by Jeff Somers
“I’ve shares to spare, all of a sudden,” I said instead. “You can have two, you fucking asshole.”
He almost smiled at me-a faint turning-up at the corners of his mouth. “While I admit that I find myself in a poor position for negotiation, I have to ask you if you really expect to be paid for this job. Where will the paycheck come from? Who, exactly, is going to pay us?”
I stared at him. “You’re fucking worried about money? About fucking money?”
“Don’t get all saintly on me, son,” he snapped back. “We all got into this mess because of money. You can piss and moan about it-oh, poor me, my team fucked up and got killed, poor me, poor me.” He waved his hands. “We caught a break here. Let’s go put a bullet in Squalor’s brain, by all means. But before I take a step, before I somehow decide to not save my ass, I need to know that there is actually a fucking fortune out there as you’ve suggested. Because, as I’m sure my old friend Mr. Kieth would agree, this has turned out to be slightly more work than expected.”
I glanced at Kieth. He looked like he’d just remembered that Belling had survived and was just a few feet away-his long nose quivering, his face pale. Our eyes met but I had no time for him. I had no time, period. But I still had just one card, just one asset: I was the cash. As long as Belling couldn’t touch the cash, he needed me, and that just might keep him from killing me when I needed him to watch my back.
“You’ll get paid, Cainnic,” I said carefully.
“How do I know that?”
“Because I intend to get paid myself,” I growled. “Why the hell else am I still standing here?”
Belling shook his head and pushed off from the wall, approaching me slowly. “Because you’re a fucking crusader, Cates. You think there’s justice, somewhere. You think if you just keep pushing, you can put a bullet in the System’s head and make everything like it was when you were five fucking years old and your daddy bounced you on his knee, right? Fuck that. Look around you. Me and the wonderful Mr. Kieth are all that’s left. I can’t speak for Mr. Kieth-whose debt I have already forgiven in a soft moment of affection for anything not made of silicon and titanium-but I am not taking one more step deeper into this fucking mausoleum unless I have a better idea of my reward. I need a reason, Mr. Cates. Who’s going to pay me?”
He stopped directly in front of me. I was in a killing mood, and I held his eyes as we stood almost chin to chin. He’d killed Marilyn Harper for no reason, and for no reason I was willing to blame him for Gatz, too. I considered just killing him, right there, one more for the tally, and not one I’d feel too badly about, either.
“I will,” a voice said clearly from behind.
I closed my eyes. I should have fucking expected it. Without opening them again, I slumped a little and said, “Meet our backer. Meet Richard Marin, chief of the System Security Force Internal Affairs.”
“Otherwise known as the King Worm,” Marin said cheerfully. “But you can call me Dick.”
I turned around and opened my eyes. There he was, dapper in a suit, glasses on, hair perfect. He was smiling.
“Mr. Cates, don’t look at me so disagreeably! I got here as quickly as I could. You provided me with a distraction and an excuse, allowing me to slip in.”
I stared at him, the urge to murder returning. “Distraction.”
He nodded and then stopped dead, cocking his head in a now-familiar pose, as if listening to distant sounds. We all waited through a few moments of still silence before he looked back at me. “Yes, I’m afraid so. I couldn’t get you inside, you see. I could get myself in if there was reasonable evidence of a crime to extend my jurisdiction under my Emergency Powers clause, and if there was sufficient noise on the EC network to cover my entry. You provided that. Excellent. Now that I am here, however, I am able to… influence things a little. If you’ll follow me, you can finally earn your money.”
“Follow you?” Belling demanded. “Follow you where?”
Dick Marin nodded as if agreeing with something. “To Dennis Squalor, of course. So you can kill him.”
We followed Marin’s jaunty walk through the door and down an identical hallway. I had a thousand questions, but he ignored them all, and after a minute of trying I shut up. Kieth limped behind me, and Belling brought up the rear, guns in hands and alert despite Marin’s assurance that we were going to be unmolested, at least for a few minutes.
“Marin, where are we going?”
