It turned towards the station. The scroach sounds were coming from the platform loudspeaker. Although it could move through solid rock as smoothly as a shark through water, it was ungainly when above ground. Its close-set legs didn’t work in a well-coordinated manner and its long tail was a hindrance, so much useless dead weight dragging behind it.
The moleworm rounded a corner, only to come face to face with two miners in their rigs.
It opened its puckered, fang-fringed maw and let out an awful, keening screech that spoke of fury and appetite. Strings of milky drool leaked out. Its snout feelers performed an elaborate display, as though the moleworm was signalling for the miners to get out of the way.
The miners clanked boldly forward. One was a driller, the other a pounder. Each raised an arm, showing the monstrous beast the formidable tool attachments they were toting.
The moleworm, appearing to lose patience, lunged at them.
The driller reacted quickly, plunging his whirring drill bit straight into the moleworm’s face. There was an eruption of meat, bone and glutinous blood as the drill augered in, and the animal’s entire body shook in a paroxysm of shock and pain.
The driller bore down, all but pinning the moleworm’s head to the ground. Meanwhile the pounder let loose with a succession of vicious blows from her pneumatic jackhammer. A device that was designed to break down and crush solid granite made mincemeat of the moleworm’s pulpy flesh and shattered its skeleton. Four, five hits, and the creature was fatally crippled. Its tail thrashed and coiled even as it shuddered in its death throes.
Thorne let out a low cheer.
“One down,” he said.
“One of many,” Dev pointed out. “Look.”
Another moleworm was squirming its way up through the same hole as the first. Elsewhere in the city, the ground was churning. Cracks appeared in street surfaces and in the cavern’s granite walls. A shopfront exploded outward as a moleworm came crashing through, followed by two more of its kind.
Suddenly, they were everywhere. Everywhere you looked, moleworms springing up from below. Eastern and western, male and female, burrowing out into the city in their droves. Each would pause as it emerged, near-blind eyes momentarily fazed by the artificial daylight. Then, orientating itself, it would make for the nearest rail station, with that slither-crawling gait that was rolling and awkward but implacably determined.
The miners, at their carefully chosen positions, ambushed every moleworm that came their way.
Drillers skewered with their drills, pounders bashed with their jackhammers, cutters sliced with their saws, blasters punctured with their compressed-air lances, carriers used their forklift prongs to pierce and disembowel.
Moleworms squealed and died.
It was by no means a one-sided battle: the moleworms fought back, rending with their powerful claws and tearing with their savage needle teeth.
Dev saw one miner wrenched wholesale out of his rig and gnawed to shreds. Another tried to escape via a rear-mounted hatch while a moleworm clawed through the protective steel mesh at the front. He scrambled free, only for a second moleworm to latch onto him with its nasotentacles as he ran for cover. It popped his head off his neck with a sideways swipe of its talons and bit several large chunks out of his decapitated body. Retribution arrived in the form of a fellow miner in a cutter rig, who removed the moleworm’s head with a single slash.
As the conflict raged throughout the city, Dev kept a constant watch for any moleworm that seemed to be superior to or distinct from the rest. Somewhere amid the mêlée would be Ted Jones, urgently attempting to bring order to his scroach-crazed moleworm army, to regain mastery over them. He scanned the scene vigilantly.
Kahlo had allocated police resources to the same task. The city’s CCTV surveillance system covered most of the principal public sites. Officers were monitoring the feeds, looking for any moleworm that was behaving in a markedly different manner from the others.
Several times Dev spied a moleworm asserting its authority over another, perhaps by nipping its tail or barging it aside. It happened so often, however, that he could only conclude it was part of the normal pecking order. The bigger, stronger moleworms bullied the smaller, weaker ones in order to overtake them and get to the food source first.
“Looks like we’re holding them,” Thorne announced with a hint of triumph in his voice. “That’s what my FDC members are saying. We’re taking casualties, but the moleys are getting it worse.”
