Escape Plans

by Gwyneth Jones

Genres: Cyberpunk; Colonization

Synopsis

To VENTUR the Subs were a nuisance.

They were fed and housed under the stern but loving care of the great machine systems. They were housed in space-saving underground accommodation, designed to protect the surface of their planet, and perfectly functional if not luxurious. Their culture was respected, some even had employment. In reality, VENTUR saved them, and their planet, from their own thoughtless harm.

But some refuse to be appropriately grateful. Some refuse to know their place...

Visiting the homeworld, ALIC hoped to find a little old-fashioned excitement on the "Subcontinent". A retired games creator, however, ALIC can't resist when Millie invites her to play a game that is wholly unique. One from which she struggles to escape, as her life becomes entwined with the people around her as they strive for revolution.

First published in 1986, ESCAPE PLANS was lauded as an original feminist cyberpunk novel, one which pulls no punches in its exploration of humanity's relationships with computers, and our own flaws and follies.

Release date: May 11, 2021

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 400

Sample

My heart pounded, my mouth hauled air. Across my shoulders a line of terrific tension knit my muscles, engaging in force with those other muscles, thrusting pistons of bone wrapped in blood and glistening hide. The pack surrounded me in thunder and bodily heat, little cold gouts of animal spittle hit my cheeks. I felt the thighs—my thighs—clench in a compulsion more violent than any amorous climax, and an enormous surge under me. I bowed my cheek against grey hide running with a hot gloss of sweat, making myself light as air, standing on my toes, floating, no longer tense … Everything slowed.

Ah. Good one.

I slipped my vicset down around my neck and parted from the throbbing animals. The scented breath of deodar and pine, filtered into our conditioned air, returned to me. It seemed I could have reached out and touched green branches. I was standing on a wide deck of golden (simulated) natural wood that floated unsupported in the middle of a grove of majestic trees. In the distance a massive bank of monitors gibbered at me brightly. Soft sighs and little stirrings fluttered through the crowd of stylishly dressed locals as we all came down. I blinked at a streak of rainbow sheen caught in the cedars, betraying the presence of a bubble canopy between us and the world outside: and felt a little lost. Where was the race?

I was in the Enabled Pavilion at Subcontinental Area Command: SHACTI to its friends, attending a glittering underworld social occasion. Everyone was talking about the bizarre execution in the Presidential Palace, a story which had just been allowed online. It had a rich assortment of compelling features: starships, rebellious basics; vile orgies. Briefly, a basic number had taken to leading little mobs out of SHACTI’s number accommodation to watch for starships (a pan-galactic emissary, you see, was about to arrive). The Sub President had had her arrested, and then murdered—as live entertainment at a dinner party.

The days of savagery had passed. There were no more secret agents sneaking down to Earth to rescue precious genotypes. The underworld was tamed and organised. In the official phrase, successfully librated—all its destructive forces balanced in an ever-changing, never failing equipoise. There was peace, plenty and tourism over all the ancient mother-planet. The Subcontinent, however, was still showing a little fight. It was the smallest of CHTHON’s 7 administrative units and the latest to enter the libration. The Subs had a Culture of their own, instead of a bland pastiche of life in Space. They were yet able to make life difficult for their Rangers, and interesting for travellers.

Still tingling with the pleasure of that borrowed adrenalin, I made my way through the between-races surge of muttering and fluttering to join my Ranger friend SETI. The Enabled fondly imagined that they were affecting the manners of elegant VENTURan society. Alas, the presence of so many bodies in one space had almost made this VENTURan physically sick, the first time she met it. I was over that now. After all, I’d come down here expressly for the strange, alien experiences. SETI was in uniform. I had put on a suit myself: visitors were directed to dress formally whenever in public. She inclined her sleek head as I approached. On the Subcontinent men went bare headed, while women grew their hair: whereas CHTHON personnel always depilated. Sub Rangers bore the confusion with dignity.

SETI wasn’t here voluntarily, and couldn’t imagine why I bothered.

