Macaque Attack!

by Gareth L. Powell

  When the assault came, Julie had been in a car, on her way to shelter. She’d been crossing Westminster Bridge at the exact moment the parliament buildings took their first hit. A swerving lorry crushed her car through the stone parapet, into the Thames.

  Merovech drained his glass.

  She hadn’t stood a chance.

  With her gone, he had nothing. He had no mother or father, no brothers or sisters, hardly any friends. He felt like a refugee from a vanished land—alone, and the last of his kind. Even the damned monkey had disappeared. All that kept him going was his duty; the same duty he’d once spurned and sworn to resign.

  Three thousand had died in London, but similar numbers had also been killed in all the other cities that had been targeted. In the aftermath of all that tumult and loss, the survivors craved stability. They desperately needed a leader they could count on; somebody whose familiarity would provide permanence and comfort in a world turned outlandish and unsafe; somebody to be a focus for their grief, and embody their hopes for the future. And so he toured the cities that had suffered in the attack; he cut ribbons at construction sites and waved for cameras; he visited schools and factories and spoke about hope and faith and the importance of rebuilding the country; and then, when he came home, he locked himself in his office, away from the public gaze, and drank whisky until the footmen came to pour him into bed.

  He watched the twin-hulled skyliner until it disappeared. Then he turned to the bottle on his desk, ready to refill his glass. As he unscrewed the cap, he heard a soft knock at the office door.

  “Come in.”

  The door opened and his personal secretary stepped into the room.

  “Your Majesty.”

  “Amy?” The neck of the bottle clinked against the rim of his glass as he refilled it. “What are you doing here so late?”

  “We have a bit of a situation, sir.”

  Amy Llewellyn still wore the same clothes she’d been wearing earlier in the day, but now she’d discarded her suit jacket, loosened her collar, and pushed the sleeves of her blouse up to the elbows.

  “A situation?” Carefully, he replaced the bottle on the desk and fastened the cap. Then he picked up his drink. “I thought I’d asked to be left alone.”

  “This won’t wait, sir.”

  Fatigue clawed at him. He gave them body and soul during the day. Why couldn’t they leave him in peace in the evening?

  “What is it?”

  Amy blew a loose strand of hair from in front of her face. “We’ve received a message.”

  He sighed. “Are you sure it can’t wait?”

  She swallowed, and shook her head. “It’s from your mother, sir.”

  Merovech’s fingers tightened on the glass. “My mother’s dead.”

  “Quite so.”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  “She made a back-up, sir.”

  Merovech felt his knees begin to shake. He’d seen his mother die, blown to fragments by her own hand grenade. He leaned against the desk. “Where is it? Where’s it calling from?”

  Without asking, Amy turned over a clean glass and poured herself a drink.

  “You’re not going to like this, sir.”

  He watched her put the top back on the bottle, and noticed her hands were shaking.

  “Just tell me.”

  Amy swallowed nervously, and cleared her throat.

  “The transmission appears to have originated on, um, Mars.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HAIRY FRIENDS

  CASSIUS BERG’S SPINDLY frame lay strapped to a bunk in the airship’s infirmary. Victoria looked down at him with distaste. Even in sleep, his leering smile remained fixed and permanent.

  The Smiling Man.

  Once, on her world, he’d been a figure of nightmare and terror, a killer with the face of a clown and the dead eyes of a snake. He’d haunted her nightmares. He’d killed Paul and tried to kill her. And then she’d thrown him out of the Tereshkova’s cargo bay, and thought it was over. She’d thought he was gone for good, little suspecting she’d run into another version of him, in an alternate version of Paris, on another timeline altogether.

  This new version of Berg looked even more like a corpse than the first one had. His skin was pale almost to the point of translucence, and had been stretched tightly across his scalp and cheekbones. Metal staples held it in place, each at the centre of a circle of red and puckered flesh. His black overcoat reeked of mildew and stale cigarettes.

  She looked around at the dozen or so monkeys crowding the bed.

  “Wake him up,” she said.

