Against Gravity

by Gary Gibson

  “I told you, my augments picked it up.”

  Malky gave him a sideways look. “I know your augments can pick up on electronics in your immediate vicinity, but not from the far end of a very long bar.”

  “You’re saying you don’t believe me?”

  “I’m saying it doesn’t make much sense, is all.”

  Kendrick sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know what else I can say.”

  There was a brief, awkward silence. “I’ve been asking questions,” Malky continued. “Most of the people who frequent the Saint are US refugees, so it looks like whoever planted that bomb figured Edinburgh could do with a few less Yanks.”

  “You know this for a fact?” Kendrick decided not to mention the possibility of Los Muertos. That would lead to a whole range of further questions he didn’t feel up to dealing with right now.

  Malky let out a long sigh. “No, I don’t know for sure. But, like I said, I asked some questions. It’s not the first time something like this has happened, you know. We’ve got a visual recording of a man coming in, putting the bag down, and leaving after a couple of minutes. But we don’t know who he was, and Todd hasn’t been able to find any matches for his face in any of the police databases that he has access to. Now,” Malky continued, “you were saying you needed to find something out?”

  Kendrick nodded, relieved by the change of subject. “About the Arlington – I want to know who did the programming for their windows. I figured Todd might know, since he’s in the same line of work.”

  Malky shook his head in exasperation. “Kendrick, did you ever think about just asking someone there?”

  “I did ask someone, but they said they didn’t know.”

  “And, of course, I can safely assume you ran a Gridsearch as well.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Malky. I checked out everything I could.”

  “And, naturally, you’re not going to tell me why you need to know this. I mean, why do you even care?”

  Kendrick smiled apologetically. “You’d think I was a lunatic if I told you.”

  Malky spread his hands. “Yeah, like I don’t think that already. Well, let’s go speak to Todd, then.”

  From somewhere above them came a deep, growling vibration that sounded remarkably as though someone was using a pneumatic drill for unknown purposes. Kendrick had gradually grown used to the eccentric lifestyles and predilections of the refugees and artists who occupied the majority of the building’s apartments. They were a reminder, Malky had once told him, of his own parents’ bohemian roots.

  A little further up the concrete stairs leading to the single enormous attic space that constituted Todd’s home and working space they came across Lucia. She was standing beyond the open doorway of her studio, bare-breasted, her shaven head glistening. Kendrick couldn’t help but note the industrial-sized pneumatic drill now discarded on the floor; Lucia was applying a blowtorch to the nose of an enormous construction of girders and concrete that took a moment to resolve into a two-headed T-Rex with a tractor in place of a ribcage. They continued on past her.

  “Why is this so important, Kendrick? What’s the big deal?”

  What to say? “It’s – hard to explain. But it’s important. Very important.”

  Malky spread out his arms. “I’m a friend. It’s not like I can’t tell that something’s going on.”

  “Bear with me, okay?”

  Malky shook his head. “Fine, fine – whatever you say.”

  It occurred to Kendrick that not even Malky knew exactly how many people lived here. However, a significant proportion appeared to be American refugees, most of them certainly illegal. He allowed Malky to lead him up yet another cramped stairway carpeted with moist-looking fabric. Finally Malky knocked loudly on the door at the top. After what felt like an appropriate interval they stepped through.

  What little illumination there was in the room beyond seeped through patterned blinds drawn over tall windows. Kendrick remembered the first time he’d been there: Todd had taken care of all his ID needs, as well as providing him with a plethora of useful and completely false personal information. In Kendrick’s augmented eyesight, the tattered furniture revealed itself in the gloom with an unnatural pearly ambience. Todd sat at the far end of the vast space, his eyes fixed on an eepsheet creased from being folded too many times. It was running one of the RaptureNet channels.

