“So, are you in there?”
“I’m still in the ship. This is just a remote. But it has the capacity. I could download into it if I needed to.” He shrugged. “Anyway, how did it go for you? Did you find any clues?”
“We lost Cole.”
“You lost him? You mean he’s—?”
“No, he’s not dead. He just ran off.”
“Where’d he go?”
“I don’t know.” Victoria’s eyes felt suddenly tired. She pinched the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger. “I sent the monkey to find him.”
“Was that wise?”
“Damned if I know.”
Paul took off his glasses. “I don’t understand why you have to be involved.” He wiped the lenses on the hem of his brightly patterned shirt. “Why don’t you turn the case over to the local federales, and be done with it?”
Victoria stretched.
“Things have been a bit sedate around here recently, and I need a change of pace.”
“Let me guess, you’re just a simple journo at heart, right?”
Victoria pushed her fists into her pockets. “What can I say? I miss that stuff.”
“Things have changed.”
“You don’t need to remind me.” The helicopter accident had put an end to her career as a writer, but the old urges were still there, and she couldn’t walk away from a mystery.
She made to step around Paul’s ghost but, as she did so, he held up a hand to stop her.
“Hold on.”
She paused. “What is it?” He was made entirely of light. If she wanted to, she could walk right through him; but, somehow, to do so seemed impolite.
“It looks as if you were followed.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was a stowaway on your chopper. She was in the luggage compartment at the back. God knows how she got in there.”
Victoria’s tiredness vanished. “Where is she now?”
“I’ve got her on camera. She’s making her way down one of the service ladders.”
“Where’s she going?”
“Looks like the accommodation section.”
Victoria hurried through the lounge, along the connecting corridor, and into her office. Paul’s image followed, the little battery-powered car whining as it kept pace. “Anyone we know?”
“Apparently not.”
She shrugged off her tunic and sat behind the desk. “Have you run her face against the passenger manifest?”
“First thing I did.”
“And you got nothing?”
“Well, duh.”
“Show me.” A few years ago, the Commodore had installed a SincPad in the top of the desk. Being unable to read, Victoria usually kept it switched off, using its glass screen as little more than a surface on which to rest her elbows. Now, for the first time in months, the display brightened into life, showing a grainy black and white feed from a camera in the corridor outside the crew’s quarters. A slim, blackclad and obviously female figure was trying to jimmy the door to Cole’s cabin. “Is this live?”
“Yes, it’s happening right now.” Paul reached up to fiddle with the gold stud in his ear. “How do you wish to respond?”
Victoria peered at the picture. She didn’t know who this woman was but, as there’d already been one murder on the airship, she wasn’t about to take any chances.
“Get some crew down there. Make sure they’re armed, and have her brought to me.”
“Aye-aye, Captain.”
* * * VICtorIa watChed the screen as three of her stewards approached the intruder. By this time, the woman had gained access to cabin, and was crouched over Cole’s luggage, her hands rummaging through its contents. She froze when she heard the stewards in the corridor outside. Then, when they pushed the door open, she backed up against the wall, hands spread flat against it, ready to spring.
“Don’t move,” Paul said. Although his image stood at the side of Victoria’s desk, she knew his consciousness—if you could call it that—still lurked in the skyliner’s computer systems, where it could monitor everything that happened on board, and that his voice was being relayed to the woman in the cabin via the intercom system. “We have you surrounded. There’s nowhere to go.”
On the screen, Victoria saw the woman glance upwards. Her eyes found the CCTV camera, and she smiled. It was a smile of recognition, and resignation. Without taking her eyes from the lens, she relaxed her stance, and raised her hands.
“We’ve got her,” Paul said. Victoria watched the stewards cuff her, and then switched off the screen. She sat back and pulled the Commodore’s cutlass from the umbrella stand.
“Tell them to bring her straight here.”
“Have done.”
Paul walked to the picture window that took up most of the wall behind the desk. Patting the flat of the blade against her palm, Victoria turned in her chair and looked out, trying to imagine what he was seeing through the little camera stuck to the front of the toy car supporting his image.
