Spares

The great and the good, the talented and the important, the cream of New Richmond’s gene pool.

No, actually. Just the richest. I guess some people of merit probably made it in through the side doors, invited to make the memorial service even more appealing to the media circus. But the autocameras and talking heads were kept firmly away from the event itself, and buzzed excitably around the lobby on the 200th floor. I’d like to think they were kept out through respect for the dead, but I suspect it was just to pique their curiosity. The cameras, droid-operated fliers, seemed to be remaining calm, but their human front people were almost exploding with excitement.

Everybody else was led up an enormous spiral staircase all the way to 203, where we stood buzzing in a room the size of a small European country. This, we were given to understand, was the chapel’s anteroom. It was two stories high, and the ceiling had been entirely painted in the style of the Sistine Chapel. Storyboarded by the West Coast’s finest, the ceiling celebrated the exploits of that most durable of action heroes—God. Religion never really went out of fashion for the rich, maybe because it’s the easiest pretense at humility they could find. All the people around me, themselves the most well-heeled in New Richmond, stood trying not to be obvious about the fact they were wondering how much it cost to have a mile-square Renaissance cartoon daubed over a ceiling—proving that pretense was all that it ever was. The room could dwarf five thousand guests, and so the four or five hundred who stood huddled in its middle were left in absolutely no doubt as to their relative status to the person who owned it.

I stood with Golson to one side of the group. It wasn’t that I particularly valued his company; there just wasn’t anywhere else for me to go. I didn’t have a plan of any kind. I was waiting to see what I would do.

The area around us was alive with a low murmur of anticipation. Golson was utterly entranced. His eyes flitted over the assembled company with a fervor that seemed almost religious itself. These, I could tell, were his gods; the wrinkled old and glowing young, all slick with money and four-dimensional with status. CostSlots were sewn into almost every sleeve, trumpeting the garment’s worth to anyone who gave a shit. Most people, it appeared, gave a shit. A very few of them had cannily eschewed these public announcements of value, and I could see the other guests trying to work out whether this was because their garments were a little cheaper than theirs, or even more expensive. From the furrowing on some of the brows around me, I could tell this wasn’t an easy judgment to make. I don’t mind the rich, really I don’t. It’s just that they’re so boring.

Getting through security had been easy; there’d been an anxious few moments while I wondered whether my picture might have been circulated around the security staff, but no one gave me a second glance. I was accompanying someone who had a bona fide invitation, as his guest, and I was also dead so I was unlikely to be a threat to anybody. Golson was still rather unhappy about the turn of events, but I’d reassured him that far from damaging his reputation, it would probably double his chance of scoring at the reception after the service. He seemed fairly cheered by this until he figured out what I meant.

I didn’t see anyone in the crowd who looked like trouble for me, nor did I expect to. I’d made Vinaldi promise to keep his head down until the afternoon. Maxen wouldn’t be showing himself before the service proper, where he was apparently slated to deliver a eulogy to the dead girl; and Yhandim and his colleagues were far too ragged-looking to be allowed near center stage of such an event. I had little doubt they were lurking somewhere on the sidelines, but so long as I stayed in the crowd I wasn’t too worried about them. Yet.

After half an hour I noticed something going on at the far edge of the group, and saw that Yolande Maxen was leading the woman whose image I’d seen talking on Golson’s invitation. This was Forma Richardson, I gathered, mother of the deceased, and she was being given a tour of the guests. I lit a cigarette, to the general irritation of everyone around me, and watched as the small entourage made its way through the crowd. Golson had disappeared by then, presumably working the room.

Something about Yolande Maxen’s face struck me as off; instead of the triumph I would have expected, or the public display of sympathy, her features seemed dead and hollow. Mrs. Richardson, for her part, seemed completely unaware of the identities of many of the people around her. Grief, possibly, or maybe the Maxens had primarily invited people they wanted to cow, rather than anyone who had any genuine relation to the dead Louella Richardson. When I saw one middle-aged couple turn away in distaste after shaking Forma’s limp hand, obviously trying not to let her misery intrude on the exciting time they were having, I looked away and gazed up at the ceiling instead.

