Living Next Door to the God of Love

by Justina Robson

“ . . . had no idea you could become so personally involved. If it was a case of asking for money or . . .”

  “It wasn’t the money,” Valkyrie said, matching piece to piece, testing the fit.

  “Do you have any idea what you did?”

  Valkyrie took that from the tone to be the kind of question that her mother-father Tupac used to ask her when the answer was perfectly clear. In this case it was perfectly clear that Valkyrie had invited an alien into the virtual world of the Forged, against all codes, rules and security. It was an act of treason and dishonour, though it hadn’t seemed so at the time.

  “He didn’t take anything you were interested in,” she retorted. “He tried to help me.” He did help me, she added, privately. Perversely, in the circumstances, she felt fine.

  “But he did take something.”

  “A bloody file protocol array!” Valkyrie snapped. “Yes, a very fancy and intricate semi-intelligent machine-developed and highly advanced infinitely dynamical n-dimensional matrix processor, but hell, still just midware when you look at it.”

  “I will admit it baffled me for a moment,” Belshazzar said, allowing Valkyrie’s anger to go unremarked. “But then I realized that if you are correct in your reporting, then what we think of as mundane in this case is nothing of the sort. No human being developed this midware. AIs made it, because they had to, in order to run Uluru. Unity is not like Uluru. Maybe it was something genuinely new, and of value. We must presume so. In which case the splinter has gained a very similar capacity to that of Mode, the one AI in all the systems I would have said was most complex. It certainly defies all my efforts to divine its skills, so far. But we had always assumed that Unity’s ability to manipulate the elevensheet must have come from perfect comprehension, so that all our works were nothing in comparison to its knowledge. Now it seems that at least for the splinter, this can’t be the case. You wouldn’t steal what you already know.”

  “He didn’t steal it. He traded it.” Valkyrie began to count out ammunition rounds: one, two, three . . . She knew why Belshazzar was so upset: she hadn’t wanted to know just how much Metatron was prepared to skip all pretence of allegiance to Earthly government in order to further its own ends.

  Valkyrie repeated what she had already told once, “Metatron agreed that in exchange for the array it would be allowed to create a data facsimile of the splinter’s one-time, nondynamical elevensheet geometry for its own analysis, understanding that this must be destroyed as soon as it was mined.” . . . thirty. She began to pack the rounds into the magazine.

  “There is more to it than that,” Belshazzar said coldly. “The splinter redesigned the identity codes of both the AIs and made them into one single entity which is now the most comprehensively life-similar machine in existence, smug as the cat that got all the cream and ten thousand times more difficult to hack.”

  “Well, Uluru has a lot of nice new regions,” Valkyrie said. She had drawn the conclusion that if she was to be arrested, she would have been already. Thus the conversation was simply a warm-up for the next phase of an operation that had lost all contact with Solargov methodologies and strictures of law. Her violation of best practice and her criminal disobedience were matters that would wait, maybe forever.

  “Your Stuffie informant who told you that Unity was at war—how much can you rely on him?”

  “It’s hard to say.” Valkyrie slotted her magazine into the gun, then opened the rack on her left forearm to fit it in place. She checked all connections but did not fire the weapon. She had no specific plan to use it but from now on she planned to carry it at all times. Sankhara’s streets were restless as the population thinned and fled both the Engine’s flurry of works and the sudden seasonal turn to winter. There were more Stuffies than ever before, and many of them were hostile to humans of Forged or other descent. Valkyrie felt Belshazzar’s silence lengthen, and added, “But he is my only link to the ground situation here.”

  “Check back with him immediately on any developments he has noticed or can tell you about from the inside. Then I want you to go and find Saxton. The Anadyr Park bubble is growing suddenly and I need to know why he’s still in it. I’m sending you transport.” Belshazzar sent Valkyrie the contact details of her new ally from Solargov Security, the Pterippus Vassago. “You’ll never make it out there on your own.”

  Valkyrie completed her second and third guns and stowed them. She tidied away all her equipment and climbed back down through the top hatch into her home. There she packed all her personal items and placed them into the locked crate she’d brought from Earth, sealing it carefully.

