Recursion

constantine 1: 2119

Constantine rubbed his temples in an attempt to ease his headache. He felt as if his brain needed a reboot. It seemed as if it had been processing without break for four months now: it was no surprise he was seeing gaps beneath the sky.

There was one outside the window of the I-train right now, just behind the three glass towers that marked the boundary between land and sea at the westernmost tip of the Great Australian Bight. It was a magnificent, though flawed, view. Red-lit streamers of cloud slid across the yellow sky, distorted and magnified as they moved behind the three enormous, transparent, fir-cone-shaped monuments. The towers themselves climbed into the evening sky at the edge of the steely grey sea flecked with the brightly colored sails of pleasure yachts that skipped and wove between the robotic cargo liners. It was a picture of both calm and motion, leisure and industry, the natural and the manufactured world. A tourist’s view of a famous scene marred by only one inconsistency.

In between the sea and the sky: nothing-an untuned grey gap where the earth didn’t quite meet the heavens. Constantine looked away. He had been seeing things for the past three weeks now; he didn’t need further reminding how hard he had been working, nor how much he had allowed his brain to become overloaded by extra intelligences.

The mineral water in the glass resting on the bentwood table before him shimmered. A standing wave had formed on its surface as the I-train braked, and one of the intelligences that shared his mind calculated the acceleration that took a train from mach seven to mach zero in a little under five minutes and idly modeled the way in which the forces that achieved this were reflected in the liquid in front of him. Constantine tried to ignore the endless stream of figures that filled his mind.

“Not now, White,” he muttered.

The train was entering Stonebreak. The checkerboard of green pasture and yellow cornfields that decorated the first level streamed past the windows of the car. This is how they displayed their wealth down here, Constantine reflected. Not in a crush of tall towers that sucked every last cent of value from the available land, but rather in an expansive and expensive display of space.

– Not entirely true, said Red, another of the intelligences crowding his mind.-They also need the food.

Constantine didn’t care. His head hurt. All he wanted was to get off the train and into his hotel room. The end was close. The tension was getting to them all.

The train dipped underground and started its final deceleration, and the other passengers began to collect their possessions. Some rose and made their way to the doors; Constantine simply gazed out of the window into the darkness of the tunnel. Two years of plotting and planning, all set to end in Stonebreak. The idea didn’t seem real. He took a sip of water from the glass and tried to think about his wife as the train drew to a halt, tried to summon up a picture of her in his mind that was more than a fading abstraction. It had been too long.

It was the busiest time of the day at Stonebreak International. No doubt Constantine’s journey had been scheduled to arrive during the evening rush, amid the simultaneous arrival of several intercontinental trains. Constantine’s life over the past two years had been spent in an interminable bustle of crowds, one tree hidden in a never-ending forest.

The station was old and shabby: the iridescent patterns of dead VNM bodies that had formed the halls may have looked cutting-edge twenty years ago, now they just seemed faintly embarrassing. Their interlinking shapes had been covered with hard-wearing transparent plastic; even so, the walls and the floors by the skylifts were scuffed and abraded by constant use. Constantine entered the elevator and asked for the roof. As he rose toward the high-vaulted ceiling, he looked down at the silver ribbons of the I-trains, curled in tight spirals around the central spoke of the terminus.

“This place is a mess, huh? The new station can’t open too soon.”

Constantine jumped at the sound of the voice. A woman was standing at the far end of the elevator.

“I didn’t see you get in here,” said Constantine, checking his intelligences.

– I did, said Red.-She slipped in just as the doors were closing. You were turning to look at the view.

“You, of all people, shouldn’t be surprised at how I slipped in here.” She held out a hand. “I’m Mary Rye. That’s my name.”

Constantine refused her handshake. Mary gave a sniff and withdrew it. She pointedly wiped her palm on the pocket of her green jacket.

– She’s been drinking, said Red.

“Don’t look at me like that. I don’t deserve that,” said Mary, head tilted forward. Her thick Australian accent made her sound old-fashioned in these days of standardized elocution. “How long have you been a ghost? Two years, I’d guess. So what the fuck do you know about it? Nothing. That’s what you know about it: nothing.”

Constantine felt himself perspiring. Sweat was trickling down the small of his back, despite the air-conditioned freshness of the elevator.

He spoke carefully. “A ghost? I don’t understand what you mean.”

