Woken Furies, Page 37

  It was as if a Renouncer monk had been pumped so full of high-grade lubricant that his body had ruptured at every joint to let the oil out. A gray-coveralled human form was vaguely recognizable at the center of the mess, but all around it iridescent black liquid boiled out and hung on the air in viscous, reaching tendrils. The face of the thing was gone, eyes and nose and mouth ripped apart by the pressure of the extruding oil. The stuff that had done the damage pulsed out of every orifice and juncture of limb as if the heart within was still beating. The screaming emanated from the whole figure in time with each pulse, never quite dying away before the next blast of sound.

  I found I’d dropped to a combat crouch that I knew was going to be worse than useless. All we could do now was run.

  “Norikae-san, Norikae-san. Please leave the area now.”

  It was a chorus of cries, perfectly cadenced, as from the opposite wall a phalanx of doorkeepers threaded themselves out of the tapestries and arced gracefully over our heads toward the intruder, wielding curious, spiked clubs and lances. Their freshly assembled bodies were laced with an extrusion of their own that glowed with soft, crosshatched golden light.

  “Please lead your guests to the exit immediately. We will deal with this.”

  The structured gold threads touched the ruptured figure, and it recoiled. The screaming splintered and mounted in volume and pitch, stabbing at my eardrums. Natsume turned to us, shouting above the noise.

  “You heard them. There’s nothing you can do about this. Get out of here.”

  “Yeah, how do we do that?” I shouted back.

  “Go back to—” His words faded out as if he’d been turned down. Over his head, something punched a massive hole in the roof of the hall. Blocks of stone rained down, and the doorkeepers flinched about in the air, lashing out with golden light that disintegrated the debris before it could hit us. It cost two of them their existence as the black-threaded intruder capitalized on their distraction, reached out with thick new tentacles, and tore them apart. I saw them bleed pale light as they died. Through the roof—

  “Oh, fuck.”

  It was another oil-exploded figure, this one double the size of the previous arrival, reaching in with human arms that had sprouted huge liquid talons from out of the knuckles and under the nails of each hand. A ruptured head squeezed through and grinned blankly down at us. Globules of the black stuff cascaded down like drool from the thing’s torn mouth, splattering the floor and corroding it through to a fine silver filigree underlay. A droplet caught my cheek and scorched the skin. The splintered shrieking intensified.

  “Through the waterfall,” Natsume bellowed in my ear. “Throw yourself into it. Go.”

  Then the second intruder stamped down and the whole of the hall ceiling fell inward. I grabbed at Brasil, who was staring upward with numb awe, and dragged him in the direction of the wedged-open door. Around us, doorkeeper figures rallied and flung themselves upward to meet the new threat. I saw a fresh wave come out of the remaining tapestries, but half of them were grabbed up and shredded by the thing on the roof before they could finish assembling themselves. Light bled like rain onto the stone floor. Musical chords rang through the space of the hall and fractured apart on disharmonies. The black shredded things flailed about them.

  We made it to the door with a couple more minor burns and I shoved Brasil through ahead of me. I turned back for a moment and wished I hadn’t. I saw Natsume touched by a misshapen tendril of black and somehow heard him scream across the general shrieking. For a scant second it was a human voice; then it was twisted out of pitch as if by an impatient hand on a set of sound controls, and Natsume seemed to somehow swim away from his own solidity, thrashing back and forth like a fish trapped between compressing sheets of glass, all the time melting and shrieking in eerie harmony with the swooping rage of the two intruders.

  I got out.

  We sprinted for the waterfall. One more backflung glance showed me the whole side of the monastery punched apart behind us and the two black-tentacled figures growing in stature as they lashed at the doorkeepers swarming around them. The sky overhead was darkening as if for a storm, and the air had turned suddenly chilled. An indescribable hissing ran through the grass on either side of the path, like torrential rain, like leaking high-pressure gas. As we skidded down the winding path beside the waterfall, I saw savage interference patterns rip through the curtain of water and once, as we arrived on the platform behind the fall, the flow staggered altogether into a sudden bleakness of naked rock and open air, spluttered, then restarted.

