The Credulity Nexus (25 page)

Rik shook his
head. “I already ate. Knock yourself out.”

She wolfed
down both packets. “All right,” she said, still chewing the last
mouthful. “Why don't you fill me in on what you've been up to,
remembering the monitors, of course.”

Rik lay awake,
Freymann asleep beside him. A shower and a brisk workout, which
involved throwing furniture at the window and slamming himself
against the door, were all he’d had the energy for. So he'd
negotiated a non-intimate bed-sharing scheme with Freymann and
fallen onto the mattress, assuming he'd be asleep in seconds.

He wasn't. He
was wide awake and staring into the darkness, listening to the
steady breathing next to him and thinking, thinking.

He thought
about what would happen in the morning. He and Freymann had
discussed it briefly, but the only likely scenario was that
Cordell's people would torture Freymann and make Rik watch. There
was no other reason for her to be there. There was no way out of
the room they were in, and their only chance of escape would be
when the robots came for them in the morning. After that, there
seemed no point in talking any more. If they could get some sleep,
they might at least be better prepared to take whatever chances
might present themselves.

He thought
about Maria: where she was, what she was doing, whether she was
scared, whether she was safe.

He thought
about the Drew sisters, murdered by Lanham's people, about Veb and
the Mistress, about the Turgu, who had once seemed to loom so large
in his life and who were almost nothing now.

But mostly, he thought about what Freymann
had said, about him being the kind of man who likes to look after
women.
What’s wrong with that?
he wanted to know. After his father died, it was damned
lucky he did look after his mother and sister. There wasn't anybody
else around to do it.

Then the
inevitable happened; he remembered the crash. His mother was
laughing when that big robot semi jumped the barrier and came
towards them. He turned once more to look at her in that moment of
icy certainty, just as she turned to him, the smile still not quite
gone from her face. And on his tongue was the apology he never got
to speak. “I'm sorry, Mom.” That's what he had wanted to say in
that last instant. Sorry he couldn't save her. Sorry he had let her
down. Sorry his love hadn't been enough.

Tears ran down
his cheeks in the dark. And he understood, for the first time, the
fear that had driven him so crazy in that last year with Maria. He
saw how he had stormed into her life and taken on all her problems,
made himself the bulwark of her emotional life, pushed aside any
independence she might have wanted, and insisted that she should
depend on him for everything. Not just for money or anything
material; he was only a cop, for God's sake, although he did what
he could. No, it was her emotional dependency he wanted, and worked
so hard to get.

And she gave
it to him, cautiously at first, but then more and more, until she
leaned on him with her full emotional weight, gladly surrendering
the entirety of her happiness to his care.

And that's when the fear set in. The fear
that, sooner or later, he would fail. The fear – the
knowledge
– that one day that truck, or
something like it, would come bouncing over the central reservation
to smash straight into them. That whatever he did, however hard he
tried, he could never protect anybody. Not in the long
run.

He swung his
legs out of the bed and sat up. He wanted to get up and do
something – anything but lie there thinking.

And maybe he
was wrong, anyway. All that stuff he was thinking about fear and
failure. It hadn't felt like that at the time. Not really. All he
had felt then was a restlessness, a need to be out of the house,
away from Maria. When he was with her, it felt like there were
heavy weights on his chest, like black clouds in his head. He
couldn't talk to her. He couldn't look her in the eye without
vague, unnamed anxieties that made his stomach turn over. So he
stayed out. He hung out with the guys in bars. And that meant he
drank too much. And the worse he behaved, the worse he felt. The
more he saw the worry in Maria's eyes, the more it reminded him of
how he was letting her down.

He was on his
feet. He didn't remember standing up.

“
Rik?”

“
It's OK. I just couldn't
sleep.”

“
What's up?”

“
It's...” Something about the sound of
Freymann's voice made him pause. She sounded worried, but worried
about him, not for herself. “I was thinking,” he said. “Something
you said about me...”

“
What?”

Her voice was
gentle. An invitation. There, in the dark and the quiet, her voice
invited him to open up, to share whatever was troubling him, to let
her carry some of his load. He thought he could make out the vague
shape of her on the bed, propped up on one elbow.

“
Fariba, I think–”

An explosion
rocked the building. The flash of brightness from the window
quickly turned to a red glow. For a moment, each of them saw the
other's astonished face.

Another bright
flash, and then another explosion rattled the building. Closer this
time.

“
What the hell is that?”

Freymann
jumped off the bed and cautiously took a look through the window.
Just as she did, there was the clatter of rotors as a helicopter
swooped low outside.

“
It's a helicopter gunship!” she called out
to Rik, ducking back out of view. “A Comanche, Type 3 or 4, maybe.
No markings I could see.”

“
Someone's attacking Cordell's
house?”

“
Looks like it. It's nothing to do with my
guys. We might run the odd covert op over here, but shooting
missiles into a trillionaire's mansion isn't our style, whatever
you might see in the Bond movies.”

“
So it's either the FBI or–”

There was
another explosion. This one seemed to come from the corridor
outside. They heard shouting from beyond the door.

With a yell,
Rik launched himself across the room. He grabbed Freymann and
dragged her down beside the bed, heaving the mattress over them.
Barely a second later, the door blew inwards on a cloud of flame.
Even dampened by the mattress, the concussion slammed them to the
ground.

Without
bothering to check that his head hadn't cracked open, Rik tossed
the mattress aside and leapt up, ready to face whoever came through
the door.

“
Chill out, big guy,” Rivers said,
strolling through the smoke into the room. “It's only
me.”

She was black
again, and naked, and looking very pleased with herself. Rik had
never imagined being happy to see the young upload, but right then,
he could have kissed her.

