Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer (20 page)

‘Are you saying,’ Eva pressed, ‘that Jack Glass
teleported
into our servants’ house?’

‘There’s no such thing as teleportation, my dear,’ said Joad. ‘Might I have my weapon back please?’

Berthezene brought out the smartcloth pouch.

‘I’ll have the handservants get a house ready for you, Ms Joad,’ said Eva, remembering her hospitable instincts rather belatedly. ‘Do you have a preference –
inland, or by the coast?’

‘Oh I’m not staying, my darlings,’ said Ms Joad, looking at neither of them.

‘Oh!’ said Eva, as if slapped. ‘You’re going straight back up?’

‘The Ulanovs are not people to keep waiting,’ she said. Then, she turned her black gaze upon each of the MOHsisters, one after the other. ‘You have bright futures, as
information artistes, my dears, I have
no doubt
of that. And so you will learn: there are things you can learn by being in the same physical space as somebody that you cannot learn from an
ideality, no matter how fine-grained it may be.’

‘And what have you learned from us, Ms Joad?’ Dia asked, emboldened.

‘I have learned,’ she said, her glance settling momentarily upon Dia. ‘Which of the two celebrated MOHsisters is the one
to watch
.’

Diana felt giddy, as if removed from the usual rubrics of caution. ‘But at any rate, Ms Joad, we must
thank
you for letting us know that our servant was actually killed by Jack
Glass, no less. Though I do still wonder how he magically got inside the servants’ house.’

‘I’ve no idea!’ said Ms Joad. ‘Goodbye my loves.’

As soon as she had gone, and whilst Deño supervised a new search of the area (there was nothing to find; his people were nothing if not
thorough
), Eva and Dia
called up their MOHmies again – an awkward, blurry, nauseous image, since the security routers sent it through nearly a thousand-or-so random pathways before making the connection. But there
they were: both parents, arms linked, floating in space, and the space all around them coloured bright with the force that through the green fuse drives the flower. Diana told them that Ms Joad had
visited, although (of course) they already knew that. Nor did they seem particularly worried by this. ‘You two can solve this horrid mystery,’ they said, in one voice. ‘Work
together, daughters!’ ‘Ms Joad said the murderer was Jack Glass,’ said Diana. ‘A lot of
nonsense
is spoken about that fellow,’ said MOHmie Yin. ‘If you
listen to the rumours he’s ninety-percent Grendel and only ten percent man! But I refuse to believe he’s a superman. He’s only a man. He’s not even the shadow of his own
reputation.’ ‘I don’t see
how
he can have done it,’ said Eva. ‘I don’t understand, practically speaking, how it can have been done.’
‘You’re a smart girl,’ said MOHmie Yang. ‘You will figure it out.’

Just before the conversation ended, Diana said: ‘Ms Joad said it had to do with FTL.’ Hard to gauge it on so shimmery a skyline, but at those three letters it was almost as if both
MOHmies shuddered. Did they? Or was it a flaw in the image rendering?

‘Hard to see what a
servant
could know about such a thing,’ said MOHmie Yang. ‘Or what it might have to do with murder.’ But there was a strange tone to her voice.
Was she angry? Diana got that seventh-sense intimation that she had touched on an unmentionable matter; although a strangely involuted one whereby the fact that it was unmentionable was itself
unmentionable. ‘FTL is a hippogriff,’ said MOHmie Yin, grinning unconvincingly. MOHmie Yin added: ‘it’s a nonsense, it’s a no-thing. It’s impossible, you know.
The laws of physics forbid it.’

‘And talking of laws,’ said MOHmie Yang. ‘We have accredited you both as crime investigators under Ulanov law. The local policepersons must defer to you, now.’

‘Oh they’re already doing
that
,’ said Diana, dismissively.

‘Sort this mystery out!’ the MOHmies sang, in unison. ‘Make us proud, daughters!’ And that was the end of the conversation.

The sisters sat together for a while. Diana worked more-or-less idly through what her bId had on the legendary Jack Glass. Three quarters myth and improbable fantasy; the rest the usual life of
a political dissident with murderous and terroristical-violence proclivities. There was nothing in any of the easily accessible datafields about him being captured, locked away in an asteroid, and
then – impossibly, magically – escaping his prison. The Ulanovs were keeping that fact tightly controlled, it seemed, for whatever reason. Assuming Ms Joad hadn’t simply made it
up, for her own reasons. She stared at the image of his face. It looked as bland as any other face. Murderers often did.

