The Star Fraction

15

Another Crack at Immanentizing the Eschaton

Dee is experiencing her first guilty pleasure. The pleasure comes from sitting on the grassy, boulder-strewn side of a valley, under Earth’s sun. The sky is a different blue, the clouds a different white, to anything she’s ever seen, even in her Story dreams. At the bottom of the valley, far below her, a brown river tumbles over black stones. Farther down the valley, the peace of the scene is disrupted by the clangour of construction on a vast pylon. But from where Dee sits, the distant noise only emphasises the surrounding quiet; the rush of work by half-a-dozen tiny, scrambling figures only reminds her that she has nothing to do but relax, and breathe deep of the clean, thick air of Earth.

The guilt comes from its all being an illusion: a full-immersion virtual reality which has her so spellbound that she understands exactly why this seductive subversion of the senses is so much frowned upon. The most decadent sybarite in the upper lofts of Ship City will sternly inform you that this kind of thing is unnatural, has rotted the moral fibre of great civilisations, and makes you go blind.

She’s a little guilty, too, that Ax can’t share it. He’s stuck out in the real world, mooching in the back of the truck. The half-tracked vehicle is like a gigantic, elongated version of Jay-Dub’s upper shell. Its brushed-aluminium skin conceals several centimetres of armour-plate. Its nuclear turbines can give it a top speed of a hundred kilometres an hour, with a flat surface and a clear run. In its stores are many fearsome and fascinating things, but VR immersion gear is not among them.

Dee’s in via a direct cortical jack, plugged in to a socket behind her ear. Ax could do this too, but there’s only one jack, and she needs it – or rather, it’s needed for her. Ax is (she has to assume) still sitting under the raised visor of the tailgate, with his legs dangling over the end of the truck, and applying his electronic version of telepathy to the dodgy reception of an old television. He’s also (she hopes) keeping a watchful eye out for predators, bounty-hunters, and dust-storms. The crawler’s systems, and Jay-Dub’s, are well prepared for all of them, but as Dee looks down the virtual valley, she suspects that they’re more than a little preoccupied. She knows a thing or two about CPU time, and from here she can see a lot of it being used.

And not only by Jay-Dub and the vehicle. One reason why she’s been sent off up the hill and instructed to do as little as possible is that her own systems are almost fully engaged. Her body, out in the real world, is lying in the back of the truck, limp as a rag-doll. All but two of the figures working on the skeletal tower, just below the long, low house whose graceful shape juts out of the slope like an overhang, are aspects of herself. Soldier is there, and Scientist, and Spy and Sys, helping two other entities with their strange work. Stores and Secrets don’t manifest themselves in VR as anything like people: instead, they’re tangled, almost impenetrable bundles of live wires and sharp thorns and equally discouraging objects. The dark figures dance and poke around them, and now and again snatch something from the thickets and carry it off triumphantly to add to the bristling tower.

The two other entities are the ones that inhabit Jay-Dub all the time. She met them after Jay-Dub had taken them in its boat up the Stone Canal, far out into the desert, last night. They are the old man and the young girl who spoke to her from the truck. (The truck, indeed, is a version of this vehicle, and she can understand the attraction of its illusory, cluttered cab.) Away from the cab, in the valley and in the house, Meg is a graceful, elegantly dressed woman, but in the cab she’s a slut. Her face and eyes are the same in both virtual environments; but her eyes always seem larger and darker, when her smile haunts your memory, than they are when you see them again.

Ax has been given the task of watching the news, and following the court case when it starts. Meanwhile Wilde, the old man in the robot’s mind, has harnessed all the resources of its mind and hers to crack the problem – as he puts it – independently of the outcome. He and Meg, and the spectral shapes of Dee’s separate selves, are running about like ants at a fire.

And Dee is up here, on the hillside, all by her Self.

Tamara caught Wilde’s elbow. His fists were clenched, his heels were off the ground. He was leaning forward, staring after Reid and Reid’s companions.

‘You can always kill him afterwards,’ she said. ‘If it comes to a fight.’

Wilde relaxed somewhat. Slowly his hands uncurled. He gave Tamara a smile to set her at her ease, and looked down at the cigarette Reid had given him. It was still smouldering, the filter tip flattened between his fingers. He took a last long drag of it, and threw it away.

‘He said I was a puppet, and Wilde was dead.’ He shook his head, then shivered. ‘If Jonathan Wilde is dead, who killed him, eh?’

‘NOT ADMISSIBLE,’ the MacKenzie adviser told him.

Wilde snorted, blinked away a floating footnote about rules of evidence, and sat down on one of the seats. He crushed his paper cup and stuffed it into the mug that Reid had left. He reached for Tamara’s hand and drew her to a seat. She sat down on it sidelong, facing him.

