Glasshouse

by Charles Stross

  I gasp. “Makes two. Of us. Oh.”

  “Love.”

  And we continue our conversation without words, using a language that no abhuman watcher AI can interpret—a language of touch and caress, as old as the human species. What we tell each other is simple. Don’t be afraid, I love you. We say it urgently and emphatically, bodies shouting our mute encouragement. And in the dark of the night, when we reach for each other, I dare myself to admit that it might work out all right in the end.

  We aren’t bound to fail.

  Are we?

  BREAKFAST is an affair of quiet desperation. Over the coffee and toast I clear my throat and begin a carefully planned speech. “I need to go to the library before Church, Sam, I forgot my gloves.”

  “Really?” He looks up, worry lines crisscrossing his forehead.

  I nod vigorously. “I can’t go to Church without them, it wouldn’t be decent.” Decent is one of those keywords the watchers monitor. Gloves aren’t actually a dress code infraction, but they’re a good excuse.

  “Okay, I suppose I’ll have to come with you,” he says, with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man facing the airlock. “We need to leave soon, don’t we?”

  “Yes, I’d better get my bag,” I say.

  “I have a new waistcoat to wear.”

  I raise an eyebrow. His clothing sense is even more artificial than my own. “It’s upstairs,” he explains. For a moment I think he’s going to say something more, something compromising, but he manages to bottle it up in time. My stomach squirms queasily. “Take care, darling.”

  “Nothing can possibly go wrong,” he says with studied irony. He rises and heads for the staircase to our bedroom. (Our bedroom. No more lonely nights.) My heart seems to catch an extra beat. Then it’s time to clear up the detritus, put the plates in the dishwasher, and get my shoes on.

  When Sam comes downstairs, he’s dressed for Church—with a many-pocketed vest under his suit jacket, and, in his hand, the briefcase we packed yesterday. “Let’s, uh, go,” he says, and casts me a wan grin.

  “Yup,” I say, then check the clock and pick up my extra-large handbag. “Let’s roll.”

  We arrive at the library around ten o’clock, and I let us in. The door to the cellar is already open. I reach into my bag as I go down the steps, conscious that if someone’s blown the operation, then the bad guys could be waiting for me. But when I get to the bottom I find Janis.

  “Hi, Janis,” I say slightly nervously.

  “Hi yourself.” She lowers her gun. “Just checking.”

  “Indeed. Sam? Come on down.” I turn back to Janis. “Still waiting for Greg, Martin, and Liz.”

  “Right.” Janis gestures at a pile of grayish plastic bricks sitting on one of the chairs. “Sam? I think it’ll work better if you carry these.”

  “Sure.” Sam ambles over and picks up a brick. Squeezes it experimentally, then sniffs it. “Hmm, smells like success. Detonators?”

  “On the sofa.” I spot the stack of spare magazines and take a couple, then check they’re loaded properly. “Where are the cogsets?” I ask.

  “Coming.” Janis waves at the A-gate. “We need to synchronize our watches, too.”

  “Okay.” This isn’t going to work too well without headsets and cognitive radio transceivers, but they’re last on our list of items to assemble because they’re too obvious. They’re easier to sabotage than metal plumbing and chemical explosives, and a lot likelier to tripwire the alarms in the A-gate than a collection of antiques. If the radios don’t work, our fallback is crude—mechanical wristwatches and a prearranged time to start shooting.

  Sam stuffs bricks of Composition-C into his vest pockets, squeezing them to fit. The vest bulges around his waist, as if he’s suddenly put on weight, and when he pulls his jacket on it hangs open. What he’s doing reminds me of something I once knew, something alarming, but I can’t quite remember what. So I shake my head and go upstairs to wait behind the front desk.

  A few minutes later Martin and Liz arrive together. I send them down to the basement. I’m getting worried when Greg appears. We’re running short of time. It’s 10:42 and the meeting is due to start in just a kilosec or so. “What kept you?” I ask.

  “I feel rough,” he admits. I think he’s been drinking. “Couldn’t sleep properly. Let’s get this over with, huh?”

  “Yeah.” I point him at the cellar. “Gang’s down there.”