Beyond the window, she could see the whale-like undersides of the Tereshkova’s hulls, and the lit windows and red and green running lights of the other gondolas. Below, at the edge of the airfield, a motorway cut southwards like a ribbon of orange light. She could see cars and trucks skimming its surface. Further away, the lights of the two Severn crossings, their humped backs carrying other motorways westward across the river, into Wales.
Although she’d been here a few times over the years, this wasn’t a part of the country she knew well. Nevertheless, it felt good to be back in England. However far the skyliner took her, the United Kingdom of France, Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Norway would always be her home—and she guessed Paul felt much the same.
He watched as she placed the cutlass on the desk and retrieved her white tunic. The shiny buttons were large and easy to fasten in a hurry. When she’d finished, she stood straight and looked at her reflection in the glass of the window: a tall woman in a military jacket, her bald, scarred head and strong-boned face lending her a handsome, almost androgynous severity.
She heard footsteps in the hall, and Paul said, “The stewards are outside.”
With a tug, she straightened the hem of the tunic. Then she picked up the cutlass and stuck it through her sash. “How do I look?”
“Totally badass.”
She smiled despite herself. “Then, I guess you’d better let them in.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
NOVEMBER RAIN
HALF-CARRYING THE half-conscious Cole, Ack-Ack Macaque staggered out of the building’s door. Across the street, K8 was in trouble. A couple of uglies had pulled open the door of the Mercedes and were trying to haul her from the car. They were short and stocky, just like the one he’d left in the apartment above, and he wondered again who—or what—they were.
“No time for guessing,” he muttered. Inside the car, K8 scratched and bit at the hands that clawed at her. Thrashing like a trapped animal, she tried to reach the gun she’d stashed in the glove box, but the uglies were strong, with big hands, and seemed impervious to her blows. As he watched, she let fly with a kick that would have broken the arm of a normal man.
“Get away from me, you creeps!” With his left hand still supporting Cole, Ack-Ack Macaque drew one of his Colts and put a bullet through the nearest of her attackers. The report was loud in the empty street, and he winced at the stab of pain from his already-damaged ears. The guy he’d hit fell against the car, and then slid down to the tarmac. He had a bullet in the spine. If he lived, he’d never walk again.
Ack-Ack Macaque gave a grunt.
“That’ll teach you to pick on kids.”
The remaining attacker let go of K8 and span around. He had the same thick brow ridge and protruding lower jaw as the others. Like them, he reminded Ack-Ack Macaque of a hairless gorilla.
“Hold it right there, Delilah.” Ack-Ack Macaque waved the Colt at him. “Step away from the irate teenager.” He glanced at K8. Sh
e had a split lip, and her sleeve was torn. “You okay, kid?”
“I’ve had worse.” She climbed out of the car and came over and took Cole from him. As she helped the writer into the back seat of the car, Ack-Ack Macaque kicked the dead thug aside, and led the other around to the rear of the vehicle, where he popped the boot.
“Get in.” The ape-man scowled, and shook his head, stance defiant. Ack-Ack Macaque let his fangs show. “Don’t fuck with me, Tinkerbell. I’ve already shot two of your friends tonight. No reason I shouldn’t make it three.”
He heard sirens: distant now, but closing fast. In minutes, the place would be swarming with police. If this lunkhead wouldn’t move, there was only one thing he could do.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He squeezed the trigger and the Colt leapt in his hand. The shot bit a bloody chunk from the man’s thigh. As he bent in pain, Ack-Ack Macaque brought the gun barrel up in a vicious swing that caught him under his over-sized chin, knocking him back into the waiting trunk.
The sirens were close now. Ack-Ack Macaque grabbed the man’s dangling legs and stuffed them inside. “Try not to bleed on the upholstery,” he said, and slammed the boot shut. “How are we doing, K8?”
Cole had been laid out across the back seat, still insensible. K8 closed the door and hopped into the front seat.
