“Remember we’re dealing with a monkey,” she said. “This is probably his gym or something.”
“A jungle gym? On a Zeppelin?” She gave the girl a sideways squint. “Have you been here before?”
“No.” Lila touched the bruise on her cheek, and scowled. “I only saw the Leader once, but that was on the ground, at the mansion.” She pushed the last bullet into the magazine with her thumb, and snapped the whole thing back into the butt of the pistol. “Now, let’s be quiet. Those guards were protecting more than just a bunch of trees, you know.”
She moved off between the pots, and Victoria took a second to marvel at her. She was only a teenager, yet she talked with the assurance of a combat veteran. What kind of upbringing, what kind of life, had that poor kid endured?
She placed Paul’s car on the deck.
“Okay,” she said, “you can come out now.”
The car buzzed. The headlights flickered on and off, and it jumped forward half a wheel rotation. Then the projectors kicked in and Paul shimmered into apparent solidity amongst the ferns and creepers.
He used a finger and thumb to settle his glasses more firmly on his nose.
“Um,” he said, looking around. “Where are we?”
“The boss monkey’s private jungle.”
“Ah.”
Victoria shook her fighting stick out to its full length.
“Come on.”
Holding the staff in both hands, she picked her way into the foliage, and Paul trundled after her, his image seeming to glide above the leaf-strewn matting that covered the deck. It was very quiet beneath the trees. Even the roar of the jets and the clatter of gunfire from above seemed somehow muted. The trees rose from their pots like the pillars of a cathedral, their branches forming archways and overhead vaults.
Ahead, through the low-hanging ivies and lianas, she saw Lila crouched beside a particularly large pot, her back resting against the curved ceramic, her gun at the ready. Beyond, the vegetation thinned out, and she caught a glimpse of an open area, with grey sky beyond it. Lila waved at her to get down.
“There’s somebody out there,” she hissed.
“Where?” Victoria craned her head for a look. She saw an iron patio table and accompanying chairs, one of which was occupied by a slumped, skinny figure in jeans, with arms hanging loose, and short, carrot-coloured hair.
Oh, merde.
“K8?” Victoria ran forward. “K8, what happened? Where’s the Leader?”
The girl looked up at her and raised a trembling arm. Tea dripped from a spilled cup. A saucer lay in pieces on the floor.
“Over,” she whispered. “They went over.”
Victoria walked to the edge of the veranda. The entire nose cone of the airship had been glazed, like the cockpit of some art deco spaceship from a pulp magazine. A section of the bamboo rail had been broken. She stood at the edge and craned forward. Below, she could see the rooftops of central London, and, stretching back beneath the veranda, an unglazed area of shadow and machinery.
“Any sign?” Paul asked, wheeling up beside her.
Victoria shook her head.
“That has to be a fifty foot drop.” If Ack-Ack and the Leader had fallen from here, they hadn’t hit the glass, which meant they must be somewhere amongst the machinery. Victoria got down onto her hands and knees, and leant over as far as she dared. Far below, wires and cables covered the floor of the chamber. Computer servers stood like islands. Strange, archaiclooking pistons moved up and down. Fans turned. Lights blinked. Coolant steamed.
An iron ladder had been bolted to the far end of the veranda.
“You could climb down,” Paul suggested. “And make sure they’re dead.”
“Maybe in a minute.” Against such a drop, the ladder looked fragile and spindly. And besides, there were more important things to worry about first. Victoria turned back to K8. She walked over and crouched in front of her. “Are you hurt?”
Sweat glittered on K8’s forehead. She put a hand to the back of her skull, where her soul-catcher nestled beneath the skin.
“I’m plugged into the hive.”
“Shit.” Lila brought her pistol to bear. “So, they already know we’re here.”
K8 shook her head. “No. I’m blocking them. For now.” Her voice was hoarse. Her fists were hard little balls in her lap, the knuckles as white as bone. “But I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up.”
Victoria waved Lila’s gun away, and put a hand to K8’s freckled cheek.
