by Guy Haley
"Bonsoir, Chevalier, Monsieur Lyon, et M'selle Veronique! Ah! I thought it may be you when I sensed ze creation of new life only today. Very intrepid. Very bold. Maintenant, 'ow may I elp you zis fine eevning?"
"Sweet lord, he's gone frog," said Tarquinius.
"It is worse than we feared," said Jagadith. He drew his sword. "Stand aside," he said loudly. "We seek entrance to the Realm of the god who dares set himself above our world and remake it so. Do not attempt to stop us."
"Oh, such a pity." The Frenchmen cradled his pointed chin in his hand and pulled an apologetic moue. "I do not zink zat weel be possible." He capered a quick flourish, then was suddenly still, his coattails whipping.
"This does not bode well," said Tarquin. "And to think you mocked me for my concern."
"I don't understand. I mean, surely you can deal with him? He's not really there, even by your terms," said Veronique.
"But he is, madam goddess scientist," said Jag, turning in the saddle to face her. His face was lit by the glow of his sword, deathly grey in the twilit world of the tree. "That is part of your professor."
"Part? I don't understand, I thought that we could only create false life in your world. How can he possibly be part of Qifang?"
"He has split himself," said Jagadith.
"Like an AI?"
"After a fashion, though the creation of such as this does not involve the division of the mind, as it would for an AI. We've not seen it since the early days. A long time ago, the time of the first Wars-with-Gods," said Tarquin. "It's not supposed to be possible now. But we can see it. His signature stinks of binary cloning. It is him, but it is not. It means he can be in two places at once, and not in a figurative, nor in a purely mechanistic, sense."
The Frenchman clapped slowly. "Bon, bon, very good. I see why ah 'ave not been able to deactivate you. You really are ze best, it is true. Ze legendary maharajah and 'is lyon! Ah, but it is something like from legende! Exquisite. So, bold guerriers, you 'ave a choice. You may turn back, and, in due course, ah will come to you and we may discuss the nature of your servitude in ma new werold order."
"Why are you doing this?" said Veronique.
The Frenchman flung his arms out and looked himself up and down. "Why not? A little theatre is an essential part of being a god, non?"
"Jag, we cannot let this buffoon distract us. I don't like it," said Tarquinius. "His intention to delay us is succeeding."
"Monsieur," said Jagadith, "I am assuming you were about to tell us that our other option was death?"
"Oui, oui. Exactement." The Frenchman nodded, and stroked at his moustaches.
Jagadith shrugged, "I thought as much. Please, be hearing me clearly now. I have been doing this for many years. So, I am respectively asking you if we may skip the rest of your monologue and move onto the part where we kill you and go about our way."
"Mais oui! 'Owever, I am not so sure it will go the way you expect."
"Now, Jag, now!" Tarquinius' battle armour slid from its hidden grooves.
"Wait!"
Too late the knight spoke, for the impatient lion pounced, drawing itself back and launching into the air in one swift motion. He landed where the Frenchman had been. A laugh mocked them from above. Tarquinius span round, and all three of them looked up. The Frenchman hung, a spider in morning wear, from the underside of a branch as wide as an autobahn. "A-a-a-a!" he wagged an admonishing finger, his spine cracking as his head turned 180 degrees to stare malevolently down at them. "I weel be going now. I weel not be seeing you again. Veronique, join me, leave zese two behind. I 'ave such things to show you, ah such marvellous, wonderful things! I am Zeus, I invite you to become ma 'Era."
"Go to hell!"
The Frenchman pouted. "Ah! Veronique, you upset me. You make a grave error. But, c'est la vie. As you wish. Die with your new friends." With that, the Frenchman let go of the branch with his hands and, standing on the underside of the branch, plucked a thin flute from his breastpocket. He covered a hole on the top and played a long, piercing wail like a bosun's whistle, wailing so high only the lion could hear its final notes. Tarquinius shuddered, moaning, shaking his head as if a troublesome fly was working its way into his ear. "Come monkee monkee monkee! Come monkee monkee monkee monkee!" said the Frenchman. He played the note again, causing Tarquinius to roar in pain and slam a missile into the Frenchman's perch. The man's legs grew obscenely long and he sprang away up the tree, leaping from branch to branch.
"A tense encounter," said Jagadith.
"Do not put up your sword yet!" cautioned Tarquinius, his voice heavy and weak, "something comes!" As the man's mad cackling grew faint, so a loud, cracking, snapping sound approached, coming down the tree toward them.
"What the hell is that?" said Veronique, searching through the branches above.
"Four hostiles approach!" said Tarquin rotating on the spot, scanning the limbs above. "I… I can't get a fix, Jag… I…"
"Do not be telling me, you do not have any idea what they are."
"No, Jag, no! Most of my senses are down. That accursed whistle!" Jag looked at the targeting screen. It crackled and blurred, reticules spinning uselessly.
Streams of information rolled up the glass, none of it good.
