Empress of the Sun

by Ian McDonald

  Suddenly his own eyes were clear. Suddenly he knew what he had to do. There could be no mistake.

  ‘Kax!’

  He sent the shotgun sliding across the blood-slick earth.

  As the tip of the short, killing blade pierced the skin of her throat, the Jiju on the bottom grabbed the shotgun, jammed it into the side of the killer on top and pulled the trigger. The blast sent her hatch-sister into the air in an explosion of blood and meat and skin.

  The spell was broken. Everett cried out. He fell to his knees. Retched. Threw up as the Jiju pulled herself up, went over to the twitching mass of shattered flesh and plunged her claws into it, again and again and again and again.

  ‘Kax …’

  The Jiju looked up, darted her eyes towards him. Her face was a mask of blood. There was nothing in those eyes Everett could recognise.

  ‘Oh God oh God oh God oh God,’ Everett whispered. This was death. Complete and bloody and vile. No argument, no coming back. In front of his eyes. Everett had never seen death before. It had not touched his family. When the alter Tejendra had died, in the raid on Imperial College to get the Panopticon, Everett had been pushed away by Sharkey. He had heard death – two gunshots – but he had not seen it. He had now. He had seen it come painfully and without any hope of mercy or escape to the Jiju. He hated it. He hated that there was nothing he could do about it.

  ‘“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not,”’ Sharkey muttered quickly. ‘“But slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”’

  The Jiju’s claws came apart into their component bots and reformed a halo. The dead Jiju’s weapons scattered and reformed, rising up like a cloud of mosquitoes, and joined with the living Jiju’s halo. The halo burned brilliant. The Jiju staggered. She closed her eyes. Her thin lips moved, as if in pain or speaking new and strange words. Her eyes flew open.

  ‘I know everything!’ Kax cried. ‘I am … everyone!’ She ran a hand over her face, groomed her maimed crest, stared in amazement at the blood and dirt. ‘Water! Water now!’ Everett handed her a canteen. Kax poured the water over her head, scrubbed off the gore. No one looked at the dead thing at the other side of the clearing. ‘Everything! All the others – everything they saw and felt and knew and learned. All their memories, all their experiences – I have them all. I am the one and only. I am Kakakakaxa Harhavvad Exto Kadkaye, Princess of the Sunlords! Thank you, Everett Singh. The Sun Throne is in your debt.’ Again Kax reeled. Everett imagined information downloading in her brain. ‘Come with me. You have to come with me. I will show you Palatakahapa, the palace of my mother. I’ve never been there – but I can see it all, in my mind. It’s so beautiful. I’ll call a flyer. I can do that. A whole fleet of flyers! That would be cool. We’ll go, yes, right now. Out of here! I hate this forest!’

  ‘Hey now, hey now, that’s all fine and dandy,’ Sharkey said, retrieving his shotgun and wiping it clean. ‘But before we go trolling off together, I’ve one question: where the hell is our ship?’

  15

  Charlotte Villiers tightened the waistband of her short battledress jacket and adjusted her beret to the correct angle. She snapped open the leather cover of the holster on her Sam Browne belt. There could be anything on the other side of the gate. Zaitsev strode three paces behind her. Out of those cheap, poorly tailored Earth 10 suits and in Royal Army battledress, he looked almost respectable.

  Ibrim Hoj Kerrim had been a man of his word. Advanced Earth 2 weaponry. Secure and exclusive access to a military Einstein Gate in the underground levels of the Tyrone Tower. The story was that the gate had been taken offline for routine maintenance. Her own Earth 10 private security force and Zaitsev, her henchman.

  Two of her soldiers opened the double doors of the gate chamber. Her squad clicked to attention. Behind the banks of controls, her alter Charles and the Plenitude Gate Command tuned the gate. The twenty-metre ring in the centre of the chamber ran with flickers of lightning and cold blue Cerenkov radiation. The gate crew knew that the coordinates they had set were for a place outside the Ten Known Worlds of the Plenitude.

