Iron Gods

by Andrew Bannister

  Web City

  IT WAS LATE evening, Web time, but the streets were still lined with stalls and there were plenty of people to mill round them. Mill round, but not buy, as far as Seldyan could see. Talking seemed more popular.

  A long section of stalls on one street sold hot food, mostly cooked over little glowing braziers half covered by metal hoods shaped like pointed hats. Seldyan supposed they were there to trap fumes but the air still smelled acridly smoky.

  She had chosen Hufsza to come with her on the first visit. Kot was too much an outlier in physical form, even here where just about every possible shade and morphology of human seemed normal. Lyste was somehow too fragile, even if fragile was the wrong word for anyone who had survived the Hive and then broken out. And Merish, obviously, was needed on board because he was the one who really understood the ship.

  Obviously.

  They could communicate. The ship had provided some tiny buds that rolled deep into your ear and stayed there. They seemed to be more than microphones; even if you only sub-vocalized, the words you had thought were transmitted, and despite the fact that the little buds lived in only one ear at a time, the answers they relayed were heard in both. Seldyan wasn’t about to enquire. Nor had she argued when Merish had handed her the little flat stunner she had originally used on Captain Hefs. It felt reassuring.

  Whatever the reasons, she was glad of her choice of companion: the crowds were thick and Hufsza’s reassuring bulk was useful. They shoved their way to one of the counters and watched as a small lean woman with a heavily tanned face rolled amorphous lumps of minced something from a big bowl into little balls which she skewered and cooked. The balls spat and dribbled bubbling threads of fat which flared as they hit the coals.

  When they were done the woman pulled them off the skewers with her bare fingers, folded them into thin flat wraps from another part of the brazier, and held them out without showing any sign of letting them go.

  ‘That’ll be six million, in laced nickel.’

  With the ship’s help Lyste had faked up some of the local currency; Seldyan counted out six flat thumbnail-sized chips of nickel and handed them over.

  ‘The nickel’s just the carrier,’ Merish had explained. ‘It’s alloyed with whatever they need to get the right value.’

  She had hefted the little chips. They seemed heavy. ‘What’s in these?’

  He had grinned. ‘Five per cent depleted U. The ship says it’s safe.’

  The stallholder seemed to think so, too. She took the chips and, without letting go of the wraps, dropped one on a glowing spot on the back of the counter next to her. The glow dimmed for a moment and then there was a high-pitched beep. The woman nodded and handed over their food.

  Seldyan took hers.

  ‘Shit!’ It was close to untouchably hot, even wrapped. She sucked in her breath and tossed it from hand to hand. She looked at the woman. ‘What are your fingers made of?’

  The woman held out her hands, upturned. ‘My past.’

  The glow from the brazier baffled Seldyan’s night sight. She handed her wrap to Hufsza and leaned in close so she could see.

  The ends of the woman’s fingers were flat and thick, as if they had been beaten out of a bar of something. There were no whorls, just rough callused skin.

  Seldyan realized that she was looking at layer upon layer of scar tissue, built so deep there was nothing left of the original flesh. She looked up from the fingers and into the woman’s impassive face. ‘What happened?’

  The woman made an odd flipping motion with her fingers as if she was trying to cool them down. ‘What do you think? Burns, newcomer. A whole year of ’em, when I was a kid. Where you been?’

  Hufsza shook his head. ‘We’re new,’ he said. ‘How did you get them?’

  ‘Whoa. You are new. Same way anybody does.’ She gestured them away. ‘Now eat. Before it gets cold.’

  A crowd had gathered round them to watch the show. They turned and began to push their way through it, but then it divided in front of them. For a moment Seldyan thought it was to let them through, but then she saw the girl walking through the gap towards the stall. If she was standard human, Seldyan guessed she would be no more than a couple of cycles old, not quite on the verge of puberty. It was hard to be sure; her slight figure was younger but her face was older. Her hair was cropped unevenly short and she was dressed in a patched coverall of faded grey fabric. There was a slight bias in her tread as if she was off balance, which Seldyan guessed at first was because of the bag slung over her shoulder. Then Hufsza nudged her and nodded towards the girl. Seldyan looked again, and saw that the sleeve of the coverall on the opposite side to the bag swung empty. The girl was missing an arm and, by the looks of it, part of her shoulder.

