Crashing Heaven (25 page)

Chapter 36

Jack was lying somewhere soft. He could hear running water. His face was covered, his own breath warm against it. His arms were crossed and held tight against his chest. He was swaddled in blankets. He remembered a small figure, half-glimpsed at the end of a passage. He wriggled. Pain danced between his ribs, across his face and hands. There was a soft thudding in his head. Perhaps he’d been captured by one of Kingdom’s agents. Soft voices whispered. There were two or three people talking. Jack risked movement. He carefully brought one arm up to pull the blanket away from his head. The speakers were arguing about him.

‘We’ve got to look after him.’

‘We can’t keep him.’

There was a pause.

‘Well, he’s here for now anyway.’

The first voice was clear and high-pitched, a far more natural version of Fist’s. The second had an uncertain huskiness to it. Jack opened his eyes and saw a metal wall. Someone giggled next to him, then prodded him in the small of his back and said, ‘Sleepyhead!’ It was unmistakably the voice of a very young girl. ‘He’s waking up,’ she called to the others. They must be children too – an older boy and another girl. Jack wondered at the adults that would leave them alone with a captive. He rolled over. A blanket decorated with a brightly smiling cartoon mouse slid off him. He was lying on a mattress, one of several pushed together. A small, dark-haired girl sat next to him, wearing a ragged dress and a shiny blue anorak. She held a cuddly rabbit and was tugging absent-mindedly at one of its ears.

‘Get back, Lyssa,’ said the husky voice. There was a table at the other end of the room. The older boy and the other girl were sitting at it. Both were just as shabbily dressed. The wall behind them was covered with bright, dynamic designs; paintings of different parts of Homelands. Some of the buildings had names scrawled across them – Chuigushou Mall, Glass Vision Tower, The Shard, The Acorn, Violin Square.

‘You won’t hurt us, will you?’ said Lyssa. ‘You killed the wicked men.’ She peered down at her bunny, pulling its nose to left and right as she spoke. ‘Wicked, wicked, wicked men.’ She looked up again, her gaze surprisingly confident. ‘You’re a ghost, aren’t you? Like us?’

‘None of us are ghosts,’ said the boy grumpily.

‘Then how come no one can see us? Not even the lions and tigers and bears?’

‘Quiet, Lyssa,’ cautioned the girl at the table. ‘Don’t tell him secrets.’

‘It’s not secret,’ said Lyssa, her head turned over her shoulder. ‘He knows,’ she concluded, whispering conspiratorially to her bunny.

‘Who are you all?’ asked Jack. Lyssa was now deep in conversation with her cuddly toy. The girl from the table came over and sat down, putting a protective arm around her. She looked at the boy, who nodded.

‘I’m Ato,’ she said brightly, ‘and this is Fred.’

‘Where are we?’

‘Deep underground, in Station’s skin,’ Fred replied. ‘About an hour’s walk from where Ato found you. We’re safe. All this’ – he waved at the walls – ‘insulates us from anyone outside.’

‘No sound scanners, no body heat cameras, nothing,’ said Ato.

‘That’s pretty impressive,’ said Jack. ‘You built this yourselves?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ scolded Lyssa. ‘Our mummies and daddies did. And Grandpa helped them.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘When the police came and took them, they left this room for us to be safe in. And they took us offweave and made us all invisible.’

‘How did they do that?’

‘Secrets from Grandpa,’ whispered Lyssa. ‘He knew that InSec were coming.’

‘For your parents?’

‘Yes.’

Realisation struck Jack. The terrorists must have tried to protect their children from InSec, and in doing so made phantoms of them.

‘Why did InSec come for them?’ wondered Jack.

‘They were fighting for peace,’ said Fred, firmly. ‘For a better world.’

Jack wondered how the parents’ weavehack worked. It must be very effective – if InSec had been able to perceive the children, they’d have been taken into care. He wondered whether Lestak could arrange for them to be looked after; if she’d even let him get a word in edgeways. Perhaps she might listen when he told her about Kingdom.

He sat up.

‘No, don’t!’ snapped Ato.

Pain spiked in his head. The room spun.

‘You’re still not better,’ she told him. ‘Lie down.’

