by Kim Newman
If Pretorius wasn’t crazy before he moved into his Integratron, ten minutes of sensory bombardment would have done the trick. He said he was swimming in the zeitgeist. Anyone else would drown.
A clanking cart approached in the shape of a black swan. It was stocked with bottles.
‘Have some gin, Molinar,’ said Pretorius. ‘It’s my only weakness.’
‘You always say that. It’s a lie. You have many weaknesses. Being half-mad is one of them.’
‘I never do anything by half-measures,’ he responded, pretending to be affronted. ‘I am completely mad. Perfectly mad. Gloriously mad. How else can one stay attuned to this crazy-paved continuum? Look at the evidence of the maelstreams. Count Dracula gets the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. The President of the United States fills a thousand pages with testimony about a stained dress. Do you really think that’s how the universe is supposed to be?’
‘Gin isn’t even a weakness,’ Molinar continued, ignoring the speech. ‘It’s a vice. You have many of those too.’
‘Who among us cannot say the same?’
‘Her,’ said Molinar, pointing at an arched, curtain-framed section of the Integratron devoted to Christina Light. A calming presence in Pretorius’s maelstream. Mostly portraits and photographs of her as a warm woman. Even film stills and posters. Veronica Lake, Meryl Streep and Madonna in Casamassima, Voyage of the ‘Macedonia’ and Miss Christina. The Princess’s image couldn’t be captured or recorded. She only manifested live, if not in the flesh. She was the glow of the Light Channel. It was all she could transmit.
‘Ah,’ said Pretorius. ‘I would never include her in any generality. She is her own entire uncommon category.’
‘We agree on that then.’
‘Once, she was light. Now, she is electric.’
Dr Pretorius was old-womanish. Molinar suspected he was immune to the effect the Princess had on men, and threw in with her project for his own reasons. That meant he must be watched. Mitsuru Fujiwara had the latest equipment and Pretorius lived amid a junkyard of obsolete television sets. There must be ways to turn the alchemist’s own screens into spies.
‘What is this intrusion? I’m very busy, you know.’
‘You asked me to come,’ said Molinar, wearily.
‘Oh yes, dear dear, yes… silly me.’
‘I’m reasonably busy myself.’
Dr Pretorius fiddled with knobs and switches.
‘Just a mo… need to get a fellow patched in. Watch that wall there.’
Molinar looked at a cliff-face of moving images.
The screens blinked, then came on again. A pattern of light and dark, sixty feet high, formed a trompe l’œil pixel portrait. A bald man with a moustache.
‘Am I supposed to recognise him?’
‘This is my late colleague Brian O’Blivion – the first human to transcend. He left the flesh behind and did not turn vampire, but re-formed as a virtual person. The synthesis of all his teachings and thoughts and quirks and annoying little habits are now on hundreds and hundreds of Betamax videotapes. A wild prophet of the airwaves and a dedicated shockwave surfer, he picked the losing side in the format wars of the ’80s. He’d be obsolete now, trapped in dead plastic boxes. I made it a project to transfer his information to our servers. We have him in our machine. Not a soul, if such things there be, but a process. A digital daemon. Brian in a Box. We can talk with him. I find his company refreshing. He foresaw the coming of Our Lady of Light, and his prophecies and cryptic warnings have been crucial. Without Professor O’Blivion, we would not be where we are.’
Cortés once charged Molinar with hanging a Jesuit who’d murdered a sacred monkey. High on psychedelic mould, the condemned man jabbered in different tongues as if possessed by five squabbling demons. Molinar had understood the priest better than he did Dr Pretorius.
‘Don’t look so glum. It’s basic. O’Blivion is an O’Racle. Dead and gone from the realm of the flesh, he survives in a sphere of pure information. His bits and bytes make a kaleidoscope. Often, he issues helpful hints.’
Molinar was dubious.
The mosaic portrait moved like a film clip. The ghost professor shifted in his seat. The back of his jacket rucked up.
‘A message from the beyond, just for you?’
‘No, my dear Molinar, for you.’
A huge voice filled the screen-studded cavern. Molinar pressed his palms over his ears. Dr Pretorius wobbled in his precarious chair. His hair flew back as if he were caught in a wind tunnel.
