Crashing Heaven (27 page)

‘People walk with them every day.’

‘They’re part of our lives. We – they – live in a space station, orbiting a dead planet they can’t bring themselves to leave, living in ways they can’t bring yourselves to change, talking to corpses they can’t bring themselves to bury. Maintaining stasis takes a lot of effort. It’s the opposite of the Totality. And it gives Kingdom and his allies an awful lot of power, even now.’

‘Yamata was working for him.’

‘I always wondered about that. You have proof ?’

‘She told me. Could she have been behind the terrorist attacks?’

‘It wouldn’t surprise me. She had the right skillset. The reskinning that poor Corazon found out about. She started as a sweat smuggler, too. She could easily have brought weapons in, explosives. Akhmatov’s distribution and enforcement networks would have been very helpful to her. Perhaps Penderville was working with them, perhaps you were about to expose them, perhaps that’s why Kingdom wanted you out of the picture.’

‘And what about Harry?’

‘I’ve never understood him.’ Grey frowned. ‘He was always so supportive of you when he was alive. His reports on you helped me convince Kingdom that you’d be a useful part of the war effort. I don’t know what’s happened to him. Maybe he did find out about you and Andrea.’

‘You knew?’ said Jack.

‘I was with you everywhere, Jack. It’s what gods do; always present where intention meets action, understanding both, influencing where we can. She felt very strongly for you, you know, but she’s a very loyal person. I nudged her to stay with you after the rock fell, but her will was stronger.’

‘Always manipulating. You disgust me, Grey.’

‘My influence was always constructive.’

‘Constructive? You sent me away to kill. And you never just influenced. That implies choice, and you never gave me that.’

‘All of you always have a choice, Jack. I thought you realised that when you walked away from the war. I wanted you to do that, I wanted you to leave the Pantheon behind. I thought I saw that knowledge in you when you refused to help me in the garden.’

Jack laughed bitterly. ‘One last question. I don’t know what Harry is any more. Do you? And is Andrea safe?’

‘I stopped watching Harry closely when you stopped working for him. He was still human then. And I don’t think you need worry about Andrea. Beyond rolling her back, there’s very little he can do to hurt her.’

That was when Fist cut in, his patience exhausted. ‘Enough with the encounter group. Jack’ll talk about Andrea all night if you let him, but we’ve got some practical challenges to deal with.’ He switched to talk silently to Jack. [Can I tell him I can kill Kingdom?]

[ No,] replied Jack. [ It’s too dangerous. We don’t want any of the Pantheon to know you’re a direct threat to them. Just give him the basics. No boasting.]

[ Fucking consequences,] said Fist grumpily before continuing out loud: ‘Here’s the deal. We’ve tracked Yamata’s signal back to Heaven, and we know she’s working for Kingdom. I think her core servers are somewhere in Kingdom’s corporate headquarters. So, it’s simple.’

‘Really?’ said Grey. ‘I’m impressed by your confidence.’

‘We break into Heaven, and then into Kingdom’s HQ. Once we’re in, we find Yamata. We know what we’re up against, so we won’t be taken by surprise. We crack her, take her memories, find out exactly what crimes she’s committed, and use them to prove Kingdom’s guilt.’

‘I can speak for East,’ Grey responded. ‘She’ll broadcast whatever you find. Everyone on Station will see it. It’ll be impossible to cover up.’

‘You’re running ahead,’ Jack told him. ‘We need to work out how we’re going to break into Heaven first, then a core Pantheon facility. One of those on their own would be difficult. Both together …’

‘I can get you into Heaven’ said Grey.

‘How? I mean – they’ve shut you down.’

‘You can walk the vacuum paths.’

‘What?’

‘This room is buried in Station’s skin. That’s why the children hide here. Only engineers ever come down this far. One of their duties is inspecting Station’s exterior. To do that, they need a door out to Station’s outer skin. Half a day’s walk, and there’s one you can get to. From there, you can go straight to Heaven.’

Fist thought for a moment. ‘We don’t have spacesuits. I don’t need to breathe, but it’s a bit of a problem for Jackie boy here!’

‘There’ll be some at the airlock,’ Grey reassured him. ‘There’s always an emergency supply.’

‘And then? The gates of Heaven don’t open for just anyone.’

‘There’s someone who can help you with that. An old friend of yours, Fist. Mr Stabs.’

