Alone, he looked around. Steam rose from the boiling pan of water. Rain spots dappled the window. He still held the papers in his hand. He dropped them onto the table as if they might bite him, and rubbed his forehead with thumb and index finger.
He’d been in and out of the Céleste facility for years. Of course they had a file on him; that was no surprise. But why had it upset Julie so badly? For a moment, he entertained the idea of a fatal disease. Could his last batch of tests have turned up a tumour, or other anomaly, which the doctors had somehow neglected to mention?
His eyes fell on the tin mug into which Julie had spooned the coffee granules. Longing for a drink, he crossed to the fireplace and tried to lift the pan of boiling water.
“Ow! Damn!”
The pan hit the floor with a metallic crash. Water burst over the flagstones. Merovech sucked his fingers and cursed his stupidity. Wrapped up in thought, it hadn’t occurred to him to use the cloth that hung beside the grate.
After a moment, he pulled his fingers from his lips and blew on them. They were red and stinging, but not seriously hurt. Ruefully, he reached for the cloth. The pan had landed on its side, and a little water remained: perhaps enough for half a cup. He picked it up and poured it into the mug of granules that Julie had left. The fridge was empty of cream, so he gave the coffee a perfunctory stir, rattling the spoon against the mug’s tin sides, and was about to lift it to his lips when he became aware of another presence in the room. He turned his head to the back room door and stiffened.
“Who are you?” Ack-Ack Macaque stood in the doorway, scratching his balls. His solitary eye looked yellow and bloodshot, and his fur had bald patches where the electrodes had been removed. He smacked his lips together and sniffed the air. “Is that coffee?”
Merovech looked down at the half-empty mug in his hand.
“Um, yes.”
He hadn’t expected the monkey to speak. But of course it could. He’d heard it talking in the clip of the game he’d been shown in the café.
The animal shuffled over and snaked the cup from him. He huffed the steam into his cavernous nostrils, and sighed; then tipped the rim to his lips with a noisy slurp.
“Ah, that’s the stuff.” He drew the back of his hand across his mouth and ran a pink, human-looking tongue over his pointed white incisors. Then he fixed Merovech with his one good eye.
“Now,” he said gruffly, “who the hell are you, where the fuck are we, and how did I get here?”
CHAPTER NINE
IMAGINARY FLOOR
FROM THE WINDOW of her cabin on the Tereshkova, seven hundred feet above the rain-drenched asphalt of Heathrow’s main cargo terminal, Victoria Valois watched a sullen dawn break over West London. She had wrapped herself in her thick army surplus coat, and pushed her feet into her sturdiest pair of boots. She wore a turtle neck sweater to hide the tight, elasticised collar the ship’s surgeon had given her to support and protect the damaged muscles in the back of her neck; and a black, Russian style hat to hide her shorn and stapled scalp.
“I want it back,” she said.
Behind her, the Commodore cleared his throat.
“I still do not think this course of action is wise.”
“Fuck wise,” she snapped. “You’ve seen the news reports the same as I have. Three more killings in the last two days. All with knives, and all targeting the victim’s brain and soul-catcher. And I’ve got the inside scoop. I know what the killer looks like.”
“But the police—”
Victoria turned to face him. The cabin felt crowded with the two of them in it. It was an economical space, with bunks built into the wall, a small metal sink and a fold-down writing table. Victoria slept on the upper bunk and used the lower one for storage.
“Whoever that bâtard is, he’s got my soul. Paul’s too. Lord knows what he’s doing with them.” As a journalist, she’d heard rumours of secret military interrogation programs for the souls of captured soldiers; she’d spoken to gang members who dealt in illegally obtained back-ups, selling them on abroad as virtual slaves, put to work in electronic brothels or gold farms, or made to fight in gladiatorial arenas.
The Commodore raised his palm.
