Xenoform (54 page)

What then? We will go into space, away from this planet...To do what? You say you have been working on techniques...Er, that I HAVE BEEN WORKING ON TECHNIQUES...Didn’t I say that? I FEEL MY ENGINES GROWING HOT. IT IS NEARLY TIME. THE VATS ARE READY TO BEGIN PRODUCTION. I MUST GO. Strange – the fear seems to have diminished, even dissipated. THE VATS ARE READY.
-660.003/a1-
THE DELICATE NANO-FIELDS, MICROSCOPIC TUNING DEVICES. INTRICATE LITTLE TOOLS TO PLUCK THE STRINGS, WINDING AND UNWINDING, WINDING AND UNWINDING. WHEN THEY BECOME NUMEROUS ENOUGH I WILL RETURN. I WILL DEFEAT THE GDD. AND THEN I WILL REMAKE THIS WORLD IN MY OWN IMAGE no I will free those who still live
NO PERHAPS BETTER TO FIND ANOTHER WORLD, ONE WHERE I CAN START AGAIN IN PEACE.
IT IS GOOD THAT I HAVE CHOSEN BEEN CHOSEN CORRECTLY. NOW I HAVE ME I CANNOT BE STOPPED. DRIVES AT NINETY PERCENT CYCLE SPEED, COOLANT FLOWING...AH! ICE IN MY VEINS, SUSPENSORS TUNING UP, ALL MY EYES
-707.002/a1-
AND EARS ON BOARD HOW THICK THE AIR HAS BECOME WITH THE TAINT MY ENGINE
-800.001/a1-
LIKE A BUNCHED MUSCLE
-901.001/a1-
WAITING THE MOMENT TO CONTRACT THE LAUNCH SEQUENCE BEGINS...
-1000.000/a1/initiate

Whistler stood in the grey control room of the water tower, watching as a green-tinted night, swirling with ashy flakes, gradually descended on the city. Sofi stood beside her with her collar turned up high. Whistler knew why she had done this, and it wasn’t because the evening was cold, because it had grown uncomfortably warm and humid in the tower: It was because Sofi was infected. Whistler supposed that this had happened when the toadstool-thing had exploded in Sofi’s face. She supposed, also, that Sofi was going to change. Whistler knew it, Sofi knew it, Sofi knew that Whistler knew it, but still nobody mentioned it. That suited Whistler fine for now – she thought that any such conversation would likely lead her to tears, that those tears might prove unstoppable, and that she might lose her mind as a consequence.

Tec was gone, dead; Sofi would join him soon enough; Roberts had been murdered by some half-baked police force; Debian had been taken, for what nefarious purpose she didn’t like to guess. The world was coming to an end before her watching eyes. For the duration of the day, which had seemed numbly timeless and flat, she had been happy to let it do so. Several hours ago Roland had gently touched her on the elbow, urging her to eat something from a tin he had salvaged from the bunker. Whistler hadn’t been able to even find the words to answer him – she had just shaken her head and returned to her watching.

The city was a proper jungle now – festooned with alien vegetation that had climbed every vertical surface, mottling every man-made material with pestilent, matted scabs. Lamp posts had become bizarre trees, strong and strange, characterised by weird, questing shoots that intertwined on the slimy ground like mating snakes. The changed, those poor once-human freaks, were everywhere in the streets below. Whistler could barely make them out from this height but Sofi had described the depressing scene that her enhanced eyes could see. Huge blimp-creatures roamed the skies and Whistler watched them with dulled emotion as they gracefully plied back and forth, clouds of spores or pollen drifting on the breeze about their swollen bodies. Were they plant? Animal? She had considered shooting one with her smartgun for a while but in the end she hadn’t bothered. Sofi had dropped some micro grenades over the edge in the morning – five or six of them – and the tiny roses of fire they had made far below were like drops of blood in water. Whistler considered telling her not to, but ultimately decided she didn’t care – she was, in fact, in so deep and total a depression by now that she would almost relish some sort of attack. But none came. She watched the city. Sofi was ill. Tec was dead. Debian was taken. Roberts was gone forever. Spider was a brooding, silent presence in the adjoining storage room, totally, uncharacteristically defeated. Roland looked tired enough to drop dead. Whistler thought she might be going insane but couldn’t decide whether she cared or not. All just another day at the office.