Fist couldn’t restrain a gasp of joy. ‘He’ll see us?’ he cried. ‘At last?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Grey. ‘I’ll tell him you’re going to bring down Kingdom. That’ll blow his mind.’

Chapter 39

It was night in the void site garden. Spinelight glowed dully, drifting across the trees and lawns like so much dust. The abandoned apartment building stood out like a broken tooth. Behind it, the sleeping suburbs of Homelands rolled up and away into the sky. There was a deep hush over Station, strong enough to be almost palpable. Hundreds of thousands slept. Jack imagined them dreaming, and wondered briefly if their dreams were any more real than the waking world they moved through every day.

[ I wish we didn’t have to come up here again,] grumbled Fist. [ I just want to go to Heaven and bring down a god.]

[ You’re the one that wanted reinforcements,] Jack replied.

Ato had brought them up. They’d followed her through a maze of maintenance ducts and machinery rooms. Sewage engines roared as they pumped waste away from humanity. An electrical substation hummed as power leapt up and away from it, out into Homelands. When they passed the gravity generators, their weight fluctuated unpredictably. Sometimes, they found themselves bouncing through great caverns, a few steps carrying them tens of metres. Sometimes, they crawled through maintenance passages, or struggled down corridors glyphed with emergency instructions, their own amplified weight a nearly impossible burden to bear. Grey had always been there, ahead of them; a beacon in the distance, showing them the way.

‘It’s always strange for me to leave this room,’ he’d said before they started out. ‘I’m different out there. I don’t let them see it, but I’m not just Grandpa any more. I’m not that simple.’

‘Can we still trust you?’ asked Jack.

‘I’ll always deliver what I’ve promised,’ Grey replied carefully. ‘I might just be a little more self-interested about it.’

[ That’s great! We’ve made a deal with the devil,] groaned Fist.

At last they reached the garden. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours,’ Ato said cheerfully. ‘Grandpa’s going to help me find some food.’

She wriggled through a small gap in the void site’s fence and started up the street. A taller figure shimmered into being next to her – Grey, holding her hand. They disappeared into the darkness together, leaving Jack and Fist alone.

[ Right,] said Fist, [ I’m going to trigger the void site’s security systems, but I don’t want anybody to know I’ve done it. Give me a minute or so.]

Jack moved into a clump of trees and sat down, leaving Fist to his work. Untouched for many years, the grass was unexpectedly lush. It had collected a soft, cold dew that quickly penetrated his trousers, chilling his skin. The sensory detail delighted him. For a long time, he’d only felt nature in weavespace, where anything that could be understood as discomfort had been elided. It was such a pleasure to feel again the awkward, determined presence of an ecosystem that persisted regardless of humanity, unenthralled by its limiting sense of the comfortable.

Fist reappeared next to him, glowing softly in the darkness. [ It’s done,] he reported. [ I’m bringing the block’s security systems back up to full function. First time they’ve run properly in years.]

All of a sudden, the grove thrilled with virtual life. Sounds emerged – the soft, lonely cry of an owl, the high-pitched screams of hunting bats. Jack imagined the glade in daytime, rich with nature’s soundtrack.

There was a rustling on the other side of the glade, and a dark shape emerged into the light. It was a fox. The pale light softened its hard hunter’s face, making it something gentle in the night. It paused for a moment to look round, then trotted purposefully across the clearing. Halfway across, it stopped, raising its nose to sniff the air.

‘Talk out loud, we want it to hear us,’ ordered Fist. ‘It’s only a scout, we want it to summon the block’s heavy security systems.’

‘What a beautiful night to be out and about!’

The fox’s ears twitched. Its head snapped round towards them.

‘Come to Daddy!’ called Fist. His words broke the fox’s concentration. It leapt for the bushes. Leaves shook behind it. ‘A couple of seconds, and we’ll have some company.’

‘I hope you’re ready.’

‘Piece of piss.’

New presences arrived soundlessly, coalescing from the darkness that the tall trees and the bushes made.

The first was a lion. It walked with a heavy grace, head swaying left and right, shoulders rolling behind its mane. Its tightly closed mouth was a black scar on its shadowed face. Intent eyes focused on Jack and Fist with a hunter’s passion. It halted in the centre of the glade and yawned. Teeth caught the light, streaks of white fire gashing the darkness.

