Macaque Attack!

by Gareth L. Powell

  Once clear of the rotors, the boy-king’s pace slowed. He straightened up and fixed her with a smile.

  “Victoria!” He took her hand and pumped it, then pulled her into an awkward, backslapping embrace. “I really thought we’d lost you.”

  “No,” she said, gently extricating herself, “we’re still here, still alive and kicking.”

  “But why did you have to stay away so long? Couldn’t you have sent word?”

  “We’ve been busy.”

  “And Ack-Ack?” Merovech looked around hopefully.

  “He’ll join us later.” Victoria glanced past the King’s shoulder. “You must be Amy Llewellyn.”

  The young woman swapped her briefcase into her left hand and extended her right.

  “Captain Valois. We spoke on the phone.” Her voice was as cold as a Welsh mountain frost.

  “Yes, well, I’m sorry if I was rude.” Victoria gave a halfhearted shrug. “But needs must, you know?”

  “Quite.” Amy regarded the windswept deck and wrinkled her nose. “Frankly, I don’t even know what we’re doing here. But now we are here, is there somewhere a bit warmer where we can talk?”

  VICTORIA TOOK THEM down to the potted jungle at the nose of the airship, where they found Ack-Ack Macaque nursing a glass of medicinal rum and talking to the Founder.

  “You’ve finally grown up,” the Founder was saying, touching him on the arm.

  Ack-Ack Macaque didn’t reply. He looked around at the intruders with a guilty start. If Victoria hadn’t known him better, she would have sworn he looked embarrassed.

  She made five coffees, and placed them on the patio table. The others took chairs. The bodyguards lurked between the trees, and the Marines—who were clearly uncomfortable about the number of armed monkeys prowling the Sun Wukong’s corridors—took up positions by the big brass door.

  “Right,” she said, folding her hands on the iron tabletop, “now, perhaps you can tell me what’s more urgent than an invasion?”

  Merovech moistened his lips. He looked so much older than she remembered, less angry and more careworn than the mental image of the teenager she’d carried with her for the past two years.

  “It’s my mother,” he said quietly. Among the branches, a parrot squawked. The air smelled of blossoms and rich compost.

  Abruptly, Ack-Ack Macaque climbed to his feet and went to lean on the bamboo rail at the edge of the verandah. He lit a cigar and looked down through the airship’s glass nose at the waves washing the French coast, his hairy head haloed in clouds of drifting blue.

  Victoria frowned at his back, then turned her attention back to the King.

  “She’s the one leading the tanks.”

  “No, not her.” Merovech tapped his knuckles against the table. “She’s an alternate version. I’m talking about the Duchess, the one from this parallel.”

  “The one who blew herself apart with a hand grenade?”

  He gave a nod, wincing at the memory. “She had a back-up, on the Mars probe.”

  “We knew that.”

  “Well, the probe’s reached its destination, and she’s been in contact.”

  Victoria’s eyes widened. “Already?”

  “It’s taken them three years.”

  “What does she have to say for herself?”

  Merovech’s face clouded. “It’s not so much what she has to say, as what she’s done.” He turned to Amy Llewellyn. “Would you mind?”

  The Welsh girl pulled a flexible display screen from her briefcase and unrolled it on the table, weighing down the corners with coffee cups.

  “These are the best images we’ve been able to get so far,” she said. The pictures on the screen showed two grainy shots of the night sky, obviously taken through a telescope. “This first picture was taken yesterday at 1100 hours, this second one six hours later.”

  Victoria bent forward to get a better look. The only difference between the two shots was the position of a fat white dot that had been ringed with red marker pen. Between the first picture and the second, it had moved relative to the stars behind it.

  “What is it, a spaceship?”

  “A projectile.”

  “From Mars?”

  Merovech cleared his throat. “My mother gave the world an ultimatum, to join her or suffer the consequences. When no-one replied, she launched this.”

  “No-one replied?”

  Merovech turned his coffee cup but didn’t lift it. “She was trying to turn country against country, but we’ve been doing a considerable amount of diplomatic work since the Gestalt attack. She couldn’t have foreseen that.”