He didn’t turn around. “To meet some people.”
I swallowed the urge to just shoot him in the head. “Marin, my people are dead. You waltz in here like you’ve got a fucking passkey, and my people are dead getting me this far.” He just kept walking. I reached out and shoved him, hard. “Hey!” He didn’t even miss a step.
“Mr. Cates, you’ll be getting your answers soon enough. But believe me, I could not have gotten this far without your efforts.” He turned his head and looked over his shoulder at me, walking briskly forward and taking a sharp left turn without hesitation. “I have my limitations, too, Mr. Cates. There are rules.”
“Rules?” I snapped. “Fucking rules? You’re the fucking King of the fucking System Pigs, and you’re telling me there are rules?” Somehow, my gun was in my hand, and I racked a shell into the chamber. “I’ve seen System Pigs shoot people in the head for being in the way. I’ve seen System Pigs shake people down for spare change because they’re bored. You’ve got rules?” I stretched out my arm and put the muzzle of the gun against the back of his head. I’d been itching to murder someone for the past twenty minutes. Might as well come full circle.
Marin whipped around and walked backward, so fast I was startled. He reached up almost casually and pushed the gun aside, and I let him. “Mr. Cates, I have rules.”
We walked like that for a moment, him backward, me just stunned, and then he whipped back around.
“I am forbidden by standing order 778 to enter a privately held religious compound without due cause. Due cause is variously defined, but one circumstance that passes all requirements is a citizen of the System under mortal threat by members of that religious organization.” He waved at me over his shoulder. “While a poor example of one, Mr. Cates, you are a citizen of the System. Members of the Electric Church were trying to kill you. I was thus duly authorized to enter the compound, under standing order 778. And under that order, I have complete authority and access to this compound. Any System Security Force officer does.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Mr. Cates, I never kid.” He stopped and turned to face a door that erupted out of the featureless gray wall. “We’re here.”
I tightened my grip on my gun. “You just needed a citizen to get shot at in here?”
He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. “A citizen equipped to find a way in and survive. A Gunner. Believe me, your work here is not done yet.”
He reached into his coat and produced an unmarked plastic card. He waved it at the door and it snicked open. “Come on in.”
“What’s in there?” Belling asked.
Marin smiled for a split-second, like a brief glimpse of the sun. Then it was gone. “Not what, Mr…” he hesitated a moment. “Nynes? No… no… Belling, isn’t it? Not what. Who. Step this way. You, too, Mr. Kieth,” he added cheerfully. “Your services as well will be needed before long.” He stepped inside, and we followed him. I couldn’t think. I felt like everything was being turned inside out. Nothing was making sense.
“My name,” Belling said weakly, “is Cainnic Orel.”
“As you wish, Mr. Orel.”
The room we entered was dark. “Marin, you’re here, right?” I asked, whispering for no apparent reason. “What the fuck do you still need us for?”
“I need you, Mr. Cates, because very soon I suspect I will violate my rules and lose my authority here. Assuming I survive. Now, let’s have some light.”
The lights bloomed, bright and blinding. We stared around, blinking, and then I froze.
/> “Avery Cates, Ty Kieth, Cainnic Orel,” Dick Marin said. “Meet Dennis Squalor. And the Joint Council.”
XXXIV
MECHANICAL BUGS IN THE MIDST OF HIS SMILING FACE
10000
I wasn’t sure how to process what I was seeing. We were deep inside the Electric Church’s main complex, underneath Westminster Abbey, and it was for the first time completely silent. Not even Wa Belling had anything to say.
It was a big open square room with a high ceiling. A huge round table of dark, polished wood filled it, and around the table were seated Monks, but the figures weren’t wearing the usual black robes of the Monk. They appeared to be inactive, slumped stiffly in the soft leather chairs. Thick black cables ran from the back of their heads into a well in the center of the table. Across the table from us was a rectangular black box, similar to all the boxes Kieth had lugged around. A thick layer of dust had settled on everything.
“They’ve been here for almost twenty years,” Marin said soberly.
