Crashing Heaven (26 page)

Chapter 38

Fred and Lyssa never left the room. Fred painted the walls, laboriously creating images of a world that was entirely closed to him. Lyssa played with her dolls, imagining moments that would never happen. Ato was both young enough to come and go at will, and old enough to do so usefully.

For a couple of days, Jack let himself calmly drift between sleep and waking, allowing the healing that had taken place in both his body and Fist’s internal structures to fully bed down. Fist was dormant for much of the time. Sometimes they were awake at the same time and talked silently to each other. Fist was sleepy and distracted. Jack only stopped worrying about him when he started grumbling again.

[ I wish you didn’t have so many good reasons for not killing Kingdom. Why do you always have to worry about consequences?]

[ Because they’re always there to be dealt with.] Fist swore grumpily. [ But there’s something only you can do that I need some help with.]

[Oo, what thrills could possibly await?] sulked Fist. [Sending someone a text message? Finding out where the nearest train station is?]

[ No. Hacking fetch code. I want to free Andrea.]

[ Won’t that have
AWFUL REPERCUSSIONS THAT KILL
US ALL?]

[ No, because you’re good enough to make sure that nobody notices.]

[Motherfucker. It’s not enough that I’ve got to think about sodding consequences before doing something
TOTALLY REASONABLE
like killing a fucking god. I’ve got to reprogram your girlfriend, too.]

[ Not reprogram her,] Jack replied. [ Not at all. I want to protect her from that. Remember how much you hated it when Grey rewrote just a tiny part of you, just once? She has to deal with far worse than that, all the time. All fetches do.]

[ You sound like the Totality. Get your mate Ifor to sort it out.]

[Please. If not for her, then for me.]

[ It’ll be hard work. It’d mean understanding fetch permission structures, digging into how the weave manifests them and working out exactly how the Coffin Drives store them. Hmm …] Fist was silent for a moment, lost in thought. [ Fuck. That could actually be quite interesting. Useful, even.]

[ It’d be more than useful for Andrea.]

[All right, I’ll see what I can do. But it’s not an easy job. I won’t make any promises.]

[ Thank you, Hugo.]

[Don’t call me that,] snapped Fist. [Gods, you’d think we actually liked each other!]

Jack slept again until the sound of cooking woke him. The meat that Ato had brought back, crowing triumphantly about her waste-raiding skills, turned out to be spoiled, but the vegetables were edible. Fred boiled them in water over a small electric heater, creating something approaching vegetable soup. It smelt thin and unappetising, but Jack hadn’t eaten for three days so hunger jabbed deep into his stomach.

‘Hello,’ he said, yawning and stretching. ‘Do you think I could have some soup?’

‘No,’ snapped Fred. Ato shushed him. ‘Pour him a bowl of soup,’ she told Lyssa.

Lyssa – concentrating hard – tottered over to him with a full bowl. She smiled shyly, blushing as he thanked her, then turned and ran back to the table.

‘Thank you all,’ Jack told them.

They didn’t reply. They were too busy eating. The soup itself was flavourless, the vegetables overcooked to the point of dissolution. Jack didn’t want to speculate on how old they were, where they might have been found.

When dinner was done, the children piled up their plates by the sink in the corner of the room. Fred turned to Ato. ‘I cooked, you wash up,’ he told her.

‘Let me,’ said Jack. He went to stand up, but rose too suddenly and tottered unsteady on his feet.

[Careful,] Fist warned.

The three children watched with wide eyes. Only Lyssa didn’t look nervous.

‘We know what you are, you know,’ said Fred. ‘We know that you’re carrying – one of them.’

‘One of what?’ asked Jack.

‘A puppet.’

‘How do you know?’

‘We’ve got a scanner that picks up anything strange,’ Lyssa chipped in. ‘We used it while you were asleep.’

‘You’re a puppeteer, aren’t you?’ said Fred.

Jack saw no point in lying.

‘Yes. I am.’

‘I saw a puppet once.’ Lyssa’s voice was soft as she remembered. ‘Just like yours. Her puppeteer brought her into school. She was called Lumberjack Lil. She was funny! She juggled her chainsaws.’

‘I saw one of those shows too,’ said Fred.

‘We all did,’ said Ato. ‘They said they were safe, that the puppets would hunt down the evildoers who wanted to harm us. But they didn’t want us to be scared of them, and it was really all for the children who died on the moon, so they made them look like toys.’