  T minus ten minutes. The door opens, and Janis comes out. “Okay, I’m off to start the show in the auditorium,” she tells me. A fey smile. “Good luck.”

  “You too.” She leans forward, and I hug her briefly, then she’s off, walking down the library path toward City Hall.

  “Where’s Sam?” I ask.

  “Oh, he had something extra to do down there,” Liz says, a trifle sniffily. “Last-minute nerves.” A moment later he comes up the stairs. “Come on, Sam, want to miss the show?”

  I open my mouth. “Time to move!”

  Fragments of memory converge on a point in time:

  Five of us, three males and two females, walking along the front of Main Street toward City Hall. All in our Church outfits, with subtle changes—Sam’s vest, my shoes, Martin’s bag. Discreet earbuds adding their hum to our left ears, flesh-toned pickups parallel to our jawlines. Businesslike.

  “Merge with the crowd, then when they head for the auditorium doors, break left under the door labeled FIRE EXIT. Meet me on the other side.”

  Purpose. Tension. Beating heart, nervousness. A faint aroma of mineral oil on my fingertips. The usual heightened awareness.

  Cohorts and parishes of regular citizens—inmates—are gathering on the front steps and in the open reception hall of the biggest building on Main Street. Some I recognize; most are anonymous.

  Jen looms out of the crowd, smiling, converging on me. My guts freeze. “Reeve! Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “Yes, it is,” I say, slightly too coldly because she stares at me, and her eyes narrow.

  “Well, excuse me,” she says, and turns on her heel as if to walk away, then pauses. “I’d have thought you’d be celebrating.”

  “I am.” I raise an eyebrow at her. “Are you?”

  “Hah!” And with a contemptuous smirk, she wheels away and latches on to Chris’s arm.

  A cold sweat prickles up and down my spine—sheer relief, mostly—and I head toward the FIRE EXIT sign, which is conveniently close to the rest rooms. I pause for a second to glance around and check my watch (T minus three minutes) then lean on the emergency bar. The door scrapes open, and I step through into a concrete-lined stairwell.

  Click. I glance round. Liz lowers her gun. I’m too slow today, I think hopelessly. I mute my mike. “Two minutes,” I say, backing into the corner opposite her niche. She nods. I reach into my bag, pull out my gun, stuff the spare magazines into my pockets, and drop the bag. Click. That’s me.

  One minute. Sam and Greg and Martin, the latter looking slightly harried. I key my mike. “Follow me.”

  A couple of weeks ago, wearing Fiore’s stolen flesh, I explored this complex—extremely cautiously, taking pains to be certain that Yourdon was occupied elsewhere at the time. The first floor contains the lobby and a big auditorium, plus a couple of things described on the building map as “courtrooms.” The second floor, which we pass without stopping, is wall-to-wall office space. The third floor . . . well, I didn’t spend much time there.

  We reach the door and pause. “Zero,” I say, tracking the sweep of my watch hand.

  A second later there’s a chime in my headset. “Go!” says Janis.

  “Now.”

  Greg opens the door fast, and Martin and Liz duck through, then pronounce the bare-floored corridor clear. I lead us along it, then there’s another door, and Greg forces the exit bar from our side. Carpet. A short, narrow passage. Yourdon must have left by now, surely? I rush forward and find myself in a boringly mundane living room, furnished in dark age fashion except for the sm
ooth white bulge of an A-gate in one corner. “Here,” I say. “Spread out.”

  We’re not experts at house searches. Doubtless if there was armed resistance waiting for us, we’d be easy prey. But the house is empty. Three bedrooms, a living room, an office—there’s a desk and an ancient computer terminal, and books—and a kitchen and bathroom and another room full of boxes. It’s empty. Empty of personality as well as anachronisms like a longjump gate.

  “What now?” asks Sam.

  “We check out front.” I walk up to the front door of the apartment, then Greg squeezes past me and unlocks it. He pulls it open and steps out, then I follow to see where we are, and the ground leaps up and whacks me across the knees with a concussive jolt too deep to call a noise.

  “Panic one,” Janis says in my ear, a prearranged code for Team Green. That was a bomb, I think dizzily.