Directly above me was a representation of some biblical event or other. It meant nothing to me, nor probably to anyone else in the room. It was yesterday’s box score. We used to have religion but now we had code, both signifiers of events that happen in worlds which are just out of sight. We used to believe in an invisible God: Now we put our faith in streams of electrons fizzing through spaces too small to see. Once again our understanding is handed over to the unperceivable, as if there is some fundamental need in humanity which requires the inexplicable to be at the heart of our lives, which requires that our destiny be shaped by intangible forces. Maybe we need places with no paths to them.

God, code, our own minds. Maybe we just never read the manuals properly.

As I stared up at the ceiling it shaded away, and instead I saw a series of images that came unbidden into my head. Henna’s face, and Angela’s; and then Shelley Latoya. Shelley took the longest to fade, a memory of the way her eyes had slipped across to me when I’d given her a cheap way out of the guilt she felt at taking her dead sister’s money. It was replaced by a girl I’d never seen in real life: Louella Richardson. Strangely, the image I had of her face was different from that in Golson’s photograph, as if taken in altered light.

Finally I saw Suej, not sad but laughing.

A low grating sound heralded the opening of two enormous doors at the far end of the room. Naturally the entrance to the chapel was as far as possible from where we were standing, to make once again the point of how large the room was. It was surprising, in fact, that we hadn’t all been shown some other humbling treats yet, like sofas fashioned from silicon or a scale model of the Milky Way in diamonds. Maybe that would come later, after the service. If so, I would never get to see it.

Because as I fell in step with the other mourners and started the long trek across the room, I knew what I was going to do. I was going to pull the veils from Maxen in front of his congregation, to show that even men made of points of light are capable of sin.

On the way across the anteroom I spotted Chief of Police McAuley amongst the crowd, and hung well back. He, of all the people there, would recognize me on sight. Thankfully, McAuley was too busy smarming some dignitary to look in my direction. I stayed well at the back of the room when we entered the chapel, and sat at the end of a row. The chapel was dark and surprisingly small, and the guests would fill it to capacity. In front of me I could sense scuffles as people fought as politely as possible for the best seats, but the sound meant little to me. I seemed to be retreating inside my own head, into some inner space where all was quiet.

I was going home. Perhaps all it ever takes is a little effort, a realization that you’ve spent too long living in the front of your mind, and that you can throw the doors to the back room wide. I knew that I had made the right decision, and that if my timing was right, I might even be able to carry it through before I went down.

As I waited for the service to start, my eyes wandered over the chapel walls, which were dark with stained and polished wood. After so many years of running, I was surprised to find myself, at last, in a place of such peace. The columns in the room had been made out of single tree trunks, varnished but left irregular and true. Probably no one else in the room understood that this chapel had nothing to do with Christianity, and was instead a tribute to the secrets Maxen had learned during his own time as a soldier in The Gap. Sure, there were crucifixes and icons in all the right places; but the only illumination was from the thousands of candles which stood in rows on every surface, and the light they gave off, soft and buttery, could be a reminder of only one place. All it needed was a few blue lights hidden in corners, and everything would have been perfect.

Everyone was seated eventually, and the service started. I was remembering times spent crouched behind trees, in the calm before firestorms, every fiber of my soul attuned and listening for the music of life and death. A small choir sang something old and well-meant, probably the choice of Louella’s mother: The archaic, carved phrases echoed round the chapel like bewildered birds trying to find their nest.

Louella’s brother stood up then, and made his way to the lectern. He gave a short speech, with due emphasis on how productive a member of society his sister had been. His words were perfectly relayed around the room by the PA system, and the old woman sitting next to me started to cry, messing up the sleeve of her dress. It didn’t really matter; she wouldn’t be wearing it again. I couldn’t believe she’d known Louella, and I wished Nearly was with me. This was what I’d been trying to tell her the night before—that our bodies are pushed into action by emotion they have no control over, and I had no patience with it anymore. The real world had to learn how to deal with The Gap, or nothing would ever make sense.

