Be My Enemy (7 page)

“Mr. Mchynlyth, I need everything you have to the engines,” Captain Anastasia cut her engineer off before he could complain. Everett had learnt learned this about Mchynlyth: he would moan and gripe and complain and invent a thousand reasons why any request was unreasonable, illogical, impossible, but then he would deliver, every time. “Sen. Take us straight up.”

“Bona, ma’am.” Sen swiveled the impeller-attitude control, turning the engine pods into lift mode, and pushed the power levers all the way to the end of the slot. “Power is at—”

“I am aware of the power situation, Miss Sixsmyth.”

Everness
lifted by the nose. Two mooring lines held her down by the tail. Everett grabbed Dr. Quantum to stop it from sliding off the console. The deck tilted higher. Every centimeter of
Everness
's two hundred meters creaked and strained.

“Trying to code here!” Everett shouted. The airship shook again to another of the strange vibrations that seemed to emanate from deep inside the ice. Then the deck lurched with a jolt that knocked everyone from their feet and rolled the ship to the left. The right rear mooring line had snapped.
Everness
was still held to the ice by the single left rear line. Sen climbed back to the helm and tried to balance the lift and thrust controls to bring the ship on to an even keel.

“Half the impellers is meese and the ballast's froze solid,” Sen hissed. Slowly, slowly,
Everness
rolled on to the horizontal. “Go on polone!” Sen yelled, playing the levers like a musical instrument.
Everness
strained at the remaining anchor line like an animal tugging at an ankle trap. The main communication board crackled.

“Attention airship, attention airship.” The voice spoke in the oddly accented English of E2. It was not these people's native language, Everett remembered. There was no English language, there were no English people. They were a mixture of Moorish and Hispanic. Plenipotentiary Ibrim Hoj Kerrim—Everett always thought of him as an ally—had learned his English through an implant plugged directly into his brain. People who possessed the technology
to do that would have no difficulty destroying
Everness.
“We are targeting you with numerous and overpowering weapons systems. Land immediately, land immediately.”
But you won't use them
, Everett thought.
You daren't risk destroying the Infundibulum
. But they would know that theirs was an empty threat. They must have secret, smart ways of crippling an airship.

“Are we there yet, Mr. Singh?” Captain Anastasia asked.

A single button glowed at the center of Dr. Quantum's screen:
this change requires a restart.
“I'm rebooting the system.”
My TV-Tropes moment
, Everett thought as the application shut down and the screen went blank.
The Last Minute System Reboot.
Another jolt: the final line parting. Sen gave a small shriek as
Everness
climbed rapidly. Her hands danced over the board, trimming and stabilizing and balancing impellers.

“Land immediately E3 airship, land immediately,” the loudspeaker demanded. Captain Anastasia stood at the window, looking down. She spoke no word, she did not move.

“We can't get away from them,” Sen said.

“It's not them I'm getting away from,” Captain Anastasia said.

The noise was so huge, so terrible that it broke through the whine of the straining impellers, the groans of
Everness
's stressed airframe. It was an endless tearing shriek. It sounded like the world cracking open. It was the sound of a million miles of glass shattering at once. Everett and Sen rushed to the window.
Everness
was high now, enabling them to look down at the pursuing battlecraft, almost directly under them. Directly under the hostile ship, the surface of the ice was cracking in a web of lines and fissures that followed the direction of the hovercraft. Everett held his breath. From
Everness
's bridge he could see what the crew of the hovercraft could not, a dark crack opening in the ice behind them, racing toward them, under them like jagged lightning. The ice wrenched apart. At the last moment the hovercraft pilot saw the peril and tried to steer out of it, but it was too late. The crevasse widened into a chasm, a canyon
in the ice. The hovercraft wavered on the slip, then went down, end over end.

“Oh the Dear,” Captain Anastasia said. “Those men, all those good men, those poor men.” Then Everett saw the bottom of the crevasse. It was vast and dark and it moved.

“Ma, when we was out, I saw…” Sen's voice trailed off as she searched for the words to describe what she'd seen.

“I saw too,” Captain Anastasia said in a voice Everett never wanted to hear again. “Return to your posts.” Everett tore himself away from the horror. Whatever was down there—something huge, something ancient, something that had been awakened by the vibrations of the hovercraft over the ice, something that could swallow
Everness
whole—it was moving.

“Status, Mr. Singh.”

Dr. Quantum had rebooted. Everett's fingers flew over the touchscreen, opening apps.

“I'm getting the Jump Controller up.”

“Mr. Mchynlyth!” Captain Anastasia bawled into the microphone. “Whatever power we have left, divert it to the jump gate. Sen, all stop impellers. Mr. Singh, we are in your hands.”