[Should I show myself now?] said Fist.

[ No,] said Jack. [ We’ll wait until they ask to see you. I don’t want to surprise them.]

[ Why not? It’d be fun.]

‘They’re not really just puppets,’ Fred was saying. ‘We learned all about them. They’re a whole suite of applications.’

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ Jack replied.

‘I wish we’d had your puppet,’ Ato sighed. ‘It might have protected us from sweatheads.’

‘What do they do to you?’

‘Every so often, they catch us.’

‘If Ato hadn’t seen you kill two of them,’ said Fred, ‘she’d have just left you upstairs. But they wanted to kill you. She said that makes you one of us.’

‘Until we start to get grown up,’ said Lyssa, her voice almost a whisper, ‘they’re the only people who can see us.’

‘They attack you?’ asked Jack.

‘Them and InSec,’ said Ato, with a sadness too heavy for a child. ‘There used to be so many more of us.’

The washing-up seemed irrelevant now. There was a spare chair at the table. ‘Can I sit down?’ asked Jack. Ato nodded. Fred turned round and went back to his painting. The chair was too small for Jack. His knees stuck up and out at an awkward angle, and wouldn’t fit under the table. Lyssa giggled.

‘Have you ever killed any children?’ Ato said suddenly.

‘No,’ replied Jack, shocked. ‘Why would you think that?’

‘You’re like the sweatheads. You can see us.’

‘I’ve only ever attacked the Totality, because we thought they were threatening you. Children like you. And Fist – my puppet – isn’t real like sweatheads are. He’s just a projection.’

[Oi!]

‘We’ve never killed a person,’ Jack continued, ignoring him. ‘Just Totality minds.’

‘The teachers didn’t call that killing,’ said Lyssa. ‘They said that the puppets were going to go and play with the Totality. And once they’d finished, the Totality would think differently about people.’

‘They said they weren’t made to hurt anyone,’ Ato interjected. ‘But my father said that the puppets were going to kill the Totality. That we had to stop the Soft War. And then they came and killed him.’

‘They killed all our parents,’ Lyssa said sadly, ‘all across Station. And their fetches are all caged.’

Fred’s paintbrush made soft scraping noises. He was painting something box-like, but brightly coloured. It could have been a mall.

‘We want to see your puppet,’ Ato told Jack. ‘We need to know that we’re safe. We think we are, but we need to know it.’

[ Your cue, Fist. Get ready. And play nice.]

[Aw.]

‘I’ll ask him to appear,’ Jack told the children. ‘Will he scare you?’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ announced Grey, stepping into the room from nowhere. ‘These are tough kids, you know.’ The lightest scent of cigar smoke touched the air. He had a gin and tonic in his hand.

‘If you’re using them like you used me,’ said Jack, ‘I’ll kill you myself right now.’

When they heard Jack threaten Grey, Ato and Fred leapt on him. Even Lyssa joined in. They slammed into him, making him stumble backwards and then fall. He found himself lying on the mattress, arms and legs held down.

[ Fuck,] spat Fist. [ Him again. What now?]

[Stay out of sight. Let’s see what he wants.]

Grey chuckled. ‘There’s really no need for that,’ he told the children. ‘He’s not going to hurt me. He couldn’t.’

‘Are you sure, Grandpa?’ asked Fred.

‘I’m sure.’

They let go of Jack and gradually pulled away.

‘I’m sorry, Jack. They’re very protective.’

‘Have you hurt them at all?’

‘Oh no. Not in the way you mean. Their parents built platforms for me in their minds. I’ve never needed to. And besides – I wouldn’t want to.’

Jack thought he saw a flicker of guilt shadow Grey’s face, but immediately dismissed the idea.

‘And now I want to have a grown-up conversation with you, Jack. I’m going to have to send you young ones off to sleep, I’m afraid. Jack – you’ll have to move off the mattresses.’

Jack stood up, letting all three children lay down, Lyssa giggling, Fred and Ato with an air of grumpy resignation. ‘Are you ready?’ Grey asked them. ‘Yes,’ they chorused. Grey waved his hand, and they were asleep.

‘What’s going on here?’ asked Jack. ‘How did you do that? How can you even be here? This room’s caged.’

‘It is. I’m in them, Jack. The ghost children of Station are my last redoubt.’

‘You’re in their minds?’

