Creation Machine (26 page)

‘Shit.’ Fleare said the word softly, through almost-closed teeth. ‘That’s all on that ring, is it?’

‘Yeah. Documentary, still images, some 2-D vid. Most of it has a stolen look, if you know what I mean. Unofficial.’

She nodded. ‘I can see why it’s interesting.’

‘Oh, all that’s just back story. The really interesting part is that the Fortunate got their thing, whatever it was, and hauled it away to somewhere very secret. That fact is on here, although the location isn’t, but so is one more thing.’ Muz drifted slowly over to the ring, and hovered above it so that it lit him from below ‘A bit of the code on here suggests – only suggests, mind – that a few of the people from the death camp may still exist in possibly recoverable form, somewhere in one of the sims.’

‘Really? Why would the Fortunate save their own victims?’

‘I agree, it would be weird if they had, but I don’t think it was them. I don’t think they
could
unless they had some high-grade help and there’s no sign of that.’

Fleare stood up. ‘Are you going to suggest that we go in and look for these people?’ she asked.

‘Well, yes.’ The sphere gave an embarrassed-looking wobble. ‘There’s a bit more, if it helps.’

Fleare rolled her eyes. ‘Try me. It might.’

‘Okay. No promises, but I think we are only seeing a part of the story. There are two missing bits: what is the thing, and where did it end up?’

Fleare nodded slowly. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘If it turns out to be important, fair enough. But how would we know?’

‘Know what? If it’s important? Well, we don’t. But we can guess. Two things. First, whatever it was, that thing was important enough to dig out and take away. We know the Fortunate don’t waste time on trivia. Ergo, it wasn’t trivia. And second, back to Nipple again. These ancient fragments are big news. Creating a brand-new ecosystem that lasts fifty thousand years and counting? And that was probably just a fragment, not a complete artefact.’ He rose from the ring, floated back over to Fleare and settled in her outstretched palm. ‘It could be that the Fortunate think they’ve got their blood-soaked hands on something really lethal. And there’s just a small chance they’re right.’

‘Okay.’ Fleare fought the urge to close her hand around the sphere. Something about it made her want to heft it.

Her left leg was hurting; had been hurting for a while, an insistent, gently sinister ache that had begun in her ankle and had made its way, day by day, up past her knee and as far as her hip. This morning the ghost of the same pain had appeared in her other leg.

She had waited for a message from Jezerey but when it had come, just yesterday, it had been terse, a text-format message sent encrypted. That had seemed needless. ‘Sorry, girl, no luck yet. Still working on it. Take care and keep
yourself
safe.’ The yourself had been emphasized.

She bit her lip, and wondered if her leg would still hurt when she was in the sim. ‘So,’ she said, ‘how do we go in?’

Fragment recovered from Archive, unknown

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. It’s one of a very long list of things I don’t know. Sometimes, when I’m not in a simulation, I try to make a list of the things I do know. I never get past the fact that I am a simulation myself. I assume I have a body somewhere.

They – good question; I don’t know, it’s on the list – drop me into other simulations sometimes. I don’t know why they do, but I’m good at it. Not just being in a simulation; working out what I’m supposed to do. There’s always some kind of task. Sometimes I think they’re making me practise for something.

Whatever. I guess it’s a way of killing time. And here comes another.

. . . and with no transition at all there is a table beneath my elbows, an unused plate and cutlery between my forearms, an upright chair back behind me and a firm seat beneath me, and a voice says:

‘Rudi? Are you okay?’

. . . so apparently I am Rudi. I turn towards – her – and nod and smile. I don’t want to speak yet but she seems okay with that and she smiles back and says:

‘I just thought you looked a bit weird for a second, that’s all.’

. . . and she smiles again and rests a hand on my thigh and my – male, definitely male – body responds as if it has had plenty of practice, but, social obligations, I lay a hand on hers and use my face to signal ‘later’ and it works because she smiles and removes her hand.

