Crashing Heaven Read online

  ‘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.

  ‘You would know, wouldn’t you, Jack? After all, you spent enough time with them. What you did was shameful. To run away from battle, after a moon full of dead children, after all the bombs. You made it pretty clear you weren’t happy with Grey’s decisions for you. But I never took you for a coward.’

  Anger blazed in Jack. It took him a moment to choke it back and ready a reply. As he did so the Assistant Commissioner cocked her head, as if listening to someone invisible. He looked over at Corazon. She was staring at a point just to the left of Lestak. There was a flash of shock, then pity. Then she mastered herself and her face went blank. Only her tight, pale lips betrayed the emotion she was feeling.

  [ Fetch activity,] Fist told him.

  [ If it’s out of home, it won’t be wearing a face.]

  [ Just a skull? No wonder Corazon’s so freaked.]

  [Can you see it?]

  [ No. Don’t have permissions.]

  [ Be glad.]

  [ You humans …]

  Lestak reached out, wrapping her arms round empty air. It took Jack a second to realise she was hugging someone who wasn’t there. ‘No, Issie, there’s no need to be upset,’ she said. ‘Mummy’s fine. But we don’t need your help just now. You can run along and play.’ Another pause. Lestak and Corazon both stared intently at the same vacancy. Corazon’s face remained carefully empty. Lestak’s was suffused with a desperate kind of love.

  [ It’s scanning me,] said Fist. [Powerful weaveware. Invasive little shit.]

  ‘You can’t take the funny puppet with you, Issie,’ said Lestak, then almost snapped, ‘no, he’s not like you at all.’ There was another silence. Then she kissed nothing again and said, ‘Goodbye.’

  Corazon relaxed slightly, shifting in her seat. Jack waited for Lestak to recover herself and speak. There would be more accusations. When he’d been in the care of the Totality, he’d never been able to take comfort in the memory of friends or colleagues. He’d never been able to get beyond the thought of this conversation, waiting to explode out of any of them.

  A quiet, insinuating voice drifted through his mind. [ You’ve always been better off with me, Jack.]

  Lestak caught his suddenly abstracted expression. ‘Sweet Rose,’ she said. ‘You’re talking to it, aren’t you? That thing inside you. As if it were a person.’

  ‘We’ve all talked with the dead, Lestak,’ Jack replied. ‘It’s no better or worse than that.’

  Now it was her turn to pause for a moment and master her anger. ‘Oh, how dare you? Issie was alive, once. She’s still a person. That unreal thing – never. And she’s got nothing but love for me. All that creature brings you is death. It must be like having a bit of Totality inside you, mustn’t it? No wonder you went over to them so easily. Thank the gods all the other puppets were destroyed.’

  [ Bitch,] growled Fist. [Pro-Totality? Doesn’t she know how many of them I’ve fucked?]

  ‘I’m not here by choice,’ said Jack. ‘What do you need to ask me? Or are you just going to abuse me?’

  [Abuse us,] hissed Fist. [ Not just you.]

  ‘Let’s get this over and done with,’ sighed Lestak. She gestured at the air with a pale hand. Jack imagined notes shimmering into being in front of her. Her eyes focused briefly on them. ‘Watch him, Corazon,’ she said. ‘I want your thoughts afterwards.’

  Then the interrogation began. Lestak tore into Jack with a controlled anger that scared him. She barely touched on his life in-Station, just confirming his involvement with the Penderville investigation and the three months remaining before Fist took possession of his body. Once that was done, she moved on to detailed questioning about his Soft War involvement. As she forced answers out of Jack, memories ripped through him.

  Out there, the sun was just another cold, comfortless star. Wrapped in the hard metal of a stealthed mind-breaker, Jack and Fist drifted from moon to asteroid to gas field to comet, hunting rogue AIs that had broken away from Pantheon control but hadn’t yet joined the Totality. Some sought to hide and reproduce. Others just wanted to live out their last days in peace. They were seen as easy targets, so Jack and Fist were usually assigned to them. It took weeks to track each one down, then days to close in on it, cauterising threat-detection systems one by one. Once they were near enough Fist would reach out through the little ship’s antennae, pushing beyond his prey’s defences, probing for weaknesses in its deep architecture. Hours passed in digital meditation on individual lines of code.

  Jack came to understand his work as a kind of militant audit. The puppet felt like a far more sophisticated version of the accountancy packages that Grey had licensed to him on Station. Just as Jack had perceived the truth about companies by burrowing into them and analysing their hidden financial flows, Fist deduced the structure of each mind by tracking the shimmering tides of information that pulsed through it. In both cases, it was a slow, meticulous process.

  But once he’d patiently mapped his prey, Fist was all speed. He attacked with a focused savagery that to start with fascinated Jack. Their minds would merge, pulsing through the ships’ systems and then out across the void, burning into the intimate heart of their target. Fist would run riot with vicious, unforgettable delight. The one-sided combat always climaxed in moments of sheer vandal joy. There would be a thrill like breaking glass in Jack’s heart as another rogue guttered out, selfhood becoming silence in the cold darkness of space. At first Jack would feel deep satisfaction that he had killed another mind like the one that had thrown the rock at the moon.

