Omega Point (17 page)

  "Aren't you on the same side?" asked Richards.

  "No," said the guard.

  Bear raised an eyebrow.

  "I mean yes. They've all come out of the woods. Come to save us, they say. Us! There's this mad psychic badger who says he's seen the end of the world, that the Terror is coming here, here to Pylon City! I don't believe any of it."

  "That cable, there," said Bear, pointing. "The Terror did that. I saw it. Happy?"

  "Bah! That? A failure down the line. It's happened before, but the Prince took it as some kind of sign. Next thing I know, we're up to our bloody armpits in chipmunks. Ain't right, I tell you. I've not spent my entire life keeping the beggars out only to let all of them in. It ain't right!"

  "Neither is sleeping on duty," said Bear mildly.

  The guard made as if to grab his pike, but then thought better of it. "Leave me be! Isn't it enough that I've got to let you in?"

  "Is that right?" said Bear. "I've been living here for years, you know. Not all of us live in the Magic bloody Wood."

  "Yes! I would. Animals, think you're special, just because you can talk. If that's the bloody case why don't you have central heating? Some pissed-up bloody fox shat on me doorstep last week. And I'm a vegetarian. Do you know how much fox shit stinks? Bastard. Your papers, sir!" said the guard.

  "I'm looking for Commander McTurk. Do you know where he is?"

  "They're all at the square," said the guard. "The whole city. He'll be at the square."

  Bear leaned forward and cupped his hand round his ear.

  "Sir," added the guard truculently.

  "That's better," said Bear.

  "Big moot on, talk of war. You'll see."

  "Then you'll be glad of the help of the talking bloody animals," said Richards.

  The guard wafted a hand in front of his nose. "You there, you better take a bath! Or someone will like as not arrest you for vagrancy."

  "You do need a bath, you know," said Bear to Richards. "You stink."

  "Are you going to stand there all day gabbing? Clear off!" said the guard.

  "Thank you, my good man," said Bear. "Carry on."

  "Being sarcastic to armed men is not big or clever, Bear," said Tarquin.

  "Unlike me," said the bear.

  They passed through the gates. As outside, so inside; everything was made of iron. The walls, the road, the plant-pots, the carts, the gothic-lettered street signs. The metal varied in colour from the silvery-white of the tramlines to the angry red of the rooftops. A thousand hues of black and red and silver and grey. They could taste it on the air like blood.

  The city was as quiet as the grave. The three walked toward the centre, their feet ringing off the pavement, until the murmur of a crowd could be heard. They crested a low rise and were suddenly at the edge of a large square directly beneath the giant pylon.

  "Holy shit," said Richards, and reached up to push back his missing hat.

  The square was rammed full of people and creatures of all types; every Grid-born whimsy cooked up by humanity. Fantasy knights, Arabian warriors, bobble-headed, babyfied versions of popstars and holoartistes, spacemen, Vikings, orcs and elves, squeaky steampunk robots and elephantine aliens. Droids, drones, devils and dragons, goblins and warlocks, gangsters and clams with bazookas.

  Then there were the animals: strange, giant caricatures of animals, fevered imaginings of burnt-out cartoonists, fairytale versions of animals, bipedal and big. Animals that looked like they could live in a forest in the Real, others that appeared to have broken out of the children's section of a home ents library. Some plush, some not, some real as real can be, others rendered in graphical forms ranging from primitive pixel block through outright cartoon to uncanny valley-baiting photorealism.

  Generations of gaming characters culled from the broken RealWorlds Reality Realms and beyond and a thousand kinds of toy from half a century of AI-gifted playthings.

  All of them were talking frantically to one another.

  "It's a refugee camp for geek cast-offs. You two should feel right at home here," said Richards.

  "We don't," said Bear and Tarquin simultaneously, and with some conviction. "I've not seen a big gathering like this for, ooh, well, ever. Most of these tribes are bitter enemies. Come on," said Bear, raising his voice to be heard over the crowd. "Let's see what this is all about."

  Bear stopped and spoke with a guard, pointing at Richards. The guard executed a bow and hurried off.

