by Jeff Somers
I nodded immediately. “Honey, I thought that was understood, for all of us. Fuck, that’s a standing order.” I swallowed. “Be in the Assembly Room in five, okay? Take notes.”
“Keep calling me honey,” she called out after me, “and we may not have to wait for the Monks to arrange it.”
I tried to find my way back, but got lost in the twisty tunnel-like hallways of the place. It gave me an opportunity to search out more of the boobytraps they’d set up in case we had to fight off a small army of SSF or Monks or whatever huge, global organization was going to decide to kill me tomorrow. They’d been busy little bastards, and the work was first-rate. Aside from the guns and the drop-plates, there were electrocution wires stretched across the floors at key intersections, ready to snap taut and murder a half-dozen men simultaneously. There were small charges embedded in the seams of the floor, ready to blow and tumble another dozen into a newly born pit. Anyone trying to force their way into the place was going to pay dearly for it.
Eventually one of the Droids found me. Sputtering programmed politeness, it led me to where everyone except Milton and me had gathered. The four of them huddled around the Monk, which stood exactly where I’d left it when I’d fled: ramrod straight, staring directly ahead under the dual influence of its mod chip and Kieth’s custom instruction set.
“Well, well, the Boy Gunner,” Tanner said as I approached. “Traveling in style while the hired help suck fumes all the way across the ocean, I see,” she added sourly.
“I’ll kick in an extra yen to your share for pain and suffering,” I announced, pulling off my coat. “Now shut the hell up and let’s get started. You said you didn’t think we had much time?”
Kieth nodded and danced around checking his equipment. “The brain appears to be in good physical shape, but something is decaying in there. The personality? Soul? Subconscious? Ty doesn’t know. Maybe he’s just too crazy, after all this time. Every time Ty unhooks Brother West from the mod chip, Brother West goes more apeshit than the last time. Mr. Gatz has been able to control West to an extent-maybe a substitute for the mod chip-but that also appears to be decaying. Ty thinks you have about five minutes before Brother West goes fatal error on us.”
I stared at the Monk. It looked like a prisoner awaiting execution, head held high. I’d noticed that Kieth’s third-person royal status got worse when he was under pressure. “When that happens, you can kick the mod chip back in with your new instruction set, yes?”
“Yes. I think. We won’t know until we do it.”
I looked around, taking stock. We were in a mothballed factory, in an abandoned neighborhood, thousands of miles from what I thought of as home, and more than likely near death. I felt a strange sense of calm, of fatalism. If the Monk jumped up and slaughtered us all, it wouldn’t surprise me, and I wouldn’t, I thought, mind all that much.
Milton arrived and saluted me.“Go ahead, then, Mr. Kieth,” I said.
Kieth leaped up, mopping his head with the same filthy rag. “All right, then. Ty will be recording the whole episode, of course. Just in case. I will disconnect the behavioral modification chip, Mr. Gatz will assert his, uh, influence, and then you can question it.”
I nodded and addressed them all. “What we need most from Brother West is information about the security at Church headquarters. Anything else is gravy. Okay? So everyone else shut the fuck up until I’m finished.”
“Yeah,” Tanner drawled. “Or Mr. Cates will shoot you.”
I was starting to like the sisters. It also reminded me that I needed a weapon, fast. I felt defenseless and confused without something to defend myself with. “Kieth? Gatz?”
They both nodded. Kieth gestured a command carefully at his equipment, Gatz removed his glasses, the Monk spasmed again, and we all stood in silence. After a moment, the Monk shivered and turned its head, the sound of the tiny motors clear and sharp.
“Why am I still alive?” it said, turning its head back and forth. “I know Mr. Gatz. I know quite a lot about Mr. Gatz. I know the names Cates, Kieth, Milton Tanner. I do not know you.”
Kieth dashed around his black boxes adjusting things with waves of his arms and subtle flicks of his wrist. “Amazing, Mr. Cates. Brilliant, really. They’re using the brain’s lower functions as-is-saves them the trouble of trying to program all that stuff in. They’re using the brain’s memory as primary storage, though it looks like a stream dump is sent to the EC on a real-time basis. They’re saving themselves tons of money and time and effort by just using the human brain. If they tried to replicate this electronically they’d still be designing the fucking nano. The upper functions of the brain are filtered to the mod chip, which is just a null point.”
