Hive Monkey

by Gareth L. Powell

  She sat back.

  “Pourquoi?”

  “Because somebody’s trying to kill me.”

  Victoria made a steeple of her fingers. “So you

  said, but why have you come here? Why have you come to me?” Cole leant forward. Beneath the scratches, his face looked puffy and soft. She had him pegged for an alcoholic, or maybe a junkie.

  “Firstly, because you’re the only skyliner in town right now.” He counted off the reasons on his fingers. “And secondly, because you’ve got a reputation for pretty tight security. Nobody can get on board without being scanned for weapons.”

  Victoria picked up one of the fountain pens that lay on the desk jotter. The brain surgery she’d undergone had left her unable to read or write, and so the pen was useless to her; but she still liked to fiddle with it while she talked, like an ex-smoker sucking on a plastic straw. “Who are you, Mister Cole?”

  “I’m a writer.”

  “Oh?” She raised an eyebrow. “What sort of a writer?” She herself had been a journalist, back before the head wound that left her incapable of parsing written text.

  Cole looked down at his hands. “I’m a novelist.”

  Victoria frowned.

  “Who’d want to kill a novelist?” She drummed the end of the pen against the blotter. “Aside from another novelist, I mean. What sort of stuff do you write?”

  “Science fiction.”

  “Ah, I see.” She sat back in her chair. “Well, of course, I don’t really read that stuff myself.” She rubbed her nose with a forefinger. “But my husband does.”

  “Your husband?” It was Cole’s turn to frown. “Forgive me, ma’am, but on the flight up here, I checked your public profile. It said your husband was dead.”

  Victoria narrowed her eyes. Even after a year of unwanted fame, she couldn’t get used to the idea that strangers could be familiar with details of her personal life.

  “Yes he is.” She put the pen on the desk. “But he still has his uses.” She raised her gaze to the security camera above the door. “Paul? I assume you’re listening?”

  “Oh, yes.” The voice came from an intercom speaker bolted to the metal ceiling. Paul had been murdered a year ago, for his unwitting part in the conspiracy to bring about Armageddon; but Victoria had managed to rescue a back-up copy of his personality. At first, she’d stored it in her own head, running it on the neural gelware prosthesis that filled half her skull; but that hadn’t been a very satisfactory arrangement for either of them. She needed her privacy, and he needed something to occupy him. And so, a couple of months ago, with K8’s help, she had uploaded his electronic essence to the Tereshkova’s main processors, where there was enough computing power to sustain him almost indefinitely. The process had been difficult and risky. They couldn’t turn him off without resetting him to his initial state, which would have meant losing all the memories he’d accumulated since being reactivated. So they’d been forced to set up a seamless fibre optic link between Victoria’s cranial processors and the computers in the Tereshkova, and then transfer him along it. Back-ups were notoriously delicate, prone to falling apart at the slightest disruption, but somehow they’d done it. He had the chance to survive a little longer. And their relationship, which had once been torrid, then awkward, seemed now to have settled into a deep, caring friendship. The love was still there. Love, for them, had never been a problem. They’d stayed close all through their disastrous marriage and subsequent separation; it was only his sexuality that drove them apart. He’d stopped finding her desirable, and it had broken both their hearts.

  Now, a thirty centimetre tall image of him shimmered into existence before her, projected from a hologram generator built into the surface of the desk. He appeared to be in his late twenties, with spiky, peroxide blonde hair, and a blue and turquoise Hawaiian shirt worn over combat trousers. He’d been dead for a year, and they’d never been closer. Freed from the needs and desires of the flesh, he’d simply stopped caring about sex. That side of things had ceased to matter. What counted now, for both of them, was that the love remained. And love was what it was all about. They were both lonely, damaged creatures, but together, they had found some measure of companionship and contentment.

  Her eyes flicked to a piece of paper stuck to the wall beside the desk. Paul had found a quote from an old short story, and printed it out for her. It said: ‘Throughout history, love served a serious evolutionary purpose. It compelled us to look after those around us, and to allow them to look after us. This was the root of community, and the groups which survived and prospered were those with the most love.’ And that, for her, more or less summed it up.

