Omega Point (39 page)

  "Come now, shadow man!" cried the captain. "I have no fear of thee!"

  "Then you are as foolish as your hat," said the shadow being.

  Shadow-sword turned steel feather aside. Left-hand dagger forced soul-sucking blade away. But it could not go on forever. Perspiration poured from Piccolo. Penumbra attempted to execute a high-handed thrust, coming in over Piccolo's guard, but the captain saw it, parried with his dagger, made a faux-pas to Piccolo's left, then swung his blade across his torso, bypassing Penumbra's cirque-a-six.

  Penumbra glanced down with amusement on his face. His flesh rippled as if Piccolo's blade had passed through water.

  "No matter how hard you fight, you will never best me. Do you not see? As this world dies, I grow the stronger while you grow weaker. Each death brings me closer to my rightful state, and I will forge this realm anew."

  "Is that so? Then I am damned, and all is lost." Piccolo let out a shout, and pushed himself onto the dark lord's sword. Richards gasped, feeling the cold black of the blade as Piccolo did. Penumbra laughed as Piccolo disintegrated, but stopped. Piccolo's face lacked fear. Penumbra turned, and there stood Bear, tall as vengeance. Penumbra frowned and tried to pull his sword free of Piccolo, but could not. As his body disintegrated into sooty particles and was sucked into Penumbra's blade, Piccolo spoke again.

  "We may not be able to slay you, prince, but if I am one of the last few pieces of your puzzle then at the very least my death should make you solid enough to catch." These last words were framed by nought but the shape of a mouth. Piccolo was gone. Richards fought to pull back, and clutched at his chest, transferring his flailing senses to Bear.

  "Right then, you slippery bastard!" said Bear. "My friend's death better have been worth it. Let me tell you, I'm in no mood for any funny business." Penumbra turned as the huge toy leant forward and prodded him. His arm was solid, and bled a little where Bear's claw poked. "Yep," said Bear, "that's that for you," and he grasped him under one large arm, pinning both of Penumbra's to his side. "Right, sunshine, we've got an appointment with the doctor."

  Bear battered his way one-handed through the warring armies towards the altar where Lord Hog, surrounded, fought a dozen assailants.

  "Listen! Listen! Let us strike a deal," wheedled Penumbra.

  "No sale, chum." Bear punched his claws through the face of a trollman. "I've seen how your deals work out."

  "No, listen! Listen! I must absorb much of this world, it is true, but I can spare a piece of myself. I can make you real, Bear. Real! Just think! No more of this demi-life. You will be a creature of substance. I will leave you upon the world of your choice, where you may fight as long as you like."

  Bear chuckled. "Now you sound like Richards. I may be real, I may be not, but the important thing is that I feel real, and I always have. When I was a toy, I enjoyed being a toy, because I was loved and needed and it didn't matter to me that I was only stuffed." Three haemites came howling at them. A strong backhander saw them off. "Now, it may be only a little bit different here, but it still doesn't matter. What does matter is that you are a very bad man. So shut it, Mr Sneaky."

  They were nearly at the altar, which ran with Hog's blood. His skin was opened by many small wounds, and he bled freely from them, but the monster fought on.

  "Hey! Piggy! I've got him!" said Bear as the remaining members of Lord Hog's guard formed up around him in a semi-circle.

  "Good! I have done what I can, now the rest is up to you! You must sew the Penumbra back onto the Flower King, for he will not willingly rejoin his greater part!"

  When he heard this, Penumbra began to wriggle frantically.

  "Noooo! Not that! Please! I beg you! Think of yourself! Think of the box in the attic!"

  "Not listening," said Bear. He patted at his side and ripped open his flap, and produced his needle. Richards hustled the dazed Waldo over to the struggling shadow lord.

  "Here, take Tarquin," Richards said. Hog grunted and roared and fought with his guards as the enemy attempted to reclaim their leader. Richards slipped the lionskin off and wrestled it over Waldo's dark double. "Pin him tight, Tarquin." The lion obliged, encasing Waldo's shadow in stone.

  They had Waldo sit, and pressed the struggling shadow's soles against Waldo's. "Right, you little sod," said Bear. "I'm going to Peter Pan you good and proper."

