She was a state. Loose folds of flab were caked in thick sable mud, her hair was a tangle of ossifying dreadlocks. Every breath was asthmatic, a battle against coagulating catarrh. She twitched like a palsy victim.
"No problem," he said, wishing to God he meant it.
They waded into the first slough channel.
The fifth island they came to was much larger than the previous four. Iron girders were sticking out among the sedges. There was more grass than reeds on the crest. Soil had begun to accumulate in the crevices between the fragments of stone and cement. Greg cut his calf on something jagged. Cursed.
The island's far shore brought them to within thirty metres of the houses. One more immersion and back on to solid ground. This time it was a long straight ridge parallel to the row of houses. It was cluttered with twisted, drooping chimney stacks, and buckled rafter apexes gnarled with scabby lichens; slate tiles formed a loose flaky shingle beneath their feet, making the going hard.
Just as he reached the summit, Greg heard the sound. A low-volume hum in the background. But rising in pitch and intensity, in menace. A note he was irksomely familiar with.
"Move out, double-time," he said. "The bastards have inflated the hovercraft."
"No more," Gabriel said wretchedly.
"One last time. That's all. Then it'll all be over."
"Yes. Yes, you're right. Only a few minutes left. It's clearing, Greg. So much clearer now."
Realisation struck. He could sense her mind. A pale disconsolate mist of disjointed thoughts, fluttering aimlessly, corrupted with coarse threads of harrowing pain. Gabriel was animated by adrenalin alone, and her endocrine glands were virtually exhausted.
They'd escaped the twins' nullifying effect. Greg let his gland run riot, charging his cerebellum to overload, and screw the risk. Synapses vibrated shrilly under the stress, delusional ripping sounds filtered into his ears, coming from inside his skull, neurone membranes splitting open. His espersense swept out. It was a heady boost. Whole once more.
Two hovercraft were curving away from the tower, each containing three minds, radiant hard-wound balls of mercurial malevolence. Greg recognised Toby riding in one of them, along with a couple of crewmen he couldn't place. Mark and Kendric were paired in the second, along with its pilot. There was no sign of the other minds Greg knew to be out there—Armstrong and Turner, not even Hermione. The tower was an empty shell to his espersense, which meant at least one twin had remained behind. The big question was whether the third hovercraft had been inflated.
A faint haze of small minds glowed around the wavering perimeter of his espersense, occasional twinkles within. Animals of some sort, clinging to a dour existence amid the ruins. Abandoned pets reverted to their true feral nature, rodents scrabbling to stay above the mud, an invasion of reptiles.
He pulled Gabriel roughly down the slope and into the bog which covered the street, ignoring her weepy cries of protest. They didn't have to swim. The syrupy mud drowning the tarmac was only a few centimetres deep, lapping over his feet like slushed snow. It was possible to wade. The raft of algae came up to mid-thigh.
Greg was nearly tempted to hide in one of the houses. None of them had doors or windows left. Pick one at random and cower down. Unless the hovercraft boasted some pretty sophisticated sensors, Kendric and Toby would never find him in time. But the dangerously dilapidated condition of the walls stopped him. If the tower went up with anything like the violence Gabriel claimed the friable houses would collapse on top of them.
They reached a mouldering dune which had once been a leylandii hedge, and squelched over it. Greg saw two white aureoles sliding fluidly across the horizon behind them, winding down through the slough channels. The drone of the hovercraft propellers drifted in and out of audibility. Kendric and Toby were fanning out, their search pattern carrying them further apart. At least it was only two.
He steered Gabriel down the narrow dank gully between two houses. There were animals on the other side of the walls, more than he'd originally thought, scurrying around frantically. The garden at the rear of the house backed on to another garden. Head-high panel fencing marked out the boundary, putrefying laths drooping under their own weight. In one corner was a greenhouse whose panes were pasted with hand-sized valentine leaves. Some abandoned horticultural treasure had thrived in the heat and abundant nutrient-soaked mud, making it look as though the aluminium-framed structure was about to burst apart at the seams.
