Implied Spaces (23 page)

The guards did not seek out the enemy, or aid whoever was fighting the zombies, but remained true to their calling as guards, and continued to shield the head of state.

Aristide, overheating, took off his scarf and raincoat.

Overhead, the sun of Topaz flickered, shimmered, and died. A few remaining streetlights flickered on. Buildings, aside from those on fire, remained dark.

Emergency lights flashing on nearby buildings heralded a new arrival. This was followed by a grinding, thundering noise, as of a roadblock being battered to pieces. This was followed, in turn, by a volley of shots.

Aristide quietly resumed his raincoat and scarf.

A pair of vehicles rolled into sight. First was a large earthmover with a blade on the front and emergency lights flashing from atop the crew compartment. The other was an autobus, with the windows knocked out to permit those inside to fire freely in all directions.

The guards’ leader ordered his men forward, rifles leveled to give covering fire.

The earthmover and the bus halted on either side of the hotel entrance but left the field of fire clear. It was well that they did, because the lights and noise attracted another wave of zombies, all of whom were efficiently killed or driven away.

A group left the bus and came trotting up to the doors. Some were dressed as police, and some were not. The bodyguards fell back to let them enter.

The newcomers’ leader, a brown-skinned woman in the uniform of a police lieutenant, saluted the Guard officer.

“We’re from Meg Town,” she said. “The plague didn’t hit there, and we came as soon as we could.”

“We’re very relieved to see you.”

Both turned their heads at a volley of shots from the bus, followed by the harsh screams of a zombie, cut short by a final shot. There was no further noise, and the two leaders returned to their conference.

“I understand you’ve got Prime Minister Ataberk here?” said the lieutenant. Her fighters moved into the lobby, their eyes searching the darkness.

“We were caught here by the outbreak,” the bodyguard answered.

“We can take the PM away in our vehicle and return to Polity House or any designated emergency headquarters.”

“That won’t be necessary. I understand that transport is laid on for later—”

“
Look out!”
Aristide shouted, and threw himself to the floor. As he skimmed along the smooth golden surface on his slick raincoat, the newcomers raised their weapons and opened point-blank fire on the bodyguards.

On each face was an expression of perfect love. The adoration of their master they at last felt free to express.

There was a bang, a sense of twisting in the air. A mirror shattered. Three of the newcomers vanished in a blast of air. Guards were falling.

The bodyguards were shooting back—their ballistic armor smocks had protected them against at least some of the enemy bullets. Both screams and bullets tore the air.

Tecmessa took another pair of the intruders. Then another. And then no one was left standing, but everyone on the ground, strewn over the bullet-shattered lobby.

Aristide glanced cautiously around him. All the attackers appeared dead.

“
The door!”
the Guard captain said.

More attackers were coming, those who had remained on the earthmover and the bus in order to keep the zombies at a distance. With bullets in both legs, the Guard captain rolled onto his stomach, and using the body of the police captain as cover, began to fire.

Tecmessa took the attackers that the captain did not. Silence reigned in the lobby for a brief span, and then a defiant howl came floating into the lobby from the street. Other voices answered, a chorus of feral anger that echoed in the city’s canyons.

The zombies were coming. Attracted by the noise of the vehicles, they had trailed behind the bus, growing in number and waiting for their opportunity.

That moment had now come.

Zombies boiled from the street, charging through the doors and bashing their way through the windows. The remaining guards fired till they were overwhelmed. Tecmessa took many, but the attack came from so many directions that Aristide had to withdraw deeper into the hotel, backing down a corridor to lure the zombies after him, Tecmessa’s thunder shaking doors and shattering glass as it devoured the enemy.

In another world, he realized, the one to which Tecmessa was the womb, zombies were even now fighting the Venger’s troops, those who had followed the police lieutenant. He wondered which side would prevail.

When the zombies stopped coming , Aristide ran back into the lobby and found a zombie bent over the Guard captain and worrying at his throat. Aristide drove his kitchen knife into the back of the zombie’s neck and severed her spine. She toppled, and he kicked her away.