  From behind her she heard the voice of the stallholder. ‘Hello, Krish. How many do you feed tonight?’

  The girl said nothing. She held up her only hand, four fingers spread.

  ‘Only four? Take for six. I readied them so you may as well. Here,’ and the stallholder reached below the counter and brought up a package of rough paper. ‘Go on, take it.’

  The girl hesitated for a second and then held out her bag. The stallholder dropped the package into it and gave it back, and the girl swung it awkwardly on to her shoulder again. She nodded once and then turned and walked away through the gap in the watching crowd. It closed behind her, and Seldyan thought she heard approving noises.

  No money had changed hands.

  She turned back to the stallholder. ‘What was that about?’

  The woman’s face closed like a door. ‘More questions? If you’re so new you need to ask, I ain’t saying.’ She turned her back.

  The crowd had gone quiet. Seldyan nodded, as much for them as for Hufsza. ‘We’re going,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

  They worked their way through the milling people until they were suddenly clear. Then, by mutual consent, they walked quickly until the lights and the smells of the food stalls had faded behind them. Then, in a pool of darkness at the entrance to an alley, they stopped and faced each other.

  Seldyan spoke first. ‘What the fuck?’

  Through the darkness she saw Hufsza’s teeth glint in what might have been interpreted as a smile, if she hadn’t known him. ‘Life’s not simple here, is it? People with industrial injuries give free food to kids with missing arms, and everyone knows what it’s about except us?’

  She shook her head. ‘Simple, I don’t know, but it’s not good. I’m going to call the ship, okay?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll join in.’

  Seldyan sighed, and tapped her earlobe twice, and out of the corner of her eye saw Hufsza doing the same. Almost immediately she heard Merish’s voice.

  ‘Hi, guys. You good?’

  ‘Alive but baffled.’ She smiled to herself. ‘There are things we don’t understand.’

  ‘Uh-huh? Tell me. The others are listening too, by the way.’

  She told him, glancing at Hufsza from time to time for confirmation. When she finished there was silence for a while. Then Merish said, ‘Okay, some interesting stuff there. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Look around. You?’

  ‘Hang out here, I guess. The ship’s having a good time sucking up planets-full of data. So far it seems to have stayed hidden; no sign we’ve been noticed by anything …’

  ‘Good.’ She was about to sign off when the bead gave a sharp buzz like angry insects. She yelped and grabbed at her ear, but by the time her hand was there the noise had stopped and instead her ear was full of voices.

  One became clear. It was Merish, but obviously not talking to them: ‘… unknown vessel, do not approach like that again. Repeat, do not – that was way too close. Do that again and we assume you’re hostile.’

  More voices; different versions of events, arguments. Seldyan took the bead out of her ear, held it up to her lips, glanced a warning at Hufsza (who widened his eyes and grabbed the bead from his own ear) and whistled as loudly a
s she could. She waited a moment, then said ‘sorry’ softly to the bead and replaced it in her ear.

  ‘Guys? You there?’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry about the noise. Seems we got noticed after all. We got buzzed.’

  She raised her eyebrows. ‘By what?’

  ‘Don’t know. Or, don’t know yet. Something big, maybe even as big as us. Came past very fast, very close. Then gone.’

  Seldyan glanced at Hufsza. ‘What does the ship think?’

  ‘That is what the ship thinks. Or it’s as much as it’s telling.’ He fell silent for a moment. ‘No sign of anything now.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Seldyan tapped her foot. ‘If the ship can’t work out what it was that must mean it’s at least as smart as the ship, or luckier. Watch it, guys.’ She broke the contact and looked at Hufsza. ‘Okay. Let’s start. Where?’

  He shrugged. ‘Where people are. Where they go to meet people.’