Caustic fingers of silver-white light probed through a gap between a couple of houses a hundred metres away. The propeller noise was loud, fluctuating in strident piccolo whistles. Greg sensed Toby's churlish mind; the man was spite-laden, yearning to be the one who found the quarry. Instinct chafed at him. He knew Greg was nearby. A nature-ordained hunter.
The bulk of the houses blocked off the light as the hovercraft glided down the street. Then the questing fingers reappeared, closer this time, three houses away.
Greg urged Gabriel behind the greenhouse, and waited until the searchlight fluoresced the verdant avocado-green leaves.
The green corona died as the hovercraft moved on, but Greg knew that knot of determination in Toby's mind. He'd order the pilot to take the hovercraft down the gardens once he reached the end of the street.
His espersense tracked Kendric, who was still patrolling the slough channels. They couldn't go back, and the blast would turn the confined gardens into a death-trap of flying masonry.
"Through there." Greg pointed ahead. The row of houses in front of them were virtually identical to the ones behind, only in slightly better condition. Gabriel moved like an automaton.
Greg kicked at the panel fence, tearing through it like tissue paper. There was a fruit cage on the other side, a box made from galvanised steel poles wrapped in a tattered cobweb of black nylon netting. The sight of it sparked an idea.
He reached up to one of the crossbeams with his right hand and began to tug. The pole was held in place between the uprights by two moulded plastic sockets at each end, both of them fractured and bleached by the decade-long torrent of UV-infested sunlight. One of the sockets crackled at the pressure he applied, then snapped abruptly. Greg yanked the other end of the pole out of its socket with a burst of ebullient strength, tearing the netting as it came free. The pole was three metres long, in good condition; the zinc coating had whitened down the years, but it'd protected the steel from rust.
"What's happening?" Gabriel asked.
"I'm improvising a little present for Toby." There was no longer any vindictiveness at the prospect, nor even malice.
This was an intrinsic fight for survival now, nothing more. His mind had relegated Toby to an obstacle which had to be tackled. Hatred was all the other man's problem.
Greg clamped the pole between his knees and tied on a strip of the ripped nylon mesh. It was a laborious job, he had to use his teeth to grip the end of the strip while his fingers formed the knot. Spears didn't come any more primitive, but the rudimentary tail ought to keep its trajectory stable for a few metres.
They slogged towards a narrow alleyway between the two houses ahead, the disturbingly concave walls had so many bricks missing they looked like two vertical checkerboards. There was an unstable aggregation of brick chunks and sandy earth in the gap, rising half a metre above the algae. Greg had lost his shoes somewhere in the slough channels; his feet were unrecognisable, lumps of gummy tar which ached abominably.
If he stood on anything sharp they'd go completely numb as the pain breached the cortical node's threshold. When they reached the small front garden they were knee-deep in the greasy mire again.
The street they found themselves in was virtually intact. Greg could almost believe he'd walked out into a pre-dawn autumn morning of fifteen years ago. Rusted, windowless hulks of petrol-driven cars were parked along the road. Barren trees stood tall, low brick walls were topped by fanciful wrought-iron railings, the lampposts were still vertical. It was a well-ordered slice of middle-cla
ss suburbia. Only the algae-matted water shattered the illusion of normality.
A curtain of light streaked out at the far end of the houses a hundred and fifty metres away. Toby's hovercraft had turned down into the gardens. Greg sensed the excitement rising in the man's mind. Toby's native instinct was telling him his prey was nearby.
Greg found it uncanny to observe, almost as though his own ability was being turned against him. He and Toby must share the same mental genotype.
"I want you to walk down to the other end of the street," he told Gabriel.
She didn't reply, standing with shoulders drooping, arms dangling at her side. Her left hand looked appalling, tumescent and inflamed. Mud had dried and cracked on it, as though she was shedding a hardened outer skin, allowing new, blue-tender flesh to break through. He refused the impulse to check his own.
"Listen, Gabriel. You must walk down the street. And when the hovercraft comes, you fall down. OK? That's all. Can you manage that for me?"
A confused frown puckered her forehead. "Walk?"
