Something Coming Through

54. Men and Monsters

Mangala | 30 July

Vic chased Nevers across stretches of sand and gravel, past shatterings of rock and clumps of ragged ribbons streaming in the wind, through veils of dust that swelled and slackened and swelled again. Always the dust and the wind. Vic was labouring against it, finding it hard to suck air through his mask. He was tempted to rip it off, but knew that if he did he’d choke on the dusty air. His bruised hip was stiffening and pain spiked it at every step, and sharp pains prised at his chest. He was too old for this foolishness. Old and out of shape, puffing like an old-fashioned steam engine, and Nevers was getting away, vanishing into haze and wind-blown dust.

It was really blowing hard now. Thickening clouds swirled around Vic as he jogged along, the rifle held at port arms. Everything but his immediate surroundings was lost in brown smog. The sun a low bloody smear.

Indistinct shapes flowing through the murk ahead of him. The hard rattle of gunfire. The blink of an explosion and the hard percussion of it coming afterwards, blown on the wind, blown past him.

Something bad going down. Men v. monsters. And Vic was running straight towards it, probably the worst idea in a life full of bad ideas. He told himself that he was doing it for Skip and knew that was only partly true. He was angry at himself for letting Nevers get away. He was angry because Nevers had faked him out so easily. He told himself that he was going to get himself killed out of stubborn pride, but he kept going because every alternative was worse.

For a moment, the dusty haze blew thin and he glimpsed Nevers way ahead of him, jogging along steadily, the son of a bitch. And then the dust thickened and swallowed him again.

Vic followed, limping and blowing, feeling a sudden sick urgency. Something whooped past him and he belatedly realised it was a stray round. He’d never been shot at before. Never before had to draw a gun in anger, either.

But the rattle of gunfire was dying away, fraying to stray shots. Vic limped past dead things sprawled on the ground. Past dead things splayed and shattered around starbursts of char, some still slowly writhing. Past something like the legless and headless torso of a man, crawling on its elbows and leaving a trail of blue slime.

A mound loomed ahead, a trench cut across the ground in front of it. Vic slowed to a walk and jacked the combat rifle under his armpit, sweeping it back and forth as he walked over broken black flagstones to the edge of the trench.

A young woman sat below, clutching her belly. Blood leaking over her fingers. A young man crouched nearby, watching as Nevers pawed through the pockets of a dead man burned hairless in a charred coat. Bodies were scattered on either side. Bodies and pieces of bodies. Men and monsters. And now Nevers was standing, turning, his rifle slung on his shoulder, a bracelet looped between the fingers of his right hand.

Vic raised his rifle and said, ‘This is as far as it goes.’

‘Yes, it is,’ Nevers said, holding up the bracelet. ‘The thing we came to find — it’s in here. And we know how to deal with it.’

There was a faint envelope of light around him. As if he was standing in the glow of a spotlight.

‘You’re too late,’ the young man said. His voice was muffled by his face mask and his long black hair was dishevelled and dusty, but his gaze burned with scorn. ‘Ugly Chicken has already called to its friends. The spaceships are on their way.’

‘They aren’t here yet,’ Nevers said. ‘There’s still time to undo things.’

Vic said to the young man, ‘There are spaceships here?’

‘They’re coming,’ the young man said.

‘Seriously?’

‘I swear on the life of my sister,’ the young man said.

Nevers said, ‘Take care of these prisoners, Investigator Gayle, while I root out the source of the infection.’

‘No,’ Vic said.

Nevers looked at him, ignoring the rifle. ‘We’re going to do the right thing.’

‘Yes, we are. You can start by kneeling on the ground and clasping your hands on your head.’

‘You’re going to arrest me? I don’t think so.’

‘For the murders of three men back there.’

‘I think you should take a moment, Investigator. Get your breath back before we get on with the job.’

‘There is no job. You come out here to my world, you and that avatar, and expect me to dance to your tune. You promise to help me, and then you run off the first chance you get. You expect me to help you enforce laws that have no authority here, over something you don’t own or even understand. No more. This is where your foolishness ends.’

