Guardian
Guardian
Book Three of the Veiled Worlds Trilogy
Jo Anderton
First published in Australia in 2014
by FableCroft Publishing
http://fablecroft.com.au
This book © 2014 Jo Anderton
Cover art
by Dion Hamill
Cover design
by Amanda Rainey
Design and layout
by Tehani Wessely
Typeset
in Sabon MT Pro and Ambrosia
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Anderton, Jo, author.
Title: Guardian / Jo Anderton.
ISBN: 9780992284442 (paperback)
ISBN: 9780992284459 (ebook)
Series: Anderton, Jo. Veiled worlds trilogy ; bk. 3.
Subjects: Technology–Fiction.
Quests (Expeditions)–Fiction.
Cities and towns–Fiction.
Science fiction.
Dewey Number: A823.4
First and always I have to thank Rabia Gale and Miquela Faure for being more than just amazing beta-readers, but a cheer squad and counselors too. Thank you also to Tehani Wessely, for your support and enthusiasm. It means more than you could know.
I would also like to thank the crew at Giant Bomb for their Persona 4 endurance run. The best cure for a difficult year.
And finally, but most importantly, my husband. Thank you for your understanding and never-ending support. None of this would have happened without you.
The Keeper sits in the chair his programmers made, and tries to ignore his brothers beating down the door. All the screens in the abandoned comms room are dark, the hubs dull, and everything is coated in a thick layer of dust. He presses the palms of his hands against his ears, long fingers criss-crossing his bald scalp, and squeezes his black eyes shut. It doesn’t help, of course, because his body isn’t real. But he can’t help trying. It’s the way he was designed.
“
I’ve come,” he gasps and rocks forward, “to make my report.”
He
’s travelled long dark paths and entire continents to reach this station, but his brothers follow no matter where he goes. Maybe this will at least distract them, from Tanyana and Kichlan resting in the mountain above Movoc-under-Keeper. So far away.
“
The disintegration is not my fault. You have to believe me. It didn’t even start with Tan, not really. My brothers and their schemes are much, much older.”
If he tries really hard, scrunches up his unreal eyes and bends all his fragmented mind on it, the Keeper can block out the sound of his brothers. That doesn
’t mean they’re not there, hunting him. He just can’t hear them anymore.
He remembers his programmers instead.
It’s almost like they’re alive again, and in the room with him. The light of shining crystal hubs scatters the dim blanket of dust and the entire underground station buzzes with energy. Half a dozen different programmers emerge from the shadows, some grown up, some still children, but all fully aware of the people they used to be and in regular contact with the world they left behind. Not like it is now.
“
Actually,” the Keeper breathes, and straightens. He feels stronger, bolstered by his memories of a time when he was whole. “It’s
your
fault.”
Everyone turns to him in shock.
“Yes,” he says, more confident by the moment. “Yes, it was all your doing. You created them! Then you set them loose. You should be fixing this, not me. Not Tan.”
One of the programmers—wearing the body of a ten-year-old girl, but so
very much older—approaches him. She carries a notepad of shimmering crystal covered in code written in globules of debris. “What do you mean, Guardian?” she asks. “I’m reading all sorts of strange errors on the feed, and have received multiple queries from across the veil. Can you explain?”
“
Call me
Keeper
,” he replies.
Keeper
is the name the people of the light world first gave him, and it is the name he has chosen for himself. “And that’s why I’m here. To report.”
She nods.
“Then we are recording you.”
“
It wasn’t Tanyana’s fault they picked on her,” the Keeper says. “She just took the wrong job. Caught the attention of the wrong people. They would have chosen any powerful pion-binder. She was such a good architect before the accident that gave her all those nasty scars. She made pretty buildings. I saw some of them, like the big blue art gallery. I liked that one. Lots of doors to close, you know, wherever she and her nine point critical circle went.”
“
Doors?” the programmer frowns. “Ah, you mean a weakening in the veil.”
“
You should call them doors!” he snaps at her. “On this world I’m the Keeper, and they’re doors. Got it?”
