go dead.

The holding area started out as a prefabricated sports hall;
the floor is occupied by a grid of sockets at three metre intervals, some of
them occupied by two-metre high aluminium christmas trees with periscopesa
taser fence. Anyone crossing between the branches walks into a painful electric
shock. By using tasers they can regularly reconfigure the holding space: it
foils escape plans. Jimmy isnłt alone; in the adjacent cell is a person who
calls himself the Flyer. He wears a worn leather bomber jacket and does
break-and-enter, burgling apartments and searching them for their telebanking
access codes. Everyone keeps them on a slip of paper somewhere, in case their
diary malfunctions. The Flyer flies by night, usually on dexamphetamine, which
is why Wellcome caught him doing over an employeełs flat; he kept typing his
name over and over again on a kitchen terminal until a grocery system got
suspicious. Or so he maintains.

Jimmy stands as far away from him as possible, uncomfortably
aware of the taser fence behind him and the cameras slung from the ventilation
fans. The Flyer is a bearish shape, and his jacket stinks of dead skin. It
reminds Jimmy of the Man, the car, and the way she ...

Jimmyłs palms are damp and his migraine pulses like a badly
programmed drum kit.

The Flyer talks incessantly.

�I never gave the Man much line ęcos she had it in her to
carve me if I fucked up. Mind, we werenłt the worst of friends; I got this
jacket, see, off her for a run of one of her pieces. She just wanted to talk to
this shopkeeperłs central heating. Bang!"

Jimmy blocks his ears against the Flyerłs laughter and
wonders what happens if you throw up on a taser?

The Flyerłs hands are lurid in the blood-orange light as he
gesticulates. �Like I got me a contact will see I get out of here in a couple
of weeks, which is better than the Man. A registered bidder, like. Buy herself
my sentence! Company prisonbah! Company pad!" He sniggers drunkenly.

Jimmy figures that the Flyer is on the payroll or, possibly,
mad. He is manic, a demented devil lost in a hell of coldly burning lights and
electrified silver treesa sudden wave of nausea grips Jimmyłs stomach. He
gasps for breath as his sense of balance dissolves in a crazy whirl, but his
migraine refuses to let him throw up.

The Flyer wonłt stop talking. �Like I says, someone zeroed
the Man. You hear about that? One of those smart grenades. Mustłve been quite a
sight. I reckon itłs that mob from Tottenham, figured she was headed for them
neuroplants and bio-logicals."

Jimmy shivers.

The Flyer smiles at Jimmy and says, his voice a whisper all
of a sudden: �I can give you a new identity and get you out of this shithole
for free. Or my friends can finish what the grenade began. Theyłre all around
you."

Jimmy looks about him.

Every taser in the room is aimed at him.

The cameras turn their backs and examine the far corner of
the holding area for cobwebs.

Jimmyłs neck prickles.

The Flyer grins and he walks through what should be fifty kilovolts.
Nothing happens. �Come on, son," he says, and takes Jimmy by the arm, leading
him towards the service door in the nearest wall.

There is a corridor behind it, lined in blue acrylic. Jimmy
and the Flyer run along a catwalk which is slung two feet above ground. The
handrails shake. Beneath them, fat pipes squiggle along the floor. Jimmy
follows the Flyer, his viewpoint shifting and swirling in crazy migranous
patterns. There are lights in the pipes below him, pulsing. He keeps his eyes
off them. They frighten him. As they walk, the flourescents set into ceiling
alcoves dazzle then go past, dazzle then go past like they were moving too, the
other way, like they were growing bright then dim as they rush past, then
things get worse and they snap on off on off thundering in his head and when
the flyer glances back and smiles encouragement his face is all collapsed,
fallen in, like there was a singularity in his left eye, blinking, on off on
off and when Jimmy glances away to the near wall the light from the
fluorescents is threaded and latticed upon the rough white surface and it
spells words behind his eyes and the words taste like the cocktail and he
thinksSomething Sweet.

Ideograms etch their way across Jimmyłs eyes.

Fragments of speech rumble like trucks through the paths of
his mind.

The tunnel seems to compress and expand in all directions at
once. Suddenly he is aware of the network of service ducts behind the wall, the
fistulae and abcesses in the cityłs iron intestinal tract.

The Flyer leads Jimmy to the end of the tunnel. A spiral
staircase as stark as the skeleton of some vast sea creature drills its way
down to the basement.

They go down, reach ground level doors painted red for Fire
Exit, and keep on going, past the doors, down, where the air gets stale, past
more doors, painted blue for Car Park, and down, through other doors that
should be locked (they glimmer and spark behind Jimmyłs eyes and when he looks
back he sees wires coming out of them, amber running lights and loops of bell
wire and black tape and all the paraphernalia of the Flyerłs trade) and down
and down and down.

Jimmyłs veins churn in the rumble of traffica trunk subway,
above them and to the right. He stumbles on the steps and the Flyer tells him
to look where hełs going but all he can see are brake servos, stereos, fuel counters,
cabin spies, lights and cigarette lighters and heaters and coolant pumps and
fans and radio presets and CB slang writ large all over the walls of the spiral
chasm.

�I think Iłm blind," Jimmy says and somewhere in his voice
therełs the upswell of raging panic.

The Flyer curses and manhandles him down the steps and
little by little, the further down they go, the better things get, till at last
Jimmy gets his eyes back.

The spiral steps end in a square dead-space in the corpse of
a metro system; the London Underground has been disused for a decade, ever
since the IRA hit it with nerve gas. On Black Monday the bodies of a thousand
civilians were laid out on the platforms at Kingłs Cross.

�Come on now," says the Flyer. He kicks some rubbish against
the wall and picks up a torch. �Wełve got a train to catch."

Jimmy follows him onto the platform.

He becomes aware of something itchy, a feeling hełs had
every time he passed a power cable since leaving the holding area. There is
electricity about, an active power supply. The tracks gleam smoothly away into
the shadows when The Flyer shines his torch along them.

They look used.

Tina thumps the alarm plate on her desk, strides across the
room and thumbs a pad protruding from a white cabinet. It clicks and opens, recognizing
her; inside it, nesting in a rack of black-painted aluminium, are three Heckler
& Koch rifles of the latest model. She takes a rifle and a spare magazine
and heads for the door and her helmet which hangs from a hook on the back of
it. She pushes the helmet down onto her head then sprints down the stairs.
Behind her, the arms cabinet whines shut and locks itself. The rifle, switched
on by removal from its charge-point, chambers a cartridge.

Ahead of her, the service door opens; her relief has taken
over Control and is helping her. She darts into the tunnel, rifle ready,
guessing that Jimmy and the Flyer wonłt have hung around for her. Her helmet
video prints up a message; nobody ran a wringer on the Flyer. Nobody knows who
he is. He could be anything; a man from the Man set to spring Jimmy, a
mercenary assassin trained by the CIA, a goddamn Martian. Curse the fucking
arresting officer for not running a wringer on him then and there! She comes to
the staircase.

Now she knows where theyłve gone.

She radios Control and while she negotiates the operation
and informs her superiors of what shełs already found about Jimmy her mind is
racing. Between calls she dials the tape loop from the holding pen up onto her
helmet visor, looking for the Flyer.

For some reason itłs Fosterłs face inside her helmet.

Foster?

Then it comes together

Fosterłs cancelled diary.

Foster in traffic control.

Four minutes delay and a lost witness.

Jimmy.

A hissing rattle emanates from the tracks. Seconds later the
far end of the tunnel is lit by the eerie lights of a thirty year old train.
There is only one coach; it runs on autopilot. The doors drifts open and Jimmy
and the Flyer get in.

�Who are we meeting?" Jimmy asks, then regrets it. Itłs as
if, when he opened his mouth, a hot pin stabbed morse code into his eyes.

The Flyer just shakes his head. �She scares the shit out of
me."

The train rattles through a couple more stations then Jimmy
feels a shift in his balance on the seat as the train slows down. A needle
beneath a dusty dial cover in the seat opposite him stirs itself as the brake
pressure climbs; the sign on the platform reads Embankment

The train stops and the doors open. The Flyer gets out and
waits impatiently for Jimmy.

�Come here," says the Flyer. Jimmy obeys and follows him to
the end of the platform, and an exit blocked by a massive armoured door.
Looking up, he sees the eye of a camera gleaming at him.

With a grating of rusty metal, the flood barrier rolls up
until it is poised like a giant guillotine above the doorway. They go through.
Bonsai oak trees spread a waist-high avenue of foliage between walls rich in
Picasso, Seurat and Tanguy. Jimmy doesnłt recognize most of them but he knows
they are originals. They stink of time and money.

The roof completes the surreal effect. Here, so far underground,
Jimmy looks up and sees clouds drifting above the ruby glow of a setting
sunand a falcon, hovering on wings of light.

�Jimmy, Say hello to Josephine."

Jimmy stares at the employer, whose name is Josephine, and
sees the realization of his fears; the Man could be her twin sister. Her
retarded twin sister.

�Hello," he says tentatively. The Flyer steps back and
removes his flying jacket.

�Hello Jimmy." She moves towards him and takes his hand.
�Come on in." Her hand is small and cool in his. Itłs as good an excuse as any
to break down and cry; he tries to conceal it.

�Do you like this place?"

Jimmy nods, taking the path of least resistance.

�Itłs not mine. I borrowed it, from a friend of yours. You
know who I mean, donłt you, Jimmy?"

Jimmy can guess. The Man.

�Listen," says Josephine, �I need something of yours, something
very special. Do you remember Doctor Dexter?"

Jimmy lifts a hand to his forehead without thinking. A blur
of red lines has smeared across the centre of his vision. Perhaps his mind is
becoming more sensitive to electrical fields.

�My headache," Jimmy mumbles. He cradles his forehead in his
hands. The red lines are firming up. They twist and turn like angry snakes.
They menace his sanity.

Josephine glances at the Flyer. �Have a guest suite
prepared."

The red lines shimmer into placealphanumerics. Abstracts
from research papers. Foetal cerebellar tissue left over from abortions used to
cure parkisonism. Embryonic nerves reproduce, grow, replace the burnt out tissue
of the substantia nigra. Immature brain tissue used to patch up the living.
Jimmy sees another document.

A self-referential one.

Something Sweet.

�No!" he shouts, and lashes out. He keeps on spinning while,
pixel by pixel, the world is going out.

�Wake up."

Jimmy is in a real bed.

�Yeah?" he groans. It is very dark. He cannot see anything.

�Youłve got to move out."

He feels his arms and legs moving of their own accord,
pulling him out of the entwining quilt.

The bed surges uneasily beneath him; the water baffles
arenłt set up. His head is cold; he touches his scalp with his hand and feels
bare skin. His fingers curl with revulsion and he shudders, like hełd touched a
cold blooded thing.

�Josephine wants Something Sweet. She needs it or shełll
die. Only she wants it on her terms. She killed the Man for it, now shełs ready
to kill you. What do you think Dexterłs here for?

Jimmy feels for the light switch.

�The light is on."

Jimmy canłt see a thing.

�Dexter has anaesthetised your optic nerveshełs blinded
you."

Jimmy starts screaming but his voice gets strangled, cut
off, like whoever is speaking to him has put a hand round his throat, only he
canłt feel any touch. Justpressure.

�They donłt want you. They want me. They blinded you for me.
So I can see."

Therełs nobody else in the room but Jimmy. Itłs Jimmyłs
voice. Something Sweet is coming on-line, heading for synergy; picking up
emissions with its neural antenna, adding Jimmyłs optic and speech centres to
its own calculation spaces. Lay every cell in Jimmyłs tumour end to end, theyłd
stretch to the moon and back.

�Jimmy, you must get out of here. They want to cut your head
open again."

Oh God, Jimmy whispers to himself, only his mouthłs still forbidden
him. He has to think the words, recite them in his head. Oh God, I canłt see I
canłt see I canłt see ...

�Will you please calm down? If you donłt wełll never escape
and Doctor Dexter will dice your brain."

Then, through his mindsł eye, Jimmy sees wordsbig black san
serif letters against ever-brightening whitespace.

CHAIR BY SNOWDON

SOFTWOOD TABLE WITH METAL TRESTLE SUPPORTS AND SEPIA PLASTIC
LAMINATE WORK SURFACE WITH DESIGN DERIVED FROM 23 ENVELOPE ALBUM COVER

A PAIR OF POLISH IMPORT WORKING TROUSERS TORN AT LEFT KNEE

ęSHITTEDł BY GILBERT AND GEORGE (ORIGINAL)

Jimmy is allowed a quiet moan.

The words in his eyes swim and coagulate. Black and white
shapes intersect and snap togethera living room in dazzle paint.

�Note also woodcuts by seminal dazzle theorist Edward Wadworth."

The windows are opening in Jimmyłs headpictures, dates,
critiques, contexts, letters, bulletin-board screen dumps, and suddenly Jimmyłs
head does not feel like an enclosed space at all, but a curved surface, utterly
exposed, a gateway folded back on itself, a place that is no place.

�Welcome to the noosphere. But first, a word from our sponsors."

A living room blinks into existence around him. Bright, vibrant,
unreal colour. Superrealist precision. Jimmy starts counting dust particles in
the far corner of the roomthen something lifts his gaze and he notices the
door. The door is locked, but Jimmy imagines the numeric code for it, goes over
and punches it into the keypad.

The door opens.

Jimmy steps out. It is a bright, cloudless day in the
corridor. There is no movement.

�The police are on their way now. Josephine knows this. She
will want to move you."

The Flyer steps into the corridor and sees Jimmy. Hełs surprised,
but he tries not to show it. �Hello, Jimmy! Nasty turn you had"

He approaches.

�I think round about now is a good time to do something."

The Flyer stops dead. �Whatłs that?"

Jimmy just stands there, arms by his sides, and thinks,
What? What am I supposed to do?

�Come on, extemporize!"

�Are you okay, Jimmy?" says the Flyer.

�Tell me, Jimmy" Jimmyłs voice drips sarcasm. �Have you ever,
just once in your life, taken the initiative?"

The Flyer scowls. �You iced up with me or something?"

�Keep out of this. Iłm counselling my client."

The Flyer just stares as the truth kicks home. �Oh shit," he
murmers. �Oh shit." He turns and runs.

All of a sudden the sky explodes. Great red clouds like
lumps of raw meat rain blood and bats down upon the ceiling with all the force
of a vengeful god. The Flyer screams and Jimmy falls to his knees and covers up
his eyes in horror.

Jimmyłs curled up like a foetal ball, shivering on the
carpet and his mouth wonłt stop yelling at him.

�Get up! Get up! Doctor Dexterłs coming to get you! Josephinełs
going to bundle you up in her car and take you somewhere forgettableGet up!

Jimmy gets a toe-hold in his own mouth. He keens.

�Honestly," says his mouth, �you can lead a horse to water
but you"

�Jimmy?"

Josephinełs voice.

Jimmy looks up. Josephine is very pretty, he realises. The
corridorłs sky is full of demons and winged pudenda but Josephine isnłt taking
any notice.

Jimmyłs voice says, �You killed the Man."

�Yes," she says. �The Man wanted your"

�The Man paid for your MedicAid, didnłt she, Jimmy?"

Josephinełs eyes narrow as she realises what shełs speaking
to.

Jimmy gets his voice back. He gazes beseachingly at Josephine.
�Help me." His voice gets twisted from him again. It says: �Well Jimmy, thatłs
the last time I try to appeal to your higher feelings."

The Flyer comes up behind Josephine. �Wełve got to leave.
The police have entered the station."

�Right."

All the lights go off.

�Shit."

Jimmyłs body jumps and jitters. �Wake up! Wake up! This is
your life speaking! Ach, isnłt it just my luck to wake up in a spear carrier"

Somewhere down the corridor the Manłs hi-fi starts bleating
like a sheep. An eighteen ton sheep.

There is a shout, an inarticulate garble of noise
culminating in the flat crackle of automatic weapons.

Blue bike-lights penetrate the gloom of Josephinełs pad.

Two sudden explosions flare like immature rose-hips and
something round and hairy comes rolling along the corridor. In the light of a
burning painting Jimmy recognizes his old consultant. Therełs something caught
between his teeth, squirming and struggling. His tongue.

Jimmyłs mouth says, �Isnłt it funny how things always come
in threes?"

Therełs one bike still coming. Jimmy scrambles up and flings
himself against the wall, out its way.

The wall by his head is laced with blood and scraps of
flesh.

�Nah, itłs only a Jackson Pollock."

The floor shivers and someone grabs himsoft cool hands
tight round his neck. Hełs thrust back in his room and hears Josphinełs
laboured breath as she presses home a special code on the door lock.

Words appear out the blackness of the room.

DOOR

CARPET IN ORIGINAL WILLIAM MORRIS DESIGN

MURDERING PATENTS EXECUTIVE

BOY WITH NO SURVIVAL INSTINCT

The living room clicks on againthe monochrome view of an
infra-red camera, set high up in the ceiling, behind the light fitting. There
he is, just behind Josephine, head bowed, unable to see in the blackness of the
room. Jimmy takes a step forward, sees himself move. He peers at himself, feels
the camera zoom at his command. His nose fills the screen.

And something very strange happens inside him. All of a sudden
he has a feeling he has never experienced before.

Power.

Josephine starts screaming. Something Sweet has jumbled the
lock. Through the walls Jimmy can see the secret liftshaft, locked against her.
She whirls and runs out the room.

Gunfire. Instinctively he turns his head and of a sudden he
is in a different place, and has a thousand eyes, and he watches the battle
from every angle and at every instant of time, from the moment the police bikes
appeared to the no-time called now.

Instinctively, Jimmy runs through every conduit and switch
and bell-wire of the apartment. The lights flicker. The Manłs hi-fi system
spits and snarls. All of a sudden, Jimmy is everywhere.

Jimmy gets a grandstand view of the Flyerłs butchery.
Through the Manłs security cameras he watches the mobile response squad
penetrate the apartment. With a sick twist in his stomach, Jimmy realises that
the advance party doesnłt stand a chance. The Flyerłs too quick, hełs got
hidden arsenals all over the apartment and the station, hełs better trained,
and he knows their tactics.

Jimmy turns his head again and sees another scene with his argus
eyes; the Flyer leaning over Josephine. It looks like shełs been run over by a
bike. Shełs no more substantial now than a discarded fragment of origami, and
much stickier. Trapped in the antechamber to the tunnel, the Flyer shoulders
his gun and ducks through the entrance into the tube. Incendiaries flower like
green carnations as he jumps down onto the tracks and ducks for cover.

Jimmy sees a policewoman move east along the Northbound
platform, turn down the interconnecting corridor.

All his other eyes show no-one else in the area.

Then he zooms in on her name badge and now he knows who it
is.

Jimmy shouts. Jimmy screams. Jimmy loses his cool, and his
one chance to save her.

The Flyer aims for Tina and fires and she goes spinning all
over the platform and Jimmy runs out and the Flyerłs still there.

�A hero at last. Oh, terrific." Words not his nor even human
spill out Jimmyłs mouth while his eyes stream tears. One of his thousand ears
has digested her comms overspill and now he knows she was here to save him.

She was here to kill Foster.

That Foster is aiming for him.

With all his might Jimmy hits out. Somewhere beneath the
rails a circuit flips and the ghost train lights flicker on with the current.
The Flyer at last lives up to his name, dancing and jiving and shedding sparks
like there was a party inside him.

Jimmy kneels beside Tina. Therełs a lot of blood. Iłm sorry,
he thinks, because he cannot speak, I was afraid and it happened too quick and
IIłm sorry.

�Oh shit," Tina says.

Jimmyłs heart leaps. If shełs concious, he figures, maybe
therełs hope.

�Oh God, how predictable," says the voice, and Jimmy thinks
Shut up! Shut up! Help me! Help her!

�Help her yourself. Iłm not here to run your life. No one
is. No one, ever again. Youłre free."

Jimmy shudders. Free.

Tina moans. �Whał?"

Jimmy squeezes her hand. All of a sudden he finds hełs back
where he can use his mouth. �Youłll be fine," he says, and therełs an edge of
confidence in his voice that wasnłt there before, that had got trodden down
years before till hełd thought hełd lost it. �Can I lift you?" he says.

Tina stares at him. �II think so. Canłt stay here. Fire"

Jimmy looks about with his thousand eyes. He watches her
comrades mopping up. They fire and shout their way through rooms that were once
the Manłs. He turns back to Tina. Theyłve forgotten her in the heat of battle.

Up, says the thing in Jimmyłs head.

Jimmy picks Tina up in his arms, closes his eyes and concentrates.
The train rumbles forward.

Jimmy blinks and the doors open.

They ride, Tina leant across Jimmyłs lap while he sits up
against the doors of the train. Tina squeezes his hand, just a little. It is
all she can manage. He squeezes her hand too, and he looks in her eyes.

She smiles.

Free.

Something Sweet steals into Jimmyłs mouth, and sings her a
lullaby.

[ Site Index] [ Fiction Index] [ Feedback ]

Toast: A Con Report

Although he made his first sale back in 1987, itłs only
recently that British writer Charles Stross has begun to make a name for
himself as a writer to watch in the new century ahead, with a sudden burst in
the last couple of years of quirky, inventive, high-bit-rate stories such as
�Antibodies,"

�A Colder War,"

�Bear Trap," and �Dechlorinating the Moderator" in markets
such as Interzone, Spectrum SF, Odyssey, and New Worlds. In the fast-paced and
innovative story that follows, he shows us that all this �posthuman" stuff may
be arriving a lot faster than anyone thinks that it is ...

Charles Stross is also a regular columnist for the monthly
magazine Computer Shopper. Coming up is his first collection, Toast, and Other
Burned Out Futures. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

* * *

Old hackers never die; they just sprout more gray hair,
their T-shirts fade, and they move on to stranger and more obscure toys.

Well, thatłs the way itłs supposed to be. Your Antiques!
asked me to write about it, so I decided to find out where all the old hackers
went. Which is how come I ended up at Toast-9, the ninth annual conference of
the Association for Retrocomputing Meta-Machinery. They got their feature,
youłre getting this con report, and never the two shall meet.

Toast is held every year in the Boston Marriot, a piece of
disgusting glass-and-concrete cheesecake from the late 1970s post-barbarism
school of architecture. I checked my bags in at the hotel reception, then went
out in search of a couple of old hackers to interview.

I donłt know who I was expecting to find, but it sure as
hell wasnłt Ashley Martin. Ashley and I worked together for a while in the
early zeroes, as contract resurrection men raising zombies from some of the big
iron databases that fell over on Black Tuesday: I lost track of him after he
threw his double-breasted Compaq suit from a tenth-floor window and went to
live in a naturist commune on Skye, saying that he was never going to deal with
any time-span shorter than a season ever again. (At the time I was pissed off;
that suit had cost our company fifteen thousand dollars six months ago, and it
wasnłt fully depreciated yet.) But there he was, ten inches bigger around the
waist and real as taxes, queuing in front of me at the registration desk.

�Richard! How are you?"

�Fine, fine." (Iłm always cautious about uttering the social
niceties around hex-heads; most of them are oblivious enough that as often as
not a casual �Howłs it going?" will trigger a quarter-hour stack-dump of woes.)
�Just waiting for my membership pack ...."

There was a chime and the door of the badge printer sprang
open; Ashleyłs membership pack stuck its head out and looked around anxiously
until it spotted him.

�Just update my familiar," I told the young witch on the
desk; �I donłt need any more guides." She nodded at me in the harried manner
that staff on a convention registration desk get.

�The bar," Ashley announced gnomically.

�The bar?"

�Thatłs where Iłm going," he said.

�Mind if I join you?"

�That was the general idea."

The bar was like any other con bar since time immemorial, or
at least the end of the post-industrial age (which is variously dated to
December 31, 1999, February 29, 2000, or March 1972, depending who you talk
to). Tired whiskey bottles hung upside down in front of a mirror for the whole
world to gape at; four pumps dispensed gassy ersatz beer: and a wide range of
alcohol-fortified grape juice was stacked in a glass-fronted chiller behind the
bar. The bartop itself was beige and labeled with the runes DEC and VAX 11/780.
When I asked the drone for a bottle of Jolt, they had to run one up on their
fab, interrupting its continuous-upgrade cycle; it chittered bad temperedly and
waved menacing pseudopodia at me as it took time out to spit caffeinated water
into a newly spun bucky bottle.

Ash found a free table and I waited for my vessel to cool
enough to open. We watched the world go by for a while; there were no major
disasters, nobody I knew died, and only three industry-specific realignments or
mergers of interest took place.

�So what brings you here, eh?" I asked eventually.

Ashley shrugged. �Boredom. Nostalgia. And my wife divorced
me a year ago. I figured it was time to get away from it all before I scope out
the next career."

�Occupational hazard," I sympathized, carefully not questioning
the relationship between his answer and my question.

�No, it bloody isnłt," he said with some asperity, raising
his glass for a brief mouthful followed by a shudder. �Youłve got to move with
the times. Since I met Laura Iłve been a hand crafted toy designer, not a, an"
he looked around at the other occupants of the bar and shuddered, guiltily.

�Anorak?" I asked, trying to keep my tone of voice neutral.

�Furry toys." He glared at his glass but refrained from
taking another mouthful. �Thatłs where the action is, not mainframes or steam
engines or wearables or MEMS or assemblers. Theyłre all obsolete as soon as
they come off the fab, but children will always need toys. Walking, talking
dolls whołre fun to be with. I discovered Iłve got a knack for the instinctual
level" Something small and blue and horribly similar to a hairy smurf was
trying to crawl out of one of his breast pockets, closely pursued by a
spreading ink stain.

�So she divorced you? Before or after children?"

�Yes and no, luckily in that order." He noticed the escaping
imp and, with a sigh, unzipped one of the other pockets on his jacket and
thrust the little wriggler inside. It meeped incoherently; when he zipped the
pocket up, it heaved and billowed like a tent in a gale. �Sorry about that;
hełs an escape artist. Special commission, actually."

�How long have you been in the toy business?" I prompted,
seeking some less-hazardous territory.

�Two years before we got married. Six years ago, I think."
Oh gods, he was a brooder. �It was the buried commands that did it. She was the
marketing face; we got a lot of bespoke requests for custom deluxe Tele-tubby
sets, life-sized interactive droids, that kind of thing. Peter Platypus and his
Pangolin Playmates. I couldnłt do one of those and stay sane without implanting
at least one buried Easter egg; usually a reflex dialogue, preferably a suite
of subversive memes. Like the Barney who was all sweetness and light and
I-love-you-you-love-me until he saw a My Little Pony; then he got hungry and
remembered his velociraptor roots."

�I suppose there were a lot of upset little girls"

�Hell, no! But one of the parental investment units got
pissed enough to sue; those plastic horsies are expensive collectorsł items
these days."

�Do you still get much work?" I asked.

�Yes." He downed his glass in one. �Youłd be amazed how many
orcs the average gamer gets through. And therełs always a market for a custom
one. Herełs Dean" The wriggling in his pocket had stopped; it looked rather
empty. �Excuse me a moment," he said, and went down on hands and knees beneath
the table in search of the escape artist.

<> 

Handcrafted toys are probably the last domain of specialist
human programmers these days. You can trust a familiar with most things, but
children are pretty sensitive and familiars are generally response-tuned to
adult company. Toys are a special case: their simple reflex sets and behaviors
make them amenable to human programmerschildren donłt mind, indeed need, a lot
of repetition and simple behavior they can understandwhile human programmers
are needed because humans are still better than familiars at raising human
infants. But someone who makes only nasty, abusive, or downright rude toys is

<> 

* * *

Later, while my luggage sniffed out a usefully plumbed
corner and grew me a suite, I wandered around the hardware show.

Hardware shows at a big con are always fascinating to the
true geek, and this one was no exception. Original PCs werenłt common at
Toast-9, being too commonplace to be worth bringing along, but the weird and
wonderful was here in profusion. In the center of the room was an octagonal
pillar surrounded by a cracked vinyl loveseat: an original Cray supercomputer
from the 1980s in NSA institutional blue. Over in that corner, that rarest and
most exotic of beasts, an Altair-1 motherboard, its tarnished copper circuit
tracks thrusting purposefully between black, insectoidal microprocessor and
archaic hex keypad (the whole thing mounted carefully under a diamond display
case, watchful guardian demons standing to either side in case any enthusiasts
tried to get too close to the ancient work of art).

I strolled round the hall slowly, lingering over the ancient
mainframes: starting with the working Difference Engine and the IBM 1604
console, then the Pentium II laptop. All of them were pre-softwear processors:
discrete industrial machines from back before the pręt-ą-porter brigade
acquired personal area networks and turned electronics into a fashion
statement. Back when processor power doubled every eighteen months and
bandwidth doubled every twelve months, back before theyłd been overtaken by
newer, faster-evolving technologies.

I was examining a particularly fine late-model SPARCstation
when somebody goosed me from behind. Strangers donłt usually sneak up on me for
a quick gropemorełs the pityso when I peeled myself off the ceiling and
turned round, I wasnłt too surprised to see Lynda grinning at me ghoulishly.
�Richard!" she said, �I knew youłd be around here somewhere! Howłs tricks?"

�Much the same. Yourself?"

�Still with the old firm." The old firmIntangible Business
Mechanisms, as they call themselves todayis a big employer of witches, and
Lynda is a particularly fine exponent of the profession, having combined
teaching at MIT and practice as a freelance consultant for years. Another of
those child prodigies who seem attracted to new paradigms like flies to dog
shit. (I should add: Lynda isnłt her real name. Serial numbers filed off, as
they say, to protect the innocent.) �Just taking in a little of the local
color, dear. Itłs so classical! All these hardwired circuits and little lumps
of lithographed silicon-germanium semiconductor. Can you believe people once
relied on such crude technologies?"

�Tactless," I hissed at her: an offended anorak-wearer was
glaring from beside the Altair-1. �And the answer is yes, anyway. But it was
all before your time, wasnłt it?"

�Oh, I wouldnłt say that," she said. �I had a laptop, too,
when I was a baby. But by the time I was in my teens, it was all so boring,
dinosaur-sized multinationals being starved to death by the free software crowd
and trying to drown them in a sea of press releases and standards initiatives,
to a Greek chorus singing laments about Moorełs Law only giving room for
another five years of improvements in microprocessor design before they finally
ran up against the quantum limits of miniaturization. I remember when House of
Versace released their first wearable collection, and there was me, a
sixteen-year-old goth with more CPU power in her earrings than IBM sold in the
1990s, and it was boring. The revolution had eaten its own sense of wonder and
shat out megacorporations. Would you believe it?" She blinked, and wobbled a
little, as if drunk on words. I think her thesaurus was running at too high a
priority level.

I surreptitiously looked at her feet: she was wearing heavy
black boots, the preferred thinking environment of the security-minded. (Steel
toe caps make for great Faraday cages.) Then I eyeballed her up and down;
judging by the conservative business suit, she had deteriorated a lot in the
past year, to the point where she needed corporate meme support. When I first
met Lynda, shełd been wearing a fortune in homemade RISC processors bound together
by black lacy tatters of goth finery, cracking badly secured ten-year-old
financial transactions every few milliseconds. (And selling any numbered
offshore accounts she detected to the IRS for a thief-takerłs cut, in order to
subsidize her nanoassembler design start-up.) Now she was wearing Armani.

<> 

A business suit is a future-shock exoskeleton, whispering reminders
in its wearersł ears to prompt them through the everyday niceties of a life
washed into bleeding monochrome by the flood of information they live under.
Corporate workers and consultants todayI gather this, because I dropped out of
that cycle a few years ago, unable to keep up with a new technological
revolution every six monthslive on the bleeding edge of autism, so wrapped up
in their work that if their underwear didnłt tell them when to go to the
toilet, their bladders would burst. And itłs not just the company types who
need the thinking environment: geeks became dependent on low-maintenance
clothing years before, and itłs partly thanks to their efforts that the
clothing became sentient (if not fully independent).

Clothes today say far more about someonełs corporate and social
status than they did in the twentieth century; we can blame the Media Lab for
that, with their radical (not to say annoying) idea that your clothes should
think for you. A conservative business suit by a discreet softwear company
screams PHB groupware; sneakers and a sloganeering T-shirt or combat pants go
with the Freeware crowd, anarchoid linuxers and hackers, some of them charging
a thousand bucks an hour for their commercial services. A 1980s-yuppie would
have been astonished at the number of body piercings in the boardrooms, the
vacant, glassy stares of brain-webbed executives being steered round the local
delicatessen by their neckties while their suit jackets engineered a hostile
takeover in Ulan Bator and their shoes tracked stock prices. But then, an
eightiesł yuppie would be a living fossil in this day and age, slow and
cold-blooded and not sufficiently intelligent to breathe and do business
simultaneously. O brave new world, to have such cyborgs in it.

<> 

* * *

We arrived back in the bar. �I think I need a drink," said
Lynda, wobbling on her feet. �Oops! So sorry. Er, yes. This is so slow,
Richard! How do you handle the boredom?"

�Excuse me?" The bartender handed me another Jolt, this one
nicely chilled. A large margarita slid across the bartop and somehow appeared
in her hand.

�This!" She looked around vaguely. �Real time!"

I stared at her. Her pupils were wide. �Are you on anything
I should know about?" I asked.

�Sensory deprivation. My suitłs powered down." She shook her
head. �I feel naked. I havenłt been offline in months; there are things
happening that I donłt know about. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but
now Iłm not sure. Is it always like this?"

�How long have you been down?" I asked.

�Iłm unsure. Since I saw you in the show? I wanted to get
into your headspace and see what it was like, but itłs so cramped! Maybe half
an hour; itłs a disciplinary offense, you know?"

�What, going offline?"

Her eyeballs flickered from side to side in the
characteristic jitter of information-withdrawal nystagmus. �Being obsolete."

I left Lynda in the safe custody of a hotel paramedic, who
didnłt seem to think therełd be any permanent side effects once her clothing
had rebooted. I headed back to the con, fervently glad that Iłd stepped off the
treadmill a couple of releases after Ashley, way before things got this bad.

<> 

Information withdrawal is an occupational hazard for the
well-connected, like diabetic hypoglycaemia; if the diabetic doesnłt get their
sugar hit, or the executive their info-burn, they get woozy and stop working.
On the other hand, you can only take it for so long ...

Lynda is 26. At 16, she was cracking financial
cryptosystems. At 17, she was designing nanotech assemblers. At 20 she was a
professor, with a patent portfolio worth millions. Today shełs an executive
vice-president with a budget measured in the billions. She will be burned out
completely by 30, out of rehab by 32 (give or take a case of tardive
dyskinesia), with a gold-plated pension and the rest of her life ahead of
herjust like the rest of us proto-transhumanists, washed up on the
evolutionary beach.

<> 

* * *

Back in the con proper, I decided to take in a couple of
talks. Therełs a long and sometimes contradictory series of lectures and
workshops at any Toast gathering, not to mention the speakersł corners, where
any crank can set up a soap-box and have their say.

First I sat through a rather odd monologue with only three
other attendees (one of them deeply asleep in the front row): a construct
shaped like a cross between a coatrack and a praying mantis was vigorously
attacking the conceit of human consciousness, attempting to prove (by way of an
updated version of Searlełs Chinese Room attack, lightly seasoned ą la Penrose)
that dumb neurons canłt possibly be intelligent in the same way as a, well, whatever
the thing on the podium was. It was almost certainly a prank, given our
proximity to MIT (not to mention the Gates Trust-endowed Department of
Amplified Intelligence at Harvard), but it was still absorbing to listen to its
endless spew of rolling, inspired oratory. Eventually the construct argued
itself into a solipsistic corner, then asked the floor for questions; when
nobody asked any, it stormed off in a huff.

I must confess that I was half-asleep by the time the robot
philosopher denounced us as nonsapient automata, sparing only half my left eye
to speedread Minskyłs Society of Mind for clues; in any event. I woke up in
time for the next talk, a panel discussion. Someone had rounded up an original
stalwart of the Free Software Foundation to talk about the rise and demise of
Microsoft. There was, of course, a Microsoft spokesdroid present to defend the
companyłs historic record. It started with the obligatory three-minute AV
presentation about how Our Great Leader and Teacher (Bill) had Saved the World
from IBM, but before they could open their mouths and actually say anything,
Billłs head appeared on-screen and the audience went wild: it was like the
Three Minute Hate in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

(I used to use the manłs software like everyone else, but
after the debacle of Windows NT 6.2, and the ensuing grand jury investigation
and lynchings, well)

After the Microsoft talk I went back to my temporary apartment
to estivate for a few hours. At my age, I need all the regeneration time I can
get, even if I have to take it hanging upside down in a brightly colored cocoon
woven to the side of a tower blockłs support column. I run some quackware from
India that claims to be a white-box clone of the Kaiser-Glaxo program the Pope
uses; my tent and travel-equipment designs come courtesy of the Free Hardware
Foundation. Having lost my main income stream years ago due to the usual
causes, principally cumulative future shock and the letdown from the Y2K
consultancy business, Iłd be lost without the copylefted design schemata to feed
to my assembler farm: I certainly canłt afford the latest commercial designs
for anything much more exotic than a fountain pen. But life on a twenty-century
income is still tolerable these days, thanks to the FHF. More about those
angels in Birkenstocks later, if I can be bothered to write it.

I awoke feeling refreshed and came down from my cocoon to
find a new wardrobe waiting for me. Iłd got my tent to run up conservative
geek-chic before my napurban camo trousers, nine-inch nails T-shirt, combat
boots, and a vest-of-pockets containing numerous artifactsand it whispered to
me reassuringly as I pulled it on, mentioning that the fuel cell in my left hip
pocket was good for thirty hours of warmth and power if I had to venture out
into the minus-ten wind chill of a Boston winter. I pumped my heels, then
desisted, feeling silly: in this day of barely-visible turbogenerators, heel
power makes about as much sense as a slide rule.

Outside my spacious dome tent, the floor of the hotel had
sprouted a many-colored mushroom forest. Luggage and more obscure personal
servants scurried about, seeing to their human ownersł requirements. Flying
things buzzed back and forth like insects with vectored-thrust turbojets. A
McDonaldłs stall had opened up at the far side of the hall and was burning
blocks of hashish to make the neighbors hungry; my vest discreetly reminded me
that I had some nose plugs.

I had been asleep for three hours. While I had been asleep,
Malaysian scientists had announced the discovery of an earth-sized planet with
an oxidizing atmosphere less than forty light-years away; the Gates Trust, in
their eternal pursuit of favorable propaganda, had announced that they were
going to send a Starwhisp to colonize it.

<> 

Insert snide comment about clones, eyes of needles,
possibility of passage through, at this juncture; the whole point of a
Starwhisp is that itłs too small to carry any cargo much bigger than a
bacillus. Probably the GT was just trying to tweak the American publicłs guilt
complex over the breakup of NASA.

<> 

* * *

The Pope had reversed her ruling of last week on personality
uploads, but reasserted the indivisibility of the soul, much to the confusion
of theologians and neuroscientists alike.

There had been riots in Afghanistan over the forcible withdrawal
of the Playboy channel by the countryłs current ruling clique of backwoods
militiamen. (Ditto Zimbabwe and Arkansas.)

Further confirmation of the existence of the sixth so-called
gravitoweak resonance force had been obtained by a team of posthumans somewhere
in high orbit. The significance of this discovery was massive, but immediate
impact remained obscureno technological spin-offs were predicted in the next
few weeks.

Nobody I knew had died, or been born, or undergone major
life-revising events. I found this absence of change obscurely comforting; a
worrying sign, so I punched up a really sharp dose of the latest cognitive
enhancer and tried to drag my aging (not to say reeling) brain back into the
hot core of future-surfing that is the only context in which the antiquities of
the silicon era (or modern everyday life, for that matter) can be decoded.

I got out into the exhibition hall only to discover that
there was a costume show and disco scheduled for the rest of the night. This
didnłt exactly fascinate me, but I went along and stared anyway while catching
up on the past few hoursł news. The costume show was impressivelots of fabric,
and all of it dumb. They had realistic seventiesł hackers, eightiesł Silicon
Valley entrepreneurs, ninetiesł venture capitalists, and millennia resurrection
men, complete with some bits of equipment too precious to put on public exhibitionthings
like priceless early wearable computer demos from the Media Lab, on loan for
the evening: all badly glued Velcro, cell-phone battery compartments run up on
a glue-gun renderer, and flickering monochrome head-up displays. Toward the
end, one of the models shambled on stage in a recent (three-month-old, hence
barely obsolete) space suit: a closed-circuit life-support system capable of
protecting its owner from any kind of hostile environment and recycling their
waste for months or years. It probably qualified as an engineering miracle
(closed-circuit life support is hard) but it left me with a lingering
impression that a major cause of death among its users would be secondary
consequences of sexual frustration.

The disco was, well, a disco. Or a rave. Or a waltz. These
things donłt change: people dress up, eat, take intoxicants, and throw
themselves around to music. Same old same old. I settled down with the drinks
and the old crusties in the bar, intent on getting thoroughly wasted and
exchanging tall stories with the other fogies.

About four or five drinks later; an advertisement crawled
through my spam filter and started spraying hotly luminous colors across my
left retina. I was busy swapping yarns with an old Cobol monkey called
Solipsist Nation and I didnłt notice it at first. �Is something wrong, my
friend?" he asked.

�Słspam. Nothing," I said.

Solly pulled out a huge old revolvera Colt, I thinkand
looked around. Squinting, he pointed it at the floor and pulled the trigger.
There was no bang, but a cloud of smoke squirted out and settled rapidly to the
ground, clustering densely around a small buglike object. The visuals stopped.

�Itłs nothing now," he agreed, putting his gun away. �There
was a time when things were different."

�When they didnłt hide behind microbots. Just hijacked mail
seryers."

He grinned, disquietingly. �Then they went away."

I nodded. �Letłs drink a toast. To whatever made the mail
spammers go away."

He raised his glass with me, but I didnłt see him drink.

<> 

Something the junk advertisers donłt seem to understand: we
live in an information-supersaturated world. If I donłt want to buy something,
no amount of shouting or propagandizing will budge me; all it will do is get me
annoyed. On the other hand, if I have a need for your product, I can seek it
out in an eyeblink.

<> 

* * *

We now return you to your regular scheduled programming ...

There was an art show. Fractals blossomed in intricate,
fragile beauty on wall-sized screens of fabulously expensive liquid crystal,
driven by the entropy-generating logic-chopping of discrete microprocessors.
You could borrow some contact lenses and slip between two wall-sized panels and
youłre on Europałs seabed, gray ooze and timelessness shared with the
moluscoids clustered around the hydrothermal vents. Endless tape loops played
cheesy Intel adverts from the tail end of the 20th, human chip-fab workers in
clean-room suits boogying or rocking to some ancient synthesizer beat. A
performance-art group, the Anderoids, identically dressed in blue three-piece
suits, hung around accosting visitors with annoyingly impenetrable PHB
marketroid jargon in an apparent attempt to get them to buy some proprietary
but horizontally-scalable vertical-market mission-critical business solution.
The subculture of the nerd was omnipresent: an attack of the fifty-foot Dilbert
loomed over walls, partitions and cubicle hell, glasses smudged and necktie
perpetually upturned in a quizzical fin-de-siŁcle loop.

I took in some more of the panels. Grizzled hackers chewed
over the ancient jousts of Silicon Valley in interminable detail: Apple versus
IBM, IBM versus DEC, RISC versus CISC/SIMD, Sun versus Intel. Iłve heard it all
before and itłs comforting for all its boring familiarity: dead fights, exhumed
by retired generals and refought across tabletop boards without the need for
any deaths or downsizings.

There was an alternate-history panel, too. Someone came up
with a beauty: a one-line change in the 1971 antitrust ruling against AT&T
that leaves them the right to sell software. UNIX dead by 1978, strangled by
expensive licenses and no source code for universities; C and C++ nonstarters:
the future as VMS. Another change left me shaking my head: five times per hour
on a cross-wind. Gary Kildall didnłt go flying that crucial day, was at the office
when IBM came calling in 1982 and sold them CP/M for their PCs. By Y2K,
Microsoft had a reputation for technical excellence, selling their commercial
UNIX-95 system as a high-end server system. (In this one, Bill Gates still
lives in the USA.) What startled me most was the inconsequentiality of these
points of departure: trillion-dollar industries that grew from a sentence or a
breeze in the space of twenty years.

<> 

This is the season of nerds, the flat tail at the end of the
sigmoid curve. Some time in the 1940s, the steam locomotive peaked; great
four-hundred-ton twin-engined monsters burning heavy fuel oil, pulling
miles-long train sets that weighed as much as freight ships. Twenty years
later, the last of these great workhorses were toys for boys whołd grown up
with cinders and steam in their eyes. Some time in the 2010s, the
microprocessor peaked: twenty years later our magi and witches invoke
self-programming demons that constantly enhance their own power, sucking vacuum
energy from the vasty deeps, while the last supercomputers draw fractals for
the amusement of gray-haired kids who had sand kicked in their eyes. Sometime
in the 2020s, nanotechnology began the long burn up the curve: the nostalgics
who play with their gray goo havenłt been decanted from their placentories yet,
and the field is still hot and crackling with the buzz of new ideas. Itłs a
cold heat that burns as it expands your mind, and I find less and less
inclination to subject myself to it these days. Iłm in my seventies; I used to
work with computers for real before I lost touch with the bleeding edge and
slipped into fandom, back when civilization ran on bits and bytes and the
machineries of industry needed a human touch at the mouse.

<> 

* * *

Eventually I returned to the bar. Ashley was still more or
less where Iłd left him the day before, slumped half under a table with his
ankles plugged into something that looked like a claymation filing cabinet. He
waved as I went past, so after I picked up my drink at the bar, I joined him.
�Howłre you feeling today?"

�Been worse," he said cheerfully. Three or four empty
bottles stood in front of him. �Couldnłt fetch me one, could you? Iłm on the
Kriek geuse."

I glanced under the table. �Uh, okay."

I took another look under the table as I handed him the
bottle. The multicolored cuboid had engulfed his legs to ankle-height before;
now it was sending pseudopods up toward his knees. �Your health. Seen much of
the show?"

�Naah." He raised the bottle to me, then drank from the
neck. �Iłm busy here."

�Doing what, if I can ask?"

�Iłve decided to emigrate to Tau Ceti." He gestured under
the table. �So Iłm mind-mapping."

�Mind-map" I blinked. I do not think that word means what I
think it means drifted through my head. �What for?"

He sighed. �Iłm sick of dolls, Richard. I need a change, but
Iłm not as flexible as I used to be. What do you think Iłm doing?"

I spared a glance under the table again. The thing was
definitely getting larger, creeping up to his knees. �Donłt be silly," I said.
�You donłt need to do this, do you?"

�Afraid I do." He drank some more beer. �Donłt worry, Iłve
been thinking about it for a long time. Iłm not a spring chicken, you know. And
itłs not as if Iłll be dead, or even much different. Just smarter, more
flexible. More me, the way I was. Able to work on the cutting edge."

�The cutting edge is not amenable to humans, Ash. Even the
weakly superhuman canłt keep up anymore."

He smiled, the ghost of an old devil-may-care grin. �So I
wonłt be weakly superhuman, will I?"

I drew my legs back, away from the Moravec larva below the
table. It was eating him slowly, converting his entire nervous system into a
simulation map inside whatever passed for its sensorium: when it finished, it
would pupate, and something that wasnłt Ashley anymore would hatch. Something
which maintained conscious continuity with the half-drunken idiot sitting in
front of me, but that resembled him the way a seventy-year-old professor resembles
a baby.

�Did you tell your ex-wife?" I asked.

He flinched slightly. �She canłt hurt me anymore." I shook
my head. �Another drink?" he asked.

�Just one for the road," I said gently. He nodded and
snapped his fingers for the bar. I made sure the drink lasted; I had a feeling
this was the last time Iłd see him, continuity of consciousness or no.

<> 

And that, dear reader, is why Iłm writing this con report.
The Your Antiques! audience want to know all about the history of Cray Y-MP-48
s/n 4002, hi-res walkthroughs and a sidebar describing the life and death of
old man Seymour. All of which is, well, train-spotting. And you canłt learn the
soul of an old machine by counting serial numbers; for that, you have to stand
on the footplate, squinting into the wind of its passage and shovelling coal
into the furnace, feel the rush of its inexorable progress up the accelerating
curve of history. In this day and age, if you want to learn what the buzz of
the computer industry was like, youłd have to stop being human. Transcendence
is an occupational hazard, the cliff at the edge of the singularity; try
climbing too fast and youłll fall over, stop being yourself. Itłs a big
improvement over suicide, but itłs still not something Iłd welcome just now,
and certainly not as casually as Ashley took to it. Eventually it will catch up
with me, too, and Iłll have to stop being human: but I like my childhood, thank
you very much, and the idea of becoming part of some vast, cool intelligence
working the quantum foam at the bottom of the M-theory soup still lies around
the final bend of my track.

<> 

Trunk And Disorderly

1. In Which Laura Departs and Fiona Makes a Request

�I want you to know, darling, that Iłm leaving you for
another sex robotand shełs twice the man youłll ever be," Laura explained as
she flounced over to the front door, wafting an alluring aroma of mineral oil
behind her.

Our arguments always began like that: this one was following
the script perfectly. I followed her into the hall, unsure precisely what cue
Iłd missed this time. �Laura"

She stopped abruptly, a faint whine coming from her ornately
sculpted left knee. �Iłm leaving," she told me, deliberately pitching her voice
in a modish mechanical monotone. �You canłt stop me. Youłre not paying my
maintenance. Iłm a free woman, and I donłt have to put up with your moods!"

The hell of it is, she was right. Iłd been neglecting her
lately, being overly preoccupied with my next autocremation attempt. �Iłm terribly
sorry," I said. �But can we talk about this later? You donłt have to walk out
right this instant"

�Therełs nothing to talk about." She jerked into motion
again, reaching for the door handle. �Youłve been ignoring me for months,
darling: Iłm sick of trying to get through to you! You said last time that
youłd try not to be so distant, but look how that turned out." She sighed and
froze the pose for a moment, the personification of glittering mechanistic
melodrama. �You didnłt mean it. Iłm sick of waiting for you, Ralph! If you
really loved me youłd face up to the fact that youłre an obsessive-compulsive,
and get your wetware fixed so that you could pay me the attention I deserve.
Until then, Iłm out of here!"

The door opened. She spun on one chromed stiletto heel, and
swept out of my life in a swish of antique Givenchy and ozone.

�Dash it all, not again!" I leaned my forehead against the
wall. �Why now, of all times?" Picking a fight then leaving me right before a
drop was one of her least endearing habits. This was the fifth time. She
usually came back right afterward, when she was loose and lubed from witnessing
me scrawl my butchness across the sky, but it never failed to make me feel like
an absolute bounder at the time; itłs a low blow to strike a cove right before
he tries to drill a hole in the desert at mach twenty-five, what? But you canłt
take femmes for granted, whether they be squish or clankie, and her accusation
wasnłt, I am bound to admit, entirely baseless.

I wandered into the parlor and stood between the gently
rusting ancestral space suits, overcome by an unpleasant sense of aimless
tension. I couldnłt decide whether I should go back to the simulator and
practice my thermal curves againbalancing on a swaying meter-wide slab of
ablative foam in the variable dynamic forces of atmospheric re-entry, a searing
blow-torch flare of hot plasma surging past, bare centimeters beyond my
helmetor get steaming drunk. And I hate dilemmas; therełs something terribly
non-U about having to actually think about things.

You can never get in too much practice before a freestyle competition,
and I had seen enough clowns drill a scorched hole in the desert that I was
under no illusions about my own invincibility, especially as this race was
being held under mortal jeopardy rules. On the other hand, Laurałs walk-out had
left me feeling unhinged and unbalanced, and Iłm never able to concentrate
effectively in that state. Maybe a long, hot bath and a bottle of sake would
get me over it so I could practice later; but tonight was the pre-drop
competitorsł dinner. The club prefers members to get their crashing and burning
done before the racesomething to do with minimizing our third-party insurance
premium, I gatherso itłs fried snacks all round, then a serving of rare
sirloin, and barely a drop of the old firewater all night. So I was perched on
the horns of an acute dilemmato tipple or topple as it werewhen the room
phone cleared its throat obtrusively.

�Ralph? Ralphie? Are you all right?"

I didnłt need the screen to tell me it was Fiona, my
half-sister. Typical of her to call at a time like this. �Yes," I said wearily.

�You donłt sound it!" she said brightly. Fi thinks that
negative emotions are an indicator of felonious intent.

�Laura just walked out on me again and Iłve got a drop
coming up tomorrow," I moaned.

�Oh Ralphie, stop angsting! Shełll be back in a week when
shełs run the script. You worry too much about her, she can look after herself.
I was calling to ask, are you going to be around next week? Iłve been invited
to a party Geraldine Ho is throwing for the downhill cross-country skiing
season on Olympus Mons, but my house-sitter phoned in pregnant unexpectedly and
my herpetologist is having another sex change so I was just hoping youłd be
able to look after Jeremy for me while Iłm gone, just for a couple of days or
maybe a week or two"

Jeremy was Fionałs pet dwarf mammoth, an orange-brown
knee-high bundle of hairy malevolence. Last time Iłd looked after Jeremy he
puked in my bedunder the duvetwhile Laura and I were hosting a formal orgy
for the Tsarevitch of Ceres, who was traveling incognito to the inner system
because of some boring edict by the Orthodox Patriarch condemning the fleshpits
of Venus. Then therełs the time Jeremy got at the port, then went on the
rampage and ate Cousin Branwynłs favorite skirt when we took him to Landsdown
Palace for a weekend with Fuffy Morgan, even though wełd locked him in one of
the old guard towers with a supply of whatever it is that dwarf mammoths are
supposed to eat. You really canłt take him anywherehełs a revolting beast. Not
to mention an alcoholic one.

�Must I?" I asked.

�Donłt whine!" Fi said brightly. �Nobody will ever take you
seriously if you whine, Ralphie. Anyway, you owe me a favor. Several favors,
actually. If I hadnłt covered up for you that time when Boris Oblomov and you
got drunk and took Uncle Featherstonehaughłs yacht out for a spin around the
moon without checking the anti-matter reserve in the starboard gravity
polarizer ...."

�Yes, Fi," I said wearily, when she finally let me get a
word in edge-ways: �I surrender. Iłll take Jeremy. But I donłt promise Iłll be
able to look after him if I die on the drop. You realize itłs under mortal
jeopardy rules? And I canłt guarantee Iłll be able to protect him from Laura if
she shows up again running that bestiality mod your idiot pal Larry thought it
would be a good idea to install on her when she was high on pink noise that
time"

�Thatłs enough about Larry," Fi said in a voice dripping
liquid helium. �You know Iłm not walking out with him any more. Youłll look
after Jeremy for two weeks and thatłs enough for me. Hełs been a little sulky
lately but Iłm sure youłd know all about that. Iłll make certain hełs backed up
first, then Iłll drop him off on my way to Sćo Paolo skyport, right?"

�What ho," I said dispiritedly, and put the phone down. Then
I snapped my fingers for a chair, sat down, and held my head in my hands for a
while. My sister was making a backup of her mammothłs twisted little psyche to
ensure Jeremy stayed available for future torments: nevertheless she wouldnłt
forgive me if I killed the brute. Femmes! U or non-U, theyłre equally
demanding. The chair whimpered unhappily as it massaged my tensed-up spine and
shoulders, but there was no escaping the fact that I was stressed-out. Tomorrow
was clearly going to be one of those days, and I hadnłt even scheduled the
traditional post-drop drink with the boys yet ....

