A long time later, McMurray comes up to me and clears his throat. "Howard, can you hear me?" he asks I mumble something like leave me alone. My head aches like it's clamped in a vice, and my mouth is a parched desert.
"Can you hear me?" he repeats patiently.
"Feel. Like shit." I think for a minute, during which time I manage to crowbar my eyes open. "Water?" Something's missing, but I'm not sure what.
McMurray turns away and lets a medical type approach me with a paper cup. I try to sit up to drink but I'm as weak as a baby. I manage a sip, then I swallow: half the contents of the cup go down my chin. "More." While the paramedic is busy I get my throat working again. "What happened"
"Mission accomplished." McMurray looks self-satisfied.
"Ramona's on her way back up with the goods."
"But, the — " I stop. Hunt around in my head. "You put the block back," I accuse.
"Why wouldn't I?" He steps out of the way to let the nurse or paramedic or whoever pass me another cup of water.
This time I manage to lift a hand and take hold of it without making a mess of things. "It's going to take another twelve hours or so to bring her up, and I don't want you deepening the entanglement while that's happening." I stare into his pale blue eyes and think, Got you, you bastard. Even though it's treachery against Billington, who thinks he owns McMurray body and soul, I get the picture.
"Did she get the, the thing?" I ask. Because that's when I blacked out, right after we entered the zone of the death spell or curse or force field or whatever it is around the wrecked chthonian war machine on the seabed. Right when Ramona recognized what she was looking for, bang in the middle of the periscope, and opened my mouth to announce, "I've got it. Give me three more meters, and stand by for contact."
"Yes, she got it."
"When, when are you going to unhook us"
"When Ramona's back up and decompressed — tomorrow.
She has to be physically present, you know." His expression turns sour. "So it's back to your room for the duration."
"Agh." I try to sit up and nearly fall off the chair. He puts one hand on my shoulder to steady me. I glance around, my vision still blurry. Billington's across the room conversing with his wife and the ship's officers; I'm all on my own over here with McMurray and the medic. Icy fear clamps around my stomach. "How long have I been under"
McMurray glances at his watch, then chuckles. "About six hours." He raises one eyebrow. "Are you going to come quietly or am I going to have to have you sedated"
I shake my head. Quietly I say, "I know about Charlie Victor." His fingers dig into my shoulder like claws. "You want to settle with Billington, that's none of my business," I add hastily. "But give me back my phone first."
"Why?" he asks sharply. Heads turn, halfway across the control room floor: his face slides into an effortless smile and he waves at them then turns back to me. "Blow my cover and I'll take you down with me," he hisses.
"No fear." I swallow. How much can I safely reveal...? At least Ramona isn't listening in; I don't need to doublethink around McMurray right now. "She told me about the jet skis, I know how we're getting out of here." / know that there's a seat reserved for you, but no room for me. It's time to lie like a rug: "The phone isn't official issue, it's mine. I bought it unlocked, not on contract. Cost me close to a month's wages, I really can't afford to lose it when the shit hits the fan." I put a whine in my voice: "They'll take that expenses packet you made me gamble away out of my pay for the next year and I am going to be so screwed — "
"We're out of range of land," he says absent-mindedly, and his grip relaxes. I swing my legs over the floor and steady myself until the world stops spinning around my head.
"Doesn't matter: I'm not planning on phoning home. But can I have it back anyway?" I get one foot on the deck outside the ward.
McMurray cocks his head to one side and stares at me.
"Okay," he says, after a moment, during which I feel none of the weirdly other-worldly sense of strangeness that came over me while I was putting one across Eileen in the monitoring center. "You can have your damned phone back tomorrow, before Ramona surfaces. Now stand up — you're going back to the Mabuse."
McMurray details four black berets to escort me back to my room aboard the Mabuse, and it takes all of their combined efforts to get me there. I'm limp as a dishcloth, hung-over from whatever drugs Billington's tame Mengele pumped into me. I can barely walk, much less climb into a Zodiac.
