Selling Out

by Justina Robson

  She turned to him with icy composure. “And what might that be?”

  “A crossworld group of uniquely powerful allies, all brought together by the person you thought you’d just use as a robot spy.”

  “You have no power within your individual races or worlds. Skills and strength maybe, but no authority . . .” She glanced upward at Teazle’s dangling form, his wiry and muscular body apparently hanging from no more than a cursory connection with some flimsy ceiling tiles, and flinched slightly. “Not any more,” she added.

  “She’s right,” Teazle said in his harsh garble, words half swallowed and liplessly delivered with all the promise of a B-movie monster. “We haven’t got any authority here, or anywhere. You’re a crazed heretic pretending to be a pop star who used to be a half-assed secret service employee. The faery hasn’t got the loyalty of a mayfly or the attention span of one either, even in human guise. The sister’s an out-of-work chef who just managed to burn spaghetti, and I have better things to do than be bossed around by some human jobsworth. We should leave the humans to their hysteria with the moths and take off for a better place.” His speech was an open invitation, and Lila sensed a rise of energy in Zal correspondingly. She could feel his smile in the swirl of andalune he bathed her in and the beginnings of a conspiracy of sorts—they were plotting something, or beginning to execute a plan of their own and even though there was almost no magical power in the place they had enough between them to manage something before the day was out.

  There was the sound of guns being cocked. Lila craned around and saw armed guards on the door. Some guns pointed at Teazle, some at Zal, some uncertainly at the floor.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Delaware said. “Liabilities all. You’ve said enough in the last ten minutes to ensure your incarceration as security liabilities.”

  “Where are my parents?” Lila broke in. “Have you released them?”

  “In their current condition the doctors say there is some hope for recovery . . .”

  “They’re dead,” Lila said.

  The room was silent. Delaware bit her lip, apparently only then realising her misstep in revealing that they had at least lived until recently.

  Lila felt Max staring at her. “What do you mean? They were dead before. Weren’t they?” Her sister looked at her accusingly and then at Delaware and then at Malachi.

  “You were keeping them on ice just in case they were capable of being returned, right?” Lila asked, speaking to Delaware but looking at Max. “Maybe you could have sent me to Thanatopia to recover them, found out how to use that place, like a necromancer. That’s the reason you’d give me to go there. Or you could trust them to be the ballast keeping me flying right.”

  “We need every piece of information we can get,” Delaware replied, cool and stony faced. “You and every other human knows that. All the others have the advantage of prior knowledge. We know nothing. We have to do everything we can to ensure our security and safety. I hardly need blackmail to make that an essential goal.”

  “There’s a lot of holes in Demonia,” Zal said conversationally. “Like in Alfheim. But nowhere near as much cracking as there is in Otopia. It’s getting worse. I hear the faeries are none too happy about it either. I hate to interrupt again but it seems like there are some larger issues of the moment here that nobody is addressing. If I were you I’d be wondering if the incursion of outsider creatures here wasn’t related to that. Maybe you’d like to make a note of it.” He smiled at Cara though there was no smile reaching his eyes.

  Delaware gave a nod and one of the technicians did something on his notebook.

  Lila’s AI sprang to life. She had got used to its quiescent state and having it suddenly appear in her consciousness, as big as she was, was a terrible shock. Her awareness expanded and at the same moment she felt herself seamlessly overridden by this second system. She felt so loyal and grateful to the agency, how could she have allowed her personal life—however tragic—to interfere?

  Tath, who had been weak and silent until then, suddenly stirred inside her chest.

  “Yar,” Malachi said with uncharacteristic droll annoyance. “I’ll be having that if you don’t mind.” He held out his hand and the notepad spun out of the technician’s grasp and flew across the room straight to him. He caught it in midair, releasing the still-sobbing Max who put both hands over her mouth and stared with disbelieving eyes.

  “It won’t do you any good,” Delaware said. “We have others, and we have the codes. We can reset them faster than you could try to crack them.”

  “Time to go, lads,” Malachi said and the technicians sidled up towards him.

  “Graham, Yvonne,” Delaware snapped, but her commands went to deaf ears.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Malachi said idly, as he was flanked by white coats. “I’ve nothing against you and your operation. I’ve been glad to help you and I’d do it all again, I will do it all again, but I have some interesting affairs that have to be settled first, namely, you have to give Lila autonomy, or as from this moment the fey will cease all diplomatic friendliness with you. And that could be disturbing at the present time, since I believe you will be needing us to help you deal with your—little problem.”

  “But . . .” spluttered Delaware, turning to Sarasilien and Dr. Williams.

  “Faery dust is persuasive,” Sarasilien said, giving Malachi a glance of respect. “And to human senses, virtually undetectable. Dr. Huggins and Dr. Peacock here are under his command until it may be washed off.”

  “You are the magical expert here. It’s your responsibility to be on guard for this kind of treachery!” Delaware snapped at him.

  “I have been in the laboratory for months, attempting to resolve the issues with the Bomb Forensics Team, aside from that brief interlude with the elves and their quest to hunt down Zal. Besides, Malachi has clearance to do as he likes. It was part of his remit. He is within his rights to use minor magical persuasions against lower-ranking officials if he suspects them of unethical practices.”

