by Alex Lamb
As a single huge hand reached into the gap, Will surfaced in a habitat-tunnel and sucked air, his heart pounding. He sat upright and found himself in a transit-grave near the banks of a stream. He wore a scarlet, skin-tight body-suit with a black and white bull’s-eye painted over his heart.
Somebody nearby was screaming. Will looked across the brook to the other bank and saw frenetic activity obscured by a line of tall blue ferns. A lot of Wills dressed like himself were dashing about. He glimpsed a clone wielding a large carving knife.
Moneko sat up in the pit next to him, dressed in a similar uniform.
‘This way,’ she said, leaping out. ‘Hurry.’ She took his arm and steered him rapidly down the tunnel away from the screaming crowd. ‘Did you meet Balance?’
‘Yes. Lots of him.’
‘Thought so. He’ll check our exit site. We need to be away from here fast.’
‘What were those people doing?’ said Will, glancing back.
Moneko shook her head. ‘No idea. Looked like theatre. But it doesn’t matter. Right now we need to focus on getting home.’
She regarded his body-suit bitterly. He glanced at hers.
‘That’s emergency release for you,’ she said. ‘You don’t always get to pick what you’re wearing. Or your gender. Or your face. Frankly, this is a good outcome, though I’d have preferred something a little less obvious. Keep running.’
They sprinted around the next bend in the tube. Moneko paused and grabbed his shoulders while he wheezed for breath. She didn’t look remotely affected by the exertion.
‘What happened in there?’ she said. ‘What did you see? Just the highlights. Keep it brief.’
Will explained and watched her expression darken.
‘You waited for the bloody agents to pour into the clearing before pulling the cord? Jesus! Why did you leave it so late?’
Will shrugged. ‘I was surprised.’
‘Bullshit,’ said Moneko. ‘But never mind. What you need to know is that getting out of here is going to be difficult now. The only reason you haven’t been caught already is because we’ve had lots of practice at this. Balance might not look that scary to you – after all, you walked straight past him this morning, right? Well, that’s because every rule we follow has seen a lot of tactical adaptation. You don’t remember how hard it was to get this far because every other time, you died. But now we’re improvising, which means no more easy passes. You need to do what I say, when I say it, or we’re both finished. Got it?’
Will nodded.
‘Hold me up,’ she said. She gripped his shoulders and sagged, her eyes fluttering.
Will seized her body before she could topple to the floor. A second later, she was back.
‘What the fuck was that?’ he asked.
‘Using the map,’ she explained. ‘Data trawling. Looking for a way out.’
She glanced around and started off at a jog towards a thicket of two-metre-tall mushrooms near another kink in the tube. On the far side of it lay a junction where the tunnel forked. In the centre of the join, a narrow spiral of bony stairs led up to a hole in the ceiling between the strands of shimmering light-kelp.
‘That way,’ said Moneko, pointing.
The stairs looked unreasonably flimsy but held Will’s weight without protest. Moneko sped up them while Will staggered behind, lurching and shielding his eyes as he ran past the lighting-vines’ fierce glow. He emerged half-blinded into another landscape much like the one he’d just left, the only major difference being that this tunnel ran at right angles to the one underneath. Will started to understand how easy it would be to get lost on Snakepit. He didn’t even know how deep into the tube matrix they were, or whether there was an ocean over their heads.
Moneko pointed towards a three-storey wooden building that had been built in the middle of the tunnel with an almost identical steam running underneath. It had simple fabric walls like a Galatean trench apartment. She started leading him around the side of the structure and suddenly leapt back.
‘Balance,’ she said. She found a flap in the wall and dragged Will inside.
He caught a glimpse of a giant clone stomping in their direction as he darted through the opening.
On the other side of the cloth, a meeting was under way. Twenty identical female Wills in purple unitards sat cross-legged in a circle, humming. They looked up in astonishment as Will and Moneko hurried past.
‘We’re doing interruption,’ said Moneko cheerfully. ‘Don’t worry, it’ll be brief. But I’ll be back later with cards for those who’re interested in sharing their feelings.’