‘What was all that –’ her voice dropped ‘– about the fast folk?’

Wilde glanced around. Seats around them were filling up, as people settled down to await the beginning of the case: Reid’s supporters and theirs, as well as an increasing number of people who didn’t fit in either camp, and who were drifting in from the main gate. These visitors, as distinct from the litigant alliances, made a colourful showing, with their hacked genes, elective implants or biomech symbionts. News remotes prowled about, some on the ground, some – supported by small balloons or tiny haloes of rotor-blades – drifting or hovering overhead. Up at the front someone tested microphones, generating howls of feedback.

‘There’s no time,’ Wilde said. He sighed and repeated, as if to himself, ‘There’s no time.’ Then he clasped Tamara’s hand and said urgently, ‘Look, you’ve seen something of what Reid really thinks. I don’t know if he’ll try that in court – he can’t very well claim I’m human, and Jay-Dub’s owner, and then turn around and say what he just said. But there’s a lot more at issue than the matters before the court. If the outcome goes against him, there’s no way Reid will go along with it. And if it goes against us, there’s no way we can go along with it!’

‘We could challenge him to single combat,’ Tamara said, as if it were a good idea. Wilde laughed at her.

‘Do you really fancy my chances?’

Tamara thought it over, eyed him critically. ‘Nah. Not really. You’re bigger, but he’s faster.’ She brightened. ‘But I’d have a chance, or I could call on an ally. Shit. Wish Ax was with us.’

‘Forget it,’ Wilde said. ‘You’re fighting no battles for me.’

‘Battles…’ Tamara sat up straight. ‘You said there might be big trouble. I can tell the comrades to get ready. In Circle Square we’ve got a few good fighters, and people who’ve studied all the great anarchist battles – Paris, Kronstadt, Ukraine, Barcelona, Seoul, Norlonto…’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Wilde. ‘Well, I hate to break this to you at such a late date and all, but there’s one vital thing all the great anarchist battles of history have in common.’

‘Yes?’

Wilde stood up and got ready to move down to the front row. He grinned at Tamara’s eager enquiry.

‘They were all defeats,’ he said.

Wilde took his seat, with Tamara at his right and Ethan Miller at his left. The others who’d come with him filled the other seats on either side. Farther to the left, across a passage between the files of seats, Reid and his immediate supporters had positioned themselves. The rest of the hundred or so seats were occupied, and twice as many more people – human or otherwise – made shift to stand or sit on the grass. In front of all of them was the wooden dais with its simple furnishings, and an array of microphones and cameras. From the labels stuck on them they appeared to be from the news-services rather than part of the court’s arrangements, but some of them had been cabled to loudspeakers at the rear of the seats, the cobweb threads of the cables shining on the damp and now trampled grass. Ethan ostentatiously checked the mechanisms of his rifle.

At a minute before ten, the voices hushed, and the other sounds – of breathing, of shifting, of recording – seemed louder, as Eon Talgarth walked up the central aisle. Heads and cameras turned. Talgarth faced straight ahead.

He was a slight-built man, of medium height, with wispy brown hair slicked back under a tall hat. He wore a plain black suit and white shirt, with a blue tie. His features conveyed a greater maturity than Ship City’s fresh-faced fashions normally affected. When he reached the dais he bounded up on it, and sat down carefully on the canvas seat. He filled his glass with a yellow liquid, sipped it, and lit a cigarette. His narrow-eyed gaze swept the crowd.

‘Right,’ he said, in a London accent that sounded archaic and drawling by comparison with the clipped local speech. ‘Begin.’

Reid stood up at once and walked to the nearest microphone.

‘Objection,’ said Wilde, rising. ‘My charge is the more serious, and should be heard first.’

‘Over-ruled,’ said Eon Talgarth. ‘His claim was prior.’

Wilde turned an incipient shrug into a polite bow, and sat down. ‘WORTH A TRY,’ the adviser told him.

Reid addressed the judge.

‘Esteemed Senior,’ he said. ‘Thank you for hearing us.’

‘Thank you for honouring the court with your custom,’ Talgarth said. ‘Now, what’s your charge?’

Reid paused, and then spoke as if reading from a note: ‘My charges are against Jonathan Wilde, and Tamara Hunter. My charge against Jonathan Wilde is that the robot known as Jay-Dub, property of the same Jonathan Wilde, was used to corrupt the control systems of a Model D gynoid, known as Dee Model, property of myself. My charge against Tamara Hunter is that she illegally took possession of the gynoid, subsequently claimed that Dee Model was abandoned property, knowing that the gynoid was not abandoned, and raised an improper defence of the gynoid’s falsely claimed autonomy against the recovery agents of its lawful owner.’

Talgarth looked at Wilde and Tamara.

