Scratch Monkey (17 page)

"But it may be premature," cautioned Oshi. "Didn't you get the rest of my message from Boris? About the Ultrabrights?"

"Yes. I've got some news for you: the cosmic background radiation is getting hotter. It's been doing so since you arrived, following an inverse square curve. Odd, that. I'm afraid it puts you in rather an unpleasant position. Unless you can somehow explain it?"

"If you'll let me." Her heart hammered between her ribs. She felt dizzy, fight/flight reflexes unable to cope with her physical state.

Mik didn't move. "Go ahead."

"I was sent here when my controllers realised there was a problem. That was a while after you arrived. The problem followed you here and it's a matter of bad timing -- or maybe something else. I don't know how long I was buffered in the download process, but according to Raisa there's something funny about your Gatecoder. People aren't released from it on schedule. It's possible that it's been storing me up for a while -- after you arrived and were downloaded -- and whatever's happening outside triggered my physical incarnation. That is, I was only downloaded from storage when whatever I was sent to achieve had already started."

"Plausible." He didn't move.

Oshi felt sweat pooling in the small of her back. "What's important is that I know things about the Superbrights," she said. "Things they don't want to let out. So my controller sent me here because he needed an agent who knew what the real situation was, someone who could assess things on the spot and take appropriate action."

"Less plausible." Oshi weighed her chances again, found them less than optimal.

"But true. It was this or ... whatever they do with humans who ask too many questions. Believe me, I didn't want this: he played me into asking for it, and here I am. We're all in deep shit. Whatever chewed up your home world is coming down throughout this sector and I don't even know the absolute date so I can't figure out how long it's been, but I'd be willing to bet that's what's happening. And --"

"Are you a Superbright?" asked Mik.

Disgust made Oshi spit. "No!" Bitterly: "I just know a little bit more about them than I'm meant to."

"Then you know ..."

He was fishing for something, she realised. "What they're doing with the dirtworlds?" she asked.

"Tell me about it!"

"They farm us." She watched him for a reaction. "They foster life-after-death cults among the ignorant, and harvest their minds when they go virtual at death. No reincarnation for the poor: just ... food."

"Why weren't you eaten, Oshi Adjani?" he asked, almost gently.

A sharp memory of choking paralysis gripped her. She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the evil possibilities. If your personality can be recorded, downloaded to another star system, what's to stop it being duplicated? "Maybe I was ..."

There was a metalic click. She looked up: Mik had opened the door. "You're free to leave," he said. "But I think you should come with me. Things are going to get a little unhealthy here before long."

"Why is that?" she asked, almost unbelieving.

He shrugged and straightened up. He no longer looked menacing: more like a careworn friend than a lethal stranger. "It doesn't make any difference what you are. I didn't see an increase in wisdom throughput when I threatened you. You're on your own, whoever you are -- even if you are what you say. So you're not part of
him
."

"Well I'm so
glad
that you think that." She glanced round. "Where is there to go?"

"The redoubt." He grinned again, baring snaggled teeth in his lower jaw. "Via an assembly point in the Temple of Osiris. I'm going to pay Anubis a visit tomorrow night. Would you like to come along? It should be quite a spectacular ride."

After Mik left, Oshi crashed out. It was a while before she relaxed enough for sleep: even with watch circuits standing guard in her skin, she was edgy with the fear of a sudden awakening.

Awakening came in due course with a knock on the door. Oshi sat up before she realised she was no longer asleep: ears tense for the slightest sign --

"Oshi."

One person standing outside the door. "Come in."

It was Mik. "Everything's fixed," he said. "There's going to be a meeting. Escape committee, below the Temple of Osiris." He held out a bowl to her.

"What's with this Osiris stuff anyway?" she asked, taking the bowl: it held a lump of rough bread and a wedge of cheese.

"The god who dies and is resurrected to redeem us in the afterlife and bring the fields to fertility with his blood," said Mik. "Supposedly Anubis's boss. Supposedly. The dog-head won't go near the temple. Not in person, anyway."

Oshi bolted down the lump of cheese and started on the bread. Her stomach churned, its modified lining extruding villiform absorbtion surfaces in a weird parody of the normal digestive process. She felt slightly queasy as she watched Mik. He sat down and pulled a metal tube from a deep pocket in one trouser leg: began to slot components into it by touch.

