Fractions (66 page)

Damn. I tried to remain poker-faced.

‘What you see is what you get. I've done nothing secretly that goes against what I've said openly.'

‘Of course. Then you can have no objection. Take a look at these…'

Agreements, ready to sign. Maps. London, for a start, was to be carved up. The part conceded to the space movement encompassed the Greenbelt and an arc of suburbs in which we had free trade zones. They'd even given it a name: North London Town, which on the map some military hand had clipped to NORLONTO.

It was a lot. Frankly, I'd have settled for less.

‘And in return?'

‘No armed actions to be launched from the territory. And one other thing…'

‘Yes?'

‘Ah…the nuclear deterrence contract, Mr Wilde.'

‘You want me to end it?'

‘Good God, no!' He looked shocked. ‘We want you to transfer the policy to us.'

‘To the
government
? But you've got –' I stopped, and looked at their ever-so-slightly-embarrassed faces.

‘Oh,' I said. ‘I see.' I turned again to the map, and picked up a pen. By the end of the night we had something I could take back to my committee.

Two days later I sat in a room at the back of a Greenbelt shebeen with a group of men and women who, thanks to my negotiations, had emerged blinking from hideouts and camps and cells. I explained to them that they had the chance to try out their ideas on a couple of million more or less enthusiastic people, with minimal interference from a state only too glad to have this explosive and impoverished mass off its hands. I told them the only price for this was a
de facto
acknowledgement of that state's authority, and the renunciation of an untested nuclear deterrent about which most of them had mixed feelings and which was now obsolete.

I didn't expect gratitude or agreement, and I didn't get them. What I got was comrades falling over each other to denounce me. I'd expected that. Being expelled from the organisation came as a surprise. The vote was unanimous.
Et tu
, Julie.

‘Good day to you, comrades,' I said. ‘And good luck.'

I stood up and pushed back my chair and ducked out of the door and walked away. Two days after my expulsion, US/UN crack troops took over and disarmed every surface-based deterrence exporter. The renegade subs took longer, but they were rounded up too. Among other consequences, my ex-comrades didn't have our nuclear policy to bargain with, so they had to settle for a smaller Norlonto than I'd been offered.

It served them right, but I wished they could have kept Islington. The Christian fundamentalists got it, and set about ethically cleansing the place. Eleanor and her family had to abandon Finsbury Park. They moved in with us and it was months before they found a new house.

I was getting too old for that sort of thing.

Why couldn't we have gone in through the canals?' Wilde grumbled, as he booted yet another inquisitive machine away from his ankle. Several hours of difficult progress through back alleys, with the expedition crunching and stomping and shooting their way over and past assorted mechanical vermin, lay behind the strain in his tone and the strength of his kick.

‘Ha!' Tamara snorted. ‘You
seen
the canals around here?'

‘As it happens,' said Wilde, ‘no, I haven't.'

‘And you don't want to.' Tamara flattened herself against a wall and signalled back to the others to halt. ‘But you will.'

She poked a device like a long electric torch past the corner, and waved it back and forth, keeping an eye on the readings on a handheld meter and the view on a wrist-screen.

‘OK,' she announced. ‘No sapients. Looks fairly safe. One at a time. Deploy to the centre of the street, spread out, then single file to the right. Go.'

She ran out into the middle of the road, which was about fifty metres wide and obsessively well-paved. Along the centre were empty plinths of concrete like traffic-islands. Tamara bounded up on to the one facing the alley, looked around again and beckoned to Wilde. He dashed after her and jumped up beside her.

‘Cover my back,' she said. Wilde stood behind her and began scanning up and down the street, his pistol held in both hands, close to his waist. The street had its own strange pedestrians: robots of various shapes and sizes clambering walls, edging along pavements. One or two bowled down the permanent way, in light wheeled vehicles. Ethan had to dodge one of these smartly as he ran over. It sounded a subsonic siren that set everyone's teeth on edge.

‘You look like you know what you're doing,' he said to Wilde, as he stationed himself a couple of metres further back along the plinth.

‘Trained in the militia,' Wilde grinned. ‘Mind you, it was a long –
look out
!'

A black, winged missile was hurtling towards them. Wilde raised his pistol to head height and shot it. It came down and hit the roadway in a shower of feathers.

‘Pigeon,' said Ethan. ‘Take it easy, man. They're harmless.'

When the alarm spread by this incident had been calmed, the deployment continued. After a minute or two they proceeded behind Tamara along the canyon of office-buildings. Somewhere a couple of streets away, an automated process was sending gouts of flame high in the air at irritatingly irregular intervals. Between flares, the illumination of the buildings themselves was almost as unpredictable: some windows dark, full of the expedition's reflections as they passed; others, at street-level or high up on the faces of the buildings, lit from within. Shadows and silhouettes moved, but not those of humans. At the same time, it was impossible to believe that a robot-based commercial life was going on; it was all too random, too artificial.