Feet pounded down an interior corridor. Aristide turned to defend himself and saw a half-dozen more of Prime Minister Ataberk’s bodyguards, who had been guarding another entrance to the hotel and had been summoned by their captain.

The guards immediately finished off a number of enemy wounded, and checked their comrades for signs of life. Only the captain had survived the double attack, and he waved off their aid.

“I’ve been infected,” he said, holding one hand to the wound on his throat. “There’s no point in trying to help me.”

“If we could get you to a pool of life…” Aristide said.

“I’ll slow you all down.” He looked at Tecmessa, the little black wand fixed on the sword hilt. “That’s a hell of a weapon you’ve got there.”

“It’s a secret project.”

“We’re going to need a lot more like it.”

I hope not
, Aristide thought. The captain looked at the bodies of the police lieutenant and the others who had arrived on the bus.

“Who
are
these people?” he asked.

“They’re the ones who loosed the zombie plague in order to cover their attempted coup. They were here to capture or kill the Prime Minister.”

“Good thing the boss is safe, then,” the captain said. Aristide looked at him.

“The Prime Minister was evacuated hours ago,” the captain explained. “There are utility tunnels that lead from here to Constitutional Square, and from there it’s a short sprint to Polity House.”

“You were here as a rear guard.”

“We were here to attract anyone trying to take out the PM” The captain looked down at the police lieutenant. “Good thing we were.”

“Sir,” said one of the newly arrived guards. “We no longer have the numbers to hold a building this large.”

The captain nodded. He had grown pale, and blood oozed between the fingers pressed to the wound on his throat.

“You’re in charge. I’ll report, after which you will shoot me in the head. Then you and the other units are authorized to withdraw to a more defensible location.”

“Sir!”

While the Guard captain communed with his implant, Aristide ventured a probe of his own.

Endora?

Yes?

You’ve been following this?

Yes.

Can the recordings of Tecmessa being used vanish?

I’m afraid ongoing bandwidth problems prevented any recordings at all.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Aristide turned away as the captain was given his quietus. Too many memories had already been loosed in the last few hours.

He took a weapon from one of the fallen and joined the surviving guards on a trek to their next fortress.

Dawn would come, he thought, in time.

12

It was difficult in the modern world for anyone to stay dead for very long. Aristide sat in the clinic, awaiting Daljit’s resurrection in a waiting room that smelled of flowers and too many nervous bodies. It was less than two days since her plunge off the apartment balcony.

Other survivors crowded the waiting room, all showing the shock and horror of the last few days—tens of thousands had died. Since resurrection facilities were not unlimited, the government and Endora had created a prioritized list for who would be brought back to life and in what order. Vital government functionaries and servitors first, everyone else later. Endora, however, had been willing to do Aristide a favor by bumping Daljit up the list by a few categories. Aristide had tried but failed to disguise how grateful he was for the favor.

Bitsy—the new Bitsy—coiled in Aristide’s lap. He absent-mindedly stroked her short hair. He witnessed lovers and families welcoming their lost ones back to the land of the living, with overloud hellos and nervous laughter. A disturbing number of the dead had been children, the most vulnerable to violence.

It was fortunate they wouldn’t remember how they had died, probably at the hands of their family or friends. At least they were spared that trauma.

He was more saddened at the thought of the children who had somehow survived the attacks of their kin, and who would remember for the rest of their lives the sight of their loved ones turning into monsters.

When Bitsy uncoiled and hopped to the floor, Aristide knew that the cat had learned through her data connections that Daljit was about to step into the waiting room. Aristide rose, wiped his nervous hands against the seams of his trousers, and stepped toward the door.

Daljit appeared. She walked with a certain deliberation, as if she was unused to being in the world. She was dressed in the clothing that Aristide had brought from her apartment—he had also brought cosmetics and the flowery perfume she favored. She smiled as she saw him and kissed his cheek, then stepped back and gave him a questioning look.

“What happened?” she asked. She blinked. “Did we—”

“Not here,” Aristide said. He led her from the clinic and to a sleek Destiny automobile, which under autopilot pulled from the curb as soon as they entered and closed the hatch.