  There was an angry squeal. They looked up to see Hog being taken in the side by a long spear. The mook guard had fallen and Hog's enemies had reorganised, keeping themselves back from his cleaver and jabbing with their pikes. He bellowed, smashing the pike to matchwood and pulling upon it, dragging the unfortunate creature wielding it within chopping distance whereupon it was swiftly dispatched.

  "Now, Bear! Now!" shouted Richards. The cavern rumbled. Little remained of the Anvil now but the inner temple.

  Bear shook his head. He wrestled with the struggling shadow, and the first stitch went in, pricking blood from Waldo's feet. It drew a howl of despair from the shadow. Waldo looked on, puzzled.

  "What are you doing?" he said. "Who is this man?"

  "Nooooo!" screamed Penumbra.

  "Yes!" cackled Bear. He stitched swiftly, humming as he worked.

  "Aieeeee!!!!!" said Penumbra. As each new, neat stitch went in, Penumbra became flatter and flatter, his features less distinct. Bear finished off the first foot and moved to the other. A morblin rammed a pike into him, a haemite chopped into his side with a rusty seax. He irritably punched them away, Richards shooting over his head, warding further blows from him by pulling at the world code.

  "Better hurry this up, Bear!" Bear muttered, and stitched faster than he ever had before. There was a pained oink, and Hog sank to his knees. Hungry spear points dipped themselves in and out of his body.

  "Quickly, quickly, sew it on!" he grunted. "Or all is lost!"

  "Aieee!" screamed Penumbra. "Leave the pig! Kill the bear!"

  Bear was beset from all sides. The last of the elite mook guard fell, and the enemy swarmed all over him. Morblins, trollmen, haemites, and things with far too many teeth to have proper names. Richards covered himself over with a hemispheric shield, and ducked down, a mass of creatures scrabbling at it and burying him.

  "Get him off me! Cut the stitches!" ordered Penumbra. He was little more than a dusky cutout of a man.

  "No!" said Bear. "One… more… stitch!" His assailants stabbed and cut him. Fur and stuffing went everywhere, as they ripped long strips of fabric from him. They tried to drag him back, but he fought them off with flailing paws and deadly might, his violence astounding them. With one last heroic effort he hauled those who still clung to him forward. He reached out and, using all his strength, moved his arm to pull the thread through one last time.

  The scrum parted for a moment, and Richards saw a pair of conjoined haemites prime their weapon and point its nozzle at Bear's back.

  "Sergeant Bear!" he shouted. "Look out!"

  A burning light burst from Waldo and washed out over the cavern. Bear covered his remaining eye.

  The cavern shattered into nothing.

  The haemites, in the instant they felt their unnatural life desert them, fired.

  Lord Penumbra ceased to be as flames washed over Bear, setting his fur ablaze.

  Bear fell, arms flailing.

 

Otto watched stolen feeds of Henson's men being slaughtered by k52's robot drones. They proceeded into the Realm House practically unhindered, only to be swarmed by spider drones when they had reached the Grid relays on the floor of the Realm House cavern.

  "Bad tactics," he said. "They let them in, let them access the Grid relays before moving in in force and taking them out." Otto replayed key parts of the footage, watching the way k52's machines behaved, plotting avenues of attack and defence. Question was, why had k52 let them in at all? "Are we ready?" he said.

  "Yes," said Valdaire.

  Otto lowered himself onto the first v-jack couch, next to the dead Waldo.

  "No time to clean him away, sorry," said Valdaire. She slipped the v-jack headpiece on.

  "Good fortune, Klein," Guan said.

  "Now," said Valdaire. "Because of the nature of this patch up here, and possible interference, entry into the Grid may be a little rougher than normal, OK?"

  "OK."

  "In case you can't find the way yourself, I've rigged a channel that will carry you directly to your virtual office. You'll have to find your way after that, I can't break Richards' encryption and get you straight in to the LA office. Now, are you ready?"

  "
Ja
," said Otto. He hated the VR world.

  "Right, on three. One… two… three…"

  Otto's mentaug howled as it was slaved to the v-jack unit. His head felt as if it would burst as he was shunted along the raw Gridlines, his perceptions open to a world normally hidden to human eyes. He hadn't enjoyed his last interface with the raw Grid. This jaunt wasn't much better, a dizzying roar of light and sound, knots of blackness growing like bacterial infestations where k52's presence interfered with the running of the Grid.

