Fractions (48 page)

‘Do you want me to stay?'

‘Aye, well, no.' She passed me the charred cardboard; I sipped, winced and held it under the tap. ‘Ah mean, Ah wid, but Ah c'n see ye fancy Annette.'

‘Wish she could. Wish I'd told her.'

‘Och, she knows. Ah think she's feart. Yir so – intense.'

‘Intense? Moi? You mean, not like my pal Dave Fight-The-Good-Fight Reid? Likes his easy charm with the labour theory of value, is that it?'

Sheena grinned. ‘Yir no far wrong. See, if he cares enough whit she thinks tae argue wi her, he cannae jist be interested in gettin aff wi her.'

The kettle sang. I gazed at the fluorescent strip above the worktop and squeezed my eyes. Sheena's weight shifted away and she busied herself with the mugs. I sighed in the sudden aroma.

‘So what am I doing that makes you think I'm coming on too strong? I've hardly had a chance to say a word to her all bloody evening.'

‘Dead right,' Sheena said. ‘Ye talk tae me, and ye say things tae Dave, and aw the time ye look at Annette and smile at whitever she says.'

‘I do not!'

She looked me in the eye.

‘All right,' I admitted. ‘Maybe I do. I'm sorry. Must seem a bit rude.'

‘It does an aw,' she said. ‘Still, I'm no blamin you. I started the whole wee game. C'me oan, see's a hand wi they mugs.'

When I'd finished the coffee I stood up. Dave and Annette were sitting on the floor, leaning against the side of the bed. Dave's arm was across Annette's shoulders.

‘See you, guys.'

‘See ya,' Dave said.

‘Goodnight,' Annette said. I tried to read her narrowed eyes, to gloss a twinkle or a wink. She looked down.

Sheena kissed me goodnight at the door, with a warmth as sudden and unexpected as her kissed hello.

‘Sure?' I tried to curve my lips to a mischievous grin.

‘Sure.' She pushed my shoulders, holding. ‘Yir a nice man, but let's no make our lives any mair complicated than they are.'

‘Okay, Sheena. Goodnight. See you again.'

‘Scram!' she smiled, and closed the door.

Tiles to chest-level, whitewash, polished balustrade. Glasgow working-class tenement respectability, not like the student slum I inhabited. I remembered something. I turned back to the door and squatted in front of it, pushed back the sprung brass flap of the letter-box.

‘Dave!' I shouted.

‘What?' came faint and distant.

‘After
Charles the Second
!' I yelled. ‘Patron of the Royal Society!'

 

A cloud had descended on the city while I'd been in the flat. At the junction of Great Western Road and Byres Road I waited at a crossing. Heels clicked up behind me, stopped beside me. A girl in a fur coat. She turned, smiling, and asked, ‘How do the lights –? Oh, I see.' Voice like a warm hand, English upper-class accent. The fur and her hair glittered with beads of moisture. She was going somewhere she wanted to be, confident no-one would dare lay a finger on her: a beautiful animal, perfectly adapted, feral.

‘Terrible fog, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘Never seen one like it in Glasgow.'

The lights changed. We crossed, our paths diverging. She went down Byres Road, to that place where she wanted to be, and I walked along Great Western Road, back to my room.

It's raining on New Mars. This is a machine-made miracle, the work of rare devices far away, and of the insensate, botanic power of their countless offspring which turn metal petals to focus faint solar radiation on chunks of dirty ice, flaring their surface volatiles to send them tumbling sunwards, nudged and guided in a precisely calculated trajectory that years later takes them into an atmosphere just thick enough to catch them and carry them down; where with luck they fall as rain and not as fire, and which in any case each bolide's passage leaves marginally better fitted to catch and contain the next.

