Wrath of the Lemming-men (10 page)

‘Huh. Alright.’

Rhianna wandered into the sitting room. She was wearing heavy boots, a jacket and gloves. ‘I don’t think I’m going to like it here. It seems so. . . I don’t know,
capitalist
.’

‘Well, it
is
the HQ of a major corporation,’ Carveth said. ‘Where’s Suruk?’

‘I’ll find him,’ Smith said, suddenly a little worried, and he left the room. He knocked on Suruk’s door and went in.

The alien stood by the shelves, admiring his skull collection. ‘I have made a decision,’ he said. ‘When this mission is done, I will go to find Colonel Vock.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I am certain.’

Smith nodded. ‘I’d rather you stayed, Suruk.’

‘You think Vock will defeat me?’

‘No, I’d just rather – well, you know, I prefer having you around.’

‘And you also, Mazuran. You have been a good friend, and a great source of wisdom and bail money. But honour calls – and I shall of course return.’

‘I understand. Just - look after yourself, Suruk. And make sure you give him a good smack in the chops from me. Anyway,’ he added, forcing himself to brighten up, ‘we’d best get going. We’ll discuss Vock later.’

‘Indeed,’ said Suruk, ‘Now, let us slay some yuppies!’

They hurried across the cold landing pad, into a smart terminal where a monorail picked them up. The carriage was empty except for a high-ranking executive: the shoulders of his suit were padded, and he gabbled into a mobile comlink the size of a housebrick: ‘Buy it out at thirty percent, ditch the workforce and sell the gardens for scrap. What say we meet at Bernie’s wine bar, seven of the clock, bring your wad?’

Rhianna scowled. If ever she was going to use her powers to pop someone’s head, Smith thought, it would probably be now. Suruk leaned across and whispered to her, ‘He is a capitalist and I am an indigenous tribesman. Could it be wrong to detatch his head?’

Rhianna grimaced and looked away.

Smith glanced at Carveth. She was putting her mittens on, and she looked small and worried. ‘You’ll be alright,’ he said. ‘All you’ve got to do is talk to our agent, get this info and report back. Simple, eh?’

‘Yeah, right,’ she said. ‘This must be our worst plan since you let Suruk go carol singing on that bullion train.’

‘Nobody holds out on the Baby Jesus,’ Suruk growled.

‘I tell you, as soon as we’re done I’m coming straight back. No screwing around.’

The monorail slid to a halt at the main terminal.

There was a logo on the wall outside: a heraldic lion holding up a sword. Beneath the sign an unshaven man was finishing a cigarette.

‘Rick?’ Carveth gasped, squashing her nose against the window. ‘Rick Dreckitt?’

‘God,’ Smith muttered. ‘Not him.’

The doors slid open, pushing Carveth aside. Dreckitt looked inside the carriage.

‘Hey, sister,’ Dreckitt said. He had a gravelly, slightly melancholic voice. ‘How’s business?’

She prised her nose from the window before it could get frozen there. ‘Brilliant!’ she said, beaming at him. ‘How’re you?’

‘Still alive.’ Dreckitt smiled, reluctantly.

Carveth waved at the others from the carriage door.

‘See you in a few days!’ she called, and she skipped away.

‘Let’s get down to business, Rick!’

Suruk looked at Smith. ‘No screwing around, then?’

‘So,’ said Dreckitt, ‘they want me to put the squeeze on you too, huh?’

‘Yes please!’ Carveth said, trotting along at his side.

They were walking through the monorail terminal. It was white and sleek, dotted with odd chrome sculptures like twisted bumpers. Low-ranking Leighton-Wakazashi staff – which Carveth and Dreckitt resembled – hurried past them in work gear. Every so often they would spot an executive from the higher floors, telling someone loudly about his car over the comlink.

‘It’s a tough draw,’ Dreckitt said. ‘If you ask me, the company stinks like they pulled it out the bay after a week in a lead vest.’

Carveth was not quite sure what Dreckitt was talking about. His slang originated from Carver’s Rock, a very tough colony in the United Free States where he had worked as a bounty hunter. Apparently it was quite common for a man to wear a concrete overcoat out there despite his Chicago typewriter, which just went to show how different things were abroad. Whatever he was on about, it always sounded very exciting.

‘Gosh,’ Carveth said, ‘it is funny us meeting, isn’t it? I mean, after Urn and everything.’

Dreckitt frowned, perhaps recalling their last meeting, where Carveth had had her way with him in the
John
 
Pym
. He had been very drunk. ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘We’ll always have the kitchen table.’