  The astonishing clarity and self-possession she had miraculously acquired on the frost bridge remained so strong that she had the presence of mind to commit a final will and letter to Guide memory, and only then did she pause to realize that her time here must be very close to an end.

  The thought did not trouble her. She stamped down on the foot control to her drop hatch and skimmed out onto the light, icy winds. She took one lazy turn, looking down on all the lanes and buildings she had learned to know, admiring their coating of frost, then she dropped down towards the shore and alighted on the grassy cliff-tops which rose sheer and ochre from the north end of Unforgettable Beach.

  She was admiring the clear views out to sea when a long, elegant hand came over the edge beside her left foot, and another joined it a moment later. In a second or two the Elf pulled himself up over the edge and turned to sit with his legs hanging down over the drop. Valkyrie saw that he had taken to carrying a bow and poison-tipped arrows on his back.

  He gave a dramatic sigh. “That was harder than I thought, as the actress said to the bishop. But here I am, in answer to your prayers, golden servant of Artemis.” He held his left hand up to her.

  She reached down and handed across a thousand credits.

  “Ow! Metal hands freezing, girl!” He rubbed and blew on both his hands and stuck them under his arms. “I would have traded for information anyway. I was looking for Francine yesterday but when I got to Crisscross Street—wow, serious winter and even worse slavering monster problems. White hair and teeth and claws. What are those things? A kind of bear? No not bears. Also pieces of somebodies. Big stains and nasty . . . bits of insides littering the path. Do you know if she’s all right? Is she in there?”

  “I believe so,” Valkyrie said. “The splinter returned there last night.”

  “Ho, the splinter. He has a name. And look at you, so shiny with knowledge. What were you doing . . . Ah, you got what you were looking for.” He kicked his feet up in the air, pleased with his deductions.

  “You had something to tell me?”

  “There’s a rumour that someone got out last night. And things have gone into a big quiet. There’s a really big, deep”—he stretched his hands out and sketched in the sea with his fingers—“quiet in the Big Deep. All waity. All thinky. All hanging by its feet upside down. And the yappy dog off its leash.”

  “In Gaian please?”

  “Theo’s in the shit at home. Don’t know how long it will last but feels like a while. Sort of thing can go on for centuries but it probably won’t. Funny, it’s been a bit easier to drag these things out from under the last few hours. I don’t know why . . .” He pressed his hands down beside him, pulled his knees up and sprang to his feet. “Was that worth a thousand?”

  “At least two,” Valkyrie told him, not sure what it meant. Theo was out of power? Then who ruled?

  “I like it up here,” Damien said as they faced into the wind. The sea was racing with whitecaps. No sails or craft of any kind were out upon it. Its blue was only a few shades deeper than that of the sky. “Beautiful.”

  “It really is,” Valkyrie agreed, taking a deep breath.

  49 / Francine

  In late morning I lay in bed. It was warm in our room now that Jalaeka and Greg had built a fire. I read SankhaDaily for a while as Greg made breakfast. Jalaeka had gone into Sankhara.

  Before he left
I heard him destroy the Jordan staircase. He’d said he would, to prevent any creatures from below getting access to the top floors, and neither of us had argued. The strange contrast of comfort and fear made me feel like I never wanted to get up again.

  “Engine Analysts suggest the inclement weather is due to the exceptional upsurges of emotion resulting from the release of the Metropolis Paper. Many Greater Sankhara residents have suffered personal losses which were confirmed as final yesterday when the government declared the Metropolis Sidebar lost without trace. Winter has long been associated with emotional restriction, sadness and death, while snow may signify a desire for purification through forgetting. It is speculated that this period should last a relatively short time, but we may expect instability and extreme conditions to persist for up to six months. Meanwhile in Hoolerton and points southeast of Central Sankhara the Engine continues reconstructing to an unprecedented degree. SankhaU analysts suggest that residents and visitors should avoid the Hoolerton and Dogwood areas until further notice and Crisscross Street and all points south have been temporarily closed to traffic of any kind. An emergency evacuation of those areas is currently under way.”

