Crash Deluxe (18 page)

On cue, an auto-life-support wheeled in. The man it carried was bald and overweight. His scalp flaked onto a towel that covered his shoulders. His eyes were yellowed, but keen. Behind him walked an identikit version of Mal, only somewhat older and larger.

‘Parrish, meet Gerwent Ban. King of Viva and environs. Hereditary leader of the Electronic Transaction Polity.’

The ETP.
Tigers without teeth
was how my stepdad Kevin described them.
The remnants of the old banking fraternity. As secretive as the Masons had once been. Now moneyed but powerless. This is Gerwent Ban?

I felt ripped-off. There was nothing exotic or special about him - apart from the pricey life-support. Anyone else would be dead.

I considered doing something humble out of respect.

Gerwent looked to where Bras lay on the mat. ‘Are you unwell, child?’

‘No, father.’ She rolled away from us, eyes to the wall.

I stared in disbelief at Ban’s decrepit flesh. Only a short time ago Bras had been forcibly taken from The Tert and adopted by the Royal Family as what I assumed was a publicity feat. What had really happened here, I wondered, that had got her calling this half-dead creature
dad
?

‘Ms Plessis. You’ve a talent for getting noticed.’ His voice was surprisingly strong. Amped and modulated by the chair, I figured - he didn’t look like he had enough breath left to spit.

I crooked a finger - the only bit of me not secured, and said the first thing that came into my head. ‘Is it normal behaviour for the King to kidnap law-abiding citizens?’

He laughed - a cross between a wheeze and puff from the ventilator. The auto-chair moved him closer to me again, with Mal and her twin a step behind.

‘Nothing is normal for a King. And it’s been a long time since you were a law-abiding citizen, Parrish Plessis.’

He had a point there.

I nodded at the cams on the ceiling and the two heavyweight guards. ‘Untie me. What’s to be scared of?’

‘The same thing that attracts people to you, I would guess. You’re very unpredictable.’

I
laughed this time, at this gentle massaging of my ego. Maybe he wasn’t as dead as he looked.

Moved by some unspoken command Mal approached and freed me.

I rubbed circulation back into my arms and legs but made no move to get up. I was intrigued. King Gerwent Ban wanted me for something, and I wanted to hear what. This game I’d rolled my dice on had jumped to a scale way beyond my measuring. If I didn’t learn . . .

I took a slow breath. ‘Bras tells me you’re working up a revolution. How are you gonna do that?’ I couldn’t see any point in hedging. Blunt seemed to be everyone else’s tactic.

‘You are aware that our media communications are run by Brilliance, a constructed editing intelligence of supposedly infinite capacity to organise, select and edit information.’

‘Yeah, I’m familiar with it.’

‘I say
supposed
. We believe that it is not an AI but has a biological component - somehow a real consciousness has become meshed with the editing processor.’

I though about Merv’s reaction when he talked about Brilliance. He knew something. ‘You mean it has a brain?’

‘We think so.’

I tapped my fingers on the chair leg. ‘Why don’t you just shoot it in the head, then?’

Ban made a strange strangled noise at the suggestion. ‘Perhaps we might consider something so direct,
if we knew where it was
.’

‘You’ve got no idea?’

He grimaced. ‘None.’

‘So what is your plan?

‘We think that the meshed system has become unstable and that the constant editing choices are degrading its “thought” processes.’

‘What are the IOs doing about it?’

‘Nothing. With the complexity and volume of what is viewed it is unprofitable and inefficient to use human labour to edit. Brilliance was . . .
is
a cost-effective and competent evolution in communication. She has developed her own editing technology that is swift and incomprehensible to us. To start again would cripple them.’

‘Which is what you want to do. Cause a media blackout.’

‘Crude but accurate. We want Monk and Sera Bau to vie so hard for ratings that the sheer volume and distress will cause Brilliance’s new organic part to have a cerebral haemorrhage.’

‘What’s that?’ Was this the abridged version of perceived events suitable for dummies, I wondered? If so, then I deserved a freakin’ medal for my new-found talent at playing along.

