Xenoform (45 page)

A tugging at the back of his shirt made him yelp with surprise and almost drop the nail gun. He whirled round and it was his daughter. Her eyes were wide and glassy in the shadows. She had the strap of the green bag across one small shoulder, so that its body hung against her hip. She was, as instructed, fully clothed and shod. Her thin chest was hitching as she breathed and he could see that her panic was barely contained. Was he really thinking about taking this fragile, precious creature and going out there? Making some sort of dash for safety?
Where
? Maybe it would be better to barricade themselves inside the house. He could rip up the antique realwood floorboards and nail them across the windows and doors. The monsters would hear him do it, though. They were close-by. Would they attack the house?

‘Iaella, honey...’ he said, caught in indecision. ‘Er...’

‘Are they still out there, Daddy?’ she asked, so quietly that he barely heard her. Her lower lip was quivering minutely.

‘Yeah, Ella. Still there. When did you first see them? They must have come quick, right?’

‘I looked one time and they weren’t there. I looked again and they were there. That green stuff looks like it’s growing, Daddy.’

‘
I know, honey,’ Stevin said. Inside, his mind was whirling –
What do we do? What do we do? Oh no oh no we’re going to die! What are those things? What do we do? I’ve got my daughter here! What do I do with her? What if those things come in here?
– and he had to actually clench his jaw to keep from verbalising his terror. He turned and parted the curtain again. The outside of the window was filmed with green slime. He watched, grimly fascinated, as it seemed to thicken and coagulate before him. The window scrolled, instantly covered over again, scrolled again. Textures slowly manifested in the greenshit, things rising from the surface of the goop like germinating seeds. The slime became thick enough to completely block the view from the window. Stevin reached out one hand to touch the glasspex, feeling dreamy and unreal.

‘Daddy! No!’ hissed Iaella in what was probably the closest to a shout that she dared under the circumstances.

Stevin stayed his hand and shook his head as if coming to his senses. He realised that somehow,
somehow
, the green goo was on the
inside
of the window. He recoiled in shock and horror. He had almost put his hand in the stuff, would have done if Iaella hadn’t stopped him. He shuddered to think of what that weird, mobile slime would feel like on his fingers.

‘Thanks, honey,’ he said in a weak voice. And then he smelled the stench of the greenshit coming through the breached glasspex. It took the breath out of him, doubling him over – a stench so foul as to be almost a physical force. ‘Oh no...’ he managed to gag, spluttering.

Iaella was covering her mouth with one hand, her cheeks bulging behind it as she, too, struggled not to actually be sick. ‘What’s happening, Daddy?’ she sobbed.

Stevin went to her and wrapped her in his arms, squeezing her small frame briefly. ‘I don’t know, Ella. Something nobody has seen before.’ He spat onto the floor, trying to rid himself of the noxious smell that had become, repulsively, a taste in his mouth. ‘Sorry,’ he said, absurdly under the circumstances.

‘Are we going?’ she asked, crying hard now. ‘Are we going to go out there, Daddy? That’s what the bag’s for, isn’t it? It’s the survival kit.’

‘Yes, honey, I think we have to,’ Stevin said. The nail gun was cold and reassuring in his hand, talismanic. ‘Pass me the bag – it’s heavy.’

‘I’m scared!’ she whimpered, but she handed him the bag.

‘Me too, honey, me too.’ He glanced towards the front door where the green stain was now spreading down the wall and onto the floor. Something large and slow was moving outside the door, right on the step – something was slowly brushing against the door itself, gently tensing it against its frame and relaxing again. They both stared wide-eyed at it for a terrified moment. ‘Right now, okay?’ Stevin said, shaking Iaella once, smartly, by the shoulders. She looked into his eyes, frightened but now composed. He admired her immensely in that moment, loved her with a desperate intensity, felt terrifyingly responsible for her life. She nodded once and took his free hand in one of hers.

‘Not this way. Out the back.’

‘Okay.’ Her voice barely a whisper, her racing pulse visible in her neck.

