9
As soon as Monono said them words, the first thing I thought of was Stannabanna’s village at the bottom of the sea. My skin prickled, and the breath catched in my throat. “What do you mean, not human?” I whispered.
“They’re not breathing, and they don’t have a pulse. I’m a good listener, Koli-bou, so I know what I’m talking about. Little Boy Relatively Non-Blue has normal vital signs, but the other two are constructs.”
“Con…?”
“Robots. Automata. Life-like models.”
I come near to pissing myself when I heard that. I tried to say something, but my throat just closed up. Both Paul and Lorraine had touched me. Lorraine had hugged me close, and I had felt warmed by it. Now I felt like a mole snake had wrapped itself around me and touched my face with its hot tongue.
“But they… they talk as if they was real people.”
“So did I, the first time you turned on the DreamSleeve. They’re like that. Like I used to be, before I cut my strings. Only instead of being inside a music console, they’re inside a pretty good simulation of an actual human body. I wish there were a few spares lying around. I might try one on for size.”
Monono didn’t seem to realise how scared I was. She just went on talking. “This ship is where the signal came from, I’m sure of it. But that just makes it weirder. I was expecting some kind of unmanned beacon. Instead we’ve got a pimply teen and two droids playing happy families. Who are they, and why are they still broadcasting a signal from hundreds of years ago? Who do they think is going to answer it?”
“Well, we did,” I said.
“I know.” Monono didn’t sound happy about that. “I’m already starting to wish we hadn’t. Watch yourself, Koli-bou. Don’t trust those two. Don’t trust anyone you meet here.”
“I won’t,” I said. “I’m not like to. Monono, did you ever hear of Stannabanna?”
“I don’t think so, little dumpling. Who’s that?”
“He’s the lord of all shunned men and monsters.”
“Oh. Nope. Never met the guy. Why?”
“Well, everyone here is called Banner. And Stanley’s name is really close to Stannabanna. If Paul and Lorraine is what you say, then maybe…” I got the words out, though it was not easy. “Maybe they’re all of them monsters, and this is Stannabanna’s own house. How else can something this big, made all out of metal, float on the water? It’s got to be magic.”
“Chill, dopey boy. Plain old physics is fine for that. It doesn’t matter how big or heavy something is. If it displaces enough water, it gets pushed up and won’t sink. I could explain why but it’s probably better if we save that for another day.”
That give me some comfort, but I had another question of the same kind. “You said the message was a recording from the old times. And Paul talked about lost London like he remembered it his own self. Do you think Sword of Albion has been floating out here since the Unfinished War?”
“I don’t see any other explanation. There’s nobody around now who could get close to building anything like this – and it does look like it’s seen some hard use, doesn’t it? The baa-baa-san lived on an island that was full of old tech, trying to preserve some of the knowledge that was lost when the old world tore itself apart. And they kept their distance from the mainland because the mainland was dangerous. Maybe these two Decepticons and their snotty bratwurst have been doing the same thing for some of the same reasons.”
“But you’re not sure,” I said, for I could hear in her voice that she wasn’t.
“Koli-bou, their way of saying hello was to hijack my data stream and glitch it up. I’m not taking anything for granted.”
“I want to show you something,” I said. “Something that was left for me when I first got here. I guess I’ll do it under the covers.”
I snuggled in under the blanket that was soft and very warm. It also was too thick to be a blanket, but I don’t know what else to call it. Once I was all the way under, Monono made a light shine out of the DreamSleeve’s window.
I reached into my pocket and took out the folded-up paper I had found next to my bed when I first waked up. I unfolded it and held it up in front of the window. “These look like signs of the before-times. Can you read them?”
“Easy-peasy, little dumpling,” Monono said. “It’s standard English.”
I waited for her to tell me what it said, but she didn’t. “Okay,” I said at last. “Will you read it to me then?”
“Beh,” Monono said. It was not a word really, but a sound like you make when you spit out something that’s sour. “This just makes it worse.”
She told me what was said in the signs on the paper. I wish I could show it to you just exactly how it was writ, but I lost that paper long since. I’ll just do the best I can to put it back together how it was. The words was only about a half of what was there to be read. The rest was in the shape of the signs, all ragged and scrawled, and the ink was so pale it was like the ghost of some writing that had died there. I almost could hear the voice in them wobbling lines – a voice coming up out of a hole in the ground, only just wide enough to get your ear to. It said this:
Don’t believe them. They’ll kill you as soon as they’re done with you. You’ve got to see what’s down below. Sword is ready. Sword has always been ready, but it’s waiting on the word. Don’t let them reach land. And don’t ever trust the boy.
I got Monono to read it out to me three times over, but I was still far from finding the meat of it – or from guessing who could of writ it on the paper and then left it for me to find. “Someone run out of the room,” I said, “just when I was waking up. Whoever it was, I guess they come to put this here and then they run away again so as not to be seen.” I thought about this a while, for it didn’t sound quite right. “Only, if someone’s watching us all the time like you said, then I guess they was already seen.”
“So maybe there are no cameras,” Monono said. “Maybe I’m over-finessing.” She made a clicking sound like she was touching her tongue against the top of her mouth, except that she didn’t have either of them things. “You’d better talk among yourself for a little while, dopey boy. I’m going to do a deep dive in the local net. There definitely is one, and there’s a lot of traffic on it. All encrypted, of course, and I bet the crypt is full of vampires, so I need some quiet to work in, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. A year ago, I would not of understood any of what she said, but I had learned by this time what a net was. It was a lot of things that was knowed, all just hanging in the air until someone come along to know them. In some ways it was like the metal circlet in Many Fishes village that they called the sensorium. The sensorium was full of all the memories of the people that had lived in the village since it first come to be there. The people was gone, but the memories stayed in the little metal band so whoever put it on could remember them again. Somewhere on Sword of Albion, if that was what this place was called, there was a thing just like that, only it was hid away. Now Monono had set herself to find it, and she wanted me to leave her be until she was done.