Fractions (71 page)

‘He's telling you not to push it,' Tamara muttered.

Wilde grinned at her and went forward again as Reid took his seat. The tension in the crowd had diminished. Even Talgarth's impassive face betrayed relief.

‘The robot Jay-Dub resurrected me without disaster,' he said. ‘But there is more to the matter than this.'

Reid leaned back in his seat, hands behind his head, and watched Wilde with half-lidded eyes.

‘The court has given its view on one of Reid's charges,' Wilde said, ‘and left the other in abeyance until the other Jonathan Wilde, aka Jay-Dub, can be…prevailed upon to answer it. I now wish to press my counter-charge, the outcome of which may perhaps affect how any fines and damages in these matters are allocated. It may also affect the question of the resurrection of the dead in general.' He smiled at Talgarth, who no longer seemed relieved. ‘Not in a legal sense – on that, I'll defer to the court – but in a practical sense.'

Wilde stepped a little to the side, so that while he was unarguably and correctly addressing the court, he was also speaking to Reid and to the wider audience.

‘My counter-charge is this: that David Reid had me unlawfully killed, by the reckless action of people acting on his behalf and by his personal, wilful neglect of my injuries. That having done that, he has made no efforts in good faith to resurrect me. He claims that this is difficult – nonetheless, no evidence exists of any attempt on his part to overcome the difficulty. I claim compensation for loss of life-experience and loss of society, for my entire down time. That is, for nothing less than the whole of Ship Time, and possibly for longer.'

Eon Talgarth had to call for order, more than once, before the hubbub ceased.

‘Do you have evidence to bring for this charge?' he asked.

‘Yes,' said Wilde.

He stalked over to his seat, reached into Tamara's backpack, and pulled out the folder of Talgarth's notes. He held it high as he walked back, and presented it to Talgarth.

‘The evidence,' he said, ‘has been gathered by a certain Eon Talgarth, and has been a matter of public record and never challenged.'

The court fell silent, except for the toy-helicopter buzzing of the remotes and the distant din of the machinery outside.

Talgarth riffled through the pages, and shook his head. ‘There were conflicting claims,' he said, ‘as to the manner in which Jonathan Wilde met his death. Although I myself inclined to the view which you have just stated, there are no surviving witnesses other than David Reid and, putatively, yourself. Its not having been challenged has, I'm afraid, no bearing on the matter. No court on this planet recognises libel, and they do not recognise a refusal or failure to rebut a claim as any evidence in its favour.'

He sighed, as if in regret for more than the inadequacy of the evidence; for, perhaps, a political passion long spent, which had driven him to compile the dossier. He handed the folder back to Wilde.

‘The court cannot accept this as evidence,' he said. ‘In the absence of other evidence, or the confession of the one you have accused –'

He glanced at Reid, who was shaking his head vigorously.

‘– which I understand will not be forthcoming, and which I have no power to compel, I do not see how this charge can be tried at this time. Should you call Reid as a witness, he may refuse to answer, and no adverse inference may be drawn from that.'

Reid's legal adviser stood up and conferred briefly with Talgarth, while Wilde stepped back out of earshot and looked away. When the woman had sat down again, Talgarth tapped with his gavel.

‘The counter-charge is dismissed,' he said, ‘without prejudice to either party. Wilde's bringing of the charge cannot be called vexatious or frivolous, and is not to be held against him. The name and reputation of David Reid remain unsullied. The allegation that his killing of Wilde was unlawful, or with malice, remains as it was before the charge was brought, that is, an unsubstantiated historical speculation which he is within his rights in treating with contempt.'

Reid and his assistant exchanged smiles.

‘However,' Talgarth went on, with an abrupt harshening of his voice, ‘the claim that Reid was responsible, culpably or not, for the death of Jonathan Wilde is…considerably better attested. The witnesses are not, of course, in this court, but some are known to survive and could be asked to testify.'

He beckoned Reid's adviser, and after they had conferred again he banged his gavel.

‘Reid does not contest his responsibility for the fact of Wilde's death.' He held out an open hand to Wilde. ‘You may proceed.'

