Interzone 251 (13 page)

Yopu rolls on his casters to Blue’s side, careful to steer clear of the snaking cables.

“What is in the envelope?”

“And now Yopu manifests curiosity,” says Blue. Somehow his canine face conveys pleasure, and he commences ripping open the paper packet.

“You haven’t answered my questions, why don’t you answer?”

“Climbing buildings is rough on the hands, I guess. But she did it for this,” says Blue, holding a tiny microchip up to the overhead light. “And this, little ’bot, this is purpose, writ large. And it’s about to be yours.”

***

“Test number thirty-seven.”

“Excuse me, Blue, but this is test thirty-six.”

“Thanks, Yopu.”

Injee groans. “This is taking too long.”

“You wanna do this? Stop rushing me.”

“I don’t know what you’re doing, even.”

“Watch.” Blue turns away from the programming tablet and disconnects the data cable protruding from Yopu’s back. “He’s unhooked, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Yopu, who is the most important human in the city right now?”

“Thomas Nickelhart.”

“Why?”

“Nickelhart is a man of peace. He works to free all of us from tyranny.”

“Do you love Nickelhart?”

“Oh, this is bullshit,” Injee interjects.

“Would you give your life for him?”

“Yes, I would, because it’s the right thing to do.”

“It’s just repeating some programmed crap!”

“Why?” asks Blue. “Why is it the right thing to do?”

“Oh, this ought to be good,” says Injee, folding her arms over her thin chest.

“Nickelhart is wrongfully imprisoned because he stood up against the sanctions on non-humans. Peaceful relations are the key to equality.”

“You don’t really think that. You’re a machine.”

“Machines are part of the non-human brotherhood, too.”

“Do we need this, for it to talk?” Injee says, turning to Blue. Then, quieter, “About peace?”

“You want him to carry out his new programming, don’t you?”

“It doesn’t need to spout Nickelhart’s rhetoric. It’s just a machine.” She throws her hands up in frustration or disgust. “Besides, how am I supposed to use that?”

“Language enhances purpose.”

“It’s not going to be talking to anyone. In fact, if it does, it could give away the plan.”

“He’s loyal, that’s part of the programming.”

“Then, make it loyal to me. Or loyal to this one task. It just needs to be devoted to one tiny demonstration, to take out one guy.”

“You won’t like that.”

“You’re supposed to do what I tell you while your master’s waiting to get out. If this doesn’t work, I’m going to tell him how you failed.”

They glare at each other for a few long moments. Blue looks away, stalks over to the workbench.

“What do you want, Yopu?” Injee asks.

Yopu shifts back and forth on metal casters.

“To free Nickelhart.” A tone of longing, of something more, a desire left unfulfilled.

“That’s not enough. What else?”

Yopu looks in the direction of the broken doll, still lying forlorn and fractured on the workbench, and then down at the place, now empty, from whence perfect white dumplings once dispensed.

“Perfection. I want perfection. Everything is dirty and broken.”

“You hearing this, Blue?”

“I hear,” he says, growling softly, his back to the girl and the dejected robot.

“What if you could blast away all the things that are ugly, dirty and broken, Yopu? What if you could fill the world with light and make it beautiful, perfect?”

“Injee, don’t,” says Blue, his mechanical voice rising. “I can program him to care about the cause so he’ll do the job. Don’t you hear what he’s saying?”

“Perfection is possible,” says Yopu quietly. “But you want something else.” He looks at Injee for a long moment.

“Wipe it,” says Injee. “Then install the switch for the demonstration. Ten hours.”

***

“Don’t worry, Yopu.
I didn’t take it all.”

“I’m not worried, Blue.”

“We’ll show her, alright. She’s a human, a small thinker.” The dogboy gives Yopu a backward glance and then clambers up an aging fire escape to the rooftop where Injee waits with her binoculars.

Yopu ambles to the corner near the steps of the municipal building and squats in his usual place. Passersby pay him no notice.

This is to be the day of proof of his loyalty to Nickelhart, the day he shows the world that the Beloved Master should be free, but there’s something more. Yopu yearns to illuminate the heart of each man, woman, child, Newcomer, and Moddie. One shining moment for the world to see, a beacon of cleansing light. Starting with this one man.

