The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [150]
JENNIFER MORGUE thumps against the outside of the security shutters, sending a shower of glass daggers crackling and clinking across the floor. The shutters bend but they hold: something’s clearly wrong with the beast, or it should have been out of the moon pool by now, leaving a twisted trail of titanium structural members behind it. Dumping the controlling intelligence out of its temporary host body must have awakened the chthonian prematurely, still deathly weak and hungry. Mo doesn’t look away from my face. She’s searching me for something, some sign. I stare at her, wondering which way she’s going to jump, whether the geas has gone to her head: if it has conferred not only the power that goes with her role, but also the callousness.
After a few seconds Mo looks away. “We’ll sort this out later.”
I stumble back towards the sacrifice chairs. Ramona is still out. I rest a palm on her forehead, then snatch it back fast: she’s fever-hot. “Give me a hand . . .” I manage to get one arm over my shoulder and begin to lift her off the chair, but in my present state I’m too weak. Just as my knees begin to give out under me someone takes her other arm. “Thanks—” I glance round her lolling head.
“This way, mate.” The apparition grins at me around its regulator. “Sharpish!”
“If you say so.” More black-clad figures appear—this time, wearing wet suits and body armor. “Is Alan here?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Because—” there’s a crashing noise from the far wall, and I wince “—there’s an alien horror on the other side of that wall and it wants in bad. Make sure somebody tells him.” I start coughing: the air in here becoming unbreathable.
“Ah, Bob, exactly the man! Don’t worry about the eldritch horror, we’ve got a plan for this contingency—as soon as we’ve evac’d we’ll just pop a brace of Storm Shadows on his ass and send him right back down where he came from. But you’re exactly the man I was hoping to see. How are you doing, old chap? Got a Sitrep on the opposition for me?”
I blink, bleary-eyed. It’s Alan all right: wearing scuba gear and a communications headset only the Borg could love, he still manages to look like an excitable schoolteacher. “I’ve had better days. Look, the primary opposition movers are dead, and I think Charlie Victor might be amenable to an offer of political asylum if the rite of unbinding did what I think it did to her, but about the Smart car on the drilling deck—”
“Yes, yes, I know it’s a bit scorched around the edges and there are some bullet holes, but you don’t have to worry: the Auditors won’t mind normal wear and tear—”
“No, that’s not it.” I try to focus. “In the boot. There’s a tablecloth with a diorama wrapped up in it. Would you mind having one of your lads blow it up? Otherwise all the Bond mojo zapping around in here is going to follow us home and wreck any chance of me and Mo getting back together again for anything but a one-night stand.”
“Ah! Good thinking.” Alan pushes a button and mutters into his mike. “Anything else?”
“Yeah.” Either there’s a lot of gray smoke in here, or—“I’m feeling dizzy. Just let me sit down, for a moment . . .”
Epilogue
THREE’S COMPANY
IT’S AUGUST IN ENGLAND, AND I’M ALMOST FUNCTIONING on British Summer Time again. We’re having another heat wave, but up here on the Norfolk coast it’s not so bad: there’s an onshore breeze coming in from the Wash, and while it isn’t exactly cold, it feels that way after the Caribbean.
We call this place the Village: it’s an old in-joke. Once upon a time it was a hamlet, a village in all respects save its lack of a parish church. It was one of three churchless hamlets that had clustered in this area, and the last of them still standing, for the others slid under the waves a long time ago. There was only the one meandering road in the vicinity, and it was potholed and poorly maintained. Go back sixty or seventy years and you’d find it was home to a small community of winkle-pickers and fishermen who braved the sea in