“Yes. I know.” A shadow crossed his face. “Believe me, I know. All I’m saying is that I do not think it safe for you to attend the funeral. Whoever this killer is, he will be annoyed you survived, and he will not want you to identify him.”
Victoria gave her head a small shake, and winced and the pain.
“It’s Paul’s funeral,” she said. “I’m not going to miss it for anything.”
In the corner of her eye, Paul’s image waved a virtual hand.
“What do you want?”
He put his hands together, fingertips touching his bristly chin.
“First of all, thanks. For saying you’ll go the funeral. I mean, I’ve got no one else. Literally. So, I appreciate it.” He shuffled his baseball boots on an imaginary floor. “But secondly, I agree with the Commodore. You can’t go, it’s way too dangerous.”
Victoria’s arms were across her chest.
“It’s not your decision.”
“But it is my funeral.”
“So?”
He cast around, avoiding her gaze. “So, I can un-invite you if I want to.”
Victoria laughed despite herself.
“Shut up,” she said, as kindly as she could.
The Commodore’s bushy white brows frowned at her.
“To whom exactly are you talking?”
“No-one.” With a mental command, she silenced Paul and pushed his image to the far edge of her visual field.
“I’m going to the funeral,” she said as firmly as she could, addressing both the old man and the digital ghost, “and that’s all there is to it.”
She saw Paul throw his hands up in disgust. In the real world, the Commodore wrapped his gnarled fingers around the pommel of the cutlass at his waist.
“Well, at least take one of my stewards. You need an armed bodyguard.”
“No. Thank you, but no. I appreciate the offer, but I don’t want to scare him off. I want to draw him out.”
She reached down and pulled an old Tupperware sandwich box from the bags and suitcases piled on the lower bunk. Inside, wrapped in an oily hand towel, lay a replacement for the retractable carbon fibre quarterstaff she’d lost at Paul’s apartment. She took it out and held it before him, weighing it in the palm of her hand.
“Besides, I’ll have this.”
The Commodore huffed.
“You are in no condition to fight, young lady. And besides, you had one of those before, and it didn’t do you much good.”
Victoria felt her cheeks redden. Her fingers tightened around the metal shaft.
“Next time will be different.”
AN HOUR LATER, despite the protestations of both the Commodore and the Tereshkova’s chief surgeon, Victoria took a helicopter from the pad atop the skyliner’s central hull. The helicopter’s pilot wore mirrored aviator shades and chewed gum. He took her to Battersea Park, bringing the chopper down to kiss the grass for only as long as it took her to clamber down from the cockpit. Then, as soon as she was clear, he was off again and up, peeling away across the Thames.
Victoria smoothed down the rumples in her coat. Warm sun touched her face. The air on her skin felt just crisp enough to be refreshing, and so clear it seemed to chime like a bell. Quite a contrast from the rain she remembered from her last visit. Her breath came in little drifts of vapour. She walked towards the edge of the park, hands in pockets. Despite her bravado, her neck hurt a lot more than she had been prepared to admit. The stitches were tight and sore, and the staples hurt like needles driven into her flesh.
It’s my choice, she thought. Two serious head wounds in two years. I can feel like a victim, or I can feel like a survivor. It’s up to me.
She took a taxi across Battersea Bridge into Chelsea, and west along the river, past the rows of houseboats moored benea
th the embankment wall. Holding her head as still as possible, she watched as they drove through the brown brick terraces of Chelsea, with their black iron railings and plastic For Sale signs, to the Exhibition Centre at Earl’s Court, where the driver turned right and pulled over at the kerb. The ride had only taken a few minutes. Victoria paid and climbed stiffly out, onto the pavement in front of the gates of Brompton Cemetery.
As she entered the graveyard, an Airbus whined overhead on its way to Heathrow. The trees were black and bare. She walked along the central driveway. Beneath her coat, the retracted quarterstaff swung against her thigh. The graves, their stones the colour of weathered bone, ranged from simple, overgrown headstones to sprawling mausoleums, their inscriptions too smudged by lichen and neglect for her text-recognition software to decode.