  Victoria was impressed. How different things were to the way they had been, three short years ago, when the West had been on the verge of nuclear war with China over the sovereignty of Hong Kong. Times had changed, relations had thawed; and all it had taken to usher in this era of peace and cooperation had been a global invasion from a parallel world.

  She tapped the image on the screen with her fingernail. “So, what kind of projectile are we talking about? Is it a bomb?”

  Amy enlarged the picture, but couldn’t resolve any further detail. The white dot remained a white dot. “As far as we can tell from spectrographic analysis, it’s a solid lump of rock, possibly a repurposed asteroid.”

  “And what kind of damage are we talking about?”

  Amy sniffed. “Projections vary, but it’s likely to be extensive. Given its mass and speed, it’ll hit with anything from several hundred to several thousand times the force of the Hiroshima explosion. There’ll be catastrophic damage, earthquakes and tsunamis, and the aftereffects won’t be much fun, either. At the very least, we’re looking at a worldwide nuclear winter lasting anywhere from ten to a hundred years.”

  Victoria thought back to the parallel world she’d just left, to the grey skies and dying plants, and the thin, starving and disease-ridden survivors.

  “Why are you telling me this?” She shuddered.

  Amy gave Merovech a sideways glance. “I’ve been wondering that myself.”

  Merovech had been leaning back, listening. Now he sat straight, and reached across the table for Victoria’s hands.

  “You and Ack-Ack, you’ve saved the world twice in the last three years,” he said. “I guess I’m kind of hoping you’ll find a way to do it again.”

  Leaning against the bamboo rail, Ack-Ack Macaque blew air through his nostrils in a low, animal grunt. Victoria ignored him.

  “Can’t you fire a missile at it and blow it up?”

  Merovech shook his head.

  “It’s not possible,” said Amy Llewellyn. “We don’t have anything with that kind of range or stopping power. We could fire a hundred warheads at it and it still wouldn’t be enough.”

  “Then what’s the plan?”

  “We don’t have one.” The Welsh girl made a sour face. “If we did, we wouldn’t be here talking to you.”

  Victoria reached up and pulled off her wig. She let it fall to the table.

  “You want us to go up into space?” She ran a hand over her bald scalp, grimly amused at Amy’s attempts not to stare.

  “We don’t have a craft,” Merovech said. “We’ve got some experimental engines but nothing to bolt them onto.”

  “Then I’m sorry, your highness, but I don’t see how we can help.” Victoria got to her feet. “Unless you need us to evacuate you to another parallel?”

  Merovech set his jaw.

  “I won’t leave my people to die.”

  “You may not have a choice.” They stood looking at each other for a moment, and Victoria couldn’t help but admire his bravery and dedication. The boy who never wanted to be king had grown to be one of the finest kings the Commonwealth could ever have hoped for. At the rail, Ack-Ack Macaque took the cigar from between his teeth.

  “I’ve got an idea,” he rumbled.

  Victoria gave him a look. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.” He leant back, resting his elbows on the bamboo, the
butt glowing between his fingers. “I’ll need to check it with K8, but yeah, I think I know how we can stop that asteroid.” He picked something from the hairs on his chest, inspected it, and then popped it into his mouth. “This whole invasion thing, too.”

  Amy Llewellyn frowned skeptically. “You really think one monkey can make that much of a difference?”

  Ack-Ack Macaque stiffened. He stood straight and looked her up and down. “You really think I can’t?”

  For a moment, there was silence, broken only by the cries of the birds in the upper branches. Then the Founder cleared her throat.

  “You have a plan?” she asked, speaking for the first time since the meeting convened.

  “That’s what I said.” Ack-Ack Macaque wouldn’t look at her.

  “Care to share it?”

  He turned back to the view through the airship’s glass nose. When he spoke, his voice was gruff.

