Grandpa?
I know, Juliet The strike window ends in ninety seconds – mark. Decision time.
Mr Philip told me about that, Miss Juliet. It’s a grand idea. He said it was your suggestion.
Certainly was, boy. She’s an Evans, through and through. And we don’t do anything by halves. No sir.
I wonder who’s in that tower, Royan asked.
Someone big, Julia said. Someone important, important enough to make Kendric visit him, not the other way round. And if you knew Kendric like I do, you’d know how few people in the world would be granted that concession.
The first instance of sensation invaded their private universe, an electric tingle reminding her of far-off nerves. Julia looked down on the mill, judging it with the dispassion of some Olympian goddess.
Could it really be? Philip asked.
There was never any body, said Royan. Never any real proof. Not even Mindstar knew.
We’d have to hurry. The timing is tight, very tight.
No, Julia said, bold with conviction. The timing is perfect. Synchronized.
Gabriel? Philip enquired.
I expect so, she said. Whatever the reason, we cannot ignore this opportunity.
I agree, said Royan.
That makes it unanimous, then. Access the Ordnance Survey’s memory core and download that mill’s co-ords, m’boy, accurate as you can get. We’ve only got the one satellite uplink left after your friends came a-knocking. I would’ve preferred to keep watching Wisbech, just in case we need to update. But we’ll simply have to make do.
You’re lucky you’ve still got that one. Father is efficient.
Julia’s awareness shifted as the thematic image faded. She was plugged directly into Wilholm’s myriad gear systems, a bright-glowing three-dimensional cobweb of data channels. New strands were coming on line at a phenomenal rate as the antithesis poured through it, purging the virus.
A quick status check showed her that there were only three functional servos out of the eight which steered Wilholm’s one remaining satellite dish. Accelerated time stretched for what seemed like aeons as the dish swivelled round on its axis to point at the western horizon. Her grandfather had overridden the servos’ safety limiters, allowing them to take a double load. Temperature sensors relayed the heat from overloaded motors straight into her medulla, interpreted as scalding hands.
Sorry, Juliet.
Her pain vanished.
The dish’s rotation halted, smaller azimuth servos began tracking it across the sky.
Co-ords ready for loading, Mr Philip. Got them down to half a metre.
Anything within three hundred metres would be enough, Julia said.
Don’t brag so, girl, Philip said as he loaded the figures into an OtherEyes personality package. But a sliver of pride escaped from his thoughts.
So, that just leaves the reactivation code. Juliet, your honour.
She allowed herself one moment of supremely self-indulgent satisfaction.
Access AvengingAngel. The long string of binary digits emerged from her nodes to hang between the three of them. Her grandfather integrated it into the OtherEyes personality package. The completed data construct squirted into the dish transmitter, streaming upwards at lightspeed.
This time, you bastard, this time I’ll get you.
43
In his mind the theory was perfect. They weren’t particularly high up, and the mud around the tower shouldn’t have been deep. Of course, there was no way of actually testing it in advance.
Greg hit the thin coating of surface water and kept on going, his momentum only slowing when the water reached his thighs. He let his knees bend, absorbing inertia. Thick viscous goo rose up his shins, embedding them. That was the point where his left hand thumped into the water, finally overloading his beleaguered cortical node. Greg screamed at the lancets of pain its faltering barricade let through. Brilliant starbursts of light danced across his vision.
His feet were resting on something solid. He could see guttering orange light washing across a big clump of reeds about three metres in front of him, marking the perimeter of a low mound of rubble. A gable end was sticking up in the middle of it, inclined at forty-five degrees, supported by a buttress of rafters which resembled some bizarre geometric whale skeleton.
The water had come up to the bottom of his ribcage, leaving his folded legs entirely under the mud. Greg tried to straighten his knees. It took an age before even the faintest tremble of motion began. The mud refused to let go.
Panic churned his gut. He had absolutely nothing to grip, nothing he could use to drag himself out. His legs muscles had to do all the work. And any second now Kendric’s crewmen would be storming out of the tower.
‘Where are you, Greg?’ Gabriel called.
