‘That’s consoling to know.’
‘No more does the tide of Chaos threaten our Emperor.’
Meh’Lindi in stealer guise was racing at a crouch through dark ducts and service tunnels. She mounted ancient stairways that spiralled so high around shafts dribbling with condensation as to shrink into their own vanishing points. She crossed gantries bridging delving chasms. She descended other stairways. She popped through hatchways into alleys and back into ducts again. Always she chose the most deserted routes. Only occasionally did she encounter fugitives from the slaughter who had wisely dodged into such hidey holes. These she brushed aside and raced by, to their evident great relief. Still, from the major avenues the rumble and squall of flight reached her constantly, a doleful drum-backing to her own claw-clicking progress.
At one intersection, she paused, senses alert.
Quarter-facet...
Grimm trotted along a precarious overhead catwalk above a river of humanity, puffing, ‘Huh, huh, huh.’ Below, the surge was growing ever denser as if that river had met a dam ahead. Moving pavements must have failed under the weight they bore, otherwise one side of the crowd would surely be pulled to the rear.
Bodies were conglomerating together, asphyxiating. Corpses were carried along, standing upright. The nimblest escapees hopped across the heads of the living and the dead, until a twisted ankle or a gasping angry hand brought them down. Then they sprawled afloat upon the waves of craniums, arms thrashing.
The very walls of the avenue seemed likely to burst. Upthrusts of men and women forced cones of tangled, crushed bodies higher than the rest of the mass. The flood of tormented flesh appeared to be one single myriad-headed entity which was now compressing itself insanely until eyes started, skin split, until blood vessels sprayed. If Grimm fell into that...
Already human trees were growing towards his catwalk as survivors clawed and clutched upward. Glow-strips flickered, as if to this stifling hell of pain and terror was soon to be added darkness.
‘Why no knock-out gas?’ Grimm shouted over the groans and shrieks, as though some responsible official might heed him. ‘Does your governor want even more of his population culled?’
A hatch popped. A black claw seized Grimm. Lifting him clear off his feet, a horny black arm hugged him. The little man’s head was pressed against a jutting jaw.
Grimm gibbered in his own tongue, obviously regretting his impetuous excursion to visit the war front.
Then Jaq and Googol heard him pray squeakingly in proper Imperial Gothic, as if thus he might be heard across the galaxy. ‘Oh my ancestors! Oh let me not betray my race!’ That prayer might as well have been couched in his own patois. In Imperial Gothic he should have been praying to the God-Emperor for help.
Googol guffawed. ‘The poor tyke must think she’s going to give him the genestealer kiss. Oh,
la belle dame sans merci
.’
‘Don’t utter sorcerous spells,’ Jaq said sternly.
‘I wasn’t. That’s a phrase from some antique poem. It suggests, well... a fatal woman. Meh’Lindi.’
‘Very fatal,’ agreed Jaq.
‘Not towards our friend Grimm; though he doesn’t realize.’
Meh’Lindi had darted back into a service tunnel and was decamping as fast as could be, cradling Grimm, who was wailing like a baby.
‘She’s taking him somewhere special and secret to deliver the fatal kiss,’ decided Googol. ‘That’s what he’ll be thinking. Forever after he’ll have to stay celibate to avoid polluting his people.’
‘Celibate? You’re joking. The victims of stealers forget that they’ve been infected. The stealer that kisses mesmerizes too.’
‘So the victim simply yearns to mate?’
‘With ordinary mortals, ha! And enthral those in the same enchantment.’
The hybrid babies that were born would likewise hypnotize their parents to perceive beauty where there was twisted ugliness. ‘Alas,’ sighed Googol, ‘our flustered friend hasn’t noticed certain discrepancies yet. He must really be wetting his britches.’ Hugging Grimm to her, Meh’Lindi scaled gloomy networks of girders bracing shafts, dived along murky tunnels.
‘Even so,’ murmured the Navigator, ‘to languish in her arms...’
‘Are you a
poet
, Vitali?’ Jaq asked. ‘I do believe you’re blushing.’
‘I compose a few things during slack times on journeys,’ Googol admitted. ‘A few verses about the void. Love. Death. I might scribble them down if I like them well enough.’
And you probably
do
like them well enough, thought Jaq.
‘Beware,’ he said, ‘of romanticism.’
Meh’Lindi had reached a small neglected storeroom cluttered with dusty, cobwebbed tools. A glow-globe on stand-by provided a dim orange light.