‘Do you accept these charges, or contest them?’

They both stood up. ‘We contest them.’

‘Very well,’ said Talgarth. With one airy wave he gestured for them to sit, and Reid to continue.

‘The material evidence for these charges,’ said Reid, ‘has been brought to your attention through the First City Law Company, and I wish to introduce it formally. One: a transcript of an interaction between my gynoid, known as Dee Model, and another artificial intelligence. Two: personal records of interactions I have had in the past, with an artificial intelligence embodied in a robot known as Jay-Dub. The authenticity of these records can be, and has been, independently verified.’

Talgarth nodded. ‘The court accepts their provenance.’

‘Challenge?’ Wilde murmured into his adviser’s mike.

‘NO CHANCE.’

‘Three,’ Reid went on, ‘the public record of the ownership of Jay-Dub, posted many years ago with the Stras Cobol Mutual Bank. Its owner is identified as Jonathan Wilde, my opponent in this case.’

‘Will the person identifying himself as Jonathan Wilde please rise?’

Wilde complied, turning around so that every eye and lens in the place could see him.

‘Thank you,’ said Talgarth, with a curt nod to Wilde. ‘You may sit.’ He turned again to Reid. ‘Continue.’

‘Fourth, and finally,’ Reid said. ‘An autonomy claim posted through Invisible Hand Legal Services, by Tamara Hunter, also in this court –’

The identification ritual was repeated.

‘– and alleged to be on behalf of Dee Model, an allegedly abandoned automaton.’

Talgarth took another sip of his drink, and fixed his eye on Tamara.

‘We accept that this claim was posted,’ she said.

‘Fine,’ Talgarth said. He tapped a cigarette out of a pack, and lit it.

‘So that’s the evidence,’ he said. ‘You needn’t introduce evidence about Tamara Hunter’s defence of Dee Model, as the incident is a matter of public record. The court acknowledges that there’s a case to answer, on the face of it.’

Wilde stood up, blinking spasmodically as the MacKenzie downloaded a sudden screed past his eyes.

‘We are prepared to answer it, and to lay counter-charges,’ he said. ‘However, I need a few moments to assimilate some new information. I crave the court’s indulgence for…ten minutes?’

A ripple of impatience and derision disturbed the crowd.

‘You have seven,’ said Talgarth.

What the MacKenzie adviser was telling Wilde, and which he précised to Tamara and a huddle of their supporters, was this:

Invisible Hand’s sub-contracted software agents, on a (necessarily slow) trawl of Ship City’s vast, unencrypted public records – which, in the absence of anything resembling a civil service, suffered from inadequate maintenance, low compatibility and shoddy indexing – had uncovered a single, intriguing reference to Jay-Dub and Eon Talgarth. They had never had any recorded contact since the landing, but they had been on the same work-teams back on the other side of the Malley Mile.

‘Does this change anything?’ Tamara asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Wilde said. ‘But Reid must know about this, just as he must know that Talgarth took a pretty dim view of my activities back on Earth.’

Ethan Miller thrust his face forward. ‘We should get the trial called off, man! The judge is biased against you, and maybe against Jay-Dub as well.’

‘We can’t,’ said Wilde. ‘We’ve agreed to him, I’ve said publicly I trust his judgement, and we can’t turn round now and say we didn’t know.’

‘But we can on appeal to another court,’ Tamara pointed out.

‘Ah,’ Wilde said. ‘So could Reid – this cuts both ways! We don’t know how Talgarth and Jay-Dub got on when they were both robots together – could’ve been the best of mates, for all we know.’ He straightened up, coming to a decision. ‘Reid can’t know that Jay-Dub never mentioned this, or for that matter that it’s currently out of communication with us. So he might be holding this back as grounds for an instant appeal if the decision goes against him. Fuck it. I’ll just have to bear it in mind. Play on.’

Dee hears a distant shout. The figures around the tower are yelling and waving at her, and moving away. The tower itself has changed, its barbed branches forming a pattern that looks somehow inevitable and right, ugly though it is.

She sighs and stands up. Now she’ll have to slog and slither all the way back down the hill, and along the rough road. Seeing as how this is virtual reality, she doesn’t understand why she can’t just fucking fly. Wilde has told her about something called ‘consistency rules’ but she’s not impressed. She doesn’t need a spurious consistency to stop her going mad.

But all this casting of curses and aspersions proves redundant, for without a moment’s warning she’s back in her tired and aching flesh. Her head hurts so much she wishes she were scrambling down that hillside, under the big, hot sun of Earth. Above her, tools and flashlights sway from hooks, and all around the deep electric hum of the crawler’s turbines tell her they’re on their way.