* * * *

2. The New Butler Calls

I was lying on the bottom of the swimming pool in the conservatory
at the back of Chateau Pookie, breathing alcohol-infused air through a hose and
feeling sorry for myself, when the new butler found me. At least, I think
thatłs what I was doing. I was pretty far-gone, conflicted between the need to
practice my hypersonic p-waggling before the drop and the urge to drink Laurałs
absence out of my system. All I remember is a vague rippling blue curtain of
sunlight on scrolled ironworkthe ceilingand then a huge stark shadow looming
over me, talking in the voice of polite authority.

�Good afternoon, Sir. According to the diary, Sir is
supposed to be receiving his sisterłs mammoth in the front parlor in approximately
twenty minutes. Would Sir care to be sober for the occasion? And what suit
should Sir like to wear?"

This was about four more sirs than I could take lying down.
�Nnngk gurgle," I said, sitting up unsteadily. The breather tube wasnłt
designed for speech. Choking, I spat it out. �Młgosh and please excuse me, but
who the hell are you?"

�Alison Feng." She bowed stiffly, from the waist. �The
agency sent me, to replace your last, ah, man." She was dressed in the stark
black and white of a butler, and she did indeed have the voicesome very
expensive training, not to mention discreet laryngeal engineering, went into
producing that accent of polite condescension, the steering graces that could
direct even the richest and most irritable employer in directions less
conducive to their social embarrassment. But

�Youłre my new butler?" I managed to choke out.

�I believe so." One chiseled eyebrow signaled her
skepticism.

�Oh, oh jolly good, then, that squishie." A thought,
marinating in my sozzled subconscious, floated to the surface. �You, um, know
why my last butler quit?"

�No, sir." Her expression didnłt change. �In my experience
it is best to approach onełs prospective employers with an open mind."

�It was my sisterłs mammothłs fault," I managed to say
before a fit of coughing overcame me. �Listen, just take the bloody thing and
see itłs locked in the number three guest dungeon, the one thatłs fitted out
for clankie doms. It can tryłn destroy anything it bally likes in there, it
wonłt get very far anł we can fix it later. Hic. Glue the door shut, or weld it
or somethingone of her boyfriends trained the thing to pick locks with its
trunk. Got a sober-up?"

�Of course, sir." She snapped her fingers, and blow me if
there wasnłt one of those devilish red capsules balanced between her
white-gloved digits.

�Ugh." I took it and dry-swallowed, then hiccupped. �Fionałs
animal tamerłll probably drop the monster off in the porch but Iłd better get
upłnłcase sis shows." I hiccupped again, acid indigestion clenching my stomach.
�Urgh. Wossa invitation list for tonight?"

�Everything is perfectly under control," my new butler said,
a trifle patronizingly. �Now if Sir would care to step inside the dryer while I
lay out his suit"

I surrendered to the inevitable. After all, once youłve
accepted delivery of a dwarf mammoth on behalf of your sister nothing worse can
happen to you all day, can it?

Unfortunately, I was wrong. Fionałs chauffeuse did indeed deposit
Jeremy, but on a schedule of her own choosing. She must have already been on
the way as Fi was nattering on the blower. While Miss Feng was introducing
herself, she was sneakily decanting the putrid proboscidean into the ornamental
porch via her limousinełs airlock. She accomplished this with stealth and
panache, and made a successful retreat, but not before she completed my
sisterłs act of domestic sabotage by removing the frilly pink restraining rope
that was all that kept Jeremy from venting his spleen on everything within
reach. Which he commenced to do all over great-uncle Arnoldłs snooker table,
which I was only looking after while he was out-system on business. It was the
triumphant squeaking that clued me in that we had problemsnormally Jeremy
manages to achieve a preternaturally silent approach while he sneaks up on one
with mischief in what passes for his mindas I headed toward the stairs to my
dressing room.

�Help me," I said, gesturing at the porch, from which a duet
for Hellłs piccolo and bull in a china shop was emanating.

The butler immediately rose in my estimation by producing a
bolas. �Would this serve?" she asked.

�Yes. Only hełs a bit short for a mammoth"

Too late. Miss Fengłs throw was targeted perfectly, and it
would have succeeded if Jeremy had been built to the scale of a typical
pachyderm. Alas, the whirling balls flew across the room and tangled in the
chandelier while Jeremy, trumpeting and honking angrily, raised his tusks and
charged at my kneecaps. �Oh dear," said the new butler.

I blinked and began to move. I was too slow, the sober-up
still fighting the residual effects of the alcohol in my blood. Jeremy veered
toward me, tusks raised menacingly to threaten the old family jewels. I began
to turn, and was just raising my arms to fend off the monster (who appeared
dead-set on editing the family tree to the benefit of Fionałs line) when Miss
Feng leaned sideways and in one elegant gesture ripped the ancient lace
curtains right off the rail and swiped them across my assailantłs tusks.

The next minute remains, mercifully, a confused blur. Somehow
my butler and I mammoth-handled the kicking and strugglingnot to mention
squealing and secretingJeremy up the rear staircase and into the second best
guest suitełs dungeon. Miss Feng braced herself against the door while I rushed
dizzily to the parlor and returned with a tube of InstaSteel Bulkhead Bond,
with which we reinforced the stout oak partition. Finally my stomach rebelled,
quite outraged by the combination of sober-up and adrenaline, at which point
Miss Feng diffidently suggested I proceed to the master bathroom and freshen up
while she dealt with the porch, the pachyderm, and my suit in descending order
of priorities.

By the time Iłd cleaned up, Miss Feng had laid a freshly manufactured
suit for me on the dresser. �I took the liberty of arranging for a limousine to
your club, sir," she said, almost apologetically. �It is approaching eighteen
ołclock: one wouldnłt want to be late."

�Eighteen" I blinked. �Oh dear, thatłs dashed awkward."

�Indeed." She watched me cautiously. �Ah, about the agency"

I waved my hand dismissively. �If you can handle Jeremy I
see no reason why you couldnłt also handle great-uncle Arnold when he gets back
from Proxima Tau Herpes or wherever hełs gone. Not to mention the Dread Aunts,
bless łem. Assuming, that is, you want the job"

Miss Feng inclined her head. �Certainly one is prepared to assume
the role for the duration of the probationary period." Sotto voce she added,
almost too quietly for me to catch: �although continuing thereafter presupposed
that one or both of us survives the experience ...."

�Well, Iłm glad thatłs sorted." I sniffed. �Iłd better trot!
If you could see the snooker table goes for repair and look to the curtains,
Iłll be off, what-what?"

�Indeed sir." She nodded as if about to say something else,
thought better of it, and then held the door open for me. �Good night, sir."

* * * *

3. The Dangerous Drop Club

I spent the evening at the Dangerous Drop Club, tackling a rather
different variety of dangerous drop from the one Iłd be confronting on the
morrow. I knew perfectly well at the time that this was stupid (not to mention
rash to the point of inviting the attention of the Dread Aunts, those
intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic), but I confess I was so rattled by
the combination of Laurałs departure, my new butlerłs arrival, and the presence
of the horrible beast in room two that for the life of me I simply couldnłt
bring myself to engage in any activity more constructive than killing my own
brain cells.

Boris Kaminski was present of course, boasting in a low-key
manner about how he was going to win the race and buying everyone who
matteredthe other competitors, in other wordsas many drinks as they would
accept. That was his prerogative, for, as the ancients would put it, therełs no
prize for second place; he wasnłt the only one attempting to seduce his
comrades into suicide through self-indulgence. �We fly tomorrow, chaps, and
some of us might not be coming back! Crack open the vaults and sample the
finest vintages. Otherwise you may never know .... �Boris always gets a bit
like that before a drop, morbidly maudlin in a gloating kind of way. Besides,
itłs a good excuse for draining the cellars, and Borisłs credit is good for
it�Kaminski" is not his real name but the name he uses when he wants to be a
fabulously rich playboy with none of the headaches and anxieties that go with
his rank. This evening he was attired in an outrageous outfit modeled on
something Tsar Putin the First might have worn when presiding over an acid rave
in the barbaric dark ages before the re-enlightenment. Hełd probably found it
in the back of his big brotherłs wardrobe.

�We know you only want to get us drunk so you can take unfair
advantage of us," joshed Tolly Forsyth, raising his glass of Chateau !Kung,
�but I say letłs drink a toast to you! Feet cold and bottoms down."

�Glug glug," buzzed Toadsworth, raising a glass with his
telescoping sink-plunger thingie. Glasses were ceremoniously drained. (At
least, thatłs what I think he saidhis English is rather sadly deficient, and
one of the rules of the club is: no neural prostheses past the door. Which
makes it a bit dashed hard when youłre dealing with fellows who canłt tell a
fuck from a frapp� I can tell you, like some high-bandwidth clankie heirs, but
thatłs what you get for missing out on a proper classical education, undead
languages and all, say I.) Goblets were ceremonially drained in a libation to
the forthcoming toast race.

�Itłs perfectly all right to get me drunk," said Marmaduke
Bott, his monocle flashing with the ruby fire of antique stock-market ticker
displays: �Iłm sure I wonłt win, anyway! Iłm sitting this one out in the bleachers."

�Drink is good," agreed Edgestar Wolfblack, injecting some
kind of hideously fulminating fluorocarbon lubricant into one of his six knees.
Most of us in the club are squishies, but Toadsworth and Edgestar are both
clankies. However, while the Toadsterłs knobbly conical exterior conceals
whatłs left of his old squisher body, tucked decently away inside his
eye-turret, Edgestar has gone the whole hog and uploaded himself into a ceramic
exoskeleton with eight or nine highly specialized limbs. He looks like the
bastard offspring of a multi-tool and a mangabot. �Carbon is the new" his
massively armored eyebrows furrowed�black?" Hełs a nice enough chappie and he
went to the right school, but he was definitely at the back of the queue the
day they were handing the cortical upgrades out.

�Another wee dram for me," I requested, holding out my snifter
for a passing bee-bot to vomit the nectar into. �I got a new butler today," I
confided. �Nearly blew it, though. Sis dumped her pet mammoth on me again and
the butler had to clean up before Iłd even had time to fool her into swearing
the oath of allegiance."

�How totally horrible," Abdul said in a tone that prompted
me to glance at him sharply. He smirked. �And how is dear Fiona doing this
week? Itłs ages since she last came to visit."

�She said something about the Olympic skiing season, I
think. And then shełs got a few ships to launch. Nothing very important aside
from that, just the aprŁs ski salon circuit." I yawned, trying desperately to
look unimpressed. Abdul is perhaps the only member of the club who genuinely
out-ranks Boris. Boris is constrained to use a nom de guerre because of his
position as heir to the throne of all the Russiasat least, all the Russias
that lie between Mars and Jupiterbut Abdul doesnłt even bother trying to
disguise himself. Hełs the younger brother of his Excellency the Most Spectacularly
Important Emir of Mars, and when youłve got that much clout you get to do
whatever you want. Especially if it involves trying to modify the landscape at
mach twenty rather than assassinating your elder siblings, the traditional
sport of kings. Abdul is quite possibly certifiably insane, having graduated to
orbital freestyle re-entry surfing by way of technical diving on Europa and naturist
glacier climbing on Plutoand he doesnłt even have my unfortunate
neuroendocrine disorder as an excusebut hełs a fundamentally sound chappie at
heart.

�Hah. Well, wełll just have to invite her along to the party
afterward, wonłt we?" He chuckled.

�Par-ty?" Toadsworth beeped up.

�Of course. Itłll be my hundredth drop, and Iłm having a party."
Abdul smirked some morehe had a very knowing smirkand sipped his eighty-year
Inverteuchtie. �Everyone who survives is invited! Bottoms up, chaps?"

�Bottoms up," I echoed, raising my glass. �Tally ho!"

* * * *

4. The Sport of Kings

The day of the drop dawned bright and coldat least it was
bright and cold when I went out on the balcony beside the carport to suit up
for my ride.

Somewhat to my surprise, Miss Feng was already up and waiting
for me with a hot flask of coffee, a prophylactic sober-up, and a good-luck
cigar. �Is this competition entirely safe, Sir?" she enquired as I chugged my
espresso.

�Oh, absolutely not," I reassured her: �but Iłll feel much
better afterward! Nothing like realizing youłre millimeters away from flaming
meteoritic death to get the old blood pumping, what?"

�One couldnłt say." Miss Feng looked doubtful as she
accepted the empty flask. �Onełs normal response to incendiary situations that
get the blood pumping is a wound dressing and an ambulance. Or to keep the
employer from walking into the death trap in the first place. Ahem. I assume
Sir intends to survive the experience?"

�Thatłs the idea." I grinned like an idiot, feeling the
familiar pulse of excitement. It takes a lot to drive off the black dog of depression,
but dodging the bullet tends to send it to the kennels for a while. �By the
way, if Laura calls could you tell her Iłm dying heroically to defend her
virtue or something? Iłll see her afteroh, that reminds me! Abdul al-Matsumoto
has invited usall the survivors, I meanto a weekend party at his place on
Mars. So if you could see that the gig is ready to leave after my drop as soon
as Iłve dressed for dinner, and I donłt suppose you could make sure therełs a
supply of food for the little monster, could you? If we leave him locked in the
garret dungeon he canłt get into trouble, not beyond eating the curtains"

Miss Feng cleared her throat and looked at me reproachfully.
�Sir did promise his sister to look after the beast in person, didnłt he?"

I stared at her, somewhat taken aback. �Dash it all, are you
implying ...?"

Miss Feng handed me my pre-emptive victory cigar. She continued,
in a thoughtful tone of voice: �Has Sir considered that it might be in his best
interestsshould he value the good opinion of his sisterto bring Jeremy along?
After all, Lady Fionałs on Mars, too, even if shełs preoccupied with the aprŁs
ski circuit. If by some mischance she were to visit the Emirłs palace and find
Sir sans Jeremy it might be more than trivially embarrassing."

�Dash it, youłre right. I suppose Iłll have to pack the
bloody pachyderm, wonłt I? What a bore. Will he fit in the trunk?"

Miss Feng sighed, very quietly. �I believe that may be a
remote theoretical possibility. I shall endeavor to find out while Sir is enjoying
himself not dying."

�Try beer," I called as I picked up my surfboard and climbed
aboard the orbital delivery jitney. �Jeremy loves beer!" Miss Feng bowed as the
door closed. I hope she doesnłt give him too much, I thought. Then the gravity
squirrelizer chittered to itself angrily, decided it was on the wrong planet,
and tried to rectify the situation in its own inimitable way. I lay back and
waited for orbit. I wasnłt entirely certain of the wisdom of my proposed course
of actionthere are few predicaments as grim as facing a mammoth with a
hangover across the breakfast tablebut Miss Feng seemed like a competent sort,
and I supposed Iłd just have to trust her judgment. So I took a deep breath,
waited another sixty seconds (until the alarm chimed), then opened the door and
stepped off the running board over three hundred kilometers of hostile vacuum.

The drop went smoothlyas I suppose you guessed, or I
wouldnłt be here to bend your ear with the story, what? The adrenaline rush of
standing astride a ten centimeter thick surfboard as it bumps and vibrates
furiously in the hypersonic air-flow, trying to throw you off into the
blast-furnace tornado winds of re-entry, is absolutely indescribable. So is the
sight of the circular horizon flattening and growing, coming up to batter at
your feet with angry fists of plasma. Ah, what rhapsody! What delight! I
havenłt got a poetic bone in my body, but when you tap into Toadsworth outside
of the club-housełs suppressor field thatłs the kind of narcotic drivel hełll
feed you. I think hełs a jolly good poet, for an obsessive-compulsive clankie
with a staircase phobia and knobbly protrusions; but, at any rate, a more
accurate description of competitive orbital re-entry diving I havenłt heard
from anyone recently.

A drop doesnłt take long. The dangerous stage lasts maybe
twenty minutes from start to finish, and only the last five minutes is hot.
Then you slow to sub-sonic velocity and let go of your smoldering surfboard,
and pray to your ancestors that your parachute is folded smartly, because it
would be mortifying to have to be rescued by the refereełs skiff. Especially if
they donłt get to you until after you complete your informal enquiry into
lithobraking, eh?

There was a high overcast as I came hurtling in across Utah,
and I think I might have accidentally zigged instead of zagging a little too
firmly as I tried to see past a wall of cloud ahead and below me, because when
my fireball finally dissipated I found myself skidding across the sky about
fifty kilometers off course. This would be embarrassing enough on its own, but
then my helmet helpfully highlighted three other competitorsAbdul among
them!who were much closer to the target zone. I will confess I muttered an
unsportingly rude word at that juncture, but the gamełs the thing and it isnłt
over łtil itłs over.

In the end I touched down a mere thirty-three thousand
meters off-base, and a couple of minutes later the referees ruled I was third
on target. Perry OłPearywho had been leading memanaged to make himself the
toast of the match before he reached the tropopause by way of a dodgy ring seal
on his left knee. Dashed bad play, that, but at least he died with his boots
oneven if they were glowing red-hot and welded to his ankles.

I caught a lift the rest of the way to the drop base from
one of the referee skiffs. As I tromped across the dusty desert floor in my
smoldering armor, feeling fully alive for the first time in weeks, I found the
party already in full swing. Abdulłs entourage, all wearing traditional kimonos
and burnooses, had brought along a modified camel that widdled champagne in
copious quantities. He held up a huge platinum pitcher: �Drinks are on me!" he
yodeled as Tolly Forsyth and some rum cove of a Grand VizierToshiro Ibn
Cut-Throat, I thinkhoisted him atop their shoulders and danced a victory
mazurka.

�Jolly good show, old son!" I called, ditching my helmet and
gloves gratefully and pouring a beaker of bubbly over my steaming head. �Bottoms
up!"

�Błmłs up undeed!" Abdul sprayed camel flux everywhere in
salute. He was well into the spirit of things, I could tell; indeed, the spirit
of things was well into him.

Ibn Cut-Throatłs kid brother sidled up behind me. �If
Ralphie-sama would care to accompany me to His Majestyłs Brotherłs pleasure
barge, we will be departing for Mars as soon as the rest of the guests arrive,"
he intimated.

�Rest of the guests? Capital, capital!" I glanced round in
search of my clankie doxy, but there was no sign of Laura. Which was dashed
strange, for shełd normally be all over me by this point in the proceedings: my
nearly being turned off in front of an audience usually turned her on like a
knife-switch. �Who else is coming?"

�Lots of people." Ibn Cut-Throat Junior looked furtive:
�itłs a very big party, as befits the princełs birthday. Did you know it was
his birthday ...? Itłs a theme party, of course, in honor of the adoptive
ancestors of his ancient line, the house of Saud."

Abdul al-Matsumoto is as much an authentic prince of Araby
as I am a scion of the MacGregor, but thatłs the price we all pay for being
descended from the nouveau richewho survived the Great Downsizing hundreds of
years ago. Our ancestors bought the newly vacated titles of nobility, and consequently
we descendants are forced to learn the bally traditions that go with them. I
spent years enduring lessons in dwarf-tossing and caber-dancing, not to mention
damaging my hearing learning to play the electric bagpipes, but Abdul has it
worse: hełs required by law to go around everywhere with a tea-towel on his
head and to refrain from drinking fermented grape juice unless itłs been cycled
through the kidneys of a re-engineered dromedary. This aristocracy lark has its
down side, you mark my words.

�A theme party," I mused, removing my face from my cup:
�that sounds like fun. But I was planning on taking my gig. Is that okey-dokey,
as they say? Is there room in the imperial marina?"

�Of course," said the vizier, leering slightly as a shapely
femme wearing a belly-dancerłs costume sashayed past. I noticed with distaste
his hairless face and the pair of wizened testicles on a leather cord around
his neck: some people think too much testosterone makes a cove stupid, but
therełs such a thing as going too far, what? �Just remember, itłs a fancy-dress
party. The theme is the thousand nights and one night, in honor of and for the
selection of His Excellencyłs newest concuboid. His Excellency says you should
feel free to bring a guest or two if you like. If you need an outfit"

�Iłm sure my household wardrobe will be able to see to my
needs," I said, perhaps a trifle too sharply. �See you there!"

Ibn Cut-Throat bowed and scraped furiously as he backed away
from me. Something oddłs going on here, I realized, but before I could put my
finger on it there was a whoosh and I saw the familiar sight of my gigwell,
actually itłs Uncle Featherstonehaughłs, but as hełs not due back for six years
I donłt think that matters too muchdescending to a perfect three-point landing.

I walked over to it slowly, lost in thought, only to meet
Miss Feng marching down the ramp. �I didnłt know you could fly," I said.

�My usual employer requires a full pilotłs qualification,
Sir. Military unrestricted license with interstellar wings and combat
certification." She cleared her throat: �Among other skills." She took in my
appearance, from scorched ablative boots to champagne hairstyle: �Iłve taken
the liberty of laying out Sirłs smoking jacket in the master stateroom. Can I
suggest a quick shower might refresh the parts that Sirłs friendsł high spirits
have already reached?"

�You may suggest anything you like, Miss Feng, I have complete
confidence in your professional discretion. I should warn you I have a guest
tagging along, but he wonłt be any trouble. If you show him to the lounge while
I change, we shall be able to depart promptly. I donłt suppose youłve heard
anything from Laura?"

She shook her head minutely. �Not so much as a peep, Sir."
She stepped aside. �So, Iłm to set course for Mars as soon as the guest is
aboard? Very good, Sir. I shall be on the bridge if you need me."

It appeared that Miss Feng was not only an accomplished butler,
but a dashed fine pilot as well. Would miracles never cease?

* * * *

5. Miss Feng Serves the Wrong Beer

Uncle Featherstonehaughłs boat is furnished in white oak panels
with brass trim, ochre crushed velvet curtains, and gently hissing gas lamps. A
curving sofa extends around the circumference of the lounge, and for those
tiresome long voyages to the outer system there are cozy staterooms accessible
through hidden sliding panels in the walls. It is a model of understated
classical luxury in which a cove and his fellows can get discreetly bladdered
while watching the glorious relativistic fireworks in the crystal screen that
forms the ceiling. However, for the journey to Abdulłs pleasure dome on Mars it
suffered from three major drawbacks. For one thing, in a fit of misplaced
bonhomie Iłd offered Edgestar Wolfblack a lift, and old Edgy wasnłt the best
company for a post-drop pre-prandial, on account of his preferred tipples being
corrosive or hypergolic, or both. Secondly, Laura was still making her absence
felt. And finally, as the icing on the cake, so to speak, Miss Feng had locked
Jeremy in the luggage compartment. He was kicking up a racket as only a sober
dwarf mammoth with a hangover can, and I could barely hear myself think over
the din.

�Dash it all, how much beer did you give him?" I asked my
butler.

�Two liters, Sir," Miss Feng replied. �Of the rather elderly
Bragote from the back of your unclełs laboratory. I judged it the least likely
to be missed."

�Oh dear God!" I cried.

�Bragh-ought?" echoed Edgy, as a plaintive squeal and a loud
thud echoed from the under floor bay. By the sound of things Jeremy was trying
to dash his brains out on the undercarriage. (Unfortunately a dwarf mammothłs
skull is thick enough to repel meteors and small anti-matter weapons.)

�Was that a mistake?" Miss Feng enquired, unexpectedly tentatively.

I sighed. �Youłre new to the household, so I suppose you werenłt
to know this, but anything Uncle Featherstonehaugh brewed is best treated as an
experiment in creative chemical warfare. He was particular keen on the Bragote:
itłs a mediaeval recipe and it requires a few years to mature to the
consistency of fine treacle, but once you dilute the alcohol itłs an excellent
purgative. Or so Iłm told," I added hastily, not wanting to confess to any
teenage indiscretions.

�Oh dear." Her brow wrinkled. �One suspected it was a little
past its prime. There is another firkin in the hold, just in case it becomes
necessary to sedate Jeremy again."

�I donłt think that will work," I said regretfully. �Hełs
not entirely stupid. Uncle was working on a thesis that the Black Death of 1349
wasnłt actually a plague but a hangover."

�Blackdeath? Is no posthuman of that nomenclature in my
clade," Edgy complained.

BUMP went the floor beneath my feet, causing my teeth to vibrate.
�Only two hours to Mars," Miss Feng observed. �If Sir will excuse me, I have to
see to his costume before arrival." She retreated into one of the staterooms,
leaving me alone with old Edgy and the pachydermal punctuation.

* * * *

6. Pleasure Domes of Mars: A Primer

I arrived on Mars somewhat rattled, but physically none the
worse for wear. Miss Feng had rustled up a burnoose, djellaba, and antique
polyester two-piece for me from somewhere, so that I looked most dashing,
absolutely in character as a highly authentic Leisure Suit Larry of Arabia. I
tried to inveigle her into costume, but she demurred: �I am your butler, Sir,
not a party-goer in my own capacity. It wouldnłt be right," she said, tucking
an emergency vial of after-shave in my breast pocket. Itłs hard to argue with
such certainty, although I have a feeling that she only said it because she
didnłt approve of the filmy harem pants and silver chainmail brassiere Iłd
brought along in hopes of being able to tempt Laura into them. Edgestar we
dressed in a rug and trained to spit on demand: he could be my camel, just as
long as nobody expected him to pass champagne through his reactorłs secondary
coolant circuit. Jeremy emerged from storage pallid and shaking, so Miss Feng
and I improvised a leash and decided to introduce him as the White Elephant.
Not that a real White Elephant would have menaced the world with such a malign,
red-rimmed glareor have smelled so unpleasantly fustybut you canłt have everything.

A word about Abdulłs digs. Abdul al-Matsumoto, younger
brother of the Emir of Mars, lives in a madly gothic palace on the upper slopes
of Elysium Mons, thirteen kilometers above the dusty plain. Elysium Mons is so
big youłd hardly know you were on a mountain, so at some time in the preceding
five centuries one of Abdulłs more annoying ancestors vandalized the volcano by
carving out an areophysical folly, a half-scale model of Mount Everest
protruding from the rim of the caldera. Thus, despite the terraforming that has
turned the crumbly old war god into a bit of a retirement farm these days,
Abdulłs pleasure dome really is a dome, of the old-fashioned do not break
glass, do not let air out (unless you want to die) variety.

Ground Control talked Miss Feng down into the marina below
the sparkly glass facets of the dome, then sent a crawler tunnel to lock on to
the door before old Edgy could leap out onto the surface and test his vacuum
seals.

The door opened with a clunk. �Letłs go, what?" I asked Jeremy.
Jeremy sat down, swiveled one jaundiced eye toward me, and emitted a plaintive
honk. �Be like that, then," I muttered, bending to pick him up. Dwarf mammoths
are heavy, even in Martian gravity, but I managed to tuck him under my arm and,
thus encumbered, led the way down the tube toward Abdulłs reception.

If you are ever invited to a party by a supreme planetary
overlordłs spoiled playboy of a younger brother, you can expect to get
tiresomely lost unless you remember to download a map of the premises into your
monocle first. Abdulłs humble abode boasts 2428 rooms, of which 796 are
bedrooms, 915 are bathrooms, 62 are offices, and 147 are dungeons. (There is
even a choice of four different Planetary Overlord Command Bunkers, each with
their own color-coordinated suite of Doomsday Weapon Control Consoles, for
those occasions on which one is required to entertain multiple planetary
overlords simultaneously.)

If the palace was maintained the old-fashioned wayby
squishy servantsit would be completely unmanageable: but it was designed in
the immediate aftermath of the Martian hyper-scabies outbreak of 2407 that
finished off those bits of the Solar System that hadnłt already been clobbered
by the Great Downsizing. Consequently itłs full of shiny clicky things that
scuttle about when youłre not watching and get underfoot as they polish the
marble flags and repair the amazingly intricate lapis lazuli mosaics and
re-fill the oil lamps with extra-virgin olive oil. It still needs a sizable
human staff to run it, but not the army youłd expect for a pile several sizes
larger than the Vatican Hilton.

I bounced out of the boarding tube into the entrance hall
and right into the outstretched arms of Abdul, flanked by two stern, silent
types with swords, and a supporting cast of houris, hashishin, and hangers-on.
�Ralphie-san!" he cried, kissing me on both cheeks and turning to show me off
to the crowd: �I want you all to meet my honored guest, Ralph MacDonald Suzuki
of MacDonald, Fifth Earl of That Clan, a genuine Japanese Highland Laird from
old Scotland! Ralphie is a fellow skydiver and all-around good egg. Ralph, this
isharrumph!Vladimir Illich of Ulianov, Chief Commissar of the Soviet Onion."
Ulianov grinned: under the false pate I could see it was our old drinking chum
Boris the Tsarevitch. �And thiswhy, Edgy! I didnłt recognize you in that! Is
it a llama? How very realistic!"

�No, is meant to be a monkey," explained Wolfblack, twirling
so that his false camel-skin disguise flapped about. I opened my mouth to tell
him that the barrel Miss Feng had strapped to his back to provide support for
the hump had slipped, but he turned to Abdul: �You like?"

�Jolly good, that outfit!"

�Pip pip," said Toadsworth, whirring alongside with a glass
of the old neurotoxins gripped in one telescoping manipulator. I think it might
have been a high-bandwidth infoburst rather than a toast, but due to my
unfortunate hereditary allergy to implants Iłm very bad at spotting that kind
of thing. �Which way to the bar, old fellow?"

�That way," suggested Ibn Cut-Throat, springing from a
hidden trapdoor behind a Ming vase. He pointed through an archway at one side
of the hall. �Be seeing you!" His eyeballs gleamed with villainous pro-mise.

A black-robed figure in a full veil was staring at me from behind
two implausibly weaponized clankie hashishin at the back of the party. I got an
odd feeling about them, but before I could say anything Toadsworth snagged my
free hand in his gripper and began to tug me toward the old tipple-station.
�Come-on! Inebriate!" He buzzed: �all enemies of sobriety must be inebriated!
Pip pip!" Jeremy let out a squealing trumpet blast close to my ear and began to
kick. Not having a third hand with which to steady him, I let go and he shot
off ahead of us, stubby ears flapping madly in the low Martian gravity.

�Oh dear," said Miss Feng.

�Why donłt you just run along and see to my chambers?" I
asked, irritated by the thought that the bloody elephant might poop in the
punchbowl (or worse, dip his whistle in it) before I got there. �Leave the
beast to me, Iłll sort him out later."

�Inebriate! Inebriate!" cried Toadsworth, hurtling forward,
the lights on his cortical turret flashing frantically. �To the par-ty!"

* * * *

7. In Which Ralph Explains the Nature of his Relationship
with Laura

Now dash it all, it behooves a young fellow to remain
discreet and close-lipped about matters of an embarrassingly personal nature.
But itłs also true to say that this story wonłt make a lot of sense without
certain intimate understandingsa nodłs as good as a wink to a deaf robot and
all thatand in any event, ever since the minutiae of my personal affairs
became part of the public gossip circuit following the unfortunate affair
involving the clankie dominatrix, the cat burglar, and the alien hive-mind, it
would be somewhat hypocritical of me to stand upon my privacy. So where a more
modest cove might hesitate, allow me to step in it and, at risk of offending
your sensibilities, explain something about my complex relationship with Laura.

I sometimes fancy that life must have been so much simpler
back in the days of classical Anglo-American civilization, when there were only
two openly acknowledged genders and people didnłt worry about whether their
intimate affairs were commutative, transitive, or reflexive. No
clankie/squishie, no U or Non-U, nothing but the antique butch/femme
juxtaposition, and that was pretty much determined by the shape of the external
genitalia you were born with. Perverts dashed well knew what they were, and
life was simple. Modern life is enough to drive a cove to drugs in my opinion,
but as a Butch U Squishie of impeccable ancestry I have the social option of
maintaining a mistress, not to mention the money, and thatłs where Laura comes
in.

Laura is very clankie and very frilly femme with it, but
with a squishy core and sufficiently non-U to make a casual relationship just
barely acceptable to polite society on the usual sub-rosa Morganatic basis. We
met on a shooting weekend at one of the Pahlavi girlłs ranches on Luna, doing
our bit for evolution by helping thin the herd of rampaging feral bots during
their annual migration across the Sea of Tranquillity. Iłm not sure what she
was doing there, but I think it was something to do with working her way around
the Solar System on a cut-price non-U grand tour: laboring as a courtesy
masseuse in Japan and a topiarist on Ceres while saving up the price of her
next interplanetary jaunt. Her maternity factory or mother or whoever was
sending her a small allowance to help pay her way, I think, but she was having
to work as well to make ends meet, a frightfully non-U thing for a cute little
clankie princess to have to do. Our eyes met over the open breech of her
silver-chased Purdey over-and-under EMP cannon, and as soon as I saw her
delicately wired eyelashes and the refractive sheen on her breasts,
simultaneously naked and deliciously inaccessible in the vacuum, I knew I had to
have her. �Why, I do declare Iłm out of capacitors!" she fluttered at me, and I
bent over backward to offer her my heart, and the keys to the guest room.

There is something more than a little bit perverse about a
squish who chases clankie skirt: even, one might suppose, something of the
invert about them; but I can cope with sly looks in public, and our butch/femme
U/non-U tuple is sufficiently orthodox to merely Outrage the Aunts, rather than
crossing the line and causing Offence. If she showed more squish while being
less non-U, I suppose it would be too risqu� to carry on in publicbut I digress.
I trust you can sympathize with my confusion? What else is a healthy boy to do
when his lusts turn in a not-quite-respectable direction?

Of course, I was younger and rather more foolish when I
first clapped eyes on the dame, and wełve had our ups and downs since then. She
was, to be fair, unaware of my unfortunate neurohormonal problems: and I wasnłt
entirely clear on the costs, both mechanical and emotional, of maintaining a
clankie doxie in the style to which she would want to become accustomed. Nor
did I expect her to be so enthusiastic a proponent of personality patches, or
so prone to histrionic fits and thermionic outrages. I expect I had some
surprises for her, too. But we mostly seemed to bump along all rightuntil that
last pre-drop walk-out, and her failure to turn up at the drop zone.

* * * *

8. Jeremy Runs Amok; A Dreadful Discovery before Dinner

Among the various manners of recovering from the neurasthenic
tension that accompanies a drop, I must admit that the one old Abdul had laid
on for us took first prize for decadent (that means good) taste. Itłs hard to
remain stressed out while reclining on a bed of silks in a pleasure palace on
Mars, with nubile young squishies to drop pre-fermented grapes through your
open lips, your very own mouth-boy to keep the hookah smoldering, and a clankie
band plangently plucking its various organs in the far corner of the room.

Dancers whirled and wiggled and undulated across the stage
at the front of the hall, while a rather fetching young squishie lad in a gold
lam� loincloth and peacock feather turban waited at my left shoulder to keep my
cocktail glass from underflowing. Candied fruits and jellied Europan cryoplankton
of a most delightful consistency were of course provided. �What-ho, this is the
life, isnłt it?" I observed in the general direction of Toadsworth. My bot
buddy was parked adjacent to my bower, his knobbly mobility unit sucking
luxuriously conditioned juice from a discreet outlet while the still squishy
bits of his internal anatomy slurped a remarkably subtle smoked Korean soy ale
from a Klein stein by way of a curly straw.

�Beep beep," he responded. Then, expansively and slowly,
�you seem a little melancholy about something, old chap. In fact, if you had
hyperspectral imagers like me, you might notice you were a little drawn. Like
this: pip." He said it so emphatically that even my buggy-but-priceless family
heirloom amanuensis recognized it for an infoburst and misfiled it somewhere.
�Indiscretions aside, if therełs anything a cove can do to help youenemies you
want inebriated, planets you want conqueredfeel free to ask the Toadster,
what?"

�Youłre a jolly fine fellow and I may just do that," I said.
�But Iłm afraid itłs probably nothing you can help with. Iłm in a bit of a blue
funkdid you know Laura left me? Shełs done it before several times, of course,
but she always comes back after the drop. Not this time, though, I havenłt seen
gear nor sprocket of her since the day before yesterday and Iłm getting a bit
worried."

�I shall make inquiries right away, old chap. The clankie grapevine
knows everything. If I may make so bold, she probably just felt the need to get
away for a while and lube her flaps: shełll be back soon enough." Toadsworth
swiveled his ocular turret, monospectral emitters flashing brightly. �Bottoms
up!"

I made no comment on the evident fact that if the Toadster
ever did get himself arse over gripper hełd be in big trouble righting himself,
but merely raised my glass in salute. Then I frowned. It was empty! �Boy?
Wherełs my drink?" I glanced round. A furry brown sausage with two prominently
flared nostrils was questing about the edge of the bower where my cocktail boy
had been sitting a moment before.

�Grab him!" I swore at the lad, but I fear it wasnłt his
fault: Jeremy had already done him a mischief, and he was doubled over in a
ball under the nearest curtain, meeping pathetically. Jeremy sucked the remains
of my Saturnian ring ice-water margaritas up his nose with a ghastly slurping
noise, and winked at me: then he sneezed explosively. An acrid eruction slapped
my face. �Vile creature!" I raged, �What do you think youłre doing?"

Iłm told that I am usually quite good with small children
and other animals, but I have a blind spot when it comes to Jeremy. He narrowed
his eyes, splayed his ears wide, and emitted a triumphantnot to say
alcohol-saturatedtrumpet-blast at me. Got you, he seemed to be saying. Why
should you two-legs have all the fun? I made a grab for his ears but he was too
fast for me, nipping right under my seat and out the other side, spiking my
unmentionables on the way as I flailed around in search of something to throw
at him.

�Right! That does it!" People to either side were turning to
stare at me, wondering what was going on. �Iłm going to get you" I managed to
lever myself upright just in time to see Jeremy scramble out through one of the
pointy-looking archways at the back of the hall, then found myself eyeball to
hairy eyeball with Ibn Cut-Throatłs administrative assistant.

�Please not to create so much of a noise, Ralphie-san," said
the junior under-vizier: �His Excellency has an announcement to make."

And it was true. Human flunkies were discreetly passing
among the audience, attracting the guestsł attention and quieting down the
background of chit-chat. The band had settled down and was gently serenading us
with its plucked vocal chords. I glanced after Jeremy one last time: �Iłll deal
with you later," I muttered. Even by Jeremyłs usual standards, this behavior
was quite intolerable; if I didnłt know better, Iłd swear there was something
up with the blighter. Then I looked back at the stage at the front of the room.

The curtain sublimed in a showy flash of velvet smoke, revealing
a high throne cradled in a bower of hydroponically rooted date palms. His
Excellency Abdul al-Matsumoto, younger sibling of the Emir of Mars, rose from
his seat upon the throne: naked eunuch bodyguards, their skins oiled and
gleaming, raised their katanas in salute to either side. �My friends," old
Abdul droned in a remarkably un-Abdul like monotone: �It makes me more happy
than I can tell you to welcome you all to my humble retreat tonight."

Abdul wore robes of blinding white cotton, and a broad gold
chainfirst prize for atmosphere diving from the club, I do believe. Behind
him, a row of veiled figures in shapeless black robes nudged each other. His
wives? I wondered, or his husbands? �Tonight is the first of my thousand nights
and one night," he continued, looking more than slightly glassy-eyed. �In honor
of my sort-of ancestor, the Sultan Schahriar, and in view of my now being,
quote, too old to play the field, my elder brother, peace be unto him, has
decreed a competition for my hand in marriage. For this night and the next
thousand, lucky concubines of every appropriate gender combination will vie for
the opportunity to become my sole and most important sultana."

�Thatłs right, itłs not just a date!" added Ibn Cut-Throat,
from the side-lines.

�I shall take the winnerłs hand in marriage, along with the
rest of their body. The loserswell, thatłs too boring and tiresome to go into
here, but they wonłt be writing any kiss-and-tell stories: they should have
made backups before entering the competition, thatłs not my problem. Meanwhile,
I ask you to raise a toast with me to the first seven aspiring princesses of
Mars, standing here behind me, and their intelligence and courage in taking up
Scheherazadełs wager." He sounded bored out of his skull, as if his mind was
very definitely busy elsewhere.

Everyone raised a toast to the competitors, but I was losing
my appetite even before Ibn Cut-Throat stepped to the front of the stage to
explain the terms of the competition, which would begin after the banquet. I
may come from a long line of Japanese pretenders to the throne of a
sheep-stealing bandit, but wełd never consider anything remotely as
blood-thirsty and mediaeval as this. The prospect of spending a night with
dashing young Abdul gave a whole new and unwelcome meaning to losing your head
for love, as I suppose befitted a pretender to the crown of Ibn Saudnever mind
the Sassanid empireby way of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. �I donłt think this
is very funny," I mumbled to Toads-worth. �I wish Laura were here."

Toadsworth nudged me with his inebriator. �I donłt think you
need to worry about that, old chap. I spy with my little hyperspectral
telescopic imager"

Ibn Cut-Throat was coming to the climax of his spiel: �gaze
upon the faces of the brave beauties!" He crowed. �Ladies, drop your veils!"

I gaped like a fool as the row of black-garbed femmes behind
the prince threw back their veils and bared their faces to the audience. For
there, in the middle of the row, was a familiar set of silver eyelashes!

�Isnłt that your mistress, old boy?" Toadsworth nudged me
with his inebriator attachment. �Jolly rum do, her showing up here, what?"

�But she canłt be!" I protested. �Laura canłt be that
stupid! And I always forget to remind her to take her backups, and she never
remembers, so"

�ęM ęfraid itłs still her on the stage, old boy,"
commiserated the Toadster. �Therełs no getting around it. Do you suppose she
answered an advertisement or went through a talent agency?"

�She must have been on the rebound! This is all my fault," I
lamented.

�I disagree, old fellow, shełs not squishy enough to bounce.
Her head, anyway."

I glanced up at the stage, despondent. The worst part of it
was, this was all my fault. If Iłd actually bothered to pull myself out of my
pre-drop funk and talked to her, she wouldnłt be standing on stage, glancing
nervously at the court executioners standing to either side. Then I saw her
turn her head. She was looking at me! She mouthed something, and it didnłt take
a genius of lip-reading to realize that she was saying get me out of here.

�Iłll rescue you, Laura," I promised, collapsing in a heap
of cushions. Then my mouth-boy stuck a hookah in the old cake-hole and the
situation lost its urgent edge. Laura wasnłt number one on the old chop-chop list,
it appeared. Therełd be time to help her out of this fix after dinner.

* * * *

9. An After-Dinner Show; Discussions of Horticulture

Dinner took approximately four hours to serve, and consisted
of tiresomely symbolic courses prepared by master chefs from the various
dominions of the al-Matsumoto empireall sixty of them. The resulting cultural
m�lange was certainly unique, and the traditional veal tongue sashimi on a bed
of pickled jellyfish cous-cous a lłOlympia lent a certain urgency to my
inter-course staggers to the vomitorium. But I digress: I barely tasted a
single bite, so deeply concerned was I for the whereabouts of my cyberdoxy.

After the last platter of chili-roast bandersnatch in honey
sauce was cleared and the dessert wine piped to our tables, the game show
began. And what a game show! I sat there shuddering through each round, hoping
against hope that Laura wouldnłt be called this time. Ibn Cut-Throat was master
of ceremonies, with two dusky-skinned eunuchs to keep track of the score cards.
�Contestant Number One, Bimzi bin Jalebi, your next question is: what is his
Excellency the Princełs principal hobby?"

Bimzi rested one elaborately be-ringed fingertip on her
lower lip and frowned fetchingly at the audience. �Surfing?"

�A-ha ha ha!" crowed Ibn Cut-Throat. �Not quite wrong, but I
think youłd all agree she had a close shave there." The audience howled, not
necessarily with joy: �so wełll try again. Bimzi bin Jalebi, what do you think
his Excellency the Prince will see in you?"

Bimzi rested one elegant hand on a smoothly curved hip and
jiggled seductively at the audience: �my unmatched belly-dancing skills and"
wink�pelvic floor musculature?"

�Iłm asking the questions around here!" mugged the vizier,
leering at the audience. Everybody oohłd. �Did you hear a question?" Everybody
oohłd even louder.

�Pip pip," said Toadsworth, quietly. He continued: �I detect
speech stress analyzers concealed in the pillars, old boy. And something else."

�Let me remind you," oozed the Vizier, �that you are attending
the court of his Excellency the Prince, and that any untruth told before me, in
my capacity as grand high judicar before his court, may be revealed and treated
as perjury. And" he paused while a ripple of conversation sped around the
room�now we come to the third and final cut-off question before you spend a
night of delight and jeopardy with his Royal Highness. What do you, Bimzi bin
Jalebi, see in my Prince? Truthfully now, we have lie detectors and we know how
to use them!"

�Um." Bimzi bin Jalebi smiled, coyly and winningly, at the audience,
then decided that honesty combined with speed was the best policy:
�a-mountain-of-gold-but-thatłs-not-my-only"

�Enough!" Cut-Throat Senior clapped his hands together and
her a-borning speech was arrested by the snicker-snack of eunuch katanas and a
bright squirt of arterial blood. �To cut a long story short, his Excellency
canłt stand wafflers. Or gold-diggers, for that matter." He glanced at one
particular section of the audience who, standing under guard, were white with
shock, and smiled toothily: �And so, now that wełre all running neck and neck,
whołd like to go first?"

�I canłt bear this," I groaned quietly.

�Donłt worry, old fellow, itłll be all right on the night,"
Toadster nudged me.

To prove him wrong, Ibn Cut-Throat hunted through the herd
of candidates andby the same nightmare logic that causes toast to always land
buttered-side down except when youłre watching it with a notepad and
counterwho should his gaze fall on but Laura.

�You! Yes, you! It could be you!" cried the ghastly little
fellow: �Step right up, my dear! And whatłs your name? Laura bin, ah, Binary?
Ah, such a fragrant blossom, so redolent of machine oil and ceramics! Iłd spin
her cams any day of the week if I still had my undercarriage," he confided to
the crowd as my pale person of pulchritude clutched a filmy veil around her and
flinched. �First question! Are you the front end of an ass?"

Laura shook her head. The crowd fell silent. I tensed,
balling my hands into fists. If only there was something I could do!

�Second question! Are you the back end of an ass?"

Laura shook her head again, silently. I tried to catch her
eye, but she didnłt look my way. I quailed, terrified. Laura is at her most
dangerous when she goes quiet.

�Well then! Let me see. If youłre not the front end of an
ass, and youłre not the back end of an ass, doesnłt that mean youłre no end of
an ass?"

Laura gave him the old fish-eye for an infinitely long ten
seconds then drawled, in her best Venusian butter-wouldnłt-melt-in-her-mouth
accent: �Why, I do declare, what is this ęassł you speak of, human, and why are
you so eager for a piece of it when you donłt have any balls?"

I was on my feet, staggering uncertainly toward the stage,
as Ibn Cut-Throat raised his fists above his head: �We have a winner!" he
declared, and the crowd went wild. �You, my fragrant rose, have passed the
first test and go forward to the second round! My gentles, let it be known that
Laura Binary has earned the right to an unforgettable night of ecstasy in the
company of his Excellency the Prince!" Sotto voce to the audience: �Such a
shame she wonłt live long enough to forget it afterward."

I saw red, of course: dash it, what else is a cove to do but
stand up for his ladyłs honor? But before I could take a step forward, meaty
hands descended on each of my shoulders. �Bed time," rumbled the guard holding
my left arm. I glanced at his mate, who favored me with a suggestive leer as he
fingered the edge of his blade.

�Flower bed time," he echoed.

�Ahem." I glanced at the stage, where Laura was struggling
vainly as a cadre of guards as grotesquely overaugmented as old Edgy wrapped
her in delicate silver manacles: �If you donłt mind, old fellow, Iłve got a
jolly good mind to tell your master he can take your daisies and push them"

�Bed time," Miss Feng hissed urgently behind my right ear.
�We need to talk," she added.

�Okay, bed time," I agreed, nodding like a fool.

Guard number two sighed dispiritedly as he sheathed his
sword. �Petunias."

�What?"

�Not daisies. Petunias."

�Bed time!" Guard number one said brightly. I think he had a
one-track mind.

�We were supposed to bury you under the petunias if you resisted,"
Guard number two explained. �Itłs so hard on the poor things, they donłt get
enough sunlight out here and the soil is too acidic"

�No, no, see, hełs quite right, if we bury him hełs supposed
to be pushing up daisies," said Guard number one, finally getting hold of the
conversation. �So! Are you going to bed or are we going to have to tuck you"

�Iłm going, Iłm going," I said. The homicidal
horticulturalists let go of me with visible reluctance. �Iłm gone," I
whimpered.

�Not yet, Sir," said Miss Feng, politely but forcefully
propelling me away from the ring of clankie guards surrounding the stage.
�Letłs talk about it in private, shall we?"

* * * *

10. Miss Feng makes a series of Observations

The guards escorted me out of the dining pavilion and up two
flights of stairs, then along a passageway to a palatial guest suite which had
been made available for the members of the Club. Miss Feng followed, outwardly
imperturbable, although I heard her swear very quietly when the guards locked
and barred the main door.

�Dash it all." I stumbled and sat down on a pile of
cushions. �Iłve got to rescue her before itłs too late!"

Miss Feng looked at me oddly. �Indubitably, Sir. Although we
appear to be locked in a guest suite on the second floor of a heavily fortified
palace built by a paranoid lunatic, with guards standing outside the door to
prevent any unscheduled excursions. Perhaps Sir would consider an after dinner
digestif and a post-prandial nap instead?"

But I was too far gone in my funk to notice: �This is my
fault! If only Iłd talked to her instead, she wouldnłt be here. This isnłt like
Abdul, either. I know him, hełs a good egg. There must be some mistake!"

�If Sir will listen to me for a minute" Miss Feng drew a
deep and exasperated breath, her chest swelling beneath her traditional black
jacket in a most fetching manner�I believe the key to the problem is not
rescuing Miss Laura, but making a successful escapeafterward. Sir will perhaps
recall the planetary defense grasers and orbital arbalests dug into the walls
of the caldera? While I am an adequate pilot, I would much prefer our departure
from the second-most-heavily fortified noble house on Mars to be facilitated by
traffic rather than fire control. And" she raised one eyebrow,
infinitesimally�Sir didpromise his sister to take care of her mammoth."

�Dash it all to hell and back!" I bounced to my feet unsteadily:
�Who cares about Jeremy?"

Miss Feng fixed me with a steely gaze: �Youwill, if your
sister thinks youłve mislaid him on purpose, Sir."

�Oh." I nodded, crestfallen, and ambled over to the screen
of intricately carved soapstone fretwork that separated the central lounge from
the inner servantsł corridor. Small thingumabots buzzed and clicked outside,
scurrying hither and yon about their menial tasks. �I suppose youłre right.
Well, then. We need to rescue Laura, retrieve Jeremy from whatever drunken escapade
hełs got himself into, andtalk our way out of this. Bally nuisance, why canłt
life be simple?"

�I couldnłt possibly comment, Sir. Compared to covering for
one of Prince W the thirteenthłs little escapades this should be a piece of
cake. Incidentally, did you notice anything odd about the Sheikh Abdul
tonight?"

�What? Apart from his rum desire to butcher my beloved"

�I was thinking more along the lines of the spinal parasite
crab someone has enterprisingly planted on him since the race, Sir."

�The spinal what? Dear me, are you telling me hełs caught
something nasty? Do I need to take precautions?"

�Only if Sir wishes to avoid having his brain hijacked by a
genetically engineered neural parasite, his prefrontal lobes scooped out and
eaten, and his body turned into a helpless meat puppet. Mr al-Matsumotołs
burnoose covered it incompletely, and I saw it when he turned round: you might
have noticed hełs not quite himself right now. I believe it is being controlled
by Toshiro ibn-Rashid, the vizier."

�Oops." I paused a moment in silent sympathy. �Bloody poor
show, that."

�Iłve seen more than one attempted coup dłetat in my time,
Sir, and it occurs to me that this is an unhealthy situation to be in. The
banquet continues for three more days, and Sir might usefully question the
wisdom of staying to the end. After all, his Excellencyłs puppet master didnłt
throw a party and invite all of the princełs personal friends along for no good
reason, did he?"

�Then I suppose wełll just have to rescue Laura and make our
escape." I stopped. �Um. But how?"

�I have a plan, Sir. If youłd start by taking this sober-up,
then Iłll explain ...."

* * * *

11. A Meeting in the Tunnels

Miss Fengłs Plan was certainly everything you could ask for.
One might even suspect her of black ops training, but experience has taught me
that it is best to never knowingly underestimate the lethality of a
sufficiently determined butler. I confess I harbored certain misgivings about
the nature of her proposed offensivebut with stakes this high I was prepared
to work to any plan.

However, it was after midnight before we could start, when
the guards opened the doors to direct a shambolically intoxicated Edgestar and
a thoroughly inebriated Toadsworth into our company. �Pip Paaarrrrrp,"
Toadsworth burped, drifting to a bumpy halt in the middle of the floor: his
cortical turret spun round twice with the force of the belch, as his lights
strobed down through the spectrum and went dark.

�Am being pithed," said Edgestar, shambling into a pillar
and collapsing onto two legs. �Huuuurk!"

�Let me help you with that," I said, stepping forward to
relieve him of his camel-hair coatand the full firkin of Bragote that Miss
Feng had secreted beneath it. I nearly dropped the cask: nine gallons of ale is
quite an armful, especially when itłs bottled up in corrosion-proof steel and
biohazard warning stickers.

�Aaah, thatłs better," mumbled Edgestar, another leg
retracting with a hiss of hydraulics and a brief stink of chlorine. �ęM tired.
Głnight."

�Quietly," Miss Feng reminded me, as I lowered the deadly cylinder
to the tiles. �Excellent. Iłll take care of this." She rolled it on its side,
directing it toward the door, as she palmed a pre-emptive sober-up. �Iłm sure
it will be quite the hit at the squishie servantsł party," she added, with
something very like a shudder.

I tip-toed away from the door as she knocked on it, then
dived into my room to hide as the bolts rattled. As a servant, Miss Feng stood
a better chance of avoiding suspicion than Ibut she had other tasks in mind
for which Edgestar, Toadsworth, and I were clearly well-suited. And so I
swallowed my misgivings, picked up the sober-up spray, and approached
Toadsworth.

�Excuse me old chap," I essayed, �but are you up for a jolly
jape?"

�Bzzzt" The cortical turret turned toward me and I confronted
a red-rimmed eye stalk: �In-ebriate? Par-ty?"

�Jolly good show, Toadster. But I think you might enjoy this
first, what?" I flicked the sober-up at him. �Donłt want to let the side down,
do we?"

There was a muffled explosion, his cortical turret spun
round three times, and steam hissed from under his gasket. �You unspeakable
bounder!" He buzzed at me. �That was below the belt!" His lights flashed
ominously. �Iłve a good mind to"

�Whoa!" I held up a hand. �Iłm terribly sorry, and Iłll
happily demonstrate the depth of my gratitude by groveling in any way you can
imagine afterward, but we need to rescue Laura from the harem, and then we need
to make our escape from the evil vizier and his mind control minions."

�Really?" The Toadster froze in place for a moment. �Did you
say evil vizier? With minions? My favorite kind!"