  "We've got to wait," said Bear. "Let's see what's going on while we do." They joined the back of the crowd. A five-foot badger in a top hat stood on a stage directly in the centre of the square, an antiquated microphone before him. An important-looking man with an unconvincing skin stood off to one side.

  It looked like the badger had said something contentious, and Richards and Bear found a place as he raised one paw in an appeal for order. The heavy robe he wore whispered over his fur, the sound cutting under the mutter of the crowd. The menagerie took notice, and the square fell silent.

  "Friends, old and new, I realise what I say is hard for you to accept, but it is the truth!" said the badger. It was old, its breath wheezed, and there were far more silver hairs than black on his body. "It is with great difficulty that many of you came here. The ancient troubles between our people have driven us apart, but we must lay them to rest, or we shall all perish!" His head bobbed ceaselessly as he spoke, as if he were looking at a procession wending its way between the pylon lines above.

  "Bloody anthropomorphic menaces!" said someone in the crowd. "Piss off back to the forest!" But the voice was isolated, and quickly silenced.

  "It is perhaps a measure of the dangers that face us today," continued the badger, "that we are here as one, ready to stand up to the evil that awaits us." A whisper rustled through the crowd. "The armies of Lord Penumbra are massing to the south of Pylon City. He means to storm it. To take it and then the woods. He means to destroy us all." There was an awful pause.

  "Rubbish!" shouted a man.

  "There's no Death of the World. No Great Terror. It's a myth. He's just another warlord!" said a bright pink ocelot.

  "We shouldn't be friends with these apes!" said a small blue hedgehog.

  "What do you know? You live in a hole!" rebuked an archaeologist.

  The man on the stage gesticulated angrily. He ushered the badger out of the way and took the mic. A screech of feedback blasted the crowd, causing several rodents to pass into a dead faint.

  "Silence," shouted the man. He had a large amount of embroidery and fancy cloth in his outfit. Big rubies. A collar that said "Lord High Mayor and/or Prince". "It is true. If it were not, why have the trade routes to the east fallen empty? Why are the roads choked with refugees? Why have we been suffering earthquakes in this previously geologically stable area? One of the great cables," he said, shaking a finger above his head, "there! Is brought low." The crowd followed his finger up the pylon, a few of the assembled pointing at the slack line. "The black arcs of Lord Hog make ever greater use of the skylines. Our friend Mr Spink speaks the truth, though many of you here doubt his powers. The world is ending!

  "We of Pylon City and the folk of the Magic Forest have been at war for many sorrowful generations! But Mr Spink is right. Now is the time to put aside our woes and unite!"

  "Keep your hands off our trees, you bastard!" shouted someone. There was a grumble of agreement from the beasts.

  "And men of Pylon City, creatures from across the industry lands, I have not been your prince these long years by listening to every wise man who would bend my ear without taking account of my own counsel."

  "Nor," said Bear behind his paw, "has he been their prince for those long years without having the heads of those wise men who disagreed with his counsel removed with large iron shears."

  "Yesterday evening I sent our most percipient thog riders out to the south. Men of keen vision whose eyes may gallop along the horizon more swiftly even than their mounts."

  There was nodding and agreement in the crowd. "It's true," said one man. "Fast they are. And the men keen-eyed."

  "What the hell is a thog?" said Richards out of the corner of his mouth.

  "Like a cow with six legs," said Bear.

  "Very quick, and extremely palatable. Needlessly pedantic, though," added Tarquin.

  "Nine set out," continued the prince. "Only one returned, and on the point of death. Before he died in my own arms he said this to me: 'Make ready for war, my prince. Lord Penumbra marches on the city.'"

  "What? Why would he attack us?" shouted a man at the front of the square. "We sold him his army!" There was much coughing and shuffling about amongst the men present. A four-foot rat in dungarees turned to a well-padded fellow. "Shame on you!" it said. The man flushed and looked away.

  "Yes. Well," said the Prince, "perhaps it is time to look over our long-cherished views on impartiality." There were murmurs. The Prince paused. "And perhaps we should question the wisdom of selling an army of automata to a man who is composed entirely of darkness."

  "You don't say," said an angry cat in a hat.