  I met Brasil’s eye. He didn’t look any happier than I felt.

  “You go first,” I told him.

  “No, it’s okay. You—”

  A shrill, pealing howl from up the path. I shoved him in the small of the back and, as he disappeared through the thundering veil of water, I dived after him. I felt the water pour down onto my arms and shoulders, felt myself tip and—

  —Jerked upright on the battered couch.

  It was an emergency transition. For a couple of seconds, I still felt wet from the waterfall, could have sworn my clothes were drenched and my hair plastered down around my face. I drew one soggy breath, and then real-world perception caught up. I was dry. I was safe. I was tearing off hypnophones and ’trodes, rolling off the couch, staring around me, heartbeat ripping belatedly upward as my physical body responded to signals from a consciousness that had only just slipped back into the adrenal driving seat.

  Across the transfer chamber, Brasil was already on his feet, talking hastily to a grim-faced Sierra Tres who’d somehow reacquired both her own blaster and my Rapsodia. The room was full of a dusty-throated whoop from emergency sirens that hadn’t seen use in decades. Lights flickered uncertainly. I met the female receptionist halfway across the chamber, where she’d just abandoned an instrument panel gone colorfully insane. Even on the poorly muscled face of the Fabrikon sleeve, shocked anger glared out at me.

  “Did you bring it in?” she shouted. “Did you contaminate us?”

  “No, of course not. Check your fucking instruments. Those things are still in there.”

  “What the fuck was that?” asked Brasil.

  “At a guess, I’d say a sleeper virus.” Absently, I took the Rapsodia from Tres and checked the load. “You saw the shape of it—part of those things used to be a monk, digitized human disguise wrapped around the offensive systems while they were dormant. Just waiting for the right trigger. The cover personality might not even have been aware what it was carrying until it blew.”

  “Yeah, but why?”

  “Natsume.” I shrugged. “They’d probably been tagging him since—”

  The attendant was gaping at us as if we’d started gibbering in machine code. Her colleague appeared behind her at the door to the transfer chamber and pushed his way past. There was a small beige datachip in his left hand, and the cheap silicoflesh was stretched taut on his fingers where he gripped it. He brandished the chip at us and leaned in close to beat the noise of the sirens.

  “You must leave now,” he said forcefully, “I am requested by Norikae-san to give you this, but you must get out immediately. You are no longer either welcome or safe here.”

  “Yeah, no shit.” I took the offered chip. “If I were you, I’d come with us. Weld shut every dataport you’ve got into the monastery before you leave and then call a good viral cleanup crew. From what I saw back there, your doorkeepers are outclassed.”

  The sirens whooped about us like methed-up partygoers. He shook his head, as if to clear it of noise. “No. If this is a test, we will meet it on Uploaded terms. We will not abandon our brothers.”

  “Or sisters. Well, suit yourself, that’s very noble. But personally I think anyone you send in there at the moment is going to come out with their subconscious flayed to the bone. You badly need some real-world support.”

  He stared at me.

  “You do not understand,” he yelled. “This is our domain, not the flesh. Th
is is the destiny of the human race, to Upload. We are at our strongest there, we will triumph there.”

  I gave up. I shouted back at him.

  “Fine. Great. You let me know how that turns out. Jack, Sierra. Let’s leave these idiots to kill themselves and get the fuck out of here.”

  We abandoned the two of them in the transfer room. The last I saw of either was the male attendant laying himself on one of the couches, staring straight up while the woman attached the ’trodes. His face was shiny with sweat, but it was rapt, too, locked in a paroxysm of will and emotion.

  • • •

  Out on Whaleback and Ninth, soft afternoon light was painting the blank-eyed walls of the monastery warm and orange, and the sounds of traffic hooting in the Reach drifted up with the smell of the sea. A light westerly breeze stirred dust and dried-out spindrizzle spores in the gutters. Up ahead, a couple of children ran across the street, making shooting noises and chasing a miniature robot toy made to resemble a karakuri. There was no one else about, and nothing in the scene to suggest the battle now raging back in the machine heart of the Renouncers’ construct. You could have been forgiven for thinking the whole thing was a dream.