‘I still don’t see why,’ said Eva, unable to get Ms Joad’s black gaze out of her mind, ‘she had to come in person. All the way from the Ulanovs! To
us
?’

‘Something
is
wrong,’ said Diana. ‘She didn’t come down here just to meet
us
in person. We’re hardly important enough. And there’s literally no
reason why she should be interested in the death of a servant.’

‘So she came just to intimidate us, then. A personal visit
is
more intimidating than an appearance in the IP, after all.’ And then: ‘which is to say, she came to
intimidate
our MOHmies
. Not us:
we
hardly matter, in the larger scheme of things, after all. This was her way of saying to our MOHmies – we’re watching your daughters, we
can get to them, we can reach them.’

And it was at that moment that Diana had one of her intuitive leaps of comprehension, the sort of instinctive human-nature-based insight of which Eva was not capable (for all her five years of
extra life and her six PhDs). ‘They’re scared.’

‘What?’

It was almost a criminal act to say this; and Dia could not help glancing nervously around. Almost certainly this space was shielded and protected against direct Ulanov surveillance. But
almost certainly
was not as reassuring a form of words as you might want, where the ultimate powers in the system were concerned. ‘The Ulanovs are scared – of us, of the Argents,
of our MOHclan.’

‘Why?’

‘Do I have to spell it out for you, Eva? Those three little words, I suppose. Do you think I even
know
? I’m fifteen years old, and politics and conspiracy and power-jockeying
and all that are beyond
me
. But they won’t be forever. And you can bet your bippy the Ulanovs have an enhanced sensitivity to the pre-tremors of rebellion. They’re scared that
the Argents are about to – I don’t know what. But
something
.’

Eva was wide-eyed. ‘Do you think we are? Our MOHmies, I mean?’

‘
I
don’t know, do I? But that would explain her strange insistence that it was Jack Glass who killed our poor little handservant Leron. Why him?’

‘Explain it how?’

Diana pushed some tagged data into one of her sister’s IP atria. ‘See for yourself. There’s nothing in this data to upset a squeamish MOHsister, I should add – though he
has
done some horrible things to his fellow human beings. But I’ve tagged up a dozen or so key semes, and the main one is: his close association with the Revolutionary
movements.’

‘The Terrorists,’ Eva said, automatically, a more-or-less superstitious reflex.

‘Sure. Terrorists. Antinomians. Followers of Mithras. All that. Glass is a kind of figurehead, or inspiration, for these groups. He has devoted his life, apparently, to overthrowing the
Ulanovs.’

Eva whistled a C# through perfectly pursed lips. ‘Is that what Joad was saying? Was that her coded way of warning us that the Ulanovs suspect us of having
Antinomian
sympathies?
“Jack Glass is your murderer” . . . means
that
?’

‘Or if not us, then maybe amongst our servants?’

‘Oh how could that even
be
? These are carefully selected handservants! They go through – goddess, I don’t even know
how many
layers of preselection and vetting.
How could they slip through that degree of checking?’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Diana agreed. ‘There are too many levels on which it doesn’t make sense. Unless.’

‘Unless?’

‘Unless our MOHmies have some new leverage. Some new means of applying pressure. Those three letters Joad made such a fuss about accidentally-on-purpose letting slip.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Eva.

That evening the girls ate together in the snug. Deño and Iago ate at a separate table. An open window let in odours of salt-water and lavender. The seesaw of the
cicadas swelled and shrank, as if the air itself were pulsing. Or yawning. The view was of the stalagmite silhouettes of the cypresses, and above them was the black-blue nightsky, speckled all over
with lights. More of these were in motion than were stationary.

‘When I mentioned FTL to our MOHmies,’ Diana said, because she had been ruminating on this for a while, ‘it was as if I had uttered a profanity.’

Eva looked at her. ‘You think?’

‘Why should it be a secret?’ Diana asked. ‘If somebody has developed the technologies of faster-than-light travel – well, then, that’s a cause of collective human
celebration! It would mean the freedom of the stars! Why would it need to be kept secret, why would people kill for it, why would MOHmie Yang flinch when I said it?’

‘Maybe it was only a wobble in the image,’ said Eva.