  “Well,” he said, “the first thing we’re going to have to do is capture one of those tanks.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  HEAVY COAT

  THE THINGS ACK-ACK Macaque missed most about the Tereshkova were its watering holes. He missed hanging out on a barstool, eating peanuts and drinking daiquiris. The old skyliner had been built to transport passengers in comfort and elegance, and most of its half a dozen gondolas had sported at least one lounge area with a fully stocked bar. The Sun Wukong, on the other hand, was a warship. It had been built by a hive mind with no real interest in creature comforts. The crew cabins were spartan affairs, with steel-framed bunks bolted to the metal walls. The only touch of luxury was the forest built into the airship’s nose, and even that had its uses.

  After the humans left through the brass door to return to the bridge, he spent a few minutes swinging through the upper branches, stretching himself, working out the kinks in his back and shoulders. The fight with Bali had left him battered, but he’d been bruised and hurting to begin with.

  The Founder watched him from the patio table. She’d discreetly tipped her coffee into the soil at the base of one of the potted trees and replaced it with tea—black, with a slice of lemon—which she sipped as she waited for him. When he finally came down from the trees, she was sitting demurely, monocle in place and hands clasped in her lap.

  “Do you feel better now?”

  Ack-Ack Macaque growled. “I feel like hammered shit.”

  “Are we going to finish our conversation?’

  “What conversation?” He shuffled over and flopped onto a vacant chair. “You already told me you were pregnant.”

  The Founder twitched her tail.

  “I haven’t told you the best part, yet.”

  Ack-Ack Macaque raised an eyebrow, too tired to move or really give a shit. “What best part?’

  “It’s twins.”

  The air drained out of him. He felt like a week-old party balloon.

  “Twins?”

  “A boy and a girl, as far as can be told.”

  “Holy hopping hell.”

  The Founder removed her monocle and polished it with a lace handkerchief.

  “Is that all you have to say?”

  “For the moment.”

  “And you’re still going through with this idiotic plan to capture a Leviathan?”

  “Yah.”

  She twisted the lens back into place. “I thought that now you knew about the children, you might—”

  “Might what?” Ack-Ack laughed bitterly. “Give up this life of adventure and settle down somewhere?”

  “Don’t be childish.”

  “Then what? What do you want from me?”

  The Founder looked towards the vast, cone-shaped window that formed the airship’s nose. The daylight glinted on her monocle.

  “When you told me you’d let Bali live, I thought you’d finally started to grow up. I thought you were starting to accept your responsibilities.”

  Ack-Ack Macaque snarled deep in his throat. “Why the fuck do you think I’m doing this? You think I’m facing off against those tanks for fun?”

  “Why else? This isn’t our fight. We could leave now, leave this world to Célestine and her minions, find a better one, a safer one…”

  “Fuck that.” He leant his elbows on the table and leaned towards her. “Listen, lady. I saw some stuff on that last parallel, when I was in the woods.”

  The Founder frowned.

  “What sort of ‘stuff’?”

  “Stuff that opened my eye.” Ack-Ack Macaque put a fist to his forehead and mimed an explosion.

  “You mean the drugs that female gave you?”

  “No, it was more than that.”

  The Founder gave a dismissive snort. “If you don’t want anything to do with these children, just say so.”

  Ack-Ack sat back with a sigh. “You don’t get it.”

  “I’m quite sure I don’t. Why don’t you explain it for me?”

  Frustrated, he ground his right fist into his left palm. “I saw the multiverse,” he rumbled. “All of it. Now, whether it was real or a hallucination doesn’t matter. I know what I saw.”

  The Founder considered him with cool disdain. “And what else did you see? What ‘revelations’ were vouchsafed?”

  Ack-Ack Macaque bit down on an angry reply. She could be as sarcastic as she liked, he was still going to say his piece.

  “I know that if we run, now, we’ll be running forever.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Yes, yes we will.” He scratched his chest. “Because I’ve seen what happens—I’ve seen war and suffering. I’ve seen that wherever you go, wherever you run, there’s always some fuck-knuckle thinks he has the right to impose his will on everybody else. Look at Bali.” He lowered his voice. “Look at yourself.”