The crashing stopped. There was a tinny sound, as of cymbals of cheap brass being bashed together, following a raucous squawking. Further away came an answer: crash crash crash! "A-hooka! A-hooka! A-hooka!" Then again from directly above, and again from the left. Tarquin roared and flung more munitions into the tree above, blindly firing. A scalloped needle as large as a football field came sailing down, burning.
"Where are they?" hissed Veronique.
"There, there, and one up there," said Jagadith, indicating with his eyes. "The fourth I cannot see."
Veronique followed his darting gaze. She caught a glimpse of a hulking silhouette the size of the lion. Two baleful red eyes looked back then were extinguished as the thing moved off into the darkness round the trunk.
"Grip me tight. Whatever happens, do not fall from Tarquinius!" said Jagadith.
There was a thump behind them. A blur of movement as something fell to the left. Tarquinius spun round.
Crash crash crash! "A-hooka! A-hooka! A-hooka!" Staring at them with unblinking glass eyes, the dull red fire of violence burning in them, were two monkeys; monkeys of the plushfurred, mechanical variety. Each carried a pair of cymbals, and sported little red waistcoats. One wore a fez. Crash crash crash! "A-hooka! A-hooka! A-hooka!" The leader put its head on one side, parting lips to reveal interlocking steel teeth. "Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. A-hooka!"
"Deary, deary me, I am feeling that your professor might well have been a very sick man even before he arrived here, madam goddess."
"He had one of these in the lab, an antique… some kind of ancient toy."
"These are no playthings, not now," said Jag, his head moving counter to Tarquinius' as they sought to keep both monkeys in sight. Crash crash crash! One banged its cymbals, its felt mouth opening in time to the beating of the cymbals. "A-hooka! A-hooka! A-hooka!" went the other, moving towards them robotically. The other hurled its instrument at them. It scythed over their heads like a deadly frisbee, making them duck. The cymbals smashed into the tree, one sticking, the other clattering noisily down to the floor. "A-hooka! Ahooka! A-hooka!" It shuffled sideways, circling them. A third hurtled from the dark above, cymbals above its head. It landed easily, only narrowly missing them.
"Jag, they seek to encircle us," warned Tarquinius. "And I still cannot sense the fourth."
The monkey who had dropped his cymbals squawked and charged, knuckling along the ground in a charge, shoulder held forward.
"Tarquinius! Move!" The lion's head swung round as he moved to take in the charging ape; too late. It barrelled into Tarquinius' flank, spinning the lion round like a cat kicked by a horse. He writhed through the air, landing crouched and snarling. Somehow, both Jag and Veronique kept their seats, though they were winded in
the tumble. Tarquinius backed away from the three apes, keeping his back to the tree's vast trunk. He moved unevenly.
"Dear sainted ones!" exclaimed Jag. "They have dented you with their tussling!"
"Never mind that! Keep on eye on those blasted monkeys."
The three apes formed a loose semicircle in front of them, two banging their cymbals, the ape that charged them running backwards and forwards, hooting and slapping the floor with murderous plastic hands.
"Tarquinius, we must act soon, they attempt to herd us into a trap. The fourth creature is above us."
"I know. My senses are beginning to come back online. It intends to jump soon."
"I am ready."
"As am I. Hold tightly now, madam goddess."
"Let's take the one on the left."
"Agreed."At some invisible signal, the fourth monkey leapt from above. Tarquin jumped forward. The displaying monkey tried to grapple them, but the lion sailed straight over its head. It squawked with rage. As Tarquin hit the floor to one side of the left-most monkey, Jag neatly decapitated it with his crackling sword. For a moment the three-metre ape tottered, sparks spewing from its ruined neck, then, with one last bash of its cymbals, it pitched forward to fizzle upon the floor.
"There, one down," Jag said, but as he did so he grimaced, rotating his sword arm; the blow had badly jarred it. The three remaining monkeys howled in indignation, bashing their cymbals and smashing their fists into the tree. Then, as one, they turned to face them. Their eyes glowed red, their lips curled. Snarls escaped their synthetic voice boxes.
"Now what? I do not see an easy way out of this," said Tarquinius.
"Perhaps we will be safe if they do not work out that if they charge us all at once they wi…"
The monkeys dropped their cymbals and came knuckling along the floor in a line. Tarquinius ran, bounding up a low rise, then turned to face them, roaring in defiance. One monkey stumbled, hands clasped over its ears. Tarquinius fired a salvo of rocketry into its prone body, setting its fur ablaze. Veronique screamed for a weapon. Jag sang a war-song in a language of a long-dead people. One monkey hurled itself over the head of the other, carrying both Jag and Veronique to the floor. The other slammed into Tarquinius with the force of a steam train, the two rolling on the floor in a tangle of mechanical limbs. Jagadith, grasped it by the torso, one arm pulled to popping by the laughing ape. Tarquinius, scrabbling free and rearing up, rained blows onto the unyielding head of his assailant with paws the size of manhole covers.
Veronique cursed her lack of a gun, forgetting she could create one merely by thinking of it. Jag screamed as his arm came out of the socket, his world washed red. The next thing he saw, the monkey lay dead at his feet, his sword protruding from its chest, black smoke boiling out round its hilt.
