The only thing we can be certain of is that the game remains offline, and players still can’t log on.
In the wake of the crash, several hacker groups have claimed responsibility for the appearance of the second monkey, but Céleste’s PR department remains resolutely tight-lipped about the entire affair, issuing only a short statement to the effect than normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.
With every offline hour costing Céleste a fortune in subscriptions and advertising revenue, we can only hope they mean what they say.
Publicity stunt, hack attack or FUBAR? Only time will tell.
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CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
NGUYEN
ACK-ACK MACAQUE WOKE on a hard tile floor, and groaned. His tongue felt like a dry old rag; his hands and feet had been lashed with twine, and his chest felt like a pincushion. He couldn’t sit up, but he could turn his head.
The room upon whose floor he lay seemed to be some sort of storage locker or changing room. Six neoprene wetsuits dangled from a rack of pegs above a utilitarian wooden bench. Rope-handled plastic bins sat at either end of the bench, diving masks piled in one, flippers in the other. Against the opposite wall, a wire rack held twelve oxygen cylinders. The room had only one door: of polished wood, with a small porthole set into it. From beyond it, he could hear music, raised voices, and the clink of glasses.
Still on the yacht, then.
Victoria lay unconscious on the tiles beside him, an inch-long tranquiliser dart sticking from the right side of her chest, just below the collarbone. He worked his dry lips.
“Victoria?”
The effort of speaking triggered a glowering pain behind his eye, as hot and fragile as any hangover. In frustration, he gave his wrists a twist, testing his restraints. The rope felt shiny and uncomfortable, like nylon.
When I get out of here, he thought, somebody is really going to get bitten.
Another twist, and he felt the glossy cord scrape into his flesh. The fibres creaked, but he didn’t have the strength to try again. The sedatives in his system had him pinned beneath the weight of a bone-deep, soul-crushing fatigue, and he longed for the simple comforts and cold certainties of the Officers’ Mess. Illusion it may have been, but life had been so much easier when all he’d had to worry about was the war. No crazy bald chicks or runaway princes, just one clear mission objective after another. And before the war, woozy, pre-conscious memories of rum-fuelled Amsterdam bar fights, of a life unburdened by self-analysis or self-awareness, where all that concerned him was the knife in his opponent’s hand.
He closed his eye and pressed his head back against the cold tile. The pressure seemed to soothe the pounding ache. Then, over the distant sounds of merriment, he heard footsteps in the hall outside.
Oh, what now?
The door pushed open and a man entered. He was tall and thin, and dressed in evening wear. In his hand, he held a patent leather case.
“Ah, you’re awake. Good. I thought you might be.” He sat on the bench and placed the case flat on the wood beside him.
Ack-Ack Macaque blinked up at him. “Who are you?”
The man looked down at himself and smiled. His black hair had been gelled back and parted, his eyes held the barest suggestion of epicanthic folds, and his shiny skin glowed with the sepia tones of an old Victorian photograph.
“Forgive me. The last time we met, you were on an operating table and I—” He smoothed a hand down the lapel of his dinner jacket. “I had a different face.”
“Doctor Nguyen?”
The man tipped his head in a polite bow. “The same.”
“The man who—”
“The man who made you, yes. And your little friend there.”
Using his elbows to push himself up, Ack-Ack Macaque struggled into a sitting position. “But you’re dead.”
Nguyen popped the clasps of his leather briefcase.
“Not dead, my simian friend. Simply upgraded into a better body.” He raised the lid of the case, revealing row upon row of gleaming surgical instruments.
“Now,” he said, “I must give you another shot of tranquiliser. Enough to hold you until we reach the Maraldi, and its excellently well-equipped infirmary.”
