by Jaine Fenn
Not that Tarset was everybody’s idea of a pleasant place to live, as was proved when they reached the main concourse and saw that one of the elevators was out of order, yet again.
Arnatt mimed an exasperated sigh and rolled his eyes theatric-ally as they stood in the grumbling crowd. Bez remembered waiting at this very spot, all those months ago, with hub-law. So much had changed. By the time the car finally arrived, Bez was smiling to herself.
No lovers this time, but the car was crowded. Bez tolerated the press of humanity with equanimity.
More passengers got on at the upper concourse, but as the car rose through the station it began to empty. One of those who got on after her was a stockily built child, travelling alone. Bez was uncertain of its sex as it wore a heavy coat and hat. Presumably some parent had told their offspring to wrap up when travelling through the hub; though if they cared that much, why weren’t they with it? Bez suddenly found herself considering children as something other than small and unpredictable humans. As something, perhaps, she could let into her life. That was a shocking idea: shocking, but not entirely unthinkable. She already had one legacy, unseen and abstract. How would it be to have living descendents? How would it be to give love to someone who gave unquestioning love in return? Perhaps she should start with a pet-Something smashed, a dissonant, unexpected ksshckt.
Even as she jumped, yellow vapour billowed up from the floor.
On the far side of the car she saw that the child had lost her hat.
Except, this was no child. Bez recognised the face, the unruly red hair. The Sidhe sleeper agent. Even as the shock hit, the girl’s face creased in pain and Bez’s throat began to burn.
The lift stopped. Bez waited for the doors to open, poised to make a run for it.
The doors remained shut. Her eyes were smarting now, but through the tears she saw the Sidhe traitor watching her even as she coughed and retched.
Every breath was agony. She made herself stop breathing, but she could still feel the corrosion burning into her lungs.
She closed her eyes, not giving up, but changing focus. Tuning out and going virtual.
The panicking passengers faded and the walls became translucent. Beyond them, the representation of the car’s braking mechanism glowed red: some sort of emergency override? She was aware of another presence - Arnatt. She tried to sub-vocalise, to ask if he knew how to disengage the lock and open the doors, but even that small physical movement made her damaged throat convulse, almost dumping her from the virtuality.
It occurred to her, in a distant way, that she should be frightened. But the only emotion she felt was a deep disappointment at having been caught out so easily.
She looked further afield, searching for some virtual tool she could use, some way to escape the trap she had stupidly fallen into.
Arnatt hovered beside her, his silver icon reaching out to pull data from the air, sorting and discarding.
Suddenly he stopped and turned to her. He was close now, as close as it was possible to get to anyone in the infoscape; their unseen processes meshed, disrupting each other in subtle ways. She resisted, because this was a distraction, and if they were to stand any chance of surviving the situation in the real, they needed to keep focused in the virtual, and look for a way out.
She shifted her perception, keying into the lift’s surveillance. It was futile and only made the inevitable more painful, but she had to know. The feed was vid only: she could still hear the screams and cries for help through her physical hearing, but they were distant, almost irrelevant.
Her body had fallen to the floor, along with the assassin and almost everyone else in the lift. Arnatt was still half sitting up, and his eyes were open if streaming. A heavily built man was trying to force the doors. Then he too fell to his knees.
Through the yellow air, Bez saw her body twitch: despite her will, a last, desperate breath had been taken. She was vaguely aware that, somewhere deep inside, soft tissue was being burned out, irrevocable destruction being visited on flesh that no longer had a strong connection to her.
Even as she watched the life seep from her body, she clung to Arnatt’s virtual presence, striving for that last shot at existence, determined to somehow persist beyond bodily annihilation, if …
only…
for…
’” a moment.
EPILOGUE:
CHANDIN
(Cyalt Station)
This is becoming a habit, thought Chandin, staring at the box on his desk. He’d got his security people to take all the usual precautions, scanning the package for explosives, drugs, nanites, the works. He had also tried, without much expectation of success, to track down the source of this apparently anonymous delivery. Somewhat to his surprise, the item had come through a partially traceable channel, via the courier company Hawk Consignia. Unfortunately, when he queried them they said that the account that had sent the package had since been closed.
