Macaque Attack!

by Gareth L. Powell

  When the two tall, expressionless guards came to arrest her, she felt almost relieved.

  “Take me,” she said as bravely as she could, “to your leader.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  WRATH AND MALICE

  ACK-ACK MACAQUE KEPT moving. His stomach grumbled and tiredness clawed at him. He’d been on the run for hours now and was, frankly, knackered. But, even though he’d made it to the forest, he didn’t dare stay still for more than a few minutes at a time—just long enough to catch his breath, drink some water from a stream, or take a shit. After all, who knew what kind of heat-seeking tech those metal bastards packed? For all he knew they’d be able to pick him out at a hundred yards, and he had no intention of sitting around waiting for them to find him. Better to keep low and stay nimble, scampering through the undergrowth on his hands and feet. His plan, such as it was, involved finding a police station or army base, or maybe even a country sports store—anywhere that might have a stock of guns and ammunition. He only had four bullets left in his Colts, and there was no way in hell he’d be able to force his way back into Célestine’s facility without some serious firepower.

  And when I get inside, I’m going to shoot her ladyship in the kneecaps, he vowed to himself, and then keep shooting bits off her until she agrees to send me home.

  He paused for a moment to catch his breath, and leant against a tree, chest heaving. All he’d wanted was to save the world—and it hadn’t even been his world. How had he ended up here, in this cold and windy hellhole? Still wheezing, he spat into the grass, regretting each and every cigar he’d ever smoked.

  From behind, he heard the thud of clawed feet on mossy ground, and the rustle of lithe bodies crashing through bracken and underbrush.

  Dogs!

  They were close, and their cyborg masters wouldn’t be far behind.

  “Shitballs.”

  The trees in this part of the forest were mostly young saplings, with thin springy branches that wouldn’t bear his weight. Even if he managed to swarm up one, he’d be trapped in it, treed like a cat—unable to swing to the next because it’d snap beneath him.

  The sounds of pursuit grew closer, and he looked back. From the undergrowth, a pair of Dobermans flew at him like slavering suede missiles. His hands dropped to his holsters; but he knew that if he fired, he’d be giving away his position to his pursuers and using the last of his ammo. Instead, with no other choice, he dropped into a fighting crouch and let his lips peel back from his teeth.

  “All right, mutts, let’s play.”

  The dogs were almost upon him. He could see breath steaming from their mouths and powerful muscles rippling like pistons under their hides. He curled his hands into claws and thrashed his tail. Then he let out the deepest, most guttural snarl he could muster—an outpouring of rage and frustration that welled up from the soles of his boots. It was the cry of a challenged alpha male, an expression of wrath and malice so potent it could have stopped a charging gorilla.

  The two Dobermans slithered to a halt, their paws scrabbling at wet leaves and moss. It was a fair bet that, living in France, they’d never seen a monkey before—especially an enraged male almost the size of a human being. They took one look at the creature in the clearing—at its yellow incisors and baleful eye—and, whimpering in terror, fled back the way they had come.

  Ack-Ack Macaque scowled after them.

  “Yeah, you’d better run.” He put a hand to the small of his back and straightened his spine. Something clicked and he groaned. “Goddammit.” The roar had taken much of his strength. He felt emptied out. Much of the fear and anger that had been driving him had vanished, having vented away into the damp autumn air like steam from a safety valve. Now, he felt overwhelmingly tired.

  What I wouldn’t give for a coffee right now. He scratched his stomach. He couldn’t afford to linger. With a sigh, he turned and loped deeper into the forest, heading away from the distant sounds of pursuit.

  Soon, he came to an older part of the wood, where he scaled the first tree that seemed capable of holding him. Once up in the tangle of bare branches, he started swinging from tree to tree. The going was slower than running on the forest floor, but at least he wasn’t leaving a scent trail for the dogs to follow. They wouldn’t be able to track him through the air.

