Empress of the Sun Read online

  27

  Charles was waiting in Charlotte Villiers’s room, perched on the deep windowsill overlooking the snow-flecked dark water of the Oudeshaans Canal. He applauded her entrance.

  ‘You played the Praesidium like a piano, cora.’

  Again her alter’s use of the term of endearment grated on Charlotte Villiers.

  ‘We’ve shown our hand. The eyes of the Plenitude are on us. It will be much more difficult for the Order to operate now.’

  And for me to gain control of the Infundibulum, Charlotte Villiers did not say. Charles Villiers raised an eyebrow. Sometimes her alter was too like her. She peeled off her gloves. ‘Any success with the Thryn?’

  ‘The Thryn are hard to motivate. Human needs and emotions are quite alien to them. They may well regard this as a biological versus biological spat.’ Charles Villiers reached lazily for an orange from the fruit bowl on the table beside him. He thrust thumbnails into the rind, releasing a tiny zesty spritz into the air. ‘And even if we can persuade them that our concern is their concern, that concern may extend no further than E4. They have no reason to aid the rest of the Plenitude. The Thryn Sentiency has never shown any interest in the other Known Worlds.’

  ‘Then we shall all have to take refuge on Earth 4,’ Charlotte Villiers said.

  Charles Villiers peeled the orange and split it deftly into segments.

  ‘Oh. Yes. And another thing. That tracking device. It’s not transmitting any more.’

  ‘The Jiju …’

  ‘Or the crew. But I suspect the Jiju. In which case, they have a direct quantum link back to us. To us personally.’ Charles Villiers popped a piece of orange into his mouth.

  A knock at the door. A man in Heiden fashion of brocade waistcoat and tailcoat entered and gave a small bow.

  ‘Ebben Heer, so good to see you.’ He was a member of the Order, a junior staffer far below the politicians who formed its heart, and all the more valuable for his lesser rank. He – or his twin – could go places no Plenipotentiary or Security Council member could. ‘You have something?’

  ‘Heer Daude has been following the people you specified.’ Ebben Heer opened a leather briefcase and laid a picture on the table beside the fruit bowl. It showed Paul McCabe, lost in his own thoughts, waiting at a crossing on Exhibition Road. He looked small and scruffy and completely unaware he was being watched. Charlotte Villiers had heard that the people of E7 had developed quantum scanning technology that could tap the entangled state between twins and draw information from it. In this case, images. She was seeing what Ebben Heer’s twin on Earth 10 had seen, what Ebben Heer saw in his own head when he fully opened his mind to the two-in-oneness.

  Charlotte Villiers found the idea hideous. Nothing private, nothing secret, nothing sacred. Ebben Heer laid out more images: Paul McCabe taking a taxi, Paul McCabe crossing the college courtyard, Paul McCabe with students. Paul McCabe dull Paul McCabe boring Paul McCabe unexceptional and average in every way.

  ‘These are more interesting,’ Ebben Heer said. Colette Harte: looking over her shoulder as she went up the steps at the front of the Natural History Museum, as if she expected someone to be behind her. Colette Harte in the Central Hall among the bones of long-dead dinosaurs. Colette Harte shaking the hand of a teenage boy.

  ‘Who is the boy?’ Charlotte Villiers asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I have another image that shows him more clearly.’

  Colette Harte and the same boy entering a bright and cheerful Japanese restaurant, glimpsed from a few metres distance.

  Charlotte tapped the picture with a manicured nail.

  ‘I know this school uniform. I don’t know the boy, but I know the school. Bourne Green School. Everett Singh’s school. Now, why would Ms Harte be interested in a Bourne Green schoolboy? She wouldn’t be so foolish as to be indiscreet about my agent, would she?’

  Charles Villiers had left his comfortable seat and was poring over the photographs. ‘It seems Ms Harte is not staunch.’

  ‘Ms Harte is very far from staunch. Disloyalty is a vile crime. It will have to be dealt with most harshly. Thank you, Ebben Heer. This is excellent information.’

  The Earth 7er touched forefinger to forelock.

  ‘By your leave, Fro, do you think Heer Daude might be returned to me? I’m feeling the separation sickness – I can’t sleep at night and I’m getting these terrible anxiety attacks and bouts of dizziness when I don’t know what world I’m on; and it’s as bad for him. And that world, I know you’re Plenipotentiary there, but I don’t like what I see of it. No, I don’t like it at all.’

