‘Found somewhere to live. Got a job – in futures maybe – and, uh, read and written a lot.’
‘What would you write?’
‘Philosophy. Kind of. Oh, not just atheism, humanism, I’m sure there are plenty doing that out here—’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Kohn remarked.
‘—but I want to do more. I want to attack all these cults and ideologies. I have this, this vision that life could be better if only people could see how things really are. That it’s your one life, it’s yours, you have this inexhaustible universe to live it in and God damn it isn’t that enough? Why do we have to wander around in these invented worlds of our own devising, these false realities that are just clutter, dross, dirt on the lens? – all these beliefs and identities that people throw away their real lives for.’
‘Like, there is no God, and you shall have no other gods.’
‘That’s it. That’s what I want to write.’
‘I have a better idea,’ Kohn said. The understanding of how good an idea it was glowed within him, spreading like an inward smile. ‘Would you like to be on television?’
Only cable, and with a small subscriber base, he explained. But items did get picked up sometimes by the networks, and the Cats had schedules to spare since all they put out was their own edited exploits and an alternative news-slot with a bit of radical/critical/marxist analysis thrown in.
‘If you can just talk like that to a camera you’ll be fine,’ Kohn said. ‘Nothing to it. No interviewers. No professionals to sneer. It’s your show. Say what you like – basically we hate the barb and the mini-states, and if you do too then you’re on our side; anything rational would be better than those smelly, cosy subtotalitarianisms. The only viewers will be watching because they want to, so you won’t bore anyone. And, you being a capitalist, you can measure your success by the credits that you clock up!’
‘Oh man.’ Jordan had fire in his eyes now. ‘That sounds great. Too good to be true.’
‘No, just true enough to be good.’
‘Speaking of clocking up credits…what do you guys, your comrades, do with the money you make?’
Kohn frowned. ‘Savings bank account.’
Jordan laughed. ‘You’d do better buying gold and keeping it in an old sock!’
‘What else could you do with it?’ Kohn asked, genuinely puzzled.
Jordan looked at him, shaking his head. ‘Call yourselves mercenaries…Look, you’ve got an inside track on the whole micropolitics of this place, you’re in the middle of a free-trade zone, you don’t pay taxes, you’ve got access to news and rumours more or less as they break…You know, I could make a bit of money from what I learned on the net tonight!’
Kohn looked at Janis for guidance. She shrugged. ‘Sounds feasible enough.’
‘Great!’ Kohn straightened up and raised his glass. ‘Here’s to the international communist–capitalist conspiracy, to which I’ve always wanted to belong.’
For Jordan they drank to philosophical speculators, which they all thought was rather good, and for Janis to mad scientists who did awful things to rats. After that they got loud and, eventually, quiet. ‘Is Molly Biolly a crank band?’ Janis was looking at the stage when Kohn swung into the seat beside her, returned from another prowl through the buzz.
‘I don’t know. What—?’
‘That guy at the back, looks like Brian Donovan. Like the picture of him on the back of his book.’
Behind the holo image of three girls in second-skin plastic doing indecent things with synthesizers stood the scratchy spectral fetch of a man with long grey hair and a long grey beard. He seemed to be staring at them.
‘Weird,’ Kohn said, sliding away from and in front of Janis.
‘Isn’t it just a projection?’ Jordan asked.
‘The band is,’ Kohn said, not turning round. ‘But this stage has its cameras, too, so you can patch in a moving point-of view from somewhere else…That’s how a fetch works, out in AR. Shit, he is watching us. And he knows we know. Let’s make some space, keep it natural, knock back the drinks and head for the door. You first, Jordan, then Janis.’
Kohn stood, gulped whisky. The figure moved forward, through Molly Biolly, a ghost through ghosts. Some yells of complaint and disgust went up. The fetch glided across the edge of the stage and into the crowd. Irrationally, people made way. Smoke coiled into colours inside it.
The band, which had been TALKIN BOUT MY GENE RATION!!!! fell to mouthing soundlessly, like terrorists on television. The crowd in the pub was silent, too, eyes focused on the moving image.
The fetch pointed a translucent arm at Kohn. Its lips moved out-of-synch as the speakers boomed back to life.
‘MOH KOHN!’ it said. ‘I ACCUSE YOU OF BREAKING THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT! IF YOU DO NOT APOLOGISE IN PERSON AND IN THE FLESH TO MY EMPLOYEE, ACCEPT A RANSOM AND CLEAR HER NAME WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, I WILL SEE YOU IN THE NEAREST GENEVA COURT. IN THE MEANTIME AND WITHOUT PREJUDICE I OFFER A REWARD FOR YOUR ARREST AS A RENEGADE AND A PUBLIC MENACE.’
Donovan’s fetch looked around, as if to make sure everyone had heard that, and vanished.
Kohn was backing off – on the balls of his feet, ready to lash out.
The music came back on. Somebody laughed. Just a terrorist dispute. Attention returned to the band; heads turned away.
A heavily built man sitting on a bar stool casually slid an empty stein along the slick of beer, pushing at the bar with his toe so that the stool spun, carrying him round, the sweep of his arm carrying the glass round to the final flick of a discus throw.
Kohn ducked so fast his feet left the ground. The glass hit the wall behind him and bounced off, almost getting him on the rebound.
Kohn lunged forward, doubled fists driving into the attacker’s midriff. The man gasped but pushed back, up and off the stool. Kohn reeled away and a table caught him across the back of his thighs. He staggered but didn’t fall.
In a moment something changed: his point of view. He looked down at his head from a metre or so above it, two metres, and everything was laid out for him like an architect’s diagram. Some calm undertone soothed the frightened australopithecine that was in his skull but thinking it was out of it. Only a picture, a visual aid, an icon: this is what it would look like if you could look at it like this. He reached – saw his hand reach – behind him and caught a full glass as it slid from the table and dashed the contents in his opponent’s face, then stepped forward and neatly wrecked the man’s knee. He was back behind his eyes in time to see the other’s fill with pain and shock before a sideways topple took them closing to the floor.
Kohn pulled his credID card from his back pocket and held it up as he turned to face one of the pub’s security cameras.
‘I suppose you got all that,’ he told the record. ‘I’ll not press charges but if you want to you can call me as a witness.’ He looked at the people whose table he’d cannoned against. They were still getting out of their seats, wiping at their clothes. He pointed at the slumped figure.
‘A round on him,’ he said.
Everybody was looking at him again.
‘Don’t fucking mess with me,’ he added, and walked towards the door. Jordan had been holding Janis back. He let go of her upper arms and stooped to rub his shins.
‘Spirited little tyke, isn’t she?’ Kohn said.
He smiled at the two indignant and relieved faces.
‘C’mon gang, let’s go. Don’t look back or you’ll turn into a pillar of salt.’
At the Clearing House Donovan turned around in the privacy bubble to face a seething silence. Everyone had been and gone, flitting out and back through the evening to attend to their several businesses, while he had divided his attention between calling off various live actions and haunting a succession of pubs, nightclubs and drug dens. But they’d all been present to see him finally find Kohn. The images from the pub’s cameras were still spread around them like scraps of newsprint, rippling with re-run movement.