by Adam Carter
“Why do I get the feeling,” I asked, “that once again we don’t have a plan here?”
“We have a plan,” Gordon said, still straining. “We get out of here, grab the countess and rendezvous with Iris.”
“Your plan is to kidnap the countess?” I asked, just to clarify.
“Sure. We find a way to make her forget about Iris, or failing that we dump her in a gulag or something.”
“And how exactly do we make her forget about Iris?”
“Iris might know. She has a computer brain, remember.”
That much was true. If we could all get together, return to the Glory and fly away we might be able to stop and think for a while. First, though, we needed to get down from the trees.
“Cass, do you still have your sword?”
“It’s on the ground.”
I looked down and saw it standing there, embedded into the mud as a symbol of the countess’s cruel mind at work. “There’ll be another way,” I said. While I thought about what that other way could possibly be, a piercing roar filled the air and I froze. The jungle may have been artificial, but it seemed the countess had done her best to make the place real.
“That’s just a noise, surely,” Cassiel said. “There are no lions here, there can’t be.”
“With rich eccentrics,” I said, “I find it best to assume the least likely possibility is true.”
“Gordon, hurry,” Cassiel said. “Flex those muscles.”
Under ordinary circumstances, I would have chastised the young woman for even saying such a thing; but as the low growl of the approaching predator grew closer I watched with a still heart as Gordon strained against the vines. While I’m no lightweight, Gordon’s job had kept him fit and built up his muscles, so if there was anyone who stood a chance of breaking free it was him. I could see the tension in his face as he fought the vines which pulled taut about his muscles in a final measure of resistance.
Then, with a shriek of death, the vines snapped and Gordon tumbled to the ground. He landed heavily and lay upon his back for several moments while he caught his breath. I’m not one to impress easily, but I must admit it had been something of an astounding feat; Cassiel was veritably wetting herself, perhaps because she has no dignity.
“If you’re done slouching,” I said, “could you maybe cut us down, please?”
“Sure, sure.” Gordon took up Cassiel’s sword and started towards us. He stopped, momentarily forgetting us, when something from the trees growled. All three of us were looking around by this point, searching for something moving stealthily through the trees. I could hear the steady pad of large paws and knew that whatever was in the jungle with us was very real indeed.
It came into sight an instant later, but Gordon had seen it and did not need our warning. The thing was as large as Gordon and almost twice as long. Its coat was golden, its four strong limbs ending in thick padded claws. There was a tail, but it was not much to speak of and held a tear-drop-shaped brush at the end which did not look at all threatening. Its head was framed by a great brown mane, while its snout sprouted whiskers and held a maw filled with sharp fangs. Its eyes were alert and intelligent, which hardly surprised me at all.
I had never before seen a lion and it was much larger than I had expected. As Gordon backed away from it, holding Cassiel’s sword as though he knew how to use it (he didn’t know how to use it), I could not help but feel we were all about to be torn apart for the thing’s supper.
It was hardly the best way to be introduced to the king of beasts. I also wondered whether lions lived in jungles, but that was beside the point because this one clearly did.
Gordon continued to back away, but there was only so far he could go before the lion pounced and I did not like the thought of him going beyond my line of sight. Setting his feet firm, he held his ground at last, striking a Tarzan pose as the great lion prowled. However, a pose was all it was, for in a moment the lion was going to rip him into pieces. The lion charged and Gordon swung the sword with a roar born of equal parts desperation and fear. The sword struck the lion, but the huge bulk of the beast slammed into him and sent the blade flying. The brute landed atop Gordon and he cried in panic as he struggled to free himself.
“Gordy!” Cassiel shrieked. Her cry was so loud that the beast looked up, allowing Gordon the opportunity to punch the big cat in the face.
I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen someone punch a lion in the face, but it was something I shan’t soon forget. The animal was shocked, went into a daze, and then a cloud of anger consumed its entire face and I knew if I did not get the two of us out of that tree right there and then we were all going to die.