‘If you tourists like ‘em so much,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you stay in their funxing hotels? They’re forever grizzling about your lack of economic input.’

‘I tried it SETI. Couldn’t stand the bugs.’

‘ALIC!’

‘It’s true. I couldn’t even get my door to open. And the bathroom kept pelting me with grapefruit juice.’

We were speaking acronymic, so there was no risk of offending anyone.

SETI grinned, while her eyes perused the crowd with a spurious expression of deep and Ranger-like attention.

She was blind. She’d been blind from conception, the result of one of those odd bargains our executive lines make with PRENAT. She wore a prosthesis, invisible and efficient. Executive pride wouldn’t allow her to go back on her parent(s) bargain and have a nerve graft. But knowing SETI’s opinion of this kind of duty, I was sure it was in her sleeve.

‘Commander’s pulling frightful faces at you,’ I suggested meanly.

‘Oh, funx off ALIC. She isn’t even here.’

‘Isn’t she? Why not?’

SETI’s blind eyes narrowed in reproof. ‘Can’t talk about it ALIC, sorry.’

I had been meaning to tease her, and see if I could elicit more of the execution story: the details too gross to be committed to decent circuitry. I changed my mind. She was in her Ranger mood, and I had better be humble.

On the breast patch of her spruce blue suit SETI wore 2 stripes, one silver, one red as blood. I could wear the silver myself. It merely stated that she was a PIONER—an adult passenger/inhabitant of a neo-environment rotation: in other words, a citizen of the Space communities collectively known as VENTUR. The red stripe said she was a menarch, trained and able to give birth to a live child. The gene-lines (or families, as they would say on the underworld) who preserved abilities of that kind came near to being our ruling class: SETI traced her menarch ancestry back to officers of the first carousels. In theory our most select executives are always ready to abandon the machines and set about wresting life from the raw elements of an unknown planet. And though we know they will never be required to do so, we have to respect the principle. It is essence of VENTUR.

The menarchs have never managed to become Rulers of the Universe. VENTUR is a democracy. So they have to be content with serving as underworld Rangers. After passing through the ranks of CHTHON at something approaching the speed of light, SETI would proceed straight to the plenum Secretariat, so long as she didn’t catch pernicious leukaemia somewhere on the way. But by that time, VENTUR hoped, she would have worked out her empire-building urges where she couldn’t do any harm.

Thi SETI and I had been at school together once. My desk had captured her name on the Sub Area Command list when it was planning my trip, and we had resumed a half-forgotten friendship. I neither envied nor resented Thi SETI’s status. In Space, as they say, no one’s on top. Down here it was slightly different. She was accustomed to dealing with numbers: I had to humour her a little.

Now, in the middle of the deck, Pavilion threw up a cage of light, which sang a warning to stray racegoers who had wandered on to the stage. In the cage appeared the galloping horses, a soundless overwhelming presence. The bars of light disappeared and we were left with the replay. It was my race. I recognised the iron grey and felt an answering beat of excitement in my blood. There was no attempt, naturally, to reproduce the whole race. This was art; and very good too, for the underworld. Beyond the light stage a jockey had been brought in, to be petted and praised. She rode My Sorrow, exclaimed my dangling vicset band. The grey, by Gay Sorrow out of My Mountain … Note the phenomenally low pulse rate of this superb athlete. Sporting Enabled slipped their hands inside the girl’s clothes to feel if it were true.

‘I do hope,’ muttered SETI bitterly, ‘they aren’t going to bring in the horse.’

If there must be crowds, high ranking Subs made a pretty show. The Subcontinent was famous for its head-woven textile, gengra they called it. There was a strong Cultural prohibition against nakedness, so when they wanted to look like us they wore body-hugging gengra from head to toe. Forked fragments of stars and sunsets, herds of zebra; flowers growing, rippled around the jockey. Gengra feeds off any nearby power: it would be a warm day on Titan when your pretty clothes refused to run. But as I remarked to SETI, the vicsets looked peculiar. At a games stadium at home we’d be wearing sweaty trackstraps or nothing.