She sits up cautiously and swings her feet to the floor. Ax stands by the closing tailgate. Interior screens light up on all four walls of the vehicle’s hold as the rear door shuts with a sigh of hydraulics and a suck of sealing-strips. They are heading straight for the canal, which they cross with a gentle pitching motion. The crawler’s treads, Dee knows, are mounted on some kind of extensible legs which make drops of a couple of metres no more than bumps in the road.

‘What’s going on?’ Dee asks.

Ax shrugs, but Dee’s question is answered as the forward screen changes to a view over the shoulders of Wilde and Meg. Meg twists around and smiles, Wilde keeps looking forward but his eyes meet hers in the rear-view mirror. (Consistency rules again. Crazy, Dee reckons.)

‘Hi,’ he calls. ‘Sorry about the abrupt departure. You can go back to our place with Meg if you want, but right now I’ve got to stay in reality.’ He laughed. ‘To the extent of looking out the window and driving the truck, anyway.’

In reality, Jay-Dub is nested in a cavity near the front of the vehicle, and has been since they arrived. The truck is perfectly capable of driving itself. Dee has a shrewd suspicion that the necessity of controlling its progress is in part purely psychological, at a more superficial level than that of the embedded consistency-rules. She lets the explanation pass.

‘Where are we going?’ she asks.

‘We have to go back to Ship City,’ the man tells her.

‘Problem at the trial?’ Dee guesses. She’s not paying the conversation her full attention; she’s exploring her mind, checking off her selves like they’re strayed children coming home, and finds to her relief that they’re all there. Secrets is smaller, Stores is far bigger than when she downloaded them to Jay-Dub – but that’s all right, she has room in her head to spare.

‘Oh no,’ Wilde shouts back, his eyes flicking from the mirror to the desert. Dee can see the vehicle is moving at almost its top speed. ‘We have to pick up some poison, and then…’

His voice trails off, whether because of the outcrop they’re about to (she grabs the edge of the bed-bench) go over – or because he doesn’t know what to say.

‘Then what?’

Wilde’s eyes, crinkling into a smile, look back at her again.

‘We’re going to hack the gates of hell.’

She doesn’t even bother to ask for a further explanation. It is obvious that none will be forthcoming, and she has to assume there’s some good reason why not. Wilde gives her an encouraging nod, and then turns his attention to the flat desert and to Meg. Ax has braced himself on an old foil blanket, next to an aerial feed, and is having visions by television.

Dee sets Scientist to work, and enters Sys. Minutes pass. Then, as from a great, cold height, a mountain higher than any on Earth or either Mars, in a raw virtual vacuum that makes her head feel as though it’s about to bloodily explode, Dee sees exactly what Wilde’s cryptic statement means.

‘You first,’ Tamara said. The others dispersed to their seats and Wilde stepped forward to the microphone. Talgarth stubbed out the cigarette he’d spent the seven minutes smoking, and nodded.

Wilde went through the same courtesies as Reid had used and said:

‘Esteemed Senior, I am more than willing to answer for my actions, and for those undertaken on my behalf. I am not willing to answer for the actions of the robot Jay-Dub, or to accept the allegation that it is my property. My present physical existence began last Fi’day, around noon, when I was resurrected. The robot Jay-Dub claimed to have accomplished this, by means which I make no pretence to understand –’

Reid sprang to his feet.

‘Objection!’ he said. ‘Irrelevant.’

‘Sustained,’ said Talgarth.

Wilde swallowed. ‘Very well, Esteemed Senior. The point can be made independently by appealing to the records of Jay-Dub’s transactions with the Stras Cobol Mutual Bank, which I am happy to make available to the court so far as they are relevant. They establish indeed that the owner of Jay-Dub is one Jonathan Wilde. And they identify who, exactly, that Jonathan Wilde is. The earliest records include transactions with David Reid’s company, Mutual Assured Protection. They explicitly accept the name ‘Jay-Dub’ as a synonym of Jonathan Wilde, and the robot Jay-Dub as equivalent to that person, Wilde. The robot Jay-Dub has been accepted without demur these many years as none other than Jonathan Wilde – Jay-Dub, in short, is Jonathan Wilde! Any records mentioning Wilde as the owner of the robot Jay-Dub, therefore, can only be interpreted as meaning that the person Jonathan Wilde owns Jay-Dub in the same sense that I, Jonathan Wilde, own my body.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Any coincidence of names is regretted.’

Eon Talgarth, sitting on his chair on the dais, shared an eye-level with Wilde, standing. Their eyes locked for a moment.