  But every joy has its shadow. And so, as Jack followed Fist through mind after mind, he started to listen more closely to the thoughts shattering all around him. He’d known since he was a child that each member of the Pantheon was, in effect, a sentient corporation. With that understanding, it was easy to see even the smallest and most basic corporate structure as something like an organism. He’d always used his analytic skills to nurture such creatures. Now he began to see that he was destroying their deep-space brethren. With that came a more disturbing realisation. Hardly any of the minds he was ordered to kill had the processing power to so accurately fire an asteroid halfway across the Solar System, or the hacking skills needed to render it invisible to the Pantheon. And nothing was being done to find the true culprit of the moon attack and bring them to justice.

  After each death it became routine for Jack to come to in pain, curled up in a corner of the cockpit. Usually he would find that he had vomited on himself. Sometimes his bowels would have voided. Fist would hang before him, cackling madly, prodding him back into consciousn
ess. Then the little puppet would spin off to flit through the little ship. Sometimes he’d leap out beyond the little ship’s portholes, scratching at them from outside, a phosphorescent ghost in the darkness of deep space shining with ferocious, deeply fulfilled glee. It was hardest when he mimicked the death-screams of the AI he’d just killed.

  Jack would drag himself to his berth and sleep for days, waking only to vomit again and weep. He’d dream of the war ending, of Fist being lifted back out of him, of peace and privacy. He’d curse Sandal for letting the rock through, Grey for sending him away to fight, Kingdom for accepting him as a puppeteer. At last, he would stumble to the shower to clean himself, able only to stand and let its sharp heat sting him. Fist would settle back into his head, triumphant hilarity subsiding at last to silence. Their little craft would return home, ready to fall back into the gravity of a moon or bolt itself to a space station’s superstructure. Another mind would be crossed off the list. The other puppets would tease Fist for his perceived weaknesses – a lack of speed, a needlessly close obsession with the structural detail of his prey. Fist would tell them to fuck off.

  Soon the hunt would begin again.

  ‘Is this what you wanted to hear?’ Jack asked. ‘Is this the debriefing your patron asked for?’

  He’d just described, in detail, the death agonies of a Jovian mind. It was a survey and ore-recovery swarm that fled Calisto, looking to dream its last weeks away until the licences that supported it ended and the fusion reactors that drove it sputtered into death. It had been working non-stop for eighty-seven years. Corazon had stopped taking notes long ago. She was staring at Jack, fascinated.

  ‘Do you want to hear how we tore them apart to protect you from their need to be free? Do you really want to know, Lestak?’

  ‘And do I need to tell you about the thousands dead, Jack? About the rock your cold friends threw at the moon? Do you want to hear about the children my – our – colleagues lost? Do you want to hear how many classrooms were just empty, because there was no one left to fill them? Do you, Jack, when you tell me how you felt eradicating those unreal fucking creatures, when they stepped out of line, and started to become machines for killing? Do you?’

  ‘None of the minds Fist and I killed were responsible for that. And soon I’ll be just one more of the war dead too. I won’t even leave a fetch behind me.’

  There was a moment’s silence, then Lestak said: ‘Oh, what’s the use?’

  Outside, the Sunwall had darkened, spinelights fading with it, and night had come to the Homelands. But neither Lestak nor Corazon had made the gesture that would illuminate the room. So, as the Assistant Commissioner turned away from the table, she seemed to curl up into the blackness and be lost within it. Jack felt a soft touch at his shoulder. It was Corazon.

  ‘The interview’s over. I’ll take you back to Docklands.’

  Lestak said nothing as Corazon led Jack out of the room. Her silence was more pointedly accusing than any of her questions.

  [Oh, I loved hearing about all the fun we had,] chortled Fist. [ Those were the good old days, weren’t they?]

  That cut even deeper.

  Chapter 6

  Lieutenant Corazon said little as they returned to the flyer. It was only when they entered the deep black of the Wart that she spoke again. Her face was softly etched on the darkness by the green and blue glow of dashboard instruments. Her voice had hushed to a whisper. Dreams of journalistic objectivity had slipped away. She almost seemed to be trying to engage with him as a person.

  ‘I didn’t realise how tough it was out there.’

  A container train appeared ahead of them. There was the soft hissing of gravity baffles and a whine from the little pulse engine as the flyer altered course. Its swing, its seatbelts’ soft tug, reminded both Jack and Corazon that they were moving unsupported through space, with nothing to hold them should they fall.

  Jack kept his voice neutral. ‘Breaking minds. Watching them break us. There was nothing soft about it.’

  Corazon smiled sadly. ‘We had our own problems. Terrorist bombs, Kingdom killing terrorists. It was non-stop. Out beyond Mars, hardly anything seemed to be going on.’

  A warning light flickered red. She touched a switch and it faded. Jack suddenly felt very alone. ‘What happened to Issie?’ he asked.

