Crash Deluxe

by Marianne de Pierres

  I zipped my crop up and wriggled into the raincoat, finally calming down enough to look around the cabin.

  The ’copter was big enough to be luxurious, small enough to be practical, and for the first time ever I was sitting in the passenger seat like a civilised human being. Not strapped to the tail, or trying to fly the freaking thing by myself.

  It still didn’t lessen my loathing at having my feet off the ground. God wouldn’t have just given us wings . . . he’d have given us motors as well.

  God? Now there’s a cute idea.

  I hadn’t reconsidered the notion of a higher being since my ill-chosen worshipping of the great freaking Wombat had turned out to be the venerating of a complete freaking maniac.

  I really needed to work on improving my choices. Starting now.

  For a second I relaxed back into the seat.

  ‘Comfortable?’ the pilot asked.

  I nodded, eyelids barely open.

  ‘Good.’

  The smallest of creaks and a restraint harness dropped over my head and shoulders, snapping tighter than one of Luxoria’s bondage toys.

  I squirmed and fought it. ‘What the—’

  ‘Keep still or it will strangle you.’

  Sweet.

  My few warm seconds of relief turned instantly to crap.

  I struggled against the harness despite the pilot’s warnings and it shrank until I could barely breathe, at which point I forced myself to calm down.

  The city stretched out underneath us - the chrome-trimmed buildings and bright canal watercourses bleeding into one eye-hurting glare.

  Viva might be huge, I thought, but it might as well have been the size of Torley’s and the Stretch. Everyone seemed to know me. Everyone wanted a piece of me.

  I closed my eyes again but they didn’t stay that way long.

  The ’copter took a sudden plummet and fell into some ragged ducking and weaving through the air traffic.

  Sirens again. And some heated warnings over the comm from air traffic control.

  The pilot ignored them.

  ‘What . . . you . . . doing?’ I panted.

  She didn’t answer but the sweat beading her upper lip told me that she had troubles of her own.

  I craned every which way to see, catching glimpses of a media ’copter dogging us.

  My square-jawed pilot took a risk and careered out of the orderly stream and low into controlled space.

  A Militia bat appeared, its titanium and fibreglass blades dangerously close. Not shooting, but reeking of serious intimidation.

  The ATC warnings got heavier. Two minutes longer, they said, and they’d blow us out of the sky.

  I took it as bluff. Below us was the heart of Viva wealth. Mansions on mansions. Nobody would get away with sending ’copter bits to burn holes in the carefully electrolysed lawns.

  My pilot obviously agreed with me and stuck fast to her choice, even with a Militia bat posted hard on our shoulder.

  The media ’copter, though, had other instructions and peeled away, losing itself back into the normal stream of traffic.

  One down.

  I was working on giving some advice to the pilot when she initiated a landing sequence.

  Something in the protocol jogged my memory.

  M’Grey Island. Shite.

  I looked down. The floating bridge was locked into its daytime spot but we weren’t headed towards it. The pilot’s security clearance was high enough that she took us straight in, over Razz Retribution’s ex-estate, into the heart of the canals, losing the bat at M’Grey’s boundary.

  I sucked as deep a breath as the restraint would allow.

  We descended quickly, a flash of perimeter security disengaging, and we set down on a flat disc of land inside a palace.

  Palace.

  What did the freaking Royal family want with me?

  The pilot held a fancy snubbed Beretta at my chest as she unclipped the harness from the seat and shoved me out the door with one easy push.

  I tried to run but the harness tripped me.

  The pilot locked a hand onto the webbing and dragged me bodily across the pad to an open-topped ’pede. She shoved me in the back seat, ordering me with an ugly growl to keep still.

  Panic replaced everything else in my head. Loyl Daac and Ibis weren’t here to break me out this time. No one who cared knew where I was. Last time I’d been on M’Grey had been a set-up, someone trying to pin me for Razz Retribution’s murder. I wasn’t cool with the place at all.

  The Eskaalim ballooned like a fat tic. Its pincers hooked deep inside me. I found myself visiting that same dark place I’d lived in when Jamon had owned me.

