Beautiful Intelligence (18 page)

He took Leonora’s hand in his to guide her away from the hawkers. “You can see why epileptics are banned,” he said. He shrugged. “Warned, anyway...”

He was half surprised when she squeezed his hand back. “Where are we heading, Hound?”

“We need food. Calorific supplies, for energy. And water.
Good
water.”

He glanced over his shoulder to see Dirk trailing, a mini-bong in one hand, smoke wafting from his nostrils. He glanced at Leonora. She was looking at him.

“You alright?” he asked.

She nodded. “Just glad that we have got you.”

“Er... yeah.” He extracted his hand from her grasp, disconcerted. Leonora was not one for sentimentality. At least, that’s what he’d thought. He’d only known her a short while and savvied almost nothing of her time with Manfred.

At a Francophile mini-mart called Antoine’s Plaice he bought dried meat, Brie, nuts, packs of K-water. The water was not cheap.

“Imported from Kenya and sold to us at great profit,” he muttered.

The Berber manager grinned. “Massive fix!” he said. “Afrique getting its own back! ’Bout time too.” Then he gave Hound the finger.

Hound scowled, having assumed nobody here spoke English. “Let’s get back to whitey and three-eyes,” he said. “Man, they’d better be where I left ’em.”

He didn’t trust Zeug now. But nor did he trust himself to tell Leonora about his suspicions, in case she freaked. It was a quandary he didn’t know how to solve. His relationship with her was becoming complex now that she’d banned him from speculating.

He tried to smile. “C’mon. The worst is over. I can see you’re hating this.”

“I’m not used to it,” she replied in a small voice.

He took her hand again and led her through back alleys to the spice degrader where they’d left Yuri and Zeug. The machine, a colossal three-storey steel box, smelt of cinnamon and coke. The pair stood close to one another, with Zeug wearing shades so that his vision was restricted; earplugs in his ears. They didn’t want another freakout caused by people proximity.

“You two okay?” he grunted.

Yuri frowned, drew breath to reply, then looked away and said nothing, as if to imply his contempt. Hound shrugged. He’d had worse in his time.

When Dirk caught up he handed out their supplies, then said, “We need to move on. We’ve got a country to cross before we get to Morocco. Reckon we’ll be safe there. Maybe I can build us a new hide.”

“You had better,” Yuri remarked.

Hound tried to stop the dart of anger rising inside him, but it just popped out. “Why don’t you shut it?” he said. “Disappointed with my leadership? Fuck off then. See if I care, man.”

Zeug took a step forward and said, “Leave him alone. I don’t like you.”

“Yep, surely. We know what
you
think-“

Zeug struck without warning, with the speed of a cobra. Hound lay on the ground, winded but nothing worse. Yuri pulled Zeug back, a look of surprise – almost of horror – on his face, while Leonora uttered a scream and raised her hands to her mouth.

Hound leaped to his feet. For some reason the gesture infuriated Zeug, and with a shrug he was free of Yuri’s grip. “I don’t like you,” he repeated.

The street was empty. Hound pulled out his snub-nose. “I’ll kill you if you touch me again.”

“You will not dare use that on me,” Zeug said. “I am far too valuable.”

Hound gasped at the audacity. This was a different Zeug; almost sophisticated, albeit still unstable. Could Yuri be tweaking him to wrest control of the AIteam? He realised it wasn’t just him who could be in danger: Leonora too maybe.

He decided to take a risk. He aimed the snub-nose to the ground and fired. The ricochets echoed around them so loud everybody except Hound and Zeug ducked.

“I’ll do it if I need to,” he said.

“Hound,” Leonora breathed, staring wide-eyed at him and shaking her head.

He took a step back. Had he done enough?

Zeug leaped at him. Hound raised the snub-nose and aimed it at Zeug, but Zeug dived to one side, then stood still. Hound followed him in the sights, aimed to miss and fired again.

Zeug shrank back. Hound saw a micro-ladder on the side of the spice degrader. He ran, leaping up the ladder until he reached the platform three metres up: safe. Zeug stood at the bottom, his arms windmilling around the lowest step as if unable to decide whether or not to follow.

Yuri ran over and pulled Zeug away. Hound heard people shouting at the end of the street.

Then Zeug turned on Yuri, grabbed his head and in a single motion twisted it off.

Blood fountained. Leonora screamed. Zeug dropped the head and ran down the street.

