Cronix (41 page)

“Hold on tight, Mr Oriente. We're going over a cliff.”

“What ...” He was about to say more she swung the steering wheel sharp left and the Rolls Royce veered off the road, over a grass verge and off into the abyss. Oriente's words vanished into a halting yell which made his hostess grin with childish pleasure. The car simply floated up, into the air.

“I know, I'm sorry,” she said. “Cheap trick we play on first-timers. There's just so few of you left now, I couldn't resist.”

Still breathless, Oriente peered over the side of the car. The lake was receding fast, the sailboats like puffs of air on the blue. The car was flying upwards, towards the distant mountains.

“We headed to the hills?” he said. She shook her head and pointed at a distant cloudbank, fluffy and alluring on the horizon.

“That's the gateway to the Five Islands,” she said. “We'll have to pull the roof up, though, the clouds get a little wet.”

The cloud enveloped them in wispy white cover, then closed around them like a wall. White turned to solid grey and the sky around them grew dark, almost solid. It was impossible to tell how fast they were going, but Oriente was sure they had slowed down. He started in his seat when a large silver fish swam across the windscreen.

“What the hell? When did we enter the sea?”

“The cloudbank congeals at a certain height into water,” said Dolly. “We'll break the surface in about ten minutes.”

As promised, the car emerged on to the surface of a rolling ocean a few minutes later. Dolly flicked the wipers on and lowered the roof: a fresh sea breeze whipped Oriente's hair, seagulls screeched overhead. They were floating in a channel, on either side of which rose a cliff face towering a thousand feet or more. The cliff edge to the left was fringed with tropical trees and jungle creepers. In the distance, mountains glowered blue in the distance.

Dolly followed his gaze.

“That's Island Two,” she said, steering the car-boat in the direction of the other cliff face. “Don't want to be going there.”

“Why not?” said Oriente. The car was in the lee of the huge cliff now, and he could make out a jetty among the rocks.

“Because Island Two is full of some of the most dangerous criminals in history.” She looked round to register his surprise, and was gratified by what she saw. “You see, in the chaos of the Exodus, any number of evil people managed to slip through the gates of eternity. Warlords, mass murderers, terrorists, drug barons. Politicians,” she grinned. “People who had caused massive suffering back on Earth. They changed their identities and created new lives for themselves up here in heaven, often indulging their nasty vices in their own private worlds, since a lot of them had amassed a great deal of capital. It’s one of Tilloch’s hobbies to hunt them down and bring them here, to his 'nature reserve' on Island Two, at least for one life cycle. He’s quite the moral crusader, in his own weird way.”

“And do what with them?”

“Oh, dispense a little retroactive justice,” she said. They were pulling up to the landing at the base of the cliff, and Oriente could see a tunnel mouth open behind it.

“Sounds brutal.” Oriente said. “Not to mention illegal.”

“Yes to both.” Dolly pulled up by the wooden jetty and they leapt out. A wizened tree was growing out of a split rock at the foot of the cliff, and on a low branch overhanging the surging waves, a grey-furred ape gnawed an orange fruit.

“But then, the criminals would have trouble complaining to the authorities afterwards without unmasking themselves, so they generally don’t. And while they are here, Tilloch has come up with a fiendishly clever device to make them pay for their sins.”

She explained as she led him up worn stone steps to the tunnel entrance that her grandfather used a refinement of consciousness-blocking, the family stock in trade, to allow the criminals to believe they were in fact still on Earth, their old mortal selves, somehow abducted by an all-powerful organization and left on a rugged, jungly island to survive as best they could. Often, they were told they were being filmed and broadcast live to a global broadcast.

“A kind of reality show-cum-rough justice,” was how she put it. “Makes them even more self-conscious, that their peers might somehow be watching. Ultimately harmless, though.”

Inside the entrance of the tunnel, a brass elevator door slid open. They stepped in, and Dolly pressed the top button.

