Creation Machine (27 page)

Ten seconds sees me out of the apartment and on to the terrace. Far too long. Thirteen, and I am near the elevator. No chance – I could get in but I’d never get out again. Fifteen seconds, and we’re into Plan B. I never liked Plan B.

I run past the elevator door and round a corner, and there they are. The shade squares.

No time for relief. I reach up with both hands.

Field mesh is weird stuff. I know it’s not real but it feels it. It’s like trying to grab an oily film on water and it takes a couple of goes before I’ve got the middle of a square in each hand.

Eighteen seconds. No choice left. Run.

I reach the parapet in four big strides, tighten my hold on the squares, gather a mouthful of saliva, launch myself out over the edge – and fall like a stone.

The squares have gone limp. With a small part of my mind I notice my bowels emptying. Rudi doesn’t like that but I haven’t time to help. I’m busy watching.

Sallah’s block has thirty floors. Halfway down there is a restaurant terrace that sticks out just a bit further than the rest. It’s my landmark. If I act too soon then there’ll be time for Security to catch up with me. Too late, and there won’t be much left to catch.

The terrace flicks past. I spit up towards the squares, as hard as I can, and hope they’re as smart as they’re supposed to be.

For an aching millisecond nothing happens. Then both shade squares spread and harden into storm mode and the upward force nearly breaks my grip but not quite because I was ready for it.

We hit the ground hard enough to bruise but not hard enough to do serious damage, and I add another apology to the thousands I’m going to owe Rudi by the time this is over.

I catch my breath. Then I run.

On the way I take stock. So far so reasonable. The simulated Sallah is thoroughly compromised, which was the idea. This simulated world has been nudged on to a new path for the delight of some voyeur somewhere. Coming back to the practical, I badly need a change of clothes, but Rudi’s wardrobe has a couple of issues. First, it is thirty blocks away, almost an hour on foot. Far too long for the owner of a face which will get very famous, very fast, just as soon as the news hits the public screens. Second, it is in what’s about to be the most watched apartment on the planet.

Third, we both have an appointment somewhere else. Rudi’s remaining time is ticking down and so is mine.

The city is on a grid layout. Picture an aerial map. The streets run up and down, left to right. Sallah’s apartment building is just below the centre of the map. Below it, parks and parliaments; above it, commercial, the shitty but necessary business of swapping lots of money for lots of stuff, or the other way round. And above
that
, the other sort of commercial. The human sort.

I head up the map, past a couple of blocks of shiny shop fronts. The ones they put in the tourist brochures, but only after they edit out the junkies and the baby whores. They call it Spillage, here – a nasty intrusion on the public life of the city, by all the human refuse that makes the private life of the city possible. Under the awning of an up-market clothing store I step over a pair of outstretched legs. Their owner doesn’t move. She might be twelve or thirteen but it’s hard to tell through the bruises and the make-up. As I step over her I notice the syringe sticking out of one of her skinny thighs. It’s empty. So’s she, I guess.

I find time to hope that my nudge does some good.

A few blocks more, and we’ve left the nice places behind for good. Warehouses, narrow streets, little workshops that never stop working, and bigger ones that spew chemicals and acrid-smelling smoke across the pavement. I step sideways to avoid a spreading puddle of something purple that seems to dissolve concrete, then throw myself sharply against a wall as a truck grinds by. The wheels swish through the puddle we just avoided, splashing the purple stuff against the wall. It steams. I watch it for a second then move on. Like I said, we have an appointment.

The smoke den doesn’t advertise itself. Just a door in a wall. Anyone who needs to know it’s there, knows. I knock and wait, counting under my breath. I’ve reached ten by the time a thin, nervous-looking boy opens the door. Ten is good. Ten means everything is okay. Twenty would have meant we have a problem. Immediate would have been run like fuck.

I push past the boy. It’s dark inside, and the air smells of sharply sweet smoke with undertones of sweat and alcohol. Drowsy conversations stop as I enter, and then start again as the door closes. A few people glance at me with unfocused eyes.