  There’s a click behind me, then a scream of pain. I whip round and that saves my life because the short burst of gunfire hammers past me and catches Liz instead, bullets slapping into her body as she spins round. I keep turning and drop to one knee, then fire a continuous burst that empties the magazine and nearly sprains my wrists.

  “* * *,” says Janis, in my ringing ears.

  “Repeat.” I’m staring at Greg. What used to be Greg. Someone behind me is making horrible sounds. I think it’s Liz. “We have a code red, two down.”

  “I said, Panic two,” says Janis. “They’ve got a Vorpal—”

  Pink noise fills my ears, and her voice breaks up: cognitive radios meet heuristic jamming. “Come on!” I yell at Sam, who’s bending over Liz. “Follow me!”

  We’re on a landing at the top of the stairs. Yourdon’s apartment covers one side of the building, but on the other side—there’s a door. I dash toward it, reloading on the go. Greg tried to kill me, I realize. Which means he warned them. So . . .

  I pause at one side of the door and wave Sam to the other. Then I brace myself and unload the entire clip through it at waist height.

  While my ears are ringing, and I’m fumbling the next magazine into place, Sam kicks the door in and quickly shoots the police zombie slumped against the side of the corridor in the head. (That one was still moving, hand creeping toward the shotgun lying in the floor; the two bodies behind it aren’t even twitching.) Seeing how efficiently Sam steps in gives me a momentary chill of recognition. No hesitation. Behind us, Liz is still moaning, and Martin won’t be good for anything. “What is this place?” I ask aloud.

  “More offices.” Sam kicks a door open and duck-walks through it. “Modern offices.” I follow him. The next door is more substantial, opening onto a glass-fronted balcony above a room with open floor space, an office-sized assembler at one side, and a row of glassy doors . . . “Is that what I think it is?”

  Bingo. “Gates,” I say. “A switch hub. How do we get down—”

  “Hello, Reeve,” says my earpiece, in a voice that sets my teeth on edge. “This isn’t going to work, you know.”

  Where did Fiore get a headset from? Greg? Or have they captured one of Team Green?

  Sam looks as if someone’s poleaxed him. His jaw is literally gaping. Too late I realize he’s on the same chatline.

  “You’ve lost, Reeve,” Fiore adds conversationally. I can hear noises in the background. “We know about your plot. There are guards outside the switch chamber, and if you get past them and make it to the longjump pod, you’ll die—there’s an active laser fence in there. I’m most disappointed in you, but we can still work something out if you put down your popguns and surrender.”

  I touch my index finger to my lips and wait until Sam nods at me, to show he’s got the message. Then I walk toward the door onto the staircase leading down into the switch chamber and its bank of shortjump gates.

  I don’t want Sam to see how sick I feel.

  “You don’t know shit, Fiore,” I say lightly.

  “Yes I do.” He sounds smug. “Greg’s unfortunate death makes further concealment irrelevant. Bluntly, you’ve failed. You can’t—”

  I rip my earbud out and throw it away, frantically miming at Sam to do likewise. He pulls it out of his ear and stares at it. As he’s about to toss it there’s a dual bang. He doubles over as a thin reddish mist sprays from his left finger and thumb, retching with pain.

  “Sam!” I yell at him. He cradles his damaged hand, panting. “Sam! We’ve only got a few seconds! Fiore can’t stop us, or he’d already be up here! Sanni’s got him pinned down! We’ve got to blow the longjump pod before he gets away! Give me your jacket!”

  “No choice—” He takes a shuddering breath and shakes his head. “Reeve.”

  I place my gun at my feet and take him by the shoulders. “What is it, love?”

  A moment of awful tenderness, as I see the pain in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says brokenly. “I couldn’t be what you wanted.”

  “What—”

  And his good fist, still wrapped around the butt of his gun, whacks me across the back of my head, propelling me straight into a pit of darkness from which I only emerge when it’s far too late.

  Epilogue

  TO cut a long story short, we won.

  IT feels very different when you watch a replay of a body tumbling off a cliff, in free fall toward the harsh ground so far below, and it’s not your body, and there are no second chances.