  I flicked my Abacand closed and clenched my hands together for a moment, feeling my cold knucklebones. I listened to Greg clunking and moving around in the kitchen area and heard the soft sound of the music he was listening to.

  “Voice mode,” I said to my Abacand and set it to record a message, propped on the comforter, supported by a pillow. I looked into the tiny silver face of its camera. “Mum,” I said. “I’m all right. I hope you are too. I hope you’re happy. I think I am, but I’m not coming back. Not yet anyway. Love you.” A minute or two went by but I had nothing else to say. I sent it and called Sula, the only close friend from Earth I was still in touch with.

  “Happy birthday!” she yelled as soon as the connection sank. “Sweet sixteen and never been kissed, ha ha ha! Where are you?”

  “Hull,” I said, making up city number twenty that I’d never been to. “Where are you?”

  “Reykjavik,” she said, sweeping her Abacand around to give me a panorama of some shops, then herself, beautiful in sugar-pink winter gear. “New lip gloss, just bought it last Tuesday, very kachinga, sent you some to your postbox number, did you get it?”

  “Yes,” I lied. “Thanks. That’s what I was calling to say too.”

  “How’s your mother? Did you call her?”

  “Good. Yours?”

  “Still taking the drugs, thank goodness.” Sula walked over to a bench and sat down. “Dad’s gone off with that Peta woman again. Hey ho, don’t miss him. All he ever did was talk about golf. What else did you get? How’s that boyfriend of yours you never show me?”

  “He’s good. Out. You know.”

  “He’s always out.”

  “No. I call you when he’s out.”

  “Why? What you doing when he’s in? Don’t say. Don’t say. I already know.” She giggled and I envied her, envied her, envied her. I touched the screen where her round, wind-rosied cheeks were curving.

  “Hey, what’s that for?” She screen-poked me back. “Aren’t you a good girl?”

  “No,” I said and my heart plunged down unexpectedly. “Really not.” Tears started up in my eyes and I sat up, sweeping the Ab into my hand and taking a quick swipe at my face with my cuff in the meantime.

  “I didn’t mean it, you donkey,” she said, shaking her Abacand—and me by extension. Its picture shot around, blurred and crazy. “Not like that.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Stupid. What are you doing tonight?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “I hope it’s good. And I want pictures. You call me when you get there, wherever it is. Here, I’m sending you a song I made up in case you called, you black old sheep. Okay, I have to go because Nimi is on the other line and I have to get back to the stupid apartment in five minutes, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re sure you’re fine? It’s good to see you. Like your hair.”

  I smiled. “I’m really really fine.”

  “Happies!”

  “Happies back.”

  The Abacand played, “You are my reindeer, my wild reindeer. I’m learning to be so kind to you. We are becoming very good friends. Santa will be so proud of you!” to the tune of “You Are My Sunshine.” I folded it into its flat form and held it pressed against my chest.

  I looked at my books, and I knew I was never going to SankhaU.

  Greg and I ate together. Jalaeka came back from Sankhara and said he’d seen Damien there. He passed me one of Damien’s notes. There was a piece of used chewing gum acting as a seal, and a strip of sugar candy inside, heavily fortified with some strange thing no doubt.

  Happy Birthday, baby.

  I screwed the paper up and threw it in the fire, remembered my last birthday—the day I met Damien, the two of us fighting over that bin . . .

  “Okay?” Greg and Jalaeka said at once, looked at each other, then at me.

  “Yeah.” I put my hands in my pockets.

  They shared another glance. “Think we’ll get some more wood, soft furnishings, seventeenth-century chairs, priceless card tables, that kind of thing,” Greg said.

  Well, how would they have known?

  When they’d gone I went to run myself a bath in the centre of the gilt and ivory bathroom, but when it was ready I couldn’t bring myself to undress. I kept seeing Chayne, and the way that Theo had looked at me. I remembered the way he undressed me. Why now? What a stupid time to think of things like that. But I couldn’t stop.