But to Dee, out in the wet night, it's commonplace, and a drag. For about half an hour she's had to keep the image-intensifiers at full blast, and her eyes are hurting. Her ears, too: sonar ping off wet walls a metre or so away on either side induces an enclosing sense of pressure. At the same time turning it down or off would strain her even more. So it's with relief and relaxation that she sees the narrow waterway open out on a much wider and brighter canal.

‘Ring Canal,' Tamara indicates as she turns her little craft to the right. Dee, craning her head and looking fore and aft, can see no curvature. Tall, narrow houses – rather than storage blocks and industrial units – overlook this canal, and lights are strung above its banks. Ahead, a rapidly closing hundred metres away, the Ring Canal itself opens out, and through the gap between the buildings at the end Dee sees what looks and sounds like a bonfire: a blaze of light, a roar of noise.

At the confluence, the Ring Canal separates to left and right, curving to a visible ring whose diameter Dee estimates as three hundred metres. More of the tall houses huddle around it, and within it there's a flat island, accessible from the surrounding circular way by bridges. This central island is covered with corrugated-iron huts and fabric booths and shacks, among which many people are loudly busy. The light comes from overhead floods, and from each individual booth's contribution of spotlights, fluorescent tubing, strobe, fairy-light cable, and fibre-optic.

Tamara takes another right and throttles back the engine, coasting along the outer bank, silent amid the din of music and commerce, both competitive.

‘What's going on here?' Dee asks.

Tamara spares her a glance. ‘Fi'day evening in Circle Square.'

A tiny jetty under a narrow wrought-iron bridge, with a set of steps attached. Tamara moors the boat and motions to Dee to climb the steps. She waits on the shoreward side of the bridge and helps Tamara to haul up the bag. The coming and going of people – couples, groups, kids dodging and weaving between legs and wheels, youths on or in vehicles built to go fast and moving slow, and things that might be vehicles except they have no riders – almost pushes her back off.

‘Right,' says Tamara, ‘time to make you legal.'

She sets off along the bridge, Dee close behind her – one person in the crowd who has no difficulty getting through.

Most of the stalls around the circumference of the island are locked up, but still lit-up. The ones that aren't are selling drinks and snacks. The main action is going on towards the hub, in a melée of fairground attractions, discos and rock concerts. Dee notices a stage with a band that looks and sounds just like Metal Petal, this week's hit at every uptown thrash. A quick visual zoom and aural analysis reveals that they
are
Metal Petal. (Dee's heard about copyright, but it's one of those things she doesn't quite believe, a song of distant Earth.)

Tamara stops in front of a thing like a big vending-machine between two stalls. It's covered with dust and rust. It has a black window at the top and a speaker grille and a channel down one side through which Tamara swipes a card. Nothing happens.

‘Hey!' she shouts. She bangs the side with her fist, making a hollow boom. ‘
Fucking
IBM,' she says to no-one in particular.

Lights come on behind the dark window.

‘Invisible Hand Legal Services,' says the machine, in a voice like God in an old movie. ‘How can I help you?'

‘Register an autonomy claim for an abandoned machine,' Tamara says, catching Dee's wrist and pressing her palm against the window.

‘Both hands please,' says the machine. ‘Both eyes.'

Dee spreads her fingers against the glass and peers in, seeing her own reflection and bright, moving sparks of light.

‘How do you wish the claim to be defended?'

‘I'll defend it!' Dee says with a sudden surge of Self-ish passion.

‘By the principal,' Tamara adds gravely. ‘And by me, my affiliates and by back-up if requested.'

‘Very well. Noted and posted.'

The lights go out. Tamara's still holding Dee's wrist, and she swings her around and grabs the other…then lets go, and clasps hands instead. Dee looks at Tamara's eyes and sees her own reflection and the speeding, spinning lights behind her, the doubled fair.

‘Okay gal,' Tamara yells. ‘That's you with a gang on your side! That's as free as it gets! Give or take…Later for that! Right now –' she twirls to face the thrumming hub of the island market ‘– let's
party
!'