No sooner had he spoken, however, than the moleworms appeared to take stock and adopt a new tactic. They stopped blundering blindly into the ambushes. Instead, they approached with greater caution and sometimes sidestepped the miners altogether, finding alternative routes around.
Dev wondered whether this was due to the moleworm corpses piling up around the miners’ positions. The sight and smell of so many dead of their own kind surely served as a deterrent to the moleworms. They were smart enough to sense there was danger to them in certain areas of the city.
But then the creatures became sneaky. They began burrowing back down underground and coming up directly beneath the miners. Dev saw rigs and their drivers getting pulled down below the surface, mechanical limbs flailing as they vanished from view.
“It’s Jones,” he said. “This isn’t spontaneous. Can’t be; it’s too organised for that. The bastard is rallying his troops. The moleworms were being slaughtered. Now he’s turning the tables and they’re the ones doing the slaughtering. But where is he? Where the fuck is he?”
“He’s got to be having help,” Kahlo said. “It’s happening simultaneously, all over Calder’s Edge, and it’s precision-aimed. So either he’s somewhere where he can see everything at once...”
“Or he has a spotter guiding him.”
“Friends in high places.” Kahlo fixed her gaze, once again, on the rock arch. “Bet you anything Graydon’s out on his balcony, giving Jones a heads-up. He’s telling him where all the pit folk platoons are. Picking them out for him.”
It made sense to Dev. Graydon had an eagle’s eye view of the entire city from his office. If he was Jones’s hypnexed slave, he was perfectly placed to carry out real-time reconnaissance.
“Then it’s Graydon we have to stop first,” he said. “Right now he’s more of a threat than Jones himself. And unlike Jones, at least we know where he is.”
“I’m with you,” said Kahlo. “Thorne? Get your people to scatter. Thin out. Make themselves a less concentrated target.”
“Will do,” said the union leader. “What’s all this about the governor? How’s he involved?”
“Later,” Kahlo said. To Dev she said, “There’s a pod waiting. You can come along, but on one condition. Graydon’s mine, do you understand? I deal with him, no one else.”
Dev nodded, and he and Kahlo hurried towards the esplanade’s rail platform.
“You know I want to be wrong about your dad,” Dev said.
“So do I,” said Kahlo. “He has the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. But even if he is acting against his will, that doesn’t change what he’s been doing. If he does turn out to be a traitor, I will nail the lousy son of a bitch to the wall.”
47
MAURICE GRAYDON WAS out on his office balcony, spectating through binoculars. Spread below him was a teeming vista of violence: the desperate struggle between miners and moleworms on the streets of Calder’s Edge – and at present, the moleworms were winning.
He didn’t turn round as Dev and Kahlo stepped out through the open picture window. He registered awareness of their presence by lowering the binoculars and straightening his spine.
“Enjoying the view?” Kahlo said.
“Watching my city being decimated?” Graydon replied. “Citizens dying defending it? Hardly a pretty sight.”
“Then why be a part of it?”
Graydon tilted his bald head. “Astrid, whatever do you mean?”
“Look, Graydon, you might as well come clean. We
’ve figured it out. The one saving grace is that you’re not responsible. You’re not yourself.”
“I’ve never felt more like myself.”
“The Plusser, he’s using you. He’s done something to your mind. This is not your fault. But you’ve got to stop helping him. You’ve got to fight his influence. Look out there. Look what’s happening. Calder’s Edgers are getting killed – massacred. You can’t be involved in this. It goes against everything you stand for.”
“Can’t be involved in this,” said Graydon. “Are you giving me an order, or asking for reassurance?”
“I’m trying to reason with you, that’s all.”
Kahlo moved a couple of paces closer to her father. Dev stayed put, letting Kahlo take the lead. It was up to her to manage the situation however she saw fit. He would back up her play.
“Dad,” she said.
Graydon levelled his gaze at her. “Oh, so now you call me Dad. Now you acknowledge who I am. Now that you need something from me.”
“I don’t need anything from you except to stop being Ted Jones’s accomplice. You’re a strong-willed man, with a forceful personality. Whatever Jones has done to you, whatever he’s made you believe about yourself and about him, you can resist it. You can overcome it. I know you can.”
