K-Machines

by Damien Broderick

  "I don't think you should expect quick service today," Lune told me, glancing at the unattended counter. An open door showed that the serving staff, no fools they, had swiftly found discretion the better part of valor.

  I really was abruptly very hungry. I sniffed, caught a tang of freshly cooked meat. I picked my way through broken glass to the fallen monster. Its flesh was charred, smoking still. One hefty thigh had a nicely glazed look to it. In a fit of silly bravado, aware of Morgette's gaze upon me, I seized the great three-taloned foot, jammed my boot against the fire-blackened breast, ripped. The cooked limb resisted at the joint. I twisted it, fingers sticky with monster juice, tore it free. It smelled okay, a bit gamy perhaps. I took a bite.

  "Needs salt," I said.

  The Ensemble woman regarded me with disgust. "That was a damn fool thing to do. You don't know where it's been. You don't know where it's come from. Its biochemistry could be enantiomorph—"

  "Here." Lune threw something; I caught it in my left hand. Salt cellar. I sprinkled some on the warm flesh, took a second bite.

  "Thanks. Care for some? Breast or leg?"

  "I think not," she said judiciously. "What's it taste like?"

  I mused, flung the gnawed meat back on the carcass.

  "Chicken." I grinned at her. "Tastes like chicken."

  CHAPTER TWO

  Exegetical Analects

  There is one who asks: What is the document whose name is called SgrA*, and how is its name properly pronounced?

  One answers: We speak this name thus: "Sag-a-star." The multiform document, whose name is called thus, is the sacred Scripture more properly known as Sagittarius A Star, revealed in its infinite variations throughout the Many Worlds to the blessed and accursed human Eric Linkollew.

  There is one who asks: Is this "Sagittarius A Star" a Revelation, an observed reality, a literary device? Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral? Is it bigger than a bread box?

  One answers: O Fool! Read the Words and know Truth. All Knowledge is in SgrA*.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SgrA*: 1946, Two Years Old

  He runs across the room, short legs pumping, arms outstretched to the shiny pots inside the kitchen cabinet. He stumbles as he grabs at the open cabinet door, it swings shut, for a moment jams one finger painfully. The impulse to scream pulls his mouth wide, draws in his furious breath, but wait, as he jerks from the hurting thing, the door swings open in his grip, he totters backward, the door swings wider, he falls to the linoleum floor on his padded backside, and light gleams and beckons and shouts its joy. In go his hands, grasping the heavy, shining pot, pulling it onto the floor. The lid clatters wonderfully, slides free, bangs on the floor. He grabs at it, gets his fat fingers around the knob on top, strikes the pot with the singing lid, the sound of it, the cry of it, rings in his ears and dances in the bones of his arms. Rapture! He beats the pot, slam, bash, banging, crash! Holding the pot by its long handle, he stumbles to his feet, runs into the front room where Mummy is sitting in her big chair in her robe and nightie, asleep. But she is not asleep. She looks at him with wet eyes, without moving. She tells him to be quiet.

  "No!"

  He runs back into the kitchen, slamming his aluminum drum. The jagged clashing crash is pure happiness. "No!" he cries again. Bang, bang. He laughs and runs. Mummy stands in the doorway. She bends forward. "No! No! No!" Has she said it? Has he said it? She bends forward and puts her hands upon her belly, and goes to a chair beside the kitchen table, and puts her head on the table. Mummy is making a terrible sound. Mummy is crying. He drops the pot. He watches her, and feels hot tears burst from his own eyes. He clutches her knees in sorrow. Mummy draws him against her, lifts him up on to her lap, rocks him.

  "Don't cry, Mummy," he says in anguish. "I'll help. Where you hurt?"

  She cries and cries, drenching his hair. "Your poor little sister," she says at last, muffled against his head. Her breath. He hasn't got a sister. Jealousy burns in him. He pulls away. Mummy says, "You would have had a little sister or brother."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jan

  The small portholes in the control cabin of the vimana were annoyingly blurred, not quite translucent, like an out-of-focus lens. They were designed, of course, for the cryptic optical system of ambulant vegetables, their Venusian designers and crew. Face pressed close to the damnable quartz, Jan Seebeck snarled under her breath, wishing for the intuitive interface of her dark energy craft, The Hanged Man. Soon enough, she assured herself, I'll be back in my own ship. It should have repaired itself by now.