  ‘In a while, Ebben Heer, in a while. I need you – sorry, your twin – to complete one more task for me. This boy, I want to know who he is. Bourne Green School in Stoke Newington – let your twin know. One more task and you are done.’

  Ebben Heer closed his eyes and his lips moved, and Charlotte Villiers knew that even as he shaped the thought, the same words and images appeared in the mind of his twin, across universes. She shivered. Every world in the Plenitude came to the Heisenberg Gate in a different way: Earth 3 through research, Earth 5 through its naturally occurring zones where planes overlapped, Earth 7 through the inherent quantum nature of its citizens.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ An E7 ‘I’. We’ll do it.

  ‘Thank you. Now, Charles, I need to arrange a full meeting of the inner circle of the Order and brief them on the changed nature of things. Not on this world – if you’ll excuse me, Ebben Heer. At my apartment. At your convenience. But first, I want to have some words with Everett M Singh.’

  28

  Ryun Spinetti liked being a detective. He liked knowing things about people they didn’t know he knew. He liked watching them and following them and them not knowing he was watching and following. He liked the skill in trailing someone and not being noticed. He had learnt how to trail people on a website called ‘Be Your Own Detective’. Never let them see you looking at them, the site said. Use reflective surfaces: shop windows, car glass, even puddles. Follow their reflections. He stayed up late reading the page about how to go through people’s trash to find useful information – latex gloves, a large empty garage and chopsticks were the keys here. He hoped it wouldn’t have to come to the Trash Thing with Everett.

  The girl who was following Everett, Noomi’s mate Becs, she was a rubbish detective. She would never get a job on a Sunday tabloid newspaper. First rule: blend in with the crowd. In her white Boy London leggings and Nicki Minaj boots, she could not have been more obvious if she had been a Dalek. Terrible at following but easy to follow. If she caught him following her, there were creepy-stalkery consequences he didn’t want to think about. He’d end up with his face on some super-creep name-and-shame site.

  Noomi’s mate Becs – was she going out with anyone?

  He watched her watch Everett at the allotment. How long had they had that? He’d never mentioned it. Maybe it was his Grandpa Singh’s. What have you got in there? Ryun wondered, zooming in the telephoto lens on the family SLR. ‘Be Your Own Detective’ said it was a lot less suspicious than a pair of binoculars. Becs had a great ass, but she chewed gum constantly. Ryun thought that made people look stupid. Then Noomi arrived and it got crowded.

  His dad was playing World of Tanks when Ryun got in.

  ‘Dad, can I get some money?’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Forty quid.’

  ‘Forty quid? Hell’s teeth, Ryun!’

  ‘I want to get night-vision goggles.’

  ‘Night-vision goggles?’

  His dad explored several ways to ask What do you want those for? without actually asking What are you up to?

  ‘Proper night-vision goggles,’ Ryun said. ‘They’re on the Rampage Airsoft website.’

  ‘Actually, for proper ones, forty quid’s not bad …’

  Ryun whispered a victorious yes to himself. His dad wanted second play with them. Now the finisher: ‘They’ve got a place on Highbury Road. Can you take me ove
r there?’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘They’re open until seven.’

  And Mum didn’t ask What are you up to? when he slipped out after dinner with the new night-vision goggles pushed up on his beanie. On the street there was too much light to use them. Ryun found the bent bar in the railings around Clissold Park and squeezed through. After dark the park was a bad place of drinkers and drug dealers. Ryun could clearly see them, spooky ghost-figures at the bandstand and the tennis courts. He could see them. They couldn’t see him.

  ‘Cool,’ he said to himself. The park was a glowing plane, like a phantom zone. The street lights were exploding stars, car headlights swords of light so bright he could almost hear them in his head like lightsabers.

  He slipped the goggles on again at the end of Aden Terrace. House windows were white squares, the allotments a confusing weave of plots and paths, fences and sheds, water butts and bamboo poles. A cat stared glowing-eyed at him.

  The padlock hadn’t been opened. It had been cut off. That was good. He wouldn’t have to use the bolt-cutters in his backpack. There were cooled drips of melted metal on the hasp.