‘It’s my job to make sure that disruptive technology is properly controlled,’ Nevers said.

‘Maybe on Earth. But out here we’re free to do what we like. That’s what this world is for.’

‘Free to find stuff that could seriously fuck us up,’ Nevers said, jiggling the bracelet. ‘And this is exactly that kind of stuff.’

‘Is that what your friend told you?’

‘They want to help us. That’s why they’re here. And if they say something is dangerous, wrong, then we should listen to them.’

‘Or perhaps we should make up our own minds,’ Vic said. ‘Drop that bracelet and your fucking rifle and assume the position.’

‘If you want to arrest someone, Investigator Gayle, arrest Fahad Chauhan and Chloe Millar. They came here illegally. They interfered with Elder Culture technology—’

‘Policing Elder Culture ruins isn’t my business. But it isn’t yours, either. Because you have no authority here. Assume the fucking position. And that’s your last warning.’

Nevers stared at Vic, inscrutable in face mask and goggles. He said, ‘Do you really think that arresting me will do any good?’

Something was definitely occupying the same space as him. His face glinted with a kind of golden glaze.

Vic steadied the rifle on his hip, pulled the tangle of wire from his pocket. ‘You won’t be able to do anything without this.’

The Jackaroo avatar stepped forward. ‘Silly little man. I’m not there any more. I’m in the local grid.’

Behind its ghostly gleam, Nevers let the bracelet unspool between his fingers and fall to the dirt. He raised his boot, ground it down.

Later, Vic said that it was as if graves had opened all around him. The flagstones half-buried in the sand and gravel along the edge of the trench and scattered between the mounds seemed to invert and narrow beams of hard black light burned up from them, leaning away into the sky. As if an unbearable reality had punched through weak spots in the fabric of the world. And figures were struggling amongst the columns of black light: identical pairs of antagonists mirrored everywhere around him. Angels and devils battling in the dusty air.

Fahad said that it was as if a golden giant had loomed against the sky. An anime monster swatting at a swarm of fighter planes. The planes trailed black threads, swooping around and around the monster, wrapping it in a constricting net that immediately began to tighten, cutting into its substance. Slivers of furnace light burned in gaps between the threads, jetting into the air in every direction as the monster struggled and roared and diminished.

Chloe saw the world shift and change, as if everything had been replaced by a copy of itself. Everything the same; everything slightly different. She saw the image of the Jackaroo avatar explode like a stained-glass window, shattering into a thousand animated shards. Sharp and swift and burning, they swirled around Nevers, who screamed and dropped to his knees, and then whirled high into the air. A skinny column that grew thicker and brighter as it lengthened because the shards were multiplying. And suddenly there were other shapes in the air around it, flocks of small quick dark ghosts fluttering in the glare of the column, each plucking out a shard and wrapping around it and falling out of the air. A hard rain striking the ground all around and vanishing into it, while overhead the column diminished until it was no more than a stain fading into the dun sky.

A few fugitive ghosts fluttered here and there in widening gyres. One slanted low and swooped above the trench, turning to look at Chloe as it went past. She had the impression of a face like a shelled walnut randomly studded with black stones, or a drop of water swarming with black motes, or a ball of churning insects, or a clutch of busy clockworks. Something so unfamiliar that her mind couldn’t make sense of it, a wrongness projected by a logic at right angles to everything she knew, a mask or shield that hid a fierce avid awareness that would shrivel her if she saw it entire. She felt the extreme edge of that attention pass through her mind, and then it was gone, and the last trace of the column was gone too.

The Jackaroo avatar had vanished. Nevers looked up cautiously, dazed and dishevelled, and the other man jumped into the trench and told him to stay exactly where he was. He was aiming his rifle at Nevers, glancing down at Chloe and asking her how she was doing.

‘Not so good, to tell the truth.’

She had forgotten the heavy pain in her belly for a moment, but now it was back.

‘You hang in there,’ the man said. ‘I’m going to call for help.’

Fahad was standing at the wall of the trench, staring towards the mound that cradled the black room at its centre. He tore off his face mask and goggles, turned to Chloe. He was crying. ‘He’s gone,’ he said.