Infundibulum open. Multiverse address up. The jump code to get out of there had been entered. But
Everness
had moved from the position that Everett had originally calculated as their exit point, and the ship was now drifting in the wind. Every jump began at a specific code and ended at another. Everett had to find his location in this world and then link it to the destination code. And the code he'd need to jump out of this world was changing by the second.

“Dundee, Atlanta, and Sweet St. Pio,” Sen said. Sharkey's family curse. But there was no rage or hate in Sen's voice, just an ice-cold numbness. Everett looked up. The thing in the ice had risen, the eater of the hovercraft, the destroyer of worlds. It towered up from the chasm, taller than
Everness
was high, a worm, a dragon, a snake, an ice monster, all of these and none of these. Metal. It was made of
metal. Metal and swollen, sun-starved flesh. Its blunt head weaved in the white sky, sensing with organs and abilities unknown to humans, questing, hunting. Finding. The head turned to look down on
Everness.
It was studded with brass portholes. The head opened. It kept opening. Everett had seen one of the drilling machines used to dig tunnels for the London Underground. It had been equipped with rings and rings and rings of teeth and grinders and diggers. The head of the Ice Thing opened like a flower, a flower all blades and grinding wheels.

“Mr. Singh…” Captain Anastasia said.

There. Everett grabbed the code and slid it into the Jump Controller. Then he opened up the destination window and dragged in the destination code. The button was grey. The button was grey. The button couldn't be grey. The button
could not
be grey. Grey was death. He glanced up. The death mouth of the Ice Thing was descending on them. The glance distracted him, made him able to see the thing he hadn't seen for looking too hard: a dialogue box.

Is this your intended destination? Accept/cancel.

Accept.

Sen shouted something in a language Everett did not understand. Captain Anastasia was a black shadow against a universe of blades and fangs and swirling teeth. The button went green.
Jump.
Everett hit it. The world went white.

“Where is we?” Sen's voice said, somewhere in the white. Then the white turned to blue, with clouds, clouds that weren't made of teeth, clouds that didn't want to eat you, clouds that were just clouds. Little fluffy clouds. Beyond them, an airplane glittered in the sun.

“Home,” Everett said.

H
e came out of the white into gloom so thick that he could not see. Then Everett M remembered that he could do something about that. He could do something about almost anything since he came back from the Moon. A thought opened up the image-amplification system Madam Moon had inserted into his brain. Every minute, it seemed, Everett M discovered some new Thryn improvement or enhancement or augmentation. The scale of what had been done to him was terrifying, like suddenly discovering yourself on the edge of a very tall building, looking down. They had opened doors in every part of him. At home—wherever home was now—there had been an Advent calendar on the kitchen wall, beside the signed photograph of radio 2 DJ Chris Evans and some of Vickie-Rose's splodge drawings. Twenty windows opened, five still to go. Beneath each window, a picture, a snapshot, a glimpse of a surprise. He was like that, with alien weapons and superpowers rather than snow scenes and robins and wise men pointing at a star.

The gloom brightened. He was in a dank, damp chamber. The Heisenberg Gate stood at the center of a ring of workstations, and beneath his feet was a metal grating. Above him was a rough rock roof, lined with runs of power cable and studded with light brackets. He faced a line of soldiers in black. Soft caps and hard guns. Their guns were aimed at him. What did they think he was going to do? Everett M stepped on the ramp. The guns twitched but remained trained on his heart.

White light washed out their faces. The Heisenberg Gate had opened. Everett M's Thryn senses learned fast: do a thing once and they never forgot. The image enhancement circuits moderated the light to a comfortable level. Charlotte Villiers stepped out of the gate and the white light vanished.

“At ease,” she said. The soldiers sloped their weapons. A man stepped through the ring of soldiers, a shabby man, with thinning hair, in a raincoat and a suit that didn't look right. His tie wasn't straight.

“Welcome to Earth 10, Everett.” The man extended a hand, but he hesitated when Everett M reached out to grasp it. “Goodness. How extraordinary. I'm sorry…I never imagined…”

“For God's sake Paul, it's only an alter,” Charlotte Villiers snapped.

“I know, oh I know,” the dowdy man said. “It's just…I'm sorry Everett, I knew—know—your alter so well, all his life. I was—am—a close family friend, almost an unofficial uncle.”

“I don't know you at all,” Everett M said. “Maybe you didn't work with my dad in my world. Maybe you weren't at Imperial.” Maybe you never even existed.

The dowdy man came to the same conclusion. He mumbled his name—Paul McCabe—and shook hands limply, but Everett M could see that he was shaken. Then Everett M saw the second civilian, behind the ring of soldiers, and it was his turn to be shaken.