Not possessing Gordon’s strength, I could not simply snap my bonds, but I’ve always been a sneaky thing and have never had to rely too much on my strength. Wriggling back and forth, I was beginning to loosen my bonds and at last there was some slack forming at my wrists. I watched as the lion went for Gordon again, and Gordon’s answer was to cling to the animal and pretty much hope for the best. Not the bravest of strategies, but if it kept him alive I’m not sure he much cared.
And then my right arm came loose and I was so shocked I almost fell out of the tree. Using my free hand, I tore at the vines holding my other arm, not taking into account that my legs were still tied, so I fell forward, swung down and almost smashed my face into the tree. The action tore the vines from my legs and I tumbled from the tree and crashed into the lion. If it was shocked before, it was seriously freaked out now, for it had never expected women to be raining from the sky.
Above, I could hear Cassiel shouting support, telling me to ‘get that lion good’ or something. If she wanted the lion got good, she should have come down herself.
With a primal scream, Gordon threw himself at the lion again, toppling the beast my way so that the three of us went tumbling. Lions are heavy, let me tell you, and as it rolled over me I was of absolutely no help whatsoever to Gordon.
The weight lifted as the lion stalked Gordon once more. His clothes were torn and there was a gash in the side of his head, but there was no indication he had been mauled. Lying on the ground, I cast my eyes around for something I might be able to use as a weapon and found that Cassiel’s sword was almost within reach of my hand. Without giving any thought to my safety, I scrambled to my feet and snatched up the blade, turning with it to face the monster.
“Hey, Toto,” I shouted, holding the blade before me, “come get some.”
“Toto was the dog,” Cassiel shouted. “You’re probably thinking of the Cowardly Lion.”
The lion did not look especially cowardly, but I supposed it was easy enough to make stupid observations when she was still safely stuck in the tree. The big cat snarled as it faced me, spittle flying through the air, its eyes burning with murder. My palms turned clammy as I realised I had no more of an idea as to how to wield the sword than did Gordon.
Its face changed then, for it was afflicted with spasms, and the lion collapsed to its front knees. For one hopeful moment I thought the beast had just died or something, but then it rose to its full height and snarled at me all over again.
“Gordon,” I said, not taking my eyes off the beast, “climb the tree. Get Cass free and …”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“Not asking you to leave me, why would I want you to leave me? Just cut Cass down and …”
“Pardon me,” the lion said, “but would you perhaps like for me to stop trying to eat you?”
I stared, blinked, stared some more, blinked again and dropped the sword. As it struck the wet ground I jumped. “I … You …”
“We, he, she, you, they, they,” the lion said. Then it smiled, or at least I think it was a smile. I’d never before seen a lion smile, but if I ever did I’m pretty sure that was what it would have looked like. A smiling lion is odd, because its jowls aren’t quite designed to do that and its whiskers get in the way.
“What’s going on?” Cassiel asked. “Is t
hat lion talking?”
“It’s not a lion,” Gordon said with a happy laugh. “It’s a machine.”
“And there’s a ghost in this machine,” the lion said. It winked at me in a way I recognised.
“Mary-Lou?” I asked.
“In the synthetic flesh. This lion’s not quite a machine, by the way. Parts of it were real at one time, some were grown in a lab and the rest is mechanical. It’s part robot, part clone, part me now. I don’t think we have a name for this type of thing, but I’m not human so I don’t have the need to find names for everything.”
I had no idea what she was babbling about, but it hardly mattered. All I cared about was that the lion wasn’t going to kill any of us.
“Why?” Gordon asked. “Not that I’m complaining about you saving our lives and everything, but what’s your angle here, Mary-Louise?”
“I just wanted to get close enough to the countess to work out her plan, then get everyone together so we can get out of here. And, once I got into her systems, finding out her plans was easy enough.”
“Who are you?”
