redRobe

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  ‘And those,’ demanded Axl, pointing to an expensive-looking pair of men’s ankle boots. No buckles, just a self sealing flap. If they were regulation issue, then it was senior ranks only.

  ‘They belong to the boss.’

  Yeah, well that explained it. Though the pleasure of meeting their CO was still to come. He’d only just arrived and was choosing his bedroom.

  It was 8 p.m., Wednesday, 14 September. Axl knew that because it was displayed in his left eye, just below the timecode that now read 160.59.59. He’d asked Kate to come down to supper with Mai at 8.30 on the dot. She hadn’t wanted to but Axl was reeling her in. And he still didn’t feel any better about it.

  ‘You going to get rid of those?’ Axl asked, pointing at both pairs of drying boots.

  The soldier shook his head.

  With a shrug, Axl opened a shutter and let cold evening air swirl into the smoky room. For the first time since he’d arrived in the high valley the night sky was deep blue, the wind mild and it wasn’t raining. Axl could look from the stone window to the village far below. And that was the direction in which he hurled the boots one after another. Straight towards a four-wheel Toyota cutting scars in the grass as it climbed noisily towards the house.

  When defMoma stamped into the room with her spare boots clutched angrily in one hand, she found Axl sweeping his arm across one end of a long wooden table, knocking fag packets, medicare boxes and stripped-down gun parts to the tiled floor.

  ‘This is for food,’ Axl told her. ‘You or your little friend want to play strip-the-gun-naked go and do it outside. And get rid of this crap, too.’ He scooped up a box of combat rations and tipped the packet of enhanced grits onto the tiles in a rain of little foil squares. Everything the human body could possibly need, from essential amino acids to chelated minerals, minus texture and taste. He’d have swapped a crate of the fucking stuff for a single dose of MDA-4.

  ‘You’re not an observer.’ It was a statement not a question.

  ‘Well done,’ said Axl.

  ‘You told me…’

  Axl didn’t care what he told her. Two people were talking in the hall and Axl was busy registering a voice he’d been half expecting, half dreading, ever since he’d recognised the sergeant that night in the stables exactly a week ago…

  ‘Well,’ said the voice, ‘have you found Father Sylvester yet?’ The words were utterly flat, without accent and yet they gripped Axl’s attention the way crocodile clips grip testicles. Party time.

  The revolver was in his hand before Axl even realised that he’d drawn it. Three strides took Axl to the doorway and the crack of the barrel as it met Colonel Emilio’s head was louder than the thud the big man made when he hit the floor. Just nothing like as loud as the single drum kick that swallowed up the rest of Axl’s soundtrack and spat it out as echo.

  Axl was feeling better about life already.

  ‘Freeze,’ he said loudly, and behind Colonel Emilio, the lieutenant did just that, like someone had dipped her in liquid nitrogen.

  ‘This is private,’ Axl told momaDef, ‘strictly between friends.’

  ‘You know the CO?’

  ‘Yeah, but he won’t remember,’ said Axl over his shoulder, as he turned back to defMoma who was still inside the room. ‘I looked different then.’

  The fat sergeant had her hand hovering over the half-open, velcroed flap of her own holster, unable to complete the move without making that familiar ripping sound. The one that tells you someone is about to draw their weapon.

  ‘I wouldn’t,’ said Axl and nudged the revolver in her direction. Choosing advanced weaponry then wrapping it in a neoprene container apparently designed to make it difficult to get at made no sense at all to Axl. He’d take a skeleton holster or a lanyard over a closed-top holster any time.

  ‘Come in,’ Axl gestured to the lieutenant, who did as he said, stepping over the Colonel.

  ‘You’ll find Clone in the kitchen,’ Axl told the sergeant, sweeping his arm across the other half of the long table so the last of the clutter hit the floor. ‘Tell him to bring supper.’

  ‘Get your own fucking ...”

  The fat woman didn’t finish because Axl put a bullet into the wall behind her, showering her broad shoulders and cropped head with coin-sized chunks of plaster. The kind that knock normal people to the floor from shock if nothing else.

  He got complete silence then. Inside his head and out. The ringing Silence that comes when human ears try to adjust from one extreme of noise to the other.

  ‘Food,’ said Axl firmly.