I looked at the King Worm. “This… this is the Joint Council?”
Marin nodded. “Every last one of the senile bastards.”
A wave of dizziness made me reach backward and stumble into the wall. “Wait a second, wait a second,” I panted. Everything had been moving too fast for far too long. “The whole goddamn System is run by Monks?”
Marin shook his head. “They’re not Monks.”
“You said our quarry was in here as well, Mr. Marin,” Belling asked, sounding polite. “Care to point him out so we can get this show on the road?”
Marin nodded curtly, and then twice more for no apparent reason. “Of course. But allow me a moment or two for Mr. Cates, who seems quite distressed. I believe I owe him at least a moment of explanation. Also, once you complete your contract I will be unable to maintain the, er, calm I have imposed on the situation through my authority as chief of Internal Affairs, SSF. All hell will, in fact, break loose even before you pull the trigger, Mr. Orel.”
Belling shrugged. “It’s your dime.”
I pushed off from the wall, my vision clearing. Marin turned to me, his creepy smile in place.
“Dennis Squalor was a Techie, Mr. Cates. Twenty years ago, with the world still smoldering from Unification, with everything still balanced on a knifepoint, he was just a skilled Techie who had an idea about immortality through cyborg conversion. An idea he took to the newly formed Joint Council. He offered to convert the new rulers of the world into immortal cyborgs for a fee.”
“Fucking brilliant,” Kieth breathed, wandering dreamily around the room.
Marin ignored him. “The Joint Council thought he was crazy and told him to sod off. But Mr. Squalor wasn’t easily discouraged. He did the only thing he could think of to prove to the Joint Council that his procedure would work: He performed it on himself. He Monked himself. And returned to the JC months later a cyborg.” Marin paused, cocking his head again. “Excuse me,” he said. “There’s a lot going on. This time, the Joint Council couldn’t wait to sign up. They wanted to live forever.”
I stared at the dusty figures seated around the table. I was mesmerized by them, their empty stares, and moving a distant memory.
“Once this was accomplished, the Council was able to return their attention to the newly formed System. There were a lot of growing pains. Revolts, riots-the System was breaking apart as quickly as it had been formed. Unification was failing. And then, much to everyone’s horror, Dennis Squalor himself began to fail.”
Kieth was on the other side of the table, running his fingers along the shoulders of one immobile form. “Brain function degeneration,” he said absentmindedly. “Inevitable. Modifiable through a mod chip, but incurable.”
Marin nodded, still turned toward me. “Incurable, and horrifyingly obvious to the Joint Council. Squalor’s procedure was subtly flawed, and they immediately knew they were doomed. Things happened fast after that: Squalor was granted broad powers and budget to investigate a solution. Proxy power was transferred from the JC to their secretaries, who have been more or less running the show since. The JC was, as you see, shut down-put into a hibernation mode, actually-until a ‘cure’ was developed for their mental degeneration. Squalor was too far gone to actually find a fix for the problem. As he freefell into madness, he founded the Electric Church. Although he did take one last step that he thought would save him.”
Belling squinted at Marin. “You’re saying the Joint Council’s been a bunch of vegetables for twenty years, and their fucking secretaries have been running the show?”
Marin nodded. “There was never an official proclamation or transfer of power, but the secretaries were in a perfect position, suddenly. Completely anonymous, granted proxy power, and with no mechanism in place for their removal, election, or other curtailment of their power. It was in their interest to leave things alone. Any attention drawn to their situation might lead to their removal. Steps were taken. The SSF was formed, for example, with broad powers. Squalor fell through the cracks for a few years, although he technically never left this complex; the secretaries assumed he was dead, or incapacitated. They saw no reason to pursue him. When he resurfaced with the Electric Church, it wasn’t easy to get rid of him.”
“Fascinating,” Belling drawled. “Where is Squalor? You can finish the history lesson while we tear his circuits out.”
“Shut the hell up,” I said quietly. “He’s going somewhere with this.”
