‘I do too, Beast. Guess we’ll know soon enough.’
‘I can depressurise, I think. Can you get Antoinette into a suit without the other two causing any trouble?’
‘Not going to be easy. I’m already worried about leaving them alone down there. I don’t know how long it will be before they decide to risk moving around. I suppose if I could get them into one compartment, and her into another…’
‘I might be able to selectively depressurise, yes. Never tried it before, though, so I don’t know if it’ll work first time.’
‘Maybe it won’t come to that, if the Convention’s goons get to us first.’
‘Whatever happens, there’s going to be trouble.’
Xavier read Beast’s tone of voice well enough. ‘Antoinette, you mean?’
‘She might have some difficult questions for you to answer, Xavier.’
Xavier nodded grimly. It was the last thing he needed to be reminded about now, but the point was inarguable. ‘Clavain had his doubts about you, but had the good sense not to ask Antoinette what was going on.’
‘Sooner or later she’s going to have to know. Jim never meant for this to be a secret her whole life.’
‘But not today,’ Xavier said. ‘Not here, not now. We’ve got enough to deal with for the moment.’
That was when something on the console caught his eye. It was on the three-dimensional radar plot: three icons daggering in from the direction of the carousel. They were moving quickly, on vectors that would bring them around Storm Bird in a pincer movement.
‘Well, you wanted a response, Xavier,’ Beast said. ‘Looks like you’ve got one.’
These days, the Convention’s cutters were never very far from Carousel New Copenhagen. If they were not harassing Antoinette — and usually they were — then it was someone else. Very likely the authorites had been alerted that something unusual was happening as soon as Storm Bird had left the repair bay. Xavier just hoped it was not the particular Convention officer who had taken such an interest in Antoinette’s affairs.
‘Do you think it’s true, that they’d kill us without even asking why we were on fusion thrust?’
‘I don’t know, Xavier. At the time I wasn’t exactly spoilt for other options.’
‘No… you did fine. It’s what I would have done. What Antoinette would have done, probably. And definitely what Jim Bax would have done.’
‘The ships will be within boarding range in three minutes.’
‘Make it easy for them. I’ll go back and see how the others are doing.’
‘Good luck, Xavier.’
He worked his way back to where Antoinette was waiting. To his relief, Clock and the pig were still in their seats. He felt his weight diminishing as Beast cut power to the nuclear rockets.
‘Well?’ Antoinette asked.
‘We’re OK,’ Xavier said, with more confidence than he felt. ‘The police will be here any moment.’
He was in his seat by the time they were weightless. A few seconds later he felt a series of bumps as the police craft grappled on to the hull. So far, so good, he thought: they were at least going to get a boarding, which was better than being shot out of the sky. He would be able to argue his case, and even if the bastards insisted that someone still had to die, he thought he could keep Antoinette out of too much trouble.
He felt a breeze. His ears popped. It felt like decompression, but it was over before he had started to feel real fear. The air was still again. Distantly, he heard clunks and squeals of buckling and shearing metal.
‘What just happened?’ asked Mr Pink.
‘Police must have cut their way through our airlock,’ Xavier said. ‘Slight pressure differential between their air and ours. There was nothing to stop them coming in normally, but I guess they weren’t prepared to wait for the lock to cycle.’
Now he heard approaching mechanical sounds.
‘They’ve sent a proxy,’ Antoinette said. ‘I hate proxies.’
It arrived less than a minute later. Antoinette flinched as the machine unfolded itself into the room, enlarging like a vile black origami puzzle. It swept rapier-edged limbs through the room in lethal arcs. Xavier flinched as one bladed arm passed inches from his eyes, parting air with a tiny whipcrack. Even the pig looked as if there were places he would rather be.
‘This wasn’t clever,’ Mr Pink said.
‘We weren’t going to hurt you,’ Clock added. ‘We just wanted information. Now you’re in a great deal more trouble.’
‘You had a trawl,’ Xavier said.