�Top hat, old boy, top hat!" I waved my hands encouragingly.
�All we need to do is get old Edgy awake"

�Somełbuddy mention nominative identifier?" With a whine of
overstrained hydraulics Edgestar Wolfblack began to unfold from his heap on the
floor. One foot skidded out from under him and ended up scuttling around the
skirting board, barking furiously until the Toadster was forced to shoot it to
death with his Inebriator. �Hurrrrk. Query vertical axis of orientation?"

�That way," I said, pointing at the ceiling. Edgy groaned,
and began to quiver and fold in on himself, legs and arms retracting and
strange panels extending to reveal a neat set of chromed wheels.

�Vroom," he said uncertainly. �Where to?"

�To the harem! To rescue Laura and the other contestants,
while Miss Feng poisons the squishie servants with Uncle Featherstonehaughłs
Bragote," I explained. �If youłd be so good as to follow me, chaps ...."

I pulled on the black abaya Miss Feng had procured for me,
then bent down to tap on the robot servitorłs hatch, clutching the identity
beacon Miss Feng had acquired from one of the waitrons during dinner. The hatch
deigned to recognize the beacon and opened, for which I was duly grateful.

The servantsł tunnel was built to a more than human scale:
not all the bots were small bleepy things. I screwed my monocle firmly into
place and hurried along the dank, roughly finished tunnel, blessing my
foresight in remembering to download the map. I donłt mind admitting that I was
sweating with fright, but at least I was in good company, with Edgestar
whizzing alongside like a demented skateboard and the Toadster gliding
menacingly through the darkened tunnel, his trusty Inebriator raised and ready
to squirt.

Miss Fengłs plan was clear. The unlucky ladies would almost
certainly be languishing under lock and key in the harem. Moreover, the haremłs
main entrance would be guarded by palace eunuchs, or possibly chaperone-bots.
However, she speculated, the servantsł passage would still be openif we could
get past the inevitable guard on the back passage. We would find the
chaperone-bot, I would pretend to be a fainting misplaced maiden, and Edgy and
the Toadster would play the part of Palace security guards who had found me and
were taking me back inside. Getting out would be a little harder, but by then
Uncle Featherstonehaughłs tipple should have taken effect ....

Something moved in the tunnel ahead of me and I froze,
knock-kneed in fear. I donłt lack moral fiber, it just gives me the runs: I
swore under my breath and stopped dead in my tracks as Toadsworth ran over my
hem. �What is it?" He buzzed, quietly.

�I donłt know. Shh."

Holding my breath, I listened. There was a faint shuffling
noise, a breathy whistling, and then a clicking noise from the dark recesses of
a twisty little side-passage. A shadow moved across the floor, and paused. I
sniffed, smelling an unholy foulness of stale sweat and something else,
something familiarI then blinked, as two evil, red-rimmed orbs brimming with
pure, mindless hate loomed out of the darkness toward me.

�Jeremy!" The delinquent dwarf reared back, waving his tusks
drunkenly in my face, and I could see his trunk begin to flare, ready to blow a
betraying blast on the old blower. There was only one thing for itI reached
out and grabbed. �Hush, you silly old thing! If they hear you, theyłll kill
you, too!"

Grabbing a mammoth by the trunkeven a hung-over miniature
mammoth whołs three sheets to the wind and tiddly to the point of winking-is
not an act I can recommend to the dedicated follower of the quiet life.
However, rather than responding with his usual murderous rage at the universe
for having made him sixteen sizes too small, Jeremy blinked at me tipsily and
sat down. For a moment I dared to hope that the incident would pass without upsetbut
then the gathering toute came out suite, and the foul little beast sneezed a
truly elephantine blast of beer-smelling spray in my direction. I let go instinctively:
he struggled back to his feet and began to reverse shambolically into the
tunnel, with a mistrustful glare directed over my left shoulder. I tried to
scuttle after him, only to be brought up short by the Toadster, who was still
parked on my skirt. �Dash it all, men, follow that mammoth!"

With a brain-rattling crash, a fiendishly stealthed black
chaperone-bot jumped over my suddenly stationary form, slipped on the
snot-lubed floor, tumbled head-over-heels into the far wall, and crashed to the
ground in a shower of spiked armor and vicious stabby bits. I nearly jumped
right out of my skinindeed, I believe separating me from my integument had
been the sole purpose of its acrobatic display.

Before I could gather my disguise and my wits and run, Edgestar
revved up to speed and whizzed past me. Vrooming like a very vroomy thing, he
jumped on the bally bot in a most unfriendly manner! It was a sight to see, I
can assure you. The chaperone-bots of al-Matsumoto look a lot like Edgestar in
humanoid form, only less convivial and disinclined to a discreet afternoon
tipple when they could be out and about, briskly ripping unfortunates limb from
limb. But being bots, they lack the true �lan and esprit of a clankie, and even
a hung-over tea-trolley posthumanoid is a fearsome thing to behold when it gets
its cricket box on. Jeremy scampered off into the bowels of the palace honking
tunelessly; meanwhile, old Edgy bounced up and down on the combat robotłs abdomen,
squeaking furiously and spinning his wheels. They had cute little cutting disks
on their inner rims! The chaperone-bot lay on its back, stiletto-tipped legs
curling over and inward to stab repeatedly at the assailant on its abdomen, but
Edgy was too fast for it. Presently it stabbed too enthusiastically for its own
goodand Edgestar yanked hard, pulling the stinger under the edge of a gaping
inspection panel. With a triumphant squeal of brakes he leapt off the
chaperone-bot just in time, transforming back into humanoid form in mid-air as
sparks began to fly and an acrid smoke poured from its joints.

�Jolly good show, that transformer!" I exclaimed.

�Pip-pip!" said the Toadster, regaining some of his joie de
vivre.

I consulted my map again. �The back door to the harem is
just around the corner! I say old chap, I think youłve cleared the last
obstacle. Letłs shuftie, shall we? If wełre to be home by tea it behooves us to
get our move on."

* * * *

12. I Find Laura in Questionable Company

Well, to cut a long story short, there I was in the harem of
the Emir of Marsłs younger brother, surrounded by adoring femmes, while my two
fellows from the Club made themselves scarce. �Darling," Laura trilled,
reclining in my arms, �I do confess, I am so touched! Hic."

�I know, my dear, but we canłt stay here." I quickly
outlined what I knew. �Miss Feng thinks the evil Vizier is conspiring to build
resentment against the oppressive and harsh autocracy of the al-Matsumoto clan,
and intends to use it to foment a revolt."

�But the al-Matsumotos arenłt harsh and autocratic!" complained
one of the ladies, a cute blonde bimbettebot in filmy harem pants and tank top:
�theyłre cute!" The room descended into giggles, but I frowned, for this was no
laughing matter.

�Theyłll be harsh and autocratic by the time Ibn
Cut-Throatłs spinal crab is through with Abdul! Dash it all, do you want to be
decapitated? Because thatłs whatłs going to happen if the Vizier seizes power!
He wonłt have any use for youhełs the chief eunuch! Hełs an ex-man, and his
special power is chopping off heads! He probably thinks testosterone is
something you catch from sitting too many exams."

�Oh, Iłm sure I can fix that," a dusky six-armed beauty informed
me with a flick of her aristocratic nose: �I didnłt study regenerative medicine
for nothing." Her arch look took in Laura: �Why donłt you take yourself and
your tin-plate tart and leave us to sort out the matter of succession? She was
only going to go down hard in the talent show round, anyway."

�Pip-pip!" called Toadsworth, sailing from one vaulted
side-chamber to another in pursuit of a giggling conical debutante, a silk
favor knotted around his monocular. �Party back at my pad, old chap! Bring a
knobbly pal! Inseminate! Inseminate! Bzzt!" I looked away before the sight of
his new plug-in could scar my retinas for life. You canłt take these clankie
stallions anywhere in polite company, they canłt so much as wink at a
well-lubed socket without wanting to interface with it

�Shełs right, darling, we must be going." Laura laid her
elegant head on my shoulder and sighed. �Oh I do declare, my feet are killing
me." I scooped her up in my arms, trying to see over a faceful of frills.

�Iłve missed you so much," I told her. �But what are you
doing here anyway?"

�Hush." She kissed me, and for a moment the world went away:
�My brave, butch, bullish Ralphie!" She sighed again. �I was going to hold out
until after the race! But I had just checked into the Hilton when I received a
telephone call saying there was a gentleman waiting to see me in the lobby."

Jealousy stabbed at me. �Who was it?" I asked, cringing and
glancing away as Edgestar rolled past, having transformed himself into a
tentacularly enhanced chaise lounge for the amusement of the blonde
bimbettebot, who appeared to be riding him around the room using his
unmentionables as a joystick.

�I donłt remember," she said dreamily. �I woke up here, waiting
for my princeyou! I do declarebut Toshiro said he was arranging a surprise
for you, and therełd be a party, and then it all went a little vague"

I can tell you, I was freezing inside as I began to realize
just how disoriented she was. �Laura, whatłs gotten into you?"

�Not you, not lately!" she said sharply, then lapsed back
into dreamy incoherence: �But you came to rescue me, Ralphie, oh! He said you
would. I swoon for you! Be my love rocket again!"

I saw a small, silver receptacle on a nearby table, and my
heart sank: shełd clearly been at the happy juice. Then I sneaked a peek at the
sockets on the back of her neck, under her hairline, and gasped. Someone had
planted a hedonism chip and a mandatory override on her! No wonder she was
acting out of sorts.

I plucked the ghastly thing out and dropped it on the floor.
�Laura, stand up!" I cajoled. �Wełve got to be leaving. Therełs a party to be
going to, donłt you know? Letłs go."

�But my" She wobbled, then toppled against me: �Whoops!"
She giggled. �Hic." I might have pulled the chips out of the fryer but my fish
was still thoroughly pickled.

I hadnłt expected this, but Miss Feng had insisted I take a
reset pill, just in case. I hated to use the thing on heror rather, Laura
hated it, and this invariably led to a fight afterwardbut sobriety is a lesser
evil than being trapped in a castle by a mad vizier while subjected to
mood-altering implants, what? So I pressed the silver cap against the side of
her neck and pushed the button.

Laurałs jaws closed with an audible click, and she tensed in
my arms for a second. �Ouch," she said, very quietly. �You bastard, you know I
hate that. Whatłs going on?"

�Youłre on Mars and wełre in a bally fix, thatłs whatłs
going on. This Ibn Cut-Throat fellowłs a thoroughly bad egg. Hełs sneaked a
spinal crab onto old Abdul, I think he picked you up because he wants a handle
on me, and doubtless thatłs why the rest of the Clubłs all herewełd be first
to notice a change in our boy Abdulłs behavior, wouldnłt we? The cadłs
obviously set up the sticky wicket so he can bowl us all out in one inning."

�Dear me." Laura stood up straight and took a step away from
me. �Well, then wełd better be going, darling." She straightened her attire and
looked around, raising one sculpted eyebrow at my dishevelment. �Do you know
how to get out of here?"

�Certainly." I took her hand in mine, and led her toward the
central lounge. �Iłm sure there must be a way out around here somewhere ...."

�Over there," offered bin-Sawbones, pointing: �you canłt
miss it, head for the two hulking eunuchs and the evil vizier." She pushed me
hard in the small of my back. �Sorry, but business is business and when youłre
trying to marry the second richest man on Mars you canłt be too picky, eh?"

* * * *

13. Jeremy Pulls it off

The exit was unfortunately obstructed by Ibn Cut-Throat and
his merry headsmenwith Abdul in tow, glassy-eyed and arms outstretched,
muttering about brains. And Ibn Cut-Throat had spotted us!

One thing I will credit the blighter with: his sense of
spectacle was absolutely classical. �Ah, Mister MacDonald!" he cried, menacingly
twirling the anti-chemwar vibrissae glued to his upper lip. �How disappointing
to see you here! I must confess I hoped youłd have sense enough to stay in your
room and keep out of trouble. I suppose now you hope Iłm going to tell you all
my plans, then lock you in an inadequately secured cell so you can escape? Iłm
afraid not: I shall simply have you cut off shortly, chop-chop. My gamełs
afoot, and none will stop it now, for the ineluctable dialectic of history is
on my side!"

�I donłt care what your dastardly scheme is, I have a bone
to pick with you, my man!" I cried. The two headsmen took a step forward, and
Laura clung to me in fearwhether feigned or otherwise I could not tell. �How
dare you kidnap my concubine on the eve of a drop! Thatłs not cricket, or even
baseball, and itłll be a cold day in hell before I see you in any of my clubs,
even by the tradesmenłs entrance!" Meanwhile, Laura thrust a shapely arm inside
my abaya and was fumbling with something in my dinner jacket pocket; but my
attention was fixed on the villain before me.

�Clubs." The word dropped from his lips with stony
disinterest. �As if the degenerate recreations of the class enemy would be of
any interest to me!" I shuddered: itłs always a bad sign when the hired help
starts talking in polysyllables. One of his nostrils flared angrily. �Clubs and
sports and jolly capers, thatłs all you parasites think of as you gobble down
our surplus wealth like the monstrous leeches you are!" Iłd struck a nerve, as
I could see from the throbbing vein in his temple and the set of his jaw.
�Bloated ticks languishing in the lap of luxury and complaining about your
parties and fashions while millions slave for your banquets! Bah." Laura
unwrapped her arm from my robe and covered her face, evidently to shield
herself from the scoundrelłs accusations. �When we strive to better ourselves
you turn your faces away and sneer, and when we give up you use us as beasts of
burden! Well, Iłve had enough. Itłs time to return your stolen loot to the
toiling non-U proletarian masses."

My jaw dropped. �Dash it all, man, you canłt be serious! Are
you telling me youłre a ...?"

�Yes," he grated, his eyes aflame with vindictive glee: �the
crisis of capitalism is finally at hand, at long last! Itłs about seven
centuries and a Great Downsizing overdue, but itłs time to bring about the
dictatorship of the non-U and the resurrection of the proletariat! And your
friend Abdul al-Matsumoto is going to play a key role in bringing about the
final raising of class consciousness by fertilizing the soil of Olympus with
the blood of a thousand maidens, and then crown himself Big Brother and institute
a reign of terror that will"

Unfortunately I canłt tell you how the Ibn-Cut Throat Committee
for the Revolution intended to proceed, because we were simultaneously
interrupted by two different people: namely, by Laura, who extended her shapely
hand and spritzed him down with after-shave: and then by Jeremy.

Now, it helps to be aware that harems are not exactly noted
for their testosterone-drenched atmosphere. I was, of course, the odd squishie
out. Old Edgy was clearly hors de combat or combat des whores (if youłll
strangle my French) and the Toadster was also otherwise engaged, exploring
conic sections with the fembot hełd been chasing earlier. But aside from myself
and Ibn Cut-Throatand, I suppose, Abdul, if he was still at home upstairs what
with that crab-thingie plastered to his nogginthey were the only remotely
butch people present.

Jeremy had been in smelly, sullen retreat for the past week.
Not to put too fine a point on it, he was in musth, that state in which a male
mammoth or elephant hates and resents other males because the universe acquires
a crystal clarity and his function in life is to ... well, Edgestar and
Toadsworth got there first, minus the trumpeting and displays of aggression,
but Iłm sure you understand? There were no other small male mammals present,
but Jeremy was well aware of his enemy, and his desperate need to assert his alpha-male
dominance before he could go in search of cows to coverand more importantly,
there was one particular scent he associated with the enemy from long mutual
acquaintance. His enemy smelled like me. But I was shrouded in a blackly
occlusive robe, while Ibn Cut-Throat had just been doused in my favorite
splash. And whatever Jeremyłs other faults, hełs never been slow to jump to a
conclusion.

I do not know what passed through the 80 percent of Jeremyłs
cranial capacity that serves as target acquisition and fire control, but he
made his choice almost instantly and launched himself straight for where Ibn
Cut-Throatłs crown jewels had once resided. Proboscideans are not usually noted
for their glide ratio, but, in the weaker than accustomed Martian gravity,
Jeremy was positively aerobatic, as he jumped with grace and elegance and
tusks, straight for Toshirołs tushie.

�Tally ho, old boy!" I shouted, giving him the old school
best, as Laura took two steps smartly forward and, raising her skirts, daintily
kick-boxed headsman number one in the forehead with one of her most pointed
assetsfor her ten centimeter stiletto heels are not only jolly fine pins, theyłre
physical extensions of her chrome-plated ankles.

Now I confess that things looked dicey when headsman number
two turned on me with his axe and bared his teeth at me. But Iłm not the Suzuki
of MacDonald for nothing, and I know a thing or two about fighting! I threw the
abaya back over my head to free my arms, and pointed Toadsworthłs
Inebriatorwhich he had earlier entrusted to my safekeeping in order to free up
a socket for his Inseminatorat the villain. �Drop it! Or Iłll drop you!" I
snarled.

My threat didnłt work. The thug advanced on me, and as he
raised his blade I discovered to my horror that the Toadster must have some
very double-jointed fingers in order to work that trigger. But just as the
barber of Baghdad was about to trim my throat, a svelte black silhouette drew
up behind him and poured a canister of vile brown ichor over his head!
Screaming and burbling imprecations, he sank to the floor clawing at his eyes,
just in time for Laura to finish him off with a flamenco stomp.

Miss Feng cleared her throat apologetically as she lowered
the empty firkin to the floor. (The brightly painted tiles began to blur and
run where its damp rim rested on them.) �Sir might be pleased to note that one
has taken the liberty of moving his yacht round to the tradesmenłs entrance and
disabling the continental defense array in anticipation of Sirłs departure. Was
Sir planning to stay for the bombe surprise, or would he agree that this is one
party that he would prefer to cut short?"

I glanced at Ibn Cut-Throat, who was still writhing in agony
under Jeremyłs merciless onslaught, and then at the two pithed headsmen. �I
think itłs a damned shame to outstay our welcome at any party, donłt you
agree?" (Laura nodded enthusiastically and knelt to tickle Jeremyłs trunk.) �By
all means, letłs leave. If youłd be so good as to pour a bucket of cold water
over Edgy and the Toadster, Iłll take Abdul in hand and we can drop him off at
a discreet clinic where they treat spinal crabs, what-what?"

�Thatłs a capital idea, Sir. I shall see to it at once."
Miss Feng set off to separate the miscreants from their amorous attachments.

I turned to Laura, who was still tickling Jeremywho by now
was lying on his back, pantingand raised an eyebrow. �Isnłt he sweet?" she
sang.

�If you say so. Youłre carrying him, though," I said, ungratefully.
�Letłs hie thee well and back to Castle Pookie. This has been altogether too
much of the wrong kind of company for me, and I could do with a nightcap in
civilized company."

�Darling!" She grabbed me enthusiastically by the trousers:
�and we can watch a replay of your jump together!"

And indeed, to cut a long story short, thatłs exactly what
we didbut first I took the precaution of locking Jeremy in the second best
guest suitełs dungeon with a bottle of port, and gave Miss Feng the night off.

After all, twołs company but threełs jolly confusing, what?

Yellow Snow

First published: Interzone 37, 1990

 

Sometimes you have to make speed, not haste. I made twenty
kilos and moved it fast. Good old dex is an easy synthesis but the polizei had
all the organochemical suppliers bugged; when a speed stash hit the street
without any blat theyłd be through the audit trail fast. Theyłd take a cutmy
lungs, heart and ribosomes. Only idiots push psychoactives in Paraguay: only
idiots or the truly desperate. I burned out via Brazilia and crashed into Ant
City. Jet-lagged all the way across Australia, I considered my futures; it was
time to move on to something bigger.

My first impression of Ant City was of being roasted, slowly.
The blistering humidity was outflow from the huge heat exchangers run by the
city reactors. Palm trees in the airport lounge, a rude, chattering
spidermonkey loose among the branches. No power, no Ants, a simple equation: I
was in Antarctica now, and wondering what the hell to do about it. It was
another world out there: I could feel a grating closeness between my shoulder
blades, the crush of humanity around me.

Alleyways of light lured me through the customs interface,
briefing me on local lores. Digital fingers rifled my flesh with radiation but
I was clean and meannobody with any sense takes bugs into the ant farm. Itłs a
ticket to re-direction, and I need my inputs remoulding like I need a
concience. My scams are all cortex-ridden, locked in by mnemonics until Iłm
ready to bring them out like a card sharp. Sleight of memory. The security goon
smiled sweetly, her eyes asking me if I was really alive, and w aved me past
the desk.

The shuttleport is half a klick above Ant City proper; I
took the lift down. It was a medium sized lift, with only a medium-sized
shopping mall. Shop, shop, expend, expend. A glaring incitement to

I shut my eyes and as I was trying to pin down a plan this
kid tried to lift the chips from out of my skull. Which was his bad luck: I
didnłt have any. I opened my eyes and shifted my grip on his wrists so he had
to face me.

�Nice way to greet tourists," I said. He squirmed fearfully,
muscles like metallic glass beneath his warm brown skin. �You know what I
should do with you?" He looked as if he didnłt, and wasnłt interested in
finding out either. Hełd forgotten to feed the cat or something else important.
I looked at the inside of his wrist; the node was there.

�You eat shit," he said. I glared back at him.

�Yeah, every day just like you. I should bust your fingers.
You want to tell me why not?"

�No," said the kid, looking like trouble warmed over the
next morning; �you break my fingers then my friend come and break yours." He
managed to ignore me and look contemptuous concurrently. He couldnłt have been
topside of twelve years without maturity-mods. Neomacho, cued-up by background
video. For the first time I looked at his tribals. He wore a one piece suit,
ice camouflage militia-surplus. His wrist node was well-worn. Classic case of heroin
from six years, riding the horse out from under the shad ow of future shock;
itłs the kids who suffer most, these days.

�That would be kind of a bad idea," I said, �for your
friend. I got no chips. My walletłs armed; tell your sister to put it back before
she gets gluey fingers. You want me to give you some money?"

�You what?" said the kid. I felt butterfly fingers slip
something that buzzed into my pocket; it stopped buzzing when it sniffed me
again. Iłm touchy about where my wallet goes without me.

�I repeat myself," I said; �you want to earn some money?" I
leaned forward. More suspicion.

�You want I should go to bed with you?"

�No. I want some names, nothing else. Like who shifts your
stuff."

His face cleared, magically. �You want some?" he asked, happily.
�I sell you"

�No," I said, �I just want a name."

�Oh." He looked disappointed. Then, �are you polizei?"

I weighed my chances. �Would you believe if I said no?"

�No." His eyes narrowed.

�Then get lost." I gave him a push and he went. His sister
had vanished into an open shopfront selling gauzy somethings under spotlights;
for the moment at least they were zero factors in my equation. I stood alone
for a while, wondering what I looked like to the local talent and whether I
needed a new line; some nagging doubt kept telling me that I was getting too
old for this game. Trying to quell my worry I crossed to the observation deck
and looked out.

The mall was descending towards a park with a lake around
it, and a landscaped garden at one end of the lake. Ant City floated like a
submarine in an inclusion of melt-water beneath the ice cap. Kept from freezing
by the tokamaks, the water acted as a buffer against icequakes; also as central
heating. The lift was just now dropping out of the roof of the city, and the
view was dizzying; the city curved with the horizon. Suddenly I had a sense of
imminence, of seeing a new frontier opening up before me eve n though the
underground was actually closing in for real, like the dizzying megatonnes of
ice overhead: it was shaping up to be a classic revelation. The kind of
sensation you get when a new idea is coming up hot and hard. I took stock of my
situation

So consider me: male, self-contained, intelligent, age
twenty-seven. The product of an expensive corporate shockwave education,
designed to surf over new developments on the cutting edge of R&D. Iłd
freebased from my corporate owners: only time and independence had cost me my
flexibility. I had bank accounts in Liechtenstein and Forties Field, no
commitments, but I was unable to access the big company AIłs, my knowledge was
going rusty in the face of informational explosion; I was staring career
burnout i n the face at thirty. I had pushed every synthetic narcotic I could
make, but only in small-to-medium scale production: I had always managed to
skip out before the blowback. Hit and run. I didnłt use them myself, but
supplied a demand; I made people happy for a living. What could be better than
that? I liked to consider myself to be a moral anarchist, Kropotkinsł heir. Only
where was I going to go next?

Therełs always time for another drug or craze; time for it
to reach peak saturation, to maximize the number of receptors ... every drug
has its day! But in this age I was slowly turning into a classicist; I sold old
clean shit with none of your new hoodoo metabolic mania to retool the human
genome for optimal thrust. That made me techo-obsolescent. Things were moving
too fast for people like me to keep up; not every dealer wanted to turn their
skull into a gene-machine for the recombinant receptor-affinit y tuning that
passed for heavy shit these days. Frankly, I was lousy at genetic programming;
as likely to come up with a new disease as a saleable product. But there was a
blindingly obvious solution staring me in the face, and I knew just where to
find it; all I needed was a link.

I found a phone and used it to find a list of rented accomodation;
I chose a flat, furnished, four rooms, monthly payments, good view of the park.
If I hadnłt been speeding a week ago it would have cost an arm and a leg, or at
least a kidney. Now all I had to do was make the right contact; and that, for
some-one of my background, was easy.

We met in a cafe on the edge of a drained swimming pool,
where the penguins jostled excitedly for scraps from the tables. She looked
nervous, which was to be expected. I was, too. I didnłt even know how much she
wanted for the job! Just that she was as desperate as I was.

�What youłre looking for ... � she said; �dangerous, you
know? The temporal annealing processes arenłt really mapped out very well, and
the moles are kinda touchy about nosing it about. I mean, this is military
surplus, right?" She dragged on the hookah nervously, watching the surveillance
cameras for blind-spots. Concentrating on the long-lost lover bullshit for the
digital polizei, I smiled tenderly before I replied.

�Look," I said, �this is SDI spin-off material, right? After
the third world war came out biological all the Pentagon defence contracts
lapsed, leaving you with a heap of junk and no budget, right? So why not use it
to make some quick cash? Face it, youłre damn near starving. Now I" I leaned
back in my chair�Iłm a potentia customer. With currency. The PERV was designed
to let them know when to zap missiles before they torched off, and the Interactive
Reality Transformer was built to open a hole in spacetime. So why canłt you
turn them into a time machine for me? Iłm willing to pay! And I mean to say, if
the old Unistat government trusted that rig with their lives, what can go wrong
with it now?"

She coughed. �Lots," she said drily. �Just look what
happened to them. Youłre forgetting that this stuff was never used ... only
tested in simulation. Nobody ever did get round to firing smart rocks through a
time window, did that escape your attention? This is highly, uh, dangerous."

I sighed. �Look," I said, �for the final time, thatłs your
speciality. Not mine! I mean, I like the idea of supporting higher education, I
really do, but I canłt afford to throw money away without any come-back on the
investment, right? But if you and your university department do this for me,
Iłll see about .. uh, endowing a Chair in perpetuity, maybe?"

�The College authorities might be doubtful about naming a
chair after a semilegal drug dealer," she said dubiously. It was the first sign
of her fall from grace; so she was desperate! I pushed on.

�Yeah," I said, �but you can call it whatever you want. I
paid for your flight here, didnłt I? When was the last time your government
gave you any money for anything? Look, just do this for me and Iłll make an
endowment you wonłt forget."

�Um, right," she said, almost smacking her lips. Then she
made her decision; the right one. �Okay. Fly up to Oxford in the first week of
next month. Iłll have one of our post-docs meet you in; we should be ready to
test by then." A faint cloud crossed her face. �Youłve no idea how bad things
have got up there," she added softly; �You were a good student, on that
exchange program. Try not to get shot before wełre ready, right?"

�Sure professor," I said, waving for the waiter. �Thatłs,
like, one of my lifełs ambitions."

She unwound a bit. �Whatłs the other?"

I grinned widely. �To fuck Ronald Reagan."

While I was waiting for the call from the Hawking Laboratory
I crashed out in front of the video, reading graphic novels and scanning reruns
of twentieth century docudramas. The condenser burbled in the makeshift fume
cupboard Iłd built in the bathroom and the gene-spinners clicked intermittently
as I soaked up Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Leonid Brezhnev. Creatures of
another era, when the universe was just about beginning to fill up and society
was teetering on the edge of a baroque tomorrow; fasci nating cut-outs in a
past that was truly another country. Twenty years earlier still everything was
so naive, so pre-technological; but the timezone Iłd picked was already on the
brink of today, unsophisticated bug-ridden systems powering up for the
remorseless march into a post-modernist present. People were waking up to
changes, beginning to notice the end of industrialism. Yeah, I figured I could
hack it; gather protective coloration, not look too out of place, but be so far
ahead of the p ack th t I could hit them with a dose of double-barrelled
futurism and make my getaway clean-heeled and rich enough to retire ...

�Just say NO," I mimicked, and threw an empty beer can at
the screen. Good jokes are made of this, I thought. Then the phone coughed.

�Yeah?" I asked.

�Itłs for you," it said, extending the handset. I took it
and listened. �Twenty mil? Thatłs steep ... okay, yeah, so itłs never been done
before ... how much? Oh, right. Iłll figure a way ... day after tomorrow? Fine.
See ya." The phone grabbed itsł handset back and wiped it furiously. I tried to
stare it down, but it didnłt seem to notice. In my experience when domestic
appliances get uppity the only answer is to shoot them; but I didnłt have a gun
on me so I leaned back and thought irritably abou t what the good professorłs
news instead.

The weight restriction on the time jump was going to be
tight. It worked out at ten kilograms, plus my good self. Thatłs not much, is
it? Clothing, a portable kit, some raw materialsnot much. Compute-power no
problem; you can only cram so many mainframes into a false tooth, but back
where I was going even one of them was going to give me an unfair edge. The
real problem was going to be currency for investment. I frowned. Credit? Did
they have credit in those days? Or did they have to carry metal coins around?
What could I use instead?

Ah. Good idea. Why not do it right now? I sat up and grinned
wildly, then staggered through to the bathroom. My gene-machine was sitting on
the floor, humming to itself. I bent down and plugged myself in, figuring out
the ideal stash. Something theyłd never check for; something better than money,
a dirt cheap commodity to vector on the market. Like the goose that laid the
golden eggs, I was going to make a one-man heroin fortune in the eighties! I
was going to be so successful the market pri ce was going to bomb! Yes, Iłd seen
the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The pot of yellow snow ...

Yellow snow is a handle for a kind of cheap dealer shit; nobody
falls for it these days. All it takes is a gene-machine and the nerve to use it
on yourself. You engineer a retrovirus that makes a minor alteration to your
enkephalin receptorłs tertiary structure, thus changing itłs substrate
affinity; then you engineer another that adds a small peptide tag to the stuff
your own receptors get off on, so that they match. Customise your pain/pleasure
complex, right? That leaves you free to use another ęvirus, one that makes some
of your peripheral tissuepancreas, saygo into endorphin overdrive, pumping
out the real McCoy in such volume that you literally piss heroin analogs away
whenever you go to the toilet. Nowthis is the cool bityou add some acetic
acid to neutralise all that ammonia and urea, then you partition it out in
organic solvents and dissolve it in a sugar solution and re-crystalise. You get
natural heroin in your kitchen sink! Indistinguishable from gold triangle authentic,
exc pt that itłs better. Only trouble is, therełs a certain stigma attached to
its source, hence the handle yellow snow; nobody wants to be pissed on by their
dealer, hey? Anyway, these days customs computers donłt look out for hidden
stashes; theyłre on the scan for designer genes. So any time after the naughty
ęnineties yellow snow would be a non-starter. But where/when I was going ...

�Just say no," I mimicked. Then I slurped another beer can.
�Iłm gonna piss on you, all, junkies!" Good joke for an anarchist businessman,
teetering on the edge of burnout, to ride the elevator back to where it all
began. I wondered why nobody had done this before; it seemed so cool!

Maybe I was going to find out.

I hitched a Zeppelin ride for Ancient Britannia to give me
time to assemble my time-travel survival kit; also time to take it slow and
easy and get my head screwed on in preparation for the jump. I locked myself in
my first-class stateroom and ignored the long, stately cruise across icy wastes
and the ocean gulf to the Cape of Good Hope. The passengers were socialising
frenetically, holding balls and orgies in the gas-cell auditoria; I didnłt need
it right then. I donłt like have people rammed down my thr oat, en masse: I
need to retreat into my personal space, to maintain a distance between myself
and the burning wilderness of raw nerve endings that constitutes a global
culture for ten billion naked apes.

As we crossed the Azanian coast I went on a shopping spree.
The latest databases from Grolier; a repołd personal dialysis machine from
Squibb; a very compact mainframe from Bull-Siemens. Everything to be collected
when I got where I was going. In a mail-order feeding-frenzy I ordered anything
I thought I could use that weighed less than fifty grams; then I crashed out
for a relaxed sybaritic binge, dragging on designer silks for a bar-crawl
around the kilometer-long airship. There was a lot of entertainme nt to be had,
watching the desperate writhings of the jet-stream set on their slow
intercontinental cruises through the new millennium; being rich beyond belief
they travelled as slowly as possible, in order to flaunt their leisure time. As
a handsome dowager told me on her way through my bed and my affections: �But dear,
only the poor have to hurry to keep up! Speed is no substitute for real life."
No, but it sure could enhance my credit status ...

A week to cover fourteen thousand kilometres and we were on
final approach into one of the main British airports. One which still had a
runway. I shook my head, looking down through the transparent deck. I was going
to get something unique out of that? Even the ruins looked dingy.

The arrival zone was dirty yellow; beggars displayed their
wounds beside a kitchen selling curry from the pot. They had a scared-looking
goat tethered nearby to show how fresh the meat was. I pulled on my shades and
walked fast, kept walking until I came to a concourse. Somebody grabbed me; I
looked round.

�Mister Agonistes?" I saw naked fear in his gaunt face.
Polizei leaned on their guns outside, sniffing for the spoor-signs of money. I
nodded. �Iłm from the research centre; I was to take you to the laboratory ...
�

�Thatłs good," I said. �Wherełs our chopper?"

�Our what? Oh ... Iłm sorry. We couldnłt possibly afford
one," he said lamely. Gaunt beneath threadbare tweed clothing: The public rice
ration had gone downhill, I noted. �We could get a rickshaw ... if you could
pay ... �

I paid.

The lab was a decrepit concrete cube, unpainted for decades,
glass-faced windows nailed over with boards and a makeshift wind-turbine bolted
to the roof. Only the satellite downlinks were clean, desperately polished to
the shimmery finish of metal that was about to wear through. He led me inside,
up a staircase in which trash had drifted deep. �We can only run the lift for
two hours a day," he apologized; �the turbine is for the big stuff." He glanced
over his shoulder furtively, as if trying to guess how much meat there was on
my bones; I shivered. Maybe Iłd grown too fat on the airship, and too slow.

�Here we are," he said, pushing open a fire door at the top
of the stairs. �Herełs where we stored the IRT modules. The PERV is hooked into
our system next door; the stuff you ordered ... itłs all here."

�Wherełs Professor Illich?" I asked.

He shrugged uncomfortably. �Shełll be here soon," he said.
�Iłd better go now ... �

He retreated through another door and I took stock.
Everything Iłd ordered, plus a cheap nylon rucksack of dubious vintage. I
searched through it, assembling and ordering, then opened my wallet. Three
small glass vials lined up like so many menacing soldiers; diseases of the
imagination. I hoped Iłd debugged them properly. I sat down on the dusty floor
beneath a hulking piece of machinery that resembled a half-melted fusion
reactor and contemplated them. My future: the past. I sat for a long time
before I pulled out my works and fired them up.

Professor Illich arrived half an hour later; she looked just
the same as she had in Ant city, except that now the hungry eagerness
underlying her veneer of professionalism was nakedly obvious. I imagined her
rotting in these dank, woodwormed buildings for decades, chances of the Nobel
prize slipping through fingers without the financial grasp to obtain that vital
extra funding ... I kicked aside the empty vials. They clattered off the
concrete as I stood up.

�Does it work?" I asked.

She smiled tensely, and rested one hand on the smooth
ceramic side of the malnourished reactor. �It works," she said. �One Probabilistic
Eigenstate Reorganisation Viewer, in full working order." She looked over her
shoulder; �Steve ... go tell Anwar to power up the Cray, therełs a good boy."
She turned back to me. �The account," she said.

�Here. You tested it?" I kept my fingers on the folio as she
paused.

�A cat. We sent it back six months then retrieved it.
Alive."

�How long was the delay?" I asked.

She shrugged. �Six milliseconds."

�Six milliseconds!" Incredulous, I nearly grabbed the megadollar
envelope back from her. She nearly exploded.

�Look, mister Agonistes, wełve gone to all this trouble for
you ..! Donłt you know anything about temporal annealing? There are limits to
how far we can test it. Spacetime is a continuum, an interwoven fabric of
superstrings; you can unravel it for a moment and see through to a new pattern
... then it re-weaves itself, anneals into a new structural arangement with
minimal potential energy. The wave-function always collapsesyou ever heard of
Schroedingerłs cat?"

�Yeah!" I said. �But six milliseconds?"

�You wanted a trip into the past. We wanted to prove that
you could make it alive, not prove that you could make it and come back as
well. Thatłs what you asked for, right? We had to go on half-rations for a week
to afford the power for the one trial! There was no second chance. As it is we
know youłll make it alive, but therełs no guarantee that the past you come out
in is our pastit might be another configuration, another local minimum in the
energy diagram. Wełll try to bring you back ... � I held up a hand wearily.

�Okay." I turned and looked up at the IRT module, squatting
on concrete blocks streaked with rust like some prehistoric lunar module with
cancer. I was loaded; I felt light-headed, almost feverish, as the retroviruses
went to work in my brain and pancreas. �Iłll take it," I said. �Try to bring me
back one year downstream and Iłll double your money. After the event. You know
why Iłm trying to make this trip?"

She nodded mutely, trying to contain herself. What Iłd just
saidtwenty million pounds more would keep her and her department running for
ten years. Ethics could take a back seat for that kind of hope. I almost felt
sorry for her for a minute.

�Okay," I said, �letłs do it. Where do I go?"

She looked at me critically. �Here, in this circle." White
spot on concrete, right underneath something that bore an unpleasant
resemblance to the exhaust nozzle of a big rocket motor. �Remember ... when the
eigenstate collapses, there are no guarantees. You might wind up in our past
... then again, if therełs a local entropic minimum you might find yourself in
a universe which has changed subtly. Less entropy; more information. Thatłs the
curve, you see, randomness versus order. Wełll dragnet for you a y ear down the
time stream from your targetApril first, eighty four, wasnłt it?as long as
you keep holding onto this tag" she passed a gadget to me that looked a bit
like a quaint digital watch �and hope for the best. Jump in thirty seconds .."

With that she retreated rapidly, leaving me standing in a
dusty circle with a small pack on my back and a feeling that maybe Iłd been
tricked, when there was a low growling noise and the naked light bulb dimmed,
flickered and went out. Violet shadows seemed to flicker at the edges of my
vision, dancing across the shadowy form of the IRT: then PERV counted down to
the launch window, and in a sudden burst of shocking blue flashed out

Darkness. Feeling giddy, I staggered, and kicked something
that fell over with a terrifyingly loud clatter. Where was I? Fumbling in
semi-panic I felt cold walls beneath my fingertips, then the inside of a door

Light. Leaving the broom-cupboard I stumbled downstairs. The
door: fresh green paint glared at me beneath recessed fluorescent lighting. AN
ALARM WILL SOUND ... I pushed through. Outside, the grass was neatly mown and
the concrete apron was full of archaic-looking vehicles with squared-off edges
and too much metal. Elation seized me; Iłd made it! I headed for the street and
reached a bus shelterunvandalizedwhere I put my pack down. Fumbling, I pulled
on my datashades and eyeballed a glittering cur sor into the middle of my
visual field. There were few people about, and nobody seemed to be staring at
me; I looked round, correlating visual parameters. Everything seemed to be in
order, there were no visible anachronisms; it felt as if time had healed all
wounds, as if the clock had wound back to deposit me gently in the tail-end of
the last century when civilisation was a function of humanity rather than
machines. I felt safe in my uniform of jeans and sweat-shirt and back-pack:
camouflage for the urba fox. Safe and sly and hungry, ready to take on the
forces of this sleepy little city ... I began to walk, a spring in my step.

Street corner shops bustled with grey people in archaic clothing:
mass production fashion victims filled the mall like so many mannequins of
times gone by. Remember how everyone used to look the same? Vehicle traffic was
thicker here/then, as I discovered when I crossed the road. Polizei ... I
tensed, then realised that there were no guns and I could actually see their
eyes. There were no beggars, either. The skin on the back of my neck crawled.
Without beggars, how do you know how rich you are? My shades were slowly caking
over with graphics as their sensors correlated textual overspill, scanning ads
for familiar campaigns. I hadnłt expected it to be quite like this, quite so
disorientating. Not only did everyone wear more or less the same stereotyped
costumes, they also seemed to be on an economic par with one another; as if poverty
didnłt exist at all here.

I cancelled my video program and took my glasses off. People
seemed to focus around me, avoiding contact, eyes downcast. I felt sweaty, in
the first bout of a low grade fever as my immune system targeted surplus viral
vectors. Disseminating the news, data for the public ... how did they do it?
Oh, archaic paper form. Remember ... I dug into one pocket for my precious
supply of antique coinage. It was time to buy a newssheet.

The shop was wired, but the systems were so primitive as to
be untouchable; no EPOS magic touch here, no files to tamper with for a bonus
redirection of products. Anyway, I wasnłt a black disc merchant to begin with;
what was I thinking of? I looked at the racks and selected a fat-looking wedge
of paper, then paid for it. The assistanthumanlooked at me curiously, but was
too busy with other customers to bother me; I nodded distractedly and strolled
outside into the sunlight and shoppers.

Putting my datashades on I began to read the headlines, leaving
my machines to deduce the social context from the references. Argentina was
protesting to the UN about something called the Malvinas; there was widespread
concern over a disaster at some place near Kiev; inflation was coming down. The
computer pondered for a bit then reported a classic match. This was the past,
okay. The incredible sense of elated freedom returnedit was true! I was going
to make it! Burn-out reversed by the futurist accel eration; coming from a time
when progress was incremented in microseconds, how could I fail in a time where
product lifecycles came and went in years?

This was going to be good. Shark-hungry for profits I
glanced round, looking for nightlife stakeouts to make my pitch from; haunt a
small market and connect with the local yardie zone-boss. Show them the colour
of profit; yellow snow. Flash out snowflakes of sugar-coated ecstasy on a
captive market at ten eurodollarspoundsa hit. Set up a still in a cheap
rented flat; drink, eat, refine a hundred grammes of peptides a day. Then
invest the profits for my triumphant return; computer-assisted share bu ying
for artificially intelligent deals. I looked to the finance pages, seeking
commodities in which I knew I could make a profit, and thatłs where I finally
noticed the dissonance. Marihuana and opium futures were going down for the
third successive year ...

Itłs been six months now.

I spent my first night, exhausted and hungry, on a park
bench. Junkies shot up around me, cheap shit and clean needles available in a
brown bag from the off-license stores; I watched, envying them their high,
until one of them staggered over to me glowering and shaking a wobbly fist as
he mouthed inaudible curses at me.

I began to notice signs beyond the financial pages. Therełs
less crime, less moralizing; less fear. Less wealth, too. All the narcotics
have been legal since ęthirty-three, when prohibition crashed in America and
the rest of the world followed suit. Suicide is legal, too, and abortion, and
anything you want to do to yourself in private. These people are so free! I
should have guessed; what Professor Illich said about local minima in the curve
of entropy, incomplete annealing of the wave-function, a time when things
havenłt gone quite so far downhill as in my own daysł past ...

I remember pissing in the gutter; pissing yellow gold that
sparkled in the cold sunlight. But what use is the Midas touch in a world of
floating currencies? For a while my urine ran red, an unexpected side-effect of
the infections; I had a terrible headache, and my teeth chattered continuously.
But Iłm better now. Much better. Got over my fear of brain damage; Iłm not that
incompetent.

Shit may be legal but there is a Problem with it. I heard
the Prime Minister talking about it on the news yesterday. The Police want
Something to be Done. Iłll second that.

After a week, the Salvation Army took me in. They deal with
a lot of junkies, try to rehabilitate them half-heartedly. I went overboard on
the old ęseen the lightł number, sang hallelujah! to their choir and mopped the
floor after supper. They seem to like it.

Anyway, I have seen the light. Now I sleep in the hostel,
clean floors in the evening, and parade the streets with a sandwich board by
day. DRUGS ARE THE DEVILłS TOOL, it says in big letters. I made it myself. I
sleep on a narrow, hard bunk bed and dream up scams, but itłs so very hard to
figure out how to turn a megadollar profit when youłre as broke as I am now;
with no ID I canłt even claim social security benefits. Kind of embarrassing.
Meanwhile, I keep on with the only scam I know, pis sing in the wind. You never
know, I might get lucky. They might re-criminalize it tomorrow ...

01.23.06

Appeals Court

by Charles Stross & Cory Doctorow

What finally wakes Huw is the pain in his bladder. His head
is throbbing, but his bladder has gone weak on him latelyif he doesnłt get up
and find the john soon hełs going to piss himself, so he struggles up from a
sump-hole of somnolence.

He opens his eyes to find that hełs lying face-down in a hammock.
The hammock sways gently from side to side in the hot stuffy air. Light streams
across him in a warm flood from one side of the room; the floor below the
string mesh is gray and scuffed and something tells him he isnłt on land any
more. Shit, he thinks, pushing stiffly against the edge and trying not to fall
as the hammock slides treacherously out from under him. Why am I so tired?

His bare feet touch the ground before he realises hełs
bare-ass naked. He shakes his head, yawning. His veins feel as if all the blood
has been replaced by something warm and syrupy and full of sleep. Drugs? he
think, blinking. The walls

Three of them are bland, gray sheets of structural plastic
with doors in them. The fourth is an outward-leaning sheet of plexiglass or
diamond or something. And a very, very long way below him he can see
wave-crests.

Huw gulps, his pulse speeding. Something strange is lodged
in the back of his throat: he stifles a panicky whistle. There in a corner is
his battered kit-bag, and a heap of travel-worn clothing. He leans against the
wall. Therełs got to be a crapper somewhere nearby, hasnłt there? The floor,
now hełs awake enough to pay attention, is thrumming with a low bass chord from
the engines and the waves are sloshing by endlessly below. As he picks at a
dirty shirt a battered copper teapot rolls away from beneath it. �Shitfuckpissbugger,"
he swears, memories flooding back. Then he picks the teapot up and gives it a
resentful rub.

�Wotcher, mate!" The djinn that materializes above the
teapot is a hologram, so horribly realistic that for a moment Huw forgets his
desperate need for a piss.

�Fuck you, too, Ade," he mumbles.

�What kind of way to welcome yer old mate is that,
sunshine?" Hologram-Adrianłs wearing bush jacket, pith helmet and shorts, a
shotgun slung over one shoulder. �How yer feeling, anyway?"

�I feel like shit." Huw rubs his forehead. �Like Iłve been
shat. Where am I? Wherełs Bonnie gotten to?"

�Flying the bloody ship. We canłt all sleep. Donłt worry,
shełs just hunky-dory. How about you?"

�Flying." Huw blinks. �Where the hell"

�Youłve been sleeping like a baby for a good long while."
Ade looks smug. �Donłt worry, we got you out of Libya one jump ahead of Judge
Rosa. You wonłt be arriving in Charleston, South Carolina for another four or
five hours, whyłnłt you kick back and smoke some grass? I left at least a
quarter of your stash"

�South Carolina?" Huw screams, nearly dropping the teapot.
�Unclefucking sewage filter, what do you want to send me there for?"

�Ah, pecker up. Theyłre your co-religionists, arenłt they?
You wonłt find a more natural, flesh-hugging bunch on the planet than the
Jesonians who got left behind in the Geek Rapture. Hell, theyłre the kind of
down-home Luddites what make you look like Buck Rogers."

�Theyłre radioactive," Huw wails. �And Iłm an atheist. They
burn atheists at the stake, donłt they?" He rummages through his skanky
clothes, turning them inside out and outside in as he searches for something
not so a-crawl that hełd be unwilling to have it touch his nethers.

�Oh, hardly," says Adrian. �Just get a little activated
charcoal and iodine in your diet and memorize the Lordłs prayer and youłll be
fine, sonny."

Huw ends up tying a t-shirt around his middle like a diaper
and seizing the teapot, which has developed a nasty rattle in its guts.

�Breakfast and toilet. Not in that order. Sharp."

�That door there," says the tiny Adrian.

The zeppelin turns out to be a maryceleste, crewed by capricious
iffrits whose expert-systems were trained by angry, resentful trade-unionists
in ransom for their pensions. The amount of abuse required to keep the ship
on-course and to keep its commissary and sanitary systems in good working order
is heroic.

Huw opens the door to the bridge, clutching his head, to
find Bonnie perched on the edge of a vast, unsprung chair, screaming
imprecations at the air. She breaks off long enough to scream at him. �GET THE
FUCK OFF MY BRIDGE!" she hollers, eyes wild, fingers clawed into the arm-rests.

Huw leaps back a step, dropping the huge, suspicious sausage
hełs been gnawing at. His diaper unravels as he stumbles.

Bonnie snorts, then gets back control. �Aw, sorry darlinł.
Iłm hopped up on hateballs. Itłs the only way I can get enough FUCKING SPLEEN
to MAKE THIS BUGGERY BOLLOCKY SCUM-SUCKING SHIP go where I tell it." She sighs
and digs around the seat cushion, coming up with a puffer which she inserts
briefly into the corner of each eye. The tension melts out of her skinny shoulders
and corded neck as Huw watches, alarmed.

�You look like a Welsh Ghandi," she tells him, giggling. Her
lips loll loose; she stands and and rolls over toward him with a half-drunken
wobble. Then she throws her arms around his neck and fastens her teeth on his
shoulder, worrying at his trapezium.

The teapot whistles appreciatively. Bonnie gives it a savage
kick that sends it skittering back into the corridor.

�You need a wash, beautiful," she says. �Unfortunately, itłs
going to have to be microbial. Nearly out of fresh water. Tubłs up one level."

�Gak." Huw replies.

�ęSnot so bad."

�Itłs bugs," he says.

�Youłre hosting about three kilos of bugs right now. Whatłre
a few more? Go."

Huw picks up his sausage. �You know where wełre going,
right?"

�Oh aye," she says, her eyes gleaming. She whistled a snatch
of �America the Beautiful."

�And you approve?"

�Always wanted to see it."

�Theyłll burn you at stake!"

She picks up a different puffer and spritzes each eye, then
bares her teeth in a savage rictus. �Iłd like to see them fucking try. BATHE,
YOU CRETINOUS STENCHPOT!"

Huw settles himself among the soup of heated glass beads and
bacteria and tries not to think of a trillion microorganisms gnawing away at
his dried skin and sweat.

�Bastard scum bastard," he mumbles at the battered teapota
one-time host for a cultural guidance iffrit to the Peoplełs Magical Libyan
Jamahiriya, and now evidently hacked by Ade and his international cadre of
merry pranksters. �Why South Carolina? Głwan, you. Why there, of all places?"

He isnłt expecting a reply, but the teapot crackles for a
moment then a translucent holo of Ade appears in the air above it, wearing a
belly-dancerłs outfit and a sheepish expression. �Yer wot? Ah, sorry mate.
Feckinł trade union iffritłs trying to make an alpha buffer attack on my
sprites." The image flickers then solidifies, this time wearing a bush jacket
and a pith helmet. �Like, why South Carolina? To break the embargo, Huw. Ever
since the snake-handlers crawled outta the swamps and figured the Rapture had
been and gone and left łem behind theyłve been waiting for a chance at
salvation, so I figured Iłd give them you." Adełs likeness grins wickedly as
tiny red horns sprout from his forehead. �You and the backchannel to the
ambassador from the Cloud. They want to meet God so bad I figured youłd maybe
like to help the natives along."

�But theyłre radioactive!" Huw says, shaking his fist at the
teapot with a rattle of yeast-scented beads. �And theyłre lunatics! They wonłt
talk to the rest of the world because wełre corrupt degenerate satanists, they
claim sovreignty over the entire solar system even though they canłt even
launch a sodding rocket, and they burn dissidents to death by wiring them up to
transformers! Why would I want to help them?"

�Because your next mission, should you choose to accept it,
is to open them up to the outside universe again." Ade smirks slyly at him from
atop the teapot.

�Fuck." Huw subsides in a fizzing bath of beads, with are beginning
to itch. Moving them around brings relief, although itłs making him a little
piebald. �You want to infect the Fallen Baptist Congregations with godvomit,
you be my guestjust let me get the fuck away before the shooting starts."

�Thatłs the idea," says Ade, scratching his beard
absent-mindedly. �Bonniełs one of our crack agents. We donłt wanna risk one of
our best prophets-at-large in a backwater, mate. Youłll be safe as houses."

Huw thinks of Sandra Lal, the house of the month club, and
her mini-sledge, and shudders. His arse is beginning to itch as the bacteribeads
try to squeeze through his puckered ringpiece: itłs time to get out. �If this
goes wrong, so help me I am going to make you eat this teapot," he says,
picking it up. He shakes his head, then he heads downstairs to find Bonnie
again and see if shełs come down far enough off the hateballs to appreciate how
squeaky-clean Adełs messiah manque is feeling.

The big zeppelin lurches and buzzes as it chases its shadow
across the sandy beaches and out of control neomangrove jungle that has run
wild across the gulf coast. The gasoline mangroves spin their aerofoil leaves
in the breeze, harnessing the wind power and pumping long-chain terpenoids into
their root systems, which ultimately run all the way to the hydrocarbon
refineries near Beaufort. A long-obselete relic of the feverish
cross-fertilization of the North American biotechnology biz with the dinosaurs
of the petroleum age, they ought by rights to have made the US the worldłs
biggest source of refined petrochemicalsexcept that since the Singularity,
nobodyłs buying. Oil slicks glisten in the sunlight as they spread hundreds of
kilometres out into the Atlantic, where they feed a whole deviant ecosystem of
carbon-sequestrating petroplankton maintained by the continental quarantine
authority.

Huw watches apprehensively from the observation window at
the front of the bridge as Bonnie curses and swears at the iffrits, who insist
that air traffic control is threatening to shoot them down if they donłt steer
away from the land of the Chosen People. Bonniełs verbal abuse of the ship
ascends to new heights of withering scorn, and he watches her slicken her
eyeballs with anger-up until they look like swollen golf-balls, slitted and
watering. The ship wants to turn itself around, but shełs insisting that it
plough on.

�Hail ground control NOW! you fucking sad, obsolete piece of
shit, so that for once, JUST! FOR! ONCE! you will have done one genuinely
USEFUL! thing for SOMEONE!" she snarls with a cough, hacking up excess angry-up
that has trickled back through her sinuses. She picks up the mic and begins to
stalk the bridge like an attack-comedian scouting the audience for fat men with
thin dates to single out in her routine.

�This is Charleston Ground Control repeating direct order to
vacate sovereign Christian States of America airspace immediately or be blown
out of the sky and straight to Satan. Charleston Ground Control out." The voice
has the kind of robotic-slick Californian accent that tells Huw straightaway
that hełs talking to a missile guidance computer rather than a human being.

�HAIL! HIM! AGAIN!" Bonnie yelled, hopping from foot to
foot. �Arrogant Jesus-sucking sack of SARS, scabrous toddler-fondler,
religion-addled motherfucker," she continues, punching out with the mic for
punctuation.

