K-Machines

by Damien Broderick

  GODPLAYERS 02

  K-MACHINES

  Damien Broderick

  CHAPTER ONE

  August

  "Name and date of birth."

  "August Se—" I began.

  "Name first." The overweight clerk was testy and trigger happy. She'd been sitting all summer morning on a sweating plastic seat at this counter, had probably munched a brown-bag lunch high in sugar out back in some cramped room filled with mops or dusty filing cabinets crammed with yellowing records that nobody ever looked at because it was all in the database, and now her blood sugar was plummeting perilously.

  "My name," I said patiently, "is August. My birthday is—"

  "Surname or given name? I haven't got all day."

  Actually she did have all day. What else was she going to do except punch in this information that was already contained in the documents I'd handed her? She had pushed them to one side, naturally, without a glance. I could have strung this game out for a while, for the amusement value. But when I turned my head a fraction, I saw the line of bored and irritated students snaking away behind me. I'd been creeping forward in the same line myself, developing much the same mood, for about half an hour, after two hours first thing in the morning in another interview with the police concerning the disappearance of Great-aunt Tansy and the death of her friend Mrs. Sadie Abbott in the freak accidental destruction of our Northcote house. They wanted to know where I was living now, and my current phone number, as did the insurance assessor, and I could hardly tell them that I was sleeping in a different universe where the phone company's service didn't yet extend. My temper was frayed.

  "Listen to me carefully," I said. "My name is August Seebeck. I was born—"

  "Zayback with a zed?"

  "You spell my surname s-e-e-b-e-c-k. It's Estonian."

  "Kid, I don't give a rat's ass if it's Lower Slobovian. D.O.B.?"

  "My date of birth," I said automatically, as you do, "is also August, the—" I broke off, shook my head in confusion. What? Wait a minute. I flipped out last year's laminated student ID card. Back then I hadn't known I was a Player in the Contest of Worlds. It showed a slightly grim picture of me beetling my brows at the digital camera, above my name, spelled correctly for a change. The date embossed on the background security hologram was February 12. What? Seamlessly, then, as these things do and the rules change, the fact retrofitted itself into my memory. Hot high-summer Southern Hemisphere birthday parties, splashing in the plastic pool, laughing a lot as Aunt Tansy looked on from the shade of the veranda, shoving and hugging Dugald O'Brien the golden Lab who was...

  Who was my father Dramen, actually, under a kind of disguise, but weeks earlier that ludicrous and impossible truth had worked its way neatly into remembrance past with no further bobbles or boggles, however dismaying it seemed. I pushed the card back in my pocket, a bit shaken by a different impossible thought. I'd started to tell her I was born in August, which was no part of any calendar I'd ever heard of until this moment when it tumbled out my mouth. It was ridiculous, like imagining a month called "Steve" or "Bruce." There were eleven months in the year, always had been. Ask anyone. Now there were twelve. Shit, they'd squeezed in an entirely new month. An extra month, named after me. I shook my head, trying not to grin. Up came more facts, unbidden. On February 12, 1809, Charles Darwin had been born in this Earth, and a few thousand kilometers away, in Kentucky, so had Abraham Lincoln.

  You know, Lune had said something along those lines. And I hadn't understood her. Who would? It was insane. More symmetrical that way, she'd said. Revise the Seebeck family rhyme, not to mention... what, the seasons? Or had she said the calendar? And something more, something scary as shit, my unconscious told me, scuttling away from it, eyes closed. Six doughty women—but I only had five sisters. I slammed the door shut on that before it got a foot in. All this in a long moment, with the clerk tapping her toe impatiently.

  Okay, anyway, so that meant—given the precession of the equinoxes, the fact that the seasons were reversed here in Australia, so local February was the new astrological August—that I was now an Aquarius, perhaps the paradigmatic Aquarian, and so—

  "Date. Of. Birth."

  "Twelfth of February," I told the clerk, and added the late-twentieth-century birth year embossed on the ID card. Of course, who could possibly know if that year meant anything, truly had anything to do with my birth? As far as I could tell, I might indeed be twenty-something years old, which is how I looked and felt, or half a million. Half a trillion, maybe, long before this world's Sun had coalesced out of frigid interstellar gas, long, long before the planet under my feet accreted from cosmic leftovers and started spinning days solar and sidereal. I felt a jolt in my gloved right hand, shook my head, waited for my pulse to come back under control.