  HALF AN HOUR later, as the light of the afternoon began to fade and his arms started to feel like overstretched rubber bands, he came to an area where the trees were blackened and charred. An airliner had crashed into the heart of the forest. Parts of the wings and fuselage were clearly visible at the centre of the burned-out area. Cautiously, he crept closer. There hadn’t been many jet airliners on Victoria’s world, where skyliners accommodated the vast majority of aerial passengers. Neither had there been any in the game world he’d once inhabited, based as it had been on a fictionalised version of World War II.

  Stupid way to travel, he thought, regarding the wreck. Blasting through the air at half the speed of sound, crammed into a thin metal tube, more payload than passenger. Why go through all that when you could have the comfort and relative spaciousness of a skyliner cabin? Sure, the journey would take longer, but if your only concern was time, why not simply strap yourself onto a missile and have done with it?

  Something white caught his eye. A thighbone. Now that he’d seen one, other bones seemed to leap out at him. They lay strewn around the wreck like the leftovers of some hideous feast, some half-buried and sticking up from the earth, others piled in heaps where they’d fallen. He frowned. The plane had fallen here, and nobody had come to collect the bodies.

  What the hell? This wasn’t the Amazon rainforest; the wreck lay less than ten kilometres from the centre of Paris. Why hadn’t anybody come? They must have been able to see the smoke and flames. He thought back to the ruined village, the collapsed bridge. Whatever had happened here must have happened everywhere else as well. Some calamity had hit the whole country—maybe the whole world—and nobody had come to investigate this plane crash because they were all too busy dealing with their own dead and injured.

  He shivered.

  A couple of years ago, he’d fought Célestine and her plan to provoke a nuclear war. The crazy old cow had wanted to cleanse the world, leaving it free for her cyborg armies to inherit. Eventually, she’d been defeated and killed; but this was a whole different timeline, with a whole different Célestine. What if, in this reality, the Duchess had succeeded? Ack-Ack Macaque cast his eye at the darkened clouds and leafless trees.

  “Ah, crap.” He felt his skin crawl at the thought of radioactive fallout. The hairs on his neck and arms prickled. What was safe? Was he breathing the stuff now? Then he remembered Célestine. When they’d fallen through the portal, she hadn’t been wearing a protective suit. She hadn’t taken any precautions. Maybe things weren’t so bad.

  “Either way, there’s fuck all I can do about it now.”

  He crawled along the branch he was on, and jumped into the waiting arms of the next tree. He was going to give the crash site a wide berth; and, unless he dropped dead of radiation poisoning in the next couple of hours, he’d just have to go on assuming there was no contamination—or, at least, not enough to hurt him in the short term. He had to assume he’d go on living.

  After all, what choice did he have?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THAT VILE PRIMATE

  THE TWO GUARDS marched Victoria across the windswept campus, past row after row of workshops and assembly lines; past racks of artificial torsos, crates filled with disembodied heads, and, at the back of one particular building, a conveyor belt leading to a row of dumpsters filled with discarded human remains. Arms and legs stuck out at uncomfortable, unnatural angles. The bodies had been cored like apples, their brains and spinal cords having been cut out and pasted into new cyborg bodies. Flies swarmed over the cooling meat. The workers tending the conveyor belt turned to watch her pass with dull, frightened eyes.

  At the end of the row of structures, they ca
me to an exposed area that had once been a car park but which was now empty, save for a couple of rusting Citroëns and a large military transport helicopter. The helicopter’s twin rotors turned lazily. The craft had been painted the same dull, oppressive grey as the sky. Warm yellow light spilled from the ramp gaping open at its rear. The guards led Victoria to the base of the ramp and pushed her forward. She took a couple of steps, and then looked back.

  “You’re not coming?” she asked.

  They regarded her with blank, impassive expressions, their faces betraying all the verve and personality of shop window mannequins.

  “You go on,” one of them said. “We’ll be here when you’re finished.”

