Fairyland

by Paul J McAuley

  ‘Pieter’s a good scout,’ Alex says. ‘He was here from the beginning.’

  ‘Not for much longer,’ Bloch says. He glances at his slate, then erases it and puts it away in a pocket of his smock-like shirt. He says, ‘This whole place is about played out. Nothing’s come through for a while now. The little fuckers are just diddling with the corporations. They’re bluffing. It’s plain to see that they’ve run out of trade goods. Sooner or later someone is going to go in with force and that will be the end of it.’

  ‘That’s why we’re going in now,’ Alex tells Morag.

  ‘Oh no,’ Bloch says. That’s why you’re not going in, because if you do, every ragged-arse motherfucker will follow, and no one will get anything out of it. Sit down, Alex. You too, mademoiselle.’

  Morag reaches the helical stair ahead of Alex. Bloch calls after them, ‘Really, there is no place to run.’

  Morag scrambles out into the cold, grey air. Four security guards are making their way across the houseboat moored alongside the Oncogene. They are led by the blonde woman who turned Morag away three nights before. She isn’t wearing a mask now, but Morag would recognize her anywhere. The woman points at Morag and shouts something that is torn away by the freezing wind that blows across the lake.

  Morag runs for the Oncogene’s bow. She plunges straight through the Escher hologram and clambers around the struts of the microwave mast. Black water two metres below; the guard coming around the mast. Morag tears off her coat and the guard grabs for her and is left holding the silver quilted coat by one sleeve as Morag dives into the water.

  15 – Surfacing

  Morag comes up beneath a floating pontoon, gasping for breath in a tiny space of black, foul air. Footsteps bang and rattle overhead, moving away. Morag pulls herself towards a little tent of grey light, ducks under the ice-cold water again, and surfaces between the sides of two houseboats amidst a floating litter of dead leaves, foodwrappers and bleached Coke cartons.

  Cold has robbed her of any feeling in her hands, and the weight of her boots is dragging her down. She manages to loop an arm through a fender’s rope and hangs there, simply breathing. Then Katrina leans out above, her shaven head silhouetted against the grey sky. She grips Morag under the armpits and hauls her up.

  The houseboat is an empty dormitory. Katrina silences its alarm circuits, smashes a door panel, and drags Morag inside a long cabin lined with bunks. She finds a sheet, and leaves Morag to strip out of her soaked clothes and dry off. Morag is sitting wrapped in the sheet, trying to stop shivering, when Katrina returns carrying a set of orange coveralls with the InScape logo emblazoned on their back. They are oily and ripped, and at least two sizes too big, but they are dry.

  Katrina opens a carton of tomato soup, and Morag holds it in her hands as it warms. The first sip scalds her tongue, but she eagerly drinks the rest as fast as she can.

  Katrina explains that the security guards came for Armand. She set fire to the taxi and escaped while they were trying to put it out and rescue the warewolf. Then she followed them to the Oncogene.

  Morag says, ‘That man, Bloch, knew about it. He betrayed you. They have Alex.’

  Katrina scratches at the strip of leopard fur on top of her shaven skull and says, ‘Bloch must have made a deal with these people, or with the company they work for. I talked with Max, and that’s what he thinks.’

  ‘What will they do?’

  Katrina lights a cigarette. ‘What the fuck do you care? I said all along this isn’t your business. You shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Give me one of those.’

  ‘I did not think you smoke.’

  ‘I started again.’

  The nicotine rush is much diminished, but after a few puffs Morag feels calmer. She says, ‘I thought you could help me. You and Alex. Tell me about Bloch and his friends. What will they do with Alex?’

  ‘Alex will look after himself. He will try and bargain with these people. He knows things they need.’

  ‘They could turn him over to the police. And won’t they be looking for us?’

  ‘At worst they will hold Alex until they have gone in, and then they will release him. By then he can do no harm.’

  ‘You seem very certain.’

  Katrina says, with exaggerated patience, ‘Security patrols are made up of employees of the three big corporations, one from each. They do not trust each other, you understand. It is like Berlin or Vienna after the Second World War. These people, though, were all from one company, or at least they all wore the same uniforms and were armed with the same model of taser. You have finished the soup?’