Two seconds later, they were out of the other side of the building and hurrying up a picturesque footpath that wound towards another bend in the tunnelscape.
Moneko checked behind. ‘I don’t think he spotted you,’ she said. ‘Let’s hope so, because the net just started tightening. First, agents will converge on your exit site to gather traces of your signature. Then they’ll start combing to make sure you can’t get back to soft-space. We don’t want to be anywhere near when that happens.’
‘So where are we going?’ said Will.
‘The nearest crowd,’ said Moneko. ‘Balance aggregates data from local instances. The second-best way to avoid him is to be somewhere he’s unwelcome. The third best is to use stealth and the fourth is to be somewhere he’s overloaded, which is all we can hope for right now.’
‘What’s the best option?’
‘Somewhere he’s not looking at all,’ she said. ‘Which, for the rest of today, is off the menu.’
Beyond the rise lay the opening to another spiral staircase headed to a lower level, this one larger and grander, complete with an enclosing tower of swirling filigree made from grown enamel. Moneko started down it.
Once past the glare of the lights, Will could see that they were descending towards a market that filled the bottom of the tube beneath. It was crammed with colourful stalls separated by narrow lanes. Voices echoed up from the floor thirty metres below.
Will and Moneko clattered down the stairway until they heard someone approaching. She grabbed him.
‘Go slowly,’ she hissed. ‘Like you have all the time in the world. Take my hand.’
She smiled at him and started chatting randomly about Mettaburg gossip as three clones of indeterminate gender in blue shifts came by, ascending the stairs. They nodded politely as they passed.
‘Our problem is visual cues,’ said Moneko once they were gone. ‘Balance will trawl the local surface memory of cooperating citizens. That’ll take time, but he’ll eventually trace these outfits to your exit point. Then he’ll come looking.’
‘So we have to find something else to wear,’ said Will.
‘Let’s hope it’s that kind of market,’ she replied.
It wasn’t that kind of market. Before they reached the bottom, he could already see that the stalls were packed with strange plants and animals. People led unusual livestock down the lanes. Will saw tethered lines of neon-yellow emus and tiny horses the colour of the sea. Stilt-legged elephants no larger than dogs and decorated in humbug stripes trumpeted to protest the confined space.
‘Are all these things my clones, too?’ said Will, eyeing the throng with revulsion.
‘Of course not,’ said Moneko. ‘This is a bioform art market. These things are all adapted from tunnel fauna. They’re demonstration patterns – people buy the templates to make their own copies. It’s also a fucking disaster for us,’ she added, ‘but it’ll have to do.’
She gripped his hand and took him out into the dense, meandering crowd.
‘Why a disaster? I thought you said a crowd was good,’ said Will. ‘How’s he supposed to find us in here?’
‘Let’s hope he doesn’t,’ she replied. ‘We need to get to the other side before he zeroes in, otherwise we’ll find ourselves in the middle of a stampede.’
They squeezed through the market for five uncomfortable, foul-smelling minutes before Moneko started to r
elax. Then they heard more screaming. An enormous crash came from behind them, as if someone had upended an apartment building.
‘Fuck,’ said Moneko.
Will glanced back and caught sight of Balance clones above the roofs of the stalls, wading towards them as if the people and animals in the market were so much surf.
‘I knew it,’ she snarled.
She dragged him sideways into the rear of an enclosure full of slender eight-foot-tall purple birds that gaped at them and started anxiously peeping.
‘He’s just killing people?’ said Will in astonishment.
‘They’re threads, Will. Everyone’s being dumped back into virt. Everything you can see is disposable. Except you and me, that is, because we’ll end up in custody with our minds picked apart.’
She grabbed the rope that tethered one of the birds to a stake in the grey dirt floor and snapped it like chewing gum. Then she broke off the other end, giving herself a two-metre length, and pulled the enclosure’s flap back open, revealing a stream of panicking pedestrians flooding by.
‘They’re not acting very disposable,’ he commented.