‘Beware,’ boomed Brian O’Blivion. ‘Beware Jun Zero!’
All the facets of O’Blivion as if every blood vessel in the Professor’s face exploded at once. The picture froze into photo-negative silver-on-grey afterimage, then degraded to static snow, except for eyes which hung there in space, composed of a dozen screen-savers, and looked straight at Molinar.
‘There,’ said Pretorius. ‘Now you’ve been told.’
‘What, exactly? That we should beware of a criminal who’s on the watch-lists of every police agency in the world?’
The Mad Gnome tugged his lip and said, ‘I may have exaggerated when I claimed we could talk with Professor O’Blivion. It’s more a matter of him talking to – well, let’s not beat about anyone’s bush, shouting at – us. Oracles, as a rule, discourage follow-up questions. Takes the edge off the mystique. It is up to we lesser mortals to interpret and decode.’
NEZUMI
She was concerned Mr Jeperson might not be safe inside the big bus, but he wanted her not to pick fights with the cleaners. Her first duty was to protect her principal. Her second was to do what he asked. She sized up the newcomers and roughed out the order they’d need to be killed or disabled if they forced her to fight.
The vampire woman with the knives first.
The cyborg second. She didn’t like fire.
The Big Cheese third. Nobbling a commanding officer always threw the enemy into a tizzy.
Then, the schoolboy and the larger of the two vampire men. The lingering smell of old blood was on them. They were the most practised killers.
The four remaining ronin – space-age samurai – in no particular order. The smaller vampire man was a wispy reed who’d shift to mist, a trick of limited use inside a sealed space suit.
Maybe the driver, to be on the safe side. She could tell least about him. Surprises weren’t welcome.
The doctor who was talking with Mr Jeperson she could leave. If he snuck a poison needle out of his bag, Mr Jeperson could take care of himself. He had a fussy dislike of guns and knives – in Britain, he usually carried an umbrella shooting stick instead – but could go a round or two with the biggest bruiser in any given pub. Years of Sergeant Dravot’s refresher courses in ‘holds and throws and breakfalls’ kept him fighting fit.
She’d not kill the semi-Aussie. Someone had to be alive to surrender.
And tell the tale.
‘You do that?’ the vampire woman asked her. She stood over the boy Nezumi had killed. Someone had fetched his eyeball-hooded head and put it back in place. It rolled over.
‘Yes, miss,’ Nezumi admitted.
‘Nice work. What iron are you playing?’
Nezumi partially slid her sword from its sheath.
The woman whistled, which rattled through her helmet speaker.
Nezumi would have to thrust through her heart – the steel rim of her helmet was too thick for a head-chopping slice.
‘Silvered steel,’ the woman observed. ‘Classy.’
Nezumi had taken her katana – crafted in the fourteenth century by Bizen Kanemitsu, the swordsmith known as sai-jo o-wazamono, which translated to Grand Master of Great Sharpness – to a Hatton Garden silversmith for plating. She was reluctant to subject the Kanemitsu to such treatment, but many famous blades had broken against vampire necks.
‘Does it have a name?’ the woman asked.
‘“Good Night Kiss”,’ Nezumi admitted, resheathing the sword.
The woma
n patted the knives on her thighs. ‘I call these “the Captain” and “Tennille”. They’re new.’ She tapped her holstered pistol and shoulderslung machine gun. ‘“Simon Smith” and “Amazing Dancing Bear”.’
‘Good names,’ said Nezumi.
‘I think so. The naming of weapons is an art. Men give their guns and knives names like the ones they give cars and speedboats. As if they were naming their willies. Bragging and compensating.’
Nezumi giggled.
‘Women name weapons as they name their babies. To nurture and protect and wish them well in the world. “Good Night Kiss”. It’s not a boastful name. It’s a promise.’
‘I am Nezumi. Mouse.’
‘I’m “Cottonmouth”. It’s what a man decided to call me. Men like reptile names. It’s better than “Viper”. I’d have preferred “Garter Snake”. My real name is O-Ren Blake.’
The semi-Aussie knelt by the dead boy.
‘This is Derek,’ said Cottonmouth.
‘Hya,’ croaked Derek.
‘Nezumi took down the eyehead.’
‘Choice,’ said Derek.
