Authors: Al Robertson
[She has to be Pantheon, to be able to show herself to us like that,] said Fist nervously, from deep within Jack’s mind.
[ It must be East,] replied Jack. [She loves visiting clubs in disguise.]
[ We should leave.]
[Pure chance that we ran into her. And we’re quite unusual. It’s not surprising she took a second look.]
[ We meet one of her people, and then she appears the next day? I don’t like it. You’ll get damaged.]
Jack had never seen Fist so jittery. [ I’ve come to see Andrea,] he said. Her name was a talisman that strengthened his resolve.
[ Then see her!] Fist’s voice had a sudden half-panicked shriek to it. [And she’ll tell you to fuck off! And we can get the fuck out of here.]
There was a large man wearing a cheap suit at the door to the backstage area. ‘I want to see the singer who was on just now,’ Jack told him.
‘No socialising.’
‘I’ve come a long way. I’m – an old fan of hers.’
The bouncer grunted. ‘One of those. Well, if you want to piss your money away you can have her manifest at your table for twenty minutes. Got to be before her second set, she gets pulled back to the Coffin Drives after that. Pay at the bar.’
‘Is there anywhere more private?’
‘We’re not that kind of place.’
‘No, really. I just want to talk.’
‘I bet.’ The bouncer snorted. ‘I’ll ask the boss.’ His face went blank for a moment, then he said, ‘Empty dressing room out back. Cost you big. We monitor it.’ A fist slapped against a palm. ‘Don’t try anything funny.’
Jack paid. [Keep spending like that and we’ll have nothing left to live on,] whined Fist.
The bouncer ushered Jack through into a long, narrow corridor. ‘Third on the left. She’ll be waiting for you.’ Performers had tagged its walls with graffiti. There were barcodes too. Had Jack been onweave, they’d have summoned datasprites as soon as he perceived them. He wondered what he’d have seen. There’d probably have been nothing more than a shimmer at the edge of his vision as his anti-virals snuffed them out.
It was easy enough to find the dressing room, harder to knock confidently on the door. Seconds passed. Jack wondered if he’d been ripped off. At least he’d only have lost InSec’s money. Then Andrea shouted ‘Come in.’
The room was tiny. There was barely space for two chairs and a makeup desk. Andrea was sitting at the desk. A real dress, identical to her virtual one, hung shimmering behind her. It was like a field of stars, haloing her covered head. ‘Close the door,’ she told him. With a little contortion, Jack did so. ‘Sit down.’ She’d made her voice cold. ‘I didn’t want to see you. I hoped you wouldn’t try and find me.’
‘I had to. Especially after I found about – your situation.’
There was no adequate way of describing her death.
‘I needed some easy cash once, when I was alive. Signed away fetch performance rights to a few little clubs. Too cheap to even advertise the gigs onweave. I always thought I’d be able to buy the rights back. But then I died.’
‘I don’t mean the club,’ replied Jack. ‘You – she – you passed on. What happened to her, Andrea? And why didn’t you tell me?’
Jack sounded plaintive, even to himself. Andrea was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘I wish I could smoke. This would be the perfect time.’
‘Andrea, please. I’ve only got twenty minutes with you.’
‘Oh Jack, I know, I’m sorry. But what can I say? I’m dead, I died, I was killed. And of course I couldn’t tell you. Because what would I have been then? So much code on a server.’
[Oi! What’s wrong with being code?]
‘But why get in touch at all?’ Jack asked, ignoring Fist.
Andrea half-smiled. ‘You should have seen how she remembered you, Jack. It was so different from Harry. So private, so intimate. Even after you’d gone. She kept it all in a little secret place, so close to her heart, and she went back to it again and again.’
Jack sighed, at once touched and saddened. ‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘But I still don’t understand why you came and found me. Why you tricked me.’
‘Oh Jack.’ She turned the dark void beneath her hood to face him, and raised a hand to cup his face. He nerved himself to look back as directly, but when he did the shadows hid her white bone face. ‘I have all her memories,’ she told him. ‘I am her memories. So I missed you. I thought about you all the time. But I’d never even talked to you.’ There was such loss in her voice. Her hand drifted gently across his cheek. He felt the slightest of breezes, as if tiny feathers were flickering against his skin. ‘I thought you’d never come back to Station. I wanted to see how the war had changed you. To be as close to you as she’d been, when everything was so different. And then you found out about Fist’s licence, and you needed support, and I could give it.’ She let her hand drop. ‘I know all about coming to terms with death. And now, here we are.’
Jack wished he could take her hand in his. It was so strange to find himself moved by a ghost.
