Crashing Heaven (18 page)

Chapter 25

Raindrops landed like little cat feet. [ I really can see everything now,] Fist chirped. [Stop, Jack, let me show you, there’s so much!]

[ No,] Jack said and strode on, making Fist dance through the sodden night streets to keep up with him. The little puppet skipped in and out of the gutter, searching for the deepest puddles to jump into. He cooed with glee every time his tiny, ghostly feet disappeared. He used his newly enabled weave access to simulate splashes.

[So many droplets, all flying up!] Another little leap. [ It’s astonishing, Jack, I’ll take you onweave to see. I can do anything!]

Jack remained silent ahead of him. He’d pulled his hat down and twitched up the collar of his trench coat until his face was all but invisible. That didn’t stop people from stopping and admiring him. ‘Oh, that coat’s beautifully cut,’ said one. ‘He knows how to wear a suit,’ said another. ‘I’d fuck him,’ announced a third. Every time he heard someone thrill at his East-enhanced weave presence, Jack pulled his hat a little further down and for a minute or so broke into a near trot to escape.

They arrived at the Panther Czar at about eleven o’clock. Outside the club, the queue laughed and jostled and squabbled. Deep beats boomed out from within. They ducked into a doorway just over the road. The light rain turned the hard neon signage that crawled around the club into something far gentler and more subtle than Pierre Akhmatov had ever intended.

[Let me get you onweave,] begged Fist.

[Later. It’s not the right moment.]

As late evening turned to deep night the queue waned. At about half past two, as the weather worsened, the exodus began. Drenching rain suffused the night, encouraging those leaving to dart quickly away. Its heaviness was deliberate, Pantheon planners reducing late night crime by nudging revellers off the streets. It dulled sound and light, filling the night with a soft, static hiss, turning streetlamps into half-seen orbs. Couples huddled up against each other, nearly running, spilling high-heel clacks into the air. Groups shouted farewells and then rapidly split into ones, twos, threes, taking off up or down the street.

[Let’s go in now. I can’t wait!]

[ We’re going to wait until it’s just him in there.]

[ How do you know he’ll stay?]

[ I spent months studying his routine. Sunday night, and he processes the week’s takings alone. The club hasn’t changed much since then. His habits won’t have done, either.]

There was one final burst of departures before the door staff began shutting up the front of the building. One by one, neon lights winked out.

[ They’re taking it offweave.]

Jack watched Fist kick at a real pebble. The stone didn’t move but Fist looked up suddenly, his eyes swivelling as he watched its virtual equivalent fly through the air.

[ You’re chasing dreams, Fist.]

[ Fun dreams.]

A small swarm of sweatheads drifted by. Jack pretended not to see them. One had empty sleeves where her arms should hang. Another moved on crutches, a single leg swaying backwards and forwards between them. Fist stepped into the road, and, pointing towards them, turned his eager face to Jack.

[ I could make them all look so beautiful, Jack. Almost as beautiful as you can be! Get them all laid, what do you think? And then there’ll be people waking up with them tomorrow, when the overlay lifts off. Won’t it be funny?]

[Come back here, Fist. Save your energy. You’ve got much more important things to do tonight.]

[ When, Jack, when?]

[Soon.]

Fist was clearly spoiling for a fight. Jack was surprised by relief that East hadn’t broken his fighting spirit. It was such a fundamental part of the puppet’s personality.

Now the staff were leaving the club, running under the rain as their customers had done. The last few lights in the entrance hallway flicked off. A heavily built man tugged the club’s main doors closed and locked them. As he turned to walk away, a gust of wind snatched at his coat, exposing a white shirt and a black bow-tie. He started to whistle, deliberately walking slowly; refusing to acknowledge the storm. His whistle died away. Rain hissed like a detuned radio.

[ Now, Fist,] snapped Jack, starting across the road. Fist followed, rising into the air until his head was level with his master’s. [Oh, I’ve been looking forward to this!] he sang out. Jack almost commented on how much more helpful he was being compared to the last time they’d visited the club. But the change might turn out to be temporary. Mentioning it could break it. [ Then open that door,] he said [and let’s go play.]

No one either inside or outside the Panther Czar saw them enter. Nobody could, because Fist had reached into the weave and – using the codes that managed sweathead perception – made them both invisible. Camera stalks swivelled away from them as the main doors opened with a rainwater hiss.

