The Star Fraction

13

The Court of the Fifth Quarter

Why couldn’t we have gone in through the canals?’ Wilde grumbled, as he booted yet another inquisitive machine away from his ankle. Several hours of difficult progress through back alleys, with the expedition crunching and stomping and shooting their way over and past assorted mechanical vermin, lay behind the strain in his tone and the strength of his kick.

‘Ha!’ Tamara snorted. ‘You seen the canals around here?’

‘As it happens,’ said Wilde, ‘no, I haven’t.’

‘And you don’t want to.’ Tamara flattened herself against a wall and signalled back to the others to halt. ‘But you will.’

She poked a device like a long electric torch past the corner, and waved it back and forth, keeping an eye on the readings on a handheld meter and the view on a wrist-screen.

‘OK,’ she announced. ‘No sapients. Looks fairly safe. One at a time. Deploy to the centre of the street, spread out, then single file to the right. Go.’

She ran out into the middle of the road, which was about fifty metres wide and obsessively well-paved. Along the centre were empty plinths of concrete like traffic-islands. Tamara bounded up on to the one facing the alley, looked around again and beckoned to Wilde. He dashed after her and jumped up beside her.

‘Cover my back,’ she said. Wilde stood behind her and began scanning up and down the street, his pistol held in both hands, close to his waist. The street had its own strange pedestrians: robots of various shapes and sizes clambering walls, edging along pavements. One or two bowled down the permanent way, in light wheeled vehicles. Ethan had to dodge one of these smartly as he ran over. It sounded a subsonic siren that set everyone’s teeth on edge.

‘You look like you know what you’re doing,’ he said to Wilde, as he stationed himself a couple of metres further back along the plinth.

‘Trained in the militia,’ Wilde grinned. ‘Mind you, it was a long – look out!’

A black, winged missile was hurtling towards them. Wilde raised his pistol to head height and shot it. It came down and hit the roadway in a shower of feathers.

‘Pigeon,’ said Ethan. ‘Take it easy, man. They’re harmless.’

When the alarm spread by this incident had been calmed, the deployment continued. After a minute or two they proceeded behind Tamara along the canyon of office-buildings. Somewhere a couple of streets away, an automated process was sending gouts of flame high in the air at irritatingly irregular intervals. Between flares, the illumination of the buildings themselves was almost as unpredictable: some windows dark, full of the expedition’s reflections as they passed; others, at street-level or high up on the faces of the buildings, lit from within. Shadows and silhouettes moved, but not those of humans. At the same time, it was impossible to believe that a robot-based commercial life was going on; it was all too random, too artificial.

At the next major junction the street they were on crossed one that was narrower, but much more crowded: a slowly moving river of metallic machinery, over which faster entities skittered and skipped.

‘Makes you sick,’ Ethan muttered. ‘Some of the big ’uns would make bloody good cars.’

‘You pay me enough, I’ll catch you one,’ Tamara told him. She waved them all into a skirmish line, again keeping Wilde next to her.

‘Right,’ she said, swinging her back-pack to the ground. ‘Time to hack through the jungle.’

She unbuckled the pack and tugged down the flaps, exposing a piece of equipment with a small keypad, extensible aerials, rows of meters and screens.

‘Amazing,’ said Wilde. ‘Popular mechanics! Amateur radio!’

‘Heap of junk,’ Tamara said. ‘No fucker will miniaturise it. Not enough demand.’

‘You put this together yourself?’

She looked at him. ‘Wouldn’t trust anybody else to.’

Her fingers flew over the keypad. Screens flickered, tiny speakers howled and stabilised.

‘Gotcha! Traffic channel.’

She twirled a knob, looked up at the machines passing like cattle ahead. Made some adjustment, twirled it again. A ten-metre-long crawling machine suddenly swerved right across the road. The machines behind it piled implacably into it and within seconds formed a mounting heap of wheeled or tracked robots. As those in front of it kept moving, a space soon cleared.

Tamara was still watching the feedback.

‘Fucking go! Go! Go!’ she yelled.

The others sprinted across.

Tamara lifted the pack, leaving the control-panels exposed.