Then there was more singing from the choir. As the singing ended, I heard stirring from the people around me. A glance at the order of service told me why: the big moment was approaching, when New Richmond’s nearest stab at deity would reach down his hand and bestow the largesse of his ready-to-wear compassion. The guests sat up straighter, peered forward intently into the gloom, and as the final note of the music died into nothing around us, a figure stood at the front of the chapel and made his way to the lectern.

Like everyone else, at first I did nothing more than stare. Arlond Maxen looked stern, and distant; but that’s the way we like them. We’re all just looking for Daddy, and sometimes fathers are unkind. Maxen was of medium height, wearing a dark suit, and his graying hair was swept back from his temples. The glasses he wore made his eyes oblique, as if even in the flesh you couldn’t touch them, as if he’d always be behind a screen. There was something so lustrous about his power and wealth, even from that distance, that for a second I was taken aback, made to wonder whether people like me could ever really affect the world of someone like him.

The moment when I stood up reminded me of something, as if the echo of a shot I’d once fired had finally rebounded off all the mountains in the world and come back into my head for good. I guess people assumed my standing up was part of the memorial service, at first, or maybe that a guest had simply lost his mind. I walked with my head up and shoulders back, straight down the center of the aisle.

The chapel was utterly silent, and my footsteps clapped like a slow knocking on some heavy door. By the time I was halfway there I began to hear murmurings, and sensed movement in the shadows over to one side of the chapel. I relied upon my prediction that the guards would not risk sending a shot off across the chapel when New Richmond’s finest citizens were hunkered down on each side, and kept on walking, my eyes fixed on Maxen, his staring back at me.

When I was a few yards away I pulled out my gun, and the atmosphere behind me changed immediately. But then it was too late. Two short paces put me a couple of steps below Maxen, the muzzle of my weapon pointed squarely at his forehead Now there was definite movement in the corners of the room, as security men came out of nowhere on the peripheries of the chapel, and rifles appeared on their shoulders. They stayed out of sight of the guests, but I could feel the red points of laser sights all over my back. They had a clear shot at me, but were waiting for a signal. Like everyone else in New Richmond, Maxen had them well trained. Added to which, if they shot me there was a real danger the shells would pass through my body and make it into Maxen, traveling much slower by then, and doing a lot of damage to their lord and master. Not a risk any of them was prepared to take.

“Tell them,” I said to Maxen. “Tell them that if anyone shoots I’ll have more than enough time to smear the back of your head all over the wall behind you.”

Maxen stared down at me, his face impassive. Though only five years my senior, he looked as if he were made out of tectonic plates. His face was tired and stoic, and reminded me of something I’d seen in his wife’s.

“You’re going to shoot me anyway, Randall,” he said. “So what difference does it make?”

“No,” I said. “I’m not going to shoot you. I was going to, but instead I’m going to do something worse. I’m going to tell these people a little story, and then I’ll let you live.”

“Then you’ll die.”

I shrugged. “It happens.”

Maxen flicked his eyes to the corners of the room and held his hands out. I walked the remaining steps toward him, my gun still centered on Maxen’s face, then turned to face the congregation.

In front of me were five hundred pairs of eyes, all unblinking. I grabbed Maxen around the neck and pressed my gun up under his chin. It fit there neatly, as if it had been waiting for this moment most of its life. Perhaps we all had—me, Maxen, and a gun. The crowd gasped quietly, too shocked to do anything except let their bodies unconsciously react. My head was filled with white noise, as if the circuits were burning out.

“Louella Richardson wasn’t killed by accident,” I said, trying to make it as simple as possible. The microphone picked up my voice and sent it ringing out around the room. “Louella was killed for fun. Louella was killed by a man hired by Mr. Maxen.”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it didn’t happen. The room was utterly silent. The eyes kept staring up at me, but I could see no change in their expression. Maxen stood stiffly by my side, the shaved underside of his chin smooth against my wrist.

I started again. “This same man killed four other women, and some friends of mine. But the only one who lived above the hundred line was Louella, and so that’s why you’re here today. Not because Arlond Maxen gives a shit, but because he’s guilty. It’s his fault that these women all died and he thinks that if he does this it will cover the smell in his head.”

Still nothing. I stared down, at the faces, wondering if I’d started speaking by mistake in some foreign language. Nobody moved, there was no scandalized buzz, no buzz of any kind. This didn’t seem to mean anything to anyone.

