The Baba Yaga (20 page)

When she came out, Yershov was still standing where she had left him. He stared over at her as she put away her weapon. “Christ,” he said. “You’re cold.”

“You’re not the sweetest person I’ve ever met, either,” Walker said. “Perhaps this will remind you to stay on the right side of me.” She looked back down the access corridor at Amber’s body, and was shocked at what she saw. The young woman’s body was completely changed from the goddess that had confronted them. It was as if she decayed all at once. The hair had greyed, and turned wispy. Her skin, which had seemed so fresh, so lustrous, was as frail as parchment. On the face, it was falling into the skull. Walker turned away, revolted.

Maria spoke. “You killed her,” she said.

Walker looked over at her. Maria was sitting on the floor, her arms cradling her little girl. The child had finally woken, but she looked very drowsy. She looked like she had been drugged. What was going on here? “Yes,” she said. “I killed both of them. Is that a problem?”

“No,” said Maria. “No, that’s not a problem, although I wish I’d got to do it myself. To both of them.” She looked thoughtfully at Walker, and then pointed to her jacket, at the slight bulge where the weapon sat concealed. “Will you show me how to use that?”

Walker studied her for a moment, and then looked at the child in her arms. Was this someone else to take care of? A few months ago, Walker had barely given thought to children. She barely saw any. Now they were everywhere.

Walker sighed. “Yes,” she said. “I think I probably should.”

T
HE
W
HITE
H
ORSEMAN
came out of phase close to Shard’s World, landing on a damp morning at the spaceport outside Roby. Conway had taken the pilot’s sling, plotting the course from Hennessy’s World through the void. Kinsella had watched closely, but there was no chance of learning whether what she had said about the access codes was true and, in truth, he hadn’t expected it. He wasn’t entirely convinced that Conway’s claim was true. Surely Grant wasn’t so callous as to condemn a man to the perpetual grey of the void?

There had been little conversation between Kinsella and Conway during the flight: enough for Kinsella to assist operations, and to establish who was to take which cabin. Once the ship was down, however, Kinsella suggested that Conway abandon her uniform. They were, he pointed out, no longer within Expansion jurisdiction, and the uniform might make people uncooperative, at best. After some thought, she agreed, and changed into civvies. Kinsella himself dressed comfortably and practically for what he assumed would be a day of moving around a wet city, although he tucked a small but compact laser within reach. Conway, he assumed, was armed to the teeth.

Outside, the early morning was wretched. The rain was not being kind to the city of Roby, which seemed to be covered in a thin layer of grease. The city-bound shuttle trundled dispiritedly through a sad landscape and several ill-kept stations before depositing them in the city’s centre. Fredricks’ offices were easily located in one of the buildings crumbling around the main square. The main doors were closed, but unguarded, and opened at once when pushed.

“Strange,” said Kinsella.

“What’s strange?” Conway said.

“I would have thought someone like Fredricks would have guards out front.”

Conway shrugged. “Easier for us,” she said, and went inside.

They passed through a deserted vestibule and towards a big flight of stairs. There were no lights on, although the morning had started out gloomy and was, if anything, getting darker as the rain clouds rolled in. There were no sounds either, no voices coming from far rooms in the ruined mansion, only their own footsteps thudding dully against the thinly-carpeted floor. At the end of the corridor they came to a big door. Kinsella went through first, with Conway following close behind. He looked round the dingy room with distaste. If this had once been the hub of Fredricks’ business operations, everything he’d owned was now gone. All that was left was a couple of broken chairs and a pervasive smell of damp. A window had been broken at some point, and then it had rained steadily for several days. Kinsella sighed. “I guess we’re too late,” he said.

Conway nodded, but was unperturbed. “A search of the room might reveal something.”

“Search?” Kinsella looked around. “There’s nothing left here
to
search! If Fredricks knew where Walker was heading, that information has gone with him.”

“Nevertheless, I believe we should take a look around.”

Kinsella, dutifully, poked about the room. A few bits of rubbish, either discarded or blown in through the window. Some scraps of paper that revealed little. Conway, meanwhile, had gone over to the door, and was standing there, arms folded, looking down the corridor. Almost as if she was waiting for someone...