‘It wasn’t a trawl,’ Mr Pink said. ‘It was just an eidetic playback device. It wouldn’t have harmed you.’
The proxy said, ‘The registered owner of this vessel is Antoinette Bax.’ The machine moved to crouch over her, close enough that she could hear the constant low humming that it gave out and smell the tingle of ozone from the sparking taser. ‘You have contravened Ferrisville Convention regulations relating to the use of fusion propulsion within the Rust Belt, formerly known as the Glitter Band. This is a category-three civil offence that carries the penalty of irreversible neural death. Please submit for genetic identification.’
‘What?’ said Antoinette.
‘Open your mouth, Miss Bax. Do not move.’
‘It’s you, isn’t it?’
‘Me, Miss Bax?’ The machine whipped out a pair of rubber-tipped manipulators and braced her head. It hurt, and continued to hurt, as if her skull were being slowly compressed in a vice. Another manipulator whisked out of a previously concealed part of the machine. It ended in a tiny curved blade, like a scythe.
‘Open your mouth.’
‘No…’ She felt tears coming.
‘Open your mouth.’
The evil little blade — which was still large enough to nip off a finger — hovered an inch from her nose. She felt the pressure increase. The machine’s humming intensified, becoming a low orgasmic throb.
‘Open your mouth. This is your last warning.’
She opened her mouth, but it was as much to groan in pain as to give the proxy what it wanted. Metal blurred, much to quick for her to see. There was a moment of coldness in her mouth, and the feeling of metal brushing her tongue for an instant.
Then the machine withdrew the blade. The limb articulated, tucking the blade into a separate aperture in the proxy’s compact central chassis. Something hummed and clicked within: a rapid sequencer, no doubt, tallying her DNA against the Convention’s records. She heard the rising whine of a centrifuge. The proxy still had her head in a vicelike grip.
‘Let her go,’ Xavier said. ‘You’ve got what you want. Now let her go.’
The proxy released Antoinette. She gasped for breath, wiping tears from her face. Then the machine turned towards Xavier.
‘Interfering in the activities of an official or officially designated mechanism of the Ferrisville Convention is a category-one…’
It did not bother to complete the sentence. Contemptuously, it flicked the taser arm across Xavier so that the sparking electrodes skimmed his chest. Xavier made a barking noise and convulsed. Then he was very still, his eyes open and his mouth agape.
‘Xavier…’ Antoinette gasped.
‘It’s killed him,’ Clock said. He started unfastening his restraint webbing. ‘We must do something.’
Antoinette snapped, ‘What the fuck do you care? You brought this about.’
‘Difficult as it may be to believe, I do care.’ Then he was up from his seat, grappling for the nearest anchorage point. The machine gyred to face him. Clock stood his ground, the only one of them who had not flinched when the proxy had arrived. ‘Let me through. I want to examine him.’
The machine lurched towards Clock. Perhaps it expected him to feint out of the way at the last moment, or huddle protectively. But Clock did not move at all. He did not even blink. The proxy halted, humming and clicking furiously. Evidently it did not know quite what to make of him.
‘Get back,’ it o
rdered.
‘Let me through, or you will have committed murder. I know there is a human brain driving you, and that you understand the concept of execution as well as I do.’
The machine brought the taser up again.
‘It won’t do any good,’ Clock said.
It pressed the taser against him, just below his collarbone. The sparking bar of current dancing between the poles like a trapped eel ate into the fabric of his clothes. But Clock remained unparalysed. There was no trace of pain on his face.
‘It won’t work on me,’ he said. ‘I am a Conjoiner. My nervous system is not fully human.’
The taser was beginning to chew into his skin. Antoinette smelt what she knew without ever having smelt it before to be burning flesh.
Clock was trembling, his skin even more pale and waxy than it had been before. ‘It won’t…’ His voice sounded strained. The machine pulled back the taser, revealing a scorched-black trench half an inch deep. Clock was still trying to complete the sentence he had started.
