Empress of the Sun (16 page)

A longer pause.

‘All right. Central Hall at the Natural History Museum. Closing time.’

‘Where?’ he had asked, but Colette had disconnected.

When he got there, the answer to the question was obvious.

‘It’s not real, you know.’ The sudden voice startled Ryun, gazing up at the tiny head on the elegant curved neck. ‘There are at least a dozen other replicas in museums around the world.’

Colette Harte. Taller and younger than he had imagined, but his imagination could not have predicted the purple hair. New Rock boots. She offered a hand and an introduction. Her grip was strong.

‘Okay, Ryun, we’re going to go somewhere else. This is a bit déjà vu because I met Everett right here, just before Christmas.’

‘I know. You went for sushi. You gave him a memory stick.’

‘You like sushi?’

‘I like sushi a lot.’

In the taxi she asked him testing and detailed questions about Everett, the kind that only a best friend would know. She requested a booth at the sushi place, and Ryun left his shoes by the sliding door. He wiggled his feet to hide the hole in his sock, right over the big toe. The booth was warm but small and Ryun felt self-conscious so close to this woman who was only one step away from being a stranger. She ordered tea and a round of smoked-eel nigiri. Ryun went for the crab roll.

‘Did you see what was on the memory stick?’ Colette asked.

‘Everett showed me it, yes.’

‘I wish he hadn’t done that.’

‘Parallel universes exist.’

‘They do. They’re real. You didn’t take a copy of the files on that memory stick, did you?’

‘No.’

‘That’s good. That’s about the only thing that is good.’

Ryun sipped tea from the bowl. His heart was fluttering, he could hardly breathe, hardly lift the tea bowl to his
lips. His hands shook. He had been scared making the call, scared when Colette had agreed to meet him, scared when he told his mum and dad a lie about where he was going after school, scared all the way down on the train and the tube, scared going up the steps to the imposing front of the Natural History Museum. Scared in the taxi, scared in this paper booth. He had thought that maybe there was a place beyond scared, like the calm and cool and peace at the eye of a hurricane. There wasn’t. Beyond scared was only more scared.

‘When Everett disappeared, he went to one of those parallel universes.’

‘Where did you get that idea from?’

‘He told me.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said his dad was heading up some inter-universe defence force, protecting the Ten Worlds of the Plenitude. He said like his dad was in some of witness protection scheme, and that he – Everett – he’d been assigned like a special protection team – like navy SEALS but with an airship. If he opened an app on his phone, they’d jump in from some other universe. But.’

‘But.’

‘But I don’t believe it.’

Colette Harte closed her eyes and let out a shallow sigh.

‘From the curiosity of teenage males, good Lord deliver us. Ryun, why did you call me?’

‘Because you worked with Everett’s dad. I thought you might know the truth.’

‘Do you think Everett’s not telling you the truth?’

‘Yes. No.’

‘If I knew the truth, do you think I would tell you?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

‘What if I said everything he said is true?’

‘Well, then, that’s good. But …’

‘Your “buts” are spooking me, Ryun.’

‘But then there’s the text message.’

He held out his phone.

‘
Get this 2 Mum: am OK. Dad OK. See u soon
,’ Colette read.

‘Yes, but …’

‘But …?’

Another round of sushi arrived, and fresh tea, and kombucha for Ryun.

‘First thing: why would Everett send that to me if he was coming back the very next day?’

‘There’s a second thing?’

‘The second thing is: when I showed it to Everett, he said he hadn’t sent it. Then he said he didn’t remember sending it. Then he said he’d lost his phone. Why would he send that text and then say he’d lost his phone? Doesn’t make sense. But there’s a third thing. Well, third and a fourth. Third thing is: in the showers? At school? In the changing room? Well, he never used to go into the showers with everyone else because he was shy that way, but then
he did, and he had all these scars, like lines along his arms and legs. I never saw those before. They made me feel weird. And that’s also the fourth thing, because since he came back, well, there’s things he does he never did before, and things he doesn’t do that he used to. Sometimes I don’t know him at all. He’s like a totally different person.’

‘What do you think I can do, Ryun?’ Colette asked.

‘Well, I think you know what’s happening.’

