"What do you want?" Fabian asked between gulps. "Unless you've come to audition for drums?"
Charlotte laughed delightedly at seeing the sulky cow so thrown by the scene, which set Fabian off again. Although there was something peculiar about the maid's face, squinting as though she was drunk. Charlotte had seen that expression before somewhere. Couldn't quite place the memory.
The maid took two steps into the room. Fast steps.
"Hey—" Fabian began.
The maid hit him. It was a backhanded blow, she barely aimed it. Her hand caught him on the side of his face, lifting him off the floor. There was a moment of dead silence as he fell back on to the pile of cushions. Then the guitar made a clattering noise as it caught on the deck, and Fabian let out a dull grunt.
Charlotte yelled, "Fabian!" and rushed over to him.
There was blood trickling out of his mouth, the side of his face where the maid had struck was bright red. He was blinking in numb confusion, his arms struggling limply. One eye was already swelling, the smooth skin discolouring. She went down on the cushions, scattering some, and gripped his wrist. Her other hand went on his forehead. "Don't move," she whispered. The guitar neck pressed awkwardly into her belly.
"I—" he coughed. More blood sprayed out between his lips.
Charlotte sucked in a breath at the sight. Utile specks of blood were staining her white cotton top. She stroked the side of his head anxiously, eyes watering. "Don't. . ."
Fabian caught sight of the maid behind her. His face twisted into rage, and he surged up.
"No!" Charlotte flung herself on him, pinning him down on the cushions. "No, Fabian. She's cleardusted." That was the memory, the squint, the dazed crazed look. She'd seen some of her patrons' hardline bodyguards take the stuff. Cleardust was a synthesized derivative of the old angel dust, giving the manic strength and immunity to pain without the hallucinogenic effect.
"Very good," said the maid. "You're bright for a whore."
Charlotte was centimetres from Fabian's face. Seeing pain and reflections of pain in his eyes.
A hand that must have been made of metal closed around her upper arm, and she was yanked up, squealing at the sudden pain. She stumbled for her footing. "Please, Fabian, please stay down. Please." It was all she could think of. He wouldn't understand. The maid would kill him.
He glared upwards, bloody lips parted.
"Please, for me," she pleaded.
"Right," his voice was distorted, as if he was chewing on something.
The pressure on Charlotte's arm increased, making her mouth part with the pain. She was turned to face the maid. The glazed eyes made her shiver inside. They didn't see anything in this universe.
"I will ask you some questions," the maid said. "You will answer them for me, or I will start to snap all that expensive bonework of yours. Understand, whore?"
"Let him go. I'll tell you anything you want. But don't hurt him."
Charlotte heard a muffled high-pitched crack from somewhere outside the den. She thought it sounded like some kind of weapon.
The maid gave a cyborg smile. "You're a very popular girl all of a sudden. Lots of people want to talk to you. But I'm first. And last."
The crack came again, then again.
"Who gave you the flower?" the maid asked.
It took Charlotte's wild thoughts a moment to work out what flower she was talking about. "Let Fabian go."
"The flower?"
"I don't know who he was, not his actual name. Please."
"Liar."
Charlotte's hand was grabbed. She screamed as two fingers were bent back. There was a pistol-shot snap.
Strangely enough, there wasn't any pain, not at first. She couldn't feel anything below her wrist, then a red-hot ache spread up her fingers, biting hard into her knuckles. There was bile rising in her throat. Her head began to spin alarmingly; for a moment she thought she was going to faint.
In horror she saw Fabian on his feet, lurching towards her and the maid. She lashed out with her free arm, knocking him back. His face was a mask of desperation and agony.
"Oh God no," she wailed, tears swelling up. He was regaining his balance, going to try again.
"ENOUGH OF THIS. FABIAN, STAY WHERE YOU ARE." The voice was an inhuman roar, loud enough to be painful. It was coming out of the music deck speakers, she realized.
Fabian ducked his head down in reflex, hands halfway to his ears. Even the maid was frozen.