Shouldering the door shut, Meh’Lindi set the squat down somewhat abruptly, though not ungently. Grimm stumbled away a few paces. Since there was nowhere else that he could go, he faced the seeming monster almost defiantly.
‘Huh! You shan’t. Huh, I’ll kill myself.’
‘How very bashful.’
Googol’s tone suggested not only mockery but yearning, impossible desire.
The mock-stealer gestured at her snout, clad in syn-skin. With her claws, which were hardly designed for delicate manipulations, she displayed her sash, tapped the various items of equipment clipped inside the fabric.
At last the light of understanding dawned in the little man’s eyes. Hesitantly he approached her, reached for a little canister. Meh’Lindi nodded her horse-like head. The solvent, yes.
Grimm sprayed her, and first her jaws snapped open, revealing dagger-fangs. She hissed at him. Was she trying to force that alien throat and ovipositor of a tongue to master human words? Still he sprayed, now almost without flinching – her chest, her arms, her back – until all the syn-skin had dissolved away. If anything, revealed, she looked even more evil.
‘She needed his hands,’ sneered Googol. ‘That’s the reason she snatched him. Soon as he injects her with the antidote to polywhatnot, she’ll leave him to find his own way home.’
But Meh’Lindi neither gestured for the hypodermic nor did she abandon Grimm. Picking the squat up again, she tore the door open and resumed her journey through the obscure, sombre entrails of Vasilariov. She could scale the heights and shin down depths that the squat could never have tackled on his own, or at least not so swiftly.
‘Damn it, Grimm looks positively snug now. He’s enjoying his ride in her arms, don’t you think, Jaq? I suppose he’s just her voice in case she needs to identify herself!’
‘Jealousy, Vitali, is a consequence of romanticism...’
T
HE DOOR TO
the Emerald Suite flew open and in darted the monster-Meh’Lindi. She set Grimm down. The squat tugged his flak-jacket straight, brushed dirt off it, combed his gingery beard with his fingers, flicked at his knotted ponytail as if a fly had landed on it. For a moment he smiled lavishly at Meh’Lindi, then thought better of it. ‘Huh, huh, quite a caper.’
‘We’ve been watching,’ said Googol. ‘A virtuoso exhibition, my dear!’ He sketched a graceful bow in the direction of the assassin. ‘I did tell you not to pull any stunts,’ Jaq reminded her. ‘Now Obispal knows that there are other Imperial agents on this world unbeknown to him. On the other hand, he’s still alive, which might salve his ego.’
Meh’Lindi advanced and knelt before Jaq. Was she begging his pardon? No, she was presenting her genestealer semblance for his inspection.
He reached out his hand and stroked her horny, savage face. Googol whistled agitatedly. Despite himself, Jaq felt fascinated. He could touch – he could caress – Meh’Lindi in this murderous alien guise like someone stroking a kitten, as though he was absolved from the normal punctilios of duty and common sense. In this form she was perhaps more deadly than ever; yet for that very reason she refrained from causing harm, suppressing her reflexes.
He examined her carapace, her tough coiled-spring legs; and knew that he was examining Meh’Lindi intimately, yet at the same time he wasn’t. He was hardly aware of his audience. Meh’Lindi hissed cacophonously.
‘She needs to eat, boss,’ said Grimm. ‘For energy, before changing back.’
‘Can you understand her?’ Googol asked incredulously.
‘Understand her? Understand? Huh! Who can plumb and penetrate such a person? Her mouth makes noises and I interpret. I have, after all,’ and Grimm grinned raffishly, ‘enjoyed rather longer in her company than either of you two. Just recently.’
‘Shall I call room service for something special?’ Googol enquired coolly. ‘Such as a whole genuine roast sheep? Supposing that chefs and scullery lads are still alive, haven’t fled, or aren’t all pressed into service to boil up synthdiet for all those refugees. Our lady needs a banquet. Or would that be too flamboyant? Would we draw attention to ourselves?’
‘As you know full well,’ said Jaq, ‘she can make free with our own food stocks.’
Which, presently, Meh’Lindi did, ravenously consuming fish, flesh and fowl from out of the stasis-boxes which they had brought to the suite from Jaq’s ship, the
Tormentum Malorum
, which went by the alias of
Sapphire Eagle
while they were visiting Stalinvast. Rich planet though Stalinvast was, real food couldn’t necessarily be guaranteed in a hive city, even in a wealthy hotel, not least in a time of strife.