‘Losing copies is expensive,’ she said, peering out. ‘Especially in a market. Emergency backups come with memory loss. Transaction records get fucked up.’
Will caught sight of a huge black and orange dragonfly zipping over the crowd. Moneko cracked the rope like a whip, smacking the insect out of the air. She was as fast and precise as he used to be.
‘Balance’s spare eyes,’ she said.
‘Then didn’t you just reveal our location?’
‘Are you kidding me?’ she said. ‘How long did you imagine bugs last in an animal market? For each one I take out, the livestock eats twenty. It’s the only thing good about this place.’ She grabbed his hand and yanked him out into the flow.
‘You’ve got smart-cells,’ he noted.
‘Clever boy.’
‘Do I? Can I help? How do I wake them?’
‘No time,’ she said. ‘You haven’t activated the upgrade.’
‘Shouldn’t we have done that before the truth diving?’
‘You first dive wasn’t supposed to be this dramatic,’ she told him as they ran.
‘How about the agents?’ he asked. ‘Are they as fast as you?’
‘Faster,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t recommend finding out.’
They fled to the far end of the market, away from Balance’s stomping monstrosities. Where the market stopped, buildings started. The sides of the tunnel had been packed with grand town houses, making it look like a street from Surplus Age London, complete with fake white-stone cladding and bioluminescent street-lamps. Flights of steps led up to elaborate front doors.
Moneko crouched just inside the last line of stalls and peeked out between the canvas sheets. Stall-keepers and customers were flooding up the road clutching plants and pets, trying to flee the mayhem. They were scrutinised as they passed by Balance agents stationed at regular intervals.
‘Classic flush manoeuvre,’ said Moneko. ‘Bastards.’
‘What do we do?’ said Will. He still felt in the dark about how the damned planet worked. There was nothing to do but follow Moneko and hope. She said nothing as she watched the street. Meanwhile, the marching clones behind them stomped closer.
‘Are we going to move?’ he asked.
Moneko inhaled sharply. ‘Got it,’ she said. ‘Look – see that house over there? Third on the left.’
Will looked. To his eye, it was utterly indistinguishable from the others.
‘Now watch the agents,’ she said. ‘See how their gazes move. Look at where they’re standing.’
Will saw what she meant. The agents’ gazes were turning everywhere except towards the building Moneko had identified. There wasn’t a sentinel positioned outside that house, either. There was a slight gap in the pattern of clones, as if none of them wanted to be too near it.
‘They’re using option two,’ she said. ‘Balance is unwelcome there. If we’re lucky, that’s our exit. It’s the first lucky break we’ve had.’
‘In the house?’
‘Sites like that one often have local gates direct to the mesh, bypassing the regular grid for private access. That’s what we want. But first we need a diversion. Hold me.’
She sagged again. Will held her up while her eyelids fluttered. Two seconds later, she came back.
She frowned at him. ‘What I’m about to do is a bit Cancery. You should never try this. It’s not legal.’
‘Why not?’ said Will. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Thread subversion,’ she said. ‘Ripping someone’s mind and dumping a copy of mine into their body.’
Will grimaced. Just when he was getting used to the Willworld, it managed to creep him out all over again.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘He’ll wake up in soft-space with a headache and a modest dent in his favour-account, that’s all.’
She flopped again, gritting her teeth this time. Somewhere, several stalls away, fresh mayhem erupted. Three-metre lengths of wood that Will guessed were parts of stall frames started sailing overhead like javelins, directed at the Balance agents on the street. They responded immediately, leaving their posts with unlikely bursts of speed. Poles hit their armour and smashed. Moving as one, the agents closed in on the source of the disturbance like freight trains, powering straight through the pedestrians in their path, leaving body parts and blood spattered in their wake. Moneko was right. They could really shift when they wanted to.
‘Now,’ said Moneko. ‘While they’re distracted. They’ll have full coverage again in seconds.’ She whipped another dragonfly out of the air as she leapt from their hiding place.
They sprinted for the house. Moneko gripped his hand as they ran.