‘We want her brain to bleed.’

‘If your self-destruct idea works, what happens then?’

‘When Brilliance is incapacitated, we begin again with a more basic technology, including net-time with genuine free information. We will resurrect a political system in this country,’ said Gerwent Ban.

‘Don’t tell me . . . governed by the Polity?’

Bras sat up on properly on the mat, drawing her knees to her chest. ‘I told him youse were smart.’

‘“You”,’ Ban corrected gently.

Bras coloured.

‘And that will make the world a better place,’ I asked, sounding innocent enough even to myself.

‘Of course it will.’ Bras raised one of her small, newly crafted fists. ‘He promised me it would.’

I caught a glimpse of what was left of the street kid behind the constructed crust of self-confidence. Bras had been saved from The Tert. But
had
she been saved? She was ill and I knew what ailed her.

I felt guilty - responsible. The Royals had fixed her arms, upgraded her speak, prettied her clothes, filled her head with propaganda and given her cred to wield. But they had no idea what was going on inside her.

I wished I hadn’t, either.

‘So what do you want from me?’

‘We need you to light fires that will get Brilliance burning. Once she’s damaged, we want to expose the extent of her control with a rogue broadcast,’ said Gerwent Ban. ‘We want you to anchor it when we do it.’ He paused a moment switching his modulator over to a command tone. ‘But the timing is significant. Sera Bau plans to release her footage on the eve of the Pan-Sat transmission. We must have Brilliance primed for overload at that precise time.’

‘What resources do you have?’ Maybe a silly question considering his wealth. Maybe not.

‘We have a facility assembled. It contains all the communications technology we need. There is also a small collection of weapons there, should you need them. Once you agree we will take you there.’

Bras stood and approached me, her face whiter than the sheet on her sleeping-mat. Mal sidestepped in behind her, ready to catch her should she fall.

‘There’s a condition to all this, Parrish,’ said Bras.

Gerwent Ban spoke. ‘Brasella feels that we need your old face back. When things change we will need to show an authentic figurehead. Someone wronged by the media.’

Well, the world was crazy. Officially. Someone was gonna give me weapons and a viewing audience to play with.

Hysteria would have been appropriate in the face of his announcement but a dam of unshed tears blocked its way. The impasse meant there was only room in me for calm.

Yet Bras, King Ban, Sera Bau, Monk, Daac, Tulu - every damn conniving person I could name in a breath - didn’t understand one momentous thing.

The Eskaalim.
The shape-shifter. The creature turning others into energy-driven sadists - violence junkies. The one turning me into a sex addict and a madwoman. The one I’d recently learned, that we couldn’t live with and couldn’t live without.

I kept my tone very even. My words were clipped and clear.

‘Do you actually know what was happening in the heart of the Tertiary sector? In Dis?’

Bras shrugged. It turned into an odd kind of movement, even with the expensive prosthetics.

Ban spoke for her. ‘Our informant tells us that a man there was experimenting with hormones, prolonging puberty in young people. It turned their behaviour animalistic.’

‘Your informant? You mean Leesa Tulu.’ The harshness of my voice was unmistakable. ‘Is that all she said?’

Ban’s breather whirred louder for a second. ‘Yes. Out of interest, how did you stumble over that connection? ’

‘Some information still comes free,’ I whispered.
Not really free, Parrish.
‘Now listen. I’ll be your anarchist. I’ll be your anchor. I’ll be anything you damn well want. But
I
have some conditions.’

Gerwent Ban wheeled closer, energised with eagerness, until he was alongside Bras. She put her prosthetic hands on his shoulders. They looked so real that I could swear she felt his flesh. Maybe if I lived long enough I’d get Loyl Daac a new prosthetic like hers.

‘Yes?’ he said.

‘First, I want Bau
and
Tulu.’

‘Afterwards. Yes.’ The King’s ventilator sucked in agreement. ‘You can
have
who you like.’