The elevator opened on to a broad stone rampart, the parapet of a ramshackle Spanish fort overlooking the gulf between the two islands. Oriente looked down at Island One: a neat Arcadia of meadows grazed by deer, placid lakes and shady groves. A Greek temple peeked out above a cypress grove on top of a distant knoll.

Below the parapet where they stood, a wooden drawbridge crossed the narrow abyss to Island Two. The bridge was up, and the sea churned far below. On the far side was a clearing, traversed by a muddy trail that led off into thick jungle. Rising above the green canopy, Oriente saw a jagged mountain wreathed in smoky clouds. He had an odd feeling he had seen this place somewhere before.

“A lot of people sense that,” said Dolly, leaning out over the parapet. “That's because Tilloch modeled it on Skull Island from the original King Kong movie. And it has its dinosaurs and monsters, too. There’s even a Kong out there somewhere, though I haven’t seen him for a while. I don’t think he likes dictators and war criminals much.”

“Jesus.” Oriente scanned the forest for any sign of life, but could only see a flock of parrots skimming the treetops. “And who are the criminals out there?”

“It varies,” she said. “Depending on who we can find. But we’ve had a variety. Some of them, the really bad ones, have been brought here several times, just for good measure. There was Gregor Suarez, the most infamous Muerte terrorist who disabled the soul poles at the final Dover Lemming festival. Thousands of people died. And then there was President Bush and his entire war cabinet” Tilloch released them at the same times as the surviving Al Qaeda leadership…”

A man's voice interrupted her. Oriente span round to see a slender young man with blond hair and pale skin, a slightly Asiatic cast to his features. Not beautiful, exactly, but there was something utterly entrancing about his bearing, a quiet collection of subtle forces.

“Mr Oriente,” he stepped forward, nimble as an acrobat, hand outstretched. “Such an honor to meet you. I am Tilloch Shustra. Welcome to Five Islands.”

Oriente shook his hand. For a moment they stared into each other’s eyes, and Oriente felt like his soul was being weighed.

“I see Dolly’s been giving you the tour,” he said. “I do hope you’ll be comfortable here.”

“As long as I’m staying on this island,” said Oriente, trying to break the snake-charmer hold of the Tamagochiite’s eyes. Tilloch smiled

“Don’t worry about that. We are all friends here.” He had a resonant, though not deep voice.

“Although if you like, I can give you an air tour to see some of the more notorious residents of Skull Island.”

“Why did you put the island here? Right next to your own private paradise?”

“Ah,” said Tilloch. “A philosophical experiment. How can you measure heaven if there isn’t a little frisson of hell to add some spice? You enhance the positive by proximity to the negative. You feel safer here, knowing there are monsters and killers just over there, unable to cross the narrow chasm. Our guests in the nature reserve sometimes come to the bridge here and shout across the abyss. Beg to get out, rant and rage, fire an arrow at me if I’m out taking the air on the walls. I saw Joseph Kony out there just last week.”

He seemed to be addressing Dolly by this point, like a bird-watching expert sharing his latest tropical sightings. The young woman raised her eyebrows. “Again? What is this, his fourth time?”

“Joseph Kony?” Oriente repeated. “I know that name…”

“He was the head of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, kidnapped thousands of children and turned them into his own personal soldiers to fight for the holy spirit. Used them to mutilate, rape and kill their own families.” Tilloch’s voice was matter of fact. “He’s been back a few times now. And I doubt this will be his last visit. Though for him, each one feels like the first time.”

He smiled apologetically, as though he was forgetting his duties as a host. “But please, enough of that for now, Mr Oriente. May I offer you some refreshment?”

He led the way to a large, airy room that overlooked the parkland of Tilloch’s private island. Dolly uncorked a bottle of red, and Oriente could barely suppress a moan of pleasure as he tasted it. His host nodded in satisfaction.

“Another little hobby of mine. I have been searching for the perfect flavors of wines and foods for years, replicating and improving upon what was indigenous to Earth. Of course, never having been there myself, I am told by Eternal friends that I have a palette less constrained by the memory of the old flavors than they do. But I of course cannot judge.”