The flatscreens came on, each one showing the same picture of a woman's face. Charlotte let out a choked cry as she recognized her. "Julia Evans," she gasped. It was her. Really her. Just like at the Newfields ball. That same compelling oval face.
Julian Evans smiled thinly. "Hello, Charlotte. I think it's about time you and I had a talk."
"Not a chance," said the maid.
Chapter Nineteen
Julia's personality package was coded as a commercial intelligence summary, so the Colonel Maitland's 'ware network-management program automatically assigned it storage space in the lightware cruncher Jason Whitehurst was using to analyse kombinate finances. Once it was loaded, the personality package immediately reformatted the command routines of the processing structure it was running in, isolating itself from the lightware's operating program and antiviral guardians. After it had confirmed its autonomy it sent out a series of instructions to the internal databuses, arrogating their handling procedures, shutting down the data flow.
With the lightware cruncher's processing operations suspended, the personality package began to wipe all the programs and files it found stored in the unit's memory. Access codes were changed. A new sequence of operating routines were loaded. The package's highly compressed data planes expanded into the empty lightware. Julia's reconstituted mentality came on line.
She started to assess the airship's 'ware architecture, spreading her presence through the datanet, burning into ancillary processor cores. The bridge's 'ware was her first priority, gaining complete command of her new domain. New channels were opened and safeguarded, data flowed back into the lightware cruncher.
The Colonel Maitland's flight control systems were plugged into a broad range of sensors and cameras distributed throughout the fuselage. Radar and the satellite uplinks were useless, swamped by the tekmerc's jammer. She studied the optical circuits, pulling their codes out of memory cores, then started to look around.
External camera, portside fuselage. The Messerschmitt hovered level with the gondola. A laser rangefinder pulsed every second, helping it to maintain its stand-off position exactly. Eight armour-clad figures were left swung out between it and the Colonel Maitland. Each of them identical, factory moulded; left hand controlling a jockey-stick, right hand holding a Lockheed rip gun. Two wavering columns of hot compressed air streamed out of the jetpack nozzles, behind and slightly below the shoulders. As she watched, one of them disappeared through a hole in the side of the gondola.
* * * *
Internal camera, gondola lower-deck crew lounge. The lounge had been ravaged by the rip bolt, loose chairs hurled at the walls, composite walls cracked and buckled, carpet smouldering. Glass lay underfoot, the door twisted in its frame.
Two of the armoured figures were standing inside, Lockheed rip guns raised cautiously, covering the open doorway. Helmets blank bubbles of metal. A third swept through the hole, jetpack efflux stirring up a mini-hurricane of wreckage as he settled on the uneven decking.
* * * *
External camera, upper tail fin. The ruined landing pad, pitiful remains of the Pegasus spewing out thin plumes of smoke. Two of the Colonel Maitland's crew, dressed in silvery fire-suits, were surveying the scene. They kept close to the edge of the pad, giving the Pegasus a wide birth as they shuffled along, testing the deck sheeting before each step.
* * * *
Julia called up a structural schematic and systems status review from the bridge's flight control 'ware. The central gasbag, below the landing pad, had been badly lacer
ated. Helium was escaping at a critical rate. The bridge crew had ordered a near-total ballast dump to compensate. Water from tanks and the swimming-pool was venting out of the gondola as fast as it could be pumped.
The Colonel Maitland's geodetic framework was drawn in fine blue lines, gasbag suspension rigging a jumble of green cobwebs. A large, roughly oval, area of fuselage struts around the landing pad and hangar had turned red, fringed in yellow. The landing pad itself was mostly black; a lot of the stress sensors' optical cables had been cut in the explosions, leaving gaps in the picture. Maintenance drones were inching along the longitudinal frames, inspecting individual struts for fractures, supplementing and refining the data from the sensors, filling in the true status of the black zones.
The damage assessment was reassuring. The basic framework was bearing up under the redistributed loading. Power to the contra-rotating fans was being reduced, relieving as much pressure as possible until the upper fuselage frames could be repaired.
She accessed the bridge's memory cores and discovered that the maintenance drones communicated with the flight control 'ware via laser links; the entire geodetic framework was dotted with interface keys.