  A grizzled capuchin tapped Berg on the forehead with the flat side of a meat cleaver.

  Victoria looked down and straightened her tunic. It was a red one with gold buttons and a silver scabbard on a white silk sash, and it had once belonged to her elderly Russian godfather, the Commodore. It was the only thing of his to have survived the crash of his old skyliner, the Tereshkova; and it had only survived because she had been wearing it at the time, having donned it for luck in the battle against the Gestalt.

  For this confrontation, she had left her head bare, displaying her scars—scars the other Berg had given her during their first clash.

  On the bed, the new Berg’s eyelids flickered. He blinked up at the hairy faces and bared fangs around him and jerked against his restraints.

  “What’s happening?”

  “I’m happening, Mister Berg.” Victoria stepped forward and bent slightly, bringing her face a little closer to his. “I trust you remember me from this morning?”

  “Let me go.”

  Victoria shook her head, keeping her expression immobile and unfriendly. “I’m afraid not. I have some questions for you.”

  “I mean it. I have powerful friends. If—”

  “As you can see, I have angry, hairy friends, Mister Berg, with sharp teeth and bad tempers. Now, let’s take all your bluster as read, shall we? Because, from where I’m standing, you’re in no position to be making threats.”

  He glared at her.

  “When I get free from these straps, I will make it my business to kill you.”

  Victoria wagged a finger. “If you get free from those straps, Mister Berg, these guys will eat you.”

  She brushed at a speck of dust on her tunic, making the medals clink and jangle, and let her other hand rest on the pommel of her sword. Around the bed, the monkeys chattered and whooped, and did their best to look fierce and hungry. They brandished swords and knives. One, a brawny howler monkey, carried an old fire axe.

  Berg looked around at them, and stopped straining against his straps.

  “I won’t talk.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  He cocked his head. “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because we’ve done this before, you and I.” Victoria tried not to shudder at the memory. “Last time we spoke, you were dangling out of the back of a skyliner and, when push came to shove, you told me everything I needed to know.”

  Berg’s brows furrowed. “What on Earth are you talking about?”

  “We’ve met before, Mister Berg, on another timeline. You may have killed the Victoria from this world—you may have killed a whole lot of people for that matter—but, where I come from, you’re the one who’s dead.” She rocked back on her heels and folded her arms. The overhead light twinkled across the frayed gold braid on her cuffs. “So, keeping that in mind, I want you to tell me about your boss, Doctor Nguyen. We know he’s at the Malsight Institute; I just need you to tell me on which floor to find his office.”

  Berg licked his lips, his tongue darting like a lizard’s, scenting the air.

  “Go to hell.”

  Victoria sighed. “Please, Mister Berg. This is your last chance to be helpful.” She looked around at the motley troupe of primates assembled around the bed. “Otherwise I’m going to have to ask my friends here to start getting creative with you.”

  She gave a nod to the capuchin. Th
e little creature had a swollen head, deformed by the artificial processors crammed into its skull, and a row of sturdy input jacks protruding from its back like the spines of a dinosaur. At her signal, it inched forward, raising its cleaver above the captive’s forehead.

  Berg’s flat and expressionless eyes looked up at the blade.

  Then, with a roar of anger, he sat up. The leather straps at his wrists stretched and snapped. With the speed of a striking snake, he clamped a hand around the little monkey’s neck and snapped its spine like a used match.

  Aghast, Victoria threw out a hand.

  “Stop!”

  But it was too late. With an angry shriek, the rest of the troupe fell on him. Berg writhed and lashed out with his hands and feet, but they were too numerous, too close. Blades flashed. He used his forearm to block one sword, but two more skewered him through the ribs. He cried out, sounding more indignant than hurt, and tried to swing his legs off the table, but that only exposed his back, and a gibbon with patchy fur took the opportunity to sink a foot-long carving knife into the hollow between his shoulder blades.

  Victoria stepped backwards to the door, hands covering her ears.