  ‘Weird,’ Ryun breathed. He stepped into the allotment. Dead tomato plants and rotting courgette leaves were treacherous under his feet. The shed. Right, what you got in there? That padlock had been cut off as well.

  Is it your interdimensional-portal-stargate? Ryun thought. Had to be. If Doctor Who could put a Tardis inside a police telephone box, the Plenitude of Known Worlds could put a jump-gate in a garden shed.

  Ryun reached out to open the bolt. Hesitated. More buts. More questions. If Everett – or the pseudo-Everett’s – secret jump-gate was in there, why did he need to cut the locks off? Why was the metal melted? He could hear his heart. He had never been so apprehensive in his life. Ryun swallowed. You have to know. You have to know.

  He pulled back the bolt and threw the door wide.

  The night-vision goggles showed every detail of the horror within.

  The body was naked, pierced through and through with pulsing black tubes. Spread-eagled against the wall, it hung like a huge, pale spider at the centre of a web of black strands that covered every centimetre of the inside of the shed. Thick black fluid dripped from the web to floor and was absorbed silently and completely. A cluster of black tendrils burst from the body’s mouth open in a frozen scream. The tendrils waved slowly, oozing black oily slime from their tips. The chest was open, split throat to navel, ribs cracked and held wide by struts of the same black substance that infested the shed. Inside, where the heart should have been, something stirred. A rat, a rat made from five rats melted and fused together. The night-vision goggles spared him nothing. The rat that was five rats turned its five heads towards Ryun. Five mouths bared in a hiss. Glittering eyes opened all over the inside of the shed. Hundreds of rats – half-rats – were melted into the black web. They echoed the heart-rat’s hiss. And at the sound the body opened its eyes. Its eyes. Its eyes – they were insect eyes. Strands of black web-stuff, like frozen dark lightning, sprouted from the eyes, reached towards Ryun.

  ‘Agh.’ Ryun said. He was beyond words, cries, even screams. Nothing but paralysed animal grunts came from his brain. ‘Uh.’ He backed away, slipped on a treacherous mulched courgette leaf. The black eye-tendrils loomed over him, fused together, formed into a face. The face of the thing that had been a man, melted into the living ooze. The face that some part of Ryun’s brain, which would not, even at the very end, stop asking questions, realised was that of the missing Rentokil man. The oily black face looked into his.

  Then a hand grabbed the hood of his parka and pulled him away hard. Ryun cried out as he came down rib-cracking hard on the edge of a raised bed. Another ghostly face in his night-vision goggles. Everett.

  ‘If you want to live, don’t touch the black stuff.’

  ‘Everett?’

  His hands. What was wrong with his hands?

  The black face lunged. Everett stabbed out his right hand, palm forward. The face exploded into a smear like a burst fruit, froze, and shattered like glass. The hut was a shrieking, hissing thrash of rats and black tentacles. Two hands now. Ryun’s night vision flashed painful white. The hissing shrieking stopped. Everett grabbed him by the hood again and dragged him out into Aden Terrace.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Uh. Ah. What? That … He … you …’

  ‘Can you walk?’

  ‘Think so.’

  Everything hurt. Ryun’s mind was still numb. It hadn’t been real. Couldn’t have been real.

  ‘We’ll need to get out fast. There’s one more thing I need to do.’

  Through night vision, Ryun saw metal and plastic objects melt into the palms of Everett’s hands. The skin closed over them. The tips of each of Everett’s forefingers peeled back. Metal emerged, unfolded. Everett advanced down the allotment patch of badly laid concrete paving slabs. White-hot beams lanced across Ryun’s night vision, again and again, like swords of light. He pushed up his goggles to see Everett walk back towards him, silhouetted against the blazing garden shed. He held out a hand to Ryun. His fingers were whole again. But unnatural strength pulled Ryun to his feet.

  ‘The fire brigade’ll be here soon.’

  ‘Everett …’

  ‘Later. Why did you …? No. No time.’

  It hurt to walk, hurt so bad Ryun wanted to cry out with every step. He had never been hurt in his life, Ryun realised. Not really hurt, body-harming hurt. He froze at the end of the terrace where it opened on to Clissold Close.