He examined the suicide waistcoat, spotted the cracked canister, and took a small aerosol can out of his bag. He sprayed fast-setting sealant on the crack, then emptied the can coating most of the other phials. Airfix glue smell stung Nezumi’s nostrils. The suspect goop was sealed in.
Cottonmouth gingerly picked up the waistcoat Nezumi had taken from the boy she hadn’t had to kill and called for a lock-box.
‘It’s gonna be a mare to get this cluster bomb off Johnny No Head and into the chilly bin,’ said Derek, holding up gauntleted hands. ‘Can’t undo the bloody knots with the glovies on, eh? Could one of you chop off his arms? Then I could wriggle the bang-bang vest off him and no worries.’
‘Think of the optics, gorehound,’ said an American.
‘Aw, c’mon, Hunter. He’s totally munted already. Double armodectormy’s not gonna piss him off any more than losing his bloody coconut.’
‘“The Wire is watching”, remember,’ said Hunter. ‘We’re on candid camera. All the time. Golgotha will do worse than rip your arms off if you start a riot by mutilating a corpse in public. At least drag him into an alley first.’
Nezumi took out her Girl Guide knife again.
‘Careful there, Missy,’ said Derek.
Disarming the charges was easier when the wearer was dead.
She stood back and let Cottonmouth strip the clinking waistcoat off the corpse. Hunter had another lock-box ready.
‘You might want to take a shower,’ Derek told her. ‘Scrub with bleach, if you can. To be on the safe side. We’re EarthGuard, by the way. Here to, ah, do what it says on the packet… guard Earth. From extranormal threats and suchlike. If Evil Squid from Mars were flopping about, we’d nut ’em. More of a calling than a grind. You can put in a chit for helping out.’
Derek picked up the severed head.
‘So, matey, learned your lesson? Never bloody threaten Earth, because it’s bloody guarded. And don’t go spoiling a nice party with a bio-terror attack, ’cause no one likes that.’
‘Derek is from New Zealand,’ said Cottonmouth, solving one mystery.
There were others. Like what EarthGuard were really up to.
A skill Nezumi picked up at school was sitting in a new classroom during the larking-about period before the register was called and mapping the invisible web of friendships and enmities. With careful observation and intuition, she could work out who was shamming, or stuck in the wrong group, or harbouring feelings that would bubble over eventually. Girls secretly liked as often as they secretly disliked. The history of Drearcliff Grange’s shifting alliances and flare-up hostilities over any term was more complicated than Japan’s Sengoku Era (the ‘Warring States’ period). Nezumi was used to living in a house of cards built on top of an apple cart.
She liked Cottonmouth, but didn’t trust her. Friendly before the match, she’d smash your face with a stick as soon as the ref looked the other way.
Another cleaner – ‘This is Panty-Mask, if you can believe it,’ said Derek – brought over a body bag. Clear polythene, with a seal rather than a zip for use in cases of infectious disease. Derek handed over the head to stuff in with the rest of the corpse.
Panty-Mask hoisted the bag over his shoulder and walked back to the bus.
Only now did Golgotha step down to the street.
The Big Cheese came over to inspect the burned stain.
His crew stood to attention. Even Derek.
Nezumi was invisible to him. She didn’t even need vampire powers or ninja stealth. He was used to ignoring children, girls, civilians.
It was odd, then, that he did notice the chauffeur. Their eyes didn’t meet, but there was an awareness. The vampire with iron teeth was expected.
Mr Horror – not a friendly name.
A webstrand, the merest filament, stretched between the Colonel and the chauffeur.
Golgotha – also not a friendly name – was worse than a bad penny.
He was a bully, and self-righteous about it. To his way of thinking, he was born in charge.
Even Cottonmouth threw him a salute.
Bullies didn’t have friends – only minions. They had wary alliances. Bullies never picked on each other. They marked out territory, then were beastly to whoever they could get away with picking on.
Golgotha had his gang about him, but there was another web. Some of the EarthGuard team were Inner Circle. Others were camouflage or cannon fodder.
Derek didn’t know his principal had another gang that he wasn’t in.
Sometimes, girls pretended not to be as close as they were. For advantage later in the day.
Golgotha knew Mr Horror not as an equal, but a minion. Someone else’s. Bad Penny was most likely another. The sleek hearse’s big cheese – most likely a fat bat – hadn’t popped out of the coffin yet.