  Nothing got me crazier.

  I kicked the pilot in the back of the head with both heels. The ’pede lurched and veered towards some small outbuildings. In a blind rush of madness I hoped it would crash into one of them, and kill us both - denying their prize to whoever had gone to these lengths to kidnap me.

  The pilot flung her arm around me to restrain me but I rolled out of reach as the ’pede smashed into the wall.

  I waited for oblivion, but it didn’t come.

  Trapped upside down and alive - my mind skittered wildly.

  Rough hands reached in. I bit at them.

  Swearing. Then the pressure of a derm.

  Not long enough.

  The room I woke up in was in a basement and disappointingly plain - almost empty. Just a sleeping-mat, a walk-in cupboard and a comm viewer. No windows. No natural light.

  The good news was that someone had draped me in a large coat.

  Not her, I hope?

  My friendly pilot stood, arms crossed, at the door.

  I took a better look at her. She had heavy doglike jowls and might have seemed motherly if you ignored the shok-stick tucked into her belt, the shoulder holster snug against her large breasts and the tree-thick diameter of her biceps.

  I ran some far-fetched scenarios as to the identity of my kidnapper.

  But when the truth came it was worse.

  Or should I say . . . her.

  ‘Hello, Parrish.’

  A young girl entered quietly, almost meekly. Pale-skinned, undersized, short hair and rich-tailored clothes but masculine. Cultured voice.

  Most distinct were her eyes, huge brown irises and showing only a little white. And the fancy wireless graft made to look like jewellery around her ear.

  Another person who knew me . . . but who was she?

  ‘Sorry about the restraints but Mal - your pilot - thinks you should hear us out before we agree to remove them.’

  We agree?

  I settled for a cross between a grunt and snort and a filthy look at Mal.

  Her chin whiskers didn’t even quiver.

  The small girl circled me, clasping her arms to her body as though she didn’t know where to start. There was something odd about the way she held them. Jerky. As if they belonged to someone else.

  A suspicion began to weevil its way into my mind - a memory of a scrubber living off the scraps that the Muenos discarded underfoot. A kid who’d been stolen by a media ’Terro and had ended up being adopted by the Banking Royals as a publicity stunt. I looked for any other similarity and came up short.

  Can’t be.

  This girl was educated and carried the air of someone much older. Still, the name fell out of my mouth.

  ‘Bras?’

  She paused, unsmiling. ‘Yes. Bras.’ She patted the silver-coated wireless connection. ‘Accelerated-Learning Deposit and a Resocialization Implant. But otherwise, right, Bras.’

  My heart pumped a bit harder, sending a woozy kind of warmth out to my limbs. ‘I wondered about you - w-what happened.’

  She frowned, rebuffing my sentiment. ‘I knew about you.’

  ‘What did you know?’ I challenged her. ‘And how did you know where I was?’ And what will James Monk think happened to me?

  ‘We’ve been tracking you,’ she said simply, as if that was enough informati
on.

  Did the whole freaking world want to know what I was up to?

  ‘Tell me why you changed your . . . ?’ She paused as though she was searching for a word. Maybe she had the same dud language-infusion as me. ‘Appearance.’

  I wrinkled the split on my forehead. The blood had dried and it was already starting to knit. I grinned despite Bras’s grave manner. ‘Necessity. My regular face had gotten way too popular.’

  She considered that for a while and then gave an agreeable nod.

  I should have been steamed at that. The kid had me trussed up. But I felt relieved. Somehow it seemed important to pass her test.

  ‘Sit,’ she ordered.

  Mal materialised a chair and pushed me on to it with one broad finger. That was one woman I wasn’t planning to get into an arm-wrestle with. I reckoned Mal would have been able to match it with Mama.

  I sagged into the chair, tiredness rolling over me as if someone had covered me with a blanket and turned out the lights. Through half-closed eyes I watched Bras muttering soft instructions into her pick-up. Soon the screen began streaming a montage of shots.

  They woke me up with a jolt, sitting me upright as if I’d been stung.

  The Tert again. Not just The Tert . . . MoVay - wild-tek blisters and pus, dead bodies coated in crawl.