  ‘CCTV cameras,’ Ryun said. ‘They’ll have filmed—’

  ‘I took them out on the way in,’ Everett said. ‘I’ve been doing this a while. Come on. Let’s get you back to your place. You’re still kind of shocky. And there’s things you need to know.’

  One thing Ryun did know. He didn’t like being a detective any more.

  29

  ‘Can I see them?’ Ryun asked.

  The room was warm and dimly lit and the familiar things on walls, shelves, screens made the thing in the shed seem unreal and distant, but Ryun was still shaky. So much, too much, too soon, too fast. Start with Everett. Start with the thing you know. Even if, as Ryun realised, he didn’t.

  ‘It’s kind of private,’ Everett M said. ‘It’s like the inside of my body.’

  ‘You didn’t mind back there,’ Ryun said.

  ‘I was saving your ass back there. You want to end up like Rat Killer guy, with Nahn for brains?’

  Everett M had explained the Nahn, but there was so much rattling around inside Ryun’s head; hard, gritty things, like stone-washing jeans. The Nahn had taken over one parallel world and wanted to take over another. This world. The Nahn were The Bad.

  ‘No. Of course no,’ Ryun said. ‘But I need to know what’s going on. You owe me, Ev.’

  ‘Okay,’ Everett M said.

  He took off his top and sat bare-chested beside Ryun on the bed. He turned his forearms upwards. The lines Ryun had noticed in the showers darkened and split along the seams. Skin-panels folded and retracted. Ryun glimpsed spidery white devices inside the cavities. They unfolded out of Everett M’s arms, unfolded again; racks and clips.

  ‘They’re usually fitted with nanomissiles, but I used them all up on Earth 1. I’d have to go back to Earth 4 to resupply.’

  To Ryun the weapons that unfolded out of Everett M’s body were the most beautiful and at the same time the most repulsive thing he had ever seen. He wanted to choke and hurl. He wanted to touch them. He extended a hand towards the white machinery. Everett M slapped it away. Ryun gasped and nursed wounded fingers.

  ‘You almost broke my fingers!’

  ‘Sorry. No, I’m not. Don’t touch me there.’

  ‘Does it hurt?’ Ryun asked. His face was a picture of wonder and horror, equally coloured.

  ‘Every time,’ Everett M said. ‘Every. Single. Time. The really clever stuff isn’t the weapon systems, it’s the stuff you can’t see. I�
�m faster than you, I’m stronger than you, I can go on for longer and I can hear and see things you can’t. I’m faster and stronger and better than anyone on this world.’

  ‘See things? Can you, like, undress people like Superman’s X-ray vision?’

  ‘No,’ Everett M said. ‘I’ve tried. There’s other senses as well. I can hear radio. That’s how I tracked the Nahn down.’

  Footsteps on the landing. The two boys froze. The feet could go two ways, to the bathroom, or towards the bedrooms. They were coming to the bedroom. Everett M snapped his ports shut and was wriggling into the T-shirt as Ryun’s dad knocked and opened the door. He did a quick double-take at Everett M pulling his T-shirt down over the waistband of his jeans.

  ‘Are you guys okay?’

  ‘We’re okay,’ Ryun said.

  ‘Good. Excellent. Um, Ryun. Those, um, night-vision goggles? Are you using them? Could I have a go with them?’

  ‘One thing I’ve noticed,’ Everett M said when Ryun’s dad had gone back down the stairs, goggles in hand. ‘You’ve stopped saying um.’

  I have, Ryun thought, and he knew exactly when he had and why. When: the moment he had seen the alien tech retract into the palms of Everett’s hands. Why: he knew now. There was no doubt. His suspicions were confirmed. Everett was not his best friend Everett. He was the double from a parallel universe. Everything Ryun had feared was true, and more. This Everett was not just a double, but an alien-re-engineered cyborg agent. Working for the bad guys. Planted with the real Everett’s mum and kid sister. Who had tried to kill the real Everett. Who had sneaked brain-devouring alien nanotech from Earth 1 to this world and then accidentally let it loose.

  ‘Colette was right,’ Ryun whispered.

  ‘What?’

  He hadn’t realised he had spoken aloud.

  ‘Colette. Your dad’s friend. I mean, your alter’s dad’s friend …’ It would always be an easy mistake, confusing alter for original. Especially when the question of who was alter and who was original depended on who you were and in what universe.