Mary gave an impatient shrug of her shoulders and waved her hand dismissively. Her green suit looked expensive but shabby. Two long strands of cotton trailed from the hem of her blouse. A brooch in the shape of three little cats was pinned lopsidedly to her lapel.

“Sure you don’t,” she said with heavy sarcasm. She waved her hand in the direction of the doors. “Look, I’m not blind. I’m not stupid. I know what to look for. I know what I see. I wait on the platform and I look out for people like you arriving. A train pulls in and the crowd on the platform parts like the Red Sea? I look to see who’s walking along the path that forms. I see the cameras suddenly turn to look in one direction? I look in the other. I do that and I spot someone like you. The most ordinary-looking person in the building, and yet you never have to stop or step aside; your elevator is always waiting and your car always stops right by the exit. You never get stuck behind the person with the luggage and you’re always just ahead of the person stopping to ask directions. You’re one huge statistical improbability: your life is planned so that you will never be remembered. You’re a ghost. Just like me.”

She finished speaking just as the skylift emerged from the ground into the red light of evening. Through the glass, they could see rush-hour pedestrians hurrying by in all directions. Constantine tapped his fingers against the hard plastic of the console that nestled in his pocket.

“Well, whatever you say, madam. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

He stepped out into the cool Australian evening and strode toward the waiting boat that would take him to his hotel. Mary took hold of his sleeve and pulled him backwards.

“Hey, don’t you madam me and then walk away. I was speaking to you. Didn’t you hear me? Of course you heard me. You were ignoring me. Being rude.”

Constantine turned to face her, conscious that she was on the verge of making a scene.

“Would you mind letting go of my arm please, mad-” He paused.

– Mary, reminded the Blue intelligence. There was an edge of amusement to its voice.

Constantine said nothing. Mary gazed at him with bleary eyes. There had once been a pretty face there, thought Constantine abstractedly, but now it was lost beneath the podgy swelling of fat and over-applied makeup. She spoke gently, her hard little chin pressing down against its soft cushion of flesh.

“I have a name,” she continued with a drunkard’s dignity. “Please do me the courtesy of using it.”

“Very well…Mary. Please let go of my arm.”

The two uniformed porters who stood by the varnished wooden sides of the hotel boat were now looking in his direction. Pink galahs fluttered beneath the huge expanse of the red sky. Constantine felt incredibly exposed.

Mary caught his expression and laughed.

“What are you so worried about? No one will be watching us. We’re both invisible. Both invisible. Fact of life. Fact of our lives, I should say.”

At that she took hold of her green skirt by the hem and pulled it right up so the tops of her thighs were exposed.

“Stop it,” muttered Constantine.

“Why?” Mary asked, pulling her skirt up still further to show the faded pink daisy-printed panties she wore beneath. “See what I mean?” she said. “No one’s looking at us, are they? Are they? Are they looking at us? No.”

Constantine turned his back on the two hotel porters, who were now looking in any direction but his. He took hold of Mary’s skirt and pulled it back down.

“For goodness’ sake, stop it. What do you want?”

“I want you to acknowledge me for who I am. I want you to speak to me. And I want to do you a favor. I might know something to your advantage. Yes. To everyone’s advantage. Listen to me and you could become a big man. The savior of Stonebreak, they’ll call you.”

Constantine paused, listening to his inner voices.

– She certainly believes that what she’s saying is the truth, said the Red intelligence.

– If you go along with her for the moment, she will at least stop drawing attention to you, said Blue.

– I have nothing to add, said White.

Constantine and the others waited for a moment for the last intelligence, the Grey one, to speak, but as always it remained silent. Constantine gave a shrug. He turned to Mary.

“Okay. I’ll listen, but no more drawing attention to us.”

Mary gave a delighted smile. “Good. You won’t regret this. Come on. This way. We’re going up to the top of the city.”

She linked her arm through Constantine’s and began to walk along the side of the canal.

“You still haven’t told me your name.”

“Ben D’Roza,” said Constantine.

“Ben? I don’t think so. That was the name on your train ticket, and it will be the name on your hotel reservation, I’m sure, but it’s not your real name, is it?”

Constantine sighed.

“Okay. It’s Constantine,” he said. “Constantine Storey.”

“Constantine,” said Mary carefully, as if practicing the name. “Constantine. I like that. And have you ever been to Stonebreak before, Constantine?”

“Yes. Several times.”

“Business or pleasure? Business, I bet, since you’ve got the face of someone who couldn’t have fun in a brothel with a platinum e-card tied to his dick. Have you ever been a tourist here in Stonebreak, Constantine?”