 

‘You're telling me,' Wilde said incredulously to the robot, ‘that
Reid
is
here
?'

‘Yes,' said the robot. ‘Why should that surprise you? Is it more remarkable than your being here?'

Wilde grinned at it sourly. He pushed away his empty plate and sipped at his beer. He shook his head.

‘Reid was one of the last people I saw,' he said. ‘For all I know, it may have been him who had me killed. And as far as I'm concerned, it happened
today.
Christ. I keep expecting to wake up.'

‘You have woken up,' the robot said. ‘You can expect some emotional reaction as your mind adjusts to your situation.'

‘I suppose so.' A bleakness belying his apparent age settled on Wilde's countenance. ‘It has already. So tell me, machine. I'm here, and you say Reid's here. What about other people I knew? What about Annette?'

‘Annette,' the machine said carefully, ‘is among the dead. Whether her mind as well as her genotype has been preserved I don't know, but there may be grounds for hope.'

‘Because of the clone?'

‘Yes.'

‘I must find her, and find out.'

‘You can find out without finding her,' said the machine. ‘It's…I'll explain tomorrow.'

‘Why not now?'

‘Trouble,' the machine said. ‘Don't turn around until you hear something.'

Wilde set down his glass. His shoulders began to hunch.

‘Relax,' said the machine.

The doors of the pub banged open and the music stopped. Conversations ran on for a few seconds and then trailed off into the spreading silence. Everybody turned around.

Two men stood in the doorway. They were wearing loose-cut, sharp-creased business suits, over open-necked shirts, over tee-shirts. Their hair was as shiny as their shoes, and their knuckles flashed with studded stones. One of the men perfunctorily held up a card showing a mug-shot of himself and a grey block of small print. The other took from a jacket-pocket a crumpled ball of flat material. He grasped a corner of it and shook it out. With a final flick of his wrist he snapped it to a glossy, full-colour, high-res poster depicting the dark-haired woman who had fled from Wilde and the robot.

‘Anybody seen her?' he demanded.

The pub's customers could still be approximately differentiated into two groups, the men at the bar and the girls at the tables, although some mingling had begun. A little flurry of giggles and gasps came from the women, and a murmur of grunts and slightly shifted seats and glasses from the men. Anyone who looked about to say something would glance at the men at the bar, and find someone else to look at, something else to say.

Within half a minute everybody was talking again; the men at the bar had turned back to watching the television, where a commentator was interviewing a team-leader behind whom bodies were being stretchered from an arena. The only person still looking directly at the repossession men was Wilde. The one holding the picture strolled over; the other followed, fondling a revolver-butt with a look of distant pleasure.

The man with the picture looked down at Wilde and smiled, showing perfect but strangely shaped incisors, long canines. Perfumed fumes poured off him like sweat.

‘Well,' he said, ‘you look interested. Big reward, you know.'

Wilde looked up reluctantly from the picture. He shook his head.

‘She reminds me of somebody I used to know,' he said. ‘That's all. But I've never seen her here.'

The man glared at him. ‘She's been here,' he said. ‘I can smell it.' He turned his head this way and that, inhaling gently, as if his statement were literally true. The other man gave a sudden gleeful yell and snatched up something from the floor.

He brandished it under Wilde's nose. Wilde recoiled slightly. The robot, leaning between a chair and the table-top, jerked forward a couple of centimetres.

The thing the man was holding was a newspaper.

‘Knew it!' he said. ‘Bloody bolishies! Right, that's it. We know where to look for her!'

Stuffing the newspaper and the poster in their pockets, the two men stalked out through another silence. The doors banged again. The music came back on. The hominid behind the bar looked at Wilde with an expression of deep rue, then shrugged his wide shoulders and spread his broad hands, his long arms comically extended. The shrug completed, he turned away and switched the music back on, louder.

Wilde returned to his meal, and downed his glass of spirits in a gulp that brought tears to his eyes.