“You’ve never been to Earth?” Oriente accepted the tray of canapés his host offered, and again gasped with almost embarrassing pleasure at the subtle infusion of flavors, hints of infinite possibilities, that crept across his palate. Tilloch once again smiled with indulgent pride.

“Feel free to get down on all fours and howl like a dog,” he said. “I believe in freedom of expression here. No standing on ceremony.”

He gave a charming smile. “And in answer to your query, no, I have never been to Earth. Pegomas went there once, and hated it. Dingy, was how he described it. Didn’t like the taste of oxygen either, which I'd never really thought about, and he absolutely loathed the smell of his own fleshy body. He suffers from a condition that is a kind of inverse to your own fear of coming to the Orbiters. A squeamishness about flesh, of being a mass of tubes and oozing waste products. Many Tamagochiites suffer from it. Even some humans, now they’ve been away so long. Have you ever read de Vitulan? He’s an excellent poet of ours who's written extensively about such feelings.”

Oriente shook his head, no: he had never even realized there were such things as Tamagochiite poets. The only ones he'd ever really heard of were the unfortunate children that Nurse Shareen had been caught peddling to criminal gangs back on Earth.

Oriente could have happily sat there eating and drinking all night, listening to his host’s soothing voice and not wondering about the whys and wherefores of what had happened to him. But he knew he had to resist that temptation.

“Your note, back at the hotel. It said that I might get to return. To see Lola again. I take it from that she's still alive down there?”

Tilloch pinched the crease of his trousers and straightened his leg. “Dolly, be a darling and get the fire going would you?”

Dolly, who had been lounging on a stone window seat, leafing through a glossy magazine, sprang to her feet and put some logs in the fire. It roared quickly into life, the flames throwing their warmth on the hearth rug and flagstones. Mission accomplished, she made her excuses and left.

Tilloch nodded slowly. “Yes, by a miracle, Lola is still alive. Not many people are left down there, and those who are, are mostly scattered. You may have heard that it became impossible for the people in the Orbiters to download back to Earth, or the people on Earth to return here. Something overrode the fail-proof system, though even now the technicians are still not sure what is was.”

He smiled, as though he alone might know what the glitch was.

“At the same time, that 'something' was activating the stored bodies in the reanimation stations, until the sheer weight of Cronix led to the collapse of all major urban centers. Pretty bloody, as you might imagine.”

“Jesus Christ.” Oriente rubbed his face. “And Lola? Where is she?”

“There is a Norman castle not far from where you used to live. A place called Arundel. A small group of survivors fought their way out of London and have been holding out there for the last few years. They've run out of ammunition for most of their weapons, but have managed to hold off the Cronix with bows and spears and sheer determination. Lola is among them.”

Oriente was dumbfounded. It seemed absurd to think of Lola, his beautiful, ditzy nurse, penned up in some fetid medieval stronghold, surrounded by a mass of vacant killers. “Why…” He had trouble voicing what he was thinking.

“Why does she keep on going, when she could easily have ended her messy existence down on Earth?” Tilloch already knew what was on his mind, it seemed. “Because she has a child.”

Oriente gaped at him. “Mine?”

“No. The girl is seven years old. The daughter of Quintus Swaincroft.”

“Quin.” Oriente stared at his clenched fists. “So he survived?”

Tilloch shook his head. Oriente found it impossible to read his features, to tell if he was at all affected by all this, or merely enjoying an interesting anecdote over aperitifs with a diverting new guest.

“He survived the first years. He was with Lola until they evacuated from London. For some reason, he chose not to leave with her and the others. Went back into London. I have not been able to ascertain why, and we lost track of him. But Lola has the child she always wanted. She will never leave her. And of course the girl can never be chipped. She will die down there.”

Tilloch lapsed into silence. Oriente tried to imagine what Lola must have gone through: her dream fulfilled, only to warp into a nightmare from which she could never escape.