Macaque Attack (33 page)

iv. Bedding or sleeping bags.

v. Torches with spare batteries, matches and candles.

vi. Sturdy refuse sacks and packing tape.

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CHAPTER FORTY

SURFIN’ FROGS AND PUNCHING GODS

A
S THE
S
UN
Wukong
powered south towards the Spanish border, Katherine Abdulov took Victoria to see the
Ameline
.

“Call me Kat,” she said, buttoning her coat as they stepped out onto the airship’s flight deck. “Everybody else does.”

Victoria tried to place her accent but couldn’t. There were hints of Spanish and Arabic influence, but nothing she could pin down. To starboard, the sun was a red ember on the horizon. In the darkness below, the lights of Bordeaux and Toulouse slid past on either side like the raked coals of glowing campfires. Feeling the cold, she tugged at the hem of the Commodore’s military jacket, straightening it. It had been tailored for a skinny old man, not someone with breasts, and so had a tendency to ride up at the waist.

“Everybody?”

“My family.”

“And where are they?”

Kat scuffed the sole of her boot across the metal deck. “All dead.”

Victoria thought of Paul. “I’m sorry.”

The young pilot shrugged. “Don’t be. We all are.” She stopped walking, and the wind ruffled her hair. “Dead, I mean. You and me.” She craned her neck to peer over the side. “Everybody down there.”

After her recent experiences in helicopters, Victoria preferred not to look down. Instead, she let her hand rest on her scabbard. Her head felt cold and she wished she’d brought a hat.

“We’re not dead yet.” After all, wasn’t that what this was all about? Weren’t they trying to save the world?

Kat clicked her tongue regretfully. “Yeah, I’m afraid you kind of are.”

Victoria was confused. “But you said the plan would work, that we could stop the rock.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Then what is it,
s’il vous plait?
”

The younger woman faced into the wind for a moment, and took a deep, savouring breath.

“Come inside,” she said, nodding at the
Ameline
’s open cargo ramp. “I’ll explain everything.”

K
ATHERINE STALKED UP
the ramp and Victoria followed. She found herself in a hold that had seen better days. The walls were covered with scuffs and dents; much of the webbing had been torn or tangled, and graffiti marred the doors and bulkheads. The air smelled musty, with hints of solder and old sacking.

“This way,” Kat said, leading her forward, through a hatch outlined with yellow and black warning tape, into a passenger compartment lined with rows of threadbare seats, their plastic covers split and frayed, the foam insulation ratty and discoloured beneath.

“Everything happened a long time ago, and far away,” Kat said without lingering. She stepped through into a short corridor, at the end of which was a ladder leading upwards. Victoria stood at the bottom and watched her climb, then followed. At the top lay the
Ameline
’s bridge. It was a small cockpit, with a low, readout-covered ceiling and a pair of well-worn couches. Kat took the couch on the right and motioned Victoria to the one on the left.

“Where?” Victoria asked.

“Back in the real world.”

“This isn’t the real world?”

“No, sorry.”

Victoria twisted around, trying to get comfortable as she processed the statement. “We’ve seen a few timelines,” she said, “and they all seemed remarkably real and solid.”

“None of them were, I’m afraid.”

“I don’t follow.”

Kat exhaled through her nose. “I’m trying to explain this as gently as I can.” She brushed back her hair. “Take your monkey friend, for instance.”

“What about him?”

“He used to be a character in a computer game, didn’t he? And when he was in there, he was locked into the virtual world.”

Victoria didn’t like where this was going. “We rescued him. We got him out.”

“But did you?” Kat moved her cupped hands as if weighing up invisible bags of flour. “Did you really rescue him, or did you simply bring him from one simulation to another?”

Victoria narrowed her eyes. The old journalistic instinct twitched. There was a story here and, whether she wanted to know the truth or not, she needed to uncover it.

“You tell me,” she said.

Katherine gave her a frank look. “I don’t think I have to, do I? I think you’ve already guessed.”

“You’re implying all the worlds we’ve seen, the whole multiverse, they’re all part of a game?” Victoria was beginning to wish she had a martini.