[ Time’s a-passing, lover boy.]
[ It always is.]
‘Is the puppet here too?’ she asked, breaking the silence.
‘Yes,’ replied Jack. ‘But he’s not very happy about it.’ [ Too bloody right!] interrupted Fist. ‘He’s hiding in the back of my head,’ continued Jack. ‘But I might be able to get him out, if you want to meet him.’
‘No,’ replied Andrea. ‘If he doesn’t want to – let’s just let him be.’
[ Thank the gods. Wake me up when you’re done with the nostalgia and we can get the fuck out of here.]
Jack was silent for a moment. He’d shared so much with this woman, who both was and was not the Andrea of his past. Her mails – pages long, coming every few days, in response to his own equally lengthy letters – had given him so much strength.
‘How did you manage to write to me?’ he asked.
‘Gods,’ she responded, shifting. ‘Straight to the practical.’
‘You shouldn’t have been able to.’
She laughed joylessly. Jack imagined a sad half-smile, then remembered the cold, hard skull that the shadows hid from him. ‘I know,’ she replied. ‘That’s another reason why I didn’t want you to come and see me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s because of Harry. He’s been reborn too. But he came back as something new.’
‘He’s not a fetch?’
‘No. He’s something very different. After he died they tried to cage him. They did that to a lot of fetches, the ones made from people who’d helped the Totality. But he broke out.’
‘They thought he was a terrorist?’
‘Harry?’ She laughed. ‘Dear lords no. But he was going to damage the Pantheon. He reopened the Bjorn Penderville murder case just before they shot him.’
‘Proof of Pantheon criminality.’
‘I always thought he’d left it behind him, one of the ones that got away. But one day he came in furious, said he’d been stitched up, that he needed to know who Penderville had been working for to hit back. Next day he put the paperwork through to make it official.’
‘You’re sure there was a connection?’
‘We were both killed that night.’
‘Shit.’
‘He talks about it often. He’s found out a lot more about the case since he died. You remember Aud Yamata? The dock worker who was the last person at the crime scene before the shooting?’
‘The one with the cast-iron alibi?’
‘That you thought killed Penderville. You nearly had her and the man that managed the Panther Czar and their Pantheon backer. So when Harry went back to the files, they acted. And’ – Andrea made a gun shape with her hand, cocked to fire – ‘Boom.’ Her thumb came down like a hammer on a bullet.
‘But how does that mean you could write to me?’
‘Harry needed someone to talk to. He trusts me. So once he’d been back for a bit, he started summoning me. He helped me disable my kill switch, so I don’t have to go back to the Coffin Drives any more. I pulled myself together then I got in touch with you.’
‘Fuck, Andrea, I’m sorry. I thought it was just my life the Pantheon had screwed up. Have you told anyone about all this?’
‘I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. That’s why I didn’t want you to find me. People mustn’t even think you might be digging into this. You have so little time left. I don’t want whoever killed us taking any of it away from you.’
‘What about Harry? Can’t he go to InSec?’
‘He’s taken it as far as he can on our own, but he doesn’t trust them. He doesn’t like to admit it but he’s very vulnerable. I am too.’
‘Then why even tell me all this?’
‘You’ve meant so much to me. You still do. Part of me’s so happy that you found me tonight. So I decided that I wouldn’t hide anything from you. Not any more.’
The moment froze Jack. Andrea shimmered in front of him, a pattern of memories made almost real. He wanted to touch and hold her, to kiss her, but there was nothing physical left to embrace. And overlaid on that need was grief and loss for, despite her presence before him, the woman he’d loved was dead.
It was impossible to know what to say.
Andrea broke the silence. ‘I’m getting a warning. Our time’s nearly up.’
‘How much more?’
‘A minute or so.’ She leant forward, her hand on his knee, the darkness that hid her face so close to his. ‘I really don’t want you to get involved, Jack. Harry and I were killed, and you’ve lost seven years of your life. That’s enough.’
‘I’m going to die soon anyway. And nobody needs to know you’re part of it.’
‘No, Jack. Nothing good can come of taking on the Pantheon. I want you to patch things up with your parents and then let go in peace.’
‘I thought I’d had enough of taking sides.’
‘You did the right thing stepping away from the Soft War. Step away from all this, too.’
She put a finger to his lips. He was sure he could feel it. ‘I love you, Jack,’ she said. ‘But we’ve had our time together. I’m sorry I can’t see you again, but it’s best for us all.
‘Andrea, I—’
‘Goodbye, Jack.’
And then she was gone.
[She’s right,] snapped Fist. [ It’s too dangerous. Stay out of it.]