  The breeze whipping across the car park smelled smoky and autumnal, laced with the scents of wet earth and rotting leaves. In Victoria’s head, Paul said: “I don’t like this.” The helicopter’s tail rotor towered above them. The ramp was wide enough to accommodate a tank.

  “I don’t blame you.” She hadn’t been a fan of helicopters since that crash in the South Atlantic, a lifetime ago.

  She walked up the ramp and paused at the top, where she used her arm to shield her eyes, blinking as they adjusted to the contrast between the twilit gloom outside and the brightness within.

  The helicopter’s cargo hold had been outfitted as an art gallery. There were expensive-looking carpets on the deck, and tapestries hanging from the bulkheads. She recognised a number of famous paintings and carvings. In the centre of the space, a long metal box had been covered in candles, each of which was lit. There were votive candles, tea lights, lanterns, and gothic candelabra. Their glow gave the place the feel of a church, and their flames flickered brightly in the cold air swirling in from the open ramp. At the back of the room, near the hatch that led through to the cockpit, Alyssa Célestine sat behind a desk, face like a scowling cat. Back on Victoria’s timeline, the woman had been the Duchess of Brittany, companion to the King of the United Kingdoms, and mother to Merovech, the Prince of Wales. Goodness only knew what rank or title she held on this world.

  “Come in.” Célestine had unbuttoned her tunic. A squat black pistol lay on the desk in front of her. Victoria glanced back, at the guards at the bottom of the ramp. They were watching her. How could they stand to live in those metal shells? For a second or two, she pitied them. Then a wave of nausea splashed over her as she remembered her own situation. However artificial they might be on the outside, at least they still had their own brains. They weren’t running on slippery, lab-grown gelware. Their limbs and organs may have been replaced but their minds were still their own, still the product of greasy human neurons. For all their physical alteration, they remained human in a way she never could. And it was all Célestine’s fault. Célestine and Nguyen. Victoria should have died of her injuries, but they’d saved her. Nguyen had used her to test his techniques and theories. She had been an early prototype for his cyborg soldiers, her brain a testing ground for the gelware that allowed human consciousness to be copied and transferred into a metal body. They’d turned her into a guinea pig, and she’d been pathetically grateful—at least, until she’d realised the full scope of their plans. Then she’d killed Nguyen and helped Ack-Ack and Merovech finish off Célestine.

  Yes, back on her timeline, the Duchess was dead. On this one, she wasn’t. Victoria swallowed. Mouth dry and heart twitching like a caged animal, she turned to face the woman.

  Lady Célestine glared at her.

  “Do you speak English?”

  “Oui.”

  “Why have you come here?”

  “To find my friend.”

  “The monkey?”

  “Yes.”

  “He tried to kill me.”

  Victoria drew herself up. “As I recall, you opened fire on him.”

  The woman’s gnarled fingers brushed the stock of the pistol on the desk.

  “He broke into my lab.”

  “Is it your lab or is it Nguyen’s?” Victoria narrowed her eyes. “And, talking of Nguyen, why did you shoot him, anyway?”

  Célestine pursed her lips. She wrapped her fingers around the gun.

  “He allowed himself to be captured. His death was necessary.”

  “In case he talked?”

  “Because he disappointed me.” She raised the weapon. “But now it’s your turn to talk. Where are you from?”

  “Paris, originally.”

  “Which Paris?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  “Your name?”

  “Victoria Valois.”

  “Valois…” Célestine’s lip curled. “Of course. You’re the woman from the helicopter crash.”

  “You know me?”

  “I remember Nguyen operating on you.”

  Victoria blinked in surprise. “You were there?”

  “I have made contact with alternate versions of myself and the good doctor on a dozen parallels,” she said, “and on each, I have given them the tools to create new bodies, new societies.” Keeping the gun’s narrow barrel trained on Victoria, she rose stiffly to her feet. “The iteration you killed two years ago was one of my most promising students. We had never been so close to success. But then you ruined everything. You and that vile primate.”

  “You were trying to start a nuclear war.”