Food smells from lots of different dishes, and the sound of many quiet voices. A restaurant, then. A waitress pushes a floating tray up to us and starts filling plates. My meal is some sort of flesh, bluish-pink and raw-looking, with green sprigs arranged round it like a beard, and a little jug of sharp-smelling yellow sauce. She has the same, only smaller, and she pushes the jug away. The waitress says, ‘Enjoy your meal, Council Memberess Demaril and sir’ and shoves the tray away and I sense it is time to start speaking so I look up at her and smile.

She raises an eyebrow. ‘What?’

‘I’m not used to thinking of you as Ms Demaril, that’s all.’

‘I’m not used to hearing you being called sir,’ she says. ‘Let’s stick to being Sallah and Rudi, shall we?’

And I look into the eyes of the important-sounding woman who I now know is called Sallah Demaril and my right hand finds a glass of something and I raise it and say, ‘Let’s’, and she raises her glass too and we clink, and then drink, and I wait for her to start eating and then I join in.

The flesh is chewy but tastes okay, sweet and a bit bland. The green stuff is bitter. The sauce helps.

We talk as we eat and I piece it together. I’m good at that, like I said. Rudi’s full name is Rudimans bin’ Haffs, and this meal is a celebration because it is half a year since he and Council Memberess Sallah Cato Demaril had their first,
epic
fuck in the back of a blacked-out cab. Until now she has kept the relationship hidden, because he is the wrong age, the wrong caste and the wrong colour and she is an ambitious junior minister in a government that cares about these things. A lot. But now things have got to the point where she is ready to rethink that.

Rudi, meanwhile, has been playing a long game. I can see it in the sim; they show me that kind of thing. His set piece comes tonight, and it’s up to me to play it out. Simulated realities have to be internally consistent. You can only have one set of rules at once.

While we eat I watch Sallah, as much as I can without making it obvious. She’s standard human, from the outside. They don’t like mods here. This is a conservative middle-tech planet. Middle income, middle pollution, a lot more than middle inequality. That was probably the reason it was simmed in the first place. Comfortable academics love studying inequality. The academics are probably all long dead now but the sim is still trotting along. And now someone’s found a use for it.

Sallah has thin straight eyebrows over grey eyes, with only the wrinkles at the corners admitting to the midway point of decade number five. She is obviously proud of her cheekbones, brought out with the faintest blur of darker tone. Conservatively dressed, only she would probably call it
suitable
: close-fitting jacket, buttoned to the top, with long sleeves and a full collar that reaches halfway up her neck.

As I look, Rudi’s beautifully simulated biochemistry makes itself felt. I remember he gets off on the stiffness of her dress, the contrast between the formal clothes and the woman they cover. I let myself catch a bit of his excitement. It helps with playing the part.

We finish the meal with tiny dishes of something that is mostly sour cream – they like their sour flavours here – and huge glasses of pale tea, and then there is a silence, long and loaded and full of eye contact being made and broken and made again, until she says: ‘Are you ready to go?’ And I give the only possible answer and she waves for the cheque.

It floats up on its own tray. I watch her as she leaves money – real paper money, it’s in fashion again here, if you can afford to own any.

I follow her to the exit, gaze roving over her hips. She has a lithe fullness that comes with well-managed ageing, and the close-fitting material does that trick of revealing as it hides. More biochemistry happens. This time I keep my distance from it.

As we leave I sense people’s eyes on us, recognizing her and scoping me, and I realize this evening is a big deal for her. She has gone public. Some timing.

We flag down a cab, none of your high-tech stuff but a real honest-to-fuck pedicab with real pedals and a proper slave to push them, and squeak back through a warm evening full of night-time city smells to an apartment block behind a security gate. Touch-pad entry to the ground-level foyer; no visible staff but several discreet weapons pods on the ceiling and that’s just what they want you to see. A flying eye whirs round a corner and hovers briefly in front of her and longer in front of me. It’s too close so I want to swat it, but I don’t. Play the game. It won’t hurt you, sweetheart. It just wants to look. When it has finished, it dips in the air like a nod, and flits off back to wherever. I let go my breath, and realize I must have been holding it. Too tense.

We walk into an elevator and say nothing all the way to the top.

The elevator doors open on to a big terrace. It’s shaded by big squares of something like silk, so fine you can hardly see it, floating about independently just above our heads. One of them begins to track us across the terrace, but Sallah waves it away.

