God Emperor of Didcot (22 page)

Dreckitt’s left hand was on the gun strapped to his thigh. With people like this, there was always a risk of violence. That was the trouble with the underworld: two bit punks, always on the lookout to snuff a private dick.

A dirty business.

There was tea in the bag, about enough to make a cup and a half. It looked like grit, he saw - and then, as he held it up to the light, he noticed that it had a violet tint. This was it, alright: the purple tea of Urn, the death-juice. One sip could boil the brain of a normal man, even one used to drinking tea. To anyone else, it would be lethal.

Dreckitt put a hand into his coat and slowly removed his wallet. He pulled out a wad of notes and tossed them on the table.

The young man counted them. ‘Adjusted Sterling,’ he said. ‘Nice.’

Dreckitt thought about the Hyrax’s money, printed with the God Emperor’s image three times per note, and largely regarded as worthless.

‘It’s all yours, man,’ the dealer said. ‘Knock yourself out.’

Dreckitt collected the Tea of Death and slipped it, and the wallet, back into his coat. He stood up and walked out. At the door the light and heat of the dusk hit him and he slid his hand into his pocket and clenched his fist around the tea. ‘One sip from that and you’ll never come down.’ He felt almost cheerful as he walked back to his car.

Meanwhile, Wainscott was scurrying up the rocky side of Filter Hill, three miles out of Capital City. His boots were quick and agile on the loose ground. Suruk strolled along beside Wainscott, but Smith lagged behind: partially because he was not quite as nimble, but also to look out for Rhianna.

‘Ow,’ she said, removing another pebble from her sandals. ‘This really hurts.’

Being one with Gaia, Smith reflected, was clearly easier on thick grass and flat surfaces. Slightly irritated, he waited until Rhianna had removed the stone and helped her back up.

‘Perhaps you ought to wait at the bottom,’ he suggested kindly. There was a small camp a mile away, a staging post the Teasmen had set up for the recapture of the Capital. A dozen soldiers waited there, ready for the command to move on the city.

‘No!’ she replied, and he was surprised to see that she looked annoyed. ‘I can manage perfectly well in my own right. I don’t need any help, thanks.’

This sounded like trouble. ‘Alright then,’ he said. ‘But I think you’d be better off with walking boots.’

She scowled and he wondered what the hell he was supposed to do. What did she think he was, psychic?

Having never quite worked out the limits of her mental powers, he added to himself, If I am supposed to be psychic, could you let me know?

No reply. He slogged on.

They reached the top. Waincott and Suruk lay in the shadow of a dead tree to hide their outlines. Smith and Rhianna crept over to join them.

Wainscott was dressed like a Teasman, with a plantation flag in his belt and a dark cosy on his head. He pointed at the city. ‘The enemy,’ he said. ‘Look.’

Smith took the telescopic scope from his rifle. He put the scope to his eyes and suddenly the details of the city sprang into view: the gargoyles and nameplates on the warehouses and office blocks, the chimneys of thousands of homes and, biggest of all, the spires, columns and minarets of what had once been the senate-house.

‘That’s the Hyrax’s palace,’ Wainscott said. ‘The throne of the God-Prophet or some such rubbish. Utter nonsense, all this God Emperor stuff.’

‘It’s an oppressive patriarchal construct based on false notions of masculine dominance,’ Rhianna said. ‘The very towers point towards the phallocentric myth at the heart of his so-called
king
dom.’

Wainscott looked at her as if she were mentally ill. ‘Right. But that’s not the real problem. The Hyrax has his Crusadists, and a crazy bunch they are, but the real power behind him’s over there, to the East of the city: the Edenites.’

Gilead’s men lurked under a complex mass of sensor equipment and camouflage, their perimeter bristling with anti-aircraft guns. Their base looked like a very large, very plush guerrilla encampment, with more flags and much better TV reception. What Smith had taken for a small building rolled slowly across the perimeter. A hatch opened in the side of it, and three hulking shapes disembarked: motorised combat suits, each seven feet tall and covered in weaponry, puffed out by armour to the shape of teddy bears.

The wind stirred, ruffling the grass around them. A jumble of brassy, raucous sound seeped out of the city and made its way to their ears. Some kind of marching music was parping from the Edenite fortress.

‘Imagine dropping an EMP in the middle of all that stuff,’ Wainscott whispered. The major’s eyes gleamed with excitement. ‘You’d close the whole place down in one go. Can you imagine it? Actually
shutting them up
.’