“That’s interesting, Mr. Kieth,” I said. “Can I ask it questions?”
The Monk twitched its head like a bird, and oriented on Kieth. “Questions?”
“Will you answer questions?”
Gatz nodded. “He’ll answer.”
I cleared my throat and stepped forward. “I’ve done some preliminary research and a few walk-bys. It looks to me like the EC headquarters has a single entrance, controlled by wireless handshake, correct?”
“Probably the Amblen Protocol,” Kieth said with a nod.
The Monk twitched and shivered again. “Amblen Protocol… modified. Custom. Dr. Amblen himself provided the algorithmic adjustments.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Mr. Kieth, that means there’s a transmitter chip that beams the authentication code when the Monk approaches the HQ entrance. It’s probably write-twice media, programmed to flush itself if tampered with.”
Ty looked outraged. “Did you just explain the concept to Ty? Ty’s designed these systems, Mr. Cates.”
“There is,” the Monk said slowly, jerking its head twice, “a random frequency shift as well.”
“Ah,” I muttered, ignoring Kieth. “One entrance-what are the deterrents to herd you through?”
“The authentication handshake is wide-field. You must supply the correct response no matter where you attempt to enter.”
“The response to a failed authentication?”
“If no… response is… transmitted, a suppression field is deployed. That is all that is necessary. There are of course brothers on guard duty.”
“There you have it. Thank you, West.” I turned to Kieth and smiled. “We can get in. Ty, find the transmitter chip, but don’t fuck with it. It will be hidden, possibly camouflaged as a different type of chip altogether. Then we can start plotting.”
Kieth twitched his nose. “I can get into it. Ty can get into anything.”
I nodded. “Ty’s a genius, yes, yes. But if Ty fucks up even a little, the chip will burn itself and will be so much char, okay? We’ll have one shot at getting the algorithm out of it. Fuck it up with your itchy trigger fingers and I’ll have to shoot you. Brother West,” I said, “are there any other security features we need to know about?”
The Monk oriented on me jerkily, twitching. “The power and network feeds for the handshake system are located within the HQ building. They do not connect outside the building. There is no way to cut power or intercept the feeds. If you approach without authorization, the suppression field is invoked, and you are held until the guards can respond and eliminate. Response time averages six seconds.”
“Are you observed while entering?”
“Digital analysis software examines every frame of security cams, which cover every foot of the perimeter, yes.”
I swore. For a few seconds we were bathed in complete silence. I looked at Kieth, who just stared back. Then I glanced back at the Monk.
“Will you help us?”
It twitched violently. “Help you?”
“Will you help us to get in?”
Another few moments of silence, marred only by the trembling hum of the Monk’s motors. It was vibrating slightly.
“Will you kill me?”
I blinked, and swallowed hard. “Kill you?”
&
nbsp; “Yes.” It took a step forward awkwardly, and then stopped. “If I help you to enter the Abbey, will you kill me?” With apparent effort, it spread its hands.
Glancing around the room, I found no one willing to look me in the eye, no one willing to offer even an unspoken opinion. Finally I made fists with both hands and looked back at the Monk.
“Done.”
The Monk didn’t move at first. Then it nodded its head, once, the motors humming. “Done.”
XX
IT HURT MY EYES A LITTLE JUST TO LOOK AT HER
00001
“Well, this is depressing.”
I ignored Gatz. He was the only one I thought I could count on to at least not slit my throat. Kieth intended me no harm, I thought, but he wouldn’t lose sleep if I got hurt, either; I wasn’t even sure he regarded other people as people, and not as especially well-designed Droids. Milton and Tanner were in it purely for the money, and people in it for the money could never be trusted.
That left Kev Gatz.
