Yes. I have to leave the vir. So I need you to look after the boy. Distract him. Tell him stories. Keep him occupied.
What are you stealing, this time? Memories? Stories? Souls? Dreams?
That’s none of your business.
How can we be sure you will come back? You left us before.
Because I keep my promises.
They rise in my mind, all of them, the Kraken and the Green Soldier and the Princess, thunderstorms made of thought that wrap tendrils of lightning around my brain.
PROMISES ARE GOOD, they roar. FEAR IS BETTER. WE ARE ALWAYS HERE. WE ARE ALWAYS LISTENING. DO NOT BETRAY US.
I fall to my knees. The Aun leave my mind, and the dusty darkness surrounds me. The sudden silence is deafening. Even in my dreamlike mindshell, I shake all over.
‘You know,’ I say aloud, ‘you are starting to convince me about the whole Flower Prince thing. Family really is the worst.’
The Princess speaks again, softly this time, like rain.
We will weave dreams for our father, as we did once before, long ago. But the time will come when he, too, has to wake up.
‘Yes. But not yet.’
‘His name is not Raoul d’Andrezy,’ Chekhova says, looking at me pointedly. ‘Isn’t that right … Colonel?’
I smile sheepishly.
‘Elder, this is Colonel Sparmiento. From the Teddy Bears’ Picnic Company. A Sirr-employed mercenary group. On Earth. When your volition push came, I was tasked to check his background. It turned out to be fabricated.’
Barbicane says nothing but his eyes widen.
‘So, Colonel,’ Chekhova continues. ‘How about you tell us your story.’ She crosses her arms and looks at me down her nose like a very cross, hot schoolteacher.
I spread my hands.
‘What can I say? You caught me. I was with the Teddy Bears. We were not all ursomorphs, although it helped if you liked honey. My apologies for the charade, but I would prefer if my former employers were kept in the dark regarding my whereabouts. The Bears are many things, but they are not forgiving. And we … parted ways rather suddenly.’
Conning the zoku is a fine art. But if there is one weakness they have, it’s that they always think everything is solvable, that problems are obvious and neat, like in games – and if you make them think they have succeeded, they tend to give up. My identity had another identity concealed within it, a rather more solid one, backed up with the data Mieli collected when she joined the ranks of the Teddy Bears. You can still break Colonel Sparmiento if you poke at him hard enough, but I’m betting that Chekhova won’t. Especially now that she is trying to make an impression on an Elder.
‘So, you are a deserter,’ she says. ‘And how exactly did you come by a Verne cannon bullet that is more than two hundred years old?’
‘As you are no doubt aware, things are a little bit … restless on Earth at the moment.’
‘If by restless, you mean eaten by recursively self-improving non-eudaimonistic agents, then, yes, I am aware. Professional interest.’ There is a hungry look in Chekhova’s eyes.
‘Well, my unit and I started to smell trouble a few weeks ago, before the chens came. We made it out with the bullet and some other goods from the wildcode desert. We may have taken some liberties with following the chain of command, if you take my meaning. But at least we got out. Most of the Teddy Bears were not so fortunate.’
I look at Barbicane. ‘Were you planning on offering us a drink? I’d like to toast to my comrades. Poor bastards: but I was proud to serve with them. And some of them left family behind, family who could do with a new start in Supra City.’ The last part is true as welclass="underline" one of Mieli’s fallen squadmates had cubs in the Belt. ‘Especially now that the Sobornost has decided to eat everything inside the orbit of Mars. That’s why we came here. But I guess it’s all for nothing now.’
Barbicane lets out a bellows-like sigh. ‘Well, Colonel! That’s quite a story! But you are being a good sport! Perhaps we can still work something out.’
Barbicane hovers from his chair to a copper globe showing an engraved old-fashioned map of Earth, but with a strangely tilted axis – the Antarctic is near the equator. He opens it deftly with his manipulator hand, takes out a bottle of a dark amber liquor and three glasses, and pours. He looks at me seriously.
‘Names are not important! For us, only entanglement matters. The spime you gave us was impressive. I’m still interested!’
‘On the contrary,’ Chekhova says. ‘If the Colonel’s item is genuine and came from Earth recently, we should stay as far away from it as possible.’
Barbicane raises his eyebrows.
‘You know how closely we are being watched by the Great Game Zoku these days,’ Chekhova says. ‘What do you think they will do if we acquire something that might be infested with Dragons?’
Barbicane purses his lips.
‘True,’ he says. ‘Damn their eyes!’
‘The Great Game? What does she mean?’
‘A guardian zoku! Protects us from existential threats, or so they claim! Rose to power after the Spike.’ Barbicane’s face grows dark. ‘They converted some junior Club members, to report on more ambitious experiments! Said they endangered spacetime. Phsaw!’ He looks at his drink mournfully. ‘But I confess, Colonel, Chekhova has a point! It’s a delicate time.’
I look at Chekhova. What game is she playing? Does she have something to do with the Great Game Zoku? I don’t want to risk a direct confrontation with them, not yet. Perhaps I should pull back and try again via a different route. But it has taken a lot of effort and time to set the current job up. Time that Mieli may not have.
‘I have comrades to think about, Elder,’ I say. ‘As it happens, I’ve also had interest from a Narrativist zoku in Supra City: I believe they would like to transport it into a Realm and use it for a setting in a confined-space drama of some sort – not that I really understand these things.’
Barbicane sneers. ‘Give it to Narrativists! Ridiculous! A piece of matter shaped by nuclear fire, made for a purpose!’
‘But we must consider—’ Chekhova tries to speak, but Barbicane waves his gun-hand to stop her.
‘A great shame, to turn it into a – metaphor!’ he roars.
I decide to throw more fuel into the fire.
‘I mean, really. I have heard a lot about the Gun Club. Wasn’t it your Hawking holeships that stopped the Protocol War from being an even bigger disaster? The only things that can take out a guberniya, from what I hear. And you are telling me that you are afraid of another zoku who thinks you are playing with fire?’ I shake my head slowly. ‘I think I would be better off with the Narrativists. It sounds to me like your children out there have more courage than you.’
I am not just talking to them. I’m talking to the whole zoku: they are acting as its avatars in the Circle of the train.
‘I bring you a historical object, a shell from the biggest gun ever built before the post-Collapse era, and you don’t want it because it might be dirty? Please.’ I get up. ‘I will take my business elsewhere.’
Barbicane lifts into the air and spins around slowly, thruster legs burning holes in his chair’s upholstery. His eyes are squeezed shut, and he is thinking hard. Then he spins around and thrusts his gun arm straight at my face.
‘Ah ha! I have an idea, Colonel! A compromise! Will satisfy the zoku volition! Chekhova is a Dragon expert! She will inspect the item in the Arsenal, at molecular level! That way it will be safe. Everybody happy? Hmm?’