  Dr. Williams turned to regard Sarasilien with new interest. She followed the conversation like a small owl, her head turning eagerly to each new contribution.

  “So you’re prepared to betray us all?” Delaware sneered.

  “You are in no immediate danger, so betray is a foolish word.” Sarasilien barely moved from his upright position. “But Malachi is not the only one here who foresees bad consequences for your use of Lila as a remote-controlled device. Even if it were unobjectionable, the opportunity exists for her to be subverted and used against you as Malachi has proved.”

  “The other reason none of this will ever work,” Dr. Williams spoke up, “is that as it stands the agency and Lila are now mutually opposed to one another’s interests. Either you all work together in a spirit of trust and cooperation or the entire matter will end very badly indeed. Cara, this is your problem. You can’t do this with rules and force from on high, mostly because none of these people respond to it. It’s time for a different approach.”

  The younger woman stared at her with rigid dislike. “What had you in mind?”

  “I was thinking you might take a holiday. I’ve already written you a note. Overwork can be a terrible thing.”

  “I have no intention of leaving at a crisis period . . .”

  Dr. Williams looked dismayed. “Oh, but I already sent it. Your authorisation is here. Plus, the Director has been so pleased with your work that he’s arranged a promotion for you on your return. You can go anytime you like. Your replacement is on the way.”

  Teazle snickered. “That’s more like it. Finally a bit of interest. Mutiny, and no telling at what level the commands really come from. I like it.”

  Delaware had gone a deathly, speechless white.

  At that moment a fiery ball, smoking faintly, pushed its way through the wall and darted to Lila’s shoulder. With a small popping noise Thingamajig manifested and took a look into the surprised faces around him.

&
nbsp; “Ooh, not a moment too soon! I’m sensing a lot of anger in the room, a lot of restless spirits filled with the vibes of inadequacy and confusion, mingled with just a piquant hint of incompetence. You, you lady,” he pointed to Delaware, “have done a masterful job here.” He bowed deeply and dug his claws into Lila’s shoulder with a shiver of satisfaction. “So, how is everybody doin’?”

  There was a moment’s thoughtful silence as everybody stared at the imp.

  Then Delaware turned and stalked from the room, pushing past the armed guards without a backward glance. They heard her heels in the corridor fading away to quiet.

  “Was it something I said?” Thingamajig asked, his eyebrows raised almost higher than his head.

  Sarasilien turned his head towards Dr. Williams. “Do you suppose she will make a valuable enemy?” Everyone listened, temporarily stunned to personal silences by the sudden turns of events. Lila noted the AI signing Delaware off the authority listings, but nobody appeared to replace her.

  “Her losses are her own affair,” Williams said with a sigh. “She simply wasn’t suited to the position by temperament, which caused her to make several unfortunate misjudgements, and that’s true enough to be the entire reason I will ever give.”

  The elf nodded slowly, his lips pursed forwards in the common human manner of someone who is considering a strangely intriguing and impressive manoeuvre.

  “I can’t see a replacement,” Lila said, all her attention focused on Dr. Williams, but as she spoke the omissions from the roll began reappearing in her knowledge—Malachi was reinstated where he had been deleted when she awoke. Sarasilien’s cautionary status was dropped and his privileges restored. Her own file, that had always been brief and to the point, suddenly expanded, like a concertina; chock-full of new information. Her seniority was upped five levels, putting her on equal footing with Sarasilien himself for clearance and command. It was like watching flowers bud and bloom in seconds of time-lapse film. And then new blooms came: Zal’s name appeared, and Teazle’s too . . .

  At this point Dr. Williams, who had been quietly fiddling and muttering crossly at her personal interface Berry, pulled up what Lila was seeing and projected it shakily onto the far wall across Malachi’s and Max’s heads so that everyone else could read it too.

  “I’ve been doing some adjusting,” she said, reaching into a pocket for her glasses, shaking the arms out carefully and putting them on her face. “And if you are agreeable, Zal and Teazle, I would like you to consider this proposal . . .”

  She got out the light pen from her top pocket and started sketching lines. She drew a band around Lila, Zal, Teazle, and Malachi. “This would be the outside operations group. Which leaves myself and the office and technical staff as your base resource team.” At this point her own name appeared: Dr. Williams, Director of CrossWorld Resources and Operations. She circled it into the much larger list of people who worked at the agency. “Whilst of course Lila’s responsibility is to Otopia, naturally, I wouldn’t expect that of outsiders whose interests may lie elsewhere. This group is to be created solely for the purpose of investigating common crossworld problems and resolving them to mutual satisfaction. If you don’t want to participate then you must say so now because it’s high time we paid more attention to interesting reports like this one . . .” She fussed with the Berry and murmured, “Stupid machine . . . such little buttons . . . come on, damn you . . .”

  A video clip appeared as Max and Malachi sidled out of the way and came to lean against Lila’s bed. Teazle swivelled his head around to look the right way up at it.