  The Founder’s chin dropped. She squeezed her hands in her lap.

  “That was a cheap shot.”

  Ack-Ack Macaque swore, got to his feet and shambled over to the drinks cabinet. It was a box on wheels containing a few bottles and a stack of glasses, and had once been a minibar in an expensive New York hotel, before he’d liberated it by heaving it through the window into the pool.

  “Don’t mean it ain’t true.” He knew he was being petty, but didn’t much care. After all, it was her who’d bombed London and killed all those people, not him, and he saw no reason to sugarcoat the truth. He rummaged in the cabinet and fixed himself rum and cola, dumping both into a tall glass without care for drips or spills. Once again, he missed the shabby elegance of the Tereshkova’s lounge, and the white-gloved stewards who used to mix his drinks.

  Still seated, the Founder said, “So, this is where you’ve decided to make your stand?”

  He stood straight, downed half the glass in a single swallow, and then wiped his lips on the back of his hand.

  “I’m tired of saving the world,” he said. “If we keep jumping from one timeline to another, we’re always going to be butting up against trouble, in one form or another.” He took a second smaller sip; swallowed. “There’s always going to be somebody that needs their ass kicked.”

  “You’d rather stay here and fight?”

  Ack-Ack Macaque stuck his chin out. “Sure, why not? This is where I’m from. I’ve got friends here.”

  “And that’s worth dying for, is it?”

  He shook his head. “You’re not listening.”

  “And you’re not explaining yourself very well.” The Founder unfolded her hands and stood. She brushed down the front of her skirt with a gloved hand. “I just want to be sure you know what you’re doing, and that you’re doing it for the right reasons.”

  Watching her, and the bulge at her middle, Ack-Ack Macaque drained his glass. He clunked it down on top of the cabinet.

  “I belong here,” he said. “I can’t run out at the first sign of trouble.”

  “I’d hardly call impending global annihilation ‘the first sign of trouble’.”

  “Whatever.” He reached up and snatched off his g
oggles and leather cap, and tossed them down beside his glass. “I’m talking about Victoria and K8, and Merovech. They’re…” He tailed off.

  The Founder inclined her head. “They’re what?”

  Ack-Ack Macaque swallowed. He felt foolish, and that only fuelled his irritability.

  “They’re my troupe.” He fixed the Founder with a baleful eye, daring her to laugh, but she only smiled.

  “So, you do care about something, then? You have chosen a side?”

  “Shut up.” He stomped back to the rail and leant his weight on it. Through the airship’s nose, he could see the distant coastline of England lying like a green smudge on the other side of the Channel. Seagulls wheeled through the air like little white fighter planes. Ships carved long, foamy wakes across the calm waters.

  Damn it all, what had Apynja done to him? What had happened to the days when he would have simply hopped into his plane and flicked the world the finger? When had he started giving a shit? He glanced back, around his shoulder, at the Founder’s pregnant belly and shuddered. It filled him with… what? Not dread, exactly. He wasn’t afraid of being a father. No, it was something else, something harder to pin down. For much of his life, as far as he’d been concerned, he’d been living on the edge of death, throwing himself into one dogfight after another, relying on skill and sheer bloody-mindedness to see him through. Now though, for the first time, he felt flutters of apprehension. Where previously he would have been itching to get going—to fly eagerly against the Leviathans in a battle to the death—now a strange fatalism gripped his heart. Mortality weighed on him like a heavy coat. When he thought of the children—his children!—growing in the Founder’s womb, he experienced a wave of sadness, almost regret, and knew in his gut that, one day, he’d go off on one of those damn fool missions and never return. One day, he’d leave them fatherless. In that instant, he knew it, and knew the Founder knew it too.

  No wonder she’s pissed off.

  He licked his lips and swallowed. His life had split in two. A crazy, reckless chapter had drawn to a close, and something new was waiting to take its place—an unexplored future with no maps or precedent, where everything to which he’d become accustomed would change. He would change. Truth was, he already had. For the first time in his life, death actually meant something.