Kinsella heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Kinsella’s hand went straight to his weapon, but Conway seemed untroubled. She pushed the door open, and two men came in. They greeted Conway cordially, as if expecting to find her here, giving overly smart salutes that, to Kinsella’s eye, bordered on the insubordinate. Conway seemed unsurprised by their arrival. Kinsella, by the window, looked down into the square. There were two more of them outside, two women, standing on the pavement by the entrance to the building. A team of four, all the way from Hennessy’s World, presumably, clearly military of some kind, and Conway had been expecting them. Who the hell were they?

Pretending to be examining a soggy cardboard box on the windowsill, Kinsella listened to the quiet exchanges between Conway and the two men. A cold chill passed through him. He knew them, he realised; they haunted your dreams, and when they stepped out into the real world, turned your life into a nightmare. Crimopaths: people who had killed without conscience, remorselessly, and repeatedly. Most of them were telepaths, or low-level psychics, who’d struggled with their abilities. The Bureau had identified them, experimented on them, to augment their abilities, to burn out what little moral compunction they had. To use them to do the Bureau’s dirty work. It was an experiment best forgotten.

But here they were, and Conway had been expecting them.

“Thank you,” Conway said calmly to the leader. “Perhaps you might wait for us outside. I believe Mr Kinsella wishes to speak to me in private.”

The man nodded. Smiling almost pleasantly at Kinsella, he quit the room, taking his colleague with him.

Kinsella crossed the room. “Conway, what the hell is going on here?”

“Come now, Mr Kinsella. I’m sure you know that already. These are our new travelling companions.”

“Don’t you know what they are? They’re crimopaths!”

She looked back at him patiently. “I know that. Of course I know that.”

“But you obviously don’t understand what that means? Now I’ll admit they’re a perfect fit for the Reach, but I don’t want to go near them.” Conway, he thought, was not reacting as someone should who had just been told that four cold-blooded killers had arrived to take up residence in her life. “And you were
expecting
these people?”

“I’ll be perfectly honest, Mr Kinsella, and say that I wasn’t expecting four of them. Three at the very most.” She rubbed her cheek. “Still, I suppose they’ll come in useful.”

“Three? Well, I suppose
three
of them would have been perfectly reasonable! Have you taken leave of your senses? You must send these people back to where they came from—”

She lifted her hand and he remembered that, although dressed casually, she was a Fleet major, and much younger and fitter than him. “Mr Kinsella,” she said, “whatever you may think, I do know my business, and I do not take unnecessary risks. I understand crimopaths and have extensive experience of working alongside them. I know better than anyone that it would be an act of self-destructive madness to travel with these people if one did not have a means to control them.”

“I don’t care what your experience of them is—and, to be honest, I don’t want to know. But you’re deluding yourself if you think you can control these people. They’re uncontrollable by definition. That’s why their use was phased out and the whole lot of them were locked in a prison deep beneath the ocean.”

“With great respect, you are behind the times,” Conway said. “Fleet Intelligence has been working for years on means to harness their unique capabilities to the service of the Expansion.”

“People don’t learn, do they? Fleet Intelligence
made
these monsters in the first place.”

“And now we can control them.” She walked over to the window, gesturing to Kinsella to follow her, and then reached down to touch the handheld strapped to her side. “Watch,” she said.

Kinsella looked down onto the street below. Conway pressed a button on her handheld, and the nearest of the crimopaths jerked suddenly, then fell to the ground, hands clutched to his head. The brief scene that unfolded was one of the most disturbing Kinsella had ever witnessed in his long career as a spook. The crimopath was clearly in pain, but he was not distressed—he simply grunted and shook as if the pain was something almost external to him. At one point, he even seemed to be amused by it—his own agony a source of perverse pleasure. His colleagues, meanwhile, stood and watched as if he were some kind of specimen. One even walked round, to see the display from all angles, her head cocked in interest. Otherwise, there was no emotional response that Kinsella could see: they simply observed. If Conway could do this to all of them—and he assumed that she could—the thought that this might happen to them didn’t distress them either. It merely... pacified them.