We stood on the Dole Line near Downing Street with every other citizen of the System. A few blocks back were the twisted remnants of a heavy-duty black metal gate, half of it torn from its moorings and the other half melted. I twisted my head and could see a jagged wall of masonry still standing on Downing Street itself, just inside those gates, where a small sign was amazingly clean and uncharred, reading DOWNING STREET, SW1, CITY OF WESTMINSTER. I considered asking when the fuck London had been the City of Westminster, and then considered my companions and decided against it. The Abbey was called Westminster, too, and the Abbey had looked like the oldest fucking thing in the world, so maybe it had been a long time ago, fifty years or forever.
I imagined some of the people on the line-snaking for miles up and down the street several times before disappearing-were actually waiting for their issue of Nutrition Tabs and Necessities Coupons, sponsored by several of the richer families in London, but the Dole Line was really just a meeting place. Most of us were there looking to make deals, usually illegal. You had the cream of London’s underground standing around in broad daylight, so despised by their betters that no one paid any attention.
I was looking for guns.
Just a mile away our target sat behind a high wall and the security system: Westminster Abbey, Worldwide Headquarters of the Electric Church. The Abbey itself was largely gone, carried away by Unification and riots and the simple erosion of a population so desperate that ancient bricks became valuable. All that was left was one wall and most of one tower, upright by the grace of God or whatever, the new wall around it a cinder-block monstrosity.
I followed Gatz at a leisurely pace. He was working the line, making inquiries after a gun dealer Kieth recommended. I didn’t have any contacts in London, so I took the advice offered and hoped for the best. It was a gray, rainy sort of day, a steady drizzle of subtle dispirited precipitation that soaked your clothes before you realized it.
I had Brother West in my head, the poor fuck. I’d had people plead with me not to kill them. I’d never had someone beg me to pull his plug. I was happy to take Dick Marin’s money, I was happy to kill whomever he wanted me to in return for what he’d offered me, what did I care? But listening to West, I’d realized it really was true. Inside every Monk there was a human being silently screaming in digital, with no mouth.
I followed Gatz, my hands in my pockets, my best hardassed mask on, staring at the Monks. A gang of them worked the Dole Line. They smiled their way up and down, politely asking if anyone wanted to hear their personal testimony. They got a few takers, thin, pale men and women with deep, blank eyes who probably thought that if they joined the EC they wouldn’t have to stand in line for a whole day just to get some super-rich asshole’s version of charity. The Monks were all immaculate. Clean, polished, calm, polite, well-spoken, but every time I looked at them I saw a scream. I made fists inside my pockets and wanted to rip each latex face off.
“Ave,” Gatz said, gesturing me closer. “This guy knows our man.”
I stepped forward. Gatz was standing with a short, gaunt, completely toothless man who sported a thin line of drool out of the corner of his mouth. He grinned at me and I wanted to punch him just to make him stop.
“You know Jerry Materiel?” I asked.
Drooly nodded slowly. “Shure, shure,” he lisped. “He’s on line right now, doin’ bizness. I could point ’im out to you for, say, five yen.”
I stared at him, keeping my hardassed mask on. I felt Gatz glance at me through his glasses.
“You want I should give him a nudge?” he asked.
I bunched my jaw muscles. “No,” I said firmly. There were rules, or ought to be. Or had been, once. If you just fucked everyone you met, fucked and fucked and fucked people, where did it end? The man had made an honest offer. I fished a credit dongle from my pocket. “Five it is, friend, on delivery.”
Drooly nodded happily, spittle flying, and broke away from the line. We followed him for about two minutes, an endless, featureless line of desperate people passing us, most engaged in furtive discussions, some making exchanges. The city around us looked desolate and abandoned, and incredibly ancient. On the horizon was a tall, broken tower that soared upward and ended in jagged, black-char teeth. The whole place felt like the riots had ended twenty years ago, and everyone had just left it as it was-every stone on the street, every destroyed building, every evacuated family-all just collecting dust all these years. It was a ghost city. Drooly stopped in front of a group of men who looked a little too well-fed for the Dole Line and pointed.
“Here’s Jer,” Drooly sputtered. “Wit’ the broken nose.”
I ignored Drooly’s outstretched palm and stepped up to the group. One of them did have a prodigiously broken nose, sitting at a noticeable angle to his face. I nodded at him. “You Jerry Materiel?”