The second was a tiger. Its casual, confident, loose limbed stroll promised lethality. Iron-hard muscles fluttered beneath skin. Light and shadow danced across its pelt, combining with its stripes to form jagged, shifting patterns. It stretched itself out by the lion. Claws broke out of its paws, then retracted.

Finally, there was the bear; a great, lumbering mass, snuffling loudly in the quiet night. Its muzzle was paler than its dark fur, an off-white smudge that lent definition to an otherwise featureless silhouette. Something very ancient woke in Jack – a deep fear of the great shape that loomed before him, older than darkness. It joined the other two.

The silhouettes of all three exuded menace. They were in full offensive mode. Jack wondered how they might have looked when they’d been manifesting in friendlier ways. He’d often visited friends who lived in similar blocks; watched the defence creatures play with the children in their gardens. Bears were giant, cuddly creatures, lions very proud but more than a little lazy, tigers whip-smart jokers. Each of these animals would no doubt have a cartoon self too, gathering virtual dust in silent digital vaults, ready to look harmless for children it would never again guard.

[Good,] said Fist. [ They’re not attacking. The confusion protocols are working. And now …]

Feral breath hissed to Jack’s left and right. Fist had summoned his panthers. They rose out of the darkness, spinning up from memory into sleek, silent shapes. Fear spat adrenaline into Jack’s blood.

[ I’ve refined them a bit,] Fist commented, not noticing. He’d stripped the four big cats back to near abstraction. They were little more than brushstrokes in the air, prowling shapes spun out of fluid lines that were darker than the night. A shimmer, and there was a leg; an eye was a flash of red, a tooth was a white gash. Tails swished. There was a snarl and a hiss, and they moved into the glade.

Jack flinched. [ They still spook me,] he admitted.

[ I might be able to do something about that, once I’ve absorbed this lot,] replied Fist.

[ I’d like that.]

The three guardian animals stayed still as the puppet’s ghost creatures prowled around them. The trio had lost animation, now seeming more like still images.

[ I’m cracking them,] crowed Fist.

[ You’ve got about a minute left.]

[ We’ll be fine!]

A panther leapt at the bear and vanished into it. The bear shape shimmered and disappeared. Then Fist took the tiger and the lion. One last cat remained, prowling watchfully around the glade.

[ They’re ours now?]

[Oh yes. They work for me.]

[ No extra strain on your processors?]

[ No – they’re still running on the block servers. I’ve just rebuilt their command structures so they listen to me too. A bit more tweaking and they’ll be able to manifest anywhere. We can summon them whenever we need them.]

[ No chance we’ll be spotted?]

[ Nope. I’ve put datablocks up to mask anything unusual. And …] Fist was silent for a moment. In the distance, a virtual dog howled at an imagined moon. [Got it. Lots of choice in the block’s visual templates. When I’ve got a moment, I can change how the panthers look. No more big cats to scare you!]

[ Thank you,] said Jack. [And there’s one more thing we need to do before Ato gets back. We have to talk to Harry.]

[ That psychopath? You’re crazy.]

[ We need to understand more about him. It could help us break Yamata.]

[ But they’re the same as each other. What if he’s on her side?]

[ You saw how they went at each other. There’s not much chance of that.]

[ Hmmph.]

[Can you summon him?]

[Suppose so.]

[ Then do it.]

Fist grumbled as he complied.

‘You call – and here I am!’ smiled Harry, strolling casually out of the darkness. He was wearing a suit and a long, dark overcoat. Fist snapped into full defensive mode. The panthers reappeared, ringing Harry. A harsh, low growl rolled across the clearing. ‘Lovely pets,’ he said, stretching a hand out to one of them. It snapped at him. Harry took a step back, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it tightly round a bloody finger. ‘Sharp teeth, eh?’

[ He’s contained,] Fist told Jack. [ It’s safe to talk.]

‘Hello Jack,’ said Harry. ‘Good to see you.’

[Scanning him too?]

[ Yes, Jack. Now I know what I’m looking for – human mind, Totality architecture, identical to Yamata.]

‘Of course I’m happy to be scanned, Jack. After all, we’re old friends, aren’t we? Nothing to hide.’

‘You’ve hidden quite a lot, Harry. It’s about time you were straight with us.’

‘I’ve always been as straight with you as you have with me.’ That seemed barbed, but Harry’s expression was entirely innocent. Jack let it pass. ‘Besides,’ continued Harry, ‘we both want the same thing – Kingdom’s head on a plate, and Yamata’s with it.’