[Didn’t you want to take on a god?]
[ Not with both hands tied behind my back.]
It took a while for Jack to recover himself. He heard Andrea’s second set begin, but he couldn’t bring himself to go out and watch. Seeing her perform would have broken him. At last the music ended.
As he passed back through the club, Jack noticed that East was sat on the lap of the man who’d passed through her, kissing him ferociously. She’d let her disguise slip and was now recognisably herself. The man’s girlfriend looked on in awe. Jack wondered what great transfiguration she was witnessing. Fireworks would be happening onweave. East’s blessings were always generous. The man would be forever changed, his weave presence suddenly more elegant, more chic, more watched and thus more real than any of those around him. New choices would open up for him. The girlfriend would soon find herself alone.
Others were starting to understand the true nature of the visitation. A crowd was gathering. East reached down, fumbling to unzip the man’s flies.
[ That’s the gods for you,] said Fist, [all appetite.]
In that moment, Jack decided. [ I’m going to find out which one of them did this to us,] he said, [and I’m going to bring the fucker down.]
Fist swore all the way home. Once they were back in their room, Jack tried to talk to him. At first the puppet refused to even listen, sticking his fingers in his ears and chanting gobbledegook. At last he began to calm down. Jack tried again.
[ It’s simple,] he explained. [ We go to the Panther Czar, you break into their local network, we copy all their records, that’s it. We should be able to do it from the club’s public areas. We might not even need to go in.]
[ But what if someone recognises you?]
[ I was InSec’s secret weapon. They kept me hidden away. I’ve never been anywhere near the Panther Czar.]
Fist only really started to come round when he realised just how hard finding out who was behind Akhmatov’s more questionable activities would be.
[ It’ll take a few weeks to go through the data, Fist. Perhaps even longer.]
[ We really won’t need to leave the hotel?]
[ Hardly at all. There’s just food. And my dad. That’ll be it.]
[Oo, it’ll keep you right out of trouble!]
And there was a little reverse psychology, too.
[Of course, getting into their core commercial servers won’t be easy. They’ll be very heavily shielded.]
[Cracking some shitty little nightclub’s security? A challenge? You are joking, Jack.]
[ If you thought you couldn’t do it I’d completely understand.]
[Dear gods, remember what I am.]
[As if I could forget.]
[ Just get me close to them, I’ll fuck ’em in the arse, we’re done. They won’t even know I’ve been in there.]
The discussion left Jack exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep. At last he entered a liminal state, somewhere between waking and dreaming. Lying on his side he watched Fist manifest, then tiptoe out into the middle of the room. The puppet clearly thought Jack was out cold. The window opened beneath him, a black pool glistening with stars. He looked down, then over at his puppeteer.
‘Little sleepy boy,’ he whispered, ‘soon be sleeping all the time. Soon be sleeping all the time!’ He cackled quietly and wrapped his short arms around himself in a strange little hug, shaking with silent laughter. Then he leapt up and started to throw himself around the room. His limbs spun as he wheeled and pranced across the floor, the walls, even the ceiling, hissing a song to himself that would rattle in Jack’s head for days.
‘Soon be king, soon be king, soon he’ll sleep and I’ll be king. Even Stookie Bill will bow, even Stookie Bill will bow!’
That was a name Jack hadn’t heard since he’d been deep in the Soft War. Stookie Bill was a twentieth-century ventriloquist’s dummy. Humanity’s first ever television signal had encoded his image. When Fist’s fellow puppets found this out, they’d been unbearably excited. Their virtual ancestor became an obsession, almost an object of worship. ‘Simple-minded idiots,’ Fist had commented. But the cult of Stookie Bill had clearly had an impact on him, too.
Jack shuddered. He didn’t want to let Fist know he was aware of this jarring moment of triumph. He pretended to grunt and then rolled over, so at least he didn’t have to see any more of it. He reminded himself that there was no escaping Fist, that the only alternative to working so hard to have a tolerable relationship with him was dark and painful, and would break the possibility of finding any sort of peace before the end came. And of course the puppet was a powerful tool. Jack needed his full cooperation if he was to have any chance of finding out who’d killed Andrea and Harry, and forced him into exile.
At last, sleep took him, but Fist’s glossy wooden face haunted his dreams. The puppet’s false, grinning mouth clacked out soft, determined words. ‘Soon be king’ alternated with ‘soon be mine’, the two phrases chasing Jack through the night until his alarm rang and shook him back to wakefulness. Fist was perched on the end of the bed, watching. [Quite the disturbed night,] he said, his thin voice piping against the alarm’s harsh beeping. This time Jack did snatch at him and wall him up in darkness.
