Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [69]
He followed Moh and Janis into the main room. No one else seemed to be around.
‘Coffee, anyone?’ Moh said.
‘Sounds like a really good idea.’ Jordan sat down on the sofa, too hard. Faint ringing noises echoed into the distance.
‘Here’s another good idea.’ Moh tossed something over his shoulder. It landed beside Jordan. ‘Have yourself one of these.’
Jordan picked up the pack of marijuana cigarettes and looked at it doubtfully as a battered Zippo landed on the identical spot. He turned to Janis and raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you think of this stuff?’
‘Well – it’s not particularly good for you if you smoke a lot, and it makes some people lazy or at least lazier than they’d be anyway, but on the other hand it isn’t addictive and it’s a lot less carcinogenic than tobacco.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m having one, anyway.’
‘It doesn’t make holes in your brain?’
‘No, I don’t think the latest research really bears that out.’
Jordan took the lighter and packet over to Janis.
‘I’ll try it,’ he said. ‘But I’m not quite sure how.’
‘Best a little smoke and a lot of air.’ She demonstrated. Jordan lit up and went back to the sofa. Away for one evening and already he was on drugs. Rather to his surprise he made a fairly creditable fist of it, and had got over the coughing by the time Moh brought him a big earthenware mug of Nicafé.
‘Good stuff?’ Moh grinned, settling beside him.
‘Yes,’ Jordan gasped, wiping his eyes and sipping coffee. He looked at how the man sat: arrogantly relaxed, one ankle resting on the other knee, the ebony gleam of his leather clothes; and the woman, half-lotus in the chair, alabaster skin and tender flesh in black silk, smoke curling around her curling hair. ‘Can’t say I’ve noticed much effect yet.’
Moh’s lips and brows twitched, but he made no comment.
‘So…’ Jordan looked from Moh to Janis. ‘Are you going to tell me what you know?’
Moh rolled his eyes and closed them. ‘Not tonight we ain’t.’
He seemed to have drifted off into some kind of trance. Janis noticed Jordan noticing, and made a pacifying gesture.
‘He’s had a long day,’ she said.
‘Not to mention the drugs.’
‘Yeah,’ said Janis. ‘Not to mention the drugs. Tell me about yourself, Jordan.’
Jordan took another hit. He still couldn’t identify any effect. His mind felt clear and calm, and he couldn’t look at anything but Janis. She had flared when she spoke, and now was settled back to a steady flame with a flickering hint of mischief. They talked quietly while Kohn watched something else, and said nothing.
Moh saw the darkness and the lights of the city around them as if the walls were transparent; and the new strange company he kept, the bright city of clean sharp logic at the back of his mind. It ran pictures for him, eidetic memories that played like VR diskettes, of the world that had made the world he walked in now:
the bright world the banner bright the symbol plain the greenbelt fields the greenfield streets the Fuller domes the crowds the quiet dark moments
the plastic model spaceships hanging from black threads the old Warsaw Pact poster of a little girl cradling the Earth DEFEND PEACE the stacked clutter of toys and books and tapes the VR space-helmet
the war. The Republic didn’t disdain the help of children. The party set up a special militia, the Young Guards. Moh toted his first rifle then, a lightweight British SLR, in boring nights of watching the entrance to an office tower. (The trick was that he was guarding it secretly, from a safe-house window across the street: the government was already behaving like a resistance movement.) The days were more exciting: demonstrations and street fights, the tensions of the struggle to maintain neutrality, to keep out of the war. Josh and Marcia made jokes that he didn’t get, about fighting for peace. They were