 

‘Ax?'

No response. Ax is watching television in his head, or in front of his eyes, or whatever the hell he does. Dee can't stand his autistic but audible interest for a second longer. She leans over and shakes his shoulder. He rouses himself and frowns up at her.

‘Wha –?'

‘Ax,' she says patiently, ‘would you mind
patching
this fascinating material to a
screen
, so I can see it too?'

‘Oh. Sorry, Dee.'

He disengages from the cortical downlink and fiddles with switches. Outside, on the big screens, the outskirts of the Fifth Quarter roll slowly past. Dee watches the chaotic activity with disdainful dismay. If this is how machines behave when they're left to run wild, she reflects, it's no wonder humans mistrust them.

Around the crawler, which is making its way up a broad street, dozens of other machines, each about thirty centimetres long, are scurrying and sniffing about. They look like larger versions of the cleany-crawlies you find in houses, and although partly autonomous they're guided by radio control from the cab. Meg has told her they're looking for traces of a specific poison: one of the public-health countermeasures with which this place is periodically bombarded. The poisons – generically known as Blue Goo – are the nanotechnological equivalent of viruses, regularly updated and mutated to keep pace with the likewise evolving smart-matter wildlife of the machine domains. The job of spraying them from the air is done by a charity, which has no difficulty at all in raising money and volunteers.

Ax gestures to her to look behind her. Part of the screen she turns to gets masked as another window clicks up. It's the Legal Channels service, showing the court case. Wilde – or Jay-Dub, as Dee finds herself mentally calling him – and Meg have been keeping an eye on it, when they can spare a moment. Ax has been given the task of keeping a
close
eye on it. Dee has been feeling left out, and wonders if the others have been trying to spare her feelings. Nice of them, but a waste of time.

Because, whatever bad news the court case may bring her, it's all irrelevant now. As Ax said, that shit is
over.

 

Wilde has apparently just finished speaking. He turns away from the judge, Eon Talgarth. Even Dee's heard of Talgarth, a former crim from the Malley Mile orbital camp, who studied law as a prisoner; got involved in, then disillusioned with, abolitionism; and has for years made a living adjudicating disputes between scrappies and between machines.

As Wilde turns away the camera follows his face, and he gives it a slow, arrogant grin.

‘Well that was some speech!' says the breathless commentator. ‘He looked quite annoyed when he described his killing – his
alleged
killing I should say! Sorreee! And nobody's ever suggested before that we might owe the dead their back pay! For the implications of that please see –'

Ax snips that particular thread and all Dee hears now is the silence in court as Reid strides to the mike. His face makes her quail. She's hardly ever seen him angry, and never with her, but she knows his anger is to be feared and right now he's angry at the whole world.

The camera circles around behind Talgarth. Reid's more composed now, and Dee feels proportionately calmer – in fact, as she gazes at the close-up, she feels the stirring of an involuntary affection and desire. It's all the more disturbing in that she feels it as a person, not as a slave, but she puts it down to her past and concentrates on what the man is saying.

‘Senior Talgarth,' he says heavily, ‘what we have just heard is a disgrace to this court, and an insult to the intelligence of us all. It is also dangerous, in stirring up an opportunistic envy that has no place in a basically just society such as ours, where no person is reduced to selling their lives or labour to those more successful than themselves.'

‘Objection!' comes a shout from Wilde.

‘Sustained,' says Talgarth sternly. ‘We aren't here as a public forum.'

Reid dips his head. (Dee hears Ax, behind her, snort.)

‘The point,' Reid continues, ‘is that my opponent has asserted that those with an interest in the dead have a claim against me, because I've made no attempts in good faith – as he puts it – to tackle the immense task of finding a way to bring about the resurrection of the stored dead. Well, Esteemed Senior, good people, that is a task which I freely admit is beyond my capacities!' He spread his hands and shrugged. ‘Have I ever prevented anyone else from putting forward a proposal to tackle it? No! Because, as we all know, the real problem is finding a way to contain those whose help we need to raise the dead. The fast folk, those who once were human and whose minds, and motives, developed far beyond human comprehension or control.
They
are the ones I could awaken, if I wished.
They
are the ones who could awaken the human dead, who sleep in the same storage-media as they do. And
they
are the ones who could, in the blink of an eye, turn this planet into the kind of hell that some of us glimpsed, a hundred of our long years ago.'

