Chaos Cipher (37 page)

A whole
carnival of fun had begun around the city, and Enaya Chahuán had
taken part in helping show their visitors around. By no means had
Pierce Lewis extended any further hospitality toward Vilen Krupin
since he had arrived, other than the boxing match and the victory
celebration. Enaya sensed their guests would feel uncomfortable, so
she got in touch with the away supporters and asked volunteers to
help her show them around the city.

‘
I’m not
interested in plants,’ said Krupin curtly.

‘
Sure,’ Enaya
chuckled, ‘which is why I’m taking you to the garrison. I think
military training would more suit your interests.’

‘
Plants are
boring.’ Krupin said, looking around. ‘Are all these people
celebrating plants, really?’

‘
The Meadows
aren’t about how we cultivate food. Minerva Meadows is about how we
cultivate fun and recreation.’

‘
I think your
sports and training facilities are small.’

‘
They’re as
big as they need to be in this area,’ she explained. ‘Most our
activities are outdoors and more cooperative rather than
competitive.’

‘
That’s
stupid,’ Vadim the Raw-Dog said cynically.

Enaya took a
breath and prayed if there were Gods that they would get her out of
this mess.

Some of the
away supporters shared drinks and interests but their guests were
mostly quiet and unresponsive, bringing down the happy attitude of
many of the other members. Enaya was now getting used to their
names. The one who called himself Raw Dog was still battered and
bruised after fighting with Hattle. He’d needed his brow stitching
and had a large plaster above his eye. Then there was Horace, a
lank and skinny looking kid with long blond hair he greased back
into stiff looking spines. Similar to Krupin, he liked to sport a
menacing set of teeth grills, and his eyes she noticed were fully
black and she was told these were not ocular contacts. Titans often
had various bio-hacks and she supposed his had something to do with
seeing in the dark. The biggest of the men was Lyov, Krupin’s
personal body guard. He wore a smart, grey and black vicuna suit,
tailor made from the Atominii’s Savile Row, his eyes shielded
behind ocular visors. Finally, there was Nikkolai. She expected
Nikkolai to be the most dangerous and crazy since his skin was
covered in tattoos and tribal markings she had no idea about. But
after speaking with Nikkolai he was the one she found most
agreeable. Although still set in his ways with quiet mannerisms and
a steely eyed stare, he seemed most eager to talk and did so with
genuine curiosity. She’d asked him about his tattoos and Nikkolai
had said he trained with various tribes in the Novus and around the
Northern outlands. He’d told her that pain was his greatest ally
and an experience he’d grown to understand. Then he’d asked her
about her life, about her family and background, something she had
not been asked about in a very long time. She was happy to share.
He’d told her he thought they had both been marred by war. And
where she took the path of politics, he embraced the Kalashnikov
and the Molotov.

When they
arrived at the training grounds Krupin was surprised to see a small
band of militia walking around with weapons. They were smiling;
some were laughing and playing games. Enaya walked them over to
meet Artex Valdek, the mercenary overseeing training. Artex had
agreed to meet with the guests and show them around the training
areas.

Krupin
approached the big man with the numbered armour. He noticed the
etched number 5 on Artex suit and the scorpion tattoo by the side
of his ear.

‘
You like
scorpion’s Valdek?’ he asked.

Artex smiled
and nodded.

‘
I know that
mark,’ Krupin claimed. ‘The Scorpions were Atominii armed hardland
police used for social control. Is this where you got your
branding? Were you once a hardlander flesh pusher?’

Artex Valdek
didn’t respond. He might have told Krupin he had the wrong
Scorpions this time but decided against it. He wouldn’t let Krupin
know exactly what the mark really meant, but he let him think it
was something to do with hardland control. It wasn’t. Instead,
Artex pointed to the gun ranges and redirected the
conversation.

‘
Interested
in firing one of those?’ he asked.

‘
I am,’ said
Vadim Raw Dog.

‘
Good,’ said
Artex, ‘follow me.’

He led the
guests and some of the supporters through the training yards. Some
of the martial artists were slow fighting, going through the moves,
counters and blocks and disarming one another so others could see
how it was done.