‘Ryun, do you think you can trust me? You’ve met a complete stranger and she’s taken you for sushi, and you’ve gone with her, without checking, without asking, without thinking. You know nothing about me, Ryun – who I am, what I do, who I work for. I could be a very dangerous person. I might be about to have you abducted or killed. Have you told anyone where you are?’

Suddenly Colette was the fierce voice he had heard on the phone and Ryun realised that he had lived his life among people who were basically good and true and honest and reliable, or at least harmless – even in school – and had assumed that everyone else was like that too. The world didn’t have to be like that.

‘Everett trusted you, and you trusted him, so I will.’

‘Then I will tell the truth. The truth is that if I told you the truth, the whole truth, you would be in danger. Very great danger. Me and Everett’s dad were members of a research group exploring the possibility of the existence
of parallel worlds, and communicating with them. We first made contact with a plane we call Earth 2.’

‘That was the one you sent the drone to?’

‘Earth 2 is a member of a federation of parallel universes called the Plenitude of Known Worlds. There are nine alternative earths. We are in the process of becoming number ten. I’ve become involved in the accession process – it’s long and it’s complicated and it’s politics and stuff I don’t get and I don’t like. But it involves me in a lot of jumping around between parallel universes. You’ve dropped your sushi, Ryun.’

He hadn’t noticed it slip from his chopsticks.

Colette smiled. ‘Yes, me. This morning I had breakfast in a cafe on Earth 7. The Plenitude is moving its headquarters from Earth 3 …’

‘That’s where Everett was!’ Ryun exclaimed. ‘The one with no oil.’

‘And with airships,’ Colette continued. ‘Wonderful airships. The Plenitude is moving offices from Earth 3 to Earth 7. I only got back on this world at lunchtime. I was just back in my office when you called. The Plenitude is big and it’s powerful, but it’s just a handful of worlds among the billions and billions of the Panoply. That’s the multiverse, Ryun, the whole shebang. All the parallel worlds. And there are worlds – forces, powers, species – that are a threat to the Plenitude – and to our world as well. But the Plenitude has its factions and groups and parties, and they don’t always
work together. And some of them are powerful and dangerous. And some of them want what Everett’s dad has and what he gave to Everett.’

‘The map of all the worlds.’

‘The Infundibulum. It’s a very powerful weapon in the wrong hands. We have to keep it safe. Everett is in danger, his dad is in danger, I’m in danger. If I told you everything, you’d be in danger too. The fewer people who know, the better, Ryun. Ignorance is safety.’

This wasn’t right. Wasn’t
right
. Maybe it was a stupid, naive thing, to go asking big questions without thinking about whether he could take the answers. Maybe he trusted people too much and assumed everyone was a Good Guy. But her answers had answered precisely nothing. Colette had just turned his questions back on him.
Trust me, it’s for your own good
was never an answer.

‘But he’s a mate. He’s my friend.’

Colette laid her hand gently on his.

‘Be a mate.’ She gripped his hand gently but firmly.

‘Be there with him. Don’t push him. All those “buts” you have – don’t say them to him. Keep them to yourself. But look out for him. Be a friend.’

The bill arrived, immaculately folded. Colette slipped a card on to the little lacquered tray.

‘Are you a friend, Colette?’

Ryun looked her in the eyes. He never felt comfortable doing that, but what he saw in her eyes he could believe.

‘He doesn’t know it yet, but I am. I always have been. Ryun, you can call me. If you see anything strange, if you get worried about him, call me. Be my eyes, would you?’

Ryun nodded. Colette tapped the screen of her phone.

‘I’ll get you a taxi home. It’s a long way back to Stokie.’

‘Thank you. And for the sushi.’

‘You’re welcome.’

Ryun slipped on his shoes and waited on the bench seat by the door for the minicab to arrive. Colette slipped out into the night. He watched her purple hair disappear into the crowd of muffled-up winter pedestrians. She had told him nothing, but he had learnt a thing. He had been concerned before. Now he was afraid. Terribly afraid.

*

She didn’t hear him. She didn’t see him. A cold wind, gusting sprays of piercing rain, had blown up in the Georgian streets and squares of Fitzrovia. Colette pulled up her collar and put her head down and so she did not see the man get up from his table in the window of the Cypriot cafe opposite and step out into the street. He kept six pedestrians between him and her. He was careful to look as cold and angry with the weather as everyone else but she would not look behind her. She was an amateur at this and he was a professional. She turned on to Tottenham Court Road. He kept his distance but did not let her out of his sight. She swiped her Oyster card through the gate of Warren Street tube station and she didn’t see, didn’t hear, didn’t suspect
the follower seven bodies behind her. He passed his hand over the scanner and the clever little chip embedded in his fingertip fooled the computer and let him through.

