Ack-Ack Macaque (20 page)

“More hacking?”

A mischievous grin. “Hardly. I worked there, remember? I got trained. They wanted me to know how important you were. They even gave me a
brochure
.”

Ack-Ack Macaque took the cigar from his mouth. He raised his muzzle and huffed a trio of expanding smoke rings at the low metal ceiling.

“So, what did it say in this brochure? What am I, a kids’ toy?”

K8 laughed brightly. The lamplight caught the short copper curls of her hair.

“You’re a weapons system, Skipper. A prototype. The game’s just a fortunate spin-off, a bit of extra cash. The real money’s in intelligent guidance systems. Drones, missiles. Even space probes. They didn’t want to go to all the trouble of developing genuine AI, so they thought they’d do the next best thing, and start bootstrapping primates.”

She leaned forward and lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “But here’s the thing nobody else knows, the bit I
did
get from hacking the server. That probe they’re sending to Mars, it isn’t full of terraforming bacteria. No, that’s just a cover story. A diversion. Really, it’s full of souls.”

Ack-Ack Macaque moved the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.

“Souls?”

“Recorded personalities.” She tapped the back of her neck, at the base of her skull. “Thousands of them, harvested from the dead and dying.”

“To what end?”

“To download, once they get there. Don’t forget these guys are pretty heavily into the whole transhumanism trip. The probe’s the size of a London bus. There’s machinery in there. It’s going to build android bodies for the Undying faithful—bodies that don’t need to breathe or eat or sleep. And then, they’ll have the whole of Mars to themselves. By the time the Americans or Chinese get around to sending a manned mission, they’ll find an established colony of robot cultists already in place.”

Ack-Ack Macaque considered this. He hadn’t understood everything she’d said, but he thought he’d gleaned the gist. Or some of it, at least.

“You say thousands. Is the cult really that big?”

K8’s expression darkened.

“The faithful probably number a couple of hundred. The rest have been harvested from hospitals and morgues. A ready-made slave army.”

Ack-Ack Macaque tapped ash onto the deck.

“Robots, Morris? Really?”

“Yes, Skipper. They already had a prototype. They built it using what they learned working on Victoria Valois. They stretched some skin over its face and uploaded a personality into it. Called it Berg.”

“What happened to it?”

K8 shrugged. She had no idea. Instead, she held up one of the connective leads by its copper jack.

“Are you ready to get in there and cause some trouble?”

Ack-Ack Macaque held his cigar at arm’s length, considering. Then he dropped it to the deck and ground it out with the toe of his boot.

“Yeah.” He hopped up onto the bed beside her and rolled onto his back. “If it’s the best way to hurt Céleste, then hook me in.”

K8 shuffled close to his head as he made himself comfortable.

“I’ve been fiddling with the parameters,” she said. “I think I’ve rigged it so you’ll have unlimited ammo. Cool, huh?”

Ack-Ack Macaque grinned, exposing his incisors.

“Can you make it so I can’t die?”

K8 tipped her head on one side.

“I think you’re almost immortal already. After all, why name the game after you if you can get killed off easily? There’d be no challenge.”

Ack-Ack Macaque wriggled on the blanket, adjusting his position. K8 removed the goggles from the top of his head, and smoothed down the chestnut-coloured hair on his scalp.

“Maybe that’s what happened with the other four monkeys,” he said. “Maybe they got killed and had to be replaced?”

K8 shook her head.

“You don’t die if you get wasted in the game. Not in the real world. You just get disconnected.”

“So, the new version of me...?”

“He’s just an uplifted monkey, same as you are, jacked into the game. He’s probably in the same lab, in the same couch where they had you.”

“But is he indestructible too?”

“Not entirely. Neither of you is. You’re both just very, very hard to kill.” She plugged the leads into the sockets on the edge of the SincPad. “So, I guess we’re about to answer that age-old question.”

“What question?”

She bent over him, sliding the other end of the cables, one by one, into the corresponding ports on the top of his head.

“The question of what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object.”

E
VERYTHING WENT BLANK.
Then, half a second later, Ack-Ack Macaque found himself standing once more in the perpetual summer of a fictional 1944. This time, K8 had dropped him closer to the main action, behind a hangar on his old airbase.