Ack-Ack Macaque snarled. This was the man who’d turned him from knife-wielding primate to plane-flying freak; the man who’d pumped his skull full of plastic brain cells and burdened him with an intelligence he’d neither desired nor sought. Fighting the heaviness in his bones, he flexed his shoulders and pulled. The rope bit through his skin and he roared, but he kept pulling. At the same time, he swung his legs around and got himself into a kneeling position. The nylon rope stretched. He could feel the damp fibres pulling against each other. From the bottom of his jungle soul, he squeezed every last scrap of wild strength. His wrists flared with agony. And then the rope snapped, and he was free, his fingers clawing for the face of his creator.
Nguyen didn’t flinch. Instead, he looked Ack-Ack Macaque in the eye.
“Masaru!”
The strength fled from Ack-Ack Macaque’s arms. His lunge became a collapse, and he fell sprawling at his tormentor’s feet, limbs twitching.
Nguyen laughed harshly.
“I built you, stupid monkey. Did you not think I might have included a safe word in your programming?”
He rummaged in his case and pulled out a hypodermic needle and a small glass bottle of tranquiliser.
Ack-Ack Macaque flopped like a fish on the floor. All he wanted was to rip out this man’s throat with his teeth, but his arms and legs were numb and useless. Eventually, he stopped thrashing and lay panting with his nose against the tiles.
“Why?” he asked.
Nguyen looked down at him in surprise. “Why did I make you?” The man pushed the needle through the rubber membrane at the neck of the bottle, into the colourless liquid within.
“You and your predecessors were prototypes. First attempts. We had planned to raise an army of uplifted monkeys.” He stared wistfully into the middle distance. “But, as it turns out, humans are easier to control.” He pulled back the plunger and filled the syringe. “Luckily, we found another use for you. A profitable use.”
“The game?”
“Indeed. Our programmers needed an artificial intelligence at the heart of their game, so we gave them one.” He smiled. “Although not perhaps the one they were expecting.”
Ack-Ack Macaque coughed. The tiles smelled of seawater and bleach.
“And Victoria?”
“A happy accident. She was dying, so we had nothing to lose. We used her as a test bed. We could try things, new techniques that we hadn’t dared try on the Prince.”
“And now you’re an android?”
“Yes.” Nguyen drew himself up, looking down appreciatively at his new body. “One of the first. Soon, there will be thousands. When the bombs start falling and the people come to the shelters we’ve set up, we’ll begin the process of transforming them. They will enter frail and scared, and leave as virtual supermen, with the world in flames at their feet.”
Ack-Ack Macaque shook his head, nose rubbing against the cold floor.
“You’re insane.”
“Is it insane to want to rebuild the world, to put right the mistakes of history and eradicate disease and suffering?”
Ack-Ack Macaque turned his head and hawked phlegm.
“The way you’re doing it, yes.”
Nguyen placed the glass vial back into his case.
“These are the goals I have worked for all my life. Humanity can, and will, be improved.”
“Whether it wants to be or not?”
Nguyen came and stood beside Ack-Ack Macaque, shoes inches from his face. He looked down.
“What it wants doesn’t matter. Left alone, the human race will kill itself. It has already wrecked the environment which sustains it. Without our help, how much longer do you think it will survive? Strong leaders are needed. We will found a n
ew society, based on science and reason, and we will save humanity from itself.”
“But first you’ve got to kill everyone, right? In order to save them?”
“Enough!” Abruptly, Nguyen crouched, and caught Ack-Ack Macaque by the scruff of his neck, android fingers firm and strong. “Why am I arguing with you, anyway? You’re nothing but an animal.”
“At least I’ve still got my own junk. I’m not some metal eunuch.”
The needle pricked his skin, sliding into the side of his neck. He tried to twist away, but couldn’t break Nguyen’s iron grip.
“Don’t struggle.”
Nguyen depressed the plunger, pushing icy liquid into Ack-Ack Macaque’s veins. Then the grip loosened, and Nguyen climbed to his feet.
Ack-Ack Macaque looked up at him, heart hammering.
“There’s just one thing I don’t get.”
“And what’s that?”