It's dark outside — past sunset, anyway — and the sky is black but for a faint red haze on the western horizon. As we bump up against the side of the Mabuse, where they've lowered a boarding platform, I notice the guards are still wearing their trademark items: "Hey what's with the mirrorshades" I ask, slurring my words so that I sound half-drunk. " 'S nighttime, y'know"
The goon who's climbing the steps ah'ead of me stops and looks round at me. "It's the eyeliner," he says finally. "You think wearing mirrorshades at night looks stupid, you should try carrying an MP-5 with a black jumpsuit and a beret m while wearing eye shadow."
"Cosmetics don't go/with GI Joe," chants the goon behind me, a semitone out of tune with himself.
"Eye shadow?" I shake my head and manage to climb another step.
"It's the downside of our terms and conditions of employment,"
says Goon Number One. "Some folks have to piss in a cup to pass federally mandated antidrug provisions; we have to wear make-up.
"You're shitting me."
"Why would I do a thing like that? I've got stock options that're going to be worth millions after we IPO. If someone offered you stock options worth a hundred million and said you had to wear eyeliner to qualify ..."
I shake my head again. "Hang on a moment, isn't TLA Corporation already publicly traded? How can you IPO if it's already listed on NASDAQ"
Goon Number Two behind me chuckles. "You got the wrong end of the stick. That's Install Planetary Overlord, not Initial Public Offering."
We climb the rest of the steps in silence and I reflect that it makes a horrible kind of sense: if you're running a ubiquitous surveillance web mediated by make-up, wouldn't it make sense to plug all your guards into it? Still, it's going to make breaking out of here a real pain in the neck — much harder than it looked before — if the guards are also nodes in the surveillance system. As we trudge through the corridors of the ship, I speculate wildly. Maybe I can use my link into Eileen's surveillance network to install an invisibility geas on the server, and use the sympathetic link to their eyes as a contagion tunnel so that they don't see me. On the other hand, that sort of intricate scheme tends to be prone to bugs — get a single step wrong in the invocation and you might as well be donning a blinking neon halo labeled ESCAPING PRISONER.
Right now I'm so tired that I can barely put one foot in front of another, much less plan an intricate act of electronic sabotage: so when we get to my room I stagger over to the bed and lie down before they even have time to close the door.
Lights out.
It's still dark when I wake up shuddering in the aftershock of a nightmare. I can't remember exactly what it was about but something has filled my soul to overflowing with a sense of profound horror. I jerk into wakefulness and lie there with my teeth chattering for a minute. It feels like an entire convention of bogeymen has slithered over my grave. The shadows in my room are full of threatening shapes: I reach out and flick the bedside light switch, banishing them. My heart pounds like a diesel engine. I glance at the bedside clock. It's just turned five in the morning.
"Shit." I sit up and hold my head in my hands. I'm not making a good showing for myself, I can tell that much: frankly, I've been crap. After a moment I stand up and walk over to the door, but it's locked. No moonlight excursions tonight, I guess. Somewhere a kilometer below the surface, Ramona will be dozing in that chair slowly decompressing as a nightmare dreams on in the ancient war machine tucked between the ten mechanical grabs on the underside of the retrieva
l platform. Aboard the Explorer, Billington paces the command center of his operation, those weirdly catlike eyes slitted before the prospect of world domination. Somewhere else on board the Explorer, the treacherous McMurray is waiting for Billington to terminate the Bond geas, so that he can release Ramona's daemon and then she can assassinate the crazed entrepreneur, delivering JENNIFER MORGUE Site Two into the hands of the Black Chamber.
It's pretty damn clear now, isn't it? And what am I doing about it? I'm sitting on my arse in a gilded cage, looking pretty while acting pretty ineffectual. And I keep finding myself mumbling lie back and think of England, which is just plain humiliating. It's almost as if Billington has already terminated the invocation that's binding me to the heroic role — "Shit," I say again, startling myself. That's it! That's what I should have noticed earlier. The heroic pressure of the geas is no longer bearing down on me, skewing my perspective.
I'm back to being myself again, the nerdy guy in the corner.