Inside was warm and dry and dark. Fist constructed a view of the corridor that led away from the main reception area from infra-red security camera footage and dropped it in behind Jack’s eyes. [Straight ahead, then over the dance floor,] he told him. They moved silently, barely as substantial as the shadows that surrounded them. Their shared experience of training and fighting rose up inside them like a rebooted operating system.

[ No security manifesting, Fist?]

[ That’ll kick off a bit later, when I let them see us.]

[ Wait till we reach the private area.]

The empty club oozed memories of spilt drinks, transient highs and hobbled lives. Jack wondered at the kind of mind that could achieve transcendence in such a limited, limiting space.

[ I could turn on some of their weaveware, Jack. Then you’d see something.]

They slipped towards the stairs that they’d climbed only a few days ago. [Let him see us,] said Jack. A moment, then Fist replied, [Done.] Jack shouted up the stairs, his voice suddenly, shockingly harsh in the velvet silence that suffused the empty club.

‘We’re coming for you, Akhmatov.’

Akhmatov’s response took maybe a second. The air shimmered and a huge black cat was roaring towards them, already in midleap. Its mouth was a shocking neon pink against darkly blazing fur. It was four times larger than Jack remembered. He threw his arms up and tottered backwards. It was all he could do not to scream.

Then Fist touched it and became the panther. [So much for his outer security perimeter,] he growled through his new mouth. [ It was all of them at once. He’s scared. You OK?]

[ Bad memories.]

They went up the stairs and through the security doors, Fist padding on all fours, carefully keeping his distance from Jack. Jack kicked Akhmatov’s office door. Wood tore away from hinges. He stepped through it and found himself in a desert. A jagged sun blazed in a blue sky above harsh yellow sand and bleach white rocks. Each colour was an assault.

‘We’ve come for you, you murderous fuck.’

Fist followed Jack into the room. He split into four normal-sized panthers, each made puppet. Soft fur was replaced by black paint; tooth ivory by pale, unstained wood. The first panther stopped and licked itself. Its wooden tongue clacked softly as it moved across its haunches, flicking against wooden joints that replaced ones made of ligament and bone.

The second panther raised its head to the empty sky and growled. The sound was clearly artificial. The third and fourth sat resting on a large rock, eyes and ears swivelling. The rock seemed suddenly a little more unreal, a painted polystyrene prop discarded from an exhausted movie set.

[ He’s here. Hiding, but he’s here,] said Fist through the first panther. Its cat throat gave Fist’s voice a rich, deep huskiness. Jack remembered the tearing of claws, deep in flesh.

[Do we really need the panthers? Couldn’t you just crash his weave access?]

[ I could. And then we’d have him. But—] The second panther stretched, reaching out with its forelegs and pushing hard against the ground. Claws scratched at the sand. [—we wouldn’t have server access. We need to go through all this to get to them.] The cat’s haunches rose up high, its tail – segmented links that looked like a black spine – twitching and spinning above them.

[ Then stop preening, and get it over with!]

[Oh, I think I scent him now,] growled the third panther. It jumped down from the rock, thudded on to the sand and prowled forwards, its long shadow sliding along behind it. The others moved with it, the four of them forming an arrowhead. The lead panther turned back to Jack – [ He’s here …] – then snapped its head forward again. Its whole body tensed, then it was flying forward, pouncing at the empty air, claws snatching at something that, if there was a breeze, could just have been a billow of sand. But there was no breeze.

Paper-white teeth clashed with empty air. There was a thin high scream, and suddenly there was no sun or sand or rock. Blueness shimmered round Jack, the wooden panthers floating just ahead of him. A shock of cold broke against his whole body. He breathed out and bubbles rose. He and Fist had been pulled underwater. Akhmatov’s security beasts were lost to him, and so he was fighting back with the only thing that remained under his control: the environment.

The shock of immersion made Jack forget to hold his breath. To his surprise, he felt his lungs fill with air. The simulation of being underwater was not complete. The lead panther thrashed around ahead of him. It was wrapped around something, mouth and claws tearing at it. Jack assumed that Fist was struggling with Akhmatov, but the club owner remained invisible, his security systems not yet finally defeated. His resistance had already lasted for at least five seconds – highly impressive, against Fist. The other panthers propelled themselves towards the fight with regular backward kicks. In the meantime, Jack could do nothing to help.

The sea was as empty as the desert had been. Above, there was only a lighter blue. There was no sign of a surface. Below, the water darkened to black. Shards of sunlight danced between Jack and the combatants, the ocean vast beyond them. Jack wondered how it had been coded. Perhaps it was finite and eventually stopped. Perhaps he could move through it forever, the simulation perpetually creating new distance before him. Fear chilled him. A digital eternity seemed so much emptier than its analogue equivalent.