Cold winds also blew sleet through the alleys and canals of the elegant city of Heiden, on Earth 7, and a man sat back in his comfortable leather chair by a coal fire, closed his eyes and watched his twin a universe away stalk Colette Harte across London.

Charlotte Villiers snapped the revolver on to the figure flying up into the folds of
Everness
’s gas cells. Snapped it away. The bridge lay before her, and the prize. She had a finer revenge for Anastasia Sixsmyth, when her squad armed the demolition charges and blew Captain Anastasia’s ludicrous gasbag to rags and scraps of shipskin around her.

The Jiju. They had not been part of the plan. That they were here could only mean one thing: they sought the same prize she did. Ibrim Hoj Kerrim’s nightmare: the Jiju, a trillion of them, with a sixty-five-million year head start on humanity, and a million open doors into the Plenitude. Worlds would burn.

Beams of light slashed across the airship’s gloomy interior from above, from left and right, stabbing up from
below. The Jiju were opening holes in the hull. Cries. Screams. Human voices. Her squad was engaging the Jiju and losing. The Infundibulum was everything. Revolver in hand, Charlotte Villiers ran for the head of the ship. Would no one shut those alarms off?

‘Ma’am, ma’am, they’re coming through the walls!’ Sorensen’s panicked voice in the earpiece. ‘They’re everywhere!’ A stutter of automatic fire, on the radio and from deep down in the belly of the ship. A cry, quickly cut off. In the edges of her vision, Charlotte Villiers saw the darting, dancing movement of Jiju warriors. The Dear, they were fast. Again the ship lurched and threw her against the railing, almost toppling her over. A falling object hit the walkway with a hard crunch. A head. A human head. Charlotte Villiers fought down the reflex gag. The headless body lay on the edge of the topmost catwalk. Blood dripped through the mesh. No time for horror. Only a few metres more to the companionway down to the bridge.

‘Sorensen!’ Dead air on the radio. ‘Zaitsev! Report!’

‘I’m on my own. They’re cutting us apart.’

‘McClelland, Akauola, Chambers?’

‘Gone.’

For the first time Charlotte Villiers knew the cold helplessness of panic. She did not know what to do. No. Command is command: give an order. It doesn’t matter whether it is right or wrong, good or bad. Do something. She thumbed the communicator bar on her collar.

‘Everyone to the forward companionway. We will rendezvous, take the Infundibulum and get the hell out of here.’

*

‘I’ve got you, I’ve got you.’

Flashes. Flying: lift cells like big full moons above her. Arms locked around her. Loud noises, bangs, shots. A hard landing that made her cry out.

‘Come on, Sen. Come on, my love.’

Holes opening the skin. Light pouring in: and more than light. Flashes. That crying sound: it’s her own voice. But over under inside more than everything: hurt. Hurt outside: every inch of skin and muscle a wall of pain. Hurt inside: things broken there. Hurt in the heart: the Villiers polone had smashed her like a cockroach. Hurt everywhere, so big the only place to get away from it would be to die.

Flashing in and out of black. A voice: ‘Come on, my love, my dilly, my dorcas. We’re almost there.’

World shaking. Nothing to hold. Tumbling down stairs: hurt on hurt. Crying with pain. Black is good. Black is warm. Black is no pain.

‘Come on, my love, stay with me! Sen, stay with me!’

Black/no black. Black/no black. Don’t go to the black. Don’t go. Don’t!

Door banging open. ‘Mchynlyth! Mchynlyth! First aid!’

And silence. So sudden, so sharp she forced herself up
out of black. Forced eyes open. Great window. Out there.
Out there
. Tentacles. Living/machine. Twisting/twining. The ship in its grasp.

Black.

And out. She hurt, so she was alive. On her back on the deck. Looking up into Mchynlyth’s brown face. Hiss, spray. Cool … and
no pain
.

‘Easy, easy. Jesus Krishna; that bitch, if I ever catch her …’

The ship shook again. Behind Mchynlyth, the tentacles opened. At the centre, a steel squid.