  Unsurprisingly, given the apocalyptic tendencies of RaptureNet, a preacher kept thrusting his hands into the air and yelling in a tinny voice while a computer-generated image of the Archimedes floated in the background. Wherever I go I still can’t get away from that damn thing, Kendrick thought to himself.

  Todd was a small, mostly bald, middle-aged American with the frame of a famine victim and a soft, lilting West Coast accent. A workstation not unlike Caroline’s occupied one wall, while a smaller version of her window-screen leaned against another wall, held in place with gaffer tape.

  Todd glanced round at them, blinking and smiling. He nodded in recognition as Kendrick approached. “Long time no see,” he said. “In the flesh, at least. What brings you here?”

  “I need you to find out who programmed something.” Kendrick described the hotel’s door environment, while Malky listened with apparent interest.

  “Looks like the Archimedes? Interesting.” Todd nodded towards the eepsheet he’d been watching as they’d entered. The preacher was now holding an old-style wand to his ear, in order, presumably, to better demonstrate the act of speaking to God. Another window opened on the eepsheet, showing an alternative view of the same preacher wearing flowing robes and a long white wig that crackled with computer-generated lightning. The berobed version looked down on his other self, zapping the wand with cartoon lightning.

  Todd noted Kendrick’s interest and nodded towards the images. “You ever watch this stuff?”

  “I’m . . . afraid not.”

  Todd laughed nervously. “Stop looking so worried. You know I get off on shit like this. It tickles me. And, you know, that’s what helped sink Wilber. Economically speaking, building something the size and complexity of the Archimedes took up a serious chunk of the USA’s annual GNP for a good few years. Can’t maintain a wartime economy with shit like that going down, and that’s why his own army eventually turned against him. Now, Wilber—”

  “Todd,” Kendrick gently interrupted him, “I know all this – remember?”

  Todd blinked, then his face coloured. “Sorry, forgot,” he muttered sheepishly.

  Though Todd’s nerdish enthusiasms often ran away with him, Kendrick warmed to him nonetheless. “It’s true that a lot of people still believe in Wilber’s message, though,” he added, by way of a gentle prompt.

  Todd nodded eagerly. “Actually, this particular channel is pumped out of a portable studio in the back of a truck in Colombia. Real guerrilla-broadcasting kind of thing. But I’ve got to tell you, I think they just might have something.”

  Kendrick tried to frame his response as diplomatically as possible. “Wilber would use any lies that came to hand in order to gain power – and hold it.”

  “Look, I’m serious,” Todd protested. “I’m far from being the religious type, but for all Wilber’s craziness about using the Archimedes as a testing ground for building some kind of techno-rapture gridlink to God, the people he had working on it were real scientists. A lot of the people who tune in to RaptureNet, they’re old guys who worked in the science industries before the LA Nuke. And regardless of whether or not they actually are religious-minded in the old-fashioned sense, they go for that whole Tipler consciousness-at-the-end-of-time thing.”

  “Look, Todd, I just need your help in finding out who did this thing.”

  “And wouldn’t I like to know why,” Todd chuckled. “Okay, okay, just kidding. It’s no problem – right, Mikhail?”

  “Absolutely,” Malky replied.

  “I mean, it’s not like this is secret information, right?” Todd continued, his grin growing wid
er. “You’re asking because, say, you admire the skill of the artist involved?”

  “I’m asking because I’d really like to know who did it.” Kendrick tried unsuccessfully to keep an edge out of his voice.

  Todd nodded. “How’s Car doing?”

  “You mean Caroline?”

  Todd smiled. “Listen, Ken, this one’s for free. I can tell you for a fact that Caroline produced that display on commission.”

  “Caroline?”

  Todd wore a satisfied smirk. “You sound surprised. It’s the kind of thing she does, after all.”

  It was indeed. “I should have thought of that, Todd. Thank you. I owe you one.”

  “No problem. So what’s so special about some display based on the Archimedes, anyway?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure.”

  “Now, that’s not really an answer.”