"The only question is how the Goons take it," he said calmly. "They're too dumb to register what's going on. Can't bribe them, any more than you can bribe a musket ball. (Missile's are another matter, but unfortunately we're not up against ...) The radiation temperature's still rising. Boris told Lorma to get the gadget you wanted ready; she's somewhere in a basement staring at the vacuum. Maybe we'll know what's happening by evening."

"Wha'time's'it?" Oshi burped, feeling a noxious wind. Her stomach churned some more and was still, as empty as if she hadn't swallowed a thing. She was ravenous. "Need more food."

"Check. It's late afternoon. You've slept almost an entire day." Mik finished bolting his device together. He kept it pointed away from her. Caught her gaze: "it's a grenade launcher. Full automatic, three centimetre, smart enough to hold its fire 'til it seems the whites of their eyes."

"Guessed that." Oshi stared at the gun; the gun stared back, blinked lazily at her. "Anything to eat?"

"You
are
hungry."

She stood up suddenly. The gun's eyes widened, tracking her across the room. "You don't say." She stretched, winced as she placed too much stress on her ankle. "I was underweight when I arrived. My digester's been tuned up. I could eat a horse."

"Don't have any of those here." Mik waved at the door; "if you want to help yourself, it's all outside. Don't go 'way."

"Believe me, I've got no
intention
of going away. Not with the kind of neighbours you've got."

There was a small vestibule outside the room she'd awakened in. Deep shelves covered in dust faced her, racked from floor to ceiling; the outer door was stone, latched with a thick wooden bar. A covered tray drew her attention. She grabbed the loaf of bread and chewed methodically, then drained the jug of water behind it. A blunt-faced cat mummy stared at her from the back of the funerary niche.

"It's like this," Mik added, raising his voice just enough that she could hear him round the door; "Anubis knows we're up to something, but he doesn't know what. Or he didn't until he caught Boris messing around with one of the fabricators. We hijacked them when Anubis was't paying attention. We may not have access to Dreamtime or much in the way of computing resources, but we've got a good bioengineering team and we sort of expected to have to pull some stunts wherever we arrived. So we were using them to spin some nasty surprises like the tapeworm I gave Rai. When that's in place, when the rest is sorted, we can go bang on his door. He'll listen. He'll have no alternative."

Only Oshi's augmented hearing enabled her to pick out the subvocalized follow up: "
neither will we
." She didn't comment. She was too busy: her stomach writhed in something halfway between cramp and the gustatory equivalent of a multiple orgasm.

"Who'else'there?" Oshi demanded around a mouthful of breadcrumbs. (She shoved the tray to the back of the niche; something rattled.)

"Everyone who's anyone. The team --" the inner door opened. "Are you alright?"

"Fine." Oshi stumbled back into the sleeping room. "But my
stomach
is out of
control
. Carry on talking." She sat down heavily on the bed. Mik leaned against one wall, watching a spot ten centimetres behind her face.

"Look like you need the food. There's a team; Anubis did something to our wet squad. None of them are here, we don't know why -- think he may not have downloaded them or something. So all of us who're left are second-stringers -- not real pathfinders, but the support team. Still and all, we have Lorma and with the biotech group she jacked together a couple of genocide brews like the tapeworm. Then there's Boris and the diplomats. They're not fighters, exactly, but war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means and they know their subject if you follow my drift. A few of the others can probably fight. And there's a lot of support engineers -- we've got a short bite but a long tail."

"What're'you?" asked Oshi, still chewing on an empty mouthful of air. She belched loudly; "
pardon
me."

"I'm the strategos," Mik admitted. "There was contingency planning in case the natives weren't friendly; my download manifest labelled me a botanist. So I'm here but I've no-one to work with."

Oshi grinned, narrow-eyes: "
now
you have." She burped again, and stood up. "If my stomach doesn't give me away ... how about taking a walk? I'd love to see what you've got lined up."

"I'll bet you would." Mik picked up a black box and held it out to her; "take this. You seem to know how to use it."

Oshi turned it over in her hands. Brushed black aluminium finish on a lump of raw machined titanium. A couple of holes, a couple of clips, a trigger. "Crude, but --"

"It was the best we could do at short notice."