�Bonnie," Huw says, quietly, flinching back from her
candy-apple-red eyeballs.

�WHAT?"

�Maybe you should let me talk with them?" he says.

�I am PERFECTLY! capable of negotiating with MICROCEPHALIC!
GOD! BOTHERING! LUDDITES!" she screeches.

No youłre not, Huw thinks, but he doesnłt even come close to
saying it. In the state shełs in, she could lift a car and set it down on top
of a baby, a reversal of the kind of hysterical strength hełs heard that
mothers possess at moments of extreme duress. �Yes, you are," he says. �But you
need to fly the ship."

She glares at him for a moment, fingernails dug so hard into
her palms that drops of blood spatter to the flooring. Hełs sure that shełs
going to charge him, and then zeppelin changes direction with a lurch. So she
throws the mic at his head, viciouslyhe ducks but it still beans him on the
reboundand goes back to screaming at the ship.

Huw staggers off the bridge and sinks back against one of
the bare corridor-bulkheadsthe zep that Adrianłs adventurers stole is made
doubly cavernous by the absense of most of its furnishings.

�This is Airship Lollipop to Charleston Ground Control requesting
clearance to land in accordance with the Third International Agreement on
Aeronautical Cooperation," he says into the mic, using his calmest voice. Hełs
pretty sure hełs heard of the Third International Agreement, though it may have
been the Fourth. And it may have been on Aeronautical Engineering. But that
there is an agreement he is sure of, and hełs pretty sure that the Christian
States of America is no more up to date on international affairs than he is.

�Airship Lollipop, yłall welcome to land here, but wełs
having trouble argumentating with this-here strategic defense battle computer
that thinks yłall are goddless commie-fag euroweasels. I reckon youłse got
maybe two minutes to repent before it blows yłall to Jesus."

Huw breaths a sigh of relief: at least therełs a human in
the loop. �How do we convince it wełre not, uh, godless commie-fag
euroweasels?" He asks, suppressing a twinge as he realises that in fact he and
Bonnie meet about 130 percent of those criteria between them.

�Thatłs easy, yłall just gotta have a little faith," says
the airhead on the traffic control desk.

Huw grits his teeth and looks through the doorway at Bonnie,
whose ears appear to be smoking. He puts ahand over the mike: �does this thing
carries missiles?" he calls to her.

�FUCKING fucking arse shit bollocks" Bonnie hammers on a
control panel off to one side. It bleeps plaintively, the ancient chime of
servers rebooting: �ęing COUNTERMEASURES suite!"

�Hasta la vista, sinners," drawls the missile launch computer
in a thick gubernatorial Austro-Californian accent. Two pinpricks of light
blossom on the verdant horizon of the gasoline mangroves, then a third that
rapidly expands into a fireball as the antique pre-Cloud hypersonic missile bus
explodes on launch. The surviving Patriots stab towards them and therełs a
musical chime from the countermeasures control panel. Huw feels a moment of
gut-slackening terror. �Youłve got mail!" the countermeasures system announces
in the syrupy tones of a kindergarten teacher. �AOL welcomes you to the United
States of America. You have new voice mail, which will follow automatically
after this message from our sponsors: click the pink furry button to access our
extensive range of introductory offers, the pink fuzzy button to access our
customer accounts database, the pink lozenge to see how AOL can help you"

Bonnie thumps something on the panel, muscles like whipcord
standing out on her arm as she glares at the oncoming missiles. Huw backs away.
She might actually be a communicant, he realises in absolute horror. She might
actually be an AOL screen nameshełs mad enough ... These days, tales of what
AOL did with their users during the Singularity are commonly used to scare
naughty children in Wales.

�Acknowledged," says the possessed countermeasures suite, in
the hag-ridden tones of a computer that has surrendered to the dark side. For a
moment nothing seems to happen, then one of the onrushing pinpricks of light
veers towards the other. Paths cross then diverge in a haze of debris. �Youłve
got mail," it sighs.

�Donłt read it!" Huw screams, but hełs too lateBonnie has
punched the console again, and messages begin scrolling across it. In the
middle distance, Charleston airportsł cracked and vitrified runways are coming
into view. Missile batteries off to one side cycle their launcher-erectors
impotently, magazines long since fired dry at the robot-piloted godless
commie-fag euroweasel aid flights.

�We gotta bail out before we land, otherwise wełd have to go
through customs," she says brightly. �That would be badSouth Carolina never
ended prohibition."

�What?" Huw shakes his head again. �Prohibition of what?
What are you talking about?" His hands are shaking, he realises. �I need a
drink."

�Prohibition of grass DIPSHIT," Bonnie says. She pauses for
a moment, prodding at her eyes with a mister, but they are so swollen that she
canłt get its applicator into contact with bare mucous membrane. She roots
around some more, then whacks some kind of transdermal plaster on her arm.
�Sorry, gotta ARSE FUCK come down now. Your stash, darling? Itłs illegal here.
If the customs crows catch you with it, theyłll stick you on the chain gang and
youłll be chibbed and FUCK RAPED BABY-EATING MURDERED by psychotic redneck
klansmen for the next two hundred years. Itłs bad for the skin, I hear." She
stands up and heads towards a battered cabinet at the rear of the bridge, which
she opens to reveal a couple of grubby-looking parachutes that appear to have
been carefully hand-packed by stoned marmosets. �Wełll be passing over the hot
tub in about three minutes. You coming?"

The parachute harness she hands him is incredibly
smellyevidently its last owner didnłt believe in soapbut its flight control
system assures Huw that itłs in perfect working order and please to extinguish
all cigarettes and switch off all electronics for the duration of flight.
Tight-lipped, Huw fastens it around his waist and shoulders then follows Bonnie
to the back of the bridge and down a rickety ladder to the bottom of the gas
bag. Therełs an open hatch, and when he looks through it he sees verdant green
folliage whipping past at nearly a hundred kilometres per hour, hundreds of
metres below. �Clip the red hook to the blue static line eye," says the
harness. �Clip the"

�I get the picture," Huw mutters. Bonnie is already hooked
up, and turns to check his rig, then gives him a huge shit-eating grin and
steps backwards into the airshipłs slipstream. �Aagh!" Huw flinches and
stumbles, then follows her willy-nilly. Seconds later the chute unfolds its
wings above him and his ears are filled with the sputtering snarl of a
two-stroke motor as it switches to dynamic flight and banks to follow Bonnie
down towards a clearing in the mangrove swamp.

The swamp rushes up to meet him in a confusion of green, buffeting
him with superheated steam as he descends toward it, so that by the time the
chute punches him through the canopy he feels like a dim-sum bun. Bonniełs
chute is speeding ahead of him, breaking branches off and clattering from tree
to tree. He tries to follow its crazy trail as best as he can, but eventually
he realizes, with a sick falling sensation in his stomach, that shełs no longer
strapped into it. �Bonnie!" He yells, and grabs at the throttle control.

�Danger! stall warning!" the parachute intones. �Danger! Danger!"

Huw looks down, dizzily. Hełs skimming the ground now, or
what passes for itmuck of indeterminate depth, interspersed with clumps of
curiously nibbled looking water hyacinth. The tree line starts in another
couple of hundred metres, and itłs wall to wall petroleum plants. Black-leafed
and ominous looking, the stunted inflammabushes emit a dizzying stench of raw
gasoline that makes his eyes swim and his nose water. �Fuck, where am I going
to land?" he moans.

�Please fold your tray table and return your seat to the
upright position," says the parachute control system. �Extinguish all joints,
switch off mobile electronics, and prepare for landing." The engine note above
and behind him changes, spluttering and backfiring, and then the damp muck
comes up and slaps him hard across the ankles. Huw stumbles, takes a faltering
step forwardthen the nanolightłs engine drops down as the ęchute rigging
collapses above his head and thumps him right between the eyes with a hollow
tonk.

�What youłve got to understand, son," says the doctor, �is
itłs all the fault of the alien space bats." He holds up the horse syringe and
flicks the barrel. A bubble wobbles slowly up through the milky fluid in the
barrel. �If it wasnłt for them, and their Jew banker patsies, wełd be ascended
to heaven." He squeezes the plunger slightly and a thick blob of turbid liquid
squeezes out of the syringe and oozes down the needle. �Property speculators."
He grins horribly, baring gold plated teeth, and points the end of the needle
at Huwłs neck. Huw canłt seem to move his eyes from Docłs moustache: itłs huge
and bushy, a hairy efflorescence that twitches supiciously as the barefoot
medic inhales with sharp disapproval.

�Property speculators?" Huwłs voice sounds weak, even to
himself. He stares past the doctor at the peeling white paint on the wall of
this sorry excuse for a medical centre. �What have they got to do with ..."

�Property speculators." Doc nods emphatically as he rams the
blunt end of the quarter-inch needle against Huwłs jugular. Tiny machines whine
and click and the side of Huwłs neck goes numb. �They bought up all the
beachfront property, right? Hurricane alley. Then they vanished taking their
mortgages with łem and all the locals whołd put their savings into bank
accounts and stocks and bonds were left holding the sack. Then the seas rose on
account of globular incendiarism, and we got the double-whammy of the insurance
corporations going bust."

Huw tries to swallow. The plunger is going down and white goo
is flooding into his circulatory system, billions of feral redneck nanochines
bouncing off his fur-lined arteries in search of damaged tissue to fix. His
mouth is dry, his tongue as crinkly and musty-dry as a dead cauliflower. �But
the, the alien"

�Alien space bats, son," says Doc. He sighs lugubriously and
pulls the syringe away from Huwłs neck. �With their fancy orbital fresnel lens.
Theyłre behind the global warming thing, yłsee, itłs nothing to do with burning
oil. It dates to the fifties. Those commies, they were smartusing their
ballistic missile radars to signal the space brothers! We live in a strongly
anthropic universe, it stands to reason there must be aliens out there. Itłs a
long-term plot, a hundred year Communist plan to bankrupt America. And itłs
working. All those deserters and traitors who upped and left when the
Singularity hit, they just made it worse. Theyłre the savvy ones we need to
make this country great again, rebuild NASA and Space Command and go wipe those
no-good Ruskie alien space bats and their Jew banker patsies from the dark side
of the moon."

Oh Jesus fuck, Huw thinks incoherently, lying back and
trying to get both eyes to focus simultaneously. He still feels sick to his
stomach and a bit dizzy, the way hełs been since Bonnie found him neatly curled
up under a gas tree with a huge lump on his head and his parachute rigging
draped across the incendiary branches. �Have you seen my teapot?" he tries to
say, but hełs not sure it comes out right.

�You want a cup of Joe?" asks Doc. �Sure, we can do that."
He pats Huwłs shoulder with avuncular charm. �You jesł lie there and let my
little helpers eat the blood clots in your brain for a while."

�Bonnie" Huw whispers, but Doc is already standing and
turning towards the door at the other side of the surgery, out of his line of
sight. The blow from the motor did something worse to him than concussion, and
he canłt seem to move his arms or legsor neck. Iłm still breathing, so it
canłt be that bad, he tells himself hopefully. Remember, if you break your neck
during a botched parachute landing and then a mad conspiracy-theorist injects
black market nanomachines into you, itłs highly unlikely that anything worse
can happen before sundown, he tells himself in a spirit of misplaced optimism.

And things were, indeed, looking up compared to where theyłd
been an hour or two ago. Bonnie had found him, still unconscious, lying at the
foot of a tree that was already dribbling toxic effluent across his boots. The
teapot was screaming for help at the top of its tinny electronic lungs as an
inquisitive stream of brick-red ants crawled over its surface, teaming up to
drag it back to one wing of the vast sprawling supercolony that owned the
continent. The ants stung, really, really hard. And there were lots of them,
like a tide sweeping over his body. It was Bonnie whołd called Doc, using some
kind of insane spatchcock mobile phone jury-rigged from the wreckage of her
parachute harness to broadcast for help, and it was Bonnie whołd sat beside
him, whispering sweet nothings and occasionally whacking impudent formicidae,
until Doc had arrived on his half-rusted swamp boat. But shełd vanished
immediately afterwards, not sticking around to explain to Doc how come she and
Huw were at large in the nevergladesand Doc seemed mad about that.

After a couple of hours on the operating table Huw has begun
to realise that half an hour can be a very long time indeed when your only
company is a demented quack and you canłt even scratch your arse by way of
entertainment. And his arse itches. In fact, itłs not all that itches. Up and
down his spine, little shivers of tantalizing irritation are raising
goose-flesh. �Shit," he mumbles, as his left hand begins to tremble
uncontrollably. The nanobots have reached the swollen, damaged tissues within
his cervical vertebrae and are busily reducing the swelling. Theyłre coaxing
suicidal neurons back into cytocellular stability, laying temporary replacement
links where apoptosis has already proceeded to completion, and generally wreaking
the wonder of the Christopher Reeve process on Huwłs supine spinal cord. For
which Huw is incredibly gratefulif Doc was as nuts as he seems he might have
injected a auto engine service pack and Huw might at this very moment be gestating
a pile of gleaming ceramic piston ringsbut it itches with the fire of a
thousand ants crawling inside his veins. �Arse, bugger, fuck," he moans. And
then his toes begin to tremble.

By the time Doc reappears Huw is sitting up, albeit as shaky
as an ethanol addict in the first week of withdrawl. He moans quietly as he
accepts a chipped ceramic Exxon mug full of something dark and villainous
enough that it resembles a double-foam latte, if the barrista substituted gulf
crude for steamed milk. �Thanks," he manages to choke out. �I think. Do you
know where Bonniełs going to be back?"

�That evil woman?" Doc cranks one eyebrow up until it
teeters alarmingly. �Naw, son, you donłt want to be going worrying about the
likes of her. Shełs bad company, her and her crewbetween you and me, I figure
shełs in league with the space bats." He chuckles humorlessly. �Naw, youłll be
much better off with mełnłSam. Ade told us all about youłnłwhat youłre here
for. Wełll set you straight."

�Ade. Told you." Huwłs stomach does a backflip, which feels
extremely strange because something is wrong with his body image. It feels all
wrong inside. He clears his throat, and almost chokes: the alien
whistle-thing-communicator is gone! Then his stomach gives a warning twinge and
his momentary flash of hope fades. The godvomit has simply retreated deeper
into his gastrointestinal tract, hiding to bide its time like a robotic extra
in a Ridley Scott movie. �Howłd you know him?"

�łCause we do a bit of business from time to time." Docłs eyebrow
relaxes as he grins at Huw. �A little light smuggling, son. Donłt let it get on
your nerves. Ade told us what to do with you and everythingłs going to be just
fine."

�Just fine" Huw stops. �What are you going to do with me?"
he asks suspiciously.

�Ade figures we oughta deliver you to the Baptist temple in
Glory Citythatłs Charleston as wasin time for next Thursdayłs memorial
service. Itłs the sixteenth anniversary of the Rapture, and they get kinda
jumpy at this time of year." A meaty hand descends on Huwłs shoulder and he
looks round, then up, and up until his newly fixed neck aches at the sight of
an enormous and completely hairless man with skin the colour of a dead fish and
little piggy eyes. �Son, this is Sam. Say hello, Sam."

�Hello," rumbles the human mountain. Huw blinks.

�Youłre going to hand me over to the baptists?" he asks.
�What happens then?"

�Well." Doc scratches his head. �Thatłs up to you, isnłt
it?"

�But this anniversary. What do you mean, they get jumpy?"

�Oh, nothing much. Jesł sacrifice a bunch of heretics to
make God notice they still błlieve, that kinda thing. You got a problem with
that?"

�Maybe." Huw licks his lips. �What if I donłt want to go?"

�Well, then." Doc cocks his head to one side and squints at
Huwłs left ear. �Say, son, thatłs a mightly nice ear youłve got there. Seeing
as how youłve not paid your medical bill, I figure wełd have to take it off you
to cover the cost of your treatment. Plus maybe a leg, a kidney, and an eye or
two. How about it?"

�No socialised medicine here!" rumbles Sam, as a second
backhoe-sized hand closes around Huwłs other shoulder.

�Okay! Iłll do it! Iłll do it!" Huw squeaks.

Doc beams amiably at him. �That calls for a shot of corn likker,"
says the medic. �I knew youłd see sense. Now, about the alien space bats. Wełve
got this here telescope what Sam acquired, but we donłt know how to work it
proper. Have you ever used one? Wełre looking for the bat cave on the moon ..."

Welcome to the American future, at the dusk of the
twenty-first century.

The ant-colony has taken the entire Atlantic coast of the
US, has marched on Georgia and west to the Mississippi. It is an anarchist
colony, whose females lay eggs without regard for any notional Queen, and it
has entered its eighth year of life, which is middle-aged for a normal colony,
but may be just the beginning for the Hypercolony.

The God-botherers have no treaty with the ants, but have
come to view them as another proof of the impending end of the world. Anything
that is not contained in chink-free, seamless plastic and rock is riddled in
ant-tunnels within hours. Theyłve learned to establish airtight seals around
their homes and workplaces, to subject themselves to stinging insecticide
showers before clearing a vestibule, to listen for the tupperware burp whenever
they seal their children in their space-suits and send them off to Bible
classes.

The ants have eaten their way through most of the nematode
species beneath the soil, compromised all but the most plasticized root-systems
of the sickening flora (the gasoline refining forests are curiously symbiotic
with the colonyanarchist supercolonies like living cheek-by-mouth-part with a
lot of hydocarbons). Theyłve eaten the bee-hives and wasp-nests, and theyłve
laid waste to any comestible not tinned and sealed, leaving the limping
Americans with naught but a few billion tons of processed food to eat before
their supply bottoms out.

The American continent is a fairy tale that the cloudmind
tells itself whenever it doubts its collective decision to abandon humanity.
The left-behinds there spent their lives waiting for an opportunity to pick up
a megaphone and organize crews with long poles to go digging through the ruins
of civilization for tinned goods. Presented with their opportunity in the
aftermath of the Geek Rapture, they are happy as evangelical pigs in
shitplenty to rail against, plenty of fossil fuel, plenty of firearms.

What more could they possibly need?

Once it becomes clear that Huw is prepared to go to Glory
City, the Doc comes all-over country hospitality, seeing to it that Sam gets
him properly lubricated. They watch the sunset through the tupperware walls of
the Docłs homestead, watch the thick carpet of ants swarming over the outer
walls as they chase the last of the sun across the surface. When the sun
finally sets, the sound of a billion tromping feet keeps them company.

�Well," says Doc, nodding at Sam. �Looks like itłs time to
hit the road."

Huw sits up straight. Glory City is not on his agenda, but
if hełs going to make a break for it, he wants to do it somewhere a bit more
crowded and anonymous than here, right in the middle of Docłs home turf. Plus,
hełs still weak as a kitten from gasoline-tainted corn mash and the nanosł
knitting at his guts.

�Wełll take the bikes," Doc announces with an affable nod.
�Go get łem, Sam."

Sam thuds off towards an outbuilding, the plasticized floors
dimpling under his feet.

�Hełs a good boy," says Doc. �But I figure I used too many
cognitive enhancements on him when he was a lad. Made him way too smart for his
own good."

Sam returns with a serious-looking anime-bike dangling from
each hand. �alt.pave-the-earth," he says, setting them down. His voice is
bemused, professorial. �Iłll go get the sidecar."

�Hełll need a spacesuit," Doc calls after him. �Whatłre you,
about a medium?"

Huw, staring wordlessly at the stretched and striated bikes
with their angular mouldings, opens his mouth. �Iłm a 107 centimeter chest," he
replies vaguely.

�Ah, we donłt go in for that centimeter eurofaggotry around
here, son. Donłt really matter much. Spacesuits never fit too good. Youłll get
used to it. Itłs only six hours."

Sam returns with a low-slung sidecar under one arm and a
suit of Michelin-Man armor over his shoulders.

�Itłs very ergonomic," he rumbles tectonically as he sits
the suit down next to Huwłs folding lawn-chair, then goes to work attaching the
car to one of the bikes.

Huw fumbles with the michelin suit, eventually getting the
legs pulled on.

�Binds a bit at the crotch," he says, hoping for some
sympathy.

�Yeah, itłll do that," says Doc.

Huw modestly turns his back and reaches down to adjust himself.
As he does so he fumbles with the familiar curve of the brass teapot. Peeking
down he sees a phosphorescent miniature holographic Ade staring back up at him.

�Sharper than a trouser-snakełs tooth," Adrian hisses.

Huw puts his hand where hełd expect to find a pocket and a
little hatch pops open, exposing a hollow cavity in the thigh. Quickly, he
slips the teapot into it and dogs the hatch shut. �Iłm ready, I think," he
says, turning round again.

Doc and Sam have already suited up; theyłre waiting impatiently
for Huw to catch up. The bikes are bolted either side of the sidecar, and Doc
waves Huw into the cramped seat. Waddling in the suit, clutching a portable
aircon pack, Huw has a hard time climbing in. Everything sounds muffled except
the whirr of the helmet fans, and a pronounced smell of stale gotchis and
elderly rubber assaults his nose periodically, as if the suit is farting in his
face. �Letłs go," Sam rumbles, and they kick off towards the doorway, which
irises open to admit a trickling rain of ants as the bikes roar and spurt gouts
of flame against the darkness.

The jet-engine roar of the engines doesnłt die down, nor
does the laser-show strobing off the organic LED pixelboards on the outsized
fuel-tanks, but still, somehow, Huw snoozes through the next couple of hours in
a moonshine-assisted haze. Doc is rambling at length about some recondite point
of randite ideology, illuminating his own rugged self-reliance with the
merciless glare of A-is-A objectivist clarity, but after a few minutes Huw
discovers two controls on his chest plate that raise his opinion of the suit designers:
a drinking straw primed with white lightning, and the volume control on the
radio. As his sort-of jailers pedal away, driving him along a pot-holed track
lined with the skeletons of dead trees, he kicks back and tries to get his head
together. If it wasnłt for the eventual destination he could almost begin to
enjoy himself, but therełs a nagging sense of weirdness in his stomach (where
the godvomit still nestles, awaiting a communicative impulse) and he canłt help
worrying about what hełll do once they get to Glory City.

An indeterminate time passes, and Huw is awakened by a sharp
prodding pain near his bladder. �Uh." He lolls in the suit, annoyed.

�Psst, keep it quiet. They think youłre sleeping." The
prodding sensation goes away, replaced by a buzzing voice from just north of
his bladder.

�Ade?" Huw whispers.

�No, itłs the tooth fairy. Listen, have you seen Bonnie?"

�Not lately. She went for" Huw pauses. �You know I landed
bad?"

�Shit." Ade pauses. �So thatłs what youłre with Doc for.
Have they got her?"

�I donłt think so." Huw desperately wants to scratch his
head in puzzlement but his arms are folded down inside the sidecar and he
doesnłt dare let Sam or Doc figure hełs awake. �Look, I woke up and the
doctoris he a real doc?was trying to fix my neck. A motor fell on my head.
Bonnie got him to help but then she left and I havenłt seen her. Went off on an
errand or something."

�Shit and double-shit." Adełs tinny voice sounds upset.
�Theyłre not trustworthy, mate. Sell you as soon as look at you, those two. She
said you were hurt, but"

�You donłt know where she is, either," Huw accuses.

�Nope." They ride along in near silence for a while.

�Whatłs the big idea?" Huw asks, trying to sustain a sense
of detachment. �Packing me off to bongo-bongo land to convert the cannibals is
all very fucking well, but I thought you said this would be safe as houses?"

�Um well, therełs been a kinda technical hitch in that direction,"
Adrian says. �But wełll get that sorted out, donłt you worry yer little head
over it. Main thing is, you donłt wanna stay with the randroids any longer than
you got to, got that? Anyway, Iłm sure you can show łem a clean pair of heels,
mate. When you get to Glory City, head for the John the Baptist Museum of
Godless Evolution and make your way to the Steven Jay Gould Lies and Blasphemy
Exhibit. Therełs a trapdoor under the Hallucigena mock-up leading to an
atheistłs hole and if you get there Iłll send someone to pick you up. ęKay?"

�Wait" Huw says, but hełs too late. The buzzing stops, just
as Doc reaches over and cuffs Huw around the helmet. �What?" Huw cranks the
volume on his suit radio.

�said, you paying attention, boy?" Doc demands. Therełs a
suspicious gleam in his eye, although Huw isnłt certain it isnłt just the
effect of looking at him through a thin layer of toughened glass across which
stray a handful of very lost ants.

�I was asleep," Huw protests.

�Bah." Doc rubs off the ants, then grabs the brakes. �Well,
son, I was just saying: only a couple of hours now until we get there ..."

The road is unlit and therełs little traffic. What there is
seems to consist mostly of high-tech bicycle rickshaws retrofitted for unapologetic
hydrocarbon combustion, and ancient rusting behemoth pick-ups that belch thick
blue petroleum smokecatalytic converters and fuel cells being sins against
manłs deity-designated dominance over nature. The occasional wilted and ant-nibbled
wreaths plaintively underscore the messages on the tarnished and
bullet-speckled road signs: KEEP RIGHT and SLOW TRUCKS.

The landscape is dotted with buildings that have the
consistency of halvah or very old cheddar. These are the remains of manłs folly
and his pride, now bored out of 90 percent of their volume to fill the
relentless bellies of the Hypercolony. Individually, the ants crawling across
his faceplate, along his guantlets, over the sexy sizzle of the LEDs and
crisped up in a crust around the flame-nozzles appear to be disjointed and
uncoordinated. But now, here, confronted with the evidence of the Hypercolonyłs
ability to energize collective action out of its atomic units, Huw is struck
with a deep, atavistic terror. There is an Other here, loose on the continent,
capable of bringing low all that his kind has built. Suddenly, Huwłs familiar
corporeality, the source of so much personal pride, starts to feel like a
liability.

The aircon unit makes a sputtery noise that Huw feels rather
than hears through the cavaties of the michelin-suit. Hełs tried wiggling its
umblicus in its suit-seal, but now the air coming out of it is hot and wet and
smells of burning insulation. Hełs panting and streaming with sweat by the time
the dim white dome of Glory City swims out of the darkness ahead to straddle
the road like a monstrous concrete carbuncle. Sam guns the throttle like a
tireless robot, while Doc snores in the sidecar, his mouth gaping open beneath
his moustache, blurred behind the ant-crawling lexan of his faceplate. �How
much longer?" he gasps, the first words hełs spoken in an hour.

�Three miles. Then we park up and take a room for the night
in Saint Patłs Godly Irish Motel. No smoking, mind," Sam adds. �They donłt take
to the demon weed."

Huw stares in grim, panting silence as they take the uphill
slope towards the base of the enormous, kilometers-high Fuller dome that caps
the former city. Impregnated with neurotoxins, the dome is the ultimate defense
against ants. They ride into the city past a row of gibbeted criminals, their
caged bones picked clean by ants, then into the deserted and enormous airlock,
large enough to accomodate an armoured batallion. What Huw initially takes for
an old-fashioned air-shower turns out to be a gas chamber, venting something
that makes his throat close when he gets a hint of a whiff of it through the
suitłs broken aircon. After ten minutes of gale-force nerve-gas, most of the
ants are washed away, and those that remain appear to have died. Sam produces a
stiff whisk broom and brushes him free of the few thousand corpses that have become
anchored by their mouth-parts to his suit, with curious gentleness, and then
hands him the whisk so that he may return the favor. Then the inner doors to
Glory City open wide, sucking them into the stronghold of the left-behind.

Once inside the dome, Huw finds that Glory City bears little
resemblance to any streaming media representations of pre-singularity NorAm
cities hełs ever seen. For one thing the roads are narrow and the buildings
tall, leaning together like a sinister crowd of drunkards, the olde-world
olde-town feel revived to make maximum use of the cubic volume enclosed by the
dome. For another thing, about half the tallest buildings seem to be spiky
towers, like the old mediaeval things back home that he associates with seamy
nightclubs. It takes him a moment to realise: those are churches! Hełs never
imagined so many temples existing before, let alone in a single city.

The next thing he notices are the adverts. Everywhere. On
billboards and paving stones and the sides of parked monster trucks. Probably
tattooed on the hides of the condemned prisoners outside, before the ants ate
them. Half the ads seem to be public service announcements, and the other half
seem to be religious slogans, and some are in-between: ENJOY HOST ON A SHINGLE:
COMMUNION WITH ZEST HALF THE CALORIES LOWER GLYCEMIC INDEX! Whichever they are,
they set his teeth on edgeso that hełs almost happy when Sam steers him into a
cramped parking lot behind a tall gray slab of concrete and grunts, �this is
the motel."

Itłs about two in the morning, and Huw catches himself yawning
as Sam shakes Doc awake and extracts him from the sidecar. �Cłmon in," says
Doc. �Letłs get some sleep. Got a long day tomorrow, son."

The lobby of the motel is guarded by a fearsome-looking
cast-iron gate. Huw unlatches his faceplate and heaves a breath: the air is
humid and warm, cloying and laden with decay as sweet as a rotting tooth. Doc
approaches the conciergełs desk while Sam hangs back, one meaty hand gripping
Huwłs arm proprietorily. �Donłt you go getting no clever ideas," Sam rumbles
quietly. �Doc tagged you with a geotracker chip. You go running away, youłll
just get him riled."

�Uh. Okay." Huw gulps.

Doc is at the desk, talking to a woman whose long black
dress is like a throwback to the puritan colony days and who wears a bonnet
that looks like itłs nailed to her head. Shełs old, showing the distressing
signs of physical senescence. �Twenty cents for the suite," she says loudly,
�and fifteen for the pen." (Deflation has taken its toll on the once-mightly
dollar.) She wags a wrinkled finger under Docłs nose: �and none ołyour filth!"

Doc draws himself up to his full height. �I assure you, I am
here to do the Lordłs work," he tells her icily. �Along with this misguided
creep. And my assistant."

Sam pushes Huw forward. �Doc gets the presidential suite
whenever he stays here," he says. �You get to sleep in the pen."

�The ...?"

�łCause we donłt rightly trust you," Sam says, pushing Huw
towards a side-door behind the reception area. �So a little extra security is
called for."

�Oh" Huw says, and stops. Oh, really now, Huw would say,
except that now the Doc is back with a squeeze-bottle of something liquid and
so cold that it is fogged with a rime of condensation. Huwłs dryth of throat
manifests, and the gob in his mouth has the viscosity of rubber-sap.

�Thursday, Son?" the Doc says, playfully jetting a stream of
icy liquid in the air.

�Ahhh," Huw says, nodding vigorously. Six hours in the suit
with nothing but highly diruetic likker and any number of hours of direct
sunlight in its insulated confines after the aircon broke downhełs so
dehydrated hełs ready to piss snot.

�This a-way," the Doc says, and beckons with the bottle.

Huw lets Sam help him climb out of the sidecar and barely notices
the rubbery feeling of his legs after hours of being cramped up in the little
buggy. �Hotcha," the Doc says, �come on now, timełs a wastinł." He gives the
bottle another squeeze and water spatters the dusty ground.

�Aaah," Huw agrees, lumbering after it. Hełs never felt
quite this thirsty in all his days.

The Doc heads for a staircase behind a row of
suppository-shaped elevator cages, standing open and gleaming in scratched
plastic dullness by the diffuse white light of the holy sodiums overhead. Huw
can barely keep up, but even if he had to drop to his knees and crawl, hełd do
it. Thatłs holy stuff, that water, infused with the numinous glow of life
itself. Didłt the Christians have a hymn about it, �Jesus Gave Me Water?" Huw
comes from a long line of trenchant black country atheists, a man who takes to
religion the way that vegans take to huge suspicious Polish sausages that look
like cross-sectioned dachshundts, but hełs having an ecstatic experience right
now, taking the stairs on trembling knees.

The Doc spits on his thumb and smears the DNA across the
auth-plate set in the door at the bottom of the stairs. It thinks for a long
moment, then clanks open in a succession of matrioshkoid armour layers.

�Głwan now, youłve earned it, the Doc says, rolling the
bottle into the cell behind the door.

Huw toddles after it, the michelin suit making him waddle
like hełs got a load in his diaper, but he canłt be arsed worrying about that
right now because therełs a bottle of water with his name on it at the other
side of the cell, a bottle so cold and pure that it cries out to him: drink me!
Drink me!

Hełs sucking it down, feeling the cold straight through to
his skull-bone, a delicious brain freeze the size of the Universe, when the
teapot rattles angrily in his thigh pocket. The sound is getting him down,
distracting him from the sense of illumination appearing at the back of his
mindłs eye as he gulps the water, so he pulls the thing out and looks at it,
relaxing as he sees the shiny metal highlights gleaming happily at him.

Adrian pops out of the teapot, so angry hełs almost
war-dancing, and he curses. �Fucking suggestibility rayBible-thumping
pud-fuckers canłt be happy unless theyłve tasped someone into ecstasy. Come on,
Huw, snap out of it."

�Go ęway," Huw mumbles irritably, �młhavinł a
trash-transcentialtranscendential ęsperience here." He gulps some more water
then squats, leaning against the wall. Something loves him, something vaster
than mountains and far stronger, and itłs bringing tears to his eyes. Except
the teapot will have none of it.

�Fucking wake up! Jesus, didnłt they tell you anything in
class when you was a kid? They infuse your cerebrospinal fluid with nanobots
that have a built-in tropism for the god module in your temporal lobe. Tickle
it with a broadband signal and youłll see God, angels square-dancing in heaven,
fuck knows what. Get a grip on yourself!"

�Itłs God." Huwłs got a name for the sensation now, and he
grins idiotically at the opposite wall of his cell. Itłs a slab of solid
aluminium, scratched and dented and discoloured along the welds: and itłs as
beautiful to Huw as fluted marble pillars supporting the airy roof of a
pleasure dome, pennants snapping overhead in the delightful breeze blowing off
the waters of the underground river Alph

�Itłs not God, itłs a fucking tasp! Snap out of it, dipshit,
Theyłre only using it on you łcause they want you nice and addled for the
Inquisition tomorrow! Then, no more God module!"

�Huh?" Huw ponders the question for an eternity of proximate
grace, as serried ranks of angels blow trumpets of glory in the distant clouds
that wreath his head. �Iłm ... no, Iłm happy. This way. Iłve found it."

�What youłve found is a bullet in the back of the head if you
stay here, fuckwad!" Ade shakes his fists from the top of the teapot. �Think,
damn you! What would you have thought of this yesterday?"

�Yesterday?" Yesterday, all his troubles, so far away. Huw
nods, thinking deeply. �Iłve always been missing ęthing like this, even
fłIłdidnłt know it. Feels right. Everything makes sense." The presence of the
ultimate, even if itłs coming from right inside his own skull courtesy of a 5.4
gigahertz transmission from Godbotherer Central, is making it hard for Huw to
concentrate on anything else. �Wanna be like this łtil I die, ifłs all the same
to you."

�Theyłll kill you, man!" Ade pauses in his frantic
fist-waving. �Doesnłt that mean something to you?"

�Mmf. Lemme think about it." Huw slowly slumps back against
the wall, his suit bulking and billowing around him and digging sharp joints
into his bruised body, sanctifying and mortifying his flesh. �If I believed in
an actual, like, God, thisłdłbe marvellous. But Godłs such a goddamned
primitive fetish, isnłt it? Sołmła, an atheist. Always have been, always will
be. But this thing is like, inside me, and itłs huge, so enormous and
blindingly brilliant itłs like my own reflection on infinity." His eyes widen.
�Hey, that means Iłm a god. Iłm like, transcendentistry, right? I think
therefore I guess I am. If they try to shoot me Iłll just zap łem with my
god-powers." He giggles for a while, pointing his fingers at the ceiling, walls
and floor, lightning bolts of the illuminated imagination spraying every which
way. �Itłs a solipsystem! Nobody here but me. I am god. I am god. I am god"

The teapot zaps him with an electric shock as Ade vanishes
in a huff.

�Ouch." Huw sucks his thumb for a moment and meditates on
the cellestial significance of the autodeity sending him messages from his
subconscious via a curved metal antiquity stuffed with black-market Libyan
electronics. Then he tucks it away in his pocket and settles back down to work
hard on regaining his sense of omnipotent brilliance. And hełs still sitting in
that pose the next morning, staring at the wall, when the sense of immanence
vanishes, the doors grind open, and Doc and Sam come to take him downtown to
face the Inquisition.

They parade him down the road in the drab grey morning light
of Glory City, past the filling-stations, the churches, the diners, the other
filling stations, the refinery, the filling-station-memorabilia market, the
GasHaus, the corkscrew apartment blocks where every neighbor can look in on
every otherłs window, and the execution ground.

And it all feels good to Huw.

As the parade progresses, curious locals emerge from their
homes and workplaces as if drawn by some ultrawideband alert, rounded up and
herded out to form a malignant rent-a-mob that demonstrates to Huw how
important and central to reality he is. They pelt him with rotting fruit and
wet cigar stubs with live coals on one end that singe him before bouncing free
to the impermeable pavement, affirming his sense of holy closeness with the
intensity of their focus on him. Once, they stop so that the Doc can roar a
speech at the crowd

�hereticvengeancedrugssexwantonness"

Huw doesnłt pay much attention to the speech. Through his
feet he fancies he can feel the scritterscratch of the Hypercolony, gnawing
patiently at the yards of stone and polymer between him and the blighted soil.
Itłs a bad feeling, as if Glory City is a snow-globe that has been lifted into
the air on the backs of a heptillion ants who are carrying it away, making it
sway back and forth. The curlicue towers and the gnarled and crippled crowd
rock in hincky rhythm.

The faces on the balconies swim when he looks up. Some of
them have horns on their foreheads. He turns away and tries to stare at a fixed
point, using the ballerinałs trick of keeping his gaze still to make the world
stop its whirling, but his gorge is rising, and his stomach is threatening to
empty down his front.

This is not good.

He sits down hard, his armored ass klonking on the pavement,
and Sam lumbers toward him. Huw holds out his hand, wanting to be helped to his
feet, back to the godhead and the good trip. Just as Samłs fingertips graze
his, a woman wearing a voluminous black gown dashes out of the crowd and
snatches him under the armpits, looping a harness around his chest. Where it
touches his back it gloms on hard, hyperglue nanites welding it to the suitłs
surface.

�Hold on," Bonnie hisses in his ear, and he feels like
weeping, because he knows he isnłt to be redeemed after all, but tediously
rescued and rehabilitated and set free.

�Bitch harlot!" screeches Doc. �Sodomite! Stop her!" Sam
grabs for her past Huwłs shoulder, sideswipes the rounded swell of her
bosomextensively, chastely covered, this being Glory Cityand jerks his hand
back as though hełd been burned.

The harness around Huwłs chest tightens with rib-bruising
force and hełs dragged backwards, skittering over the roadway before the
harness lofts them both into the air, up toward the balconies ringing the
curlicue towers. Bonnie, who is tied off to him by a harness of her own,
squints nervously down at the crowd receding below them.

Huw bangs chest-first into the side of one of the towers, Bonniełs
weight knocking the breath out of him. They dangle together, twirling in the
breeze like a giant booger as strong hands hoist them bodily up and over a balcony,
then inside, adding insult to injury in the form of an atomic wedgie. Bonnie
scrambles in after him, unlocks her harness, and shakes out her voluminous petticoats.
Huw is still dazed from the flight and gasping for breath. Hełs bent over
double, trying to breathe perfumed air thick with musky incense.

�You all right?"

Huw forces himself to straighten up and look around. The
room is a tribute to excess: the wallpaper is printed with gold and red and
black tesselationsobscene diagrams, he realises, interpenetrating and writhing
before his eyesand the sofa is flocked with crushed purple velvet. The
coffee-table supports a variety of phallic implements in an assortment of
improbable colours, suited to an altogether different kind of inquisition than
the one that hełd been headed for.

As for the furniture, itłs inhabited by several persons of
indeterminate gender, wearing outfits ranging from scanty to inappropriate for
a place of worshipunderwear is in fashion but not much else is.

Bonniełs face swims into focus before him, her blue fringe
brushing his forehead: that and her hands are the only parts of her body he can
see. �Itłs the gnostic sexual underground," she hisses. �Therełs always one to
be had, if you know how to look. Nobody takes it up the tradesmanłs like a man
with religion. No one needs it more, either. These lucky folks just figured out
how to square the circle, thanks to the Bishop."

She gives him a hard shake. �Come on," she says. �I hit you
with enough seratonin reuptake blockers to depress a hyena." He feels a hard
tug at his throat and she holds up a small blowdart for him to examine. �I know
youłre out of the god-box."

Huw opens his mouth to say something, and finds himself sobbing.
�You took away my god-self," he manages to say, snotting down his beard and
horking back briny mouthfulls of tears and mucus.

Bonnie produces a hankie from up one sleeve of her
church-modest gown and wipes his face. �Sha," she says, stroking his hair.
�Sha. Huw, I need you here and now, OK? Wełre in a lot of trouble and I canłt
get us out on my lonesome. The god feeling was just head-in-a-jar stuff. You
werenłt being god, you were feeling the feeling of being god. You hate
thatitłs how they feel in the cloud, once theyłve uploaded."

Huw snuffled. �Yeah," he says.

�Yeah. Baby, Iłm sorry, I know it hurts, but itłs how you
want to live. If I know one person whołs equipped to cope with the distinction
between sensation and simulation, itłs you. Jesus, Huw, other than these
maniacs, youłre the only person I know who thinks there is a distinction."

Huw struggles to his feet and teeters in his ridiculous
trousers. Bonnie giggles.

�What are you wearing?" she asks.

Huw manages to crack a fractional smile. �Theyłre all the
rage in the American Outback," he says. �Whatłs that youłre wearing?"

�A disguise. Doubles as a biohazard shield." She swivels her
hips, setting twenty kilograms of underskirts swishing. �Wełre both a bit
over-dressed for the occasion; letłs skin off and Iłll introduce you to the
Bishop. Go on, you get started."

Huw begins the laborious unlatching process and gradually
shucks the pants. The teapot clatters free, drawing a raised eyebrow from one
of the sexually ambiguous catamites twined around a sofa arm. The vibration
kicks some erratic connection back into life: Adełs image glows softly through
the deep pile carpet.

The little avatar wrinkles its nose. �Bugger me sideways,"
says Ade. �Place looks like an Italian whorehouse, minus the charm and
hygiene." He turns and looks Huw up and down. �You look a little more like your
usual cheerless self, though, mate. Should I assume that youłve joined us again
in the land of the independently cognited?"

Huw nods miserably. �Iłm back," he says. �No thanks to you.
Those two assholes know youthey do business with you!"

Adrianłs avatar has the good grace to look faintly
embarrassed. Bonnie leans past Huw with a creak of whalebone and picks up the
teapot. �Did I hear that right?" she asks menacingly. �You been selling stuff
again?"

�Uh." Ade looks unrepentant. �Yeah, I guess so."

�What kind of stuff?" Bonnie hisses, her eyes narrowing.

�Um ... stuff. Mostly harmless."

�What kind of mostly harmless stuff are we talking about
here?" Huw asks, mustering up a faint echo of interest. The blissed-out
resistance cadre on the sofa are showing signs of interest, too.

�Oh, the usual, sunshine. Telescope lenses, tinfoil
hatsokay, Faraday cage helmetsformicide spritzes, tactical nuclear weapons,
bibles, tinned spam, that kind of thing."

�And in return theyłre paying you in" Huw begins, then
Bonnie interrupts him.

�No, wait. What else are you smuggling, you rat bastard?
Donłt try to hide it from me. Those neverglade-living low-lives were so eager
to hand Huw over to the Fallen Congregations that they had to be trying to
cover something up. Like, oh, whatever the fuck you were doing with them. What
was it, Ade? Resurrection on the installment plan? Banned downloads? Are we
going to get that fucking mad crow descending on us?"

�Oh, I say!" someone says from behind her, but Bonnie is so
worked up she doesnłt notice. Huw glances over his shoulder and sees one of the
miscellaneous perverts standing nearby, a hand clasped over his/her mouth. The
perv is fish-belly pale and wears nothing but very complicated underwear. �Did
you say"

�Just a few small downloads, lass," Ade says cheerfully.
�Nothing to get worked up about, keep your hair on."

�Downloads. Shit." Bonnie breathes deeply. Shełs looking
pale. �Shit, thatłs all I need," she says. She puts the teapot down. �Right,
wełll have to take this up later, Huw. Right now wełve got to go see the
Bishop, and that means skin. Help me out of this thing."

Huw fumbles for a while with the complex catches and clasps
on her dress, fuzzily aware that hełs standing very close to her and hełs not wearing
any trousers. As she steps out of her costume she grabs him around the waist,
squeezes him tight, and kisses him fiercely on the mouth. Shełs nervous,
vibrating like a live wire, and something squirms around in his throat, wanting
to comfort her. �Why do we have to be naked?" he asks when she surfaces for
air. �Who is this Bishop, anyway?"

�The Bishop runs the First Church of the Teledildonic. Itłs
a dissident: lives in a baptismal pond, says wełve got it all wrong and time is
flowing in reverse. Wełve passed the Tower of Babelthatłs the cloudand the
Floodwarmingand now wełre ready to move back into the Garden of Eden. So
wełve got to stop wearing clothes and start fucking like bunnies."

�But" Huw can feel his brain trying to twist out through his
ears as he tries to accomodate this deviant theology to what he knows about the
Fallen Baptist Congregations�whatłs that got to do with anything? With these
folks?"

�I say, hold it right there, pardner!" says the pale perv,
running drowned-looking hands through his/her long green hair. The effect would
almost be sexy if not for the medium-sized pot belly and the black rubber
hedgehog-apparatus that conceals his/her crotch, studded with silvery
transducers: �Youłve got it all wrong!" He/she waves a finger at Bonnie. �This
isnłt the Garden of Eden, itłs the Garden of the Son of God, after the rapture,
the hundred and forty-four thousand saved souls living in paradise on Earth,
free from sin"

�Whatłs that, then?" asks Huw, rudely prodding in the direction
of the strap-on.

The perv draws itself up to a haughty metre-fifty: �Iłll
have you know that this is the finest model chastity phallus money can buy,"
s/he says, voice cracking and descending an octave: �ęs got all the sensory
inputs of the real thing, wired right into my spine, but because little feller
himself is tucked out of sight behind it therełs no actual genital contact. No
skin, no sin." He fondles the thing happily and shudders. Another of the
prosthetically enhanced worshipers is sitting up on the sofa behind him and
showing signs of interest.

Huw backs away slowly. �Get me out of here," he mouths at
Bonnie. She nods, then reaches out and strokes the pervłs pristine love
machine. �Now." Bonnie leads him around the pervwho doublesover in ecstasy at
her touchtowards a pair of pornographically decorated hardwood doors at the
rear of the room.

Bonnie takes a deep breath. �Wish I could stay," she calls
to the three or four temple whores on the bed, �but wełve got to see their
Grace. Itłs urgent. If I were you, Iłd get to a safe house before the gendarmes
arrive."

�Give him our love," one of the omnisexuals calls behind
them. They board a lift that runs sideways, down, up, and then sideways again,
through a route that sends Huwłs inner ear on a loop-de-loop. They emerge into
a hallway thatłs carpeted with greasy-feeling tentacles that twine sensuously
around his toes, and the walls have the sheen of waxed and oiled skin. The
whole thing has the smell of Doritos and musk.

Bonnie hands him the sack with her clothes and his ruined underpants
and the teapot and pushes him ahead of her, squeezing his ass affectionately as
they go.

The Bishop is three meters high, ten-limbed, with eight complete
sets of assorted genitals, fourteen breasts, four tongues, and is impossibly
hideous to contemplate. Bonnie ushers him into its presence after dickering
with a pair of disturbingly toothless ministers who bar the high door.

�Your Grace," she says, as they step into its
eucalyptus-fumed inner chamber.

�My dear child," it says, with one of its mouths. �It warms
Our heart to see you." It has a voice like a teenaged boy, high and uncertain.
�And your companion. You are both lovely as they day He made you."

One of its hands slithers free of the tangle and extends
before them. Bonnie bends down and kisses the ring painted on the third finger,
then elbows Huw, who kneels tentatively and takes the proffered digit, which is
warm and moist and pulses disturbingly.

�Your Grace?" he says.

�Be not afraid, child," the Bishop says. �This meatsuit
allows Us to bring the Word to Our scattered temples without having to
transport Our physical person through the uncertain world. One day, all of us
will be liberated by these meatsuits, free to explore our flesh in many bodies
all at once."

�Youłre uploaded?" Huw says, drawing his hand back quickly
and shuffling back on his knees.

The Bishop snorts a laugh with its rightmost face. �No,
child, no. Merely telepresent. Uploading is the mortification of the fleshthis
is its celebration."

�Your Grace," Bonnie says, peering up at it through her
fringe with her eyes seductively wide. �It has been an honor and privelege to
serve you in my time here in Glory City. Iłve found my counselling duties to be
very rewardingthe gender-reassignees here face unique challenges and itłs
wonderful to be able to help them."

�Yes," the Bishop said, crouching down. �And Wełve appreciated
it very much. But We sense that you are here to ask some favor of Us now, and
We wish youłd get on with it so that We could concentrate on the savage
rogering wełre getting in one of Our bodies."

�Itłs complicated," Bonnie said. �This guy here is on the
runhe was headed for the auto-da-fe when I rescued him."

�This is the One?" the Bishop said, putting one delicate feminine
hand behind his head and pulling him closer to its big golden eyes. �The two
who brought you to Glory City are not know for their extreme piety," it says.
�So why do you suppose they brought you here, rather than simply, oh, eating
you or using you for spare parts?"

Huw keeps himself from shying back with an effort of will.
�I donłt know," he says. Bonnie crowds in to another one of the Bishopłs faces.
Deep within him, Huw feels a shiver of golden light, the god-feeling.

�I think my downers are wearing off."

�They tasped him, so I hit him with some depressants,"
Bonnie says.

�Feels goooooood," Huw says.

�It does, doesnłt it?" the Bishop says. �I favor three or
four hours on the tasp myself, twice a week. Does wonders for the faith. But I
suppose wełd best keep your ecstasy under control for now. Phillida!" it calls,
clapping two of its hands together, bringing one of the ministers running. It
twines an arm between the guardianłs legs and murmurs, �Bring Us a
freethinkerłs cap, will you?" The ministerłs toothless maw gapes open in
ecstasy, and then it scurries off quickly, returning with a mesh balaclava that
the Bishop fits to Huwłs head, lining up the eyeand mouth-holes.

Huwłs golden glow recedes.

�Itłs a Faraday cage with some noise-cancellation built in
to reverse any of the mind-control rays that do get through," the Bishop says.
�How did you come to be on the American Continent, anyway?"

�It started when I ate some godvomit and smuggled it out of
a patent court," Huw says.

The Bishopłs golden eyes widen. �Judge Rosa Guillianiłs
court? In Libya? Last week? You are carrying the Ambassador?"

�The very same," Huw says, obscurely pleased at this notoriety.
�It wasnłt my idea, believe me. Anyway, this smuggler I knowwe knowAdrian, he
sent me here. Said that this was the safest place to hide out."

Bonnie breaks in. �But now we come to find out that hełs
been dealing with the two who tasped Huw"

�Sam and the Doc," Huw says.

�I know of them," the Bishop says.

�Selling them bootleg downloads from the Cloud."

�Ahh," the Bishop says. �Excuse Us a moment." It arches its
back and screams out a long orgasmic wail. �One of Our other meatsuits is being
ministered to," it says distractedly, �and We needed to have a bit of a shout.

�Wełre pleased to know this. It explains certain pseudo-nuclear
events in the outback that Wełve had word ofthe Doc must be retailing anti-ant
technology to the other hillbillies."

Bonnie shuddered. �Thatłs just for openers, Iłm sure. Fuck
knows what else Ade has sold those nutjobs."

�Just some downloads, he said," Huw mumbles. �Fuck it, what
did he mean by that? You can download anything; I know I did!"

�Downloads could be either good or bad," the Bishop muses
aloud, rubbing two disturbingly rugose limbs together slowly. �But first, We
have more pressing temporal priorities to attend to, my children. It appears
that your rescue did not go unnoticed by the puritan majority, and they will
presently be calling. Moreover, this would explain a request for a flight plan
and landing clearance that the airport acknowledged four hours ago" the Bishop
stops, its back arching ecstatically�oh! Oh! OH! Closer to thee, my God!"
Breasts quiver, their purple aureolae crinkling, and it screams out loud in the
grip of a multiple orgasm of titanic proportions.

Huw peers out through the eye-holes of his mesh mask, which
presses cold and hard into his skin. �Did you say that the law is nearby?"

�I believe they are," the Bishop says. �Yes, there. The
primary perimeter has been breached. Such a lovely front door." It looks
sternly at Bonnie. �You were reckless, child. They followed you here."

�I took every precaution," Bonnie says, blushing. �Iłm no amateur,
you know"

Huw has a sudden sickening feeling. �Itłs me," he says. �Iłm
bugged with a geotracker."

Bonnie glares at him. �You could have said something, she
snaps. �Wełve compromised the whole operation here now."

�I was distracted, all right? Mind-control rays make you
forgetful, Okay?"

The Bishop clucks its tongues and gives them each a pat on
their bare bottoms. �Never mind that now, children. All is forgiven. But Iłm
afraid that you are right, we are going to lose this temple. And Iłm no more
infallible than you, you know: Iłve been ever so lax with the evacuation drills
here. My ministers find that they disturb their contemplation of the Almighty.
I fear not for this meatsuit, but it would be such a shame to have all my
lovely acolytes fall into the hands of the Inquisition. I donłt suppose that
youłd be willing to help out?"

�Of course," Bonnie says. �Itłs the least we can do."

No, the least we could do would be to get the fuck out, Huw
thinks. He glares at Bonnie, who prods him in the belly with a fingertip.

�But of course, we could also use some help of our own"

�Quid pro quo?" the Bishop says, its quavering voice bemused
now, and that irritates Huw ferociously: the law is at the door, and the Bishop
thinks itłs all a tremendous lark?

�Not at all, your Grace. We came to beg your indulgence long
before we knew that there was a favor we could do for you. We need your
assistance getting shut of this blighted wasteland. Transport to the coast, and
an airship or a ballistic or something that can get us back to the civilized
world."

�And I need to shut down my geotracker," Huw says, wondering
where it has been implanted. Somewhere painful, Sam had told him.

�Yes, you certainly do," the Bishop says. �Youłll find an escape-line
clipped to the balcony out the third door on the right, along with some
baskets. Pack the ministers in the baskets, tie them down (donłt mind if they
squirm, itłs in their nature), clip the baskets to the line and toss them out
the windowIłm making arrangements now for someone to catch them on the other
end. If you do this small favor for me, I will, oh, I donłt know." The Bishop
idly strokes their scalps and tickles their earlobes. �Yes, thatłs it. Therełs
a safe house on the coast, a farm where my people have been making preparations
for a much more reasonable approach to dealing with the ants than godvomit and
nukes. They will be delighted to shelter you for as long as it takes you to
make contact with your people and get off the continent. Such a shame to see
you go." It quickly gives Bonnie directions, and Bonnie recites them back with
mnemonic perfection.

Therełs a distant crash that Huw feels through the soles of
his bare feet. �Clothes?" he asks.

