Hive Monkey (33 page)

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

CORONA OF IRIS

S
HE 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 than 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 rein.”

“And so you turn us into zombies?” Lila asked indignantly.

The Founder’s brow furrowed.

“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...

“No.” The word rolled like molasses from his tongue, and he opened his eye to banish the images playing in his head. “No, you’re wrong.” He looked around the table, at Victoria and Paul, and K8’s unconscious form lying on the deck. They were his friends, his comrades. His family.

“I already have a troupe,” he said, and snorted to clear the stink of her from his nostrils. His hands itched, painfully aware of the revolvers in the holsters at his hips.

She gave him a haughty look.

“I could make you a king.”

Moving very slowly, he opened his jacket and pulled a cigar and lighter from the silk-lined pocket. He’d made his decision and chosen his side. Now, all he had to do was get her fragrance out of his head, and the only way to do that was to smother everything in a tobacco fug. His hands felt shaky as he bit the end from the cigar and spat it onto the floor.

“Sorry, sweetheart.” He paused to light the end of the cigar, and then spoke through clouds of pungent blue smoke. “But I don’t want your machines in my head.”

The smoke spread warmth in his chest, and he felt his head go deliciously light.
Ah,
he thought,
that’s the stuff.

Looking distinctly unimpressed, the Founder pursed her lips. She reached up and adjusted her monocle.

“Better a few machines in your head than a bullet?”

Their eyes locked.

“That’s the deal, huh?”

“I’m afraid so. And if you’ve got any notions of somehow saving this world, you can forget them right now. The fleet’s already begun to dump its cargo. Within hours, the planet will be ours.”

Ack-Ack Macaque looked at his friends.

“And what about them?”

“They will join the Gestalt.” She peered around at them. “We will be enriched by their bravery.”

Ack-Ack Macaque shook his head. He’d already lost K8 to the hive, he’d be damned if he’d let them take Victoria as well.

He looked across at his boss, and noticed her eyes. The pupils had dilated into wide, black pits. Only a thin corona of iris remained and he realised that, while he’d been talking, she’d taken the opportunity to slip into command mode and overclock her system. Her mind must be racing and her heart pounding, ready to fight or flee. All she needed was an opening.

Their eyes met, and an understanding passed between them.

“And as for you,” the Founder was saying, oblivious to this byplay, “either you come willingly, or you’ll be assimilated right along with them. The process works equally well on monkeys as it does on people.”

Ack-Ack Macaque drew himself up in his chair. He sucked in a mouthful of smoke and blew it in her direction.

“Sorry love, but that’s not going to happen.”

The Founder’s gloved hand tried to flap away the cigar fumes.

“And that’s your final answer, is it?”

“Not quite.” Under his chair, Ack-Ack Macaque pressed his bare feet to the smooth wooden deck, ready to spring. “There’s just one more thing.”

The female monkey’s eyes became suspicious slits.

“And what might that be?”

“Just this.” He screamed, and leapt. At the same time, Victoria surged to her feet, sending the heavy iron table flying towards one of the bodyguards.

The machine guns fired.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

WRECKAGE

C
RAWLING ON ALL
fours, William Cole worked his way through the shattered remains of the
Tereshkova
’s main gondola. As he moved, he tried to ignore the sounds of battle coming from outside, and the ominous groans and creaks of the superstructure above his head. All he could think of was Marie. Nothing else mattered to him, except to see her safe.

He crawled across the carpeted expanse of the main passenger lounge, through piles of broken furniture and shattered fittings, onto the hard steel deck of the corridor that led aft to the infirmary.

“Marie!” he called. “Hold on, I’m coming.”

In places, the corridor’s ceiling had hinged down to within inches of the floor, and he had to squirm and wriggle his way through sharp-edged gaps that were too small for him. By the time he reached the infirmary, the skin on his arms, shoulders and hips had been scraped raw, and his knees were bruised and battered.

“William?” Her voice sounded weak.

“I’m here,” he cried, “I’m here.”

Part of a medical trolley had wedged itself in the doorway, and he had to squeeze around it. When he got inside, he saw his worst fears realised. The ceiling had collapsed in the same way as in the rest of the gondola, leaving only a few feet of clearance. Marie, who had been lying on the bed at the time of the crash, now lay pinned to the mattress.

“Marie!”

“William.”

Her head was turned towards him, held against the pillow by the steel ceiling panel pressing down from above on her cheek and chest. The foot of the bed was a tangle of wreckage, and he couldn’t see her legs.

“Oh, crap. Marie.” He knelt beside the bed and reached in to touch her face. “Don’t worry, honey. Don’t try to move. I’ll get you out.”

Bracing his back against the fallen ceiling, he tried to heave upwards, pushing until sweat broke out on his forehead and his temples felt ready to burst.

“No.” Her voice was a whisper, but it stopped him.

“What do you mean?”

Marie licked her lips.

“No, you’re not getting me out.”

William felt panic surge up inside.

“But, I—”

“No.” Marie swallowed. “It’s too late. I’m sorry.”

William stopped pressing against the ceiling and dropped to his knees. He reached for her, and brushed a curl of auburn hair away from her eyes.

“I’m not leaving you.”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to, my love.”

He ran his hand back along the bed, past her shoulders and down, following the curve of her body beneath the blanket. He got as far as her hip before he found something blocking the way. His fingers hit metal where there should have been flesh. A girder had broken through from above, driving the ceiling down into the mattress. Her abdomen and legs were crushed. Her torso stopped in a mess of torn blankets, slathered in something warm and sticky.

Fighting back a cry of anguish, he jerked back his hand and, without looking at the blood on his fingers, wiped it on the sheet.

“No,” he said. There had to have been some sort of mistake...

Marie closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

William wanted to cry. He wanted to curl into a ball and block his ears, and make it all go away.