“Get in, Skipper.” She turned the key and the engine boomed to life. Ack-Ack Macaque bounded onto the roof, and slid over to the passenger side. The door was open, and he swung in. He was still closing it when she let the brake off, and the big Mercedes leapt forward, throwing him back in his seat.
WITH THE PEDAL pressed firmly to the metal, and a mile-wide grin on her face, K8 flung them through a maze of narrow terrace streets. She had one eye on the road, the other on the Sat Nav screen. Her hands and feet moved in sharp, precise jabs, spinning the wheel and stamping the brake, then the accelerator. In the seat next to her, Ack-Ack Macaque clung to his armrest. As they slithered around a particularly tight turn, the wing mirror on his side splintered, snatched away by the rear light of a parked car.
“Jeez!” K8’s grin grew wider than ever. She was obviously having the time of her life. The car moved like an extension of her will.
“Drive it like you stole it, Skip.” She gunned the gas again, and they tore down a steep, tree-lined hill, at the bottom of which, AckAck Macaque saw a busy main road. His fingers dug into the armrest but, just before they reached the junction, K8 stood on the brakes, and the heavy Mercedes squealing to a stop.
In the sudden silence, K8 cracked her knuckles and smiled at him. The air smelled of burned rubber.
“I think we’re out of trouble,” she said, glancing in the rear view mirror. “And, fun as that was, we’d better stop drawing attention to ourselves.”
She changed gear and pulled out into the traffic. Keeping to the speed limit, she drove the big Mercedes along the road, which ran alongside the city docks. Across the water, Ack-Ack Macaque saw the masts and floodlit prow of Brunel’s ss. Great Britain—the first iron-hulled steamship to brave the Atlantic, and a direct ancestor to the Tereshkova, and all the other skyliners now plying the trade routes of the world. Nervously, he looked behind them, but saw no flashing blue lights. They were just one car among dozens now, going with the flow.
During the violent manoeuvres, Cole had been thrown from the back seat and now lay sprawled across the floor, with his head in one of the foot wells and his legs in the other. Ack-Ack Macaque decided to leave him there. He swivelled back to face the front, and stuck a finger in his ear. Firing his guns in the enclosed space of the bathroom had been a bad idea. He could have burst an eardrum. As it was, who knew what long-term damage he’d done to his hearing? At the moment, everything sounded muffled, as if he’d stuck gum in his ears, and waggling his finger in the hole brought no relief, no matter how hard he did it.
“Everything okay, Skipper?”
“Huh?”
“I said, are you okay?”
He sniffed the tip of his finger, and then slipped it into his mouth.
“Nothing serious,” he said around the taste of the earwax. “Just a little deaf from the gunshots.” He tried to sound cavalier, but the truth was he couldn’t get away from the thought that, like the grey hairs around his muzzle, the damage to his ears was a sign that he was as mortal as anyone else—something he’d never had to worry about when he’d been immersed in the game, back before Merovech and friends busted him out of the Céleste Tech labs; back when he’d been the indestructible WWII flying ace, and all he’d had to worry about were enemy planes and banana shortages; back where guns never jammed, parachutes always opened, and the skies were forever a bright, brilliant blue.
They passed office blocks and bus stops. At the end of the road, K8 took a left up Park Street to avoid the city centre. The shops on the hill were arranged in a neatly stepped terrace, at the top of which the dramatic Neo-Gothic tower of the Wills Memorial Building loomed over the university.
Ack-Ack Macaque watched the reflection of the Mercedes as it flickered from one shop window to the next. He still wore only his t-shirt and ammo belt, and found himself wishing for the warmth of his flight jacket, which he’d left in his cabin, back on the Tereshkova. His coat and fedora were folded on the back seat, but he didn’t like them as much as he liked the jacket. It had been a present from K8. She’d also given him a matching leather flying cap and a pair of goggles. They were the same as the ones he’d worn in the game; and that was the whole point. The outfit was his brand. When he wore it, people recognised him. He wasn’t just a monkey then, he was a character.
