The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [95]
I used to wonder why the most beautiful women always ended up with rotters, but as explanations go this one stinks. I try to take a step back but she’s still holding my arm and she’s got a grip like a steel mooring cable, and I’m backed up against the wall. My wards are flaring now, incandescent spectral light from the chain I’m wearing under my shirt. “What have you done with her?” I demand.
“Nothing, personally. But if you want to see her again you’ll come with—”
The velvet wall between us rips open shockingly fast, and Ramona comes slamming through. I’m not sensing the shape of her emotions, or even seeing a blurry inner vision through her eyes, I’m inside her, I am Ramona for a random moment, and the somatic realization is simultaneously very wrong and very right. The floor beneath her feet is carpeted but it’s slowly turning. Unsteady on her heels she looks round the gloriously upholstered salon, past the windows, sees the sea and the headland. Three black-clad guards with guns flank a monster just like the corpse in the white suit as her heart tries to climb her throat. ★★Bob?★★ Her cold apprehension hits me like a hammer. This isn’t random fear of the unknown: she knows precisely what she’s afraid of. I follow her gaze down to the floor, and the carpet she stands on. It’s a glorious antique Isfahan carpet. Woven into it, almost invisible silver threads trace out a design identical to the one on my wards, on McMurray’s earring. From one edge of the carpet a coiled cable leads to a control box grasped in the walking corpse’s hands. ★★It’s a trap, Bob, don’t let them—★★
The corpse pushes a button on the control box and suddenly I can’t feel Ramona anymore. I stagger, disoriented: it’s like having a full-body local anesthetic. I blink until I can focus my eyes. Johanna is smiling at me in a satisfied, cat-got-the-canary manner. “Who do you work for again?” I ask, trying to regain control.
“Ellis Billington.” Her smile vanishes, replaced by casual authority. “He says I’m to take you aboard the Mabuse. You will do exactly as I say—assuming you ever want to see her again.”
“What?” I ask, feeling sick and sober with the backwash from Ramona’s fright. “But I came here to see him anyway!”
“Perhaps, but you’ve also acquired adversary status, according to our reading of the main security geas. It’s probably a memory leak in the code, but until we’ve terminated this phase of the operation we’re going to treat you as threat number one.” She steps closer to me and before I realize what she’s doing she reaches into my jacket and removes the pistol Ramona made me wear. She takes two steps back and I find myself staring up the muzzle of my own gun, feeling stupid. “Lights out, Mr. Howard.”
I’m opening my mouth to say something when the ward they’ve trapped Ramona in shuts down and her presence floods into me again. I’ve got time for a brief moment of relief—time to think We’re whole again—then the walking corpse shoots her with a Taser, and while Ramona and I are both flopping around on the floor Johanna steps forwards and sinks a disposable syringe into my neck.
11.
DESTINY ENTANGLED
I AM ASLEEP AND DREAMING AND AWARE AT THE same time—I appear to be having a lucid dream. I really wish I wasn’t, because that rat bastard Angleton has taken advantage of my somnambulant state to sneak into my head with his slide projector and install another pre-canned top secret briefing, using my eyelids as stereoscopic projection screens. And I don’t care how bad your nightmares are, they can’t possibly be as unpleasant as a mission briefing conducted by old skull-face while you’re asleep, unable to wake up, and suffering from an impending hangover.
“Pay attention, Bob,” he admonishes me sternly. “If you’re alive, you’re getting this briefing because you’ve penetrated Billington’s semiotic firewall. This means you’re approaching the most dangerous part of your mission—and you’re going to have to play it by ear. On the other hand, you’ve got an ace up your sleeve in the form of Ms. Random. She should