Outpost (46 page)

Approaching
footsteps. Dancing flashlight beam.

Nikki
grasped Nail by the ankle and dragged him down the tunnel. She was half Nail's
body weight, but possessed a maniac's super-strength. He sobbed and begged. His
fingers raked concrete. Punch could hear Nail pleading as he was dragged away
down the corridor. Echoing screams.

Punch
adjusted his grip on the sharpened coin. He cut as fast as he could. The cord
binding his wrists had started to fray.

Nikki
returned and untied him from the girder. She dragged him down the tunnel. He
didn't scream. Whatever horror Nikki planned for him, he resolved his last
words would be 'Fuck you.'

There
was an office chair in the middle of the tunnel. Nikki tied him to the chair
and pushed him down the tunnel.

'Where
are we going?' demanded Punch.

'To
meet the family.'

Nikki
kicked open double doors and propelled Punch into some kind of operations
centre.

The
room was rippled with liquid metal like melted candle wax.
Hyperion
passengers were melded to the
walls and ceiling like flies trapped in a web.

Hyperion
crewmen stood sentry round the walls. Drones. Worker bees. Officers in
brass-button uniform. Deckhands in striped tunics.

A
figure at the centre of the room. A body lying in state. A Russian cosmonaut in
a scorched pressure suit, part cooked by thermite but still intact. Canvas
hanging in charred strips, under- suit ribbed with cooling tubes. The helmet visor
was raised. Metal tendrils snaked from inside the enamel helmet, hung from the
table, wound across the floor and fused with the wall.

Nikki
parked Punch at the back of the room. He craned to see past Nail. A figure tied
to a chair.

Ghost.

They
both leaned forward so they could talk. Nail sat between them, sobbing.

'How
the hell did you get here, Gee?'

'I
came across the ice,' said Ghost. 'I came to help Jane. They caught me in the
tunnels. Two of them. Thought they would kill me for sure, but they dragged me
down here. It was like they had orders.'

'Are
you okay? Are you infected?'

'I'm
all right.'

A
wall screen pulsed static. A figure was fused to the screen.

'Who's
that?'

'I
think it's Rye,' said Ghost. 'What's left of her.'

'Thought
she was long dead.'

'She
was on
Hyperion
all
the time we were living it up. She was down below with the passengers. Guess
she survived the fire.'

Nail
kept sobbing.

'Nail.
Hey, Nail.'

Nail
didn't look up.

'Forget
him,' said Ghost. 'He's lost it.'

'Have
you got your knife?'

'She
took it.'

'I
can't get my hands free.'

'Jane
is around here some place,' said Ghost. 'The best we can do is stall for time.'

Jane
checked her watch. The final seconds.

00:00

Turn-around
time. If she wanted to save her own skin, she should forget Punch and head for
Rampart before it drifted beyond reach. Take a guaranteed ride back home.

She
unbuckled the watch and threw it away. Fuck it.

Jane
stood at the end of a corridor. She guessed the lower levels of the nuclear waste
repository hid some kind of doomsday, continuation-of-government facility built
during the cold war. A minor synapse of the Soviet command structure. Perhaps
regional control for the submarine fleet.

She
passed a communal shower.

She
passed a powerhouse. Three rusted diesel generators. The generators appeared
dead. She laid a hand on the metal housing. Cold. No vibration. Output dials
smashed, needles at zero. So why were the lights on? The ceiling strip-lights
pulsed like a slow heartbeat. She wondered if something had infiltrated the
ducts and conduits. Perhaps the bunker itself was somehow alive and sentient.

She
glanced into a side office. A pin-board map faded sepia. Canada, Norway and
Alaska, the rest of the Arctic Circle. The stand-off zone. The theatre of war.
Chart coordinates of the Soviet armada, the bomber fleet, patrolling the
frontier, waiting for the order to attack.

An
infected crewman from
Hyperion
stood in the corner of the room beneath a mildewed portrait of Lenin straddling
the Arctic Ocean like a colossus. The semi-decomposed figure stood sentry like
he was waiting for instructions.

Scattered
equipment on the floor. New stuff. Tin mugs. Balled socks. Russian
Playboy.
Jane kicked through the litter.
She kept her eyes on the infected crewman in case he made a move. He remained
still, lit by intermittent, flickering light.

Jane
thought about the infected crewmen she encountered in the upper levels of the
complex. They wouldn't have the intelligence or dexterity to improvise a suicide
vest. Something was manipulating them, using them as a defence perimeter.
Nikki? Had she got them trained like dogs? Sit, heel, beg.

Jane
quietly backed out of the room. The rotted sentinel watched her leave but made
no move to follow.

Something
was aware Jane had entered the lowest levels of the bunker and was content to
let her walk deeper into the subterranean complex.

Nikki
wandered around the ops centre, hands in her pockets, casual confidence, like
she ran the place. No sign of infection.

'What's
the deal, Nikki?' demanded Ghost. 'Are we lunch, or what?'

Nikki
turned to face him. Mild surprise, like she had forgotten he was there.

'Believe
it or not,' she said, 'I'm doing my best to help you.'

She
was mild, good-humoured, utterly insane.

'That's
nice.'

'Jane
will be here any minute,' said Nikki, glancing at a
Hyperion
officer as if she expected him to
provide confirmation. 'I'm anxious to speak to her.'

'We
blew the anchor cables, Nikki. Rampart is floating free. It's caught in the
current. It's heading south. We can all go home. You can come too. But we have
to leave right now. We don't have time to fuck around. It's drifting out of
range.'

