Hive Monkey (23 page)

“So you do care about us?”

“Of course I do. I already saved the world once, didn’t I?” He took a mouthful of smoke, rolled it around, and blew it at the ceiling. “Besides, I’m not really alone, am I?” He coughed, and looked away, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “I’ve got you two, and K8.”

Victoria exchanged a look with Paul, and they both raised their eyebrows. This was the first time they’d heard him talk this way; the first crack they’d seen in his habitually gruff exterior.

“Yes,” she said, “of course you do.”

The monkey scuffed a foot against the deck. He looked supremely uncomfortable.

“That’s okay then.”

Victoria tried to suppress her smile. It appeared that, despite his coarseness, Ack-Ack Macaque had the same insecurities and needs as everyone else, including the need to belong; and it seemed losing K8 had finally driven home to him who his friends really were, and made him appreciate everything he had, and everything he stood to lose.

“You should get checked out,” she said, wanting to spare him further embarrassment. “Get Sergei to patch you up.”

Ack-Ack Macaque looked down at himself. He tried to straighten his torn sleeve.

“But K8—”

“You’re not going to be any use to her in that state. Get down to the infirmary and get Sergei to see to you. That’s an order.”

He took the cigar from his lips and rubbed his brow.

“Yes, boss.”

A
FTER HE’D GONE
, Victoria walked around her desk and sat in the chair.

“Jesus Christ,” she said.

In the bright noon light from the picture window, Paul’s image was an insubstantial ghost haunting the corner of her office: the murder victim who wouldn’t lie down, the ex-husband who never left.

“What are you going to do?”

Victoria pulled the cutlass from her belt and dropped it into the umbrella stand.

“You said you could fly this thing?”

Paul took off his glasses and rubbed them on the hem of his shirt. “Well, yes, if I had to. All the connections are in place.”

“You have to.”

“Right now?”

Victoria drew herself up. “Make course for central London, best speed.”

“Aye, aye.” Paul’s brow screwed in concentration as he devoted more and more of his processing time to the business of running the airship’s systems. His image grew tenuous, and then finally disappeared, as he focused his attention elsewhere. Moments later, Victoria felt a tremble through the deck as the skyliner’s engines powered up and the
Tereshkova
’s nose swung eastwards again, towards the capital.

Ahead, the windscreen showed a bright blue sky growing paler all the way to the far horizon. A single vapour train caught the sun like a comet trail, and she found herself wondering what the world would have been like had jet travel really taken off in the latter half of the twentieth century. With the first skyliners entering commercial service in the early 1960s, and the subsequent oil blockades and price wars of the 1970s, jet air travel had never become an economical option, and now only the richest and most extravagant used it as a means of crossing oceans. Skyliners might be slower, but they were dependable and cheap, and their nuclear-electric engines had none of the economic and environmental disadvantages of oil.

But how would things have been, she asked herself, had the skyliners not come along when they did—if the post-war British and French shipyards had been allowed to wither and die instead of being turned over to airship production? What would the globe look like with everybody rushing around at nine hundred kilometres per hour, and the skies streaked by hundreds of shining white trails?

Paul’s voice came over the intercom.

“We can’t fight them all,” he said. “Not by ourselves.”

Victoria glanced up at the security camera in the corner of the ceiling.

“We’ll alert the authorities.”

“Will they believe us? Because, quite frankly, I’m in the middle of this, and I’m not even sure
I
believe it.”

Victoria knew he was right. Even among skyliner captains, most of whom were considered pretty eccentric in their own right, she had a reputation as a maverick. Putting the world on a war footing in three hours would take more than just her word.

“In that case,” she said, “I’m going to have to make a call.”

“Not—?”

“Who else? Besides, he owes us a favour.”

T
HE FACE LOOKING
back at her from the screen was that of a young man, but his eyes seemed more mature and weary than one might have expected from his apparent age. They were the eyes of a boy who’d served in the South Atlantic; who’d lost comrades in a helicopter crash; lost his father at an impressionable age; and fought his mother in order to prevent a holocaust.

