The girl was still frozen, staring at Fist.
‘He’s right,’ whispered Fist, leaning in towards her, his voice soft with barely controlled rage, ‘you really are. RUN!’
At that she broke and was gone.
Jack was leaning over the figure in the doorway.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
‘They took me by surprise.’ The static that clogged the biped’s shout was a little less pronounced at lower volume. ‘The male kicked my voice box,’ it explained as it rolled over. Its head was a blank oval of nanogel. Light indentations represented eyes, nose and mouth. Its neck was a round metal collar. Its attackers had torn a black poncho away from a softly-moulded body. One of its legs was bent awkwardly beneath it. Jack went to help it sit up.
‘What happened?’
‘They jumped me, pulled me in here and started to beat me.’
‘They’ve gone now.’
‘The funny thing – I’m running full diplomatic weaveware. It should have been impossible for them to attack me.’
Fist was floating at Jack’s shoulder. ‘Their weaveports are stunted,’ he said. ‘I had to force them to see me.’
‘Strange,’ said the biped. ‘It was racially motivated, I am sure.’
‘Race?’ said Fist. ‘You’re not a race. You’re machines. Just like me.’
‘Hush, Fist,’ said Jack.
‘I’ve heard of creatures like you,’ said the biped, ‘but I never thought to see one so close.’
‘You should be scared of me.’
‘You’re well caged. And your master is kind.’
‘I know seven hundred different ways to purge your neural net.’
‘I will live on in the Totality as memory. Something like your poor, sad fetches.’
‘Those cripples are nothing to do with me.’
‘Be quiet, Fist,’ said Jack. And then, to the biped, ‘Do you think you can stand up?’
‘Yes.’
Jack put an arm beneath its shoulders and supported it as it tried to rise. It tottered slightly as its leg unfolded and stiffened, then stood firm. ‘That’s better,’ it said. ‘Can you walk?’ Jack asked. It took a couple of experimental steps.
‘Just about.’
‘Then let’s get you home.’
[ This really goes against my programming, Jack,] grumbled Fist as they disappeared from the alleyway, the biped leaning against Jack as they went.
Chapter 8
The biped was also staying in the Wound. ‘There’s less interference there,’ it said. They stumbled back to its hotel in silence. It insisted on buying Jack a drink. He turned down the offer of a whisky. The shabby bar was empty. Music played from exhausted speakers. Each song was a tinny parody of itself, a sketch waiting to be filled in by weave-delivered content.
‘I’m sorry, I have to ask,’ said the biped, once they’d sat down, ‘I thought everyone here was onweave? But those children …’
Its words were clearer than they had been. Repair systems had done their work. The poncho hid its body, but its head was uncovered and glowed gently in the gloom. It was how an alien moon might look, if softly lit by a dying sun. The nanogel it had been carved from was translucent. Jack could make out the bar beyond it, its outlines blurred and made ambiguous as if seen through a badly scuffed lens.
‘I don’t know,’ said Jack. ‘I haven’t been on-Station for seven years. They’d never have slipped off the net back then.’
He tore the top off a sugar sachet and poured it into his coffee, stirring the white powder into the murk with slow, deliberate strokes. The mug warmed his hands when he picked it up. He swigged at the black liquid, letting the heat run into his mouth and down his throat, savouring the hard touch of reality. Because he was offweave, it barely tasted of anything. Fist sang out in his head, [Caffeine this late keeps us both up.] Jack shut him away.
‘And you’re not onweave yourself ?’ asked the biped. Jack didn’t answer. ‘I’m sorry, that was tactless of me.’ Silence grew between them again. ‘Thank you for helping me just now. Not everyone would.’ Jack shrugged. ‘And may I ask one more indelicate question?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘You’re a puppeteer? I hope you don’t mind the word.’
‘I am, yes.’
‘There are hardly any of you left.’
‘There’s only one – me. And two puppets – Fist and Mr Stabs.’
‘Mr Stabs? He doesn’t have a human counterpart?’
‘He did. David Tiamat. But you know what happened to him.’
There was a moment’s silence. The biped stiffened as it accessed the relevant records. ‘I’m sorry,’ it said. ‘It always seemed best to cripple ships, rather than kill their occupants. We assumed he’d be rescued quickly.’
But Tiamat hadn’t been. His ship had drifted alone for too long. Unable to bear the solitude, he’d handed himself fully to Mr Stabs, dying gratefully as the puppet took full possession of both his mind and body. The story had become a favourite with the other puppets, passed between them like a talisman.
‘Your intentions were good,’ said Jack. ‘You can’t be blamed for the Pantheon’s carelessness.’
‘They’ve been careless with you, too. You don’t have long before …’
The biped shifted in his seat and looked down. Jack assumed the movement was meant to communicate awkwardness and pity.
‘Three months until Fist’s licence runs out,’ he said. ‘Then he’ll own my body. Just like Mr Stabs does Tiamat’s.’
Fist cackled in Jack’s mind.
‘You can’t revoke the terms and conditions?’
Jack smiled sadly. ‘Another file you need to access,’ he replied. ‘The removal systems were part of the last puppet management facility, in high orbit around Mars. It held all the puppets that had been stripped out of their puppeteers, and all the systems that extracted and then supported them. It was all vaporised towards the end of the war. The hardware and software designs were lost too. So there’s nowhere I can go to get him taken out of me, and no way of building a new facility to do it.’
‘But why can’t things carry on as they are now?’
‘I don’t own Fist – I just hold a seven-year usage licence for him. When it ends I can’t return him to the Kingdom subsidiary that looked after the puppets, so some pretty stringent penalty clauses kick in. What remains of the company is empowered to seize any or all of my assets, up to his replacement value. Puppets are very sophisticated, so they’re worth a lot. And I’m a homeless, godless traitor, so I’m not. Which means the company gets the only real assets I have left – my body, my mind. And there’s nothing left of the company but Fist. So he’ll own me, unconditionally and absolutely. And as soon as his corporate management systems register that, they’ll move to fully occupy my mind and body.’
‘Can’t Fist stop them?’
‘Not even Kingdom could. It’ll happen automatically. There’s no way of changing that.’ Jack paused for a moment. ‘Not that Fist would want to, of course,’ he finished, unable to hold bitterness out of his voice.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said the biped. ‘And there’s definitely nothing else of the company left?’
‘There were rumours that six unmounted puppet embryos survived, but nobody’s ever found any trace of them. No systems for them to survive on. So there’s nowhere else but Fist to go but,’ and Jack tapped his head, ‘here.’
Fist winked into existence, letting the biped see him too. ‘He’s stuck with me now, squishy!’
‘We’ve talked about this before. Don’t use that word.’
‘Fuck you!’
Jack went to slap Fist, but the puppet was too quick. By the time his hand reached him, Fist had disappeared. ‘I’m sorry,’ Jack said. ‘He can get a bit out of hand.’
From the depths of his mind, a voice echoed up – [ I’ll out of hand you, Jackie boy …]
‘Not an easy time.’
‘No,’ said Jack. ‘Not at all.’