Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [181]
On the metre-wide quay a shadow moves – her own.
She turns to look back down the tunnel. A light, far back in the corridor, has just come on and something is moving between here and the source. Tamara, a moment later, notices it too and she steps from behind the door. She glances at Dee, points outwards, and then makes a two-fingered chopping motion to left and right. Together they jump out of the door, turning in opposite directions as they steady themselves, crouching on the quay.
Dee sees the walled bank of the canal rising three metres to street level, and the quay running alongside the canal to a junction a few hundred metres away. Boats and barges are moored along it, doors and tunnel-mouths punctuate it. There’s nobody moving on it at the moment.
Over her shoulder she sees a similar view in the opposite direction, except that the canal extends out to the dark of the desert. She hears at least one set of running footsteps, now about half-way along the tunnel. She gestures frantically to Tamara.
‘Get in the boat!’ Tamara says. She hauls the rope and the little inflatable bumps against the quay’s lip. It barely rocks as Tamara steps in, sways wildly as Dee follows. She finds herself flat on her back in the wet well of the boat on top of her purse and shoes, her feet getting in the way of Tamara’s as the human woman casts off and starts the engine. Dee’s glad she’s in this undignified position as Tamara opens the throttle and the engine’s whine rises to a scream and the front of the boat lifts. The boat surges out across the water and Tamara brings it over in a long curve that has them shooting straight along the middle of the canal to yells and curses from other boats by the time a distant figure appears at the mouth of the tunnel.
It’s the man who recognised her. He shouts after them, but whatever he says is lost in the engine’s note. Tamara slews the tiller again and they swing around in a wall of spray and head for an opening, passing under Stras Cobol and into a branch canal that runs between high windowless walls less than five metres apart. Tamara eases off the engine and Dee cautiously sits up.
‘Lucky for us the boat was there,’ she says.
Tamara snorts. ‘It’s my boat! I left it there an hour ago when I started my round of the bars.’
Dee smiles wanly. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Circle Square,’ Tamara says. ‘Precinct of the living dead. Crawling with bad artists, freethinking machines, and anarchists arguing about what to do in an anarchy. Safe.’
Dee isn’t sure how to take this.
‘Thanks for getting me out.’
Tamara looks past Dee, at the dark water. ‘Yeah well…I gotta admit I’m not sure what I got you out from. That guy and the robot didn’t look like greps to me. Did you recognise them, or what?’
Dee’s already been through this in her head. ‘No,’ she says, her voice cold. ‘But he recognised me. I’m certain of that.’
‘Me too,’ Tamara says dryly. ‘Just I don’t think it was from a pic. He looked like he wanted to kill you, that first moment. Kill somebody, anyway, but shit, coulda been shock or some’ing – hey!’ She stares at Dee’s face. ‘You ain’t dead, are you? You and him might’ve had previous.’ She looks quite pleased at this speculation. ‘It’s all right, you can tell me. We’re cool about the dead as well as machines, OK?’
Dee doesn’t know much about the dead. Once, when she was new, she’d thought that she could hear the dead: press her ear to the wall and hear them talking, furiously, in dead languages. But it was just the sough of the machinery, the ’ware, the marrow in the city’s cold bones.
So her owner had told her, his laughter almost kind. With a harsher tone in his voice he’d added: ‘The dead are gone. And they aren’t coming back. Most of them…ah, forget it.’
And obediently, she had.
She isn’t sure whether to be annoyed