‘I’m coming.’ Was he rising fractionally faster? The pain from his left hand had been suppressed again, making it easier to concentrate. He could feel the mud sliding down his thighs. ‘Get into the reeds. Go on! Move.’
His buttocks left the mud behind, and he stood up. There was water up to the top of his legs, the mud still incarcerated his knees. Greg brought his left foot out of the mud’s suction clutch, standing stork-style, then fell forwards, windmilling his arms.
The strain on his right knee was incredible, his bodyweight was trying to bend it in exactly the opposite direction to which it was designed to hinge. He grabbed at the reeds with his right hand, pulling himself along towards the cover of the mound. The mud relinquished its hold on his right leg with extreme reluctance.
A chorus of wild shouting broke out behind him. Mark’s voice rose above the others, bawling to bring some lights.
Greg grasped at another clump of reeds. His progress was a combination of swimming, slithering and crawling, all at a snail’s pace. He was completely hampered by his desperation to avoid any commotion. Thankfully, the reeds began to get thicker and higher.
He heard a long erratic stutter of muffled thuds from behind him, and guessed at food cans rupturing in the fire.
A quick glance round let him see the tower, a black phallic monolith probing a cloud-smeared night sky. The first floor’s broken window was a glaring yellow rectangle, while others glowed with biolum’s softer pink-white radiance; sketchy shadows were moving about inside. Several people were dashing about on the grass ring around the tower’s base; three were splashing through the shallows, but not venturing far. If they wanted to get across to the reeds they’d have to get down on their bellies and squirm; it was the only way. They didn’t have the motivation. A couple of intense torch beams stabbed out, scouring the reeds.
Greg rolled back on to his stomach and began his serpent wriggle again. Thirty seconds later there was hard ground under his elbows. Reeds competing with stiff blades of grass. He was using his knees as well as his elbows now, scuttling towards the gable end, and cover. He knew exactly what Kendric and Armstrong would do next. Flinty pebbles and rapier grass lacerated his skin. Somewhere over to his left another heavy body was burrowing through the vegetation.
An electromagnetic rifle opened up, warbling loudly. Bullets thudded into the mound, pinged against the brickwork, ricocheted off, whining. Greg kept going.
‘Get over there.’ That was Kendric’s unmistakably enraged voice. Murmurs of argument followed.
The white torchlight trimmed the tips of the reeds around Greg. Tiny reddish-brown ovate flowers glowed lambently. Midges formed a silver galaxy overhead. The light passed on. The electromagnetic rifle had fallen silent.
Greg reached the sloping brickwork. Gabriel was ahead of him, panting heavily at the end of a streaky mud trail.
‘God, the smell,’ she exclaimed.
‘What smell?’
‘Some people.’
He climbed gingerly to his feet. The island they were on was about twenty metres at its widest. Greg had cherished a halfnotion that the mounds would all be connected. But the next one was a good forty metres away. Algae-curdled water sloshed lik
e crude oil between the two. It didn’t look as though there was much of it on top of the mud.
‘Clothes off,’ Greg said, then flinched as the electromagnetic rifle poured another fusillade of bullets into the gable end.
‘Do what?’ Gabriel asked. She was cradling her left hand again. Her face was haggard, totally lethargic.
‘We’ve got a lot of swimming to do. Clothes are going to drag us under.’
‘Swim where?’
‘Clear of the tower, remember? Kilometre at least. How long have we got?’
Gabriel closed her eyes. ‘About twenty minutes, maybe less.’
‘Do we survive?’
‘Some of us do, some of us don’t.’ She sounded completely disinterested.
Greg ducked his head round the side of the bricks, bringing it back fast. ‘Bugger!’
‘Now what?’
‘They’ve put the fire out. I was hoping it would be a beacon to the ships on the Nene. Somebody might report it.’
That brought a half-hysterical giggle from Gabriel, ending in a gurgling cough. ‘Don’t you worry, Greg. Lots of people are going to see your tower before tonight’s out. You betcha.’
‘Oh, yeah.’ He felt stupid. ‘Let’s go.’ He started shrugging out of the dinner jacket, clenching his teeth as his left hand dragged through the arm, it’d swollen badly, skin stretched taut, pulling open the grazes. Trousers followed, and the discovery that buckles are tricky one-handed.
