Chapter Forty-Five
13.38.34
They heard the girl puking before they reached her.
‘I’m scared she’s dying.’ Kate’s voice was raw, as if she was the one who’d been vomiting over the tree roots.
‘No,’ Axl said firmly. ‘Rinpoche wouldn’t allow it.’ Both Kate and he knelt in front of the girl and waited for her huge pupils to focus.
‘13.38.34…’ She told Axl. Mai even did the dots between numbers.
He nodded. ‘I’m looking for Rinpoche,’ said Axl.
‘Beloved?’ She stared up at him, dark eyes as empty as the Big Black.
‘The silver monkey ... I need to talk to him. You know where he is?’
‘Up.’ The Japanese girl pointed directly into the night, sky.
Yeah, thought Axl, surprise me…
‘How do you know?’ Kate demanded, voice uncertain.
‘We’re watching. You’re small and suddenly whoosh…’ Mai smacked her hand into the dirt, ‘you’re big.’
Radical focus shift, most vidSats came with it built-in except for the really cheap Italian ones. Watching not listening or he’d have been down already. Besides, Mai probably wasn’t looking at them, not really, she’d spliced into some feed. Actually… Axl ran through what he knew about human optics and decided it amounted to the same.
‘Tell Rinpoche I want to do a deal with Tsongkhapa.’
‘You want what. . . ?’
‘Tsongkhapa,’ Axl stressed, ignoring Kate for a second, ‘you got that?’
Mai had and within seconds so had Rinpoche… The silver monkey didn’t so much drop as plummet. Not quite as fast as Mai’s hand had hit the dirt but still swift.
Big beats crashed in Axl’s head. One second there was blackness, then the silver monkey was landing, wings thrown wide and grown vast, its very own instant parachute.
Axl grinned and Rinpoche grinned back, wings already shrinking.
‘So,’ it said, folding the now small wings neatly across its back, ‘you looking for extra muscle?’
‘No, I’m changing the deal.’
‘There is no deal,’ said Rinpoche.
‘As of now there is,’ said Axl. ‘Or there will be. And it’s got to hold for Tsongkhapa too. Not just you.’
‘No problem.’ The silver monkey shuffled its feet. ‘Hermetic hierarchy’s hard to explain. Total autonomy within rigid limits, bit of an oxymoron really.’ Rinpoche looked embarrassed, ‘Soft intelligences have such a hang up on free will.’
Axl wondered what soft… then realised he was. You show me your guilt, I’ll show you mine.
Digging his fingers into the inside pocket of his coat, Axl found the broken soulcatcher. It was wrapped in the anti-static cloth his biohazard chips had been in. ‘Here,’ Axl put the small bundle in the silver monkey’s paw and watched as Rinpoche carefully unfolded the cloth, holding the matrix of wires, feather and beads up to the firelight so they glistened with an oily sheen.
‘You want her mended before you take her back?’ Rinpoche’s voice was flat, uninflected.
‘No,’ Axl shook his head. ‘I let her go and her safety becomes Tsongkhapa’s responsibility. That’s the deal.’
‘Done.’ Sharp canines sliced the web of wire criss-crossing the soulcatcher and Rinpoche caught the remaining beads as they dropped into its hand.
‘You wanna get Mai’s opinion before you fuck with her head?’ Tukten demanded pushing ahead of the others.
‘Mai doesn’t have an opinion,’ said the silver monkey, ‘she’s got three of the fuckers… None currently compatible.’
‘Do it,’ said Axl. He glanced at Kate, but it was Rinpoche he was talking to. ‘She doesn’t need to take responsibility, I will…’ Axl sighed, picked up his snubPup from where it rested in the mud at his feet and stood. He didn’t say it’s time I took responsibility for something, he didn’t need to.
The last thing Axl did before slipping away from the fire was pull the revolver from where it was stuck into his belt at the back and put it on the damp grass where Ketzia, Louis and Tukten had been sitting.
Rinpoche didn’t need it. Nor would Mai if Axl’s guess was accurate. The silver monkey wouldn’t just follow her like a shadow, he would become her shadow—whether the kid liked it or not. Kate wouldn’t touch the gun even if she did find it, but Tukten would and Axl’s money was on Tukten to guard Mai for all he was worth. Always assuming Rinpoche let the boy get a look in ...
In five minutes Axl would have exactly five hours before the SS St Bernadotte lifted off from Vajrayana and dropped through the first of the lock gates on its trip out into the big black. In thirty minutes the flowers out in the big black would open to catch and reflect the sun and Axl would be too late to spring anything, never mind a one-grunt ambush.
Colonel Emilio’s conscripts were waiting below him. Not camped-out-on-the-forest below but directly, spit-and-it’ll-mess-up-their-precious-hair below. From what Axl could tell, half of the conscripts were on this side of the road, the others across the road, also hidden. All any one of them had to do was look up and they’d see Axl glued to a rock face above, doing his best imitation of oversized gecko. Only they wouldn’t look up, at least Axl sure as hell hoped not.
They’d be watching that path down from the slopes, wired up with infrared, waiting for him to lead the others straight into a killing zone. Well, he had a couple of reasons why it wasn’t going to happen and the main one had a zytel butt and was cradled in his arms like a baby.
By the time Kate heard gunfire PaxForce would be excised, foreclosed, out of the loop. And if not there wouldn’t be much Axl could do about it because he’d be dead. He was doing Kate a favour she hadn’t asked for and would probably never even acknowledge to anyone. But hell, that was life.
The conscripts might be so ignorant, underpaid and brain-fried they didn’t know their arse from their neighbour’s elbow but the Colonel would report in on Mai’s significance, if he hadn’t already, that much was guaranteed. A little legalistic sleight of hand and WorldBank would be reclassifying the kid as Joan’s clone and pulling her in for trial. Kate too, accessory before the fact. . .
Extraditing would be difficult, with luck. Taking her off Samsara now before the feeds got fed was a much softer option. That’s what he’d have done if he was the Colonel. And Axl, as the Colonel, didn’t even want to think about he’d do to Kate. And if the Colonel didn’t, CySat would if she got returned for trial. It was humiliation and rape whichever way you looked at it, on screen or off, or both.
Blocks of wood banged slowly together echoed inside Axl’s mind. No more than a basic click track. Somewhere far below it was melody, fractured like glass and soft as the footfall of rats in a dusty attic. WarChild, obviously. No gruff Latino voice was looped over the top but that was okay, Axl could do the rap from memory.
Read, Reconnoitre and—get dead or—get it Right.
The toughened twine he’d originally brought along to tie up Mai had cut raw strips into the centre of his palms. The rope was too thin to get a good grip and besides his hands were slick with sweat. Shaking, too.
Fear did that. Always.
Axl didn’t do fear, either, but recently his body seemed to have forgotten that.
‘More light,’ Rinpoche said and Tukten pushed another branch into the fire, then tossed two smaller ones on top, watched as sparks danced up into the pre-dawn.
‘Beads,’ demanded Rinpoche, then remembered he was already holding them. Small and lifeless, they looked as insignificant as bits from a child’s necklace. They looked liked… small hard-spheres, really, which is what they were.