Another of the panthers reached the fight. It threw itself into the fray and, once again, the world changed. They were no longer underwater. A gentle breeze gusted against Jack. He stood in a circle of henges, each one made of two upright man-sized stones supporting a third horizontal one. A sunset sky blazed with reds and oranges. Long shadows drifted across the centre of the circle, where a single sarsen lay flat. Two panthers rolled and snarled across it, their wooden bodies clattering against the rock. The others paced, looking for a way into the fight. Akhmatov’s security systems were not yet sufficiently compromised to give them access.

Fist had however managed to dismantle some of his camouflage protocols. The two fighting cats spun and snarled around a shadowy figure, an almost man-shaped mass of disturbed air. Teeth and claws tore into it. It bled tiny spatters of visual noise. They became spots of red as they hit the green grass. The third cat pounced. There was a howl, and they were in the jungle clearing where Jack had been tortured. Memories of virtual claws ripped through Jack. He wondered what state Akhmatov would be in when his defences were finally broken. He turned away and leant against a tree. It felt wet. His hand was covered with brown paint. He touched a low hanging leaf. His fingers came away green. This was no longer the reality that Akhmatov had built. Fist was remaking it according to his own needs.

Looking around, Jack felt like an actor who’d wandered into an empty stage set. Unreality was exploding into being everywhere. The jungle floor was nothing more than brown-painted concrete, the trees that leapt out of it brightly coloured flats. Even the bird-song that suffused the space changed, crackling through static for a moment then reinstating itself as a series of obvious imitations. The battle was nearly over. Fist let out a triumphant howl, drowning out Akhmatov’s scream of rage and terror. The painted jungle disappeared entirely.

There was a popping sound, and the sharp smell of burning plastic. Then a new scene took over. Fluorescent strip-lights lit an unremarkable room holding a desk, some chairs and four paintings. One showed a desert, one a sea, one a stone circle and one a dense jungle. Panthers prowled through each of them.

Akhmatov was lying on the floor, shaking. Fist stood over him, now just a wooden puppet again, and cackled gleefully. ‘If you try anything on,’ he said, ‘I’ll crack your mind open like an egg and piss in it.’

‘He means it,’ said Jack. ‘I’d do what he says, if I were you.’

Chapter 26

They let Akhmatov pull himself up and lean against the desk. He was dressed in a black shirt and trousers. Both were covered in silver weave sigils.

‘I’ve shut down his access to the club systems,’ said Fist. ‘There’s nothing there but flesh.’ Jack pulled the chair out from the other side of the desk and sat down. [And I’m running through his files, too,] added Fist quietly. [ I’ll let you know if I find anything good.] Akhmatov was wheezing. His skin was a traumatised grey. It was an effort for him to speak, but his voice was surprisingly strong when he did.

‘I should have killed you eight years ago.’

Fist started towards him, his little hands twitching. ‘No, Fist,’ ordered Jack. ‘You’ve had your fun. We need him able to talk.’ Fist sat down hard, grumbling to himself about nice cops. Jack turned back to Akhmatov. ‘And we should have raided your clubs and arrested you.’

‘You’d have been stopped if you’d tried that.’

‘Pantheon?’ said Jack. ‘They did stop me, in the end.’

‘And we learned from you. Yamata stripped anything to do with her patron out of my systems.’

[Shit.]

[ I’ll keep looking,] replied Fist. [ There’ll be something we can use. There always is.] Then he spoke out loud. ‘Don’t stop talking, Akhmatov. Tell us what we want to hear. Make it easy on yourself.’

‘That’s what torturers always say, isn’t it?’ Akhmatov was slumped against the table, legs splayed out before him, a puppet whose strings had been cut. ‘Rest assured the gods will torture you.’

‘Not for your sake, though,’ replied Jack. ‘You don’t really matter, do you? It’s Aud Yamata and poor dead Penderville that count. That’s what they don’t want us digging into.’

‘I’m saying nothing
.’

‘Look at Yamata now. Disappeared. A new identity, a new
weave presence, maybe even a new body. Where is she
? Somewhere in the Wart? In Homelands? In Heaven, even?’

‘I
wouldn’t know.’

‘She’s your boss. Why did she
get promoted when you didn’t? What did she do
that was so valuable? She was just one of the
grunts back in the day, the one who brought the
sweat in. But now you’re still stuck counting cash
in a Docklands dive. And she’s who knows where
, but it’s better than here, isn’t it?’