  She was looking indignantly at the top sheet I'd passed her. "This says you've completed three years of your medical degree and now you want to change your major."

  "I do."

  "Damn it, you only have one more semester before you graduate as a Bachelor of Medicine. Six months. What's wrong with you kids today?"

  "I don't seem to have the patience and human kindness to be a clerk, let alone a medico."

  The clerk narrowed her eyes. Perhaps she detected some tincture of irony, or even of sarcasm. I gazed back blithely. She shook her head, clicked keys, peered at the flat screen.

  "The philosophy courses you have listed here are all filled, you'll have to go back to the department and choose a different schedule. Next."

  I stayed put. "Dr. Blackford has confirmed my standing with his graduate program. I'll be taking an accelerated bridging semester. His signature is on the second form."

  "Philosophy! What sort of job do you think you're going to get with—All right, that's in order." She scribbled an initial, clicked more keys, stamped a form, passed it back to me. "Take this to room 102 and get two photographs. They'll prepare a card for you, Mr. Zay-back. And don't come back moaning to me when you're flipping burgers and watching all the young doctors cruise by in SUVs. Next."

  I nodded to her with a certain sudden access of respect, taking my forms. Maybe she did care about her faceless, ever-changing temporary charges. Maybe her own heart's desire had been medical school, but she simply hadn't made the cut, hadn't scored highly enough on rigid tests designed, apparently, by nerd-clever Aspergers. Poor woman. Ah well, there were trillions more like her, breaking their hearts in menial jobs, grousing behind stained counters and eating themselves sick on a billion worlds, a googolplex of worlds maybe, and all of them, when it came down to it, no more significant than scene-setting in the greater scheme of things. In the Contest.

  Whatever that was.

  Room 102 and its jaded photographer could wait. I went out into the blazing cloudless summer sun, looking for Lune.

  ***

  She leaned against the bole of a tree in the courtyard, the milk coffee perfection of her skin freckled by a thousand shady leaves. Lune seemed utterly relaxed, arms loose, hands clasped easily in front of her. Another woman stood half in the sunlight, eyes squinted against brightness, speaking with apparent urgency. I loped across the grass, glare from the Edward Kelly Law Library windows spearing my eyes.

  "Ah, the wonderboy." The woman seemed to be in her mid-thirties, mature but attractive, dressed for a day of the office, probably behind a large polished executive desk.

  Lune lifted her right hand with a kind of carefree grace, took my left, aware of my sensitivity or, more exactly, residual anxiety about my own gloved right hand. I squeezed her fingers. "More bureaucratic bullshit, and miles to go before I sleep," I told her. To the woman I said: "Hello, I'm August Seebeck."

  "August, this is Morgette Smith's Daughter, the Custodial Superiore of th
e Ensemble. My boss, you could say. Or my adoptive mother."

  "How do you do?" When I extended my gloved hand, Morgette shook it firmly for the shortest possible time. Maybe she knew what it could do. "So you're the Mother Superior, so to speak?"

  "We're hardly a celibate order of nuns," Lune said in mock reproach. "As you have reason to know." She sent me a dazzling smile. "Morgette is the founder of the Ensemble."

  "Not exactly," the Player woman said. "That was the work of your young friend's sister, Superiore Septima. A very long time ago, far before your time, child. Do you think we could get out of this wretched sun now?"

  Septima? Did that ferocious old warrior Septimus, guardian of the hellmouth or Gehenna or what vile plenum of pain and horror it was, have a twin sister? Yet another member of my monstrous, profligate family? A month ago I had supposed that I was an only child, an orphan, yet already I'd collected more than a double handful of siblings, not to mention two recovered parents, now vanished again. What was another sister in that rowdy pack? The more the merrier. I put the question out of my mind for the time being.

  "There is a coffee shop at the entrance to the student union building," I said. "Quite good latte, if that's your poison. Or iced tea, probably better in this weather."

