Wrath of the Lemming-men (12 page)

‘How to operate a laser rifle and how not to whore myself to just anyone who walks past.’

‘Good! And with that thought I will leave you,’ Carveth added, lurching to her feet. ‘Tomorrow, we will learn some other stuff about guns and drill and all that. Goodnight, ladies: it’s been a pleasure.’

She turned and walked out, a feeling of contentment swelling within her. I trained them well, she thought. My robot sisters.

The door to the bar swung shut behind her. Overhead the neon sign flickered and buzzed. She sniffed and fished a map out of her pocket. Time to go to work.

Carveth took a left, meandered down the corridor and found a door marked ‘Authorised staff only’. For a moment she wondered if this sort of work might be better done whilst entirely sober. Ah, but wasn’t that exactly the sort of thing that the company would expect? Her drinking spree was therefore a cunning ruse to fool them into thinking she was drunk, which admittedly she was, which was in turn a double bluff – or something. . . She slipped the keycard out of her thigh pocket and ran it through the lock. Apparently she was authorised.

Carveth slipped through and closed the door behind her.

She crept down the corridor, the carpet tiles muffling her boots. There were framed pictures on the walls: a motivational poster, a pin-up elf from
Galaxy of Battles
, a girl in leather smalls draped over some circuitry. The air was stale. She was in the computer department.

As if to confirm this, voices burst out from an office to the left: two technicians, shouting over one another. One started laughing at his colleague’s stupidity as Carveth ducked down and crept under the window. She grinned at her own cleverness.

Standing up again, she felt less clever. Her brain swayed worryingly inside her skull, slopping about in Bacardi like a picked frog in ethanol. She reached the lift, pressed the button and watched the big red digital display count up to her floor.

From one of the offices a voice broke out in a snarl.

‘Liar, wicked liar! Computers don’t break, you fool!
You
broke it!’ The door rolled open and she slipped inside, remembered Dreckitt’s instructions and keyed in ‘sub-basement four’. The lift sank. Pan-pipes started playing
The Safety Dance
.

Dreckitt sat back in his chair and poured himself a shot of rye. He stared into the glass, reflecting how much whisky looked like the urine sample of a habitual whisky drinker.

He took a sip and pulled the face he tended to pull when drinking. No matter how many times you swirled it round the bottom of the glass, Famous Teacher still tasted like tractor fuel.

He got up and walked to the little window. It was snowing outside, pitch-black except for the lights on the landing strip. He wondered what was going on in Smith’s spaceship. Probably something cheerful. He grimaced and took another sip.

The company radio stations played power ballads and synthesiser pop, so Dreckitt had brought his own records.

At the moment, a warbling crooner was telling him that this was not goodbye, but
au revoir
. Dreckitt didn’t believe a word of it.

Looking into the black, he suddenly realised that he was lonely. Carveth made him feel uneasy, as well as making him wince, but he didn’t feel quite so miserable when she was around. Even the perpetual rain and flickering neon of his homeworld would have been bearable with her. I ought to tell her that, he thought. Let her know she’s a doll. Maybe not:
doll
was probably the wrong word for a reprogrammed sexbot.

Someone knocked on the door. Dreckitt opened it.

A sour-faced security officer stood outside. ‘Company business,’ he said. ‘Step aside.’

‘I’m stepping,’ Dreckitt replied.

‘I’m here to search the room,’ the officer said, walking in. ‘Just a routine check.’ He took a scanner from his belt and ran it up and down the curtains.

‘Sure, it’s routine,’ Dreckitt said. ‘It’s routine, just like a kangaroo practising law. It’s routine as a two-bit grifter getting three aces against Nick the Greek.’

The security man frowned, struggling to comprehend. ‘So, um, not routine, then?’

‘Damn right. Take the breeze, pal. Scram.’

The man’s face hardened. ‘No deal,’ he said, and he reached for his gun. Dreckitt whirled, grabbed at the table and as the gun appeared he smashed the whisky bottle over the agent’s head.

The security man crumpled like a sack full of old clothes. The smell of whisky was overpowering. Dreckitt lifted his pillow and took his pistol from underneath. ‘Too bad you wouldn’t leave,’ he said. ‘But then again, who does?’

The lift stopped and the piped music cut. As the door opened, light jazz began to play.

‘Bloody hell,’ Carveth said.