* * * *
Internal camera, gondola stairwell. Greg and Suzi were moving to the upper deck. Suzi was brandishing her Browning in one hand, pulling Greg along with the other. She looked as if she was walking directly into a hurricane blast, face furrowed with concentration, teeth bared, every step an effort. Greg was moving like an unplugged junkie. Julia recognized the thousand-metre stare; his gland was active, dissolving the real universe.
* * * *
Structural schematic. A patch of the gondola's upper-deck hull changed to red, shooting out a ripple ring of yellow. The red centre snapped to black. Another rip-gun bolt. Electrical lines were cut, fibre-optic links severed. Compensator programs assigned priorities and rerouted power and data.
* * * *
External camera, portside fuselage. One of the armoured tekmerc squad had broken away from his colleagues, charging towards the gondola much too fast. He cannoned into a cabin through the gap in the hull which the rip gun had made, arm just catching the edge.
* * * *
Internal camera, gondola upper-deck cabin. The armoured figure spinning chaotically, bouncing off walls and ceiling. Legs and arms thrashing about, splintering the composite. He wound up jammed into a corner, jetpack still firing, boots a metre off the ground. The Lockheed rip gun fell from his gauntlet. His legs began a running motion in midair, toe caps hammering deeply into the bulkhead.
Julia brought additional processing power on line for that. Armour malfunction? Some sort of flying phobia? There was no rational explanation.
* * * *
Internal camera, gondola lower-deck crew lounge. The remaining nine members of the squad were all assembled in the lounge. Their movements were sluggish, forced, the same as Suzi.
One of them pointed his rip gun at the mangled door. Fired. Fire alarms howled in protest throughout the gondola.
The squad clattered out into the lower-deck central corridor, heading for the prow. A couple of the Colonel Maitland's cabin crew were in the central corridor, a steward and a maid. Both of them listless and drowsy. They gawped at the approaching tekmerc squad.
"Where is Charlotte Fielder?" one of the squad asked. His amplified voice was loud in the confined space of the corridor, menacing.
The steward looked about, his face white. "She might be with Fabian Whitehurst, in his cabin, or hers. I'm not sure."
There was a momentary pause.
"Where is Jason Whitehurst?"
"In his study." The steward pointed a wavering hand down the corridor towards the prow. "That way."
Four squad members stepped forward.
"You will show these four where Fabian Whitehurst's cabin is."
The steward jerked his head in terror.
One of the squad reached out and grabbed the maid. She screamed.
"Be quiet. You come with us to the study."
She began to snivel. The armoured figure jerked her along, nearly lifting her off the floor.
* * * *
Julia accessed the Colonel Maitland's radio gear, letting the raw signals flow directly into the lightware cruncher. The white-noise howl of the Messerschmitt's jammer dominated every frequency. She began to slot in filter programs. The tekmerc squad had to have some way of communicating.
She found a string of digital pulses in the UHF band, and refined the filter programs to kill the last of the jammer interference. A decryption program was loaded into the circuit.
* * * *
Tekmerc squad inter-suit radio communication.
Tekmerc one: ". . . know what the fuck's happened to Chad. Those psychic freakos are beating the hell out of each other somehow. You know how it is with them."
Tekmerc two: "God, it's like my head's on fire. There are corridors everywhere, like a bloody maze."
Tekmerc one: "No, there aren't. Fight it, turn up your photon-amp brightness. There's only one corridor."
Tekmerc two: "Sure thing, Leol."
Julia identified Tekmerc one as Leol Reiger. Her own abridged memories contained a concise security file on him.
She assigned the cause of the lone tekmerc's spasming run as due to Greg's psi effusion.
Tekmerc three: "Shouldn't we try to find Mandel and Suzi?"
Leol Reiger: "Suppose you tell me where the hell to look now Chad's weirded out."
Tekmerc three: "So how about helping Chad?"
Leol Reiger: "How, you dipshit cretin?"
Tekmerc three: "Sorry, Leol. Can't think with this psychic shit screwing my mind."
Leol Reiger: "Concentrate on finding the Fielder girl. And forget about the psychics, this corridor crap won't last much longer. They'll burn their brains out at this rate."
