‘Maybe,’ Goscil said, brushing hair from her face. ‘But the rocket people hate being reminded their fancy computers are going to catch chaos too.’
‘Their precautions have worked so far,’ Rasfline said.
Goscil snorted. ‘They’ve only been up and running properly for the last year, and even then with minimal real input until two months ago. I give them three months, maximum, before something gets them.’
‘You seem quite an expert in data contamination,’ Rasfline told her, smiling at her and then at Consistorian Austermise’s attaché, who was talking to a high-rank civil servant.
Goscil ignored the insult. ‘There are nanotechs you can exhale, Ras; chaos-carriers that can float in an aerosol or crawl out of a skin pore.’
‘Still,’ Rasfline said, ‘Ogooue-Maritime has avoided such infection so far; perhaps it will continue to do so.’
‘Three months,’ Goscil said. ‘Want to bet on it?’
‘Thank you, no. I believe gambling to be a pastime for the weak-minded.’
Gadfium looked round the various groups of people in the antechamber, the feeling of frustration building up inside her again. ‘Oh, let’s just go,’ she said.
Rasfline smiled. Goscil scowled.
‘Madam wishes a copy of herself made?’
‘That’s right. A construct, for the crypt.’
Gadfium had given herself, Rasfline and Goscil the rest of the day off. Rasfline had probably gone to socialise with some of the people they’d left in the Hall of Mirrors’ antechamber. Goscil was doubtless crypting fresh data on some arcane subject. Gadfium had gone to change from her court clothes into something less formal in her apartment and then made her way to the Palace’s Galleria, a shopping complex modelled after part of twentieth-century Milan where the court elite could indulge themselves. She had been here only once before, five years earlier, when she had first been summoned to the Lantern Palace to be Adijine’s tame white-coat. She had been slightly disgusted by the snooty opulence of the place and its too-obviously perfect clientele then and felt no different now, but she had a plan to execute.
She sat in the subtly lit boutique – a traumparlour by any other name – sipping coffee over an antique onyx table.
‘With what purpose in mind, might one ask?’ asked the sales girl.
‘Sex,’ Gadfium told her.
‘I see.’ The shop assistant had called herself a sales executive and was probably the daughter of some clan chief; this would be her societal apprenticeship, Gadfium expected; the equivalent of one of the genuinely shitty jobs young people from the lower orders were expected to take on before they were allowed to enjoy themselves. The girl looked fashionably delicate and stainlessly steely at the same time. She was dressed in red, wearing what looked like a one-piece swim suit, large boots and wrist muffs. Her skin glowed like polished chestnut, her body was flawless and her ice-blue eyes looked out over cheekbones Gadfium fancied a chap might cut himself on.
‘I’m too busy for a real affair,’ Gadfium told her, ‘and anyway the other party is also Privileged and physically distant, so we want constructs made which can have fun on our behalf and then download the rosy afterglow, or whatever.’ Gadfium smiled and slurped her coffee deliberately. The girl winced, then smiled professionally and patted her tied-back black hair, held in place by a red comb which – assuming the girl was Privileged – was probably a receptor device.
‘Madam does realise that there are potential recompatibility problems, over time, with constructs made from Privileged persons.’
‘Yes I do, especially with the kind of full-mind construct I’d like. But I am decided, and that is what I want.’
‘Full-mind constructs are particularly prone to developing independence and becoming incompatible.’
‘It only has to last a few weeks in crypt-time; a couple of months, maximum.’
‘The contiguity-expectancy may indeed be of that order,’ the girl said, looking troubled and recrossing her long legs with what Gadfium could only think of as a flourish. ‘Most people would not be happy with a self-construct becoming independent over such a time-frame, especially in a romantic context.’
Gadfium smiled. ‘Most people aren’t realists,’ she said. She put her coffee down. ‘When can we do it?’
‘Madam has the permission of her clan?’ the girl asked, sounding dubious.
‘I’m seconded to the Palace; I think you’ll find I have all necessary authorisation.’
‘There is also the question of… discretion,’ the girl said, smiling thinly. ‘While of course not illegal, strictly speaking, the service madam is requesting is not one it is generally thought best to publicise widely. Madam would be requested to make an undertaking to the effect that she would restrict knowledge of her acquisition strictly to those of her own standing whom she is certain could have no objection to the process involved.’
‘Discretion is the whole point of this,’ Gadfium said. ‘Only myself and the other party would know.’
‘The process will utilise the neuro-lattice which would normally only be activated on madam’s quietus. This is the device which- ‘
‘Yes, I know what it does.’
‘I see. There is some danger…’
‘I’ll risk it, dear.’
Another Gadfium woke, looking out through the eyes of the original. This must be a bit how old Austermise feels, they both thought, and experienced the other’s thoughts as an echo.
The view was of a gently lit booth lined with curtains of intricate design. She was in some reclined seat, her neck and head held firmly but comfortably. There were two people standing looking down at her; a serious-looking older woman in a white coat, and the young lady in red.
‘Madam’s very first memory, again?’ the older woman said.
‘Earlier I said it was the blue swing,’ she said (and heard herself say it, and thought: oh yes, the blue swing, but what about the-), ‘but actually I think it must have been the time when my father. fell off his horse into the river.’ (- horse? Ah…)
The woman nodded. ‘Thank you. Do you still wish your construct to be released into crypt-time now?’
‘Please,’ Gadfium said, trying to nod but failing.
The woman in the white coat leant forward and reached out one hand to touch something on the side of the unit restraining Gadfium’s head.
The man slipped in through the curtains behind the two women as the older woman’s hand disappeared from Gadfium’s field of view. He was tall, slim and dressed conservatively in a light suit. His face did not look quite right. He held something thick and black and curved in his hand. Gadfium only recognised it as a gun when he brought it up towards her.
Gadfium felt her eyes widen and her mouth start to open. The girl in the red swimsuit began to turn round. The man saw her turn towards him; the gun moved quickly to one side so that it was no longer pointing at Gadfium’s face but at the girl. The man shot her first.
The noise was minimal; the girl’s head jerked back and she fell instantly, a delicate fountain of blood spraying up and back onto the tented ceiling. Gadfium watched it all in real time
/and in crypt-time, as the older woman began to turn, her hand still somewhere behind Gadfium’s neck.
Gadfium felt her other self, the construct, drop away from her like a bomb from a plane, producing an instant of vertigo as the girl hit the floor and the man – his face too straight, too unmoving – turned the black tube towards the woman in the white coat. The shot hit her in the temple, whirling her round so that she pirouetted as she collapsed. More blood, Gadfium felt, as she tried to move her head but still could not, still trapped, still held, as though her neck and head had been fixed in concrete, bored through and bolted with steel.
The man’s face turned impassively to her and the gun came up. She beat her feet on the reclined couch, brought her hands up to scrabble over the surface of the helmet unit trapping her, feeling desperately for some release mechanism.
He took a step forward and pointed the gun at her forehead.
/Quickened, she fell away from the scene in the traumparlour an instant before the man shot the woman in the white coat.
Gadfium had visited the crypt many times, through receptor devices in helmets, chairs and pillows; she was less adept than the average person in navigating its complexities – the sort of natural ease that came with immersion from childhood would never be hers – but she was no stranger to the medium.
It took her new self only a few seconds of crypt-time to realise that she was effectively free within the system, at least for now. Existing initially within the traumparlour’s grey-zone hardware she had not yet been given an official crypt identity.
She checked the immediate surroundings for clues to why one woman had been murdered, another was about to be and a third – herself – soon going to be.