Everything was exactly as he remembered it, from the acrid tang of engine grease to the feel of the warm tarmac beneath his bare feet. He drew his Colts. Nobody in sight. The main action was taking place at the end of the row of hangars, in the Officers’ Mess. He could hear somebody hammering out a tune on the piano. Glasses clinking. Voices raised in laughter.

This had been his life for as long as he could remember. This field, that tent. Those planes on the runway. He felt his lips pull back from his teeth, exposing his canines.

Okay motherfuckers
, he thought.
Time for a dose of reality.

Keeping low, he loped from hangar to hangar, working his way towards the sounds of merriment. Was his replacement inside the tent? Some of the planes seemed to be missing from the runway. Perhaps he was, perhaps he wasn’t. Ack-Ack Macaque paused at the corner of the final hangar, and tightened his grip on the Colts.

There was only one way to find out.

He licked his teeth, checking them for sharpness. Then, still hunched as low as possible, he scampered around to the front of the tent. When he got there, he straightened up as far as he could and, holding his gigantic silver revolvers high, kicked open the door.

Instantly, the piano music stopped. All the heads turned in his direction.

Same old crowd, he thought. Young, talkative and cavalier. His thumbs drew back the hammers on the Colts.

“Where’s the monkey?” he snapped. They looked at him in puzzlement. Nobody spoke. From the corner of the tent, the cockney Mess Officer bustled towards him, all white jacket, slicked back hair and pencil moustache.

“Afternoon, squire. What can I get you? The usual, is it?”

Ack-Ack Macaque looked him up and down. The wide-boy patter never changed. The man was an obvious construct, part of the program. How come he’d never noticed before?

He pressed the barrel of one of the Colts to the Mess Officer’s forehead, and pulled the trigger. The gun went off with a satisfyingly deafening bang, and red mist blew from the back of the man’s head. But he didn’t fall down. He stood there, holding his silver tray, looking stupid.

“Evenin’ squire.” His jaw flapped, caught in a loop. “Evenin’ squire. Evenin’ squire. Evenin’ squire...”

Ack-Ack Macaque kicked him aside. The kids on the nearest tables were starting to get to their feet, their mouths half open in alarm, their eyes wide with surprise. He shot them all, one at a time.
Blam! Blam! Blam!
Heads and arms flopped. Men and women screamed. Blood flew everywhere, but he knew it meant nothing. None of these deaths were real, they were just a means to an end: a way of attracting the big guy’s attention.

He reached out a hairy arm and grabbed an airman by the lapels.

“Where is he?” he snarled. The kid was seventeen or eighteen, with the first wispy suggestions of a goatee beard.

“I don’t understand.”

“The other monkey. Where is he?”

The kid’s eyes rolled in his head.

“What other monkey?”

Ack-Ack Macaque leaned in close, bringing his teeth right up to the kid’s cheek.

“There’s another version of me. A new one. He’s not here right now.
Where
is he
?”

The kid wriggled in his grip.

“Took off about an hour ago, heading for the
Brunel
. But I thought that was you. What is this? What’s happening?”

Ack-Ack Macaque released him, letting him drop to the rough wooden boards of the tent’s floor.

“Things have changed,” he said. “There’s a new monkey in town. Tell your friends.”

He turned on his heel and stalked out onto the runway. A few of the mechanics were loitering, disturbed by the sound of gunfire but unsure how to react. He plugged them all. What did it matter? None of them were really here.

He swarmed up the side of the nearest Spitfire. It wasn’t his plane, but it would do. The seat would have been narrow for a man, but gave him plenty of room. He settled into position on the parachute pack and closed the pilot’s door. Then he pulled closed and latched the canopy hood. He wound the rudder to full right, to counter the plane’s torque, and pressed the starter buttons. The fuel pressure light came on and the engine coughed. The four-bladed prop spun into life, and the aircraft strained forward against its brakes.

Ack-Ack Macaque’s large nostrils quivered with the smell of aviation fuel and hot metal. He saw survivors stumbling from the Officers’ Mess, and pointed upward with his index finger.

“I’m going up,” he called. “Get out of the way.”

They looked at him with pale incomprehension, milling around in front of the plane. Frustrated, he switched to his middle finger. “Oh, up yours.”

He took hold of the throttle and the plane leapt forward, scattering the onlookers like chickens. Laughing, and still waving his one-fingered salute, Ack-Ack Macaque taxied to the end of the runway. He hadn’t bothered plugging his headset into the radio, so he couldn’t hear the protestations of the tower. Instead, he fixed his eyes on the horizon and let out a piercing, fang-filled jungle screech.

