She remembered.
She jolted her head aside, sprang up, ready to deliver a rabbit-punch to the Q"ell"s thoracic hinge. As far as she knew, it was the best way of knocking out an insectoid.
The next thing she knew, she was on the floor, with hard, chitinous arms around her, moaning and struggling feebly.
"There has been a change in the situation," said the officer"s voice, almost in her ear. "We need your help." Benny felt her stomach heave, was violently sick on to the cold stone. She smelled the fumes of chloroform in her vomit: for a moment she thought she was going to pa.s.s out again. But the dizziness receded. She got up, wiped her lips and stared at the Q"ell.
"My help help?" she said. She looked at the piece of gla.s.s in the alien"s hand, and realized it was a small bowl, not a knife at all. A pinkish liquid swirled around inside it, giving off wisps of steam: probably it was something that was intended to revive her.
Hotel Du Q"ell, she thought. We chloroform you, threaten to cut your throat, and revive you with herbal tea afterwards.
Full English breakfast extra. She began to laugh, a dry, choking laugh that tasted of vomit and ended in a fit of coughing. "Well," she concluded, "all I can say is that if you really expect me to help you now, you"d better ask me very nicely."
"We have lost contact with the Recruiter," the Q"ell said, apparently oblivious to Benny"s sarcasm. "We want to know what to do."
"What to do?" Benny stared at the hard alien face, saw that the eyes were twitching in their sockets, and the whole head was making minute jolts, clicking against the top of the thorax. The Q"ell, she realized, was deeply disturbed.
Whatever had happened had evidently undermined his sense of ident.i.ty: which figured, she thought, if that ident.i.ty had been dependent on a telepathic link with a machine.
She wondered what had happened to the Recruiter, and why it had happened now, after fourteen hundred years. She grinned as she realized the likely answer.
The Q"ell was still staring at her, his body twitching.
Benny took a deep breath, tried to forget that this creature had been about to have her for lunch. "Why do you think I can tell you what to do?" she asked carefully.
"The other animal said that you had a friend you called the Doctor, and that you kept talking to him although he wasn"t there."
"The other animal? You mean Gabrielle? You"d better start remembering that we"ve got names, if you expect any help." Benny stood up. She tried to ignore the wobbly feeling in her legs and the humming in her ears that resulted from the effort, and looked around her. For the first time she noticed that it was a different room to that in which she"d lost consciousness. The diamond-shaped lamps were the same, but the walls were darker, the decorations more subdued.
There was even a window: a vertical slit with a wide inner sill on which stood a gleaming machine-gun, set on runners so as to provide a wide angle of fire.
"We want you to talk to the Doctor now," the Q"ell was saying. "We want you to tell him to communicate with the Recruiter for us."
Benny frowned. She decided not to admit, for the time being, that she couldn"t. Instead she asked, "Why not communicate with the Recruiter for yourselves?"
"I"ve told you. We can"t."
"It"s in the Citadel, isn"t it?"
"Yes, but we are not permitted access."
Benny looked at the machine-gun, wondered if it could be taken off its mounting. It looked light enough to carry.
Aloud she said, "Don"t you think that might have changed too? Given the "change in the situation"?"
A pause. Benny didn"t look round, but she could imagine the Q"ell tilting his head on one side, searching the telepathic airwaves, failing to get a response. Finally he said, "What do you think?"
Benny grinned, turned to face the alien. "I think we ought to give it a try," she said. "Get some of your people together."
As an afterthought she added, "And Gabrielle, too."
But even as she said it she felt a chill pa.s.s over her, and she knew. She knew even before the Q"ell said, "Gabrielle?
The other animal? She has been processed. Did you need her for anything?"
Benny could have asked what "processed" meant, but she didn"t need to. There was a humming in her ears, a red mist in front of her vision. She turned back to the window, to the gleaming machine-gun. She could see the knurled bolts that secured it now. It was only a matter of releasing them, then she could pick up the gun and fire it, fire it at the Q"ell until the clip was empty and the alien was a ma.s.s of pulp and broken chitin, squashed against the wall, squashed like the bug bug it was - it was - She ran to the window, kneeled down by the gun, began beating her fists against the stone below the mounting. The Q"ell was shouting something, but she couldn"t hear it over the pounding of her blood in her ears. She didn"t want to hear it; she just kept beating her fists on the stone, harder and harder, watching the mist in front of her eyes thicken. Finally, when the pain began to get through from her hands, she stopped.
She heard a metallic click behind her. "It has gone mad,"
said a Q"ell voice. "If it gets up, kill it."
Very slowly, Benny turned round. Through tear-blurred eyes she saw three Q"ell, rifles aimed at her.
She swallowed. "I"m not mad," she said. She hoped the Q"ell would think it was normal that her voice was jumping all over the audio spectrum. "It"s just a ritual my people have when a friend dies."
One by one, the rifles were lowered. Benny stared at her bloodied fists, realized suddenly that they were hurting like h.e.l.l.
Slowly, she stood up. "OK, then," she said. "Get your troops together. It"s time to meet the Recruiter."