He’d been the star of one of the world’s most popular online virtual reality games; and then last year, after he and Victoria helped thwart a plot to trigger nuclear Armageddon, he’d become one of the most recognisable faces on the planet. Photos of him had been splashed over every newscast and web bulletin. His existence had been big news: a monkey raised to sentience via brain implants. They painted him as a walking, talking marvel; a cartoon character made real; a real-life superhero. He was the monkey who’d saved the world.
And then, at the height of it all, he’d walked away. He couldn’t handle the fame, and he didn’t want it. He had been trying to get his head around the fact that he was living in the middle of the twenty-first century and not, as he’d thought, in 1944. He needed rest and relaxation; so he stuck with the Tereshkova, and her new owner, Victoria Valois. Victoria needed a pilot, and he needed sanctuary. The deal worked for both of them.
He had a strange relationship with Victoria, and he didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to describe it. She was his commanding officer, and she was his friend. The species gap ruled out any hint of romance, and yet there was something between them that was deeper than mutual respect: a recognition of kinship, perhaps. When they looked into each other’s eyes, they saw a little of themselves staring back. They were both artificial creatures. Both their minds ran like software on the synthetic gelware neurons packed into their skulls; and both had been products of the Céleste Technologies lab in Paris. They were abandoned prototypes, and therefore both unique. But uniqueness led to loneliness. The Tereshkova was the closest thing he had to a home, K8 and Victoria the closest thing he had to any sort of family; but there was nobody who really understood him; no other talking monkeys to sympathise and share his pain.
And nobody he could fuck.
He rubbed his leather eye patch. The empty socket itched sometimes, especially in cold weather.
In California, some pony-tailed Buddhists had tried to explain to him about Karma and the journey of the soul.
What savage atrocity did I commit, he wondered, to have to live this life as a talking monkey?
Whatever it was, he hoped it had been spectacular.
Thinking about loneliness reminded him of the Gestalt, and the offer Reynolds had made earlier that evening.
How would it feel, he pondered, to be permanently hardwired into the thoughts and
feelings of hundreds of other people; to be part of a larger, emergent personality; a single thought in a vast torrent of consciousness?
He could see how that kind of surrender might be a comfort, for some. Humans, like most primates, were social creatures. They clustered together in packs, seeking the safety, reassurance and approval of the tribe. Outcasts were miserable, distrusted and frowned-upon, and had a tendency to die early. If joining the Gestalt meant an end to loneliness, he could see how they might find doing so attractive; but it wouldn’t work for him. He’d still be the only monkey in a sea of apes; still just as alone, however many humans he had crawling through his head, chattering away about their human feelings, and human problems.
Reynolds could go fuck himself. It was bad enough having to talk to humans, without being forced to hear all the crap that bubbled around inside their swollen brains. He’d rather be lonely than submerge himself in babble.
And yet, he had to admit, the white suits they wore did look kind of cool.
A raindrop hit the windscreen. Then another. As their patter became an insistent drumming, K8 hit the wipers.
Ack-Ack Macaque looked out at the suddenly slick and shiny road. Back in the game, he hadn’t had to worry about rain; the weather had always been perfect: a perpetual high summer just right for dogfights. Of course, he’d seen rain before that; he wasn’t a stranger to it. He’d spent the early part of his life in Amsterdam, made to battle other monkeys and apes in illegal backstreet knife fights. That was how he’d lost his left eye. His memories of that time were vague, to say the least. He hadn’t been fully selfaware in those days; he’d been an average monkey, unable to speak. And without language, there had been no naming of things, and hence, no memory of having seen them. All he had were a few images, fuzzed by his lack of understanding, and blotted by the clumsy footprints of his subsequent neural surgery. If he concentrated, he could remember rain dappling the waters of a wine-dark canal at night, breaking up the reflections of the neon shop signs; and thunder that cracked and growled over the city like the very wrath of God. But how much of that was actual memory, and how much had his newly expanded brain backfilled over the years?
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