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By Root 1121 0

’t a straightforward ideological split. The same language was used on all sides. And it was a genuinely difficult issue: did the biggest threat to freedom come from the struggles of the Free States and the barb to maintain their own domains, or from the Republic’s efforts to enforce some minimal frame of law and rights across them all? Wilde argued for supporting the Republic but trying to moderate its claims. It was a position that Jordan found uncomfortable but the nearest to his own view, though he had a rather harder line on what should be done about people like the Elders and Deacons and Warrior captains of Beulah City. ‘Put them up against their fallen walls,’ he’d written once.

He’d won a modest fame from his writing and arguing, and his feel for the markets had not deserted him in the chaotic circumstances of the civil war. He was earning his keep; and Cat – her talents, like those of so many others, stretched by the revolution – had plunged into organizing defence work, liaising with the militias and security mercenaries and the new authorities. Occasionally she’d go out on active; to keep her hand in, she told him, and maintain her street-cred. Those were the few times when he felt like praying, if only to the goddess.

Anyway, Cat wasn’t on active now. It was her turn to make the dinner. He hoped she’d be ready soon.

The telly-skelly moved; the arms reached up; the fingers flexed. Jordan jumped. He got a grip on himself and peered at the machine suspiciously. With an audible creak it settled back.

Power surge, probably. Jordan looked anxiously at the screen to check that his painfully written article hadn’t been wiped. He watched in open-mouthed disbelief as the page shrank, and around its borders options appeared, Doorways™ opened…

He keyed through the options eagerly, finally convincing himself that it was all there. He smiled when he saw the change in the logo. A new release, indeed. They must have got someone really good to work on that, if the story of how Dissembler had developed from Josh Kohn’s work was to be believed. As far as Jordan knew, it had been universally considered impossible to maintain or document in any normal sense.

Before rushing out to tell everyone the good news he thought he’d better check the mailbox. There was one letter in it, addressed to the Collective from the Army of the New Republic. It had been there since the day of the insurrection – the day Dissembler had collapsed.

He opened it and found:

Attn C Duvalier in re J Brown

2 days @ 200B-m/day

Total 400B-m CREDIT

PAID

Date as addr

For some time he didn’t move; he felt he didn’t breathe. He remembered her oblique remarks, the tilt of her head as she shook it slowly, her whispered admonition not to do it again, not to try to hack the Black Plan. He remembered the weight of the weapon in her jacket pocket.

He knew that she’d arrived as, in some sense, an emissary of the ANR. She’d as good as said it. But he’d thought of her actions as coming primarily from conviction. Thinking back, they had come from conviction. But she’d come here to do a job, a job she’d got paid for, and the job was him. To turn him away from the dangerous meddling in the Black Plan’s affairs, to turn him to good use, point him in the right direction, aim and fire. Perhaps even their infiltration of Beulah City had been part of the plan…of the Plan, he corrected himself bitterly.

God, perhaps that was why the Black Planner had approached him in the first place, so that he’d be outside BC and able to get in if the need arose! No, that was too paranoid.

Nothing had been heard of the Black Plan since the day Dissembler crashed under – it was rumoured – a final, spasmic assault from the cranks, shooting their last bolt. Not surprisingly, if the Plan had used Dissembler in the way he’d surmised that day outside the shopping centre. He’d sometimes wondered what had become of the Black Planner.

He heard a familiar light step in the corridor.

He deleted the message with one swift stab of his finger.

He spun the chair to see Cat