Empress of the Sun (26 page)

‘He wouldn’t do that if he had a choice,’ Everett M said.

‘Where has this sympathy for your alter come from?’ Charlotte Villiers asked.

‘He is my alter. I’m him, he’s me. I would never do that. Not unless it was life and death.’

‘As you say, you are his alter.’

On to Pentonville Road, through heavy traffic. A cyclist in yellow high-vis came up on the taxi’s inside as the traffic lights at King’s Cross turned red.

‘Where are we going?’

‘For lunch. The Praesidium is on high alert, though what we could do should the Jiju decide to invade, I don’t know.’

‘The Thryn.’ As he said the word, Everett M felt his implants strange and alien inside him, separate from his own flesh. ‘Madam Moon could stop them.’

‘We’re investigating that.’

The full implication hit Everett M. Madam Moon, Earth 4, his home: ‘My mum, Vicky-Rose … Bebe Singh, Gramma Braiden!’

‘We will protect them as best we can, Everett. Have no fears about that.’

Everett M would have jumped out of the cab in an instant, in a burn of fear and anger; run somewhere, anywhere, nowhere; shouted aloud what he felt to no one. But the little red door lights were on. The doors were sealed. He was locked in with Charlotte Villiers.

‘It’s imperative you stay here, Everett. If the Jiju invade, the real …’ Charlotte Villiers caught her slip. ‘The other
Everett will come for his family. We need you to be ready for that.’

‘Mum, Vicky-Rose,’ Everett M said again.

‘The Order will do its best.’

The cyclist pulled up on to the pavement and dodged pedestrians down to Gray’s Inn Road. A fleet of buses pulled in at the stop outside King’s Cross station. After days of snow and sleet, the sky was clear, a brisk wind drying the streets and sidewalks. Light glinted from the glass annexe to King’s Cross and the gaudy plastic signs of cheap Bangladeshi restaurants. St Pancras was like a little bit of Gotham dropped into north-east London. Everett M tried to imagine that blue sky filled with invaders: airships, star-ships, motherships, second moons, Death Stars; millions of shooty spacefighters. Tripod fighting machines. Giant city-stomping Godzillas. What did super-intelligent dinosaurs drive?

‘This isn’t real.’

‘It’s the most real thing there is, Everett. He will come. Whatever happens, be ready for him. No mistakes this time.’

The taxi lurched on to Euston Road, turned left on to Gower Street.

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Do you like Japanese food?’ Charlotte Villiers said. ‘Your friend Ryun does.’ The taxi pulled up outside a small Japanese restaurant. A maneki-neko cat waved from a small
window beside the door. ‘In fact, he should … ah, there he is.’

The door opened. Ryun stepped out. He was in his school uniform. He looked small and pale and frightened. A man stepped into the doorway behind Ryun. He was short, a little chubby, his hair slicked down. He did not look comfortable.

‘What’s going on?’ Everett M asked.

‘We’re having lunch,’ Charlotte Villiers said. ‘With friends. We need to get a few things straightened out. Your friend Ryun is very loyal, but he’s let his curiosity get the better of him. He’s not very good at following people. He never thinks that someone might be following him. Not much of a detective. Pandora’s box can’t ever be closed again. That’s a pity. At least you’ve been discreet with your girlfriend – Noomi’s not her real name, surely – that says a lot about boys and who they trust, don’t you think? You see, I need to know that I can trust the people I work with. You, your friend Ryun, your girlfriend, Colette Harte – he’s been talking to Colette Harte. I’d advise against that. You see, we can offer protection, or we can withdraw it.’

‘You go near Noomi, I’ll kill you.’

‘You won’t, Everett. Don’t bluster. Do you see my colleague Heer Daude? He is an Earth 7 twin. I’m sure you learnt about them in school. Everything he sees and hears, everything he feels and thinks, is shared by his Earth 7 twin, Ebben Heer. Except Ebben Heer isn’t on Earth 7. Ebben Heer
is on Earth 4, in north-east London. Roding Road, Stoke Newington. Number 43. You’re fast, Everett, but you’re not faster than quantum entanglement. Now, we know where we stand. Sushi.’

The Sunlords turned Everett and Sen into superstars.

WELCOME OUR GUESTS FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE!

