Edge. Part 18

"Right," said Brian. "Let's get him fed."

But the food wasn't ready yet. It hurt to leave the steamy kitchen and step out into the back yard, where old mattresses lay in neat rows, plastic crates stood in a pyramid, and rusted poles supported a web of clotheslines. Eight or nine teenagers were practicing flips and rolls around the makeshift outdoor gym.

"He's going to mess that up," said Opal. "See?"

One of the youths rolled off a mattress, hitting the ground hard. He stood up, rubbing his ribs.

"Ouch," he said.

"You nearly nailed it," Opal told him.

From their left, a canine yap sounded. A Jack Russell on a lead formed of braided string wagged his tail. His owner was a girl around Richard's age; her sweatshirt was pink, bearing a picture of a flat-chested muscular man holding a knife. The heading read CARLSEN: THE FIREMAN RETURNS, while his blade dripped moving blood, animated droplets sliding down the sweatshirt fabric.

"That's Zoe," said Opal. "And this"

Everything faded as Richard's hearing filled with the hiss of non-existent surf.

Blades and the whirring machines, peeling back the skin and slicing the skull, glistening folds of fatty brain, trickles of and slicing the skull, glistening folds of fatty brain, trickles of blood and no one noticing. blood and no one noticing.

Richard felt choked by hands that did not exist, punched by invisible fists inside his chest.

"Jeez," said Zoe. "What's with the f.u.c.king kid?"

"I don't Richie? You all right?"A cramp pulled him over. Hot fluid spewed from his mouth.

"Oh, gross."

"Richie..."

"Sorry." He wiped his mouth. "I'm really sorry."

Zoe picked up her Jack Russell.

"Hey, Opal. You keep a pet, you gotta clean up after it, y'know?"

"f.u.c.k you." Opal put her arm around Richard. "Just go away."

His world lurched again.

She's hugging me.

The world was so strange.

Next morning he walked with Brian through Brixton, past blocks of flats with piles of bin-bags stacked outside. Rotting rubbish emanated a stink; it felt as if the air had thickened, becoming heavier, and you had to push through it to get anywhere.

"No pick-ups for six weeks," said Brian. "And that s.h.i.t Fat Billy is making like it's not his fault."

"Oh," said Richard.

"And like, the weird thing is people believe him. Like if he had more powers, he'd be able to sort out the mess."

Back in the squat, there had been a couple of people with shirts whose logos were the A-on-pentagram symbol of New Anarchism.

"You're an NAer?"

"s.h.i.t, no. They're stupid. OK, through here."

They pa.s.sed along an alleyway, skirting more rotting refuse, and came out onto a grimy road. Opposite was a shop with a handpainted sign Cal's Cycles and ceramic sheeting protecting the window. The metal door was guarded by three locks; Brian pressed his thumb against one, and extended his keychain from his belt to open the others.

"Give us a hand with these, will you?"

"What do I do?"

There was a trick to jerking the ceramic shutters open. Richard tried to helpe push them up, into the slots over the windows, but Brian did all the work.

"Cal won't be in till ten, most likely. You'll recognise him by the tats."

"Tats?"

"Bare arms and tattoos, kind of old-fashioned, but at least the designs move."

Inside, the shop smelled of sawdust and oil, and the floorboards were grey with age, iron-hard. Racks hung from the ceiling; from them bicycles were suspended, looking insectile, like praying mantises, in the vertical position. Gauntlets and boots filled shelves and two gla.s.s display cases, one of which doubled as a sales counter. There was a phone pad for taking payments, and a stained coffee mug which someone had left standing overnight.

"If we don't clean that," said Brian, "it'll just stay there growing fungus, maybe evolve intelligence. Could do with the conversation round here."

"You want me to work on software?"

"Got a bunch of gauntlets out back. Whole batch has buggy controlware. You up for sorting it out?"

"I... don't know."

"So let's find out."

The workshop-storeroom was cluttered with electronics and mechanical components, the air tangy with oil and metal dust, sharper than out front. A large scratched wallscreen would serve as Richard's display, and a small graphite processor pad for the actual programming, instead of a phone. On one wall, triggered by Richard and Brian's entrance, a movie poster brightened into animation: a grey-haired man performing gekrunner-style moves but with bare hands and ordinary shoes, and beneath him the words: Le Mouvement, Le Mouvement, C'est Moi. C'est Moi.

"Early parkour guy," said Brian. "French, coming to London to talk about the Tao of free-running. Old school, before your actual gekrunning, cause they didn't have these little doodads."

He handed over a gauntlet with a cracked-open casing.

"Looks like a car motive cell." Richard followed weblines with his finger. "Viral engineering, viruses carrying the electronicYou know."

Pain rotated inside his forehead.

"You all right, Richie?"

"Sorry, yeah." Richard rubbed his forehead. "No problem."

"OK, good. See, that control web is the kind of thing NAers don't get. Actually, just the fastenings on your clothes need a technical civilisation, stuff dug out of the ground with machinery, trucks for transport, factories, and shops, right? They don't get how complicated it all is."

