Theme Planet (54 page)

As she regained consciousness she
struggled, spinning around in tight circles, snarling.

Satisfied, Dex pocketed the rest
of the wires and hefted the wand thoughtfully. He approached the bound form of
Toffee and knelt by her, hand moving out, halting her struggles. She glared at
him.

Dex ruffled her hair.

“Go to Hell,” she snarled.

Dex reached forward, and grasping
her head tightly, kissed her gently on the forehead. Then he pulled back, tears
shining in his eyes. “I love you, Toffee, no matter what you say or do. I’ll
love you until the stars go out.”

Dexter stood.

Toffee continued to struggle.

Dex looked down at the wand.
Would Molly be so easy to pacify? If
easy
was the right word?

He doubted it.

And Katrina?

Dex shuddered, and his eyes were
hard. He had a bad feeling he would have to send
that
bitch to Hell.

~ * ~

Amba moved through
a hundred different landscapes. First came fields of
black, wavering grass, the stalks bending in a breeze which felt fresh and
light. Amba wasn’t sure when her surroundings had metamorphosed, but she had
her FRIEND in her chest and felt happy, at peace, for the first time in her
life.

You like this Dexter a lot, don’t
you?

We understand each other.

Do you really? Well you’re the
first people in history to do so.

You called us “people. “

Maybe I did. Maybe you have...
worked your way outside the box. After all, what is human ? What is real? Who’s
to say the so-called real humans haven’t actually devolved to a state where
they no longer can be classified as human under their own stupid rules? It’s
all just labels anyway. A person is defined by their thoughts, their words,
their actions. If you think you feel love for Dexter, then I’d say that’s
something approaching humanity -especially for you.

What is love, Zi? Is that what’s
happened to me?

What is love?
Laughter.
That’s something I
could never explain to you, child.

Now Amba moved through an army of
silent rollercoaster carriages. They were everywhere, packed in tightly under a
candyfloss sky. Each carriage was a different size and shape and function; each
one carried a riotous blaze of colourful paintwork.

Are these new? Waiting to be
used?

No,
said Zi,
these are the dead,
the abused, the cast-off. We all end up here one day. Even you, poor android.
Zi considered this.
Even me.

Unless we die in a hail of heroic
bullet-fire and destruction.

Yeah, there is that.

Amba moved through the hundreds,
thousands - tens of thousands - of cars and carriages. Before long the blaze of
colours became a blur until nothing else seemed real, and Amba thought the
rollercoaster graveyard would go on forever.

Where is this place?

The dark side of your soul,
child.

She walked for what felt like
hours, stretching off into days. All around her lay cold, dented metal,
tarnished alloy, twisted steel, splintered wooden slats, tattered, faded flags.
It was a sad place, and Amba felt melancholy creeping into her heart. These
faithful rides had given so must joy, fun, laughter - now they were left here
to rot.

Melancholy is a human emotion,
said Zi.

Maybe I’m not as terrible as my
makers intended?

That’s a novel thought,
said Zi.
But I disagree.

Eventually a wall of dark rock
began working its way towards them, looming larger with every thousand
footsteps. It was massive, high and rough and violent, running from horizon to
horizon. Amba knew she would have to climb this obstacle - but then, who said
reaching the Theme Planet Advertising Broadcast Station would be easy?

I think SARAH is starting to
malfunction,
said Zi.

Why’s that?

Why put the obstacle?

Maybe it was always here.

Maybe she’s testing you. Maybe
she doesn’t trust you.

Now
that, said Amba,
I can
understand.

Amba reached the foot of the
cliff and glanced behind her, at the gleaming colours of a million different
carriage designs. And she frowned. For Theme Planet hadn’t been operating for
that
long,
surely? There was no way so many millions of cars could have been
made obsolete. Was there?

Maybe SARAH has been around a lot
longer than you think.
Zi sounded... not smug, but as if some kind of cunning had filtered down
through her subconscious; an intrinsic understanding which she now grasped, but
wasn’t wholly about to share.
Maybe this isn’t the first Theme Planet? Maybe
it... came from somewhere else?

Maybe,
said Amba.
It no longer
matters. I have a job to do. I have to anger Romero, anger Oblivion - get them here.
Get them to come after me.

Do you have the words
? said Zi.

Oh, yes,
said Amba.

She started to climb. The wall of
jagged rock reared above her, too high to see the top. Amba set her mouth in a
tight line, focused her concentration, and climbed, hands finding tiny nooks
and cracks, agile boots digging in, finding wedges, searching out ledges. And
Amba moved upwards, and the air cooled and caressed her, and wafted her hair
about her forehead. As she climbed, Amba thought of Dex. Thought of his long hard
search for his family; for his wife, who had then betrayed him; for his
children. Beautiful children.
I could have those children,
Amba
realised, remembering her own daughter who had been taken from her all those
years ago. Yes. We would have our own ready-made family. It would not matter if
we were engineered to have no kids; we would already have some. It would be
perfect. I could replace Katrina. And obviously, because she’s been a bad
person, and I could be a
good
person if I tried hard, I am sure we would
all get on perfectly.