‘It’s not raining,’ she says.

The shade square floats off and parks itself somewhere out of sight. I’m impressed. They only thought of field technology a few years ago here, and it’s still pretty expensive.

The main door to the apartment is on the other side of the terrace. As we get to it a pair of flying eyes scoot towards us. They’re a bit bigger than the one downstairs. Big enough for grown-up weapons. Too late to worry now.

Sallah’s eyes follow mine towards them. She sighs a bit. ‘I can’t get rid of them out here,’ she says. ‘They’re part of my security contract.’ She pauses, then looks up at me. ‘They don’t go inside, though, so . . .’

I nod. ‘So?’

She smiles, and opens the door. The flying eyes part to let us through. The door closes behind us and suddenly there is no space between us, none at all, and my nose and mouth and hands are full of the smell and taste and feel of her and even though a tiny part of me is screaming
‘Hold back!’
I can’t because for some reason I can’t tell the difference between me and the remnants of Rudi any more and I don’t care.

Without letting go of each other we stumble across the apartment shedding clothes as we go, and by the time we get to her chamber we are naked and I can see her, I can see her breasts and the tight little mat of hair at the base of her belly and I run my hands down her, and we collapse together and I am gone.

When I wake the first thing I know is comfort, that pure animal feeling that comes from recent sex and the smell and feel of your mate next to you. It’s dark, I’m warm and my body hurts a bit in all the right places. It’s fun remembering why.

Then there is a sickening moment when I realize what it means and the next thing I know is fear, because most of what I am remembering was
not
supposed to happen. I have no idea, no idea
at all
, how long I slept.

Oh dear holy shit, what have I done?

I lie dead still while my mind races and I try to get my heart rate back to normal. After a few dozen breaths we’re getting there and I risk moving an arm, sliding it out from under the covers like a snake. Halfway out the cover sinks to fill the hole. Sallah moves a bit and moans and I freeze, but it’s okay, she’s still asleep, and the arm comes out into fresh air and I can see Rudi’s cheap chrono which, thank you, glows in the dark.

I’ve been asleep for two hours. Oh crap.

Another dozen breaths while I do the maths. It’s outside the plan but – more maths – it might be okay. If everything else goes to spec. If I don’t fuck up.

If I’m lucky.

Time to go. I slide away from Sallah and stand up, letting the cover settle back oh so slowly. A waft of expelled air smells of her and for a crazy moment I am ready to lie down again. Then I’m back in control. I squeeze my eyes shut for half a minute to get some night sight. Then I prowl round the apartment, picking up my clothes. Two minutes later I am dressed, and now it’s time for the important stuff. I shut my eyes again, remembering the simulation. Eyes open. Go.

Out of the main room. Down a short corridor. Duck under a tell-tale beam, turn to the right, step over another beam and into the study. No alarms so far, but we’ll soon fix that.

The study’s cluttered. No surprise there. Step carefully round the junk on the floor, swing past the desk and stop in front of the old-style bookshelves, apparently filled from end to end with genuine old-style books because Sallah is a bit of a collector. Count four shelves down and four books in. My guts hurt with the tension. Pause for as long as I dare to calm things down. Take hold of book. Pull.

The projected image of the bookshelves fuzzes out and suddenly I am standing on the threshold of Sallah’s real office, twice the size of the study. The old oak desk is against the wall where it ought to be, covered in terminals, screens, data stores and even keyboards, as if Sallah has never heard about less being more. But none of it matters, because the real point of the exercise is . . .

. . . my foot goes through a tell-tale beam. It’s hidden low, under the edge of the desk. No way you’d notice it, unless you knew it was there.

Like I did.

The lights brighten, and half a dozen camera patches swivel towards me. Suddenly Rudi’s face is seriously famous, and suddenly I am on two separate deadlines. Rudi’s, because this was the purpose of his game, and mine, because now I know where his game actually ends and I don’t want to be there when it does.

I run. I have twenty-five seconds before the house goes into lock-down – twenty-five, because that’s how long the building management system thinks it would take Sallah to get to a terminal and cancel the alarm, if she was going to. After that, everything is in secure mode. No doors, no elevators. No way out.