‘The court will rule on this point,’ Talgarth said. ‘The robot known as Jay-Dub is in a unique position among all the inhabitants of this colony, so far as I know. However, it is a position in which many of the said inhabitants once were, and in which it alone remains. I accept the argument which has just been put, and I rule that any charges against Jonathan Wilde in the capacity of owner of the robot Jay-Dub must be laid against that robot, as a self-owning mechanism.’ He looked around. ‘It is not present in this court and should be notified forthwith. The charge against that Jonathan Wilde remains pending.’

Reid started to his feet with a look of fury, but a woman sitting beside him caught his arm and drew him back. After conferring head-to-head with her, Reid desisted.

‘My ruling carries no precedent relevant to questions of machine personality as such,’ Talgarth went on. ‘The matter of the ownership of Dee Model has still to be considered. Regardless of whether her control-systems were corrupted, and who if anyone is responsible for that, Reid’s claim that he did not abandon her is not contested. Therefore he remains her owner, and those present on the other side of the case are enjoined to co-operate in her apprehension and return.’

Tamara rose, received a flicker of permission to speak, and said, ‘Senior Talgarth, this court has many times ruled that the autonomy of machines may be claimed by the machines themselves. That, and not the issue of abandonment which I freely admit I was wrong about, is the basis on which we wish to assert Dee Model’s self-ownership.’

Talgarth sighed. ‘All such cases,’ he said patiently, ‘relate to unowned sapient machines in the machine domains. The freedom of such automata is also implicitly recognised by other courts. The gynoid under consideration, however, has been constructed by the resources and efforts of David Reid, and remains his property until he decides otherwise.’

Tamara sat down and gave Wilde a grimace of regret or apology. Wilde, however, seemed to gaze right through her. He blinked, smiled at her and stood up. He walked to the microphone and looked over the crowd before turning to the judge.

‘Esteemed Senior, your valued opinion on the matter of Jay-Dub and the matter of Dee Model raises some further points, which I beg the court to consider. First, in the matter of Jonathan Wilde in his embodiment as Jay-Dub. The court has accepted that he and I are separate persons, though – by implication – sharing a common history up to a point which the court has refused to determine –’

‘How?’ Talgarth frowned.

‘When you sustained the objection that the time of my resurrection was irrelevant.’

Talgarth sat back. ‘That’s correct.’

‘As a separate embodiment of Jonathan Wilde, I wish to proceed against David Reid on the charge of having unlawfully killed me, on the basis that any considerations or acknowledgements that may have been made between Reid and Jonathan Wilde aka Jay-Dub have no bearing on me.’

‘I’ll defer consideration on that until the time of your resurrection has been determined satisfactorily,’ said Talgarth. ‘The charge of murder which you brought against Reid remains outstanding until that point has been cleared up, or is not contested. David Reid, what do you say?’

Reid rose, disdaining to step forward. ‘Please the court,’ he said loudly, ‘I am quite willing to accept this person’s claim that he was resurrected by the robot Jay-Dub three days ago. As a matter of natural justice I wish the earliest opportunity to clear myself of the charge of murder, or have it thrown out of court as a waste of the court’s valuable time and a piece of actionably vexatious litigation.’ He glared at Wilde and sat down.

‘Very well,’ said Talgarth. He turned to Wilde. ‘Before we move to considering that charge, do you have anything further to say about points raised by my opinion on the matter of Dee Model?’

‘I do indeed,’ said Wilde. ‘The court mentioned that the gynoid Dee Model had been constructed with the, ah, other party’s resources and efforts. I wish to raise a question about the ownership of those resources themselves. Because Dee Model’s body is a clone of the body of my late wife. This is obvious to me, and I challenge Reid to deny it.’

He paused and turned around to face Reid. Reid’s response was a tremor of the eyelids, and a shake of the head.

‘You don’t deny it?’ Talgarth said.

Reid stood up. ‘No.’

Wilde shot Reid a look of triumph and hatred, then composed his face to swing a calm smile past the cameras as he turned again to Talgarth.

‘In that case,’ Wilde said slowly and distinctly, ‘I claim that Dee Model’s body belongs to the legitimate heir of my wife!’ He smiled at Talgarth. ‘Whether that heir is myself or Jay-Dub I leave to the court to determine.’

Reid rose at once and bowed politely, though whether to Wilde or Talgarth wasn’t obvious.

‘I am happy to concede the ownership of the genotype,’ he said. ‘And to come to an amicable or, failing that, arbitrated arrangement about its use, or compensation for its use and any distress inadvertently caused. My major concern is the recovery of the gynoid’s software and non-biological hardware, which are incontestably my property.’

Wilde looked over to Tamara, who shrugged and raised her eyebrows as if to say, ‘What’s his game?’ The MacKenzie remote was saying substantially the same thing. It had expected a bigger fight, since the ownership of genotypes was a hotly contested issue. Its only suggestion was that any concession made here would avoid establishing a precedent that other courts might recognise.