At the next major junction the street they were on crossed one that was narrower, but much more crowded: a slowly moving river of metallic machinery, over which faster entities skittered and skipped.

‘Makes you sick,' Ethan muttered. ‘Some of the big 'uns would make bloody good cars.'

‘You pay me enough, I'll catch you one,' Tamara told him. She waved them all into a skirmish line, again keeping Wilde next to her.

‘Right,' she said, swinging her back-pack to the ground. ‘Time to hack through the jungle.'

She unbuckled the pack and tugged down the flaps, exposing a piece of equipment with a small keypad, extensible aerials, rows of meters and screens.

‘Amazing,' said Wilde. ‘Popular mechanics! Amateur radio!'

‘Heap of junk,' Tamara said. ‘No fucker will miniaturise it. Not enough demand.'

‘You put this together yourself?'

She looked at him. ‘Wouldn't trust anybody else to.'

Her fingers flew over the keypad. Screens flickered, tiny speakers howled and stabilised.

‘Gotcha! Traffic channel.'

She twirled a knob, looked up at the machines passing like cattle ahead. Made some adjustment, twirled it again. A ten-metre-long crawling machine suddenly swerved right across the road. The machines behind it piled implacably into it and within seconds formed a mounting heap of wheeled or tracked robots. As those in front of it kept moving, a space soon cleared.

Tamara was still watching the feedback.

‘Fucking go! Go! Go!' she yelled.

The others sprinted across.

Tamara lifted the pack, leaving the control-panels exposed.

‘Still here?' she said to Wilde. ‘Shit, OK, let's move it.'

She sidled across the road, Wilde at her back keeping lookout. A machine on four long, stalked legs, its body about the size of a melon, with a cluster of lenses at its front, suddenly reared above the pile-up and scanned them.

‘What's that?'

Tamara looked up and stopped.

‘Don't move,' she said.

Wilde held his breath, and froze in the act of looking over his shoulder at the machine. The lenses withdrew, and another tubelike extension moved into position. Tamara stabbed frantically at the keypad.

‘Shoot!' she yelled.

Wilde jumped and turned, but it wasn't him she was calling to. A volley came from the far side of the street, knocking the machine over. Tamara and Wilde ran to join the others.

‘Shit,' said Ethan. ‘That one was sapient.'

‘I
never
hunt sapients,' Tamara said, gasping and rubbing the small of her back. ‘Don't mind killing the little fuckers, though.'

They moved on; over a bridge that gave Tamara an opportunity to point out to Wilde exactly why using the canals for transport in the machine domains was not a good idea; and on until they saw, in a wide park at the end of the long avenue, a scrap-metal stockade.

‘Talgarth's court,' Tamara said.

As they walked up they were swept by sonic scans that set their teeth buzzing, laser scans that made them blink and curse.

‘Ignore it,' Tamara said. ‘They have to check.'

The park was bizarrely neat, and kept that way by tiny devices that roamed through the grass and among tree-branches. For the first time since they'd landed, Tamara enjoined care against stepping on any machinery.

‘Talgarth don't like it,' she insisted. ‘Fines you.'

They picked their way across the grass, their weapons holstered or slung – the bristling armaments on the stockade being more than enough to protect them from any feral gadgetry. Machine-guns, laser cannon, radar and whirling, ever-ready bolas…

The stockade's three-metre-high gate swung smoothly open before them, and quickly shut behind them. About a hundred metres square, grassed like the park, with a dais in the centre, seating and media-equipment scattered around, and wooden cabins of varying sizes around the perimeter. Nobody else was present.

‘What do we do now?' Wilde asked.

Tamara looked at her watch. ‘It's one in the morning,' she said. ‘We pick a cabin to put ourselves up in, and we sleep.' She grinned. ‘It's an old vertebrate custom.'

‘Well worth keeping up,' Wilde said. He looked around indecisively as most of the others moved confidently off.

Tamara caught his hand.

‘Come with me,' she said. ‘I'll see you're all right.'

He complied, a confused look on his face.

‘You watch out,' Ethan called after him. ‘She follows old primate customs.'

‘Go fuck yourself!' Tamara yelled back. ‘See you in court!'

 

‘So this is how non-propertarians do it.'

‘Yeah. Free love.'

‘Ha. I was faithful to my wife for seventy years…'

Wilde's voice trailed off, then continued, more happily, ‘…and now I've been with two other women in three days.'

‘What! Who else?'

‘None of your business. Free love, right?'

‘Aw, go on.'

‘She's probably dead by now.'

There was a silence. Then Tamara, her face lit only by a dim night-light and the glow of Wilde's cigarette, spoke in a cautiously cheerful voice.

‘Hope it ain't catching.'

Wilde gave her a lopsided grin and stubbed out the cigarette. Their eyes adjusted swiftly, and they spent a few moments looking at each other.

‘Could be,' Wilde said. ‘I'm dead myself after all.'

Tamara investigated.

‘Well this bit's definitely alive.'

