‘Can I go onweave?’
‘No overlay, no commerce, no search, no social. Just mail and fetch access, to talk with your loved ones.’
[ That’ll make finding Andrea a bit tricky!] giggled Fist. [ No distractions, then. Just a lovely, lovely family reunion. Your living dad and your dear dead mum.]
‘InSec’s made a formal request for an interview. Assistant Commissioner Lestak’s sending someone to pick you up from our landing pad tomorrow morning. The meeting is a condition of your parole. If you don’t attend, you’ll be found and imprisoned.’
He led Jack down empty corridors into a lift. It shuddered and began to fall. The official gave Jack a look of deep contempt. ‘If it was down to me I’d put you out of an airlock, and let you freeze with your fucking terrorist friends,’ he hissed.
‘The Totality have always denied attacking the moon,’ replied Jack. ‘They blamed a rogue mind, acting alone. I believe them. And the Pantheon were looking for revenge, not justice.’
The lift doors opened. The official shoved Jack out. ‘Now fuck off.’ There was an empty atrium and a midnight street. Tiredness hit Jack harder than any interrogation ever could. Suddenly all he wanted to do was find a room and sleep, and never wake to see the dawn. He thought of Andrea, sighed, and then stepped out into the darkness of Station.
Chapter 2
It was night and the spinelights were dim. Jack left Customs House and set off into Docklands down a road the colour of rust, turning the collar of his coat up against the rain. He’d walked these streets before, but never offweave. Calle Agua was almost as he remembered it, a canyon of four- or five-storey office blocks owned by either Sandal or Kingdom. Each was carved out of age-scarred iron.
Kingdom’s visuals were always minimal. As the architect of humanity’s presence in the Solar System he liked physical structure, the heart of his power, to be exposed. So, the iron would have been left to show through the weave. Sandal’s offices would have been glossed with an overlay of smiling faces and positive thoughts. He was responsible for cargo, docks and related transport logistics. He liked to show how important he was to the smooth movement of goods and services, and so to general human happiness.
And of course six Pantheon icons would be watching over Docklands from far above, clustered around the Spine and backlit by spinelight. Five of them would be fully aware, tending visibly to their enclosed world.
Only Grey’s raven would be blinded and hobbled. Station’s master corporate strategist had been silenced for years.
Being offweave, Jack could see none of this.
[ I’m sure you’re not missing anything,] said Fist, his thin, high voice singing in Jack’s mind. The little puppet had run a dozen paces ahead. The rain was falling through him. He looked back at Jack, varnished eyes gleaming excitedly out of a glossy painted face. [Come on!] he shouted. Then he clapped his wooden hands together twice and disappeared beneath the elevated rails that crossed the end of Calle Agua. There was something almost innocent about his excitement. As Jack followed him beneath the single high arch that supported the bridge, carefully avoiding puddles, a train bumped and swayed over it. Light flashed down, showing buildings that were already a little lower and less imposing. He turned towards Hong Se De Market. Fist was standing on the pavement just ahead of him, staring at a figure that was looking up at a warehouse.
[Look at that, Jack! A Totality biped. He’s far from home.]
[ If he’s identifying as male, he is. Otherwise, she is.]
[Pedant. What’s it up to?]
The rain shimmered off the biped’s dark poncho. It was about the height of an average human. After a few seconds it turned away from the warehouse and moved down the street, stopping when it was in front of the next building. As its head moved to stare upwards again, its hood slipped. It had no face. Light glowed out of a soft blank oval, tinting the wet night purple.
Fist was all hungry fascination. [ If I wasn’t caged,] he muttered. Jack crossed the road to pass the biped. Fist ran after him. [Snowflakes out there, squishies in here,] he panted. [ I don’t know what things have come to. No wonder your customs friend was so unhappy!]
[Don’t call them squishies, Fist.]
[ I don’t see why not. I don’t mind being called a puppet.]
As they approached the market, gloomy metal facades gave way to ramshackle assemblages of plastic, tin and canvas, barely holding together as the rain lashed them.
[Docklands’ biggest market? It’s a dump.]
[ It’s better when you’re onweave.]
Jack remembered dancing words hanging in midair, enticing passersby into market booths. Ghostly data sprites touched at potential customers with viewer-appropriate fingers, whispered viewer-appropriate promises, displayed viewer-appropriate genitalia and hinted at viewer-appropriate wonders – on sale NOW! By contrast, reality was sodden and heavy, a failure to be anything but its tarnished, non-negotiable self.
The booths were all closed, but some of their weave systems had been left running, beaming content into the darkness. There were men and women – sometimes in groups, sometimes alone. They all stood rapt, dreams dancing like whispers around them.
[Don’t let any of them see you.]
[ I’d give them such a scare,] cackled Fist. [ I wonder if they’re watching the same thing as the squishy?]
[ I doubt it. The Totality aren’t weave fans.]
[Look at that fellow!]
An old man was standing in front of a particularly rundown group of stalls, smiling beatifically at the rain. One hand hung at his side. The other was inside his trousers, tugging at himself. There was a dark hole in the centre of his face where his nose had fallen in. Jack started. He’d forgotten how brutally sweat could degrade its users. Nobody else was reacting to the sweathead. Their weaveware would be actively masking his presence.
Jack began to walk more quickly. Hunger bit, intensifying the cold and the wet. Memories of Andrea haunted him, more persistent than any sprite. She’d loved hunting through the market for bargains. He so wanted to make new moments with her, sharded with fresh joy. He’d worked so hard to make sure that rage and bitterness wouldn’t corrode them. He pulled his coat closer around himself and shivered. There was so little time left. Another train hummed by, slowing for Hong Se De station.
The streets emptied as they left the market behind and neared the Wound. Jack let its deeper, more impersonal history distract him from Andrea’s absence. Centuries ago, a stray asteroid had gouged into Homeland’s outer skin. The district whose streets and buildings sat just over the damaged area, hugging Homeland’s curved interior, had been renamed to commemorate the event. Kingdom’s architects had built down into the gash, creating buildings whose lower floors saw out through it into space. The Wound attracted people who wanted that kind of view. It became popular with the dockers who worked on the edge of the void, and the spacers who spent their lives travelling through it. Few of them would be out at this time of night. Most were sleeping, shattered by the brute physicality of their working lives. There was little need for nightlife in the neighbourhood.
Fist announced that he was bored. He started pulling himself back into Jack’s mind. [ Find us a hotel,] Jack told him. [ Then we’ll start looking for Andrea.]
[ How?]
[ We’ll search.]
[ I can’t go onweave yet. I haven’t broken all the security glyphs.]
[Shit. How long till you’ve got full access?]
[Perhaps a week, probably two. This fucking cage.]
They kept walking. After a few minutes a Twins weave sigil announced a café. Soft light spilled out of its window, turning falling raindrops into streaks of fire. A ventilator whirred, filling the cold night with the hot, beckoning reek of frying oil. Jack pushed through the door, hoping for food and help with a weave-search.