redRobe

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  Because his mind was in his balls. It was obvious, wasn’t it?

  A small silver mosquito, wired for sound and vision. Fibre-optic eyes so small as to be almost invisible. Wings that doubled as solar panels and six tiny metal legs that let it cling to the wall near Kate’s bed. Basic stuff.

  So why the fuck had it come as such a surprise? Waxy leaves whipped into his face as he slid between bushes but Axl hardly felt them, though his hands flipped up to protect his face all the same.

  If that mosquito hadn’t been in shadow it would have been able to escape. But all that voice-activated broadcasting of what it had heard and seen had drained its power and not enough light could reach that wall for its wings to do more than mark time.

  And besides, the Colonel had made one mistake. The bug was a low-valley model, not designed for this altitude or temperature. That was what made the thing easy to catch. It was also what made Axl notice it in the first place. Only, noticing the thing too late was no better than not noticing it at all.

  * * * *

  ‘Mai?’ The front room of the Inn was crowded with sleepy conscripts but it went quiet the moment Axl crashed through the door. The sabatier still clutched in his hand saw to that. Ketzia didn’t know where Mai was, or if she did she wasn’t saying.

  Axl left the Inn with a couple of Tibetan women and a handful of grinning conscripts tagging. It took Axl all of two minutes to outrun his audience.

  Maybe they’d expected him to cut Mai’s throat when he found her, Axl had no idea. He only knew that whatever they expected the conscripts were a whole lot less bored-looking than when he went in through the Inn door.

  The corporal on the Z3 gyroByke had problems with the idea of handing over her Honda, so Axl left her flat on her back in the street thinking about it. Though it was a push to her shoulder, not a chop to her throat with the sabatier, that put her there.

  Getting soft in his old age, Axl decided, wondering what the old revisionist version of his Colt would have said. But he didn’t really have time to worry about it. No one did, not now. He needed to get to Mai before the Colonel did. How long that took depended on how obsessively Colonel Emilio had PaxForce stripping out bug data for key words.

  Mai wasn’t in the stables either, though Axl’s horse was, so at least she hadn’t stolen the animal to try crossing the high plateau by herself. Nor was Mai around the jumble of open-fronted shacks behind the village that passed for its market, though half a dozen conscripts were.

  The conscripts scattered, dropping the crudely-beaten Tibetan bangles they had no one to give to and striped rugs they’d leave behind. Been there, done that, ditched the T-shirt. Violence, rape and shopping for souvenirs. It had to be something the sergeants taught at boot camp.

  The Inn, the stables and the market all empty of Mai—he had to face it, wherever the girl was, it wasn’t in the village.

  Cold mud slid from the Honda’s back wheel like shit off a shovel as Axl hit a skid turn at the end of the row, but a military-grade gyro kicked in on cue and the bike kept him upright, tracks biting grass as he left the market and raced straight up the valley side. In reality, it was a mountain wall so high that human vision failed long before the snow-lacquered slopes gave way to graphite grey walls that stopped only after they’d long since left the thinning air behind, and met the cold emptiness of Samsara’s upper atmosphere.

  Down near the base of that wall, Axl slid between spindly firs and hung a shaky right to skirt a huge clump of thorn.

  ‘Make a noise, make it obvious…’ That’s what his old sergeant used to say. Axl doubted if she’d ever seen a lapwing—he certainly hadn’t—but that’s what this manoeuvre was named after; if setting yourself up as a moving target rated being described as a manoeuvre.

  Birds rose from the tangle of thorns in an explosion of feedback and a goat that stood on a nearby ridge vanished like someone had hit delete. The grass got ever more yellow the higher he raced, the air thinner, the soil turning to grit that ricocheted from beneath the Honda’s churning back wheel.

  Layers of hard attack SFX overlaid manically over-driven guitar and pumping double-tracked, adrenalin-fed bass.

  Another minute of climbing and Axl was officially above the treeline, though a few stunted firs protruding bonsai-like from snow-flecked rock didn’t seem to have got the message.

  Somewhere down in that valley was Mai and he had to get to her first. Powdered snow whipped into Axl’s face as he searched from Cocheforet up the other side of the valley towards the high plateau, looking for the red flash of Mai’s coat. But there was nothing.