  ‘What? Oh, yes.’

  Katrina hands Morag a carton of coffee and opens another for herself. ‘We will wait here two, three hours. You get warm. Then we will go. Do not be scared. We will be fine. I have arranged things.’

  ‘Do you still want to break into the Magic Kingdom?’

  ‘Of course. Max says the fuckers who took Alex will make their move tonight, in case we try to make new plans. There was a big release of fembots this morning. Things are breaking down.’

  ‘I know. I mean, Bloch told Alex more or less the same thing. Katrina, we must get into the Magic Kingdom ahead of them.’

  ‘I admire your spirit. I rescued you from the water because you have guts, jumping like that. You did not know they were not armed with anything more than tasers.’

  ‘It was stupid. I didn’t stop to think.’

  ‘If you stop, you do not do it. Tell me, now we have time to talk, why do you want to stop them?’

  ‘They won’t care that they are risking the little boy’s life. I think that if they go in, the fairies might threaten to kill the little boy, and I know these people won’t care if they do.’

  ‘Fairies don’t think like that,’ Katrina says. ‘We rest now.’

  Katrina lies down on one of the bunks and promptly falls asleep. Morag finds a mirror in the dormitory’s bathroom and fingercombs her drastically shortened hair into some kind of shape, then sits by a window and smokes four of Katrina’s cigarettes, one after the other, and watches the segment of the Intersection’s skyline visible beyond the superstructure of the adjoining houseboat. Three giant holographic figures of vironment supermodels, caught in heroic gestures, slowly revolve in the sky. One is the saint of the Bidonvilles, Antoinette. Morag minks she recognizes one of the others. Joey something. Santano, Serpico, something like that. The third, a ruggedly handsome white-haired man, she doesn’t know at all. She doesn’t have much time for the vironment sagas in which you can pull on the body of one of these heroes like a suit of clothes, but she would like to be able to do that right now. She would like to be strong and certain, not cold and scared, not intensely aware of her vulnerability. She has been on intimate terms with death too many times not to be scared of it.

  The holographic figures seem to grow brighter as the sky darkens. At last Katrina’s watch beeps, scaring the hell out of Morag. Katrina wakes at once, and says that it is time to go.

  Katrina rents a secure phone line from a fat Dutch woman who runs an office service in a cramped room in one of the prefabs. Morag waits outside the sealed booth, nervously watching everyone who goes past, her arms wrapped across her breasts. It’s cold, and the heating circuit in the baggy coveralls is defective, scorching her back and not working anywhere else. At any moment Morag expects the gang of security guards to round a corner and descend on her.

  Katrina is in the booth a long time. When she comes out she looks grim, and tells Morag to follow her.

  ‘I talked with Max again. He has made arrangements. He sends a car for you.’

  ‘You’re going to do something, aren’t you?’

  ‘Alex made a deal with you, perhaps. But not with me. You walk away, no shame.’

  ‘Not without the boy.’

  Katrina says, ‘You can’t save everyone in the world. Yes, you see I know something about you. Go home. There is no shame.’

  ‘You’re saying tha
t you won’t help me?’

  ‘For what reason do I help you?’

  Morag stops. They are at the edge of the vast, dark, weed-grown and mostly empty parking lot. Only a few lights are working. The burnt-out hulk of the taxi sits under one, in a drying pool of white foam.

  Morag says, very much on her dignity, ‘I’ll find these people and offer to go in with them. They will take what they want, and I will look for the little boy. It’s exactly the same deal I made with you and Alex. I don’t care about these silly games. Only the little boy and an end to the murders.’

  ‘Except they will not agree to it. Why should they?’

  ‘Perhaps not. But if you won’t help me, then I’ll have no other choice.’

  Katrina says, ‘You come with me. We think of something.’

  ‘You’re going to run away, aren’t you?’

  ‘Think what you like,’ Katrina says, suddenly angry. ‘You come with me or stay here and get fucked. I don’t care.’

  Katrina walks away, heading straight towards the main gate. Morag lets her do it. Katrina doesn’t look back, and after a minute Morag turns and heads towards the prickly towers of the Magic Kingdom.

