Hive Monkey (7 page)

“But, you’re not alone. You have K8. You have a place here.” She reached out a hand. “You have me.”

“I know.” Ack-Ack Macaque scowled. “But it’s not easy being the only talking monkey in the world.”

“You feel like a freak?”

He gave a shaggy shake of the head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

Victoria felt her cheeks colour. She tapped the ridge of scar tissue at her temple. The surgery to repair the damage to her brain had been extensive and life saving; but it had left her bald and scarred—an oddity.

“Oh, really?”

She saw him glance at her scalp, then back down to the bottle in his paw.

“Sorry, boss.”

She gave a shrug. In truth, she knew how he felt. She used to feel the exact same way when passengers tried not to stare at her. For a while, it had bothered her; but last year’s unpleasantness had given her confidence, and a certain notoriety, and now she no longer cared what anyone thought of the way she looked.

She accepted his apology with a gracious nod.

“C’est rien.” Her beer was cold and sharp, just the way she liked it. She savoured the bubbles on her tongue before swallowing.

The sad truth was, the camaraderie she shared with Ack-Ack Macaque was about the closest thing she had to a relationship with an actual, physical being. She had Paul, of course, but, however much she loved him, he was still just a face on a screen, or a tiny hologram on her desk. The monkey was, tragically, the nearest thing she had to a living, breathing friend.

“You know,” she said, “I don’t trust them, either.”

His eye swivelled up to meet hers.

“The Gestalt?”

“There’s something about them.” She thought of Reynolds, and wondered how many minds had been peering at her from behind the man’s mild, cornflower-blue eyes. “They freak me out.”

Across the table, Ack-Ack Macaque took another hit of rum. She gave him a long, thoughtful look.

“I wonder why he wanted you,” she said. “In particular, I mean. After all, I’ve got nearly as much gelware in my head as you do, and yet he didn’t even ask me.”

“Feeling left out?”

“Hardly.” Her thumbnail worried the edge of the beer bottle’s label. “But doesn’t it strike you as odd?”

“Everything they do’s fucking odd.”

She dipped her heard, conceding his point. “Still, there’s something about it that doesn’t ring true. Something that tells me he wanted to do more than simply recruit you.”

Ack-Ack Macaque regarded her from beneath a lowered brow. “Your journalist instincts acting up again, boss?”

Victoria smiled. “Something like that.”

Ack-Ack Macaque ground out the butt of his cigar, then fumbled in his jacket pocket and pulled out another. “I thought as much.” He put the fresh cigar into his mouth, but didn’t light it. “Don’t go digging around on my behalf. I couldn’t give a damn what they want.” He grinned. “I’m just glad I slapped the silly sod when I had the chance.” He stretched in his seat. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, boss, I’m going out for the evening.”

Victoria sat back with a sigh. Her curiosity would have to wait. She peeled off the label and screwed it into a ball.

“Are you going anywhere nice?”

“I hope not.” He gave a toothy grin. “Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

“Quite sure, thank you.”

Victoria watched as Ack-Ack Macaque got to his feet, with the cigar clamped in his jaw and the bottle dangling from his fingers.
This is my life,
she thought:
an uplifted monkey, an electronic ex-husband, a teenage hacker and me; four wretched creatures drawn together because we have nowhere else to go; because we’re all artificial, made things—with patched-up souls, and cortices covered with other people’s grubby fingerprints. Maybe that’s why the Gestalt frightens us so much: because, instead of feeling incomplete and ashamed, they embrace their artificiality. They make it a central part of themselves. And they want to help us.

With a flick of her finger, she sent the screwed-up label skittering across the table.

“Well, have a good time, won’t you?”

Ack-Ack Macaque caught the paper ball and dropped it into his unused glass.

“I’ll give it a try.”

A shout came from the corridor behind him. Victoria looked over, just in time to see a figure burst into the room—a wild-haired, bearded man in a white t-shirt and saggy pyjama bottoms, with pale, gooseflesh arms, and a gun clenched in his fist.

Oh hell, Cole.

