Ack-Ack Macaque (23 page)

Meanwhile, unaware of her scrutiny, Ack-Ack Macaque folds away his razor and shambles over to his owner and screeches at him. His owner is a skinny Malaysian with bad teeth and dark sweat patches beneath the arms of his linen jacket. In response to his inarticulate screeches, the man hands him his reward: a lit cigarette. The bitterness of the smoke clears the lingering stench of the dead chimp’s dung. The nicotine makes his head swim. He chatters happily to himself, perching on the edge of a wooden pallet in order to savour every breath.

He hardly notices when the smartly-dressed woman steps from the crowd with a fistful of money, and makes his owner the kind of offer it would be extremely foolhardy to refuse.

T
eiko squirmed beneath
him, but Ack-Ack Macaque had the weight of experience. They were perilously close to the edge of the deck, but he didn’t care. He knew he couldn’t die, not really. This was all illusion: he had nothing to lose. Using all his strength, he pulled his rival towards the abyss.

“Stop struggling,” he growled. The younger monkey didn’t listen. He let out a howl and tried to sink his teeth into Ack-Ack Macaque’s arm. Ack-Ack Macaque slapped him. “Shut up. I have something to say.”

He pushed away and rose to his feet. Teiko blinked up at him, wary as any cornered animal.

“We both have to die,” Ack-Ack Macaque told him. “We have to show them that this is all bullshit. This is all fake. The kids playing this game think you’re some kind of high tech computer intelligence, but you’re just a monkey with a computerised brain, same as I am.” He turned and walked a few steps back towards the conning tower. He raised his arms to the circling planes above and raised his voice. “The people at Céleste are lying to you! They’ve lied to us all! They’re planning to take over—”

Pain lanced his thigh, sharp and unexpected. He squealed and fell, and Teiko was on him, the blade of his knife now sticky with Ack-Ack Macaque’s blood. Ack-Ack Macaque raised his arm to block a second slash, and cried out again as he felt steel bite though his sleeve, into skin and muscle.

Damn it
, he thought,
I wasn’t finished!

He reached around and grabbed the younger monkey by the back of his leather jacket. With all his strength he heaved upwards, lifting his opponent just enough to give him room to twist his hips sideways, throwing Teiko off balance.

They rolled over together, gripping each other’s stabbing arms. Deadlocked.

“Let go, you moron.”

Teiko’s teeth snapped at his face.

“I’ll kill you!”

“No, you fucking won’t.” Ack-Ack Macaque tried to wrench his arm free from the younger monkey’s grip. “I always win. That’s all there is to it.”

Teiko laughed, fierce and mad. “Look at your arm, grandpa. You’re bleeding.”

The sudden pang of doubt was as intense as the pain from his stab wounds. In all his years, Ack-Ack Macaque had never been injured like this. He’d survived dozens of plane crashes with only cuts and bruises; legions of German ninjas had yet to lay a blade on him; and yet this young upstart had already stuck him twice, once through the leg and once through the arm. For the first time in his life, he felt truly unsure. He had no idea what would happen next. He’d assumed this would be a simple monkey smack-down. A bit of a scuffle between near-immortals. But now, locked in Teiko’s fighting embrace, he understood that—in the game at least—he was caught in a fight to the death. When it was done, he might wake up on the
Tereshkova
with K8; but in the meantime, he’d feel every stab, every slash and bite. He’d become used to the painless violence of the game; but this was Amsterdam all over again. If Teiko got the better of him, it would
really
hurt.

Well
, he thought,
fuck that.

They might share an implanted core personality, but Teiko was younger, and therefore less experienced. He was so busy trying to get his knife into Ack-Ack Macaque’s neck that he’d left his face exposed. Their noses were practically touching, close enough that Ack-Ack Macaque could smell the sickening sweetness of his breath.

A quick butt to the face. Teiko yelped, rolling away. His hands flew to his crushed nose, and Ack-Ack Macaque pounced. Straddling the younger monkey, he used both hands to drive the blade of his knife straight through Teiko’s throat. The blade slid through flesh and gristle until it hit the spinal column. Teiko’s legs thrashed. Ack-Ack leaned his full weight on the pommel of the knife. He felt the vertebrae part, and the tip punch through, into the metal of the
Brunel
’s flight deck. Teiko let out a wheezing, bubbling moan, and shook spastically.

And then he was still, and it was all over.

Ack-Ack Macaque clambered to his feet. The high altitude wind blowing across the carrier seemed to freeze the very marrow of his bones, and a strange, desolate sadness welled up from the core of his belly.

Teiko was dead. He’d just killed the closest thing in the world that he had to a brother. And damn Céleste for making him do it. Damn them for making him
at all
!

Looking over the edge of the carrier’s deck, he spat into the void.

“The people at Céleste are in bed with the cult of the Undying,” he said, voice gruff and flat. K8 had told him that in the past, thousands of people had watched recordings of his adventures in the game. He hoped someone was recording this right now. “They’re behind the attack on the King. They’re trying to use Merovech to plunge Europe into martial law. Don’t trust them! Don’t let them—”

The world convulsed. The sky flickered like the eyelids of a dying ape, and everything went white.

A
CK-
A
CK
M
ACAQUE BLINKED
. Blinded by the flash, he rubbed his walnut-like knuckles into his eyes. When he lowered them, he found himself back in the cramped passenger cabin, on board the
Tereshkova
, with K8.

