Vampires of Avonmouth

by Tim Kindberg

  “You’re right. But there’s something else she needs in order to fulfil her mission. It’s what she’s just been looking for and I’m going to give it to her – in a manner of speaking.”

  Among the I&I signs and the occasional legend of Last Few Days that had joined them, new graffiti had appeared: FLESH WITHOUT BEADS. The capitals stood out in a fat, edged font.

  Sweat trickled around his beads as he walked up to his desres, relieved that no dems were waiting for him this time: no souls clamouring. Someone must have come and taken them back to the carie.

  Inside, David surveyed his quarters. They were tumultuous and unclean at the best of times, straight out of what Elizabethans used to call a detective novel. Ironic, now that he no longer was one. Officially, anyway. Now, all the furniture and belongings had been upended, shaken and searched. His bed had been torn apart. She had left no evidence of her identity, but he knew Obayifa had been there looking for the bone circuitry. Why now? Perhaps because she had needed all the extra beads from the crew to recognise its emanations among the network’s noise and find it.

  The desres played silent bulletins on the walls: a selection of updates from individuals, about their more or less contented lives or their understandable, sympathy-evoking hardships. David allowed himself to be distracted by them for a minute, with creeping disdain. The network had eliminated news, in the old-fashioned sense of events of public significance, events subject to scrutiny.

  He closed his eyes and tried to think of what he must do next. By the time he opened them again, a video message had appeared in the cycle. It was from Mary, recorded at his front door.

  “Volume,” he commanded the desres.

  “Desres four hundred cubic metres.”

  “Turn the sound up.”

  “How far?” it purred.

  “Turn it to six.”

  “Mr ID Detective, leave my gentlemen and ladies alone. And you might want to ask me about who you’re spending time with.”

  “Replay video.”

  It was all she said, the ID felon who in anger had left herself on record. And who appeared not to have detected his change of status. It was out of character for her to suggest he speak to her. And he could think of no one he would expect her to know about. Unless she had followed him. Which made no sense. He decided to ignore her, at least for now.

  He would take Pempamsie to see Dirac and the bone circuitry. Perhaps some light would be thrown by bringing her together with the strange apparatus. But they had to reach there without Obayifa knowing.

  He patched through to the bodai. “Breakage?”

  “All is known.”

  “Find a case the same as the one containing the bone circuitry.”

  As soon as Breakage had located an identical case, he took it to the platform of a transit node in the near-above, along the dockside from the Royal. David had asked the bodai to fill the case with transmitting equipment according to Dirac’s specifications. Once Breakage was at the node, Dirac, who was on standby, switched the network tunnel carrying the bone circuitry’s emanations to the fake case. Obayifa now knew they had a way of playing the emanations from a false location, but it was worth a try.

  David was hidden near the transit node. His heart thumped in his chest at the thought of Obayifa’s approach. It was cowardly, hiding from her. But nothing was to be gained at this point by confronting her again.

  Breakage, still in his green clinician’s uniform, looked as though he was expecting a patient on a gurney, for all that he stood on a crowded platform. David sweated as he waited for a sign from the bodai, the vodu’s pacing footsteps ringing inside his mind. He could sense Obayifa nearby, her malevolence.

  Breakage patched through. “Entity with no network presence has left a two-car. Approaching.”

  There she was. Mentalmagic. Her expression, searing with psychic energy, was cranked to the power of ten ordinary flesh. She wore a short-sleeved blouse of black silk, flaunting the veins. David couldn’t help but wonder whether Pempamsie would be a match for her. They had similar strong, tall, lithe builds. But Obayifa was infused by a barely controlled hunger.

  Who had she been once? What mother’s child?

  David spoke to Pempamsie through Breakage, who in turn communicated via the Royal’s guard bodai. “It’s time,” the guard said to her in David’s voice, without any understanding of what it was saying or why. Pempamsie set off immediately, as they had agreed.