He had a good idea who it came from. Not that he had expected any further contact, given the transmission he had received six weeks ago. Then again, that had been via beevee. A physical delivery would take far longer to reach him. He was ashamed to recall his guilty relief on finding that Orb - or Orzabet or whatever her real name had been - was no longer in a position to release the incriminating material she had held on him.
When he first took the actions Orzabet had blackmailed him into, he had received considerable attention from his peers. There had been talk of a possible Oversight Committee. But the Treaty Commission was nothing if not pragmatic, and when his actions had started getting dramatic results the investigation requests had been dropped. After the ThreeCs story broke, he was given the resources to set up a dedicated subdivision.
Tanlia had been key in getting the newly formed - and, Chandin thought, rather dramatically named - Revelations Bureau off the ground. In his darker moments he almost expected to see Tanlia herself exposed as a Sidhe agent, but unless Orzabet had missed something vital, there were no Sidhe in the Commission, nor in any positions of power in the hubs. He would have loved to know why that was, but with Orzabet dead, he doubted he would ever find out.
The Revelations Bureau certainly had their work cut out. For every Sidhe in human-space there must be dozens of knowing col-laborators and hundreds of unknowing agents. Orzabet’s data - the original dataspike, the subsequent transmissions and her final, posthumous databurst - had given the organisation enough to get started, but there must be more.
Chandin would go down in history as the man who had exposed what the media had dubbed the Hidden Empire - even if most of the credit wasn’t his - and he intended to finish the job. He had lived his life assuming humanity was free of Sidhe influence; he wanted to die knowing it really was. That was why, after much discussion with Gerys, they had decided to donate their second child licence to the lottery. His work was his legacy.
He opened the box. As he hoped, it contained dataspikes. Seven of them in a holder, each with a printed label: GenerallGovt. I, 2 and 3; Corp I and 2; Misc, inc. Freetraders; and ThreeCs.
Chandin had a ridiculous desire to punch the air. Instead he lifted the first GenerallGovt. ‘spike out, eager to see what he had.
Given how much data a single ‘spike could hold, he was going to need more resources.
Underneath the ‘spike was a piece of hardcopy paper with some writing on it. He lifted out the holder to reveal a high quality printout of just three words: Use them well.
Chandin had every intention of carrying out Orzabet’s last wish.
EPILOGUE:
SO HE DOES
The reproduction is perfect, down to the sycophantic waiters and the residual sweet/sour/smooth tang of roast cherry and curd cheese on a tongue she no longer possesses.
The only anomalous detail is her dining companion. The man who sits across the table looks like Imbarin Tierce … until he doesn’t. As she watches, his face changes again, to become that of Arnatt. Before (There was a ‘before’?) he was
a stranger, though one she felt she should know. The constant metamorphosis is one clue that none of this is real. Another is her last clear memory before this current period of awareness, which is of watching herself die.
Thoughts trickle through her mind, many of them related to how come she still has a mind for thoughts to trickle through.
Her ability to reason is coalescing, returning after an unspecified absence.
Imbarinl Arnatt walches her silently, fork poised above his plate.
There is only one logical conclusion. ‘I’ve been uploaded,’ she says out loud. The act of speaking feels as real as the ambience of the restaurant and the flavour of the food.
Her companion’s face settles back into Imbarin’s features. He smiles and says, ‘Correct!’ He sounds pleased, and exactly like Imbarin.
‘That’s not possible,’ she states flatly, despite the evidence to the contrary. ‘I’m experiencing continuity of consciousness.’ Holodrama makers’ flights of fancy and databreaker legend notwithstanding, it was impossible to upload a human consciousness into a virtuality. Memories could be stored and incorporated into limited intelligences, but the personality would be disrupted for ever. The Salvatines were fond of citing this as evidence of the human soul.