  She nodded slowly. Then she winked at him, wandered out of the alley and back towards the lights and the food smells, checking over her shoulder every dozen paces to make sure that he was still in sight. A minute later they were among people again. She stopped by a couple of lounging men and grinned at them. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘I’m new in town. Where do I go to get a drink?’

  She watched their faces stretch into smiles. As their body language began to shift she gestured towards the approaching bulk of Hufsza and added, ‘My friend and I.’

  Both men’s faces fell. One of them jerked a thumb. ‘That way,’ he said. ‘The light.’

  The other man snickered.

  Seldyan followed the gesture. At first she couldn’t make out what the man was talking about but then she saw a dim purple glow highlighting a doorway about fifty paces away.

  She looked back at the men, holding their gazes for a while, but their faces had closed down. Eventually she nodded. ‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ she said.

  One of them turned a little to the side and spat. Seldyan turned her back and placed a hand on Hufsza’s shoulder. ‘Off we go,’ she said.

  They were walking through the smudge of darkness between the braziers and the door when someone said, ‘Wait.’

  They stopped. Seldyan half glanced at Hufsza. His eyes, tinted purple by the leaking light, were narrow.

  She flexed her fingers. ‘Okay, we’re waiting.’

  ‘Sorry I was rough on you.’ Seldyan felt her eyes widen – it was the voice of the woman from the food stall.

  ‘It’s okay. You don’t know us.’

  ‘Sure I do. You’re the people with the big ship. You should hear how people are fighting over you.’

  ‘As long as they’re not fighting against us.’

  ‘Not yet, but they might try. Watch yourselves.’

  Seldyan glanced at Hufsza. ‘Who might try? Patras?’

  There was a snort of suppressed laughter. ‘Only while he has something left to fight with. Listen, I’m going to trust you. Think about this. Not everyone who turns up here is a refugee. Plenty people get here with life savings, good-enough ships, supplies – but sooner or later everyone’s poor. How do you think that happens?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The City Fathers. You’ve seen how the place is set up. They provide a basic plate with enough power under it – literally, just enough – to put a field over the top and keep the air in. Then they charge for everything else.’

  Hufsza shrugged. ‘We knew that. Where’s the surprise?’

  ‘You don’t get it.’ The voice was quiet but insistent. ‘I said everything. Water, heat, air top-up, sanitation, lighting. Everything. And here’s the clever thing: even if you manage to bring all that with you, and some people did, they still bill you for what they think you ought to have used.’

  Seldyan stared at Hufsza. He looked disbelieving. ‘But how do they make that stick? I mean, if you brought your own stuff they can screw their bills. You’re fine.’

  ‘No, you aren’t. If you don’t pay, they charge a tariff on the plate power, equal to what you should have been paying, plus interest. A lot of interest. And if you don’t pay that – they power down the reactor.’

  Seldyan felt her eyes widen. ‘Power down … no, wait. No shield? Really?’

  ‘Really. Round here, hard vacuum’s free. Everything else costs.’

  Hufsza shook his head. ‘That’s just a threat, though, right? They wouldn’t really do it?’

  ‘Yes, they would. Have done, four times so far. About a hundred and fifty thousand dead. Not recently.’

  ‘How many? Fuck.’ Seldyan felt anger balling in her stomach. ‘So this whole place is a scam?’

  ‘Now you get it.’

  Hufsza was clenching his fists. ‘Patras,’ he said. ‘Is it him?’

  ‘Mainly him. Some hangers-on.’

  ‘And the Green Star?’

  There was a pause. ‘No. Not so’s you’d see. I wouldn’t say more than that.’

  Seldyan frowned. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I get that. I hate it, but I get it. So what about burned fingers and missing arms?’

  ‘We hack the reactors – pull them away from central control and up the output.’ The voice sounded weary. ‘It isn’t a safe job. The reactors are underneath the plate, see? No biological shield, and they put the controls inside the hot zone. Lucky ones like me, we get burns that heal. Less lucky, they get burns that don’t heal, and the only way is amputation. Some of ’em get over the burns and die anyway; a few weeks, a few months. The rest of us have to wait and see.’

  Seldyan sought for more words, but she had run out. She looked helplessly at Hufsza, who was slowly clenching and unclenching his fists. He opened one and stared at it. ‘Why the kids?’