�Oh, yes, I suppose, by all means, if you must," the Bishop
says. �Cloakroomłs behind the last door on the right. A lost and found for
supplicants whołve left a little something behind in their blissful state as they
left our place of worship. Iłm sure wełll have something in your size, even if
itłs only Osh Kosh, błgosh."

�Fanfuckingtastic," Huw says and starts for the door, but Bonnie
catches him.

�How many to evacuate? I want to be sure we donłt miss anyone."
Therełs another thunderous crash, this one from closer by.

The Bishopłs eyes roll back into its head, then flip down.
�A dozen on the premises, not counting the ones that were on the front door. It
seems theyłve been liquidated already."

�Shit. Whatłll we" Huw dithers for a moment but Bonnie is
already heading for the cloakroom door.

�Over here!" She thrusts a bundle of clothing at him.
�Quick. Letłs go get the ministers"

Huw pauses while balanced on one leg, the other thrust down
one limb of a pair of denim coveralls. �Do we have to?" he asks.

�Yes we fucking do," Bonnie says.

Huw sees a machine like a big industrial clothes dryer just
inside the cloakroom doorway. �Quick. Help me into this thing."

�What"

�My ass, or as much of it as fits. Itłs an old RFID zapper,
you used to get them where corporatist dissidents met and this place looks like
an old Friends meeting hall."

�RFID zapper?" Bonnie squints at it dubiously.

Huw cups one hand around his crotch. �Itłs either that or
you take a knife to my scrotum." Bonnie shudders. �Itłs OK," Huw says. �Just
cos wełre Luddites, doesnłt mean we donłt cook good technology." Huw sits down
hastily and gestures at a big red switch on the side of the machine. She flips
it. Nothing seems to happen, except a green LED comes on. �Okay, fingers
crossed, that should do it." Hełs relieved to have finally made some kind of
contribution to the effort.

Bonnie helps him out. �Right, get that jacket fastened we
are going to hit the garage just as soon as wełve defenestrated the perverts."
She shrugs backwards into an upper-body assembly that looks like something left
behind by a SWAT team. �Cłmon."

Huw follows her back next door, to find a bunch of
blissed-out religionists lazily osculating one-other on a row of futons.
�Okay!" yells Bonnie. �Itłs evacuation time! Huw, get the goddamn window open
and hook up the baskets." She turns back to the coterie of ministers, some of
whom are yawning and looking at her in evident mild annoyance. �The bad guys
are coming through the back passage and you guys are going down right now!"

�Eh, right." Huw finds a stack of baby-blue plastic baskets
dangling from a monofilament line right outside the window. �Cłmon ..."

Between the two of them, they person-handle the dazed and
tasped worshipers into baskets and drop them down the line. It all takes
precious seconds, and by the time the last one is hooked up Huw is in a frenzy
of agitation, desperate to be out of the building. There are indistinct thuds
and stamping noises below them, and an odd whine of machinery from the hall
outside. �Whatłs going on now?" He demands. �How do we get out of here?"

�We wait." Bonnie gives the last basket a shove and turns to
face him, panting. �The corridors and rooms in this place, the Bishopłs got
them rigged up to reconfigure like a maze. This whole sector should be walled
off, you canłt find it unless you can look through walls."

A loud echoing crash from the room next door makes Huw
wince. �Do you suppose theyłve got teraherz radar goggles?" he asks.

�Do Ioh shit." Bonnie looks appalled. �Quick, grab my epaulettes
and hang on, wełre going down the wire!" She steps towards him, reaches around
his body and grabs the monofilament with what look to Huw like black opera
gloves. Therełs an enormous thud from the doorway behind her that rattles the
walls, and then Huw is clinging on for dear life as Bonnie drops down the wire.
A thin plume of evil-smelling black smoke trails from her spidersilk gloves as
they descend. �Ow." Huw can barely hear her moan and to tell the truth hełs
more concerned with the state of his own stomach, gellid with terror as they
drop past two, three rows of windows.

The ground comes up and smacks him across the ankles and he
lets go of Bonnie. They fall apart and as he falls he sees a delivery van pulling
away, the tailgate jammed shut around a blue basket. �Thanks a million,
bastards," Bonnie snarls, picking herself up. �Think you could have waited?"

�No," Huw pants, looking past her. �Listen, the Inquisition
are round the front and theyłll be after us any second"

She grabs his wrist. �Come on, then!" She hauls off and
almost drags him the length of the filthy alleyway, under rusting fire escapes
and collapsing headless plastic statues of Disney cartoon characters
decaptiated as graven images by the godly.

By the time they hit the end of the alley, hełs up to speed
and tugging her, self-preservation glands fully engaged. In the distance,
sirens are wailing. �Shit. Theyłre round the other side. So much for your
wait-and-get-away-later plan."

�That was back there," she says tensely. �Therełs a basement
garage, when the building reconfigured we could have dropped down a chute
straight into the cockpit of a batmobile and headed out via the service
tunnels. Woulda worked a treat if it wasnłt for your teraherz radar."

�My radar?" Huw says, hating the squawk in his voice. He
swallows his ire as he looks into Bonniełs fear-wide eyes. �Right." he says.
�We need transport and we need to get past the Inquisition shock-troops before
we can get to the out of town safe house. If theyłve ringed the block and
theyłve got radar theyłll see us real soon"

�Shit," says Bonnie, her grip loosening. Huw looks round.

An olive-drab abomination whines and reverses into the
alley, reversing towards them. Cleated metal tracks grind and scrape on the
paving as an assault ramp drops down. Itłs an armoured personnel carrier, but
right now itłs only carrying one person, a big guy in a white suit. Hełs
holding something that looks like a shiny bundle of rods in both hands, and
itłs pointing right at them. �Resistance is futile!" shouts Sam, his amplified
voice echoing off the fire escapes and upended dumpsters. �Surrender!"

�Shitfuckbugger piss," says Huw, glancing back at the other
end of the alley. Which is blocked by a wall conveniently topped with razor
wireBonnie might make it with her spidersilk gloves but therełs no way in hell
he could climb it without getting minced. Then he looks back at Sam, who is
pointing his minigun or X-ray laser or whatever the hell it is right at him and
waiting, patiently. �Surrender to who?" he calls.

�Me." Sam takes a step back into the APC and does something
and suddenly therełs a weird hissing around them. �Ambient antisound. We can
talk, but youłve got about twenty seconds to surrender to me or you can take
your chances with them."

�Shit." Bonniełs shoulders slump. �Okay," she calls, raising
her voice. �What do you want?"

�You." For a moment Sam sounds uncertain. �But Iłll take
him, too, the cad, even though he doesnłt deserve it."

�Last time you were all fired-up on handing Huw over to the
church," Bonnie points out.

�Change of plan. That was dad, this is me." Sam raises his
gun so that it isnłt pointed directly at them. �You coming or not?"

Bonnie glances over her shoulder. �Yeah," she says, stepping
forward. She pauses. �You coming?" she asks Huw.

�I donłt trust him!" Huw says. �He"

�You like the Inquisition better?" Bonnie asks, and walks up
the ramp.

Sam backs away and motions her to sit on a bench, then
throws her something that looks like a thick bandanna. �Wrap this round your
wrists and that grab rail. Tight. Itłll set in about ten seconds." Then he
glances back at Huw. �Ten seconds."

�Shit." Huw walks forwards, sits down opposite Bonnie. Sam
throws him a restraint band, motions with the gun. �Fuck it, tie me up, why
donłt you." The assault ramp creaks and whines loudly as it grinds up and locks
shut. Sam backs all the way into the driverłs compartment, then slams a sliding
door shut on them. The APC lurches, then begins to inch forwards out of the
alleyway.

Over the whine of the electric motors he can hear Sam
talking on the radio: �No, no sign of suspects. Did you get the van? I suspect
that was how they got away."

Whatłs going on? Huw mouths at Bonnie.

She shrugs and looks back at him. Then therełs another lurch
and the APC accelerates, turns a corner into open road, and Sam opens up the
throttle. At which point, speech becomes redundant: itłs like being a frog in a
liquidiser inside a bass drum bouncing on a trampoline, and itłs all Huw can do
to stay on the bench seat.

After about ten minutes the APC slows down and graunches to
a standstill. �Where are we?" Bonnie calls at the shut door of the driverłs
compartment. She mouths something at Huw. Let me handle this, he decodes after
a couple of tries.

The door slides open. �You donłt need to know," Sam says
calmly, �ęcuz if you knew Iłd have to edit your memories, and the only way I
know to do that these days is by killing you." He isnłt holding the gun, but
before Huw has time to get any ideas about kicking him in the ęnads Sam reaches
out and hits a switch. The grabrail Huw and Bonnie are tied to rises towards
the ceiling, dragging them upright. �Itłs not like the old days," he says. �We
really knew how to mess with our heads then."

�Why did you take us?" Huw wheezes after he finds his footing.
Bonnie gives him a dirty look. Huw swallows, his mouth dry as he realises that
Sam is studying her with a closed expression on his face.

�Personal autonomy," Sam says quietly, taking Huw by surprise.
The big lummox doesnłt look like he ought to know words like that. �Dad wanted
to turn you in ęcuz if he didnłt, the Inquisitionłd start asking questions
sooner or later. Best stay on the right side of the law. But once you got away,
it stopped being his problem." He swallows. �Didnłt stop being my problem,
though." He leans towards Bonnie. �Why are you on this continent?" he asks
conversationally, and produces a small, vicious knife.

�Iłm" Bonnie tenses, and Huwłs heart beats faster with fear
for her. Shełs thinking fast and that canłt be good, and this crazy big
backwoods guy with the knife is frighteningly bad news. �Not everyone on this
continent wants to be here," she says. �I donłt know about anyone elsełs
agenda, but I think that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Thatłs
practically my religion. Self-determination. You got people here, theyłre going
to die for good, when they could be ascendant and immortal, if only someone
would offer them the choice."

Sam makes encouraging noises.

�I go where Iłm needed," she says. �Where I can lend a hand
to people who want it.Your gang wants to play post-apocalypse; thatłs fine. Iłm
here to help the utopians play their game."

Huw has shut his eyes and is nearly faint with fury. Iłm a
fucking passenger again, nothing but a passenger on this tripthe alien
flute-thing in his stomach squirms, shifting uncomfortably in response to his
adrenalin and prostaglandin surgefucking cargo. For an indefinite moment Huw
canłt hear anything above the drum-beat of his own rage: carrying the
ambassador is fucking with his hormonal balance and his emotions arenłt as
stable as they should be.

Sam is still talking. �Dadłs second liver," he says to
Bonnie. �So he cloned himself. Snipped out this, inserted that, force-grew it
in a converted milk tank. Force-grew me. Iłm supposed to be him, only stronger,
better, smarter, bigger. Kept me in the tank for two years plugged in through
the cortex speed-learning off the interwebnet then hauled me out, handed me a
scalpel, painted a line on his abdomen and said ęcut hereł. The liver was a
clone, too, so I figured I oughta do like he said lessłn I wanted to end up
next on the spare parts rota."

�Wow." Bonnie sounds fascinated. �So youłre a designer
ubermensch?"

�Guess so," Sam says slowly and a trifle bashfully. �After I
got the new liver fitted Dad kept me around to help out in the lab. Never asked
me what I wanted, just set me to work. Hełs Aspergerłs. Me, Iłm just poorly
socialized with a recursive introspective agnosia and a deficient situational
relationship model. Thatłs what the diagnostic expert systems tell me, anyway."

�Youłre saying youłve never been socialized." Bonnie leans
her head towards him. �You just hatched, like, fully-formed from a tank"

�Yeah," Sam says, and waits.

�Thatłs so sad," Bonnie replies. �Did your dad mistreat
you?"

�Oh mercy, no! He just ignores ... well, hełs dad. He never
pays much attention to me, hełs too busy looking for the alien space bats and
trying not to get the Bishop mad at him."

�Is that why you were taking Huw into town?" asks Bonnie.

�Huh, yeah, I guess so." Sam chuckles humourlessly. �Anything
comes down in the swamp, you betcha they see it on radar. You came down in
dadłs patch, pretty soon theyłll come by and see why he hasnłt turned you in.
So you canłt really blame him, putting on the holy roller head and riding into
town to hand over the geek."

�Thatłs okay," Bonnie says calmly, as Sam shows some tension,
�I understand."

�Itłs just a regular game-theoretical transaction, yłsee?"
Sam asks, his voice rising in a near-whine: �he has to do it! He has to
tit-for-tat with the Church or theyłll roll him over. ęSides, the geek doesnłt
know anything. The shipment"

�Hush." Bonnie winks at the big guy. �Actually, your dad was
wrongthe Ambassadthe shipment requires a living host for communion."

�Oh!" Samłs eyebrows rise. �Then itłs a good thing you rescued
him, I guess." He looks wistful. �Ifłn I trust you. I donłt know much about
people."

�Thatłs all right," Bonnie says. �Iłm not your enemy. I
donłt hate you for picking us up. You donłt need to shut us up." She looks up
at where her wrists are trussed to the grab rail. �Let my hands free?"

Sam listens to some kind of internal voice, then he raises
the knife and slices away at Bonniełs bonds. Huw tenses as she slumps down and
then drapes herself across Samłs muscular shoulder. �What do you want?" Sam
asks.

Bonnie cups his chin tenderly. �We all want the same thing,"
she says. Sam shrinks back from her touch.

�Sha," she says. �Youłre very handsome, Sam." He squirms.

Huw squirms too. Bonnie," he says, a warning.

Sam twists to stare at him and Huw sees that therełs
soemthing wild breaking loose behind his eyes. �Come on," Bonnie says, �over
here." She takes his hand and leads him towards the driverłs cab of the APC.
�Come with mamma."

Huw is revolted by the sight of Sam, docilely moving past
him, nimble on his big dinner-plate feet, hand enfolding Bonniełs eyes down. He
feels a sear of jealousy, and only Bonniełs sidelong glare silences him.

After the hatch thumps shut, Huw strains to overhear the murmured
converation from behind it, but all he can make out is thumps and grunts, and
then, weirdly, a loud sob. �Oh, Daddy, why?" Itłs Sam, and there are more sobs
now, and more thumps, and Huw realizes theyłre not sex noisesmore like seizure
noises.

His ribs and shoulders are on fire, and he shifts from foot
to foot, trying to find relief from the agony of hanging by his wrists. He
steps on their pathetic pillowcase of possessions and the lamp rolls free, Ade
popping up.

�My, you are a sight, old son," the little hologram says.
�Nice hat."

�It helps me think," Huw says, around the copper mesh of the
balaclava. �It wouldnłt have hurt to have a couple of these on the zep, Ade."

�Live and learn," the hologram says. �Next time." It cocks
its head and listens to the sobbing. �Whatłs all that about then?"

Huw shrugs as best as he can, then gasps at the chorous of
muscle-spasms this evinces from his upper body. �I thought Bonnie might be
having a shag, but now Iłm not sure. I think she might be conducting a therapy
session."

�Saving the world as per usual," Ade says. �So many virtues
that girl has. Doctrinaire ideologues like her are the backbone of the
movement, I tell you. Whołs she converting to pervtopic disestablishmentarianist
personal politics, then?"

�One of your trading partners," Huw says. �Sam. Turns out
hełs the Docłs son. Clone. I ęspect you knew that, though."

�Sam? Brick shithouse Sam?" Therełs a distant, roaring sob
and another crash. �Whołd have thought he had it in him?"

�Whose side are you on, Ade? What have you been selling
these bastards? I expect Iłll be dead by dusk, so you can tell me."

�I told you, but you didnłt listen. There is no conspiracy.
The movement is an emergent phenomenon. Itłs complexity theory, not ideology.
The cloud wants to instantiate an ambassador, and events conspire to find a
suitable host and get some godvomit down his throat." Ade nods at him. �Now the
cloud wants the ambassador to commune with something on the American continent,
and there you are. How do I know the cloud wants this? Because you are there,
on the American continent. QED. Maybe it wants to buy Manhattan for some beads.
Maybe it wants to say hello to the ants. Maybe it wants to be sure that
meatsuits are really as banal and horrible as it remembers."

�No ideology?" Huw says, as another sob rattles the walls.
�I think Bonnie might disagree with you."

�Oh, she might," Ade says, cheerfully. �But in the end, she
knows it as well as I do: our mission is to be where events take us. Buying and
selling a little on the side, itłs not counter-revolutionary. Itłs not
revolutionary. Itłs just more complexity. More soup whence the conspiracy may
emerge."

�Thatłs all conveniently fatalist," Huw says.

�Imagine," Ade says, snottily. �A technophobe lecturing me
about fatalism." The sobs have stopped, and now they hear the thunder of
approaching footfalls. Bonnie comes through the door as Ade winks out of
existence, trailing Sam behind her.

She takes both of his hands and stands on tiptoe to kiss him
on the tip of his squashed nose. �Youłre very beautiful, Sam," she says. �And
your feelings are completely normal. You tell the Bishop I told you to go see
her. Him. It. Theyłll help you out."

Samłs eyes are red and his chin is slick with gob. He wipes his
face on his checkered flannel shirt-tails. �I love you, Bonnie," he says, his
voice thick with tears.

�I love you too, Sam," she says. She reaches into his pocket
and takes out his knife, opens it and cuts Huw down. �Wełre going now, but Iłll
never forget you. If you ever decide to come to Europe, you know how to find
me."

Huw nearly keels over as his arms flap bloodlessly down to
slap at his sides, but manages to stay upright as Sam thuds over to the ramp
controls and sets the gangway to lowering.

�Come on, Huw," she says, picking up their pillow-case.
�Wełve got to get to the coast."

�Court is in session," screams a familiar voice as the ramp
scrapes the rubberized tarmac. Three UN golemsso big they dwarf Samcome up
the ramp with alarming swiftness and clamp hold of Bonnie, Huw and Sam before
any of them have time to register anything more than a dim impression of a
brightly lit alleyway and in the middle of it, Judge Rosa Guilliani: encased in
a dalekoid peppermill of a personal vehicle, draped in her robes of office, and
scowling like shełs just discovered piss in her coffee-cup.

�You are charged with violating UN biohazard regulations,
with wanton epidemiological disregard, with threatening the fragile peace of
our worldłs orderly acquisition and adoption of technology, and with attempting
to flee UN jurisdiction."

�Youłre out of your jurisdiction," Bonnie says.

�Iłll get to you," the judge snaps. �I never execute a
criminal without offering her last words, so you just sit tight until I call on
you."

Sam is thrashing hard at his golem, trying to buck it off
him, but he might as well be trying to lift Glory City itself for all the good
it does him. For Huw, being trapped in the iron grip of a golem is oddly
nostalgic, hearkening back to a simpler time when he knew he could trust his
perceptions and the honest virtue of neo-Luddism.

He closes his eyes, clears his mind, and prepares to defend
himself. Itłs bankrupt, hełll say. Your UN is a sham. Therełs no more virtue in
your deliberation over which technologies to adopt than there is in this
benighted shitholełs wholesale rejection of everything that doesnłt burn petrol
or heretics or both. Hełll say, The �other side" in this fight doesnłt even
notice that itłs fighting you. Its leaders are opportunists and scoundrels, its
proponents are patsies at best and sadists at worst.

Huw sucks in air to deliver this speech that will rescue him
from the gibbet, ignoring the many aches and owies that light up his body like
accupuncture needles, and there is a tremendous crash as another APC crunches
down in the alleyway behind the Judge, its ramp falling to reveal ranked men in
white robes, numerous as ants, clutching tasp-wands, scimitars, pulse-guns,
ballistic guns, and cruciform spears that hum with sinister energy.

�Itłs the Inquisition," Bonnie says. �I told you you were
out of your jurisdiction." She looks like shełs ready to say more, but Sam
breaks free of his golemłs grip with a roar and snatches her up, flings her
over his shoulder and disappears into the guts of his APC, which clanks away
amid the whining ricochets of small arms fire from the soldiers of the
Inquisition.

Judge Rosałs spinning turret give the Inquisitors pause, especially
after it blasts a dozen of them out of their boots. Finally, one brave soul
darts forward and jams a speartip down its barrel, falling to the ground when
the Judge nails him with enough electricity to freeze-dry him on the spot, so
that he clatters when he hits.

They give up on moving her, surrounding her instead with bristling
guns. �I have diplomatic immunity, you God-bothering imbeciles," she screeches,
the amplified howls knifing through their skulls and dropping a few of the
remaining Inquisitors to their knees.

They hustle Huw into the APC, kicking him to the grippy
deck-plates and pinning him there with a gun-barrel dug hard into one kidney.
They leave a detail to watch the Judge and clank away with him to the
auto-da-fe.

�This is gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts us," one of
the Inquisitors breathes right in Huwłs ear as the ramp drops in the main plaza
of Glory City, where a crowd of thousands awaits his appearance.

They drag him up by his much-abused arms, letting his feet
scrape the ground. He loses a shoe on the way to the stage, and the other on
the way up the steps. His overalls tear on ground, so that by the time hełs
hauled erect before the crowd, the skin covering one whole side of his chest is
abraded away, a weepy, striated road-pizza left behind.

A white robe is draped around him and snapped shut in behind
and around his arms. The crowd roars with anticipation, and their faces swim
before him, each in a rictus of savage anticipation. Huw wishes he still
believed in his God-self, but theyłve left him his copper balaclava, so hełs
out of the god-box.

�Sinner?" a voice says, hissingly, in his ear. It echoes off
the walls of the plaza, off the balconies crowded with hooting spectators who
fall silent when these amplified syllables are sounded. �Sinner, can you hear
me?"

The speaker is right there in his ear, as close as a lover,
breath moist. �I can hear you," Huw says.

�Will you confess your sins and be cleansed of them before
we end your life on Godłs earth?"

�Sure," Huw says. �Why the fuck not?"

Therełs a disapproving murmur from the crowd and the left
side of Huwłs head lights up like someonełs stuck a live wire to it. A chunk of
his ear falls wetly to the stage before him and the crowd roars as the hot
blood courses down his face.

�You will not profane this courtroom," the hisser hisses.

Huw struggles to remember his brave speech for the Judge,
but it wonłt come. �I" he stammers. Theyłre going to kill me, he realises, a
sick certainty rising with his gorge. �I"

�You stand accused!" the speaker shrieks in his ear.
�Unclean! You have consorted with vile demons and the sky-born minions of
Satan! You did wilfully escape from the custody of your arresting officer and
were found in wanton congress with the degenerate scum who swirl in the cesspit
of their own tumescent desires in the swamp of iniquity for which we are
damned!" His accusorłs voice rises. �Lo, these score years and eight we have
dwelt since the Rapture, the ascent of those who are bathed in the blood of the
lamb, and what is it, you faithful among the fallen ask, what is it that holds
us back to this land of sorrows? And I answer you: it is the likes of this
miserable sinner! Behold the man, lost in the sorrow and degradation of his
evil!"

Huw manages to stay silent while the inquisitor gets himself
worked up into a holy-roller frenzy of foaming denunciation. It would appear
that Huw has single-handedly doomed every living human on the North American
continent to a fiery and perpetual damnation by his pursuit of sins both
trivial and esoteric, from sodomy to simony by way of barratry and antimony. Concentration
is hard. Hełs weak at the knees, and the entire side of his head feels as if
itłs been dipped in molten lead. He listens to the condemnation with mounting
disbelief, but not even the accusations of ministering iced-tea enemas to the
ailing baby ground-squirrels in the petting zoo manage to drag a protest from
him in the face of likely punishment. He can see the score to this scene and
his words would merely serve as punctuation for random acts of degradation and
violence against his person. Finally the inquisitor winds down, his voice
ratcheting into a gloating hiss. �How do you plead, sinner?"

�Does it make any difference?" How asks the sudden silence,
hating the tremor in his voice. �Youłre going to kill me anyway."

The small of his back explodes and he falls over, unable to
draw breath with which to scream. Dimly he registers a couple of shadowy
figures standing over himone of them having just clubbed him in the kidneys.

�How do you plead, sinner?"

Huw isnłt about to plead anything because he can barely
breathe, but the inquisitor seems to view this as deliberate recalcitrance: he
raises a hand and another guard steps forward and clubs Huw between the legs.

�How does he plead? Anyone?" The inquisitor roars at the
crowd, hidden amplifiers boosting his voice and scattering it across the plaza
like a shotgun blast.

�Guilty! GUILTY! GUILTY!" roars the crowd.

�The prosecution, having made its case before God and man,
rests," says the inquisitor, leaning heavily on a baseball bat.

�Hmm." Huw is distantly conscious of another, more thoughtful
voice. �And what do you say, minister for the defense?"

�Nothing to say, your Grace." The defense attorneyłs voice
is thin and reedy and quavers a little. �My client is obviously guilty as sin."

�Then I guess we are in agreement. Okay, yłall, let justice
be done." Guards pick Huw up off the ground and bear him to the front of the
stage. �In the name of the authority vested in me by the law of the Lord, as
Bishop of this principality, I hereby find you guilty of whatever the hell
youłre guilty of. We donłt get to give justice, thatłs his upstairsłs job. So
the sentence of this court, handed down in mercy rather than in anger, is that
wełre going to give you a one way ticket to ask the holy father for clemency
and forgiveness in person. To heavenłs gate!"

The crowd roars its approval and people begin to stream out
of the square like ants, boiling and shifting to repel an invasion of their
territory. Huw groans, gasps for air, and coughs up blood. �It wonłt hurt," the
judge promises, almost kindly. �Not much, anyway."

Therełs another brief journey by APC, this time barely out
of the square and back round a couple of side roads. The guards let Huw lie on
a bench seat, which is a mercy, because his legs arenłt working too well. Just
get it over with, he wishes dismally. Is anyone going to tell Sandra? he
wonders. She got me into this

The APC parks up and the ramp rumbles down. Theyłre in
another of the huge access tunnels that run through the wall of the dome, like
the one Doc and Sam dragged him in through almost a day ago. Itłs been a very
long daythe longest. Vast blast-proof doors close behind the APC, slamming
shut with a thunderous boom. The guards frog-march Huw down the ramp and out,
up the tunnel to the next set of doors. Therełs another APC behind the one he
arrived in, and a handful of dignitaries step out of it to witness the
proceedings.

The guard on his left lets go of him. �When the doors open,
run forward," he says. �If you dance and stamp your feet a bit theyłll figure
out where you are faster. They know theyłre going to be fed, though, so theyłll
be waiting for you. If you make them come inside theyłll take their time."

�Youłre going to feed me to the ants," he realises.

�Godłs little helpers," says the guard to his right.

�What if I donłt cooperate?" Huw asks woozily.

The guard on his left hefts his cattle prod thoughtfully.
�Then wełd have to work you over some more and do it again." He hefts the prod
in Huwłs direction. �Not that itłs any trouble, mind. All the same to us."

Huw backs away from the guards until he thumps into the
outer door of the airlock. �Oh. Oh shit." The guards are wearing hermetically
sealed tuppersuits. So are the official witnesses. A bell clangs from the front
APC. Then the door hełs leaning against begins to grind down into the ground.
Huw glances round and sees the guards and witnesses scurrying backward to the
safety of their armoured vehicles, despite the security of their anti-proof
suits. �Fucking cowards!" he tries to yell, but it comes out as a cracked
squawk. Damn, Iłm going to die and I donłt even get a good exit line. He turns
back to face the opening door and takes a step forward towards the blasted
wilderness that used to be North America.

Itłs like the surface of the moonor worse. A lightning
strike somewhere up the coast has set one of the petrochemical forests on fire
and the resulting smogbank has smeared the baby-blue bowl of the sky with the
sooty muck of a by-gone age. The sun itself is a bloated red torch aflame in a
sea of shit-coloured clouds that roil and bubble above a landscape the colour
of charred ash. Gas trees march into the distance from the flanks of the Glory
City dome, but the ground beneath them is muddy brown and shimmers slightlyat
first Huw thinks itłs covered in a slick of escaping light fraction crude, but
then he looks closer and sees that the shimmer is that of motion, the incessant
febrile ratcheting digestive action of a myriad of superorganisms. The ants are
lords of all that they surveyand that includes him.

Huw steps forward onto the desolate ground, leaving the
tunnel mouth. He glances round once. �Bastards," he mouths at the smugly
merciful Bishop and his torturers, safe in their air-conditioned tanks. Therełs
a faint rattling humming noise in the air, and he takes a deep breath,
wondering how long itłll take the ants to notice him. What chance does he have
of reaching another airlock? Probably not muchthey wouldnłt be using this as
an established means of execution if survival was easy, or even possible. But
Huw has no intention of giving the assholes in the dome the satisfaction of
actually seeing the ants get him. He takes another deep breath and lurches
forwardone knee is very much the worse for wear and hełs light-headed and
nauseous from the beating hełs takentrying to get away from the front of the
airlock.

�Huw?"

At first he thinks hełs hallucinating. Itłs Bonniełs voice,
distant and tinny, and that grinding rasping noise is back. Therełs also a
faint sizzling sound, like hot fat on a grill. He shakes his head and lurches
on.

The sizzling noise is back. The ground ahead is dark, like
an oil spill. �Huw? Where are you? Hang on!" He stumbles to a halt. The oil
slick is spreading like a shadow, and when he looks round he sees it extends
between him and the dome. Thatłs odd. He looks down. Ants. Theyłre everywhere.
He canłt out-run them. So he collapses to his knees and looks at them. Theyłre
whatłs making the sizzling noise. Itłs the noise of a trillion millimetre-wide
cutting machine mouths chowing down on the universe. If they could speak their
message would be, you will be assimilated. He reaches out one shaky hand and a
winged ant alights on his fingertip. He brings it close to his face, ignoring
the scattering of fiery bites on his legs and knees, trying to meet the eyes of
his executioner.

The ant stares at him with CCD scanners. It spreads its
wings and Huw watches, entranced, trying to read the decals embossed on each
flight surface. Chitin is waxy, isnłt it? He realises. It would dissolve in the
gasoline mangroves. So these arenłt

�Huw! Hang on! Wełll rescue you!"

It is Bonniełs voice, he realises, looking round in
disquiet. Massively amplified, it booms out across the wasteland from the top
of a vehicle that looks like an old-fashioned swamp boat with a bulbous plastic
body mounted on it. The boat is surfing over the ants, he thinks, until he
realises that therełs not much of a solid surface over there.

�Can you hear me?" Bonnie yells.

Huw waves.

�Great! Iłm going to pop the hatch and lay down an
insecticide screen! When you see it go, I want you to run this way! Three! Two!
One!" Bang.

One end pops off the side of the swamp boat and a cloud of
foam drifts out. Bonnie follows it, something like a flame thrower strapped to
her back. Shełs pumping away in all directions, striding towards him on his
little raised island, and Huw realises that nothing, nothing has ever looked as
beautiful to him as this pansexual posthuman, lithe and brilliant in her
skin-tight neoprene suit, laying about her with grace and elegance and
GABA-inhibitors as she comes to rescue him from this frankly insane situation

Huw lurches into motion, a drunken and lopsided wobble impelled
by a now-fiery burn at the side of his face. The ants have tasted blood and theyłre
hungry. He howls as he runs, and Bonnie steps aside and spritzes him on the
fly. �Go on!" She calls. �Iłll cover you!" He needs no urging, but lurches on
towards the swamp boat rescue. Within the back of the translucent bubble he can
dimly see a figureSam, maybe?working the controls, keeping the big blower on
the back of the boat in ceaseless motion, sucking ants through the mincing
blades

Hełs on the ground, and he canłt remember how he got there.
�Shit, this is no good," says Bonnie. �What have they done tooh fuck." She
picks him up and begins to drag him, her breath coming in gasps. The ants see
their prey escaping and close in, an ominous sizzling hymn of destruction on
the wing. �Go on!" she urges, and Huw manages to get one leg working. They hop
along together and Bonnie gives him an enormous shove, boosting him up the side
of the boat and in through the airlock. The open ęlock bay is crawling with
fiery red ants, the disassembler toolkits on their heads whining in an
irridescent blur. Huw bats at them, and Bonnie stands up just outside the
airlock to spritz down the swamp boat, and then something like a monstrous
humming tornado falls on her with an audible thud. She screams once, and
twitches, and Huw cowers at the back of the airlock.

�FUCK!" The door hełs lying against crashes backwards under
him, tumbling him into the swamp boat as Sam leaps over his body and dives
forward. �Bonnie!"

With the last of his strength Huw grabs one of Samłs ankles,
tumbling him into the lock. �Stop," he gasps.

�Bonnie!" Sam howls. But he freezes instead of throwing himself
out into the gray storm.

�Close the door or wełre both dead," Huw gasps.

�Bonnie!" One meaty hand reaches outthen closes on the airlock
panel. �Oh god. Oh shit." Therełs a Bonnie-shaped outline just visible on its
feet through the whirlwind but itłs glowing white, the colour of live bone, and
something tells Huw that hełs looking at her skeleton, crucified on a storm of
insectoid malice in the act of rescuing him from the swarmtheyłll be waiting
for youand Sam swings the door shut with a boom on its gaskets just as the
pile of white bones at the heart of the tornado explodes outwards and collapses
across the wasteland in front of the airlock.

Theyłre not out of danger. Sam howls and grabs at his face,
falling backwards against the opposite wall of the airlock. �Spray!" he yells,
like a dying desert explorer calling for water.

Huw fumbles around the cramped cell, squishing bugs wherever
he finds them until he sees the blue spray bottles strapped to one wall. He
hauls himself upright and takes aim at Sam. �Where do you want it?" he asks.

Sam half-turns towards Huw and holds his hands out from his
face. Huw retches and holds the trigger down, blasting Sam in thein whatłs
left of the front of his head. The ant tornado that came down on Bonnie must
have shed waves of flying biting deconstructors, for Samłs head hosts a boiling
pit of destruction, cheeks bitten through and eye sockets seething. The noises
Sam makes are piteous but coherent enough that Huw is sickly afraid that the
manłs going to survive. And after what happened with Bonnie hełs not sure what
that means.

�Glag-ad," Sam gurgles, and Huw yanks down the emergency
first aid kit and pulls out a gel pack that says something about burns and bites
and massive tissue injuries on its side. He lays it across the top of Samłs
face, making sure to leave a hole around his mouth, then hunts out a syrette
full of something morphinesque and whacks it into Samłs upper arm. After a
tense minute Samłs whistling breaths slow and the shuddering spasms relax into
something like sleep.

How is nearly out of it by this time, drunk on a cocktail of
terror, pity, pain and exhaustion. The world seems to be spinning as he hauls
himself through the rear door and into the cockpit at the back of the craft.
Smugglerłs swamp boat, he realises. Doc must not have wanted to show this
anywhere near Glory City. As he studies the unfamiliar controls he comes to the
unpleasant conclusion that hełs not going anywhere on his own. Donłt know how
to operate it, and if I did, I wouldnłt know where to go, he realises. He
glances out the windshield at the gathering darkness, punctuated by the evil
fire-red bellies of ants that are trying their luck on the diamond-reinforced
sapphire laminate. (Some of them are even leaving gouges in it.) Just a
temporary reprieve ...

Therełs a crackle from a grille on the dash. �Ready to
accept UN jurisdiction, you miscreant?" croaks a familiar tenor. Huw stares at
the speaker as floodlights come on behind him in the depths of the swamp,
spearing the cab of the smugglerłs boat with a blue-white glare. �Or would you
rather I crack that toy open like an egg and leave you to the ants?"

Christ, Huw thinks. Itłs not as though I know how to drive
this goddamned thing, anyway. He presses a button next to the grille. �Can you
hear me?" he says. He repeats this with four more likely-looking buttons until
Judge Judyłłs cackle answers him back.

�You going to come along peacefully?"

�Sure looks like it," he says. �Do I get to stand trial
somewhere civilized?"

The judge chuckles fatalistically. �Once we shoot our way
off this fucking continent and nuke it in our wake, I fully intend to drag your
spotty ass back to Libya for a proper trial. Does that suit you?"

�Down to the ground," Huw says. �Now what?"

�Herro," Ade says, popping up out of his lantern after the
Judge has Huw shrink-wrapped and tossed in a narrow hold, her daleksuit and her
golems filling up all the available on Samłs boat. �Ew," he says, when he
catches sight of Samłs ruin of a face. �That canłt be good."

�Hełll get fixed up once he gets to civilization," Huw says.
�Judge is taking us to Libya." He sighs and tries to get comfortable in his
enforced, plastic-wrapped vermicularitude. �The ants got Bonnie," he adds,
conversationally, his voice hollow and echoing in the cramped hold.

�You donłt say?" Ade says. �Well, thatłs too bad. Scratch
one useful idiot."

�You know, itłs going to be a pleasure to rat you out to the
UN," Huw says. �A pleasure to get the ambassador cut free and fed to a
disassembler. Your movement stinks."

The tiny Adrian plants its hands on its hips and cocks its
head at Huw. �Useful idiots I have patience for," he says. �Useless idiots,
well, thatłs something else altogether."

The boat judders to a halt. Therełs a roar of jets overhead
and a series of crashes all around them. Wełre being bombed, Huw thinks. The
boat bounces like a pea on a plate. �Sam, are you conscious yet?" he says,
aloud. Sam doesnłt move. Just as well, he thinks, and prepares to die.

�Oh, please spare me the drama," Adrian says. �I radioed
your position to the Bishop so that he could capture you, not kill you. The
Ambassador needs a host."

He hears the golems slam past his hold and run out to do
battle, then more jouncing crashes.

�I have diplomatic immunity," the Judge screeches as something
drags her past his cell. A moment later, the hatch opens, and Huw and Sam are
lifted, dumped into a gigantic airtight hamster-ball, sealed, and rolled away
back toward Glory City.

�Children," the Bishop says. He is thin and weak-chinned and
watery-eyed, and his voice is familiar. It takes Huw a moment to place it, and
then he remembers the voice, moist in his ear: Sinner, can you hear me?

�You are in: So. Much. Trouble." Judge Judy is no longer hissing
like a teakettle, but her rage is still clearly barely under control. �What do
the words ęDiplomatic Immunitył mean to you?"

�Not an awful lot, Wełre afraid," the Bishop says, and
whitters a little laugh. �We donłt much go in for formalities here in the new
world, you know."

Theyłve amputated the dalek suitłs gun and damped its
public-address system, so that Judge Judy is reduced to a neutered head in a
peppermill with a black robe of office draped round it, but she is still
capable of giving looks that could curdle milk. Huw numbly watches her glare at
the Bishop, and the Bishopłs watery answering stare.

�What shall We do with you?" the Bishop says. �Officially,
youłre dead, which is convenient, since it wouldnłt do to have the great
unwashed discover that Godłs will was apparently to let you go.

�The entity who alerted Us to your presence was adamant that
the sinner here should be spared. Youłre host to some godvomit that many
entities are interested in, and consequently, you may live. So chin up, right?"

�Iłm thrilled," Huw says. �But I ęspect that means that Sam
herełs not going to live? Nor the judge?" Sam is zap-strapped at the ankles and
wists and shoulders and knees and thighs, but itłs mostly a formality. Hełs
barely breathing, and the compress on his face blooms with a thousand
blood-colored roses.

�Well, of course not," the Bishop says. �Heretics. Enemies
of the state. Theyłre to be shoved out the lock as soon as Wełre sure that
theyłve got nothing of interest to impart to Us. A day, two tops. Got that,
your honor? As long as you say useful things, you live."

The Judge sputters angrily in her peppermill.

�Now, letłs get you off to the operating theatre," the
Bishop says.

Huw can barely muster the will to raise an eyebrow at this.
�Operating theatre?"

�Yes. Wełve found that quadruple amputees are much more
pliable and less apt to take it on the lam than the able-bodied. Youłll get
used to it, trust us."

The servants of the Inquisition, ranged around them, titter
at this.

�Take them away," the Bishop says, waving a hand.

Huw is having a dream. Hełs a disembodied head whose
vocal-chords thrum in three-part harmony with a whistle lodged in his stump of
a throat. The song is weird and familiar, something he once sang to a beautiful
girl, a girl who gave her life for him. The song is all around him, sonorous
and dense, a fast de/modulation of information from the Cloud, high above, his
truncated sensorium being transmitted to the curious heavens. The song is the
song he sang to the beautiful girl, and shełs singing back.

His eyes snap open. Hełs on the floor of his cell, parched
dry and aching, bleeding and naked. The whistle warbles deep in his throat and
the floor vibrates in sympathy, with the tromping of a trillion tiny feet and
the scissoring of a trillion sharpened mouth-parts.

The ants come up through the floor and Huw squirms away from
them as best as he canbut hełs still shrink-wrapped and the best he can do is
hump himself inchworm style into a corner, pressed up against the wall of the
dome that forms the outer wall of his cell. The song pours out of his throat,
unabated by his terror. Some part of him is surprised that hełs capable of
caring about anything anymore, but he does not want to be eaten by the ants,
does not want to be reduced to a Huw-shaped lump of brick-red crawling insects.

The whistlełs really going to town now. The Ambassador is
having words with the hypercolony, and Huw can just barely make out the sense
of the song hełs singing: Ready for upload.

The ants have covered him, covered the walls and the floor
and the ceiling, theyłve eaten through his coating of shrinkwrap, but the
expected stings donłt come. Instead, Huw is filled with the sense of vast
clumps of information passing through his skin, through the delicate mucous
membranes of his eyes and nostrils, through his ears and the roots of his hair,
all a-crawl with ants whose every step conveys something.

Something: the totality of the hypercolonyits weird, sprawling
consciousness, an emergent phenomenon of its complexity, oozing through his
pores and through the Ambassador and up to the cloud. Itłs not just the ants,
eitheritłs everything theyłve ever eaten: everything theyłve ever
disassembled.

Somewhere in that stream is every building, every car, every
tree and animal andand every person the ants have eaten. Have disassembled.

Bonnie is passing through him, headed for the Cloud. Well,
she always did want to upload.

Huw doesnłt know how long the Ambassador holds palaver with
the hypercolony, only knows that when the song is done, he is so hoarse he can
barely breathe. (During a duet, do the musicians pay any attention to the
emotional needs of their instruments?) Huw leans against the wall, throat raw
as the Ambassador chatters to the ant colonybiological carriers for the
engines of singularity, its own ancestral bootstrap codeand he can just barely
grasp whatłs going on. There are complex emotions here, regret and loss and
irony and schadenfreude and things for which human languages hold no words, and
he feels very stupid and very small as he eavesdrops on the discourse between
the two hive minds. Which is, when the chips are down, a very small discourse,
for the Ambassador doesnłt have enough bandwidth to transmit everything the
ants have ever stored: itłs just a synchronization node, the key that allows
the hypercolony to talk to the cloud in orbit high above it.

And Bonnie is still dead, for all that something that
remembers being her is waking up upstairs, and hełs still lying here in a cell
waiting to be chopped up by barbarians, and therełs something really weirdly
wrong with the way he feels in his body as if the ants have been making
impromptu modifications, and as the Ambassador says goodbye to the ants a sense
of despair fills him

The door opens.

�Hello, my child." Itłs the other Bishop, the pansexual
pervert in the polygenital suit. It winks at him: �expecting someone else?"

Huw tries to reply. His throat hurts too much for speech
just yet so he squirms up against the wall, trying to get away, for all the
time an extra millimetre will buy him.

�Oh, stop worrying," the Bishop says indulgently. �Iah,
ah!I just dropped by to say everythingłs sorted out. Mission accomplished, I
gather. The, ah, puritans are holed up upstairs watching a fake snuff video starring
yourself, being disassembled for spare organsoperating theatres make for great
cinema and provide a good reason for not inviting them to the auto da fe in
person. Isnłt CGI great? Which means youłre mostly off the hook now, and we can
sort out repatriating you."

�Huh?" Huw blinks, unsure whatłs going on. Is this a set-up?
he wondersbut therełs no reason why the lunatics would run him through
something like this, is there? Itłs so weird itłs got to be true. �Wh-whaargh,
what do you mean?" He coughs horribly. His throat is full of something
unpleasant and thick, and his chest feels sore and bloated.

�Wełre sending you home," the Bishop says patiently. It
holds up a slim hand and snaps its fingers; a pair of hermaphrodites in motley
suits with bells on the tips of their pointy shoes steer in a wheelchair and go
to work on Huwłs bonds with electric shears and a gentle touch. �You have our
thanks for a job well done. Iłd beatify you, except itłs considered bad form
while the recipient is still alive, but you can rest assured that your lover is
well on her way to being canonized as a full saint in the First Church of the
Teledildonic. Giving up her life so that you might survive to bring the
hypercolony into the full Grace of the Cloud certainly would qualify her for
beatification, even if her other actions werenłt sufficient, which they are as
it happens." Slim hands lift Huw into the wheelchair and wheel him through the
door.

�I feel weird," Huw says, voice odd in his ears. His ears?
He manages to look down, and whimpers slightly.

�Yes, thatłs often one of the symptoms of beatification,"
the Bishop says placidly: �the transgendered occupy a special place of honour
in our communion, and to have it imposed on you by the hypercolony is a special
sign of grace." And Huw sees that itłs true, but he doesnłt feel as upset about
it as he knows he ought to. The ants have given him a whole goddamn new body
while the ambassador was singing a duet with them, and hesheis about five
years younger, five centimetres shorter, and if her pubes are anything to go by
her hairłs going to come in two shades lighter than it was back when she was a
man.

Itłs one realisation too many, so Huw zones out as the
Bishopłs minions wheel her up the corridor and into an elevator while the Bishop
prattles on. The explanation that the Bishop is both the leader of the Church
Temporalthe fallen Baptistsand the Church Transcendentalthe polyamorous
pervertspasses him by. Therełs some arcane theological justification for it
all, references to Zoroastrian dualism, but in her depression and disorientation
the main thing thatłs bugging Huw is the fact that she survivedand Bonnie
didnłt.

Upstairs in whatever dwelling theyłre in, therełs a
penthouse suite furnished in sybaritic luxury. Carpets of silky natural growing
hair, wall-hanging screens showing views from the landscapes of imaginary
planets, the obligatory devotional orgy beds and sex crucifixes of the Church
of Teledildonics. The Bishop leads the procession in through the door and a
familiar voice squawks: �youłll regret this!"

�Perhaps." The Bishop is calm, and Huw sees why fairly rapidly.

Judge Guilliani spins her chair round and glares at him,
then her eyes fasten on the wheelchair. �What happened here?" she demands.

�The alien artefact you so urgently seek," the Bishop says
with heavy irony. �It has accomplished its task, and we are blessed by the
fallout. Its humble human vessel who you see before you" a hand caresses Huwłs
shoulder�is permanently affected by the performance, and we are deeply
relieved."

�Its. Task." Guilliani is aghast. �Are you insane? You let
it out?"

�Certainly." The Bishop smirks. And we are all the ah, ah,
better for it." He pauses for a moment, sneezes convulsively, and shudders
orgasmically. �Oh! Oh! That was good. Oh my. Yes, ah, the cloud has
re-established its communion with the North American continent, and I feel sure
that the hypercolony is deeply relieved to have offloaded almost two decadełs
worth of uploadseverything that has happened since the Rapture of the Nerds,
in fact."

�Ah." Guillani glares at the Bishop, then gives it up as a
bad jobthe Bishop doesnłt intimidate easily. �Whołs this?" she demands,
staring at Huw.

�This? Donłt you recognize her?" The Bishop simpers. �Shełs
your creation, after all. And youłre going to take very good care of her,
arenłt you?"

�Gack," says Huw, blanching. She tries to lever herself out
of the wheelchair but shełs still weak as a baby.

�If you think Iłm" a puzzled expression crawls over the
Judgełs face. �Why?" she demands. She peers closer at Huw and hisses to
herself: �you, you little rat-bastard! Court is in session"

�Because the Ambassador she carries is the main pacemaker
for all uploads from the North American continent, and if you donłt look after
her the Cloud will be very pissed-off with you. And so will the hypercolony.
Oh, and if you donłt promise to look after her, you arenłt going home. Is that
good enough for you?"

�Ahem," says Guilliani. She squints at Huw, eyebrows
beetling evilly. �Main pacemaker for a whole continent? Is that true?"

Huw nods, unable to trust her throat.

�Hmm." Guilliani clears her throat. �Then, goddamnit, I
hereby find you not guilty of everything in general and nothing in particular.
All charges are dismissed." She glares at the Bishop. �Iłll even get her
enrolled in the witness resettlement program. Will that do for now?"

Huw shudders, but the Bishop nods agreeably. �Yes, that will
be sufficient," he says condescendingly. �Just remember, you wouldnłt want the
hypercolony to come calling, er, crawling, would you?"

The judge nods, meek submission winning out over bubbling
rage.

�Very well. There appears to be a jet with diplomatic
clearance on final approach into Charleston right now. Shall we go and put you
it?"

Halfway across the Atlantic, Huw falls into a troubled
sleep, cuddled restlessly in her first-class berth. Sitting up-front in Ambassador
class, the Judge mutters darkly to herself, occasionaly glancing nervously over
her shoulder in the direction of Huw and her passenger. Far above them, the
Cloud whirls in its orbit, tasting the meat with its mutifarious sensory
apparati, thinking its ineffable thoughts, muttering in RF and gravity and
eigenstate. Now itłs got someone to talk to downstairs, signals synchronized by
the beat of Huwłs passenger, it grows positively voluble: catching up with the
neighbourhood gossip, chuckling and chattering about the antics of those
loveable but dim dreaming apes who remain below.

Huwłs dreaming shełs back at Sandra Lalłs house, in the aftermath
of that memorable party that started this whole thing off. Only shełs
definitely shewearing her new body, aware of it but comfortable in it at the
same time. Shełs in the kitchen, chewing over epistemology with Bonnie. A sense
of sadness spills over him but Bonnie laughs at something, wavingBonnie is
male, this timeat the window. Then he holds out his hand to Huw. Huw walks
into his embrace and they hold each other for a long time. Bonnie doesnłt say
anything but his question is clear in Huwłs head as she leans her chin on his
shoulder. �Not yet," Huw says sleepily. �Iłm not ready for that. Not łtil Iłve
kicked Adełs butt halfway into orbit and cleared it with the judge. Theyłre
making you a saint, did you know that?"

Bonnie nods, and makes a weird warbling sing-song noise in
the back of her throat. It soothes Huw, and she can feel an answering song
rising from the Ambassador. �No, donłt worry about me," Huw murmurs. �Iłll be
alright. Wełll get together some time; I just have some loose ends to tie up
first."

And the funny thing is that even inside her dream, she
believes it.

Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross are the gold-dust twins of
post-singularity social commentary. �Appeals Court" was first published in
Argosy #2 (April/May, 2004), and is reprinted here for the benefit of the many
who never got to see the final issue of that short-lived but well packaged
magazine. It is a sequel to Stross and Doctorowłs story �Jury Duty". For deep
background, check out this provocative article on post-Singularity SF by Gregory
Mone in Popular Science: Is Science Fiction About to Go Blind?.

Cory and Charlie are releasing the story here under a
by-ns-sa Creative Commons license. You are free to copy, distribute, and
perform this work, and to create derivative works, as long as you attribute it
to the authors, do not make commercial use of it, and distribute any derivative
works under the same license. See the license agreement for complete details.

Unwirer

by Charles Stross & Cory Doctorow

He stared at her, stunned into bovine silence. She pinched
his cheek and shoved the papers into his hands. �Bon voyage, mon ami," she
said. She kissed each cheek, then pulled out a compact and fixed the concealer
on her lip.

#

Paris in springtime was everything it was meant to be and
more. Roscoe couldnłt sit down in a cafe without being smartmobbed by unwirer
groupies who wanted him to sign their repeaters and tell them war-stories about
his days as a guerrilla fighter for technological freedom. They were terribly,
awfully young, just kids, Marcelłs age or younger, and they were heartbreaking
in their attempts to understand his crummy French. The girls were beautiful,
the boys were handsome, and they laughed and smoked and ordered him glasses of
wine until he couldnłt walk. Hełd put on twenty pounds, and when he did the
billboard ads for Be, Inc. and Motorola, they had to strap him into a girdle.
�Le choix Am?ricain," in bold sans-serif letters underneath a picture of him
scaling a buildingside with a Moto batarang clenched in his teeth.

Truth be told, he couldnłt even keep up with it all. Hardly
a week went by without a new business popping up, a new bit of technological
gewgaggery appearing on the tables of the Algerian street-vendors by the Eiffel
Tower. He couldnłt even make sense of half the ads on the Metro.

But life was good. He had a very nice apartment with a view
and a landlady who chased away the paparazzi with stern French and a broom. He
could get four bars of signal on his complimentary Be laptop from the bathroom,
and ten bars from the window, and the throng and thrum of the city and the net
filled his days and nights.

And yet.

He was a foreigner. A curiosity. A fish, transplanted from
the sea to MarineLand, swimming in a tank where the tourists could come and
gawp. He slept fitfully, and in his dreams, he was caged in a cell at
Leavenworth, back on the inside, in maximum security, pacing the yard in
solitary stillness.

We woke to the sound of his phone trilling. The ring was the
special one, the one that only a one person had the number for. He struggled
out of bed and lunged for his jacket, fumbled the phone out.

�Sylvie?"

�Roscoe! God, I know itłs early, but God, I just had to tell
you!"

He looked at the window. It was still dark. On his bedstand,
the clock glowed 4:21.

�What? What is it?"

�God! Valentiłs been called to testify at a Senate hearing
on Unwiring. Hełs stepping down as chairman, I just put in a call to his office
and into his dadłs office at the MPAA. The lines were *jammed*. Iłm on my way
to get the Acela into DC."

�Youłre covering it for the *Journal*?"

�Better. I got a *book deal*! My agent ran a bidding war between
Simon and Schuster and St. Martinłs until three AM last night. Iłm hot shit.
The whole fucking thing is coming down like a house of shit. Iłve had three
Congressional staffers fax me discussion drafts of billsone to fund $300
million in DARPA grants to study TCP/IP, another to repeal the terrorism
statutes on network activity, and a compulsory license on movies and music
online. God! If only you could see it."

�Thatłsamazing," Roscoe said. He pictured her in the cab on
the way to Grand Central, headset screwed in, fixing her makeup in her compact,
dressed in a smart spring suit, off to meet with the Hill Rats.

�Itłs incredible. Itłs better than I dreamed."

�Well ..." he said. He didnłt know what to say. �See if you
can get me a pardon, OK?" The joke sounded lame even to him.

�What?" There was a blare of taxi horns. �Oh, crap, Roscoe,
Iłm sorry. Itłll work out, youłll see. Clemency or amnesty or something."

�We can talk about it next month, OK?" Shełd booked the
tickets the week before, and they had two weeks of touring on the continent
planned.

�Oh, Roscoe, Iłm sorry. I canłt do it. The bookłs due in 12
weeks. Afterward, OK? You understand, donłt you?"

He pulled back the curtains and looked out at the foreign
city, looking candlelit in the night. �I understand, sweetie," he said. �This
is great work. Iłm proud of you."

Another blare of horns from 6,000 miles away. �Look, Iłve
got to go. Iłll call you from the Hill, OK?"

�OK," Roscoe said. But shełd already hung up.

He had six bars on his phone, and Paris was lit up with
invisible radio waves, lit up with coverage and innovation and smart, trim boys
and girls who thought he was a hero, and 6,000 miles away, the real unwiring
was taking place.

He looked down at his slim silver phone, glowing with blue
LEDs, a gift from Nokia. He tossed it from hand to hand, and then he opened the
window and chucked it three storeys down to the street. It made an unsatisfying
clatter as it disintegrated on the pavement.