The underworld ‘vicarious experience games’ were nothing like vic games we played in Space. There was no subjective scenario in them, no physical; no role play. In the actual stadium trained basics competed against each other, sometimes with the help of other animals. Next door, the Enabled would be standing around in their best clothes with twinkling vicset bands around their temples. Each participant chose a player from the programme—and experienced something of what happened to her, or him. The trance was so light it was perfectly possible to reselect if your choice seemed to be having a hard time (an unsporting option that had really shocked me when J first came across it).

I had a professional interest in the phenomenon of underworld vic. I had once been a games conceiver myself.

‘Did you know,’ I said to SETI, ‘that according to their Cultural prax the Subs are forbidden to use vicarious experience equipment?’

As far away from the jockey as they could be, a group of heavily clothed figures stood together. Their hair hung to their shoulders, their heads were together in earnest conclave. To SETI they were trouble; to me they were unspoiled, valuable survivors. In a rush of post-vic benignity I wished I could bring the 2 viewpoints together.

‘I’ve been taking a burst course,’ I announced. ‘From their University. It’s fascinating—’

SETI looked bored.

‘Most tourists,’ she remarked gloomily, ‘come for the scenery. Capt’ you later ALIC. I’m on duty, I have to circulate.’

I had spotted an Enabled acquaintance of mine, a woman called Yolande Tectonics. I strolled across the deck to network a little.

The Enabled families of the underworld all had inherited rights of access to our facilities, but Yolande was a special case. Her grandmother, or great grandmother maybe, had been raised to the silver stripe. She was immensely proud of her PIONER status; though of course she was never likely to leave Earth.

Her friends melted away. They belonged to the overdressed and hairy contingent. I hoped they might come back when they saw I was not a Ranger. Yolande herself wore a close approximation of a formal VENTURan sheer; on the breast a broad gleaming band.

‘Do you think this woman should have been terminated?’

‘Oh, certainly Pioneer Aeleysi. What are you thinking of? Don’t you recognise anti-VENTURan agitation when you see it?’

She treated me like a child. It was the same with every Enabled I had encountered. They must know better, but without the Ranger blues and bare head they looked at your face and couldn’t help themselves. It was clever of her to pronounce my name correctly. I had been called ‘Alice’ over my screen occasionally—a somewhat startling intimacy. Yolande knew acronymic, and at least a little of its etiquette. She would not elide my personal ID unless I suggested she should. But she still said ‘pioneer’, for PIONER; which set my teeth on edge.

A group of extremely gaudy Enabled passed by, in the centre of it one of the Sub President’s nephews. It might have been the decadent young man who had been closely involved in the live execution. Those beautiful people, the Sub Presidents, were a CHTHON institution. I was surprised it had not noticed they were the wrong crew for the serious-minded Sub, but possibly there were other considerations. All systems are a little corrupt, after all: that’s why we need the libration. Yolande scowled balefully after the giggling rainbow. Her vicset was round her neck, dead and dull because she had not keyed it to her wristfax. Nobody could accuse her of joining in the ‘brain orgy’.

‘People like that ought to have their heads burned off,’ she growled. I did not ask if she was still talking about the rebellious basic.

We had not met in-person before, only over the screen in the University net. I was impressed by the alien being in front of me: half savage, half Space-veneered sophisticate. Yolande, however, seemed perfectly at ease.

‘It’s strange,’ I said. ‘As I learn about your Culture, I’m amazed at how close it is to VENTUR.’

‘Huh?’

‘Well. Yolande, we have “SERVE” and you have your “Function”—’

Every other Culture on the underworld recognised an array of systems much like the VENTURan array. As CHTHON took them over, one by one, it had been easy enough to patch ‘the money machine’, or whatever it was called, into our FUNDS. And so on through each area. On the Subcontinent there was no such arrangement. They had one system, known as Function. They refused to admit it could be divided. CHTHON patched them in anyway, but the disjoint caused endless problems.

‘You know what SERVE is Yolande: Zero Variation Process Control. It’s our over-system: the one that keeps all the others running as they should, here and in Space. SERVE’s the thing that stops my shuttle booking from interfering with your toilet pump.’

