‘I’m sorry,’ Fist replied bashfully. It struck Jack that the puppet had never received such clear, unambiguous gratitude before. ‘I didn’t have much time.’
‘You did a beautiful job,’ Andrea reassured him. ‘Now I have complete control over every part of myself. I can travel anywhere in the Solar System. And now the Totality have opened the way, I can come and go from the Coffin Drives at will. We’re using my rewrite of your feather code to stabilise all the other fetches, so they can do the same. You’ve freed us all.’
‘What are the Totality up to?’ said Jack. ‘All that’ll restart the Soft War.’
‘They want the caged fetches on the streets of Station, telling everyone what Kingdom did to them. And they’ve always hated the Coffin Drives.’ Penderville caught her attention. ‘Poor man,’ she sighed.
‘Can you do anything for him?’ asked Grey. ‘It’d help us a lot.’
‘Oh, I can stabilise him. But not to help you, Grey. To help him.’
Penderville’s body was a manic scribble. Andrea knelt down by his head and placed her hands on his forehead. Jack was surprised to see that they didn’t sink in, as his own hand had done. She leant forward, putting her mouth close to where Penderville’s ear should be, and began to whisper. Jack had an impression of music, playing a slow, stately tune a great distance away. Fist watched, fascinated. Jack wondered what deep processes he was witnessing.
Penderville began to fall into something approaching definition. The speed of shift between selves slowed, until the changes matched the music’s slow, deliberate rhythm. His mouth still gaped open in a scream, but it shifted less and less between different versions of itself. At last, he was mostly his final self – a pale-skinned man in his late twenties, dressed in a vacuum suit that was only missing a helmet.
Andrea reached up and over her shoulder. When she brought her hand back there was a feather in it. She took it and, ever so gently, placed it in Penderville’s mouth. A convulsive shudder ran through him. He screamed like a newborn. His limbs flailed. Andrea’s hands were on his cheeks, her gaze steady on his own.
‘Hush,’ she whispered. ‘It’s all right. You’re dead now. Nothing can hurt you.’
She slowly soothed him through aching moans and then sobs and then just whimpering until he was lying silent, curled around himself. At last she looked up at Jack.
‘He’s ready,’ she said. Then she turned back to Penderville. ‘Stand up,’ she told him gently, ‘it’s time.’ She helped him climb to his feet. The vacuum suit made his movements awkward. Penderville wiped tears away from his face with a heavy gloved hand, leaving grey dust smeared across his cheeks. ‘This is Jack,’ said Andrea. ‘You need to talk to him.’
Then, she turned to Jack. ‘I have to go now. I’m working with the Totality to stabilise all the other fetches.’ Her wings unfurled. For a moment they seemed to be the size of the sky. There was a jagged blast of music, and all the best times they’d shared pulsed in Jack’s mind at once. ‘I’ll see you soon, my love,’ she said. ‘You too, Fist.’
‘If we make it,’ replied Jack.
Andrea laughed. ‘Fuck’s sake, Jack, enough with the self-pity. Didn’t I tell you not to get in too deep? You’ve only got yourself to blame.’ She winked, suddenly so truly herself. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she said, ‘I’m sure of it.’ And then she was gone.
Jack took a moment to pull himself back to the present. He turned to Penderville.
‘Hello. I’m Jack Forster. I’ve waited a long time to meet you.’ He wasn’t sure what else to say. ‘I’m sorry that Yamata killed you.’
‘There’s no need to be,’ Penderville replied hopelessly. ‘I wanted her to. But it didn’t change anything.’
‘What happened to you?’ Jack asked him. ‘Why?’
Guilt and pain had written themselves across Penderville’s whole body. He’d been a young man when he died, but now his hair was grey. Wrinkles scarred his face. The vacuum suit, a little too big, hung awkwardly on him. When he spoke, his voice was soft and sad.
‘I was glad when she killed me,’ he said, his voice bleak. ‘I knew I was going to be caged. I thought at least I’d never have to think about it again. I was wrong about that. I was only sad that nobody knew.’
‘Nobody knew what?’
Penderville put his face in his hands, and moaned. ‘Tell us,’ said Grey, softly. East cut in too. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Confess. It’s so much better to share these things.’
Penderville choked words out. It was difficult to make them out. He was looking down at the ground. There was such passionate shame in his voice. ‘I thought it would be nothing,’ he sobbed. ‘Yamata lied to me. She told me that the rock would just hit one of the abandoned moon bases, that it would just look like Totality sabre rattling. She said that Kingdom would use the incident to justify a fresh round of legislation against them. I didn’t know they’d aimed it at the summer camp.’
Jack looked from Penderville to Grey and East. ‘No,’ he breathed, profoundly shocked.
Words tore out of Penderville. ‘It’s true. I made the rock invisible to anyone on Station. They’d only see it when it actually hit the moon, and then they’d be terrified because they’d think that the Totality could bypass our defences so easily. I killed all those children. And I let Kingdom blame the Totality and start the Soft War, but then I couldn’t live with it – and I was going to tell – but Yamata killed me first.’
Jack swung round to Grey. ‘Did you know about this?’
‘I knew nothing, Jack,’ he protested. ‘I’m appalled. Those poor children—’
‘Oh, for gods’ sake.’ Jack turned back to Penderville. ‘So Yamata dropped the rock on the moon? On Kingdom’s orders?’
‘Yes. I met her when it was all being set up. I was worried about what would happen if I was caught. She told me that it would all be fine. That Kingdom knew. That it was his plan and that it had his full approval.’
‘They would have killed you whatever you’d done, once you knew that.’
‘We’re all tools of the gods. When they call we have to obey. Once I knew that it was Kingdom I couldn’t say no. He was my patron. I owed him everything.’
‘Oh, no.’ Jack stepped towards Penderville and put a hand on his shoulder. This time, it didn’t sink in. ‘That’s what you all do, isn’t it?’ he said to Grey accusingly. ‘You make us puppets.’
‘We’ve got your best interests at heart. We always have done.’
‘Grey and I had nothing to do with this, Jack,’ added East, stepping forwards. ‘We’re as shocked by it as you are. And we’re working with the Totality now. That’s why that snowflake’s here, that’s why we’re not stopping the dead from rising. We want people to know about all this. We want a fresh start.’
‘You want to bring down Kingdom and reinstate Grey. All this is a power play, nothing more.’
‘I was framed and I fell from power,’ said Grey, sounding offended. ‘I’m a victim too.’
Jack snorted dismissively.
‘And we’ve still got work to do,’ Grey continued. ‘Kingdom’s pushing for a resumption of hostilities against the Totality. He’s seen that I’m active again, so he’s hitting me hard. My headquarters are under attack. People are beginning to notice all this’ – he waved at the snowflake – ‘and everyone will know about it once Andrea and the Totality have released all those fetches on to the weave. We need to make sure there’s no way Kingdom can turn it all to his advantage.’
‘How could he?’
‘He’s very powerful and he’s very afraid, which makes him very dangerous. We need to make sure that there’s no way he can cover up any of his crimes. East needs to make sure that people hear the right side of the story. I need to reawaken my board, so I can defend myself properly. You need to get everything you know in front of the Totality and the Pantheon. Now, you can stay here and discuss the niceties of morality, or we can get moving. Which is it going to be?’