  Obayifa approached Breakage – who surely was immune, wasn’t he, to whatever conjuring she might attempt: Breakage who possessed no mind, in the fleshly sense, to extract?

  “Breakage, resist.” She had to be given to believe that it was the genuine case.

  She put one hand to the surgeon’s crotch, draped the other arm around his neck. Stared into his averted eyes.

  Then she laughed and unclasped him. He held the case steadily in his right hand, but she seemed to ignore it and grasped his beaded left wrist. The motors complied to follow her movement as she brought the wrist upwards, as though about to kiss his hand.

  No bodai will harm flesh.

  The bodai’s mouth and eyes posed bizarrely according to an algorithm stretched beyond its conception. David couldn’t help but imagine Pempamsie in her clutches, Pempamsie made of flesh and blood.

  Obayifa started to pull at Breakage’s beads.

  “Resist, Breakage.”

  Breakage, an ID police bodai, was programmed to be physically robust in the cause of managing ID crime; he had to deal with all types of recalcitrant flesh, including the crazed outcomes of botched bead hackery. He tried to remove her grasp. She stopped him, swinging his arm from side to side. And then tumbled him to the ground.

  Bodais occasionally fell during routine operation, when the physical world failed to meet their algorithms’ assumptions. It was not like a fleshly stumble: more like that of an insect, which quickly righted itself with rapid, seeking articulations of the limbs. But Obayifa had thrown Breakage to the ground with her superior might; he just lay there.

  She reached down for the case. Breakage slid beyond her reach and picked himself up. She approached him again. He held up his free arm against her. Once again she grasped his wrist. And Breakage let her dance his arm around.

  Mentalmagic.

  “Impressive,” David said to her through Breakage, his words spilling from the bodai’s mouth.

  Obayifa let Breakage go. “I’ve supped on so many minds lately, I’ve emptied so many flesh buckets: I can fuck with anything.” She looked around for David, but he was untraceable in a crowded midday scene of flesh and bodais in transit.

  “Take what belongs to you,” he said. “Everyone wants rid of her as much as you do. I hope you enjoy her. I know I have. The case is locked, but I will let it open when you’ve taken the next two-car and travelled ten stops from here.”

  Passers-by were pausing to gawp at the macabre figure. Obayifa smiled, a broad-lipped, saurian threat to all of them.

  In their old-fashioned conception, vampires sucked human blood. You could keep them away with garlic or a crucifix, or drive a wooden stake through their hearts to destroy them. But what of a vampire energised by an accumulation of minds, replete with mentalmagic, physically strong – in a world of sensa, devoid of all religion except the worship of consumption, what could one do to contain such a creature? Only the rule that one must invite a vampire over a threshold seemed to apply to vodus.

  David addressed these questions to the vodu inside, conscious that it might be the same type of being as lay behind Obayifa. It was pushing its blur of a face against the bars, gripping them with its brush-stroked paws.

  It spoke, for the first time ever, in a voice like a slurry of guttering liquid:

  “Fuck her.”

  It seemed to be speaking to Obayifa; could only be referring to Pempamsie. As the words were uttered, David realised he had said them out loud.

  And she was gone, with the case.

  CHAPTER NINET
EEN

  The Beautiful Alone

  The women from the Royal were excited about David’s chosen rendezvous point. “The Beautiful Alone,” they kept saying as we hurried through Avonmouth.city. “We’re going for the Beautiful Alone.”

  I, Pempamsie, had noticed these hangars suspended in the near-above. They were nondescript outside, distinguished only by the files of flesh walking in and out. When we entered one, it proved to be merely a shell for arrays of stacked wooden cubicles, connected by stairways also of wood. Timber was plentiful in the carbon-eating forests, but otherwise rarely seen. The Royal women were excited. They found five of them empty and occupied one each, bidding me to enter mine despite my incomprehension.