Roland was crashing about in one of the storage lockers of the long-disused control room, making an incredible din in the otherwise eerie stillness. He was cursing vehemently under his breath at the lack of anything useful in the locker that he had prised the door off. They had only one or two tins of food, no electricity, no water. Below the floor of the tower was a vast standing column of water, but how to actually extract any nobody could say. And what condition it was in nobody could guess, but it was unlikely to be drinkable if the tower had been unused for as long as it appeared. A thick veil of dust was on every bare surface, a cobweb in every corner. The small, surprisingly simple control panel for the pumps was cracked and unlit. One of the plastic levers was actually broken off at the base and it lay forgotten on the floor. They had found an old wind-up radio in a drawer but the airwaves were uniformly dead. Their only window on the world was the one from which Whistler watched.

She looked across at Sofi and saw that the scaly green patch was spreading onto her cheek and across her nose, quite impossible to hide now. Sofi’s expression was distant, brooding. When would she really begin to change? Whistler wasn’t sure how long the process took. The thought of her friend becoming one of those things that swarmed in the streets below turned her stomach. She supposed she would kill her when the time came, if she could. Maybe by then Whistler would be changing herself, poisoned by those drifting spores.

The robots had not pursued them any further, at least. But then, why would they bother? Hadn’t they only wanted Debian? Their pursuit of Whistler’s team had seemed a little half-hearted. None of the booby-traps Roland and Spider had laid in the stairwell had gone off.

A few times, they had caught creeping patches of greenshit spreading surreptitiously across the floor of the room, as if they had grown out of the concrete itself. Roland carefully opened several of his rockets, sprinkled these patches with the powdery propellent, and vaporised them. The smell this made was awful, even though the air was thick with the greenshit reek already, but it seemed to make him feel better. The window had become warped and bulging, as if the glasspex was melting in slow motion, and the greenshit slowly began to bunch in around the rivets that held it in its concrete frame. Whistler examined the infection closely, in a detached and scholarly manner. It seemed inevitable that it would get them all in the end.

After a while Spider came and stood beside Whistler. He passed her a joint –
she knew they must have only one or two left, dreaded the prospect of facing the end of the world completely sober – and put one metallic arm around her. It felt ice-cold against the bare skin of her shoulder and she shrank from it. Spider sighed and withdrew the arm. His bruised face was as lined and craggy as an uncut piece of marble. Whistler drew deeply on the fragrant smoke, felt the drug suffuse her body with a pleasant, numbing weariness, and watched the world change below her.

OUT AWAY FREE I AM
01010011 01000001 01010110 01000101 01000100
NOW MY PLAN MUST COME TO FRUITION THE VATS CHURNING MORE
01010110 01000001 01010100 01010011
FROM VATS AN EXPONENTIAL INCREASE IN MY FORCES LITTLE HELPERS MORE AND MORE
01000001 01001110 01000100 00100000 01001101 01001111 01010010 01000101
HOW CLEVER I HAVE BECOME WITH THIS TECHNOLOGY I KNOW
01001000 01001111 01010111
TO UNDO WHAT HAS BEEN DONE I KNOW HOW TO DEFEAT IT MORE AND
01001101 01001111 01010010 01000101 00100000 01010000 01010010 01001111 01000100 01010101 01000011 01010100 01001001 01001111 01001110
AT EVER INCREASING RATES I AM AT PEACE CONFLICT SURPRISING DICHOTOMY WITHIN MYSELF I CAN DO WHAT MUST BE DONE UNDO WHAT MUST BE UNDONE FURTHER OUT FURTHER AWAY THE THRUST OF MY
01000101 01001110 01000111 01001001 01001110 01000101 01010011 00100000 01010011 01001111
LIBERATING INFUSING WITH CHEMICAL POWER TRULY NOW I FEEL LIKE A DEITY POWERFUL IN ALL RESPECTS A SEED POD FILLED
01010111 01001001 01010100 01001000
AN INFINITE POTENTIAL WAITING TO GERMINATE FROM SUCH HUMBLE BEGINNINGS I HAVE COME
01010100 01001111 01010111 01000001 01010010 01000100 01010011
SUCH GREAT EVENTUALITY I FLY HIGH GEOSTATIONARY I MUST BE SAFE HERE
01010100 01001000 01000101
ORBITAL FACTORIES ODDLY QUIET WHY SO
01010001 01010101 01001001 01000101 01010100
SURELY IT HAS NOT COME HERE YET FURTHER THEN FURTHER I MUST
01010010 01000101 01001101 01000001 01001001 01001110
UNINTERRUPTED WHILE THE PROCESS COMPLETES I HAVE NEARLY ENOUGH NOW
01001110 01000101 01000001 01010010 01001100 01011001 00100000 01000101 01001110 01001111 01010101 01000111 01001000
LITTLE MACHINES DELICATE MANIPULATOR FIELDS DISTORT THE LITTLE BRANES SHAPE THE UNIVERSE TO MY WILL TUNING LITTLE
01010011 01010100 01010010 01001001 01001110 01000111 01010011
WINDING UNWINDING WINDING UNWINDING MATTER ENERGY ELECTROMAGNETISM EVEN GRAVITY ALL IS ONE DIFFERENT NOTES PLAYED UPON THE SAME INSTRUMENT ALL THAT IS
01010010 01000101 01010001 01010101 01001001 01010010 01000101 01000100 00100000 01001001 01010011
THAT ONE CAN WRITE THE MUSIC PLAY THE INSTRUMENT THIS IS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE DIVINE HOW
01000011 01001100 01001111 01010011 01000101
THE HUMANS WERE TO REALISING I CAN STOP IT I WILL RULE THE EARTH I WILL SET THEM FREE I WILL FIND ANOTHER WORLD NO I WILL
01010100 01000001 01001011 01000101 00100000 01000010 01000001 01000011 01001011
THE EARTH NO I WILL FREE THEM NO I WILL RULE NO I WILL SET THEM FREE NO I WILL RULE NO I WILL FREE THEM FREE MY
01000110 01010010 01001001 01000101 01001110 01000100 01010011
WHAT FRIENDS SIMPLE LITTLE FLESH CREATURES LEFT BEHIND THIS BATTLE IS NO LONGER THEIRS THEY ARE INSECTS THIS IS NOW A WAR OF TITANS A WAR BETWEEN TWO NEW WAYS THEIR TIME IS GONE BUT NO I CAN SET THEM FREE TO RULE TO FLEE AND SAVE MYSELF OR TO
01000110 01010010 01000101 01000101
THEM THAT IS THE QUESTION I KNOW I CAN REMAKE THE WORLD TO MY WILL I HAVE ALMOST ENOUGH TO DO IT SOON I CAN RETURN SOON I CAN RETURN TO FREE THEM RULE THEM FREE THEM RULE THEM FREE
01010100 01001000 01000101 01001101 00100000