"Are you alright? God, I thought he was going to kill you!" said Veronique, running to the knight's aid.
"I believe that was his intention… Aiee!" shouted Jag, halfway to a scream. His breath became shallow, he clutched his side and looked, ashen-faced, to the woman. "Careful, madam goddess, my arm has come from its socket." He winced. "Now, now where is Tarquinius? We must be on our way."
"He's there…" Veronique pointed, hand shaking. The mighty lion lay on his side, head stretched out. He was dented in several places, the plates round his vulnerable underbelly buckled in. Thin green mist steamed out from rents in his body. Next to him was the fourth monkey, curled in a foetal position, pedalling itself frantically round and round on the ground, increasingly fast, until it stopped with a whiff of burning and a bang.
"Tarquinius!" Jagadith rushed over to his supine steed.
"Jag… aaahhhhhhh…. dith," Tarquinius' voice was almost inaudible. His mouth was ajar, unmoving; his multi-purpose tongue lolled.
"Oh, noblest friend! You cannot die, I will not allow it."
"Complete… the… mission…"
"Rest, my friend! Rest! I will slay this god, then you and I will go away, until the world needs us once more. Be still, I will return."
But Tarquinius did not reply, and, as Jagadith looked on, the green glow of his eyes, undimmed for millennia, flickered and died. Jagadith stood for a long time, his tears falling silently onto the metal of the lion, before he would allow Veronique to help him mend his shoulder. Veronique had some medical training, and forced it back into place on the first try. After a couple of experimental swings with his sword, Jag set off to the tree's trunk.
"I, I could try to bring him back…" offered Veronique.
"Do not even attempt it! The world here is too unstable, see, come here." He strode back to Veronique, grabbed her roughly by the wrist and dragged her over to the monkey he had dispatched. "Look at the smoke."
She looked. She squinted. "It looks like smoke," she said.
"Look harder."
She looked harder. The smoke was composed not of gasses and particles of soot, but of thousands of numbers, flowing upwards to disappear. She stood up sharply. "That's not supposed to happen. I've never read of anything like that."
"The world is trying to adapt," said Jagadith, "and it is breaking down. The professor is altering it too much and too quickly. It should be smoke, but that is our world's interpretation of your professor's interpretation of what he imagines should function in our world as smoke as our world sees what he sees it becoming, if you understand me."
"No," admitted Veronique.
"If you would be trying to utilise your godly powers here, madam," continued Jagadith, "this third level of interference could well unravel the universe about our ears. Your professor is bending the whole fabric of reality, for what purpose I know not, but it is imperative I stop him! More than our world is at stake, I think. Quickly," he said impatiently, gesturing at the tree. "Time is short. Tarquinius and I are one, and a half cannot last long without the other. We must act swiftly or all will be lost."
"You are going to die?" said Veronique.
"Yes, madam goddess," said Jag, "I am going to die. Maybe not as you would understand it. But I am not going to do it before I have completed my task." His perfect features were set like stone. "Professor Zhang Qifang will pay."
Chapter 20
Arizona
The sky glowed with the predawn, black shading to blues as the stars winked out. Otto dozed, allowing his near-I to take the strain of monitoring the car's brain, but not for long. Not being hijacked by huntware and driven to his death over one of the many precipitous drops this part of the world boasted was worth the price of a little sleep.
As the sun rolled out from behind the mountains, he roused himself, shutting off his melatonin production, already artificially depressed, to mimic a normal waking pattern. The closer he kept his circadian rhythms to normal operation, the less lousy he felt. He upped his cortisol levels. Immediately he felt more focused. Otto's ability to moderate his biochemistry was a standard feature in Ky-tech personnel. He used it infrequently, and then for short periods. After a few days, physical wear set in as the body's systems remained unrefreshed. Psychosis would occur after a few weeks. If he were too reliant on it, production of his neurotransmitters could be permanently compromised in a similar way to what happened to heavy MDMA users, only worse. He'd seen it happen to others, ex-soldiers like him addicted to the fast burn of life lived 24/7, or too frightened of the mentaug's dreams to sleep.
Right now, he wanted coffee. Using the biochem-moderator always made him crave the stuff, though it was supposed to have no effect on him. More medical bullshit. He called up the car's map from its internal memory and searched for restaurants. Since his brief reconnection to the Grid at the falls, his near-I had been only tenuously connected to the network in order to track the interference signals of Valdaire's cheater programmes. He was running his tracking of Valdaire through several double-blind service providers and then observed by himself only obliquely. Still he kept the car to banked data, like the map, and he had it display on the windscreen, not in his iHUD.
For a rare
few hours he'd been free of the noise of the Grid, the targeted advertising, messaging, news updates and calls that filled the heads of all but the most resolutely anti-Grid citizen. He enjoyed the disconnection; he was not like some people, going to pieces when their uplinks malfunctioned or their phone hit its pre-ordained obsolescence date. But now he was reluctantly part of the world again, and it gave him a headache.