Theme Planet (31 page)

Amba smiled then, a bare showing
of teeth that had nothing to do with humour. She simply had to progress and
react to whatever secrets Lady Goo Goo was hiding. And hiding something she
was; that reptilian gaze screamed it harder than a thousand proudly displayed
cluster bombs.

“I know it’s Romero. Earth’s
Oblivion Government have wanted me dead for a long time. I’m just surprised it
took this long for them to find me. You must be very... efficient.” She turned
back to the keyboard, and her fingers flickered across air keys.

“Hands up,” growled Amba.

Lady Goo Goo stopped typing
suddenly, and turned her head to Amba. Her wrinkled old face crinkled into
contempt and she began to laugh. “You’re a pretty one, aren’t you? For an executioner.
What Generation are you? You’re certainly not a Five, like the simpleton over
there.”

Again, Amba said nothing. In her
experience, it was better to say nothing.

What was the point? In a few
minutes, the Lady would be dead...

Lady Goo Goo licked her lips and
her eyes narrowed. “Aah. I see! You’re Anarchy, aren’t you? I can
smell
it, dearie. I can smell it - on your skin, in your metallic breath, in your
fucking
pussy.
You ooze it like alien semen.”

Amba stepped closer, the FRIEND
held steady, her eyes focused, senses screaming imminent danger. But from
where? Which direction? Hidden guns? Turrets? A sniper? All came back as
unprocessed, unchecked, non-viable.

“I’m sorry,” said Amba, and she
did not know why she said it.

“I know,” said Lady Goo Goo, pink
hair wobbling, and she smiled, and gave no signal, no gesture, but the whole
damn forest
came alive.
The trees and ferns and vines
creaked
,
groaned, and suddenly vines shot towards Amba and she leapt up and backwards, a
flip that left her in a crouch, face neutral, FRIEND extended towards Lady Goo
Goo.

She fired, but Goo Goo had gone,
a backflip of her own. The desk and terminal vanished with a
whump
of
disintegrating matter and Amba shifted her stance, dropping one leg a little, but
there came a hiss of air and she twitched her head left, too late, as a vine
slammed down and took her FRIEND. The weapon sailed up into the forest and Amba
stared for a moment in disbelief, before another vine - with razor-sharp fins -
slashed for her at head height. Amba ducked and rolled, looked back to Goo Goo,
and realised the old woman had...
changed.
Nothing visible, just in the
way she moved. She was crouched on all fours, back arched easily. In fact, her
stance reminded Amba of a large cat. Another vine slashed at her, and she
back-flipped three times, landing lightly next to Jonno. She crouched, her
hands whipped out, and took away his leg splint. The shotgun.

“Hey!” said Jonno.

“Sorry, I need it,” said Amba,
without looking at him. She was watching Lady Goo Goo, advancing slowly across
vegetation, moving on all fours,
undulating
with a rippling spine.

“I thought you’d help me become
more human,” said Jonno, miserably.

“You’re doing just fine,” said
Amba, looking swiftly about for more attacking jungle.

“But I
need
help!”

Amba and Goo Goo launched at one
another at the same time, flying through the air, and Amba cocked the shotgun
and fired once, twice, three times before they connected. Amazingly, she
missed. They slapped into each other, and the shotgun spun away, landing with a
muffled thump in vegetation. Amba punched hard, three times,

five, ten, slamming her steel
fists into Goo Goo’s head even before they landed together, in a tight embrace.
Goo Goo took the blows, reached out, and grabbed Amba by the throat and cunt.
She threw Amba away into the jungle like a toy, and the android spun, crashing
into tree trunks which suddenly came alive, groaning, and reached for her with
splayed branches like fingers. She hit the ground and rolled fast as a trunk
the thickness of her waist crashed down, impacting where her head had been. She
crouched and scuttled forward, as more branches and razor-tipped vines whistled
past her, grabbed the shotgun, somersaulted over an aggressive plant snapping
at her with the teeth of a piranha, and landed before Goo Goo.

The Lady was waiting for her,
wrinkled face full of humour, reptilian eyes watching her. She took a step
back, and it was like watching a snake recoil, readying to strike.

“What
are
you?” said Amba,
slowly, not taking her eyes from Goo Goo.

“One of your nightmares,” hissed
Goo Goo, and struck fast. Amba dodged, shifting right, licking her lips. She’d
never met a creature that could move so fast. She glanced down, saw twin slits
across her forearm, oozing blood. She wasn’t even sure which part of Goo Goo
had inflicted the wound... until she saw a tongue with razor barbs flicker from
the ridiculous old woman’s mouth...

“Frightened now, are you, my
little sweet?”

Goo Goo struck again, and Amba
twisted backwards, raising one arm to deflect the blow. This time pain flashed
through her, and she spun around, rolled with the blow; ended in a crouch,
cradling the shotgun. The tongue had cut her right bicep to the bone. Blood
pulsed from her arm, pattering on the jungle floor.

“I’m going to cut you up, one
piece at a time,” said Goo Goo, moving towards her, head bobbing, whole body
rippling like a cross between a big cat and a striking adder.

Amba pumped and fired the
shotgun, which gave a
boom
and blasted shrapnel through the vines and ferns. But Goo Goo had slipped
right, body oscillating, and the shells missed their mark.