  Which was the point Axl finally stopped reacting and started to think. Bruiser guitar chords chopping off into an after echo of silence. What he needed most, he realised, was some help. This wasn’t one he could win on his own… Instead of looking down into the valley, Axl began to scan the sky.

  ‘Lapwing defence,’ said a voice behind him. ‘Make a noise, be visible, draw the enemy away.’ Rinpoche cocked his head to one side and frowned. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘just ‘cos your sergeant said something doesn’t make it true. Bit like you and the old bastard. Your big problem is you’re too trusting.’

  Axl looked at the silver monkey in disbelief. Next it would be telling Axl that he’d been set up.

  Rinpoche nodded. ‘Oh, and I put a patch into your head for old time’s sake.’ Rinpoche said, before Axl could ask how the monkey knew what he was thinking. ‘I mean, fuck knows, it wasn’t difficult. You’ve got more wire in there than jelly.’

  He’d come back to that later, Axl decided, much later.

  ‘You know where Mai is?’

  Rinpoche did, that much was obvious from his sly grin. ‘Now Clone’s gone, she’s busy negotiating,’ the Colt said, his voice studiedly casual.

  ‘She’ll be fucking dead if I don’t get to her first,’ said Axl.

  ‘And if she isn’t she’ll wish she was when Emilio gets through with her. You’ve got to warn her.’

  ‘No,’ said Rinpoche apologetically. ‘You’re on your own. Tsongkhapa can’t take sides. And I…’ The ex-Colt shrugged. ‘But for the record, Colonel Emilio has just notified Vajrayana that PaxForce intends to arrest a Spanish whore called Juanita. That’s Mai…’ Rinpoche added, as if Axl wasn’t capable of working that out for himself.

  ‘And off the record,’ the silver monkey glanced around him. ‘Last time I looked she was trying to persuade some kid he wanted to take her with him when he left.’

  Rinpoche didn’t need to say how and Axl didn’t need to ask. He got a picture in his head, rough cut like bad mix. A drop shot of clouds, then valley sides with a tiny waterfall, trees seen from above, a river bank, Mai…

  ‘Okay?’

  Yeah, it was. She’d gone through the village from Escondido, met the kid and walked out along the valley bottom. Unless she’d arranged to meet the kid there. But that didn’t seem likely and—with luck—the kid with his trousers pulled down round his ankles hadn’t told anyone where he was going or why.

  Mai had been stripped naked under a boy who looked about twelve, her eyes open to watch the clouds as the boy held her arms up over her head.

  Maybe Rinpoche heard Axl’s thanks, maybe not. Axl didn’t wait around to find out. Kicking the Honda into gear, he gunned the throttle and slipped the clutch until the fat back wheel bit mud. It took a moment or two for the treads to find optimum depth and the tyre pressure to self adjust. But then everything came together in a blur of trashed-up bass lines and the gyro kicked in as the bike crested a tiny ridge and started to slide diagonally across a long shale bank.

  Even in Day Effé there were fuck-wit city suits who did black runs for fun. Mostly they wore full body armour, kevlar-mesh bonded to funky silver leather, chitin shoulder pads and knee protectors with full tsunami function. Axl wore cargo pants and a cotton shirt. So slicking down shale was as open an invitation to get the skin flayed off his body as it was possible to get, at least without going near PaxForce.r />
  Needless to say, it wasn’t skill that kept Axl upright when the fat back wheel hit a bank and the Honda took off to land with a long sideways skid, it was the fact that combat bikes were built for pig-shit-thick grunts with colour co-ordinated riding abilities.

  Another drop and then a second ridge raced towards him and the earth dropped abruptly away. There wasn’t even time to swear before the ground that wasn’t there came up to meet him and the bike jumped fifty feet before touching down again on wet grass, gyro whining.

  Axl had a problem, and his problem was that someone had seen Mai leave the village or else the boy had told a companion how he planned to spend the morning. Dumb fuck. Down to Axl’s left was a diagonal line of conscripts positioned in combat formation, a regulation three paces apart and three paces behind as they swept the valley bottom. The grunts weren’t even bothering to stay in cover.

  They looked like tiny toys, Axl thought, and then he didn’t think anything because the Honda was airborne again, grass falling away beneath him.

