Xenoform (39 page)

‘Yeah, thanks for your help, man,’ said Tec.

‘No problem. Can we eat something, and then I’ll try the net?’

‘Sure, let’s have a look,’ said Tec, leading the way up to the makeshift kitchen.

‘Anything’d do, really.’ He sat on one of the high stools. ‘I hope they’re okay out there. I wonder how many more of those creatures there are. They might be everywhere.’

‘Yeah, maybe, but I pity the monster that picks a fight with Whistler and Sofi.’ He shrugged.

‘I suppose so. Does this mean nobody’s able to watch the roof now?’

‘I guess not,’ said Tec, opening the food cupboards one by one and then closing them in disgust. ‘Mother usually watches the cameras. I guess we could bypass her and set up a monitor. Or maybe Junior could watch,’ he said thoughtfully. He stopped, straightened up, and turned round. ‘Hey, man, have you seen Junior at all?’

‘Who?’ asked Debian, his face blank.

‘Junior. He’s my robot. Small spidery thing, hence the name: Spider Junior. Not too bright, also hence the name, but capable of watching the roof for us. Now that I think about it, I haven’t seen him for a while.’

‘I don’t think I’ve seen any robot.’ Debian was picking up on Tec’s concern. ‘Why? Something wrong?’

‘I don’t know...’ said Tec thoughtfully. He was holding a tin in one hand and his face was distant. ‘Beans?’ he said at last.

‘Sure,’ said Debian gratefully. ‘Then we’ll get right on with it.’

Junior was still nearby, although he was not in too sociable a mood. In fact, Junior had been going through some changes recently. He heard his name mentioned, but his name didn’t mean anything to him any more. He was just a single node in a system far, far greater.

‘The pod is here, Mrs Smith,’ said Simon. ‘It’s waiting in the basement.’

Startled from her contemplation, she glanced up from the window and said, ‘Thank you, Simon.’

When she made no move towards the door Simon went to stand beside her. ‘Mrs Smith, it really is time to go,’ he said softly. He touched her elbow, cajoling, but it was like a piece of cold marble.

She didn’t speak for some time and when she did it was not in answer: ‘Look at it. What the hell happened here?’ She indicated the city below them.

Obligingly, Simon looked. There was a greasy greenish film over the outside of the window. The sky was dark and veiled in rolling banks of smoke. There were no gyrocopters flying now, although a solitary searchlight probed the sky with unguessable intentions, its milky beam illuminating only smoke and cloud. The horizon still glowed to the north but the brilliance of the glare had reduced dramatically. Clearly the fire was the only thing that was coming under control, though. Most of the city was unlit, powerless, crushed beneath darkness. Random explosions punctuated the night from all directions
–
the signs of urban warfare, a state of existence that had seemed utterly improbable only the day before. Simon wondered who was fighting whom. He supposed it was basically a free-for-all. There was almost no news coming in, apart from that relayed by HGR security squads dispatched onto the streets for that specific purpose. They reported widespread gang activity and acts of police brutality. One team had actually had to fight its way back, harried by the Backstreet Gang, losing several employees in the process. Also, there were increasingly worrying reports of strange creatures roaming the city. A security squad had shot one and it had allegedly melted down into some kind of slime. It was unbelievable. It was becoming undeniable. Multiple reliable witnesses had related the incident. The scene outside was apocalyptic. The teams had all been called in. There were marksmen posted on the roof with mag-rifles and barricades on the ground. HGR headquarters had been made a virtual fortress, an island in a sea of inexplicable enmity.

‘I don’t know, Mrs Smith. But I think it’s still happening.’ Simon was not privy to the latest HGR research data, limited in scope though it was, but Mrs Smith actually had a pretty good idea of what was happening, or part of it anyway.

‘What does it look like to you, Simon?’

Simon squirmed slightly, anxious to get her away, sickened by the sight of the stricken city below. ‘You should get to the pod, Ma’am. We can get you to the sea-port, but you need to go
now.’