  The smell of wood in complete darkness, of the polish or oil used to treat it, was magnificent, I had to admit. The hard feel of the seat on my rear and its back against my vertebrae bucked me. And the silence. I could tell that everyone was offline. It made no difference to me, since I was nonned anyway. But I could begin to understand what all their chatter had been about on our journey there. They were officially no longer subject to the sensa they had told me about in the Royal: the sensa which both pleased and – as they would never acknowledge – enslaved them.

  We were close together but separate. Warm rain drummed softly on the hangar’s roof, high above us.

  The Beautiful Alone.

  I, Pempamsie, felt Nkonsonkonso for the first time in UK.land: link in a chain; never break apart. However much the cubicles separated us, I was conscious of the unseen others around me, felt bonded to them as flesh.

  At the same time the silent solitude caused me to become conscious of my inner enfeeblement. The resinous smells evoked memories of my childhood. And those memories were like tracks that ended suddenly in wilderness where my home used to be, my parents. Thus far, memories from the icestation onwards appeared to be intact; my vodu’s redactions were in the far past. But would its obliteration march through the course of all my memories? And would I be able to retrieve my past if the man in Super Mare succeeded in ridding me of my vodu? It cast its shadow even as I thought these thoughts, subtle but pervasive and undermining of Pempamsie’s true self.

  I left the cubicle and walked down the stairs to where I would be able to see David arrive – if he returned safely. I thought of his grief, and wondered if the Royal women were so strangely compliant with him because of it.

  For a moment I wondered, what if the creature arrived, instead of him? I would fight. At least Pempamsie was taught well how to fight.

  As I stood I drew looks from others who headed for the exit, touching their beads as they walked, looking pleased. Were they thankful for having been offline for precious moments or for being online again? I could ask the women from the Royal, but the network masked the truth of everything. Their answers would be lost in a stream of sensa, looking at the surfaces, not within.

  A silhouette came to stand at the hangar door. It was David. I climbed back up the stairs, knocked on the Royal women’s cubicles and led them to him. We followed him out to where the robot Breakage stood on watch.

  David looked fatigued and shaken. I gave him a smile, this lost man who wanted himself back.

  “So you’re not a doll,” I said. “Did she come?”

  “Yes, and I gave her what she wanted. Or seemed to give it.” A trace of a smile in return, despite his ordeal. “And she knows of the deceit by now. Only she has no idea where we are. At least, I hope not.”

  I looked around. So many nodes, so many flesh and robots traversing the heated air. “Maybe she’s watching us now.” The words were uttered, but suddenly I wasn’t sure they were mine. The sultry atmosphere pressed upon me.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, gently lifting my chin with the tips of his fingers. I looked into his face. It was him, David – and therefore I was I.

  “Something missing inside,” I said. “We’ll see this Dirac of yours, and you’re going to show me the mystery object that you are so irritating me by not disclosing. But then we have to go to Super Mare. I can’t wait much longer.”

  David led them to the docks on foot in the down-below, where they would take a launch out into the estuary and along the coast.

  David and Pempamsie watched for their pursuer as they proceeded, while Breakage ambled in faux humanness by their side, scanning Big Mind for local anomalies. The four women from the Royal strolled with them, silent and subdued by the restored flow of sensa, walking too slowly for David’s impatient liking. He called for them to quicken their pace, in vain.

  Flesh and bodais poured through the transitways. The near-above crackled with the transportation of ones and goods. Burnished metal and glass glinted; concrete bore the stains of a half-evaporated shower. The motley group moving from node to node in the noise and rain-smell of Avonmouth.city were unremarkable dots, and David wanted to keep it that way.

  But he stopped suddenly, and the rest of the group stopped with him, wondering why. Ahead of them was Mary standing at the intersection, leaning against the glass of a Kwik Kutz, looking at him, in her tam-o’-shanter and a thin raincoat. She appeared to be alone. He recalled the message she had left for him from the door of his desres, about someone he had been spending time with.

  “Who is she?” asked Pempamsie.

  “No one. Please wait here with them while I find out what she wants.” He walked across to Mary, who gave Pempamsie an insouciant stare as he approached.