“Colette?”

She heard his voice say her name and she winced. Everett watched an array of emotions play across her face as she looked at him, emotions that did not belong together. Recognition and confusion. Memory and betrayal. Affection and horror.

“So you want me to hunt him,” Everett M had said at the gate from his own world.

“No no no Everett,” Charles Villiers had replied. “We want you to
be
him.”

“Come along Everett,” Charlotte Villiers said now. Her heels rang from the metal flooring. “Don't stare.” The soldiers parted. Paul McCabe visibly cringed away from her. Everett M followed.
Beyond a heavy security door was a long rock-cut tunnel, lit with bulkhead lights and flickering fluorescents. Nothing could have been further from the white, slick, Thryn-built jump rooms of Everett M's world.

“Where are we?”

“Worldgate One,” Paul McCabe said. Everett M tried to place his accent: yes, Northern Ireland.
You hate me now because I've told you that in my world you're nothing.
“We paid a branding company quite a lot of money to come up with the name. Rubbish, isn't it? You're in the old Channel Tunnel test drilling from the 1970s. You have the Channel Tunnel in your world?”

“We have three,” Everett M said. “All maglev.”
Stop trying to sound like you are still my unofficial uncle
, he thought. Everett M glanced over his shoulder. Colette Harte walked behind him. She caught Everett's eye.
I see hate there
, he thought.
But it's not for me. You didn't hate him so you can't hate me. It's for her, Charlotte Villiers, and him, Paul McCabe, but most of all for yourself. They've made you do something, become something you hate more than anything.

A black car waited at the end of the tunnel, in front of a colossal set of metal doors. It gleamed like liquid in the harsh fluorescent light. Everett M had seen that glint before, from the polished hood of another black car, the moment before it hit him and knocked him into another life. The Everett M from before the collision and the Everett M he'd become were so different that they might as well be separate people. In a way it had killed him, that other black car. He shivered.

“Are you cold, Everett?” Paul McCabe asked.

“I'm always cold.”

Charlotte Villiers sat beside Everett M in the back of the car. Paul McCabe rode up front. The driver was a big, shaved-headed man in a suit. He looked more like a movie thug than anyone Everett had ever seen.
But I can own you
, Everett M thought. Colette Harte had remained at the facility. She had not spoken one word to
Everett M in his short transit through Worldgate One, but he felt that her emotions had gone from revulsion to suspicion to sympathy. He felt sure that he could count on her to be an ally.

Winter sleet was clearing from the sky over the South Downs as if swept from the sky by a giant, impatient hand. Low winter sun was breaking, turning the wet road to a glaring blade of light. The black car whisked Everett M past long lines of trucks bound for the Channel Tunnel. It was all so familiar. It was all so strange.

“We need an agent on his world,” Charles Villiers had said under the white lights of the Panoply training facility a universe away. “We need someone who can get up close, into his friends, into his family.”

“Someone like me,” Everett M had said.

“We took terrible liberties,” Charles Villiers had said. “We did things to you without your permission, Everett. But we couldn't pass on an opportunity like that.”

“What, I'm supposed to be grateful for you turning me into RoboEverett?”

“Everett, Everett, so cynical. You would have died. We saved you.”

And so I owe you
, Everett M thought now, as the black car merged into the never-ending wheel of traffic on the London Orbital motorway.

“We need you to be him, Everett. We're going to put you into his family. We've written a cover story, it'll stand up. We've a dossier on his school, his friends, his family. A lot of it overlaps, of course. The people on E2 have put it onto a memory implant, but there will still be holes, so the story is you suffered a brief fugue state. The trauma of your father's disappearance made you have a bit of a personality breakdown.”

“My father's dead,” Everett had said.

“Yes, yes, of course. Sorry Everett. Your alter's father. The story: you had a personality breakdown, you went missing, the police
missing person's unit found you. You're still suffering from memory loss. Your mother—his mother—has been notified, the police will bring you back.”

Everett M peered out the window now. Paul McCabe had stopped trying to make conversation with him. Charlotte Villiers had not even attempted to talk. She sat neatly and properly. From time to time she checked her make-up in her compact mirror. Everett M studied this world into which he had been pushed. The differences were in the details. The cars looked the same, but in this world they burned oil products. Same with the power station at Dartford: the smoke stacks spat out the exhaust from hydrocarbon fuel. So different from the clean hydrogen fusion plants that powered Everett M's world. But these people had developed the Heisenberg Gate—and the Infundibulum, the gateway to the entire Panoply of universes, which no one else in the Known Worlds had done. No. Not these people. His father.

