Xenoform (18 page)

The robot did not respond, so Whistler repeated her request. Still it didn’t budge. She reached out and knocked on its carapace with the knuckles of one hand. Nothing. Aware of the many eyes on her she gave up, brushed past it and hit the pad to open the door. The harvesters left, resisting the urge to look back to ensure that they were not pursued. In the throne room, nobody spoke. The atmosphere that emanated from it was like a chill wind at their backs. The skins of the lizards rustled like dry leaves in their pit, until the massive doors closed again, cutting the sound off. The black-clad guards stood like statues. Whistler and her team retrieved their weapons beneath their steady gaze, self-consciously and as hurriedly as they could. Mercifully Sofi didn’t drop anything this time. The parrot was perched atop the head of one of the statues, its yellow stare alien and analytical, its head cocked quizzically. Its insanely bright colouring was actually quite good camouflage in this gaudy room.

Sofi stuffed the micro grenades back into their bandolier where they hung low like a string of explosive sausages. ‘I think your robot’s broken,’ she said to one of the guards. ‘It’s locked up or some shit.’ She pointed back over her shoulder with one thumb towards the throne room. None of the guards moved or answered.

Whistler could feel Roberts’s nervousness like an itch. He wanted to leave, a sentiment she echoed. ‘Come on,’ she said and ushered her companions out into the large outer chamber.

They walked nervously through the forest of disintegrating pillars, agonisingly aware of the guns watching them from the shadows. Without the robot to escort them they moved uneasily, half expecting the guns to chatter into life at any moment, wanting to converse about injury and death in staccato barks of exclamation. There was nobody in the chamber except for the three of them. They passed through it as casually as they could, trying not to look nervous to the people who doubtless surveilled them through video cameras deeper inside the complex.

They passed through the large warehouse door and into the fenced-off alley where the man on the raised platform still stood in the same position. His massive form emanated insolence like body odour. He cradled the mag-rifle gently, like a baby, in one thick arm. Whistler felt his eyes on her back, knew how quickly the rifle could be in the firing position. Her faithful smartgun was thrumming in her pocket like a purring kitten. But she thought that her party would leave unmolested, knew that Haspan would have killed them already had he wanted to. Although he was clearly psychotic and erratic, Whistler felt oddly sure that he would let them go – perhaps as a favour to Roland, perhaps in the hope that they might solve the greenshit riddle. She didn’t care why – she was just glad to be leaving.

Their journey through the blistered moonscape of the midnight Undercity was as uneventful as could be hoped. Small groups of hoods were propped in dark corners everywhere, clouds of pungent smoke marking their personal spaces like warding spells. Nebulous sound filled the chill air. It was the sound of nothing in particular, and Whistler knew it well. It was the steady respiration of the Undercity itself, a homogenised texture of voices, music, weapon discharges, vehicle noises, so ubiquitous that it was heard almost as a silence.

They stopped outside a metal-ribbed building of cracking plastic. About halfway up its front was a large holo-sign. The sign was no longer projecting but its face still bore the legend BBD in two-metre letters of anodised metal. The building wore a dusting of decay like a veil. Its edges were indistinct with dirt, wear, the ravages of time. The whole of the ground floor had been boarded up. A side-road ran around the left of the building into an unlit car park where a gang of teenagers were racing semi-wild petrol ponies. There were jubilant whoops and screams, muddied in the thunder of engines as the youngsters clung to their mechanical mounts, hammering up and down a makeshift track defined by lumps of masonry. There were six or seven ponies in all – massively tall and solidly built, modified with flamboyant chrome exhaust stacks and free-flow air filters which poked from their armoured hides. One rider, on a mount whose colour looked cherry-red in the darkness and belched flames from its exhaust, side-slammed into a competitor, sending the victim’s steed skidding to its knees, spilling the rider off violently in an acrobatic display.

Some of the teenagers rode with bottles in one hand. They wore the deep purple and black of the Nightriders gang. Small timers. Still the harvesters plotted a course around them. They weren’t sure exactly where the lab would be located, and frankly it would be hard to see unless they stumbled over it.

