Reality 36 (17 page)

  At night they rested upon a low hill as far away from open water as possible. Their second day's travel was harder. They had gone barely a third of the way over the morass.

  On the third day, they encountered a broad expanse of moss broken by many pools. For the fourteenth time in a handful of hours, Tarquinius found himself immersed to his haunches in black muck. The basalt golf ball remained frustratingly distant.

  "Damn it, Jag!" said the lion. "We're getting nowhere. We have to come up with some other plan."

  Jag slapped a mosquito the size of a fist, mashing it to ruin against his filthy coat of plates. "Perhaps then, dear comrade, I should go on alone."

  "Jag, don't be ridiculous. You would fail, you have no hope on your own. Perhaps if we were to... Wait!" Tarquinius' head swung round. "To the east; I hear screams."

  "What?"

  "Female." Tarquinius' tongue disgorged itself. "164 centimetres, 59 kilogrammes. She is assailed by… something. I can't get a fix on it."

  "That has happened too often recently for my continued ease."

  "Ah. So now you are also concerned, I see." Tarquinius' stentorian voice disappeared to be replaced by an amplification of the encounter. The woman's cries were mingled with the chatter of weapons fire, drowning out her obscenities. Over all, a low and dreadful humming.

  "She seems spirited."

  "She only has a thirteen point two percent chance of survival. We should aid her."

  "Why? The lives of many more depend upon the alacritous completion of our task," said Jagadith.

  "Because she is what she is."

  "Yes?"

  "She is one of
them
, not one of
us
– a person; with a capital H," said Tarquinius.

  "How so?" Jagadith leapt aboard his mount. "Is it she we must confront?" He paused. "Why do her own creatures attack her?"

  "Because she is not our prey." Tarquinius grunted hard as he hauled himself out of the ooze. "Her access protocols are intact; outmoded, forbidden, perdita – but intact and distinct from whatever is causing that vortex. The attackers are not of her fashioning."

  "Then we must aid her, and expel her. Ah! This is a regrettable diversion."

  Tarquinius shook out his metal mane, flinging out mud and strings of algae. "You must hold fast. I have a low probability of making the dash without becoming mired. It would serve you ill if you were to be thrown. Ready?"

  "As always." Jag drew his sword. "Let us not be delaying any longer, I am eager to learn why this goddess breaks the seals."

  With a roar that sent clouds of birds screaming from the marsh, Tarquinius leapt forward. His paws gouged sucking holes from the mud as he ran. A few times he slipped, a few more he faltered. Once he went crashing on to his chest, and it was all the knight could do to keep in the saddle.

  The lion played the goddess's voice as they ran. Slowly its defiance seeped away.

  "Quickly Tarquinius! Quickly!"

  "I see her. I see her!" bellowed the lion. With a lurch, Tarquinius stumbled on to more solid ground, and he accelerated to impossible speed. Wind streamed through the lion's hair, bending the feather back on Jagadith's turban and stinging tears from his eyes. Ahead, a woman was running frantically through the swamp, turning to shoot behind her.

  Her pursuers were abominations. Fat flies the size of children, their bodies stopped halfway in the transformation from maggot. Their heads were those of hags, multifaceted eyes erupting from their putrescent flesh, mouths frothing drool. They formed a shifting mass of airborne flesh, its parts moving too quickly for Jag to count, though he estimated at least twenty. One fell from the sky, pinwheeling, its wings shattered by bullets, but there were too many for the woman to defeat.

  "Prepare! Prepare! Combat configuration initiated," shouted Tarquinius. Mirrored plates dropped down to cover his eyes, a shield of the same material rising from his back to protect his rider. Missile racks rose from his flanks. A perforated gorget swung out and up from under his chin over his mouth. Atop the saddle, a panel slid back to reveal a tactical display, reticules darting about. "Fire!" he roared. A salvo of missiles streaked towards the insect-things, blowing three apart in a welter of gore. Tarquinius galloped faster, gathering in his legs to hurl himself into the swarm. The insects' wings whined as horribly as meatsaws as Tarquinius swatted them from the sky. Jag's sabre glowed with blue fire, the creatures he destroyed dissipating like broken television pictures on the breeze.