“Not a game, as such, but a simulation nevertheless.”

Victoria gave a loud tut. “
C’est ridicule!
There isn’t enough computing power in the world.”

“Not in
this
world, no.”

Victoria took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said reasonably, “let’s backtrack a couple of steps. Why don’t you explain to me again who you are, and how you got here?”

Kat sighed. She crossed her booted feet at the ankle and tapped at a couple of overhead readouts.

“I was born on Strauli,” she began, “which is a planet a hundred light years from here, in the year 2360.”

“The future?”

“More like the distant past, now.”

Victoria shook her head. “I don’t understand.” She was missing something, but wasn’t sure what it might be.

“I’ll get to it.” Kat promised. “But, to start at the beginning, my family were traders, and I captained one of their ships.”

“This one?”

“Yes, the dear old
Ameline
.” Katherine gave the bulkhead an affectionate pat. “We’ve been through some scrapes together, I can tell you.”

Victoria reached over and touched her sleeve. “But how did you get
here
?” she insisted.

Kat made that clicking noise with her tongue again. “Something got loose,” she said. “Something horrible. We weren’t sure if it was a weapon or a deranged filing system, but it was sentient, and it called itself ‘The Recollection’.” Her shoulders quivered as she tried to repress a shudder. “It rolled over world after world, breaking apart everything it touched, and storing it all as information.”

She was telling the truth. Victoria could tell; she’d had enough practice interviewing politicians and other professional liars.

“What did you do?”

“We ran.” Kat punched one hand into the palm of the other. “We gathered together as many survivors as we possibly could and we made for the stars.” She stopped talking, eyes focused on the pictures in her head—a thousand light-year stare.

“So, why are you here, now?”

“It caught us.” The words came out tinged with loathing. Kat’s fists were clenched. “The Recollection’s whole purpose was to gather intelligent beings,” she said, “to harvest them and deliver their stored minds to the end of time, to a point it called ‘The Eschaton’—the ultimate end of all things.”

“But why?”

“Because its builders believed they’d be resurrected, brought back to life in the infinite quantum mind-spaces of the ubercomputer.”

Victoria frowned. “
Je ne comprends pas.
”

Kat tipped her head back against the chair’s rest and rubbed her eyes. “At the end of time, as the last stars guttered and died, they believed there would be a final flowering. That their descendants—or the descendants of whichever race survived until the end—would have the means and wherewithal to construct a huge computer of near infinite complexity, powered by the very dissolution of the universe itself. And having retreated within this computer, they’d then be able to play out the entire history of the cosmos, over and over again with endless permutations. As the final seconds of the real universe ticked towards their conclusion, the builders would be able to live out aeon after simulated aeon, cocooned within their virtual worlds.”

Victoria looked at the main view screen, which currently showed a crystal clear, light-enhanced image of the
Sun Wukong
’s deck and the darkening sky beyond. “And that’s where we are now, in this simulation?”

“Yes.” Fingers laced over her midriff, Kat closed her eyes. “When The Recollection came for us, we fought and we ran. But, as I said, it caught us.” She shivered again. “All of us.”

Victoria lay back and considered her reflection in the touchscreen panel above her head. Not everything Kat had said had made sense, and she had plenty of questions. They were part of her default response: if she didn’t understand something well enough to explain it in a newspaper article, she just kept chipping away at it until she had all the facts.

“If all that’s true,” she asked hesitantly, picking her words, “how come you remember it and I don’t?”

“Because it never happened to you.” Kat gave one of her one-shoulder shrugs. “You were long dead by the time The Recollection reached Earth.”

“Then what am I doing here?”

The young pilot glanced sideways at Victoria. “The ubercomputer’s vast and powerful. It recreated you from the DNA of the people it had. From them, it extrapolated every person who ever lived, anywhere, and brought them back to life.”

Victoria wanted to laugh or cover her ears. It sounded like the most muddleheaded New Age tomfoolery, and she really wanted a drink. This wasn’t, she felt, the kind of conversation one should have sober.

“I’m sorry, but all this, everything you’re telling me, it all sounds crazy.”