  She bent her face down to Paul’s level and poked a thumb in Cole’s direction.

  “Have you ever heard of this guy?”

  Paul’s sprite turned to face the man in the chair. His fingers scratched at the pale stubble on his chin.

  “William Cole? Hell, yes.” He held his hands out. “Mister Cole, it’s an honour to meet you. I’ve read all your Mendelblatt books.”

  Cole raised an eyebrow. The hologram couldn’t really see him. His attentiveness was a carefully constructed illusion. Paul’s actual ‘eyes’ were the security cameras set into the corners of the office ceiling.

  “All three of them?”

  “Absolutely. Jesus.” The little figure rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. He shuffled his trainers. “Better Angels is one of my top ten favourite books of all time. Seriously, I must have read it a dozen times over, at least.”

  Victoria flicked a finger through the projected image, to get his attention. “Can you think of any reason why anybody would want to kill him?”

  Paul put a hand to his garishly attired chest, fingers splayed. “Absolutely not. The man’s a genius.” He gave Cole a shy glance. “Like Dick, Ballard and Chandler, all rolled into one. Really, I mean. Wow.”

  Victoria sighed. “Please excuse my husband’s nerdgasm, Mister Cole. What you have to understand is that, however free and bohemian we may seem to you, the truth of the matter is that, on a skyliner, everything is determined by weight and cost. We can only afford to feed so many mouths, and we only have room for a fixed number of passengers, and a fixed number of crew. If I were to grant you sanctuary aboard this vessel, you would either have to pay your way, or work your passage.”

  The American wiped his lower lip on the back of his hand. “I understand.”

  “Well, which is it to be?”

  Cole patted his trouser pockets. “Being temporarily devoid of funds, I will have to opt for the latter.” He smiled ruefully. “Tell me what I can do.”

  Victoria shook her head. It didn’t work like that. “No, you tell me what you can do, and then I’ll decide how best to use you.”

  Cole spread his hands. “I don’t have a lot of skills. Beyond writing, obviously.”

  “Can you cook?”

  “A little.”

  Victoria picked up the pen and tapped it against the edge of her desk. “The chef needs a new helper. The last one jumped ship earlier tonight. He got a better offer, apparently. Can you scrub pans and wash dishes?”

  “If that’s what it takes.”

  “That is exactly what it takes, Mister Cole.” She rose, and extended her hand. “Welcome aboard. If you wait in the passenger lounge, I’ll have one of my stewards show you to your quarters.” They shook, and the author turned to leave. As he opened the door, she spoke again. “Oh, and Mister Cole?”

  “Yes?”

  “If it turns out you’ve done anything despicable to warrant this murder attempt, I’ll throw you off this ship myself. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Perfectly clear, Captain. And thanks.”

  TEN MINUTES LATER, William Cole found himself alone in a narrow cabin in the central gondola. In contrast to the passenger cabins, which were comparatively spacious, the crew cabins were narrow and utilitarian, with barely enough room to stand beside the bunk bed that took up the majority of
the available space. There was no window, and nowhere to sit. The room smelled of garlic, farts and old cologne. Moving carefully in the confined space, William changed into a pair of pyjama trousers and an old t-shirt. The covers on the top bunk were mussed and grubby, so he climbed into the unused lower bed and closed his eyes. He could hear his pulse thumping in his ears. The three hours since the explosion had been a frantic rout. Still groggy from the blast, he hadn’t bothered waiting for the police to arrive. Instead, he was up and moving as soon as he felt able to stand. During last year’s nuclear standoff with China, he’d developed an emergency plan in case the missiles flew, and now, he was following it. He wasn’t going to hang around and wait for a second gunman to come looking for him.

  Shaking off the protests of his neighbour, he crossed the road, taking care to give the burning car a wide berth, and picked his way into his apartment. The bomb blast had strewn fragments of glass across the front room, which crunched beneath his shoes as he gathered up his passport and bankcards, and stuffed them into his pockets. His hands were shaking. This wasn’t drug paranoia: somebody really was trying to kill him.