In fact, it feels like I'm being squeezed into a state of fatalistic passivity, waiting for a rescuer to come get me out of this situation. The reason I feel so indecisive and like crap is, I'm going through cold turkey for heroism. Either that or the focus of the Hero trap has shifted — I check the alarm clock again. It's now ten past five. What did McMurray say? Sometime today. I pull out the chair and sit down in front of the Media Center PC. Jet skis on C deck.
They're going to give me my phone back soon. What was the speed dial code? As soon as we're untangled Charlie Victor is going to kill Billington. Gravedust systems. JENNIFER MORGUE isn't as dead as McMurray seems to think. That's the only explanation I can come up with for Billington's behavior.
"Oh Jesus, we are so rucked," I groan, and hit the boss key so I can see whether Mo, at least, is safe.
"It's like this," says Mo, checking the seals on her instrument case once more, "I can do it without attracting attention.
Whereas, if you guys do it, you're not exactly inconspicuous.
So leave the job to me."
She's sitting on a gray metal platform slung over the side of a gray metal ship. A flashy-looking cigarette boat is tied up next to it, all white fiberglass and chromed trim until you get back to the enclosed cockpit and the two gigantic Mercury outboards in the tail. The man she's talking to is wearing a wet suit, a bullet-proof vest, and horn-rimmed spectacles. "What makes you think you can do it?" he asks, with barely concealed impatience.
"Because it's what I've spent the past four bloody months training for, thank you very much." She squints at the lock, then nods minutely and puts the case down. "And before you say it's what you've spent the last twenty years specializing in, I'd like to remind you that there are any number of reasons why you shouldn't go in first, starting with their occult defenses, which are my specialty. Then there's the small matter of their point defense systems, starting with an Indian Navy sensor suite that Billington's spent roughly fifty million on, upgrading to NATO current standards. The bigger the initial insertion the greater the risk that it'll be spotted, and I don't think you want them to realize they're being stalked by a Royal Navy task group, do you"
Barnes nods thoughtfully. "I think you underestimate how fast and hard we can hit them, but yes, it's a calculated risk.
But what makes you think you can do it alone"
Mo shrugs. "I'm not going in without backup — that would be stupid." She grins momentarily. "On the other hand, you know how this setup works. If I stay back at HQ it all goes pear-shaped. I think the smart money is riding on them already having retrieved JENNIFER MORGUE: the worst-case operational contingency is that, with Billington's expertise in necro-cognitive decoding, he also knows how to make it work. I expect any first attempt we make to fail — unless I'm along for the ride and in a position to act out my assigned role in accordance with the geas he's got running.
I'm not trying to be sticky here, I'm just reading the rules."
"Shit." Barnes is silent for a moment, evidently running some sort of scenario through his mind's eye. Then he nods briskly. "All right, you convinced me. One reservation: you've got a ten-minute lead, maximum, and not a second longer. If there's even a hint of instability in the geas field, all bets are off and I'm taking both teams in immediately. Now, one last time — can you enumerate your priorities"
"First, secure the field generator so Billington can't shut it down on schedule. Next, release the hostages and hand them off to the 'B' team for evac. Third, neutralize the chthonian artifact and if necessary sink the Explorer. That's all, isn't it"
Captain Barnes clears his throat. "Yes. Which I'm afraid means you just passed Angleton's cricket test. But you need this, first." He hands Mo a red-striped document wallet.
"Read it, then sign here."
"Oh dear," Mo says mildly, running one finger down a series of closely typed paragraphs of legalese drafted by a bunch of Home Office lawyers with too much time on their hands: "Do I have to"
"Yes," Barnes says grimly. "You must. That's also in the rules. They don't hand these out every day. In fact, they're so rare I think they probably had to invent it just for you ... "
"Well, pass me the pen." Mo scrawls a hasty signature then hands the document back to him. "That all square"
"Well, there's one other thing I'd like to add," Barnes says as he seals the document into a waterproof baggie and passes it to a sailor waiting on the bottom steps of the ladder. "Just between you and me, just because you've got the license, it doesn't mean you've got to use it. Remember, you're going to have to live with yourself afterwards."
Mo smiles, her lips drawn razor-thin. "It's not me you should be worrying about." She picks up a waterproof fiberglass black case and checks the latches on it carefully. "If this goes to pieces, I'm going to have words with Angleton."