  On the image a human presenter and a demon who looked like a cat-person looked with slight stage fright at the camera but began without preamble. “We are part of the mathematical analysis teams who’ve been working on the physics of what we know about the new cosmology since the Bomb . . .” The human, a young man, cleared his throat and glanced at his colleague but continued. “We’ve been studying the crack patterns in the various regions and comparing them with what is known from akashic science about I-space. We’ve also been consulting with groups about unexpected phenomena . . . wherever we can get that information. You’re now a part of that organisation. It’s not exactly government from anywhere, but we are funded and . . .”

  “Digression,” murmured the cat.

  “...um...the point is that we have reason to believe, if our equations are right, that there is a fundamental instability governing the space-time and aether matrix which permits our worlds to coexist. It is getting worse and various activities increase the instability . . . however, the major point about our research is that we think the primary cause of the problem is: our theories predict the existence of another world. But nobody seems to be able to detect it.” He glanced at the cat who nodded sagely. “The fact that it isn’t there, apparently, means that the fabric of our dimensions is starting to rip itself apart and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s reasonably slow. We think years, not months. A decade to fatal instability. Before that . . . we don’t know what will result as things get worse. But they will get worse, probably in unequal jumps.” He paused and took a drink from a glass of water that had been out of shot.

  “But,” the cat interrupted in a smooth, soft voice, “we think that if this world could be found and somehow reintroduced to the matrix, the pattern will stabilise. The equations clearly predict that the presence of the seventh realm would balance everything out. It’s because it’s not there that everything is starting to warp. Everything points to its existence.”

  “How could it exist and not be there at the same time?” Zal asked the recording, just as the cat continued.

  “Of course it seems impossible for something to exist, yet not be there at the same time. We have postulated that maybe it does exist but has become separated from our continuums in some way and is therefore only detached and not nonexistent in the greater cosmos. If it has been destroyed or failed to arise then, of course, nothing could be done. Demonia, Alfheim, and Faery also note for the records that the instability issues were present, yet at much lower levels, prior to the QBomb event in Otopia. We never considered looking for other worlds before now. If there is evidence . . . I am not allowed to discuss it here. Another department will take care of that. That concludes the summary findings.”

  The recording ended.

  “Well, I think that says it all.” Williams switched off the display and put her Berry back into her pocket. “Now, staff if you would return to your duties I will take Lila and her sister home and assist with the arrangements for the immediate return of Mr. and Mrs. Black. If that’s all right with you, Lila?”

  Lila took a deep breath, “I think I’d like to be alone for a while,” she said, and got down from the gurney. She gave Zal a nod that said he was included in “alone” and gave Max a small smile of apology. As she passed Malachi on her way out he signed that he’d look after Max and she picked the technician’s device from his hand. The soldiers guarding the door stepped aside for her silently.

  As she was walking Lila re-cued her access to her AI and set it to full interface. The extra machine mind lay seamlessly with hers. She only had to think for all its possibilities to be controlled: she closed the door behind her and locked it, using her new security permissions to invoke Protocol 111b (higher-ranking agency staff are temporarily countermanded in event of emergency or suspicion of threat) to ensure it could not be overridden. She did the same thing to the control system in her hand, locking out all others from access—and not only to this single unit, but to all units of any kind containing the same program.

  On her shoulder Thingamajig tugged at her hair but she ignored him and began to walk down the hall, orienting herself via her internal schematic of the building. “Where are we going?” he piped. “Are you on some mission?”

  She didn’t answer. Inside her chest the exhausted Tath watched her with quiet interest. Her feet took her at a steady pace through doors she had never had cause to open befo
re, their locking mechanisms opening at the touch of her fingers. As she walked she also opened up regions inside the secure zones of the AI systems where the hot-working copies of several million different operational programs were kept, located the ones which gave remote access to her internal software and hardware, and watched them closely. Meanwhile she was really looking for a master command somewhere in the whole works—several security levels higher than she was allowed to command she knew it must exist: a means to shut her up and shut her down. As that was going on she took a cursory glance at the flow of comms traffic to see what was bothering most of the other agents.

  Weird reports of supernatural events flooded the lines.

  She turned into an airlock and waited for it to cycle, reading all the time: all over Otopia, mostly in regions of isolated country, people were reporting strange creatures, humanoid but greyish with red eyes, who could move at incredible speeds and seemed to haunt certain places. They also told stories of strange people arriving late at isolated places and asking favours, who then made cryptic warnings about impending disasters, usually minor, although one of these had occurred shortly before the collapse of the entrance to a lead mine in which two men were killed. It made peculiar reading but less peculiar if you were armed with the knowledge that these things were almost certainly unknown people from a known place. The media was rife with speculation that they were undead, vampires, and ghouls that were coming through from Thanatopia—a place never out of the popular press. Lila was ready to discount this, as they sounded quite wrong for that. In any case, although they were disturbing, they so far posed no threat she could see.

  She put the matter aside as the airlock opened and let her into the machine room deep in the basement, where some of Otopia’s most sensitive computer systems were encased in carefully designed sarcophagi. The people who worked here were mostly maintenance engineers and they were few and far between, doing regular checks at times that didn’t coincide with her visit, so she was alone.