‘Go!’

He moved to the back door ahead of her, checking constantly to make sure she was right on his heels – nothing to worry about there, the girl was practically adhered to him. He unlocked the door, one-handed, nail gun in the other, and they slid out into the night. Strange, animal cries were on the air, a crackle of gunfire like distant static. The road to the south looked clear, still normal, and they headed that way, running in the shadows. The vile smell was thick in their throats, cloying, sickening. The green haze hung over the city like smoke, but it was clearly not smoke any more – shapes whirled within it, hypnotic, interplays of light and dark that looked solid at times, as if things were moving in the sky, obscured. The moon scudded along, bright above the clouds like a boat on a diseased sea.

Clustered just inside the garage door in the basement they looked a grim and motley bunch. They were lit only by Ari’s headlight – Tec had killed the gennie to conserve fuel while they were away – and in the gloom their forms looked strange and misshapen, distorted by the addition of various pieces of massive hardware. The hangar behind them was conspicuously empty, dark and cavernous.

‘Okay, you guys,’ said Whistler, gesturing for quiet. ‘Simple. We’re gonna work on a shoot first, ask questions never basis here. Anyone with an unfamiliar weapon be bloody careful about area-of-effect. That means you, Sofi. Those things are liable to splash a bit, okay?’

‘Someone’s getting splashed today, that’s for fuckin’ sure,’ answered Sofi, a curious half-smile on her lips. ‘But none of you guys.’ She inspected her borrowed plasma thrower admiringly. The weapon was as thick as her thigh.

‘RPC HQ is in west Med Hab, so it’s possible that the authorities are still in control there, especially around Resperi’s base. As they’re closer to the site of the barge crash, it’s also possible that things are a lot worse there than here.’

‘Expect the unexpected, in other words,’ suggested Tec.

‘Be prepared, in other words,’ corrected Whistler.

‘Yeah, dumb-ass,’ said Sofi. ‘You can’t expect the unexpected. ’S a dichotomy, ennit?’

‘No,’ replied Tec as if speaking to a particularly irritating child. ‘It’s a contradiction in terms. A dichotomy is a division into two. Dumb-ass yourself.’

‘Careful, Tec,’ said Sofi menacingly, hefting the thrower. ‘These things can splash a bit.’

‘Piss off,’ he told her amiably.

‘Right, you two,’ interjected Whistler, judging that this had gone far enough now. ‘You back in the room?’ They both nodded. ‘Debian, you’ve been very quiet. Any questions?’

Debian could think of about a million questions but none of them currently seemed suitable. He wanted to get back in the net urgently, and was concerned that he should have accepted Whistler’s offer to stay by himself after all. Currently everything else seemed merely a distraction from that goal, and part of him hated himself for feeling like that. But what was he to do? That same part of him genuinely wanted to help these people – Whistler in particular, who had risked the safety of her base to take him in. She had a compelling nature that was hard to define – that same characteristic that made a good leader – and that went far beyond her mere physical attractiveness. And now that their contract had been ended her team were at risk from any police force who felt like chancing their arm. Not to mention any risk from Hex’s people – Cyberlife, Alcubierre, or whoever they might really be. The AI knew where Debian was – would it supply his enemies that information? Would it for some reason be obliged to? If so, then why not simply send a robot to kill him? On reflection, he thought he could trust it for now.

Whistler’s team had given him a weapon to carry – a simple, non-computerised submachine gun. He had never held a submachine gun before. Apart from the incident with Hex he had never held
any
gun before. It hung under his left arm on a diagonal strap, its weight unfamiliar and its proximity to his body disturbingly sinister in his mind, as if it was tainting his aura somehow.
Two sides
. Was this when he must choose? If Whistler’s team was one side, then what was the other? The AI? What did it want from him? He felt like collapsing to the floor, where he would lie with his eyes shut and weep until either sleep or death took him. Instead, he said simply, ‘I’m fine.’