‘Like Fist is in yours. But Fist only has the power of one mind to draw on. When they’re together, I have all three of them. And when they’re outside – there are a couple of hundred who survive. They’re my core. Where is the little man, by the way?’

[ Well?] said Fist. [ There’s not much of him here. We’re safe.]

[Go for it.]

Fist shimmered into being, sitting on the table top, swinging his legs. His body moved in a more coherent way, but there were still scattered patches of charring.

‘Why didn’t I pick you up when I scanned them, then?’ said Fist.

‘You have been in the wars,’ said Grey. ‘I am sorry. But to answer your question – I’ve taken great care to hide myself. I’m buried very deep indeed.’

‘And are you present to them, like Fist is?’

‘Oh yes. You heard that they call me Grandpa? I look after them. I guide them. But it’s so much more difficult than I thought it would be.’

Grey suddenly seemed very old. He made a chair appear, then slowly and carefully sat down on it. There was a stiffness to him that was very far removed from the usual fluid elegance of his movements. Jack was shocked to realise that he looked haunted.

‘Advising them, helping them find food, keeping InSec attention away from them. And in return, they hide me and keep my core components safe. But I live in them, and as them too. Their lives are so difficult. They’ve lost so much.’

Jack was surprised to see Grey feel pity. ‘That’s not your fault,’ he said.

‘I’m responsible. Their parents were my people. They just wanted to end the Soft War and see the Totality get full recognition as an independent, Pantheon-equivalent corporate body. And then, all this.’

‘But you told me that the Totality were a contagion, that their power had to be limited.’

‘I was lying to you, Jack,’ sighed Grey. ‘Doing what I do. Managing the situation.’

‘Manipulating the situation. Manipulating me.’

‘You can call it that, if you want to.’

‘Like when you reprogrammed me,’ said Fist.

‘Reprogrammed?’ said Grey, suddenly thoughtful. ‘That’s a good word. Maybe that is what I was doing. If you control the information that someone gets, you control them. Sharing the right data in the right way – I suppose it is a way of reprogramming people. I am sorry.’

‘What’s your game, Grey? What’s in it for you?’

Grey smiled sadly. ‘Nothing. What I am now comes from these few children. And they’re not old enough to have become effective dissemblers. You’ll find that I’m in a more evasive mood when I am out of this small room; when I can draw on my deeper resources.’

‘But for now?’ said Jack.

‘But for now, I am as simple and open as they are.’

[ Fist?]

[ He’s telling the truth,] answered Fist. [ He’s just coming from them. There’s nothing else there. His signal’s much less complex than usual.]

[ I can trust him?]

[ Broadly, yes, Jackie boy. Take advantage! Squeeze him for all he’s got!]

‘You’ve been working with East,’ said Jack. ‘What brought you together?’

‘I had such ambitions. I thought that if I worked with her, I’d be able to influence Station away from the war and bring us closer to the Totality. The Pantheon are too controlling, Jack, I’d begun to see that. We need to be more open – like the Totality are. Of course, that conflicted with Kingdom’s interests. He had a lot to lose. And he’s lost almost all of it.’

‘What did you tell me that wasn’t a lie?’ said Jack.

‘Lie? That’s a terrible word. I told you what you needed to know to ensure that you took the path that would be best for you.’

‘Not for me, for you.’

‘And I’ve done so well out of it.’ Grey waved his hand round the cramped little room.

‘You’ve been keeping yourself safe,’ said Jack. ‘At the cost of all of these children. Of their parents.’

‘I didn’t realise how ruthless Kingdom would be. We struggled for years. At last he found a weakness and used it. Made everyone believe that my activist groups were fronts for terrorists; killed them, blocked their fetches, shut me down, froze my board. It was a shocking experience. So fast. I barely had enough time to get the Greyware running in the kids, hide them in safe rooms. When my board was shut down I shifted over into them. I’ve been running in them ever since.’

‘So who were the real terrorists?’

‘I could never find any traces of them. All the bombs, the attacks on Station; they just happened. They mystified me as much as anyone. I had so many people out there, trying to understand what was going on. Nothing. The children think of themselves as ghosts, but the people who bombed Station were the real phantoms.’

‘They helped Kingdom, though, didn’t they?’

‘Oh yes. They justified the war, kept people from thinking too much about why we might really be fighting. All those empty shrines they created. Every day, people look at pictures of dead children and remember why the Totality has to be destroyed. Making peace with it? It means forgetting the dead. And, as a culture, we’re very bad at that.’