  The images stabbed into me as if they were the Cabal Coomera dagger. I think I even moaned. Seeing MoVay unwound all my long-practised sang-froid. My scaly beauty mark ached.

  I’d lost Roo there. I’d nearly lost myself. MoVay was my week in Hell. A preview of what life would be if I didn’t straighten things out. It lurked in my corner sight, a constant reminder.

  Remember, human . . .

  ‘Where did you get that?’ I gasped.

  ‘We paid a . . . collector to get it. Unfortunately, there is more. And we are not the only ones who have copies. This goes out live on OneWorld over the holidays. Sera Bau’s going to use it to cripple James Monk.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I shouted. Pieces of information flew around me and I couldn’t catch them.

  ‘Think about it,’ Bras said. ‘What gets prime air over holidays?’ she asked.

  Ker-clunk. ‘The Pan-Sats?’

  She nodded. ‘Sera Bau owns over twelve hours of footage. It will rip gut out of Monk’s sports programming. ’

  Despite the cultured tone, her sentences weren’t always quite right.

  Bras replaced the paused montage with a head-and-shoulders of a man and woman. She focused on the man.

  I squinted through watering eyes at the thick, heavy face.

  ‘James Monk. Shareholder in Brilliance. Sports IO. That means Information Owner,’ she added as an aside.

  She pointed to the smooth-skinned red-haired woman at his side. ‘Sera Bau. DramaNews IO. The other major shareholder in Brilliance.’

  I studied Bau’s image. The woman from the foyer of the InterGlobe was also the woman who must have funded Ike in MoVay. She’d given him his freedom so that he could create madness for her to film - something so horrible that it would take the viewing public away from the biggest-rating fortnight of each year - the Pan-Sats.

  The calculation of such an act struck me like a body blow.

  ‘My information tells me that James Monk was sponsoring this atrocity.’

  Bras gave me a look almost as disdainful as Lavish’s.

  ‘Then your information is wrong.’

  Something in her conviction convinced me too. Or was it the doubt that I already had about Merry 3#? A reliable friend, eh? I’d purge the stupid p-diary as soon as I got a minute.

  Bras’s eyes closed and she rocked forward on her toes, eyes rolling around under her lids. Saliva drooled out of one corner of her mouth.

  Mal was beside Bras in a second, wiping the spit away, slipping a mask across her nose, patting her back with soothing strokes.

  She turned on me like an accusing parent.

  ‘You’ve stressed her.’

  I’ve stressed her?

  I was on the point of telling Mal something to that effect when Bras opened her eyes again. Watching her slowly focus, I recognised something in her that made me want to run and hide.

  ‘Did Razz Retribution work for Bau?’ I asked.

  ‘Mal - will - tell more,’ she managed, allowing the woman to lift her up and lay her gently on the mat.

  Satisfied that Bras was comfortable, Mal turned her attention back to me.

  ‘Sera Bau discovered that one of her Prier pilots, Razz Retribution, was the money behind some genetics research that interested her. She arranged for a criminal who called himself Dr del Morte to steal it and use it.’

  Mal spoke in a flat tone, as if the information to which she was privy was of only a passing interest. Her main interest lay pale and groggy on the mat before her.

  I digested the information in little bits and, for the first time in a long while, pieces began to fit together for me.

  Mal went on. ‘You were framed for Razz Retribution’s murder and Bau got to make a film of something that will seal her ratings for the next year.’

  ‘Why me?’

  Bras propped herself on a shaky elbow. ‘Convenience. Someone plausible. Someone with no redress. Someone who could die,’ she said.

  I saw something in her as she spoke - like Daac and yet different. Bras had come from the worst of nothing to the best of everything. You couldn’t do that and not suffer.

  ‘So Sera Bau murdered Razz,’ I asked.

  Bras nodded but Mal spoke.

  ‘Not by her own hand, of course. You’ll never prove it, either. Which is why you must accept our offer.’

  ‘Our?’

  ‘My family,’ whispered Bras.

  Mal circled me, stopping near the door.

