Dreaming Metal

by Melissa Scott

  “Sorry.” She didn’t sound it, particularly, her broad face as calm as ever, but she shifted sideways, letting the lights fall on my face again.

  I pretended to study my image in the tall mirror, leaned forward to darken the lines that emphasize the roundness of my eyes. “So what is it?” I knew I sounded hostile, and made myself smile. “Sorry. You know I get a little tense before the show.”

  “I remember.” She smiled, too, but it didn’t touch her eyes. “Two things. Binnie asked me to tell all the principals personally that we’re going to be tightening physical security as of tonight.”

  “What?” The thin brush twitched in my hand, and I made myself finish the last line before I spoke again. “What’s going on—and what does he mean, tighten physical security?”

  Terez made a slight gesture, not quite a shrug. “Realpeace has issued another statement about farang influence in the upperworld. They mentioned the Empires specifically, this time, so Binnie’s nervous.”

  “What did they say?” I glanced toward the ceiling, where the pinpoint transceivers clustered, but the nodes were dark except for George’s standby light. Celeste was already installed, waiting for her part of the show to start; not for the first time, I wondered what she made of Tigridi and Fire/Work.

  “Pretty much that,” Terez answered. “They—I think the word they used was `deplored’—the increasing number of farang performers in what used to be a coolie space—”

  “The hell,” I said, and Terez nodded.

  “Oh, I know. But this isn’t about reality, just the myths.” She took a breath. “They called on the Empire owners to go back to the old ways, and said that they, Realpeace, were considering buying out one of the Empires in order to bring it back to what it was.”

  “Not much chance of that,” I said. “Unless they have one hell of a lot more money than anybody thought.”

  “Or if they wanted to bid on the Queen-Iron,” Terez said. “But what Binnie’s worried about is that they might try intimidation to make the owners sell a better house, or just change the program. I’m afraid he might be right.”

  I turned to look at her directly, startled. Terez was probably the least easily agitated person I know, the woman who had once looked at an illusion spinning out of control, literally crashing and burning in the middle of the stage, and announced, “I think you need a new trifocal filter” while she cued the fire curtain and the extinguishers. She saw my expression, and shrugged.

  “Don’t worry about it, we just want to be sure nobody gets into the stagehouse who doesn’t belong.”

  Don’t worry, my ass. I said, “Anything more on that break-in?”

  Terez grimaced. “Nothing. All the codes have been changed, and I ran a check on George to make sure he hadn’t picked up any parasites. It looks as though whoever tried it didn’t actually get in.”

  The time flared in front of my eyes, warning me I had less than five minutes before the curtain went up for the second half of the show. Terez saw it, too, or some reminder of her own, and pushed herself away from the chair where she’d been leaning.

  “There’s one other thing. What’s going on with the act?”

  “Memory problems,” I said, automatically, and wasn’t surprised when she shook her head.

  “You haven’t even tried running virtual.”

  “I didn’t want to infringe.”

  “That’s never bothered you before.” Terez shook her head, frowning thoughtfully, as though the problem was genuinely hers. “It’s weird, Fortune—not that anybody in the audience would notice, but there’s something missing.”

  “Celeste has other things on her mind.” I grinned, expecting her to laugh, but instead her eyes widened.

  “You mean that. It’s what that Jian woman said, you think this is something special.”

  “No—”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Celinde.” Aside from my family, Terez is the only person who uses my real name in anger. “I’ve been watching it, I’ve seen how good it is—it, Celinde, not her. Or do you really think you’ve got true AI there?”

  I shrugged, not wanting to tell her the truth—if nothing else, it was a hell of a risk for the Tin Hau to take right now, with Realpeace making trouble—but already uncomfortable with the lie. She had heard Jian, too, and she knew that Jian believed. “No—I don’t know. Celeste is, well, different, though.”

  She nodded slowly, her expression already smoothing out again as she got herself back under control, getting back to the calm she needed to run the second half of the show. “Yeh. So I see. What—no, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know what you think or what you’re going to do about it. Haya?”