  But down at the lower limits of my neurachem hearing as we walked away, I could just make out the cry of ancient sirens, like a warning, feeble and faint, of the stirring forces and the chaos to come.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Harlan’s Day.

  More correctly, Harlan’s Eve—technically, the festivities wouldn’t commence until midnight rolled around, and that was a solid four hours away. But even this early in the evening, with the last of the day’s light still high in the western sky, the proceedings had kicked off long since. Over in New Kanagawa and Danchi the downtown areas would already be a lurid parade of holodisplay and masked dance, and the bars would all be serving at state-subsidized birthday prices. Part of running a successful tyranny is knowing when and how to let your subjects off the leash, and at this the First Families were accomplished masters. Even those who hated them most would have had to admit that you couldn’t fault Harlan and his kind when it came to throwing a street party.

  Down by the water in Tadaimako, the mood was more genteel but festive still. Work had ceased in the commercial harbor around lunchtime, and now small groups of dockworkers sat on the high sides of real-keel freighters, sharing pipes and bottles and looking expectantly at the sky. In the marina, small parties were in progress on most of the yachts, one or two larger ones spilling out from vessels onto the jetties. A confused mishmash of music splashed out everywhere, and as the evening light thickened you could see where decks and masts had been sprayed with illuminum powder in green and pink. Excess powder glimmered scummily in the water between hulls.

  A couple of yachts across from the trimaran we were stealing, a mini-mally clad blond woman waved giddily at me. I lifted the Erkezes cigar, also stolen, in cautious salute, hoping she wouldn’t take it as an invitation to jump ship and come over. Isa had music she swore was fashionable thumping up from belowdecks, but it was a cover. The only thing going on to that beat was an intrusion run into the guts of the trimaran Boubin Islander’s onboard security systems. Uninvited guests trying to crash this particular party were going to meet Sierra Tres or Jack Soul Brasil and the business end of a Kalashnikov shard gun at the base of the companionway.

  I knocked some ash off the cigar and wandered about in the yacht’s stern seating area, trying to look as if I belonged there. Vague tension eeled through my guts, more insistent than I’d usually expect before a gig. It didn’t take much imagination to work out why. An ache that I knew was psychosomatic twinged down the length of my left arm.

  I very badly didn’t want to climb Rila Crags.

  Fucking typical. The whole city’s partying, and I get to spend the night clinging to a two-hundred-meter sheer cliff face.

  “Hello there.”

  I glanced up and saw the minimally clad blond woman standing at the gangplank and smiling brilliantly. She wobbled a little on exaggerated stiletto heels.

  “Hello,” I said cautiously.

  “Don’t know your face,” she said with inebriated directness. “I’d remember a hull this gorgeous. You don’t usually moor here, do you?”

  “No, that’s right.” I slapped the rail. “First time she’s been to Millsport. Only got in a couple of days ago.”

  For the Boubin Islander and her real owners at least, it was the truth. They were a pair of moneyed couples from the Ohrid Isles, rich by way of some state sell-off in local navigational systems, visiting Millsport for the first time in decades. An ideal choice, plucked out of the harbormaster datastack by Isa along with everything else we needed to get aboard the thirty-meter trimaran. Both couples were unconscious in a Tadaimako hotel right now, and a couple of Brasil’s younger revolutionary enthusiasts would make sure they stayed that way for the next two days. Amid the confusion of the Harlan’s Day celebrations, it was unlikely anyone was going to miss them.

  “Mind if I come aboard and take a look?”

  “Uh, well, that’d be fine except, thing is, we’re about to cast off. Couple more minutes, and we’re taking her out into the Reach for the fireworks.”

  “Oh, that’s fantastic. You know, I’d really love to do that.” She flexed her body at me. “I go absolutely crazy for fireworks. They make me all, I don’t know—”

  “Hey, baby.” An arm slipped around my waist and violent crimson hair tickled me under the jaw. Isa snuggling against me, stripped down to cutaway swimwear and some eye-opening embedded body jewelry. She glared balefully at the blond woman. “Who’s your new friend?”

