World of Fire (Dev Harmer 01) (29 page)

“Actually, I can believe a Plusser would do that,” said Dev. “Everything I’ve heard about this Ted Jones tells me it would have given him a big digimentalist boner treating you like dirt and then cutting you loose. Plussers hate us that much. Our fleshy bodies are that offensive to them. Our lack of religious faith, too. Anything they can do to show how much contempt they have for us...”

“I never saw him again. There’ve been times, since, when I wished he had simply killed me. Times when I contemplated doing the job myself. As his influence on me started to fade, I realised how I had been duped. Without Ted around any more to keep reinforcing his power over me, the brainwashing gradually wore off. I figured out who – what – he really was. I understood how he had made me betray not just my principles but also, in some way I could not determine, my own race. Finally I plucked up my courage and went back to where we were keeping the moleworm, to confront him.”

“But...?”

“He wasn’t there. Nor was the moleworm. The bricked-up end of the lava tube had been breached. The tube was empty.”

“How long ago was that?”

“A few weeks, I think. Perhaps three or four months.”

“You can’t be more specific?”

“I’ve found it hard keeping track of time. Days have blurred. Until you told me it’s been two years since I meant to leave Alighieri, I had no idea it had been quite that long. I’d had an inkling, but I was far from sure. Ah. Almost there.”

Banerjee gave a forwards inclination of the head.

“That’s the bar where he and I met.”

It was three standard habitat cubes shoved together and knocked through to make a single large venue. Plastic tables and chairs were set out in front, haphazardly. It had once, in happier days, been called The Hobbit’s Hole. This name had been whitewashed over, however, and replaced by Underworld.

“‘A fight every night,’” said Banerjee. “That should be its motto. I was always at pains not to spill anyone’s drink, on the rare occasions I went there.”

Morning had only just broken. The ambient lighting was sputtering towards brightness. Yet already there was a queue of Lidenbrockers outside the bar waiting for it to open.

“Now, Ted’s house isn’t far.” Banerjee glanced around, orienting himself. “Down that street, I believe. Then right at the next junction, and there we are. Or is it left? No, right.”

“You don’t sound sure,” Dev said.

“When we went there that night, it was darker than this.”

“You never came here again?”

“No. It was only that one time, when he took me prisoner and... You know. Did what he did. But I’m certain of the route.”

They set off once more, and within minutes they were in sight of the habitat the Plusser had been renting. Dev cautioned Banerjee and Trundell to hold back.

“Stegman, you keep an eye on them, okay? Zagat, with me.”

Stealthily, guns drawn, Dev and the big policeman approached the front door.

“Be ready for anything,” Dev whispered. “Even if Ted Jones isn’t home, the place could be booby-trapped.”

Zagat grunted assent.

Dev put his ear to the door and listened. He could hear nothing. He motioned to Zagat to check the windows. Zagat did so and shook his head.

“Blinds,” he said, miming drawing a cord.

Dev debated. There was every chance the Plusser was elsewhere, long gone, and the house was empty. That didn’t mean, though, that he might not have left a nasty surprise behind for anyone who tried to break in.

He tested the door handle; it turned smoothly, and the door swung inward.

Inattention?

Or invitation?

Only one way to find out.

It was dark inside the habitat, but Dev’s Alighierian vision swiftly adapted.

The lower storey was unoccupied. It had the standard layout: open-plan living area, kitchen nook, connecting door to the bathroom. The decor was in fairly shabby condition, and most of the surfaces bore a thin fur of dust. A couple of dirty dishes lay in the sink. The air had a stale, undisturbed tang.

The habitat had been lived in, but not, it seemed, all that recently.

Dev indicated that Zagat should scope out the bathroom while he himself headed to the upper storey.

The stairs were narrow and steep. One riser creaked loudly underfoot. Dev froze. No sounds from above. No scurry of furtive activity. He reaffirmed his grip on his hiss gun and continued on up to the landing.

Two doors, both shut.

One opened onto a bedroom with a rumpled, unmade bed and a few items of clothing strewn around. Nobody here.

The other door revealed a bedroom of identical size to the first. In this one, the bed had been shunted aside against the wall, stacked on end along with nearly all the other items of furniture.

A lone, tubular-steel chair stood in the centre of the floor.

In it sat a slumped body.

Dev crept forward, gun levelled.

It was a man. His chin was sunk onto his collarbone. He appeared dead.

Peering more closely, Dev detected the tiniest of movements. The man’s chest was rising and falling, all but imperceptibly. He was breathing, but in the shallowest way possible. His nose gave a faint whistle as the air went in and out.

Dev spied an intravenous drip installed in the man’s arm. The tube led to a machine silently dispensing a clear fluid into his bloodstream.

He was alive, but in a kind of coma or suspended animation. Physically here, mentally absent. No higher-order brain function. The machine was life support, providing him with a nutrient solution to keep him from starving.

Dev realised that he was looking at Ted Jones. Or rather, the body of Ted Jones, minus its Polis Plus occupant.

Then he realised that Ted Jones had raised his head and was looking back.

Drifty, not-quite-right eyes.

Next instant, a hand clamped round his wrist and twisted it sharply. Another hand wrested the hiss gun from his fingers.

Jones stood and pressed the barrel of the gun against Dev’s forehead.

“Dev Harmer,” he said. “The ISS consultant who’s come to foil my plans. How’s that working out for you?”