The suited lawmaker, the one with eyebrows like rampaging caterpillars, and his owlish Moddie bodyguard come down the steps towards him. The man hefts his briefcase to reach into a pocket for a credchip, which he then waves in front of Yopu’s reader.

No blinking light, no blip of confirmation.

Inside, looking out at the man through the mono-lens, Yopu thinks
light, glorious and white
.

Almost time.

“Maybe it’s out of order,” says the bodyguard, glancing right and left, ever vigilant for external threat.

“Damn.” The suited man groans and turns on his heel. The pair begin to retreat in the direction of the waiting rickshaw lineup at the foot of the massive steps.

From atop the nearby building, Injee and Blue peer through binoculars at the rickshaw.

“They’re moving away, what is it waiting for?” Injee says. “If you’ve fucked this up—”

“Wait,” says Blue. The dog’s shaggy tale thumps on the concrete. “Wait for it.”

Now.

A glow, then a searing blue fire, lights the ring Blue has configured around Yopu’s neck joint. His circuits surge as power drains from his powerpack and the hot-wired backup kicks in. A whining sound, soft and then louder, and in an instant, the blue pulse expands. A circular blast radius ripples outward with Yopu at its brilliant epicenter.

Reptile urchins clustered on the nearby curb are the first touched by the blast. The light consumes them where they tussle over a bag of snacks, shoveling crumbs into their tiny pink mouths. For a fraction of a second, they glow, too, as though lit from within by pale fire. Then their charred forms crumble into fine ash. A pair of turquoise-colored sunshades lay among the dusty particles.

On the rooftop, Injee gasps, “Big, why is it so big?” Her rough little hand flies to cover her mouth. Blue hops and claps with delight, and slaps Injee on the back.

The owl-faced bodyguard turns his head all the way around to look toward Yopu for a fraction of a second, just enough for Yopu to glimpse his widening eyes as the pulse overtakes him and the lawmaker. The owl Moddie reaches for his ward’s elbow, and his kevlar vest slumps to the pavement, gray ash flowing out through its armholes. The lawmaker’s flowing synthetic robes flutter to the ground as he dissolves. Yopu’s internal camera records every second.

The light passes through the nearest rickshaw driver, who utters a cry as it touches him, a slight, strangled sound. For a brief moment, his straw hat flares, a reddish flame shooting from its peak. He, too, disintegrates, and the wooden handles of the rickshaw; the metal body of the little two-wheeled transport tips over with a clatter. The wave of light flows on past.

Somewhere down Lotus Blossom Lane, a woman screams.

This, too, thinks Yopu, is perfection.

***

This is Tracie Welser’s third story in
Interzone
. ‘A Body Without Fur’ (#240) was listed as an ‘Honorable Mention’ in Gardner Dozois’
The Year’s Best Science Fiction
. Her work has also appeared in
Crossed Genres
and
Outlaw Bodies
. She is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Tracie currently resides in California, where she is working on her first novel.

First, there’s the news. But you don’t pay a great deal of attention to it, do you? You have other things to do. Eventually, though, you see the headlines on your timeline, reposted by friends. Another high school slaying in the States; a civil war in some godforsaken country somewhere in Africa or the Middle East; drone strikes in Central America; and those first, worrying reports from Angola, of a flu-like infection that’s already killed eleven farmers and seems to have jumped from human to human…

***

1) You’re on a train from Island Gardens to West India Quay. You’re with your brother. You’ve been helping him move house and now you’re on your way to a tapas bar to get something to eat. The lights of Canary Wharf shine through the rain. In the carriage there’s this young Chinese guy wearing a German army shirt. He’s scratching at a fresh tattoo on his forearm. Lightning flickers over the Thames.

Later that afternoon, you’re walking with friends on Peckham Rye, kicking through piles of wet orange leaves. Jet planes whine overhead on approach to the airport. A green parakeet flits across the path.

Somebody sneezes, and you make a joke about bird flu.

***

2) A year later, you’re living in the ruin of a terraced house somewhere in North London. You can’t remember how you got there. Three other people live in the house, but you only know two of them. Understandably, you tend to keep yourselves to yourselves, and, when you meet, you have handkerchiefs clasped over your mouths.

Food is a problem, as is security.

You keep a wooden hockey stick next to the sofa cushions that serve as your bed, and an old carving knife tucked into the leather motorcycle boots you stole from the Goth guy who lived in the house opposite until the local kids put a petrol bomb though the plate glass of his living room window.