Bewildered, I let go of Maxen and leaned on the lectern. I opened my mouth to speak once more, but nothing came except this, with a dawning white light in my head.

“And five years ago, he had my wife and daughter killed.”

Only then had I realized, and I found that after the realization came, I didn’t have anything else to say.

“Nobody gives a shit, Jack,” said a voice, and I turned to see where it had come from. There, sitting on the end of the sixth row, was Johnny Vinaldi. “Henna, your spares, anyone below the hundreds—to these guys, they’re all just disposables.”

This time there was a reaction from the congregation, although I don’t think any of them could have been as surprised as me. Vinaldi stood up and shook his head at me. “Sure, Maxen here cared a little bit about Suej. After all, she was his daughter’s spare. That’s why he was so keen to get her back, and the real Suej died this morning, Jack, so looks like you got tit for tat. Apart from that, no one here gives a flying fuck. They didn’t come here to mourn. They came here to worship this guy.”

I suddenly understood why Maxen had never visited my Farm in the night: because his own daughter’s spare was there, and that would have seemed wrong to him; and in that moment I realized how many rooms there must be in his head, how tiny and how tightly locked.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Vinaldi quietly, light-headed with a sense of unreality. I knew only the sound of gunshots could make it seem real.

Vinaldi grinned humorlessly. “What you should have been doing,” he replied, and then he raised his hand and shot Arlond Maxen in the face.

He spun round on his axis, still upright, and before the body was on the ground, Vinaldi had emptied his clip into it. Maxen’s glasses skittered across the floor in the silence, and his eyes stared nakedly up into nothing.

The room exploded all around me into flares and tear gas. Out of the shadows ran six of Vinaldi’s men, spraying machine-gun fire all around them, leaving behind the bodies of the guards they’d already killed, the guards who should have been parking bullets in Vinaldi and me. They were aiming now for the remaining Maxen security men, and got most of them, but Maxen’s men weren’t the only people who fell. Maybe it wasn’t deliberate, but people still died, falling to the ground like trees in a forest which had never seen violence, surrounded by the ghostly faces of those who would be left behind. I knew that at least some of them would remember the day when the jungle rose up and came to find them where they lived, but I also knew how little difference it would make.

Vinaldi was surrounded by his men and swept away by their human shield, his mission accomplished. The room flickered with orange light, thick with smoke. I reeled into the chaos, staggering through screams and blood and fire.

Dazed by the fact I was still alive, I wandered toward the thickest part of the crowd, unconsciously seeking cover in the parts where people were screaming loudest and panicked into blindness. I walked slowly through the forest of candles, surrounded by people having the worst day of their lives, but for me it was as if they were barely there. It felt like the whole house was burning down, as if every window was being flung open. I saw Golson in the crowd, but he didn’t see me. He was too busy comforting one of the other guests, who happened to be young and attractive. Others ran past me, their clothes torn or on fire. I saw a costSlot rapidly counting down through the dollars as the garment it was attached to was consumed by flames.

By the time I made it into the anteroom, a stream of people was already ahead of me, sprinting toward the exit. I became part of the crowd again as it surged like a river in flood down the massive staircase to the entrance to the Maxens’ property on the 200th floor. It didn’t look like many people were sticking around for the reception.

Instead of making for the xPress with the others, I slipped out of the current and backtracked along the corridor to an emergency staircase, which I knew must run from a point a couple of hundred yards away. I didn’t think anyone else would know where it was—they don’t get a lot of practice at emergencies above the 200th floor. I felt untouchable, and it seemed I was, because no one got in my face. A little way down the corridor I passed Louella Richardson’s mother, standing by herself. Her hands were shaking but her face looked clear. She was staring straight ahead but didn’t seem to recognize me.

The staircase door was unguarded, presumably because all of Maxen’s men who were still breathing were otherwise engaged in the chaos upstairs. When I reached it I turned and looked back the way I’d come. At the far end I could see the hurtling mass of people, hear the shouts. A smear of faces. It was all taking place in an odd land far away.

Then I opened the door and a hand immediately reached out and pulled me through.