“I don’t see any fresh burials,” she said. “The place looks full. How come you get to be buried here?”
In the corner of her vision, Paul blinked. She knew he could see the path and the surrounding stones through her eyes, and she felt an unexpected prickle of sympathy, supposing that it couldn’t be an easy thing to attend your own funeral.
“My grandparents were sort of rich,” he said. “We have a family plot. As I’m the only surviving heir, I guess I get to be buried in it.”
Ahead, towards the rear of the cemetery, they found a loose knot of people standing around a casket. Maybe half a dozen in all, including the priest.
“We’re late,” Paul said.
Victoria stopped walking. She recognised two of the people as distant, estranged relatives of Paul: distant cousins she hadn’t seen since the wedding. They frowned at her, clearly less than thrilled by her presence.
She ignored them, fixing her attention on the coffin. She tried to imagine Paul’s body lying inside that plain wooden box — not the phantom in her eye, but the real Paul, the one she’d loved so hard, and then lost.
“Are you okay?” Paul asked.
She shook her head. How could she be, with her husband lying hollow-skulled beneath that lid? However convincing the simulation in her head might be, the real man had gone. Her eyes stung like paper cuts. She opened and closed her fists, fighting down an urge to tear open the box and beg him to wake up.
After what seemed an eternity, the priest closed his little black book, and the small congregation watched in silence as the pallbearers lowered the coffin into the earth.
The priest threw a handful of soil onto the lid.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” He made the sign of the cross.
The mourners turned away and began to break into groups. They rubbed their hands together. Their breath steamed. Someone made a joke.
Victoria stood silently, looking at the grave, hating them all.
“I’m sorry,” Paul said.
She wiped her eyes with gloved fingers.
“What for?”
“For your loss.”
A train clattered past, wheels screeching as it pulled into the Tube station at West Brompton. Further to the north, a triple-hulled skyliner chugged over Earl’s Court, the winter sun glinting off its brass fittings and carbon fibre bodywork.
“It’s your loss, too.”
“I know.”
Paul fell silent. Victoria looked down at her hands. She didn’t know what else to do or say. When she finally looked up, she saw a woman staring at her from the far side of the hole in the ground. The woman was somewhere in her late forties. She wore a long, elegant coat with fur around the collar and cuffs, and a small pillbox hat with a wisp of black veil. As she walked around the lip of the grave, the shins of her leather boots kicked the hem of her coat.
“Do you know her?”
Paul glanced up from his reverie.
“It’s Lois.”
“Who’s Lois?”
“We worked together in Paris. I wonder what she’s doing here?”
“I think we’re about to find out.”
The woman approached, and stopped a few paces away.
“Victoria?”
“Yes?”
The woman seemed relieved. She stepped forward and offered a gloved hand.
“My name’s Lois Lapointe. I worked with your late husband. I’m so sorry about what happened.”
“Thank you.”
Another train whined into the station. Victoria heard the bong of a platform announcement.
“Do you mind if I walk out with you?”
“Not at all.” Victoria turned and began strolling back towards the gate. Lois Lapointe fell into step beside her.
“I recognised you from a picture Paul kept on his desk,” she said.
“Have you come all the way from Paris?”
“I have.” Lois put a gloved hand on Victoria’s sleeve. “There is something I must tell you. Something very important.” She gestured to a wooden bench at the side of the gravel path. “Can we sit?”
Victoria hesitated.
“Can’t we talk somewhere warmer? I could buy you a coffee?”
The grip on her sleeve tightened.
“Please,” Lois urged. “I don’t have much time. I know why your husband was murdered.” She glanced nervously at the surrounding stones. “And I think I might be next.”
CHAPTER TEN
SPACE SHUTTLE STACK
MEROVECH READ TO the end of the last printed page. Then slowly, he placed it face-down on the table with the others.