“I’m going to tear you up, eat
your flesh, and send your bones to Android Hell...”

She attacked, and Amba waited the
blink of an eye for her to get in close before unleashing the shotgun, catching
Goo Goo full in the belly, but still the old woman came on, slamming into Amba
and sending them both rolling in a flurry of limbs across the thick vegetation.
A branch nearly decapitated Amba, and as Goo Goo’s face came close she slammed two
fingers into the old woman’s eyes, up to the knuckles, with a disgusting
squelching sound. A deathblow. Amba’s fingertips were in Lady Goo Goo’s
brain...

The eye sockets went suddenly
hard, clamping Amba’s hand in place, and with a flick of her head Goo Goo sent
Amba sailing back across the fake woodland, finger bones snapped. She landed
hard, broken fingers twitching, and got slowly to her knees. Her eyes focused.
Goo Goo, despite having
no eyes
, was orientating on Amba and grinning
like a village idiot.

“That hurt you, pretty little
Anarchy Android, didn’t it? Do you really think I need eyes to see you with?
This is my domain, pretty little dove. This is my
world...
and now it’s
time to stop playing games with you. Now, it’s time to put you gently to sleep.”

Lady Goo Goo stood, body rigid,
and Amba was panting, the wounds on her arms stinging, blood drenching her
flesh, fingers broken. In all her assassinations, she had never been wounded.
Not once. And now, here, this old woman with candyfloss hair was making a
comedy of her attempts...

Amba’s jaw set tight.

“Tell me what you are. Before you
kill me,” she said, realising the woman was not human, not android... but
something else, something far more complex. She was like no recognised and
accepted
alien
Amba had ever heard about...

She was...
adapting,
almost. A shapeshifter.

Amba’s head snapped left. Jonno
was standing, mesmerised, and there was something about the look on his face,
something
which didn’t fit right, didn’t sit true, and struck a discordant note of disharmony
in Amba’s soul.

“Too late,” said Lady Goo Goo. “Time
to say goodnight, sweet dove.”

Lady Goo Goo’s mouth opened,
suddenly too wide, in a massive, screeching, grotesque show of teeth. The mouth
was as big as Goo Goo’s whole head, a deep black-and-crimson maw edged with
black bone and filled with row after row after row of chattering razor teeth
which chattered and chomped and
promised.

Goo Goo leapt, so fast she was a
blur -

And Amba was frozen to the spot.

~ * ~

CHAPTER EIGHT

INSIDE OUTING

Sometimes she had
a dream, and she didn’t know if it was real or
imagined. And in the dream, or maybe the reality, she was surrounded by a
blackness so intense and thick, like an oily smoke which did not choke her,
that even when she lifted a hand before her eyes she could see nothing. Not her
pretty white fingers, not her prettily painted fingernails. Then, to make
things worse, with a start, she realised she wasn’t actually standing on
anything solid - no rocky ground, no fancy wooded flooring, no slick bathroom
tiles. She just hung, immobile, as if from wires, as the thick blackness
engulfed her and filled every sense, her sight and sound and taste and touch,
filled everything with a nothing.

Shit,
she realised, and even her
internal voice had no sound, made no echo, had no real substance.
Maybe I’m
dead. Maybe I’m dead and this is what it feels like, this is where you go? To
this deep dark hole, down in the centre of the world where nothing can
infiltrate your doom; your oblivion.

She tried to work out who she
was, but failed miserably. She could not remember her name, nor any single
detail about herself. This distressed her, and made her wonder if she was, in
fact,
insane
as opposed to dead. And if this was insanity, then this was
far, far worse. Give her death every time.

At least in death, in theory, one
found peace. But not here, like this. This was not peace. This was an ode to
madness. A soliloquy for the sad and lost and depraved. A wild moaning wind
symphony, a song of the mentally diseased.

And it came to her, one glimmer
of information, and she realised she was not dead, and not insane, and she
reached out with her invisible hand and
grasped
that glimmer of
information like it was a sharp blade, and even though it tore her flesh, made
her scream, made her bleed, she hung on to that data and drew it towards
herself and into herself and knew she was real, knew she was
human.

Molly.

Toffee.

Her children.

Her girls.

I am alive, and I am married, and
I have wonderful baby girls,
and like an oil cloud curtain being drawn back, colours flooded her world and
reality and she flew, or drifted, over a vast dead forest of bone trees.

A cold wind moaned, and caressed
her, and she shivered.

The sky was the colour of blood,
shot through with indigo and dark grey. Black and amber storm clouds raged like
swirling echoes of chaos in an eternal battle, hurling spears of lightning and
roaring with thunder. Below, the forest was a vast, eternal thing, endless grey
skeletal trees sprouting like cancer from a barren bleached earth. She floated,
over the eternity of bone, and all she could think was:

My children.

Where are my children?

What happened to my life?

Who am I?

I am my children. My children
have become me. I hope they are unhurt... because if they’re not, I’m going to
rend and tear and kill, I’m going to cut off heads and find a gun and pump
bullets into pale rancid flesh, watching steel rip out lungs and heart, smash
bones through arms and legs, shatter skulls and piss brain pulp onto the rancid
fetid lap of the gods...

Click. Like a light-switch.
Click, click.