The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [139]
★★Fuck it, keep breathing, monkey-boy! What are you doing, shit-for-brains, trying to kill us both?★★ That’s Ramona. She sounds as if she’s calling to me from the far end of a long corridor.
Breathe? I’m lying on top of Johanna on the floor. How did we get here? She’s still as a corpse, but she’s got her teeth embedded in my shoulder and she’s hugging me like her one true love. And I feel so heavy. Breathing is a huge effort. There’s a haze forming around my vision. Breathe?
A hand—mine?—is fumbling with the lump in my pocket.
Breathe.
Everything is going gray. The tunnel is walled in darkness. Johanna Todt waits at the end of it, smiling coolly, as inviting and desirable as a glass of liquid helium. But I can also tell somehow that Johanna isn’t what’s waiting for me if I take that drink: Johanna is like the bioluminescent lure dangling before an angler fish’s head, right in front of the sharp jaws of oblivion. She’s got me in her arms and if I take the lure, when I get up I’ll be as hollow as she is, I won’t be me anymore, just a puppet rotting slowly on its feet while her daemon tugs it through the motions of life.
Breathe?
BANG.
Johanna spasms beneath me, shuddering and tensing. Her thighs flex.
BANG.
I remember to breathe, then nearly choke on the hot stink of burned powder.
She’s vibrating away, drumming her heels on the floor, and there’s a flood of blood and tissue everywhere around her head, like a spray of hair. As I pant for breath I realize there’s a hand clutching a pistol inches away from my head, and my arm feels as if it’s twisted half out of its socket. A combined wash of fear and revulsion makes me bounce off the floor, muscles screaming. ★★Ramona?★★
★★Still here, monkey-boy.★★ She’s gasping—no, that’s wrong—she’s struggling for breath. There’s a burning sensation in her gills as she fights down the reflex to extend them fully. Stroking towards the slim shadow of the Mabuse outlined against the brightness of the surface, still some 200 meters overhead: ★★Breathe, dammit! I’m getting cramps! I can’t keep this up.★★
I pant like a dog, then carefully lower the pistol. I’ve got more pulled muscles and my right arm is screaming at me, plus a savage bite that makes me dizzy when I poke at it with my left hand. I look at my fingertips. Blood. ★★Shit. How long—★★
★★If that bitch was telling the truth, you’ve got two or three more minutes to get the diorama and make it up on deck.★★
I look around, trying to make sense out of nonsense, a luxurious lounge aboard a yacht, a dead woman on the floor . . . and a diorama in a large, locked display case. I can’t move the case, it’s the size of a pool table. I groan. It looks like the proximate effect of my first stab at hatching a Plan B was to spook Billington into ordering the ship sunk—and right now, I seem to be short of options.
But. Secure the field generator. That’s the core of the geas Billington’s set up, and he’s now trying to destroy it in the crudest way imaginable—not just by throwing the “off” switch, but by blowing up the ship. (Why? Because I got a little too clever and let slip the yipping Chihuahuas of infowar.) If I can keep it running, then the semantics of the spell demand that James Bond—or a good knockoff—will save us. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to keep the thing running while I get it off the sinking ship.
My Treo is in my back pocket. I nearly scream as I reach for it with my right arm, then shakily switch it on and aim the camera lens at the display. Once I’ve filled the memory card that’ll have to do. I check the display—72Km/97% Complete—then