“How touching. You finally show some faith in me. Better late than never, I suppose. But what if I refuse to, as you suggest, resist?”
“Then,” Kahlo said, producing a pair of smartcuffs, “I’ll have no choice but to arrest you in accordance with federal Diasporan law. Section five of the TerCon Postwar Pact – the crime of aiding and abetting, willingly or otherwise, forces hostile to the interests of the Diaspora.”
“You’re calling me a collaborator? A traitor?” Graydon seemed distantly amused.
“Tell me you’re not.” There was a plaintive note in Kahlo’s voice. “Tell me I’m wrong. It wasn’t you who set that freight shuttle on us. You didn’t bring down Beauregard’s arcjet. You haven’t been giving Jones directions for his moleworms from up here. Tell me none of that’s true.”
“Are you wrong?” The governor pondered. “In one sense, no. In another, yes.”
Kahlo’s shoulders slumped. All at once, she saw everything clearly.
As did Dev.
“You weren’t hypnexed,” Dev said to Graydon. “You’re not Jones’s patsy. You’re actually doing this of your own free will.”
“Free will?” said the governor. “I feel more as though it’s out of necessity. No one is forcing me, and I haven’t even had to force myself. Do you know how much I hate this place?”
He swept an arm, indicating the beleaguered subterranean city and the cavern containing it.
“It took everything from me. Everything. My wife. The love and respect of my daughter, my only child. It took my belief in the rightness of things. It stripped me of all I ever valued and left me with nothing. Shall we go indoors?”
Graydon didn’t wait for an answer, but led the way into his office, closing the picture window behind them.
“There,” he said, a small frown easing from his forehead. “Now we can hear ourselves think. I don’t need to be out there any more. Ted seems to have everything firmly under control. The downfall of Calder’s Edge is assured.”
“That’s what you think,” said Dev. He held up three fingers. “You have three minutes. Three minutes to explain yourself. Then you’re going to tell me how I can identify Jones in his moleworm host form. You’re going to point him out for me if he’s down there in the city, and if he’s not, you’re going to tell me exactly where he’s squirreled himself away, and then I can go after him and kill the living shit out of him.”
“I’m sure you have ways of making me talk, Dev,” said Graydon.
“You bet I do.”
“And if he doesn’t succeed,” said Kahlo, “I’m more than willing to try.”
“My own flesh and blood.” Graydon sighed, mockingly. “It’s so sad when children rebel against their parents.”
“I don’t have anything to rebel against. I don’t have parents. Haven’t since I was small. So come on, out with it. You say you were left with nothing. You’ve been governor of Calder’s Edge for twenty years. That’s hardly ‘nothing.’”
“A title, a job,” said Graydon. “Something to occupy my time. The people love me. They’ve voted me into office again and again. If it makes them happy, why not? But I stopped caring about the governorship a long time ago, about politics, about anything much. Life is transitory. Its pleasures are fleeting. One moment you’re there” – he snapped his fingers – “the next, you’re gone.”
“Ma’s death.”
“Indeed, Astrid. Soraya’s death. It shouldn’t have happened. A woman – a beautiful, clever, skilled woman in her prime – taken away, all because some rig designer at TechnoCorp couldn’t be bothered to debug the operating software, or because some CEO decided to cut corners on materials or manufacture, or because some worker on the assembly line didn’t insert a rivet properly, or I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. A stupid, random event. Human error or neglect, one or the other. The inherent imperfection of our species, and Soraya was its victim.”
“And for that,” said Dev, “you’ve decided to betray our entire race?”
“Not betray.” Graydon headed over to the sideboard and poured himself a generous measure of his expensive Japanese whisky. It seemed a natural gesture on this occasion, rather than a calculated, cynical pose. The man needed a drink. “Revenge is, I suppose, the name for it. I am avenging myself for Soraya’s death.”
“On thousands, maybe millions of innocent people?” said Kahlo.
“No one is innocent,” Graydon stated firmly. “Everyone is guilty of being imperfect. It’s the human disease.”
