It’s Johanna Todt, McMurray’s thugette. It’s funny how she’s nothing like as glamorous when I’m sharing my eyeballs with Ramona: or maybe it’s something to do with the combat fatigues, life preserver, and smudged make-up, not to mention the stench of ancient death she drags around like a favorite toy she can’t bear to let go of. She’s standing behind the diorama at the center of the geas generator grid, holding a hammer about ten centimeters above the Bond-mannequin’s head. Whoops.
I’m still trying to think of something to say when Ramona takes the initiative: “Fancy meeting you here, dear. Did Pat deep-six you, or did you decide you needed a bit more bargaining power?”
“Ramona?” She cocks her head to one side. “Ah, I should have guessed. Three’s a crowd: Why don’t you butt out, bitch?”
I manage to temporarily regain control of my larynx: “She stays,” I say. Remember to breathe deeply, I tell myself. My doubled vision is beginning to annoy me: the light around Ramona is definitely brightening towards a predawn twilight. I try to keep the MP-5 pointing in Johanna’s general direction, but she’s right—if I start shooting, I’m as likely to take out the geas generator as hit her. “What are you doing here?”
“Unlike some, I know who I’m loyal to. I figured I’d help myself to the leftovers at the rich man’s buffet, seeing I’ve just armed the scuttling charges. And aren’t you just the dish? I think you’ll do for starters.” Johanna’s grin widens, carnivorously: I catch a whiff of breath that’s not so much stale as cadaverous, reeking of the crypt. “I can disentangle you, ’Mona, did you know that? I can even unlock your binding without killing McMurray. I stole his tokens while I was helping him consider the error of his ways down in the brig.” She turns her free hand so that I can see she’s holding a small plastic box. “It’s all in here. I own you both.”
Breathe. Ramona tenses and kicks harder towards the light. Her buttocks are a solid slab of agony: she’s swum nearly a kilometer straight up, and she’s beginning to tire of struggling, of fighting off the adaptive stress that seductively taunts her, the knowledge that if she just uses her other muscles everything will become so much easier—
“So what do you want with us?” I ask, taking a short step towards her.
“Stop. Don’t move.” She stares at me. “I want you to adore me,” she says, almost wistfully. “I want you to be my body. ’Mona, give him to me and I’ll even set you free, Ellis doesn’t need to know—”
For a moment I’m in Ramona’s body, swimming free towards a surface that is slowly brightening: it’s still a dim twilight, utter darkness to merely human eyes, but I can see shapes in the murk above me. Half of the horizon is dominated by a huge, black shadow that the drill string disappears into, and there’s another dark silhouette in the near distance. I’m in control, I’m the one who’s swimming with unfamiliar legs and weaker upper arms—I begin altering course towards the distant, dark shape in the water—
Meanwhile, Ramona is in my body, and she’s dropped the MP-5 and is halfway across the perspex lid covering the diorama, making a noise in the back of her throat that I’ve heard when two cats get serious about their territory. Johanna whacks the hammer hard, off the back of my neck—aiming for my head, but she misses—causing a bright sharp pain, and then I’m in her face and she’s biting at me and trying to smash me on the side of the skull and Ramona does something with my arms that I’m just not up to, some type of blocking move. I can feel muscles, possibly a tendon, tearing as I punch Johanna overarm; she blocks, I bring up a knee—
Breathe for two because the Mabuse is holding station but it’s still a third of a kilometer away—
“Bitch!” screams Johanna, then sinks her teeth into my shoulder and goes for my balls.
Ramona, not used to having that external hazard to guard, doesn’t react in time to Johanna—but I do, and I manage to squirm sideways so that Johanna grabs my inner thigh painfully, rather than turning me into a pile of screaming jelly. The Glock in my pants is digging in uselessly. Then I notice Johanna’s teeth in my right shoulder. They burn and they’re icy-cold at the same time, which is wrong: bite injuries aren’t meant to freeze. Everything about Johanna is wrong: this close with the Tillinghast resonator powered up I can feel something moving just behind her face, something horrifyingly similar to Ramona’s succubus, but different. Instead of feeding on the small death I can hear it calling for the great one, the ending of time. I feel weak in its presence, enervated and crushed by a numinous dread.