He was out of the game. Back in the real world—whatever that meant.

He smacked his lips. His arm and leg were uninjured, and free of stab wounds.

“What happened?”

K8 reached over and began to remove the wires from his head.

“Céleste panicked,” she told him. “They shut down the game servers.”

BREAKING NEWS

From
The London & Paris Times
, online edition:

Party Like It’s 2059

28 N
OVEMBER
2059 – Tomorrow, the peoples of Great Britain, France and Norway will celebrate 100 years of political and cultural togetherness.

Celebrations start at dawn, with a druidic ceremony at Stonehenge, and the lighting of a string of hilltop beacons, from the Falkland Islands in the south, to the ancient town of Hammerfest in Norway.

The day will climax with a concert in Hyde Park and simultaneous firework displays in London, Edinburgh, Paris, Cardiff, Belfast and Oslo.

The celebrations come almost exactly a year after the attempted assassination of King William V, and police in all cities will be on high alert, determined to prevent further atrocities. Roadblocks have been set up in a number of major cities, and key members of known regionalist and republican protest groups have been pre-emptively detained.

Although still in a coma, the King is expected to symbolically participate in the celebrations. An air ambulance will move him to the luxury liner
Maraldi
, owned by his wife, Her Grace, Alyssa Célestine, Duchess of Brittany. The liner will be anchored in the English Channel, midway between Britain and France. Once on board, his majesty will be present to ‘witness’ a celebratory fireworks display and, via satellite from the mid-Atlantic, the launch of the UK’s first Martian probe.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

REPLICANT ZOMBIE

V
ICTORIA STOOD AT
the head of the dining table in the
Tereshkova
’s main lounge, her hands resting on the curved steel back of a chair.

“So, we’re in agreement?”

Merovech and Julie sat to her right; the Commodore and K8 to her left. The monkey perched at the far end, chomping on an unlit cigar.

Merovech’s fingers traced circles on the polished wood.

“And you’re sure she’s planning a coup?”

“As sure as we are about anything right now.”

“Then you have my vote. She needs to be stopped.”

Julie Girard put her hand on his arm.

“Are you sure? Even after everything we have seen, she is still your mother.”

Merovech covered her hand with his. He raised his eyes to Victoria.

“You have to prevent her from killing my father.”

“We’ll do our best.”

On the other side of the table, the Commodore harrumphed.

“I still don’t like it. It all seems far too dangerous. Why do you have to go down there, onto her ship? Why can’t you stay up here and let the Prince broadcast to the nation?”

Victoria shook her head.

“Because I don’t think it would work. We’ve been through this. K8 and our monkey friend have put the word out to the gaming community. Hopefully that will build. But the Duchess has already put out a story that Merovech’s had some kind of nervous breakdown. If he starts posting videos on the web, it will be easy for the media to dismiss them as paranoid fantasies.” She let go of the chair and straightened her back. “The macaque videos are going viral. If we’re going to capitalise on the publicity, the only way will be to do something direct, and public.”

The old man fingered his moustache.

“I’m still not clear what you plan to do if, and I mean if, you get aboard.”

“I’m a journalist. If there’s a shred of proof on that tub, I’ll find it. And then we’ll confront her.”

“In front of the television cameras?”

“Ideally, yes.”

“And what if the TV cameras ignore you? This woman, she has great influence, yes?”

Victoria smiled. She inclined her head to the far end of the table, where Ack-Ack Macaque sat with his feet up, a fingernail worrying at something caught between his front teeth.

“Trust me,
nobody’s
going to ignore him.”

The Commodore crossed his arms. Gold braid glimmered at his wrists.

“Bah. I still do not like it. But, as always, you have my support.”

“Thank you. Merovech, are you ready to speak to the nation when the time comes?”

“K8’s patched us into a satellite feed. As soon as we get your signal, we can start broadcasting.”

“Do you know what you’re going to say?”

“No, but I’m sure it will come to me.”

Victoria rubbed her hands together. In the corner of her eye, she could see Paul’s image.

“How about you?” she asked.

He scratched his ear.

“You know me, Vicky. In for a penny, in for a pound.”

“Okay, then.”

She looked at the faces around the table.

“Make no mistake, if we fail at this, we’ll be tried as traitors. That means lengthy jail sentences, or worse.”

Merovech untangled himself from Julie and rose to his feet.

“Thank you,” he said, holding out his hand for her to shake. Victoria shook her head instead.

“Don’t thank me yet. I told you, I’m not a royalist. I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it for Paul.”

“I understand. But, thank you anyway.”

At the other end of the table, Ack-Ack Macaque pulled the wet, flattened cigar butt from his yellow teeth.

“Yap, yap, yap. So we’ve all got a stake in this. That’s why we’re here. Can we get on and do something now? ’Cos personally speaking, I’m pissed off and I want to break stuff and hurt people.”

Victoria smiled, lips tight and thin. With her brain locked into planning mode, her thoughts rang with the crisp, bell-like clarity of spring morning.

She clapped her hands.

“
Ecoutez-moi bien
. Okay, we’ve got a few hours. Merovech, you carry on jotting down ideas for your speech.
Julie, tu l’aides
. And you, monkey man, you’re with me.”