Xenoform (31 page)

‘I talk to the organ grinder,’ said Roland. ‘No offence.’

‘None taken. I’ll tell her.’ Roberts considered the possibility that Roland was just using this as an excuse to get Whistler back round to his lair. The old boy was clearly smitten, and why not. Roberts began to count out the cash onto one of the few clear areas of work-surface, watched keenly by those dark eyes. As soon as he reached nine-thousand, Roland’s skeletal hand darted out, pilfered the pile and stowed it about his person in one fluid and surprisingly quick motion. He was probably running some synaptic-enhancement software.

‘Thanks, then, Roland,’ said Spider again, taking the ammo boxes and dropping them into the various bulky pockets of his combat jacket. The bulges they made were barely noticeable on his massive person. Less easy to hide, of course, was the rifle itself, but the harvesters had no concerns about walking to the van with it. The police didn’t really come round here, and of course they also had almost-blanket immunity.

Roberts paused as he headed for the door. ‘What is that?’ he asked.

‘What?’ responded Roland. ‘I don’t...’ He trailed off, squinting as if this would help him hear better. ‘That noise?’

‘What the hell...?’ asked Spider. His gaze was drawn to the main workbench in the centre of the room. Upon its battered surface tiny machine parts were gently vibrating, dancing in a silvered blur. Several of them worked their ways to the edge of the table and fell to the floor. Spider stared dumbstruck, a great frown creasing his wide face. The door of an old cupboard beside the battered sofa slowly swung open of its own accord. ‘Get down!’ he yelled, dropping to his knees and trying to shelter his massive body beneath the table. Roland didn’t seem to hear him, just stood there with an expression of mild bemusement on his face.

A great booming thunder was rolling out of the east. Roberts ducked and moved in a crouch towards the front door. For a moment Spider thought he was going to dive out of it. Out on the street they could hear people shouting. Roland’s robot had come out from under the workbench and stood poised on its rear-most set of legs, head cocked. It still held a crumb of stainless steel in its mandibles. Its segmented eyes were alive with strange intelligence.

‘An explosion,’ said the robot, startling everyone. ‘Near the space port.’ Its voice was surprisingly human, if genderless. One of the guns fell off the wall with a loud clatter that cut through the deep rumbling coming from outside, making all the humans jump. Roland swore softly.

Roberts looked at the robot. ‘Near the
space port
? It must be a hell of a bang. Are we safe here?’

‘Too many variables,’ said the robot dismissively.

‘Safe from the fucking bomb, or whatever it is! The explosion, you smartass machine!’ Glass was breaking nearby in the city – a delicate, shimmery, tinkling noise. Pod alarms were going off.

‘Yes,’ said the robot. It managed to sound offended. ‘For now.’

‘Sshh...’ said Roland. ‘Is still going on. Listen!’

‘Shit!’ cried Spider in what seemed like a fair summation of the situation. ‘I have to see what it is, Roland. Look – thanks for the toy. We have to roll, but we’ll be in touch, all being well. Assuming this isn’t the end of the world or some shit.’ He got to his feet and took the new mag-rifle.

‘Okay, no problem,’ said Roland distractedly. ‘I just come out and have a look with you.’ He started to the door.

‘Okay, let’s go,’ said Roberts. He cautiously opened the door, slightly surprised that it hadn’t been locked.

They stepped out into the grey trench of the alley. Random screams and shrieks pierced the day. Because of the narrow viewing angle afforded by the towering buildings around them they couldn’t see much of the city. However, the alley ran almost due east-west and a massive pillar of black smoke could be seen rising from what had been the northern edge of Centre District.
Had been
because that distinctive part of the city’s skyline, which had included several iconic tower blocks, was gone. The vast column of smoke rising from there made it look as if the huge black leg of a giant had stomped a great swathe of the city flat. What must have been massive chunks of debris fluttered against the sky like leaves in the wind. The orange dance of fire lit the skyline like an artillery barrage. Sirens could be heard climbing above the sounds of human distress, triggered by the shock-wave. The three people and the robot stood stunned, staring into the sky like prophets who had seen their deity descending from the heavens, wreathed in fire and brimstone, bent on vengeance.

