Jennifer Morgue (19 page)
Authors: Charles Stross
Something smacks into the tailgate — a stray pebble, I tell myself as I swerve back up the coast road towards Orleans.
''I knew you could do it!'' Ramona enthuses like she's channeling a cheerleader. ''What did you do to get them riled up like that?''
''I asked about Marc.'' I glance in the mirror and flinch; my tail is back in the SUV and has gotten it turned around.
It's kicking up a plume of dust as it follows me. I swerve wildly to overtake a Taurus full of pensioners who're drifting along the crest of the road with their left turn signal flashing continuously, then I overcompensate to avoid rolling the Smart.
''That wasn't very rucking clever of you, was it?'' she asks sharply. ''Why did you do it?'' Irrelevant distractions nag at the edges of my perception: a twin-engine pond-hopper buzzes overhead on final approach into Grand Case Airport.
''I wanted to see if my suspicions were correct.'' And if I was dreaming or not.
There's a van ahead, moving slowly, so I pull out to look past it and there's an oncoming truck so I pull back in. And behind me, closing the gap again, is the SUV. ''I am going to have to lose these guys before they phone ahead and get some muscle ahead of me on the road to Philipsburg. Any ideas?''
''Yes. I'll be on my way in about five minutes. Just stay ahead of them for now.''
''Be fast, okay? If you can't be safe.'' I pull out recklessly and floor the accelerator again, passing the van as the driver waves angrily at me. There's a kink in the road ahead and I take it as fast as I dare. The Smart is bouncy and rolls frighteningly but it can't be any worse at road-holding than the SUV tailing me, can it? ''Just what are they doing with the women?''
''What women?''
''The women Marc was kidnapping and selling to the boat crew. Don't tell me you didn't know about that?'' The Suzuki has pulled past the van and is coming up behind me and I'm fresh out of side streets. From here, it's a three-kilometer straight stretch around the foothills of Paradise Peak before we get to Orient Beach and the fork down to the sea. After that, it's another five kilometers to the next turnoff. I'm doing eighty and that's already too damn fast for this road. Besides, I feel like I'm driving two cars at once, one of them a sawed-off subcompact and the other a topless muscle-machine that dodges in and out of the tourist traffic like a steeplechaser weaving through a queue of pensioners. It's deeply confusing and it makes me want to throw up.
''What do you know about — '' pause '' — the abductions?''
''Women. Young. Blonde. His wife owns a cosmetics company and he looks too young. What conclusion would you draw?''
''He has a good plastic surgeon. Hang on.'' The muscle car surges effortlessly around another bus. Meanwhile the SUV has pulled even with me, and the driver is waving his gun at me to pull over. I glance sideways once more and see his eyes. They look dead and worse than dead, like he's been in the water for a week and nothing's tried eating him. I recognize that look: they're using tele-operator-controlled zombies. Shit. My steering wheel is crawling with sparks as the occult countermeasures cut in, deflecting their braineating mojo.
I tense and hit the brakes, then push the cigarette lighter home in its socket during the second it takes him to match my speed. We come to a halt side by side on the crest of a low hill. The SUV's door opens and the dead guy with the gun gets out and walks over. I sniff: there's a nasty fragrant smoke coming out of the lighter socket.
He marches stiffly round to my side door, keeping the gun in view. I keep my hands on the steering wheel as he opens the door and gets in.
"Who are you?" I ask tensely. "What's going on"
"You ask too many questions," says the dead man. His voice slurs drunkenly, as if he's not used to this larynx, and his breath stinks like rotting meat. "Turn around. Drive back to Anse Marcel." He points the gun at my stomach.
"If you say so." I slowly move one hand to the gearshift, then turn the car around. The SUV sits abandoned and forlorn behind us as I accelerate away. I drive slowly, trying to drag things out. The stink of decaying meat mingles with a weird aroma of burning herbs. The steering wheel has sprouted a halo of fine blue fire and my skin crawls — I glance sideways but there are no green sparks in his eyes, just the filmed-over lusterless glaze of a day-old corpse. It's funny how death changes people: I startle when I recognize him.
"Drive faster." The gun pokes me in the ribs.