  The woman had fallen in the mud and could not rise. One of the downed insects dragged itself toward her. She pointed her gun at it and pulled the trigger. The weapon clicked, empty. She shouted in frustration and threw it aside.

  A huge metal paw descended on the creature with a final squelch.

  "All destroyed, Jagadith."

  "Jolly good. Now," said Jagadith, turning to Veronique Valdaire lying prone in the swamp. "My dear goddess," said Jagadith "Pray be telling us who you are and what you are doing within the confines of the Thirty-sixth Realm. This place is as forbidden to you as it is to the god who did this." He gestured delicately at the ruined insects. "Explain yourself."

  "I don't know what you're talking about. I'm lost," stammered Veronique. "I came up from Blandorray by zeppelin three weeks ago, those horrible things…"

  She was somewhat attractive, noted Jag, her skin a lustrous ebony under its smears of mud. The lion glared at her. Tarquinius had no time for the percentiles of beauty.

  Jagadith held up a perfect, if dirty, hand.

  "Please! Be sparing us your falsehood, madam goddess. We are not to be bamboozled, is this not correct?"

  "Right," agreed the lion. "No bamboozling. We know what you are."

  "And, we did save your life. And you are carrying a representation of a Hechler series nine electrically activated automatic assault rifle, which, as we are both aware, is not something any of the natives hereabouts would even dream of, being unfamiliar with firearms beyond rifled muskets. An illegal game add-on, is it not, from the old days? So, even if you are thinking to mislead us, it would be most discourteous in light of your rescue, and foolish when taken in consideration of this evidence." He refreshed his smile. "Now, please tell us who you are."

  "Dammit!" said Veronique, slapping the mud. Jagadith wrinkled his nose; he did not approve of women swearing. "Dammit dammit dammit! OK, OK. My name's Veronique Valdaire. I'm an AI systems analyst working on a digital anthropology project out of UCLA under Zhang Qifang."

  "Ah yes, we are familiar with this project, and the good professor. Qifang gave you your codes? They should not permit full access."

  "I had my near-I modify them, ran myself out through relays via a defunct experimental satellite. It's how I got in."

  "You are talented, then." Jagadith looked around at the dead insects. "Even without this ungodly commotion going on, we would have been alerted to your presence eventually. And perhaps, under different circumstances, you would not have been so happy to see us. There have been fatalities from our encounters with interlopers in the past."

  "Those are my preferred outcomes," growled Tarquinius, shifting his weight.

  "Your choice to enter the Realms makes you a criminal, I am afraid. You are not the first researcher who was tempted to break the seals, and no doubt you will not be the last."

  "Let's expel her now," said Tarquinius.

  "Why are you here? To study us up close and personal, as you might say? Find your own world of marvellous wonders tiresome? Or did you just fancy a little game of god?" Jagadith's face became hard.

  "No, of course not. I am not a hacker. I came here because of Professor Qifang. There's something odd happening in the dead space outside of the extant Realms. He found it, but he disappeared. He sent me a message to meet him here, and so here I am."

  "This is most irregular," said Jagadith.

  "Indeed," said Tarquinius. "Could it be that Qifang is the god we seek? That is a sorry prospect."

  "Betrayal is a possibility we must consider," said Jagadith sadly.

  "I came here to help. I want to help," said Veronique. "I need to find out what he uncovered. He left me data – someone's being manipulating the dataflows across the whole of the Realms. It wasn't him. Betraying his principles is not the way Qifang is. If he says he has discovered something, then he has."

  "A something left conveniently undescribed. He is old, is he not?" said Jagadith.

  "A hundred and twenty-seven."

  "There you have it, my dear. Impending mortality affects us all, shaking even the most deeply held principle. I am very sorry for being so abrupt, but your actions are a trifle fishy to me. And also terribly foolish," said Jagadith. He wobbled his head.

  "I have done nothing but study the Realms. I would never do anything to harm them," said Veronique.

  "Your very presence belies that," said Jagadith curtly. "Still, we cannot expel you as of yet. The disruption to this Realm is too extreme. De-interfacing your mind could kill you."

  "I say do it anyway," said Tarquinius.

  "Pay no heed to him," sighed the paladin. "We are duty bound to safeguard human life, as far as is possible. We are the paladins of this Realm. I am Sir Jagadith Veyadeep, Vedic templar of the Order of Silken Lights. This, your divinity, is my mount and friend, Tarquinius."