  “Stop,” she cried again, but they couldn’t hear her over their own frenzied screeching. Horrified, she watched Berg sway to his feet. He had a sword stuck right through his chest, and she could see both ends of it. However, it didn’t seem to be slowing him down. With a single bone-crunching backhand, he slapped a Japanese macaque against the wall, crushing its skull.

  “Stop!”

  His smile turned in her direction and their eyes locked. The monkeys were just an inconvenience to him. He had promised to kill her, and he intended to make good on that vow. As if in a nightmare, Victoria drew her own sword. Berg moved towards her as if moving through water, monkeys hanging from his arms and legs, weighing him down. As she watched, he reached around and pulled one of the knives from his back. He held the red, slick blade by the point, and drew his hand back, ready to throw it.

  “Goodbye, Miss Valois.”

  Victoria flattened herself against the door. She didn’t have time to access her internal clock. She’d have to rely on her natural reactions. But he moved so fast…

  Behind him, the howler monkey leapt from the bed. Still in the air, it swung its axe. Howlers were among the largest of all monkeys, and its arms were twin cables of elastic muscle. Hearing its cry, Berg glanced around, and the blade caught him across the bridge of his nose. The top of his skull came away like the top of a boiled egg, and he collapsed, dragged down and submerged beneath a tide of biting, clawing, stabbing beasts.

  CHAPTER SIX

  KISHKINDHA

  BALI SAT CROSS-LEGGED on a sun-warmed rock, waiting for the leopard. His tail twitched. He knew the big cat was stalking him, and had been for some minutes now. He was at the upper limit of the jungle, where the trees grew sparse and petered out like a green wave breaking against the volcano’s curving flank. Below, he could see most of the island and, beyond its treetops, the narrow strait dividing the island from the rest of the peninsula. Sunlight danced on the water. A couple of miles from where he sat, smoke rose from a clearing, marking the position of the stockade where the other members of the monkey army, gathered and brought here by Ack-Ack Macaque and the Sun Wukong, awaited him.

  Humans, it seemed, had uplifted at least one primate on every parallel world visited by the airship. As soon as they had the technology, they created an intelligent ape or monkey. Privately, Bali wondered if they did it because they were lonely. Once, the humans had shared their worlds with other intelligent hominids, such as Homo erectus and the Neanderthals; but then those species had died away, leaving Homo sapiens home alone, with only themselves to talk to.

  It must have been terribly lonely for them, he thought. No wonder their stories were filled with fairies, pixies, vampires and other half-human creatures.

  But was that loneliness what had driven them to upgrade other primates?

  Life for most of the uplifted creatures had not been pleasant. Some bore lingering pain from the surgery that had increased their intelligence; others simply pined for more of their kind, or for a release from captivity. Some, like Ack-Ack Macaque, had been plugged into virtual reality environments, such as games or targeting systems; while others lived out their days in laboratories or cages.

  Now, thanks to Ack-Ack Macaque, they were all free. They had this island, which they’d named after the monkey kingdom in the story of the Ramayana; and they had each other. And, while Ack-Ack Macaque was away with the Sun Wukong, Bali had command. In the big guy’s absence, he was the alpha male.

  And so it had fallen to him to kill the leopard.

  He could feel it behind him in the shadows, and imagine it edging closer and closer, its belly brushing the leaves of the forest floor, haunches trembling, muscles coiled and ready to strike, spotted fur quivering.

  Not today, mon ami.

  In his lap, Bali held an automatic pistol and a hunting knife. All he needed was to draw the animal to him, and bring it close enough for a clean shot, or a deft strike with the blade.

  The beast had been hanging around the camp for a couple of weeks. In that time, it had taken a lamb and half a dozen chickens. Then, last night, it had attacked and killed one of the chimps as they were out gathering firewood. How it got onto the island, nobody knew. Bali’s best guess was that it must have swum across the strait from the mainland, but he had no idea what could have driven it to attempt such an arduous feat, unless it had been drawn by cooking smells and the promise of fresh monkey meat.