“Precisely who I said I am: Mary-Louise.” The lion frowned. “But there’s someone in here with me, inside my sub-systems. Prodding me, prompting me to betray both the countess and Securitarn.” Then the lion shrugged. “Ah well, I’ll figure that out later.”
“We still need to take the countess with us,” I said. “Mary-Lou, can you help with that?”
“I’m an overly large cyborg lion; is there anything I can’t do?”
I liked that answer so I went with it. As we began searching for the exit, however, we heard a shrill voice from above.
“Hey,” Cassiel cried, “anyone want to cut me down?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The countess did not prove difficult to find; nor did she prove especially difficult to take captive. After all, we had a lion on our side and the countess had such a distrust of people that she was relying on the computer system infecting that lion to protect her. Now that we had the countess, we had to decide what to do with her. Leading her towards the lifts, we asked her where she was keeping our shuttle, for that was our escape route off Ganymede. In reply, she made a snide comment, at which point our friendly lion threatened to bite her face off, so she told us the shuttle was being kept in the hangar on the seventieth floor.
Now that we had Mary-Louise on our side, we thankfully had no fear of the lifts, so we were able to ride up to the seventieth floor without the thought that we were at any moment going to plummet to our deaths. It was strange to be crammed into a lift carriage with two friends, a prisoner and a lion, but without muzak all I could think was that there was something missing.
As the doors opened, I should not have been surprised, for I had long since come to accept that these rich Ganymedians could have whatever they liked in their mansions. Still, I was not quite prepared for the hangar. It was a vast single-chambered floor with one wall entirely open to the elements. The wind seventy floors up was horrendous, but the hangar was so large we did not have to go anywhere near the edge. Equipment lay about the place, along with barrels of what was presumably fuel, while several birds were wandering around and making themselves at home. There were only a few vehicles docked in the hangar, and the sleekest of them all was a custom hex dart with sleek red and white panelling. The hex darts were amazing racing craft and my eyes lit up as they fell upon its raw, beautiful body.
Gordon was already running his hand along its fins, his face that of a schoolboy locked overnight in a sweetshop.
“Down, boy,” Iris said, moving towards us. “You’re spoken for.”
Gordon hugged her, which was always a pleasant sight to see, and beyond Iris I could see the Bunnyhop Express. It seemed Iris had located our shuttle while the rest of us had been messing about in the jungle.
“You leave my dart alone,” the countess glowered.
“I’d take it in a heartbeat,” Gordon said, “but it wouldn’t fit us all in. Besides, you’d tell the police and I could hardly fly around in a stolen vehicle.”
“Why is there a lion here?” Iris asked.
“She’s cool,” I said. “That’s Mary-Louise.”
“She’s not cool,” Iris said icily, which is ironic now that I think about it. “She’s the defence for this whole building.”
“She’s working with us.”
“Oh, you idiots. How could you …?”
“Oh excuse me,” I said. “We can’t all have a computer brain, but we’re not idiots. She’s helped us survive this far and …”
“Of course she has,” Iris exploded. “I – for want of a better word – hacked into her programming and messed around a bit. I made her question herself and got her to think on her own two feet for a while. Stand, I mean. Four feet … whatever. Anyway, point is she’s still a representation of the lethal security system protecting this building and there’s only so long I can keep her confused for.”
“Oh,” I said. “So she’s not our friend?”
“Uh,” Cassiel said, “should we be talking this bluntly in front of her?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Iris said. “Look at her.”
We did look. The lion was standing there with a blank expression on its face. It looked as though a taxidermist had opted to stuff it in a very bored pose.
“She’s processing,” Gordon said. “Now that we’re on the verge of kidnapping her mistress, she’s reassessing her priorities. I think she may be about to kill us.”
The countess laughed. “You guys are useless.”
“Everyone into the shuttle,” Gordon said. “If we can place some distance between us we should still be all right.”