  “We were trying to save humanity. To improve it.”

  “By killing most of it.”

  “So what? Your world was dangerously overpopulated. You could have stood to lose some of the dross, the deadwood.” Célestine gestured to the open ramp behind Victoria. “As we have done here.”

  Victoria’s mouth felt dry.

  “There was a nuclear war here?” A droplet of sweat tickled as it ran into the small of her back.

  Célestine waved a dismissive hand. “A small one. Inconsequential, really.”

  “Somebody stopped you again?’

  The woman smiled. “We just developed more subtle methods. Biological methods. Diseases genetically tailored to target certain subsets of the population, leaving only a percentage of the adults.”

  Victoria had to stop herself from turning away in disgust, appalled by the implied slaughter. “Enough to create your brave new world?” she asked, almost spitting the words.

  “Enough to provide the slave labour to build it.”

  Victoria felt her cheeks growing hot. Rage bubbled up like stomach acid. “Who elected you ruler of the world?”

  Behind her, she heard the ramp closing. The deck trembled underfoot as the helicopter wobbled into the air. Braced against the desk, the Duchess straightened her arm, and aimed the gun directly at Victoria’s face.

  “And who elected you its saviour?”

  Beneath the anger, Célestine looked tired. The fingers holding the weapon were starting to gnarl, the backs of the hands blotchy with liver spots and ancient scars.

  “Do you think this has been easy?” she asked, regarding Victoria with glittering eyes. “All these years, all these worlds? This has been my life’s work.”

  “Turning people into robots?”

  “Trying to save the human race!” She shook the gun and Victoria cringed. If she could keep the Duchess talking, she might have time to access her internal menus and dial up her speed and strength.

  “You could just stop now, and walk away,” she suggested, stalling for time.

  Célestine shook her head. “No, not now. I’ve spent too long at this. I’ve invested too much time, too much of myself—too much of all my selves.”

  “Perhaps we could help you?”

  “No.” She motioned Victoria over to a porthole. They were climbing slowly, rising over the campus of workshops and warehouses that made up the laboratory. Victoria braced herself against the inside of the hull and bent to the window. Below, in the fields beyond the barbed wire fences, immense armoured vehicles sat in ranks.

  “Are they tanks?” They were bigger than any kind of tank she’d ever seen.

  Lady Alyssa buttoned her bla
ck tunic. Her close-cropped hair and bright eyes gave her the look of a Siamese cat.

  “They are my Land Leviathans.”

  Victoria cupped a hand around her eyes and pressed her face to the glass. Bristling with guns, and with sparks shooting from their smoke stacks, the Leviathans resembled armoured locomotives, or battleships plucked from the sea and given caterpillar tracks. In the corner of her vision, she saw Paul’s image superimposed across the scene.

  “There are hundreds of them,” he said.

  For a moment, Victoria regretted her decision to allow Paul to ride in her head. If she got herself killed—and it seemed increasingly likely that she would—he’d also die. If her heart stopped pumping the oxygen her gelware ran on, he’d fade away like a computer program in a power cut. She could have left a copy of him running on the Sun Wukong’s processors, but that would have run contrary to their pact. In the aftermath of the Gestalt invasion, they’d made each other a promise. She wasn’t backed-up, and Paul didn’t want to live without her, haunting the memory banks of a captured airship. If she died, he would follow. On this trip, they were sharing the risk, and there would be no second chances.

  Victoria stepped back from the window. Célestine let her pistol drop demurely to waist-height, but kept it aimed. “What do you think?”

  “Does it matter what I think?”

  “Perhaps not, but I wanted you to see them.” She walked around the heavy metal box occupying the centre of the hold, putting it between them. In the candlelight, her eyes seemed to smoulder.

  “You say I kill people? Before I came to this world, it was a totalitarian dictatorship, a fascist nightmare. There were death camps, torture houses. Now, because of me, many of the formerly downtrodden are free, and equipped with bodies that may serve them for a thousand years. I killed all the generals.”