★★Fuck it, keep breathing, monkey-boy! What are you doing, shit-for-brains, trying to kill us both?★★ That’s Ramona. She sounds as if she’s calling to me from the far end of a long corridor.
Breathe? I’m lying on top of Johanna on the floor. How did we get here? She’s still as a corpse, but she’s got her teeth embedded in my shoulder and she’s hugging me like her one true love. And I feel so heavy. Breathing is a huge effort. There’s a haze forming around my vision. Breathe?
A hand—mine?—is fumbling with the lump in my pocket.
Breathe.
Everything is going gray. The tunnel is walled in darkness. Johanna Todt waits at the end of it, smiling coolly, as inviting and desirable as a glass of liquid helium. But I can also tell somehow that Johanna isn’t what’s waiting for me if I take that drink: Johanna is like the bioluminescent lure dangling before an angler fish’s head, right in front of the sharp jaws of oblivion. She’s got me in her arms and if I take the lure, when I get up I’ll be as hollow as she is, I won’t be me anymore, just a puppet rotting slowly on its feet while her daemon tugs it through the motions of life.
Breathe?
BANG.
Johanna spasms beneath me, shuddering and tensing. Her thighs flex.
BANG.
I remember to breathe, then nearly choke on the hot stink of burned powder.
She’s vibrating away, drumming her heels on the floor, and there’s a flood of blood and tissue everywhere around her head, like a spray of hair. As I pant for breath I realize there’s a hand clutching a pistol inches away from my head, and my arm feels as if it’s twisted half out of its socket. A combined wash of fear and revulsion makes me bounce off the floor, muscles screaming. ★★Ramona?★★
★★Still here, monkey-boy.★★ She’s gasping—no, that’s wrong—she’s struggling for breath. There’s a burning sensation in her gills as she fights down the reflex to extend them fully. Stroking towards the slim shadow of the Mabuse outlined against the brightness of the surface, still some 200 meters overhead: ★★Breathe, dammit! I’m getting cramps! I can’t keep this up.★★
I pant like a dog, then carefully lower the pistol. I’ve got more pulled muscles and my right arm is screaming at me, plus a savage bite that makes me dizzy when I poke at it with my left hand. I look at my fingertips. Blood. ★★Shit. How long—★★
★★If that bitch was telling the truth, you’ve got two or three more minutes to get the diorama and make it up on deck.★★
I look around, trying to make sense out of nonsense, a luxurious lounge aboard a yacht, a dead woman on the floor . . . and a diorama in a large, locked display case. I can’t move the case, it’s the size of a pool table. I groan. It looks like the proximate effect of my first stab at hatching a Plan B was to spook Billington into ordering the ship sunk—and right now, I seem to be short of options.
But. Secure the field generator. That’s the core of the geas Billington’s set up, and he’s now trying to destroy it in the crudest way imaginable—not just by throwing the “off” switch, but by blowing up the ship. (Why? Because I got a little too clever and let slip the yipping Chihuahuas of infowar.) If I can keep it running, then the semantics of the spell demand that James Bond—or a good knockoff—will save us. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to keep the thing running while I get it off the sinking ship.
My Treo is in my back pocket. I nearly scream as I reach for it with my right arm, then shakily switch it on and aim the camera le
ns at the display. Once I’ve filled the memory card that’ll have to do. I check the display—72Km/97% Complete—then shove it in a hip pocket.
Looking around the owner’s lounge, I don’t see anything obvious, but the dining room was just up the corridor. I duck out and stumble towards it, shove my way through the door, and what I want is waiting for me under a pile of uncollected dirty dishes. I grab the linen tablecloth, wait for the clatter of crockery to stop, and stagger back to the lounge. Then I whack the display case hard with the butt of my pistol, knocking out as much glass as possible.
Breathe. I catch a glimpse of Ramona, the agony spreading to her lower back. There are burning wires of pain in her shoulders as she scrabbles towards the surface close by the port side of the Mabuse. The air in here is foul, a stench of sewers and decaying, uncooked meat. I shove the pistol in a pocket then take the tablecloth in both hands and drop it across the broken glass and the diorama. I lean forwards—Remember to breathe—and gather it all in with both hands. Then I fumble on the floor for the plastic box containing the tokens that Johanna taunted Ramona with. My hands shake as I finally tie off the corners of the tablecloth in a rough knot. ★★Got it,★★ I tell her.