  Mono shocks cushioned most of the landing and his knees took the rest, but hitting the saddle still felt like someone was trying to kick his spine up through the top of his head.

  And then Axl was racing into a belt of firs, loose gravel giving way to a crust of dead pine needles that cracked and slid like unset lava beneath the wheels of his Honda. Staying upright ate up the next few minutes.

  When the pines finally gave way to slopes of pasture complete with stolid yaks and dazed-looking Tibetan goats that scattered as the Honda catapulted out of the tree cover and headed for their herd, Axl was already almost too late. The fat woman walking point ahead of the sweep of solders was almost at the bend in the river.

  ‘Fuck,’ Axl gunned the engine angrily, flicking the rev readout from green to red as he blipped the engine up past safety. Maybe it was the scattering goats or perhaps the wind finally changed direction to bring them the unmistakable, hysterical whine of the two-stroke but either way, the man running tail flipped round and unslung his snubPup.

  Guitars screamed a warning.

  A burst of speed carried Axl along the slope above the soldiers and by the time they realised he intended to get ahead of them Axl was already there, the Honda’s rev readout flashing purple with electronic pain.

  Now he just had to reach Mai—and fast—because letting defMoma stumble over the top of a bank and find Mai naked, sprawled beneath some second-grade conscript was one way to guarantee that the sergeant took close personal interest in showing the girl that NCOs did it better.

  In fact, the only thing that stood between defMoma just hurting Mai and actually cutting her throat was the fact that the fat woman had firm orders to arrest the girl, which would hold off the throat slitting if not much else. And Axl wasn’t about to let either happen.

  Not if he could get there first. And he was going to ...

  Hill/Slope/River. Axl got the flash played straight into his brain, just like he was running some top-grade satellite positioning software. A quick nudge on the handlebars, a nudge of the accelerator and the Honda X3 was rocketing down a long slope towards a bank that flipped the bike up and then dropped it all the way down to the river and Mai.

  She was naked, cock-eyed tits as beautiful as he remembered them, her hips full and soft. And it was obvious from the blind panic in her unfocussed eyes that she didn’t have the faintest idea who was riding the bike falling towards her.

  The conscript sitting naked nearby should have gone for a weapon but went for his trousers instead. He was still trying to yank them past his knees as Axl decided to try for a skid stop and quickly decided it was a bad idea.

  Even laminated carbon-fibre can only take so much. The front shock buckled as the Honda hit the bottom of the slope, the wheel itself snapping with a loud crack. The droids back in Okinawa had bonded that too, either that or the rim was run through with some kind of internal mesh of neatly woven polymer strings. Instead of exploding into shrapnel, the wheel collapsed on itself.

  Axl still went arse over tit into the cold river but as he scrambled out again the revolver already gripped in his hand, without Axl even remembering how it got there.

  ‘Freeze.’

  The conscript, who still looked about twelve and scared shitless pulled a knife anyway, so Axl opened a gash across his temple with the revolver, pistol-whipping the boy to his knees. Life was getting messy—and about to get messier.

  The soldiers were maybe 250 yards away, their ordered line and fast walk rapidly turning into a jagged run.

  ‘You,’ Axl said frantically, putting his gun to the head of the naked girl and tightening his finger on the trigger. ‘You’re under arrest ... Do you understand?’ Mai didn’t even look at him. She was too busy staring at the boy on his knees. It was Tukten, the sullen-faced brat from the Inn. Not a conscript at all.

  Lowering his revolver, Axl grabbed Mai’s red jacket from the grass and flung it round her narrow shoulders, her instinct kicking in enough make Mai shuffle her arms through its sleeves. The kid scrambled into her thong without being told and yanked a black cotton skirt up round her waist, her eyes never leaving Tukten.

  ‘I’m arresting you,’ Axl’s words were rapid but precise. Somewhere up there Tsongkhapa would have a vidSat data banking sight and sound. And if there wasn’t then Axl knew he could rely on Rinpoche to do the job for him. No one would be able to say this arrest hadn’t been made properly.