Tecmessa, with the heavy blade reattached to the hilt, waited sheathed and propped up against the back seat. The sword had seemed an inappropriate object to bring into a clinic waiting room. Aristide slid onto the wide back seat, and held the sword at his hip as if it were attached to his belt.

Daljit looked at the world with wide, questioning eyes. The car hissed away from the curb.

“We didn’t kill Tumusok?” she asked. “What went wrong?”

Her backup had been made on the day of the planned assassination, so that if things went amiss, she would be resurrected complete with the established knowledge of the Venger’s existence.

“No,” Aristide said, “that part worked fine. Tumusok was dispatched, resurrected successfully, and briefed by Endora. But a few hours later the enemy worked out that he’d been detected, and attacked before we were ready for him.”

“Attacked?” Daljit’s expression was intent. “How?”

“A zombie plague,” Aristide said. “Apparently the intention was to cause enough chaos so that the Venger’s agents could seize power in as many of the pockets as possible.”

“So it was a zombie that got me?” Daljit said. Then, gazing out the window: “I take it the Venger’s coup failed?”

Bitsy jumped up onto the padded shelf behind their seat. “He was unsuccessful everywhere except Courtland,” she said. “Courtland is the corrupt AI, by the way, and even there the Venger had only managed to turn a minority of the population by the time the war started. But these were enough to seize and hold the wormhole gates from Courtland into the pockets, and presumably the rest are now being subjected to a Seraphim-like plague that will bring them all under the Venger’s control.”

Aristide could imagine the horror of the population there, communication with the outside cut off, the Venger’s propaganda on all the feeds, growing panic as the sickness began, the fever, hallucinations, and eventual coma as the brain was restructured from within…

With the Seraphim, people hadn’t realized at first what was happening. In Courtland’s pocket universes, everyone would know at once, and known there was nothing they could do. The valiant and the cowardly, the old and young, the devout and the irreligious, all condemned to the same fate.

Daljit’s look was bleak. “Has there been any communication from Courtland?”

“Surrender demands,” Aristide said, “from someone calling himself Vindex—Latin for ‘the Avenger,’ by the way. There’s only one of him, supposedly… he’s not a committee, like the Seraphim.”

“But he’s got Courtland.”

“Yes. Or he
is
Courtland, under another name.”

They fell silent. Daljit looked in bleak silence at a series of storefronts blackened by smoke damage. There had been a great many fires set during the disturbances, but, thanks to building codes and modern materials, very little had actually burned down. The buildings’ contents had gone up in smoke, but the buildings remained, looking out at the world through blackened eyes.

The scent of ashes sifted through the car’s ventilation system.

“How are people taking it?” Daljit asked.

“They were afraid,” Aristide said. “Now they’re angry. Everyone wants to do something, but this early it’s unclear what most people can do.” He looked at her. “You have a job waiting for you in the war effort, if you want it.”

Daljit was surprised. “But I’m just a geneticist.”

“You’re a geneticist in a biological war.”

“I’m not a senior enough fellow at the Institute to work on human genetics,” Daljit said. “I—” And then she stopped, as if she realized how obsolete that idea had become.

Aristide laughed. “That was before the war. Now we need everyone with any skills in that direction, to work out what weapons Vindex and Courtland can deploy against us, and how to counter them—or immunize ourselves against them before they are ever used.” He gave her a grim smile. “That’s important—your job category is much more substantial than mine, a semi-retired computer scientist turned biologist turned swordsman.”

The car turned, and Daljit looked at her surroundings in surprise.

“We’re going to the port?”

“I have the boat for another three days,” Aristide shrugged. “Why not?”

The car drove to the pier where
Fathom Deep
was tied up. Aristide told the car to wait, and then he, Daljit, and Bitsy left the Destiny and walked down the pier. He rested the heavy sword against his shoulder. Water surged beneath them; composite planks boomed beneath their feet. The sun, reflecting on the wavetops, danced across the sailboat’s hull.