The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [121]
“You’ll both be quiet,” he says in a curiously calm tone, and oddly, they both shut up. I glance sideways and see Ramona’s cheek twitching. She rolls her eyes frantically at me, and the penny drops.
I lean over towards McMurray. “You’ve made your point. Let them talk. They won’t do it again.”
“You sure of that, boy?” McMurray looks amused. “I’ve known these hellcats and their type longer than you’ve been alive, and they’ll—”
“That’s not the point!” I stab one finger at him. “Do you want her willing cooperation, or not?”
He makes a sound halfway between a laugh and a snigger, just as there’s a loud grinding noise from the crane and the boat lurches. “All right, have it your way,” he says indulgently as we lift off the deck with a bump that throws Ramona against me.
“Bastard,” she says indistinctly. Then the mist clears and I can suddenly feel her presence in my mind again, as warm and vibrant as my own pulse. ★★Not you, him,★★ she adds internally. ★★Thanks. It’s not like Pat to make a mistake like that, lifting both blocks at the same time.★★
★★Think it’s intentional?★★ I ask, wondering how long we’ve got to talk.
★★Not really.★★
McMurray is saying something to Todt, who’s slumped against the railing away from him. I try to make the most of his lapse: ★★I’ve noticed them making other mistakes. Listen, I got into Eileen’s surveillance network. Mo’s arrived, and there’s a backup team on the way to rescue us.★★ The crane swings us over the edge of the Mabuse and the boat drops like a lift towards the sea below, leaving my stomach somewhere above my head. ★★Griffin’s on the spot, looks like he’s been playing an inside game. Ramona, if you run into Mo, don’t get her pissed-off, she’s brought her—★★
I suddenly realize that my head’s full of cotton-wool and Ramona isn’t listening. She looks at me and blinks, then stares at McMurray, who smiles faintly in response. “What’s that about?” she asks, aggrieved.
“No talking out of class.” He looks at me speculatively. A porthole winds past the back of his head, embedded like a zit in the flank of a behemoth. “Orders from the boss. Once you’re aboard the TMB-2, then you get to talk among yourselves.”
“Enjoy the peace and quiet while you can,” Todt sneers.
We hit the water with a neck-jarring thump, and everything gets very busy for a minute or two. The two black berets who’ve been riding down with us fire up the engine and cast off the cables securing us to the crane, which in turn throws us variously into one another and across the bottom of the boat. It’s a bouncy, jarring ride, and I get a lungful of spray as I try to sit up. It ends with me coughing over the side, wishing I had Ramona’s gills. By the time I’m half-recovered we’re turning away from the Mabuse and accelerating across open water. I finally get some air back and look around to see that we’ve circled the former destroyer. In the distance, there’s land on the horizon, but much closer to home a monstrous cliff-like bulk looms over us—the former Glomar Explorer.
My sense of scale fails me when I try to take it in. I find myself looking up, and up, and up—the thing’s as big as a skyscraper, nearly a fifth of a kilometer long. After the Explorer was retired and mothballed in the 1970s they cut the superstructure away, but Billington’s people have rebuilt the huge derrick that towers ten stories above the deck, the two huge docking legs and the big cranes at each end of the moon pool, and the entire drilling platform and pipe management system. It looks like an oil rig humping a supertanker. There are loud pumps or engines running up on the deck, and a hammering noise overhead; looking up I see a chopper closing in on the helipad at the stern of the ship. “Who’s that?” I ask.
“That’ll be the boss arriving,” says McMurray. To the driver: “Take us in.”
We motor steadily towards a platform hanging near the waterline, halfway along one flank of the giant ship. The ship sits eerily still in the water, as if it’s embedded in the top