  In the years since Sanni and I—and the rest of our ragtag resistance network—kicked the door shut and overturned Yourdon’s pocket dictatorship, I’ve watched the video take of Sam’s death many times. How he sapped me, then gently laid me out on the floor, grunting with effort as he rolled me into the recovery position so I wouldn’t choke on my own vomit. How he straightened up painfully afterward and put his gun down. How he walked along the row of shortjump doors, looking for the one opening on the short metal corridor with the handrail and the ring of support nodes halfway along it. How he paused, and went back to move me so that I wasn’t lined up with it. And then how he stepped through.

  What does it take to step into a corridor, knowing that your enemy said there’s a laser fence halfway along it? And as if that isn’t enough, to do so wearing a waistcoat with ten kilos of plastic explosives weighing down its pockets?

  Sam gets halfway along the corridor. There’s a momentary flash, then the door bulges and turns black as the T-gate does a scram shutdown and ejects its wormhole endpoint through the side of the pod. It’s not very dramatic.

  And that’s how we reach the foot of the cliff.

  While I was unconscious, Janis and her team did what was expected of them. I think that she was expecting betrayal all along, because she had a few surprises of her own. Yourdon, at the front of the hall, chopped her in half with his Vorpal blade: I can only imagine his shock when another Janis stepped out from behind the fire escape and blew a hole through his chest. I should have realized she was playing a tricky game—her excuse about taking all night to run off ten kilos of high explosives was far too convenient—but in hindsight, she didn’t trust anyone by that point. Even me.

  While I was unconscious, Fiore—desperate, trapped in the police station down the road by a squad of murderous Sannis—patched through his netlink and got onto our command circuit which was, as expected, compromised by design. But Sanni was one jump ahead of him all the way. Greg had told him what was going on that morning. Fiore thought that a laser fence and extra security guards would suffice. These psywar types, they don’t think like a tank, or a fighting cat. Two of me—despite being seriously pissed at Sanni for making them live in the library attic and stay away from Sam—took him out with a rocket-propelled grenade, while three other squads fanned out and combed the parish churches for cowering revenants. As Janis later explained, “When the only soldier you can rely on is Reeve, you make the most of her.” But I won’t bear a grudge, even though two of me died.

  Because when the dust stopped raining down on the cowering cohorts in the auditorium, while our other instances raced t
hrough the administration block and the hospital, frantically hunting down assemblers and deleting their pattern buffers before another Yourdon or Fiore could ooze out of them, it was Janis who stepped up to the lectern and fired a shot into the ceiling and called for silence.

  “Friends,” she said, a faint tremor in her voice. “Friends. The experiment is over. The prison is closed.

  “Welcome back to the real world.”

  THAT all happened years ago. The river of history waits for nobody. We live our lives in the wake of vast events, accommodating ourselves to their shapes. Even those of us who contributed to the events in question.

  Maybe the oddest thing is how little has changed since we over-threw the scorefile dictatorship. We still have regular town meetings. We still live in small family groups, as orthohumans. Many of us even stayed with the spousal units we were assigned by Fiore or Yourdon. We dress like it’s still the dark ages, and we hold jobs just like before, and we even have babies the primitive way. Sometimes.

  But . . .

  We vote in the town meetings. There are no scorefile metrics with hidden point tables that some smug researcher can tweak in order to make the parishioners jump. We don’t dance like puppets for anyone, even our elected mayor. We may live in families as orthohumans, but we’ve got an assembler in every home. Mostly we don’t want to be neomorphs. Many of us spent too much time as living weapons during the war. We do have—and enthusiastically use—modern medical technology, with A-gates everywhere. The costumery and lifestyle upholstery is harder to explain, but I put it down to social inertia. I saw a blue hermaphrodite centaur in a chain-mail hauberk and no pants in the shopping mall the other day, and guess what? Nobody raised an eyebrow. We’re a tolerant town these days. We have to be: There’s nowhere else to go until we arrive wherever the Harvest Lore is carrying us.

  As for me, I don’t have to fight anymore. I’ve got the best of my surrendered self’s wishes, without any of the drawbacks. And I’ve been so lucky that thinking about it makes me want to cry.