Those kids.

They run like feral animals, into everything. They know nothing of school, of games consoles or chart music. They’ve inherited a different world, a pandemic world. Most of their friends are dead. While you’re still struggling to adjust, they’re running wild. They don’t know any other way. They have no context, nothing except stories. And who wants to listen to stories when there’s petrol to pilfer and cats to catch?

Yeah, cats.

Even thinking about them makes your mouth water. It’s been so long since you had any sort of meat.

***

3) When you were younger, you used to worry about zombies. They were all over the internet back then. People used to daydream about killing them. Your friends used to joke about what they’d do during a zombie apocalypse. Now, though, you know it isn’t the undead that are the problem. Walking corpses would be preferable to the lying-still-and-decomposing kind. At least the walkers would keep themselves busy, and you wouldn’t have to burn them.

Yes, daily cremations have become part of your routine. You can’t let the dead fester. They breed disease and attract rats. At first, you and the others tried to keep a semblance of order and dignity. Later, as the numbers of the dead increased, the process became steadily cruder. Now, it’s all about lugging the bodies into a pile and setting them on fire.

***

4) Sooner or later, the water pumps are going to stop and the taps run dry. Then, you’re going to have to move. You’re going to have to find somewhere with a dependable supply of fresh water, untainted by waste or corpses, or radiation from the failing nuclear plants on the coast.

And, inevitably, every other fucker in the country’s going to have had the same idea.

And so you pack your shit into a four wheel drive Honda that used to belong to the local playgroup leader. You take all the tinned food, and your hockey stick, and you head west.

***

5) You have to drive on the pavement a lot.

***

6) When you reach the A40, you find it clogged with abandoned cars. A military helicopter clatters overhead, heading for Heathrow. Foxes haunt the hard shoulder.

Once you get out past the M25, the traffic queues thin out and you pick up speed. You might even reach Oxford before nightfall.

***

7) What have you brought with you?

Photo albums?

Books?

A pile of old CDs?

A dead smartphone?

A dying ebook reader?

None of that crap’s going to be worth as much as a pair of waterproof boots and a good knife.

***

8) Sticking to the back roads, you go a whole day without seeing another living soul, save for the crows flapping from the telegraph wires as you pass.

Somewhere in Wiltshire, on the forecourt of a deserted filling station, you start to sneeze, and tell yourself it’s just a cold.

Back on the road, the villages you pass have been barricaded. The inhabitants are fearful of infection. Paint-daubed warning signs tell you to keep away.

***

9) Eventually, you find yourself on the street where you grew up, standing on the pavement outside your childhood home. The place looks as if it’s been empty a long time. Some of the windows have been smashed. The garden’s a mess. You have no idea what brought you here.

Inside, the house smells of mildew. You try the radio in the kitchen, but the electricity’s off. The cupboards are bare.

Despite the chill in the room, you feel hot and feverish. Right now, you’d give anything for a bowl of your mother’s homemade chicken soup.

Newspapers lie scattered on the table. You can’t bring yourself to look at them, so you try the stairs instead.

Outside, it’s starting to rain.

***

10) When you were eight years old, this was your bedroom. You lie on the bed and close your eyes. If you squeeze them tightly enough, you can almost feel your old toys around you.

You stay there, wrapped in the blanket, listening as the rain taps skeletal fingers against the skylight. You remember the feel of your father’s bristles, the way your mother used to call up the stairs when it was time for school.

How did all that warmth turn to cold and hunger, to transit camps and columns of refugees?

You start to sweat and shiver.

***

11) A sound comes from your sister’s room at the end of the hall: the endless scratching of a record player repeating the same phrase over and over and over. You lie quietly on the bed, listening, wrapped in the musty blankets, too comfortable to move. Your long-dead best friend sits on the arm of the chair by the window.

“I just can’t see the point any more,” she says.

She starts to cry.

Lying there, you watch her walk out into the hall in her thick socks, to the top of the stairs, and you wonder if you should go after her. But the blankets are warm and you’re very tired.

Your breath wheezes in your chest.

After a while, you pull the sheet up to cover your face.

***

This is Gareth’s sixth story in
Interzone
. His latest novel,
Hive Monkey
, is out now from Solaris and reviewed in this issue. You can find him online at 
garethlpowell.com
.