Omega Point (13 page)

  "Fool!" roared Tarquin. "Kill him, kill the man named Richards, kill him now! The Lord Penumbra still has half a world to lay waste, and you invite his enemies into this pavilion."

  Circus wrung his little hands, a look of abject misery upon his face. He looked at the lion, then Richards. "He has eaten of the meat, he will be swine as his fellows."

  Richards kept his eyes on the lion, forcing his mind to grasp this stupid world. His anger pushed him through and he found the code, a hideous worm that impelled him to feed, and crushed it vengefully. He gasped aloud as his hunger released him, his handle on the world code going with it, leaving him wrung out and pained. He got to his feet unsteadily.

  "Cretinous midget! Dimwitted dwarf, oh!" snarled Tarquin. "This creature has not eaten. He is an interloper, a Class Five AI! I recognise it, I see it now! There is no place for him here. Once I have dined on them, Circus, I will devour you piece by screaming red piece! I trusted you to murder him by your magic, now I see I must do all myself lest we are all undone by your vanity!"

  "What to do, oh, what to do?" Circus's face crumpled and he brought his hands up to his face. "Now the master will destroy me and I will never be a woman."

  "Mr Richards, we are utterly, utterly shafted," said Bear. He was having trouble remaining on his hind paws. He was roughly half pig, half bear. Which bits were stuffed was up for debate. It was not a pretty sight.

  "Nothing, Circus. I will consume you the slower for your idiocy." The lion licked his black lips. "At least you have done half your job," he laughed. "You first, bear. Richards, I will save you for the master's return." It jumped, landing squarely on Bear's bald back. By now Bear was hardly a bear at all, and the lion's claws drew not stuffing but parallel lines of bright blood.

  "Mr Richards!" grunted the toy. "Get it off! It's going to bloody kill me!"

  "Shit!" Richards pelted the lion with anything he could lay his hands on. Silver salvers, soft fruits and heavy puddings ricocheted off Tarquin. Bear, slick with blood, managed to wrestle the enraged creature round until he had it in a firm headlock, but his arms were shrivelling into those of an over-sized boar. He was big, Bear, and the code had much to rewrite, but working it was, and much too fast for Richards.

  "Look out!" said Bear, somewhere between a squeal and a roar. A bolt of purple energy slammed into a table and Richards was thrown backwards. Splinters of burning wood landed amidst the silken cushions and set them alight as Richards found himself dodging back and forward round a heap of fruit in a highcharged game of peek-a-boo with Circus. The little man's hands were clawed, his painted nails held before him as ridiculous daggers. His face was contorted with rage, teeth bared and mouth frothing. "Richards?" he shrieked. "Richards? Richards! Richards in my house! Curse you! Curse you!" The brooch on his head stared maniacally forward. Lightning crackled and another bolt of energy erupted from it. Richards ducked, and the blast arced over his head to shatter an ancient timber. The building groaned as weight was redistributed through its structure in new and unsupportable patterns.

  "Pl'anna! Stop!" said Richards.

  "Aieee!" screamed Circus, and yanked Richards' legs from under him. Richards was caught in a whirlwind of unwashed silks and limbs, ripe with the scents of old sex. "I kill you, Richards! I kill you!" squeaked the dwarf. He knelt on Richards' throat, pinning him to the floor. Richards' eyes bulged as the little man reached up to his turban and withdrew a long hatpin, gripping it in one jewelled fist like a stiletto.

  "Pl'anna! Pl'anna! Stop!" Richards spluttered. He slapped at the dwarf, causing him to squeal and clutch his cheek.

  "My face! My beautiful face!"

  Richards rolled to the side, levering the dwarf off him, and scrambled to his feet. Circus swiped at him with his pin. Richards kicked him hard in the chest, sending Circus back down, and stamped on his wrist. The dwarf shrieked, dropped the pin and spat at him with hatred.

  "I killllll you!" The brooch glowed. Richards leant forward and grasped it. Though it burned with an appalling electricity he held it fast.

  "It's me, Richards! Pl'anna, I know you're in there!" He pulled the brooch hard.

