Tidelands: I-Nine (17)
Complicit. Battle Circuits. Railing. The Climb. The Fall.
“I can’t remember,” Eva says
Which earns another look of scepticism, and a sigh.
But it’s not her fault, is it? That she can’t remember? It’s like a blackout. Like with drunks, when the blood alcohol level reaches a certain point, the hippocampus shuts down. Such a person can still function, drawing on their working short-term memory, and the memories, experiences and knowledge that they already possess; they just won’t lay down any fresh long-term memories until the blood alcohol dips back down and the hippocampus reboots.
How does she know all of this? It sounds like one of Azimuth’s footnotes. She’s never herself even imbibed alcohol – outside of the virtual. Does that count?
So has something similar happened here? To her?
“Was there a voice?” he persists, still gently.
Yes – a fragment of recall – there was a voice, wasn’t there? Fractured, staccato, as if sculpted from static and noise. Do they know that? Her father and Azimuth? Have they pieced together that much? But no more. Not what the voice said, perhaps; not where it took her to – where was that?
She feels almost giddy. They really don’t know! Something which she doesn’t even have to conceal, for neither in fact does she.
“Did it tell you something? Take you somewhere?”
She shakes her head.
“I … I’m sorry, I just can’t …”
He sighs again, less patiently. He stands up, hands on hips, and looks out the window.
“We do so much to protect you, you know. To nurture you.” He looks back at her, over his shoulder. “You do know that, don’t you?”
She can feel his stare, peripherally, but does not risk returning his gaze.
“Do you know how important you are?”
She looks down into her hands. Why is she being blamed for something that happened to her? Does he think she’s somehow complicit? That she is hatching some sort of plot?
Is she?
There is a shout, and with it Squirrel’s lethargy begins to lift, her focus to swim up from the depths where it has been held down. By the time it resurfaces, and she is beginning to form a picture of what’s going on, the single shout has become a raucous disjointed chorus.
The first to realise their freedom are the curious restless nightmeerkats, not all of whom have been squished and trampled; there are reserves – seven, no, eight of them, two whole teams of fresh and hungry substitutes – and these now are fanning out, whip-smart, slinking into the cover of shadow, or leaping up into the black nest of rafters to disappear into the heights of the makeshift warehouse, as the panicked pole-men wagon-train into a tight defensive circle, their backs to one another, prods facing out, twitching them left, right, up, in terrified anticipation.
But the man in black has disappeared.
His oppressive attentions momentarily elsewhere, Squirrel scans the scene.
Two drones, already now moving into position, snare one kat mid-leap, its limbs flaying the air comically as it swims weightless in the suspension field. The two tanks are similarly engaged, flanking another escapee, backing it into a corner, as one mantis-tip shoots out a net edged with a periphery of sharp pins, fixing the kat to the warehouse wall.
This is not enough. Soon all the mayhem will be contained. She needs more.
Where are the rest of them? She scans the other two cages, their door lights green, each slightly ajar, but whose inmates are yet to show signs of joining the fray. Drugged, almost certainly; injured, perhaps; or maybe just dead.
She reaches out with her implant, reestablishing the connection with the control hub, flying through its menus and icons, through inventories and options, until she discovers what she needs: the drugs, administered centrally, through the creatures’ own implants.
Perhaps they just need a little more encouragement.
She engages their battle circuits.
It’s the dream again.
But this time she is high up – higher than she has ever been before, up near the ceiling, looking down upon the endless rows of glass cases. From here, it’s clear the rows do not in fact go on endlessly, but bank up on four sides, like a stadium; and they are not in fact rows, but curve around in a peculiar shape – a sort of maze, in fact. Though this greater distance does not quieten the voices. If anything, they are more insistent, as if, having more of them in the scope of her vision exposes her to a greater swathe of their tormented dreams.
Is that what they are, then? Dreams? She thinks of them as the Sleepers, but doesn’t know if they’ll ever wake from their nightmares. For some reason she cannot state, she suspects not.
She looks straight down. It’s very high. She feels her legs go weak, her heart beat harder – even though this isn’t real. What would happen if she fell here? Would landing wake her up? Worth a try. Anything to end the voices.
[Eva.]
She turns around. But there is no one there. And what she sees behind her confuses her, for she is looking back into her room.
[Do you want to come back inside, now?]
It is Azimuth.
What does it mean, “back inside”?
She turns back forward and it is not now the Sleepers that she sees, not the strange stadium, but the dark shaft of the arcology, and she is standing, barefooted, in nothing but her nightdress, along the flat top of the balcony rail, her toes peeking over the edge.