Kat sat upright. “It is crazy, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”

“And what about you?”

“I had a brush with the Recollection. It infected me with its spores but only at a low level. I had protection.” Her artificial hand went to her throat, as if touching a pendant that wasn’t there. “The changes it made to the structure of my brain enabled me to retain my memories. There are others like me, just a few of us who know the truth, who remember.”

“And you’re just flying around, spreading the word?”

“No.” A grim shake of the head. “We’re fighting a war.”

“Against the computer?”

“Against its builders.” Kat pressed a control, and a rotating three-dimensional display blinked into existence in the centre of the cockpit, showing a tactical representation of the surrounding airspace, from ground level to the upper stratosphere. Possible threats, such as ground vehicles and large buildings, were picked out in red. “I told you they retreated into their own simulations to escape the death of the universe. Well, some of them went native in a big way. Instead of being content to live out their lives in recreations of the past, they decided to change it to suit themselves, to carve out little empires and stamp their domination on the timelines.”

“Like Célestine?”

“Bingo.” Kat clicked her fingers. “She’s one of the builders. A long time ago, she cast versions of herself across all the timelines, and now she sits behind the scenes, working through them to achieve her ends.”

“Célestine built the multiverse?”

“Yes, in part. But there’s another out there, another of the architects of the simulations, and she’s more dangerous than Célestine could ever be.”

“Who is she?”

“A criminal, responsible for a million atrocities.” Kat’s fists clenched. “We’ve been tracking her for years but she’s recently gone quiet. Most of her alternate selves are dead.”

“And you think she’s here too?”

“I know it.”

Victoria swallowed. Her mind raced. Then she froze. Something cold squeezed her stomach and her mouth went dry.

“Is she me?”

“What?” Kat’s eyebrows shot up. “No!” She laughed. “No, you can relax, you’re fine. It’s not you.” The laugh dried like a puddle in the sun. “No, you already know her. She built the airship we’re riding on, using her knowledge of glitches in the programme to move it between the timelines.”

“The
Founder
?”

“The clue’s in the name, I guess.”

“But she’s a monkey.”

Another shrug. “It amuses her to take animal form. She might be a monkey on this world and an ape on the next. And she goes by many names—Founder, Architect, Apynja...”

“You’re here to get her?”

“Her and Célestine.” Katherine Abdulov drew herself straight and Victoria saw her lip curl. “We’re here to stop them before they do any more harm; to bring them to account for the billions who’ve died in their little games.”

“Virtual beings?” Victoria thought of the world she’d visited most recently, laid waste by Célestine’s drive to build a cyborg army. All those ghosts...

“Sentient beings nonetheless, and fully capable of suffering.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

A mischievous smile glimmered behind Kat’s dark eyes. “Because you and Ack-Ack Macaque have been fighting them and, if you don’t mind me saying, doing a damn good job.”

“And you want our help?”

“Not help so much, but maybe we should pool resources. What do you think?”

Victoria took a deep breath and let out a long, draining exhalation. “This is a lot to take in.”

“I know.” Kat chewed her bottom lip. “It was tough for me too, to start with. But please think about it. I could do with someone like you. There are very few who can move between the worlds, and you’ve been doing it for the past two years.” Her expression became wistful. “And besides, I’ve been looking for Ack-Ack for a long time now.”

“You have?”

“Yes.” Kat smiled. “You see, I know who he really is.”

A
CK-
A
CK
M
ACAQUE STOOD
with K8, on the viewing platform at the top of the Rock. The Strait of Gibraltar lay before them like a sparkling azure carpet. At the foot of the Rock, the hotels and apartment complexes of the town clustered close to the shoreline. Waves broke against the beaches. A westerly breeze blew in off the Atlantic, bringing a chill to an otherwise unseasonably warm November day, and he turned up the collar of his coat. Fourteen miles away, across the water, the stony Rif Mountains of Morocco loomed brown and purple through the haze—the uppermost tip of a whole new continent that stretched eight thousand vertiginous miles to Cape Town, and the spot where the waters of the South Atlantic ran into those of the Indian Ocean.