‘Very well,’ said Wilde. He adjusted the microphone, his hand shaking slightly. ‘The only compensation I wish is that David Reid resurrect my wife’s mind as well as her body – something which is evidently possible, as the robot Jay-Dub has demonstrated by resurrecting me.’

Reid was on his feet at once. Wilde had to step back quickly as Reid strode up and caught the microphone from his hand.

‘The court has not accepted that Jay-Dub resurrected this man!’

Talgarth flicked ash from his sleeve. ‘Ah, but you have,’ he said mildly.

Reid sat down again. The woman beside him whispered in his ear, her face stiff with annoyance. The news remotes buzzed, and people in the crowd were checking out the running commentaries, on hand-held screens or on their contacts.

‘Order!’ Talgarth banged his gavel, carefully steadying his drink first. ‘David Reid may answer your request in his own time.’

‘I’ll answer now,’ said Reid. Wilde stepped back from the microphone, and returned to his seat.

‘You’ve stirred things up a bit,’ Tamara observed.

Wilde winked, confusing the remote adviser for a moment, and settled back to listen to Reid.

‘Wilde’s request is reasonable,’ Reid was saying. ‘The question of resurrecting the dead has for long been on the minds of us all. But, however much we may wish to do it, we are prevented by force majeure. Most of the personalities of the dead, including that of Reid’s wife Annette, are held in smart-matter storage which remains inaccessible without the co-operation of posthuman entities whose capacities and motives are unknown, but who – as experience has shown – are a risk to us all. I am responsible for keeping the codes that could be used to re-start them, and I can assure this court that until someone demonstrates a way to do this safely, these codes remain in my possession, and the dead…sleep.’ He glanced at Wilde. ‘There are some matters best left undisturbed,’ he told him.

‘He’s telling you not to push it,’ Tamara muttered.

Wilde grinned at her and went forward again as Reid took his seat. The tension in the crowd had diminished. Even Talgarth’s impassive face betrayed relief.

‘The robot Jay-Dub resurrected me without disaster,’ he said. ‘But there is more to the matter than this.’

Reid leaned back in his seat, hands behind his head, and watched Wilde with half-lidded eyes.

‘The court has given its view on one of Reid’s charges,’ Wilde said, ‘and left the other in abeyance until the other Jonathan Wilde, aka Jay-Dub, can be…prevailed upon to answer it. I now wish to press my counter-charge, the outcome of which may perhaps affect how any fines and damages in these matters are allocated. It may also affect the question of the resurrection of the dead in general.’ He smiled at Talgarth, who no longer seemed relieved. ‘Not in a legal sense – on that, I’ll defer to the court – but in a practical sense.’

Wilde stepped a little to the side, so that while he was unarguably and correctly addressing the court, he was also speaking to Reid and to the wider audience.

‘My counter-charge is this: that David Reid had me unlawfully killed, by the reckless action of people acting on his behalf and by his personal, wilful neglect of my injuries. That having done that, he has made no efforts in good faith to resurrect me. He claims that this is difficult – nonetheless, no evidence exists of any attempt on his part to overcome the difficulty. I claim compensation for loss of life-experience and loss of society, for my entire down time. That is, for nothing less than the whole of Ship Time, and possibly for longer.’

Eon Talgarth had to call for order, more than once, before the hubbub ceased.

‘Do you have evidence to bring for this charge?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Wilde.

He stalked over to his seat, reached into Tamara’s backpack, and pulled out the folder of Talgarth’s notes. He held it high as he walked back, and presented it to Talgarth.

‘The evidence,’ he said, ‘has been gathered by a certain Eon Talgarth, and has been a matter of public record and never challenged.’

The court fell silent, except for the toy-helicopter buzzing of the remotes and the distant din of the machinery outside.

Talgarth riffled through the pages, and shook his head. ‘There were conflicting claims,’ he said, ‘as to the manner in which Jonathan Wilde met his death. Although I myself inclined to the view which you have just stated, there are no surviving witnesses other than David Reid and, putatively, yourself. Its not having been challenged has, I’m afraid, no bearing on the matter. No court on this planet recognises libel, and they do not recognise a refusal or failure to rebut a claim as any evidence in its favour.’

He sighed, as if in regret for more than the inadequacy of the evidence; for, perhaps, a political passion long spent, which had driven him to compile the dossier. He handed the folder back to Wilde.

‘The court cannot accept this as evidence,’ he said. ‘In the absence of other evidence, or the confession of the one you have accused –’

He glanced at Reid, who was shaking his head vigorously.

‘– which I understand will not be forthcoming, and which I have no power to compel, I do not see how this charge can be tried at this time. Should you call Reid as a witness, he may refuse to answer, and no adverse inference may be drawn from that.’