His gaze focuses on Eon Talgarth, and Dee feels only the slipstream of his passionate plea: ‘Esteemed Senior! I know
your
memory is not so short! Strike down this claim before it does more harm!'

He looks around once more, and resumes his seat.

Talgarth sips from a glass, and lights a cigarette. He contemplates the smoke for a few moments, then leans forward, elbows on knees. His posture makes a strange contrast to the formality of his attire, and, as if noticing this, he removes his hat.

‘Means he's talking off the record,' Ax explains.

‘But we can hear him!' says Dee.

‘Figure of speech,' says Jay-Dub, from the virtual cab up front. ‘Ssh.'

Dee, somewhat chastened, looks away for a moment and notices that the crawler is idling at the end of the broad street. The subaltern machines have returned, whether in defeat or success she doesn't know. Ahead, there's a grassy park with some fortification in the centre. Above it she detects a cloud of gnat-like flying-machines.

‘Ah, Reid,' Talgarth is saying, ‘you were always a fine speaker, and I hear what you say. But between you an' me, if you catch my drift, Wilde has made a valid point about how we could do it off-planet, safe in space, like, and you haven't answered that, have you?'

Reid raises a hand placatingly to Talgarth, who leans back and replaces his judicial hat. Then Reid turns to the stiffly dressed woman beside him and has a murmuring consultation, from which the camera – as required – cuts away. It pans to Wilde, who's sitting with –

‘Tamara!' Dee and Ax exclaim delightedly.

‘Good for her,' says Jay-Dub.

Back to Reid, who's just angrily shrugged off the woman's hand and is walking towards the camera and the mike, followed only by the woman's open-mouthed dismay.

‘I didn't want it to come to this,' Reid says, all conventional courtesy discarded as he speaks to the world, and the court only as an afterthought. ‘But enough is enough. Sure, “we” could do it in space! Tell me, who's this “we”? If anyone has the capital to spare for a deep-space station
and
a ring of laser-cannon shielded against any viral programs that could be sneaked into its controls,
and
a foolproof procedure worked out
and
hair-trigger, dead-fall nuclear back-ups in place, they can go right ahead! Be my guest! I'll
sell
you the fucking dead, and the demons who could raise them. Go ahead! Have another crack at immanentizing the eschaton!

‘Before any entrepreneurs of the apocalypse rush forward, however, let me give you a warning.'

He turns and points a shaking finger at Wilde, who's observing Reid's performance with an expression of insolent detachment.

‘
Don't
follow any suggestions from this…
thing
that calls itself Jonathan Wilde! This thing which admits it is a creature of the robot Jay-Dub!'

He pauses and takes a deep breath, and faces Talgarth. ‘Esteemed Senior, I have a heavy responsibility before the people of New Mars. I allowed the robot Jay-Dub to continue in existence, after I had grounds to suspect that it was corrupted by the original fast folk, in the Malley Mile. It has repeatedly, in person and through its golem here – and, for all we know, through manipulation over the years of the so-called abolitionist movement – urged on us the disastrous course of re-running the fast folk. Whose interests, I ask you, would that serve?'

Talgarth makes no reply.

Reid, as if in sudden disgust with the whole business, gives a backward shake of his arm above his head and stalks back to his seat. But he doesn't sit down. His supporters rise with him, and others in the crowd stand too.

Reid reaches inside his jacket, and there's a sudden frenzy of movement as the crowd separates – some fleeing the confrontation, others closing with one side or the other. Tamara, and some people Dee doesn't know but Ax – going by his eager comments – does, form a barrier around Wilde. The cameras bob about, the factions face each other arms in hand.

Talgarth is speaking urgently into his right lapel, and making equally urgent gestures. Dee notices the weapons on the stockade's iron walls swivel on their mounts, swing around and bear inward and down.