  "Lay on, Macduff," Lune said. Morgette said, "You're training him quite nicely. I appreciate thoughtfulness in a new Player." She strode along beside me and Lune, and I saw her frown. "I have to caution you against undue familiarity, Lune," she said. "It's obvious that you two are intimate; you must understand that I disapprove, although of course it's your own business."

  I opened my mouth, closed it again. As usual, I knew too little to say anything sensible. Superiore Morgette was getting under my skin, but there was little advantage in making this obvious to her.

  With some asperity, Lune told her, "Butt out, Madam." She paused, a breath, added, "All due respect, and like that."

  I held a smile from my lips, squeezed her hand. Morgette gave her a hard sidelong glance, flicked her eyes at me, burst out laughing. "Very well, you bad girl. I understand that the child has been promoted already, and at the hands of our Founder, no less?"

  "Madame Morgette, I am not a child," I told her. "I am a stranger in a very large number of strange worlds, and probably many centuries younger than your good self—" I gave her a bland glance of my own. "Or am I being inexcusably rude in mentioning your age? I must say, you're very well preserved."

  I pushed open the heavy glass door to the union building. A gust of cold conditioned air swirled past us, escaped into the sunlight. Several spotty students tripped over their own feet, instantly smitten. Lune smiled at them in a friendly and utterly sisterly manner, and followed me into a small space of Formica tables and steel and plastic chairs, redolent of third-rate coffee. Behind us, one of the young men dropped his pile of books. It must be like this when you stroll around in the company of a movie star or some radiant fashion model. The difference, thank God, was Lune's wondrous intelligence. I pulled out a chair for her, something I never would have dreamed of doing for a woman a month ago; but a month ago, I'd never have dreamed that someday I would meet a woman like Lune. For a moment, I stood there behind her, dazed by a rush of emotion.

  "Charmed," the Ensemble woman said, an edge to her tone. She stood beside the square table. "If you please."

  "Oh. Sorry." I drew out another chair, settled her in place. Three or four younger academics watched us with guarded interest. A young woman student in what looked like a cheerleader's uniform, except that we didn't have cheerleaders in my version of Australia, stared at Lune with a kind of shameless envy. Once, I'd have stared at the cheerleader in her skimpy skirt and perky sports bra; no longer. "What can I get you both?"

  By the time I returned with my laden tray, they were in some sort of voiceless standoff. I unloaded an iced tea for Morgette and two cans of frosty Dr. Pepper, plus a lamington on a paper plate for Lune. "It's probably stale," I said regretfully. Fresh and fluffy from a pastry chef's hands, layered with strawberry jam, coated in a soft surround of dark chocolate sprinkled with coconut flakes, a square block of lamington is the food of the gods, if we exclude the pavlova, another Australian confection, all crisp egg-white shell, whipped sugary cream innards, sliced strawberries and spooned passion fruit on top, the thought of it made me weak with yearning, with longing for my lost Great-aunt Tansy, the finest cook I knew, gone forever, never more than a mask for my hidden mother Angelina, she gone in her turn, once again, with my father Dramen. This particular lamington, I could tell, had not been fresh for several days. No doubt a fly or two had strolled upon its dried chocolate crust. I sighed, sat down, popped the tab on my soda.

  "So how about them Bulldogs?" I said.

  "Frivolity," the superiore said in a flat tone. "How refreshing."

  I looked at Lune; she gave me a bland glance, and I felt my tightening muscles relax. There were plenty of ways to play this, although I felt like grabbing my beloved's hand and walking back out into the sunlight, or opening a Schwelle into a more hospitable world. That would leave the people idling away their noontime in the coffee shop in a state of shock, confusion, and disbelief, which would be unkind and quite possibly attract attention from those I was eager to avoid, so it didn't seem like the best plan. I let the fuzzy bubbles slosh around my mouth for a moment, then put down the can.

  "I'm new at this game," I said. "Until last week, I didn't even know it was a game. That was before the deformers killed me, of course." I could hear the brittle edge in my voice. It's no fun, remembering the vile moment of being torn into shreds and then reconstructed by an Angel from the Omega Point, even if you end up in better shape than you started, which maybe was the case, although I had my doubts. My right hand clenched inside its leather glove.

