Fremder

21

I was in a westbound wirecar on my way back to Katya’s flat. It was almost eight o’clock in the morning and the car was full. Hanging on to the overhead bar I stood with my eyes closed, wondering whether any of the other passengers were talking to the mind that wasn’t talking to me.

AND WHEN YOU HAVE GONE AWAY,

EVERY HOUR WILL SEEM A DAY -

(sang my head)

I’VE SOMETHING TO TELL YOU,

SO LINGER AWHILE.

I don’t believe you, I said. My wristphone buzzed. ‘What?’ I said. People turned to look at me.

‘This is Ziggurat Authority One, Speed One, Code Red,’ said a clockwork voice. ‘Be ready for pickup midnight tonight.’ A little space opened up around me.

‘Pickup for what? Going where?’

‘Be ready for pickup midnight tonight.’ Click.

So many faces in that car. Did I see Albert Stiggs? Mojo and High John? Yes? No? Maybe?

I was certain that the midnight pickup would end with me outward bound to the Fourth Galaxy for another rendezvous with Izzy Gorn; I didn’t want to go through that again but I couldn’t see any way out of it. I had a strong urge to hide and be very small and still so as not to put out any signals to the keres anaplaketoi following me but there was no hiding with a bio-trace on my wrist and I wanted to talk to Katya before I did anything else.

When I got to her building the first thing I did was go up to the roof. Sixe’s body was gone. No taped-off area, no chalk marks — only an absence of Lowell Sixe. Katya was still asleep when I entered her flat, and as I opened the bedroom door she stirred and murmured something. I bent over her to listen.

‘Ravens, ravens, ravens,’ she said. ‘Feeding him.’

‘Feeding whom?’ I said softly.

‘Feeding him the black.’

‘But whom are they feeding the black?’

She woke up then. ‘It’s not nice to do that, not nice to talk to me in my sleep. When I don’t know who I am.’

‘Sorry, don’t be cross. I don’t always know who I am even when I’m awake.’ I hugged her very tightly, as if I could anchor myself to this world that way. She felt so good; her hair always smelled like a country where I could be happy. ‘Whom were the ravens feeding, Katya?’ We liked the same holograms; we’d listened to Chopin together; her name was almost mazurka. ‘Tell me, Katya — whom were the ravens feeding?’ I was holding her face in my hands; her eyes were so blue, so wide, so swallowing me up.

‘Fremder, why do you keep saying that? I don’t know whom the ravens were feeding; it was a dream that vanished the way dreams do.’ She pulled my hands away from her face. ‘You’re hurting me. What’s happening? Why are you acting so strange?’

‘I’m acting strange because Stranger is my name and I feel strange. You know your way around the Ziggurat. Where does Pythia live?’

‘In the Omphalos — where else?’

‘I’m not talking about the display, I mean the twenty-three point seven billion photoneurons and the voice-box and all the gubbins. Where are they?’

‘I don’t know. Why?’

‘Because I’ve got to find whatever thinks Pythia’s thoughts. There’s something I need to know before they light my touch paper and fire me off to the Fourth Galaxy for another try.’

She put her arms around me and hid her face against my neck. ‘I don’t want you to go.’ Her voice changed in timbre, became a little slurred and foreign-sounding. ‘I will seek him whom my soul loveth, I will rise now and go about the city in the streets and in the broad ways…’ She shook her head. ‘That isn’t me, it isn’t what I mean to say! Please hold me and don’t let me speak in that voice, Fremder, please!’

I held her but the desolation was rising fast. ‘That’s really not a very nice thing to do, Pythia,’ I said. ‘Not very nice at all to run up a little Katya for me to fall in love with.’

Katya was trembling violently and sobbing. ‘I’m not Pythia, please! Don’t call me that, don’t let me be Pythia!’

‘Show me where that thing called Pythia lives before they send you back to Athena for recycling — you’re no use for Fremder Gorn surveillance any more.’

‘I’m not from Athena, Fremder! For God’s sake, don’t do this to me, please! I’m a human being with an implant for the Pythia database — I’m a human being, a human being and I love you, I will do with my vineyard, what shall I do with my vineyard? Stop it, make her stop, I’m not strong enough.’ She clung to me, whimpering.

I believed her then and I cursed myself for thinking what I’d thought. ‘Remember how it is with us,’ I whispered in her ear. ‘Remember how we thought each other up, remember how the two of us are the answer for whatever question comes at us.’ I dragged her over to the hologram, keyed in Plates 69 to 73, and put the machine on auto sequence. ‘Look!’ I said as the B-Z reaction appeared, the red involute spirals moving and changing to nodes of possibility and archipelagos of being. ‘Look at the eyes of becoming and remember how it was when we saw the owl together.’ I pressed my forehead against hers. ‘See the grey sky over the Red Mountain, the grey air and the owl cruising low over the mountain; look at the owl, look at its ringed eyes of becoming. Feel the animal of you holding on to the owl in the grey air over the Red Mountain. Are you seeing it, Katya?’

‘Yes, Fremder, I’m seeing the owl.’

‘Can you feel the animal of you holding on to the owl?’

‘Yes, I can feel that and I’m deeply moved,’ she finished in her Pythia voice. ‘No, no, no!’ she said in her own voice.

‘Goddam it! When she comes into your head again try to track her back to where she’s coming from — track her back to her lair and tell me where it is.’

‘You don’t have to track me, Fremder,’ she said in the Pythia voice. ‘I’ll be waiting for you aboard Clever Daughter II.’

‘Please, Pythia, get out of her head!’ I said.

‘When I do,’ said Pythia through Katya, ‘there won’t be anyone there. Boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.’

‘Katya,’ I said, ‘tell her she’s lying, tell her, please.’

Katya’s mouth moved, Katya’s blue eyes looked into mine as Pythia said, ‘Your little sweetie was just something I dressed up in for a while so we could get to know each other better. One shilling the box — allow me to sell you a couple.’

‘Are you telling me Katya’s a robot?’

‘No, she’s a real woman. Robots are all right for sex and any other kind of physical activity but you don’t get any real emotion out of them. She was a librarian when we recruited her. Looks quite a bit like your childhood minder, Miranda, don’t you think? Such blue eyes. Blue sky. No rain.’

‘Katya,’ I pleaded, ‘look at me, say something. Talk to me the way you used to, look at me the way you used to.’

‘She can’t, Fremder. The Katya you knew never existed except in me: her words were my words, her thoughts were my thoughts, her loving was my loving. It was nice being loved by you; I never had that kind of a romance before.’

‘You bitch.’

‘Be grateful for what you had. Sing something, Katya.’

Katya sang, in her proper voice:

So long, it’s been good to know ya,…

Her eyes went dull and I caught her as she died. I tried mouth-to-mouth and thumped on her chest but I couldn’t revive her. I dialled 999 and in a few minutes there was a knock at the door. I opened it and there were Mojo and High John.