  He had a rucksack ready packed, containing everything he needed, from first aid supplies to powdered food and iodine tablets. It was his ‘bug-out’ bag, and it was stashed beneath his bed, where he could find it in the dark. All through the international crisis, he’d felt better knowing it was there. He knelt down and pulled it out by its canvas straps. He grabbed the electronic notebook containing the handwritten first chapters of the book he was working on, stuck it in a side pocket, and added a couple of spare batteries. Then he was out of the door and clattering down the concrete steps to the block’s basement garage. He owned an old Renault with ninety-four thousand miles on the clock. It took him as far as the skyliner passenger terminal at Filton, where he abandoned it in the long-stay car park without a backward glance.

  This was his plan: get airborne, and ride out the crisis. If somebody wanted him dead, he wasn’t going to stick around long enough for them to take another pop. Better to get airborne and keep moving while he figured out his next move.

  The gunman—if indeed the ape-like thing in the car had been a man—had been killed, but that didn’t mean the danger had passed. The creature had been a pawn, and his death simply a way to protect the person, or persons, that had hired him. William knew enough to understand that the first rule of covering up an assassination was to kill the assassin. It had just been luck that the bomb had blown prematurely. Once whoever was behind the attack discovered their man had failed, they’d send somebody else, sure as eggs were eggs. The only thing that puzzled him was who ‘they’ might be. As far as he knew, he had no enemies. An obsessive fan would have acted alone and, as far as he knew, he hadn’t said or written anything to anger extremist groups of any persuasion. He simply didn’t have that many readers.

  After all, he thought as he lay on the bunk in the Tereshkova’s cabin, who pays attention to science fiction writers, anyway? We’re the motley fools of literature. We caper and dance on the page, and nobody takes us seriously—certainly not seriously enough to send assassins.

  The mattress felt firm beneath him, and the sheets had the reassuring hotel roughness of cotton that had been washed and boiled a thousand times. Four days of amphetamine-charged wakefulness pressed down on his eyes; they felt like two peeled onions stuffed into the crevices of his face. He needed to sleep, to recharge his mental and physical batteries, yet he felt his heart jump at every unfamiliar creak and bang. The Tereshkova had her own soundtrack: a constant accompaniment made up of the hum of the engines and the purr of the air-conditioning units; the buffeting of the wind; the clank and gurgle of the water pipes; and the knock and slam of cabin doors up and down the corridor. He could even hear snatches of dance music from the passenger lounge. He kicked off his shoes and turned on his side. Fleeing here had been instinct: simple selfpreservation. Now, he had to work out his next move. According to her schedule, the Tereshkova was bound for Mumbai, by way of Paris, Prague, Istanbul, Cairo, and Dubai. If he kept his head down and his nose clean, he could ride her all the way to India, and after that, who knew? Perhaps he’d find passage to Hong Kong and Tokyo, and then across the Pacific to San Francisco, and the whole North American continent.

  Or, he realised, he could alight at any one of those stops, and claim sanctuary on another skyliner, headed somewhere else. With a bit of planning and forethought, he could switch from one ship to another, criss-crossing the globe until his trail became too tangled to trace. He had his passport, and he had his notebook. He could work on his novel during his off-duty hours, without Max or Stella breathing down his neck. Or he could tear it all up and write something else. The Lincoln Mendelblatt books had made his name and attracted him a readership, but he was sick of the character. The Jewish private eye stories were set in a fictional world in which the UK and France had never merged, and England now stood on the edge of a federal Europe; a world of financial chaos and Middle Eastern oil wars, in which Westminster’s loyalties leaned closer to Washington than Paris.

  Stupid.