Whistler studied him closely for a moment, her eyes like surgically-sharp chips of ice.
She’s reading my mind
, Debian thought. ‘Okay,’ she said at last. ‘Stay close to me or Tec. That thing is a simple spray-and-pray affair. Anything over a hundred metres, don’t bother, even if other people are firing. Roland, Ari – you sure you still want to join us?’

‘Sure, pretty lady,’ said Roland. ‘Sure I’m sure.’ His tone was light but his expression was all business. His face was weathered and hawkish – he looked like the spectre of death made flesh, the ridiculous rocket launcher his scythe.

‘And I don’t get a choice in the matter,’ said Ari, but it didn’t sound bitter about this.

‘Thanks, guys,’ said Whistler quietly to the old man and his machine. ‘We would have lost both Spider and the van without your information. Really, you’ve done more than enough for us already. If you wanted out now I wouldn’t blame you.’

‘Stop saying that, will you?’ asked Roland. ‘And let’s get going. Ain’t getting any better out there, y’know.’

Whistler nodded to Tec, who stepped forward with a large cross-shaped spanner which he inserted into an exposed panel beside the huge outer door, fumbling briefly in the dark to slot it home. He turned it, using both hands, gradually cranking the door open. The brooding blackness of the car park inched into view.

‘These are on a mechanical delay,’ he said. ‘When I take the spanner out we all need to hoof it.’ He looked around to make sure everybody was with him and then took the key out. Debian wondered briefly how they would get back in with Mother off-line, the power out and nobody home. Presumably they had some plan for this. They slunk outside, Ari’s headlight lancing across the crumbling grey architecture, making shadows stagger across every surface.

They moved cautiously, Whistler with her smartgun held in front of her, sniffing the darkness for targets. The others kept pace behind her, Tec and Sofi moving to flank her, providing as wide an angle of cover as possible while maintaining visual contact. Debian, feeling foolish and out of place, trailed along behind Whistler, heeding her instruction to stay close. He resisted the urge to raise the submachine gun, whatever his nerves were telling him. He was achingly aware that if he did have to fire the damn thing he would need a lot more space and a lot less opportunity for friendly fire than he had in the confined car park, where the configuration of the pillars sometimes funnelled the team into fairly close proximity despite the huge area of the space.

Ari stayed back, roving from left to right, trying to cover all angles with its light, moving with a birdlike, skittish speed. Whistler had to silence a little voice at the back of her mind that kept asking what they would do if Ari were to fall victim to the AI virus suddenly and attack them or otherwise betray them. She wondered how dangerous the thing could be if it wanted to. Roland stalked along in the middle of the pack, looking for all the world like a man out for a bracing recreational walk. The massive rocket launcher seemed to float along almost as if carrying him, barrel cocked to the ceiling.

They moved towards the exit onto street level in this cautious, nervous manner. Something howled loudly from nearby – a long and mindless note
–
and the noise echoed round the car park such that they couldn’t tell where it had originated from. They glanced around fearfully and continued.

Tec and Sofi flattened themselves against the edges of the wide doorway, peering round into the street. They nodded and Whistler slowly led the party outside. The night air smelled repulsive, a thick organic smell that Whistler knew by now to be the stink of the greenshit. She had smelled it first in Vivao’s flat. Green flakes were falling, settling on all surfaces. The substance seemed to be thickening into shapes here and there, as if things were rising from it. In some places, thick pools or patches of jungly green sprouted from the road, glistening wetly in the low light. The party surveyed the scene with trepidation.

‘What is that stuff in the air?’ asked Debian. ‘Is it safe to touch it, do you think?’

Whistler shook her head but Roland said, ‘Sure, I come here all the way on foot. Damn shit stings a little but it brushes right off. Don’t seem to have done us any harm, least not short-term. Remember those hats and filters? Everyone got them?’ Nods all round. ‘Time to use them, I think.’ Everyone did as he said. It was clear that the hats would shield most of their heads and faces although they were hardly a completely hermetic protective solution. Debian pulled his collar up high to shield his neck, too. With his chin tucked into his jacket he was pretty well covered.