' Someone has been. I thought at first it was that mad Frenchwoman, but now I'm not sure. Anyway, it's a big problem. If the bailiffs figure out how to use the root kit to gain a toe hold here, they don't need to burn us – just take the whole place over.'
'That's the least of your worries,' Amber points out. 'What kind of charter do these bailiffs run on?'
'Charter? Oh, you mean legal system? I think it's probably a cheap one, maybe even the one inherited from the Ring Imperium. Nobody bothers breaking the law out here these days, it's too easy to just buy a legal system off the shelf, tailor it to fit, and conform to it.'
'Right.' She stops, stands still, and looks up at the almost invisible dome of the gas cell above them.
'Pigeons,' she says, almost tiredly. 'Damn, how did I miss it? How long have you had an infestation of group minds?'
'Group?' Sirhan turns round. ' What did you just say?'
There's a chatter of avian laughter from above, and a light rain of birdshit splatters the path around him.
Amber dodges nimbly, but Sirhan isn't so light on his feet and ends up cursing, summoning up a cloth of congealed air to wipe his scalp clean.
'It's the flocking behavior,' Amber explains, looking up. 'If you track the elements – birds – you'll see that they're not following individual trajectories. Instead, each pigeon sticks within ten meters or so of sixteen neighbors. It's a Hamiltonian network, kid. Real birds don't do that. How long?'
Sirhan stop cursing and glares up at the circling birds, cooing and mocking him from the safety of the sky.
He waves his fist: 'I'll get you, see if I don't -'
'I don't think so.' Amber takes his elbow again and steers him back round the hill. Sirhan, preoccupied with maintaining an umbrella of utility fog above his gleaming pate, puts up with being manhandled. 'You don't think it's just a coincidence, do you?' she asks him over a private head-to-head channel. 'They're one of the players here.'
'I don't care. They've hacked my city and gate crashed my party! I don't care who they are, they're not welcome.'
'Famous last words,' Amber murmurs, as the party comes around the hillside and nearly runs over them.
Someone has infiltrated the Argentinosaurus skeleton with motors and nanofibers, animating the huge sauropod with a simulation of undead life. Whoever did it has also hacked it right out of the surveillance feed. Their first warning is a footstep that makes the ground jump beneath their feet – then the skeleton of the hundred-tonne plant-eater, taller than a six-storey building and longer than a commuter train, raises its head over the treetops and looks down at them. There's a pigeon standing proudly on its skull, chest puffed out, and a dining room full of startled taikonauts sitting on a suspended wooden floor inside its rib cage.
'It's my party and my business scheme!' Sirhan insists plaintively. 'Nothing you or anyone else in the family do can take it away from me!'
'That's true,' Amber points out, 'but in case you hadn't noticed, you've offered temporary sanctuary to a bunch of people – not to put too fine a point on it, myself included – who some assholes think are rich enough to be worth mugging, and you did it without putting any contingency plans in place other than to invite my manipulative bitch of a mother. What did you think you were doing? Hanging out a sign saying 'scam artists welcome here'? Dammit, I need Aineko.'
'Your cat.' Sirhan fastens on to this: 'It's your cat's fault! Isn't it?'
'Only indirectly.' Amber looks round and waves at the dinosaur skeleton. 'Hey, you! Have you seen Aineko?'
The huge dinosaur bends its neck and the pigeon opens its beak to coo. Eerie harmonics cut in as a bunch of other birds, scattered to either side, sing counterpoint to produce a demented warbling voice. 'The cat's with your mother.'
'Oh shit!' Amber turns on Sirhan fiercely. 'Where's Pamela? Find her!'
Sirhan is stubborn. 'Why should I?'
'Because she's got the cat! What do you think she's going to do but cut a deal with the bailiffs out there to put one over on me? Can't you fucking see where this family tendency to play head games comes from?'
'You're too late,' echoes the eerie voice of the pigeons from above and around them. 'She's kidnapped the cat and taken the capsule from the museum. It's not flightworthy, but you'd be amazed what you can do with a few hundred ghosts and a few tonnes of utility fog.'
'Okay.' Amber stares up at the pigeons, fists on hips, then glances at Sirhan. She chews her lower lip for a moment, then nods to the bird riding the dinosaur's skull. 'Stop fucking with the boy's head and show yourself, Dad.'
Sirhan boggles in an upward direction as a whole flock of passenger pigeons comes together in mid air and settles toward the grass, cooing and warbling like an explosion in a synthesizer factory.
'What's she planning on doing with the Slug?' Amber asks the pile of birds. 'And isn't it a bit cramped in there?'
'You get used to it,' says the primary – and thoroughly distributed – copy of her father. 'I'm not sure what she's planning, but I can show you what she's doing. Sorry about your city, kid, but you really should have paid more attention to those security patches. There's lots of crufty twentieth-century bugware kicking around under your shiny new singularity, design errors and all, spitting out turd packets all over your sleek new machine.'
Sirhan shakes his head in denial. 'I don't believe this,' he moans quietly.
'Show me what Mom's up to,' orders Amber. 'I need to see if I can stop her before it's too late -'
* * *
The ancient woman in the space suit leans back in her cramped seat, looks at the camera, and winks. 'Hello, darling. I know you're spying on me.'
There's an orange-and-white cat curled up in her nomex-and-aluminum lap. It seems to be happy: It's certainly purring loudly enough, although that reflex is wired in at a very low level. Amber watches helplessly as her mother reaches up arthritically and flips a couple of switches. Something loud is humming in the background -
probably an air recirculator. There's no window in the Mercury capsule, just a periscope offset to one side of Pamela's right knee. 'Won't be long now,' she mutters, and lets her hand drop back to her side. 'You're too late to stop me,' she adds, conversationally. 'The 'chute rigging is fine and the balloon blower is happy to treat me as a new city seed. I'll be free in a minute or so.'
'Why are you doing this?' Amber asks tiredly.
'Because you don't need me around.' Pamela focuses on the camera that's glued to the instrument panel in front of her head. 'I'm old. Face it, I'm disposable. The old must give way to the new, and all that. Your Dad never really did get it – he's going to grow old gracelessly, succumbing to bit rot in the big forever. Me, I'm not going there. I'm going out with a bang. Aren't I, cat? Whoever you really are.' She prods the animal. It purrs and stretches out across her lap.
'You never looked hard enough at Aineko, back in the day,' she tells Amber, stroking its flanks. 'Did you think I didn't know you'd audit its source code, looking for trapdoors? I used the Thompson hack – she's been mine, body and soul, for a very long time indeed. I got the whole story about your passenger from the horse's mouth. And now we're going to go fix those bailiffs. Whee!'
The camera angle jerks, and Amber feels a ghost re-merge with her, panicky with loss. The Mercury capsule's gone, drifting away from the apex of the habitat beneath a nearly transparent sack of hot hydrogen.
'That was a bit rough,' remarks Pamela. 'Don't worry, we should still be in communications range for another hour or so.'
'But you're going to die!' Amber yells at her. 'What do you think you're
'I think I'm going to die well. What do you think?' Pamela lays one hand on the cat's flank. 'Here, you need to encrypt this a bit better. I left a one time pad behind with Annette. Why don't you go fetch it? Then I'll tell you what else I'm planning?'