The lion, however, had other ideas. Mary-Louise had finished her processing, for the feline head jerked, its eyes blinked and it was once again aware of our presence. “Hey, Mary-Lou,” I said, a tremor to my voice. “We still good?”
“Roz,” the lion said. “I’m sorry, we were becoming friends and everything.”
“We’re not still friends?”
“I’ve alerted Securitarn to your presence. They have troops on the way.”
“Perfect,” I said. “This is it, then. They know about Iris, it’s over.”
“Iris?” Mary-Louise asked. “Iris Arowana is dead. She was killed on the artificial moon Ceres four months ago.”
I looked to Iris, but there was no surprise in her face. When she had tweaked Mary-Louise’s programme, she had removed any knowledge of Iris’s survival. It was a ray of sunlight, for it meant all we had to worry about was the countess.
“Into the shuttle,” Gordon repeated. “Securitarn don’t mess about. Even if they take the stairs, I can’t imagine it’s going to take them long to get up here.”
“I can’t allow that,” Mary-Louise said. “Leave the countess and surrender.”
“No,” I said. “If you want us to stay, you’re going to have to stop us. Securitarn are probably going to shoot us. Is that what you want, Mary-Lou?”
“No. No, I don’t. But I can’t let you go. Please, Roz, please stay.”
It was difficult to listen to the pleading note of her voice. Making friends with a computer programme may sound like a weird thing to do, but believe me I’ve done weirder. “Come with us,” I said. “Come back to the Glory. We don’t have a computer system and could probably do with one.”
“You’d have me run your ship for you?”
“Sure.” Of course, I doubted Gordon and Iris would go for it. Whatever else, Mary-Louise had been created by Securitarn and they wouldn’t want her hanging around their sword-ship.
“I’d like that,” she said with a wistful tone, “but I can’t. I’m sorry, Roz. Please don’t make me do this.”
I placed myself between the lion and Iris. “Get the countess on board the Bunnyhop,” I said. “We’re going, Mary-Lou. If you stop us, you’ll be effectively killing us.”
“I have my duty.”
“You also have a duty to me.
”
“Why?”
“Because I’m your friend.”
She paused, her eyes watching Iris drag the countess into the shuttle. “Stand aside, Roz, or I’ll kill you.”
Having an unnaturally tall cyborg lion threaten me like that was disturbing to say the least. But by my own logic I could not stand aside. These people were fun to be around and despite everything I was having a good time. They were my friends, and I had the same duty to them as Mary-Louise had to me.
“Gordon,” I said, “go with Iris. She’s not much of a pilot so she’s going to need you.” Why that was true, I had no idea. With her artificially enhanced brain, she could learn piloting in an instant. She would apparently forget it all again once she stepped off the vessel, in order to make way for other knowledge, but I’ve never been lobotomised so can’t say how it affects a woman’s mind.
“Roz,” he said, “you can’t fight a lion by yourself.”
“She’s not by herself,” Cassiel said, standing beside me with her sword.
Gordon wanted to argue, but his priority was in keeping Iris safe. He went to say something, maybe to offer some words of encouragement, but there was nothing he could say which would have made any difference so he just went into the shuttle.
“Well,” Mary-Louise said, “this isn’t good.”
I laughed, but the sound was hollow. “It’s not been good since we got here.” But it was back to me and Cassiel against the world, so I had a strange sense of satisfaction in that at least.
The engine on the Bunnyhop spluttered to life and the lion’s entire demeanour changed. Mary-Louise knew there was no choice now; she had to do everything within her power to stop us.
With a wild roar, Cassiel charged. It was such a sudden and unexpected move that I was stunned. The lion met her attack, swiping a great paw at the oncoming blade and destabilising Cassiel’s sense of balance. Even as she fell onto her side, she made another strike with her sword, and this time the blade sliced through the lion’s leg. Blood gushed from the wound and the lion rounded upon her in anger.