"Yes." Greg pressed his hand on her back, starting her off. "And when the light shines, you go for cover."
Gabriel's feet had found a shuffling rhythm. "Fall down?"
"That's right."
"Orders," she mumbled vaguely. "I won't let you down, Greg. I won't."
Greg left her doing her apathetic sleep walk, feeling a prize turd for using her as bait; and headed back up the street towards the wide beam of light which kept shooting out, documenting the hovercraft's progress. Algae foamed around his knees. Slithery mud tried to pull his feet from under him. Sometimes he thought he could feel the hardness of the tarmac.
The light shone out of the gap in front of him. Greg stood still, listening to the drone of the propeller growing louder, echoing back and forth across the street. The light was extinguished. A faint trace of it rippled along the roof of the house.
Toby's hovercraft drew level with him. Light slammed out of the gap, transfixing him like a rabbit in a headlamp.
A scream of ecstatic triumph burst from Toby's mind. Greg's vision was wiped out in a sparkling pink mist as his retinas were overwhelmed by a targeting laser. He lurched forwards. The warbling of electromagnetic rifle fire punctured the night. Bullets stitched a line of small craters in the algae behind him. The propeller drone rose to a crescendo as the pilot fought to turn the hovercraft.
Greg was dumped into the darkness again. The laser impact abated, and he saw a smattering of stars through the shredded gauze of cirrus clouds. He could hear the ripping sounds of the hovercraft riding roughshod over fences.
Greg felt his nerves cooling, heartbeat slowing, tension abating. Going with the flow.
He sensed the hovercraft racing down the gardens, heading back the way it'd come.
A final visual check on Gabriel showed him a forlorn figure bumbling through the mire. His espersense showed her mind was operating with cyborg simplicity, completely absorbed by the mechanics of walking.
He lowered himself into the algae.
The hovercraft had reached the end of the gardens now, rounding the last house in the row. Greg caught a glimpse of its insect-eye array of lights sliding into view as he dropped below the surface.
Espersense revealed all he needed, real and hypersense universes entwining smoothly. Toby leaning against the prow, fists clenched, eyes bugging, slipstream plucking at hint. The merciless lights finding Gabriel. Her legs buckling, sending her toppling forwards. Toby's howl of revenge consummation.
Greg could hear a throbbing sound transmitted through the filthy water, getting louder.
Toby's mind was a lurid spew-point of animus thoughts zooming towards him.
Greg pressed his feet down hard as the hovercraft rumbled directly overhead. He broke surface, bringing a cloying cone of algae with him. A blast of desert-air wind escaping from beneath the hovercraft skirt ablated the mucus from his face. He kept rising like a shabby tenth-rate Neptune, galvanised spear in his hand, already drawn back for the throw. Aiming. The pole steady. And fling.
It shot through the wide mesh of the protective carbon fibre grille at the rear of the hovercraft, hitting the spinning propeller full on. The trajectory bent then as the tip was chopped by the blade's leading edge, tugging it down and round. That, by itself, wasn't disastrous, the blade edge was designed to handle bird impacts. But the length of the pole meant it was deflected right into the mounting. The propeller's axle-bearing sheared off instantly under the terrible impact stress. And a two-metre-diameter five-hundred-R.P.M. buzz-saw exploded out of the grille to digest the rear of the pneumatic hovercraft.
There was a thunderclap blow-out, and the prow of the hovercraft bucked up into the air, losing rigidity, light beams strafing the sky. Three bodies and pieces of loose equipment were catapulted in a short arc. A tremendous spume of water jetted up as the propeller hit the algae, chewing through. One of the bodies fell into its base. The shredded hovercraft hull flopped back down. The lights went out, and the spume died.
It began to rain gobs of mud and algae, pattering down over a wide area.
One mind had survived, the body which housed it writhing feebly. Another body was facedown in the water, Toby. Of the third there was no sign.
Greg waded forward. It was easy going. A vast patch of the street had been stripped of its covering of algae.
Gabriel was floating on her back, half submerged. Greg got his hand under her head and lifted her. She coughed weakly. "I did it, didn't I, Greg? Just like you wanted."