"Really? I'd never have guessed." Barnes's tone is withering, but he follows it by sitting down next to Mo and leaning close: "Listen this is not going to go pear-shaped. One way or another, we've got to make it work, even if none of us end up going home. But more importantly — you listen — this isn't about you, or me, or about Bob, or about Angleton. If the Black Chamber gets their hands on JENNIFER MORGUE it's going to destabilize everything. But that's just the start.
We don't know why Billington wants it but the worst-case analyses — well, use your imagination. Watch out for any signs — anything, however small — that suggests Billington isn't in the driving seat, if you follow my drift. Got that"
Mo stares at him. "You think he's possessed"
"I didn't say that." Andy shakes his head. "Once you start asking which captains of industry are being controlled by alien soul-sucking monsters from another dimension, why, anything might happen. That sort of thing leads to godless communism and in any case they've got friends in high places like Number Ten, if you know what I mean. No, let's not go there." His cheek twitches. "Nevertheless, there is no obvious reason why a multibillionaire needs to acquire alien weapons of mass destruction — it's not exactly on the list of best business practices — so you be careful in there.
As I said, you can call 'A' troop in at any time after you make contact, but once you've made contact they're going in ten minutes later whether you ask for them or not. Let's check your headset — "
There's a knock on the door. I hit the boss key, flip the keyboard upside down, and stand up just as the door begins to open. It's one of the stewards from upstairs, not a black beret. "Yes?" I demand, slightly breathless.
He holds out a silver tray, half-covered by a crisp white linen cloth. My Treo sits in the middle of it, pristine and untouched. "This is for you," he says dully. I look at his face and shudder as I reach for the phone — he's not himself, that's for sure. Green lights in the back of the eye sockets and a distinct lack of breathing are usually indicators that you're looking at a nameless horror from outside space-time rather than something really sinister like, say, a marketing executive: but you still wouldn't want to invite one back to your cabin for a
drink and afterdinner conversation.
I take the phone and hit the power button. "Thanks," I say. "You can go now." The dead man turns and leaves the room. I close the door — and hit the button to fire up the phone's radio stage — not much chance of getting a signal this far from land, but you never know. And in the meantime ... well, if I can get back in touch with Control somehow and tell them not to send Mo in after me that would be a good thing. I find I'm shaking. This new Mo, fresh from some kind of special forces class at Dunwich, spilling blood with casually ruthless abandon, and working as an assault thaumaturgist with Alan's head-bangers, scares me. I've lived with her for years, and I know how hard she can be when it's time to rake a folk festival organizer over the coals, but that new violin she's carrying gives me the willies.
It's as if it comes with a mean streak, a nasty dose of ruthlessness that's crawled into the tough-minded but intermittently tender woman I love, and poisoned her somehow. And she's heading fot the Explorer, now, to — secure the field generator, release the hostages, neutralize the chthonian artifact, sink the Explorer — I stop dead in mid-thought. "Huh?" I mumble to myself.
"Secure the field generator"
That was the geas field she and Alan were discussing. The probability-warping curse that dragged me kicking and screaming into this stupid role-play thing, the very invocation I'm supposed to be destroying. She thinks it's aboard the Explorer! And Angleton wants her to keep it running!
I stare at my phone. There's no base station signal, but I've still got a chunk of battery charge. "Does not compute," I say, and stub my thumb on the numeric keypad. I'm frustrated: I admit it. Nobody tells me anything; they just want to use me as a communications link, keep me in the dark and feed me shit, pose around in evening drag at a casino and drink disgusting cocktails. I go back to the desk, flip the keyboard rightside up, and hit the boss key again. Mo's sitting in the cockpit of the cigarette boat, fastening her five-point safety harness. A pair of sailors is installing a kit-bag full of ominous black gadgets in the seat next to her; over the windscreen I can see the gray flank of a Royal Navy destroyer, bristling with radomes and structures that could be anything from missile batteries to gun turrets or paint lockers, to my uneducated eye. The horizon is clear in all directions but for the rulerstraight line of an airplane's contrail crawling across the sky.
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