The noise of metal rang from the walls as she pulled the cocking lever and armed it. "I feel a lot better already. Let's go and see what's cooking."

Getting ready to move out always screwed Oshi's nerves tighter than the event itself. Like a hurdle in a race, it loomed larger in her perceptions than in reality. More so here, where her only defense was her wit and a lump of metal and explosives. "We need more," she whispered. "Can you improvise anything?"

Mik jumped up and paced over to the door. "Not without making contact. Someone's supposed to be lifting Boris's arms cache, if Anubis hasn't already staked it out, but that's all we were counting on."

"I was afraid you'd say that." Her ankle throbbed in time with her pulse but her head was clear: nerves alight, skin tingling. "We'll just have to make sure we don't meet any goons. Let's go." She slipped the door open and peered into the gloom. The vestibule was empty. For the first time she noticed the disarmed funerary traps, designed to ensnare tomb robbers. "That's cute. Who was buried here?"

"Don't know."
Don't care
, his tone told her. "Come on."

It was dark outside, the vast sun-lamps shut down to a lunar glow along the axial tube of the colony. Wisdom buzzed and hummed, tracking microwave transmissions up and down the huge cylinder. There was nothing lying in wait for them.

Mik nodded silently. His face was a nightlit shadow, bisected by the dull glow from the axial light pump and the darkness of the doorway. "Move on out," he said. "What went wrong was Boris. We all figured that if Anubis locked one of us down he'd tear them limb from limb; instead he started asking questions."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He shook his head dismissively. "Need to know."

Oshi blinked slowly, stared at him with heavy-lidded eyes. "Did you, now? Well, then." She hefted her firearm. "Where to?"

"Meeting place near the old central Temple of Osiris. Like I said, Anubis doesn't use it: and it's defensible against the goons in the short term." Mik headed off round the back of the accommodation block, pausing whenever Oshi got too far behind. "That's what we need."

Buildings bulked like decaying teeth in the nightlight, dimly illuminated by the nocturnal radiance of the axial light pump. Shadowy doors clustered around the stumps of bulbous habitats and agorae, living places and social arenas. Stump-nosed rodents looked up suspiciously as they passed, then bent back to their diet of casual litter. A soft breeze blew. Oshi tugged her jacket tighter across her shoulders, glancing into quiet corners as she passed.

By the vision of her altered eyes, the townscape was a mass of intricate spiderwebs, violet pathways and floating designs that hung upon the air like mystic flags. Her wisdom cache kicked in, giving a meaning to the virtual overlay. "Is it always this busy around here?" she asked.

"Busy? You mean the --" Mik stopped again and peered at her in the gloom. "You can see the wisdom environment directly?"

"I'm no drone. I've just got an optic server. There's a lot of heavy traffic tonight.
Way
more than you'd expect for a normal ecology. I don't know much about oneils like this, but if Anubis knows --"

"
Bad
news." Mik glanced around twitchily. "I really don't think we can afford for that to happen. Do you see any goons?"

Oshi scuffed at the ground, glanced round edgily. "The Goon Squad are a sick joke. If Anubis really knew what he was doing -- he has control of the colony resources -- he wouldn't piss around with macroforms and living weapons; I think he's lost it. I want to find out more. Don't you?"

"I'm not sure it matters. Look, lets go where we're going then talk about this some more. It's interesting but I'd rather not stick around here."

They passed trees and carefully cultivated stellae of synthetic life, glittering patterns of engineered mist that fluttered along the ground with the delicate touch of insect life. Living stalactites arched overhead: the pebbles on the path hummed with warmth from below. Nightrunning voles twitched the garden corners clean. In the distance, a fountain sputtered softly upon stone. The path crossed a footbridge of wood above a trickling stream lined with green moss, turned black by the nightlight. Convergent sparks of silver pointed Oshi towards a major pipe junction.
It's so beautiful: such a shame it's got to be terminated
. She glanced sidelong at Mik.
I hope the damage can be restricted ...
she thought of Raisa, blinking back powerful emotions, fear and loathing and betrayal; a complex urge to ensure her own abandonement before it was too late. Before she had to feel something more than passing lust, transient narcissism.