  She didn’t have to spell out her position: the more she knew about Celeste being people, the more compelled she’d be to tell Binnie, tell the owners, and that would only bring down all the trouble we were trying to avoid. “Haya,” I said, and wished I’d lied more convincingly.

  “I’ve got to get back to my station,” she said, and even as she spoke her eyes slid sideways, acknowledging a call from one of the other techs. “But I meant it, Fortune.”

  “I know,” I answered, but the door had already closed behind her. I looked back at my image in the mirror, the makeup much too strong for the room even with the lights turned up to match the stage, the velvet-and-sheer fabric that the dressmakers call illusion glistening black against my skin. Ever since I could first afford to buy scraps, I’ve had my costumes made of illusion; the pun’s a comfort in the tension before a performance. I was sweating already, and not just from nerves.

  It was not a good night. My performance was off, and Celeste was merely mechanical, so much like a normal Spelvin construct that I caught myself wondering if I’d imagined everything. I never did manage to get myself properly up for the show—it was uninspired at best—and it was a relief when the curtain came down. Everybody has nights like this, but they’re never pleasant, and you never really get used to them. I muted the skinsuit displays, letting the heat and tingle fade from under my skin and the lights disappear from in front of my eyes, and looked around for the nearest stage-system pinlight.

  #Celeste. Walk the karakuri to the keeping, then download yourself. And let me know when you’re ready.#

  #I estimate twenty-eight minutes to place the karakuri in storage, and twenty minutes to shut down and return,# she answered. #Is that acceptable?#

  #Go ahead.#

  The assistant stage manager was signaling for the mass curtain call, all the acts together, and I took my place in the line, pasting a smile on my face. This was a new conclusion, something that Muthana had put in last week—to appease Realpeace, I guessed, from what Terez had told me—and a lot of the first-half acts were complaining about not being able to leave as early as usual. I doubted it would help much: over half the acts were coolie, but the important ones—mine for the closing and Tigridi opening the show—were yanqui and midworld respectively. Realpeace could make something of that.

  The strip lights at the edge of the stage flickered, a constant pale blue flutter of glyphs and numbers across my vision, updating the system status. It was normal; I ignored it, and stared out into the darkness beyond the first three rows, the applause hard as the rain sprinklers. Then there was a soundless pop, percussion beneath my skin and a flash of black, gone as quickly as it had appeared. The strip lights were flaring red, and I kept my smile steady with an effort, heard Attlie Bae hiss something that sounded like a question. I hadn’t realized she had a skinsuit, I thought, and then wondered if I’d missed something real.

  #System overload,# Celeste murmured in my ear. #Unauthorized program trying to run. Should I let it?#

  #No,# I said, and didn’t care if the audience saw my lips move. #Isolate it—where’s George?#

  It was a stupid question, and I knew the answer as soon as I asked. Celeste had said there was a system overload, and George was the system.

  #I’ve taken over his functions,# Celeste answered. #Holding.#


  The lights in my eyes were fading back to pink—still problematic, but not a disaster—and the subsidary systems were turning yellow one by one as Terez and the assistant stage managers went to manual. The applause never faltered: not many of tonight’s crowd were wired.

  #Curtain down in three,# Celeste murmured—on the public circuit, I realized, calling George’s cues. We stepped back as rehearsed, only a little ragged, and the heavy curtain swept down in front of us. Only when it closed did the babble of voices start.

  “Did you see that?”

  “—George?”

  “Who’s calling cues?”

  “—Terez?”

  “What was it—?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fanning wave to me, hands forming a new sign.

  *Celeste?*

  I nodded, but Terez’s voice cut me off. “Haya, people, we’ve had a small technical problem. Stage systems are down. I repeat, stage systems are off-line, we’re running standbys. If you have props to get to the keeping, do it manually, or you can leave them in the stagehouse overnight, but we need the house cleared by 0100.”

  “What the hell?” Attlie Bae said softly, and I shook my head.

  “No idea.” An unauthorized program, Celeste had said, trying to run. No, first it had shut down George, and then it had tried to run—not a normal system overload, that was certain, but something actively hostile.