She was looking across a marble hall at a bronze torso, ten feet high. It was stylised: the lack of detail made it eerie. The muscles of the chest were smooth slabs, the face featureless except for a stern brow and a bland horizontal stripe of mouth. On the statue’s plinth was one word: COMMERCE.

Awed, she stepped into the hall. Her soles squeaked on the floor. Walnut panels stretched up the walls. Marble women stood on tiptoe at the edges of the room, holding up glowing balls. Everything was sleek.

Carveth felt uneasy, watched.

There was a picture on the wall beside the statue. She closed one eye to stabilise her vision. The picture showed a man in a double-breasted suit, big and healthy, staring into the camera with an expression that was at once jocular and threatening. He had a pencil moustache like W’s, but neater hair, and he looked much less ill.

‘Lloyd Leighton,’ said a voice.

Carveth spun around. Emily crossed the hall in a soft hiss of skirt, her bootheels clicking on the marble.

‘The former owner of the Blue Moon Corporation, co-founder of Leighton-Wakazashi. He used to be the richest man in the galaxy,’ she explained. ‘Until he disappeared.’

‘I, um, I just needed some air.’

‘Of course. A fundamentally vulgar business, commerce,’ she observed. ‘Nobody of any real worth
makes
money. One either marries or inherits it. Lloyd Leighton made roller-coasters.’

Carveth peered at the picture: Leighton looked like a tyrant on his day off. ‘Roller-coasters?’

‘Gaudy, nasty things,’ Emily said. ‘Not like the sort of entertainments we have at Mansfield Theme Park. We offer lawn croquet and then a little sit-down. But Leighton felt he could make money that way. He went missing at the start of the war, after Leighton-Wakazashi took over Blue Moon.’ She looked down at Carveth, frowned and said, ‘You seem somewhat lost.’

‘Yes,’ Carveth said. ‘I took a wrong turn somewhere –all a bit much. . .’

‘I agree. It’s all so crass and cheap-looking. Terribly vulgar.’ Emily sighed. ‘Would you care to join me for a stroll?’

‘I’m alright, thanks.’

‘Then goodnight. My constitution demands that I retire.’ Emily smiled, turned, and disappeared down the corridor, her skirts whispering around her.

Carveth watched her go and exhaled. She glanced at the map. Nearly there. The bronze statue glowered at her as she left the room.

Smith answered the doorbell with a pistol in the pocket of his dressing gown. ‘Dreckitt?’

The android stumbled in and slammed the airlock behind him. Suruk, who had been hiding behind the door with a machete, waved.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ Dreckitt said.

‘What is it?’

‘My cover’s blown,’ Dreckitt said. He was shivering, Smith saw: he wore his raincoat over a shirt, hardly sufficient for the cold outside. ‘They sent some gunsel to check out my room. He drew on me and I knocked him cold.’

‘Dammit,’ Smith exclaimed. ‘Are you sure?’

‘If I’m not sure, I just wasted good hooch on some guy’s head. We’ve gotta go. If they’ve found me, they’ll find Polly.’

‘Right,’ said Smith. ‘I’ll radio in to HQ.’

‘That’s really bad!’ They looked round: Rhianna stood in the corridor, wearing a kaftan. ‘This is an act of corporate oppression, not to mention attempted murder! We should picket their offices at once!’

Dreckitt turned back to Smith. ‘Why the hell are you packing a rod in your pyjamas?’

Smith took the Civiliser out of his pocket. ‘For close encounters.’

Dreckitt shook his head. ‘This whole place’s gone crazy.’

‘Nonsense,’ Suruk said. ‘It has become good!’ He disappeared into his room and returned a moment later, spear in hand. ‘I have never taken the skull of a yuppie,’ he said, ‘but I understand that they often have a bull and a bear in their market. It should be an interesting fight.’

The basement was deserted. Carveth crept through a little communal mess-room, down a narrow corridor and reached the main data archive. A sealed glass door blocked the way. She pushed her keycard into a slot in the wall and the main lights flickered into life. The computer made a set of staccato mechanical barks and the door slid back.

The data archive consisted of one seat and a terminal.

Diodes flashed on the walls like Christmas lights. She had no idea what they did.

Carveth lowered herself into the seat and turned on the monitor. She wiggled her fingers, ready to go to work.