‘Bullshit, Harry. We know what you are now. It’s very different from what you pretend to be.’

Harry was suddenly holding a cigar and a box of matches. Each panther took a pace towards him. ‘No need to worry,’ he said reassuringly. ‘This really is just a smoke. Or rather, the memory of one.’ A little flame from a match suckled at the cigar’s tip, chasing shadows from his face.

‘But you’re not the memory of Harry, are you?’ replied Jack. ‘You were never a fetch. You’re something very different.’

[ I can take him, Jack. Let me try!]

[ Hush, Fist. Not now. Not if we don’t have to.]

‘That’s right, I’m not a memory. I am Harry. Always have been, always will be. I really shouldn’t be here, you know. But I’m a very lucky man.’

‘What happened to you?’ said Jack.

‘Can you get rid of this lot?’ Harry indicated the panthers. ‘So much easier to talk when you’re not surrounded.’

‘The muscle stays,’ Fist spat.

Harry took a long, slow draw on his cigar. The end of it flared orange-pink. The rich smell of smoke filled the glade.

[ Very impressive simulation,] commented Fist. [Serious processor power behind it.]

[ We’re definitely safe?]

[Completely.]

‘All right if I sit?’ wondered Harry. Jack looked to Fist, who nodded. ‘Taking orders from a puppet?’ he asked, with a look Jack chose to ignore. A chair appeared and he sat down, carefully pulling his overcoat out from beneath him.

[ Now he’s just showing off,] said Fist.

‘So, what do you want to know?’ asked Harry.

‘The truth,’ Jack replied.

Harry sighed. ‘All right, Jack. I’m not a fetch. Yamata came for me when I reopened the Penderville case. By then she wasn’t human any more. She burned my mind into a Totality hive, then tossed my body away and let everyone think I’d been shot by some Docklands lowlife.’

‘Why did she bother doing that?’

‘I was straight with you about the Penderville case. She wanted to stop me finding out why she’d killed him. And that gave her an opportunity to seize all the knowledge I had.’ Harry tapped his forehead. ‘In here. And directly integrate it with her own systems. Of course, to do that she had to turn me into something just like her.’

‘That would take a lot of hardware. Where did she hide it all?’

‘I was sitting around somewhere in Homelands. Yamata dug through my mind, pulled out everything I knew about InSec. That meant she was ahead of them every step of the way. They couldn’t touch her. And she used everything I knew on Docklands crime syndicates, too. All my old contacts work for her now.’

‘What was she doing?’

‘She was behind the terrorist attacks on Station. I should have realised she’d be working for Kingdom. He could blame them on the Totality, and use them to take down Grey and anyone else who was anti-war. Helped him keep the Soft War going too. Classic gambler, keeps on losing, always takes another punt and hopes he’ll win it all back.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Harry. Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘My investigation, Jack, like I always told you. You knew what you needed to know to get the job done. And I’ve never trusted that puppet of yours.’

‘YOU? Worried about trusting ME? Fucking hell, Devlin,’ snarled Fist.

‘So they were false flag attacks,’ Jack said. ‘But you helped them happen. Why didn’t you fight back? Refuse to work with Yamata?’

‘She never woke me up enough. It was like living in a dream. She’d use a bit of me here, a bit of me there. But I began to realise that the dream was real. After the Panther Czar fiasco you were sent out-system, but I was only moved across departments. I always worried that someone would make my lack of involvement more permanent. So, I put some countermeasures in place in case someone killed me or tried to screw with me once I was dead. They woke up – and they started to wake me up, too.’

‘What then?’

‘Well, most of me was usually shut away from her. I didn’t know exactly how powerful she was. I certainly wasn’t in a position to take her on directly.’

‘You did a pretty good job the other day,’ Fist said.

‘I was ready for her. And I’ve been rebuilding myself. It’s been quite a few years since I escaped. Besides, back then, I had other problems. I needed to get the Totality hardware she was storing me on away from her.’

‘You could have just jumped into the Coffin Drives.’

‘No way. Once you’re on them, you’re trapped. Besides, I quite like running on Totality hardware. You should feel it, your mind just sings. So I had to move myself physically. Easily done, she didn’t know how awake I really was. A little bit of looking around, some alterations to a transport docket, smoke and mirrors around the document trail, and Bob’s your uncle! I was out of my little Homelands warehouse and free.’