“No. I haven’t.”

“Then let me show you around. I’ll show you something that will interest you.”

She slipped her hand down Constantine’s arm and took hold of his left hand, squeezing it tightly with her fat fingers so that his wedding ring dug painfully into his flesh.

They walked along a typical Stonebreak street. A wide, shallow, canal ran parallel to the narrow road, separated from it by a series of wide, tree-planted lawns. The whole was bordered by short rows of one- or two-story shops and houses, intercut with narrow alleyways accessible only to pedestrians. Chairs and tables had spilled from the cafes and bars out onto the lawns and were now slowly filling with the evening trade. A young woman walked by, hanging onto the arm of a tanned young man. She was dressed in the latest fashion: a simple white shift, her neck and arms wrapped in exotically curved bangles of silver and gold. She smiled prettily at Constantine and Mary as they passed, heading in the opposite direction.

The smell of the evening grass, the gentle splash of the water, the sheer prettiness of the cool narrow alleys, all these had helped Constantine relax sufficiently to return the young woman’s smile, though he was still confused.

“On nights like this, you wonder why they call Stonebreak a design failure,” said Mary.

They passed a cafe done up in period style: glass tables, bent beech chairs, and white linen. From its wide windows, light shone across the darkening lawns, illuminating the customers sipping beer and wine at tables arranged in a circle around an enormous lime tree.

“Where are we going?” asked Constantine, eventually.

“Relax,” said Mary. “Do you see any other people around here looking tense? No. They’re all out for a pleasant evening’s stroll and a drink. Do you want to be noticed? I don’t think so. So just hold my hand and try to look as if you’re enjoying yourself.”

Constantine had been enjoying himself. Now he suddenly realized how incredibly out of place he appeared in his business suit. He wished he’d had time to change into the same cool, loose-fitting dress the locals adopted.

“Now,” said Mary, “at the moment we’re on the second level of Stonebreak. Residential and leisure: medium-density housing and shopping. We’re going to head to the center, the fourth level: cultural quarter and Source. Stonebreak, as you should know, is built as four concentric circles, each raised above the last. Beneath us lies a thin layer of maintenance ducts and so on, and beneath that, the main support structure, and beneath that again the transport system and I-train terminus.”

“Thank you for the travelogue. Is there a reason for it?” asked Constantine.

Mary shook her head. “Just being friendly. It’s nice to have someone to speak to. Talking’s nice, don’t you think? It’s nice to have a conversation.”

Constantine muttered something in reply. Mary chatted away happily.

“When I first started out I had a comfort family set up for me in Brazil. I did a lot of work in Brazil. I was there a lot of the year. Hans, that was my husband…well, he thought he was anyway. You know how it is. Two kids. Ellie and Gerhardt. It was somewhere to go and have a decent meal and just chat with someone…”

Her voice tailed off as she strolled on, lost in thought. Constantine glanced at her and felt a sudden stab of pity. She was obviously living in much reduced circumstances now. The shabbiness of what had been an expensive suit and her once exercise-honed body running to alcohol-fueled fat suggested someone who had been high up within a company hierarchy. This physical manifestation of failure walking alongside him reminded Constantine of the pressure to succeed he himself was under. He turned his face from the narrow alley squeezed between two yellow stone cottages. A silver strand of nothingness showed at its end.

The gap beneath the sky was spreading. He was going mad.

Mary seemed to rouse herself.

“What about you, then?” she said. “Do you have a comfort family?”

“Me? No,” said Constantine, his mind still elsewhere.

Mary gave a knowing laugh. “Of course not,” she said, a note of bitterness creeping into her voice. “I forgot. It’s different for men, isn’t it? I bet you’ve got a string of skinny, unwitting twenty-year-old girls lined up from here to Alaska. All their details looked up from your company database and a script worked out so you can flatter your way into their apartments and their panties. I remember what it used to be like. It feels more moral to you than using a brothel, doesn’t it? And you don’t get your dinner cooked in a brothel, or your shirts ironed, or someone sitting up at night watching football with you, or slicing lemons when you have a cold, or-”

“I’m married.”

Mary stopped dead, her hand pulling Constantine backward. She opened her mouth wide in disbelief and began to laugh.

“Married? What’s that got to do with anything?”

“It means something to me,” said Constantine simply. Mary brought her face close and breathed a sweet, alcohol breath over Constantine. She looked up into his eyes.

