Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [137]
‘Everything that can be done,’ Cat said. ‘You’ve been in the system for hours, since the crashes stopped.’
Jordan glanced at the clock icon: 24.03.
‘That’s the time?’
‘Yeah,’ Cat said. ‘You were hooked. You were lost in it.’
‘Duh.’ Jordan shook his head and stood up. ‘There’s just some things to—’
‘No,’ Cat said firmly. ‘Come on. There’s nothing left to do. It’s done, all that you can do. Leave the rest to the goddess.’ He could hear in her voice that she was smiling. ‘It’s Her job.’
She turned away and he followed her through to the long room. Nobody was about, not even the children.
‘Where is everybody?’
‘Sleep of the just, or out on active,’ Catherin said from the corner. She reached into one of the bags she’d left and pulled out a bottle of Glenmorangie.
‘Where d’you get that?’ It was a controlled-zone product, embargoed.
‘Don’t ask,’ Catherin said, looking in a cupboard she couldn’t have seen for two years and emerging with a brace of fine heavy glasses. ‘Drink.’
He sat on the couch and she brought over a small table for the whisky and water and sat leaning against the arm at the opposite end.
‘Cheers.’
‘Slainte,’ Cat said.
The drink was welcome. Too welcome: it was dangerous to drink whisky for thirst. Jordan reached for the water bottle and drank half of it, then took another sip of whisky.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Yeah, it’s all in the hands of the goddess now. What a day.’ He closed his eyes for a moment and saw the peculiar aftereffect of looking at the same kind of thing for hours on end. Not exactly an afterimage: it came from something deeper than the retina, perhaps the visual system still firing at random, replaying monochrome images of what you’d been seeing – in this instance faces, scrolling text, tunnels in dataspace, the choppy seas of the market.
He opened his eyes and Cat’s shining image flooded and filled his sight, more welcome than water.
‘What have you been doing today?’ he asked.
Cat smiled. ‘Didn’t you see?’ She laughed. ‘You couldn’t. I’ve been running myself ragged, telling the comrades what to do. Not my strong point. I’m more used to what we call the “foot-soldier praxis”.’
Jordan said awkwardly: ‘Yeah, I know. I saw your bio when I was trying to track you down. Uh, hope you don’t mind—’
Cat dismissed it with an airy wave of the hand. ‘Course not. It’s my CV!’
‘It’s impressive,’ Jordan said. ‘An irregular soldier of the revolution.’
‘That’s me…and a mercenary at that.’ She chuckled. ‘Goddess, what a world! Even the revolution is privatized…It was Moh who got me into that. Before I bumped into him’ – she smiled to herself, looking away somewhere – ‘literally, as it happens – I was just doing it out of the goodness of my heart. Or something.’ She looked around the room. ‘Yeah, I had some great times here.’
Jordan nerved himself to ask, ‘Why did you leave?’
‘Bust-up with Moh. Political got personal, or maybe the other way round. That’s how it goes.’
Jordan looked at her, puzzled. ‘Moh didn’t strike me as someone who’d turn political disagreements into personal fights.’
‘Hah!’ Cat snorted. ‘That was the trouble!’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I really loved him,’ she said. ‘I still think he’s, well, an amazing man. But just thinking about him makes me angry; it calls up all the things we fought about.’ She laughed, swirling her drink and looking into it. ‘Mostly about fighting. I always believed you had to…believe, to fight. Like you said. Goddess, was I the original fanatic! I doubt if you ever believed in religion the way I believed in the politics, if you ever read the Bible like I read the latest perspectives document from the faction leadership. But Moh I could never figure out. I got to think he was cynical.’
‘A gun for hire?’
‘That’s it. I suppose you’ve met the gun.’ She shared a smile with him. ‘A dedicated follower of Comrade Kalashnikov. But back there in the hospital I found that he thought I was the loose