  "Good day," rumbled the lion.

  "Madam goddess, by directly connecting with our reality you have placed yourself in an inordinate amount of danger. I must be asking you to accompany us until we can expel you safely."

  Jag reached out his hand. Veronique looked doubtfully at it.

  "Goddess one minute, expulsion the next. I've had some mixed messages from men in the past." She grasped the paladin's grimed hand. He pulled her up on to the saddle behind him. "If I can help, I will. I was in the USNAPC for six years…"

  Jagadith raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  "United States of North America Peace Corps," she explained.

  "A charming modern euphemism for 'army'?" said Jag. "You were a soldier then?"

  "Yes, not frontline, cyberwarfare division. I also have degrees in AI psychology and virtual ecology, I'm not helpless. I know this Realm, I can fight."

  "Madam goddess, you could have a doctorate in the structure and manifestation of our kingdom, and your studies would never prepare you for the confrontation we must attend to. An old man your professor may be in your world, but not here. Here he is a god," Jagadith said sternly. "Now, this must go." Veronique's gun disappeared. "And do not be using any of your privileges to interfere with the good working of this universe again. If you would sit and be quiet, my friend and I have terrible peril to be dealing with. Tarquinius," he said to the lion, "I believe the worst of the swamp is behind us now."

  Tarquinius padded through the mire, surreptitiously watching the digital anthropologist. The look on her face made him smile as only the king of the beasts can.

Chapter 11

Quaid

The police cruiser bobbed on the Medway swell, the navigation lights of the
Aurora Viva
lost then found in the folds of night half a mile out. An amber necklace of exclusion beacons about the yacht slid up and down the water, the hull they encircled a stepped shadow punctuated by the eggwhisk silhouettes of rotary sails.

  Lights blinked far off on the windmills of the North Sea arc, tracing the northern shore of Boris Island. Beyond ships glittered like the table decorations of maharajahs. The double spires of the Channel carbon sequestration plants soared as gaudy as Christmas trees on the horizon. Inland, the swamps of Essex were blacker than the sea, towns hinted at by the muted glow on the undersides of clouds.

  The sky was an unbroken murk, but there were stars in the water, luminescent algae moving with the waves. A pair of police launches cast them into swirls as they prowled back and forth in long sweeps within the cordon, sonar scanning the seabed, while a million candle searchlights darted out to stab at one whitetop then another, retreating in disappointment at every foray. From below the mournful sea-monster eyes of autonomous submersibles shone.

  Otto dialled his magnification back to normal. Richards sat on the deck, legs out before him like a child, fiddling with his dicopter box.

  "I'm going to need to fab some more of these, I'm down to my last half dozen," he grumbled. He scrabbled around a bit and discovered a group of short-range relay ants, the size of old one-euro coins, five legs arranged round the rim. They scuttled out of the way of Richards' finger when he poked at them, their chirruping on the edge of human hearing. "What are these doing in here? Little beggars get everywhere!" Otto grunted by way of reply. He didn't like the sea, it made him queasy. They'd never found a cure for motion sickness. He tried not to look at the ocean surface, fearing he would pitch forward into a wet infinity of tiny green suns.

  "This'll do." Richards slid one of the drawers of the box shut with a click. He opened his hand. On his synthetic palm sat a synthetic fly. He stood up carefully, hand flat. His sheath's softgel covering glowing white with reflected light, painting him as some manic waterborne pierrot against the dark. "There we go," he said. The artificial fly jumped into the air, and buzzed out across the water.

  "I don't see why we just don't go on board now. We have a warrant from Hughie," said Otto.

  "I want to get a look at them before they know we're coming," Richards said. "I know you get seasick but these things are really fragile. If I'd have sent it out from the shore it'd have been blown away." Richards stood on tiptoe as his sheath unconsciously followed the movements of the tiny machine he was guiding toward the
Aurora Viva
.

  "Hmm," said Otto. A hot breeze was blowing from the southeast, unusual at the beginning of September. The rains would probably be late. The Londons were going to cook a few weeks longer. "I can taste it from when Tufa hit me with that cattle prod." He spat over the side.