  16 – The Magic Kingdom

  When they come for Armand, he tries to knock down one of the guards and make a run for it, but another guard gets in first with a rubber cosh and Armand falls, pain exploding in his right knee. They have to carry him into the elevator that takes them down to the service level of the big hotel, although he barely notices. He’s so hungry for soma that everything, even the pain in his knee, seems to happen at a great distance in a cold, grey, flat world.

  Harassed guards talking into headsets wave on the two men carrying Armand. A man in a one-piece suit trots behind, telling them to hurry. It’s cold and dark outside the service entrance. A jeep is waiting there, and Armand isn’t surprised to see the fat man sitting in the back seat. Armand has to sit beside the driver. His handcuffs are locked to the crash bar, and one of the guards, a big blonde woman, gets in behind him and says that if he gives any trouble she’ll jam her taser so far up his ass he’ll be spitting sparks.

  Mister Mike will eat her liver, Armand thinks, and giggles to himself. They don’t know that they haven’t killed Mister Mike. He’s coiled inside Armand’s skull like a snake.

  The fat man asks him how he’s feeling, and Armand says defiantly, ‘Never better.’

  ‘What did they promise you?’

  The blonde guard says sharply, ‘You be quiet.’

  ‘Let’s move it out, people,’ the man in the suit says He is very young, with a shaven head and plucked eyebrows. Rouge dusts his cheekbones, giving him the hectic look of a tuberculosis victim. He says, ‘The clock’s running.’

  ‘We don’t need this fat fucker,’ the blonde guard says. ‘This is supposed to be a simple in and out, not a tourist trip. It’s my ass on the line here.’

  Armand realizes that they’re going to take him into the Magic Kingdom, and grins to himself. Once he’s there, the Folk will deal with these fools, and then everything will be all right.

  ‘It’s all of us,’ the young man says. ‘The whole team is riding with you.’

  ‘I’m just here to help,’ the fat man says mildly. ‘I made my agreement with your bosses, not with you.’

  The blonde guard pulls the young man to her, kisses him, then pushes him away. She says, ‘I’m in charge now,’ and tells the driver to move on.

  It’s a short drive from the Interface to the perimeter of the Magic Kingdom. The whole time the jeep never gets out of third gear. Armand watches everything with interest. He’s never been in the Interface before. He looks up at the giant transparent figures hanging in the black air above the buildings, at the different people the jeep passes. He thinks he sees the woman he was supposed to kill, but when he turns around the blonde guard raps the side of his head with her taser.

  She was probably a ghost, Armand thinks, but he can’t get out of his head the way she stopped and looked right at him. She was wearing baggy orange coveralls. Her black hair had been cut short.

  The jeep bumps over wide grills set in the road, air rushing up around it, drives on past plantations of tall, spindly filter traps, then pulls off the road. The blonde guard unfastens Armand from the crash bar, locks the cuff around her own wrist, and hustles him down a grass slope to the railway tracks just outside the tunnel. By the light of the guards’ powerful torches, he sees the faint outline of one of the fairies’ involuted signs. He grins, tasting Mister Mike’s memory of bloodwork.

  A man is waiting on the far side of the tracks, bulky in a stiff flak vest under an unfastened puffer jacket. His web belt is loaded with pouches and little bags. Black stuff is smeared on his cheeks and forehead. He’s one of the people who fuck around at the edge of the Kingdom, one of the dirty little spies the fairies play tricks on when they can be bothered.

  Like the blonde guard, this fool isn’t pleased to see the fat man. The fat man says, ‘I cut a deal with the suits, Bloch, just like you. Don’t worry, you’ll still get your percentage.’

  Armand says, ‘You’re all dead, standing here.’

  ‘You shut up,’ the blonde guard says.

  The fat man says, ‘They’ll kill you too, Armand. You’re a broken weapon. You know what happens to those. Your only chance is to help us.’

  It is what they kept telling Armand in the hotel room, after the technicians had taken blood samples and put his head in a frame and looked at false-colour sections of his brain on a TV. It is lies. The Folk will not let him down.