‘Still here?’ she said to Wilde. ‘Shit, OK, let’s move it.’

She sidled across the road, Wilde at her back keeping lookout. A machine on four long, stalked legs, its body about the size of a melon, with a cluster of lenses at its front, suddenly reared above the pile-up and scanned them.

‘What’s that?’

Tamara looked up and stopped.

‘Don’t move,’ she said.

Wilde held his breath, and froze in the act of looking over his shoulder at the machine. The lenses withdrew, and another tubelike extension moved into position. Tamara stabbed frantically at the keypad.

‘Shoot!’ she yelled.

Wilde jumped and turned, but it wasn’t him she was calling to. A volley came from the far side of the street, knocking the machine over. Tamara and Wilde ran to join the others.

‘Shit,’ said Ethan. ‘That one was sapient.’

‘I never hunt sapients,’ Tamara said, gasping and rubbing the small of her back. ‘Don’t mind killing the little fuckers, though.’

They moved on; over a bridge that gave Tamara an opportunity to point out to Wilde exactly why using the canals for transport in the machine domains was not a good idea; and on until they saw, in a wide park at the end of the long avenue, a scrap-metal stockade.

‘Talgarth’s court,’ Tamara said.

As they walked up they were swept by sonic scans that set their teeth buzzing, laser scans that made them blink and curse.

‘Ignore it,’ Tamara said. ‘They have to check.’

The park was bizarrely neat, and kept that way by tiny devices that roamed through the grass and among tree-branches. For the first time since they’d landed, Tamara enjoined care against stepping on any machinery.

‘Talgarth don’t like it,’ she insisted. ‘Fines you.’

They picked their way across the grass, their weapons holstered or slung – the bristling armaments on the stockade being more than enough to protect them from any feral gadgetry. Machine-guns, laser cannon, radar and whirling, ever-ready bolas…

The stockade’s three-metre-high gate swung smoothly open before them, and quickly shut behind them. About a hundred metres square, grassed like the park, with a dais in the centre, seating and media-equipment scattered around, and wooden cabins of varying sizes around the perimeter. Nobody else was present.

‘What do we do now?’ Wilde asked.

Tamara looked at her watch. ‘It’s one in the morning,’ she said. ‘We pick a cabin to put ourselves up in, and we sleep.’ She grinned. ‘It’s an old vertebrate custom.’

‘Well worth keeping up,’ Wilde said. He looked around indecisively as most of the others moved confidently off.

Tamara caught his hand.

‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you’re all right.’

He complied, a confused look on his face.

‘You watch out,’ Ethan called after him. ‘She follows old primate customs.’

‘Go fuck yourself!’ Tamara yelled back. ‘See you in court!’

‘So this is how non-propertarians do it.’

‘Yeah. Free love.’

‘Ha. I was faithful to my wife for seventy years…’

Wilde’s voice trailed off, then continued, more happily, ‘…and now I’ve been with two other women in three days.’

‘What! Who else?’

‘None of your business. Free love, right?’

‘Aw, go on.’

‘She’s probably dead by now.’

There was a silence. Then Tamara, her face lit only by a dim night-light and the glow of Wilde’s cigarette, spoke in a cautiously cheerful voice.

‘Hope it ain’t catching.’

Wilde gave her a lopsided grin and stubbed out the cigarette. Their eyes adjusted swiftly, and they spent a few moments looking at each other.

‘Could be,’ Wilde said. ‘I’m dead myself after all.’

Tamara investigated.

‘Well this bit’s definitely alive.’

‘Oh no.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘How d’you expect me to stand up in court tomorrow?’

‘You’re standing up all right tonight.’

‘Mmm.’

‘Anyway – ah-hah-ha-ha-ah – you’ll get help from ah-ha-ha!’

‘I’ll give you Invisible Hand.’

‘Nah,’ said Tamara. ‘That’s for much later…’

‘It’s eight o’clock,’ Tamara informed him kindly. ‘You look terrible.’

‘Thanks.’ Wilde steadied himself on one elbow and reached for the mug of coffee she was holding out to him. ‘Oh, God. How long have I been asleep?’

‘Four hours.’