Reid’s legal adviser stood up and conferred briefly with Talgarth, while Wilde stepped back out of earshot and looked away. When the woman had sat down again, Talgarth tapped with his gavel.

‘The counter-charge is dismissed,’ he said, ‘without prejudice to either party. Wilde’s bringing of the charge cannot be called vexatious or frivolous, and is not to be held against him. The name and reputation of David Reid remain unsullied. The allegation that his killing of Wilde was unlawful, or with malice, remains as it was before the charge was brought, that is, an unsubstantiated historical speculation which he is within his rights in treating with contempt.’

Reid and his assistant exchanged smiles.

‘However,’ Talgarth went on, with an abrupt harshening of his voice, ‘the claim that Reid was responsible, culpably or not, for the death of Jonathan Wilde is…considerably better attested. The witnesses are not, of course, in this court, but some are known to survive and could be asked to testify.’

He beckoned Reid’s adviser, and after they had conferred again he banged his gavel.

‘Reid does not contest his responsibility for the fact of Wilde’s death.’ He held out an open hand to Wilde. ‘You may proceed.’

‘Ax?’

No response. Ax is watching television in his head, or in front of his eyes, or whatever the hell he does. Dee can’t stand his autistic but audible interest for a second longer. She leans over and shakes his shoulder. He rouses himself and frowns up at her.

‘Wha –?’

‘Ax,’ she says patiently, ‘would you mind patching this fascinating material to a screen, so I can see it too?’

‘Oh. Sorry, Dee.’

He disengages from the cortical downlink and fiddles with switches. Outside, on the big screens, the outskirts of the Fifth Quarter roll slowly past. Dee watches the chaotic activity with disdainful dismay. If this is how machines behave when they’re left to run wild, she reflects, it’s no wonder humans mistrust them.

Around the crawler, which is making its way up a broad street, dozens of other machines, each about thirty centimetres long, are scurrying and sniffing about. They look like larger versions of the cleany-crawlies you find in houses, and although partly autonomous they’re guided by radio control from the cab. Meg has told her they’re looking for traces of a specific poison: one of the public-health countermeasures with which this place is periodically bombarded. The poisons – generically known as Blue Goo – are the nanotechnological equivalent of viruses, regularly updated and mutated to keep pace with the likewise evolving smart-matter wildlife of the machine domains. The job of spraying them from the air is done by a charity, which has no difficulty at all in raising money and volunteers.

Ax gestures to her to look behind her. Part of the screen she turns to gets masked as another window clicks up. It’s the Legal Channels service, showing the court case. Wilde – or Jay-Dub, as Dee finds herself mentally calling him – and Meg have been keeping an eye on it, when they can spare a moment. Ax has been given the task of keeping a close eye on it. Dee has been feeling left out, and wonders if the others have been trying to spare her feelings. Nice of them, but a waste of time.

Because, whatever bad news the court case may bring her, it’s all irrelevant now. As Ax said, that shit is over.

Wilde has apparently just finished speaking. He turns away from the judge, Eon Talgarth. Even Dee’s heard of Talgarth, a former crim from the Malley Mile orbital camp, who studied law as a prisoner; got involved in, then disillusioned with, abolitionism; and has for years made a living adjudicating disputes between scrappies and between machines.

As Wilde turns away the camera follows his face, and he gives it a slow, arrogant grin.

‘Well that was some speech!’ says the breathless commentator. ‘He looked quite annoyed when he described his killing – his alleged killing I should say! Sorreee! And nobody’s ever suggested before that we might owe the dead their back pay! For the implications of that please see –’

Ax snips that particular thread and all Dee hears now is the silence in court as Reid strides to the mike. His face makes her quail. She’s hardly ever seen him angry, and never with her, but she knows his anger is to be feared and right now he’s angry at the whole world.

The camera circles around behind Talgarth. Reid’s more composed now, and Dee feels proportionately calmer – in fact, as she gazes at the close-up, she feels the stirring of an involuntary affection and desire. It’s all the more disturbing in that she feels it as a person, not as a slave, but she puts it down to her past and concentrates on what the man is saying.

‘Senior Talgarth,’ he says heavily, ‘what we have just heard is a disgrace to this court, and an insult to the intelligence of us all. It is also dangerous, in stirring up an opportunistic envy that has no place in a basically just society such as ours, where no person is reduced to selling their lives or labour to those more successful than themselves.’

‘Objection!’ comes a shout from Wilde.

‘Sustained,’ says Talgarth sternly. ‘We aren’t here as a public forum.’

Reid dips his head. (Dee hears Ax, behind her, snort.)