  Charlotte Villiers turned to her alter and held up the relay strapped to her left forearm. Checks. Cross-checks. Charles Villiers nodded. The huge chamber hummed as the gate powered up. Charlotte Villiers admitted a flicker of apprehension at the thought of jumping out beyond the Known Worlds. A billion billion parallel Earths out there in the Panoply. More than all the stars in the sky. That would give anyone a chill of insignificance. How could you measure a human life against all those worlds? But the boy was out there. He jumped between worlds, Plenitude to Panoply, Panoply to Plenitude, with the cheek and arrogance of a thief running across the rooftops of London. Last time she had sent soldiers out into the great unknown to catch him they never came back. It would be different this time.

  ‘Ready whenever you are, Madam Villiers.’ The Gate Controller was a smart, groomed young woman. Charlotte Villiers approved of her make-up and the precise angle of her Gate Command forage cap. The controller could not hide the fear on her face, that the things she saw and heard in this chamber would cost her for the rest of her life.

  Charlotte Villiers faced her soldiers. A dozen of them, in black E10 fatigues. Inelegant, but practical. Squad leader Sorensen, a tough-faced blonde, brought the squad to attention.

  ‘At ease. You’ve been briefed, but I have some final notes. In a few moments we will be making an Einstein Jump. My alter has set the coordinates to drop us precisely into the airship at the closest safe point to the tracking device. The gantries and walkways are narrow, so we will form up in two files. There are long drops inside the airship. Watch your step. Gravity is about two-thirds Plenitude normal. You may find the transition momentarily disorienting. The crew will be armed with standard non-lethal Airish self-defence weapons. They’re painful and can incapacitate. My previous comments about heights inside the airship stand. If the crew offers any resistance, deadly force is authorised.’ Charlotte Villiers took a breath. ‘Concerning the Jiju – we do not anticipate encountering any, but on the minuscule chance that we do, do not engage. They are a civilisation roughly sixty-five million years older than us. We do not want to anger them. Our mission is to obtain the Infundibulum by any means and return it to the extraction point, where I will activate the relay and return us to this world. Controller, we’re ready now.’

  The Gate Controller pushed forward a lever and the chamber flooded with blinding white as the huge metal ring filled with light. Ghost-photons, Charlotte Villiers thought. A glimpse of the ultimate reality beyond both Plenitude and Panoply. The light cleared. Beyond the gate was a long spidery walkway overhung by the bulging curves of the lift cells.

  ‘You are clear to jump, Madam Villiers,’ the Gate Controller said.

  ‘With me,’ Charlotte Villiers ordered. She walked briskly and coolly up the ramp and into another universe.

  *

  Charlotte Villiers hit the deck of Everness and broke into a run. Behind her, her soldiers split off along the crosswalks and down the spiralling companionways. Airships were big, with many places to hide a small Earth 10 tablet computer. That was the briefing. The truth was that Charlotte Villiers knew it would not be anywhere else than the bridge. The hands that lifted the Infundibulum would be hers alone. She very much wanted to see how the Singh boy had made it work with the jumpgun. He was talented. Resourceful too. Perhaps she should have abducted him rather than his father. Nevertheless, she would happily put three shots into him if he came between her and the prize. She might do it anyway. Deny his talents to the enemy.

  Sirens blared, alarm bells rang. Too much to expect she would make it to the bridge undetected, but she had hoped for more of an advantage.

  ‘Zaitsev!’ Her lieutenant was at her shoulder, easily matching her pace. ‘The Confed, the American with the mouth full of Bible quotes – he’s the only real threat. He has real weapons. Find him, neutralise him.’
She jabbed a finger down the central access stair. From her close study of the schematics of commercial airships, she had learnt that the weighmaster’s station was in the cargo hold.

  Alone now. Ahead of her were the command, control and crew zones: the heart of the ship. And a massive impact slammed Charlotte Villiers into the deck. Stunned, winded, she rolled. Something – someone – small and pale and very, very fierce dropped out of nowhere on top of her. The girl. The Sixsmyth kid. Charlotte Villiers punched hard, caught her in the stomach. The girl screamed and reeled back. You weren’t expecting me to fight for real, Charlotte Villiers thought. Like an adult. Like it’s life or death. Sen choked and puked. Charlotte Villiers grabbed her and threw her as hard as she could into a truss. Sen went down, broken, gasping, spasming like a crab on its back on the decking. Charlotte Villiers adjusted her beret.