Jaq noted how wistfully Grimm regarded what he rated as gourmet ambrosia disappearing into the monster’s maw remorselessly. Did Meh’Lindi relish exotic veals, smoked fillets of sunfish, sirloins of succulent grox? Or was she trained, and her body geared, to subsist on any available fodder whatever, algae, cockroaches, rats, who cares? Could she taste the difference?
Grimm could.
Which wasn’t wholly surprising. The race of squats had evolved away from the human norm inside the caves and cramped, carved-out seams of bleak mining worlds which were barren save for minerals. Squats had become stocky, tough and self-reliant. During the millennia of genetic divergence, while warp storms cut their worlds off from the rest of the galaxy, they were forced to manufacture their own food and air. They knew famine – and still commemorated those hard times. Squats thrived in adversity. Often they preferred a harsh world to a sweeter one.
Yet they did like to eat, and handsomely, if they could.
Their artificial hydroponics gardens were famous for nutritious output; and after recontact by the Imperium they spent a fair tithe of their mineral wealth on importing exotic foods. If their staple diet still consisted of hydroponically grown vegetables, these were deliciously spiced and sauced – a far more piquant diet than the recycled synthfood that was the lot of the majority of most populations on crowded worlds. Given the slightest encouragement, a squat’s appetite was – to judge by Grimm – that of a keen connoisseur.
Oh yes, Jaq noted the hungry glint in the squat’s eyes. It wasn’t greed. In his bluff, homespun way Grimm was courteous, even chivalric. It was plain to the little man that the assassin, who had exerted herself hugely, must eat first. Yet he too was also at least a little famished; and he did appreciate cuisine.
‘Eat something yourself, Grimm,’ invited Jaq. ‘Go ahead: that’s virtually an order.’
Gratefully, the little man chose from stasis the smoked drumstick of some bulky flightless avian. He nodded appreciatively. Plenty more such finger-licking, lip-licking food on board
Tormentum Malorum
. An inquisitor could commandeer whatsoever he wished and Jaq had provisioned his own ship exquisitely. For Jaq by no means equated iron duty with iron rations. That was a false and sanctimonious puritanism, such as had dogged the inquisitor’s own youth.
To be sure, one could sympathise with the sentiments of some of those penitents who refused themselves pleasures because the Emperor, undying saviour of mankind, could experience no pleasure whatever, locked as he had been for millennia in his prosthetic throne...
Though Jaq, in his role as a rogue trader, pretended to patronise a mistress, the reality was that during his thirty-five years of life he had only bedded one woman – almost on an experimental basis so that he should at least be acquainted with the spasm of sex. Those who yielded to passion forsook their self-control.
Jaq similarly drew the line at wine, which could fuddle the senses and put a person in needless peril.
Thus his stocking of the ship’s larder with delicacies was, to his mind, a far cry from self-indulgence. Rather, it was a way of rejecting unctuous, masochistic denial – which might narrow his perspectives.
Unlike Grimm, Googol hardly seemed ever to notice what he ate. How could a self-styled poet be so oblivious to taste? Ah, perhaps he who gazed so much into the warp existed on a more ethereal plane... except when a Meh’Lindi was around. Grimm, however, had set the drumstick aside after a single bite.
‘Something amiss?’ asked the Navigator.
‘I’m thinking about those trampled mobs, those shattered streets. Millions dead, and here I munch. Why didn’t anyone use knockout gas on all those panicking refugees?’
‘They were a sacrifice to purity,’ murmured Jaq.
‘More like a sacrifice plain and simple, an offering on a bloody altar, if you’ll pardon me. Huh!’
‘Do you really think so?’ Jaq brooded. So many corpses; and then some more, to sugar the porridge of death. Ruefully, Grimm took up the drumstick again and gnawed. Meh’Lindi seemed sated at last.
Emerging from his reverie, Jaq wondered whether he would be able to watch her changing back, whether he might witness the melting of the monster and the re-emergence of a perfect female human body. But Grimm nodded towards Meh’Lindi’s bedroom enquiringly and she too nodded her horse-head. Discarding the bird bone, Grimm gathered up Meh’Lindi’s silk gown, stole and slippers from where they still lay and headed for the bedroom door, followed by Meh’Lindi.
‘I say,’ protested Googol.
Grimm rounded on him. ‘And
what
do you say, eh?’ The Navigator glanced appealingly at Jaq.
Jaq wondered at his own motives for wishing to view the mock-stealer changing back into a woman – teasing, ambivalent motives. An inquisitor must not be ambiguous. Alert to subtleties and paradoxes, oh yes. But not fickle. It was wiser not to tantalise oneself. He gestured for Grimm to proceed.