‘Shut
up Forster.’

‘And how do you feel about her now
she’s the queen and you’re just a pawn
? She wanted us to find you, that’s why she
let Corazon see you. She thought I’d torture you
and probably kill you, and you’d know what she
could do to your fetch, so you’d stay loyal
and keep silent, and that would be it. But if
you help me bring her down you won’t have
to worry about that.’

‘I think we should kill him
,’ said Fist. Then [Keep him talking. He’s anonymised all
his contacts. I can’t tell which one’s Yamata
. Make him slip up, give something away.]

[OK,] said Jack
. Then he continued out loud, ‘No, Fist. We’re not
going to hurt him at all. Because if we did
, if we even killed him, then we’d be just
as much a pawn as he’s been, all these
years. And we don’t believe in that, do we
, Fist? We don’t believe in being pawns, in just
doing what we’re told. Nicely. Politely.’

‘Let me break
him.’

Jack laughed. ‘I could be a far nastier cop
than you, if I wanted to,’ he replied. ‘You’ve probably heard this morning
what I did to those policemen.’ He knelt down next
to Akhmatov, so he was almost face to face with
him. ‘Last night I slept with East, and she opened
herself up to me. Gave me everything. You know what
that means, don’t you? She must be a regular
, in a club like yours.’

For the first time, emotion
flickered across Akhmatov’s face. Fear crept out of him
. Jack sensed a sad, defeated rage behind it. He wondered
if East had increased his sensitivity, too. ‘She gave me
everything,’ he whispered.

‘If you’re going to show me,’ said Akhmatov, ‘do it now. Do it quickly.’

Jack sighed. ‘No. You’re not going to help me find Yamata because I’ve made you love me, barely able to scrabble around in your own memories for lust of me. You’re going to do it because you’ve understood just how you’ve been used, and you’re more angry than you are afraid. Aren’t you?’ He let a few seconds hang empty in the air, then nudged an East switch in his mind. He moved in even closer and whispered ‘Aren’t you, Akhmatov?’ as quietly as he could.

‘They should have let me fucking kill you when I had the chance!’

Akhmatov’s sudden movement knocked Jack backwards. The other man was on top of him, fingers scrabbling for his throat. ‘I told Yamata that you were a risk to me,’ he shouted, ‘to all of us, but she didn’t listen – and look where we are now! That bitch coming back from Sheltie, pretending it’s a job for her security firm, and we kill a man I’ve known for twenty years and some fucking policewoman, and you’re here, and look where we fucking are now!’

[ Bingo!] said Fist. [ That’s it.]

When Jack hit Akhmatov it was like punching a wet pillow. The club owner sagged and fell away, the burst of energy that had given him a brief advantage shattered. Fist was on him instantly, hands buried in his head. Akhmatov screamed. ‘No!’ snapped Jack. He rolled forwards and snatched the puppet away, tearing him out of Akhmatov’s mind. The club owner gaped in shock while Fist cackled madly.

[ What have you done to him?]

[ I haven’t hurt him. At least, not as much as you have. I’ve done him a favour.]

[ Fist …]

[ I’ve dropped deep sweathead tags into his weave presence. Unremovable. Everyone’s weaveware will just blank him out, blank him right out! He’s the invisible man now. He won’t be able to tell anyone what we know.]

[ For gods’ sake, Fist. We still need information from him.]

[ No we don’t. I know which of his contacts Aud Yamata is, and I know how to find her.]

[ You’re sure?]

[ It was much easier to fillet his business than I thought it would be. Almost like I was built for it.]

[Any clues on her boss?]

[ No mention of that at all. Just like the man said.]

As they spoke, Akhmatov crawled away and collapsed in a corner of the room. He was shaking.

‘One last question,’ said Jack, turning back to him. ‘Do you know who Yamata works for?’

[Don’t get your hopes up, Jack. He’s just a minion.]

‘I told you I don’t know,’ he choked out. ‘I’m better than that fucking bitch, and I’m still running this fucking club, and the Pantheon are still fucking playing with me. And I don’t even know who it’s all for.’

‘You’ve Easted him, haven’t you?’ said Fist. ‘He’ll be telling the truth. But we’ve got a more immediate problem. InSec’s coming. For you.’

‘Shit. Let’s go.’

‘Why? I can hide you from those wankers now.’

‘I don’t want them finding out you’ve been unlocked.’

‘Backing away from a fight? Boring!’

‘We’re running. Now.’

They got three hundred metres down the road before the InSec flyers caught them.