‘Thanks to you, you promiscuous anarchist bitch.’

Tamara smiled.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ve put a drug in the coffee. You’ll be more awake than you can imagine.’

‘Is that why I’m seeing things?’

‘No. You left your contacts in.’

‘Thanks again.’ Wilde reached for his cigarettes and rasped his face. ‘Does this anarcho-capitalist court by any chance have some rip-off, monopolistic enterprises associated with it?’

‘Funny you should ask.’ Tamara indicated a couple of packs of cigarettes and a bubble-pack containing a razor and toiletries. ‘I put them on your bill.’

She busied herself with making breakfast while Wilde padded about, getting washed and dressed and drinking the drug-laced coffee. The cabin had three adjoining rooms: a small bedroom with an elementary wash-stand and a tiny toilet; a small kitchen, and a larger room containing communications equipment and computer interfaces, all on a conference-table with half a dozen chairs around it.

‘How long are we expected to stay here?’ Wilde asked, shaving.

‘As long as it takes.’

‘Has Reid turned up yet?’

‘Yup. And his supporters. Odds are about even if it should come to a fight.’

‘That’s a happy coincidence.’

‘No, it was arranged by –’

‘Don’t tell me, Invisible Hand. OK. Jesus.’ He towelled his face. ‘I haven’t felt so unprepared for anything since my final exams.’

‘What are exams?’

‘Old primate custom.’ Wilde crunched his Harmony Oats. ‘I gather you’ve evolved beyond it. Let’s catch the news.’

Tamara set up the communications rig in the main room, while Wilde watched. She was still in her jeans and tee-shirt and flak-jacket, but she’d put on make-up and perfume as some kind of gesture towards formality or femininity.

‘Am I still a mess?’ Wilde asked.

She looked him up and down. ‘You’ll do,’ she said. ‘Use the after-shave, though.’

They checked out the news. The case was the lead item on all channels. Overnight, a whole sub-culture of newsgroups and discussion for a had sprung up around its aspects. The three killings claimed by Dee and Ax, their disappearance, and the appearance of Jonathan Wilde gave the whole affair an added edge of social panic. At least two heretical churches had already proclaimed Wilde a sign of the end.

‘I hope your abolitionist comrades are prepared for trouble,’ Wilde said.

‘What kind of trouble?’

‘You should know. Don’t you always get hassles, selling your paper? Hasn’t Ax shown what can happen if people suddenly think the world’s going to change forever? Imagine all of that multiplied by tens – hundreds!’

Tamara shook her head. ‘I can’t. I’ve read about riots and revolutions, but we’ve never had anything like that here.’

‘Count yourselves lucky.’

Tamara’s cheeks reddened. ‘Oh, I do, don’t get me wrong. Ship City’s basically not a bad place, it’s just that – there are all those wrongs done to machine minds, and – it’s a long way from the ideals of anarchism. And people really do think that you suddenly turning up means all that’s going to be put right.’

‘“The ideals of anarchism”,’ Wilde repeated heavily. He gazed at Tamara’s face for a few seconds. Nobody, looking on, could have had any doubt which of the two youthful faces in the cabin had the older mind behind it.

Wilde spent the next hour or so in conversation with a subset of Invisible Hand’s legal database, the ‘MacKenzie’s friend’ software. It was a friendly, and user-friendly, system. Its hardware component was an ear-to-chin phone that picked up what he said and heard, and passed it by short-range radio to a local relay. Its prompts could be whispered in his ear, or displayed in his contacts.

Shortly after nine, Tamara interrupted his study of precedents and arguments.

‘Reid’s come out of his cabin,’ she told him.

Wilde blinked away the display.

‘What’s he doing?’

‘Just wandering around with his friends, sipping coffee and chatting to people – and to the news ’motes.’

‘I think I’ll do the same,’ said Wilde. ‘Also, I wouldn’t mind talking to him.’

Tamara smiled wryly. ‘Bit late to settle out of court.’

Wilde stood up. ‘It’s never too late,’ he said. ‘But no, I don’t hold out much hope of that! The fact is, I can’t wait to see him.’

Tamara was silent for a moment. Wilde lit a cigarette.