They rode in a gossamer howdah on the back of a huge, ambling sauropod along the ten-kilometre royal road that spiralled down the inside of one of the enormous black ziggurats that Everett had seen from the flight in to Palatakahapa on the Sunlord royal yacht. Hundreds of thousands of Jiju lined the way, raising their crests in a synchronised Mexican wave of purple flashing into red into orange. Kax rode an ornate jewelled saddle far up the sauropod’s long neck, just behind the head. She raised a hand and her crest to the adoring thousands. It took hours to make the procession. Everett and Sen fell asleep against each other, curled up like kittens.

OUR PLANESRUNNING ALIEN FRIENDS CELEBRATE MATCH DAY!

They were given the royal box at the arena for some sporting event that played like basketball with ten hoops all around the court. Everett threw in the ball. A dozen hands rose to meet it. Body slammed and crunched against Jiju body. Kax went through a dozen changes of skin colour and sang an entire opera in twittering Jiju in her excitement, but Everett could not understand what was going on. He thought about the family seats in the North Stand at White Hart Lane, and talking about the game with his dad on his way back to the flat to try something new for Cuisine Night.

THE MASTER OF THE MULTIVERSE AND HIS FEMALE COMPANION ENJOY CULTURAL ACTIVITIES OF GREAT SUNLORD PEOPLE!

Ten thousand Jiju performed a long, elegant, intricate dance involving multicoloured fans, massive puppets on sticks and glowing auras of light among the great trees of a park at the base of the ziggurat city of Palapahedra. Each pyramid was a single building that was also an entire city – and they extended much further beneath the ground than they did above. Self-contained, self-maintained and self-powering, each housed one hundred million Sunlord Jiju. On the slow flight to Palatakahapa in the heavily damaged
Everness
, Everett had lost count of the number of black pyramid-cities in the horizon-less landscape. ‘Female companion, huh!’ Sen complained.

APE-PEOPLE GO SAFARI!

They went out on wave-skimming sky-sleds over a sea
that was wider than any ocean on any Earth. Sen pinned her great hair back and wore her welding goggles and clung to the edge of the little raft with wild glee. Lower, faster, closer! she urged the pilot. The pilot spoke no English but understood her excitement. This small landlocked sea – by Worldwheel standards – was a reserve for a rare species of marine wildlife. Everett had seen computer simulations of sea creatures from the age of the dinosaurs – snapping jaws, long snake-neck, powerful flippers – but these dwarfed any of those monsters, dwarfed even the great whales of Earth, the largest creatures that had ever lived on those worlds. Flying animals, half-bird, half-pterodactyl, circled, hunting fish, when Everett saw dark shadows rise up below the surface. The water exploded in white foam and monster heads on long necks burst from the waves and snatched mouthfuls of ptero-bird. The pilot sent the sky-sled weaving in and out of the necks. Sen shrieked in delight.

ALIENS MARVEL AT POWER OF SUNLORDS!

They were in a chamber in a chamber in a chamber at the very heart of the palace of the Empress of the Sun. Everett and Sen were guided along corridors and through locks and doors; each room they entered seemed larger than the one that contained it.
Infundibular
, Everett thought. Like a Tardis. In the centre chamber, at the very heart of the place, which seemed the biggest chamber of all, was a model of the Jiju universe. They stepped out on to a floating
disc – gravity was so weak here every step took Everett a dozen metres – at the centre of which blazed a model sun. Around the edge of the disc stood Sunlord technicians at floating consoles. The technicians dialled down the sun-blaze until the humans could see the other objects at the hollow centre of the ring: a circle of hovering rectangular plates – each in reality must have been the size of Earth, Everett calculated – upright to the sun; and over the sun’s north and south poles, complex mechanisms in ghostly silver. Nothing physical could have existed more than an instant so close to the boiling surface of the sun: Everett reckoned they must use the same force-field technology that made their aircraft and palaces fly. The jets that move the sun, Kax explained, and Everett sensed her pride and power. This was her inheritance: the ability to make a star dance to her will.
But I’ve done that too
, Everett thought. He had punched a Heisenberg Gate into the heart of a sun and emptied its energy on to the Nahn nest in Imperial University in Earth 1’s London. He knew that what he was seeing was more than a model; it was a control system. A touch on one of those control pads could fire the star-jets and make the sun itself move. Geek-Everett should have been thrilled to the roots of each hair on his head. In that head was the knowledge that the Jiju were reverse-engineering the Infundibulum – his Infundibulum, the Infundibulum his dad had entrusted to him. Him alone.
For you only, Everett
. I’m sorry, Dad. I had to give it to them.

Kax led them back out through the doors in the nested chambers, along the corridors. Everett moved close to Sen and whispered, ‘Can we stop this? I hate this.’