Lines ran up and down the screen. It emitted a stuttering rattle, as if its gears were not quite meshed, and then the screen flashed white, black, and white again. In the upper left corner of the screen was the message:
Go to Line 10
.

She put her keycard into the memory slot and words clattered across the screen:
How can I help you today?

Carveth closed her eyes, the world wobbling a little behind them, and remembered her mission. ‘Show me all files relating to selling things to the Ghasts,’ she said.

Sorry!
the computer replied.
Those files are encrypted. Special company order
.

‘Can’t I just copy them?’

Sure! You just won’t be able to read them, that’s all.
Copying right now.

Bloody computers, Carveth thought. It wasn’t like this in the Empire. Proper computers had cogs and paper spools.

‘Just out of interest,’ she said, eyes fixed on the screen, ‘who encrypted the files?’

There is no name on file
, the computer replied.
It’s
credited to ‘a lady’
.

‘A lady?’ Carveth said.

She flopped back in the seat. ‘A lady’. Who the hell would call themselves that, except—

A sense of leaden horror dropped over her, like a curtain coming down. ‘Oh, hell,’ she said.

Words scrolled across the screen.
Download complete
.

She reached forward and pulled out the keycard. As the screen went black she saw Emily’s face reflected in it, like a ghost.

‘It would be only understandable for one to expect an explanation.’ A blank, meaningless smirk spread across the lady android’s face. ‘One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other,’ she observed. ‘But it can never resist sticking its nose in to have a look around, can it now?’

Carveth started to rise.

‘Not so hasty,’ Emily said. ‘I believe we have a little unfinished business to discuss. Tell me, did it not occur to you that the company might have the gumption to install a sleeper in the ranks, as the common people put it? Someone to keep an eye on proceedings, to guard the data files, to keep our papers safe from a dirty little back-stairs menial like you?’

Carveth leaped out of the seat. Emily made a grab for her, Carveth ducked, and in a moment they faced one another, the armchair between them. ‘Now look,’ Carveth said, ‘let’s be reasonable here, right?’

‘One does not reason with the likes of you!’ Emily snarled. ‘A thief, a spy, and. . . and a
social climber
!’ She lunged around the chair. Carveth darted left, spun the chair and ran. She thumped the panel and sprang through the airlock as it slid open. She tore down the corridor, stumbled, glanced back and saw Emily rushing after her, filling the passage with skirts that hissed against the wall, a tidal wave of silk. Emily’s legs were longer – and as Carveth reached the mess-room Emily grabbed her pony-tail, yanked her back and tossed Carveth across the room.

She hit the floor. Like a mad bride Emily stood in the centre of the mess, looking round. Her hands shook as she slid a fountain pen from her decolletage.

Carveth pulled herself onto her hands and knees.

Emily’s twitchy fingers started to dismantle the pen, turning it into some kind of weapon.

‘Time,’ she said, ‘for this pen of mine to dwell on guilt and misery. Yours.’

Carveth jumped up. Emily jabbed, but missed, and Carveth fell across the mess table. Emily sprang onto her, pen raised to stab, and Carveth’s hand closed around a bottle on the tabletop. Emily lunged and Carveth twisted round and smashed the bottle over the lady android’s head.

Emily fell in an explosion of sauce. Carveth stumbled back and Emily rose from the floor. Her scalp was covered in salad cream. She looked as if she had been standing under an albatross.

A droplet of salad cream trickled down Emily’s forehead. She sniggered.

Carveth ran.

In the wrong direction.

Suruk led the way, Dreckitt following. Smith was next: he kept glancing back to make sure that Rhianna was still with them. Nobody tried to stop them: tough executives turned and fled rather than confront them, three-wheeled scooters rattled away from the sound of their boots.

‘Down here,’ Dreckitt said, and they hurried into the stairwell. ‘We don’t have long.’

Suruk raised a hand. ‘I smell something. It is like. . .fizzy drink and food that is taken away. I smell men.’

‘Food?’ Smith said. ‘Carveth may be nearby. She’s like a dustbin sometimes.’

‘No,’ said Suruk. ‘I mean
men
.’

‘We must be in the computing section.’ Dreckitt cocked his huge automatic. ‘Not far now. We just need to—’

A door dropped out of the ceiling behind them, cutting them off like a portcullis. Smith glanced round, and with a crash a second door fell at the far end of the passage, sealing them in.