Wrath of the Lemming-men (18 page)

‘Pay attention, men.’ Smith put the teapot down on the table. ‘Benson’s out of the running and W – well, who knows. To my mind it’s down to us four to find the Vorl, defeat the enemy and rescue Earth. I’ll be mother,’ he added, pouring out the tea.

The old spy lay stretched along the sofa, wrapped in a blanket. The emergency life-support kit was on the floor beside him. Lights flickered on a long, ticking box: slowly, a bellows rose and fell like a plastic gill.

Carveth wandered over from the galley, thoughtfully chewing a biscuit. Suruk crouched on a chair beside the table, waiting. He had mixed up a luminous, evil-looking fluid in his room and used it to seal up the gash in his leg.

He always smelt faintly of ammonia; now he smelt of iodine as well. His wounds did not seem to discomfort him.

‘Now,’ Smith continued, ‘Benson had a number of documents on him. I’ve looked through them, and they all point in one direction.’ He took a swig of tea. ‘We all know there was a connection between Leighton- Wakazashi and the Vorl. None of us knew what it was until now. The connection is this man: Lloyd Leighton.’

He held up a printout of a photograph, folded in two.

It was a group picture, taken at some kind of dance.

Healthy faces in evening dress beamed at the camera; a few raised cocktail glasses. The style of the clothes was not Imperial. In the centre of the picture was a big man with a moustache, smiling broadly.

‘I know him!’ Carveth exclaimed. ‘There was a sort of display about him in the company buildings. Emily showed me a bust.’

‘I thought it was only Mazuran who witnessed that,’ 
Suruk said.

‘He used to own. . . Blue Moon, is it?’

‘Blue Moon got bought out by Leighton-Wakazashi,’ Rhianna said. ‘My modern dance group staged a satirical protest at their board meeting.’

Smith held up a newssheet clipping. It showed a row of demonstrators baring their backsides at a large building.

‘
Blue Moon face mass-mooning in morning
’, he read out.

‘Lloyd Leighton was a powerful man: Lloydland, his theme park, made him very wealthy. He had friends in high places – useless riff-raff, by and large.’

Carveth examined the photo. Smith was right: she recognised several of the faces around Leighton from old magazines. Here was Percy II, the chinless predecessor of King Victor, who had been replaced when he started bleating about the need for strong leadership – preferably the sort with antennae. On his left, Parity Wickworth, the noted socialite, who had famously propositioned Ghast Number One and had received the sort of response to be expected from a sexless, human-hating army ant. Or maybe it was a different Wickworth sister: Calamity perhaps, or Indemnity or Janet.

‘Parasites, the lot of them,’ said Smith. ‘Now, open out the picture.’

Carveth did so. At the edge of the party stood Ghast Number Two.

It looked so horrible, she thought, so unnatural and wrong. Here were all these people, dressed beautifully, smiling away – and in the middle of them, heaped with insignia, stood the sworn enemy of the human race. And they were treating him as a guest!

Carveth said, ‘So Leighton knew the Ghasts. Did they eat him?’

‘No,’ said Smith. ‘He went missing just before the war. Blue Moon was going downhill, and there were bad rumours about Lloydland. For one thing it was in the wrong place: at the far edge of human space, out of the way. But –pay attention everyone – Benson’s file says that just before Leighton went missing he was researching the location of an ancient Morlock artefact which, he believed, would provide the final clue as to the location of the Vorl.’

‘I know of this object,’ Suruk said. ‘It is the Tablet of Aravash. The tablet is thousands of years old and very precious. It is written that the light of the sun must never fall upon the tablet and, that should this happen, the apocalypse will begin.

‘The tablet has a long and bloody history. Some years ago, the Edenites tried to bribe our elders into giving it away for fifty thousand Imperial pounds. Bah! Fifty thousand pounds for the writing of the ancients!’

‘Terrible,’ said Rhianna. ‘Imagine putting a price like that on tribal heritage. What did you do?’

‘We held out for seventy-five.’

‘You
sold
your heritage?’ Rhianna gasped. ‘For money?’

‘The elders are wise. They caused a hatchling to knock up a copy the night before. After all, one picture of stick-warriors looks very much like another to the untrained eye. When the Edenites found out about the forgery, they were enraged and sent soldiers up the Vargan River to steal the tablet. We threw the soldiers back at the water-side. After that, the elders hid the tablet in a dark cellar, deep underground. And thus it is proven that—’

‘If you can’t take the tablets by water, you should stick them where the sun doesn’t shine,’ Carveth said.