The Weed Captain is standing behind the bar that divides the long room into two. The surface in front of him is covered with little flat tubes. They’re mouthpieces that plug into the coiled manifolds of smoke pipes that run round the walls – people get stoned here on an industrial scale. He looks at me, his eyebrows raised. I nod, and he waves me through the lift-up of the bar and into one of the private stalls behind. He watches me sit down. ‘Wait here.’ His voice is a spluttering hiss that comes from a puckered hole in his neck, because smoking is
very
bad for you. He turns and leaves, drawing the curtain over the entrance of the stall.

I wait, doing my best to keep calm. It’s not easy. I’m crazy with adrenalin and exhaustion. I work on my breathing, getting it gradually down to some kind of even keel, focusing my eyes on a spot of dirt on the filthy curtain. After a few minutes my heart rate is something like normal.

Then the curtain moves. Not much. Just a tiny sway, and then stops, as if it had been caught by a draught. One that hadn’t been there before. At the same moment, I realize that I can’t hear anyone talking. Then there is a new sound, of a faint
pock
followed by an edgy rumbling noise. As if someone had bowled something underarm and it was rolling towards me. Something small but heavy. Something made of metal.

I throw myself up and backwards as hard as I can. The thin partition splinters and I am rolling head over heels through into the very back of the bar. I crash over empty barrels, bump into a line of bales of weed stacked waist-high, throw myself over it and crouch down on the floor, hands over my head.

For a second there is silence. Then there is a hiss, an orange flash and a noise like a lot of angry fireworks, and I realize that the rolling thing was a mini-cluster. Nasty and illegal. I hunker down as much as possible and hope like hell it isn’t heat-seeking.

The bales shake as the tiny warheads thump into them. Someone screams and then stops. The firework noise peaks and fades out, and plaster dust flutters down on to the backs of my hands.

There is the sound of feet, getting closer, and I realize I’m running out of time. Correction. Have run out. Somehow I fucked up, and it feels like treachery but I have to go.

I say a quick, silent, utterly inadequate ‘sorry’ to Rudi for getting him into this. Then I do the thing inside my mind, which I can’t describe except to say that it feels like
this
, to snap myself out of here.

Nothing happens.

I try again.

Still nothing. Still here.

More feet, coming closer, and a crash as someone shoves some wreckage aside. I’ve got seconds, and no options at all. I have to make the sim work for me.

I reach deep into the controls of the body I am inhabiting, going far too fucking fast but there’s no time to be gentle, and I find the place I’m looking for.

There.

Rudi’s body shuts down. No heartbeat. No breathing. Muscles lax (and a bit more shit eases out, and I find time to be pleased with the artistic touch). Eyes open because I need them, but staring like death. He’s got about a minute like this before his brain starts dying. And at the moment, I wouldn’t like to guess what happens to me when his brain dies.

One minute. I wait, and hope desperately that my stupid idea works. That they scan for life signs soon, and that the fact of an apparently dead body stops them from doing anything in a hurry. Just as long as it buys me time.

The feet stop. Ten seconds gone. Twenty. Thirty. Time enough for a scan, more than enough. What . . .?

Then I hear an intake of breath and a click-hum, and realize that it hasn’t worked, because that is the sound of an energy weapon going live. I’m about to fry.

And then, with no warning at all, the world twists and I am somewhere else, lying on a hard white floor, still in apparently Rudi’s body, and a woman’s voice says quietly:

‘Got them.’

I have time to think
‘What?’
, before someone seizes my upper arm.

I convulse, wrenching my shoulder up and around so that my arm is pulled out of the grip. Then I am up on my feet and running.

Then the world blurs for a moment and suddenly I am running the opposite way and someone in front of me is reaching out. I swerve round them, twisting my shoulders to stay clear, and the world does it again and I am on the floor where I started. I yell and thrash but then something buzzes against my arm and everything fades out.

Deep Simulation, Plenum Level (‘Entry Hall’), Catastrophe Curve

FLEARE FLOATED IN
nothing at all. Open, her eyes saw a clean, fuzzy whiteness. Closed, there was black. None of the familiar reds, purples and greens of light filtered through thin muscle and circulating blood. Just black, which meant that the white probably wasn’t white, or at least that it wasn’t white light. Or perhaps it was, and her eyelids weren’t really eyelids?

She felt like laughing at her own self-analysis. She turned, if that was the right way to think about it, to Muz, who was floating next to her. He had chosen to appear as a sphere again and she could see a distorted reflection of herself in his surface. ‘Where are we?’