More shouting had broken out from the tower. Lots of conflicting orders interwound with Kendric’s repeated urgings and Armstrong’s controlled barks.
Gabriel gave him a remorseful stare before starting halfheartedly on the buttons of her blouse. Greg peeled his trousers off and helped her pull her blouse gingerly over her inflated left hand.
‘Put your shoes back on,’ he said.
A third burst of rifle fire lashed the bricks.
They bent double, keeping the bulk of the small pyramid between themselves and the tower as they crept down to the grey slime. The stuff was semiliquid, a thick gelatine that squelched and undulated alarmingly as Greg immersed himself. It closed around him, finding its way into every orifice. But he didn’t sink. In fact the worst of it was on the surface. A sixty-centimetre stratum of water had been sandwiched between the spongy mud and lathery algae.
Gabriel groaned as she lowered herself behind him and the cold mire enveloped her.
Greg began to move, a tortuously slow sidestroke, kicking hard with his feet. Big faecal gobs of the pulpy algae clotted his right arm, splattering over his face. He had to stop every four or five strokes and wipe it off. His eyes were stung raw. Gabriel had it easier. He was pathbreaking for her, clearing a ragged channel.
When they reached the second island, Greg began to worry about what kind of chase was being organized back at the tower. He looked over his shoulder and saw that someone had opened the tower’s top-floor window, they were raking the torch beam over the first island and the surrounding water. The light wasn’t powerful enough to reach him, but he made Gabriel keep below the wavering tops of the thin reeds as the pair of them crossed over to the island’s opposite side.
Away to the right, Greg could see the bloated humps of decomposing tree trunks protruding from the algae like surfaced whales. The number, about thirty, implied some sort of park, which ruled out that direction. They needed to move fast now. Build distance before the tower blew. The park would be genuine swamp, impossible to traverse.
A hundred and fifty metres ahead were the first ranks of buildings recognizable as such; detached houses, their walls partially collapsed and roofs concave, but remaining upright. Bridging the gap was a pockmarked landscape of ash-green atolls separated by hoary stretches of slough.
‘Any preference direction-wise?’ Greg asked.
Gabriel shook her head. ‘No. But you were right about getting clear. That explosion is a brute. I hope I can make it.’
She was a state. Loose folds of flab were caked in thick sable mud, her hair was a tangle of ossifying dreadlocks. Every breath was asthmatic, a battle against coagulating catarrh. She twitched like a palsy victim.
‘No problem,’ he said, wishing to God he meant it.
They waded into the first slough channel.
The fifth island they came to was much larger than the previous four. Iron girders were sticking out among the sedges. There was more grass than reeds on the crest. Soil had begun to accumulate in the crevices between the fragments of stone and cement. Greg cut his calf on something jagged. Cursed.
The island’s far shore brought them to within thirty metres of the houses. One more immersion and back on to solid ground. This time it was a long straight ridge parallel to the row of houses. It was cluttered with twisted, drooping chimney stacks, and buckled rafter apexes gnarled with scabby lichens; slate tiles formed a loose flaky shingle beneath their feet, making the going hard.
Just as he reached the summit, Greg heard the sound. A low-volume hum in the background. But rising in pitch and intensity, in menace. A note he was irksomely familiar with.
‘Move out, doubletime,’ he said. ‘The bastards have inflated the hovercraft.’
‘No more,’ Gabriel said wretchedly.
‘One last time. That’s all. Then it’ll all be over.’
‘Yes. Yes, you’re right. Only a few minutes left. It’s clearing, Greg. So much clearer now.’
Realization struck. He could sense her mind. A pale disconsolate mist of disjointed thoughts, fluttering aimlessly, corrupted with coarse threads of harrowing pain. Gabriel was animated by adrenalin alone, and her endocrine glands were virtually exhausted.
They’d escaped the twins’ nullifying effect. Greg let his gland run riot, charging his cerebellum to overload, and screw the risk. Synapses vibrated shrilly under the stress, delusional ripping sounds filtered into his ears, coming from inside his skull, neurone membranes splitting open. His espersense swept out. It was a heady boost. Whole once more.