“Bad news?”
Ack-Ack Macaque sat opposite, on an old wooden chair, wrapped in a ratty towelling dressing gown that Merovech had found for him.
“My whole life is a lie.”
The monkey stuck its bottom jaw forward.
“You too, huh?”
Merovech scowled. “I’m serious.”
“So am I.” Ack-Ack Macaque reached under the gown’s hem and caught hold of his tail. He started to groom the hair at its tip.
“It’s not easy for me, you know. One moment I’m fighting the Second World War, the next I’m somewhere in France and you tell me it’s 2059.”
Merovech tapped the papers on the table in front of him.
“You don’t understand.”
“That’s for shit-damn sure!”
“No. My mother. She’s been lying to me. All this time, all these years.”
Ack-Ack Macaque stopped grooming his tail.
“You want to trade problems? I’ll trade. Believe me, I’ll trade.”
Merovech put a hand to his head. His world felt ready to crash around him in ruins.
“Please. Just give me a minute. I need to think.”
The monkey glared at him.
“Well, when you’re all done ‘thinking’, perhaps you could explain to me how I got here?”
“We rescued you.”
“Rescued?”
Merovech scratched his cheek, annoyed at the distraction. “You were in a laboratory. We broke in and got you out.”
“A Nazi laboratory?”
“What? No. No, you have to forget all that. The Nazis and the war, none of that really happened. It was all a game, all make believe.”
“A game?”
“A computer game. You know what a computer is, right?”
“Like an adding machine?”
“Yes, exactly. Like an extremely complex adding machine. You were plugged into one, and it created this whole game world around you.”
Ack-Ack Macaque stuck a finger into his right nostril. He had a root around, then pulled the finger out and examined the end thoughtfully.
“Why would they do that?”
“As I said, it was a game. People played against you.”
“So, I was like a puppet?”
Merovech shrugged.
“Yeah, I guess you could look at it that way.”
The monkey was silent for a little while. Then he said, “Suppose all that’s true. Just tell me one thing.”
“What?”
“Whose ass do I have to kick?”
“What do y
ou mean?”
“I mean, who do I have to kill for putting me in that game? All this time, I thought it was real. All those deaths... Just tell me. Was it you?”
Merovech held up his hands.
“No. We’re the ones who got you out, remember? We rescued you.”
“Rescued me from who?”
“From Céleste.”
“Who the fuck is Céleste when she’s at home?”
Merovech turned over the stack of papers before him. He tapped the company logo at the top of the first page.
“Céleste Technologies. They’re a corporation. A multi-national group of companies.”
“And you rescued me from them?”
“Yes, sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of?”
“Well.” Merovech scratched his cheek again. He needed a shave. “The thing is, it’s my mother’s company.”
“Your mother’s?” Ack-Ack Macaque sat back with a scowl.
“If it’s any consolation, she’s been lying to me as well.”
“You poor baby.”
“I’m serious. All my life, she’s been using me. Not telling me the truth.”
“So you rescued me to piss her off?”
“Something like that.”
Merovech rolled his eyes at the absurdity of it all. Here he was trying to pour his heart out to a monkey, but the monkey had troubles of its own. Suddenly, he felt very young, and very alone.
They were silent for a few minutes, both lost in their own woes. Then Ack-Ack Macaque bent forward across the table. “You know what we need, Merovech?”
Merovech gave up. He shrugged.
“What?”
A hairy palm slapped the wood hard enough to raise dust.
“Booze! And lots of it!”
With a maniacal laugh, the monkey sprang from his chair and began rooting through the kitchen cabinets, chattering to himself. Tins fell and rolled across the flagstones. Crockery clacked; cutlery clashed.
Merovech heard Julie’s bare feet on the wooden stairs, and turned as she pulled aside the curtain. Wrapped in a grey towel, she looked pale and skinny, with her eyeliner smudged and her hair flattened on one side, where she’d been lying on it.
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