‘Working for InSec is more satisfying than I ever thought it could be.’
‘No doubt,’ replied Jack. ‘I knew Lestak, years ago. You’re young to be working for someone like her.’
‘I passed second in my class at the Academy.’
‘East chose the right path for you, then.’
‘As Grey would have done for you.’
Jack snorted.
‘He was a good patron, once,’ Corazon snapped. ‘He certainly honoured you. You rose as quickly as I’ve done.’
‘And then he exiled me and fell. The Pantheon are far from good, Corazon. They’ll screw you if they need to.’
Corazon’s light, friendly manner frosted over. ‘Grey’s been punished. The rest still put us first.’ There was a moment’s silence, then she continued, ‘I’m with you in an official capacity. Please use my rank when you address me.’
‘I was called to serve in InSec too. Will you do me the same favour, Lieutenant Corazon?’
‘I can if you want me too, Parolee Forster.’
[ Touché, Jack,] giggled Fist. [ I do like this one.]
Corazon’s defence of the gods was so clearly rooted in a very personal sense of gratitude. Jack remembered his own relationship with Grey. The god had done so much more than steer his career. He’d been a mentor and a friend, helping Jack leap the hurdles and manage the pressures that his fast-tracked life created. Jack hadn’t understood that Grey’s very personal attention was a privilege, not a right, until his Soft War posting showed him how quickly and absolutely a god could lose interest in one of his creations.
All of a sudden, shadows took them and they were flying through darkness. They’d entered the hollow interior of the Wart. ‘So they still haven’t blessed this place with spinelights?’ asked Jack.
Corazon’s reply was sharp and impersonal. ‘Kingdom felt that there wasn’t sufficient return on energy deployed. The fusion reactors don’t really need it. Nobody ever visits the ruins. And the industrial zones are lit at ground level.’
As Jack’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw that that was indeed the case. Soft glowing lights patterned the Wart’s floor space, hanging all around the little flyer. Exhaust flares flickered flame orange, or magnesium white. Streetlights made small triangles in the dark, regularly spaced in little clustered networks. A few tower blocks spiked the gloom, their presence defined by thin lines of small, bright windows. Squinting, Jack imagined that he could see tiny figures behind those windows. He sighed. If Fist were fully active, he would have been able to mesh with the weave systems behind every single one, reach into any room he chose to and know everything about everyone within it. It would have made the search for Andrea so much easier.
A light flashed on the flyer’s control panel, blinking in time with a warning tone. ‘Shit,’ muttered Corazon. ‘We’re running late.’ The flyer accelerated, pushing Jack back into his seat. The entrance to Homelands was a small white circle ahead of them. It quickly expanded until it filled the flyer’s windscreen. Suddenly they’d exploded through it and out, and Lieutenant Corazon was pulling the flyer round in a tight curve through the vast skies of Homelands.
The thin silver spar of the Spine stretched out ahead of them to the Sunwall, the great, opaque lens stretched across the rim of Homelands like a skin over a drum. It glowed with soft, golden light, casting the luminous haze that made every Homelands day seem so perfect, lighting a world divided in two by the lazy curves of the River Mèche. Residential complexes, shopping malls and business and science parks clustered on either side of it. Halfway along Homelands a circular line of spoke towers reared up, climbing all the way to the Spine. Each tower extended downwards too, passing through Homeland’s skin and out into space. Their external floors merged with the buttressing struts that supported the green-gold ring of Heaven. There was one tower for each of the Pantheon, housing their core operating companies and major subsidiaries. At this time of day, each would be filled with hard-working employees, implementing the many and varied corporate policies constantly coming down from on high. All would be working at least six days a week, eight hours a day. Most would toil harder than that. The gods demanded much from those who served them most directly, but rewarded them proportionately.
‘Dammit, we’ve missed our landing slot.’
Corazon’s cold animosity was forgotten in her frustration. She let the flyer curve round to the left, opening up a magnificent view of a quarter that Jack had once known reasonably well. Chuigushou Mall shone beneath them. The Violin Gardens estate drifted in and out of sight, redbrick walls referencing an aesthetic that had been dead for at least three hundred years.
[Suburbia in space,] said Fist. [ The ’roid halls of Titan are far classier than this.]
‘So how does it feel to see your old haunts, Jack?’ asked Corazon.
Jack was surprised by the sudden friendliness of her tone. But then, forgiveness had always been important to East and her followers. It was key to engaging with the intricate, scandalous life stories of her celebrities. A pariah one week could be a hero the next. A popular singer’s habit of attacking their partner would be forgotten on the release of a thrilling new song. A drug-addicted actor would star in a hit drama, and suddenly become a perfect parent and spouse. Of course, such rapid change had its flipside. East had near-instantly torn down as many icons as she had created. She had always been a reliably fickle entity.
Now Jack could see the streets of Chuigushou Vale. Strips of semi-detached houses were arranged in leaf-like patterns around exclusive shopping and entertainment spaces. But even here, there were reminders of war. Burns scarred the shimmering landscape.
‘Void sites?’ wondered Jack.
‘Oh yes. The terrorists hit Homelands too.’
Jack was oddly relieved to hear the frost return to her voice. It felt much more honest than her sudden warmth. ‘What do they look like, when you’re onweave?’ he asked.
‘You see the faces of dead children.’
They flew past a cluster of medium-sized office blocks. The Sunwall’s light gilded their blank, reflective surfaces, turning them into a web of jewelled fingers. Behind them, a mixed-use landscape stretched away – start-up incubators, micro-malls, the mansions of the wealthy. For a moment, memories of the city filled Jack’s mind. All of it came to life in his imagination with an emotive vividness that the weave could never match.
‘We’ve got a landing slot.’
The flyer dipped and kicked, skimming towards a large tower standing just by the entrance to the Wart. Jack didn’t need the weave to recognise it. It was InSec. They were falling into the midsection flyer pads on the thirty-third floor.
‘A few minutes, and you’ll be in with Assistant Commissioner Lestak,’ Corazon said firmly. ‘Ready to try and convince her to hate the Pantheon, too?’
Chapter 5
‘Seven years away,’ Lestak began. ‘And five of them a coward.’
‘Spare me the lecture. Ask what you need to and let me go. I’ve got people to see.’
‘Release you? Yes, I have to, don’t I? Those vicious friends of yours made sure of that. An amnesty for war criminals …’
‘I’m not a criminal. And the Totality isn’t vicious. Far from it.’
Lestak sighed and looked away. Unlike Corazon, she’d retained her hair. It was cut short and briskly styled, just as it had been seven years ago. The winter dusting of grey was new, though. Weave sigils dangled from her earrings. She pulled her glasses off and gently massaged her forehead. Jack was struck with the sudden, real presence of the past. He remembered her in this same mood when she’d interrogated him and Harry Devlin about the slow progress of the Penderville murder case. She’d been angry then, too. Memory told him that she would put her glasses down, then turn towards him and attack. She did.