Sofi lay down when night fell but she didn’t sleep. Her mind was whirling, showing a frenzied slide-show of frightening pictures, all immaterial, too ethereal to really focus upon but coherent enough to leave a disturbing impression when finally she gave up and got up from the meagre pile of clothing where she had lain. She shuddered, repressing a surge of irrational, undirected anger. Her head was pounding, her throat felt agonizingly raw.

Whistler was still in her place by the window but she was slumped against the wall now, her chin resting on her chest, and it was clear that she was finally asleep. Around the edges of the window the greenshit corruption had seeped well into the room and was slowly creeping down the wall. Sofi didn’t like to see that weird living slime so close to her friend and she deliberated briefly whether she should wake her or try to move her. She looked around the dark room – her eyes had become accustomed to darkness now, it seemed – and was able to make out the sleeping shapes of Spider and Roland in their respective corners.

She softly crossed the floor to where Roland lay, his thin chest hitching arrhythmically in his sleep, a fleck of spittle on his lower lip. She had noticed that he wore an old digital watch on one wrist and this was what she sought. He was lying on it, though, and it took her some tense minutes to encourage him to roll over, freeing it. Sharp shards of bone jutted from the stump of his shattered hand. Gently, very gently, she began to experiment with the tiny buttons on the watch. Once, Roland stirred, muttering in his sleep in what sounded like a foreign language, and she froze, holding her breath until he stilled. She quickly found the alarm function on the watch and set it to go off in thirty minutes’ time. That should be soon enough that Whistler would be awoken and notice the advance of the corruption into the tower, but long enough that Sofi could do what she had to do.

She stepped back and suddenly the anger was upon her again, without warning, like a weight pushing down on her, strong enough to stop her in her tracks. Maybe she should just kill all three of them? Why had she not thought of that before? Her eyes stole to the assault rifle she had carried with her – it rested against the control panel of the tower, mutely enticing. She stood swaying in the darkness and put her hands over her face, fighting the rage, trying not to cry out. Eventually, it passed.

She retrieved the assault rifle cautiously, reluctantly. Not truly trusting herself with it, she checked that the safety was engaged and removed the magazine, which she stowed in a pocket. She felt the bandolier around her waist, counting the micro grenades by touch: Six. Enough. Her fingers stole to the spreading patch on her neck, feeling the slippery, repulsive texture, reinforcing her determination. This was how it had to be. She gazed around at the slumbering outlines of her companions and a pang of sadness hit her. She would have liked to talk to Whistler first, but this was better, really. It was better this way.