Fortunately this was exactly what Roberts did. Even though he was the only one with a night vision mode, he stumbled and fell suddenly as the three picked their way through the brambles around the edge of the car park. Sofi had actually drawn a knife before she even called out to him.

‘Ow! Shit!’ reported Roberts’s unmistakably cultured voice from somewhere on the floor in front of them.

Whistler was a little surprised to see that she was holding the smartgun. The damn thing was insidious. She stuffed it back into her pocket and went cautiously in the direction from which Roberts had yelled. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Bloody steps,’ he answered, and Whistler could see him now, apparently kneeling on said flight of steps, rubbing his elbow.

‘How’s that expensive night vision?’ asked Sofi appearing out of the darkness.

Roberts simply glared at her, teeth clenched.

‘Is this it then?’ asked Whistler, stepping onto the top step. The flight was quite long, maybe sixty steps, and a matt black door stood at the bottom like a darker slash in the gloom, a point at which the shadows had congealed. There was no obvious sign of habitation. The door was just a door – there was no camera, no sentry gun, just a door with one round handle.

‘I don’t know,’ replied Roberts, standing up and brushing some imagined dirt from his long coat.

‘I guess we’ve already ruled out the subtle approach, then,’ opined Sofi and she walked down the steps and hammered on the door. The sound clipped abruptly, dying seemingly within the material of the door itself.

Whistler waited, one taloned hand tracing the contours of her smartgun through her pocket. The shouting of the racers was distant now and a bubble of isolation fell over the harvesters as they waited. They had no idea how the surgeon – Spake – would receive them. If things went badly for him he might end up dead.

‘Anything on IR?’ asked Whistler.

‘No,’ said Roberts. ‘Rest assured, I’d tell you if there was. Oh! Wait–’

The door swung openly rapidly, but only about a hand’s width. A pointed and rat-like face peeped out at them. Sofi actually took an involuntary step back.

‘
Yes
?’ asked the face in an absurd falsetto.

‘Are you Spake?’

The little beady eyes darted in the little pointy face like flies in a jar. ‘
Yes
.’

‘We’ve come to talk to you about some surgery. Can we come in?’

‘No.’ Something was twitching in the man’s face, making one corner of his almost lipless mouth jump up and down. ‘Not tradin’ any more.’

‘Why not?’

‘Who are you?’ The wheedling voice took on tones of suspicion now, making it even more grating and unpleasant than before. ‘Police?’

Whistler allowed herself to laugh lightly, attempting a smile. It proved difficult under the acidic gaze of the surgeon. His darting eyes crawled across Whistler’s companions, lingering horribly on Sofi’s sleek lines. ‘Hardly,’ said Whistler, and the eyes flickered back to her. Bony fingers were teasing at the open edge of the door. ‘We got your address from Mister Haspan.’

‘What do you want?’ He looked as if he would just bolt at any moment, back to some deep concrete burrow.

‘We need to know where the greenshit is coming from. Do you know what I’m talking about?’

‘
Noooo
...Go away!’ And he tried to slam the door, but Sofi’s foot was in it.

Whistler kicked the door open, sending Spake flying into the wall behind him, off which he rebounded, cracking his head hard. She often found that her body, not her mind, seemed to make the decisions in these situations, and was happy to go with it. She was on him, with the fabric of his dirty white shirt bunched in one hand. She bore down, fangs bared and dripping, suddenly demonic, inhuman. Sofi and Roberts were away down the corridor and already spreading out into the underground bunker, checking for lurking dangers, weapons in hand. Spake shrieked like a woman in an old horror film and tried to wriggle away, clutching for the doorway. Whistler elbowed the door shut and Spake pulled his fingers back just in time, and so narrowly avoided having some surgery to perform upon himself. His eyes were so wide now that they looked as if they would simply roll out of his head and across the floor at any moment.

‘What the fuck have you been putting in people?’ hissed Whistler, her speech distorted by the swollen venom glands in her cheeks, thick and sybillant.

‘Nothing! Noth-nothing! It’s not me, it’s not me, it’s...’

