redRobe

Chapter Thirty-Eight ...In the Society of Wolves

It looked like some picnic, thought Kate. The kind she and Joan used to take in the hills behind Castel Gandolfo when Joan was still alive. Lavender and rosemary suffusing the warm breeze as they rode across scrub-covered slopes and through ancient, thousand-year-old olive groves.

But that was then and this was frightening.

Hooves sank into cold mud or struck sparks from stones as the horses headed up track towards El Escondido. It was drizzling, but Kate had grown used to that. Surprisingly the lieutenant rode less well than Kate would have expected.

Kate didn’t ride at all. She walked behind with Axl glued to her side like someone had splattered them both with a goo gun, not that paxForce grunts carried anything that non-lethal.

Around the time the horses had finally arrived, the black woman with the thin, twisted dreadlocks gave a signal for her troops to find some target that wasn’t Axl. Kate didn’t know what the signal was, just that one minute Axl’s body and face were breeding red dots like lice, next moment all the dots were gone.

Kate was shocked at how relieved she felt.

Now she followed Clone, defMoma and the horses past rough juniper scrub and through the darkness of a rhododendron tunnel, under the twisting branches that closed out the sky over her head as if they were petrified worm-casts.

The high-falling foss splashed away to her right, water plummeting down the valley side to the pool below. And the slight wind blowing down the tunnel into her face hung heavy with the smell of damp earth. Any hound following after their party could track them by the stink of horses and the sour undercurrents of blood, shit and fear.

Kate shivered. For herself and for the huge naked man who stood in his saddle and rode straight-legged up ahead. They were tramping down the dead. Ground fine, unviralled and spread thin it might have been, but the earth beneath their hooves and feet had still once been flesh. But then, was that so different to back on Earth? Except there the dirt was carapaced over with concrete or marble and sterilised by history.

‘What?’ Axl asked.

What was she thinking? Kate almost said, ‘about anything but Clone’. Instead she shrugged. ‘That this is all meat. . .’ She nodded at the track and the leaf-encrusted mud glued to her boots, then jumped at the touch of his fingers on her wrist.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘There’s nothing to understand,’ Kate said crossly. And there wasn’t. Life happened and then someone got left to clean up the mess. Someone like her. How difficult could comprehending that be?

Just before the track climbed the steepest part of the lower valley towards Escondido it branched off, the main track kept on up to the ramshackle monastery, a narrower path headed downwards again through undergrowth towards the mute roar of falling water.

‘Through there?’ momaDef demanded when Clone reined in his horse.

The big man nodded, jerking his heavy chin towards the narrower path.

‘You go first,’ momaDef told him. ‘Any problems I’ll shoot you, understand?’

What the tongueless Clone grunted might have been agreement but sounded more like an insult. And then he kicked his bleeding feet heavily into the flank of his horse and crashed away through the bushes, remembering just in time to duck as he went under a snaking branch.

‘Dumb fuck.’ momaDef was after him even before her fat sergeant had realised what was happening. It took the handful of conscripts a second to work out what the sergeant was shouting about and then they jogged after the fat woman, snubPups snagging on every branch despite being held tight to their chests like regulations demanded ...

Get lucky, thought Axl, kill each other. Which would at least save him the effort. Not that he was bothered by the grunts. But taking out defMoma, momaDef and Colonel Emilio was going to be a pleasure if the chance ever arose.

Tracking Clone was effortless. He’d signposted his passing in branches on both sides of the path which were snapped back to white bone and in leaf mould churned deep with hoof-marks.

All the same Axl took his time, not wanting Kate to reach Clone too early. Because whatever the lieutenant would do to the big man when she finally caught up with him was likely to be slow and nasty. . . And Axl wanted to avoid Kate having to watch that. There was enough anguish built up behind her troubled dark eyes already. He’d seen the way her head jerked and her shoulders hunched every time someone mentioned the dead pope by name.

By hanging back Axl hoped to stop Kate seeing Clone tortured and killed. Only, when Kate and he finally reached the mountain pool, it seemed the lieutenant had blown her chance to do either. Clone took the dive himself, taking momaDef with him, from a point on the path that dropped fifteen metres into the ice-cold waters of the foss pool below.

All of this Axl put together as he and Kate walked down to the water’s edge. He based it mostly on bloody footprints he’d seen back up the path. That had been where Clone dismounted to whip his horse into the distance, the man’s spoor track climbing the path’s upper edge just high enough for him to be able to turn, hide in bushes on the slope above and hurl momaDef off her horse down into the foss pool as she galloped past.

Primitive undoubtedly, but hard to counteract.

But putting it together from clues wasn’t really necessary, obvious ones or not. Because the fall suddenly imprinted onto Axl’s vision. The roar of the tumbling waterfall mixing abruptly with crashing synth, the fierce exaltation written on Clone’s face. Then a splash, silence and the darkness of deep water.

Axl shook his head quickly. He’d arrived at the edge of the foss and the huge sergeant was waiting for them.

‘You did this.’ She stood in front of Kate, her words stripped raw with emotion, and that emotion wasn’t just fury. Tears filled the woman’s eyes and real sorrow was in her round face. A muscle tugged at her jaw with almost cartoon-like regularity.

‘It’s your fault,’ she insisted, fists clenched. The only thing that stood between Kate and the grief-stricken defMoma wrapping her hands round Kate’s throat, was Axl, and his head was still spinning from the snapshot replay of Clone’s fall. But what he wanted to say was ...

‘Her fault? How the fuck do you work that out?’ The words were ripped from his head, spoken in a hard metallic rasp that sounded far away, though it came from where Rinpoche scrabbled up between two rocks. ‘She wasn’t even here, was she? You stupid fuck.’

Rinpoche steered Axl and Kate firmly away from defMoma and then busied itself with folding sodden wings tight against its back. ‘United in death,’ Rinpoche said with a grim smile. ‘Well, at least they’ll have no trouble bringing them up together.’

‘Oh and you’d better have this,’ the monkey dropped a cold glass blade into Axl’s hand, ‘Call it a present. . . You know,’ the silver monkey added suddenly. ‘I like this place. Really like it. In fact, I’m planning to stay. You, on the other hand, shouldn’t stick around. And as for her…’ Ruby eyes flicked towards Kate, then towards a handful of conscripts improvising ropes and hooks to drag the pool. Rinpoche shrugged. ‘It’s your shot,’ it said. ‘But I really wouldn’t waste it.’

Rinpoche shook water from his fingers and passed Kate a black ring made from beaten iron. ‘I figured, what the fuck, this might have some sentimental value?’

‘Jesus,’ said Kate.

‘Yeah,’ Rinpoche grinned, showing gold canines, ‘that’s what it’s got engraved around the inside. Of course…’ The silver monkey paused, ‘don’t take it wrong, but for myself, these days I’m Tibetan Bon Buddhist.’

The little shit wasn’t joking either, Axl realised. It had come down with Turing Syndrome. Make machine artilect and before anyone knows it, your gun’s gone pacifist, the chill cabinet’s vegetarian and the house AI’s campaigning for the reintroduction of zoning regulations.

The tension levels didn’t improve when Colonel Emilio turned up to oversee the retrieval of momaDef’s body. For a start the Colonel had serious problems with the fact Kate Mercarderes had her head buried in Axl’s shoulder and the Cardinal’s pet killer was slowly, absentmindedly stroking her long black hair.

‘Lovely couple,’ said Rinpoche.

The Colonel glared at Rinpoche, at Kate and Axl and then finally back at the silver monkey—and didn’t like any of what he saw.

‘You,’ he said, nodding to Kate. ‘You’re not required here.’

Axl shrugged insolently, to save her the effort. That was how the neat, green-eyed Colonel made him feel. But then Axl figured if you’ve been thrown together from what was left in the bottom of the slop bucket, impressing buttoned-down establishment wannabes was never going to be an easy option.

And besides, Axl was right out of sympathy. The lieutenant deserved everything that happened. In fact, as far as Axl was concerned Clone had simply saved him from having to do the job.

‘We’ll stick around,’ said Axl as casually as possible. ‘She’s with me and I’ve got work to do.’

Colonel Emilio didn’t like that either, but then Axl hadn’t wanted him to. For better or worse—though probably the latter—Axl was the Cardinal’s man. There might be no contract, no formal indenture, and it was true he appeared on no lists of humans, ghosts or AIs employed by VaticanMexico, just as no house agreement covered him for cloning insurance or rebuild, but that wasn’t the point.

Axl shook his head.

What was between the old bastard and him wasn’t written down or recorded, it was etched into memories, most of them bad. As for Colonel Emilio, given a face-off was inevitable, Axl would rather it came sooner than later.

There was something badly wrong with the arm that finally broke the surface, waved once and splashed back out of sight. It had taken the conscripts three trys to snag anything at all and on the fourth go the snagged body had fallen off its hook halfway to the surface, so they’d been forced to start dragging the bed of the foss pool all over again.

Now the body they had snagged was caught on a rock while PaxForce soldiers tugged in vainly at their rope.

‘Free it,’ Colonel Emilio shouted crossly and a conscript ran forward. Leaning out over the foss pool, the boy grabbed the pale arm and then let go hurriedly, shuffling back so fast he almost tripped himself. ‘Sir. . .’

Axl beat Colonel Emilio to the water’s edge. He felt the cold of the water on his legs but ignored it, putting his hands beneath the arms of the corpse to pull the body sideways. It came free from the rocks and Axl pushed the bald man up onto a nearby ledge.

Brown eyes stared at him from an Asiatic face perfectly preserved by the ice cold water. His guts hung free.

‘Who is it?’ Axl asked.

‘I’ve no idea.’ Standing behind him, Kate glanced once at the body and shrugged.

Rinpoche was right about one thing, on their fifth drag of the pool the conscripts had no problems bringing momaDef and Clone up in one go, their big problem was separating them. And it wasn’t just that the huge man had his teeth sunk so far into the small woman’s throat that Sergeant defMoma had to use her own blade to force open his mouth. It was what Clone had done with his thumbs.

One was hooked in under her spectacles through the lieutenant’s pulped right eye, thick fingers locked round the side of her dreadlocked skull to keep his hand in place. As for the other thumb… Kate jerked her face sideways when she realised where Clone had rammed it.

‘Sweet fuck,’ said a voice in Axl’s head, ‘Corn on the fucking cob.’ The silver monkey was right. It looked exactly as if Clone had driven his thumbs into the lieutenant at both ends and started chewing on her throat.

‘Yeah,’ Axl said. ‘And all she did was strip him naked, tie string round his balls and wire him to a generator.’

defMoma exploded right on cue. The crack of a detonating firework, twisted loops. Steely bass gone harder. Rough-cut drums, echoed out.

Party time. Blocking the sergeant’s punch easily, Axl hesitated and shocked himself by not killing her. Slotting her out was as simple as chopping the edge of his right hand to her larynx, but instead Axl grabbed the sergeant’s left wrist and pivoted himself under it, taking the wrist up behind her back as he simultaneously kicked her leg, hard and fast. She went down onto her knees in a crunch of guitar as Axl twisted her arm up behind her.

The woman could stop struggling or she could listen to her own elbow rupture. As choices went it was simple.

‘Drop it.’

Axl heard the words first and then felt the kiss of a cold muzzle against the side of his head. Inside it, the soundtrack went down to a two-drum heart beat.

‘Well hey,’ said the voice in his skull, ‘there’s always a critic’ Axl grinned and grinned again. That was what the Colt always used to say back in the days when it was just some gun with an amorality problem.

The Colonel had his arm outstretched, stubby fingers wrapped round the ivory handle of a tarted up paxForce-issue hiPower. Axl didn’t like anti-environmental posturing used as a position-statement and didn’t like the fact the man probably had a case full of fancy guns, but it wasn’t the ivory that really fucked him off, it was the look in Colonel Emilio’s eyes that said, ‘Nailed you.’

Twisting the fat sergeant’s left arm even harder wasn’t the brightest response but it was satisfying. Pain hissed between the woman’s lips and when Axl tightened his grip again she gave up trying to bite back the pain.

‘Let her go,’ Colonel Emilio ground the Colt muzzle harder into Axl’s left temple. ‘Now.’

‘Do that again,’ Axl said softly, ‘and it’ll be your fucking arm that gets broken.’ He was getting stripped-back bass now, low and skeletal. More space than sound.

‘Release her,’ the Colonel said firmly and Axl heard an abrupt click as he jacked back the slide on his gun. Dust to dust, dross to dross… There had to be worse ways to go than being slotted by some sanctimonious WorldBank arsewipe but Axl couldn’t think of any.

Of course, he could just have stopped twisting the fat woman’s wrist but Axl couldn’t get his head round that, either. And as the bass line kept time over the heartbeat, Axl got that feeling he was missing something obvious, yet again.

‘Hey, shit for brains…’

The monkey wasn’t looking at Axl, he was staring pointedly at Colonel Emilio’s gun. Colt hiPower, ivory handle, .38, single clip, no laser sight and probably only semiAI.

Probably only semi… Sweet Jesus.

Snapping one fist sideways into the Colonel’s groin, Axl flipped his attention back to the sergeant, broke her forearm with an easy twist and ground the jagged ends against each other until she screamed. And he kept grinding broken end against broken end until she pissed herself too.

Colonel Emilio pulled the trigger. Only the pre-sectioned flechette that should have scrambled Axl’s brains stayed exactly where it was, correctly ratcheted into the chamber but untouched by a firing pin as dead as the already-moving Axl should have been.

The gun that Axl rammed under the Colonel’s jaw had no electronics, no little data packets for Rinpoche to scramble, just an old-fashioned arrangement involving trigger, hammer and tempered steel spring.

The slug wouldn’t frag into razor-edged shards designed to pulp his brain, it wasn’t even jacketed with depleted uranium. It would just pass straight through, punching his memories and most of his brain out through a fist-sized hole in the top of his skull. Still, it was enough. And what Axl wanted more than anything was to pull that trigger.

‘Next time,’ Axl promised, stepping back.

‘There won’t be a next time,’ said the Colonel, rubbing his jaw. Then he turned to his troops. ‘Get the lieutenant packed in ice,’ he barked. ‘And you can leave those two here. I’m sure this bitch will want to bury them.’ Not even bothering to watch as the conscripts scrambled fast for ropes and stretchers, the Colonel stalked over to the bitch in question.

‘This man isn’t a real refugee,’ he told Kate coldly. ‘His name isn’t Jack Black, Black Jack or any permutation. He’s a convicted murderer. His name is…’

‘Axl Borja,’ Kate said calmly. ‘Yes, I know.’

Which was probably the one response Colonel Emilio hadn’t been expecting.

Behind the Colonel, conscripts kept on loading momaDef s corpse onto a gurney and Axl watched them tighten the straps. Clone and the bald man with the slit-open stomach sprawled on the rocks, eyes open to the sky. Some medic was tending to the sergeant, though he took his time about it and claimed to be carrying no anaesthetic. Sergeant defMoma didn’t believe him and Axl wasn’t surprised, he didn’t either. But Axl wasn’t really paying attention to any of that. He was busy listening to the exchange between Kate and the Colonel.

‘And I suppose you know he’s here to betray you,’ said Colonel Emilio. ‘This man was sent by the Cardinal to hunt you down… Don’t you understand that?’ His voice was furious.

That was when Kate looked at Axl. A slow gaze through dark eyes that let him see deep into her head and beyond, to a child walking long lonely corridors filled with marble. Kate shook her head.

‘I don’t believe you,’ Kate told the Colonel and turned on her heel, conversation over. Axl had never seen anything quite so magnificent or so unbelievably stupid.