He felt the soft pressure of her hands on his shoulders, pushing him down. It was a relief to sink back on to the mattress.

‘We’ll look after you. And anyway, you can’t go anywhere just now. They’re looking for you upstairs.’ There was a confident finality to her voice. She was talking as much to Fred as to Jack.

Jack felt a soft scratching in his mind. Fist was stirring. An indicator pinged. The puppet’s core consciousness would start rebooting in an hour or so. Perhaps it would be best to sleep until then. He felt that he could trust the children not to betray him. Exhaustion rolled over him like a dark wave, and he let himself fall into it.

He dreamed that he was Corazon again. Her assassin pursued him through sleep. Sometimes there was one Yamata, shooting at him through a keyhole. Sometimes many limped behind him, never quite catching him, never slowing down. At one point, he found himself in the middle of a silent, moonlit piazza. Bone-white stone surrounded him. There was no one else there, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop running.

When he awoke, he barely felt rested. The room was quiet. Lyssa was sitting by the table, playing with her bunny. Fred stood at the rear wall, sketching on it with a marker pen, roughing out a new building for the Homelands mural. Neither noticed he’d woken. There was no sign of Ato.

Jack closed his eyes and settled back into his mattress. Now that he’d looked outwards, he could reach inwards. Icons flashed in his mind – Fist’s damage repair reports. The puppet’s basic systems had successfully repaired themselves. His mind, memory and personality were ready to be reactivated. Jack had to be present to steer this final rebirth. For a moment, he hesitated. Without Fist, he had felt loneliness, but also peace. There’d been solitude for the first time in seven years. Such privacy was difficult to relinquish.

But so much had changed since they’d returned to Station. Each had become a mediator for the other, Jack helping Fist engage with the subtle workings of humanity, Fist helping Jack control the digital environment that the little puppet understood so well. Emotion poured through him. He thought back to when East had offered to neuter Fist’s higher functions. He’d framed his objection then in rational terms; now, he understood that there was far more to it than that. The puppet was no longer just a burdensome tool. He was a conscious, developing individual with whom Jack was deeply involved.

Commands pulsed in Jack’s thoughts. They confirmed that it was safe for Fist to reboot. At peace in the sanctuary of his mind, Jack watched as his child began to live again.

Chapter 37

Hours passed. Jack seemed to be asleep. In fact, he was deep in conversation with Fist.

[ Thank gods I’m back,] chirped the puppet. [ You can’t manage without me. Rescued by children!]

[Pretty capable kids. They’ve hidden from InSec all this time.]

Fist was silent for a moment. [ Well, here’s part of how they did it,] he told Jack. [ This room’s a Turing cage. Nothing digital gets in or out. And that young girl’s got some fairly heavy protection running. She’s invisible to anyone onweave.]

[ They said that the lions and tigers and bears couldn’t see them either. Must be invisible to security programs, too.]

[ Yup. But only for a while. Their protection stops at puberty. Lyssa’s weave presence will activate fully then and break her shielding.]

[And the boy?]

[Looks like his broke a few months back. But he’s never been fully onweave. Must have been hiding here all that time.]

[ He could do that?]

[As long as they keep feeding him.]

[ That’s not what I meant, Fist.]

[ I know. Poor kid.]

The note of empathy in the puppet’s voice surprised Jack. He wondered about commenting on it, but worried that that would inhibit it. [ They can’t have got this stuff from their parents,] he said neutrally. [ It’s far too sophisticated.]

[ Their folks must have been hackers as well as terrorists. Interesting. I’ll dig into the code, see what I can find out.]

[ That’s not all the digging we need to do. We need to work out what happened at TrueShield.]

[ I could have killed a god, Jack Conscience Forster decided I shouldn’t, and we had our backsides tanned. End of story.]

[And that should be impossible. None of the other puppets could have done it. They were built on military minds, Totality specialists with no sense of Pantheon structure. They’d have been completely lost in divine security code.]

[Puppet plus accountant equals god fucker,] preened Fist. [ How about that? It was a piece of piss to break, Jackie boy. Pantheon security sucks, it’s overconfidence again.]