"How long have you had Marc?" I ask.
"Shut up."
/ need Ramona. The smell of burning herbs is almost overpowering.
I reach out to her: ''Phone me.''
''What's the problem? I'm driving as fast as — ''
''Just phone me, damn it! Dial my mobile now!'' Fifteen or twenty endless seconds pass, then my Treo begins to ring.
"I need to answer my phone," I tell my passenger. "I have to check in regularly."
"Answer it. Say that everything is normal. If you tell them different I'll shoot you."
I reach out and punch the call-accept button, angling the screen away from him. Then in quick succession
I punch the program menu button, and the pretty icon that triggers all the car's countermeasures simultaneously.
I don't know quite what I was expecting. Explosions of sparks, spinning heads, a startling spewage of ectoplasm? I get none of it. But Marc the doorman, who managed to die of one of the effects of terminal cocaine abuse just before Ramona's succubus could suck him dry, sighs and slumps like a dropped puppet. Unfortunately he's not belted in so he falls across my lap, which is deeply inconvenient because we're doing fifty kilometers an hour and he's blocking the steering wheel. Life gets very exciting for a few seconds until I bring the car to rest by the roadside, next to a stand of palm trees.
I wind down the window and stick my head out, taking in deep gasping breaths of blessedly wormwoodand fetor-free ocean air. The fear is just beginning to register: I did it again, I realize, I nearly got myself killed. Sticking my nose into something that isn't strictly any of my business. I shove Marc out of my lap, then stop. What am I going to do with him?
It is generally not a good idea when visiting foreign countries to be found by the cops keeping company with a corpse and a gun. An autopsy will show he had a cardiac arrest about a day ago, but he's in my car and that's the sort of thing that gives them exactly the wrong idea — talk about circumstantial evidence! "Shit," I mutter, looking around.
Ramona's on her way but she's driving a two-seater. Doubleshit.
My eyes fasten on the stand of trees. Hmm.
I restart the engine and reverse up to the trees. I park, then get out and start wrestling with Marc's body. He's surprisingly heavy and inflexible, and the seats are inconveniently form-fitting, but I manage to drag him across to the driver's side with a modicum of sweating and swearing.
He leans against the door as if he's sleeping off a bender.
I retrieve the Treo, blip the door shut, then start doodling schematics in a small application I carry for designing fieldexpedient incantations. There's no need to draw a grid round the car — the Smart's already wired — so as soon as I'm sure I've got it right I hit the upload button and look away. When I look back I know there's something there, but it makes the back of my scalp itch and my vision blur. If I hadn't parked the Car there myself I could drive right past without seeing it.
I shamble back to the roadside and look both ways — there's no pavement — then start walking along the hard shoulder towards Orient Beach.
It's still morning but the day is going to be baking hot.
Trudging along a dusty road beneath a spark-plug sky without a cloud in sight gets old fast. There are beaches and sand off to one side, and on the other a gently rising hillside covered with what passes for a forest hereabouts — but I'm either overdressed (according to my sweating armpits) or underdressed (if I acknowledge the impending sunburn on the back of my neck and arms). I'm also in a foul mood.
De-animating Marc has brought back the sense of guilt from Darmstadt: the conviction that if I'd just been slightly faster off the ball I could have saved Franz and Sophie and the others. It's also confirmed that my dreams of Ramona are the real thing: so much for keeping a fig leaf of deniability. She was right: I'm an idiot. Finally there's Billington, and the activities of his minions. Seeing that long, hungry hull in the distance, recognizing the watcher on the quay, has given me an ugly, small feeling. It's as if I'm an ant chewing away at a scab on an elephant's foot — a foot that can be raised and brought down on my head with crushing force should the pachyderm ever notice my existence.
After I've been walking for about half an hour, a bright red convertible rumbles out of the heat haze and pulls up beside me. I think it's a Ferrari, though I'm not much good at car spotting; anyway, Ramona waves at me from the driver's seat. She's wearing aviator mirrorshades, a bikini, and a see-through silk sarong. If my libido wasn't on the ropes from the events of the past twelve hours my eyes would be halfway out of my head: as it is, the best I can manage is a tired wave.