  I sat on the floor next to the bath, leaning against its warm side, and asked the Abacand to run a full analysis on the bank account I’d been using—the one with so much money in it. All the credits were from the Well, and some of them ran to tens of thousands of credits in a single transaction. There were no others. The debits were mine and from the street cash dealer; all reasonably small sums we used to live on. They hardly made a difference to the total, which had climbed on a steep gradient from day one. As Jalaeka had told me, it was all darshan money, all good-time money. “Your college fund, your career fallback, your pension, babe.” I never noticed until now that he’d never spent any of it himself.

  I glanced around me and realized that he didn’t own anything, except some clothes, which had all come via the Well designers and were a gratis part of his deal. It hadn’t bothered me until Theodore had pointed it out and now it ate away at me. Why why why? And I said to myself, “You stupid mare you know why,” and then another voice said—“But for you? For you? How crazy is that? How could someone like him love you in particular? Who are you? You barely have any friends because you left them all when you left home, and now you can’t face them, and it’s been too long, and you can’t go back, and forward looks finished. If Theodore wins, then you’d be better off dead, and if Jalaeka wins then what the hell will happen to you? Can you even think about it? He won’t be yours forever. You’ll be old in thirty years and dead in eighty. Maybe you don’t want him to, because then your whole holiday-in-ice will end and it’ll all be over. And look. You know what this is? This is a legacy. He’s going to leave you.”

  I hate Theo for what he’s done to me. I hate feeling helpless. I feel like the only thing I can do now is make Jalaeka vulnerable. As long as I’m alive he’ll never be free, he’ll always be locked to trying to protect me. Instead of greeting the news of my Translation with prissy silence I should have asked for what I really wanted—to be part of him in the sense that I’d be an arm or a leg—only I didn’t dare and now it’s too late.

  Worst of all I hate the . . .

  “Worst of all you hate the way your boyfriend materializes in the bath and finishes your sentences when you least expect it—is the line you were looking for,” Jalaeka said, putting a wet hand on my head and dripping tepid water down my face. “Now, how spectacular is that?”

  “I’ve seen better,” I said,
sniffing and only then realizing that I was crying.

  “Yeah yeah.” He sat up with a slosh.

  I turned around, put my hands on the rolled rim of the tub and looked over the edge. He was fully clothed. Frost whitened the tips of his hair and eyelashes. “You dill. What are you doing?”

  He was almost high. “We’re going out. Just you and me. All arranged. Greg safe. Don’t worry. You can have the water after me.”

  “I don’t want to go out,” I said. “Greg . . .”

  “I know.” Flakes of snow were melting in his hair. “You were thinking of enjoying a night in to wash the guilt and self-loathing out of your brain and it takes ten months to dry. But I thought we’d go straight to the partying because it’s your birthday thing, in an ill-judged attempt to avoid all the ‘I hate me’ horseshit for which I am partly responsible. And I should apologize for listening in. It’s a horrible habit. In my defence . . .”

  “You!” My self-pity turned to outrage at his admission of spying.

  I was so glad he was joking with me that I turned around, got up on my knees, put both hands on his shoulders and pushed him under the water. Bubbles rose from his mouth and nose and his hair swirled around my hands and wrists, silky soft. His eyes stayed open under the water and he looked at me with comic, pleased surprise.

  I took hold of his jacket lapels and pulled him out again. “What did you say? Listening in?”

  “Oh, you noticed that.”

  “How could you listen to me? I thought the whole thing that you did . . .”

  “I did,” he said, looking at me with his most apologetic face. “I did make you untouchable to Unity. And I gave you a gate in that wall of mine.”

  “What?” My hands let go of their own accord.

  “It’s what you wanted but never said. I didn’t do it before because I thought it was too risky and—I wanted to hide the truth about me. And I didn’t want to make you into a copy of me, a Stuff thing. I wanted to let you be yourself. Not compelled by your material form to join me or join Unity in that no-mystic all-terrifying way. I was going to let you alone today, separate you out again. Only I couldn’t bring myself to do it like I did with Rita. I can read you. And you can read me. Although, unless you ask, that’s all it means. The rest of the whole spawning-universes and quantum whizmajig godlike thing isn’t part of it. I thought it was probably safer that all that stay with me. Or everybody would want it. And you know what it’s like when everybody has something . . . not cool anymore.”