  The sergeant wanted to kill Axl. Wanted it so badly the need was written in her blue eyes and in the muscles that stood out in her thick arms and knotted her jaw. He could almost taste the adrenaline sweating off her. But she wasn’t going to get the chance. None of them were.

  ‘Put your gun on the floor first,’ Axl told defMoma and waited while she did.

  It wasn’t her white trash manners, wrong-end-of-the-bell-curve genetic coding, macho ignorance or what defMoma did or didn’t have dangling between her fat legs that fucked Axl off, it was her PaxForce uniform, pure and simple. The twenty pocket combats. The silicon dogtag. The sweat-stained dirty grey T-shirt stretched tight over steroid shoulders.

  ‘Thank you.’ Scooping up her gun, Axl flipped open the holder in a squeal of velcro and spun her Colt hiPower, Blackjack style, trying it for balance. Not bad, but not as good as the revolver held in his other hand. Where balance went, that was perfect.

  ‘At least I’m not in love with my fucking weapon,’ snapped the lieutenant.

  ‘Well, shit,’ said Axl, glancing between defMoma and momaDef. ‘Maybe you two just never met the right gun.’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  ...Knock It Down

  Same as it ever was. Chance threw the sixes and he kicked over the dice. By nightfall Axl had a sour taste in his throat no amount of putting one over Colonel Emilio could have shifted.

  But the evening began well enough, once he’d managed to persuade the sergeant she really did want to order a conscript to cook Kate and Mai supper. He let momaDef prop Colonel Emilio up against a wall. The man’s thick greying hair had stopped the blow from being fatal or even that serious. Axl had to admit to feeling slightly disappointed.

  Even Mai could have cooked better but it wouldn’t have been half so much fun as making the sergeant order her troopers to do it. What they got served was some kind of crude pancake, made from sour milk and barley flour cooked on a griddle.

  ‘Tsampa,’ said Kate when Clone slammed a plate piled high with the pancakes down on the table. Clone was willing to let someone else use his kitchen, just about. But no conscript was going to serve Kate.

  With the tsampa went preserve, dark as venous blood and made from crushed berries. And even the soyburgers Axl used to flip for McDonalds at the aeropuerto outside Day Effé tasted better. They drank from clay bowls that were greasy round the rim from the yak butter that floated like tiny oil slicks on top of the green tea. It was a safe bet that somewhere in his rations the unconscious Colonel Emilio would have a vacuum-sealed sachet of pure Colombian, but Axl decided to go after that later.

  defMoma and momaDef didn’t eat, just watched in heavy silence as Kate and Mai sat at the table and calmly ate their supper, talking only to each other as if Axl and the PaxForce officers didn’t exist.

  Fucking brilliant.

  It was costing Kate though, that much was obvious from the way she chewed occasionally at the inside of her mouth. And the way her hand shook slightly as she raised the tea bowl to her lips.

  Still, he couldn’t have done it better himself, Axl thought. Actually if he was being honest, he couldn’t have done it at all. Getting in someone’s face by not. getting in their face was a skill Axl lacked.

  Violent and demented he could do easily enough. Where he originated from that was simple survival stuff, but Mai’s simmering contempt and Kate’s complete indifference were way more subtle…

/>   Kate nodded to Mai, who downed her final cup of buttered tea.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Kate to Axl, as he stood to pull back her chair. ‘I enjoyed that.’

  ‘Yeah ...' Mai stuffed the second to last tsampa in her mouth, wiped up the remains of the preserve with the only one remaining and put it in her jacket pocket. On her way out of the dining room, she kicked the big wooden door shut with her heel.

  ‘Jesus,’ the lieutenant said in disgust. ‘How can you eat in the same room as that little tramp. She’s got the manners of a pig.’

  ‘Really?’ Axl shrugged and did his best to look puzzled. ‘You obviously move in better circles…’ He glanced to where the sergeant was sprawled in a chair, vast breasts flopped onto her jutting gut, black sweat patches Rorschach-blotting her singlet, the only item of clothing she wore on top. Now that Kate and Mai were gone, she was stuffing handfuls of dried apple porridge direct from a foil sachet to her mouth.