‘What the hell happened?’ asked Roberts. People ran past in fleeing panic, jostling him, shouting and crying. Spider clutched the mag-rifle close to his chest and began to load it from one of the boxes still in his pocket. His face was grimly set.

‘I don’t know,’ breathed Roland. ‘I never seen anything like it. Are we under attack?’ His face hung slackly, like the flesh of a corpse. ‘Ariadne? What was it?’

‘I can’t even get satellite-feed at the moment,’ said the robot. ‘So I couldn’t say. I will keep trying to connect.’

‘About that,’ said Roberts, still staring at the amorphous monster in the sky. Waves of flame towered and crashed down on the distant streets of Centre District on bat-wings of pumping smoke. ‘I think you should keep that gizmo off the net for now. We have a guy at our place who tells us not to connect, that there’s something dangerous loose in the net, some AI.’

‘I noticed you guys had no net-sigs, but you don’t think much of it round these parts. An AI? What, like a smart virus? That would explain some of the stuff that’s been going on. You think this was done by your virus? We’re under attack from a fucking computer bug?’

Roberts swallowed heavily, looking into the old man’s enquiring face. ‘It could be. And it could be one monster of a bug.’ And then, seemingly to himself: ‘Man. This is some serious shit. A lot of people live over there.’

Roland kicked his robot, who chittered electronically and scuttled away. ‘You hear that, Ari?’ he demanded of the machine. ‘Stay off the fucking net ’til I say otherwise. And don’t connect any of the guns, either.’

‘Okay, okay,’ replied the robot resentfully. ‘I rather doubt that your friend is correct, though, just for the record.’

‘Give a damn what you doubt,’ muttered Roland sullenly. He turned again to Roberts. ‘When did machines start to answer humans back, eh?’

Roberts shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’

Spider was watching the city burn. A cloud of dust boomed up from the horizon as another building crumbled and fell, presumably fatally damaged by the initial explosion. It looked almost insignificant from here, like an anthill blowing away in the wind. The sirens were becoming a symphony. It sounded like some of them were going in the wrong direction. ‘We made these machines more and more clever, and maybe this is what we get,’ he said quietly. ‘In the end, this is what we get. I think the net just declared war on us. Find a religion now is my advice.’ He powered up the rifle. It thrummed gently, reassuringly. ‘Just in case,’ he said when Roberts turned to look.

‘
In case
what
?’ demanded Roberts.

Spider shook his head. ‘In case
whatever
,’ he said.

Roberts sighed. ‘Okay, we’d better get back to base if we can. I can’t raise them on sat-link and I’m not going to try net. Roland, will you be okay here? You could come with us if you like, I guess. We already have one lodger, so another won’t hurt. We don’t have much food, but...’

Roland seemed to consider this proposition carefully, staring at the cloud of smoke. Already the wind was tearing rags from it, elongating the top, blowing it slowly towards them. A heaving sea of flame rolled beneath it, occasional jets of fire fountaining up. The wind was hot on their faces and the sickening tang of burning fuel was on it. ‘I be okay here.’ He sounded unsure of this to Roberts. Roberts felt unsure of everything as of about two minutes ago, so he knew how Roland felt.

‘The fire will come this way, Roland. It’s going to eat the Lanes, and then it’ll come here.’

‘They gonna stop it,’ answered Roland, not taking his eyes from the firestorm.

‘Who is?’ asked Spider.

Roland shook his head. ‘Maybe they cut a firebreak in the city. They find a way. Somebody’s gonna have to.’

Ari shifted as if it wanted to say something, but the robot must have thought better of it, because it held its peace. Its mandibles wiggled nervously and it seemed unable to look away from the burning horizon. People were hanging out of the windows of the surrounding tenements, craning to see, faces pallid with horror. Roberts could hear a woman crying, nearby but out of sight. Her sobs were shrill and desperate, cutting through the general racket. It was a sound of dark despair. A shiver went down his spine.