  “The stagehouse will be closed at 0105,” Terez said. “I repeat, the stagehouse will be closed at 0105. Front-of-house and lower levels will stay open, but the stagehouse will be off-limits to everyone except the technical staff.”

  Bae swore under her breath, and headed for the nearer wing. I looked around to see how far Celeste had gotten with the karakuri, and Fanning waved to me again.

  *What was that?* That and a few name signs was about the limit of my sign. He remembered and switched to speech. “I felt—something, but I couldn’t catch the transmission.”

  His eyes glowed green with his display lenses, left over from Fire/Work’s performance, but the pulse has been strong enough that he probably would have felt it through the base sensors in his palms. I said, “Something was trying to run in the stage systems. A virus, maybe.”

  “Shit.” That was Dhao, looming up behind Fanning. He glanced up at the gratings and the lights suspended overhead, and then made an embarrassed face. “I know, there are lots of fail-safes, but those things are heavy.”

  “Not nearly enough fail-safes.” That was the diminutive female puppeteer, a sharp coolie voice at my elbow. “Not where machines are involved.

  “We should have a real crew, an all-human crew,” her husband agreed, and raised his voice to include the people standing around us. “I’ve been saying that for years. What does it take to get these people to protect us?”

  “You can take that up with ba’ Muthana,” Terez interposed, smooth as ever, but I could see the anger in her eyes. “Fortune, I need you.”

  Celeste. I suppressed my own instinctive fear, and nodded. “Fanning, I’ll catch you later.”

  *Later,* he answered, but I was already hurrying after Terez.

  The tech staff had a cubby at the back of the stagehouse, beyond all the batten controls and winches, beyond even the lift that led to the keeper. Right now the door was open, spilling hot gold light onto the worn floor, brighter than the working lights that filled the stagehouse now that the show had ended. Through the doorway, I could see the night show’s assistant stage manager, the same woman who’d done it for years, and Inay Hasker; a screen flickered blue between them, glyphs and strings of code spilling past. Hasker looked up as we approached, and moved out of the doorway to let us in, but the ASM never moved from her place at the control board, her eyes glued to the scrolling text. What I understood of it was enough to send a shiver up my spine: all the main environmental systems were down or compromised—for once the puppeteers had been right, it wouldn’t have taken much to drop one of the lights right on the stage.

  “It’s your construct that’s holding things together right now,” Terez said, and pulled the door closed behind us. “But she—it’s not responding to us.”

  I looked around for an access node, and Hasker slid a movable point into view. #Celeste? You there?#

  It was a silly question, but I didn’t know what else to say. There was a moment of silence, nothing moving in the air around me or beneath my skin, and then the familiar presence was back again. #Still here. Fortune, these people wish access, but George’s password files are demonstrably corrupt. Do I let them in?#

  Her voice sounded thin, attenuated, and I shifted so that I could see the ASM’s screen without losing the sight-line link. The strain was starting to show, half a dozen indicators flickering orange and red. #Yeh, Celeste, I’ll vouch for them.#

  #Thank you,# she said, and for an instant sounded just like George.

  On the screen, the pattern of lights and glyphs began to change, and the stage manager reached up to adjust her filament mike. “Give me circuit ten.”

  Celeste’s confirmation whispered in my ear, echoing her voice from the overhead speaker, and Terez said, “Can you bring it down, Jorunn?”

  “Yeh.” The ASM’s voice was abstracted, her eyes still fixed on the screen. “If this holds.”

  “If you can’t capture the invading program,” Hasker said, “trash it.”

  “Haya,” the ASM answered, and Terez looked at me.

  “Can Celeste handle this?”

  “She knows George’s parameters,” I said. “And she’s Level Four.”

  Hasker snorted. “That construct may have started out at Four, but it’s something else now.”

  I looked away. Terez said, “Not the time, Inay.”

  “There’d better be a time, and soon,” Hasker said, and there was sudden movement, a cascade of glyphs, on the ASM’s screen.

  “I think we’ve got it contained,” the ASM said. “Celeste, can you run stand-down yet?”

  “The sound system is still unstable,” the construct answered. “Continuing to adjust parameters.”

  The ASM did something to her keyboard. “Does that help?”

