Macaque Attack!

by Gareth L. Powell

“What are you on about?” He stepped over the corpse and brandished the knife. “Who are you?”

  Victoria moved her staff into a defensive position.

  “I’m her.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to look directly at the body. As a reporter, she’d seen her share of violent crime scenes, and knew what to expect. Instead, she looked inside her own head, concentrating on the mental commands that transferred her consciousness from the battered remains of her natural cortex to the clean, bright clarity of her gelware implants.

  Berg’s posture tightened. He glanced from her to the body, and back again.

  “Twin sister?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Lucky me.”

  The first time she’d fought him—or at least the version of him from her own parallel—he’d been superhumanly fast and tough, and he’d almost killed her. She’d been left for dead with a hole punched through the back of her skull. She tightened her grip on the metal staff. This time would be different. This time, she knew all about him, knew his methods and limitations, while he remained blissfully unaware of her capabilities.

  Visualising her internal menu, she overclocked her neural processors. As the speed of her thinking increased, her perception of time stretched and slowed. The traffic noise from outside deepened, winding down like a faulty tape. In slow motion, she saw Berg’s muscles tense. His legs pushed up and he surged towards her, black coat flapping around behind him, knife held forward, aimed at her face. His speed was astonishing. A normal human would have been pinned through the eye before they could move. As it was, Victoria only just managed to spin aside. As momentum carried him past, she completed her twirl and brought the end of her staff cracking into the back of his head. The blow caught him off balance and sent him flailing forwards with an indignant cry, through the remains of the front door and out, into the hallway.

  He ended up on his hands and knees. Victoria stepped up behind him, but before she could bring her staff down, Berg’s spindly arm slashed backwards, and his knife caught her across the shins, slicing through denim and skin. The pain registered as a sharp red alarm somewhere at the back of her mind, way down in the animal part of her brain, and she tried to ignore it. It was a distraction, the gelware told her, nothing more. Her heart thumped in her chest, each beat like the pounding of some great engine. He’d hurt her before; she wouldn’t allow him to hurt her again. She stabbed down with her staff, pinning his wrist to the hardwood floor, and leant her weight on it. She ground until she felt the bones of his hand snap and crack, and saw the knife fall from his fingers.

  Berg’s head turned to look at her. Although the grin remained stretched across his face, his eyes were wide and fearful.

  “Who are you?”

  “I told you.” Victoria could feel blood running down her shins, soaking into the tops of her socks. She glanced back at the dead woman in the apartment, and saw blonde hair mixed with wine-coloured blood, and an out-thrown hand with torn and bruised knuckles. The poor woman hadn’t stood a chance. She’d been butchered, and all Victoria could do now was avenge her.

  “I’m Victoria Valois.” She stepped forward and raised her weapon high over her head. She wanted to bring it down hard, driving the butt end into the space between his eyes. She wanted to feel his metal skull cave beneath her blow, feel his brains squish and perish. He had killed at least three people, probably more, and would kill her too if he got the chance.

  He deserved to die.

  And yet…

  CHAPTER TWO

  UNCLEAN ZOO

  TAKING OFF FROM a private airstrip on the outskirts of Paris, Victoria and K8 flew across the English Channel in a borrowed seaplane, with Cassius Berg handcuffed and gagged in the hold. They were heading for a sea fort that stood a few miles off the coast of Portsmouth. When the old structure came into sight, they splashed the plane into the waters of the Solent, carving a feather of white across the shimmering blue surface, and taxied to the rotting jetty that served as the fort’s one and only link with the outside world.

  The seaplane was an ancient Grumman Goose: a small and ungainly contraption with which Victoria had somehow fallen grudgingly in love. The little aircraft had two chunky propeller engines mounted on an overhead wing, and the main fuselage dangled between them like a fat-bottomed boat bolted to the underside of a boomerang.

  When she stepped from the plane’s hatch, Victoria found a monkey waiting for her, fishing from the end of the jetty. It wore a flowery sunhat and a string vest, and had a large silver pistol tucked into the waistband of its cut-off denim shorts. Overhead, the sun burned white and clean.