I laughed, to show her that was meant to be funny.

‘Don’t you see? Function and SERVE are really exactly the same thing.’

The rest of the numbers found the Sub attitude to systems intelligence offensive. Most of them personified their arrays to some degree, and they didn’t like to see the friendly ghosts so brutally dumped out of the machines. CHTHON personnel, who ought to know better, were not free of this hostility. But I had come to the Sub as a traveller; my mind was open. I had seen at once the identity between this ‘single over-system’ and our almighty SERVE. So much goes on in the lightlines; such fertile connections between this and that: the process of keeping it all in balance becomes the most important process, if not the only process—

Yolande gazed at me solemnly out of her little greenish eyes. I noticed suddenly that I could see the furtive outline of some Cultural undergarment peeping through her sheer, just above the generous ‘pioneer’ stripe. I had to bite my lip, and lost the thread of my argument.

‘You are wrong,’ said Yolande.

‘What?’

‘SERVE is not identical with Function,’ she explained.

She looked around the deck perhaps hoping her friends would come back and support her. I saw her CHTHON tag winking in her ear: but also another glint of metal, in a less acceptable location.

The Subs had a relationship with their ‘Function’ which could only be called symbiotic. The characteristic way they grew their hair, with a shorn crown and a thick fringe dangling over their temples, only seemed to emphasise what it was trying to hide. Yolande had two holes there, burned through flesh and bone, wired up with gold and never allowed to heal. Every time I accidentally caught a glimpse of the mutilation on any Sub, I couldn’t seem to help imagining myself touching (Augh!) one of those open sores. But the real burns were inside, in the brain itself. Yolande’s family was in the construction business, they made mobile domes. Yolande was hard-wired. She was a walking plastics process, you just had to plug her in.

It was no use. Having remembered the holes, I could not continue a serious conversation.

‘Come on Yolande,’ I cried bravely, gesturing towards a sunken furniture nest with a games console in it. ‘Let’s play something together. We can use hand controls.’

Yolande T politely excused herself. ‘I’m afraid I don’t play with machines. Pioneer Aeleysi.’

A slight emphasis on the word ‘play’ put me firmly in my place.

There were basic servants dotted about, bearing trays of weird delicacies. Enabled underworlders liked to cannibalise their basics. It was not an economy, the collars were expensive. They just preferred what they called ‘personal service’. The prospect of being surrounded by human domestic appliances dissuaded many people from visiting the underworld: it was more of a deterrent than the fearsome gravity well. I took a canapé with practised ease. I was used to them now. I could see the girls and boys as pretty, in their nice tight little sheers. They stood in decorative groups, waking up when the collars round their necks called them. They could be petted too, but I wasn’t quite brave enough for that.

I didn’t want to take another race. The excellent win on My Sorrow had left me pleasantly high. But I felt rather aimless now that I’d exhausted my contacts. There were no other tourists about. The Sub was not a popular resort, and also people were nervous about in-person mixing. It was a pity there were no men around, I thought. Rangers were not encouraged to bring partners of either sex on tour: SETI complained about it bitterly. I had less use for the other sex than she, but a nice hearty companion would have been useful for this occasion. A Ranger’s partner, interested in the local Culture. Exec men, in my opinion, were generally brighter than the women. I wandered over to the monitor bank and stared at the other underworld games: some realtime and some recorded, tiny and far away. Little voices jabbered on my vicset as I came into view: I keyed them out. I had no wish to dump income on the Southern2 ice soccer. In a larger screen in the centre of the bank lay SHACTI racetrack, under a perfect blue sky.

The stands were packed with basics. It was odd to see them. In this Pavilion and on the shiny Enabled mall I had been more in-person with hordes of unknown numbers than ever with my closest friends at home. But just when I’d decided the crowding was quite bearable, I always saw or heard something to remind me of the truth. The Enabled were nothing, absolutely nothing. The real underworld was down there: and I would never understand it. But who would want to? I gazed, slightly vertiginous, at the wriggling seething mass. Could one vic it? I wondered. No one would dare.