“I don’t believe it. You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”

She turned around again, took his hand, and began to drag him back along the street.

“Come on. We’re going to be late.”

Night shadows were spreading. White light shone from the spherical paper lanterns strung in looping lines between the chestnuts and limes that marched up the central lawn. A white barge came gliding down the canal, elderly people enjoying their pre-dinner drinks on the deck; the smell of prawns being fried in garlic and butter wafted from the open windows of the galley below.

– This is taking too long, said Blue, his voice seeming too loud in the stillness that was settling with the evening.-Are we being led into a trap?

– I can’t see anything around us, answered Red.-Besides, I trust her. Her body language backs up her words. I don’t think she’s keeping anything from us.

– I…agree, said Blue, — but I can’t help thinking that someone with the ability to train as a ghost might have enough skill to conceal her motives, even from us.

“Be quiet,” muttered Constantine, concealing his mouth with his hand and pretending to cough. “She’s watching me. She knows I’m listening to you. You’re supposed to be a secret, remember?”

Mary was gazing up at him again, her eyes full of cool appraisal. Constantine nodded toward the barge.

“That smells delicious, doesn’t it?” he said.

A pair of tramlines emerged from a side street to their left and swept round to follow the axis of the central strip of grass. The line of trees now moved to one side to make way for it. They walked on in silence for a while. Presently a tram came bumping along, an ancient construction of wood and metal that clanked and rattled as it trundled down the rails. It slowed sufficiently for Mary and Constantine to climb on board and then grumbled to itself as it sped up again. The pair sat down on a bench of varnished wooden slats. Constantine rubbed his fingers approvingly across the warm wood.

“When Stonebreak was set to build itself, they wanted the best of all worlds,” said Mary. “The Australian and Southeast Asian government wanted it to be both ultra modern and ultra traditional. That’s why you can still see the VNM bodies in the I-station, and that’s why the tramlines zigzag around this level. Some thought trams were too modern to be ultra traditional, so it was decided that no line should run the entire length of any street. It will be a twisty journey from here to the locks.”

“Fine,” said Constantine, surprised to realize how relaxed he was becoming. If it hadn’t been for his encounter with Mary, he would have gone straight to his hotel and would now be worrying about tomorrow’s business. Instead, he was seeing the sights of Stonebreak. Even the mystery of his guide’s purpose and identity was giving him something else to think about for a while. It helped that Mary did not seem threatening in any way.

“You can feel it, can’t you?” said Mary.

“What?”

“A sense of freedom. I can see it in your face. Everyone thinks that being a ghost means you can do what you want, whenever you want, but they don’t get it, do they? They don’t know what it’s like to be regularly exposed to indifference. Most people think it would be good to get out from under the noses of Social Care, but you miss it once it’s gone. What if you fall ill, and there’s no one there to see it? That’s when you regret the millions of credits worth of software constantly combing the world’s databases and removing each and every trace and reference to you. What if you were drunk and fell from this tram into the canal? There would be no record of your destination or your point of origin. Every computer sensor you’ve passed has been deliberately turned the other way as soon as they detected your bio signature. No one is waiting up for you somewhere because your employers want it that way, so no one would even know that you were splashing feebly in the water down there in an alcoholic haze.”

She sighed and leaned back in her chair.

“And that’s not the worst part, is it? It’s the loneliness.”

She wiped a fat hand across the corners of her eyes and sighed, then she sat up and forced a smile.

“Still. It could be worse. Maybe it’s not so bad for you. You’ve got the voices in your head for company, after all.”

“Voices?” Constantine forced a puzzled expression onto his face.

Mary put a hand to her mouth and raised one shoulder a little. “Oops. Sorry. Silly me. They’re supposed to be a secret, aren’t they? Pretend I didn’t say anything. Nothing about voices.”

She giggled and nudged him in the ribs.

“Still, I’ll tell you something. You want to be careful when those voices that don’t exist are speaking to you. Your whole face relaxes and it makes you look really stupid. I suppose they don’t think to control your expression. You should tell them that. Oh, sorry, I mean, if they really existed, you should.”

She giggled again, then sighed.

“I wish this tram would get a move on.”