“Merovech. If you’re all turning yourself into cyborgs, why do you still need Merovech?”
The doctor returned the needle to his case.
“When we first planned all of this, the Duchess was to transfer her consciousness into Merovech’s body. She was to become a strong new leader, and found a new royal dynasty, moving from host to host down the generations, immortal and all-powerful.” His voice seemed to waver, echoing in Ack-Ack Macaque’s ears as the drugs bit chunks from his awareness.
“Since these new android bodies came on stream, all that seems rather redundant,” Nguyen continued. “Still, we need him as a figurehead. The Duchess is a powerful woman, but even she can’t order the prime minister to declare war. If we are to see our plan through, we need to load Her Grace’s personality into Merovech when he becomes King.”
Shadows blotted the corners of Ack-Ack Macaque’s sight. He tried to say something, but couldn’t. His thoughts became light and airy, as if someone had thrown open a window in the stuffiness of his mind. The tiles no longer felt uncomfortable beneath him. He pictured clouds and Spitfires, and the warehouses of the Amsterdam waterfront. He wondered how long it would take to—
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
ARTIFICIAL THUNDER
LINTON MARTIN DIED in the chair in the centre of the Tereshkova’s main lounge, wracked by cramps. Whatever he’d swallowed took a long time to kill him, and he sweated his way through another cigarette before the end finally came.
When it was close, with his teeth clenched against the pain, rivulets of perspiration running down his face, and the muscles in his neck standing out like steel hawsers, he fixed Merovech with a wild glare and hissed, “I will live again.”
Then the half-smoked dog-end of his final cigarette fell from his fingers. His left leg shot out straight and his hands clawed the air. An agonising convulsion shook him, juddering every muscle, curling his arms against his chest. For a second he stayed rigid, vibrating with pain. And then he buckled. His limbs went slack and he fell to one side. The chair fell with him. His skull hit the deck with a solid clunk, and he lay there in a tangle, eyes bulging and tongue lolling wetly from his lips.
Merovech turned away. He’d seen men die before, but that didn’t make it any easier to watch. He stood with the Commodore as the stewards rolled Linton onto a canvas stretcher.
“Throw him out,” the Commodore growled, his damaged hip braced against the tilt of the deck. “We need to lose as much weight as we can.”
“Not so fast.” Merovech put a hand on the sleeve of the old man’s tunic. The Commodore scowled, clearly annoyed at having his orders questioned in front of his crew.
“You want to keep him?”
“Of course not. But if we get through this, we’re going to need all the evidence we can find.”
The Commodore huffed, clearly unconvinced. But he turned back to his men, who were hesitating in the doorway, and said, “Take him to the galley and put him in one of the freezers. Throw the food out if you have to. It is not like we will be needing it.”
Then he began to limp towards the bridge, dragging his bad leg behind him. Merovech followed. As in the lounge, the floor in the connecting corridor leant at an alarming fifteen degrees to starboard, making the slippery metal deck treacherous.
“How much more can she take?”
Bracing himself against the walls of the corridor, the Commodore didn’t look around.“We are still losing gas. The bags are compartmentalised. If only two or three compartments are damaged, we will be fine. If more, then we have real trouble.”
“We’ll still have enough to stay airborne, though?”
“Perhaps.” A shrug. “Who knows?”
They passed the galley. Steel pots swung from ceiling hooks. Shards of smashed crockery covered the floor.
“What are we going to do?”
The Commodore stopped moving. “I won’t abandon her.” His gnarled hand gave the bulkhead an affectionate pat. “I am too old to mourn again. If she goes down, I go with her.”
And then he was off, using his hands to steady himself. They came to the bridge, where the pilot and navigator fought to keep the massive craft on an even keel. The Commodore barked something in his native tongue, and the pilot snarled back; a string of guttural curses.
“We cannot stay up much longer,” the Commodore translated.
“But we’re not crashing?”
“No. Not yet. Although the strain on the hulls is great, and we should land if we can.”