“We’ll get you out of this,” she said.
The girl shook her head again, flinching away from the physical contact.
“I don’t think so, boss.” She gave the brittle, selfconscious smile of a little girl trying to be brave. “The stuff he put in my head’s getting stronger all the time. I don’t know how much longer I can fight it.”
A jet screamed past outside, and something exploded aft. They felt the deck quiver.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Lila said. “If the monkey’s dead, we need to find the control room, and stop them dumping the agent.”
“Oh, I’m not dead.”
The voice came from the edge of the veranda. Victoria turned in time to see a hand appear at the top of the ladder, followed by a hairy head. A white-suited monkey clambered awkwardly over the bamboo rail and dropped to the wooden deck. Beneath the suit, he wore a bandolier across his chest, and a holster on each hip.
Lila raised her gun.
“No!” K8 lunged forward in her chair. “Don’t shoot him. Look at his eyes.”
Victoria frowned. His eyes?
Then realisation hit her.
“Mon dieu!” She lowered her sword, and put a hand on Lila’s gun, gently pushing it downwards.
“But—”
“His eye patch. It’s on the left.”
“So?”
“The Leader wears his on the right.” She turned to the monkey. “Isn’t that right, Ack-Ack?”
The macaque threw a floppy salute.
“Howdy, boss.” He straightened his tie.
“Nice threads.” Paul looked him up and down. “What happened to their owner?”
“I used him to break my fall.”
“He’s dead?”
“Very.”
“So, it’s over?” Lila asked hopefully.
Ack-Ack Macaque shrugged. “Not yet. The attack’s still underway.”
“How do we stop it?”
“Leave that to me.”
Victoria slid her sword into its scabbard.
“What are you going to do?”
Ack-Ack Macaque jabbed a leathery thumb in K8’s direction.
“Well,” he said. “First off, she and I need to convince the fuckwits in white that I’m their chief.”
“n o, you Can’t do that.” Victoria was horrified. “I won’t let you.”
They had been arguing for several minutes.
“It’s the only way,” Ack-Ack Macaque assured her. “K8 can broadcast to the entire hive.”
“But it’ll destroy her.”
He reached into a silk-lined jacket pocket and pulled out a rather battered-looking cigar.
“We don’t have a choice. You understand that, don’t you, K8?”
“Yes, Skip.”
The girl’s hair was wet at the temples. Her face had become pale and drawn.
“No,” Victoria made a cutting motion with her hand. “She’s only seventeen, for God’s sake. You can’t ask her to do this.”
Ack-Ack Macaque lit up, and huffed the cigar into life. He took a heavy draw, and blew smoke at the butterflies flittering above his head.
“I don’t like it any better than you do. But she hasn’t got much choice. The way I see it, that muck in her head’s winning. It’s going to take her sooner or later, whatever we do. At least this way, she gets to save the world first.”
Paul scratched his beard thoughtfully.
“But if she opens herself to the hive,” he said,
“won’t they be able to read her thoughts? Won’t they know it’s a trick?”
Ack-Ack Macaque curled his lip in irritation. He rolled the fat cigar between his fingers and thumb.
“Okay.” He stood over K8. “Can you do anything about that? Send sound and vision only, without the commentary?”
“I can try.”
“Good girl.”
He went to stand by the veranda’s rail, with the darkening November sky at his back. Somewhere far beyond the clouds, the sun had already set. Fuming, Victoria took Lila and Paul to watch from the treeline. K8 sat facing him.
“Ready?” he asked her.
“Yes, Skip.” There were tears in her eyes. He straightened his collar and smoothed back the hair on his cheeks and scalp. He had to look convincing to the Gestalt even if, inside, all he wanted was to murder every single last one of the motherfuckers.
How dare they put him in this position.
He bit back the rage, and dropped the half-smoked cigar over the rail.
“Right then, sweetheart,” he said gruffly. “Ready when you are.”
K8 swallowed.
“Goodbye, Skip.”
“Don’t say that.”