They reached the inner perimeter of the second level. Just beyond the stone streets, a glass cliff rose into the sky, marking the border between the old and the new. Through this transparent wall Constantine could see the skeleton of the land: silver-grey bodies of VNMs in thick-plaited strands, rising in smooth curves and waves to support the next level up. The scene reminded Constantine of a mangrove swamp, a tangle of short-trunked trees with wide-spreading roots and intertwining branches, holding up the roof of the world. Staring at the greyish tangled trunks before him, Constantine had his first sudden inkling of the sheer size of Stonebreak, and the huge effort that had gone into its construction. He felt quite humbled.

Mary yawned loudly and began to scratch her side.

“They left the walls transparent so that people could see the roots of the city. Back then they were just showing off; now that VNMs build everything, it’s more of an embarrassment. The base is solid and there’s no room for the modification or organic growth that you get in modern arcologies. Stonebreak is lodged firmly in the past. It was defunct the day they built it. Some day they’re going to have to tear it down and start again.”

She gave a little sigh. “It can’t come soon enough for me. Come on, onwards and upwards.”

There were elevators set into the base of the soaring wall. Perfectly transparent, they rode its inside as invisible as a sheet of glass in water. As they ascended, Constantine looked out over Stonebreak: at the low-rise streets, light reflecting from the black water of the canals, and beyond that to the darkened outer area that held the expansive gardens and arboretums, the playing fields and farmland situated on the first level, and then, finally, to the empty wilderness of the Nullarbor plain.

He felt as if he was walking through a dream. The bustle of the I-station and the awakening nightlife of the second level seemed to belong to another world.

Am I drugged? he suddenly asked the intelligences in his head.

There was a pause before they answered.

– I don’t think so, said Red.

Another, longer pause.

– No. I can’t see anything, but I know what you mean. Things seem strange.

– I agree. Go carefully.

From the fourth intelligence, as always, there came no word.

Mary took his arm and pointed to their left. Water was falling in a twisting tube down the inside of the wall, a liquid tornado, except moving with none of the violence and energy; instead, it seemed to splash and play like a merry stream. Hidden lights shone on the torrent, sending rainbows spinning and flashing and dancing around the inside of the glass walls in a fairy display.

“That’s the water that feeds the canals. It passes through the water features and fountains of the business quarter on its way from the evaporators at the center of Stonebreak. They say if the water flow ever ceased, we’d all be dead within twenty-four hours. They built this city on one of the most inhospitable terrains on Earth.”

She sighed. “I’ll tell you what, though. I like it. I like the way it looks. I think it’s pretty, you know? Everything else within the wall is about power and size and strength, but that waterfall, it’s just about making something for pleasure.”

Constantine frowned. “Oh, come on Mary, all of the second level looks nice. All those streets and canals. I’ve been in far worse places. Many people would like to live there, given the choice.”

Mary shook her head and laughed.

“Oh, Constantine. How can you be so naпve? Being a ghost, obviously a trusted man within your organization, you should be able to look more deeply into the reasons for things, and yet you accept this at face value? Stonebreak wasn’t about providing a nice environment to live and work, Stonebreak was all about telling the world that the Australian and Southeast Asian coalition had come of age and that they weren’t prepared to be fucked with. When they raised this arcology, they were taking out their big dicks and slamming them on the table, saying ‘Look at these! How about these for prime Australian beef, you fuckers.’”

Constantine smiled weakly at Mary’s imagery. The elevator slid to a halt and the doors opened, but Mary stayed where she was, warming to her theme.

“But it all backfired. They moved too soon. Now they’re left with this huge white elephant and they stand in awe and envy of those other organizations that stayed their hand. Now they look to Toronto and Lake Baikal and Atlantis and they wonder what to do next, but they’re worried. A deeper crisis is unfolding, one that goes to the heart of Stonebreak, one that must remain a secret…And then a ghost arrives…”

She looked knowingly at Constantine, who kept his face carefully blank, but all the time waves of relief were washing through him. She didn’t know. She didn’t realize that he was here on a far larger mission, one whose roots went back to long before the building of Stonebreak. The very thought of it made Constantine shiver. Sometimes he forgot for a few minutes the importance of his task, but the memory soon returned, weighing down upon him. No wonder he was stressed. No wonder he was seeing things. Or not, as the case may be.

“…but you’ve got to ask yourself, is it worth it?” she continued, oblivious to his thoughts. “I was involved in the building of this place, and what did it get me? A nervous breakdown.” She shook her head sadly. “You’re feeling the pressure too, aren’t you? No need to answer me. I can tell.”

Constantine said nothing. For the moment the sky fitted perfectly down to the ground, and that was good enough for him.