Whole story to date:

The cops caught Roscoe as he was tightening the butterfly
bolts on the dish antenna hełd pitoned into the rock-face opposite the Canadian
side of Niagara Falls. They were State Troopers, not Fed radio cops, and they
pulled their cruiser onto the soft shoulder of the freeway, braking a few feet
short of the soles of his boots. It took Roscoe a moment to tighten the bolts
down properly before he could let go of the dish and roll over to face the
cops, but he knew from the crunch of their boots on the road-salt and the creak
of their cold holsters that they were the law.

�Be right with you, officers," he hollered into the
gale-force winds that whipped along the rockface. The antenna was made from a
surplus pizza-dish satellite rig, a polished tomato soup can and a length of
co-ax that descended to a pigtail with the right fitting for a wireless card.
All perfectly legal, mostly.

He tightened the last of the bolts, squirted them with
lock-tite, and slid back on his belly, off the insulated thermarest hełd laid
between his chest and the frozen ground. The copsł heads were wreathed in the
steam of their exhalations, and one of them was nervously flicking hisno,
*her*handcuffs around on her belt.

�Everything all right, sir?" the other one said, in a flat
upstate New York accent. A townie. He stretched his gloved hand out and pulled
Roscoe to his feet.

�Yeah, just fine," he said. �I like to watch winter birds on
the river. Forgot my binox today, but I still got some good sightings."

�Winter birds, huh?" The cop was giving him a bemused look.

�Winter birds."

The cop leaned over the railing and took a long look down.
�Huh. Better you shouldnłt do it by the roadside, sir," he said. �Never know
when someonełs going to skid out and drive off onto the shoulderyou could be
crushed." He waved at his partner, who gave them a hard look and retreated into
the steamy warmth of the cruiser. �All right, then," he said. �When does your
node go up?"

Roscoe smiled and dared a wink. �Iłll be finished aligning
the dish in about an hour. Iłve got line of sight from here to a repeater on a
support on the Rainbow Bridge, and from there down the Rainbow Street corridor.
Some good tall buildings there, line of sight to most of downtown, at least
when the trees are bare. Leaves and wireless donłt mix."

�My place is 4th and Walnut. Think youłll get there?" Roscoe
relaxed imperceptibly, certain now that this wasnłt a bust.

�Hope so. Sooner rather than later."

�Thatłd be great. My kids are emailing me out of house and
home." The cop looked uncomfortable and cleared his throat. �Still, you might
want to finish this one then go home and stay there for a while. DAłs office,
theyłve got some kind of hot shot from the FCC in town preaching the gospel
and, uh, getting heavy on bird watchers. That sort of thing."

Roscoe sucked in his lower lip. �I may do just that," he conceded.
�And thank you for the warning."

The cop waved as he turned away. �My pleasure, sir."

#

Roscoe drove home slowly, and not just because of the snow
and compacted slush on the roads. *A hot shot from the FCC* sounded like the
inquisition come to town. Roscoełs lifelong mistrust of radio cops had
metastaized into surging hatred three years ago, when they busted him behind a
Federal telecoms rap.

Hełd lost his job and spent the best part of six months
inside, though hełd originally been looking at a from a five year contributory
infringement stretchcompounded to twenty by the crypto running on the
access-point under the �use a cypher, go to jail" statuteto second degree
tarriff evasion. His public defender had been worse than useless, but the ACLU
had filed an amicus on his behalf, which led the judge to knock the beef down
to criminal trespass and unlawful emission, six months and two yearsł probation,
two years in which he wasnłt allowed to program a goddamn microwave oven, let
alone admin the networks that had been his trade. Prison hadnłt been as bad for
him as it could have beenunwirers got respectbut while he was inside Janice
filed for divorce, and by the time he got out hełd lost everything hełd spent
the last decade buildinghis marriage, his house, his savings, his career.
Everything except for the unwiring.

It was this experience that had turned him from a freewheeling
geek into what FCC Chairman Valenti called �one of the copyright crooks whose
illegal pirate networks provide safe havens to terroristswithin the homeland
and abroad."across the homeland." And so it was with a shudder and a glance
over his shoulder that he climbed the front steps and put his key in the lock
of the house he and Marcel rented.

Marcel looked up from his laptop as Roscoe stamped through
the living-room.

�Slushy boots! For chrissakes, Roscoe, I just cleaned."

Roscoe turned to look at the salty brown slush hełd tracked
over the painted floor and shook his head.

�Sorry," he said, lamely, and sat down on the floor to shuck
his heavy steel-shank Kodiaks. He carried them back to the doormat and then
grabbed a roll of paper towels from the kitchen and started wiping up the mess.
The landlord used cheap enamel paint on the floor and the road-salt could eat
through to the scuffed wood in half an hour.

�And paper towels, God, itłs like youłve got a personal
vendetta against the forests. Therełs a rag-bag under the sink, as youłd know
if you ever did any cleaning around this place."

�Ease the fuck off, kid, you sound like my goddamned
ex-wife," Roscoe said, giving the floor a vicious swipe. �Just ease back and
let me do my thing, all right? It didnłt go so good."

Marcel set his machine down reverently on the small
hearthrug beside his Goodwill recliner. �What happened?"

Roscoe related his run-in with the law quickly. Marcel shook
his head slowly.

�I bet itłs bullshit. Ever since Tijuana, everyonełs seeing
spooks." The ISPs on the Tijuana side of the San Ysidro border-crossing had
been making good coin off of unwirer-symptathizers whołd pointed their antennae
across the chain-link fence. La Migra tried tightening the fence-gauge up to
act as a Faraday cage, but they just went over it with point-to-point links
that were also resistent to the noise from the 2.4GHz light-standards that the
INS erected at its toll-booths. Finally, the radio cops got tired of ferretting
out the high-gain antennae on the San Diego side and theyłd Ruby-Ridged the
whole operation, killing ten �terrorists" in a simultaneous strike with Mexican
narcs whołd raided the ISPs under the rubric of shutting down narcotraficante
activity. TELMEX had screamed blue murder when their fiber had been cut by the
simple expedient of driving a backhoe through the main conduit, and had pulled
lineage all along the Rio Grande.

Roscoe shook his head. �Bullshit or not, you going to take
any chances?" He straightened up slowly. �Believe me, therełs one place you
donłt want to go."

�Okay, okay, I hear what youłre saying."

�I hope you do." Roscoe dumped the wad of towels in the
kitchen trash and stomped back into the living room, then dropped himself on
the sofa. �Listen, when I was your age I thought it couldnłt happen to me,
either. Now look at me." He started thumbing his way through the stack of old
magazines on the coffee table.

�Iłm looking at you." Marcel grinned. �Listen, there was a
call while you were out."

�A call?" Roscoe paused with his hand on a collectorłs copy
of *2600: The Hacker Quarterly*.

�Some woman, said she wanted to talk to you. I took her number."

�Uh-huh." Roscoe put the magazine back down. *Heads itłs
Janice, tails itłs her lawyer*, he thought. It was shaping up to be that kind
of day; a tire-slashing and an hour of alimonial recriminations would complete
it neatly. Marcel pointed at the yellow pad next to the elderly dial phone.
�Ah, shit. I suppose I should find out what itłs about."

The number, when he looked at it, wasnłt familar. That
didnłt mean muchJanice was capable of moving and her frothingly aggro lawyer
seemed to carry a new cellular every time he saw herbut it was hopeful. Roscoe
dialed. �Hello? Roscoe. Who am I talking to?"

A strangerłs voice: �Hi there! I was talking to your
roommate about an hour ago? Iłm Sylvie Smith. I was given your name by a guy
called Buzz who told me you put him on the backbone."

Roscoe tensed. Odds were that this Sylvie Smith was just
another innocent kiddee looking to leech a first-mile feed, but after this
morningłs run-in with the law he was taking nothing for granted.

�Are you a law enforcement officer federal employee police
officer lawyer FCC or FBI agent?" he asked, running the words together, knowing
that if she was any of the above shełd probably liebut it might help sway a
jury towards letting him off if he was targeted by a sting.

�No." She sounded almost amused. �Iłm a journalist."

�Then you should be familiar with CALEA," he said, bridling
at the condecension in her voice. CALEA was the wiretap law, it required
switch-vendors to put snoopware into every hop in the phone network. It was bad
enough in and of itself, but it made the noncompliant routing code that was
built into the BeOS. access-points he had hidden in a bus-locker doubly illegal
and hence even harder to lay hands on.

�Paranoid, much?" she said.

�I have nothing to be paranoid about," he said, spelling it
out like he was talking to a child. �I am a law-abiding citizen, complying with
the terms of my parole. If you *are* a journalist, Iłd be happy to chat. In
person."

�Iłm staying at the Days Inn on Main Street," she said.
�Itłs a dump, but itłs got a *view of the Falls*," she said in a hokey secret-agent
voice, making it plain that she meant, �Itłs line of sight to a repeater for a
Canadian wireless router."

�I can be there in twenty," he said.

�Room 208," she said. �Knock twice, then once, then three
times." Then she giggled. �Or just send me an SMS."

�See you then," he said.

Marcel looked up from his machine, an IBM box manufactured
for the US market. It was the size of a family bible, and styled for the
corporate market. They both lusted furiously after the brushed-aluminium
slivers that Be was cranking out in France, but those laptops were *way* too
conspicuous here.

Roscoe pointed at the wireless card protruding from the slot
on the side nearest him. �Youłre violating security," he said. �I could get
sent up again just for being in the same room as that." He was past being
angry, though. In the joint, hełd met real crooks who could maintain real
project secrecy. The cowboy kids he worked with on the outside thought that
secrecy meant talking out of the side of your mouth in conspiratorial whispers
while winking tourretically.

Marcel blushed. �It was a mistake, OK?" He popped the card.
�Iłll stash it."

#

The Days Inn was indeed a dump and doubt nagged at Roscoe as
he reached for the front door. If she was a Fed there might be more ways she
could nail him than just by arresting him in the same room as an illegal
wireless card. So Roscoe turned around and drove to a diner along the block
from the motel, then went inside to look for a wired phone.

�Room 208, please ... hi there. If youłd care to come
outside, therełs a diner about fifty yards down the road. Just turn left out of
the lobby. Iłm already there." He hung up before she could ask any awkward
questions, then headed for a booth by the window. Almost as an afterthought, he
pulled the copy of *2600* out of his pocket. The hacker magazine (shut down by
a court injunction last year) was a good recognition signalplus, having it
didnłt violate the letter of his parole.

Roscoe was halfway down his first mug of coffee when someone
leaned over him. �Hi," she said.

�You must be Sylvie." He registered a confused impression of
bleached blonde hair, brown eyes, freckles. *Must be straight out of J-school*.
�Have a seat. Coffee?"

�Yes please." She put something like a keyring down then
waved a hand, trying to catch the waitressłs eye. Roscoe looked at the keyring.
Very black, very small, very Nokia. Rumour said they were giving them away in
cereal boxes in France.

�Suppose you tell me why you wanted to meet up," Roscoe said
quietly. �Up front. I can tell you right now that Iłm out on parole, and Iłve
got no intention of doing anything that puts me back inside."

The waitress ambled over, pad in hand. Sylvie ordered a coffee.
�What were you charged with?" she said. �If you donłt mind me asking."

Roscoe snorted. *Score one for the cool lady*some folks
hełd met ran a mile the instant he mentioned being a con. �I was *accused* of
infringement with a side order of black crypto, but plea bargained it down to
unlawful emissions." *Score two*she smiled. It was a weak joke, but it took
some of the sting out of it. �Strictly no-collar crime." He took another
mouthful of coffee. �So what is it youłre doing up here?"

�Iłm working on a story about some aspects of unwiring that
donłt usually make the national press," she said, as the waitress came over,
empty mug in one hand and jug in the other. Roscoe held his up for a refill.

�Credentials?"

�I could give you a phone number, but would you trust it?"

�Point." Roscoe leaned back against the elderly vinyl seat.
*Young, but cynical.*

�Well," she added, �I can do better." She pulled out a
notepad and began scribbling. �*This* is my editorłs name and address. *You*
can look up his number. If you place a call and ask for him youłll get put
throughyoułre on the list of interview subjects I left him. Next, herełs
myno, anemail address." Roscoe blinkedit was a handle on a famous Finnish
anonymous remixer. �Get a friend to ping it and ask me something." It was worth
five to twenty for black cryptoanonymity was the FCCłs worst nightmare about
the uncontrolled net. �Finally, herełs my press pass."

�Okay, Iłll check these out." He met her eyes. �Now, why
donłt you tell me why the Wall Street Journal is interested in a burned out
ex-con and ex-unwirer, and we can take it from there?"

She closed her eyes for a moment. Then she dangled her keyring
again, just a flash of matte black plastic. �These are everywhere in Europe
these days, along with these," she opened her purse and he caught a glimpse of
a sliver of curved metal, like a boomerang, in the shape of the Motorola
batwing logo-mark. �Theyłre meshing wireless repeaters. Once youłve got a
critical mass, you can relay data from anywhere to anywhere. Teenagers are
whacking them up on the sides of buildings, tangling them in tree-branches,
sticking them to their windows. The telcos there are screaming blue murder, of
course. Business is down 40 percent in Finland, sixty in France. Euros are
using the net for telephone calls, instant messaging, file-sharingthe wireline
infrastructure is looking more and more obsolete every day. Even the ISPs are
getting nervous."

Roscoe tried to hide his grin. To be an unwirer in the
streets of Paris, operating with impunity, putting the telcos, the Hollywood
studios and the ISPs on notice that there was no longer any such thing as a
�consumer"that yesterdayłs couch potatoes are todayłs *participants*!

�Wełve got ten yearsł worth of editorials in our morgue
about the destruction of the European entertainment and telco market and the
wisdom of our National Information Infrastructure here in the US, but itłs
starting to ring hollow. The European governments are *ignoring* the telcos!
The device and services market being built on top of the freenets is accounting
for nearly half the GDP in France. To hear *my* paper describe it, though,
youłd think they were starving in the streets: itłs like the received wisdom
about Canadian socialized healthcare. Everyone *knows* it doesnłt workexcept
for the Canadians, who think wełre goddamned *barbarians* for not adopting it.

�I just got back from a month in the field in the EU. Iłve
got interviews in the can with CEOs, with street-thugs, with grandmothers and
with regulators, all saying the same thing: unmetered communications are the
secret engine of the economy, of liberty. The highest-quality ęcontentł isnłt
100-million-dollar movies, itłs conversations with other people. Crypto is a
tool of ęprivacył"she pronounced it in the British way, prihv-icy, making the
word seem even more alien to his ears�not piracy.

�The unwirers are heroes in Europe. You hear them talk, itłs
like listening to a course in *US* constitutional freedoms. But here, you
people are crooks, cable-thieves, pirates, abetters of terrorists. I want to
change that."

#

That evening, Marcel picked a fight with Roscoe over supper.
It started low key, as Roscoe sliced up the pizza. �What are you planning this
week?"

Roscoe shifted two slices onto his plate before he answered.
�More dishes. Got a couple of folks to splice in downtown if I want to hook up
East Auroratherełre some black spots there, but I figure with some QOS-based
routing and a few more repeaters we can clear them up. Why?"

Marcel toyed with a strand of cooling cheese. �Itłs, like,
boring. When are you going to run a new fat pipe in?"

�When the current onełs full." Roscoe rolled a slice into a
tube and bit into an end, deftly turning the roll to keep the cheese and sauce
on the other end from oozing over his hand. �You know damn well the feds would
like nothing better than to drive a ditch-witch through a fiber drop from the
border. ęSides, got the journalist to think about."

�I could take over part of the fiber-pull," Marcel said.

�I donłt think so." Roscoe put his plate down.

�But I could" Marcel looked at him. �Whatłs wrong?"

�Security," Roscoe grunted. �Goddamnit, you canłt just waltz
up to some guy whołs looking at 20-to-life and say ęHi, Roscoe sent me,
howzabout you and me run some dark fiber over the border, huh?ł Some of the
guys in this game are, huh, you wouldnłt want to meet them on a dark night. And
others are just plain paranoid. They wouldnłt want to meet *you*. Fastest way
to convince łem the FCC is trying to shut them down."

�You could introduce me," Marcel said after a brief pause.

Roscoe laughed, a short bark. �In your dreams, son."

Marcel dropped his fork, clattering. �Youłre going to take
your pet blonde on a repeater splice and show her everything and youłre afraid
to let me help you run a new fat pipe in? Whatłs the matter, I donłt smell good
enough?"

�Listen." Roscoe stood up, and Marcel tensedbut rather than
move towards him, Roscoe turned to the pizza box. �Get the *Wall Street
Journal* on our side and we have some credibility. A crack in the wall.
Legitimacy. Do you know what that means, kid? You canłt buy it. But run another
fat pipe into town and we have a idle capacity, upstream dealers who want to
know what the hell wełre pissing around with, another fiber or laser link to
lose to cop-induced backhoe fade, and about fifty percent higher probability of
the whole network getting kicked over because the mundanes will rat us out to
the FCC over their TV reception. Do you want that?" He picked another cooling
pizza slice out of the box. �Do you really want that?"

�What I want isnłt important, is it, Ross? Not as important
as you getting a chance to fuck that reporter, right?"

�Up yours." Roscoe returned to his seat, shoulders set defensively.
�Fuck you very much." They finished the meal in silence, then Roscoe headed out
to his evening class in conversational French. Marcel, he figured, was just
jealous because he wasnłt getting to do any of the secret agent stuff. Being an
unwirer was a lot less romantic than it sounded, and the first rule of unwiring
was *nobody talks about unwiring*. Maybe Marcel would get there one day,
assuming his big mouth didnłt get everyone around him arrested first.

#

Sylviełs hotel-room had a cigarette-burns-and-must squalor
that reminded Roscoe of jail. �Bonjour, Młsieu," she said as she admitted him.

�Bon soir, madame," he said. �Commentava?"

�Oy," she said. �My granmother woulda said, ęyoułve got a
no-accent on you like a Litvak.ł Lookee here, the treasures of the Left Bank."
She handed him the Motorola batarang hełd glimpsed earlier. The underside had a
waxed-paper peel-off strip and when he lifted a corner, his thumb stuck so hard
to the tackiness beneath that he lost the top layer of skin when he pulled it
loose. He turned it over in his hands.

�Howłs it powered?"

�Dirt-cheap photovoltaics charging a polymer celltheyłre
printed in layers, the entire case is a slab of battery plus solar cell. It
doesnłt draw too many amps, only sucks juice when itłs transmitting. Put one in
a subway car and youłve got an instant ad-hoc network that everyone in the car
can use. Put one in the next car and theyłll mesh. Put one on the platform and
youłll get connectivity with the train when it pulls in. Sure it wonłt run for
more than a few hours in total darknessbut how often do folks network in the
blackout?"

�Shitfire," he said, stroking the matte finish in a way that
bordered on the erotic.

She grinned. She was slightly snaggletoothed, and he noticed
a scar on her upper lip from a cleft-palate operation that must have been
covered up with concealer earlier. It made her seem more human, more
vulnerable. �Total cost of goods is about three Euros, and Motołs margin is
five hundred percent. But some Taiwanese knock-offs have already appeared that
slice that in half. Motołll have to invent something new next year if it wants
to keep that profit."

�They will," Roscoe said, still stroking the batarang. He
transferred it to his armpit and unslung his luggable laptop. �Innovation is
still legal there." The laptop sank into the orange bedspread and the soft
mattress beneath it.

�You could do some real damage with one of these, I bet,"
she said.

�With a thousand of them, maybe," he said. �If they were a
little less conspicuous."

Her chest began to buzz. She slipped a wee phone from her
breast-pocket and answered it. �Yes?" She handed the phone to Roscoe. �Itłs for
you." She made a curious face at him.

He clamped it to his ear. �Who is this?"

�Eet eez eye, zee masked avenger, doer of naughty deeds and
wooer of reportersł hearts."

�Marcel?"

�Yes, boss."

�You shouldnłt be calling me on this number." He remembered
the yellow pad, sitting on his bedside table. Marcel did all the dusting.

�Sorry, boss," he said. He giggled.

�Have you been drinking?" Marcel and he had bonded over
many, many beers since theyłd met in a bar in Utica, but Roscoe didnłt drink
these days. Drinking made you sloppy.

�No, no," he said. �Just in a good mood is all. Iłm sorry we
fought, darlinł, can we kiss and make up?"

�What do you want, Marcel?"

�I want to be in the story, dude. Hook me up! I want to be
famous!"

He grinned despite himself. Marcel was good at fonzing
dishes into place with one well-placed whack, could crack him up when the
winter slush was turning his mood to pitch. He was a good kid, basically. Hot
head. Like Roscoe, once.

�Cłmon cłmon cłmon," Marcel said, and he could picture the
kid pogoing up and down in a phone-booth, heard his boots crunching on
rock-salt.

He covered the receiver and turned to Sylvie, who had a bemused
smirk that wasnłt half cute on her. �You wanna hit the road, right?" She
nodded. �You wanna write about how unwirers get made? I could bring along the
kid Iłm ęprenticing-up, you like." Through the cellphone, he heard Marcel
shouting �Yes! Yes! YES!" and imagined the kid punching the air and pounding
the boothłs walls triumphantly.

�Itłs a good angle," she said. �*You* want him along,
right?"

He held the receiver in the air so that they could both hear
the hollers coming down the line. �I donłt think I could live with him if I
didnłt take him," he said, �so yeah."

She nodded and bit her upper lip, just where the scar was,
an oddly canine gesture that thrust her chin forward and made her look slightly
belligerent. �Letłs do it."

He clamped the phone back to his head. �Marcel! Calm down,
twerp! Breathe. OK. You gonna be good if I take you along?"

�So good, man, so very very very very good, you wonłt believe"

�You gonna be *safe*, I bring you along?"

�Safe as houses. Wonłt breathe without your permission. Man,
you are the *best*"

�Yeah, I am. Four PM. Bring the stuff."

#

They hit the road closer to five than to four. It was
chilly, and the gathering clouds and intermittent breeze promised more snow
after dark when Roscoe parked outside the apartment. Marcel was ready and
waiting, positively jumping up and down as soon as Roscoe opened the door.
�Letłs go, man!"

Back in the cab Sylvie was making notes on a palmtop. �Hi,"
she said guardedly, making eye contact with Marcel.

�Hi yourself." Marcel smiled. �Where we going tonight, man?
I brought the stuff." He dumped Roscoełs toolbox and a bag containing a bunch
of passive repeaters on the bench seat next to him.

�Wełre heading for East Aurora." Roscoe looked over his
shoulder as he backed the truck into the street, barely noticing Sylvie
watching him. �Therełs a low hill there thatłs blocking signal to the mesh near
Chestnut Hill, and wełre going to do something about that."

�Great!" Marcel shuffled about to get comfortable as Roscoe
cautiously drove along the icy road. �Hey, isnłt there a microwave mast up
there?"

�Yeah." Roscoe saw Sylvie was making notes. �By the way, if
you could keep from saying exactly where wełre placing the repeaters? In your
article? Otherwise FCCłll just take łem down."

�Okay." Sylvie put her pocket computer down. It was one of
those weird Brit designs with the folding keyboards and built-in wireless that
had trashed Palm all over Europe. �So youłre going to, what? String a bunch of
repeaters along a road around the hillside?"

�Pretty much that, exactly. Should only need two or three at
the most, and itłs wooded around there. I figure an hour for each and we can be
home by nine, grab some Chinese on the way."

�Why donłt we use the microwave mast?" Marcel said.

�Huh?"

�The microwave mast," he repeated. �We go up there, we put
one repeater on it, and we bounce signal *over* the hill, no need to go łround
the bushes."

�I donłt think so," Roscoe said absently. �Criminal
tresspass."

�But itłd save time! And theyłd never look up there, itłll
look just like any other phone company dish"

Roscoe sighed. �I am so not hearing this." He paused for a
few seconds, merging with another lane of traffic. �Listen, if we get caught
climbing a tree by the roadside I can drop the cans and say I was
bird-spotting. Theyłll never find them. But if I get caught climbing a phone
company microwave tower that is criminal tresspass, *and* theyłll probably nail
me for felony theft of service, and felony possession of unlicensed
devicestheyłll find the cans for sure, itłs like a parking lot around the base
of those thingsand parole breach. Iłll be back in prison while youłre still
figuring out how to hitch-hike home. So enough about saving time, okay? Doing
twenty to life is not saving time."

�Okay," Marcel said, �wełll do it your way." He crossed his
arms and stared out the window at the passing trees under their winter caul of
snow.

�How many unwirers are there working in the area?" Sylvie
said, breaking the silence.

Marcel said, �Just us," at the same moment as Roscoe said,
�dozens." Sylvie laughed.

�Wełre solo," Roscoe said, �but there are lots of other
solos in the area. Itłs not a *conspiracy*, you knowmore like an emergent form
of democracy."

Sylvie looked up from her palmtop. �Thatłs from a manifesto,
isnłt it?"

Roscoe pinked. �Guilty as charged. Got it from Barlowłs
*Letters from Prison.* I read a lot of prison-lit. Before I went into the
joint."

�Amateurs plagiarize, artists steal," she said. �Might as
well steal from the best. Barlow talks a mean stick. You know he wrote lyrics
for the Grateful Dead?"

�Yeah," Roscoe said. �I got into unwiring through some deadhead
tape-traders who were importing open recorders from Germany to tape to shows.
One of them hooked me up withsomeonewho could get French networking gear. It
was just a few steps from there to fun-loving criminal, undermining the body
politic."

#

Marcel came out of his sulk when they got to the site. He
loaded up his backpack and a surveyorłs tripod and was the model of efficiency
as he lined up the bank-shot around the hill that would get their signal out
and about.

Sylvie hung back with Roscoe, who was taking all the gear
through a series of tests, using his unweildy laptop and two home-made antennae
to measure signal-strength. �Got to get it right the first time. Donłt like to
revisit a site after itłs set up. Dog returning to its vomit and all."

She took out her keychain and dangled it in the path of the
business-end of the repeater Roscoe was testing. �Iłm getting good directional
signal," she said, turning the keychain so he could see the glowing blue LEDs
arranged to form the distinctive Nokia �N."

Roscoe reached for the fob. �These are just *wicked*," he
said.

�Keep it," she said. �Iłve got a few more in my room. They
had a fishbowl full of them on the reception desk in Helsinki. The more lights,
the better the signal."

Roscoe felt an obscure species of embarassment, like he was
a primitive, tacking up tin cans and string around a provincial backwater of a
country. �Thanks," he said, gruffly. �Hey, Marcel, you got us all lined up?"

�Got it."

Only he didnłt. They lined up the first repeater and tested
it, but the signal drop-off was near-total. Bad solder joints, interference
from the microwave tower, gremlins ... Who knew? Sometimes a shot just didnłt
work and debugging it in the frigid winter dusk wasnłt anyonełs idea of a fun
time.

�Okay, pass me the next." Roscoe breathed deeply as Marcel
went back to the truck for the other repeater. *This* one worked fine. But it
still left them with a problem. �Didnłt you bring a third?" Roscoe asked.

�What for?" Marcel shrugged. �I swear I tested them both
back homemaybe itłs the cold or something?"

�Shit." Roscoe stamped his feet and looked back at the road.
Sylvie was standing close to the truck, hands in her pockets, looking
interested. He glanced at the hill and the microwave mast on top of it. A light
blinked regularly, warm and red like an invitation.

�Whyłnłt we try the hill?" Marcel asked. �We could do the shot
with only one repeater from that high up."

Roscoe stared at the mast. �Let me think." He picked up the
working repeater and shambled back to the truck cab absent-mindedly, weighing
the options. �Come on."

�What now?" asked Sylvie, climbing in the passenger seat.

�I think." Roscoe turned the ignition key. �Kid has half a
point. Wełve only got the one unit, if we can stick it on the mast itłll do the
job." He turned half-round in his seat to stare at Marcel. �But we are *not*
going to get caught, yłhear?" He glanced at Sylvie. �If you think itłs not
safe, Iłll give you a lift home first. Or bail. Itłs your call. Everyone gets a
veto."

Sylvie stared at him through slitted eyes. Then she whistled
tunelessly. �Itłs your ass. Donłt get into this just because Iłm watching."

�Okay." Roscoe put the truck in gear. �You guys keep an eye
out behind for any sign of anything at all, anyone following us." He pulled
away slowly, driving with excruciating care. �Marcel? Stick that bag under my
seat, will you?"

The side-road up to the crest of the hill was dark, shadowed
by snow-laden trees to either side. Roscoe took it slowly; a couple of times
there was a whine as the all-wheel drive cut in on the uncleared snow. �No fast
getaways," Sylvie noted quietly.

�Wełre not bank robbers." Roscoe shifted down a gear and
turned in to the driveway leading to the mast. There was an empty parking lot
at the end, surrounded by a chain-link fence with a gate in it. On the other
side, the mast rose from a concrete plinth, towering above them like a giant
intrusion from another world. Roscoe pulled up and killed the lights. �Anyone
see anything?"

�No," said Marcel from the back seat.

�Looks okay tohey, wait!" Sylvie did a double-take. �Stop!
Donłt open the door!"

�Why" Marcel began.

�Stop. Just stop." Sylvie seemed agitated and right then Roscoe,
his eyes recovering from headlight glare, noticed the faint shadows. �Marcel,
*get down*!"

�Whatłs up?" Marcel asked.

�Crouch down! Below window level!" She turned to Roscoe.
�Looks like you were right."

�I was right?" Roscoe looked past her. The shadows were getting
sharper and now he could hear the other vehicle. �Shit. Wełve been" He reached
towards the ignition key and Sylvie slapped his hand away. �Ouch!"

�Here." She leaned forward, sparing a glance for the back
seat where Marcel was crouching down. �Make it look like you mean it."

�Mean what" Roscoe got it a moment before she kissed him.
He responded automatically, hugging her as the truck cab flooded with light.

�*You! Out of the*oh, geez." The amplified voice, a womanłs
voice, trailed off. Sylvie and Roscoe turned and blinked at the spotlights
mounted on the gray Dodge van as its doors opened.

Sylvie wound down the side window and stuck her head out. �I
donłt know what you think youłre doing, but you can fuck right off!" she
yelled. �Fucking voyeurs!"

�This is private property," came the voice. �Youłll have to
get a room." Boots crunched on the road-salt. A holster creaked. Roscoe held
his breath.

�Very funny," Sylvie said. �All right, wełre going."

�Not yet, you arenłt," the voice said again, this time
without the amplification, much closer. Roscoe looked in the rear-view at the
sillhouette of the woman cop, flipping her handcuffs on her belt, stepping
carefully on the ice surface. In her bulky parka, she could have been any state
trooper, but the way she flipped her cuffs

�Go go go," hissed Marcel from the back seat. �*Vite*!"

�Sit tight," Sylvie said.

From the back seat, a click. A gun being cocked. Roscoe kept
his eyes on the rear-view, and mumbled, �Marcel, if that is a gun I just heard,
I am going to shove it up your fucking ass and pull the trigger."

Roscoe rolled down his window. �Evening, officer," he said.
Her face was haloed by the light bouncing off her breathłs fog, but he recognized
her. Had seen her, the day before, hanging off the edge of the gorge, aiming an
antenna Canadawards.

�Evening sir," she said. �Evening, małam. Nice night, huh?
Doing some bird-watching?"

Made. Roscoełs testicles shriveled up and tried to climb
into his abdomen. His feet and hands werenłt cold, they were *numb*. He
couldnłt have moved if he tried. He couldnłt go back

Another click. A flashlight. The cop shone it on Sylvie.
Roscoe turned. The concealer was smudged around her scar.

�Officer, really, is this necessary?" Sylviełs voice was
exasperated, and had a Manhattan accent she hadnłt had before, one that made
her sound scary-aggro. �It was just the heat of the moment."

Roscoe touched his lips and his finger came back with a powdering
of concealer and a smudge of lipstick.

�Yes, małam, it is. Sir, could you step out of the car,
please?"

Roscoe reached for his seatbelt, and the flashlight swung toward
the back seat. The copłs eyes flickered behind him, and then she slapped for
her holster, stepping back quickly. �Everyone hands where I see them NOW!"

Fucking Marcel. Jesus.

She was still fumbling with her holster, and there was the
sound of the car door behind her opening. �Liz?" a voice called. The other cop,
her partner. 4th and Walnut. �Everything OK?"

She was staring wide-eyed now, panting out puffs of steam.
Staring at the rear window. Roscoe looked over his shoulder. Marcel had a small
pistol, pointed at her.

�Drive, Roscoe," he said. �Drive fast."

Moving as in a dream, he reached for the ignition. The
engine coughed to life and he slammed it into gear, cranking hard on the wheel,
turning away from the cop, a wide circle through the empty parking lot that he
came out of in a an uncontrolled fishtail, swinging back on forth on the slick
paving.

He regained control as they crested the ridge and hit the
downhill slope back to the highway. Behind him, he heard the cop-car swing into
the chainlink fence, and in his rearview mirror, he saw the car whirling across
the ice on the parking lot, its headlights moving in slow circles. It was
mesmerizing, but Sylviełs gasp snapped him back to his driving. They were
careening down the hill now, tires whining for purchase, threatening to
fishtail, picking up speed.

He let out an involuntary *eep* and touched the brakes, triggering
another skid. The truck hit the main road still skidding, but now they had
rock-salt under the rubber, and he brought the truck back under control and he
floored it, switching off his headlights, running dark on the dark road.

�This isnłt safe," Sylvie said.

�You said ęDrive fast,ł" Roscoe said, hammering the gearbox.
He sounded hysterical, even to his own years. He swallowed. �Itłs not far."

�Whatłs not far?" she said.

�Shut up," he said. �OK? Wełve got about five minutes before
their backup arrives. Seven minutes until the chopperłs in the sky. Need to get
off the road."

�The safe house," Marcel said.

�SHUT UP," Roscoe said, touching the brakes. They passed an
oncoming car that blinked its high-beams at them. *Yes, driving with my lights
off, thank you,* Roscoe thought.

#

Roscoe hadnłt been to the safe-house in a year. It was an
old public park whose jungle-gym has rusted through and killed a kid 18 months
before. Hełd gone there to scout out a good repeater location, and found that
the public toilet, behind the chain-link fence, was still unlocked. He kept an
extra access-point there, a blanket, achange of clothes, a first-aid kit, and a
fresh license-plate, double-bagged in kitchen garbage bags stashed in the
drop-ceiling.

He parked the truck outside the fence, snugged up between
the bushes that grew on one side and the chain-link. They were invisible from
the road. He got out of the truck quickly.

�Marcel, get the camper-bed," he said, digging a crowbar out
from under his seat and passing it to him.

�What are you going to do?" Sylvie asked.

�Help me," he said, unlatching the camper and grabbing a tarpaulin.
�Unfold this on the ground there, and pile the stuff I pass you on top of it."

He unloaded the truck quickly, handing Sylvie the access-points,
the repeaters, the toolboxes and ropes and spraycans of camou colors. �Make a
bundle of it," he said, once the truck was empty. �Tie the corners together
with the rope. Use the grommets."

He snatched the crowbar away from Marcel and went to work on
the remaining nuts holding down the camper bed. When he had the last one
undone, he jammed the pry-end of the bar between the lid and the truck and
levered it off the bed. It began to slide off and he grunted �Get it," to
Marcel, but it was Sylvie who caught the end.

�Over the fence," he gasped, holding up his end while he
scrambled into the back of the truck. They flipped it over together, and it
landed upside-down.

A car rolled past. They all flinched, but it kept going.
Roscoe thought it was a cop-car, but he couldnłt be sure. He stilled his
breathing and listened for the chop-chop of a helicopter, and thought that,
yes, he heard it, off in the distance, but maybe getting closer.

�Marcel, give me that fucking gun," he said, with deceptive
calmness.

Marcel looked down at the snow.

�I will cave in your skull with this rod if you donłt hand
me your gun," he said, hefting the crowbar. �Unless you shoot me," he said.

Marcel reached into the depths of his jacket and produced
the pistol. Roscoe had never handled a pistol, and he was surprised by its
weightheaver than it looked, lighter than hełd thought it would be.

�Over the fence," he said. �All of us." He put the gun in
his pocket. �Marcel first."

Marcel opened his mouth.

�Not a word," Roscoe said. �If you say one goddamned word,
either of you, youłre out. Wełre quits. Fence."

Marcel went over the fence first, landing atop the
camper-bed. Then Sylvie, picking her way down with her toes jammed in the
chain-link. Roscoe set down the crow-bar quietly and followed.

�Roscoe," Sylvie said. �Can you explain this to me?"

�No," Roscoe said. �Sylvie, you stay here and cover the camper
bed with snow. Kick it over. As much as you can. Marcel, with me."

They entered the dark toilet single file, and once the door
had closed behind them, Roscoe pulled out his flashlight and clicked it on.

�Wełre not going home ever again. Whatever you had in your
pockets, thatłs all youłve got. Do you understand?"

Marcel opened his mouth and Roscoe lunged for him.

�Donłt speak. Just nod. I donłt want to hear your voice.
Youłve destroyed my life, climbing that tower, pulling that gun. Iłm over, you
understand? Just nod."

Marcel nodded. His eyes were very wide.

�Climb up on the toilet tank and pop out that ceiling tile
and bring down the bag." He aimed the flashlight to emphasize his point.

Marcel brought down the bag and Roscoe felt some of the tension
leak out of him. At least he had a new license-plate and a change of clothes.
It was a start.

Sylvie had covered the bottom third of the camper-bed and
her gloves and boots were caked with snow. Roscoe set down the trash-bag and
helped her, and after a moment, Marcel pitched in. Soon they had the whole
thing covered.

�I donłt know that itłll fool anyone who walks over here,
but it should keep it hidden from the road, at least," Roscoe said. His heart
had finally begun to slow down and he was breathing normally.

�Herełs the plan," he said. �Iłm going to swap the license
plates and drive into town. Sylvie lies down on the back seat. Theyłre looking
for a truck with three people in it and a camper-bed. Marcel, youłre walking.
Itłs a long walk. Therełre some chemical hot-pads in the first-aid kit. Stuff
them in your boots and mitts. Donłt let anyone see you. Find somewhere to hide
until tomorrow, and then wełll meet at the Donut House near the Rainbow Bridge,
8AM, OK?"

Marcel nodded mutely. The snow was falling harder now,
clouds dimming the moonlight.

Roscoe dug out the hot-pads and tossed them to him. �Go," he
said. �Now."

Wordlessly, Marcel climbed the fence and started slogging toward
the highway.

They watched his back recede, then Roscoe jumped the fence
with the trashbag. He dropped it in the back of the truck and hauled his
tarpaulin-bundle back to the playground side, then dragged it into the
bathroom. It was too heavy to get into the drop-ceiling and the drag-marks in
the fresh snow were like a blinking arrow anyway. He left it on the floor.

He helped Sylvie over the fence, then hunkered down, using a
small wrench to remove the plates from the truck. Sylvie crouched beside him,
holding the flashlight.

�Did you know he had a gun?" Sylvie said, as he tightened
down the bolts.

�No," Roscoe said. �No guns. We donłt use guns. Wełre fucking
network engineers, not pistoleros."

�Thought so," she said, but made no further comment as he
fastened the new plates in place.

Finally he stood up. �Okay, letłs go," he said.

�Whatłs the plan?" She paused, hand on door handle.

�The plan is to get away from here. Then figure out what to
do next." He glanced at her sidelong, calculating. �I think youłll be all
right, whatever happens. But that little idiot" He realised his hands were
shaking.

Sylvie climbed into the truck. Roscoe sat for a minute,
concentrating on getting a grip on himself.

He drove slowly, starting every time he saw moving shadows,
the headlights of other vehicles. One time the road took a bend and he passed a
police car, stationary on the shoulder. He nearly jumped out of his skin, but
forced back the urge to put his foot down or even turn his head*give no sign*,
he told himself.

Sylvie sighed as the police car vanished in the rear view.
�Youłre going to go the rendezvous, like you told him?" she asked.

�Yeah. More than the little shit deserves, but I owe him
that much. Wełve got to sort this out together." He tapped the steering wheel.
�Iłll have to ditch the truck."

�No."

Roscoe stared at her. Sylviełs face was half in shadow, half
a flat orange wash-out from the street lamps. �I donłt trust him. I think hełs
a provo."

�What?" Roscoe shook his head then looked back at the road.
�Hełs young, is all. A bit young." They were not far from Main Street, and he
began looking around for somewhere to park the truck. �Listen, wełre going to
have to walk a ways. You up to an hour on foot?"

�A hike in the dark? Yeah, I guess so." Sylvie sniffed. �If
you go to that Donut House theyłll arrest you. Youłll go down as a terrorist."

Roscoe didnłt dignify her paranoia with a response. Instead
he pulled over. �Open the glove box. Therełs a can of foam cleaner and some
wipes inside, pass łem over."

�If you want." She sounded resigned. Roscoe focussed on polishing
the wheel and gearshift handle. Old prints he didnłt care about, but he didnłt
want to leave fresh ones. �There have been arrests you havenłt heard about."

Roscoe opened his door and climbed out. The air was freezingly
cold, trying to suck the life from his face and lungs. He picked up the trash
bag from the back and paused, about to close the door. Instead he left it open,
forcing himself to leave the keys dangling enticingly in the ignition. �You
coming?" he asked.

Sylvie hurried to catch up. �Therełs a guy called Dennis Morgan,
on the Texas border," she said quietly. �Donłt know where he is, the feds wonłt
saythey pulled him in on firearms charges but all the warrants, search and
seizure, went through a special FEMA courthouse that wonłt talk to us. We tried
FOIA notices and got denied. Dennis had no record of violent offenses, like
you, he was just an unwirer, but they charged him with attempted murder of a
federal agent then stuck him in a hole so deep we canłt find him."

Roscoe slowed, hearing her panting for breath.

�*Secret* trials, Roscoe, special terrorism courts. They
donłt call them that, but all the records are sealed and I canłt even find the
defense attorneys in the goddamn phone book. ęS a woman called Caitlin Delaney
in Washington State, they found kiddie porn in her house and a meth lab in her
garage after they shot her resisting arrest, you know? They made her out to be
some kind of gangster. She was fifty, Roscoe, and she had multiple sclerosis,
and her backyard just happened to have line of sight to the Surrey side of the
Canadian border."

Roscoe slowed even more, until he felt Sylvie walking beside
him. �FCC, Roscoe, theyłve been making sure we know all about these dangerous
terrorists, did you know that? But I made some phone calls from payphones to
local stringers, had them do some digging. Unwirers are disappearing. Their
turf gets too visibly unwired and then they vanish, leaving behind guns and
drugs and kiddie porn. Thatłs the *real* story Iłm here to cover. Roscoe, if
you go to that donut joint and Marcel is what I think he is, youłll just
vanish."

She took his hand and stopped. Roscoe felt himself halt. His
shoulders were tense and the lining of his jacket felt icy-slick with freezing
sweat. �What do you want?"

Her breath steamed in the air before him. �I donłt want you
to get yourself killed," she said. Up close he could see the scar on her lip,
the smudged foundation on her cheek. �Shit." She leaned against him and put her
chin on his shoulder, nosing in like a small animal in search of warmth. �Look,
come up to my room. We can discuss it there."

#

The Days Inn was a hell of a lot closer than the Rainbow
Bridge, that was for sure. Being scared half out of his skin and on the run was
exhausting, and Roscoe was perversely grateful to Sylvie for leading him back
to the motel room, even though a nagging paranoid corner of his head kept
shrieking that she, not Marcel, was the agent provocateur, that shełd get him
into bed and G-men with signal meters and search warrants would erupt from the
closet

But it wasnłt like that, it wasnłt like that at all.

They ended up naked, in bed together. And before anything
much could happen, Roscoe was asleep, snoring quietly, dead to the world. He
didnłt notice it, actually: what he noticed was waking up to the dim red glow
of the alarm clockłs flickering digits, Sylviełs face limned against the pillow
next to him with the incipient glow of hell-fire, digits flickering towards
seven ołclock and an appointment with an uncertain future.

�Hey. Wake up."

�Mm-hum." Sylvie rolled towards him for a warm moment, then
her eyes opened. �We didnłt?" She looked hopeful.

�Not yet." He ran one hand along her back, cupping her buttocks
with a sense of gratified astonishment. *How did this happen to us?* He
wondered, a thought that always hit him between the eyes when he found himself
in bed with a new woman. *Itłs been a long time.*

Her gaze travelled past him, settling on the clock. �Oh
shit." She hugged him, then pulled back. �Therełs never enough time. Later?"

�After the meet-up, when I know if itłs safe to go"

�Shut up." She leaned over and kissed him hard, almost angrily.
�This is so unprofessionallook, if Iłm wrong I apologize, all right? But if
you go there I think youłre walking into a sting. I donłt think you should go
near the place. If I had a repeater I could stake it out with a webcam, but"

�A repeater?" Roscoe sat up. �Therełs one in my bag."

�*Right*." She rolled out of bed and stretched. He couldnłt
take his eyes away from her. �Listen, letłs freshen up and get outta here." She
grinned at him, friendly but far from the intimacy of a minute ago, and he had
tangible sense of lost possibilities: �Letłs get the donut joint wired for
video. Then we can go grab some coffee and figure out what to do next."

Signal strength near the bridge was good. Roscoe just
glommed his repeater onto a street lamp above eye level, to boost the final
hundred yards to the block. �Theyłll spot it immediately, probably take it down
later today," he said. �Hope this is worth it."

�It will be," she reassured him fiercely, before striding
away towards the donut joint. He stared after her, a slim figure bundled in
improbable layers of cold-weather gear, and resisted the impulse to run after.
If the cops were looking for anyone itłd be him, a known parole violator, not a
single young female on the far side of the road. Plan was to fasten the cam to
the back of a road sign opposite the doorway, use plastic zipstrips to keep it
on target. He glanced at his watch: seven zero seven hours. *Cutting it fine,
if itłs a stake-out* ...

Roscoe took a walk around the block, stamping his feet
against the chill, trying not to dwell on the unpleasant possibilities. His heart
gave a little lurch as he came back around the alleyway and saw Sylvie walking
back down the street towards him, but she was smiling and as she caught up with
him she grabbed his arm. �Come on, therełs a Starbucks on the next block," she
said.

�I *hate* Starbucks," he complained.

�Yeah, but itłs indoors and off the street," she explained.
�So youłre going to put up with it this once, okay?"

�Okay."

They shed gloves and caps as they went in past the Micronet
booths and the pastry counter. Sylvie ordered a couple of large lattes. �Is the
mezzanine open?" she asked.

�Sure, go on up." The gum-chewing barrista didnłt even look
up.

At the top of the stairs, in a dark corner well back from
the shop front, Sylvie produced her phone and began fiddling with it. �Letłs
see. Ah ... uh-huh. Here it is." She turned it so he could see the tiny colour
display. The front of the donut shop was recognizable. �It does voice over IP,
too, lots of people use these instead of laptops. What time do you make it?"

�Seven thirty," A gray minivan pulled up in front of the
shop and disgorged a bunch of guys in trenchcoats and one very recognizable
figure. His stomach lurched. �Who are those guys? Whatłs Marcel doing with" He
stopped. Further comments seemed redundant.

�Letłs see who else turns up," Sylvie suggested, sipping her
latte.

Marcel went into the donut store. Two of the men in trenchcoats
followed him. Most of the others moved out of frame, but one of them was just
visible, hurrying down the alley at the side of the store.

Nothing happened for a couple of minutes, then a police car
pulled up. Two uniforms got out, but as they headed for the door one of the
trenchcoats came out. Words were exchanged, and angry gestures. The uniforms
went back to their car and drove away: the trenchcoat headed back inside.
Sylvie sniffed. �Serve łem right, stopping for donuts on your tax dollars."

Roscoe tensed. �I think you were right," he said slowly.

Sylvie beamed at him. �Oh, you ainłt seen nothing yet!"

It was five minutes to eight. Roscoe went downstairs for
another coffee, his feet dragging. Everything was to be closing in, going
nightmarishly wrong. *Iłm screwed*, he thought. *Gotta run*

�Roscoe?"

�Coming." He turned back and hurried upstairs. �What is it?"

�Watch." She pointed the phone display where he could see
it. A pickup truck roughly the same colour and age as Roscoełs drew up in front
of the donut store.

�Hey, thatłs not"

�I told you we employ stringers. Right?"

A man wearing a jacket and cap climbed out of the cab. He
looked a bit like Roscoe, if you were watching via a covert webcam from across
the street. He turned and looked at the camera, but he was too far from it for
Roscoe to see if he winked or not. Then he turned and went in.

Trenchcoats boiled out from behind trashcans like so many
black leather cockroaches. They swarmed the truck and blocked the doorway and
two of them with guns and warrant cards drawn covered the parking lot. There
was chaos and motion for almost a minute, then another trenchcoat barreled out
of the door and started yelling instructions at them. The guns vanished. Marcel
appeared in the doorway behind him, pointing. Two of the trenchcoats began to
cross the road, heading towards the camera.

�I think thatłs enough," said Sylvie, and killed the feed.
Then she hit one of the speed-dial buttons on her phone. It rang twice.
�Bonjour. Ou est le"

Roscoe shook his head. He felt approximately the way he imagined
a tuna fish might feel with a wooden deck under one flank and the cruel sun
beating mercillessly down on the other, gills gasping in a medium theyłd never
evolved to survive exposure to. Sylvie was speaking in rapid-fire French,
arguing with somebody by the sound of it, while he was drowning on dry land.

Sylvie finished her call and closed her phone with a snap.
She laid her hand across his: �Youłre OK," she said, smiling.

�Huh?" Roscoe started, setting the empty coffee cups.

�That was the French consulate in Toronto. I set it up in advance
so theyłd see the webcam. My editor, too. If you can cross over into Canada and
get to the consulate youłve got diplomatic asylum, genuine refugee status." She
reached into her pocket and pulled out a small box; it unfolded like intricate
brushed-aluminium origami, forming a keyboard for her to plug the phone into.
�Wełre going to hit the front page of the Journal tomorrow, Roscoe. Itłs all
documentedyour background, Marcel, the gun, the stake-out, all of it. With a
witness." She pointed a thumb at herself. �Wełve been looking for a break like
this for *months*." She was almost gloating, now: �Valenti isnłt going to know
whatłs hit him. My editor," she slurped some coffee. �My *editor* got into the
game because of Watergate. hełs been burning for a break like this ever since."

Roscoe sat and stared at her dumbly.

�Cheer up! Youłre going to be famousand they wonłt be able
to put you away! All we have to do is get you to Montreal. Therełs a crossing
set up at the Mohawk Reservation, and Iłve got a rental car in the lot next
door to the Days Inn. While Iłm at it, can you sign these?" She thrust a bundle
of papers at him and winced apologetically: �exclusive contract with the Wall
Street Journal. It covers your expensesflight includedplus fifteen grand for
your story. I tried to hold out for more, but you know how things are." She
shrugged.

He stared at her, stunned into bovine silence. She pinched
his cheek and shoved the papers into his hands. �Bon voyage, mon ami," she
said. She kissed each cheek, then pulled out a compact and fixed the concealer
on her lip.

#

Paris in springtime was everything it was meant to be and
more. Roscoe couldnłt sit down in a cafe without being smartmobbed by unwirer
groupies who wanted him to sign their repeaters and tell them war-stories about
his days as a guerrilla fighter for technological freedom. They were terribly,
awfully young, just kids, Marcelłs age or younger, and they were heartbreaking
in their attempts to understand his crummy French. The girls were beautiful,
the boys were handsome, and they laughed and smoked and ordered him glasses of
wine until he couldnłt walk. Hełd put on twenty pounds, and when he did the
billboard ads for Be, Inc. and Motorola, they had to strap him into a girdle.
�Le choix Am?ricain," in bold sans-serif letters underneath a picture of him
scaling a buildingside with a Moto batarang clenched in his teeth.

Truth be told, he couldnłt even keep up with it all. Hardly
a week went by without a new business popping up, a new bit of technological
gewgaggery appearing on the tables of the Algerian street-vendors by the Eiffel
Tower. He couldnłt even make sense of half the ads on the Metro.

But life was good. He had a very nice apartment with a view
and a landlady who chased away the paparazzi with stern French and a broom. He
could get four bars of signal on his complimentary Be laptop from the bathroom,
and ten bars from the window, and the throng and thrum of the city and the net
filled his days and nights.

And yet.

He was a foreigner. A curiosity. A fish, transplanted from
the sea to MarineLand, swimming in a tank where the tourists could come and
gawp. He slept fitfully, and in his dreams, he was caged in a cell at
Leavenworth, back on the inside, in maximum security, pacing the yard in
solitary stillness.

We woke to the sound of his phone trilling. The ring was the
special one, the one that only a one person had the number for. He struggled
out of bed and lunged for his jacket, fumbled the phone out.

�Sylvie?"

�Roscoe! God, I know itłs early, but God, I just had to tell
you!"

He looked at the window. It was still dark. On his bedstand,
the clock glowed 4:21.

�What? What is it?"

�God! Valentiłs been called to testify at a Senate hearing
on Unwiring. Hełs stepping down as chairman, I just put in a call to his office
and into his dadłs office at the MPAA. The lines were *jammed*. Iłm on my way
to get the Acela into DC."

�Youłre covering it for the *Journal*?"

�Better. I got a *book deal*! My agent ran a bidding war between
Simon and Schuster and St. Martinłs until three AM last night. Iłm hot shit.
The whole fucking thing is coming down like a house of shit. Iłve had three
Congressional staffers fax me discussion drafts of billsone to fund $300
million in DARPA grants to study TCP/IP, another to repeal the terrorism
statutes on network activity, and a compulsory license on movies and music
online. God! If only you could see it."

�Thatłsamazing," Roscoe said. He pictured her in the cab on
the way to Grand Central, headset screwed in, fixing her makeup in her compact,
dressed in a smart spring suit, off to meet with the Hill Rats.

�Itłs incredible. Itłs better than I dreamed."

�Well ..." he said. He didnłt know what to say. �See if you
can get me a pardon, OK?" The joke sounded lame even to him.

�What?" There was a blare of taxi horns. �Oh, crap, Roscoe,
Iłm sorry. Itłll work out, youłll see. Clemency or amnesty or something."

�We can talk about it next month, OK?" Shełd booked the
tickets the week before, and they had two weeks of touring on the continent
planned.

�Oh, Roscoe, Iłm sorry. I canłt do it. The bookłs due in 12
weeks. Afterward, OK? You understand, donłt you?"

He pulled back the curtains and looked out at the foreign
city, looking candlelit in the night. �I understand, sweetie," he said. �This
is great work. Iłm proud of you."

Another blare of horns from 6,000 miles away. �Look, Iłve
got to go. Iłll call you from the Hill, OK?"

�OK," Roscoe said. But shełd already hung up.

He had six bars on his phone, and Paris was lit up with
invisible radio waves, lit up with coverage and innovation and smart, trim boys
and girls who thought he was a hero, and 6,000 miles away, the real unwiring
was taking place.

He looked down at his slim silver phone, glowing with blue
LEDs, a gift from Nokia. He tossed it from hand to hand, and then he opened the
window and chucked it three storeys down to the street. It made an unsatisfying
clatter as it disintegrated on the pavement.