  Armand says craftily, ‘Let me go in with him—’ pointing with his free hand to the fat man ‘—and we get you what you want.’

  The fat man says, ‘It’s an idea.’

  Bloch says, ‘You would like that, wouldn’t you?’

  Armand says, ‘I only help him. No one else.’

  ‘You need the soma,’ Bloch says. ‘I see how hungry you are for soma. Once you get a whiff you’ll help us, all right.’

  ‘Shut up, all of you!’

  The blonde guard touches her left ear. Armand sees that it’s sealed with a flesh-coloured button.

  She says, ‘The surveillance worm is in the system, ready to go. Once it’s activated we have ten minutes at most, but probably no more than six, to get past the perimeter. Human security will have their hands full with the protest marchers, but the AIs won’t even blink. You two—you follow the plan. You’re in our machine now. Fuck up and I deal with you on the spot.’

  She seals a mask over her mouth, puts on goggles. So do the two men. Armand smiles. They’re so weak that they don’t even dare breathe the living air of Fairyland.

  The blonde guard says, ‘Before either of you get any cute ideas, remember that the worm diverts the feed from cameras, it doesn’t destroy it. Anything funny and you’ll be wasted on the way out.’ She touches the button in her ear again. ‘It’s launched.’

  There’s a shallow scrape under the fence, and they roll under it one by one. Armand makes sure that the blonde guard has to pull him through, even though it hurts his wrist. Once inside, she draws a machine-pistol from inside her leather jacket.

  ‘Hey,’ Armand says, ‘I know about those,’ but no one is listening to him, they’re too busy looking right and left.

  A wide belt of tall dry grass stretches away, glimmering in the distant light of floodlamps. Bloch tells them to wait, and moves off through the grass in a snaky dance that will do him no good at all.

  The fat man whispers to Armand, ‘Where are your little friends?’

  ‘All around us. They can hear us. They can smell your blood moving under your skin.’

  Armand is excited. He has an erection. His entire skin quivers with little jolts of nervous electricity. He wants to run through the grass, run wild through the Magic Kingdom. Perhaps this time he can chase down the Twins. Perhaps he can scare them so bad they’ll never again mock him, never again shoot at him. The Queen is gone, and perhaps he
can rule. He could be King. He tips back his head and howls at the night and then he’s down in the dry grass with the blonde guard pushing his face into cold dirt, telling him in a whisper muffled by her mask to shut the fuck up.

  Bloch comes back and they move on until they reach the weed-grown narrow gauge railway tracks. Ahead, paths glimmer in the semi-darkness. The big mountain in the middle of the lake takes a black, ragged bite out of the neon glow of the Interface. For a moment, nothing stirs; then a cloud of small moths gusts around them, paper-dry wings batting at bare skin and leaving trails like pollen on goggles. Armand snaps at the moths, because they smell faintly of soma, but then Bloch sprays something from an aerosol and the moths disperse as suddenly as they arrived.

  The fat man says, ‘Is that a helicopter? Listen.’

  Armand can hear it.

  Bloch says, ‘It’s on the far side. Probably some news crew watching the protest march.’

  Armand giggles. ‘They’re coming for you,’ he says.

  They ignore him. Bloch leads the way to the railway station, watching the screen of a little handheld motion detector. Armand used one in Africa, going from house to house clearing out snipers.

  The station ticket office is just a brick shell over a frame of rough timber. Inside, it stinks of piss and the ashes of old fires. Bloch kicks dirt away from the access cover, sprays the lugs with penetrating oil and uses a crossbar key to unlatch them. He and the fat man lift the cover.

  Red light flares in the small space. Far below, something makes a snarly kind of roar. Then the light is eclipsed, and the roar grows louder. Something is climbing up the shaft.

  Armand tries to pull away from the blonde guard. There’s a guardian in the shaft, and guardians don’t stop to find out if you’re with the Folk or not.

  Bloch slams down the cover, manages to get two of the lugs fastened before something slams into the cover from below with a tremendous hollow clang. Dust flies up and Bloch staggers back. ‘Out,’ he says, ‘out, out!’