"Sure did, and no messing."
"Did you get 'em?"
"Yeah, they aren't going to hazard anyone again."
Four light beams pinioned him. Kendric's hovercraft was turning down into the street. He froze into place. Too exhausted to run. Besides, he could never have left Gabriel.
The hovercraft approached at a cautious unhurried pace. Greg shielded his eyes against the glare. Kendric was standing in the prow, in front of the Perspex windscreen. The epitome of the great white hunter, electromagnetic rifle cradled in a light grip, one foot on the gunwale.
Greg saw it coming, reading it straight from Gabriel's mind. Genuine telepathy. His mouth gaped, and he pointed high into the western sky.
Kendric's mind registered sublime contempt that Greg would try such a pathetic stunt. Then vacillation set in, precisely because it was so unlikely. He looked round to follow the direction of Greg's accusing finger, just in time to see a frigid saffron dawn expand across the sky above Wisbech.
The light source was directly above them, a cold dazzling star which crawled through the genuine constellations at an infinitesimal pace. Its radiance was throwing shadows as sharp-edged as daylight. Greg could see wisps of fluffy cloud gusting high overhead, they must've been kilometres away.
Gabriel began to laugh.
The false star was as intense as noonday sunlight, then brighter. It began to elongate. Brick walls glared scarlet. Dew-mottled algae sparkled like a diamanté ice floe.
Intuition whispered into Greg's brain. He knew. The Merlin. Then his far-flung espersense delivered the final shock, a single band of incendiary thought originating from the spaceprobe's bioware nodes: Philip Evans's unholy vengeance glee as he hurtled inexorably towards Leopold Armstrong.
The Merlin descended at orbital velocity, boring a vacuum-tunnel through the lower atmosphere. A purple-white plasma comet with a rigid incandescent tail of superionised air, stabbing down like some monstrously overpowered strategic defence laser.
Greg flung his arms desperately over his face, trying to save his eyes. There was carmine blood-light, then sable blackness.
The blast wave was a white-noise tsunami. It plucked Greg out of the mire and sent him spinning through space. He could see the street's houses disintegrating, slates taking flight, bricks avalanching. The air had become a blizzard of giant splinters and powdery fragments.
He saw the tower. Rather, where the tower had been: a thick column of fusion-hot air f
ountaining up into the darkening sky. Its flickering vermilion fluorescence was sheathed by ragged braids of ebony soot-clouds. Garish blue-green static webs discharged around its mushrooming crown.
For a liquid, the water was incredibly hard.
Chapter Forty-Four
Greg woke to peace, body and mind. Blissful. He could feel his entire body except for his left hand, and nothing hurt, nothing felt abused. There was just warmth and softness.
Makes a bloody change.
He opened his eyes. Even the light was gentle, pale pearl.
Rapid blinking resolved the blurred shapes around him.
He was lying on his back looking up at an ivory-coloured ceiling with inset biolum strips. A young man in a white medical-style coat was removing an electrode hoop from his forehead.
"Welcome back, Mr. Mandel," he said.
That humourless tone, his intent professionalism. He had to belong to Event Horizon.
"There is no need to worry," the doctor assured Greg. "You are a patient in Event Horizon's Liezen clinic—that's in Austria."
"Who's worrying?"
The doctor nodded earnestly. "Ah, good. Sometimes there is disorientation following a prolonged somnolence induction."
"What do you call prolonged?"
"Eight days. In addition to your physical injuries you were suffering from advanced cerebral stress due to an overdose of neurohormones. I've loaded a prohibition order into your cortical node preventing any gland secretions. Come back in three months, and I'll wipe the order; or you might consider having the gland itself extracted." His nose twitched. "I don't approve of them, personally."
"Thank you, Doctor." Julia's cut-crystal voice chopped off any further admonishments. "That will be all."
The doctor sighed resignedly, and backed away.
Greg turned his head, He was in a small tidy room with plenty of medical gear modules stacked beside the bed. A picture window looked out over sunny parkland dotted with grazing llamas.