  “I’m Valois.”

  The monkey watched her from behind its mirrored shades. She couldn’t remember its name. A portable transistor radio, resting on the planks beside the bait bucket, played scratchy Europop.

  “So?”

  Behind the monkey, at the far end of the jetty, the fort rose as an implacable, curving wall of stone. Victoria swallowed back her irritation. The breeze blowing in from the sea held the all-too-familiar fragrances of brine, fresh fish, and childhood holidays. Considering it was November, the day felt exceptionally mild.

  “Where’s your boss?”

  “Does he know you’re coming?”

  “Don’t be stupid.” She slipped off her flying jacket, pulled a red bandana from her trouser pocket, and wiped her forehead. Keeping hold of its rod with one hand, the monkey produced a rolled-up cigarette from behind its ear. The paper was damp and starting to unravel. It pushed the rollup between its yellowing teeth, and lit up using a match struck against the jetty’s crumbling planks.

  “I don’t think he’ll want to see you.”

  Smoke curled around it, blue in the sunlight. Victoria sighed, and raised her eyes to the armoured Zeppelin tethered to the fort’s radio mast.

  “Is he up there?”

  “Yeah, but he ain’t taking no visitors.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  She went back to the Goose and pulled Berg out onto the jetty’s planks. He blinked against the sunlight. Victoria slipped a loop of rope around his neck, and jerked on it like a dog chain. Leaving K8 to secure the plane, she led her prisoner past the startled monkey, along the jetty, and into the coolness of the stone fort.

  The corridors were dank with rainwater, and she was surprised to feel a sense of homecoming. Despite the frosty welcome, this little manmade island felt more like home than anywhere else on this timeline. She’d spent the past six weeks in Europe, but it hadn’t been her Europe. Everything about it had been different and, to her, somehow wrong. She looked forward to getting back to the familiar cabins and gangways of the armoured airship, and Paul.

  Would he even remember her?

  Dragging Berg, she stomped her way across the fort’s main flagstone courtyard.

  Standing in the English Channel, several miles off the coast of the Isle of Wight, the circular fort had been built in the 19th century to defend Portsmouth from the French. Made of thick stone and surrounded by water on all sides, the structure had lain derelict until the turn of the millennium, when an enterprising developer had converted the stronghold into a luxury hotel and conference centre, complete with open-air swimming pool. Fifty years, and two stock market crashes, later, the weeds and rust had returned; and now that the place had been ‘liberated’ by the monkey army, it more resembled an unclean zoo than an exclusive resort. The water in the swimming pool lay brown and stagnant, its scummy surface speckled by shoals of empty beer cans and the wallowing bleach-white bones of broken patio furniture. Shards of glass littered the patio area.

  The steps up to the base of the radio mast were where she remembered, still overgrown with lichen, grass and mould. The grass whispered against her leather boots, and she knew suspicious eyes watched her from the fort’s seemingly empty windows.

  Stupid monkeys.

  She’d only been gone six weeks.

  ONCE ABOARD THE airship, Victoria
led Berg to the artificial jungle built into the vessel’s glass-panelled nose. Cut off from the rest of the craft by a thick brass door, this leafy enclosure formed Ack-Ack Macaque’s personal and private sanctuary and, at first, the monkeys guarding it didn’t want to let her in.

  “He’s in a foul mood,” warned the one wearing a leather vest.

  Victoria tugged at the rope around Berg’s neck, making him stumble forwards.

  “He’ll be in a worse one by the time I’m through with him. Now, are you going to let me past or not?”

  The monkeys exchanged glances. They knew who she was, yet were obviously nervous about troubling their leader. Finally the older of the two, a grey-muzzled macaque with a thick gold ring in his right ear, stood aside.

  “Go ahead, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.”

  Victoria pushed open the heavy door and stepped inside. The chamber was a vast vault occupying the forward portion of the airship’s main hull. The floor had been covered in reed matting, on which stood hundreds of large ceramic pots. Palm trees and other jungle plants grew from the pots, forming a canopy overhead, and it took her a minute or so to make her way through the trees to the wooden verandah overlooking the interior of the craft’s glass bow. Birds and butterflies twitched hither and thither among the branches. The air smelled like the interior of a greenhouse.