  He glanced down at the knife in his left hand. When he killed the leopard, he had decided he’d gut it and wear its skin as a trophy. He would walk back into the stockade draped in the pelt and blood of the vanquished beast. A display like that would impress the rest of the troupe, and strengthen his position as alpha. It might even convince a few of them that he should be running the show, rather than Ack-Ack Macaque. After all, where was their precious leader now that they needed him? Swanking around the multiverse in his dreadnought with the women, while the rest of them were here in the jungle, facing down predators and building a civilisation from scratch, with little in the way of luxury—and no females.

  Bali felt his lips draw back from his sharp incisors. If he were in charge, things would be different. Good lord, yes. Less crude, more forward thinking, more businesslike. And there would be females! Even if he had to raid a zoo, he would find some.

  To hell with trying to build a homeland of our own, he thought. What could be more inefficient? With their numbers and the dreadnought, they could take one by force, rather than carving it from the jungle by hand. There were so many human worlds. Surely they could find a lightly defended one that was ripe for a management takeover, with plenty of human slaves to do their bidding? After everything they’d suffered at the hands of the humans, surely they were owed a modicum of revenge, not to mention compensation?

  Before being picked up by the Sun Wukong, Bali had been kept in a temple, chained to a wall and fed by the monks. They had taken him in following his escape from the laboratory that created him. The monks revered him as an aspect of their monkey god, Hanuman, and he’d enjoyed being pampered. Despite the chain, he had been looked after and respected, and he missed that. He had liked being a god. His grip tightened on the knife. He would be one again. When he became the true and undisputed alpha, he would fashion himself as a fearsome leopard god, falling from the skies to plunder world after world. Instead of hiding here, on an empty parallel devoid of humans, he and his brethren would avenge themselves on their creators. They would gather riches and power—and, most importantly, females—and he would be the true, one-and-only alpha, forever.

  His nostrils quivered. On the breeze, he caught the barest hint of cat; a fleeting waft of spice, sweat and blood. The beast must be close now. Slowly, so as not to startle it, he rose to his feet, gun held out to his right, knife to his left, naked save for the elas
ticated straps of his shoulder holster.

  He felt invincible.

  “Okay, mon ami, I am here, and I am ready.” His eyes swept the shadows and dapples between the trees, his ears strained for the stealthiest sound.

  “Now, where are you?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SHITS AND GIGGLES

  STILL SHAKEN BY the killing frenzy in the infirmary, Victoria summoned the Sun Wukong’s command crew to the airship’s briefing room. They sat in the front row of chairs, and she leant on the lectern before them. Outside the porthole, dusk had begun to lower.

  “Okay,” she said, “Let’s review what we know about Nguyen.”

  Ack-Ack Macaque stirred in his seat.

  “He’s a fuck-head?”

  Victoria ignored him. The gelware in her skull had been pumping sedatives into her bloodstream to calm her after the incident with Berg, and she felt lightheaded and in no mood to spar with the gruff old monkey. Instead, she nodded to K8.

  “S’il te plaît?”

  The white-suited teenager gave a tight smile, and unrolled a keypad. She tapped in a command and a screen lit behind Victoria. It displayed a photograph of a short, balding, middle-aged man with a stethoscope slung around his neck.

  “Doctor Kenta Nguyen,” K8 said, reading from her notes. “Surgeon and gelware specialist. On our parallel, he was born on the seventh of December 1989, in Osaka, Japan. Mother Japanese, father from Vietnam. He graduated from university in Tokyo in June 2014; went to work on the Human Genome Project; and then went to work for the Céleste Institute, where he helped develop soul-catcher technology and became a pioneer in the field of gelware neural prostheses.”

  “Blah, blah, blah.” Ack-Ack Macaque made talking motions with his hands. “And then in 2059, he tried to blow up the world and turn everybody into robots. Yeah, we know the story.” He sat back in his chair. “I just don’t see what good talking about it’s going to do. I don’t need to understand the guy.” He made his fingers into the shape of a gun and took aim at an imaginary target. “I just need to know where he is.”