Divisions by Ken MacLeod

absorbing the organics. I picked Malley up, like an actor in a Killer Robot outfit carrying off an actress in a Torn
And Revealing outfit, and bounded to the buggy. The crowd scattered around me. I set Malley down in the passenger seat and hopped into the driver’s seat.
    I had underestimated the crowd. They were not some panicked mob, but a peasant village, watching what they saw as the suborning or abduction of a well-liked and much-needed teacher. Those who’d gone up the stairs were streaming back down, and those who hadn’t were closing around the buggy. Students, young men mostly, added to the numbers pouring out of the college doorway. They made no threatening approaches, giving it a good few yards’ clearance, but they formed an increasingly solid mass around us. I looked out at a wall of people dressed in their colourful wools and cottons, their broad leather belts; at their competently held, though crude, weapons, their smooth and hostile faces.
    Well, at least they should see my face. ‘Scroll helmet,’ I murmured, and the globe around my head opened at the top, the aperture widening, then narrowing, as the smart-matter flowed back into the temporary ring-seal resting on my collarbones. I turned to Malley before anyone could react and said:
    ‘Could you please explain things to them?’
    Malley shrugged. His hands were quivering. He wiped the back of one hand across his mouth and stood up, gripping the rim of the buggy’s windshield.
    ‘Hey, friends!’ he called out. ‘Listen to me! Thanks for your concern, but everything’s all right. I’m going away for a short while with this woman from the … outside. I’m going of my own free will. So please don’t worry! Let us through, please.’
    The tallest and toughest-looking man in sight shouldered his way to the front and stood right in our way.
    ‘I’m sorry, Dr Malley,’ he said. ‘But we ain’t sure you are going of your own free will. Those space-folks, those socialists , they can do things to your brain so’s you think you’re doing what you want, but you’re doing what they want, see?’
    ‘Not that old lie,’ I muttered under my breath. I should have guessed that the non-co dominant ideology could only be a full-blown paranoid delusional system.
    ‘I’m sure they can,’ Malley said. He’d recovered some of his poise. ‘But I very much doubt that they can do it in half an hour.’
    The tall guy looked nonplussed for all of two seconds.
    ‘Well then,’ he said with implacable logic, ‘she must’ve threatened you. That they’d zap the village, or some’ing. It’s all right, Dr Malley, you tell us! We ain’t scared of them!’
    ‘I assure you—’ Malley began, but I knew it was of no use. Argument
would get us nowhere. I couldn’t credibly threaten Malley, and if it came to threatening the crowd my pistol (now inside my suit, and pressing painfully against my hip) was no match for their guns. Whether the suit could recreate the helmet in time to protect me from a shot was an experiment I didn’t care to try.
    ‘Scroll helmet up,’ I whispered, and turned on the engine. In the moment of blackness I reached up and caught Malley’s shoulder.
    ‘Get right down!’ I yelled, pulling hard. With the other hand I caught the wheel. I groped with my foot for the control pedal and pushed it down. The buggy leapt forward and as the view cleared I saw the man in front of us hurl himself out of the way at the last possible second. The others did likewise, scattering like skittles. And then we were through, careering down the village street in a flurry of chickens and a shower of stones. One or two shots were fired, but they whizzed overhead—I doubted that they were seriously aimed to hit. The only people between us and the end of the village were more interested in getting out of our way than in stopping us. But one of them, glimpsed as we hurtled past, was holding a rectangular chunk of plastic with a yard-long thin rod poking up