"Hi, stranger. Looking for a lift?" She grins ironically at me.
"Let's get out of here." I flop into the glove-leather passenger seat and stare at the trees glumly.
She pulls off slowly and we drive in silence for about five minutes. "You could have gotten yourself killed back there,"
she says quietly. "What got into you"
I count the passing palm trees. After I reach fifty I let myself open my mouth. "I wanted to check out a hunch."
Without taking her eyes off the road she reaches over with her right hand and squeezes my left leg. "I don't want you getting yourself killed," she says, her voice toneless and overcontrolled.
I pay attention to her in a way I can't describe, feeling for whatever it is that connects us. It's deep and wide as a river, invisible and fluid and powerful enough to drown in. What I sense through it is more than I bargained for. Her attention's fixed on the road ahead but her emotions are in turmoil. Grief, anger at me for being a damn fool, anxiety, jealousy. Jealousy? "I didn't know you cared," I say aloud. And I'm not sure I want you to care, I think to myself.
"Oh, it's not about you. If you get yourself killed what happens to me"
She wants it to sound like cynical self-interest but there's a taste of worry and confusion in her mind that undermines every word that comes out of her mouth.
"Something big is going down on this island," I say, tacitly changing the subject before we end up in uncharted waters.
"Billington's crew has got watchers out. Seagull monitors controlled from, um, somewhere else. And then I ran into Marc.
Judging by the state of my wards every goddamn corpse on the island must be moving — why the hell haven't they chained up the graveyards? And what's this thing they've got about single female tourists"
"That might not be part of Billington's core program."
Ramona sounds noncommittal but I can tell she knows more than she's admitting. "It might be his crew carrying on behind his back. Or something less obvious."
"Come on! If his sailors are kidnapping single females, you think he's not going to know about it"
Ramona turns her head to look me in the eye: "I think you underestimate just how big this scheme is."
"Then why won't you teil me?" I complain.
"Because I'm — " She bites her tongue. "Listen. It's a nice day. Let's go for a walk, huh"
"A walk — why?" I get the most peculiar sense that she's trying to tell me something without putting it
into words.
"Let's just say I wanna see your boxers, okay"
She grins. Her good humor's more fragile than it looks, but just for a moment I like what I can see. "Okay." I yawn, the aftereffects of the chase catching up with me. "Where do you want to go"
"There's a spot near Orient Bay."
She drives past tourists and local traffic in silence. I keep my mouth shut. I'm not good at handling emotional stuff and Ramona confuses the hell out of me. It's almost enough to make me wish Mo was around; life would be a lot simpler.
We hit a side road and drive along it until we pass a bunch of the usual beach-side shops and restaurants and a car park. Ramona noses the Ferrari between a Land Rover and a rack of brightly painted boneshaker bicycles and kills the engine. "C'mon," she says, jumping out and popping open the trunk. "I bought you a towel, trunks, and sandals."
"Huh"
She prods me in the ribs. "Strip off!" I look at her dubiously but her expression is mulish. There's a concrete convenience nearby so I wander over to it and go inside. I pull my polo shirt off, then lose the shoes, socks, and trousers before pulling on the swimming trunks. I have my limits: the smartphone I keep. I go back outside. Ramona is just about hopping up and down with impatience. "What are you doing with that phone?" she asks. "Come on, it'll be safe in the glove compartment."
"Nope. Not doing." I cross my arms defensively. The Treo doesn't fit nicely in the baggy boxer-style trunks' pocket, but I'm not handing it over. "You want my wallet, you can have it, but not my Treo! It's already saved my life once today."
"I see." She stares at me, chewing her lip thoughtfully.
"Listen, will you turn it off?" f "What? But it's in sleep mode — "
"No, I want you to switch it right off. No electronics is best, but if you insist on carrying — "
I raise an eyebrow and she shakes her head in warning. I look her in the eye. "Are you sure this is necessary"
"Yes."
My stomach flip-flops. No electronics? That's heavy. In fact it's more than heavy: to compute is to be, and all that. I don't mind going without clothes, but being without a microprocessor is truly stripping down. It's like asking a sorcerer to surrender his magic wand, or a politician to forswear his lies.
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