He sighed, and the light in his eyes died down. ‘Of course, I don’t know how. You’d have to get an EMP bomb under the radar. And every vehicle that goes past gets searched. . . goodness knows how it could be done.’

Sounds rose up from the palace now. They were loud and distorted, blasting out of great speakers nailed to the roof. Lumps of plaster must be falling out the ceiling, Smith thought.

‘Only the Hyrax is great! All hail the Grand Hyrax! Only the Hyrax is great!’

Seemingly at random, the God-Prophet’s voice came on:

‘– severing the accursed hand from the arm, the wretched head from the neck! The eye that will not see – blind it to make it see! The mouth that will not announce the glory of the Hyrax – fill it with the dentures of faith! The Beast lurks among us, stirring lies against the earthly paradise of the Grand Hyrax – anyone denying the earthly paradise will die! Obey me and live! I hope you’re listening to this, harlots of Babylon especially! Crusade!’

With great finality Rhianna said, ‘What a colossal jerk.’

‘Of course, at the moment he just sounds like an idiot,’ Smith said. ‘But if they manage to stop people drinking tea, his powers may start to work. And then the people of Urn will be like lambs to the slaughter.’

Suruk had been studying the city in silence. ‘I wish I were in the palace,’ the alien said. ‘Swinging my blade, striking down my enemies, liberating someone from something or other. . .’

‘Well, you’d be busy,’ Wainscott said. ‘Look over there.’

Smith turned the scope on the west of the city, where the spaceport and industrial areas were. They looked dead. Smoke rose from a few chimneys, but otherwise, the place was deserted. The warehouses were locked up, the streets empty – wait a moment. He turned up the amplification on the gunsight.

A column of praetorians turned the corner, three abreast. Light caught their helmets and the leather of their coats. At the front of the column, like the head of a Chinese dragon, was a black banner bearing the antennae’d skull of the praetorian legions. Beside them ran beast handlers, hauling back the ant-hounds the Ghasts used to guard their fortresses.

The main impression Smith had was of bulk. They were taller and thicker than normal Ghasts, more bullish; a blunt, effective tool for killing and intimidation. Smith watched them carefully, feeling a kind of cold readiness run over him. They were bred to terrify, but what he felt now was eagerness to fight.

The praetorians yelled something in unison. A warehouse door rolled open, the column stormed inside and it slammed behind them. Then they were gone, but for the brief moment that it had been open Smith had caught a glimpse of movement behind the doors: swarming Ghasts, rows of vehicles and weaponry.

‘They’ll be formidable enemies,’ he said. ‘Super game, too.’

Wainscott nodded. ‘At this range you could pick one of those lobsters right out of its tank.’

‘Too risky. Shame, though.’

A thin line of dust crept from the East gates. Light glinted on laser proof armour. Vehicles rolled into the countryside, towards the wilting tea plantations.

‘Patrol,’ Wainscott said. ‘Edenites.’

A sun dragon whirled above the convoy, soaking up heat from the engines. Gunshots popped from the column and it screeched and spun away, tracer fire chasing its tail.

No fire discipline, Smith thought. The Edenites had a combination of enthusiasm and paranoia that made them unpredictable when armed – which was always.

‘Best get going,’ Wainscott said. ‘They might get nervy and bung a missile up here.’

Quietly, they turned and climbed back down. The slope was steep and unreliable, and Suruk went ahead to catch Rhianna if she should fall. Smith watched her make a long job of descending and found that Wainscott was at his side.

‘Funny bird, that,’ Wainscott observed. ‘All that

“masculine dominance”, “phallocentric myth”. . . is she any good in the sack?’

‘I really wouldn’t know,’ Smith replied.

They climbed into the jeep and returned to the main forward camp, by the railway station. Smith was astonished at how busy the place was. Men and women worked ceaselessly: regular soldiers from the Colonial Guard and scouts from the teasmen were unloading equipment from trains, discussing tactics and pouring over maps.

But that was not all. In the fields nearby stood the first of Agshad’s skimmers, half-hidden by the tea crop. They were ugly, powerful-looking machines, a mix of hover-craft, fighter plane and tank, covered in armour plates and trophies. Some carried slogans and pictures on the side.

Most were red, where the paint had not worn through to show dull metal, greasy with oil. Thin figures moved between them: M’Lak, not quite comfortable here yet, preferring their own company to that of the stubby, pinkish-brown humans.