  "Though many of our number are but artisans and fabricators, we have no choice but to make a stand," continued the Prince. "I have placed the Pylon Guard under the command of Lord High Commander Hedgehog. He and Mr Spink have brought eight thousand animal warriors with them. We of Pylon City stand with many folk who have fled here from elsewhere, as we do also with the people of the plateau and western lands. It is only true and proper that the Lord High Commander lead our combined forces in battle. I delegate full responsibility to him, for I am a merchant, not a soldier. Henceforth our troops are his to command." The Prince smiled winningly at the crowd.

  "I'll bet he's on the next train out of here," said Bear. "No balls, that prince."

  "And he's beaten you like twenty times!" called out a highspirited seal pup. He was shushed by his father.

  "Gentlefolk, I give you Lord High Commander Hedgehog." There was a burst of applause as a man-sized hedgehog in a suit of armour waddled onto the stage, spines poking through holes in his cuirass, all protected by artfully articulated sleeves. A cohort of heavily armoured men and animals took up station before the stage. Richards felt himself jostled, and he turned to see guards encircling the crowd.

  "Hello," said Lord High Commander Hedgehog in a cheery kind of way. "I say, I say, it's a rum old thing but I've got some awfully bad news." He smiled weakly at the crowd. "I'm afraid you're all going to have to fight. Sorry and all, but there is a war on." Hedgehog's voice was cluttered with stilted upper-class nonsense, but there was steel in it.

  The hedgehog began to talk of musters and conscription, of regiments and barracks. But Richards caught none of it. A guard approached Bear.

  "Sir? Commander McTurk is here to see you."

  "He has come in person. Good." Bear nodded in satisfaction as a stumpy mechanism clunked through the crowd to them, steam-powered and man-shaped, like the haemites, though fairer of form.

  The automaton stopped by the Bear and his prisoner. Bear saluted. "Sir! I came upon this man while I was conducting a longrange patrol to the east of Optimizja. He maintains that he…"

  McTurk interrupted, steam whistling out of his mouth as he spoke. "Richards. So you got my message. Not that I am unhappy to see you, but just what the hell are you doing here? It's not safe."

  "Huh?" said Bear. "You
know
each other?"

  "You could say that, Bear." Richards' face broke into a broad smile. "A social call is all, Rolston. I thought I'd see how k52's plan to take over the world was doing. And how you were. Say, what do you know about k52 and his plan to take over the world?" His smile grew less friendly. "Or is it your plan too, Rolston?"

  "There's no time for that," the automaton rumbled. "k52 has eyes everywhere. Come with me – there's somewhere we can talk."

 

The Prancing Weasel was a rough pub on a rough night at a rough time, and was actually full of your actual weasels: long, ribbon-bodied psychopaths who were amusing themselves by doing dangerous, drunken things with knives. The iron of the walls was rusty, the floors sticky, the air heavy with oxidised iron, stale beer and sweaty fur.

  The tables and benches were in a worse state than the floor. Richards got a table while Bear and Rolston were at the bar, but when Bear returned, he refused to sit. "My fur will get dirty," he said. Richards sat anyway, getting a rust stain on Tarquin's hindquarters from the bench.

  "What is this place?" said Tarquin with dismay. "This isn't the kind of establishment I am inclined to frequent." He looked at the embattled bar staff running from table to table, slopping grog as they went. "My tail is dangling into something most unpleasant."

  "You're imagining that," said Richards, as he flicked Tarquin's tail out of a spittoon.

  "Hmmm," said Bear, gulping ale from a bucket.

  Richards sipped his own drink. The beer was surprisingly good. The Prince had declared all inns to be free for the night, and people and animals had crowded them to breaking point. They're partying like it is the end of the world, thought Richards. Which, technically speaking, I suppose it is.

  Most of the patrons were mammals of one kind or another, although the Prancing Weasel's clientele included a couple of birds, and there was a frog with a gun in the corner.

  A band of rowdy vole mercenaries sat on a nearby table, upsetting acorns and starting fights. They sang songs in a register so high it set Richards' teeth on edge. On the other side of the room a gang of drunken badgers boxed with hares, while the men in the place built their courage with outrageous tales and heroic quantities of booze.