  She stepped back to the controls, which looked simple but were only marginally more intelligible. The flying saucer sauntered in its leisurely fashion toward the orbit of Mercury. She and a team of vegetable engineers had modified the vimana's operating system in a way she still didn't understand, because really it had been The Hanged Man's suggestion that somehow rewrote elements of reality's core rules, briefly opening a Schwelle large enough and weird enough to let through a spaceship from the Venusian galaxy to this universe of Son o'Star and its riled inhabitants. The limitations were severe, though; they'd had to start from Venus, there was no way to jump straight from Earth to Mercury. The Shintoists must surely be in hot pursuit by now, but they were running very silent indeed.

  "Two more hours," her tattoo told her. At the corner of her eye the fairy nudged itself free of her bare upper arm, luminous blue wings beating into a blur, hovered above the controls. At some level below her conscious awareness, the vimana's cybernetics were linking with Jan's Vorpal grammar. Thought control, in effect. She shrugged. Easier than trying to conn by hand while peering through what seemed to be the bottom of an old Coke bottle.

  "Thanks, sweetie," she said. She settled uneasily on a stool designed for a calla lily with legs, sort of, hitching up her short skirt. Sylvie floated across the panel, settled on a plastic nipple jutting from the surface, caked with dried ichor, bent as if to drink. "Honey, I don't think you'd like it. It's sort of plant fertilizer."

  "Give me a break, Toots," the fairy told her, looking over a slender shoulder. "Not as if I'm really here, you know. We're both going cabin crazy." The psychonic projection bent its head again, sipped at the foul stuff, or seemed to. Jan shuddered, squeezed her eyes tight. Her familiar was right; cruising from Venus to Mercury in a flying saucer that seemed to have been snipped out of sheet metal and soldered together by a class of incompetent slum technical school fourteen-year-olds was far less enthralling than screaming at close to the speed of light back to the Solar System from the enigmatic Xon star her family had once mistaken for the appalling black hole at the center of the galaxy, Sagittarius A*. At least then you had temporal dilation to help the time pass or at any rate to squeeze time into a smaller package. She sighed, put her head in her hands. Bristles stung her fingertips; her hair was growing out, and she didn't know what to do with it.

  A rustle like dry leaves blown by a damp breeze, or perhaps wet leaves blown by a dry breeze, brought her head up. The Venusian Stalwart entered from the cabin where it had been estivating. It had a certain military bearing unusual in a tuber. Jan gave a languid wave.

  "Warrant Officer Pjilfplox," she acknowledged. "Had a nice rest? We're nearly there. Couple of hours at the most."

  The faint smell of manure was stronger now, and she tried not to wrinkle her nose. One man's meat, she told herself. Still, it was unnerving; the thought of her sister Maybelline locked in sexual embrace with one of these creatures was positively disturbing. The fairy darted at her ear, whispered, "While we're doing clichés, live and let live, huh?"

  "All right, all right, already, Sylvie," she muttered. Sometimes the psychonic projection was as irritating as having a dime-store psychoanalyst perched on your shoulder.

  "I am refreshed," the saucers pilot told her, the sibilant mushy. "Has your vessel communicated with you as yet, or you with it?"

  "Hang Dog remains stealthed, as instructed," Jan said, slightly testy. "The last thing we need at
this point is a squadron of Zealot warriors buzzing around us like wasps." She hopped off the stool, jiggled her gold Lurex tights, looked around for her jacket. "I hope the same proves to be true of this old tin bucket." The jacket, soft pale-blue baby Ichthyosaur leather scaled so finely it gleamed even in the saucer's dull light, lay wadded up as a pillow at one end of her inflated sleeping bag. She knew perfectly well that the vimana was undetectable by any technology likely to be available to the Bar Kokhba culture, but something perverse in her drove Jan to goad the plant when it went military on her ass. Turnips and asparagus in uniform, it was like something out of Charlie Dodgson, how could you take it seriously?

  "This humble vessel," said the Venusian warrior reproachfully, "is a state-of-the-art war machine. It is true that our methods of construction are not as—"

  "Now look what you've done," Sylvie said. The tattoo settled on the console, and folded her head under her wings, as if embarrassed.