She sniffed.
“What should I say, then?”
For the first time, Ack-Ack Macaque felt a hot lump rise in the back of his throat.
“Be seeing you, kid.”
They held each other’s gaze for a long moment. They both knew this was it. Then, wiping her cheeks, K8 sat up straight. She closed her eyes. Her posture became stiffer and more formal, and the tension bled from her features. Her lips curled up in the same dreamy, vacant smile that he’d wanted to wipe from Reynold’s face.
By the time she reopened her eyes, she looked like a different girl.
The K8 he’d known was almost gone, and he didn’t have a lot of time.
Ack-Ack Macaque cleared his throat.
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN of the Gestalt,” he began. “Esteemed colleagues. It is I, your Leader, standing here on my flagship, over London. Apologies for not contacting you directly,” he tapped the side of his head, “but my connection has been damaged.”
Were they getting this? Did he sound convincing? The Leader had been a wordy bastard with a gob full of corporate waffle. Could he match that?
“I have something important to, um, tell you. And you’d better listen because otherwise I’ll… I mean… Look, attacking this world was a mistake.” He punched the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. “And the reason I’m speaking to you now is that I require you to stop it. Stop everything. Immediately. Like, right now, okay?”
Over by the trees, Paul winced. Victoria shook her head. He was fucking this up, and they knew it. Flustered, he opened his mouth to speak again but, before he could, K8 moaned. Her eyes rolled up in her head, and she fell back, her body as limp as a tossed banana skin.
“Christ!” All pretence forgotten, he hopped forward and took her hand. Her skin felt cold. Before he could do anything else, Victoria marched up and shouldered him aside.
“Get out of the way,” she said. She picked K8 from the chair and laid her on the deck, then checked her pulse and breathing.
“Is she going to be okay?” Ack-Ack Macaque asked. “I don’t know.” Victoria didn’t look up. “I don’t even know what’s wrong with her. But she’s breathing for now, no thanks to you.”
“Hey, I—”
Paul’s image stepped between them.
“Listen,” he said. “The guns have stopped.”
Interrupted in mid-protestation, Ack-Ack Macaque cocked his head. All he could hear was the distant rumble of jets. The constant firing from above had ceased.
“Holy shit,” he muttered. “They believed me? That speech worked?”
Paul coughed. He ran his tongue around his lips.
“No,” he said regretfully. “No, I don’t think they did.”
Ack-Ack Macaque fixed him with a one-eyed stare.
“What makes you say that?”
Paul swallowed, and raised an arm to point into the trees at the back of the veranda.
“She does.”
Another macaque stood in the gloom of the potted forest, squinting at them through a monocle. Two armed Neanderthal bodyguards flanked her. She wore a white business suit with matching gloves and pearls, and carried a furled white umbrella with an ivory handle.
Ack-Ack Macaque curled his lip at her.
“Who the hell are you supposed to be?”
The female removed the monocle from her right eye and smiled, revealing sharp, pointed teeth.
“Me, darling?” She licked her left canine. “Why, I’m the power behind the throne. And I’m here to make you—” she raised her chin “—an offer.”
Ack-Ack Macaque narrowed his eye.
“What kind of offer?”
“A job offer.”
“Whoa, lady.” He held up his hands. “I think you’ve got the wrong monkey.”
“Please.” Her tone was scornful. She blew dust from her monocle, and screwed it back into her eye. “You’ve just killed my protégé, the least you can do is hear me out.” Without taking her eyes from Ack-Ack Macaque, she leant her head towards the Neanderthal on her right, and whispered, “And if any of the humans move, kill them.”
Both bodyguards raised their weapons: heavy automatic rifles with long, curved magazines, each capable of hosing all life from the veranda in a couple of sustained bursts.
“Yes, Founder.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CORONAE OF IRIS
SHE TOOK THEM back to the wrought iron table, and bade them sit.