[How did you get out onto the balcony?]
She doesn’t know. There was a light – was there? First it was red. Then it was green. And now here she is. But it is too early. She should have waited for the signal.
What signal?
[Please, Eva. You must come down. Come inside and talk.]
Talk, talk, talk. Questions, questions, questions. And tests and lessons and never going out. And always having to hide – but never being able to hide. No hiding ever. No place to run. Nowhere to go.
She looks down again into the darkness, into the view that she hates – no more of that! She will turn her back on it! Slowly, precariously – oops! That was close! – she shuffles her feet around to face herself back toward her room. There, that’s better.
[Eva, please, come down off the railing.]
“OK, OK,” she says, rolling her eyes. “On one condition: that you answer one question – just one! – truthfully.”
[And what is that?]
“Who am I? Really?”
[You are Eva,] Azimuth says, after a pause.
She sighs. Shakes her head.
“That’s what I thought.”
And steps backward off the railing.
Judging by its non-emergence, the enormous spider-type-thing is indeed dead – or anyway, temporarily out of action in some recuperative coma. But its offspring are not. They erupt now from their mother, bursting out from one of the egg sacks that it carries like a backpack of emergency supplies, fully formed and battle ready (a stratagem Squirrel supposes it had not had chance to employ in the bout itself).
And nets and prods and forcefields all begin to look a little inadequate.
Especially considering what’s now happening in the other cage.
For the Champ is waking up too.
Squirrel doesn’t wait around to enjoy the fruits of her labours, but urges Stegrun up and on, her last act before making straight for the door is to persuade him to destroy the control hub, one thump of a blue veined fist – and with it the field disguising the warehouses disappears, opening it up to the night; and she is out of there.
Emerging from the stables she makes straight for the cliff face beneath the eyries. But the tribal thud of music, the syncopated flash of spectral lights, the roars and shouts behind her, are all a peripheral distraction: she only has eyes for the climb.
But when they reach the cliff, the blue giant just stands there, pawing confusedly at the rock. And then she realises: he has never climbed before; has only ever stood and squatted and swiped and wrestled. She must show him how.
And so, slowly, tentatively, he begins to move up; first one hand, then the other, as mentally she grips with his hands, pushes up with his legs, finding purchase, pulling upward, moving higher.
This is how the jockeys must feel! To be their mount, to inhabit those stupendously powerful, alien bodies, as if they were their own.
There are fresh roars erupting from below, a growing crescendo of screams. She resists turning to see, but can picture the panic, spreading through the crowd, the carnage she has unleashed. Does she care? Feel responsible? But it’s not she who has unleashed anything; it was always there, pent up and waiting to explode. They have done this to themselves, the people who created all this, who profited from it, who enjoyed the entertainment and the spectacle.
People such as those above her.
She is not far, now; the climb is shorter than she’d thought – or else Stegrun has made it so. And as she looks up, she can see the eyrie, see the little figures on the viewing platform, their panic-wide eyes peeping down from their little glass bubble at this thing, coming at long last to pay its overdue respects.
She edges out, climbing diagonally, sideways and upwards, toward the topmost tip of the headland. It is almost in reach – she can picture it, how they will scatter, scream, how she will calmly extend its hand, and carefully, precisely, judiciously, reach down for the well-tended head, pluck it up between giant blue forefinger and thumb like a tick, and …
Whether it is exertion from the climb, or from maintaining the psychic connection, she is starting to feel drowsy. She has never done it for this long, and never controlled another’s body in this way.
But no. There it is something else; another mind, that has climbed alongside her, unnoticed all this time. The mind of someone cloaked in stealthy black, and who materialises now beside them, perched agilely on the outcrop where he has been waiting to fix her mind in his, vicelike, waiting to squeeze.
[Not today, kid.]
She resists, pushes back with all she’s got; but it’s too much – fighting his intrusion, controlling the giant – and she can feel it all begin to slip away.
He is too strong.
And they are slipping.
Like some scene from an old film.
The giant, toppling backwards, flailing, falling.
And she, clinging desperately to one enormous arm, flung farther out as that arm swings out for balance.
And she is thrown, sailing out and down.
Over the moonlit sea.
And they are falling.
Toppling down.
Head over heel over head over heel.
Down and down through a hole without end.
Like Alice, they think. Or Lucifer.
And they wonder.
What will be at the bottom?
Tidelands is a weekly sci-fi & fantasy serial that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. Part 1 is free to read, but you can keep up with the story by signing up for exclusive access, or buying ebook or paperback editions of the collected instalments as they appear.