Wainscott stopped the jeep and Suruk, who was only half-inside anyway, sprang down and looked around, openly intrigued. Smith helped Rhianna out of the jeep –were you supposed to help an enlightened modern woman? Whatever the answer was, he knew he would be wrong – and they headed towards the warehouses.

‘They’re still poisoning the tea,’ Wainscott said. ‘They’re trying to pressure us into making a bad move.’ He looked around. ‘We’ve got six more bases like this one, equidistant from the city. When the time comes, we’ll rush it all at once, somehow.’

They found Morgar with Carveth beside one of the skimmers. Carveth waved and ran to meet them. ‘Hello all!’

‘You seem very cheerful,’ Smith said.

She nodded. She was wearing her overalls, and there was already a smudge of dirt on the end of her nose. ‘Well, it’s nice to be busy, isn’t it?’ Her voice dropped into a loud, hoarse whisper. ‘And guess who’s here?’

Smith peered at the fighters, trying to pick one face from the others. Suddenly he spotted a man of average height, handsome in a battered way and wearing a Panama hat to keep off the sun. ‘Dreckitt,’ he said, as if it were a swear word.

‘Eee!’ Carveth said, grinning.

Rhianna glanced around and said, ‘Where?’

‘Don’t look, don’t look!’ Carveth hissed. ‘He’ll see me in my overalls.’

Smith frowned. Her enthusiasm troubled him. ‘Before you go any further, Carveth, I ought to point out that he was sent to kill you last time you two met. It was a miracle that he decided not to.’

She nodded. ‘You see? He could have assassinated me but he didn’t. That’s a pretty good start for a relationship.’

‘Well, you’re certainly cleared the murder-on-sight hurdle. Next stop, wedded bliss. Honestly, Carveth, I’m not entirely happy with this.’

Rhianna leaned in. ‘We’ll talk later,’ she said.

Morgar strolled over from the skimmers, smiling pleasantly. ‘Hello there. Warm, isn’t it?’

‘As hot as the blood gushing from a severed neck,’ Suruk said.

‘Quite. Picnic weather. Now, Polly, you must meet my friend Ozroth Bloodaxe. He’s quite the auto enthusiast. Ozroth?’

A M’Lak turned from his work and flipped up a welding mask.

‘This is Ozroth Bloodaxe, of the line of Drelcor,’ Morgar said. ‘And this is Polly Pilot, of the line of. . . Pontius, perhaps?’

Smith felt strange, unsettled. His head ached a little. So, this is it, he thought. This is the army that will free Urn or die trying. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was just about to remember that he had forgotten something.

‘Are you okay?’ Rhianna said.

‘I feel odd. Sort of worried, but I’m not sure why.’

‘It’s stress.’ Rhianna nodded sagely, setting her dread-locks in motion. ‘War is very stressful. Getting shot at can actually put your chi out of alignment. Why don’t you have a rest, and then maybe a massage?’

‘Really?’ he said. The thought of it made him feel quite giddy. ‘I mean, from you?’

She shrugged. ‘Sure. You need to relax.’

‘I need to sit down,’ Smith said, still thinking about Rhianna and massage.

‘Yes, you do,’ said Carveth.

*

Smith walked into the station offices. They were empty.

All the men were outside. It seemed oddly quiet here: the eye of the storm.

He pulled out a chair and sat down. He felt slightly ill, as if he had a migrane coming on. Outside, a tall, hawk-like woman was staring into a cup, surrounded by a little knot of Teasmen. She wore robes and seemed to be making some sort of speech. This must be Sam O’Varr, he realised, the Sauceress of Urn. Smith did not believe in tea-seeing: it sounded too much like one of Rhianna’s nonsenses.

Bloody Rhianna. He felt depressed, in a dull, placid way. It was better if she didn’t massage him. Better not to let her touch him at all, better still to ignore the bloody woman, accept that she was never going to be his and get back to killing Gertie. There was a war to win; the sooner he could forget about sex with girls, the sooner he could get back to bashing the Ghast on his own.

Outside, the sauceress was sharing a joke with a soldier from the Colonial Guard. Smith watched them bang their mugs together and thought: Tea, yes, that’s what I need.

He got up. Glancing across the corridor, he saw a small office kitchen. He wandered in, filled the kettle and put it on. Smith found a mug and a small fridge containing a packet of milk. There were no half-decent spoons, so he took out his penknife. It would do. He opened the cupboard and found a small jar labelled ‘tea’. It was empty. ‘Bollocks,’ he said.