“Hello, Victoria. What can I do for you?” This was Merovech I, King of the United Kingdom of France, Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Norway, and head of the European Commonwealth. In the time she’d known him, he’d played many roles—a soldier, a criminal and a runaway, to name three—but this was the first time she’d spoken to him since his coronation, and the first time she’d seen him actually looking like a king. Gone were the ripped jeans and red hoodie she remembered; in their place, a tailored suit, crisp white shirt and regimental tie.

“Your majesty.” Victoria tipped her head forward. “I’m afraid this isn’t a social call.”

Merovech leant towards the camera.

“I should say not. I saw what our monkey friend did on the M4, and how much damage he caused.”

“I can explain.”

“I think you’d better.”

Hands clasped behind her back, Victoria rocked back on her heels. The young king had become a man. Every gesture and tone conveyed authority and patience. She wasn’t sure how much of that came naturally, and how much had been taught.

“Merovech, listen.” She put a splayed hand to her chest. By addressing him informally, she hoped to break through the façade, and reach the young man she’d once fought alongside. “You remember last year?”

“I’m hardly likely to forget.”

“Well, this is worse.”

Merovech raised an eyebrow. “Worse than all-out nuclear war?”

“Yes. At least in a nuclear war there’s the possibility of a few survivors.”

“What are we talking about?”

“An invasion. Several hundred armed skyliners, one over every major city, and each one packed with some sort of hideous plague.”

“Where are they coming from?”

“From thin air.”

The young king sat back in his chair, and his image blurred for half a second as the camera refocused.

“I beg your pardon?”

Victoria rubbed her forehead. “Look, it’s an invasion from another dimension, from a parallel world. I can’t explain more than that because, quite frankly, I don’t understand it all myself.”

“Is this for real?”

“I keep asking myself the same question.”

He looked at her for what seemed like a very long time, and she could see that he was weighing their friendship, deciding how far he could trust her. Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “When?”

“Three hours.” She felt a surge of relief. “You’ll need everything you have in the air, and you’ll need to alert the other countries. But be careful. If these things unload their cargo, it’s game over, and we’re all as good as dead.”

Merovech frowned, suddenly doubtful. He tipped his head to one side and tapped a finger against his lips.

“How can I ring the President of the United States and tell him we’re being invaded by Zeppelins from the Great Beyond?”

Victoria took a step closer to her screen.

“You’re the Head of the European Commonwealth, he’ll have to listen to you.”

“But will he believe me?”

“Does it matter? If one country scrambles every fighter plane it has, the rest will have to follow suit. They might not know the reason, but they won’t want to be caught napping. You get every European plane in the air, and I can guarantee the Russians, Chinese and Americans will do likewise.”

Merovech made a clicking sound with his tongue.

“After last year’s unpleasantness with China, putting that many planes in the air could be dangerous.”

“It’ll be a lot more dangerous for you to do nothing.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Yes I do. I’ve got the monkey with me. Twelve months ago, the three of us saved the world. Now, we’re asking you to help us save it again.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

FAMILIAR STRANGERS

I
N A PASSENGER
lounge on board one of the
Tereshkova
’s starboard gondolas, William Cole sat on a bar stool with his elbows resting on the copper counter top. The lounge had been decorated in the style of a Zeppelin from the 1930s, with lots of bare rivets and brass fittings, and lazily revolving ceiling fans carved to resemble wooden propellers. Behind the bar, a painting hung over the cash register. It depicted a young man in a white Russian dress uniform with a red sash. William didn’t know who the young soldier was, but he recognised the jacket, and some of its medals, as being identical to the one worn by Captain Valois.

I guess that must be the Commodore
, he thought to himself.

Opposite the painting, on the other side of the lounge, a row of portholes showed him the green countryside of southern England. The undulating landscape rolled past beneath the ship like the hide of some tremendous dragon.

