Crashing Heaven Read Free Page A

wonders – on sale NOW ! By contrast, reality was sodden and heavy, a failure to be anything but its tarnished, non-negotiable self.
    The booths were all closed, but some of their weave systems had been left running, beaming content into the darkness. There were men and women – sometimes in groups, sometimes alone. They all stood rapt, dreams dancing like whispers around them.
    [Don’t let any of them see you.]
    [ I’d give them such a scare,] cackled Fist. [ I wonder if they’re watching the same thing as the squishy?]
    [ I doubt it. The Totality aren’t weave fans.]
    [Look at that fellow!]
    An old man was standing in front of a particularly rundown group of stalls, smiling beatifically at the rain. One hand hung at his side. The other was inside his trousers, tugging at himself. There was a dark hole in the centre of his face where his nose had fallen in. Jack started. He’d forgotten how brutally sweat could degrade its users. Nobody else was reacting to the sweathead. Their weaveware would be actively masking his presence.
    Jack began to walk more quickly. Hunger bit, intensifying the cold and the wet. Memories of Andrea haunted him, more persistent than any sprite. She’d loved hunting through the market for bargains. He so wanted to make new moments with her, sharded with fresh joy. He’d worked so hard to make sure that rage and bitterness wouldn’t corrode them. He pulled his coat closer around himself and shivered. There was so little time left. Another train hummed by, slowing for Hong Se De station.
    The streets emptied as they left the market behind and neared the Wound. Jack let its deeper, more impersonal history distract him from Andrea’s absence. Centuries ago, a stray asteroid had gouged into Homeland’s outer skin. The district whose streets and buildings sat just over the damaged area, hugging Homeland’s curved interior, had been renamed to commemorate the event. Kingdom’s architects had built down into the gash, creating buildings whose lower floors saw out through it into space. The Wound attracted people who wanted that kind of view. It became popular with the dockers who worked on the edge of the void, and the spacers who spent their lives travelling through it. Few of them would be out at this time of night. Most were sleeping, shattered by the brute physicality of their working lives. There was little need for nightlife in the neighbourhood.
    Fist announced that he was bored. He started pulling himself back into Jack’s mind. [ Find us a hotel,] Jack told him. [ Then we’ll start looking for Andrea.]
    [ How?]
    [ We’ll search.]
    [ I can’t go onweave yet. I haven’t broken all the security glyphs.]
    [Shit. How long till you’ve got full access?]
    [Perhaps a week, probably two. This fucking cage.]
    They kept walking. After a few minutes a Twins weave sigil announced a café. Soft light spilled out of its window, turning falling raindrops into streaks of fire. A ventilator whirred, filling the cold night with the hot, beckoning reek of frying oil. Jack pushed through the door, hoping for food and help with a weave-search.
    A woman and two teenage boys were hunched over a zinc bar. The woman was finishing some soup, spooning green liquid carefully into her mouth. A hood hid her face. She was clearly a deep spacer. Her right arm had been held at Customs House, leaving only a bright metal socket attached to her shoulder. A long cloak covered the rest of her. Her crutch was leaning against the bar. Jack wondered if they’d also confiscated one of her legs. Sandal’s officials must have reasserted a Pantheon limited tech use licence. Such licences no longer applied in the Totality-controlled regions of the Solar System. Jack wondered if she’d be able to replace her limbs when she returned home.
    [ They strip the limbs from good honest working folk. Shocking!]
    [ That’s the Pantheon for you. You never own anything. You just license it from them.]
    The two teens displayed Grey