The gelware processors in Victoria’s head kicked into combat mode, pumping adrenaline into her system and ramping up the speed of her thoughts. The chair went flying behind her, and her fingers curled around the neck of the beer bottle, ready to hurl it. At the same time, in her peripheral vision, she saw Ack-Ack Macaque throw himself sideways across the lounge, dragging his huge silver Colts from their holsters. By the time Cole staggered to a halt a few paces inside the door, he found himself facing a woman and a snarling monkey, both pointing weapons at him, and both poised to defend not only themselves, but also everybody else on the skyliner. His eyes rolled from one to the other, and then down to the pistol in his fist.

“Don’t shoot!” He let go of the gun as if scalded. The weapon clunked onto the deck, and he raised his hands.

Lying on his side, with both guns trained on Cole’s forehead, Ack-Ack Macaque spat out his cigar.

“We won’t fucking shoot,” he said in disgust, “if you don’t fucking
move
.”

A
CTING ON
V
ICTORIA’S
instructions, Ack-Ack Macaque and two of the white-jacketed stewards manhandled William Cole to her office, where they handcuffed him to the chair in front of her desk. She followed behind, examining the fallen gun.

“So, Mister Cole,” she said when he had been firmly secured. “Would you care to explain what you were thinking?”

Cole looked bad. Beneath the scratches, his face was pale, and his eyes bugged out. His breathing came in heaves.

“Yeah,” the monkey said, growling around his unlit cigar. “Because bursting into rooms waving guns is a very good way to get your fucking head blown off.”

Cole looked between them. Sweat glistened on his balding forehead.

“I want to report a murder.”

Victoria sniffed the barrel of the gun she’d picked up. It had been fired recently.

“Have you killed somebody, Mister Cole?”

“No!”

“Then, tell me, what’s happened?”

Cole swallowed. “A man came into my cabin.” He pulled experimentally at the cuff on his right wrist. The chain rattled. “He looked just like me. He said he’d come to help, that somebody was trying to kill me.”

“But you already knew that.” Victoria weighed the pistol in her hand. “You told me as much when you came on board.”

“Yes.”

“Did you shoot him?”

Cole shook his head. “He was already wounded. I didn’t realise at first.”

“And now he’s dead?”

“I think so, yes.”

Victoria turned to one of the stewards. “Get a medic to the chef’s cabin. Go armed. Report back.”

The man gave a salute, and left the room.

Cole squirmed in his chair. “I didn’t kill him. That’s his gun you’re holding. He gave it to me before he—” He swallowed again. “Before he died.”

Victoria looked him up and down. She knew he hadn’t smuggled the gun aboard himself. Given his claim that somebody had tried to kill him, she’d made sure his bag and clothing had been thoroughly searched.

“All that remains to be seen,” she said. “In the meantime, I’d like you to take a deep breath, and start from the beginning.” As a former correspondent, she’d had plenty of practice at talking to the distraught. She slipped off the military jacket and draped it over the back of her chair, to make her look more informal. Then she sat and placed her hands on the desk, palms down. “Now,” she said as calmly as she could, “who was this man? Did you recognise him?”

Cole’s jaw tightened. “Of course I recognised him!”

Beside his chair, Ack-Ack Macaque spat out his cigar. “Then who was he? Don’t keep us in suspense.”

Cole turned a baleful eye on him.

“I told you. He was
me
.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

DOPPELGANGER

T
HE DEAD BODY
lay wrapped in its habit, on a bunk in the
Tereshkova
’s infirmary. Ack-Ack Macaque looked from it to the man standing at the foot of the bed.

“That,” he said, “is fucking uncanny.”

Standing next to him, Victoria Valois was forced to agree. Aside from a few cosmetic differences—tidier hair, a better maintained beard, and a bullet hole in the stomach—the man lying on the bed seemed to be the exact double of William Cole. At the end of the bed, Cole himself seemed transfixed.

“He said his name was Bill,” he said.

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know.” Cole’s hands were crossed in front of his chest. Despite the cold, he still wore only a t-shirt and pyjama trousers. “But he said he’d come to warn me. Something about a virus.”

“Any idea what he meant?”

“Sorry, none.” With nails bitten down to the quick, the writer scratched at each of his wrists. “What happens now? Do we go to the police?”

“No.” Victoria looked up at the ceiling. She felt warm and tingly inside. First the Gestalt guy, and now this? So many questions suddenly needed answering. “The
Tereshkova
is mine.” She pulled the Commodore’s white dress tunic more firmly onto her shoulders. “For now, I’ll lead the investigation.”