  "Oh, shut up." But Pjilfplox could not see the fairy, except as a motionless tattoo on Jan's arm, and was now doubly affronted. "No, no, not you, sorry, look I'll just go away and have something to drink until we get there. Give me a yell, okay?"

  "But there is nowhere to go outside this cabin," the warrant officer said. Clearly there was more it would have liked to have said, but it was unused to civilians. It blustered on: "And it would not be wise to partake of intoxicating—"

  Jan put her hands over her ears, pulled a face, and took herself off to the sleeping bag. It was maddening beyond measure to have Schwellen closed to her, but what could you do? Try to open a doorway to another world this far into empty space, and the unimpeded Xon radiation flooding from the direction of SgrA* would block your effort like a palm shoved in your face. You can't get there, anywhere, from here, that was the rule. Generally speaking, anyway. She'd done it once, somehow, utterly mysteriously, escaping to Juni's nano-encrusted retreat from a previous engagement in this Solar System with the children of the Bar Kokhba civilization that had built her dark energy starship and then, frightened out of their wits at her return, had tried to nuke her into oblivion. Sometimes she wished she were clever, like that Lune girl. One of these days, she'd have to find out how that had worked. Maybe good old Hang Dog had been thinking about the problem, whiling away the boring hours on orbit near Mercury. Or maybe that kid August would provide some fancy answer. She snorted, face turned to the hull, eyes closed. Fat chance, the boy was green as a spring apple. But cute. Very cute.

  From her shoulder, the fairy Sylvie said: "Bad girl. He's your brother."

  "Nag, nag, nag," Jan murmured, drifting already into the sleep of the terminally bored. "So he claims. Never heard such a whopper..." Her whisper faded into silence and the rustle of leaves going about their business.

  ***

  Something wet and rather disgusting brushed her ear. Jan jolted up.

  "Kindly attend," the vegetable said diffidently. "Our craft is under attack."

  "Oh goodie." She struggled to her feet, recoiled instantly from the manure-scented damp of the deck, scuffed the soles of her tights on the sleeping bag, and jammed her toes into her boots. Pretty boots, but perhaps not ideal for combat. Still, it was all in the wrist these days, machine against machine, nothing to do but watch, half the time. "Action at last," she said anyway, just to suit the mood of the moment. "Have we heard from the Hanger yet?"

  "The ship is probably masked by Mercury, perhaps at the libration point. To be short: might be unable to see us."

  Something smacked the vimana hard, like a firm clip over the ear from an old-school disciplinarian. There'd been plenty of them plying their trade in the yeshivas last time she visited the Messianic Shintoists of this universe. No reason to suppose they'd have mended their ways in a mere two or three generations; these guys were traditionalists to a fault. The sleeping bag skidded away around the curve of the cabin. Jan and the warrant officer tottered, managed to remain upright without clutching at each other, to Jan's considerable relief. The psychonic fairy came off her shoulder, hovered in her left visual field.

  "The old bucket won't last ten minutes with the stuff they're throwing at us," Sylvie informed her, patched into the control system of the Venusian flying saucer. Of course Jan could have bypassed the interface, plugged her own Vorpal grammar directly into the system, but she hated to have other people's software squirming around her brain stem. Especially when the other people were aliens. Friendly aliens, true; allies in the Contest, standing shoulder to shoulder, or shoulder to pistel, or whatever, against the K-machines and their presumptive gamemasters or mistresses or whatever the hell—

  "Well, come on, show me!" All Jan could see projected in the three-dimensional bubble that now filled half the cabin was a blur of scribbles, something a child might have done with crayon, a whole box of them. The visual system of the tubers operated by different rules. Presumably all this was a magnificent tactical and strategic map laid out for the benefit of the warrant officer. If so, that worthy was instructing its craft by more subtle means than speech. Or speech that she could understand. The bubble seemed to clear as Sylvie performed prodigies of transformation in the map state-space. The saucer icon hung in the center of the display, surrounded by grid lines, astronomical reference points, indices of the planets and moons and asteroids and dust lanes of the Solar System, with a muted icon showing the Sun altogether too close for comfort. Five attack craft moved on vectors that were not at all encouraging. A list of the weapons being deployed snapped down as Jan ran her eye from one enemy vessel to the next. Particle beams, lasers, rail-gun bombardment (that had been the impact, she saw, deflected at some cost by the vimana's mercury-orichalcum defense field array), maybe even the craft themselves if they were in suicide-martyr mode. Shit, surely it hadn't come to that. But they'd been pretty pissed when she stole their Kabbalah ship and took off for a little trip to investigate the Xon star.