  ‘You’ve made me angry now,’ she said. ‘Vermin.’ She raised her boot, to stamp the heel down through Sen’s rib-cage and burst her heart. A kick to the shoulder sent Charlotte Villiers staggering backwards.

  ‘Not as angry as me.’ Captain Anastasia dropped from the kick into the savate fighting stance, coiled but open, charged but relaxed: deadly dangerous. Where had she come from? A harness, a zip-line. ‘So, you can beat up kids. Want to try it with Momma?’ She flicked her fingers: Come on if you think you’re hard enough.

  ‘I do not have time for this,’ Charlotte Villiers said and drew the heavy revolver from her holster.

  The whole two hundred metres of Everness’s hull shook. Charlotte Villiers staggered, the shot went wild. In the moment of distraction, Captain Anastasia scooped up her terribly damaged daughter, slapped the zip-line control and was jerked up into the high vaults of Everness’s cathedral-like interior. Charlotte Villiers drew a bead. The airship jerked again, longer, harder. Debris snowed down from the high gantries. Charlotte Villiers grabbed the rail to steady herself and tapped the communications bar on her collar.

  ‘What the hell is going on here?’

  ‘There’s something out there,’ Zaitsev shouted. ‘It’s big. Christ it’s big. Oh Jesus God!’

  And now the voice of Sorensen her lieutenant, filled with panic. Bursts of gunfire rang out from the lower levels of the airship over the clamour of alarms. ‘Jiju! Thousands of them!’

  16

  At the start of assembly, Mrs Abrahams the principle warned the whole school that she would be extending the morning meeting for an extra five minutes. She had An Announcement. For the Whole School. She made it after the non-denominational hymn, the reading from Toni Morrison and the regular announcements.

  ‘The school has rats.’

  She waited for the laughter at the back of the assembly hall to die down.

  ‘We have a small but stubborn infestation of rats. We have called in pest control to get rid of them, and they will be using poison. This will be clearly marked with a black-and-yellow chequerboard pattern. Do not touch them, do not investigate them, do not put them in your mouths. And do not touch, approach or put in your mouths any rats, dead or especially living. It is not cool, it is not cute. Rats leak urine. Rat urine is responsible for Weil’s disease, which attacks the kidneys and the brain and can be fatal.’

  Mass icks and ughs and whoas.

  Rodent piss will do it every time, Everett M thought.

  ‘Rats are vermin and they will be exterminated from our school, so protests, Facebook campaigns and petitions from PETA and any other animal-welfare groups to save the cute furry animals will be ignored. Your energies would be better directed to your summer exams.’

  Mrs Abrahams swept from the stage. The school drifted away in their class groups.

  Noomi caught up with Everett M on the way to the lockers. She’d done something manga with her hair.

  ‘You’ve done something manga with your hair,’ Everett M said.

  ‘Points for noticing,’ she said, flicking her fingers up her sculpt of gelled hair.

  What Everett M was noticing was Gothy Emma and her emo friends hanging around at the end of the corridor. They looked self-conscious and uncomfortable and eager not to be noticed noticing. Everett M waved to them. They giggled but were unembarrassed.

  ‘I like it,’ he said to Noomi.

  ‘Trick with the car,’ she said. ‘Impressed. How?’

  ‘It’s about reflexes,’ Everett M said. ‘Timing.’ Her way of speaking was infectious. Noomi nodded as if he had handed her the key to all wisdom. She hurried along at Everett M’s side, hugging her backpack to her chest. She was wearing over-the-knee socks again, Everett M noticed. He had always hoped he would be hot for a girl who wore over-the-knee socks. And that the girl with over-the-knee socks would be hot for him. Something went click in his heart. It was not a Thryn mechanism. It was an Everett thing. Noomi stopped suddenly. Everett M almost walked into her. She held out a Coke can.

  ‘Could you?’

  ‘No,’ Everett M said and then saw her mouth open in disappointment and the Everett-thing in his chest died a little. ‘Not here.’

  They crossed the all-weather pitch and went behind the temporary classrooms. Gothy Emma and her cronies followed at a discreet distance.

  ‘Give it here.’

  Noomi passed Everett M the Coke can.

  ‘This will be quick.’

  ‘Can I?’ Her phone was in her hand.