‘Me too,’ Sen whispered. ‘I’s had enough of being a princess. Princesses are naff.’

*

Tippy-tap. Scrit-scratch
.

‘Uh?’

Rap-rappety-rap-rap
.

‘I’s coming.’

The door opened. Sen’s eyes went wide in surprise. She gave a cry, covered her small breasts with her hands. She was wearing only panties.

‘Everett Singh! Go way go way go way! I thought you were … someone else.’

‘Sorry sorry sorry.’ Everett’s face burned in embarrassment. The latty door slammed in his face. ‘Sen, can I … come in?’

The door opened again. She had pulled on a rugby shirt. ‘It’s kind of messy.’

Kax had offered the crew apartments of staggering luxury and opulence in Palatakahapa’s Sojourners’ Tower. Everett, Sen, Captain Anastasia, Mchynlyth and Sharkey had each on their own decided they preferred to sleep on the ship. The ship was the one place you couldn’t see the ship.
Everness
was a terrible, tragic ruin. Her spine was warped, her catwalks and companionways twisted.
Ceilings were bowed in, latty doors jammed. Her skin still gaped in a dozen places from the crash and the Genequeen assault, and was ripped and torn where squidship tentacles had resisted giving up their grip. Of the three engines that had been sheared away in the crash-landing, only one had been replaced. The second was still in engineering. The third was lost forever. Everett could not look at the ship without pain. But sleeping in her was more than just not having to look at the wreckage: it was an act of loyalty. It was an act of love.

Sen’s porthole was cracked and the wooden roof panelling splintered, but her hammock hung level, her over-stuffed drawers spilled clothing, there was dusty make-up strewn over every surface and her rugby players looked down from the walls. Everett moved a short wooden staff to sit down on the pull-down door-seat. The amber globe on top of the staff rippled like jelly. Everett dropped the staff with a yelp. Sen picked it up quickly. The gel flowed with gold, cinnamon, shades of yellow and orange and settled back into a sphere.

‘Oh wow, that’s it,’ Everett said. ‘Can I try?’

‘It doesn’t like anyone else touching it,’ Sen said. She leaned the staff carefully in a corner. ‘Anyone but me.’

‘Can you make it work?’ Everett asked.

Sen nodded. ‘But I don’t like it. It’s like it’s in my head.’

‘I got stuff in my head too,’ Everett said.

‘I know.’

‘I don’t want it there. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want to be here. Sen, I gave them the Infundibulum.’

‘You had to, Everett. You couldn’t have done anything. I would’ve done the same. Any of us would.’

‘But that doesn’t make it right.’

‘I’ll tell you you’re all right if you tell me I’m all right,’ Sen said.

‘You had to shoot that Jiju. The Captain … Annie said you had to.’

‘It was just so fast,’ Sen said. ‘Like it happened before I had time to think about it. I pulls the trigger and the thumper shoots and it’s gone and it was like all so slow but so fast at the same time and you think you can go back and make it not happen but you can’t. No one can. I’s killed someone, Everett Singh. I’m not clean. I feels dirty. I’ll always feel dirty, in here.’

Everness
moved at her moorings, buffeted by the winds that blew forever up or down this shaft through the world.

‘I killed someone too,’ Everett said. ‘Not directly. But I gave Kax the gun. She killed the other princess.’

‘If you hadn’t, Kax would’ve died. Do you think that other Jiju would’ve said, “Thank you oh so much, Everett Singh and Mr Miles O’Rahilly Lafayette Sharkey”? She’d have thought something meese on to that dolly riah of hers and cut you and Sharkey up into mince. You done right. We done right. ’Cept …’

‘It doesn’t feel like it.’

‘It don’t.’

‘And Kax is taking us around like we’re … gods or something, and all I’m thinking is, I wish my dad had never given me the Infundibulum. I should have just deleted it. I could have. I thought about it. There was a moment – just a swipe of the finger, and it would have been gone. I should have just got rid of it and that Jiju you killed would be alive, and all Charlotte Villiers’s soldiers, and that other Tejendra on Earth 1 and the crew of that hovercraft on the ice world, and ’Appening Ed, and that other Everett, he’d just be another me, going to school and seeing friends and trying to get girls and playing football, and Annie and you would have a ship and lives back there on E3, and okay, Charlotte Villiers would have my dad, but he’d be on Earth 3, and they’d treat him well, and maybe when she had the Infundibulum from him she’d let him come back.’