Two hovercraft were curving away from the tower, each containing three minds, radiant hard-wound balls of mercurial malevolence. Greg recognized Toby riding in one of them, along with a couple of crewmen he couldn’t place. Mark and Kendric were paired in the second, along with its pilot. There was no sign of the other minds Greg knew to be out there – Armstrong and Turner, not even Hermione. The tower was an empty shell to his espersense, which meant at least one twin had remained behind. The big question was whether the third hovercraft had been inflated.
A faint haze of small minds glowed around the wavering perimeter of his espersense, occasional twinkles within. Animals of some sort, clinging to a dour existence amid the ruins. Abandoned pets reverted to their true feral nature, rodents scrabbling to stay above the mud, an invasion of reptiles.
He pulled Gabriel roughly down the slope and into the bog which covered the street, ignoring her weepy cries of protest. They didn’t have to swim. The syrupy mud drowning the tarmac was only a few centimetres deep, lapping over his feet like slushed snow. It was possible to wade. The raft of algae came up to mid-thigh.
Greg was nearly tempted to hide in one of the houses. None of them had doors or windows left. Pick one at random and cower down. Unless the hovercraft boasted some pretty sophisticated sensors, Kendric and Toby would never find him in time. But the dangerously dilapidated condition of the walls stopped him. If the tower went up with anything like the violence Gabriel claimed the friable houses would collapse on top of them.
They reached a mouldering dune which had once been a leylandii hedge, and squelched over it. Greg saw two white aureoles sliding fluidly across the horizon behind them, winding down through the slough channels. The drone of the hovercraft propellers drifted in and out of audibility. Kendric and Toby were fanning out, their search pattern carrying them further apart. At least it was only two.
He steered Gabriel down the narrow dank gully between two houses. There were animals on the other side of the walls, more than he’d or
iginally thought, scurrying around frantically. The garden at the rear of the house backed on to another garden. Head-high panel fencing marked out the boundary, putrefying laths drooping under their own weight. In one corner was a greenhouse whose panes were pasted with hand-sized valentine leaves. Some abandoned horticultural treasure had thrived in the heat and abundant nutrient-soaked mud, making it look as though the aluminium-framed structure was about to burst apart at the seams.
Caustic fingers of silver-white light probed through a gap between a couple of houses a hundred metres away. The propeller noise was loud, fluctuating in strident piccolo whistles. Greg sensed Toby’s churlish mind; the man was spite-laden, yearning to be the one who found the quarry. Instinct chafed at him. He knew Greg was near by. A nature-ordained hunter.
The bulk of the houses blocked off the light as the hovercraft glided down the street. Then the questing fingers reappeared, closer this time, three houses away.
Greg urged Gabriel behind the greenhouse, and waited until the searchlight fluoresced the verdant avocado-green leaves.
The green corona died as the hovercraft moved on, but Greg knew that knot of determination in Toby’s mind. He’d order the pilot to take the hovercraft down the gardens once he reached the end of the street.
His espersense tracked Kendric, who was still patrolling the slough channels. They couldn’t go back, and the blast would turn the confined gardens into a death-trap of flying masonry.
‘Through there.’ Greg pointed ahead. The row of houses in front of them was virtually identical to the ones behind, only in slightly better condition. Gabriel moved like an automaton.
Greg kicked at the panel fence, tearing through it like tissue paper. There was a fruit cage on the other side, a box made from galvanized steel poles wrapped in a tattered cobweb of black nylon netting. The sight of it sparked an idea.
He reached up to one of the crossbeams with his right hand and began to tug. The pole was held in place between the uprights by two moulded plastic sockets at each end, both of them fractured and bleached by the decade-long torrent of UV-infested sunlight. One of the sockets crackled at the pressure he applied, then snapped abruptly. Greg yanked the other end of the pole out of its socket with a burst of ebullient strength, tearing the netting as it came free. The pole was three metres long, in good condition; the zinc coating had whitened down the years, but it’d protected the steel from rust.