The girl doesn
’t argue, but he can see her making notes. She’s using debris to do it, so he can
feel
her. Reporting back to the programmers on the other side of the veil. Telling them all about their broken little Guardian program and his delusions.
He squeezes his hands into fists, and concentrates. No time for that now. His brothers are coming.
“I know you can’t see them,” he continues, trying to sound reasonable and fully functioning. “But most people on this world can see
pions
: semi-sentient particles glowing deep inside of all things, that can be persuaded to manipulate the very fabric of the world. Tanyana and her circle used them to deconstruct raw materials and remake them into grand buildings and giant statues.”
“
And all that pion manipulation creates a lot of debris,” one of the programmers chimes in. “We know all about that. You’re right, we can’t see pions, but your programmers can see debris. It looks like, well, like sludge. Dark and wet and wiggly. That’s probably why the people here think debris is a waste product. All they know is that it appears after the binding of pions, and too much of it entropies their carefully created systems.”
The Keeper nods.
“After her accident Tanyana lost the ability to see and command pions, but gained the ability to see debris. So they made her into a debris collector.”
A small shudder runs through the programmers.
“Horrible procedure.”
“
Yes.” The Keeper looks down at his fingers, nervously fiddling in his lap. He’s never told Tanyana that he saw her being suited. All the machines and the blood and Tan strapped to that table, unable to fight back. He knows how horrible it was. “Because debris cannot be touched by human hands, she had a
suit
drilled into her bones—six glowing metallic bands around her wrists, ankles, neck and waist.” His brothers created that suit, and put Tan through the torture of its installation just to test it. “The suit looks like silver, but it’s not. It’s made of debris. Just like me.”
He looks up and waits for the incredulous reaction. No one should be able to do anything like that, because no one on this side of the veil has the skill to work with debris. That
’s why it took him so long to understand what was happening. That’s why he didn’t fight back, until it was too late. Until Tan. Because only his programmers should be able to recode debris. His brothers, and the things they did, were impossible.
But the programmers in this ancient comms room don
’t react. They are just memories, after all. Hallucinations summoned by his lonely, shattering mind. They keep plugging away at their ethereal keys and scribbling their pointless notes.
“
Over time she learned to control the liquid metal that oozed from those bands,” he continues, voice little above a whisper. He used to give regular reports, and the programmers on both worlds hung on his every word. Now, he just wants to tell someone. Anyone. Even if they aren’t real. “Mould them into any shape she needed, from spoons to pincers to swords. But the life of a debris collector is a low one. Tan hated it at first. I think that’s how he tricked her. Devich, I mean. Because she’d been so rich and everyone had looked up to her, and then she was at the bottom of society, spending her life picking up trash. Devich made her feel like she still belonged with the elite of Movoc-under-Keeper, even though it was a lie. I didn’t like him from the beginning, but she couldn’t hear me properly at the time, so how could I warn her?” The Keeper shakes his head. For countless years he’s watched from the shadows, unable to interact with the people he’d been created to protect. He’d known Devich was lying. He’d seen him ingratiate himself with Tan, then report back to the veche on every single thing she did. If only he could have warned her not to let Devich get so close, then the little bastard couldn’t have betrayed her, and hurt her.
And she wouldn
’t be pregnant now either. But that bit wasn’t any of his business. Made him blush black just to think about. Poor Tan. Poor little baby, somewhere inside of her like a glitch in her code.
“
But, after a while, she started to realise that being a debris collector wasn’t all bad. She made friends with the rest of the team, especially Kichlan and his brother Lad.” He pauses, and sighs gently. “Lad.”
Lad should have been a programmer, like the little memory-girl listening to him with a faintly bemused expression. But the programmers are different now. Broken. What did Tan call it?
Half
. Tan found the term in an old book written by the Unbound, and it was supposed to mean Half in the real world, and Half in the Keeper’s. That wasn’t exactly right, but it was pretty close. Because Lad really had been only half a man. He had lost the programmer part of him, and it made him childlike and strange.
The Keeper
’s programmers started failing not long before Novski’s critical circle revolution changed pion-binding from something only a few people did really well, to the foundation for a civilisation of sprawling, automated cities. For a long time the Keeper hadn’t understood what was happening to his programmers, why they were arriving broken, without memories of their true selves, and unable to program anything. But he is pretty sure he knows now.