Nikki
shook her head and smiled.

'They
bombed the cities. Nuked them. I saw it myself, when I sailed south. I saw the
sky lit up. I saw the world on fire. There's nothing beyond the horizon,
Rajesh. Europe has been wiped clean. America too, as far as I know. We are the
last people on earth, and this is our home.'

'You
can't be sure.'

'Embrace
it. It's evolution. We are the next stage, the next level. Open your eyes. We
are on the cusp of something wonderful.'

Nikki
took gloves from her pocket and pulled them on. She stood over the dead
cosmonaut. She reached inside the helmet and snapped a rivulet of metal. She
examined it.

'So
who do you think he was? What happened up there?'

She
stood in front of Ghost.

'What
do you think it is?' she asked, holding the sliver in front of Ghost's face.

He
shied away from the gleaming splinter.

'Where
does it come from? Is it man-made? Nanobots run wild? Maybe it's not from earth
at all. Maybe it came from somewhere else.' She gestured to
Hyperion
passengers fused to the wall.
'Do you think they finally understand? Once you surrender to it, once the transformation
takes hold, do you think it all becomes clear? What it's like on the other
side? Aren't you curious to find out?'

'No.'

'How
can you not want to know? This is the dominant life form on the planet now.'

'Doesn't
mean shit. It's a virus. Bacteria. It can kill, but I don't hold it in high
esteem.'

'This
is very different.'

'These
Hyperion
guys. They follow you like a
puppy dog. How does that work?'

Nikki
took a radio from her pocket. A Rampart walkie-talkie. She switched it on. A
strange, tocking signal. Nikki held the radio to the dead cosmonaut's helmet.
The signal got louder, more insistent, then dissolved to feedback.

'They
sing to each other. Some kind of high-frequency chatter. They merge their
thoughts.'

'I
don't see much thought going on.'

Nikki
stood behind Nail. She slapped a hand on his bald scalp and pulled back his
head. He yelped in pain. She dropped the sliver of metal into his mouth then
clamped his jaw closed. He gnashed his teeth. He bucked
and thrashed in his
chair. He
arched
his back. She held him a full
minute, then released her
grip. He spat the metal shard on
to
the
floor.

'You
fuck,' he sobbed. 'You fucking fuck.' He retched. He
spat.
Pathetic attempt to purge
infection from his mouth.

Nikki
grabbed a swivel chair and positioned it in front of Ghost.

'His
name isn't Nail Harper, you know that, right? He's David Tuddenham. A fuck-up.
Petty thief. Petty everything. But now all that hurt, all that damage, will
evaporate. A lifetime of failure will just melt away.'

'You're
nuts,' said Ghost. 'You are one hundred per cent, grade-A batshit.'

'Think,'
said Nikki. She got up, and paced up and down like she was lecturing a class.
'Just take a moment and think. This situation, this new state of being, it's
weird, but is it necessarily bad? This could be a wonderful opportunity to
become something new. That's good, right? Most people spend their whole lives
wishing they could be different.'

'You
were a student in Brighton, is that right? Brighton University?'

'Sure.'

'What
did you study?'

'Biogeography,'
said Nikki. 'Ocean science. Ecosystems.'

'Did
you enjoy it?'

'Of
course. That's why I did it.'

'Think
back. Remember. What did you enjoy?'

'Nightlife.
Alan and I had a flat on the seafront. It was heaven.'

'Do
you remember your first day at university? The day you first arrived. Do you
remember how you felt?'

'My
parents dropped me with suitcases. I was excited to leave home. Nervous I
wouldn't make friends.'

'That
girl. The person you used to be. Can you remember her? Can you bring her back
just for a moment? What would she say if she saw you now?'

Nikki
snapped another nugget of metal from inside the cosmonaut's enamel helmet. She
looked at it a long while.

'I'm
so sick of being me.'

'I
can help you, Nikki. There's a way back from all this.' 'The burden of
selfhood,' she sighed. 'Life-long anguish. Straining to support an elaborate
artifice every waking moment. Trying to maintain our bullshit personas.
Haircuts, clothes. Making our big fucking statements to an indifferent world. We
drink, we smoke, we squander fortunes on DVDs, anything to escape ourselves for
a few blessed minutes.'

'You
don't have to turn Martian just to feel better. That's like shooting yourself
in the brain to cure a headache.'

Nikki
closed her eyes, placed the globule of metal on her tongue and swallowed. She
smiled.

She
stood over Nail. She bent and kissed him.

She
resumed her seat in front of Ghost.

'I'm
so sorry, Nikki.'

'I
wanted to kill you. I was going to kill you all. I hated you so damn much. I
don't know why. But I want you to join us. I'm not going to force you. Nail?
He's a child. I had to decide on his behalf. But I want you folks to
volunteer.'

Jane
walked through a series of plant rooms. Most of the ceiling lights were smashed.
She wanted to save her flashlight batteries. She struck a flare. It burned
fierce purple.

Ventilation
flues. Dehumidification filters.

The
air conditioning was shot. The plenum fans that should have pushed air through
the complex were rusted and still. Yet, when she took off a glove and put a
hand to the wall-vent, she could feel a breath of wind.

She
found the canteen. Metal tables and chairs. A communist mural of heroic
agricultural workers holding sickles and scythes, gazing towards a golden dawn.
She got tired of searching.

'Punch,'
she shouted. 'Where are you, dude?'