Kinsella was revolted. “All right,” he whispered. “You’ve made your point. Whatever you’re doing, stop it.”

Conway let the show continue for a few seconds longer, then pressed the button on her handheld again. “Pain is a useful motivator with individuals like this,” she said. “While they don’t react with fear—they don’t feel fear, of course—the experience is not particularly pleasant and, in general, they try to avoid it. It therefore becomes a means of controlling their behaviour—preventing them from acting upon their worst impulses, or else acting them out in ways which can be used.”

Kinsella put his back to the window. He thought, for a moment, that he was going to be sick, but he swallowed a few times and got himself back under control. “So who controls you, Conway?”

She turned an impassive eye upon him. “Nobody controls me, Mr Kinsella. But as I’ve explained to you already, I obey my orders.” She looked around the room. “Superiors change. One is seconded to a new organisation, and finds oneself with a new commander. But the chain of command remains intact.” She looked round the room. “We can go now. We’ve got what we came for. Those people out there—who you are so eager to send on their way—have been able to tell me that Delia Walker went to Shuloma Station in search of someone called Heyes. We’ll find her there, or, if she has left, we can follow the lead from Shuloma.”

At the thought of bringing these people anywhere near Delia, Kinsella almost threw up again. “You’re very sure of that.”

Conway made for the door. “My team excels at what it does.”

M
ARIA LOOKED AT
the woman who had saved her life. She had short dark hair, almost black, although there were hints of chestnut in it, and a few grey strands. Her hair was cut in a short bob, neat and business-like. She was kneeling down next to her, reaching for Jenny’s hand. Jenny looked up at her sleepily. “Are you going to help us find my daddy?” said the little girl.

“I’m not sure,” said the woman, and glanced at Maria, who shook her head. “Let’s get to know each other better first.”

“Monkey, too,” said the little girl, closing her eyes again. “I miss Monkey.”

“Well, we’ll see about that.” The woman turned to Maria. “Perhaps you could tell me something about yourself. What the hell was that all about? Who were those two?”

Maria was desperate to trust this woman—she wanted to trust her so much—but Amber, after all, had seemed so wonderful, like a guardian angel who had appeared out of nowhere, and who had turned out to be the Devil in disguise. She shook her head.

The woman frowned. “I’m Walker. Delia Walker. That one over there is Yershov, and this little one here who saved all our lives is Failt.”

Maria took in the little creature standing nearby, with its ugly face and horrible tentacles. She tried not to shudder at the sight. “He’s Vetch, isn’t he?”

“He’s Vetch, and he’s friendly. Okay—you know who we are. Can you tell me something about yourself?”

Maria grasped Jenny into a hug and shook her head.

“Okay,” said Walker. “You don’t have to tell me anything. You can go on your way if you want—although it seems to me that you’re not flourishing right now, and that you could probably do with a friend.”

Maria retrieved Jenny’s hand from Walker. She’d had a friend. Kit. The only friend she had ever wanted. Kit and Maria, together forever...

“I’m not going to press you,” Walker said. She had taken the hint and withdrawn slightly, and was now sitting hunched on her heels. “We can sit here for a while until you get your breath back. Then you can go on your way. Wherever it is that you’re going.”

But Maria was going nowhere. She and Jenny were stuck on this hellhole, and she didn’t know what to do or where to go, and she couldn’t tell any more who was going to help her and who was going to harm her...

Walker was speaking again. “You know, your little girl doesn’t look very well.” Her voice was neutral, almost analytical in tone. “I imagine you’ve noticed that already.”

Maria began to cry.

“What’s wrong with her?” said Walker.

Between sobs, Maria explained. “That woman... The one you shot... She and the man gave Jenny some kind of drug... They wanted to trap me into taking care of her... I don’t know what it is they’ve given her!”

Yershov, standing nearby, muttered, “Filthy bastards.”

“I agree,” said Walker. “Thank you for trusting me—Maria, yes? Maria and Jenny?”