He waited until late evening to set out for the Panther Czar. Docklands’ streets were pretty much deserted. Pedestrian workers had long since hustled themselves away from offices and factories. A buggy whined by, its electric motors straining at the weight of a trailer piled high with scrap metal. As he walked, Jack looked up at the Spine. He imagined Grey’s hooded raven, regretting that he wasn’t able to see it. He remembered hearing about Grey’s fall. The strange, vindictive joy that had filled him then pulsed through him once again. Perhaps soon he’d help bring down another god. He smiled to himself.
After about three quarters of an hour they reached the Panther Czar.
[So this hovelbox belongs to Pierre Ilich Akhmatov? The man who plots with the Pantheon? Fuck’s sake, Jack, if you can judge a man by his enemies you really did hit rock bottom.]
The club was just across the road from them. It was a long, low warehouse, constructed from fluorescent yellow plastic sheeting. Words had been roughly hand-painted above a single pair of red double doors: ‘Panther Czar’. Teens and twenty-somethings jostled each other in a long queue, dressed in more or less artfully ragged weavewear. Some was noticeably high quality, flagging up modish Homelanders who were self-consciously slumming it. Several smartly dressed, thick-necked gentlemen kept the peace at the doors.
[ Why didn’t you just raid the place?]
[ We were setting it up when they sent me out-system. They needed me to finish making the case for it. That was a big reason why it never happened.]
[Ooo – get you, Mr Important!]
Jack waited for another buggy to pass, then started across the road to join the queue. Fist hung in the air for a second before bouncing after him, floating along like a children’s balloon.
[Can you feel any of their core systems yet?]
[ No. We need to get closer. Where the action is!]
Fist’s voice was a gleeful, triumphant cackle. Jack wondered how far he could trust him. The little man was becoming more capricious as the change rushed towards them.
[ Joining the crowds! Partying! My kind of night!] Fist chirped. [Champagne and oysters!]
[ Remember it’s business, not pleasure.]
They joined the back of the queue. Jack wasn’t too much older than the other clubbers. Most were wasted on drink or drugs. The club’s weave presence entranced them. ‘Oh, the panthers are beautiful!’ sighed a girl just ahead, her fingers kneading invisible fur.
[ We’ve hit their security perimeter,] said Fist, suddenly more serious. A silence opened in Jack’s mind as Fist concentrated. [Let’s start by pretending we’re one of these bouncers. And ping the system for a headcount …] More silence, filled with thought. Then Fist yawned. [ This is far too easy.]
[Don’t be complacent.]
[Complacent? The only real challenge is staying awake. Anyway, there’s a couple of hundred punters in there and about twenty staff. Almost all on the ground floor and in the basement. Just one person upstairs.]
[Could be Akhmatov.]
[ Without any guards? I’m meant to be the one with the wooden head.]
[Can you get what we need from out here?]
[ No. The core commercial systems are on the first floor. They’ve kept them off the main club network. We need to be closer.]
[Makes sense. Half the kids in there would be hacking them for free drinks otherwise.]
The queue moved on. The club loomed above them, glistening dully in the spinelight glare. It was the colour of a cheap hangover. Every time the red doors opened to let more punters in, bass rhythms thumped out.
[Almost there,] said Fist. [ Not too fussy about who they let in.] Jack reached into his pocket and fingered the InSec card. [Let’s hope you don’t get recognised, Jack. Wouldn’t want you getting bounced. Protect the meat!]
Jack tried to watch the door staff without looking at them too directly. None of them were paying him any sort of attention. The camera cluster above the door glanced at him and looked away. Another minute or so, and they were through the red double doors. The bouncer didn’t want to know why he was offweave. ‘Just don’t start anything,’ he said. The girl in the ticket booth took Jack’s money without comment.
[ I told you it’d be all right,] he said casually, careful not to let Fist know just how relieved he was. [Good thing it’s not one of Akhmatov’s classier joints.]
They were in a black-painted corridor that smelt of cheap alcohol and cheaper drugs. Clubbers bustled past them and pushed through another pair of double doors. The corridor exploded with light. Music roared, higher frequency noise rounding out the simple repetitive beats they’d heard outside.
[
THAT’LL BE THE DANCEFLOOR
, THEN
,] screamed Fist. [
NO CHARLESTON, DAMMIT!
]
[
NO NEED TO SHOUT
, JUST NEEDS A BI
T of dynamic recalibration. There, that’s it.]
Jack started towards the doors. A soft but definite stickiness pulled at every step.