‘I should warn you,’ Tamara said. ‘I spoke to him yesterday, when he called me, right, and…even though I’d seen him on the news and so on, I found when I actually spoke to him that he’s very…I mean he has a kinda, you know, presence. You may find him a bit…intimidating.’

Wilde stood up, with a harsh laugh.

‘I watched him watch me die,’ he said. ‘No way can he intimidate me.’

They walked out of the cabin together. Tamara swaggered, her big pistol blatant in its holster. Wilde strolled, coffee in one hand, cigarette in the other. Dew sparkled on the grass. The chill, damp air held slow, small columns of smoke and steam above knots of people who stood about, in earnest or sociable discussion. Some of the cabins had opened out into stalls, though only for minor necessities. No food or drink sales marred the dignity of Talgarth’s court.

The metal of the stockade – great chunks of ragged-edged iron, that might have been the platework of ships, but which were torn like strips of bark and sunk into the soil – gleamed red and rusty in the sun. The stockade’s armaments kept up a constant movement, swinging or swivelling. Outside, the machine domain made its presence felt with geysers of flame and the roars and squeals of clashing engines in pursuit of their incomprehensible and incompatible aims.

Wilde walked among the groups of people, waved to those few he recognised as his supporters, and then went over to the centre of the court. Workmen and robots were setting up an awning of plain red canvas above the dais. Beneath it, in the centre of the dais, were a folding-chair of pale wood and frayed grey fabric, and a small table at the right hand of the chair. On the table lay a glass, a bottle, a gavel, and an ashtray.

Wilde examined this arrangement for a moment, smiled, and turned away. He found himself face-to-camera with a news ’mote. It resembled the sapient robot they’d encountered at the crossroads, but its array of mikes and lenses would have left no room for anything more sinister.

The lenses were not only for cameras. As the machine stepped delicately backwards on its insectile legs, it startled Wilde by throwing a fetch of the blonde girl they’d seen presenting the news bulletin. She stood on the grass to the right of the machine.

‘She looks solid,’ Wilde whispered to Tamara, ‘not a holo –’

‘It’s in your contacts,’ Tamara hissed back, baring her teeth bravely at the camera.

‘Legal Channels!’ the girl said brightly. Her voice came, in eerie ventriloquy, from the machine’s speakers. ‘Good morning, Esteemed Senior Wilde!’

‘Good morning,’ Wilde said, smiling down at her. His cigarette fizzed out in the grass.

‘Look at the camera,’ Tamara whispered. The girl’s virtual image instantly flitted to the front of the camera, and stood on empty air.

‘Do you have any comments to make, Esteemed Senior Wilde?’

‘NOTHING TOO SPECIFIC,’ the MacKenzie advised.

‘Yes,’ said Wilde. ‘There’s no need to call me “Esteemed Senior”…dear lady. My name is Jonathan Wilde, and my friends call me “Jon”.’ He beamed her a smile that suggested he’d be honoured to count her among them; then coughed and said, more formally: ‘I have no comment to make on the case, but I am concerned about the interpretation which some, ah, less responsible news channels than yours are putting on it. I implore anyone who may be listening to do nothing rash – to let the law take its course, because that’s the only way to preserve and improve the civilised values of anarchy.’ He smiled again. ‘That’s all.’

‘Thank you, Jon Wilde! And have you anything to say about Judge Eon Talgarth’s known views about yourself?’

‘NO,’ advised the MacKenzie, in an urgent flash.

‘Nothing at all,’ Wilde said cheerfully. ‘I have every confidence that a man of his standing would never allow such matters to influence his judgement. I’m sure my choice of his court is proof enough that I mean what I say.’

He made a chopping motion of his hand in front of his chest, and nodded. The girl hesitated, literally hovering, waiting for more, but Wilde set his face in an expressionless mask and walked briskly out of the cameras’ field of view. Tamara hurried after him.

‘That was all right,’ she said. She didn’t sound entirely enthusiastic. Wilde squeezed her shoulders.

‘Don’t you be another,’ he said.

She looked up at him. He was staring straight ahead.

‘Another what?’