‘Don’t mock Suruk’s native culture,’ Rhianna put in, turning to her. ‘What seems primitive and backward to us may mean something very important to more. . .

authentic
peoples. To us, Suruk may appear somewhat—’ ‘Right,’ Smith said, thinking it best to step in before Rhianna’s head talked its way onto Suruk’s mantelpiece.

‘So where is this tablet? Is it still hidden in a cave?’

‘Ah, no,’ said Suruk. His mandibles parted and he smiled. ‘This is where the true wisdom of the ancients can be seen. They placed the tablet in an ancient fortress, known to men as the British Museum.’

There was a pause. Rhianna blinked. ‘You gave your most sacred artefacts to the British Museum? Suruk, really! The British Museum represents the most rampant forms of imperialist colonialism!’

‘A cunning double-bluff,’ said the M’Lak, flicking his tusks casually. ‘Now the tablet is safe behind glass. Braves may quest to the museum, behold the stone and devour an ice-cream as they do. Everyone is happy.’

‘So after all this time, the clue we’ve needed is on display, on Earth,’ Carveth said. ‘Typical – whenever you go looking for something in space, it’s always where you started!’

‘The British Museum on Dalagar,’ Suruk said. ‘Not on Earth.’

They finished their tea. Carveth put her mug down and said, ‘Well, it looks like it’s pretty clear. We head to this Dalagar place, pop down the museum, get a picture of Suruk’s holy rock then fly out to wherever they tell us and get chummy with the Vorl. All we need is a weepy speech about how this war affects everyone, even psychic ghost-people, and we’re home and dry. Now then, where is Dalagar? Can’t say I’ve heard of it.’

‘Dalagar is its Morlock name,’ Smith said. ‘We call it New Luton.’

‘New Luton?’ Carveth echoed. ‘Then we’re dead.’

Six Ghast fighters screamed over the horizon as the last of the transport shuttles came in to land. The AA lasers opened fire and men and aliens ran for cover. To the West an Aresian deathwalker trained its dessicator on a missile battery. Rockets corkscrewed up from the ground and popped against the walker’s force-fields, overloading them, and then the seventh rocket slipped through and blew the walker’s canopy apart. It staggered into a factory chimney with a yowl of tortured machinery, collapsing in a shower of shattered bricks.

Doors dropped open in the transport shuttles and a horde of beetle-people scurried out. NCOs with loud-hailers awaited them.

‘Citizens! The British Space Empire has rescued your species from lives blighted by idleness and free love! This is your chance to pay back that debt! This city was built as a symbol of our future. Today you join the gallant defenders who unite to say:
This is enough! This is where
we turn the Ghasts, no matter what the cost! Bloody hell! Duck!
’

The
John Pym
touched fifty yards further down the landing pad. A medical team jogged over to collect Benson, pushing a stretcher between them like a battering-ram. The air was thick with the drone of gatling guns.

M’Lak braves strolled out of the next craft down, bundles of weapons under their arms. A M’Lak was waiting for them in a red coat. ‘Greetings campers! Welcome to the city of fun!’

‘Ah,’ Suruk said. ‘Package holidays.’

Soldiers were unloading food from the shuttles. Cranes swung out, men shouted to one another over coughing lorry engines. To the right, Smith glimpsed a clanking warbot stride between the shells of two houses, steam pouring from its chimneys.

Smith took a deep breath of the damp night air. It smelt of burning and wet dust.

The four of them hurried from the ship and a ground crew ran in and threw camouflage netting over the
Pym
. Smith glanced back. With the camouflage the
Pym
reminded him of a rusty tin overgrown by weeds.

‘Come along, men,’ he said, and they jogged through the gates of the landing pad and into the city itself.

New Luton was in ruins. The Western Sector was in enemy hands: between that and the Imperial camp were six miles of broken masonry and wrecked vehicles. This place had once been the City of the Future, and battered statues of heroes still protruded from the chaos as if drowning in a sea of stones.

Suruk stopped and looked into a crater beside the road.

He stared at his reflection in the stagnant water, his shrewd eyes a little distant behind the stern complexity of his face.

Beside him Carveth said, ‘You alright?’

The alien glanced round. ‘Yes, I am fine. I was just thinking. . . one day I shall spawn into a pool like this.’

‘Spawn?’

