2

James was amused. “How did she know?”

“She said everyone knows,” said Sam.

The little garden had a clutch of bamboos, a pond, a tiny stone bridge, and two cold benches. James took one. Sam and Lucia took the other.

“Two hundred alks.” James yawned. “Remember the Floor of Six? How many were there?”

Sam shuddered. “I don’t…I don’t.”

“Seven. And we did just fine. Pie’s getting big. Seven’s too few now, but two hundred? It was going to get out sooner or later, but that’s not my problem since I’m just a contractor. You want to talk about yesterday?”

Sam talked about yesterday – briefly, detachedly, as if it was some other girl that went down to the Floor of Three and saw a hundred people blown to pieces by a steam-giant.

James did not react. In fact, his lack of reaction was almost annoying. “Glasses,” he mused, “over eyes of glass. I wonder…”

The Maestro mumbled to himself as they walked. Sam wanted to curl up and sleep. She did not know where they were headed, nor did she ask –somewhere on the same Floor, away from the Pillar, but still close to the centre where the streets were kept clean. Manors grew larger until each was a sprawling compound. Patrols of fusiliers nodded at James as they passed. They all seemed to know him.

They were walking down a garden grown wild. Nothing of beauty grew in the native soil of the Floors: twisted vines, weeds, sickening little bundles of what had once been grass a hundred generations ago. They flourished like carnivores, deformed and hungry, eating into brick and stone. An effort had been made to keep the path clear, but only just.

The mansion was gargantuan and dishevelled, half-ruined except for the thousands of electric cables running through the walls, the roof, the windows, the holes in the wall. The double doors were solid bronze, studded with what looked like rusted nails. A ceramic nameplate suggested that this was the residence and offices of Joran Guiyu, Encoder and Consultant.

James raised his hand then thought better of it. Lucia knocked.

A woman in lacy underwear opened the door. Her skin was perfect like porcelain, her hips glistening like marble. A veil covered her eyes but her lips were bare and red like fresh roses. She stepped aside to let in her guests, her movement fluid, her hips swaying as if every minute motion was a practiced pose, and that was also its flaw – no living thing would sensually open a door then close it by thrusting their hips. This was an ambler – flawless like a doll, but dead.

“I made that,” commented James.

“How much would you –”

“Three million, plus five hundred thousand a year for upkeep. The –” James mimed the swaying hips. “– Joran did that.”

A voice yelled from upstairs. “Cowen! You can’t just override my Ring, it’s against your Terms of Service.”

The first floor was one massive workshop. Black paint covered every window. Every light bulb, every candlestick, was caged inside some dark mesh that shifted their hue to a bloody red. Every conceivable surface was covered in black tape. Thousands of spinning copper cylinders sat on shelves, tables, chairs, the floor. Tape gushed through them in a never-ending conveyance, scratching and buzzing like insects.

A lumbering pile of a man sat in the middle of the mise en place, crouched behind a desk stacked high with even more tape. He wore blackout goggles despite the gloom, and the folds of his arm gushed out like jelly.

“Don’t…you’re stepping on Lionel’s upgrade,” he wheezed. “What are you doing here? We’re not due for another – what day is it?”

“Keeping busy?” asked James.

“Get out of her way!” he yelled. The sexy ambler-thing squeezed past Sam, shoving its breasts in her face. “Joy, take them downstairs,” he said, flashing a topaz Command Ring on his little finger.

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“No,” said James. The ambler stuttered and did not move.

“Cowen! Stop it! You are breaking my immersion!”

“What were you doing with Robert Finley?”

One by one, the cylinders stopped. The creepy rustling receded until there was only silence…and Joran’s hyperventilation. “What did you say?”

“I have no right to ask, I know, and it’s none of my business, and really I shouldn’t put my nose into yours, that’s rude, obviously, but curiosity overwhelms me and I have to ask.”

“It’s none of your business.”

The Maestro turned to Sam. “Joran and I went to school together. He was the son of a uh…what do you call it?”

“Lingerie.”

“Lingerie conglomerate, and I was just some kid, but we have always respected each other. Me for his uh…rigid mind, and he for my…what do you like me for?”

“Get out of my house.”