They stepped out from the elevator onto the third level. Here the buildings rose higher, built mainly of glass to allow maximum daylight inside them. The towers were not as tall as in other cities of the world and were spaced wider apart, set in groves of trees or gravel gardens, but nonetheless this area emanated the unmistakable feeling of power. Two women in security uniforms came walking toward them.

“Good evening,” said one. “Up here for an evening stroll?”

“That’s right, officer,” Mary said. “I’m taking my friend here to see the Source.”

The security officer glanced at her partner as she smelled Mary’s breath and gave a minute shake of her head. She looked at Constantine.

“The Source? First time in Stonebreak, sir? That’s an excellent place to visit, especially on a clear night. But it’s a long walk across the third level. You’d do better taking the under-city route. If you get back in the elevator and keep going down, it will take you to the I-station-”

“That’s okay,” said Mary. “We’d prefer to walk.”

The security officers glanced at each other again, then drew closer together, directly in front of Mary.

“No. I think you misunderstood,” said the second officer. “I really would consider taking the elevator, if I were you.”

A look of anger crossed Mary’s face and she took a step forward. Constantine put one hand on her shoulder to restrain her. He lowered his head and spoke in a bland, unremarkable voice, adjusted his posture in a certain way, did everything he could to make himself forgettable: a dull grey man in a dull grey suit.

“Actually, officers, we would prefer to walk through the city. I will vouch for this woman.”

There was a pause. Somewhere in a Stonebreak computer, a routine had just appeared. It created a new identity for Constantine and passed on clearance in that name to the officers. Its work done, the routine deleted itself.

“Okay, off you go,” said the first officer, her head tilted as she listened to a voice speaking in her ear. Mary and Constantine, the man who wasn’t there, headed on into the business quarter.

They walked through still streets between silent buildings. The business quarter had the air of a city of the dead: vast mausoleums lining wide thoroughfares that led through the night to nowhere. The brightly lit lobbies they passed seemed devoid of life: empty goldfish tanks, set out with toys but drained of water. Very occasionally they saw a security guard sitting at a desk, tapping at a console or watching a viewing field, but it was as if they were peering through a glass into a different world. Even Mary seemed subdued by her surroundings. She had hardly spoken since the episode with the two guards. Constantine wondered why they had intervened to stop her passing. How had a ghost been stopped by such simple security measures? Why hadn’t they been automatically distracted by a strange sound, a message, a change in their routine?

For that matter, why hadn’t Constantine’s own hidden protectors done that for him straightaway? Was Mary somehow affecting the routines? The thoughts were driven from his mind as he heard her sigh.

She was staring at the building immediately to her left with a despairing expression. Constantine gazed at it in surprise. It was the DIANA building: his own company. Mary sighed again and continued walking.

“That’s who I work for,” she said.

Constantine said nothing.

Around the corner two rectangular towers faced each other across a broad plaza. The facade of each was divided up into square windows, giving the buildings a retro, late-twentieth-century feel. A bright yellow light shone from every window, lighting up the plaza below. A single person stood in each window, looking out across the plaza at the person standing in the window opposite. Thousands of people, standing in absolute silence, gazing into another’s eyes. People in grey suits, in red dresses, in white bikinis. Old men in candy-striped blazers and young girls holding balloons, all standing in their individual squares of light staring, staring, staring. Constantine felt mad, shrieking panic scrambling around in his stomach at the thought of walking out there, across the plaza, in front of all those eyes.

“No…” he murmured, his mouth suddenly dry.

Mary gazed at him from under furrowed brows. “What’s the matter?” she asked, glancing around the street.

Constantine turned back to the two towers, but all the people had vanished. Another hallucination?

“Nothing.”

“You’re working too hard.”

“I know.”

“Is it worth it?” Mary said. “Is it really worth it? Don’t you just want to give up and do something else?”

Constantine didn’t answer. Mary was speaking to herself.

The far end of the business quarter came quite suddenly. Another tall glass wall rose into the heavens behind the low-rent, low-rise buildings at the back of the third level. Another elevator took them up to the top of the fourth and final level, where they proceeded through more wide streets, this time paved with large grey slabs of mock stone.

“This is where Stonebreak has its law courts and libraries, its mock parliaments and theaters. We’re not going to look at them, they’re far too dull.”

The pair trudged past earnest-looking buildings of grey stone, adorned with columns and engraved with Greek or Latin mottoes.

Mary snorted in disgust.