  “I know, I know, but it’s the only one I’m giving you right now. Sorry.”

  Todd nodded with a gentle smile. “Got another question for you, then, just to make us even.”

  “Sure.”

  “What do you think is up there?” Todd asked. “What’s up there that prevents anyone getting back on board the Archimedes?”

  Kendrick frowned. Todd was clearly just looking for more fuel to feed his endless obsession with conspiracy theories. “Christ, Todd. There’s nothing complicated about it. Nobody’s dumb enough to try and get on board that thing while the place is swarming with runaway nanites.”

  “Yeah?” Todd’s eyes glinted. “But sometimes, on the Grid, you hear rumours. You hear rumours.”

  16 October 2096

  Edinburgh

  Kendrick still had at least a little money left over from the post-Maze trials, remnants of the compensation he’d received. Unfortunately, the money had been paid in dollars, an already badly devalued currency by that time. Kendrick’s financial acumen was not great but he knew enough to transfer the funds into other currencies and store it in European Legislate accounts before it devalued any further.

  Which hadn’t stopped a lot of that money slipping away in the meantime, but at least it gave him a means of keeping himself alive when times were lean. Careful investment had helped stretch the funds out, but Hardenbrooke’s treatments had cut deep.

  However, the money could only last so much longer. Occasional freelance journalism – under a variety of assumed names, of course, each with its own bank account – did help to bolster things, but the sporadic nature of such work meant that it was ultimately little more than a stopgap.

  Now he would need to seek out new sources of income, without the European Legislate finding out any more about him than he wanted it to.

  A few years before, Kendrick had signed a contract with a Grid news agency to work as a freelance stringer, having the advantage that he could file stories while remaining largely anonymous. But now there was the chance of something more permanent, which might mean moving south to London, or possibly somewhere in mainland Europe.

  That would be good but, because he was a Labrat, there were some serious risks involved.

  Which was why Malky so often proved useful in these matters. There was always the slim chance that background checks could lead to Kendrick’s real identity being exposed. Altering the necessary records to maintain his independence was a risky operation all on its own, but creating a personality that would allow him to work fully above board in the media – well, all he had to do was decide if it was worth the risk.

  Either that or he’d have to find some other way of making a living before the last of his money finally ran out.

  As far as the incident at the Armoured Saint was concerned, it appeared that the heat was now off. Todd had done his job well: Kendrick had been scrubbed from the security records.

  So what do I do now? he asked himself, waking in his own bed the next morning. A half-packed duffel bag still sat near the door, but thoughts of fleeing after the incident at the Armoured Saint had faded following his encounter with Marlin Smeby. Besides, he realized belatedly, if the Legislate had developed any concerns over his identity he would have known about it long before now.

  His meeting with Smeby had occupied Kendrick’s thoughts while he was sleeping as much as they had earlier when he’d been awake. Taking up any offer from Draeger was a wrong move, he knew that. What he’d been promised might not even be true – but even so, why couldn’t he stop thinking about it? Why had he just accepted that information and left so meekly, without trying to find out anything more about why Draeger was so interested in him?

  Perhaps he wasn’t the hero he would have liked to be. He didn’t want to die any more than anyone else did. When Smeby had offered the rest of his life to him, he’d very nearly gone down on his knees in gratitude at the hint of such a chance. He’d left the Arlington hotel disgusted with himself, having told Smeby that he’d need to think further about any face-to-face meeting with Draeger.

  But the intervening hours had allowed Kendrick to reflect on ways of turning such a meeting to his own advantage. It offered a chance to do something that, as a journalist, he’d relished for a long, long time: a personal encounter with Max Draeger, the architect of Wilber’s vision.

  Kendrick had long ago given up any hope that his wife or child might still be alive. After escaping the Maze he’d spent a couple of years interviewing witnesses, vainly following up leads. After Wilber’s fall from power, however, records had mysteriously disappeared overnight. The bureaucrats and army officers involved in the arrests of citizens following the LA Nuke had suddenly discovered that they’d been doing something else at the time.