I looked for SETI after that. I found her but she seemed abstracted. Perhaps she still had her eyes in her sleeve.

‘Oh ALIC,’ she said. ‘I forgot. It’ll be on your desk by now. We’ve had to turn down your access to go and shoot snow leopards.’

There was a recreation preserve north of SHACTI, on the alt wall. Only Rangers were allowed to go in and record the animals in-person, but SETI had promised me that she could ax it. ‘Things are a bit funxing wobbly at present. There’s a study centre up there, so it all has to go closed.’

I had been counting on that trip.

‘What’s so special about a study centre?’ I wailed. ‘Trust me SETI, I’m not going to sell my story!’

Mistake! That wasn’t something to joke about. CHTHON personnel were so sensitive about those places. I shouldn’t have protested at all—

‘Capt your later.’ said Thi SETI coldly, as she walked away.

I’d been wondering, ever since the replay came up, what would happen to you if you walked around the horses. I walked around them. It’s bad manners anyway, to go through a light stage; spoiling everybody’s illusion.

What happened was that I was sat down in a furniture nest. My mood had broken. SETI was a real live Ranger and she had a lovely body: copper bright through her sheers. And she didn’t mind a little old-fashioned space-love to while away a tiresome tour without her partner. I had been too grateful, too admiring. She repaid me by treating me like one of her Enabled. There probably wasn’t any prohibition. She just didn’t feel like doing me a favour.

What an idiot I must have looked chatting to Yolande T.

The poor woman didn’t seem to understand a word I said.

I stared at the golden floor between my bare feet, irritated with myself and ready to leave.

I looked up. I saw the jockey from the race I had vic’d sitting under the monitor bank. She was quietly eating canapés from a napkin in her lap. She had a straight back and good shoulders, neatly muscled but not at all masculine. Good breasts. She wore a pale blue sheer cut off at mid-thigh. It had the SHACTI stadium logo on it. There was a collar round her neck but it didn’t seem to have lobotomised her. There she sat, neatly eating. The vic-players had forgotten her. The self-respecting Subs wished that she didn’t exist. She smiled at me.

It was a wonderful smile, a subtle and promising smile. My momentary depression lifted.

There are probably 16 of her, I thought. Maybe you can take one home: but then I remembered cloning them wasn’t allowed. The stadium could seed its horses, but not its jockeys. The problem we have with numbers isn’t that they are hard to produce.

What had made me think of seeding? Clones always have a certain air, as if they pity the rest of us for our haphazard origins.

Games players were chosen out of the mass on their early MEDIC assessments. They were biels, bonded labour, owned by the stadium, which gave my jockey a rather dubious status in local society. In theory, Sub orthoprax prohibited the buying and selling of basics. Part of the extreme distaste for vic games was the fact that they involved intimate contact with biels.

She was the rider of My Sorrow, I remembered, and checked my programme. Millie Mohun, the famous hill girl, whispered the vicset band against my collarbone. She had been brought in from the surface and was doing very well on the Sub stadium circuit. They were all ‘famous’, but I was obscurely pleased to find she was one of the wild ones. I wondered if she was Enabled to smile at me like that? Perhaps no one could use her except for the vic. I might have checked with tourist information but I felt a slight embarrassment. It’s always the silliest things you commit to circuitry that come back and haunt you. I didn’t want to become the object of Ranger hilarity in a monitor room.

The races were over. I did not notice SETI leave: Yolande was lost in the crowd. I let a plump doll help me into my boots and suit and took the little-used gravity lift down from the Pavilion foyer to the ground.

Among the girders of the Pavilion’s permanent mooring, garishly coloured aircars shuffled on the parking lot, being channelled to their owners inside the underbelly of the lustrous egg. One by one they popped up into the mouth there, popped out again and sailed away on the grid. Collared domestic servants, pets and drivers squatted by the rows, and hopped and jumped to get inside when the cars started moving. The floor I stood on was fused dirt. Everything had the rough uneasy air of. . .