Chris had managed to stabilize the descent by pulling the stick over to the right - but it was still a descent, and it was still faster than he would like. He glanced at the altimeter: it showed 2500 metres. Almost half-way down already. He could only hope that the ice on the wings would melt before they got too near the ground. That would at least give him a chance of landing under control.
He looked over the side trying to find a suitable place to land. The city of Bristol glittered below him: gaslit streets, moonlit parks, the glistening line of a river. An open s.p.a.ce would be best, he thought. With an effort, he stretched his legs out to push the rudder pedals, steering the plane towards the largest of the parks. He became aware of Chevillon"s body next to his, now rigid and immobile. It occurred to him that he ought to get Chevillon out of his straps and dump him over the side, so as to give himself more room to move in the cramped s.p.a.ce of the c.o.c.kpit. But he wasn"t sure he could face doing it. Besides, he would need Roz"s help, and though she was only three metres behind him, he had no way of signalling to her.
He decided not to think about it, but simply watched as the moonlit expanse of gra.s.s, blobbed with dark trees, slowly came closer. The ice on the wings did begin to melt - he could see fragments of the stuff whirling away in the slipstream - but not fast enough. The plane was still dropping.
He pulled at the throttle cable, but the engine wouldn"t give any more. He cautiously edged the stick back, but the nose didn"t come up and the wings wobbled dangerously. More ice would have formed on the front of the wings than on the back, he realized; the plane was being physically tipped forward. He glanced over his shoulder, saw the back of Roz"s flight helmet at the bottom of the sh.e.l.l-pocked slope of the fuselage. Staying put, he thought, in case of a rough landing.
Which made sense.
He was relieved to see, as the ground grew closer, wide s.p.a.ces of flat-looking gra.s.s between the trees. At last he managed to level off: he was sure that if he flew around at low alt.i.tude for a few more minutes he had a fair chance of landing safely. He decided to use the time to pick out the best possible site.
After a couple of minutes, he saw a place where a wide road ran along the edge of the park, and decided that it would do. The surface was harder, but there was less chance of hidden b.u.mps or holes in the ground. Chris turned the plane sharply around above a cl.u.s.ter of buildings, preparing for what he hoped would be the final approach to the landing.
Then, ahead, he saw a column of moving lights. He stared at them for a moment, then realized that they were vehicles of some kind. They had the same primitive, boxy, metallic look as the plane he was flying. The lights from the vehicles illuminated the facade of the building he was flying over and he saw the words "UNIVERSAL TOYS" painted in white across the redbrick walls, with a crude image of a teddy bear.
"Roz!" he shouted, though he knew she couldn"t hear him. "I think we"ve found the factory!" He had known it was somewhere on this side of the city: the Doctor had mentioned that Benny took her lunches in the park. Chris had the sudden, crazy notion that if they could just get inside the factory everything would be all right. They would get the children back somehow. He imagined finding the transmat unit, pressing the recall b.u.t.ton - of course there would be a recall b.u.t.ton - Something loomed up ahead: the trees lining the park.
Chris opened the throttle, pulled back on the stick. The plane jerked upwards; there was a clattering noise as the uppermost twigs of the trees brushed past the wheels.
Ahead, the ground was flat and gra.s.sy for several hundred metres. Forget the road, he decided, just get down.
Keeping the stick back, Chris slowly let in the throttle.
With the nose up, and the speed low, the plane should stall.
Hopefully, it would do that when it was only about a metre off the ground. But Chris was acutely aware that, though the speed they were travelling at was less than a tenth that of a standard flitter, it was still quite fast enough to kill them if anything went wrong.
The dark shapes of the last of the trees glided below.
The plane slowed. Chris had no idea of the stalling speed, and not much s.p.a.ce to get it wrong in. Chris remembered what Chevillon had said about volatile fuels, and switched the engine off.
The plane dropped.
The grey shape of a statue reared up ahead: he hadn"t seen it against the gra.s.s in the silvery light. Frantically, Chris tramped on the rudder pedals. He felt the plane turn, then hit the ground. There was a crunch of metal as a wing hit the statue, and the plane jolted violently. Chris was almost thrown out of the c.o.c.kpit as the fuselage tilted forward.
Something hit him on the shoulder, then on the head. He clung on to the stick, which was now behind him for some reason. He heard Roz shouting, saw the bright glare of a light ahead of them, a light that hadn"t been there before. He heard the roar of engines, a voice shouting.
Then he fell. More light exploded in his head, then everything went dark.
When Josef woke up, he knew that the war was over, and that he ought to ask his sergeant for instructions. He rolled over on the oddly hard surface of his bunk, opened his mouth to call out Ingrid"s name - And then felt the hard-packed earth under his palms, and remembered where he was. And what had happened to Ingrid.
He sat up slowly, shivering, and looked around him. The cracked redbrick walls of the dugout he"d taken shelter in stared back at him. A dusty shaft of sunlight shone through a broken wooden door.
The war was over and Ingrid was still dead. He could still hear the hollow snap of her neck breaking, the gurgling, choking sound of her death. His sergeant wouldn"t be able to order her back to life again. No one could.