Hound saw white-cloaked market traders approaching.

“Run!” he cried, leaping down to the street, rolling to take the impact, then jumping to his feet. “Dirk, run!” He grabbed Leonora’s hand and pulled. Ran in the opposite direction to the traders, following Zeug; but Zeug had already vanished.

He saw a stack of rotting cardboard boxes. Desperate, he pushed Leonora under them, then Dirk, glanced over his shoulder, saw a flash of white, then crouched down and pulled the largest box over his body.

Waited... heard voices, the sound of feet clattering up, then cries as they discovered the body. Some voices faded, others stayed around, talking, wailing, then fading. Silence... just distant street hubbub now. Nobody near, or so he hoped as he raised the box a centimetre and peered out.

Nobody.

“Man, we got lucky,” he said. “Never try the cardboard box trick,
never,
you hear me? Okay, out now while the coast’s clear.”

Leonora and Dirk pulled themselves out of the reeking mass of cardboard, vegetable gunk covering their clothes. Hound brushed them both down then looked up and down the street. He saw kids in the distance, an old man walking away, a couple approaching. Possible danger.

“Walk on like nothing happened,” he said. “Ain’t no street cams I can see. Next alley, we dive in. Gotta get away. Hopefully no satellite’s pinged us. My spex’ll guide us.”

“But where’s Zeug?” Leonora whispered.

“Zeug’s gone.”

“But Yuri...”

“He’s gone too! Leonora,
move.
”

He led them away, taking her hand and his, not looking back once, until a narrow alley appeared and they were able to slip into it.

Hound’s spex led them to safety. With red blips flashing north and east – police on their way – he wiggled along passages, over a roof, down a tunnel, then out through a storm drain onto a monorail track.

“There’ll be cams here,” he said. “To deter metal thieves. We’ll dodge back and head down to the freeway. Then spend the night with the bums. Ready?”

~

Leonora wept.

Dirk did not weep, but tears trickled down his face. Hound said nothing, gave nothing away, looking to either end of the bridge beneath which they skulked – mounds of boxes, metal junk, algae-sheened puddles... He said he was looking through his spex for police, for local crims. His mouth was a thin line; teeth compressed, jaw tight. Those terrible moments had shaken them all.

The AIteam was shattered. All that
work...

She felt as desolate now as she had when she realised Manfred had left her in Damascus. As she wept, memories flashed before her mind’s eye, like journo photos: that Damascus bazaar; Manfred’s white face; seeing Hound for the first time. The sense of abandonment, of shock. Then anger when the shock departed, anger that she could not express.

They called her stuck-up when she was at school because she was shy, brainy, seemingly aloof, unemotional. Well, that had changed. Now, she didn’t care – she didn’t care who saw her upset. What mattered was that she was
upset.
Something had to come
out.

Eventually, she slept, chilled, uncomfortable. Dirk muttered in his sleep. Hound sat alert every time she woke and opened her eyes, on guard like a bird of prey, peering this way and that.

They ate bread and cheese next morning, and drank water. Hound said, “We need new clothes. There’s nothing on my radar, but Yuri’s body ain’t gonna go away. Police’ll be tracking. Street cams might pick us up shopping in the souk. We need new clothes, then get
away,
and fast.”

“Clothes?” she said.

“Dat not easy when you on da run,” Dirk added.

Hound stood up, took off his trousers and jacket, reversed them, then put them back on. “It’s just you two,” he said, stroking his chin. He took out a beanie, put it on, then said, “Stay here. I’m more worried about satellite goons than anything. The police’ll have the area watched, keyed to our appearances – if they’ve seen us.” He grimaced. “Keyed nexus style. Ha! And the Japs said the nexus’d make everything so easy...”

He ran off, leaving Leonora looking at Dirk, half reassured, half scared.

“What you thinking?” he asked her.

“You?”

“I ask you first.”

She did not like his tone, so she shrugged and said, “It’s over, Dirk. The end of the AIteam.”

“And Zeug loose.” Dirk sniggered. “But he won’t last long. He’ll be caught. It’ll be on da news. Dey won’t do him for murder though ’cos dey won’t know what he is.”

“Thanks for that,” she murmured.

Dirk nodded. “Dere’ll be blood on him–”

“Enough!”

Dirk took a metal case from his pocket, pulled out a cheroot and lit it. “You ever thought Leonora,” he said, “dat anything might go wrong?”