Bez briefly wonders if organised religion was on the right track after all, and this is heaven. She quickly discards the notion as even less unlikely than her original conclusion.
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Imbarin raises his fork and takes a bite.
Bez, by way of an experiment, does the same. The fork enters her mouth; she tastes sour cherry; she chews, feeling her jaw move; she swallows. The sensations exactly mirror those she would expect, including the sensual pleasure at the initial taste and the feel of food sliding down her gullet. She hates to imagine the kind of processing power required for such faultless emulation.
‘Something like this…’ she says slowly. ‘ … even leaving aside being…’ She can’t quite say ‘dead’ and settles on, ‘ … only virtual.
It’s impossible. All of this is impossible.’
‘For humans, yes.’
She looks at him, hard. ‘Who are you?’
‘You can call me Tarset if you like. Unless you prefer Imbarin, or Arnatt, or … No, you never met any of the others, did you?’
‘The other what?’
‘Avatars. Of my consciousness.’
‘All right: what are you?’ Bez hears the quaver in her perfectly reproduced voice.
He takes a sip of wine, then says, ‘A very old mind in a very complex machine.’
Bez considers his words. Impossible, yet logical. Certain other facts fall into place. ‘You’re a Sidhe too, aren’t you? A male.’
He raises his eyebrows. ‘Very good. I knew you’d work it out.’
Should she reveal how she came to that initially unlikely conclusion? Stupid question: there is no dissembling here. ‘I know about the males in the shiftships. Although … you’re not like them.’
‘Not mad, you mean?’
‘No.’
‘That’s because I - we - aren’t bound into structures that enter shiftspace.’
‘No … because you’re bound into a hub station instead! You really are Tarset, aren’t you?’ It’s almost as though her dream of the data nexus has come true; she is talking to an individual who holds power and knowledge of that magnitude. Power enough to bring her back from the dead, then recreate reality for her.
‘It might be more accurate to say that I am the hub-point. One of the hub-points. And we prefer to call ourselves Oberai, not Sidhe.’
‘So all of the hubs are … like you?’
‘Oh yes. And I’m not merely at Tarset, you know.’
‘Like that’s not enough!’ Just because what Imbarin - Tarset - said made sense, that didn’t mean it was easy to grasp. But just because the implications were hard to grasp, that didn’t detract from the wonder of it.
‘It isn’t enough, you know,’ he says. ‘Being restricted to one location - even an entire space habitat - isn’t enough. Would you like me to show you what I mean?’
‘Yes. Sweet void, yes!’
So he does.
Table of Contents
PART ONE
STANDARD NEON-GRID ARCHITECTURE
CHANDIN
(Cyalt Hub)
DATA BONANZA
(Olympus Orbital, Ylonis System)
(New Salem, Quondat, Quondat System)
AN ABSTEMIOUS LOT
RISK FACTORS
ESTRIS
(The Ice Coast, Tetrial Beta, Tetrial System)
THE DARKNESS BENEATH
TROPHY PIECE
TOO MANY GUNS
(Port Viridian, Tethisyn)
ROUNDING ERRORS
PART TWO
REMILLA
(New Salem, Quondat System)
CHANDIN
(Cyalt Hub)
FULL CIRCLE
(Olympus Orbital, Ylonis System)
ESTRIS
(The Ice Coast, Tetrial Beta, Tetrial System)
CHANDIN
(Cyalt Hub)
NEWSHOUND
EVOLVING WILDNESS
THE ECSTASY OF OBEDIENCE
(Olympus Orbital, Ylonis system)
REMILLA
(Tarset hub)
ILLOGICAL CONVICTION
FAR FROM DEFENCELESS
THAT SPACE IN MY HEAD
ONLY FOR A MOMENT
EPILOGUE:
CHANDIN
(Cyalt Station)
EPILOGUE:
SO HE DOES