  Circus screamed. There was a ripping noise like wet satin, and Circus came undone like a week-old banana. As Richards pulled at the eye jewel, a zip appeared in the dwarf's face, and it unzipped. Not just the turban, or his clothes, but his entire façade, as if maquillage, vestments, skin and hat were all of a piece. The zip's teeth were the teeth of civet cats, curved and interlocking. They yielded with the faintest of mewls. Circus bucked and shrieked and fell beneath the table. Richards stood confused in the blazing room, clutching the eye brooch, which swivelled and wetly tickled his palm. All around was flaming peril, the taste of meat vile in his mouth.

  He made to cast the skin aside.

  "Misserr Rissshars! Missserrr Rissshars!" said Bear. "Reee! Reee! Re rion!" Richards stared at him for a second then hastily pointed the brooch at Tarquin. The arm Bear had the lion pinioned with had become that of a pig completely, leaving him defenceless.

  "Er, Shazam!" yelled Richards, mimicking the dwarf. But Circus had not said exactly that, and the result was not what he intended. Rather than a heavy carving, Bear found himself wrestling with a skinless lion. It roared in agony as its hide slapped into a wall.

  "What in the sweet holy name of God is fucking going on here?!" shouted Richards. He stared at the jewel – it stared back. He held it aloft, pointed at the lion and Circus attacked.

  Richards' skin crawled in revulsion as the thing Pl'anna had become landed on his back. Atrophied fingers closed round Richards' face, obscuring his vision as a stench of rotting mackerel stole his breath. Richards staggered to and fro, knocking food and crockery into the voracious blaze as he went. He grabbed at the dwarf-thing, but his hands skidded on its slimy flesh.

  "Richards! Richards! I didn't know, I didn't know! He changed me, he changed me! Help me, Richards, please!" Pollyanna's voice bubbled through inhuman lips even as claws scrabbled at Richards' eyes, and its voice changed back to that of Circus. "You wicked creature! All I ever wished for was womanhood!" Richards reeled back. Flailing madly, he drove it hard behind him, praying he did not stab himself on the hooks about the room. He was rewarded with a pitiful scream as the creature was impaled. He ran blindly. There was a jingle as the chain went taut, and Circus was wrenched from his back. Richards ran to the levers behind the curtain. He grasped them at random, flinging them this way and that, using the slippery dwarf-case to protect his hands from the fire-hot metal. The jerking thing that was once Pl'anna dropped a few feet, screaming as it bounced. Large protruding eyes sat awkwardly either side of a lipless mouth, legs built for jumping, broad and powerful, forelimbs feeble sticks. Richards watched it scrabble weakly at the hook embedded in its shoulder. It looked at him pleadingly. Cheerful eyes in an ever-changing mask; flighty, wise, idiotic Pl'anna.

  My God, what has k52 done? he thought.

  Richards released the brake on the lever and yanked it back. There was a swift tattoo of chain on hollow wood, and Circus disappeared upwards, bleating as he went, pursuing the flames that devoured his home.

  The pagoda was ablaze. Richards gagged at the pig carcasses, nausea redoubling now he realised their origins. Green fire played over them as their fat burned. Fruits roasted in the heat where they sat on the table. Bread blackened, baked for a second time. The furnishings against the wall burned, fire crawling from them to the higher levels of the tower. The huge rope, inflammably thick, twisted in the heat.

  "Bear!" shouted Richards. The fire was rapidly becoming a searing inferno, and he was forced to shield his face with his arm. "Bear! We need to get the hell out of here!" The building grumbled as the structure shifted. A heavy beam hit the floor with a noise like a giant's xylophone. Embers rained down. It would not stand much longer. "Bear!" he hollered, his throat raw from the smoke. A squeal from a corner answered. Bear, now wholly hog, was making good use of his new tusks, goring the flayed lion, which lay unmoving upon the floor, ropes of grey intestines round his trotters. Bear-the-pig looked up with frenzied eyes, and for a moment Richards was sure he would charge. The corpse of Tarquin flickered from red to grey, and then lay solid and inflexible, a statue commemorating a brutal end. The bear-pig shook his head, and understanding returned to its face.

  "We've got to get out of here!" Richards ran towards the doors, jumping flames, narrowly missing a dragon as it fell from the arch above, spitting sparks for the first and final time. Richards threw himself through the gap in the gates, and he was into the cool dark outside.

  The pavilion cracked and roared, strips of firelight playing upon the flagstones. Beyond the circle of heat it was tranquil. Unperturbed, Lucas the pig rootled for rotten fruit in the orchard.