  ‘Access. You need to be small.’ A mirthless laugh. ‘I never grew much so I qualified. Well done me.’

  ‘Yeah, well done you.’ Seldyan meant it. Without thinking she extended a hand towards the voice.

  She never completed the movement.

  There was a moment of – intensity.

  The concussion shook her off her feet. She felt her chest compressing and her lungs emptied in an explosion of breath. Then there was a second tearing explosion and blazing air slammed into her back like a hammer, throwing her against the wall, one shoulder first.

  She opened her eyes slowly and then closed them again as something hot trickled down her forehead. With her free hand she wiped the blood on her sleeve and turned her head away from the wall. She was covered with dust, and there was something wrong with her shoulder. Next to her, Hufsza was pushing himself slowly away from the wall. He looked dazed. Seldyan wasn’t surprised.

  She took a breath, and coughed dust. The second breath was better. She looked around for the woman, but there was no one. Her hand was still extended; she must simply have forgotten to withdraw it. She did now, and realized that it was wet.

  Then she saw the jagged form at her feet, and her thoughts slowed down.

  The woman seemed smaller in death. There was no doubt it was death – even ignoring the mess above the shoulders, life could never look as fractured. And there was something glistening in the wall. It looked like a splash, with a lump in the centre. She dared a closer look.

  The lump was a piece of masonry, squashed into the wall by the force of its own impact. Presumably, the same force that had carried it through the shattered head of the woman lying at Seldyan’s feet.

  For a moment there was quiet. Then noise happened – angry, fearful, confused people noise.

  Somehow it sounded worse than explosions. Seldyan swallowed and tapped her comms bead. ‘What happened?’

  Her ear buzzed angrily for a painful second. Then Merish’s voice came through. ‘Sel? Thank fuck. Are you okay?’

  ‘I think so. There was, I don’t know, an explosion, an attack. Something. What can you see?’

  ‘Something organized. Coordinated, probably. There’s been explosions all over the Web. Minor casualties, mainly. That’s odd.’

  ‘
What is?’

  ‘Well, if you’re setting off a load of kinetics in a populated area you expect to take out a certain number of civilians, but this didn’t. Oh, wait …’

  She waited.

  When he came back on line his voice was steadier, but not calmer. ‘We should get you out of there, guys. That was a coup; looks like our Green friends are making their bid.’

  Seldyan glanced at Hufsza, who was still leaning against the wall. She couldn’t see his expression, but his posture looked weary. ‘We’ll be okay,’ she said, partly for his benefit, ‘but some directions would be good.’

  ‘Okay. Get back to the main square, the one you left just now. I’ll guide you from there. And good luck, because you are going to need it.’

  The comms went silent. Seldyan rubbed her hands together, trying to ignore the screaming pain in her shoulder. It was getting harder. She turned to Hufsza, who was still leaning against the wall. ‘You heard the man,’ she said. ‘Time to go.’

  He nodded, and pushed himself away from the wall. The effort seemed to cost him, and he stood, swaying slightly.

  She gave him a grin. ‘Come on, Huf.’

  He didn’t move.

  She reached her arm a little further. ‘Come on, Huf. Let’s get out of here. Trust me.’

  Still nothing. She felt her stomach contract.

  ‘Come on, big guy. You can do it.’

  His voice was very calm. ‘No, I can’t.’ The Arch-light glanced across his torso. The front of his chemise was dark with blood. It was spreading as she watched.

  ‘What? Shit, Huf …’ She took a step towards him but he held up his arm.

  ‘Don’t. There’s no point.’ He gestured towards the wall where he had stood next to her. She followed the gesture and her eyes widened.

  There was something sticking out of the wall – a slim rod a couple of hands long. It was dark with blood.

  ‘That went through me, Sel.’ He took a slow breath and she heard bubbling. ‘I, I can’t …’ His voice tailed off in a long sigh. His eyes closed. Then he dropped gently to his knees, sagged sideways, and fell to the ground. She heard the tock of his head hitting the floor.