* * * *
Internal camera, study. Jason Whitehurst was sitting behind his desk cradling his head in his hands, rocking slowly back and forth, moaning, saliva bubbling from his lips. The two hardline bodyguards were covering the door with their Racal laser carbines, faces hard.
* * * *
Gondola internal camera review. Snatched images flicked into the lightware cruncher as Julia shuffled through the inputs searching for Charlotte Fielder.
The bridge with its crew, faces strained, hunched over their consoles, shouting hoarsely at each other. Lower-deck corridor with the two groups of tekmercs walking away from each other, frightened blank faces of the steward and maid. Lower-deck cabins, lounges, gym, a sauna; all deserted.
One cabin provisionally assigned to Fabian: a mishmash of toys and clothes sprayed about. Crew quarters at the prow, their small double cabins decorated with hologram pin-ups, a big mess room with a flatscreen showing mushy static, communal washroom, laundry. The crew members were curled up in their chairs or lying on bunks, woozy, afflicted by Greg's psi effusion. Greg and Suzi in the upper-deck corridor, directly above the crew quarters. Upper-deck cabins, beautifully furnished staterooms, a dining-room right at the stern, a swimming-pool, the water nearly gone, a terrific whirlpool in the centre.
* * * *
Fuselage internal camera review. The cameras fixed to the geodetic framework were all black and white, providing her with pictures of the narrow dimly lit longitudinal walkways, the gasbags looming oppressively. Next came pictures of ladders and stairs pinned to the transverse frames. Cylindrical maintenance drones sliding along their rails, folded waldos at both ends, like cybernetic mandibles.
Someone was climbing up a ladder near the stern. A woman in a maid's dress, totally unaffected by the psi effusion. At three hundred metres she was too far away from Greg, the effect was localized, centring round the gondola.
Julia accessed the crew records, matching the face with a file image. The maid's name was Nia Korovilla, she had been a crew member for eight years. A Russian national, with good references from three hotels, a clean employment record.
There was no reason for her to be where she was. Julia assigned a subroutine to keep watching her.
* * * *
Internal camera, gondola lower deck, Fabian's cabin. The tekmercs with the steward broke in. They didn't bother with the lock, simply punching out the door. It swung inwards, buckled by the first tekmerc's kick. The four of them entered, rip guns held ready.
* * * *
Tekmerc squad inter-suit radio communication.
Tekmerc four: "Leol, Frank here, there's no one in the boy's cabin."
Leol Reiger: "OK, Frank, try the girl's. And ask the steward if there's anywhere else they're likely to be. Find her!"
Tekmerc four, identified, Frank: "Will do."
Tekmerc five: "Hey! Hey feel that, it's stopped."
Tekmerc six: "Christ yeah."
Tekmerc seven: "Bout time."
Tekmerc three: "Hell, I can see properly again."
Leol Reiger: "Chad, Chad, check in."
Tekmerc six: "He had to win. Man, he's got some power, turn your brain inside out from half a klick."
Leol Reiger: "Chad, answer, fuck you."
Tekmerc two: "Come on, Chad!"
Leol Reiger: "Right, scratch Chad. If he couldn't handle some fucking geriatric Army relic he's better off out of it. Don't make no difference to us, he was just a convenience. We go through all the cabins until we find the whore. Right out of the manual. Now let's see some action out of you bastards."
* * * *
Internal camera, gondola upper-deck cabin. Chad's jetpack was still pressing him up into the corner of the cabin, helmet pushing against the ceiling. His legs had stopped running, arms hanging limply. A phone mike was picking up the jet-pack noise, a strident whine. The bed's counterpane had been caught in the efflux, blown towards the hole in the wall where it had snagged on the edge, flapping vigorously.
* * * *
Internal camera, fuselage keel. Suzi had climbed up the stairs from the gondola, her Browning pistol pointing ahead along the walkway. Greg followed, looking enervated, the skin around his eyes baggy and dark, but he was alive.
Julia knew her flesh and blood self would be flooded with relief that he had beaten Chad.