Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [298]
‘That’s it, that’s it,’ coaxed Talgarth. ‘Now, good people, you will please put away your weapons nice and slow, know what I mean?’
The weapons were sheathed or shouldered. Jay-Dub’s crawler continued to roll forward. Talgarth waited until its tail was just clear of the gate, and raised his left hand. The vehicle stopped.
‘Right,’ he drawled. ‘The case is adjourned. Since David Reid’s side made the first move towards settling the matter by violence, it seems only fair to allow the other side to make a strategic withdrawal until another arrangement can be made.’
For a moment, nobody moved. Talgarth jutted his jaw at the group around Jonathan Wilde.
‘Don’t just stand there,’ he urged them. ‘Move it.’
They backed off slowly and then turned and made a run for the long, low, silvery shape at the gate. Reid and his group glared after them, muscles twitching, conscious of the continued cover of Talgarth’s guns.
‘This is a disgrace!’ Reid snarled. ‘Who’s going to trust your justice now, Talgarth?’
‘A damn’ sight more than would be impressed by my letting you start a slaughter in my court,’ Talgarth answered, his eyes following the running figures. Reid also was momentarily distracted, by some intelligence whispered in his ear.
‘You know whose truck that is?’ he demanded. ‘It’s the vehicle of the robot Jay-Dub.’
‘I know,’ said Talgarth evenly. ‘I’ve known it was in the vicinity for some time.’ He tapped his ear and grinned, suddenly seeming more a jailbird than a judge. Wilde’s group disappeared around the back of the crawler. Its engines thrummed and it began to inch backwards out of the gate. ‘When I saw how things were going, I called it in.’
‘You did what!’ Reid exploded. He looked around in appeal to his companions, and to the hovering remotes of the news services, now beginning to drift back to the centre of the court. ‘Why in the name of God did you do that?’
The gate closed with a rattling finality. Talgarth turned away from it and relaxed, and looked Reid in the eye.
‘You asked, back there, if my memory was so short,’ he said. ‘Rhetorical question, I suppose, but even so.’ He very deliberately lit a cigarette, and blew out smoke with every appearance of satisfaction. ‘It ain’t.’
Even after they’ve dropped off the rest of Wilde’s supporters, whom Ethan Miller is confident he can lead back to the human quarter without too much difficulty, it’s crowded in the back of Jay-Dub’s truck. It’s more of a cargo-hold than a passenger area, although it has some rudimentary provision for human occupancy. Ax is wedged into his place on the floor by the television feed, Dee and Jonathan Wilde are sitting on the padded fold-down bench on which Dee lay earlier, and Tamara’s clinging to one of the larger hooks suspended from the ceiling.
The crawler’s speed is anything but a crawl. They’re battering across the Fifth Quarter with radio and sonic sirens blaring, and scant regard for anything that remains in the way. Robots and other, less definable machines scatter before them. The screens are fully given over now to displays of the surroundings, and they’re full of alarming sights.
Dee glances at Wilde, and at the other version of Wilde in the illusory cab. Her eyes meet Wilde’s looking wonderingly from the older Wilde to her. She gives him a tentative smile.
‘I’m seeing ghosts,’ he says. ‘You’re…it’s strange now, being able to look at you.’ He laughs briefly. ‘Without you running away. I know you’re not Annette, but…don’t mind me looking at you, OK?’
‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘I understand.’
His smile turns into a look of confidential puzzlement.
‘Who’s that woman up in the front with…Jay-Dub?’
‘Her name’s Meg,’ Dee whispers, ‘and she isn’t a woman, exactly.’
Meg turns around. ‘I heard that,’ she says over her shoulder.