‘
There’s no
order here,’ Krupin noticed, walking beside Artex.

‘
There’s
order,’ said Artex, ‘we have rules, a constitution. They call us
anarchists, and although in many ways we practice it, the strict
definition I think is holacracy. We practice new social systems
through practical experimentation and we change our methods to meet
the situation. We have to be dynamic.’

‘
But I mean
there’s no command.’

‘
Chains of
leadership command exist in the militia,’ Artex explained. ‘Here
I’m a leader to my soldiers in the Eagle clan. But it is limited.
If I overstep my bounds I can be removed from duty through majority
veto. A Mercenary like me is a clan leader, that is to say I train
them and help them perfect their skills based on my
professionalism. I then start up a new Eagle clan faction elsewhere
once my work is finished here. The constitution states I must
finish my goals after I’ve defined them for myself.’

‘
And you have
a government here, yes?’

‘
No,’ Enaya
Chahuán came in, ‘we have an organisation.’

Krupin began
to laugh. ‘The Atominii have an organisation. The Atominii do not
need a government because the technology has freed the market.
People can trade however they wish with whatever resources they
have.’

‘
That’s where
you’re wrong Mr Krupin,’ Enaya Chahuán felt it prudent to report.
‘The Atominii most definitely do have a government, a hidden one,
one that serves the interest of the already powerful, a hidden
state government that infiltrates the mind of its population to
believe that no other way of life is possible apart from the
Atominii. And its cyber-markets have enslaved the population, not
freed them. It instils fear of practicing anything new and
dispossesses people of attempting to live differently through
Atominii dependency. These people are PR for what you refer to as a
high-tech market. It presumes everybody to be a consumer and only
great company owners to be creators to which people rent their
services. Here we do not agree with authority unless it is
legitimate.’

‘
Legitimate?’
Horace suddenly snapped. ‘The fuck is that, lady?’

‘
It means,’
she started calmly, ‘the people here have an impact on decisions to
the proportion and degree they are affected by them as stated by
our constitution. The Three Circles. You may have seen them around
the city?’

They hadn’t,
but she illustrated their meaning anyway. Enaya pointed to one of
the symbols of the Three Circles on a door above the military
building and they saw it at last. The circles, triangulated evenly;
in the top circle was the profile of a human head with what looked
like a set of gears and cogs titled
cognition
, in the lower two circles
there was a fist raised to the air titled
liberty
, and in the other a smiling
emotocon with the gender signs signified and titled as
ludus
.

‘
Cerise
Timbers has a constitution based on the Three Circles,
Cognition
,
Liberty
and
Ludus
which means play
and leisure. Between
cognition
and
liberty
arises self-consciousness, between
Liberty
and
Ludus
arises the
secular, between
Ludus
and
Cognition
, fulfilment emerges, and centring them all is
Utopia
.’

‘
Utopia?’
Krupin grinned looking around.

‘
Don’t be
fooled by utopia, Krupin. The emergent culture here put it in the
centre of our symbol because it is a guide to our progress, it
signifies only our orientation, not an actual thing that can be
realised, but a reason for bringing together the circles. Because
it can never be achieved, you see, it simply orients our direction.
Because of our ideology we are able to organise society without
hierarchical systems of authority while promoting thought and
wisdom. We don’t cast a vote on everything. Instead we facilitate
an open dynamic discussion. Because in places like the Atominii,
those who seek the highest points of hierarchy and reach it, too
often do not live by the rules they apply to others. Here, everyone
is empowered, leadership is distributed by consensus and shared. We
welcome criticism, especially by those who take pains to understand
our ways, while in the Atominii, people aren’t even aware they’re
imprisoned.’

Krupin
started to laugh again, forcefully now, as though to drown out
Enaya’s words.

‘
The Atominii
is not a prison, why do you think so many want to get inside?’
Horace said.

‘
Yes, the
Atominii offers freedom, it’s the hardlands that is the prison,’
Lyov agreed, arms folded in his nice neat suit.