Richard looked around the workshop, remembering the redwood-panelled rooms at home, clean and elegant but never welcoming, not comfortable like here.

"You're not rich, though. You, Opal, Jayce, and all the"

"Him."Brian's expression closed down. "You want to stay with us, you do not nick from your friends."

"I wouldn'tOh. Is that what Jayce did?""Uh-huh. Now, you know the first rule of hacking, right?"

"Er..."

"You start with a cup of coffee, refill every twenty minutes, repeat until task finished. I'll put the kettle on while you crank up the display. Give us a shout if nothing's in English."

Richard popped the service interface onto the wallscreen the text was Korean but he found a ReadMe and babelled the contents. By the time Brian put coffee down beside him, he was already deep in the code, sketching diagrams in the side panes as Mr Stanier had taught at school. When he surfaced back into day-to-day reality, his coffee was cold. He sipped from it anyway.

Mr Keele periodically said that optimum cognition requires frequent breaks, so Richard flipped open another pane to browse the news. Unable to help himself, he murmured a query into a bead microphone, and watched as the results blossomed inside the new pane, with FRIENDLY ENEMIES? as the headline, a picture of Father and someone else someone familiar dressed in tuxedos, and the caption: Philip Broomhall Philip Broomhall greets Zebediah Tyndall at City dinner. greets Zebediah Tyndall at City dinner.

He thumbed on the audio...

"Despite the hard-fought takeover battle between Tyndall Industries and BroomCon regarding Hixon Media, the corporate rivals appeared to put aside their differences before the Industries and BroomCon regarding Hixon Media, the corporate rivals appeared to put aside their differences before the Lady Mayor of London. However, appearances can be deceptive, since both men" Lady Mayor of London. However, appearances can be deceptive, since both men"

...then silenced it.

Hands shaking, he made the pane disappear, then continued to stare at the screen where it had been. After some time, his attention drifted as if on gentle currents into the coding panes, and then he was back at work, forgetting everything, at home with himself once more.

[ THIRTEEN ].

Josh walked along the Embankment south of the river, watching the solar barges drift past. There was no reason to be in this part of London particularly there were other places that Richard Broomhall could be but this was central, with hostels and more: an entire ecology of homelessness, a bleak, pervasive undersea of living that was easy to fall into and hard to escape. Every few minutes, he checked his phone display. At 10:01am, finally, output appeared: Entry OK. Entry OK. Thirty seconds later, an appended message brightened: Thirty seconds later, an appended message brightened: 1st gen 1st gen replication successful, 53 processes sp.a.w.ned. replication successful, 53 processes sp.a.w.ned.

Although Petra had slipped the querybot inside the net's defences, she did not know how subtle and pervasive it could be, and he had not told her. Most of his sp.a.w.ned code would suicide quietly in a kind of controlled apoptosis, deliberate suicide just like human cells, for the sake of the body's health. The risk of being traced back to Petra was low. He would have liked more detailed progress reports from the burrowing code, but more traffic meant greater likelihood of monitors noticing and His phone buzzed, and for a moment was too blurred to make out. They've found me. They've found me. But he blinked and refocused, to identify the caller as Kath Gleason, from Sophie's school. But he blinked and refocused, to identify the caller as Kath Gleason, from Sophie's school.

"h.e.l.lo, Josh."

"Miss Gleason."

"Kath, please. I just thought I should check in with you."

"There's no news."

"I didn't think there was." In the phone image, she shook her head. "Your, er, Mrs c.u.mberland came in to see Eileen. Asked for Sophie to be taken off the school roll."

Eileen was the headmistress.

"The school roll...?"

"Mrs c.u.mberland said that regardless of the outcome, Sophie would never return."

Josh rubbed his face. There's only one outcome. There's only one outcome.

"I'm sure Maria's right."

"Probably. It's just We asked about you, for confirmation, and she said you're out of the picture."

"Out of the picture."

"That's what she said."

He looked up at the rotating wind-turbines, the long row stretching past the Houses of Parliament, and said again, without knowing why: "I'm sure she's right."

"Oh, then... Are you in Swindon at the moment?"

"Nowhere near."

"I just wondered if you were going to be around."

Josh stared at her in the phone.

Christ, she's. .h.i.tting on me.

Sometimes a woman was interested and he didn't get it in fact, he still didn't believe that Petra could fancy him but this was blatant. With Sophie worse than comatose persistent vegetative state meant there was nothing left to awaken and Maria filled with confusion, hating him... How did that equate with him being available?

"The Brezhinskis aren't doing too well," Kath went on. "The father's still bottling things up inside, the mother's still drinking, and Marek... We'd like to see him back in school."

"It sounds as if the family needs help. Would the school pay for counselling?"

"I... don't know."

"There's someone who could help, so long as she does get paid. I can put her in touch with the family directly. You can vouch for her, if Mr Brezhinski asks you."

"Vouch for whom, exactly?"