★★Get the hell out!★★
She doesn’t need to tell me twice. I head for the door, grabbing the MP-5 on the way, and cast around the corridor for the door onto the sun deck.
★★That one, Bob—★★
The daylight glare nearly brings tears to my eyes after the death-stink below decks. I step out onto the deck and walk to the side of the ship, then look aft. In the distance there’s a white trail etched across the wave crests. Breathe. I blink, and see through Ramona’s eyes, looking up at the light from beneath the keel of the frigate. From down here it looks enormous, the size of a city. Run. I weave my way aft, back into the access passage to the boat deck. There’s a crane and boarding steps descending over the side, ending just above a floating platform at the waterline. I take the steps two at a time, nearly tumbling into the water in my haste.
★★Get yourself overboard! Now!★★ Breathe. She can see the grid of the platform, the shadows of my feet on the metal grating.
★★Not yet.★★ I gasp for breath, my vision flickering with the bright sparkles of hyperventilation as I set down the stolen diorama and pull out my phone: 74Km/99% Complete. ★★How do you think we’re going to get onto the Explorer ? Neither of us is in any condition to swim that far, and anyway—it’s moving.★★
There’s white foam at the bow of the huge drilling ship as its positioning thrusters power up. Billington isn’t stupid enough to sit too close while his yacht self-destructs: even if he isn’t afraid of the backwash from the geas generator he’s got to be worried about the fuel tanks.
★★We’ve got to get over there!★★ She’s near the surface.
★★I’ve got a plan.★★ Breathe. I reach down into the water as—
With all her remaining energy she reaches up towards the hand breaking through the silvery mirror-surface above her and—
“Ow!” Water splashes over me as Ramona breaks the surface and grabs onto my hand.
“Plan. What plan? Ow . . .” I heave. Something in my back registers a complaint, in triplicate, then locks up and goes on strike.
Ramona twists round and falls back onto the platform. Out of the water, she goes limp. I can feel her muscles. I wish I couldn’t.
“Look over there.” I point. The silvery trail is curving towards us like a bizarre missile running just above the surface of the water. There’s something that looks like a glassy black sphere in the middle of it, surrounded by four huge orange balls: “It’s my car.”
“You. Have got to be. Kidding.”
“Nope.” I grin like a mad thing as the Smart Fortwo whines towards me eagerly, its hub-mounted air bags thrashing the water into submission. “It may not be a BMW or an Aston Martin, but at least it comes when I call it.” It slows as it nears the edge of the platform. Ramona sits up wearily and begins to peel off her outer-heated wet suit. Her skin is silvery-gray, the scales clearly visible: even the few hours underwater have been enough to cause the change to set in, and her fingers have begun to web. By the time she’s got her top layer unzipped, the car has slowly pulled up to the platform edge and driven aboard. The engine stops.
“Who’s that?” she asks, pointing through the windscreen.
“Oops, I forgot about him.” It’s Marc, sometime procurer and latterly zombie. He’s bloated up against the front windscreen and the driver’s side door. “You’ll have to help me get him out of there.”
“This is why I never date the same guy twice—avoids raising a stink, you know?”
I get the door open, just in time to be hit by an olfactory experience almost as good as Johanna’s buffet. “Ick.”
“You can say that again, monkey-boy. He’s leaked all over the seats—you expect me to ride in this?”
“You’re the one who told me about the scuttling charges, I’m the one with the biometrics that match the ignition button. Your call.”
I grab hold of one arm. To my great delight, it doesn’t come off in my hand. Ramona opens the opposite door and shoves him towards me. I do a two-step with the stiff, twist him round, and shove him onto the platform. I grab the bundled-up geas generator and shove it into the shoe box that passes for a boot in this thing. Ramona winces as she tries to belt herself in, and holds something up: “What’s this?”
“Marc’s idea of a conversational intro.” I pass her the MP- 5. “You know how to use one of these, I figure I’ll take the pistol.” It’s another Glock, of course, with a whizzy laser-sighting widget and an extended magazine. “Now let’s go visit Ellis, huh?”
