Doctor Who_ So Vile a Sin - Ben Aaronovitch [3]
There was a moment of lucidity towards the end. He found himself in a bar in the part of the undertown that had once been called Hong Kong, with eighteen schillings left on his account.
Just enough for a last bottle of juke.
The bar was housed inside the salvaged fuselage of an antique passenger flitter, bolted halfway up the remains of the Ching Ma bridge. From his seat Vincenzi could see the remains of the spaceport at Chek Lak Kok which had been nuked during the Wars of Acquisition. He wondered which race of bemmies would 14
use such a prosaic weapon against a ground target, a well-aimed rock from orbit being much
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faster and cleaner. The Falardi perhaps, or maybe the Qink, both of whom leant towards the esoteric when it came to weapons.
Or perhaps we did it to ourselves, he thought. A fire-and-forget weapon that got fired and forgotten – another little mistake that was left behind when they floated the overcities.
He could make out the distinct footprint of the blast, a series of concentric circles written in twisted steel and plasticrete, as neat as a schematic on a tactical monitor. Heat casualties, blast casualties, radiation casualties.
Dead, nearly dead. Dead soon.
He had enough money for a bottle of juke and after that, without money or protection, he was dead meat. Already he could feel the undertown closing in around him, toothy shadows that would detach from nooks and crannies as soon as he left the bar.
Would he fight? He thought he might – it seemed more appropriate than just letting them turn him into an average-looking corpse. He smiled. No doubt bits of him would live on as spare parts in an organ bank somewhere. Why wait? he thought, and lifted his hand to attract the bar thing.
And then his life changed direction.
‘That stuff will kill you,’ said a man sitting further down the bar.
‘That’s my business,’ said Vincenzi.
The man shrugged. He flashed his ID at the bar thing. ‘Give the stabsfeldwebel something less fatal.’
‘Now listen, friend –’
‘Yes,’ said the man, ‘I am your friend.’
He was dressed in a conservative grey kaftan and matching leggings. His features were too bland to be anything other than a bepple, unlined tan skin, grey eyes, small nose and mouth. He was so unobtrusive it was almost conspicuous.
The bar thing put a bottle down. The man picked it up and moved over to the stool by Vincenzi. ‘Try some of this.’
It was Centillion sake from the Asumi habitat in Procorus –
200 schillings a pop. What the hell, thought Vincenzi, why not?
There was a hiss as he cracked the seal and the 16
bottle flash heated to the correct temperature. He poured a measure into a 20 ml shot glass with a picture of the bridge etched into its side. He lifted the glass, sniffed the aroma and threw the contents down the back of his throat. It felt good going down, much better than the juke had. Maybe he would burn a little brighter for having that inside him.
The man retrieved the bottle and poured himself a measure.
‘My name is Fluellen,’ he said.
‘What do you want?’
‘Do you know what a compiler is?’ asked Fluellen.
‘A fixer?’ Vincenzi glanced at the bottle. He was willing to talk as long as the drink kept coming.
‘Help yourself,’ said Fluellen. ‘A few hundred years back a compiler was a smart system that wrote specified network code.
That was before computers and information systems became autonomously referential. You told the compiler what you wanted to do and it translated it into operating code. Back then they still had languages for computers. I collect them.’
‘You don’t say.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Fluellen. ‘I’ve got SARTRE, micro-nietzsche, FLENSE and even a fragment of the original DALEK source code. That’s strictly illegal of course, so I’d be thankful if you would keep it under your hat.’
‘You can count on me,’ said Vincenzi, reaching for the bottle again.
‘Well, of course I can,’ said Fluellen. ‘The job of a compiler is to take a series of simple aspirations and then work out all the fiddly little details – break the problem