EarthGuard were doing more than tidying up.
They were taking over. Their bus was called the Armourdillo. She suspected it ought to be called the Trojan Horse.
The Aum Draht terrorists hadn’t launched a random attack.
This was more cunning and much worse. A plan was side-tracked – the fungus dispersal she’d prevented would have needed more than aeroplane glue and a flamethrower arm to suppress – but not derailed.
Golgotha was through the gates.
SI MOLINAR
The Integratron was off the grid. It could pull signals from the Andromeda Galaxy but was not on the internal phone network. Dr Pretorius bothered people with scrawls stuffed into tubes and delivered by compressed air. When the Princess first commissioned visioneers to sketch plans for a futuristic skyscraper, they proudly included a state-of-the-art pneumatique. Decades later, when the Daikaiju Building was under construction, no one thought to amend the blueprints and install FAX machines instead. Only the Mad Gnome used the antiquated system. A fangs-on-edge-making brring sounded whenever a scroll plopped out onto a botheree’s desk.
Inside the Integratron, Molinar’s wrist radio didn’t buzz. When he left, it practically electrocuted him. Ninety-seven urgent alerts from a dozen users.
In the elevator, he clicked through the gadget’s greenscreen.
Multiple messages from Officer Saki-A, demanding response. Several from Saki-K, who wanted to know why her colleague’s calls were ignored. Code signals for a terrorist incident. A report on the nature of the attack that corrupted into a hash of symbols because the Bund PD’s beepers weren’t compatible with LI Security’s next-gen communi-tech. The terror code alert could mean anything from a Tatenokai nutjob beaning people with a kendo stick at the Shrine of Higo Yanagi to a tactical nuclear weapon set off in Mermaid Ancestor Place Market.
Hyakume wanted to know when the Gate would be open again.
The Gate was shut!
Highly Urgent voicemail from his Segundo, Marit Verlaine.
Rolling updates from staff about annoying guests. Se
nator Blutarski was charging around the kitchens waving a sushi knife. Waitresses wanted to know if they were cleared for a wet job on the fat fool.
Code signals for a fatality or fatalities. In some instances, that wouldn’t be bad news – but Molinar’s kill-list remained in a contingency folder. He had issued no hunting licences. People with no business dying had got clipped on his watch.
As Executive Vice-President, his watch was All The Time.
The express elevator wasn’t express enough.
How long had he been with Pretorius? Twenty minutes, at most. How could so much go so wrong so quickly?
Was this what the oracle foretold? Was this Jun Zero?
He stepped out of the elevator into the Security offices. Emergency lights alternately bathed Floor 88 in blood-red and ultraviolet. Vampire eyes glowed like the heated points of torture pokers in the crimson. Fangs and shirt collars radiated eye-searing white in the UV. The accompanying siren was loud enough to scramble the Four Horsemen of the Poxyclypse.
A case in the reception area displayed his conquistador morion. He was tempted to break the glass and put the helmet on again. Cortés swore by his Toledo steel skid-lid. This is your best friend in a tormenta de mierda.
Verlaine was on the phone.
She was already in her black party minidress. A bow at the small of the back hid her hold-out gun. Her scarlet lipstick matched her bobbed hair. In a hundred years, Molinar was the Bund’s fifth Captain of the Guard/Head of Security. Marit Verlaine, who came over on the Macedonia with the Princess, was its first and only Segundo. She refused promotion to the top spot and had literally buried two of her former bosses. She stood in her stockinged feet. High-heeled pumps, just out of the box, were on her desk. She’d taken off one earring to answer the phone.
Only a few of his people were still in the office.
A swivelling chair indicated that Suzan Arashi, the invisible geisha, was at her desk. Her job was monitoring who was in the building at any time.
Watson and Kuchisake were faffing around with the alarm. Kuchisake translated aloud from instructions printed in Japanese and German (giving away the period during which the equipment was purchased). Watson followed instructions, thumping buttons like a toddler who can’t yet understand why a square peg doesn’t fit a round hole. Against the odds, the smiling lovers – who usually wore matching anti-pollution masks over sardonicus grins – succeeded. Lights and siren shut off. Several panic phones rang and flashed, but could more easily be ignored.