He looked me and Gatz up and down. “Mabe, who’el you, den?”
His accent was so thick I could barely understand him. Sifting through the mangled syllables, I squinted until I thought I looked inscrutable and deadly. It had worked before. “Avery Cates, out of New York.”
He studied me for a moment, and then grunted. I knew enough about people like Jerry to determine this meant he’d heard my name. “Bawl ov chawlk, lads, eh?” The men who had been standing with him drifted a few feet away, smoking cigarettes and talking. The cigarettes marked them as fairly prosperous crooks; it had been weeks since I’d had a steady supply of smokes.
“Cates outter New Yawk, awright,” Jerry Materiel grunted, looking me up and down again. “I heard you Captain Kirked the Kendish hit. That you?”
Kendish… I thought a moment, and then brightened. Mitchell Kendish had been a Joint Council undersecretary. He’d launched an investigation into a group stealing SSF laundry hovers and tearing them apart, selling the parts right back to the SSF to repair the remaining hovers. It had been genius, but Kendish had spoiled everything. The undersecretaries, who were the people who did most of the day-to-day real work of running the System, can usually be bribed-they were the worst in the whole damn filthy System, worse even than the System Cops because they didn’t have a Department of Internal Affairs to keep track of them and meddle once in a while.
What made the whole insane machine run was bribes, really. No matter how corrupt and broken the machine was, everyone could rely on the magical power of yen and that stabilized things. But Kendish hadn’t wanted anything to do with a bribe. So I’d been hired to put him away. I didn’t mind; you didn’t get to be an undersecretary by being a saint, and the price was right. That had been my most high-profile job-and one of the few that had gone off without a hitch, professional and dry, no mess. I thought longingly of the money I’d been paid for that. Long gone, into Pickering’s, into a lot of bullshit. “Yeah, I poked Kendish.”
Jerry nodded. “Awright, I know you. What kin Jerry do for Mr. Avery Cates outta New Yawk, then?” He squinted at me. I was still in my stolen duds, and they hadn’t gotten
too beat up yet, because I’d gone a remarkable seventy-two hours without being shot at, beaten, or chased. “Assuming ’e’s gawt the bees and honey for the job.”
In response, I made a show of paying Drooly, who’d been standing there grinning in five-yen ecstasy, for his time. “I’ve got yen,” I said. “You have an office?”
Jerry Materiel spread his arms and smiled, his teeth brown and cracked. “The whole field a wheat’s my office, Mr. Cates! Tell us what y’be needin’.”
I had laboriously written a list onto a scrap of paper. “Any two or three of these would be fine.”
He ran his eye over the list, raised an eyebrow, and licked his thumb. “Y’know what yer doin’, fer sure. I’ll ne’ s’resurance. Say twenty would relax me on the subbeck, eh?” He produced a small hand-held credit scanner. Glancing around, I paused: A flash of red hair down the street, ducking behind something, made me stiffen. I ran my dongle through the scanner and it lit up green. I glanced back at Jerry Materiel and he grinned.
“No need to wor’ abut the whoppers, Cates. They don’t bust the Dole. Too borin’ for ’em. If’n yer gon’ wor’ abut sometin’, wor’ abut the feggin’ Tin Men.”
I nodded. “I worry about the Monks,” I said. “Be sure of that. I also need building plans. Old ones, pre-Unification.”
Jerry winked. “My speci-ali-tee, Cates. I’ll have a butcher’s and see what can be done. You gawt an addy?”
I slipped him another piece of paper. “Where and when, Mr. Materiel?”
He stared at the second slip for a moment, chewing his lip, and then glanced back at the list. “Here, Mr. Cates, in twenty.”
“Done.” I leaned forward slightly. “Tell me, is there a red-haired woman about a block away, sort of hiding behind that ruined wall, but watching me?”
Jerry Materiel didn’t move his eyes from my face, but that terrible, brown-black grin appeared again. “Lumme! She sure has been eyeballin’ you, Cates, since you got ’ere. She ain’t SSF, or you’da been shown the heels, right?”