Dexter. Dexter Colls. So noble
and courageous.

I think I really
am
in
love with him...

She climbed, and paused for a
while, resting her pain-riddled fingers and toes. She glanced back, and jumped
a little when she realised how high up she was. To slip and fall now, from this
great height - then, Anarchy Android or no, she would be squashed like a bug in
the mangled wreckage of old rollercoaster CARs far below.

The CARs spread off as far as
Amba could see - and her eyesight was perfect.

Bizarrely, the way they’d been
arranged, the colours seemed to paint a smile.

Ironic.

Amba turned back, and continued
to climb. She had a long way to go.

~ * ~

Amba perched on
a
narrow lip of rock, a ridgeline of dinosaur scales, and looked out across the
vast, black, rocky desert. She could see camps out there, and with a frown she
realised what - or who - the figures were, gathered around their small fires
beside Truks and HJeeps.

They were SIMs. Hundreds of SIMs.

“Wonderful,” she muttered.

You think they are waiting for
you?

I think they’re guarding the
TBAP. If that’s the case, then SARAH was telling the truth, in that this whole
place is infested with Oblivion spies. Romero has obviously been planning his
invasion for quite some time.

I think it’s safe to say, Amba my
sweet, that for as long as you have breathed God’s sweet air, for as long as
you’ve carried out assassinations, then each and every act has been geared in
some way towards achieving this moment.

That bastard,
snapped Amba.

Her eyes followed the dark paths
through the wilderness. Far ahead, a glittering grail on the horizon, stood a
stark black building bristling with a thousand masts, antennas and SuperQ
dishes - able to broadcast pretty much across the entirety of the Four
Galaxies. It was an incredible and incredibly expensive piece of technology,
owned by none other than Theme Planet, and Monolith.

Maybe that’s what Romero is
really after,
said Zi.

You think
?

Monolith refused to license the
design. It would make a great military tool - for, say, controlling a War Fleet
as it conquered every planet it could get within pissing distance of. Yes?

Possibly. Probably. What concerns
me more now is the protection. They obviously don’t want anybody near the
thing...

Or to destroy it,
pointed out Zi.

Let’s give that bastard Romero
something to think about.

Amba stood, and flexed, and began
the hazardous climb down. It took a long time. A
long
time. But Amba did
not mind. She was on a mission and her mind was set. She was saving the day,
instead of destroying it. She was trying to help something, instead of kill it.
And that made her happy. Made her feel cleansed. More human.

She landed in a crouch, in the
dust, and moved forward swiftly, FRIEND in hand, eyes alert, senses screaming
for anything -
anything -
that may point out a sniper or covert enemy...

“HEY.
HEY YOU! THE WOMAN WITH THE GUN! THE HUMAN NEEDS TO PUT THE GUN DOWN. THE HUMAN
NEEDS TO STAND
STILL!
OR
I WILL PULP THE HUMAN!
OR
I AM NOT BATTLE SIM KNOWN AS
GRUMMER...”

Amba, who had frozen, turned and
her eyes picked out the hazy patch of a CovertShield blanket. She smiled
easily, and fired her FRIEND - blowing a hole through the SIM big enough for
her to squeeze her head through.

The SIM was slammed backwards,
body parts pouring out through the huge hole like a bucket of animal slop. The
corpse hit the ground with a slap, and Amba ran as alarms squealed through the
darkness, and suddenly
everything
became panic. Amba ran swiftly, and
heard guns discharging and the
pings
of flattened bullets bouncing off
rock. She slammed past a SIM and blew his head off. Another lurched into her
way, loading his SMKK machine gun, and Amba shot away his legs so he collapsed,
gurning, onto his face. She leapt his dust-paddling corpse, then dodged left
and right, zigzagging through the wasteland of SIMs, and approached a machine
gun nest, which opened fire with the whine of the dreaded mini-gun. Amba
sprinted up the right hand wall, speed and momentum carrying her on, and with a
blam
put a FRIEND round through
the operator’s skull top. She landed with a
thud
in the nest, grabbed
the minigun with a grunt, and turned it on the shocked, camp of SIMs who were
still holding bowls of oxtail soup, many with spoons halfway to their mouths,
eyes fixed on her as their conversation faltered into shocked silence, with
just one stray voice whining, “I don’t see how much damage
one
little
lady can make...” before a cough made him drop his spoon in his soup and glance
up.

“Let me show you,” said Amba,
sweetly, and unleashed the minigun on the hundred or so SIMs. Flesh and limbs
exploded outwards, and the SIMs dropped their soup bowls and lunged for
weapons. Hot metal screamed and scythed, and oxtail soup slopped up faces and
armour plating as bowls exploded in showers of powder, and SIM skulls were
drilled with spinning bullets. They went down in a wave, like a cornfield under
a sweeping storm, until the silence was massive and Amba dropped the glowing
minigun with a clatter.