“He'll come back. He'll come back for his Mum and his sister.”

“Laura and Victoria-Rose,” Everett M had said.

“Victory-Rose,” Charles Villiers had corrected. “In this world, your little sister is Victory-Rose. He'll come back, and we need you to be there when he does.”

“What do you do when he does?”

Charles Villiers had looked genuinely astonished.

“Why, take the Infundibulum from him.”

“And these weapons?”

“He travels with a crew of pirates,” Charles Villiers had said. “Villains—bad people, they wouldn't hesitate to cut down anyone who gets in their way…”

For the first time in the mission briefing, Charlotte Villiers had spoken.

“Oh, for God's sake Charles, this is not a theme park ride. Everett, he is your enemy. He doesn't know it, but he is. He doesn't know what he has, the damage he can do without even thinking. For
all our sakes—and the sake of your mother and sister, and even his mother and sister, we must have the Infundibulum. There are forces out there that are a threat to all of us. If they get the Infundibulum before us, it will be the end of everything we know, on all of the Ten Worlds. We must have security.”

Remembering those words, Everett M looked over at Charlotte Villiers beside him. Her lips were thin but vampire red beneath the veil of her hat.
The threat, you say
, Everett M thought,
the threat that will destroy everything we know. You never say what it is. But the threat to Mum and Vickie-Rose, I know what that is. It's you.

He knew by heart the landmarks they passed now, the buildings and places that mapped his life. The chimney of the Lea Valley incinerator, the Olympic stadium, White Hart Lane. Everett M looked around. These shop signs, he recognized them, The Egg Stores. Konoc Polish Supermarket. Sofa King. This was Stamford Hill. There was the gate to Abney Park Cemetery. Where it had happened. Even the bus stop was in the same place.

“Stop here.” Paul McCabe looked round, startled by Charlotte Villiers's voice after so long a silence. The Obvious Thug driver pulled the black car in without comment or question. He opened the door for Charlotte Villiers. She stepped onto the pavement.

“Careful in the traffic, Everett,” she said as he got out in the road. “We wouldn't want history repeating itself.”

“Why have you brought me here?” Everett M asked. Stokie was bright with hard January sunshine. He shivered with cold. Charlotte Villiers took a pair of round-eye sunglasses from her bag and put them on under her veil.

“I want to tell you about your enemy, Everett. He's your alter, but he's not you. He's smarter than you. He's a lot smarter than you. His Dad may have discovered the Infundibulum, but this Everett turned it into a working map. He's the important one. You, well, you're the raw materials we had at hand.

“There are no accidents, Everett. There are no coincidences. It
wasn't your bad luck you were run down by a car on this spot in your own Hackney. We arranged it. It's easier if we make it look like an accident. We would still have had to take you apart and have Madam Moon put you back together again. So much simpler than a kidnapping. Kidnapping, I've found, does attract the wrong attention. A carefully rehearsed accident, a cover story to your family, it's all so much less fuss.

“So, don't flatter yourself, Everett. It's not about you. It's never been about you. It's about him. Because of him, everything that happened to you happened. Because of him we put Thryn machinery into your body. Because of him, you're here. Not because of you, because of him. Remember that when you see him. You're just the alter.”

She raised a gloved hand. The driver opened the door for her. Everett M stood blinded by the low winter sun. He felt as if the black car had hit him a second time. Everything was knocked out of him. Home, family, friends, his entire world, his sense of self, his dawning teenage sense that he was unique and special: all smashed to pieces and left lying on the side of the road. The Thryn technology inside him felt vile, like ashes in his blood. He wanted it out, he wanted to claw the hatches open and rip out the circuitry that was half machine, half living flesh.

Charlotte Villiers took off her dark glasses and stowed them in her bag.
I saved your life
, Everett M thought.
But that doesn't mean anything to you. Nothing about me means anything to you, except that I'm his alter. I'm just a body draped around these things you put inside me. An avatar.
Against his will, Everett M felt the Thryn weapons systems powering up inside him, drawing on his horror and rage. He wanted to slash the black car into glowing chunks with his lasers, melt those chunks with his missiles, blast everything to burning slag. But he would still be in this world, and his mum and Vickie-Rose would be in his world, and between them, the people Charlotte Villiers worked for. He clenched his fists, forced the hatches to stay closed, powered down his weapons.

“Come along Everett,” Charlotte Villiers said. “God, this is a ghastly little world.”

The first policeman was a detective sergeant called Milligan. He had a moustache.
Sergeant Tache
, Everett M thought. The other was a family liaison officer, whatever that was, and her name was Leah or Leanne or Leona.
Leelee
. Everett M had always made up his own names for things and people.