‘Because to me it looks like war.’

‘Either that,’ he agreed grudgingly, ‘or we’ve fallen through a dimensional rift into the land of the bizarre. Please, Ma’am...’

‘But who is attacking us?’ Smith sounded like she was talking to herself now. ‘Who planted those organs? The same people who planted the computer bug, I’ll warrant. So much for us finding them.’ She chuckled – the notion seemed laughable now.

Simon stared into her face – it looked moulded or cast – not human but living statue, the features finely chiselled and the hair a solid piece of stone. ‘Organs?’ he said. ‘You mean the GDD?’

Smith sighed heavily, seeming to shrink as she did so. She turned to Simon. ‘You may escort me now, Simon.’

‘Very good,’ he said, relieved.

Smith let him lead her from the office without further ado. She resisted the urge to look back – it might seem too much like a
last
look back, an admission of defeat, and she disallowed herself the weakness.

They moved through the chaotic bowels of the building in solemn silence. HGR employees charged here and there or slumped in the easy chairs that lined the corridors. Many of them had not been home for days, all of them were frightened or exhausted. There was no official ban on leaving the premises – not yet – but most people were too fearful of what was happening outside. They knew they were safe here, shielded by the basic inviolable nature of big business. The company was stronger than any human being – it would protect them, mother them through the hard times. Smith knew they might be wrong. With no communications, no robots, no real high-tech weaponry beyond the remaining handful of small arms and with the power cuts that had reduced the building to generators, they were as vulnerable as anyone. Monsters on the streets? Gang warfare? Police shooting without question; contracts dishonoured; allegiances tossed aside? Smith was opting out of it while there was still time. She had a nice little artificial island a hundred miles offshore that right now sounded a lot more relaxing.

They dared not take the lift to the basement, so Simon led the way down shining stairs of ceramicarbide. Smith realised she had never seen them before, never had occasion to take the stairs. This small thing bothered her more than she could understand.

The basement was spotlessly clean and brightly lit except for Material Receipt, which was dark and deserted at the far end, the shutter rolled down and the windows electronically tinted black. A black pod, smooth skinned and subtly understated, waited a hundred metres away. Two hugely muscled men, whose suits bulged as if overinflated, waited silently by the pod. They wore sleek projectile weapons openly on their belts.

‘Grace, Linden,’ Smith greeted them. These were two of her most trusted ranking security men. They grunted as politely as they could manage. ‘How’s the finger, Linden?’

‘Okay,’ he answered, clearly not wishing to talk about it. Linden had, until this morning, owned a feline battle familiar, Stripe. Stripe had started to go a little loopy, disobeying commands at first and eventually running away from Linden into the depths of the research department, much to his master’s embarrassment. Linden had chased, and eventually captured, Stripe, who showed his gratitude by biting Linden’s right middle finger off at the first knuckle. One of the resident surgeons had patched him up as well as they could without computerised equipment. All familiars and robots had been ordered disabled.

‘Good. Shall we go?’

‘Let’s.’

Linden opened the door of the pod for her and Smith climbed in. The seats creaked expensively as she settled herself and belted up. Linden sat in the front passenger seat and Grace (an amusing name for so huge and clumsy a creature) squeezed behind the manual control panel. The pod had been net-isolated in storage for months. As an added precaution HGR techs had physically removed all connection devices and sockets. There was no remaining way to interface with the pod even if you wanted to. Grace was a meathead – Linden, like Smith, had disconnected and quad-firewalled. Smith was satisfied that they had taken all possible precautions.

Simon watched the doors of the pod click into place, the cracks around them disappearing. He said nothing, but on his face was a look of fear. He was being left behind, perhaps to die. Smith deigned not to look at him, relaxed into her seat. Almost every feature of the pod’s interior was the same matt black. Grace started the pod and eased away with a smooth inclination of the control stick. Another pod, essentially identical, waited for them before the exit: More security personnel, a heavy-weapons team equipped with the pick of the remaining serious hardware. This escort pod led them to the huge security doors that gave onto the street. Sentry guns here had been replaced by baton-armed guards who watched with depressed disinterest as the two pods paused to let the door open and then crept out into the city, bouncing gently on their suspensor cushions.