  During the nuclear crisis, he’d had an epiphany; a moment of clarity in which he’d realised he didn’t want to go to his grave remembered only for a series of trashy sci-fi detective novels. That realisation was, he admitted to himself, the real reason he was a month overdue on the latest instalment. He’d lost all enthusiasm for the setting. In the grip of real world events, his invented globe seemed paltry and irrelevant. Now, he wanted to be remembered for something nobler and more worthy. He had higher aspirations—aspirations that had become buried under the accumulated silt of convenience and expediency. He was tired of being passed over for awards and accolades, and tired of people’s eyes glazing over when he told them what he wrote. He wanted to go mainstream and write serious literature. He wanted to write a book so searing and heartfelt that, one day, a girl in a library somewhere would read it and it would make her cry, and fall in love with him. If he had to depart this life, why not take a stab at literary immortality? Why not leave his mark on the world, once and for all? He owed it to himself. Five years ago, when he’d hopped that first skyliner from Dayton to Liverpool, and then caught a freezing train south to Bristol, his plan had been to set up home with Marie and write the Great Transatlantic Novel. He’d been an overweight middle-aged man in love, but what great plans he’d harboured, what ambitions!

  Lying on his back, staring up at the underside of the chef’s bunk, he felt something harden inside him. He owed it to himself, and he owed it to Marie. She’d died believing he could do it, believing he could reach for the rarefied literary heights and escape the sweaty backstreets of pulp. When he’d started out, he’d been young and callow, with nothing original to say about the human condition. He’d been bored and lazy, and suffering through the slow motion car crash that had been his first marriage. No wonder he’d taken to writing escapism. Now, though, he was older, and could draw on the bitterness of two years of grief, disillusionment and drug addiction; and he had the rest of his life to gather more new experiences.

  Exhaustion weighed on his bones like a heavy quilt, and yet, lying there, he felt the first tickle of optimism. Maybe this disruption was what he’d needed all along? Instead of moping around the flat, blitzing his grief with chemicals, he should have been out in the world, getting a change of scenery and dirtying his hands with some honest toil. Sweat would help him now more than speed ever could. Here on the Tereshkova, he’d labour as a kitchen hand during the days and write in the evenings, with no distractions, drugs or deadlines. He felt a moment’s shame that it had taken a car bomb to shake him out of his rut, but now it had, he knew he’d been given a chance to make a new start, a clean start. All he had to do was seize it.

  He scratched his nose. Hadn’t Kerouac sailed out as a ship’s cook during the Second World War? Maybe you couldn’t write convincingly about life unless you were out there living it, shoulder-to-shoulder with everyone else
—up to your elbows in the world, scraping your knuckles against its rough edges.

  Lying there in the darkness, he curled his fingers into tight fists. For the first time in months, he felt alive. He didn’t know who had tried to kill him, or why, but that didn’t matter right now. What mattered more than anything else was that he suddenly had a reason to go on; he could see a path in front of him, and knew how to walk it. After years of doubt and misery, he could finally see how to become the writer he wanted to be.

  His eyes were raw and dry. Closing them, he surrendered to his accumulated fatigue and, wrapped in an itchy blanket, on an airship bound for foreign parts, fell asleep dreaming of the places he’d see and the books he’d write.

  HE WAS WOKEN by the squeak of the cabin door’s hinges. The room was still dark, and he had no idea how much time had passed. The door had been opened a crack. A dim light pushed its way in from the corridor, and he rubbed his eyes. William tensed. With his mouth dry and heart hammering, he lay as still as he could. Through half-closed eyelids, he saw a shadow slip into the room. Hardly daring to breathe, he wished for a weapon. He heard the rustle of cloth, the soft tread of a shoe against the metal deck.

  “William?” The voice was male, and American. “Are you there?” The figure crouched beside the bunk, and shone a torch at him. It wore robes, like a monk’s habit. A cowl shadowed its face. Gulping down breaths, William shrank back into the corner, shielding the glare with a hand held in front of his eyes.

  “Who are you, what do you want?”

  The figure didn’t answer. Instead, it reached up and lowered the hood, revealing its face, and William gaped as he found himself staring into features that were almost an exact reflection of his own. “I know this is an awful shock,” his double said, “but please try to relax.” He spoke through a clenched jaw. Sweat shone on his brow and upper lip. “My name’s Bill,” he said. The words sounded forced. “I know you’ll have a lot of questions, and I promise I’ll try to answer them. But right now, you need to loosen your fists and listen.” He let the robe fall open, revealing a black shirt and tie. The shirt had a hole in it. The material was sodden around it, and stuck to his skin. He coughed wetly.