  ‘No.’

  A flicker of Thryn enhancement, and he crushed the can, top to bottom, flat as a coin. Coke sprayed everywhere. Noomi leaped back but her eyes were wide.

  ‘Oh Everett.’

  Everett M felt a million miles tall. He could leap not just cars but whole continents, planets, galaxies. I could get to like this feeling, he thought.

  ‘We’re late for first class,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yeah, yeah.’ Noomi seemed almost to be snapping out of a trance. ‘Shit. Damn. Stuff.’ She skipped away. ‘Impressed again, Everett.’ She joined her friends. They were in a stream that specialised in art so theirs and Everett M’s timetables never meshed. They were a wild crew, the Year Ten art girls, wild and freethinking. They smelled of paint and modelling clay and art room. Noomi threw two words back over her shoulder. ‘Homework date.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Art plus science. I’ll text you.’

  He was late to first-period maths. The teacher made small fun of him, but Everett M didn’t feel belittled. In his mind, he was still striding over planets, world to world. Noomi used words like they were fifty-pound notes, rare and precious. Everett M went back in his mind over every one of them. They were probably the most words a girl had ever said to him in one conversation.

  But the big challenge that day was avoiding Ryun. School was not the place for difficult questions, otherwise Ryun would have asked them before now. But his manner had changed. He was tense, a bit stand-offish, a bit wanting to be with Everett M, a bit spooked, a bit amazed. A bit like Noomi, Everett M thought. Starstruck. Except with Ryun, it’s because I’ve been to a parallel universe and back.

  Between Ryun and Noomi, the final bell could not come soon enough. Everett M’s phone chimed on his first footstep outside the gates.

  Homework date. The map linked to a coffee shop on Green Lanes. Everett M had noticed it. It had charity-shop sofas and desperate art on the walls, the kind that is beneath amateur but carries a ludicrously high price tag. The slacker dudes said you could buy skunk. Everett M had never noticed Noomi there. He had never really noticed Noomi at all until she started photographing his ass.

  She was waiting for him on a cracked brown leather sofa. She had changed. Boots, knee-socks over tights. Everett M loved her way with leg-wear. A tiny tartan kilt with straps that were just there for show. Jacket ditto. She had put on some make-up. Not too much, Everett M didn’t like too much make-up. It made girls look a little scary. But this was just right. It drew his eyes to her eyes, made them dark and mysterious.

  ‘You look great,’ he said, crashing down on to the opposite sofa.
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br />   ‘Points for noticing,’ Noomi said. ‘No points for clothes.’

  Everett M felt self-conscious in his school uniform but he slipped off the blazer, took off his tie and untucked his shirt and it looked a little more hip. Street-normal Everett M was hoodies and skinny jeans, which wasn’t much less of a uniform. It was easier for girls to dress the way they wanted to be.

  Noomi ordered Vietnamese coffee from the dreadlocked waiter. Everett M had never heard of Vietnamese coffee, but it sounded cool and new and a bit sophisticated so he ordered one too. It came in a tall glass and was very sweet with a hint of cardamom.

  Noomi curled her legs under her. ‘So far away, Everett.’ She patted the sofa beside her.

  ‘Homework?’ Everett M swiped open his tablet as he sat down beside her. Noomi swiped it shut.

  ‘Later.’

  He could feel his heart beating. Every nerve and muscle in Everett M’s body wanted to propel him out of that sofa, out of that coffee shop, down the road to Stoke Newington with every joule of Thryn energy.

  ‘Relax.’ Noomi planted a hand on Everett M’s chest and pushed him back into the embrace of the sofa. ‘So tell me, are you a superhero?’

  This time he almost did leap out of the sofa.

  ‘Do you really want to know?’

  Noomi leaned forward. She smelled very good.

  ‘Say.’

  ‘I’m an alien cyborg double agent from a parallel universe. I’ve replaced the real Everett Singh.’

  ‘Lies!’ Noomi punched Everett M on the chest with enough weight for him to feel it.

  ‘Okay, I work out.’

  ‘Teach me your workout. No, seriously. I’d love to be really, really fit.’ She took Everett M’s hand and placed it on her arm. ‘Chicken wings.’

  ‘It feels all right to me.’