The war was over and it didn"t matter. It didn"t make any difference to anything. He still had to avenge Ingrid, if he could: it was the only thing he could think of that made any sense.
Josef stood up, aware that he was hungry and thirsty. He wasn"t sure what he could do about being hungry, but there was an iron tank in the corner of the dugout that collected rainwater through a pipe that went to the roof. The tap was broken, but there was a rusty hole in the top, just big enough for him to push his metal canteen through. The water tasted metallic and bitter, but it was water. Josef drank what he needed, filled the canteen again, then walked to the door. He wriggled between the broken pieces of wood and into a pa.s.sageway which sloped up to the surface. The sun was shining directly through the entrance, and he couldn"t see anything through the light. He wondered if he ought to wait until the sun had moved round, but eventually decided against it. He couldn"t hear anything. Nothing had tried to shoot him. It ought to be safe.
He walked slowly up the pa.s.sageway, moving as quietly as possible and keeping close to the wall. He crawled the last couple of metres, poked his head out cautiously. He saw a field of dry soil, littered with broken bricks and surrounded by a high stone wall. It sloped away to the north, and beyond it was the huge building where Ingrid"s killers had gone. The stone facade of the building was grey-white in the sunlight, broken by the dark lines of slit windows and patches of green creeper. Josef could see the ground-engines that guarded it, squatting down on the stone courtyard.
Squatting down?
He frowned, peered closer. There didn"t seem to be any smoke coming from the stacks: whoever was operating the big machines seemed to have simply parked them, out there in the open. Cautiously he made his way around the edge of the field, keeping under the cover of the wall until he came to the crumbled breach in it that overlooked the courtyard.
Yes. The ground-engines were definitely parked. One of the insect-things was slumped against one of them, apparently asleep. He crept over the wall and lowered himself on to a bank covered in dry, yellowing moss, sc.r.a.ping his hand on a sharp piece of broken stone as he did so. The insect-thing was now hidden by the bulk of the ground-engine. He couldn"t see any other movement in the courtyard. Behind the ground-engine, a huge door gaped open.
Josef stared at the gaping door. If he could get into the building, he reasoned, then he could probably get near to where the enemy were. Then he could destroy the enemy - if necessary by destroying himself. The self-destruct mechanism on a ground-engine of this size ought to be able to destroy a lot of things.
Josef wanted to destroy a lot of things. He wanted to destroy everything, if he could. He began to creep forward across the courtyard.
"Halt!" shouted a voice.
Chris opened his eyes, saw a line of khaki-clad men with long rifles in their hands. Roz was standing in front of them, shouting. "We"ve got to get into the factory - "
"This is a military operation! We have instructions to allow no one - "
"- only people who know what"s going on. I haven"t got sodding time time to argue - " to argue - "
Haven"t got time? thought Chris blearily. Wasn"t it already too late? He struggled to get up, but fell back again on to the wet gra.s.s. He realized then that he must have been unconscious for a few moments. He checked in his pocket to make sure he still had the gun that Chevillon had given him.
"Don"t move!" shouted the voice. "We have you surrounded!"
Then Roz was standing over him. "Chris? You OK now?
Thank the G.o.ddess for that, at least."
One of the khaki-clad figures was standing behind her, also looking down at Chris. "I"m sorry, sir, but your servant seems to have been rendered quite mad by the crash. We"ll do everything we can to help you on your way, but we have to point out that this is a restricted area - "
"She"s not -" Chris broke off, swallowed. His throat was unexpectedly dry and his jaw hurt. He wondered how long he"d been unconscious. "- not my servant," he finished with an effort. "She"s my partner. And she"s not mad. We really do need to get into the factory. That"s why we came here. That"s why Chevillon"s dead."
The officer frowned and glanced over his shoulder. "I think we"d better take them with us. The colonel might want to speak to them."
"We haven"t got time," Roz was saying again. But the soldier had turned to his men and was shouting orders. A stretcher. Handcuffs.
Handcuffs? Chris tried to sit up again. This time he made it. He leaned against the side of the plane, pulled Chevillon"s gun, using his body to shield it from the line of soldiers.
Roz saw it, raised her right eyebrow about a millimetre, then nodded.
Chris moved the gun to where the soldiers could see it, took aim at the officer.
"Adjudication service!" he yelled. "n.o.body move!" Roz ran.
Chris heard the crack of a rifle, saw Roz duck.
"n.o.body move!" he shouted again. He struggled to his feet, took a step forward and put the gun to the officer"s neck, at the same time keeping the man"s body between him and the line of soldiers.
It occurred to him that he was taking a hostage. He tried to remember his training on hostage-taking situations, and to antic.i.p.ate what the others might do. Most likely they would try to negotiate: that would give Roz some time.
The officer shouted, "Shoot them, lads! Don"t worry about me!"
Chris swallowed hard. He"d reckoned without heroics.
Fortunately the soldiers seemed just as confused as he was: they glanced at each other or at their commander. One fired a shot into the air, well above Chris"s head.
Roz, he noticed, was gone.