“This is where their imagination ran out. We’re walking nearly a kilometer above the Nullarbor plain and the best they could come up with are these imitation Roman dumps. Fucking architects. I work for a company that devised a structure that weighs millions of tons, has a diameter of nearly nine kilometers and a volume of thirty cubic kilometers. A structure that stands in one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. And what do they choose to decorate it with? Bad copies of bad copies of the bloody Parthenon. Two and a half thousand years of continuous advancement in human technology since the Greeks built the bloody original, and they still can’t think of anything to improve on it.”

Constantine was smiling now. The streets they walked were lightly scattered with other tourists, some of them looking at Mary to see what she was shouting about, but most of them looking away in disgust at her language. Mary continued, oblivious to the stares.

“I mean, why couldn’t they just leave those buildings in the form that they grew? Surely the fact that Stonebreak is is enough. It doesn’t have to pretend to be anything else.”

“I quite agree,” said Constantine. “But didn’t you say earlier that Stonebreak is obsolete? I thought the VNM look was passй?”

“Oh, shut up,” Mary replied without anger. “Come on. We’re almost at the Source.”

Nearly forty years ago, the CEO of the Australia Southeast Asian coalition had walked across the flat scrubland of the Nullarbor plain to a point marked by a cross lightly scraped into the dry earth. Four dull grey machines were already set on the soil at the north, south, east, and west ends of the cross. She had crouched down and placed a fifth, silver machine, no bigger than her hand, in the faint depression scooped at the center of the cross, and then turned to smile at the assembled press and VIPs who stood one hundred meters back, behind the fluttering plastic ribbon that encircled the location that was destined to be the Source. The heaps of junk metal and other raw materials needed for the VNMs to work upon had been placed well out of sight of the spectators. They would have spoiled the effect, ruined the magic.

The sky had been a deep, deep blue, the sun a yellow glare, low in the sky, too bright to look at directly. The CEO turned to smile and pose for pictures. She was wishing she had worn a thicker suit. Okay, so they had deliberately scheduled the activation ceremony for early morning when it was cooler, but the Nullarbor plain was meant to be hot, for fuck’s sake. She had to clench her teeth tightly to stop them chattering as she smiled.

Eventually, the photo call was over, and she could head back between the sparse bushes, the reddish sand scratching at her soft blue leather shoes, and enter the presentation area. Someone handed her a glass of thin champagne and she took it with a smile. “Get me a fucking cup of hot fucking coffee,” she muttered under her breath.

She held up the glass and smiled brightly. “Good morning. Today, we can all feel privileged to be attending this incredible and historic event. Today, we can look back over five thousand years of human history, and reach out with the finest sieve imaginable, and garner the very best of human achievement, bringing it together here in humankind’s mightiest achievement to date. Using the very latest in self-replicating technology, we…”

The crowd stirred: she was losing them. Fuck the speechwriters, what did they know? She hadn’t got to her present position by rehashing other people’s words. She did what she knew best and went with her instincts.

“Ah, to hell with it,” she said. “You know what this is about. Let’s build a city.”

She raised her glass and took a sip. Out on the arid soil the machines began to stir. The assembled crowd drank their thin champagne and looked on at the unfolding scene: five cylinders scratching in the sand. How could the start of something so momentous appear so dull? It didn’t seem right at all.

Soon they began to drift away, bored when they realized nothing much was going to happen out there. As they did so, the engineers and the workforce moved in. The sun rose further into the empty sky, beating down harshly on the minuscule activity below. Minuscule activity at the moment, maybe, but growing all the time as the machines began to reproduce.

A huge metal tree marked the Source. Pastel lights moved back and forth over it, dramatically picking out its colossal shape in the clear night. The trunk was composed of five thick strands twisting around and in and out of each other to form a thick plait. Four of the strands were a dull grey; the fifth, bright silver. The trunk itself emerged from the flagged ground and rose forty or fifty meters into the air before untwisting itself to spread its five branches high over Constantine and Mary’s heads. These five branches then each split successively into two and four and then eight strands, blossoming into a huge, feathery, treelike effect.

The harsh white stars twinkled at them through the sharp outer branches. Constantine was so taken by the sight, he felt as if he had forgotten to breathe.

“It’s like something out of a fairy tale,” he whispered.

Mary nodded dreamily, and Constantine continued. “We walk around this place and we think we know what it is, but it’s too big to hold in the mind. We need something like this to remind us what this place is all about. Thank you for bringing me here, Mary. Thank you.”