‘I still want to speak to her,' he said.

‘If you're concerned about the gynoid,' the machine said, ‘don't worry. If she's with abolitionists she'll be legally and physically safe from repossession, at least for a while. And if she isn't…' It moved the upper joints of its forelimbs in a parody of a shrug. ‘They aren't going to harm her. Just fix a programming error. It's not important.'

‘Because she's just a machine, right?'

‘Right.'

‘Well, it may be tactless to point this out, but so are you.'

‘Of course,' the machine said. ‘But
I'm
human-equivalent, and
she
's a sex-toy. Like I said: just a fucking machine.'

 

Surveillance systems? Don't make me smile. Any recording made around the centre of Circle Square is irredeemably corrupted, hacked and patched, spliced and remixed. Even Dee's memories are understandably giddy: Soldier and Spy just shut off in disgust, leaving only simple reflexes on the job. Humans pass drugs from hand to hand, machines pass plugs. The music has amplitudes and electronic undertow that work to the same effect. Dee sees Tamara talking to a tall fighting man with an industrial arm, finds herself talking to a spidery gadget with airbrushes and a single mind. It thinks, and can talk, of nothing but murals. It knows about concrete surfaces and the properties of paint and the physics of aerosols. It tells her about them, at considerable length.

She could have listened to it all night. She's a good listener. But the artist sees a builder, and without an excuse or goodbye skitters away through the crowd to chat it up.

Tamara catches Dee's elbow and stares after the machine. Then she turns and Dee can, as they say, see the wheels going round as the speech centres overcome intoxication.

Eventually the words break through.

‘
Not
human equivalent!'

‘I've talked to worse men,' Dee says.

 

Dee's mindlessly bopping – this is a Self-specific skill – when she notices the man she's bopping opposite, who's moving as if he presumes he's dancing with her. Her gaze moves up from his shiny leather fake-plastic shoes to the trousers and jacket of his fancy but unstylish suit, past the miasma of disgusting scent rising from the sweat-stained tee-shirt neckline inside the open-necked shirt-collar to his –

face
!

– and the shock of recognising one of the greps, the repossession men, sends an adrenaline jolt that rouses Soldier. Everything slows, except her. (The music goes from disco to deep industrial dub.) A quick glance around sets Surgeon swiftly to work on the tendons and cartilages of her neck and brings back the intelligence that Tamara is writhing sinuously a couple of metres away, her back half-turned, and behind Tamara, sideways on to Dee, is the other grep. His movements and stance are as if he's fucking a virtual image of Tamara a metre or so in front of the real one, but that's just disco-dancing. His gaze doesn't leave the real Tamara for an instant.

She sees the sweat flick from his hair as his head flips. He looks fully occupied for at least the next couple of seconds.

The other grep, the one who's got his eye on her, has definitely noticed Dee's mental shift (that sudden blurred head-movement's a dead giveaway) and his pupils are shrinking to pin-holes even as his eyelids are opening wider. Dee is aware of her pistol as a heavy shape in the soft leather of that silly, cissy bag at her feet, aware of her narrow skirt as
drag
that'll impede the tactically obvious lethal kick.

She could yell, but a yell is nothing in this noise. The only pitch audible above it would be inaudible – to human ears. Her mouth opens, her chest inflates with rib-stressing speed and she lets out an ultrasonic yell she hopes is audible to machines for hundreds of metres around: ‘
Fucking IBM, help
!'

The music stops. Lights flood. People blink and stumble. At the same moment Dee's right hand reaches down, her right foot kicks up behind her – still in a move that could be part of a dance-step – and her high-heeled shoe flies into her hand. She holds it high like a hammer, ready to nail the grep through the eyeball. Recognition of this ripples through the muscles and blood-vessels of his face as the speakers suddenly speak. The voice of the IBM, to Dee's Soldier-speeded senses, now sounds deeper and more menacing than anything in de Mille: