Omega point

CHAPTER 22

Richards' eyes snapped open and he sat up on the altar. The chains binding him fell away. He flexed his hand. There was a stiffness to his arm, but the wound had healed white and smooth, a runway for old pain.

Hog recoiled.

"How? How? Hog's work undone!"

Richards looked up at the sweating swine. "You asked me what manner of beast you are. You are no beast, you are Rolston. You are not Hog. Sorry."

"I, I am Hog, Hog!" Hog beat his chest with his hands and held them up to the shocked audience of mooks.

"You are Rolston." Richards slipped off the altar. "I'm sorry, man, but it's true. This place did a number on you, just like it did to poor Pl'anna."

"Seize him!" Hog's mooks wavered. "Seize him!" he roared. The mooks made for Richards. He held up his hand and they froze.

"Nope, no seizing today." Richards breathed deep as his mind infiltrated the construct of Reality 37. He was fully layered into it now. Still unable to effect large-scale change, he was, however, far from defenceless. He reached out. Not much of Waldo's creation remained now, and what was left was reducing all the quicker now the door to the Grid and his own machineries were gone.

"k52 should be here any moment," said Richards to his friends. "This will all be over soon. Hey, Waldo, you can come out now."

A gasp went round the mooks as a man appeared at the heart of the temple.

"The Flower King! The Flower King is here!" The news rippled round the amphitheatre from mook and man alike. Those who could fell to their knees, Bear's fur soaking up the gore of Hog's feast.

There was a rumble and the ground shook. Rocks fell from the wall and bounced into the audience of mooks, crushing many.

A slow clapping sounded around the amphitheatre.

"Speak of the devil," said Richards.

A figure stepped from the head of the staircase and into the amphitheatre, a figure of writhing shadow, armoured in night.

"Hog, dear Hog, at this very last, I come for thee."

"But our pact!" roared Hog. "My mooks, my mountain, we would remain, an eternal bastion of pain!"

"I see you do not honour your bargains, Lord of the Swine. You promised me the queen and I see no queen. Why should I honour my side of our business? I believe you said something very similar earlier this evening." Penumbra walked across the arena floor; his skin still writhed with shadow, but his features were more solid than before, features that were a dead ringer for Waldo. "You are a fool, Hog. And now you will die. And when you are dead, this world will be gone, a fitting punishment."

"Is that so?" said Hog. "Then why can I see a future? For him!" He pointed at a pirate. "There is a break in his line, but there will be no proper death for him today. He will pass on ten years hence, rich and drunk, full of wine and syphilis, dead in the arms of his doxy. And him!" he said, pointing out another. "He persists, a proud man with many sons. No death for him! He will go into the long sleep loved and mourned. Only worms and flowers will feast on him." Hog swung his head round, searching the crowd, his snout snuffling as he sniffed out the futures of those present. "And him," he said, his beady eye resting upon Piccolo. "He shall be your undoing."

"You attempt to buy more life, fly-lord." The Penumbra loosened his sword in its scabbard and drew the flickering tongue of darkness out. "That cannot be. There can be no future for anyone here. That is why you see nothing of yourself, Lord Hog, for there is simply nothing left to see." He held his sword in the air, its darkness sucking in the light, and addressed all present. "I made this place! I made this place for you all, and what did you do? You cast down the queen I set above you, and made the world a ruin. As I made you, so I unmake you. That is your punishment, that is the judgement of Penumbra! Haemites! Trollmen! Things of the deep dark corners! Advance!"

Round the top of the arena, all up the rift in the wall, from the doors into the temple circle, came the clanking of iron feet and the hiss of steam. Penumbra's army came forth in numbers. The mooks milled about, a confused chittering rising from their ranks.

Hog gaped, then his face hardened. "Mook-guard, release your prisoners." The glaive-armed mooks stepped down as one. Weapons were handed back to the pirate band. Bear grimaced as his paws were freed and he slipped his gauntlets on.

"I should kill you where you stand," said Bear.

"There is no time for this!" said Hog, his voice wavering between that of the swine and of Rolston. He looked at the bemused Waldo, who stared around as if drugged. "There is a chance. We must make him whole." He looked at Richards. "I understand now."

"Richards?" said Piccolo. Fighting had erupted along the upper galleries of the amphitheatre. "But the Flower King…"

"Look at him. He's not right, is he?" said Richards, pointing at Waldo, who gazed round the temple in bemusement. "I'll tell you why. He's the Flower King alright, but so — " and he jabbed his finger at Penumbra "- is he."

"What?" said Bear. "Eh?"

"They're part of the same thing, that's why Waldo is so dazed and Penumbra is so vengeful; they're incomplete. Waldo, Giacomo, your Flower King, he died in here. The system took an imprint of his personality, because these things cannot abide discontinuity, and let him carry on walking around. k52's been exploiting the whole thing. I don't have time to explain now, there's a battle starting. Just listen to pigboy here. We have to get as much of the Flower King together. Only he can kick k52 out. He made this world; he can do what he wants, if he remembers how."

Hog/Rolston nodded. "Aid me in making him whole again, for this is no complete man before me here. Pirates, captain, Bear, you have a choice. You may fight with me or fight with Penumbra. But with me is the only way to save our world. Bring Penumbra to me, alive, or all is lost!"

Piccolo and Bear looked at Richards. He nodded.

"Very well, Mr Richards," said Piccolo. "If that is indeed our lot, so be it."

"How many times do I have to say," said Richards. "Misters are for men, and I'm no Mister Man. It's just Richards." He took his revolver from a mook, and thumbed back the hammer. "Now, has everybody got that? Good."

Sobieski's face wavered on Chloe's screen. "Absolutely not, Klein. Your mission failed, through no fault of your own." He paused. "Damn shame about Chures, he was a good man. But we risk losing a lot more if we don't wrap this up here and now. We're going straight to plan B. Swan's ready. We've got to move before k52 does."

"Tell me, Sobieksi, how did Henson's mission play out?"

The eugene's expression hardened. "We're going ahead. The stratobomber is in place. k52's making his move. Grid activity is being disrupted worldwide. We've large spikes of activity in the Realm House. There's been movement on k52's link into the EuPol Central choir. We will execute our plan as discussed, Klein, and we have to do it now."

"Ten to one you're playing exactly into k52's hands," said Otto.

Sobieski cut the call.

"They're not listening. They're going to blow it, that damn eugene at the VIA…"

"Sobieski," said Valdaire. "He brokered the deal with the Chinese."

"Sure, he has his uses, but right now he's not listening. Commander Guan, how quickly can you get me to Nevada?"

Guan consulted with his superiors. "We can get a stratojet here in half an hour."

"And then it's another three hours to the States," said Otto. "Three hours is three hours too many, and there's no more reason they'd listen to me face to face. We have to stop them."

"What will happen if you don't?" said Guan. "You seek to act on the information of an AI. How can you be sure that was AI 5-003/12/3/77?" he said, giving Richards' serial — the Chinese refused to use AI names.

"That was Richards," said Otto. "You learn to tell them apart after a while, even when they're pretending to be each other. I have no idea what the result will be if we let the bombs go off, but if Richards says we should stop it, then we should. He is nearly always right. He irritates me, because he is condescending with it, but that does not alter the fact."

"There is another way," said Valdaire.

"Remote access?" said Otto. "I don't see how that will help.

If they say no to me on the phone, and no to my face, they will say no to a sheath."

"Then you'll have to fight your way in, and persuade them otherwise," she said. "You have resources out there, right?"

"Sure, we have a garage in LA, airbike there, groundcar; well, had a groundcar there, but there are plenty of weapons, one of our bigger stores."

"Richards got any sheaths there?"

"Yeah," said Otto. "I don't think I like where this is going."

"A good airbike, I expect," said Valdaire.

"A Hermes, good sport model. Good speed," said Otto.

"One of Richards' sheaths could be in Las Vegas in under an hour, then," said Valdaire. "This is a top-of-the-line set-up Waldo has here. He has v-jacks. I can reconfigure those to control a sheath remotely. It'll be like your own body."