This was it. This was him, where he’d always been. Where he’d always belonged: behind the joystick of a Spitfire, ready to take on the world.

And boy, was the world in trouble.

H
ALF AN HOUR
later, high in the clear skies above Northern France, Ack-Ack Macaque gripped the stick of his Spitfire as the plane vibrated around him. Ahead, enemy fighters danced like gnats in his crosshairs, harrying a much larger, far more ponderous vessel.

Flagship of the Allies’ aerial fleet, the aircraft carrier
Brunel
dominated the sky. With dimensions similar to one of its seagoing counterparts, it was easily the largest vessel in the European theatre. On its back, serried ranks of Nissen huts housed an entire squadron of single-seater Hurricane fighter-bombers. The planes were launched and recovered via a metal runway slung between the two over-sized, armoured airships that formed the bulk of the carrier’s mass. The propellers of fifty Rolls Royce engines powered the beast, and gun emplacements bristled along its flanks and undercarriage.

Half a dozen German fighters were currently attempting to mount an attack on the carrier, but were being held at bay by three of the
Brunel
’s Hurricanes, and a solitary Spitfire.

Ack-Ack Macaque leant on the throttle, urging his plane higher. The air in the cockpit turned bitterly cold. His breath came in puffs of vapour, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t real cold, was it? Just an illusion, like everything else. He kept his attention on the dogfight unfolding before him, squinting to pick his adversary from the wheeling wings and chattering cannons of the British planes.

He saw a Messerschmitt fall from the fray, trailing smoke and flames, an aileron flapping loose. Above it, the Spitfire wheeled. Compared to the functional lines of its prey, it was as sleek as a hawk; and where its RAF roundels should have been, it sported a grinning, painted monkey’s face.

“There you are.” He pulled on the stick to give chase, ignoring the other planes. Coming up from beneath the fight, he hadn’t yet been spotted by the other pilots. For now, he had the element of surprise.

Okay, he thought, let’s hope the world’s watching. He mashed the trigger button with his leathery thumb, and felt the rattle of the wing-mounted cannons. His shots caught his target across the underside of its fuselage, midway between the wings and rudder. He caught a glimpse as he hurtled past vertically, propeller clawing the thin air, and his plane threatened to stall. He pulled back, flipping the bird over onto its back. The yellow nose of a Messerschmitt lunged at him, but he rolled away from its attack, snarling.

“I should have dealt with them first,” he muttered. “Too late now.”

He looked around for the other Spitfire, and was alarmed to see it looping around behind him. Its guns blazed and he felt the bullets rip into his wings. Swearing silently, he kicked the rudder pedal and hauled the stick back to his hip, tipping the horizon over in a vertiginous rolling turn.

More impacts, like rocks on a tin roof. The seat convulsed beneath him. He pulled harder. German planes whirled across his view, zooming and banking, thrown into disarray, and he kept his thumb on the trigger, hoping to clear a few from the sky.

With merciless savagery, he threw his Spitfire from side-to-side, feinting one way and then another. Two more bursts hit him, but then he went left as his pursuer went right. Both planes screamed around in a banking turn that brought them face-to-face.

Ack-Ack Macaque fired, and saw the cannons on his counterpart’s wings do likewise. The two planes were shredding each other. Bullets slammed into the cockpit around him. The propeller splintered. Invisible hammer blows shattered the windshield. But still he kept firing. Only when collision seemed unavoidable did he knock the stick sideways.

The air roared through his fur. He pulled his goggles down over his eyes and tried to turn for another attack. The engine spluttered ominously, releasing gouts of black smoke. Hot oil peppered his fur. The prop had been partially shattered and the stick felt sloppy in his hands.

Panicked and vulnerable, he scanned the skies for the other planes, only to see the German Messerschmitts circling at a distance, watching the duel in apparent confusion. For a few moments, he couldn’t place the other Spitfire. Then it appeared from behind the great sausage shape of the
Brunel
’s starboard gasbag, trailing smoke. As he watched, the pilot brought its nose up just enough to make the lip of the metal runway, and the plane hit the deck like a pancake, slithering on its belly, skidding around and around until — like an injured wasp blundering into a spider’s web — it was caught by the crash netting at the runway’s far end.