  “It’s not my doing that your dems come after me.”

  “Isn’t it? But that’s not why I’m here, Mr ID—Wait. You’re not anymore, are you.” She made a clicking sound with her tongue. “That’s really none of my concern, however. Your new friend, on the other hand, is my concern.” She flicked her eyes across the way.

  “What?” David took a fresh look at Mary, the ID criminal he had left free – and now had no authority over. Her resemblance to Yaa was, he saw clearly now, only superficial. Suddenly he understood.

  “First they send a bodai, now they send you. So you’re a sleeper. In a carie. Disguised as a minor ID felon. Not as straightforward as you seemed, eh?”

  “We’ve looked into her. She’s a killer.”

  “Who’s she killed?”

  “Our people. Humans you used to work alongside before IANI took you in back here. One of our greater achievements, by the way, the certificates you needed to work for them after you’d worked for us. Not to mention one of our more generous acts, in recompense for what the renegades did to you. But she. She’s not your average IANI agent. There’s blood on her hands.”

  “She’s told me about it. They used her. Used her body without her consent. It’s why she absconded. From them.”

  “She’s the enemy. They don’t change once they’ve been to an icestation.”

  “She’s changed. I trust her. She doesn’t remember committing murder, but she knows and she acknowledges it.”

  “You can’t rely on her. We went back into her past. That scar, for instance.”

  “What about it?”

  “The parents used to beat her, and that’s just the physical manifestation. They sold her. Couldn’t wait to get rid of her. She was damaged goods from the very beginning. Now that she’s loose from IANI she’ll revert to mental instability. You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

  Mary looked around casually for watchers as she spoke. Westaf was good. He would never have suspected her.

  “What are you asking me to do?”

  “Leave her to her fate. She’s going to get what she deserves. And we’ll all be wiser about vodus when we observe Obayifa in action upon her.”

  “Obayifa. Of course you two have met. Why would I listen to you?”

  “Your daughter.”

  His heart went cold. “What the fuck do you mean?”

  “We’ve left her alone for as long as you’ve been good and done no more than the bare minimum for your new masters.”

  “You’re bluffing. She’s nonned to
you. To everyone. I made sure of it before I left.” His voice was tightening; it was difficult to speak.

  “Nonned to Westaf. You think so?” The vodu pricked up its ears. There was no breeze, and the intersection was baking and crowded. Pempamsie was watching the conversation closely. He had to think quickly.

  “Listen. You have to leave this to me. Tell them they have to trust me. I beg you. You must have enough data about me to know I have no loyalty to the network. There’s something bigger at stake than her or any of us. Give me time. You don’t know what is nonning her, any more than I do – or IANI does, for that matter. It’s renegade technology or spirit-meddling, call it what you will. But I’m working with someone who can figure it out. And maybe use it against the network. Leaving Pempamsie to Obayifa will only put the technology back in the hands of the renegades. Is that what you want?”

  Her eyes were bluff almonds beneath the tam-o’-shanter. Although he now knew Mary to be an agent of Westaf, this did not alter his estimation of her. Her care for the dems in her charge was genuine, whatever her duplicity.

  “All I’m asking for is more time. What could go wrong? What’s to be gained by punishment in her case, anyway? I’ll take responsibility for her. I’ll take my chances. We don’t all have to live in a snake pit. You’re from Westaf. You know there’s another way.”

  The network, plying and transmitting bits, was perturbing psychblood in veins around them as he spoke, numbing the minds of flesh with sensa. Through the windows of the Kwik Kutz, bodais permed and preened the customers, exercising their small-talk routines.

  “Very well,” Mary said, evidently after latent consultation. “A little more time. But this had better not end badly. We mean what we said about Yaa.”

  David was trying to absorb the magnitude of his undertaking when Pempamsie appeared beside them suddenly and grabbed Mary.

  I, Pempamsie, watched the intensity between David and the girl. They were familiars. She was not from the Royal. A feeling grew too much, swelling inside.