From the other workstation, the navigation officer threw a brisk salute, and spoke at length, with many accompanying hand gestures. The Commodore scowled, then shambled over to peer at the man’s screen. From the inside pocket of his tunic, he produced a pair of reading glasses, which he balanced on the bridge of his nose as he scanned the data. He gave a grunt; and then he straightened up and turned to Merovech.
“We have two RAF fighter jets circling us in the darkness. They say they are reluctant to fire while you remain aboard, but neither will they let us deviate from our present course.”
Merovech frowned. “They actually want us to reach the Maraldi?”
The Commodore slipped the spectacles back into his pocket, as deftly as any conjuror, and smoothed down the tips of his moustache.
“It seems you have a appointment to keep.”
RETURNING TO THE sickbay, Merovech found Julie Girard looking strained. The painkillers weren’t doing enough to dull the stinging needle wound in her thigh. But when she saw him, her brow furrowed not in pain, but concern.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You look very pale.”
Merovech came over and sat beside her. He took her hand.
“I’m scared, Jules. I’m angry and I’m scared.”
“What can I do?”
Merovech took a long, ragged breath. “Nothing. That’s the trouble. I’ve got the speech ready to go, but my father’s down there, and he could be dying, and all we can do is wait. It makes me feel so bloody helpless.”
He turned his head to the porthole. The sky was dark, but he sensed the jets all the same: out there in the blackness, circling like sharks.
“When I found out what had been done to me, what my own mother had done to me, I wanted to confront her. I was furious and hurt and all those other things.”
Julie touched his hand. “You had every right to be.”
“I know. But now it’s all unravelled. We’re fighting for our lives, and I don’t know what to do. There’s too much at stake and I can’t see a way out. She’s got the Air Force and the Navy, and what have we got?”
The walls gave a metallic shudder. Julie’s fingers moved up to his cheek. She brushed at his hair, tidying it.
“We have got a monkey.”
Merovech smiled in spite of himself.
“I love you.”
Julie’s hand dropped into her lap. “Do not say that unless you mean it.”
“I do. In fact, if we get out of this alive—”
“Do not say it.”
Merovech cleared his throat. The words wer
e boiling up inside him. “If we make it through this in one piece, I want you to marry me.”
Julie blinked at him, stunned.
“Are you serious?” She slammed her palms onto the blanket. “Are you really serious?”
Merovech pulled back.
“But, I thought—”
“We could both be killed in a few hours. Personally, I will be amazed if I am not dead or in jail by the morning. How can you be thinking about marriage at a time like this?”
“What better time is there?”
Julie scraped her lower lip with a purple thumbnail. “What about my father?”
“He can’t stop us.”
She shook her head. “You do not know him. You do not know what he can be like.”
Merovech huffed air through his cheeks. He thought he had a pretty good idea of exactly what the old bastard could be like.
“Forget about him.”
In a tight, irritated gesture, Julie wiped her hair back with the fingertips of one hand. “That might be easy for you to say. I cannot forget about him, Merovech, he is my father.”
Where she’d pulled the purple strands back, he caught sight of the faded shadow on her cheek: the yellowed remains of the bruise that had so angered him in the café.
“Well,” he snapped, “he doesn’t deserve to be.”
“What?”
“You heard me. You can keep denying it, but we both know what he is, and what he’s done to you.”
She waved a hand in front of her face, trying to ward off his words.
“No! Non!”
Far beyond the gondola’s walls, Merovech heard the distant roar of the circling planes: a rumble in the dark, like artificial thunder.
“I can keep you safe,” he said.
“Safe?” Julie looked around the listing cabin. “You call this ‘safe’?”
“You know what I mean.”
She shook her head, eyes flashing, and he drew back, expecting her to shout. She didn’t. Instead, she dropped her chin to her chest and took a series of deep, calming breaths. When she finally looked up and spoke, it was with a firmness that surprised him.
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