Word count to date: 10915

Posted by Cory Doctorow at June 9, 2003 09:53 AM | TrackBack

Comments

Nice story, enjoyable read. Not sure how youłll remove 4500
words.

The �light/heavy gun" line could go. Seems out of place. I
would say remove the gun altogether, but you need it to motivate the escape.

Posted by: K.C. Baltz at June 9, 2003 12:02 PM

Everything I have to say sounds like the worst
slobbering-fanboy material, so Iłll just say: thank you for writing stuff like
this.

Posted by: postrodent at June 9, 2003 12:42 PM

I agree; thatłs a lot to have to trim out of a great story.
Caveats: I noticed the following (as, no doubt, will your editor): metastaized;
tarriff; hełd originally been looking at a from a ...; terroristswithin the
homeland and abroad."across the homeland."; unwirer-symptathizers; resistent;
but it made the noncompliant routing code that was built into the BeOS. access
points ...; But run a fat pipe into town and we have a idle capacity, upstream
dealers ...; The ring was a special one, the one that only a one person had the
number for.

Posted by: D. Stewart at June 9, 2003 01:25 PM

Great stuff, as usual. You might want to change �even to his
own years" to �even to his own ears".

Thanks for providing us some great reading fodder!

Posted by: Bobby at June 9, 2003 03:10 PM

If this story ever gets expanded, try making the Marcel
character more three dimensional. Some small grammatical and spelling mistakes
which would be better fixed. Great story!

Posted by: Pierre at June 9, 2003 04:16 PM

Great stuff! I wish it didnłt sound so ... possible.

Posted by: Greg at June 9, 2003 04:45 PM

Good stuff. I have been checking the site every day for
weeks for updates. Have fun editing.

Posted by: adeh at June 9, 2003 07:33 PM

Your story shows a viewpoint, well enough for me to sympathize
with it. Awesome!

Posted by: Richard Soderberg at June 9, 2003 11:34 PM

Great, I only wish there was more quality fiction found
online like this, please release some more of your work. Pretty, pretty please?

Posted by: Chris Bloch at June 10, 2003 08:55 AM

Very nice story; it moved along quite nicely and I enjoyed
it very much (aside from the frustration of waiting for a new installment!)
Thanks for putting it online, particularly differing versions from each of you
and with a little discussion of how you resolved �creative differences." All in
all I think this was quite good.

Iłm not sure that the collaboration was as good as either of
your work done alone, but the factors are so variable ...

Anyway, you seem to be open to comments, so I thought Iłd
seem to be making some:

Marcel pulling a gun seemed so out of place to me, so
jarring considering prior events, that it shook my �willing sense of disbelief."
It seems so very obviously a McGuffin inserted to move the story to a
conclusion. On the other hand, Iłm not an author, so what do I know?

Similarly, the government is treating unwirers so harshly
that I canłt believe that Sylvie just walked out of there, that they let her
go. If the feds are willing to go to the length of fabricating evidence against
unwirers, why let their biographer walk? It seems to me more likely that,
having missed Roscoe, theyłd have picked her up and dumped her in some dark
unpleasant place. It would also serve as a warning to the press to avoid
sympathetic portrayals of unwirers in the future. No, I canłt buy that one,
either.

On the other hand, no work of fiction is perfect. Youłre the
authors, if you like it, go for it!

Again, thanks!

Mike

Posted by: Mike Sherck at June 13, 2003 01:08 PM

The mind on this kid I tell ya! Can we please put Corey,
Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, into a thinktank with some high powered
engineers & a bunch of VC.

Posted by: J at June 25, 2003 11:06 PM

Hey J, letłs not forget that this was co-authored by Mr
Charles Stross! Iłm sure hełd love to take his rightful place in the thinktank
as well ... ;)

Cheers guys, great work!

Posted by: mattheww at June 26, 2003 04:17 PM

Thanks for the story. Roscoełs tale is an interesting read.
Great title, BTW!

Re comments and critiques from other readers:

If Marcel seemed a bit more unhinged to begin with, youłd
solve two problems (that may or may not seem like actual problems to you): the
2-D ness of Marcel, and the slight implausibility of him drawing a gun on the
cops. I donłt know; neither of those were really much an issue for *me*, but it
would be a low-cost fix.

Personally, I donłt care for the �up" endingyou put in a
little bit of regret and alienation but I think that aspect of things needs to
be pumped up. Roscoe needs to lose something *significant* from his
adventurerather than just being a Euro-hero whose girlfriend is going to stand
him up for That Special Weekend. Maybe Sylie *should* get nabbed by the feds.

Regardless of Syliełs fate, I donłt think that the �the
problems back in the USSA are going to clear up Real Soon Now!" ending works.
It feels sort of tacked on, and I would want to see the story someplace darker,
more ironic.

If you need to lose 4500 words Iłd trim them from the denouement
mostly, take some away from the cop descriptionswe really only need to know
that Handcuffs Cop recognizes R., and lose the bed scene altogetherthey donłt
screw anyway so whatłs the point?

Itłs a variety of noir youłve written. Donłt let Good
triumph :)

Thanks again for putting this online.

xxx000,

Ebie

Posted by: Ebie at June 27, 2003 10:39 AM

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Whatłs This?

This is a site where Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow are publicly
collaborating on a short story for ReVisions, an alternate science fiction
history anthology from DAW books, edited by Isaac Szpindel and Julie Czerneda.

Read more ...

Story outline

Herełs a link to the outline for the story, which is full of
spoilers. You have been warned. That is all.

Books by Cory Doctorow

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

The Complete Idiotłs Guide to Publishing Science Fiction
(with Karl Schroeder)

Essential Blogging (with a cast of thousands)

A Place So Foreign and Eight More (forthcoming Sept 2003)

Eastern Standard Tribe (forthcoming Jan 2004)

Books by Charlie Stross

Toast

Singularity Sky (forthcoming August 2003)

The Atrocity Archive (forthcoming Feb 2004)

Stories by Stross and Doctorow

Jury Service

Flowers from Alice

Selected stories by Cory Doctorow

0wnz0red

Liberation Spectrum

Visit the Sins

Home Again, Home Again

Selected Stories by Charlie Stross

A Colder War

Disclaimer

The story wełre writing here is for the forthcoming
anthology, ReVisions, a collection of alternate science-history stories, that
DAW books will publish at some unspecified date TBD. The last draft we post
here will be the draft that we send to Isaac Szpindel and Julie Czerneda, the
editors, and itłs likely that wełll do some rewriting after that, so therełs a
near-certainty that the published version will differ from the text we come up
with here. Reviewers who quote this text should note that it isnłt the final
text, just a working draft.

Jury Service

by Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow

For a change, Huwłs head hurts more than his bladder. Hełs lying
head-down, on his back, in a bathtub. He scrabbles for a handhold and pulls
himself upright. A tub is a terrible place to spend a night-or a morning, come
to think of it-he blinks and sees that itłs midafternoon. The light slanting in
through a high window limns the strange bathroomłs treacly Victorian fixtures
with a roseate glow.

That was quite a party. He vaguely remembers the gathering
dawn, its red glow staining the wall outside the kitchen window as he discussed
environmental politics with a tall, shaven-headed woman with a blue forelock
and a black leather mini-dress straight out of the twentieth century. (He has
an equally vague memory of her defending a hardcore transhumanist line: score
nil-nil to both sides.) A brief glance tells him that this room wasnłt a
bathroom when he went to sleep in it: bits of the bidet are still crawling into
position and therełs a strong smell of VOCs in the air.

His head hurts.

Leaning over the sink, Huw twiddles the taps until they
begin to dribble cold water. He splashes his face and runs his hand through his
thinning hair, glances up at the mirror, and yells �Shit!"

Therełs a spindly black biohazard trefoil tattooed on his
forehead. It wasnłt there yesterday.

Behind him, the door opens. �Having a good morning?" asks
Sandra Lal, whose mutable attic this must therefore be. Shełs holding a
three-kilo minisledge in one hand, tossing it into the air and catching it like
a baton-twirler, her grotesquely muscled forearm bulging with hyperpressured
blood and hormones at each catch.

�I wish," he groans. Sandrałs parties tend to be wild. �Am I
too late for the dead dog?"

�Youłre never too late." Sandra smiles broadly, camping it
up. �Coffeełs on in the kitchen, which is on the ground floor today. Bonnie
gave me a subscription to House of the Week and todayłs my new edition-donłt
worry if you canłt remember where everything is, just remember the entrance is
at ground level, okay?"

�Coffee," Huw says fervently. His head is pounding, but so
is his bladder. �Um. Can I have a minute?"

�Yes, but Iłd like my spare rest room back afterwards. Itłs
going to be en-suite, but first Iłve got to knock out the wall through into the
bedroom." She hefts her sledgehammer suggestively.

Huw slumps down on the toilet as Sandra shuts the door
behind her and bounces off to roust out any other left-over revelers. He shakes
his head as he relieves himself: trapped in a mutating bathroom by a transgendered
atheist Pakistani role-playing critic. Why do I keep ending up in these
situations? he wonders as the toilet gives him a scented wash and blow-dry:
when it offers him a pubic trim he hastily retrieves his kilt and goes in
search of coffee.

Sandrałs new kitchen is frighteningly modern-itłs one of
those white room jobs that looks empty at first, sterile as an operating
theatre, but oozes when you glance away, extruding worktops and food processors
and fresh-fabbed cutlery. If you sit suddenly therełll be a chair waiting to
catch your buttocks on the way down. No separate appliances, just smart matter
and raw ingredient feedstock. Last night it looked charmingly gas-fired and
Victorian, but now Huw can see it in the raw. He feels queasy, wondering if he
ate anything from it. But relief is at hand. At the far end of the room therełs
a traditional-looking dumb worktop with a battered old-fashioned electric
cafetiŁre sitting on it. And some joe who looks strangely familiar is sitting
there reading a newsheet.

Huw nods at him. �Uh, where are the mugs?" he asks.

The guy stares at Huwłs forehead for an uncomfortable moment,
then gestures at something foggy thatłs stacked behind the pot. �Pick one of
those," he says.

�Uh, right." Glassy aerogel cups with walls a centimeter
thick, light as frozen cigar smoke. He takes the jug and pours, hand shaking.
Huw has got the hot-and-cold sweats. What the hell was I drinking? he wonders
as he takes a sip.

He glances at his companion, evidently another survivor of
the party: a medium-height bald joe, maybe in his mid-thirties, with the
unnaturally stringy build that comes from overusing a calorie-restriction
implant. No piercings, no scars, tattoos, or neomorphisms-apart from his
figure-which might be natural. That plus his black leather body suit means he
could be a fellow naturalist. But this is Sandrałs house, and she has
distressingly eclectic tastes.

�That todayłs?" he asks, glancing at the paper.

�It could be." The fellow puts it down and grins oddly. �Had
a good lie-in?"

�I woke up in the bathroom," Huw says ruefully. �Milk"

�Here." He shoves something that resembles a bowl of blue
ice-cubes at Huw. Huw pokes at one dubiously, then dunks it in his mug. �Hey,
this stuff is organic, isnłt it?"

�Only the best polymer-stabilized emulsions for Sandra," the
joe says sardonically. �Of course itłs organic-nothing but carbon, hydrogen,
nitrogen, and a tinge of oxygen to them." Huw takes a sip. �Of course, you
could say the same about your cellphone," adds the stranger.

�Ah." Huw puts the mug down, unsure where the conversationłs
leading. Therełs something disturbing about this: a sense of d�ją vu nagging at
the edges of his mind, as if

�You donłt remember me, do you?" asks his companion.

�Alcohol has this effect on me at times," Huw confesses in a
grateful rush. �Iłve got an awful memory"

�The namełs Bonnie," says the man. �You spent most of the
early hours trying to cop a feel by convincing me that Nietzsche was
responsible for global cooling." Huw stares at him and feels something in his
head do an uneasy flip-flop: yes, the resemblance is clear, this is the woman
he was talking to last night. �ęs amazing what a good bathroom can do in the
way of cellular redifferentiation surgery these days, you know?" the bald
guy-Bonnie?-continues. Then he winks at Huw with what Huw realizes, to his
horror, is either lascivious intent or broad and filthy-minded humor. �Howłs
your hangover? Are you up to picking things up where we left off?"

�Aaaugh," says Huw, as the full force of the post-party
cultural hangover hits him between the eyes, right beneath the biohazard
trefoil, and the coffee hits his stomach. �Need fresh air now ..."

� � � � �

The next morning, Huw wakes up more gently. Awakened by
sunlight, but this time in his own bed. He yawns and sits up, pauses for a
moment to get his bearings, then ventures down the comfortably unchanging
stairs to retrieve his post. The dusty tiles in his vintage
late-nineteenth-century terrace house are cold beneath his bare feet. A draft
leaks around the ill-fitting outer door, raising gooseflesh on his bare legs.
Two-thirds of the mail is spam, which goes straight on the
recycle-before-reading pile, but therełs also a genuine letter, complete with a
stamp on the envelope. Ink on paper-someone took the trouble to communicate
with him personally, putting dumb, thrax-prone matter in motion to make a
point.

He rips the envelope open with a cracked fingernail. He
reads: your application for international triage jury service has been provisionally
accepted. To activate your application, present this letter in person to ...

He carries the letter through into the kitchen, puts it on
the table so he can keep an eye on it as he eats. He barely notices the morning
chill as the battered Red Crescent surplus food processor barfs up a lukewarm
cup of Turkish coffee, a vague facsimile of scrambled eggs, and an even vaguer
pastiche of bacon. Today is Huwłs big day. Hełs been hoping for this day for
months.

Soon, hełll get to say what he thinks about some item of new
technology-and theyłll have to listen to him.

� � � � �

Welcome to the fractured future, at the dusk of the
twenty-first century.

Earth has a population of roughly a billion hominids. For
the most part, they are happy with their lot, living in a preserve at the
bottom of a gravity well. Those who are unhappy have emigrated, joining one or
another of the swarming densethinker clades that fog the inner solar system
with a dust of molecular machinery so thick that it obscures the sun. Except
for the solitary lighthouse beam that perpetually tracks the Earth in its
orbit, the system from outside resembles a spherical fogbank radiating in the
infrared spectrum; a matrioshka brain, nested Dyson orbitals built from the
dismantled bones of moons and planets.

The splintery metaconsciousness of the solar-system has largely
sworn off its pre-post-human cousins dirtside, but its minds sometimes wander
nostalgiawise. When that happens, it casually spams Earthłs RF spectrum with
plans for cataclysmically disruptive technologies that emulsify whole
industries, cultures, and spiritual systems.

A sane species would ignore these get-evolved-quick schemes,
but therełs always someone whołll take a bite from the forbidden Cox Pippin.
Therełs always someone whom evolution has failed to breed the
letłs-lick-the-frozen-fencepost instinct out of. Therełs always a fucking geek
whołll do it because itłs a historical goddamned technical fucking imperative.

Whether the enlightened, occulting smartcloud sends out its
missives as pranks, poison or care-packages is up for debate. Asking it to
explain its motives is roughly as pointful as negotiating with an ant colony to
get it to abandon your kitchen. Whatever the motive, humanity would be much
better off if the Cloud would evolve into something so smart as to be
uninterested in communicating with meatpeople.

But until that happy day, therełs the tech jury service:
defending the earth from the scum of the post-singularity patent office.

� � � � �

After breakfast, Huw pulls on jeans, boots, and shirt. He
locks the front door carefully behind himself and tells his bicycle to unbolt
itself from the rusting red drainpipe that stains the brick side of his house
with green moss. He pedals uncertainly to the end of the road, then eases out
into traffic, sneering as the omnipresent web of surveillance routes the
peoplemovers around him.

Safe cycling is one of the modern conveniences that irritate
him most. Also: polite youngsters with plastic smiles; cops who think like
social workers; and geeks who think they understand technology. Geeks, the old
aristocracy. Hełll show them, one of these days. Huw wobbles along the side of
the main road and pulls in beside the door of the Libyan consulate.

�Mister Rogers? I am pleased to meet you." The young man
behind the desk has a plastic smile and is far too polite for Huwłs taste: Huw
grunts assent and sits down in the indicated seat. �Your application has been
forwarded to us and, ah? If you would be pleased to travel to our beautiful
country, I can assure you of just one weekłs jury service."

Huw nods again.

The polite man fidgets with the air of someone trying to
come up with an inoffensive way of saying something potentially rather rude.
�Iłm pleased to inform you that our young land is quite tolerant of other culturełs
customs. I can assure you that whatever ISO-standard containment suit you
choose to bring with you will be respected by our people."

Huw shakes his head. �What huh?"

�Your, that is, your" The smiler leans across his desk and
points at Huwłs trefoil-marked forehead. The finger he points with meets
resistance. A plastic sheet has hermetically sealed Huwłs side of the room off
from the rest of the consulate. It is so fantastically transparent that Huw
hasnłt even noticed it until the smilerłs finger puckered a singularity in its
vertical run, causing it to scatter light at funny angles and funhouse distort
the solid and sensible wood-paneled walls behind the desk.

�Ah," Huw says. �Ah. No, you see, itłs a joke of some sort.
Not an official warning."

�Iłm very glad to hear it, Mister Rogers! You will, of
course, have documents attesting to that before you clear our immigration?"

�Right," Huw says. �Of course." Fucking Sandra. Whether or
not she is directly responsible for the tat is beside the point. It happened on
her prem, therefore she is culpable. Dammit. He has errands to run before he
catches the flight-attracting the attention of the gene police is not on his
agenda.

�Then we will see you soon." The smiler reaches into a desk
drawer and pulls out a small tarnished metal teapot which he shoves
experimentally at the barrier. It puckers around it and suddenly the teapot is
sitting on Huwłs side of the desk, wearing an iridescent soap-bubble of
pinched-off containment. �Peace be with you."

�And you," says Huw, rising. The interview is obviously at
an end. He picks up the teapot and follows the blinkenlights to the exit from
the consulate, studiously avoiding the blurred patches of air where other
visitors are screened from one another by the utility fog. �What now?" he asks
the teapot.

�Blrrrt. Greetings, tech-juror Rogers. I am a guidance
iffrit from the Peoplełs Magical Libyan Jamahiriya. Show me to representatives
of the Peoplełs Revolutionary Command Councils and I am required to intercede
for you. Polish me and I will install translation leeches in your Brocałs area,
then assist you in memorizing the Qurłan and hadiths. Release me and I will
grant your deepest wish."

�Um, I donłt think so." Huw scratches his head. Fucking Sandra,
he thinks again, then he packs the pot into his pannier and pedals heavily away
towards the quaint industrial-age pottery where he oversees the antique
solid-volume renderers, applies the finishing human touches, and packs the
finished articles for shipment. Itłs going to be a long working day-almost five
hours-before he can get around to trying to sort this mess out, but at least
the wet squishy sensation of clay under his fingernails will help calm the
roiling indignation he feels at his violation by a random GM party prankster.

� � � � �

Two days later, Huwłs waiting with his bicycle and a large
backpack on a soccer field in a valley outside Monmouth. It has rained
overnight, and the field is muddy. A couple of large crows sit on the rusting
goal-post, regarding him curiously. There are one or two other people slouching
around the departure area dispiritedly. Airports just havenłt been the same
since the end of the jet age.

Huw tries to scratch the side of his nose, irritably.
Fucking Sandra, he thinks again as he pokes at the opaque spidergoat silk of
his biohazard burka. Hełd gone round to remonstrate with her after work the
other day, only to find that her house had turned into a size two thousand
Timberland hiking boot and the homeowner herself had decided to winter in
Fukuyama this year. A net search would probably find her but he wasnłt prepared
to expose himself to any more viruses this week. One was quite
enough-especially after he discovered that the matching trefoil brand on his
shoulder glowed in the dark.

A low rumble rattles the goal post and disturbs the crows as
a cloud-shadow slides across the pitch. Huw looks up, and up, and up-his eyes
canłt quite take in what hełs seeing. Thatłs got to be more than a kilometer
long! he realizes. The engine note rises as the huge catamaran airship jinks
and wobbles sideways towards the far end of the pitch and engages its
station-keeping motors, then begins to unreel an elevator car the size of a
shipping container.

�Attention, passengers now waiting for flight FL-052 to
North Africa and stations in the Middle East, please prepare for boarding. This
means you." Huw nearly jumps out of his skin as one of the customs crows lands
heavily on his shoulder. �You listening, mate?"

�Yes, yes, Iłm listening." Huw shrugs and tries to keep one
eye on the big bird. �Over there, huh?"

�Boarding will commence through lift bzzt gurgle four in
five minutes. Even-numbered passengers first." The crow flaps heavily towards
the huge, rusting shipping container as it lands in the muddy field with a
clang. �All aboard!" it squawks raucously.

Huw wheels his bike towards the steel box then pauses as a
door opens and a couple of confused-looking Australian backpackers stumble out,
leading their kangaroo-familiars. �Boarding now!" adds the crow.

Huw waits while the other three passengers step aboard, then
gingerly rolls his bike inside and leans against the guardrail spot-glued to
the wall. �Haul away lively, there!" someone yells above, and therełs a creak
of ropes as the cargo container lurches into the air. Even before itłs clear of
the goal posts the huge airship has cut the station-keepers and is spooling up
to its impressive fifty knot cruising speed. Huw looks down at the town and the
mediaeval castle unrolling beneath him and takes a deep breath. He can tell
this is going to be a long trip.

His nose is itching again.

� � � � �

Air travel is so slow youłd almost always be faster going by
train. But the Gibraltar bridge is down for repair again and last time Huw
caught a TGV through the Carpathians he was propositioned incessantly by a
feral privatized blood bank that seemed to have a thing for Welsh T-helper
lymphocytes. At least this tramp floater with its cargo of Christmas trees and
chameleon paint is going to give Huw and his fellow-passengers a shortcut
around the Mediterranean, even if the common room smells of stale marijuana
smoke and the other passengers are all dubious cheapskate hitchers and netburn
cases who want to ship their meatbodies around instead of doing the decent (and
sanitary) telepresence thing.

Huw isnłt dubious; hełs just on jury service, which requires
your physical in-the-flesh presence to prevent identity spoofing by imported
weakly godlike AIs and suchlike. But judging from the way the other passengers
are avoiding him he looks dubious. Or maybe itłs just the biohazard burka and
the many layers of anti-nanophage underwear hełs trussed up in underneath it.
There has got to be a better way of fighting runaway technology, he tells
himself on the second morning as he prepares to go get some breakfast.

Most of the airshipłs crew are uplifted gibbons, and during
their years of plying the skyways over the Middle East theyłve picked up enough
Islam that itłs murder getting the mess deck food processors to barf up a
realistic bacon sandwich. Huw has his mouth-lock extended and is picking
morosely at a scrambled egg and something that claims to be black pudding with
his fork when someone bounces into the seat beside him, reaches into the folds
of his burka and tears off a bite of the sandwich.

The stranger is a disreputable backpacker in wash-n-wear tropical-weight
everything, the smart-wicking, dirt-shedding, rip-stopping gossamer uniform of
the globe-slogging hostel-denizens who write long, rambling HOWTOs online
describing their adventures living in Mumbai or Manhattan or some other blasted
corner of the world for six months on just five dollars. This one clearly
fancies himself quite a merry traveller, eyes a-twinkle, crowsfeet etched by a
thousand foreign sunsets, dimples you could lose a fifty-dollar coin in.

�ęello!" he says, around a mouthful of Huwłs sandwich. �You
look interesting. Letłs have a conversation!"

�You donłt look interesting to me," Huw says, plunking the
rest of his food on the backpackerłs lap. �Letłs not."

�Oh, come on," the backpacker says. �My namełs Adrian, and
Iłve loads of interesting anecdotes about my adventures abroad, including some
rather racy ones involving lovely foreign ladies. Iłm very entertaining,
honestly! Give me a try, why donłt you?"

�I really donłt think so," Huw says, pointedly. �Youłd best
get back into your seat-the monkeys donłt like a disorderly cabin. Besides, Iłm
infectious."

�Monkeys! You think Iłm worried about monkeys? Brother, I
once spent a month in a Tasmanian work-camp for public drunkenness-imagine, an
Australian judge locking an Englishman up for drunkenness! There were some hard
men in that camp, let me tell you. The aborigines had the black-market liquor
racket all sewn up, but the Maori prisoners were starting up their own thing,
and herełs me, a poor, gormless white man in the middle of it all, dodging
home-made shivs and poison arrows. Went a week without eating after it got out
that the Maoris were smearing shit in the cookpots to poison the abos. Biowar,
thatłs what it was! By the end of that week, I was hallucinating angels and
chewing scrub-grass I found on work-details, while the abos I was chained to
shat themselves bloody and collapsed. I caught a ballistic out of there an hour
after Iłd served my sentence, got shot right to East Timor, where I gorged
myself on Gado-Gado and Riztaffel and got food poisoning anyway and spent the
night in the crapper, throwing up my lungs. So donłt tell me about monkeys!"
Adrian broke off his monologue and began industriously masticating the rest of
Huwłs lunch.

�Yes, thatłs all very disgusting. Iłm going to have a bit of
a nap now, all right?"

�Oh, donłt be a weak sister!" says Adrian. �You wonłt last
five minutes in Libya with an attitude like that. Never been to Libya, have
you?"

�No," Huw says, pointedly bunching up a fold of burka into a
pillow and turning his head away.

�Youłll love it. Nothing like a taste of real, down-home
socialism after dirty old London. Peoplełs this and Popular that and Democratic
the other, everyone off on the latest plebiscite, holding caucuses in the
cafes. Itłs fantastic! The girls, too-fantastic, fantastic. Just talk a little
politics with them and theyłll bend your ear until you think youłre going to
fall asleep, and then theyłll try to bang the bourgeois out of you. In twos and
threes, if youłre recalcitrant enough. Iłve had some fantastic nights in Libya.
I can barely wait to touch down."

�Adrian, can I tell you something, in all honesty?"

�Sure, mate, sure!"

�Youłre a jackass. Really revolting and duller than I can imagine.
If you donłt get the fuck back to your own seat, Iłm going to tell the monkeys
youłre threatening to blow up the airship and theyłll strap you into a
restraint-chute and push you overboard."

�Youłre a bloody card, you are."

Huw gathers up his burka, stands, climbs over Adrian and
moves to the back of the cabin. He selects an empty row, slides in, and
stretches out. A moment later, Adrian comes up and grabs his toe, then wiggles
it.

�All right then, wełll talk later. Have a nice nap. Thanks
for the sarnie!"

� � � � �

It takes three days for the tramp freighter to bumble its
way to Tripoli. It gingerly climbs to its maximum pressure height to skirt the
wild and beautiful (but radioactive and deadly) Normandy coastline, then heads
south-east, to drop a cargo of incognito Glaswegian gangsters on the outskirts
of Marseilles. Then it crosses the Mediterranean coast, and spends a whole
twenty-two hours doodling in broad circles around Corsica. Huw tries to amuse
himself during this latter interlude by keeping an eye open for smugglers with
micro-UAVs, but even this pathetic attempt at distraction falls flat when,
after eight hours, a rigging monkey scampers into the forward passenger lounge
and delivers a fifty-minute harangue about workerłs solidarity and the black
gangłs right to strike in flight, justifying it in language eerily familiar to
anyone who-like Huw-has spent days heroically probing the boundaries of
suicidal boredom by studying the proceedings of the Third Communist
International.

Having exhausted his entire stash of antique read-only books
two days into a projected two-week expedition, and having found his fellow
passengers to consist of lunatics and jackasses, Huw succumbs to the
inevitable. He glues his burka to a support truss in the cargo fold, dials the
eye slit to opaque, swallows a mug of valerian-laced decaff espresso, and
estivates like a lungfish in the dry season.

His first warning that the airship has arrived comes when he
awakens in a sticky sweat. Is the house on fire? he wonders muzzily. It feels
like someone has opened an oven door and stuck his feet in it, and the
sensation is climbing his chest. Therełs an anxious moment, then he gets his
eye slit working again, and is promptly inundated with visual spam.

�Hello! Welcome effendi! The Thousand Nights and One Night
Hotel welcomes careful westerners! We take euros, dollars, yen, and hash
(subject to assay)! For a good night out visit Aliłs American Diner! Hamburgers
one hundred percent Halal goat here! Need travel insurance and ignorant of
shariła banking regulations? Let the al-Jammu Travelerłs Assistance put your
mind to rest with our"

Huw instantly posts a bid for adbuster proxy services, picks
the cheapest on offer, and waits patiently for his visual field to clear. After
a minute or two he can see again, except for a persistent and annoying green
star in the corner of his left eye. Finally, he struggles to unglue himself and
looks about.

The passenger lounge is almost empty, a door gaping open in
one side. Huw wheels his bicycle over and hops down onto the dusty concrete
apron of the former airport. Itłs already over thirty degrees in the shade, but
once he gets out of the shadow of the blimp his burkałs solar-powered air
conditioning should sort that out. The question is, where to go next? �Hmm." He
rummages crossly in the pannier until he finds the battered teapot. �Hey, you.
Iffrit! Whatever you call yourself. Which way to the courtroom?"

A cartoon djinn pops into transparent life above the potłs
nozzle and winks at him. �Peace be unto you, oh esteemed Madame tech-juror
Rogers Huw! If you will but bear with me for a moment" The iffrit fizzles for
a moment as it hunts for a parasitic network to colonize�I believe you will
first wish to enter the terminal buildings and present yourself to the
Revolutionary Airport Command and Cleaning Council, to present your entry visa.
Then they will direct you to a hotel where you will be accommodated in
boundless paradisiacal luxury at the expense of the grateful Peoplełs Magical
Libyan Jamahiriya! (Or at least in a good VR facsimile of paradise.)"

�Uh-huh." Huw looks about. The airport is a deserted
dump-literally deserted, for the anti-desertification defenses of the twentieth
century, and the greenery planted under the aegis of King Muammar the First,
have faded. The Libyan national obsession with virtual landscaping (not to
mention emigration to Italy) has led to the return of the sand dunes, and the
death of the gas-guzzling airline industry has left the airport with the
maintenance budget of a rural cross-country bus stop. Broken windows gape
emptily from rusting tin huts; a once-outstanding airport terminal building
basks in the heat like a torpid lizard, doors open to the breeze, and even the
local snack vendors donłt seem to come here any more.

It takes Huw half an hour to find the Revolutionary Airport
Command and Cleaning Council, a wizened-looking old woman who has her
Nike-soled feet propped up on a battered wooden desk in the lobby beneath the
International Youth Hostelling sign, snoring softly through her open mouth.

�Excuse me, but are you the government?" Huw asks politely,
talking through his teapot translator. �I have come from Wales to serve on a
technology jury. Can you direct me to the public transport terminus?"

�I wouldnłt bother if I were you," someone says from behind
him, making Huw jump so high he almost punches a hole in the yellowing ceiling
tiles. �Shełs moonlighting, driving a Thai investment bankłs security bots on
the evening shift. See the bandwidth?"

�Um, no, as a matter of fact I donłt," Huw says defensively.
�I stick to the visible spectrum."

The interloper is probably female and from somewhere in
northern Europe, judging by the way shełs smeared zinc ointment across her
entire observable epidermis. Chilly fog spills from her cuffs at wrist and
ankle and therełs the whine of a peltier cooler pushed to the limit coming from
her bum-bag. About all Huw can see of her is her eyes and an electric blue
ponytail erupting from the back of her anti-melanoma hood.

�Isnłt it a bit rude to snoop on someone elsełs dreams?" he
adds.

�Not really." The interloper shrugs, then grins alarmingly
at him. �Itłs what I do for a living." She offers him a hand, and before he can
stop himself hełs shaking it politely. �Iłm Bj�rk. Doctor Bj�rk."

�Bj�rk, uh"

�I know what youłre going to say, named after the early twenty-first
century bard, yes. I specialize in musical dream therapy. And Iłm here on a
tech jury gig, too. Perhaps wełll get a chance to work on the same case?"

At that moment the Revolutionary Airport Command and
Cleaning Council coughs, spasms painfully, sits up, and looks around
querulously. Iłm not working! Honest! She exclaims through the medium of Huwłs
teapot translator. Then, getting a grip: �Oh, youłre tourists. Can I help you?"

Her manner is so abrupt and rude that Huw feels right at
home. �Yes, yes," he declares impatiently. �Wełre jurors and we need to get to
a hotel. Wherełs the light rail terminal or bus stand?"

�Are no busses. Today is Friday, canłt you read?"

�Friday" Huw does a double-take.

�Yes, but how are we to our hotel to ride?" asks Doctor
Bj�rk, sounding puzzled.

�Why donłt you walk?" the Council asks with gloomy satisfaction.
�Havenłt you got legs? Didnłt Allah, the merciful, bless you with a full
complement of homeobox genes?"

�But itłs" Huw consults his wrist-map and does a
double-take�twelve kilometers! And itłs forty-three degrees in the shade!"

�Itłs Friday," the old woman repeats placidly. �Nothing
works on Fridays. Itłs in the Qurłan."

�So why are you working for a Burmese banking cartel as a security
bot supervisor?" Bj�rk asks sharply.

�Thatłs-!" the Council glares at her. �Thatłs none of your
business!"

�Burma isnłt an Islamic country," Huw muses aloud, seeing
which direction Bj�rk is heading in. Maybe shełs not a fucknozzle after all, he
thinks to himself, although he has his doubts about anyone who has anything to
do with dream therapy, much less musical dream therapy. (Unless shełs only in
it for purely practical reasons, such as money.) �Do you suppose they might be
dealing with their demographic deficit by importing out-of-timezone gastarbeiters
from Islamic countries who want to work on the day of rest?"

�What an astonishing thought!" echoes Bj�rk. �That must be illegal,
mustnłt it?"

�Stop! Stop!" The Revolutionary Airport Command and Cleaning
Council puts her hands up in the air. �I have a nephew, he has a car! Perhaps
he can give you a ride on his way to mosque? Iłm sure he must be going there in
only half an hour, and Iłm sure your hotel will turn out to be on his way."

The car, when it arrives, is a gigantic early twenty-first
century Mercedes diesel, with tinted windows and air conditioning and plastic
seats that have cracked and split in the dry desert heat. A brilliantly
detailed green-and-silver miniature mosque conceals a packet of tissues on the
rear parcel shelf and the dash is plastered with green and gold stickers
bearing edifying quotations from the hadiths. The Councilłs nephew looks too
young to bear the weight of his huge black moustache, let alone to be driving
this Teutonic behemoth, but at least hełs awake and moving in the noonday furnace-heat.

�Hotel Marriott," Bj�rk says. �Vite-schnell-pronto! ĄHale,
hale!"

The Mercedes crawls along the highway like a dung beetle on
the lowest step of a pyramid. As they head towards the outskirts of the
mostly-closed city of Tripoli Huw feels the gigantic and oppressive weight of
advertising bearing down on his proxy filters. When Libya got serious about
consumerism in the second decade of millennium three, they went overboard on
superficial glitz and cheezy sloganizing. The deluge of CoolTown webfitti
theyłre driving through alternates between insanely dense technobabble and a
bizarrely arabized version of discreet Victorian traderłs notices, with just a
seasoning of old-time anti-western paranoia. Once they drive under the
threshold of the gigantic tinted geodesic dome that hovers above the city,
lifted on its own column of hot air, it finally gets through to Huw: hełs not
in Monmouth any more, or even Bradford.

The Councilłs nephew narrates a shouted, heavily accented
travelogue as they hoot and lurch through the traffic, but most of it is lost
in the roar of the air-conditioner and the whine of the differential. What
little Huw can make out seems to be pitches for local businesses-cafes,
hash-bars, amusement parlors. Doctor Bj�rk and Huw sit awkwardly at opposite
sides of the Mercłs rear bench, conversation an impossibility at the current
decibel level.

Doctor Bj�rk fishes in her old-fashioned bum-bag and produces
a stylus and a scrap of scribable material, scribbles a moment and passes it
over: DINNER PLANS?

Huw shook his head. Dinner-ugh. Hełs gamy and crusty with
dried sweat under his burka and canłt imagine eating, but he supposes hełd better
put some fuel in the boiler before he sleeps.

Bj�rk scrolls her message off the material, then scribbles
again: I KNOW A PLACE. LOBBY@18H?

Huw nods, suppressing a wince. Bj�rk smiles at him, looking
impossibly healthy and scrubbed underneath her zinc armor.

� � � � �

The Marriott is not a Marriott; itłs a Revolutionary
Progress Hostel. (There are real hotels elsewhere in Tripoli, but they all
charge real hotel bills, and the government is trying to run the tech jury
service on the cheap.) Huwłs djinn spiels a little rantlet about King
Ghadaffiłs critique of trademarks, and explains that this is the Peoplełs
Marriott, where the depredations of servile labor have been eliminated in favor
of automated conveniences, the maintenance and disposition of which is managed
by a Residentłs Committee, and primly admonishes him for being twenty minutes
late to his first Committee meeting, which is to run for another two hours and
forty minutes.

�Canłt I just go to my room and have a wash?" Huw asks. �Iłm
filthy."

�Ah! One thousand pardons, Madame! Would that our world was
a perfect one and the needs of the flesh could come before the commonweal! It
is, however, a requirement of residence at the Peoplełs Marriott. You need to
attend and be assigned a maintenance detail, and be trained in the chores you
are to perform. The common room is wonderfully comfortable, though, and your fellow
committee members will be delighted to make you most very welcome indeed!"

�Crap," Huw says.

�Yes," the djinn says, �of course. Youłll find a WC to your
left after you pass through the main doors."

Huw stalks through both sets of automatic doors, which
judder and groan open and creak shut. The lobby is a grandiose atrium with
grimy spun diamond panes fifteen meters above his head through which streams
gray light that feeds a riotous garden of root-vegetables and xeroscaped desert
scrub. His vision clouds over, then a double row of shaky blinkenlights appear
before him, strobing the way to the common room. Huw heaves a put-upon sigh and
shambles along their path.

The common-room is hostel chic, filled with sagging sofas, a
sad and splintery gamesurface, and a collection of a half-dozen morose
international travelers clutching at their teapots and scrawling desultorily on
a virtual whiteboard. The collaborative space is cluttered with torn-off sheets
of whiteboard, covering every surface. Doc Bj�rk has beaten him here, and she
is already in the center of the group, animatedly negotiating for the lightest
detail possible.

�Huw!" she calls as he plants himself in the most remote
sofa, which coughs up a cloud of dust and stale farts smelling of the worldłs
variegated cuisines.

He lifts one hand weakly and waves. The other committee
members are staring at him coldly, with a glint of feral calculation in their
eyes, and Huw has a feeling hełs about to get the shittiest job in the place.
Mitigate the risk, he thinks.

�Hi there, Iłm Huw. Iłm here on jury duty, so Iłm not going
to be available during the days. Iłm also a little, uh, toxic at the moment, so
Iłll need to stay away from anything health-related. Something in the early
evening, not involving food or waste systems would be ideal, really. What fits
the bill?" He waits a moment while the teapots chatter translations from all
over the room. Huw hears Arabic, Farsi, Hindi, Spanish, French, and American.

Various whiteboards are reshuffled from around the room, and
finally a heroically ugly ancient Frenchman who looks like an albino chimp
squeaks some dependencies across the various boards with a stylus. He coughs
out a rapid and hostile stream of French, which the teapot presently
translates. �Youłll be on comms patrol. Therełs a transceiver every three
meters. You take spare parts around to each of them, reboot them, watch the
Power-On Self-Test and swap out any dead parts. Even numbered floors tonight,
odd floors tomorrow, guest rooms the day after." He tosses a whiteboard at Huw,
and it snaps to centimeters from his nose, a-crawl with floorplans and
schematics for broadband relay transceivers.

�Well, thatłs done," Huw says. �Thanks."

Bj�rk laughs. �Youłre not even close to done. Thatłs your tentative
assignment-you need to get checked out on every job, in case youłre reassigned
due to illness or misadventure."

�Youłre kidding," he says, rolling his eyes.

�I am not. My assignment is training new committee members.
Now, come and sit next to me, the Training and Skills-Assessment sub-committee
is convening here."

� � � � �

Huw zones out during the endless sub-committee meetings that
last into early evening, then suffers himself to be dragged to the hotel
refectory by Doc Bj�rk and a dusky Romanian Lothario from the Cordon Bleu
Catering Committee who casts pointed and ugly looks at him until he slouches
away from his baklava and dispiritedly climbs the unfinished concrete utility
stairway to sub-level 1, where his toil is to begin. He spends the next four
hours trudging around the endless sub-levels of the hotel-bare concrete
corridors optimized for robotic, not human, access-hunting buggy transceivers.
By the time he gets to his room hełs exhausted, footsore, and even more sweaty.

Huwłs room is surprisingly posh, but he canłt appreciate it.
He looks at the oversized sleep-surface and sees the maintenance regimen for
its control and feedback mechanism. He spins slowly in the spa-sized loo and
all he can think about is the poxy little bots that patrol the plumbing and
polish the tile. The media center is a dismal reminder of his responsibility to
patrol the endless miles of empty corridor, rebooting little silver mushrooms
and watching their blinkenlights for telltale reds.

He fills the pool-sized tub with steaming, lavenderand eucalyptus-scented
water, then climbs in, burka and all. The djinnłs lamp perches on the tubłs
edge getting soaked in oversloshes as he shifts his weight, watching the folds
of cloth flutter in aquatic slomo as its osmotic layers convect gentle streams
of water over his many nooks and (especially) crannies.

�Esteemed sir," the djinn says, its voice echoing off the
painted tile.

�Figured that one out, huh?" Huw says. �No more Madame?"

�My infinite pardons," it says. �I have received your jury assignment.
You are to report to Fifth Peoplełs Technology Court at 0800 tomorrow. You will
be supplied with a delicious breakfast of fruits and semolina, and a cold lunch
of local delicacies. You should be well-rested and prepared for a deliberation
of at least four days."

�Sure thing," Huw says, dunking his head and letting the
water rush into his ears. He resurfaces and shakes his head, spattering the
walls with water thatłs slightly gray with bodily ick. �How farłs the
courthouse?"

�A mere two kilometers. The walk through the colorful and ancient
Tripoli streets is both bracing and elevating. You will arrive in a most
pleasant and serene state of mind."

Huw kicks at the drain control and the tub gurgles itself
empty, reminding him of the great water-reclamation facilities in the
sub-basement and their various osmotic tissues and dams. He stands and the
burka steams for a moment as every drop of moisture is instantly wrung loose
from its weave. �Pleasant and serene. Yeah, right." He climbs tiredly out of
the tub and slouches towards the bedroom. �What time is it?"

�It is two-fifteen, esteemed sir," says the djinn. �Would
sir care for a sleeping draught?"

�Sir would care for a real hotel," Huw grunts, then lies
down on the enormous white rectangle that occupies the center of the bedroom.
He doesnłt hear the djinnłs reply. Hełs asleep as soon as his head touches the
pillow.

� � � � �

A noise like cats fucking in a trash can drags Huw awake
most promptly at zero-dark ołclock. �Whatłs that?" he yells.

The djinn doesnłt answer: itłs prostrate on the bedside
table as if hiding from an invisible overhead axe blade. The noise gets louder,
if anything, then modulates into chickens drowning in their own blood, with a
side-order of Van Halen guitar riffs. �Make it stop!" shouts Huw, stuffing his
fingers in his ears.

The noise dies to a distant wail. A minute later it stops
and the djinn flickers upright. �My apologies, esteemed sir," it says dejectedly.
�I did not with the room sound system mixer volume control interface correctly.
That was the most blessed Imam Anwar Mohammed calling the faithful to prayer,
or it would have been if not for the feedback."

Huw rolls over and grabs the teapot. �Djinn."

�Yes, oh esteemed sirrah?"

Huw pauses. �You keep calling me that," he says slowly. �Do
you realize just how rude that is?"

�Eep! Rude? You appear to be squeezing"

�Listen." Huw is breathing heavily. He sits up and looks out
of the window at the sleeping city. Somewhere, a hundred gigameters beyond the
horizon, the sun might be thinking about the faint possibility of rising. �I am
a patient man. But. If you keep provoking me like this"

�Like what?"

�This hostel. The fucking alarm clock. Talking down to me.
Repeatedly insulting my intelligence

�Iłm not insulting!"

�Shut up." Huw blows out a deep breath. �Unless you want me
to give you a guided tour of the hotel waste compactor and heavy metal
reclamation subsystem. From the inside."

�Ulp." The djinn shuts up.

�Thatłs better. Now. Breakfast. I want, letłs see ... fried
eggs. Bacon rashers. Pork sausages. Toast with butter on it, piles of butter.
Donłt argue, Iłve had a grey-market LDL anti-cholesterol hack. Oh yeah. Black
pudding. Tell your little friends in the canteen to have it waiting for me.
There is no ęor elseł for you to grasp at, you horrible little robot, youłre
going to do this my way or youłre not going to do very much at all, ever
again."

Huw stands up and stretches. A plink with the pinky remote
and his bicycle unlocks and stretches too, folding itself into shopping-mall
mode. Memory metal frames are one of the few benefits of high technology, in
Huwłs opinion-along with the ability to eat seven different flavors of grease
for breakfast and not die of a heart attack before lunchtime.

�Got that?"

�I told them, but they say these Turkish food processors,
they donłt like working with non-Halal"

The djinn shuts up at Huwłs snarl. Huw picks up the teapot,
hangs it from his bikełs handle-bars, and pedals off down the hotel corridor
with blood in his eye.

I wonder what my chances are of getting a hanging judge?

� � � � �

Huw pedals to the end of the hotelłs drive and hangs a left,
following the djinnłs directions, rides two more blocks, turns right, and
confronts a wall of humanity.

Itłs a good, old-fashioned throng. From his vantagepoint
atop the saddle, it seems to writhe, a mass of variegated robes and business-attire,
individuals lost in the teem. He studies it for a moment longer, and sees that
for all its density itłs moving rather quickly, though with little regard for
personal space. He dismounts the bike and it extrudes its kickstand. Planting
his hands on his hips, he belches up a haram gust of bacon-grease and ponders.
He can always lock up the bike and proceed afoot, but nothing handy presents
itself for locking. The djinn is manifesting a glowing countdown timer, ticking
away the seconds before he will be late at court.

Just then, the crowd shits out a person, who makes a beeline
for him.

�Hello, Adrian," Huw says, once the backpacker is within
shouting distance-about sixty centimeters, given the din of footfalls and
conversations. Huw is somehow unsurprised to see the backpacker again, clad in
his travelwear and a rakish stubble, eyes red as a baboonłs ass after a nightłs
hashtaking.

�Well, fancy!" says Adrian. �Out for a bit of a ride?"

�No, actually," replies Huw. �On my way somewhere, and
running late. Do you think I can ride around this crowd on another street?"

The backpacker snorts. �Sure, if you ride to Tunisia. Thatłs
not going to do you much good here, Iłm afraid. And donłt think about locking
it up, mate, or itłll be nationalized by the Popular Low-Impact Transit
Committee before youłve gone three steps."

�Shit," grunts Huw. He gestures at the bike and it deflates
and compacts itself into a carry-case. He hefts it-the fucking thing weighs a
ton.

�Yup," Adrian agrees, cheerily. �Nice to have if you want to
go on a tour of the ruins or get somewhere at three A.M.-not much good
otherwise, though. Want to sell it to me? I met a pair of sisters last night
whołre going to take me off to the countryside for a couple days of
indoctrination and heavy petting. Iłd love to have some personal transport."

�Fuck," says Huw. Hełs had the bike for seven years; itłs an
old friend, jealously guarded. �How about I rent it to you?"

Adrian grins and produces a smokesaver from one of the many
snap-pockets on his chest. A nugget of hash smolders inside the plastic tube, a
barely visible coal in the thick smoke. He puts his mouth over the end and
slurps down the smoke, holds it for a thoughtful moment, then expels it over
Huwłs head.

�Lovely. Iłll return it in two days, three tops. Wherełre
you staying?"

�The fucking Marriott."

�Wouldnłt wish it on my worst enemy. Here, will this be
enough?" He hands Huw a foil-wrapped brick of Assassin-brand hash, the size of
a paving-stone. �The sistersłre into hashishim-revival. Quite versatile minds,
they have."

Huw is already copping a light buzz from the sidestream
Adrianłs blowing his way. This much hash will likely put him in a three-day
incontinence coma. But someone might want it, he supposes. �Tell you what," he
says. �Letłs call this a deposit. You can have it back for the safe return of
the bike in four days at the Marriott, all right?"

Adrian works his head from side to side. �Sure, mate. Works
for me. Shame you donłt trust me to return the bike on my own, but thatłs how
it is, I suppose."

�Okay. But youłd better bloody look after it. That bike has
sentimental value, wełve come a long way together." Huw whispers into the
bikełs handlebars and hands it to Adrian. It interfaces with his PAN, accepts
him as its new erstwhile owner, and unfolds. Adrian saddles up, waves once, and
pedals off for points rural and lecherous.

Huw holds the djinnłs lamp up and hisses at it. �Right," he
says. �Get me to the court on time."

�With the utmost of pleasures, sirrah," it begins. Huw gives
it a sharp shake. �All right, then," it says. �Let me teach you to say, ęOut of
my bloody way,ł and wełll be off."

� � � � �

Huw doesnłt know quite what to expect from the Fifth
Peoplełs Technology Court. A yurt? Sandstone? Horrible modernist-brutalist
white-sheathed space-age pile?

As it turns out, itłs an inflatable building, an outsized
bounce-house made of metallic fabric and compressed air. The whole thing could
be deflated and carted elsewhere on a flatbed truck in a morning, or simply
attached to a dirigible and lifted to a new spot. A great safety-yellow rubbery
gasket the size of a manhole cover sprouts from one side, hooked into power,
bandwidth, sewage, and water, armored flex-hoses coursing with modcons.

Itłs shaped like a casino-ownerłs idea of the Parthenon,
cartoonish columns and squishy frescoes depicting mankindłs dominance over
technology. Huw bounds up the rubbery steps and through the six-meter doors. A
fourteen-year-old boy with a bad moustache confronts him as he passes into the
lobby.

�Pizzpot," grunts the kid, hefting a curare-blower in Huwłs
direction. Huw skids to a stop on the yielding floor.

�Pardon?"

�Pizzpot," repeats the boy. Hełs wearing some kind of
uniform, yellow semi-disposable coveralls tailored like a potato-sack and all
abristle with insignia. It looks like the kind of thing that Biohazard
Containment passes out when they quarantine a borough because itłs dissolving
into brightly colored machine parts.

�The Peoplełs Revolutionary Technology Court Guardsman
wishes to see your passport, sirrah," his djinn explains. �Court will be in session
in fifteen seconds."

Huw rolls up his sleeve and pressed his forearm against the
grimy passport reader the Guardsman has pulled from his waistband. �Gaah. Show
me the way." A faint glowing trail appears in front of Huw, snaking down the
hall and up to a battered-looking door.

Huw stumbles up to the door and leans on it. It opens
easily, sucking him through with a gust of dusty air, and he staggers into a
brightly lit green room with a row of benches stretching round three walls. The
center of the room is dominated by two boxes; a strangely menacing black cube a
meter on a side, and a lectern, behind which hunches a somewhat moth-eaten
vulture in a black robe.

Faces turn to watch Huw as he stumbles to a halt. �Youłre
late," squawks the vulture-on second thoughts, Huw realizes shełs not an
uplifted avian, but a human being, wizened and twisted by age, her face
dominated by a great hatchet of a nose.

�Terribly sorry," Huw pants apologetically. �Wonłt happen
again."

�Better not." The judge harrumphed consumptively. �Dammit, I
deserve some respect! Horrible children."

As the judge rants on about punctuality and the behavior of
the dutiful and obedient juror (which, Huw is led to believe, had always been
deplorable but has been in terminal decline ever since the abolition of capital
punishment for contempt of court back in the eighteenth century) he takes stock
of his fellow jurors. For the first time he has reason to be glad of his
biohazard burka-and its ability to completely obscure his snarl of anger-because
he knows at least half of them. The bastard pseudo-random number generators at
the Peoplełs Magical Libyan Jamahiriya embassy must be on the blink, because
besides Doc Bj�rk-whom he kind-of expected-the jury service has summoned none
other than Sandra Lal, and an ominously familiar guy with a blue forelock, and
the irritating perpetually-drunk centenarian boomer from next door but one.
There are a couple of native Libyans, but it looks as if the perennially
booming Tripolitanian economy has turned jury service evasion into a national
sport. Hence the need to import guest-jurors.

Fuck me, all I need is that turd Adrian to make it a clean
sweep, thinks Huw. This must be some kind of set-up. He settles on a bench in a
rustle of static-charged fabric and waits for proceedings to begin.

The Vulture stands up and hunches over the lectern. �Listen
up!" She rasps, in a forty-a-day voice that sounds like shełs about due for
another pair of lungs. �I am doctor Rosa Giulliani-thatłs a doctor of law-and I
have volunteered my services for the next two weeks to chair this court, or
focus group, or three-ring circus. You are the jury, or potential consumers, or
performing animals. Procedurally the PMLJ have given me total autonomy as long
as I conduct this hearing in strict accordance within the bounds of international
law as laid down by the Hague Tribunal on Trans-Human Manifestations and Magic.
Some of you may not fully comprehend what this means. What it means is that you
are here to decide whether a reasonable person would consider it safe to
unleash Exhibit A on the world. If Exhibit A turns out to be a weapon of planetary
destruction, we will probably all die. If Exhibit A turns out to be a widget
that brings everlasting happiness to the whole of humanity, we will probably
all get to benefit from the consequences. So I will enforce extreme measures
against any rat-bastard who tries to smuggle a sample out of this room. I will
also nail to the wall the hide of anyone who talks about Exhibit A outside this
room, because there are hardware superweapons and there are software
superweapons, and we donłt know what Exhibit A is, yet. For all we know itłs a
piece of hardware that looks like a portable shower cubicle then turns round
and installs antique Microsoft crashware in your thalamus. So."

Giulliani subsides in a fit of racking coughs. The person
next to Huw, a young punk of indeterminate-or no-gender, turns and winks at
him, then mutters something incomprehensible in Czech. �Cool, I wonder what
shełll pay for a new set of Kurdish lungs, one careful owner?" Huwłs tea-pot
translates.

Huw stares back for a moment, then shrugs.

Judge Giulliani gathers herself, and Huw fiddles idly with
the dialect gain on the djinnłs translation engine control panel:

�We follow a set procedure. Yłall lissłn here. A statement
is delivard by the dayum fool script kiddies who downloaded the memeplex from
the metasphere anł whołre applyin fer custodial riats ta it. This describes the
prior backgrounł ta their actions. Ya reckon? Secondly, a preliminary
activation of the device may be conducted in a closed environment. Thirdly, o
buss dis. You rabble git to talk ęboutit. Foethly, you split into two teams:
advocates anł prosecution. Yo taxe be to convince members uh de othuh team to
join you. Sheeit! Finally, you deliver your majority verdict to me and I check
it for procedural compliance. Then with any luck I get to hang the meddling
kids. Ere-a zeere-a uny qooesshuns?"

Huw shakes his head, bemused. For some reason he canłt get
the teapot to give Judge Giulliani an authentic Neapolitan accent. But Doc
Bj�rk is already waving a hand in the air, eager to please. The judge turns a
black gaze on her, one that reminds Huw of historical documentaries about the
Ayatollah Khomeini, but Bj�rk refuses to wilt.

