Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [285]
‘Wha –?’
‘Ax,’ she says patiently, ‘would you mind patching this fascinating material to a screen, so I can see it too?’
‘Oh. Sorry, Dee.’
He disengages from the cortical downlink and fiddles with switches. Outside, on the big screens, the outskirts of the Fifth Quarter roll slowly past. Dee watches the chaotic activity with disdainful dismay. If this is how machines behave when they’re left to run wild, she reflects, it’s no wonder humans mistrust them.
Around the crawler, which is making its way up a broad street, dozens of other machines, each about thirty centimetres long, are scurrying and sniffing about. They look like larger versions of the cleany-crawlies you find in houses, and although partly autonomous they’re guided by radio control from the cab. Meg has told her they’re looking for traces of a specific poison: one of the public-health countermeasures with which this place is periodically bombarded. The poisons – generically known as Blue Goo – are the nanotechnological equivalent of viruses, regularly updated and mutated to keep pace with the likewise evolving smart-matter wildlife of the machine domains. The job of spraying them from the air is done by a charity, which has no difficulty at all in raising money and volunteers.
Ax gestures to her to look behind her. Part of the screen she turns to gets masked as another window clicks up. It’s the Legal Channels service, showing the court case. Wilde – or Jay-Dub, as Dee finds herself mentally calling him – and Meg have been keeping an eye on it, when they can spare a moment. Ax has been given the task of keeping a close eye on it. Dee has been feeling left out, and wonders if the others have been trying to spare her feelings. Nice of them, but a waste of time.
Because, whatever bad news the court case may bring her, it’s all irrelevant now. As Ax said, that shit is over.
Wilde has apparently just finished speaking. He turns away from the judge, Eon Talgarth. Even Dee’s heard of Talgarth, a former crim from the Malley Mile orbital camp, who studied law as a prisoner; got involved in, then disillusioned with, abolitionism; and has for years made a living adjudicating disputes between scrappies and between machines.
As Wilde turns away the camera follows his face, and he gives it a slow, arrogant grin.
‘Well that was some speech!’ says the breathless commentator. ‘He looked quite annoyed when he described his killing – his alleged killing I should say! Sorreee! And nobody’s ever suggested before that we might owe the dead their back pay! For the implications of that please see –’
Ax snips that particular thread and all Dee hears now is the silence in court as Reid strides to the mike. His face makes her quail. She’s hardly ever seen him angry, and never with her, but she knows his anger is to be feared and right now he’s angry at the whole world.
The camera circles around behind Talgarth. Reid’s more composed now, and Dee feels proportionately calmer – in fact, as she gazes at the close-up, she feels the stirring of an involuntary affection and desire. It’s all the more disturbing in that she feels it as a person, not as a slave, but she puts it down to her past and concentrates on what the man is saying.
‘Senior Talgarth,’ he says heavily, ‘what we have just heard is a disgrace to this court, and an insult to the intelligence of us all. It is also dangerous, in stirring up an opportunistic envy that has no place in a basically just society such as ours, where no person is reduced to selling their lives or labour to those more successful than themselves.’
‘Objection!’ comes a shout from Wilde.
‘Sustained,’ says Talgarth sternly. ‘We aren’t here as a public forum.’
Reid dips his head. (Dee hears Ax, behind her, snort.)
‘The point,’ Reid continues, ‘is that my opponent has asserted that those with an interest in the dead have a claim against me, because I’ve made no attempts in good faith – as he