The machine knocked him sideways with the blunt circular muzzle of its Gatling gun. Bone cracked; Clock crashed against the wall and was immediately still. He looked dead, but then again there had never been a time when he had looked particularly alive. The stink of his burned skin still filled the cabin. It was not something Antoinette was going to forget in a hurry.
She looked at Xavier again. Clock had been on his way to do something for him. He had been ‘dead’ for perhaps half a minute already. Unlike Clock, unlike any spider, Xavier did not have an ensemble of fancy machines in his head to arrest the processes of brain damage that accompanied loss of circulation. He did not have much more than another minute…
‘Mr Pink…’ she pleaded.
The pig said, ‘Sorry, but it isn’t my problem. I’m dead anyway.’
Her head still hurt. The bones were bruised, she was sure of it. The proxy had nearly shattered her skull. Well, they were dead anyway. Mr Pink was right. So what did it matter if she got hurt some more? She couldn’t let Xavier stay like that, without doing something.
She was out of her seat.
‘Stop,’ the proxy said. ‘You are interfering with a crime scene. Interference with a designated crime scene is a category…’
She carried on moving anyway, springing from handhold to handhold until she was next to Xavier. The machine advanced on her — she heard the crackle of the taser intensify. Xavier had been dead for a minute. He was not breathing. She felt his wrist, trying to locate a pulse. Was that the right way to do it, she wondered frantically? Or was it the side of the neck…
The proxy heaved her aside as easily as if she were a bundle of sticks. She went at it again, angrier than she had ever been in her life, angry and terrified at the same time. Xavier was going to die — was, in fact, already dead. She, it seemed, would soon be following him. Holy shit… half an hour ago all she had been worried about had been bankruptcy.
‘Beast!’ she cried out. ‘Beast, if you can do something… now might not be a bad time.’
‘Begging your pardon, Little Miss, but one is unable to do anything that would not inconvenience you more than it would inconvenience the proxy.’ Beast paused and added, ‘I am really, really sorry.’
Antoinette glanced at the walls, and a moment of perfect stillness enclosed her, an eye in the storm. Beast had never sounded like that before. It was as if the subpersona had spontaneously clicked into a different identity program. When had it ever called itself ‘1’ before?
‘Beast…’ she said calmly. ‘Beast… ?’
But then the proxy was on her, the diamond-hard, scimitar-sharp alloy of its limbs scissoring around her, Antoinette thrashing and screaming as the machine pried her away from Xavier. She could not help cutting herself against the proxy’s limbs. Her blood welled out from each wound in long beadlike processions, tracing ruby-red arcs through the air. She began to feel faint, consciousness lapping away.
The pig moved. Mr Pink was on the machine. The pig was small but immensely strong for his size and the proxy’s servitors whined and hummed in protest as the pig fought the bladed limbs. The whips and whorls of his own shed blood mingled with Antoinette’s. The air hazed scarlet as the beads broke down into smaller and smaller droplets. She watched the machine inflict savage gashes in Mr Pink. He bled curtains of blood, rippling out of him like aurorae. Mr Pink roared in pain and anger, and yet he kept fighting. The taser arced a stuttering blue curve through the air. The muzzle of the Gatling gun began to rotate even more rapidly, as if the proxy were preparing to spray the cabin.
Antoinette crawled her way back to Xavier. Her palms were crisscrossed with cuts. She touched Xavier’s forehead. She could have saved him a few minutes ago, she thought, but it was pointless trying now. Mr Pink was fighting a brave battle, but he was, inexorably, losing. The machine would win, and it would pick her off Xavier again; and then, perhaps, it would kill her too.
It was over. And all she should have done, she thought, was follow her father’s advice. He had told her never to get involved with spiders, and although he could not have guessed the circumstances that would entangle her with them, time had proved him right.
