Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [50]
He slotted them back together, one by one, and slammed the final assembly into place like a magazine. Lights winked as systems checked in; drives purred and fell silent. It was ready.
‘Can you still rely on it?’ Janis asked.
‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘That isn’t a worry. You can’t corrupt AK firmware. Been tried. Im-fucking-possible. Nah, I’ll tell you what’s worrying. It’s who else could be relying on it.’
She sighed and put her elbows on the table, held her chin in her hands. ‘Let’s try and get this straight,’ she said. ‘Whatever happened back there, somebody or something downloaded scads of data to your gun’s memory, and you think it’s using the gun’s own software to guard it?’
He saw the light in her eyes, the heat in her cheeks, and knew it had nothing to do with them: it was the feral excitement of tracking down an idea. He felt it himself.
‘That makes sense,’ he said admiringly.
‘And not just the software,’ she went on. ‘It’s guarding it with the gun, and with—’
Her teeth flashed momentarily: Got it.
‘Yes,’ he said. He saw it too. ‘With my life.’
He hauled himself to his feet. Better to look down at that gaze she was giving him, that scientific and speculative examination.
He shrugged and stretched. ‘So what’s new?’ he said. ‘The hell with it. I’m hungry.’
They returned to the long room to find a dozen young adults and a couple of kids eating and talking around the table. Janis felt her mouth flood, her belly contract at the smell and sight of chicken korma and rice.
Everybody stopped talking and looked at her.
‘Janis Taine,’ Kohn announced. ‘A guest. A person who’s put herself under our protection. And a good lady.’ He put an arm around her shoulder. ‘Come on, sit down.’
After a moment two vacant places appeared at the table. As soon as she sat Janis found a heaped plate and a glass of wine in front of her. She ate, exchanging nods and smiles and occasionally words as Kohn introduced the others: Stone, tall with a building worker’s build and hands, who had worked with Moh to establish the Collective; Mary Abid, who’d found life too peaceful back home after the stories she’d heard from her grandfather; Alasdair Hamilton, a slow-voiced Hebridean demolition man; Dafyd ap Huws, a former ANR cadre…They looked the most reassuringly dangerous bunch of nice people she’d ever met.
They didn’t ask her about herself, or even mention her call of that afternoon (some etiquette applied), so she didn’t tell. She occasionally glanced sideways at Moh, who just grinned awkwardly back when he caught her eye. He looked tired, running on emergency; grim when he didn’t know anyone was looking at him. After the meal finished he took a couple of Golds and broke them up to build a large joint, with the same detached mechanical competence he’d shown when reassembling the gun. She waved the joint past her to Stone.
Stone drew on the smoke and blew it out past his nostrils and said, ‘OK, Moh, we’re waiting.’
One of the children was taking the plates away. Janis turned from puzzling at the puzzled look her thanks brought, hearing her last word, ‘anyway…’, hang on a sudden silence around the table. Moh lit a cigarette and tilted back his chair.
‘Comrades,’ he said, ‘we are in deep shit.’ He rocked forward, elbows on the table, looking everyone in the eye. ‘First off, Janis here. She’s a scientist. She’s come here to get away from Stasis, and from whoever put some demons down the wire to her lab. So…I’m giving her close protection, yeah, and we’re gonna be away from here, but everybody keep that in mind. Don’t want to say any more about that, so don’t nobody ask.
‘Next little problem, and this is where the good music starts, is…last night I winged Cat. She’s OK, right, no worries. But she was on a crank bomb team. Talked to her in hospital, and it looks like the Left Alliance have put their muscle where their mouth’s been for a long time, about gan-gin