‘Second, I want you to find the best geneticist you can and analyse this.’ I reached into my crop and pulled out the neural spike that the Cabal had removed from Ike’s head.

‘And that would be?’

‘You think you want to start a revolution. Actually, you need to stop one. A biological revolution. Something is changing people into beasts.’

Ban blinked with unspoken scepticism. After all, someone like me had to be crazy.

‘Why would you expect me to believe something so preposterous?’

‘Ask Leesa Tulu what was really going on in the heart of The Tert. Better still: torture her. It’s the only way you’ll get the truth. Do it at least to help your . . . adopted daughter.’

‘Brasella?’ His flaccid body quivered. Definitely not dead yet.

I felt Bras’s stare on me too, intense and distressed.

Telling her like this was cruel. But I needed to make them understand - for me and for her.

‘Because she is infected.’

‘What do you know?’ Even the modulator couldn’t keep the King’s voice strong.

‘Hallucinations, voices, violent urges. Sound familiar?’

Bras nodded, swallowing hard. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s a parasite that feeds off the epinephrine in your body.’

‘How do you acquire such a thing?’

‘We all have it but it’s dormant. Splicing of certain genes has released it. When Sera Bau found out what entertainment it could provide, she paid someone to spread the . . .’ I stopped short of saying the word
alien
. I didn’t really know what it was - only that it wasn’t human. There didn’t seem to be any other word in the human vocabulary to accommodate that idea, yet that one sounded so nuts. ‘Just get this analysed. Quickly, if you want to help Bras.’

Gerwent Ban nodded at Mal’s near-double. ‘Melanie will see to it. Is there anything else?’

For a few seconds I gave myself the luxury of considering a future. If I actually survived, what would be important to me afterwards? I hadn’t planned much past revenge.

Even if I didn’t make it, maybe I could set some things in place.

But what? Clean up The Tert?

Sounded cool enough, but the reality was that the punters who lived there didn’t want to be part of the super-cities. They didn’t want the interference and the regulations. And yet most of them didn’t want the scum and deprivations of The Tert either.

‘I want you to reinstate and maintain the public utilities in the Tertiary sector. Running water and consistent power.’

If Ban had had an eyebrow it would have cocked.

‘An interesting request. I can’t guarantee that I can do it but while I have influence I will try. You’ll have to believe that.’

‘And
you
need to believe that I will interfere with your plans in any way I can if you don’t.’

I didn’t know how, but I would find a way. After all, messing up was my biggest talent.

‘Right. I also need the help of a person I can trust.’
Or trust more than you
,
anyway.

He was prepared for this. ‘Give Melanie the name and whereabouts. I’ll have them brought in.’

‘I’ll need to make contact with them first,’ I said. ‘And one more thing.’ I opened the coat and flashed the torn brocade. The whine of his breather quickened.
Definitely not dead.
‘I need some proper clothes.’

The King nodded, rubbing the smooth fabric of his auto-chair, telling it to take him elsewhere. ‘We have a deal, then?’

‘Yes.’

For the first time since Jamon Mondo had come into my life a few years before, I felt light.

If this was power, I was hooked.

 

 

 

 

M
al and Bras took me to a lift that opened into a suite with a view.

‘An Intimate will attend you here until tomorrow evening when we travel to our hide,’ said Bras.

I looked around. Another room of my own. Even better than the Luxoria. I should be enjoying all this. Instead, I prowled around. Restlessness plagued me as usual. Would I ever be rid of the feeling that time was running out?

I told myself that it was because I was used to acting quickly to solve things and now I had to deliberate and plan. In truth, though, I couldn’t shake the desperation inside myself. Real or imagined, it was with me in the same way that my lungs sucked oxygen. Since my overdose with dizzies, something had shaken loose. My grip had weakened.

I forced myself to change calmly into the jeans and shirt that Mal had brought me.

They both looked away.

‘How secure is the hide?’ I asked them.

Bras swung her arms as though they were uncomfortable or, now that I’d seen her own sparsely furnished room, I thought that perhaps she was as uneasy as I was with comforts.