  On cue, an auto-life-support wheeled in. The man it carried was bald and overweight. His scalp flaked onto a towel that covered his shoulders. His eyes were yellowed, but keen. Behind him walked an identikit version of Mal, only somewhat older and larger.

  ‘Parrish, meet Gerwent Ban. King of Viva and environs. Hereditary leader of the Electronic Transaction Polity.’

  The ETP. Tigers without teeth was how my stepdad Kevin described them. The remnants of the old banking fraternity. As secretive as the Masons had once been. Now moneyed but powerless. This is Gerwent Ban?

  I felt ripped-off. There was nothing exotic or special about him - apart from the pricey life-support. Anyone else would be dead.

  I considered doing something humble out of respect.

  Nah.

  Gerwent looked to where Bras lay on the mat. ‘Are you unwell, child?’

  ‘No, father.’ She rolled away from us, eyes to the wall.

  Father?

  I stared in disbelief at Ban’s decrepit flesh. Only a short time ago Bras had been forcibly taken from The Tert and adopted by the Royal Family as what I assumed was a publicity feat. What had really happened here, I wondered, that had got her calling this half-dead creature dad?

  ‘Ms Plessis. You’ve a talent for getting noticed.’ His voice was surprisingly strong. Amped and modulated by the chair, I figured - he didn’t look like he had enough breath left to spit.

  I crooked a finger - the only bit of me not secured, and said the first thing that came into my head. ‘Is it normal behaviour for the King to kidnap law-abiding citizens?’

  He laughed - a cross between a wheeze and puff from the ventilator. The auto-chair moved him closer to me again, with Mal and her twin a step behind.

  ‘Nothing is normal for a King. And it’s been a long time since you were a law-abiding citizen, Parrish Plessis.’

  He had a point there.

  I nodded at the cams on the ceiling and the two heavyweight guards. ‘Untie me. What’s to be scared of?’

  ‘The same thing that attracts people to you, I would guess. You’re very unpredictable.’

  I laughed this time, at this gentle massaging of my ego. Maybe he wasn’t as dead as he looked.

>   Moved by some unspoken command Mal approached and freed me.

  I rubbed circulation back into my arms and legs but made no move to get up. I was intrigued. King Gerwent Ban wanted me for something, and I wanted to hear what. This game I’d rolled my dice on had jumped to a scale way beyond my measuring. If I didn’t learn . . .

  I took a slow breath. ‘Bras tells me you’re working up a revolution. How are you gonna do that?’ I couldn’t see any point in hedging. Blunt seemed to be everyone else’s tactic.

  ‘You are aware that our media communications are run by Brilliance, a constructed editing intelligence of supposedly infinite capacity to organise, select and edit information.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m familiar with it.’

  ‘I say supposed. We believe that it is not an AI but has a biological component - somehow a real consciousness has become meshed with the editing processor.’

  I though about Merv’s reaction when he talked about Brilliance. He knew something. ‘You mean it has a brain?’

  ‘We think so.’

  I tapped my fingers on the chair leg. ‘Why don’t you just shoot it in the head, then?’

  Ban made a strange strangled noise at the suggestion. ‘Perhaps we might consider something so direct, if we knew where it was.’

  ‘You’ve got no idea?’

  He grimaced. ‘None.’

  ‘So what is your plan?

  ‘We think that the meshed system has become unstable and that the constant editing choices are degrading its “thought” processes.’

  ‘What are the IOs doing about it?’

  ‘Nothing. With the complexity and volume of what is viewed it is unprofitable and inefficient to use human labour to edit. Brilliance was . . . is a cost-effective and competent evolution in communication. She has developed her own editing technology that is swift and incomprehensible to us. To start again would cripple them.’

  ‘Which is what you want to do. Cause a media blackout.’

  ‘Crude but accurate. We want Monk and Sera Bau to vie so hard for ratings that the sheer volume and distress will cause Brilliance’s new organic part to have a cerebral haemorrhage.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Was this the abridged version of perceived events suitable for dummies, I wondered? If so, then I deserved a freakin’ medal for my new-found talent at playing along.