[Oh no.] Awe rose in Jack. [Sometimes, when I was working close enough to the Pantheon, I’d hear their protection growling in the distance. I was out on the edge of a five-year business plan once, I saw the Twins’ firewall on the horizon. Unreachable. Unknowable. It burnt so brightly. I couldn’t look at it for more than a few seconds. I don’t know how to describe it.]

[ That’s not how it looked to me,] chirped Fist. [ It was just a little door. I just raised my foot and kicked it down. Bam! I always knew I was special! I only wish all those other puppets were still around, I’d love to have seen those little S.O.B.’s faces when I showed them what I could really do.]

[More than special,] said Jack. [ You’re a Pantheon gun. Could you really have killed him?]

[ I could have done whatever I wanted to. Messed around with his corporate structures. Crashed some of his businesses. Deleted his personality. Copied ours into it. Wait a second …] Fist paused for a second, then exploded with vicious excitement. [ I could have copied us over Kingdom! He’d have become us! We could have been gods! I could have been a god! Let’s go back and do it!]

Fist’s glee scared Jack. Trying to sound as calm and firm as he could, he replied: [ You haven’t thought that through, Fist. Remember, we don’t have any proof of what Kingdom’s been up to. And if you kill a god, lots of people die and the other gods would kill us. We’d last seconds at most.]

[ BUT
WHAT SECONDS THEY’D BE!
]

[ Remember East’s anger,] Jack told him, keeping his voice gentle. [ Imagine eleven of them turning on you.]

[ I’d fucking have the lot of them.]

[Even if you’re damaged?]

[ Fuck’s sake, Jack. Yamata barely touched me. That’s just a detail.]

[ Really?]

[ I’m fine.] There was a pause. [ Well, maybe there are some little bruises. But they don’t matter.]

[Show me.]

[ I don’t want to think about it. Come on, Jack, let’s go! I’m a Pantheon gun! I may be short of a few bullets, but I’m still ready to fire!]

There was a little less glee in his voice, a little more anxiety. Jack wondered what the true extent of the damage was. [ I need to see,] he said, quietly but firmly. [ I’m not taking you anywhere until I’ve seen.]

[ Jack …] whined Fist.

[ I mean it.]

Fist let a series of images escape into Jack’s mind. The puppet was wrapped in a tightly buttoned and belted trench coat. A little fedora hat was perched on his head.

[ There. Hardly a scratch.]

He turned to left and right, stretching his arms out. He didn’t seem to realise that the trench coat was torn under one arm. The tear revealed a charred wooden body dotted with broken remnants of clothing. Wisps of hair emerged from beneath the hat. There was a new looseness to his movements, as if his joints had been over-strained and left slightly too flexible. His face and hands were darker than they had been, stained by smoke.

[ That looks quite serious.]

[ I’m fine, Jackie boy, fine fine fine! Ha ha ha.] His laughter was forced. [ I’ve just had to reallocate some internal memory. And I’ve still got some repairs to finish. So no full visuals at the moment, I’m afraid.]

[ You’re not at full attack strength.]

[ You’re spoiling everything, Jack.]

[ I’m helping you think clearly. How hard could you hit Kingdom, right now?]

Fist said nothing.

[ Hard enough to be sure of finishing him off ?]

[ Fucking hell, Jack.]

[And what would happen if you didn’t? He’d wipe both our personalities. Then he’d rebuild your attack systems and turn them on the rest of the Pantheon. We’d be dead and he’d be able to take over or kill any of them. Is that what you want?]

For a moment, Fist’s newly battered face was inert. He looked more puppet-like than ever before. Then he leapt into animated life again.

[ I’m bored with this! Let’s talk about Yamata and Harry! We can chat about Kingdom again when I’ve finished my repairs.]

Relief shook through Jack. [Good idea,] he said. [ How could Harry fight her off like that?]

[ I’ve got a pretty good idea. I scanned him when he passed through me. I’ve got his number now. Yamata’s too. And you know what’s really strange? At a systems level, you can’t tell them apart.]

[ But she hit you with a Totality attack package.]

[She’s a post-mortal human consciousness running on a Totality platform – that jellyfish thing was her weave presence. Harry makes more of an effort to look good, but he’s really exactly the same. It’s why he could make such a big dent in her.]