  The lieutenant’s lips twisted, but she was already moving on to what was really bugging her. ‘Helping the enemy. Attacking members of PaxForce. You want to tell me…’

  The rest of momaDef’s question was drowned out by the splash of Colonel Emilio vomiting onto marble tiles. Shock or the side effect of concussion, Axl didn’t care. The man should still have tried to make it to the window.

  ‘Tell me too,’ said the Colonel, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Or maybe we can skip straight to the bit where I kill you.’ He held a baby Uzi in one hand and was using his other to pull himself up, fingers gripping the edge of a Bon tapestry.

  It was almost impressive. Most people would have stayed down after a blow to the head like that, bouffant head of greying hair or not. But Emilio was built like a bull, thick bones and thick hide and stupidly stubborn.

  Axl had met the type too many times before to remember—and he hadn’t liked any of them any better then. So if Rinpoche was thinking of putting in an appearance, now would be a really good time.

  Inside Axl’s brain blood flow increased to the amygdala, cortisol levels rocketed, adrenaline kicked in and stress jacked up the bmp to his backing track, step on step. It took less than a second.

  But the darkening sky outside the window remained empty. Which wasn’t to say the silver monkey wasn’t keeping track, just that it was running to a different timescale. And besides, it was developing a thing for tight dramatic entrances. Which was fine, because that fitted well with Bon mythology. But then what did you expect from an ur-myth that said the high plateau of Tibet was really a naked goddess, arms and legs splayed wide, lying flat on her back?

  Weird shit indeed.

  ‘Recognise me?’ Axl asked.

  Stood upright, free hand carefully wiping the last specks of vomit from his neat salt and pepper moustache, Colonel Emilio looked carefully at the hard-eyed, gaunt man stood in front of him. He was dressed in the standard ‘fugee uniform of felt trousers, grey smock and old boots but there was something about the face, that chin… The right answer hovered briefly on the edge of his awareness and then it was gone.

  ‘Didn’t think so. Try five weeks back, La Medicina…’

  Recognition hit and Colonel Emilio half raised his Uzi. ‘I should have killed you,’ the Colonel told Axl flatly.

  ‘Yeah,’ said a voice behind Axl. ‘Join the queue.’

  defMoma and momaDef spun round first, and Rinpoche gave a little bow. Axl couldn’t be arsed, he already knew who it was and besides he was too busy watching, enjoying the shock in Colonel Emilio’s eyes.

  Time stopped.

  Or maybe it speeded up.

  Whatever happened, the Colonel, Wireframes and the sergeant freeze-framed and the silver monkey kept talking as Axl walked over to the Colonel and lifted the excited Uzi gently from his fingers.

  ‘Tsongkhapa wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Tsongkhapa?’ Axl said, then realised Rinpoche was talking inside his head and the others couldn’t have heard it anyway. They were too busy hitting the high notes of a fugue.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the voice, ‘but first get rid of this lot.’

  Get rid of them?

  ‘Get them out of this place, away from the Pope.’

  Away from the… Axl stopped dead. He hoped he didn’t look as stupid as he felt. ‘There is no Pope,’ he said aloud. It was beginning to sound like a mantra and one too many other people seemed not to believe.

  Rinpoche laughed. ‘Shit happens—and so does reincarnation. And guess what? Sometimes they’re the same.’ The silver monkey clicked its fingers and the fugue holding the others abruptly ended.

  Like someone flipping out of a trance defMoma fumbled desperately for her gun and kept fumbling, fingers scrabbling at her belt until she remembered she was no longer wearing one. ‘What the fuck is that?’ She said crossly.

  ‘I’m a monkey,’ said Rinpoche, ‘made of fucking metal, with fucking wings. What the flying fuck do you think I am?’

  ‘I wasn’t briefed on this,’ said Colonel Emilio to no one in particular.

  ‘No,’ said Rinpoche, ‘I don’t imagine you were.’ It nodded at the lieutenant and then waved its paw towards Axl. ‘You know who this is?’

  The woman shook her head.

  ‘Remember Axl Borja?’

  She did. So did her sergeant, Rinpoche could tell from the way her huge shoulders tensed.

  ‘And you have both heard of Cardinal Santo Ducque?’ His voice was silkily sarcastic.

  Something unspoken passed between the two women, brief as a blip of static. Anger, contempt, glee… Whichever it was, Axl didn’t like it, but the flicker of emotion wasn’t there long enough for him to identify it. All he saw was Colonel Emilio shake his head slightly at momaDef and defMoma.