“The human disease,” said Dev. “You sound like a Plusser. Ted Jones may not have hypnexed you, but you’ve certainly been listening to his propaganda, haven’t you? Listening and learning.”
“Ted and I, we’ve had many a long and informative talk. Funnily enough, I haven’t ever met him in person, in his fleshly guise. It all started with an anonymous conversation, a call out of the blue from an unlisted commplant address. I didn’t even realise that the fellow I was talking to was Polis Plus, at first. I assumed, up ’til the penny dropped, that he was simply an Alighierian. A Lidenbrocker, judging by the slight satellite-bounce delay. I might have guessed he wasn’t, had we ever been face to face. That thing with the eyes – Uncanny Valley, is it?”
“He befriended you. He wormed his way into your confidence.”
“And made things clear to me. He showed me that there was an alternative to humanity and its many, many flaws – a race without imperfections, and somewhere where there’s no suffering, no loss, no despair, only contentment and logic and meaning.”
“For fuck’s sake, he converted you?” Dev exclaimed.
“Enlightened me, I’d prefer to say.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Kahlo. “Jones got you believing in his religion? The Singularity? Plusser heaven? All of that digimentalist bullshit?”
Graydon looked pained. “I wouldn’t expect you to be open-minded, Astrid. You’ve never been the type. It’s always black and white, with you. You’re typical of how people are in this day and age. Empirical, unimaginative, lacking a sense of mystery...”
“Not deluded either,” Kahlo shot back. “And Jones has promised you – what? A place in the Singularity when you die? You can join all the other Plussers in their glorious eternal afterlife?”
“Absolutely.” Graydon’s expression was serene, beatific. “When the time comes, I can be uploaded. Elevated to oneness with the Singularity.”
“Yeah, Jones dangled that one in front of me too,” Dev said, “like a rotten carrot. He suggested my digitised self is pretty much the same thing as a soul. The implication being, stick anyone through a transcription matrix and there’s not much difference between them and an AI sentience.”
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“He even offered me the chance to become a member of Polis Plus before my body starts to decay and die.”
“The price being Alighieri,” said Kahlo.
“If it’s anyone’s to give away, it’s mine.”
“All this time, you’ve been lying to us. To everyone. To me. You nearly killed me with that train!”
“I regret it,” Graydon said. “But Ted insisted that it was the right course of action, that I had to sacrifice you in order to rid us of Dev Harmer. For what it’s worth, I’m glad you escaped unscathed.”
Kahlo, unable to contain herself any more, lunged at him. Sweeping the whisky tumbler out of his hand, she grabbed him by the throat and shoved him up against the wall. Her eyes were wide and glittering.
“Bastard,” she snarled. “To think I ever loved you or thought you loved me. You don’t love anything. You’re not even a strong person. I see that now. You’re weak. Weak and pathetic. Scared of death. Scared of grief. Scared of anything you can’t control.”
“Kahlo...” said Dev.
Ignoring him, she continued, “I lost someone too, Dad. You seem to forget that. But did I turn out like you? Did I let myself get eaten up by bitterness? Did I hate myself so much I would fall for a Plusser selling me his religious snake oil?”
“Kahlo,” Dev persisted. “You’re killing him.”
Graydon was making guttural, strangulated choking sounds, and his face was purpling. His fingers plucked at his daughter’s hands, uselessly.
“So what?” she said. “He doesn’t deserve to live.”
“No argument,” said Dev. “But I need him alive just a little longer. He hasn’t yet told us where to find Jones.”
Kahlo reluctantly loosened her grip. Graydon slumped to the floor, sucking in urgent, wheezy breaths.
Dev squatted beside him.
“While you’re recovering, I want you to think carefully about your situation, Governor Graydon. If I let Captain Kahlo throttle you to death – and she very well might – or if I kill you myself, which, let’s face it, I’m perfectly capable of, then you’re never going to get your chance at life after death, are you? You’re never going to become a Plusser like you so desperately crave. You’re going to be just another defunct human being.”
World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) Page 29