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Whatever we find in there, don’t get freaked out, remember? Keep your feelings in check.’ She glanced at him nervously as they reached the door.
‘Of course!’ said Will. ‘I get it. No disgust. Are we escaping or what?’
Moneko pushed the door open. Apparently even private residences on Snakepit didn’t have locks. Will was about to comment but Moneko held a finger to her lips and fixed him with an urgent stare, then quickly shut the door behind him without a sound.
Will found himself in a long, well-appointed hallway painted white and decorated in an ecclesiastical style like something from the wartime Earth of his youth.
They crept down the hall. In a large room on the left, a service of some sort was taking place, oblivious to the mayhem outside. Will glanced in as they darted past and saw ranks of clones with baseline faces wearing High Church uniforms. Will couldn’t help gawping. Were these clones Truists?
He glared at Moneko, who urgently made the shushing gesture again as they headed for the elegant staircase that led down to the basement. Consequently, they almost didn’t see the clone in white robes walking up towards them.
‘Hey!’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’
Moneko kicked, whipping his head back on his spine with a sickening snap. He tumbled noisily back down the stairs, knocking over a standing vase situated at the bottom.
‘Brilliant,’ she snarled as it smashed.
There were shouts of concern from behind them and the sound of footfalls in the hall.
Moneko took Will’s hand and yanked him down the stairs. She shoved him through an open doorway at the bottom, slammed the door shut and leaned up against it.
‘Find a chair,’ she said. ‘Or some kind of furniture. Now!’
Will scanned the short passage. Squarish openings like space station airlocks lined either side. Will checked the first one on the left and found himself staring into a cell identical to the one he’d been imprisoned in during the Interstellar War – the setting for all his war nightmares. His skin chilled. Something inside him screwed tight in an instant.
‘Why is this here?’ he said quietly.
‘Who cares, Cuthbert?’ said
Moneko as she struggled to hold the door shut. ‘Is there a chair?’
There was a chair. It was identical to the one they had tied him to during torture sessions. With a hot pressure mounting in his skull, Will picked up the chair and took it back to Moneko, who wedged it under the door handle.
‘This won’t hold them for long,’ she said. ‘We need to move.’
She dragged him down the passage, past the cell and an identical one opposite.
‘Are these clones Truists?’ said Will, his voice cracking. ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ He found himself hyperventilating. Why would any version of him possibly want to copy such hideous pieces of his past?
‘Killing us if we’re not careful,’ she said. ‘These guys hate the Underground.’
At the end of the basement passage lay a simple room with curving walls of black biopolymer and a white dirt floor with two transit-graves. Unfortunately, one of them contained a pulsing human form that swelled while they watched.
‘Fuck!’ yelled Moneko. She grabbed her hair.
At the other end of the corridor, a concerted banging on the door gained rhythmic strength.
‘What’s the problem?’ said Will. ‘Can’t you just kill it?’
‘No,’ said Moneko. ‘The pit won’t open until arrival is complete.’ She grabbed his shoulders. ‘We won’t be able to make a clean exit unless we clear those monks out.’
‘So just kill them! You have smart-cells.’
‘And in seconds, so will they. Listen, here’s what I need you to do. Call up soft-space. When you get contact, don’t go forwards. Take a step back into the thread map. Find their mass and pull it. Then backward again.’
‘How—’ Will started.
‘Intuition,’ she said. ‘I can’t do this, Will. It has to be you. Do it quick, okay? Ready? I’ll hold you.’
Will nodded. He shut his eyes, called up his home node and watched soft-space loom. It wasn’t the station he saw this time but a more confined space, dark with shadowy figures pressing close. He ignored it. Instead he stepped backwards. As he did so, he found himself in a maze of bright strings, all taut and vertical like the internal workings of some insanely complicated yarn factory. Right in front of him, a vivid pink and black thread quivered. Almost as close, to the left, a cluster of identical strings in snow-white and blood-red were somehow vibrating their way towards him. They were the monks – he could tell.