His brothers.
“Who is Lad?” the programmer asks.
The Keeper can
’t answer straight away. “I think Tan blames herself,” he whispers, eventually. “But maybe it’s my fault too. We all should have looked after Lad better. Instead Tan got involved with Fedor and the Unbound in their struggle against the veche. They believed that the Unbound—that’s another name for people who don’t see pions and can’t bind them—shouldn’t be forced to become debris collectors. They believed in me, even though everyone else nowadays just thinks I am a myth.” It was nice to have people believe in him again, even if they got some of the details wrong. He wasn’t actually a god, for one. “They convinced Tan to help them attack the veche, and she brought Kichlan, Lad and even members of her old critical circle along. They broke into a secure storage facility and they were going to release some of the debris the veche had been hoarding. You know, to help me. But it all went badly. So badly.” He sinks his head back into his hands, black tears streaming hot against his cheeks. He doesn’t want to remember this part. “And Lad died.”
“
Why are you crying?” The little girl programmer crouches beside him. “Programs can’t cry.”
“
Tan held him in her arms when he died,” the Keeper sobs and gulps the words. The girl is right. Programs shouldn’t cry. But he does. “I saw it all happen, and I couldn’t do anything to help. His blood splashed all over Tanyana’s suit, and that greedy silver drunk it all up. The debris in her suit absorbed the programmer paradigm still buried somewhere inside him. When he was alive, Lad didn’t know what he was. But dead, he was able to access her code. When my brothers tried to take back control of the suit they had created, Lad
reprogrammed
it and freed Tanyana from their shackles. Thanks to him, she was able to escape, and rescue Kichlan.” And destroy Movoc-under-Keeper, but he doesn’t mention that part. “It was amazing. It reminded me of you.”
The girl recoils.
“Your
brothers
?”
“
This is what I’m trying to report. My brothers are behind everything. None of what happened to Tanyana was an accident! They planned it all! She didn’t
fall
eight hundred feet from the palm of
Grandeur
and hit her head. She was pushed! They bound her to an experimental collecting suit, and created monsters for her to fight. They kidnapped Kichlan and tried to undo the pion bonds that hold his body together, just to see what she would do.” The Keeper staggers to his feet. “Everything they did to Tanyana, it was all part of their plan to kill me. They keep cutting off little bits of me, and reprogramming them. It hurts. It makes me feel so small.”
“
But why?” the little girl says, sounding worried. “I thought you called them your…
brothers
.” She says the word like it makes her feel sick.
“
Because they want to bring down the veil between worlds,” the Keeper answers.
“
But that will destroy them!” one of the other programmers stammers. “This world, the light world, and the dark world on the other side. The worlds are so different that they destroy each other when they come into contact, and the only thing that stops that happening is the veil in between.”
And it
’s the Keeper’s job to keep it that way.
He
’s just a program, really, created on the dark world to keep the veil strong. Sometimes, he looks like a black and white sketch of a man. Most of the time, he’s just code. And in this world, the light world, that code is debris.
He tries his best. Anywhere a pion is manipulated it weakens the veil—opens a door—and he will appear to keep it strong, and save everyone. All the time. Over and over again.
Until his brothers arrived, and started messing with everything.
“
That’s why they’re trying to kill me. If I’m gone, there’s nothing protecting the veil. No one to close the doors.” He walks slowly through the room. Runs white fingers through the insubstantial bodies of the programmers from his memory, but no one takes his hand. No one ever treated him like a person, before Tanyana.
“
But maintaining the veil is too big a job for just one Keeper. I know you think I’m not good enough. I know you’ve been upgrading me. Because I’m a tool to you. Not a friend.”
“
You are just a program,” the girl says. “Programs don’t need friends.”
But he does.
“You altered me, over and over, and the bits you didn’t like you threw away, into the veil between worlds. But they didn’t die there. They told me, the veil is not what you all think it is. The veil is lush, the veil is rich. It’s where my brothers were born, from my discarded off-cuts. All because you don’t believe in me.”