His voice was mellow, conciliatory. She replied, “Not until the copters came in Malta.” Tears began trickling down her face. “There’s an old saying... a can of worms?”

“I know it.”

She nodded. “I understand now. We could not control him. You are right, I suppose. They’ll capture him before the day is out, then they will cut him open and analyse him.”

Dirk nodded, standing up. “I gotta go to da can. I won’t be a mo.”

Leonora nodded. Sadness took her, and her vision misted behind tears. Swifts cried as they flew through the air catching insects. She waited.

And waited. After ten minutes she began to worry. Fifteen... then she heard bootsteps, and she relaxed. But it was Hound.

At once he said, “Where’s Dirk?”

“He went to... you know.”

“Waz?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

She shrugged. “Fifteen minutes, perhaps?”

He paused, fingers tapping wristbands, and she knew he was hurtling through the nexus, plying data seas, grabbing info. “Nothing,” he said.

“Nothing?”

“I... I...”

“What?”

“I didn’t think I’d need to tag us AIteamers,” he said.

She shook her head. “What does that mean?”

“He’s gone. Can’t follow. He must’ve planned it a while.”

Leonora stood up and walked towards him, stopping when she was a metre away. Something about his manner, some micro-tic, alerted her. “That’s a lie, isn’t it?”

He took a deep breath. “Sorry. Yeah. I could trace him.”

“But there is no point.”

He shook his head. “You was right, his job’s over.” He smiled. “Man, you’d better stop paying him.”

Leonora sagged. “Yes. Can you see to that?”

Somehow, this blow was softer. Dirk had been redundant for some time, and perhaps had become argumentative because of that. She felt no surprise, only a mild sense of betrayal.

She glanced at Hound. “What about you?”

He grinned. “I’m good. A team can be two.”

“You do not want to leave me?”

“Hey, I’m good. This ain’t over yet. I wanna see what Zeug does.”

Leonora wiped tears from her eyes. “You are loyal,” she said. “You could have been a self-serving waster, but you are still here.”

“Loyalty’s an under-rated quality,” he said. “Like perseverance is.”

She sighed. “You can start speculating about Zeug again if you want to.”

He threw a package at her. “Not before you put this lot on.”

“What is it?”

“Pretty clothes. Sorry if they’re not your colours.”

~

Hound led Leonora to the freeway, which they crossed alongside a dozen Euro-vagrants: good cover. Then he led her into a warren of passages where the flats were rented out for next to nothing and nobody asked any questions. Scabby adverts in Italian, French, Spanish, German and English delineated ghettos; flags spray-painted warned and welcomed in equal measure. Africa had become a kind of promised land, but here he saw the dark side of the European dream.

Then a green dot flashed three times in the right corner of his vision.

He stopped. “Hey...”

“What is it?”

He tapped wristbands to mod the resolution of the signal, until its associated infos wrapped themselves around his spex. “Zeug,” he whispered. “Man, he’s been spotted. Wait, wait... it’s an Islamic posting service. I’m not sure now. Could be coincidence.”

“What does it say?”

“It’s some sort of reference to a superman... like, a really ripped guy. With bad skin. What I don’t understand is how the poster knows Zeug’s not human. Calls him étre personne japonais. That means Nippandroid.”

“Zeug’s bad skin could be the fake tan and dirt.”

“Exactly.” Hound considered the info. He had put out a nexus request for all of Annaba, keeping it general, hunting down references to strong men, unusual behaviour, oddities and strange speech, especially that overloaded with numbers. This was the first match to hit the accordance level.

“Well?” She sounded excited.

“We definitely need to investigate this one. I think Zeug will move to escape
people
– maybe he’ll want to find camels. But he could still be in the city.”

“Where does the signal locate him?”

Hound applied the virt-compass, then walked to the next crossroads and orientated himself. He pointed. “There. North, two three-twenty metres. Maybe twenty minutes walking. The nexus’ll guide us.”

They walked at slow pace through the dingy alleys of the locale, emerging on to a main shopping street, dodging through the solbuses to get to the other side, then walking on. Faux
-
crippled traders tried to stop them, but Hound brushed them aside without a word, leading the way, with Leonora slipping through in his wake. Then they were out of the warren, before them a power station, a hulk of metal and brick, grey on grey beneath rain-threatening sky.