[ You can’t run human minds in a Totality environment. They work in a completely different way.]

[ No one told those two! I didn’t get too deep in, but there was some pretty sophisticated crosspatching going on. Oh, and there’s no fetchware in there at all. They’ve never been near a Coffin Drive. They became what they are as soon as they kicked the bucket.]

[Shit. What about the physical Yamatas?]

[ I’d guess clones, brains scooped out and replaced with nanogel mind nodes. Yamata runs them by remote control. Her signal traces back to Heaven. Harry’s off-Station somewhere. High Earth orbit, by the look of it.]

[ We should tell Ifor.]

[ What? He’s Totality, they’re on Totality platforms. I bet he’s involved. They’re stitching us up. Fucking squishies. We should have killed them all.]

[ This isn’t them. The Yamata clones are several copies of the same body. That’s not Totality, they value variety too much. They never repeat themselves.]

[ But what about Harry? He could be sitting in a Totality server on a snowflake somewhere.]

[ How would they have got hold of him? And why? No, it’s got to be Kingdom. Who else could get two human minds running on Totality hardware?]

[And you don’t want me to touch him. I hope you know you’re his fucking bitch, Jack.]

[ We’re going to get hard, undeniable proof of Kingdom’s involvement in all this. We’ll give it to Grey and East, and the Totality, and between them they’ll bring him down. We’ll be heroes, Fist. And there’ll be no risk of Kingdom getting his hands on your firepower.]

Fist yawned.

[ You’re sleepy?]

[ Repair packages calling. I’ve got to shut down for a bit. This is a boring conversation anyway.]

Fist grumbled back into Jack’s mind. Soon, little snores sighed up. Jack felt hugely relieved that he’d managed to defuse Fist’s excitement at his newly discovered capabilities. He wondered in a tired way how he’d keep protecting him from the damage he could cause. Thoughts of protection turned his mind to Andrea. He worried that Harry might have discovered their relationship, might still take his revenge on her. The past sighed in his mind. They’d worked so hard to hide things. ‘I don’t want to tell him until it’s right,’ she used to say. ‘Until I know for sure it’s serious. He’d be so angry if he found out.’ Jack reassured himself that Harry never had done.

As he drifted into sleep, other memories of their time together brushed at him, like waves caressing a darkening shore. There was Andrea as he’d first seen her, performing in a Kanji Town night club. Harry dragged Jack there after they’d argued about music. ‘I told you she was better than anything you Homeland fucks have, didn’t I? If she hadn’t fallen out with the Twins, she’d be the biggest star on Station.’ A single spotlight carved the pale mask of her face from the darkness, the rest of her lost in soft shadow.

There was the first time they kissed; a snatched, urgent intimacy that took both of them by surprise, after hours in a near-empty cabaret bar. Two half-empty glasses flared gold between them. Ice had melted into the whisky’s pale fire when at last they remembered to finish them. ‘You can’t pretend you’re not from here,’ she told him then, for the first time.

As she got to know him, she would drag him back to the streets of his childhood and force memories back into him. ‘It’s who you are. Not some Homelander that Grey made.’ He came to believe that she emphasised her Docklands accent when she was with him, used slang that she would normally skip over. He remembered walking past a playground with her. ‘I used to love that place,’ he said. Children still tumbled laughing through it. ‘Look at them,’ she said, ‘finding joy despite the world.’

Towards the end, he found it harder and harder when she went back to Harry. By then, he was living pretty much full time in his Docklands hotel. He was on first name terms with the staff, who turned a blind eye to her frequent late night visits. She was suffering, too. As her affair with Jack had become more serious, so her sense of guilt had grown. ‘He’s not always a good man,’ she said, as they argued one night, ‘but it’s the best part of him that loves me.’ Dawn found her hard-faced. ‘I have to go,’ she said again and again, making no move towards the door. ‘I have to go.’

Three days later, the rock fell.

Mercifully, sleep took Jack before that last meeting came to life in his mind. Memory’s weave drifted off him, tapestried moments falling away. His last conscious thoughts were of sweathead code. He wondered what he’d forgotten as he remembered his relationship with Andrea; what more challenging truths lay beyond his remembrance of their time together. And then at last he slept, too damaged even to dream.