‘Come with us, Roland. We’ve got the van. The fire’ll reach here before it gets to our place if the wind stays steady. We can get the others, move on if we have to. I can’t imagine it being stoppable. The roads are going to be choked. We should go.’

‘No, no, thanks,’ said Roland firmly. He turned to go back indoors. ‘I can get anything I need here. If I need a pod, I get one. Even with communication difficult, I can send my robot. I wait a bit, see what happens.’

‘Okay, man,’ said Spider. He was practically itching to go. ‘We need to go check in with base. Thanks for the gun, Roland. All the best. 13A Molder Jackson Complex, if you change your mind.’ Spider’s face was set and worried. Although he had only just met Roland the old man had already endeared himself to Spider – he had a strangely compelling charisma.

‘No problem. And don’t worry about me, I’m sure. See you again sometime. When the world comes right again, eh?’ He laughed and coughed, waving Ari to follow him. Birds were streaming out of the east, hectic with terror.

‘I hope so,’ said Roberts. He turned to Spider, who nodded his head towards the west, where the van was parked. They set off at a brisk walk.

Roberts looked back once. The gun-merchant and his robot were disappearing back into the dimness of Roland’s office. He hoped the old man would be okay. Surely he was tougher than he looked – he had probably been a gang-fighter in his youth, veteran of a hundred trials of life and death. Contented by this thought, Roberts jogged after the rapidly-striding Spider. Streams of hurrying people rushed in both directions, but mostly away from the new terror blossoming in the east.

Reaching the van felt like coming home from a strange and hostile land, but Roberts knew the feeling was illusory. They were far from safe just yet. He strapped himself into the pilot’s seat and fired up the manual control panel. Although the van had been disconnected from the net since the morning before he didn’t trust the vehicle completely. Something could have infected it before then. Unlikely, but Roberts had stayed alive this long by being cautious. The universe had tried unsuccessfully to trick him into fatal complacency many times before. He wouldn’t trust the machine to drive itself. Spider was calling up manual weapon controls on the overhead terminal, his shiny pincers somewhat clumsy on the interface. His DNI sockets were useless metal wounds in his shaven skull. His slab-like teeth were clenched.

Roberts moved the van away from the roadside parking slot and headed straight towards the heart of the Undercity proper. He tried to keep a rein on the speed, knowing that he might panic if he let it get out of control. First he would be just stepping on it, next he would be flooring it and then he would be in a blind, fleeing rout. Instead, he drove efficiently and calmly. There was surprisingly little traffic on the small, ancient roads near Roland’s place. The van slunk, panther-like, through the shadows that blanketed the narrow streets here even in daytime.

They turned down one road whose mouth was so constricted that Roberts inched the van through at walking speed. Spider wasn’t worried. Roberts knew the area fairly well. The streets never changed here, never developed, never seemed to erode either. Long ago, Roberts had fought running battles with government forces through these narrow alleys, surviving for years when the average life expectancy of an insurgent was about three months. He had only told the others of this period of his life once, when he had first joined them. Then he’d never mentioned it again. Nobody asked about it.

Spider relaxed a little, trusting his companion. He still watched the composite picture on the monitor, showing the views from all the van’s external cameras, though. The mag-rifle lay on his lap like a sleeping dog as the grimy streets passed by. The sky was dark with smoke and turbulent with sirens. A woman scuttled across the road in front of them on numerous tiny millipede-legs of anodised alloy, then she was gone into the dark outcrops of a battered building. Spider almost shot her on instinct, his claw fluttering to the gun-turret controls before relaxing again.

They moved through tumbledown streets as the sky above them darkened and became hazy with smoke. Roberts turned on the filtration system. The electrical smell of the purifier gradually replaced the oily stench of the burning city.

As they passed a road on their right Spider caught a glimpse of gang fighters encircling some sort of animal, or modified human – something ragged and broken-looking with mossy fur. It floundered on the floor, its limbs flopping weakly, seemingly jointed in the wrong places. The sun illuminated the figures greyly from behind its shroud of ash and smoke. As the van passed them and they were lost from sight Spider heard the chatter of gunfire.