  ‘. . . in the name of the Cardinal and on behalf of WorldBank. Under a mandate authorised by the United Nations.’ The resolution number meant nothing to her but Axl reeled it off anyway, down to the relevant sets and subsets. It was only when the gabble of formal phrases was finished and Mai stammered out her question that Axl realised that the kid had no idea why…

  ‘You’ve got the Pope in your head.’ Axl went for an answer that was short rather than strictly true, it was quicker.

  ‘No.’ The way Mai looked at Axl wasn’t much of a novelty, because ex-lovers of his had been looking at Axl like that for as long as he could remember. But then dealing with the kid’s outrage suddenly took second place to keeping himself alive, as an approaching conscript flipped out a spring-loaded cosh and Axl got fed a ragged Strat-high warning riff.

  ‘You’re dead…’ The weighted cosh slammed towards Axl’s skull in an effortless, practised arc. The man was seriously unhappy. So was defMoma who was racing up behind the conscript. She’d been planning to get there first.

  Axl hit the dirt ahead of contact, taking the landing on his left shoulder and drawing up his right leg, going into a half foetal. Trick number one was never break a fall with your hand unless you want your wrist shattered. Number two is don’t wait to make that kick, don’t aim, don’t look—just do it.

  Bass lines collided.

  Axl’s blow dislocated the man’s knee, the sole of his boot tearing open the joint and rupturing its synovial capsule. The conscript went down sideways because that’s what happens if someone kicks out your legs. And the man’s howl of pain lasted as long as it took Axl to chop him viciously across the throat with the edge of his hand.

  After that he just gurgled.

  When Axl came back up onto his knees, the gun he was holding was the conscript’s snubPup and its zytel butt riffed straight up between defMoma’s legs, hard as hell and twice as nasty. The big woman screamed and bent double, which was a bad mistake because Axl’s second blow caught her in the gut, showering him with her breakfast.

  And then the rifle’s safety was off, Axl was knelt astride her hips and the red dot of his laser sight was busy wrecking cells at the back of one of defMoma’s eyes. Been there, done that, watched the atrocity…

  ‘You’re mumbling…’It was Mai and she looked afraid.

  Too bad. With his new gun to defMoma’s face, Axl rifled the patch pocket on her T-shirt, ready to toss its contents onto the mud. Somewhere the bitch had to have PaxForce issue meth, cooking sulphate, anything. Even paraDerm would do. But t
he pocket was empty so, gun still to her head, Axl rolled the juddering woman onto her front to try the arse pockets at the back.

  Chocolate, melted with body heat and squashed beyond use, a used packet of Coag and ditto eczma cream, two PaxForce-issue laminates, one giving her name as Martyna ‘defMoma’ Labowsky, the other a card to be read out to suspects before their arrest. And finally, sweet fucking success, a tatty vacuum-sealed foil sachet tucked into the bottom of her pocket, date stamped and closed with a strip of tamper Tell running across the top. UN-issue cooking sulphate, the world’s best-loved currency. Grey crystals were bouncing off the back of his throat before the sachet was even properly open.

  ‘Crack each crystal between your teeth and suck it soft with saliva,’ suggested the packet but Axl ignored it. That was only if you wanted to slowburn and he didn’t, definitely not. Axl wanted the full white light/white heat.

  Glass-hard neon notes wrote themselves round every bewildered conscript, round Mai’s red jacket, even round the valley lop like some filter effect had kicked in. Which was exactly what had happened inside Axl’s head.

  ‘This woman is under arrest,’ Axl told the milling conscripts and his voice was firm, without the slightest tremor. You could say what you liked about PaxForce but they cooked only the best sulphate.

  The way it was meant to go was they’d all nod, convinced by the authority of his words and Mai and Axl would get out of there, fast. . . Taking Tukten too, if Mai insisted. And that’s the way it would have worked if Colonel Emilio hadn’t ridden up on some prancing stallion, looking like he was leading a parade in the Plaza de Armas.

  ‘Good,’ he said, spotting Mai. ‘We’ll take over now.’

  Quite how Axl’s new snubPup ended up pointed at the Colonel’s stomach Axl couldn’t remember. And to give Colonel Emilio credit he didn’t flinch or try to shuffle his horse away from Axl’s aim, even though the tightness in his face said he knew just how messy a gut wound could be. If not from experience, then in theory at least. Even staff colleges covered that stuff.