‘We could always have it again.’ Dreckitt said nothing, so she added, ‘Tell me what we’ll be doing.’

‘Okay.’ Dreckitt shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘Leighton-Wakazashi makes high-grade computers, right?Now, the cutting edge of that is simulants: flesh and semi-blood, cultured in a tank. The brains of the Empire – you and me, sister, you and me.’

She nodded, rapt. ‘So we’re at it – where it’s at, I mean?’

‘Exactly. We’ve been checking L-W for a while, making sure that they don’t start doing things they shouldn’t –building custom jobs for the wrong reasons, selling andies off to private clients, and so on.’

He fell silent as a woman strode past in a bright red suit, leafing through a personal organiser. They turned into a smaller corridor. ‘Beneath here is where the data-bases are,’ Dreckitt said. ‘I don’t have clearance: we can figure out how to get it later. But I warn you: the data’s guarded by the most hardcore techs around. They won’t be happy about a dame nosing through their business –assuming they know what a dame is.’

Carveth nodded and they walked on. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing. A cardboard cut-out was propped against the wall: a woman in a steel bikini, six feet tall, wielding a sword. She had huge, pointed ears. ‘
Galaxy of Battle
.’

The bounty hunter scowled. ‘Yep,’ he said. ‘L-W hold the rights. Most addictive thing in the universe.’

‘Don’t I know,’ Carveth said. Fifty years ago, Leighton- Wakazashi had bought a moribund tool for sharing pornography called the internet. It was now used to support the company’s virtual world, a place considered by its inhabitants to be significantly better than the real one. ‘I used to play it,’ Carveth said. ‘I bought my own castle and everything. I wanted my own palace, but the captain made me spend it on a new autopilot for the ship. I suppose on balance he was right.’

‘Listen, we need to talk about where you fit into this.’

‘I’m all yours.’

‘Good. Let’s go somewhere private,’ Dreckitt said, and he opened the door of the ladies’ toilet.

Inside a cubicle, Dreckitt said, ‘Here’s the deal. It’s wartime, and sims are getting requisitioned for logistics work left right and centre. The company knows it can’t send andies out untrained. So, it calls them back in and gets them battlefield-ready – and that’s where you come in. You’re training them.’

‘What? I can’t do that! I don’t know how to fight, let alone how to teach other people.’

‘It’s a breeze, sister. The real trainer’s been delayed: Intelligence gave her ship a Mickey Finn. You’re down to do it in her place. There’s a neural link in your room: all you have to do is download this.’

He reached into his coat and took out a programme box. On the front was a photograph of a red-faced man, squinting belligerently as if regarding an enemy through a telescope. The title read:
The Davies-McLaglen Complete
Sergeant Major Simulator
.

‘These broads are all androids,’ Dreckitt explained. ‘Tell ’ em to stand up straight and it’s a done deal.’

The man on the box glowered out at Carveth, his chin protruding like a cowcatcher. She sighed. ‘Rick, do you remember when you and I went out on that date?’

‘When I was hired to kill you?’

‘Yes. Do you think that could ever happen again?’

‘Depends whether you cross me or not. Listen, kid,’ said Dreckitt, ‘I get your drift. But this is a job. Maybe sometime we can get together and sink some rye, but for now, Dreckitt’s on a case, and there’s no getting him off it.’

‘Well then, we’re partners! We’ll sort it all out, and then we can get some time together. I can be on your case too.’

‘You already are,’ Dreckitt said. He looked glum for a moment, then sighed and added, ‘I shouldn’t be hard on you. You’re okay. Don’t look so shook up, kid. You look like you’re expecting to get the bum’s rush.’

Carveth was not sure whether this was a disease or an unnatural act. ‘You wish,’ she said, and she opened the cubicle door.

Back in the living room of the
John Pym
, Smith was consulting their library. This consisted of about fifty books, roughly divided between military history, spacecraft recognition guides, battlefield manuals and stories about young women looking for Mr Right.

‘Hey, Isambard.’

Smith glanced up. It was warm inside the ship, and the heat made him feel a little drowsy. Rhianna had taken off her coat and boots and, by the looks of it, a good deal else: her t-shirt and skirt seemed only attached to her by accident. Her casual sexiness made him interested, then resentful, then wary.

‘Just looking in my books,’ he said. ‘I wondered if there might be anything useful about the Vorl in them.’