“You may call me Founder.” She walked slowly around the table. As she passed behind each of them, she paused to sniff their hair. “I am the true leader of the Gestalt. The monkey you just killed, the one who liked to call himself, the ‘Leader’ worked for me.” Having completed a circuit of the table, she stopped walking and stood between her bodyguards. “I come from a timeline significantly more advanced that this one, and I am significantly older that I look.” Resting both hands on the umbrella’s pommel, she glared at them through her monocle. “So, I’d appreciate it if you showed me some respect. When I was born, Queen Victoria sat on England’s throne.”
Paul’s image crouched between Ack-Ack Macaque and Lila. He pushed his glasses more firmly onto the bridge of his nose and stammered, “But, but, but that would make you two hundred years old!”
“Two hundred and four, actually.”
“How could you still be alive?”
“Technology, dear boy.” The Founder straightened up. “I have tiny engines in my blood, which constantly monitor and repair and renew. With their help, I might live to be a thousand years old.”
Ack-Ack Macaque stirred uncomfortably. “Bullshit,” he muttered.
The Founder gave a sigh.
“Do you remember my husband’s machines, the microscopic ones that turn normal humans into fresh recruits for the Gestalt? The ones you came here to stop? Didn’t you ever wonder why they were so much more advanced than the rest of his technology? I mean, airships?” She rolled her eyes. “Give me a hypersonic scramjet any day.”
Victoria Valois had been watching and listening quietly. Now she sat forward, her hands on the table.
“You gave them to him?”
“Precisely.” The Founder tapped the tip of her umbrella against the deck. “When I recruited him, he was little more than an escapee from a laboratory.” She smiled nostalgically. “I showed him how to move between worlds, and gave him the technology to build an army.”
“But why?”
The monkey laughed.
“My dear woman, why ever not?” She swept the umbrella around in a gesture that encompassed all the possible worlds of creation. “You humans are far too irresponsible and squabblesome to be allowed free reign.”
“And so you turn us into zombies?” Lila asked indignantly.
The Founder’s brow fur
rowed.
“Think of it as harnessing your potential, child, and turning it to less destructive ends. Sometimes being a grownup means being prepared to take responsibility for yourself, your friends and, if necessary, your entire world.”
High above, the grey clouds finally delivered on their promise. Rain beat against the glass panels of the airship’s nose. A few drops fell through the holes made by Ack-Ack Macaque’s Spitfire, and pattered down onto the uppermost leaves of the trees, dripping from there onto the deck’s wooden planks. On the ground below the warship, London lay battered and smoking. Lights flashed as emergency vehicles tried to push through roads choked with abandoned cars. People were cowering in offices and Underground stations, dreading the next bombardment.
Ack-Ack Macaque tapped his fingers on the iron table. He wanted to smoke, but didn’t want to risk reaching into his inside pocket for a cigar. He didn’t want the Neanderthals to think he was going for a concealed weapon.
“You mentioned a job offer?”
The Founder turned to him.
“Indeed.”
“Let me guess,” he pushed back in his chair. The metal legs scraped on the timbers. “You want me to join your merry band?”
“Would that be so awful?” She stepped up to him, so that the toes of her shoes almost touched the heels of his outstretched feet. “I know you must have been lonely. Macaques like us, we’re not solitary creatures. We need the company of our own kind. We need a place to belong. We need the comfort and security of a troupe.”
Ack-Ack Macaque pulled his feet away from her. He snarled, but he knew she was right. He could feel it as an ache in his chest. And yet—
“You’ve been alone so long,” she said. “But all that’s past now.”
He could smell her. Somewhere beneath the cotton and pearls, beneath the aromas of shampoo and perfume, lay the scent of a female macaque. The first female of his kind he’d ever met, and maybe the only one he ever would.
His nostrils twitched. Something stirred inside him, and he closed his eye, feeling dizzy.
He could go with her. It would be easy enough to do. He felt the soft fabric of the borrowed suit and tie, and visualised himself at the head of a Zeppelin fleet, with her at his side. He imagined holding her in his arms, and pictured the two of them in heat, mating in a frenzied mutual lust…
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