Fractions (45 page)

The barman's another giant, some brain-boosted gigantopith or whatever (she's never had occasion to sort out the hominid genera) and he's slumped sadly on his elbows, wrists overhanging the near edge of the bar counter. He turns away from the gladiators on the television and smiles at her, or at any rate bares his yellow fangs.

‘Yesh?'

‘A Dark Star, please.'

Without getting up the barman reaches for bottles and mixes her a rum and cola.

‘Eyshe?'

‘Yes please.' She's careful with the sibilants; the urge to slide into mimicry (it's a bug in Spy, actually) is hard to resist. She lets Spy handle the process of paying, selecting the right grubby note from her filched collection of promissories. Gold values she can handle in any of her frames of mind, but crops and machine-parts, land and labour-time are foreign to most of them.

The ice clinks as she takes her drink to an unoccupied table nearest to the end wall. She sits down with her back to that wall. She lays her purse, and her pistol, casually on the table. She sips her drink, lights a cigarette, and keeps an eye on the door as if waiting for her friends or boyfriend to turn up.

The two photofit faces currently hovering in her pattern-recognition and target-acquisition software might come through the door any minute now. If she's lucky, they don't know she's armed. She's almost certain they don't know about Spy, and Soldier, and all the other routines she's loaded up. They're expecting Secretary, and Sex, and Self, who between them can't raise more than a kick or bite or scratch. They can handle that, and as for the others here…once the heavies flash their cards the customers will watch her being dragged out of the place with all the empathy and solidarity and compassion and concern that they'd give to the recovery of a stolen vehicle.

But there are people in this district who don't see things that way, and if the repossession guys – the greps, as the slang goes – don't come in and find her, or if they do and she gets away, she'll be off into the back streets to seek human allies.

That's all as may be. Her owner might by now have discovered just what hardware and software she's packing, and he'll have someone and/or something more formidable on her tracks.

She keeps her eyes on the door and her fingers close to the pistol.

 

‘English spoken here?'

Wilde scuffed the surface of the canal-bank path – it had changed from trodden dust to a strip of fused sand which broadened and merged with the street ahead, the permanent way made from the same material as if the finger of a god had drawn the lines from space – and waited for the machine to reply.

The city had grown on the horizon as they got closer, eventually into a huge, vaguely organic-looking jumble of soaring spiky towers, their visible structure like the interiors of bones or the skeletons of sea creatures, their outlines picked out by lights. What had looked from a distance like some matted undergrowth was now resolved into a fringe of low buildings which – unlike all the other shantytowns Wilde had seen – appeared to extend in through the main body of the city on whose edge they now stood. To their right and left were fields. The bulky moving presences of machines in those fields were the only traffic they had so far encountered. Lights had passed over, but it was difficult to tell whether they were natural or artificial. Once, something huge and silent and leaving a green afterimage or trail had rushed above their heads, above the city and made a distant flash beyond.

‘Waterfall,' the machine had explained, unhelpfully.

Now it shifted on its feet and answered Wilde's question. ‘You'll be understood,' it said hesitantly. ‘English is the predominant language. Your usage and accent – and mine, I might add – may seem a little quaint.'

‘Before we go any farther,' Wilde said, his gaze flicking from the buildings under the first street-lights ahead to the machine, ‘get me straight on a couple of things. First, is it normal to be seen talking to a machine? I mean, are – robots? – like you common around here?'

‘You could say that,' said the machine dryly.

‘OK. Next item on the agenda as far as I'm concerned is getting something to eat and a drink and a place to crash out. Am I right in thinking that I'll have to pay for it?'

‘Oh yes,' said the machine.

‘And you don't happen to have some money stashed away in that shell of yours?'

‘No, but I can do better than that. See the second building along the road? It's a mutual bank.'

Wilde said nothing, although his mouth opened.

‘You do remember what that is, don't you?'

Wilde laughed. ‘So I get to raise some cash by mortgaging my property?' He gestured at the clothes he stood up in. ‘That's not much help –'

The machine gave a creditable impersonation of a polite cough.