‘It would be like the Wright brothers discovering heavier-than-air flight, then sealing the data in a chip and
telling nobody
. Surely it would make sense just to . . . disseminate
the knowledge? To lodge a copy in a public IP, something?’

‘There’s no FTL technology,’ said Eva. ‘It doesn’t exist. Any such thing would violate the laws of physics. It’s a nonsense.’

‘Wouldn’t that make it more ironic, though? People killing one another over what they
think
is a new FTL technology, when such technology doesn’t even exist! Killing
people just over a rumour.’

‘Anyone with a kindergarten education knows that faster-than-light travel is a nonsense,’ said Eva again. ‘Anybody not actually a member of the Sumpolloi knows it.’

‘It’s exactly the Sumpolloi who are likely to believe it, though,’ said Diana, thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps that’s the point. If there really were an FTL technology then
people could use it to flee the System . . . couldn’t they? They could use it to escape the Lex Ulanova altogether.’

‘And if there were a technology to make us all-powerful and immortal then we’d all be gods,’ said Eva. ‘But there isn’t.’

‘You’re missing my point. The point is that the
idea
of it could become a symbol, a flag. A banner. A rallying point for revolution.’

Eva shuddered. ‘I do wish you’d stop using that word.’

After supper they prayed together, and kissed, and then they went to their separate bedrooms.

6

The Gate of Horn and the Gate of Ivory

Diana’s head was filled with motion and electricity. All our heads are, of course. But hers was of a degree of sophistication unusual amongst human beings. She was
thinking: and if there were a technology that violated the laws of physics and permitted FTL travel. Would it, having violated one law of physics, allow the user to violate other ones?
Teleportation, for instance? As Deño made a final check of her room, she asked him: ‘Dominico, am I safe here?’

‘Yes, Miss,’ he replied. ‘As safe as we can make you.’

‘What if a murderer could teleport directly
into
my room?’

Deño’s face registered puzzlement. ‘But Miss,’ he said. ‘There’s no way anybody could do that.’

‘You’re right,’ she said, settling inside her gel-bed. It was a delicious sensation: for the gel took the edge off her gravity-fatigue. ‘Is Iago outside?’

‘Of course, Miss.’

‘Send him in. I want to say goodnight to him.’

Deño left, and Iago came in. He stood, as if to attention, beside the bed. ‘Oh sit down, Iago,’ Dia chided him. ‘You only stand up to try and impress me – and
I’m not impressed.’

‘I prefer to stand, Miss,’ he replied. But little dots of sweat were evident on his forehead, and the muscles in his thighs were visibly trembling under the effort of keeping him
upright. Pride, Dia decided. That’s all it was. Well: she wasn’t going to insist.

‘Eye-
arrr
-go,’ she drawled. ‘Do you think the solar system’s most infamous murderer is going to materialise in my bedroom out of thin air and kill me?’

‘No,’ he said, levelly.

‘Oh, come, come, Iago. You
heard
what Ms Joad said. You were right there.’

‘Nevertheless, I’m still not sure I understand who this gentleman is supposed to be. A myth, is my guess.’

She smiled. ‘You’re right, of course. It’s all politics, isn’t it? It’s all jockeying for position amongst the MOHfamilies and the Gongsi, isn’t it? We are
intimidatable
, I suppose. Killing Eva and killing me would harm the Argent family, and would benefit our rivals, I suppose. And by the same logic, even just
scaring
us has some small
benefit. But, goddess! – if they wanted us dead, wouldn’t they just blast the whole island from orbit?’

‘That,’ said Iago, shifting his weight slightly from his left to his right leg, ‘would be an act of war.’

‘But maybe war is where this is going?’ She said this languorously, sliding deeper into her gel-bed. It was a real enough worry, she supposed; but a point is reached, as sleep comes
over a body, when even the most acute worries lose their sting.

‘The Clan’s power and influence is based on
influence
,’ said Iago. ‘Any of your rivals, any organisation who wants to supplant you in the hierarchy below the
Ulanovs – well, they need to do more than just wipe you out. They need to
take your place
, and that means they need your
information
. Without it they wouldn’t be able to
consolidate their power.’

‘Indeed,’ said Diana. Sleep was coming. Hello sleep!

‘My understanding, Miss,’ he went on, in a pleasant-enough lullaby-y drone, ‘and of course I don’t know the specifics – but my understanding is that there are
caches of extremely valuable information encoded into the fabric of this house. To destroy it would be to destroy that information.’