  ACK-ACK MACAQUE STOOD at the verandah’s rail, hands clasped behind his back and a fat cigar clamped in his teeth. He didn’t turn as Victoria walked up behind him.

  “You’re back,” he said.

  “I am.”

  From where he stood, he could see the sea fort and the blue waters of the Channel.

  “Any luck?”

  “Some.”

  She took her prisoner by the shoulder and pushed him down, into a kneeling position on the planks at his feet. Ack-Ack Macaque looked down with his one good eye.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Cassisus Berg.”

  The monkey gave the man an experimental prod with his shoe.

  “Didn’t you kill that fucker once already?”

  “Not on this timeline.”

  Ack-Ack frowned at her. Her face was pale despite her exertions, and her eyes were red and tired-looking. He could see she hadn’t slept well in several days. “And your other self? Did you find her?”

  “We were too late.”

  A wrought-iron patio table stood a little way along the verandah. Behind it stood a wheeled drinks cabinet filled with bottles of all shapes and sizes. Victoria left Berg kneeling where he was and walked over and helped herself to a vodka martini.

  A parrot squawked in one of the higher branches, its plumage red against the canopy’s khaki and emerald.

  Six weeks ago, Ack-Ack Macaque had tried to talk her out of getting involved with another version of herself but, predictably, she hadn’t listened—and he’d had more than enough to do trying to keep control of his monkey army. The problem with being the alpha monkey was that they all looked to him to tell them what to do and arbitrate all their pathetic squabbles. When faced with any kind of decision, they were more than happy to pass the responsibility up the chain of command until it dropped into his lap. It was the way primate troupes worked; it was also the way the military worked, and he didn’t like it. It was a pain in the hole. He was used to being a maverick, a grunt, an ace pilot rather than an Air Marshal. Being a leader cramped his style.

  Considering the figure at his feet, he said, “What are we going to do with him?”

  Victoria took a sip from the glass, and wiped her lips on the back of her gloved hand.

  “He’s a cyborg, same as before. A human brain in an artificial body.”

  Ack-Ack Macaque twitched his nostrils. The man smelled like an old, wet raincoat. He gave the guy a nudge and, arms still cuffed behind him, Berg tipped over onto his side.

  “It’s definitely him, though?”

  He watched as Victoria swirled the clear liquid in the bottom of her glass.

  “Mais oui,” she said. “And you realise what this means, don’t you?”

  Ack-Ack Macaque scowled at her.

  “Should I?”

  “It means Nguyen’s on this parallel, too.”

  Ack-Ack Macaque’s hackles rose. His scowl turned to a snarl, and his fingers went to his hips, where two silver Colts shone in their holsters.

  “Where is he?”

  “Paris, I think. An operation calling itself the Malsight Institute. I had K8 pull up some information on it.”

  “And?”

  “Officially it doesn’t exist. There’s nothing about it until two years ago. Rumours, conspiracy theories, that sort of thing. Very secretive, government money. Black research. Heavy security.”

  “Sounds familiar.”

  “If he’s there, and he’s building another robot army, we have to stop him.”

  Ack-Ack Macaque growled, deep in his throat. Doctor Nguyen had been the man responsible for creating them both in his laboratories—their own personal Frankenstein. He took the cigar from his lips and rolled it in his fingers.

  “We leave in an hour,” he decided. He was overdue for some action, and, after spending the last six weeks trying to sort out the complaints and squabbles of a troupe of irritable, irresponsible monkeys, he was itching to bust some skulls. “Reactivate your husband and recall the crew.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “What do you think I’m going to do?” His lips curled back, revealing his sharp yellow fangs. He clamped the cigar back between his teeth. Leathery fingers bunched into fists. “If Nguyen’s here, I’m going to grab the bastard by the ears and rip his fucking head off.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  ASSHOLE VARIATIONS

  ON THE AIRSHIP’S bridge, Paul shimmered into apparent solidity. He blinked, removed his rimless spectacles, and rubbed his eyes.