‘Oh.' Wilde looked at it with a renewed, speculative interest. ‘I see.'

He set off along the road, ahead of the machine for the first time since they'd met. The machine lurched into motion after him.

‘Just don't get the wrong idea,' it said, its voice as stiff as its gait.

 

One of the girls at the nearest table is giving a rendering of the pub's signature song in an authentically dire accent, full of maudlin yearning.

Self knows that the Malley Mile is a real place, and that both the sense of loss and the rainbow effect refer to aspects of its reality that – strangely, or is it just part of the program? – bring tears pricking to even her cold eyes. Scientist is yammering on about it, but she doesn't want to know right now.

She's just settled down with her third drink, burning the alcohol straight to energy but remembering to emulate the effect, when the door bangs open and a girl walks in who sure isn't some office-worker deciding the weekend starts here.

She's tall and thin, though her flak-jacket makes her look broad. Narrow jeans, spacer boots, a big automatic holstered on her hip. On her other hip she's carrying a large bag with a strap taking the strain to her shoulder. Short blonde hair lying close to her skull. Face too bony to be bonny. The main things going for it are her bright blue eyes and her big smile, which at this moment is turned on the men at – and the man behind – the bar.

She walks up to the bar and orders a beer, and as she drinks it she chats to one or two of the guys, and while she's chatting she reaches into her big satchel and hauls out fresh-looking tabloid newspapers and carefully counts coins from the men who take them. Some of them take them as if they're keen to read them, others with a show of reluctance and a lot of banter, but most just shake their heads or shrug and go back to their own conversations and watching, the television screen, where somebody's just about to take a sudden death shoot-out. All the while the girl's every so often glancing around the room in a way that has Spy torn between admiration at the unobtrusive way she does it and anxiety that she's looking for someone quite close to Spy's hard little heart, namely Self.

The girl at the bar goes on talking to the men at the bar for another few minutes, then eases herself casually from the stool and takes a handful of papers and tries to sell them to the office-girls. She's only successful at one table, and then she's walking to the last table where the dark-haired woman sits alone.

A shot echoes. Two hands jolt towards two pistols, then retract as a ragged cheer from the screen and from those watching it indicates that it's just a death penalty being scored.

And then, grinning and shaking her head, she's standing there looking down. ‘Jumpy tonight, aren't we?' she says.

Spy and Soldier are jumpy indeed, jostling for possession, and it's all Spy can do to modulate Soldier's sharp command into a smooth, low-voiced request: ‘Just don't stand between me and the door.'

The tall woman steps smartly sideways. She looks surprised, but she doesn't go away.

‘Hi,' she says. ‘My name's Tamara. What's yours?'

Self takes over. She keeps her hand where it is.

‘Dee,' she says. ‘Dee Model.'

‘Ah,' says Tamara. ‘I see.' Her eyes widen slightly as she says it, then look away as if, for the moment, she's at a loss. ‘Mind if I sit down?'

Dee gestures to her to do just that. She takes the seat to Dee's right, between her and the bar.

‘What's that paper you're selling?' Dee asks.

Tamara slides a copy across the table. Its masthead says
The Abolitionist
in quaint irregular lettering with barbed serifs. The articles, which Spy assimilates in about two seconds and which gradually seep through to Self, are an odd mix: news snippets about labour disputes; technical articles about assemblers and reactors and stuff; some columns of a sort of paranoid gossip about the doings of various important people, in which Dee's owner's name appears here and there; and long rambling theoretical pieces about machine intelligence.

Dee puts it down, having just given it what looks like the most casual, superficial glance. She wonders for a moment if this is a trap, but Spy thinks it very unlikely: these are exactly the sort of ideas she'd expected to find in this area, and it's obvious that Tamara's espousal of them is completely, perhaps resignedly, familiar to those around her. (That those around her might be part of some elaborate set-up doesn't occur to Dee, or even to Spy: although their background is rich in intrigue and betrayal, they lack the ramifying conspiratorial imagination that would be second nature if they lived in a state.) Dee tries to keep her wild hope out of her voice.