He was waiting for Marie, and Lila. In his hands he held an old photograph. It was a printout from a digital file, and he’d been carrying it around in his pocket ever since the day of his wife’s funeral. It was a shot he’d taken in New York, not long after they’d first met. He’d taken it on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, and it showed her laughing, leaning back against the railings with the whole of Manhattan spread out behind her. She was wearing a black ‘I ♥ New York’ t-shirt. Her orange hair had been cropped short and tucked behind one ear, and the sun picked out the freckles on her nose. It was the one photograph of her that he’d included in his bug-out bag; the one picture he wanted to keep, as a reminder of everything they’d had, and everything they’d lost. It was a picture of her taken when they were both young and in the first passionate throes of love, when the world seemed filled with excitement and hope, and all their dreams seemed attainable. At the moment the shutter clicked, neither of them had known that she would shortly fall pregnant, that the baby would die, and that, unable to comfort each other, they’d separate and spend so many years living apart, married to the wrong people, only to reunite a decade later, a short time before her untimely death.

A glass of soda water stood on the counter beside his left wrist, fizzing quietly. It was all he wanted. Once, he might have ordered a glass of bourbon to steady his nerves; now, he no longer felt the need. He’d taken a hot shower and changed his clothes and, for the first time in months, felt clean inside and out.

What would Marie—his Marie—have said if she’d known that, one day, he’d find another version of her, and get to meet the daughter they’d lost? Would she have felt betrayed, or would she have been pleased for him, wanting only for him to be happy? He smoothed out the edges of the photo with his thumbs, hoping her answer would have been the latter, because, whatever she might have thought, he couldn’t afford to pass up this second chance.

After all, he told himself, he wouldn’t be cheating as such. This
was
Marie. She had many of the same memories as his Marie. She’d even remember this photograph being taken. At the point the camera clicked, they’d been the same person. It was only later, when the baby died—or in her case, lived—that their lives had diverged. The last sixteen years may have panned out differently for her, but she was still, essentially, the same girl he’d taken up to the eighty-sixth floor of the Empire State; and the picture he held was as much a photograph of her as it was of the woman he’d said goobye to just over two years ago. He thought of the closing lines of
War Of The Worlds
by H.G. Wells:
And strangest of all is it to hold my wife’s hand again, and to think that I have counted her, and that she has counted me, among the dead.

How many people had ever been given such an opportunity? He placed the picture on the counter, and took a sip of water. The ice cubes clonked and jangled against his moustache and upper lip. How many, indeed?

He turned to the portholes and watched a wisp of white cloud drift past. They were making good time towards London but he didn’t know how high they were. Were they higher than the observation deck on the Empire State? Perhaps he should have arranged to meet Marie and Lila on the helipad at the top of the
Tereshkova
’s central hull. Perhaps that would have been somehow more fitting than arranging to meet in a bar? He’d spent far too much of his life in bars. If they all came through this alive, and if the world escaped assimilation by the Gestalt, he promised himself that things would change;
he
would change. He’d stop taking drugs and start getting regular exercise. If it took every last scrap of his strength, he’d make the woman in the photograph proud of him. He’d even start writing again, and do it properly this time.

A girl walked into the lounge. She had glossy, shoulder-length brown hair tied back in a loose ponytail, and she was dressed in the white jacket and black trousers of a borrowed steward’s uniform. It took him a moment to realise who she was, but when he did, the realisation hit him like an electric shock that sparked from the sensitive pit of his stomach to the prickling skin at the back of his neck. This was Lila, the daughter who never was, the daughter who’d died in the womb. And now here she stood, as large as life, and twice as beautiful.

His mouth went dry, and he sucked his bottom lip. What could he say to her, what could anyone possibly say in this situation? The only words that came into his head were either far too pompous, or impossibly trite. In the end, he settled for, “Hello.”