  The charged particle beam locked on to the saucer and would not be shaken off. In the display the saucer tilted; despite gravity adjustment, Jan tottered. A line suddenly joined her borrowed craft and one of the enemy: she knew the great crystal at the base of the saucer, between the three landing balls, was blazing its terrible weapon. The red enemy ship jerked visibly, could not evade the beam. Abruptly, it was gone. Jan felt sick. She was glad the display was decently schematic, that the portholes did not show her the destroyed vessel, the expanding shell of gas that had been human lives. Yes, they were trying to kill her, but really they had every reason to be pissed. Four lines struck from the remaining war craft, touched the icon at the center of the display. Instantly, the wall of the hull began to glow: dull red, crimson, yellow, white. It started to dribble, blazing droplets splattering on the moist deck. Jan gave a yelp, flung herself into complete registration with her psychonic projection, and through Sylvie with the saucer's communication and command structures. The pilot was there already, of course; she apologized hastily, stepped sideways in the virtual command tangle, sent out a shout at the speed of light for The Hanged Man.

  The hole in the hull went violet, burning her out of focus, wide open eyes, and peeled into blackness. Air rushed out with a whistle, then a whine, then a howl. Even in her distraction, Jan's habits reached again and again for a Schwelle, an opening into one of the infinite number of universes where she was not under attack. Nothing happened. She shook her head like a small dog savaged by a large dog. Light-years distant, unmasked by a planet's bulk and atmosphere, the uncanny radiance of the Xon star clamped its prohibition upon her.

  "Trapped me, eh, you motherfuckers? We'll see about that." She clung to the crystal pole in the center of the flying saucer, gasping for breath as air rushed into vacuum. Frantically, she sought for emergency life support. Nothing, not even a glass bubble to pull over her head or a brass bra and panties to keep the airlessness at bay. Her shout to her starship continued in a roar of radio frequencies and modulated light. The illumination inside the vimana, always dim, wavered and seeme
d to fade. No, she thought, that's just me.

  "On his way," the fairy told her, and folded up limply into a tattoo on her arm.

  Light exploded inside the display bubble. Mother Angelina, she thought, the bastards are hitting us with everything they've got. No quarter given. Who needs K-machines with refusnik allies like this?

  She lurched away from the crystal pole, eyes streaming and bulging, chest aching, wrapped her arms around the startled warrant officer. "It's been fun, toots," she said. Her voice sounded thin and unconvincing in the thin and almost unbreathable partial pressure. "Too bad we—"

  Four red stars bloomed and went out. The great light flared a second time. Something struck the flying saucer hull, which rang like a great bell. The deck jolted, throwing Jan to her knees.

  you appear to be having some difficulties, the voice of her Kabbalah ship said inside her skull. i am bringing you aboard.

  "You do that, you great lug," Jan said. "I hope you haven't been wasting your time out here. I expect a full report on the Xon—"

  In the display bubble, The Hanged Man floated above them like an elaborate golden Menorah ablaze with candles, or a Tree of Life. It wrapped arms about them.

  Jan allowed herself to pass out.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  August

  Ensemble Superiore Morgette Smith's Daughter scowled, took a small vanity mirror from her shoulder purse, propped it on the table, muttered. The mirror curdled. Something unnerving happened. Here I was in the room of hysterical people crouched under tipped tabletops, weeping, gasping, out cold, with the doorway blocked by a large smoldering heap of scorched Chicken McNuggets, redolent of frizzled bat wings, and really that was nothing special, just a ferocious carnivore of unknown species put out of its misery in double-quick time, but what set my teeth on edge and raised the hackles of my neck was a blunt-fingered hand, nails not especially clean, poking up out of the mirror and reaching around like Thing in the Addams Family. It's strange, in retrospect; I'd seen people come through mirrors before, I'd done it myself for that matter, but this was utterly out of context. This café was a place you dropped into for a quick Dr. Pepper and a lamington.