“But—”

“No buts.” She fixed Cole with her firmest stare. “The local
flics
don’t get a sniff of this.” She panned her gaze around the assembled faces. “Do I make myself clear?”

One by one, they nodded their assent. They knew as well as she did that international treaties protected the autonomy of each skyliner: that each functioned as an independent city-state, unaffected by the laws of whichever territory it happened to be flying over, and that the local police had no jurisdiction.

She looked over at Ack-Ack Macaque.

“What do you say, monkey man? Are you up for a challenge?”

Ack-Ack Macaque fixed her with his one-eyed squint.

“What do you have in mind, boss?”

Victoria smiled. She could tell by the way his tail twitched, and by the way the fingertips of his right hand drummed against the handle of the revolver at his hip, that he’d been just as bored as she had during the Atlantic crossing.

“First off, we need some facts.” She gave a nod towards the dead man on the bunk. “Like who this guy was, and how he got aboard. And how he got dead.”

Ack-Ack Macaque leaned over the corpse and sniffed.

“He smells fresh.” His pink nostrils twitched. “I mean, apart from the fact that he’s shat himself, but everybody does that when they die, don’t they?” He looked up at her. “What does the doc say?”

Victoria had already spoken to the airship’s medical officer—a grey-haired old alcoholic by the name of Sergei.

“Gunshot wound to the large intestine. Died from internal haemorrhaging. Otherwise, nothing unusual.”

“Was he wearing a soul-catcher?”

“Unfortunately not.” If the man had been wearing a catcher, they’d have been able to electronically revive and quiz the copy of his personality held within. That was how she’d saved her husband, Paul, after he ran afoul of a killer in London.

“So, no help there, then?”

“Not much.” She reached out to touch the hem of the dead man’s robe. As she moved, the medals on her chest tinkled together like distant wind chimes. “Mister Cole, do you have any idea why this man’s dressed as a monk?”

The writer shook his head. He was calmer now than he had been when he’d burst into the lounge, but his eyes were still wide and bloodshot. It seemed to be their default setting, and gave him the look of a hermit dragged from a cave.

On the other side of the bunk, Ack-Ack Macaque gave a grunt. “Maybe he’s a fucking monk?”

Cole blinked at him. “Who would shoot a monk?”

Victoria drew her hand back from the bed. “You didn’t go to Catholic school,” she said, “did you, Mister Cole?” He frowned, and opened his mouth to protest, but she silenced him with a raised hand. “You said his name was Bill. Did he tell you anything else? Give you any idea where he was from?”

Cole licked his lips. His eyes settled on her for a moment.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He massaged the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. “Hell, I’m not even sure I believe it myself.”

Victoria narrowed her eyes.

“You’re talking to a cyborg and a monkey. If you can believe that, you can believe anything.”

The American put a hand to the small of his back and straightened his spine, visibly trying to pull himself together. Victoria could see the gooseflesh on his bare arms.

“Okay,” he said. “What do you know of parallel worlds?”

“Quantum theory.” Having been married to a sci-fi fan, and been obliged to sit through seemingly endless movies and TV shows, she had a pretty good handle on the concept. “The idea that there’s a multiverse of endless alternate realities, each with a different history. Like in
Star Trek
, where everybody in the parallel world has a beard.”

Cole gave her a reappraising look. “Yes, that’s it. Essentially, every choice we make spawns two or more alternate worlds. In one, we take the first choice, in the other, we take the second choice, and so on.”

Victoria glanced down at the dead man’s face.

“And so this guy’s supposed to be you from a different reality?” She didn’t believe it for a second. “Alternate worlds are just fiction, Mister Cole. They’re plots from bad movies about Nazis; they don’t really exist.”

Cole held out his hands. “I know. Trust me, I write books about them and even I can’t believe in them. But that’s what he told me; that he was me from another reality.”

“Maybe he was having you on?”

Across the bunk, Ack-Ack Macaque gave a snort. “Who jokes with a bullet in their gut?” He waved a hand from the writer to the corpse, and back again. “Look at the two of them. They’re completely identical. What other explanation is there?”