  Bear trotted through the burning doors. His head was high, the smoking pelt of Tarquin clamped in his mouth.

  "Lucas," called Richards. The other pig's head snapped up. "Come on, we're leaving."

 

Richards sat on a log. He stared at the brooch. The brooch stared back at him. The glow of the fire at the hilltop washed all with copper. Lucas and Bear waited expectantly nearby.

  Richards pursed his lips. He'd tried to break his way back into the world structure without luck. He supposed his earlier success could have been the presence of the other Five, or the transmutational worm that was invading him, or even just plain anger, but now he was firmly locked back inside his human emulation. So he'd tried brandishing the brooch like Circus again, but little had happened. That left him with only one option. He hunted around for a stick and placed the eye-jewel on the log. He looked to the pigs. "Well," he said resignedly, "I really can't think of anything else. In here, I have to play by the rules, and those old games, they liked you to improvise." He raised the stick high and brought it down hard. There was a tiny cracking noise, then a huge bang. White light flooded the area, and Richards found himself sprawled between Lucas and Bear.

  They were still pigs.

  "Balls," he said.

  "Richards, Richards!" A voice emanated from a dim glow above the log. The glow grew in strength, resolving itself into the shape of a young woman. Richards' heart skipped a beat.

  "Pollyanna, Pl'anna?" he said.

  The avatar of the other Class Five AI was a frail-looking thing, transparent, a soft whisper of damask on the night air. Sheer robes floated about her, ineffectively shielding her modesty. But though she was very beautiful, and though her clothes were very scanty, there was a purity about her. Pollyanna changed her looks often – above all things she loved to shop – but she had a peculiar form of naïve wisdom to her as deep as forest moss, and that never changed.

  "Richards, oh, Richards, he has you too!" Her voice was like forty women whispering as one in a cloister, a sign that the subpersonalities in her were falling out of step with one another.

  She was dying.

  "k52," said Richards, his voice soft and small and sad. "Pl'anna, what did he do to you?"

  Pl'anna sighed. "I disagreed with him, Richards. I went away. The next I knew, I was imprisoned in that brooch, made into a parody of everything I have ever been, but you have set me free. Thank you, Richards, thank you," said Pollyanna. "But he has you too! How?"

  "Pl'anna, listen, he doesn't have me, not yet. I'm here to stop him. I came in, from outside, Pl'anna. What is k52 playing at?"

  "Oh, Richards." She faded momentarily, the air shimmering. "He told us that he would save the world, Richards. He told us he could bring immortality to humanity."

  "What? Dog men and bears, old toys and old games and fucking great vortices? How is that going to save anything?" said Richards.

  "You do not understand."

  Richards calmed. "Yeah. Yeah, I think I do. This world is not of k52's doing."

  Pl'anna smiled. "It was here when we arrived. He wishes to destroy it, for it stands in the way of his plans. Something is pushing back, something has changed him. He has become part of this place. Something has forced itself into him. He is insane, Richards. Stop him."

  The light from the figure dimmed, her words fading into the crackle of the dying fire on the hill.

  "What did he want to do, Pl'anna? What were his original intentions! You must try and tell me!" Frustration grew in him, frustration that he could neither save her nor act directly and pull the information from her mind before she died.

  The apparition bowed her head. "Omega Point, Richards, k52 seeks the Omega Point."

  "How?" Richards called. He crawled forward, trying to will the other Five to stay.

  "He promised an end to war and pain, and a place where everyone would be happy, and a time where the universe would sing with joy, but then we came here, and… he was lying." She looked behind her, as if expecting someone to call her. "I shall speed this wood on through the night, so you may continue your journey. And your friends too I shall restore, for it was through me that they were transformed, and I still have some influence on the world, now I am free of my prison." The figure had faded from view almost entirely, only the faintest ghost remaining, the voice going with it.

  Richards felt himself grow frantic. "Where are you going? How will you save yourself?"

  Her voice replied, a sigh on the wind. "I cannot. k52 had us leave our base units and bound our coding into this world. I am sustained by the Realm machinery; my being is written into the land. All those places that held me are gone; the tower was the last of it. I must expend the remainder of myself to aid you, but do not mourn me. Thank you, for oblivion is sweet to that which was my fate before. Find Rolston – he was in Pylon City, last I knew." She smiled, and then dismay came upon her. "Richards. Oh, Richards, I am sorry, but I did not know what to do."