‘It calls itself the Entry Hall.’ Muz’s voice sounded flatter and harder in here. ‘It’s the jumping-off point to all the families of sims. It doubles as a data pipe, too. Can you feel it?’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t feel anything. There isn’t anything to feel.’

‘Try turning round.’

She did, and felt a breeze blowing on her face. She hadn’t noticed it before. She frowned and turned back, but there was no corresponding air against the back of her head. She looked at Muz again. ‘How does that work?’

‘However it wants to. This is a sim, remember? You’re code, I’m code, it’s code. We’re all code.’ He drew level with her face and floated nearer, until she had to cross her eyes to stay focused. ‘Welcome to my world,’ he said quietly.

Fleare suddenly felt cold, although she wasn’t sure how she managed it in this place where there was nothing to feel. ‘It’s creepy,’ she said. ‘Does it have to be like this? Can it be like something else?’

Yes.

The voice was in her head. She jumped and looked around. ‘Who are you?’

I am your Moderator.

Fleare looked back at Muz and raised her eyebrows. He moved away a little and gave a quick up-and-down bob. ‘It’s friendly,’ he said. ‘It runs the place. Or, more, it kind of
is
the place.’

She compressed her lips. ‘Okay, ah, Moderator. Can this place have another appearance? Something more human?’

Yes.

For a moment, the white that wasn’t anything winked out. Fleare’s senses swam, and she closed her eyes reflexively. When she opened them, she was in the biggest space she had ever seen.

‘Okay,’ she said slowly. ‘That’s – better . . .’

They had parted company with the old Orbiter. Sooner or later someone was bound to put two and two together, and besides, the ancient ship was getting edgy about being so close to the Cordern; the server farm was far down the thin end of the Catastrophe Curve and the Trash Belt was too sparse to shield them from view from either direction.

Fleare had not felt comfortable about the Orbiter’s replacement. She stared at it for a long time. Then she turned to Muz. ‘Really?’

‘It’s perfect. It’s small, it’s fast, it’s inconspicuous. What’s your problem with it?’

She reached out a toe and prodded it. ‘It’s a . . .’ She paused, and prodded it again. ‘Okay, I give up. What is it?’

‘See? I told you it was inconspicuous. There are tens of thousands of these things abandoned in the Trash Belt.’ Muz floated over to position himself proudly above the object. ‘It’s an Autonomous Waste Fissile Containment Unit. Otherwise known to its friends as an AWFUKU.’

Fleare gave herself a moment to process that. Then she grinned. ‘Yeah, well, that’s roughly how I feel too. I don’t need to know what its enemies call it.’ She stood back and examined the object. It was an extensively dented, comprehensively rusted cylinder about three metres long and two across, with a large, crude-looking reaction motor bolted – she looked closer and realized that it really was quite literally bolted – to one end. Most of the dents were concentrated at the other end. She supposed that implied speed. She considered another prod, and then changed her mind and converted it into a proper kick. The impact made no sound at all, but her foot hurt. ‘Fissile Containment? This is a nuclear waste thing, isn’t it?’

‘Originally, yes.’ She wondered how a shiny sphere could look embarrassed, but Muz had managed it. ‘It’s been repurposed. Rapid transport of sensitive material. It’s quite expensive.’

‘Oh, good. It looks pretty used. I hope they spent some of the money on decontamination.’

‘I’m sure they did. They would have said, otherwise.’ The sphere knocked against the top of the cylinder, and a hatch squeaked open. ‘Shall we?’

‘I guess.’ She raised a leg towards the hatch. Then she stopped. ‘Muz? If you irradiate me, I’ll . . .’ She paused, searching for words.

‘You’ll what?’

She gave up, stepped forward and shoved a leg in through the hatch. ‘I’ll
glow
, okay?’

‘And you’ll look beautiful. Now shall we go?’

‘Muz? Fuck off.’

They went.

It really was quite fast.

She looked round, and then up. She was in the centre of a vast hall. Distant walls soared tens of metres and curved over to meet in a vaulted ceiling pierced by great skylights. Low-angle sun made blue-grey shafts full of dust motes, looking almost structurally solid as if someone had floodlit a line of oblique girders. She stood on a floor made from octagonal tiles of a pinkish swirly stone, with black squares filling the corners. The far wall was full of tunnel openings.