Smith tried her best to relax as Grace steered the pod through a network of hastily erected concrete barriers, tailing the heavy-weapons team. HGR security personnel watched them pass from prefab pillboxes, the protruding muzzles of their guns combing the night. Somewhere off to the right somebody was firing an assault rifle into the dark streets of the city in calm, frugal bursts. It was impossible from here to discern their target. Smith was amazed at how rapidly the building had been fortified, amazed at how a virtual war had begun in the space of a day. She shivered, although the pod was warm, and tried not to look. She thought of her private island, thought of the weeks ahead, thought of spending them with Grace and Linden and a handful of other lackeys. It could even be sort of fun – she and Linden had had a brief fling a few years back – maybe it could be revived?

Inevitably, her gaze was drawn back to the window. As they moved further into the city a strange grey-green, granular dust began to accumulate on the windows of the pod. Grace turned the wipers on without comment. Once a dark, bat-like shape wheeled across the sky, a long and sinuous tail trailing behind it. Smith craned to follow it as it disappeared into the banks of smoke and cloud, unable to tell whether it was animal, robot or virtual being. Something howled inhumanly from the dark gullet of a side street, chilling her blood. Linden glanced, worriedly, in the direction of the sound as the two pods crossed a deserted road junction beneath a skeletal span of viaduct.

They drove past the body of what had probably once been an enormously overweight man, who had clearly fallen to the street from a high window and burst there like some hideous, overripe fruit. Smith was shocked that even in the Lanes, even on an insane night like this, nobody had come to clear him up. Linden muttered something that she didn’t catch. They saw a police van, burning brightly, at the end of a side street. Shadowy figures bolted away from it as they passed. Smith imagined the heavy-weapons team in the lead pod hastily training their guns on the alley from the slit windows of their vehicle.

They headed north, the hellish glow of the burnt swathe of city ahead and to their right, deeper into the Lanes, aiming for Med-Hab and the sea port. The moon was an evil eye, half blinded by smoky cataracts.

Smith was jolted back to reality when her pod glided to a stop. Linden had his hand pressed to the ear-piece of the simple radio headset that linked him to the other pod.

‘What is it?’ demanded Smith, craning to see past Grace’s huge body.

‘Some weird shit, by all accounts, boss,’ replied Linden. ‘Look.’ He pointed up ahead of them.

Smith peered over Grace’s shoulder. There was an old cable-car wire up there, draped with what looked like thick green vines, several stories up. The vines dangled from it to the rooftops of low shops and houses, weaving the architecture of the city into a thick, organic curtain. Creatures of uncertain form moved within and upon this curtain, in and out of it, defying gravity fearlessly. They were spidery and angular, human-sized but strange in their motions. Smith recognised them for what they were. HGR had been studying the GDD as long as anybody.

‘
My God...’ she breathed. ‘They’re...’ And then she noticed that this strange jungle actually extended out of sight into the dark streets. In places the screen of vegetation was threadbare, in others it was thick and coagulated. Creepers hung from net wires, car cables, protrusions of masonry, windowsills, satellite dishes, rooftop railings. They looked slimy, from here, almost dripping. In some places it looked as if the corners of man-made structures, where they blurred into the greenshit curtain, were actually
softening
somehow, eroding. The creatures neither made to attack them nor retreat from them.

‘What shall we do Ma’am?’ asked Linden. His voice was matter-of-fact, unworried.

‘Drive on, angle off to the west, away from this.’

Linden repeated the command into his headset and the pods moved off again in tandem, taking a left between high brick walls. The greenshit was thinning out again here. What was happening to the city? Those
things
, the infected, what were they doing to the place? Where were the authorities? The pod stopped again.