‘What about the guy with the parrot wings? The guy with the dragon skin? Were they yours?’

‘Okay, okay, there was a guy with wings, yes, but no guy with dragon skin, I don’t know no guy with dragon skin!’ He was prattling now, out of control, terrified for his life. The grey demon had him in its grip. Sharp claws were at his throat.

‘Leo, with the wings – what did you put in him?’ Whistler punctuated each word by banging Spake’s fragile-looking head on the wall. His weak body lolled and flopped forlornly like an eel seized from the water by a predatory gull and brought to land to be devoured.

‘Nothin’! The greenshit, it isn’t me!’

‘Then who is it?’

‘Nobody! Nobody’s doing it! Nobody knows where it’s coming from.’

Roberts appeared at Whistler’s elbow and planted the barrel of his pistol on Spake’s head like a full stop. Spake gibbered in fear, spittle flying from his desperately-working lips.

‘Fuck it,’ said Roberts. ‘Let’s just plug him. He’s lying. I bet he’s behind it all. He’s putting those things into people for some sick reason of his own. I care not what it is, but maybe the problem will go away when this rat-fuck’s brains are on the wall.’ He half-depressed the trigger button and the gun began to hum, the sound of an approaching train heard through the tracks.

Spake tried again to escape, but Whistler had her hooks in him and he couldn’t move a muscle. She pressed her face into the sweat-stinking hollow of his neck. Venom dripped onto his skin, raising it instantly into welts.

‘
It isn’t me! I don’t know what’s causing it! People are just getting sick after surgery. I cut one open and there was this
thing
in there! I hadn’t fucking put it in there!’ He was crying now, all self-respect gone, dissolved in the blue light of his tormentor’s eyes. ‘When I tried to take it out, it killed her! I’m not tradin’ any more! I don’t want to kill!’

Whistler leaned back a little, lowering Spake so that his back was on the floor. ‘Is that true?’ She asked, more to herself than to Spake. She thoughtfully released her grip on his shirt. Her talons had torn it in several places. Roberts kept the gun stuck to Spake’s sweaty head, though.

‘
Yes
!’ he cried desperately. ‘Yes! I don’t know where they come from. People just get the greenshit after surgery. It defies all fuckin’ logic! No science I know has any explanation for it. Please – you gotta believe me!’

Whistler couldn’t bear his snivelling, snot-streaked face any more. She stood up and stepped away, brow wrinkled in thought. Roberts, too, stepped back, lifting the gun, resting its stock on his shoulder. In his long coat he looked like something out of a particularly sinister Western, one of the bad guys. Spake didn’t dare move – he stayed frozen on the floor.

‘
Dis one bastard, he got sick after I done some mods for him. He’s got it, too, I’m sure of it! He’s sick. When I saw him, he looked bad, man. What could I tell him? Take two ibuprofen and lie down?’ Spake cackled madly – a sound with no humour in it. ‘He’s gonna
die
, man! He’s got the greenshit! I can’t work any more. I don’t know how to stop it.’

‘Other surgeons are seeing this as well?’

‘
Everyone’s
seeing it.’ Warily, Spake began to get to his feet. The sight of the glowering Sofi appearing round the corner of the corridor stopped him dead and he carefully settled back on the floor again.

‘Where is this man you made sick? Where does he live? I think we need to get him to someone who can take a proper look.’

‘Sure, sure, I’ll tell you.’ Spake was sickeningly eager to please. Sofi’s disgust was apparent on her face. ‘He lives in Teardown, twenty-seven Wrexham Place. His name is Vivao. He’s real sick, but it wasn’t me! I swear it wasn’t me!’

Sofi said, ‘Shall we take this freak with us? In case he’s lying?’

Spake’s face quivered in fresh terror at this prospect. Large and greasy-looking tears began to ooze down his cheeks. ‘No – no!’ he gibbered. ‘I’m not lying!’

Whistler didn’t answer Sofi – instead she asked Spake, ‘What is causing it? If you know anything, tell us now. We wouldn’t want to have to come back again.’