‘Create offspring.’ Somewhere far off, a shell whined. ‘Continue the line of Agshad.’

‘You mean –
have babies
?’

‘I would merely cough up a special pellet full of spores into the water. In time, some of the spores might become adult M’Lak. Most would not.’

Carveth nodded. ‘I can’t imagine you bringing up children. Unless you ate them too quickly, that is. But you – a mum!’

‘I am not a “mum”, nor am I female. We are asexual, but for reasons unknown to me we tend to be described as male. Now, enough of this emotional talk. Let us find some warfare.’ Suruk belched and walked on, scratching the place where his backside would have been.

Rhianna was quiet. Smith tried not to mind. He had stopped thinking about the moments that she had seemed to feel something towards him. He had been deluding himself. He stepped over a fallen signpost and glanced back to make sure that Rhianna’s insubstantial footwear could deal with it. She smiled and he looked away.

A figure rounded the corner and trotted towards them.

It was a M’Lak, even slimmer than usual, in a strange mix of clothes: tough army trousers and boots, traditional M’Lak armour and a roll-neck sweater. Smith watched the alien approach, finding the combination of soldier, savage and jazz fan curiously familiar.

‘Morgar?’ Suruk said.

‘Hello Suruk!’ the alien called. ‘Captain Smith!’

‘It’s you!’ said Smith. ‘Hello there!’

Morgar ran to meet them, putting on his glasses as he approached. ‘Welcome everyone! Captain Smith, Miss Mitchell, yes? And Polly Anorak.’ He put out a hand and shook with each in turn. ‘And, most of all, welcome, Suruk.’

‘
Jaizeh
, Morgar,’ Suruk said. ‘What brings you here, my brother?’

‘My architectural experience got me posted here as alien liaison officer with the Royal Offworld Engineers. Their fortifications have a fascinating blocky style – naïve, you might say.’ He paused. ‘I heard about Father, Suruk.’

‘Indeed. We must speak of this,’ Suruk said.

‘We will. But first, let’s get inside. Look, Suruk, clan colours,’ he added proudly, pointing to a cloth in his belt. ‘I use it to polish my specs.’

The headquarters were underground, in what had once been the spaceport hotel. It pulsed with energy, movement and sound: people hurried back and forth with wads of papers, pointing to screens and relaying orders. Voices –human, M’Lak and even the odd Kaldathrian beetle-person – rang around the halls.

Morgar led them down a great departure lounge. Once it had been luxurious: now the red striped wallpaper was peeling, the carpet ruined by army boots and fallen plaster. But it was still busy, for technicians now worked on the leather settees and the gilt-edged monitors flashed up information about the war outside. It smelt of synthetic bacon and solder. At a table a row of people were assembling small mechanical cats.

‘Kitten bombs,’ Morgar explained as they passed. ‘The bomb has a core of TNT with a sodium fuse. We leave them out next to a bucket of water: the Ghasts can’t resist dunking them out of spite. This way, if you would.’

At the rear of the hall was a waiting room equipped with three battered armchairs and a coffee table. The display board said:
All flights delayed owing to leaves on
landing pad and galactic war
.

Suruk looked down to the end of the hall at a small group of M’Lak. ‘I see that the elders of our tribe are here.’

Morgar grimaced. ‘You can
never
get away from the elders,’ he said glumly. ‘We evacuated the civilians, but unfortunately they count as military personnel.’ He brightened up. ‘I’ll fetch the major for you – back in a mo. Cricic!’ he called down the hall, ‘could you fetch our guests some drinks?’

A Kaldathrian turned from its work and lumbered over. It was the size of a shire horse and looked like a cross between a stag beetle and the contents of a cutlery drawer.

‘Welcome, honoured guests,’ it buzzed. ‘Please, accept some dung as a token of our hospitality.’ It passed Smith a neat ball about the size of an orange. ‘I rolled it myself,’ it said, proudly.

Rhianna reached into her satchel. ‘Here,’ she said, hold-ing out a cigarette. ‘I rolled this myself.’

Smith bowed. ‘Thank you for the dung, beetle-fellow. I’m afraid we can’t return the favour right now, but we’ll see if we can turn something out later.’

The Kaldathrian peered at the cigarette. ‘Most kind,’ it said. ‘So. . . who likes lemonade?’

‘Haven’t you got any tea?’ Smith asked.

‘Of course. I forgot. Our section commander doesn’t drink it.’

‘No tea? Is he ill, or just foreign?’