[Akhmatov certainly doesn’t waste any money on keeping his carpets clean,] said Fist.
[ Who’s around us?] said Jack. [Any more security?]
[ No, the closest is the other side of the main dance floor. There’s some virtual muscle too, but we don’t need to worry about that.]
[And the person on the first floor?]
[ Hasn’t moved.]
[ I think it could be him. Now, let’s get close to those servers.]
The main dance floor was a ferocious transmedia vortex. Jack felt overwhelmed, and he was offweave and undrugged. An anonymity of clubbers leapt and bounced around him, gurning faces and shaking bodies blurring into one ecstatic mass. By the time he’d pushed halfway across the room he was sweating hard. Elbows hit his face and torso. Once they’d been all round the ground floor he was soaked and covered in small bruises.
[Still no joy, Fist?]
[Signal’s too weak.]
[ For fuck’s sake.]
They kept trying for about half an hour. Jack started to wonder how honest Fist was being. He remembered the previous night’s triumphant dance. Fist hadn’t seemed like someone who’d just agreed to something dangerous. Rather, he’d come across as someone celebrating the avoidance of any risk at all.
[ Fuck this,] Jack said. [ We’re not getting close enough down here. We’re going upstairs.]
Fist laughed. [ Well, I’m glad you’ve kept your sense of humour, Jack. We’ve done our best, this hasn’t worked, what a terrible shame. We should leave now.]
Jack set off for a set of stairs he’d spotted earlier. They were roped off and marked ‘Private’.
[ Think you’ve got turned round, Jack. The exit’s over there.]
[ I know exactly where I’m going.]
[Come on now, Jackie boy, a joke’s a joke.]
Jack shouldered his way through some particularly energetic dancers. One of them shouted at him, but the words were inaudible.
[ You really mean it, don’t you? You’re a lunatic, Jack. You’ll get yourself beaten up. At best.]
[ Just like when some of the prison’s biggest thugs came looking for me after your dodgy card games. It won’t be any worse than that.]
[ But I didn’t know I’d be taking over then!]
They were off the dance floor and into the corridor. Fist sulked in silence as Jack climbed the stairs. Halfway up, there was a landing.
[ Think about Andrea!] wailed Fist. [ If you get caught, they’ll go after her too.]
[ We kept our relationship secret. There’s nothing to connect us. She’s perfectly safe, whatever happens.]
A disinfectant reek stung Jack’s nose. There were two doors marked with little barcodes, one shaped like a man, another like a woman. A third door had a little combination keypad by its handle.
[Physical security! There’s nothing I can do about that. We can stop playing at burglars and leave.]
[ Read one of the staff. Get me the combination.]
[ They might pick me up. That could be dangerous.]
[ They definitely will do if I go down and tell them what we’re up to here. Which I will do if you don’t start helping me now. Do it, Fist, or I’ll get the shit kicked out of us both.]
Fist swore and closed his eyes. His body shook slightly. Jack imagined his consciousness skipping from bouncer to bar staff to DJ, brushing against their virtual selves, looking for cracks to seep into.
Fist’s eyes flicked back open.
[ I’m only helping you to get in so we can get out as quickly as possible.]
[ Yes.]
[ I really don’t think you should be doing this.]
[ There’s only one person up there. And we’ll avoid him. Now what’s the number?]
[2754.]
[ That was nice and easy, wasn’t it?]
[ Fuck off.]
They stepped through the door and into luxury.
[Got a signal?] said Jack.
[Getting stronger.]
[Go to work.]
The corridor was padded with pale, thick carpets. Soft uplights illuminated pastel walls, studded with glyphs. Jack wondered about the onweave art that the glyphs represented. When Jack first started investigating Akhmatov’s business affairs, he’d watched interviews with a few young Station artists. Akhmatov had a habit of arriving at their studios unannounced and paying substantial amounts for one or two pieces of their best work. None of them had been either able or willing to give much information away about their patron. Akhmatov’s interest made sure that these stylish young people patronised his more exclusive events, lending them an air of cutting edge excitement that made them some of the most popular nights in Docklands. They’d even attracted a regular Homelands clientele.
No doubt these glyphs pleasured onweave viewers with sounds and visuals from the servers of today’s bright young things. No doubt Akhmatov’s art patronage still helped keep his venues at the cutting edge of fashion. And of course, such patronage would please East. As maker and breaker of Station fashion, her interest and indulgence were essential to the success of Akhmatov’s business. Jack wondered briefly if she was the Pantheon member whose influence he’d made out in the Panther Czar’s accounts. She’d certainly always been close to Grey.