‘Shit,’ Mudge raised the barrel of his weapon and began moving for position.
‘Mudge,’ I said softly. He stopped. Somewhat reluctantly I could see Rannu lower his carbine. ‘It’s him,’ I said to Mudge. I wasn’t sure if I believed it. Mudge glanced over at me and then lowered his gun. We all looked over at Balor. Balor sighed deeply, obviously disappointed.
‘Buncha pussies,’ he muttered and glared at Gregor before going and sitting on a heavily reinforced folding chair in the corner.
Morag stepped towards Gregor, who like me was swaying slightly, though I suspect for different reasons. The human/alien hybrid towered over her. He was as tall, possibly taller, than Balor, though he had a much more slender build. Watching him loom over her was the only time I got really nervous. She stretched out her hand to him. He looked at it for a while before finally reaching out with his own bony hand. His fingers were too long and had too many joints in them. I thought he was going to wrap his fingers multiple times around Morag’s small hand.
Morag led Gregor over to another chair, but instead of sitting he just crouched down, almost seeming to fold himself up. There was something insectile about his position. I could not square this thing with the Gregor I had spoken to in the virtual construct. He looked at me and then at Mudge and smiled, and then pointed at Mudge.
‘Fucking what?’ Mudge said. I started laughing.
‘He’s surprised to see someone more alien-looking than he is,’ Morag said, smiling slyly. Rannu and Pagan started laughing; even Balor smiled sulkily. Gregor’s mouth opened and he laughed. That shut all of us up. At first it was like a seal barking, then it seemed to modulate and change until it sounded a bit like Gregor’s easy laugh, though off somehow. We all just stared at him.
‘Seems you being weird-looking is funny no matter what race you are,’ I said, as I stubbed out my cigarette and took another pull of vodka. Mudge gave me the finger but he seemed to have relaxed.
‘Hey, is that my hip flask?’ he demanded.
‘Yep.’ I took another swallow of vodka and then Gregor reached over from what seemed like very far away and took the flask from my hand. We all watched as he drained the rest of the flask.
‘I think he’s working on instinct,’ Pagan said almost apologetically. I found it reassuring that there was that much of a squaddie left in him.
‘Can you speak to us?’ Pagan asked in his irritating, patronising tone. Gregor turned to look at him, his head seeming to swivel too far round. He opened his mouth and there was a squeal of distortion, as though through a microphone. His voice seemed to cycle through tones and possibly frequencies until it found one it liked and he started to sound more like Gregor again.
‘Of… course… I… can… fucking speak to you, I’m… not… fucking stupid.’ His head swivelled round at a disconcerting angle to look at me. ‘Who’s… your mate?’ Mudge and I grinned. Though I think we both knew that this was not the Gregor we had known, that this was something completely different, he was in there somewhere.
I was getting used to oddness. Me, Mudge and Pagan sitting in a circle talking to a sea demon, a teenaged girl and an alien was beginning to feel commonplace. We let Gregor ease back into human communication by telling him a heavily abridged version of what was going on. He mostly stayed quiet, asking the occasional question. He seemed awkward with himself, even after Morag had found him a pair of Balor’s cut-off shorts and he’d tied them round his waist. I realised halfway through Pagan’s description of God, which I couldn’t be bothered to listen to, that he was ashamed of his alien-ness. Somehow that seemed reassuringly human, but I couldn’t think of anything to do that would make him or us feel better about this.
Gibby and Buck had returned about halfway through our brief. I wasn’t sure whether they’d been sent away in case they angered Gregor or had decided to not be around themselves, but when they returned Gregor stood up, or unfolded himself. Both Gibby and Buck had backed away, hands going to holstered antique revolvers at their sides. We’d calmed things down but Gregor still looked like he might eat either of them and they looked like they might bolt at any time.
‘Who’re the Cabal?’ I finally asked him, several hours later, when I was pretty sure that we’d exhausted our version of events.
‘The people who’ve done all this. The people who captured me and experimented on me,’ Gregor said. His voice, almost normal now, was lulling me into believing he was both human and my friend. ‘Basically a group of fat old rich guys. Invisible men, corporate old money, intelligence agency types, military and civil service high-ups.’
‘From where?’ Mudge asked.
‘Most anywhere, but mainly Europe and America, as far as I can tell.’
‘A conspiracy?’ Buck asked scornfully. Gregor swivelled his head round and looked at him with the black pools of his eyes, long enough to make the pilot feel very uncomfortable. Buck was opening his mouth to say something when Gregor answered.
‘I don’t think they see it that way. They don’t see they have anything to conspire for or against. They and people like them have always made the decisions, and that’s the way it is.’
‘A secret government then?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think it’s anything that prosaic. They’re just the doers for our society. Cabal is my word for them. I had to call them something to give them an identity, you know?’ Gregor said. It had to be the alien’s influence that was making this ex-squaddie who’d grown up on the streets of Stirling use words like prosaic.
‘Do we know who any of them are?’ I asked.
‘Rolleston,’ Gregor answered without hesitation. We nodded. ‘He’s the head of their security, handles all their dirty work. The others are somewhat distant. They communicate remotely or through intermediaries. Other than Rolleston, the only other one I’ve seen is a guy called Vincent Cronin. Must be in his late twenties or he looks it anyway, expensive suits, expensive ware, katana…’
‘Which corp?’ Mudge asked. Anyone carrying a katana was normally an executive, a corporate samurai. A good executive had to prove himself in business and then duel for promotion. Rumour had it that for the top jobs the duels were to the death, blood on the conference-room floor. They only wanted people with the nerve to step up. If he was that young and carrying a katana, then he must not only be good, he would’ve had to have gambled big time and had it pay off.
‘I don’t think it’s that simple; he doesn’t appear to have a particular citizenship. He’s some kind of high-level fixer, executive without a portfolio. Rolleston handles all the dirty work and Cronin does all the organisational stuff.’
‘So we can assume this guy’s best of breed?’ Mudge said. Gregor nodded. It didn’t look right, his head seemed to bob elastically.
‘So they started the war?’ I asked.
‘I think so.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What did they want you for?’ Mudge asked.
‘For Their technology,’ Gregor answered. ‘I was a sample, then I was a test bed and finally I was a production facility.’
‘Military applications?’ I asked. Gregor shrugged. That didn’t look right either. I wondered if he still had what we would recognise as a skeleton.
‘I guess, but I think a lot of the Cabal is very old and very ill.’
‘So they want to use Their liquid… biological whatever to help rejuvenate and generally increase their lifespan?’ Mudge said.
‘Possibly,’ Gregor said.
Something horrible occurred to me. ‘Their operators – Rolleston, the Grey Lady and the like – will they be augmented by Themtech?’ Gregor considered this.
‘I don’t know. It’s a possibility. They look normal so if they are augmented they must be a lot more sophisticated than me.’