“Mr. Cates, you are a remarkably civilized criminal. But perhaps Mr. Orel is right: Time is wasting. Gentlemen, I give you Dennis Squalor. Or what’s left of him.”
He walked around the table and stopped next to the black box, which came up to his chin. We stared for a moment. Kieth was the first to react, almost running around the table.
“Holy fucking shit!” he gasped. “He’s fucking digitized!”
“Squalor’s last-ditch effort to arrest the degeneration of his mind. It worked. Too late to actually cure him, of course, but it froze the damage.”
“I thought digitizing the brain didn’t work?” My throat felt like sandpaper.
Marin shrugged. “Most of the time, no. But in some people, for some reason, it does. There’s been a lot of research into this topic: The secretaries have plans for an SSF made up entirely of digitized humans in boxes like this, controlling robot avatars.”
“Robot avatars,” I repeated, staring at the featureless box. “The Cardinals.”
Marin nodded. “The Cardinals. Squalor’s avatars, made to look like him physically, controlled remotely by Squalor’s intelligence, which resides here in several redundantly arrayed storage units. That was Squalor’s solution to his own problems, and what the secretaries plan for the SSF, if they can get the success rate up above, oh, 20 percent, with the other 80 percent turning out as mental patй on the other end. They don’t need much better, because it’s cheap and easy to build the goddamned avatars. Hell, you could have a one-man police force.”
The idea of the System Pigs being perfect robots, controlled remotely and instantly replaced when damaged, made me feel ill, my stomach rolling in sudden anxiety.
Belling regarded the box. “This is Squalor?”
Marin nodded. “It is.”
There was a booming noise against the door. Marin didn’t move. “We must move quickly, gentlemen. The Cardinals are attempting entrance. This means that Squalor has determined that we are here to do him harm. This calculation has negated my authority here-it’s programmed in, you see-and his avatars are acting to protect him. Please proceed.”
Belling nodded and took aim. I stepped forward and pushed his arm down. “Wait a fucking second,” I said, staring at Marin. “You need the plug pulled on this fucking box? That’s all? Why in holy fuck did you need us? Why not just do it yourself?”
Marin smiled and reached up and took hold of his sunglasses. A flash of inexplicable dread went through me.
“Because, Mr. Cates,” he said, removing his glasses. “I�
�m programmed not to.”
Tiny cameras sat like mechanical bugs in the midst of his smiling face.
“The eyes,” Marin said with a sigh. “The eyes are the hardest part. You can make a machine look remarkably human, but the eyes never turn out right, and never fool anyone.”
Kieth was staring happily at Marin. “You’re a… Monk?”
“An avatar, actually, Mr. Kieth,” Marin replied. “One of thirty-four Richard Marins in the System at present. There were thirty-five, but one of me got destroyed in a bombing in Yerevan yesterday. It’ll take a few days to get a replacement.”
He waited a few moments, looking from face to face, smiling. I got the impression the fucker was enjoying his effect on us.
“I was a prototype-the aforementioned all-avatar SSF. I was pretty much a failure as a System Cop, so they figured it wouldn’t be much of a loss if I got pureed by the procedure, which almost every other candidate had been. They digitized me, added in the basic programming restrictions to control me-obeying orders, never breaking rules, protecting the secretaries, etc.-and then made their one huge mistake: They charged me with eliminating Squalor and the Electric Church, which had begun to worry them as it spiraled out of control.”
The booming sound coming from the door had grown steadily in volume, and was now accompanied by the sad terrible sound of metal warping.
“All right!” Marin suddenly animated, replacing his glasses and gesturing at the black box. “History lesson’s over. Things are going to spiral out of control in here very soon, so please, put Mr. Squalor out of his misery. I am programmed to obey all Joint Council resolutions, standing orders, and enacted laws, in both spirit and letter, so I cannot directly harm a citizen of the System or act directly against a certified religion. Mr. Cates? I think you’ve earned the right.”
Belling glanced at me, chewed on this for a second, and then made a sarcastic show of bowing and sweeping his hand toward the box. I stepped forward and took aim.