‘The point,’ Reid continues, ‘is that my opponent has asserted that those with an interest in the dead have a claim against me, because I’ve made no attempts in good faith – as he puts it – to tackle the immense task of finding a way to bring about the resurrection of the stored dead. Well, Esteemed Senior, good people, that is a task which I freely admit is beyond my capacities!’ He spread his hands and shrugged. ‘Have I ever prevented anyone else from putting forward a proposal to tackle it? No! Because, as we all know, the real problem is finding a way to contain those whose help we need to raise the dead. The fast folk, those who once were human and whose minds, and motives, developed far beyond human comprehension or control. They are the ones I could awaken, if I wished. They are the ones who could awaken the human dead, who sleep in the same storage-media as they do. And they are the ones who could, in the blink of an eye, turn this planet into the kind of hell that some of us glimpsed, a hundred of our long years ago.’

His gaze focuses on Eon Talgarth, and Dee feels only the slipstream of his passionate plea: ‘Esteemed Senior! I know your memory is not so short! Strike down this claim before it does more harm!’

He looks around once more, and resumes his seat.

Talgarth sips from a glass, and lights a cigarette. He contemplates the smoke for a few moments, then leans forward, elbows on knees. His posture makes a strange contrast to the formality of his attire, and, as if noticing this, he removes his hat.

‘Means he’s talking off the record,’ Ax explains.

‘But we can hear him!’ says Dee.

‘Figure of speech,’ says Jay-Dub, from the virtual cab up front. ‘Ssh.’

Dee, somewhat chastened, looks away for a moment and notices that the crawler is idling at the end of the broad street. The subaltern machines have returned, whether in defeat or success she doesn’t know. Ahead, there’s a grassy park with some fortification in the centre. Above it she detects a cloud of gnat-like flying-machines.

‘Ah, Reid,’ Talgarth is saying, ‘you were always a fine speaker, and I hear what you say. But between you an’ me, if you catch my drift, Wilde has made a valid point about how we could do it off-planet, safe in space, like, and you haven’t answered that, have you?’

Reid raises a hand placatingly to Talgarth, who leans back and replaces his judicial hat. Then Reid turns to the stiffly dressed woman beside him and has a murmuring consultation, from which the camera – as required – cuts away. It pans to Wilde, who’s sitting with –

‘Tamara!’ Dee and Ax exclaim delightedly.

‘Good for her,’ says Jay-Dub.

Back to Reid, who’s just angrily shrugged off the woman’s hand and is walking towards the camera and the mike, followed only by the woman’s open-mouthed dismay.

‘I didn’t want it to come to this,’ Reid says, all conventional courtesy discarded as he speaks to the world, and the court only as an afterthought. ‘But enough is enough. Sure, “we” could do it in space! Tell me, who’s this “we”? If anyone has the capital to spare for a deep-space station and a ring of laser-cannon shielded against any viral programs that could be sneaked into its controls, and a foolproof procedure worked out and hair-trigger, dead-fall nuclear back-ups in place, they can go right ahead! Be my guest! I’ll sell you the fucking dead, and the demons who could raise them. Go ahead! Have another crack at immanentizing the eschaton!

‘Before any entrepreneurs of the apocalypse rush forward, however, let me give you a warning.’

He turns and points a shaking finger at Wilde, who’s observing Reid’s performance with an expression of insolent detachment.

‘Don’t follow any suggestions from this…thing that calls itself Jonathan Wilde! This thing which admits it is a creature of the robot Jay-Dub!’

He pauses and takes a deep breath, and faces Talgarth. ‘Esteemed Senior, I have a heavy responsibility before the people of New Mars. I allowed the robot Jay-Dub to continue in existence, after I had grounds to suspect that it was corrupted by the original fast folk, in the Malley Mile. It has repeatedly, in person and through its golem here – and, for all we know, through manipulation over the years of the so-called abolitionist movement – urged on us the disastrous course of re-running the fast folk. Whose interests, I ask you, would that serve?’

Talgarth makes no reply.

Reid, as if in sudden disgust with the whole business, gives a backward shake of his arm above his head and stalks back to his seat. But he doesn’t sit down. His supporters rise with him, and others in the crowd stand too.

Reid reaches inside his jacket, and there’s a sudden frenzy of movement as the crowd separates – some fleeing the confrontation, others closing with one side or the other. Tamara, and some people Dee doesn’t know but Ax – going by his eager comments – does, form a barrier around Wilde. The cameras bob about, the factions face each other arms in hand.

Talgarth is speaking urgently into his right lapel, and making equally urgent gestures. Dee notices the weapons on the stockade’s iron walls swivel on their mounts, swing around and bear inward and down.

One floating camera suddenly spins and zooms in on the gate, which has opened, unnoticed. The rounded prow of a great armoured vehicle noses in. Dee looks away from the television window to the window screens, and sees another angle on the same view. The intruding vehicle is their own.