  It was over. He found himself in Richards & Klein's remote telepresence lobby, represented by an anonymous avatar made of ovoids and spheres, its clothes an allusion to a business suit.

  Genie instantly appeared in front of him, fancy-dress outfit nowhere in sight; she wore a sober grey skirt and jumper, her hair slicked and tied back, businesswoman style. "Otto? Otto! Ohmygod, it's you!" She did a little jump, gabbling quickly, her words tripping themselves. "Oh, thank goodness! Otto, what's going on? The Grid's freezing up, I can't reach any of my friends, and I have no idea what's going on. I've not heard anything from Richards since the office blew up. I saw his Gridsig, but nothing else. Is he OK? Are you OK?"

  "
Ja
, Genie, calm down. We are OK. We are in the middle of a case. You will learn, this is not unusual."

  "The office? Someone blew the office up? With a compact nuke? Usual! Otto, they've had to shut down half the arco. That's not unusual?"

  "OK, yes, that's not so normal. Listen, can you bring up the LA office for me? I need to access one of Richards' sheaths, the heaviest model he has there – this is Richards' territory, not mine. I could do with some help."

  "Yeah, er, sure, of course." Genie became focused, pulled a board made of light out of the air and began working switches with sweeps of her fingers. An AI would have interfaced directly with the network, but Genie was a pimsim, a post-mortem simulation, and the habits of the living died hard. "I've had to patch an entirely new network together after the office went. It's shaky, especially now with the Grid shutting down. What's happening?"

  "One of Richards' brothers, that's what is happening."

  "Oh, er, OK. Another Five? Is that bad?"

  Otto's avatar nodded its featureless head. "Don't worry."

  "What have I got to worry about? I'm already dead." She gave a little smile. She had been young, she still was, and would be forever. She'd been with the company slightly under a year, not long at all. "OK, right, er, you're in!" She clapped her hands and smiled brightly. "Well, Mr Klein, will there be anything else?"

  "Yeah," said Otto. "Anyone calls, tell them to ring back."

  A smoother shunt through the Grid, and Otto followed paths ordinarily trodden by Richards.

  He opened plastic eyes to the inside of a closet in the garage beneath their LA shopfront. He held up plastic hands as the lights came on.

  He felt a little weird at being inside Richards' body. It was all… wrong. At least he'd been able to convince him to buy this light combat model. Not as heavy as Otto would have liked, but it would do.

  He had the rack release him and stepped past four other sheaths to the closet door. It slid open at a thought from him. Outside, the remainder of the garage. His eyes alighted on the airbike at the centre.

  Seconds later, Otto was in the air over nighttime LA. Below, the sounds of traffic collisions filtered into the smoggy air, and blocks' worth of lights flickered uncertainly. Over LAX, dirigibles bumped one another aimlessly, and he watched as a stratoliner plummeted from the sky to impact and explode on the mountains east of the city. He deactivated all automatic features of the airbike and switched illegally to full manual.

  Riding the wind, he accelerated to 300kph and sped out toward the mountains, hoping he would not be too late.

 

Crumbs of the Anvil remained, favourite corners of the mooks, places where Hog's victims had been especially terrified, those scraps that had enough psychic integrity to avoid being immediately rent apart by the Terror. Most of the two armies were gone. Here a mook cowered, floating upon an evaporating rock; there stood the empty husks of haemites, the unnatural energies that motivated them gone along with their master. The carrion silence of battles concluded hung heavy over the arena's remains, the tinkling sound of dying reality and the hiss of places boiling away its only foes.

  Of all the surviving pieces of the Anvil, that surrounding the altar was the largest. An uneven circle remained, four of the seven stone monoliths sentinel at its edge. Only thin smoke came from this last piece of the world. Hog's evil had hardened it to black diamond.

  Off to its left, the cages of sustenance floated, separate but nearly as resilient as the island of reality Richards was on. The glistening eyes of sated mooks watched.

  He let his energy shield drop, and pushed himself out from a crush of dead mooks, morblins and trollmen.