Mary swayed slightly as she gazed upward into the air.

“In memory of the five original VNMs that were used to construct Stonebreak,” she said. “I’ve heard that the fractal effect at the end of the branches was incredibly difficult to achieve back then.”

Constantine merely nodded.

“Don’t you notice anything odd about the branch directly above us?” asked Mary.

He looked up to where searchlights flitted back and forth, causing the shadows cast by the metal twigs to dance like leaves blowing in the wind. He stared at the branch above him. It did look strange, now that Mary mentioned it. Not misshapen as such, not even melted…He searched for the right word.

“It looks odd. It reminds me of something.”

She didn’t answer for a moment, allowing him to think. When he didn’t continue, she began to explain softly.

“The contract to build Stonebreak was too big for one company back then. It was awarded to five different concerns: Berliner Sibelius, Sho Heen, 113, Imagineers, and DIANA. Each of them contributed one of the VNMs that were needed to construct Stonebreak. This tree is a legacy of those five machines. That branch above us is the DIANA branch, and it’s breaking down. You can see how it’s crystallizing.”

Constantine experienced a sudden flash of recognition on hearing Mary’s words. That’s what the branch reminded him of: an old piece of uneaten fudge, still the same shape, but slowly turning back into sugar.

“I sometimes wonder if I’m the only person to have noticed that deterioration,” Mary said. “But I doubt it. One-fifth of Stonebreak is the result of the DIANA machine. So what if one-fifth of Stonebreak is similarly breaking down, deep down beneath the surface?”

“Hell…” murmured Constantine.

Mary continued: “And then I hear that DIANA is one of the agitators calling for Stonebreak to be pulled down. Of course they would be! Trying to hide their mistakes. So I put two and two together, and I think about what’s going to happen next. I head down to the station and I wait. And I wait and I wait. And then I see a ghost arrive with the best stealth routines of anyone I’ve ever seen.”

Constantine said nothing.

“You’ve come here because of this, haven’t you?” demanded Mary.

Constantine remained silent. She gripped his arm.

“Tell them, Constantine. Tell them that I know. I’ve been watching and gathering information all the while, ready to drop back into the game. I’ve been out here on my own for too long. Let them know that; I’m ready to do what’s required.”

Constantine opened his mouth to speak, but was distracted. Three people wearing long grey overcoats had moved up to them so silently that Constantine hadn’t noticed their approach.

“Good evening, Mr. Storey,” said one. “Sorry it took us so long to find you, but, well, you’re shielded by the best. Us.”

Another took hold of Mary by the arm and firmly began to lead her away; Constantine couldn’t tell whether by a man or a woman; all he could make out was a smudge of a person. They must all be wearing some sort of baffling equipment, he realized.

“Hey, leave her alone!” yelled Constantine. “I was speaking to her.”

“Can’t take the risk, Mr. Storey. She’s drawing attention to you. That’s how our computers found you, by noting the dead spot that seemed to follow her around.”

“But she’s a ghost too!”

“Was a ghost. Was a ghost. Now she’s just an unemployed consumer, like so many others here.”

“Unemployed? But she works for DIANA.” He hesitated. “At least, that’s what she told me.”

“Not for ten years.”

Constantine was half led, half bundled away from the Source. A grey flier rested lightly on the ground nearby. They steered him toward it.

“But people ignore her. I’ve seen her move down the street and no one notices she’s there. She must be a ghost. What have you done to her?”

The grey figures did not reply; they just bundled Constantine into the flier. As the door closed, there was a faint shimmer beside him and Constantine found himself sitting between two tall women with short-cropped hair.

“Whew. It’s a relief to turn those baffles off. I start to feel as if I can’t breathe. Now, if Lee gets a move on in dumping that woman, we can soon get you back to the hotel and out of mischief, Mr. Storey.”

Constantine watched the third grey figure hand Mary something, then turn and move quickly back toward the flier. Mary watched him go, then looked at the object in her hand. A bottle.

As the flier rose into the air, Constantine watched her take a deep drink, then begin to head toward the buildings that lined the perimeter of the open space in which the Source sat. Late-night sightseers moved out of her way as she staggered past. The flier climbed until it was just higher than the surrounding buildings, still much lower than the branches of the Source, and then it began a long dive down toward the second level. Constantine caught a last glimpse of Mary moving through the sparse crowds. The passersby continued to pay no attention to her. An embarrassment, it was as if she wasn’t there.

As if she were a ghost.