‘
When they’ve
got your minds, your souls, your friends and loved ones, all you
can do is want in,’ said Artex, ‘you pay with your thoughts,
sacrifice your creativity and receive brownie points and snippets
of paradise for your services to their neuro-commerce. It’s that,
or risk being an outcast, alone in the hardlands. It’s known as a
false choice.’

‘
That what
happened to you?’ Krupin bit, staring at the Mercenary.

‘
No,’ he
answered with an even temper. ‘I got sick of killing my brothers
for a paradise nobody believes we can share.’

‘
Because it
doesn’t belong to everyone,’ Krupin argued.

Artex didn’t
care. He opened a locker and retrieved a rifle, slamming a
cartridge under the handle and loading the chamber. He smiled to
Raw Dog and handed him the weapon, then pointed with his chin at
the sandbags downfield.

‘
There’s your
target,’ he told him. ‘Safety’s on.’

Vadim turned
and held the weapon up and then Artex whistled loud, getting his
attention before he started shooting.

‘
The
protection!’ He said, pointing to a pair of goggles and ear
protectors hanging from a nail at the shooting gallery’s booth.
Vadim smiled and began to take aim again when Artex whistled for
the second time.

‘
I strongly
advise it,’ he said with no humour. ‘And if you want to shoot that,
keep the rifle’s stock tight into your shoulder. And lean in as you
fire. Understand?’

‘
I shot gun
before,’ Vadim grunted, putting on the goggles and ear protection.
It took him a moment to get set up. He seemed unsure about the
safety setting and eventually figured out how to take it off. Then
a few rounds burst from the assault rifle and pelted the sandbags
down the range. He turned back to smile at Krupin and his friends
when Artex shouted at him for turning around with a weapon. Irked
by this, Vadim unloaded the rest of the weapon’s cartridge at the
targets and removed his goggles.

‘
No ammo-’ he
shouted at Artex, turning around, ‘so no danger.’

Vadim put the
weapon’s butt down to the floor and took the weapon by the muzzle,
crying out suddenly as he burned his hand on the hot metal. Artex
caught the rifle before it hit the ground as the others burst into
laughter, mocking Raw Dog’s stupidity.

*

With Enaya
Chahuán leading the way back towards the festivals and air zone,
Krupin was curious to know how Cerise Timbers kept the Atominii off
their backs.

‘
Not always
successfully,’ she dejectedly revealed. ‘Actually not long ago we
lost a few of our scouts in the Novus.’

‘
That so?’
Krupin asked.

‘
They were
killed by the Blue Lycans,’ she explained.

‘
Yes the
gene-freaks of war.’ He said. ‘Olympian genetic soldiers, we’ve
been trying to catch them a long time. Every time anybody gets
close they never are heard from again.’

‘
The idea is
to stay away,’ she responded.

‘
Yes,’ Krupin
smiled his gold tooth visible between his uneven grey incisors.
‘Only imagine if one could be tamed? You could have very strong
army I think.’

Enaya didn’t
comment. Lips pursed she looked on at the festivals, hoping soon
the music would be too loud for them to continue their
discussion.

‘
If one were
inclined,’ she said, ‘perhaps.’

A stage was
set up not far from the air zone and groups of people were piling
in from all sections of the dome. They came from the hamlets, from
the tree-homes, areas of East B’ One and Two and North A One and
Two. There was singing and chanting as groups of people got onto
the stage. They were the cymatic blues and psychedelic rock
band,
Lieutenant Jack-Wire and the Mystic
Racket!
Their guitars wailed and licked
with blues rhythms, projection screens mapped moving screens and
displayed wonderful illusions to the musicians on stage. The licks
were fun, kicking, a voice sang, a voice with stones in his throat,
a grinding, gravelly voice that hit well with the offbeat and
kicking guitar licks. And the audience screamed as they knew the
song well. A huge fire burst onto the stage and as the beat
dropped, a sinusoid of electric bass took over, musical
interference that controlled how the fire burned, sonic cymatic
sounds distorting the flames. And all at once the band started up
again, mixing with the trance of electronics.