  The men and women trapped in the Maze weren’t even the only ones who’d disappeared. There had been others, countless thousands now resting in unmarked graves by chilly roadsides.

  Exactly why the children of parents deemed to be security threats had also been taken into custody had never been adequately explained. Probably the intention had been to use them as bargaining tools to force people like Kendrick to do whatever Wilber wanted them to do. On that long-ago morning in Washington, his daughter Sam had vanished along with the children of dozens of other detainees – and none of them had ever been seen again.

  It wasn’t in the least likely that Draeger would know anything about Kendrick’s family. But the man had worked closely with Wilber, had been close to the heart of the political machine that had ruled America for a number of years. He was therefore, in his own way, responsible. Kendrick knew how badly he needed some kind of closure, and a meeting with Draeger might eventually lead him towards it. That would make it all worthwhile.

  Giving up any hope of further sleep, Kendrick got up and dressed. It was early, very early, but he needed to think, so he went out into streets still quiet and empty in the hours immediately following dawn. As seagulls circled in a slate-grey sky above him, he found his way to the Meadows, knowing he could lose himself in the open-air market that sprang up there every Tuesday.

  The Meadows, originally a stretch of green near the ancient heart of the city, was now lost and churned to mud under an impromptu shanty town of home-made tents inhabited by refugees sleeping rough. Some of these, remembering the can-do capitalist spirit of their forebears, had found it within them to scrape a bare-bones living selling anything that might just possibly turn a profit.

  The airbases that had once constituted the USA’s strongest foothold in the Old World had been abandoned with unseemly haste, and it was surprising just how much stuff had been left behind in deserted barracks and mess halls. Pieces of uniforms, even medals, along with all kinds of miscellaneous paraphernalia and electronic equipment. There were also books, music, clothes, and half-dead data-storage gear from yesteryear, too old and ruined to qualify even as antiques – a vast jumble of fascinating exotica and useless shit in pretty much equal measure. You could browse in the Meadows for hours, even if you never bought anything.

  Because it was still so early, half of the stalls weren’t open
for business yet. Kendrick got a coffee from a van sitting, engine-less and wheel-less, on piles of bricks and wandered about idly, wondering why it should even matter to him to discover that Caroline had been the one to design the hotel’s window environment.

  Who was to say that wasn’t just blind coincidence? But it occurred to him that there was only one way to know for sure. He glanced at the time – not quite so early now, so maybe she’d be up.

  His wand beeped to confirm that someone had picked up on the other end of the line. He caught the sound of a breath, a faint, barely audible exhalation.

  “Caroline, is that you?”

  Something else . . . Suddenly the ambient sound of the Meadows faded. Experience told him that his augments had recognized something in that background hiss and were now trying to isolate it.

  Patterns weaved in and out of the near-inaudible static, and Kendrick’s head swam. A faint wash of dizziness almost made him lose his balance – as if, he thought, the eye of God had reared over the horizon and gazed, unblinking, down at him.

  The wand beeped again, indicating that whoever was there had hung up. It felt as though a spell had been broken. Kendrick dropped the wand back in his pocket and leant against a corrugated-iron wall, waiting for his head to stop swimming.

  When his thoughts had cleared, he pulled out his wand again.

  “Hi.”

  “Erik?”

  “Hey, Kendrick! Good to hear from ya.”

  “Listen, I was thinking maybe I do need to talk to you or Buddy. Were you serious when you said you were in close contact with him?”

  “Jesus, of course I was. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  So they made arrangements.

  It rapidly became clear that Caroline wasn’t in.

  Kendrick stood in the street outside her building and cursed out loud. He then scrolled through screeds of information on his wand until he found what he was looking for.

  Perhaps she just didn’t want to speak to him. In that case, why not say so? Why just pick up the wand and listen in silence, before hanging up?