31

D
EV DIDN’T BERATE
himself for letting the Plusser catch him unawares. It was done. Error. Move on.

His main concern was making sure that a second or so from now, his brains weren’t decorating the wall behind him.

Surprise tactic? Two could play at that game.

He pushed his head forwards, shoving Jones’s gun arm back. At the same time he reached for the IV in the Plusser’s arm and yanked the tube out sharply and roughly.

Jones let out a guttural cry of pain, and Dev lashed a hand upwards, knocking the hiss gun out of his grasp. The weapon spiralled across the room, clattering into a corner.

Jones dived for it, but Dev shoulder-barged him. They fell together into the chair, which toppled, depositing them both flat on the floor.

Lying supine, Jones threw a punch. Dev intercepted it and unclenched the Plusser’s fist, remorselessly bending the fingers back until two of them broke at the metacarpal joint. Bellowing, Jones grabbed the chair with his other hand and swung it up and round, clobbering Dev on the side of the head.

His entire skull ringing, Dev wrestled the chair off Jones and brought it downwards onto his exposed neck so that one of the armrests crunched into his windpipe. He thrust harder, applying his bodyweight, hoping to choke the Plusser into submission.

Jones, however, jabbed his good hand into Dev’s midriff, fingers rigid. As luck would have it, he struck one of the clusters of bruises from Dev’s Ordeal. Dev rolled away, doubled over, clutching his belly.

Jones made another bid for the hiss gun, scrambling across the floor on all fours. Blood dribbled from his forearm where the IV had been torn out.

Dev managed to grab hold of his ankle and pull him back just before he got to the gun. Jones kicked out with his other foot, the heel of his boot scraping skin off Dev’s knuckles, but Dev refused to let go. Rising to a kneeling position, he hauled Jones towards him like a fisherman reeling in his catch.

The Plusser twisted round and rose up to meet Dev, arms outstretched. Clawing hands found Dev’s ears and wrenched sideways, outwards. Dev felt cartilage tear.

In response, he jammed a thumb between Jones’s lips, digging the nail into the soft flesh inside his cheek. Then, with a brutal jerking motion, he ripped open the corner of his adversary’s mouth.

The pain forced Jones to let go of Dev’s ears. The two of them reeled away from each other.

Bleeding, panting, Jones eyed Dev across the metre-wide gap between them.

“Hurts,” he lisped through his ragged, lopsided mouth. “I hate pain. Such a frailty. Not that I care what happens to this body. Do what you like with it. It’s not me. It’s just somewhere I’m lodging.”

“Same here,” said Dev.

“Difference is, I can be gone in a flash. Can
you
say that? You humans haven’t got ’porting down to a fine art like we have. You haven’t refined the compression algorithms anywhere near as much. What we can do in milliseconds takes you minutes. You need transcription matrices, too, unlike us. External hardware. You have no idea how clunky that is. Positively crude.”

“We’re working on it.”

“Still, any moment I wish, I’m out of here and somewhere else.”

“Not if I blow your brains out first.”

“Ah, but you’d have to be quick. Quicker than thought itself.”

The door burst open and Zagat barged in, drawn by the commotion. He took stock of the situation at a glance.

Jones lunged again for the hiss gun.

Zagat planted a flechette from the MPA pistol into his arm. Half of Jones’s biceps was gouged out by the barbed dart. Jones sprawled.

Dev launched himself over the wounded Plusser in a diving roll that brought him right to the hiss gun. Spinning round, he took aim at Jones’s head.

“Go ahead, shoot,” said Jones, a hand clamped to his now-useless arm to stem the blood flow. “Soon as I see your finger tighten on that trigger, I upload.”

“And where will you go?” said Dev. “My guess is into the brain of the moleworm you and Professor Banerjee kidnapped.”

Jones cocked his head appreciatively and forced the intact corner of his mouth into a smile. “Very good, Harmer. How astute of you.”

“Wasn’t difficult. You’ve fitted the moleworm with an implant. I bet you were inside it until just a short while ago. You zapped yourself back here soon as I entered the room. I triggered a silent alarm, didn’t I?”

“Commplant proximity detector.” Jones tapped his temple. “Set to alert me if anyone comes within a five-metre radius of this body. I couldn’t have some home intruder wandering in and finding me sitting here, vulnerable and helpless, now could I? Or some ISS consultant.”

“You knew my name. The moment you saw me. How is that?”

“If I said lucky guess, would you believe me?”

The Uncanny Valley blankness disappeared briefly, like a fog lifting. Dev could have sworn he saw a twinkle in Jones’s eyes.

“It could just be,” the Plusser continued, “that I like to keep abreast of current events. Your time in Calder’s Edge has not, after all, been uneventful.”

“True, but still, not that many people know I’m on Alighieri. Maybe you’ve been keeping tabs on me, but I’m thinking maybe someone else has, a comrade of yours. That’s how you know about me. There’s another of you Plussers over in Calder’s. While you’ve been busy moleworming around, this other guy has been watching your back. It wasn’t you who tried to kill me with a freight shuttle. It was him.”

“You’re probing. You’re not getting anything from me. I’m off. Places to go, things to do, humans to kill.”

“Wait!” Dev lowered the hiss gun. “Jones, or whatever your real name is. Just wait.”

“What is it?” sighed Jones.

“I’m going to give you a chance. Tell me what your plan is.”

“Now why in the name of the Singularity would I do that?”