  “One moment—yes. The sound system is now stabilized. Beginning stand-down.”

  The ASM leaned back in her chair with a sigh of relief. Terez peered over her shoulder, then nodded. “Nice work. Both of you.”

  “Thanks,” the ASM murmured. Celeste was mercifully silent.

  “Can we get a look at the program yet?” Hasker asked.

  “Give me a minute,” Terez said, and motioned for the ASM to give her the controls. The other woman slipped gratefully aside, and Terez took her place in front of the boards.

  “It’s isolated in VPW Five,” the ASM said, and Terez nodded.

  “Celeste. If this gets loose again, can you hold it?”

  “One moment.” A chain of glyphs on the main screen went from red to green, and Celeste’s voice was suddenly stronger. “Yes. The problem areas are isolated, and stand-down is 58 percent complete.”

  “Haya,” Terez said again, and then, more loudly, “Thanks.” I saw the ASM give her an odd look, but Terez’s attention was already focused on the smaller central screen. Hasker stepped closer himself, peering over her shoulder, and in spite of myself—in spite of knowing perfectly well what I’d see—I stood briefly on tiptoe to see over his shoulder. The screens were full of constructors’ hash, glyphs I couldn’t read, followed by ever-changing strings of numbers. The ASM mumbled something, a question, but I couldn’t make out the words. No one answered, Terez still frowning at the screen, but the pattern stabilized at last.

  “So what is it?” Hasker demanded.

  The ASM shrugged. “I recognize the matrix, but that’s about it.”

  “Give me a minute, will you?” Terez said. She didn’t sound particularly impatient, but Hasker leaned back quickly, blocking my view. I looked at the ceiling instead, searching for a pinlight. My eyes filled with codes as the
IPUs captured the tightbeam transmission, and I felt the familiar fizz of data under my skin: if I hadn’t known better, I would have assumed that everything was normal.

  Terez made a little noise, a soft grunt of satisfaction, and Hasker said, “You’ve got it.”

  “Yeh.”

  I looked myself, but saw only the familiar chaos of constructors’ codes. “So what is it?”

  Terez looked over her shoulder at us. “It was supposed to run at the end of the show—projected on the curtain, but they didn’t know about the new curtain call. I’m not sure what the message was, though.”

  “Can you run it?” Hasker asked. “The payload, I mean.”

  The ASM made a soft noise of disbelief, and Terez shook her head, uncertain. “I can pull it out,” she said, “and maybe I can run it, but I can’t guarantee that I can make it virus-free. I’d rather not risk it.”

  “I’d like very much to see what they had in mind,” Hasker said. From the tone of his voice, it was not a request, and Terez sighed.

  “I’m not willing to let it into the system. Especially with George down.”

  “I can—filter—the payload,” Celeste said.

  Terez blinked. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. The code is clear, payload and carrier are different. I can filter them apart.”

  Terez looked at me. “What do you think, Fortune, can Celeste do it?”

  #I can.# Celeste’s words whispered in my brain, the ghost of a voice.

  “If she says so, yeh.” Behind me, I heard Hasker take a breath, but he made no other comment.

  “Haya,” Terez said, and touched controls. “Go ahead, Celeste.”

  “Beginning.”

  For a long minute nothing happened, and then a rush of color appeared on the left of Terez’s screen. She studied it, but did nothing, made no move to adjust her controls. Then that square of screen turned black, and then flashed glyphs redder than furnace iron. I recognized them both—RETURN and then REVENGE—but together they didn’t make sense. Then they vanished, and the flames appeared. Even just seeing them on the screen, contained by the monitor, I caught my breath: they looked too real, too much like the flames that had followed the funeral bombing, so that for a second I could almost imagine I was seeing that again. The flames grew, feeding on the background—if the clip had been projected against the curtain, they would have seemed to be feeding on it, consuming it, a ripple of heat adding to the effect, so that I drew back in spite of myself. And then, just when it seemed at though they had to burst through the screen, that the glass would crack and shatter, blue raindrops—no, they were glyphs, the same RETURN/REVENGE as before—splattered down onto the fire, quenching the unreal flames before the image vanished.