  “Ah, Vicky.”

  His image was a hologram projected by a small drone, about the size and shape of a dragonfly, which hovered behind his eyes. It portrayed him as he had been before his death: spiky peroxide hair, gold ear stud, and a loud Hawaiian shirt under a long white lab coat.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Me? I’m perfectly, um—” He frowned down at the glasses in his hand, as if seeing them for the first time.

  “Fine?” she suggested.

  He jumped, as if startled. “What? Oh yes. Fine. Perfectly fine.”

  “Are you still hooked into the main computer?”

  “I am.”

  “Then warm up the engines, we’re leaving.”

  She walked over and lowered herself into the captain’s chair. She knew Ack-Ack Macaque wouldn’t mind.

  Below, the members of the ragtag monkey army emerged from the doors and windows of the sea fort. Some were clothed, others were not; but all carried weapons, either slung on their backs or gripped in their teeth. She watched them swarm up the mooring ropes and suppressed a shiver.

  “As soon as they’re all aboard, head for France,” she said. “And tell K8 to leave the plane and get her butt up here, or she’s going to get left behind.”

  “And Cole?”

  “Merde.” She’d forgotten the writer. “Where is he?”

  “The Lake District.”

  “And Lila’s with him?”

  “Lila?”

  “His daughter.”

  “Ah yes, of course. I think so.”

  “Can you get a call through to them?”

  “I’ll do my best.” Paul’s image wavered and froze as he turned his attention to the airship’s communication systems. Victoria sat back in her chair, allowing her coat to fall open around her. After a few seconds, one of the screens blanked, and then cleared to show the face of a middle-aged man with wild grey hair.

  “Hello, Captain, what can I do for you?” The picture was shaky and showed the man’s face from below. Cole was hiking in the hills above Lake Windermere, and talking into a handheld phone. His cheeks were re
d and he was out of breath.

  “We’re moving the ship, Cole.”

  “And you want us to come back?’

  She shook her head. “There isn’t time. We’re going to Paris. We’ll try to pick you up afterwards.”

  William Cole stopped walking. The air wheezed between his lips.

  “Don’t hurry on our behalf,” he said. Behind him, Victoria glimpsed sunlit hills curled with brown autumn bracken and, far below, the waters of the lake.

  “We’ll be back,” she promised. “But maybe not for a while.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Something illegal.”

  “Well, don’t worry on our account.” He scratched the grey fuzz on his chin. “We’re happy enough here. We found Marie and everything’s great. In fact…” He looked away from the camera and the wind ruffled his hair.

  “What?”

  “Well, we were thinking of staying here,” he said. “Permanently.”

  Victoria felt a pang of disappointment. “Is that what you both really want?”

  “I think so. I mean it’s quiet here. Things are going well with Marie. We’ve found a cottage, and I’ve started writing again.”

  Victoria took off her fur cap and ran a hand over the bristles of her scalp. Thrown together by chance, she and Cole had become friends over the past two years, and she’d be sad to lose him—especially as he was one of the last humans left among the airship’s crew. With him and Lila gone, only Victoria and K8 remained, the only two women on a Zeppelin full of primates.

  “Then I wish you luck.” She drew herself up in her chair. “You and Lila. After everything that’s happened, you both deserve some peace.”

  Cole smiled.

  “As do we all, Captain. As do we all.”

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, the gigantic airship rose from the fort and turned its two-kilometre hull eastwards towards France. Once, it had belonged to the leader of the Gestalt; now it belonged to the monkey army, a prize taken in battle and rechristened in honour of its new masters. At first, the monkeys had simply called it ‘Big Sky Thing’. It was only recently, at the urging of the troupe’s more erudite members, that Ack-Ack Macaque had officially renamed it Sun Wukong, after the monkey king of Chinese myth, who was born from a stone and went on to rebel against Heaven itself. Reclining on the bridge, Victoria watched the blue waters of the English Channel wheel beneath. The coast of France lay against the horizon like a green and purple cloud.