Sorry, Dad, Antoinette thought. You were right, and I thought I knew better. Next time 1 promise I’ll be a good girl…
The proxy stopped moving, its servo motors falling instantly silent. The Gatling gun spun down to a low rumble and then stopped. The taser buzzed, sparked and then died. The centrifuge wound down until Antoinette could no longer hear it. Even the humming had ended. The machine was simply frozen there, immobile, a vile blood-lathered black spider spanning the cabin from wall to wall.
She found some strength. ‘Mr Pink… what did you do?’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ Mr Pink said. And then the pig nodded at Xavier. ‘I’d concentrate on him, if I were you.’
‘Help me. Please. I’m not strong enough to do this myself.’
‘Help yourself.’
Mr Pink, she saw, was quite seriously injured himself. But though he was losing blood, he appeared not to have suffered anything beyond cuts and gashes; he did not seem to have lost any digits or received any broken bones.
‘I’m begging you. Help me massage his chest.’
‘I said I’d never help a human, Antoinette.’
She began to work Xavier’s chest anyway, but each depression sapped more strength from her, strength that she did not have to spare.
‘Please, Mr Pink…’
‘I’m sorry, Antoinette. It’s nothing personal, but…’
She stopped what she was doing. Her own anger was supreme now. ‘But what?’
‘I’m afraid humans just aren’t my favourite species.’
‘Well, Mr Pink, here’s a message from the human species. Fuck you and your attitude.’
She went back to Xavier, mustering the strength for one last attempt.
Chapter 23
CLAVAIN AND H RODE the rattling iron elevator back up from the Chateau’s basement levels. On the way up, Clavain ruminated on what his host had shown and told him. Under any other circumstances, the story about Sukhoi and Mercier would have strained his credulity. But H’s apparent sincerity and the dread atmosphere of the empty room had made the whole thing difficult to dismiss. It was much more comforting to think that H had simply told him the story to play with his mind, and for that reason Clavain chose, provisionally, to opt for the less comforting possibility, just as H had done when he had investigated Sukhoi’s claims.
In Clavain’s experience, it was the less comforting possibility that generally turned out to be the case. It was the way the universe worked.
Little was said on the ascent. Clavain was still convinced that he had to escape from H and continue his defection. Equally, however, what H had revealed to him so far had forced him to accept that his own understanding of the whole affair was far from complete.
Skade was not just working for her own ends, or even for the ends of a cabal o
f faceless Conjoiners. She was in all likelihood working for the Mademoiselle, who had always desired influence within the Mother Nest. And the Mademoiselle herself was an unknown, a figure entirely outside Clavain’s experience. And yet, like H, she had evidently had some profound interest in the alien grub and his technology, enough that she had brought the creature to the Chateau and learned how to communicate with him. She was dead, it was true, but perhaps Skade had become such a willing agent of hers that one might as well think of Skade and the Mademoiselle as inseparable now.
Whatever Clavain had imagined he was dealing with, it was bigger — and it went back further — than he had ever imagined.
But it changes nothing, he thought. The crucial matter was still the acquisition of the hell-class weapons. Whoever was running Skade wanted those weapons more than anything.
And so I have to get them instead.
The elevator rattled to a halt. H opened the trelliswork door and led Clavain through another series of marbled corridors until they reached what appeared to be an absurdly spacious hotel room. A low, ornately plaster-moulded ceiling receded into middle distance, and various items of furniture and ornamentation were stationed here and there, much like items in a sculptural installation: the tilted black wedge of a grand piano; a grandfather clock in the middle of the room, as if caught in the act of gliding from wall to wall; a number of black pillars supporting obscure alabaster busts; a pair of lion-footed settees in dark scarlet velvet; and three golden armchairs as large as thrones.
Two of the three armchairs were occupied. In one sat a pig dressed like H in a simple black gown and trousers. Clavain frowned, realising — though he could not be absolutely certain — that the pig was Scorpio, the prisoner he had last seen in the Mother Nest. In the other sat Xavier, the young mechanic Clavain had met in Carousel New Copenhagen. The odd juxtaposition made Clavain’s head ache as he tried to construct some plausible scenario for how the two came to be together, here.