  ‘Yes,' said the lieutenant carefully, ‘everyone knows the Cardinal.’

  ‘Well,’ Rinpoche’s smile was cold. ‘This man works for him. Something your Colonel already knows. And currently I work for Axl, sort of…’

  With a sigh, Colonel Emilio dipped into a pouch on his belt and pulled out an olive grey Sony walkWear, military issue. In the time it took the machine to boot up, he’d unfolded a pair of floating-focus Raybans and clumsily velcroed a tiny keypad to the inside of one wrist.

  Some sentient bloody spySat with delusions wasn’t what Colonel Emilio wanted. Not what he wanted at all. True, he’d heard rumours of another operative working the area, but Axl? And anyway, the idea was that the operative and PaxForce didn’t cross.

  Sat on the window sill, Rinpoche grinned at the Colonel, thin lips pulled back to reveal extremely nasty-looking teeth. As if it too could see the frames and menus scrolling ghost-like and translucent beyond Colonel Emilio’s eyes.

  And try as the Colonel might, the digital grab he’d taken of the silver monkey didn’t pull up any information on screen. Irritated, Colonel Emilio loaded another grab and reran the visual recognitions software. Absolute zilch. Between them, WorldBank, the IMF and PaxForce had the best military neural net in existence and so far as it was concerned the bloody monkey didn’t exist.

  ‘Classified,’ Rinpoche told him smugly and jerked his thumb at Axl. ‘Like his mission.’

  The Colonel was about to say he was cleared for access to the highest levels but the words died as the Sony RomReader suddenly went dead and he could see nothing but sick-making white fuzz. And when he ripped off the Raybans, he got the silver monkey grinning at him.

  ‘You responsible for this animal?’ Colonel Emilio asked Axl, unstrapping the wrist-pad in disgust. . .

  ‘I think it’s probably the other way round,’ said Axl and the silver monkey suddenly looked at him, head turned sideways, as if it was vaguely impressed. Or at least, as if he wasn’t quite the idiot it had assumed.

  Besides, given the endless scroll of crap he’d accepted without reading when he first bonded with the Colt, Axl was willing to lay odds that MacroShite had some sub-clause to say AIs reincarnating between hardware systems invalidated the agreement. ‘Look,’ s
aid Colonel Emilio, ‘I think we should get the lines of command clear here…’

  Nodding down to the revolver he was holding, Axl smiled. ‘I think we already did.’

  Rinpoche grinned at the Colonel. ‘Missing you already.’

  It tipped itself backwards off the stone sill, wings suddenly spreading and growing. By the time Colonel Emilio reached the open window, the animal was already riding up into the air currents, Cocheforet spreading small and isolated beneath it.

  The Colonel and Axl reached a simple compromise. Probably the only one not to involve Uzis, revolvers and one of them actually having to shoot the other rather than just talking about it. PaxForce wouldn’t interfere with Axl’s mission, whatever that was, if he didn’t interfere with theirs.

  By then Axl had already insisted that, in his opinion, there was no Pope Joan or Father Sylvester on Samsara and never had been. Joan was digital dust in backed-up newsfeeds. Unfortunately Axl didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.

  And Axl left out what Rinpoche had said to him. One, because he wasn’t sure it had ever happened and two, because, even if it had, he needed time to process the data.

  ‘So, you’re just at Cocheforet for the sightseeing?’ Colonel Emilio smiled and smoothed his moustache, then patted his hair into place and winced as his hand met the bump left by Axl’s revolver. He stopped smiling.

  His scalp was so thick, Axl realised it had bruised but the blow hadn’t even produced blood. Next time he was going to have to hit the man harder.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Axl, ‘that and my health. The Cardinal thought I needed to take the air.’ He nodded down to the guns he’d piled safely on the floor while the others were fuguing, inviting Colonel Emilio to take back his Uzi. The fact Axl had a revolver clutched firmly in his hand made it that much easier to make the offer.

  ‘Okay,’ said Axl, ‘you remember how it works. You leave Kate and Mai alone and I leave you three alone. Mess with Mai or Kate and you get an instant lead implant. No warning.’

  The Colonel looked at Axl, eyes burning. ‘You are the Cardinal’s man?’