‘Another comrade who’s disappointed at my moderation and common sense. I had enough of that in my first life.’

And with that he let go her shoulders, nudging her as he did so. She looked ahead again, and found that they were walking straight into the group of people around David Reid.

Reid was wearing a loose woollen suit, and a blue cotton shirt without a tie. He leaned with his left hand on the back of a seat, on which he’d left his mug of coffee. His right hand held a cigarette, with which he made sweeping, smoke-trailing gestures. He was speaking to three men and a woman, all dressed with similarly casual care. His long hair was damp from a recent wash, and the morning air.

When he saw Wilde he stood up straight, transferred the cigarette to his left hand, and held out his right. The two men shook hands, both smiling, studying each other’s faces and finding in them recognition and, almost, disbelief.

‘It’s been a long time,’ Reid said.

‘Not for me,’ replied Wilde.

Reid acknowledged this with a brisk nod.

‘I appreciate that,’ he said. ‘Perhaps with more time, you could have seen things differently.’

‘I can see the Karaganda road quite clearly,’ Wilde said. ‘And your face. When I close my eyes. I’ve had time to think about the look that was on your face, my friend.’

‘That wasn’t personal,’ Reid said. ‘And neither is this.’

‘I know it wasn’t personal,’ Wilde said. ‘I know you better than that, Dave. I almost wish it had been.’

‘We were both political animals,’ Reid said lightly. ‘You had decisions like that to make, too. In your time.’

Wilde shrugged. He fumbled for a cigarette. Reid pre-empted him, offering a pack and a light. Wilde accepted both with a thin-lipped smile.

‘Tobacco,’ he mused, as if noticing its anomalous presence for the first time. ‘Cotton. Wool. Where are the plantations, the flocks?’

‘Organic synthesis is our best-developed technology,’ Reid said. ‘As you should know.’

Wilde laughed. ‘The case starts in twenty-five minutes,’ he said. ‘That’s how long you have to convince me you didn’t let me die to shut my mouth for good.’

Reid touched Wilde’s shoulder, as though to remind him.

‘Not for good,’ he pointed out. ‘You’re here, and you’ve been –’

He stopped. Wilde spoke again immediately; it could have seemed he interrupted.

‘For long enough!’ he said. ‘You almost admit it, man! I want you to admit, and explain it. And to retract your ridiculous accusation that the actions of the robot Jay-Dub are any responsibility of mine, and to free the autonomous machine that you have walking around in Annette’s body. An apology for that insult to my wife and myself wouldn’t be amiss, either. Then we can talk about other matters.’

He was trembling slightly when he finished speaking.

Reid stood, blowing smoke slowly from his lips.

‘What other matters?’

Wilde leaned forward, speaking so softly that only Reid and Tamara, and the MacKenzie, heard him.

‘The fast folk,’ he said, ‘at the other end of the Malley Mile.’

Reid recoiled slightly. ‘Is that what Jay-Dub told you?’

‘I worked it out for myself,’ said Wilde. ‘It’s obvious, when you think about it.’

Reid shook his head. For a moment, his face showed genuine grief. Then, his expression hardening, he stepped back.

‘Jay-Dub made you,’ he said. ‘He made you as a weapon against me. And something else, I warn you, made Jay-Dub what he is.’

‘He?’ Wilde retorted, following his prompt. ‘That’s quite an admission.’

‘He was you,’ Reid said. ‘A simulation of you, I should say. And for a time, he was my friend. He had plenty of time to accuse me of his – your – murder or neglect, and he never did. Because he understood. He has a greater mind than yours or mine, Jon, and he understood. But he was, when all’s said and done, a machine. A machine with its own purposes, with endless patience, and bottomless cunning. I had hoped that the human element in it would overcome the machine’s…program. I was wrong, and I’ll put that mistake right. Legally, you own it, and I’ll nail you to that. But in reality, you are…’

‘What?’ Wilde challenged. ‘Tell me what you think I am.’

‘Instrumentum vocale,’ Reid said bitterly. ‘A tool that speaks. Jon Wilde is dead.’

He turned on his heel, sweeping up his companions with a brusque gesture, and stalked away.