I push the ignition button, check that the doors and windows are closed, then gently tap the gas pedal. There’s a red light blinking on the dash, but the engine starts. We tilt alarmingly as I drive off the edge of the platform, but the car stabilizes fairly fast, leaving us bobbing like a cork in the water. I stroke the accelerator again. That starts a lot of spray flying—this thing isn’t the world’s most efficient paddleboat—but we begin to move away from the Mabuse, and I start the windscreen wipers so I can see where we’re going. The Explorer is a huge, gray bulk about 400 meters away. There’s the beginning of a trail of foam at her stern, but I’m pretty sure I can catch her—even a Smart car can outrun a 60,000-ton, deep-ocean drilling ship, I figure. Ramona leans against my sore shoulder and I feel her bone-deep exhaustion, along with something else, a creeping smugness.
“We make a pretty good team,” she murmurs.
I’m about to say something intended to take the place of a witty reply when the rearview mirror lights up like a flash bulb. I goose the accelerator and we lurch wildly, nearly nosing over as a spray of water goes everywhere. Then there’s a sound like the door of Hell slamming shut behind me, and another huge lurch sets us bobbing side to side. A water spout almost as high as the topmost radar mast hangs over the ship, then comes crashing back down.
“Fuck fuck fuck . . .” We’re less than a ship-length away from the Mabuse, on the opposite side to the scuttling charge, and that’s probably what saves us: most of the blast is heading in the opposite direction. On the other hand, the ship is rolling, heeling over almost sixty degrees, and there’s a gash below the waterline that’s raised so high above the surface I can see it in my rearview mirror. It looks large enough to take on a hundred tons of water a second. Johanna opened the bulkhead doors below the waterline, and as if it isn’t enough that the charge has ripped the yacht’s skin open, cavitation from the explosion has broken her keel. I suppose Billington doesn’t much care about money at this point—when he’s Planetary Overlord he can have as many yachts as he likes—but right now I care because we’re less than 200 meters away from something as massive as a ten-story office block that’s just begun to disintegrate. As a way of ensuring that annoying witnesses are silenced and the geas generator stops working, it’s overkill, bu
t if it succeeds I suppose Lloyds of London are the only people who’re going to complain.
The ship’s superstructure hangs in the air like a hallucination, heeled over through almost ninety degrees. Loose life rafts and stores tumble across the deck and fall into the sea. With majestic slowness it begins to roll back upright—warships aren’t designed to capsize easily—and I steel myself for the inevitable backwash when four or five thousand tons of ship go under.
I floor the accelerator pedal to open up some distance behind us, which is, of course, the cue for the engine to die. There’s an embarrassed beep from the dashboard. I mash my thumb on the START button, but nothing happens, and I realize that the blinking red light on the dash has turned solid. There’s a little LCD display for status messages and as I stare at it in disbelief a message scrolls across:
MANDATORY SERVICE INTERVAL REACHED. RETURN TO MAIN DEALER FOR ENGINE MANAGEMENT RESET.
Behind me, there’s a sinking frigate, while ahead of me, the Explorer has begun to make way. I start swearing: not my usual “shit-fuckpisscuntbugger” litany, but really rude words. Ramona sinks her fingers into my left arm. “This can’t be happening!” she says, and I feel a wash of despair rising off her.
“It’s not. Brace yourself.”
I flip open the lid on top of the gear-stick and punch the eject button. And the car ejects.
THE CAR. EJECTS. THREE WORDS THAT DON’T BELONG in the same sentence, or at any rate in a sentence that’s anywhere within a couple hundred meters of sanity street. In real life, cars do not come with ejector seats, for good reason. An ejector seat is basically a seat with a bomb under it. The traditional way they’re used is, you pull the black-and-yellow-striped handle, say good-bye to the airplane, and say hello to six weeks in traction, recovering in hospital—if you’re lucky. The survival statistics make Russian roulette look safe. Very recent models buck the trend—they’ve got computers and gyroscopes and rocket motors to stabilize and steer them in flight, they’ve probably even got cup holders and cigarette lighters—but the basic point is, when you pull that handle, Elvis has left the cockpit, pulling fifteen gees and angling fifteen degrees astern.
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