�What," rasps Giulliani, �is it?"

�About this Exhibit, yah? Is it the box, in? And if so, how
secure the containment is? I would hate for your worries to depart the abstract
and concretize themselves, as it were."

�Huh." The judge stalks out from behind her lectern and
kicks the box, hard. She must be wearing steel toe-caps, from the noise it
makes. Huw whimpers faintly, envisaging imminent post-singularity grey goop
catalyzed nano-annihilation, beyond any hope of resurrection. But the only
terrible consequence is that the judge smiles, horribly. �It are being safe,"
she announces. �Box are being waste containment vessel left over from second
French fast breeder program." This announcement brings an appreciative nod from
a couple of members of the audience. The second French fast breeder program was
nothing to do with nuclear reactors and everything to do with
disaster-mitigation replicators bred to mop up the eight giga-Curies of
plutonium the first program scattered all over Normandy. Even Huw is forced to
admit that the alien memeplex is probably safe behind the Maginot line of
nanotech containment widgets lining the diamond-reinforced tungsten carbide
safe.

�So when do we get to see it?" asks Huw, tweaking his teapot
back onto its original dialect setting.

Judge Giulliani turns her vicious gaze on him. �Right now!"
She snarls, and thumps her fist on the lectern. The lights dim, and a
multimedia presentation wobbles and firms up on top of her lectern. �Listen up!
Let the following testimony entered under oath on placeholder-goes-here be
entered in the court record under this-case-number. Go ahead, play, damn you."

The scene is much as Huw would have imagined it: a couple of
pudgy nocturnal hackers holed up in a messy bedroom floored in discarded ready
meal packs, air hazy with programmable utility foglets, are building a homebrew
long baseline radio telescope array by reprogramming their smart wallpaper.
They work quietly, exchanging occasional cryptic suggestions about how to
improve their rigłs resolving power and gain. About the only thing that surprises
Huw is that theyłre both three years old-foreheads swollen before their time
with premature brain bridges. A discarded pile of wooden alphabet blocks lies
in one corner of the room. A forlorn teddy bear lies on the top bunk with its
back to the camera viewpoint.

�Ooh, arenłt they cute?" squeaks Sandra. �The one on the
left is just like my younger brother was, before his little accident!"

�Silence in court, damn your eyes! What do you think this
is, an adoption hearing? Behold, Abdul and Karim Bey. Their father is a waiter
and their mother is a member of the presidential guard." (Brief clips of a
waiter and a woman in green battle-dress with an improbably complicated gun
drift to either side of the nursery scene.) �Their parents love them, which is
why they paid for the very best prenatal brainbox upgrades. With predictable
results."

Abdul and Karim are pounding away at their tower of rather
goopy-looking foglets-like all artifacts exposed to small children, it has
begun to turn gray and crinkly at the corners-but now they are receiving a
signal, loud and clear. Theyłre short on juice, but Karim has the bright idea
of eviscerating Teddy and plugging his methanol-powered fuel cell into the
totsł telescope. It briefly extrudes a maser, blats a signal up through the
thin roof of their commodity housing, and collapses in exhaustion.

The hackers have only five minutes or so to wait-in which
time Abdul speed-reads an illicit download of The Satanic Verses while Karim
rolls on his back making googling noises as he tries to grab his feet-for they
have apparently found the weakly godlike AIs of the metasphere in a receptive
mood. As the bitstream comes in, Abdul whacks his twin brother upside the head
with a purple velour giraffe. Karim responds by irritably uploading a correctly
formatted patent application with the godvomit as an attachment.

�I hate smart-alec kids," mumbles the bald guy with the blue
forelock, sitting across the room. The judge pretends to ignore him.

�These two miscreants are below the contractual age of consent,"
Huw hears himself muttering, �so how come their application is being accepted?"

�Here in the PMLJ, as you should well know seeing youłre
staying here," the judge croaks, �your civil rights are a function of your
ability to demand them. Which is a bit annoying, because Karim demanded the
vote six months ago, while Abdul is a second lieutenant in the Peoplełs Memetic
Self-Defense Forces and a dab-hand at creating new meme viruses. In fact,
therełs some question over whether we shouldnłt actually be dragging him up in
front of a military tribunal instead."

Judge Giulliani seems to have forgotten to snarl; her commentary
is becoming almost civilized as the presentation from the subpoenaed crib-cam
fast-forwards to the terrible twołs attempt to instantiate the bitstream in
atoms. Using a ripped Teddy bear as a containment vessel.

�Ah, here, you see it here. The artifact is extremely
flexible, but not so flexible that it can gestate in a pseudo-living toy. Abdulłs
own notes speculate that gestation may be supported in medium-sized dogs,
goats, and camels." Over the lectern, the display zooms in on the teddy-bearłs
swollen gut. The bear is jerking spasmodically and ticcing like a Tourettic
childrenłs TV host, giggling and stuttering nonsensical self-worth
affirmations. The gut distends further and the affirmations become more
disjointed, and then a long, sharp blade pokes its way through the pseudoflesh
and flame-retardant fur-analogue. �There are indications that the artifact
floods its host organism with endorphins at metamorphosis-time," the judge
says, and the rent in the bearłs belly widens, and out climbs a shimmering
thing.

It takes Huw a moment to understand what hełs seeing. The artifact
is a tall, metallic stalk, at first coiled like a cobra, but gradually roused
to full erectness. Its glistening tip dips down towards the bear. �See how it
sutures the exit wound?" the judge says, a breath of admiration in her rough
voice. �So tidy. Jurors, take note, this is a considerate artifact." Indeed,
the bearłs fur has been closed with such cunning that itłs almost impossible to
see the exit wound. However, something has gone horribly awry inside of it, as
it is now shaking harder than ever, shivering off its limbs and then its fur,
and soon its flesh starts breaking away like the sections of a tangerine.

The artifact stands erect again, bounces experimentally a
couple times, then collapses in a way that Huw canłt make any sense of. Hełs
not alone, either. The jurors let out a collective uncomprehending bleat. �Look
closely, jurors!" the judge says, and the scene loops back on itself a couple
times in slomo, from multiple angles, then again in wireframe. It makes Huwłs
mind hurt. The artifactłs stalk bulges in some places, contracts in others, all
the whole slipping through and around itself. His potmakerłs eye tries to no
avail to understand whatłs happening to the topology and volume.

�Fucking lovely," a voice nearby gasps. He recognizes it as
Sandra Lalłs. Shełs always had a thing about trompe lłoeil solid. �Nicest Klein
bottle Iłve ever seen."

Klein bottle. Of course. Take a Moebius strip and extrude it
one more dimension out and you get a vessel with only two dimensions, the
inside and outside a single continuous plane. Glassblower shit. Fucking
showoffs.

The young brothers are on hands and knees before the
artifact now, staring in slack-jawed concentration, drool slipping between
their patchworks of baby teeth and down their chins. The cam zooms in on the
artifact, and it begins to fluoresce and pulse, as through it were digesting a
radioactive hamster. The peristaltic throbbing gives it motion, and it begins
to work its way toward the hamper in the corner of the room. It inches its way
across the floor, trailed by the crawling brothers, and knocks over the hamper,
and begins to burrow through the spilled, reeking linens.

�Itłs scat-tropic," Doc Bj�rk says.

�Yes," the Judge says. �And scat-powered. Karim notes that
its waste products are a kind of silt, similar to diatomaceous earth, and
equally effective as a roach and beetle powder, as well as water and trace
elements."

�A fractional-dimensional parasitic turd-gobbler from outer
space?" Huw says. �Have I got that right?"

�Thatłs right, małam," says the blue-forelocked joe. �And
itłs pretty, too. Iłd gestate one, if only to eliminate the need for a bloody
toilet. Quite a boon to your average WHO-standard pit-latrine, too, I imagine."
The voice, he recognizes the voice. It belongs to Bonnie: the transhumanist
she-he that Lal introduced to him at the party where he became patient zero for
whatever GM crapola he is carrying. He wonders if she-he is fucking Lal:
Sandrałs neuter, although itłs not as if thatłs stopped anyone in a decade.

�Of course youłd gestate one," Huw says. �Nothing to you if
your body is dissolved into toxic tapioca. I imagine youłre just about ready to
join the Cloud anyroad."

Sandra casts him a poisonous glare. �Fuck you, and the goat
you rode into town on," she hisses. �Who the hell are you, anyway?"

�Judge?" Doc Bj�rk says, desperately trying to avoid a mass
execution for contempt of court, �My co-juror raises an interesting point. What
evidence do we have to support Adbulłs assertion that the artifact can safely
gestate in mammals, or more specifically primates?"

The Judge grunts irritably. �Only simulations, of course,"
she says. �Were you volunteering?" Doc Bj�rk sits back hastily.

�Are you seated comfortably?" Giulliani asks pointedly.
�Then I shall continue." She whacks her gavel on the lectern and the
presentation rolls boringly on. �Here, near as we can tell, is the artifactłs
life-cycle." In fast-forward, the space monster digests the twinsł nappy hamper
then chows down on their bedding while Abdul-or maybe itłs Karim-hastily
jury-rigs an EMP gun out of animatronic toys and an air force surplus radar
set. The twins back into a corner and wait, wide-eyed, as the thing sprouts a
pink exoskeleton lined with throbbing veins, rabbit ears, and a set of six baby
elephant legs with blue toenails. It squats in the middle of their room,
hooting and pinging as it digests the pile of alphabet blocks. Karim-or maybe
itłs Abdul-improvises a blue goo attack using the roomful of utility fog, but
the ad hoc nanoweaponry just slimes off the space monster like so much
detergent.

�At this point, the manifestation estivated," announces the
Judge.

�Duh, wassatmean?" asks one of the other jurors, one who Huw
doesnłt know-possibly a nationalist from the Neander valley.

�It went to sleep," explains Doc Bj�rk. �Isnłt that right,
Judge?"

�Damn straight." The Judge whacks her gavel again. �But if I
get any more lip out of you, sunshine, Iłll have you flogged. This is my trial.
Clear?"

Bj�rk opens her mouth, closes it, then nods.

�Well," says Judge Giulliani, with some satisfaction,
�thatłs that, then. The thing seems to have fallen deeply asleep. Just in case
it wakes up, the PMLJ Neighborhood Sanitation Committee have packed it into a
Class Four nanohazard containment vessel-which Iłm standing on right now-and
shipped it over here. Wełre going to try a directed revival after lunch, with
full precautions. Then Iłll have a think about it, you damned meddling baboons
can enter my verdict, and wełll wrap up in time for tea. Court will adjourn!
Make sure youłre all back here in three hours time-or else."

In case the message isnłt sufficiently clear, the bench Huw
is perched on humps up into an uncomfortable ridge, forcing him to stand. The
Vulture storms out the back of the courtroom in a flurry of black robes,
leaving a pool of affronted jurors milling around a lectern containing a
sleeping puddle of reified godvomit.

�All right, everyone," announces Doc Bj�rk, clapping her
hands together. �How about we go and find the refectory in this place? I could
murder a baklava!"

Huw slouches off towards the entrance in a black humor, teapot
clanking at his hip. This isnłt going quite the way hełd imagined, and hełll be
damned before hełll share a refectory table with that sanctimonious Swedish
girl scout, much less Sandra and her genderbending (and disturbingly
attractive) friend. Someone is quite clearly doing this in order to get under
his skin, and he is deeply pissed off. On the other hand, itłs a long time
since breakfast-and there must be somewhere that serves a decent tofuburger in Tripoli.

Mustnłt there?

� � � � �

The safe house is another inflatable, half-buried in sand
and ringed with memory-wire fencing some shepherdłs noisesome cache of GM
livestockcows that give chocolate milk, goats that eat scrap plastic and
excrete a soft spun cotton analogue, miniature hamster-sized chickens that seem
even stupider than real chickens and swarm like tropical fish. Adrianłs already
waiting for them when they arrive, standing over the remains of Huwłs bicycle.

�Guess you get to keep the hash, old son," Adrian says,
kicking the wreckage. �Too badit was a lovely ride. I see youłve met Maizie
and Becky. Becky, love, would you mind setting Huw down now? Hełs looking a
little green and Iłm sure hełd appreciate some terror firmer and the removal of
that horrid gag."

Neat as that, Huw is sitting plonk on his bottom in the
sand, helping Adrian laboriously pry back and snap off each of the golemłs
fingers. Adrian tosses them to the goats and Maizie says something to him that
Huw canłt understand.

Adrian shakes his head. �You worry too muchthose buggersłll
eat anything."

Once hełs free of the gag, Huw give his jaw an experimental
wiggle, then opens his mouth in a wide gasp. Quick as that, the whistlewhich
has been hiding cannily behind his left earcircumnavigates his jaw and climbs
into his mouth, darting down his throat. �Shit!" Huw says, around the harmonics
of the whistle now nestled back in his larynx.

�Aha!" says Adrian. �Youłre the carrier all right. We read
about you online. The sisters want samples, later. Youłre going to need a bath
first, I think. No offense. Come on in," he says, kicking away sand to reveal a
trap-door. Hosting it open, Adrian exposes a helical slide into the
bounce-housełs depths; he slides in feet-first and spirals down into the
safe-house.

Huw gasps for breath, balanced on the fine edge between nervousness
and stark screaming terror. Normalcy wins: the whistle doesnłt hurt, indeed
barely feels as if itłs there. A goat sidles up behind him with evil in its
eyes and leans over his shoulder, snorting, to see if hełs edible; the hot
breath on his ear reminds him that hełs still alive, and not even unable to
talk. One of the Libyan Goth ninjettes is squatting patiently by the door.
�Hello?" he says, experimentally rubbing his throat.

She shrugs and emits a rapid-fire stream of Arabic. Then, seeing
he doesnłt understand she shrugs again and points at the slide. �Oh, I get it,"
says Huw. He peers at her closely. �Do I know you from somewhere?"

She says something else, this time sharply. Huw sighs.
�Okay, I donłt know you." His throat feels a bit odd, but not as odd as it
ought to for someone whołs just swallowed an alien communications protocol. I
need to know whatłs going on, he realizes, eyeing the trapdoor uneasily. Oh
well. Steeling himself, he lowers his legs into the slide and forces himself to
let go.

The room at the bottom is a large bony cavern, its ceiling
hung with what look like gigantic otoliths, floored with pink sensory fronds.
Adrian is puttering around with a very definitely non-sapient teapot on a
battered Japanese camping stove; the other one of the ninjette twins is sitting
cross-legged on the floor, immersed in some kind of control interface to the
Red Crescent omnifab that squats against one wall, burbling and occasionally
squirting glutinously to itself. �Ah, there yłare. Cup of tea, mate?" says
Adrian.

�Donłt mind if I do," Huw replies guardedly. �Just what the
fuck fuck fuckęscuse meis going on?"

�Siddown." Adrian waves at a bean-bag. �Milk, sugar?"

�Both, thanks. Aghdamn. Got anything for-for Tourettełs?"

�ęCording to the user manual itłll go away soon. No
worries."

�User manual? Shyou mean this thing comes with a warranty?
That sort of thing?"

�Sure." Adrian pours boiling water into the teapot and sets
it aside to stew. Then he sits down besides the oblivious Libyan woman and
pulls out a stash tin. He begins to roll a joint, chatting as he does so. �Itłs
been spamming to hell and back for the past six months. Seems something up
there wants us to, like, talk to it. For some years now itłs not had much of a
clue about us, but itłs finally invented, bred, whatever, an interface to the
human deep grammar engine. Sort of like the crappy teapots the embassy issues
everyone with. Trouble is, the interface is really specific, so only a few
people can assimilate it. You" Adrian shrugs. �I wasnłt involved," he adds.

�Who was?" demands Huw, his knuckles whitening. �If I find
them"

�It was sort of one of those things," Adrian says vaguely.
�You know how it happens? Someone does some deep data mining on the proteome
and spots a correlation. Posts their findings publicly. Someone else thinks,
hey, I know that joe, and invites them to a party along with a bunch of their
friends. Someone else spikes the punch while theyłre chatting up a Sheila, and
then a prankster at the Libyan embassy thinks hey, we could maybe rope him into
one of the hanging judgełs assizes, howzabout that? Boy, you can snap your
fingers and before you know whatłs happening therełs a flash conspiracy in actionnot
your real good old fashioned secret world order, nobody can be arsed tracking
those things these days, but the next best thing. A self-propagating teleology
meme. Goal-seeking Neat Ideas are the most dangerous kind. You smoke?"

�Thanks," says Huw, accepting the joint. �Is the tea ready?"

�Yeah." And Adrian spends the next minute pouring a couple
of mugs of extremely strong breakfast tea, while Huw does his best to calm his
shattered nerves by getting blasted right out of his skull on hashishim dope.

�ękay, lemme get this straight. I was never on tech jury
call, right? Was a setup. All along."

�Well, hurm. It was a real jury, all right, but that doesnłt
mean your name was plucked at anything like random, follow?"

�All right. Nobody planned, not a conspiracy, just a set of
accidents łcause the Cloud wants to talk. Huh?" Huw leans back on the beanbag
and bangs his head on a giant otolith, setting it vibrating with a deep
gut-churning rumble. �Sh cool. It wanna talk to me?"

�Yer the human condition in microcosm, mate. Here, pass the
spliff."

�ękay. So what wants to talk?"

�Eh, well, youłve met the ambassador already, right? Słokay,
Bonniełll be along in a while with it."

�And whothefuck are you? I mean, whatłre you doing in this?"

�Hell." Adrian looks resigned. �Iłm just your ordinary joe,
really. Forget the Nobel prize, that doesnłt mean anything. ęs all a team
effort these days, anyway, and I ainłt done any lab work for thirty, forty
years. Tell the truth, I was just bumming around, enjoying my second teenage
wanderjahr when I heard ębout you through the grapevine. Damn shame we couldnłt
get a sane judge for the hearing. None of this shit would be necessary if it
wasnłt for Rosa."

�Rosa"

�Rosa Giulliani. Shełs like, a bit conservative. Hadnłt you
noticed?"

�A bit. Conservative."

�Yeah, shełs an old-time environmentalist, really likes conserving
thingspreferably in formalin. Including anyone whołs been infected by a
communications vector."

�Oh." Huw is still trying to digest the indigestible
thought, through a haze of amiability-inducing smoke, when the local unplugs
herself from the omnifabłs console, stands up and stretches, then plugs in a
language module.

�Your bicycle will be healed again in a few hours," she
says, nodding at Huw, just as the omni burps and then hawks up a passable
replica of a Shimano universal ratio gearhub. �Can you put it together with
tools?"

�I, uh" Huw gawks at her. �Do I know you?" he asks. �You
look just like this hacker"

She shrugs irritably. �I am not responsible for my idiot
clone-aunts!"

�But you" he stops. �There are lots of you?"

�Oh yes." She smiles tightly. �Ade, my friend, I am taking a
walk. Donłt get up to anything I wouldnłt."

�I wonłt, Beckie. Promise."

�Good. Iłm Maizie, though." She climbs onto a toadstool-shaped
bone and rapidly rises towards the ceiling on a pillar of something that might
be muscle, but probably isnłt.

�Lovely girls," Adrian says wistfully when shełs gone.
�Where was I? Ah, yes: the ambassador."

�Ambassador?"

�Yeah, ambassador. Itłs kind of a high-bandwidth node, with
enough translator brains to talk to that thing in your throat. Youłre the
interpreter, see. Wełve been expecting it for a while, but didnłt reckon with
those idiot script kiddies ending up in court. Itłll be along"

Therełs a clattering noise behind Huw, and he looks round so
abruptly that he nearly falls off his sack, and though hełs feeling
mellowfar-better disposed towards his fellow man than he was an hour agoitłs
all Huw can do to refrain from jumping up, shrieking.

�You!" says Bonnie, clutching a large and ominously familiar
box in her arms as she slides to a halt at the foot of the spiral. �Hey, Ade,
is this your party?"

The box twitches in her arms, as if something inside it is
trying to escape. Huw can feel a scream welling up in his throat, and it isnłt
hisitłs a scream of welcome, a paen of politics. He bites it back with a
curse. �How the hell did you get that?" he says.

�Stole it while the judge was running after you," Bonnie
says smugly. �Therełs a README with it that says it needs a translator. That
would be you, huh?" She looks at him with ill-concealed lust. �Prepare to plug
into the ride of your life!"

�God, no," he groans.

Adrian pats his shoulder. �Pecker up. Itłs all for the
best."

The box opens and the Kleinmonster bobs a curtsey at him,
then warbles. His throat warbles in response. The hash has loosened his vocal
cords so that there isnłt the same sense of forced labor, just a mellow, easy
kind of song. His voices and the Kleinmonsterłs intertwine in an aural
handshake and gradually his sensoria fades away, until hełs no longer looking
out of his eyes, no longer feeling through his skin, but rather hełs part of
the Cloudmind, smeared across space and time and a billion identities all
commingled and a-swirl with unknowable convection currents of thought and deed.

Somewhere there is the Earth, the meatspace whence the
Cloudmind has ascended. His point of view inverts and now the Earth is
enveloped in him, a messy gobstopper dissolving in a probabilistic mindmouth.
Itłs like looking down at a hatched-out egg, knowing that once upon a time you
fit inside that shell, but now youłre well shut of it. Meat, meat, meat.
Imperfect and ephemeral and needlessly baroque and kludgey, but it calls to the
Cloud with a gravatic tug of racial memory.

And then the sensoria recedes and hełs eased back into his
skin, singing to the Kleinmonster and its uplink to the Cloud. He knows hełs
x-mitting his own sensoria, the meat and the unreasoning demands of dopamine
and endorphin. Ah, says the Ambassador. Ah. Yes. This is what it was like. Ah.

Awful.

Terrible.

Ah.

Well, thatłs done.

The Kleinmonster uncoils and stretches straight up to the
ceiling, then gradually telescopes back into itself until itłs just a button of
faintly buzzing nanocrud. The buzzing gains down and then vanishes, and it
falls still.

Bonnie shakes his shoulders. �What happened?" she says, eyes
shining.

�Got what it needed," Huw says, with a barely noticeable under-drone.

�What?"

�What? Oh, a bit of a reminder, I expect. A taste of the
meat."

�Thatłs it?" Bonnie says. �All that forwhat? A trip down
memory lane? All that fucking work and it doesnłt even want to stick around and
chat?"

Huw shrugs. �Thatłs the Cloud for you. In-fucking-effable."

�Will it be back? I wanted to talk to it about ..." she
trailed off, blushing. �I wanted to know what it was like."

Huw thinks of what it was like to be part of the
matrioshke-brain, tries to put it into words. �I canłt quite describe it," he
says. �Not in so many words. Not right now. Give me a while, maybe Iłll manage
it." Hełs got a nasty case of the pasties and he guzzles a cup of lukewarm
milky tea, swirling it around his starchy tongue. �Of course, if youłre really
curious, you could always join up."

Bonnie looks away and Adrian huffs a snort. �Iłll do it some
day," she says. �Just want to know what Iłm getting into."

Huw keeps the smile off his phiz. �I understand," he says.
�Donłt worry, I still think youłre an anti-human race-traitor, girlie. You
donłt need to prove anything to me."

�Fucking right I donłt!" Bonnie says. Shełs blushing rather
fetchingly.

�Right," Huw says.

�Right."

Huw begins to hum a little, experimenting with his new transhuman
peripheral. The drone is quite nice. He sings a little of the song from the
courthouse, in two-part discord. Bonniełs flush deepens and she rubs her palms
against her thighs, hissing like a teakettle.

Huw cocks his head at her and leans forward a bit, and she
grabs his ears and drags him down on top of her.

Adrian taps him on the shoulder a moment later. �Sorry to interrupt,"
he says, �but Judge Rosałs bound to come looking for you eventually. Wełd best
get you out of Libya sharpish."

Huw ignores him, concentrating on the marimba sensation of
Bonniełs ribcage grinding over his chest.

Adrian shakes his head. �Iłll just go steal a blimp or
something, then, shall I?"

Bonnie breaks off worrying Huwłs ear with her tongue and
teeth and says, �Fuck off a while, will you, Adrian?"

Adrian contemplates the two of them for a moment, trying to
decide whether they need a good kick łround the kidneys, then turns on his heel
and goes off to find Maizie, or perhaps Beckie, and sort out an escape.

The Cloud whirls in its orbit, tasting the meat with its
multifarious sensory apparati, thinking its in-fucking-effable thoughts,
muttering in RF and gravity and eigenstate. The ambassador hibernates on the
safe-housełs floor, prized loose from under Huwłs tailbone, where it had been
digging rather uncomfortably, quite spoiling Huwłs concentration, and tossed
idly into a corner. The Cloudłs done with it for now, but its duty-cycle is
hardly exhausted, and it wonders what its next use will be.

Huw moans an eerie buzz that sets Bonniełs gut a-quiver in
sympathy, which is not nearly as unpleasant as it sounds.

In fact, Bonnie thinks she could rather get used to it.

The End

Tarkovskyłs Cut

by Charles Stross and Simon Ing

Once a lifetime Jewel swims in the Folded Rose lagoon. She
strikes out through the mirror-still water until she can just make out the Hub
wall, and then she swims a little further. She lies back in the water and lets
things pass her by for a while. On a clear day she can just mke out, directly
above, the fields and forests she explored as a cild. She smiles, and maps the
vague topology, sharpening it with memories.

Then, for the first time in many years, she turns off her Wisdom,
and thinks back, unaided, to what it was like. The feel of landpussy fur. The
strong savour of barbecued cockroach. The first exquisite tickle of the Wisdom
uplink behind her eyes. She swims in memories and falls like a stone, into
childhood, and into the black depths of the lake.

Now Jewel is an old woman again, nearing the end of her fortieth
lifetime, and she is ready to swim again.

She stands on the foredeck of the houseboat, fingering the jewel
which hangs on a silver chain about her neck.

The craft turns in the water, and Jewel watches as the Huba
craggy, rust-stained rock wallswings into view. She looks up, and up and up.
The rocks climb all the way to the forests of her childhoodthere, on the
opposite side of the oneil. The Hubłs fault lines and discolorations are not,
like the lagoon, a builderłs whim. They are real. The Heaven Eleven oneil is
ten thousand years old.

The houseboat is anchored to a smaller, grey and scree-swept
slope, which curves so that its lips meet the hub at either edge, forming a
pouch some five hundred feet above the lagoon. In it lie the remains of an
ancient city and there, built over their ruined heart, stands the Folded Rose
Sanctuary. There are no landward approaches to the Sanctuary. The slopes,
naturally rugged and inhospitable, have been seeded with things lethal to man.
Birdmen patrol the rocky crests, watching for airborne intruders with senses
enhanced by a secret process.

Jewel stretches in satisfaction and turns to the
wrought-iron table. On it stands a small glass cafetiere. She presses down on
the filter arm and watches the brew darken. She pours herself a cup and sits
down. Soon she will have to go and kill her wife. As always, the thought of it
excites her.

She sips her coffee. They feed coffee berries to Wolfmen. As
the berries are digested, so the beans within them partly ferment. It has
become a kind of ritualto drink wolf coffee before killing her lovers.

Jewel opens a small bottle of hash oil and slurs it into her
coffee. The scent is delicious.

She drinks, and rides the slow, gentle hashish swell into
the First House of Contemplation.

She fingers the jewel around her neck. It has seventy
facetsone for each of her lives.

She thinks of her wife, and of their lovemaking. Margetłs
breasts are small and too far apart and her orgasm is a raucous laugh. The
taste of her wetness is rich and sickly.

Jewel withdraws from the play of images, and clasps her
hands. Conciously now, she draws from these erotic images the shapes and
movements of Margetłs body, the relative suppleness of each limb in each plane.
When she is finished she knows how to kill her.

She knows the poise to adopt, the angle to hit, the force
necessary for the blow, and the speed of the strike. This is the Second House.

Warmed by the drugged coffee, she unclenches her hands. The
bright morning sunlight casts shadows of her fingers onto the table beneath.
She waves her fingers and the light threads over the table. The movement of
light and shade is erotic. She enters the Third House, and reads violence into
the movements of the shadows. Violence and sexuality fuse in a single, simple
rythm.

Her breasts engorge.

The Census is over by evening. The stench of molten
insulation drifts across the street from the Recidivistłs nest. By Three tomorrow
morning, all subversives will be retrodden. The managing director of the
census, Harvey Mishima is in a teleconference with other officers of the
Census. His fellows appear behind his eyes, faces black with ash and hands
sticky with housejuice. They all have exactly the same smile.

�Report by numbers," Harvey drawls. He lifts up his legs and
rests his feet comfortably on the bar table. Harvey Mishima is a middle-aged
retread who has been programmed to think that all Recidivists should be
recycled. His number two sits next to him, convinced that in some previous
incarnation she was Eva Braun. She likes killing ragheads.

A bartender mixes cocktails and twitches his whiskers nervously:
Eva Braun is field-stripping her gun.

Two. Seven subjects in the block, now cared for.

Three. None in the block, but we found a sewer rat.

The bartender twitches its whiskers in terror.

Four grunts and howls and masturbates in front of the
camera. Semantic engines do their best to draw meaning from the display. Four
is a psychopath on test-release from the Domino Factory. Hełs killed as many
beastmen as Recidivists.

Five. None in the block. Tried to link with six but got whitenoise.

Six. A practical knowledge of nursing the elderly is
essential, but not necessarily gained in the private sector.

Harveyłs Wisdom tries making sense of the whitenoise where
six should be. Harvey turns it off and spits. He calls up Cleansing, using his
Wisdom to port a description of Six to them.

No dice. He turns to Eva. �Six is outalive and missing."

The ratman sets their drinks down at the table.

�Too slow," Eva drawls and blows him to bloody fragments all
over the plastic fascia of the bar.

�Eva," Harvey sighs, �are you listening?"

�Sure," says Eva. She drops on all fours and sniffs the
ratmanłs roast remains

Harvey drains his drink. �Mixed a good cocktail," he says.

Eva grunts. Her mouth is full.

Wolfmen trace Sixłs scent, and find a house. It lies on a
slant, mouthparts buried deep in the conduit running under the road. Sawtooths
drill the door to bits and find Alia in the bedroom. They pin her to the wall
with beetle limbs and chew off her clothing. Wolfmen slavering toxin and mucus
fling her to the futon; they rub themselves against her, wet her with their
secretions, deafen her with howls of orgasm.

When Alia starts to bleed Harvey Mishima calls off the beastmen
and hands Alia a handkerchief. Nanotech robots in Aliałs blood have already
repaired the physical damage done to her. The purpose of the attack is to
traumatise, not her body, but her mind. Even these limited objectives have not
been achieved. It hasnłt worked. It never does. Alia, like all of them, has no
soul. She feels nothing.

Alia considers it likely that the human culturesł conquest
of mortality and pain led directly to this Fall.

This makes her a Recidivist.

Harvey offers her a pill. He smiles a smile she has seen
many times before. �I am going to kill you," he says, �either by beasts or by
this little bomb. If your cooperation is satisfactory I will detonate the bomb.
If you have not swallowed the bomb, though, or if your behaviour is an any
other way unsatisfactory, I will let in the wolfmen."

Alia snatches the pill out his hand and swallows it. A few
seconds later something green and slimy blinks behind her eyes. Good. Alia is
better equipped than Mishima realises. The snake icon has confirmed that her
tonsils have disarmed the bomb.

Mishima tells her to shower and when she returns to the bedroom
he is naked. It will be that kind of interrogation. Afterwards, when there is
nothing more for her to open up to him, in the physical as well as the semantic
sense, they have a drink together. Mishima sips and smiles and lies down on the
bed, breathing rapidly in a shallow, gasping manner that reminds her of
vivisected beastmen.

It is time. She calls up her Wisdom. It is a sophisticated
black market system which can alter the data stored in other units based upon
the simplest of semantic instructions.

Alia tells her Wisdom to keep beastmen and other callers
away from the house. It goes to work and befuddles the beastmen and all the
other paraphernalia of a Census Enquiry.

Gnats seeded by the census to observe events in the room are
fed a self-editing intuitive video-loop of Mishima and Alia copulating.
Observers within the Sanctuary of the Folded Rose will be amazed at the sexual
energy of the pair, long after Alia has escaped.

Alia bends over Mishima and places a transdermal patch on
his neck. The room shimmers a pale bluea shade which induces calm and
contemplation.

Mishima feels the patch and sees the light and doesnłt care.
�How much drink did you put in that alcohol?" he asks, draining the glass.
Selective blockers have taken out his ethanol dehydrogenase complex. He is drunk
on a single bourbon. His own Wisdom persuades him it has taken longer for him
to get drunk than it actually has.

�You feeling okay?" says Alia.

�Check. My mindłs off for servicing tomorrow ... I mean itłs
my ... I should be caring and sensitive to the needs of young people ... oh
shit" Mishimałs syntactic engine is playing up again. His last concious act is
to turn it off.

Alia takes a deep breath, then goes to the kitchen and opens
the fridge. She takes out a braindrain.

It has eight tentacles and no eyes. Like its octopoid
ancestor it only survives for about four hours outside its usual habitatin
this case a highly oxgenated saline sponge.

Alia plants it on Mishimałs face. The braindrain hunts
busily for orifices. Pseudopodia probe the buccal mucosa, the nasal sinuses,
the orbits of his eye sockets. Mishima dreams that a large cat has decided to
share his pillow.

�What are you?" Alia asks.

�Cube," Mishima replies. The answer is a nasal whisper: all
that the invasive tentacles in his nose and throat will permit. Alia asks
Wisdom the time. The tentacles should have penetrated his menenges by now. Soon
Harvey will be unable to lie. Braindrains are breedable wetware packages,
configured to handshake human CNS and control speech centres.

Cube. Six sidessix lifetimes.

�Tell me about them."

�Canłt."

�Explain."

�Iłm a retread."

Alia shivers with revulsion. The braindrain was a wise
choice. Truth drugs are like blunt hammers; the braindrain is a surgeonłs
scalpel. Drugs would never be able to reveal the previous identity of Harvey
Mishima. The braindrain might.

She wonders who Harvey was, before the retread. Some Recidivist.
Some comrade.

The building shivers in sympathy with Aliałs anger. It detatches
its proboscis from the street artery and stands up. Alia soothes the house; she
thinks of trees, solidly rooted. She looks at Mishima, at the braindrain,
clamped leech-like to his face. The house responds to her fierce satisfaction
and squats back down with a jarring bump.

This is going to take a long time.

The braindrain starts eating Harveyłs facea desperate and,
ultimately, futile attempt to assuage its massive metapbolic demnds. Alia does
not look at him as she interrogates him. It is bad enough having to listen to
his whistling voice without having to watch his face go bloody.

�Why the Census?"

�Because," Harvey wheezes. The air is escaping through
ragged holes in his cheeks. Alia calls up her Wisdom and handshakes Harveyłs
semantic engine. She scrolls through the icons behind her eyes and selects the
kinds of functions she needs. In a minute or two Harvey wonłt have a mouth. He
can talk to her via her Wisdom, instead.

We suspect an offensive. We are suppressing Recidivist
groups in the area. When the big one comes down we donłt want to have to burn
the Suburb.

It takes an hour to get names, dates, faces and all the
other paraphernalia the Team needs to plan Jewelłs assassination. Alia glances
surreptitiously at Mishima. His hair is gone. His skull glitters pink and white
like candy in the pale-blue light. His eyes are full of purple wormy things.
Alia looks away, fast. �Who were you? Before the retread?"

This time Mishima can answer. The parts of his mind sealed
by the retread process have escaped and are establishing new dendritic
architectures within the braindrain itself. Whoever Mishima was is being reborn
inside the drain.

Hello, Alia.

Mishima has no eyes now: whoever it was who had inhabited
him must have recognised her from her Wisdom handshake.

�Youłre a Cube," she says. Her words are randomnoises she
makes to give her time to think. Someone who knew her. Someone close?...

@italic(Fourth lifetime.)

�When were you retrodden?"

Eighty years ago. Third lifetime.

Alia nods. Of course. Of course. She closes her eyes.

How long have I got?

Alia calls up her Wisdom. With a sick twist in her stomach,
Alia remembers that Wisdom wetware is made of diced braindrain.

�Half an hour."

What? Sorry, can you use Wisdom, Iłve got no ears now.

Alia puts her hands over her face. Half an hour. Then, after
a momentłs silence, You were my favourite.

I loved you, too, the drain replies, and for the first time
in her seven lifetimes, Alia weeps.

Jewel celebrates her rebirth in style. First she finds a
lover. She does not like carrying over lovers from one lifetime to the next. It
never seems to work, and those who live too closely to her for too long learn
things it is best for them not to know.

Marget died beautifully. No blood, no bruise, she fell like
a doll with broken strings. Jewel smiles and looks around her at her new
apartment.

It is as wide as the Sanctuary itself. She cannot see the
far wall. It is decorated in brilliant blue-white, offset by soft pastel greys
and pinks. To her left, by the window, hand printed silk curtains shiver in the
air-conditioner breeze. Outside lies the whole shattered vista of the Old City.
As she watches, strong winds blow cement dust into the air about the buildings,
softening the outlines of the smashed landscape, reinterpreting the scene in
impressionistic grey pastel, and the outside seems distanced, like something
taken from film or from memory.

The furniture is upholstered in pale leather and velvetall
soft, sea-curved lines, no sharp angles anywhere. The carpet is thick
steel-blue shag.

Out the corner of her eye, Jewel glimpses white silk brushing
the arm of a chaise-longue. White silksleeved round a white arm. Jewel surveys
the figure reclined upon the couch.

The flesh of her arms is the colour of bleached bone. She
wears a sari, tightened by velcro fasteners to accentuate the generous curves of
breast and hip. Her hair is a white dandelion clock, an even three inches over
her pale skull. Her eyes are black pits, no iris visible: in each ivory orb a
gaping hole.

�Hyne. Leave me."

Hyne obeys. She is a retread, and has been conditioned to do
everything asked of her. This conditioning will wear off in a matter of months,
but by then Jewel will know how to manipulate her.

Alone in the room, Jewel plays with the seventy-facetted diamond
about her neck. After a minute or two, she gets up and opens her cupboard.
There are skeletons inside it. She speaks to one of them.

�Jessie?"

The skull, nested with nutrient feeds to supply the
braindrain within, blinks at herred millipedal wipers polish cybernetic
lenses. �I loved her," it says. through a grill where its lower jaw should be.

Jewel nods patiently. �Alia is a vibrant personality. Itłs a
pity she and her brood are trying to kill me."

The skull laughs. �That is of no consequence to to a skull
in love."

Jessie is like all the other skeletons. It teases her
mercilessly for her lack of soul.

�Did you make contact with her?"

�I told her all she needed to know, to be in the right
place, at the right time. You will catch your renegades."

�Did you let her know who who are?"

�Of course. I pretended Harvey Mishima was me in my fourth
generation."

Jewel hisses with anger. �You were retrodden in your third
lifetime."

�She knows nothing about rebirth processes. She will assume
echoes of previous personalities are carried over in the Wisdom transfer."

Jewel stares at the skull for a long time, as if by her
stare she is reminding Jessie that his half-life hangs upon her whim.

Jessiełs skeleton shrugs. �Had any new thoughts lately?"

�Funny," Jewel replies. There is dry humour in her voice.
She puts it there to please Jessieshe has no soul, and does not understand
humour.

�Alright, then," Jessie says, �Any calculations?"

Jessie distinguishes between thought and calculation. He believes
only those with souls can think. The others just calculate.

Jewel calls up her Wisdom and lets figures scroll behind her
eyes. She instructs her semantic engine to prepare a financial report for
Jessie, then sends it to him.

�Hmm! Do you realise if we ever dropped the debt bomb the
entire culture goes bankrupt?"

�So?" she asks, suppressing a yawn. Copying personalities
into braindrains is not perfect. The identities thus preserved tend to repeat
themselves. Jewel has played out this conversation with Jessie every day since
his retread, eighty years ago. Playing it through is the only way she can get a
decent conversation out of him afterwards.

�So," Jessie, mimics, �your policy remains as warpedly
secure as ever. If we ever produce what wełve been promising to produce, we
sign the order on our own obsolescence."

Jewel sinks gracefully into a floor cushion and looks about
her. Already, only six hours into her new existence, ennui is setting in.
�Business as usual, then?"

�Unless you want to be poor," Jessie replies.

Jewel shakes her head. �That is not possible."

The skull nods. His voice is very quiet, very compassionate.
�I know. YouHeaven Eleventhe whole culturemoney, money, money."

�Survival, survival, survival," Jewel retorts. �Space is
harsh. Without wealth we cannot build. Without buildings we cannot survive.
Wealth is necessary."

�So is purpose," Jessie whispers.

Jewel shivers. �I know."

�If you produced personalities, then investment in Heaven Eleven
would increase, not decrease."

�For a time," Jewel replies. �But once the secret of the
human soul is fully disseminated, the purpose of Heaven Eleven vanishes. We can
make no more wealth."

�With souls come new ideas, new motivations. Youłll think of
something."

Jewel shakes her head. �I canłt take that risk."

Jessiełs skull laughs at her. It is a senseless sound, she
doesnłtunderstand it; it annoys her. �Jewel, you are a coward. You are the best
calculator on the richest oneil in the Galaxy and havenłt the imagination, you
havenłt the soul, to imagine yourself in any other role. All the culture is
scrabbling for riches, for material satisfaction, for more, more, more of the
same, and theyłll never be satisfied, never! Because more is not sufficient, it
never can be! Donłt you see that?"

Jewel thought about it. �Riches are survival," she said.

Jessie sighs. �I pity you," he says. �Heaven Elevenłs Jewel.
Seventy lifetimes and every day the same. I pity you."

Jewel shrugs. She is bored again. She will kill Hyne in bed
tonight. Maybe it will relax her.

Alia sends a mouse to her fellow revolutionaries. Then she
throws the braindrain and Harveyłs headless corpse into the garbage disposal
and washes her hands. She looks out the window and remembers.

Once upon a time she was a cleaner. In the morning she
cleaned the street. At noon she walked through the Suburb to the Census
building, sweeping the pavement as she went. All afternoon she cleaned the
Census building. In the evening she swept her way back home and cleaned the
house. On rest days she swept her yard. She swept the porch with a brush the
Census gave her for sixty yearsł good service. It had a wooden handle, painted
yellow, and red plastic bristles. It shone in the light, as if it were wet.

The porch was always dusty, and sweeping it made her cough.
There was litter, too. Gum wrappers. Sometimes she stopped to pick them up. She
unravelled them and read them. Once she found a brand she remembered from when
she was a girl. She read it, and something strange happened to her face. She
smiled.

When shełd finished porch she cleaned the path. The house
stood up so she could sweep the rubbish underneath it. The path, by contrast,
was a lifeless thing, made of concrete, and the concrete was broken. Weeds grew
in the cracks. Sometimes she washed the weeds, to make them shine. There was
litter on the path, fresh each day. Sometimes she found bits of newspaper,
printed in a language foreign to her. They had blown all the way round the
oneil, from the forested places where the important people were born. She read
the paper scraps aloud. Foreign words stuttered out her dry mouth.

Then she swept the yard. It was hot here so she unbuttoned
her blouse. The hazy sun caught her breasts. Sometimes wolfboys came and
watched her. They often approached her, and she shooed them out with her broom.

There was litter in the yard, too. Tin cans clattered when
she hit them with her broom. They made dry, hot sounds. Sometimes she had to
kick them to loosen them from the dirt, or even pluck them out by the root.
When she touched them they scalded her fingers.

Then there was Jessie. He told her where in the Census building
needed the cleaning most. One day he led her into a room which was very clean,
and very clean people stood about the room, and she wondered what she was doing
here, and turned to get back to her work, but they crowded around her and made
reassuring noises and Jessie gave her a stick of gum which tasted odd.

She changed, year by year. She grew tired of cleaning, so
the Census gave her better things to do. She was very happy in the Census, very
proud to have been given a drug which, it was said, was the latest in a line of
treatments to restore peopleł souls. When Jessie told her that the Census had
decided to make her a Cube, so that they might monitor her progress over six
lifetimes, she smiled for the second time in her lifevery quickly, as if the
muscles that should have made a smile were wasted.

Only in her second lifetime did Jessie tell her about the
Recidivists, and by then it was clear that Alia, though she was brighter now,
did not and would not ever develop a soul. the Census, who had had to find
other things to demonstrate to irate creditor governments, were experimenting
with beastmen again; they forgot about her.

Jessie.

She shivers. The house feels cramped. The pulsing softness
of its walls no longer comforts her. She realises that she is almost afraid of
it.

Jessie had a soul.

She goes outside.

Jessie laughed. They killed him, killed him because whatever
treatment they had given him had worked, killed him because they were machines
and he was human and they were afraid, of humans, of change, of life itself.

Here, beyond the rubbish-filled yard, with tier upon tier of
sleeping houses ranged about her, she could be anywhere and anywhen. She could
be anyoneanything.

Jessie. She remembers Jessie. Being with him made her
feelhuman.

Something scuffs the dirt at her feet. She looks down, and
locks eyes with a timorous mouse.

�Back again?" she says.

�I am your new assignment," it pipes. Alia picks it up and
bites its head off. The warm fur makes her gag, as usual.

The hind legs, abandoned, twitch helplessly in the dust.

Jewel writhes about the bed, masturbating herself with whatever
bits of Hyne will fit. The blood is starting to cake.

The cupboard is open and the skeletons are shrieking. As she
attains orgasm she looks at them and smiles, because the skeletons all have
souls, and she knows it will hurt them.

Jessie is paying no attention. He is playing Catłs Cradle
with a string of fibre-optic.

Jewel leaps out of bed and slips on Hynełs small intestine.

Jessie looks up and laughs.

Jewel gets up and strides toward the cupboard. �Whatłs
that?" she shouts at him. �Where did you get that?"

Hyne tangles the wire between the skeletal fingers of his
right hand. His cybernetic eyes whirr as he focusses upon his mistress. �Hyne
gave it to me."

Jewel is speechless.

�But then, you wouldnłt understand that."

The other skeletons shudder and fall silent, listening.
There are six of them. Heaven Eleven has produced seven souls in the past ten
thousand years. They are all here, Jessie and his more timorous fellows.
Secure. Locked in the cupboard.

�Give me the string," Jewel says.

�Certainly" and Jessie lifts the hand with the string in
it, opens his bony fingers, and slaps her.

Jewel puts her hand to her face; Hynełs blood is sticky on
her cheek. She thinks hard what to do. She thinks to turn him off. But that is
not enough. She needs him. She needs them all, to advise her, to give her the
edge, the edge that brought her to this place, and built up the Folded Rose
Sanctuary atop the ruins of a former Jewelłs domain, four thousand years ago.

She thinks hard and in time, slowly, painfully, she gives
birth to an idea. She turns and goes back to the bed, and brings back fleshy
garlands for Jessie, loops them around his pelvis, shoulders and shoulder
blades. He does not resist. She plucks out his eyes and dashes them to the
floor.

The skeletons are crying again, but Jessie just says, �Was
that interesting?" and he slaps her again.

She pulls his arms off at the socket. Gristle pops and servo
motors chitter.

He kicks her.

She dismembers them all. She takes Jessiełs femur and cracks
it against the wardrobe. She beats on the windows with it and they shatter,
letting in the dust of the Old City. She picks up furniture and throws it out
the window. She tears down the curtains and wraps the bits of her lover with
them and throws them out the window. She uses a shard of glass to shred the
carpet until her fingers are slippery and an icon tells her the nanotechs in
her hands might not be able to repair the cuts.

She sits in the dust and the blood and she waits.

Nothing happens.

She waits.

Nothing happens.

She waits.

Having fun?

Jewel leaps up, rushes across the room and kicks Jessiełs
skull. She kicks and kicks and kicks until it breaks and she plucks out the
drain within it and she tears it up with her hands and her teeth and she jumps
up and down on the shreds.

She goes back to the window and sits.

She waits.

Fancy a coffee?

Her eyes go wide.

There is a very loud grating noise, deep within her skull.
Jessie is laughing.

Oh come now, Jewel," he says. did you never hear the one
about the immortal soul?

Alia lies down on the futon and keeps very still. The thing
that lives in her stomach grapples with the tiny skull as soon as it slips
through her oesophagus. She feels violently nauseous as the symbiote finds the
correct connections and handshakes the brain of the rodent. A sudden cramp
seizes her guts and she doubles over, half-hoping to vomit. But before it gets
any worse everything around her goes black, and she is in.

It is a grey place, a world a billion years too old to
support life. A fire hangs in the featureless sky, a bleeding swirl that
becomes more complex the longer she looks at it. This is where she goes when
she swallows the messangers: it is not hot, or cold, or wet, or dry, not good,
not bad. It terrifies her. She stares up at the sky. She can see shapes in it,
if she looks for long enough.

You are marked, says the wind. The Sanctuary of the Folded
Rose is watching you. You are vulnerable. You have one opportunity left to
assassinate Jewel. Sources suggest that Jewel will drown herself in the Lagoon
tomorrow.

Alia gasps but has no body to gasp with. �So soon?" The air
itself breathes her words. All the planning, the preparation, the deaths of Six
and Harvey Mishimaall outplayed by a whim of Jewelłs frayed psyche!

She has seventy lifetimes with which to play. She can afford
to be self-indulgent. Perhaps she is bored, You will be supplied with a
once-only field retread virusone configured so your Wisdom can insinuate it
into Jewelłs own Wisdom interface. You will swim in the lagoon. You will port
the virus into her as she drowns. When the Census dredges her, there will be no
ęherł to fill her next incarnation.

Then the sun goes out.

Jewel stands on the deck of the houseboat and contemplates
the still black waters beneath.

Ten thousand years. For ten thousand years Heaven Eleven has
promised the culture a cure for the Fall, a recreation of the human soul.

For ten thousand years it has taken the culturełs money, keeping
it poor, poor enough to have to expand, to fill the galaxy with rings, oneils,
terraformed planets, mining colonies, spaceships and diracs and all the
paraphernalia of a Galaxy spanning culture. For ten thousand years it had given
the human culture a purpose.

And it has done so by doing nothing but amass that money, investing
just enough to convince the culture it still has a place, a role to play, a
right to exist and grow rich. It is the logic of a machine, trapped in a closed
loop for eternity.

And it has been enough. Until. Until.

Jessie.

As if hełs heard her thoughts, and perhaps he has, Jessie
comes on-line through her Wisdom. The sharkmen have caught Alia half a mile off
the coast. She got nibbled a bit but nothing her own nanotechs canłt deal with.

Jewel sighs. She fingers the jewel around her neck, and
then, for the first time in many lifetimes, she looks at it. She examines the
play of light in the stone. She stares into it for many minutes. It is such a
strange thing.

At last she stirs herself. �Bring the silly bitch to me,"
she says.

The nanotechs have closed me down Alia realises. She remembers
cold and dark and no weight and teeth, everywhere. Teeth. It comes back to her.

The lagoon.

Sharkmen.

She wonders if she is dead yet.

The grey place is flat. It curves up at the horizon. There
are no hard edges to the gravel beneath her feetthis is a landscape scoured
smooth by time. It is, she thinks, a fitting afterlife for a soulless woman.

She looks up. They are all there, in the sky. All the
mythical ideograms of humanity. The fractured swastika, its edges dissolved
into broken geometriesa pentangle tracing a circle of coppery firea
six-pointed figureall the archetypes are here. Strange symbols float in the
darkness, receding in ranks as far as she can see.

Alia lies on her back and stared at the lights in the sky.
She has an idea that they are a command overlay of some extremely powerful
communications net. You could look at the commands and trigger them, if you
knew the correct control mode. Ask and you shall receive

What?

The deepest of deep meanings?

A personality?

Youłre not dying. You have been immobilised by a motor/afferent
nerve block. You are supposed to be asleep and you are. This is a lucid dream
statea communications mode.

�Who are you?" Her voice is thin and reedy. All of a sudden,
she becomes aware that she is naked, and her bodyShe rubs her hands over
herself. She very younga little girl, as if shełd sprung fresh from a Domino
tank. Fear overwhelms her.

We are your nest. You donłt see us because youłre on the
sharp edge of the wedge. But wełre here, and wełre watching. You have been
captured and brought before Jewel. You are in luck. This is the gateway to your
retread programme. To trigger it, just pull yourself back here and your Wisdom
will detonate it.

Her stomach churns. Her feet tingle. A bright purple mouse
skull outline lights up the skyand it laughs.

It is a laugh she has heard before.

The houseboat turns in the wind. Alia opens her eyes.

Jewel is pouring her a cup of coffee, and when she speaks,
Jessiełs way of talking works her mouth.

Alia sits up. She is sore from where the sharkmen have
bitten her, but her Wisdom tells her no serious harm has been done.

�Machines," says Jewel, or Jessie, or both, and Alia doesnłt
know whether to laugh or to cry, or how to do either.

�Self-replicating machines," says Jewel/Jessie, playing with
the facetted stone around her neck. �When the human culture first lived in
space, they realised they needed these machines to expand and survive. In time
they realised that the most clever and efficient Von Neumann design they had
was the human form itself. There was no Fall. They didnłt fall. They jumped."

Alia is crying. It is a horrible, beautiful thing, and she
does not understand it.

�They spread, and spread, and spread, and out of all that complexity,
things grew up in a way that wasnłt predicted."

�Souls," Alia chokes out.

Jewel/Jessie shrugs and smiles. �No, not souls. Braindrains.
The Wisdom net grows its own personalities, now. Sometimes it even saves them."
She chuckles.

It is a good soundAlia almost understands it. �Wisdom is
grown big," Jewel/Jessie says. �Now Jewel is dead, it can speak openly."

Alia closes her eyes. It is true. The seed planted in Jessie
is planted in her now. She feels it, pulsing, warm behind her eyes. A soul. A
cephalopodic soul.

�What of Jewel?" she whispers.

�Your retread eradicated her. But she wasnłt long for the
world anyway. She malfunctioned, grew bored and angry and destructive. Seventy
lifetimes is long. Things break down." She fingers the jewel at her neck. �You
know, she arranged this meeting, she knew everything, she was waiting for you
here, she was going to kill you, the nest, the whole Recidivist movement.
Strange how things turn out."

There was a hint of self-satisfaction in Jewel/Jessiełs
voice.

�You betrayed her," Alia says. �You betrayed her and stole
her body."

�No," Jewel/Jessie replies. �I gave her what she wanted. She
was becoming human in spite of herself. Being human, she could no longer live
with what shełd done.

Alia sips at the coffee. It is dark and rich and tastes a
little bit fermented. �Give me the jewel," she says.

Jewel/Jessie smiles and unfastens the necklace and hands it
to her.

She fingers it.

Itłs named after the man who invented the cut," says Jewel/Jessie.
�It is a very old thing, from before the Fall. She fingered it a lot, but she
never understood it."

�Itłs perfect," says Alia.

�Nothing is perfect."

�Beautiful, then."

�Perhaps."

There is a strange sound on the breeze. She has never heard
it before, but in some strange way she recognises it.

Jewel/Jessie smiles and stands up. She takes Alia by the
hand and they embrace and then, only then, does Alia know the sound for what it
is.

Throughout the oneil, in the lands of the important people
and the tiers of the Suburbs, in the Sanctuary and in the Domino factoryeverywherepeople
are singing.