  “Oh, we haven’t, ah . . .” I opened an inviting hand.

  The blond woman’s mouth tightened. Maybe it was a competitive thing; maybe it was Isa’s glittery, red-veined stare. Or maybe just healthy disgust at seeing a fifteen-year-old girl hanging off a man over twice her age. Resleeving can and does lead to some weird body options, but anyone with the money to run a boat like Boubin Islander doesn’t have to go through them if they don’t want to. If I was fucking someone who looked fifteen, either she was fifteen or I wanted her to look like she was, which in the end comes to pretty much the same thing.

  “I think I’d better get back,” she said, and turned unsteadily about. Listing slightly every few steps, she made as dignified a retreat as was possible on heels that stupid.

  “Yeah,” Isa called after her. “Enjoy the party. See you around, maybe.”

  “Isa?” I muttered.

  She grinned up at me. “Yeah, what?”

  “Let go of me, and go put some fucking clothes back on.”

  • • •

  We cast off twenty minutes later and cruised out of the harbor on a general guidance beam. Watching the fireworks from the Reach wasn’t a stunningly original idea, and we weren’t even close to the only yacht in Tadaimako harbor heading that way. For the time being, Isa kept watch from the belowdecks cockpit and let the marine traffic interface tug us along. There’d be time to break loose later, when the show started.

  In the forward master cabin, Brasil and I broke out the gear. Stealth scuba suits, Anderson-rigged, courtesy of Sierra Tres and her haiduci friends, weaponry from the hundred personal arsenals on Vchira Beach. Isa’s customized software for the raid patched into the suits’ general-purpose processors, overlaid with a scrambler-rigged comsystem she’d stolen fresh from the factory that afternoon. Like the Boubin Islander’s comatose owners, it wouldn’t be missed for a couple of days.

  We stood and looked at the assembled hardware, the gleaming black of the powered-down suits, the variously scuffed and dented weapons. There was barely enough space on the mirrorwood floor for it all.

  “Just like old times, huh?”

  Brasil shrugged. “No such thing as an old wave, Tak. Every time, it’s different. Looking back’s the biggest mistake you can make.”

  Sarah.

  “Spare me the cheap fucking beach philosophy, J
ack.”

  I left him in the cabin and went aft to see how Isa and Sierra Tres were getting on at the con. I felt Brasil’s gaze follow me out, and the taint of my own flaring irritation stayed with me along the corridor and up the three steps into the storm cockpit.

  “Hey, baby,” said Isa, when she saw me.

  “Stop that.”

  “Suit yourself.” She grinned unrepentantly and glanced across to where Sierra Tres was propped against the cockpit side panel. “You didn’t seem to mind so much earlier on.”

  “Earlier on there was a—” I gave up. Gestured. “Suits are ready. Any word from the others?”

  Sierra Tres shook her head slowly. Isa nodded at the comset datacoil.

  “They’re all online, look. Green glow, all the way across the board. For now, that’s all we need or want. Anything more, it just means things have fucked up. Believe me, right now, no news is good news.”

  I twisted about awkwardly in the confined space.

  “Is it safe to go up on deck?”

  “Yeah, sure. This is a sweet ship, it runs weather-exclusion screens from generators in the rigging, I’ve got them up on partial opaque for incoming. Anyone out there nosy enough to be looking, like your little blond friend, say, your face is just going to be a blob in the scope.”

  “Good.”

  I ducked out of the cockpit, moved to the stern and heaved myself into the seating area, then up onto the deck proper. This far north, the Reach was running light and the trimaran was almost steady on the swell. I picked my way forward to the fair-weather cockpit, seated myself in one of the pilot chairs, and dug out a fresh Erkezes cigar. There was a whole humicrate of them below, I figured the owners could spare more than a few. Revolutionary politics—we all have to make sacrifices. Around me, the yacht creaked a little. The sky had darkened, but Daikoku stood low over the spine of Tadaimako and painted the sea with a bluish glow. The running lights of other vessels sat about, neatly separated from each other by the traffic software. Basslines thumped faintly across the water from the glimmering shore lights of New Kanagawa and Danchi. The party was in full swing.