The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [42]
Voice mail? Hell, yes—in this Brave New World there’s no escape from the internet, even at 40,000 feet. I yawn again and plug in my headset, trying to shake off the influence of Ramona’s distantly sensed repose. I glance at the screen. It’s Mo, and she’s on Skype, too, so I place a call.
“Bob?” Her voice crackles a little—the signal is being bounced via satellite to the plane and the latency is scary.
“Mo, I’m on a plane. Are you in the Village?”
“I’m in the Village, Bob—checking out tomorrow. Listen, you asked me a question yesterday. I’ve been doing some poking around and this destiny-entanglement stuff is really ugly. Have they already done it to you? If not, run like hell. You’ll start to share dreams, there’s telepathy going with it, but worse, there’s reality leakage, too. You end up taking up aspects of your entanglement partner, and vice versa. If they’re killed you’re likely to drop dead on the spot; if it lasts more than a couple of weeks it goes beyond sharing thoughts, you could end up merging with them permanently. The good news is, the entanglement can be broken by a fairly simple ritual. The bad news is, it takes both parties cooperating to do it. Do you have any way out of it?”
“Too late. They ran it yesterday—”
“Shit. Love, how long is it going to take you to realize that if they ask you to do them a special favor you need to run like—”
“Mo.”
“Bob?”
“I know—” My throat closes up and I stop talking for a moment. “I love you.”
“Yes.” Her voice is faint at the end of the internet connection. “I love you, too—”
This is too painful to hear. “She’s asleep.”
“She?”
“The demon.” I glance round, but there’s nobody in the row in front of me and I’m directly in front of the partition between business and cattle class. “Ramona. Black Chamber operative. I don’t—” This is too unpleasant: I start trying to figure out another way of approaching the subject.
“Has she hurt you?” Mo’s tone is chilly enough to freeze my ear.
“No.” Not yet. “I don’t want you to go near her, Mo. It’s not her fault. She’s as much a victim of this as—”
“Bullshit, love. I want you to tell her, from me, that if she even thinks about messing with you I’ll break every bone in her body—”
“Mo! Stop it!” I lower my tone of voice. “Don’t even think about it. You don’t want to get involved in this. Just don’t. Wait ’til it’s all over and we’ll go on holiday together and get away from it all.”
A pause. I tense up inside, desperately hoping for the best. Finally: “It’s your judgment call and I can’t stop you. But I’m warning you, don’t let them fuck with you. You know how they use people, what they did to me, right? Don’t let them do it to you, too.” A sigh. “So why did they send you?”
I swallow. “Angleton says he needs me to get inside an operation and I think he wants an unblockable communications channel back to the field controller. Did you ask him what it’s about—”
“Not yet I haven’t. Hang in there, love. I’m finishing up here and I’ve got to go back to London tomorrow: I’ll drag everything out of Angleton before sunset. Where is he sending you? Who’s your backup?”
“I’m on my way to the Princess Juliana Airport on Saint Martin, staying in the Sky Tower at Maho Bay. He’s sent Boris, Pinky, and Brains to look after—” I suddenly realize where this is leading. Quick on the uptake I ain’t. “Listen, don’t bother trying to—”
“I’ll be on the next flight out, I just have to touch base long enough to mug Harry the Holiday Piggy Bank. It’ll be a cold day in Hell before I’m trusting your skin to their—”
“Don’t!” I can see it already, horrible visions welling up out of the twisted depths of my subconscious.