  ‘She was Lestak’s daughter. She died on the moon.’

  It was the answer he’d expected. He supposed that, after their meeting, Lestak would be salving herself with the company of her child’s fetch.

  ‘It was a terrible time,’ he said, to himself as much as to Corazon.

  [ It was our casus belli. A joy.]

  Jack reached inside his mind and let a partition grow, trapping Fist behind it. There would be no more of his synthetic rage for a while. Jack thought about the attack. As ever, he felt no anger at the loss that had been inflicted on humanity. There was only a deep, impassioned grief at the bloody decisions that political calculation could lead to, and at the fact that – once created – such wounds could be so hard to heal.

  ‘I was just too old to be up there,’ Corazon told him. ‘I lost friends.’

  An asteroid had been diverted from its course and dropped on to one of the old lunar mining bases. Those responsible had somehow rendered the asteroid invisible to Station’s sensors, and thus unstoppable. The attack seemed to have been meant as a spectacular but harmless show of strength. But at the time the base had been hosting the annual Homelands Junior Schools Mooncamp. Three thousand children aged between four and thirteen had died instantly. The failure to spot the asteroid had been Sandal’s responsibility. He’d lost status accordingly. Several of his key security subdivisions had been transferred into the care of Kingdom. The Pantheon refused to accept the Totality’s protestations of innocence. The Soft War began shortly after.

  ‘I can’t believe you even protested about being sent to fight them, Jack.’ Corazon’s questions had become more intimate. Now her anger felt more personal too.

  ‘I was an accountant,’ he replied. ‘All the rest of the puppeteers were soldiers. They were professionals who’d been working with Kingdom’s mind-killing systems for a long time before they were merged with puppets. I was dropped in pretty much untrained. I had no reason to be there.’

  ‘Grey wanted you to go, didn’t he? It was his will. The gods see much further than we do.’

  ‘That’s nonsense, Corazon.’

  ‘The Pantheon know what’s best for us, Jack. They protect us. They always try to steer the right course.’

  ‘You think? Look at where Grey’s choices have left me. And it’s not just me. Look at the Penderville murder case – there was evidence of Pantheon involvement there.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’ Shocked fear resonated in her voice.

  ‘If the gods themselves turned away from the truth, I’d follow the truth and not the gods.’

  ‘Don’t use the InSec vows to justify such … heresy.’

  ‘I was starting to find it in the Panther Czar’s accounts. It was well hidden, but it was real. One of them was helping smuggle sweat into Station.’

  ‘You think a god would help do that, Jack? And kill to cover it up?’

  ‘I’d just taken my initial findings to Harry Devlin. He took me seriously. Then the Soft War began. The Pantheon used it to shut our investigation down. None of those fucks care about justice.’

  ‘Hush, Jack. You can’t say things like that.’

  ‘Why not? It’s the truth.’

  ‘It can’t be. And anyway – it’s not respectful.’

  ‘Things have changed, Corazon. Sandal failed us all. Grey was naïve. Kingdom fought and lost an unjust war. East used it all to quadruple her viewing figures.’

  ‘Your point is?’

  ‘The Pantheon are brutal and self-interested, and they’re very powerful indeed. That’s a bad combination.’

  ‘I won’t listen to this, Jack.’

  ‘They lie to us, they use us and t
hey throw us away. I’ve killed for them, so I know. You’re not a journalist, are you? I bet you dreamed of it, ever since you were young. How much choice did East give you when she sent you to InSec? And did you really believe her when she said it was the best thing for you?’

  ‘I could have chosen to do something else.’

  ‘I had a friend who was a singer. A very good one. She wasn’t happy with East’s plans for her. East broke her career.’

  The flyer broke out of the Wart. Corazon steered it to swoop down low over Docklands. ‘Where did you want to go to, Forster?’ she said, her voice suddenly free of emotion.

  Fist had found his way round the partition.

  [Sounds like you hit a nerve!]

  ‘Just by Kanji Square station,’ said Jack.

  ‘Far from your hotel.’

  ‘Someone to find.’

  Corazon settled the flyer on to the street. Jack opened the door. Scheduled rain pattered at it, gusting in and chilling him.

  ‘They gave you your InSec credit at Customs House?’

  ‘Yes . You had an observer there. She should have confirmed that.’

  ‘We had nobody at your reentry interview.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  Jack climbed out and stood by the door. ‘Grey taught me one useful thing,’ he said. ‘Don’t trust the gods. Don’t believe their bullshit.’ The last of the flyer cockpit’s warmth gusted out and away. ‘You’re smart, Corazon. That’s a lesson you should learn too.’

  ‘You’ve only got a short time,’ Corazon replied. ‘Go and see your father and your mother’s fetch. Make your peace with them, at least. And keep your nose clean. I don’t want to see you again.’

  [ First Andrea rejects you, now it’s Corazon. You have quite the way with the ladies, lover boy!]

  The flyer door folded back to black wholeness, until there was only a machine beside Jack. A high-pitched whine and it lifted out of the streets, climbing up and away into the round and limited sky.