“We help each other – that is our thing. You wouldn’t believe it, but I was once a child.” James raised his hand, and the Green effervesced from his fingertips. The ambler went to him and, to Sam’s astonishment, began to pirouette like a ballerina. “He helped me when no one else would, for no reason other than I was an acquaintance, not even a friend, and he asked for nothing in return. Of course, he’s asking now but…I am rich now, so it’s fine, and it is not a matter of money. Never is. I owe him my life – so to speak, and for that I tolerate many, many of his quirks.”

The encoder took off his goggles, and Sam started. The man’s eyes glittered in the dark, not of the Green but as if a reflective metal had been planted in his retina. They were fixated on the ambler, now seemingly floating in the air with one leg raised over its head. “That,” he said, almost salivating. “I need an imprint of that.”

“You can have it for free.”

The encoder did not blink. “They wanted the Perfect Vessel. I told them it’s impossible, but they kept pushing.” He jerked a thumb at Lucia. “I told them yours was an exceptional case but they wouldn’t listen, so now I’m running prototypes.”

“For what?”

“I just told you, the Perfect Vessel.” Joran looked at Sam as if only now realizing she was there. “You. I saw you on…ahhhh…”

“A happy coincidence,” said James.

“There is no such thing, Cowen.”

“I’m not the planning-ahead kind of necromancer.”

“You should be. They are coming for you.”

“Me? I can do whatever I please, but you? One word from Jack and you will never leave this room. One from me and your toy breaks your neck. This is what happens when you play both sides.”

“Play? Play?!” The hyperventilation was gone. So was the slightly panicked what’s-going-on demeanour. The encoder Joran Guiyu squinted at James as if he were a stain. “I just want to live, Cowen! I code! I’m good at it! And if that gets me caught up in your little game of whose-turn-is-it-to-fuck-shit-up then that’s the cost of doing business, I’ve made my peace with that – but I’m not a player. It is you, the both of you, that keep pulling me in! You owe me,” he jabbed at Lucia. “The state she was in, no one else could have fixed her.”

“You remind me often.”

“So don’t you come to my house and make threats like I’m some idiot. Every day a guy shows up and tells me if I don’t do what they say they’ll break my thumbs, they’ll flay me a live, etcetera, and then they give me wagonloads of money to do five minutes of work. Am I – what am I missing here? Why can’t you all just ask nicely? It’s just business, Cowen. It’s only personal to you.”

James stopped. Even in the dim light Sam could tell he was grinning. “Wow,” he said. “You alright?”

“My blood pressure,” Joran grumbled, “but I’m not the one who needs to relax.”

“Joran has a way with words,” James shrugged. “He’s too smart for politics but he can beat us all if he tried.”

“Who are you talking to?” the encoder turned on Sam and looked at her like she was a rock that had gained sentience. “Does he keep you so he can talk to himself?”

“I think so,” said Sam.

“You necromancers are all fucked up in the head,” Joran declared. He fiddled with a panel of switches on his desk and the copper cylinders around the room began to turn. “Are we done? Are you going to leave me alone?”

“The Perfect Vessel –”

“Still working on it. Not gonna stop. They want it finished by the plenum.”

“Is that possible?”

“No, and it never will be,” the encoder cleared his throat and suddenly he was hyperventilating again. “One master wants this and another wants that. That’s how nothing gets done.”

“The Finleys are arguing,” stated James. He blinked. “The old man is awake.”

“No one’s smart when it’s life and death. Look how much you are paying me.” Joran slipped on his goggles. “Get out of my house. Wait, before that, give me the imprint.”

“For what?”

“For the fucking pep talk.”

James laughed. He picked out a roll of tape and ran his hand along its length. The Green trickled from his fingertips, but instead of fading away it began seeping into the surface like water into a sponge. The cylinders spun to a higher pitch. The walls resonated in harmony.

“A thing followed me here,” James said softly, casually. “Looked like a butler. Glasses.”

“Prototypes, as I said,” said Joran, softly, casually. “They are amalgams, like Lucia.”

“Nothing is like Lucia.”

“Not yet, but I’m working on it.”

“If you somehow finish this thing, this Perfect Vessel, does it…”

“You can’t bring the dead back to life, Cowen. I’ve said it since the beginning: give up and enjoy your life.”