‘Oh no.'

‘Oh yes.'

‘How d'you expect me to stand up in court tomorrow?'

‘You're standing up all right tonight.'

‘Mmm.'

‘Anyway – ah-hah-ha-ha-ah – you'll get help from ah-ha-ha!'

‘I'll give you
Invisible Hand.
'

‘Nah,' said Tamara. ‘That's for
much
later…'

 

‘It's eight o'clock,' Tamara informed him kindly. ‘You look terrible.'

‘Thanks.' Wilde steadied himself on one elbow and reached for the mug of coffee she was holding out to him. ‘Oh, God. How long have I been asleep?'

‘Four hours.'

‘Thanks to you, you promiscuous anarchist bitch.'

Tamara smiled.

‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘I've put a drug in the coffee. You'll be more awake than you can imagine.'

‘Is that why I'm seeing things?'

‘No. You left your contacts in.'

‘Thanks again.' Wilde reached for his cigarettes and rasped his face. ‘Does this anarcho-capitalist court by any chance have some rip-off, monopolistic enterprises associated with it?'

‘Funny you should ask.' Tamara indicated a couple of packs of cigarettes and a bubble-pack containing a razor and toiletries. ‘I put them on your bill.'

She busied herself with making breakfast while Wilde padded about, getting washed and dressed and drinking the drug-laced coffee. The cabin had three adjoining rooms: a small bedroom with an elementary wash-stand and a tiny toilet; a small kitchen, and a larger room containing communications equipment and computer interfaces, all on a conference-table with half a dozen chairs around it.

‘How long are we expected to stay here?' Wilde asked, shaving.

‘As long as it takes.'

‘Has Reid turned up yet?'

‘Yup. And his supporters. Odds are about even if it should come to a fight.'

‘That's a happy coincidence.'

‘No, it was arranged by –'

‘Don't tell me, Invisible Hand. OK. Jesus.' He towelled his face. ‘I haven't felt so unprepared for anything since my final exams.'

‘What are exams?'

‘Old primate custom.' Wilde crunched his Harmony Oats. ‘I gather you've evolved beyond it. Let's catch the news.'

Tamara set up the communications rig in the main room, while Wilde watched. She was still in her jeans and tee-shirt and flak-jacket, but she'd put on make-up and perfume as some kind of gesture towards formality or femininity.

‘Am I still a mess?' Wilde asked.

She looked him up and down. ‘You'll do,' she said. ‘Use the after-shave, though.'

They checked out the news. The case was the lead item on all channels. Overnight, a whole sub-culture of newsgroups and discussion for a had sprung up around its aspects. The three killings claimed by Dee and Ax, their disappearance, and the appearance of Jonathan Wilde gave the whole affair an added edge of social panic. At least two heretical churches had already proclaimed Wilde a sign of the end.

‘I hope your abolitionist comrades are prepared for trouble,' Wilde said.

‘What kind of trouble?'

‘You should know. Don't you always get hassles, selling your paper? Hasn't Ax shown what can happen if people suddenly think the world's going to change forever? Imagine all of that multiplied by tens – hundreds!'

Tamara shook her head. ‘I can't. I've read about riots and revolutions, but we've never had anything like that here.'

‘Count yourselves lucky.'

Tamara's cheeks reddened. ‘Oh, I do, don't get me wrong. Ship City's basically not a bad place, it's just that – there are all those wrongs done to machine minds, and – it's a long way from the ideals of anarchism. And people really do think that you suddenly turning up means all that's going to be put right.'

‘“The ideals of anarchism”,' Wilde repeated heavily. He gazed at Tamara's face for a few seconds. Nobody, looking on, could have had any doubt which of the two youthful faces in the cabin had the older mind behind it.

 

Wilde spent the next hour or so in conversation with a subset of Invisible Hand's legal database, the ‘MacKenzie's friend' software. It was a friendly, and user-friendly, system. Its hardware component was an ear-to-chin phone that picked up what he said and heard, and passed it by short-range radio to a local relay. Its prompts could be whispered in his ear, or displayed in his contacts.

Shortly after nine, Tamara interrupted his study of precedents and arguments.

‘Reid's come out of his cabin,' she told him.

Wilde blinked away the display.

‘What's he doing?'

‘Just wandering around with his friends, sipping coffee and chatting to people – and to the news 'motes.'

‘I think I'll do the same,' said Wilde. ‘Also, I wouldn't mind talking to him.'

Tamara smiled wryly. ‘Bit late to settle out of court.'

Wilde stood up. ‘It's never too late,' he said. ‘But no, I don't hold out much hope of that! The fact is, I can't wait to see him.'

Tamara was silent for a moment. Wilde lit a cigarette.

‘I should warn you,' Tamara said. ‘I spoke to him yesterday, when he called me, right, and…even though I'd seen him on the news and so on, I found when I actually spoke to him that he's very…I mean he has a kinda, you know,
presence.
You may find him a bit…intimidating.'