"Guan's men trashed the equipment," said Otto.

"They trashed some of it. I can salvage enough to patch you in."

"You want me to borrow one of Richards' bodies, and use it to break into the Reality Realms vault and stop an atomic bomb going off?"

"That's about the size of it," said Valdaire.

"He had a pair of v-jacks, right?" said Lehmann.

"Yeah," said Valdaire.

"Lehmann, you're staying here, I need you to keep an eye on things." Otto rubbed his hand over his face. Wearing Richards' robotic body sounded about as appealing as slipping on someone else's old underwear. " Scheisse. Let's do it."

"Mooks! Arise! Fight! Destroy! We will not be cowed. Attack! Attack! Hog on, brothers!"

The mooks snatched up whatever came to hand — rocks, bits of bone, the skulls of ancient meals — and with a roar of "Hog on!" charged. The mountain rumbled and the eye of the Terror filled the sky.

Bear cast himself into the fray, hurling Penumbra's creatures into the air.

"Captain," grunted Hog, "bring the shadow to the Flower King. Without it we can do nothing."

Piccolo nodded and ran into the fight, his pirates following close behind. Richards scooped up Tarquin and slipped the bloodied lionskin on.

"All better now?" purred the lion.

"I will be when this is all done," said Richards. "We've got to keep Waldo safe, or it won't be. Come on."

The battle was going poorly for the mooks. The creatures of Penumbra, fronted by his haemites, marched towards the centre of the Anvil's heart. They slashed methodically with broad-bladed swords, sucking the life from scores of the grey-skinned creatures. Others, welded into pairs and bearing flameflowers integrated into their bodies, burnt many more. Hundreds of mooks died in the first few moments, but they attacked the opposing army in waves fuelled by the fiercest fanaticism. They were weak, yet they were many, and the vanguard of Penumbra's force was pulled down by screaming mooks to be rent apart. Piccolo and his band accounted for more, and Bear took on an entire phalanx on his own, battering his way in a frenzy through a score of trollmen. But the cordon tightened, and soon Lord Hog was forced back onto his altar, cleaver in one hand, a long skewer in the other, Richards and Waldo behind him. Increasing numbers of trollmen and haemites made their way through the thinning mooks. Hog smashed them back, plucked them from the floor and hurled them into their comrades, split them from crown to crotch with his cleaver.

"Hurry! Hurry! I cannot hold them for much longer!" he bellowed. Richards kept Waldo between himself and the altar, Tarquin a shield of stone. In his hand he grasped his revolver, gunning down any that came close.

The mountain shook, rocks fell. Gaps appeared in the walls, chasms across the floor, blackness visible through them all. Wind blasted as the Terror devoured the air, the shattering of reality a fragile background to the raw tumult of war.

The mooks were falling like wheat before a scythe. One, then two of Piccolo's pirates went down. The whole cavern shook. The mountain died as those who fought within died. The last great bastion of the world was coming apart, and Penumbra laughed. He was becoming less of a shadow with each death, an exact double of Waldo in dark armour.

A tremor brought a section of wall down, shattering into dying numbers as the stone toppled into darkness. Lumps of rock rolled across the floor, crushing many from both sides. Piccolo danced over a boulder that rolled into the last of his pirates, and found himself face to face with Penumbra.

Richards called out to the air captain, but his voice was lost. With his limited influence on the world he turned aside blades as he fought, rocks bouncing from an invisible shield about him and the dazed Waldo. When his attention returned to Piccolo, the air captain was engaged in a desperate fight with Penumbra. Piccolo was a master fencer, yet Penumbra had command of his blade beyond that which Piccolo could boast, for it was a part of his black heart. Richards watched as they danced back and forth, leaping over gaping holes in the cavern floor, twisting away from each other's weapons when the ground shook harder, slaying creatures who dared to interrupt their duel. Richards reached out across the tumult of warring information and hooked into Piccolo's mind. At his core, limited coding and intelligence lay dormant, quest-giving, support, yarn-spinning, a minor NPC in some outdated game. Overlaying it a vital intelligence thrummed, imbued with life by Waldo.

"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 amp; 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.