‘Do you really think that human-equivalent machines are, well, equivalent to humans? That they have rights?'

‘Oh, sure,' Tamara says. ‘Don't you?'

‘Hmm,' says Dee. ‘Let me get you a drink.'

When she returns she's carrying Tamara's satchel. She swings it under the table and places her pistol back on the top. Tamara waves away the offer of a cigarette. Dee lights up and leans close. Soldier takes over second place from Spy, who doesn't like what's going on at all. The most Spy can do is make sure no-one overhears. Another probe into the room's electronics, and the music's volume goes up a few decibels.

‘I'm a machine,' Dee says.

Tamara's obviously half-suspected this, just from the name, but just as obviously doesn't quite believe it.

‘You coulda fooled me, girl,' she says.

Dee shrugs. ‘Most of my body was grown in a vat or something. Most of my brain's artificial. Technically and legally I'm a decerebrate clone manipulated by a computer. Neither component is anything but an object, but
I
feel like I'm a person.'

Tamara's nodding vigorously, the way people do.

‘And I need your help,' Dee adds. ‘I've escaped and my owner's agents are searching for me along this street.'

Tamara's head stops moving and her mouth opens.

‘Oh shit,' she says.

Dee stares at her. ‘What's the matter?' she asks. ‘Isn't this what you want?' She glances at
The Abolitionist.
‘Or is this all –?'

Tamara closes her eyes for a moment and shakes her head slightly. ‘It ain't like that,' she says, looking embarrassed. She steeples her fingers to the sides of her nose and talks quietly into this adequate mask. ‘Of course I'll help you…We'll help you. It's just – this isn't the main thing we do, you know? We've persuaded a few people to free machines, but a machine freeing itself doesn't happen very often. Not that you get to hear about, anyway.' She's grinning again, back on track. ‘You into making a fight about this?'

‘I'm ready for any kind of fight,' Dee says. ‘Who's this “we”?'

‘Half a street full of anarchists,' Tamara says.

Dee doesn't understand what this means, exactly, but it sounds hopeful, especially the way Tamara says it.

‘Can you provide sanctuary?' Dee asks.

‘We're probably your best bet,' Tamara says abstractedly. ‘There hasn't really been a proper fight on this issue. It'd be quite something to be the ones to pick it. Bloody hell. This could shake up the city, the whole damn' planet!'

Dee tries to think of a reason why this should be so, but apart from a bit of handwaving from Scientist there doesn't seem to be any information on file.

‘Why?' she asks.

Tamara stares at her. ‘You are definitely a machine,' she says, smiling past the side of her hand. ‘Or you'd know the answer.'

Dee considers this, trying to formulate Scientist's bare hints into speech.

‘It's because of the fast folk, isn't it?' she suggests brightly. ‘And the dead?'

Tamara's eyebrows flash upwards for a split second. ‘That's the smart worry,' she says. ‘It's the stupid worries that are the real problem…I think you'll find. Anyway. Are the greps likely to be hanging around outside?'

Dee thinks about this.

‘No,' she says. ‘Not now. But there might be others.'

Tamara drains her glass. ‘Let's go,' she says.

They're just getting their things together when the door opens and a young man and an old robot walk in. The man looks haggard and is wearing desert gear, and the robot's just a standard construction rig. Tamara doesn't give them a second glance but Dee watches as the man pauses at the doorway and looks around the room with a curious intentness.

He sees her, and his gaze stops.

He takes a step forward. His face warps as if under acceleration into an awful, anguished look, more a distortion of the features than an expression – it's unreadable, inhuman. At the same time Dee can feel the robot's questing senses scan her body and tap at her brain. Spy and Soldier and Sys move dizzyingly fast in the virtual spaces of her mind, repelling the hack-attack. Her own reactive hacking attempts are deflected by some shielding as impenetrable as – and perhaps no other than – the robot's hard metal shell. The robot makes a jerky forward lurch as the man takes a second step towards her. All of Dee's several selves start screaming at her to get out.