The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [137]
★★Ramona.★★ I find I’m breathing fast and shallow. ★★Listen to me—★★
★★Billington knows! He must know! That’s why he sent the guard to kill you! He’ll have McMurray under arrest or dead or worse!★★
★★Ramona. Listen.★★ I take a deep breath and try to focus on air and dry land. ★★Listen to me. Feel through my skin. Breathe through my lungs. Remember where you come from.★★ I stand over a cadaver and force myself to think of lush green landscapes. ★★You were able to let me share your metabolism when I nearly drowned. Let’s try doing it the other way.★★ Breathe. Keep breathing for two people, lest one of them start sprouting tentacles and scales. It’s not as easy as it sounds: you should try it one day.
★★You’ve got to get off the ship!★★
★★How do you know what Ellis is doing?★★ I ask. I step over the body and into the corridor. It’s even less welcoming, stinking of the grave, of soil and darkness and blind burrowing things. First door on the right, up the stairs, left, corridor—
★★Pat and I have a back channel.★★ Ramona concentrates on swimming, letting the calming repetitive motions occupy her mind. (Is it my imagination, or is it beginning to get slightly less dark?) ★★Last time he checked in he warned me about the scuttling charge. He figured Billington would have you taken off the ship, along with Eileen. Next thing, he drops the block between us. That’s all I know, I swear!★★
★★Uh-huh.★★ The stairs feel as if they’re on the edge of crumbling beneath my shoes, maggot-riddled boards creaking warnings to one another. The air is turning clammy. Keep breathing, I remind myself. ★★You haven’t been entirely honest with me, have you? You and Pat. You’ve been using that block of his to keep me from dumpster-diving your head for intelligence. Playing me like an instrument.★★
★★Hey, you’re a fine one to talk!★★ Too late: I realize she’s glimpsed my memory of Mo’s briefing. Secure the geas generator. ★★You guys want it, too.★★
★★No,★★ I say grimly, ★★we want to stop anyone from getting it. Because if you think through the political implications of a human power suddenly starting to play with chthonian tech, you need to ask yourself whether BLUE HADES would view it—★★
Creepy violin music in the back of my head raises the hair on the nape of my neck, just as I round the corner at the top of the stairs and come face to face with another zombie in a black uniform. He’s got an MP-5 in a tactical sling at the ready, but I’ve got adrenalin and surprise on my side—I’m so jittery that I pull the trigger three times before I can make myself stop.
★★—as a Benthic Treaty violation,★★ I finish, then draw a deep breath and try to stop my hands shaking. ★★What’s with all the zombies? Is Billington killing his optioned employees as a tax dodge or something?★★
★★I don’t know.★★ She takes out her frustration on the water. ★★Will you move it? You’ve got maybe six minutes to get off that ship!★★
Secure the geas generator. The corridor seems to pulse, contracting and dilating around me like a warm fleshy tube—a disturbingly esophageal experience. The smell of decay is getting stronger. I pick up the MP-5, managing not to lose my non-existent breakfast as the zombie’s neck disintegrates. I brush rotting debris off the sling, stick the pistol in my pocket, and let Ramona take over my hands to check the burst selector on the machine pistol. I duck-walk down the passage and then there’s a crossway and another door opposite me. I open the door to the owner’s lounge—
I’ve got company.
“Well, if it isn’t the easily underestimated Mr. Howard!” She smiles like a snake. “Better not squeeze that trigger, all the carbines are loaded with banishment rounds in case the Black Chamber tries something—you’ll fry the generator if you shoot. And you wouldn’t want to do that, would you?”
It’s Johanna Todt, McMurray’s thugette. It’s funny how she’s nothing