“
You got a way out?” Freymann asked,
climbing to her feet. “No, don't bother telling me. I'll be deaf
for a week.”

“
How did you find us?” Rik
asked.

“
I just followed your distress
call.”

“
What?”

Rivers raised
her voice. “Your radio signal.”

“
That was me,” Freymann shouted. Then, at
Rik's puzzled expression, “What? You thought I smashed up that
dombot for fun?”

Which reminded
Rik that the two Barbie-dolls were still out there somewhere.
“We've got to go,” he told Rivers.

Another
explosion spoke of Rivers' friends still blowing up the place.
Without further debate, they moved out into the corridor, Rivers
leading.

“
Where the hell are we?” he asked as they
hurried along.

“
Cordell's place in the middle of nowhere,
north-east of Monclova, Mexico,” Rivers told him. “The only way in
or out is by air. When I saw which way you were headed, it was the
obvious destination. I whistled up the scramjet and beat you here
by a mile. I even had time to organise the chopper. It's surprising
the kind of hardware you can get your hands on in South America, if
your boss knows the right drug barons.”

They reached a
stairwell and ran down. Alarms and sirens were sounding all over
the building by then. Rik thought he heard the sound of a heavy
machine gun giving return fire. They found a locked double-door at
the foot of the stairs, and Rivers burst through it as if it were
nothing. Outside was one of the big lawns that Rik had seen from
the window of his room.

“
This'll do,” Rivers shouted. “The chopper
will be here in a moment.” Rik assumed she was in contact with the
pilot through her cogplus.

They moved
away from the house, into open space, and for the first time they
could see, behind them, the flames and smoke rising from the
central part of the sprawling mansion. Rik could clearly hear the
helicopter manoeuvring out of sight, and the deep rattle of
Cordell's guns up on the roof, trying to take down the gunship.

“
Stay where you are. Do not attempt to
escape.”

They all
turned to find the two robot guards standing just three metres
away. The girls had changed out of their white catsuits with the
bullet-holes, and were now wearing daring cocktail dresses. The
happy thought struck Rik that Rivers' attack had interrupted the
lovely Peth's night-time fun.

“
We don't have time for this,” Rivers said,
almost too quietly for Rik to hear, and rushed straight at the two
robots.

Rik moved to
follow her, but Freymann caught his arm with both hands and hung
on.

“
Let her get herself killed,” she
shouted.

Rik pulled
against her for a moment while the sense of what she had said sank
in. The helicopter was on its way. If Rivers could buy them a few
moments, fine. And if she didn't make it in the attempt, then that
was no great loss. He let Freymann pull him back, increasing their
distance from the fight.

In the uneven
red light from the fires, Rik struggled to make out the matte black
upload. But he heard her crash into one of the bots, and saw the
bot go down. The second one did not stop to assist its companion
but came after Rik at a run, long legs pounding, beautiful face set
in a neutral expression, skimpy dress clinging to sculptured
curves, all revealed in the hellish light of the burning
mansion.

Rik didn't
have time to register the strangeness of the sight. He watched the
approaching robot carefully, shifting his weight, trying to
prepare. In his peripheral vision, he saw Freymann adopt a fighting
stance.

The robot was
there, reaching for him with impossible speed. He barely managed to
twist out of the way, shooting out a fist, aiming for the shoulder.
But the machine was gone before his blow landed, turning and
reaching back for his extended arm. If it caught him, he thought,
it would all be over. He would never shake its grip, and it could
do whatever it liked to him.

But it didn't
catch him. It jerked away at the last moment, knocked off-balance
by Freymann's kick to the back of its leg. Rik regained his own
balance and tried to punch it again, hoping to keep it reeling, but
the machine stepped nimbly away from him. He and Freymann whirled
to face it, ready for its next attack, and for a moment it simply
watched them, perhaps reassessing its strategy and its
opponents.

A dark shadow
flitted through the air above them, as Rivers somersaulted over
their heads and thudded into the waiting robot. She grabbed its
head as they went down, twisting and heaving at it, and they rolled
across the lawn, struggling in a blur of limbs.

The helicopter
had arrived and was clattering above them as Rik turned to check on
the other robot. It was damaged, one arm hanging loosely and deep
scars in its skin – black on pink in the garish firelight. Its
little frock had been ripped off, and it limped towards them in a
g-string and bra. It would not be long before its nanite body had
repaired itself enough that it could re-enter the fight.

He turned to
Freymann. “Come on,” he shouted, pointing to the gunship dropping
towards them. He meant for them to run farther out onto the lawn so
the chopper could land and pick them up. But Freymann shook her
head and pointed back along the wall of the building. Half a dozen
men carrying machine guns were running towards them.

“
We've got to make a run for it,” Rik
bellowed, but the gunship was right over him now, and he couldn't
even hear himself. He grabbed her arm and pulled her. If they
waited any longer, the damaged robot would reach them, or one of
Cordell's men would shoot them.

A huge roar
cut through the noise of the chopper, and the world was lit by
brilliant, stuttering light. The gunship was firing. Around
Cordell's men, the ground was blasted into the sky. Then the gunner
found his mark, and Rik saw body parts flying as the men were torn
to pieces in a hail of armour-piercing, explosive bullets.

The thunder
above him stopped, and the world was dark again. Darker than
before. A slender hand with painted red nails caught Rik's arm and
held it in a grip of iron. He turned to find the face of the
damaged robot just inches from his own. It said something to him
that he did not hear and began to walk back to the house, dragging
Rik helplessly after it. Behind him, the Comanche touched down, the
blast from its rotors making his shirt billow and snap.

He wanted to
tell Freymann to get on board and get away, but when he looked back
he couldn't see her.

“
That's far enough, bitch!”