  "New." Morgette regarded me steadily. "So I'm told. I find it hard to believe."

  I laughed. Lune didn't seem interested in her lamington; I pulled the paper plate in front of me, and started to peel off pieces of coconut-sprinkled chocolatey cake, popped them in my mouth. I was right: stale. "Frankly my dear," I said, "I don't give a shit. Believe what you like. Lune, I hate to eat and run, but I think I'm wasting my time with this old harridan." I pushed back my chair, stood up. Someone screamed. Something tore like old canvas, noisily. Lots of people screamed. All this in the moment of my rising. It seemed a disproportionate response, somehow. As I turned, the heavy glass door to the coffee shop ripped away from its hinges, and a terrible thing came in to join us.

  Lune kicked away her chair, became very still. Morgette, I saw from the corner of my eye, was reaching into her purse. Everyone else was yelping, crouching under tables, sitting frozen in disbelief. My right arm was instantly rigid, outthrust. A word of fire hung upon my tongue; I withheld it. Nothing would be gained in setting the union building ablaze with a lick of plasma from the edge of the Sun. There were more ways than one to skin a monster.

  I muttered, "Hard wind." And instantly regretted it as the leather glove was torn off my hand by a blast of foul-smelling air stinking of sulfur, captured, as far as I knew, from the dense atmosphere of some nameless world in a galaxy far, far away. A millimeter wide at my palm, it was a hose-stream of force equal to a battering ram. It caught the creature in the center of its breast, where three or four crusty nipples stretched vertically, like buttons on a vest, from throat to thorax. The blow flung it back into the smashed doorway, where its bat wings tangled on the damaged aluminum frame. Its muscular tail thrashed, catching a bearded intellectual who held a copy of Derrida's final book before him like an amulet, laid him flat on the vinyl tiles. The dreadful scaled neck, cabled with muscle and sinew, flung forward the thing's vile head, all gaping jaws, snarling teeth like rusted knives, forked blue-gray snake tongue, eyes boiling in rage. It drew in its wings tight against its body and flung itself toward me.

  A line of brilliant light stabbed across the room, cut a jagged, blood-gushing, instantly cauterized incision in the thing's
breast, where my air blast had already broken ribs. The monster screamed, high-pitched and ear-splitting as a factory whistle, hesitated only for a moment, crouched back upon its two great scaled legs, leapt again. Morgette's weapon fired a second time, but the thing was armored like a tank. Lune said in my ear, "Burn the fucker, August," so I did. No time for niceties. The back of my hand still stung where the glove had torn and blown away. At least the leather wouldn't catch fire and singe me. I spoke of sunfire to my Vorpal implant. Plasma from the surface of the Sun scorched the air. Actinic radiance splashed back from the plate-glass windows. When you need a pair of Ray Bans, you can never find them. I squinted, blinked, and saw the thing catch fire, the fat under its scales igniting. Bat wings frizzled, stinking like toenails dropped on coals.

  Its screams were ghastly, set my teeth on edge. The slaying brought me no pleasure other than the satisfaction of not dying myself. I played flame upon its head, which exploded into steam and greasy smoke, putting an end to the racket. There'd been not the slightest sign of intelligence. Whatever it was, this was some adjacent world's version of a feral tiger, a Kodiak bear, a pack of pitbulls, dropped into this world to do harm to me, to my love, or for all I knew to Superiore Morgette. The fire went away from my hand. My arm was shaking, my whole body was shaking. I was drenched with sweat. I saw that Lune was safe, reached behind me for the chair, leaned on it a moment. Its rubber feet squeaked in the silence on the floor. I sat down at the table. The lamington was smeared across the Formica surface. I glanced at my left hand; chocolate and cake everywhere. I rubbed it off on my jeans. The Ensemble woman was tucking away her weapon. Not a hair out of place.

  "Someone up there doesn't like us," I said. Around us, and outside in the lobby, people were starting to sob and mutter.

  "The contest is hotting up," Lune said, "no pun intended. Thank you."

  "My pleasure. I hope the vice chancellor doesn't send the insurance bill to us. My God, I'm famished." I licked my dry lips. "Fighting monsters certainly takes it out of a man."