‘
The Boys’ Book of Uplifting Adventure
,’ Rhianna said, picking up one of the titles. ‘I doubt it. . .’

Smith frowned. ‘I hope Carveth’s all right. I never trusted that Rick Dreckitt fellow. Shady type, that.’

‘You worry about Polly, don’t you?’

‘Sometimes. Especially when she puts her arms out and goes
Neeeeeeeyow!
Bad form in a pilot.’ He shrugged.

‘She’s not a bad sort, deep down.’

‘I think that’s very kind,’ Rhianna said. ‘It’s good that you care so much.’

Smith lifted a volume of
Jane’s Fighting Spacecraft
and scowled behind it in the direction of Rhianna’s lithe body.

He crossed his legs and tried to think about something else, noticing that the old radio mast was getting ready to transmit its message of love.

‘How’s Suruk?’ Rhianna asked.

‘He’s in the hold, practising. He means to go after this Colonel Vock as soon as he gets the chance.’

Rhianna shook her head, genuinely sad. ‘War just breeds war,’ she said.

‘They don’t think like that. To Suruk, the cycle of violence is a bike with scythes. Still, if this Vock fellow is anything like the rest of the Furries, he’ll have earned it.’ He felt tired and sour. ‘How’s about a drink?’ he suggested.

‘Cool.’

Smith got up and opened the fridge. A stop at the company shop on the way back from the terminal had secured them a useful supply of beer. He pulled out a few and set them on the table. ‘Here we go.’

Rhianna always seemed to find it hard to sit on a chair properly for any length of time. She pulled her feet up under her and ran a hand through her hair. She looked deliciously scruffy.

Smith opened the hold door. Inside, Suruk was practising fighting with his spear, calling out the names of the strikes as he jabbed and sliced the air: ‘Leaping Dog style! Monkey Threatens Biscuit! Solitude Standing!’

‘Pint?’ Smith asked, making the universal tipping gesture. Suruk nodded.

‘You know,’ Smith said as he returned to the table, ‘I don’t trust Leighton-Wakazashi. They’re too interested in making a profit and not enough in the galaxy as a whole.’

‘Really, Isambard?’ She sounded pleased. He realised he had said something right.

‘Absolutely. Leighton-Wakazashi exploit the galaxy terribly. Not like our East Empire Company. They know how to exploit the galaxy
properly
.’

Rhianna frowned. ‘Soon enough,’ she said as Suruk strolled into the room, ‘Leighton-Wakazashi’s greed will turn against it. It’s karma. Karma is inside everything.’

Suruk started rooting about in one of the cupboards.

‘Not in here,’ he said. ‘I think I ate it.’

‘That’s korma,’ Smith said. ‘Another beer, anyone?’

The Leighton-Wakazashi buildings were soulless, even to an android. Carveth did not like her small, white, allotted room: the chrome and digital clocks unsettled her.

Already she missed the
John Pym
, with its dials, gears and inexplicable pinging sounds. Sitting up in bed, she reflected on the grim task that was to come. She’d registered, claiming that she was here to train the lady androids in basic combat drill, and been given a list of trainees and a programme of activities to run through with them, as well as a uniform in a box.

The list of names sounded reasonable: ten simulants of varying nationality, with the initial R or K in the middle of each name, for Robot or Karakuri depending on the planet of manufacture. The training schedule was less promising, though. There was a cursory bit about tactics and rifle handling, along with longer sections about close-quarter wrestling/hair pulling, beach volleyball and hazardous environment training (mud, custard). Each day was rounded off with a sing-song and disciplining of recruits (‘preferably over the knee’, someone had written in biro on the timetable. ‘Tolerate no naughtiness’). This looked bad.

‘Dirty old buggers!’ she said. Stuff this, she decided. If she was going to run this show, she’d run it properly, not for the amusement of a bunch of dirty old executives.

There was no way that she was going to roll around in mud dressed in anything but tough, sensible clothes. She might perhaps pay Rick Dreckitt a visit in less sensible clothes later, but that was her own business. After all, you had to have some sort of life outside work, didn’t you?

There was a neural shunt and a player on the wall. She wired up the basic training disc, plugged it in and went to sleep.

‘So,’ said Smith, finishing his fourth can, ‘Shipping command came to the conclusion that there was probably a connection between Binky landing the ship the wrong side up and the disappearance of half the shipment of Scotch. They accused him of being a drunkard.’

Rhianna nodded keenly. ‘How did he get his pilot’s licence back?’